A Prophetic Warning at the Moldovan Border – Ukraine 2025

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”]
[et_pb_row admin_label=”row”]
[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]

Some of you have been following my journey on social media over the past few months as I raised funds for a mission trip with Overseas Missions to minister in Ukraine this past September.  Our initial plan was to help train a local church in how to operate in spiritual gifts, to visit and minister to refugees, and whatever other doors Holy Spirit opened up to us.  Our actual trip differed some from the original plan, as it always does, but I believe we accomplished much that God wanted us to and that we deposited things in that nation that will bear lasting fruit.  However, to begin doing any of that, we first had to actually get to Ukraine.  Because of the Russia-Ukraine war, no one can fly directly into the country, so our team had to meet up in Bucharest, Romania, rent two vans, and drive there.  So, we loaded up the vans, as one of the two drivers I accidentally forgot a team member at the hotel (it was only for a few minutes and I never made it out of the parking lot so it’s not as bad as it could have been), we loaded up the vans with all of the team members, and set out for Ukraine.
The drive through Romania was 3-4 hours long, and we were heading to a ferry that would take us across the Danube River and to the Ukranian border.  I forget the reason, but at one point Tyler, the leader and other driver, had me re-route our directions to avoid the ferry.  We had gotten split up, which didn’t really matter because we were going to the same place anyway, and in the end his van ended up at the ferry anyway.  My van, however, did not.  Not knowing they ended up on a different route at that point, I followed wherever the GPS took me, which landed me at the border of Romania and Moldova.  For a brief geography lesson, Moldova is completely surrounded by Romania on the west and south and by Ukraine on the north, east, and south.  Going through Moldova is one method of going to Ukraine.  Except we were going to Izmail, a city south of Moldova that is reachable by crossing into Ukraine directly.  None of which I knew at the time.  All I knew is that I was at the border of the wrong nation, and where I had stopped, it was too late to turn around.  Oops.
I forget if I called Tyler or if we messaged because I can’t find the message thread, but when he found out our van was at the border of Moldova his advice was basically “stay safe.”   Because what I didn’t know at the time was that in the weeks leading up to the trip, God had given a dream to a friend who wasn’t able to join us.  In that dream, God expressly instructed us to avoid the Moldovan border.  And because our initial route avoided Moldova entirely (in keeping with the divine instructions) and I had re-mapped a new route, Tyler forgot about it . . . right until I told him that we were at their border.  So now I’m not only at a border of a nation I didn’t intend to be at, but I discover after the fact that God had given us explicit instructions not to go that way. Double oops.
Now, this may sound like a horrible turn of events, but I actually found it pretty funny at the time, and I still do.  It is just so incredibly human of us to have God give us knowledge and instruction that surpasses human wisdom and yet for us to just bumble along and mess it all up anyway.  And because God is good and He loves us, He makes a way for us anyway.  So in spite of finding out that I had bungled things up quite nicely, I wasn’t worried.  In fact, right when I pulled up to the Moldovan border, God gave me a prophetic word in the form of the license plate in front of me to tell me what His plan was.  I forget the  whole plate, and the letters didn’t matter, but the plate had exactly three numbers, and they were 333.  Usually when I see three 3’s it is in reference to Jeremiah 33:3 which says, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”  In other words, even though I didn’t know the details of the situation up-front, God was reassuring me that He was going to tell me whatever I needed to know with wisdom that surpassed my existing knowledge.  And with that, I proceeded to drive forward into the border crossing.
Other than passports, one of the first things the border crossing guard asked me for was an International Drivers License (IDL)—which I did not have.  And had I been paying better attention the language of the Holy Spirit leading up to the trip I would have had one because my mom had actually mentioned it to me days before we left the USA.  But Tyler had done a bunch of research online and the general consensus was that no one ever asked for one, so he didn’t bother mentioning it or suggesting I get one.  Which again was funny because it was one of the first things they asked for at the border crossing I wasn’t supposed to be at.
Once the man found out that neither I nor anyone else in the van had one, he became rather agitated.  He kept saying things like “we are going to have to find you another driver.”  At which point in time I made the comment “If we don’t have the right license, I can simply turn around and not enter your nation, and that will solve that problem.”  Realistically, I could just backtrack, take the ferry the other van was going to use, and skip Moldova.  He didn’t like that answer because he replied, “Then you would still be driving in Romania without one.”  I didn’t understand why he said that at first, but the second time we replayed a similar conversation I realized what was going on.  European border crossings are a bit different than North American ones.  In North America the nation you are leaving generally doesn’t care that you are leaving.  The only nation who cares is the one you are attempting to enter.  This is not how Europe works, or at least the part of Europe we were in.  I wasn’t talking to a Moldovan.  I was talking to a Romanian border guard, who was getting more upset every time I suggested we turn around and keep driving through Romania without an IDL.  Oops again.
