Thursday, May 31, 2007

A Response

I have come accross many people who, because of their experiences, tell me that in reality the fullness of the kingdom modelled by Jesus is not always for us, now. This is just a quick response - to hopefully put accross a different view on this.


The gospel is salvation and salvation (‘soteria’) is an all-inclusive, holistic term that restores all that was lost at the fall. It means forgiveness, healing, prosperity, deliverance, safety, rescue, liberation and restoration.

Now if we believe that we already have one part of the word (‘forgiveness’) then we also, legally, have the rest of it – as in Jesus has already earned all this for us. Now I will be the first to say that we haven’t fully pulled in our legal inheritance yet, but it’s not because it is impossible in our time. It is why we need to keep contending and praying ‘your kingdom come as it is in heaven.’

I know that not every person that comes to me for healing gets healed at the moment. So, I can lower the standard of Holy Scripture to meet my level of experience, or I can pursue more of the Kingdom and change my experience. We know that God hates sickness like he hates sin. So he wants us out of sickness, right now. The father can’t want us in sickness to teach us things when it cost Jesus everything to get us out of it – the Trinity can’t be divided. It says that Jesus did what he saw the father doing and Jesus healed every sick person that came to Him for healing. So the problem is not with God.

We also have been justified, so there is no good beating ourselves up either, particularly when Jesus took the beatings for us.

So the last thing we can look at is the demonic – and we are in a battle there. But the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church – so we have not just a legal right to health, but also we are on the winning side. That’s not to say we aren’t going to have disappointments on the way – but if we know it’s our inheritance we will fight more for it and see more and more people healed. We can’t pray ‘your kingdom come’ and then not really expect it to manifest. There is no sickness or poverty or demon oppression in the kingdom – so when we pray ‘kingdom come’ we are pulling all that onto earth.

When Jesus sent people out he told them to say that ‘the kingdom of heaven is (present tense) at hand’ then to lay their hands on the sick and heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons. That was the gospel according to Jesus and Jesus is perfect theology. Jesus never preached the gospel without demonstrating it in power. They cannot be separated. Where people have chased this biblical example of the gospel, they have found it. In Mozambique, they have had 60 people raised from the dead because they take Jesus at his word and they also see countless deaf people healed. In Redding California cancer rates have dropped 50% since they started praying and healing the sick.

And just a little end note!!: When Jesus said the poor will always be with you, He was doing it within a specific context. He was talking to a bunch of people who had the privilege in time and space to have the physical Lord Jesus with them. Jesus was speaking to them. They were always going to have the poor with them in their lifetime, because the kingdom was not going to be fully established across the planet in their lifetime. They had a unique privileged choice to spend on the physical Jesus in-front of them or the poor.

It is different for us - we don’t have that same choice. For us if we spend on the poor we ARE spending on Jesus – for what we do for them we do for Him. But just as that is different, so He was not making an eternal or universal statement when He said ‘the poor will always be with you’. Instead He asked us to establish the kingdom (which has no poverty in it) and to practically help impoverished people out of poverty.

All in all, we owe the world a divine encounter. Have fun doing it!

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

You need to read this book. Seriously.

The Bible is only truth, if you get the truth from it.


The Bible is a book that we give so much power over our lives to. We use to build organizations, families, lives and ministries upon. Hadn't we better understand what it actually means - not what we've heard it means (traditions of thought) or what we think it could mean. We give it far too much power to not understand it.

'How to read the Bible for all it's worth' teaches you how to work out what the books of the Bible are actually saying. Once you've worked that out then you are equipped to apply it to life.

I had to read this book as part of a course. I started reading it thinking this was for the clueless people who totally needed a guide to the Bible. I also thought it would be boring!

But it has changed my life and my relationship with the truth i base my life upon. How scary to base a life on something that isn't necessarily there in the text! It's also scary to now see that so much of the stuff great christians get from the Bible - is not what it was saying to us. Scary!

Do yourself the biggest, most essential favour ever and learn how to read the Bible.

Monday, May 14, 2007

God Invades...!


My friend Darren, writes about last friday night outside starbucks in Redding California. He, and my other friends there, have been at school of ministry too. It's cool to hear that they are just doing the stuff...!!!

Darren writes...


I had to write this because of what happened tonight.
It's about 12:55 am and we just got back from discovery village.

A couple hours earlier ...

