Mainland China
(Sunday Sept 17, 2006)

This was probably my weakest day physically and one of my strongest days spiritually. We had planned in advance for Sunday morning to be more a worship and ministry service, with less teaching and more ministry and impartation. Normally I would do the "obedience" part of my teaching in the second session, but God had me hold it until Sunday morning (the third session). We also decided to have an hour of worship instead of the "usual" half hour. They made an announcement that worship would be loud, so they would be sealing off the room (Soundproofing it). That meant that everyone had to arrive by 9:00 AM as they would seal the room.

That darn cold continued to get worse. Part of me could not understand why God did not just heal me, since healing comes so easy to Him. The other part of me understood why. It had to do with that passage from 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 that Ruth had mailed to me in Hong Kong. God wants to send a greater revival to Asia than what we have already seen. That revival is not going to come cheap. The apostle Paul suffered in Asia, Jeannie Lawson and many others laid down their lives there. So I knew that I would not be exempt from suffering either.

All the same, I felt so sick Sunday morning that I did not know how I was going to get through the service. They worshipped for an hour. I spent part of that hour worshipping with them and the rest of it trying to mentally review my 90 minute teaching for that morning. My concentration was shot and I was having trouble remembering the material. "Lord!" I prayed silently, "Please help me. I feel spent and I don't know if I have anything left to give them. I have waited so long to minister here. Please don't let me fail them!"

Then I was reminded of the verse from 2 Corth. 12 where Paul prayed for God to remove the thorn in his flesh. Verses 8 to 9 came to my memory: "8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

Quite frankly, when it came time for me to speak, I was a bit nervous that I would not be able to do an adequate job. Then the Holy Spirit came on me. I was able to clearly communicate what He had given me to say. He also helped me to use humor and recalled some neat stories (e.g., personal testimonies) to my mind to help me illustrate it powerfully. That was the session where I did my teaching about obeying Him and I always end that teaching by making an invitation for people to enter into an obedience covenant with God. Every single person in the room was eager to do that. I spent a bit of time explaining that God would definitely ask them to do something they don't want to do (or to not do something they really wanted to do) and they would be obligated to obey Him without arguing about it if they made this covenant.

But no one changed their mind. They were all eager. After leading them (a repeat-after-me prayer) into the covenant, I asked them to cry out to God like they did in Acts 4:23-30 for boldness to obey Him and for empowerment to obey Him.

The Holy Spirit began to fall on people in the room. About 2/3 of the room was Pentecostal and the other third evangelical. The Holy Spirit began to fall on most of them, even the ones who had never seen it before. A few were looking around questioningly, but most were receiving from God. (The ones who were uncomfortable with this Pentecost type of experience were unable to leave, because the door was still sealed with sound proofing, so as not to call attention to what was going on in the room. Believers in China have to be cautious in the worship services, as they are not government sanctioned.

Usually this type of group prayer and ministry time lasts about 15 to 20 minutes. But the Holy Spirit came in and took over the room for a full 40 minutes. It got really wild in there.

My interpreter was probably a dispensationalist. But he had prayed the obedience prayer along with the others. And when the Holy Spirit took over the meeting, He also touched him. My interpreter experienced tingling in his hands, heat on his feat and God really touched his heart. Originally he was not going to be able to do the last session (2-6 PM) because he had another commitment. The person they had obtained for that service barely spoke English and I was kind of worried about how that service would go. But after the way that the Holy Spirit touched my interpreter, he decided to cancel his afternoon commitment and continue interpreting for me. He was seeing the Holy Spirit in action for the first time in His life, but he liked what he was seeing. He already moves powerfully in the gift of evangelism, and I suspect God is going to be doing some additional amazing things in his life.

At one point during the ministry time, God told me to say, "God is releasing the gift of prophesy." The room went into an uproar. People started falling heavily to the ground (no catchers) and some lay shaking on the ground under God's power for over 30 minutes. The room got really noisy and God was all over His people. Some were crying, some were dancing in the spirit, a few were shaking, some were falling down, others appeared to be speaking in tongues. (The tongues part is a guess, they may have been interceding in Mandarin.) I silently asked God "What next?" He told me to just wait, and He continued to pour out on the people in the room for a full 20 minutes. I spent most of it just waiting and watching what He was doing in the room in amazement. But He also poured out on me during part of it.

After the Lord finally gave control of the service back to me, I offered to lay hands on anyone who wanted it to pray for impartation. (I had washed my hands with disinfectant liquid just before I started the ministry time to try and prevent passing out any germs as I prayed for people). Before I could get the invitation out of my mouth, I was mobbed with people wanting prayer. They don't "line up" for prayer in China, they just mob around you.

So I began to pray for the "mob" and God began to touch people. Some of them just got a small touch, but may were touched very visibly and tangibly. It was amazing to watch how powerfully God touched people as I prayed for them. I knew He was enabling, equipping and empowering them for the work He had for them to do in China.

We did have a couple of demonic manifestations. One came during the ministry time. The lady did not want to be free of her demon, so I merely shut it down instead of casting it out. (I don't believe in casting out demons if they person doesn't want them gone.) The other appeared in the middle of my teaching. Instead of dealing with it, I just had them move her into the other room and make her comfortable. When the demon saw that it wasn't getting any attention, it stopped manifesting about three minutes later.

I did not feel sick at all from the time I started preaching Sunday morning until we broke for lunch, because the anointing was on me so strongly. However, the afternoon session was a bit of a struggle because I was feeling sick/weak again. However, I did not cough or sneeze and the session appeared to go well. When it was over, we had a question and answer session that went for an additional hour past the scheduled ending time. I expected the questions to be about hearing God's voice, but most of the question were about the Holy Spirit touching people during the Sunday morning ministry time. God had done a lot of impartation and the people had a lot of manifestations that they'd not experienced before. I downplayed the manifestations and put the emphasis on what God was doing in their lives to equip/anoint them for His purposes.

There was a special dinner with a few key leaders. Some of them arrived late and one of the leaders (a worship leader) from Beijing was asking me a word I'd given her and subsequent experience that she had. The waitress overheard out discussion (being interrelated of course) and began to share how she used to go to church when she lived with her mother. She'd stopped going when she'd move to this city, and had apparently never made a personal commitment to God. But something stirred in her heart as she overheard our discussion and she wanted to visit a church. The believers there immediately got her connected in with the pastor who's church closest to where she lived. The also exchanged names and phone numbers. That is sort of how the gospel spreads in China... people overhear believers talking and express interest. Then they are either led to the Lord on the spot, or they start visiting the underground church services and accept the Lord there.

Dinner went for a couple of hours and then they took me back to my hotel and I went right to sleep even thought it was only 8:00 PM. My body was totally spent. Instead of doing sight seeing the next morning, I went straight back to Honk Kong and my medicine--the stuff I'd packed away in my other suitcase. I began to feel better when the medicine started to kick in. It was a very long trip home and I did not arrive at home until about 28 hours after I left my hotel on Monday morning.

The hardest part of the trip was saying goodbye to the believers in Mainland China, especially to Pastor Ann. I had given her a copy of my book (How To Hear The Voice Of God In A Noisy World) Sunday night. She brought me a present Monday morning for breakfast, a lovely statue of a camel. I don't know why, but that statue really appealed to me. I would have liked it even if it had not been a present form someone I cared about. But it is even more special because it came from someone who I have really come to love. I put it on top of my television in my living room. Each time I look at it, it reminds me of China and I find myself thinking that I will be back soon. I am not sure when that will be, but I am praying it will be in the very near future.