Just the other night I was driving with my stepdaughter to a local open Thrive meeting. We were about 30 minutes early, so we decided to stop in at a Trader Joe’s grocery store that was on our way and grab a bite to eat. We were hungry and it was going to be written off as a business expense anyway, so we figured we might as well. As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I had been here before, but it had been a while. The building on the far side of the parking lot from the store was a place where a ministry I used to be on staff with hosted conferences a number of years prior.
Feeling like this was a God-timed moment, I drove over to the building and parked the van. My stepdaughter was confused, and I probably didn’t explain clearly, but we got out and walked up to the door. I then prayed something to the effect of “I lay claim to every heavenly deposit that was left here from the previous events that we did and for every angelic assignment that has been left untended and remains here. I lay claim to those blessings and angels and attach them to the ministry of The Kings of Eden in Jesus’ name.”
I turned around to walk back to the van, but suddenly was hit with the power of God and instantly became what is known as “drunk in the Spirit.” As I walked to the vehicle, I could sense a roughly fifteen-foot-tall angel following right behind me, and by revelation I knew that there were in fact three angels that had come with me. While one of them is called To The Nations, I’m not certain yet what functions the other two serve.
The encounter itself was somewhat profound and entirely unexpected, and the next fifteen minutes of being drunk in the spirit while shopping for snacks was also fun, but as I reflect back upon this event, there is more to it than meets the eye.
How long would those angels have waited there for someone to give them something to do if God hadn’t brought me by that night?
The Bible says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). Angels, and the heavenly host as a whole who have been sent to earth at God’s command, have been sent to serve us in a myriad of ways. When God gives them an assignment, it doesn’t end because we neglect them. Rather, they are still waiting for us to engage them again and to partner with them to fulfill their heavenly mission. Some assignments are sent to specific people, but other angels are assigned to fulfill a particular mandate. While the gifts of God will not be removed from us, mantles and mandates can pass us by if we remain stagnant or fail to move into all that God has for us.
This begs another question: How many others of the heavenly host are waiting for someone to help them complete their assignments here on the earth? And if angels are waiting for us to come and pick them up, what are we waiting for?
I firmly believe that God has many more angels assigned to us than we realize, and probably many who are waiting for us to release them to get things done! Pray this prayer with me:
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the multitudes of the heavenly host that you have sent out on our behalf to bring your light, life, and love to the world. Wherever there are unused and abandoned angels whose mission is aligned with ours, we ask that you would transfer them to us and to the things you are doing in and through us, our lives, family, work, and ministries. We apply the full armor of God to ourselves and our angels. In the name of Jesus, we activate and release every angel who has already been assigned to us to go and accomplish all you have sent them to do. We ask that you would assign additional angels to us according to your will and perfect design, and that you would open the storehouses of heaven to bring us every spiritual blessing that has been stored up for us in heavenly places in Christ, and we ask all of this right now in Jesus’ mighty name! Amen.
My wife tells me that I flit from thing to thing and idea to idea—and she’s not entirely wrong. It’s just that in my moving from one subject to another, whether in prayer and contemplation, writing, or otherwise, I tend to circle back around to the same subjects over and over again. The subjects of life and immortality are some of these ideas that I keep coming back to, so the other day I was spending some time in prayer and discussion with the Holy Spirit while driving to work. As I did so, I began to inquire about how we can practically engage the revelation of immortality in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 1:10-11) to live and not die.
One point I made was that we know that this is enacted in part in our thoughts and words on an ongoing basis. As Proverbs 18:32 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” The things we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts alter our reality, and we receive the results of that fruit, whether nourishing or poisonous. If we speak death over ourselves, it should be no surprise when we grow sick, old, and die. Likewise if we spend even a few minutes each day praying and decreeing life in our bodies then we can expect to live healthier, more vibrant lives. Nevertheless, this can’t be the only piece to that puzzle, as if that is all there was to it, then we’d be there already. As I pointed this out, Holy Spirit nudged me that this is indeed an important step in the process that I have been neglecting, and that is partly because in some ways it seems almost too simple to be true.
I was reminded of the story of Naaman, the commander of the King of Aram’s army. He contracted leprosy, and sought out Elisha the prophet to heal him. He got angry when Elisha didn’t even meet him in person, and sent a messenger to tell him to wash very specifically in the Jordan River. Naaman got very angry, complained that many other rivers were better, and left in a rage. His servant spoke to him and said something that showed great wisdom on his part. “Naaman’s servants went to him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!’ So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.”
Sometimes we write off the simple things because they seem too simple, and I have been guilty of this. Nevertheless, while speaking life over ourselves daily is a useful and important habit to build, if that was all it took, I wouldn’t be asking the Holy Spirit how we can walk in this reality, as masses of people would have been doing this for centuries and living thousands of years at a time. So, we continued chatting briefly, as I began to ask more questions about how we can live this out and have it work for us here and now without having to wait for decades of speaking life over ourselves for this revelation of immortal, abundant life to work gradually over time.
Well, Holy Spirit asked me an interesting question, saying “Since you have been set free from death, the question really becomes ‘how much life do you want?'”
At first glance this might sound a bit strange, but the scriptures confirm that we have, indeed, already been set free from sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” If we think about it, that means that we have literally been set free from anything that should cause us to die. I will point out that “set free from” doesn’t mean we are incapable of dying. It simply means that we are no longer forced to.
This has puzzled me for a while, actually, as I have thought to myself that we already know that Jesus has already paid for all sin, sickness, poverty, pain, disease, and death for all time. Therefore, it seems odd that people still die. After all, if we have been set free from sin and death, shouldn’t we stop dying? I think the question “How much life do you want?” answers this.
In theory, we are not supposed to die, but if we want to die, we can. Likewise, if we want to live, we also can. God gave the children of Israel these choices in Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, which says, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. . . This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live . . .” The same choices God gave to the Israelites, He has given us in Christ Jesus. So while we shouldn’t die, we still can if we want to. The key difference between the Israelites and us is that we have received an upgraded version through a perfect sacrifice that has wiped out all of our sin, and therefore removed the right of death to destroy us. However, we still have the ability to choose death if we still want to.
Not only that, I believe both the world and the Church have been duped into believing that death is our only choice. A large part of this is attributed to what I refer to as a worldwide death-consciousness, the collective understanding of almost everyone in the world that we are all fated to die, and this collective consciousness carries an energy with it that pushes us all slowly toward death. Because we have been swindled into believing the lie, we confess the lie, live the lie, and teach the same lie to others, only further perpetuating the myth of mandatory death. The Bible tells us something far different, and Jesus said many times over that we can live forever.
Kobus Van Rensburg, a prophet and teacher and former senior leader of SpiritWord Ministries (https://spiritword.org.za/) received this same revelation many years ago, that he had a choice whether to die or live. With this revelation in hand, even during his battle with cancer, he was pronounced clinically dead on six different occasions and was resurrected each time, until finally dying more permanently on December 21, 2013. If nothing else, he demonstrated that we can choose life time and time again, and as we choose life, we can receive it in place of death. While many have mocked him for his beliefs, few can say that they defeated death after dying on six separate occasions.
All in all, I am left asking myself the same question “how much life do I want?”, and I encourage you to ask yourself the same. Do you want to enjoy and experience all God has for you without old age, pain, and health problems? I welcome you to continue with me on this journey as we pursue and apprehend the abundant, immortal life of Jesus Christ.
