Resting in God’s Presence

I got an unexpected phone call the other morning from a brother in Christ, and we began talking about resting in God’s presence, a practice also known as “soaking”. He began to share about times of worship he has enjoyed where the Presence of God would come strongly upon him, but then at some point he would feel that strong atmosphere around him lift off and go away. He said something interesting, “Brother, I don’t like it when it goes away, and I haven’t figured out how to make it stay.” This statement brought further discussion, and we continued to look at the factors involved in resting in God’s presence.

The thing we have to remember about soaking is that when we do this, we are engaging a person, not a thing. The reason this brother couldn’t make Holy Spirit remain is because we don’t have the ability to control Holy Spirit, nor should we. God is God, and He will do what He chooses to do when He chooses to do it. However, while we cannot force God to do anything, that doesn’t mean we don’t have the ability to influence His choices.

James 4:8a says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (ESV)” While we cannot force God into remaining near us with His presence when we soak, we can always engage our relationship with Him to encourage Him to remain, and if not remain, to return. When we are in a time of resting in God’s presence and we will feel His presence “lift” or leave or lessen in some way, many times people think “well, I guess that’s it then.” They end their time of enjoying God and continue with their day. What some don’t realize is that if we feel His presence lift, if we re-engage Him, He will usually return with His presence and we can continue to enjoy Him longer.

God is a person, albeit a Divine Person, and we get our human emotions and responses from Him. When someone reaches out to us, we tend to be favorably disposed toward engaging them, and we get this from God. We like being liked, and so does God. If we choose to spend our time in adoration and/or worship of Him, we will find that He graces us with the “with you” presence spoken of in John 14:17. If we want God to come, we simply have to draw near to Him first, and He will respond. If we want Him to return, we simply have to draw near again. This is both the what and the how of soaking prayer. The practice of resting in God’s presence is incredibly simple and is all about engaging Him until His external presence comes, and then enjoying Him once He comes.

Personally, soaking is one of my favorite things to do. I greatly enjoy the sensation of feeling Him on my skin. It’s hard to describe, but there is this sort of weightiness combined with this feeling of air currents on my skin combined with this slight electric sensation. After a while, I simply can’t handle laying in His presence any longer because it becomes too intense. I rarely have an issue with His presence leaving, but when I do, it is often because my own focus wanders elsewhere. When that happens, I simply refocus on Him and His presence, and those sensations that mark His presence return once again.

Sometimes when we take time to do this, at first we may sense and feel nothing. However, as we engage Him time and time again, we will find, often within just a couple weeks or even a few days, that we begin to sense His presence. Resting in God’s presence is incredibly easy, but it might not have instant results. Then again, it may. As we continue to engage God in this manner over time, it usually speeds up the process. What used to take me 15-20 minutes of worship to sense His presence so I could then rest in Him now takes just a few moments of resting and focusing in on Him. Resting in God’s presence is a wonderful way to draw closer in our relationship with Him, and a beautiful way to fill the hunger that we have for Him in our hearts.

If you want to read more about this subject, give a read to another article titled Cultivating His Presence.

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Stop, Drop, and Pray

While I was driving to work the other night I was listening to a podcast, I had this strong impression that I needed to pray. I turned off the podcast message and went into prayer. After a few minutes, I felt impressed to call a certain friend. When I did, she let me know that she was glad I called because she had literally just asked the Lord for help in a situation, and moments later I rang her cell phone. I prayed with her and helped her work through the immediate issue. I learned as a Cub Scout to “stop drop and roll” if for some reason my clothing ever caught on fire. Sometimes, putting out spiritual fires can be similar—we need to stop, drop, and pray.

I once heard prophet Larry Randolph say something at a conference I attended that has stuck with me. He said, “In the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.” Often I think we are looking for big spectacular displays of divine power, but more often than not God works supernaturally in subtle ways. Think about it—before my friend had even prayed, God alerted me I needed to pay attention to what He was doing, and then even as she was praying, He impressed on me to call her. In Scripture, this could be characterized as a manifestation of the gift of the word of knowledge, but more often than not I just think of it as God communicating with me. Sometimes God lets us know things not through a spiritual gift, but through our relationship with Him.

Prayer is a crucial part of our spiritual lives, and it has the ability to change any situation. While I believe that cultivating a lifestyle involving intentional prayer is important, I also believe that random times of prayer are also vital. It isn’t enough to just have metered times of prayer complete with prayer lists because some life situations don’t fit the mold. Don’t get me wrong—I believe that using a list can be a valuable means of intercession because it provides focused reminders about people and situations that need ongoing prayer. However, we must also cultivate sensitivity in our hearts to the Holy Spirit so that we know when it is time to stop, drop, and pray.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give someone who wants to grow deeper in their relationship with God is to become more sensitive to both the voice and leading of the Holy Spirit. It says of Him in John 16:13-14, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.” Holy Spirit loves to reveal the will of God to us, and He does it in full concert and cooperation with Jesus and the Father, so we can trust that all directions we receive from Heaven come with a unified will and purpose.

I plan to eventually write and release one or more books on the prophetic, including wisdom and guidance on how to hear the voice of God and recognize the various ways He leads us, but until then, here are some other resources that may be helpful to grow in hearing God’s voice:

My buddy Praying Medic has written two books on the subject that I highly recommend. They are
Hearing God’s Voice Made Simple and Seeing in the Spirit Made Simple.

There are many others out there, but two good ones are Spirit Talk by Larry Randolph and Translating God: Hearing God’s Voice For Yourself And The World Around You by Shawn Bolz.

You might also be interested in reading about how I learned to first listen to God and then pray what He desires in my article titled “How I Received Mentoring In Prophetic Intercession“

What Do You Do When The Inner Healing Is Done?

