Mbostrom2's Blog

“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed out of the hand of the enemy.” Psalm 107:2.

At the time of this writing (2003) I am employed as the administrator of The Church of the Living God in Galveston, Texas. Because I am also an ordained minister functioning as a staff pastor and Bible teacher, I am used often to teach classes and minister when our Senior Pastor Robert E. Dowdy, Sr is gone.

One week I felt very strongly that I was to minister in teaching at the Sunday 10 a.m. service. I went to Pastor Dowdy and told him that I never covet his pulpit, but I felt I had a message for the congregation on the practical teaching to “wait on the Lord”. Pastor Dowdy said he would think about it, but did not give me his answer until the following Saturday night at 8 p.m. I was ready because the Lord had spoken to me, and I obeyed by getting ready with the message.

As I spoke of examples of waiting that the Lord had given me, there was a holy hush throughout the congregation. At the end of the service Pastor Dowdy told the people that we were going to do nothing but wait on the Lord, and if they had to leave they should do so quietly. The praise leader began playing his guitar and one of the singers began to praise, but it seemed out of order in the spirit and they stopped. We sat quietly and waited.

After about 20 minutes, that seemed like hours, a lady got up and brought her child for prayer before she had to leave. Pastor and his wife prayed for the baby. As they prayed Pastor’s wife had a word of knowledge [1] for the mother. The mother of the baby fell to her knees sobbing as God totally delivered her. When that was over we all went back to sitting quietly. God had more for us.

The week prior in a mentor session I prophesied to Stella that she was to be bold when God had something on her heart. I felt God was going to use her in the near future to set someone free. Stella got up during this time of waiting and said, “Someone here feels like there are chains around their mind and they are being tortured. God has shown me who you are and I want you to come forward for God to set you free.” She stood there and waited but no one came. She repeated it and two ladies came forward and were set free from bondage. But she said the person God had shown her had not come forward.

Tosha was sitting with her husband and five children to Stella’s right. The church had been praying for Tosha because she was deeply depressed. We were concerned for her safety and the safety of her family.  Here is Tosha’s testimony as she told it to me:

“This all started when I was 17 years old and had a nervous breakdown. I was put in a hospital and have no memory of that month. I had suffered so much abuse in my young life and at that time I basically checked out and lost one month of my life, walking around in the hospital in a vegetative state. One day I was looking at the television and came back to my senses, wondering how I got there.

At the age of 20, after my first child was born, I received Jesus in my heart in my bedroom and God just showered me with His love. I felt such freedom and love that I have never experienced before. That lasted for a few weeks and then I had distance again from God. During the next ten years I drifted from doing well to going into times of depression. Those times I did not have feelings, just numbness.

The same thing happened in the year 2000 and I went blank for about a week. I was taking care of my children and even went to a Full Gospel church. I found a note I had written during that time in my Bible and it was written so small it seemed like Jiminy Cricket wrote it.

After that I started getting really numb again and thinking thoughts of death constantly. I told my husband to take me to the hospital and he did, not knowing why I needed to go. He did not realize I had plans to kill myself that evening.

In the hospital I got gloomier by the minute. I was in there with many people with a lot of different issues they were dealing with. The only difference between me and them was that I had God in my life and no fear of death. The numbness was so great and thoughts of heaven were getting stronger every day. The pain was so great. I did not love my husband anymore or care for my children. They had me on so much medication that I was more numb than when I began.

Satan did not need to torment me anymore, he had me. I had given up. When I got home I stayed inside my room all the time. I would close myself in my bedroom and would get up and change a diaper or make a meal, but I would get back into my bed right away. That bedroom always had to be dark; I could not stand the daylight or the sunshine because it was so bright. 

If I prayed with my children, it was a cold prayer with no feelings. I pushed everyone away including my husband and my children. I did not want anyone close to me. I did not love and I did not have any feelings at all. I would not allow anyone to love me, no matter how much they were reaching out to me. The chaos in the household was so great because I set a pattern in the house in front of my children. They were always fighting and it really had an effect on my husband.

I had many dreams about having fear of things. I was tormented all day long following a night of bad dreams. The odd this was during the nightmare, if I did pray, the fear and torment would stop there and I would not be tormented after I awoke. 

I found God again in church one day during a song and I began to cry. Finally I felt something! I had feelings again! I began to pray about every little thing. I did not want to lose that feeling of having God again in my life.

One day at church I decided I needed to get rid of this once and for all. That is the day my husband and children wanted to leave and I couldn’t. Something said, “Don’t leave.” My husband needed to leave and the children were cutting up the worst that they had ever done in church, and I couldn’t leave.

