With all those experiences within the grace of my life and with the grace of that warm honey that went thru my head with sparkling bubbling joy into my heart landing down into my belly springing forth a stream of delicious joy that my heart and soul so desperately needed, this had happened just a few months ago before this evening (See testimony #11). In the foyer of the chapel Im sitting there behind that desk when I began to hear that congregation in the sanctuary praising God. I got up out of my seat with that oppression and depression hanging on me that had been tormenting me for almost 3 and a half years or so now. I had tried to shake it. Cried God knows how many tears over it over those years and months but was nothing bettered. Only occasionally I would get a drop of relief from it out of Gods mercy and great compassion. Thank God God delights in mercy.
I walked up to the double doors in the back of the sanctuary and I began to stare at those believers shouting joyful praises to God. They were testifying about how God had been so good to them that week. One was praising Him for this and another was giving God thanks for that. I watched with my heart out stretched toward heaven again in hope of being one day set free from what had been cleaving and ailing me for all those years and months. Real oppression and severe depression is merciless in its tormenting power. As I stared at them, watching, hoping, crying I cried out to God. God Why? Why? Why? I hate feeling like this. Please save me from this. Little did I know He was already working on my behalf and things were about to take place that would change my situation for the better forever.
As tears were falling from my eyes as I looked inside the sanctuary at those praising people, a tall young man about my own age (nearly 21 at the time) entered the front doors of the chapel to my left. He looked at me and said, Hey, how are you doing? As I tried to hide my tears I said, well not to bad. He looked at me with a strange look like he was really concerned and said back. Not to Bad huh? Yea I said back , Not to bad. He went thru the rest of the annex area of the chapel to look around and a few minutes later he came back by me, said by and left. I didn't think much more about it when he left, all though dear God, God knew how desperate I was for my soul to be set free and healed of its oppressions some way, some how.
Well there was still a lot of time left in that service going on (They were in no hurry to leave), so I went back and sat down behind the desk thinking about my life and those experiences I had experienced with God over the years. WATCH YOUR TONGUE, WATCH YOUR TONGUE, WHAT YOUR TONGUE, I could never forget that shout and those words. But still as then even so it was that evening, I wondered what God was trying to teach me in saying those 3 words to me so loudly and audibly years back. Remember, dink da dee deno.
Going over all this and other things in my mind, that same tall young man that had left about 30 minutes ago, came back. He entered those front doors again with a big ol smile on his face starring at me. He said, Deno, when I left here earlier the Lord spoke to me. Now I knew the Lord still spoke to people no matter what others say about that, because He had audibly spoken those 3 words to me years back. Plus I was raised up hearing, singing and believing the Song, He walks with me and talks with me along lifes narrow way. He lives, He lives salvation to impart. You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart. I grew up singing and believing that.
I said back to him, HE DID? He replied back, Yes He did. He told me to go get this tape and bring it back to you. He said you are to listen and listen to this tape until you really grasp the rich wisdom in it. Tape I thought, what tape? The only tapes I was familiar with were mom and dads gospel music tapes and my Boston tapes, and a few others. He reached his hand out to me with that tape in it and I took it out of his hand. Then I looked at the tape.
When I read the title of that tape something special went off on the inside of me. It was like this day, this moment and this tape had been meant for me for a thousand years and this day far away from my home town in America, all the way over here in England, it was finally in my hands. I noticed a cartoon like figure of a man in the corner of that tape behind a pulpit preaching pointing his finger. He looked familiar that man. I had seen him once before on TV years ago on a Sunday morning. My dad and family went to church that day but I was having a bad day so I stayed home. While they were gone I turned the TV on and that man I saw on this tape was that man on TV and I recognized it to be him, Brother Kenneth Copeland. Now I did not know his name then, but I did recognize the face.
Do you know what the title of that teaching tape was in my hands? It was called THE POWER OF THE TONGUE by Kenneth Copeland. When I read that title something began to stir around in my heart and I knew, I knew, I mean I knew that this tape was for me but I had no idea at that moment how much that tape and the word of God on it, was going to really bless my soul and life in the days to come.
