In my last write-up, I shared how God met me powerfully during the ministry team impartation prayer time, and how He kept me "glued' to the floor for well over an hour after I'd been prayed for.
When He finally let me up, it was after 8:00 PM. I'd not had a visit to the lady's room since before 3:00 that afternoon, when I'd left my hotel room. I did not intend to miss any of the worship service, but by bladder was practically shouting for me to 'take care of business.' I decided to go dart out quickly to the lady's room, then come back for the rest of the worship.
I had to make my way back into the main portion of the tent and walk the main aisle to the exits near the "facilities." As I was doing that, the Lord pointed out a couple to me who were sitting in the very back of the room, right near the exit. He said, "Remember those two extra seats you have?" I said "Yes." Then God told me that those seats were for those two. I thought about approaching them at that moment, but both were worshiping and the man has his eyes closed. I heard the Lord say, "You can bring them to the seats after you use the facilities."
So I went out to the trailer. The area was almost completely abandoned. There was one young Hispanic father with a toddler in tow, a little girl. He went to the steps leading up to the woman's facilities and stared at it. Then he wandered over to the men's. He seemed unsure of what to do, so he just kept wandering back and forth between the two locations.
I approached him and asked him if he needed any help taking his daughter to the lady's room. He seemed so grateful for the offer and handed his daughter over to me. We went up the stairs together and the room (which had 5 stalls) was completely empty. I took her into one stall and asked her if she needed help taking her pants down. She said "Yes."
Please understand, I don't have any kids of my own, and this was a bit of foreign territory to me. But the toilet seat came up to her shoulders and it was obvious that she'd need assistance. So I lifted her up and held her over the seat, and turned my head away to give her some privacy and told her to let me know when she was done.
Even with my inexperience with small children, we got through it with no problems or awkwardness or discomfort on her part. I had to hold her up to the sink so she could wash her hands and get soap from the dispenser for her to wash with. She was very good at doing her own part with the assistance I provided. Then it was time to take her back to her father, who gratefully collected her at the exit. By this time, my own bladder felt like it was going to explode and I felt quite a sense of urgency to take care of my own need.
The Lord spoke to me as I was handing the little girl back to her father. The first thing He said was, "This is a very fitting thing to do upon first coming out of My presence, to help a father with his daughter on Father's day." I wasn't sure why that was so pleasing to the Lord, but I was glad that it was. However, my highest priority at that moment was to race back into the lady's room to take care of my own need. I barely got the door closed and got seated without having an accident.
After I'd taken care of business and was washing my own hands, I asked the Lord about what He had said. He told me that what I did was to demonstrate His His love to this father by helping him solve his problem (of how to take care of his daughter's needs). The Lord went on to say, "That is what My power and anointing is for--to demonstrate My love to the lost."
When I went back into the tent, the Lord reminded me of the couple that He wanted me to give the "close seats" to. I approached them, and at that moment both of them were looking around the room and not worshiping. I said, "Excuse me. I believe the Lord wants you to be in seats closer to the platform for this service."
The man replied, "Yes, but we got here a bit late and it looks like all the closer seats are taken and I don't know how to get better seats." So I told him that I had two for them if they'd like to move. They said that was like an answer to prayer and followed me to the seats.
It turned out that they were somewhat influential people in their denomination, and their denomination was in the process of trying to decide if Lakeland was of God or not. They had come to check it out. One of them had prayed something along the lines of, "Lord, if this is really of You, then please somehow move us to a closer seat." Isn't it amazing how God is able to work that out. He kept me busy so I could not get a chance to take my stuff off of the alternate seat, and then He led me to them. Sometimes God just awes me.
The worship ended shortly after I got back to my seat. They had one of the Fresh Fire Ministry interns come up to do announcements, and he sort of killed the meeting. He went on for about half an hour and was very boring and seemed to clear the strong sense of God's anointing from the room.
The Lord's presence had been very think in the meeting when worship first ended, but it left quickly as this man droned on. He talked about himself a lot, but he did not have much that was interesting to say. His main agenda seemed to be trying to get people to go on a short term were mostly a pitch to try and get people to go on a short term mission trip that Fresh Fire Ministries was sponsoring. Something unusual happened that I'd never seen before. Between the time he started speaking and the time he stopped, over half of the people left the meeting.
I think part of the problem was that Todd Bentley wasn't on the stage, part of it was that the announcement guy was tedious and boring, and the other part was that the tangible sense of God's anointing went away. At any rate, by the time he finished, the tent was half empty. That was sort of a shame, because the speak that night was really quite good. This speak seemed to sense the "let down" in the spirit, and he tried very hard to get the congregation "back." Some came "back" but the level of anointing was nothing like it had been at the end of worship. I felt very sorry for him, because I had been in his situation one time, where someone killed the meeting before I was given the microphone. That type of thing is really hard for a speaker.
I really liked him, and was very interested in what he was saying. But I was also hungry, and you are not allowed to eat ion the tent. I had brought some sliced cheese with me. I intended to sneak outside, eat it quickly, and be back in five minutes time. But my plans did not work out as expected. A whole bunch of people kept grabbing me to request help with this or that, because of my "volunteer" badge. They did not want anything big or difficult, but there were so many of them. There was one odd one--one couple complained to me that the sound system was too loud and requested that I turn it down immediately. Of course, I did not have authority to do that (besides, I disagreed with their assessment of the volume.) I offered to get them some Kleenex that they could put in their ears to help reduce the noise, but they did not want that kind of help. Mostly they just wanted to complain.
