Once In A Lifetime?

[Via Cassian]

I know what you mean. Sometimes I am humbled at how I experience the presence of God far outside the realms of my imagining. One morning as I was eating breakfast in a BK parking lot, a woman approached my truck and asked if I had 55 cents I could help her with so she could pick something up at the gas station she was short for. I gave her a breakfast sandwich and a 5 dollar bill. My heart lit on fire, I felt it flowing from my heart to my fingertips as I was washed in the Spirit and I was overcome with joy. We both had tears in our eyes. I didn't intend on feeling any such way about it, just fulfilling my Christian obligation, but she and I both had tears in our eyes after that. I told her I love her and God loves her and we went out separate ways. Glory to God.

Interesting, thank you. Your comment, "I am humbled at how I experience the presence of God far outside the realms of my imagining," is something I will be thinking about for a long time. You are so right, these types of events are totally outside the realms of our imagining. As you were thinking one thing about the situation (helping the lady) God is right there doing something more -- making his presence known to you both. Great story -- Glory to God.

And the lady who also experienced God at that moment -- I think your kindness and God's presence has stayed with her too. She will always remember that closeness to God. I know people who are Christians because of such encounters.

Did you impart the correct theology, the full details of correct Biblical analysis, the correct creed? Yeah, I'd say you were 100% spot on!

 

[SingerOfSongs]

SoS,
That feeling is often lost after the Salvation Experience but though we might grow so accustomed to it that it becomes normal, there is, really, no reason to loose it. There is the instruction that we should always remember our first love that is seldom studied but should be studied without end.


When you experienced that love from God you were seeking, pro-actively, to know God in a personal way. I have continued to seek to grow, ever, closer to God since 1/1/'90 and God has continually poured His blessings over me and my family, evoking that warm, cozy, feeling of love, often. To this day my desire is a closer relationship and I am pro-actively seeking Him, still.

Nice to hear, Bill

 

[SingerOfSongs]

When I attended a very small Evangelical church that was not Charismatic in any way we had a fairly steady stream of visiting pastors and missionaries. Once during a Sunday evening prayer session with a visiting pastor who had retired and was elderly, four of us were sitting on metal folding chairs in a small circle. His face had deep lines of a long life preaching the Bible to poor congregations. After our prayers when we were just chatting about the Christian path, the life in Christ, he reached out and put his hand on me. I think in his mind it was just a gesture people often do during conversations -- ie he was not thinking about the laying on of hands -- but that was 25 years ago and I still feel it and remember his face. He is the only such visiting pastor I remember from those years and the only time anything like that has happened to me. Part of what made the event so unusual was that it was so unintentional on his part -- just a passing gesture -- but instantly I said in my mind, "that was the Holy Spirit."

LOL, I bet all the good Charismatics will reply, "see what you have been missing by not attending a Charismatic church that's filled with the Holy Spirit!"

Oops, showing my ignorance here, but without Googling I wouldn't know what 'Charismatic' meant in this sense