Hi all,
Most of you know my life and my transparency, regularly sharing elements of our lives from funny things our oldest (handicapped) son says, to dynamics between Barb and myself, to some of the things the Lord has recently shared with me ‘hot off the press’ as the saying goes.
My experience with vertigo
A couple of years ago I got very, very tired during a series of meetings and travel, work around the house, our time with Chris each week, and the demands of ministry to pray, study, write, correspond, email, Skype and such – it is constant because of the growing world-wide network of our house church friends and affiliates, and those who don’t do house church, but have been blessed by the teachings I share.
And I tend to need only 5-6 hours of sleep, have lots of energy, and need activity. Torture for me is inactivity. I need to be doing something, and I have to get out of the house daily. Rare is the day I don’t venture outside.
That particular morning I sat up to get out of bed and suddenly within my mind I could not tell up from down, right from left. It wasn’t that the world was spinning, it was that I didn’t know up from down but for what my eyes told me. It wasn’t dizziness, in which the world seems to spin rapidly on a horizontal axis, this was vertigo: The sudden inability to determine up from down, right from left. The world doesn’t spin with vertigo, a person just doesn’t have any reference to up or down or left or right.
I had to immediately think through what was up and down, left and right. I remember looking at the red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand and focusing on that as I lowered myself back to my pillow, and I lay there on my left side until things returned to normal within myself.
I experimented. I discovered I could lie on my left side or on my back, but if while on my back, I turned my head to the right to any degree past vertical – just staring at the ceiling – the vertigo swept in. I would quickly turn my head back to the left to stop it. I could not turn to nor lie on my right side without a massive wave of vertigo envelope me.
Just sitting up and walking required tremendous concentration to mentally assert what my eyes were telling me and tell my brain I was upright. Putting one foot in front of the other had to be thought through, each step confirming that was down and a firm reference point for my brain to focus on.
I fought to stay upright by sheer mental concentration.
There is a time to command the body, and a time to listen to the body
Some Christians become so enveloped in a particular stream of teaching they think they can command, proclaim, speak their world into existence while ignoring common sense and due diligence. That is presumption: The act of thinking something is God’s responsibility when in fact it is our responsibility.
I once had a man who worked for me come to my office early one afternoon asking for prayer. He said he got headaches daily in the early afternoons and he had prayed for himself, had hands laid on him for prayer, commanded, proclaimed, bound and cast out the devil and all the ‘usual suspects’, but was no better.
I guess I was the last resort I thought to myself after he told me everyone who had prayed for him and all he had done to be healed. So we sat down and I did what I prefer to do when about to pray for someone, which is to sit in silence and see what the Father would say or reveal. Instantly I heard the Father say, “He is dehydrated. Tell him to drink water and cut back on the coffee, which I’ve been dealing with him about.”
He was shocked, absolutely shocked at how ‘unspiritual’ that word was. He was a bit like Naaman the leper of II Kings 5 who balked at the command to wash 7x in the river Jordan to be healed, but eventually humbled himself to do so. My friend was expecting a great, loud, commanding prayer from the Seer to rid him of his headache. “Just drink water? Really? Is that all there is?”
The next day he checked in again; never a headache since that day. A year later we saw each other and he was still amazed that something so simple had cured him.
So there I was at the Dutch conference
I was tired from trip preparations before we went, jet lag and travel, and then right into the conference. I woke up Friday morning with vertigo, but was determined to be healed and function normally. That night, as our son Brian led us all deep into worship my eyes were suddenly opened to the Lord’s realm, and Jesus was there.
I thought He would come over to me and lay hands on me, but all He said to me was, “No, I’m here to minister to hearts and souls tonight. You did it to yourself”, and then He turned to walk in our midst, putting His hand on several people over the next several minutes. The testimonies afterward were amazing and in some cases deeply personal. His presence was SO strong, so many touched…but not me.
I’ve run out of room for today, next week I’ll share what the Father told me that Saturday afternoon about the Lord’s remark ‘You did it to yourself’ and about what He said about the condition. Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