After that service was over, I locked up the chapel and was excited about getting home and listening to that tape. When I got home and put that tape in the tape player and punched play...OMG. My inward spiritual juices began to flow. The bread that I was needing, my ears and my heart was finally hearing and my soul was soaking up every word and every line that Brother Copeland spoke. I don't know how many times I listened to that lesson tape by brother Copeland but I will say this. The Word of God in that tape and applying its wisdom to my life, in just a few short weeks RESTORED MY SOUL AND RESTORED UNTO ME THE JOY OF OUR SALVATION and brought in to my life Gods presence in a manner that I had never tasted before. I became totally set free from all that oppression and depression that had gripped me and had been haunting my life for all those months and years by believing and doing what Brother Copeland was teaching me in that tape which was TO WATCH MY TONGUE.
You see friends though that day I heard God speak to me audibly those 3 words WATCH YOUR TONGUE. One of the reasons that I did not receive what He was shouting at me was because the words I was saying were not cuss words or vulgar words as our mom used to tell us. But worse than that, I was saying over and over and over again and again and again into my life CURSE WORDS and these kinds of words do more harm to the souls peace than cuss words. Once I had learned from brother Copeland Gods Word about the tongue and its power, I stopped saying those words and began to replace them with faith and strong determination with words of life and peace. Doing that, obeying God in that, ended up putting a joy and gladness in my heart and soul so delicious and sweet. I began to fall in love with Jesus all over again.
In closing I write.....Pleasant WORDS are as the honeycomb. Sweet to your soul and good for your health and bones....Proverbs 16:24
Life and Death are in the Power of the Tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit....Proverbs 18:21
A mans stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of HIS MOUTH. From the PRODUCE of his lips he shall be filled.
In closing I want to suggest to all of you to go on line and order from Kenneth Copeland Ministries the CD message title, THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. Brother Copeland is a strong man of spiritual wisdom and your soul will bless you for heeding his God given us delicious light....Thank you.....deno....much more to come....please share freely.
Till we meet again The Lord Bless You and Keep You. The Lord shine upon you His favor and peace. The Lord smile upon your life with singing and rejoicing over you. The Lord strengthen your hearts with Joy and Love evermore. In Jesus Name...Amen
To get more out of my #12a) testimony it is better that you have read my earlier ones leading up to this one.....deno
After that hour in the blessing of the Spirit of the Lord that night where He watered my DESPERATE dry with His Living Waters of life and refreshing joy, I knew God was still with me and aware of my situation and inner vexations. I was reminded of the REUNITED(Testimony #10) song message in my car that God knew my pains. That He knew what I was going thru and that far beyond my understanding all this had a purpose and a plan of His sufficiency of grace in my life and of things to come.
Friends sometimes circumstances, feelings, and situations play heavy on our minds perceptions to the degree that we even wonder where is God in all this mess and pain? Does He walk amongst the bruised and the broken hearted? Does He really care about those who need a physician? And does He really care and is He aware of what we are going thru and facing?
Listen, as sure as God was on the scene and fully aware of Jesus' anxiety in the garden of his trying despair where in he, under great pressure sweat as it were drops of blood fearing the cross, even so and no less, God loves you and is aware of your situation no matter how ugly or abandoned the situations look or appears to be. Don't let the crosses of being a christian or the great trials, persecutions and afflictions in this life make you think you have been rejected by God. As believers whose names are written in the book of life, they mean just the opposite.
Recall with me this. When Steven in the book of Acts whom God co-labored with mightily in signs and wonders confirming the truth that Jesus Is Risen and that He Is Lord and the Truth; when he was suffering rejection of the elders of Israel and was being brutishly stoned to death, Jesus was fully there, aware and on the scene. The Spirit does not abandon us in all our trials and test when faced with the powers of darkness raging against us, nor when we are being stone or crucified for His Names sake.
Present pains, afflictions, persecutions for being believers and for being boldly faithful to Jesus, imprisonments, stonings, being fed to lions, whippings to the flesh etc., are not to be interpreted as to say that God is not with us, or is not for us, or that He has abandoned us. Persecutions and afflictions of these sorts come against us (the believers) because WE ARE One Spirit with the Lord and in the spirit realm all those anti Christ spirits see this and come to toy with our heads in hope to deceive us in OUR minds of what is really glory to us in the Spirit. They play with our minds to draw our attention away from the fact of the truth that CHRIST IS IN YOU AND HE IS YOUR CONSTANT SURE HOPE & GLORY.
Again, let us not think that the cross we bear for the name of the Lord, though the CROSS at times feels painful and afflicting as nails driven deep in ones hands and feet that we have been abandoned by the Lord. No for He is here. We in faith hold on to the word of truth of His promise to us, Lo I Am With You In All Situations and Circumstances, Even To The End Of The World.
