Establishing Divine Government in the Church

I was at a home group meeting this past weekend with friends and one of the guys mentioned something about being glad he was out of ministry and the hierarchical system of religion, and how even just the word “ministry” brings up negative feelings. I think this is honestly an increasingly common thing that is happening in the Body of Christ as people are leaving denominational churches in droves. There is a measure of necessary deconstruction and remodeling of our belief systems taking place as we encounter new information and then discover that in some churches and groups, asking intelligent questions about our faith is not acceptable. When this happens, we tend to realize that we don’t belong and need to go elsewhere or nowhere, but that regardless of what we do, it’s time to leave where we are now. And in coming out of one such system, my friend’s comment made a lot of sense.

The very idea of hierarchy or government or leadership has become so toxic to some people that it is easy to look at the scriptures from our woundedness and see Jesus promoting an end to all forms of chain-of-command. And yet not only was Jesus was not abolishing hierarchy and government, He was establishing it. We see this first in his own actions, and then further along we see Paul the Apostle elaborating further on what some of that is meant to look like. I think it is incredibly important if we want to function as healthy members of the Body of Christ for us to understand what God’s government looks like and what Jesus was establishing in the earth, and then discuss a key we can use to identify the health of the leadership of a local church Body.

God has a Divine Order that He has established in all creation. We see this in the functioning of the cosmos, in the Divine Councils the scriptures make occasional reference to, as well as what we saw modeled in the life of Jesus and later on by Paul the Apostle. We can see it in Genesis 1 with God placing the sun and moon to rule over the day and night. In Genesis 1:16 and 1:18 where it states that God set the sun and moon to govern over day and night there are two different words used, memšālâ and māšal, both of which essentially mean “to rule/govern”. Even in creation God set up divine government in the cosmos and the scriptures directly state it. Furthermore, He went on to give mankind authority over the earth and its living creatures (Gen 1:28) and directly gave Adam authority (Gen 2:15) over Eden to steward it. In Genesis 1:28 we again see two words used, this time slightly different—kāḇaš which means to subdue or bring under subjection by force, and rāḏâ, which means to dominate, tread down, or rule over in a manner that suggests it is done by force and/or power. The point of sharing all of this is simply for us to understand that in both the terrestrial heavens and the earth God created a divine order and that there is no way to escape this idea of hierarchy.

Adam was given authority over every living creature on the earth, which means from the beginning it was God’s intention to have a leadership structure in the earth. We see the presence of hierarchy even just in one of the names we call God—He is the “Most High God”. In order for there to be a “Most High” God there have to be gods that are less-high than the Most High, otherwise there wouldn’t be a modifier of “Most High” put on the front of the title “God” in order to delineate which God we are referring to. And no, I am not promoting pantheism, but rather a more appropriate understanding of cosmology and God’s divine order and authority structure in the heavens, including but not limited to the Divine Council and the Elohim, of which in Christ we have been included in. (If you want to learn more about this I highly recommend Dr. Michael Heiser’s book “The Unseen Realm” as a good reference tool). 

In Isaiah 9:6-7 it was even prophesied about Jesus of the governmental system He was coming to establish, and this is probably a good part of why his disciples were so convinced He had come to establish another earthly Kingdom. They weren’t confused as to whether He was establishing a kingdom or not, because they were correct and He was establishing one. They were mistaken about what that governing system looked like and what it governed over.

Isaiah 9:6-7 states:
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

According to that prophecy in Isaiah, Jesus came to establish a governmental system that would be ever-increasing, and that He would reign in righteousness forever. We actually see mention of this in Romans 5:14 where it talks about how death reigned from Adam to Moses (a reign is a governmental system ruling over something) but in Romans 5:17 it says that those of us who receive Jesus’ righteousness will reign with Him in life! (If you want to understand more about reigning in life with Jesus, pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality“). 

Then we get to Jesus’s earthly reign where He appointed apostles. Apostles in the Roman Empire were tasked with governing over colonized areas and spreading the culture and ways of the Roman Empire into that region. By Jesus appointing 12 of his disciples as apostles, he was denoting a few different things—first, that there was indeed a hierarchy, as apostles carried more authority than the rest of His disciples, and second that their job as “sent ones” was to establish the culture of His government. You can’t “apostle” if there is no existing governmental system that you are spreading and expanding. The Apostle Paul elaborated a bit more on this when He explained in Ephesians 4:11-16 about what we now term the “Fivefold Ministry”, which is apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers.

Each of the Fivefold is vital for growing and building the Body of Christ, and while they are not necessarily more “important” than other people, Ephesians 4 states that these individuals and the ministry grace they embody is a gift of Jesus Christ to the entire Body. If we want to get away from systems of religious control that is perfectly fine, but if we want to get away from the divine order in the Body of Christ that Jesus gifted us, that would be foolishness at very best.
Personally, I operate in the grace of a Fivefold Teacher, and with that comes both grace for the task as well as responsibilities that God has given me to steward on behalf of the Body. It doesn’t make me more important that someone who isn’t a Fivefold minister of some kind, but it does mean that I have a specific job that may differ from what certain others are called to, and a large part of my task is to teach and equip the rest of the Body to walk into greater fullness of everything God has planned for us. That’s also why my books almost always carry not just information, but an activation component of how to practically live out and apprehend whatever the subject of that book is—because information will only take you so far if you can’t actually use it.

If we truly want to live out and walk out all that God has planned for us, both individually and corporately, we must accept that there is in fact a governing structure in the Body of Christ, that begins with apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:19-22). The purpose of this isn’t for anyone to lord their position over one another, but rather for each of us to play the role we were designed for, and in so doing for the entire Body of Christ to prosper.

Now, I did promise that I would discuss a key we can use to identify the health of the leadership of a local church Body, and it’s actually pretty simple. Unhealthy leaders and unhealthy leadership structure is all about control, whereas healthy church leadership is about guidance and guidelines that help people function in their highest calling without feeling a need to manipulate or control the individual.

I want to be clear about what I am saying with this, as well as what I am not saying. I am not saying that someone can do or say whatever they want in a local Body without care or concern for the influence it will have on other people and then if a leader speaks to them about their immature behavior then that leader is being “controlling”. No, that leader is stewarding a local Body and is looking out for the needs of everyone, whereas that individual is looking out for the needs of himself or herself only. Healthy leadership will come with established healthy boundaries. We should expect that. We should also expect that those leaders will have some sort of accountability structure in place (not necessarily personally with every member of that church, but with certain individuals in and outside of that local church Body) so if there truly are problems that arise, that there are people who can help mediate the conflicts and give additional perspective. However, that doesn’t mean that someone gets to do whatever they want and constantly ask for outside mediation if they don’t get their way. Accountability is also not a system to be used to control leadership any more than leaders are meant to control their members.

What I am saying is that a leader should help guide those under their leadership and attempt to help everyone figure out how they fit into the local Body, either personally or through other members of the leadership team. In other words, if you aren’t personal friends with the local pastor or apostle, that’s actually okay. He or she can’t be best buddies with every single member of the congregation, and it is an unrealistic expectation to hold of them. A reasonable expectation is that there will be someone in leadership that you can connect with, but the very nature of a leadership structure and the need for delegation means that one man can’t do everything. Even the Apostles in Acts 6 chose seven other men to have leadership roles under their ministry specifically because of a need to delegate tasks.

This article is getting a bit longer than I had anticipated, so I want to bring it to a close here, but the underlying point here is that ministry isn’t bad, leadership and hierarchy aren’t cuss words, and we need to value the place that leadership has in God’s system of Divine Order both in the heavens and in the earth. If we want to match what God is doing, then we have to get enough understanding that we can accept the presence of a governing system and then align ourselves with and in it where God directs us to go.  And if you have been hurt as a result of being part of a local church where maybe someone didn’t steward God’s heart toward you as well as you could have hoped, I encourage you to seek out some of the inner healing resources on this site (I have written extensively on the subject of inner healing and deliverance including my coauthored book “Broken to Whole“, recently made into an audiobook) so you can heal and move past the things that have been holding you back.


The Holy Spirit Told Me To Give My Favorite Jacket Away

This past week it got pretty cold in Texas. Now, to be fair, that is according to Texas standards, not those of anywhere that gets regular winter chill. Nevertheless, after living in Texas for four years, I am more maladapted to the cold then ever. I did, however, keep my winter gear from living up north, so while I may feel a little cold, I’m ultimately just fine. Well, this was the first day this winter that it was getting truly cold, and the sun had gone down, so I was wearing my winter coat when I went out. I went to the grocery store to buy food, as one does, then walked back out to my truck to get in and go home. As I was putting my bags in the truck, a guy came up to me and asked if I had any money for food.

