Preposterousness

Ladies and Gentlemen...please welcome my first guest blogger...the very wonderful, Diane !

Well I've caved to husband pressure in order to provide my first ever guest blog! David has already supplied his perspective on the Bill Johnson conference @ Dayspring last weekend, but as I was the one taking notes the old-school way, he thought I may have picked up on something else. And since I get told that I look at things from a different angle most times, I thought, 'why not'.

First things first, I don't think I was mentally prepared for a conference, but I find I seldom am. Busy, tired, distracted; I'm sure most of you know the drill. I also don't 'do' crowds at the best of times. I needn't have worried - the team @ Dayspring know how to welcome and make people feel comfortable from the get-go, and one of our Pastors had kept seats for us, so it was easy. And it was PACKED. So many people with expectation in a smallish room. It was tangible how hungry people were for the Word.

The Dayspring worship team kicked everything off - they were tight, volume maybe a bit low (or it could be that my hearing has been permanently damaged by ear-bleedingly loud sound elsewhere...), but the most important thing was that the Holy Spirit was there. An hour of full-on worship is a wonderful thing, but my note to self was to not wear heels next time...hard to enter in when you can't feel your toes. :-)

I just could hardly wait to hear Bill Johnson. You have to understand that I'd never heard of the guy until a copy of 'Dreaming With God' caught my eye in a Christian bookstore, and told me to buy it. It did, really. When I read that book I felt something shift in my head, heart and spirit, and the repercussions of that are still being felt today. It was the catalyst to rediscover my creativity - something that had been shoved down as 'not practical or worthwhile' and 'only a hobby'. Since then, God has opened doors for me to try my hand at video editing, animation, graphics and to have people like it. A big boost to the old self-esteem.

I'd heard some podcasts from Bethel Church, and I liked what I heard, so I knew the content of the conference would be good. However, it's like David said, being able to watch and share the move of God as it happens is something else.

Some of my highlight quotes of the weekend:

"People who feed on bad news can never become part of the solution."

"The world is crying out for an example of the goodness of God. He's better than we think."

"Everything and everyone before Jesus pointed to something they could describe, but could not demonstrate."

"We each represent an aspect of God's character that no-one else on earth can."

"The problem with the church is that we have exchanged 'the Kingdom of God is near' for 'the end of the world is near.' "

"God isn't looking for an answer, but a testimony." (LOVE this.)

"We're told to 'grieve not' and 'quench not' the Holy Spirit. We grieve Him when we do wrong things. We quench Him when we don't do the right things."

"We have to learn not to be offended at God, and unimpressed with us."

"The Holy Spirit is imprisoned in unbelieving believers."

"The church spends a lot of time praying for what we already have."

"God may ask you to sell your house and give the proceeds to the poor, and the next day ask you to open a savings account. When you ask "Why? God, you're confusing!!" He says, "That's why you need to stay close."

David Crabtree - "When there is no Holy Spirit, we are governed by externals."

I could go on, and on, and on, but space and a blog reader's attention span may be limited!

I talked of a shift in my heart, mind and head after reading the book. Well, after this weekend it feels like I've been rotating on a certain axis - it was a perfectly fine axis as it was still going round - but there has now been a shift of degrees. I can feel it, and I know it. Without getting too esoteric on youse all :-) It feels that I can see things clearer and am stronger. And totally non-hyped.

I was prayed for by one of the team - I didn't go forward or anything, we were to pray for those around us, and she turned to me twice - I recall her praying for me to have 'sharp teeth' like a lion, to be given wisdom as I walk into what God has for me to do, and that I would be given the right words to say, because God has given me the ability to speak and create a new atmosphere, as my words contain weight and make people listen. I certainly hope so.

So yes, I'm still experiencing a little conference-sickness. It was an awesome time full of hope and joy, now it's the hard yards of applying it. I do know one thing - after being a bit non-plussed by the noisy and 'big-bang' ministry experiences in the past, I've realised that when correctly applied, there is NOWHERE else I'd rather live than in a life where the prophetic, and the tangible and frequent intervention of the Holy Spirit is expected and experienced. I want to hear amazing stories of the miraculous power of God for healing and not just say 'wow', but to also go "yep, that's what happened when we prayed too". People who live in that way don't need to shout and scream, they just allow God to move, and there is a closeness in their relationship to Him. They KNOW Him.