To read more on this and related subjects, pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” available on Amazon in both Kindle and in Print.
I am in the process of writing my latest book, The Gospel of Life and Immortality, which I plan to publish later this year. While researching for the book I began doing a fairly in-depth study on Genesis 6:3 and the math associated with how long Adam’s descendants of the line of Seth lived, the most well-known being Noah. Most people know the story about how God told Noah to build an ark because He was going to wipe everyone out with a flood due to their evil, and this was one of the main Bible stories I learned as a young child. Long-term, this has had an impact on how I viewed God the Father, as He always seemed a very harsh taskmaster, while Jesus was always kind and loving.
This recent study I did caused me to go word-by-word through Genesis 6:3, studying not just the word meanings but having to retranslate the verse, and I was astounded by what I found. I had a hard time believing it at first, largely because the Bible has been translated so many times that it is hard for me to understand how so many different people have missed it, but what I found is a game-changer in how we view God and His nature as revealed in the Old Testament. I am going to share what I found, as well as a little bit of the other details of my study. It is going to get a bit nerdy and look at words in Hebrews, so bear with me as I think you will be pretty astounded by what I found too.
Genesis 6:3 says, “Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years” (NIV). I began looking at this because I wanted to see why people use this verse to put an “age-cap” on how long we are allowed to live. In doing math, it simply doesn’t work as ten generations of descendants of Noah lived far longer than 120 after this verse. Thus, while that’s not what the verse means, I don’t want to focus on that, as it isn’t the point of this article. What that realization did do, however, is make me look deeper at the verse, as if the verse wasn’t sharing a limit on human longevity, then what did it mean?
Before going further, we need to remember that translation is an art, not an exact science. Translators have to do some decision-making as to the author’s intentions when putting a work into a different language, as many words, parts of speech, and even word-order of the sentence do not match up across languages. I regularly read books online that I read, one chapter at a time as they are translated. What invariably happens is that later in the novel, a translator will realize a word they have been translating one way for dozens of chapters is better translated another way. He or she discovers this based on insights the author leaves in the text, but because those insights occurred later in the book, I am able to witness how the translator’s new perspective changes how they interpret word meanings. For someone who starts reading after the entire work is completed, it will all get changed and they will never know, but for those of us who read it in-process, we can not only tell that a change was made but can also recognize the difference in emphasis the change makes. In other words, translators have tough decisions to make, so it is understandable when things are mistranslated, as it’s rarely intentional. Nevertheless, we also need to be brave enough to identify when a translation needs to be updated to better reflect what the text should say.
The Bible is no different. Translators look at scripture verses and do their best to put the author’s intended meaning into another language. Mistakes are made, and sometimes there is no “correct” way to do it, so a translator has to make an educated guess. At times, translators make mistakes, and as we learn and grow in our understanding of who God is and what He is like, we are able to spot some of those mistranslations. Sometimes, as is the case here, it significantly changes what a sentence means.
In the NIV Genesis 6:3 says “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years’.” This verse is translated pretty congruently across many translations. In Hebrew the sentence says “Yĕhovah ‘amar ruwach `owlam diyn ‘adam gam basar shagag yowm me’ah `esriym shaneh. If you translate the thirteen words in this sentence based not just off of what one thinks it should mean based on what we have been taught, but instead based off of how the words are translated throughout the rest of scripture and following actual grammar rules, Genesis 6:3 is best translated as follows:
“God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause, but the length of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years of time.’ (emphasis mine)”
A BIG difference!
It is obvious that this translation significantly differs from other translations, so let’s look at why. The first three words, “Yĕhovah ‘amar ruwach, are pretty straightforward, and are generally translated correctly, saying “The Lord said, ‘My Spirit . . .’” Everything after that, however, is where it goes wrong.
First, there is no word of negation in this sentence, and certainly not in the first part where in needs to be. For those who aren’t familiar, a word of negation is something like “no” or “not”. It is a word or article that denotes the opposite or negative of something occurring. Where Genesis 6:3 is consistently translated as “my Spirit will not contend”, the “not” simply doesn’t exist in the Hebrew. The fourth word `owlam is usually translated in scripture as “everlasting, forever, perpetual, or eternal.” If there is no word for negation, then why did it get translated into “will not forever” if the “not” isn’t actually written there? Why have so many different translators inserted it there.
I think it’s pretty simple. Based on how they understand the verse they are translating, it doesn’t make any sense if God were to say “My Spirit will contend with man forever,” as logically, God is contending either for 120 years or forever, but not both. In order for the sentence to make sense to them, they added the “not” in there. The problem is that it totally changes the meaning of the sentence into something it never said to begin with.
Let’s continue to look at this sentence. The fifth word, diyn, means a series of things, including “to act as a judge, please a cause, contend, strive, and govern”. Of the five options, why did the translators choose the words contend or strive? I’m not sure, but it probably had a lot to do with their view of an angry God who was getting ready to judge the people of the world for their many sins, so they chose a translation option that fit their expectation of the sentence meaning. Remember, however, that since the first part of the sentence doesn’t include a word of negation, then continuing to translate the sentence this way makes it all break down. Why would God plan to contend or strive with us forever? That literally makes no sense. And since it doesn’t make any sense, then we need to pick one of the translation options that does make sense, especially since there are five of them. We know from scripture that God will not judge us forever because of Jesus, so that doesn’t make sense either. All we have left is for God to govern us forever, or to plead our cause forever. Of those two choices, it seems more reasonable that the sentence would say God is pleading our cause eternally. Why? God is the sovereign authority of all creation, so He doesn’t need to announce that He will govern us forever—that’s a given. This leaves the first five words of the thirteen-word sentence meaning “God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause . . .
Additionally, we have the benefit of hindsight and we know a good deal more about God’s nature as a result of Jesus coming to earth to reveal Him. The book of Hebrews shows us that God sent Jesus to plead our cause before Him eternally (Hebrews 7:25, 9:15), and that while we were enemies of God He came to die on our behalf (Romans 5:8-10), so it doesn’t make any sense that God would be judging us or fighting against us eternally anyway. We know from Scripture that Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30) and Jesus revealed the Father’s nature (John 14:9-10) which means that if Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) then God is the same in the beginning pre-incarnation as He is now, pleading our cause eternally to make us righteous in Him. Said simply, Jesus’ nature shows us God’s nature, and they are still one and the same, pleading our cause for eternity. If we look at the second half of the sentence, we start with the sixth word, ‘adam, which is straightforward, meaning “man” or “mankind”. The seventh word gam means “also”, “but”, “yet”, or “though”. The eighth, basar, means “flesh”, and the ninth, shagag, means “to go astray”, “commit sin”, or “error”. The tenth word, yowm, means “day”, “time” or “period of time”. The rest of the sentence is again straightforward with me’ah `esriym literally meaning the number one-hundred twenty, and the thirteenth word shaneh meaning “years” or “years of time”.
If we put the second half of the sentence together it says “. . . but the period of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years.” When we pull it all together, it says what I wrote earlier: “God said, ‘my Spirit shall eternally plead man’s cause, but the length of time for flesh to sin and go astray is/will be 120 years of time.’”
