Raising The Dead: Processing Vicarious Trauma and Grief

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One of the topics I occasionally write about is the subject of raising the dead according to Jesus’ command found in Matthew 10.   Because it has been treated as a somewhat fringe topic, fairly few people teach in-depth on this subject.  In my own journey to follow Christ, I’ve discovered some lesser-known details regarding the process of pursuing resurrection for those who have passed on.  Today I want us to look at the vicarious trauma and grief associated with praying to raise the dead.

A first question (and a very good question) is “what are vicarious trauma and grief?”

According to the American Counseling Association, Vicarious Trauma (also known as secondary trauma or compassion fatigue) is the “emotional residue of trauma” that people experience as they help others process through their own pain, trauma, and problems.*  While typically associated with counselors, nurses and caregivers, doctors, and emergency personnel/first responders, vicarious trauma can ultimately happen to anyone who is exposed to the pain of others on an ongoing basis.

Grief is a deep level of sorrow associated with loss, usually involving the death of a loved one.  A friend tends to identify grief with “the acceptance that something bad has happened.”

Grief is a normal, accepted part of the process of losing a loved one, and vicarious trauma is typically only associated with picking up and carrying the pain of others that is not your own.  Thus, if dealing with death one will typically either grieve the death of a loved one or experience vicarious trauma from someone else’s pain and loss, but not both.

In chapter 11 of my book Faith To Raise The Dead, I talk about how to stay encouraged while believing for the dead to be raised.  While I don’t address the subject of grief specifically in that chapter, I believe it is a barrier to standing in faith to raise the dead.  However, we are also human and we cannot stuff that grief down forever.  When I involve myself into a resurrection attempt, I invest my heart in it.  I try to save any grieving until after a burial, but if it creeps through along the way, I spend a little time crying and/or getting over it, then I keep pressing through in prayer to see a miracle happen.  It is true as believers that we weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn, and I have found this most especially true when dealing with death in situations like these.  The reason I believe ignoring or pushing past grief is important is because we are literally praying so that the problem that causes the grief will disappear.  Thus, it doesn’t make any sense, nor does it seem to be a faith-filled stance, to me, to grieve someone’s death while praying for their return.

Picking up the grief in the situation is, I think, a normal thing to have happen.  However, there comes a point where it goes beyond simply grieving someone else’s loss and moves into the realm of vicarious trauma.  Some view this as the difference between sympathy, which is feeling pain for someone else’s problem, and empathy, which is understanding someone else’s pain in their problem.  I suppose this is true by definition, but when we engage our hearts into something like raising the dead, it is hard not to sympathize, and in some ways, I think it is unhealthy.  If we remain entirely aloof from the process, how engaged can we really be in the outcome?

When it comes to raising the dead, I have found that vicarious trauma is a very real thing, which is something I never considered when I began a serious journey to raise the dead seven to eight years ago.  As we come in contact with the pain, grief, and loss of others, it becomes hard to distance onself, and that pain that we pick up over time can add up.  In the end, it is a heavy weight to carry, and at times it has weighed me down.  In situations like these, the only solution I have is to spend time with God.  The Bible says of Jesus that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, so I spend some time in prayer, often with tears, trading my burdens for His, and releasing my baggage to Him.

Now, considering I want to help people step into the reality of resurrection power and successfully raise the dead, why am I talking about this?  Wouldn’t it be better to leave out the ugly details and emotional pain that comes with it?  Sure, that might be enough to get someone to put their foot in the door, but it isn’t going to make them last.  It certainly won’t help them persevere when things get rough.  The Bible has some advice on the subject that I think is highly relevant and very important for us to consider.  In Luke 14: 28-35 it says:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?  For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,  saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?  If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.  In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

This passage admonishes us to look at what we are getting ourselves into before we set out to do something.  If we don’t, the reminder is that we are at risk for failure.  It is the scriptural equivalent of “look before you leap.”  As I read the Luke passage, something else stuck out to me that I find poignant and directly related to resurrection.  If we consider that we are the salt of the earth, if we lose our saltiness, how can we “get fixed” again?  When I become too burdened by vicarious trauma, the only way I can “regain my salt” is to lay it all at the feet of Jesus.  I make use of practical earthly tools (such as Good Grief, a flower essence for emotional healing), but in the end, I cast my cares upon Him because He cares for me.

Praying to raise the dead is an emotional process.  There is nothing enjoyable about praying for a dead baby to return to life, and it is even more painful when the baby doesn’t rise and you hand it back to the mother knowing full well that in that moment, you failed to successfully release the power of God to solve the problem.  When those situations happen, we have to know that we are all-in, and we have to know how to lay the grief and trauma at the feet of Jesus so we can heal, get up again, and keep pursuing the abundant, powerful, resurrection life of Jesus Christ to display it to the world.

If you want to learn more about raising the dead I encourage you to do the following:

 

1. Sign up for our Raise the Dead Initiative mailing list here to receive updates and connect further.

2. Get some books.  I have written two books on the subject:  Practical Keys to Raise the Dead and Faith to Raise the Dead.  Practical Keys is a series of excerpts from Faith To Raise The Dead, all of which give practical advice for when you are actively praying to raise someone at that time.  Faith To Raise The Dead goes more into theology, but has a chapter devoted to resurrection testimonies, an appendix in the back of faith-building scriptures to help you pray for the deceased to return to life, and I answer a lot of common and even difficult questions surrounding the subject.

Tyler Johnson, founder of the Dead Raising Team has written multiple books on the subject as well:  How to Raise the Dead and The Dead Are Raised. Be sure to check out Father Hebert’s encouraging book Saints Who Raised The Dead for pages upon pages of uplifting testimonies about saints in history who have raised the dead in Jesus’ name.

3. Join the Raise the Dead Initiative on Facebook.   The Raise the Dead Initiative is a group I started to help the Body of Christ grow in this area, and I will eventually develop an RDI teaching curriculum to train believers to pray for and raise the dead.  You may also be interested in The Dead Raising Team (DRT) and  Dead Raising Campaign Facebook groups.

4. Look at how you can host or attend a School of Resurrection in your area. Contact Tyler Johnson via his website at http://www.oneglance.org/ to arrange the event.  Tyler is an awesome man of God and good friend who regularly teaches Schools of Resurrection to help transform our understanding on the subject of resurrection life. He has Dead Raising Teams around the world who are ready to mobilize in their area to release the abundant life of Jesus Christ.  You can also head over to Gumroad to buy and download a complete Resurrection School Audio Series.

5. Watch/listen to David Hogan’s YouTube Series on the subject of Raising the Dead: Session 1 —  Session 2 — Session 3 — Session 4

6. Pray for and actively engage opportunities to raise the dead in your area by reaching out to friends when you hear that someone has passed away.

 

*https://www.counseling.org/docs/trauma-disaster/fact-sheet-9—vicarious-trauma.pdf

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India Missions 2018: Finishing Well

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In the first blog of three about my mission trip to India with Overseas Missions, I shared about the first three days of our trip and the kindness that God showed during that time. In the second blog I shared about the time we spent with the Tiger Widows and God’s divine provision to open the door for us to share His love with them. In this article, I am going to share about the last two days of the trip and an extra surprise ministry moment on the plane ride home.

After we left the Tiger Widows on the fifth day, we left the area and drove back to Calcutta. The next day, the second to last of the trip, we got up and went to the Dump Yard, an area of Kolkata right next to a large trash dump where many poor people live. One of the local pastors has started a children’s school, where they also have church on Sundays and are working to educate the children as well as teach them about God. They are working to raise money to build a school on the approximately 1/6th-acre plot they have, but we were able to do another medical clinic there, pray for the sick, and feed the 50-70 children there as well.

