Much of my adult life I have been on the low-income side of the financial spectrum, being single with non-skilled work. Almost ten years ago now I obtained my CNA certification and began to work in a low-paid but skilled trade in healthcare, and three years ago became a Registered Nurse. I am also married and we are a two-income family. Financially we are not “rich” compared to Western-World standards (although compared to many places in the world we are the 1%), but my wife and I do fairly well for ourselves.
Recently we had our friend Angie visit who used to live in Portland and who we would spend time with regularly. She has been living out of state and is headed to South Africa with the Peace Corps for just over 2 years. While visiting, we took her shopping for some good shoes and other things she would need on her trip that she hadn’t obtained yet. We went to a few different shoe stores and none of them had what she was looking for, so we stopped by the Shoe Mill, one of our favorite places to buy shoes due to the quality of the products that company sells.
Within about twenty minutes my friend Angie had found the shoes she wanted, and she decided to buy two pair, although we would have to pick up the second pair the next day. At checkout the price was just over $200. I asked “Is this for both pair or just one?” It was for one pair. Angie’s face visibly fell when the clerk said this, and I was feeling similarly inside. That’s a LOT of money for two pair of shoes, and what Angie didn’t say to me but I already knew was that she was out of work until she started working with the Corps a few weeks later.
I wordlessly pulled out my wallet, playfully nudged her aside, and swiped my credit card before she had much chance to complain. Friends are like that. She was appreciative, but that’s not why I am sharing this. I have usually been the person in the position to need the help and be grateful when someone decided to step in and pay the bill. I will say that while I have always appreciated the help, it’s an awkward position to be in–feeling like you either can’t pay something or that you can pay it, but it will be a significant financial strain to do so. Angie could have paid for the shoes, but it certainly would have made things more difficult for her in the in-between time she was in.
After buying them, I had a moment where I realized just how blessed I am. I have a good paying job, have most of my financial needs met, and am not generally stressed about money as a result. Instead of being in a position of lack, I was finally able to bless a friend whom I love from the bottom of my heart. I couldn’t help but remember the verse in the New Testament where Paul talked about this. “For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness” 2 Corinthians 8:13-14. This feeling was what I felt Paul must have been referring to–that we all have times of lack and times of plenty, and that in our times of plenty it is important to supply the needs of those who lack because we all have times of lack. When we as the Body of Christ step out and become the solution to the problems we see, our abundance supplies someone else’s need, and in a very unfair world we create just a little more fairness. I really hope I am able to get used to giving more to others than they give to me, not out of pride, but because I really like to show people love in practical ways like I mentioned above, and I pray that if you have never experienced something like that before, or if it’s been a long time, that God blesses you with abundance from heaven so that you have far more than you need and can be Heaven’s hand of supply in a time of need, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Since we began to experience the gems, many have asked us what these gemstones mean and what God is saying and doing. I have my own thoughts and opinions, which are by no means the “certified” correct answer, but I do believe I can offer insight into a portion of what God is saying and doing. To begin with, I believe this particular miracle is a bit hard to classify. For example, is it a sign, a wonder, or a miracle? While I suggest that a certain minister operates in a gift of miraculous powers for gemstone apportation, and those around him seem to have it rub off on them, it doesn’t follow the same controllable pattern that many other spiritual gifts follow.
Tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, gifts of healings, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and discernment of spirits can all be engaged to some great extent at-will of the user, and I am a firm believer that if most of the gifts can be used that way, all of the gifts can be used that way. As such, over the past few years I have explored the means by which we engage those other gifts to understand how one might purposefully engage miraculous powers, and more specifically gemstone miracles. I have found that there seems to be little relationship between the appearance of gemstones and our human activity. Jewels appear quite often when we least expect them, not when we are most focused on finding them, although they can appear then too. As such, it is hard to narrowly define as a miracle, although it certainly falls well within the confines of that category. On the other hand, I suggest it is simultaneously a sign and a wonder as well. A sign is pretty straightforward, being an event or action that points to something else, and the gemstones definitely do that. A wonder is possibly more difficult to describe, but seems to be more closely aligned with an action or event that causes us to be more in awe of God.
I believe this gem-sign points to a number of things. In ancient Jewish culture the father of the groom was the one who decided whether the groom was ready to marry his betrothed or not. The groom was required to add a room onto the family house and had to adorn it with sufficient comforts to ensure the wife would be comfortable in her future dwelling. Once the bridegroom’s father felt the groom had sufficiently prepared a place for her, the groom would then go and bring his bride to be with him there. Jesus spoke of this reality in John 14:2-3 where 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. (NIV)” This statement of his wasn’t random and out of context, but rather his disciples at the time understood that he was speaking of them as being as important to him as though they were his bride. When he would come to collect his bride, he would adorn her with jewels before he would take her to his father’s house to be with her. In the same way, God is adorning us with gems and even settings of gold and silver before bringing us to be with Him. Additional references about God giving jewels to His people, His Bride are as follows: Genesis 24:53, Isaiah 54:11-15, Isaiah 61:10, Jeremiah 2:32, Ezekiel 16:9-14, Zechariah 9:16.
