I have been very busy and haven't had a lot of leisure time. But I have gotten in the habit of spending my leisure time by watching TV. God has been speaking to me about wanting to take over greater measures of my leisure time. I have been trying to give it to Him by spending more time doing spiritual activities, like listening to old prophecy tapes (words God has given to me through others over the years), teaching tapes, etc. But those have felt more like work and less like relaxing. It was a struggle to give God my leisure time because I wasn't feeling rested in it. (It is hard to concentrate on a teaching when you are really tired.) God had told me that when He takes something away from you (vegetating in front of the television), He replaces it with something better. But the alternate ways I'd been spending my leisure time did not feel like "something better" to me.
I had been heavily cleaning my house for days because I have houseguests coming, then I had about ten hours of routine Monday computer work to for GodSpeak and I had two hours of errands to run. I had started working at 5:30 AM and now it was 5:30 PM. I was too tired to houseclean or do more computer work. I wanted to give God my leisure time, but I did not know if I could stand to listen to another prophesy tape.
"Would you like it if I gave you something better?" God asked.
"Yes, Lord." That idea sounded wonderful. I wanted Him to invade my leisure time with His presence.
"Ok, Teresa. Why don't you start by putting on worship music and laying on the sofa and wait for Me to meet you."
I suspected God was going to put me to sleep and give me some much needed rest. But He did not do that. I worshiped with the music for about half an hour and His presence seemed to keep increasing on me as I worshipped. Then He was so tangible that He flooded my senses. I did not feel tired anymore. I felt both refreshed and very much energized and ready to go.
"Teresa, would you like Me to take you into a vision?"
"Oh, yes, Lord!" His idea sounded wonderful to me. The only problem was that it was now my dinner time and I was feeling hungry. I wondered if I should eat first and then go do the vision with the Lord.
"Don't worry about eating," God said. "Trust Me to take care of you. In fact, this vision is going to stretch you a little and I want you to settle in your spirit that you are going to trust Me instead of resisting Me during it.
"How do I do that?"
"Let's discuss it before we begin so you have settled in your spirit that this is from Me. I am going to send Moses to you in this vision to teach you something." So I stopped and prayed my standard "I am about to be stretched" prayer to God the father. I told Him that I believed He was the One giving me the instruction to prepare for this vision, and telling me to discuss it with Him before it happened. I asked Him to step in if this was not of Him--a check in my spirit, something to disrupt me out of it, etc, if I was wrong. I told Him that I was going to trust Him and cooperate with whatever happened to me unless I experienced something unbiblical, then I was going to stop anyhow.
God choose to give me a Scripture precedent for meeting Moses (who had died). He reminded me of the time that Jesus took Peter, James and John to the Mount of Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus and talked to Him, and He allowed the disciple to see and experience it. That put me at peace to trust God for this vision.
"Just go back to worship, daughter, and I will bring you into it." The worship music was still playing. I began to worship again and tried to ignore the hunger rumbles in my stomach. Pretty soon the sense of God's presence saturated me. I love being in His presence like this and even if we did not have the vision, I would not go away disappointed. I closed my eyes and continued to worship. All the sense of being hungry left me.
After a while, I heard a voice call my name. I opened my eyes and looked at the source of the voice. It was an older man with gray hair, and he was dressed in white with gold trim. His face and hands looked human, but his clothes radiated the glory of the Lord. I realized that he must be Moses.
"Yes, I am Moses." He appeared to be able to hear my thoughts just like the angels did, and answered my unspoken question.
I sat up and tried to show him some respect. Moses is one of the heroes of the faith to me, and I respect him immensely. In fact, I identify with him strongly and his life/story has had a bigger impact on me than any other old testament figure. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know what it was like for him going up the mountain to meet with the Lord that last time, knowing that he was going to die. Was he afraid?
He told me that he was not afraid because he had spent so much time directly in the Lord's presence here on earth, and he knew that he was about to go spend the rest of eternity with the Lord. He was a bit excited about seeing God's face and being in His presence for all eternity instead of just for short times on the mountain and in the tabernacle.
