All Death is an Enemy—Live Accordingly

After moving to a very small town in Ohio earlier this year, the nearest countryside is about a two minute drive away. And that’s not an exaggeration. That should just tell you how small of a town I’m living in. One of the things I see on a near-daily basis as a result, is roadkill. Squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, a lot of deer, and the occasional stray cat or unrecognizable bird.  And as often as I can remember to do it, I command life into those bodies each time I pass one. Why? Because all death is an enemy, and we should live accordingly.

I haven’t done it in a good number of years, but from time to time I used to stop, put the roadkill in the bed of my truck, and continue to pray over it for 2 to 3 days. When I was still married, my wife and I had a house rule at the time that three days was the maximum that I would keep them. Not because Jesus was in the tomb for three days or any other pseudo-spiritual reason someone can think up for a three day time limit. No, this was purely practical. After about three days, the level of decay that the body underwent became enough of a problem that we agreed that if it hadn’t risen in three days, I would let it go.

Now, I understand that to most people this seems like extreme behavior. But what if it isn’t? What if we as the Body of Christ have gotten so complacent with death that we stopped giving it the level of attention that we should have been giving it all along? I’m not saying everybody has to go pick up roadkill and pray for it and if they don’t they are somehow neglecting the gospel. That would be a ridiculous assertion to make. What I am saying is that I think we have become so accustomed to death that we generally don’t give roadkill a second thought.

Sure, if we can see that it was somebody’s dog or cat we might say a quick prayer for the family, but what if praying for peace for the family wasn’t the solution that God wanted us to offer? What is God was actually just wanting us to reverse death? It’s not that crazy of a proposition. The Bible tells us in Romans 8:11 that “the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead quickens and gives life to our mortal bodies.” It is this same Holy Spirit that empowers the gifts of the spirit. The same Holy Spirit, by which we work miracles. By which we prophesy. It is the same Holy Spirit who transfigures our bodies. Why would it be strange that the same Holy Spirit is still in the business of raising the dead?

Now, maybe roadkill is a bit too extreme for some reading this. While I disagree, I can accept that some people feel that praying for animals to be raised from the dead is too much. But how many of those who think roadkill is too extreme have even prayed for a person who died? And how many other limitations are we going to place on when we decide to stand against death? Let me tell you the ones I most commonly see: If somebody is too old, they deserve to die. If we arbitrarily think the person might not want to return to life, we let them stay dead. If we think they have too many injuries or disabilities, we decide it’s OK for them to be dead. I would argue that we are far more comfortable with death than God ever intended. Far more cavalier about it. Far too accepting.

So what am I suggesting the standard should be? It’s actually extremely simple, doesn’t require special memorization, and is really straightforward to apply. The way we can know when we should reverse death is if it is present. It’s that simple. If death is there, we reverse it. Every time. Every situation. It doesn’t matter the age, the physical circumstances, what we think we arbitrarily believe the will of the deceased to be (none of which can be concretely tested by any reasonable prophetic standard and pass). There are no special provisos or side clauses that give us a way out. If death, loss, or destruction is present, it’s the job of a son of the Most High God to fix it.

But Michael, that’s a really high standard.

Yes, it is. What’s your point?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I didn’t make that standard up. Jesus did.

If somebody can show me, and I mean truly and unequivocally show and prove to me that there is a circumstance of death, loss or destruction that the shed blood of Jesus on the cross was not meant to solve, that the power of God was never intended to reverse, then I will back down on that standard. But they cannot and it’s impossible to prove that, because Jesus’s standard about life and death and His work on the cross is absolute and doesn’t leave room for compromise.

There is no “yes, but what if. . . “. Our job is to fix it. And yes, that’s going to get inconvenient at times. But that just means we need to get used to being inconvenienced.

As an RN, I currently work in an ICU. I am surrounded by more death now than I have been at any prior time in my nursing career. And I still pray for life in every situation even when it seems hopeless or pointless because Jesus didn’t give us any other standard. Jesus didn’t say “only pray for life if you think it will matter” or “when situations look really hopeless, it’s OK to just give up.” Jesus stood in front of the tomb of his friend who had been dead for multiple days and even then it still wasn’t too late. There is no time, situation, or circumstance in all creation where it is too late for Jesus to do something. That doesn’t mean outcomes always goes the way I want or expect them to that doesn’t mean I always receive the answer I am praying for. My failure to fully steward what Jesus accomplished says nothing about what Jesus accomplished and says a lot about my ability to steward it.  But one thing I do know for certain is this: according to Jesus all death is an enemy, and we must live accordingly.

If you want to learn more about how to walk in resurrection power, pick up a copy of my book Faith to Raise the Dead and its sequel The Gospel of Life and Immortality.

 

Live Life Longer

As a nurse, I both have and overhear a large number of extremely random conversations on a weekly basis. I recently was in a room where a woman was talking about how she and others her age had lived long lives and how they need to make room for others.  In other words, she was talking about how they all needed to die in order for their posterity to have space on the planet to live.  Fortunately or unfortunately, she is absolutely wrong.  I say it’s fortunate that she’s wrong because it means people don’t need to die to make room for other people to live. It’s unfortunate because she clearly doesn’t believe that. And we largely tend to receive the results of what we believe. As that saying goes, “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

As I have continued to talk about life and immortality over the years, one of the major questions I get asked is that if everything I am saying about what Jesus accomplished on the cross is true, and that we were never meant to die, and that He took care of defeating death on the cross, then why do people still die?  And it’s a fair question. But I think it largely goes back to what this woman was saying in believing that she needs to die as the means to exit the Earth in order to make room for other people to live.  If we believe we have to die, then guess what: we probably will.

