JOEL 2 GENERATION

I know this post will probably be misunderstood, but that's okay. I am a WORD & SPIRIT guy. I want to share God's written, inerrant WORD AND I want to do so with demonstrations of the power of the Holy SPIRIT. Non-Charismatics are pretty much WORD-only people. I used to be one. And that isn't to say we didn't believe God would anoint/bless His Word as we shared it which is the Holy Spirit's activity. But what was clear is that we didn't expect much else. When I became a Charismatic, there was most definitely a pendulum swing. To be honest, I became obsessed with healing and other types of miracles that constituted the power of the Holy Spirit. And sometimes that resulted in us under-emphasizing the proclamation of the WORD. We'd often pray for people, and see healing but not end up sharing much of the the Gospel. Possibly a good critique for such a dynamic is that I was at times a SPIRIT-only person.  Thankfully, I had some great 'voices' in my l...

Obviously, when we pray for an unbeliever in Jesus' Name and they get healed, we love it when we check back in with them at a later time and they are still healed.  At times, however, we find out that a person's pain/problem has returned; that in some way they have "lost" their healing. Of course, whenever we encounter this we will pray again and I can't remember a time in doing so when their pain/problem doesn't go away again after prayer. I had a discussion with a friend the other day about the issue of unbelievers losing their healing, and I think the Lord gave me a deeper insight into why that might have happened. He had shared about a man who was healed, lost his healing, and then when he met him again, after prayer, the Lord brought healing a second time. He really hadn't responded much to the Gospel after the first encounter, but after the second, he was a different man. It also opened a door for the woman who was with him to be healed.  This remind...

It is that time of year again. The "Christmas is a pagan holiday" crowd will be out in force claiming that celebrating Christmas on December 25th comes from paganism and should therefore be abandoned. And let's face it, no follower of Jesus wants to be participating in something pagan. And nor do I!! So, to not keep anyone in suspense as to the conclusion of this blog post, I will state the fact of the matter upfront: Celebrating Christmas on December 25th DID NOT originate in Roman paganism! I blogged about this last year and will probably continue to do so annually to counter the lie of the pagan origin of Christmas  -  LINK There is definitely an ongoing debate amongst Christians as to WHEN Jesus was actually born but to the surprise of many, the idea that His birth was in December (or January) is a very early belief amongst Christians. I had previously been persuaded that a September date was most likely, but after considering the evidence I will present below, I bel...