The Holy Spirit Releases the Father's Love

A powerful testimony and some fun surf here in this video. Check it out.

Direct link: http://youtu.be/cN9jNLKCbVA

Happy Valentines Day!  We are blessed to be celebrating 22 years of marriage this year! Hallelujah!  Time flies when you're caught up in the glory!  With love being the key ingredient it is important to remember that love is the first mentioned fruit of the Holy Spirit by Paul in Galatians.  Yes, that heavenly love from above can transcend all trials and tribulation when you yield to the Spirit's presence.  Remember it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit so yieldedness to the Spirit is key.  We have a testimony below that tells of a life touched and changed by that heavenly love released when the Holy Spirit is given place to minister.

So first a bit of intro...

A few years back we were blessed to minister with a mission group in Hawaii called Surfing the Nations that uses surfing as a tool to go into different countries and share the Gospel and bring relief. 

We had a powerful time of ministry while we were over there and a friend recently sent us a testimony about how his life was unexpectedly touched and forever changed by the power of the Spirit when we ministered there which we share here below today.

It was also an unlikely encounter that took place that sparked the move to go over to Hawaii and minister:  I was walking up the beach after a surf in California one day when I saw a group of Pacific Island-looking people having a luau with leis around their necks and Hawaiian music playing and the whole deal.  I stopped to check it out for a moment, just watching it all, and the Holy Spirit struck me with power suddenly, the Lord revealing to me as His presence poured over me: “You’re about to go to Hawaii and minister.” 

Shortly after that, our friend Mel Tari mentioned he was connected with a ministry called Surfing the Nations in Hawaii, so he made some calls and connected us up, and not too long after that we were on our way. 

We had some powerful ministry times there and it was a blessing to also minister the Gospel afterwards to my uncle who had lived in Hawaii for many years and was terminally ill with cancer at the time.  I had spent many seasons over there at his house just surfing the Islands, and in fact had first started surfing in Hawaii right near his place as a young pre-teen, but now I had a mission to also share the Gospel with him before cancer took its full toll, which we were able to through many conversations while visiting him after our time at Surfing the Nations.

The group at Surfing the Nations was mostly made up of evangelical believers from different parts of the world, many from Scandinavia at that time, which gave us a smooth path since we had ministered in Scandinavia so much. It was mostly evangelical non-Charismatic people though, so the leader encouraged me to “go for it and minister in the Spirit, just don’t oversell the Charismatic stuff; rather, just start ministering and let the Lord do it.” 

We’ve had the same experience in many other evangelical-type mainline settings where we’ve seen the Lord go past people’s preset barriers and touch them with the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit in awesome ways. 

Below is a testimony from Dave Estrella, a good friend of ours, who, though he grew up in church all his life, had never really experienced the power of the Spirit, and his life was touched and changed forever by the glorious love of God through the outpoured power of the Holy Spirit as we ministered to him and others at Surfing the Nations. The Holy Spirit will meet us right where we are and minister that heavenly love if we will just let Him.

“I just wanted to share this with you. Blessings!!!”  From Dave Estrella:

I was just writing this for a talk that I am giving at “Hungry” which is the young adults group at my church, and I decided to share it with others now too! I hope it blesses you as you read…

I definitely remember the first time I realized I loved God. It was the first time I realized that God loved me. I grew up in a family where both of my parents were strong Christians. They loved God, His word, each other, and us kids so much. They took us to church every Sunday, and we enjoyed it most of the time. Sometimes I didn’t want to go, but for the most part I had a very positive experience with church.

I don’t know if I ever really understood what it meant to be a Christian though. I remember trying to think of what the gospel was just in case I had to tell someone about it, and I couldn’t really put all the pieces together. I knew Jesus died on the cross for our sin, but I didn’t truly understand the good news. But I enjoyed my youth group and going on fun trips and stuff.

