Best of LMR: "Constipated Anointing"

Reposted from January 2008.

I’m about to get a bit irreverent and share a funny, sad, true story. ::Inserts tongue firmly into cheek…::

A number of years ago I was invited to lead worship for a week-long campmeeting at a church in Bakersfield, California. Right away I noticed that the pastor of this charismatic Word-Faith church had a distasteful beat-the-sheep leadership style, and that he had something to prove. Anyway, he announced that the last night would be an anointing service, where he would lay hands on and pray for anyone who wanted it. He pumped this up as the climax of the campmeeting, and that last day he went into seclusion to pray and fast, denying his flesh and all distractions so the Holy Spirit would honor his faith and move upon the people.

He came into the meeting halfway through the worship with a dead-serious intense look on his face, and it sort of went like this: when he “felt the anointing” coming on, he’d interrupt the worship and call for people to come forward–“quickly, quickly”–to receive. This happened several times, but it was obvious something was wrong. I guess the Spirit wasn’t manifesting the way he thought it ought to happen; very few people were “falling under the power”, etc.

I felt sorry for the guy, honestly, because he was trying so hard. It was as if after all his efforts, God was standing him up. He was treating the “anointing” (which we’ve grossly misunderstood) as a sort of magic spiritual potion that ebbs and flows, and it warn’t flowin’. Forgive the analogy, but it’s the best one I can come up with: it was as if the anointing was constipated. It just wasn’t coming forth, and this pastor reflected it in his sweaty, reddening brow.

Then, all of a sudden, the pastor stopped, got this real mystical look on his face like he was getting something very powerful in the Spirit. I was leading worship from the piano, and he turned to me and began slowly and deliberately speaking a message in other tongues in my direction–as though the message were for me.

Are you sitting down? Here was his interpretation of the message in tongues:

“FIND THE RIGHT SONG. Find the right song. When you find the right song, it will happen.”

Okay, let me say right now that I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, and I have experienced and witnessed them in action many times; and although I’m not one to conjure them up, I know how to host God when He manifests Himself. But even I knew that this was a crock. “Find the right song?” What an interesting way to pass the buck. Without saying it outright, the pastor (under cover of a spiritual manifestation, mind you) was blaming his spiritual constipation on the worship leader, placing the burden squarely on my shoulders to hear from God about the exact magical song to play to rescue this thing.

Well, apparently, I didn’t “find the right song”, because about five minutes later the church worship leader came up and told me the pastor wanted her to replace me on the piano. Not surprisingly, changing piano players and worship leaders didn’t solve the constipated anointing problem. After four grueling hours of this, the pastor finally closed the meeting and let us go home.

Here’s the incredible irony of all this, something the pastor probably wasn’t even aware of. The first night of this campmeeting, while the pastor was out doing prison ministry, the pastor’s wife called for people who wanted to be anointed for music and arts to come forward, and invited my wife and me to pray for them. We hadn’t fasted; we hadn’t secluded ourselves; this was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Out of about 40 who came forward, 39 fell to the floor under the power of God as we lightly lay hands on them–without all the pretense and preparation. No signs of constipation.

The point? I’m way more anointed than this guy was. (Just kidding. ::Takes tongue out of cheek.::) Actually the REAL point is that the anointing–whatever we perceive that to be–belongs to God. We can host Him, we can welcome Him, but we can’t conjure Him up or make Him do our bidding. Fasting and prayer are good things, but I felt like this guy got in his own way–and God’s–because ultimately if God had responded the way he wanted, the pastor would have gotten the credit for it. As it was, when it didn’t happen, he tried to pass the blame to me. (I don’t think it worked.)

Got any stories like this? Love to hear ’em. (By the way…I won’t go into detail about the physical conditions that prompted me to remember this story…) 🙂