Excerpts from
Visions Beyond The Veil
by H. A. Baker

How do we respond to the type of things described in the book Visions Beyond The Veil? There are many different possible responses. We can ignore what we read. Or we can discount what we read as the product of childish imagination. Or we can become melancholic, saddened that the Lord would give supernatural visitations to a bunch of children but not to us. Or we can allow H. A. Baker's account to stir our hunger and our passion for God, then call out to God to meet and fill us!

I am guessing that you are one of the ones who finds yourself feeling hungrier for God, who finds yourself longing for a closer relationship with Him. I am guessing that you long for an increase in your ability to perceive His nearness and abide in His presence; that you desire to see into the spiritual dimension -- to see what the Father is doing. I am guessing you want to go farther and deeper in the things of God, to be closer to Him and to move in greater measures of His anointing, power and victory.

If so, then the question arises -- how does a person accomplish this? How do I get closer to God and have my eyes more opened to the things of the Spirit?

The answer is both simple and complex. It is simple to explain but complex to do. You simply cast aside the things that hinder you, press into God and ask Him to take you deeper. But that is easier said than done. Paul summed it up this way in Romans 7:22-23 when he said, "22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members" (NIV).

The reality of our situation is that we live in this world. We cannot escape to the heavenlies and live solely in God's presence and in the spirit world until the day God takes us to be with Him. If God wanted that for us, He would simply take us home. But He has a purpose for our lives and He has kingdom plans for us to accomplish. We can learn to live more and more under His lordship as we carry out these plans. We can learn to make Him the Lord/boss/director of our lives. We can become more and more attune to His Spirit and His leading. We can learn to discern His voice more clearly. We can enter into worship and spend some time in His very presence. We can become carriers of His presence as we go about our lives.

Some people live much closer to accomplishing this goal than others. I think of Heidi Baker, who seems to live in incredible intimacy with God and who seems to carry His tangible presence with her. God usually shows up in her meetings and people have incredible encounters with God while she is ministering. Why? Because Heidi walks in great intimacy and obedience to God and because she is hungry and greedy for His presence and because she allows Him to transform her and fill her with His compassion for others.

When Heidi came to speak in the San Francisco Bay Area in October of 2002, she coached us on how to press in to God and enter into His presence. Under her coaching, I pressed into God and had a remarkable encounter with Him. I would like to close this series by sharing how she coached us and the encounter that enabled me to have with God. (You can read a detailed write-up of this at: http://www.godspeak.net/newbeg/nb_11.html):

Heidi was invited up to speak and God took over the service. The first thing Heidi said was, "Would the worship leader come back up front, I don't think we are done worshipping yet." So we did a bit more worship. As the first note of the first song began, I just knew I had to either be kneeling before the Lord or on my face before Him. There was absolutely no room in this crowded pew to do that, so I made my way past three people and to the aisle. My original intent was to kneel in the aisle. But as I reached the aisle, I noticed two or three others going up front to kneel. Heidi was sitting on the top stair of the platform and a few were kneeling in the open ministry space in front of the platform. It "felt right" to go up front, so I did. Others were coming up as well. I intended to simply kneel before God, but I ended up flat on my face. It felt so right to be flat on my face before Him, so I stayed there. I had no idea I was going to be there for the next three and one half hours.

God's presence felt so tangible in the room. After a song or two, Heidi began talking to us, encouraging us to call out for God, to tell Him how hungry we were for Him. I did not need much encouragement, it sort of rose up out of my belly. I wanted Him so bad that I thought I was going to burst. I found myself groaning and calling out to Him out loud, and I do mean "loud!" Normally I would be very embarrassed to do something like that in a meeting, to interrupt the speaker and make loud noises. But I was not focusing on self at all, I was focusing on God. The embarrassment was not there, only a hunger and a passion for Him. I wanted more of Him and I did not care what happened to me in the process of getting it. Heidi was not at all upset or distracted that I had begun crying out to God. Within a second or two, several others were doing it as well.

I wish I could give you a "blow by blow" description of how Heidi coached us to cry out to God and welcome His presence. Unfortunately, that is not going to be possible. I was only paying a little bit of attention to what she was saying. My primary focus was on God. I wanted Him so bad that I thought I would explode. The intensity and passion for Him rose for a while, and then I could sense His sweetness around me. I got "peaced out" for a little while and was silent before Him.

Then God began to talk to me. He suggested that I tell Him that I would trust that no matter what happened to me in the meeting, it would be Him and I would just receive and trust. (It is kinda scary when God says something like that to you. So He invited me to take a couple of minutes to pray and discuss it with Him.) After He confirmed that this instruction came from Him, I decided that I was going to go into a 'no holes barred' trust-encounter with God. I would stay open and receptive to Him no matter what happened to me or around me. I half expected to end up in an open vision in the 3rd heaven, or something like that. God had other plans but they were very good plans.

