God Already Traded His Son For Yours

I was at the hospital last night and spoke with the parent of a patient, and this parent was having a hard time dealing with the circumstances of their injured adult child (for those of you who don’t know me well, I have been an RN for over a decade). In the short conversation we had it came out that she is a believer, and she shared that she is having trouble holding onto hope in the circumstances. Now, in these types of not-good situations my job is a little more challenging than some because I actually have two jobs that can be in conflict with one another. My job as a nurse/employee is not to give people hope, but to give them an accurate assessment of the situation—which in some cases is absolutely bereft of hope, faith, or anything lifegiving. On the other hand, my job as a son of the Most High is to release life into any and every circumstance and take dominion over everything that opposes it. This is most especially true in my given sphere of influence, which includes but is not limited to my job as a nurse.

In the conversation with this individual, this person asked me what they could do because they felt they needed to do something to help their loved one recover. I encouraged them that while it can feel at times like prayer does nothing, God hears and responds to every single prayer we pray, and that prayer is never pointless or hopeless. This individual then shared that their thoughts and prayers had turned that evening to trying to bargain with God to take their life in place of their child.

It was at that moment that I decided to inject some truth into the conversation in a slightly different direction. You see, nurses end up wearing a lot of different hats while in a hospital or other care facility. We are the patient advocate, the waiter/waitress, the electronics technologist, the doctor’s assistant, the pseudo-social-worker, the assistant physical therapist, the state-appointed drug-dispenser, and for me more often than many, the chaplain and therapist. It certainly is part of my job description to offer emotional support, but given my level of expertise with inner healing, the human soul, counseling-adjacent-conversations, and overall ministry experience, I find myself in these situations more frequently than most. So, I opted to share with this struggling individual a bit about God’s nature and His plans for their family member. The goal of this wasn’t specifically to fix any one thing, but to reframe how they viewed the circumstances and their role in it. I can’t walk everyone through every step of how I might manage something if I was in a similar situation, but I can often give them some insight into a better and more lifegiving path forward, and I can pray for them.

I reminded this individual that God actually cares far more about the well-being of their loved one than they do, and that at no time ever would He require their life as an exchange for their kid—because God already traded His only-begotten Son for theirs. His plan from the beginning of creation and even before, has always and only been about Life. Jesus made very clear in John 10:10 that He and the Father were both collectively about Abundant Life, and that death, loss, and destruction are in direct opposition to their will. No matter the situation, regardless of how bad things might look, there is only ever one response from our Father, and that is to release life. You see, our Heavenly Father is lifegiving and in Him there is no darkness. He doesn’t have hidden motives and really isn’t difficult to understand. We have let pagan beliefs and legalistic old-covenant religion confuse us into believing God requires something from us in order to perform good works on our behalf when He has never required those things of us. The Bible tells us in Romans 5:10 that even while we were enemies of God that the Father sent the Son. And it is key to note that we were only His enemies in our own minds, because we were never enemies in His mind. We have been and will always be His beloved children. We spoke a bit longer, and after encouraging this family member with some more truth of God’s nature and His plans for their family, I prayed for this person, then we both separated and went about our business (I can’t even claim that I got “back to work” because I didn’t consider what I was doing to be somehow separate from my job).

Bad things happen. Difficult circumstances come to pass. Hard times arise, and we can only deal with them as best as we can in those moments. I don’t pretend to be some super-Christian who has it all figured out. I firmly know that I don’t. What I do know is that regardless of the circumstances that our mandate to release life, take dominion over corrupted creation, remove the decay from the cosmos, and to love all creation has never changed. Revelation 21 tells us there will come a day when Jesus wipes every tear from our eyes, and I am determined to be someone who apprehends the message of life and immortality such that I am alive in-body when that day arrives, and until then it is my task to help usher that day in. The Bible tells us that truth sets us free, and I think we have so often become convinced that if we bargain with God that we can somehow get His hand to move—when in reality He already moved in the person of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to trade God anything for anything, and most certainly trade yourself for someone else because He already made the trade. God already traded His son for yours. He already bankrupted heaven to redeem earth and everyone on it. He is madly and deeply in love with you, so no matter what situation, what circumstance, what darkness has been rearing itself in your life, His plans are only, always, and ever for life. Trust in that.

If you want to learn more about God’s plans for abundant life for you and your loved ones, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my books The Gospel of Life and Immortality and Faith to Raise the Dead, as well as my friend Tommy Miller’s books Deathless and Transfigured.

The Price of Kindness

I was reading a book this morning, a Chinese cultivation novel, where a character was pondering the meaning of kindness. In this book, the character was pondering kindness in order to advance his station in life, and he began to do random acts of kindness in order to understand it better. But he noticed that the more kind things he did for people, the less and less benefit he was able to receive from it as far as growing, his understanding was concerned, and the character had to spend time figuring out why this was, as it was hindering his personal growth. As the reader, I could easily see the problem— kindness when done with the express intent of getting something from the person you are helping, even if that thing you are receiving is only a better understanding of kindness itself, it’s not very altruistic at all, and is still just another version of giving to get. True kindness does not expect to receding anything in return—the price of kindness is nothing.

As I continued reading this book, the character figured out what I said above in the subsequent chapter, and began to understand kindness as a concept better. Which then got me pondering about kindness.

Everyone has something about God’s nature that moves them more than other aspects of his. For my two best friends, one of them is most moved by His goodness, and the other is most moved by His love. But the primary attribute of God that moves my heart is His kindness— so I took this opportunity to begin to really think about His kindness and what it is about it that touches me so deeply.

And that is where I began to think about the price of kindness. One truly cannot put a price on kindness because it is done without expecting anything in return. Which is kind of a strange thing because it makes kindness without cost, or priceless in all senses of the word, and yet it costs the giver everything to be able to give it, making it also quite costly.

Then I began to think about what it costs God to be kind to us. And why he would choose to be kind to us. What could somebody possibly gain in choosing to be kind to those who both can’t repay it and won’t repay it? And the truth is, there isn’t any gain. Love chooses to act in kindness with full disregard for personal gain, and that is what makes it so remarkable. Our Heavenly Father doesn’t extend kindness toward us because He’s seeking to get something from us. He gives us his kindness as a free gift simply because that’s what Love does. That’s who Love is.

First Corinthians 13 tells us that love is kind. And it sounds so simple to say, but in practice, it means that Love is quite costly. Because in giving kindness, it costs the giver everything, including the right to have rights regarding the act of kindness. And that may sound strange to say, but if we think about it, it is true. True kindness does something without an expectation in return. Which also means that the giver lays no claim upon the act itself or upon any benefits from its outcome. As a result, it is also not self-seeking— which suggests the kindness is really just one of the many manifestations of love. And love, too, is both costly and without price.

My prayer for you today is that you would have an encounter with God’s kindness—because His kindness is without limit and it is poured out for you personally to experience this aspect of His great love toward you.

