Attention!

What’s been happening lately? That’s a question that cannot be answered in only a few sentences.

Revival has been compared to a mountain where the Lord resides at the summit. Sometimes the path runs up a gentle slope, but on other occasions it can be steep and tiring. Our church, on the climb up the mountain of revival, seemed to come to a plateau--or at least a place where the ascent was very gradual. It wasn’t that God had stopped moving, but it didn’t seem quite as intense or at least didn’t seem to be growing. At first glance this would seem to be an awful thing to have happen, but God was still working. He was doing an inner molding of each individual’s heart and bringing us to a higher place of maturity. Our focus was taken off of revival and put where it belonged--on the Initiator of revival. It was a time of pruning, strengthening and growing.

Even though God was doing a good thing inside us, we knew we wanted to go higher. The people of our church began longing to see God’s mighty acts. As our hunger grew for the more of the Lord we knew was available, we began to pray with a new intensity. Of course God answered. One Sunday morning, God decided that it was time. Like that Sunday in June when God first poured out His Spirit on us, people again flocked to the altars, crying out for more.

A few months before, it had been prophesied over us that we would become a church of worship. Now, as God poured a fresh rain of His Spirit, this promise began to unfold. God showed Pastor Myers that He was going to use our praise as spiritual warfare. We spent a long time around the altars, as wave after wave of praise was raised to the Throne.

Near what we thought was the end of the service, one of the deacons told Pastor that he believed God didn’t want us to go home that day. Pastor then shared this with the congregation and said that the church would be open all day for prayer. A few people stayed the whole day in the presence of God, while others drifted in and out. The second a newcomer entered the doors, the presence of God hit him like a mighty blast of wind. As the afternoon came to a close, more and more people filled the sanctuary, and as they came the presence of God intensified. Soon, up and down the halls, even in the classrooms, anywhere you walked in the church, you could feel the thick glory-cloud of God’s presence. As you can imagine, the service that night was charged with God’s power. Those who had been to the prayer time felt they had grown by leaps and bounds in those few short hours, and were very prepared for whatever God was going to do. Yet the service was short, for most were exhausted by the intense labor they had engaged in.

Since that Sunday, God’s presence has been mounting. God has been doing awesome things in the lives of individuals. More and more people are getting saved, especially in the Friday evening revival services.

One teenage girl shared the testimony of her experience with God. She had been struggling with depression and had been getting counseling, but things didn’t seem to be improving. Her friend asked her to attend a revival service with him, and although she didn’t know why, she said yes. When the call for salvation was given, she responded. Later that night, when she was prayed for, the power of God came upon her so strongly, she was knocked off her feet. As she lay on the floor, she felt someone holding her hand. She heard God tell her He would guide her and take care of her. When she got up off the floor, she asked her friends, "Who was holding my hand?" They told her nobody had held her hand, and she realized it had been the Lord! She concluded her testimony by saying, "So from now on, Jesus is going to be the main man in my life!"

For many months there was a pastor’s wife who attended the revival services in a wheel chair because she had multiple sclerosis. One Friday night a lady walked up to the front to give a testimony. She began by saying, "I’m the lady who used to come in a wheel chair!" The congregation erupted in praise. Once it had died down, she continued by saying that many years ago the Lord had told her He was going to heal her, but she just kept getting worse. She repeatedly asked Him about it, and one day he told her some changes He wanted her to make in her diet and exercise. Soon her strength began to come back. Now she is able to walk short distances without assistance and has no pain. She is looking to the Lord for a complete healing.

A lady from our church had an ulcer on her leg for three years. She received prayer for something completely different, but the next day she noticed her ulcer was gone. She is a nurse, and one day at work God told her to pray for a patient who was going to have surgery on a possibly cancerous lump. She was having a busy day, but she knew she had to do what God said. She found out the lady was a Christian and just before she went in for a last-minute X-ray, they said a short prayer together. A little while later the doctor called the nurse and said, "I don’t know what happened, but we can’t find the lump! It’s on the old X-rays, but we can’t find it on the ones we took today." The nurse told him, "Well, that woman believes in a healing God." The doctor went ahead with the surgery anyway, but still couldn’t find the lump. It was completely gone.

A family in our church knew a three year old girl who had stomach cancer. Our church prayed for her for about a year and the lump in her stomach shrunk enough so the doctors could remove it. When she was four, the doctors told us she probably wouldn't have any more trouble with cancer, but then they found another lump in her bladder. The little girl's parents came to a Friday night revival service at our church, gave their lives to Jesus, and then stood in proxy for her as Pastor Myers prayed for the cancer to be healed. The following Tuesday she went in for surgery at Mayo Clinic, but the doctors could not find any cancer. Even her scar tissue from previous tumors was gone.

To describe all the miracles and changed lives would take too much space. We have seen a deaf ear opened, diabetes swept away, people set free from demonic influences, and marriages restored. Yet the greatest miracle of all is the 5,000-plus lives that have been saved in less than two years.

Our church is indescribably thankful for all God has done in us. Still, it doesn’t stop here. This is an unending, ongoing story, because we are determined to never go back to what we were, and to keep pressing on to what God wants us to be.