JOEL 2 GENERATION

God, Maker of Heaven and Earth, decided that a homesick, Catholic Filipino man named Tooti with a toothache who works at a fast food place needed healed and told me to do it. I did.

This past weekend, DJ and I got to do something we both love doing-- destroying the works of the devil. We were invited to minister at a community nearby. I knew it was going to be a special time because soon after arriving, we were able to pray for two different people in one household. One, the house help, we're still waiting for confirmation about her knees, but the other, a teenage girl received healing for her wrist and testified the next morning that it was still 100 percent. So, that was just dinner. The next morning, we went to the first service and DJ threw down the challenge of doing what Jesus did. Afterwards, many came for prayer and the Lord touched about 40 or so. In fact, those with left shoulder problems and wrist problems all walked away with healing. Afterwards, DJ went to speak with the youth and fired them all up and I spoke to the second service. Early that morning, I had asked God some very specific things about what He wanted to do in the services. ...

On a recent ministry trip to a neighboring Muslim country, Isaac of Ninevah and I saw several dozen miraculous healings as we prayed for people in the wake of the Church services we were preaching in. The night before the services we saw a teenage girl healed of a wrist problem after we had given a word of knowledge. The following morning this girl testified in the Youth Group where I had the chance to share that God had healed her the night before. I had to run upstairs to pray for the sick with Isaac of Ninevah, but the Youth Pastor told me after the service that I had "poured kerosene on the Youth and that after I left they lit a match". The Holy Spirit fell on this group of young people and many of them couldn't even get off the floor. God released new gifts of the Spirit. People that entered their meeting room also got hit by the Holy Spirit. Upstairs "Normal Christianity" was also happening as we saw close to 40 people healed of all different kinds ...

Last night I needed a ride home having put my car in the shop. I asked a Muslim man if he could give me a ride and he agreed. As is very normal, he asked me if I was a Muslim. I proceeded to tell him that there is really no comparison between our faiths. As a Christian, I am sure I am going to heaven, I have a relationship with God wherein He speaks to me, I can heal the sick, cast out demons and prophesy to others. I shared with him that I have seen deaf ears opened, the blind see, the lame walk and many other miracles. He proceeds to tell me that he is almost completely deaf in his right ear. I told him that I would like to get together this coming week and pray for God to heal his deaf ear. He asked me, "Do you really think you can heal my ear?" I told him a little bit about faith at that point. He then asks, "Do you have a prophetic word for me"? I told him that I would ask the Lord and when he dropped me off I would tell him if I did. While we drove t...

In the beginning was the Word. . . For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son. . . In the last few weeks, the Lord has turned up responsiveness to the Kingdom. To begin with, one person complained of an aching shoulder. I explained to them that oftentimes these kinds of pain are connected to emotional difficulties or unforgiveness. A close friend was then able to pray for them and within two days the pain was gone. It should also be noted that this person's shoulder had been hurting for weeks and the doctors only recommended pain-killers. Another person called the same close friend because they were aware of hatred in their life. My friend was able to pray for them as well and they received more freedom as the Spirit touched their heart. Yet another person began asking some pentetrating questions about the nature of the Kingdom. Two close friends were able to share very clearly with them. Their openness and hunger was off the charts. I, too, shared the s...

This morning we got to minister in an expatriate Church. As is our custom, we not only teach/preach when we go, but also demonstrate the Kingdom. The Lord gave us a number of prophetic words that were meaningful to the people we called out. I'll let Isaac of Ninevah blog what happened to him and I'll stick to what happened to me. Before the service, the Lord had given me a name of man and the word "sisters". I called out the man's name and one of the Church leader's told me that this man is not here this morning, but took my phone number so he could call me. I told her again that I had gotten his name and that he had two sisters. This afternoon, I received a call from him. He said his name and told me he had two sisters. We are going to meet this week to pray for him and see what it is that the Lord wants to communicate to he and his sisters. I was excited because it was one of the only times that I have ever gotten a name from the Lord, called it out...

