Sid Roth welcomes Debbie Rich

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter right here with Debbie Rich. I know no one is going anywhere because I promised you, you were going to…someone’s neck was just healed in Jesus name; someone’s ear was just opened in Jesus name.  I believe that we are going to have an outpouring of God’s Spirit.  Debbie could not have been lower.  Here she is, a pastor of her church in Alaska, her husband runs off with the worship leader, leaves her.  She figures her ministry is finished, but you had a prayer; what was your prayer?

DEBBIE:  I said Lord I ask for fresh oil from heaven.

SID:  What does fresh oil mean?

DEBBIE:  I don’t think I was even sure of that.  But I knew the term.  I thought I knew what I was asking for, I said I want your presence; I want an experience with you; more than my library books,  more than three point messages, or my theology; I need you to be so fresh to me and my children, to even get me through this Lord.  More than…I always read about revival; and have been interested in that since I was a little girl. And was always reading the Wigglesworth books; and the Charles Finney books; the Kathryn Kuhlman books.  Lord I need my own right now, my own revival.  I am hurt, I am bitter; I don’t understand what has happened.  I need you to be so real to me, so I wrote a song, about…I ask for fresh oil from heaven.  And the next Sunday, I was now at the piano bench leading worship, and I began to sing that song:  I ask for fresh oil from heaven.

SID:  I mean at this point you weren’t even sure you were able to have a church.

DEBBIE:  No, in fact I said Lord, if they take the church away from me, if I loose my ministry license, if I never preach again, somehow I will live without that; but what I cannot live without but what I can’t live without is your presence.

SID:  That is what Kathryn Kuhlman used to say, she used to say, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit; He is all I have got.

DEBBIE:  Yes, and moments like that you realize he is all that you really all you have. And other people would get bitter and turn away from God.  I knew I would not do that.  I knew I tasted too much, but I needed him to be very personal to me at that moment.  So I began to sing that song and I was not expecting what happened, to happen.

SID:  I love it when God shows up suddenly.

DEBBIE:  I love that too, the suddenly of God; and in the middle of the song, the Holy Spirit swept into our little church; in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.  Just a small church and knocked me off my piano bench, where I was totally filled, saturated, enveloped; drunk in the Holy Ghost.  And a couple of hours later I literally crawled up the wall of my church, just laughing and joy unspeakable.  And I turned around to see…

SID:  But wait there was no reason to have joy unspeakable.  I mean you have just gone through a trauma of traumas.

DEBBIE:  Right, and all the more I needed that supernatural joy.  That has nothing to do with your circumstances, but everything to do with his presence and how real he can be and wants to be.

SID:  Now when you said you were “drunk” in the Holy Spirit, explain for those that don’t understand.

DEBBIE:  Well, in Acts chapter 2, the day that the Holy Spirit was given to the church; the Bible says that when they were all filled and began to speak with other tongues; that people began running in and looking and pointing at them, and saying look at them they are drunk.  And the Bible says Peter is standing up with the eleven; I have to wonder where he was before he stood up; I believe he was on the floor just in the presence of God; he stands up and says we are not drunk as you suppose.  He didn’t say we are not drunk, but not like you think; seeing it is but the third hour of the day, it is too early for alcohol.  But this is that, that was spoken by the prophet Joel that in the last day says God, I will pour out of my spirit on all flesh.  And he is still doing that today.  And it is as though alcohol and drugs are the perversion; the enemy, the devils perversion of what only what the Holy Spirit can do.

SID:  Let me ask you, when the Spirit of God came on you, at such a profound way, were you worried of anything, were you afraid of anything, were you fearful?  I mean you have three children, your husband has run off with another woman, the church is probably going to kick you out as being the pastor; a drunk normally when they are drunk, they are not worried about a thing.

DEBBIE:  Exactly.  I have been worried about all of the above until that moment, and that moment I couldn’t care less about any of that.  The only thing real to me was how big and how powerful God is and how much joy he was giving me.  He was doing in moments, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, what no psychiatrist can do.  He was going where no surgeon’s knife can go; he was doing what no counselor can do.

SID:  Out of curiosity, this is wonderful this is going on for you, and that would of been enough.  As we say it at Pesach, at Passover time; however what was going on with this whole congregation, watching their pastor fall off their bench; drunk in the Holy Spirit, literally holding onto walls, so she doesn’t fall down.  What were they thinking; what was going on with them?

DEBBIE:  Well, when I gained enough composure to care, I looked out and found that my entire church was on the floor in the same condition.   And not only were they like that, and what an awesome day in God we had; but that night I walked into a prison in Alaska were I had been having a prison ministry take place for quite some time; did not even tell them what happened in our church that morning, and thirty some men (some of them in there for life sentence for murder and rape), fell out of their seats drunk in the Holy Ghost.  And we began to have a revival in that prison that shook the entire Alaskan prison system.

SID:  Now what makes a man, a hardened, convicted felon sitting in their seat fall down and become…I mean were they pushed down?

DEBBIE:  No except…

SID:  I mean were they pushed down by God’s Spirit?

DEBBIE:  Yes, the heavy, of course the word for his glory; the Shekinah, the Kabod of his glory; it is, it is the heavy; in fact Strong says it is the heavy laden; the heavier still;  the weight of almighty God.

SID:  Hold that thought.   You are about ready to experience the weight of Almighty God; don’t go away; be right back after this.