New Life in Christ! July 26, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in House Church, personal, testimony.Tags: House Church, new believers, new Christian, testimony
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I just had to come and let the blogging community share in my joy! “There’s a new name written down in Glory, and it’s mine, oh yes, it’s mine!” Ok, well, it isn’t mine, but you get where I’m going…
I was speaking for a little while with a friend of mine, Clairmont Trotman, who I’ve been encouraging in the Lord. I met him as I was asked to assist in a deliverance session a couple months ago. Afterward I was encouraged to follow up on him, as he had not yet found a church. I decided to call him about three weeks ago, and we made arrangements to meet and visit with the rest of my house church. We went to a lime hosted by one of our members last Saturday, and he got a chance to meet some of the church.
Tonight was supposed to be our men’s night – where the guys come together for accountability and male bonding time. The other guys didn’t make it out, so it was just Clairmont and myself – but the Word says, “Where the two or three are gathered, [Christ] is in the midst.” Isn’t that the truth!
We watched “Evan Almighty” – where a US congressman is selected by God to build an ark – literally! He was praying for God to help him “change the world” – and God certainly helped him do that! It was quite funny….
But this movie is impactful on so many different levels. It really shows one man following his convictions even although everybody thinks he is crazy… including his wife! He sticks to his guns – that God has called him to build an ark to save the people from a flood – and one comes, but not from rain…. (no, I’ve given enough spoilers – watch the rest yourself!)
After the movie, though, I asked Clairmont what he thought it was saying. I said, “Church started the time you got into my car: ‘where the two and three are gathered….’” He got quite emotional as he explained that he felt that the movie spoke to him about God’s imminent return, how there’s not much time left. He spoke aobut his past sins and mistakes, and I told him that God can remove all of them – in fact, he already has through the Blood of Christ. From a ’secular’ movie, God’s Holy Spirit spoke to a young man, who knelt on my living room floor and gave his life to Christ…. but it gets better! I prayed over him and then read a passage from Frank Perretti’s book “Piercing the Darkness”, where the main character comes to salvation and the angels are shown to rejoice as Jesus himself appears to take her sins away.
We had a meal together – man I love my wife’s cooking – and we just had a good time relaxing… I told him about our church and showed him pictures of some of our members. We talked about getting him a Bible – he doesn’t have one of his own – and then I quoted from Acts 2. I was trying to give him a context of how we operate as an assembly at SHARP ( read Acts 2:41-47.) I started to quote from the beginning of Acts 2, and while I was making reference to the Holy Ghost coming onto the believers in the upper room, Clairmont suddenly exclaimed, “I can feel the Spirit!” I said “Great!” and immediately laid hands on him, praying aloud that as I read the Scriptures aloud over him that the Holy Spirit woud really get ahold of him. I quoted the beginning of Acts 2 up until the believers had received the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and where Peter had quoted the prophet Joel. (Acts 2:14-21)
At that point I got expressly personal, putting Clairmont’s name into that prophecy from Joel, calling on God to pour out his Spirit on Clairmont… and watched as Clairmont started to shake! I told him if he heard any words that weren’t English in his mind that he should say them out – and he started speaking tongues immediately! MAN! How AWESOME is GOD??? We spent some more time as I kept asking God to fill up Clairmont in every area, and I found myself holding his hands and speaking the power of God into them! I rebuked the demons of suicide and death and commanded them out as well….
PRAISE GOD! He’s all excited now, and he wants to get baptised…. I can safely echo Peter in Acts 10:44-48: especially vs 47, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” Just praise the Lord with me!
A Normal Church July 25, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in House Church, personal.Tags: city wide church, House Church, normal church
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(This text is lifted from this website – I loved this article so much I decided to repost it here… but it’s so LONG (6 pages long when I printed out the article in Word) that I decided to whet your appetite with the first ‘page’ and put a link to the rest of the article here.)
There is a story about a city. There is only one church in this city. In this particular town, there are anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 people who are all part of the same church. This is an entire network of Christian people.