He ended up leaving us and checking on some cars behind us, at which point he instructed the driver of one of those cars to come up to our van and show me his IDL paperwork, which that man kindly did, and briefly explained a little to me about international driving laws and agreements between the US and other nations in that regard.  Shortly thereafter this Romanian border guard returned to the van, made some comment to me about me being in the military, that I had better have the correct paperwork on my return trip, then let us pass through.  Now we were heading to the Moldovan part of the border crossing to actually enter Moldova.  (I later discovered that the IDL is a powerful tool of bureaucracy that has exactly zero value for driving ability and it simply mimics a small portion of your license of your existing nation in multiple languages.  It can be acquired in under ten minutes online.  And as they’re basically just copying your existing license info from your home nation as the template for it, it is pointless. A lot of drama over nothing.)
That segment of the check-through was slightly easier because they didn’t ask me for an IDL, and while they didn’t speaking English, both the Moldovan border guard and I spoke Spanish, so we were able to talk with our mutual second-language to get us through the checkpoint.  During that time I also spoke to the man who had come up to the van earlier.  His name was John and and as we talked I found out he was in a position of significant responsibility over a US military garrison somewhere in Germany (It took me over a week to realize that a combination of John being present and me having my passport photo be of me in a camouflage shirt must have given that border guard the impression that I was military, because nothing about the passengers or contents of our van screamed “military”).  John was visiting Ukraine because his wife is Ukrainian and they had not been back in the country for a while.  He also explained that this border crossing was the worst one to use to enter Ukraine and that they always avoid it—but that they had to go this way because this was the only border anywhere close to where they were going that had a veterinarian there.  Because they had brought their dog with them on that trip they needed a vet to review their dog’s paperwork to have him be permitted through.    And this is where some of that wisdom-beyond-knowledge that God was going to provide us came in.  Before we left that checkpoint, John asked me if we had a “vignette”.  Having no idea what he was talking about, I said as much.  He explained that it was basically a toll or road tax that we were required to pay, and that Moldova would expect us to have it at the next border crossing.  Which at that moment, I discovered the next border crossing was only one kilometer away.  Yes, we were crossing at the very bottom tip of Moldova and were going to spend a single kilometer of distance in this nation.  On the other end of that short road was another Moldovan border crossing and then a Ukrainian one where we would get to do this process all over again.  Fortunately, because God placed John in our path, first so the Romanian would believe I was military, and second so we could buy this “vignette” (a 4-euro-equivalent road tax) before arriving at the next border, we were not held up extra at the border as a result.
I stopped at the gas station John recommended, bought the vignette, and then we went to the next border crossing just down the street.  Everyone in line was stopped at that one for almost two hours because a group of Orthodox and/or Hasidic Jews who were making some kind of pilgrimage had a bunch of drugs with them and it held up the line, but that gave me more time to talk to John and see if there was anything else we needed to know so we could cross borders without further hassle.  There wasn’t.  We did not see John or his wife again and made it through the rest of the border crossings without much additional hassle, but his presence at the first border and the insight he gave us into the whole vignette-acquiring process took care of the major issues we were facing at that border crossing, and eventually we were driving into Ukraine and heading to the Green Hall Hotel in Izmail where we stayed for the following week.
There are multiple potential takeaways from this story, such as “heed prophetic warnings,” but the one that stuck with me was to simply trust God to make a way when we need a path opened before us.  He told me up-front with the license plate message that He was going to tell me things I didn’t know, so I didn’t really see a reason to get into fear over the border crossing.  Was I at perfect peace the entire time?  No.  But was I amused and generally enjoying the adventure?  Yes.  Even while we were in the middle of it all, I recognized those were the kind of events that make for a good story and a great memory.  I decided to have fun with it all and just see what unfolded before us.  And as I did so, God came through with everything He said He was going to provide for us.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
[/et_pb_row]
[/et_pb_section]