Science is only more recently becoming able to quantify things that the Bible has stated plainly for thousands of years— things such as “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). The Bible says it in a variety of ways, that ultimately what we behold and believe, we become.  If we believe we have to die, then we will die. If we believe we get to live, then we will live. If we believe we are sinful then we will receive sin’s payment, which is death. If we believe we are righteous, then we receive the gift of righteousness, which is life.  This principle doesn’t just touch on life and death, influences many other areas of life.

Overpopulation is not our problem on the Earth.  Waste is.  Poverty isn’t our problem. Waste is.  Hunger really isn’t a problem. Waste and mismanagement are.  Now, for any single one of those we could easily point to specific examples where they are, in fact, a problem right now, somewhere on the Earth.  But my point is they don’t need to be. If we were to get rid of all of the corruption from every government in the world, we could probably solve world hunger in under six months. We have sufficient technology to desalinate the ocean to provide water for everyone all over the world. It would definitely take a lot of construction and planning, but the point is that it’s possible to do.  The idea that we can’t do certain things or that we are incapable of certain things as far as providing food, water, or shelter for people is usually just a lie. On a local scale, it is definitely possible for there to be a temporary local hunger problem.  When the storms hit North Carolina this past year, there was definitely a local problem. But a temporary local problem is not the same thing as saying that we are incapable of providing food worldwide.  Not that the US is perfect by any means, but there are many times that the US has delivered food aid to other countries with starving populations and the leaders of that nation simply stockpiled the food as a means of control instead of distributing it to the people.  At that point in time, corruption was the problem because the hunger issue could have been solved with the resources provided.

Lack and limitation mindsets will only ever yield us the same results that they’ve gotten us before: inability and incapacity. Quite often our problem isn’t that we lack something, it is that we have very firm beliefs in our lack and limitation. Sure, there may be lack in an immediate moment, but those who overcome are those who believe that they can overcome. Those who believe they can’t overcome tend to remain stuck in their problems.

I know that sometimes talking about life and immortality, living forever and never dying and never having an old and decrepit body can sound extremely impractical to people who are dealing with what most think of as real-world problems. But explain to me how death isn’t a real world problem and maybe I’ll believe you (hint: you can’t). The truth is, though, if we can believe the truth of the Bible, that we don’t have to die, maybe everything else that feels less-daunting than that will be believable too. Maybe when the Bible says that God has supplied all of our needs out of his immense wealth that we will actually begin to believe that and watch our needs and even our wants get met.  Maybe when God says he has made us whole, he actually means for us to experience fullness in spirit, soul, and body. Maybe if we begin to believe that, we will see our bodies healed, our souls healed, and yes, even our spirits restored (while you may not be able to kill a spirit, you absolutely can damage one).

I want to encourage us today to believe for the limitless. To push the boundaries of our expectations beyond what we have been willing to expect before. The Bible says that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or think, according to the power at work with us . ..” (Ephesians 3:20).  It is a conditional statement, which means that while God has limitless capacity, we have the ability to limit that capacity based on our beliefs and expectations.  If we want to receive more, we need to believe more. I’m not talking about just working really hard in toil to believe. I am talking about transforming our mindsets to believe the truth that God has already been telling us because as we do that, we will experience the promises He has made to us.

Maybe believing in life and immortality is a bit much for you right now. Well then, maybe start by believing in a long life. And by long life, I don’t mean adding an extra five years, I mean adding an extra fifty.  If the average age at death is in the 70s or 80s, and we know that some people live into their early hundreds, than realistically long life needs to extend beyond that, or it isn’t really long. It’s just the longer end of normal.  If you don’t think you can believe for living forever, maybe start believing in experiencing constant divine health: that you never get sick and never get injured.  Because in reality, if you never get sick or injured, and your body doesn’t experience decay, then you will never die. In fact, signs of aging will begin to reverse themselves as your body regenerates.  I’m not saying you need to arrive there all at once, nor am I pretending I have either. What I can tell you, though, is that I very consistently have people tell me they think I am at least 10 years younger than I am.  I personally believe that my long-held belief in life and immortality and the end of decay in the cosmos because of what Jesus did on the cross is responsible for my experience. I have been talking about this subject for the last decade and a half— and as I continue to renew my own mind to believe the truth, it seems only reasonable that my body would be starting to match that belief in an observable manner.

If you want to learn more about how to walk in this revelation of life, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality. In my book The Power of Impartation I also discuss some of the principles God has created in the cosmos that you can use to help apprehend the life God has already prepared for you in Christ Jesus.  I also write regularly about the topics of inner healing and deliverance because the transformed soul is a major key for us to experience everything God has planned for us. If you want to learn more about how to do that, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book Broken To Whole.  And as always, I write on all of these subjects extensively so you can take a look at other articles I’ve written on this website as well.

 

 

Jesus, Our Conquering King

I attended the Ascend the Summit Leadership Intensive led by Barry Maracle this weekend in Ottowa, Canada.  It was a powerful time of worship, fellowship, teaching, and encouragement among leaders in the Body of Christ.  We began Saturday morning with a time of corporate prayer, which consisted of the group of about 80 to 100 believers all praying in tongues for 10-15 minutes and then sharing what the Lord spoke to us and/or showed us.  During that time I had an encounter with the Lord that impacted me deeply and that I want to share with you.

Right as we began praying in the spirit, I opened my heart with expectation to perceive whatever the Lord wanted to show me during that time of prayer.  Immediately I had a vision of angels opening the main double doors of the room we were in from the outside.  They began marching into the room in two columns, splitting off to the right and to the left immediately as they entered.  They were each carrying a tower shield, and as they filed into the room they began to line the walls facing inward in what appeared to be a type of protective honor guard.  After the entire room was surrounded by an angel army, I saw Jesus walk in, flanked by another unidentified spirit to His left rear.  Jesus looked very different than I normally see Him because when He comes to me He is generally wearing a robe of some kind but is dressed what I would call more casually.  This time, however, He was wearing armor and carried Himself very differently.  He walked into the room and then walked to the front of the room, then turned and took a seat on a golden throne on a small dais that had appeared there.

