I was raised a good Baptist girl growing up but slipped away from the Lord during the last part of the 60′s and in the 70′s.  I gave my life back to the Lord in 1983 on a sunny day in May.  My Mother and I were sitting outside enjoying the sun and I went into her restroom.

I know how this will sound to the religious ear, but I was literally in my mother’s restroom when the Holy Spirit came on me so powerful that I just broke and began to weep.  It was powerful and yet so gentle then later I remembered thinking that if my Mother had not been sensitive to the Holy Spirit that day, and had not known just what to say, and not to say when I grabbed her around the legs as she was putting some towels away, that the moment may have just been gone.

It is so imperative that we are sensitive to Him when we are around unbelievers because we never know when God will be dealing with their heart.  Sometimes we can say too much when we should just be sensing the presence of God and only saying what we hear Him saying.  So that day as I grabbed her I said “I need God right now!”  She led me to the Lord that day and as we went outside on that bright sunny day there was a rainbow in the sky.  She said that it was God’s sign of His promise to her that her Children would be saved!  We could never find anyone else that saw that rainbow that day!

After being baptized in the Holy Spirit a few months later God gave me a deep hunger for His word almost insatiable!  I became a worshiper of the Lord.  It seemed if no one else was worshiping Him in the whole church you could hear me crying out in the middle of the worship service “I love you Jesus!”  I was just so thankful to have been delivered of the things that God had set me free of that I was overwhelmingly grateful to Him.  Oh what a love affair I had with Him in that time and truly it has never ended.  I was a worshiper and he always manifested himself to me when I did.  We truly enter His gates when we praise Him and He manifests Himself in our praises.  He shows Himself strong to us as we love on Him.

I tell you this story because it was possibly one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me in my years after being baptized in the Holy Spirit!  I was sitting in the pew at church that night and there happened to be an Evangelist there who was speaking at the evening service.  I barely remember anything he said that night but as he came to the conclusion of his sermon he began to sing and old song about being with Jesus and that this was not our home.  It started out saying “This old house I’m living in is needing so much repair.  The windows and the shutter’s keep letting in cold cold air.”  I began to think how wonderful it would be to go and be with Jesus and as I walked up the aisle to the front of the church I sort of raised my hands at half mast.  Suddenly I felt as though someone had a hold of my hands and my feet not as someone would usually have them but like some sort of cords were going through from the back part of my hand to the palms and the same with my feet!!  It felt like there were also attachments on the bottoms of my feet and hands.

All at once the cords began to pull up on one foot and it felt as though my knee was touching my chin.  Then the next leg went up and then both arms one after another.  I began going back and forth from one side of the church to another and then spinning all the while my legs and arms going up and down and up and down!  I could sense that I was still in the church but I knew that I was also in a realm that was not anything that was of earth.  All at once up out of my inner being came this sound and I could hear myself saying “It’s real!! It’s real!  It’s real!!”  I kept on dancing and at one point I passed my little Baptist turned Pentecostal mother and said “It’s real!!” to which she looked very indignant at me and said in a very kind of embarrassed voice.  “I know it is real Jo Ellen.” When she said that I began to think about what I must of looked like and I went to sit down on a pew but to no avail!  Suddenly it felt like two hands went under me and pushed me back off the seat and I began to go right back into my dance and screaming “It’s real, it’s real!!!!”

You see, a few nights before at church, the music had begun during a service and I saw these two little old Pentecostal ladies go up front and begin to what the old timers use to call “dancing in the Spirit” and by that I do not mean Just doing the Charismatic hop!!  I mean you could look at their eyes and see that they were no longer with us but were dancing with the lover of their soul in heavenly places!  So I went home being new in the things of the Spirit and laid in the floor before the Lord and had cried out to Him saying “I know that those women had something that I have never had but Lord it doesn’t look pretty but if you want me to do that I am willing!”  And sure enough that night at the First Assembly Of God Church in Connersville, Indiana, I found out that there was a real Spirit realm and that you can be as if you are in two worlds at one time, and I found out that it is real!!

When I stopped dancing finally there was a crowd of people around me with tears running down their faces.  My little dance that seemed so ugly to the world had been beautiful in the Spirit and had touched many that were in that service and I…  Well I have never been the same!!  Yes He is real!  The angels are real and God is real and He wants to dance with you also.  I now dance before Him with all of my might, but I initiate it.. This one was more or less out of my control.  God wanted to show me that He was so real and that it is alright to dance before your King!  If you do not believe this it is OK but you have come to late to tell me that it isn’t real!  I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good!!  Dr. Kenneth Hagin use to say that “It is better felt than telt.”  I happen to believe that now!!  Oh I am a student of the Word but there is nothing that you can take away from someone who has felt, touched and seen the power of God in action!!  It is real my friends!!

~ by Jo Ellen Stevens
Arise Shine!

Jo Ellen Stevens of TCIC Ministries is a Prophetic speaker, author, worshiper and intercessor.  She has ministered with her husband for 23 years and was a worship leader at the Assembly of God for many years.  She is an ordained minister (Restoration Ministries) and works with Restoration Ministries in their Ministry Rooms doing prophetic worship with her husband.  She has taught many bible studies and have led many intercessory prayer groups.

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