When I came across this, I was shocked. I mean, really shocked. I was thinking about it the rest of that night. Why? Because translating Genesis 6:3 this way totally changes how we have to view the events of the Great Flood. Now that we have identified what the verse is really saying, it shows us that the flood didn’t happen because God was angry and fed up with humanity. In fact, it said the exact opposite! It said that in spite of our sinful ways, God would always fight for us. Furthermore, it showed us God’s mercy in giving a warning that in under 120 years there would be some calamity that would come that would put a limit on the ability for all flesh to commit sin and go astray. In fact, not only does this not say that God caused the flood, but it causes us to really have to look at the fact that Jesus revealed in John 10:10 that the thief is the one who kills and destroys.
If the enemy is the one who causes death and destruction, and the Great Flood caused an immense amount of death and destruction, then we cannot blame the flood on God anymore. By translating Genesis 6:3 properly, it only further shows us that God was not actually against us, judging us by the flood, but pleading our cause forever instead! Not only that, but God actively worked to forestall the flood on our behalf. Sin causes death, and the outworking of sowing and reaping is enough to account for how the enemy gained access through our sin to cause the Great Flood in the earth and kill all land-dwelling creatures, not God.
Hindsight shows us that the flood actually been revealed to Enoch over 800 years prior, whereby he prophesied it in the naming of his son Methuselah. We have to remember that because Enoch was a prophet, and because Old Testament prophets would give their children prophetic names at the Lord’s direction, Methuselah’s name is likewise prophetic. Author and speaker Chuck Missler has done a revealing exposition on the meanings of the names in Genesis 5, but we will look at Methuselah’s name specifically. His name comes from two root Hebrew words: muth, a root word that means “death or to die”; and from shalach, which means “to shoot forth, send forth, or set free/release.” His name is a prophetic statement that literally means “death will bring it forth” or “death will release it”. Whose death? Methuselah’s. What will it bring forth? Well, doing some math from the genealogies in Genesis 5, Methuselah died the same year that the flood covered the earth. Is it a coincidence, then, or the fulfillment of a prophetic warning that his death would cause the flood to be released? Something about the righteousness on Methuselah’s life caused the judgment of the flood to be held back, and God in his mercy ensured that Methuselah’s life was extended longer than any other recorded human alive so as to spare everyone as long as possible.
I believe we have to reimagine our view of the Great Flood. While we used to see it as one of the ways God stood in firm judgment against humanity, what it actually shows us is a Heavenly Father in His infinite mercy who is standing on our side. He warned people of the flood at least a century in advance so they could prepare for it as well. If anyone else had heeded the advice God gave to Noah, they too would have been spared, but no one did.
As I realized this, and even now, I am having to re-work some of my long-held views about God and His nature. I cannot look at the Great Flood the same way any longer, as the scriptures simply do not support the narrative I have believed for years, and which I was taught as a child. Furthermore, it calls many other things into question. If we have badly misunderstood the Flood, one of the most well-known Bible stories, how many other stories did we get wrong? What else needs a better translation that actually more clearly reveals the heart of our Heavenly Father toward us? And how does this force us to change our view of God? I believe that the more God continues to reveal Himself in the scriptures, the more He will reveal His unending goodness, far more than we have ever realized before.
As a nurse, I take care of a lot of sick and injured people, and that can be emotionally hard sometimes. Much more difficult, however, is having a family member who has health problems. After years of dealing with a gradually worsening health situation, with some recent interventions that looked extremely hopeful but have been much more disappointing than expected, it has been difficult to stay encouraged, especially when my loved one suffers daily.
What is possibly even more upsetting is the fact that I have prayed many, many times for her healing, and it’s not like I am a novice at healing the sick. I have prayed for many people to be healed of a range of conditions, with a decent measure of success, and there are times when it feels like it is far easier to heal a random stranger (whom I care about far less than my family, although I do care) than it is to heal my family members. There also seems to be an irritating trend among faith-healers that we seem to be able to heal many people, but with our own families, things don’t seem to work as they should. And while I don’t accept that as an immutable rule, it does appear to be a trend that I have yet to understand the full reason behind.
So, for those reading who think they have the “simple, easy solution” for this healing problem, and I “just need to do this or that”, when I am feeling discouraged about a loved one not getting healed, I’m willing to bet that 99% of the time, I have already tried whatever the faith-filled suggestion is. The present situation has been after years of prayer and fasting combined with medical interventions, and an awful lot of faith. To me, when all of this has gone into the situation and still no results, it seems pretty reasonable to be discouraged when it feels like I can do very little to solve the problem. And let’s be honest, at the end of the day, right or wrong, we all want results.
Well, after some very recent setbacks, and feeling pretty down, I spent some time crying, basically hiding from my family in part of the house so they wouldn’t see me crying and get more upset themselves. Then I connected with a close friend by phone who was, as always, super encouraging, and who was entirely unable to fix the problem too, but just continued to love and encourage me during my struggle. As all of this was happening, I was also spending time in prayer and asking the Lord to give me wisdom on how to move forward, because I know a few things pretty clearly:
1) This problem is not the will of God, because He is good and this is evil. 2) This problem was not given by God, but by the enemy. 3) Jesus already said “yes” to healing the problem 2000 years ago on the cross. 4) God already has a plan to fix the problem in the here-and-now.
As I was praying, I felt God tell me something, and remind me of something else. First, He just kept telling me what a good job I was doing. While it sounds lovely, I find it frustrating at times when He tells me that, because I can get extremely results-oriented and when I am doing everything I know to do to solve a problem and it still isn’t getting fixed, being told how great I am doing can be maddening. However, as I thought about it, Him telling me this reminded me to be less results-focused and to just continue to love well through the process, something my buddy also pointed out. Second, I was reminded that it’s not just faith that gets the job done, but patience.
In Hebrews 6:10-12 Paul wrote to the church and said, “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.”
Sometimes it can be hard, very hard, to pray in faith and not see an answer. And sometimes that can go on for years, and it still feels like nothing is happening. But there has never been a single prayer prayed in the history of humanity that God has not responded to in some way, so even when it feels like nothing is happening, we have to look at things from a heavenly view and ask God what He is doing. Next, we have to be patient.
My friends know that especially when it comes to healing prayer, I’m not particularly patient. I expect results now, and if they don’t happen now, then I pray again and expect them now. And again right now, and again right now, until it happens . . . right now. And patience in healing prayer is something God has been gently teaching me about, and I am gradually learning. However, I still firmly believe that instant results should be our preference.
Even while expecting instant results, we have to be people who are invested in a long term view of things. When it comes to praying for healing, or salvation, or really, praying for anything else, do we have a long game? Anyone can be faith-filled for five minutes. Anyone can pray a powerful-sounding prayer and then dash away, onto the next thing to pray about and/or problem to solve. It takes a lot more perseverance to stick things through and week after week, month after month, year after year continue to believe God for the things He has already promised to give us. It takes another level of character to do all of this and not get angry with God or blame Him in the process.
I wish that things happened much faster in the spirit realms than they sometimes do. I am fervently looking toward the day my family is healed and whole with no pain and problems, and continue to hope, pray, and stand in faith for that outcome. Nevertheless, am I willing to stick it out with both faith and patience? The truth is that faith without patience simply will not inherit certain promises. Faith for a short time that then wavers and dies is insufficient to obtain certain things from God. Not because God is withholding from us, but because the enemy is. Not because God is being stingy, but because some results require far more than a one-time prayer to obtain.