There were moments that I remember noticing the one weird girl in the youth group who actually seemed like she loved God. I could see something different in the way she worshiped. It wasn’t pretty. It seemed more awkward and uncool than anything else, but it was genuine and it made me think a little. I, on the other hand, was the most plain vanilla, average, normal, nothing crazy about me kind of Christian high schooler kid, and I never thought I would ever do anything great for God. I was planning on living a normal life forever.

But then a miracle happened, a miracle that I wouldn’t recognize as a miracle for years to come - until now pretty much. An old friend, Rudy Mena, from Salinas High came to my church and told me about a bible study that he was starting up on Monday nights. He practically forced me to come. He was so excited! I didn’t really have an excuse cause it was literally two blocks from my house and I wasn’t busy. I had just graduated high school and was praying for new Christian friends cause all my old friends left, so I guess God was answering my prayers.

My first experience at Rudy’s bible study was a little uncomfortable to say the least. They were all like that one weird girl in my youth group who seemed like she loved God. Their passion for God was what made me uncomfortable, but it was also what drew me in because deep down inside I wanted to love God passionately like they did. So for the first time in my life, I was out of my comfort zone and in a new environment where I didn’t really know what it meant to be a Christian. Rudy and I became close friends and we began to seek after Jesus together. He truly helped me so much. I hung out with Rudy for about a year and a half and grew little by little in my faith. Nothing too crazy ever happened though.

A year or so later I joined a cool group of young hippie-like surfers (in Hawaii) who really loved Jesus. It was an organization called Surfing the Nations. I traveled the world with them and had many new experiences, but one experience in particular topped them all. (This is the part where I finally get it).

One normal day at Surfing the Nations, some missionaries named Bryan and Mercedes Marleaux came to speak to us in our daily morning meeting. What seemed to be a normal meeting turned in to something that was everything but normal! After they shared their message (I can’t even remember what they talked about) they began to pray for us. It was kind of a free for all. Everyone stood up and they went around praying for different people. Some people started to cry, some started to laugh, some started just moving around a little (shaking etc). I on the other hand was “in the zone.”

My eyes were closed and I was focused on God. If I had experienced an environment like that a few years earlier I would of just shut down, or left the room. But God had been slowly moving me out of my comfort zone ever since I started hanging out with Rudy and his crazy Jesus-loving friends a few years back. I was about to get it….

All of the sudden I began to feel something. I knew exactly what it was, but I had never felt it so strong in my life. It was love, the love of God poured out by the Holy Spirit as Bryan and Mercedes ministered amongst us. I felt a warm loving embrace start to fill the air around me, and wrap around me, and fill my whole body. God himself tangibly wrapped His arms around me and spoke deep into my heart.

Something else kind of weird was happening at that very same moment that played in to the whole thing. My friend Matt, whom I had just met a few months prior and didn’t know very well, just started bear hugging me. Not like a little pat on-the-back let me comfort you a little kind of hug. It was like let me squeeze the life out of you till you are no longer breathing kind of hug. Ok maybe not quite that intense, but it was a strong grasp. However, it was through this bear hug that I heard God speak to me. He told me as clear as day, “this is how tightly I am holding you, and I’m never gonna let you go.”

Now, it’s hard for me to communicate to you what I was feeling in that moment, but I can tell you that it was the best thing ever. Nothing, absolutely nothing, no love, no feeling, no experience, no nothing ever has or ever will come close to the ecstasy and joy that I felt in that moment. It was the love of God; the love of my heavenly Father revealed through His Spirit. It was so strong that it changed me forever. I am not the same because of that one life-changing experience.

Romans 5:5 tells us that God pours His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I believe that’s what I was experiencing in that moment, and have continued to experience in moments like that in even greater measures as I just walk with Jesus.

This precious gift of experiencing God’s love is available to all believers. What’s the requirement? Just faith. You don’t have to do anything to earn it because God knows that you could never deserve it. Just stop striving, stop trying to earn God’s love through the righteous things you do (a message I need to hear every day), and simply believe that He loves you just as you are and go to Him and ask Him to pour out His love upon you. He will not deny you O child of God.

