Re: Testimonies from WarCry 2009

emilyanne_n — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:36:32 -0000

This year was my first year of War Cry. I had been saving up since last year's War Cry... my friends came back all fired up about God so I decided to go, since it seemed to me that it would be a good experience.
It wasn't a good experience! It was the most AMAZING thing that has happened to me in my entire life!

Day 1: I was really excited on this day not only about God, but I was REALLY happy to be able to see my friends. Up to Thursday I would say that my friends were a partial block from God, and I know that in order to fully experince God's AMAZING GRACE, I would have to fully focus on Him. So next year I won't let other people get in my way of seeing God, but that's not saying I didn't experience Him this year, because I did. Worship on this day during evening session I felt pretty disconnected. I wasn't really open to worshiping in front of over 500 people, even though they aren't there to be watching me, so I pretty much just stood there and clapped. Not really that much. I wasn't really putting my heart into what I was doing.

Day 2: I woke up feeling pretty good on this day! I had been working on opening my heart to God, and I was SOOO ready for worship! The Spirit of God spoke to me during morning session and I just broke down crying for a WHILE. Evening session was AMAZING! It was totally fun going crazy and just worshiping God, because He is SO worthy of our praise!

Day 3: It seemed to me at this point in time that every day was just going to get better! I was with a certain group of friends during this day, and a lot of the beginning half of the week. I ended up being a spiritual distraction to them, and them to me, but I wasn't aware of this at this point. The devil was really trying to get to me on the third day. I found that morning session was dull [not for any particular reason, it was almost as if my hearing was cut off.] and during evening session I was only thinking about how unclean the bad decisions of my life had made me. This was during the beginning worship. I felt so bad about everything I had done to hurt other people, I made myself be in the mindset that because of my uncleanliness, I could NOT bring myself to God, I could NOT bring myself to ask for his forgiveness, for His grace. His absolutely amazing grace. One of my very good friends who is close to the Lord asked me to sit with her. I was standing there right next to her during worship. I felt like I could do absolutely nothing, like a sinner like me could NOT bring herself before God. The Devil had closed off my thoughts to God, then a wall broke down. God had been continuing to tell me, at some points in time AUDIBLY that I was His child and that he loves me. When that wall broke down inside my mind I heard Him and I started crying, and no matter WHAT I did, I could NOT stop. I saw Jesus, standing right next to me in some of the hardest situations of my life, a particular one of me being ridiculed by a particular family member, and no one else in my family standing up for me. Back when that happened I felt completely helpless, I could not feel God' presence with me. I had a vision the first time I heard God tell me I was his child. It was the day John Mac spoke, which I think was on the second day. He asked us to imagine experiences we've had that have hurt us, and this experience I just mentioned was the biggest one I saw. J.M. later had us see Jesus in our situation. I saw Jesus right next to me, holding me in His arms, telling me that He loved me, that He has ALWAYS loved me, and that I was HIS child and he would not let me be torn down by other people.
It was so amazing.
My friend that had asked me to sit with her, noticed that I was crying, just complete out-of-control racking sobs, and she just started praying over me in tongues. I was completely overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit and as she prayed I felt this IMMENSE sense of peace come over me. My friend reached down and pulled out a notebook. It was filled with all sorts of little verses and promises that God has made us. She was flipping through it and finally stopped and showed me something she had written down at an earlier time. I'm pretty mad that I can't remember what it said, although it DID have a lot to do with God's unconditional and irrevocable love. I remember her words as she showed me what had been written. "Emily, I don't know if this applies to you, but I felt that God was calling me to show this to you."
And it applied.
During evening session of this day I was so completely filled with joy! Jesus loved me! I was His child! If He is for me, then WHO CAN BE AGAINST ME? They ended up calling up if we needed prayer about pretty much anything, if I remember correctly. I went up because I needed help to forgive someone for something that they had done to me a few years back, and I still had not forgiven them.
MY friend Hannah went up as well, I finally released all of my anger and bitterness against who I had been hurt by, and I had forgiven them, so I prayed over my friend Hannah. I was praying for her situation, I didn't know what it was. But I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. My mind finally went blank, like someone had turned turned off their TV, and I suddenly remembered a memory that had happened at Manna Church of Fayetteville when I was about 7 or 8. We were all praying during a class and one of the leaders started praying in tongues. I remembered how cool it sounded and how sometimes I would PRETEND I could speak in tongues. I thought about, just as my mind had gone blank, how cool it would be if I could pray over Hannah in tongues.
All of a sudden, I started shaking uncontrollably, I started crying, absolute racking sobs. My mind went completely blank. I could literally FEEL the presence of God. My jaw started shaking; up and down, up and down, inhumanely fast. I was breathing, and all of a sudden, I heard words. I couldn't understand what they were, but I was JUST breathing and these words were pouring out of my mouth. It was almost as if something inside me was speaking for me, because I could go on for three minutes, without breathing, just continuing to speak in this unknown language. I didn't know what was going on, Hannah didn't know what was going on, we were both crying our guts out and shaking.
I would have to say it was one of the coolest thing EVER.
This lasted for awhile. I tried to stop, and I couldn't. It ended up winding down after 10 minutes. It felt nice to breathe again! I was so freaked out by my first experience of speaking in tongues. Glory be to God.

