GETTING FROM THE PARKING LOT TO THE MEETING
To summarize my last report, I had run into all sorts of difficulties getting to the meeting, including delays at the airport, delays being stuck in traffic and getting lost on the way to the meeting. When I finally arrived, I expected things would go much better for me. But that was not to be the case. I stepped out of the rental car, which was parked on slanted ground. The door fell closed before I could get my stuff out, and to my dismay, I discovered that it had locked itself. I was locked out of the rental car--and my purse and car keys were still inside of it. And at that moment, it started to rain.
I felt so helpless and I did not know what to do. One of the parking lot attendants tried to use a hanger to break into the car for me, but he was unsuccessful, and we were both soaking wet.
There was a covered picnic area very close to where my car was. I went there from cover from the heavy rain. There were three policemen guarding the meeting grounds, and they were standing together in a huddle under the covered part of the picnic area. I went up to them and asked if they could help me. They said that they were not allowed to help people break into locked cars because of liability issues. One of them offered to smash the window with his club, but that did not really seem all that helpful. I asked them if they could radio their switchboard to get me a phone number to call, but they did not do so.
I did not know what to do and I felt very helpless. I did have my cell phone, but there was only about 15 minutes left on the battery and I did not have a number to call. I tried calling my husband at work to see if he could use the internet to find me a locksmith who would come to the car. But he was unreachable.
Shortly after that, one of the policemen came back to me--he had used his cell phone to get the rental car's emergency number. I tried calling it, but they told me that did not service lockouts, and it was not their fault that I did not know the doors self-locked. They suggested I call AAA or a locksmith. I asked them for a number of a locksmith in my area and they gave me one. But when I called him, he said that he did not service that area. By now by battery was beeping that there were only 2 or 3 minutes left on it.
I was pretty much out of options at that point. So I had a little prayer time. The first thing I told the Lord was that I was a bit surprised at how calm I felt, and I suspected that was because He was keeping me in His peace. That was kind of a neat thing. But I still had a problem that I needed Him to take care of.
I can't explain how, but at that moment I just knew that God would somehow take care of me and I felt a supernatural sense of His reassurance settle over me.
I had tried to take care of the problem until I exhausted every option at my disposal. Now I was up a creek--in some rural location that I could not explain to anyone how to get to, with no access to my money or credit cards, with my cell phone battery pretty close to dead, and with no one I could turn to for help. In the natural, this would be a very good reason to get anxious, but this supernatural peace washed over me. And then, as if the Lord were reassuring further to trust Him, it stopped raining at precisely that moment.
Just then a lady came to her car to go home--she was flying home the next morning and was leaving early because she had to get up early to leave for the airport. She asked me if I needed any help and I asked her if she knew the phone number for AAA. She happened to be a member, so she handed me her card so I could call them. I had intended to pay them for helping me, but they would not service non-members. So the lady told me to go ahead and give AAA her membership number. The policeman passed by right then and told me that my location was the parking lot for the aerospace museum at the Sun N' Fun center. AAA said that help would be by within an hour, possibly sooner. I was amazed that my cell phone had lasted for the entire call, especially since I was on hold for the minutes before talking to the AAA representative.
I thanked the lady for letting me use her AAA account to get help, and she took her card back and drove away. A few minutes later my cell phone rang, and it was AAA calling me back. The AAA truck was on the way but I'd need to show my AAA membership card before he'd help me, or else he'd leave without assisting me. The lady who owned the car had already driven off, and I was not sure what to do. I was just starting to feel like the problem was solved, and now I was up a creek again. But oddly, I still had a sense of God's peace over me.
"Ok, God," I told Him, "It looks like you are going to need to bring this lady back or find me someone else with a AAA card."
Then the Lord said something that was so obvious I said "Duh!" for not thinking of it myself. There were literally thousands of people at this meeting--surely one of them just have a AAA card and be willing to help me out. But they were all busy in the meeting, so how would I find one?
I walked over to the area where they were barbecuing and selling food. There were not customers there at that moment, only ones working the booth. I asked in anyone was a AAA member. They all looked at each other like I was crazy and then said, "No."
So I found myself praying, Lord, please send me a AAA member who will help me. I walked towards the tent entrance as I prayed. A man was coming out just as I walked up, so I asked him if he were a AAA member. He said, "Sorry, no." But there was a person going into the tent as I asked. He turned to me and said, "I am a AAA member--a gold card member even. What do you need?"
I was thinking "O thank you God!!!" I told the man my problem and asked if he would be willing to come out and show them his card when the AAA truck arrived. He said, "Of course. You just come and get me when the truck arrives and I will take care of you." I asked him where he was sitting. He said that he'd put a chair up against the back wall of the tent near the entrance, so I could find him easily. Then he brought me inside to show me. I was so grateful to him, he was being so kind and helpful. If felt like God had sent him out of the tent at precisely the moment I was looking for someone from AAA just so he could take care of me.
