Are You Willing to Look Foolish?
I went through an encounter with God that completely changed my life in April of 2017.
I was directing a global conference at our church in Dallas and really encouraged our volunteers to work in excellence leading up to the conference, but to be surrendered to the Lord if He showed up during sessions. I told them we would be “Martharys.” I would define “Martharys” as men and women who prepare a place for Jesus and others to dine, like Martha did, but when Jesus arrives they sit and eat with Him. Martha had a gift of hospitality, and we were going to serve with all of our hearts. Mary had a heart to sit at Jesus’ feet and forgo everything else to do so. We would take both of these incredible women as examples and serve this way. If someone was working the T-shirt table and the Lord was opening a door for them to meet with Him, they had full permission to sit with the Lord. If someone got upset that the T-shirt table wasn’t being manned while someone was encountering our Jesus, then we would be gracious for their personal deliverance. I am kidding; but seriously, these scenarios bring up a lot in people. Little did I know that I would be one of the people encountering Jesus in an unexpected way.
We had a session where someone had a word of knowledge for a woman named Sheila with flat feet to be healed. No one in the room immediately came to the front when the word of knowledge was mentioned. Then a young man said he had a friend who attended our church named Sheila, so he called her. When he called her (we put her on speaker phone over the mic), a young man at the front who had never prayed for healing for anyone before prayed for her. The funny part is that she was driving and had to pull over because she felt the burning in her feet. She looked down and said through a weeping voice of excitement and awe that arches had been formed in her feet.
I was amazed. Something was different about this healing for me. I had seen and heard about healings before, but I was in awe. Our heavenly Father healed someone’s flat feet through the words of someone who had never prayed for healing for anyone before. Not only that, He did it through the speaker phone and into a microphone in a room full of people for someone who wasn’t even in the room.
I was so blown away by what God did that I felt Him and His presence so unbelievably strong in that moment. It was overwhelming awe. I was sitting next to my boyfriend, who is now my husband, and knew what I was feeling could turn into a very emotional time with God if I gave in. In this moment, I felt Him present a choice to me. It was as if I could choose to lean into this moment with Him or get up and go direct the conference. If I leaned in, it was what I had been praying for everyone to experience, and if I just kept working I’d be giving up a moment I could never get back. In that moment I had no idea the impact my decision to “let go” would produce, but I chose to lean in.
I had so much faith for healing that I ran to find a man in the room whom I knew had cancer. Our church had been praying for his healing for several weeks at this point. I laid at his feet and just wept as the Lord showed me a few things that were really beautiful. I was wailing. This was not a pretty and delicate tear time with God. Nope. If you were in the room that held 600 people—you heard me. I was being shown things in heaven that words didn’t even need to be said for me to understand. It was as if things were being revealed to me in a moment that were so supernatural and peaceful and so divine. I could see the cloud of witnesses and two men who have already passed away, looking at me and sharing the heart of heaven in that moment. They showed me how much more I had to learn in the revelations of heaven on earth. I wanted to know more, and it deposited a hunger in me. They also gave me information and insight that I will always treasure in my heart. When I was done weeping at this man’s feet, I knew the Lord was not done. He presented to me a second time: “Do you want to keep directing the conference or do you want to see more?” After I saw what I had just seen I got up and ran to the back office area and continued to weep. During this whole time it was as if I was the only one in the room and all I could feel was the presence of heaven.
I lay on the floor as though there was heavy weight within me that glued my body to the cold concrete. I was unable to move for three hours. Yes, this even went into the next session time, and I am so thankful that people knew how to step in and help facilitate the conference. You see, there had been many people encountering the Lord in such powerful ways at our church in the weeks leading up to the conference. God was already doing supernatural things through leadership so that it was not unusual for something like this to happen. We had been experiencing a tangible presence of God in the room during our staff meetings. For those reading who may not know what I mean, it was like someone was standing behind us—when you can feel someone’s presence. We could not see Him. However, we could feel Him in our meetings.
There was an understanding that this was God and it was good, so they just let me be so that the Lord could do what He wanted to do. I remember the first part of the encounter I was trembling at the goodness of God. He was physically shaking anything and everything that was not holy out of me. I didn’t even know what all of these things were; I just knew that’s what was happening. His very presence in this encounter overwhelmed me to the point where I was no longer in the room where my body was lying. I was with my heavenly, sovereign, and divine Lord. I was in the presence of the Holy.
There was a moment when I saw Him take my heart out and give me a new one. He gave it to me whole, set apart, holy, and untainted. Completely new—in one moment, I had a new heart from Jesus Himself. Wow. Open heart surgery. He told me that I would need to water it with the Spirit and feed it with the word for it to stay as strong as it was when He placed it within me. A simple blueprint for wholeness.