I want that, please.

Continuing from my post after the first session of Bill's conference, and some tweets about it being the most amazing 24 hours of my life, here's my attempt to put into words what this weekend meant to me : * I've often come back from conferences 'hyped' and ready to do stuff.  Once the hype wears off, so does the desire to do stuff.  There was no hype here.  In fact, almost the opposite.  DaySpring Church are probably one of the most old-school-yet-modern pentecostal churches in Sydney and flowing in extended free-worship, prophecy, healing, etc is normal for them, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Bill has taken on apostolic leadership for the church.  Both Diane and I have come away from the weekend feeling a shift in our mindsets, a shift in our spirits, and completely unhyped.  Just ready to move deeper into the mysteries of our wonderful God.  Everyone else who has been there this weekend is feeling the same. * If you're not familiar, do some research on Bill and Beni Johnson (his wife) and their home church Bethel in Redding, CA.  Their ministry has seen people raised from the dead, creative healings, countless other miracles, and all without any of the flashiness that can sometimes be part of these ministries. They are real people.  They both had people in the conference congregation praying for them, laying on hands, etc. * David Crabtree, the pastor of DaySpring, gave a snippet of his awesome teaching series on grace.  In short, grace doesn't just mean "unmerited favour" like so many of us think.  Try some word substitution with some key verses and you'll soon see that "empowered presence" is really what God is getting at. * By far the majority of the sessions were designed to help us walk in authority when we pray, especially for healing or recreative needs.  We weren't just receiving, we were doing.  Practical workshops in any other context always leave me feeling "ugh", but this was so beautiful, natural and real that I soon realised this is how I need to live my whole life.  One thing Bill said that really resonated with me was about why some are healed and some aren't, etc, etc.  This is not a direct quote, not even close, but I'm going to put it on here as a quote...for effect, ya know.

Jesus came to earth, fully God and fuly human, yet stripped himself of His divinity in order to live as humans except that He was completely without sin.  He was therefore totally reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit to "do" all the things He did (and remember, if all of that was written down, there would not be enough room in the entire planet to house it).  When Jesus died for us, we too became blameless, sinless.  He then sent the Holy Spirit to live in and with us.  So from the day of pentecost onwards, we have had exactly the same "tools" at our disposal as Jesus did.  The only thing which prevents us from being as effective in our lives as Jesus was is our self-imposed separation from the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, our free-will.  We have all we need, we just don't use it, or even realise it.  The reason some are healed and some aren't is that I'm not aware of everything that is going on, I'm not in that place of total submission to the Holy Spirit.

And that was from just one minute of the hours of gold this ministry team brought.  The way he explained this made so much sense.  If I haven't made sense, and you wanna know more, leave a comment and I'll try to elaborate or simplify. That's all I can process for now.  I do plan on doing another post with some more of the thoughts from our notes (actually, Diane is likely gathering some thoughts for that post - a guest post from my wife!), but we eventually stopped taking notes as we've ordered the CDs.  There is just too much to take in all at once.  I take comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one who thinks this way too, others who've heard Bill speak before didn't even start taking notes and just ordered the CDs before the conference even began...they were ahead of the game.

So I posted earlier about how excited Diane & I were about being able to attend Bill Johnson's conference, When Heaven Invades Earth. So far, we are not even the slightly disappointed.  I was tweeting some of the gems he shared (and being selective is hard...), and hashtagged them with #billjohnson if anyone is wanting to search. I already knew he was a funny man as well as being incredibly humble about God's destiny for him and the people he shepherds.  My favourite of his funny gems tonight was...

I have found Aussies are fairly quiet until they drink

Very astute Bill :) The band from Dayspring Church, where the conference is being held, led us in some Jesus Culture songs (Can I Have More If You?, King Of Glory) before going into some solid worship with their own music, finishing with Hillsong's The Stand.  The hour of worship flew by, as did the next close-to-three hours of teaching and healing.  74 healings.  Amazing. Can't wait for tomorrow!