The Hand of God

How great is our God / Sing with me how great is our God/And all will see/How great/How great/Is our God!

God is awesome!!!!!

Had a deliverance session last night - it was awesome watching the Lord work and demons fleeing at the mention of the name of Jesus! It was a long session, but really rewarding - God moved sovereignly as I commanded the evil spirits out. It was even more awe inspiring to watch the Lord touch her as the evil spirits were removed and the presence of the Lord came in to fill the vacant spaces - I commanded out a spirit of heaviness and declared Isaiah 61:3, that the Lord gives the ‘oil of joy for the spirit of heaviness’, and she started to laugh; as I commanded out anxiety and spoke in the peace of God, based on Philippians 4:6-7, she visibly relaxed and you could physically see the change in her appearance as God’s peace entered her.  As I commanded out doubt and unbelief, the Lord had me release supernatural faith in its place - you should have seen the power of God hit her!

As I called out multiple personalities and commanded them to tell me their names, four identified themselves and were removed. As I broke ungodly soul ties and canceled curses of words spoken, tears flowed. Surprise was registered on her face as the Lord supernaturally revealed things that she didn’t even realize were there. After the 3 hour session, I laid hands on her and prophesied her destiny - released God’s call on her life and the power of God hit her; she could barely stand at one point. God is just awesome!!

So I’m rejoicing! One more victory for the Kingdom of God!

You know, I realize that the #1 top post for months now on my blog is the one where I just had nothing to say! :D  I can’t believe it!  All I did was list a couple of my favourite websites.   So, I thought I’d add to that list (curse you, shameless blog stats!)

A couple more of my favourite websites - now not just limited to the prophetic/supernatural, are:

• In Plain Site (no, not a typo!) - this is the deepest website on Biblical matters I have found!  My blog contains a link to this site that is my second most popular post since I started!
• Simple Church Journal - An informational website about house churches - also called simple or organic churches.
• House 2 House - Another website dedicated to house churches.
• Paul D. Watson - A new addition to my favourites list. Only read a couple entries so far, but it’s good stuff here.
• Ministering Deliverance.com -A part of a network of websites dealing with deliverance. Check out the website’s blog (and no, although the author’s name is also Robert, it’s not my site!)
• The Deliverance Ministry Blog is another new website - testimonies of actual deliverances! I’ve recently added one, so you can check it out. It’s another site linked to the one above.
• Great Bible Study - And this website lives up to its name!  This is another deep website!  It has a lot of Biblical material - including information about deliverance.  It’s the last of the series of websites I can find from the Ministering Deliverance network above.
• Overcomer - my friend Darla’s blog… interesting, funny, deep spiritual insights.  I have her on my homepage so that I can be updated as soon as she adds anything.
• inProgress - another friend on the blogosphere.
• A Mending Shift - Another one of the websites that made it onto my personal Google homepage so that I can be updated - very, very good stuff here.

Ok, that’s enough for now! (Ok, I admit, I’m not at home - I’m in Tampa on my aunt’s computer, so I don’t have access to my bookmarks on my home PC…. ) Seriously though, check out these websites and have fun!

On the blog Subversive Influence, Brother Maynard commented that ”authority is given through relationship by those over whom it is held, not mandated from above by position.”   That succintly describes my own thoughts on authority and accountability, as I have been having random discussions about the topic with a pastor who questions the accountability and authority structures within the house church movement.  He said to me that when a proponent of the house church was challenged on these accountability and authority issues that he could not give a theologically sound response. 

My take on this is, having been a member of a house church for many years, I am still seeing accountability and authority work in practice because of the relationships that are formed within.  It really doesn’t matter what stream of Christianity you follow, you are under authority because you choose to be, and whether that authority comes from ‘above’ or not, there is an implicit relationship that is there between the one under authority and the one to whom authority is given - otherwise, there is abuse.  I choose to submit to the authority of my leaders and my peers, who have the permission to speak into my life because of my relationship with them.  If you are within a ‘traditional’ church structure, you are under the ‘covering’ (hate that religious term!) of your leaders, not by virtue of their being your leaders, but because you chose to come under that authority by joining the church.  However, by choosing that, you have chosen that relationship and have given authority to that leader. 

