So this is more like a bit of our journal than an update, just something personal we wanted to share.
So here’s the story, it’s a normal Sunday night service at Bethel, good hour of worship with Jenn Johnson, people get crazy (in a good spiritual way), then Pr. Bill comes up the stage to pray for people, this time he starts up calling people with body injuries caused by accidents, some people stand, the rest of us gather around them and pray for healing, Heaven invades earth, people gets healed, sweet! So far, all good, a normal Sunday night service.
Just as Bill prepares to call the second group of people to get prayed for, a group of people on the right front side of the church starts to shout, we all look towards them and notice how they are all staring at the ceiling, and there it is, Heaven totally invades the room now, a cloud of gold dust and feathers starts to get thicker and thicker right above our heads, the sense of God’s presence in the room erupts in form of shout and spontaneous songs of praise and adoration, for the next two hours or so, all we could do was sing songs and as Bill said, ‘camp around the glory’. I would say that night is one of the highlights of our life so far, a surreal experience in Gods presence.
Here’s the beautiful scene though, while all this was happening, I kept looking at Pr. Bill, here’s the man whose passion and values triggered this whole movement, by far one of the most anointed and wise speakers, pastors and teachers of this generation, literally the guy everyone in this culture looks up too, there he is, for about two hours he just stood there, looking around the crowd and back up to the cloud. Not for a second he tried to interfere or take control back to him, talking about honouring the presence of God huh?
Not to forget that this is a day before the Leaders Advance Conference starts, the room is full of visitors, leaders from all over the world that came to get some of what God is doing here. The pressure to do something would probably freak most of us out, but after that, pretty much what he said is ‘I really don’t know what to do...’ followed by another moment of silence. Then he said something that I don’t think I will ever forget, he said something like this ‘This is different, it’s hard to know what to do, to be honest, I really don’t know what to do, but I know this much, the most important thing has finally become the Most Important Thing’, in another worlds, the Presence of God has finally become more important than our agenda! Come on right??
All together, Pr. Bill probably spoke for 10mins or less that night, yet on that night I learned one of the greatest lessons of my life on what it looks like to value the presence of God more than our own agenda, more than our programs, more than our plans. What it looks like when the thing that should matter the most actually becomes the thing that matters the most. Perhaps that’s why things seems to be easier around here, not because this people are the best people in the world, or perfect or anything, but because someone decided that if the glory comes, our job isn’t to add it to our stuff, but to camp around it until He tell us to move, no matter what it looks like.
As I said before, last Sunday night is one of the highlights of our walk with God, that’s for sure, we feel honoured and amazed that we’re getting to see this things happening right before our eyes, signs and wonders, creative miracles are all soooo good, specially when you’re one of the people being used to deliver them, but the lessons we’re learning about stewardship, about hosting Gods presence and dwelling in that place is so much better. When our focus is God and not what He can do, things get so much easier, so much better!!
daniel
