Be Filled (August 29, 1997)

A Church near my house was having a special renewal meeting and guest speaker. I decided to go "check it out" this evening (Tuesday).

It was good! It was a lot like the early renewal days where there was a lot of teaching about being thirsty, drinking from the Lord's river, receiving what He has for you, etc. Then, after a very good teaching session was over, they had us move to a large gym where they had strips of carpet laid out so we could do "carpet time". We lined up and the speaker came and prayed for us. It was a lovely time of refreshing for me. I must have been down about 40 minutes. The Lord's sweetness surrounded me... it was a gentle time.. no manifestations or power stuff. But it was SO nice to be in His presense.

Near the end of that time, I began to remember that the speaker had told a story about how God gave him an evangelism anointing, and how he has seen at least 6 people receive Christ every day since then. I am as greedy as they come when it comes to God's free and abundant spiritual gifts... and I began to desire an increase in evangelism anointing... I have some evangelism anointing already, but I wanted MORE! and I wanted to be more effective in moving in that anointing. So I began to ask the Lord for it... believe me, it is not the first time I've asked Him for that.

About then, I became aware of the noise in the room and was no longer "lost" in the Lord's presense. I opened my eyes, and saw the fellow praying for people across the room. I told the Lord that I wish that the speaker could pray for me for an evangelism anointing. God said something fairly obvious, like "Go get in line and when he gets to you, tell him what you want." So I did.

He said he'd be happy to pray for me for that... his wife had joined him in praying for people... He told me, "When I lay hands on you, the Lord will impart this into you. Take it, it's yours." Then he laid his hands on me, and it felt like liquid fire surrounding me. I began to shake and my feet were sort of running in place. It got incredibly hot and I could feel God's power surging through me. The fellow started praying "Fire! Fire! More Fire!!"

I finally said something like, "Wow, it's so hot!"

The speaker said to his wife... "she's got it" and the wife replied "Yes, she does."

About then I was not sure I could take any more. He gave me a very brief prophesy sort of promising that God had placed an evangelism calling on my life and that Jesus was going to start by personally evangelising me... by captivating those areas of my heart that I'd not already turned over to His Lordship. I could not think of any areas at the moment, but the idea sounded good to me. I prayed silently and invited the Lord to take any areas of my heart that weren't already under His Lordship. Then I went down.

It was a shorter time, but a fairly powerful time.... I could feel His power surging through my body. At one point I started to smell disinfectent, like in a hospital room. I asked the Lord what was going on. He said that He was doing surgery in my spirit and that the anasthetic He was going to use was His peace. About then, I was overcome by His peace. Just then I felt someone touching my neck on the right side, not far from my throat. I opened my eyes to see who was touching me. No one was there, but the physical sensation remained. It was almost like the Lord was touching my neck with an invisible hand. Then I relaxed into His presense and was lost in His peace for a while.

After a while, the peace lifted and I felt relatively normal. I thought I'd be a bit disappointed that I'd not gotten drunk in the spirit or Holy Laugher or something along those lines. But I felt a very strong sense of His presense with me and felt very content. I sat up and opened my eyes. A lady near me was doing worship dance to the worship tape that was playing in the background. I watched her for a few minutes... her dance was beautiful to watch, and the look of joy and awe of God in her face was even more delightful. Anyhow, after a few minutes, I felt like it was time to go home. So I got up and left the building.

I got into my car and began driving home. A Bible verse kept running over and over in my mind.... "be not drunk with wine, but BE filled with the Holy Spirit." After a while, I asked God why this verse was going through my mind so much. He answered with a question.

"Teresa, what is the verb in this sentence...'be filled with the Holy Spirit'?"

"Filled."

"No, the verb is 'be'. Filled is what you are to 'be'. Is 'to be' an active or a passive verb?"

"Passive."

"That's right," the Lord replied, "it is passive. Your job is to 'be' and My job is to fill you. Your part is not really all that hard... You already are Mine, and you cannot stop being Mine. I will fill you.. that is My job, and I enjoy doing it."

"Wow!"

I love my new spiritual job description... to "be". And His job is even better... to fill me! In the past, it has sometimes been tricky for me to "be filled" since that implies that I have to do something to get filled, and I don't really seem to have much control over that.

But I can certainly "be" and let Him do the filling....