By Doug Grills
Glory Mountain Pastor
www.glorymountain.com
About five years ago, I had stepped out of our home one evening to spend some time with the Lord. The bigger spiritual context prior to that moment was that I had had about five years of emotional healing in which God spoke to me regularly and radically loved me through His kind words and spiritual love experiences that rocked my world toward wholeness. The Radical love of God was massaged into my battered and bruised past like a healing balm that forever settled any doubts of His enormous love.
The Lord had determined that since I had been healed so much by His Love, that it was time to balance the love of the Lord with the amazing fear of the Lord. This Tsunami experience was so profound in its affects that I subsequently spent several months trying to understand and integrate the fear of the Lord in my life. It propelled me into the scripture and every book I could get my hands on that dealt with the fear of the Lord.
Here’s what happened that life altering evening. Without warning, as I stood on the little patio in the back yard that night I went into a trance or something totally unfamiliar to me. It is very difficult to describe what happened because it was totally new to me and so much in the spirit that words go begging to explain it. All I know is that time ceased. I don’t really know if my spirit man left my body or what state I was in. Nothing like it has happened since. Any awareness of my natural surroundings was absent…like nothing physical existed. I was totally unaware of myself spiritually, mentally or physically. I don’t know if I was still where I was when this started.
All of a sudden I was overwhelmingly aware of The Almighty Presence of God. It was like being engulfed in the Spirit of the fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:2). His presence was so real, so touchable, so thick, and so astoundingly present. This will sound contradictory, but I was saturated with the peaceful, holy, dread of the power of God. It gave me an understanding of John the apostle saying he “was like a dead man”. I was so overwhelmed with the dread and fear of God’s power I knew He could exhale me into oblivion with one slight breath. I was faced with a reality over which I had absolutely no control. I was completely oblivious to everything except for the stunning dread of His power. Simultaneously there was not one ounce of negative fear or concern that I was in danger.
Regretfully, the experience ended, and I slowly reentered the natural world, the night darkness, the cool of the evening. Although my ability to recall things if seriously impaired, that experience is as fresh as yesterday. Actually it was so hyper-real, so impacting, that nothing I have ever experience in life was more real than it was.
It took sometime to reenter the physical world. In hindsight I can express what had happened to my, but at the time I was so stunned that I reentered disoriented. I was shaken to the core and I remember asking the Lord, “Help me understand what happened. Give me a metaphor, a picture, something, anything to help me get my mind around what happened.”
The answer to my request came in the form of a tsunami vision. This was not only for my edification, but it was also a prophetic picture.
So, here’s the vision. I’m standing at the edge of the water on a lovely sunny beach with my eye closed, just enjoying the sun listening to the waves. I opened my eyes to see I was standing in front of a one hundred foot high wall of ocean with my nose touching it. The wall went as far as the eye could see. It was a massive wall of blue green ocean ready to crash on me and drive me into the sand beyond recovery. I knew the pure tonnage of all that water was my preview of death.
Simultaneous I knew the ocean was a massive benevolent force for food and the source of our rain supply vital to our farms.
My greatest fear was realized. I began to see the top of the wall begin to tilt toward me, and sure enough the 100 foot wall came crashing down on me. In that moment, dread and fear engulfed me. Can you believe it, after the wall fell I was left standing and it felt as though my hair had just been gently rinsed.
God, I believe, is saying that the coming tsunami will have elements a la Ananias and Saphira. Phenomena provoking awe and wonder will abound. Simultaneously we will see the tonnage of dramatic healings crashing down on us for us to initiate and enjoy. The latter reign has a benevolent tsunami tucked away in it. Awe, dread, and jubilee joy will be our heartfelt experience.
Doug Grills