…How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him Luke 11:13

Here is another encouraging chunk of scripture. I just wanted to include this cause sometimes it’s good just to chew on a chunk of the word…

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Romans 5:1-11

Surfing the Nations in Hawaii
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/Mnyn16l_2Zw

Deja Vu All Over Again

I recently shared how we were at a friends wedding up the coast when on the way back we stopped by a campground.  While taking a little ride on some bikes the Holy Spirit gave me a clear "stop and talk to this guy" word when passing by a couple.  After a little conversation I found out his girlfriend had been taking him to church lately but he had never received Christ. "I am almost a Christian," he said.  Well, after talking a bit and sharing the gospel with him he opened his heart and received Christ -- Praise God he is "almost" no more.  Who wants to “almost” go to heaven?    

That divine appointment brought back a sense of “this feels like déjà vu all over again.”   Then I remembered: Yep, we had a divine appointment right in that same place a few years ago with the same kind of circumstances leading up to it:

We had been up in the exact same area a few years back at another wedding in Monterey, one of my relatives was getting married, and it had also turned into a series of divine appointments: 

Back then it started off with my uncle, an intellectual agnostic type of guy, who approached us straight off and asked us to pray for him right before the wedding started. 

I was taken aback, after years of seemingly fruitless witnessing to him he was asking for prayer all of sudden. 

He had been diagnosed with cancer—it seems the coolness of spouting off intellectual elitism lost the cache it had at Bay Area parties while swilling that glass of wine with hip friends—now the end game was in sight and agnosticism and atheism offered him no comfort or hope whatsoever. 

So we prayed for him and shared more about the Lord with him and came to find out when we saw him at his home in Hawaii a few months later—after ministering with STN—that he had started going to church, and at an evangelical church no less, down the road from his house in Poipu, Kauai. Wow!!!  

Back in the wedding in Monterey, God’s presence took over our time as we just hung out a bit in the area the next day, and then we headed down the coast and stopped in Big Sur and went for a hike where we came to a fork in the trail.  I remember the Spirit of God giving me a nudge to not go towards the waterfall at the moment, but to instead head up the hotter dustier part of the trail to a lookout point. 

We came to the lookout point and there on the bench was a guy sitting with his head in his hands.  We ended up talking with him and he started sharing struggles he was having in his life with relationships and drugs, etc.   We shared Christ with him and he opened his heart and we prayed for him to receive Christ and for the Spirit of God to minister to him, which He did, Hallelujah!!!

Then a strange thing happened: all of a sudden, with a changed countenance and a big smile, he started telling me where the good and hard-to-get-to, hidden surf spots were around the area.  Seemed like he had an injection of truth serum—well I guess he did since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth—I suddenly felt like a secret CIA surfer giving Holy Ghost injections to surfers along the coast to find out the secrets of their hidden spots.

That is not the only time that has happened, we were in Northern Scotland, way up where if you go further north you will finally hit the North Pole.  We were spending time for our anniversary and visiting the place of former revival.  The area was known for good surf but trying to get to the right place with the right wind and swell hitting at the right time seemed beyond difficult.  I was mostly hitting spots with good swell but “victory at sea” wind conditions; a fun alternative was trout fishing since they have so much trout in this area. You can fish it as much as you want without a license or limits.  Well, after quite a bit of fish I was hungry for some decent surf. 

I ran into this local at a gas station and started talking with him; I wasn’t very hopeful about getting info from him since other locals were quite mum about telling you info on where to surf and when in this region.  However, I was just hanging out and started sharing some Holy Ghost Surf Stories with him.  His heart seemed touched and he looked around to make sure no one else was listening to us, and then grabbed a map and said, “Look here, yank, if you want some great surf, go to this surf spot about an hour away right now. It will have some nice swell and a wee bit of off shore winds.”