After Jesus sat down, I saw what I can only describe as enemies that were brought before Him by other angels in attendance there.  They were brought cowering in a heap in front of Him, and then He passed judgment upon them right then and there.  But what struck me wasn’t that Jesus was there in power or in victory, but that the enemies before Him were ours—mine and everyone else in the room.  And it wasn’t that I could see specific people that I recognized, because the truth is that I have no enemies as far as people are concerned—or at least none that I consider enemies, even if someone else might choose to consider themselves that way toward me.  What I was seeing was spirits that have arrayed themselves against us, and they were on the floor in front of Jesus, captured, powerless, and fully defeated. In that moment a song lyric ran through my mind from a song called “Defender”, which goes “You go before I know that you’ve even gone to win my war.  You come back with the head of my enemies, you come back and you call it my victory.”

I have never before had Jesus reveal Himself to me in this manner, but it was powerful and impactful—because what I was seeing was Jesus having in front of Him every enemy, every spiritual force of darkness that had arrayed itself against us, as captured and conquered foes.  We had only just begun to pray, so it clearly was not a result of hours of intercession or some other spiritual work that any of us in the room had done.  It was because Jesus has already conquered every foe that we could ever face, and He was showing this to me in that moment by revelation.

Now, one can easily make this same argument theologically, as the Bible directly states as much, saying things like “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15).  What made this encounter so powerful wasn’t because it was theologically accurate, although it was that too.  What made it powerful for me in that moment was the effect it had on my heart and mindset.  You see, it’s not that I didn’t already know or was unfamiliar with the concept of Jesus as a conqueror and overcoming king.  Revelation 19:16 shows us a picture of Jesus riding in victory on a white horse with his position of King of King and Lord of Lords tattooed on his thigh as the Angelic Host absolutely dominate in front of Him.  What made it impactful was that in that moment, it went from being a mental concept to an understanding that went beyond simple knowledge.

Every enemy we will ever face, every problem that rises up in front of us, Jesus has already overcome it.  That doesn’t change the fact that sometimes there is still a process for us to walk out to apprehend the manifestation of that victory and to enforce it in the earth realm.  However, what it does mean is that we have zero reason to do battle in the heavens, to war against cosmic forces of darkness and fallen elohim as though they are somehow equal with us.  It means that we, coming from a position of complete and total victory that Jesus has already apprehended on our behalf, simply crush the enemy under our feet.  We don’t need to toil in war trying to fight a battle where victory has already been determined on our behalf and upon which judgment has already been passed upon our enemies.  It means we are not coming up against problems with the mindset of trying to deal with them as though there is any chance we could ever be overwhelmed under them.  No, it is impossible for us to be overwhelmed by an enemy that was already defeated, captured, and paraded in front of us.  It is entirely possible for us to have to deal with spiritual enemies and enforce God’s government and dominion upon them.  But it is impossible for us to need to defeat them in some sort of equal combat because nothing about the situation is equal.  We are not dealing with them on a level playing field.  We aren’t coming at problems with any sort of fairness but rather from a position of total dominance.  When difficult circumstances arise it can be easy to feel like a victim.  It can be easy to feel like we are being crushed by the weight of problems.  But Jesus has already overcome every enemy we would ever face, has already conquered them, captured them, and passed judgment upon them in front of us.  All we have to do is change our mindset to understand and perceive the victory that we already have and then from that position of complete and total domination, enforce that in the present.

Now, to some, this might sound like double-speak—that Jesus already defeated every enemy and yet we still need to enforce it somehow.  The key is in perspective.  If I believe I have to fight a battle in order to win, then I will walk onto the battlefield to fight on equal terms.  But nothing about any situation we will ever face is on equal terms unless we foolishly choose for it to be that way.  We don’t deal with problems as equals.  We deal with problems as royalty, and even as problems rise up in front of us we see Jesus, our elder brother, returning from the battlefield having already done the heavy lifting, and having brought the opposition in front of us where we can now deal with them from a position of power and authority.  You see, while it might not feel like this perspective changes much about how we deal with problems, the truth is it changes everything.  Our perspective becomes our reality, and when we choose Heaven’s position on a matter and we come into agreement with Heaven’s plan we can more easily see it manifest in the earth according to that divine blueprint.  Our perspective determines our experience.  Whether we get to experience Heaven’s reality is based on what we believe about Him and therefore what we apprehend in a moment, but Jesus is already the conquering King and nothing will ever change that.

 

 

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.

 

 

“There Will Be War in 2024”

I just published an article titled “There Will No Longer Be War Anymore” and noticed it getting almost no response, likely due to its peaceful title and graphic that isn’t attention-grabbing.  I knew that was a risk when I chose that title, so I am doing an experiment.  This is the exact same article but with a title and image that focus on the exact opposite aspect of this message.  I’m curious to see which one will get more traffic (and I suspect it’s going to be this one, which further makes the point of this article).  Read on!



Toward the end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next one there is typically a mass-influx of prophets and prophetic people who seek the Lord for what He is saying about that next year. Some people also go off of the Jewish Calendar citing things like “Israel is God’s timepiece.” Now, while I won’t go into why I believe much of the Body has an extremely flawed and frankly unbiblical view of Israel in this article, what I will say is that whether we pick the Hebraic Calendar or the Julian Calendar system, the trend is still “It’s a new year so let’s see what God wants to say.” I used to do this for myself personally and for friends and family and have fallen out of the habit, but I don’t have anything specifically against seeking the Lord in set times and patterns. What I do have a problem with is the significant number of people who are declaring “War in 2024.” Why?  What we should be declaring  is “There will no longer be war anymore.”

