Session 3 - Glory and Grace Conference in Dubai

This conference happened just a few weeks ago and Rob and Bonnie Rufus went there to minister. The audio files are available at the "Well of Life" church in Dubai. All the sessions are worth listening to (and I will probably make notes on them as soon as I can) - but Session 3 particularly caught my attention because Rob preached about a subject I am particularly passionate about. Rob preached on the Holy Spirit - "He will come upon you". Here are the notes:

"God does not call us to suffer sickness - that is not the will of God. We suffer because of our commitment to a gospel of grace in a world that demands that we have value only on the basis of our self-righteous performance and our personal self-made man or woman achievements. In a world that is so legalistic, Paul says; "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" and he goes on to say we have a righteousness that is apart from the law and is by faith from first to last.

The suffering we go through is our stand for the gospel in a world that is anti and alien to the very idea that God gives you blessings and favour and shows you grace - God gives you approval and acceptance and love and sonship and identity through nothing you do or earn or deserve but because intrinsicly you are in His image. You are a son, you are a daughter and He has given you His righteousness and therefore He gives it to you without you earning it or meriting it.

To believe that in a world that is so contrary to that - you will suffer from the demonic realm, from the oppression of the enemy, from legalistic religious people - they will come at you! Demons will come at you!

I have just come through a period these last few weeks that seem like they want to crush the message of grace and just smash us and crush us as a community. I arrived here in Dubai needing ministry not wanting to give ministry! Your response (and you made it so easy to minister to you) and your joy and your laughter was wonderful and I stood here just allowing God to minister to me and I know I am going back to Hong Kong refreshed. I am mentally tired and emotionally tired and jet-lagged but I am going back spiritually refreshed. I ran on the beach early this morning and God spoke to me clearly about Hong Kong and I tell you - I am going back feeling like I have been on an invigorating time with the Lord. So thank you so much and I mean that for your openness to God.

Psalm 91. I am talking tonight about the Presence of God coming on us - the power of God coming on us and living in that place of intimacy. The secret place of the Most High. Psalm 91:1; "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High" - that is the Hebrew word; "Most High" = "El elyon". "Will rest in the shadow of the Almighty". "Shelter" means that intimate place, that close place, that secret place of the Most High God. "Will rest" - wonderful word that.

"Shadow" - that word is the "Hovering Presence of God" - it is not just a static Presence. It is a Presence like we see when the Presence of God was hovering over the deep in Genesis 1:2. This is like a helicopter over you and there is a down-draft of the Presence of God. The hovering Presence of God - the shadow of the Almighty will be over your life.

Now when we come into the New Covenant - we are in the secret place whether you feel or not because we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So we are living from the eternal realm to the temporal realm and living from the invisible realm to the visible realm - from the unseen to the seen. We are currently seated in Christ Jesus if you are born again. If you are a Christian and you are in Christ, your life is hid with Christ in God and you are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So there is no more secret place than that - to be seated in heavenly places. So Christians are trying to get into the secret place by a lot of works and a lot of fasting and a lot of rituals and a lot of ceremonies. And I am not against prayer and not against fasting - I believe in those things. But they do not give you the legal access in. It is being in Christ Jesus through the grace of God, you can come into that place of intimacy.

So you can be standing anywhere you want and you can suddenly say; "Lord I thank You I live in the secret place - not because I prayed 10 hours a day. Most of my day in Dubai is very busy and let's not call them distractions because they are legitimate demands not a waste of time. Our vocations are our callings and they are not a waste of time - they are not distractions. They are just genuine legitimate demands and so "Lord, I don't have 10 hours to pray to get into that mystical zone of encounters with you".

But you see you don't have to because you are in the secret place - you dwell in the shelter of the Most High not because you have earnt or deserved it but because you are in Christ and your life is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is your life appears, you too will appear with Him in glory.