When God Heard Sylvia’s Prayers

I want to share something that happened this morning.  I was at the grocery store doing the normal mundane things that you do in the grocery store— going up and down the aisles, getting food off shelves and putting them in my cart.  I don’t remember what I was doing the moment it happened, because I don’t think I was doing anything particularly exciting. I was probably trying to think of where in the store the next item on my list was.  As I pushed my cart down the main aisle of the store, I saw this woman to my front right.  She was older, probably in her late 60s or 70s, greyed hair with some streaks of color in it.  Right when I looked over and saw her, I had this thought run through my head—that she has a grandson, that she has been concerned about him, and that she needed to know her prayers mattered.  Now, after having this thought out of the blue, I did what almost everyone does—which is first wonder if that was my thought or the Holy Spirit, and then ponder it more as I continued with my shopping.  Did I stop and talk to her at that moment? Yeah . . . no.

However, I wasn’t wanting to entirely ignore the situation.  Part of engaging the prophetic is to not just receive revelation, but to interpret it and decide what action needs to be taken.  Some things just require prayer, others require speaking to others, and while this seemed like it more obviously fell into the latter category, I don’t honestly like randomly approaching strangers in situations like that because it’s uncomfortable.  So, as I continued my shopping, I did ask the Lord to have me run into her again during the course of my shopping if He wanted me to go talk to her.  Which I did just a few minutes later, when we were the only two people in an aisle, making it rather obvious to me that I was, indeed, supposed to go speak to her.  She was standing toward the far end of the aisle, so I walked past her to the end of the aisle, parked my cart, then turned back to speak with her.

Leading with my usual “Hey, I have a random question for you”, I then asked her if she had a grandson.  She confirmed that she does, at which point I proceeded to let her know the rest of what the Holy Spirit had shared with me— namely, that God knew she was worried about some kind of difficulty that was happening with her grandson and that He wanted her to know He was going to take care of the grandson and the situation.  The Lord didn’t tell me what the situation was, I didn’t ask, and I didn’t really feel like I needed to know— but she thanked me and let me know that she was indeed worried about him and that she needed to hear that.

I finished up with my shopping, I got in line to check out, then realized I forgot something I had meant to look for.  As I walked back through the store to find what  I was looking for, I ran into this woman again.  We made eye contact, I smiled at her, and she proceeded to tell me that she really needed to hear that message from God today and asked if she could give me a hug.  I’m a hugger, so I gladly accepted.  She told me her name was Sylvia, and asked me to keep her in prayer, and I continued to encourage her that her prayers matter, that the Lord knows what is going on, and that He is going to take care of things.

What I experienced in the grocery store is something called a Word of Knowledge. It is one of the nine spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12,  and it functions very much like how it did with Sylvia and I, where you suddenly know something that you could not otherwise have known.  The Word of Knowledge deals in the realm of facts and information, as juxtaposed with the Word of Wisdom which deals more with function and process—how to resolve a problem or execute a plan or anything along those lines.  While it can sometimes be helpful to know whether you receive a Word of Knowledge or a Word of Wisdom, both have a similar function in that they tell you something you didn’t know before that has some sort of application to the situation.

In this case, the Word of Knowledge gave me information about a situation— primarily that Sylvia had a grandson, that he had a problem, and that God already had plans to address the issue. In reality, this is one of the best kind of prophetic words you can give somebody because it doesn’t require action on anyone’s part.  All you have to do is deliver the message. There is no intercession needed, they don’t have to go and do something in response to the prophetic word, and it is largely to encourage that person and help him or her to continue to trust God as they walk out the outcome He has already planned.

Now, as I mentioned before, I didn’t need to know more about the situation, but let’s pretend I did.  Let’s pretend that either I needed or wanted to know more.  Sometimes more information can be helpful because you get a word that’s extremely vague. Sometimes it is just enough information that without more detail it is useless to actually solve any kind of problem.  Sometimes you are simply curious about what the Lord is talking to you about.  But whether any of these or for some other reason, you can always just ask the Lord to tell you more.  There is no limitation on either the gift of the Word of Knowledge or Wisdom or on our relationship with the Holy Spirit that forbid us from asking Him questions.  If we don’t know enough, we can just ask for more.  I think sometimes we build it up to be more complex than that in our minds, but it really isn’t.