Now, we could argue that by sheer quantity of people prophesying such things that it must mean God is saying it, but I would argue two things: First, its plainly obvious and doesn’t require prophets to tell us this particular detail. Second, even if God is warning of war, why is not the next part of the word “so we need to decree Heaven’s peace in its place”?  I’m a teacher not a prophet so I won’t spend a ton of time in this article judging the words themselves—I’ll let a prophet somewhere do that. What I will do is teach a little about the heart and nature of God and His plans in the earth so we can decide what our response should be to these kinds of words. Let’s break down these two points I am stating in a little more detail.



Impending War is Obvious

It doesn’t take a prophet, or a prophetic person, or even some kind of historian or economist or someone in similar positions to observe that a war has been planned. The military-industrial complex, the money-laundering that happens through war, the penchant for the CIA to intentionally destabilize governments and then have the US military swoop in and “fix” it all while certain players take the opportunity to loot that country’s resources—all of this is a consistent pattern. It really doesn’t take a prophet to see what certain leaders have been pushing toward and leading the nation and the world toward in recent years. I can see this quite plainly and not only do I not watch the news, I haven’t had any angelic visitations tell me about it either. Its just that obvious.

I recently saw a prophetic dream that someone released on social media about a certain situation, and then read some of the comments. One of the comments in particular was rich, memorable, and touches on the point I am making here. The commenter said, “I am old enough to remember when you had to have the dream *before* the event happened for it to be considered prophetic.” The obvious point here is that if you get “revelation” after the fact then how revelatory is it really? And while yes, God can and does explain and clarify things to people in revelation and it doesn’t negate whether that person heard from God, it does speak to the point that we need to expect a bit more from our prophetic revelation. God doesn’t need to give us special prophecies about things that are incredibly obvious. In fact, when we prophesy the obvious it plays to something called “confirmation bias” where we look at the things around us and use circumstances to confirm what we already believe. Since the plan to start more wars is obvious, all a prophetic word is going to do is push on the “confirmation bias” button and suddenly everyone is in agreement with the word and because we already believe it’s true we judge that prophetic word as accurate, only further trenching ourselves in that belief and co-creating it.  Can we please stop helping the enemy by coming into agreement with death, loss, and destruction and co-creating it with them?

What We Govern, We Get

To my second point, here is why all of that is really bad: While prophets and prophetic people are busy declaring obvious wars, I don’t see many of them telling us to decree and command for God’s peace and His divine government to come replace it. And that’s a HUGE problem. The Bible tells us some key things about God’s nature as well as the age we are living in. One of them is in Isaiah 9:6-7a which says:

“For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.”

Friends, this is a generally accepted prophesy about Jesus, but let’s take a second and look at what it actually says. It speaks to His nature and plans, which include His nature as the Prince of Peace, but it goes on to say that “of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.” So right away we can identify that the plan of God is for peace to increase, not war, but it gets even better. Verse 6 tells us that “the government will be upon His shoulders.” To review simple anatomy, the head sits on the shoulders. The shoulders and the rest of the body are below the head. Since Jesus is the head, and we are the Body, then this means that the government isn’t resting exclusively with Jesus and we have to sit here and wait like idiots for Jesus to appear in the clouds and rescue us. Our job is to take responsibility to govern. So what are we governing? If we can decree a thing and see it established (Job 22:28), then why are we decreeing and establishing wars and not establishing the government of God in peace?

Jesus has literally given us authority to govern what happens in the earth.  The Bible says that when everything has been placed under his feet (again, under the entire Body of Christ) then and only then will He come to turn it over to the Father. Even if someone disagrees with the hints of eschatology in this article, none of that changes our mission and our mandate—the increase of His government and peace. We seem to be really bloodthirsty these days, and it is sad. If we keep coming into agreement with war, death, loss, destruction, poverty, and pain then that is exactly what will happen and it will occur because we, the Body of Christ, have created a platform for it, a blueprint, a place for it to land in the earth.

There is a prophecy in Isaiah 2 where it says that “in the last days” that people will go to what sounds like a physical Zion and be taught by God.  As a result of this we will beat our swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, and nations will no longer fight or train for war. And because of how it is written, people relegate this to a far off someday, when in reality that entire passage can (and should be) taken somewhat less literally than we normally do.

First, if we want to go with Last Days theology for a minute, Peter the Apostle declared we were there a couple thousand years ago, which means we probably should expect this scripture to apply to us here and now. Second, there are very few actual blacksmiths any longer and we don’t use swords and spears as common methods of warfare anymore, nor do we farm the same way. A comparatively small portion of the world’s agriculture is grown using a beast of burden and a plow.  This means this passage might not be entirely literal in nature and war ending isn’t necessarily going to look like literally turning spears into pruning hooks.  Rather, it embodies a concept that communicates we will each individually no longer engage in war. Finally, the last verse of that particular prophecy gets rather overlooked. Isaiah 2:5 says, “Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” The entire point of this prophetic word is to give a glimpse of what the future will look like, and then the prophet directly instructs the hearers of the word to start living it now.

Its really quite simple. We, the Body of Christ, have been given authority and power to govern the earth. We just don’t govern the way earthly governments do because our Kingdom is both not from here and also supersedes earthly governments in authority quite significantly. Swords and spears are the weapons of individuals.  When we stop fighting one another with weapons and start coming into agreement with one another for peace, peace happens.  So we need to embody this prophecy now in our hearts, minds, prayers, and in words of agreement instead of waiting for a someday-event while co-creating more violence, anger, and bloodshed with our God-given authority.  It is time we start governing over these prophetic words of war through our own decrees of peace, prosperity, and declare an end to violence, secrecy, corruption, murder, fear, and more. It is time we began to decree the domain of God manifesting in the earth to protect all those who are helpless in war-torn areas. It is our job to govern over every demonic spirit who seeks to cause anger, envy, strife, covetousness, and more both on an individual and international level. It is our job to release the Godly powers, principalities, thrones, mights, and dominions and spiritual forces in heavenly places to go accomplish all that Jesus has planned and to help establish His righteousness, justice, and peace in the earth.

