JOURNEY OF FAITH
Day Three Hundred Ninety-six
WHY DO I EXIST
CHAPTER 52
MAJESTIC HOLINESS OF HIS GLORY
DIVINE HEALING
Abba Father…I have gazed attentively into the Sanctuary, and I have beheld Your Power and Your Glory! With my own eyes, I have seen Your Glory!… and in the presence of the congregation, I will proclaim Your Great Name and Your Mighty Power according to all that my eyes have seen!
Above is a link to a video presentation of my testimonies of those 9 1/2 years of miraculous events during my ministry to my Mother after the Lord raised her off her death-bed, presented at my mother’s Memorial Service on January 25, 2014…testimonies of how obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit brings the blessings of God; testimonies of how prayer in accordance with the will of God moves the Hand of God. You will be greatly blessed! [please note: the Church and the Denomination identified at the beginning of this video are Apostate and no longer belong to Christ. I have since…in 2015…confronted Leadership with their apostasy, and have no longer thereafter been associated with them].
CHRISTOPHANY!
audio message: 130615_002
Incredible! On Wednesday evening, May 2nd, 2019, at 9:19 PM, our Lord Jesus Christ showed Himself in visible form to a woman in our Condominium complex!
Louise is on our Condominium Board of Directors along with myself, and so we are in touch on a daily basis; I know her well. Our three story Condo building is arranged in a semi-horseshoe, and we both live on the 3rd floor. Her kitchen window and my kitchen window are directly across an atrium garden from one another, about 50 feet apart.
I was not available to take her phone call when she saw Jesus in my kitchen window, and so when she called, she left the message you can play for yourself [above]. What is so unusual…and incredible…is that she was absolutely awe-struck, looking at Jesus while she was leaving the message!!
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DIVINE MANIFEST PRESENCE OF CHRIST
On that late February, 1984, winter night on Long Island, I lay on my bed crying out to God…immersed in deep sadness and sorrow, intense crying and pain, overwhelming grief, loneliness, and broken-heartedness over a deep sense of loss that had just blind-sided my life. I had only just become the bride of Christ 28 months prior, on October 17, 1981. And now this was the third night of intense emotional agony. I remember thinking that if Hell were like this…and I knew instinctively it was ten thousand times worse, infinitely worse…I couldn’t bear it. The emotional pain I was experiencing was entirely debilitating…I don’t know how I made it through the work day. I felt hopeless and helpless…crushed and immobilized by a consuming sense of loss. When I got home in the evening, all I could do was collapse on my bed, crying out to the Lord in utter despair. A whole array of verses from Psalms went through my mind as I just poured out my broken heart to Him.
Quite suddenly…out of nowhere…the Lord walked into my room! I didn’t visibly see Him; my room was just as dark as it was before. But I was so filled with His Presence entering into my room and into me I felt like I was going to explode! My physical body could not contain His in-dwelling Presence! I remember exclaiming in awe, “Oh Lord…I can’t bear any more! I feel like I am going to burst!” Not that I wanted Him to leave; I was just expressing how I literally felt…that my human body just could not contain Him for any longer and live! At that moment, it didn’t matter to me whether I lived or died…I was experiencing an eternal weight of Glory beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent Glory and blessedness in His Presence!
The inaccessible Light [although there was no literal light] of the Glory of His Presence lasted maybe five or six seconds…but that experience is just as fresh in my memory today as it was in reality those 40 years ago! At that moment…the heretofore unbearable, debilitating emotional pain I had been feeling did not diminish in intensity, nor was it removed. It just became so insignificant and so meaningless in the light of what I had just experienced, that I literally thought, “Who cares!” And from that point on, though the source of the pain was never removed or resolved, it never again mattered to me, nor bothered me. I had seen the Lord; with my own spiritual eyes, I had seen Him! I would never again be the same!
Just one second in the inaccessible Light of the Glory of His Presence…a foretaste of Heaven itself…even now here on Earth is more than enough to wipe every tear from our eyes…all of our sadness and sorrow, crying and pain, grief and loneliness and broken-heartedness! And in that glorious coming Day, the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. [Isa 35:10]
Beloved…don’t become discouraged and lose heart! For your light and momentary troubles during this life are achieving for you an eternal glory beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness nevermore to cease! [Cor 4:16-18]
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DIVINE MANIFEST PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
At 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon in the mid 1980s, I left Brooklyn with a 15 passenger van filled with 5-12 year old inner city kids on our way to a weekend retreat at a Christian Retreat Center in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I was their Youth Leader. The Conference Center Director told me that the Prayer Band from the Brooklyn Tabernacle was going to be there for the entire week…and they had been praying for us every day! I was deeply impressed hearing they were praying for us, because they certainly did not know us, and at that time I had never even heard of the Brooklyn Tabernacle!
