We had a healing service at church last night, though "healing" was somewhat loosely interpreted - it wasn't just about physical healing, but also spiritual healing. I wanted to just record my thoughts from last night, and some things I learned.
There was a lot of talk about the Lakeland revival. Many people who had been to Lakeland gave testimonies. Then my dear friend Craig Simonian got up to preach the message, and he talked about being hungry for the presence of God. He ended with a call forward to anyone who wanted prayer to have that closer relationship with God.
I went up, because I knew that so much other stuff is on my mind and I don't often hunger for God. Instead, I hunger for food, and surfing the web, and video games, and watching TV. I realized that I was reluctant to get prayer because it was like I didn't want to hope and be disappointed.
After I was prayed for I went for a walk, because I feel that I encounter God best by myself and I felt like I wanted to just open up to Him how I felt and what I wanted. I told him that I wanted to follow him, that I wanted him to be Lord, and that I wanted to want to open up to a deeper experience of Him. I told Him that though it seems hard, I would give up other stuff if it is what He asked me too. I felt good about the prayer, and after a bit I went back inside.
As soon as I got inside, I was so moved by all the wonderful people that God has put on my heart, and I was drawn to pray specifically for three people that were there in the room that are precious to me. After a while, I realized that I was feeling the Holy Spirit in me, through my prayers, and it struck me that this was "my version" of the spiritual blessing that God was bringing to the church last night. It wasn't falling out, or being emotionally overwhelmed, or laughter, or laying on the floor, or some of the other amazing things that we have come to associate with renewal and revival meetings and that some people were experiencing last night. It was, instead, God's Spirit moving in me in the way He wanted to. And that is good!
I was then moved to spend a bit of time explaining a lot of this to someone who was also feeling a bit left out of what was going on. I think I helped them.
Here is the frustration: it was said last night that we want people to have freedom, and we want to permit God freedom to act. Even so, I and my friend found ourselves expecting something very specific, and we wanted as much of it as other people got. But what if God has something different for different people, which my experience seemed to indicate? We should rethink what we mean by freedom in the Spirit, to realize that it isn't the freedom to be demonstrative. It is the freedom to pursue the Lord, whether that is quiet or loud, contemplative or ecstatic, emotional or intellectual or neither.
Here is the joy: I am amazed, in retrospect, that I was able to fend off depression or discouragement, even though I went off by myself to pray (going off to pray, 15 years ago, always ended up with my just digging into my negative thoughts deeper and deeper). I went from potentially self-condemning thoughts to helping someone else see the fallacies in both of our expectations. That is cool.
It is also cool that praying for amazing people seems to be where God has me right now. I gotta say, it is a pleasant duty.
I didn't know you had this blog, PJ! I just thought you had the technical one, which I looked into but can't really respond to.
ReplyDeleteI love that you recorded your thoughts about the healing service. I know you have had some struggles with this stuff in the past, so I just have to say that I am encouraged by what you wrote, sounds like something of a breakthrough for you! Blessings on your head, my friend!
I love what you wrote, PJ. I have had the more physical reactions like laughing and shaking and have become disenchanted with them. During the past renewal, I realized that those physical reactions didn't add up to more sanctification and often made people proud who experienced them and others who didn't experience them feeling left out. I am more convinced than ever that manifestations are mostly a person's body reacting to the Holy Spirit. The real stuff that God is doing is right in line with what you talked about--God doing stuff in our hearts. In other words, people can have no manifestations at all and be changed forever. I'm really hoping with the Lakeland experience happening that people do not get wrapped up once again on manifestations. Our hunger needs to be for God, not our body doing strange things. I hope we are able to pastor this time well so that we maintain spiritual health.
ReplyDeleteI think that last time around we took the stance "Maybe God is doing something new. We don't know but that in the end, He will get great glory from this, so we should be careful to allow Him the freedom to act. Therefore, we should direct this as little as possible."
ReplyDeleteBut I think that this time around, some of us are feeling like we need to quickly insist on a focus on Jesus, and on loving each other. That is what Paul insisted on in his teaching on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 13 - that without the love, there wasn't any point to all of our manifestations and spiritual insights. And if we adopt an attitude of "I'm better than them because I (see angels, fall out, laugh, whatever)," then we are repeating the error of the Corinthians. We can help our people avoid that.