You Will Regret Missing The Rapture

A few weeks before I moved from Austin, Tx to the New Philadelphia area of Ohio earlier this year, I somehow got into what was a confusing conversation for me with one of the nursing assistants in my hospital system. It was confusing for me largely because these days I am very far removed from the mainstream heaven-when-you-die rapture belief. I simply forget sometimes that some people are so entrenched in that belief system they either can’t or won’t consider anything else. I don’t even remember how the subject came up, but it ended up with her telling me that I was on “dangerous ground” by teaching people what the Bible explicitly states about life and immortality. And to top that off, I was informed that if I don’t believe in the rapture that not only will I miss it when it happens, but that I will regret it because I will be forced to be here for the Great Tribulation.

Unfortunately, the conversation devolved quite rapidly. I was surprised to discover she had never even heard of Preterism, much less Partial Preterism (views that deal with End-times beliefs from a different perspective than the typical Futurist belief), but ignorance is fine if you’re willing to listen to me explain what it is. Nobody knows everything, and we all have opportunities to learn new things. However, not only was everything I said falling on deaf ears, but that she was trying to paint me in this heretical-teacher-bound-for-judgment role, and I wasn’t having it. Am I a Fivefold Teacher? Yes. Do I need to be responsible with the things I teach and say? Yes. Do I attempt to do that precisely because I understand why and how it is important? Also yes. It is precisely because I understand the value of solid Christian teaching and how it has an impact on our lives that I write books and weekly articles and will launch The Kings of Eden Podcast this year. Hosea 4:6 tells us that “my people die/are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Even in my job as a nurse, I see people who grow sick and on occasion die because of things they didn’t know or things they thought they knew but understood incorrectly. What we don’t know can and often does hurt us, and my heart is for everyone to live in the fullness and abundant life that Jesus provided for us, so I want to provide information and resources so people can access those things.

The funny thing to me is that in this conversation, while I was being told that I would miss out on the rapture and that she believed I was a false teacher, I was unphased by these things she was trying to firmly warn me about. In fact I told her I was “comfortable with that” when she told me that what I am teaching is fringe theology. Why? Because I am. It might be fringe now, but it will one day be mainstream, and as a forerunner, it’s my job to spread the word early.

The other thing this woman didn’t realize (nor do I think she would have understood if she did) is that decades ago when I still believed in the Rapture, I literally would pray and ask God to let me remain for the Tribulation so I could help people through it. You see, I’m pretty serious about this whole Life thing. Death is an enemy, it needs to be fully put down once and for all, the pain of the world must be healed, and the decay removed from the cosmos. And while that all might sound like big ideals, its literally what Jesus came to accomplish, and I think that nothing less than His full reward is appropriate.

So if Rapture-ready heaven-if-you-die theology isn’t it, what should we believe and why? We need to remember that death never has been our means of access to heaven—Jesus is. My book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality” lays out Jesus’s plan for us. The book title is taken from 2 Timothy 1:10-11 where Paul declares that the gospel he preached is one of life and immortality—life of ever-increasing quantity and quality. In addition to extensive scripture references to lay out where this message is all throughout the Bible, I include an entire chapter on the subject of death not being our means of access to heaven, as well as a chapter discussing end-times theology and what to do with it. I also highly recommend my friend Tommy Miller’s books “Deathless” and “Transfigured”. All three of these resources will help you have a deeper understanding of God’s plan for us that does not include death or a rapture. You might also check out the book Victorious Eschatology by Harold Eberle if you want a theological deep-dive into end-times/rapture stuff.

Why Being a Prophetic Feeler Can Be Overwhelming (And What To Do About It)

A friend once wrote me a message and asked me the following question: “Do you have any suggestions for how someone way too empathetic can work with and love whoever they’re helping without being swallowed up by the painful stuff being addressed? Or does that indicate some brokenness in itself?”

I thought this was a really great question, and the answer is both extremely simple and highly complex. The simple answer to this question is “You need inner healing and deliverance.” As you can guess, I will now give you the complex answer, so buckle in.

Quite often when someone is “too empathetic” and they get absolutely steamrolled by other people’s emotional junk, it is usually unhealed emotional wounds on behalf of the person who is receiving the emotional overload. The new vogue thing in prophetic circles seems to be “I’m a prophetic feeler” but in reality most of the time people are just super unhealed and their soul is so open to other people’s emotions that they have trouble having internal emotional and energetic boundaries. This means that there is what I would essentially consider emotional contamination coming from the other person that you are receiving and being overwhelmed by because you lack the internal barriers and protections that someone normally would have in place to prevent that from happening.

As for why this subject comes up and people find it overwhelming, that is because it absolutely can be overwhelming. The key for a “prophetic feeler” is that you must identify

1) what burdens God is giving you and

2) what issues you are picking up on that aren’t yours to bear and

3) what of the burdens you are picking up is due to you being unhealed and far too wide open

“Oh, but Michael, you don’t understand. If it had happened to you then you’d understand what it is like.”

Oh, I understand perfectly well. I avoid most non-God-focused events with large crowds for a reason—not because I *don’t* understand. I don’t even find stores that are very busy and full of people enjoyable. It’s too chaotic and really unenjoyable. I was in Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and it was packed. Absolutely teeming with people. I expressly remember having the thought at that time that “this is exactly why I avoid these types of situations.” It can be intense at times. I just don’t talk about it very much and haven’t styled myself as a “prophetic feeler” because I don’t really think the title adequately describes what is going on for me.

Now, I have a dear friend who I go on mission trips with and she and her husband are both absolutely awesome. They are some of my favorite people to minister in the nations with. She is absolutely what I would term a “prophetic feeler” (and I’m fairly certain she would say that she is if you asked her), and at times the Lord will have her absorb the painful emotions of others. In my opinion it’s not actually hard to do, and it’s a skill anyone can learn, but yes, some people are more naturally gifted and/or inclined to it than others, and some have a special divine grace for it as well. I don’t know which of those categories I fall into, but I know how to do it and at times have to be very intentional not to.

Well, I was on a ministry trip with this friend and she mentioned how sad she was feeling constantly. In talking a bit, we recognized that she felt that way because she was picking up on and processing some pretty intense emotional stuff that I and another person on the trip were each dealing with. And sometime after she got on her flight, thereby leaving our presence, the emotional difficulty literally just cut off like someone turned water off from a running faucet. Our emotions were literally the source of her problem, and it is because she was engaging in a form of intercession, which among other things means “to bear and carry away.”

Now, on one occasion a few of us did discuss the whole thing about feeling other people’s feelings and carrying those burdens, and she shared how she used to be absolutely floored for a month or so after a mission trip because of all the emotional baggage she picked up and carried away from others. Eventually the Lord intervened and taught her how to release those emotions after she picked them up so she wasn’t carrying hundreds of people’s emotional pain for months or years at a time. And this ties in with what I was saying in the beginning about being too open and absorbing everything. In addition to needing to have a bit more of a firm hold on what we do and don’t absorb is something I think most prophetic feelers also need to learn—how to take whatever they are picking up, give it to the Lord, and fully release it from their own soul. Intercession is, among other things, the ability to “bear and carry away” burdens. It is not bad to be able to bear someone else’s burden, but it is extremely unhealthy to pick up that burden and not set it back down in the loving hands of the One who already pre-planned to carry it away for all of us on the cross.

