JOEL 2 GENERATION

Not only had we tried to minister to the Emirati men, but I had also spoken with the Egyptian muslim manager of the coffee shop to send us any of his employees (there were probably about 10 or so) to us if they needed healing.  He said he would, but then like some of the managers we make the same offer to, he didn't keep his word.  Later he told me that he was simply busy, but after the Emiratis left, I decided that I would approach his staff independently.  I spoke with one Filipino server and she didn't have a problem but grabbed her co-worker standing next to her and said she had a back problem.  I asked the first woman to lay her hands on the area where the pain was and I prayed a quick healing prayer.  Quick because they were working and the place was busy.  She was healed and they were both thanking the Lord.  It was like that changed the atmosphere for us in the place.  Sitting next to us was a Tunisian family, who like us had made th...

i don't particularly like spending hours and hours in malls, but that is where the nations congregate in Dubai and our intention is to love as many people as we can - so we found ourselves at yet another Dubai mall. While a few of the team went snowboarding, the rest of us headed for another coffee place and that became our little "ministry base" for the next few hours. At first it was a bit of a slow start. I tried to connect with a group of four Emirati muslim men who were sitting next to us. I had a word of knowledge about a neck problem and yet none of them said it applied to them. As I explained further and spoke about the way we pray for the sick and see all types of conditions healed, they were extremely polite but clearly not interested. They even surprised us by buying a pastry we had ordered after they had recommended it and I offered the Kingdom yet again. Again, no interest in having us minister to them. One of them said a very interesting thing, al...

We had been invited to travel into the interior of the United Arab Emirates to minister in a house church in the evening, so we made our way to the oasis city of Al Ain in the morning to see what the Lord would do in the mean time. Our day began again in a mall. it was quite windy and since it felt like a sandstorm was brewing we decided to take things inside. The first person we ministered to was an Emirati muslim woman. I got a word of knowledge for her and one of our women approached her to pray for her. They needed some help with Arabic and so I came back and we saw the Lord heal her as we prayed for her in Jesus' Name and speak to her about the Kingdom. It was funny when an over-protective, and zealous Egyptian muslim who worked in the shop close to where this woman worked came over to check things out. I knew what he was up to and so I just offered him any healing he needed. He wasn't open at all and actually was a bit sarcastic so we moved on knowing that she w...

yesterday we spent many, many hours in the largest mall in the world watching God touch people from many different nationalities. I think that was something that really shocked us all - in addition to ministering to people from the United Arab Emirates, we interacted with and/or prayed with people from South Africa, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Mali, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbajan, India and Ethiopia. I'm sure there a couple of more because we were a team of 7. Here were some of the encounters: At lunch there were a large group of South Africans eating next to us and I told them about the team I had with me that could heal and prophesy and before we even had a chance to continue, I got a word of knowledge for a back condition in a particular part of the back. Two of the women had it and I had them each grab each other's hand and I prayed and both of them were healed! One of them went on and on about all the medication she had been taki...

As Isaac of Ninevah and some of the team arrived in Dubai, they got a word of knowledge and saw a man healed (I don't have the details), but just a good start to what's going to be a great time of healing and miracles. we headed out last night to a mall and got to minister to quite a few people - employees in the restaurant we ate in - we prayed for two or three of them. one for headaches, another for a throat condition that the Lord revealed through a word of knowledge. at a coffee shop a bit later, we got to pray for a couple more employees - one of them had an problem in her arm which we prayed for several times and saw get about 80% better. I also approached some Emirati Arab muslims with what I thought was a word of knowledge for them. None of them had the problem (a word for a neck condition) but were very interested to discuss healing and learn from a Christian how we hear from God and pray for the sick. I was able to share with them in Arabic the Lord's pra...

a group of us has arrived in Dubai to see what God will do as we love people intentionally with the power of the Kingdom. i arrived a bit earlier than the group and it started off with a word of knowledge for a knee condition for the employees of the car rental company. one was a muslim and the other man a Christian. the Christian man from India had the problem and let me pray. The Lord healed his knee and he told me that he was "born again". He also was eager to know when and if I was doing any Church services in Dubai? as I was about to get into the car, the other man approached me. he wanted to know one thing; he asked me, "How did you know that my friend had a knee problem"? I told him clearly that Jesus told me because He wanted to heal him. As is often the case, since muslims don't believe God speaks anymore, he was most shocked in how in the world I knew about someone else's problem who I obviously didn't know. the great thing about...

