Resting in God’s Presence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Reimagining The Flood: Unveiling The Goodness of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A BIG difference!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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India Missions 2018: Finishing Well

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The six Sisters being honored for 25 years of service

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

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

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

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

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India Missions 2018: Serving The Tiger Widows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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India Missions 2018: The Kindness of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Define Your Vision – Bring Your Future Into Your Present

A few weeks ago I spent a little time praying about the direction God is taking my wife and me regarding our ministry and another health-related business we are building. I have been feeling a bit lost of late, not sure how to proceed in any direction, in spite of having a list of items I could accomplish, all of which would “get something done.” Somehow, this hasn’t felt like what I needed, so I took a short walk and began to talk to God about it. As I walked past a bush on a path, the Holy Spirit highlighted it to me, and he said to me, “Define Your Vision.”

As I looked at this bush, Holy Spirit spoke to me—not just in clear words, but through an inner knowing in my heart what the message was, and the message was this:
“That bush has tiny little buds all over it, that will grow into branches, with their own buds and branches and so on. The seed doesn’t know exactly what is going to happen every step of the way, but that doesn’t matter. The seed contains within itself the blueprint for the entire bush and its growth process, regardless of what happens. I want you to define your vision, your mission, to be like the seed. Define the DNA of what you are doing and where you are going. Define your vision, your end-product, from the beginning—as you grow the vision will guide you on your path.”

Interestingly, this word the Lord spoke to me is similar to something He shared with the prophet Habakkuk in Habakkuk 2:2-3, saying:
“Then the Lord replied:
“Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that he who reads it may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”

There is something that happens when you define your vision—it creates a clear path. This may be part of why I have felt a little unclear of late as to where we are headed and where we are growing to. I do see God growing The Kings of Eden, and I am excited with where I see us going to this point, but how long can a visionless, planless thing sustain itself? Not far. I used to think company mission statements were stupid. Typically they are incredibly broad and vague, not offering specific ideas or concepts. Over the past few years, I have realized that a mission statement is often broad and vague for a reason—it is the outline, the outermost parameters of an organization, not the individual goals that define the path. Certainly goals are important, and planning is what moves you from one phase to the next, but if goals are a single step each, then the mission is the journey of a thousand miles.

A mission statement helps define the vision in valuable ways, but the main one is actually pretty simple, and very straightforward. When any new idea comes forth, you simply have to ask one question “How does this forward the mission?” There are trillions of great ideas in the world, but if a great idea doesn’t forward the mission, then it is not the right idea—or at least not the right idea for that group. For example, consider that a business is about the pursuit of health. While someone might have a great idea about how the business can help people enhance personal prosperity, unless it is somehow tied into health, it doesn’t match the mission. Mind you, it might be a great idea for another company, and that individual may even go on to form a new company with that idea in mind, but then he or she will design a mission and vision that match with that idea.

I personally believe this idea is applicable in far more areas of life than it might seem at first glance. You don’t have to have a mission statement for everything you do, but at least define your vision—get clear about those things that are important to you and those that aren’t. Figure out the things you want to focus most on in life, and purpose to make time for them. Identify those things that really are somewhat extraneous, and see how you can reduce or even eliminate them entirely. This even works when spring-cleaning, clearing out clutter to get ready to move, or with any other project. What belongings do you own that don’t fit with where you are headed? Define your vision, then dump the extra baggage! You will be glad you did.

There is something about putting definition to something, framing it and making it real in your mind, that gives it life and energy and helps it to spring forth into reality. If you have been feeling unclear about where you are headed in any area of life, take time to define your vision. We are in the process of doing that now, and I believe it will only help us as we move forward. I’m excited, actually, because I believe this is the beginning of many new things to come!

If you aren’t already subscribed to our mailing list and want to know how this vision and plan works out for us, fill out the brief form below to get occasional updates, as well as receive a free ebook on engaging angels as our gift to you. Be well, be blessed, and may you prosper in every way as you define your vision!

Acts of Love, Service, and Sacrifice

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Valentines Day is one of my least favorite holidays, albeit nowhere close to my distaste for Halloween. While the idea behind it is literally lovely, I have a hard time matching up with the commercialized push to “do something” for your spouse and other loved ones else you don’t truly love them. I am horrible at keeping up with holidays to begin with (Exhibit A: three feet from me is my parents’ Christmas present that I still haven’t sent them and its now the middle of February), so having a holiday that comes just two weeks after my wedding anniversary is a recipe for failure. With all the commercial focus on loving one another, I want to take a moment and consider how God demonstrates His great love for us—through acts of love, service, and sacrifice.

In John 15:13, Jesus spoke to his disciples about love, saying “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In Ephesians 5:25-28, Paul speaks about how husbands should love their wives, saying “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Jesus in John 13 even did a physical act of service, washing his disciples’ feet to demonstrate to them through both service and physical touch His great love for them. I find it interesting that in our commercialized world we are so focused on love as gift-giving of expensive items that we forget true demonstrations of love also include acts of service and sacrifice.

