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Come Holy Spirit Conference - March 2025
Our theme tonight is be filled with the Spirit. I believe this has always been important, but especially now. I desire to be filled with the Spirit every day, and I try not to waste any time or energy on worry, fear, or doubt. It's all about Him.
The times we live in are more evil than good. I really want to see our younger generations raised up into the Daniels and Esters they may need to be. But how do I help that happen? By seeking them and helping them to be filled with the Spirit every day. This is what Scripture encourages us to do.
I want to look at one of the most prominent scriptures about being filled with the Spirit: Ephesians chapter 5, starting at verse 15. The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus:
"Be very careful then how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to one another with Psalms and hymns and songs from the Spirit, sing and make music from your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
What's most important is clear: be filled with the Spirit.
First, something has to happen to you. There's something that the Spirit has to bring to you. This is why Jesus told the first believers before He ascended into heaven:
"Don't start on the mission. Don't leave home, but wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes. And when He comes, He will bring power."
Jesus has a plan for how we live—not willy-nilly, whatever we want, but a plan for us to live in a certain way. It's a plan for us to live a life filled with the Spirit, which means a life that's empowered. That means a life that's beyond human explanation.
If your life can be explained simply by your education, your strength, your abilities, or your family background, it's not beyond human explanation. But when Jesus starts to work, when the Spirit starts to move, you move out beyond that, and it becomes a life beyond human explanation.
On the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, the disciples were filled with the Spirit. And interestingly, in Acts 4:31, it happens again:
"After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly."
The filling of the Holy Spirit is not just a one-time event—it happens over and over again.
A couple of years ago, some young pastors came to me and asked, "What's your secret? We've been watching you for a few years, and every time you go places, things happen. What's your secret? Do you have some prayer thing? Do you fast for weeks before you speak?"
I said no. It's not about anything that I do. It's about what was done to me.
When we first came into this, we had a church in Chicago. We're typical Chicagoans—a little suspicious of things, and for good reason. We had heard about this man John Wimber and this movement called The Vineyard, but we thought, "I don't know if we can trust that." Christians often speak evangelistically and exaggerate. So we sent three of us out to Southern California to check it out.
The first day, we ended up in a small meeting with about 50 people—all church leaders. John Wimber was speaking, and he gave a great talk on how leaders should be servants. Then at the end, he said, "I think the Holy Spirit wants to do something here. Everyone, get up."
We all stood up. He said, "You can relax." Then he said, "You can open your eyes or close your eyes." I opened my eyes—I was there to check this out. Then he just said, matter-of-factly, "Holy Spirit, come."
There was no music, no buildup, no hype. I grew up in a Pentecostal church where you had to work things up to make the Spirit come. There was none of that here. We're waiting, and when you're all standing there waiting, two minutes is a long time. Five minutes is close to eternity. I was getting to the point where I thought, "Yeah, the Holy Spirit is busy somewhere else today."
But then John Wimber said, "Hey, look—see the Holy Spirit coming on this guy." He pointed at someone in the front row. I looked as hard as I could, but I couldn't see the Holy Spirit. I didn't understand that what he meant was: see the effects of the Holy Spirit moving on him.
He went over to the guy, put one finger on his forehead, and this guy doubled over and started sobbing. We went from about to fall asleep to a man doubled over sobbing. Then his wife started crying. Then there was a lady right behind me who started shaking. I didn't understand what was happening—I just thought it was weird.
Right when I was judging her, all of a sudden John Wimber said, "Now receive the Spirit," more forcefully. It was like a fist hit me on the chest and nearly knocked me over. Time slowed down for me.
My first thought was, "I must regain control of my body right away so I don't end up looking like her." But then I remembered: that was real. That was physical. Here and now, real. That was not some emotion or idea floating out there—that was the spiritual realm touching this realm where my body is. It was brute force.
