After six hours of preparation, the blog for Day 236 of The Red Shoe Project was mistakenly deleted and lost due to technical difficulties at 3 a.m. No worries... I am working on it! A rewrite will be posted soon under today's date. Let's push that aside and get right into to the GOOD NEWS! Something even better happened on Day 236 anyways! It's a real life, living illustration about Hearing the Voice of God!
Yesterday was a bit unusual. For days, I had been preparing my heart in prayer for our monthly Bible fellowship group that meets one Friday night a month at the home of some dear friends. Many hours have gone into putting together this Hearing from God series, so I wasn't really worried about having material to share at the study. There was more than enough. But God said,
"NO" -- "Don't prepare a structured study.
I'm going to do something else!"
Okay... sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! The difficulty with that is that people are coming out for a Bible study. What will people think when I've got nothing? Not to mention when I tell them... "No need for a study, God's going to move amongst us tonight!" Well... it can all sound a little "Woo-Woo" if you know what I mean. Strange? Challenging? Scary? YES! But that's besides the point. I had every intention of doing exactly what God wanted.
At the last minute, an invitation came to go to a special afternoon ministry event taking place at Harvest Tabernacle featuring David Wagner. An excitement arose in my Spirit! I could hear that little voice within me shouting, "Let's Go!" I knew if I went I'd have little to no time to prepare further for the evening study. "God," I prayed, "Can you give me a little something here for tonight?" I sensed in my Spirit that the people in attendance had heavy hearts and that God, personally, wanted to work on their insides. At that moment, He popped three scriptures in my mind. Two of them dealt with worry, and one of them was a testimonial of God's saving power! "Lord -- This one doesn't have anything to do with worry... Am I hearing you right?" The Lord responded, "YES." With that, I quickly wrote down the three scripture references and tucked them in my Bible for later. In my mind, I determined that I would split everyone into three groups, and give each group a scripture to discuss. Later we'd pull back into a big group and see what people had to say. This would allow me to get the group started, and I'd just wait and see what the Holy Spirit wanted to do. It left lots of room for Him to move. Off I headed, out the door in my RED shoes, to the afternoon church meeting.
What a powerfully, inspiring meeting it was! The presence of God was intense. What does that mean? While I was sitting there and the minister was talking, I could feel the glory in the atmosphere. As I listened intently to the message, I could hear the Holy Spirit praying within me in some divine language. At times, I felt my insides shaking! The Spirit of God was doing something deep down in my soul -- Was He dancing in there? Possibly. Jumping up and down? Maybe. He was darn excited about something.
When the minister moved closer to where I was sitting, the Spirit within me intensified. When He moved away, towards the other end of the room, it lessened slightly. At one point, the minister called a girl out into the isle, who was sitting a couple rows up from me. He prophesied over her, (That means he gave her a message from God), and she slowly fell backward onto the floor where she laid praying quietly to herself for about ten minutes. She was only about six feet away from me. When I looked at her, I could see her hand was shaking. It looked like electricity was going through it, making it vibrate. The power of God was so strong, I began to leak. Tears rolled down my face.
When the service was over, I went to the front for the minister to pray over me. Without hearing a word from me, He told me things that only God and I know. Then He prayed for a release of God's anointing upon me. When it was all over, I had to sit down on a chair for a few minutes. I couldn't walk. My legs were like over-stretched rubber bands. It was as if they had no bones in them to hold me up. LOL. I could feel that electricity rushing through my body. I sat there with my face in my hands, weeping for some time, praising God in whispers. What had He done? I don't know, but I loved it all the same. Eventually, I opened my eyes and went back t my seat. Most of the people had left the church by now. My friend just smiled at me and we headed home.
Time flew by and I found myself at the Home Group Fellowship. I was one of the first to arrive. The Host whispered to me that Charlie was coming tonight with his Dad. Charlie was coming! Oh my gosh! No wonder the Holy Spirit asked me to push my agenda aside. He had something special in mind -- even if I didn't have a clue what that exactly was! The Host, her son, and I stood right there in the driveway and I prayed that God would have His way tonight, and that He'd use us to touch Charlie.
Things went as planned. Everyone broke into groups and discussed their scriptures. Then they came back into one large group to discuss them further. Throughout the entire time, I was asking God in my mind... "What is it that you want to do here God?" I felt assured in my Spirit that He had all things in control. Where was He though?
Finally, we came to the last person in the circle. It was Charlie's turn to speak. Being new, he didn't have a lot to say. I asked him to read the scripture. It was Psalm 40: 1-3. (He took me out of the miry clay!) For me... just hearing the Word of God flow off of Charlie's lips was glorious! I had been challenged, at the afternoon meeting, to believe that God still does what The Bible says He does! I was believing, that as Charlie spoke these words, it was prophetic! (That means that one day those words will be true for Charley, personally!) I'm holding onto that!
I asked Charlie, since he was new to the group, if he'd like to ask a question. He could ask anything. He asked how long it took for God to move in a person's life for change to occur? My friend's sons shared wonderful answers. Then almost everyone in the group began to share. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The Holy Spirit was moving in each of their lives as they testified of what God had done in them. Okay... so let me explain. Just minutes earlier, we went around the circle and they all shared their thoughts and ideas on the scriptures... but this was different. The Holy Ghost had arrived to the party. Passion was flowing from them! Excitement was in the air. God was moving and I'm not even sure they knew that was what was happening. I looked at Charlie. He was fine. He seemed captivated with what God was doing -- just taking it all in.
At one point a gentlemen sharing a final testimony pounded his fist upon his chest as he boldly proclaimed his thoughts about God! BOOM! Something broke in the atmosphere. I'm telling you, I don't know what happened in the Spirit realm, but something exploded. Perhaps that was God breaking the chains of sin! Who knows? But this I do know: It was right at that very moment, that God dropped the Word in my heart that pulled it all together.Revelation 3:20
"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with that person,
and they with me."
I looked at Charlie... "It all starts, Charlie, with opening the door of your heart to God -- asking Him to reveal Himself to you. We're going to do that tonight." I looked at the others as we all stood holding hands in a circle. "Let's all open our hearts wide, for a deluge of The Father's Love to be poured in, like never before." We prayed and God sealed all that He'd done in that little room.
Powerful!
And it's just the beginning of what God is doing...
in Charlie's life,
in the lives of each individual in that circle,
in my life... the Girl in RED shoes.
Talk soon,
Gail
PS... I know that God planted His seed in the soil of Charlie's heart tonight, and that the Holy Spirit watered it with the testimonies and words of everyone that was present. Believe with us, in prayer, that it's only a matter of time before Spiritual Growth becomes visible in Charlie's life! To God be the Glory!
