Winterfire, Day 3

Okay...it's a good thing this conference ended today, because if it didn't, I may have exploded, or gotten raptured, or something! It just got better, and better, and better, as the Spirit of God moved deeper, and the people of God worshiped more fervently, and the praise became literally explosive! New England is ripe for a massive outpouring of God's power!

1. Again, we walked into the sanctuary, and the presence of God at 8:55 am was so thick that I began to weep immediately. Now, normally, the Friday evening service is packed out and the Saturday morning service is noticeably less in attendance. Not so! The place was PACKED at 9am with people hungry for more and more of God. The worship was amazing. And then, Dr. Gerald Jeffers came to the pulpit and ushered the people into the presence of God with an amazing 15 minute message on restoration.

He discussed, as most of the previous speakers had done, about how 2008 was a year of unprecedented attack by the enemy on our relationships, our finances, our minds, and our bodies. It was widespread throughout the body of Christ. We won many great battles in 2008, but they left us wounded, weary, and, like Samson after killing 1000 Philistines with a donkey jawbone, dying of thirst. Ps. 23:3 says, "He restoreth my soul". But over in Ps. 29: 10-11, the Lord speaks of the floods that come against us, like the ones we have faced in 2008. It says, "The Lord sits upon the flood. The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace." The reason God wants to restore us is because He does not intend to stop the floods. Instead He will give us strength to rise above the flood and have peace in the midst of it. There was more to the message, but that was the main point. The altar again filled with souls hungry for the peace of God in the midst of their own flood.

2. THEN.... Bro. Steve Willoughby, a missionary to the nation of Singapore, got up and just blew us away!

This man is an apostolic hero. If you need someone to model your life after (other than Jesus, of course), look to this man right here. He is a spiritual giant in my eyes, and he showed me exactly what kind of a Christian I want to be. This man has stage 4 cancer, and so does his wife. They have 3 children (2 who are still at home), and I have NEVER NEVER seen anyone worship and praise God with such passion and fervor, and reckless abandon!! He preached about fear. His scripture was from 1 John 4:17-18 Perfect (mature) love gives us boldness before God. There is NO FEAR in love. Perfect (mature) love casts out fear. Fear hath TORMENT! In the Strongs... torment means dwarf, curtail, restrict, minimize, diminish. Fear minimizes your impact and effectiveness in the kingdom. He gave his testimony and the people just BURST into incredible praise and worship that couldn't be stopped! I am so excited that we bought the DVD set of all these messages! I will share them with EVERYONE!!! And I will watch them over and over as well... gleaning all I can from these great men of God and what the Spirit speaks through them.

Finally, Bro. Morgan from San Francisco gave the closing message, entitled "The Tale of Two Trees", referring to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the wisdom of man... the fruit of that tree is is contentious and selfish. The tree of life represents the wisdom of God, and the fruit of that tree is peaceful, full of purity, and easily intreated. Those who are not born again eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Those who ARE born again eat from the tree of life. BUT, there are those who eat from BOTH trees, and they are the CARNALLY minded. They eat from the tree of life on Sunday morning, but Mon-Sat they eat from the other tree. James says that a double minded man is unstable in ALL his ways. You can't lead double minded people into revival. And also, you can't have carnally minded people trying to LEAD the church into revival... because you never know which way they are going to go.

By the end of his message, I was so drained and so overwhelmed, that I just sat. It was too much to process. We heard NINE preachers in 3 days, and it will take some time to digest all that we heard and experienced. All I know is that we DEFINITELY intend to go next year, because it will be the 10th anniversary of the Winterfire Conference. We intend to be part of what God is doing in these last days!!

If you would like to see pictures of what the facility we worshiped in looks like inside and out, click here to see the facilities brochure.