I realized in that moment that somewhere deep inside, I didn't really fully believe the Holy Spirit was real. I kind of thought of Him as just an emotion we get into in the right circumstances, or something theoretical. But this was really, really real. So I repented of my unbelief.
The minute I did, my whole body went pins and needles. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. And when you're standing and can't move, you slowly tip over. My friends caught me and said, "What are we going to do with him?" This continued for an hour—just frozen, pins and needles all over.
Everybody else left. It was just my friends and me. Right at the end, I felt like God said, "I'm not finished with you yet."
A few days later, we were waiting in an auditorium—about twice the size of this room, filled with chairs. Nobody was there. We were just waiting to go talk to someone, and my friend started worshiping. All of a sudden, I felt this wind coming on me. The next thing I knew, my friend put his hands on me, and I lost all strength in my body. I found myself sliding out onto the floor.
When I got on the floor, a rod of fire started moving up and down my body. It got stronger and stronger and stronger—wave after wave after wave. I thought I was going to die. My friends finally left and went to the meeting. Can you imagine? They left me there with God, all by myself. I didn't come out of that for three and a half hours.
From that moment on, things happened. It was what happened to me.
We started going to different conferences, trying to figure this out and how to learn. For about two years, almost every time we went somewhere, something was happening to me. There's this crucial thing: something has to happen to you. He has to get into you. That's very important. Sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes it's a repeated process. But when it comes, you'll never be the same again.
If we want to be filled with the Spirit, we have to submit completely to the Spirit's direction. Paul says, "understand what the Lord's will is"—that is, we are to understand enough to submit to His will completely.
When you read the book of Acts, what you see over and over again is: "So and so, filled with the Spirit, stood up and did this" or "stood up and spoke this." They are doing and speaking what the Spirit is leading them to do with complete boldness. It means you've got to be quick to obey exactly the leading of the Spirit.
If you're to be filled with the Spirit, the degree to which you do not surrender completely to the Spirit becomes the limit to how much you can experience the fullness of the Spirit. To say it another way: if you want to be as full of the Spirit as the Lord wants you to be, then all must be surrendered to Him.
I heard a story about an old Pentecostal pioneer named John G. Lake who ministered in South Africa, a century ago. In the 1920s, all cars worldwide were black—that was the only choice. This man would get dreams and visions about ministry ahead of time. He would see what was going to happen in meetings and then go in and do the things he had seen.
One day, as the story goes, they're leaving the arena where he had just finished a meeting. They're getting into the black car in the late afternoon when a demonized man comes running down the street with a knife, screaming, "I'm going to kill you!"
The people with him thought, "No problem, brother. We'll just rebuke the demon, and the guy will fall down." But he didn't do it. He kept looking at the guy, then at the car, then back at the guy, then back at the car. Finally, at the very last possible moment, he looks at the car, whirls around, rebukes the demon. The guy collapses. The demon leaves.
They asked him, "Why did you wait so long? Why did you keep looking at the car?"
He said, "Because in the dream, the car was red. Just at that final moment, the setting sun hit that car at just the right angle, so the light made the black car look red. That was when I spoke the word."
Now that is obedience under pressure.
When I grew up out west, most of the people I grew up with were cowboys. I did not fit in—there's not an ounce of cowboy in me. But I learned a thing or two.
When they take you on a horse ride, there are easy horses and hard horses. The hard horses will get the bit between their teeth. You have to hit them hard or whip them to turn them. They fight you every inch of the way. But the easy horses—you can touch them on the side of the neck, and they'll turn. The slightest touch will make them turn. They're tuned in to you and serving you.
I said to the Lord, "I want to be an easy horse in Your hands. I want to be able to be turned by You at the slightest touch."
That obedience comes with a fullness of the Spirit that I never experienced before. Coming to that place where You can move me easily and I will respond quickly to Your move leads to greater fruitfulness.
A couple weeks ago, I was at a three-day conference in mid-Southern Illinois, at one of our big Vineyard churches, a couple hours south of Chicago. The first night, we're sitting in worship, halfway through the worship time, when I felt this urge. An urge came over me to leave the worship and go out to the lobby.
