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.