June 23, 1999
A healing evanglelist named Benny Hinn is in town and the Lord told me to go help out at his crusade, so I will be serving as an usher there (Thursday and Friday). Today they were doing setup, so I stopped by after work to help.. I arrived a bit late, so they did not really need me. I was going to leave (go home) but God stopped me and told me to go pray over the seats.. by the way, I am told that there are 18,000 seats in the arena. So I started to go back in, and was met by two of the Benny Hinn staff. We got into a conversation during which time I shared that God was prompting me to walk around the seats and pray. Then encouraged me to do so. Since they were staff, with official badges and everything, I took that as "official permission" and started walking through the seats, praying.
God gave me one very simple instruction... pray in tongues. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am not big on praying (interceding) in tongues.. I prefer to pray with my understanding. But He told me tongues, so I only prayed in tongues. I did not cover all 18,000 seats, but I am pretty sure that I prayed over about 9,000 of them.. it took a really long time as I walked the asiles in prayed in tongues.. my arms outstretched over the chairs.
The longer I prayed, the more the anointing seemed to increase.. just from praying in tongues over those chairs in tongues. At certain points God would speak to me very distinctly. At one point the anointing go so strong that I almost fell over.... in fact I had steady myself on the backs of a few chairs to avoid falling into a heap on the floor.
"There is an angel standing right next to you," the Lord whispered.
I looked.. I could not see it, but I could definately sense it's presense. As I moved away from it, the tangible anointing decreased but still remained very strong. I could feel this "sweetness" in my hands and my fingers were tingling.
I wanted to stay there and soak in the anointing, but I knew I had a job to do, so I continued moving across the huge auditorium. At certain times the anointing would be stronger than at other times. In one section, my right foot suddenly began to cramp. I thought maybe it was an enemy attack to distract me from praying.. but God said it was a word of knowledge.. that in this location, a lame person would be healed. I noted the location in the auditorium and I am going to watch for this. It would not surprise me if it were one of the first miracles of this crusade.
It was amazing, I could walk though an obsticle course of various chairs and railings and steps with my eyes closed and not trip or bump into anything. I guess God was just leading me. I really did not think about it much.. I was SO aware of His presense as I prayed softly in tongues.. His presense was so tangible.
Suddenly the anointing increased tenfold. I opened my eyes and found that I had wandered back in the area where God had told me there was an angel. Then God said something to me that was the most precious of anything He said.
Let me give a tad of background so it will make sense. One of my dearest friends had just informed me (about 1/2 an hour before I left work to go pray over the colluseam) that her 19 year old daughter had a potentially serious health problem... she is trying to make a doctor's appointment, but for some reason does not seem to be able to get one until sometime next month. We don't know how serious the daughter's condition is right now... and we are concerned and praying. In fact, I'd been interceeding for her the whole 40 minute drive from work to the colluseam.
"Teresa," The Lord said, "The same healing anointing that is here for this crusade will be on M______ clear across the country, and I will come upon her and heal her as the anointing falls here." The anointing was so strong as He said that that I could barely remain standing.
"Oh, Thank you Lord!!"
Can you immagine God showing up so tangibly in an almost empty auditurium where just a few dozen people were "setting up"? Yet He was there.... and the anointing was very strong.. immagine what it will be like when the stadium is filled with 18,000 people hungry for God!!
I can hardly wait until tomorrow when the crusade starts!
June 24, 1999
This will have to be a brief report because I am so tired I can hardly sit up. I volunteered as an "usher captian" and I did not get to sit down once from about 1:00 PM until after 11:00 PM. I was so busy that I hardly got to pay attention to the service.. but God did some things that are realy noteworthy and I'd like to share them.
Fairly early in the service, Benny gave an altar call. So many people steamed forward that there was no way to count them all. I happened to be assigned to one of few areas where there was a stairway down to the main floor.. and so our section had many of the new converts coming through it... and there were litterally people as far as the eye could see.. they streamed down the asiles, filled up the front and there were so many of them that did not all sit on the lower level and a few were standing the staircase leading down there. It was incredible.. I could literally feel the Lord's joy at this.
Not long after that, they took an offering and that kept me so busy that I lost track of what was going on.