Sometimes is it very funny to see how unbelievers react to God's power when it is manifested in their lives. Just yesterday as my wife and I were in a large mall, we ran into one of her Muslim friends. She was raised in the U.S., so she has perfect English. As they spoke, the Lord gives me a clear word of knowledge about a problem in her neck. When I inquired, she said she had a problem. My wife tried to explain a little bit about the word of knowledge and she said, "oh, you're reading my vibes". They continued to talk and then an even stronger word came about a problem on the left side of her stomach. When I asked her, she again said that she had a problem there. She again tried to dismiss my "reading her vibes". Finally, I got another word for a wrist problem and she verified that she had pain due to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. As she left, she made yet another comment describing what had happened to her. We weren't doing anything 'spiritual...

Tonight, DJ, the Sojourner, and I gathered for prayer. Now this isn't the normal kind of prayer where people come together to squeeze their eyes shut and try not to go to sleep. No, our prayer tonight was: show us where to go and what needs to be healed there. While praying, we ask the Lord for words of knowledge, images, names, prophetic words, and whatever else He wants to give us. I must admit that this is one of the high points of the week for me because I have a group of people who willingly come together in order to pray that the Kingdom will come and actually believe their prayers are heard. So, while praying, I listed the words of knowledge, images, and other spontaneous thoughts, e.g., left ear, left leg, left shoulder, old man in a red checkered head scarf, etc. I also received the name of a restaurant. My friends, kind as they are, were willing to go along with this word, so off we went. When we got to the restaurant we didn't go in immediately, but went around...

Last night in a discussion with an Egyptian Muslim man, I asked him if he needed a miracle in his life. He said, "everyone needs a miracle". I asked him to be more specific. He didn't need any healing in his body, but then asked, "How can I be pleasing to God"? He wanted me to pray for him about this. I told him that I knew the answer to his question. I quoted Galatians 2:16 - "...a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus". This of course is exactly the opposite of what Islam teaches. Every Muslim believes it is by their good works, their works of the law, that they can be justified. Since my new friend had never heard anybody completely contradict/deny everything he had ever been taught about how one can become pleasing to God and enter heaven, I needed to illustrate what I had just said. I explained to him that in Christianity, we are made acceptable to God by putting our faith in Jesus Christ. Our names...

A little over a week ago, I had the joy of ministering healing to several different people. One man had a pain in his hands from a skin condition and after receiving prayer, said he was better. Another man asked for prayer for his back. Again, after prayer, he was 100%. He also asked for some prayer for his family which I did gladly. His wife then came up and I was able to bless them both. After the service, as I was headed to the car, this same man chased me down to say, "thank you." Praise God. Another man had some stomach problems that disappeared after prayer as well. Still yet another young man experienced a greater degree of freedom in his emotional life as a result of prayer. Lastly, a man came with a heart full of repentance and received a huge download of grace, i.e., the power to overcome the next temptation not the license to do it again. I left the fellowship that day feeling a quiet joy and a sense of wonder over how people got healed by my prayers. U...

Last Friday, a group of us ministered in a Church service where we saw many people healed, prophetic words given and addictions broken in the lives of those present. Since there were about 10 of us praying for people during the ministry time at the end of the service, it was hard to know exactly what God was doing, so at one point I just asked everyone to raise their hands if they had experienced a healing or some other kind of miracle. About 15 people raised their hands out of about 75 people. I personally saw several healings in the people I was praying for. One man, who was responding to a word of knowledge given (we gave a number of words at the beginning of the service), was completely healed of two conditions he had. When I asked him if he wanted to testify to what God had done, he couldn't as he was crying because of God's goodness towards him. I was really touched. Another man was testifying that he was about 60% healed when I joined some others who were praying for...