Our mandate is “Make Jesus’s Kingdom and His will manifest on earth as it already is now in heaven.” So let’s stop lending our agreement to prophecies of war, death, and destruction and be about establishing His government and peace, shall we?

There Will No Longer Be War Anymore

Toward the end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next one there is typically a mass-influx of prophets and prophetic people who seek the Lord for what He is saying about that next year. Some people also go off of the Jewish Calendar citing things like “Israel is God’s timepiece.” Now, while I won’t go into why I believe much of the Body has an extremely flawed and frankly unbiblical view of Israel in this article, what I will say is that whether we pick the Hebraic Calendar or the Julian Calendar system, the trend is still “It’s a new year so let’s see what God wants to say.” I used to do this for myself personally and for friends and family and have fallen out of the habit, but I don’t have anything specifically against seeking the Lord in set times and patterns. What I do have a problem with is the significant number of people who are declaring “War in 2024.” Why?  What we should be declaring  is “There will no longer be war anymore.”

Now, we could argue that by sheer quantity of people prophesying such things that it must mean God is saying it, but I would argue two things: First, its plainly obvious and doesn’t require prophets to tell us this particular detail. Second, even if God is warning of war, why is not the next part of the word “so we need to decree Heaven’s peace in its place”?  I’m a teacher not a prophet so I won’t spend a ton of time in this article judging the words themselves—I’ll let a prophet somewhere do that. What I will do is teach a little about the heart and nature of God and His plans in the earth so we can decide what our response should be to these kinds of words. Let’s break down these two points I am stating in a little more detail.



Impending War is Obvious

It doesn’t take a prophet, or a prophetic person, or even some kind of historian or economist or someone in similar positions to observe that a war has been planned. The military-industrial complex, the money-laundering that happens through war, the penchant for the CIA to intentionally destabilize governments and then have the US military swoop in and “fix” it all while certain players take the opportunity to loot that country’s resources—all of this is a consistent pattern. It really doesn’t take a prophet to see what certain leaders have been pushing toward and leading the nation and the world toward in recent years. I can see this quite plainly and not only do I not watch the news, I haven’t had any angelic visitations tell me about it either. Its just that obvious.

I recently saw a prophetic dream that someone released on social media about a certain situation, and then read some of the comments. One of the comments in particular was rich, memorable, and touches on the point I am making here. The commenter said, “I am old enough to remember when you had to have the dream *before* the event happened for it to be considered prophetic.” The obvious point here is that if you get “revelation” after the fact then how revelatory is it really? And while yes, God can and does explain and clarify things to people in revelation and it doesn’t negate whether that person heard from God, it does speak to the point that we need to expect a bit more from our prophetic revelation. God doesn’t need to give us special prophecies about things that are incredibly obvious. In fact, when we prophesy the obvious it plays to something called “confirmation bias” where we look at the things around us and use circumstances to confirm what we already believe. Since the plan to start more wars is obvious, all a prophetic word is going to do is push on the “confirmation bias” button and suddenly everyone is in agreement with the word and because we already believe it’s true we judge that prophetic word as accurate, only further trenching ourselves in that belief and co-creating it.  Can we please stop helping the enemy by coming into agreement with death, loss, and destruction and co-creating it with them?

What We Govern, We Get

To my second point, here is why all of that is really bad: While prophets and prophetic people are busy declaring obvious wars, I don’t see many of them telling us to decree and command for God’s peace and His divine government to come replace it. And that’s a HUGE problem. The Bible tells us some key things about God’s nature as well as the age we are living in. One of them is in Isaiah 9:6-7a which says:

“For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.”

Friends, this is a generally accepted prophesy about Jesus, but let’s take a second and look at what it actually says. It speaks to His nature and plans, which include His nature as the Prince of Peace, but it goes on to say that “of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.” So right away we can identify that the plan of God is for peace to increase, not war, but it gets even better. Verse 6 tells us that “the government will be upon His shoulders.” To review simple anatomy, the head sits on the shoulders. The shoulders and the rest of the body are below the head. Since Jesus is the head, and we are the Body, then this means that the government isn’t resting exclusively with Jesus and we have to sit here and wait like idiots for Jesus to appear in the clouds and rescue us. Our job is to take responsibility to govern. So what are we governing? If we can decree a thing and see it established (Job 22:28), then why are we decreeing and establishing wars and not establishing the government of God in peace?

Jesus has literally given us authority to govern what happens in the earth.  The Bible says that when everything has been placed under his feet (again, under the entire Body of Christ) then and only then will He come to turn it over to the Father. Even if someone disagrees with the hints of eschatology in this article, none of that changes our mission and our mandate—the increase of His government and peace. We seem to be really bloodthirsty these days, and it is sad. If we keep coming into agreement with war, death, loss, destruction, poverty, and pain then that is exactly what will happen and it will occur because we, the Body of Christ, have created a platform for it, a blueprint, a place for it to land in the earth.

There is a prophecy in Isaiah 2 where it says that “in the last days” that people will go to what sounds like a physical Zion and be taught by God.  As a result of this we will beat our swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, and nations will no longer fight or train for war. And because of how it is written, people relegate this to a far off someday, when in reality that entire passage can (and should be) taken somewhat less literally than we normally do.

First, if we want to go with Last Days theology for a minute, Peter the Apostle declared we were there a couple thousand years ago, which means we probably should expect this scripture to apply to us here and now. Second, there are very few actual blacksmiths any longer and we don’t use swords and spears as common methods of warfare anymore, nor do we farm the same way. A comparatively small portion of the world’s agriculture is grown using a beast of burden and a plow.  This means this passage might not be entirely literal in nature and war ending isn’t necessarily going to look like literally turning spears into pruning hooks.  Rather, it embodies a concept that communicates we will each individually no longer engage in war. Finally, the last verse of that particular prophecy gets rather overlooked. Isaiah 2:5 says, “Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” The entire point of this prophetic word is to give a glimpse of what the future will look like, and then the prophet directly instructs the hearers of the word to start living it now.