While it is true that each person has ways he or she gives and receives love best (check out The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman), God’s greatest gift of love was an act of service through personal sacrifice. And this wasn’t just an old sacrifice—it literally changed the course of humanity and shifted the balance in our favor, removing the death and decay from sin and ushering in the manifestation of abundant life God planned for us from the beginning of creation. However, it didn’t stop there. He gave us His Holy Spirit to continue that transformative work within us on an ongoing basis, speaking and releasing love to us every day. As it is written, “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). If we want to consider how to spread that love best to one another, I believe it looks like every-day acts of love, service, and sacrifice, not as a one-time event.

These acts of love always have to be massive. How about the time when we don’t feel like turning the light off but our wife is also in bed next to us and doesn’t feel like it either. That time our wife wants a foot rub and we are exhausted, but instead of saying no, or even telling her we are tired, we just do it anyway. The time where for no reason whatsoever, and because of no special holiday pressuring us, we go out and get her some flowers or some other small something. That time we put down our electronic devices and purpose to fully listen to whatever it is she is saying without trying to solve the problem (guilty as charged). The time where we don’t feel like cuddling because we are tired, hot, cranky, don’t like it (not sure this one even exists), or whatever else, but that we hold her anyway (Mind you, these ideas can apply to women just as much as men, but I’m a dude, so that’s what you get). These are all little things, and the big things are good and important too, but it is acts of love, service, and sacrifice on a daily basis that truly do what God does–shed love abroad in our hearts.

If our job is to BE Christ to people, then we will look for ways to do that not just with our wives, but with our children, family, friends, and even coworkers. After all, in John 13:34-35 Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (emphasis mine). If all else fails, life happens, or the world falls apart, commercialization has no hold on the future, but we can never go wrong with acts of love, service, and sacrifice.

A New Level of Trust For Provision

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A few years ago, my wife’s college, Heald College, was shut down by the Department of Education in a push to try to punish its parent corporation, Corinthian College. It was a shame that Heald was shut down partly because a lot of jobs were lost, and partly because the school itself had a rich history of education without all of the shady dealings that Corinthian College engaged in, and who had only bought it a few years prior. At any rate, this also meant that my wife’s income was going away, and this meant God had to bring us into a new level of trust regarding our finances.

Almost all of our married life up to that point, my wife and I had both been employed, and for most of that time, she made far more money per hour as a college professor than I did as a nursing assistant—multiple times what I made, in fact. After graduating from nursing school and working at a rehab facility my wage rose to meet hers, but with her losing her job, we simply weren’t going to have enough money to meet all of our monthly expenses.

We had known this school-closing was coming in advance, and I had already been looking for a new job, so I was pleased to finally get an interview for a position at a local hospital. I ended up being offered the position, and when they told me how much I was going to be paid, I was blown away. I literally got a $10 per hour raise moving from my current job to the new one based off my nursing experience. Furthermore, that didn’t include a sizeable shift differential for working night shift. I accepted on the spot—so quickly, in fact, that the HR person stopped me and said “I haven’t told you the whole offer yet.” I was clearly excited to get the job.

All of our money troubles did not evaporate overnight, but my I began the new job right as the school closed, and my wife did receive six months of unemployment on top of that—which helped us out a lot as we transitioned into this new level of income which, in spite of the raise I got, was still less than we had been making before. Eventually, with cost of living increases, raises from yearly service, other bonuses, and picking up additional shifts here and there, my income has roughly matched where we were at before.

This hasn’t been especially easy on my wife, partly due to her job loss and partly due to a much-needed transition due to health issues. Even the transition to spending more time at home raising our grandchildren and homeschooling them has presented its own challenges, none of which have been any easier than going to work. What I did discover in that situation was that God was not only ever-present to help in our time of need, but everything worked out SO smoothly! Not only did I get a higher-paying job at just the right time, but I was able to time it to get myself two weeks off for a road trip, storage clean-out, and ended up writing Gemstones From Heaven while on that trip.

What I felt the Lord show me from all of this was that His goodness and abundance are ever-present. Certainly there are times we feel and/or experience more lack than at other times, but there are other times such as this where even though we didn’t spend hours in prayer over the situation, and in fact I began job-hunting before the College closed, God positioned us just how we needed to make everything work for our good. I am reminded that in every situation God is working things in our favor, even as it says in Romans 8:28 that, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God calls everyone to His purposes, so we can trust that He is actively at work in our lives to bring good things out of those that appear less-than-good. And I thank God for that!

Forerunners and Imposter Syndrome

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I have a friend who regularly reminds me that I am a forerunner. I didn’t used to understand why, but as I have pursued the revelation of life and immortality (get a copy of my book on the subject here) I have come to understand more of why he, a fellow forerunner, always reminds me of that. It’s because he has been there, knows how difficult it can be, and is trying to ease my way.