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This past week a friend and I completed her inner healing. Yes, I get that it sounds strange to say that. It feels strange to say it. But it’s true; we have finished, to the best of our knowledge, doing inner healing with her. Is it possible we missed some small issue somewhere that is still lingering? I suppose. But at some point, if we believe inner healing prayer heals things, then it can’t actually last forever, can it? Let me put it another way. The enemy has a finite set of resources to use in each of our lives. Usually, demons work to create trauma and pain in our lives to develop strongholds—strategic points inside our hearts where they have carved out a space to live, and from those broken places, expand their reach within a person to cause more problems. When all inner wounding is healed, and all demons cast out, there simply isn’t anything left to fix. Since there is a limited amount of inner wounding that people have, and because we are healing it through prayer far faster than new emotional wounds can occur, eventually it all gets fixed. This sounds great, and it is, but what do you do when the inner healing is done? Once someone is “all better”, what is the next step?

Think about what the Bible says about sin. It says that because we are in Christ, all sin has been cut off from us. If we are sin-free, and there isn’t anything to fix, do we suddenly become the wisest, kindest, most self-actualized human beings on the planet? Of course not! Inner healing is no different. Inner healing removes negatives. It puts an end to old emotional patterns, stops negative cycles of sowing and reaping based on pain, trauma, and abuse, and sets us free from being drawn back in to our past dramas and issues. But once we are set free, again, we don’t suddenly morph into sages. After all the healing is done, we still have a growth process ahead of us. So what does that look like?

Only part of the process of personal growth is past-healing. That’s the inner healing and deliverance part. The rest are forward-focused, which looks like renewing the mind and growing in wisdom, knowledge, and character. Another way of thinking about this is that we grow in the fruit of the spirit and in our relationship with God and have our minds transformed to be like His. Even when we have fixed all the bad stuff, that doesn’t mean we are mature. However, it does mean that we are free to walk into maturity without hindrances. Hebrews 12:1-2a says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Inner healing lets us throw off everything that hinders, but it doesn’t mean we are running our race forward. That’s the next step. This is the part where we learn the things that challenged us before: how to manage money better, how to have healthy relationships, how to make healthy boundaries, and much more. So how do we do that?

There are many ways to facilitate this, including self-help books, life coaching, and more. My friend Jeremy Mangerchine has written a book, The Table and the Dream, that looks at the question “What do you do now that you’re free?” I highly recommend this book as a good starting place on the journey forward after inner healing (and it’s still useful even if you’re still on the journey). If you haven’t begun your own inner healing journey, or want ways to move forward in your own process, I recommend you try the following:

Check out my coauthored book Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul. Consider using the Fragment Finder” flower essence along with it.
Praying Medic’s book Emotional Healing in 3 Easy Steps
Karol Truman’s book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die
Other blog posts: Five Steps To Emotional Healing, The Weight of Sorrows, and the Divine Healing That Works series
Use Flower Essences by Freedom Flowers – designed to help release the negative emotions and make it easier to receive inner healing, there is a free intro course you can sign up for at the bottom of the home page .

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Raising The Dead In The Hospital

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Last year, I was contacted by a husband to pray over his wife who was very ill. When my wife and I arrived at the hospital, she had literally just passed away. Given her condition, they had already turned off monitoring equipment, so the husband made sure not to notify the hospital staff so that we would have time to pray together before anyone came in to do any post-mortem anything. In this situation, getting access to the wife’s body was easy because not only was the husband leading the charge, but no one else even knew about it at the time. Unfortunately, getting access to a body to pray over it and command life isn’t always that easy, especially in a hospital setting.

Another time, I got a call from a friend who let me know about a local family who wanted prayer to raise their child from the dead. They were still in the hospital, and weren’t sure how to go about getting access to their child’s body to have time with her to pray. I called the family, made a plan, and later that evening my wife and I visited and we all prayed together over the child for multiple hours. The staff were incredibly helpful, and made lots of room for us to do what we wanted to do without any pushback of any kind. So what did we do to get the staff on board and why were they so helpful to us? Great question.

We contacted the chaplains.

I honestly believe hospital chaplains can sometimes be the secret weapon to get done what we want done. And here’s why: Many chaplains, especially in cities, are “non-faith-specific” in that they are trained how to help people of any belief system or religious path engage their own beliefs during their hospital stay. While a chaplain has his or her own beliefs, the goal of a chaplain is usually to support the patient and their family in their process, not push the chaplain’s beliefs onto them. Knowing this, we just got the chaplains to help us walk out our beliefs. Chaplains basically have to give equal value to all spiritual paths, yours is just as valid as anyone else’s. Therefore, they will usually go to bat for you. In this case they did, and four of us had multiple hours of time alone with the child. Sure, things could get weird if we told them we’re having a good old-fashioned dead-raising, so we went with a simpler tact that anyone can use.

If ever you are in a situation where you don’t know how to get the hospital to bring the body back to you (as a family member), tell them this: “As part of our religious beliefs, a minister will be coming to the hospital, and we would like to have time to pray together in the presence of our deceased loved one.” If you are the minister, just change the script slightly, but the underlying concept is the same. If no minister is coming, again, just change it slightly. Regardless, the key point is that being in the presence of the body and having time to pray is an important part of your spiritual path. Honestly, using the terms “our spiritual path” or “our religious beliefs” are like trumps cards in hospitals that makes people do what you want even if they strongly disagree with you.

At the end of the day, the goal of praying to raise the dead is to release the life of Jesus Christ. Even if we die, it isn’t too late. The entire message of the gospel revolves around the pivotal point that God raises the dead, as if Jesus wasn’t raised, no one else can be either, but because He was raised, we can be too. Don’t ever let a life situation, and especially not hospital staff, stand in the way of doing what Jesus commanded us to do in raising the dead.

If you need a quick reference guide on what to do to raise the dead as well as how things work in the United States (and probably most first world countries), pick up a copy of my book Practical Keys to Raise the Dead. If you want a more in-depth understanding of the subject of resurrection as a whole, pick up a copy of my book Faith To Raise The Dead, or my friend Tyler Johnson’s book How To Raise The Dead. If you want to host a School of Resurrection to bring this teaching to your church or ministry contact Tyler Johnson at OneGlance Ministries to schedule one in your area.

