Stewarding The Prophetic Gift

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Years ago, when I was first introduced to the Charismatic Renewal and the prophetic as a whole, I lived in State College, Pennsylvania. I don’t recall when or where, but I met a woman who was highly prophetic, and gave her a ride to our church a few times. She was very friendly and outgoing, and told me about all these very specific prophecies over her life. It all sounded very exciting, and there was definitely supernatural activity surrounding her life, but I would be surprised if many of them came to pass, and for one reason: She wasn’t very good at stewarding the prophetic gift.

Prophecies as a whole are usually conditional. Most of the time they are an invitation to encounter and engage God in various areas of our lives. I have heard it say that if someone receives a prophetic word from different people more than three times it is a “done deal” and is guaranteed to happen, but I can’t say for sure whether that is true or not. Nevertheless, most prophecies are meant to help draw us into God’s plans for our lives, not encourage us to sit on our laurels and wait for God to dump the prophesied future upon us. And this is where this woman went wrong—she didn’t do the things she needed to do to walk them out.

Let me give you an example: she once had a dream where angels were lined up in a row holding number cards, much like the judges in the Olympics hold to score events. She understood in the dream that this series of numbers were lottery numbers. So what did she do? She called me and left a voice message that said “I had this dream two nights ago and didn’t buy a ticket yesterday, and those were the lottery numbers. Pray and release the angels to do it again today!”

Umm, no. You had the dream two nights ago and watched as those exact numbers become the actual lottery numbers yesterday night, and instead of recognizing that you didn’t follow through on God’s instructions, you are just hoping to have someone else agree with you in prayer and have those exact same numbers come up again tonight. Sure, God is able to do it, but it isn’t going to happen. That’s what we call a window of opportunity, and even though I was fairly young in the prophetic, even I could tell that she had missed it. I confess I was also disappointed she hadn’t called me a day sooner, because I would most definitely have bought a ticket. . .

She isn’t the only one I have ever heard having something similar happen. When I was a kid, my parents had some friends who had a similar encounter, and I still remember this story over 25 years later. The Lord spoke to one of them and gave them a lottery number to play. They didn’t buy a ticket, and unsurprisingly, they didn’t win. Their takeaway? You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. Simple, right? While I am not specifically advocating for or against the lottery, if the Lord gives you an instruction, especially if it isn’t going to hurt anyone, then just do it! In both of these cases, the risk of buying a single ticket is so minimal that even if you heard wrong and failed, you aren’t out more than the price of a cup of specialty coffee. Furthermore, what if you took that small risk and did hear correctly? Consider the potential future impact that would have had on not only your life, but the lives of those around you.

If we are interested in stewarding the prophetic gift, we have to step out and take risks now and again. If we want to see God move, then we have to walk out the things He has told us and put action to our beliefs. When I talk about “doing things to walk it out”, some people say “Jesus did it all, so we just need to rest in the victory.” Yes, the Bible does talk about entering into God’s rest, but that doesn’t mean we sit around all the time and do literally nothing. Jesus, of all people, knew how to rest in the Father, but the Bible tells us that He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38). Sure, we need to live in God’s rest, but if God gives us specific instructions, it would be prudent to do what we see our Heavenly Father doing (John 5:19).

I have heard people tell me these amazing prophetic words they have received that speak of them having huge businesses or big ministries far larger than most around today. And when I ask them what they are doing to walk it out, they give me a funny look. “I’m just waiting on the Lord.”

That’s not how this usually works.

In all honesty, God is probably waiting on you. Yes, there are times where God will give someone specific instructions about remaining in rest or some such thing, but I think that is often more about a heart posture as we walk things out than it is about doing literally nothing. I can’t tell you the number of meaningful words I have received from high-profile people, because it seems to happen to me a lot, but I don’t just sit there and wait for them to come to pass. I look at how I can walk them out practically.

Just this past week my wife and I were called out in a service with a very detailed and specific word of knowledge. With that came a very detailed and specific prophetic word that covered a series of things, one of them being that God had a bigger house for us. Not a new house, although it would be new to us, but specifically a bigger house. This prophet didn’t know that my wife and I have been working on getting our house ready to sell and are looking to buy a bigger house. We had some things that held us up, and more recently have just held off on listing the property. After we received this prophecy, we contacted our realtor and signed paperwork the next day to put it on the market. That’s what’s known as “responding in faith.”

At some point it doesn’t matter what it is that God says. If we want to steward the prophetic gift, or any prophetic word we receive as a whole, it will require obedience, and that obedience usually requires some sort of action. Unlike how the woman in the first story seemed to think, when God gives us instructions there are often timetables associated with them. At times we don’t know the timetable, but with something like her dream, it was pretty clear, and she failed to do one simple thing which would have had massive ripple effects in her life. We already felt the Lord leading us to get a new property, but had stalled out. When we received instructions from God, the only thing left to do was act on them.

If you have received prophetic words that still have not come to pass, I encourage you to spend some time talking to God about them. What are some practical steps you can take to walk them out? How can you partner with God to move them forward? Stewarding the prophetic gift isn’t, in my opinion, just about how to prophesy over others, but also how to walk out the words we have received. After all, if we are faithful with little, the Bible does say that we will receive more (Matthew 25:23, Luke 16:10).

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A Sinister Undercurrent In Disney

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I have never been to Disneyland or Disney World, and as amusement parks, they are probably very fun. Some of the shows on the Disney Channel are far more wholesome than most adult shows. And most kids enjoy at least some of the Disney Empire of movies. Nevertheless, I have recently become aware of a nefarious and even occult undercurrent with the company. Yes, I’m talking about the Magic Kingdom, Mickey Mouse, the Disney Princesses, and all of the rest of it, and more specifically in their movies. It is very hard to pinpoint, but there is some type of occult and/or satanic influence behind Disney. I’m not saying that everyone who works for Disney is evil, nor that the Board are satanists, and it is admittedly difficult to pinpoint the exact nature of the problem. However, it has become apparent to me the past few weeks through a series of synchronous encounters the Lord brought across my path that there is indeed a sinister undercurrent in Disney.