I had got to discovery village at about 10:30 to meet joel, karen, and camille. We end up talking outside starbucks and just hanging out. There are two black guys that we end up meeting, charles and garland. They came from LA and are visiting; and I realized that I had seem them both at school earlier. Anyways, charles and garland come over and they both actually come and sing for us since they told us they lead worship down at their church in LA. They both finish and charles ends up getting me drunk and I fall down laughing!

Well, 4 girls, who are in high school we find out,sitting down besides us were watching charles and garland sing and laughed with us; after I fell down, however, they come over and start asking Karen "Is he (me) okay?" I'm still laughing and Karen starts explaining to them what's going on. I eventually get called over there and we talk to them about our youth kids and how they have been seeing angels and getting crazy encounters. Karen tells one of the girls that she sees fashion over her and she gets the chills and tells us that she wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up! Well, I feel the prophetic wave coming up and I start gathering words of knowledge.

Two of the girls start talking to Karen and Camille and we have two of the girl's attention. I am talking to one of them and I tell her, "Hey, this might sound totally crazy and I could be totally wrong, but I just see you with a lot of children." She almost but doesn't quite understand and I ask her if she likes children. She is a little shocked and she asks me, "How did you know that?" I tell her that I see her loving on children and I saw her as a teacher, loving on children that never had love growing up and that she was changing many children's lives through it. She begins to cry and she tells me that she's wanted to be a teacher since growing up and earlier that day, those 4 girls had been talking about her and children! While she's crying, I start prophesying about how she's been wanting something real and she is getting freaked out; telling us that for weeks now, she's been crying out to God to see if God is real or not.

Karen on the other side with Camille, ends up praying for one of the girl's back because of back pains. She gets instantly healed and starts freaking out while telling her friends that she never had this feeling before. We continue to minister, giving out words of knowledge and prophesying over the girl's lives. Karen and Camille end up praying for the other girl who had an ulcer in her stomache which caused pain and she couldn't eat regularly for the past 3 weeks. They finish praying and she says that the pain is all gone and she felt a cold touch on her stomache! She starts freaking out and begins to cry!

I walk over to the pair of girls Camille is talking with and as we talk, I had this word for one of the girls about family troubles. She instantly gets freaked out and walks away crying. Her best friends tell me about the recent situation in her life with family and when she comes back, she apologizes for walking away but we say it's fine. Me and Camille end up prophesying over her life that God wants to heal the family and is all about restoration. We start to teach them on the "misconceptions" about God and they all start to ask us questions because of their particular stage in life. This whole time, they are telling us that "It feels right to be here right now" and we tell them that it was totally God who set them up! I think 2 of them used to go to church but had never felt God this way.

Karen and Joel are talking to the other girls and start leading them through some stuff. Me and Camille walk over and find out that two of the girls have sculiosis which is a disease on the spine which makes it hurt a lot. Me and Camille put our hands on one of the girls back and as soon as I begin to pray, Camille feels a snap on her spine and starts laughing! Camille asks the girl, "DID YOU FEEL THAT?" and she ends up laughing and says, "YES" while her other friend who got healed of the ulcer is watching all of this! She then tells us that there is no more pain and that later on, she had to have gotten a surgery for it! All of the girls start telling us that they never had felt anything like this before. They got healed and touched by the Holy Spirit and it was fantastic.

All 4 of the girls are getting radically touched and we start telling them about Bethel and how they should come and they were so excited about coming. We still end up ministering to the 2nd girl who had sculiosis and all of us, including the girls, are praying for her. Karen is ministering to her prophetically and starts calling out the peace and destiny over her life while the rest of us are praying for healing. At the end of it, she is crying and we ask her about the pain. She tells us that it's all gone now!

They are all so overwhelmed at thinking "We are so glad that we came to discovery village tonight!" We end up praying and prophesying over charles and he falls over crying and laughing which got to show the girls how to minister to other people. We have them start laying their hands on him and praying over him and after a while, we have them pray over garland since he is getting drunk as well.

This whole ordeal lasted about 2 hours in the front of discovery village. There are so many other details about what happened tonight; the new levels of the prophetic and words of knowledge; teaching the girls how to listen to the Lord and showing them that God is not a God of judgment but a God of love!

It was freaking amazing. God totally showed up at discovery village.
The 4 girls are coming to church on sunday night and we are making them sit with us.

I love Jesus.