"The Presence of the Lord"
In the summer of 2006 my wife surprised me with a ticket to the Promise Keepers men’s event in Dallas Texas. It so happened that my wife and my friend Mickey’s wife had got together and decided to buy
Mickey and me tickets for the event, and a week before the event they surprised us both. My wife Liz was so excited when she told me about what she had done. She told me that Amalia (Mickey’s wife) had
got Mickey a ticket too, and sparkled as she told me how hard she and Amalia had worked to get us the tickets.
I smiled and thanked her, but she sensed that I wasn’t truly happy about the gift. I tried to explain that while I thought that Promise Keepers was a great organization and that I believed it was good for
Christian men to attend these types of evens, I had never personally had a desire to attend one of their events. Needles to say, Liz was disappointed. She slightly frowned and looking downward told me she
would try to get her money back.
Feeling like the jerk that I was, I told her to not return the ticket. I assured her that I was sure that once I was there that I would enjoy myself and receive spiritually from the event. The truth is, for the next
week I dreaded every moment just knowing that I had to go. Funny thing is, Mickey felt the same way as I did. It wasn’t that I had anything against the Promise Keepers, or any of the men that attended their
events. I just didn’t feel any desire to attend. I couldn’t think of anything that would happen there that I had not previously experienced at other men’s conferences or fellowships that I had previously
attended, and Mickey felt the same way, and we felt that if we would have to suffer so...in the name of Christ...that my brother-in-law Bill should have to suffer too, so we invited Bill to go with us.
True to womanhood, my sister pressured him to attend with us.
Mickey and I both agreed that we owed it to our wives to attend the conference and humbly considered it a formal spiritual sacrifice that we would ever so piously commit to please our wives. Surely the Lord
would be pleased by our piousness.
Day 1:
The first day of the event, Mickey, Bill and I drove to Dallas to pick up our tickets and waited in lines that seemed to circle the convention center endlessly. It was so hot that day. The temperature seemed to
hang somewhere around 100 to 200 degrees with a relative humidity of 105% or greater. Seriously, it took us around two hours to get our tickets from will call.
We finally got inside and got our seats and then spent the next hour getting drinks and food. When the show started, the lights went down and some guy started speaking. I couldn’t tell you how many
speakers there were that night or what any of them spoke about. I simply can’t remember. I guess no one man spoke to my heart. I should be ashamed to admit this.
I should have better listened to each of the speakers if for no other reason, out of respect. I believe that the speakers all have a heart for the Lord and I’m sure that he blesses each of them. I have no doubt
that there was knowledge that I could have obtained, both intellectually and spiritually.
I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful and I didn’t go in with a bad attitude. In retrospect I see that the Lord moves on those he calls His children in His own ways.
In my life, time and time again the Lord has turned the negative things in my life around or made them of use to others, or simply opened my heart and mind to glean from those negative events.
I want to be clear that even though it may be to my shame, I am at least being truthful…I didn’t personally receive a thing from any one speaker there that evening…but others did.
Near the end of that first evening, one of the speakers gave a “Alter Call”. This is where a speaker will ask the audience if anyone would like to come down and give their heart to the Lord and receive Christ
as their salvation. Most people experience this at most services in their home church. Usually one or two people will come down and give their hearts to the Lord, but this particular night was different.
Again I say, I don’t remember what the speaker had been talking about or the men before him. Their words went in one ear and out the other, but when the last speaker asked if anyone wished to come
down and accept the Lord as his Lord and Savior, ten or fifteen men came down. Then ten or fifteen more came. Then twenty or more came down and they just kept coming.
I can’t describe the feeling that came over me. I felt as if I was alone. A spectator, in a distant place. A voyeur to a scene that I was not a part of.
The American Airlines Center is a large sports arena with 150,000 square feet of floor space. There were near to twenty thousand people at the event that evening and for thirty minutes they continued to
come out of their seats from the highest rows to the lowest. As a spectator, they appeared to flow out of the isles like streams of water, flowing down a mountain. The Spirit of God came over me and I stood
for the whole period and breathed it all in. I still cannot find the words to express the feelings that came over me. I felt as if I had been given a gift from God Himself. As if he had placed me on the mountain
and allowed me to watch His Spirit flow down the mountain like great streams flowing in the form of His Children. I don’t know how long I stood there. I kept slapping Mickey on the arm saying ”look at
them…do you see them all…they just keep coming…do you see them?”