So, as I bring this to a close, I want to challenge the reader with this: in areas of your walk with Jesus Christ that you are struggling, do you have what it takes to walk out a long game if needed? If not, what do you need to do to get the patience, perseverance, and endurance so that you can?
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. . . If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:7-8, 11
In the first blog of three about my mission trip to India with Overseas Missions, I shared about the first three days of our trip and the kindness that God showed during that time. In the second blog I shared about the time we spent with the Tiger Widows and God’s divine provision to open the door for us to share His love with them. In this article, I am going to share about the last two days of the trip and an extra surprise ministry moment on the plane ride home.
After we left the Tiger Widows on the fifth day, we left the area and drove back to Calcutta. The next day, the second to last of the trip, we got up and went to the Dump Yard, an area of Kolkata right next to a large trash dump where many poor people live. One of the local pastors has started a children’s school, where they also have church on Sundays and are working to educate the children as well as teach them about God. They are working to raise money to build a school on the approximately 1/6th-acre plot they have, but we were able to do another medical clinic there, pray for the sick, and feed the 50-70 children there as well.
The children were a lot of fun, and the boys in particular loved getting to roughhouse with some of the team. We fed them lunch, with the team serving all of the children, and treated both adults and children alike at the medical clinic. One of the children there, about ten years old, had an open wound he had gotten a few weeks prior from a motorcycle accident. It looked fairly well tended overall, although I was surprised, as it’s the type of wound we usually see in the hospital here in the USA, not at a random volunteer clinic. We gave him supplies to last him a good week or so of daily dressing changes, and one of his friends listened to the instructions and watched us clean the wound as well to make sure he could help his buddy. It was super sweet to watch.
Kyle playing with a bunch of the boys
The most impressive moment of that day, to me, was when God healed a young man of leprosy. This guy was probably in his mid-twenties, and he told one of the other nurses that he had lost all sense of smell for the past six months. This nurse recognized the problem and suspected leprosy, so had the doctor assess the nerves in his arm to see if they showed signs of thickening, and they did. Sure enough, it was leprosy.
To explain, leprosy involves loss of sensation at nerve endings. As a result, one cannot feel pain, meaning that if one gets burned, cut, or otherwise injured, while normally people will recoil from the offending item, the leper cannot sense the pain and will continue the unsafe activity, damaging the skin. This leads long-term to missing fingers, toes, and even limbs, ears, nose, etc. All in all, it’s a terrible disease. Unbeknownst to any of us, this nurse had a discussion earlier that day with the doctor about the symptoms of leprosy, and if she hadn’t she might have missed the signs. God truly does lead and guide even things as simple as our conversations, and in this case, it led us to identify leprosy.
Why is this important? Because of what happened next. There was nothing the medical team could do for him medically, but Jesus is the best healer that exists, so a few of us gathered around him and prayed in Jesus’ name for leprosy to go and for him to be healed. They had given us these flower-necklaces earlier that day, each of which had a rose at the end. I had him smell mine to see if his sense of smell had been restored, and it had! This man had been unable to smell for six months due to an undiagnosed serious disease, and within minutes of diagnosis, we prayed and Jesus healed him, restoring his nerve function and allowing him to smell once more. I am always so impressed with the kindness and goodness of our God who reaches out and touches lives, heals diseases, and generally just cares far more about our lives than He has to, and He does it all because He loves us.
The last day we visited the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta where Mother Teresa’s tomb is. Two of the women on the team and I went to a very early morning Mass service, and were blessed to witness their celebration of 25 years of prayerful service of six of the sisters there. The peace of God that rested in that place, and specifically in the room where the tomb was located, was amazing, and the clarity with which I could hear the voice of God speaking to me while there was equally astounding. It was evident that they have spent many years cultivating the presence of God in prayer and acts of service at that place, and it was an honor to visit and share in their joy that morning. After the service, the sisters gathered outside on the balconies and in the courtyard and sang songs of praise to God and songs of congratulations to the six sisters. We went back there with the rest of the team later, and many of us spent some time in prayer there. All in all, it was a wonderful way to end our trip there. It was a fitting bookend, in some ways, as the work of the Sisters of Charity embodies what we were there to do in serving the Tiger Widows as well.
The six Sisters being honored for 25 years of service
Afterwards, because the day we went the Sisters of Charity had their citywide missions closed, we were unable to volunteer for service-work as originally planned, so we spent some time shopping for gifts for family and friends, eating lunch, etc., then packed up to get ready to fly out that evening.
The flights and layovers were fairly uneventful until the 12-hour flight over the Pacific, where a surprise awaited me. I had the thought come to me prior to that flight that someone on the plane might have a medical emergency. Well, about four hours in, one of our team members told me I needed to go to the back of the plane because there was some medical problem. An elderly man had fallen down and hit his head, and was fumbling through his bag searching for medications. The flight attendants were there, but no one really seemed to know what to do. I assessed him, and while he had no obvious signs of a head injury, he was very confused and had medication on-hand for Parkinson’s Disease. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fact is that any signs of a bleed inside his head that would be observable to me are what are called “late signs”, meaning that if any of them appeared in-flight, the man’s death due to brain injury would basically be assured. I am thankful that none of that occurred, as even if we had turned the plane around it would still have taken four hours for us to arrive at the nearest airport.
At any rate, I spent the rest of the flight keeping an eye on him, both because I was concerned about the possibility of a head bleed, and also because he was incredibly confused and at risk for falling again. In fact, if I hadn’t been watching him he probably would have fallen a few more times—and that doesn’t include the time he tried to undress himself and the many times he lost his phone and wallet . . . in his pockets. Either way, I was glad to be able to help this man out, and the airline was very nice and gave me a first-class breakfast as a thank you for keeping an eye on him. Which, considering the day we flew back was also my birthday, it was like a fun extra birthday gift from God!
Having never been on a mission trip before, I was richly rewarded by all that we did. I got to spend time with one of my closest friends, got to meet incredible people and made new friends, spent my days loving God’s destitute children in another country, as well as getting to enjoy their unique culture and all that it entails, and was greatly encouraged in my faith in many ways. I had the pleasure of getting to serve people every step of the way, and learned new things about my own heart and how God has designed me. A final thank you to everyone who helped contribute to this trip financially and in prayer, and I encourage anyone who has not yet been on an overseas mission trip to take the plunge! God bless you all, and I look forward to the next time I am able to share stories of the wonderful adventures I get to have in God!
Last week I shared about the first three days of medical clinics we held on a recent trip to India (read the article here), where we went to minister specifically to the Tiger Widows, but also to the local communities. After the first three days of clinics in a single location, a door opened up for us to go meet with some of the Tiger Widows more directly. This was wonderful news, as most of the team had come with the express purpose of ministering to these forgotten women in mind.