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A Word of Knowledge In A Dream

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This past Friday morning I woke up from a peculiar dream. The dream is as follows:

I am in a church that is a lot like Life Center, a church I used to attend. I am up front on stage with a small group of people who are calling out words of knowledge and ministering to the people in the audience. The woman who goes right before me calls out a word of knowledge for some condition God wants to heal and then announces that she will pray for the first three people to come up front. It strikes me as odd that she limits how many people she will pray for, but it is my turn next.

I tell the crowd what God is showing me, which is that He is healing people with jaw conditions of any kind, including tooth problems and another word I can’t think of but which deals with jaw pain. A few moments later I am able to remember the name, which is TMJ. I announce all of this, and a bunch of people all over the auditorium stand up. As there are far too many to pray for individually in a reasonable amount of time, I pray over all of those who are standing, and half of them get healed. I tell the rest of them to come up for prayer. Then the dream ends.

Upon waking, I found the dream somewhat perplexing. While I absolutely love the idea of healing dozens of people under the anointing, there was no context in my life to identify its relevance. While I used to be part of a local ministry that put on conferences, I resigned a few months ago and am not currently in a position where I would expect to be ministering on stage in front of a group.

While the dream was Friday morning, that evening I brought some friends to go listen to a buddy of mine speak and minister about resurrection power and abundant life. At the end of his message, he asked everyone who had gone with him to India last November to come up and be the prayer team. Other than my friend, there were 5 of us from the trip present, so we all went up to pray for people.

At this moment I was now standing in the front of a church getting ready to pray for the sick and injured when my dream that morning suggested I would be doing exactly that. Furthermore, the name of the church I was in was “Life Church”, very similar to the name of the church in my dream. It didn’t really hit me until a short time later, and what really drove it home was the second person I prayed for, who needed healing for her . . .

. . . TMJ.

And upon praying, God healed her jaw.

It was that moment that I realized that I was living out the dream I had that morning. Again, keep in mind that nowhere in the natural could I have expected this outcome. I have a dream of being in front of a church group and get a word of knowledge in the dream about people needing healing for TMJ. That night I am called upon by a friend unexpectedly to be on the ministry team, and one of the three people I prayed for has that condition!!

This is a perfect example of divine guidance that comes forth in a dream. God wants to give us revelation in our dreams and speak to us things that He wants us to know. This particular dream was still a little interpretive, but the main details of the dream played out pretty closely in real life. Presumably, God gave me that dream in advance to show me about what would happen that evening, but I failed to realize it until it was already happening. Why did He reveal that to me knowing that I would misunderstand? I don’t know. Maybe because it encouraged the woman I was praying for? Possibly because He is trying to teach me something new about dreams, or healing, or other life circumstances? I’m not sure.

What I do know is that regardless of how simple or complex our dreams are, God wants to speak to us while we sleep. The question to ask ourselves is, “Are we listening?”

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Prophetic Bulletin: Weights and Measures; A Time To Intercede For The United States

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Sunday morning, 2/3/19, I had this nagging sense that something was wrong, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it—even whether it was related to something in the natural or the spirit. I began to talk to my family to try to figure it out, and it turned out that both my wife and stepdaughter were having a similar sense. We began to discuss, and rule out, what we felt it was in relation to. It wasn’t the strange car parked near our house, it wasn’t something about going to church that morning, and while it didn’t feel like it was an earthquake coming, we went out and bought a few things just in case. We weren’t really sure what it was, but we decided to skip the movie we were going to see in theater (we had bought tickets the night before) and skip our gym workouts spend time in prayerful discussion to discern the nature of the problem.

After posting on FB to crowd-source, and having a large number of people respond that they had been having a similar sense from God and/or a general feeling of things being strangely off somehow in the past day or so, we began to recognize this wasn’t just something in our house, but nationwide, and some reports were coming in from people around the globe. All of this was too coincidental and simultaneously widespread for it to actually be a coincidence. God was trying to tell us something. I immediately began to fast, and we continued to seek God. After more prayer and fasting, and connecting with others in the Body who are hearing and sensing similar things, I have narrowed it down to four main areas I believe God is highlighting right now and wants us to pray into.

1) The Superbowl and Sex Trafficking

The Superbowl is the number one day a year for sex trafficking. I do believe that is part of what I was sensing the other day, and many others had the same revelation, and we have prayed into that. While the Superbowl is over, Sex Trafficking is still a major issue. The US has had some big breakthroughs and busted a number of trafficking rings in the past year, but we need to continue to pray for the hidden things to come to light, and the captives to very literally be set free from this abominable practice. Furthermore, some of this gets into some really high-level spiritual stuff dealing with ritual human sacrifices, sex rituals, and the goal of the enemy to regain spiritual power to control the destiny of the United States. We need to pray the power of iniquity is broken over this nation. (for more information/education on the how and why of satanic rituals, go here)

2) The Safety and Effectiveness of the President

The Lord spoke to me the night before last and told me to fast until Tuesday evening (this evening), and as I was pondering this I realized that the State of the Union address occurs this evening. I believe part of what is going on is that God has plans for what He wants this President to accomplish, and the powers of darkness are working overtime to prevent the POTUS from doing what God has ordained for him to do. Regardless of whether Trump is consciously aware of the will of God for his presidency, God has plans that He wants to come to pass, and we need to pray for wisdom and divine guidance, physical and spiritual protection, and for favor and open doors for everything God wants to accomplish through the President and his policies and actions.

