USA Tour: Day Eleven

Another strange day….

We went out for a late breakfast at “Cracker Barrel” which does do some quality American food. Grits with your bacon and biscuits is better than it sounds! There was a whole crowd of us there and the waitress was very patient with the crazies in her nice quite establishment. She had an Easter Bunny hat on with flapping ears – Godfrey was sorely tempted to get one to use during ‘Fly to breathtaking heights’! He resisted though so Nashville will be spared blue and white flapping bunny ears (he’d look right at home at SloshFest though).

Had a very dull afternoon brightened up enormously by a good conversation with my lovely wife via the wonder that is Skype; 1p per minute to the home phone and better call quality than most phones.

Some of us didn’t bother with lunch as the breakfast was so late, however our three drunk ecstatic girls didn’t get out of bed until noon-ish so Dave, Paul and Woody took them out for lunch and they all got so drunk they ended up under the table in the restaurant! Dave was the soberest one there and they had to get a wheelchair when they got back to MorningStar to get them from the car into the building!

The evening meeting seemed a lot tougher than last night. Godfrey led us in declaring out kingdom truths into the land for this area which seems to have a spirit of confusion over it. It’s hard to find your way around by car and several times people in our group have got lost on simple journeys. Even the GPS gets very confused and stalls out with the screen frozen and showing that you driving across fields (on roads that aren’t new) and showing nearby roads that don’t exist! When he declared out that the Lord calls us to be saints not knights there was a bit of a tumbleweed moment! We did break through corporately but not to the level that we had the night before. John seemed unusually sober when he spoke too. There was a feeling of resistance to the wild, free liberty of the Holy Spirit in the place. However the “Wild Bells” song does carry quite an anointing and there was at least a measure of breakthrough – I guess it’s easy to get frustrated when you know what’s possible but not every night can fulfil all your expectations. We did some serious damage to principalities and powers I think, especially when we called for and prophesied joy over the students and the next morning at breakfast we saw a whole bunch of them and a few were clearly under the influence, laughing and shaking.

After the meeting I needed to pack up my laptop, that had been used to project the words, and the cymbals from Charleston so Paul and Trey could take them back with them.

We went out for a meal (and ended up getting all lost and disoriented again as usual) and ended up in Applebee’s. The food I had was good but it was 1:30 by the time we left. When we got back to MorningStar Godfrey realized his rental car key and the room key had fallen out of his pocket. We didn’t know if it was in the car he’d got a lift in (whose owner/driver we had no contact details for!!) or in the restaurant. We called the restaurant and they didn’t know who we were (how could they not remember 16 very joyful Christians causing mayhem in their place??) and didn’t think there were any keys on the floor anywhere. We pondered what to do and decided we’d best head for the place and check ourselves even though it was now closing and we didn’t really know the way very well. We prayed on the way that the keys would be there and the place would be open and we managed to find it with only one minor wrong turn. They had just found the keys when we got there and were about to lock up! This was a major relief. However we got horribly lost on the way back – that gnarly old confusion on the land – but made it back to bed for about 3am.

Dave saw Godfrey and me and said he’d been invited to go to L.A. with John Crowder for three days so we didn’t need to take him to Atlanta in the morning as he’d fly from Charlotte and John Crowder would sort his ticket-change for the flights back to the UK. This was great for Dave and for us as it meant we could head straight for Nashville in the morning and not go via Atlanta, which if you check on a map is NOT en route!

P.S. One thing I forgot to mention about Monday night’s meeting (Day 10) was that while Dave was praying for two girls sat next to each other I joined him and then noticed a man sat a couple of seats down just watching with a mixture of emotions on his face. He was clearly attracted to what was happening but a bit scared too. I staggered over to him and asked if he’d like some prayer but that he was free to refuse if it was all just too weird for him. He said he would so I laid my hands on him and just felt the Holy Spirit wash over us and I started laughing. After a minute or two of this I just knew the reason for the laughter was that he needed a joy infusion. I whispered in his ear “This is my best prayer” and carried on laughing and he got hit. He started shaking and laughing, gently at first and then getting stronger and stronger. I started praying some truths of the fullness of the Gospel over him and we both got thoroughly clobbered. It turns out he was married to one of the girls Dave had been praying for and they’ve been married for four months. I prayed with them some more then got a crazy buzzing noise in my ear, like electrical short circuiting inside my ear canal. I asked if either had a problem with their right ear and the girl, Janet, said she had intermittent buzzing and balance problems. I laid hands on her ears and told the buzzing and balance issues to go in Jesus’ name and called for health and healing from heaven and she then stood up shook her head all around and jiggled about and said it seemed fine. She confirmed at tonight’s meeting that she’d had 24 hours without any problems whatsoever. While I was praying for her husband, David, I’d laid my hand on his knee at one point and when he went to get the car to go out for Pizza he’d run through the building, jumped down some steps and told us when he came back with the car that he’d had serious problems with his knee for quite a while and Janet said he’d limped into the meeting in considerable pain and discomfort. He’d been healed while we were praying or during the worship without him even asking Jesus to touch his knee let alone anyone specifically praying for it! Isn’t Jesus just utterly amazing?