Its really quite simple. We, the Body of Christ, have been given authority and power to govern the earth. We just don’t govern the way earthly governments do because our Kingdom is both not from here and also supersedes earthly governments in authority quite significantly. Swords and spears are the weapons of individuals.  When we stop fighting one another with weapons and start coming into agreement with one another for peace, peace happens.  So we need to embody this prophecy now in our hearts, minds, prayers, and in words of agreement instead of waiting for a someday-event while co-creating more violence, anger, and bloodshed with our God-given authority.  It is time we start governing over these prophetic words of war through our own decrees of peace, prosperity, and declare an end to violence, secrecy, corruption, murder, fear, and more. It is time we began to decree the domain of God manifesting in the earth to protect all those who are helpless in war-torn areas. It is our job to govern over every demonic spirit who seeks to cause anger, envy, strife, covetousness, and more both on an individual and international level. It is our job to release the Godly powers, principalities, thrones, mights, and dominions and spiritual forces in heavenly places to go accomplish all that Jesus has planned and to help establish His righteousness, justice, and peace in the earth.

Our mandate is “Make Jesus’s Kingdom and His will manifest on earth as it already is now in heaven.” So let’s stop lending our agreement to prophecies of war, death, and destruction and be about establishing His government and peace, shall we?

The Angel with the Wing Tattoos

The daughter of one of my patients shared a story with me about a previous visit their family had at the hospital I work at.  Everything I share in this story is what she personally told me:

 

They had been in the hospital at that time for a few weeks when they had been expecting to stay only for a few days.  Her mother had been very sick and was so sick, in fact, that she was near death and began talking to her dead relatives as though they were close at hand (which, if you understand that we are surrounded by the Cloud of Witnesses, she most likely was close to death and was talking to her deceased family.)

She was given a room in the ICU, so a nurse came to move this patient to the new room.  The person who came to the room to move her was a tall blond male nurse with piercing blue eyes with beautiful tattoos of wings on each of his arms.  When he came into the room he told them, “You are safe now because I’m here to take care of you.”  This nurse took them to the ICU, got her tucked in bed, gave her medications, and told both the patient and her daughter to rest.

They were undisturbed for six hours overnight and got amazing sleep, then woke up the next morning, the patient went to a surgical procedure, and had recovered so well that she discharged from the hospital the next day.

When the daughter talked to staff about the  nurse they had that night, she was very thankful for his care and wanted to know who it was—but the hospital had to record of this employee and none of the staff recognized any ICU nurse matching that description.  Because she had been given medications, had vital signs taken, etc., all of that should be recorded electronically on the Electronic Health Record, so they decided to speak with Medical Records to get a copy of their records for that hospital stay.  Per the daughter, this “employee” did not appear anywhere in the medical records as well—as if this nurse who worked with them overnight basically didn’t exist!

 

The daughter was excited when she told me this story, and she told me it was the reason they came back to the hospital when I met them—because they knew beyond a shadow of doubt that angels were actively at work in the building and it gave them a feeling of security knowing that God was taking care of them.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”  There is something about how angels function that, at times, they will manifest in bodily form appearing as humans, and we can interact with them without knowing we are talking to angels.  I firmly believe this is exactly what happened in this encounter they had!

To add some details to consider, any time someone transfers from one unit to another in this hospital, there is a process.  The bed on the new unit has to be assigned and someone has to transfer them in the computer once they arrive—which means someone has to either tell the person to transfer them in the computer, or do it themselves.  This means the angel would have either had to do the electronic transfer himself or tell someone else to—someone who later clearly didn’t remember that conversation with that being.  When a patient transfers units, the offgoing nurse gives a report to the oncoming nurse, so someone would have had to tell the angel something about the patient they were coming to pick up, and if they didn’t do that, the offgoing nurse would have followed up at some point to ensure that report was given if for no other reason than it is a legal obligation nurses have when transferring care.  All documentation in the computer would require some kind of login, and somehow every nurse on the unit would have to have believed that some other nurse was the one caring for that patient including the Charge Nurse who is the one responsible for making staff assignments.  Furthermore, if the Charge RN didn’t initially notice that overnight the patient had no nurse assigned, they would certainly have noticed when it came time to make assignments for the day shift staff.

All of these details and more make this story just that much more profound when we consider all of the big and little details that God had to work out in order to send an angel to take care of his beloved daughter and to ensure she recovered and was able to return to her normal life.  In the same way that God went out of His way for her, God cares about all of the big and little things in all of our lives, and when we pray and ask Him to intervene, we can trust that He will.  Whether it will always be as dramatic as this encounter or not, we have a Heavenly Father who is trustworthy—and who knows!  Maybe someday you will be telling me a story of an angelic encounter you had as well!

Hearing God: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers

Since my buddy Kyle died this summer, I have been struggling to a certain degree with raising the dead—not in deciding whether to move on or give up on his resurrection as much as with finding an answer and a fruitful way forward in my own heart. I have been wrestling with how to become actually-effective in raising the dead. I have been wrestling with how to become whom I must become to carry the miracle-answer in any situation of need. And I have been dealing with the discouraging fact that every time I pray to raise the dead, the only thing that my Heavenly Dad says to me is how much of a great job I am doing, even when they haven’t returned yet. I suppose I should find what He tells me encouraging but it simply tells me that there is nothing different that I could be doing to be more effective than I am and have the resurrections occur—and to me, that’s rather discouraging.