He was homeless, looked like he was in his 30’s somewhere, walked with a limp, and seemed a bit cold. In talking to him briefly, I found out his name is Sean. I don’t tend to carry much cash on me, so I gave Sean some food bars I had just bought and a few bottles of water. It gets pretty hot in Texas, so I always keep some water bottles in my truck for exactly this purpose. When someone on the street asks me for something, I feel like I can at *least* give them some water. I handed him the small bag of food and water, and it was right then that the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said “give him your jacket.” Now, I knew which jacket God meant because it was the one sitting on my passenger seat directly in front of me. My favorite jacket. It was kind of a cross between a sweatshirt and jacket as it was a waist-length zip-up with a hood from North Face, so you could really call it either, but I like it and wear it all the time. Or at least I did up until that moment.

I asked him “Do you have any other warm clothes?”
“No, just what I’m wearing.” Sean replied.
“Then take this. Hopefully you’ll be a bit warmer. I washed it yesterday so it’s clean.”

I handed him the jacket and then that was the end of our interaction. As he limped away, eating a food bar and now hopefully getting a bit warmer, I started to reflect on the encounter. You see, I didn’t say at the time that “God told me to give this to you.” I didn’t try to preach the gospel to him. And I didn’t ask him if I could pray for his leg or whatever was causing the limp. As he was walking away it occurred to me that maybe I could say something about God, but it would have made things end on an awkward note because it didn’t flow naturally in the interaction and would have gotten tacked on as an afterthought. And maybe I should have anyway. I don’t know.

What I do know is that Sean was warmer that night and he ate more than he would have otherwise. The passage in James 2:14-18 comes to mind when I think of that evening. It says:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.

If in our pursuit of being holy or spiritual we forget to take care of basic human needs such as food, water, clothing, and shelter, then in reality what good is this gospel? Of what value is a gospel that will do nothing whatsoever for one’s current day-to-day life and only comes into play in some theoretical afterlife? What really is that gospel saving us from, or saving us into? And how is this gospel loving if it abjectly ignores human need, lack, and pain? Now that doesn’t mean that we each individually can fix every situation everywhere. But can we change the situation in front of us? And further still, can we learn to trust God to supply OUR needs so that we always have an overflow to give from?

There’s one more piece to this story. As I was driving away, I began talking to the Lord about my jacket specifically because it was my favorite. I have other sweatshirts I can wear. I have a winter coat. I don’t have a lack of things I can wear to be warm—I suddenly had a lack of things I *preferred* to wear to keep warm. So how much was me being selfish, how much was me complaining, and how much was me processing? I don’t think I was being selfish, as I literally gave the jacket away when I was instructed. I don’t feel like I was complaining, or if so only minimally, because I truly did want Sean to be warm and be okay that night. I just also wanted to still have my favorite jacket. So I talked to Him about the mixed feelings I was having, and I didn’t really come to any specific conclusion except that I was going to choose to trust Him to be bigger than the situation and to take care of my desires and likes as well.

Fast forward two days and I was at my aunt and uncle’s house. They live in San Marcos about an hour south of Austin, and my parents had sent some Christmas gifts that arrived late. So early January here I am opening Christmas gifts, and what is the first thing I open? A brand new jacket.

I’m not even kidding. While I was giving Sean my favorite jacket and talking to the Lord about the situation, He had literally already sent me a new one and it was waiting at my family’s house for me to pick up. How often do we fail to trust God to see us through? And how often do we try to figure out ways in the natural that we can work it out for ourselves to somehow come out on top or get ahead or whatever else, not willing to trust that God not only sees and knows, but is faithful to follow through and meet us in those situations.

I think so much of our Christian walk is about learning to trust the only One who is truly fully worthy of it, and in doing so being willing to go anywhere, love anyone, touch anyone, place ourselves in any situation He leads us into no matter how dirty or ugly or unpleasant or even dangerous it may be—simply because we know He is worthy of our trust and all of our love, and so we’ll do literally anything for Him. For me that night it was giving away my jacket. Another time it could be food or money or time or anything else. But as we step out in obedience and trust, God will meet us in ways we could not have expected before—because He is faithful.

 

 

What We Tolerate, We Empower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Prosper Yourself—Getting Into The Crypto Game in 2022

Hey Friends of Eden! Happy New Year! Normally one might expect some kind of special prophetic word for the beginning of the year, but I’m launching into something I think can transform your year and ultimately your financial future if you decide to dive in and learn. This article is significantly longer than my usual blog articles because there is so much information to cover, but I think it is worth spending the time on.

Let me begin by saying that I know a lot of people are skeptical about cryptocurrency, and it’s because we have been raised in a system that is all about keeping us bound in debt to that system. Crypto is, I believe, one of the key methods God plans to take the wealth of the wicked and give it to the righteous in this season we are in. God always works with mankind and we see quite often in the Bible that He uses human agents (Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Elijah, Gideon, Deborah, Nehemiah, Mary, Peter, Paul, etc.), and along with humans he uses the systems we make and live with to accomplish His plans. Crypto has the potential to be that very agent–a means by which we bypass some of the wickedness in the financial system and set up new ways of buying and selling that reduce outside control over us and our finances. All of this means that we are actually more-free to steward those finances wisely and prosper how God designed. Imagine if we were so prosperous we could actually lend and not borrow and be the head and not the tail like the Bible tells us. Imagine if instead of wondering how we were going to transform the world around us, we had enough resources for our daily lives and to bring the transforming power of Jesus to others in very practical ways. I believe that wisely investing in cryptocurrency is a key way we can accomplish this in this hour, and while it isn’t the only way this can happen, I think it is a window God has opened for us right now. Now that you understand why I think crypto is so important, I’m going to explain what it is and how you can get involved if you so choose. I also have a number of referral links and other links you may find helpful so you may need to bookmark it and come back to it later. Also, some links work better from a phone. Now, let’s get to it!

Everyone reading this is going to be in a slightly different place, so I’m going to go from most basic to most complex in the things I’m going to put out there for you, as well as try to express what I think the level of risk is with each option. What I am saying isn’t advice on what you should invest in but rather some information and a series of options and observations of what and how you can invest based on what you feel are the best decisions for your life, investment plans, and level of risk you want to entertain. I have also tossed in a few points about how the banks and government don’t actually work in your favor, but that’s just a fact, not investing advice.

If you are new to cryptocurrency entirely, crypto as a whole is a bit like normal fiat currency, or regular cash-money, in that there are all different kinds of it. For example, the Japanese Yen is a different currency than the American Dollar or the Chinese Yuan, but all of them are currency and can be used to buy and sell. And yet, each currency is only usable in the right place. There are many different cryptocurrency tokens (basically a coin, or type of currency) out there, but most have heard of Bitcoin (BTC) and Etherium (ETH), as they are the primary two. Different tokens operate off of different blockchains, where a blockchain is essentially an ongoing coding process that records transactions in a linear fashion. It occurs in “blocks” that link one to another, hence the name “blockchain.” One of the positives about blockchain technology is that it makes it very hard to counterfeit, although a weakness is that once something moves on the blockchain it is nearly impossible to retrieve and often hard to locate, which means scamming and theft are easier to get away with if one knows how.

So why do we care about Crypto and blockchain technology? Partly because it will be used more frequently in the future, so much like the early internet days of the 1990’s, as it’s going to grow and evolve but still be around, we might as well start learning to use it now. From an investment and asset-growth perspective, if it’s going to be around for a long time, the sooner we get involved the more we can potentially profit over time.

But Bitcoin costs around $50,000 right now. Haven’t we already missed out? No. Certainly people who bought BTC at $3 ten years ago and held onto it are doing quite well for themselves, but as a whole, most people didn’t do that and Bitcoin, is, in reality, a forerunner for the entire industry. It’s the one most people have heard of because it’s the first, but in reality it isn’t the best. In fact, in my opinion, Bitcoin and Etherium are some of the worst cryptocurrencies as far as function goes, but they are fairly safe investment holdings to have simply because they are old and well-known. I liken Bitcoin to gold and Etherium to silver–both aren’t going anywhere, but most of the time people don’t make massive life-changing gains from owning them. You can, however, still make money with them, so they’re not bad to have, necessarily. It all depends on your investment strategy.

To invest in crypto, you have to first be able to buy and store crypto. There are a growing number of exchanges and marketplaces to buy cryptocurrencies, and some aren’t available everywhere (KuCoin, for example, isn’t available in Texas for whatever reason). I primarily use Crypto.com to buy and sell, and have found it to be a very versatile platform with over 2500 different crypto coins available to buy and sell, but Coinbase has some good educational options that Crypto.com doesn’t have, so that may be a better platform for someone starting out, but really, if you do both you have more options available to you. There are some coins that aren’t on those exchanges (especially newer coins, and many meme coins), so you may have to end up on a few different exchanges, but to get started, I personally recommend the following because they are all ones I actively use (The links below are referral links). Once you buy crypto you will also want to look into wallets and learn a bit more about Seed Phrases, but this is already going to be longer than I want so I encourage you to research what wallets are (Trezor and Ledger are hard wallets — there are also paper wallets, electronic wallets, and probably more I have forgotten), as well as what a seed phrase is and why it is important you keep it safe.

