I had ministered through the entire lunch hour. Because of Indian hospitality, they would not start the next session until I had a chance to eat. So I gobbled down my food as fast as I could. We started the afternoon session at 2:50. They told me that I should end it somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30. They started with worship, so I was not given the microphone until 3:20.
The wedding had finished, so they moved the afternoon session to the main auditorium. It was not a very inviting place. It was large and marble and formal and the front row of seats was about 20 feet away from the platform. The room was huge, way too big for a group of about 60 or 70 people. As they worshipped, I looked around the room and I saw some demons hanging out in the rafters. I realized I would have to do another authority prayer when I got the mic to clean out this room. I wished we had not changed rooms, the other room was so well suited to our needs. This one seemed inappropriate. The people were scattered all over the room instead of sitting together near the front, so it seemed really empty and would make it difficult for me to make eye contact and connect with the people.
When I got the microphone, I started with prayer. I thanked the Lord for what He did that morning and then I invited his presence. Then I spent some time doing an authority prayer and kicking out those demons I had seen in the room. I also threw in a silent prayer asking God to help me because this room seemed very difficult to minister in with the people so far away and so spread out over the huge room. God answered that prayer almost immediately. The power went out and the sound system stopped working. Since we could not use the microphone, we asked the people to all sit together at the front so they could hear us. They filled the first seven or eight rows of the church, but were much more clustered and easier to work with in terms of establishing audience rapport. About five minutes after we got the people moved to sit together near the front, the power came back on and we had use of the sound system. It took about 15 minutes to work all those logistics out. It was now 3:40.
The "intimacy with God" teaching takes an hour in English, or two hours with an interpreter. But I figured I could cut it by about ten minutes and still finish at 5:30, or at least start the corporate ministry time at 5:30 and let the Holy Spirit go as long as He desired. The first part of the teaching is to share a bunch of personal experiences of what intimacy with God looks like in my life, with a sort of you-can-have-this- too flavor to it. The Indians love it when you tell personal stories of your experiences with God (in fact, most Americans like this as well). The people seemed to be really with me and really connecting.
I had already shared several stories with them and asked them if they would like me to share another one with them. I got all sorts of enthusiastic "yes" (they learned that word in English) from them. The Holy Spirit was captivating them and beginning to give them a vision of what their own personal relationship with God might look like. It was going very well and the anointing was very strong.
As I started this story, a lady came in who was apparently a VIP, and the sponsoring pastor got a chair for her and put it in front of the front row of pews on the side near the door. The lady made a noisy entrance and every head in the place turned to look at her. It took a bit of an effort to get people's attention back. Then the lady turned around in her seat and began talking, full volume, to someone in the pews behind her. It was very disruptive and she did this for some time.. maybe 8 or ten minutes. I noticed that I had lost the people I was speaking to. They were not following me, nodding and giving non-verbal feedback, and laughing at my humor the way they had been minutes before. They were just sitting there looking at me. I thought perhaps they did not relate to this particular story, which was a longish story. It takes about 7 minutes to tell in English, or 15 minutes to tell with an interpreter. So I wrapped the story up as fast as I could. Since I had lost the congregation, I was praying silently as Sharath interpreted, asking God what to do to get them back. I had a sense that some of the interfering demons had returned, despite the fact that I'd taken authority over the room and kicked them out for the duration of the meeting.
I decided that maybe the people were sort of sleepy from eating a big lunch, as well as being distracted from that lady's noisy entrance. So I told them that in a minute I was going to tell them a six-step process to developing their own personal intimacy with God, but first I wanted everyone to stand up. Then I had them stretch a bit. (That is a great way to break the sleepiness off of folks after lunch during an afternoon session.)
To my surprise, Sharath turned to me and told me I needed to end the sermon within the next ten minutes. I looked at my watch. It was only 4:15 and I'd been given permission by the event organizer to speak until 5:30. I told him that it was not possible to end in ten minutes, that I needed another hour to teach the six points of my teaching on intimacy with God and then at least 15 minutes for ministry time. The people were all standing and looking at me, waiting for directions on what to do next. I wanted to get back to them and continue the teaching, but Sharath refused. He said we must discuss this now. So Sharath and I had a private five-minute discussion as we stood on the platform with all of those people standing there watching us and waiting for me to tell them what to do next. (Americans would have simply sat down, but not these Indians.)
The gist of the conversation was that they had some VIPs and they needed to do a short ceremony to recognize and honor those VIPs. Sharath told me that the ceremony would not take more than ten minutes. One of the VIPs, the one who came in late and was disruptive, was apparently in a hurry. She kept looking at her watch every two or three minutes. Sharath felt pressured to have the ceremony right away because she was so obviously in a hurry. He also told me that everyone in the room was aware of the situation and that they would be distracted by this concern and would have trouble paying attention to the teaching. He told me that if I could not wrap up my teaching in a few minutes, we should take a break and do the short ceremony and then go back to the teaching after it. I said that would be ok. Then I noticed the people were still standing. I told them to sit down. But Sharath did not interpret it for me because he was so concerned with watching the VIP that he was not paying attention to me. So I used gestures to tell them they could sit down. They understood my gestures and complied. Then I stepped off of the stage.
I was feeling sort of baffled by this, as I'd been given the microphone and was told it was ok to go until 5:30. I could not understand why they were taking the microphone away from me only 45 minutes into the teaching. I figured it was just one of those cultural things that I did not understand. But as I stepped off of the platform, God spoke to me. "Teresa, I am not pleased." I was not sure precisely what I had done to displease Him, but I immediately began to apologize to Him and ask Him to show me what He wanted me to do to correct whatever I'd done to displease Him. "No, Teresa, I am not displeased with you or your behavior. I am displeased because they gave me control of the meeting and then they took it away from Me for their own agenda."
He went on to tell me that I was not to preach any more at that meeting, that His anointing was lifted from it because they took control of the meeting away from God after giving it to Him. Wow, that was another eye opener for me. It put me in a bit of an awkward position because I would have to upset the people who invited me to come minister in order to obey God. But if God said not to preach any more at that meeting, then I was not going to disobey Him.
I tried to sit down in an empty spot on the front row of the pew, but they insisted I sit on a folding chair next to the VIP. I did not want to sit there, so I sat down in the pew. An English speaking usher came to me and kept pointing at the chair and insisting that I "please sit there." So I moved to please them.
They put four folding chairs on the platform. Then they called Sharath to the platform and had him sit in one of those chairs. They handed him a bouquet of flowers and then wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and shook his hand. (I later learned that in that part of India, when they want to honor someone, they wrap a blanket around them.) To my surprise, they called me up next and gave me the same treatment. They also had me pose for pictures with a few of their leaders. Then they called up the VIP lady who had come in so noisy and disruptive. After her, they called another lady up. The last lady they called up had attended the entire meeting and had not done anything disruptive. While they were calling her up the disruptive lady was posing for her pictures. As she sat back down next to me on the platform, I reached out and shook her hand. (That seemed like common courtesy to me). As I touched her, the spirit of discernment kicked in and I sensed a strong Jezebel spirit on her. I was shocked -- that was the last thing I expected. In fact, I did not think there were any Jezebel spirits in India, I thought they just dealt with the demons empowering the idols in India and that was it.
After they honored the fourth lady, the disruptive lady (the one with the Jezebel spirit) was given the microphone. Sharath told me that she'd asked to say a few words and that is why they gave her the microphone. But she did not say just a few words -- she talked for over an hour. She talked longer than I did.
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