I had been aware that the revival was going on in Lakeland and I had been hearing a lot of good reports about it, as well as some "concerns." I have never been much of a "watch a meeting on TV" type, so I did not follow the meetings on GodTV. Then one day (May 9) Jim Paul and I prayed together by phone for someone who was very sick. After we prayed, he sent me an email suggesting I tell her to watch the Lakeland revival on GodTV or via the internet. I decided that before I could pass that instruction along, I'd better watch it once on TV myself. So I tuned GodTV into my television set, and watched the revival meeting.
Even after watching it, I remain someone who would much rather attend a meeting in person than watch it on TV. But what I saw on TV that day looked good, and made me hungry for revival. So I prayed and asked God if He'd be willing to send me to Lakeland for a healing impartation. (This prayer happened about 2 hours into the 4 hour broadcast.) God surprised me. He said, "Teresa, would you be willing to go somewhere else closer to California, to someplace that sprung up from Lakeland instead of going directly to the source? Would you be willing to go to somewhere you could drive to instead of flying--somewhere like Oregon?"
Well, the truth is that I'd prefer to go directly to the source and receive the impartation directly from Todd Bentley, who was heading the revival. But I was "willing" to go somewhere else if that is what God wanted me to do. So I said, "Yes." Then I added, "But Lord, I don't know where in Oregon to go. You will have to show me where to go."
About 3.5 hours into the 4-hour broadcast, God did exactly that. Mr. Bentley was handed a cell phone and he said, "I have pastor Denny Cline from Oregon on the phone. Denny recently got back from Lakeland and he is starting to have these revival meetings in Oregon." Then Todd prayed on the phone for an impartation and blessing on these meetings.
This really got my attention because I knew Denny Cline. He and his friend, Arlin Atkin, had gone to Toronto the same time I did (for my first trip there in 1994), and we ended up hanging out together. We had stayed in touch by phone for a while, but eventually we fell out of touch. I still had his home phone (or so I thought at the time) so I could call him and find out where the meetings were.
I tried to call him Saturday morning, but he'd moved to a different city since then, so the number I had for him was no longer valid. At first I was disappointed, but God told me to try looking him up on the internet. I did a quick search, and the web page for his church (Albany Vineyard Christian Fellowship) popped up. I checked the schedule and saw they were going to have meetings Thursday to Saturday nights. I had commitments on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but starting on Thursday I was free through the end of the weekend. Their schedule was perfect for me. I used mapquest to discover that the church was about a 12-hour drive, so if I left about 5:00 AM, I'd get there about 5:00 PM, giving me time to check into the hotel and still get to the 7:00 PM meeting. Their revival schedule seemed to fit together with mine perfectly. The cost was another matter...I figured gas, hotel and meals would be $600. I planned to put that on my credit cards and trust God to supply the money. By this point I was so hungry for revival, and I wanted to go to a "live" revival meeting so badly.
I tried to call Denny's church, but discovered that their office was closed until Tuesday. I wanted to verify with Denny that if I drove all the way up to Albany Oregon, that he'd lay hands on me and pray for impartation at some point (either in the meeting itself or privately outside of the meeting.) I lined up a hotel to stay in and got all the rest of my travel plans in order. Tuesday morning I called the church. Denny was teaching a class when I called, but they said that if I left a message on his voice mail, that he'd probably call me back later that day. So I did. Only I did not get a call back on Tuesday.
Wednesday I went ahead and gathered the stuff I would take with me, but did not actually pack it in my suitcase. I still expected Denny to call me back that day to confirm that they really did pray for impartation there, but he did not call. By Wednesday night, I was in a point of "crisis." Despite my teachings on not setting fleeces for God, I had sort of come to think of Denny calling me back (to confirm the impartation prayer) as a sort of sign as that God really wanted me to go. When everything else fell into place so neatly, but Denny did not call me back, it left me feeling confused. Was God really sending me or had it been the voice of my own heart?
I told the Lord that I really needed to hear from Him on whether I should go or not. I was willing to go if He was sending me, but I did not want to drive all that way (and incur all that expense) if it wasn't really Him. I wasn't sure what I should do, so I set my alarm for 4:00 AM and went to bed thinking that I would probably still be going in the morning.
The Lord woke me at 2:00 AM and said to me, "Teresa, I asked you if you were willing to go. I did not actually tell you to go. I wanted to see if you were willing to settle for impartation through a secondary source. That answered the question if you were looking to Me for the impartation, or looking to a particular man. Because you have demonstrated a willingness to go, I am not going to send you there. You don't have to go to Oregon."
I wasn't sure whether to be happy about that or disappointed. Yes, the idea of a 12-hour drive by myself seemed tedious and difficult, but at least I'd get a taste of the revival. Now it looked like I wasn't going to get anything.
The next day was one of the most unpleasant I'd had in a really long time. It was a record-breaking heat wave in my area and my electricity went out early in the day and stayed out most of the day. I could not go anywhere because I could not open our electric gate to get my car out. I could not use the computer, cook, watch TV, listen to music. My house phone doesn't work without electricity and my battery in my cell was almost dead, so I couldn't make calls. I couldn't even go for a walk because my foot was in a cast and I was only allowed to walk a few feet at a time. The heat was unbearable and I was frustrated, bored and miserable.
