Thoughtful in Selah

God has done an amazing thing in my life and this is the praise report. I really wanted to share this testimony to everyone who reads it in hopes that they find it encouraging in their relationship with God and that they will see how awesome God is.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 was a night that I will never forget. It was about 11:45 PM when I had just laid down to go to sleep. Somewhere around there, my roommate had made a comment how his shoulder had just spontaneously twitched. At that same instant, mine had done so too. This seemed a little eerie. I then felt the room begin to grow darker and something like a black cloud made its presence. I told my roommate, JD, that we needed to pray. We both sat up in bed and begin to break the spiritual forces that were there. We began casting out demons from the house and praying that blessings and peace from the Lord would take its place.

Two years ago, I had another experience with a spirit in this very room. It was the spirit of sexual temptation and immorality. I did not want that to come over my life again so JD began to pray over me that it would no longer exist.

We decided that we needed to wake up the other men in our group that were sleeping in another area of the house to come and join our intercession. The instant that the other two guys entered the room, both JD and myself began shivering and shaking like we were experiencing cold temperatures that not even an ice age could fathom. We continued to shatter demons and spirits with their grips of death wrapped around our necks and pray blessings over the home in which we were staying. Then, as God began to move, we began to repent of things that had taken place in our lives and prayed that God would start to move in our lives.

After about 15 or 20 minutes of this, we thought that our hearts we clear. The other guys went back to sleep, but I made a remark to my roommate that I just felt such a peace of God that the spirit was forced out. I said, "I wish that I could feel that peace too." I asked him if he would like to me pray over him or just wait until the morning since it was around midnight and we had to wake up early the next morning. He said that it could wait for another time but I said, "You can't wait with these things. If you wait, it is only going to get worse."

So once again we entered into intense prayer and I declared that the spirit of sexual immorality and temptations, "would be ripped out by the roots and never return." By this point, we began to break other chains in our lives. The chains of crude joking, the chains of impure thoughts, the chains of impure speech were all broken.

I believe that it has been over a year now since I have been praying for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and to receive the gift of Tongues. So somewhere around midnight on Thursday, August 14, AppleJacks (who we woke up a second time to come pray with us - God Bless him) and JD began praying over me for the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

I began pressing deeper and deeper into God that he would release it upon me. I could feel the power of God begin to fill the room as the other lifted their voices in Prayer Language. Soon my mouth began to go numb and soon it overtook my entire face. It traveled down my neck and into my arms. My trembling hands soon became heavy and I didn't have the strength to stand on my weakening legs. I was beginning to become overwhelmed with the present power that my body was just trembling before the Lord.

We then puts our arms around each other and continued to pray. JD said, "Just between me and Brice right now, God is giving you an embrace from Heaven." As JD put his arms around me, I felt such a power close in on my body. My body felt like it would fall like iron to the floor, but the arms of God were physically wrapped around me and I felt like a string puppet being suspended by His hand.

After close to an hour of praying for the baptism, we were approaching the one o'clock hour. JD and AppleJacks kept telling me to just open my mouth and God will move my lips. I knew I just had to speak what was on me heart but there was nothing there to let out. JD had looked over at the clock and actualy saw it change from 12:59 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. and said, "Brice, it is one o'clock and God is in this room and it is time that you are filled with Holy Spirit."

I felt something start to rise from my chest and into my mouth. The best was to descibe it is taht feeling like you are holding yourself back from throwing up - but this was a word. In that very instant - Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. I began to speak Tongues of the Holy Spirit. As I did, AppleJacks confirmed it, "Yep, you got it, that's it."

Keeping in mind that we were in the basement of a house with other sleeping guests upstair, we lifted an extremly quite shout of praise unto the Lord. The only thing I could do was lift my hands above me head and take as much effort as I had to clap without making any sound.

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We went to the International Leadership Embassy conference at 6 p.m. on Thursday. During some intense worship, I was able to dip into the Holy Language about five times but only when I would begin to pray really fast. At this point, I could only say one syllable repeatedly. The next evening, during the second session of the Generating One conference, God began to teach me to say other words and He taught me how to pray in Tongues without first praying in English.

TheCall was on Saturday and I knew that it would be a life changing and spirit filling day. We arrived on the National Mall at 8:00 a.m. for the pre-worship service that led into TheCall. I began praying in Tongues and I couldn't stop until I fell asleep 16 hours later. TheCall was an intense 14 hour fast in which I was completly consumed with fire for the whole time.

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Even on the van ride home - a 9 hour drive - I was still enfilled with the Holy Spirit and could not help but randomly break out into Tongues. I'll tell you what, it makes the trip go so much faster when you are in your own personal sanctuary while listening to contemporary Christian music on an MP3 player and praying in the Spirit.

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I still have not been able to fully withdraw from the Spirit but I say, "I don't want to lose this at all. I will not silence the Holy Spirit from speaking through me."

Once I got home from the trip I was chekcing all 40 of my emails when something came from God.tv. They had sent out a prayer request for one of their team members who had just suffered from marital seperation. Both him and his wife were in high positions at God.tv. Normally, like any other email, I would just think, 'oh that's sad and terrible' and I would delete the email and move on. But as I continued to read to small letter, I just began to speak out in Holy Tongues and I just lifted them up to God and asked Him to rebuild their marriage.

Now why am I telling all of you this? For the first time, God has increased my compassion for others and I believe He is beginning to reveal his plan for my life to me.

Another one happened when I was watching tv just a couple hours ago. An presidential candidacy ad for Barrack Obama came on and they were talking about all his plans that make him look like a good guy and I said out loud, "...but he doesn't care about the millions of murdered innocent souls that cannot cry out for themsleves" and I began to speak in Prayer Language again.

I believe that God is working on my heart to become a true prayer warrior for Him to show compassion and pray for those who are hurting and in need. I believe that God is going to begin giving me gifts of miracles and healing as I rise up and be an instrument that He would use.

Labels: Posts of my Faith, Posts of my Personal Life