Every week at PENHOP (Penang House of Prayer), they have what’s called Thursday Night Encounter. This night begins with worship, followed by a speaker, and usually concludes with some sort of altar call. This past Thursday was no different.
Our speaker was incredible. She was on fire for Jesus and very charismatic. She spoke about pursuing God’s presence, God’s power, and the possession of heavenly inheritances. Towards the end of her sermon, she showed us a video from a conference she had spoken at a few months back. In the video, the leaders of the conference prayed over the attendees and asked for the Holy Spirit to fill them, asking for them to be spiritually baptized. As hands were laid and prayers spoken, most of the recipients fell to the ground. Some shook, others rolled, and some laid completely stiff.
I wasn’t sure what to think. I could tell these people loved God, but it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Sabrina called the PENHOP staff to the front of the room after the video and asked for them to pray over us. To lay hands on us. I’d never experienced anything like in the video, but I had attended a spiritual gifts worship session at Ceta Canyon when I was in high school.
Ceta Canyon is the Methodist church camp I attended from 6th grade through my senior year, and continued to volunteer at throughout college. It in the middle of nowhere deep in the back country roads of the Texas panhandle.
Boone and Corey Tyson, two brothers from Follett, Texas (literally as far north as you can get before hitting Oklahoma), lead this worship session with guys from their home town youth group with the goal of us to see the potential of our spiritual gifts. We prayed for visions, interpretations, prophetic prayer and worship, and for the 16 year old high school students in that room to speak in tongues. And it happened. I spoke in tongues that day, Ethan Winegarner by my side interpreting the prayer.
I felt the presence of God that day more than I ever had before. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the thought of speaking in tongues myself because I didn’t feel like it was a clear way to communicate with God. It did, however, make me more open to others doing it – even in churches if they had interpreters present. I didn’t realize it then, but that day at the Ceta Canyon Lodge played a huge part in my spiritual growth. We shared hard things with each other and encouraged one another in ways I’d never seen Christians do before.
I left camp that summer and never spoke in tongues again. Until Thursday night.
As the PENHOP leaders prayed over the congregation, it was happening all around me. And MAN, did the enemy hit that discouragement button hard. What’s wrong with me? I thought. Am I praying wrong? Do I not love you enough?
He immediately pulled me back into the prayer room of the Canyon Lodge.
Was that day real? Doubt struck, the enemy smiled. Was I really speaking in tongues? Or had I fallen into my typical teen ways of doing anything to fit in?
Suddenly, words started to make their way out of my mouth. I was speaking in tongues…again. And it’s hard to explain, but even though I didn’t know what I was saying, I knew I had uttered those words before.
He had me praying the same prayer I’d prayed almost ten years ago, with the hands of north-west Texans covering my head and shoulders.
I did one of those God checks. You know, when He tells you something so ridiculous, you almost have to peak out of one eye and look up to make sure you heard Him right.
It was real, He whispered, and so is this. I had stopped speaking. But tongues is not the gift I have for you.
Alright. So….now what?
I continued the night worshipping my Father as I always had. I sat quietly, listening and singing with the band, eyes closed, holding my hands with my elbows resting on my bent knees. And I communicated with God in a way that was intimately unique to my relationship with Him. It was beautiful, and it felt natural. I glanced around me to those laying on the floor and knew they were experiencing Him in their own way. In His own way for them.
“The way you wash, wash over me.
The way you overcome, overcome me.
The way you burn, burn in me.”
We sang the lines above for nearly ten minutes and with each note, the Lord opened my eyes wider. He told me how we as His children are created so uniquely and that He has so many facets of His character that it would almost be impossible if He communicated to us all in the same way.
That night, and that day nearly ten years ago, I had asked Him to show me, to teach me about the gift of tongues. To do that, He had me speak in a language unknown to anyone else for just a moment. How amazing is that?
I hadn’t directly asked for the gift of tongues, and He basically told me that wasn’t what He had for me, and He still allowed it to happen twice to ease my curiosity and bring me knowledge in Truth.
He brought peace to my heart and got rid of my doubt completely.
This is not how I’ve chosen to speak to you, sweet daughter, but that does not diminish the love I have for you.
I left PENHOP that night still wanting to learn more about spiritual gifts (even Googled it that night), and fully knowing that my walk with the Lord is 100% unique. It is intimately and intentionally placed before me to be so right for me and God that no on else could possibly understand it for themselves.
What God has for me is not what He has for you. What He grows and manifests in you, I’ll never experience in the same way. He loves us so much. And He teaches us in ways that are so unique and exclusive to us so we may experience Him with abundant clarity.
All my love,
Aubrey
