TOS004 A Witness to Life in the Spirit (Part 1) ; for Audio
First show in the series on Life in the Spirit. Patti Brunner shares her personal testimony about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in her life that led her to deeper understanding, comprehension and appreciation of Life in the Spirit. She explains how her black and white viewpoint was opened to Technicolor by the love of God and acceptance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
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Welcome to Truth of the Spirit episode 4, I am Patti Brunner. So glad you could join me as I share a Witness of Life in the Spirit.
Even though as a child I was baptized and confirmed and received sanctifying grace, I was unaware of the fullness that the Holy Spirit has made available for the Church. Actually, the only thing I knew about the Holy Spirit was that we changed the sign of the Cross from Father Son & Holy Ghost to Father, Son & Holy Spirit. That and that song, “Come Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up thy rest”
We were never nominal Catholics at my house so I got a lot of opportunity to sing that song at church. We took steps to worship and learn and to serve. My mom, a young Catholic widow, took us to Church pretty well every time the doors were open.
When I was a young married woman, my mother gave me a New American Bible for Catholics. Checking it out I saw a prayer to the Holy Spirit: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of us your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love.” It was about 20 years later that I actually heard someone pray that prayer.
It was the prayer we said multiple times a day during a women’s retreat called Cursillo. They added, “Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.” During the 1996 retreat something happened that changed my life forever.
I went to the retreat after continual prodding by friends. Several members of my study group were going. My husband Rick had been talked into going to the men’s Cursillo a month earlier.
Rick showed me how powerful the Cursillo was by his total change in attitude on the Monday following his weekend! He also told me about how he came to love his group and that he realizes that the love the apostles felt for each other must have been very similar. He said Father John had told them it was like a little piece of heaven and Rick agreed. Later on he realized he had been healed of long-term depression. 9/29/96
And felt for the first time that God loved him and that his salvation was assured.
So, I went with an expectant faith that God would have something for me too. It started with a truly honest Sacrament of Reconciliation.
The next day, as we gathered in a circle and sang I truly experienced God’s love for each of the women and comprehended how we are one body in Christ. During a break, as I read scripture, I felt a strong connection with the words and with the Lord.
During in the retreat, a priest prayed for us to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Now, I really had no idea what that meant but in my heart I decided to receive whatever God had for me. While we said a rosary, I knelt down and asked God for a physical healing of my knee. Suddenly I had the sensation of kneeling on rose petals, and my knee was healed.
Through God’s grace, a lifetime prepared me for this moment, and this moment prepares me for a lifetime.
Later that evening we had a healing service. As individuals went up for prayer we were told to lift our hand toward the person and pray. I was quite surprised that I could feel a flow of power like electricity to that person. It was awesome.
Each time the energy ceased I could sense the healing had taken place. Sometimes it came in waves, as if several types of healing were being bestowed on the same person.
I think if the room had been dark I would have been able to see sparks!
When it was my time for prayer, I expected to experience the fireworks first hand, but….nothing, nothing but a warm peace. As the ladies prayed for me their hands felt like a heavy blanket had been placed on my shoulders.
I was a little disappointed but I told God I was happy to receive whatever he wanted to give me—whether it was a little or a lot.
After I had been prayed for, I returned to my seat, still a little disappointed but I thanked God for whatever he had given me. That’s when the power of God zapped me. All of a sudden a fire started in my chest. There was a rush of wind, a wonderful cyclone, a tornado of fire going on inside my chest and I could barely catch my breath. Could this be what happened to the apostles in the upper room? With emotion, I started crying. It lasted for several minutes. Then I began to feel totally relaxed, like a soft noodle, someone took my hand and it was as if Jesus was holding my hand. After a while things turned back to normal, but I was changed forever. I looked around expecting everyone to have the same experience, but I seemed to be the only one.
My life changed like going from black and white to Technicolor, like going from two tin cans and a string to an IPhone or from a pencil to a computer. It was a whole new world. What did I understand? God’s love! I comprehended—I felt—God’s love for me and for others. During the next few days I began to have wonderful visions and spiritual experiences. I experienced heaven and I lost my fear of death.
I also experienced promptings to help others.