To take this idea one step further, God is not just Jesus’ father, but he is our heavenly Father as well. It was customary in the Middle East, and still happens to this day in some places, where the father of the bride was required to provide a dowry, essentially a payment from the bride’s family to the groom’s to take the bride and ensure she was well-provided for. In the same way, God is sending us literal physical gemstones that we will carry with us into this spiritual marriage with Jesus, our bridegroom.
The second message I see God sharing with us is one of joy. We are God’s children, and we must become like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Kids have one main job in life and that is to play! Our Father delights in us, his children. Psalm 16:11 says “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand (NIV).” It is an absurd notion if we believe God doesn’t want us to have fun. One of the main objections I have witnessed to this manifestation is that of the staunchly religious and otherwise stuck-in-the-mud people who seem to forget that God started Genesis out by placing his new creations in a garden full of delights in a land titled Pleasure. God is possibly the most hedonistic being of the universe, and wants us to share in his limitless joy! Why send us gems? Why NOT send us gems?? They are so incredibly fun!
The third thing I see God doing is found in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” the things God has prepared for those who love him.” God is able to do far more than we can imagine in our human minds and human thinking, so much so that we’ve never even heard of many of the spectacular things God has planned for us.
In Isaiah 558-9 God says “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” God is interested in raising our faith. God wants us to have the opportunity to ask and believe for far more than we have ever asked before, and what better way to do that than completely wreck our beliefs and understanding of what God will and won’t do for us.
Fourth, I see this as a manifestation of provision. When we see gems appear, along with the feathers and gold dust I mentioned prior, how can it do anything but raise our belief in a Divine Provider? There is a church down in Puerto Rico who had a significant gem manifestation a number of years back (I am unsure if it is still happening today), and they were able to sell the vast majority of the gems which allowed them to pay off debt and finance God’s work in their area. I have heard other stories that I cannot confirm where other churches had so much gold dust appear that they were able to pay off and/or fund a building program off the proceeds from the gold sales. Who needs man’s provision when God shows up? He is our provider, and while oftentimes He uses other people to supply all our needs and wants, God doesn’t have to wait helplessly in heaven in hopes that humans will heed his requests. He can make new creations appear the same as He did the first time when he created the heavens and the earth!
Fifth, this sign is a witness to all of God’s hand at work. In other words, it’s a sign that points directly to Him. I have shared gems with countless people, and many have come up with their own names and explanations for what they are and how they appear, but the message I give is always consistent and always points to Him. It is not uncommon for me to hear someone ask me about my “fairy gems” or “magic gems,” and while some might get upset about seemingly occult references to God’s gifts, I don’t. While using different terminology, they are recognizing that God is up to something and they are simply speaking out of their own grid of understanding.
The sixth thing I see God doing with the gems is something that a friend shared with me a while back. She said “We have had gems tested, and when different people brought the same gem into the same jeweler, he got different results based on what the person who brought the stone in believed about the stone.” Entire churches have gotten in a theological uproar over whether the gems are or aren’t from God, and a good number of churches who first received the gem manifestation with joy rejected it later due to the controversy inside the fellowship afterwards. One thing my friend Carla said has always stuck with me. “God told us once that people think they are testing the gems, but in reality the gems are testing them.” I believe God uses the gemstones, and other supernatural manifestations, as a plumb line for our hearts. Are we a people who are hungry for God and his ways and ready to embrace the new things He is revealing to us, or are we so suspicious, jaded, and cynical that anything we see gets put through a spiritual spectrometer to thoroughly test and understand every aspect before we can receive it with joy?
Many people have asked me if I have ever had my gems tested. No. Honestly, I’ve never felt the need to do so. I can figure out what stones they most likely are just by looking at them, and the only testing I have ever tried is to see if the clear ones were diamonds or not. Other than that, it just doesn’t matter to me, not to mention that testing gems can get really expensive very quickly, especially when you have hundreds of them. Whether they are glass or crystal really is of no real significance to me in that these are tangible reminders of God’s love toward me. The material they are made of doesn’t in any way alter the fact that these stones appeared from the heaven-dimension, some of which fell from midair in my living room!
Sometimes I think God does things just because He can, and sometimes there are so many reasons behind His actions that we can only begin to touch the surface of what He is doing. For example, some of the gems had cracks in them when they appeared, and others cracked or chipped sometime after they manifested on earth. I had one that was completely whole when I placed it in a plastic bag, and later when I looked at it the stone was chipped, but no chip was floating around in the bag with it. The chipped-off part had literally vanished into thin air! It seems completely absurd to me that God would send us gems from heaven that are flawed, but then, aren’t we all chipped or cracked in some ways? Doesn’t God send us as unblemished spirits into the earth where we then pick up cracks and chips on our journey through life? Some people have actually prayed for “injured” gems and they have recovered. I believe this is just one more layer of the depths of the things God is doing in and through the gems–that we, too, can be healed just as the gems can. Sometimes, too, the cracks will form pictures. I also have a suspicion that some of these gems have a mission of their own when they arrive on earth, and that they form cracks and chips because their heavenly energy is being released into the earth and they are literally becoming smaller or less perfect as a result.
