The Dennis Life

Wednesday. Day 3.

Before I forget, last night, each of us was invited onto the platform one at a time and presented with a luscious bouquet of flowers; a fragrant and lovely show of gratitude and love for our individual participation in their land! And when we arrived back to the hotel, all the luggage concierges converged upon me to let me know that my luggage had finally arrived and would I please inspect it for damage. It’s fine. They’re elated, watching me to see if I’m elated. Of course I am! And so can rest easy.

So decked out in my own comfortable clothes, Day 3 begins. This is the last day of the IWI Ascend 07 training seminar for the general assembly, with one more session tomorrow afternoon just for the Pastors and Worship Leaders. So, we have a schedule out in front of us, and the teaching is split up between Matt for the sound guys, and Sion and LaMar for the different teaching sessions for the attendees throughout the morning and afternoon. We’re kind of in a worship flow pattern now…

Matt has gotten the sound to a premium for that hall, the team is grooving together now and have gotten to know each other and how we flow together as a group. The worship is just getting better and better! Hey, I’m pretty familiar with the songs now and really enjoying both LaMar’s and Sion’s teaching and leading of freestyle worship. I remind myself to ask Sion later about what chord progressions he’s using because they lend themselves so readily to flowing in the Spirit. I am so full of joy and peace. Content at last in God’s promise to me and spiritual fulfillment in an incredibly dynamic, flowing worship team. We’re praising God, worshipping with abandon and just generally having a darn, good time. At least I was and I think everyone was there with me!!

I could feel the power building throughout the day.

It’s time for our evening break and LaMar gathers us all together in the Green Room to regroup, refocus and pray. Mark, the outreach pastor from LaMar’s church, arrived yesterday evening and joins us in prayer before the evening session where he will deliver the message. LaMar confesses to us that he feels blocked off and professes the need for a breakthrough and asks that we all lay hands on him, Sion and Mark before the evening session. The Presence of God is thick in the room and everyone is praying out a prophetic Word over the evening and what is to come. God promises a new thing, for the evening, for the Indian people and for the country of India. At the end of the prayer time, someone starts singing and we lift our voices in a beautiful chorus of “We are standing on Holy Ground, and I know that there are angels all around…”

God is with us. As the evening worship flows, the power builds (eventually I’ll have a video here, I’m working on it - no pictures of tonight because we were all too involved in the happening)!

What happens next is the most incredible experience and display of God’s Living Presence that I’ve ever witnessed…LaMar says it best when he shares with us from his website blog written later that evening after the event. But what I will share is that at one point, when he mentions in his blog that he doesn’t know what to do next and one of the pastors comes up on the platform and calls the other Indian pastors forward, the atmosphere changed!

Once the pastors began to pray and the worship team continued to flow in Spirit worship, the physical Presence and Power of God fell and I was driven to my knees and then to a genuflecting position with my head on the floor. When I was able to look up, I saw that everyone on the platform was on their knees, or with their heads on the floor, or prostrate as LaMar describes below. The pastors were crying out prostrate on the floor, the congregants were crying out and some were on their knees, the worship team was on the floor, the music continued and people were weeping openly and freely in the complete Presence of God Almighty. I was forever changed in that moment and life will never be the same again…

LaMar describes it poetically and beautifully at http://worshipinstitute.com/news_lamar.php.

Like the night before, we rode back to the hotel in silence, awed by the signs and wonders of the evening’s event, and humbled before the Presence of God Most High. I was so pregnant with His Presence and overwhelmed by what had happened that I could not sit still and felt stifled in our hotel room. I literally grabbed my laptop, explained to the girls that I had to process for awhile and flew out the room, down the elevator, and found a quiet corner in one of the lovely sitting areas and began to write.

I would sit from time to time in complete silence, just staring out the window into the hotel courtyard. Although the hotel courtyard was physically beautiful, nothing compared to the awe that filled my soul having been lifted to the Throne Room, the Courtyard of the Most High and felt and experienced the supernatural Power of God, basking in the Light of His Love and Glory__afterglow…