Today I prayed with some guys that were wanting to be free from the grip of lust and immorality in their lives. At one point in the past, all that I could have done was to sympathize with their stumbling in this area, and to weakly encourage them to try harder to control their desires. But I can humbly (and joyfully) say that though these same chains once bound me for years, God broke them in an instant and now I am experiencing a level of sexual purity that I once thought was simply unattainable. So I was able to pray with these guys with great authority - what a great feeling to command these foul spirits to flee! A wiser man than I once said that "a crisis that isn't followed up by a process will result in an abcess" - so these guys that were set free today must choose to maintain that freedom if it is to last. Still - what a blast!

Last night when the Pizza delivery man approached, the Lord gave me a word of knowledge for a problem in the left arm. I asked the man if he had a pain there and he did. I told him I was a Christian and that I wanted to pray for him. He let me pray for his arm and the Lord healed him. The Lord delivered the delivery man!

A Palestinian woman who was open to the Lord came to join us in worship. We knew the Lord has something special for her – as He always does for any non-Christian visitors! As my wife asked how she could pray for her, she said had a problem in her right arm. I remembered that about 4 days before the Lord had given me a word of knowledge for a problem in exactly the same place, but I found no one at the time to pray for. I shared that with her and we all began to pray for her arm. She said that she felt something happening to her while we prayed (as is often the case when the Lord is healing someone). As she checked her arm out after we prayed, with a very surprised look, she asked in Arabic, “What did you do to me, MAGIC or something”? Her Christian friend explained to her that it was the Holy Spirit, NOT magic, who had healed her arm. At just about that time I got a strong word of knowledge about a problem someone having a problem/pain in the lower left side of their...

Two months ago, Isaac of Ninevah had a dream. As is his habit, he wrote it down and forgot about it. It wasn’t until one of our new Nepali friends had almost exactly the same dream that its significance became clear to us. In Isaac’s dream, he was being chased and was shot by a gun. Our Nepali friend also was being chased in his dream, but escaped unhurt. What makes the Nepali’s dream interesting is that we had prophesied to him that he would have a dream the first night we met them. I had initially said the dream would come to him within a week, but then felt impressed to change that to “within two weeks”. Sure enough, on about the 9 th or 10 th day he had this dream. We met with 3 Nepalis the other night to discuss the significance of his dream. I told him that Isaac represented Jesus, who “took a bullet” and he “was rescued” in his dream and didn’t have to die. This Nepali Hindu has the New Testament in his own language that Isaac gave him. God has ...

On a trip to Malaysia, we saw God move in power on several different occasions. While eating one night in a Chinese restaurant, I walked past a waiter and got a word of knowledge for a jaw. I inquired and the waiter in fact had a problem with his jaw. I prayed for him and he was healed. On another day we were visiting a prayer retreat center and the Lord gave us a number of prophetic words and other words of knowledge for healing while there. While sitting around a table, the Lord just began to give us revelation for the people sitting around us. One word of knowledge was for an upper arm and shoulder problem. One lady had this problem and we prayed for her and she was healed. That night I saw her at a revival meeting and she was waving her hand at me indicating that everything was fine - It is always great to hear that someone stays healed! A couple of other words and prophetic pictures were given around the table that afternoon. After that, as we were touring around the prayer...

Dreams are so important-- both the ones we have at night and the ones that we carry inside of us. I was recently blown away by the revelation that our life in God is as big as we can dream. Most of us have allowed Hollywood to do all of our creative thinking for us. Our imagination is as withered as the cursed fig tree from neglect. If our lives are to be holistically transformed, our imagination must also be redeemed in the process. Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. That must have taken some imagination. About a month ago, I had a dream where me and another man I didn't know were being chased by a man with a gun. In order to escape, we both ran down a set of stairs. Somehow, the man in front of me got away and disappeared. When I awoke, I was a little distraught and wondered what it was all about. I dutifully wrote the dream down in my journal hoping that the Lord would shed some light on it later. About two weeks ago, I blogged about some men who got heale...