For those who don’t know, India still functions on what is known as the “caste” system, which is basically a cultural hierarchy that is partly hereditary. Most cultures have them, but in India, especially from a Hindu background, it is more deeply ingrained than some. In this particular system men are more valuable than women, and if a husband dies the widowed wife cannot remarry, and generally sinks into poverty. The Tiger Widows’ husbands have been killed over time by Bengal tigers while working out in the forest, leaving these women, who sometimes are young women who have children, destitute and unable to change their station in life. In other cases, the women are older and have been widowed for a long time, so in their old age, they have no one to take care of them except for some of the other younger widows. When we were informed we would be able to go meet and spend time loving and serving more of these women, our hearts jumped at the opportunity.
There have been others over time who have either used the idea of serving the widows for personal gain, using these women’s tragedies for personal publicity, or who have not followed through on their promises to help them, so some of those in government involved with helping these women had put up a hurdle for us to see and minister to them. The condition to love these women in person was to bring a gift of a sari or blanket to each widow.
We were happy to do this. Actually, we were all delighted with the idea of giving a sari or blanket to each one of these precious women. What better way to tangibly show them love is there? A single blanket or sari wasn’t super expensive, but when you start talking about 750 widows, the costs add up quickly. As none of the costs of these gifts were included in the initial trip budget, from the time we found out about it on the third day, we had 12 hours to raise $3,000 to be able to buy the gifts for these women that next day.
We all prayed, and a few of us took to social media to raise money. Within the twelve hours, we had raised 2/3 of the total. Over the next number of hours another $500 came in from donations online, and the team pooled our money for the remainder. I am pleased to say that followers of this blog and my Facebook feed contributed about $1,000 of the total. Thank you so much to everyone who gave for the critical need, as it allowed us to minister the power and love of God to those women. Let me tell you what that money did!
On the fourth day, we drove a few hours from where we were staying to a remote church meeting-place where some of the women were gathered. When I say “church meeting-place”, what I mean is that it consisted of a roof with no actual walls. We held another medical clinic there, and we preached the gospel to these women, gave them saris, washed their feet, prayed for them, and just spent the day with them. Sometime during this day, we were invited to visit homes of some of the women who were paralyzed and pray for them, so four of us and a local pastor went to pray for them. There were two homes we visited, one nearby where the woman had a stroke and regained strength and movement to her affected side. The other woman’s home was further out, so we walked about ten to fifteen minutes to her home.
Heading to pray for the paralyzed woman
The path was brick, about six to eight feet wide, and we were led by a young woman, presumably also a widow. She took us down this path for a while, passing a few houses and ponds and numerous fields of rice as we went. We turned down another path, continued for a time, then turned again down what was more of a long grassy embankment between fields than any kind of actual road or path. The area was quite beautiful, and fairly quiet. There were no sounds of road traffic which I am so accustomed to hearing living in a big city in the States, so the sounds we heard were those of individuals, animals, and just creation as a whole.
We arrived at the second house and were invited inside by the family. This house was basically a mud-and-stick construction with fabric for some of the outer walls. The five of us took our shoes off and came inside to see this woman, paralyzed from the waist down, laying on the thinnest of mats, basically just thick enough for her not to be touching the ground and providing no comfort or padding whatsoever. Her countenance was dim, she seemed mentally dull, and appeared to be in constant pain. Her neck was also tighly locked, and she was unable to turn her head from side to side.
We laid hands on her and began to pray, then had her try to move her limbs. She was able to move her legs some after we prayed for a few minutes, regaining some gross motor movement, but at some point we saw no further improvement. Tyler had the pastor share the simple gospel message to her, while her family was all gathered around listening as well. As the pastor spoke in Bengali, sharing with her about Jesus loving her and dying on the cross for her sins, this old grandma turned her head to the right to look at him more directly.
In case you missed that, this woman’s neck was locked. I personally palpated it and attempted to perform range of motion, and there was literally no motion. While she was hearing the message of the gospel, Jesus touched her neck and she regained movement that she did not have five minutes prior. The pastor invited her to pray for Jesus to become the Lord of her life, and after she prayed, her countenance visibly changed. She went from being dull and slow to smiling and having a brightness about her. We prayed again, and while we saw no further noticeable healing, it was evident that she had received a touch from heaven.
Later on, we saw her countenance dim down again, presumably due to the demonic trying to re-exert control over this woman they had been able to manipulate her entire life. You see, in India, gods and goddesses are a known commodity. Everyone knows they exist and that their power is active. Thus, when we preach Jesus, the God above all other gods, the God who is kind, the only God who heals, the only God who gives his own life in exchange for ours, they have no problem believing us, unlike many here in the United States who doubt even the existence of the supernatural realms. We prayed for her once more, thanked her and the family for inviting us into their home, and headed back to the group. This was by far my most memorable and favorite time on this entire trip.
Almost 100% of the women raised their hands to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior
The next day we held another medical clinic with many hundreds of widows, one of the team, Sung, preached a simple yet profound gospel message, and almost every widow present raised her hand when invited to accept Jesus. We treated their medical problems, and yet again, Jesus healed those we were unable to help medically. Jesus was present in the footwashing, the salvation message, the medicine, giving blankets to each woman, feeding them lunch, and every aspect of the day. One woman, crying, told a team member “you have loved me more than my gods ever have.” That is exactly what we came to do—provide an active, living demonstration of the love that Jesus has for each of these precious women.
Our short-term trip did a lot of good, I believe, but there is also an ongoing need that we are unable to meet with short-term trips. One program that the local pastors have set up for these women is a tailoring program. This program teaches the widows how to produce clothing, giving them a skill so they can run their own businesses and become self-sufficient through self-employment, one of the few things the caste system cannot shut them out of. We were able to visit where this program is run, and the sewing machines were donated during a prior mission trip. To date, 20 have finished and 32 are currently enrolled in the program. It costs about $30 USD a month per widow, and 6 months to train them.
In order to be truly independent, however, each widow who has completed the training needs her own sewing machine. The 20 women who have completed the program are still waiting on machines before they can start their businesses, and each sewing machine costs $180 USD. Furthermore, the location the training is currently being done at is temporary, and land has been donated for a permanent training center to be built, which costs another $30,000 USD to build. For all 52 women to receive a machine, the total cost is $7,800. God was able to raise $3,000 for these women in 12 hours, so I firmly believe that God not only can, but wants to provide a machine for each of these women.***
Please pray and ask God how you are to partner with The Kings of Eden and Global Mercy Foundation India for their tailoring program.
Ten people giving $15 each or one person each month for 10 months is a single sewing machine. A one-time gift of any amount is fine, but they also need ongoing partners to help fund the women as they go through the program as well. There are three ways you can send money to help:
1. A Gofundme fundraiser that will be sent to the ministry overseeing this work.
2. Send money via Paypal to The Kings of Eden, marked with a note for the widows’ tailoring program. We will forward 100% of the money to the local ministry for the widows.
3. Contact Global Mercy Foundation directly (a 501(c)3 nonprofit) and donate with a note marked for the widows’ tailoring program. For more information, and occasional updates about the tailoring program, you can visit their Indian sister-ministry at Global Mercy Foundation India.
After being there with these women, it strikes me more than it ever has before how even just a one-time donation can be a life-changer for not just a single woman, but for potentially her friends and family. If a young widow has children, she will be able to afford to raise them well, and if she is tending to other widows as well, she will have the resources to help care for them too. Furthermore, this program is a great outreach method to reach these forgotten women for Jesus.