In this instance, I received the Word of Knowledge through a prophetic gift, but it is possible to receive that same information just through our relationship with the Lord without a spiritual gift. In fact, I probably give people prophetic words and prophetic insight more often from a position of my relationship with the Lord than I do from a gift of prophecy or other prophetic gift. I know how to operate in most of the 1 Corinthians 12 gifts at will, and sometimes they work on their own without me initiating, but there are times when people ask for help and the gift remains silent when I turn to it to see what I can find out.  But when we have a relationship with the Lord, a gift is a tool, not a limitation. If that tool isn’t doing the job, I will just have a direct conversation with the One who causes the tool to function to begin with, the God of the Multiverse who has all knowledge and wisdom.  I say all of this so that we don’t get too hung up on an operation of the gift.  Gifts are useful, they are helpful, and I personally believe they are vital and necessary.  I think translating them as “gifts” in scripture has done a bit of a disservice in the way that much of the Western church views the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  These are divine empowerments that are designed to help us destroy works of darkness and establish the kingdom of God on the Earth as it already is in Heaven.  I have talked to many people over the years who see them as optional, a “take it or leave it” sort of thing.  And not only do I think they are badly mistaken with that mindset, but experience over time has demonstrated to me that as a result of a difference in our beliefs, mine is far more functional.  If a friend needs healing or to hear from the Lord, they’re going to come talk to those of us who can get the job done over any of the people who consider the gifts to be “optional.”  The Holy Spirit would not give us those gifts if we didn’t need them.

I can safely assume that Sylvia didn’t know she needed a Word of Knowledge for encouragement, but the Lord did.  I didn’t know the gift was going to operate when it did, but I have been intentional over the last two decades to cultivate that type of engagement in my life for precisely this type of situation, even if it makes me uncomfortable every single time.  I am used to it far more than I was in the past, but I still dislike going up to random people in situations like this, whether for prophecy or healing.  To me it’s the equivalent of cold-calling for sales, but with a Kingdom bent to it.  I know I have something they can benefit from, but I have to interrupt this person who is minding their own business to try to convince/show/demonstrate to them that they want what I’m handing out.  And I’m not certain that feeling of discomfort ever truly goes away, but with experience does come a level of confidence or at least familiarity with this type of situation.  So while I don’t prefer that kind of interaction, I’ll still generally do it.  And, to be fair, from the other side of things, I think I would be thrilled if I was walking through the grocery store and some stranger began to prophecy over me something that the Lord knew was weighing heavily on my heart.  I would feel seen, and I would feel loved.  And when we go through difficult situations, sometimes that’s all we need to be able to keep going and to see the conclusion of the situation.  And if I would ever wish to be on the receiving end of that, it only makes sense that someone else has to step out of their comfort zone for that to happen, so by the same token it might as well be me and it might as well be right now.

When God heard Sylvia’s prayers, he sent a son who operates in divine revelatory empowerments to encourage her and to help her have the strength she needs to get through this problem and to help see her grandson through it as well.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that God cares about things in our lives more even than we do.  There is no situation that is too small for Him to deal with, and it is never a waste of His time.

Normally, I like to close an article like this with resources to help you grow in the subject area I was talking about, but I don’t have any great resources to recommend you on how to grow in the Word of Knowledge.  For me, it is an ongoing process of trial and error, hearing the Lord, learning to trust that I accurately heard what He spoke to me, and then taking a risk and seeing what happens, but I will share one last tip you may find helpful.  The reason I began by asking Sylvia if she had a grandson is because that is a quick test to find out if I heard correctly or not.  If she doesn’t have a grandson, then the rest of the word would not make any sense and therefore I probably heard incorrectly.  At that point I would apologize for interrupting the individual and move on with my day.  But because she confirmed that she did have a grandson, it also helped give me confidence to deliver the rest of the Word of Knowledge the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart.

The spiritual life we live isn’t always spooky.  In fact, I think its rarely is.  I remember Prophet Larry Randolph saying once at a conference that “in the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.”  Sometimes we don’t have to go looking for spiritual experiences, we just need to have a heart that is open to the Lord and we need to cultivate a habit of obedience so that when He tells us things we actually do something with it.  If you want to experience the gift of the Word of Knowledge, or want to grow in it, I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to bestow  that gift upon you and to teach you how to use it. And who knows? Maybe someday soon you’ll be walking through a grocery store and the Holy Spirit will speak something to you that changes somebody’s day, or maybe even changes their whole life!

