Surprised by Pentecost on Pentecost

Gotta share a great testimony from this last Pentecost Sunday (5/31/20). 

This morning I spoke via Zoom to a church in Northern Russia (1200 km north of St Petersburg).  My dear friends David & Zhenya Verly have been pastoring there for several years and she was my translator.  Previously, they had asked me to share some of my recent supernatural experiences.  I was supposed to speak for 30-40 minutes.  So I gingerly unpacked a couple things… and got a little bolder as I neared the end of my 40 minutes.  But my hosts asked me to share another story they had previously heard from me.  Sooo, I get a little bolder. 

Then the Zoom attendees were free to ask questions.  I could tell that they were ‘rising to the occasion’.  There was beginning to be a buzz in the air.  Literally, they were ‘bubbling over’ with smiles, thumbs-up, nods and laughter, as I ‘gave them permission’ to enter new territory.  So, I got really bold and decided to take the big plunge… into a Holy Spirit New Wine fest. 😊 I invited them to ‘have another drink’ of the New Wine.  We all ‘tipped’ the glass and ‘took another drink’… and before long we were in a most delightful ‘out of control’ experience.  God bless my translator… she was overcome and couldn’t translate anymore.  Incapacitated, she just fell backward onto her husband.  Well, he can’t speak Russian, so I just went ahead and facilitated with generic style language – speaking in tongues, hand gestures and “More, Lord”, etc.  Before long I was rolling in holy laughter like I haven’t done in 10 years or more… and the Zoom attendees were too!  So much fun!!!  We were all most pleasantly surprised by the Spirit!  It was a wonderful experience! 

Pentecost was revisited.  Internet bandwidth and nearly 5000 miles of distance couldn’t stop Holy Spirit.  He was going to break out no matter what. 

After things began to simmer down and when my translator was able to regain her composure, I asked them to share what they experienced.  As people took their turns sharing, their testimonies made me laugh and made me cry.  Some were so funny… and some were so tender.  FREEDOM was in the air!!  Needless to say, we were emboldened to believe for more in the future. 

We were all surprised by an outbreak of Pentecost on Pentecost Sunday.  This touched all of our hearts very deeply.  Despite the circumstantial hurdles, Holy Spirit did something with us that we could never have ‘manufactured’ by our own initiative.  It makes us appreciate Him even more.  And so what was supposed to be a 30-40 minute ministry time ended up being 2 ½ hours… and it was ‘alive’ the whole time.   When we realized how long we had been on Zoom, we all had to laugh… and we did.  Needless to say, our hearts were warmly knit together on our first meeting together. 

I’m looking forward to our next meeting.

Several people have said that when they watched this video clip ‘it’ got on them, too.  If you’d like to join in the fun, click here then go to 3 hrs 00 mins through 3 hrs 17 mins – about 17 minutes of Pentecost New Wine fun stuff – joy, holy laughter, etc.

— MLH

Follow-up: After this amazing Zoom experience David & Zhenya sent this amazing God-story:

“One of the ladies in our church showed up in an unbelievers dream, prayed for him and he was healed!”

“Let me start from the beginning.  Our good friend Mark Hendrickson preached an inspiring message to our church in Russia over Zoom a few weeks ago.  He talked about stepping out of the box of our normal prayer life and moving into some new unexplored realms of prayer.  Our church loved his message and immediately put it into practice.”

“Tanya is a massage therapist and typically works with children only.  So when she received a phone call from a gentleman whom she’d never meet asking for a massage her initial response was, “No.”  However, she felt a little nudge from Holy Spirit to help this man, so she said, “Yes.””

“The man came to her office, she gave him a massage and at the end, she asked if she could pray for his back.  He agreed.  She laid her hands on his back, prayed and the pain immediately left.  He was so excited he paid her double for the massage.”

“The man went without pain for about a week, until he woke up in the middle of the night with intense back pain.  He eventually drifted back to sleep.  As he was sleeping he saw Tanya, our massage therapist, dressed in white, come to him in his dream.  She laid her hands on his back and when he woke up the next morning he realized that the pain was gone!  The man was so excited that he called her to tell her what happened.”

“God is doing a new thing! (Isaiah 43:19)” – D&Z

Advertisement