I said, "Is that You, Lord?" And I felt like the Lord said, "Yeah. I've got something out there. I'm preparing something out there."
So I got up and went out to the lobby. At first, nobody was there. I saw somebody I knew and talked to them, but then in about five minutes, three young pastors came by who had just finished a 40-day water fast. The Holy Spirit was on them. They took one look at me and started falling down in the Spirit. I took one look at them and saw what God was doing in them. That carried on for another hour as we prayed over them and prophesied over them.
All because of the slightest nudge: leave the worship and go out. Something's going to happen.
If you want to see more of the fullness of the Spirit, this greater, deeper level of submission must take place.
This leads to my third point: eliminate whatever will get in the way of that complete submission.
Don't be drunk. That gets in the way. Don't be drunk with wine—that's going to get in the way. Be wise, not foolish, about how you live. Live in such a way that nothing gets in the way.
Those who pursue worldly pleasures, worldly riches, and power are putting obstacles and impediments in front of the Spirit's work in their lives. Remove those things, and more comes.
But there are other things that are impediments—things that keep us from fully walking in submission and the fullness of the Spirit. Chief among them are:
These keep us from obeying the Lord. He speaks to us, and we sit there debating: "Is that you? Could that really be God? Would God really want to use me? I mean, what about this other thing?" By the time you're finished thinking it all through, you've missed the moment.
I was meeting with young adults earlier, and I said, "You have seven seconds to respond to the Holy Spirit when He's giving you one of those nudges. You don't have time to do all that thinking, doubting, and second-guessing. You have seven seconds, or you're going to miss the moment."
You've got to act quickly, which means you can't have that stuff in the way.
When I was having that fire experience—fire going through my body—something died in me: my fear of man. My fear of what people would say. My fear of being weird. My fear of what people would think.
After the Lord puts His fire in you like that, and you think you're going to die, there's nothing anybody else can do that's going to make you afraid. You have a fear of the Lord that drowns all that away.
It's important to get rid of those things that stand in the way—the things that keep you from being sensitive to the work of the Spirit. When you give way to fear and self-doubt, you're too slow. You miss it. And then you continue to have more self-doubt because you don't get to see the things happen.
How many times have you felt a nudge from the Spirit—a sense that you should talk to that person, go to that place, or contact that old friend—and then you dismissed it? You didn't do it. Those little nudges are not a light thing. They could be life and death. You can't hesitate. You've got to go for it. You've got to be bold.
In the book of Acts, being filled with the Spirit and being bold are almost synonymous. They go together.
For the last 30 years or so, our church has been helping some small Vineyard churches in Turkey—a Muslim country. Everybody in these churches came from a Muslim background, and many have come to Jesus through miracles, deliverances, dreams, and things like that.
Last year—not 2025, but 2024—we had visited them in the spring. Around that time, a young man was converted and baptized in one of those churches. This is a big deal there, because being baptized means you'll be ostracized and treated as dead by your family.
This young man was a medical student going into his last year of study. In the final year, you spend the whole time in the hospital, going around with doctors and other people, getting hands-on practice.
On September 5, 2024, he was in the emergency room. They brought in a woman whose heart had stopped. Nobody knew how long, but it wasn't beating. The medical team worked on her heart with all the equipment and technology they could bring to bear. They worked for 40 minutes and couldn't get her heart to beat.
Then they said, "She's dead. She's probably been dead for the whole 40 minutes. There's no bringing her back." Usually, if the heart doesn't beat within about five minutes, all the other organs start dying. At 40 minutes, they packed up all their gear and started walking out.
He's following all the other doctors out of the room, and there's a nudge. The nudge was simply this: go back and try again, and pray this time.
He says to the other team, "I need to go back. I want to try a little longer."
They said, "No, it's pointless. It's over. 40 minutes—there's no point."
He said, "Oh, I really need to go back."