The power of the Most High overshadows your life and then we go through to the New Testament and God says to Mary; "You are going to conceive, the child - the body and blood of Messiah - in your womb" and she says; "I can't - how can I? I have no man! I am a virgin". And the angel Gabriel says to her; "The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you and the power of the Most High shall over-shadow you".

So you see to conceive in the womb of your spirit the miraculous, the supernatural, the solution and wisdom to life and problems - you need intimacy with God. You need that overpowering conciousness of the power of God over you - the hovering Presence and intimacy and acknowledging that in a sense of the conciousness of God over your life and you begin to conceive solutions and answers.

Why does Peter's shadow heal the sick? Isn't that amazing that his shadow healed the sick! Some in this room have seen that and I have had some small measure of that as I walk people have been delivered of demons and healed just by walking by them. I could tell many amazing stories but haven't got time. Why does that happen?

Your shadow will release what is overshadowing you.

When you become concious of this, you will carry your own weather system, your own heavenly climate with you. You carry your own weather pattern with you, when you walk into a room you carry the climate of God - the overshadowing of the Presence of God.

How many of you have been in a room and it's all wonderful and then suddenly someone walks in and you feel this oppressive feeling in the room you know? And someone walks in and they say to you; "Man the demons ... can you feel the oppression in this room?" and you have to say to them; "Actually it was a bright, beautiful lovely spiritual climate but I sure did feel it when you walked in to this room because you carried that self-pitying, woe is me attitude with you".

You see if we are not overwhelmed by the assignment to invade the impossible and see the miracles of God happen through our lives, then we will be overwhelmed by troubles and our entire life will be concerned with our troubles and it is pretty self centred that. It is a fixation on ourselves and we go in on ourselves and analyse ourselves. Folks I want to tell you - don't look inside yourself to find answers to your problems. Because if you go inside yourself you will get very depressed. If you look at the world you will be unimpressed - if you look at Jesus you will be very impressed! Because He is wonderful - He is absolutely wonderful.

There is something that God wants to bring upon us in this meeting. His overshadowing Presence will come upon our lives in the most marvellous and wonderful way. I remember when it happened to me in 1981. I was very dry and I had never seen any miracles happen through my life. I had been a Christian for a few years. I had planted a church after I had been saved for 2 years at 23 years of age with 10 people. We had been going for a few years and it was very dry and very boring. We were doctrinally correct. We were dead right ... and dead. I didn't want to go to my own church anymore. But I had to because I was the pastor and I would look at the weather and think "Great I could go surfing today and I can't now because I am the pastor and it is so dead in this church" - and I was so angry and resentful of those who didn't turn up because I was jealous of them because I didn't want to turn up!

And the Pharisees and the Sadducees were absolutely correct in their doctrine. The Pharisees were absolutely fanatical about the Word of God. But here comes the Living Word of God and they can't see Him because they are so doctrinally correct that they can't encounter the Living God.

You know Glenda used to write me love letters while we were dating and perfume them with her perfume when we lived 500 miles apart and that was lovely you know, reading her love letters and smelling the perfume. But I didn't say "I am going to live for the rest of my life with these letters". Those letters drove me insanely crazy to get to the one who was writing them! Some people love the Bible more than they love the Author of the Bible. They don't even know the Author! And in fact you can't even know the Author just by reading the Bible! The Author of the Bible reveals the Bible to you. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. The Author will lead you to the Scriptures and open the Scriptures to you.

But in our Western world we are trained to be academic and cerebral. You can go to Harvard University and have lectures in Harvard on how to run a business by professors who have never run a business.

Because this is a cerebal, academic, cognitive view of Christianity - of modern, Western Christianity - that can put a man on the moon which is a wonderful achievement ... blah, blah, blah but they can't raise the dead or open deaf ears or open blind eyes with the power of the Living God because they are so cognitive and analytical.

I was talking to the Lord this morning and I said; "Lord how do we walk more into the miraculous?" and He said; "You have to be set free from your adult analytical attitude. I said the secrets of the kingdom are given to little children". To those with child-like innocence, the secrets of the kingdom are revealed but to the haughty and the arrogant the kingdom is hidden from them.

