REMARKABLE AND UNBELIEVABLE INSTANT TRANSFORMATION
T. Wieland Allen
I used to marvel at the story in the Bible about Saul who met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascas and immediately became a new creature in his spirit, soul and body with the new name of Paul. The fact that he had harassed, abused and even killed Christians in his vocation didn't keep God from completely transforming him supernaturally and using him in a mighty way to bring the Gentiles into the body of Christ.
In my early marriage to my husband, Stephen Allen was a drunkard and often proud of it. That demon of drunkenness created havoc in our marriage, in our finances, in the lives of our children and in our family life. Our children and I lived in hell on earth but to the outside world we looked like the ideal family because we hid the abuse and Stephen's intense anger that caused us to walk on eggshells, constantly fearing his outbursts for every little infraction of his ideals and expectations of us. We lived many, many years in that horrible hell.
Eventually, however, Stephen had a miraculous encounter with Jesus Christ also, like Paul, and his story is worth telling. The most marvelous part of the story is that I had nothing to do with the miracle, I just prayed hours a day in the intercessory language of the Holy Spirit, praying for peace in our lives. The prayers of the Holy Spirit in His prayer language was my retreat from the reality of the hell in which I lived.
First I must tell you that My salvation from the hell of living with a drunkard was that I had heard about experiencing the reality of God by being baptized in the Holy Spirit and that the experience was still for today, hearing about it from a well known and respected weather man in a large city adjacent to us. That weather man named Don Woods had sent to me a book on the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in tongues after I heard him and his wife Jane speak at a small church gathering. The book was written by a married couple who were Episcopalians, like Stephen and me. I read the book and recognized that it related to the power of God of which I had read in the Bible but had never heard that it was real for today. The story in that book and the joyful lives of Jane and Don Woods convinced Me that the power of God through the Holy Spirit was what I needed to combat the emotional and verbal abuse, the harassment and the constant fear in which our children and I lived.
After consuming the thrilling book about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I did what was suggested in the book. I asked God to baptize me in his Holy Spirit and sure enough I began to pray in a heavenly language, one I had never heard before. I was fascinated, but in a few days I stopped praying in the language of God, even though I was constantly reading the Bible while Stephen was at work.
One day while we were visiting my parents at Christmas time I was observing our young nephews Jimmy and John playing on the floor with their toys amidst the wrappings. I saw the youngest boy, who was still a toddler, engrossed in something else while his toys laid on the ground. As I looked closer, he was playing with a piece of cellophane tape that he had evidently pealed off of some wrapping. He was transferring it from one finger to another as it stuck on his fingers, totally engrossed in the tape. As I observed his purchased toys lying on the floor while he played with a piece of tape, the thought came to my mind that I was doing the same thing with a gift that had been given to me, a gift for which Jesus Christ had been crucified so that I would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to come live inside of Me with His prayer language. I had shoved God's gift to me aside also by stopping praying in the Holy Spirit, just like our toddler nephew was doing with the tape while his gifts from his parents laid on the floor.
Needless to say, after that experience with our nephews I began to pray every day after I sent Stephen off to work and our children off to school. The more I prayed, the more powerful faith in God began to grow inside of me, the belief that God had a better plan for our lives. Little did I know that it involved an almost unbelievable miracle. Unfortunately, Steve's drunkenness became more frequent and his anger became more intense. Consequently the hell in our lives became more destructive.
My spiritual friends constantly advised me to leave tracts around for Stephen to read or to invite him to attend charismatic prayer meetings with me. I knew that if I did all of that, that more and maybe even worse anger would erupt, which I feared. Every time I prayed I told God that I didn't want a green apple, that I wanted a ripe, sweet apple when my prayers were answered and that I was willing to be patient until that happened. I prayed hours and hours at a time, not knowing what was happening in the spiritual world around me at the time. I was just enjoying the gift that God had given to me.
At Christmastime Stephen was in the habit of attending the after office Christmas parties of his attorney friends. Alcohol flowed freely at those parties. Stephen, of course, was invited to all of the parties because of his charming and entertaining personality. He was the life of every party. His habit was to return home often while drinking at any time from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. However, after one particular Christmas party that year he had called me after work and told me that he would be home at midnight. I didn't believe him because he was never in control of his actions after he started drinking. I spent hours and hours that night praying for him because he had previously wrecked his best friend's car while he was out in the wee small hours of the night doing whatever it was he always did. That friend was his banker, so no report was made to the authorities, I guess. I was concerned the night of the Christmas party that if he did the same thing that he might kill someone, so I prayed all night until 5:00 a.m. and then I went to bed. He had not arrived home yet.
I woke with a start at 7:00 a.m. knowing that Stephen had to be in court that day to work so I ran downstairs to see if his car was in the driveway since he had not come to bed. When I walked into the sunroom of our home, I observed him passed out in his recliner but his car was nowhere to be seen. Later he told me that he had gotten so drunk that someone had brought him home and placed him in the recliner and then left. He had no idea who did that good deed.