They said, "Suit yourself, but we're not going back."
He goes back. He doesn't have all the equipment now, but he does chest compressions and prays. After 15 minutes, her heart started. He pushes the button, calls everybody back, and says, "Her heart's beating."
They said, "That's impossible."
"Well," he said, "look at the monitor. It's beating on its own."
They took it from there. I heard about this story the next day, September 6th. I went back on the 7th and asked, "Well, what happened with her? Did she recover? Did she die again? What's her brain function?"
They said they sent her home on September 7th because they couldn't find anything wrong with her.
That's just a nudge. That's how things happen.
That's how it is. Things happen around us. You're just in this place, you get this little nudge, and you obey exactly, right away, in the moment.
When you're overly worried about yourself and how you appear, or concerned about maybe losing your pride, it doesn't work that well. The fullness of the Spirit can't freely flow through you into the people that need His touch.
A lot of our self-doubting and overthinking is really just us being concerned about ourselves: "How am I doing? Am I doing it right? Would God really do something through me?"
When we first started praying for people, one annoying thing was that my hand would shake. It's really not helpful to the person you're praying for when you're trying to lay hands on them but your hand is shaking.
I asked God, "Why is my hand shaking like that when I'm trying to help these people?"
He said, "Because you're thinking about yourself. Power's getting backed up in your hand. If you would focus more on them and forget about yourself, the power would flow through you more freely into them. Then they would shake instead of you."
I tried that out, and it worked really well. So I've stopped giving room to those things. I don't hesitate. I go for it all the time. I try every time. I expect the Spirit to be working through me.
For me, it's like every day: "Okay, what do we got? What do You have for me today, Lord? I'm ready to go. Give me the nudge, and I'll be there. Have the person speak, and I'll be there. Put them in front of me. I'll go for it."
That's the fullness of the Spirit. As we move into those things and put aside drunkenness, worldly pleasure, and those obstacles, and give ourselves fully to Him, we can experience truly the fullness of the Spirit.
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Come Holy Spirit Conference - March 2025
Our theme tonight is be filled with the Spirit. I believe this has always been important, but especially now. I desire to be filled with the Spirit every day, and I try not to waste any time or energy on worry, fear, or doubt. It's all about Him.
The times we live in are more evil than good. I really want to see our younger generations raised up into the Daniels and Esters they may need to be. But how do I help that happen? By seeking them and helping them to be filled with the Spirit every day. This is what Scripture encourages us to do.
I want to look at one of the most prominent scriptures about being filled with the Spirit: Ephesians chapter 5, starting at verse 15. The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus:
"Be very careful then how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to one another with Psalms and hymns and songs from the Spirit, sing and make music from your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
What's most important is clear: be filled with the Spirit.
First, something has to happen to you. There's something that the Spirit has to bring to you. This is why Jesus told the first believers before He ascended into heaven:
"Don't start on the mission. Don't leave home, but wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes. And when He comes, He will bring power."
Jesus has a plan for how we live—not willy-nilly, whatever we want, but a plan for us to live in a certain way. It's a plan for us to live a life filled with the Spirit, which means a life that's empowered. That means a life that's beyond human explanation.
If your life can be explained simply by your education, your strength, your abilities, or your family background, it's not beyond human explanation. But when Jesus starts to work, when the Spirit starts to move, you move out beyond that, and it becomes a life beyond human explanation.
On the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, the disciples were filled with the Spirit. And interestingly, in Acts 4:31, it happens again:
"After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly."
The filling of the Holy Spirit is not just a one-time event—it happens over and over again.
A couple of years ago, some young pastors came to me and asked, "What's your secret? We've been watching you for a few years, and every time you go places, things happen. What's your secret? Do you have some prayer thing? Do you fast for weeks before you speak?"
I said no. It's not about anything that I do. It's about what was done to me.
