Holy laughter

Two nights ago - Maundy Thursday - we had an overnight prayer meeting in church. I love praying with my group because it's with a prophetic band of God-lovers! These are with folk, many of whom I've known for years. Over the years, we've journeyed with each other through life's ups and downs, I've seen some of them go through pretty trying times. Through it all, by God's grace, everyone has stayed fervent for the Lord!

And there is nothing more joyful than spending Maundy Thursday with a prophetic band of God lovers! Anyhow, we had gathered to pray - from 10pm to 7am ... and what I love about these times is the opportunity to commune with God, and to walk with Him. During these meetings, we periodically do a "Listening to God" corporately, and then we take our next steps as He says after hearing His voice. In the many years I've done this, I've always known it to be an adventure. God is always up to something, He does the most amazing things, and as we are led by the Spirit, and we follow His direction and counsel step by step, He always unfolds something breath-taking.

This night, we started off well. We worshipped, we listened to God, we prayed ... there was such a tangible presence of God in the place. By His grace, we were hearing Him well. I was hearing Him well. In our midst, there are seers, hearers, feelers ... God speaks to us in different ways. And the wonderful thing about the Body of Christ coming together to discern His voice and His heartbeat is that different ones perceive Him differently - by sight, sound, feeling. Since we see in part and prophesy in part, when we come together to share what we are getting, the piece that we get becomes clearer, and there is a delight!

Around midnight, we take some time out for a break, and I check my email...perhaps not such a wise thing to do. There was one mail I received that after reading, put me in dismay. I couldn't shake off the feeling of dismay, and when we regrouped for Round 2 of worship and listening to God, I was distracted, downcast, out of sorts. In short, my peace had been disturbed. At this time, no one in my group knew this, but it was also affecting my ability to see and listen from God. All I had was the tumult in my heart. This is really quite disastrous for a prophetic person!

But God is amazing and He is so good.

With worship, my despair lifted somewhat...and I was deeply impressed to pray a prayer "Holy Spirit, we give you freedom to do anything you want in our midst." This was confirmed by others, so our prayer leader prayed the prayer and released us to our own time with the Lord. I got off my seat, we all walked away in various directions for our own time with the Lord, and what happened next blew me away.

God zapped me with Holy laughter. He gave me a laughter that emanated from my belly (out of the belly shall flow rivers of living water), and I could not stop laughing. And it was such a deep laughter. Everytime I stopped, it would start again. It's the first time anything like this has happened to me, such a deep joy welling up from inside. Such a hilarity.

I knew it was supernatural, because of where the laughter was welling up from, from deep within the Spirit. But it is not so much the outward manifestation of this laughter that wowed me. It was the fruit of it. After that, I realised that although nothing had changed regarding the news in the email, and I still had a situation in my hands, the sting of it had gone. I wasn't as affected by it, and I wasn't as crushed by it. Yes, the best way to describe it is that the STING was gone.

Needless to say, I danced through the rest of the night (figuratively speaking). God restored joy and peace to me, I started to flow with the rest again, and had a wonderful time with the Lord! I marvel at all this, and now, two days later, continue to marvel.

I move in Pentescostal circles, love being led by the Spirit, and have oftentimes experienced travail ... where as intercessors, we weep while praying for someone/ something/ a nation as led by the Spirit. But until Thursday, I had never experienced holy laughter myself.

I've always thought holy laughter had a bit of a "bad rep", especially when one reads about the chaotic scenes in church sometimes when this phenomenon is manifested in the congregation. But now that I've had it happen to me myself, I can attest that God uses it as a healing tool. It is a powerful tool - Hallelujah!!!

Sure, as in any move of the Spirit, there are counterfeits, and it may be that sometimes, what we see manifested in some places is not of God. But it can be a genuine move of God too. God has many weapons in His arsenal, with which He uses to heal us or accomplish His purposes. May we just be vessels yielded to Him, and say "Lord, we give you the freedom to do whatever you want to in our lives."

I know when we are fully surrendered, He will take our breath away.

Being filled with the fullness of God

"I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:16-19)

If we have the power of God in us (as we do as Christians), why is it that so many of us live a powerless Christianity. The early Church in the book of Acts walked in the fullness of God. They preached the word and signs and wonders followed. They healed the sick, the lame walked, the blind saw. They were like their Master, Jesus.

Today, I find so much of the reality of the power of God missing from our lives. Yet, the world is searching. Just last week, my hairstylist shared why she abandoned the faith of her mother (Christianity) to convert to another faith. It was because the other God was able to dramatically deliver her from a demonic affliction. It broke my heart to hear that, because our God is able to save to the uttermost. Yet, if we are His ambassadors, we don't bring his hope to a lost and dying world. For the most part, we don't carry His power and presence, heal the sick, deliver the oppressed ... We don't represent Jesus and the good news of the Gospel terribly well.

I speak for myself in all this, and I asked God what it would take for us ... for me ... to be able to move in a greater dimension of His authority, His power.

The Lord convicted me of two things:

1. To walk in a greater dimension of power, we need to live a fasted lifestyle.

One of my big ahas was to read in Luke 4 that prior to His 40-day fast, Jesus was "full of the Holy Spirit". After His 40-day fast in the wilderness, where He overcame the temptations, Jesus returned in the "power of the Spirit" from whence He began His ministry. There is a shift here. Jesus also tells His disciples that in a particular deliverance, they were ineffective because "this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting".

2. To release His power to those around us, we must first be filled with Him to the point of overflowing. The analogy He brought to mind is the cup in Psalms 23. "You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows." And how do we get the fullness of Christ? Ephesians 6 says it is in knowing the height, depth, length, breadth of the love of God that we will be filled with Him. We love only to the measure of our understanding of His love of us. If we really truly knew how much He loves us, we would be completely undone.

Last year, when IHOP's Matt Candler was in Singapore speaking about the Father's love, I got such a deep revelation of how much He loves me that I couldn't stop crying. My altar minister thought I was going through hard times as I was crying so hard! Truth is, I was totally undone by the knowledge of His great love for me.

Since then, I have been praying a prayer that Matt taught us ... "Father, please increase my capacity to know your love and my capacity to love you." It's been one of the simplest but most life transforming prayers for me, even as I pray it regularly, and now I know that knowing His love is key to being filled by Him.

At the end of the day, our walk with God is such a beautiful one. It is not burdensome. The outflow of power to touch and heal lives comes not from striving but in sitting in the presence of God, gazing upon His face, having Him love on us. Oh that we may know that truth, and out of that place of communion and revelation knowledge, to be a potent force just like the early Church was. Amen.