Then it was time for a bit more worship and healing prayer. The power of God was so tangible in the room. I had to stand at the little steps from the bleachers to the main floor, and keep people from going down prematurely. So I was right there in the thick of it.. and it was SO powerful. God's presense was tangible. I closed my eyes and worshipped during part of this, and I opened them and looked around during part. God's presense was on the people.. you could see Him so tangibly on many of them. It was a beautiful sight... powerful as well.
Remember how God had told me He was going to heal a lame person in a certain section as I walked the grounds and prayed on Wednesday afternoon? Well, I ended up being assigned to that very section. And when it came time to give testimonies, one of the first people down was a woman who was carrying a cane, waving it joyfully in front of her and practically dancing down the steps. I said to her, "Looks like you won't be needing that any more!" She replied something like, "Not any more, but before this I could hardly walk 10 steps!" WOW. I was SO blessed that God allowed me to see the very healing He'd given me the word of knowledge about the day before!! God is so good.
Let me just share a few other things that I saw. I will prefix it by saying that not everyone was healed, but many many were. I saw a lady get up out of her wheelchair and walk! It was such a lovely sight. I saw one of the prayer team helping a toddler walk for the very first time... it's deformed legs straigthening before my eyes as I watched... and the father following behind with tears of joy streaming down his face.
During the testimony time, I was stationed on the main floor... right down where the action was so I got an awesome view of what God was doing. I was just guiding people where they should go, not working directly with them. But some were so excited that they just had to tell me what God did for them.. stories of chronic pain leaving... people moving necks and backs that used to be unusable, a teenage girl who was healed of "chronic depresion", a woman carrying her legbraces and lifting her knees very high with a look of absolute rapture on her face... God did so many awesome things. There may have been some fakes in the crowd.. just trying to get up on the stage to be prayed for. There may have been some people who were caught up in the emotion of it all.. but one thing I am absolutely sure of.. The Holy Spirit was tangibly present and there were a lot of very real and very powerful healings. I wish I should share the expressions on people's faces with you as they discovered they were healed. Oh God, it was so awesome. There was man who had chronic pain for over 11 years and it was suddenly gone! There was the woman who felt the warmth of God go through her and burn away cancer in her body.. God was on the move!
Benny ended the meeting by asking those who felt called to full-time ministry to come forward so that he could pray for us.. I went up on that altar call.. it was only 5 minutes long, but it was my only chance to receive.. as I was so busy working all night..and I know that I am called to full time ministry. And when Benny prayed over the group , I could feel the Lord all over me.. His pesense so sweet. Then my hands began to tingle.. and right after that Benny said, "Some of you are beginning to feel your hands tingle.. that is an impartation of the anointing.. receive it."
Oh God is good! It was worth my tired body to see all those salvations! It was worth my very sore feet to see all those healings! I was too busy to participate in the worship like I would have liked to, but God found a way to touch and bless me none the less. He is so good!
Well, I gotta get to bed cuz it is now 12:30 AM and I hvae to be back at the stadium at 7:00 AM, cuz we have to setup to let in the crowds at 8:00 AM for the morning service.
June 25, 1999
Friday was the final day of the Benny Hinn crusade. As expected, God showed up bigtime. I was doing volunteer work as an Usher captian, overseeing 6 ushers that were servicing about 2000 seats. There are an amazing number of "situations" that come up and need individual attention, so believe it or not, I missed most of the service.. except, of course when it came time for the altar call and healings/testimony parts.. I got to be right in the think of it then.
My favorite "situation" to handle was a woman who came and got me during the evening service ... the service had been going for about 1/2 hour .. all worship, and God's presense was already tangible in the room. She had a problem that she needed help with.. she needed to accept Jesus right then and could not wait for the altar call!!! So I took her outside of the main auditorium to a quiet cooridor and led her to the Lord. She had all these things that had been at her in her life.. her husband wanted a divorce, her oldest daughter was getting rebellious and unmanagable, etc. She was literally overwhelmed at what was going on in her life. I prayed for those concerns and then had her pray with me to invite Jesus to be her Lord. As she repeated the salvation prayer after me, God's peace washed over her. You could see a change in her muscle tone as she "relaxed" into His peace... tears streaming down her face and a smile on her lips. Isn't God wonderful! Another problem that I really enjoyed solving was this frail elderly lady with a walker.
