Angels and Fiery Rain

By David Hobbs

This blog is about a supernatural walk with God through Christ. While the emphasis is on supernatural encounters and experiences, it is also on current ones—what the Lord has done since the last entry or at least the recent past, as opposed to long ago. The manna must be fresh or it breeds worms and stinks.
Two days ago, Monday morning, I went out to the church early to pray, as I try to do once or twice a week. The prayer time was good but unremarkable. As I was leaving the old sanctuary building about 5:45 am, I looked across the parking lot to the new one. The rising sun was still hidden behind the building, but its rays were shining on the clouds above, where a remarkable thing was happening. Though it’s supposed to be our dry season, a misty rain was falling out of the clouds above the church, evaporating before it hit the ground. As the sun shone through this falling mist, it turned it brilliant colors of yellow and red, which made it look like fiery rain falling on the building. I quickly pulled out my iphone and snapped three pictures, trying to catch the glory of the moment which I knew would be quickly past as the sun rose higher.
My only thought at the time was the visual phenomena of falling rain and falling fire, both of which we have prayed for for many years. But to my surprise, when I downloaded the pictures to my laptop and printed them out on full pages of paper, I could see the shapes of angels and horses of fire in the rain.
I took it as a sign from heaven, both for our church, which has had many prophecies and visions concerning such supernatural events, and also for myself—I am about to embark on a 3 month book tour of the U.S. promoting my salvation story, Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed, and the work of God in revival and preparing the Bride for His coming. If you want to see the pictures, the link to my Facebook page where they’re posted is:
www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19966&id=1541887269&l=243cd88aab.

If you want to follow my book tour, the link for that is:
www.amicusbooks.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&Itemid=55.

Click on the Tour/Events tab and you can see my schedule. Come out and see me if I’m close by.
If you’re interested in booking me for a tour event (there is no charge), go to the media tab, click on the first option, the TIP Sheet. It contains my publicist contact info.

May we all stay close to Him and continually see His glory and feel His love this summer!

The Doers, the Helpers, and the Gawkers

By David Hobbs

It was "Seek Week" and we were having special evening prayer meetings at the church. It was Wednesday and I was feeling pretty much out of it, though quite a few seemed to be actively engaged with the Holy Spirit. Toward the end of the meeting we circled up and held hands to pray together. The lady on my right, a very spiritual woman who has graced this blog before, was in the Spirit and began bending double, jerking or convulsing as different people prayed.

Finally, about the time the meeting was over, she went down all together and lay on the floor moaning and crying out. Cheryl was praying over her. She looked like she was birthing something in the Spirit. She got especially animated when someone prayed out evangelistically for souls. Realizing this, I stretched my hands toward her and prayed in tongues, which felt like the most spiritual thing I had done all night. Others standing around gawked at her and the “spectacle” she was making of herself.

The next morning the Holy Spirit instructed me. “There are three groups of people in the world,” He said, “everyone must pick which group they’ll be in.”

The story he reminded me of was when Jesus was going to heal the girl on her deathbed (Luke 8:40). But on the way He was stopped by the woman with the issue of blood. By the time He dealt with that woman, the original girl had died. When Jesus came to the house and saw the outpouring of mourning, He proclaimed the girl was not dead, but sleeping, which raised an instant reaction of scoffing, mocking, doubting and unbelief.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Jesus did this purposely, to identify the crowd who didn’t believe? Then He put out everybody from this crowd. This was the first class of people: the unbelievers, or the gawkers. He didn’t give them a chance to “exercise their ministry” but put them out before they could sabotage His.

He let stay the parents and His three top disciples. The parents were more concerned about seeing their girl healed than gawking out a miracle. They became part of the second group, the helpers. These are people who can’t do the miracle, but their prayers and presence help create the atmosphere for the miracle to occur. In the prayer meeting I was talking about, I was in the crowd of helpers, as was Cheryl. We were not able to accomplish the work, though Cheryl was midwifing it, a subcategory of helpers. And I was lending my prayers to set the spiritual atmosphere to help it come about.