Crypto.com – https://crypto.com/app/wk58jtdar5 to sign up (Use the link, we both get $25 in crypto)
Coinbase – https://coinbase.com/join/king_mxo5
Maiar Exchange App (EGLD and MEX) – https://get.maiar.com/referral/e3su9gwakf
Uphold – https://uphold.com/signup?referral=1f91a17bae
Free Bitco.in – https://freebitco.in/?r=10396951

I primarily use Crypto.com, but Coinbase, Maiar, and Uphold are useful for
1) backup options in case an exchange goes down temporarily (I’ve had it happen before)
2) I use Maiar for the EGLD and MEX tokens which I am moderately invested in and its that token/company’s own platform which makes staking and using it much easier. I also expect these tokens to go up significantly in the next year or two, so plan to buy and hold more of it.  Currently you can make around 250-300% APY by staking and farming those tokens.
3) Uphold is one of the only places to buy and hold XRP right now, which is something I expect to go up in the next year or three, so that’s primarily what I use that exchnage for.
4) Free Bitco.in is where I stake my Bitcoin specifically, earning upwards of 4% APY and also I use their free faucet to earn tiny bits of BTC over time (we will cover faucets in the free section). I also hold and stake the FUN token which can increase your rewards on their platform as well.


Now let’s get into the meat of the subject—how can you make money with cryptocurrency? There are few main ways, which I will cover, and then we will look at possible options on how to invest, and what one might use as a strategy for investing (keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list–there are other options out there and I encourage you to use this as a base to get started and learn more, not as a stopping point). The main ways one can make money with crypto are to mine, to stake, join a rewards-based investment system, to buy low and sell high, become a primary investor in a project at the outset, and finally to help out in some way to get free crypto. Becoming a primary investor usually requires a lot of money as well as good knowledge of the potential investment, so we will skip that one and look at all the others as useful investment options.


Mining

Mining is where you run a computer program using specialized crypto-mining equipment in order to perform the computer processes necessary for the blockchain technology to function. Essentially, crypto miners are the reason that cryptocurrency works to begin with. Miners then get paid out in cryptocurrency for the computer calculations (known as hashing or hashes) that their computer hardware performs. These machines are usually expensive, loud, and create a LOT of heat (I used to have a Bitcoin miner) and you have to have a really stable and fast internet signal to get the best benefit. You have to pick which kind of crypto you want to mine, so you can’t buy one device and expect it to work for everything—it won’t. Mining is its own very in-depth subject and while I used to, I haven’t done it in years so haven’t kept up. Antminer is a reputable company that produces and sells mining equipment, so that is one place to start looking. The risks here have a lot to do with your ability to properly manage the equipment and run it properly, the cost of mining the token (initial cost and costs of electricity and internet over time), as well as how the price of the token you are mining changes over time. This type of investment requires some time and research and some very real physical considerations about space, noise, heat, etc.


Buy Low and Sell High

This option is pretty straightforward and doesn’t require much explanation. With this method of investment, it is much like stocks that don’t produce dividends. You buy crypto at a price that you think is good and expect it will go up over time, and if it goes up over time and you sell for a higher price than you bought it at, you win. If the price stays stagnant or goes lower for a long period of time you don’t lose money, but you also don’t make anything so your money just kind of sits there growing dust until something interesting happens. You can strike it big, but you can also go nowhere, much like the stock market, so it all depends on which crypto you buy, how long you hold, and a number of other factors. The risks here are primarily market influences that decide the buying price of the token/coin, as well as having to choose which tokens you buy. If you buy what is called a “meme-coin” (something that basically has no actual usefulness or utility but a lot of people are talking about it, such as Shiba Inu, Shiba GF, Dogecoin, and many others) you might happen to buy at the right time and have it work out well for you. You might also buy at the peak of the hype (and meme coins are all about hype) and then watch the price crash in your face, never to recover. Well, that’s where choosing which coins to buy can get risky. To reduce that risk, I prefer to stick with coins that I see some kind of actual use for. While I am NOT telling you that the following coins are good coins that you should invest in, I AM saying that these are ones I personally like because I see them as having good utility over time. You have to decide for yourself if you agree with my assessment or not, because I’m not spending your money and I’m not responsible for what you do with it– you are. That’s why I’m trying to be very clear about the risks, potential benefits, and what you have to consider when buying.

With all of that said, I personally like XRP (Ripple), EGLD and MEX (Elrond’s tokens), CRO (Crypto.com’s coin), ADA (Cardano), AVAX (Avalanche), MATIC (Polygon), FTM (Fantom), BNB (Binance), and the usual BTC (Bitcoin) and ETH (Etherium). Bitcoin and Etherium are dinosaurs as far as utility goes, and ETH transaction fees (called “gas fees”) are super high, but the Big Two aren’t going anywhere so they tend to be, in my opinion, better low-risk investing options. Low risk also equals smaller gain, but it also usually means less potential loss. Fantom, Avalanche, Binance, Elrond, and Cardano all provide their own platforms that run faster than ETH and BTC and are far less costly, so are ones that I prefer — as well as I prefer to stake in coins and companies that use those networks because it reduces the loss I sustain in gas fees (which with ETH can sometimes run into the hundreds of dollars depending on transaction size, ETH price, and time of day). There are literally thousands of tokens out there, and many of them I have never heard of. Just because I didn’t’ list it here doesn’t mean it is good OR bad. It just means I didn’t list it here.  And I am not suggesting that any of the ones I listed here are good investments for you either–I’m just saying I personally like them because I think they have good long term potential—you will have to decide for yourself what tokens of the thousands out there are good choices for you.



Stake

Staking crypto is similar to putting normal fiat currency into a savings account, but in most cases it is more like a high-interest-bearing money market account. To understand why staking crypto is typically far more lucrative than depositing money into a bank account, we have to look at interest rates. APY or Annual Percentage Yield is the amount of money you will earn on an investment in one year’s time. Most savings accounts right now offer extremely low APY. For example, my bank right now offers 0.05% APY on its basic savings account. To put that in perspective, it means by depositing $100, at the end of one full year I will have $100.05. If I wanted to become a millionaire by doing that, well, let’s be honest—no one ever became a millionaire by saving money in a savings account and having no other investments because just inflation alone (usually 3% or greater, but right now it’s much worse) means that the speed at which your money grows in your savings account is slower than the speed that value inflates. Your savings account is losing you purchasing power (which is what actually matters) even if the dollar-amount is growing. Keep in mind that they use that money to invest in ventures that make them significantly more. In other words, they are borrowing money from you to make huge amounts of money for them, and then toss a penny or two in your direction and act like they’re helping you.

Where staking crypto differs is first and foremost in interest rates. Rates go anywhere from 2% to literally hundreds of thousands or millions of percent in APY, but most crypto tend to have anywhere from 2-15% APY. To use the $100 analogy, remember that the bank is offering you 5 cents a year for your money, and crypto is offering you anywhere from $2-$15 for that same money. That is anywhere from 40 to 300 times what a bank will give you right now. As you can see, staking cryptocurrency is a much more lucrative option than a savings account, which is one of the main reasons people are turning to crypto instead of banks (and it’s also one of the reasons the financial industry whales and big banks are getting upset and want it regulated more—we are partially avoiding them and their game and going elsewhere and prospering).

Now, there are a wide variety of ways to stake. I have staked on Crypto.com, Uphold is launching their staking capabilities soon, and I think you may be able to do it on Coinbase too, but those aren’t where I do most of my staking. All of those are fairly low-risk staking options and will usually give anywhere from 2-15% APY like I mentioned before (15% is possible but rare). This is where things get a little more confusing, and where levels of risk come into play because all of this is forms of passive income, and passive income streams are where people can truly move from living paycheck to paycheck to living in an overabundance with more than enough to live comfortably and also give to others freely. Simple straightforward staking on one of these (or other) exchanges is one way to make income through growing your account size over time, but it isn’t the only way. DAOs, Nodes, and other Rewards services are other ways that use a similar concept to staking that will grow your holdings over time, and at a significantly faster rate than the bank.