If you consider yourself to be a “prophetic feeler” and want to get better at managing it, as well as releasing all of the things you’ve picked up from others that aren’t your burden to bear long-term, I have a few suggestions. First, I encourage you to get the book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic. It gives a very simple prayer template that can help you pray through releasing any emotions you are feeling regardless of whether they originated with you or not. Second, I encourage you to connect with an inner healing minister who can help you become more internally healthy yourself and thus address that issue of internal barriers I mentioned earlier (links listed below the article). Third, I encourage you to check out the resources that Freedom Flowers has to offer for emotional health, and specifically I recommend the Yarrow Shield essence which is specifically designed for helping those who tend to pick up other people’s emotional and energetic “stuff” and can get overwhelmed by it.

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun

WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace

Transformations Community – Adena Hodges

Risen Light Works – Danielle

Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

Grace Over Formula

I had a dream on January 18^th of this year that I want to share with you, as well as the interpretation and the message it carries for all of us. The dream itself was pretty short. I was at my old property and standing at the fence talking to the neighbor. In real life this neighbor doesn’t exist, but in the dream she was a woman who had a very young child and she needed food for the kid. For some reason I was in possession of a container of Similac baby formula that I had sitting on my pantry shelf, and I could see it on my shelf while I was talking to her (don’t ask me how, dreams can be weird). I offered to give her the baby formula, and she politely declined. Instead of letting me give her the food, she gave me a $5 bill. That was the end of the dream. Upon waking, it didn’t take long to identify the message of the dream, because the dream symbols were fairly clear and it was a play on words—grace instead of formula.

Sometimes we can get so busy trying to do things the way we have always done it before or the way everyone else is telling us that something works that we forget we have the Spirit of the Living God inside us and at our disposal 24/7. This reminds me of something a friend said to me in a conversation just the other day, which was that sometimes people think using the prophetic for daily life things is cheating. Its not.

When I was in college, I had one class where the professor gave us four essays that we could prepare for prior to each exam, as we would each get one of them on the test. He was only ever going to give each of us one of them, but it was random as to which essay question each of us would get, so if someone wanted to perform well they had to research to prepare to answer all of them. The morning of each test, I would ask the Holy Spirit to help me get the essay question I wanted—the one of the four I felt I was the most prepared to answer well. Once on the ride to class (Penn State has a campus bus system because it’s a large campus) the Holy Spirit said “move one seat to the left”. That might not mean much to anyone else, but it was a very straightforward answer to me because, as most students do after a few weeks in any class, we all sat in the same seats out of habit (and I got a dirty look from the girl who normally sat in the seat I took that day, as it was one to the left of my normal seat). On the day of the final exam, because finals were often held in different rooms and at different times than normal, I had never been in the classroom so the Holy Spirit showed me a vision of an aerial layout of the seats in the classroom, highlighting the one I should sit in with the color blue. When I arrived I got distracted and completely forgot to look for my special seat, and by the time I realized it, most of the seats were filled. I looked around the room and then realized I was already sitting in it! God had guided me to the right seat anyway.

The Holy Spirit is our ultimate cheat code for life. He is the Spirit of Wisdom, Revelation, Knowledge, and Counsel, so it seems only prudent that if we need any of those things that we start by asking Him for them. But in order to take advantage of that, we have to be willing to set aside our well-planned formulas for things and learn to flow in grace. That doesn’t mean we should never make plans of any kind, but especially when it comes to our spiritual life, when we operate from a position of grace we will be able to set aside our rote formulas for accessing God, getting things done in prayer, and all of the other “ways” we have learned over the years to get God to do things. Why? Because often those things are based on running a formula. For example, there is a chapter in my book “The Power of Impartation” that explains multiple spiritual laws in depth. That information is both useful and helpful, but there are times when we are so busy trying to work spiritual laws to our benefit that we miss out on an even higher good that God has prepared for us.

When we are able to live from grace, God’s divine empowerment in our lives, we can transcend all formulas and patterns and be led by His Spirit in all we say and do. And I’m not there by any means, but I do feel this is a valuable reminder for all of us.

As we close, I want to leave you with a resource that might be helpful. I haven’t read this book yet myself, but it came to mind as I was writing this article, and I suspect it is because the Holy Spirit is nudging me to share it with you all—so that’s what I’m going to do! The book is called “Grace Over Grind: How Grace Will Take Your Business Where Grinding Can’t” by Shae Bynes. In her own words, she is the “Founder and Chief Fire Igniter of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur,” and this book is actually an expanded version celebrating the 5^th anniversary of the book. While it is geared toward business, I suspect the principles in it can translate to other areas of life as well, and if you’re a kingdom-minded business owner then Shae is someone you’ll want to get in touch with. And if you like what she says, she also has a podcast you can listen to as well. Be well, be blessed, and may you go forth with grace!

The Expiration Date of Grief

I was talking to a dear friend the other day about grief, and she made an analogy I had never heard before. She said that grief is a bit like a ball inside a box. The ball never goes away, but as the box grows over time, the relative space that it takes up is lessened so the grief becomes less intense and/or less severe. And while it becomes less intense, it never goes away because no matter how big the box gets, the ball is always still there. While I have never heard it described in those terms before, I am familiar with the fact that most people seem to believe that grief has no end, that it will never fully leave, and that all we can do is let time and distance lessen the pain. And for the nonbeliever and/or the secular world, that is probably fairly true. But as followers of Jesus, we don’t have to play by the world’s rules, and I can promise everyone reading this that grief has an expiration date—a predetermined day when grief meets its end.

I recognize this is a bit counter-culture, as the idea that all grief can be fully healed, resolved, and go away forever is something very few seem to believe. But I suggest that it’s what the Bible teaches us as a result of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, so I want to lay this out for us and then provide some options for people to walk out and experience the end of their grief in the here-and-now because I don’t believe in a heaven-if-you-die gospel, I believe in a gospel that is so powerful and transformative that it works right here, right now, and it applies to everyone.

In Isaiah 55 we see the prophecy commonly referred to as the “suffering servant,” which is generally recognize to be Isaiah prophesying about Jesus and what He would do for us on the cross. It’s a great chapter to read because there is a *lot* that it speaks of when you delve into it, but I want to hone in on verses 4 and 5 in the NKJV specifically. They say:

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.”

I chose the NKJV for this specifically because it uses the word “grief” in there, and while other translations sometimes use the words “pain” and “suffering” instead of “grief” and “sorrows” they ultimately communicate the same concept. Grief is painful, and sorrow is a form of suffering. If the Bible spoke of Jesus saying that he would carry these things on our behalf, and not just carry them but carry them away, then that is what He did. Jesus didn’t just come so we would have hope in the middle of bad things. He came to *remove* the pain of the bad things and make them become good. How can God possibly make evil things like death become good? I don’t fully understand it, but He can, He does, and He has committed to doing so for all of us forever.