If this post has blessed and interested you, check out my book! If you enjoy what you read, leave a positive review and help other readers locate the book. Many thanks to you and may you be richly blessed with gemstones from heaven!
A collection of gems from one of the first Gem Parties we held
Early this year, God told me that gemstones would begin to appear more frequently around us. I was excited, as I have seen this manifestation hundreds of times before in the past few years. More recently, however, gems appeared very infrequently, and for a few reasons. Before going further, however, some of you readers may not have heard of this before, so let me explain.
A friend of ours, Carla, passes through Portland every so often, and we and some other friends of ours make sure we visit with her whenever she is around. This particular time she had a surprise for all of us, but we didn’t know the half of it. We all went to a retired Chiropractor’s house to meet some other friends of hers who had come for a visit. All together there were nine of us present. The once couple had a unique manifestation of the Lord happen around them, something which had been going on for five years at that time–namely that gemstones would literally appear from heaven around them, both on the ground and in the air.
Sunshine and I were like little children that evening, running around and picking gemstones up off of the floor. We would hear them fall out of midair and land on the hardwood floors, sounding at times like a muted version of a rainstick–the wooden musical devices that are filled with beans or seeds and make rattling noises. At one point she and I laid down on the floor and just waiting for gems to fall on us, which they shortly did. Yes, I have had jewels from heaven fall on me. I can still remember my wife’s squeals of delight as she went around picking them up. She is such a kid. To this day, she still squeals with great joy almost every time she finds one too, and I have to imagine God loves that.
To explain more about the stones themselves, they are all cut gemstones with brilliant facets. Some of the facets are cut so strangely that people simply do not cut jewelry like these are cut, and it flabbergasts jewelers. I have only once ever seen a raw, rough, uncut stone of the thousands I have seen appear. The majority are amethysts, peridot, low-quality emerald, garnets and rubies, along with an occasional aquamarine. There are also clear and yellow stones, probably different colors of topaz. In all honesty, I cannot tell you for certain what any of these stones are, as I’ve never had any professionally tested, but some of them are pretty obvious just by looking at them. Since this started I have bought a cheap diamond-tester and none of the ones I have found are diamonds, suggesting to me that the clear and yellow ones are topaz or other stone. Most are the size of the head of an eraser, and teeny tiny ones are actually as uncommon as really large ones.
Each stone is unique, but some stand out more than others. On rare occasion there will be a mystic fire topaz, a stone that has three colors in it that are all mixed together. They are some of my favorites. Carnelian, an orange stone, rarely appear as well, but are a unique change when they do. My stepdaughter found a stone once that had streaks of gold in it. Occasionally a larger stone will appear, including ones that are the size of a fingernail, or even larger. Rarer still, probably close to one in five-thousand gems, appear in some sort of setting. This can be in a ring, cuff links, or a pendant. On at least one occasion that I know of, the chain even appeared with the pendant!! Not only that, but from time to time a feather, usually at least an inch or two long, would simply appear in midair near Glenn, almost as if he had wings he was fluffing and it was a stray coming off of him.
That first weekend my wife and I experienced this was quite a whirlwind. We spent that Friday night in an evening of worship, fellowship, laughter, and gemstone-hunting throughout the house. Carla is a professionally trained pianist and led us in some worship songs on the high-quality piano in the Chiropractor’s living room. We took communion in an “upper room,” ie. one of the upstairs bedrooms, and as a whole God just rocked our night. Saturday was a bit of a mental break, as our minds attempted to process the absolutely amazing experiences we had the night before. Although “break” is sort of a relative term. I must have called at least four friends and told them all about our night and what God had been doing. Sunday was a blast. We went to church and shared with a bunch of people what we had experienced, and that evening we went to another meeting the couple were having at a church on the other side of the city. That night was really fun too, because not only did we have our new friends who were there, but a pair of our long-time friends, Hope and Beth also drove up from a couple hours south of us for the gathering. Hope and Beth are precious women, and are both what I refer to as God-junkies–they will go anywhere and do almost anything if God is in it. When we told them about the gems, their response was “Where do we need to be and when?”
We spent the evening listening mostly to the husband, whom the manifestation seems to center around, share about his life journey and how God brought him salvation as well as this unique gem miracle years later. The people at that church were very kind, and so many people wanted to share the gems to make sure that everyone had at least one. It was like a room full of starving people but each one wanted to make sure that the other had a piece of bread before they were content to enjoy their own. While this may sound strange at first glance, it just shows me how hungry people are to see God work noticeably and spectacularly in their lives. We ALL desire a visible demonstration of the invisible God, and even more, a visible demonstration of his love for us. For myself, I was continually blown away. I felt SO incredibly loved by my heavenly Father, who loved me so much that he would not only obliterate my experience of “impossible,” but do it with such beautiful and valuable items. I mean, how many Gods have you heard of that just hand out gemstones to their followers?
