You know you are Acclimated to Oklahoma when. . .

God's Presence and the Fiery Tongue

After much time in prayer, I experienced what I felt was a drunkenness in the Spirit. It was like a heaviness that made it hard to hold my head up and a loss of inhibitions, although my mind was quite clear. I picked up a long pole that my son had left in the living room. I held onto it so that I would not fall as I walked around the room. After much pleading for assurance that God would give me the courage or whatever I needed to do His will, I heard my spirit, who was standing next to me on my left, say to Him “Yes, Lord” three times. Although I did not hear what God said, I knew that He had assured us. I knew then that I could relax in Him. I fell to the floor.

As I lay on the floor I felt that my tongue had been cut out. As I lay dazed and drunk, I saw a fiery tongue flash across the dark room. In a silly drunken daze I commented to God that He missed me. But then I saw my spirit, who was sitting to the left of me, reach over and grab it and place it where my tongue had been missing. Shortly after, as I lay wondering if this was for real, I sat up and realized that the mist and heaviness in the room was gone. The room had become quite clear. I then knew without a doubt that His presence had been in the room.

The next Sunday, a friend shared with me that being drunk in the Spirit was like an anesthetic for the removal of my tongue and the replacement of the fiery tongue. That next week God began to reveal some things to me. One of the first, was a song He had put on my heart about six weeks prior to that night. It was called “Set my soul afire.” The song talks about putting a burning desire in our soul to witness. I tried for some time to get it off my mind, but eventually felt like God meant it as a prayer for me. The first thing I realized from the song was that God had separated my soul and spirit and secondly that the fiery tongue was placed on my soul. As in the song, He was setting my soul afire. He was renewing a burning desire for those who are lost. Another thing that I realized was that GOD had put the song on my heart and placed it as a prayer. The song was His desire not mine AND He was answering the prayer He had put on my heart.

The next thing that God showed me that week was out of a study that I was helping Shirley Carpenter with. I mistakenly did the wrong chapter, but not according to God. It was out of her book The Rock Garden Locked, a chapter called Chrysolite - A Consuming Fire. In that chapter she mentions Matt. 3:11, where John the Baptist talks of the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Was not God earlier this year leading me to seek baptism? She also mentions Acts 2:2-3, about the tongues as of fire. She talked about the refining fire and consuming fire. Another thing she mentioned in that chapter was that during a study she found out that the word glory literally means weight or to be heavy. Was it the glory of God in the room that made it feel heavy?

Now I can’t say that I truly understand all that nor that I clearly understand what God really wanted me to know from it. But what I do know is that, what happened that night was from God, that it was from His word, and that He meant it as another step in my training for His work. The whole idea of what fire does has opened up a new understanding of God.