Yesterday we went to another Middle Eastern mall – we were actually just stopping by to say hello to some of our community that was celebrating a birthday and H. from Texas finds a Bedouin muslim woman, offers healing and proceeds to pray for her right in the shoe store.  H. is just being who she is – a Holy Spirit filled believer releasing the Kingdom whenever and wherever she goes.  When we found the birthday party (in a restaurant),  I offered "Christmas presents" to any of the staff.  I had my Santa's hat on and told them (mostly muslims) that we would help anybody with pain.  One Lebanese muslim came over and shared some personal details/problems.  I explained that my friends could "see" things and told him they would share some things with him.  Two of the team from Texas proceeded to NAIL the situation – it was about his engagement and upcoming marriage.  They also prophesied over a S. African believer who was at the party...

At the end an already great day, we had a renewal meeting in an Arab Church in the evening where there was a lot of powerful prophetic ministry and training/equipping in the prophetic as our guests from the United States ministered and just went for it.  During one of the words that their team was given, a very strong word of knowledge came in my right ear.  I went up to tell the team member who was prophesying to tell him that the word was for one of the two he was ministering to prophetically and it turned out that one of the men was 100% deaf in his right ear.  he was completely healed and the man who leads the Church is a surgeon and tested it out thoroughly and declared the man, whose condition he knew of, healed of deafness!  I love medically verified miracles – who doesn't?

Yesterday we all decided to go to a large mall to finish our Christmas shopping and see how many "presents" we could give to people by way of healings, prophetic words, etc.  You have no idea how much fun it is to play "Kingdom Santa" in a muslim country!  We broke into a few groups and no sooner had we started out that one of the other groups had already been praying for a Gulf Arab muslim man who had a cane.  He was with his grown daughter.  I was brought in for further translation and he explained to me that he had been in a horrible motorcycle accident many years before.  He was thanking me that my friends had stopped him and kept saying, "God has sent you to us today" even though he hadn't been healed yet!  He was so touched.  I got a word of knowledge about an ear problem.  His daughter explained that it was for her daughter who had hearing issues but was at home.  The man's leg was in need of more than healing; he needed a creative m...

Yesterday we had Kingdom-minded, prophetic group arrive from the U.S. to see what God might do as we seek to demonstrate the God's love in supernatural ways to whoever we meet, wherever we go, whenever we are out.  Even as they were jet-lagged, we headed out yesterday to see what kind of "Christmas presents" we might deliver to the different muslims we would meet.  The men went in one direction, the women in another (I'll have Desert Princess share their stories) and over the course of the next few days, I'll be blogging about our adventures together in two different muslim countries. Isaac of Ninevah, myself and three others headed out. One place we stopped to have some tea was where we were able to pray for our first person.  We had offered to our servers to help anybody who had pain.  An Iranian muslim employee was the first one we saw God touch.  He had pain in his left foot, particularly in his big toe.  I laid hands on his foot and prayed quickly comm...

Tonight in a restaurant where we've ministered to people before, the Lord opened a door to minister to a woman from Burma.  She had had trouble breathing for a month.  Desert Princess prayed for her healing while she asked her to put her own hand on her neck.  There was no change.  We felt it was probably demonic and asked if we could pray again.  This time I asked a Christian employee who was a friend of hers to lay hands on her neck and we shifted into a spiritual warfare mode – praying the power of the Blood and the Cross, I broke off the demonic assignment.  She was set free!  Very encouraging dinner.

St. Augustine's influence on Western Christianity is second to none.  However, his theology, primarily due to the Neoplatonic philosophy which influenced it, moved Christianity away from the primitive Church, and thus the Apostolic faith, in a number of ways. The Eastern Church wasn't as "infected" by Augustine's theology and never adopted some of his 'novel' theological ideas (double predestination, extreme notions of total depravity, unBiblical notions of God's love, a warped view of human sexuality, and an overall concept of God that is shaped more by Neoplatonism than the Bible). Thankfully there are a growing number of theologians and philosophers who are unraveling (and abandoning) these pagan influences upon Western Christianity and I believe we are seeing a resurrection of the most primitive, Apostolic understanding of God's nature, man's condition, and the very core of God's essence - His love.  Largely due to Augustine's ...