When we first came into this, we had a church in Chicago. We're typical Chicagoans—a little suspicious of things, and for good reason. We had heard about this man John Wimber and this movement called The Vineyard, but we thought, "I don't know if we can trust that." Christians often speak evangelistically and exaggerate. So we sent three of us out to Southern California to check it out.
The first day, we ended up in a small meeting with about 50 people—all church leaders. John Wimber was speaking, and he gave a great talk on how leaders should be servants. Then at the end, he said, "I think the Holy Spirit wants to do something here. Everyone, get up."
We all stood up. He said, "You can relax." Then he said, "You can open your eyes or close your eyes." I opened my eyes—I was there to check this out. Then he just said, matter-of-factly, "Holy Spirit, come."
There was no music, no buildup, no hype. I grew up in a Pentecostal church where you had to work things up to make the Spirit come. There was none of that here. We're waiting, and when you're all standing there waiting, two minutes is a long time. Five minutes is close to eternity. I was getting to the point where I thought, "Yeah, the Holy Spirit is busy somewhere else today."
But then John Wimber said, "Hey, look—see the Holy Spirit coming on this guy." He pointed at someone in the front row. I looked as hard as I could, but I couldn't see the Holy Spirit. I didn't understand that what he meant was: see the effects of the Holy Spirit moving on him.
He went over to the guy, put one finger on his forehead, and this guy doubled over and started sobbing. We went from about to fall asleep to a man doubled over sobbing. Then his wife started crying. Then there was a lady right behind me who started shaking. I didn't understand what was happening—I just thought it was weird.
Right when I was judging her, all of a sudden John Wimber said, "Now receive the Spirit," more forcefully. It was like a fist hit me on the chest and nearly knocked me over. Time slowed down for me.
My first thought was, "I must regain control of my body right away so I don't end up looking like her." But then I remembered: that was real. That was physical. Here and now, real. That was not some emotion or idea floating out there—that was the spiritual realm touching this realm where my body is. It was brute force.
I realized in that moment that somewhere deep inside, I didn't really fully believe the Holy Spirit was real. I kind of thought of Him as just an emotion we get into in the right circumstances, or something theoretical. But this was really, really real. So I repented of my unbelief.
The minute I did, my whole body went pins and needles. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. And when you're standing and can't move, you slowly tip over. My friends caught me and said, "What are we going to do with him?" This continued for an hour—just frozen, pins and needles all over.
Everybody else left. It was just my friends and me. Right at the end, I felt like God said, "I'm not finished with you yet."
A few days later, we were waiting in an auditorium—about twice the size of this room, filled with chairs. Nobody was there. We were just waiting to go talk to someone, and my friend started worshiping. All of a sudden, I felt this wind coming on me. The next thing I knew, my friend put his hands on me, and I lost all strength in my body. I found myself sliding out onto the floor.
When I got on the floor, a rod of fire started moving up and down my body. It got stronger and stronger and stronger—wave after wave after wave. I thought I was going to die. My friends finally left and went to the meeting. Can you imagine? They left me there with God, all by myself. I didn't come out of that for three and a half hours.
From that moment on, things happened. It was what happened to me.
We started going to different conferences, trying to figure this out and how to learn. For about two years, almost every time we went somewhere, something was happening to me. There's this crucial thing: something has to happen to you. He has to get into you. That's very important. Sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes it's a repeated process. But when it comes, you'll never be the same again.
If we want to be filled with the Spirit, we have to submit completely to the Spirit's direction. Paul says, "understand what the Lord's will is"—that is, we are to understand enough to submit to His will completely.
When you read the book of Acts, what you see over and over again is: "So and so, filled with the Spirit, stood up and did this" or "stood up and spoke this." They are doing and speaking what the Spirit is leading them to do with complete boldness. It means you've got to be quick to obey exactly the leading of the Spirit.
If you're to be filled with the Spirit, the degree to which you do not surrender completely to the Spirit becomes the limit to how much you can experience the fullness of the Spirit. To say it another way: if you want to be as full of the Spirit as the Lord wants you to be, then all must be surrendered to Him.
