Training a Son of Our Father To Heal the Sick

One of the things we did in Peru 2023 with Overseas Missions was hold medical clinics, which, being a nurse, I play a role in.  The clinic process usually involves seeing patients, assessing their needs, giving medications where possible, then sending the problem list (written on a piece of paper with their name) to the prayer team to pray for the problems.  The results are pretty fantastic—almost everyone who goes through the clinic and gets prayer gets healed.  Because we are in a non-English-speaking country, however, that means we have to use translators because most of the team doesn’t speak the local language which, on this trip, was Spanish.  Our leader made some arrangements with locals he is in relationship with, and one of the translators, Jonathan, was the son of a local Iquitos pastor.

He did a fabulous job translating for us the entire time we were in Peru.  And although Jonathan was a pastor’s son, he wasn’t accustomed to praying for the sick (to be fair, I am the son of an Episcopal priest and I wasn’t raised to pray for the sick either).  So, while most of what the nurses in the clinic did was identify and treat physical problems and send people to the prayer team, I had a few times I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to have us pray—so mostly I had Jonathan do it.  He was uncomfortable at first (he told me, but it was pretty obvious even if he hadn’t said anything), but he did great and was willing to push himself out of his comfort zone.  It probably helped a bit that for everyone he prayed for, their pain gradually left as well, so he could see the results of his prayers in real-time.

Now, when it comes to praying for the sick, I have a bit of a mental algorithm I go through in my head while talking to the Holy Spirit and just trying to be generally aware to spiritually discern what God is saying and doing, so I made sure to tell Jonathan my process, and I’ll share that here as well.

First, when it comes to heal the sick I begin with a prayer of command.  Something simple like, “All pain, leave now in the name of Jesus.”  You see, in Matthew 28:18-19 Jesus told his disciples that He had received all authority in heaven and earth, then delegated the disciples to go and exercise that authority on His behalf.  So, when praying for the sick the first thing I do is engage my authority and release power to heal, and expect it to be done in faith. Then, where possible, I have the person test it out and see if they can tell a difference.

After praying, one of three things will happen:  it will get better, get worse, or stay the same (or they may not be able to tell, so in that case I assume it has remained the same).

  1. If it gets worse, it’s a demon, so then I cast out demons.
  2. If it gets better but not all-better then God is actively healing them in that moment and I pray again.
  3. If it stays the same then I pray again because even Jesus prayed twice (Mark 8:22-25).
  4. And if it gets all-better then they’re healed. Give them a hug and let them know God loves them.

 

The rest of the prayer session tends to continue in a similar manner, with me praying then identifying what is happening, then adjusting from there.  If we hit blockages where nothing is happening after praying multiple times or if they have been gradually getting healed and it stops, then I cast out demons.  Once I have done that if it still plateaus, then I am talking to the Holy Spirit to see if there are emotional issues or curses or something else that are interfering with what we are praying, deal with that issue, then ideally go back to my prayer process again until they are fully healed.

Since Jonathan eventually plans to be a doctor anyway, I taught him this algorithm to him since it’s largely based on how I problem-solve as a nurse anyway, and figured it would be a good fit for him.  Then, as we prayed for people, I coached him through the process, asking him what he saw, what he thought we should do next, etc.  Finally, in keeping with the prayer of power and authority, I continued to remind him that he is a son of the Most High God and that Sons of the Kingdom don’t ask for creation to obey us—we command it to.

We practiced this healing prayer process both during the clinics infrequently with patients and also at a few healing prayer services we did while in Iquitos.  While praying together, Jonathan and I saw God heal blindness, deafness, and a number of other less-problematic conditions, but the last patient we saw on the last clinic day was a pretty special circumstance that beat out all of those.

On the final day of the clinic, we spoke to a young woman who’s main complaint was knee pain.  Seeing that she was the last patient, I had Jonathan pray for her, and the pain left instantly.  After praying for her knee and giving her antiparasitics for her family, vitamins, and some other medications, I observed that her ankle looked really strange, something she hadn’t mentioned anything about.  It looked at first glance like she had broken it sometime in the past and it had healed very poorly, as it was swollen and misshapen.  Upon asking her, it turned out that she had an ankle tumor.  I mean, I would have led with that, but people can be funny.

Now, while I inspected her ankle I noticed something that was impossible to miss because of how glaringly obvious it was.  This young woman’s ankle and the tumor on it were absolutely covered in gold dust!  We had seen other patients in the clinics and everyone whose skin we inspected for a skin problem had supernatural gold dust on their skin problem, but on this woman’s ankle it was thicker and just more somehow.  I showed Jonathan and then showed the woman—and explained it was a miracle from heaven (milagro de cielo) and a sign that God wanted to heal her body.  With that, we began to pray.

As you can probably guess, I had Jonathan pray for her.  I began by having her rate her pain and move her ankle so we could observe how much range of motion she had (another way to evaluate change when healing the sick).  Jonathan liked to pray long, flowery prayers with a bunch of “Father Gods” thrown in there so I told him to pray a super short prayer this time.  I had him say “Pain, leave in the name of Jesus.” He prayed, and some of the pain left.  After praying she said it felt like something was “grabbing her ankle,” so I had him command “Demon get out and all swelling go in the name of Jesus.”  He did, the demon left, the rest of the pain went, and as we continued to take turns praying over the next few minutes, the swelling visibly reduced to about half the size!  Her pain was gone, and her range of motion in the ankle had improved significantly.