Day 4: Day 4 was a CHALLENGE. I was confronted by an entire youth group. They told me I was being a spiritual distraction to one of their youth, and, apparently, I had been saying bad things about some of the girls in their youth group. Now the guy who I had unintentionally been a spiritual distraction to told me so himself, and it was so hard hearing it from him, seeing as how I have known him since I was about 5 or 6. I was very upset that this happened, and that I had been confronted on it on the second to last day. I ended up praying with some of the people from my church about it, and I ended up seeing how that opened up some spiritual doors for me. It made the last night the BEST night.
But right after morning session, my youth pastor [Nathan Stanley] and his wife talked to me because they saw that something was wrong, and they ended up, through a series of events, coming to find out it was about unforgiveness towards a certain family member, and I ended up forgiving them and moving on, and I feel so much more free because of it. That night during evening session was when the prophet Michael Cotten spoke. I was sitting down at the front because I would say most of us had some EXTREMELY POWERFUL encounters with the Holy Spirit that night, and we had been called up. Mr. Cotten was prophesying, and I felt pretty left out because I would see all of these people around me receiving all of these gifts. Calls to leadership, gift of healing, gift of casting out evil spirits, so on, and so forth. It was towards the end that I ended up praying with a girl, Sandy. I was praying over her and then we were just sitting there, crying, completely overwhelmed by God, and then she said a looonnnnnggg sentence. I couldn't hear her because the music is SO LOUD AT WAR CRY. [It's AWESOME! lol.] And so I asked her again what she had said, and she told me that she had said. "Do you know how Mr. Cotten said that if your hands are burning, then you have the gift of healing? My hands are burning." [At this point I was saying something along the lines of "WOW! THAT IS SO AWESOME!"] She then went on about how her uncle has cancer, and something about it being healed. IMMEDIATELY at this point Mr. Cotten said that if anyone had any kind of illness or physical problem, then please stand up so someone can pray for you.
Who better to pray, then someone with the gift of healing?
She then said she had to fins someone to pray for. She was so excited. I told her she could pray for me. "I have asthma." I told her. So she prayed for me and I have not had a problem with my asthma since. Glory be to God.
When she was done, I turned around and I saw this girl, sobbing, and kneeling before God. My jaw locked up. I IMMEDIATELY felt the need to pray for her, so I did. I started speaking in tongues as soon as my mouth opened. This was a lot different then my first experience with it the day before. As I prayed, I could hear the words in my head, and know exactly what I was saying. Absolutely amazing. She just started crying harder and harder, and she eventually stopped. I decided that the jaw-locking thing had something to do with the need to pray for people, so I looked around for a minute, walked around some, and then my jaw locked up again. This time I knew the person. I would walk around and pray over people. I could NOT keep myself from praying from people. I just felt God SURGING through me and I wanted to share that with people... I was walking around the back of where we were having worship and my jaw locked up, just seeing over half a thousand people worshiping God and falling before Him. I felt the NEED to pray for everyone. My youth pastor's wife eventually stopped me and brought me behind the curtains of where we were having worship, and she, along with a lady named Rebecca, basically told me that I was GIVING TOO MUCH, and that I needed to receive.
Well, alright.
So I went back right against these massive speakers, praising God, and I had kind of like a vision.
I saw this urn by a river. It had this NASTY murky dark water in it. I saw hands pick up the urn and throw the nasty water out by the side of the river. The hands set the urn down, and it started raining this BEAUTIFUL CLEAR RAIN, and drop by drop, as the minutes progressed, this now clean urn filled up and overflowed.
It was kind of like my spirit. I felt absolutely RENEWED as I left that building. I ended up praying over two of my friends that night. It was really weird though, because after that last night, until the next morning, I was having HUGE problems speaking in English! I now find it a lot easier to pray in tongues than in English. It's amazing.
Glory be to God.

Day 5: Day 5 was definitely pretty sad. I got to meet some awesome people at War Cry, drink energy drinks every day without getting yelled at, learned how to share my now renewed faith with others...
and I became a new creation thanks to Jesus Christ my savior.

I would never tell anyone that I don't think they wouldn't enjoy War Cry, because if Jesus wants you to be His, then you definitely need to have this powerful encounter.
Glory be to God.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" --2 Corinthians 5:17

EmilyAnne Nystrom, Rockfish Church, Raeford NC

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Re: Testimonies from WarCry 2009