A year or so later, we invited the couple and held a Gem Party at our house–a twelve-hour revolving door of fellowship and fun. During the day we had a very informal hang-out and people of all ages were literally crawling on our carpet picking up stones. In the evening we had a time of worship and then the husband shared his testimony, similar to the one I had heard a year prior. At that time he also brought out some of the more spectacular gemstones God has given them. Many of these are large, and by large I mean the size of a quarter or larger. I estimated that over the course of that 12 hours over four-thousand gems appeared, and was possibly closer to six-thousand. I will be honest, I consider this a conservative estimate, based on the number of people present and the quantity of gems each of them left with. At the end of that meeting, I had over 100 gems, and that didn’t include the massive amount my wife, stepdaughter and her husband and my grandkids had, or the stash that the other 26 people who came left with by the end of the day. Some people left with far more than I did! This meeting sparked something, and we held one every two to three months for the rest of that year. Not only that, but it turned into a series of meetings throughout the surrounding area, and Gem Parties have been held at four or more different peoples’ houses since then.
Fast forward again to January of this year, two years after we started having gem parties and a year after we stopped having meetings, we still had gems show up, but it was usually one gem with a four-month interval in-between. When God told me that gems would begin to appear again and with greater frequency, I was excited, but also somewhat reserved. After all, a single stone every month would be more frequent than what we had been having the year prior. To my amazement, within a week and a half I found the first stone. It was a clear white stone and was on the edge of my granddaughter’s bed. She had fallen asleep in our bed and I was taking her to her own bed at midnight. As I came close to her bed I immediately recognized the gem that was conspicuously perched on the edge of her mattress. I showed my wife, who, yet again, squealed with delight. Since then, we have had at least one hundred more gems appear this year. One appeared on my stepdaughter’s wedding day on our back patio–a wedding gift from our Heavenly Father. About a month ago now, on a Saturday, we had a gem-breakout while we were replacing our dining room carpet with a quality vinyl flooring with a wood-appearance. Since we were pulling up the carpet I told everyone to be on the lookout for gems in case any had appeared UNDER the carpet when we had the Gem Parties here years before. Sure enough, my stepdaughter found one while I was out at Home Depot. Go figure.
Something in this process sparked a supernatural whirlwind because for the rest of that day, the next day, and even into the next week we had gems appearing. They started by simply appearing on the floor and on the window ledges, but after a few hours advanced to falling from the air onto the new “hardwood” floors. In fact, it had become so prolific and distracting that it took us two days to complete what would have been a one-day project, but God wasn’t done. To date, we had never seen a blue sapphire appear, and we had a handful of them appear that weekend! While that may not seem significant to some, blue sapphires hold special significance to my wife and I in regards to our marriage, and it felt like God had taken this now-familiar manifestation to an even deeper place of love and special-ness for us.
One of my main motivating factors for holding the first meeting, a belief that still exists today, is that people needed to have encounters with God that expanded their view of what was possible. In a world that is full of anger, violence, depression, sickness, and poverty, we need a higher perspective than in the past. When natural disasters, economic disasters, or even emotional disasters threaten our way of life, we must have a deep reservoir of experiences in and with God that stabilize us in those troubled times. It was my heart’s desire to create a space where people could experience this life altering miracle and in so doing reach a new level of understanding of who God is and what He is like. My own life has been so radically altered by the things I have experienced, including but not limited to gold dust, feathers, and gemstones appearing and sometimes even disappearing again, objects supernaturally sticking to walls, as well as a variety of other strange and wonderful spiritual encounters. God is so much greater than we can ask or think of, and He is interested in taking us deep into his realms of glory and mystery if we will open ourselves up to new things.
Catch some podcast interviews I have done on the topic here:
Gemstones From Heaven Podcasts
If this post has blessed and interested you, check out my book! If you enjoy what you read, leave a positive review and help other readers locate the book. Many thanks to you and may you be richly blessed with gemstones from heaven!
Vampires have received a burst of popularity in the past number of few years, from the True Blood TV series to the recent Dracula movie and even with the deep philosophical question: Team Edward or Team Jacob? Vampire legends have existed for hundreds of years, and some of them are based on such gruesome and horrific historical figures such as Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory who bathed in human blood. There are many other stories and legends of vampires who are equally steeped in darkness, none of which I will expound on further.
While I find vampires in general to be repulsive, I have noticed that the truths behind the vampire tales of old have minimal comparison whatsoever to the watered-down movie and book images that current-day writers give. Unlike in books, there is no goodness in vampires. They are beings of evil who sustain their own lives at the expense of others. They are users who leave literal dead bodies in their wake. And while it is a subject of debate among some as to whether real physical vampires exist, it strikes me that the concept of vampires are a perversion of a reality that God has designed for humans, the reality of Immortality.