I had a whole bunch of questions for him. Did he feel like a failure since the people he was called to lead so often rejected his leadership? How did he manage to keep trusting God in the midst of all the difficulty and challenges? He choose to focus on that question.
"It was hard to trust at first, but as I got to really know God, then it got easy to trust Him. Here, let me show you what I mean."
He took my hand. Suddenly we were in this big old tent. I asked him where he had taken me. He said, "To the Tabernacle."
I remembered the bible story from Exodus 33:7-12:
7 Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp. 8 So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle. 9 And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. 10 All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door. 11 So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.
"What are we doing here?"
"We are waiting for the Lord to come in His glory and meet with us."
We waited a little while and then I could feel the sense of God's presence increase around me. Soon it was overwhelming and I could not remain standing. I had assumed that Moses bought me there for me to watch him meet with the Lord. But that wasn't the case at all. The Lord began to speak to Me.
"Lord, are You meeting with me?"
"Yes, child, that is why I had my servant Moses bring you here, so you could experience My presence in this place."
Wow! I was overwhelmed and I worshipped for quite some time. I got so caught up in God that I totally forgot about Moses. It seemed like the more I worshipped Him, the more the sense of His presence and glory increased. I was so overwhelmed by His nearness that I was almost nonfunctional. My senses were flooded with the delight from being near Him.
The Lord told Me that He was enjoying My delight in Him, it pleased Him. I was shocked.
"Lord, I am busy being blessed out of my socks. I am not doing anything but receiving. How can I possibly be pleasing You?"
"Teresa," He said, "I am much easier to please than you think I am. You have a wrong image of Me as someone who is hard to please. Let Me show you."
All of the sudden my mind was filled with knowledge and details. I saw instance after instance where I had assumed that I could not possibly please God, even when I did the things that the bible said please Him. My earthly father had been very hard to please, and I unconsciously attributed the same things to God. God showed me hundreds of times that I had done that, all in a flash of an instant.
"You are right Lord." I said, feeling like My misconception of God must be displeasing Him right now.
He laughed at me. "No, child I am not displeased with you. I am not a hard God to please. I am breaking that misconception and wrong thinking pattern off of you right now. You go out of your way to do many things to please Me--and it does. Daughter, I am pleased with you. In fact, your heart to bless Me pleases Me very much."
I felt something break off of me right then, and a sense of His pleasure began to flood over me. It felt wonderful. In fact, everything about God was wonderful.
"Lord, You are almost like a teddy bear or a push over. You give all sorts of good things to us when we just ask You for them."
I felt bad the moment I said that. It came out wrong, as if we someone had God wrapped around our little finger and had the ability to manipulate Him. I was getting ready to start apologizing to God for being so disrespectful. I hadn't meant it the way it came out.
"Peace child," the Lord said, "I know what you meant. Remember, I am the One Who reads people's hearts."
He paused, then continued, "I am not upset with you, dear one. I am still pleased with you, and it does delight Me to give you the desires of your heart."
"Lord, You are so good, You make it so easy for people to worship You!"
"That is the general intent. I want My creation to worship Me. Why would I make it hard for them to do what I want them to do? That would be counterproductive. I want to make it easy for My people to worship Me and I want to delight them as they draw near to Me."
What other response could I possibly make? I started to worship Him again. He received my worship for a while, then He showed me a pearl. He held it in front of me for me to look at. It was a pearl, but it was not the ordinary pearls I am used to seeing. It was magnificent; it glistened and glimmered and radiated His glory. I don't know how I knew this, but I knew it was the Pearl Of Great Price that Jesus talked about in one of His parables.
God asked me if I would like to have it. Of course, I said yes. Then God began to place it on my forehead instead of handing it to me. I was surprised, because I expected Him to put it in my hand. I did not say a word--but I did not have to because God hears our unspoken thoughts.
His hand hadn't quite reached my forehead yet. He stopped and asked me, "Would you like to hold it?"
I said yes, and He told me to put out my hand. Then the Lord placed the pearl it my hand. I could feel energy radiating out of the pearl, and it seemed to be vibrating. It was an amazing experience to hold it. The best way I can describe it that it was alive with God's presence and it radiated His glory. I stood here holding it and looking at it, astonished by what God had placed in my hand.