3) For The Release of the Heavenly Host and the Binding of Demonic Spirits

One of the significant things the Lord revealed to us on Sunday, 2/3/19, was from an unexpected source, the movie Monsters, Inc. Frequent readers of my blog know that I do not like Disney due to its ties to ritual abuse and the Illuminati agenda, as well as its ongoing subliminal messaging throughout their shows and movies (for more info, read A Sinister Undercurrent in Disney), and if you look at some of the messages behind this movie, it only further shows why. Nevertheless, this is what God was showing us. In the movie, the plot involves the main characters using doors to travel supernaturally around the world, basically the equivalent of heavenly portals. They are monsters whose job is to scare children and collect the fear they release to use as a power source. This is actually very similar to what is actually done in the natural, using children and their emotions and spirituality as a power source for the demonic through rituals. 2319 is a special emergency code which means that things have transferred back through the portals. Disney actually posted a “beware” warning image on February 3rd in correlation with their in-movie code. You literally can’t make this stuff up. The warning we were sensing in the spirit lined up with a prophetic warning from a movie about monsters traveling through portals to release fear on children.

What does this mean? God is showing us that the enemy is attempting to release a new series of demonic powers through portals in the heavenlies to release a new measure of fear into the earth, and to bring domination and control over its inhabitants. As the sons and daughters of God it is our job to rise up and oppose this demonic infiltration through prayer, and pray for the demonic to be bound on earth and in heaven, and for God to release the Heavenly Host to oppose what the enemy is trying to bring into the earth. Isaiah 59:19 says, “When the enemy comes in, like a flood The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” We need to pray for a flood of the Spirit and the angelic host to overpower everything in the demonic realms.

4) For All Decisions Made by the President, Congress, and Supreme Court

We need to pray that all decisions made by our governmental leaders not just at the Federal level, but at the State, and Local levels are righteous decisions. We must pray for righteous leaders to be raised up in all of these levels of government. As mentioned in the first prayer point about trafficking and rituals, there is a lot going on behind the scenes, and the demonic realms have lost a lot of their ritual power that they must regain in order to accomplish their evil work. This is why we are seeing abortion laws being frantically passed to provide even more blood sacrifices to fuel the enemy’s plans and in preparation for the new Supreme Court Justice once Ginsberg passes away. I believe there are numerous factors behind why the demonic realms have lost some of their power in this season, but the biggest reason is the prayers of the saints. As we continue to pray for God to manifest His will and His ways in our government, and for righteous leaders to be raised up for this nation at the federal, state, and local levels, we have the potential to see a revival in our governmental system. However, whether this does or does not occur in the near future will have far-reaching influence on this nation.

Through a conversation with Lisa Perna, founder of Touched By Prayer, where she shared some revelation the Lord gave her about measures, the Lord showed me that we are in a window of time right now where we are being weighed and measured as a nation to see if we will, collectively, choose righteousness or wickedness in the coming years, and what direction this nation will head. There is a lot more to this than what I have just shared, but it will need to be unpacked in a bit of detail, which I will do below.

In the book of Ezekiel, chapters 40-42 are a detailed explanation of the prophet watching a man measure the Temple, temple courts, altar, and just about every other aspects of the architecture one can think of. Right after he finishes measuring everything the glory of God enters the temple. The chapters directly after the measuring record the restoration of three things: the restoration of the Glory (ch. 43), the restoration of the Priesthood (ch. 44) and the restoration of the Nation (ch. 45). Now, this is a significant pattern of what God is doing right now, but we need to skip to Revelation 11:1 before we continue exploring this. Revelation 11:1 says, “I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, ‘Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers.'” The same pattern, or rather we should look at it as an opportunity for a pattern, is set out again in Revelation 11:1, but the results are somewhat different, involving not the restoration of all things, but the destruction of many things instead.

From a prophetic perspective, as I began to study this issue of measuring last night, I was quite shocked to come across Revelation 11:1. The Lord has been highlighting the number 111 to me for the past few months, and in spite of looking up all of the Bible verses potentially related, I had not yet received the revelation on what it signifies. I believe I now understand. God was setting up a prophetic confirmation to clarify what He is speaking right now about the nation being measured, and the fate of the United States being in the balance in the spirit.

This issue of measuring and weighing is found multiple places in scripture. We see it in Ezekiel 40-42 and Revelation 11, but it is in multiple other places in scripture as well. Daniel 8:23 speaks of when transgressions and/or transgressors have reached their fullness. Ephesians 1:10 speaks of how times have reached their fullness. We see this same concept again in Exodus 2:23-25, although in different verbiage, where after a certain measure of time God intervened. This passage was actually alluded to in Genesis 15:13-16, with verse 16 saying, “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” There is something about certain things reaching the fullness of time in the spirit that causes things to shift and change. This related to the concept of sowing and reaping in Galatians 6:7. If we sow good things, we will reap them, and what is being measured is what we are sowing to see how we will reap. We see this in Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-5 where the prayers of the saints are collected in golden bowls, and when the bowls have been filled, they get combined with fire from the altar of God and are thrown back down to earth to cause massive changes.

While I don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to the Hebrew Calendar, today, February 4th at sundown into February 5th is Rosh Chodesh Adar, the first day of the last month of the Hebrew religious year. In other words, we are ending a one-year Hebrew cycle of 5778 and entering year 5779 (the religious calendar). Adar is the last month the Israelites spent in Egypt, and it is also the precursor to Passover, when God released His spirit in what can be considered the “first revival”. February 5th is also the day the POTUS will be delivering the State of the Union address, and I believe this convergence has prophetic significance.

What God is revealing right now is that the United States is in a position of being weighed in the balance. We are in a window of time right now where righteousness can prevail again in this nation, but it depends not just on the various legislations that our lawmakers pass, but on our prayers. If anything, it depends even *more* on our prayers, as they will help decide what laws are rejected, passed, or overturned in this pivotal period. Our prayers will have a significant influence on what direction this nation proceeds, and due to our level of international interconnectedness, what happens to the US impacts the world.