I felt called to do simple things like writing letters, visiting the ‘sick and the grieving’ and praying for people. In fact it got to the point I would be driving along and the Holy Spirit would whisper someone in this house needs prayer and so I would pray. I was beginning to feel a little odd and there was doubt if all of this was coming from the Lord. Then I was encouraged to pray for a lady coming out of the post office. I figured she must have just gotten a letter with some bad news and that’s why the Spirit told me to pray for her. When I got a little closer– I realized that she was only reading her bank statement, so I shrugged off the urge to pray and went inside. Only a moment later she ran into the Post office in a frenzy. She had backed into someone’s truck! You see, the Holy Spirit always knows exactly what we need and tried to tell me that she needed my prayer. I paid closer attention after that.
One day at lunch time, Rick told me about a co-worker’s illness. Rick said he had been worried about him for some time. The man had to go to the hospital while out of town, and Rick read on his E-Mail that the man was back in town but was going to have surgery. We prayed for him together. Then I called the man’s house to see if I could help with the kids. The lady that answered and she said “just pray for him” because he would have surgery that afternoon at 3. After Rick left for work, I was urged by the Holy Spirit to go down to the hospital in a neighboring town to pray with or next to this man’s family. I had no idea what they looked like or if they would be offended but since I had been asked to pray for him, I had courage. When I got to the hospital I found out that he had been taken to surgery early. I joined his wife and his mother in the surgical waiting room. They were both extremely anxious. We prayed together and I encouraged them to talk to me to keep their minds off worry. I found out that the man and his mother were Catholic and that his wife was attending classes to become a Catholic. His mother told me the Holy Spirit sent me. I don’t doubt that at all. The next day I prayed with them, all of them, in the hospital room. Later on, the man gave my husband testimony that the doctor had not expected him to survive but that he felt the prayers brought about his healing.
I felt urged to visit people who were almost strangers in hospitals and lead them in family prayer, and God’s healing touched them.
It all was so unusual. So unusual that I searched for someone to tell me what had happened to me. But none of our friends seemed to relate. No one we talked to could explain. I wrote down my various experiences and took it to my deacon and his wife. They thought it sounded great but couldn’t explain it either.
And then my nose was in the bible all the time. I wanted to know the Word of God more and more. I got one of those “read the bible in a year” bibles and was finished in three months.
Later on, when I read the Gospel of Mark 16:18, I knew it was true!
Jesus tells us that one of the signs of believers is that “they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
I witnessed the first physical healing by the power of the Holy Spirit almost by accident. My daughter, who at the time was ten years old, had gotten her ears pierced and one of them had gotten infected- really yucky puss and redness. She was crying because it hurt and she wanted to take out her earrings but she didn’t want the hole to grow back together. To comfort her and to get her to calm down and quit crying, I told I would pray and ask God to help heal her. I didn’t really expect anything. I just was tired of listening to her cry. Imagine how shocked I was the next day when the infected ear looked entirely normal. No redness, no puss, no pain. It looked better than the other ear! At the time I didn’t make the connection to a gift of the Holy Spirit. But I certainly gave the credit to God.
The desire to share God’s blessings with others caused us to sponsor couples’ bible studies in our home. As we studied the Acts of the Apostles and then First Corinthians one of the youngest couples pointed out that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, listed in First Corinthians chapter 12, are still around– contrary to what the rest of us thought.
Angela invited us to a charismatic prayer meeting that week, and there we found answers and a new understanding of God’s power unleashed by the Holy Spirit, from fellow Catholics.
It seems that I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Somehow, I had opened my heart to the fullness of God’s love and the Holy Spirit responded by filling me with gifts of grace that were mine for the accepting.
The Holy Spirit is revealed in the Church, and by that revelation we grow more deeply as the kingdom of God. For where the Spirit is so is the Father and the Son. So, that’s what happened to me. I was baptized in the Spirit, and now I was living a life in the Spirit.
Quickly, God provided opportunities for learning about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit –partially by reconnecting us with Dennis Holt who came to our parish to give a workshop on the Holy Spirit in Old Testament.
We had double dated with Dennis & his wife Janet in high school in our hometown. Dennis, who had been a groomsman at our wedding in 1969, had also had a Holy Spirit spiritual conversion. And he wrote some books. One of the books he had written was on the Gift of Tongues and he had a tape too. They were filled with scriptures that I had overlooked.
This gift of the Holy Spirit has been stirred up again in the Catholic Church. And it is an amazing way to pray. Praying in Tongues sounds like foreign language. But it is the words of the Holy Spirit with my voice or your voice.
I listened to the tape on receiving the Gift of Tongues because I wanted to receive that gift, but I kept falling asleep. Not willing to give up I put earphones on and took the cassette to Walmart and listened while I shopped. No snoozing there! Returning home I re-read the scriptures and then asked the Lord for the gift of tongues following the suggestions in the book. Surprisingly, I immediately began praying in tongues. I went in to look at the mirror to see if those unique sounds were coming out of my mouth and they were!