DAOs

First are the DAOs. What are DAOs? They are super-ultra-high-interest-bearing accounts that provide insane APYs. OHM, or Olympus Dao, is the first of its kind, and almost every other DAO is a fork, or a split-off, of OHM. Other well-known DAOs are HEC (Hector Dao), TIME (Wonderland Dao), KLIMA (Klima Dao), and there are literally new DAOs being spun off every day. The few that are the oldest (OHM, HEC, TIME) seem to be the most stable, but even then they are a new concept so they are undergoing changes as time passes. They work based on a Treasury and Backing system, where they have a crypto treasury full of crypto assets to provide backing for their token, much like back in the day when we used the Gold Standard and used gold and precious metals as a real-life backing for the dollar. This means that these tokens have a theoretical floor price-value based on the quantity of coins and the value in the treasury. HEC recently had their token drop below the floor price so they used some of their treasury backing to correct the price and bring it back up above the floor price.

DAOs make their money largely by being stable assets that can provide liquidity for other trading platforms. Through partnerships with other banks and platforms, when someone wants to buy a crypto but the platform doesn’t have it, they can borrow it from a DAO to provide what the customer needs, and the DAO will collect fees for providing their treasury as liquidity for the other provider. They then in turn pay their investors with high APY for staking our crypto which allows them to provide the liquidity as a service. Now, when I say high APY, what does that mean? OHM’s APY has been around 6,000% to 8,000% in the latter part of last year. If we average it at 7,000% APY, that means if you put in $100 (in crypto value, not actual dollars) then in a year’s time with no other market changes, you would have $7,000 worth of OHM crypto. Again, remember that a bank will give you $100.05 for your $100 in a year’s time, so while there are risks to DAOs, there are also potential risks of not-using DAOs. For me, its not a question of whether to join a DAO or not—I believe I just have to find the right DAOs, and given the extreme volatility of that market, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in the future.

As far as what one can make, it all depends on what one invests. For example, OHM has been offering about 5-6% Return on Investment (ROI) every 5 days based on the interest it generates (which auto-compounds every 8 hours). This means that in 30 days you will generate upward of 30-36% of your initial investment, and in 3 months provided everything stays the same (token price, APY, etc) then you would more than double your initial investment. In reality it would probably take closer to 2.5 months to double if all else remained the same because of how the compounding effect works.

Now the risks. There are DAOs out there (as well as tokens and other projects) some of which are what we call Rug Pulls—where the developers get a bunch of investors then siphon off the money and tank the crypto, “pulling the rug out from under” the investors. It’s impossible to perfectly know which projects will and won’t be RPs, but the longer one is in business successfully and the more in the public eye the developers/owners are, the less likely of a RP. OHM, HEC, and TIME seem to be doing well enough and I personally don’t believe any of them are RPs. KLIMA, which I mentioned before, is all about selling carbon credits, which I despise, so I personally refuse to invest in it, but someone who is very concerned about global warming and thinks that throwing money at the problem will fix it, if it even exists, may want to give KLIMA a try. The risk for me there is in investing based off of corrupt hoax-“science”, so I personally avoid that one.

Other risks include a major drop in price, as with any token, but you still own the token so if you really want to sell at a loss, you can. The risks include a sudden drop in APY meaning your investment will still grow, but much more slowly. All in all, if you find the right DAOs I think they are fairly low risk, but that is under the condition that you do find the right DAO. Some of the DAOs that are tanking right now are JADE and LIFE, and a lot of investors have lost a lot of money on those projects. New DAOs pop up every day, so finding ones that don’t RP can be risky. One in particular that I personally support and have already invested $$ in is the Immortal Monastery Dao which will be launching officially in Q1 of 2022. I believe it will not be rug-pulling and has a lot of potential to prosper, so I am taking a big risk and investing early. Will it be the right decision? Time will tell, but if you want to check it out, you can find it at Immortalmonks.com, and join their discord group at discord.gg/immortalmonks.


Nodes

Next come what are known as Nodes, or Node-As-A-Service options. The first one that was ever created is $STRONG (Strongblock.io), but newer ones have sprung up since–Soldier, Samurai, Louverture, Ring, Thor, and more are popping up literally every day now. The ones I personally am invested in are Strong , Samurai, and Louverture (in that order) (tokens are $STRONG, $HNR, & $LVT), but I think Thor and Ring might have potential as well. Time will tell, but if I had to pick a single one to choose, it would be Strong. It is both the first of its kind and thus the most stable financially, has the best backing, and lacks the hyper-extreme volatility of some of these new projects, as well as Rug Pulls. Strong has that confidence from me, and while I’m still watching Samurai and Louverture to see if they are worthwhile of further investment, I don’t think (given their history thus far) that the developers are intending to RP or they easily could have done it already. As for how their tokens will perform, time will tell. Just my thoughts.

So how do nodes work? Nodes are meant to replace crypto-mining, providing computational power through a network of crypto nodes that support a blockchain in place of mining. Investors who make nodes make money by depositing a fixed amount of crypto to make a node, and then earning daily rewards from the node. The key here though is that you lose all of the crypto you turn in to make the node. With STRONG, you literally hand over 10 Strong tokens that you will never get back, and in turn you are (currently, the rewards can always change) rewarded 0.1 Strong tokens per node daily. This means that given a stable price of the token, it takes about 100-105 days (depending on gas fees) to make back the initial investment, and everything from there forward is profit. That means that one Strong node, while it does have initial risk, can net you close to 400% APY. If we recall that the bank will pay you 0.05% APY, there is a significant difference in potential income. The other NAAS providers all have their own rules and reward systems, which vary, but each have their own reward payouts for purchasing a node up-front to provide computational power for them to run their system.

How does this make money? If we use STRONG as the example with a market price of $450 per token (a conservative average price the past few weeks), 0.1 Strong in rewards means you are making about $45 a day, which is $315 a week, $1350 a month, and over $16,000 a year. It would cost $4500 plus gas fees to make a node, but long-term the potential benefits are there, provided the project continues with either a minimal price decrease or a price increase. But an extra $1,350 a month is nothing to sneeze at. For some people that’s their biweekly paycheck, so two nodes could double their income in a year. Just some things to consider, but you have to keep the risks in mind.

Now to discuss the risks: First, the risk is that the project tanks through a Rug or because massive whale investors sell a ton of the token all at the same time and the price tanks, sparking even more mass-selloff out of fear. That’ a self-fulfilling prophecy that spirals the token price down. I watched it happen the other day where a price went from $50 a token to $2, and a week later it was at $0.04 and the developers basically abandoned that token. The crypto was dead at that point and even if it stays around, it’s never going to amount to anything any longer. Anything that tanks a coin will mean a major, if not complete, loss for the investor. That’s a risk with any token, but with Nodes there are additional risks. While the APY is pretty amazing, the risk is also more significant than at a bank because with greater rewards come greater risks. If the token tanks shortly after you create a node, you have already turned in your tokens so you don’t have them any longer and can’t turn around and sell them even at a loss. In other words, until you make back your initial investment over time, you are choosing to entertain a very high level of risk. And yet, once you make back that investment, your risk is nonexistent because every day becomes a money-maker for you.


Rewards-Based Membership System

Finally, you can join a rewards-based membership system. I mention this next to last because there is only one of these that I am aware of at the moment, and it functions a bit like a cross between staking, a DAO, NAAS, and a normal bank bond. It is called Hyperverse.

Hyperverse is a referral-based membership system that currently offers 0.5% in daily rewards, but the unique thing about is that it guarantees a 300% total increase in your initial crypto investment. Similar to a Node system, you lose access to what you initially invest, but unlike nodes you have a guaranteed payout that isn’t subject to change at any time. When you hit the full maturation of your rewards membership (at 600 days or when it completes the process of tripling itself, whichever comes first), your membership ends. The cool thing about this system is that for as little as 50 HU, their token, you can re-buy memberships, and you can have an unlimited amount of memberships. This means that if you want to keep compounding rewards, you can re-buy memberships each time your account balance hits 50 HU in token rewards, which starts the clock on a 0.5% payout of that 50 HU as well.

While this might sound a little confusing, it means that you can purchase membership into a rewards system with guaranteed rewards, and you can continue to reinvest in that system as often as you want to increase your gains over time. I know multiple people who have been using this rewards system for almost a year and it has changed the financial picture of their lives. I have only recently heard about it and begun getting involved, so I haven’t seen the amazing gains they have yet, but the system removes a lot of the Node risks because it comes with guarantees the node systems don’t have, and it also allows you to compound your investments through reinvesting a bit like the DAOs do. This is if all you do is buy a membership to passively compound your crypto over 600 days.

Now, a unique feature about Hyperverse, one that is making it incredibly popular, is that as a referral-based membership system the more people you refer, the faster your rewards mature into that 3x gain. This means that instead of taking 600 days to reach maturation, or around 1 year and 8 months, you could potentially do that in 10 months, four months, or if you were very active with referrals, you could literally 3x your membership cost every single month and rebuy new memberships with your ongoing rewards. This is what the people I have seen do very well with this have done—a combination of sharing the referral system and reinvesting on a regular, even daily basis, to accelerate the speed that they compound their rewards.