Why did Jesus preach parables? People keep telling me; "Preach in parables so we can understand better". Read what Jesus said the parables were for! The parables were to hide truth not reveal truth. So that the truly hungry would pursue Jesus afterwards and say; "What did You mean by that?". The parables would hint at hidden truth and people would say "He's a bit weird - this Carpenter!". But others would feel their spirits burning when He spoke for He spoke spirit and life - not just words of academic, intellectual, impressive philosophies.

This morning I was saying; "You said Lord through the prophet Isaiah, 'Come let's reason together!' and Lord I just want to reason with You!". He said; "Son that is in the context of a kind rebuke. Some people think that I have to give answers on this. And there is an attitude there and God is actually saying to that person, let's reason together and see who wins the reasoning!". He said that to Job as well. "Were you there when I flung the galaxy into place?". But to the child-like who let's reason rest in revelation God will unveil the secrets of eternity and will open scientific understanding and will open political understandings. He will open solutions as to how the Gospel can break into the most difficult areas. But the Lord will reveal this by His Spirit.

What is child-like innocence? Child-like innocence is the feeling you feel if you had never sinned once and it is the feeling if someone had never sinned against you, betrayed you or hurt you. What makes adults cynical? Disappointments with ourselves and people that we trusted. So we build a defensive persona and become easily cynical and defensive and build these walls to protect us and therefore we become strong adults who can't move in the supernatural and the Presence of God comes into a meeting and we feel like we are strangers to this good. We are masking the fact that we are so far away in experiencing this God. We are the Harvard university lecturers teaching on how to be a Christian and yet never experienced the God OF Christianity. We are peddlars and brokers of academic Christianity but we have never met the author Himself. It is a cover up and disguise and deception. So we need child-like innocence restored to our lives.

How is that? We need emotional access to the feeling that we have never sinned once and no one has ever sinned against us. We have legal access to that through the Gospel - through the gift of righteousness and through the finished work of the Cross. There are many here tonight and child-like innocence will be restored back to you. So you won't feel anymore like if I surrender to God He will take advantage of me. No - no - no. Surrender to God. He is full of integrity and tenderness and He is the Perfect Father.

If you don't surrender to God, you will find yourself without even realising it surrendering to dark forces and making agreements and alliances with demonic forces that will oppress your life and make you more cynical and skeptical and defensive and easily offended.

Judas Iscariot had the greatest opportunity on the planet and he blew it for thirty pieces of silver because he had a predisposition and a vulnerability to seduction when he had the opportunity of the Messiah - every day walking with Him! The Living God - the Word Incarnate - Jesus anointed with the Holy Spirit and power - walking with Him! But he held on to his adult reasoning and adult attitudes and would not become like a little child. So the secrets of the kingdom were hidden from him. But a foul-mouthed fisherman like Peter - he got it! I love Peter! Just loses his temper all the time! He is impulsive and crazy and Jesus said; "Oh Peter there you go again!". The last physical miracle that Jesus did on the planet was to heal a man who had come to arrest Him. Yet some Christians think "Oh God can't heal me because I have got too much sin in my life". Well here is a man who came to arrest Jesus - a party with clubs and swords! That's pretty serious when you want to do that to the Son of God! And His response was to heal you. How much more does He want to heal you!

We are not in this Old Covenant thing of killing and smashing! All these people - let's show them grace.

The Spirit of the Most High will come upon you and overshadow you and you can walk through the loss of loved ones, you can walk through disappointments and you are not held together by intellectual academic philosophies. You are held together by an intimate encounter with a Living God who speaks audible words into your spirit and you can smell the aroma of Christ with your spiritual glands and you can hear Him on the inside of your spirit and you can see where He is moving because you have a child-like spirit. You can feel His touch - you can feel the wind of the Spirit and when you feel so abandoned by people and situations, there is a living God who is a God of all comfort and will comfort you not through intellectual amaeuterish psychological therapies but by an encounter with a Living God that go way beyond what your little intellect can ever work out.