Well, my buddy Steve reminded me recently of something that I already know, but where in our conversation he helped put it in context of this specific situation—namely that there are rules that govern how God can and cannot communicate with us based on where we are at and how we are able to hear Him. In any given situation it isn’t that God isn’t willing to talk to us, but sometimes He is limited in what He can successfully communicate with us.  I have written more in-depth on this subject in a recent article called The Rules of Speaking With God, but I’ll share some details here that relate to where I am going with this article in a different direction.   It isn’t that God is limited—its that we limit what we can receive. There’s a reason Jesus told his disciples “there is more I have to say to you than you can now bear.” It’s because they had to become different and grow their weight-bearing capacity before they could handle deeper and heavier things. It is likewise with us, and God has to help grow us from where we are to where we are heading in order to handle things God already wants to teach us and reveal to us right now. The fact is we simply aren’t ready, whether by our unbelief (meaning He will tell us things and we are unable to believe, receive, and/or understand it based on our deficits) or by means of some other lack in our lives. Sometimes it is that the demonic successfully block the messages God is sending us, whether that an angel is carrying a message and they block that angel and/or steal its message, or some other kind of blockage. However it happens, there is limitation in the spirit that reduces or influences God’s ability to successfully get the messages through to us when we ask.

While that is frustrating and at times disheartening, it means that we have to learn to change how we do things. Sometimes we are asking a question but it isn’t the right question, and based on the rules we need to start asking different questions to get the answers we need. Sometimes we are asking the right kinds of questions but we need to stop being broad and get more specific. And sometimes the question isn’t the problem but our level of growth and maturity is—so we must grow in certain areas before we will be ready to receive the answers to our questions. There are different ways we can get around some of this, and while little short-changes the need for growth (other than impartation, and even then it doesn’t fix everything), we can use certain strategies to overcome and move forward.

I was talking to my friend Hope this evening (the evening after I talked to Steve) about this very thing in regard to physical healing. She has been believing God for her healing for years, and God does answer with miracles at times for her—more than most people I know. And yet, she still has dealt with a lot of physical pain and suffering. What I told her is a strategy we can use in any area, but just target it toward the relevant things we are seeking and engaging. What I told her is that while she wakes up every morning with a faith and expectation that her healing has just manifested, she then discovers each day that it has not happened yet. Sure, we can say let’s just continue in that vein and one day eventually it will, and that is generally true. However, it is also safe to say that what she is doing literally isn’t working, so to continue to do that and expect a different result without changing anything might also be unwise. What I suggested she do is in addition to continuing to wake up in faith each morning that healing has come, to begin to ask the Father how she can partner more directly with Him to see it manifest.

What are the wisdom steps she can take right now to help herself on the journey?

What are the things God is trying to teach her or tell her right now that she hasn’t asked about that would move her closer to her healing?

What lessons does God have for her that will help her grow into her healing?

What are the things that are holding back or delaying or preventing the healing from manifesting?

As we start to ask different questions, something about engaging God differently allows Him to move differently. I don’t entirely understand why that is because I don’t quite understand the rules that govern how this works, but there are rules and this is why it works this way. When we stop just expecting or praying for one thing repetitively and start addressing the problem from different angles, we will find ourselves moving closer. Think of it as trying to push through a hurricane to reach the eye of the storm—pure force will make that exceedingly difficult if not impossible. However, if instead of trying to push straight into the eye and/or push against the wind forces, what if someone went at a slant in the direction the wind was moving but consistently inward? While I recognize actual hurricanes have a number of variables that would make this not work, the concept example is what I am going for. Consider that changing the approach from something that is inherently incapable of working to a different method creates an opportunity that didn’t exist before. Asking the Father different questions, praying a different way, and approaching the situation differently all will change us in ways that cause the answers to start to filter through, our prayers to become more effective, and the situations to begin to change. From a perspective of the Law of Sowing and Reaping (I explain this in depth in my book The Power of Impartation), if we start sowing differently, we will start reaping differently.  And the end result will be growth, forward movement, and answered prayer!

 

 

Guatemala Missions 2021: A Story of Healing and Redemption

My trip with Overseas Missions to Guatemala this November was eventful, to say the least, but there were certain things about it that were more special than others. One, in particular, was very precious to me because it felt like God redeemed a moment in my life that felt like a failure—not my failure, per se, inasmuch as the failure wasn’t by my choice or for my lack of trying, but because the situation did not proceed how my heart desired, and God in His infinite kindness offered me yet another opportunity for change, and to release His life to others.

One of the things I am discovering about myself is that personality-wise, as my Enneagram type is a 2, one who thrives largely on service to others, is that a desire to help others truly is a significant part of my life. As such, when I joined Overseas Missions in 2018 on a trip to India, my wife and I had prepared additional funds for some kind of emergency-need should the situation arise. And it did—in the form of a grandmother whose leg was badly infected with gangrene. Having already spoken about the funds to the leader of the India-side of our medical team, when this need arose she approached me and asked if I would be willing to cover the medical costs for this woman—which I instantly agreed because if she was not treated appropriately, she would die. Our team leader also took the situation seriously and followed up with the local pastors to make sure they tracked the family down to get the job done.

It was only later that night that I found out that the adult son had refused any kind of aid because he didn’t want our money. I still to this day don’t understand what it was he thought I was trying to give, or if in his pride he thought I was trying to take something from him by helping his mother. I will probably never know. I found out in the worst way too—everyone thought I already knew so spoke of it casually, but to discover in casual conversation that this woman was essentially sentenced to death was really hard, and I won’t lie, I ran away from the dinner table crying. Thinking about it now still makes me cry, actually. But that’s why this particular event on the Guatemala 2021 trip was so special to me—because as much as the one in India was damaging to my heart, this one was healing. Now that I’ve told you the background, I want to tell you what God did.

