Wednesday, March 27, 2013

When God Moves

Do you ever get discouraged praying for your loved ones? It can be so hard to watch them living outside of God's will for our lives, and trying not to overstep, or be preachy or judgmental when we see things they don't even recognize as sin in their lives. If we try to say anything, it is often met with hostility, or hurt feelings. So, what do we do? We keep praying, and we keep loving, and when we have to say something, we make sure it is 100% biblical, and not our opinion or pride. Then, we pray some more, and we stand back so that our imposing presence is not hindering the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. 

I know for a fact, if we are praying, God is working. 

Here is my brother's story. I and my family have been praying for this day for more than 20 years. He wrote this as his facebook status last week. I cannot read it, even now, without tears of joy splashing down my face. 

When God Moves

By Robert H. Gwinn


When God moves in your life, it changes you. The experience is real. It is a physical reality. If you are asking if there is a God based on what you can see and feel, I will tell you yes. I have both seen and felt him. I wasn't seeking him or expecting him, nor was I deserving of his intervention. My family had become increasingly aware of darkness in our lives. A "PRESENCE" had been felt in our home. My son had been telling us that dark things were in our home, lingering close to me, and disturbing his dreams at night. At first I played it off as a child's fantasy, a nightmare, or the illusion one sees when shadows interact with a shirt hanging on the back of a chair, and creates the illusion of someone sitting in the corner of your darkened room. It was the way he said it, that made us consider the possibility of something deeper, or more real, at least to his mind. 

The night it happened, he was at Grandma's house. I wasn't feeling very well, and had decided to sleep in his room, so I wouldn't disturb my wife. Not that she would miss me; I had taken to sleeping in the boy’s room or in my reclining chair most nights anyway, and had spent very few nights in our bed in the last several years. My wife and I hadn't really been connecting and apathy had settled into our relationship. That night she went into our (her) room and I had gone to bed with the dog and cats. 

Soon, I was in what would have seemed like a deep sleep and I found myself dreaming of an empty movie theater. There were no employees to be found and it was just my wife and I out for a quiet evening. She took a seat in the lobby in a row of plastic molded chairs bolted together and anchored to the floor. After several minutes I went to search for someone to sell us a ticket or provide us with concessions from the snack counter but the place was empty. I peeked through the space between the closed doors of one of the screening rooms, and could see a flicker of light, but the doors where just a facade and were quite immovable. A bit let down, I returned to the theater lobby to collect my wife and go home. There was a woman sitting beside my wife. She was an attractive black woman with a short Afro hair style and wearing a fuzzy white sweater, angora I think, that fit her loosely around the neck. She had her arm around my wife's shoulder. The woman smiled up at me but said nothing to me. My wife was crying quietly. "Let's just go." I said "You are obviously not having a good night, so let's just go home." Still without saying anything to me, my wife got up and followed me out to the car. As we left I glanced back at the black woman who was still smiling pleasantly at me as we left the building. The car was just outside the door, waiting by the curb and I opened the door and let my wife in. I walked around the car and opened the door, but couldn't sit because for some reason that wasn't clear at the time, my wife was taking up far more of the car than reality would dictate. "Scoot over." I grumbled. She didn't move. "Move" I said more forcefully. At this point I reached in and began to absurdly slap my wife on top of the head, fanning my hand rapidly, not in a particularly violent fashion, but the sort of short slapping motion you might associate with calling your dog to sit on your lap. 

It was all very clear to me, but I was aware that I was in a state of hyper-consciousness, watching this odd play from inside my own head. "What am I doing" I asked myself. "This isn't how I treat my wife. She is crying and I am being cruel. Where is all this negative energy coming from?" 

Just then something happened. In the corner of my mind’s eye something stirred, something dark, something mischievous and twisted in the worst possible context. It was as if I had caught a child with its hands in the cookie jar, or possibly like the moment when Toto pulled the curtain away to reveal Professor Marvel playing at being the wizard of Oz. It was exposed and was waiting to see what my reaction would be to it. For a moment I stared at it and it stared right back. 