I went back to my car, and as I got there, the AAA truck drove up. I flagged him down and he unlocked the car while I went inside to fetch Phillip, the man with the AAA card. He came out, showed his card. The AAA man said, "Thanks" and got in his truck and drove off. Philip was a gentleman, so he stayed with me while I got my stuff out of the car and then walked me to the meeting.
GOD WOOS ME
There is a large covered entry-way area in the tent where they sell products and have literature tables. Of course, that area was empty at the moment, because everyone was in the meeting. Phillip stopped in that area and asked if he could pray for me before I went in. He said that it was obvious I'd had a rough trip out, and he just wanted to pray God's blessings on me. I was so touched by his expression of caring and I could really feel the love of Christ coming from him. He was turning out to be such a blessing to me.
As he was praying for me, the Lord started giving me a word for him. After he was done, I asked if it would be OK if I prophesied to him. He said yes. The Lord gave me some specific details to help validate the word. It was basically a word about his destiny and future. Philip was an older man, who had recently retired. He wanted to serve the Lord in his retirement, but everyone told him that he was too old. He'd kind of resigned himself to a ministry of intercession and occasional mentoring. But God said that He was going to send Him a lot of places where a person had a need, and use him to minister into people's needs, similar to what He'd done for me tonight. God said that he would meet both emotional and tangible needs, that he would be very spirit-led and that the Lord would us him to make a noticeable difference in the lives of others. It was a great word and I was glad the Lord choose to give it to him, because I really wanted the Lord to bless him for having been so kind to me.
It was probably about 10:30 PM when I finally entered the meeting. I was expecting a powerful presence of God in the room, but all I could discern was very faint sense of His sweetness. It was nice, but no more powerful than I am used to at church, and not at all what I had expected.
Phil said that he was gong to go back and sit with his wife. He picked up the chair he'd been sitting in while he waited for me and said, "This is the only chair in the meeting I know for sure is available. Let me put it wherever you'd like to sit." I would have rather just slipped in as near the front as I could get and looked for an empty seat, figuring that it was late enough that a few people would have left. But since Phil had been so kind to me, I did not want to hurt his feelings. We walked along the back corridor towards the center of the room. There was a lady sitting in a folding chair against the tent along that corridor, so I told Phil I'd like to sit next to her. I thanked him again, then he went back to his wife. I decided that God had put me in this location, so I'd stay there instead of looking for a closer spot.
Todd Bentley was preaching. I briefly greeted the lady next to me, and she explained in Spanish that she did not speak English. I don't speak Spanish, so we could not talk, other than to exchange names. But we smiled at each other a lot and it seemed that both of us felt a connection in the spirit with each other.
Todd's sermon was so fitting, considering all that I'd gone through just to get into the meeting. He was talking about spiritual warfare: warring for you blessing, and not giving up until you have your breakthrough.
I was basically at the back of the tent, in the main walkway to exit the tent. A lot of people were constantly passing me. Some of them appeared to be leaving, and others appeared to be using the facilities. But there were some who walked by "crunching" under the anointing and I could sense the Lord's presence a bit more strongly as they passed me. There were about a dozen people like that, who passed me one or two at a time. I enjoyed watching them and I felt this sense of delight. The revival had not turned out to be the way I expected it to be, but I did feel a peaceful joy all over me. I was reminded of a few phrases from the Song of Solomon, and I had this distinct sense that the Lord was courting me (or wooing me). That very thought made me feel even happier. I was grinning from ear to ear, and that made everyone who passed me along that corridor grin back at me. The people in the meeting seemed really happy and blessed.
There was this one man who was just so fun to watch. He kept walking up and down the corridor I was sitting in, and he was manifesting the presence of the Lord. Apparently he had received some type of healing from something that made it difficult for him to walk, and he was enjoying his new freedom to walk so much he could not stop. The Holy Spirit was all over him and I could feel God's presence each time he passed me. He must have passed me 5 or 6 times. I also felt just a tad jealous (the holy kind of jealously) and I wanted the Lord to touch me powerfully as well. I did not experience the power that night, and I did not get drunk in the spirit, but I had this sense of delight and I felt so aware of God's love for me.
At the end of the sermon, Todd Bentley had us all stand up and do corporate intercession, warring for healings and salvations and breakthrough. I expected him to pray for the sick afterwards (and was hoping that God would fix my ankle), but Todd did not get around to that. Instead, they took the offering.
Many people were leaving as the offering was taken. I felt sort of in the way, since I was technically in the main corridor. So I picked up my stuff and left with them. I assumed the meeting would be over as soon as they were done taking the offering, so I did not think I was sneaking out early.
As I was driving back to the hotel, the Lord seemed to be singing to me. More precisely, certain love songs were playing in my memory so strongly that I could almost hear them with my ears. The songs were things like "I'm my beloved and He is mine, His banner over me is love." When I got into my room, I planned to spend some time praying, but this amazing peace settled over me and I feel asleep. The last thing I remembered as I dozed off was the Holy Spirit reminding me of Psalm 127:2 which says, "For so He gives His beloved sleep."
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