Well the secret CIA truth serum of the Holy Ghost did it again, without even trying!  We headed straight down to the indicated spot and it was going off, and I, for quite a while, was surfing completely by myself, hallelujah! Quite the experience for someone from crowded Southern California!!  A Scottish crowd did finally show up a few hours later and there were a grand total of about 4 other guys in the water with plenty of waves to go around.  

By that time, however, I was on my way out of the water and was frosting up as the sun was starting to go down.  In the evening, the temperatures were dropping below freezing even though it was in midsummer.

I looked back as I got out and took in the view of awesome emerald waves, white sand, and jagged cliffs, and thanked God for what was surely a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience!

Praise God for that Holy Ghost truth serum too!!

Some awesome waves in Scotland obtained in
Scotland through a divine appointment.

Divine Israeli Surf Appointment

Well it's summer, so time for a Holy Ghost Surf Story. This one took place while traveling into Israel from Europe while in desperate need of some refreshing after many planes, trains, and automobiles. We were blessed to get this divine appointment published in a recent book. This book, called True Stories of Heaven Invading Earth in Julia Loren's Divine Intervention Series, has some other cool stories too by people like John Paul Jackson as well as a forward written by Bill Johnson of Bethel Fellowship in Redding. Some time later, we had another radical divine appointment in Spain that was connected to this one, which you can check out in the video and I'll tell more about in a later posting. For now, read below about how God can blow our mind with the way he can answer even the simplest of prayers and meet our needs in such a wild way:

My wife Mercedes and I had been ministering and traveling in Europe for two months already and were leaving the next day to Israel, our next stop on a round-the-world trip, where we had a very unique and powerful divine appointment take place as we came into the Holy Land.

We were departing out of Athens, Greece and traveling to Tel Aviv, Israel when we were notified of a sudden flight change. Our original departure time of 8:00 a.m. was moved earlier to 4:00 a.m. that same morning (El Al Airlines often does this kind of thing to keep terrorists off track with their flights). We had to suddenly leave our hotel and spend the whole night at the airport, all the fun of a root canal without the drilling!

But God had a plan in it all, even the miserable flight delay where we were stuck in the barren Athens airport all night long with nothing to do.

That barren Athens airport posted two rules very clearly on signs all over: “No Smoking” and “No sleeping on the floor.” After hours of sitting around on hard plastic chairs that were designed just right as to make sleep impossible—some cruel, sadistic chair designer must have stayed up late nights designing and testing these awful sweat-producing beasts—a cement floor had never looked so good. It was like a cruel hoax, you can’t sleep in these horrid torture chairs and you’re not allowed to sleep on the floor, aagh!

After sitting for hours exhausted I couldn’t take it anymore and took a look around and went down on the floor for some rest. I was almost asleep, when I felt a kick on my side. I looked up, and saw a soldier with a machine gun towering over me (Athens has long been notorious as a terrorists transit point and thus soldiers are constantly patrolling it). He apparently was there to enforce “some” of the rules as he puffed away on a cigarette and pointed at the sign about sleeping on the floor. “Doesn’t that sign say something about smoking too?” I was about to blurt out in my agitated, just pulled back from the brink of sleep, state. But a good rule of travel is not to argue with a soldier with a machine gun in a foreign country, so I buttoned my lip and got up.

After some more hours of sweating and waiting around it was finally time to check in for our flight. We went over to the counter to now be abused by El Al Airlines, who must have taken interrogation lessons from the Mossad: You are guilty until proven innocent and must be exonerated before you can board their flight. They prod into every aspect of your life and what you are doing until they know more about you than you do! We had it coming hard at us, as we had been traveling for over two months already, all over every part of Europe, which set off red flags with them and they really gave us the third degree. Every part of our stuff was disassembled, every past ticket and place we’d been was checked

out to see if it was true, question after question, it went on for almost two hours. They even went so far as to read Mercedes’ diary and then test her on it to see if it wasn’t just some fabricated fantasy made up by a terrorist who could finally get on board and blow up the plane.

