MY BIG BROTHER GOT SAVED, FILLED AND KNOCKED DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay so for those who don't know, I have two big brothers. And I do mean BIG..........brothers. One has short hair, a wife and two kids, and is a manager at a local grocery chain. The other........well, the other is quite a bit different. He has always marched to the beat of his own drummer, which usually includes a Grateful Dead drum circle.

Recently, the deadhead brother lost his apartment in the homeless housing building here in Columbus, for repeated violent offenses, the last of which included battering his friends' apartment door in with a fire extinguisher, and cutting a huge, deep gash in his hand. He is bipolar and has been addicted to drugs and alcohol since he was 14, and he is 47.

My "other" brother, the short haired yuppy one, has been inviting us to come see this lady:

http://www.freewebs.com/adelegray/

Being a former Calvary Chapelite and a "Bapticostal", I was thinking, "Ew! A prophetess! Flake! Flake! Flake!" and wasn't really wanting to go.

But......not only did I end up going, but the young lady you see to the left of me in my avatar picture went, as did a young man from our bible study..........and little did I know.........but my "hippy" brother actually ASKED my other brother to take him to this. I think he had every intention of accepting Christ, but I don't think he expected God to knock him on his posterior like He did!

It started out like your usual charismatic rah-rah session, lots of clapping and high energy music, shimmery outfits and fancy suits mixed with jeans and street clothes, banners on the walls, you get the picture.

It was a small church in the upstairs of some cheap apartment-looking office buildings, in the worst part of the business district of our side of town...right behind the "Silver Fox" strip club.

You know......one of those chintzy little churches like World Harvest used to be, back before they got millions of dollars, bought half of the east side of Columbus and went worldwide on TV.

World Harvest happens to be where I got saved, and is also who ordained this lady - but I digress.

So, I'm standing there worshipping, and a voice in my head goes, "These people are FAKE!", biting off the word 'fake' very hatefully. So, I prayed and shut my eyes and asked the Lord to show me the truth. "Look around you", another voice said. "Take a good, close look at these people". And so I did, and I realized to my surprise......oh look she's older but there's that lady who knows people I went to school with. Oh hey didn't those people used to go to my brother's church? Wait! I know that guy over there! "See?" said the Lord, "You're safe, relax. You know these people".

Apparently the first voice was the enemy. Sometimes, they can be hard to distinguish from each other. The enemy is so slick......

........which is exactly what this lady taught on!

..............which is what my Pastor taught on this morning....

..................and so did the Pastor at my brother's church.

So there you have it. Three witnesses, who never met each other.

This is also the second time that has happened, with this lady, and I believe I wrote about it in another thread.

So this lady taught, and every word was an arrow through my heart.

It was the most captivating, fascinating sermon I have ever heard.

During the altar call, she started talking about my brother's life. BUT - he had never met her, hadn't talked to her, and was sitting there with a death grip on his cane. She spoke in specifics about this "person I know needs to make a decision", and how the devil was about to take this person on the ride of their life, and how they might not have their next breath, etc. She said she knew it was a man...a younger man. She asked wasn't he tired of his family worrying. She asked wasn't he ready to get rid of all this stuff and move on with his life. She got more and more specific until I was crying. My eyes were shut, and I could feel the stubbornness of my brother's spirit, coming from my left.

She gave the invitation "one last time", and nobody responded. Then she invited them to come up front. My friend Katie elbowed me and said, "YOUR BROTHER'S GOING UP!" and I looked and sure enough, there he went. I started bawling like a baby and went up and took his other arm...my other brother on his left, me on his right. I shook with tears, and SO DID HE, and so did my other brother.

Then, my brother, the crackhead, the alcoholic, the drug addict as long as I've known him................was gloriously, epicly, miraculously saved, delivered, filled with the Holy Spirit and with joy, and the three of us siblings cried, prayed and held each other.

Sad

My brother walks with a cane because of his achilles tendon. Our church has been praying for him, and his doctor said it has been healing back together, and he said that does not happen.

Also, my brother's gash on his hand from his incident was still oozing and open when he went in to this event tonight. When he was done praying, it was dry and new skin had began to form around the edges. Some parts were already a white scar. I saw this myself.

After this lady was done with my brother, she moved on to the lady next to me. Bam - down she went.

Then she came to me, proceeded to tell me one thing after another about me that she could have never known, and when she touched my stomach it felt like somebody put jumper cables on me. I shook worse than I did when my blood sugar was at its lowest.

Then I had an amazing experience that I won't even get into on here because I know there are way too many skeptics, but I will tell you that I am no longer concerned in the LEAST........with what anybody thinks of me. I now KNOW that I am a powerful woman of God, and nobody but nobody....can ever take that from me.

All I know is this:

"I will make your right hand to shake, because from now on, anything you set it to, will be mighty!"

