Grace Awakenings and Holy Ghost Surprises

Somewhere near Salinas… I kept hearing that line from an old song reverberate in my head as we drove down the highway in Northern California just recently.

So as we were headed down the highway I figured the Spirit of God was seeking to direct us to something. So we got in touch with our friend Dave who lives in Salinas. We had met at Surfing the Nations (STN) in Hawaii and he got filled with the Spirit when we prayed for him over in the Islands. So we stopped by his place in Salinas and happened to arrive right when a friend of his was also stopping by, who happened to be headed the other way up the highway towards Washington State. Somehow, God is able to arrange that both of us came to Dave’s house at the same time; God coordinates things in such incredible ways it blows your mind.

Dave's friend from Washington had a recent encounter with the grace of God, something he never knew about nor understood even after being a Christian and attending church most of his life. After reading Romans and Galatians on his own where the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, he finally understood the full import of The New Covenant in Christ and The Righteousness that Comes From God. This opened up a long discussion with us where we were speaking even more of the grace of God into his life and then the Spirit of God began to fall on him and move on his life as we were talking, so we started praying for him. The Spirit of God began pouring out on him, and then also on other people who were there, as well as others who showed up later. We ended up having an all-night Holy Ghost outpouring as the Spirit of God filled everyone with His fire and glory: those who showed up to the house later who came straight into the glory when they came inside, along with a few who were there hanging out in other parts of the house that were drawn into the Holy Ghost fire. The Spirit of God moved with His power and filled, and filled, and filled, everyone there all night long. It was 3:33 in the morning when we finally hit the sack—basking in the glory while finally going to sleep.

Dave’s friend from Washington headed up home that next morning. However, the next night, another friend who was part of the Jesus People Revival back in the day came by, as well as another guy starting out in ministry who realized he needed the power of God, and with them and a few others we had another Holy Ghost all-nighter. God poured out his power, bringing forth another time of people being Filled with the Holy Spirit intensely, and after praying for hours for each other, we flowed into singing old Jesus People songs and worshiping in the Spirit late into the wee hours.

Well after another night of going to sleep around 4:00 AM I'm getting the feeling in these outpourings that there isn't going to be much sleeping going on in heaven, just basking in the glory! Praise God!

Broken things can be frustrating but....

On another note, sometimes you wonder how God can work all things for good: After trying to figure out how to mow the lawn after the lawn mower died on us and it was beginning to look like the Amazon jungle, we finally broke down just yesterday and hired a guy to do a quick job for a few bucks until we got it fixed. I began to think there was something more to why this guy was with us mowing the lawn. We began to witness to him and he was listening and interacting pretty well but he then began to talk about all this stuff he learned from the Jehovah's Witnesses. Instead of giving into the temptation to argue about the Jehovah's witness stuff I began to get a word from God that seemed like it might be offensive but I went for it anyways: "You keep getting involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses and you'll find out that what they want from you is money." Instead of being offended, he began to laugh hysterically and told us that’s exactly what he had experienced as he was involved with them. That word actually opened him up even more to what we had to say. He said he knew "that Christ doesn't charge us." We told him: "That's right. He offers salvation freely to all who will receive Him as Savior and Lord." He then prayed with us on the driveway to receive Jesus the Son of God, God the Son, as His Savior. Hallelujah!! Even broken stuff like lawnmowers can be used for higher purposes in God's Kingdom.