The children were a lot of fun, and the boys in particular loved getting to roughhouse with some of the team. We fed them lunch, with the team serving all of the children, and treated both adults and children alike at the medical clinic. One of the children there, about ten years old, had an open wound he had gotten a few weeks prior from a motorcycle accident. It looked fairly well tended overall, although I was surprised, as it’s the type of wound we usually see in the hospital here in the USA, not at a random volunteer clinic. We gave him supplies to last him a good week or so of daily dressing changes, and one of his friends listened to the instructions and watched us clean the wound as well to make sure he could help his buddy. It was super sweet to watch.

Kyle playing with a bunch of the boys

The most impressive moment of that day, to me, was when God healed a young man of leprosy. This guy was probably in his mid-twenties, and he told one of the other nurses that he had lost all sense of smell for the past six months. This nurse recognized the problem and suspected leprosy, so had the doctor assess the nerves in his arm to see if they showed signs of thickening, and they did. Sure enough, it was leprosy.

To explain, leprosy involves loss of sensation at nerve endings. As a result, one cannot feel pain, meaning that if one gets burned, cut, or otherwise injured, while normally people will recoil from the offending item, the leper cannot sense the pain and will continue the unsafe activity, damaging the skin. This leads long-term to missing fingers, toes, and even limbs, ears, nose, etc. All in all, it’s a terrible disease. Unbeknownst to any of us, this nurse had a discussion earlier that day with the doctor about the symptoms of leprosy, and if she hadn’t she might have missed the signs. God truly does lead and guide even things as simple as our conversations, and in this case, it led us to identify leprosy.

Why is this important? Because of what happened next. There was nothing the medical team could do for him medically, but Jesus is the best healer that exists, so a few of us gathered around him and prayed in Jesus’ name for leprosy to go and for him to be healed. They had given us these flower-necklaces earlier that day, each of which had a rose at the end. I had him smell mine to see if his sense of smell had been restored, and it had! This man had been unable to smell for six months due to an undiagnosed serious disease, and within minutes of diagnosis, we prayed and Jesus healed him, restoring his nerve function and allowing him to smell once more. I am always so impressed with the kindness and goodness of our God who reaches out and touches lives, heals diseases, and generally just cares far more about our lives than He has to, and He does it all because He loves us.

The last day we visited the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta where Mother Teresa’s tomb is. Two of the women on the team and I went to a very early morning Mass service, and were blessed to witness their celebration of 25 years of prayerful service of six of the sisters there. The peace of God that rested in that place, and specifically in the room where the tomb was located, was amazing, and the clarity with which I could hear the voice of God speaking to me while there was equally astounding. It was evident that they have spent many years cultivating the presence of God in prayer and acts of service at that place, and it was an honor to visit and share in their joy that morning. After the service, the sisters gathered outside on the balconies and in the courtyard and sang songs of praise to God and songs of congratulations to the six sisters. We went back there with the rest of the team later, and many of us spent some time in prayer there. All in all, it was a wonderful way to end our trip there. It was a fitting bookend, in some ways, as the work of the Sisters of Charity embodies what we were there to do in serving the Tiger Widows as well.

The six Sisters being honored for 25 years of service

Afterwards, because the day we went the Sisters of Charity had their citywide missions closed, we were unable to volunteer for service-work as originally planned, so we spent some time shopping for gifts for family and friends, eating lunch, etc., then packed up to get ready to fly out that evening.

The flights and layovers were fairly uneventful until the 12-hour flight over the Pacific, where a surprise awaited me. I had the thought come to me prior to that flight that someone on the plane might have a medical emergency. Well, about four hours in, one of our team members told me I needed to go to the back of the plane because there was some medical problem. An elderly man had fallen down and hit his head, and was fumbling through his bag searching for medications. The flight attendants were there, but no one really seemed to know what to do. I assessed him, and while he had no obvious signs of a head injury, he was very confused and had medication on-hand for Parkinson’s Disease. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fact is that any signs of a bleed inside his head that would be observable to me are what are called “late signs”, meaning that if any of them appeared in-flight, the man’s death due to brain injury would basically be assured. I am thankful that none of that occurred, as even if we had turned the plane around it would still have taken four hours for us to arrive at the nearest airport.

At any rate, I spent the rest of the flight keeping an eye on him, both because I was concerned about the possibility of a head bleed, and also because he was incredibly confused and at risk for falling again. In fact, if I hadn’t been watching him he probably would have fallen a few more times—and that doesn’t include the time he tried to undress himself and the many times he lost his phone and wallet . . . in his pockets. Either way, I was glad to be able to help this man out, and the airline was very nice and gave me a first-class breakfast as a thank you for keeping an eye on him. Which, considering the day we flew back was also my birthday, it was like a fun extra birthday gift from God!

Having never been on a mission trip before, I was richly rewarded by all that we did. I got to spend time with one of my closest friends, got to meet incredible people and made new friends, spent my days loving God’s destitute children in another country, as well as getting to enjoy their unique culture and all that it entails, and was greatly encouraged in my faith in many ways. I had the pleasure of getting to serve people every step of the way, and learned new things about my own heart and how God has designed me. A final thank you to everyone who helped contribute to this trip financially and in prayer, and I encourage anyone who has not yet been on an overseas mission trip to take the plunge! God bless you all, and I look forward to the next time I am able to share stories of the wonderful adventures I get to have in God!

 

 

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India Missions 2018: Serving The Tiger Widows

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Last week I shared about the first three days of medical clinics we held on a recent trip to India (read the article here), where we went to minister specifically to the Tiger Widows, but also to the local communities.  After the first three days of clinics in a single location, a door opened up for us to go meet with some of the Tiger Widows more directly.  This was wonderful news, as most of the team had come with the express purpose of ministering to these forgotten women in mind.

For those who don’t know, India still functions on what is known as the “caste” system, which is basically a cultural hierarchy that is partly hereditary.  Most cultures have them, but in India, especially from a Hindu background, it is more deeply ingrained than some.   In this particular system men are more valuable than women, and if a husband dies the widowed wife cannot remarry, and generally sinks into poverty.  The Tiger Widows’ husbands have been killed over time by Bengal tigers while working out in the forest, leaving these women, who sometimes are young women who have children, destitute and unable to change their station in life.  In other cases, the women are older and have been widowed for a long time, so in their old age, they have no one to take care of them except for some of the other younger widows.    When we were informed we would be able to go meet and spend time loving and serving more of these women, our hearts jumped at the opportunity.

There have been others over time who have either used the idea of serving the widows for personal gain, using these women’s tragedies for personal publicity, or who have not followed through on their promises to help them, so some of those in government involved with helping these women had put up a hurdle for us to see and minister to them.  The condition to love these women in person was to bring a gift of a sari or blanket to each widow.

We were happy to do this.  Actually, we were all delighted with the idea of giving a sari or blanket to each one of these precious women.  What better way to tangibly show them love is there?  A single blanket or sari wasn’t super expensive, but when you start talking about 750 widows, the costs add up quickly.  As none of the costs of these gifts were included in the initial trip budget, from the time we found out about it on the third day, we had 12 hours to raise $3,000 to be able to buy the gifts for these women that next day.

We all prayed, and a few of us took to social media to raise money.  Within the twelve hours, we had raised 2/3 of the total.  Over the next number of hours another $500 came in from donations online, and the team pooled our money for the remainder.  I am pleased to say that followers of this blog and my Facebook feed contributed about $1,000 of the total.  Thank you so much to everyone who gave for the critical need, as it allowed us to minister the power and love of God to those women.  Let me tell you what that money did!

On the fourth day, we drove a few hours from where we were staying to a remote church meeting-place where some of the women were gathered.  When I say “church meeting-place”, what I mean is that it consisted of a roof with no actual walls.  We held another medical clinic there, and we preached the gospel to these women, gave them saris, washed their feet, prayed for them, and just spent the day with them.  Sometime during this day, we were invited to visit homes of some of the women who were paralyzed and pray for them, so four of us and a local pastor went to pray for them.  There were two homes we visited, one nearby where the woman had a stroke and regained strength and movement to her affected side.  The other woman’s home was further out, so we walked about ten to fifteen minutes to her home.

