Monday, August 8, 2011

Karen's Testimony

Just over a month ago after reading a book by Andrew Murray called 'Experiencing the Holy Spirit' I was seized with a desperate and urgent desire for this experience of the Holy Spirit. Since then I have had many experiences including electrical currents flowing through me in the night as well as visions. I have also been attending the Holy Spirit meetings at the Island Church every Thursday and thus heard about the Catch the Fire Conference. I must say I found it to be a most blessed experience particularly gaining huge insight from the teaching on the cross and who we are in Christ - I must state this here as I am most grateful to Duncan for this teaching - it helped me to explain some of the visions etc which I have been experiencing, but that is a whole different story.

I had never experienced a fire tunnel before so I was most excited since I have been in a state of urgent expectancy ever since reading the book. However I must admit I had my own ideas about what I hoped to receive from the Lord. When I walked through the tunnel I just stumbled and fell down halfway through, but I was fully conscious and aware of everything that was going on around me, I soon got up and decided to walk through again since I noticed the many strange manifestations around me and thought perhaps I needed to receive more, this time I just stumbled a bit but made it through without falling...so I went a third time when again I fell halfway through, but was completely conscious and aware of everything going on around me, where it seemed others were in some other place and experiencing far deeper things than me. To be honest this bothered me as I wondered why I had not really received anything as I felt exactly the same, but I had gone in with a huge willingness to receive. It bothered me so that throughout the next morning I pondered it almost non stop..naturally it also led me to question whether anyone really received anything REAL or if they were just pretending or making up the laughing etc..but not in a bad way..I just honestly sensed God there but wondered how someone could be that close and yet not receive..it was at this point that I felt the Lord say....'don't be so quick to say you didn't receive anything...' so I accepted this thought and trusted the Lord to show me more.

Almost as soon as I got in my house after work I had an irresistible urge to start speaking (I was alone) and when I did a strange language was coming out my mouth...well I had heard about tongues before but never felt I had received a proper tongue as it always felt made up. But this was quite different. So I spoke for about an hour non stop, but I already noticed that as I was speaking I could almost see the phrases before my eyes, this 'seeing the words' continued throughout Friday and Saturday night (hardly slept) and convinced me that this was definitely a different experience to previous unsatisfactory attempts to speak in tongues. Eventually after Church on Sunday I felt a need to write the phrases I could see down..almost as soon as they were down I felt the Lord tell me to turn my computer on and type in 'language identification'. Immediately a website whatlanguageisthis.com came up and I entered the first phrase thinking this was crazy... the first phrase was immediately identified as Tagalog which I since discovered is the second biggest language spoken in the Philippines, all of the remaining phrases were also identified as Tagalog. The next step was to translate the words. Some of them had direct translations such as 'kataka-taka which means miracle - something independent of laws of nature and 'pagtaka' which means astonishment, 'halina' - to call a person and 'mundo' - universe, everything there is...but I got no direct message as some words I had joined together likethis and some had been misspell using an a instead of an o. I have also since discovered there are several dialects of this tongue as it is spoken by approximately 22 million people which complicates such a literal interpretation. For the record I must state that I am probably one of the least traveled people in the world. I was born in Zimbabwe and lived there all my life until coming to Knysna about 9 years ago. I have never been in any other countries and never had the slightest interest in the Philippines. Since then I have had other words come to me one of which was the name of a city in the Philippines 'Naga'. Oh and the thing I like the most about this is the meaning of Tagalog - it is a name of an Ethnic group of people and the word literally translates as 'coming from the river' or 'native of the river'. I like this so much as I have seen in Rev 22:1 and other places that the Holy Spirit is likened to a river of life. It was at this point that I felt the Lord gently say to me 'Now was that REAL enough for you?' The strangest thing though is that I keep getting and seeing words which I can identify but don't string into a particular message, the sense is more of learning a language almost like in the Matrix when they put Neo in the chair with that cap and things were just downloaded in his brain..also interesting that getting a tongue was the last thing I expected or even wanted..

By the way probably one of the most astonishing miracles is the fact that when Brian asked me to share this at the Holy Spirit meeting I readily agreed and managed easily standing in front of people talking into a microphone..you see I have always been a quiet and shy person and I was terrified of public speaking and never in my wildest dreams thought I would stand and testify in front of others..but I actually quite enjoyed it!!! :)

Blessings to you and your family - Karen