As I looked at Stephen passed out in the recliner, I was overcome with the love of God for him because he was so pitiful, his being a drunk with an important position in the legal system, but he was completely enslaved by alcohol. Instead of getting mad at him, I gently woke him and told him to shower and change clothes while I fixed breakfast for him. I started cooking a good breakfast for him, assuming he didn't eat during the partying the night before, only having consumed vast amounts of alcohol, as was his habit.
Stephen came into the kitchen after showering and told me that he didn't have time to eat breakfast because he had to walk downtown to find his car. He had no idea where it was. It was a cold winter morning, but he insisted on walking to find his car. Downtown was at least two miles away. He said he needed to walk. I didn't know why but later I found out.
Much later he told me that he had called out to God on that cold walk downtown and told God that there had to be a better way to live than what he was living. We were Mr. and Mrs. Church, involved in every facet of the church, but he was completely consumed with a dependency on alcohol and our family was ruled by that demon who enslaved Stephen, and through him it had enslaved the family.
Stephen found his car and tried very hard for the next few months to refuse the call of the demon of alcohol but was powerless under its enticements. I just kept praying in the Holy Spirit for hours and hours every day and poured the love of God onto him, knowing the struggle that was going on inside of himself.
After a few months it happened, the culmination of all of those hours of my praying in the Holy Spirit for Stephen, and it was miraculous. He was at his office in the federal courthouse and an attorney friend named Al called him because they both were knowledgeable about a mutual friend who had marriage problems. His attorney friend named Al said that they needed to talk about how to help their friend Mike, as if they had no problems themselves. They were two drunks trying to fix another one. So his attorney friend came to pick up Stephen at the federal building and they drove around for about two hours in Al's car trying to figure out how to help their friend Mike with his marriage problems. It was the blind leading the blind, two drunkards trying to help another person. But, it was all part of God's plan.
After they drove around for about two hours without mutually finding any real solution to Mike's problems, Stephen told his attorney friend Al that he guessed that Mike needed to turn his life over to Jesus Christ like Stephen had. Then Stephen looked around to see who had said it. When Stephen realized that he, himself, had said that astounding confession without intending to say it, he started crying in front of his friend Al while they were in Al's car. Needless to say, his friend Al hurriedly drove Stephen back to the federal building and let him off at his office after Stephen apologized for crying so uncontrollably.
Stephen immediately called me on his office phone and told me what had happened. When he told me that he had said he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ he started crying again on the phone and in the midst of the sobs he asked me what that meant, because in the Episcopal church that term is neither discussed nor is it ever talked about. Salvation in that church is believed to happen when a person is baptized as a baby. Stephen was sobbing as he asked me on the phone if I knew when He had turned his life over to Jesus Christ. He started sobbing even more when I told him that he had just done it when he made that confession in Al's car because he had confessed Jesus Christ as his Savior. I told him that we would discuss it when he came home that evening. Somehow I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not going to the clubs to drink that night after work.
While we talked later about his confession to his friend Al and the glorious events of that afternoon, it came to me that he needed to seal his conversion experience. There was a couple of speakers I had heard about who were speaking the next night in a nearby town and I asked Stephen if he would like to go hear them. He miraculously said yes. I kept thinking, "God, how in the world did you do this?" My prayers had been answered but it was in such a miraculous way that I had trouble believing it. I had never heard of a person professing to have turned his life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it.
We had children who needed adult supervision while we left town to hear the speakers, and God prepared that part of the miraculous story, too. There was a student from ORU who was helping with the youth at our church and he had eaten lunch with us after church a few times. That young man called me the night Stephen made his confession to his friend. The young man said that was coming to our town the next day and asked if he could spend the night at our house before his Sunday meeting with the youth at the church. God miraculously provided the sitter for our children without my even asking Him. It was all part of God's plan.
We went to the meeting of the evangelist husband and wife the next night in a city about two hours drive away. There was glorious praise and worshipful singing while we found a seat, and every time I opened my eyes and peeked at Stephen he had his hands in the air praising God and crying like a baby. My husband was a changed man. I was crying, too, at the miraculous event in Stephen's life. His having never heard a salvation message, never hearing about the need to turn his life over to Jesus Christ, he did that very thing with no inner desire to do it. It was an absolute miracle!