We had to close up right after this as it was getting dark, or I would have continued to pray more because God was actively healing this woman’s body and removing the tumor and its effects!  And while I preferred to continue praying, I could also trust that God would continue the work that He had started to begin with.  After all, covering her tumor in gold dust wasn’t my idea—it was His.  This precious woman was crying by the time we were done because she could tell that God was touching her body.  It was so beautiful to see her moved by God’s gift to her, and I simply extended my faith in trust that God would finish the work over the next few days.

That miracle was pretty awesome, but almost as awesome to me was helping train up another Son of our Father to heal the sick and destroy works of darkness.  After all, if in a week’s time Jonathan saw the sick healed, blindness and deafness healed, and he even saw a tumor shrink at his prayer of command, what else is possible when partnering as a Son with our Heavenly Father?  Nothing is impossible with God!

Healing the Bora Chief

During my time in Peru with Overseas Missions, we spent a day on a tributary of the Amazon.  We saw some cool animals (sloths, crocodiles, weird turtles, macaques, and more), swam in the river, and toward the end of the day we stopped by a village of the mostly-indigenous Bora people.  Their chief, Walter, was quite the clever businessman, and their actual village was a 4-minute walk away, but they had created a model-village close to the river for tourists.  It was late in the day so many of the villagers had left for home already, but because our local Peruvian contact knows the chief, they arranged for some of the villagers to remain behind to welcome us.  What happened next was awesome.

First, Walter and his tribe welcomed us with a number of traditional dances of the Bora people, and afterward they showed us some of their tribal wares.  The items were pretty cool, as they included jewelry made of porcupine quills, artwork, and more.  I didn’t look at the artwork much though because we brought some gifts for the tribe, which I briefly explained to Chief Walter—we brought medicine.

One of the things that made this trip so fun was that so much of what we did was counter-culture to how life normally goes.  Usually, Chief Walter does a presentation with his tribe and they are in a service-role to the tourists as a form of income.  And while our team was honored to receive similar treatment (even better than usual if you consider they stayed late in order for us to see them), it is uncommon for the tourists to bring gifts for the tribe.  We provided pain medications, vitamins for the children and pregnant women, and other medications that are both generally useful and not readily available in the jungle.

Because Walter and the tribe were largely believers already we didn’t preach to them, but we did make sure to pray for anyone with pain and injuries before we left.  An elderly man came up for prayer who had lost much of the sensation and mobility in his arms after carrying a heavy load through the jungle.  He fell and was injured and afterward he could no longer move or feel properly.  While from a medical perspective I suspect he had some level of nerve impingement in his upper back, the fact is that this negatively impacted his quality of life.  Until Jesus showed up, that is.  One of our team, Shawn, prayed for him and he regained all range of motion and sensation and all the pain in his body left!

Then, my buddy Troy and I prayed for Chief Walter who had some kind of injury to his foot.  Considering the 40-minute walk twice a day along with the multiples of dances they performed barefoot, I suspect he had plantar fasciitis or similar—but regardless of the condition, it meant that simply doing daily life was painful, much less his job as the village leader.  Well we prayed and the pain left!  Now, when healing the sick and injured it can be easy to pray, not test anything, and leave feeling like we have added a notch to our belt and witnessed God heal someone, but I’m not a fan of leaving things untested if there is a way to try it out.  We began by having the Chief stomp his feet, which he was able to do without pain, so we took it to max-level.  I asked him to jump up and down on it to really make sure he was healed.  And He was, because Jesus still heals!!

Often, manifesting the Kingdom is as straightforward as being more engaged than people normally are, and other times it looks like gifts of medicine.  In this case it looked like both of those and healing prayer—but however we release the Kingdom, the key is for us to just step out and do it!  Faith looks like risk, but when we step out and risk something we create opportunities for God to show up and show off His immeasurable goodness and love.

The Shame Banana — My Inner Healing Experience with the Emotional Polarity Technique ™

Hey there Friends of Eden! It is pretty common for me to talk about inner healing and its importance to our spiritual walk, but today I want to hit it from a slightly different angle. My friend Grace recently contacted me because she has been working as an Emotional Healing and Spiritual Coach. She knows I am a strong supporter of inner healing, so she wanted me to try it out and let you all know what the experience was like when working with her, what it did for me, and how you can take advantage of her services too. I’m always up for learning new things in the inner healing arena, so agreed to give it a try. In the interest of fairness to those in my life, please keep in mind that I’m being vulnerable about inner healing issues which at times may negatively reflect on other people in my life—but this has as much to do with my own perceptions or misperceptions of them as it does with how they have treated me. It isn’t my intent to dishonor anyone by writing about this, but help you see how very-real life issues can be successfully prayed-through and healed to bring freedom.