It is often said that the enemy perverts any reality that God creates; this case is no different. God created humans to live literally forever. Our cells rejuvenate themselves and have limitless potential for healing, and that’s just in our mortal bodies alone. Our minds are able to rewire themselves based off new thought patterns and new ideas. We are amazing masterpieces made in God’s image and likeness and as God is immortal so we are designed to be. Our very bodies are designed to transform according to the life of Christ within us.
Think of how this works — Jesus instructed his disciples that if they ate his flesh and drank his blood they would have life within them. He later demonstrated Holy Communion — a ritual that doesn’t just symbolize the consumption of flesh and blood but in the ritual one partakes of mystical, spiritual elements designed to rejuvenate body, soul, and spirit alike. For even as the Old Testament says “the life is in the blood” so too is our immortal life in the blood of Jesus. For even as we partake of communion, we are able to have our bodies healed, signs of aging reversed such as wrinkles and spots, and even our internal organs, heart, liver, brain, kidneys, etc. are to be restored to fullness through His life in us.
Vampires, then, are a cheap imitation who steal the life-blood of others in order to prolong their dark existence. Not able to partake of the lifeblood of Christ who said “but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” they have to continually supplement with the blood of the dying. If you look at it another way, Vampires are a representation of the Old Testament Law, as Romans 8 explains that Law brings death but the Spirit of God brings life. You see, the Old Testament Law required the constant provision of new and fresh blood in order to keep everyone alive — and that only barely as it didn’t permanently deal with the death problem, much like with vampires constantly hunting for fresh victims to drain. In Jesus Christ the problem of death has been solved once for all with the shedding of his blood so that we all may partake freely of that life without harm to others.
The rise in Vampire-associated media is the attempt of the enemy to pervert and even discredit the good news of Jesus Christ, turning the spiritually hungry toward works of darkness due to a lack of revelation and understanding. In spite of this, God is revealing the mysteries of revelation toward eternal, immortal life in the body on the earth and this revelation of Immortality is only increasing. According to 1 Corinthians 15:26, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” and how better to destroy the works of death than by living forever? I cannot think of a single topic that is possibly MORE relevant to life today than Immortality, and this is a scriptural promise available to us in Jesus’ death and resurrection. May we walk steadily forward to apprehend the promises that God has for us in Him.
Two days ago one of my two rabbits gave birth; the baby was stillborn. I prayed over that baby bunny for over 3 hours, and even my 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old granddaughters and stepdaughter joined me at points. Late that evening, God told me to move on from praying for the bunny, and that while I WOULD raise the dead, it wouldn’t be then, the day after, or the day after that. This really struck me because God didn’t just specify that the bunny wouldn’t come back that day or the next, but he specified three days, the usual length of time that I allot for praying for our animals who have died (we have rabbits and chickens), and for any roadkill that I decide to bring home to pray for.
I was pretty upset after God told me this. I had already named the cute little bunny Miracle, and had already envisioned how cool it would be to have the rabbit grow up to be an adult when it had been born dead. I will be honest–I sobbed in my wife’s arms for about 5 minutes. On the one hand it might seem like “just a dead baby rabbit,” but for me death is something personal. As a nurse who works with a geriatric population, I cry almost every time a patient dies, whether I knew them well or not. Death bothers me. It upsets me. I don’t like it, don’t believe in it, and don’t understand when the reality of abundant life Jesus purchased for us doesn’t manifest like it should.
My point in telling you all this isn’t for you to feel sorry for me or pray for the bunny, but to know that it’s totally normal and okay to have real-life struggles as we go through this process of apprehending what God has laid before us. Reversing death is not something most people talk about or even believe is possible. Resurrection isn’t even all that popular in many Holy-Spirit-filled circles. I mean, anyone would be blessed if they were present for a resurrection, but it’s not something most people are going to actually pray for, much less seek out. As such, there is a risk involved in actually even talking about this topic.
Resurrection is not always an easy topic, and praying for the dead is even harder, not because it’s difficult to actually say a prayer over a body, but for other reasons. Emotionally there is the risk of failure. What happens if I get emotionally invested in this resurrection and it doesn’t happen? I assure you I am emotionally invested in every resurrection I seriously attempt. I’m not sure it’s actually possible to seriously pray for resurrection WITHOUT getting emotionally involved. Maybe it is, but for me resurrection has a lot to do with love and compassion, and compassion has a feeling associated with it. Compassion IS by nature emotionally involved, which can make it difficult in those times when the resurrection effort fails. Lets face it, sometimes we get discouraged, or even others around us actively discourage us. Sometimes we get into doubt or fear; fear that we might die too, fear that we might catch a disease from the body, fear of almost anything else. I believe that all of these things are part of the process of overcoming. We experience these doubts, fears, discouragement, and yet in the midst of them we have the opportunity to make a conscious choice in our hearts and minds that say “I am an overcomer because of He who has overcome.”
