JOEL 2 GENERATION

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...