Looking at this from another angle, 1 Corinthians 15:55 speaks of death having a victory and a sting, and that paragraph explains how there is a moment when death will fully lose its victory and sting and be swallowed up completely in the victory that Christ accomplished. In 1 Corinthians 15:56 it says that the sting of death is sin, the word hamartia in Greek. Hamartia means, among other things, to miss the mark, to fall short of the intended target, or to violate divine law in thought or act. I think it is pretty safe to say that grief itself is a violation of God’s divine order and plan, as death is also in violation of His plan for abundant life. If the sting of death is in how it violates divine order, and the power of that sting comes from the Law that Jesus came to fulfill and then lay aside, then it would make perfect sense that what Jesus completed on the cross provided the ultimate solution for sin, death, and also grief. Said much more simply, I think of grief as part of the sting of death, and that sting has a predetermined end. It has an expiration date. It will not last forever and it *cannot* last forever because the blood of Jesus *demands* that there is a solution for it.

If grief was God’s plan for us, then why would Revelation 21:4 declare “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.”? Grief is not God’s plan for us. And to take this a step further, did you know that Revelation 21 is already partially fulfilled? And if that is true (which it is and I’ll show you), then this means that we can access the promises of an end to death and grief here and now.

Most people read Revelation 21 as a future prophecy of a someday-event, when the first verse gives us at least a portion of the context that it was speaking of and what it was speaking of finished transitioning by the end of 70 A.D. How can I make such a bold claim? Because we have historical context to reveal this to us. The Temple complex was constructed in three main parts—the Holy of Holies (referred to as Heaven), the Inner Court (referred to as Earth), and the Outer Court (referred to as “the sea”). What Jesus did on the cross opened the way to God fully for all mankind and removed all barriers and blockages, so there was no longer a need for the Outer Court (or the “sea”) where the Gentiles were relegated, because in Christ the separation between Jew and Gentile was ended. All are included in Him as one new man.

I am no expert in covenants, but as my friend, apostle Tommy Miller teaches, any time there is a change in the covenant, there has to be a new priesthood, a new temple, and a new sacrifice. The new priesthood is that of all believers. The sacrifice was Jesus on the cross. And the new temple is in mankind, no longer a physical temple with physical walls. Thus, John’s metaphorical experience where he saw a new Heaven and new Earth and there was no longer any sea was speaking of the New Order that Jesus established through His body and blood on the cross. And Revelation 21:4 speaks to this again saying “for the old older of things has passed away.” It isn’t saying that at some future point the old order will pass away, but rather that the old order is already finished and gone.

So what does that mean for us? We are under a different order. We do not have to carry grief and pain with us forever any longer. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t ever painful for a time in the interim, because it is, but the blood of Jesus demands that grief has a predetermined end. It is my desire for every person on the planet to experience the end of grief, pain, and sorrow, and to the extent that we still experience it, it is because we need to apprehend that which has already been purchased for us. It is a bit like when we buy something online. We have already bought the item, but the delivery sometimes takes longer than we want.

As obvious as it sounds, Heaven’s primary delivery system is called “prayer”. When we have yet to fully apprehend or experience something Jesus already purchased for us, prayer is generally the answer—and I encourage anyone experiencing grief to do that. And while that sounds overly simplistic, and may even sound trite (which it isn’t meant that way), sometimes it truly can be that simple. The barrier we often hit is that when we pray, if we don’t receive the full result in that moment, we can think it didn’t work. Often with things like grief that tend to be pervasive through much of our soul, it can take persistence and consistency over time to experience the fullness we should expect, but all prayer does something, and sometimes it helps to have some direction on how to move forward with that. So. I’m going to post some links below.

The first is a very short book by Praying Medic that gives a simple and easy to use prayer template to know how to pray through painful emotions when you’re not sure what to do. Prayer always works, but sometimes it takes praying multiple times in a row and/or persistence over time. There are some Flower Essences by Freedom Flowers that can help someone process through grief and heartbreak and return to a place of joy (there are other essences that help with other things, but I’m posting ones that target these specifics here). Then, there are people. I personally recommend each of these ministers, and you will have to contact them to see if they are a good fit for your specific needs or not, but all of them should be able to help you and/or refer you to someone who is a better fit.

Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

Unmasking Kabbalah, Engaging Jesus

I’m not typically a “heresy hunter” and that’s not even my goal with this article either, but I have observed with increasing prevalence that Kabbalah is a growing thing in “mystical” Christian circles, whether those that are more Charismatic leaning, those focused on “Getting back to Jewish roots”, or those who are trying to take a more merge-science-and-spirituality approach with energy and frequencies. And when we look at what some of the well-known modern-day teachers and leaders are teaching, it confuses people even further because some are very specifically telling people TO follow things found in Kabbalah. I know it has become a trendy thing these days to teach on this stuff because it’s “Jewish Mysticism” and therefore people wrongly assume it has some relation to Christianity.

It doesn’t.

Kabbalah, Metatron’s Cube (also known as the Merkabah, which just means chariot), the Kabbalistic Tree and its Sephirot, and the view of the world that it presents all have NOTHING to do with the Gospel of the One True Lord Jesus Christ.

The Kabbalistic worldview has a totally different version of Creation where God the Father (Elohim) is actually a created being by another God-being called Ein Sof who works together with the two primary parts of the Kabbalah tree to create Elohim—which isn’t actually even in agreement with Genesis 1:1, where in the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. In Kabbalah, the work of Creation was purely a result of wisdom and will, not the act of a loving Father who wants His love to find expression. Unsurprisingly, pure will is what we see as Lucifer’s mode of operation in Isaiah 14:12-14 where it says:

How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

If we delve into the Kabbalistic cosmic view, we see that elevating himself above the Most High is actually part of what Lucifer tries to do in this religion, which is a separate and different religion from Christianity entirely. It is this very act of trying to transcend God that caused Him to be cast down to begin with, and it was his unrighteous commerce (Ezekiel 26:16) that caused Lucifer to be filled with sin to begin with—commerce that he engaged in as an act of will because he wanted to do what he wanted to do, not because he didn’t know any better.

In Kabbalah, the first Adam wasn’t actually a living man but a spiritual entity known as Adam Ketur or AK, not Adam the human who lived in Eden. No, according to Kabbalah it was the second Adam who was the one who was in the garden and caused a shattering by imbalancing the Kabbalah tree. You see, in Kabbalah, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil are actually the same tree, not two different trees, and the second Adam was a living man who imbalanced creation. In Christianity, the First Adam became a living soul and the Second (and Last) Adam, Jesus the Christ, became a lifegiving spirit, making us into new creations in Him so that we could become his brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of our Father in Heaven, the Most High God. And this is NOT what Kabbalah teaches at all. In Kabbalism, our job is to ascend the Sephirot of the Kabbalah Tree through knowledge and enlightenment of Kabbalah (can you say “Gnosticism”?), gradually working our way up through the mysteries until we reach full ascension and enlightenment. As we do this, we gradually repair all of the things that, according to Kabbalah, the second Adam broke. In other words, according to Kabbalah, Jesus is the one responsible for all of the problems as opposed to Christianity where Jesus is literally THE solution.