Heading to pray for the paralyzed woman

The path was brick, about six to eight feet wide, and we were led by a young woman, presumably also a widow.  She took us down this path for a while, passing a few houses and ponds and numerous fields of rice as we went.  We turned down another path, continued for a time, then turned again down what was more of a long grassy embankment between fields than any kind of actual road or path.  The area was quite beautiful, and fairly quiet.  There were no sounds of road traffic which I am so accustomed to hearing living in a big city in the States, so the sounds we heard were those of individuals, animals, and just creation as a whole.

We arrived at the second house and were invited inside by the family.  This house was basically a mud-and-stick construction with fabric for some of the outer walls.  The five of us took our shoes off and came inside to see this woman, paralyzed from the waist down, laying on the thinnest of mats, basically just thick enough for her not to be touching the ground and providing no comfort or padding whatsoever.  Her countenance was dim, she seemed mentally dull, and appeared to be in constant pain.  Her neck was also tighly locked, and she was unable to turn her head from side to side.

We laid hands on her and began to pray, then had her try to move her limbs.  She was able to move her legs some after we prayed for a few minutes, regaining some gross motor movement, but at some point we saw no further improvement.  Tyler had the pastor share the simple gospel message to her, while her family was all gathered around listening as well.  As the pastor spoke in Bengali, sharing with her about Jesus loving her and dying on the cross for her sins, this old grandma turned her head to the right to look at him more directly.

In case you missed that, this woman’s neck was locked.  I personally palpated it and attempted to perform range of motion, and there was literally no motion.  While she was hearing the message of the gospel, Jesus touched her neck and she regained movement that she did not have five minutes prior.  The pastor invited her to pray for Jesus to become the Lord of her life, and after she prayed, her countenance visibly changed.  She went from being dull and slow to smiling and having a brightness about her. We prayed again, and while we saw no further noticeable healing, it was evident that she had received a touch from heaven.

Later on, we saw her countenance dim down again, presumably due to the demonic trying to re-exert control over this woman they had been able to manipulate her entire life.  You see, in India, gods and goddesses are a known commodity.  Everyone knows they exist and that their power is active.  Thus, when we preach Jesus, the God above all other gods, the God who is kind, the only God who heals, the only God who gives his own life in exchange for ours, they have no problem believing us, unlike many here in the United States who doubt even the existence of the supernatural realms.  We prayed for her once more, thanked her and the family for inviting us into their home, and headed back to the group.  This was by far my most memorable and favorite time on this entire trip.

Almost 100% of the women raised their hands to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior

The next day we held another medical clinic with many hundreds of widows, one of the team, Sung, preached a simple yet profound gospel message, and almost every widow present raised her hand when invited to accept Jesus.  We treated their medical problems, and yet again, Jesus healed those we were unable to help medically.  Jesus was present in the footwashing, the salvation message, the medicine, giving blankets to each woman, feeding them lunch, and every aspect of the day.  One woman, crying, told a team member “you have loved me more than my gods ever have.”  That is exactly what we came to do—provide an active, living demonstration of the love that Jesus has for each of these precious women.

Our short-term trip did a lot of good, I believe, but there is also an ongoing need that we are unable to meet with short-term trips.  One program that the local pastors have set up for these women is a tailoring program.  This program teaches the widows how to produce clothing, giving them a skill so they can run their own businesses and become self-sufficient through self-employment, one of the few things the caste system cannot shut them out of.  We were able to visit where this program is run, and the sewing machines were donated during a prior mission trip.  To date, 20 have finished and 32 are currently enrolled in the program.  It costs about $30 USD a month per widow, and 6 months to train them.

In order to be truly independent, however, each widow who has completed the training needs her own sewing machine.  The 20 women who have completed the program are still waiting on machines before they can start their businesses, and each sewing machine costs $180 USD.  Furthermore, the location the training is currently being done at is temporary, and land has been donated for a permanent training center to be built, which costs another $30,000 USD to build.  For all 52 women to receive a machine, the total cost is $7,800.  God was able to raise $3,000 for these women in 12 hours, so I firmly believe that God not only can, but wants to provide a machine for each of these women.***

Please pray and ask God how you are to partner with The Kings of Eden and Global Mercy Foundation India for their tailoring program.

Ten people giving $15 each or one person each month for 10 months is a single sewing machine.  A one-time gift of any amount is fine, but they also need ongoing partners to help fund the women as they go through the program as well. There are three ways you can send money to help:

1.  A Gofundme fundraiser that will be sent to the ministry overseeing this work.

2.  Send money via Paypal to The Kings of Eden, marked with a note for the widows’ tailoring program.  We will forward 100% of the money to the local ministry for the widows.

3. Contact Global Mercy Foundation directly (a 501(c)3 nonprofit) and donate with a note marked for the widows’ tailoring program.  For more information, and occasional updates about the tailoring program, you can visit their Indian sister-ministry at Global Mercy Foundation India.

After being there with these women, it strikes me more than it ever has before how even just a one-time donation can be a life-changer for not just a single woman, but for potentially her friends and family.  If a young widow has children, she will be able to afford to raise them well, and if she is tending to other widows as well, she will have the resources to help care for them too.  Furthermore, this program is a great outreach method to reach these forgotten women for Jesus.

These two days with the Tiger Widows were incredibly special to me.  It was a joy to get to minister to them, tend to their physical needs, both medical and nonmedical, and above all, to see them changed by the love of Jesus Christ, working healings and miracles through the power that only He has to give.

In the next and final installment of the India 2018 Mission Trip, I will tell you about the Dump Yard Children, the healings God did there (including a young man healed of leprosy), and the work God is doing in that area of Kolkata, as well as a “surprise” ministry opportunity on the plane ride home.  Check in next week to hear the final details of this amazing trip!

 

***please note these prices are close estimates and not exact, as it depends on the current exchange rate of dollars to rupees, which is roughly $1 : 70Rs right now.

 

 

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India Missions 2018: The Kindness of God

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Some of you may have noticed that my blog has been pretty vacant this past month. That’s because I spent 11 days on a mission trip to India with a team of 24 other people. It was led by Tyler and Christine Johnson of OneGlance Ministries, and between being gone for two weeks and not posting anything the week after, it’s been pretty sparse around here. However, all that is at an end! We went there to minister to the Tiger Widows near the Sundarban region, to wash their feet, share the gospel, and hold medical clinics for them and other locals, and we did all that and more. I want to share with you all how the trip went and all the awesome things God did while we were there, as well as some of my personal struggles along the way. Thanks again to all of you who prayed for us and donated money and supplies prior to and during the trip. It made a huge difference in what we were able to accomplish!

The evening of November 5th, I flew out of Portland International Airport down to LAX where I met up with the team, and from there we flew to Shanghai, Kunming, and eventually into Kolkata. Just the flights and layovers took over a day and a half, and the trip there had its own series of mishaps and strangeness to it, but we all made it there okay, although not everyone’s luggage was quite so fortunate (two of the team received their bags the day before we flew back to the States. Whoops!). We arrived late in the evening and spent a night in Kolkata, woke up and had a leisurely breakfast, prayed and worshipped as a team, then drove a few hours south to the hotel we stayed at for the next five days. Although one of the buses tried really hard to break down on us, we got there in the late afternoon with not really enough time to do anything, so we settled in for the evening. The next day was our first day actually ministering to and reaching out to the locals, so I’m going to start counting “days” from there.

