MY VISITATIONS FROM GOD – PART 1 – FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS

In this article I will focus on my first visitation of Jesus, but there are three major visitations that have strongly marked my life. I did not feel until now that I could share these experiences except with a few people, but now it’s the time to share them publicly. There is a time and a season for everything and I feel that now it’s the time to reveal these experiences.

I have had many other experiences with God (and sadly with the demonic realm) but none are as precious as these three visitations. My life will never be the same because of these events and the knowledge of their reality have kept me close to God in times of unbearable demonic attacks.

JESUS AND ME … FACE TO FACE

It was an evening in 1995. Michael and I were pastoring in Bucharest, Romania and Michael was preparing to go to a pastor’s conference in Timisoara – another city in Romania – when he got a phone call from one of the members of the church: George Olteanu. He told us that his wife, Tanta, who was one month overdue with the delivery of their baby, is unable to deliver as the labour did not start and the doctor was not willing to do anything about it unless he first received a big sum of money as bribe. The sum was beyond their means and they were distressed. Michael managed to leave for the conference and I set down to pray for them.

I was really disturbed by the situation this couple was in and the lack of heart of the doctor. I started to pray for them and I felt God’s deep compassion. I kept on and on and on in prayer for them.

The compassion I felt seemed to draw me closer to God and I did not want to leave His presence. Once I felt I was done in prayer for this couple, I kept on singing to God. I did not want to leave. I just enjoyed so much just being with God and just lingering in His sweet calm presence. I just sang and sang and sang and loved on Him and felt His love for me.

I am not sure how long I did it for, but it felt like one to two hours. It got dark outside, I remember it was around 6 pm. I spent this time with God sitting down and leaning with my back against a wall in my living room.

As I was singing the love I felt in my heart towards God, suddenly I felt and even saw the atmosphere in the room charged up and dense, as if there were thick particles of energy all over in the atmosphere. The light bulb was transmitting a yellow type of light and it seemed that all the light particles across the room were individually seen and slightly sparkling. It was a sudden change of atmosphere, you felt like you could cut the air with something, as it was that thick, it felt like a substance you could cut. When I say that I saw this, I really can’t quite explain this properly. I saw everything with my natural eyes like I normally see, but I was seeing the spiritual realm.

I wondered what this was, but before I could think about it, suddenly the door separating my living room from the hallway just opened by itself. I closed the door before I started to pray so this did not make sense. Sudden fear swept over me for a split second as I thought someone entered my house.  But this did not make sense, since I locked the main door of the house when Michael left that afternoon and I closed the door of the living room as well.

As the door opened slowly, I could see the darkness from the hallway and suddenly in that darkness stood a person – it was the Lord Jesus Christ! My first reaction was to pull myself with my hands against the wall and gasp in shock: Jesus!

Instantly all fear left me and I felt peaceful and totally mesmerized by Him. I was no longer aware of myself, I was like a statue against the wall and I don’t think I could have done anything to control myself and make myself move or even think anything independent of Him.

He looked tall, with black hair flowing just past His shoulders, parted in the middle. He had a long face and was dressed in a long white flowing robe with long sleeves and going down all the way to his ankles. The dress was tied in the middle with a rope. He had sandals on his feet.

What immediately caught my attention was His eyes. Just like the Bible says in Revelation, His eyes were like a flame of fire – flickering all the time. The flames intertwined. I could somehow read two different kind of feelings in His eyes. There was an equal amount of compassionate love and there was firmness.

Through His eyes He spoke directly to my heart, though His lips did not move. He said to me:

“I can see you when you are going through a hard time and I can see you when you sin”

As I was sitting there trying to grasp what He just said, instantly He disappeared and the door was instalty closed as if nothing ever happened. The thickness of the atmosphere in the room started to dissipate, but a sense of the fear and awe of God lingered for a while.

I did not know what to do with what just happened. I was in such a shock so that I have no recollection what I did for the rest of the time that evening or when I went to bed. 

For some reason that I can’t explain, I did not share this with anyone for a while, except with Michael.  I meditated on what He said to me but I simply did not know what to do with the experience, so I just kept it in my heart. I did not feel the need or the desire to share it in church, even though I knew people would have loved to hear about it.

Part of me was scared to share it publicly because I thought people will not believe me or they will try to give me reasons why this was not real and affect my heart about it. But this fear was not the main reason I did not share it, there was simply no desire in my heart to do so, which I cannot not understand, as I am usually very excited to share what God is doing.

Over the years, I have shared it with a few Christian friends who were hungry for God and sometimes with a few unbelievers as a testimony of God existence. I have observed it made a strong impression on the unsaved as they could not argue with my experience. This year I feel God gave me the desire to share it publicly with people and write all my experiences in a book, together with lessons I have learnt along the way. 

At times, during severe demonic attacks, the devil tried to tell me that experience was not real. Therefore, I have gone back in time in my mind many times and analyzed the experience meticulously from every possible angle to make sure it was real. I know that I know that I was fully aware, awake, I was singing, I was able to see the change of atmosphere in the room and then saw with my eyes the door open and Jesus standing in the hallway. 

The experience was not a very short one like professionals say illusions are, the event had multiple instances, my faculties were working as I was analyzing the atmosphere change in the room before the visitation happened, was able to logically analyze why the door has opened, I could study His features and I heard a message in my heart. It was not a split of a second experience, it was a sequence of experiences. Illusions usually are just a split of a second event. This experience involved much more than that.

Looking back over my life, I realize that I so needed this message from Jesus. I had such severe demonic attacks at times that I was not sure I was going to survive – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. All areas were under attack at the same time and I was bombarded with thoughts to give up on Jesus because He is not real and other such lies. The intensity of the warfare seemed way more than what I felt I could take and experiences like the one above kept me by a thin thread close to God and able to fight the devil successfully.

You may ask me why God came and showed Himself to me. To be honest, I don’t know.  All I did before this experience was to seek Him sincerely and diligently with everything that was within me for around a year. I simply wanted to give Him my all and experience all He had. Hunger for God tends to attract God to manifest Himself, but I can’t say that this is the reason why He revealed Himself to me because I don’t know. I am inclined to think it has something to do with my calling to the prophetic.

I can’t give anyone a formula which says: If you do this and that, God will appear to you. All I can say is what He already said:

‘When you will seek Me with your whole heart, you will find Me” (Jeremiah 29:13)

“He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6)

” I did not say to the seed of Jacob: “Seek Me in vain” (Isaiah 45:19)

How God chooses to be found and to reward, is His prerogative, we cannot determine that decision.

I don’t know why He came but I am glad He did. I will never forget those eyes, just as Revelation 19:12 describe them: “His eyes were as a flame of fire”. They felt like they were piercing me, yet very loving, like two furnaces of fire, with flames dancing around intertwined in harmony and unity. Eyes of love and eyes of firmness. Perfect equilibrium between: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8) and ‘God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:29).

I learned from this that to fully know God you can’t just focus on one side of God – either the love or the fear of God. They have to coexist if you are to get a correct and complete picture of God in your heart. We have to know both sides of God, the love and the firmness and be comfortable with both revelations.

Just pretending the firmness does not exist does not make it go away. The fear of the Lord leads to life and away from sin. It’s a good thing. We need to trust God that His correction and discipline is just as much love as when He answers all our prayers. It’s the love that does not leave us to self destruct, but uses sometimes strong measures to bring correction and discipline, measures that are painful, yet redemptive.

I urge you to meditate on the words Jesus told me: “I see you when you are going through a hard time and I see you when you sin” .

Are you convinced this is true?

How should this impact the way you live your life from now on?