All in all, I agree with this quote.  I understand the pastor’s concerns, I think. He is trying to protect people from abuse - but in a healthy relationship of any kind, abuse is non-existent. He is speaking to me about protecting people from a ’spirit of deception’ and his not accepting “things across the board … until he is satisfied there is sufficient biblical evidence.”  To me, he’s questioning it because it’s different from established norms, so it must be viewed with suspicion until it can be validated.  The thing is,  God doesn’t always work in ways that can be validated by human reasoning - even the Bible calls the cross ‘foolishness to the Gentiles’ (1 Corinthians 1:23) 

By the way: no sufficient Biblical evidence for the house church?  Every letter Paul wrote to he mentions something about the church that meets in this person’s house, or that person’s house…. I’m going to get one of my friends to help me with the biblical evidence that my pastor friend wants.  The fact that one person he tackled could not answer his questions does not invalidate the entire movement!

Thanks to all of you who prayed my family through this tough grieving process… my wife has been able to get a trip to Toronto for her cousin’s funeral (financial MIRACLE, yay God!) and I’m blogging from Tampa, FL… the children are home in Barbados being taken care of by family members.

I can’t talk.

Go here.

*awe*

Interesting article at www.friendofmissional.org.

I like this “short answer” quote as a definition of Missional:

What is Missional - A Short Answer “Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors, but many churches today have inadvertently changed the “go and be” command to a “come and see” appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.

“Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.”

—Rick Meigs

A missional church will see themselves as a community or family on a mission together. There are no “Lone Ranger” Christians in a missional church.

A missional church will be a community where all members are involved in learning “the way of Jesus.” Spiritual development is an expectation.

A missional church will help people discover and develop their spiritual gifts and will rely on gifted people for ministry instead of talented people.

A missional church is a healing community where people carry each other’s burdens and help restore gently.

God is awesome!

I went back to the Christian Mission last night to speak on the Gifts of the Spirit. I gave examples of the empowerment of believers in the Old Testament (Bezalel and Oholiab - Exodus 31:1-7 (craftsmanship); Joseph - Gen. 40, 41; Daniel -Dan. 2:24,27-45 (dream interpretation); even King Saul (1 Sam. 10:10) and King David (1 Sam. 16:13) I mentioned the difference between the Old Testament’s view of empowerment and the New Testament’s: in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit ‘came upon’ select individuals - sometimes only for brief moments to accomplish certain tasks, whereas in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit came down and remained: starting with Jesus, (John 1:32-34) and then on the Church (Acts 1:5, 8; 2:1-4).

I mentioned the result of this empowerment (Mark 16:17-1 and spoke about one way that the gifts were received - the laying on of hands (Acts 8:17; 19:6; 1 Tim. 4:14)

I then spoke about some of the gifts in Scripture - Rom. 12:6-8 and 1 Cor. 12:4-11… and went on to tell my own story about how I was introduced to the gifts and started to operate in them (ask nicely and I might put it in another blog post!) From there I mentioned 1 Cor. 13, and used it to speak about love as the chief motivator for the gifts: no love, gifts lose significance.

And, like I say: then the fun started!

I told everyone what I always say: God can’t drive a parked car. He requires our particpation and willingness in order to work in our lives. I encouraged them to let down their guard, believe God and step out in faith.

Laid hands on one lady, and just quietly started to ask the Holy Spirit to come. As my hands started to get warm, she started to shake and praise. I was encouraging her to listen to see if she heard any ‘gibberish’-like sounds in her mind and to say them out in faith - but honestly, I just released the Lord to do whatever he wanted…

Prayed for another lady and prophetically spoke the teacher gift into her life - I told her I saw a shovel, and it spoke to her digging into the word of God and finding nuggets that were to be meditated on personally and then taught. I laid hands on her and prayed it into her life. Yet another lady was prophesied to about asking the Lord for what she wanted.

