Ministry Update: November 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!! Praise God for all his many blessings!!

We've just returned from the Rocky Mountain area where the Lord supernaturally opened doors and had us minister in some different places with some wild experiences. The Spirit of God was poured out powerfully and we were amazed how the Lord went before us. We ended up ministering in a couple different churches in Denver, Colorado.  It was amazing how God led and went before us to open doors, and it turned out to be a blessed time.

It is quite miraculous how we ended up being out there at all:
 
We had actually been invited out to Colorado for a family event, but then all of a sudden we got a call out of the blue, literally two days before we were leaving, from a friend we minister with in the LA area. Mercedes starts talking and this friend says they have a church they are connected with in Denver.  Our friend from LA made a last-minute call to the church in Denver for us since we were going to be right there, and amazingly, at the last moment (so unusual for many churches to be open to last-minute stuff like this and have the schedule clear) it ends up we are all of a sudden preaching in Denver.  The timing worked out just right as it was right after the time we spent time with the family.  We also got to do some awesome hiking in those Rocky Mountains while in Colorado, praise God a little time in nature always renews the soul!

The Holy Spirit was poured out in power after we preached the Word and many were filled and ministered to by the power of God.  A woman came up to the front of the church to testify to the congregation about what God had done when we were praying for her and how she was filled with the Holy Spirit while we prayed. As she started sharing, however, the Spirit of God kept hammering her and falling on her as she spoke, the glory of God just filled the whole place when this happened which was such a blessing!  After basking in the glory a bit, another man came forward and shared that pain had left his shoulder when we prayed for him and others shared how they were powerfully touched, ministered to, and received healing. 

The pastor then shared how just a couple days before we came they had taught for the first time at this church on the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Lord Himself miraculously arranged for us to all of sudden come there right after they had started to teach on the need for the Holy Spirit’s filling to put it all into practice and reality. They ended up having us do a second service after the way God moved in such power, which turned out to be a blessed time as well, much like the first.

Out into the Wild West

After we ministered in Denver the Lord began to impress upon us and lead us to go out to Wyoming, we were praying and kept getting a word to just drive out there.   Wyoming is a huge state and has the least amount of population in the whole country so you end up driving in some areas there for miles without seeing a soul, lots of antelope around and other things, but miles of open space are the norm (kind of a nice break from congested Southern California, it doesn’t seem like there really is an overpopulation problem like so many say, just an “everybody deciding to live in one small area problem” like So. Cal.) 

We ended up in a little western town where we got stuck in a snowstorm at a little inn.  Stuck at the inn we were praying about what to do when we ended up having a radical divine appointment with a girl we met in the lobby.  After talking a while we found out she was a believer who was getting ready to lead worship for the first time ever that very night.   She was also in the process of coming out of a Baptist background and had become open to the gifts of the Spirit just recently.  We shared that we felt that the Holy Spirit had led us there and mentioned we’d like to pray for her. She was overjoyed that we asked and had been hoping for something like this since she was really nervous about having to lead worship for the first time ever that night.

We knew it was complete divine timing and wild to think that she had just begun opening up to the work of the Holy Spirit.  We laid hands on her right there in the lobby and she got touched powerfully as the tears began to flow and God filled her powerfully with His presence.  It was an amazing divine appointment and made us glad we had stepped out in faith and took the risk to just drive out there not knowing what we were doing or where we were going (John Wimber used to say FAITH is spelled R.I.S.K.)

God had even more for us out there in the old wild west than we expected though. We visited a museum in the area and a video of an early pioneer from the area talked about how this is country where “one goes deep with God.”  This was followed by a wild time of experiencing some very powerful visitations and times of deep encounters with the Lord out in that open country. Glory!!!

After a little more time in Wyoming experiencing God’s renewing presence and seeing a few things—getting time alone with the Lord and decompressing is so important in ministry so as not to burn out, Bobby Clinton from Fuller Seminary says time just with God is under-appreciated in the American Christian context and why so many experience burn out—we felt led to head back to Denver.

Back to Denver

We returned to Denver and were expecting we’d probably minister with the same church but the pastor had a sudden family emergency to attend to which changed the schedule at the last moment. We were praying about God’s direction for that last weekend in Denver before returning home.  Something on the TV mentioned the town of Littleton and I felt a quickening of the Holy Spirit.  I then remembered that a friend from way back was pastoring a church in Littleton (a suburb of Denver and place where the infamous Columbine massacre took place).

We felt led to just show up at their Sunday evening service without any prior notice.  After walking in to a double take and some long hugs and time catching up with our friend that we hadn’t seen in 13 years, he asked if we’d want to share and minister.  We ended up doing the whole meeting, after just showing up unannounced, and had a powerful time as God poured out His presence. 

The pastor’s wife shared later how she was just thinking of us in the past two weeks, especially remembering how their son was so powerfully filled with the Spirit when we ministered with them 13 years back in Europe—their son is now the youth pastor of the church.

It was quite remarkable the way things worked out, it brought back some memories as I came out to Denver years back with Lonnie Frisbee when he ministered there.  It was a powerful time back then and we feel blessed to have had another powerful and miraculous time in Denver all these years later.  The Lord supernaturally went before us and opened the doors at the last moment at all the places we went—the Lord obviously had a plan we didn’t even know about and worked it all out to His glory! Hallelujah!!!!

Thank you for your ongoing prayers and support that allow us to be out there reaching others with the love and power of Christ.

May God richly bless you!

Bryan, Mercedes, and Patrick Marleaux

© Grace World Mission, Inc.