As I shared earlier, Ezekiel 40-45 show us a pattern in scripture. After we are measured, and depending on what is found, it lays the groundwork for the restoration of the Glory (which we usually think of as revival), the restoration of the priesthood (which is correlated with God doing a restorative work in the Body of Christ), and the restoration of the nation. God wants to restore righteousness and justice in the United States, and now is the time. In this season, on a governmental level, we can see legislative power returned to the People of the United States, Roe vs. Wade overturned with the addition of a righteous judge to the Supreme Court, and lawlessness as a whole removed from the land. The enemy opposes these and the many other things God is releasing at this time, so it is imperative that we fast and pray for the will of God to be released in this nation. Prophet Dutch Sheets posted a prophetic word in Charisma News within the past 24 hours that shares a similar perspective to what God has revealed to me at this time (I found his prophetic word after initially writing this).

While some of this prophetic message can sound depressing or fear-inducing to some, this bulletin isn’t for the purpose of sowing fear. This is about becoming aware that the enemy has plans for destruction, but God has plans for abundant life (John 10:10). Every time and way the enemy wants to tear down and destroy, God raises up His righteous people to destroy demonic structures and release His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. When God wants to do something in the earth, He gives revelation to His people (Amos 3:7), which allows us to partner with Heaven to manifest His will. We must not let ourselves get into a place of fear, but press forward in faith through fasting and intercession to call forth the will of God in this nation, and as we see the pattern in Ezekiel, when we decide through prayer how the US will be measured, we will see revival in both the Church and the world as the glory of God is released in a new measure once again!

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Reassigning Angels

Just the other night I was driving with my stepdaughter to a local open Thrive meeting. We were about 30 minutes early, so we decided to stop in at a Trader Joe’s grocery store that was on our way and grab a bite to eat. We were hungry and it was going to be written off as a business expense anyway, so we figured we might as well. As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I had been here before, but it had been a while. The building on the far side of the parking lot from the store was a place where a ministry I used to be on staff with hosted conferences a number of years prior.

Feeling like this was a God-timed moment, I drove over to the building and parked the van. My stepdaughter was confused, and I probably didn’t explain clearly, but we got out and walked up to the door. I then prayed something to the effect of “I lay claim to every heavenly deposit that was left here from the previous events that we did and for every angelic assignment that has been left untended and remains here. I lay claim to those blessings and angels and attach them to the ministry of The Kings of Eden in Jesus’ name.”

I turned around to walk back to the van, but suddenly was hit with the power of God and instantly became what is known as “drunk in the Spirit.” As I walked to the vehicle, I could sense a roughly fifteen-foot-tall angel following right behind me, and by revelation I knew that there were in fact three angels that had come with me. While one of them is called To The Nations, I’m not certain yet what functions the other two serve.

The encounter itself was somewhat profound and entirely unexpected, and the next fifteen minutes of being drunk in the spirit while shopping for snacks was also fun, but as I reflect back upon this event, there is more to it than meets the eye.

How long would those angels have waited there for someone to give them something to do if God hadn’t brought me by that night?

The Bible says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). Angels, and the heavenly host as a whole who have been sent to earth at God’s command, have been sent to serve us in a myriad of ways. When God gives them an assignment, it doesn’t end because we neglect them. Rather, they are still waiting for us to engage them again and to partner with them to fulfill their heavenly mission. Some assignments are sent to specific people, but other angels are assigned to fulfill a particular mandate. While the gifts of God will not be removed from us, mantles and mandates can pass us by if we remain stagnant or fail to move into all that God has for us.

This begs another question: How many others of the heavenly host are waiting for someone to help them complete their assignments here on the earth? And if angels are waiting for us to come and pick them up, what are we waiting for?

I firmly believe that God has many more angels assigned to us than we realize, and probably many who are waiting for us to release them to get things done! Pray this prayer with me:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the multitudes of the heavenly host that you have sent out on our behalf to bring your light, life, and love to the world. Wherever there are unused and abandoned angels whose mission is aligned with ours, we ask that you would transfer them to us and to the things you are doing in and through us, our lives, family, work, and ministries. We apply the full armor of God to ourselves and our angels. In the name of Jesus, we activate and release every angel who has already been assigned to us to go and accomplish all you have sent them to do. We ask that you would assign additional angels to us according to your will and perfect design, and that you would open the storehouses of heaven to bring us every spiritual blessing that has been stored up for us in heavenly places in Christ, and we ask all of this right now in Jesus’ mighty name! Amen.

How Much Life Do You Want?

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My wife tells me that I flit from thing to thing and idea to idea—and she’s not entirely wrong. It’s just that in my moving from one subject to another, whether in prayer and contemplation, writing, or otherwise, I tend to circle back around to the same subjects over and over again. The subjects of life and immortality are some of these ideas that I keep coming back to, so the other day I was spending some time in prayer and discussion with the Holy Spirit while driving to work. As I did so, I began to inquire about how we can practically engage the revelation of immortality in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 1:10-11) to live and not die.

One point I made was that we know that this is enacted in part in our thoughts and words on an ongoing basis. As Proverbs 18:32 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” The things we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts alter our reality, and we receive the results of that fruit, whether nourishing or poisonous. If we speak death over ourselves, it should be no surprise when we grow sick, old, and die. Likewise if we spend even a few minutes each day praying and decreeing life in our bodies then we can expect to live healthier, more vibrant lives. Nevertheless, this can’t be the only piece to that puzzle, as if that is all there was to it, then we’d be there already. As I pointed this out, Holy Spirit nudged me that this is indeed an important step in the process that I have been neglecting, and that is partly because in some ways it seems almost too simple to be true.

I was reminded of the story of Naaman, the commander of the King of Aram’s army. He contracted leprosy, and sought out Elisha the prophet to heal him. He got angry when Elisha didn’t even meet him in person, and sent a messenger to tell him to wash very specifically in the Jordan River. Naaman got very angry, complained that many other rivers were better, and left in a rage. His servant spoke to him and said something that showed great wisdom on his part. “Naaman’s servants went to him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!’ So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.”