It was winter and it was cold as we began our 3 hour trip, but everything seemed OK…until we got into Pennsylvania. The van was being pelted with an ongoing mixture of wind-driven snow and freezing rain, and the narrow mountain roads winding along precipices and cliffs were becoming slippery and treacherous! I was in a cold sweat, continually pleading with the Lord to watch over us, protect us, and keep us safe! With a heart of thanksgiving, we arrived at the Retreat Center at 9 PM…and the gracious staff was there waiting for us, with a wonderful dinner they had prepared for the kids!
Saturday was spent involved with our kids program, and then we joined the Prayer Band in the early evening to have dinner together in the Conference Center’s large dining hall. After dinner, our kids went over to the beautiful stone fireplace ablaze with a warm, mellow, fire at the other end of the dining hall, to sing kids praise and worship songs along with the tracks I would play on our boom box.
We always sang these songs, everywhere we went. They knew at least 100 songs, all by heart! We had been invited to sing at a number of churches over the past year; it was our particular God-ordained ministry. The kids were enthusiastic and all lit up when they sang; they thoroughly enjoyed pouring out their little hearts in these songs! Invariably, they would “bring the house down” wherever we went! Congregations wouldn’t let us leave; we would end up singing 5 or 6 songs!
I selected a track as we sat by the crackling fire, and the singing began. I never had to tell them which song I was going to play; they knew the song in just a few seconds into the opening music! Members of the Prayer Band began wandering over and joining in, and soon we were all immersed in singing kids praise and worship songs!
Suddenly, out of the clear blue, the Spirit of God swept over and fell upon our group! Kids and adults alike were weeping with joy, and then break out into another song! Kids and adults began joyfully weeping and embracing one another, breaking out again into yet another praise song! Everyone was filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit! And so the inaccessible Light of the Glory of the awesome Presence of God just kept going on and on! No one would ever be able to forget that evening when God poured out a Divine token of Love on our little group as we were immersed in praise and worship by the fireplace! Hallelujah!
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DIVINE ANOINTING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Whenever a born-again child of God places their entire life on the altar of sacrifice…wholly surrendered unto God, wholly given for the blessings and salvation of souls…and walks in the Power of the indwelling Holy Spirit the path that our Blessed Christ Personally walked and dedicated for us…a new and living way to God through the veil, that is to say, through the veil of His flesh…the path of obedience and suffering, self-sacrifice and self-denial, death to sin and death to self…you can be sure you will become a target of Satan’s fury! All Hell will break loose against you!
Quite suddenly, out of the clear blue beginning in June, 2020, the Lord allowed Hell’s onslaught to take place in my life. I was tormented and terrorized with overwhelming evil thoughts, images, and imaginations in my heart over continual stretches of time, day and night…beyond anything I had ever experienced before! It became clear that Satan’s intent was to destroy me!
I had known in my mind, and written about, that in my physical life, maturity is growth from the utter dependence of a baby to the complete independence and self-reliance of an adult. In my spiritual life, however, maturity is growth from independence and self-reliance to utter dependency upon God. He is most spiritually mature who lives a life of unreserved child-like dependence upon God.
Just as a baby opens its mouth and cries whenever it has physical needs, so I open my mouth and cry whenever I have spiritual needs. Just as a baby is utterly and hopelessly helpless to satisfy its physical needs…and will surely physically die if no one hears its cry and comes to satisfy its needs…just so am I utterly and hopelessly helpless to satisfy my spiritual needs…and will surely spiritually die if God my Father does not hear my cry and come to satisfy His child’s spiritual needs.
It is one thing to know this truth in your mind, but it is quite another to know this truth experientially! My Father allowed me to experience in my soul the inexpressible horror of realizing that unless He came to rescue me…I was surely going to spiritually die! There was absolutely no chance, no hope, not the remotest possibility of my being able to do anything about it! And I was frightened, horror-stricken, and terrified experiencing this reality in the depths of my being for the first time in my life…continually crying out for my Father like a little child!
I was experiencing something of the emotional agony that our Lord Jesus Himself experienced in the Garden that night when He began to be deeply distressed and troubled at the overwhelming prospect of the cross. The Greek verbs used in the Biblical text describing what took place that night in the Garden described an extremely acute emotion… a compound of bewilderment, fear, uncertainty and anxiety…nowhere else portrayed in such vivid terms as here: shuddering awe; deep distress; overpowering mental distress; full of terror and distress; surprised and terrified; fright and anguish.