These two days with the Tiger Widows were incredibly special to me. It was a joy to get to minister to them, tend to their physical needs, both medical and nonmedical, and above all, to see them changed by the love of Jesus Christ, working healings and miracles through the power that only He has to give.
In the next and final installment of the India 2018 Mission Trip, I will tell you about the Dump Yard Children, the healings God did there (including a young man healed of leprosy), and the work God is doing in that area of Kolkata, as well as a “surprise” ministry opportunity on the plane ride home. Check in next week to hear the final details of this amazing trip!
***please note these prices are close estimates and not exact, as it depends on the current exchange rate of dollars to rupees, which is roughly $1 : 70Rs right now.
Some of you may have noticed that my blog has been pretty vacant this past month. That’s because I spent 11 days on a mission trip to India with a team of 24 other people. It was led by Tyler and Christine Johnson of OneGlance Ministries, and between being gone for two weeks and not posting anything the week after, it’s been pretty sparse around here. However, all that is at an end! We went there to minister to the Tiger Widows near the Sundarban region, to wash their feet, share the gospel, and hold medical clinics for them and other locals, and we did all that and more. I want to share with you all how the trip went and all the awesome things God did while we were there, as well as some of my personal struggles along the way. Thanks again to all of you who prayed for us and donated money and supplies prior to and during the trip. It made a huge difference in what we were able to accomplish!
The evening of November 5th, I flew out of Portland International Airport down to LAX where I met up with the team, and from there we flew to Shanghai, Kunming, and eventually into Kolkata. Just the flights and layovers took over a day and a half, and the trip there had its own series of mishaps and strangeness to it, but we all made it there okay, although not everyone’s luggage was quite so fortunate (two of the team received their bags the day before we flew back to the States. Whoops!). We arrived late in the evening and spent a night in Kolkata, woke up and had a leisurely breakfast, prayed and worshipped as a team, then drove a few hours south to the hotel we stayed at for the next five days. Although one of the buses tried really hard to break down on us, we got there in the late afternoon with not really enough time to do anything, so we settled in for the evening. The next day was our first day actually ministering to and reaching out to the locals, so I’m going to start counting “days” from there.
That night in the hotel we divided up into three groups: the medical team, foot washing, and prayer. The medical team consisted of four main people: Sheila, the doctor, Christine, a NICU RN and head of the medical team, Janelle, a Pediatric RN, and myself, an adult trauma RN, and then multiple other team members doing vital signs and other related tasks. You’ll probably hear me talking a lot about the medical stuff and not as much about everything else, but that has a lot to do with the fact that I spent much of each day seeing patients, and far less time doing whatever else it was that the rest of the team was doing, so please bear with me.
On the first day, we got on a bus and drove the 45 minutes to the tent we would be doing the clinics at. Around an hour into the drive, we asked how much further we had left, and were told by one of the local pastors that we were about halfway there. So much for the 45 minute drive time, lol. #IndiaTime
Once we arrived, we were greeted with flowered necklaces by some of the the local pastors and other community members. Having done some setup the night before at the hotel, we unloaded our gear and the two other nurses and I got to work. The tent was on land loaned to us by a local man, and it was probably 40 feet by 80 feet in size, with these inset booth-areas set up on the side walls of the tent.
We set up a triage station in booth 1, a station for an RN and Doctor in booths 2 and 3, a medication/pharmacy station in booth 4, had one booth that our residents sports medicine and exercise physiology team members used, and then the remaining booths were used for the prayer teams and foot washing. I spent all of the first day working with one of the local pastors identifying everyone’s physical problems and sending them on to see either the RN or doctor for further follow-up. If it was something simple, I would just write for medications and bypass the other team members, but in most cases I was identifying the chief complaints and sending them to an appropriate party.
I will be honest, this was one of the most emotionally painful days of my entire life. It might sound overly dramatic, but my heart’s cry is to heal the pain of this world. While I normally take care of patients, it is usually 2 or 4 in a day, and I can help meet a lot of their needs. That day I saw literally hundreds of people, most of whom I already knew we could not solve their problems, or at best could band-aid them with some over the counter medications. In other words, I knew we were solving nothing, and it killed me inside. With each patient I saw, it was like taking the knife and driving it just a tiny bit deeper. I diagnosed one man with Parkinson’s Disease within 3 seconds of seeing him, long before the interpreter translated a single word to me. Medical science in the United States can’t even fix that, much less me in some bamboo-and-tarp tent in a field in the Indian countryside. I spent my entire day stuffing my emotions and trying not to break down sobbing over all of this because I knew if I started crying, I wouldn’t stop. If I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t be able to help any more patients, not that it seemed we were helping that much anyway.
Well, I learned a good deal about myself on this trip, including the fact that according the Enneagram (a kind of personality-profile/character-and-motivation test), I am a type 2. Type 2’s are known as the Servant, which only further accentuated the fact that my desire is to want to help, heal, hold, and fix everything, everywhere. So seeing hundreds of patients I couldn’t help was extremely hard for me, and it was hard to keep myself together enough to keep working. By the end of the day I felt entirely hopeless, and after all the patients left I just sobbed in my friend Tyler’s arms.
He prayed for me, and it helped a lot, which was good, because I was expecting to spend the entire two hour trip to the hotel crying, which I was thankful I did not. I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I am quite doing justice to how hard this was for me, and it might sound to some like I am exaggerating, but I was handling this very poorly, and Janelle, the pediatric RN was having just as much trouble as I was. It didn’t end there though. The next morning during worship, knowing we were about to head out to do this all over again, I literally felt like my heart was breaking. I was sobbing yet again, although trying to do it quietly so as to not disturb everyone else’s worship. I told the Lord that I didn’t want to go back because if I went and saw more patients, then I would care about them, and I didn’t want to have to care about them because it was simply too painful for me. Knowing full well my heart was breaking and we hadn’t even started for the day yet, I went anyway, but it was very hard for me knowing exactly what I was walking back into. I’m not someone who begs God in prayer, simply because there is no reason to and it doesn’t make the prayer any more effective, but that morning I literally begged God to help me make it through the day.
Thankfully, God in His infinite kindness answered my prayers. You see, much of the rest of the team was praying for the people and seeing God heal them of all the chronic pain and problems they came to us with, but all I was encountering was hundreds of people’s pain and suffering. They only got prayer for healing after I saw them, and I never heard about it again, so to me it felt incredibly hopeless, while other team members were riding high on the miracles that God was doing in their midst. Tyler and Christine both changed some things up that helped me a lot that morning, and also helped shift my perspective to see and understand some of the other things God was doing.
First, Christine took over triage that morning, and I helped out in the medication tent for a while. That was a good break for me, and meant I was giving people medications to help, even if they were only temporary solutions to long-term problems, but it was less-hard. Second, someone from the prayer teams would come by every so often and let us know the different miracles and healings God was doing. Hearing things like “Hey, every person who has come for prayer for joint pain so far this morning has left totally healed and pain-free” did a lot for my wounded heart (thanks Sung!). As the day went on, I was able to recognize that while I was seeing a lot of people with pain and brokenness, fifteen minutes later, Jesus would reach out and heal them. In this process, a number of people would get saved right after they got healed as well! For me, the second day was much better than the first.
