When Gary’s message on the baptism of the Holy Spirit was finished he asked us all to stand and pray with arms open to receive. When that prayer was done he said that anyone who wanted prayer should raise his hands high. I couldn’t shoot mine up fast enough. Not long after, someone was in front of me with his hand on my head praying very quietly. Not twenty seconds later, I was overcome by a feeling that was completely new. All the places I had reluctantly allowed God to enter all week were being filled up with His Spirit. As I let myself bathe in that feeling, the words came to me “This is rest.” It wasn’t rest like a good long nap, or even rest like a solid eight hours of sleep. It felt like the rest that we only hear about when we soak up His Word. The rest that some us spend our entire lives searching for. And I sat in it.
After a while I “came to” and I was pretty confused. I had just experienced the Holy Spirit in a way that I thought only happened on TV, if it truly happened at all. I was looking around the room and the Spirit was moving in others in equally incredible ways. My head couldn’t take it. I didn’t know what to do with it all. As a verbal processor, I started looking around for someone to talk me through it, but everyone I could think of was busy ushering the Holy Spirit into someone else. Finally, sitting on the floor, I curled up with my head in my knees and started to pray. I asked the Lord to make it real and to give me clarity. Not long into my prayer, a man came and laid his hand on my back. He began to intercede with a prayer of his own. Oddly, his words complemented the ones that were running through my head. As the prayer I was praying silently subsided in my head, his got louder and more clearly audible, until I was silent, simply accepting the prayer he was praying boldly. In his prayer he identified all the concerns that were beginning to consume me. He prayed for me by name (I wouldn’t meet this man until after this prayer) and asked the Lord to silence my confusion and allow me to soak up His peace. He asked the Lord to assure me that even if I don’t understand, that He is real and He has peace for me.
I truly believe that this week at Training Camp will prove to be the nexus of my story with Christ, as it began to usher me into a year that will see the Lord work even more mightily in me. I think I know now what “pressing in” means (see Training Camp 2a). There were several times this week when I began to realize that I was at the edge of my understanding. I was at the very edge of my comfort zone and God was doing awesome things, but I wanted more of Him. The only trouble was I didn’t know where else to go to find it. So I was forced to take a step in faith and say, God I don’t know how you work in this or in that but I will try it and I’m asking that you work in it, and that you work in it with all your power. I don’t like praying for myself – I have a hard time finding the words, or even believing that my words are His in that moment. Every time this week that I asked God to send someone to pray over me, they came. Every time I tried something new that leaders and friends told me was a new way to encounter God, He showed up in power. I believe God always wants to give us more of Him. The trouble is He asks us to step to the very edge of our understanding before He will make the incredible, the unbelievable real to us. So often, that’s what scares us. We want His ways to be made real in our life before we ever experience them. We want to understand our first experience before it ever happens, and I really don’t think God works that way. He wants you to press in. He wants you to say, “Lord I stand here at this cliff, staring down into the unknown and I trust that you are there to provide, to give me more of You.”
I’ll leave you with this image. It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indi has to cross that big ravine that appears to have no bridge. He steps out to find that there is a path across. When he finally gets to the other side, and the path is apparent to him, he turns and throws sand and pebbles over the bridge so others can see it and not be afraid. God calls us to step out in faith, knowing he will provide a bridge. When we finally get across and the all those experiences that seemed so foreign are now commonplace, we are called to be ministers to those who come behind. In our experience we illuminate the path for them, that they too might experience even more of the God who created them.
I pray that you boldly press in to what He has for you.
