The human body was designed to live in the glory of God… made to recognize God.

My wife Beni and I were worshipping one Sunday morning at our church when a woman came forward and began worshipping in front of us. Anyway, there are always lots of people in front of our sanctuary, with dancers and greeters, so I didn’t think it was unusual. But then, she started doing things that seemed strange to me.

When I say “strange,” you have to understand that I have a pretty high tolerance for what might be considered unusual behavior in worship. People have literally done cartwheels in front of me as part of their worship to God, and it didn’t bother me at all. Some have worn war paint and camouflage to church, and one woman came in a wedding dress with combat boots as a prophetic statement about the Kingdom. That’s normal for us.

But this particular woman’s movements didn’t seem to come from the Holy Spirit, so I tried to discern what was going on in my spiritual man – the place inside you that indicates when something’s wrong.

Usually, this gift works well for me, but this time it was as if the Lord reached into my heart and turned it off. I didn’t feel anything, good or bad. I wasn’t receiving any spiritual signal about what was happening in front of me. But then something unusual happened: I noticed a change in the air temperature around me. It was cold where I was standing, probably 10 degrees colder than anywhere else.

I remembered my brother, who is also a pastor, had encountered a demon in his office. His office was in a row of offices all on the same heating system. But after that encounter, his office stayed cold for an hour. People, unaware of what had happened to him earlier, would walk in and say, “Wow, it’s really cold in here.”

With that in mind, I investigated a bit. I walked to another part of the sanctuary, and it was warm. I returned to my seat, and it was cold. I had a strong sense that the devil was at work. I went over to our lead dancer and quietly asked her to worship before the Lord by dancing on stage because we needed to break something in the spiritual realm.

She got up and started dancing, and the moment she crossed the stage, the woman in front of me collapsed as if she were a puppet and her strings had been cut. Beni leaned forward and prayed with her. We discerned real sincerity, a heart that was right, but she needed deliverance and salvation.

This turned into a wonderful story, but I want to point out that the signals in the physical realm – in this case, the air being colder than normal – helped lead to a spiritual breakthrough. The situation contained physical indicators of spiritual realities.

PRESENT YOUR BODIES

I briefly mentioned earlier in the book that the spirit is grossly underestimated in charismatic/pentecostal circles. The same is true for the physical body. Many see the body as inherently evil, something to be ignored, set aside, tolerated but never truly used for the purposes of the Kingdom. But God designed the human body to be more than a tent in which you dwell.

It is an instrument of God that recognizes His presence and discerns what is happening in the Kingdom realm. Romans 12:1-2 says:

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Christians use this passage mostly when sending a new missionary to a post somewhere abroad or when people are engaged in other types of ministry that involve self-denial. We encourage people to present their bodies as a living sacrifice by volunteering at a rescue mission or nursing home, going somewhere, or doing something with their bodies.

I’ve heard people teach that when we raise our hands, dance, kneel, or bow in worship, we are offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. All these applications are true and correct. But I would suggest that this passage also speaks about the role of our physical bodies in recognizing and working with God.

Let me expand on this in the life of King David, the man perhaps most aware of the presence and glory of God of anyone in all history. David had 30 to 40 years where he freely came before the real and manifested presence of God, which was upon the Ark of the Covenant. The glory of God visibly radiated from it. The Bible makes it clear that David was immensely impacted by God’s presence.

As a result, he wrote: “My flesh longs for You…” (Psalm 63:1b). Was he speaking purely metaphorically? I don’t think so. He was declaring that he had been so affected by the presence and glory of God that his very body ached and longed for more. What was true for David is true for us.

In the same way that you and I might feel hunger for food or thirst for water, our physical bodies not just our emotions, intellect, and spirits can ache for God. And if we can physically hunger for God, then we can be physically satisfied by God. There is no hunger without the potential for satisfaction.

You don’t have an appetite for things that don’t exist. On the contrary, God has placed within our constitution the ability to recognize Him and His activities with our physical bodies…

This text is an excerpt from the book “The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind” written by Bill Johnson.

We invite you to read the following article “MIRACLE: PROVING THE WILL OF GOD”.