The intensity rose up in me and I found myself crying out to God again to fill me. For maybe the first time in my life, I wanted His presence more than I wanted His anointing. I know that we are supposed to want His presence more, but I have always wanted both with equal fervency. Now, for the first time, I did not care at all about the anointing -- I just wanted Him! In fact, I wanted Him so bad that I found myself praying, "Lord give me more of Your presence or I will die!" I literally meant it... I felt like I would stop breathing if I did not get more of His presence.

Right then, Heidi began telling us about how often she had prayed to God, begging Him to either give her more of His "presence, power and anointing" or to "take her home." She was verbalizing what I had just been praying. It was sort of a neat Holy Spirit confirmation to have her say out loud in the microphone what was going on inside of my spirit!

Suddenly I could not breathe. My chest and sides felt like they were going to explode. A brief terror flashed through me, and then I remembered my agreement with God that He would be in control of everything that happened to me at that meeting. The fear left the instant I realized that I was totally in God's hands. I could not breath for well over a minute and I began to wonder if maybe God was answering my prayer to "take me home" if I could not have more of Him here. (I guess in reality we have ALL of Him in the person of the indwelling Holy Spirit. What I was really asking for was more awareness of His presence and His leading and power in my life.) At any rate, I still could not breathe and I began to truly believe that God was in the process of taking me home. And you know what -- that was OK with me. I remembered that verse that says, "No man can see My face and live." So I began hoping that if God was really taking me home, He would do it by letting me see His face. If I had to die, that would be a wonderful way to go! I still wanted more of Him!

After a while I became aware of Heidi talking -- or should I say trying to talk. The Holy Spirit was on her heavily and she was having great difficulty getting sentences out... with lots of "ho-o-o-o-o's" and such between words. She told us that God must be in control, that we must yield control to Him. She shared how we had a choice, we could be in control and do things our way. Or we could yield control to Him and let Him do it His way. She said that when she was in control, she had four small churches in Mozambique and two of them were doing "not well" and the other two were "ug!". But she gave control to God and now she had 5,000 churches. She said that she liked having 5,000 churches much more than having four. She gave other comparisons of the difference between being in control and giving control to God. She said that she knew she looked weird and foolish sitting on the steps shaking and jerking under the power and hardly able to get coherent sentences out. But it was OK because God was in control. And she liked God being in control because just the other day she got to pray for a little paralyzed girl in a wheel chair and God healed her and she got out of the chair and walked. Things like that don't happen unless we yield control to God.

I found myself renewing my commitment to give Him control of the GodSpeak ministry, and of every area of my life and walk. Suddenly God's intensity was on me again and I lost track of a large part of the service. I was only aware of Him! I forgot that I was surrounded by others on the floor, I forgot I was even in a Church service. I was only aware of Him and I wanted more of Him. I wanted Him to fill me with His presence and I wanted Him to fill me with His power and anointing. I wanted to be given real kingdom things to do and I wanted to be given the authority to do them with the Father. But that (power and anointing) was not nearly as important to me as His presence. God was what was important. When I thought of God's plans, I began to think of the nations, and my passion for the nations began to increase. The awareness of my call to "the nations" rose up to a whole new level.

Just then I became aware of Heidi talking to us. She said that some of us were called to "the nations" -- not just to one nation but to the nations -- and I knew I was one of the ones she was talking about. She told us to cry out to God for the power and anointing to go and to reach them -- and again I found something rising up from my innermost being and crying out to God for this. God's presence felt so close and so tangible, but it was not enough. I wanted more of Him. I wanted to be a carrier of His presence, a carrier of His glory!

At some point, Heidi sort of taught from Zech 3 and 4. She coached us through crying out to God for what He was doing in those chapters. It was not eloquent, but it was extremely powerful. I wish I could describe it better, but I was too caught up in focusing on God and responding to Him to give you a detailed report. It was like Heidi was coaching us to have an encounter with God, and we were not all that aware of the coach because we were busy focusing and concentrating on God.

There were a few times when the intensity of God's presence seemed to lessen, and I could lift up my head (I had been doing a nose-plant into the carpet most of the night) and look at Heidi. She was sitting on the steps and she was shaking a lot herself and she was clearly drunk in the spirit and just seemed to be oozing with God's presence. She was having a lot of fun and those of us who were not "lost" in God's presence were having fun along with her. I don't think that my total elapsed time of watching Heidi instead of focusing on God even added up to 10 minutes of the entire three and a half hours that she "spoke."

At one point in the evening (I can't remember precisely where it was in the service) Heidi said something that God really quickened to me. She said that God wanted each/every one of us to carry God's presence and to walk in the same anointing that she walked in. She said that there was nothing special about her. She was "just a clay jar that has laid down so that God can flow through it."

God wants His entire body to rise and begin walking in His power and anointing. It was never intended for just a select few, it was always intended for all of us. That means that God wants this for your life as well. So, why not do what Heidi suggested: call out to God, worship Him. Lay yourself down as a clay jar before Him and invite Him to remove the gunk that keeps you from moving into that place of obedience, intimacy and anointing that He has prepared for you.