I went to a young lady, Maria, and reminded her that when I was there last I had told her that I f felt God wanted to start her off with tongues… I told her that her gifts center around her mouth, around speaking. I laid hands on her and prayed in tongues, encouraging her to speak out - she started to mumble softly, I could barely hear her. When I asked, she told me that it was there, but it was only coming out in mumbles. I kept praying for a bit, and prayed against shyness, and self consciousness, and then I told her to just keep practicing, keep asking God for more.

Prayed for the pastor’s daughter - she said she didn’t feel anything when I prayed; I said that you receive by faith, not merely by feelings. However, I did pray for her to be used in evangelism. I went to the pastor and started to pray that the Holy Spirit would fill him - started to see chains breaking, so I cut off hinderances and blockages that were stopping him from moving forward. I prayed that God would give him more authority even in evangelism and I started prophesying that God set him free from the things in his life that no one knew about, but that he was struggling with.

I prophesied to the entire body then, reminding them of their call to warfare … I told them that they needed the empowerment of the Spirit and exercising their gifts to be impactful in the community and I found myself breaking off words spoken against the assembly about irrelevance. I said that they were called to go out into the community and reach the lost.

I prophesied to the oldest member of the church - a lovely 90 something year old lady (the mother of the guy who invited me: saw her at about 6 years old or so, running through the canefields… the Lord was reminding her he still saw her as that child, still saw that joy within her, even if old age has taken away mobility and physical strength. I told her she should continue to pray for everyone, because everyone needs a praying mother.

Then we started to worship as I finished that time of prayer… and a guy slipped in the back from outside. We had just finished doing what I call a ‘Victory chant’ using Psalm 47:1 I would call out “Clap your hands all ye people….” (everyone would clap as loud as they could) “… and shout unto God with the voice of triumph!” (and everyone would shout out to the Lord in praise at the top of their lungs!) I had to coax them to break out of their sleepiness and shout! During that prayer time, the lady who was told to ask God for what she wanted spontaneously started to shake and cry out while in worship - I was like, “Finally!” - I went and prayed with her some more.

Anyway, the guy who came in went further up to the front of the church, where he was met by the assistant pastor. David spoke quietly to him while we worshipped - and then said he had come to give his life to the Lord! WOW - talk about prophetic confirmation about reaching the community! David led him to the Lord, the pastor prayed for him, and then I felt led to pray for him as well - I sensed addiction to alcohol and nicotine, so I asked him if he used to drink. He said, “Yes,” and I broke the spirits of addiction to nicotine and liquor off him… GOD IS GREAT! He knelt on the floor when I was praying for him, and I believe he’s now free.

The first lady - her name is Shontell - came up to me afterwards and she told me that she was the one I was referring to when I said that someone was called to go out into the community - she said that she has had dreams that always came true, and that even before she came back to the Lord that a lady had told her that she was called to prophesy. She’s asked me to keep her on her prayer list, and she said she needs Bible study too… I felt like this is ‘my church’, in a sense… that the Lord placed me here to assist them … so I’ll be back!

I have been pondering this post on SimpleChurch Journal (www.simplechurchjournal.com) on “Rethinking House Church” for some time now, and it is a challenging one.  Simple churches (sometimes called house churches) are smaller groupings of believers who try to live out the gospel in every day life, without the extra trappings of “church buildings”, “church staff” etc.  It revolves around (or should, in its purest form) a lifestyle of Christianity, missional in focus - other-liness rather than self-centeredness and relationships with each other and the wider community that run deeper than sitting next to people in a pew.