I realized that I'd have missed all of that unpleasantness if I'd left at 5:00 AM for Albany, and I wondered if I'd somehow missed God's direction in this. When I am miserable, it is hard for me to be spiritual. I tried to use the time to pray and seek God, but I could not seem to get "in the spirit," and time dragged slowly by. I cried out to God to speak to me about all of this, but could not hear His reply. Eventually the electricity came back on and I started feeling less miserable. But I still has this huge question mark in my spirit when I went to bed that night.
The Lord woke me early the next morning and told me that He was going to send me to Lakeland after all. At that point I wasn't so sure of my hearing. "You wanted to go, didn't you?" He asked.
Yes, I wanted to go. But was I hearing God's voice, or were the desires of my heart speaking to me? I did not really trust my hearing at that moment because the day before had been so miserable and I wasn't sure I'd heard right about not going to Oregon.
My husband got up a few hours later and He told me that he had a free pass for one round-trip flight on United Airlines anywhere they fly in the continental US. He asked me if I had a use for it. I told him how I wanted to go to some "church meetings" in Florida. In general, my unsaved hubby is not so excited about me going to church meetings. But he gave me the pass so I could go to Lakeland.
I guess I heard God right after all and I was excited.
Then I started organizing my trip. I initially planned to go as cut-rate and low budget as possible. I explored things like traveling with others to share hotel and rental car expense, staying in the cheapest hotel I could find, eating at McDonalds to save money on food, etc. I thanked God for giving me the free airfare, and told Him that I'd try to go as cut-rate and low budget as possible, so that my trip would not cost Him very much.
Then God asked me a question. "Teresa, do you want an encounter with a cut-rate low budget God, or do you want an encounter with the lavish King of the Universe."
When He put it that way... "I guess the latter, Lord."
He said, "Ok, trust Me to provide. Get yourself a nice comfortable hotel room, a comfortable car and plan to eat well. Don't worry about the cost, I will take care of it for you. And by the way, don't try to room with anyone else, because I want a date with you and you will need to be alone with Me in the room."
Now, I have this issue that it is not OK for me to spend much money on myself, to save the money for the work of the ministry. But God was telling me to spend on myself as much as I needed for a comfortable trip. I began to make arrangements in accord with His instructions. I choose to stay in a hotel with a refrigerator and stove and microwave, so I could cook the type of food I was used to eating. This meant I had to stay at a more expensive hotel to get these amenities. When I called for my reservation, they were out of their cheapest rooms (queen rooms) but had kings left. They ended up giving me their most deluxe room, a king-sized two-room suite, for the price of a regular king-sized room. Wow. I was amazed. [This is jumping ahead a bit, but when I got there, they lowered the price by another $10 per night, and I ended up getting their most deluxe room for the price of their cheapest room. Isn't God amazing!]
Still, even with this discount, this hotel was substantially more expensive that the "cheap" one. Then I got my rental car through the internet. I was originally going to go for the cheapest thing they offered, but God stopped me. He asked me if I wanted a cruise control since I had an hour drive from the airport to the hotel. I told Him "Yes, I'd love to have that feature, but only the full-sized cars offered it." The full sized cars were really expensive. He told me to get it anyhow. I went back to the web page and suddenly there was a special that had not been there before--a full sized car for only $5.00 per day more than their cheapest economy car.
God also told me to go ahead and upgrade from the free economy seats to United's Economy Plus, which have five inches more leg room. That upgrade cost an extra $186, round trip. But God said that He wanted me to be comfortable for this trip.
I added up the assorted costs of this trip, along with estimates for food and gas. It came to $1105, and I almost freaked. I thought to myself, "I can't spend that much money on a six-day trip! That is too much." But all God would say was "Trust Me, I will provide." That simple instruction was harder for me than you might think, especially since I felt guilty about spending extra money on myself. But I was determined to trust Him and I did not mention the "financial need" to a soul.
God told me that He wanted me to view this trip as a personal pilgrimage and retreat with Him. I was free to go to the revival meetings in the evenings, but my days belonged to Him. I started getting excited imagining that type of things the Lord might do during that time. [Again, this is jumping ahead, but He did even more than I had imagined.]
Six days before I was to leave, one of my advanced prophetic students told me, "Teresa, God instructed me to give you $600 towards your trip. She put the check in the mail the next day, and I received it before I left. I was grateful to her, but both she and God instructed me to view that money as coming from God.
I thought "Wow, Lord. That's great. You just paid for half of my expenses!" I have to confess that my faith was not high enough to expect Him to pay for all of it. But the next day I found two checks that were dividends from an investment I'd made a long time ago. I'd misplaced the checks and never cashed then, and I never "missed" that money. The checks were issued a year ago, and they were long-expired. I figured that I had forfeited the money because I'd not cashed the checks in time. But my husband phoned the company and they said to go ahead and cash them; they would still honor them even if it was way past the expiration date. I expected the bank to give me a hard time with these checks, but they did not. They chased the check and suddenly I had money that I'd never missed when it had been sent to me.
The two checks added up to $505. When I added the checks to the money I'd been given, it was exactly $1105--the amount I'd estimated that my more "deluxe" trip would cost. God supplied my expenses for the trip to the penny!
When I thanked God for this wonderful trip (and for providing every penny to pay for it), this is what He told Me: "Teresa, I love to give My children the desires of their heart. It caused Me more pleasure than you can imagine to do this for you. I enjoyed blessing you in this way, and I enjoyed our time together even more than you did."
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