Several people came forward, but I knew that the word Stella had was for me. One time I felt like trying to get up and I then had a feeling of being sucked into the chair like at the Astro World ride and could not move. I wanted to get up when she said it, knowing it was for me, but I was in a struggle. I felt like my feet were chained.

Finally, Stella told Pastor Dowdy that she still needed to minister to someone and pointed to me. That was all I needed. Miraculously I was able to get up and I went forward. When she prayed for me I felt like there was a puff of smoke that came out of me and I was free!

The major breakthrough was that Sunday. but I had days of getting more and more relief. In my spirit I had finally found joy and peace. I had searched for this peace for years and had never found it. This peace is a part of me and I have been so happy ever since. I can feel God again! I can hear Him again!

Things that I had gone through had begun to build and build to that point. People that do not have God in their lives have no hope. Fifteen years of my adulthood I had battled depression, but no more. I am free!

I am so blessed to have my husband as my best friend and such wonderful children. God has been so good to me and I will never be the same again. I no longer have a good day followed by bad days. Now I love the sunshine, I love to laugh with my children and husband, and especially being able to praise God again.”

Tosha has not been the same since that Sunday of ‘waiting on the Lord’.  She smiles all the time and there is a sparkle in her eyes and a bounce in her step. That happened over two years from this writing and she is still free. John 8:36 says, “Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

We put aside our agendas that day and followed the leading of the Holy Spirit. What a blessing for all of us. I don’t want to make a doctrine of this subject, but we need to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit in praise, prayer, worship and waiting. Only God knows what we need and the best time for everything.

Jesus appeared to Kenneth E. Hagin, Sr. in 1987 regarding different types of services, and the plan and purpose for each meeting: Believer’s meetings, evangelistic meetings, healing services, teaching meetings, prayer meetings, worship services and so forth.

Kenneth Hagin spoke of believers meetings in his book “Plans, Purpose and Pursuits. [2]  of the time he pastored in Farmsville, Texas in 1939 and 1940. The following are excerpts from Chapter Four, “What’s Your Purpose?”

“We had three sections of seats in our little auditorium. There would be times when the whole congregation just sat quietly, reverencing and waiting on God. Sometimes the Spirit of God would move in such a way that with no pianist or any music at all, the people in one section would simultaneously jump up and start dancing all at one just like someone was leading them!  There was no music and there was no one leading them, but they’d all start dancing just like some Unseen One was orchestrating them. [3]

None of the services were alike. In some services, the Holy Ghost so came into the room and filled with His Presence that nobody moved, nobody said a word. You were afraid to move or speak because a holy awe gripped the crowd. We had no nursery. The babies were in their mother’s arms or asleep on the floor or on a bench. Little children were sitting by their mothers. Yet as we sat in total silence for an hour and a half, not a baby cried, not a child moved. The Presence of God filled His temple. Ohhhhh! You carry that presence with your for months and months. [4]

The following are exerpts from Chapter Eight, “Reverence: Key to God’s Presence and Power.” [5]

We need to learn that when the Presence of the Lord is in a place, we should not dissipate that Presence — that power. Be quiet and reverent and then you’ll see the manifestation of the Holy Ghost that your heart has longed for. You haven’t seen anything like what we will see when the Body of Christ gets to that place of worship. We were in that kind of atmosphere worshiping God in one of our crusades, and there were five people sitting in wheelchairs. Three of them just got up and walked off. No one laid a hand on them. But for that to happen, we have to begin getting into the flow of the Holy Spirit. [6]

However, sometimes when the anointing has come to minister in that office (prophetic), people in the congregation have gotten up and started moving about. The lack of reverence for God moving in the service grieved the Spirit and He left; the anointing lifted from me. I mean, just like a bird sitting on your shoulder, it flew away — the anointing left. And those people didn’t even know it; they went out talking and whispering. Maybe they were in a hurry to leave and get something to eat, but they didn’t know that they had just hindered some dear sick people from being healed — sometimes people with terminal cases. [7]

Several years ago, the Lord said to me, “There is a move of the Spirit of God that will be lost to this present generation unless they are taught and led into it.”[8]

During those times when the Presence of God came into our services, no one moved; an awesome Presence filled the room. I wish I could describe that awesome Presence to you. Some things are just too reverent to talk about and it’s had to find words to describe them. But I’ve seen the awesome Presence of God come in and fill the Temple. I long to see the Body of Christ experience that Presence on a continual basis! [9]

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under  heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

[1] I Corinthians 12:8

[2] Hagin, Kenneth E, Plans Purposes and Pursuits, Fifth Printing 1992 (Tulsa: Rhema Bible Church, AKA Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Inc)

[3] Ibid. pg 45

[4] Ibid. pg 46

[5] Ibid. pg 99-113

[6] Ibid. pg 107

[7] Ibid. pg 108

[8] Ibid. pg 111

[9] Ibid. pg 112