I went to Aurora this weekend for a healing workshop. There are so many things that went on throughout my entire time there that would take too long for me to talk about, so on here I will shorten the experience to this: the prophecies I received (and gave), and a few other direct experiences related with it.
First, to back up a week, at Evanston's own worship leaders' workshop, I received two prophecies:
1.) the word was "Preparation," with the accompanying image from the person that prophesied of me cutting up vegetables for a big food event -- picnic? catering event? party?
2.) another person that prophesied had received an image of me hang-gliding (something I actually want to do someday), and to date I had been jumping off small or medium-sized cliffs. This time I would soon be jumping off bigger and bigger peaks. The spiritual idea that this image centered around was that I would be taking bigger risks and consequently receiving bigger rewards.
So then yesterday before we hit the public areas to go minister to people, we had a few practice sessions in prophesying. We were all divided into 1s and 2s, and at first my half was to receive prophecy and the other half was to give it--but the catch was they had to keep their eyes shut as we "picked" who to pair up with and then listen to their prophecy. The person I received told me that God and I were both -- metaphorically -- pouring concrete into some foundations (goes well with the preparation and bigger risks/rewards prophecies from last week). Then, it was time for me to prophecy to someone completely different, someone I would have no idea to whom I was prophesying to until after I did. I will say it was rather completely petrifying. For the longest time I wasn't receiving any words or images. Then the other person (the person who receives prophecy has to put his/her hand on the prophesier's shoulder) started lightly squeezing my shoulder, kind of as an act of encouragement and connection, and I finally had my clue. I started saying how this person had a huge and wonderful heart, and that God wants to use it more. I honestly had no clue what I was saying. Turned out to be completely right. What? Wow! Man...
Shortly thereafter, a bunch of us hit the mall (after getting lunch first), and a few of us started going around talking to people. It was still a petrifying experience, but after the first couple it felt more like an out-of-body experience. We prayed for one guy's back (to my knowledge, our only real "success" story). I actually reached out to two other people, both of whom had no interest (one of them walked away while I was speaking blessings on him). But the funny thing was, I didn't care. For Jesus says somewhere, "do not be angry at those who reject you, because those who reject you will also reject My Father in heaven on the last day." It's in the Gospels somewhere. But, as I was saying, after these two experiences where all I could do was tell them God loves them, I realized that I actually had no recollection of actually doing it, like I would, say, having a conversation with a friend or two.
Lastly, shortly before the very end of the conference last night, while waiting in line to be blessed by Robby Dawkins (the chief pastor at Aurora Vineyard) and Todd White (the man leading the workshop -- I should write about him sometime soon), I received another prophecy from a guy who happened to standing right next to me. He had received an image of pellets exploding out of a rifle (thanks to Erik, my friend and roommate my first year out of college, who had showed me bullet casings and explained to me the physics of how pellets and bullets leave a firearm, I understood the image). My prophesier went on to explain that I need to go out and prophesy and bless more, and that these pellets symbolized the spilling/scattering of God's words and blessings to all sorts of people all over. Basically I need to grow this prophecy gift more.
Minutes later, after Robby and Todd prayed for me and blessed me, I had this random urge to pray for Dan, my friend with whom I carpooled down to Aurora both Friday and yesterday, which I did. It was after this experience (he said he felt encouraged and more of God's strength as I prayed) that I really felt humbled. For a while now, when I would pray for someone, I would pour my heart into it and make sure to say what I mean and mean what I say, as if the words themselves had meaning. But, as I had realized, I could merely say "heart, heal, God, now, bless" as words by themselves (lame, right? who would ever pray like that?) and God can still work wonders. Conversely, I could cook up a heart-filled monologue and nothing would happen. All in all, it was a weird and humbling experience realizing that, and also a bit of understanding that I actually do need to do this more so I don't feel quite so weird doing this kind of thing in the future.
OK. I have a meeting with the choir director in a half-hour. I gotta run. But sometime soon I will write again. This is quite some God-blessed stuff. Praise the Lord!
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