Forecast Calls For Change

OK, so this is a crazy, yet amazingly true story....

Tonight as I was driving home from Kansas City with my friend Brian and we had an encounter with the listening and loving heart of our all powerful God!

First of all, if you haven't read my post from last Sunday I would highly recommend reading it before you read this one. Consider it a warm-up for your faith.

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So here we are, after having had an amazing week of ministering to people through the prophetic, physical healing and deliverance we are full of faith and spurring each other on in our pursuit of loving Jesus.  It's at this point that Brian decides that we need to listen to a message by Billy Humphries that talks about the great outpouring of the Spirit at the end of the age.

We are enjoying our drive (and Billy's teaching on "The Wind of the Spirit") when suddenly the weather starts to get really really bad. The wind came up out of no-where and began blowing snow everywhere! Within a few minutes we could no longer see the road and Brian (who was driving) had to slow down to a virtual crawl. Soon visibility had dropped to 0% and people began hitting the ditch were forced to pull off onto the shoulder.

As this began happening I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit moving upon my body. This has been a pretty standard occurrence over the past few days and so I knew that the Lord was wanting me to engage Him through prayer. As I began turning my heart towards Him I got the distinct sense that He was inviting me to rebuke the storm! We kept driving, or at least attempting to drive, and finally after a few minutes of treachery I asked Brian to pull the van off to the side of the road and said to him emphatically, "I'm going to rebuke the storm!"

So there I was, standing on the side of the highway (along with a few other stranded cars), the wind and snow blasting in my face, and I began to rebuke the storm in the name and authority of Jesus. I waited a few minutes but nothing seemed to be changing. I rebuked it again and then decided that I could just as easily rebuke it from the warmth of the van.

I climbed back into the van and looked out at the virtually hidden highway and thought to myself - "This is kind of silly! The Lord prompts me to rebuke a storm, even confirming it with a manifestation of His Spirit on my body and still nothing happens?!.... I'm NOT relenting!!".

So I began to petition the Lord once again to exercise His power and calm the storm. Jesus had done it by the power of the Holy Spirit and we have the same Spirit and the same Father! So why not here? Why not now?....And so I continued to contend.

Now what's kind of funny about this whole story is the fact that while I'm praying for the natural wind to stop, Brian has been praying that the Lord would release an increase in the wind of His Spirit upon the Church! So here we are, two sons calling out to their Heavenly Father. One is asking for the wind to stop and the other is asking for the winds to rise up! It was very comical.

We continued to pray. A few minutes of intercession go by and it begins to look like things are starting to break up. Brian and I look at each other and decide that we could probably start driving again. So he puts the van into drive and we re-emerged onto the highway.

No, we had not experienced the dramatic holding back of the wind that we had expected, but none the less we began to thank the Lord for holding back the snow and increasing the visibility enough that we could proceed on our journey home.

And then it happened!

A few hundred yards after pulling back out onto the highway the wind and snow stopped! That's right!! The storm completely stopped! No more snow! No more wind!!! Not even a hint of a snowflake or wisp of snow on the road. I looked up into the night sky and it was as clear as clear could be with countless stars on shiny display. It was amazing!

For the next 5 hours we drove home in near perfect conditions praising and thanking the Lord for His provision!

I can't tell you how much we laughed, smiled, prayed and praised our Father over that next few hours but I do know that both of our hearts grew significantly in faith for doing greater exploits through the place of prayer!!!

We have a Good Father who is Faithful to His word. A word in which He says "cast all of your cares on Me because I care for you".

Yes He certainly does care!

"This poor man cried out to the Lord, and He answered me."

Jon