All the way home that evening all I could think about was the image of all of those men flowing down the mountains like streams of water. All of those men being set free from whatever thing was binding
them. Streams flowing into the ocean, where all of the waters merged together to become one great body of water.
I saw how when we join the family of God, we for the first time, become part of a greater community. Not black or white, or brown. Not Baptist, or Catholic or Episcopalian. Not American or Canadian, African,
Arabic or Chinese. We become Christian. Children of the One-True-God. One great family that serves, worships and honors God through Jesus Christ His Son.
The Triune Spirit.
God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit.
I was blessed to be a witness to the Presence of the Holy Spirit moving through the men whose hearts were change in one night.
Day 2:
On the way home the first day of the conference, Bill decided that he wasn’t going to come back the second Day. Mickey and I made plans to meet at the train station by our office the morning of the second
day and ride the train to the conference. We arrived downtown by about 10:00 AM that morning and ended up with seats up in the nose-bleed section. This day my attitude had changed. I was cocked and
primed to absorb everything the Lord had to offer.
Again…I couldn’t tell you how many speakers there were that day or what any of them spoke about. I simply can’t remember anything about the individual speakers or what they spoke about.
What I do remember is Lincoln Brewster and his band, and one point where one of the speakers asked us all to pray for each other. These two events were burned into my memory and I doubt that the
memories will ever fade.
We had listened to several speakers and the only thing that grabbed me was a NOOMA video. I had seen a couple of them before, but I especially liked this one.
Then came Lincoln Brewster.
We he came out on stage he stated that they had flown in from Chicago earlier that same morning and that unfortunately he was sick, but promised the Show that he would still perform. He went on to
promise us, the audience, that he would do his best to give us a good show…and so he did.
He started off upbeat with “All to You” and “You are Good” that was filled with (what I now know as his style) his fast rolling and smooooth, guitar licks. The guy really rocked the place, but after a few of
these upbeat songs he moved into some worship songs, but when he sang “Another Halleluiah” and “Surrender”, the whole auditorium enter into the presence of God.!
During “Another Halleluiah” the air felt heavy all around me. All of the musicians had stopped playing and everyone in the auditorium was singing over and over again “Halleluiah… Halleluiah… Halleluiah…
Halle-lu—iah”. I know that with my writing skills, there is no way I can properly describe what actually happened.
It was all men’s voices. The sound was deep and full bodied and more in tune than I imagined possible. It was if Angles stood at the feet of God and sang their hearts out. In the middle of this heavenly
chorus, I opened my eyes and looked around me and it appeared that every man in the place was on his feet, eyes closed, head tilted back with arms raised towards the Father.
They say that the American Airlines Center’s capacity is from 18,500 persons to 21,000 persons depending on the event.
I’m not sure what the capacity of the Promise Keepers event was, but it appeared to be full that day and every man was worshiping God during those couple of songs.
Since 1983 I have been playing guitars with the band in one church or another, and always considered it an honor and loved every moment of it, but the thing I’ve always loved most is the ability to watch
people worship from the stage. To look down from the stage and see someone with their hands in the air and worshiping the Lord in song has long “filled the oil in my lantern”. I cant explain the feeling I
experience watching that.
This particular day that Lincoln Brewster was leading us in worship was like multiplying that experience by one thousand.
I looked around the entire auditorium several time to see that same sibilance of worship going on, but with tens of thousands of voices. I physically felt the worship of each man.
And in a similar way, a couple of hours later, one of the speakers asked, if any men needed prayer to stand up. I sat and looked all around the auditorium and randomly throughout the entire place, men
stood up. They were like lone trees in a vast plain. Then the speaker asked us all to find one of those brother closest to us and asked us to pray for them.
There was a man that sat down to my left, one row below me and he was immediately circled by other men. One young man about seventeen or eighteen jumped a couple of rows to lay hand on this guy,
and the man that had requested prayer covered his face with his hands and wept while others laid their hands on him and prayed.
I looked around me, and all around the auditorium were pockets of men, like the one before me, groups of men praying for one another. Yet another awesome moment.
I should only be able to say with shame that I can’t remember any of the speakers or what they spoke about. I wasn’t, not listening, and I’m sure many men received from these guys, but I truly believe that
what God had for me those two days was the experience of His presence, His effect on others...on a level that I never had conceived of before.
The Summer of 2006, I experienced the Presence of the Holy Spirit, stood in awe, and still today…stand in awe!
Bryan Woods
2008
|
|