Now, how does this membership system generate income? Well, for one they provide liquidity like the DAOs do, and they are also at the forefront of other big crypto projects, so the income for them that our buying into the rewards system generates are used by them to fund other projects, and the 3x rewards are the payout we receive as a result of their work with our membership fees. From what I have seen so far they are also working to launch their own DAO as well (Hyper Dao) and with the growing membership rolls they have their DAO will lack the risk of some of these other new DAOs that pop up daily. They are run and owned by some major investors in the Crypto sphere who have backed Etherium and Bitcoin, among other things, and have an ongoing track record of success.

The risks of this, technically, are that you don’t get your money back and they Rug, or that the tokens lose value, but I think the risks of this are extremely low with this particular company’s system. They do really great marketing, have a growing customer/consumer base, and have growing investments in the crypto sphere, all of which create a stability that I have yet to see with other projects, even the other projects I am actively invested in. To join the Hyperverse, follow this referral link and get started: https://download.thehyperverse.net/#/?code=Thekingsofeden

To watch an informational video to understand the Hyperverse system better, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHP8RdSsuFk&feature=youtu.be

Now, because this is a referral-only membership system, they’re depending on members to help other members enroll. If you have trouble or questions or just want to know more about the system, email me so I can help navigate you through the process. If you haven’t transferred crypto before it can feel a little daunting, but it isn’t actually difficult, so reach out and let’s get you connected.


Free Options

Now, the final way one can get involved in crypto is to do it for free. Well, with the exception of a rewards debit/credit card, it’s not really free, as it is using time instead of money, but time can be used to make money, so it’s just a different, and generally ineffective, means of joining the crypto market.

I use the Crypto.com rewards debit card to earn crypto-back on every purchase I make.  To use it, go to https://crypto.com/app/wk58jtdar5 to sign up (Use the link, we both get $25 in crypto). I like this particular method. While it doesn’t balloon my crypto holdings, I am going to be spending money on a weekly basis at the grocery store, filling the gas tank, and more. My bank debit card pays me nothing. This debit card pays me crypto rewards, and I’m still just using cash. How much you get back in rewards depends on the terms of the card you get (the Crypto cards have levels of rewards depending on how much you stake with them), and the rewards are usually more than just crypto-back, but that’s the only one I personally care about. I have a friend who uses a Bitcoin-rewards-back credit card. Again, he probably isn’t raking in the dough with the card, but Bitcoin has consistently gone up in price over time so for him, who is a long-term holder of the token, it’s a good plan because he is gradually adding to his holdings doing something he would be doing anyway. This particular “free” option isn’t specifically free in that there is typically some kind of initiation cost depending on the terms of that card, but it has the potential to take mundane actions that have no relation to crypto and turn them into crypto rewards.

For other free options, you can use a crypto faucet (which back when Bitcoin was super cheap were more worthwhile, but now have diminishing returns). You can use something like the Brave Browser which is an internet browser where by browsing over time, they have tiny silent popup ads in the corner of your screen (not intrusive at all for me as they’re very small and go away quickly) which earn you small bits of the BAT token. This is by no means a way you will ever get rich, but it is one way you can generate a small amount of consistent BAT doing things you are already planning to do, which is one of the reasons I use it. It also has other tracking-blocking features I like, so it’s been a good choice for me. Coinbase offers occasional education modules about new crypto tokens and they often offer a few free tokens for going through their educational modules, so you can earn small amounts of free crypto there too (my Coinbase referral link is up toward the top).Free Bitco.in is the investment account I mentioned before that offers roughly 4% APY, but it also has a free faucet for small amounts of crypto you can add to your investment, as often as each hour if you so choose. All of these options are, again, ways that you can earn free crypto, but keep in mind this simply means it doesn’t cost you cash, but they will all cost you time and energy. Two other faucet-like-things I use (but again, take consistency on a regular basis and patience) are Bitcoin and ETH slots (Basically faucets that want to look cool and use ads to generate revenue to pay you with). You won’t get rich quick, but eventually (and it will take a while) you should get a payout.

Coinbase: – https://coinbase.com/join/king_mxo5
Bitcoin Faucet: https://freebitco.in/?r=10396951
Bitcoin Slots: https://btcheat.com/?i=644089
Etherium Slots: http://ethcombo.com/?i=47925

The main risks with these are ultimately minimal payout for your time spent. I can say that I have received and used the crypto from the Brave Browser, Coinbase rewards, and FreeBitco.in faucet, so for me personally they seem no-risk, but again each person has to decide if these are worthwhile options for them.

Finally, there are some free mining options for Testnet crypto. Now, a Testnet is the testing system a cryptocurrency developer sets up before launching their actual crypto service which is called a Mainnet. I have been involved in a number of these Testnet crypto over the past few years and have already shared some with friends on social media. One, the Pi Network, is preparing to launch its crypto in 2022, and the others are in varying stages of development. With a Testnet, you simply open the app (phone only) and hit their button once a day which helps them test node connections and make sure their work is running properly before they launch. These are also referral-only so you have to use a referral keyword. I’ll provide a list below of the ones I’m doing in case you want to give it a try. The risk here is that the coin flops, the app stops working, or that you just don’t get a lot of value out of the coin once it launches, but the upside is that other than a minute or less a day, you didn’t really lose much if it fails. Joining is not a guarantee of success, and the potential rewards drop over time the more people join, so the sooner you join the better if this is something you decide to take part in.

Pi Network – https://minepi.com/kingdomwarrior612
Bee Network (Bee.com) – https://bee.com/en/download Referral code: kingdomwarrior612
Star Network – https://download.starnetwork.io/ Referral code: kingdomwarrior612
EagleNetwork – https://eaglenetwork.app Referral code KINGDOMWARRIOR
Midoin – https://midoin.link/RaS1 Referral code: michaelking11

All in all, cryptocurrency is a massive market with a wide range of options out there, means and methods of investing and getting involved, and it really just comes down to asking yourself what style of investing works best for you. One major investment key is to never invest more than you can risk to lose. I have chatted with people online who literally used their rent money for the month to invest in something they thought was going to be a sure thing, and were basically praying the price would stop dropping and go back up. That’s a terrible idea and if homelessness is something you enjoy, go ahead and risk your rent money. Otherwise, people should only risk what they can actually afford to lose. Keep in mind I didn’t say risk what you want to lose, I said that you can afford it. In other words, I don’t want to lose anything. I want to make major gains and be prosperous. But I’m invariably going to pick some losers now and again. And when that happens, I still need to be able to continue to pay my mortgage and property taxes without fear because I didn’t invest that money to begin with.

There is much more one could learn than all I have shared here, but my goal is to give you some options on how to get started and some ideas on what kinds of opportunities are out there. I am excited for you. I believe cryptocurrencies are something that have the potential to benefit us all, and I look forward to all the ways this is going to bless you and those around you! If this information has been helpful to you, please share it with others so we can keep spreading the blessing in 2022!

How To Partner With Your Angels

I recently listened to an audio message by Dan Duval about angels on his podcast program Discovering Truth With Dan Duval. This particular message confirmed something for me that I have thought about but never clearly formulated into words—that angels grow and develop over time like we do, and that in fact they are always growing in maturity. Furthermore, Dan pointed out that we can empower angels by praying for them and by praying to God about things so that we can engage and release their various functions and abilities.

The idea that we empower angels with our prayers isn’t really a new concept, nor is it new to me, but I don’t think that people typically word it that way. In fact, I don’t recall that Dan specifically phrased it that way either, but I certainly am right now. We empower angels with our prayers.

To some this might not seem important or significant, but I think this subject has immense value not only for our spiritual growth, but for every aspect of our lives. Consider that God has assigned angels to each one of us for our protection, but also for destroying works of darkness and advancing against the enemy (Psalm 91:11-13). If God sees fit to assign angels to us as messengers, protectors, and fellow servants-in-arms against the enemy, then it seems prudent to me that we should understand not just that God uses angels (read Why Does God Use Angels?), but how we can partner with them to manifest God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Before going further, I tend to get a lot of kickback when I say things like “let’s partner with our angels”, so let me explain what I mean. It should already be incredibly apparent I’m not talking about worshipping them—only an idiot or someone intentionally misinterpreting what I am saying would think that. The Bible prohibits it in multiple places (Exodus 20:2-3, Deuteronomy 5:6-7, 1 Corinthians 10:14, Colossians 2:8, Romans. 1:24–25, Revelation 1:8-9, Revelation 22:8-9). What I am saying is that God has given angels certain spheres of authority and assignments, and that their jobs include a number of things that are helpful for us as we walk out everything God has for us. Some of the more obviously scriptural functions of angels include giving us messages from God, protecting us physically and spiritually, delivering us from bad situations, guiding us, and even delivering objects such as food from time to time. With such a wide range of potential functions (my list of which is by no means exhaustive of their full abilities), it would be downright foolish for us to ignore the things that God has sent angels to partner with us to accomplish in the earth.