As I am reading a biography about the greatest healing evangelist of the healing revival of the 1950’s, I am challenged to reject two popular positions that Christians hold today. The first, and by far the most common, is for us to think that the days of the Bible were unique and special and that we aren’t to expect the things we read about to happen today in our daily lives and ministries. The second position, which is common in some Charismatic circles is that we will see the Bible days revisited one day (at some point in the future) and even that the miracles in the Book of Acts will be exceeded before Christ returns. Both of these positions effectively leave us either romanticizing about the past, or dreaming about the future all the while leaving us expecting very little today. Then I read about the move of God in the 1940’s and 50’s. The miracles and their frequency was on the same level as what we read in the Gospels and Acts in many meetings. There were meetings i...

Last night we were at a meeting where the Lord showed up. The next morning, the sore throat I've been fighting all week was all but gone. I know it's not a resurrection from the dead, but we must remember to "acknowledge Him in all our ways." I'm grateful for what the Lord did for me, but I'm also grateful for what He did through me. About a month ago, we went to a meeting with some fellow believers from the sub-continent. At this meeting, I was able to pray for a girl whom the Lord had highlighted for prayer a few days prior. Among other things, she had a painful bone spur on the back of her right hand. I laid hands on it and prayed for the Lord to remove it. Nothing happened. . .then. At this meeting last night, she comes up to me and shows me her hand and there was no bone spur and no pain. You just never know when the healing comes; we have to be faithful to pray for it. After the meeting, we headed out to the streets. In a little restaurant, we r...

Back in 1946 an Angel visited a young Kentuckian and gave him one of the most remarkable calls to the ministry that I've ever heard of - every bit as remarkable as Ezekiel's or Isaiah's. Because the man's life ended poorly, many will discount the true calling on his life and the remarkable gifting that this man possessed. I was somewhat familiar with the story of him being visited by an Angel (it is often recounted in charismatic circles). What struck me however was one of the last things the Angel told the man - he said to tell people that "their thoughts are LOUDER than their words in heaven". Immediately conviction struck me. Hopefully we are learning to control our tongues - we don't say outwardly the things we think and feel. I am often convicted of the things that my wife and I discuss when we are talking to each other about other people. But 'my thoughts'? May we ponder this - our thoughts are louder than our words when it comes to he...

There is a first time for everything. About 10 days ago, I met a muslim man and we spoke about alot of significant spiritual issues. At one point during the discussion, he left for a few minutes and when he came back, the Lord says, "This guy is an alcoholic". As a muslim, this guy isn't supposed to drink at all, but I just had a very strong sense from the Lord that he had a major drinking problem. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his friends, and so I waited until an opportune time to see if I had heard from the Lord correctly. I ran into him again tonight and he was walking alone to go and buy cigarettes. I knew this was the opportunity I had been praying for. I asked if I could walk with him and he agreed. While walking, I said, "you drink alcohol don't you". He said, "yes, I do". I then asked him if he felt he had a problem with his drinking. He said he didn't. As he began to tell me why he drank, which was to "...

Last night as I neared my house driving home, I got a very strong word of knowledge in the back of my neck. I live in a rather isolated/new area of town and so the likelihood of seeing anybody was almost zero. I said to the Lord, "if this is a word of knowledge, let there be someone right in front of me when I turn into the residential area where we live". As I drive through the gates, there is a car blocking the way to my parking area. I think to myself, "here we go"! As I approach this man, who is a muslim from Sudan, I immediately ask him if he has pain in the back of his neck, pointing to the exact area where I got the word. He is quite surprised, "how did you know that"? I gave him a quick explanation of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God. He asked if I was a Christian at this point. Then I asked if I could pray for him. He agreed. I put my hand on his neck and prayed for him, releasing the Kingdom and agreeing with what God h...