And that doesn’t even get into the half of the ways that Kabbalah twists the Gospel message. Did I mention that the Kabbalah narrative actually makes the serpent a victim of the second Adam unbalancing creation and the serpent is part of the solution to the problem? Lucifer, as a quintessential narcissist, literally is writing an alternate cosmology here where he is the victim, Jesus is the problem, and we have to enter into his religious system and work really hard in order to fix things, as though earning, striving, and trying is anything other than another version of the legalistic rules of the Old Testament that were always doomed to fail. 2 Corinthians 3 tells us that the former glory of the Law was, in fact, glorious, but that it brought death and in its place Jesus brought us a better glory that brings Life. It tells us in John 1:17 that “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Only Jesus has the grace and truth that we need, not a Jewish Religious Occult Magic system known as Kabbalah.

People.

Literally distance yourself from this stuff. It removes Jesus entirely from the equation, God is a created being, the solution to things is to work really hard at Kabbalah to “restore balance” which Jesus never taught even once (nor did anyone else in the Bible), and it literally writes out any need for the cross or God reconciling Himself to us in Christ.

We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of the Godhead Himself, so should not be attempting to “ascend” into the heavens in Metatron’s cube while chanting the name YAHWEH (Yod-He-Vav-He). Sure, it’s one of the MANY names of God, but let’s not start performing magic rituals with it (that’s literally what occultists do—use Metatron’s cube while chanting the YHVH as an occult means to ascend the heavens through the Kabbalah tree). Don’t ascend in Metatron’s cube as though you need some other vessel than your own God-given spirit to encounter Him, and don’t use the Sephirot or the Kabbalah tree diagram as some sort of divine wisdom source. It is literally a template for Jewish occult magic that will bring you and those you teach it to into bondage, not freedom.

Even the so-called Star of David (which is a dumbed-down version of Metatron’s cube when drawn in 2 dimensions) is honestly pretty suspicious, and not because of antisemitism, but because it is literally NOT an ancient Hebrew thing from King David’s time. I’m going to quote the online Britannica entry to read because it explains quite clearly what is actually going on. Note how frequently it refers to magic and Jewish mystics (who practiced Jewish magic) in this entry, and keep in mind when you read it that a hexagram is used for ritual magic. It only became the image on the flag of the current-day nation state of Israel after the Rothschild family (one among other known Illuminati-bloodline families) pushed for the current-day nation-state to be created. Britannica states:

“Star of David, Hebrew Magen David (“Shield of David”), Magen also spelled Mogen, Jewish symbol composed of two overlaid equilateral triangles that form a six-pointed star. It appears on synagogues, Jewish tombstones, and the flag of the State of Israel. The symbol—which historically was not limited to use by Jews—originated in antiquity, when, side by side with the five-pointed star, it served as a magical sign or as a decoration. In the Middle Ages the Star of David appeared with greater frequency among Jews but did not assume any special religious significance; it is found as well on some medieval cathedrals. The term Magen David, which in Jewish liturgy signifies God as the protector (shield) of David, gained currency among medieval Jewish mystics, who attached magical powers to King David’s shield just as earlier (non-Jewish) magical traditions had referred to the five-pointed star as the “seal of Solomon.” Kabbalists popularized the use of the symbol as a protection against evil spirits. The Jewish community of Prague was the first to use the Star of David as its official symbol, and from the 17th century on the six-pointed star became the official seal of many Jewish communities and a general sign of Judaism, though it has no biblical or Talmudic authority. The star was almost universally adopted by Jews in the 19th-century as a striking and simple emblem of Judaism in imitation of the cross of Christianity. The yellow badge that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe invested the Star of David with a symbolism indicating martyrdom and heroism.”

I hope this helps someone because this stuff is becoming worryingly prevalent and the publicly available facts about how evil Kabbalah is just don’t match what people seem to be teaching. And while sure, some want to claim that Jesus was a master Kabbalist himself, even if Jesus had been taught all of these “special sacred mysteries” which have largely only ever been used to form occult groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, the Theophostic society, and others, literally nothing Jesus did or taught says “Go follow Kabbalah.” If that has been the solution, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die on the cross for us, as us, with us. He would have just taught his disciples to ascend the tree through Metatron’s cube, gather together all of the shattered pieces of divinity, and work with the serpent to fix creation. But He didn’t teach anything close to that—not even once. He DID say that we have been given power to TRAMPLE serpents and scorpions, not work with them to restore creation.

Here’s where this makes things awkward, even for me personally, because there are people I know who teach this stuff, and it doesn’t make it less-harmful just because people are well-known. If you see Christian ministers teaching this stuff, I encourage you to start challenging them on it. Be respectful, but ask them how they can merge the cosmology of Kabbalah with the cosmology of Jesus. Ask them to explain how the Second Adam, Jesus, is supposedly responsible for the shattering that the second Adam in Kabbalah is responsible for. Ask them to explain how the serpent is actually a helper in restoring all things and is a victim of Adam, and how that fits into the Biblical narrative. Regardless of who makes a claim, we have to start doing some homework. If we are going to start accepting a teaching as true that has its backing in an occult religious system like Kabbalah, then we have to do some research and understand what we are aligning ourselves with and deciding to come into agreement with before we decide to just go along with it because it’s what all the popular kids are doing.

Fortunately for us, Dan Duval has done a really good job of encapsulating a wide body of knowledge and understanding about Kabbalah and what it really is in his teaching series “Exposing Kabbalah.” It is free on Youtube and also is available through multiple podcast apps. Yes, it takes time to listen to, and even more time if you do some due diligence and look at some of the source documents Daniel talks about, but if this is something you are encountering in teachings you listen to and from teachers you follow, you owe it to yourself to find out the truth.

God wants us to operate in freedom and life, and at the end of the day that’s what this message is about—uncovering a pitfall that can become easy to fall into. I have friends who like to run after every “special” conference, spiritual mystery, and secret things that makes them feel different, special, valuable, and worthy, and teaching Kabbalah mysteries helps fill that hole for a time—but it doesn’t bring the wholeness that deepening our relationship and fellowship with the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit will do, and our true identity will only be realized in Him. That is where we need to spend our time and energy and that is where we will truly grow deeper—as we engage the mystery of the ages that the Father has already revealed to us in Christ Jesus.

Seeking After Signs: What Does The Bible Say?

The Charismatic denominations are a funny place, and if you listen to what every teacher or preacher says about how to receive from God, how to operate in the gifts of the spirit, whether to seek after God’s face or his hand, how to receive answered prayer or see miracles, or anything similar, you are bound to get spiritual whiplash, because every time you turn around someone is going to be telling you something different. One person will tell you to intercede fervently to get your prayers answered. Another will tell you not to pray for them to be answered but to thank God that they are already answered until it happens. Yet another will tell you to “praise” God for it instead of praying—which at best I can assume means that you’re still thanking God but with music this time. It can get very difficult to know whether it’s okay to ask God for things or if asking Him for things is bad because different people will tell you different things. One will tell you to only seek God’s face, which in this context means to engage Him relationally and not ask Him for anything, and then you will receive everything in His hands that He is holding for you. Another will tell you to ask Him for what you need because the Bible directly states to do so, and so you should ask Him for what you need but also believe you have already received it or else you won’t get anything. This is all just plain confusing.