That night in the hotel we divided up into three groups: the medical team, foot washing, and prayer. The medical team consisted of four main people: Sheila, the doctor, Christine, a NICU RN and head of the medical team, Janelle, a Pediatric RN, and myself, an adult trauma RN, and then multiple other team members doing vital signs and other related tasks. You’ll probably hear me talking a lot about the medical stuff and not as much about everything else, but that has a lot to do with the fact that I spent much of each day seeing patients, and far less time doing whatever else it was that the rest of the team was doing, so please bear with me.

On the first day, we got on a bus and drove the 45 minutes to the tent we would be doing the clinics at. Around an hour into the drive, we asked how much further we had left, and were told by one of the local pastors that we were about halfway there. So much for the 45 minute drive time, lol. #IndiaTime
Once we arrived, we were greeted with flowered necklaces by some of the the local pastors and other community members. Having done some setup the night before at the hotel, we unloaded our gear and the two other nurses and I got to work. The tent was on land loaned to us by a local man, and it was probably 40 feet by 80 feet in size, with these inset booth-areas set up on the side walls of the tent.

We set up a triage station in booth 1, a station for an RN and Doctor in booths 2 and 3, a medication/pharmacy station in booth 4, had one booth that our residents sports medicine and exercise physiology team members used, and then the remaining booths were used for the prayer teams and foot washing. I spent all of the first day working with one of the local pastors identifying everyone’s physical problems and sending them on to see either the RN or doctor for further follow-up. If it was something simple, I would just write for medications and bypass the other team members, but in most cases I was identifying the chief complaints and sending them to an appropriate party.

I will be honest, this was one of the most emotionally painful days of my entire life. It might sound overly dramatic, but my heart’s cry is to heal the pain of this world. While I normally take care of patients, it is usually 2 or 4 in a day, and I can help meet a lot of their needs. That day I saw literally hundreds of people, most of whom I already knew we could not solve their problems, or at best could band-aid them with some over the counter medications. In other words, I knew we were solving nothing, and it killed me inside. With each patient I saw, it was like taking the knife and driving it just a tiny bit deeper.  I diagnosed one man with Parkinson’s Disease within 3 seconds of seeing him, long before the interpreter translated a single word to me.  Medical science in the United States can’t even fix that, much less me in some bamboo-and-tarp tent in a field in the Indian countryside.  I spent my entire day stuffing my emotions and trying not to break down sobbing over all of this because I knew if I started crying, I wouldn’t stop.  If I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t be able to help any more patients, not that it seemed we were helping that much anyway.

Well, I learned a good deal about myself on this trip, including the fact that according the Enneagram (a kind of personality-profile/character-and-motivation test), I am a type 2.  Type 2’s are known as the Servant, which only further accentuated the fact that my desire is to want to help, heal, hold, and fix everything, everywhere. So seeing hundreds of patients I couldn’t help was extremely hard for me, and it was hard to keep myself together enough to keep working. By the end of the day I felt entirely hopeless, and after all the patients left I just sobbed in my friend Tyler’s arms.

He prayed for me, and it helped a lot, which was good, because I was expecting to spend the entire two hour trip to the hotel crying, which I was thankful I did not. I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I am quite doing justice to how hard this was for me, and it might sound to some like I am exaggerating, but I was handling this very poorly, and Janelle, the pediatric RN was having just as much trouble as I was. It didn’t end there though.  The next morning during worship, knowing we were about to head out to do this all over again, I literally felt like my heart was breaking.  I was sobbing yet again, although trying to do it quietly so as to not disturb everyone else’s worship. I told the Lord that I didn’t want to go back because if I went and saw more patients, then I would care about them, and I didn’t want to have to care about them because it was simply too painful for me. Knowing full well my heart was breaking and we hadn’t even started for the day yet, I went anyway, but it was very hard for me knowing exactly what I was walking back into. I’m not someone who begs God in prayer, simply because there is no reason to and it doesn’t make the prayer any more effective, but that morning I literally begged God to help me make it through the day.

Thankfully, God in His infinite kindness answered my prayers. You see, much of the rest of the team was praying for the people and seeing God heal them of all the chronic pain and problems they came to us with, but all I was encountering was hundreds of people’s pain and suffering. They only got prayer for healing after I saw them, and I never heard about it again, so to me it felt incredibly hopeless, while other team members were riding high on the miracles that God was doing in their midst. Tyler and Christine both changed some things up that helped me a lot that morning, and also helped shift my perspective to see and understand some of the other things God was doing.

First, Christine took over triage that morning, and I helped out in the medication tent for a while. That was a good break for me, and meant I was giving people medications to help, even if they were only temporary solutions to long-term problems, but it was less-hard. Second, someone from the prayer teams would come by every so often and let us know the different miracles and healings God was doing. Hearing things like “Hey, every person who has come for prayer for joint pain so far this morning has left totally healed and pain-free” did a lot for my wounded heart (thanks Sung!). As the day went on, I was able to recognize that while I was seeing a lot of people with pain and brokenness, fifteen minutes later, Jesus would reach out and heal them. In this process, a number of people would get saved right after they got healed as well! For me, the second day was much better than the first.

In retrospect, I want to share something my dad said to me after I returned to the US and told him about all of this. He said to me something to the effect of “I bet that gave you a glimpse into how God feels about those people each and every day.” What he said struck me. Sure, that first day of the clinic was one of the hardest days of my life. But the Bible says in Revelation 21:4 that, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” I remember once hearing minister Jesse Duplantis share an encounter he had with Jesus, where Jesus referred to that passage and told Jesse (roughly) “Those tears are mine. There will come a day when I won’t have to cry anymore.” My mercy-driven heart is touched by the fact that God cares for these people, and cares for hurting people everywhere. Sometimes when I hear stories about God healing people, I literally start crying because of His goodness and mercy. God is a kind God—the kindest, actually. No other god or idol or whatever heals people and solves their problems. Kali, an evil Indian goddess of death and destruction, is worshipped out of fear because she harms people if they don’t. Our Jesus is the exact opposite and brings only goodness, healing, and abundant life regardless of what we do or don’t do.

Healing wasn’t all that happened either. The morning we left Kolkata, my buddy Sung found a gemstone on the bus seat that supernaturally manifested from heaven. It was a small, cut stone that was clear in color. One or both of the days we did the medical clinics at that tent, some of the prayer team kept feeling water splattering on them from the direction of the tent wall. The problem is that we were in the middle of a field and there was no water being thrown or falling on them. No natural water, that is. Jesus, the Living Water, was showering on them while they were praying for people! God was showing up and showing off, not just in healings, but in spectacular manifestations of His glory and presence.

The third day we went to that same tent and had a church service where we worshipped with the locals, our team leader Tyler spoke, we prayed for people for healing and salvation, and God came and touched them all yet again. Later that evening, I had some fun with some of the other team members doing inner healing and deliverance in our hotel room, and God yet again showed up and brought freedom from emotional pain and demonic bondage.

There was much more that happened on this trip, but it’s fairly lengthy, so I am going to share more next week in Part 2. I will share more about the Tiger Widows, going out to someone’s hut and praying for a paralytic woman, tell you about their tailoring program and how you can get involved, and more. Check back next week for more stories of God’s goodness poured out in healing and miracles!

 

 

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The One Jesus Didn’t Raise From The Dead

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I had a discussion the other day with a friend about raising people from the dead, and one of the things we talked about was what Jesus did.  She pointed out that Jesus didn’t raise everyone from the dead.  It’s an interesting idea, so I want to look at that as we discuss the one Jesus didn’t raise from the dead.

If we look in scripture, there are exactly twelve resurrection stories.  Of those twelve stories, four of them are ones Jesus raised from the dead.  Incidentally, the scriptures also only record four times that Jesus even encountered dead bodies.  So, then, which one is the one Jesus didn’t raise?  None of them.

One of the most common arguments people make against raising the dead is that Jesus didn’t resurrect every single person who died in his era.  Someone who makes that argument would be correct—Jesus didn’t go to every graveyard, search every mausoleum and crypt, and hunt down every remote tomb to body-snatch every single person he could find and bring them back to life.  What he did do is never back down from a situation he was presented with.

