Sister Willie’s wonderful testimony last Sunday stirred up something in me that I had meant to share for a while, and then, something Pastor John said towards the end of the meeting about feelings, reaffirmed that it would be good for me to share it, so here it is.
The first real experience I received from God happened to me 24 years ago. It was a dream, or something like a dream that felt very much like reality. It was so real that before I went to bed I was an unbeliever, but when I woke up, I just knew, in every fiber of my being, that God did exist, that He was real.
In this dream I was taken to a place that I believe, to this day, was heaven. The only way I can at least try to describe it is, it was as if I was standing on an ocean shore, and waves of the most wonderful, heavenly feelings kept washing all over me and penetrating my soul through and through. I was feeling perfect love, perfect happiness, perfect peace… But, and I want to emphasize this, I can’t remember seeing anything. The only element that I have ever been able to recall from this dream is the feelings I was feeling in it. And this is something I had never thought of before, until very recently.
I am now realizing that it is no accident that in my very first experience with God, the only thing He gave me was feelings. Through that glorious experience, God put an imprint on my soul, and in the years and decades that followed, even though I never realized it, I was actually looking for a place where I would find that THING that God so graciously allowed me to feel for a moment. I started going to church, because I wanted to meet that God who gave me those feelings. I decided to get water baptized because I wanted to get closer to THAT God. I went to Bible College because I believed that by doing so, I would learn more about THAT God, who allowed me to feel something from His perfect love and His glory. And then, when I left my church and started attending another church, where they put more emphasis on the holy Ghost, I did it because I was looking for something that would match those feelings I was feeling back in 2000.
Having been listening to Pastor John’s teachings for a while now, I now know that it was by God’s design and in His wisdom that He didn’t allow me to see anything in that dream; He only gave me feelings. This quote from Hebrews came to mind recently: “For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched.”
It is not through our eyes or any of our earthly senses that God is leading us, because “things that are seen [or can be touched] are temporal, but things that are not seen [or cannot be touched] are eternal.” As I am now pondering over this, Paul’s words come to mind, when he said that even tongues (something we can hear) will cease (1Cor 13:8); and as Pastor John put it in The Sound of the Spirit booklet: even the sound of new birth comes with a “familiar feeling”, that is how we know it’s the real thing, and not fake.
The truth that Pastor John teaches, the lives his ministry have produced over many decades, the fruits it is producing in my own life, and the feelings God gives me EVERY SINGLE DAY as I’m walking in the truth, are the reason I know, deep down in my soul, that I don’t need to keep searching. I just KNOW it! In recent weeks I was having the same thought a number of times: “It doesn’t even make sense that anything but THIS would be the truth.” Or as Peter and Uncle Joe put it: “This is that!”
I LOVE listening to Sister Willie’s testimonies! I have listened to the one she shared last Sunday twice now, and both times I was in tears, but they were tears of happiness and gratefulness. I am a happy man, and inexpressibly grateful for the grace God has poured out upon my life. Oh, the privilege of having the feelings that I have and an understanding of the truth that has been given to so few, even among God’s own people! Oh, that the goodness of God would lead me to repentance if there are still things in my life that I need to repent for. May His blessings and His love drive me further and further down the road of humility; may I never be puffed up by the wonderful things He’s done and keeps doing for me.
God bless you all!
Zoli