Sometimes we write off the simple things because they seem too simple, and I have been guilty of this. Nevertheless, while speaking life over ourselves daily is a useful and important habit to build, if that was all it took, I wouldn’t be asking the Holy Spirit how we can walk in this reality, as masses of people would have been doing this for centuries and living thousands of years at a time. So, we continued chatting briefly, as I began to ask more questions about how we can live this out and have it work for us here and now without having to wait for decades of speaking life over ourselves for this revelation of immortal, abundant life to work gradually over time.

Well, Holy Spirit asked me an interesting question, saying “Since you have been set free from death, the question really becomes ‘how much life do you want?'”

At first glance this might sound a bit strange, but the scriptures confirm that we have, indeed, already been set free from sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” If we think about it, that means that we have literally been set free from anything that should cause us to die. I will point out that “set free from” doesn’t mean we are incapable of dying. It simply means that we are no longer forced to.

This has puzzled me for a while, actually, as I have thought to myself that we already know that Jesus has already paid for all sin, sickness, poverty, pain, disease, and death for all time. Therefore, it seems odd that people still die. After all, if we have been set free from sin and death, shouldn’t we stop dying? I think the question “How much life do you want?” answers this.

In theory, we are not supposed to die, but if we want to die, we can. Likewise, if we want to live, we also can. God gave the children of Israel these choices in Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, which says, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. . . This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live . . .” The same choices God gave to the Israelites, He has given us in Christ Jesus. So while we shouldn’t die, we still can if we want to. The key difference between the Israelites and us is that we have received an upgraded version through a perfect sacrifice that has wiped out all of our sin, and therefore removed the right of death to destroy us. However, we still have the ability to choose death if we still want to.

Not only that, I believe both the world and the Church have been duped into believing that death is our only choice. A large part of this is attributed to what I refer to as a worldwide death-consciousness, the collective understanding of almost everyone in the world that we are all fated to die, and this collective consciousness carries an energy with it that pushes us all slowly toward death. Because we have been swindled into believing the lie, we confess the lie, live the lie, and teach the same lie to others, only further perpetuating the myth of mandatory death. The Bible tells us something far different, and Jesus said many times over that we can live forever.

Kobus Van Rensburg, a prophet and teacher and former senior leader of SpiritWord Ministries (https://spiritword.org.za/) received this same revelation many years ago, that he had a choice whether to die or live. With this revelation in hand, even during his battle with cancer, he was pronounced clinically dead on six different occasions and was resurrected each time, until finally dying more permanently on December 21, 2013. If nothing else, he demonstrated that we can choose life time and time again, and as we choose life, we can receive it in place of death. While many have mocked him for his beliefs, few can say that they defeated death after dying on six separate occasions.

All in all, I am left asking myself the same question “how much life do I want?”, and I encourage you to ask yourself the same. Do you want to enjoy and experience all God has for you without old age, pain, and health problems? I welcome you to continue with me on this journey as we pursue and apprehend the abundant, immortal life of Jesus Christ.

To read more on this and related subjects, pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” available on Amazon in both Kindle and in Print.

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Reimagining The Flood: Unveiling The Goodness of God

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I am in the process of writing my latest book, The Gospel of Life and Immortality, which I plan to publish later this year. While researching for the book I began doing a fairly in-depth study on Genesis 6:3 and the math associated with how long Adam’s descendants of the line of Seth lived, the most well-known being Noah. Most people know the story about how God told Noah to build an ark because He was going to wipe everyone out with a flood due to their evil, and this was one of the main Bible stories I learned as a young child. Long-term, this has had an impact on how I viewed God the Father, as He always seemed a very harsh taskmaster, while Jesus was always kind and loving.

This recent study I did caused me to go word-by-word through Genesis 6:3, studying not just the word meanings but having to retranslate the verse, and I was astounded by what I found. I had a hard time believing it at first, largely because the Bible has been translated so many times that it is hard for me to understand how so many different people have missed it, but what I found is a game-changer in how we view God and His nature as revealed in the Old Testament. I am going to share what I found, as well as a little bit of the other details of my study. It is going to get a bit nerdy and look at words in Hebrews, so bear with me as I think you will be pretty astounded by what I found too.

Genesis 6:3 says, “Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years” (NIV). I began looking at this because I wanted to see why people use this verse to put an “age-cap” on how long we are allowed to live. In doing math, it simply doesn’t work as ten generations of descendants of Noah lived far longer than 120 after this verse. Thus, while that’s not what the verse means, I don’t want to focus on that, as it isn’t the point of this article. What that realization did do, however, is make me look deeper at the verse, as if the verse wasn’t sharing a limit on human longevity, then what did it mean?

Before going further, we need to remember that translation is an art, not an exact science. Translators have to do some decision-making as to the author’s intentions when putting a work into a different language, as many words, parts of speech, and even word-order of the sentence do not match up across languages. I regularly read books online that I read, one chapter at a time as they are translated. What invariably happens is that later in the novel, a translator will realize a word they have been translating one way for dozens of chapters is better translated another way. He or she discovers this based on insights the author leaves in the text, but because those insights occurred later in the book, I am able to witness how the translator’s new perspective changes how they interpret word meanings. For someone who starts reading after the entire work is completed, it will all get changed and they will never know, but for those of us who read it in-process, we can not only tell that a change was made but can also recognize the difference in emphasis the change makes. In other words, translators have tough decisions to make, so it is understandable when things are mistranslated, as it’s rarely intentional. Nevertheless, we also need to be brave enough to identify when a translation needs to be updated to better reflect what the text should say.

The Bible is no different. Translators look at scripture verses and do their best to put the author’s intended meaning into another language. Mistakes are made, and sometimes there is no “correct” way to do it, so a translator has to make an educated guess. At times, translators make mistakes, and as we learn and grow in our understanding of who God is and what He is like, we are able to spot some of those mistranslations. Sometimes, as is the case here, it significantly changes what a sentence means.