إِذَنْ مَنْ يُؤْمِنُ بِابْنِ اللهِ تَكُونُ هَذِهِ الشَّهَادَةُ مَوْجُودَةً فِي قَلْبِهِ. أَمَّا مَنْ لا يُصَدِّقُ اللهَ، فَهُوَ يَتَّهِمُ اللهَ بِأَنَّهُ يَكْذِبُ، لأَنَّهُ لا يَقْبَلُ شَهَادَةَ اللهِ عَنِ ابْنِهِ وَشَهَادَةُ اللهِ هِيَ أَنَّهُ أَعْطَانَا حَيَاةَ الْخُلُودِ، وَأَنَّ هَذِهِ الْحَيَاةَ هِيَ بِوَاسِطَةِ ابْنِهِ. مَنْ لَهُ الابْنُ، لَهُ الْحَيَاةُ. وَمَنْ لَيْسَ لَهُ ابْنُ اللهِ، لَيْسَتْ لَهُ حَيَاةُ الْخُلُودِ

This week Shi'ite muslims are commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein (the grandson of Muhammad, Islam's prophet).  Even tonight as I was out for a run, hundreds of Shi'ites are attending special services as what are known as Husseiniyas  (which are different than their mosques).  This will culminate in a few nights with bloody rituals with chains and even swords as they seek to identify with the death of their martyr. Although more Orthodox Shi'ites will take issue with what I am about to say, essentially many Shi'ites believe that Hussein died as an atonement for their sins.  I've had Shi'ites friends tell me this directly and when I have sat down and read Isaiah 53 with them, one thought that it was referencing Hussein.  The recognition of a need for a savior is indeed universal – even if it is hidden deep in the hearts of men and women.  How tragic that more than 600 years after the God/Man, Jesus Christ came to earth to die as the atoning sacr...

For someone who is regularly praying for muslims to be healed, I had an encounter that was one of the most encouraging encounters ever! I walked up to a muslim man when I noticed one had an elbow brace on.  His Gulf Arab muslim friend joined us.  He had injured his arm lifting weights and he was in pain.   I told him I wanted to ask God to heal him and asked him to put his other arm on his elbow.  He did and I prayed the Lord's prayer in Arabic and asking the Lord to stretch forth His hand to heal.  I asked him to take his hand away and all he could do was stare at his friend in shock exclaiming "I swear to God" over and over as he declared that he was healed.   Then one of the most shocking things I've ever heard as he tells his friend, "My sister became a Christian when this (healing) happened to her"!!  Talk about having someone to follow up with this man.  His muslim friend was also visibly shocked by both his healing and the revelation that h...

One of the Omani muslims who was healed when we were there has contacted me a couple of times since we left.  Last night I was able to talk with him and after the small talk asks if I can help him with a curse and demonic problem.  He wanted to know when I would be back in Oman to help him, but instead I told him I had a friend in Oman who could help him immediately.  He was thrilled and very thankful. I was able to make arrangements for a couple of friends to visit him which will happen in the next few days. We saw many healed in Oman – many were given accurate prophetic words and/or other words of knowledge – several had encounters with God and saw visions.  We sowed widely and it appears with one of these men, we are beginning to see the fruit of that sowing.  I'll be sure to blog the results of that meeting and the others who are being followed up as well.

Tonight Isaac of Ninevah and I were out with our wives.  We had the chance to offer to pray for a number of different muslims and some Christians too.  One man's wrist was better (not sure if it was 100% healed).  At the end of the night, I saw a group of Gulf Arab muslim teenagers and one had a wrist brace on.  It was a soccer injury that had happened a couple of days before.  After he told me what happened, I asked him to put his other hand on his wrist.  I prayed the Lord's prayer over him in Arabic and the Lord completely healed his wrist!  He was totally shocked.  I explained that as Christians it was our mandate to heal the sick and that God loved him.  I told him how he could find me and left the encounter at that.  When I was reunited with Isaac and our wives, they knew he was healed as they watched because of the shock and reaction on the muslim teen's face.  

The fishing village morning was followed by a visit to the horse races in the afternoon.  We didn't know what God would do in such a "formal" environment, but as I was sitting with a couple of Omani muslims, one of them decided to try and tell me about islam – I knew where that was going, so I changed the subject and started talking about healing and some of the testimonies from even the morning.  He asked me to pray for him for high blood pressure which I did as we sat there surrounded by hundreds of other Omani muslims – I'm telling you, we can do this stuff ANYWHERE.  I just asked him to put his hand on his chest and I quickly released God's Kingdom.  Of course he will need to get that checked to see what happened, but afterwards he asked if I could pray for a headache that he had had for 2 days.  God healed that!  Then I began to prophesy over him and spoke to him about an angel that would visit him (this is so common with muslims and the Lo...