The third group is the smallest, the doer, often just one person with the faith, the gift, or the power to bring the miracle forth. In the Gospels that person is Jesus; after Pentecost, the apostles; in the Old Testament, a prophet. In my experience it was the woman lying on the floor, travailing in the Spirit to birth something.

The Holy Spirit was saying, “There are three groups. Each person must choose which group they will be in.” Do they want to be a gawker, which is pretty much the same as an unbeliever? Do they want to be a helper, in which case they will be part of the miracle? Or do they want to be a doer, in which case they will spearhead the miracle?

When David Hogan visited our church a number of years ago, we had gawkers come out of the woodwork and from across the country, swarming the church, hoping to see him raise someone from the dead. It was embarrassing.

To be a gawker requires nothing but the natural man. To be a helper requires an openness and obedience to the Holy Spirit. To be a doer requires a high level of yieldedness, and an advanced ability to hear the voice of the Spirit and flow in His anointing.

God's Greatest Challenge

By David Hobbs

4/30/2009

Not long ago I had a unique experience with God at our Wednesday night prayer and soaking service at the church. Things started out tough. There was no anointing and no desire inside me to pray. It looked like it was going to be a long, dry night. But I entered in anyway.
Soon, I became aware that there was a difference about the night. Duane was playing the piano, but instead of playing like usual—banging it out with driving beat and high volume (“erecting a musical wall” is how I think of it)—tonight he was more about finesse. He was changing the volume, sliding into songs and out of them, going from a song into free worship, then seamlessly back into the same or another song. I’d never heard him play any better or more breathed on by the Holy Spirit.
The level of anointing in the room rose rapidly, as did my own anointing along with it. Soon I was on the mountaintop, a complete turnaround in about 20 minutes!
The level of anointing got so heavy that I began to be awash in the love of God. Then I reached a place I get to every now and then—more so in the last 6 months—where I was overcome and conquered by this same love. What do I mean by “overcome?” To be overcome is to be filled to such an extent that normal functioning is impossible. It’s to make somebody incapacitated or helpless, or break down somebody's normal self-control (Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)
Usually during prayer I have to battle against distracting thoughts. But when overcome by God’s love there is no room for those things—they can’t even enter. I can’t think rationally, I can’t function normally. God’s love has filled me and taken over. It’s a most wonderful experience. In this state I realize that God’s love has conquered me. He’s overcome all my resistance, all my questions and reservations, all my desire to be in control and in charge, all my fears about things…. There’s nothing left but His love.
In this state I felt 2 questions surface from the Holy Spirit. The first went like this: “What do you think was the hardest thing God ever did?” It turned out to be a multiple choice test because He gave me three possible answers: 1) Create all the worlds, seen and unseen, by speaking them into being out of nothing? 2) Raise Jesus from the dead against all the powers of hell, death, science, militaries, precedent, history, natural law, and whatever else you can think of that opposed it. 3) Conquer the stubborn and rebellious heart of man by His love?
I couldn’t really answer the question, even though I thought I knew what He was driving at, because they all looked equally impossible to my human eyes.
Then He asked the second question, which drove His point home. “Taking those same three answers, what single accomplishment is God most proud of? Which one does He regard as His single greatest achievement in all time and eternity?” Then it hit me. The first two accomplishments, stupendous as they may be, can be accomplished by power alone. Granted it’s a power beyond anything I can imagine, but still, with enough power, either one of the two could be done. But the third one, oh but the third one! Not all the power in the world can win a heart in love! You cannot will someone, or force someone to love you, even if you’re God. God could have cowed my heart by fear, bribed my heart with endless blessings, manipulated my heart with flattery, rejected my heart in total justice, or created my heart like a robot that responds on command. But instead He wooed and won my heart over until I totally surrendered. “Lord Your love has overcome me. I resist no more. Do with me as You will. I am yours forever.”
“For love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like a mighty fire, like a blazing flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. (S of S. 8:6-7, NIV)