>> My name is Chris Garcia, and I want to share with you
an extraordinary encounter that I had with the Lord.
I was 17 years old.
I had just given my life to the Lord about a year prior,
and this insatiable yearning for the presence of God
flooded my very being,
and I wanted nothing but to be with Him and only Him.
I would spend hours upon hours just praying,
reading the word, getting to know Jesus deeply,
intimately, and personal. There was a fever in my soul.
It was a hunger for more of Jesus in my life.
And the Lord led me through a beautiful time,
beautiful times of refreshing with Him.
And on one occasion, it was November of 2007
that the Holy Spirit invited me to a three day fast.
I've never fasted before. I didn't have a grid for fasting,
but I knew I heard from God and I had spent -
that I were to spend three days
without any food, just drinking water.
The first day was great. I felt pretty good.
I wasn't tired, I wasn't struggling,
and it actually felt very natural for me to do it.
The second day was a little tough on my body,
and I remember the Lord led me just to have a small meal,
like a half of a banana and just to keep on fasting.
And I would spend all of my moments with the Lord
just praying, reading the word during this fast.
On the third day,
that's when everything literally started crumbling.
My whole soul was just bombarded with all these temptations,
all of these dark thoughts, all of these dark imaginings.
And I did not understand why I was going through that,
except this: I felt like it was a spiritual resistance.
And sometimes in life,
before we have tremendous spiritual victory,
there is great spiritual resistance.
And I felt that opposition from the enemy,
but it did not deter me. I kept pressing on with the Lord.
I remember the third day of my fast.
I was working at an assisted living facility,
and I was vacuuming the floor.
Everyone was gone, and I was literally weeping.
Weeping because I just felt the heaviness of this fast.
And I did not understand why I was feeling such resistance.
I know now. But when I came home,
I started talking to the Lord very sharply,
and I said, "I've been fasting for you.
I've been seeking your face.
I've been seeking you, and this is what I get.
I don't want to talk to you." I don't recommend
that you talk to the Lord that way.
But he saw the cry of my heart,
and he spoke to me as I was about to fade into sleep.
And he said, "Oh, Chris, you're seeking my hands
when you should be seeking my face.
Repent." And at that moment I understood exactly what he meant.
I was trying to get something from God
instead of being with God. I immediately adjusted my heart.
I said, "Lord, you're right. I apologize. I repent.
Forgive me for making this about me."
And I slipped off into sleep.
I opened my eyes, and before I opened my eyes,
what I thought was a dream, I saw my body and my spirit
literally wrestling with each other.
They were fighting with each other.
They were throwing throws. And you know, my body and spirit
were getting to a wrestling match.
And when I opened my eyes,
I literally kept seeing this experience, this vision.
I never had this happen.
And I heard "The spirit fights against the flesh,
and the flesh fights against the spirit,
so that you're not free to do what you desire to do."
That's in the book of Galatians.
And in the middle of this, I'm awake, but I'm not sleeping.
I'm kind of like awake.
A voice of a man speaks to me, clear as day.
And he says to me, "Romans eight one through three,
Romans eight one through three."
I open my eyes again, and I see the time.
And it's 2:20 in the morning.
I slipped out of my bed and I just started crying
because I felt so much resistance,
so much spiritual hostility.
The Bible says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood,
but against principalities and powers.
And in this wrestling, I was - I came to the end of myself
and I said, "Lord, I need you." And I just started weeping.
I had a friend that would pray with me.
He discipled me early on in my life, and he calls me.
And I actually called him and I said, "I'm weeping.
I feel that I'm at the end of myself
and I just feel hopeless.
I, I feel lost, I don't know what's going on.
I literally feel like I'm going to die."
I literally felt like I was dying.
It was the strangest feeling that I've ever felt in my life.
And he said, "What did you fast for?"
And I said, "Well, I was reading Galatians chapter two,
verse 20, where it says, 'I've been crucified with Christ.
It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
The life I live.
I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.'"
And when I told him
that I was fasting to understand what this meant.
He says to me, "You're getting your answer.
You're experiencing that crucifixion with Christ."
Immediately, I started to fall into a travail.
And a travail is this weeping that was unsatiable.
I could not contain the weeping. The Bible says in Romans
eight that the spirit groans for us.
He weeps for us with,
with, with words that cannot be uttered.
It's beyond words. It's beyond description.
And I felt the travail and the groaning
and the agonizing of the spirit,
my Spirit and God's Spirit, praying with me, for me,
praying in this moment.
