The last week of the UCSB school year was a week of radical encounters by God...it felt like the grand finale fireworks in the spiritual realm to conclude an amazing year in IV. God showed up this week powerfully blessing peoples socks off both in the church and out of the church...I randomly came across this the other day, its a blog post from a missionary couple that stopped by our house that week on their way to San Diego:
We just had a radical divine appointment in Santa Barbara on the way down the coast as we were coming back home from a ministry trip further north. To see it come to pass, however, we had to be willing to be very flexible.
A friend who happened to be staying in Santa Barbara called us late at night right near 11:00pm while we were driving home through that area and asked us to come visit her and some friends in Isla Vista at the last moment. We felt God’s hand was upon this even though it was late and we were tired and culturally it was very akward to show up at someone's home so late and unplanned like this. We went over and ended up actually spending the night and miraculously wound up in an all-day outpouring of the Spirit the next day.
This group of mostly college students near UCSB were all interested in hearing about Lonnie Frisbee and how God worked through him back in the Jesus People Revival and Vineyard Outpouring. Having had the blessing to travel and experience firsthand God’s work through Lonnie, we were stoked to share some stories. We also had a short video to play. Right in the middle of watching this video, God sovereignly started moving on people in power which sparked a Holy Ghost outpouring where we began praying for people and powerful manifestations began to take place. Other students and friends kept showing up and coming in to this spontaneous prayer meeting as God kept pouring out His Spirit all day long; this unplanned meeting which started in the morning continued on until around three in the afternoon with lots of powerful moves, fillings, and empowerings of many lives.
I finally realized we hadn’t eaten, drank, or consumed anything or taken a break the whole day—this is the kind of fasting that is worthwhile though—when God is in the midst of it versus that other forced dead kind which Jesus criticized the Pharisees for doing out of dead ritual.
It was an awesome time and just when I thought I’d keel over from all the focus and intensity of praying for others all day long without any sustenance, I was offered some sardines to remind us of our Euro mission trips and a few laughs.
I was just thinking it would be good to take a break and get a surf in before it was too late when one of the many surfers there offered to take us out for a surf break too.
We scored some fun, sunny, 2 to 3’ clean and peaky, zipper-like waves right straight out at Campus Point. I queried how often it broke this time of year like this since I can’t ever remember seeing these kinds of waves like this in this area of Santa Barbara in the summer since the Channel Islands block most summer swells. The answer was never, "it never breaks this time of year."
Another blessing, and a quite refreshing one on that day, of the willingness to be flexible and let the winds of the Spirit lead the way. We would have missed that outpouring God wanted to bring and the fun out of season unique surf session if we had just done the culturally acceptable and easier thing on our weary bodies and had just headed home rather than showing up at someone's house we didn't know near midnight to end up sleeping on the floor after sleeping in others' homes for the past few weeks already. There was unplanned blessing awaiting we knew not of but we had to pay attention to the leading of the Spirit to tap into it.
Jesus words about letting the winds of the Spirit lead the way are not just some far off idea for another Bible study but something to be applied to our lives as we learn to do what Jesus told the early disciples to do: "Follow Me."
"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." John 3:8
For the full post click here: http://reflectionsftroad.blogspot.com/2010/06/blessed-are-flexible.html
No comments:
Post a Comment