Visit to Dudley (part 4)

This is the fourth in my reports on my visit to Revival Fires, Dudley (part 1, 2 & 3).

It's about 10.30pm by the time Trevor Baker invites people forward to receive the 'impartation' - broadly speaking we've had an hour of worship (7.30-8.30pm), an hour of praying for the sick (8.30-9.30pm) and hour of listening to Trevor speak (9.30-10.30pm).

Trevor first invites all those in church leadership positions to come first and line up in front of the stage, because if we 'catch it' our churches 'catch it' too, so up I go. Trevor begins praying for people and down they go. I've closed my eyes, there are too many distractions and to be honest the talk didn't prepare my heart to receive from God, it just didn't help me at all, so I need to fix my attention on God.

A hand is on my head and I get a definite, clear push in my head that makes me take a couple of steps backwards and I feel absolutely nothing (apart from irritation that is). Now, I've had experiences where I've felt it almost impossible to stand in the presence of God, and people use slightly strange language to describe it ('the anointing was thick' or 'the atmosphere was full of the presence of God'). This was not one of those times. So I just stand there and do my best to engage with God.

Because there weren't that many people, people were given time to lie on the floor if they wish and two of my friends I came with were down, and reported that they felt Gods presence and that they believed He spoke with them.

A few days later, I speak with a good friend of mine (an elder in another local church) and he visited Dudley on night 11, his experience was almost the opposit of mine - in that he strongly felt God's presence and that Trevor gave an accurate and encouraging word of knowledge to him, identifying his main gift and calling and speaking into it. So I'm not saying nothing was happening, just nothing happened for me other than I was pushed in the head.

We hang around for a bit, people are on the floor, Trevor is laying on hands (and interestingly again, it is just Trevor praying for people). Then as a group, we ask Trevor to pray for us as a church as we've had a number of encouragements (words or prophecies) about God breaking out in our area. We hold hands and Trevor prays a great prayer, that spoke into many of the things we believe for our church, and as he does so I feel strong sense of the 'yes' of God to what is being prayed and a surge like an electric current passes through me.

One of my friends bursts out laughing and can't stop. We wonder. Turns out, it was because Trevor (in a gentle middle english way) kneed him in the stomach and he found the whole thing uncontrollably funny (which it was) and that just made him laugh rather than sense the presence of God. So we had a good laugh about that all the way home.

We're on the road home about 11.15pm. Tomorrow I'll finish these posts with some concluding comments and thoughts.