I remember it like it was yesterday. I had been at Bethel Church a little bit over a year. We were in worship. It was the eight o’clock service. I was thinking about the events that had transpired prior to us moving to Redding. Although I am not one who typically likes to wallow in the things that happened that were unpleasant, that morning for whatever reason I allowed myself to go there. In the middle of worship. So unlike me.

My thought pattern was interrupted by the person closing out worship. To be honest, I don’t even know whether we had gotten to that point yet. I thought we had just started worship. Obviously, I was caught up in my thoughts. It was like God stopped the worship service just to talk to me. The person at the front said something to the effect of, “There is somebody here . . .” Then he counteracted all the thoughts in my mind.

I was rather self-conscious at that point.

Did God just stop the whole worship service to talk to me?

I am a pastor after all. I would never do anything to disrupt the worship service. Surely, these words could be applicable to someone else in the worship service. It was like the person who spoke the words was looking right at me. At least, he was looking in the general direction of the section where we were sitting, even though it was not our usual spot.

As I took class with the person who had closed worship, I approached him the next time we met and thanked him for his prophetic word. I said, “That word you spoke was for me. Maybe there are others too, but I know it was for me.” Several years later I brought up the conversation with him again and I remarked, “What amazed me most is that God stopped the worship service just to talk to me.” His response still stays with me, “Yes, He would.”

I am not going to say that this is the most powerful prophetic word I have ever received, and that it changed my life forever. There are probably others that were more specific and gave me more direction or hope. However, what really spoke to me was the fact that God would interrupt the things in life that I considered sacred and that I would never interrupt on my own.

The God of the Universe stopped a worship service with close to a thousand people present to talk to me. I felt so small at that point. It is one thing to be singled out and to be given a life-changing, all encompassing word for your destiny. It is another to be “reprimanded” for questioning God and His goodness in the middle of a worship service. But nobody knew. It was between me and God. Even the person giving the word didn’t know who it was for until I told him.

Oh, the countless ways in which God shows us that He sees us, He Knows us, and He loves us. This is the power of a prophetic word.

By Ralph Veenstra