This is a follow on to the day when the Lord showed up in my room. If you missed that write-up, here is a quick synopsis. I was praying and Jesus showed up tangibly in my room.. I am not sure if this was a divine visitation or a vision, but it was very real. There was an intensity of the Lord's presence that I found overwhelming... to the point where I became terrified by His presence and actually ran out of the room. (Dumb, huh?) The Holy Spirit spoke to me and sent me right back into the room, where I ended up spending about an hour kneeling before the Lord and being very directly and tangibly in His presence.
It is hard to describe precisely what happened there, but I knew that He was changing me from the inside out. It is impossible to come into the light of God's presence and not be changed. Jesus put it this way in John 3:21, "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his [or her] deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." In other words, when we come into God's presence, come into His light, then He exposes what is inside.... both the strengths and the areas that need to be "cleaned out."
Before my incredible encounter with the Lord, I had been feeling pretty "together." I was content, emotionally and physically, and I had an overall sense of well being that had lasted for well over a year. I consider this one of the blessings of obeying and serving the Lord -- it is the peace of John 14:27 and John 20:21, the fruit of the Spirit manifesting in our lives (Ro 14:7, Ro 15:3, Gal 5:22).
But when you come into God's presence, His light shines deep and darkness is exposed and dealt with. This happened to me. You might say that the experience of last Tuesday (Nov 13) was the start of God digging deep into my spirit and inner being. I am learning that it is impossible to come into God's presence, to His light, and not have Him expose and root out the darkness that is within us. That is just what John 3:21 says He will do. I am not sure if we understand the "whole package" when we desire a Divine visitation, when we yearn to be literally in His presence and see some measure of His glory.
It really did not take God long. He allowed me to bask in the awesomeness of His presence that day. The next morning (Wednesday), I prayed and invited His presence again. I figured maybe I could talk God into making these Divine visitations a regular part of my life and daily experience. Instead God allowed a fear to come up.. I have a mild case of one of those phobias (not saying which one, but it is along the lines of acrophobia, claustrophobia, etc). It almost never comes up because I am almost never in the conditions that set it off. But it came up during my "quite time" before the Lord.. and I experienced such a potent dose of it that I was unable to continue with the quiet time. The fear brought me right out of the intimacy with God. No matter what I tried to do that morning, I could not get back into that sense of closeness with Him.
I was a bit startled and disappointed by that. How could something disturbing happen when I was trying to push into a deeper walk with God? Was the enemy opposing me, trying to throw barriers in my way, attempting to prevent me from moving into the full degree of intimacy that God had for me? I pondered that throughout the day, and that evening the Lord spoke to me about it. He told me that this was His hand, not the devil's. God was exposing this thing that was within me because He wanted to get it out of me, so that it did not get in my way any more or hold me back in what He was calling me to do. Then God began to speak to me about the "root" of this.. bringing me back to a specific situation when I was about 6 years old. An adult (not a member of my own family) had physically attacked me in a terrifying way and threatened to kill me if I did not behave in the manner that he wanted.
God allowed me to remember that situation specifically and was very present with me as we "remembered" or "relived" portions of that situation. It was this incredible breakthrough. Then the Lord began to speak to me about how that effected my "phobia," of what the real fear was when I got into certain types of situations. Then He put me back into that situation and when the fear began to raise up, He reminded me of the root, of the real issue and of the truth of His presence and what He would do regarding that real issue. The next day, He put me into not one, but two, real-life situations that would always set off this phobia, and I came through both of them very well... with almost no fear or emotional discomfort. I suspect some people would pay a psychologist thousands of dollars for what the Lord did for me in a couple of days. I don't know if I am 100% "cured" but I am well on my way.
So I assumed that God was done.. after all I had my "breakthrough" and I was focused on moving forward in Him... to greater depths of worship and intimacy with Him, of literally being a carrier of greater measures of His presence because we'd rooted out and eliminated my "darkness" that got in the way of His light. But that was a bad assumption... God was not done.