The fellowship they have with one another is completely overlapping. Every person does not know or fellowship with every other person, there are too many people for that to happen. But everyone knows and fellowships with someone, who knows and fellowships with someone else. The entire church meets and gathers in homes, in parks, in various restaurants for lunches and coffee, and often you can find them at the nearby lake for weekend camping. This vast network of people are gathering together and sharing life together in many different ways.
Seven days a week, during any evening, you can visit a number of homes in this town and find Christians gathered together. There are meetings and gatherings every single night, and you are welcomed to go to any one of them, at any time you want. They are worshipping Jesus in these meetings. They are sharing, praying, teaching, operating in their gifts, and intensely supporting one another’s personal lives.
Besides the daily gatherings, about once a month, the entire church gathers together outside at the city park for a giant picnic. This scene is incredible. There are people scattered everywhere throughout the city park. The park is completely full of people. There are, what looks to be, 2 acres of table cloths and blankets spread all over the ground. Everyone brings their own food. After a while, everyone begins to move into groups of 10 to 20 people to visit and pray for one another. This all day meeting in the city park starts around 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. By 6 p.m. that evening, it is still going strong.
At 6 p.m., around dusk at the park, there are still 10 or 12 Christians gathered around and talking while on the tail gate of a pick-up truck. There are also 8 or 9 ladies sitting in lawn chairs together nearby. There are still children running and playing. For the last couple of hours, there has been a children’s game of ball over at one end of the park with about 15 adults standing around visiting while the kids play.
When this monthly, city wide church meeting in the park is over, everyone goes back to their homes to resume their weekly activities of work, family time, and church life all during the week.
There is nothing to identify this vast network of Christians, other than the relationships they have. There is no name for this massive group. There is no sign posted anywhere. There is no building. There is no leader. But many people lead….
(If you’ve read this long, and you want to read the rest, don’t bother going back up to the top… just read the rest here! I do think about my readers!)
Memory Mondays July 21, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in personal, testimony.Tags: Christianity, deliverance, Holy Ghost, memory monday, personal, reminiscing, supernatural stories, testimony
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I’m going to go along with some of the things I’ve seen on some of the other blogs I frequent for a while. I’ve seen many bloggers create themes around their daily blog posts, and although I don’t think my shedule can handle a daily schedule just yet, I will endeavour to at least give a supernatural story from my days at college and or university every Monday…. let’s see how it goes….
I can remember one UCCF retreat where we were in another period of prolonged worship. The manifest presence of the Holy Spirit was evident – most of us were kneeling, some crying and all singing. The volume had been steadily building until it was a crescendo – forty young people all alone in this house, glorifying God.
One of the guys had spontaneously started to speak in tongues. Now for me, this was still all new, but by this time it was a joy to hear the ecstatic tongues coming forth from a heart of worship! But then, it happened….
His voice changed. It wasn’t his anymore. It got low, and gutteral. I was in shock! I turned, looked at him wide eyed and shouted, “What the hell was that?“ The guy manifested all on his own, became extremely strong and potentially violent. He rushed away from the main room towards the bedrooms, and everyone started running in the opposite direction! Everyone, that is, except me and the girl I spoke about in my last couple of posts who had also been filled with the Spirit just two days earlier.
Now, I had never seen a demon manifesting. I had only been exposed to the possibility of it through reading the Bible. A lot of the other people there had grown up in Pentecostal assemblies and at least had been taught about possession etc. So why are they the ones running in the opposite direction? It never occurred to me to ask – I just acted. (There’s that child-like faith again!) We ran towards him and started binding up the demon, and then some others came to help. It took about six of us to pin the guy down, and a couple of us started to command this demon to come out in Jesus’ name. The demons were stubborn, and wouldn’t move. Suddenly, the gutteral grunts gave way to a cultured English accent! The demon said his name was Nathan, and that he wasn’t coming out. We commanded and bound, but he wouldn’t leave. I got so mad at that demon at that point that I started pounding the guy on the chest, commanding him to leave! He started to say, “You’re hurting him!” but I responded with, “You’re a liar! Come out!” (Personal note – I wouldn’t hit anyone in my current deliverance ministry! I didn’t know any better at the time!) 