In Guatemala we paired up with a local missionary couple outside of Flores and their team who are growing and expanding Corazones En Accion (Hearts in Action), The Jungle School, and related business Itza Wood, all the while ministering to the local population. The school teaches children all the way through high school where possible (and you can support the children through their sponsorship program), and Itza Wood and other related businesses provide both marketable skills for those in the area, jobs that provide for a better quality of life for entire families, and the income helps support the mission work of Hearts in Action. Overseas Missions’ work this time involved setting up a traveling medical clinic, where we visited different villages and assessed their medical needs, providing medications and other simple treatments and education where relevant, and then armed with information on the physical problems the people suffered, our prayer team healed the sick, opened blinded eyes, and saw the lame walk once again. The leader’s thirteen year-old son took it upon himself to record the testimonies of what God did, and he filled over thirteen pages with healing testimonies from that trip, and he by no means got them all.

 

One day we had driven two hours to deliver food, pipes for a water line, and a message of the good news of Jesus Christ who still saves, heals, delivers, casts out demons, and performs miracles today to a tiny hamlet of seventeen families that was clearing part of the jungle to build new lives on land granted by the government. We saw some pretty spectacular healings (one in particular involved Troy, one of my teammates, which I will tell another time), then left to hold another medical clinic elsewhere. At that clinic, I met Antonio. One of the other nurses was talking to him about his wife Reina and her medical condition. It turns out she had miscarried a baby five months prior and subsequently had been vomiting every day since then, unable to keep food or fluids down. They had already seen a doctor the week prior and the ultrasound of her abdomen showed that her gallbladder was part of the problem. From what we could identify, it sounded like an infected gallbladder, which under the right circumstances is life-threatening, and after vomiting for five months, she was at very high risk.

 

You need to understand that at this point, regardless of what anyone else saw, I was seeing a similar situation to the prior trip. A man whose female family member was headed for imminent death if nothing was done to turn the situation around, and really we were the only ones who would be able to help because truthfully, Antonio didn’t lack for caring—my time with him showed me he is a kind man—he simply didn’t have the money to fix it.

I spoke with one of the missionaries and we agreed to take them to the hospital the next day, pay for the medical evaluation, and work to get her well. When we stopped by Antonio’s sister’s house near Flores where Reina and their son were living temporarily, Antonio met us there. He had taken two weeks off of work (which is a huge deal for them) and driven the two hours from where we met him toward Flores because we were coming to help—but his countenance was low and he had little hope.

We prayed for her, then drove to a local hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse where, upon explaining the situation, they took Reina into their three-bed Emergency Room and began to evaluate and treat her. She got antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, further evaluation on her vomiting, gallbladder, and more. They identified that the bleeding from her ulcers had made her anemic and while she didn’t get a blood transfusion that day, they ended up giving her one a week later and she will probably need another in the near future. They managed her pain, nausea, and she was diagnosed with severe gastric ulcers as well as a gallbladder that needed removal but fortunately was not infected. While that doesn’t sound too medically intense, and in some ways it isn’t, as we regularly treat these issues in the United States with over the counter medications, this was literally going to kill this woman. And why? Because of lack of money. The only reason she had suffered so much for so long was because they didn’t have the money. To me, that is evil.

By the end of the day, things were different. Reina still looked and felt miserable, but to be fair her body was fully depleted in every way. Antonio, on the other hand, had a completely different countenance. Why? Because of love and hope. Think about it—this man had already lost his second child to a miscarriage, and was in danger of losing his wife as she slowly and painfully wasted away and died while he looked on, feeling powerless to do anything to turn it around. But, over the course of a single day, things had changed. By the end of the day he was smiling because God had given him hope again. Not only that, but the Holy Spirit had impressed on the head nurse for our team to bring a lot of Nexium with her from the States in spite of not knowing why she was bringing it—and it was the exact medication they prescribed Reina to help her ulcers to heal. Jesus is so good!!!

And in all of this, God healed something in my heart too. Why? Because this time it actually worked. This time instead of knowing that another person marched inexorably toward death through a lack of intervention and a lack of means, God was able to not only save a life but restore a family, and I was so touched that He had given me the gift of being involved in it. The situation in India was heart-crushing, but the one in Guatemala was heart-healing, and once again revealed God’s boundless and breathtaking kindness that He demonstrates to each one of us. And that’s not all.

It has taken some time for things to turn around for Reina and Antonio. They have incurred ongoing medical costs after that initial ER visit due to follow-up visits, an endoscopy, and a gallbladder-removal surgery, most of which has already been paid for through friends and followers of The Kings of Eden (In fact, I am going to a bank today to transfer those funds to the missionaries there to cover those costs). If you want to donate to cover Reina’s other medical costs during this process, send money via Paypal to Thekingsofeden@gmail.com, and 100% of all funds will be used for medical care (I don’t do “administrative costs”—what comes in will be sent back out). Not only that, but there’s some really great news! I got a text just yesterday from Suzanne, the wife of the missionary-couple of Hearts in Action with some really amazing news! Reina, who, remember, has been unable to eat anything and keep it down for over 5 months, has already gained four pounds and is now able to eat soup and smoothies. Not only that, but she and Antonio are going to get married in 2022! I didn’t know at the time, but they have never gotten married, and this situation has given them the push they needed to get married as well. How exciting! God has done a mighty work of restoration in this couple’s lives. Their son, age 5, had told me when I was there that he was looking forward to going back to their house because they have chickens and he wants to get a dog!

Guatemala 2021 was an amazing trip for many reasons, more of which I will share in future articles, but this aspect of the trip will always remain special to me. God redeemed a loss in my life, and I have been getting to see Him do exceedingly abundantly more this time around than I even expected. If there is any situation in your life where you have lost hope, where you feel that nothing can turn it around, or where you just don’t know if God cares enough to get involved, I want to remind you that if He cares enough to have people travel from another country just to restore the health and life of one single family who did no special great deeds to earn the favor or grace of a Deity, then He certainly cares about you. Antonio told me that afternoon after we left the hospital that God answered his prayers by sending us to help them, and if God hears the cries of a desperate husband in the jungles of Guatemala and answers them, God will answer your prayers too.

 

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