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Well like many folks going thru the fire of ignorance and thru persecutions and trials I wondered why didn't that sweet relief that precious evening that I just had experienced a few months earlier totally remove all the weight of all depressions and oppressions forever( See denos testimonies #11)? It all tasted so great in my soul when the rain and sweet spiritual honey was inside me being poured, but it was not to be the fixer, the healing I longed for. It did reinstate measures of hope to my heart and formed in me an everlasting testimony of Gods grace and great compassion to share, but in time tears would fall again often as this trial came at me again and again of oppression and depressions trying to beat me down.
Well a few months or so had past since that night and I was still being attacked by the oppression and depression powers and it was at times vicious to my mind and soul in its effects and taste. Real oppressions and deep depressions are cruel to all their victims and prey. So many have not survived their mean onslaughts against their peace of mind and soul. It is a dark and dreary living night mare when your dealing with its heavy dosages. Nothing really excites you any more. Things you used to get so much joy from have no power to give you any pleasure of heart and soul against the joy crushing weight of depression and enemy oppressions. You want it all to go away but it doesn't. You even beg for it to leave but it want. And you ask yourself that same old question that you have asked a thousands times before why? What for? How come me? When will it be gone?
Well on a Sunday evening in RAF LAKENHEATH, ENGLAND, after being in England about a year, I had to go open the base chapel for a Worship service that night. I was a chapel manager in those days in the USAF and it was my weekend to be on duty for this service. Little did I know that that day, even that very evening, God ordained for me and my personal benefit years prior. A pre appointed divine connection I was going to make. All wrought and known in God and by God whose Son Jesus Christ is the author and the finisher (Developer-Completer) of our faith.
I opened and entered the chapel. Went around checking the thermostats, turning on lights etc readying the sanctuary for that evenings service. I was not a preacher or anything like that. We as chapel managers assisted the Chaplains and preachers with there administrative needs and setting up the altars for the worship service. We took care of the bookkeeping and meeting minutes, bulletins, etc etc. Whatever they needed we stood by to assist.
This particular evening a Spirit filled black congregation was going to use the Chapel for their denominations worship service. I did not know that this was going to be a Spirit filled group. I learned that as the evening progressed in the wordship service. This was like a bunch of T.D. Jakes crowd. They were excited about God and the things of Jesus Christ.
Well their service got started and I was sitting behind the desk in the Chapel foyer. I went into this day with all those former grace experiences that I have told you about in my other testimony accounts in my writings. Since the day my mom told me that one day I would preach the gospel, my world would never be the same. A few weeks after she told me that I had the rushing mighty wind experience in my car. I saw the vision of the huge Cross with that cluster of people under it like a massive sea of people carrying that cross. I had cried out to God one day when I was so miserable in my car and asked Him in tears of brokenness Why God? Why am I so miserable and my soul cast down within me. Im so depressed God. Please Please, if You know what I'm going thru. If there is some kind of purpose and plan you have in all this then let the next song on this radio station be the song (REUNITED..See denos testimony #10), the next song was REUNITED. And I had heard God speak to me audibly three simple words that for dink da dee deno seemed at the time hard to be understood. I was in my room with some friends about 2 years prior to this evening. They had asked me how I was doing? I replied well I'm frustrated and deeply depressed. Those words hardly got out of my mouth when from the unseen glory that surrounds us all in Christ, the Lord strongly shouted, WATCH YOUR TONGUE. It was so loud I thought everyone in the room heard it. Only me.
Folks I did not grasp what God meant by those words then, neither did I understand their purpose for me that evening on call at the chapel. I had not said a cuss word or as our mom used to call them, a vulgar word. All I said was that I was frustrated and deeply depressed. Whats so bad about those words? They are not bad words. They are not nasty words. So being ignorant of spiritual wisdom and understanding, His audible lesson, sermon and rebuke flew over denos' coo coo nest. But in just a few minutes on this Sunday evening in RAF Lakenheath, England, my world was going to be awakened and my eyes more and more opened. Deno was about to be, by God and His mercy, and grace, put on the road of his recovery. As it is written to preach recovery of sight to the blind and ignorant. This means to us also that spiritual sight and spiritual understanding can bring us recovery. Blindness leads us to the ditches. Sight leads us out of those ditches to walking even High in God with Jesus our marvelous light of Life. We just have to find those who by God know and understand the more better and sweeter and higher bread of heaven that is in Christ Jesus......Continues on denos testimonies #12b)...see you there