Most people want to know how to get their prayers answered, and some (like me) take it a step further and want to know how to operate consistently in the gifts of the Spirit and live a supernatural lifestyle. Some of us even believe that God wants us to be able to do these things at our command (I do an hour-long teaching about this called Miracles Today, available on Youtube). I want to help bring some clarity to this topic not by doing just one more teaching to give you even more whiplash, but by bringing some *context* to what the Bible says about seeking after signs, wonders, and miracles.

If we quote certain passages with no context and then match them with other passages that equally contain no context, then we can easily come to the conclusion that seeking after and operating in signs, wonders, and miracles is not the will of God for us. I have heard said multiples of times over the years in conversations I was personally in some variation of the idea that we should only seek intimacy with God and then everything else will automatically come to us. The idea is that whether spiritual gifts, financial provision, spiritual power, miracles, etc., so long as we “seek His face” and engage God relationally in love, then we automatically get everything else. I have yet to find that to be true, and challenge anyone to show me that practice consistently bearing the kind of fruit I am referencing. Sure, we can find a few people here and there where it worked out for them, but it doesn’t yield results consistently, which means ignoring spiritual power and assuming it’s going to head my way eventually isn’t actually a reliable means of operating in spiritual power.

It is extremely easy to find believers who love God and yet who also can’t even heal a headache in prayer. There is no special award for being a powerless Christian, but we collectively act like it is the pious stance to take, when in reality what Jesus both did and taught was to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, strength, etc. and also He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil. He did miracles all over Israel and taught his disciples to do the same, then passed that mandate on to each of us as well (Matthew 28:20). It is impossible to do a sensible read-through of the Bible and come away with the conclusion that we are not meant to operate in the miraculous, but people manage to do it anyway. Jesus didn’t pick and choose one or the other, and He certainly didn’t teach his disciples to do so either. And if neither Jesus nor the early disciples held this belief, I suggest we shouldn’t either. But let’s take a look at some interactions Jesus had on this subject and see what the Bible says.

In John 6 we see Jesus feeding the five-thousand by multiplying bread and fish. This story is found in each of the gospels, but what is interesting (which you will hear me expound on this more if you go listen to my teaching on Youtube) is that in John 6:5-6 Jesus tests Philip on whether or not he knows how to perform a miracle. You see, the text tells us that Jesus had already pre-planned to perform a miracle, which is the only way He could have been able to test Philip on it. And when does a teacher test the students? When the teacher wants to see how well the students are learning the material. Jesus wasn’t expecting Philip to just love Him a lot and then have the bread multiply on its own with no influence on Philip’s part. No, Jesus was actively teaching His disciples how to perform miracles, which means He can’t be all that upset when we actually obey His teachings and seek out how to do the same things He was already teaching the disciples to do. No, I think Jesus would commend our obedience instead.

It goes a step further though. If we jump down to John 6:25-31 we see the people flocking after Jesus, and Jesus comments that they are not looking for him because of his signs, but because of the food. He cautions them about their motives, which is key to note, urging them to seek a different type of spiritual sustenance, and in response they ask Jesus an interesting question, which is quite telling. John 6:30-31 says, “So they asked him, ‘What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’’” They specifically expected Jesus to perform some kind of miracle in order for them to believe what He was saying, and then they referenced their ancestors eating manna in the wilderness under Moses as the example or template they were going off of.

For us to understand this passage and to provide Biblical/cultural context, it is important to note that the expectation the crowd had of Jesus was a sign, and that this was normal for Jews. Jews grew up hearing about all of the signs and wonders that God performed when bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, and the writers of the Psalms wrote about them often. Culturally, Jews expected to see signs and miracles because their belief in God was largely based on visible evidence and/or testimonies or stories from others of past evidence.

We see this same tendency of Jews to seek after signs noted by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:22-24. It says, “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.”

Paul didn’t actually have a problem with the Jews seeking a sign, nor did Jesus. And God doesn’t reject wisdom just because Greeks sought after it. God is literally the embodiment of all wisdom, so it would be absurd for Him to be anti-wisdom. The issue was that without a sign the Jews were unwilling to believe, and unless you could logic your way to the Greeks, they were also unwilling to believe. Each of them had a predetermined set of cultural expectations under which God was expected to perform to their satisfaction in order for them to follow Him, and that’s just not how God does things.

We see evidence of this yet again in John 20 when Thomas does not believe that Jesus appeared to the other disciples unless he is literally able to touch Jesus’s wounds. We are going to look at all of John 20:24-31 because the entire passage has some relevance to this topic. It says:

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:24-31)

Jesus’s issue with Thomas wasn’t that Thomas needed a sign—it was his heart condition of unbelief that was the problem. There is a blessing that comes for those who believe in Him without having seen a sign, but that doesn’t mean that Jesus was anti-signs. No, it is impossible for Jesus to be anti-signs because literally the next verse we read it says “Jesus performed many other signs”. Now, if Jesus was against his disciples having, doing, or seeing signs, would He have made sure to perform a bunch of them right after telling a disciple to stop doubting? Absolutely not. The issue wasn’t one of whether they could have signs or not, it was that they were Jews, and Jesus was trying to break them of the Jewish habit of having to see a sign in order to believe in a Kingdom where faith is one of the primary currencies.

If we were to read some of these passages above at face value without understanding the cultural context of Biblical Jews/Israel, we would think that seeking after signs is a bad thing, and that Jesus gets upset when we do this. In reality, what we find is that Jesus was teaching His disciples to perform miracles, to the point that the last thing Jesus said to His disciples in Mark 16 before He ascended was this:

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it. (Mark 16:15-20)

If you were Jesus and you were against signs, wonders, and miracles, then why would the very last thing you say to your disciples include a list of the signs they should expect to see if they believe in Him? That line of reasoning makes zero sense. Not only does this passage show Jesus telling the disciples the signs they should expect, but when they obeyed what He commanded them it says that God confirmed their preaching with signs. I think it is pretty safe to say that not only are signs permissible for the believer, but that it is perfectly find to seek after them. Again, the context of not seeking after signs was for non-believing Jews who were expecting a sign in order to believe, where for Jesus’s disciples who already believed, He was teaching them how to perform miracles. The context matters immensely.

There’s a big difference between seeking signs as a requirement to believe and seeking signs because you believe. In the former it is based largely, I believe, in a lack of trust in God. In the latter, it generally springs forth in context of the relationship with Him. In other words, signs are not only not a bad thing to seek, but they’re fantastic. In 1 Corinthians 12:31 Paul told people to eagerly desire the greater spiritual gifts and repeats himself again in 1 Corinthians 14:1. Like Jesus, Paul had no issue with there being visible manifestation of what we believe. The issue isn’t whether something should have a visible manifestation, because it should, but it’s the heart posture from whence that comes that matters most, which is why Paul devoted 1 Corinthians 13 to explaining the importance of tempering spiritual power and giftings with love. It isn’t that love is important and that gifts are not, or that we should only seek love and naively hope the gifts will end up flowing our way. No, we are meant to operate both in immense love and immense spiritual power as followers of Jesus, not choosing one or the other, but doing both in great measure!

