God is Moving

THIS WEEK is one of those weeks when I just have so many different things to tell you that God did that all I want to do is just write it all down. God is moving. I heard things this week that made me speechless and overjoyed. When you read it keep in mind the power in the name of Jesus and the depth of the love of God.

First, this morning at First Assembly my friend Jade came to understand the solution of something that has been weighing on her mind. Pastor Mike Patts explained that our place is in helping God build His fearless, indestructible church in the middle of a dangerous world. She has been trying for a long time to decide whether to pursue nursing or education as a major. God showed her today that she should be a nurse, and teach Sunday School in order to give kids a foundation, something eternally important. She prayed with a member of the team and came out crying with joy. I'm so happy for her because God made it so clear to her what path would be perfect for her.

I also found out that my Youth Pastor, Ryan Austin, and his wife are going to have their first baby soon. My whole church at home is so excited for them. I blogged about their wedding a while back!

Also, on Thursday I ended up staying for about an hour and a half after CRU - until midnight - listening to the testimonies of the team who had just come back from the Haiti mission trip. What they said sounded like something out of the book of Acts and has me starving to go on a mission trip, or to see the same things on my campus. you're not gonna believe some of this stuff, but neither could they at the time. I'll try to tell you in as few words as possible.

Okay. Well soon after they got there, they began praying for a member of their team named Kelly, who was badly suffering from a sinus infection. They prayed in Jesus' name for a long time with persistence until it worked. First she felt the sickness disappear, and then they heard her congestion slowly melt away as she breathed. Miracle! She was completely healed.

Then a horrible kind of burning and pressure descended on her chest, and several others could feel it too. They prayed in the same manner that you would go to battle with an enemy - slowly and steadily pushing it back. The name of Jesus drove it back further and further, and they prayed late into the night.

In this process the Holy spirit began showing up in unexpected ways. Two of the men had been doing most of the spoken prayer, but one now felt that God had something to say through somebody else. Just when a young woman named Ashley was thinking it couldn't be her, she heard a string of words just jump out of her mouth, and they turned out to be a word of knowledge that pertained to how Kelly had been having trouble trusting God to have a plan. She didn't know if it meant anything to her, but Kelsey cried because she knew God had spoken right to her.

A young guy named Connor, who says he hadn't been doing a lot of talking for the two and a half hours that they prayed, was one of several who received visions. But his was most important. He saw deep, crushing darkness which was then pierced by brilliant light that came with the perfect peace of God. He heard that he was supposed to tell Kelly "Black and White." What does that mean? He asked God to confirm it, and another team member entered the room wearing black pants and a white shirt. He asked again, and one of the other members began to pray aloud about darkness and light. So he told Kelly he needed to say it, whatever it meant: "black and white!"

I'm not lying - at that moment, a glass table beside them shattered into countless people. Nobody broke it. Nobody leaned on it. They fell over themselves in praise and awe and confusion. God was shattering through the darkness with light. They stopped praying for the night, and the deep burning pressure was finally gone.

A few days later they told the story to anyone on the team who hadn't been there, and when they pronounced "Black and White," a 4.6 earthquake shook them on "white." There had not been a tremor in Haiti for almost a year. It was on the news, and they had to let their parents know that they were alright.

Acts 4:31 "And when they had prayed, the place where they were assebled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness."

The team said that they were a little nervous that when they told the story to us all the windows where we were might break.

They told us that many other things happened to them and have continued to happen since they came back. More things than they had time to tell us about. While they were there they witnessed the beautiful love of God shining in the song and dance of orphans who received new clean bunk beds in the place of their rotting mattresses. Kids who were more than happy. They were full of the love of God that this team brought with them.

And now, in response to Pastor Mike Patts' sermon today about "doing what God is blessing," helping to build His church, I am determined to go or stay anywhere He would like me to, just to see Him move like this. The crazy thing is that all of this is just the highlights of the Haiti team's experience and of my own. God responds when we surrender all to Him and ask Him in faith. There is power in the name of Jesus.

Revelation 1:18 "I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death." As John Piper has pointed out, as we realize more and more that Christ is supreme over absolutely everything, temptation shrinks and our devotion grows. We recognize Him as our treasure and Lord, and everything down here gets less overwhelming. He says to ask and receive, seek and find. Go on ahead and ask in the name of Jesus, see where you fit into what He is doing. God is moving. He will resepond in ways bigger than we can imagine.