Some people say we can command angels directly. Others believe we are supposed to pray to God and ask Him to command the angels. Others still believe we don’t address angels in any way and simply pray to God and let Him work out the details of how that happens. Regardless of which method(s) one chooses, prayer is a vital part of this process. Psalm 103:20 says, “Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.” Angels perform God’s word, so whether that is us declaring His word or Him speaking His words to them in response to our prayers, the more we engage heaven in prayer, the more that angels are empowered and released to do things.

If we recall back to Daniel 10, we find Daniel concerned about some things the Lord revealed to him, so in verses 2-3 he spends time fasting and praying for understanding. In verses 12-13, twenty one days after he began, an angel appears to Daniel and explains, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.” The key point of relevance here is that the first day Daniel began fasting and praying, the angel was sent to him with a message. However, it was another full twenty days before the angel actually arrived with the message, and it took an angelic prince, Michael, getting involved in a battle against a demonic prince for the other angel to finally get through. If the answer was sent on the first day, what the heck was Daniel doing fasting and praying for almost three more weeks??  Simple: His prayers were either directly or indirectly empowering the angelic host to win the battle and get the message through to him.

Why do I say this? There is an important principle outlined in Psalm 115:16 having to do with authority in the heavens and the earth. The passage says, “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind.” For whatever reason God chose to set it up so that things related to planet earth require our prayers. I don’t think it was coincidental that Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 6:10 to pray what I call a blank check prayer to God: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What Jesus prayed in common vernacular was “God, do whatever you want here on earth.” The entire purpose of this prayer was so that God can manifest His will in His way, not being limited in any manner by limiting prayers. When we pray for God to do things in the earth, He often chooses to use angels to do it, and when He does, the power released when we pray is used in some inexplicable way to help them do their jobs better.

I see two primary ways to partner with angels to perform God’s will. The first and most basic method is to look at the needs in our own lives, and those of our family, friends, churches, cities, nations, and the world as a whole and pray to God and/or decree God’s will to the heavens and the earth based on our understanding of those needs.

A second way to partner with angels is to attempt to discern what angels are actually present nearby and either in talking to them directly or asking the Holy Spirit, find out what they need to accomplish their heavenly assignments, and then pray accordingly. While it still involves prayer, this method is more focused on helping specific angels with specific needs that they identify, whereas the first is focused on generally helping some angels out there somewhere with needs that we identify (And yes, talking to angels is incredibly scriptural. The majority of times we see an angel in scripture, they are having a conversation with a human.).

Neither method is more correct; both are simply different but equally viable means of engaging angels to accomplish God’s will in the earth. The method or methods one chooses to employ will usually have a lot to do with one’s belief system, which often has a lot to do with what religious system one was raised in, and what rules or regulations that particular religious system imposed on the individual.

For example, my dad is an Episcopal priest, and while my parents are charismatic-leaning to a certain degree, and even though I know my dad has had conversations with angels on more than one occasion, I have good reasons to believe that this idea the way I am presenting it would make them both pretty uncomfortable. Years ago, if someone had told me this same thing, I probably would have been uncomfortable with it too, but largely only because I had learned a lot of dumb rules and regulations from religious systems (not just from the Episcopal church, but from other denominations too) that limited and prohibited a lot of things based on their own fears and traditions (which are often developed out of fear and control). As I began to prayerfully and intentionally reason through what I believed and why, I started to see that some of the things we have been taught are incredibly stupid, such as the idea that we shouldn’t talk to angels. If we aren’t supposed to talk to angels, then neither should have Abraham, Jacob, Isaiah, Elijah, Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, nor the apostles John, Peter, and Paul.

In the end, it all really comes down to prayer, plain and simple. If we want to partner with our angels to see God’s will manifest in our lives to a greater degree, we must develop lifestyles of prayer.

If you want to hear more about this subject, I strongly encourage you to give a listen to the podcast that sparked this article, a free message by Dan Duval called “Angels: Our Brothers in Arms”

 

Walking Together In Disagreement

Normally, when we talk about “walking with” another person, we generally refer to being in agreement with him or her. However, in the current climate of our world, which on a political level is somewhat toxic, we need to understand the importance of walking together in disagreement.

Is it nice when we agree with one another? Sure. It certainly is convenient, at any rate. Comfortable too. In fact, some people become so comfortable in their place of agreement that they surround themselves with proverbial “yes-men,” and anyone who disagrees is removed from the circle. However, there is a certain danger in always keeping ourselves cloistered in comfortable agreement, and that danger is stagnation.

When we find people in life we disagree with, especially if we are able to handle that disagreement in a mature manner, we have an opportunity to grow. I’m going to use transgenderism as an example. I personally believe that most if not all transgender individuals have an underlying psychological issue or disorder that needs to be treated as opposed to it being a difference to be celebrated.  I also believe that by celebrating dysfunction, we do these people great harm. In my line of work as a trauma nurse, I occasionally work with transgender individuals and help them along their healing journey after a car accident or other physical trauma. During that time, I call them whatever name and personal pronoun they prefer to be referred by, and treat them with the same respect I would give to any other human being. Basically, the transgender subject with that person only becomes an issue, in my mind, if it is somehow medically relevant or if they choose to bring in a whole lot of drama about it.  The key to my entire example is this: I don’t have to agree with their perception of transgenderism to help them physically heal, care for them, or be kind and loving to them.

There are so many things in life where we disagree with one another. And while unity and agreement can be helpful and at times quite powerful, we also have to be able to walk together in disagreement with one another. I don’t even always agree with my wife, but we have been married for twelve years and are going strong. There are definitely a lot of times I have upset her, and she has upset me, and we disagree on a lot of things. However, the key to good relationships is learning not how to walk together in agreement, because that is easy. It’s when we disagree that we have to put the effort in and figure out how to keep moving forward.

While writing this, I was distractedly scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across a conversation about kids and Trump hats and a generally volatile real-life situation. I read through the comments and read the following quote: “my bias came out when I saw those ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. To me it just says bigotry, racism and limited thinkers.” The ironic thing about the above statement is it was possibly one of the most bigoted things the person could have written, and demonstrated extremely limited thinking. A bigot, by definition, is one who is intolerant of those with differing beliefs. The man who wrote the above quote looked at a person, saw a hat with a particular slogan on it, and immediately judged the character and heart motivations of the person wearing it without actually attempting to see if any of his judgments were actually true.

My wife and I have some family friends with very divergent political beliefs. The thing is though, that we have healthy and even enjoyable political discussions because we don’t let politics define our relationship. Our choice to share life together as friends is what decides how we manage our disagreements, not the other way around. Certainly there are times to limit the level of access that we give toxic relationships in our lives, but I think that these days we are far more focused on cutting out dissenting voices than we are engaged in learning from one another and committing to walking together even in disagreement. I think it’s high time that we bring back some maturity into our disagreements.

Should We Prophesy About Dates, Spouses, And Life-Altering Decisions?

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Over the past century, God has been restoring the prophetic to the Body of Christ. People have been learning about the gifts of the spirit, prophets, discernment, hearing God’s voice, and more. One of the things that are commonly taught when learning about prophecy are the three things that we should never prophesy. The first is dates that things will or will not happen. The second is who we will or will not marry, and the third is about any kind of life-altering decision. Should we prophesy about dates, spouses, and life-altering decisions? Let’s find out.

My dad is a Charismatic-leaning Episcopal priest, and he doesn’t like dealing with the prophetic. Why? Because he absolutely hates when people say foolish things and tack a “well, God told me so it must be true/wise/good” on the end. He’s always like “That’s the ultimate trump card. What am I supposed to say to argue with that, even though it’s obviously a dumb idea?” His solution to issues like this is to avoid it as much as possible, much like the prohibition on prophesying about dates, spouses, and decisions. There is some wisdom behind this to a certain extent, but it is also somewhat of a reaction to past abuses, and there is a risk that we inhibit future growth by avoiding these topics entirely.

Before going further, let’s look a little at the levels of prophecy in scripture. In 1 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul outlines the gifts of the Spirit, and in 1 Corinthians 14 he expounds in more depth on the gifts of prophecy and tongues. Prophecy, in that context, is for building up others, strengthening one another, and comfort. There is another passage in Ephesians 4 that talks about prophets as a gift of Jesus to the Body of Christ. Some argue that anyone who can prophesy is a prophet, but the gift of prophecy from the Holy Spirit and the gift of the prophet from Jesus are two different things. Both can prophesy, but I suggest their functions are different. Furthermore, Romans 12:6 says, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith . . .” Prophecy, then, has levels that are in some measure designated by our level of faith as well.