I want to encourage you and remind you that YOU are a Deadraiser. YOU are a Resurrectionist!! YOU are the bridge between Heaven and Earth, the delivery system of Divine power and presence. YOU are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Whatever you are facing, whatever sickness or death you are praying over, contending against, dealing with, I exhort you to continue to stand firm in the promises of God. You are strong, you are courageous, you are beautiful. You are steadfast, you are brilliant, and your best moments are even now coming toward you. Greater is He who is in YOU than any life circumstance around you. And remember, it is never “too late.” We serve a God who raises the dead.
The more I read the scriptures, the more I see God’s provision for our lives that extends beyond healing to an abundant life that is so strong we literally cannot die. Recently I was perusing Galatians 6 when I came across the following verses, ones I have read many times before but saw something very different this time through:
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” Galatians 6:7-8
What I observed this time through is that this passage speaks not just of sowing and reaping, but of how we sow and reap either death or immortality. In fact, it makes a mockery of God to think that if we sow to the spirit we will reap anything other than eternal life, and that if we sow to the flesh that we will reap anything other than corruption and degradation of our bodies instead of the abundant life God has promised for us. If we break it down, this passage shows us we have a choice, whether we want to sow to the flesh and die, or sow to the spirit and live forever.
It is quite encouraging to me to come across these “hidden” verses on immortality as I read through the Bible because so much of it is hidden in plain sight. The message of the Good News of Jesus Christ has for so many years been convoluted and sin-focused, but now an upgraded version of the Gospel is appearing — not a NEW gospel, as some might think, but one that is more comprehensive of the fullness of life, blessing, and abundance that Jesus purchased for us on the cross. God’s plan for us is far better than we have imagined, to the point that we almost have to throw out most of what we have learned EVER about Jesus and the cross to start over from the beginning and see it in a brand new light. God’s desire for us is that we should LIVE, and so as John 3:16 says, he sent his son that we might not perish (die), but have everlasting life. Praise be to God for His boundless grace and resurrection life that He extends to us now and always.
Something about turning the corner from 2014 to 2015 has caused a noticeable shift in my life and in the lives of many of my friends. It seems like moving to a new calendar year has signified the start of a new period of spiritual and life acceleration. While at times an overused term in regards to spiritual matters, “acceleration” is really the only word I can think of to describe what is happening, but it’s more like “extreme acceleration,” moving faster than the already-fast pace we were moving at before.
In my own life I have observed that the time between when God tells me He is going to do something and the fulfillment of that promise has dropped down to about a two-week period of time, whereas before it seemed that these promises would often take a year or more to start to come to pass. In my blog post titled “A Single Stone” I detailed how only a few weeks after God told me gems would begin to appear again in our house that one showed up on my granddaughter’s bed. Last month God told me he was going to open up speaking engagements for me, and in the last four weeks I have spoken at a Senate Committee Hearing and was invited to speak at a rally on the Capitol steps to fight an unjust bill that was attempting to pass through the Oregon Senate (the bill failed).
I have had a desire to preach and speak to large groups to release the Kingdom for years, and I have had a few opportunities, but for the most part nothing much has happened, and I was not willing to start to generate my own events simply to feed my ego. This year, however, God has opened this realm back up to me, and has been sharing with me the things He is planning to do in and through me, fulfilling goals and dreams I have had for years. In speaking with friends, I have observed that God is actively accelerating ALL of our lives, and is pouring out His strength to cause our dreams to come to pass.
Many of you have had dreams you held onto for years, but when problems have come up or life circumstances have gotten in the way you have given up on those dreams, forgetting that God factored in your life when He created your destiny. What is going on in your life right now is no secret to God–He is resurrecting dream that have died and is giving new ones. God is also handing out new ideas and also wisdom on how to carry those ideas out.
We are in a period of time where dreaming is possibly one of the wisest things you can do. When you have no dreams and aspirations, life becomes much more dull and boring, and it becomes a daily drudgery. Joy goes out the window when there is nothing to look forward to in life, and each new day holds the necessary tasks for survival, but you are not thriving by any means. God intends to change that.
This year is a year for transformation. This is a year to dream. God is accelerating His hand at work in our lives in this earth, and doors of opportunity are opening that have been closed before. Now is the time to revisit old ideas that were good ideas but just didn’t work out at the time. Dream up your wildest, biggest dreams that you don’t think will ever come to pass, and ask God to show you how to move them forward. Take risks and step out into new and uncomfortable places in the directions you want to go, and you will see the hand of God work on your behalf this year.
We are positioned in this season for such exponential growth and increase in our lives as we seek the Lord and what He is doing in our lives right now. This is a period where God is preparing the Josephs for the seven-year famine that is ahead, and where those who follow the leading of the spirit and put their hand to the plow will reap great rewards. Take some time right now to listen to the Lord. What is God revealing to you?
In my journey to discover healing by the power of God, I have gone through a progression. First I wasn’t sure how often God wanted to heal, and I was one of those “If it be your will” Christians. I loved God, but I wasn’t really sure how much He wanted us to be healed. This is largely due to a very poor understanding of God’s nature and will to heal.