The afternoon service was only about half full... probably about 8,000 to 9,000 people.. but still enough people to fill up most of the lower section. There were some chairs in the cooridor and a frail older lady with a walker was sitting in one of them, looking forlorn. I was walking past. I stopped and asked her if she need assistance with anything. She almost broke into tears and shared her story with me.. she heard Benny Hinn was in town and took a taxi from San Jose to be there... over an hour drive in traffic. She got her and found she could not get in because it required going down some stairs to get to the seats, and she could not do that with her walker.. She felt incredibly disappointed because she had paid so much money to take a taxi all that way and then though we did not have a seat for her. Fortunately, that was an easy problem to solve because we had some special reserved handicapped seating right where the main cooridor fed into the room. I asked her if she could manage two steps and she said she could.. so I helped her to a fairly good seat and she was excited because God took such special care of her. Her face went from forelorn to full of joy.
Not all of the problems were "fun" to solve. There were some tired people who felt disappointed that they could not have as good of a seat as they wanted and who were having a bit of a "flesh fit" regarding that. Also there were people who were upset that they could not go down on the main floor to "receive prayer" before it was time to allow people down there.
During the altar call, I got to be right at the bottom of the steps where people came from the stadium seating onto the main floor. About 1/4 of the people who came forward to receive Christ came down those steps. I got to see each one both on their way down and again on their way up. What a treat it was to see the smile on their faces, the glow in their eyes. You could literally see the transformation of Christ on their contenence. It was awesome.
So many powerful things happened during the ministry time on Friday. I could not begin to recount them all, so let me share just two stories. There was a lady in the testimony line who was standing there holding a cane and worshipping God for all she was worth. The line had been moving very slowly, and she had been standing in front of me for quite some time. Many of the people around her where agitated, because they thought the line was for people who wanted to be prayed for regarding healing, not a testimony line for those who had been healed. They wanted the line to move faster. They some were trying to "take cuts" infront of the long line. And as the usher watching that section of the line, I would not let them cut infront of those already in line. A few of them tried to argue with me and one woman really began to mainfest. I was not physically stopping her, I simply told her she could not pass me and cut infront of the line. She stood there at my right shoulder for about 10 minutes practicly screaming "I rebuke you Satan." One of the security people should have been by to pick her up and remove her, but for some reason none came.
Meanwhile, I ignored the upset lady and stretched my hand in the direction of the one who was worshipping. I was careful not to touch her because that is against Benny Hinn's rules. I softly prayed to bless what God was doing on her and silently prayed the disruptive woman would not distract her as God was obviously touching her. After about 10 minutes, I pointed to the lady who was worshipping and said to the disrupter, "Why don't you do like her... worship God and let God touch you. Look how God is all over her."
The woman stopped yelling, closed her mouth and turned around and walked away. The other woman continued worshipping.. Oil formed on her forehead. A little later, golddust appeared on top of the oil. After a while the woman opened her eyes and looked around. I told her that God was really touching her and about oil and gold dust on her forehead. She said "Really??" I said "Yes!" THe next thing I knew, she grabbed in in a big old bear hug and said "Thank you!!" I told her God was the one who touched her and I had nothing to do with it, but she was so thrilled. SHe began to tell me a bit about her story.. how her friends wanted her to go forward in her wheel chair but she refused.. deciding to walk up wiht her two canes "in faith" that God would touch her. She only had one cane as she told me this story, and was not even using it.. just holding it. She explained how she could not walk without two canes.. one was not enough. I asked her what happened to her other cane and she had no idea. It still did not occur to her that she was not using the one she still held. As the talked, the Lord came on her again and the color of her skin changed from a palid gray to normal skin tone. I knew God was doing something incredible. I did not touch her, but I stretched my hand in her general direction and prayed out loud, "Lord, thank you for the way you are touching her. Lord, we just bless what you are doing in her." She started worshipping again.. arms upstretched and the cane dangling from her hand. THe line moved a bit, and she stepped forward, still worshipping and not even using the cane. She was not about 8 steps away from me.
About then, a ministry team member came by. There are not very many ministry team members, and one had not been by in about 1/2 hour. I motioned her over and pointed out the lady with the dangling cane to her, saying that I thought God was really touching her. The ministry team lady did something that was a real treat for me. She invited me to go with her to minister to this lady.. (Remember, only Benny Hinn and his small ministry team are allowed to lay hands on people and pray for them.) So I was delighted to go with her and "help."