We've only been back a couple of days from the trip to Oman and the healings seem to be increasing. The day I got back we went to the mall as a family – 3 people were healed.  My wife, Desert Princess and my daughter got a word of knowledge for a woman's lower abdomen and she had pain in her ovaries and was healed.  While walking out, I got a word of knowledge for a muslim woman's knee.  I walked on as my wife and daughter stopped to pray and she is radically healed.  She was in shock.  While they are praying, I found another muslim guy and got a word of knowledge for his lower back.  I prayed for him and the pain left. Then I tell my students some of the stories from Oman and one of them was fascinated by my "offer" to pray for the witch's healing.  She asked, "Do you think you would have healed him?" (he was paralyzed).  I told her yes and that we had seen many things healed – like blindness, and deafness.  She kept asking me so...

the healings are just going nuts here in the Middle East - I haven't even finished my Omani posts (1 more to go) and I've got another post about all the healings we've seen just talking to other muslims about the Oman trip - and then I took my 15 year-old daughter on a date tonight and introduce her to some employees in a bakery as "a healer". she got to pray for one of them and then a Pakistani muslim woman (a customer) is standing next to us and I tell her, "my daughter is healing that woman" - she's asks excitedly, "Can she heal me? I have a left shoulder problem!" She told us she was a Gynecologist. My daughter laid hands on her and I prayed and the Lord took away most of her chronic pain. We finished it off with another short prayer and a final "topping off" prayer (when it had gotten to 80% because Jesus doesn't get "Bs"). So then she asks for prayer to have another child - they have a daughter who is exactly t...

A progressively unchurched, secular America devoid of Christian values. When is the Church going to have courage to say that it's their fault? I've been thinking about this for a while now.  Having come to Christ in the mid-80's, there was such a "triumphalism" that I picked up in the Evangelical circles/culture to which I belonged. There was such an "elitism" albeit always couched in acceptable 'Christian-ese' speaking about humility and giving the Glory to God.  The idea was that the Church was no longer "irrelevant" like the denominations of before. The past and its "traditions" were always considered a bad thing and were hurting the effective communication of the Gospel. Youth ministry was booming with all sorts of new "methodologies" and approaches being embraced and implemented. Christian rock music had taken off and all other musical genres had become legitimate. Mega churches were on the rise; I attended one....

The morning after our amazing time of ministry in the coffee shop ended up being the most significant ministry we had during our entire trip to Oman.  We headed out in the morning to old Muscat and I had a sense that we should continue driving on to a small fishing village.  The "feel" of old Muscat is surreal.  Set on the coast between cliffs and coves as the mountains reach down to the sea is something you have to experience.  By far the most beautiful city in my opinion on the Arabian Peninsula!  We were a group of 3 guys and 3 girls and I was the only Arabic speaker.  As we walk into this small village, I remembered that several years earlier I had walked down the beach from a nearby hotel and prayed for one of the fisherman (maybe two) - I don't remember exactly.  However, I used that experience as a way to introduce ourselves.  First of all we met a group of 3 older Omani women.  I sent the guys on to the beach and shared my "story" w...

We left the Interior encouraged but had wanted to see so much more.  Little did we know that the fun was only about to begin.  When we arrived back in the capital, we met with a young missionary at a mall who we would be staying with.  The first healing we saw was a western woman in a coffee shop who had a cast on her foot.  She had broken her foot and it was still in pain.  I told her I was a pastor and that I believed all the pain would go if she let me pray – I told her 10 seconds was all I needed.  She agreed and all the pain left – she was very grateful.   As we were sitting in the coffee shop, the Lord highlighted a muslim man to me.  I approached him and the man and his two friends invited me to sit down with them.  They were all Omani muslims which I didn't realize initially as two of them were in western clothes.  They insisted I sit down and I began telling them about what had happened in the Interior (I'll told you the...

From the coast, we headed inland crossing the mountains and coming to what is known as "the Interior" of Oman.  It is more conservative and people mostly live in villages or small towns.  Ironically, it is not only known for being more conservative religiously, but it is also known as the place where there is the most witchcraft.  This is something that is not only believed in Oman, but I've asked Arabs in many countries who also believe this to be true.  We decided to go to the city considered to be the center of magic and witchcraft and see what the Lord would do.   In a restaurant we met a man from that city and asked him to tell us what he knew about the city's reputation for witchcraft.  He began to tell us some stories and the history of it acknowledging that it was far less today than in the past; however, he did tell us that one of the witches from the heyday (the 50's and 60's) was still alive, but crippled and living very close by.  ...