Then God asked me, "Teresa, how will you be able to carry through out the day for the rest of your life without losing it?"
I realized that He meant I could not old it in my hand all the time as I went about my daily activities. I might drop it or I would have to put it down. The pearl was indeed a wonderful treasure, but there was no way I could hold it and still go about living my life.
"Teresa, you like Me to take care of it? I can attach it to you in a way that you will never loose it."
"Yes, Lord." Did He plan to convert it to a necklace and place it around my neck? Or was He going to turn it into a ring for my finger? Those would be easier ways for me to carry it, but they were not foolproof. The pearl could fall out of it's setting or the chain could break and it would be lost.
He reached out His hand. "Hand the pearl back to Me."
I did, but I hated to let go of it. There was a possibility that He might keep it and never give it back to me at all. Once I had it in my hand and felt the radiance of His glory that it carried, it was hard to let go of it. But I did as He asked.
Then God took the pearl and placed it on my forehead. He pushed gently and it went inside of Me, but the process did not hurt at all.
"Teresa, since you gave it back to Me, I have put it where it belongs, and now you will never loose it."
I did not realize this during the time of the vision itself. But the first time I told someone about the vision, I had this realization. The experience was a living parable, and there is an application for us. At times we try to hold on to the things of the kingdom that we value. It might be anointing or ministries or relationships or possessions, etc. It is valuable to us, so we try to hang on to it instead of placing it back into God's hands. But the truth is that we are not capable of carrying it or maintaining it in our own strength. The only way to keep our "pearl of great price" is to put it back in God's hands and let Him be in charge of it.
The vision went on with more worship and intimate experiences with God. It lasted for over three hours. but I am not going to share all of those details in this write-up, but I have shared enough that you have the gist of the experience. I would like to jump to when the Lord left the tabernacle.
Of course, I did not want Him to go. I wanted to stay in the Lord's presence forever. It is so good to be near Him and when I am there, then nothing else matters. But God reminded me that He has things for me to do in this life that just e accomplished before I can spend all eternity in His presence. He did not just leave abruptly. Instead, the intensity of His presence began to fade until it was just a pleasant memory. Everything inside of me longed for more of Him, and I hoped that if I waited there, He might come back.
That was when I noticed Moses again. He was watching me with what looked like an expression of pleased interest. As soon as I became aware of him, I felt bad that I'd ignored him to pay attention to God.
Moses said, "That is the way it is supposed to be. I brought you here to encounter God, not to encounter me."
He paused, then he asked, "So now do you understand my answer to your earlier question?"
I had to concentrate and think back to remember what the original question had been. I had asked him had how he was able to trust God in ministry when so many things go wrong as he lead God's people. He had answered that the more he got to really know God, the easier it had been to trust Him.
Then he better explained the answer for me. "The key to trusting God is living in His presence and being saturated by Him; getting to really know Him very well. Then trust is no longer a 'mental' thing, it becomes experiential. When you directly experience His faithfulness enough times, the fact that He is faithful becomes engrained in you. Then it becomes much easier to trust Him regardless of what is going on around you. That is why I brought you to the tabernacle, so you could directly experience God's faithfulness in a way that will make it easier for you to trust Him."
I began thanking Moses for the wonderful lesson. He reached out and took my hand and we were suddenly back in my living room. I knew the vision was over and I hated for it to end. There was still so much that I wanted to ask Moses about and now I would not get the chance.
"You are right, this vision is about to end. But cheer up. The Lord will send me to you again in the future and you will see me again. But be sure that you keep your focus on Him, and not on His servants."
Then Moses was gone and the vision was over. However, the sense of God's nearness remained on me for the rest of the night. I took a short break to eat a light dinner--I wasn't hungry any more but I thought I should probably eat something. I stopped by the internet chatroom for a little while. Then I went back downstairs and turned on the worship music and started to worship God again. I did not have another vision or supernatural encounter with God, but He met me in a wonderful way as I worshipped Him. Before I new it, it was 11:00 PM and time to go to bed.
As I drifted off to sleep, I realized what had set all this off. God had been asking for Lordship of my leisure time, and when I gave it to Him, He found a wonderful way for me to spend it with Him.
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