Thank You Very Much


In the late 1970s I attended a conference called "The Party Is Here" at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship facility on Attwell Drive in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

It turned out that twenty-two people from the church which I attend showed up at that conference in twos and threes.  Two of those people were in leadership in that church, and proceeded to organize our group of 22.  So before the first meeting we gathered in the hallway between the TACF bookstore and the overflow area under the mezzanine to pray.

The result was that the Holy Spirit mowed down twenty-one of our group, and I alone was left standing at the end of the line.

At that time an elderly gentleman of apparent Asian descent began to pick his way through the 21 bodies, walking carefully toward me.  When he came close to me he held out his hand to shake my hand.  I shook his hand in response, and his entire body began to shake strongly, and he fell gently to the carpet, laughing with great waves of laughter!

After the Asian gentleman fell to the floor the 21 members of our little church group began to pick themselves up off of the carpet and proceeded to walk to the seating area in the main meeting area.  I was left alone with the Asian gentleman, who was still laughing profusely.

I decided to stay with him to make sure that he would eventually recover from his fits of laughter.  Several minutes later he also struggled to his feet, looked at me with a drunken Holy Spirit expression on his face and said to me in a strong Asian accent, "Thank you very much!"

I replied with great caution by telling him that I only shook his hand, and pointing upward, I told him that God had shaken his life!

The Asian gentleman looked upward and said with great sincerity in his wonderful Asia accent, "Thank You very much!", and left the hallway.

CONCLUSIONS:

I look back on this experience as a very fond and sobering memory, and realized that Father taught me a fundamental lesson that day.  I learned that we are prone to give the human person through whom God delivers blessings the credit for the blessings, but in reality when we deliver Father's blessings it is best to be happy to be chosen as His delivery vessel, and to not take credit for the blessings!

I have attended Christian meeting which were celebrations of anniversaries of the beginnings of outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and they turned out to be 10% 'thank You God for the blessings' and 90% 'thank you, leaders, for the blessings.'

On one such occasion I came away from the anniversary celebration with this message in my heart:  "You were the nobodies whom I chose years ago to deliver my blessings to my people, and you have been faithful to do so.  Now all these years later, are you able to receive the nobodies whom I send your way to shame those who think that they are someone special?"

I recognized in this message a passage from Paul's 1st epistle to the Corinthians:
1Cor 1:27-31  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;   and God has chosen the base things of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not, in order to bring to nothing things that are;  so that no flesh should glory in His presence.   But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who of God is made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption; so that, according as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."

I also recognized that if we limit the vessels through whom God can deliver His messages, we lose the blessing which He has ordained to deliver through other channels.  He may chose our best friend as a vessel, or He may chose our worst enemy as His vessel.  Saul of Tarsus and Michiah come to mind.  We need to be willing to hear the messages of God through whomever He chooses.  Otherwise we risk grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit.

Rob