We were extremely exhausted, dazed, and a little rattled once we were finally cleared of being international terrorists and allowed to board our plane. I dropped like a rock down into my seat, and in my state of exhaustion and jangled nerves I prayed the craziest of prayers: “Lord I am so worn out I need to do something fun.It would be so great to go surfing in Israel.”

It was a crazy prayer because I didn’t even have a surfboard with me and the surf conditions in Israel, being that it is on the Mediterranean Sea, rarely get over one foot. But God is greater than our circumstances.

We needed a battery recharge with some recreation involved after too many trains, planes and automobiles during our travels the past two months, and this night in the torture chamber of the Athens airport and the El Al grilling was the straw breaking the camel's back. God knew our weariness and was about to answer in a miraculous way.

After landing in Israel we disembarked, glad to be done with flying and airports for the moment, and began to make our way through the terminal when Mercedes noticed something very strange: the theme song to the famous surf movie “Endless Summer” was playing over the terminal loudspeakers. We both looked at each other and laughed and thought how strange, to hear that in Israel of all places, especially in the airport over the loudspeaker. I’ve never even heard that song on the radio in the States. In spite of the jet lag that was fogging my brain, it suddenly dawned on me: “I believe this is a sign from God; I prayed on the plane to go surfing while we are in Israel and I think God is going to answer that prayer somehow.”

We rented a car and were on our way out of the airport parking lot about to head straight toward Jerusalem to check into our youth hostel—the only thing in Jerusalem that would fit our missionary budget—and then go see some of the city, when, sensing an impression from the Holy Spirit, I suddenly pulled over and told Mercedes: “Listen, I believe the Holy Spirit is prompting us to go straight to the beach at Tel Aviv right now instead of going to Jerusalem.” It seemed kind of wild but she agreed we should step out on faith in what the Holy Spirit was leading. After that sign from God in the airport with the Endless Summer song it seemed like we should go for it and completely change our plans at the last moment, though we had no idea what, if anything, might be in store. We made our way toward Tel Aviv with the destination of Hilton Beach in mind, the one surf spot I had heard of in Israel.

When we pulled up to Hilton Beach I was blown away by what I saw: peeling, 4- to 6-foot waves breaking right in front of my eyes in Israel! The flight delay had caused us to arrive in perfect time with a swell that had blown in from a storm in the Mediterranean Sea the night before. This was something miraculous in an of itself, as Israel rarely ever gets good surf, rarely even getting surf over one foot as previously mentioned.

The only thing I needed now was a surfboard! I went around to a few surf shops in the area to see about renting a board but they wouldn’t rent surfboards. “You have to buy one for 800 dollars” was their answer “That’s twice as much as in the U.S. No thanks!” was my response, since there was no way I could afford that much money at that moment.

We headed back to the Hilton Beach parking lot and I stood there watching the surf, a bit bummed out thinking, “I have to stand here and I only get to watch these waves now.”

I stood there lamenting my plight, now feeling tortured and disappointed; there’s nothing worse for a surfer than to see good waves right in front of him and not to be able to ride them, it’s like a dog on a chain who can’t reach far enough to eat a bowl of food in front of him. As I stood there salivating over the waves, but becoming increasingly bummed out that I wasn’t riding them, I noticed a small black Nissan Sentra with a young Israeli surfer guy in it pulling up next to me to check out the surf. As I began talking with him, I found out that he had just come back from a surf trip to California and had visited Huntington Beach, which is only 5 miles from where we lived. This was an amazing set of circumstances to meet an Israeli who had just come back from a town right next to ours in California; it caused us to hit it off immediately and we spent some time talking.

About twenty minutes into the conversation I noticed something: “Hey, you’ve got two surfboards in your car here!” I exclaimed. He responded with an incredible statement: “Yes, and it is very strange. I never bring two surfboards with me to the beach, but for some reason today I put my board in the car and I don’t know why but I went into the house and grabbed my other board and put it in the car too.” “Wow!” I responded. “You know I was just standing here looking at these waves without a board and praying that I could surf here today somehow. How about you let me use your extra board and we go surfing together?”

