SID: My guests are from Australia. I’ve never been to Australia, though you named an important city after me, Sydney. Right?
BEN: Right. We did.
JODIE: We did.
SID: But my understanding is I don’t think of big revivals and big moves of God in Australia. Last I checked, they had about, in their whole entire history, five smaller type revivals.
BEN: Yes.
SID: And you guys start out with 50 people and a word from God. And would you believe in Australia—from all over? Even other countries? 20,000 people went to this move of God. But I have to take you back to one of the major starting points in your life. I wish I had had such a starting point. But you’re in bed, you’re asleep. By the way, had you ever seen an angel before this?
BEN: I had never seen an angel, no.
SID: Did you think you ever would?
BEN: No, in fact, someone said to me, if you ever see an angel, make sure you ask its name and its mission and I thought, Oh, that’s really handy. I’ll put that on the fridge next to the … if there’s a power cut, if something happens, I’ll know what to refer to.
SID: So you’re minding your own business, both of you. Sleeping. Tell me what happened then.
BEN: Well, like all good encounters, suddenly in the middle of the night, I woke up with this power. Electricity’s the only way to describe it, but it seems inadequate. There was power and electricity surging up and down my body and I woke up screaming and I don’t mean a gentle scream. I woke up full-blown screaming at the top of my lungs.
SID: Why were you screaming?
BEN: There was just such … the intensity, the intensity of the encounter, the intensity of the power that was in the room. I was just shaking and screaming. I could not scream any louder. And while I was doing that, while I’m screaming, suddenly unnoticed, my wife is hitting me.
SID: Why were you hitting him? He’s a nice guy!
BEN: She’s hitting me. And she’s like, Ben, Ben, Ben. There’s an angel. There’s an angel. There’s an angel.
SID: She saw it, too?
BEN: Yeah, and so–
JODIE: I saw it. I saw it.
SID: Tell me what he looked like.
JODIE: It was 10 foot tall, feet either side of our bed. So he was standing either side of our bed.
BEN: On the bed.
JODIE: On the bed. And–
SID: On the bed?
JODIE: On the bed.
SID: I’ve heard of dogs on the bed.
JODIE: No, this was–
SID: A ten-foot angel? You would be screaming, too.
JODIE: You would. It was a brilliant, bright light, white sash, white robe, golden sash and this intensity of glare just staring at us. And I immediately, this is why we were yelling because I immediately knew this is a mark moment. There was a intensity to it, a seriousness to this encounter that we didn’t immediately understand, but we knew immediately our lives will never be the same again.
SID: But then something happened to you that is actually an earmark of this current move of God that’s on planet Earth. There’s something I don’t hear much about in my TV, anywhere. But it’s an earmark of what God is doing. And that has to do with the fear of the Lord. Well, how did it affect you?
JODIE: There was such a weightiness to the fear of the Lord that entered our bedroom in that moment, you could feel it. It was tangible. There was a thickness to it. The air was thick with … it was more than the awe and wonder. There was a fear of the Lord. Literally not a scary fear, but a fear of his bigness, his holiness and I was very aware in that moment, Sid, that holiness matters. That character matters.
SID: That is such an important statement. I don’t want it to slip by you.
JODIE: Sure.
SID: That fear of the Lord matters. Character matters. Now, did you have that same feeling, Ben?
BEN: Yeah. I felt like if I put my pinky, if I moved my pinky wrong, this is the intensity. I felt like if I breathed wrong, if that was possible, that I was going to explode. I felt like I would literally blow up in the room and that was it. And I was intensely aware that our actions matter before a Holy God.
JODIE: And it lingered with us for weeks and months afterwards. It lingers with us still till today. When we start talking about it, I can immediately feel it now. You know, it lingered to the point of there was a purging of our hearts.
SID: Well, what would happen if you would start reverting to your old ways? Maybe a little gossip.
JODIE: I can feel immediately a tug in my heart of that same encounter of the Lord saying, Jodie quit that now. Lean in right now to my presence, my holiness. And you know, it even affected our speech. We couldn’t talk for … We barely spoke to each other for weeks, which sounds really funny, but even to say, how are you? How’s your day? We’d be checking our attitudes, checking our hearts, checking do I mean that, is there any hidden agenda in our hearts behind our words? And it was such a purifying and a purging at the beginning of a new season of our life.
SID: I want you to look in the camera and I want you to tell people how to yield to God. Because during this show there is going to be an outpouring of the greater glory. Explain how they can yield.
BEN: There is, you know, I always liked to tell people that I think we know we can resist the presence of God. And so if you can resist, we can do the opposite and actually receive. And so it comes down to just a posturing of our heart just to say, okay, I’m going to stop resisting and I’m just going to actually receive. And it really is just about relaxing and yielding ourselves to say, God, come and do whatever you want to do. And you know, sometimes I find that many people that don’t feel worthy of that because of their sin. Well, this is exactly why Jesus died.
BEN: When they would bring the lamb every year to come and be sacrificed, they didn’t look at the priest to see if he had any spots or blemish. They actually looked at the lamb and they found that the lamb was pure. Then that was going to be okay. It wasn’t about the people’s spots, it was about the lamb’s and Jesus is the lamb of God without spot or blemish and he has made you worthy to receive from his presence.
SID: So I want you to yield to receive all that God has for you. Now one night, again, they’re minding their own business and a hundred noisy snorting horses show up right outside of Ben and Jodie’s bedroom. What? How does that happen? Do you live on a big farm?
BEN: No. We live in a … It was in a suburb.
SID: I’ll tell you what, we’ll be right back. Next