Before I go into how my session went, let me tell you about EPT ™. According to Grace’s website, WhenYouNeedGrace.com, this therapy uses a combination of forgiveness and positive affirmations (another way of saying that is positive declarations/statements) to help us heal and walk in greater freedom. The body stores trauma and pain on a cellular level, which we are often unaware of, and EPT ™ helps release those negative emotions and helps us create new, more life-giving patterns. While some could be leery of this as some kind of “new age” technique, let me remind you that forgiveness is about as Christian as it gets, and choosing life-giving confessions with our words is an age-old biblical principle which we can find echoed in Proverbs 18:21 which says “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat of its fruit.” In other words, the things we say, affirmations, declarations, and positive statements, have the ability to release life to us while negative statements, complaining, and grumbling all will release death to us in some manner. The benefit of working with Grace is that she uses these methods to help uncover hidden things in the heart. Proverbs 20:5 says, “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out,” and Grace is definitely a woman of deep insight into the human heart. If you want to read more about EPT ™, how it works, and look at some common questions and answers, go to Grace’s About EPT page here. Now that we’ve got that covered, on to my session!

When Grace had first approached me, I recognized that I needed to identify a somewhat discrete problem, something that I thought could be addressed in a single session. While this isn’t necessary for everyone, in this particular set of circumstances I have already been working with someone consistently over time, so I didn’t want to pick an issue we were already working on. I wanted to choose something separate so I could more readily identify a difference after a single session. As I was thinking about what to choose in the week leading up to the session, I was talking with a very close friend and what came up during that conversation was me hearing myself say “Who I am is not okay.” When I heard myself say that, I felt like the Holy Spirit was putting his finger on the issue and showing me both a deep heart issue of mine, as well as something that I could more directly work on with Grace that was different than what I had been focused on elsewhere. While I wasn’t necessarily expecting one session to fix the entire life-message (which sounds deep-seated), I did believe that it was a good single-problem subject that we could work with and use as a launching place for freedom. Now, for the EPT approach in general, the client does choose the issue/problem/topic they want to focus on for that session—I just had a more specific goal in regards to identifying something I thought would be good for a single-session issue. Clients do not normally need to be that specific in what they choose to focus on.

We started the session by chatting briefly, partly because we were connected years ago when Myspace was still a thing through a mutual friend whom we both love, then got down to “business” (I make it sound like this was super clinical, but it wasn’t—Grace is quite warm and friendly and easy to talk to). She explained the basic framework for the technique/process so I knew generally what to expect, then we did a quick exercise to focus my attention more closely on what we were doing. After that, she asked me four statements to help identify my “readiness to heal”. While that might sound odd, in Nursing we use an arbitrary pain scale of 0-10 to get an idea of someone’s pain level before and after we give them medications, and this was much the same. Grace asked some specific questions to get an idea of where I was at the start of the session, so she could go back over them at the end and help us both see how effective the “treatment” was.

Grace explained that she uses something called applied kinesiology, also known as “muscle testing,” to help identify the emotion, location it is trapped in the body (even in Chinese medicine it is understood that negative emotional energy can get lodged in different organs/tissues that then contribute to physical diseases). Then she explained that the process typically involves starting with current issues dealing with that emotion and then working backwards in a person’s life, a bit like working through layers on an onion.

The first item that came up was the emotion of “dread”, which she tested was connected to my left kidney. Now, the location of the emotion may or may not matter much, in that in some instances a person can tie it to physiological problems they are actively dealing with, and in other cases it may simply be something either hidden/undiagnosed, or as is true in this case, simply not bad enough to cause an observable physical problem. Where it does matter is that from what Grace told me, the left kidney is tied to framing a problem or issue, where the right kidney has to do with solving it. In my case, the issue was one of not even feeling (emotionally) that I was able to even identify or frame how to begin solving what felt like an unsolvable problem. Fortunately for me, it actually is fixable, and Grace helped me do just that.

We briefly discussed the feeling of dread and where it came from, and identified together that it was tied to hopelessness—both that of my dad and that from my own feelings that I won’t ever measure up for him. The next step was to identify the inception point—where it all started. Interestingly enough, it began with something I’ve already done inner healing work around before—a seemingly silly event that clearly has had a larger impact on me than might be apparent at first—the Shame Banana.

What on earth is a shame banana? Let me tell you the story:

One evening, I had already been put to bed, but I was hungry, so I came downstairs to ask if I could have a snack. My dad was in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen and I have no idea where my mom was because she wasn’t down there. I forget if I suggested or if he did, but he said that I could have half of a banana, then to give the rest to him. I went back to the kitchen, ate half the banana, and went to hand my dad the rest. But, being a kid, I was playing with my food like kids do, so instead of eating half of it like an adult would, I took bites along the side of the banana longways, meaning that I literally had bites down the length of the entire fruit. Well, I did eat only half, and then went to give him the other half, at which point he erupted at me in anger (or at least that’s how it seemed to roughly-7-year-old me). I was berated for intentionally ruining the food so that he wouldn’t want to eat it, and then told me I might as well just eat the rest of it considering I had made it un-want-able to anyone else.

Well, that made me feel pretty bad at the time. I wasn’t intentionally doing anything other than getting a snack. It had never occurred to me until after he said something that eating the banana the way I did would reasonably make someone else not want it, but even when I tried to explain that, he didn’t believe me. Well, not only did I feel un-believed and misjudged, I also felt shame about eating the food (and then having to eat the rest of it) even when I had originally been the one asking for the snack to begin with. I forget what happened after that, but presumably I went to bed, and then carried the pain of the shame banana with me for the next 30 years.