In the NIV Genesis 6:3 says “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years’.” This verse is translated pretty congruently across many translations. In Hebrew the sentence says “Yĕhovah ‘amar ruwach `owlam diyn ‘adam gam basar shagag yowm me’ah `esriym shaneh. If you translate the thirteen words in this sentence based not just off of what one thinks it should mean based on what we have been taught, but instead based off of how the words are translated throughout the rest of scripture and following actual grammar rules, Genesis 6:3 is best translated as follows:

“God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause, but the length of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years of time.’ (emphasis mine)”

A BIG difference!

It is obvious that this translation significantly differs from other translations, so let’s look at why. The first three words, “Yĕhovah ‘amar ruwach, are pretty straightforward, and are generally translated correctly, saying “The Lord said, ‘My Spirit . . .’” Everything after that, however, is where it goes wrong.

First, there is no word of negation in this sentence, and certainly not in the first part where in needs to be. For those who aren’t familiar, a word of negation is something like “no” or “not”. It is a word or article that denotes the opposite or negative of something occurring. Where Genesis 6:3 is consistently translated as “my Spirit will not contend”, the “not” simply doesn’t exist in the Hebrew. The fourth word `owlam is usually translated in scripture as “everlasting, forever, perpetual, or eternal.” If there is no word for negation, then why did it get translated into “will not forever” if the “not” isn’t actually written there? Why have so many different translators inserted it there.

I think it’s pretty simple. Based on how they understand the verse they are translating, it doesn’t make any sense if God were to say “My Spirit will contend with man forever,” as logically, God is contending either for 120 years or forever, but not both. In order for the sentence to make sense to them, they added the “not” in there. The problem is that it totally changes the meaning of the sentence into something it never said to begin with.

Let’s continue to look at this sentence. The fifth word, diyn, means a series of things, including “to act as a judge, please a cause, contend, strive, and govern”. Of the five options, why did the translators choose the words contend or strive? I’m not sure, but it probably had a lot to do with their view of an angry God who was getting ready to judge the people of the world for their many sins, so they chose a translation option that fit their expectation of the sentence meaning. Remember, however, that since the first part of the sentence doesn’t include a word of negation, then continuing to translate the sentence this way makes it all break down. Why would God plan to contend or strive with us forever? That literally makes no sense. And since it doesn’t make any sense, then we need to pick one of the translation options that does make sense, especially since there are five of them. We know from scripture that God will not judge us forever because of Jesus, so that doesn’t make sense either. All we have left is for God to govern us forever, or to plead our cause forever. Of those two choices, it seems more reasonable that the sentence would say God is pleading our cause eternally. Why? God is the sovereign authority of all creation, so He doesn’t need to announce that He will govern us forever—that’s a given. This leaves the first five words of the thirteen-word sentence meaning “God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause . . .

Additionally, we have the benefit of hindsight and we know a good deal more about God’s nature as a result of Jesus coming to earth to reveal Him. The book of Hebrews shows us that God sent Jesus to plead our cause before Him eternally (Hebrews 7:25, 9:15), and that while we were enemies of God He came to die on our behalf (Romans 5:8-10), so it doesn’t make any sense that God would be judging us or fighting against us eternally anyway. We know from Scripture that Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30) and Jesus revealed the Father’s nature (John 14:9-10) which means that if Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) then God is the same in the beginning pre-incarnation as He is now, pleading our cause eternally to make us righteous in Him. Said simply, Jesus’ nature shows us God’s nature, and they are still one and the same, pleading our cause for eternity. If we look at the second half of the sentence, we start with the sixth word, ‘adam, which is straightforward, meaning “man” or “mankind”. The seventh word gam means “also”, “but”, “yet”, or “though”. The eighth, basar, means “flesh”, and the ninth, shagag, means “to go astray”, “commit sin”, or “error”. The tenth word, yowm, means “day”, “time” or “period of time”. The rest of the sentence is again straightforward with me’ah `esriym literally meaning the number one-hundred twenty, and the thirteenth word shaneh meaning “years” or “years of time”.

If we put the second half of the sentence together it says “. . . but the period of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years.” When we pull it all together, it says what I wrote earlier: “God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause, but the length of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years of time.’”

When I came across this, I was shocked. I mean, really shocked. I was thinking about it the rest of that night. Why? Because translating Genesis 6:3 this way totally changes how we have to view the events of the Great Flood. Now that we have identified what the verse is really saying, it shows us that the flood didn’t happen because God was angry and fed up with humanity. In fact, it said the exact opposite! It said that in spite of our sinful ways, God would always fight for us. Furthermore, it showed us God’s mercy in giving a warning that in under 120 years there would be some calamity that would come that would put a limit on the ability for all flesh to commit sin and go astray. In fact, not only does this not say that God caused the flood, but it causes us to really have to look at the fact that Jesus revealed in John 10:10 that the thief is the one who kills and destroys.

If the enemy is the one who causes death and destruction, and the Great Flood caused an immense amount of death and destruction, then we cannot blame the flood on God anymore. By translating Genesis 6:3 properly, it only further shows us that God was not actually against us, judging us by the flood, but pleading our cause forever instead! Not only that, but God actively worked to forestall the flood on our behalf. Sin causes death, and the outworking of sowing and reaping is enough to account for how the enemy gained access through our sin to cause the Great Flood in the earth and kill all land-dwelling creatures, not God.

Hindsight shows us that the flood actually been revealed to Enoch over 800 years prior, whereby he prophesied it in the naming of his son Methuselah. We have to remember that because Enoch was a prophet, and because Old Testament prophets would give their children prophetic names at the Lord’s direction, Methuselah’s name is likewise prophetic. Author and speaker Chuck Missler has done a revealing exposition on the meanings of the names in Genesis 5, but we will look at Methuselah’s name specifically. His name comes from two root Hebrew words: muth, a root word that means “death or to die”; and from shalach, which means “to shoot forth, send forth, or set free/release.” His name is a prophetic statement that literally means “death will bring it forth” or “death will release it”. Whose death? Methuselah’s. What will it bring forth? Well, doing some math from the genealogies in Genesis 5, Methuselah died the same year that the flood covered the earth. Is it a coincidence, then, or the fulfillment of a prophetic warning that his death would cause the flood to be released? Something about the righteousness on Methuselah’s life caused the judgment of the flood to be held back, and God in his mercy ensured that Methuselah’s life was extended longer than any other recorded human alive so as to spare everyone as long as possible.

