Lakeland Revival (florida outpouring) Day 1

It was a long trip through the night Friday night. We arrived in Lakeland, Florida about 11 am on Saturday.

We stopped by our hotel. We wouldn't be able to get into our room until after the meeting that night.

Honestly, that put me in a pretty bad mood right there. I knew check in was at 3pm, but they said it would be 4-5 before they could have a room ready for us. That mean I would be going to the meeting without a shower for nearly two days. That didn't make me happy at all. We stopped someplace to eat, I excused myself and went into the men's room and cleaned up the best I could.

Hopefully, I didn't smell too bad. God used that to give me a little lesson. It was that I would let something like that affect my attitude to the point that I would not be able to receive from him.
So I determined to let it go.

When we got to the arena at about 3pm, there were about ten people there before us. Several people were praying for a lady. She had been deaf for fifty years due to a fever she had as a child. It was interesting, a demon actually manifested. It was cast out. Then the lady could hear. She pulled out her hearing aids and several people tested her hearing, making sure she was not reading lips. Her husband explained how long it had been since she had heard. While she wore hearing aids they were almost useless. She relied more on reading lips than the hearing aids. She began to hear singing. She went up and down the line looking for the source. She couldn't find one. Some speculated that maybe God was letting her hear in the spirit. That is speculation. We don't know. Maybe when God healed her physical ears he gave her spiritual ears. I don't know, but she was extremely excited. She was also excited because she had a numbness in her right foot that she had for years and it went away as well.

Of course I couldn't just keep rejoicing for this lady. One of my pet peeves acted up and it took a fair portion of the evening to get over it.

Everyone we talked to said the presence of God was strongest up front. However, even though people showed up early, the only people that got up front were the internationals and "pastors and senior leaders." So while most folks who were hungry for the Lord waited hours in line, the "pastors" got their own line and got to go in half an hour earlier getting the best seats of course

I could have done that well. I had the necessary "credentials" but I won't do that on principal. There is not supposed to be a clergy laity split. I know the reason for this. The folks leading the revival will say they want to encourage pastors to come, get an impartation and take it back to their churches.

I'm a bit of a skeptic about this. I've seen this in charismatic circles all too often. I think it is designed to bring favor with Pastors so they will 1. support the revival and 2. perhaps encourage them to think of inviting the leaders for meetings at their churches later. I really believe that's what is going on. I hate that. If pastors are really hungry, they can come stand in line like everyone else.

Anyway, I really got ticked off about this, almost to the point of not even wanting to go in. I hate the whole laity-clergy thing that I was quite ready to say the heck with it. I prayed asking the Lord to help me with my attitude. I really felt like he said this wasn't his doing, but there would be no difference between what people received "up front" and what they received elsewhere in the arena. He didn't care where people were sitting. He was after one thing only, hungry hearts. Whoever was hungry would receive.

With that, I was able to enter into the worship. God was true to his word. Some of the young people decided they weren't going to sit on the sidelines, they went outside and started praying for people and laying hands on them. I got blessed in a major way and most of it that night was from young people - kids as young as junior high students who were ministering with power.

Was everything done "of God." - No. Some was flesh. There needed to be some wisdom, but these young people were full of zeal, love, and a desire to see God do great things and God did.

So Day 1 was an interesting day with a lot of opportunities for me not to receive what God had for me. In the end I was blessed.