The lady next to me? Her entire right arm went numb and stayed that way for a long time, while mine shook all evening.

flower

Come to find out she has a son Tommy's age who needs a new christian friend, too..........

And my little Baptist friend to my left.......who is moving home to South Carolina soon.........is trying to figure out what to tell her Baptist Pastor brother............

.........because she spoke in tongues tonight.

:-X

Uh oh!

LOL

God has been turning her life upside down for a while now though.

I'll be fascinated to see what God does in her brother's church when she goes home!

He can bring excitement to quiet churches and order to chaotic ones.

Because NONE of us can put Him in a box....because with Him ALL things are possible!

Sounds like y'all had a beautiful time in the Lord.... sunny

_________________
"Who among the gods is like you, O LORD ?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?" Exodus 15:11

http://www.achurchforthecity.org

"I don't reject your Christ, I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mahatma Ghandi

Let's just say that my "birthday gift" I want from everybody who lives around here and even likes me much less loves me is.......for them to go see this lady with me because she'll be back over at Firehouse Church the day after my b/day!

A guy at work got "KNOCKED DOWN" last night also.....I wasnt fired but given a written warning. pale

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Guest

Yes he did, hes the company Narc. Mad

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An original "Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie"
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No, he was filled with the spirit of the brown nose.... Im not proud of it but it needed done. The punishment eight hours overtime.....God bless tthem, I live for my job, I could kiss them for overtime
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An original "Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie"
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My blog mirror for those without myspace.
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Paid overtime for punishment? Laughing

no, but i guess most of the younger guys there dont want to work and consider overtime a punishment, to me its time and a half, a gift from the heavens LOL
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An original "Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie"
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
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Okay..........how did this go from news about my brother coming off of drugs and alcohol, which we've been praying for, for 30 some years, to somebody at work being assaulted?

I can't help but feel a little disrespected.

If your brother is proven to be truly delivered then I'm happy for you, that would be a truly joyous occasion. To say I'm a cynic when it comes to charasmatic spirituality would be an understatement, I've seen the devestaion it has caused many lives. What is being passed off as christian spirituallity in many services looks a lot like voodoo! I've seen clear thinking people go out of their minds in the persuit of an esoteric experience w/God, it has exasperated much of my own depression. I've seen people who have claimed to be delivered, only to return to their former addictions a short time latter, many times it is a psuedo deliverence. Yes God can and does deliver people form all sorts of ills, but it's not the norm as many espouse, the norm is a long hard road of recovery/sanctification.

Well I guess I've been put in my place, LOL.

Just read Panzer's blog.

Now I can better understand why I'm getting opposition on this.

He'd freak if he saw the worship team at my false church I go to.

No - it wasn't fake, and how dare you mock the Holy Spirit - all of you. To ask if this guy who was punched at work was full of the Panzer spirit...just the prevailing attitude that I must be stupid and ignorant and wrong by posting something "charismatic" on here....it's messed up, I'm sorry.

You know Changeling I am so sorry that every time I disagree with you it obviously ticks you off. I'm so sorry that you feel like you have to hunt down all my posts and negate everything I say. I don't understand why that is. Maybe you can't handle women having opinions. I don't know. I do know that it's sad, though.

And I also know that the enemy is using you gentlemen to try and tear me down and plant seeds of doubt in my newfound hope.

I curse him and everything he's doing, and I command him to get his hands off of all of you, in Jesus' name.

Go ahead and be mad at me about it, I don't care.

And yes, I am a powerful woman of God, and there is more than one way to take a stand.

I'm not mad at you, and I don't think your stupid, nor am I intimidated by women w/opinions. I'm hesitent to call everything in the charismatic movement counterfiet, God indeed does as He pleases. I'm not hunting down your posts to disrespect or tear you down, nor am I attempting to plant seeds of doubt in your heart. You made some comments on the other thread wich I was sure you were refering to this one, so I thought I'd let you know what I thought. If God has begun a good work in your brother's life, that's great, may He continue to do so and may your brother continue to be open to it. I was once "slain in the spirit" at a charasmatic church, I went home full of joy thanking God and now believing He really loved me. At Cornerstone in 98 after Eric Clayton had counseled w/me and Sheri had prayed for and sang to me, I was overjoyed that God still loved me and had not given up one me, that I was not beyond His grace. I admitted here before that I'm a sex addict, and I'm slowly accepting that I always will be. When I got back from Cornerstone I had the longest period of abstinance in my life, I thought I was "cured", I was wrong! I've always been looking for the miracle, the new experience w/God that would finally set me free, hasn't happened. So now I go to SA, 12 step program, and I go to confession and trust in the graces of the Church. The Church ackowledges that some do recieve the miracle, but again, this is the exception, not the norm. The norm is that we addicts will always have a proclivity to induldge in our addiction, I hope your brother doesn't become dellusioned if or when the temptations come back.