I heard a story about an old Pentecostal pioneer named John G. Lake who ministered in South Africa, a century ago. In the 1920s, all cars worldwide were black—that was the only choice. This man would get dreams and visions about ministry ahead of time. He would see what was going to happen in meetings and then go in and do the things he had seen.
One day, as the story goes, they're leaving the arena where he had just finished a meeting. They're getting into the black car in the late afternoon when a demonized man comes running down the street with a knife, screaming, "I'm going to kill you!"
The people with him thought, "No problem, brother. We'll just rebuke the demon, and the guy will fall down." But he didn't do it. He kept looking at the guy, then at the car, then back at the guy, then back at the car. Finally, at the very last possible moment, he looks at the car, whirls around, rebukes the demon. The guy collapses. The demon leaves.
They asked him, "Why did you wait so long? Why did you keep looking at the car?"
He said, "Because in the dream, the car was red. Just at that final moment, the setting sun hit that car at just the right angle, so the light made the black car look red. That was when I spoke the word."
Now that is obedience under pressure.
When I grew up out west, most of the people I grew up with were cowboys. I did not fit in—there's not an ounce of cowboy in me. But I learned a thing or two.
When they take you on a horse ride, there are easy horses and hard horses. The hard horses will get the bit between their teeth. You have to hit them hard or whip them to turn them. They fight you every inch of the way. But the easy horses—you can touch them on the side of the neck, and they'll turn. The slightest touch will make them turn. They're tuned in to you and serving you.
I said to the Lord, "I want to be an easy horse in Your hands. I want to be able to be turned by You at the slightest touch."
That obedience comes with a fullness of the Spirit that I never experienced before. Coming to that place where You can move me easily and I will respond quickly to Your move leads to greater fruitfulness.
A couple weeks ago, I was at a three-day conference in mid-Southern Illinois, at one of our big Vineyard churches, a couple hours south of Chicago. The first night, we're sitting in worship, halfway through the worship time, when I felt this urge. An urge came over me to leave the worship and go out to the lobby.
I said, "Is that You, Lord?" And I felt like the Lord said, "Yeah. I've got something out there. I'm preparing something out there."
So I got up and went out to the lobby. At first, nobody was there. I saw somebody I knew and talked to them, but then in about five minutes, three young pastors came by who had just finished a 40-day water fast. The Holy Spirit was on them. They took one look at me and started falling down in the Spirit. I took one look at them and saw what God was doing in them. That carried on for another hour as we prayed over them and prophesied over them.
All because of the slightest nudge: leave the worship and go out. Something's going to happen.
If you want to see more of the fullness of the Spirit, this greater, deeper level of submission must take place.
This leads to my third point: eliminate whatever will get in the way of that complete submission.
Don't be drunk. That gets in the way. Don't be drunk with wine—that's going to get in the way. Be wise, not foolish, about how you live. Live in such a way that nothing gets in the way.
Those who pursue worldly pleasures, worldly riches, and power are putting obstacles and impediments in front of the Spirit's work in their lives. Remove those things, and more comes.
But there are other things that are impediments—things that keep us from fully walking in submission and the fullness of the Spirit. Chief among them are:
These keep us from obeying the Lord. He speaks to us, and we sit there debating: "Is that you? Could that really be God? Would God really want to use me? I mean, what about this other thing?" By the time you're finished thinking it all through, you've missed the moment.
I was meeting with young adults earlier, and I said, "You have seven seconds to respond to the Holy Spirit when He's giving you one of those nudges. You don't have time to do all that thinking, doubting, and second-guessing. You have seven seconds, or you're going to miss the moment."
You've got to act quickly, which means you can't have that stuff in the way.
When I was having that fire experience—fire going through my body—something died in me: my fear of man. My fear of what people would say. My fear of being weird. My fear of what people would think.
After the Lord puts His fire in you like that, and you think you're going to die, there's nothing anybody else can do that's going to make you afraid. You have a fear of the Lord that drowns all that away.