In my own inner healing journey, I have shared a good bit on blog posts about working with fragments and alters. I can’t explain everything here, but you can read a series of blogs on inner healing here that should catch you up a bit. I haven’t shared many details of my own inner healing sessions, but I discovered recently that the word Disney itself was a significant trigger to my inner system. In the process of unraveling the trigger, we located a part named Lacy Susan who kept talking about Maleficent, the witch from Sleeping Beauty. This part was very scared and kept saying “She cast a spell on me.” That is strange enough in and of itself, but it made me start wondering. Was there some member of the Disney crew who, in production, added some spell to the movie? I don’t know, but my one granddaughter is terrified beyond reason of Maleficent, and I will have to do some inner healing with her on the subject fairly soon.

The very next day, a friend, who is also a survivor of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and who knew nothing about my inner healing encounter, messaged me about a dream she had that was filled with Disney references. Not only was this dream filled with Disney characters and references, the entire dream was actually someone trying in real life to access and regain control over one of the parts in her system. In talking with this friend more, she has identified this same sinister undercurrent in Disney and its involvement in her ritual abuse. As part of her own inner healing journey she avoids all things Disney, and wisely so.

The day after that, my wife and I were talking with a friend and mentioned our growing suspicion about spiritual problems with Disney. She informed us that as a kid she really liked The Little Mermaid, but that ever since, even in adulthood, she is somewhat plagued by the songs from that movie, as they randomly pop into her mind throughout the week . . . almost every week. I led her in a short prayer of renunciation and she could feel something shifting inside her as she prayed.

I pondered all of this, as anytime a subject like this keeps coming up in a short period of time, it’s something God wants me to take note up. I thought some more, and realized that in the movie Cinderella, the fairy godmother teaches the listener a set of spell words—an incantation. Wanting to test my theory, I prayed to renounce the words she said in the song: “Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo”. I immediately felt something shift inside me in the spirit. I had a family member (who is of similar age and watched the same movie as a kid) test this for me as well. I called up a super-prophetic part of hers, had this part pray the same prayer of renunciation, then asked her to tell me what happened inside her system. She told me she also could see something lifting off of her in the spirit.

The difficulty with some prophetic revelation is that it’s not always clear. For example, I don’t know if it is specifically the movies, something about the movie characters, or something else about Disney entirely. I’m not sure if the characters are putting spells on people, if the issue is subliminal messaging (there are a bunch of subliminal images and hidden auditory soundtrack in older Disney movies), or some combination thereof. It could be that there is something spiritual tied to the movies which is why the issue is so vague. At some point in time, even if I don’t have all the answers, I’m simply not going to do Disney anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly fawning all over the company to begin with, but if their products are that much of a spiritual problem, I am more than happy to do without. And realistically, I encourage you to do the same.

While yes, it does open the door to some pretty frustrating questions such as “If Disney is bad, what is okay for the kids?”. Honestly, I really don’t know anymore. I’ve heard stories from reputable sources about Cabbage Patch Kids causing serious demonization of children, as well as Pokemon being based on actual demons and their attacks based on how demons actually influence on people. The truth is that it easy to create spiritual problems and/or add demonic undertones in entertainment, especially children’s entertainment, and the reality is that there is an express goal by certain parties to do exactly that. In the same way that SRA is far more widespread than anyone realizes, occult influence in Western Culture is also far more pervasive than many realize. Frustrating? Sure. Nevertheless, it seems prudent to me to walk wisely and limit areas in my life (and my family’s lives) that give easy access to the enemy.

Have you noticed anything similar about Disney or other entertainment, whether for kids, adults, or the whole family? What has God been showing you about the subject?

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The Two Basic Steps to Understanding Our Dreams

Dreams are one of those things that “everybody” has. Now, some of you reading this might say “I don’t dream”. Scientifically speaking, everyone enters REM sleep and dreams, but many people don’t remember their dreams. Regardless of whether one remembers or not, God speaks to all of us in our dreams. They are usually about us and our lives, and can be warnings, instruction, informative or revelatory, reflection, and more, and not all dreams come from God. Certain medications can influence our dreams, as can demonic powers and the prayers of other people, whether blessings curses. Some people dream in color, while others dream in black and white. Many times people have short dreams while others have long and detailed dreams with multiple parts or acts to them. While types of dreams clearly vary, what we are going to look at today is the two basic steps to understanding our dreams.

Dreams accomplish many different things, as shared above, but a key comes out of Job 33:15-18. It says:

“For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword.”

While the verse focuses on warnings, the key I want to focus on is that God speaks to us in dreams to guide us. If we understand that God communicates with us regularly when we are asleep, we can glean Heaven’s wisdom for our lives here and now even when we aren’t spending time in prayer and listening to the Lord for instruction. For example, I recently had a dream where a friend was telling me about a project he was working on. In real life he isn’t currently, to the best of my knowledge, actually working on the aspect of this project we discussed in my dream, but it touches on some things he is already doing, and this dream seems to provide him with insight on a direction God wants to take the project in the future. While most dreams are about the dreamer, this dream was about him, not me, (evident by the content of the conversation) and provided divine guidance for the future.

Dreams offer prophetic guidance for us in our daily lives, but we can’t take advantage of that guidance if we don’t do two things: write them down and interpret them. The reason we have to write them down is that for whatever reason, dreams can be easy to forget. Sometimes I will wake up in the morning with a dream that was so vivid I am convinced I will remember it later. . . only to forget the entire dream. The worst part is that I know that if I had written the dream down then (or recorded myself speaking the details), I would have it, but because I waited, it is lost. I had this happen last week. I had two dreams, and both of them seemed significant to me. I was sure that I would remember them, so didn’t write them down. I promptly forgot the one, and then because I’m so awesome, I even waited a week to write down the second dream, losing a number of details on that one as well.

