Series: The Word
Isaiah 61:10-11 ESV
I’ve tried to remember the first time I knew that God was in me and was blessing me, but up to a point knowing God (Jesus) came on me slow and steady.
I think I don’t remember because when I was six months old I experienced a life-changing event. It has been described to me as a near death experience. The doctors told my parents I would not survive and it I did there would be significant brain damage.
My dad prayed.
Of course because I was so young, I don’t recall the details.
All I know is that from a very young age I was always drawn to all things Jesus.
My parents always went to church on Sunday. My dad taught a large adult Sunday School class and he studied throughout the week to get ready for the lesson. In those days there were no computer programs to help teachers. He studied scripture and read books about scripture. He loved studying scripture and teaching Sunday School.
My Mom has the gifts of service, hospitality, and helps and when she was at church she would check on everyone to make sure they had what they needed.
My parents were very protective of me. Being a girl in the 50’s and 60’s was different than it is today. Girls could not do what boys could do.
While I thought that was grossly unfair, nothing I said changed their rules. However, when Billy Graham came to preach at Arrowhead Stadium in 1967 my church took a bus to the event. I told my dad I wanted to go and since it was at night, I expected one of them to go with me. Much to my surprise, they told me I could go without them.
They probably knew someone who would be on the bus, but for whatever reason they let me go by myself.
That night changed the course of my life forever.
When I stepped into the stadium the Holy Spirit came on me, in me, and through me. I didn’t understand what had happened. We went to a church that identified with the holiness tradition. The gifts of the Spirit were taught, but I’d never met anyone who said they had been filled with the Spirit. I didn’t know what had happened to me.
I don’t remember anything about the message.
I went down front crying after the message and a counselor told me what happened was a wonderful thing and it was a blessing.
When I got home I cried and cried and I kept saying to my dad, “God got me, God got me.”
He was a very calm calculating sort (he was an engineer) and he said, “how wonderful! How very wonderful!”
After that night, I started having dreams and visions and they came true after each dream.
My dad reassured me the dreams and visions were from God and God would reveal everything in His time.
He was right.
That was 56 years ago and God has been faithful to direct me, to warn me, to help me, and to guide me by the power of the Spirit.
In Isaiah 61:10-11 the Prophet wrote, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God,for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.”
Through Jesus, because Jesus came, we are adorned with jewels.
We are clothed with the garments of salvation.
We are covered with God’s righteousness.
The Lord will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before the nations.
We are blessed.
We are blessed.
We are very blessed!
Spiritual Practice: Receive the Blessing!
Take time sitting in silence with God. Receive the Blessing!
In God, Deborah
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