 

Grace had some pretty simple solutions to help address this, and interestingly, forgiveness was actually a super useful tool to help do just that, something I have since used on my own and suggested to friends even without working with Grace because the way she used forgiveness was really different. It wasn’t just about forgiving my dad, but forgiving myself for the ways I responded, believed, and other things in the situation as well, helping set me free from the ways I had judged myself and created my own negative self-talk as a result of this event.

We began with forgiveness statements—first for myself.  I forgave myself for:
-Believing that since my dad didn’t understand me that I must not be good enough.
-For believing that I wasn’t good enough.

Grace pointed out there that how I ate the banana was actually pretty creative, and was a creative way to address an issue—how to eat half a banana. The problem came in with shame telling me that something was wrong with me and my creative way of seeing things. I also forgave:
-My dad for not seeing and appreciating my creativity.
-Myself for believing that the way God made me is inherently problematic versus being inherently problem-solving.

While reading these, one or two of the forgiveness statements (we took these ideas and made statements of “I forgive myself for . . .”) might seem a bit of a jump, but I have for many years realized that I often see problems that are about to crop up as a result of doing things a certain way, whether at home with my family, at church, and at work, but it is often not well-received because no one likes being told that the things they want to do the way they want to do them are going to cause more problems, which is where this whole creative-thinking thing ties in. Grace helped me to reframe the matter, looking at the fact that my ability to notice problems and solve them is actually my superpower, not a problem. As we prayed through and declared these things, we did a simple breathing exercise to help release the old patterns and trapped emotional energy. Each time we did this, I would yawn—which according to Grace is pretty common, and lines up very much with similar experiences I have had with other inner-healing methods. The yawning is indicative, among other things, of the trapped energy being released.

After we prayed through forgiveness statements, Grace then did a sort of re-assessment partway through to identify if we sufficiently hit the different problem-points on the issue or if there was still more to resolve. The forgiveness portion of this is in a way a de-identifying with the problems, removing any internal agreement I have within my psyche with those beliefs. While helpful to a degree, there is another step that needs to be taken next—replacing them with God’s truth. Thus, we went on to identify some positive-affirmation statements to help replace the negative beliefs.

The ones we came up with were:
“My ability to see things differently is a gift, regardless of who receives it or doesn’t.”
“How others receive or do not receive me is not a measure of my worth—it is a statement of where they are at.”
“Free of these old patterns, my design is no longer inherently problematic. I see and bring solutions.”

I also wrote down one other thing we hit that was sort of a side-issue but still relevant, and that may speak to you.
“I forgive myself for believing that food is connected to love and punishment. I give God permission to recalibrate my relationship with food according to His original intent.”

After going through all of these things—the identification and nature of the problem, where I was at with those issues (Grace’s initial assessment questions), forgiving and releasing them, and reframing them with positive affirmation statements, we did a reassessment. We had initially looked at my level of Distress, which was an 8 and went down to a 1, my level of Elation, which went from a 0 to a 6, and my Stage of Healing (Grace would have to explain that to you because it is specific to EPT), which went from a 3 to a 7 (on a 1-7 scale).

Overall, my experience with Grace and EPT was really good, and actually I recently recommended my wife connect with her about some stuff as the person we normally work with has been very busy with other life-stuff, and I found that the work we did together was a combination of professional, Holy-Spirit-led, comforting without being coddling, and generally just helpful. I felt like Grace was approachable, easy to talk to and work with, and the method she used was one I could see myself using in the future. And as I said before, I learned some things that I’ve been able to use since then, and I’m not particularly new to inner healing.

I hope this has been an informative, interesting, and helpful article for you, to introduce you to Grace, EPT, and the kinds of things this inner healing technique can help people get free from. I have definitely appreciated the time we spent together, and I would happily do it again. If you want to set up an appointment with Grace, check out the FAQ on her website, or see if working with her is a good fit for you to help get you unstuck or moving forward in some way, her website is WhenYouNeedGrace.com. Take a look, bookmark it, and tell your friends. Get the inner healing you need today so you can be the person you want to be tomorrow. Bless you!

 

 

What We Tolerate, We Empower

I posted something on social media the other day about gratitude, and how important it is to be thankful to God for even small things (In this case it was God showing me that a supplement I had started taking contained an item I have a food allergy to, and I didn’t realize it when I started taking it). While some of the conversation the post generated was nice, one comment was unnecessarily-instructional, informing me how I needed to pray to deal with the food allergy—as though it had never occurred to me before that I’m not supposed to have food allergies and that God has planned significantly better for me. I replied in the most positive way possible—thanking the individual for reminding and encouraging me to pursue God’s best for my body and my overall health. My reply got me thinking, however. How often have I tolerated these food allergies? I’ve had them for years so I’m definitely used to them, and have developed eating habits around them. I have certain supplements I take when things get out of hand because over the years I have found they work well for me. But in the midst of my dealing with the problem as it comes and managing my life around it, how much am I tolerating it because I am used to it instead of addressing it on a spirit, soul, and body level to become totally healed and set free from it?

I don’t actually know, which is why this got me thinking even more. I already do inner healing sessions regularly (I currently work with a woman who is highly skilled in what she does and has been a God-send for me—check her services out at Risen Light Works), so I’ll plan to do one or two that really hone in on any emotional issues and beliefs I have that are contributing to it. That will at least help deal with some of the soul-level issues that contribute. I already have supplements worked out that help me, but what am I doing on a spiritual level to deal with it? Certainly I could deal with demons, but I generally do deliverance in conjunction with inner healing, so I already expect to deal with that. But how am I inviting allergies and/or contributing to the issue in a spiritual level? That’s worth looking at.