I believe we have to reimagine our view of the Great Flood. While we used to see it as one of the ways God stood in firm judgment against humanity, what it actually shows us is a Heavenly Father in His infinite mercy who is standing on our side. He warned people of the flood at least a century in advance so they could prepare for it as well. If anyone else had heeded the advice God gave to Noah, they too would have been spared, but no one did.

As I realized this, and even now, I am having to re-work some of my long-held views about God and His nature. I cannot look at the Great Flood the same way any longer, as the scriptures simply do not support the narrative I have believed for years, and which I was taught as a child. Furthermore, it calls many other things into question. If we have badly misunderstood the Flood, one of the most well-known Bible stories, how many other stories did we get wrong? What else needs a better translation that actually more clearly reveals the heart of our Heavenly Father toward us? And how does this force us to change our view of God? I believe that the more God continues to reveal Himself in the scriptures, the more He will reveal His unending goodness, far more than we have ever realized before.

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Faith and Patience Inherits The Promises

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As a nurse, I take care of a lot of sick and injured people, and that can be emotionally hard sometimes. Much more difficult, however, is having a family member who has health problems. After years of dealing with a gradually worsening health situation, with some recent interventions that looked extremely hopeful but have been much more disappointing than expected, it has been difficult to stay encouraged, especially when my loved one suffers daily.

What is possibly even more upsetting is the fact that I have prayed many, many times for her healing, and it’s not like I am a novice at healing the sick. I have prayed for many people to be healed of a range of conditions, with a decent measure of success, and there are times when it feels like it is far easier to heal a random stranger (whom I care about far less than my family, although I do care) than it is to heal my family members. There also seems to be an irritating trend among faith-healers that we seem to be able to heal many people, but with our own families, things don’t seem to work as they should. And while I don’t accept that as an immutable rule, it does appear to be a trend that I have yet to understand the full reason behind.

So, for those reading who think they have the “simple, easy solution” for this healing problem, and I “just need to do this or that”, when I am feeling discouraged about a loved one not getting healed, I’m willing to bet that 99% of the time, I have already tried whatever the faith-filled suggestion is. The present situation has been after years of prayer and fasting combined with medical interventions, and an awful lot of faith. To me, when all of this has gone into the situation and still no results, it seems pretty reasonable to be discouraged when it feels like I can do very little to solve the problem. And let’s be honest, at the end of the day, right or wrong, we all want results.

Well, after some very recent setbacks, and feeling pretty down, I spent some time crying, basically hiding from my family in part of the house so they wouldn’t see me crying and get more upset themselves. Then I connected with a close friend by phone who was, as always, super encouraging, and who was entirely unable to fix the problem too, but just continued to love and encourage me during my struggle. As all of this was happening, I was also spending time in prayer and asking the Lord to give me wisdom on how to move forward, because I know a few things pretty clearly:

1) This problem is not the will of God, because He is good and this is evil.
2) This problem was not given by God, but by the enemy.
3) Jesus already said “yes” to healing the problem 2000 years ago on the cross.
4) God already has a plan to fix the problem in the here-and-now.

As I was praying, I felt God tell me something, and remind me of something else. First, He just kept telling me what a good job I was doing. While it sounds lovely, I find it frustrating at times when He tells me that, because I can get extremely results-oriented and when I am doing everything I know to do to solve a problem and it still isn’t getting fixed, being told how great I am doing can be maddening. However, as I thought about it, Him telling me this reminded me to be less results-focused and to just continue to love well through the process, something my buddy also pointed out. Second, I was reminded that it’s not just faith that gets the job done, but patience.

In Hebrews 6:10-12 Paul wrote to the church and said, “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.”

Sometimes it can be hard, very hard, to pray in faith and not see an answer. And sometimes that can go on for years, and it still feels like nothing is happening. But there has never been a single prayer prayed in the history of humanity that God has not responded to in some way, so even when it feels like nothing is happening, we have to look at things from a heavenly view and ask God what He is doing. Next, we have to be patient.

My friends know that especially when it comes to healing prayer, I’m not particularly patient. I expect results now, and if they don’t happen now, then I pray again and expect them now. And again right now, and again right now, until it happens . . . right now. And patience in healing prayer is something God has been gently teaching me about, and I am gradually learning. However, I still firmly believe that instant results should be our preference.

Even while expecting instant results, we have to be people who are invested in a long term view of things. When it comes to praying for healing, or salvation, or really, praying for anything else, do we have a long game? Anyone can be faith-filled for five minutes. Anyone can pray a powerful-sounding prayer and then dash away, onto the next thing to pray about and/or problem to solve. It takes a lot more perseverance to stick things through and week after week, month after month, year after year continue to believe God for the things He has already promised to give us. It takes another level of character to do all of this and not get angry with God or blame Him in the process.

I wish that things happened much faster in the spirit realms than they sometimes do. I am fervently looking toward the day my family is healed and whole with no pain and problems, and continue to hope, pray, and stand in faith for that outcome. Nevertheless, am I willing to stick it out with both faith and patience? The truth is that faith without patience simply will not inherit certain promises. Faith for a short time that then wavers and dies is insufficient to obtain certain things from God. Not because God is withholding from us, but because the enemy is. Not because God is being stingy, but because some results require far more than a one-time prayer to obtain.

So, as I bring this to a close, I want to challenge the reader with this: in areas of your walk with Jesus Christ that you are struggling, do you have what it takes to walk out a long game if needed? If not, what do you need to do to get the patience, perseverance, and endurance so that you can?

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. . . If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:7-8, 11

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