Sunday, September 21 is a day on the Race I will never forget. I remember beginning the day in worship and praise to God.
I laid in bed before getting ready for church and held my bible close to me. I smelled the aroma from the pages and inhaled its scent praying that the Word would seep into the very core of my being.
I reflected on my life this year and felt so much thankfulness for God’s grace. This has really been a year of The Lord’s favor on my life.
I should have known that church that day would be a Holy Spirit-filled time because I woke up feeling God’s presence and I carried it with me to the church service.
At the beginning of the service, worship started out rocky and it was evident that the congregation wasn’t on one accord.
Pastor Dustin was quick to discern the disunity and prayed against it. After his prayer we began singing again and it was off the hook from there! The worship was so pure and I could literally feel the weight of the presence of the Holy Spirit in that place.
Benjho, one of the young men who lives at the Legacy Home was playing the guitar with the rest of the band. From the first day I met him, I could tell that there was an anointing on his life.
As this 15 year-old stood with his eyes closed, his countenance illustrated his love and his longing for God.
Benjho is pictured on the left of the stage wearing the blue shirt.
Then suddenly there was a hostile takeover.
Before my very eyes, I watched Benjho fall to the floor and be baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.
In between his utterances, he kept saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is Savior!”
For a long time we all continued worshipping God and then our worship turned to praise, thanking God for who He is and for being in our midst in such a tangible way. Pastor Dustin didn’t even preach because after experiencing what we experienced, there was nothing more to say!
That service provoked me to think more about how we limit God to a specific time frame on Sunday mornings. We attend a service and there is a program already laid out with little room for the Holy Spirit to move.
At my home church, when one of my spiritual mother’s prays, she often says, “Holy Spirit have your way and if you need to do a hostile takeover, do it in the name of Jesus!”
That’s a prayer all of us should pray when we gather together corporately as believers. It shouldn’t be about our personal agendas but solely about God’s agenda.
Let’s challenge ourselves as the body of Christ the next time we gather together in the house of God.
Through prayer, let’s invite the Holy Spirit to do a hostile takeover and then watch Him move. It’s guaranteed we won’t leave the same way we came!
Calvary Church Praise and Worship from Jessica Shely on Vimeo.