We have to remember that it’s not always the big things that cause us problems in life. Certainly big-ticket items like abuse in any form, traumatic events and memories, and massive life stressors negatively impact us, but they’re low-hanging fruit in that they’re really obvious and we don’t have to look far to see their effects in our lives. No, it’s the little things that are harder to notice. Song of Solomon 2:15 says, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.” This verse is a really good reminder that while the big things like trauma, grief, abuse, and other pain can be big destroyers, quite often it’s the little things running around and messing stuff up in our lives. The little things are insidious because they become easy to ignore. A lot of little things can build up and collect over a length of time before anyone starts to pay any notice, but those little things truly do add up. A single termite doesn’t matter, but a bunch of termites will destroy a house.

In order to truly look at this issue, we have to look at the topics of sowing, reaping, and agreement. Sowing and reaping is an extensive subject, such that I have written entire book chapters about it in my book The Power of Impartation. You can also search the term on this website and find multiple other articles I have written about it for free so I won’t discuss it in depth here, but sowing and reaping is definitely a key. Agreements are a separate-yet-related issue. What I agree with I automatically sow into and reap, but how do agreements come into play with health problems?

Agreements have to do with things we come into alignment with. The way we align ourselves and what we align ourselves with causes attractive and repulsive forces in the spirit, and those things directly affect our lives in visible and invisible ways. If I come into mental assent with the presence of food allergies, then I am in unconscious ways deciding that those food allergies are permitted to remain in my body and negatively affect me. If I come into subconscious or unconscious agreement with the presence of allergies in my life, then I will have a hard time getting rid of them. Why? Because I’m the one giving them permission to stay!

So, now I need to identify ways I may be tolerating food allergies in my beliefs and actions. Do I take supplements because I’ve given up and am settling and tolerating them, or do I take them while I am *on the journey* toward wholeness? In honesty it’s probably a bit of both, but that’s where the heart-check comes in. How am I tolerating this in my life? Because what I tolerate, I empower.

That might seem like an unlikely statement—that the simple act of tolerating something bad empowers it—but there is no true neutrality in the Kingdom. There are people and even I believe spirit beings that try to remain neutral, but it’s an impossibility. We are either supporting light or darkness with our actions, but also with our inaction. Inaction has helped many dictators rise to power. Recent lockdowns and shutdowns in the past few years have been able to occur largely because of inaction—that we tolerate evil and wickedness and go along with it just enough to not resist. Passivity and tolerance of evil empowers it because it lets it run free without attempting to stop it. So the question I have to ask myself is “how am I tolerating food allergies?” And what other un-health am I tolerating in my life?

As we identify the things we are tolerating in our lives, unconsciously or subconsciously coming into agreement with, we can them break those agreements, stop tolerating them, and as a result we will even shift things like our physical health!
Often it begins with identification, but once you identify the problem, then you can do something to fix it. I encourage you to take a moment to run a sort of personal inventory on the little problems in your life. What kinds of things have you been tolerating recently? And what do you want to have happen instead?

 

A General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul

One of the things I have written on in depth is the subject of emotional wounds and soul trauma and the resulting fracturing and fragmentation of the soul, as well as some methods one can use to go about healing it all.  I have coauthored the book Broken To Whole partly as a means of educating people about these things and partly as a way of providing solutions for fragmentation and emotional wounds as a whole.  This subject gets a lot more complex than some people prefer to go, but the soul is complex and we all have one, so it seems prudent to me for us to be taught and prepared accordingly.  For those who are unfamiliar with this subject I recommend you start with the following blogs, in that order:

Uprooting the Poisonous Tree—The Process and Value of Inner Healing

An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation.

The Solar System Model For Understanding Fragmentation and Dissociation

For a better understanding of how fragmentation influences day to day life and the inner healing process, and how dissociation actually works in the day-to-day, listen to Dan Duval’s message “The Airplane Model of Dissociation.”

You will also want to pick up a copy of Broken To Whole and give it a read.

 

Because inner healing is so important to how we overcome as the Body of Christ, I have crafted a prayer that can be used to help pray through soul-related problems.  I call it a “General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul, and this prayer is written in such a way that it can be prayed over oneself or prayed over someone else.  It has been designed to be somewhat comprehensive because while I want people to be equipped to pray through things they are aware of, often we have problems we are not consciously aware of or do not know how to address.  This prayer is written in part to cover inner healing needs we have that we are not consciously aware of, as well as to address spiritual forces that we may also not be aware we are battling.  Some of the language addresses things I and others have encountered in the spirit (most of which can be found in scripture if you know how to look) that some may simply be unfamiliar with, but the purpose of this post isn’t to teach on inner healing, but rather to provide a prayer for use, so I am not breaking down the prayer and why I included what I did.  My prayer for you is that you find a greater measure of freedom in your life and the lives of those you love as you use this resource.  On to the prayer!

