I always believed the stories of Jesus I heard as a child but between childhood and my thirties I used to have to think when I woke up each morning to persuade myself God is real. I thought it should not be like that so I longed to have evidence I could remember and prayed often God would show Himself. As I got older I learned He comes to those who obey the teachings of Jesus so I did that and prayed earnestly. I knew I was called to preach yet hardly knew about God really. Then God the Father appeared to me in a vision like a dream at night in my sleep and said "I am God" and told me things that showed His love for my fellow people and predicted things that would happen the following day to show me this love and how He saves people from bad outcomes and it all happened just as He said. The dream was in answer to my prayer to see Father and Son and Spirit. It was more than a dream because God Himself was personally interacting with me. Months before I had been given another vision when asking earnestly for the Holy Spirit and to know with certainty that I had been given me. The vision was a bucket of building sand tipped out in front of me and words like subtitles said "Build the Temple". I asked for threefold confirmation and at a church meeting three messages were given by members: three little girls had written a song that went "Build, build, build the Temple. Build, build, build the Temple. Build, build, build the Temple" A man with a guitar who often spoke and sang preached about David being told his son would build the Temple. Another man then spoke about building the Temple. So this vision was a very real event to me. So later said to God I would preach to build the temple that is His believers - building up by His word - but I needed to know Him so I was not speaking without knowledge. That is why I asked to see Father and Son and Spirit. Then after God came in the dream just days or weeks later (mid January 1995 I think it was) a torrential rain storm period hit locally and flooded rivers and I read in Psalms how the Lord presides over floods and we should "Come and see the works of God" so I went to stand on a bridge near home and watch the flood water and rain. I had a big gold umbrella up because the rain was torrential. As I came back up the road a 'voice' only I could hear but clear as crystal with tremendous certainty and assertive authority said "PUT DOWN YOUR UMBRELLA". As soon as I did so the rain stopped so suddenly not a drop hit me. I said "It is the Lord" and remembered the way the disciples said this after the resurrection. Asking Jesus to prove it was Him I later at night asked for a dressing gown I had never used hanging on my bedroom wall to come off the nail by the morning and then went to sleep. In the middle of the night something or someone got into the hiddenmost depths of my mind and made me wake up and get up. As I did I reached for the dressing gown and took it and suddenly remembered my sign request. This made me perceive Jesus so clearly and the fact I had asked to see Father and Son and Spirit made me certain God regards Jesus as His Son: Not just a son, His Son. That is what I had asked and what was being shown me. Then weeks later I was taken to the church where for the first time I was given interpretation of a message in toungues that went: "See the trees how they put forth buds and leaves; they do so by the power of the name of Lord Jesus Christ." So now I had certainty who Father and Son and Holy Spirit are and was set on a path following them into all truth. I found very similar words in a forgotten book of scripures called the Book of Enoch and got lots of comfort and knowledge reading it. A little later I wanted to preach in a church that let anyone preach or 'share' so as I had a bath to get ready a voice suddenly said with a vision together with it "Israel has sinned; this is the sign" and I saw an eagle with a white eye overhead looking down and the vision showed me wars and terrors on the ground while it surveilled from up high. The vision said I would see such things as a sign. Immediately on TV as I got ready for church I saw US spy planes sent out (this was mid or late nineties I think) and a new police helicopter surveillance service just being started and later we had wars and mass surveillance appearing everywhere unheard of when that word came to me. So God is now very real to me but I love to think back on those things whenever I can.