It was Thursday evening, July 23, 2020, when the Spirit of God led our weekly Home Disciple Group Meeting into a discussion on Adam’s sin of disobedience against God concerning the one command given him to test his obedience. The result of his disobedience was the expulsion of Adam and his wife Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the heretofore undefiled human nature as created by God now becoming a sin-enslaved human nature. As our discussion continued along that evening under the guidance of the Holy Spirit’s leading, we were discussing Scriptures concerning how the Lord Jesus sets a believer free from the bondage of sin…that all human beings by nature have a sin-enslaved human nature, and can only be set free from both the penalty of sin and the power of sin by Christ through His atonement for sin, by virtue of His death on a cross on our behalf. When I am born again, it is as literal and real a birth as was my physical birth…and I become a new creation… a new person, whereby my former moral and spiritual condition has passed away, and all things have become new. I no longer live my life out of my sin-enslaved human nature, but now live my new life out of the Divine nature of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within me by virtue of being born again. That is why only those born-again can know, and have, and experience, the indwelling Holy Spirit.
During our discussion, the Holy Spirit swept over one of our group members and so opened up his mind and heart to this truth…in a depth he had never seen before…that he literally, visibly, was filled with a fullness of joy! He could hardly contain himself! He was wired in the Spirit, and began to testify with power about what God had done, and was continually doing, in his life! He testified that when he is tormented and terrorized with overwhelming evil thoughts, images, and imaginations in his heart [and he knew nothing about what I was going through], his God and Father reaches down and plucks His child out of Satan’s grasp and into safety, declaring with determined purpose, “No! You can’t have My child; he belongs to Me!” He was anointed…and continued to testify about the utter weakness of his flesh and how helpless he was to resist by his own efforts and strength, and that if he tried to do so it would only guarantee his failure! He testified how the Power of the Holy Spirit in his life was the source of his strength, and apart from Him he could do nothing! He just went on and on, carried away in the Spirit into the heavenly realms for the remainder of our meeting, continually praising God, proclaiming the Word of God with boldness, freedom, and confidence; with spiritual power and authority!
I just sat there and listened, thanking God for how He was so deeply touching this brother whom He was calling, and using, as the “pastor of Walmart!” And it brought to his mind a song that had so touched him…a powerful song with a powerful message…so he pulled it up on his phone and played it for us. The link is below, if you want to hear it. It is not my particular choice in Christian music… but I put myself in his place, and could embrace its powerful message as we all listened to it! The song is by CASTING CROWNS, entitled SET ME FREE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2HwtWLokSc
I myself was so blessed by the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit in our meeting that evening that I never realized that God had quietly touched and anointed me as well with the “anointing of promise” that I had been desperately crying out to Him for!
Over the past several weeks [actually, for a number of years…but now with an intense desperation] I had been pleading with Him for this anointing that I had been granted once before, in the Fall 1984 when I was just 3 years old in the Lord as a child of God… an anointing that I had lost because I had carelessly let it slip away, not appreciating in my spiritual babyhood how precious this treasure really was. I was pleading with my Father…that I could not live without it…that I could not serve as His messenger, His ministering spirit, His watchman, His emissary, with boldness, freedom, and confidence, with spiritual power and authority, unless I had this anointing of promise. I wasn’t asking for an anointing of privilege; that is God’s prerogative. No; I was asking for the anointing that was promised…that I had been granted once before. I knew what it was; and I knew I no longer had it.
The anointing of promise is the full blessing of Pentecost…and it is only granted to those who hunger and thirst for it…to those who are wholly surrendered unto God, wholly given for the blessing and salvation of souls…to those who by faith abide in the Holy of Holies in the inaccessible Light of the Glory of the unclouded Presence of the Father.
Blessed Jesus, You assured me: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…a purity, holiness, and righteousness of my own in living out my everyday life. You assured me that I will be filled…that my longing will be completely satisfied, and I will be filled up to the measure of all the fullness of God, to the richest measure of Your unclouded Presence, a soul wholly filled and flooded with God Himself! [Mt 5:6] That is the anointing of promise!
And even more beyond that…You will show me Your Glory; I will see Your Glory with my own eyes: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. [Mt 5:8] Hallelujah!
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I don’t know whether in the depths of your heart you really believe there is a God in Heaven or not, but this I do know…the accuser of God’s children, who accuses us before our God day and night, has been hurled down. We have overcome him by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of our testimony, and by the fact that we do not love our life so much as to shrink back from death…neither death to self, nor physical death if that should become necessary [Rev 12:10-11].
I proclaim to you Christ Jesus…the One Who existed from the beginning, from Eternity Past, Whom I have heard with the ears of my own inner being, and have seen with my own spiritual eyes. I have gazed upon Him and have spiritually touched Him with my own hands. He is the Word of Life. His Life is continually being revealed to me; I have seen it and testify to it, and I proclaim to you that He is the One Who is Eternal Life. He always existed with the Father, and is now continually being manifested afresh and anew to me. I proclaim to you what I have personally seen and heard in the depths of my soul, so that you also may enjoy this same fellowship together with us. The fellowship I continually enjoy is with the Father and with His Son, Christ Jesus. I am writing these things so that you also may fully share together with me in this fullness of joy. [1 John 1:1-4]
It is our birth-right as children of the Most High God! Hallelujah!