I’ll be honest, it’s actually quite difficult to interpret dreams I have completely forgotten, so my best advice is to make sure to record your dreams in some way very soon after you wake up. Some people use their phone to record, some people keep a journal right at their bedside. I usually use the notepad function on my phone to write down the date and a summary and any relevant notes about the dream and flesh out the details later. It works fairly well for me. Then, I eventually put them all into a single Word document by date. If I ever want to look up keywords, I can just use the find function and search for any keywords from as far back as the journal goes.

Interpreting dreams is the second step to getting useful information from them. What is so difficult is that they are frequently hard to interpret. My dreams are often long and detailed, and while individual items in a dream usually hold meaning, it is possible to get what a friend calls “analysis paralysis”, where I get tied up in the details such that it becomes hard to see the bigger picture. I usually have to write down the dream, then write down a much shorter summary of the dream, cutting out as many minor details as possible. Once I get a general overview of the dream, I can often figure out what it is about. Once I understand the overall subject of the dream, then I can flesh out the details once more. This doesn’t always work for me, but it is one of the two things I do to interpret my dreams. The other thing I do is ask Holy Spirit.

The Bible says in Ephesians 2 that He is the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. Isaiah 11 says He is the Spirit of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge. The Holy Spirit knows everything we need to help interpret our dreams, so asking Him for help is a good idea. Sometimes He will give me one or two piece of the puzzle that helps me put things together and figure it out. On rare occasion, He will explain the whole dream to me. Other times I don’t really get any understanding at all, so if I don’t feel that those dreams are poignant or significant, I just don’t worry about it. On occasion, I will ask a friend for help, as sometimes it is easier to interpret other people’s dreams than our own, but I try to keep that to a minimum as we all have dreams and it’s not someone else’s job to interpret mine.

Dreams as a whole are rarely as clear and obvious as the one I had about my friend and his project. They usually have a lot of imagery and symbolism that clouds our understanding, so we have to bust out our best codebreaker abilities and figure it out. Sometimes God will use a play on words to show us something. Once I dreamed about raising the dead on a train. In praying about the meaning, the Holy Spirit showed me that the train represented training—providing a vehicle to learn something. That might not have been apparent at first, but that one hint from Holy Spirit put the whole dream into perspective, and that was all it took for me to work out the rest of the details. In fact, a few months later I had some follow-up dreams to this one that provided further guidance on how to go about that training process.

In the end, learning to interpret dreams can be very helpful, and it is a good way to get revelation from God on an ongoing basis. Some people take a dream interpretation class or training of some kind, and this can be helpful. Well-done Christian dream interpretation training will help provide an overall framework for learning to interpret dreams, but even those classes have limits. Dream interpretation books, in my mind, are the same. They can possibly provide a little help if you are stuck on a particular dream symbol, but you usually need to understand more of the dream before a symbol dictionary can help. In the end, nothing is a substitute for one-on-one communication with Holy Spirit. When we talk to God about our dreams, He will help us.

If you don’t think you dream and want to start remembering them, already dream and want to dream more and remember them better, or dream and remember but want to get better about interpreting them, then pray the following prayer and then start putting your faith into action. Record your dreams and practice praying over them and interpreting them. As you are faithful with what you are given, God will give you more!

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, I ask that you would speak to me during my sleep. I ask that you would increase my dreams and help me remember them. I ask that you would give me wisdom like you did Solomon, and understanding like you did Daniel. I ask this all in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Interpreting Prophetic Revelation: Oven Encounters

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Since discovering that prophets and the prophetic are alive and well today, and that God still speaks clearly to his people through dreams, visions, the small inner voice, and more, I have had two separate encounters with ovens that highlight the importance of not just receive revelation, but rightly interpreting it.

Years ago, I was a volunteer assistant for our church’s campus ministry at Penn State. During our annual student retreat, I went to the campground half a day early to set a few things up and spend a number of hours in prayer prior to the weekend. Sometime during the time of prayer I put a music CD on and spent time soaking in the presence of the Lord. During this time, I had the strangest experience—my right hand twitched in a very peculiar fashion as if I was turning a knob or dial on something, and simultaneously I had a vision of an oven dial. Not sure what it meant, I assumed I was to pray for God to “turn up the heat” in the spirit.

That evening, when it was time for dinner, we discovered the oven was broken and was taking forever to heat up. Thus, it took hours longer than expected to cook the frozen lasagna planned for the meal. Had I turned the oven on when I received the vision and the hand movement, it would have sufficiently preheated to avoid the problem. Instead of rightly discerning the prophetic encounter, I took revelation that was sent by God to solve a practical problem and misinterpreted it as guidance on how to pray for the event.

More recently I had a second encounter with an oven, written about in more depth on my blog post titled When God Didn’t Tell Me About The Fire. In this instance, God didn’t tell me a single thing about the problem with the oven-fire that was starting, but instead spoke in that still, small voice about being a good steward and returning a staff badge to our ministry storage area. As a result of obedience, I smelled a fire in its early stages and was able to put it out before it burned a church down.

This is an example of following the clear directions God gave me and as a result of being led and guided by Him, being in the right place and time to avert a potentially serious problem. This time it wasn’t particularly hard to discern the revelation itself, but the instructions that came by divine revelation were designed to put me in the right place at the right time for an entirely different issue than that which was revealed.

In the first oven encounter, I misunderstood and misinterpreted what God was doing and missed out on blessing an entire group of people with a timely dinner and low-stress meal preparation. In the second oven encounter, because I rightly discerned not just the initial word, but followed through on where it led me, I was able to fulfill everything God had planned when he first gave the revelation.

Prophecy and the realm of spiritual revelation as a whole is more than just receiving revelation. We need to receive it, interpret it correctly, as I failed to do the first time, and then choose the appropriate action. Moses and Jonah are perfect examples of hearing and interpreting a revelation correctly, but choosing the wrong action. Moses was told to speak to a rock but struck it out of his own personal anger, which demonstrated to the people of Israel that God was angry with them when He wasn’t. Jonah was sent by God to preach to Nineveh so they would repent for their evil ways, but instead, out of his own hatred he went around announcing their imminent destruction. God still managed to work things out in both cases, but His heart was not displayed properly in either case.

