Precisely the Prophetic, Part 12

Chapter Five- Kicked into the Kingdom

Kitty:

During my years as a banker in California, my hunger for more of God intensified and grew stronger every day. By God’s grace, there was an answer to my heart’s cry living nearby. My neighbor across the street from me was an on-fire Baptist lady, and she was about 20 years my senior. Her name was Peggy Toler. We became friends, and I fell in love with her passion for God. She was so outgoing and bubbly every day we spent time together. We chatted often, and I saw how her beautiful blue eyes would just dance. Peggy was filled with joy and zeal. I sat with her in her living room one morning, and asked her, “Peggy, I’m a Baptist, and you’re a Baptist, but there’s just something about you that is so on fire for God, and I want that.” She said, “Well, honey, honey, it’s the Holy Spirit.” She was the first Charismatic Christian I had ever met. It was the Holy Spirit, she explained. I said, “Well, give Him to me.” Just like that, so innocent. She said, “Oh, darlin’, you have a Bible.” I said, “Yes, Ma’am.” She instructed me, “You go back across the street, and you read your Bible. See what it says about the Holy Spirit.”

I thought, ok, but I would rather she just give me a shot of the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t understand how those things worked. I raced home and began my pursuit of Bible study regarding the Holy Spirit. I went back to Peggy’s house and said, “I see it now. I think they lied to me. I think they lied to me about the Holy Spirit not being for today.” Peggy replied, “Yes, that’s true but honey, just forgive them”

I shot back, “But Peggy, they told me tongues were of the devil.” She said, “Well they’re just not informed, they haven’t been taught. If they don’t want to learn, that is up to them, but I can see you’re hungry. Whenever you would like, if you would like, I will take you to one of my Bible Studies we have once a week.” In this meeting, the people would gather in a circle to study the Word, and if anybody had a prayer request, at the end they would get the chair and have you sit in the middle, and they would pray for you (in my case) to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Peggy explained all that and said, “If you want to be filled, then why don’t you come with me?” I got permission from my husband to go, and I absolutely felt God in that room when I walked in with all those people. All their eyes were sparkling. At the end of the service, the teacher said, does anybody want prayer for anything? I thought, “I want the Holy Spirit!” I shot my hand up, and the leader invited me to the chair in the front for people to be prayed for. He said a couple of preliminary things, and then I repeated my request, “I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit like Peggy.” He put his hand on my head and said, “now open your mouth and praise the Lord, and I said praise the Lord, now say Hallelujah, I said Hallelujah, and then the torrent came: “shandala rhondala cotasbeshodapa! I spoke in tongues for the next two minutes, and they just let me. Flowing like a fountain, it came out of my belly. It was that river of the Holy Spirit that I had been withheld from.

The leader said, “Little sister, you have had that bottled up in there a long, long time.” It made me smile because I was learning about the Holy Spirit. I went from that place to being more on fire, more evangelistic, more hungry, and I couldn’t get enough of Him. I told my then spouse about what happened. I didn’t really need to tell him; he saw something had shifted in me and I was on fire. I have never been “off-fire” from that moment to this day, and I am 66 years old this year.

Soon after I heard about another group of women, they were called Women’s Aglow. Peggy Toler asked me if I would like to go and visit that meeting as well. I said absolutely, of course. It was during a season that I was doing daycare in my home. What happened to get to that point was this:

We had bought a house in Camarillo, CA, Ventura County and the day came that I left banking and I was able to stay home with my children. How did I go from being a banker to a stay at home mom? One day the branch manager called me over to his desk and said, “Kitty, we’d like to promote you to operations officer, because you are very skilled and good at what you do.” For years I had been a teller, and I was never out of balance more than a penny, because I love “getting it right.” That was before computers, and everything was done on a ledger back then, handwritten. I started as a proof operator, that’s the person that runs this big machine, and you process all the checks and deposits of the day.
My boss repeated, “we would like to promote you to operations officer.” I had already been a teller and teller supervisor. I had also worked as an assistant operations manager, and I said well, “Can I think about it overnight?

To Purchase Precisely the Prophetic in Paperback or PDF in its Entirety, Please Visit the Shop