Consider this:  Jesus never turned away from anyone who asked him for help, or anyone whom he felt compassion for.  While he didn’t hang out in graveyards, he did take responsibility for that which was in front of him.  As part of Jesus’ teachings on the Mount, Matthew 5:42 expresses this fairly well saying, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”  Jesus would always give to those who asked of him, and often what they asked for was healing.  In situations where the ill individual died, he raised them from the dead.

The fact is that every single dead person Jesus was faced with that the Bible records, He did something about.  I think sometimes people read too far into the text and make assumptions about things that literally cannot be proven in any way because it doesn’t mention them one way or another.  We have no idea how many dead people Jesus actually came across in his life, as it only gives detailed records of his birth and 3 years as an adult.  We don’t technically know if Jesus came across other dead bodies during those three years that just weren’t written about.  As such, we really shouldn’t make up doctrine based on facts that we don’t have.

What we can and should do is identify what we know Jesus did, and then do that.  What we know with certainty that Jesus did based on what is written is that he addressed the problems in front of him.  If someone cried out to him for healing, he healed the person.  Sometimes Jesus seemed to pick out a single individual to heal, such as the man at Solomon’s Colonnade.  It doesn’t say Jesus healed everyone else there, so it’s possible (and likely) He didn’t.  But it also doesn’t tell us that any of them asked for help either.

At the end of the day, the goal is to emulate Jesus and be conformed into His image.  We can make a lot of excuses in life about all the people we should and shouldn’t pray for to raise the dead.  In my own life, I have very strong convictions about the subject, and while I don’t stalk funerals, if someone calls me requesting prayer to resurrect a loved one, I take it seriously and attach a level of personal responsibility to it just like I see Jesus doing in Scripture.  And at the end of the day, I think that’s probably the best way to go about it.

 

If you want to learn more about raising the dead, consider out the following resources:

1. Sign up for our Raise the Dead Initiative mailing list here to receive updates and connect further.

2. Get some books.  I have written two books on the subject:  Practical Keys to Raise the Dead and Faith to Raise the Dead.  Practical Keys is a series of excerpts from Faith To Raise The Dead, all of which give practical advice for when you are actively praying to raise someone at that time.  Faith To Raise The Dead goes more into theology, but has a chapter devoted to resurrection testimonies, an appendix in the back of faith-building scriptures to help you pray for the deceased to return to life, and I answer a lot of common and even difficult questions surrounding the subject.

Tyler Johnson, founder of the Dead Raising Team has written multiple books on the subject as well:  How to Raise the Dead and The Dead Are Raised. Be sure to check out Father Hebert’s encouraging book Saints Who Raised The Dead for pages upon pages of uplifting testimonies about saints in history who have raised the dead in Jesus’ name.

3. Join the Raise the Dead Initiative on Facebook.   The Raise the Dead Initiative is a group I started to help the Body of Christ grow in this area, and I will eventually develop an RDI teaching curriculum to train believers to pray for and raise the dead.  You may also be interested in The Dead Raising Team (DRT) and  Dead Raising Campaign Facebook groups.

4. Look at how you can host or attend a School of Resurrection in your area. Contact Tyler Johnson via his website at http://www.oneglance.org/ to arrange the event.  Tyler is an awesome man of God and good friend who regularly teaches Schools of Resurrection to help transform our understanding on the subject of resurrection life. He has Dead Raising Teams around the world who are ready to mobilize in their area to release the abundant life of Jesus Christ.  You can also head over to Gumroad to buy and download a complete Resurrection School Audio Series.

5. Watch/listen to David Hogan’s YouTube Series on the subject of Raising the Dead: Session 1 —  Session 2 — Session 3 — Session 4

6. Pray for and actively engage opportunities to raise the dead in your area by reaching out to friends when you hear that someone has passed away.

 

 

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A Bible Flowing With Oil: The Miracle in Dalton, Georgia

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Some of you may have already heard about the Bible in Georgia that is literally dripping, leaking, and producing oil.  This miracle began on January 27rd of 2017 after an intense time of prayer in the Lord’s presence a few days prior, and has continued for almost 2 years.  Many people have been healed, saved, delivered, and set free from all kinds of afflictions after witnessing this miracle or being prayed for and anointed with the oil coming from this Bible.  People have so many reactions, ranging from awe, wonder, and worship of God to skepticism, doubt, and even anger at what they refer to as “false signs and wonders.”  In this day and age, we must learn to operate in a deeper level of discernment in what the Lord is doing, so I want to share with you a few details about how the oil began appearing to this group and four of the things the Scriptures reveal to us about this miracle oil.

Author’s Note:  (The Kings of Eden is not affiliated with His Name Is Flowing Oil, so please don’t ask us for oil—we don’t have or own the Bible or any of the oil and cannot send you any or respond to requests asking for oil),

The miracle of oil was birthed out of prayer, much how most miracles and moves of God are.  Jerry and his wife, the owners of the Bible, had been meeting with five other people for over two years to pray for one another and spend time in worship and fellowship.  They met in a small store, Grace 251, located on 111 W Gordon Street in Dalton, Georgia.  After two years of prayer, the Lord told them in November of 2016 that after the inauguration, that He would reveal to them what He was doing.  It was January 27th, one week to the day after the inauguration that the supernatural oil began to appear.  The oil itself began appearing in the Bible at Psalms 39.  The center of the page was wet, but because their grandbaby was at the house, the wife checked to make sure nothing had spilled on it.  When they investigated further, they agreed that it was oil, and not from any identifiable source.  As the oil continued to accumulate, it was placed in a re-sealable plastic bag, and in three weeks it saturated from Psalms all the way to the back of the book, through Revelation and the concordance, while the front half was still dry.  Then, get this:  Genesis began to get wet, and it soaked its way back through the Bible until it reached Psalms again.  As of mid August last year (2017), they had moved it to their fourth container, as none of them had been large enough to contain the oil.

As they began to pray about this miracle, the Lord told them that as long as they continued to give the oil away for free, God would continue to replenish it and ensure it continued to flow.  To date, they have given away tens of thousands of vials of this oil, reaching over 50,000 vials of oil last year alone—all appearing supernaturally by God’s grace from a single Bible.  I spoke on the phone once with Jerry, the husband of the couple who own the Bible, and he was very down-to-earth, humble, and took no credit for the miracle.  He and those around him were very clear that this was the Lord’s doing in their midst, and that while they had been praying for God to come, and He had been revealing Himself, they had no idea what He had planned for them.  However, the appearance of this Bible flowing with oil has sparked a literal revival in that region, and many have been touched by the power of God released through this oil.  Marriages have been restored, people have been healed, and as of when we spoke, there had been four documented cases of stage 3 and 4 cancer being healed.  They have been mailing the oil out all around the world for free, but currently, due to the high demand of oil, they are not able to give the oil away outside of the meetings they are hosting and/or invited to.  If you want to learn more about their itinerary, events, etc. you can find them at HisNameIsFlowingOil.org

This miracle is an amazing testimony to God’s creative power, but what could it possibly mean?  Why would God do something like this?  The Bible has a lot of things to say about oil—far more, in fact, than one might imagine at first glance.

 

The Holy Spirit

First, oil represents the Holy Spirit.  We see this clearly in Isaiah 61:1 which says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me . . .”  The Holy Spirit rests upon Him in that verse because he has been anointed.  Anointing is an act where someone rubs or smears oil on someone, so here it is clear that as a direct result of God anointing him with oil, the Holy Spirit remains on him.  Acts 10:38 expressing this same concept:  ” . . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”  Jesus wasn’t just anointed with oil—he was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power.  This same connection is further represented in the life of the disciples when Jesus informed them the same would happen to them, saying “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  The same anointing by the same Holy Spirit that Jesus received, He informed the disciples that they, too, would receive—and this extends to all those who are followers of the Lord Jesus, even to this day.  Supernatural oil from heaven points to the active work of the Holy Spirit in our lives—His infilling, indwelling nature.  Likewise, when one is anointed with heavenly oil, it is a visible prophetic action demonstrating an invisible spiritual reality.