As the encounter continued, I knew what He was doing in me was not just for me but for anyone who was willing to receive it. He revealed to me and allowed me to see people through His eyes. I was in a place of lightness. It was like a feeling of floating that would describe the beauty of His love. I could feel his pure, kind, and all-believing love for others. He does not look at us and see our imperfections with a notebook taking notes. No, He sees the beauty of our hearts and how He created us to be, love, and do. Even writing about this time with God makes me giggly and in awe. I can feel the joy rising up from deep within me. He really loves us beyond anything we can possibly imagine.
My friend, you are so deeply loved by Jesus. He loves the pure-hearted wholeness that you were made in. He loves you as though you are perfect and blameless and desires to remind you of it daily. Sometimes, the world hands us such darkness that we forget how good we really are.
There were three women I remember coming into the room during this time I was with the Lord. Every time they came close to me He showed me how perfectly whole He created them to be. It was as if we had been so distracted by the tiny things in the world that we had each lost sight of how incredibly beautiful and powerful we are in Him. He was showing me how He loves us as though we had never sinned. If we could see ourselves the way Jesus loves us, our actions and belief system would be so shaken that we would be unstoppable forces of nature on earth from heaven. We would be exploding with love for people and it would be contagious. I knew that if we truly believed what He sees in us then we would walk like Jesus did on this earth with so much love and courage. Signs. Wonders. Miracles. Many of us would be on different paths and careers and operating in deep wells of love for others.
“Many are called but few choose.”
One of the most life-changing things that happened to me in this encounter was when I started to hear, “Many are called but few choose. Many are called but few choose.” I used to think this meant not everyone is called, which confused me. Only “many” are called, and from that many only a few choose Him. I had always hoped I was one of the called ones. However, what God meant by this shook me to my core. He switched it and began to say, “Everyone is called but few choose.” Can we have a Selah moment here for like an hour? You mean that every single one of us is called but few of us choose? Wow.
I began to see people were presented with His goodness every single day in tiny ways. They were presented with His presence at church, and most denied Him each time because they were not willing to lose everything in that moment for fear of looking crazy. They would look at those crying out in the front, the ones who were truly giving Jesus everything, and judge them silently. They did not want to look “like that” and truly believed they did not need what that person was experiencing.
They had everything they needed. A strong business, a flourishing family, all the money they needed, a home, clothing, plenty of food, and they were happy showing up to church and slapping His name on their actions. However, what they didn’t see was that if they were willing to choose Him in that very moment, if they were willing to lose everything right then, they would gain everything. I love what Patricia King says: “God plus nothing equals everything.” It is so true. You don’t have to believe this right now. You really don’t have to believe this just yet. It will never change the truth behind this statement. If we have nothing but we have Jesus, my friend, we have everything. We cannot have this revelation without knowing Jesus.
The ones who were being presented with the presence of Jesus in these moments at church were so desensitized to these moments because they were in the habit of denying Him. They were front row seaters. People of influence. People who had their lives together and said they were following the Lord. They were not truly giving Jesus their everything. If they lost all their earthly possessions, they’d be desperate and a hot mess. I began to weep. Each time I saw the faces of His beloved sons and daughters not wanting to lose it to gain everything, I wept. How could we not choose Him? Father, how could we not choose You? You are so good and everything You have is good. Your path leads to eternal life, but the paths of this world lead to destruction.
“When we are on this broad path, don’t even know we are on the broad path. We become desensitized to the spiritual world and His presence in our lives every day.”
What are we doing if we aren’t losing everything to gain everything? The scary part is most of us, when we are on this broad path, don’t even know we are on the broad path. We become desensitized to the spiritual world and His presence in our lives every day. My hope and desire is to break down the revelations that the Lord has given to me to help us see and taste and know how good the narrow path is. I feel like God gave me a new toy in 2017 and let me discover it with Him. Now He is inviting me to share all of the beautiful details of this new toy He gave me with you. It was just a set of revelations in 2017, but now it is a way of life for me.
Come to God through the narrow gate, because the wide gate and broad path is the way that leads to destruction—nearly everyone chooses that crowded road! The narrow gate and the difficult way leads to eternal life—so few even find it! (Matthew 7:13-14 TPT)
I desire people to choose the Lord, even if it looks crazy or scary when He comes. You know when that “one person” looks silly in service and the judgmental thoughts start coming in, like, “Wow, that’s embarrassing” or “God, please don’t come at me like that.” The list goes on and on, but those thoughts alone can withhold an incredible moment. What if it is God and it’s how He wants to touch your heart? What if that crazy moment could transform your hurt and pain into joy and wholeness forever? What if that one moment could unleash the dreams, desires, and hopes you have for your future and your family? Better yet, what if you letting go in that moment would reveal to you His dreams and desires for your future and your family?