When I put out my book Faith To Raise The Dead, I had multiple people ask me the question “How can you write a book about raising the dead if you haven’t raised the dead yet?” While writing the book I wrestled with this very idea. What I realized is that lots of people teach things they haven’t done and we consider it perfectly normal and/or reasonable. Science teachers teach about volcanoes, water currents, outer space, atoms and subatomic particles, cellular respiration, and all sorts of other natural phenomenon and physiological processes they have never personally witnessed. History professors teach about cultures they have never actually encountered personally. People teach business courses all the time who have no actual experience running a business. It is actually quite common in higher education to do exactly that, and it happens in the Church as well.

End-times prophecy is a perfect example of this. We have well-known speakers, authors, and teachers who have deeply involved understanding of their subject matter, but at the end of the day it is technically 100% conjecture considering not a single one of them has ever actually “experienced” the end times they are speaking about. People flock to conferences, buy books, and are glued to television programs with these individuals discussing these theories that don’t even really influence our day-to-day lives, but when someone talks about raising the dead, living in divine health, or living forever the first thing many point to is the fact that I haven’t lived it all experientially yet.

The thing about forerunners is that we don’t always have all the details worked out yet, but we are the people who get everyone moving in the right direction to begin with. We are the innovators who spread the message to get the early adopters on board. As with any new idea, invention, etc. the innovators and early adopters face the most ridicule because they are willing to step out and take a risk with no guarantee of return. However, that risk-taking eventually pays off when everyone else hops on board and wishes they had started earlier.

One of the threats forerunners face is Imposter Syndrome—the fear that you risk being exposed as a fraud for what you are doing; that someday your areas of lack will be exposed and people will see you for “who you really are.” As I said before, I really had to fight this idea as an author because I haven’t raised the dead yet, but I realized that I’m not an imposter just because I haven’t been successful yet. I have learned a lot through my experiences as I have pursued resurrection, and God has taught me even more as I have continued on this path. The same is happening with the revelation of abundant life and immortality—God is revealing new levels and aspects of this truth even though I have yet to live in the fullness of this promise that Jesus gave his disciples.

The apostle Paul ran into this same problem, to the point that he repeated himself twice when speaking to the Philippians about this in Phillippians 3:12-14, saying, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Paul was very clear that he had not already attained the fullness of the revelation he was preaching, but he didn’t let it stop him from proclaiming the revelation.

I had a dream the other night that seemed to suggest there are two main ways God gives us a message He wants us to carry. The first is as a prophetic revelation, and this typically comes first. Prophetic messages are often those given by the forerunners, as they are speaking of realities that have not manifested as of yet. The second are apostolic messengers—those who have lived out the message, have struggled through the ups and downs as they have pioneered the experience, and who have become the living embodiment of that which they speak. Neither means of carrying a message is better than the other, nor is either inferior to the other; they are simply different. Apostolic messengers carry the experiences within them, while the prophetic messenger is often speaking of things he or she has yet to attain to. It is important to understand whether a message is prophetic or apostolic as defined above, as prophetic messages are those that place us in greater danger of Imposter syndrome.

Finally, it is important to have our approval grounded in God’s love for us instead of in the accolades found by other humans. If we find our solace in the encouragement and agreement of other people then when discouragement and discord come along we are not going to be able to stand firm and carry the message strong. If we are grounded in the Father’s love and approval of us, then it doesn’t matter what trials or tribulations come our way because we will be filled with an inner strength to hold our ground and lift our standard high.

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Word of the Week – May 22, 2017 – Wild!

I stumbled upon a band this weekend: WorshipMob. Blew me away. I listened for an hour. I do not know much about them except that a couple out of Denver, Colorado wanted to gather worshipers together to create jams where the entire focus is to Worship God, but even more, to let God love on them. The recorded sessions are with varying musicians, dancers, artists, believers. The particular one I heard was labeled Venture Worship 3—LionHearted, Build My Life, Spontaneous. You can find it on YouTube along with others.

Here are the lyrics that grabbed me….

“How astonishing
How bewildering
The Ruler of the Universe wants me
and He loves me
He’s wild about me
Oh,
He’s wild about me.”

Is there anyone you can say in your life that feels that way about you? I can say it about my hubby. Maybe there are some people who are fond of me…but Wild about me?

Really….how many of us actually think, let alone believe, that GOD…the Ruler of the Universe, cares about us? Of even considers us?

But Wild About?

That HE loves and wants US…

So that is the Word for today and for this week: Stop right now. Let yourself feel this. God is Wild about YOU! You do not need to perform. You do not need to accomplish your To Do list. You do not have to do anything. God, the Ruler of the Universe, is Wild about you.

Let yourself feel it. Sit with it. Dance with it (at least try tapping your toes to it!).

“Don’t give up
Just keep going
Heaven is dancing over you and cheering you forward…
Keep the faith.”

If this reality permeated our existence, our lives could change. Even in the hardship, our realities could harness hope. We would find strength and maybe even joy for putting one foot in front of the other in the journey. We would have a purpose that is not there when we live in doubt of just how much God really wants us. He wants US, something different but born out of love. He WANTS us.

Remind yourself today: The Ruler of the Universe is WILD about you! XOXO

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