Last night, until the early hours of the morning, we spoke with a Bedouin muslim friend of mine about many different topics/issues including fasting and Ramadan, hypocrisy, the purpose of marriage, polygamy, the nature of sin, and miracles too. No two faiths could be more different than Christianity and islam when discussing the topics we did last night. While speaking about faithfulness in marriage, he said that the reason muslim men are able to remain faithful was because one woman could not possibly fulfill a man's sexual needs. I explained that answer to that question is because of the the nature of sin. Because these men were living immoral lives long before marriage, they are now UNABLE to be faithful to their wives. I told him what Jesus said, "he who sins is a slave to sin". This of course is not the islamic concept of sin whatsoever - to muslims sin is a weakness, not a disease. The solution is right guidance, not a new heart. I knew that my friend was ver...

One healing evangelist has a message entitled, "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat" after the old "Wide World of Sports" program from the 1970's. He uses this to describe what having a ministry of healing is often like - we are thrilled when we see the breakthrough and the healing comes, but when the results are different, we must know how to not lose heart, but rather to dust ourselves off and get back on the horse. Just the other night, a man who is more than 50% deaf in both ears came to my home to receive prayer from Christians. I had spoken to him about the deafness we had seen healed. One of the women on our ministry team saw 3 totally deaf people healed last year while in India ministering. This man is a Muslim and he came because I had told him about the Kingdom of God - a place where God's Will is done, where the sick are healed, the demonized set free, etc. He kept saying before he came, "could it really be true that I could be...

Yesterday I got the opportunity to join in the “before school” prayer meeting that we have started doing at Bethel. I went in feeling a little discouraged due to some bad news I had received the previous day, and was not really in that place of wanting to be around a bunch of joyful, drunk people. That being said, I desperately needed an encounter with God that would break the heaviness that was weighing me down. We did lots of praying, soaking, crying out, manifesting, and prayer walking. Still I was bummed in my spirit. After this our leader asked if anyone had any prayer requests for healing. Many did, or knew of somebody that did. So once everyone had shared I went up to a boy in the First Year of School of Ministry to pray for his knee, which he had probably injured while under the power of God (this guy gets blasted major when hit with the anointing). He said his knee was very painful all day. So I laid my hand on him, commanded the knee well with a simple phrase, and then asked ...

The other day our small groups at school were sent out into the streets of Redding to destroy the works of the devil. Whatever God showed us in heaven is what we were meant to do here on earth. So, we got together and asked God to reveal to us where he wanted us to go, and who he wanted to touch that afternoon. Many of us got names of people, colors, images of sick people and snap shot pictures of houses and places where we could possibly go in the city to find people. We discussed what God showed each of us, and then compiled it into a treasure map. One of the guys in my small group saw a picture of a bridge crossing the Sacramento River, and another guy saw the word “park”, so we headed down to where we knew these things to be. We had a whole list of things on our map, so whenever we encountered someone who fit the description God gave us; we attempted to minister to them, showing them our map to confirm to them the Word of the Lord. Some people were freaked out, and others were intr...

Paul writes in 1 COR 12:8 about the gift of the 'word of knowledge'. John Wimber defines this gift as "God revealing facts about a situation concerning which the person (ministering) had no previous knowledge"(Power Healing). Through them God will often reveal where a person has pain or where specifically they need healing. Sometimes a word of knowledge seems very general (i.e. when someone gets the word for 'lower back pain' and there are 35 people present) while at other times it can be much more specific. (i.e. lower back pain comes when you are with a one or two individuals). The latter of course is far more risky to give:) This past week I have had several times where God gave me some specific words of knowledge which really encouraged me. On one occasion I was sitting with 3 Omani Muslim men when the Lord gave me a word that one of them had pain in the left knee. When I inquired, one did have that problem, and I told him that God wanted to heal him...