The fact is that we all will make mistakes as we learn to hear God, receive revelation, and practice spiritual gifts. We are all going to miss it from time to time, and that is okay—its part of the growth process. Nevertheless, we must understand that receiving revelation is just the beginning, and that we have a responsibility to properly steward every stage of the process, whether revelation, interpretation, or action.

How To See In The Spirit On Purpose

A friend dropped by recently for a visit, and somehow we began to discuss strange things I have seen in the spirit. I said something about “I looked in the spirit and saw . . . ” After I finished speaking, my friend asked me, “What do you mean when you say you looked in the spirit?” I was a bit surprised at first because I guess it seemed obvious to me at the time, but then I realized it took me a few years to learn how to do it in the first place, and then a few more years to become really confident with it. Fifteen years later it has become fairly normal for me, but it wasn’t always that way, and sometimes I forget that fact that I didn’t always know how to see in the spirit on purpose.

I think I must have stared at him strangely for a few seconds before answering. You see, my friend has been around the gifts of the spirit and the prophetic as a whole for decades longer than I have, so it struck me as strange that he was asking me how to see in the spirit on purpose. I asked him something to the effect of “Don’t you know how to do it?” You see, I incorrectly assumed that people who are experienced in the prophetic gifts already know these things, but I am discovering apparently it’s not the “norm” in the church to teach people to do it on purpose, and I think this is partly because people can’t teach it if they can’t do it—and it seems most people can’t do it on purpose.

This isn’t some special superpower I have—it’s a learned ability by means of releasing an expectation I have to perceive things in the spirit. Quite simply, because I expect it, I have engaged my faith for it to occur, and thus it happens. It might or might not have happened the first time I tried it, but it is pretty accurate these days as I have learned to expect and perceive what I wish to see. The information is there in the spirit realm for anyone to access who knows how. The problem, then, is learning how. So let me do my best to explain how to see in the spirit on purpose.

Spiritual gifts are what we might call “resident” or indwelling. Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” In other words, it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do, they remain in us and can be used at our disposal. Peter and John demonstrated this at the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3:6-8, where it says, “Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong.” Peter recognized that he had the power of God dwelling within him and at his disposal. Peter very clearly said “What I do have, I give you.” Peter knew he had something to give!

This sounds incredibly simple, but it’s a key starting point. To see in the spirit on purpose, you must realize that the ability to see spiritual reality already exists within you. Then, you need to practice using it to draw it out. Years ago, the Lord showed me a key in the book of Ezekiel about seeing in the spirit on purpose. Early on in the book, when the prophet Ezekiel describes the visions he has, he usually says “I looked and I saw.” Later on in the book, there is occasionally an “I looked and I saw”, but mostly it just says “I saw”. As the prophet trained and exercised his spiritual sight, he moved from having to look on purpose, to having engaged and exercised his spiritual sight to the point that sometimes he would see without having to activate it himself. This is a perfect example of the prophet practicing a gift at his disposal and reaping the results later on.

So how do we do this same thing? Anyone who knows how to speak in tongues understands that you can do it at will, by your choice, at any time. The Holy Spirit prays with and through you as you do it, but *you* are the one who initiates it. How do you initiate speaking in tongues? Simply by deciding in your heart to do so. Seeing in the spirit is the same.

Explained another way, we activate it through expectation or belief. Faith activates function. Let me give an example of how I do this practically. Any time I do inner healing and deliverance work, I don’t like hoping or assuming the job is done, so I prefer to have some indicator of when we have finished. I do this by expecting God to show me. That expectation is the starting point, but then I focus on my imagination to see what God wants to show me.

One time I was working together with some friends doing inner healing work, and we needed to know if we were done. What I did was expect to be shown what percentage of the work was done, and then paid attention to my imagination. What God showed me was a room that looked like it was in an ice-castle. It had a throne made of ice, and the entire room was filled with floating ice crystals. As we completed some of this healing work, I would see a portion of the ice crystals in the vision disappear. Each time we would do some more, I would re-imagine the room God had shown me to re-connect with the vision, and each time the number of ice crystals would lessen until finally I didn’t see any more of them at all! This was God’s way of showing me clearly through images over the course of an hour or two where we were in the process.

Other times during that session I would look at a power connection we were trying to break in the spirit, and at first I could see the power flowing, then faltering, and eventually ending. It wasn’t all at once either, so I checked back into that scene multiple times as well. Again, I did this by expecting to see the flow of power, then looking in my imagination to see what it looked like. Each time I wanted to check back, I would re-envision the vision I had seen the first time and it would update itself. A third time we were cutting attachments between the demonic and this person. I was looking to see if we had cut them all, but could see in my mind’s eye that we weren’t done, so I told my prayer partner to continue praying. I then mentally zoomed out from what I was seeing (again I did this simply by expecting and wanting to) and saw a crimson cord with three braided strands, of which two had been cut and one was left. When we cut the third one, I saw the whole three-strand cord severed completely in half. We had thought we were finished before, but my visions told me that we weren’t until I observed this final cut occur. As I watched this happen in the vision, the person manifested noticeably, showing us a visible sign that confirmed what I saw in the spirit.

Something else that apparently isn’t normal for most believers, even for those who see in the spirit, is to see what other people are describing when they talk about it. For example, if you were to come up to me and tell me about a vision or dream you had, I will most likely be seeing that same vision or dream in my mind’s eye while you are describing it to me. I asked some very prophetic friends of mine the other night if everyone does that, because I assume everyone else does, and they looked at me with confusion until I explained what I meant. It turns out its not something everyone else does, but I don’t think that it couldn’t be—anyone can learn it. I think I simply expect to see what they are describing, and because of that I see it.