While this was going on, the rest of the group was outside, singing about the Blood of Jesus. One of the girls had the idea to anoint everyone there and pray for their protection. They only had a small bottle of baby oil, that was only about half full when they started to pray. After the room and about half the group was anointed, they realized that the oil was almost all used up! They all gathered around that bottle and cried out to the Lord, “We don’t have any more oil, and we’re not finished! Please don’t let the oil run out!” And then an amazing thing happened…. when they were pouring out the last drops of oil, and anointed another person – the oil was supernaturally replenished! The level of the oil in the bottle rose back up to the same amount each time it was used up – enough to anoint three more people! It kept doing that all night! We all clustered around that bottle after the deliverance session, just pouring out the oil time and time again just to see the bottle fill back up! In fact, the oil supernaturally reappeared a year later as well, but that’s another story for another week….
By the way, we did not get the guy fully delivered that night, but we got him back to himself that night; he was delivered the next day in another power encounter at the church we went to after the Sunday service. (Yet another supernatural story for another time…)
Partners! July 18, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in personal.Tags: Christianity, Kingdom, partners, praise
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God … is amazing.
I’ve been helping a friend of mine with some issues as it relates to her business ideas and home life. She’s been struggling to keep up with two jobs, studying and raising three children. In the midst of all this, her business was not getting off the ground, and old partners were threatening to sue. She left her stable job in teaching to follow this dream, as she is convinced that God has led her to do it. I’ve been supporting her and encouraging her when she wanted to cry, when she was struggling to still believe that God called her into starting this business…
She was seeking someone to partner with her, and after being run around and scammed by unscrupulous people, she has finally gotten an offer from a Christian businessman who has agreed to come on board, potentially invest and help her get her business off the ground.
Now, after she’s finally gotten her answer from God, that YES, he wants her to start this business, we were talking about dreams and aspirations.I mentioned that I’d love to fly all over the world, seeing the kingdom of darkness demolished – one freed soul at a time. She asked, “That’s your vision?” When I answered in the affirmative, she said – without hesitation, “Then I’ll be your partner in ministry.”
I was blown away…. I was thinking a couple weeks ago that I need some sponsors – some people to help me when I have to travel. I hadn’t shared this with anyone: and now, here she is offering support! She said her business idea was birthed from God, and it is meant to sow into Kingdom initiatives…. so, my prayer for partners was answered without being communicated to anyone, except my Heavenly Father!
Partnership with God is essential in any Kingdom initiative – it is his Kingdom, after all – but as Ecclesiasities 4:10 – 12 says:
10 If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?12 Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Reminiscing – 4 July 17, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in personal, testimony.Tags: Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, reminiscing, retreat, testimony, UCCF, worship
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The best thing about my UCCF days were the retreats! Every UCCF’er knows what I’m talking about…. young people in a remote location for a couple days (usually a week) to seek God and fellowship with each other. And every retreat was a God encounter! We met God in powerful ways every single year!
One staple of UCCF retreats for me was the protracted periods of worship! We’d start, and just sing and sing and sing …. until God would just come and break out among us! Take into consideration – we are from different denominations, with different belief systems, but ALL united in one accord under our love for Christ! I can sooo relate to the Upper Room experience, where 120 disciples were in one place in one heart and mind, and the Spirit of God was released on the entire assembly!
There was one time when we were singing together, and when God came in, things just got wild! (As it often does!) I can remember while worship was going on having spontaneous deliverances happening – one girl was curled up in a fetal position (she was one of the most composed people I know, naturally, so this wasn’t like her) as she was reacting to the death of her father years ago. After she received prayer, one of the other girls, Kerrie – who had recently come to Christ – just spontaneously got filled with the Holy Ghost! She was dancing a dance that some had said was one from Israel…. and her mouth got filled with ecstatic tongues – first French, then Spanish, and then some form of Aramic or something… (so said one of the most widely read girls in the room!)