And what I began to experience was very unusual.
But it happened in this way that I looked up and, out of my bed,
I was on my
- on the floor, kneeling, and I had my hands on the bed.
And I look up, and I'm praying. And what appeared to be eyes
literally just opened up in the core of my being.
And like, my belly is the best way I could describe it.
And there were spiritual eyes and it rose up in my heart.
Then it rose up in my literal eyes.
And when it rose up in my literal eyes,
I began to have a full blown vision.
A vision that was so real, I thought it was happening.
And it was very unusual because in this vision
I see what appears to be a garden.
And in that garden is a man dressed in white.
And he had long hair, and I knew it was Jesus.
And I could not see his face, I can only see his back.
And he was rocking back and forth, and he was agonizing in the garden.
And it reminded me of the Gethsemane moment with Jesus
where he says,
Jesus, "You know, if this cup, you know, let it pass from me,
but nevertheless not my will, but your will be done."
And he was praying and praying fervently,
rocking back and forth with his arms stretched out like this.
And then everything fades into darkness.
And I open my eyes and I see what appears to be a tree.
It was cut like a tree trunk.
And I saw the Lord's body, and he was hugging this stump,
and he was being beaten with whips. Very difficult to watch.
I saw his naked frame literally trembling at this post,
and he was trembling, and he was crawling,
and they kept beating Him over and over and over.
And every time they beat Him, I felt it.
I felt the feeling of what it felt like.
It almost felt physical, but it wasn't physical.
It was deeply spiritual. With each beating,
I felt a blow in my soul, beyond what I can understand,
to the point that I fell on the floor
and I was just crying and crying and crying.
And this beating was occurring and everything went black again.
Darkness.
And then my eyes opened again, and I fell on my back.
And I just started just going like this, worshiping.
And it was like seeing through the eyes of Jesus.
And they were hammering his hands.
They were hammering his feet,
and they lifted Him from the cross.
Everything fades away and then it opens again.
And I saw the Lord's face,
and I saw Him hanging on the tree.
And he looked very Jewish, like a Jewish man.
People asked me like, how did he physically look?
He was very Middle-Eastern, very Jewish.
He had thick, curly hair and it was disheveled everywhere.
His beard was very close to his face
and there was blood everywhere, a big wound gushing on his face.
And he - the only way I could describe it is this.
If love had a face, that's what the face would look like.
It was absolute love.
What caught my attention wasn't his physical appearance.
It was who he was.
It was the love of God made in human form.
I knew I was looking at the face of God through the Son of God.
And he began to weep, and he began to groan.
And he did something that was very interesting.
He just lifts up his hands in the cross.
And he - it almost looked like when a child is saying,
"Hey, Dad, look what I did."
You know, I have children of my own.
So it'll be like, "Check this out."
They'll do a little drawing. "Look what I did."
His face was so pure and innocent
that it was like, "Look at what I did."
And I just lost it. I started sobbing uncontrollably.
And it felt like we were with Him,
and he was with us before the foundations of the earth.
We were crucified with Him.
And God showed me that scripture in Galatians 2:20.
"I've been crucified with Christ.
It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
The whole church, every person he's ever thought of - you.
He died. We've been crucified with Him.
And then he let out a gasp and a giant groan and a sob.
He hung his head, and he died. At that moment I could not -
I could not hold that vision.
It was so intense that I could not even stand.
Like the Bible says in the book of Daniel, that his strength left
Daniel when he saw the vision of the Lord.
Similar to me, I literally had no strength.
I could not walk. I had to use a restroom.
I crawled my way to wash my hands,
and when I look at the mirror, every gash that I recall
that was on the face of Jesus was on my face.
And it spooked me. And when I looked, it was gone.
It was something very supernatural.
And I remember going back into my room
and I felt such a strong peace.
It was a peace that was so indescribable of his love for me.
I struggled whether or not he loved me,
and I understood at that moment that he loved me.
And I realized something, that when I had awakened,
it was 2:20 in the morning.
And it was exactly the prayer that I prayed, Galatians 2:20.
I've been crucified with Christ.
Maybe you're here today. Maybe you're struggling.
Maybe you feel like Jesus doesn't love you.
Maybe you feel like God doesn't love you.
Jesus loves you, and he gave his life for you.
And what you need to do is simply come to Him with
- he comes to you with arms wide open.
He loves you this much that he died,
and he died for you, and he died for me.
So I pray that this testimony blesses you, and spurs
you not just to have a similar experience,
but to know Jesus intimately for yourself.