 

Specialization in the Kingdom

In the past 20+ years, I have been part of the charismatic movement and beyond, I have learned a decent bit about dream interpretation, and have practiced it enough on my dreams and those of others that I consider myself to be decent at dream interpretation. I have friends who I definitely would consider experts, but most of the time I think there is value in trying to work out a dream on your own with the Holy Spirit. If nothing else, as we work out and practice interpretation of our own dreams, I believe it can help give us clearer insight into some of the ways that God communicates with us on a day-to-day basis outside of the dream realm.  However, I want to take some time explaining how I manage dreams and dream interpretation to look at something a bit more expansive—how we specialize in skills and abilities in the Kingdom of God.

As I said above, I’m decent at dream interpretation.  However, when I have a dream that truly stumps me, I will reach out to one of my expert friends.  But then, because I’m pretty sure they get inundated with dream requests from other people, I try to not just pick and choose when I ask them, but I also like to vary who I ask so I am not always putting it out to the same person.

Well, I had a confusing dream the other day.  The basic concept of the dream wasn’t all that complex, but how the symbology fit with my life, and the significance of a few of the key symbols in the dream were still somewhat confusing to me.  So I reached out to a friend.  And like I said, I took a minute to decide who to ask first before I just randomly asked someone, and it just felt like this particular friend was the best person to ask. So I did. And she agreed to take a look at it and get back to me.

A day or so later, she wrote me and asked me a question related to my ancestral background and inner healing and deliverance.  I was intrigued, because I had no idea how she derived that from the dream.  It turns out that in-between the time I sent her the dream and a day or so later when she read it, she and her husband had watched a documentary.  In that documentary it included some of the same symbols that were in my dream—except this was a documentary about Irish folklore, not dream interpretation.  What it appears happened is that when I was stumped on the dream and was pondering who to consult, the Holy Spirit nudged me toward the one person that He knew he was about to give an interpretation to.  Now this is an interesting story, but what does this have anything to do with you, the reader, and what does this have to do with Kingdom specialization?

This makes me think of the book of Daniel, where we see that Daniel was given skill in the interpreting of dreams by the Lord. But he was surrounded by people who also interpreted dreams.  Daniel’s skill wasn’t made irrelevant as a result of other people also possessing similar skills, but he definitely had more skill and a level of divine gifting that set him apart.  However, Daniel was also not everywhere all at once, so I imagine that the interpretive abilities of everyone else also had their relevance.  I think these details are important because there are a few things we can derive from this on a broad level for spiritual life.

The first thing is that being surrounded by others with similar specialization or experience does not make you or your abilities irrelevant, nor does it put you in competition with one another.  As a nurse, I literally work with a dozen other nurses on a daily basis.  My nursing knowledge and skills are not made invalid as a result of other nurses being present, nor does it mean we are competing to see who can “do it better,” but rather we can pull on each other’s areas of more narrow focus or ability as needs arise.  I’m not terrible at placing IVs, but I’m also not the expert on our unit.  However, if you need wound care done and aren’t sure what to do, calling me for help might be a good idea.  Even with my example of dream interpretation, whether mine or Daniel the prophet, having others in your specialty area isn’t a bad thing, nor does it mean the area is oversaturated.  We aren’t in competition with one another in the Kingdom—we lift each other up.

Second, Daniel wasn’t the expert at everything.  He still needed other people to do whatever it was they did, and he still needed to primarily hit his areas of expertise.  In other words, Daniel’s specializations were just that—areas of focus.  It didn’t mean he was never permitted to venture outside of that lane, but Daniel knew where his lane was and for the most part he remained in it.  One of the things I think that Kingdom maturity looks like is people staying in their own lane to a certain situational degree.

I have a minister friend who is more than happy to speak to his areas of specialty, but when someone asks him for advice or his opinions on things he is not considered an authority on, he has no qualms about telling them he either doesn’t have an answer or doesn’t consider himself qualified enough to give a good answer to that matter, and moves on.  This is actually a very reasonable response, and is a mature approach to something we see with specialization, which is what is known as situational authority.  If we are at a Body Shop dealing with car problems, no one cares about my knowledge or input.  Why?  Because I know little about vehicles and next to nothing about how to fix them.  If someone suddenly starts having medical problems in that Body Shop they’ll want my help, but otherwise the best thing I can do is sit silently in a chair and let the experts do their job.  Maturity knows when to step in and when to sit down.