He paused a moment and said that he normally doesn’t loan out his equipment, but then stated that he would make an exception today as he felt these were unique circumstances and that he could trust me. “Praise God!

This is an answer to the prayer I was just praying.”

How miraculous it all was: This guy bringing an extra board like this when he never brings an extra one to the beach, then meeting him after being led right here by the Holy Spirit down to this beach in Tel Aviv, the fact that he had just returned from Huntington Beach, California, the music at the airport, the prayer on the plane, the change of the departure time by El Al Airlines that made us be right on time this morning for this divine appointment, and for the swell that just now hit, and it was all happening here in the Holy Land!

We surfed a couple hours and had a blast in those unusual Israeli-Mediterranean waves. As I was paddling back out from a wave I thanked God that I was getting to surf in Israel and reflected on how incredibly God had answered my prayer. At that point the Holy Spirit spoke into my heart once again: “Invite him to lunch to thank him for loaning you the board.” To which I responded with a vigorous “Yes, Lord!”

After we were done surfing we went out to a really cool and very authentic Israeli restaurant. As we were sitting there enjoying our Israeli meal, I felt led to share the Gospel with him.

He had the most flabbergasted response: “You are a normal person, you are a surfer, AND you are religious?” I explained that I wasn’t really religious, but that I just had a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Living in Israel his whole life he associated religion with fanaticism and dour servitude to religious rituals, and thus was unprepared to meet someone who had an authentic relationship with God, yet still was normal and did fun things like going surfing and enjoying the beach. It was very apparent that surfing, and eating, and just hanging out with him and then naturally sharing the Gospel had had a major impact on him regarding the reality of who and what Jesus Christ and the Gospel are all about.

We were able to spend time there that day with this young surfer guy and share the good news of Christ with him. This is a person who in no way would have ever listened to a presentation of the Gospel in any other format whatsoever for he was a committed atheistic Jew who hated religion—not unlike so many in Israel, which a lot of American Christians are surprised to find when they visit the Holy Land on tours.

The leading of the Holy Spirit had brought forth a divine appointment that helped us to recharge our batteries. I got to surf incredible waves in Israel of all places, while Mercedes got to enjoy the warm Mediterranean sun on the beach. More importantly however, was the fact that the seeds of the Gospel were effectively planted in the life of a closed-off, hard-hearted, religion-hating Jew who never, ever, would have listened to a thing anyone said about Christianity and salvation had I not first connected with him on a friendship level with surfing and having fun. He was so impressed he invited us to come to stay at his home if we came back through his area, something he said he doesn’t normally do.

It was incredible to reflect at the end of it all how God used our airline change to bring me to exhaustion and cause me to pray to go surfing in Israel. That along with it causing us to come into Israel at just the right time when there was an unusual swell—swells in the Mediterranean are rare and only last one day because they’re so localized—which meant we came at just the exact right moment.

To think how the music from Endless Summer played in the Airport terminal right as we walked through and then the Holy Spirit led us down to the beach in Tel Aviv where we had this incredible divine appointment with this young Israeli who just returned from California and “just happened” to bring two surfboards to the beach—something he never does. Then we got to surf together in some great Israeli waves, another miracle in itself. Then as we ate our Israeli lunch we had the glorious opportunity to effectively share the Gospel with him in a powerful way that touched his heart to the point where he was significantly impacted by the reality of the message. Not only were our own batteries recharged but our faith was incredibly buoyed by the miraculous outstretched hand of God in all these circumstances!

It was an incredible divine appointment where God showed that not only does He work everything for good, but He also knows our hearts’ desires and prayers, and answers them in ways that work together to bless us and glorify Him and His name as we follow the leading of His powerful Holy Spirit. To God be the Glory!!!