Hello hello! Thanks SO MUCH to all of you that read my last post and were praying for my church during our Firestorm last weekend! It was an experience from which I pray we will NEVER RECOVER. There are so many testimonies that I can hardly keep track of all that God accomplished but there are definitely a few groundbreaking stories that I MUST share. But before I start, you must know that this wasn't a typical Firestorm: with Theresa Dedmon (head of the Arts department at Bethel) in the lead, the efforts of the team were focused on activating, equipping, and launching my church in the creative/prophetic arts, which basically means that people were learning how they can release the heart of God to people through their artwork and other creative means. It's all about ministering the truth of the love and power of God to those inside and outside the Church so they can have an encounter with God that leads to healing, salvation and relationship with Him. Does that make sense to everyone? :)
With that being the heart of things, this is how the weekend unfolded... Friday night we hosted a prophetic arts workshop and to my joy and amazement, it was a total blowout! The building was PACKED with people not just from our own church but from churches all over Ventura county and beyond, even as far as Pismo Beach! It was an incredible blessing to see so many people united in hunger for more of the Lord... In fact I was so in awe at the Lord by what He had done that I had trouble entering into what was being shared and taught by the team! For me, my awe went beyond even the immediate blessing and joy of seeing the weekend come together... What blew me away more than anything was that what God was doing in us last weekend was the fullfillment and culmination of our earnest prayers and desires toward Him, and SO many of His promises to us. As I stood there watching, I couldn't help but feel, This is what we've been longing for, just the beginning of what we've desired for so long. It was such an awesome thing! Anyway, the testimonies even from that first night were so glorious! In His goodness, God moved with such power. So many people were activated in the prophetic and in the arts for the first time in their lives, and came to a deeper revelation that they have full access to the heart of God. As the Bethel team ministered, one young woman named Claire got a TON of prophetic encouragement and an IMMENSE amount of healing. In years past, she had experienced alot of wounding from women in the church so to have 5 or more women from the team speak words of love and life and destiny over her, God brought forth such healing and reconciliation within her that you could see the heart change on her face :). It was awesome to see her so incredible moved and blessed. Also that night, one woman was healed of problematic clicking in her knee, and my friend Katie was completely healed of pain from her sciatic nerve that had kept her from running for over 2 weeks! And after she received her healing, she prayed for a woman with horrible tooth pain (she was in need of a root canal), and they saw an immediate freedom from all the pain! That's just the beginning of what God accomplished Friday evening, so He set us up with great expectations for our ministry time the next day! :D
On Saturday, after an awesome time of ministering to the church staff and prayer team, we launched out to do prophetic arts as outreach in the city! This was a MAJOR highlight of the weekend for me because one of my deepest desires for my church is to see us go beyond our four walls and break into our community with the love and power of God like never before. And that was exactly what we did! Teams set up stations that four different places in the city, and ministered with balloon animals and face painting to the kids, and free "interpretive" art to the adults. As a result of only an hour or so of outreach, over 300 people were touched, 6-8 of which were saved, and a dozen or more were healed! It was an incredible testimony of the desire of the Lord for our area, and it showed the people from my church just how EASY it is to see the Kingdom come through their efforts! Plus, it was just plain fun :). Three awesome encounters my team had: 1) Even before we had our table fully set up (in front of Starbucks right in the heart of downtown Ventura. Praise You, Jesus, for favor!), two women from my team were already on the hunt for people in need of the Lord. They spotted a woman wearing a wrap around her head and suspected that she might be suffering from cancer or some other serious illness. So together, they approached the woman and her husband as they were getting into their car, and kindly began to pen up conversation with her. I was too far away to hear their interaction in detail but we could see the woman's face as she smiled, received prayer, broke into tears and by the end of the encounter, kissed their hands with thanks. They said she was deeply touched and encouraged by their love and faith so thank You, Lord, for backing their obedience with Your anointing! 2) My friend Kate was the "runner" for our team, as she took the responsibility to kindly yet boldly encourage people to come get art from us! We were slow in getting interest from people at first but within a few minutes she brought over these two, tough lookin, early-twenties guys. MAN, were they in or an encounter they didn't expect. The initial reason they had come was because one of them had dared the other to get his face painted, but as they sat down, my pastor who was there shared some very accurate words of knowledge about them being in the military. Shocked, they told us that they were both in the Marines, and headed to Iraq in September. That broke open conversation with them, and by the time the one guy's face was painted, we had drawn prophetic art pieces for each of them, and gotten to pray for them that God would protect and encounter them during their time overseas. It was amazing to see the gradually soften as time went on, and to our total surprise, they even agreed to let us knight them with a balloon sword (something we usually do for kids to let them know that they're beloved children of God's Kingdom) and make some pretty awesome prophetic declarations over them! Can you imagine these two guys kneeling on a busy, downtown street corner, being knighted as princes of the Kingdom with a balloon! And even more awesome was that as they walked off, the guy to whom the balloon sword was given, raised it up in the air and said, "For the Kingdom!" Whether or not he realized it, he was prophesying over our city, amen amen! Very cool! :) And 3) One of the Bethelites on my team, Becca, had drawn a picture of Africa in the shape of a heart during our outreach time but hadn't found the person who God wanted her to give it to. So as we were packing up our supplies to head back to the church, a young woman came running up to our table, asking if we were still doing face painting, and we gladly welcomed her to come sit down. Becca then realized that SHE was the one, and proceeded to ask this girl is she had a heart for Africa. As she did, the girl's mouth just dropped open in shock and she exclaimed, "WOAH, I'm going to Africa in 3 weeks!" It was a crazy divine set-up! That led into an awesome encounter in which we got to prophesy more over the girl and even pray for her formerly-christian-now-satanist boyfriend! What a way to wrap up our outreach :).
That phenomenal afternoon of outreach led into an evening healing/revival service that blew the doors off my church, and overflowed into a powerful time for the Sunday morning service as well. I don't have time to go into immense detail about all that God did but it was AMAZING. So many people were healed, touched by the Holy Spirit in unprecedented ways, and overall, we just went to a completely new level as a congregation. One woman was completely healed of an injured rotator cuff, and instead of having to go in for surgery, was able for the first time in weeks to pick up her 2 year old son! Another man was healed of bursitis in his shoulder and received full range of motion! Many others experienced inner healing, and received new levels of joy and life like never before. PLUS, my pastors got their socks blessed off with more prayer, impartation, and prophetic words than I'm sure they know what to do with! :)
Needless to say, it's obvious why I'm praying that we never recover from this weekend, and honestly, it'd be pretty hard to ever be the same again. Now we're just pursuing the Lord for His direction and strategies as to how to steward and increase the incredible blessing that He poured out on us. We cannot thank Him enough for all He has done, and we are so undone by His goodness and extravagance to us... He is so full of power and might, lovingkindness and mercy over us, His children!
There is more to share but I'll save it for another post! I love you all and pray that our Father will lead us all onward into ever-increasing glory and that His Kingdom will be made manifest more and more in our lives, to the honor and praise of His name!
Blessings,
Melissa
