Spiritual Intercourse With God Through Transactional Worship
PLUGGING INTO THE POWER OF GOD THROUGH TRANSACTIONAL WORSHIP
About twenty five to thirty years ago, I was in a John Wimber meeting in Minneapolis.
At the end of the meeting John told the congregation that the Lord wants to fill some of us with his Holy Spirit.
So I stood there with my hands high in the air and I was actively praising God.
I was not sitting in my seat passively watching some worship team perform. There was no worship team present.
I had my hands raised and I was offering up the fruit of my lips which is praise and thanks unto Him.
When I thought about what might happen I thought maybe I would break out in tongues, but I held onto no fixed formula since it was HE who would be the one who would orchestrate what would happen, and I had no idea if I would be one of the chosen ones to receive this filling. Afterall, John said that SOME of us would be filled with the Holy Spirit.
All of a sudden as I was in the midst of worship and praise I was filled with a tremendous joy and a huge smile came across my face spontaneously.
Then SPONTANEOUSLY I started breathing in and I started breathing out and I breathed in and breathed out and in and out and I checked myself analytically to come to a conclusion if I was the one who was doing this breathing in and breathing out or not, and I came to a quick assurance in my mind that it was happening spontaneously and I was not the one who was doing it.
I tried to speak in tongues during this experience because in the Book of Acts people spoke in other tongues when the fire of God came upon them, but I realized I was the one who was doing the speaking and it was not a part of the experience so I stopped speaking in tongues under my own power, and I just let God orchestrate the infilling experience in his own sovereign way.
When I compared the account of Pentecost and the Asuza Street revival I saw that tongues happened spontaneously and no one was trying to prime the Holy Spirit language pump by saying Pepsi Cola backwards or anything like that. The tongues happened spontaneously in the Book of Acts and they happened spontaneously in the Azusa Street Revival also.
Now, getting back to my experience at the John Wimber meeting..... Only a few moments after I started breathing in and out and in and out, tremendous power started to spontaneously course through my whole body. It felt like 100 volts of electricity was surging through my arms and legs. It seemed that my whole body had this strong current of God's electrical power coursing through it.
The more I praised the Lord with my arms raised, as this experience was unfolding, the stronger the power got. I REPEAT THE MORE I ACTIVELY PRAISED THE LORD THE
STRONGER THE POWER GOT. I felt my knees start to buckle and I thought that even if I fall down in a heap because of the power it would be worth it all because it was God in me and I was in HIM.
But then the power started to subside and it lessened until the last remant of power was left on my hands and that subsided also.
What a glorious encounter with God that was and talk about having intercourse with God. That experience I will always remember and it was one of those high points in my life of feeling the love that God has for me through him going inside of me like that. I knew that I had breathed in the breath of the LORD and that breath was power. Just as I was filled with the LORD'S breath so also was I filled with HIS power. That breath was his Holy Spirit and the more Holy breath that spontaneously went into me the more the Holy power
spontaneously intensified.
The Bible says that some of the signs of the infilling of the Holy Spirit is power and another is joy. I received both that day. I think we often think of power as a potential that we have after we receive the Holy Spirit, but in my case the manifest power itself that I felt in my body,
was definitely a sign that I was filled with the Holy presence of God that was in his breath.
Some pentecostal denominations have tried to put God in a scriptural box. They say this or that has to happen as a sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit. But if you try to put God into a scriptural box he will break out of it. I definitely was filled with the Holy Spirit and the JOY and POWER I experienced were the signs of the infilling of God's power.
So how can this experience I had help you who are now reading it?
Here are a couple of sentences from the beginning of my testimony just before I received the power that I will repeat again:
So I stood there with my hands high in the air and I was actively praising God.
I was not sitting in my seat passively watching some worship team perform. There was no worship team present.
I had my hands raised and I was offering up the fruit of my lips which is praise and thanks unto Him.
So the next time you are in corporate worship, take remembrance of my testimony and how I plugged into God's electrical outlet just above by raising up my two hands which are the prongs.
Think of the space over your head as GOD'S SOCKET.... as HIS supernatural electrical outlet.
Think of your arms and hands as THE PLUG that you insert into GOD'S SOCKET.
Does your vacuum cleaner work if you do not plug it in? Does your toaster work if the plug is not in the socket?
Raise your hands and plug them into the electrical outlet of God's power as you actively offer the fruit of your lips which is praise to HIM. Let the Father fill you with HIS Spirit and Power. Let the Spirit of God that is within you now guide your praise to HIM. May the Holy Spirit guide your legs in dance, and guide your arms and whole body in beautiful praise movements to the Most High.
Update: Several weeks after composing this web page, I got a confirmation about my perception of God's desire for transactional worship with his people. Steve Swanson who is a worship leader and author of the book: Heaven's Symphony: Your Invitation to Unlocking Divine Encounters Through Worship said some things on Sid Roth's program that I would like to share with you. What he said confirmed what I wrote on this web page.
Steve Swanson said: When we worship, it is God inviting us to divine encounters. God wants to meet with us. We always think we are coming to meet with God. But he is coming to meet with us. There is this divine exchange in worship where the more you give glory to the King of Glory, the more this exchange happens. And there is this invitation of God to come up to a higher place. He wants to show us things....It is the glory that creates that atmosphere where everything can change for us as we begin to worship him and that exchange comes from heaven.
Here also is another confirmation from a Messianic Jew who had a similar experience as he was praising God during a worship service: "One night I attended a Messianic worship service with about 1,500 other Jewish Believers, praising the Lord in song. With my arms stretched out to the Lord and singing praises to Yeshua and my Father in Heaven, I felt a bolt of lightning hit me in the forehead and travel throughout my body. It felt like a million volts of beautiful warm electricity—it was the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit)!" From email sent from biblesforisrael.com on September 25th, 2018.