In the past 10 days, we’ve had the privilege of ministering in 4 different church services, wherein our “…preaching (was) not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 COR 2:4). The testimonies of healings and prophetic words are simply too many to try and write about them all. I will share a few and hopefully the others who were involved will add their too. In each of the services, I would give would I came to refer to as a “Kingdom now guarantee”. As our team would began to minister, I would say that if we didn’t do the works of Jesus or if we didn’t come with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power (which of course we left up to the Lord as to what He wanted to do), then they didn’t have to believe anything that we were saying. In each and every service, God faithfully poured out His Spirit and gave us prophetic words for the people, words of knowledge, and healed many different people from a variety of problems. Additionally,...

I remember hearing some teacher or preacher noting that the last part of the book of Mark, "isn't in the oldest manuscripts." Even my Bible notes that verses 9-20 are "bracketed in the NU-text as not original. They are lacking in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, although nearly all other manuscripts of Mark contain them." Nevertheless, the same passage contains Mark's version of the Great Commission and is frequently cross-referenced with the other Synoptics. However, verses 17 and 18 don't get a lot of press unless they are being used as ammunition against snake handling communities (and even coming from the sticks of the US I still haven't seen a snake handling community). And, of course, as ammunition, they are referred to as "not in the original text" and therefore, not really in the Bible even though they are in the Bible. I, however, think there is something more afoot than textual criticism. There is a remarkable amount of oppos...

Last night I was playing soccer with 20 Arab Muslim men. About 5 minutes into the game, one of the players seriously hurt his ankle and was carried off the field. They put some ice on his foot/ankle and we finished the 1st half. I knew that God had me there on assignment. I went up, sat down next to the man and asked him to tell me where the pain was. After showing me, I took off the ice pack and put my hand on his ankle and began to ask the Holy Spirit to come and bring the Kingdom. I prayed for a minute or so and then asked him, "How is it"? He checked it out told me that the pain was definitely less. I continued to pray. I felt the presence of the Lord and told him that something was happening right at that time. After praying a second time, he was a bit surprised. He wondered what I had done. I hadn't asked him; I just sat down, took off the ice pack and put my hand on his foot. He wasn't 100%, but he got up and began to walk around. I came up next to hi...

After crossing a river, a certain group of people were commanded to go back to the middle of the river and collect some stones to build a monument so when their children asked, "What means these stones?" (KJV), they would have the opportunity to testify about what God had done for them to the next generation. The "stone-layer" generation had a definite point of reference-- a definite encounter with the Holy-- that they could recount. There was content and memory in the answer to the question: "What means these stones?" In the third chapter of Galatians, Paul writes, "This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?" Later in the same chapter, he writes again, "Therefore, He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?" Acoording to Paul, the "stones from the river" for the Ga...

A couple of nights ago in an Arab restaurant, the Lord spoke to me through a word of knowledge that our waiter’s had a problem in his left knee, a Syrian Muslim named Muhammad. When I asked about it, he explained that he had suffered a condition in his entire left leg since he was young – I found out later he had an unstable knee/leg and a flat foot. He limped slightly. I tried to explain to this young Muslim man how the Lord revealed to me that he needed healing in his leg and that I was confident God was going to do something special if he allowed us to pray. God doesn’t give us words of knowledge unless He intends to do something. I also had to explain clearly that he didn’t have to pay any money. I needed to make that clear because in his religion there are also so-called ‘healers’. Interestingly, most (if not every) Islamic healers demand some ridiculous sum of money to pray for their ‘client’s’ healing and/or to try and deliver them from demons. I explained ...

Last night a Morroccan Muslim couple, M. & A., came to visit. Actually, they are very close to the Kingdom of God because they have encountered many miracles - healings, dreams, visions and powerful encounters with the presence of God. A.'s sister was visiting and they brought her along to our house. Our friends wanted to hear about all the miracles we had seen over the summer as they had been in Morrocco and we hadn't seen them in a couple of months. While we were telling them some stories, the Spirit of Prophecy came on me and I just stopped and started to prophesy over A'.s sister. The Lord showed me that she would be a prophetess in His Kingdom. I told her that she was already "seeing things", which she confirmed. Knowing that the enemy was using her, I explained that as she submitted to the Holy Spirit, her prophetic gifting would increase exponentially. I then saw that she had been in a relationship that had ended for a specific reason - namely be...

