Seeing Jesus at the Parole Hearing

Seeing Jesus at the Parole Hearing by Sara Shallenberger job #857455 Sneak Peak Preview Excerpt I do not remember a time when I did not have a desire for both an encounter in heaven and encounters with the Lord while here on earth. He answered the desire for an encounter in heaven at age eight, but I never seemed able to pull in an encounter with Him, although in my high school years I found John 14:21, which gives us permission to believe for them based on the Word. So, in the year after the Lord healed me, I really had a desire for an encounter with Him Personally as the residual impact of the anointing He gave me was in love with Him. The Lord blessed me with my first encounter, which you can read about in my book Access during a corporate prayer service. The second encounter He gave me was at the nursing home where I was ministering once a week. That encounter is in the book I have about encountering the truth about gender. And the third encounter was at street ministry after that. And then came about the parole hearing. Which at first, I had no desire to participate in, but God had honored my willingness to speak up for all the other women in the case. When I got to the point in the hearing of sharing the gospel with the assailant, the glory had already filled the room where we were engaged via videoconference. As I was describing Jesus and His love for this individual and ability and desire to save and heal Him, Jesus Himself stepped into the room at San Quentin. The Holy Spirit opened my spiritual eyes and I saw the Lord Himself. He was standing leaning forward with the most intense, other-worldly pull. I had never seen Him pull on anyone Personally before. John 15:16 says that Jesus choses us and pulls on us. We do not choose Him first; He chooses us first and we respond to His pulling. Jesus was standing, leaning forward, completely engaged in His task at hand. He was paying no attention to the surroundings - an inner room at San Quentin Prison. He was paying no attention to the parole board or to myself. Jesus was there about His Father’s business. He was leaning forward, standing about two or three feet in front of the offender, pulling on him, with the most supernatural pull that exists. He wanted nothing more than that specific person to receive Him as savior. In the tangible, manifest presence of the Lord, there was no difference between me and the offender. That was the most glorious and surprising element of the encounter. When you encounter Jesus, you encounter His Holiness and your complete unholiness outside of Him. There is no other response our heart can have, but to be on our knees in front of Him. He is Lord. The amount of His Holiness and purity of His Holiness is other-worldly. Every time I have seen Him, that is His predominate feature. He is a person. But He is not like any other person. There is no stain of sin on Him. In the first instant of seeing Him, I had a brief flash of all of the time I had wasted. In a millisecond, I saw all the conversations I had in the twenty years before. And I realized that every moment spent thinking about the assault or worrying or agonizing over it had been wasted time. Jesus had healed me. In Jesus’ tangible presence the assault was a non-issue. Though the assault’s experience had been overwhelming as it occurred and for years afterwards, with Jesus standing in the room between me and the defendant, the assault seemed a small matter between us.