Let me tell you what happened in our service last night. All week God had been revealing some great Truths in His Word and I have been super excited to share it. However, right away, I could see that Satan wanted to throw a monkey wrench into our time of worship.
Normally, I pull into our meeting place around 30 minutes before we begin. That gives me just enough time to set things up and to prepare my heart for people to arrive. Yet, when I got there today, I was surprised to see a car already at the townhall.
Without warning, it seemed that the facility had just finished up two days of deep cleaning for the elections next week. The cleaning was so fresh, that the carpets were still hot and wet from the carpet service and the floors had wet new wax on them.
Instead of things going smoothly, I was behind and out of my element as we worked to figure out what we were going to do. With loud fans blowing moist air around, it felt like a sauna inside and our glasses were all fogging up. And as people started to arrive, I was forced to make sure everyone wasn’t going to slip on the waxed floor as it was extremely slippery. I became frazzled…
So, there we were, huddled together in a small corner of this large space, all hot and uncomfortable as we began our service. At this point, my mind is just not where it needs to be even after our time of prayer. And wouldn’t you know it, in our rush to get set up, our music failed to work properly. I even had my wife come up and lead part of the worship so I could fix it (super awkward by the way), but to no avail, everything just looked and felt so disjointed. When the last song failed to play, I just gave up and said, “I think its time to get into the Word.”
What transpired after that could only be described as beautiful. As the Word of God began to be proclaimed, you could feel the hunger and the anticipation of the congregation. And God started to feed us with His Word. You could feel a calm and peace settle on us and we were able to hear what God had for us. What started with such disorder and discord ended up transforming into a powerful time of worship.
By the end, I was covered in sweat and you could just tell that no one was comfortable, and yet various people came forward to say that they felt a movement of the Spirit. I had felt it as well. I would love to tell you what they felt, but I will leave that for them to share if they feel led to.
Tonight, everything went wrong, but God showed up anyway. What a blessing it was.
Surprisingly, the enemy’s attack did not stop at our service. For as I fell asleep thanking God in prayer I began to dream. And in my dream, I began to feel that pressure and weight of when a demon arrives. I can’t even explain it. Everything stops, your heart begins to race. It’s painful in some way but too hard to express. And two demons appeared in front of me.
For some reason, I do not know why. I began to preach the message that I just gave that night to them. And as I spoke the word of God, it seemed like one demon left and one started to struggle and stayed. Sadly, after that the dream became a blur. I cannot remember what happened to the last demon. All I remember is that I felt peace once again and I was able to fall asleep.
I think for most of us as Christians, we feel like our religion is just information about a God we no longer can feel. But that is far from the case. If we are willing to seek Him out. He will let you know He is with us. And Satan hates that. I look forward to more attacks. For the more Satan attacks, the more we know we are doing something that needs to be addressed.
I am posting the link to our service from tonight for anyone who would like to keep up on these teachings on John. And if you do listen to the message, I would love for you to message me your thoughts. Some of the things said tonight have not been heard before from our mainline pulpits. I would love to get your feedback privately so we sharpen each other’s swords and grow in Christ together.
Peace be with you…