Whether talking about Daniel being gifted with dream interpretation who sounds like he became exceedingly good at a rapid pace due to his giftings, or me who may have some measure of gifting but also who learned through experience over time, I think there is additional wisdom we can glean from all of this.  In your average dream-interpretation situation neither Daniel or I would need to rely on someone else for the answer. While I don’t consider myself to be on Daniel’s level, when things get high-level though (such as needing to tell someone both the contents of the dream they had and its interpretation), even Daniel needed to take extra time to seek the Lord for help.  I think there is an element of this type of maturity that we need to expect ourselves to walk in in the body of Christ—where we know when we can dive in and resolve something as Sons in the Kingdom and when to get outside help.

On a general level, wherever I go there should be a solution because I am present.  If someone needs healing, I’m there so you get healed. If somebody needs inner healing and deliverance, I’m there so you get set free. Whether it’s raising the dead, dream interpretation, or anything else, I believe that we as individual believers should be well rounded enough that we are generally able to handle circumstances as they come across our path, whether they are our problem or the problems of those around us.  And if for some reason, you are not walking at that level yet, that’s okay. We all have areas in room for growth, this is not condemnation to anyone who doesn’t feel like they have arrived yet. We are all on a journey, technically there is no point of arrival. But there is gradually increasing in maturity, and that needs to be a focus of ours.  The term “jack of all trades master of none” is something that should apply to most believers, with the exception that I think it should say “master of few”.  There is an element of general ability across the board that I believe each of us should possess, and to the extent that we don’t, we should be intentional about learning and growing in those areas.  And yet, there is another side of things—what I mentioned before about staying in one’s lane.  We should possess general ability, but also be able to recognize specialization.

Ephesians 4 is clear that Jesus gave SOME to the apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.  In Romans 12, we see another list where it lays out workers of miracles.  It doesn’t mean that only a special few are permitted to perform miracles, but that there is a specialization where some people are more capable at it than others.  This means that not everyone specializes in each of those things—nor should they. If we want to function as a healthy Body of Christ, then we need to understand both generalization and specialization, and operate to a healthy capacity in both.  For me, I made a decision many years ago that I need to walk in enough Kingdom power and authority that regardless of the problem and whether anyone else is present who can manifest the Kingdom in an instant, that if I am present that it will be enough.  I have by no means fully apprehended that place, but it is something that does drive me to grow in all things Kingdom.  This doesn’t negate the need for specialization, as I definitely specialize in areas of healing, whether body or soul, and things prophetic, whether revelatory or interpretive.  I still have much room to grow in all of those areas, but it means that I know where I specialize which means I also can be aware of when I need to step up because my skills are best put to use versus when I should step aside and let someone else do their thing.

The good news is that whether in generalization or specialization, Kingdom advancement is Kingdom advancement.  My encouragement to anyone who is moving forward is to keep doing so.  If someone isn’t sure how to advance, areas of weakness you can shore up, or how to best learn and grow, I encourage you to take some time and ask the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, counsel and guidance, to show you a path forward.  If you want to learn and grow in specific areas, then find those who are already blazing a path forward in those areas and read their books, listen to their teachings and podcasts, etc.  This site is a great resource for inner healing, deliverance, physical healing, and engaging in the spirit, with hundreds of free articles that also cover things such as faith, miracles, and engaging angels.  You can also check out my books on Amazon that cover a range of miracles, raising the dead, theology for life, traveling in the spirit, inner healing, impartation, and more.  Be well, be blessed, and advance the Kingdom!

 

 

Jesus, Our Conquering King

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

1) what burdens God is giving you and

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun

WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace

Transformations Community – Adena Hodges

Risen Light Works – Danielle

Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

 

 

Grace Over Formula

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Deepening Trust in God by Hearing His Voice

I was out running errands last week with Bruce my perpetual wingman (He’s my yellow lab/some-kind-of-shepherd dog that God gave me this past year—I’ll write about him sometime soon) which caused me to drive an hour across Austin to pick up some weight plates for weightlifting.  I started getting back into more intentional exercise just under two years ago, mainly running and calisthenic workouts, but more recently started including weights as well.  One of the few nice things about being in a city is that you can easily find people selling used items for great prices, and I was able to pick up weights that would have cost hundreds of dollars elsewhere.  But I digress.  In the middle of all of that, I was getting ready to head back home and had thought I was coming up on a good place to stop and let Bruce out to walk around a little bit before we drove the hour home, but I was wrong.  I was talking to the Lord about this and He spoke to my heart or mind or inside my head or however one wants to word that, to take the next left.  And this is where the dialogue began and He began to speak to me about deepening my trust in Him by hearing His voice.