 

Divine Healing

The oil secondarily represents healing.  The most well-known passage that shows us this is James 5:14-15, which says, “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.” While this verse points to the prayer offered in faith as the thing that brings the healing, the oil is connected with the act of prayer.  Some denominations, most specifically the Catholics, Anglicans and Episcopalians, consider this to be a Sacrament, an outward and visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace or blessing.  Others look at this passage from a more historical perspective, speculating that the oil was used primarily as medicine—a direct means of healing.  Regardless of which one considers this to be, or maybe one believes it is both and yet more, healing is closely associated with oil in the Bible.  How much moreso should heavenly oil be associated with the same?

Some other verses that show oil as a medium for healing include Isaiah 1:6 and  Ezekiel 16:9:

Isaiah 1:6
From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil.

Ezekiel 16:9
“‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. . . “

Intercession

A third thing the heavenly oil speaks of is intercessory prayer.  We see a lesson in ongoing intercession found in Leviticus 24:1-3:  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually.  Outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps before the Lord from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.'”  The oil is to be tended continually so the lamps are always kept burning.  The significance here is that oil can represent ongoing intercession, day and night before the Throne in heaven.  In Revelation 5:8 we see the 24 elders bowing before the Throne holding golden bowls of incense, which the passage explains, saying: “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”  There is clear and significant prophetic linkage between the book of Revelation and the ordinances of the Tent of Meeting and later the Temple.  If prayers can be likened to the burning of an aromatic substance, which it could be argued is symbolic not just of incense but of oil as a whole, then there is a connection between tending the lamps continually and ongoing intercession.

Intimacy

The fourth message of the oil is that of intimacy.  Oils, also used as perfumes and spices, have been used for thousands of years to create sweet smells, and are often used even today in intimate creams and oils for use among married couples.  We see this sentiment expressed multiple places in Scripture:

Proverbs 7:16-18
I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt.  I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.  Come, let’s drink deeply of love till morning; let’s enjoy ourselves with love!

Song of Songs 1:3
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you!

Song of Songs 1:12-13
While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance.  My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh, resting between my breasts.

Song of Songs 3:6
Who is this coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant?

Song of Songs 4:10
How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!

Song of Songs 5:13
His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh.

Intimacy is a key message of supernatural oil because God wants to be together with us.  After all, one of His names is Emmanuel which literally means “God with us.”  God’s desire is, has been, and always will be to be unified with us.  Jesus gave his life on the cross, died, and rose again so that we could be united in Him.  Ephesians 1:7-10 shows us this, saying, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding,  he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”  The word translated as “unity” in this passage is the Greek word anakephalaioō which means “to gather together into one”.  It is through the redemption brought us through the blood of Jesus that we can be gathered together into one.

Intimacy is the cornerstone of our relationship with God.  Jesus said this in somewhat plain terms to his disciples on Passover, the night before He was crucified.  In John 14:2-3 he said, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  While this might not seem extremely clear, it was very plain speech Jesus was using.  The key, however, is that one has to understand Jewish wedding customs for it to make sense.  In ancient Jewish culture, when a young man wanted to get married, he would build an addition to the family house.  The man would go and prepare that room in his father’s house, and was required to fill it with as many niceties and lavish belongings as he could afford to ensure the new wife would be comfortable in her future home.  If one will recall, they often got married in their teens, so the man was actually a fairly young man, and it was somewhat sensible that an older adult was responsible for ensuring the process was done properly.  Once the groom’s father felt the groom had sufficiently prepared the room, he would allow his son to go and bring his betrothed to come live with them, and the wedding would commence.  This paints a totally different picture of intimacy and love than one initially would read from that passage.

The twelve disciples Jesus called were mostly young men, so this wedding-language was extremely close to home.  In fact, the scriptures show us Peter was married already, so had undergone this very process sometime in the past!  Jesus wanted them to know that He was deeply in love with them, and wanted them to understand the depths of love He had not just for them, but for all of us!  The Father and the Son are working together with the Holy Spirit to prepare a place for us to come and be with them, and the miracle of heavenly oil is a sign of the intimacy and love they have for us.  How amazing is that?

 

The miracle of supernatural oil in Dalton, Georgia is not only astounding, but it reveals to us God’s heart for us to be in communion with Him:  to know and be filled by the Holy Spirit, to receive healing from Him and Him alone, the source of all life, and for His desire to engage in deeper intimacy with us on an ongoing basis.  One of the things the Lord specifically revealed to the group in Dalton, upon which they based the name of their ministry, is out of Song of Songs 1:3; ” . . .your name is flowing oil” . . .  The Lord showed them that the physical manifestation of miracle oil represents God’s holy presence.  I encourage you, as you read this, to seek the Lord about how He wants to touch you with His Spirit, Healing, and Intimate Love revealed through His presence and through this miracle of flowing oil.  If you are able to travel or live nearby, I encourage you to attend one of the services (event schedule here) and see what God is doing through this miracle.  If you do, come back and share in the comments what you heard, saw, and experienced!  I pray that each of you is blessed with an overflowing measure of God’s power and presence in your life, and that you, too, will experience this miracle oil in your own life.  Amen.

*Please note I DO NOT own the Bible nor possess the Dalton oil to be able to give to anyone.  If you write me asking for oil, I can’t send you any and I also cannot respond, as I get deluged with requests for something I do not possess.  You will have to attend their events or follow the instructions on their website, HisNameIsFlowingOil.org

 

 

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Partnering with God: Putting Faith Into Action

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There is a lot of debate about what faith is and how we partner with God through faith to see things come to pass.  In some cases we do things out of faith that God hasn’t specifically told us to do, but there are other times where God has shared something with us, either by a knowing in our hearts, speaking to us directly, or through a prophetic word.  Regardless of the method by which we receive the revelation, there are a number of ways the promise can come to pass.  The confusing part is knowing which method is in store for us and how we need to respond.  We are going to look at the various ways we can step out in faith to become partners with God’s promises.

 

Prophecy Is Usually Conditional

Most promises from God, whether received through prophecy or otherwise, are conditional.  This means that it’s not “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”  Instead, it means that the choices we make and the things we do influence whether or not the prophecy comes to pass.  An example of this is the difference between Mary and Zechariah in the Bible.  Mary agreed with the word about Jesus but God had to strike Zechariah mute so he wouldn’t disagree with the prophecy about John and prevent it from coming to pass.  If prophecies are conditional, then we can either help them along or prevent them from happening.

Sometimes, simply choosing to trust God is the faith-answer, but that’s usually when actual faith is applied to what God said, not simply a head nod and then going on our way and forgetting about what God said.  When someone truly trusts God deeply in their heart to do what He said He will do, immense faith is released to partner with that prophetic word to cause it to come to pass.  However, based on observation, I believe that kind of faith is uncommon.

 

Pray It Through

The first thing we can do to partner with a prophetic word is to pray into it.  What I mean by this is to pray for the thing to come to pass.  If God says, “I have a bigger house for you,” then start praying for a bigger house.  If God says, “I have a certain ministry for you,” then start praying for that ministry and for all God wants to do in and through it.  Most things in the Kingdom are birthed through prayer, so spending time praying for what God said to come to pass is wisdom, and it is the very least thing we can do, not to mention the easiest.  The acronym PUSH was made by someone regarding how we are to pursue things in prayer. It means Pray Until Something Happens—and that’s what we should do to partner with the prophecy.

