My wife and I were invited by a local pastor to minister at a church. After sharing about the goodness of God and how He still heals, I activated and released the people to pray for those with physical ailments. The Holy Spirit moved and many got healed. As this was going on, the pastor's teenage daughter approached me to pray for her knee which had been injured from sports. She had a younger brother next to her so I told him to pray for her sister. He said, "I don't know what to do!" I just encouraged him to command healing in her sister's knee. So he placed his hand on her knee and said a short, simple prayer. I asked the pastor's daughter how she felt and she ran around the church to test it out and exclaimed, "There's no more pain!" I high-fived the brother and said, "You just healed your sister!" As amazing as that experience was, the best part of the story came later. The brother and sister left the meeting early because it was a school night but the brother decided to come back. When the pastor saw his son return to the church, he was so surprised because his son never comes back to church after he leaves. The pastor asked his son why he returned and the son replied, "Because this is fun!"
This is probably one of my favorite testimonies because church is meant to be fun! In fact, it should be the most joyful place on earth. God is pure goodness and in his presence is fullness of joy (cf. Psalm 16:11)! I grew up experiencing the opposite. Church was so boring and my understanding of God was one of fear, confusion, distance, and seriousness. The truth is that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 14:17, emphasis added). That means if we are not experiencing overwhelming joy in our lives, especially at church, we have not properly grasped the nature of his kingdom. May we encounter his presence and step into the kingdom reality of freedom, peace, grace, love, healing, wholeness, reconciliation, forgiveness, intimacy, and perfect joy! It would be hard not to have fun in a place like that.
"But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful." Psalm 68:3
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