 

My guess is that many of us have been here at various points in time.  God is talking to us, we aren’t sure if we are hearing Him or something else, and we’re struggling to trust that it’s actually God.  I’ve been in charismatic-and-beyond circles for about 22 years now, and while at first it was a huge struggle to know if I was hearing God or my own thoughts or whatever else, 22 years later it is definitely less of a struggle, but it isn’t challenge-free.  To complicate things further, what I didn’t know when I began hearing His voice but have discovered since then is that in addition to God, angels, and demons, fragmented parts of our own souls can speak to us much like how we hear God, which makes discerning who and what voice we are hearing all the more important (for more info, check out my coauthored book Broken to Whole, in print and newly released on audiobook this past week!)

 

Anyway, since the Lord (or at least what I thought was Him) was telling me to take the next left and I would find a good place to stop and take Bruce for a walk, I was looking for left-hand-turns.  I was a bit outside of the city in the hill country at this point, so drove for a good minute and still didn’t pass a left turn.  I did, however, see a great place over to my right and began to talk to Him about that.  That was when He asked me the question “Why do you struggle to trust me so much?”

 

It’s a great question.  And I don’t entirely know. I mean, if we think about it, God is the only person in the cosmos who is truly worthy of 100% of our trust.  He’s literally the only one who never fails us, never disappoints us, never lets us down, never ditches us, and never does us wrong.  Now, some reading this may be saying “That’s not true, God has let me down plenty of times.” I would strongly suggest that He hasn’t—you simply think He has because of a lack of understanding about who God is, how He works, and the rules He put into place that govern the cosmos.  The Bible says in Hosea 4:6, “My people perish for lack of knowledge” for a reason, and sometimes what we don’t know can and does hurt us.  God has never failed us—but we have failed ourselves with unrealistic expectations, assuming things He never said, expecting God do to things or work in specific ways He didn’t tell us He was going to do, attributed failures and disobedience of other people as being God’s fault, and more.

 

And in truth, that right there is probably the answer to why I struggle to trust God—not because He is actually unworthy of my trust because again, He is the only one fully worth of it in every circumstance, but because of things I believe about how worthy He is or is not.  In other words, I need to take some time with Him and ask Him to reveal the hidden places in my heart where I received pain as a result of my own misunderstandings and all of the parts of me carrying that hidden pain and doubt.

 

As it turned out, the really great place to my right actually was a terrible place to stop.  You see, it really did look fantastic at first, but it’s almost like God knew something I didn’t and was wanting me to trust Him with a simple instruction so He could prove to me that He is trustworthy.  What I didn’t know because I couldn’t see around the next bend until I drove it, was that this “great place” was just inside a gated area that I absolutely would not have access to.  Well, clearly that wasn’t it, so I kept driving and kept looking for a driveway or pull-off to my left.  I went up and down a few more hills and was coming up on an intersection, at which point I was starting to wonder if I was going to end up driving on some wild goose chase with directions I was making up for myself down random roads in opposite directions from where I was wanting to go.  No, as it turns out, just before the intersection there was another turn into a hotel parking lot.

 

Still not sure what was going to happen, I recognized that this was a fairly low-risk proposition to begin with.  If I was wrong, then all I had to do was turn around and get back on the road.  But if I was right and what God said was true, then maybe it would be a good place to let Bruce out for a bit.

 

It was a GREAT place!  (The featured image is another picture I took of the place).  You see, behind the hotel was this dog-walking path they had created for exactly that purpose.  It even had a trashcan at the entrance to the path stocked with little doggie-sized bags for cleaning up after your pet.  We spent about ten minutes there on this really short path.  He sniffed just about everything in sight, marked half of what was visible (I swear dogs have an extra bladder in their body somewhere they just store up for special occasions like this), and had a good time.  Then, we got back in my truck and drove home.