I was stuck in the back for about half an hour with assorted requests. I finally tried to get back to my seat, but this lady standing against the back of the tent grabbed me. She pointed to my ministry team badge and asked me if I had fifteen minutes to pray with her because she disparately needed help. I could tell that the sermon was winding down and the ministry time was about to begin. I explained that I had to be up front at the left side of the stage to pray for people and take testimonies. I said that I only had a few minutes, but I'd do what I could to help her. I asked her what she needed prayer for. She said that she needed to repent before God and recommit her life to serving Him. Then she explained the nature of her problem.
This trip to Florida was the only vacation her family was taking this year. She'd been to all the meetings (morning meeting, afternoon evangelism and evening meeting every day). But yesterday she skipped the day meetings to do some clothes shopping, because the prices were cheaper in Lakeland than back home. She has somehow gotten the idea that God was mad at her for putting her own desire (shopping) over Him, because she skipped the day meetings on Saturday. She was afraid that God was so mad at her for that, and had felt convicted/condemned all day. She hadn't been able to worship at the service because she thought that God was mad at her for taking a few hours of her only vacation to do something for herself.
I instantly discerned a religious spirit and a spirit-of-condemnation working in conjunction with each other to torment her. I knew that the solution was authority prayer to break off condemnation, and not her repenting for going shopping. I did not think that I would have enough time to do that before the ministry time started. I felt a conflict because I had compassion for this lady but also I had made a commitment to be there at the platform for healing ministry time.
I asked God what to do, and He told me, "It won't take long to set her free. My Spirit is on you very heavily right now and the demons will leave quickly."
So I explained to her that God was not made at her for going shopping, and it is Ok with God for to spend some of our time on doing things we enjoy. He gave us this life as a gift and He wants us to enjoy it, providing we choose activities that are not ungodly. I explained that the enemy was trying to condemn her and make her think God was angry with her, but that God loved her and wanted to draw her close. I asked her if she'd like to be free from condemnation and she said "Yes."
Then I commanded the demons to leave, and they left very quickly. (I am, used to them putting up a bit of a fight before going, but that did not happen this time.) The lady's countenance changed. She went from a weary and downtrodden look to positively glowing. She still wanted to pray a prayer of commitment to the Lord, so I agree with her as she prayed that. The whole ministry time took about five minutes. It had been short but effective, and I was still able to get up to the side of the platform in time.
I expected that praying for the sick would be very powerful, considering the impartation I'd received and the anointing I'd seen so far this evening. But it was the weakest I'd experienced. I saw less healings on my last night than on any other night. I began to wonder what happened. But I did not have much time to think about it because it was time to take the offering, and I was one of the ushers.
There were probably only about 1000 to 1500 people left in the tent by the time the offering was over, and they decided to close the meeting by having everyone go to the back part of the tent and form prayer lines. We stood there in a receive posture and the guy who had preached walked along the lines, laying his hands briefly on each of us. He definitely carried anointing and impartation, I could feel it when he prayed for me. But this time I was only down for a short while.
When I sat up, the lady on my right was also sitting up and she looked a bit disappointed. She said, "Is that it? is that all there is?" I asked her what she was expecting and she said that she'd come to Lakeland to receive a touch from God, a spiritual awakening. It wasn't clear to her that anything had happened when the speaker prayed for her. She seemed disappointed and I did not want her to go away feeling "unmet." So I offered to pray for her.
I explained that a lot of times we don't feel anything when we receive an impartation, even though it goes into us. Then I tole her that I'd be happy to pray for her to have more of an encounter with God if she'd like me to. She said she'd like that.
We were sitting side by side on the floor in the prayer line. I reached over and placed my hand on her forehead and prayed for her. It was just a gentle prayer, asking the Lord to come and meet her and to give her the ability to perceive His nearness. When I was done praying, she said, "Wow, that is wonderful. I feel so much peace. Thank you."
I said "You're welcome," and stood up to leave.
But a man blocked my path. He said, "I saw you praying for that lady, and I was wondering if you'd mind praying for me as well." I said, "sure."
I don't know precisely why I felt led to pray this way, but instead of touching him, I began fanning him, and I asked the Holy Spirit to come and blow over him. I still had my ministry team badge on, so someone else saw me praying and jumped in behind him as a catcher. I remember thinking that I probably wouldn't need a catcher, but they the power of God hit him and he went flying backwards with so much force that it almost knocked the catcher down. (I never touched him, it was the power of God hitting him.) He began shaking under the power, and laughing at the same time.
Then someone else came up to me for prayer. I prayed for him pretty much the same way, and with the same results.
By this time, I had a small mob surrounding me of people wanting prayer. I was getting comments from people along the lines of, "Wow, you are like a loaded gun!" or "There is so much anointing on you." I began to get sort of drunk in the spirit as I prayed for people. I had a lot of fun praying for those who wanted it, and the Lord seemed to be showing up and touching people with a lot of power. Most of the people I prayed for were still down on the ground, shaking under God's anointing. It was like this "power explosion."
I don't really know that the Lord was doing or why He choose to use me to do it instead of the main speaker or Fresh Fire Ministry staff. But I sure had fun doing it with Him.
This went on until they announced that they were closing the building and we all needed to leave. It was a great way to end the trip! I had so much fun.
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