If you want to see in the spirit on purpose, it all begins with expectation. Well, it all begins with the Holy Spirit, but once you’ve gotten that far, you move on to expectation. Extend your faith to believe that you can see things, and then pay attention to what is happening in your imagination. If it helps, close your eyes and then try it.

I get that some people get all freaked out about the whole “doing things at will” thing. I can’t go into all the reasons why that fear is incredibly misplaced in this article, but it is misplaced. God has already given me power and authority to release His will on the earth (Matthew 28:18-20), so when I step out in faith and do so, I can do it with confidence I am waking in his will. This is a tool God has given us, and we need to learn how to use it properly. Besides, as I mentioned above with the inner healing session, it is incredibly practical, but that is just one possible application. If you need to hear something from God in your personal life, expect to see the answer. If you need guidance, expect to see the answer. When I took my finals for a religious studies class in college, I would pray and expect God to help me. Once, I prayed, and He gave me a vision of an aerial view of the layout of the desks in the class, with the seat I needed to sit in highlighted in blue. I prayed, I expected, and got an immediate result. As you do this, and practice it, like Ezekiel it will begin to happen to you not just when you try, but when you don’t try. And that’s when things get truly fun.

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When God Didn’t Tell Me About The Fire

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This past weekend was the Portland Healing Revival, a conference that Hearts of Fire Ministries hosted (I’m on staff), featuring Ivan Roman and Todd Bentley, with worship by Angela and Michael Pinkston and the Unfiltered Worship Band. The conference was awesome, and God showed up in a big way, touching hundreds of people with His love and glory.

Running a conference requires a bit of planning on the front end, a lot of work during the event, and a little bit more on the tail end. For this particular event, it involved me going Sunday morning to drop off a bunch of our ministry equipment at the church where we store it. I met another ministry associate there, and the two of us unloaded my truck in a short time. As we finished, Todd and his assistant pulled up, as he was speaking at that church that morning, so we chatted with them for a few minutes, then helped her set up his product table while he went to meet with the Senior Pastor. I had promised my wife I wouldn’t stay forever, so I only stayed for one worship song (after greeting some friends), then got in my truck to head home. As I got in, I saw I had left one of our staff badges on the seat of the truck.

Annoying.

I had literally just taken everything else inside, and had forgotten the badge in the vehicle from two nights prior. I felt this nudge from the Lord to “go take it inside and put it where it goes.” I mentally balked, as we will be holding our monthly Catch Heavens Flame meeting at that church this weekend anyway—I can just return it then. Keep in mind, I’m still parked literally right outside the building, and where the badge goes is probably not more than sixty feet from where I am sitting.

I felt this nudge yet again, and the message that the Lord communicated with it was “Be a good steward and put the badge where it goes.” For some background, good stewardship is important to me. I firmly believe we as believers need to be responsible with the things we have been given, whether a job, house, ministry, family, the earth, or anything else. It’s scriptural, it’s right, and it’s important. After hearing that, I got up and took the badge inside, put it with our storage, and left the room to leave.

That’s when I smelled the smoke.

When I arrived at the church someone had told me they were having a potluck, so I headed down the hall toward the kitchen to see what might be burning. I continued smelling smoke all the way across the eating area as I passed the tables, then rounded the doorway into the kitchen where crock pots were lined up along the counter. At this point, I couldn’t smell the smoke anymore and I wasn’t sure why. I sniffed at each electrical outlet a slow cooker was plugged into just in case that was it, but they were all fine. I still didn’t see an obvious source of fire, so I kept walking along the counter and reached the stove. One of the burners on the stovetop was on for no discernable reason, as nothing was cooking on it. Strange, but no visible burning. Until I looked down at the oven and saw a tendril of gray-black smoke rising from the oven door that was slightly open. I quickly pulled the door down to see a large cardboard takeout box in the oven. To make things worse, the handle at the top of the box was touching the upper coils of the oven and was literally burning.

I grabbed some dry dishrags nearby and pulled the offending takeout container from the oven and put it by the sink, pieces of smoldering cardboard ash falling off the box as I did. After ensuring it wasn’t going to burn any further, and after I turned off the stove, I notified one of the pastors, showing them what happened so they would be aware, then got in my truck and drove home.

This entire encounter blew me away. Ten minutes later and the entire building could have been on fire. Everyone was worshipping upstairs, and it is unlikely anyone would have come downstairs for an hour or more. Six or seven ministries use that church, and we had just loaded most of the ministry’s equipment into the basement, so had the church gone up in flames, it could have been bad in all kinds of ways. What struck me the most though, wasn’t how God had gotten me there to stop a fire, but that when He did it, God didn’t tell me about the fire.

This encounter could be the beginning of a number of different preaching messages—about how God knows each of our individual ways, speaking to me about stewardship as the thing to get me to go back inside, about how the enemy wants to block our ability to hear in the spirit (God may have tried to tell six different people inside about it for all I know), or even the importance of following that still, small voice speaking to us. In reality, any and all of them are valid and valuable takeaways. God does know how each of His children work and what makes them tick. God also knows the enemy wants to prevent us from hearing from God, so He makes use of backup plans and side-routes to lead us to the goal anyway. God also speaks in ways that are both obvious, as well as in those quiet nudges that we have to learn to respond to. Regardless of which one speaks to you the most, I think we need to be reminded that God cares about every detail of our lives. There is never anything too small or too large for God to take notice of.

Whether it is being a good steward and returning a badge, or God watching over and protecting an entire church of people, nothing escapes His notice. We can be encouraged when we hear stories like this that in every situation God has a plan to turn things for our good. Bad things can and do happen, and those things are the work of the enemy, not some cosmic plan of God’s to teach us some kind of lesson. Yet, in spite of the enemy’s attempts to steal, kill, and destroy, God is committed to working in and through every situation to bring out our highest good. And that’s a promise we can take to the bank.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)”

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ (Jeremiah 29:11)”

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Seeing In The Spirit To Release Physical Healing

A couple of months ago my wife and I got a gym membership after talking about it for over a year. While our fitness goals differ, we have gone faithfully each week for the past few months to enhance our health primarily through swimming. Well, Sunshine took a big hit this past week when her back went out on her. The cause is unclear, but when it was time to go to our next “gym appointment” we decided to go anyway—me to work out and her to gently rehab her back in the pool. After I finished swimming however-many laps (I find it too hard to count so don’t bother), we were slowly going up and down a lane together chatting when she asked me “You know thing where you look at people’s physical bodies and see what is wrong with them? Can you do that for me?”

