I think I really expected to sleep that night, since I had traveled 71 hours on only 6 hours sleep followed by a fairly full day of ministry. I did fall asleep for a bit (3 hours), but I woke up about 2:30 AM.
At first I was just surprised to be awake. I remember thinking to myself, "I should be really tired". But I did not feel tired. Then I thought to myself, "this will get really boring. I can't do anything, there is no TV or radio or telephone or internet and no one to talk to. And it will be a long time until the others are up", as the Indians I was staying with like to sleep in til 8 AM or later. I wondered what I should do to entertain myself. Then it occurred to me, "I guess I could read my bible".
So I got my bible and began to read John 14. I was amazed at how much God spoke to me from it. This is a chapter I had poured over many times and God had spoken to me from it many times. I did not think there was anything left for Him to reveal to me from that chapter. But He began to show me all sorts of neat things and He really began to speak to me as I read His word. We spent 1/2 an hour in that one chapter. It occurred to me that I was hearing Him more clearly than usual. So after we finished the chapter, I decided to put my CD walkman headphones on so that my music would not disturb the folks in the next room, and to worship and pray.
I did that for a few minutes, then God told me to get a pen and some paper and to start writing. Then He began to speak to me about some of the deep and intimate experiences I had with Him. Some of them were from a long time ago and some were as recent as this ministry trip. When He discussed one of these with me, it was like I re-lived it with Him. I did not just remember them, I experienced them all over again. That dialog with God was an amazing experience. I ended up with three pages of notes, which were one or two sentence descriptions of each of those experiences that God had me re-live.
The process of God talking to me and reminding me of all these neat and intimate experiences with Him was very powerful in and of itself. I thought it would easily be one of the biggest highlights of my entire trip -- except God had even more amazing things in store for me on this trip!
When we finished discussing them and I glanced over my three pages of notes, I asked God what He wanted me to do with them. He told me that this was material to share for the evening service, where He wanted me to teach on building intimacy with God and He wanted me to share some of my personal experiences with Him with the people. Then He told me to go through my pile of sermon notes (I brought a lot of them with me) and find my sermon on "Friendship With God" for the next night's evening service. He reviewed and edited those notes with me. It was really an interesting experience having the Holy Spirit go over my sermon notes with me and speak to me from them. When I next looked at my clock it was 6 AM, three hours had passed.
Then God began to remind me of the teaching series I'd recently done on the prophetic-school e-mail list about spiritual warfare. I had not brought that series with me. God told me that I needed the information in it because He wanted to convert it into a teaching on strategies of the enemy against pastors. He said I needed it for the third day of the bible college and that I must spend my free time on day two taking notes from the series I had written. (I could not just print the lessons because Sharath's printer was broken, so I had to take notes from the GodSpeak www page.) I asked God if He would mind telling me what He wanted me to teach on for "today" (day 2) for the pastors. He told me to teach on Hearing His Voice, but to be prepared to follow Him closely, because He would be deviating from my normal teaching on that topic.
Now it was 7 AM and folks would be getting up soon. I only had three hours sleep, but I was not tired at all. I felt invigorated in His presence. I had this incredible desire to just worship Him for a while. God said that would be OK with Him. So I laid back down on the bed -- I had been sitting up to take notes, etc but remaining on the bed under the mosquito netting. I put my hands up in a worship gesture and asked Him to surround me with His presence. In fact, I asked Him to pretend I was at one of those early renewal meetings and I had just been prayed for. Would He please meet me here like He did back then?
God's answer to that request appeared to be "yes." I felt His presence increase around me and then I felt His power on me in an incredible way. It was like I had stuck my finger in an electrical outlet and voltage was surging through my body. I felt His power flowing through me and I was shaking under it for a while. I was concerned that I would make too much noise as I rattled the bed and wake Sharath and his family in the adjoining room. But they never gave any indication of having heard anything.
After a while the power left me and I was surrounded by a sense of His nearness and of His sweetness. I don't know how to explain it, but I get this sort of sensation of holding a tingling ball in the palm of both hands that is actually pulsing with His sweetness instead of tingling. I call that "holding His sweetness in the palm of my hand." He had started this sensation with me a few weeks before the trip, when His presence was very tangible in our worship service and I associated it with His nearness. I felt it again.. just alone in the room on the missions field with my little worship CD playing on my walkman. It was like He had picked me up out of the room and transported me right to His very presence in the heavenlies. It was so wonderful to just be near Him and to have a sense of awe about who He is.
I asked Him about that, what was that sweet sensation that I felt in the palm of my hands when He was near. He showed me a picture of a father putting his finger lightly in the palm of a newborn baby, and the baby closing it's hand around the father's finger. Then I understood the sweet thing I was feeling in my hand was the very finger of God touching me... wow!