 

Do Something

A next step to take after that is to actually do something to put things into action.  For example, let’s say that I got a prophetic word about writing books (I have had multiple words to that end).  If I am going to partner with God to write books, then I have to do a few different things to see that promise come to pass. First, I have to decide what to write about, then I have to actually take time and write it.  Then I have to edit and revise the book, develop a cover design, and publish it—and if I want the book to sell, I probably need to do some marketing too.  All of these things don’t just happen on their own.  It’s not like I woke up one day and found some books on my shelf with my name on the cover.  No, I spent time deciding what to write, writing it, and then rewriting it to make it better.  Partnering with God means actually setting time aside to do the things He has said I will do, and in the area of book writing it has involved considerable time and effort on my part.  Mind you, I enjoy writing so I do enjoy the process, but the fact is that it doesn’t just happen on its own.

The point here is that if we want to see a word come to pass, we often need to do practical things in real life to make that happen.  Have you received a word about having some massive healing ministry?  Well, probably you need to identify what that is supposed to look like.  Take some time with God in prayer and draw up a plan.  Do you need to start a 501©3 nonprofit and rent out a place to start hosting meetings, or do you just need to start praying for people in the grocery store?  Do you even know how to pray effectively for people for healing?  Maybe you need to take some time to learn about divine healing methods and figure out how God wants you to go about praying for the sick.  Maybe you need to sign up as a volunteer chaplain at your local hospital.  Do you see where I am going with this?  A massive healing ministry won’t happen on its own.  If God wants to do something like that through you, it is going to take time and effort on your part.

 

One of the biggest weaknesses of the modern prophetic movement, in my opinion, is the “sit on my laurels” attitude.  Everyone wants a prophetic word, and of course they do!  The prophetic is amazing!  It encourages you and gives insight into God’s heart for you, and can often provide wisdom in challenging situations.  You can get perspective on things God wants to do with you in the future, and by revelation receive direction on how to proceed forward in life.  Nevertheless, if we don’t do something to put wings to prophetic words we receive, they will rarely come to pass.  It is easy to blame someone else, a ministry, an organization, etc. for not helping you in your calling, but at the end of the day it’s not really their job, it’s yours.  If God opens up favor for you in an area, then that’s great.  But if He doesn’t, then He is still planning on doing what He said, but it may not be the way we are expecting it to happen.

In the end, partnering with God in regards to prophetic promises is a must if we want to see them come to pass.  Sometimes it is as simple as praying.  Sometimes there is a small action to do.  Other times there is a long series of actions to do on an ongoing basis.  Whichever the answer, it is very uncommon that a prophecy will come to pass with no involvement on our part.  Not impossible, mind you, but rare, uncommon, infrequent.  Ultimately, the wisdom step here is to remember to engage the things God says to us.  If God tells us things, and we keep our hearts open and obedient, then as we pray for those things we can trust that He will lead and guide us in His timing to step out in action.  The book of John tells us that faith without works is dead, not because we are trying to earn our faith by our works, but because the natural response to putting faith in what God says is to step out in action.

If you have things God has promised you that have yet to come to pass, I encourage you to put them on a list and begin to pray about each one.  Ask God what He wants you to do to partner with Him in those things, then write down the answer He gives you.  As you identify the “next step” for each one, take that step and see what happens.  Once you have done those steps, if you are ever unclear you can always revisit them in prayer again to get more insight on how to move forward.  As you do practical things to partner with God, I believe you will begin to see more and more of God’s plans and purposes for your life take shape around you.

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What Is Fasting And How Does It Work? — Part 2

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In our previous blog article we discussed what fasting is.  In this part of the series we are going to take a look at what fasting does for us, and how it works on a spiritual level—as well as identify what it doesn’t do.  Then, I will explain multiple reasons why I believe fasting is an important spiritual discipline and thus why I make it a regular personal practice.

 

How Does Fasting Work?

Fasting is actually pretty profound in how it works, but there are things fasting does and things it does not do. First, it has been commonly taught that fasting is a way to move God’s heart.  Look, starving yourself doesn’t make God more interested in you, take more pity on you, or listen to your prayers more.  Fasting doesn’t show God you are desperate more than the other guy to ensure God answers your prayers, and it most certainly does not hold God hostage to deal with whatever you are fasting about.  That’s what it doesn’t do.  Nevertheless, fasting is powerful and effective, so let’s look at not just what fasting accomplishes, but how it does it.

Fasting, abstaining from something, gets results by means of spiritual laws, and one in particular which I refer to as the Law of Sacrifice. All throughout scripture we see that people sacrificed animals to accomplish certain spiritual goals.  Usually it was to get their sins forgiven or remitted (i.e. to cancel out the punishment for sins), but any kind of sacrifice releases spiritual power.  Why?  When it comes to animal or human sacrifice, the Bible says that blood carries life with it, so when you kill a living being for a sacrifice, when set up in certain ways with specific rituals, the power can be harvested and put to other use.  Not only do Christians not do blood sacrifices, largely because Jesus is the perfect blood sacrifice that works far better than any others, but human sacrifice is also just plain evil, so we clearly aren’t going to do that.  Nevertheless, those in the occult who do sacrifices do it for power.

Fasting is another form of sacrifice. It involves making a trade in the spirit realm of our desires for worldly things and using the energy we would put toward those things for spiritual use.  In short, when we fast we invoke the Law of Sacrifice, which is why fasting works in the first place.  If we don’t pay attention to what we are doing, I believe we can simply be starving ourselves with no spiritual benefits, so I generally start each fast out with a short prayer where I outline why I am fasting on that particular occasion.  This is known in some circles as “setting your intention”, but it is an important part of fasting, as it basically helps choose a focus for the spiritual energy we are releasing during the fast.  Often I write it down on a notecard or on my cell phone somewhere so I can review, in my times of prayer, what I am praying and believing for.

Many people in Christian circles have been taught that fasting moves God’s heart, but it doesn’t move it any more than any other kind of prayer does with one caveat—fasting adds extra power to our prayers, so while it doesn’t move God’s heart more, it does make our prayer more powerful and thus more effective. Fasting also doesn’t make God pity us or get us to strong-arm Him somehow.  If that’s how fasting worked, then starving people in famine-swept countries would have their problems solved simply because they all fast for such long periods of time.  No, starvation without any kind of spiritual goal or prayer behind it is just starvation.  If one knows he or she is going to starve anyway (due to poverty or whatever) and decides to turn it into a time of purposeful fasting, I consider that both wise and beneficial, but otherwise starvation doesn’t move God.

Fasting is about changing and transforming us. In the process of abstaining from food, our physical bodies don’t like it and start to complain.  I often get low back pain (more than normal) when I fast.  In some ways, this process of purposeful and metered deprivation of our physical bodies could be viewed as “putting the flesh to death” so that our spirits can be more preeminent over our flesh.  Fasting is one of the best ways to accomplish this, and it works even better, again, when combined with prayer.  In my mind, fasting is somewhat pointless if prayer isn’t going to be involved in some way anyway.

 

A Personal Practice

I began this series by explaining that I have begun to start a regular practice of fasting again like I used to years ago. When we understand what fasting is and how it works, this might make a little more sense to people, but not everyone will understand why I want to do it as a regular practice, so I will attempt to give some insight on this choice of mine.

First, fasting is very clearly present throughout scripture. Even when Jesus acknowledged the apostles didn’t fast, he identified that they would at a future point in time.  While some note that in Matthew 9:15 Jesus says “and on that day they will fast” points to a single day, not a period of time, the actual Hebrew words can mean “then” or “at that time” or “on that day”.  It doesn’t have to specify a specific day, although it can be read that way.  The version written in Luke 5:35 is more broad and while it could be translated as on a specific day, it also can be correctly translated as a broad generality of a period or age of time.  Thus, while the argument can be made that the disciples were supposed to fast for only one single day total, the sum of all the ways one can translate those words simply doesn’t have a strong enough support behind it to rule that option in and all others out, and in fact would likely go the other way.  Thus, as a scriptural precedent, it seems prudent to me to engage in the same spiritual disciplines the early church found to be important.