As I learned and grew in God’s love, I discovered that healing is simply a manifestation of that love. I also gained a deeper understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, I realized that it is ALWAYS God’s will to heal in every situation. In fact, not-healing is not even an option God has allowed Himself, as Jesus has already purchased one time for all humanity for all eternity every healing need that would ever come upon us. God can’t say “no” to something he already said “yes” to 2000 years ago. I also began to grow in faith for healing and started stepping out and praying for the sick in public and at church.
I operated at this level for around five years, believing that God wanted to heal and expecting God to do something, but rarely met with results. Eventually I came to a new level of understanding, and began to have people test out their healing at the time I prayed for them. As I did this I started to see more people receive instantaneous healing, where before I only went away hoping that people would eventually get healed. I also became more persistent, praying again if there were no results the first time, and even again after that. What I observed happening was that my PERSISTENCE in prayer in those few minutes with that person began to bear fruit. I gained greater revelation on how the enemy hinders healing and actively prevents the healing God releases from manifesting in peoples’ bodies in those moments of prayer.
As I continued to grow, God began to push me into another level of healing, namely resurrection from the dead. While to date I have yet to resurrect anyone, I began to gain more understanding of God’s desire for life that is SO strong that He even resurrects the dead. As I grew in this revelation of resurrection, I realized something: God is so interested in resurrecting the dead that the Bible says He will resurrect the dead and give them brand new bodies!! When I realized this it made me do a mental double-take. If God is going to resurrect all the dead, why do we have to die?
This took me on a journey over the past few years that showed me that God is far more interested in keeping us alive than He is in waiting until we die and then resurrecting us. After all, death is a work of the enemy, not God. Adam and Eve were immortal until that fateful day that “when you eat of it you will surely die.” They did not die at that moment, and they and their descendants even lived into the nine-hundreds, but they all eventually died. We, nowadays, live under a better covenant yet live only a fraction of the length of time they did. In our minds, someone reaching one-hundred is a big deal. In their day it was like someone reaching adulthood, with their mid-life crisis another four hundred years away.
Now, Jesus has reversed all of the laws and curses against us that cause us to grow sick and die. He has given us the authority and power to resurrect the dead and heal every sickness and disease. The Church is rapidly reaching a greater place of health in regards to healing, but the logical end to all healing is life, not death, and we are very unhealthy as the Body in regards to resurrection and abundant life. When more healing takes place in a body than decay, someone becomes healthy. When death in a body wins over life, sickness and disease and ultimately death manifest. In essence, long life is simply a process by which there is more healing taking place in our bodies over a span of time than decay, and God’s life-giving power is more active than the death in this world. After all, greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.
I look forward to a day when we step beyond healing, beyond resurrection, and simply step into our birthright, where we can live and not die and enjoy not only the creation, but enjoy stewarding the life of Christ into that creation, releasing it from that same bondage to decay that we have been released from. The Church is slowly waking up. It begins with healing, then resurrection, but when enough people have been healed and resurrected, we will eventually understand what God’s will is: that we can live and not die.
If you want to learn more about God’s desire for us to live in resurrection power and abundant life, check out my book Faith To Raise The Dead:
At the writing of this blog post I have currently been sick and battling sickness for over half a week. While that might not sound like a long time to some I am not accustomed to being sick, nor do I believe I should even be able to get sick. What at first was the beginnings of a sore throat grew into the entire left side of my neck, muscles and all, being inflamed, and multiple sores blossoming in the back left of my mouth. In fact, it was bad enough that I called off work two days in a row, and if you ask my wife I must have REALLY not felt good, as I usually go to work even when not feeling well.
I am just now turning the corner, with the throat soreness largely resolved and the neck inflammation down a little bit, although the sores are possibly the most troublesome and slow-to-heal at this point. But as you didn’t come here to hear me lament about sickness, let me explain why I share all this: It’s about perspective.
Because of the immense pain I feel every time I chew, swallow, or drink anything I have occasionally blended a protein shake to drink with as little mouth movement as possible, but for the most part I have been fasting. This might be annoying to some, but I was reminded this evening that God had asked me this past week to fast this week anyway. And while I don’t for a moment believe God inflicted me with disease to get me to fast (as I have fasted many times without needing a sickness to make me do it), I am reminded that God works all things in my life for good–both your good and mine, so as He has made me mindful that He is having me fast for a reason, I can become more purposeful about it. But there is more.
Having spent the past 2 days largely wasting my life in fun yet somewhat unproductive ways on Clan Wars and a few other game apps, I have been putting off some of my more habitual spiritual practices, including listening to the Bible via mp3 and reading and listening to other spiritually-enlightening media. This evening, after having all of my Clan Wars builders tied up for the rest of the evening, the grandkids in bed, and my wife sitting next to me also playing a game, I finally broke down and opened up Kindle on my phone. First I read a chapter more in a really lame book I am convincing myself to keep reading possibly as a stall-tactic, when I finally could take the bad writing no longer and opened up another book, “The Veil” by Blake Healy. This book is about practically engaging seeing in the spirit, but the message is communicated in an easy-to-digest format with engaging stories of some of Blake’s visionary experiences, many of which are both down-to-earth and highly revelatory at the same time.