It's important to get rid of those things that stand in the way—the things that keep you from being sensitive to the work of the Spirit. When you give way to fear and self-doubt, you're too slow. You miss it. And then you continue to have more self-doubt because you don't get to see the things happen.
How many times have you felt a nudge from the Spirit—a sense that you should talk to that person, go to that place, or contact that old friend—and then you dismissed it? You didn't do it. Those little nudges are not a light thing. They could be life and death. You can't hesitate. You've got to go for it. You've got to be bold.
In the book of Acts, being filled with the Spirit and being bold are almost synonymous. They go together.
For the last 30 years or so, our church has been helping some small Vineyard churches in Turkey—a Muslim country. Everybody in these churches came from a Muslim background, and many have come to Jesus through miracles, deliverances, dreams, and things like that.
Last year—not 2025, but 2024—we had visited them in the spring. Around that time, a young man was converted and baptized in one of those churches. This is a big deal there, because being baptized means you'll be ostracized and treated as dead by your family.
This young man was a medical student going into his last year of study. In the final year, you spend the whole time in the hospital, going around with doctors and other people, getting hands-on practice.
On September 5, 2024, he was in the emergency room. They brought in a woman whose heart had stopped. Nobody knew how long, but it wasn't beating. The medical team worked on her heart with all the equipment and technology they could bring to bear. They worked for 40 minutes and couldn't get her heart to beat.
Then they said, "She's dead. She's probably been dead for the whole 40 minutes. There's no bringing her back." Usually, if the heart doesn't beat within about five minutes, all the other organs start dying. At 40 minutes, they packed up all their gear and started walking out.
He's following all the other doctors out of the room, and there's a nudge. The nudge was simply this: go back and try again, and pray this time.
He says to the other team, "I need to go back. I want to try a little longer."
They said, "No, it's pointless. It's over. 40 minutes—there's no point."
He said, "Oh, I really need to go back."
They said, "Suit yourself, but we're not going back."
He goes back. He doesn't have all the equipment now, but he does chest compressions and prays. After 15 minutes, her heart started. He pushes the button, calls everybody back, and says, "Her heart's beating."
They said, "That's impossible."
"Well," he said, "look at the monitor. It's beating on its own."
They took it from there. I heard about this story the next day, September 6th. I went back on the 7th and asked, "Well, what happened with her? Did she recover? Did she die again? What's her brain function?"
They said they sent her home on September 7th because they couldn't find anything wrong with her.
That's just a nudge. That's how things happen.
That's how it is. Things happen around us. You're just in this place, you get this little nudge, and you obey exactly, right away, in the moment.
When you're overly worried about yourself and how you appear, or concerned about maybe losing your pride, it doesn't work that well. The fullness of the Spirit can't freely flow through you into the people that need His touch.
A lot of our self-doubting and overthinking is really just us being concerned about ourselves: "How am I doing? Am I doing it right? Would God really do something through me?"
When we first started praying for people, one annoying thing was that my hand would shake. It's really not helpful to the person you're praying for when you're trying to lay hands on them but your hand is shaking.
I asked God, "Why is my hand shaking like that when I'm trying to help these people?"
He said, "Because you're thinking about yourself. Power's getting backed up in your hand. If you would focus more on them and forget about yourself, the power would flow through you more freely into them. Then they would shake instead of you."
I tried that out, and it worked really well. So I've stopped giving room to those things. I don't hesitate. I go for it all the time. I try every time. I expect the Spirit to be working through me.
For me, it's like every day: "Okay, what do we got? What do You have for me today, Lord? I'm ready to go. Give me the nudge, and I'll be there. Have the person speak, and I'll be there. Put them in front of me. I'll go for it."
That's the fullness of the Spirit. As we move into those things and put aside drunkenness, worldly pleasure, and those obstacles, and give ourselves fully to Him, we can experience truly the fullness of the Spirit.
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