I proceeded to look at her back in the spirit and saw this strange-looking thing that was a bit like a combination between a black eel, a pair of those tongs they used back in the day to pick up blocks of ice, and one of those black spiked collars you might put on your junkyard guard dog. It had lodged itself in her back at the location/level of the vertebrae where she felt the pain and tightness. Anyway, I hadn’t even prayed yet, as I was silently looking in the spirit to see what I could observe, but while I did she felt something lift off her shoulders and was like “Wow, that’s amazing! It feels better already!” I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t even prayed yet. I’m guessing an angel must have taken care of it, but I don’t really know. Next, I told her what I saw and pulled it off of her back. Then I told her to see how it felt. No joke, she was twisting and turning with a significant increase in range of motion compared to thirty seconds prior. She wasn’t totally healed at that moment, as she ended up having more issues later on that night, but the immediate change was substantial. As I thought about it later, I wanted to share this story on the blog because I think it will help a lot of people.

I have touched on this subject before, in my article “Healing With The Seer Gift”, but in short I look in the spirit at the person or problem I am trying to “diagnose”, and as I do that I start having visions about the nature of the problem. In my wife’s case it was a demonic entity of some kind, but sometimes I will see colors instead of beings. Other times I will see objects, spiritual or psychic devices of some kind that are influencing the area in question. Once, my wife was telling me about a headache she was having and said “it feels like there is a nail in my eye.” I simply reached out toward her face, acted like I was pulling a nail out of her eye, and the headache left immediately. The reason she felt like there was a nail in her eye is because there was a nail in her eye—just not a physical, tangible one.

I think sometimes we forget that the unseen realms are in fact very real. My grandfather once had a ceremonial African mask hanging on his wall at his house. I told him about the demon I saw sitting on top of it (it looked like a big black chameleon and it hissed at me), and he basically didn’t believe me. My reply to him is key to this subject. I said, “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean I can’t see it, and it doesn’t make it not there.” The unseen realms are all around us, and our inability to perceive them doesn’t make them go away. If a demon or witch or whomever drives a spiritual nail in someone’s eye, it will remain there until it gets removed, either by us or an angel. In the same way the physical realm has object permanence, so do the spirit realms. The gifts of the spirit are part of our tool-kit that help us to interact with these invisible realms, but many times people don’t know they can activate those senses on their own, at will, and when they do, they don’t always know what to do with what they see.

Some of it is trial and error, but a big part of it is being led and guided by Holy Spirit. As I have dealt with spiritual objects, spirits, and more over the years I have learned a few things, but I still have to ask Him sometimes what to do in a situation. Following His lead is the first key to using this ability to heal.

The next thing we have to recognize is that when we act something out we aren’t just playing make-believe. Our imaginations aren’t just a pretend thing. The way we interact with the spirit realms is through our desire, intention, and belief. Our imagination is actually a vehicle that puts our belief into action. In other words, when we imagine something, we are using our power as co-creators with God to actually create that very thing. When I “imagine” myself pulling a demon off my wife’s back, I’m not just playing make-believe—I am activating my spiritual abilities to actually pull a demon off my wife’s back. While some find this hard to swallow, the proof is in the fruit. If it didn’t work, and I really was just pretending, my wife’s back would have had no change at all. Sure, someone could argue that my pretending activated her faith to believe it was better, but that doesn’t usually work when the problem is a demon, because they will fight back against you, and in a situation like this where the faith is supposedly “make believe” to begin with, how would that force a demon to leave? No, in pulling the spirit off of her back, I was making use of my authority as a son of God to do what Jesus said we could do in Luke 10:19, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.”

The third thing we have to do (in no particular order) is engage the angels. Whether we do it by speaking to them directly, praying to God to have them do something, commanding a thing to change, or simply praying to God for a situation to get fixed, all of these are valid ways we can engage angelic assistance. Everyone has ideas about which of the above options are permissible for the believer. Instead of arguing with others over what we are allowed or not allowed to do, just pick the one that fits for you and move forward. Get angels involved in the situation. They are ministering spirits sent to us to minister salvation (Hebrews 1:14)—the saving, healing, delivering power of God.

Seeing in the spirit is an incredible key to helping physical healing manifest when we pray, and it works for emotional healing too! Not everyone is automatically gifted in this area, but it is a skill that anyone can learn. Some may have it easier than others, but to say that one is incapable of seeing in the spirit is like saying some people get born with eyes. While that may happen in real life in a rare case, I assure you that the person’s DNA contains the information on how to make eyes, but something got messed up along the way. Likewise, your spirit-body has eyes (Ephesians 1:18), and if it doesn’t for some weird reason, then it’s something God needs to heal and fix, not a handicap to live with. I have learned over time and through practice to both see and hear in the spirit, and I personally think that every believer needs to have both skills trained through regular use. The enemy wants to block our ability to perceive what God is doing in any and every situation, and sometimes if I am unable to see clearly, I can hear God speaking to me. If I can’t hear Him, sometimes I will have a vision. If neither work, sometimes I will have this inner-knowing, a perception of some kind, about what to do. I encourage everyone to train your spiritual senses so that you can hear God, do what He is doing, and manifest the life of Christ Jesus on the earth. And who knows? Maybe the next time you have back pain, or a headache, or some other ailment, you will remember about this article, take a look to see what the problem is, and discover that this really does work. Don’t just take my word for it—try it for yourself and see what happens!