The common teaching in spirit-filled circles is that while all people can prophesy for building up, strengthening, and comfort, only people with the designated title of “prophet” should go in further depth and speak about dates, spouses, life decisions, and other more “risky” things. The rationale there is that certain people have a special grace to prophesy those things that others don’t have as a result of their “office” as a prophet. While I definitely agree that there are real prophets and there are differences between the grace on their life and that of non-prophets, I don’t think it means that no one else can prophesy about the three areas in question.

One of the major reasons people teach that no one else should prophesy on these subjects is due to a combination of fear and wisdom. Fear says that bad things have happened before and people have made bad decisions from prophecies that were inaccurate, so we should avoid it entirely. Wisdom says that people have made bad decisions from prophecies that were in accurate so we need to pay attention to who, how, where, and when we deal with those types of prophetic words. The former is focused on how bad the problem is while the latter on how to avoid the problem, but in reality both have the potential to miss a third aspect of the situation: discernment.

If we do not teach the body how to rightly discern between God’s voice, our own mental clutter and baggage and noise, and the enemy, then no amount of rules are going to fix the problem. Hebrews 5:14 says that we learn to discern through constant use. If we are never put into challenging situations, we will never hone our discernment. As a teacher, I want people to learn and grow, so I see no value in making arbitrary rules out of fear to avoid a problem that might or might not come up. Actually, I expect that not only will we have situations that are less than optimal, but that these moments are teaching opportunities. Why should we expect people to grow if there is no challenge?

Initially when prophets came into the Charismatic scene, there were some pretty impressive displays of accurate prophetic unction, including words of knowledge of people’s names, birthdates, social security numbers, and other very detailed information about their lives that God would share with the person ministering. Then, as excesses came into the movement and God and people began to work on stewarding things better, God was having people learn how to hear his voice and there was a pulling-back on the so-called extravagant prophetic words. However, I believe it is time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction. We need men and women of God who know how to not only hear very specific and important information, but when to share it and with whom.

Most of the time I have seen rules put into place about what may and may not be prophesied, it is in situations with highly legalistic, dysfunctional, and manipulative leadership. That isn’t to say that all leaders who make those kinds of rules are those things, but “you shall and shall not say these sorts of things from God” rules are rarely in the heart of God for a situation. Certainly, 1 Corinthians 14 tells us that the spirit of a prophet is subject to his or her control, and there are times and situations to exercise wisdom and restraint, but that isn’t usually what is happening.

As I see it, there is a measure of wisdom in stewardship, but also a good deal of fear veiled as wisdom. I believe we need to expect both the person prophesying and the person receiving the word to discern the veracity of the prophecy. We also need to make sure we are teaching people how to discern prophetic words and not just avoid talking about certain subjects. If God can speak through a donkey, then He can tell what he likes to whom He likes, and it isn’t our job to place man-made rules on who may or may not prophesy certain things. In fact, the moment we lay down those rules is probably the moment God is going to put someone in our path to break those rules, and while we will call them “rebellious”, there is a good chance God put them there on purpose to break them because they are stupid rules, although usually well-intentioned stupid ones.

I have learned over time that I am pretty bad about hearing dates accurately, so I personally just avoid telling people dates. Why? Because if I prophesy according to my faith with maturity, then I won’t mislead people when I already know I’m usually wrong about dates. I also have a high personal level of responsibility toward discerning and delivering prophetic words. I test it internally and make sure I am confident it comes from God before ever delivering it, as everyone should do before speaking a prophecy to someone else.

At the end of the day, if we want to see people grow in the prophetic, we can’t avoid the difficult areas. Mind you, we also don’t want to be foolish either, so as God pushes the Church to elevate the prophetic to new heights once again, we have some work to do. If we teach people not only how to discern God’s voice as the one giving the word, but to test every word we receive on the other end, then regardless of the situation, we can avoid a lot of problems while still engaging all that God has for us and the wisdom He wants to speak to and through us.

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abundantlife immortality resurrection divinehealing

How Much Life Do You Want?

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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.

 

 

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miraclesupernatural oilmannawinegolddustfeathersgemstones

A Bible Flowing With Oil: The Miracle in Dalton, Georgia

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Some of you may have already heard about the Bible in Georgia that is literally dripping, leaking, and producing oil.  This miracle began on January 27rd of 2017 after an intense time of prayer in the Lord’s presence a few days prior, and has continued for almost 2 years.  Many people have been healed, saved, delivered, and set free from all kinds of afflictions after witnessing this miracle or being prayed for and anointed with the oil coming from this Bible.  People have so many reactions, ranging from awe, wonder, and worship of God to skepticism, doubt, and even anger at what they refer to as “false signs and wonders.”  In this day and age, we must learn to operate in a deeper level of discernment in what the Lord is doing, so I want to share with you a few details about how the oil began appearing to this group and four of the things the Scriptures reveal to us about this miracle oil.

Author’s Note:  (The Kings of Eden is not affiliated with His Name Is Flowing Oil, so please don’t ask us for oil—we don’t have or own the Bible or any of the oil and cannot send you any or respond to requests asking for oil),

The miracle of oil was birthed out of prayer, much how most miracles and moves of God are.  Jerry and his wife, the owners of the Bible, had been meeting with five other people for over two years to pray for one another and spend time in worship and fellowship.  They met in a small store, Grace 251, located on 111 W Gordon Street in Dalton, Georgia.  After two years of prayer, the Lord told them in November of 2016 that after the inauguration, that He would reveal to them what He was doing.  It was January 27th, one week to the day after the inauguration that the supernatural oil began to appear.  The oil itself began appearing in the Bible at Psalms 39.  The center of the page was wet, but because their grandbaby was at the house, the wife checked to make sure nothing had spilled on it.  When they investigated further, they agreed that it was oil, and not from any identifiable source.  As the oil continued to accumulate, it was placed in a re-sealable plastic bag, and in three weeks it saturated from Psalms all the way to the back of the book, through Revelation and the concordance, while the front half was still dry.  Then, get this:  Genesis began to get wet, and it soaked its way back through the Bible until it reached Psalms again.  As of mid August last year (2017), they had moved it to their fourth container, as none of them had been large enough to contain the oil.

As they began to pray about this miracle, the Lord told them that as long as they continued to give the oil away for free, God would continue to replenish it and ensure it continued to flow.  To date, they have given away tens of thousands of vials of this oil, reaching over 50,000 vials of oil last year alone—all appearing supernaturally by God’s grace from a single Bible.  I spoke on the phone once with Jerry, the husband of the couple who own the Bible, and he was very down-to-earth, humble, and took no credit for the miracle.  He and those around him were very clear that this was the Lord’s doing in their midst, and that while they had been praying for God to come, and He had been revealing Himself, they had no idea what He had planned for them.  However, the appearance of this Bible flowing with oil has sparked a literal revival in that region, and many have been touched by the power of God released through this oil.  Marriages have been restored, people have been healed, and as of when we spoke, there had been four documented cases of stage 3 and 4 cancer being healed.  They have been mailing the oil out all around the world for free, but currently, due to the high demand of oil, they are not able to give the oil away outside of the meetings they are hosting and/or invited to.  If you want to learn more about their itinerary, events, etc. you can find them at HisNameIsFlowingOil.org

This miracle is an amazing testimony to God’s creative power, but what could it possibly mean?  Why would God do something like this?  The Bible has a lot of things to say about oil—far more, in fact, than one might imagine at first glance.

 

The Holy Spirit

First, oil represents the Holy Spirit.  We see this clearly in Isaiah 61:1 which says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me . . .”  The Holy Spirit rests upon Him in that verse because he has been anointed.  Anointing is an act where someone rubs or smears oil on someone, so here it is clear that as a direct result of God anointing him with oil, the Holy Spirit remains on him.  Acts 10:38 expressing this same concept:  ” . . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”  Jesus wasn’t just anointed with oil—he was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power.  This same connection is further represented in the life of the disciples when Jesus informed them the same would happen to them, saying “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  The same anointing by the same Holy Spirit that Jesus received, He informed the disciples that they, too, would receive—and this extends to all those who are followers of the Lord Jesus, even to this day.  Supernatural oil from heaven points to the active work of the Holy Spirit in our lives—His infilling, indwelling nature.  Likewise, when one is anointed with heavenly oil, it is a visible prophetic action demonstrating an invisible spiritual reality.