That happened on a Tuesday. The next day, Wednesday, Kerrie comes to me and says, “I want to worship!” Me, I’m all for worship, so we go into the girl’s dorm with two other girls and we just start to sing. After a while, people start trickling into the room… until every person at the retreat was in there (all 40 or so of us!) worshipping the Lord. Then the presence of the Holy Spirit intensifies and as we dance, people fall out under the Spirit spontaneously! (I can remember one time hearing a loud BANG – one girl had fallen out and hit the door, so she was sprawled out under the power of God, and the noise was the door slamming open and hitting the wall!) The president of UCCF at the time, Natalie Roach, was like a doctor in an emergency ward – or like a policeman directing traffic! She was directing different people to ‘Pray for this girl here’… ‘Lay hands on this guy here…’, so although it looked like bedlam, everything happened in a Holy Spirit rhythm!
I remember seeing Lambert getting hit with the power of God, and he’s down on the floor, jerking periodically as though he’s being shocked! I remember tongues flowing, spontaneous prophecies about grades – “I see “A’s”!” (A lot of the participants were going to do A’ level exams when school started back – and they did get A’s, a lot of them!) I remember Graham begging to be prayed for, but Natalie was directing him all the time to go to this person and then the next…. it was just AWESOME….
Finally it died down… the heavy presence lifted. I remember Dawn was asking, “Ok… that was wonderful! Who’s going to make lunch?” It had felt like we were worshipping for one hour. When we went outside – we were all stunned!
We had started at 11 AM. It felt like it was one hour…. but actually, it was dark outside. The clock was going on to 6 PM. We were worshipping for SIX HOURS.
Reminiscing – 3 July 14, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in personal, prophetic, testimony.Tags: baptism in the Spirit, prophecy, testimony, voice of God
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I’ll tell you next how I came into the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Most of my close friends have heard this story already…. but I thought it was a great place to go with my reminiscing posts as it follows directly from the last one, where I was first exposed to tongues in Kingdom First International.
Anyway…
Anyone who’s been reading this blog for any length of time realizes that I’m prophetic. However, I didn’t know it at the time of this story… I grew up without being taught at all about spiritual gifts, and so had never heard about the concept. That being said, I found that whenever I would talk to the Lord, I would feel him respond: thoughts would enter my mind that were not my own, and that answered my questions or comments in such a loving and positive way that there was no way, in my mind, that this could be wrong. In fact, I did not even contemplate the idea that Satan could be speaking – I had the faith of a child: I’m speaking to God, so he’s the one responding.
So, there was this one day during a weekend where I said to the Lord, “Lord, I’m bored. I want something to read!” I immediately heard, “Ok. 1 Corinthians 12.” Not ever having read that Scripture before, I immediately got out out the Bible and read up – “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I would not have you ignorant…” I realized in a flash that the ‘gibberish’ that I heard at the church was actually tongues! It also dawned on me in a flash, as I told God, “This tongues thing seems to be a more intimate way to speak to you!” I excitedly said to God, “I WANT THAT!”
After finishing the chapter, I was all ready to do something else, but God had other plans.
“Go to chapter 13,” he commanded. “Okay…” I responded.
Now this chapter I knew about – the love chapter! But reading it in context with chapter 12… ‘Though I speak with the tongues of angels…. ” BAM! There’s tongues! I had never noticed before, but chapter 13 deals with love as the undergirding reasoning behind using the gifts! wow!
I was trying to shut the Bible and get to doing something else, but again I heard the voice of the Lord: “I’m not finished yet. Go to chapter 14.” Now I’m starting to get itchy for something else to do, so I complain: “L-o-ord! (drawn out complaining whine) I wanna do something else!” But again he said, “Go to chapter 14!” And so I do. That chapter deals with tongues and prophecy, and when I read Paul say, “Earnestly desire the best gifts…I would that you prophesy…” I said to the Lord, “If that’s in there, I want that TOO!”