During the meeting of the evangelist couple they asked for people to come up for prayer who wanted to be free of dependency on alcohol and tobacco. Stephen told me he would like to go up for prayer if I would go with him. I was still thinking, "God, how did you do this?" I did go, and a minister prayed for him. He neither smoked another cigarette nor drank another drop of alcohol the rest of his life. He was miraculously, supernaturally changed from the inside
After a short Bible teaching at the meeting the ministers asked for anyone who wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit to come to the front. Stephen asked me what that was about. I didn't have time to explain so I told him that he might as well go up and get the whole ball of wax that God had for him. I was still in shock at the events that were happening. Here was a man who always make fun of signs that said that Jesus saves. Here he was, saved in a miraculous way, and going alone without me to the front of the meeting to receive another gift from God. He prayed with the evangelist to be baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and God gave him a double portion of his gifts. Stephen came back to where I was seated and told me that all of the people up there were praying in beautiful languages but his language sounded like a retarded gorilla. I told him that it was a beautiful language and the devil was trying to nullify in his mind the miracle that had just happened to him.
At the hotel the next morning I woke and saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas with the Gideon Bible from the hotel in his hands. He was crying tears of joy again and said to me, "Listen to this: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that anyone who believed in Him would not perish but would have eternal life.' " Amidst his sobs he said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. He asked me if I had ever heard that scripture before. Of course I had many, many times, but it was the first time that Stephen had really heard it that it meant anything to him because the Holy Spirit was giving him joy from having experienced the events that that very scripture promised.
Our lives changed dramatically, of course. Stephen apologized to me and our children for being such an abusive, horrible person and we forgave him. One evening soon after his conversion experience the devil tried to get him enslaved again to cigarettes by a strong temptation. Stephen asked me what to do. The Holy Spirit told me that we needed to pray in the Holy Spirit's prayer language together, which we had never done, and He said that the temptation would leave. We prayed together for the first time and in a few seconds, sure enough, the temptation left him, never to return. From that day forth we prayed together on every occasion in the Holy Spirit and we experienced the love and joy of the Lord in every minute of our lives.
Stephen became a new creation in Christ Jesus in the twinkling of an eye. He became a new person instantly before my very eyes and it was God's doing completely. He had never heard a salvation message, had never read the Bible, had never heard the phrase "turn your life over to Jesus," yet he did it without intending to do it. The liturgical church, to which we belonged, does not teach about salvation. They only teach about doing good works for the church.
Over and over again after his conversion I kept asking God how He did it so miraculously because I had never heard of anyone turning his or her life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it. Much later God told me that it was the hours and hours and hours of my praying in His prayer language of the Holy Spirit that the entire scenario was planned, set up and performed by the Holy Spirit. I had no idea that it was happening in the spiritual realm before it happened in the earth. I just knew that I needed to use the gift that God had given to me, as revealed years before when I had observed my two nephews playing on the floor, with the younger toddler playing with the cellophane tape instead of the newly bought toys. When God instructed Me to pray in the gift of the prayer language of the Holy Spirit that he had given to me instead of playing church, that is what I started doing, never dreaming that Our Father had miraculous plans for Stephen and my lives together in absolute unity with God.
Every conversion is spectacular. Because the devil had such a strong hold on Stephen's life, he needed a miraculous conversion experience. He had one and he told his story many times at churches, retreats and to individuals. In fact, about two months after Stephen's miraculous conversion he didn't come home after court like he had always done after his conversion. My faith in him was not fully developed yet and the thought came to my mind, "Well, it didn't last. There he is again going out to drink again with his drinking buddies."
In a couple of hours he called me from his office and said, "You'll never believe who I just spent two hours giving my testimony to." Sheepishly I asked him who it was. He told me that a senator acquaintance who had heard about Stephen's new spiritual life-change and the senator had come to his office wanting to hear all about it. He had given that senator his entire story beginning with the night he couldn't find his car after a drunken episode all the way to his being baptized in the Holy Spirit, to which the senator was delighted with his new life. I have to admit that I had no faith in Stephen that night but I still had faith in God.
Stephen's story needs to be told again and again so I decided to write it down so that it will live in posterity. It's worth hearing. I hope it was worth your reading it.
When God has permission from us, he gives us ripe, sweet fruit that endures forever. He did it for Stephen and me and he will do it for you.
Praying in God's Holy Spirit's gift of His supernatural prayer language accomplishes what God desires in the lives of everyone who dedicates themselves to praying. I just sat in my bedroom and prayed for hours at a time and God did the work. A person cannot pray for hours in his or her natural earthly language. Only with the Holy Spirit's prayer language is it possible. The scriptures say that we have the treasure of the Holy Spirit in earthen bodies so that the miraculous works of God will be of Him and not of us. I will praise God forever for doing the miracle. All I had to do was pray.
Isn't that absolutely marvelous!!!!!!! It's still a wonderful miracle to me and everyone who hears it. I hope it thrilled you, too.
What He did for us, he will do for you. You just need to ask God to baptize you in His Holy Spirit. Jesus said that if people, being evil, know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to everyone who asks Him.
Like I said, He did it for me and He will do it for you. It is through God's Holy Spirit living inside of you that precipitates all of your prayers being answered.
I saw a man change from a drunkard to a loving son of God in the twinkling of an eye by merely confessing that he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ.
It was an absolute miracle!