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you want to see signs, wonders, and miracles, I encourage it! In fact, I have written multiple books designed to help the believer walk in and experience the miraculous, some of which are also in audiobook format.

The books Gemstones From Heaven and Feathers From Heaven are about miracle manifestations, and provide biblical understanding about these miracles, wisdom for discerning the nature of the miracles and what God could be communicating through them, as well as insights into how we can partner with Heaven to experience them.

The Power of Impartation gives practical insight into how we can engage God’s heavenly system to see the supernatural enhanced in our lives and in the lives of those around us through impartation and other related spiritual laws.

Faith To Raise The Dead is a bit self-explanatory as it is about raising the dead—seeing them restored back to life and back to their families by the power of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of Life and Immortality takes that a step further to encourage us to never even taste death, as well as gives practical insights into how to begin walking that out.

The Beginner’s Guide To Traveling In The Spirit is a basic training manual to help equip the believer to engage the things of God in heavenly places, the result of which should be a greater manifestation of Heaven on the Earth.

Building an “As You Go” Lifestyle

One of the things I learned early on in my journey into the charismatic and things involving the power of the Holy Spirit was that so much of it is meant to be done on a daily basis as we go throughout life. I remember hearing Bill Johnsons preach once and he was explaining how a visitor came to Bethel church and asked to go out with their “mall ministry.” Bill was confused and said something to the effect of “we don’t have a mall ministry. What are you talking about?” The guy referenced all the stories Bill would tell about people getting divinely healed at the mall. Bill’s response was something along the lines of “Yeah, we don’t have a mall ministry. We have parishioners who shop.” So much of life as a believer is, I think, meant to be ministry flowing naturally out of who we are in Him as we go through our daily life. We are meant to build an “as you go” lifestyle.

Matthew 10:7-8 says, “As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” The context of this was when Jesus sent out his twelve apostles to go minister, but I think there is a principle we can glean from this passage that goes beyond the specifics of what Jesus sent them to do. I believe that as followers of Jesus it is perfectly fine to be intentional and have times we set aside to “do ministry.” There is nothing wrong with that. However, I believe that Kingdom is meant to be a lifestyle, not a task we do. The way we minister to people and expand the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven will happen most effectively if every single believer simply lives an As You Go lifestyle.

You see, the vast majority of people who call ourselves “Christians” simply go to church on Sunday and try to “live a good life.” But “being good” is not remotely the same thing as “being dangerous to powers of darkness.” And I don’t think being good is something to attain to. Being dangerous, however, is very much something I aspire to be. And the most effective way to do that is to live an intentional life where every day is ministry as a natural outflow of who we are. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God already pre-planned things for us to do. Not because we have to do things to earn His love or favor or blessing, but because we *already have* His love, favor, and blessing the works are a natural outflow of who we are—or at least they should be. And if they’re not, then its perfectly fine to be intentional about building it into our lives much like we start building any other habit.

This means that if we see someone who is sick or injured and we are out in public (the same applies if we’re not in public) then its perfectly fine to approach them and ask if they want prayer for healing. The more we do it the better we will get at reading the situation, hearing from the Holy Spirit about what to do, etc., but its better to start *somewhere* than to do nothing and then wonder why God never shows up. In many ways its pretty simple. If I don’t pray for someone, they won’t get healed. If I do pray for someone it is significantly more likely they will get healed than the guarantee that they won’t if I don’t.

I want to push this idea one step further though. When I hear people talk about divine healing and an As You Go lifestyle I only ever hear them speak in terms of physical healing. Why can’t we do the same for emotions? I believe inner healing work should be a significant part of an As You Go lifestyle, but most people aren’t equipped to do that, and I think that’s sad. The basics of emotional healing are honestly pretty simple. We pray, we ask God to do something, He does it to a greater or lesser degree, and as needed we pray more/again to solve the problem. Yes, there are ways we can get really good at it, and yes there are all kinds of prayer tools and such out there that are beneficial, and yes, we can also work with a prayer minister one-on-one to really target deep issues. I think all of those things are valuable and important, but if I had one wish in this area it would be that the Body of Christ as a whole would get really good at dealing with emotional things with one another as they randomly come up in life.

When we get triggered by something emotionally, there are some specific reasons why praying for that matter right at that time make it far easier to access and get healed than it is by repressing the feelings and then trying to drag them back up later to deal with and heal. But because most people are not well-equipped to help someone pray through something right in that moment, most of the time we let those opportunities pass us by. I firmly believe that every person alive should do deep inner healing work because everyone has “stuff” they need to deal with. And yet a comparative few:

1) can afford it (as most people who do this do it full-time and thus need some form of income to be able to do what they do)

2) stick with it long enough to see deep transformative results

I think part of this is due to a lack of understanding about the need. If more people understood why this was needed they would get help themselves without waiting until the emotional pain got bad enough they couldn’t *not* do it, and also more people would learn how to help others heal their emotions and then we could do inner healing on-the-go like we can do with physical healing. For example, just the other day I was on the phone talking to a friend and something came up for him. I forget what the issue was, but we literally spent less than 5 minutes praying through the thing, and then went right back to whatever we were talking about before. We didn’t have to make a big deal about it, it didn’t require us to spend an hour digging into his past to uncover every single possible hidden thing that might have related to it in some way, and we were able to address the matter in prayer and keep going with normal life. Now, to be fair, that was made possible by two things—first, I’m pretty good at inner healing so I have some of the skill, experience, and applied spiritual power needed to walk through something like that quickly and easily, and second, both of us have a mindset where inner healing can be part of a lifestyle so I didn’t have to do any teaching, convince him that we could do it in a few minutes, or any of the other things I find I usually have to do in order to quickly help someone with something. But my heart’s desire is that we as the Body of Christ collectively would become not only good at this, but so accustomed to this being part of the As You Go that most of the time people don’t have to set aside an hour or two of time for special inner healing sessions because they just get healed as a result of living life in community with others. It’s a very doable goal, but it requires people to first recognize the need in their own life and in the lives of those around them, and then it requires a community of people to make a change.

Now whether you currently live in a community of people where this is already happening or not, I want to leave you with some tools to start moving forward on your own inner healing journey. I am going to share links to a bunch books to educate yourself (the first one is a simple prayer template I use all the time and I highly recommend it because it’s fast to pray through and easy to learn) to a lesser or greater degree about inner healing and deliverance, to flower essences you can use to help speed along the process of emotional healing, and links to prayer ministers I recommend if you want to do a deeper dive on your own emotional healing and personal transformation journey.