Roger Thoman, author of this post, has this to say:

I have spoken and written about the following statement over and over in many different ways:

“Simple church is not about ‘doing church differently,’ rather it’s about a way of life, the Jesus way of life, and supporting that way of life through simple, organic gatherings.”

In other words, the “way of life” really is the primary focus while the structure, format, or type of gathering is completely secondary.  Our communities/gatherings must consist of people who are living or learning to live dynamic, purposeful, intimate, prophetic, missional Christian lifestyles rather than just being house-sized containers for passive Christians to gather in. (my emphasis)

That makes me think.  How can I encourage my church, which follows this format, to be more purposeful in living out this way of life?  How can I, as one of the people who is looked to for direction and leadership, model this more in my lifestyle?  Am I even doing it right?  These are more questions than answers, but I am challenged by this blog post.   What does it mean to live a life “that actually challenges my comfortable … lifestyle and propels me more often into the world of people’s hurt, pain, need, and lost-ness that Jesus engaged daily”?

I agree with Roger’s comment about building mission into the discipleship process:

However, I also sense the need to bring this type of ethos into the discipleship process so that I am being discipled into a radical, missional, Jesus-following life and discipling others in the same vein.  I believe a healthy, fathering/mentoring discipleship chain is essential to Christians living full-of-life, dynamic, intentional, intimate, purposeful, kingdom lives that propel us out of our cultural sloth.

All in all, I agree 100% with his conclusion:

I am re-imagining simple church that places a whole-life, missional, counter-cultural, Jesus-following ethos at the very center of its gathering and intentional discipleship processes.

May we all endeavour to this model - whatever stream of Christianity we are swimming with!

Last night I spoke at a Christian Mission church about the baptism of the Holy Spirit…. it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time! I was invited to speak by the assistant pastor, who I befriended while I was in Tampa. We were talking about several things including prophecy and hearing the Voice of God … he invited me to speak to his church about prophecy and then to prophesy to the congregation, but when we really got to planning it, we decided that I could speak on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as it is the empowerment for the gifts of the Spirit in any case… I carried Jason, one of the guys from my church.

It was sooo cool! I had asked the Lord what he wanted to say to the group (it was the church’s prayer group) and I got Joshua 14:6-13, where Caleb was claiming his inheritance within the Promised Land. He was 40 years old when he, Joshua and the other ten spies were sent to scout out Canaan, and is now 85 years old, but is still “as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.” (vs 11 - NIV) He calls for his inheritance - “Now, give me this mountain….” (vs 12, KJV) which is populated by giants “the Anakim (KJV) and he’s going specifically to drive them out - at 85!

God was telling the church that they are not to old to serve God by being empowered by his Spirit to wage war against the enemy… God kept him strong and fit for 45 years so that he could get his inheritance. I then started to speak on the Promise of the Holy Spirit (John 14:14-17, 26), the Purpose of the Spirit (Luke 24:49), the Power of the Spirit (Matt 28:19-20 and Mark 15:15-1 and the Presence of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-4)

Then the fun started!

I prayed for my friend who had invited me to the church to speak. He has a bad shoulder - if he wants to raise his arm he has to lift it up by using the other hand. I tried to pray healing for his shoulder, raising his hand and trying to get it to stay outstretched, but nothing happened. Oh well, I’m one step closer to seeing a miraculous healing, right?

At first no one else was coming up… then Jason encouraged them, asking them what their purpose was. He challenged them to continue meeting with the purpose of prayer and seeking God.

One of the ladies then stood up and came to the front. I was asking God how to pray as I laid hands on her; as I was asking God how to handle this I thought about one of the Scriptures I had spoken about (John 20:21-23) where Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. So, I did the same thing - breathed gently on her face and said, “Receive…” Did that a couple of times and then her eyes started to blink a bit faster, and the power hit her She started to call on the name of Jesus and shake a bit … I told her that I would come back to her and moved on.