 

General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul

 

Heavenly Father I command the hosts of Heaven to go inside the system/soul dimension of _____.  I send them to destroy every stronghold of darkness and to release every captive part of my/his/her soul in every realm, timeline, and dimension of time and eternity and bring them into the safe place in the realm of the Kingdom of Light within the soul.  I release healing light to touch every area of brokenness within the soul and to heal every emotional wound carried by the various parts within the soul dimension.  I send angels to every part of anyone else’s soul who is captive within my/that person’s soul dimension.  I remove every restraint, chain, or shackle of any kind, every weapon or impaling object, and any other devices, implants, or other objects that have been attached, implanted, or connected to those aspects of the soul in any way, and I disable, dismantle, and remove any traps or tripwires that would prevent them from being removed or that would be set off upon removal.  I apply the fire of God to destroy all of these objects and any others I have not yet named that do not come from the Most High God and servants acting on His instructions. Separate out those souls, disconnect them from him/her, and to take them to the feet of Jesus for him to decide what to do with them, and I remove any further access from those soul parts to any part of my/_____’s being in the future.

 

I take authority over every demonic spirit that has gained access to me/ _____ as a result of emotional wounds.  I break, shatter, and destroy your power and authority over him/her and remove all future access.  I bind you all and every spirit working with you, for you, or who is in any way connected to you and I cast you out of me/ _____, never to return.  I send angels to clean up everything these spirits have left behind, removing every essence, energy, residue, all objects, remnants of strongholds, and to fix and clean up anything that has been negatively influenced by any being who serves the kingdom of darkness whether intentionally or unknowingly.  I loose the fire of God to cleanse and purify every area of the soul that the kingdom of darkness has accessed or influenced, and I expand the light of the One True Lord Jesus Christ to those places of the soul, permanently extending the Kingdom of Light into those regions.  I decree that this work is finished and permanent in Jesus’ mighty name!

 

 

For those who are interested in learning more about this aspect of inner healing as a whole, you can pick up a copy of Broken To Whole, a book I coauthored that covers inner healing for the fragmented soul.  As I have developed this model after writing that book, it will not be in there, but in addition to other information, we do provide various exercises the individual can do to help jump-start their journey toward wholeness of the soul.  If you want some help in identifying and working with parts, as well as supporting the inner healing process, you might want to try Fragment Finder, a flower essence that helps resolve the buried emotional wounds which have caused the formation of soul splits or fragments.  For those who really want to dive into their healing journey, you can also buy the Broken To Whole Essence Kit, a package combination of five essence blends and a print copy of Broken To Whole.

Other good resources I recommend and use for Praying Medic’s book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps and Karol Truman’s book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, and for more complex spiritual issues, Dan Duval’s books Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth and Advanced Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth.

If this material interests you, be sure to check out the other related blog links below, and sign up for my email list to get updates when new books, products, and events are released!  Blessings upon you!

 

 

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.

 

Uprooting the Poisonous Tree—The Process and Value of Inner Healing

One of the big-ticket issues people have with inner healing as a Christian practice is the idea that Jesus never directly talked about inner healing, and the resulting argument is that we therefore shouldn’t need to do it. One of the problems with this idea is that the Bible does actually tell us that Jesus provides for inner healing. in places such as Isaiah 53:4 which says He bore our grief and sorrow, and Jesus himself quoted Isaiah 61 which directly refers to replacing joy for mourning and praise for heaviness/depression. Even if we ignore those plain references to healing emotional issues, Jesus did share farming and planting principles that we can apply directly to emotional issues and how they function within our soul. We are going to look at an example that aligns with what Jesus did teach, and see how the practice of inner healing can help our spiritual growth.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us, ” Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us . . . ” This passage tells us that we need to do two things, and in a specific order. The first is get rid of the things that hold us back, and the second is to run forward on the path that has already been marked out and predetermined for us. What holds us back? Primarily three things: bad mindsets and/or lies we believe, emotional wounds, and demonic influences and attachments. Obviously we change mindsets through mind-renewal (Romans 12:2) and we deal with demons by casting them out. For emotional wounds, however, we have to heal them. And to do that, it helps to understand how emotional wounds work, and how to get rid of them effectively and permanently.

Emotional wounds are a bit like planting a seed in a garden. The garden is the soil of our hearts, or in reality, they occur in the dimension of the soul, but let’s work with the gardening analogy. When we have negative emotions that we do not properly process and remove, whether through unforgiveness, fear, mindsets, demonic influence, or simply a magnitude of emotional pain, those negative emotions get trapped in our hearts and get planted in the garden there, acting like seeds. As we encounter new situations that are similar to those initial seed-events, the seeds get watered and grow. As we indulge our fears and ruminate on those negative things, we feed and water those seeds even more, eventually growing those seeds into poisonous fruit-bearing trees, what are essentially emotional strongholds in our hearts. Now, if we wanted to stop having bad fruit from all of those negative emotions, we could spend all our time cleaning up the garden of our soul and removing all of the bad fruit. And while doing this provides some measure of inner benefit, in the end it is somewhat futile if that is all one does.

Here’s why.