 

Divine Healing

The oil secondarily represents healing.  The most well-known passage that shows us this is James 5:14-15, which says, “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.” While this verse points to the prayer offered in faith as the thing that brings the healing, the oil is connected with the act of prayer.  Some denominations, most specifically the Catholics, Anglicans and Episcopalians, consider this to be a Sacrament, an outward and visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace or blessing.  Others look at this passage from a more historical perspective, speculating that the oil was used primarily as medicine—a direct means of healing.  Regardless of which one considers this to be, or maybe one believes it is both and yet more, healing is closely associated with oil in the Bible.  How much moreso should heavenly oil be associated with the same?

Some other verses that show oil as a medium for healing include Isaiah 1:6 and  Ezekiel 16:9:

Isaiah 1:6
From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil.

Ezekiel 16:9
“‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. . . “

Intercession

A third thing the heavenly oil speaks of is intercessory prayer.  We see a lesson in ongoing intercession found in Leviticus 24:1-3:  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually.  Outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps before the Lord from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.'”  The oil is to be tended continually so the lamps are always kept burning.  The significance here is that oil can represent ongoing intercession, day and night before the Throne in heaven.  In Revelation 5:8 we see the 24 elders bowing before the Throne holding golden bowls of incense, which the passage explains, saying: “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”  There is clear and significant prophetic linkage between the book of Revelation and the ordinances of the Tent of Meeting and later the Temple.  If prayers can be likened to the burning of an aromatic substance, which it could be argued is symbolic not just of incense but of oil as a whole, then there is a connection between tending the lamps continually and ongoing intercession.

Intimacy

The fourth message of the oil is that of intimacy.  Oils, also used as perfumes and spices, have been used for thousands of years to create sweet smells, and are often used even today in intimate creams and oils for use among married couples.  We see this sentiment expressed multiple places in Scripture:

Proverbs 7:16-18
I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt.  I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.  Come, let’s drink deeply of love till morning; let’s enjoy ourselves with love!

Song of Songs 1:3
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you!

Song of Songs 1:12-13
While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance.  My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh, resting between my breasts.

Song of Songs 3:6
Who is this coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant?

Song of Songs 4:10
How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!

Song of Songs 5:13
His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh.

Intimacy is a key message of supernatural oil because God wants to be together with us.  After all, one of His names is Emmanuel which literally means “God with us.”  God’s desire is, has been, and always will be to be unified with us.  Jesus gave his life on the cross, died, and rose again so that we could be united in Him.  Ephesians 1:7-10 shows us this, saying, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding,  he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”  The word translated as “unity” in this passage is the Greek word anakephalaioō which means “to gather together into one”.  It is through the redemption brought us through the blood of Jesus that we can be gathered together into one.

Intimacy is the cornerstone of our relationship with God.  Jesus said this in somewhat plain terms to his disciples on Passover, the night before He was crucified.  In John 14:2-3 he said, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  While this might not seem extremely clear, it was very plain speech Jesus was using.  The key, however, is that one has to understand Jewish wedding customs for it to make sense.  In ancient Jewish culture, when a young man wanted to get married, he would build an addition to the family house.  The man would go and prepare that room in his father’s house, and was required to fill it with as many niceties and lavish belongings as he could afford to ensure the new wife would be comfortable in her future home.  If one will recall, they often got married in their teens, so the man was actually a fairly young man, and it was somewhat sensible that an older adult was responsible for ensuring the process was done properly.  Once the groom’s father felt the groom had sufficiently prepared the room, he would allow his son to go and bring his betrothed to come live with them, and the wedding would commence.  This paints a totally different picture of intimacy and love than one initially would read from that passage.

The twelve disciples Jesus called were mostly young men, so this wedding-language was extremely close to home.  In fact, the scriptures show us Peter was married already, so had undergone this very process sometime in the past!  Jesus wanted them to know that He was deeply in love with them, and wanted them to understand the depths of love He had not just for them, but for all of us!  The Father and the Son are working together with the Holy Spirit to prepare a place for us to come and be with them, and the miracle of heavenly oil is a sign of the intimacy and love they have for us.  How amazing is that?

 

The miracle of supernatural oil in Dalton, Georgia is not only astounding, but it reveals to us God’s heart for us to be in communion with Him:  to know and be filled by the Holy Spirit, to receive healing from Him and Him alone, the source of all life, and for His desire to engage in deeper intimacy with us on an ongoing basis.  One of the things the Lord specifically revealed to the group in Dalton, upon which they based the name of their ministry, is out of Song of Songs 1:3; ” . . .your name is flowing oil” . . .  The Lord showed them that the physical manifestation of miracle oil represents God’s holy presence.  I encourage you, as you read this, to seek the Lord about how He wants to touch you with His Spirit, Healing, and Intimate Love revealed through His presence and through this miracle of flowing oil.  If you are able to travel or live nearby, I encourage you to attend one of the services (event schedule here) and see what God is doing through this miracle.  If you do, come back and share in the comments what you heard, saw, and experienced!  I pray that each of you is blessed with an overflowing measure of God’s power and presence in your life, and that you, too, will experience this miracle oil in your own life.  Amen.

*Please note I DO NOT own the Bible nor possess the Dalton oil to be able to give to anyone.  If you write me asking for oil, I can’t send you any and I also cannot respond, as I get deluged with requests for something I do not possess.  You will have to attend their events or follow the instructions on their website, HisNameIsFlowingOil.org

 

 

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The Power of Renunciation

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The past few months have kept me pretty busy, but one of the things the Lord has been highlighting to me is what I refer to as transformation ministry—what most people call inner healing and deliverance.  I have been doing a good bit of work of late both with myself and family members in this area, and am seeing the fruit at work.  It is incredibly empowering, as it reveals to me more and more about the level of power and authority we have been given in Christ Jesus.  One of the things I have made frequent use of during this process is the power of renunciation.

According to Dictionary.com, the word renounce means to give up or put aside voluntarily, often by formal declaration, or to disown.  Any time we renounce something during a prayer session, we are making a clear statement about what is part of us and our lives, and what we have no involvement with.  There is something about renunciation that creates a dividing line separating us from what the enemy wants to do in our lives.  As we disavow things of darkness, whether overt or covert, it breaks the access the enemy has on our lives.  2 Corinthians 6:14-17 puts it this way:

“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?  What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?  What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

This means it is no longer a “we”, but an ‘I” and “them”.  As we renounce things, and our involvement with them, we are literally making ourselves holy and set apart unto God in that area of our lives.  As we do this, even as the above verses suggest, it makes room for God to enter that part of our lives in a new way.

In a previous blog article, I discussed The Mechanism of A Vow, which touches on similar subjects, but renouncing things works based on spiritual rules.  The things we choose to engage create openness for spiritual entities to engage us in return—what I call the Law of Focus, seen clearly in James 4:8a, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”  When we renounce things, we give it anti-focus, pushing it away from us in the spirit.

Almost anything can be renounced, and it is a fairly helpful and commonly used tool in my inner healing and deliverance toolkit.  Some examples include:  negative emotions, erroneous beliefs, books, activities, movies, video games, organizations, vows, and more.  Certainly not every book, movie, video game, or organization is bad, but some of them are.  Sometimes, it’s not even that the thing itself is bad, but how we have internalized it due to our belief system is unhealthy.  A good analogy of what this does is that these things can open doors in the spirit, and the enemy wants to use them to bring darkness into our lives.  When we renounce them we close those doors and remove the enemy’s access to those areas of our lives.

Practically speaking, let’s say that someone has been playing and enjoying a video game that the Lord has been showing you is unhealthy.  Don’t misunderstand–I’m not saying all video games are bad.  I have written a book called The Gamer’s Guide to the Kingdom of God specifically using MMORPG games as a backdrop for understanding how the supernatural realms of God function.  I’m not anti-video-game.  However, not all video games are wholesome either.  If the Lord is showing you that it is time to put that game down due to its spiritual influence, you might pray the following prayer or similar:

“In the name of Jesus I renounce [name the video game] and all of my involvement in it.  I apply the blood of Jesus to that area of my mind and soul, and ask that you wash it clean with the water of Life.  In its place, I ask for you to fill me with the Holy Spirit.”

This is a super simple prayer that can be used for many different things.   It is one example, but renunciation prayer needs to cover three imperative parts in a specific order:

1.  Breaking agreement with the old (ie. renouncing)
2. Removing the negative
3. Replacing it with positive

As we progress on our individual inner healing journeys, I highly encourage everyone to not just memorize specific prayers, but to understand the principles behind them, such as those shared here.  The above prayer is simple and can be used and remastered for most situations, but when we understand the three parts of a renunciation prayer, even if we forget my example prayer, we can simply make up our own on the spot.  Regardless of whether we use a script or devise our own wording, the underlying principles are very effective.  Renunciation is powerful, and is a simple way to wreak havoc on the enemy’s involvement in our lives, setting us free to enjoy all that God has for us.

 

 

 

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