As long as we carry the misconception that sickness and evil is part and parcel of God's sovereignty, we haven't meditated deeply enough on the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. Nor will we join Christ in destroying the works of the devil. Greg Boyd writes, In my view, every other understanding of divine providence [read: the models where God determines everything ] to some extent diminishes the sovereignty and glory of God. It brings God's wisdom and power down to the level of finite human thinking. We would need to control or possess a blueprint of all that is to occur ahead of time to steer world history effectively. But the true God is far wiser, far more powerful, and far more secure than we could ever imagine. Remember whom we are speaking about. This is the omnipotent Creator who "flexes His omnipotent muscle, "as it were, by being born in a stable, growing up with the stigma of being an illegitimate child, hanging out with sinners. . . and [dying] o...

My friends and I went to pray for these two old bachelor brothers. Let me set the scene: these guys are in their mid-60s and have never married. They live in a small house in a small town and grew up in the backwoods of America. Well, these guys called us and asked us to come over and pray for the older brother's (George) leg. He had "been down" for a few days and couldn't walk without difficulty. After we prayed for them both for an extended period of time and asking the Lord to bless them, we left noticing that the swelling had gone down a little. This happened the beginning of the summer. Yesterday, one of my friends who had gone to pray with me ran into the two brothers. He asked George how he was feeling these days. George testified that some guys (he didn't recognize my friend as one of the ones who had prayed for him) came over and prayed for his legs to be healed and 15 minutes after they left, his leg was totally healed. Then John (the younger br...

Sometimes a familiar Scripture jumps out and grabs you - almost as if you've never read it before. I believe this to be a manifestation of what Paul calls "a spirit of wisdom and revelation"(Eph 1:17). Last night this is exactly what happened to me (and subsequently my wife) listening to a Bill Johnson message entitled "A Mandate for Miracles". My whole understanding of John 14:12 changed completely. Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. (NASB) Many Charismatic Christians, like myself, will quote this verse often. We talk about it amongst ourselves, we preach from it, and we even use it to defend our theological convictions. I have often referenced this verse in my own preaching. For the most part, Charismatics tend to focus on the latter part of the verse - the 'greater works'. I think one of the reasons we have...

While ordering coffee, I got a 'word of knowledge' for the woman who was serving us - I felt a sensation in my right shoulder. I asked her if she had pain in her right shoulder. She confirmed that she did which surprised her. I explained how I "knew" she had a problem and then asked her if she was a Christian - she was. It was the day before she was to go to Church so I told her to have her pastor (or whoever prays for the sick) lay hands on her and she would be healed. I told her that if for any reason she wasn't healed during prayer, that I would come back in a few days and we could pray again then. A fews days later I saw she was working and asked her how her shoulder was. She had gone to her pastor who laid hands on her and she said she felt "electricity" come into her shoulder and she was completely healed. She was so excited as she told me the testimony. She told me that the shoulder problem had affected her ability to work and that she was...

I'm into miracles. Actually, WE'RE into miracles - my family and the community that gathers in my home to pursue God, His power and whatever is available to followers of Jesus Christ. The funny thing about miracles is that once you begin to experience them, you really can't go back to a life without them. For years, I didn't really believe there was that much of the miraculous available for us - or maybe I should say, I didn't "expect" to see God's power manifested in and through my life, or the Churches I attended. That has all changed over the past few years. God broke into our very predictable Christian lives and began doing things and saying things that I had only read about previously. This blog will be about what HE DOES. For the most part, I will try to limit what is written to things that can only be explained in supernatural terms - miraculous healings, prophetic words, divine encounters, etc. I have invited some of my friends who are al...