The fruit of an emotional problem is simply the result of ongoing care and maintenance of a poisonous tree. The poisonous tree makes all kinds of room for demons to roost in its branches and the fruit ensures that the problems continue to grow and spread gradually over time. If properly tended, the tree can exist literally forever. In order to actually deal​ with the problem, one has to start moving upstream from the fruit, back to the source of the problem. One might argue that chopping off the branches would stop the tree from growing fruit, but have you ever seen what happens when a tree loses its limbs? In many cases even if cut down, so long as the roots remain intact the tree will extend its roots further and the tree will grow new limbs over time. In other words, cutting down the tree still won’t solve the problem. The only real solution is to uproot it entirely.​

This is where inner healing comes in. Instead of spending a lifetime dealing with the problems downstream of the actual issue, emotional healing is generally designed to uproot the issues at their inception. By doing this, the individual will stop having emotional triggers each time a new event occurs that is similar in some way to the initial one, which means they stop watering and growing that initial plant. Now, what complicates this a little is that each new event is also an opportunity to plant new poison-trees as well, so it usually takes time and energy to properly deal with the emotional roots of problems. These issues rarely appear overnight and are often the result of years of problems and ongoing reinforcement, so it is uncommon for these things to clear up in a single prayer session.

This is where a major objection to inner healing work gets raised—that Jesus completed His work on the cross once for all, and yet inner healing ministers just want to spend years and years rehashing past events that are already supposed to be cut off through the cross. And if people stopped having emotional problems upon salvation, then that argument would hold merit. What we believe is is supposed​ to happen and what actually​ happens are two different things. While certainly a one-time fix is the goal of every inner healing minister, it is simply uncommon, and thus we work with what we have and develop ways to do things faster and better over time, with the one-time-fixes all prayer-goal in mind.

In the meantime, someone seeking to get healing for their emotional problems would do well to remember that if problems weren’t created in a day, then they may not get fixed in a single inner healing session. Furthermore, in the same way that plant roots can get tangled with one another, emotional issues are often tied in with one another. Rejection from a parent may also come with guilt and shame in some way, fear of further rejection, and more. And that guilt and shame can then be linked to multiple different things, and so on. Thus, inner healing is often non-linear, sometimes meandering in ways that appear random at first, but when led by the Holy Spirit produce wonderful results.

At the end of the day, the point of inner healing isn’t to focus on problems. Well, it is, but only just long enough to heal them and provide tools for further self-healing work that the individual can do on their own. In this, it fulfills the first part of Hebrews 12:1, throwing off the hindrances and stumbling blocks that keep someone from moving forward into all God has for them. Ignoring the stumbling blocks slows someone’s forward movement. Removing them speeds it up. While it is possible to get bogged down in constant focus on emotional problems, that is addressed by renewing the mind, another aspect of the inner transformation process, and not one we are focusing on in this article. All in all, Jesus’s teachings as well as His work on the cross are congruent with the practice of inner healing, and those who make use of it, whether through any one of the myriad of modalities, methods, or practices available or on one’s own, he or she will, if applied consistently over time, experience accelerated spiritual growth, greater inner freedom and peace, and likely will find themselves growing deeper in their relationship with God. All in all, quite worth it.

If you are looking for some resources on how to get started, try the following:

 

 

 

 

 

The Truth Sets Us Free

The Bible tells us that the truth will set us free, and I participated in a really great example of that the past two days. As a float pool nurse, I get moved around the hospital regularly, so I have taken to praying each morning for God to assign me to the location I need to be on that day—and He has been faithful to do so each day. While at work those days, I had the opportunity to speak into the lives of some of the other nurses on the floor, and the results were pretty awesome!

Both nurses in question were having relationship problems, although entirely different in nature. With the first, I was able to explain a bit about how the soul functions in three separate parts—the mind, will, and emotions—and how when our emotions are storming out of control we have to make some choices with our will and choose our thoughts in a cold, calculated manner regardless of our feelings, and that as we do that, we can help shift how we feel in a situation. I also began to declare over her that her relationship problem was going to resolve and all will be well. By the end of the day, her countenance had changed—as had her relationship! The keys I had already given her were working!

The second of the two problems was a little more difficult and while I was able to speak some encouragement and hope into the situation, I was glad I got assigned to the same floor the next day. In fact, I almost didn’t, and at literally the last second my assignment got switched (it was so last minute I literally arrived late to the correct floor for the day) to where I had worked the prior day.

Both the nurses were really happy to see me, and we began our shift as usual with the normal daily tasks and care. During a lull in the day I spoke with the second of the two nurses who shared a bit more of how things progressed with her relationship the prior evening after we spoke—and while it confirmed some of what I had been saying the day before, it still wasn’t good. I reminded her that while she felt like things were hopeless, that a promise from God in Jeremiah 29:11 told her that she has a hope and a future, and encouraged her to shift her perspective to expect that they have a future together and that things will improve.

God was already giving out His freedom-releasing truth, but it gets better! A key part of the problem with her relational issue was actually the same as the first nurse the day prior—emotions and beliefs. The guy she was having difficulty with has a lot of unhelpful beliefs that are causing him problems, and causing her pain. I gave her similar advice on how to manage her side of the situation, but then encouraged her to pray for him so he could find a way out of his struggles.

As we discussed this, I pointed out Hebrews 6:12 which ultimately points out that it is through both faith and​ patient that we inherit the promises of God. She wasn’t understanding why things hadn’t changed in just a week or two, and I was able to show her how we have to persevere in our prayer and PUSH—Pray Until Something Happens!

As we continued to talk on the second day, I pointed out that she had already turned from negative direction to positive, and now it was walking out the positive. She just had to remain patient. I reminded her that Galatians 6:9 tells us, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” In the end, we just have to keep persevering. God answers our prayers—just sometimes it is piecemeal and not all at once.