So fast forward to a month later. I’m in Sunday School. The session is finishing, and the Sunday School superintendent is saying, “Let’s finish with the Lord’s prayer…. (unison) Our Father, who art in heaven…” As I’m following her, I know I’m saying the Lord’s prayer, because that is what I’m forming in my mind and opening my mouth to say – but what comes out is some other tongue. I only recognize the last word, “AMEN.” It took me a little while before it dawned on me, “You got it!” And then I was running all around the room in excitement. From there started my whirlwind adventure with the Lord!
Reminiscing – 2 July 11, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in Uncategorized.Tags: BCC, testimony, UCCF memories
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At UCCF I was exposed to people my own age – 17, 18, 19 at the time – who were intensely in love with Jesus Christ. I was blown away! This wasn’t just some church group, where you could tell half of the youth were forced to be there by their parents and they’d rather be in bed! This was a group of young people who enjoyed the presence of God! I enjoyed intense worship, great Bible studies and growing friendships.
I was also exposed to something else. The power of God! I loved God, read my Bible, and went to church every Sunday… but I never, never, saw God moving like I did on those daily devotion times….
As a nice, little Nazarene boy in the Caribbean, I was never taught that the Holy Spirit’s power could be so… tangible. I mean, they were visitations when you’d have people crowding around the altar rail crying out to God, but to have teenagers weeping and worshipping – kneeling and lying postrate on the floor of an auditorium and not a ’sanctified’ church building was awe-inspiring. But what blew me away was seeing the gifts of the Spirit in operation. I’d never seen that before! Tongues, prophetic words… it was all new to me, because I’d never been taught that at church.
I remember when one of my friends, Annette, invited the fellowship to her church. As is wont in some congregations, visitors are welcomed by being asked to stand and be acknowledged. Because we were a big group (maybe 10 people, I can’t remember) we were asked to stand at the front. Then the pastor told the congregation, “Stand up and bless them in your heavenly language!” Then these 40 people got up, pointed their fingers at us and started spouting off in this …. gaggle. I was scared! I slided up to Annette and asked her nervously, “What are they doing????”
Reminiscing – 1 July 9, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in personal, testimony.Tags: ISCF, reminiscing, testimony, UCCF memories
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For a couple of posts, l want to look back at God’s mighty hand in my life over the years. I remember some supernatural events while I was in college, and I want to record for posterity the hand of God in my life.
First, some background:
I grew up within the Nazarene denomination – was in church for as long as I can remember. I love God with all my heart, and at that time I was in everything! I won all the Sunday School competitions – learned memory verses, did Bible boxing, sang… everything. It got so bad that no one wanted me to be on the other team when we were playing games: my presence was an unfair advantage to that team! I got convicted and came to Christ and was baptised at the ripe old age of 11. All through secondary school I had a love for Christ, but struggled to fit in at school. During my teenage years I tried to fit in as best I could, but I had rough days … contemplated suicide and stuff at one point. But all that changed near the end of my secondary school life – I started going to ISCF. (Inter-School Christian Fellowship) I finally had some people to relate to who liked me for me…..
When I left secondary school, I got accepted into the Barbados Community College (BCC). I was still trying to fit in there when I was passing the auditorium and I heard the most beautiful singing… I was drawn inside, and I realized there were Christians there, worshipping the Lord. I learened that this was the univeristy equivalent to the ISCF of my secondary school days – the UCCF (Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.) I immediately joined them in their circle. There, I started the most intense fellowship of my life….
Blog chronicling miracles! July 4, 2008
Posted by bajanpoet in links, testimony.Tags: blog, Dudley, link, miracles, testimony
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You know what? I love the Tag Surfer – you find some great blogs that have the same tags that you have in your own posts. Here’s another blog I found just now that I plan to keep tabs on… I love watching God work in and through the lives of his people. I love how he extends his kingdom through random people who are committed to “doing the stuff.”
Here’s the blog: Miracles on the streets of Dudley – I don’t even know where Dudley is…. but I’m just so excited to read what God is doing!
