The Day The Bible Came Alive…

The days leading up to this particular Sunday were my “spiritual honeymoon” days. I’ve been in church my whole life: Sunday school, youth groups, choir, dance groups, you name it, I’ve been there but I had never heard of God visiting someone personally. They should talk about that more often because church wasn’t able to change my life but this one encounter with God turned everything around for me. During this season in my life where I was discovering God for myself, I always had this desire to want to talk to the Holy Spirit. I had just read Benny Hinn’s book “Good Morning Holy Spirit” and realized that the Holy Spirit was a fun person to talk to!

Around this time, my family and I were attending Bible studies in the evening. On the Saturday before this day, I just felt like having my own worship service with God in my room on Sunday morning instead of going to church. (Let me reiterate this in case you didn’t read the first blog, we NEED to go to church. It’s important! I just felt that I should stay home on this particular day.)

Anyway, so I decided to skip church that morning to spend time with God alone and then go to Bible Study at night. I woke up around 11am on Sunday and started my worship service in my room. It was awkward at first because I didn’t really know what to do so I decided to follow the order of a church service. After struggling to worship, I stopped and just told the Holy Spirit, “please help me today. I want to worship and just be in the presence of God, but I can’t get there by myself”.

All of a sudden, the presence of God invaded the room. I didn’t have to make any effort to worship anymore, it felt like water just flowing out of me. The air in my room became so thick. The hair on my body was standing up; I got goosebumps all over my arms; I was sobbing uncontrollable and had no idea why; worship was just flowing out of me with new songs I have never heard before just coming out of my mouth! It’s like everything around me disappeared in that moment and I was no longer in my room!

I don’t remember how long I lasted in worship (which eventually led into prayer) but after I was able to control myself, I decided to do some Bible Study. I took my Bible, a notebook, my mom’s Bible dictionary, laid them all out and said, “Holy Spirit, teach me”. I think He had been waiting for that moment because at that moment, I feel like the Bible came alive in my hands. I am not sure how else to describe it. Mind you, I have read the Bible countless times in the past, but this day was different to say the least. I can’t tell you where I started and where I ended because the Bible felt like a puzzle.

I would read a passage and He would give me a revelation about it that connects it to another passage and from that next passage, I get another connection and I was just going from verse to verse! It felt like a huge puzzle coming together and passages that I thought were contradictions this whole time began to make sense! It wasn’t just “reading the Bible” in that moment, it was like walking through it with words coming alive and with the Holy Spirit as my guide telling me “this means this, and this is why He said that”! It was my first time being taught directly by the Holy Spirit and I had never been so excited to read the Bible.

To end my worship service, I decided to do sing some praise songs and dance. Once again, I prayed “Lord, release your angels to come and praise you with me” and when I tell you that I was no longer alone in my room, I kid you not! I recognized the presence of the Holy Spirit that had been there the whole time but now it was like that bubble of joy I was feeling inside had been popped in the atmosphere in the room and the room was filled with angels! Although I could not physically see them, I could feel them dancing around with me! I imagine this must be what heaven is going to be like because I had never experienced anything this before. I will let you guess what Bible Study at church was like that evening!

The shocking part in all of this for me was that it felt like I had been laying there worshiping and going the Bible for about 1 hour but when I looked up it was almost 6pm! The moment when I knew that the verse that says “the Word of God is the bread of life is true” was when I got up from my study and physically felt full! I felt like how you feel when you just came back from the Chinese buffet…physically! I hadn’t even gotten down from my room to grab a sip of water, yet I was physically aware of feeling full like I just ate a whole meal! At this moment, an uncontrollable joy (like the uncontrollable cry earlier) filled my belly. This is not the simple, I am happy or excited type of joy. This came from such a deep place in me and felt like it was a bubble of joy just sitting in my belly (I am really trying to find the words here). It stayed with me for days!

This experience helped me realize how close God is to us and how eager He is to spend time with us if we would just be available. Imagine if we experienced God like this on our own everyday and then we went to church on Sundays with everyone bringing that presence from their quiet time with them! We may never leave church! And believe me when I say, you wouldn’t even notice the clock ticking! Go ahead, try it!

Matthew 4:4

But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”