She asked the woman what God had been doing for her. THe woman was so blessed that she could hardly answer, other than proclain how magnificant God is. She also managed to inform us that the pain is gone. "How long have you had the pain for?" she was asked. "For over a year," came the reply. "How frequent is the pain?" "It is constant. I am always in pain but now it is gone!" She started worshipping again. The ministry team lady asked her about the wheelchair.. and the woman explained that she could walk without it, prividing she use two canes. I had my hand lightly on her back as she talked to the ministry team woman, because she was getting so drunk in the spirit that she looked like she might go down any moment. The ministry team woman asked her, "well, has that changed since God has touched you tonight?"
"I don't know" the woman replied.
The ministry team lady began backing away from her. "Shall we try it?" she asked.
The woman unconsciously took a stop towards her and then another, still holding (and not using) her cane. But she did not realize she was walking. "Oh, I can't walk without a cane.. it's just not possible ... hey!!! I am walking!!!" You should have heard the delight in her voice as she realized she was doing the impossible.
Needless to say, the ministry team lady pulled her out of line and took her up front. I watched them go, tears of joy in my eyes.
There were many other stories of God awesomely touching people.... but the only other story I want to share with you is a personal experience I had. I had been working very hard as an usher captian.. not even having a chance to sit down all day. I had come because God told me to come and serve this ministry.. and I did not expect to get anything out of it. But God has a way of blessing His servants. It was very late, and about half of the crowd had gone home. The youth were "in line" trying to get on the platform to be prayed for. Some people were still in their seats worshipping God, and His presense was very tangible.
I had been on the ground floor, near the stage, helping with the testimony line. Now that the teens were mobbing forward, I was trying to get out of the way.. I was very tired and all I wanted to do was go sit down.. I had been standing almost non-stop for 16 hours at that point.
"Teresa," the Lord said, "I want you to walk the perimiter of the auditorium" (still on the ground floor, facing the bleechers where the seats were). "Stretch out your hand towards the crowd and silently pray My blessings over them. When I point someone out to you, just stretch your hand towards them and pray silently for them until I tell you to stop."
So I did as instructed. I had an usher captian badge on, so it did not look at all out of place for me to walk the perimiter .. no one noticed me. The Lord pointed a woman out to me.. about 15 rows up. The woman was standing with her eyes closed and arms upstretched.. worshipping. She did not see me. I stretched my hand in her dirction.. and I felt this power or anointing go out from it. I know that sounds strange, but I could literally feel it leaving my hand. Just at that instant, the power of God hit this woman and she began shaking visibly, then got slain the the spirit and collasped into her chair.
A little later the Lord pointed someone else out to me.. and as I stretched my hand towards them, I could once again feel the anointing going forth out of it.. and again the power of God hit the the person. God pointed several people out to me.. and each time I am certain the person did not see me or know I was silently praying for them. But each time, I felt the anointing of God go out from my hand and at the same instant, the person I was praying for would be visibly hit with the power of God. I don't fully understand what happened, but I know God was allowed me to somehow participate with Him as He touched people.. and it was an incredible blessing to me..
After it was all over, the Lord told me that because I had gone to serve, expecting nothing in return, He had given impartation or anointing to me. So, it turned out to be even more of a blessing than I anticipated.
Finally I had a chance to sit down for a few minutes, in the front row seat of the bleechers, near the staircase. I closed my eyes and worshipped for a few minutes. It felt SO good to sit down and SO good to worship.
"Teresa, open your eyes and look." God said.
THe woman who learned she could walk without a cane was walking past me, waving at me.. she did not have her cane any more. I hopped up and ran down the short flight of stairs to greet her.. and got the whole story of her healing.. she had a serious heart condition and was scheduled to have heart surgery the following week.. which would no longer be necessary. She used to also have shortness of breath, which went away, and she was able to walk unassisted. I would say God did an excellent job on her!
Also, during this crusade, the Lord called me very clearly to travel as an volunteer (helper) with Benny Hinn's ministry for a season. I doubt I will ever get to meet or talk to Benny, and I will probably never get to be on the ministry team to pray for the sick.. but I know that God will give me divine appointments as I serve Him.. and that I will be blessed for obeying Him and serving as one of many unpaid volunteers. After all, didn't Jesus call us to be Servants?
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