On more than one occasion on this trip to Brazil I’ve stated that words were failing me in trying to describe what was occurring. In so many ways, this was but a way to escape having to grapple with a plethora of emotions that have assaulted me during these two weeks. In the heat of the moment, I took the path of least resistance and put off the task of trying to sort through what felt like being in a dingy in the middle of the ocean in a raging storm.

Sitting here in an air-conditioned, pleasant room in Fortaleza, overlooking a postcard-ish view of the ocean, the events of the last two weeks now in the past, my mind is racing. I know I’m tired – perhaps a bit closer to exhausted, physically, mentally and spiritually – and everything has a surreal sense to it. Did everything I experience really happen? Did I actually see what I saw? Was my sense of the “anointing” of Holy Spirit so tangible that it felt like hyper-sensitively straddling two different worlds or realities at the same time?

In so many ways I’m grateful that I have witnesses to practically every event that occurred, witnesses from two different cultures and two different perspectives, who, at the very least, confirm that unbelievable-but-for-the-fact-of-seeing-it did indeed occur. It is hard to ignore the blind lady standing in front of you who is now weeping because she can now see or to be nonchalant while the young lady born with severe, pain-racking scoliosis is now completely upright and dancing the most incredible Jane-Fonda-inspired-callisthenic type dance you’ve ever seen while simultaneously whooping and weeping at the same time. The blind, the deaf, the mute, the lame, the pain-wracked, the malignant and benign tumors visibly apparent, all swept away by the simple application of the name of Jesus.

But, though difficult, my mind and heritage screams… really? Seriously?

The encountering of a lack of faith in traditional churches in the interior inspired by amazingly strong religiosity that caused Holy Spirit to literally remove himself from the environment and force the team to rely totally on their faith to wrangle open heaven so that the supernatural could still touch the incredulous unbelief was so shocking that my mind and my spirit reeled as though I’d been sucker-punched. A year ago I would have been ecstatic to see the miraculous that we saw in that environment; now, I am awed at how we who claim to be believers in the all-powerful Jesus, so readily deliver our authority into the hands of an enemy who joyfully takes it and immediately uses it against us.

Yes, I’ve preached on that topic continuously over the last year; but seeing it in such a horrendously magnificent demonstration of manipulation, I have a much greater appreciation of the situation that engulfs us in America. Though depressing, I am so grateful to have been presented with such a powerful, raw manifestation of what is occurring all around us; I understand in a much more personal way what Jesus must have felt when the same lack of faith in his hometown caused him to shake his head in unbelief at their religiosity.

What do I do with all of this? How do I take what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned, what I’ve been given and turn it into a currency that can be used to purchase territory in the heavenly realms? Something in me has changed; perhaps better, has been transformed. I’ve opened a spiritual Pandora’s box and seen its contents; I cannot shut it and pretend that I never opened it.

I have more work to do in processing the events of this trip. You bothered to read this, and I’m grateful; my desire is that my new discomfort in Kingdom matters will inspire you to be more intentional about who you are in Christ – you aren’t who you think you are… and you need to begin the process of discovering who you really are.

There is far too much at stake.

More to come… perhaps.