In retrospect, I want to share something my dad said to me after I returned to the US and told him about all of this. He said to me something to the effect of “I bet that gave you a glimpse into how God feels about those people each and every day.” What he said struck me. Sure, that first day of the clinic was one of the hardest days of my life. But the Bible says in Revelation 21:4 that, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” I remember once hearing minister Jesse Duplantis share an encounter he had with Jesus, where Jesus referred to that passage and told Jesse (roughly) “Those tears are mine. There will come a day when I won’t have to cry anymore.” My mercy-driven heart is touched by the fact that God cares for these people, and cares for hurting people everywhere. Sometimes when I hear stories about God healing people, I literally start crying because of His goodness and mercy. God is a kind God—the kindest, actually. No other god or idol or whatever heals people and solves their problems. Kali, an evil Indian goddess of death and destruction, is worshipped out of fear because she harms people if they don’t. Our Jesus is the exact opposite and brings only goodness, healing, and abundant life regardless of what we do or don’t do.
Healing wasn’t all that happened either. The morning we left Kolkata, my buddy Sung found a gemstone on the bus seat that supernaturally manifested from heaven. It was a small, cut stone that was clear in color. One or both of the days we did the medical clinics at that tent, some of the prayer team kept feeling water splattering on them from the direction of the tent wall. The problem is that we were in the middle of a field and there was no water being thrown or falling on them. No natural water, that is. Jesus, the Living Water, was showering on them while they were praying for people! God was showing up and showing off, not just in healings, but in spectacular manifestations of His glory and presence.
The third day we went to that same tent and had a church service where we worshipped with the locals, our team leader Tyler spoke, we prayed for people for healing and salvation, and God came and touched them all yet again. Later that evening, I had some fun with some of the other team members doing inner healing and deliverance in our hotel room, and God yet again showed up and brought freedom from emotional pain and demonic bondage.
There was much more that happened on this trip, but it’s fairly lengthy, so I am going to share more next week in Part 2. I will share more about the Tiger Widows, going out to someone’s hut and praying for a paralytic woman, tell you about their tailoring program and how you can get involved, and more. Check back next week for more stories of God’s goodness poured out in healing and miracles!
I had a discussion the other day with a friend about raising people from the dead, and one of the things we talked about was what Jesus did. She pointed out that Jesus didn’t raise everyone from the dead. It’s an interesting idea, so I want to look at that as we discuss the one Jesus didn’t raise from the dead.
If we look in scripture, there are exactly twelve resurrection stories. Of those twelve stories, four of them are ones Jesus raised from the dead. Incidentally, the scriptures also only record four times that Jesus even encountered dead bodies. So, then, which one is the one Jesus didn’t raise? None of them.
One of the most common arguments people make against raising the dead is that Jesus didn’t resurrect every single person who died in his era. Someone who makes that argument would be correct—Jesus didn’t go to every graveyard, search every mausoleum and crypt, and hunt down every remote tomb to body-snatch every single person he could find and bring them back to life. What he did do is never back down from a situation he was presented with.
Consider this: Jesus never turned away from anyone who asked him for help, or anyone whom he felt compassion for. While he didn’t hang out in graveyards, he did take responsibility for that which was in front of him. As part of Jesus’ teachings on the Mount, Matthew 5:42 expresses this fairly well saying, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” Jesus would always give to those who asked of him, and often what they asked for was healing. In situations where the ill individual died, he raised them from the dead.
The fact is that every single dead person Jesus was faced with that the Bible records, He did something about. I think sometimes people read too far into the text and make assumptions about things that literally cannot be proven in any way because it doesn’t mention them one way or another. We have no idea how many dead people Jesus actually came across in his life, as it only gives detailed records of his birth and 3 years as an adult. We don’t technically know if Jesus came across other dead bodies during those three years that just weren’t written about. As such, we really shouldn’t make up doctrine based on facts that we don’t have.
What we can and should do is identify what we know Jesus did, and then do that. What we know with certainty that Jesus did based on what is written is that he addressed the problems in front of him. If someone cried out to him for healing, he healed the person. Sometimes Jesus seemed to pick out a single individual to heal, such as the man at Solomon’s Colonnade. It doesn’t say Jesus healed everyone else there, so it’s possible (and likely) He didn’t. But it also doesn’t tell us that any of them asked for help either.
At the end of the day, the goal is to emulate Jesus and be conformed into His image. We can make a lot of excuses in life about all the people we should and shouldn’t pray for to raise the dead. In my own life, I have very strong convictions about the subject, and while I don’t stalk funerals, if someone calls me requesting prayer to resurrect a loved one, I take it seriously and attach a level of personal responsibility to it just like I see Jesus doing in Scripture. And at the end of the day, I think that’s probably the best way to go about it.
If you want to learn more about raising the dead, consider out the following resources:
1. Sign up for our Raise the Dead Initiative mailing list here to receive updates and connect further.
2. Get some books. I have written two books on the subject: Practical Keys to Raise the Dead and Faith to Raise the Dead. Practical Keys is a series of excerpts from Faith To Raise The Dead, all of which give practical advice for when you are actively praying to raise someone at that time. Faith To Raise The Dead goes more into theology, but has a chapter devoted to resurrection testimonies, an appendix in the back of faith-building scriptures to help you pray for the deceased to return to life, and I answer a lot of common and even difficult questions surrounding the subject.
Tyler Johnson, founder of the Dead Raising Team has written multiple books on the subject as well: How to Raise the Dead and The Dead Are Raised. Be sure to check out Father Hebert’s encouraging book Saints Who Raised The Dead for pages upon pages of uplifting testimonies about saints in history who have raised the dead in Jesus’ name.
3. Join the Raise the Dead Initiative on Facebook. The Raise the Dead Initiative is a group I started to help the Body of Christ grow in this area, and I will eventually develop an RDI teaching curriculum to train believers to pray for and raise the dead. You may also be interested in The Dead Raising Team (DRT) and Dead Raising Campaign Facebook groups.
4. Look at how you can host or attend a School of Resurrection in your area. Contact Tyler Johnson via his website at http://www.oneglance.org/ to arrange the event. Tyler is an awesome man of God and good friend who regularly teaches Schools of Resurrection to help transform our understanding on the subject of resurrection life. He has Dead Raising Teams around the world who are ready to mobilize in their area to release the abundant life of Jesus Christ. You can also head over to Gumroad to buy and download a complete Resurrection School Audio Series.
Back in the early 2000’s I was a volunteer with Living Stones Christian Fellowship at Penn State and was being trained to do campus ministry. We did a retreat each fall and spring (I think this was the fall retreat), and I was praying and fasting prior to the event. I was also at a stage in my life where I had just begun to learn to hear God’s voice and was practicing it at every opportunity. As I prayed for the event, I began to seek God about it. In that process I may or may not have asked the Lord what the speaker was supposed to preach on (I don’t recall), but I definitely asked God what He wanted to do during the weekend.
After writing down the list of things God shared with me, I went to one of the campus pastors with the list in hand . . .
. . . and told him God wanted to do the things on the list, so he needed to tell the speaker to speak on those specific topics.
Yes, I literally told him that.
In hindsight that probably wasn’t one of my brightest or best moments, and the campus pastor seemed to agree with that analysis. He rebuked me for being arrogant and prideful and informed me that the speaker hears from God perfectly fine without my assistance and that if God wants the speaker to address something, then he will tell the speaker about it, not me.