Books:

Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic
Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul by Michael King and others
Divine Healing for Spirit, Soul & Body by Matt Evans and Diane Moyer
Emotional Healing Made Simple by Praying Medic
Flower Power: Essences That Heal by Seneca Schurbon
Self-Deliverance and Warfare Prayers by Mason Ledbetter
Setting The Prisoners Free: The Inner Healing and Exorcism Session by Mason Ledbetter
Keys for Deliverance: Freedom From the Influence of Evil Spirits by Jake Kail
They Shall Expel Demons by Derek Prince
Prayers That Shake Heaven and Earth by Dan Duval (first of a 3 book series)

Flower Essences:

Good Grief
Heart Healer
Bouquet Blends (in general)
Sound Essences (in general)

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun
WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace Lane
Transformations Community – Adena Hodges
Risen Light Works – Danielle Rose
Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

A Resurrection Mindset: Waking the Sleeper

My very good friend Kyle died on June 19, 2021 in a motorcycle accident. The entire situation was (and is) heartbreaking, and I did pray for resurrection. At the time of writing this he hasn’t returned back to life yet, but my job is to pray, not to decide the timing of things, so pray is what I do and I let God work out the rest of the details. I have said before that in almost every situation where I step out in faith to raise the dead God teaches me something whether someone returns to life or not, and this time was no different, albeit it was harder on my emotions than most other situations. The morning of Kyle’s funeral I had a dream that I want to share with you because it spoke to me a little differently about raising the dead than I had ever experienced before. In fact, the dream was so real that I recognize I wasn’t simply dreaming, but had a spiritual encounter with Kyle as he is now part of the Cloud of Witnesses (For those who are unfamiliar, I cover encounters with the Cloud of Witnesses in my book The Beginner’s Guide to Traveling in the Spirit). This encounter challenged me with the idea that having a resurrection mindset is really about learning to wake the sleeper, not raise the dead. I want to share with you what happened and what I have learned from it.

In the physical I was staying in Portland at a friend’s house in one of their guest rooms. I had lived with them for multiple months while we made our family move to Texas and this had been “my room” during that time, so the room itself was very familiar room to me. This matters only because in the dream encounter I began in this same room.

In the dream, I woke up laying on my bed at my friends’ house where I was physically staying the night. It was morning, and Kyle’s body was on the bed on my right, and his wife was standing at the end of the bed. I reached over and lightly nudged him to wake him up—the same way I might if I was waking someone who was sleeping. And he woke up. It was so incredibly easy—like I imagine dead raising is supposed to be, and like the Bible seems to suggest it was for Jesus.

I was overjoyed when he woke/returned, and somehow Kyle and I were now in this large building, almost like the middle of a rotunda of a massive building, complete with huge pillars. The building seemed like it was old but didn’t feel old. Standing there with Kyle next to me, I called Tyler Johnson (founder of the Dead Raising Team) on my cell to tell him that the DRT had another successful resurrection, and then Kyle and I hung out for a while. It was really nice.

And then I woke up.

It took me a minute to realize that what I had experienced before was a dream encounter. You have to understand that because in the dream I was laying in the same place on the same bed in the same room that my body actually was physically, and the dream had felt so real, it was very disorienting. And, as one can imagine, when I realized that Kyle was not in fact next to me and alive because it had been a dream encounter, I began to cry.

While there are a number of potential takeaways from this encounter, I want to focus on a key lesson I believe the Lord wanted to teach me. The dream showed me something I suspect is meant to be a reality for us, and gives me a new target for my faith—that raising the dead should be as simple as waking someone up from sleep. There is scriptural precedent for this concept (not that precedent is required, but it’s still there nonetheless) found in something Jesus said, as well as some things the apostle Paul mentioned:

— When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he mentioned that she was not dead, but rather she was sleeping. (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43 Luke 8:40-56)
— When Jesus spoke of Lazarus to his disciples, He initially stated that Lazarus was sleeping, but later had to clarify for them that Lazarus’s body was dead because the disciples didn’t understand (John 11:11-14)
— In Ephesians 5:14 Paul writes, “This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”
— Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 that those who have died are asleep, and they will wake when Christ comes again.
— In 1 Corinthians 15:6 Paul wrote about Jesus appearing to the disciples and again referred to those disciples who at the time of him writing the letter had died as being “asleep”. He goes on to reference this idea of death being sleep again in the same chapter in v18, 20, and 51 as well.

Even in the Old Testament we find this concept:
— Job speaks of death being a place where he would finally get sleep (Job 3:11-17)
— Daniel 12:2 says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

When we understand the our spirits are eternal and immortal, it brings clarity to some of this. When we incarnate into the earth and our spirit inhabits a body, I believe it is at that moment that something of the interaction between spirit and body births the soul and the soul realm. When someone dies, the body is clinically dead, the eternal spirit is still alive, and the soul is in an unclear state that I suggest is probably the part that is asleep—unable to function properly until it is rejoined with the body. That specific part about the soul being what sleeps is supposition, but the Bible is incredibly clear that those who die do enter some degree of sleep-like-state, and it does not expound in-depth on what that looks like or what portion of the human being enters that sleep-state, so educated guesses are what we are left with.

Now, where this matters for us is that if we are praying to raise someone from the dead then on some level we need to change our view of death from being this massive mountain we have to overcome, and instead simply acknowledge that the person has entered a transitional state of “sleep”—and it is our job to go wake them. I don’t pretend to have it all worked out as far as what that looks like, but I do believe that God was showing me something of importance during this dream encounter. What difference in results would we see if we learn to shift our mindset from seeing death as a mountain to climb and instead we view it as a defeated foe who can at very best put someone to sleep for a bit. And if all death can do is put someone to sleep, then all we have to do is wake them back up and we’ve solved the problem. 1 Corinthians 15:25-27a says of Jesus, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he ‘has put everything under his feet.’” Jesus is the head, we are the Body (1 Cor 12:27, Eph 5:23, 29), and as such if we put everything under His feet then we, the Body of Christ, are all collectively taking dominion over it and placing it under our feet as well.

According to Hebrews 6:2, raising the dead is a foundational teaching of the faith, so I believe it is important we not only have a clear theology on what this looks like, but also practical application—a way to actually “do the stuff” and not just talk about it. To that end, I have written a book series called the Abundant Life series, of which the first book is Faith to Raise the Dead. This book is a shortcut—and that is precisely the point. This doesn’t have to be hard for everyone, and my goal in writing it is to make this a far easier journey for you than it has been for me. Faith to Raise the Dead will give the reader a great deal of wisdom and insight on raising the dead. It lays out what the Bible says on the subject, and answers many common questions and concerns. In some places I share a few perspectives and/or thought processes for the reader to consider on matters that don’t have one clear and specific biblical answer, but even things that don’t have clear-cut answers are discussed. At the end of the book there is also a list of scriptures that one can reference to encourage their faith and, if someone prefers to pray the scriptures when praying, that appendix can be used for that as well. The goal was to write a comprehensive book that prepares the reader to go out and raise the dead—and I believe I accomplished that. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book today. While my friend Kyle has not yet returned, I believe that with the resources this book holds, the future can be different for another family—and maybe you will be the next one to give someone back to their family, brought back to life by the power of Jesus Christ.