Training camp was definitely front-loaded. By that I mean that the first 4-5 days were the most spiritually intense. One of my favorite worship bands, an incredible husband and wife named Jonathan David and Melissa Helser (listen to their music at http://www.jonathanhelser.com/jonathanhelser/Home.html), were at camp for the first 4 and a half days to lead us in worship. For those days, our schedule was roughly as follows:
– Have our tent and gear packed up by 7 AM
– Exercise
– Breakfast
– Worship
– Teaching
– Lunch
– Worship
– Teaching
– Dinner
– Worship
– Teaching
– Sleep
There were a couple other events thrown in here and there for fun but the point is that we were engaging with the Holy Spirit through worship or learning His word for most of the day each day. It was so amazing.
The first two days were focused largely on the things that hold us back from stepping into true freedom and really letting the Holy Spirit flow through us. Sins in our past which hold us in shame, past intimacies/relationships which hold power over us, woundings from parents or others close to us, generational sins, etc. I don’t know how to really qualify the change in the room over those two days. How do you put into words the change that comes over a group of 180 people who thought they were slaves but are slowly realizing that they’re free? Language doesn’t seem to be able to capture the power of the joy that is present when those 180 people then come face to face with the father who has given them that freedom.
I can tell you this for sure. Those 180 people were not silent. Those 180 people were not indifferent to this realization of freedom. Those 180 people were not ungrateful to the KING WHO SET THEM FREE.
The point is that those couple days were amazing. Jesus exposed things in all of us that I don’t know whether we even knew were holding us back. Those two days consisted of Jesus hacking away at the baggage that we were carrying until our desire to dance before Him was uninhibited and our expressions of love were the expressions of free people.
On the evening of the third day, I was engaging with Jesus during worship and just kind of dialoguing some stuff back and forth with Him. He was walking me through my life and showing me that I have had a very “eventful� walk with Him over the years. I have had many different nights over my life where I can look back on them and see clearly that Jesus showed up in power. Most of these nights involve my closest guy friends getting together.
However, though I have had many nights or days when I have experienced the Holy Spirit in a very powerful way, they are still just “events�. Jesus was pointing out to me that I have lived a life where I only allow Him to move in my life at certain times. That night though, He posed the question: “Christian, you’ve now been basically basking in my presence for 3 days straight, don’t you LOVE it?�
That night I had the sweet realization that I DO LOVE THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Jesus exposed that as a true desire of my heart.
After worship, we moved into the teaching for that night and of course, it fit perfectly with where the Lord had me. A man who serves on the leadership for Adventures In Missions was speaking on essentially the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Right off the bat, I want to say that it was really amazing how he immediately put aside all doctrinal arguments that usually surround this issue. He simply said that it doesn’t matter whether you want to believe that the baptism of the Holy Spirit happens when you first accept Jesus or that it still needs to happen or that it’s a separate event or any of that. The point of it all is that God’s heart for us is ABSOLUTELY that we would be walking in the power of His spirit!
Aaaaah this is so awesome! Ok so after he talked for a while about the exact thing that God had laid on my heart during worship, we moved back into another time of worship and just accepting the invitation of the Lord to walk in His spirit.
Now, the way that I’ve always felt the presence of the spirit is through something kind of like a shiver that runs through my whole body. That’s the closest thing I can think of to describe it. It’s pretty much the greatest feeling in the whole world and I love love love it. This night at TC though, Jesus let me feel His presence in a way that I’ve never ever felt it before.
My arms, from my elbows to my fingertips, felt really tingly and warm, kind of like they were asleep but I could feel every hair on my arms. It was a feeling/sensation that I’ve never experienced before in my life and it lasted for about 20 minutes. During that time, Jesus spoke a promise to me that His presence was no longer going to be an “event� in my life. He was no longer going to come in “shivers�. He gave me the promise of His spirit LINGERING. His presence being a part of my life consistently and His power RESTING ON ME.
I was balling my eyes out, dancing my legs off, singing and yelling His name, and sweating enough that afterwards, people legitimately were a little disgusted. Haha but it was so amazing.
God continued to speak to me that night but I’m not going to go into the other things He said right now. He spoke some things to me about my identity in Him that are really just for me. But from that night on, I really do feel different. I wish there were better words than “different� to use here but the English language hasn’t given me one to really capture the change that I personally feel in my life from that night forward.
I’m going to close out this blog post by saying that Jesus made it PERFECTLY clear to me that night that His desire for EVERY ONE of His children is that we be WALKING IN HIS PRESENCE. The even cooler thing that He made abundantly clear is that every single one of His children ALREADY HAS the desire in his or her heart to live in the presence of Jesus. He created us with that desire in our hearts and we’ve simply let sin speak lies to us about that desire.
Jesus wants to show His children that He is the desire of their hearts. More than anything, this change in my life gets me fired up to let Him use me to expose this desire in the hearts of His children.
Jesus is a superfreak for my heart and I am a superfreak for His. He’s so awesome.
Love you guys.