You’ll hear more about tongues and some of the other gifts of the Spirit later in the series.
All kinds of amazing things have happened to me since then. I learned that that feeling of electricity while praying for people was the awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence through the expression of the gift of wisdom and also happens during the gift of healing.
The first time I heard the gift of prophecy manifest –which is the ability to hear the voice of the Lord in various ways– was by Marci Brungardt and her sharing during a prayer meeting from her prayer journal. I didn’t have a clue at first that she was sharing what God spoke to her for our benefit but I recognized it as beautiful words that touched my heart.
I have received also a gift of prophecy. One of the first times that happened I was driving through the Wal-Mart parking lot and I heard a voice say “slow down”. I was so surprised! I wasn’t even going fast but immediately I slowed way down. Right then a toddler ran in front of my car. God is so good!
Jesus promised in Acts 1:8 “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Some people who travel to Arkansas think they are travelling to the ends of the earth! We are a missionary state; our whole state is one diocese.
As the Lord trained me in his ways we answered the call to evangelize in various ways. My husband and I were asked to travel with a team of 16 Catholics around to Catholic parishes teaching them about the Holy Spirit in Living Life in the Spirit seminars, which we did for two years.
During healing services of those seminars, the Lord always confirmed his Word and His Presence by signs and wonders. The first time I was asked to listen to God and “call out the healings” I was very nervous. I did not doubt God, but doubted my own ability to hear and feel the problem the Lord wanted to heal.
As my elbow began to throb, I sensed that the Lord wanted to heal an elbow. I quizzed the Lord and asked him if it was Him or just my elbow acting up. The Lord confirmed to me the person whose elbow was to be healed was wearing green. As I announced that the Lord wanted to heal an elbow to the crowd who had their eyes closed, a man raised his hand. He was healed. And he was wearing green.
We prayed for lots of people. We prayed for healing for our family members, too. One holiday there were 5 healings in our family including my sister-in-law’s TMJ and my brother’s old shoulder injury. These five physical healings all really took place, but remember it wasn’t my doing. It was the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit as we gathered in His name.
This witness has been about the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit and his charisms are truly amazing. Yet this was just the start of a beautiful friendship. Since then I have been Spirit led and Spirit fed.
In the last 20 plus years, there have been lots of special little assignments from the Lord. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no way I could have done them. These things trained me to trust God more deeply. Even though many of them were out of my personal comfort zone, when I surrendered to the Holy Spirit things worked out great– and the desires of my heart began to line up with God’s will for me.
Just as God has a plan for me, he has a plan for you! God wants to give you the fullness of the Holy Spirit. God wants you to know how much he loves you. God wants to empower you with the many gifts available through the Holy Spirit.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit show us God’s love and draw us to Him.
God does not force his gift of grace, his gift of the Most Holy Spirit upon us. But in loving gestures he provides exposure to what he has to offer and gives us the freewill to ask so we can receive.
In the years after these experiences I read where Pope Paul VI talked about baptism in the Spirit and said that “no amount of religious education or listening to sermons would enable a person to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. It is a direct infusion of the Holy Spirit—involving release of the power already present in the soul but until then, relatively untapped”.
In 1973 Pope Paul VI said that the Holy Spirit was coming to awaken the Church, to stir up forgotten charisms and to bring the same vitality and joy that had kept the Church youthful and up-to-date. He said this kind of thing is a part of the history of the Church and is how the Church has been able to proclaim it eternal message. He talked about the eternal youth of the Church. He told us that Pentecost is not a distant event but a continual one. The Church lives because the Holy Spirit pours in divine grace.
Pope Paul VI compared the divine grace to a fountain. The effect is like a supernatural ‘fountain of youth’ pouring into the visible, social and human body of Christ’s followers.
“By the power of the Gospel,” the Holy Spirit “makes the Church keep the freshness of youth and constantly renews it… In a fountain, the jet of water remains high, lively and fresh as long as it is fed by the forcing current of water, even though the water itself falls and is spread over the plain.”
The Holy Spirit awakened me. The Holy Spirit stirred up the charisms and brought me vitality and joy. I have been Baptized in the Holy Spirit!
Thanks for listening. I’ll continue to share the rest of the story with you as I share the Truth of the Spirit. I hope you’ll keep listening—because there is more. So much more!
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