 

It was an interesting learning opportunity for me.  This was a really simple opportunity for God to show me that deep down I obviously have mistrust and distrust of Him that I really need to address.  And because He is kind and good, He took a simple opportunity to reveal that to me while also helping me take good care of Bruce.  And God is pretty cool like that—He cares about Bruce more than I do, and He knows that helping me take care of the little man is also a way He can show me love too—all while revealing some hidden things in my heart too.

 

I encourage anyone reading this to take a moment and ask God to begin to reveal things in your heart that He wants to bring attention to.  As He does this, take some time and ask Him some questions about the “why” and “how” behind it—why is that issue there, how did it get there, and how do you need to address it to fix it?  And if you’re new to hearing God’s voice and aren’t sure how to, I recommend you pick up a copy of my friend Praying Medic’s book “Hearing God’s Voice Made Simple” or Ivan Roman’s book “The Heart of the Prophetic”.  You can also get a copy of “God Speaks”, an anthology by Praying Medic that I contributed to which shares a wide range of perspectives and experiences on hearing God.  I am also including a few links below to other articles I have written on this subject that you will likely find helpful.

 

Four Simple Steps To Hear From God

How To See In The Spirit On Purpose

Numbers, Riddles, and Hearing God’s Voice

Wisdom For Growing In The Prophetic

Interpreting Prophetic Revelation: Oven Encounters

 

 

“There Will Be War in 2024”

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



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

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



Impending War is Obvious

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

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

What We Govern, We Get

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Will No Longer Be War Anymore

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

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



Impending War is Obvious

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

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

What We Govern, We Get

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living out the “As We Go” Mission

My checked bag had gotten misplaced on the trip home from Peru, somewhere in-between Iquitos and Los Angeles—so when I arrived in Austin I filed a claim for lost luggage, then went home. The next evening I got a message telling me that not only had it arrived in Austin just a short time ago, but that someone was driving the almost-hour to my house to deliver it to me!

I live on a highway in the country, but during the night it is very hard to find—partly because you can’t even see my house from the road and partly because the speed limit is 60mph so unless you know where to stop, you’re probably going to miss it in the dark.  Knowing this, and wanting to actually get my luggage back, I drove to the end of the lane, parked just inside the gate, then walked to the road so the delivery driver could see me.

I had gotten a series of texts that included a literal GPS tracker so I could reload the page and see in real-time where the driver was.  Technology is a bit over-the-top these days, to be honest, but in this case it made things a little easier.  Traffic was minimal at 10-something at night so I saw the driver slow-roll past my lane and then put his hazards on and stop.  He was clearly trying to figure out where to turn, but he spun around, saw me, and pulled in.  According to the app the driver’s name was Wasiu, and he was a pleasant man, who greeted me by saying “God bless you” for making it easier for him to find the place.  We briefly spoke as he returned my bag from the airline, and then I began to walk back to the gate to get in my van and drive back to the house.

As he was about to pull away and my back was turned to him, the Holy Spirit spoke a word to my heart so I quickly turned around and ran to Wasiu’s car to stop him before he drove off.  What I said to him was a single sentence, a very simple message the Holy Spirit had dropped into my spirit moments before.  All I said was:

“God wants you to know He has heard your prayers and He is going to answer them.”

He had started to drive off but he stopped the car, parked it, and got out, then shook my hand, thanking me profusely for telling him that.  I have no idea what he had been praying for and I didn’t ask, but it was clearly very important to him and the prophetic word landed where it needed to.

Sometimes I think we expect that ministry needs to look super-special in some way.  In fact, that moment of delivering a timely word was as much “ministry” as the almost 2-week Peru Overseas Missions trip I had just arrived home from the day prior.  We can clearly point to mission trips and church services and outreach events as “ministry” but the fact is that “ministry” doesn’t always have to look spooky or special.  Sometimes it looks like sharing a timely word to your lost-baggage delivery driver at 10:00 at night as he is about to leave.  The “as we go” command of Mark 16:15 really is about “as we go.”  I’m not saying we can’t have times of intentional ministry because those are important too, but we must make sure that our ministry times aren’t only the times we specifically set aside to do it.  “As we go” is a lifestyle choice, and everyone can (and should) do it.  We are Sons and Daughters wherever we go, and Kingdom authority is present within us everywhere we are, which means that “as we go”, so goes the Kingdom.  Our job is to help “your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but it won’t happen by accident—so let’s go!

Recent Posts

Privacy Preference Center

Consent Management