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Despising Spiritual Gifts

Have you ever had a loud ringing sound in your ear? I have. In fact, I was woken up the other afternoon with my right ear ringing quite loudly. I’ve had this happen many times before, the ringing, but never for this length of time, and never such that it woke me up from sleep. The droning noise went on for hours!!

It’s bad enough that I have trouble sleeping at night sometimes due to working night shift, but its even worse when I can’t sleep during the day. Thus, when I woke up around 2:30 in the afternoon, the first thing I did was roll over and try to go back to sleep. That didn’t work so well. At first I thought it was something mechanical, as I can often hear the ringing sound from televisions when they are on, fluorescent lights, and other devices. In fact, when I was a child I could know the moment someone in the house turned a television on even if it was on another floor in another part of the house simply because I could hear the frequency of the television regardless of where I was. This should say something about the pervasiveness of electromagnetic frequencies in our homes and lives, given that this was 20-plus years ago and we have even more technology now, but I digress.

At any rate, I assumed someone must be using some extremely annoying piece of tech nearby that I was hearing, as that was the only explanation my sleeping brain could come up with. After an hour or so, when I finally gave up on getting more good sleep (I had close to 6 hours total I think) and just got up, I realized that it probably wasn’t technology as I have never had tech be this loud and persistent before. From there I realized I might be discerning witchcraft taking place.

It might be a jump to the reader for me to say “ringing in the ears equals witchcraft.” The meaning of this particular manifestation of the gift of discernment of spirits is something I have learned over time. Hebrews 5:14 explains this saying, “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” I simply know it from having it happen over and over. I don’t have a scripture verse to explain it or any other clear marker that points to why I know this is what it means, but typically when I hear ringing in one ear or the other, that’s what I am discerning. This is very different from the medical condition known as tinnitus which is also a ringing in the ears, but a steady and ongoing noise. In my case, it is only ever in one ear or the other, both the pitch and volume vary each time. Usually, when this happens I will pray, and directly after I do the sound fades away, lasting in total for about five to ten seconds (if you feel you understand the significance of which ear means what, please comment below). Thus, one can understand my concern when this lasted for hours.

Again, I’ll point out that I was fairly slow on the uptake to even realize what was happening (although I’ll blame a little of that on sleep ^_^ ), but in retrospect I will also say that my attitude was a bit of a problem. I complained multiple times to my wife, “This is SO ANNOYING!” She took it quite seriously, prayed for me, and was incredibly sweet about trying to help. It did nothing to change the sound at first, which was quite disappointing, but sometime over the next half hour or so the sound did dim down a bit even though it persisted. I found out about an hour later (about four hours after it started) why that was.

I have multiple friends who are victims/survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). One of them had a problem that afternoon, which likely began around the time I was woken up by the shrill ringing noise. Without going into detail about the situation, I eventually realized my one friend might be having a problem, I called, and sure enough that was it. This person was even thoughtful enough to apologize for causing me problems, even though it wasn’t their fault to begin with. While the witchcraft I was discerning was certainly a big issue for my friend, there was another problem that was probably just as large for me:

My attitude.

I have spent a lot of time over the past fifteen years honing my ability to see, hear, and perceive the spiritual realms. This is something that I have given immense amounts of prayer, practice, impartation, book reading, more prayer, and more practice. So when I am actually getting the very thing I have prayed for, I’m all bent out of shape about it?? That doesn’t work.

I had to repent about it once I realized how bad my attitude was. Mind you, I wasn’t walking around grumbling to everyone I met about the problem, but my internal state that was an issue nonetheless. In Matthew 5:27-28, Jesus was teaching the Jews, saying “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus raised the bar of expectation somewhat higher than the law. It didn’t matter if one actually committed adultery or not if the idea resided in the heart. This same idea is echoed in the book of Samuel saying, “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). God is more concerned about what is in our hearts than our actions, because it is the things within our hearts that cause us problems (Mark 7:15).

My take-away lesson was that while spiritual gifts can sometimes manifest at inconvenient times and in inconvenient ways, I need to have gratitude the Lord has answered my many prayers in such a way. After all, I have not only asked for discernment and to flow in prophetic gifts, but I have asked the Lord to make me aware of what the enemy is doing so that I wouldn’t be taken by surprise. As I reflect back on this, the Lord actually was quite good to me in the situation. After all, I wouldn’t have been able to pray and assist my friend if I hadn’t been made aware of the problem, and I wouldn’t have been able to grow through the encounter if the Lord hadn’t revealed my attitude problem. I would much rather be the guy who has the Lord interrupt my life with inconvenient things for the Kingdom than the guy who has a predictable life and makes little to no impact against powers of darkness to begin with. And in the end, I guess all of that is something that I really can be thankful for.

Missing The Mark – When Prophecies Fail

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I had a private discussion recently with some friends regarding prophecy, and specifically when they don’t come to pass. While we didn’t all see eye to eye on every point, I thought it was an enlightening discussion, and I want to share some of what we reviewed with you all.

First, we looked at why prophecies might fail. The most obvious reason is that the word wasn’t from God to begin with, and therefore had almost no chance of coming to pass in the first place. While this is a definite possibility, even if a word doesn’t originate from God, we have creative power and can speak forth words of life, calling things that have not yet existed into reality by faith. Thus, whether a word originates directly from God or not isn’t a guarantee whether it will happen or fail.

Sometimes prophecies fail because there was demonic resistance. Actually, I personally think this is the primary reason they fail. When God speaks destiny to someone, the first thing the enemy wants to do is steal it so they can destroy it. If a prophetic word is given to us, it is so we can apply our faith and action to it, pray over the realities contained therein, and engage heaven to see it come to pass. It’s often not sufficient to let a word sit there and expect it to work all by itself.

On the other hand, some words simply don’t need an action. A word that is encouraging or comforting often doesn’t need any response other than to receive God’s goodness in our hearts, but then, those words aren’t in danger of failing to happen either. If a word does require a response, our best answer is prayer. As we continue to pray over what God has shared with us, we empower angels to remove all demonic resistance against it, and in doing so we create room in the spirit for it to occur. On the other hand, failure to do this may result in the word failing. Does this mean the prophecy was false? Not necessarily, which is hard for some to hear. It could be a missed opportunity.

