The third consecutive God Evening took place (read about week 1 and week 2 if you have not done so already) and the sense of anticipation in the sanctuary was almost tangible. God had met us in such dynamic ways in the past three weeks that even the realisation that most of our senior leaders were away did not damped the sense of expectation and anticipation.
The night started with the sharing of a word that the prophetic team had received (they had spent an hour before the event praying and seeking God’s face about the evening) – it was a verse from Isaiah 64:5 which says: “You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.” Our hearts lifted as we realised that God comes to meet those who wait for him with joy.” Instantly we knew that the theme for the evening would be the joy of the Lord. No-one had to even say that was so!
A worship leader prayed that God would come and inhabit our praises – that it would not just be a visitation but a habitation.
The pastor leading the meeting shared her intention to teach for five minutes before giving the rest of the evening to pressing into the glory of God. But first she invited people to come forward to testify about what God had done in recent weeks – one spoke about the joy that they experienced; another about understanding grace properly and not needing to perform before God; and another spoke about relaxing and allowing God to touch us and use us even if our minds tell us that we have not spent enough time with God during that day. That was a critical word, because we sometimes feel like we are unworthy to minister for God because of stuff in our lives – but God was challenging that works-based mentality in his presence.
The pastor then shared from Hebrews 6 that God rewards faith – we need to believe that God is at work and then step out in faith to partner with him. She shared from Ephesians 5:18 that we are to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit – and that it is in tough times (as in the context of Isaiah 64) that God floods our hearts with joy. Psalm 2 was referred to as justification for laughter that has happened in our midst on Tuesday nights – for even God laughs at his enemies who try and stand against him – it is like someone throwing an acorn against an armoured car – futile! We have the victory – for greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world! The joy of the Lord is our strength!
She then shared that when someone manifests in our services there could be one of 3 causes:
1. God is doing something phenomenal in the person’s life – and all we say is “more Lord” (a phrase that I struggled with some weeks back as I felt we should focus more on giving God more of us than looking out for more of him – but clearly as we are experiencing a deeper sense of his presence each week there just seems to be a strong case to crying out for more of God in our lives and in the lives of the people we are praying for.
2. A demon is either coming or going – when we worship, an atmosphere of heaven is created on earth and demons have to flee. If demons are coming, we need to worry, but that is pretty much never the case – they are always fleeing from the presence of Jesus. If this is the case, then all we say is “more Lord”.
3. The person is doing it – but we are always involved to some extent in what God is doing. Even when we were saved, we heard a message and had to respond in prayer, or with some action, to symbolise what God was doing in our hearts. Whenever the Holy Spirit moves in our lives, we have to step out and do something – so we are involved. God influences our hearts and we respond to what the Holy Spirit is doing. If people draw attention to themselves or cause a distraction that is a problem, but otherwise we say: “more Lord”
I think we all got the message – we want more of the Lord in our midst, in our lives, in our families, in our businesses, etc. We were challenged, that when we sense the Holy Spirit coming upon us, and we feel that we need to do something, we must go ahead and do it – even if it makes us look stupid – like lying on the floor, doing new hand movements, waving a flag, etc. We were reminded about a message preached on Sunday that worship is an automatic response to a revelation of God. We have no option but to respond!
The final challenge before we started to worship was to do more than worship with our voice – but worship with our whole being. And boy did we worship!!! It was a lively start of physically expressive worship songs, but very quickly there was an intimacy and a joyfulness that came over the audience. Clearly God’s joy was in the sanctuary. A prophetic song was sung, preceded by a Scripture from the Old Testament, and we corporately sang a new song about rising as God’s beloved to come and meet with him. Words of declaration were sung about the freedom that we were experiencing in God’s presence.
After about 30 minutes, the pastor invited folk to come forward if they needed prayer.I was hoping to be a spectator on the night and just be on the receiving end of ministry but when 50 people flooded the front of the sanctuary (there was probably around 250 people in the audience) there was no time to stand back.
This is where I was surprised by God. On previous occasions in my life I have known that God was about to use me by a unique sign. I would maybe heard a word spoken in a foreign tongue and I would start to sweat – as I knew that God wanted me to step out in faith and speak out the word of phrase that he had given me and trust that he would give me the rest of the interpretation. Well, tonight, there was a whole new sign that God was about to work through me: my right hand would start to shake (pretty much uncontrollably, unless I held it tightly under the armpit of my other arm. I would engage with people (mainly guys) and ask them their name and how I could pray for them, and almost immediately I would know how to start praying for them and my arm would shake and they would immediately fall to the ground – it was almost as if the power of God was welling up within me and would be released in an instant.
To say that this was unknown in my life as little as three years ago is an understatement. It has been building up over the past years and seems to be reaching a whole new level. There was a guy who was almost twice my height and there was no way that I was going to climb on a ladder and attempt to push him backwards. The moment I laid my hand on his chest, he went to sleep for about 10 minutes. When we chatted later he spoke of how God had met him so powerfully and he knew he was changed. He had asked for prayer to be a better father and husband.
A chap who is physically (not mentally) challenged also was overwhelmed by the presence of God as I prayed and he too lay in a peaceful “sleep” as God did a work in his life. One colleague manifested more dramatic manifestations as I prayed and ended up resting before the Lord, but he shook a great deal for what seemed like forever. Even the leader of the evening that I sensed God wanted me to share a prophetic word was overcome and struggled to stand in God’s presence as I prayed for her.
One more truly exciting part of the evening was the speaking of prophetic words into people’s lives – including teenagers that were in the sanctuary. I felt prompted to speak about one receiving the wisdom of Solomon (that he would just look at his friends and have godly insights into what is wrong in their lives) and the other the spirit of Nehemiah (that he would be accomplish great things for God, have a divine ability to see what needed to be done and mobilise people to get the work done). Other words and lines of throught came to mind as I prayed for people, and judging by the affirmation they would make – it seemed as through they were fully agreeing with what I was sharing with them.
In fact, the evening started out when I met one of the guys that I had prayed for two weeks back and had spoken bold word about a brand new business venture that was going to be beyond his wildest dreams – well, he testified of how in the past weeks he has started a new bakery business and this week he has seen that his earnings are up 180% – now that sounds like something unique that only God can do!
One of the “lay” elders shared a prophecy near the end of the evening about how that as we worship God and experience his joy, that something was taking place that was flowing out to supernaturally impact our land. We ended singing a prophetic new song about our land being changed.
As I reflect on the night and my past – I have one comment to make – that for so many years we believed in the infilling of the Holy Spirit – but we almost NEVER prayed for it to happen. And that is pretty much what we spent the whole evening doing – praying that God would fill us, and fill people that we were praying for – with his presence. And he answered our prayers and came and did it – mostly in dramatic ways, but in some instances in quiet ways.
The elder mentioned as we were leaving, that in our crime filled city, Johannesburg, people are hesitant to go out on a weeknight (any night for that matter) but the parking lot was packed out on a Tuesday night. He suggested that we need to keep these mid-week meetings happening as God was doing something profound and people were responding by arriving with expectation to encounter God.