Even though I was half way around the world, all by myself and far away from family and friends and all of the things I found safe and familiar, I did not feel lonely or isolated. I felt surrounded in His presence and safe and comfortable in His arms. It was such a wonderful experience. I wanted to stay there forever. God let me stay there for maybe an hour.
Then God told me that everyone was up and I needed to get up soon myself. I asked if I could just have a few more minutes with Him before I got up and left His presence. He said that would be OK. I found myself praying, "God, it doesn't get better than this. I wish I could live at this level of relationship with You forever. Having experienced this, I never want to go back to a lower level in my walk with You." Suddenly I had a realization that at home there are a lot of things that pull on my attention and distract me from God. There are all of the ministry-related demands and e-mails I get, as well as demands of my husband and of my pet dogs. And I put some distractions on myself by watching television, which diverts my attention away from Him. I realized that it would not be possible to live at this level because of the demands and distractions on/in my life. But at the same time, I could control it to some extent, such as choosing to relax to worship music instead of watching TV, etc. It is a matter of choices, and as I make more and more "God choices", this will improve the level of intimacy I walk in with Him.
Then I was aware that I would have to get up soon to minister. I also became very aware that I was God's representative to these people, and they looked to me to see what God would say to them. The solemness of that responsibility began to settle over me. I found myself praying, with fervor and urgency, "God I am Your servant and Your representative. Help me to be a good and accurate representative for You. Help me to only say what You are saying and only do what You are doing. I want to be a good representative of You, so that You will be pleased and so that You will want to use me again as Your representative in the future. Make me very sensitive to Your voice and Your leading and help me to represent You accurately in all You want to do."
So I got up and had breakfast and spent a bit of time on the computer, taking notes from my Spiritual Warfare And The Prophetic teaching series, as God instructed me to do. Then it was time for the morning session with the pastors and bible college students. At the beginning of class, there were not quite as many people there as the day before. But over the first hour a bunch arrived and I ended up with about 150 people in the class, which was more than I had the first day.
God had me teach on hearing Hs voice. Then God had me put a big emphasis how He expects us to obey Him if we want to hear His voice. I developed the "disadvantages" of this, e.g., how this gives God a right to tell us to do something we don't want to do and we are obligated to obey Him. Or maybe He will do the reverse, tell us not to do something we really want to do. And we have to obey Him once we know His will on the matter -- even when there is a big price tag on that obedience. Then God had me begin to talk about covenants and how serious they are before God -- and how He won't release us from a covenant with Him if we make one and then later on we want to change our mind.
Then the Holy Spirit told me to challenge the pastors to enter into an obedience covenant with God -- that they would obey Him no matter what He asked them to do and no matter what the cost was. His part was to speak to them clearly and their part was to obey Him. Then I began telling them why they should not make this covenant unless they really meant it, because God would not excuse them from it later on if they changed their mind .. once they made it they were stuck with it forever. Then I had folks close their eyes and bow their heads and asked for a show of hands of who wanted to make this covenant. Every hand in the place went up.
I told them to put their hands down and began trying to talk them out of making this covenant, telling them that God might ask them to take a stand of faith that would be considered illegal in India, and they might have to go to jail or even loose their life. So they should not enter into covenant with God unless they really meant it. It is a covenant that I have personally entered into, so I wanted to make sure they understood what it meant before they made it. I asked for another show of hands, and almost every hand in the room went up. This time I was convinced they really meant it.
So I lead those who raised their hands into a repeat-after-me prayer to enter into an obedience covenant with God, where He is the boss and gets to call the shots and they are the servant who has to obey, no matter what they are asked to do. After they finished the prayer, I told them to begin to cry out to God to meet them and fill them. And they began to do so.
All of their Indian reserve was forgotten. They began to cry out to God with incredible fervency and urgency. They cried out to Him to meet them, to fill them, to teach them to know His voice, to reveal His will to them, etc.
The Holy Spirit fell on the pastors and bible students as they cried out to Him. It was very powerful, and also very noisy. He took over the meeting for quite a while.. for about half an hour. The Holy Spirit also fell on Sharath, who was interpreting for me. I was standing right next to him and I could see the Lord's presence on him. A sense of the Lord's presence and of His holiness was strong in the room. I knew it would be useless to try to continue, so I simply yielded to the Holy Spirit and worshipped God until He finally told me I could continue. Then I continued teaching for about another 1/2 hour before we broke for lunch.
The morning session had been so powerful that I knew I had to come back and lead the afternoon session as well.
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