They could tell this was not an ordinary evening devotional that the girls normally had with their teacher in the dormitory at their Christian boarding school. In fact, when the Shoos entered the room, they discovered that the teacher was nowhere to be found.
These youngsters had initiated this time of worship all on their own, and the presence of God was so heavy, Glorious immediately slid to his knees.
Some children were lying prostrate before God, others were weeping, and still others had their arms raised towards heaven.
"God is our portion!" cried one child. "God is still able!" said yet another. One little girl began exhorting her roommates by the Spirit as she told them, "The Holy Spirit is saying you have been sinning, but you won't do it anymore. You're going to be changed!"
Still another eleven-year- old (orphaned when both parents died of AIDS) wept as she told them she heard God tell her, "I am your Father! I am your Father!"
This came just two days after the Lord led me to teach the children about the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Moshi, Tanzania. Almost half the children in the little student body of the New Life Foundation School received this exciting new experience from the Lord.
"These children are changed!" Josephine Shoo told me as she described how the orphan girl who had received a revelation of God as her Father had been a discipline problem for them from the time she joined the school.
"She was very rebellious, and would hit and pinch the other children. But she is a different person since she has been filled."
I asked Glorious if they had ever had a move of God like this with the children before this event, and he said there were some, but nothing to this degree. He linked it directly to the children being filled with the Holy Spirit.
This was so typical in the kinds of things that happened on this trip to the continent of Africa. Everywhere I went children were being touched in powerful ways by the presence of God.
The previous time I had visited Africa, it seemed I was led more on teaching children how to pray for the sick. But this time it was on hearing intimately the voice of God and acting on what they heard.
From the tip of South Africa back to Tanzania the Spirit of God breathed on the children through the entire trip. Scores of Christian kids I taught who were growing up in Christian homes said they had never heard God speak to them in their whole lives until we led them in simple teachings and exercises where they learned to listen to their hearts.
A group of children in Pretoria, South Africa began weeping as the Holy Spirit talked to them for what they knew as the first time. One twelve-year-old girl could hardly talk through her tears as she told me she heard God tell her that she must forgive people she'd never forgiven before.
Some in the audience began wiping their own eyes because they knew the child, and knew that her father had been the praise and worship leader of their church. Just a year before he had gotten a nineteen-year-old girl in their church pregnant.
Everyone knew what was going on but me. But what I did know was that God was touching the life of a little girl in a powerful way with the first time experience of hearing His voice.
In another church, we had a group of kids pray over some adults. Ten-year-old Birand whispered in my ear, "God shows me that this man and wife are fighting in their home!"
I replied, "Then here's how you minister to them. Don't pray their problem. Pray God's will over them, that they fighting stop and that there would be love and unity in the home."
So Birand went back to the people and prayed as he was instructed. The woman began to cry and bent down and hugged the little boy. Two days later the couple went in to see the pastor of the church.
"Pastor, we have backslidden, but we want to come back to God!" It so happened the husband was the mayor of the city! A family was changed all because a child heard a prophetic word from God that touched their lives!
Children are ripe all over the world for a supernatural touch from God!
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