Likewise, as mentioned above it is also possible that the word was false, and therefore didn’t come to pass. In these situations it means we might have failed to use adequate discernment in the first place. It’s a fact that people make mistakes, and the prophetic is no different. I have given people prophecies before that were obtuse-sounding but extremely accurate, and some that were very simple but I couldn’t have missed it further. On rare occasion I will give a word in a situation where I physically cannot correct myself as the person has already left, and I later think to myself “Wow, how did I miss that so badly?” It happens. We all must learn to walk in both grace and discernment. Grace for when people miss it, and discernment so we know when we are hearing from God and when a word just isn’t what it seems to be.

I remember a while back when someone posted a very drastic prophetic word with specific dates. He had received confirmation after sign after sign after confirmation that everything he was hearing was correct. The dates came and went and literally nothing happened. He was pretty badly beaten down by other people when this happened, which I don’t think was kind or appropriate, but was also somewhat unavoidable. When prophecies have dates attached it can be that we either heard wrong, misinterpreted what we heard, or heard correctly and something changed. Prayer alters reality, and even in the face of doom and disaster we can pray and see things change. Does that mean the man heard correctly? In spite of the signs it is possible he missed it. It’s also equally possible he hit it square on and prayer changed the outcome, averting potential disaster. How do we know which it is? We don’t—which is why I believe it is always best to extend grace to people when they mess up. It could be me in that position someday, and I’d rather receive grace, so I should probably give it to others. We reap what we sow.

One of the pitfalls of the prophetic is that there are so many variables. More often than not a prophecy is an invitation from God to engage with Him to see His will manifest on the earth. It’s rarely a statement of absolute that says what will or will not come to pass without fail, and more often it is a telling-forth of God’s highest plan and purpose. If we engage with God then those plans will probably occur, and if we do not adequately engage then we might miss out. We could engage heavily and the warfare might just be so intense that it still fails, or the situation could change in prayer and the whole scenarios just ends up very different than we originally thought. Or, we could sit on our laurels and do nothing and it still happens. When we hear the original word do we ignore it, or do we activate our faith? And how much of a difference does that even make?

My purpose in making this as confusing as possible is to point out that there are a number of spiritual dynamics at play when a prophecy is given. It is rarely as cut-and-dry as some try to make it seem, and very rarely is a failed prophecy the result of a false prophet who intentionally misleads. More often than not it’s the result of any or all of the dynamics mentioned above and then some. Regardless of the reason that a word doesn’t come to pass, I encourage you to keep your head up and don’t let disappointment get the better of you. God has good plans for you to bring health, life, and abundance your way. He doesn’t cause bad things to happen to you, and He only works toward your good. Draw a bit nearer to Him today and listen with your own heart at the things He would share with you. Let Him minister to your soul in every place of disillusionment and frustration. Let Him lead you beside still waters and restore your soul.

Prophetic Bulletin: Billy Graham’s Passing Is The Sign Of A New Era

The past day and a half since Billy Graham’s passing, I have been asking the Lord what He wanted to say about the event, as I felt there was prophetic significance to it. I had something else planned for my weekly blog post, but held off on posting it as I wanted to hear clearly what God wanted to say, and to make sure that I wasn’t simply creating something out of my own mind.

From the time I heard about his death, a scripture verse has been rolling around in my mind. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24). Mark Chironna prophesied years ago that God was getting ready to release a multitude of people to do the work of the Kingdom (link to clip at the end of the article), and Benny Hinn stated that the sign this would be so would be Billy Graham’s death. Personally I don’t like the idea of using one person’s death as a sign of something, because God is anti-death. Nevertheless, the contents of John 12:24 matches with the word Mark Chironna/Benny Hinn gave—that ultimately this event would bear much fruit, multiplying into many seeds from the one.

The Lord impressed a second verse upon me as I was pondering and meditating on this matter: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins. (Mark 2:21-22)”

I believe this verse signifies that Reverend Graham’s death is the sign that an old wineskin has ended and a new one is being established. To be clear, it could sound dishonoring to Billy Graham to call him an “old wineskin”, but that isn’t where I am coming from, and is NOT what I am saying. Usually, wine gets better as it ages, so old wine isn’t bad—just different. Every year the same vine will produce different grapes, and those different grapes will be similar, but invariably have different flavor from the year prior. A new wineskin is designed for new wine not because it is better than the wine in years prior, but in order that the two would be compatible.

Reverend Graham was born almost a full century ago, having died yesterday at age 99. It is a fact that God used him mightily to bring many people into the Kingdom. My parents took me to one of his crusades at the Phillies Stadium in Philadelphia when I was a kid, and while I don’t remember much of the event, I do recall that hundreds of people streamed onto the field when he gave an altar call for people to come and get born again. We honor him for what he has done and for the legacy he has left with us, but we also look forward into the new that God has for us.

What I found most fascinating about the verses in Mark 2 is that I didn’t know the address of the verses when I first began to meditate on them, but when I looked them up I realized this section of verses began on 2:21—the same as the date of Billy Graham’s death, February 21! This, to me, is a clear prophetic confirmation that this is what the Lord is saying: Billy Graham’s passing is the sign of a new era..

We ought to spend some time praying for the Grahams as a family, as this must be a hard time for them, and even more so because it is so highly publicized. Let us pray that they would have grace and peace. We ought to pray and ask the Lord to help us step into the NEW that He has for us. As one era is drawn to a close and another era opens up, God is releasing new revelation to us as the Body of Christ. Finally, I encourage everyone to take some time to ask the Lord what new things He is releasing into our lives, and what this spiritual transition will look like for us personally.

Clips of other prophetic words on Billy Graham’s passing:

Mark Chironna and Benny Hinn

Kim Clement

Kat Kerr

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