I explained the day prior about emotional healing and how it sometimes happens in chunks and layers, not 100% all at once. I shared my friend Praying Medic’s book Emotional Healing in 3 Easy Steps (which she used that night), and I encouraged her to keep going.

By the time we were done, she felt light. I could feel the lightness. It was freedom because truth had set her free. And it was going to set her man free. And bring freedom to her, to him, and to those around them! Yaay God!!

 

 

Emergency Preparedness is Highly Spiritual

In my teens I spent a good amount of time in the Boy Scouts, including two summers as a camp counselor at a Boy Scout Camp. There was a lot that I learned during that phase of my life having to do with the outdoors, swimming, first aid, and more, but one thing that always stuck with me was the motto “Be Prepared.” There are a variety of ways one can follow that ethos, from emergency preparedness to financial preparedness and more, but I want us to consider something that follows more closely with the subjects on this site: spiritual preparedness.

I realized years ago that in any given situation I cannot guarantee that anyone else​ will walk in the anointing, identity, and authority as a son or daughter of God to get the job done in whatever the current circumstance is. And while I think it is healthy to a degree to rely on others in the Body of Christ, situationally, that is not always possible or even wise. Thus, I decided that I must grow to become whatever I must become in any situation to solve Earth’s problems with Heaven’s power and grace.

While that may sound arrogant to some, I think it actually aligns pretty closely with the nature of our Heavenly Dad—the one who goes by the name “Jehovah Jireh” or “the God who Provides.” I had a Mormon patient share with me once that God’s name “Jehovah Jireh” actually is better translated as “I Will Become Whatever I Must Become [to meet the need].” If we consider that God is determined to become for us whatever we need in any given situation, is it really too much to consider that we, being made in His likeness, are to walk in the same nature as our Father?  And while one can make the argument that God will always provide in any situation, how did God provide for the famine in Egypt?  He sent Joseph a dream so he had seven years to prepare.  For Noah?  He gave him over 100 years to build an ark.  Sometimes, faith looks like doing something in advance.

[box] Sometimes, faith looks like doing something in advance.[/box]

Fasting is a great discipline, although difficult at times, but when tragedy strikes is really not the best time to begin fasting. In fact, I think it is far better to have lived a general lifestyle that includes fasting if for no other reason than to be prepared. Prayer is a great discipline, but is it really effective to begin developing that lifestyle once a problem hits? I suggest it is far better to have developed that discipline and have those lines of communication open prior to issues springing up. Walking in spiritual gifts, the anointing, power, authority, identity and more are all really good things​ for us to do. But is the time to begin doing those things really the moment when problems befall us and those around us, or is it wiser to be like the Wise Virgins in the parable Jesus told and be prepared for future situations?

I suspect we have entered an era where there is little time left to prepare for the things that are coming our way. There is tyranny in the air, many opportunities for intentionally-manufactured economic ruin for individuals, families, and even different regions of the world. Certain sicknesses have been unleashed on the world to intentionally create ill health and death, and the “cures” for those diseases may end up being just as deadly. The time to prepare for all of these things and the many more possibilities I have not named is not someday in the far off future. The best time to prepare is years ago, but the next best time​ to prepare is begin today.​

So what does this preparation look like? What options do we have? Let me give you some suggestions—some of them are things I already do, some are things I need to do more of myself, and this is a reminder to me to do the same as well! The suggestions below are not exhaustive, but they will get you started on the road to new levels of spiritual power, new levels of mental preparation, and new levels of walking in the authority and anointing that God prepared in advance for you to walk in, to release His love and power into this earth!

  • Get intentional about fasting and prayer. The book Reece Howells: Intercessor is a great encourager in this area.
  • Spend time engaging in impartation of spiritual gifts with others. To learn more about this subject, read my book The Power of Impartation and then put the principles into action.
  • Transform your beliefs to reflect the Abundant Life that Jesus purchased for us. Learn about God’s desire to heal every sick person and raise every dead person back to life in my book Faith To Raise The Dead, and begin to practice and engage the material in your daily life.
  • Get intentional about transforming and renewing your mind. A great resource to do this is Chris Blackeby on Youtube.
  • Build your faith for the miraculous provision of Heaven. My two books Gemstones From Heaven and Feathers From Heaven are good ways to encourage this. Ruth Ward Heflin’s Glory books are faith builders, as is the autobiography of George Muller.  There are many fantastic books out there—find them, read them, and let your faith and expectation grow!
  • Get inner healing and deliverance. An old classic is Derek Prince’s book They Shall Expel Demons—the principles and wisdom in that book are timeless. I have coauthored the book Broken to Whole which deals with how we engage healing the broken and fractured parts of our soul as a result of pain and trauma. There are many other fantastic books and resources out there, but however you do it, spend time with intentional inner healing and deliverance prayer whether with someone else or by yourself and release the pain in your heart to God. My friend Praying Medic has a really good book called Emotional Healing in 3 Easy Steps that takes a lot of knowledge and “how to” and compacts it into a simple little prayer that anyone can use in just a few minutes. I highly encourage this method.
  • Ask the Lord what other areas you need to prepare in, and ask Him to lead and guide you to the resources and methods and means with which to get ready.

What are some ways you prepare for things spiritually?

 

 

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