Second, fasting releases spiritual power. I believe that in order for us to partner with God, we need to become spiritually powerful people, and fasting helps grow us from one level of power and glory to another level.  Thus, I fast.

Third, Jesus said in Matthew 17:21 (and Mark 9:29) that some demonic spirits only come out through prayer and fasting. Both as someone who does inner healing and deliverance, and as a believer who simply recognizes spiritual combat and dealing with demons is part of the normal Christian life, if certain spiritual entities require fasting to deal with, it seems prudent to me to fast on an ongoing regular basis to be prepared.

Fourth, I prefer to be prepared and responsive instead of unprepared and reactive. Fasting as a discipline means I remain “fasted up” over time instead of waiting until a problem comes along and then having to fast reactively.  Don’t get me wrong—if a big problem comes along, one of the first things I will do is fast anyway, but I believe that having a lifestyle that includes regular fasting is a much wiser and more proactive approach, going on the offensive with the enemy instead of waiting for attacks and having to play defense.

Fifth, witches, warlocks, Luciferians, Satanists, and the like who are serious about their practice also fast. If they fast, in spite of not serving God, then it’s because it does something other than moving God’s heart, which I assure you their fasting does not do.  Fasting releases power, and if the enemy’s people do it, then I strongly believe that followers of Jesus would be foolish not to.  As such, I believe it is prudent to develop a lifestyle of fasting.

Sixth, history has shown us that fasting has played a role in many revivals and moves of God in various regions around the world. If fasting helps usher God’s power and glory into a region by even 1%, then it seems like something we should be excited about doing.

With all of these factors in mind, I have stepped back into a lifestyle that includes fasting on an ongoing basis, and I encourage you to do the same as well.  In the future we will also be looking at some basic and practical details about fasting, and how to go about actually doing a fast, so stay tuned in the future for more updates!

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What Is Fasting And How Does It Work? — Part 1

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Years ago, I used to have a somewhat regular practice of fasting, and then I got married, and since then it’s been an ongoing struggle to try to maintain any kind of lifestyle that involves regular fasting. I should clarify before going further that it isn’t my wife’s fault.  One of the things about marriage is that it changes your life in a lot of different ways, both big and small.  You start developing new habits, live in new places, and now you aren’t just doing “you” anymore, but “you-and-spouse.”  At any rate, I recently began a practice of fasting regularly again.  There are a lot of questions people have about this subject, so I will answer the questions “What is fasting and how does it work?” in this two-part blog series.  There are other common questions, which I will tackle in the future.

 

What is Fasting?

Fasting is the practice of abstaining from something for a pre-set period of time. Usually, at least in scripture, fasting involves abstaining from food, but it also vaguely references abstinence from sex in 1 Corinthians 7:5. Fasting can be done as a practice for physical health, and can be very beneficial for physical health, but in Scripture, fasting is done primarily for spiritual reasons.  When I fast, I naturally get the health benefits that come with it, so it seems like a waste to fast for physical reasons only and not include a spiritual component.  Thus, it is rare to see me fast without doing so.

The most commonly referenced scripture passage about fasting is Isaiah 58. Almost the entire chapter refers to fasting, but verses 6-12 speak most clearly about the spiritual benefits.  We can identify a number of spiritual benefits of fasting in this passage, which says:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?  Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them,   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?  Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.  Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.  If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.  The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.  Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

 

Fasting can destroy injustice, bondage, and oppression. And if you combine it with actions, it causes spiritual light to be released, and it releases healing, power, and God’s glory.  It makes it easier to get prayers answered and hear God’s voice, brings spiritual guidance, physical health and vitality, and brings provision into your life.  It also releases spiritual protection and fixes problems.  According to Isaiah 58, all of this can happen when we fast.

In scripture, this practice is very closely linked with prayer. The way I understand it, if we are going to spend time in fasting, we should also spend some of our time in prayer.  If we fast and don’t pray, I almost don’t see the point.  While not always possible, depending on one’s life situation, a “best practice” during a fast would be to spend the time we would normally spend eating in prayer instead.

There are lots of different opinions about fasting—whether we should fast, what we should fast, how long to fast, how to manage the fast, and how to break the fast. I plan to answer these questions in a future article, but for now let’s keep it simple:  consider that we should generally fast from food for a predetermined time that we prayerfully decide (1-3 days is common), and spend our time in more prayer than normal during the fast.

 

In the second part of this article, we will discuss how fasting works and what it accomplishes on a spiritual level.  Stay tuned!

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Wisdom For Growing In The Prophetic

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Back in the early 2000’s I was a volunteer with Living Stones Christian Fellowship at Penn State and was being trained to do campus ministry.  We did a retreat each fall and spring (I think this was the fall retreat), and I was praying and fasting prior to the event.  I was also at a stage in my life where I had just begun to learn to hear God’s voice and was practicing it at every opportunity.  As I prayed for the event, I began to seek God about it.  In that process I may or may not have asked the Lord what the speaker was supposed to preach on (I don’t recall), but I definitely asked God what He wanted to do during the weekend.

After writing down the list of things God shared with me, I went to one of the campus pastors with the list in hand . . .

. . . and told him God wanted to do the things on the list, so he needed to tell the speaker to speak on those specific topics.

Yes, I literally told him that.

In hindsight that probably wasn’t one of my brightest or best moments, and the campus pastor seemed to agree with that analysis.  He rebuked me for being arrogant and prideful and informed me that the speaker hears from God perfectly fine without my assistance and that if God wants the speaker to address something, then he will tell the speaker about it, not me.

I was taken aback by the response, as I felt it was somewhat important, and he not only didn’t listen to me at all but chastised me for wrong heart motives.  Certainly, he might not have been entirely wrong, but keep in mind that I was still fairly new to the prophetic.  In spite of the fact that I was learning that anyone can hear from God, that somehow didn’t translate into recognizing that anyone can hear from God, least of all people who had learned to hear God’s voice long before I did.  I wasn’t intentionally being arrogant, but rather was inexperienced.  Nevertheless, he did have a good point.  I even tried to talk to the speaker, who was someone from the church, and he wasn’t very open to listening to me either.  With all doors firmly shut in my face, the only option left was to pray.  And while praying probably should have been the first thing that I did, I didn’t know that.

Fast forward to the event, even though they weren’t the message “topics”, he addressed every single thing on my list as key components of his messages.

What did I learn from this?

First, I was right.  But there was another lesson:  God talks to other people too.  Don’t feel a need to broadcast everything God tells you to others, especially if you lack sufficient platform or individual relationship.  Pray and let God do the work.  After all, that’s probably half or more of the reason he told you in the first place.

I recently read something in Ivan Roman’s book Prophets Among Us (a book I highly recommend), that pointed out that prophets often get so excited and instantly invested into the things God shares with them that sometimes they forget either the timing or other factors related to the situation.  While I’m not claiming to be a prophet by sharing this, I can tell you I felt an urgency behind what the Lord shared with me, and the urgency combined with prophetic immaturity certainly wasn’t a great combination.

Growing in the prophetic is as important as learning to hear God’s voice.  If all we do is learn to hear God but never grow in maturity beyond that, we end up doing things like I did—things that make us look like arrogant jerks, know-it-alls, or worse.

Just because God gives us a word about something doesn’t mean everyone else needs to change to fit what we believe God is saying.  It can be a struggle, as our heart’s desire is often to see what we hear God saying come to pass, but oftentimes prayer is all that is needed in a given situation.  When we realize the power of prayer, we will be better equipped to trust that our prayers accomplish far more than our efforts at human manipulation.  In the end, this key of wisdom for growing in the prophetic is to learn when to share, and when to pray—and to recognize that we are always supposed to pray regardless of whether we share or not.

 

 

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