While praying for her, another lady in the congregation who was still in her seat, started to feel God’s Spirit on her as well, so I went to her and laid hand on her and started to prophesy over her…. I felt the word about Caleb was for the corporate body, but was also for her specifically… while speaking to her I called for a Bible and started declaring Isa. 61 over her, saying that she has been anointed to release captives and bind up the broken hearted.

I prayed for a young girl who I learned later was the last lady’s granddaughter. As I blew gently on her, I touched her head and watched as small tears trickled down her face. I hugged her and told her that I represented Jesus, and Jason piped up saying that she was loved. She hugged me tighter as the love of Jesus washed over her and as I broke off spirits of shyness and self consciousness.

I went back to the lady who was at the front and blew on her some more… she started to praise God and went down on the floor! I prayed for the pastor, calling for gifts of wisdom and knowledge. I started to sing a song by the Grace Thrillers “Thank you Lord, for one more year….” and quoted from Isaiah, as I told the church that the anointing allows me to proclaim the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ and ‘the day of vengeance’ over them; I started calling the church into a season of warfare. As I was singing the song, the lady on the floor was reacting as I sang. Jason prayed for the pastor’s daughter as well.

As I was calling the church into warfare, I reminded them again of Caleb; that he was empowered to kill giants at 85, but that the baptism they have requested - the empowerment they were receiving - was not to be trifled with. I warned them that, like the parable of the talents, God would judge them for receiving his gifts and sitting on them. I mentioned that the baptism is not to jump up, drop on the ground and feel chills, but is empowerment for service.

After the service, the grandmother told me that the night before she went to a prayer and fasting service, where the preacher spoke to them about Caleb - saying that God was saying that they were ‘well able’ …. just like Caleb was telling the Israelites that they were  ‘well able’ to defeat the giants in Canaan when they had originally spied out the land.  Confirmation!

I enjoyed myself immensely seeing God work I’m already planning to return and do more teaching and activations.  I know that God had done something there - because Satan wasn’t pleased - by the time I got home, I was sick!  I had a fever and an upset stomach…. some ginger tea and prayer made me right again, though …

GOD IS EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!

Yet another testimony of God using the Internet to set another captive free! Bless you, Jesus!

aDiosa: The Doc is IN: Isaiah 43:25 says:
Lord you can show me what is going on in the spirit right now if you choose to
BajanPOET - Knighted by the King says:
I hear the word ‘Crusher’ - There’s a demon surrounding u called ‘Crusher’
he is a spirit of oppression and is sent to dissuade u and crush ur spirit
crush your hopes; crush the very life of Christ from you if he is able
I can type.  But you need to rebuke this thing out loud
I bind u, Crusher, in the mighty name of Jesus, the Christ.
The weapons of my warfare are not carnal but mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds
I renounce all verbal contracts I have made with this evil spirit of oppression
and I forgive with my mouth and will every person who has hurt me and rejected me recently.  I release them all from my heart
The Word says that I can pull down strongholds and so I pull this stronghold of oppression down in the mighty name of Jesus.
I COMMAND THIS OPPRESSIVE SPIRIT TO LEAVE NOW
Under the authority of Jesus Christ I command Crusher to leave now!
I shall not die, but LIVE and declare the works of the LORD
The Lord has promised beauty for ashes and the garments of praise rather than the spirit of heaviness
I choose praise instead of despair and Crusher will no longer crush my spirit - GOD has given me joy for mourning and I choose HIM
Thank you Father for your deliverance
AMEN
I also feel that you should start praising in tongues…. filling the atmosphere with the language of the Spirit …. Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered!
Let me know what’s happening as u pray that prayer
I’m not there to see, so I need u to help me
aDiosa: The Doc is IN: Isaiah 43:25 says:
i just crying and thanking God
BajanPOET - Knighted by the King says:
YES! Thank you, Jesus! Another victory for the KING and his KINGDOM!!!!!!!

Isn’t God AWESOME?