Tuesday 13 February 2007

The Key is With Us Not With God

God is Love Fellowship:

I thought I heard Christian music coming from a sports stadium. So I said to the pastor, "Lets go have a look." Sure enough, it was a church group practicing for their upcoming musical.

Well when they found out he was a pastor and I a missionary, they invited us to pray for them. So I began to lay hands on them and the Holy Spirit fell on each one. After getting filled and thrilled, they invited us to come back and share at their half-night of prayer in a few days time.

When we arrived at the half night of prayer, I asked the meeting leader how long I should speak for. She said, "Oh about 40 minutes."

I said, "Well, how about I speak for 20-minutes and then let the Holy Spirit move for 20- minutes?" [ I knew when the Holy Spirit gets to moving, people don't usually care if it goes over time] I don't know if she knew what that was all about.

I shared some remarks preparing them for a move of the Spirit, then announced a time of making the meeting available to him. Well, people started to get touched. There was laughter, the atmosphere was charged. The Holy Spirit was there! Hallelujah. It went on!

I dutifully handed the meeting back after my time, and the appointed person stood up to lead the rest of the prayer meeting. As she stood to the front, I knew that this would be a telling-point for the meeting. I looked to God to touch her, to cause her to guide us appropriately, sensitively, to help her to not quench the Spirit.

Well she had real trouble speaking. Its like she was trying to move on with the intercession side of things, but just couldn't enter in! As I watched it was like something tottering on the edge and you're wondering which way its going to fall.

"Well!" she said, "I was supposed to pray for a move of the Spirit – but its already here. I was supposed to pray for revival – but its already here. I was supposed to pray for our musicians to be anointed – but they're already anointed. I think we've got nothing left to do but to thank and praise the Lord!"

With that I, and the whole congregation it seemed, burst into a relieved laughter, jumped to our feet and celebrated the rest of the night with dancing, singing and praising – and in fact, we didn't' even have to go 'til midnight. We finished a little earlier, feeling quite refreshed and satisfied that our requests were granted.

Next, we were invited to minister in the Sunday service. Now, the pastor who accompanied me and I often itinerated together, so in each meeting we would seek to be sensitive to the will of the Spirit concerning which of us should do what, in the meeting. For example, sometimes I would preach, then after that the anointing would come on him not me, to minister the Spirit. Other times he was led to minister the Word then the anointing to minister the Spirit would come on me. Other times both anointings were on each of us.

But this particular Sunday, after I shared the Word, the anointing to minister the Spirit wasn't on either of us. Eventually the pastor accompanying me called the pastor of this church because he felt that God wanted to use her this time, because God wanted to demonstrate two things: 1) He wanted to encourage this pastor that God can use her; and 2) He wanted the congregation to know that. So he laid hands on her, then told her to go lay hands on the congregation.

Well everyone she touched received a powerful anointing. All of heaven broke loose at that point, as in previous meetings, whereas it hadn't when Pastor Bobbie and I had tried to minister the Spirit in this meeting. See, God just wanted to demonstrate something.

The pastor was so excited that God used her. No doubt she had desired to be, but said that she had never been used like that before.

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