Folks - to surrender this "paralysis of analysis" is one of the greatest things you can ever do and I can do. I have a problem with this head. But God is renewing my mind and I am progressing to prove what is the acceptable and perfect will of God. Amen? How does your mind begin to change? By divine encounters. The Spirit of God is going to move here tonight and some of you will be tempted to say "Shall I get in the water? No maybe I shouldn't!". Folks it is weird NOT to get into the water of the power and Presence of a God of glory who can bring deliverance.

There is a man at the pool of Bethesda - because Israel had backslidden so far into spiritual darkness that the synagogue rulers were no longer moving in the power that God gave Abraham. They were no longer healing the sick or casting the devils out - they were just giving intellectual doctrine and academic information about the Bible. So healing now was reduced to people sitting around a pool and waiting for an angel to turn up occasionaly and trouble the waters and the first one that got in, got healed. After that the angel was so exhausted that he had to go back to heaven, get refreshed and come back later.

Here is a man that has been lying there for 38 years. He is crippled yet you can roll one inch a year into the pool. Jesus asked a funny question; "What do you want Me to do?". You would have thought the guy would say; "Hey stupid I want to be healed! You think I am lying here for my health!". Instead of the man saying "I want to be healed" says "I have nobody to help me get into the water when the angel comes".

That is the condition of so many Christians! "I have no body to help me!". Come on now. Help yourself. I don't mean self-help! Don't get into that stuff. Roll to the pool. If no one gets you to the pool of Bethesda tonight - you get in yourself! Don't lie there in the spirit of stupidity and say "I have got no one to help me!". God is saying; "Just trust Me - when My power begins to move - trust Me. It will be okay!. There are testimonies of millions around the world who have encountered Me and got healed, got set free".

Do you know why people don't want to get in the water? It is because of pride. They are afraid of the manifestations! Because the church has been so afraid of the power manifestations of God - shaking, falling, rattling, rolling, laughing and crying - that they have switched off the power, grieved the Spirit and quenched the Spirit and there is so little power left in the Church that we go after ouija boards and psychics and all kinds.

In America over 5 billion US dollars are spent on psychics. Here's the tragic thing - 2 and a half billion dollars are spent on psychics by Christians. If you deprieve people of food, they will eat anything - even poison! There are people telling you that is the devil doing counterfeit signs and wonders. If there are counterfeit signs and wonders (and there are) then there has got to be the original real authentic miracles. Some people have got a big devil in their theology and a very small God. And the devil has got such power and God is so weak and useless that He can't manifest Himself. I often wonder, which Bible are Christians reading? "Show me in the Bible where people shake and fall". I often think - what Bible are you reading?! Once your eyes are opened you can hardly see anything else!

In the first chapters of Genesis God puts Adam to sleep. "Lie down to sleep" - the Hebrew word essentially means falling under the power of the Spirit! He is in a sleep and takes Adam's rib out and makes a woman!! That's why men don't understand women because we were asleep when God made them! It is lovely not to understand women - they are a mystery! It is exciting!

When God cut the covenant of Abraham and Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law that the blessing given to Abraham can come to us and He cut this covenant with the father of our faith - Abraham - and He put Abraham into a deep sleep! Abraham wanted to be part of the covenant and God said; "This is a perfect covenant - I don't want it messed up with man's involvement. It will be cut within the Trinity on behalf of man. So fall under the power!". While he was lying there under the power, God spoke to him audibly about his people - 400 years in the future - under the power! Daniel had an encounter with God in Daniel 10 and 8 and he falls to the ground and shakes. "I became very pale and very afraid". God comes to him and says; "Well done Daniel - highly esteemed of the Lord" and He touches him.

When the supernatural of God encounters the natural, the supernatural doesn't give way. The natural does. You get overload and the more overload you get and the more you carry.

