Many times in ministry you can't depend on your feelings. You might feel dry or even dead inside, but when you stand before the people, you realize it is not you doing the work anyway. The Spirit of God begins to move through you and his presence fills the room. Over the years God has taught me to ignore what I see, feel, and think. I am only moved by what I believe. So when people say, "I reject your reality and insert my own." What I believe is the reality I live in.
However, it is great to have a weekend where you do feel what you are supposed to. Ever since I've had my personal intercessors meet with me in the Prayer Tower before services, there has been a new confidence in ministry arise from the pulpit. Just to have them lay hands on me and lift me up before the Father causes an anointing I can feel to descend upon my heart and mind. All the troubling thoughts fade away and within my heart arises a power for ministry. Not only a confidence, but a boldness to say what needs to be said without fear.
Sunday I preached about Exceeded Your Limits. I was a great time of ministry and people walked the aisles asking for prayer for their self-image. They even got the deeper meaning behind the presentation. It was the realization that we are mostly held back by nothing else but how we view ourselves. I was ecstatic with the 40 minutes of altar ministry and counseling that took place. My leadership team waited patiently with lunch for me in the fellowship hall as I ministered.
Then we all came back Sunday night. I was blessed to see an increase in attendance. It was our monthly Worship and Communion Service, which I enjoy a lot. The praise and worship was powerful and we acted a little Pentecostal during it. A great heaviness of the Lord's presence flowed over the place. Along towards the end of the service an elderly lady slipped into one of the back pews and joined our service.
After the worship I began preparing the people to receive communion and I saw that the lady was Mary Thacker. She's a well known singer. I asked her is she would help us by providing some piano music for the communion time. She sang a song and quietly played as the ushers served the communion elements. The feeling that the place was charged with the power of the Holy Spirit was becoming obvious. Joy was filling my heart as I spoke. This was getting powerful. Oh, how I miss someone who can play a piano in church. Pastor Sonny led prayer over the wafer and Terry led prayer over the cup. We partook and it sealed the end of a perfect day. His people had worshipped him, the Word was ministered with power and anointing, and we had all joined before him at the Lord's table and affirmed our oneness with him and one another.
MANIFESTATION
What they call it is the manifested presence of the Lord. You don't always feel it. His presence is always promised and real, but you don't always feel it as much as just know it. Sunday I felt it all day long. I felt it in the morning praise and worship, I felt it in the preaching, I even felt it during the leadership lunch after the service. Go'd presence was all over the place during the evening service. I think that's why so many came back. My prayer is that everyone else experienced the blessedness of his manifested presence too. It's like seeking a cold glass of water after working in the sun all day. It's colorless, odorless and flavorless, but it is exactly what you need. You can't live without it. His presence is refreshing.
When I was saved at 12 years old in the Henryville First Baptist Church, this was the feeling that came over me. I cried, I shook, and was terribly afraid of what was happening to me. God's Spirit had entered this little boy and he was so much bigger than I was that I thought I was going to explode. People around me wondered if there was something wrong with me. No, now there was something right with me!
I never felt that feeling again until I was in Texas and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. That same feeling flowed over me at the altar that night in Arlington Christian Center. As I spoke in tongues, the feeling increased and increased until I recognized it as the feeling I had when I was first saved. I knew enough of the Word by then to know in my mind that what I was feeling was an emotional response to the presence of the Lord. Whatever it was, I knew of no other feeling like it. Nothing compares to the manifested presence of the Lord.
THE FEELING
Being a Spirit-filled believer, I continued to have these encounters with "the feeling" all throughout my journey — sometimes publicly and sometimes privately. When I lived in Arlington, Texas, there was a Methodist Prayer Chapel a few blocks from my apartment where I would go every night to pray and worship. I would spend hours in that chapel just pouring my heart out to the Lord. Often I would feel his manifested presence come into the room in such a powerful way that it would scare me. He is known as the Holy "Ghost."
Over the years "the feeling" has made me cry, lifted me out of depression, encouraged me in times of battle, reminded me of my calling, and just generally made me feel loved by the Father. Although I still believe that I live by what I believe, not by what I feel, it is still important to me to feel the presence of God's Spirit from time to time, in a real and tangible way. I may not cry as often, I don't get scared anymore, but it's a great confirmation that I am still walking with the Lord after all these years. Sometimes it just feels right. It did this past Sunday.
"Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.”
Psalms 51:11