I had signed up to receive Theophostic ministry that Sunday. A team of 10 from our church have been training in how to do this for several months now. They need to get a certain number of hours of ministry time under their belts to qualify for this advanced training seminar they want to attend. I was not sure what theophostic (translates to "God's light") ministry was, but I thought it would be neat to "receive" ministry for a change.. I am usually the person doing ministry, not receiving it. I was not aware of any "issues," since the Lord and I had just worked through that phobia thing. People had been reporting incredible breakthroughs and experiences with the Lord in very short periods of time.. like 1 to 2 hours. They told me that God shows up and runs the ministry time, that He meets people in incredible and powerful ways. I was so hungry for God's presence that this sounded ultra desirable to me. I had already heard excellent reports from some of my friends who had received this ministry. I had no idea what to expect.. I think maybe I sort of expected some sort of renewal experience.
So that Sunday morning I went to my ministry appointment. The session did not go quite the way that they expected it to go. It was one of those "unusual" cases where some deep or core issues (ones I was not even aware I had) were identified. But God did not show up to "meet" me in them and shine His light to diffuse them out of my life. Looking back, I know that God usually deals with me by exposing something (e.g., making me aware of it) and then giving me a bit of time to process it (think and pray about it, mentally "chew" on it) before He meets me in it. So this was right in keeping with how He frequently deals with me. Issues were exposed, but there no real "ministry" to address / resolve them. I had an inner "sense" that this was still a side effect of having been in God's direct presence the previous Tuesday... that He was still shining His light in and exposing my darkness. I actually felt quite satisfied with the "ministry" session, because it seemed that God had used it to continue something He had started sovereignly. And I had felt very loved by the person who ministered to me. I walked away from that session feeling very good about it.
But as I began to "process" the issues during the day, I felt a bit unsettled, like I was a partially baked cake and someone took me out of the oven too early. That evening I was at a church meeting, and a lady publicly shared a testimony of how powerfully God met them in theophostic ministry that day.. and I began to wonder why my own experience had not been as "powerful" as all of those testimonies that I was hearing. I prayed on it that night, before I went to bed. I had an unsettling dream that night.. not a prophetic dream, just my own emotions "acting out" in the dream. Because I woke up from that dream feeling agitated, I called the pastor at our church who does inner healing ministry and asked for an appointment.. that was on Monday. The first time slot he had an opening for was this Friday (tomorrow).
God continued to speak to me during the week, to show me how this root issue has effected me in certain areas of my life. He showed me the lie (underlying assumption) and then what His truth is. The Lord began to dig into areas of my life, interactions, thinking patterns. He told me that all of this is a natural result of coming to His light and allowing Him to expose and remove the darkness. He is not upset at me for having the darkness there.. He just wants to get rid of it so that there is more room in me to contain His light. In one sense, it seems like a bit of a setback, because I went from a place of "well being" and contentment to being unsettled. I went from "having my act together" to seeing some blindness and nakedness (Rev 3:17) that I did not realize was there. But on the other hand, this has been a positive experience because we are making real and substantial breakthroughs in this area. I believe that the ministry session tomorrow will be another breakthrough. I am not sure how long this exposing/removing process will take, but God has been very real and tangible with me in it, and I am seeing definite forward momentum (progress). While I am "undone" it is ok, because I know that He is "redoing" me to be a bit more like Jesus.
So why am I sharing all of this so publicly? I am sharing it because my testimony of God meeting me on Nov 13 went out so publicly. So many people wrote me back and told me how they long for a divine encounter with God like the one I had.. they desire a divine visitation. This is a good thing to desire and I sincerely hope you have one with the Lord soon. But I wanted to let you know the rest of this package... of what comes with it, so that you would not be surprised or caught off guard when you begin to experience God shining in His light and exposing/rooting out your darkness. I encourage you to come to the light, come into His presence. I just do not want you to be surprised when John 3:21 begins happening in your life.. because when you come into God's presence, He will shine His light into you.. and that means that some darkness will be exposed and removed.
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