I haven't even talked about Ezekiel and "circles within circles" and glory. Isaiah got caught up and saw the glory of God. You can go on and on through the Old Testament. Come into the first day of the New Covenant on the Day of Pentecost and fire over people's heads! The deacons would have run and grabbed the fire extinguishers and tried to put them out! Modern academic theologically correct, intellectual Christians pray for revival because that is the done thing to do. It looks virteous and self-righteous. Then revival comes according to the Bible idea of revival and they call it the devil. It grieves the Spirit! Calling what God is doing the devil. The MOMENT the devil shows up his stupid head, you will know INSTANTLY! ... "Yuck!".

If God lives in you and the anointing is in you, the spirit of truth is in you - you will know that this is taking people away from the love of God and into self-exaltation or deception and oppression and into all kinds of addictions and bondages and all kinds of death and curses come on their lives.

But you look at the people who walk in the power of God's Presence and it is like hell comes against them to shut them down and they walk through hell and after 30 years of walking with Jesus they have innocent pure virgin-like hearts. I have walked with Him now for 32 years and I am more in love with Him now than ever before. I have not backslidden in 32 years or got cyncial and said "Christianity is not worth it".

You can never backslide if you have had an encounter with the God of Love - the Living God - a miraculous, tangible encounter with the Living God and in your life (which is normal Christianity) - when you have had that, you can't get bitter, cynical and walk away.

"I have had enough - the Church hurt me so that's it". You can't! Where will you go!? Poor God can't go anywhere because He is everywhere! "I am going to walk away from God" - yere?

So much of the humanistic therapies have come into the Church to replace divine encounters. That's why the Church needs so much pampering and therapies because it is a commentary on the abscence of divine encounters. Divine encounters heal your heart - divine encounters keep you pure - divine encounters keep you passionate - full of love.

And you will stay in love with your wife or husband. You really do! It is when hopelessness and meaninglessness grips our lives that we are overwhelmed with despair but when we have divine encounters (like I had here on Tuesday night and last night) - those things keep you fresh! You say; "Rob what is the most discouraging thing you have ever had in your life?" - it is when I look in the eyes of someone who says they are a Christian and they say they are not in love with Jesus anymore. I believe it is possible to live with child-like innocence decade after decade and if you are living with the Kingdom of God as your passionate priority and seeking God regularly for divine encounters then you will hold on.

The early church started off with fire over their heads and supersonic sounds like the sound of a mighty rushing wind - it must have been very loud - the sound of a mighty rushing wind! It gathered crowds of possibly more than 3,000! It wasn't just them speaking other languages because that doesn't gather crowds from far away. They heard a sound! The 12o were so drunk and the people began to mock them and Peter the apostle got up and said; "They are drunk as you suppose because this is only the 9th hour". They couldn't have got that badly drunk with only a few hours of drinking. This is the Holy Spirit! This is what Joel spoke about; "In the last days I will pour out My Spirit on all people".

The church was never more in the will of God when it was drunk in the new wine of the Spirit. The more sober the church got, the more out of the will of God it got and the more intellectual it got, the more cerebral and more brain-bound it got.

When Adam committed high treason against God in the garden of Eden, his spirit died. And his mind gained ascendancy over his spirit because he had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of staying at the tree of life. The biggest problem in the church world today is legalism, self-righteousness, self-promotion instead of that humility and grasping with wonder at the gift of righteousness that is by faith alone. We owe it to the alliances of darkness that would take them into hell to make them see. Everything the devil offers you comes with a price tag. "I will give you this pleasure but it will come with cancer and confusion and nightmares". In Christ Jesus we don't have to have nightmares.

In Christ we live full of hope and free on the inside and outside not based on our circumstances and how they treat us but based on an encounter with the Living God.