Then, suddenly, I knew what I was dealing with. This small blackness was the dark thing that had been tormenting my son when I was sleeping. This was the thing dancing in our living room the night he had fallen asleep on the couch and me in my recliner, and he had woke in the night and said he had seen. And then I did something that neither of us expected. I demanded that it leave my home, and I ordered it in the name of Jesus Christ. I felt it shove me, mentally it was going to fight back, and it was angry and defiant. I tried to call out to my wife, who I knew in reality was across the hall in the bedroom getting ready for bed and I tasted bile as it tried to shut me up. Again I said "you have no authority here! I cast you out in the name of Christ!" 

The dark thing retreated and suddenly I heard a sound. It was coming from somewhere close, I couldn't hear the words, only a voice but I knew immediately what it was. My wife was in our bedroom listening to scripture from the Bible on her phone. I was hearing the word of God. The dark thing heard it too and suddenly a look of fright came over it, it glanced wildly from the source of the sound, to me, and back again and back to me, to see what my next move would be. Again I tried to call on my wife, but it grinned and stifled my physical voice from calling out in my sleep. I pushed back again with my mind and yelled, calling out as loud as I could from that psychic place at the core of my, from the very soul of me. "God... Jesus... I cannot drive this out on my own! Help me!" and with that I just started repeating "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus... Scripture, Scripture, Scripture!" 

Now the sound grew and the word or at least the voice grew louder, though still muted by the closed door separating the two rooms and the hallway. "In the name of Jesus Christ, Go!" I commanded, and a wave hit me... Now let me try to describe this as carefully as possible. It began at my feet, which were pointed toward the hall. It was the sort of tingle you might feel from a mild current passing through you, but instead of running through the circuitry of my body in tendrils of electricity, it began moving up my legs in a solid line. Imagine passing your hand through the surface of water but instead of the water moving out of the way it simply became a part of you on a molecular level right at the point of surface tension. I am afraid that even this description is vague at best compared to the actual sensation but it's the closest I can think of. This line of energy raced up my body, through the very core of me and out through the top of my head which was pointed at the window, and as it did, the darkness fled before it. As it surged through and out I regained control of myself and practically levitated off the bed and onto my feet. I dashed across the hall and burst into the master bedroom, "Scripture, Scripture, Scripture!" My wife was startled and reaching for her phone she apologized, saying "I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll turn it down." "NO!" I said, "Turn it up and bring it with you!" As we sat on our son’s bed, after listening to the Bible scriptures for several more minutes, I told her what I had just experienced. She told me that she had been crying in the shower, and praying. and then she told me that she had heard me moaning in my sleep. She told me she had gotten ready for bed and that just before I came leaping into the room she had been listening to Matthew 8:28-34

28 When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.29 “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”32 He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.33 Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.


The next day, I told my mother and my son what had happened. The day after that, my son came home and went to his bedroom and began to cry. With tears in his eyes he grabbed me and hugged me, "It's gone" He cried joyfully "It's gone and it's really over". This was my experience on March 6th 2013. Take from it what your own spirit will. If I ever doubted, I don't now. I am forever changed. I know two things. I know I am saved (though I have a lot of work to do still) and I know beyond any scientific scrutiny that there is a God. After this event, the blessings have continued. My health has improved or at least I feel better. My Wife and I have grown much closer and her smile is back. (Most of you have no idea how BIG that is) and there is a calm and a lightness in our home for the most part that has been absent for a while. I still have a lot to pray about and get guidance for, but i finally feel I am headed in the right direction. I am not out to convert anyone, just to share this experience, and if someone’s spirit is touched by it, then it's a blessing and a gift to me as well.

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I don't know where God is going to take my brother,but I do know that from that day forward, he belongs to Jesus, the enemy of our souls has no dominion in his life, and our prayers have been answered. 

Please keep his family in prayer as they follow the leading of the Lord and the Word of God for their household of newly found faith. 

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