In the chapter I was reading he mentioned at one point that he chose to look in the spirit and then shared what he saw. This made me turn my focus a bit more heavenward and so I began by looking the situation up in a book about emotional healing that my wife and I often use as a reference, and found something that fit the sores but nothing else fit. Holy Spirit quietly spoke to me and said “It’s an attack, not something from within you.” I then looked with spiritual sight at the illness, wounds, and inflammation on my neck. What I saw was a dark octopus-like being, about the size of a basketball with tentacles, head, and all, most of which were latched in, on, and around the left side of my neck and head. I proceeded to pull it off of me, which at first made my throat hurt even more. I continued to work on it for another minute or so and the soreness in the throat dissipated somewhat. Looking further I removed some other items and beings that I saw as well.
To be fair, at the moment my mouth still hurts and my throat is not perfect, but I know that the work that I did was effective at least in a measure, and my body should have an easier time healing itself with some of the negative spiritual elements removed.
Why am I telling you all this? At each step along the way I chose to change my perspective, whether about fasting or about choosing to put down the earthly and natural mindset and engage spiritual thinking. Certainly I have prayed as have others over the past few days, but I hadn’t committed to altering my thinking in the process. I am reminded through this set of circumstances that it doesn’t matter what the situation is — we are co-creators made in God’s image and on a moment-by-moment basis alter reality with our thoughts and beliefs. To change that reality yet again requires us to change our perspective — to think at a higher level than the one that created the problem.
As we change our perspective in even little ways, we build a momentum that over time drastically alters the course of our lives. I encourage you today to take a moment and change your thoughts. Think bigger. Think higher. Think as if there were no limitations holding you back. Think boldly and think life-giving. For with the measure you use it will be measured to you and it will be a good measure, pressed-down, shaken together, and running over that will be poured out into your life. The transformation begins now.
It was around midnight and I was carrying my eldest granddaughter from my bed where she had fallen asleep down to her bed for the night. There was a dim light on in her room, and as I walked toward her bed, I noticed something glint on the sheets at the edge of the bed. As I neared it I instantly recognized that it was a gemstone, but not knowing if the kids had recently been playing with plastic stones or something, I wasn’t quite sure what I had found. I put my granddaughter in bed, walked back upstairs, and turned on a flashlight to inspect further.
The moment I turned the flashlight on it I knew it was a gem from heaven, not of human origin. I have seen thousands of these gems appear to date, but few of them have been with as little fanfare or completely out of the blue as this one was. You see, a few years ago my wife and I were introduced to a couple who have seen gemstones manifest around them for years. A year after that we invited them to do a series of meetings at our house, which expanded into some other meetings in other homes around the region as well. We did this for about a year when there were some changes that took place and we stopped having those meetings. Since then, the gems have appeared with scarcity, and the last ones prior to this were probably at least six months ago, so as can be imagined, I was pretty astounded to find the stone when I did. Talk about unexpected!
I immediately showed my wife, who, with childlike abandon got giddy and gleeful as she celebrated the discovery of the stone. For those of you who don’t know her, my wife is the most fun person to be around when she gets excited about God and what He is doing. Childlike doesn’t even begin to describe the joy that spills out of her.
Tiny feathers have been appearing, floating by in the air, and disappearing for the past number of months with increasing frequency, but gemstones had not broken forth again until now. God had spoken to me a week or two ago about wanting to bring forth the manifestation of gemstones, but I was not expecting anything as quick as this one happened. I am still pondering the meaning of this event, and what God is saying and doing, but I am confident that there is much more to come, both for myself and my household, and for you, the reader.
God is readying the Body of Christ to receive a veritable explosion of the miraculous. We are in the beginning stages of what is going to be a wild ride of the miraculous. Signs, wonders, and miracles are becoming much more commonplace as Heaven invades the Earth realm, and this will only continue in the lives of those whose focus is turned heavenward. After all, as we are ambassadors of Heaven, where we go Heaven follows, and where Heaven follows, miracles break out. In the coming days diamonds falling from heaven will be the least of what God is doing–he is preparing to feed entire nations in a day, to make buildings appear where there was only rubble moments before, to make rivers dry up and resurge once those who need to cross have passed over. God will make the desert wilderness to bloom like a garden, and these things I say are no figurative speech, but a literal reality. God has far more prepared for each of us, more than eye has seen and ear has heard.
I encourage you to draw closer to the Lord in the coming months. He has been speaking to a great many people about drawing closer and sitting with Him in this hour, to hear what it is He would share with us and to equip us to steward and release the visible manifestations of his love in power to our families, communities, and even the nations of the world. As the light of a gemstone reflects the source of the light and brings new beauty into the room, spend time to sit with the Father and let His light transform you even more, refining the heavenly gemstone that you are to Him, that you can carry even more of His light into this world.
Note: The gemstone in the picture above is one that I found on my granddaughter’s bed, and the hand holding it is mine. This was found and the picture taken on January 31st, 2015.