Encounters with God? "No I don't want this falling stuff". Well who wrote three quarters of the New Testament by the Holy Spirit? Paul the apostle. Well he had an encounter with the Living God! His name was Saul, on the way breathing out threats and wanting to kill Christians he had an encounter! God opened the window just a slight bit and the glory hit Saul and knocked the "S" off his name and put a "P" there. Then Paul asked a question and answered it in the same sentance; "Who are You, Lord?". Within three days after being saved and groping around blind from the brilliant dazzling light of the glory of God and after all that suffering from being ship-wrecked, beaten and persecuted he could still say "These are light, momentary afflictions storing up for me an eternal weight of glory".

How could he say that constantly?! No he had encounters. He talked about a man (talking about himself) and he said; "I know a man whether he was in the body or out of the body but suddenly was in the 3rd heaven and I heard awesome things". Go right through the New Testament and it is all there. John hears a voice that says; "Come up here!" and he went up into the 3rd heaven and saw a throne and all kinds of beings worshipping God around that throne and he saw an emerald rainbow around the throne. Rainbow refers to a sign that judgement is over and emerald is a green colour and the Hebrew word for "green" is the word for "fresh oil". The throne room of God is a place where you access fresh anointing oil and find that guarantee that judgement is over for you at the throne room of grace. That is not the throne room of judgement where the unsaved will face. John saw things!

Every believer is meant to have encounters with God but the Church indoctrinates us and brainwashes us with the propaganda that is only for the fanatical extreme weirdos who are so extreme that they need to "feel" God. They need to "encounter" God. Well blow that man! I am not going to have someone come and tell me I am so insecure that I need to "feel" my wife! If that is insecurity then bring it on! I want to feel her hair, I want to see her eyes, I just want to kiss her - I want to have encounters with my wife! I do not want to have some remote technical approach to my wife. I don't want to have a remote controlled relationship with my wife! I want to smell her perfume!

I think the answer to the serious adultery problem in the Church is for husbands and wives to have an abandonment of romance and fantastic sexual intimacy. One pastor in the USA said the problem of adultery is so bad because legalism has made husbands and wives so weird and we have made relationship to God of remote control and we are now relating mechanically to one another. Intimate strangers. When we have a night off with the candlelight we don't know what to talk about anymore. This pastor of a church of 15, 000 said every guy should have a stripper pole in his room and his wife should practice on that!

All I want to say is your fear of the supernatural, your fear of abandoning yourself to trust God in an encounter with Him is not based on biblical revelation, is not based on the truth of God's Word but demonic propaganda and the traditions of men.

I understand it and I understand that fear. I was deceived as a Hare Krishna and so I was very cautious. But the first time I saw God moving it frightened me a bit. I thought "Wow what is this?". But something in me said, "This is God!". That was in 1980 and 1981. If God doesn't encounter me in a tangible, manifest Presence then I get lonely - I feel lonely for Him. I miss His Presence. David said that; "How much longer shall I wet my pillow with tears? I long for You, I long for You God". This is the longing. God wants us to attract Him by our sense of the Bride romancing the Bridegroom, attracting Him to come in close.

I want to read some things very quickly to you and then I am closing.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and you know, the Pharisees are the same yesterday, today and forever. Their cousins and descendants come among us today still. You will never make the Pharisees happy - don't try. Don't get nervous about them or intimadated by their witchcraft. Just love them, forgive them and then take a whip and crack it over their heads.

If only the Church had the passion that the Son of God had for His Father's house instead of church being a convinient club that you pop into when you feel like it rather than people who are the agencies of the Kingdom. The ambassadors of the highest government in the universe - authorised to activate the advancement of the Kingdom in signs, wonders and miracles and using the authority God has given us! Invading the impossible and forcing the impossible to bow it's knee to the Name of Jesus. And when the impossible appears and it is not bowing it's knee then bring in apostolic tenacity and keep at it until it bows it's knee. Don't give up! Never surrender!