I was taken aback by the response, as I felt it was somewhat important, and he not only didn’t listen to me at all but chastised me for wrong heart motives. Certainly, he might not have been entirely wrong, but keep in mind that I was still fairly new to the prophetic. In spite of the fact that I was learning that anyone can hear from God, that somehow didn’t translate into recognizing that anyone can hear from God, least of all people who had learned to hear God’s voice long before I did. I wasn’t intentionally being arrogant, but rather was inexperienced. Nevertheless, he did have a good point. I even tried to talk to the speaker, who was someone from the church, and he wasn’t very open to listening to me either. With all doors firmly shut in my face, the only option left was to pray. And while praying probably should have been the first thing that I did, I didn’t know that.
Fast forward to the event, even though they weren’t the message “topics”, he addressed every single thing on my list as key components of his messages.
What did I learn from this?
First, I was right. But there was another lesson: God talks to other people too. Don’t feel a need to broadcast everything God tells you to others, especially if you lack sufficient platform or individual relationship. Pray and let God do the work. After all, that’s probably half or more of the reason he told you in the first place.
I recently read something in Ivan Roman’s book Prophets Among Us (a book I highly recommend), that pointed out that prophets often get so excited and instantly invested into the things God shares with them that sometimes they forget either the timing or other factors related to the situation. While I’m not claiming to be a prophet by sharing this, I can tell you I felt an urgency behind what the Lord shared with me, and the urgency combined with prophetic immaturity certainly wasn’t a great combination.
Growing in the prophetic is as important as learning to hear God’s voice. If all we do is learn to hear God but never grow in maturity beyond that, we end up doing things like I did—things that make us look like arrogant jerks, know-it-alls, or worse.
Just because God gives us a word about something doesn’t mean everyone else needs to change to fit what we believe God is saying. It can be a struggle, as our heart’s desire is often to see what we hear God saying come to pass, but oftentimes prayer is all that is needed in a given situation. When we realize the power of prayer, we will be better equipped to trust that our prayers accomplish far more than our efforts at human manipulation. In the end, this key of wisdom for growing in the prophetic is to learn when to share, and when to pray—and to recognize that we are always supposed to pray regardless of whether we share or not.
Once, years ago, I was part of a church that had a plan to build a sports center as a method of evangelistic outreach to the community. Given the nature of that particular community, the plan itself was very fitting and relevant. The pastor was highly evangelistic and had a lot of relationships with well-known sports-people in the community, so the vision, platform and expertise were certainly present. The church began to really push a funding drive for the building, and I, as part of the intercessor team, began to pray.
What happened was that almost everyone on this particular intercessor team received the same revelation one night: Not Now!
I certainly wouldn’t label myself as a prophet, then or now, and back then I was an immature and growing prophetic voice. Nevertheless, one of the leaders of the intercessor team who I would say was in the God-given position of prophet to that church (although never formally recognized as such, she very obviously functioned as such), received the same word, as did other members of the team.
We took it to prayer, asking the Lord for wisdom and guidance on the matter, and how to proceed. We discussed it among ourselves, and then designated the prophet among us (again, she had the platform of a prophet but the church didn’t designate it by title) to tell the Pastor what the Lord has shown all of us.
Unfortunately, the words were poorly received, the building plans were put in motion, and the sports complex was built at that time. What was the fruit of this? Within two to four years the church underwent some major upheaval. A lot of people left during that process, including the prophet, who had been a pillar of the church for some time.
While I don’t know all the details, I believe the main issue was one of timing. The word the Lord has given me was specifically two words: “Not Now.” It wasn’t “Don’t Build This Sports Complex.” It simply said the timing wasn’t right. The fruit of that endeavor was clearly displayed when a few years after, the church began to have major financial problems during this upheaval. While I cannot say what would have happened for certain, I do believe that God was going to do some shifting of things, including shifting of personnel, prior to the complex being built. Somewhere in this process, one of the leaders was actually found to have a somewhat problematic hidden sexual sin that he had kept from everyone, and as best as anyone knows, he hadn’t sought help for either.
I believe the reason the Lord specified the timing issue was because He wanted to save a lot of stress and prevent a lot of problems. However, because the pastor didn’t heed the prophetic words of the prophet, things proceeded forward as they did.
I believe that God has ordained an administrative order within the Body of Christ. The Fivefold ministry, spoken of in Ephesians 4, outlines five offices which Jesus has given to the church to help the entire Body of Christ grow into full maturity: the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. Each one serves their own purpose, and when they all work together well, a given church will likely prosper in every way. The corollary of this is that when they don’t work together well, or if their roles are not clearly understood, then situations such as the one above occur.
More recently, I was invited to speak for three days at a church. As I prayed about what message and ministry I was supposed to release, I felt conflicted as I was unclear exactly where I fit at this time in the Body. While I have been clear that at this time I am operating in the grace or office of the teacher, I have a burning passion for things which could also be assigned to the realm of the apostle or prophet, and I have also received a number of prophetic words that point to either of those callings as well. Thus, I was conflicted.
I consulted a prophet friend of mine who gave me very wise and incredibly helpful advice. He basically said “Plan to operate fully in the grace you are walking in right now. If God wants to shift you to another office at a future time, He can do that, but y I are clear that at this time you are walking in the grace of a teacher, so operate from that place. If you teach to the fullest of your ability, then they will receive the deposit the Lord wants them to receive from you.”
His advice was not only very sound, but it quieted the confusion in my heart, so I followed his recommendations, and the results were fantastic. By the end of the trip God had confirmed multiple times the content of the messages, had given we wisdom in advance through a dream on how it needed to be focused and delivered, and even the feedback I received from the church was that the teaching was going to help take them into a new place—a direction they have felt called toward to begin with.
It is a difficult pill to swallow for some that not everyone is a fivefold minister. But the truth is not everyone needs to be, and in reality many people don’t want to be! The goal of the fivefold is to equip everyone else for works of service. Thus, if everyone was a fivefold minister, there would be no one left to do works of service!
Paul admonished the Church to desire the greater gifts, so there is nothing wrong with pressing forward into things in the spirit, but we need to understand as the Body of Christ where and how we are supposed to operate. If I were to have gone to that church as an apostle, or prophet, given that at this time I am neither, they would not have received what God designed for them, and my ministry that weekend would likely have totally flopped. However, because I remained within my designated office at this time, God was able to move and do more than I could ask or think. Likewise, if the pastor of my church many years ago had recognized the prophet God has placed to function in our midst, I believe that church would be in a different place today. Regardless of where one fits in the Body of Christ, we each need to learn our current role, recognizing fully that God could change it in the future to something else. If we know what God is doing with us right now, then instead of constantly waiting for some future moment where we expect to be something else, we can operate to our fullest potential in the moment.
Where is God is fitting you in the Body right now. What is your role (or roles)? If you don’t already know, take some time over this week to reflect on this subject. I encourage the reader to ask the Lord to clarify this to you. Is God transitioning you into something new? Is He confirming something you have felt but never really put your finger on? Or do you know your role and are already fulfilling it? Whatever the answer, as you understand what the Lord is doing with you at this time, the entire Body of Christ will benefit, as you meet the needs that you and you alone are best equipped by God to meet.
