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A few nights ago I went to the coffee shop to meet up with
some friends. If you haven’t learned
anything about me yet, it’s that I frequent coffee shops. I think I have an addiction to what some
people refer to as ‘dirty water’. I
personally see it as some form of nectar that God has chosen to grace us with
in this life… and I think He drinks it all day long. Anyway – I drank a lot of coffee that night
and it was late, so when I got home I wasn’t able to sleep.
I laid in bed and read for awhile trying to make myself
sleepy, but it wasn’t working so I thought that I would force myself to sleep
by concentrating really hard on ‘sleep’.
I tried the tactic of ‘counting sheep’ but it never works for me, so I
gave up. I prayed. I prayed long and hard. I was begging God for a spirit of rest to
fall over me, for the spirit of sweet dreams and deep sleep to blanket me… but
I don’t think that He heard me. So I
went to the kitchen in search of Benadryl.
I swear I’m not a drug addict, but usually ONE Benadryl will
knock me out for a solid six hours. I
stumbled into the medicine cabinet and looked for my sleep-inducers with much
frustration. After five minutes of
looking high and I low I realized that we didn’t have any. I walked back to my bedroom, shut the door,
and laid back down in the pitch black. I
thought I would try forcing myself to concentrate on sleep again, but it wasn’t
working.
At 2:30am I finally caved.
I sat up in bed, propped my pillow just right and said in
much angst, “okay God – what the heck do you want?” I said it with a lot of frustration because I
was REALLY frustrated. Sometimes God
tries to keep us awake when, frankly, we want nothing to do with Him at that
point in time. It’s a sad thing,
really. So I sat there listening for a
response. It came rather quickly.
“What do YOU want?” He asked me.
“Well – I want a MacBook, God. I want a computer that freakin’ works!” because
at the point in time, my laptop was on the fritz and I’ve about had it with PC’s.
“What else do you want?” He asked.
“Well – I want to see what You see. I want to see the world changed. I want support to come in for this next year
so I can do this thing without stress.”
“What else, Matt?”
“Um, well God, I want…” and I continued on with things I
wanted to see in the world, things I wanted to see for my generation, for the
American Church. I went on and on until
I exhausted myself from thought. I ran
out of ideas and finally God said to me, “close your eyes.” So I did.
With my eyes shut God asked me, “what do you see?”
“Well, I see black, Dude.
My eyes are closed!”
“Look harder. What do
you see?” So I looked harder into the
blackness that was on the back of my eyelids.
Next thing I knew, I thought I could see gray lines drawing themselves
everywhere so I told God what I saw, then He told me to open my eyes. “What do you see?” He asked me again.
My room was covered in darkness because the lights were out,
but I still told Him what I saw. “I see
light coming from the edges of the windows.”
“Close your eyes and tell me what you see,” He said
again. We repeated this process several
times and each time I opened and closed my eyes I kept seeing more and more
things. It was awesome. Things are there, we just have to be willing
to look at them. Finally, I had my eyes
closed for about the third or fourth time and while I did I felt something come
into the room. I was overcome with a
holy fear. I just knew beyond the shadow
of a doubt that an angel was in the room with me.
I had prayed for this one time before (in Vietnam) to see an
angel and when the Lord gave me an opportunity then, I chickened out and wouldn’t
open my eyes; I begged Him to take it away back then and He did. Only this night in my room I knew this as an
opportunity that I didn’t want to deny this time.
As I was laying in bed with my eyes shut in anticipation at
what I was going to see God said to me, “open your eyes.” Without hesitation this time I snapped them
open. I looked around with my heart
beating faster and faster as my eyes scanned the room.
And there it was.
Across the room next to my bookcase I saw a figure; though I
couldn’t make out what it was, I couldn’t quite see past it either. Something was there and it was BIG. I just kind of looked in awe until God broke
the silence by asking, “what do you see?”
I told Him what I saw and He said, “shut your eyes.” And I obeyed.
The Lord then proceeded to tell me all that He was going to
do. He said that He was going to give me
everything I wanted, that He was going to put in me a changed heart, a changed
mind, a spirit full of ideas, words, and the like. He said He was going to put something new in
me. Suddenly I felt full of the
Spirit. I was warm, tingly, and I felt
immense peace; I felt the Lord’s hand on
me. A few minutes later God said to me, “you
can lay down and go to sleep now.” And
in less than a minute – I was out.
You can choose to believe this story or not, but I only put
it out there because I know it can serve as an encouragement to many. Some people may not believe in angels and
manifestations of the Spirit anymore and that’s okay. I can’t force you to believe it; I’m going to share my stories anyhow. But if
you’re wanting an experience similar to this I challenge you to ask God for
it. The Lord moves in mysterious
ways. I still don’t know exactly what He put
in me, but the only way I can discover it is to “put out” and see what fruit comes
from the sowing that I do.
There are two sides to every story because, then again, it could
have been the caffeine!