Let me give you just a few things that you can experience when you encounter God. We have two surgeons in our church and when you have a cancer in your body and go to the hospital to get that thing cut out, it is amazing what people will put up with to get that thing dealt with but they won't put up with the scalpel of God and the anointing of God! Thank God for medical science. They are fighting the war against sickness just as we are, just using a different method and different tools. But the day is coming when we are going to need more than just medical science to deal with what is coming on the earth. You go in there with this cancer and you are so desperate to get it out.

Some say "I am not a loud person so don't expect me to jump and shout and praise and make a fool of myself - it is contrary to my temperament". Well let me slam your fingers in my car door and see what your temperament will do.

Because your response is according to the degree of the intensity of your experience!

So you go into hospital and are faced with strangers and all you have with a sheet on and it is tied with nothing on underneath. You are willing to do this because you are desperate for good results. A friend of mine went in for a vasectomy and he is a pastor. Imagine giving birth! You have to put your feet up in stirrups! They are ready to start and he looks up and hears the voice of a nurse helping the surgeon say; "Oh good morning Pastor Barry!". So he says; "Good morning sister!". Forever after every time he was in the worship and he looked up and saw her! Nothing to hide! So you cut this cancer out surrounded by ninja warriors. Then they put you to sleep. You don't know what they are going to do with it. You are willing to go through partial death - but not fall under the power!? You will trust man but not God?!

"I am an academic Christian and I believe one of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control". Well the other fruits are joy, peace! That self-control is the supernatural fruit of a supernatural Person called the Holy Spirit and so when you encounter Him like Abraham and Paul and all these people did and you shake, rattle and roll - when you get up from those encounters you carry something on your life that will bring love, joy, peace, self-control.

Whenever I get really angry, I realise that I need another encounter with God so that I can get more self-control. Self-control involves a manifestation of the Presence of God! Jesus needed an encounter!

60, 000 die every year in the USA through malpractice! And they say trust doctors! If you only trust the natural realm then what kind of Christians are we?! We are meant to operate from the invisible and manifest the invisible before people's eyes! After a few weeks if the operation has gone well you will kiss that doctor and worship them! Yet this great God wants to cut with the scalpel called the Spirit without scars or stitches afterwards and He will cut out the pain of a divorce or a real cancer or sexual abuse - complexes we have had since childhood. But we will not submit because we don't want to go through the indignity of shaking and laughing and crying? There has been a control spirit on the Church stopping that. You contend for freedom and you will feel something pushing back on you from the dark realm. The more churches that contend for a gospel of grace will force hell to thinly spread it's forces. Demons can't multiply so more grace churches and less demons per church.

I made a decision in Hong Kong and God said; "If you will live not to fill buildings with people but to fill buildings with My Presence then I will live to fill buildings with people". I am not going to lead a church where God is not there. That is an oxymoron. That is weird!

When the Spirit of God comes upon you;

1. There is an impartation of God's supernatural life. We become super charged with the divine defibrillator of supernatural life. If someone is dead you will need more than 10 volts. We need POWER to be awakened to the awesomeness of who this God is. Passion doesn't have to be loud necessarily!

2. There comes an impartation of a gift that will make you strong.

3. You get vision and revelation. This may include being caught up into the 3rd heaven.

4. Healing - both physical and emotional.

5. Darkness is removed - confusion goes - demonic influence or presence is driven out and great peace comes.

6. Visitations of Jesus. Intimacy and closeness with Jesus way beyond anything your natural mind could have ever imagined would happen.

7. Commissionings and callings. They are different. God first calls you. Then He prepares you for the calling over days, weeks, months or even years - then He commissions you. That is He activates the calling and from that moment you walk in the authority and anointing of that calling.

8. Conferring blessings on you in a divine encounter. Success, favour, promotion and relief. Impartation of rest and removal of strivings from pressures that can build up over time. Often this pressure doesn't come out until the anointing releases it and opens a valve.

9. The Personality of the Holy Spirit rubs off on you.

All these impartations do not guarantee you will not face trials but they will equip you to face the trials and come through with even more grace.