If you don’t know Bill Johnson, it is time.
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Archive for April, 2007
I read over at Michael’s blog about the mass baptism at the Crystal Cathedral when Evil Kenevil spoke. You can read the whole article here in Christianity Today.
I have read lots of commentary about this including lots of people who called the whole thing fake.
Praise be to God I found the video. Here is the actual baptism video but you can see the testimony of Robert keneivil here.
OK, so they don’t dunk. But the man gave an altar call for people to “take a leap of faith and invite Jesus Christ into their heart. And if you do that I will baptize you right now.”
If salvations touch you then you have to see the video. At the end, when he was done, there was one young man who sprinted up the isle to get baptized before he was done.
I was really touched by this video.
Popularity: 45% [?]
I may be way off base here but I have to ask.
What is the connection between homosexuality and the prophetic?
Besides the “outing” of the senior prophetic minister last year, I know of more than one prophetic minister that I swear is gay. I do not know of any sexual immorality or I would have called them out by name. But the overtly effeminate speech and dress coupled with the manorisms and hair styles are too much for me.
There was a time that I thought the problem was me. I would see something and rebuke myself for thinking a certain way. Now I am just calling out the obvious. I get creeped out when I hear them teach or see them sache’ across the platform.
I am not hateful. I am not a homophobe. I have sin just like the next guy. But I see this pattern and I am trying to figure it out.
Has anyone else seen this? And why is this happening?
Popularity: 40% [?]
The three or four of you who have followed this blog know that I gave up trying to be a popular blog guy a long time ago. I post what God has been speaking to me. Well, here is what He has been talking to be about.
What is the point of your life? Reader, I am not asking you. I am telling you that is what God has been asking me.
We preach about eternity all the time but we live for the moment. We don’t really believe that life is a vapor. We worry about retirement as much as the world does. We worry about our reputations and are scared to startle the authorities in our lives with radical ideas.
Last week God began opening a ministry call to me. At first I could not get it out of my mind. I knew that God was in it. I was so excited what He would do. I knew that I would have to birth it in prayer but I was ready to commit my life to it. In the next couple days, I began to realize friction that it may cause.
That’s a real diplomatic way of saying that I was scared of the repercussions. I am worried what the leadership of my church would say. They have been inferring a very different direction for my ministry. One that I never bought into. I am worried what the people who hole my ministry credentials will say. Because of relationships involved, I would have to meet with them. And this has eaten at not only my excitement, it has taken a toll on my faith on what God would have me do. But God is sovereign.
I was listening to a sermon by Heidi Baker the last two days that stirred me. Then, while working on one of my other websites, I watched the video that is at the end of this post. Then it hit me.
Galatians 2:20 (Listen)I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
I was no more a slave of God than the lost. I was no more His servant than those who mocked Him in the flesh. I was more worried about my reputation and comfort than I was for the people that He died to save.
I was in a spiritually abusive church for a while and allowed the controlling spirit channeled by the leader to begin to kill the prophetic word in me. Right before my final meeting with the leadership I swore to God that I would never again allow the gift of God in me to bow to a man again.
And yet I almost did it. But the man I was forcing the gift to bow to was myself. Unclean man that I am.
This may sound melodramatic but I am convicted and heartbroken. Convicted because I was sure I was more sold out to Jesus than that. Heartbroken because there are tens of thousands of people going to hell all around me and I am not giving my life to the cause that my Savior died for.
I do not plan to turn over any tables in the temple but I do plan to follow God. I invite you to come with me.
Popularity: 58% [?]
There used to be a church in my town that had a real prophetic worship thing going on. The big name heavy hitters would come through and talk about how they were on the “cutting edge” of what God was doing.
sidenote: If you are in a church that is constantly hearing about how you are on the cutting edge, run. These words are meant to pump your ego and will blind you to correction from the Holy Ghost.
The church’s doctrine eventually went over the edge. Spiritual pride spread like a cancer, the roles of men and women got completely perverted (I am not a chauvinist, it was really whacked out), the pastor became a universalist then left his wife for another married woman in the congregation, divorce spread like wildfire and right before the total collapse of the congregation, they spread their sick and infected members to all the other churches in the area who then attempted to infect their new congregations with the “liberty” they now knew.
One such doctrine that was popular went like this:
It is good for me to display my liberty in Jesus so that if you are offended, Jesus can deal with your heart.
Does that sound crazy to you? People would get drunk, listen to debauchery, display their fake breasts and behave in unchristian ways with the liberty they found in Christ and with the understanding that the offense they bring will help others become mature.
I was at an engagement party where this was displayed in full force. One of the “mature” of this belief challenged me on my offense telling me that I need to go to God to see what was in my heart that allowed me to be offended. I told him,
I am not offended in the least. I just want you to repent so you don’t go to hell.
As odd as all this may seem I hear a version of this false doctrine all over the place today.
I remember hearing an old Leonard Ravenhill sermon where he talked about people who bragged about how they drank wine because they were not religious. He told them that they are sinners. And if you are a drunkard, you are not free in Christ, you are a sinner bound by the devil. The same if you are a pornographer, foul-mouthed, a liar, an adulterer, and the list goes on. I have to disagree with what has become popular and no it is not enough to “be on the path” with Jesus. You have to be born again. If you live a sinful life then you are not born again. Sorry. But it is the truth.
If I hear one more preacher brag about how they listen to the foul mouthed Bono and his band U2 I may scream. It seems as if it were some sort of spiritual test of maturity. Listen to praise and worship or contemporary Christian? Immature Christian. You listen to secular music? You are really mature. What kind of nonsense is this? God has not placed me in a position to determine Bono’s salvation, and I won’t. But I am equally sure he has not placed preachers in the pulpit to endorse his music over worship.
Preacher it is right and fitting to be relevant. God came down from heaven to speak in our terms. This is what he modeled for us. And while Paul became all things to all people, he never became a sinner to the sinners.
You know what is really relevant? The Gospel. Holiness. Seeking the face of God. Allowing Him to transform us. Listen to how John Piper puts it to pastors. (it’s less than three minutes long. You have the time)
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So I was working the altar last night for a while. Near the end of the evening a girl I had seen a couple times came up to me and asked for prayer because her back has been hurting for several months.
I prayed for her and asked how her back felt. . . no change. Now, we are just talking about some back pain here. Not blind eyes, not missing limbs, not lupus. A backache. I prayed the prayer of faith and the anointing was so think that my ministry assistant and I both felt like we might fall down. I asked again how she felt.
No change.
Now this was getting annoying. I quoted James 5 and did all I knew how to do. I asked again and she said she felt a little better. I don’t settle for courtesy healings so I asked her how much better. Turns out she was about 50% better. I said that we are going in the right direction and was about to pray again when I decided to ask a question.
I know many of you might be saying that there could be unforgiveness, or bitterness. Maybe there was a specific sin or a generational curse. Maybe we had to tackle a territorial spirit or have her renounce past affiliations.
I am not that spiritual.
I asked her, “Are you right with God?” She shook her head no. I asked if she had ever known God. She shook her head no. Hmmm. We might be on to something here.
I preached the Gospel from front to back and gave her an opportunity to repent for specific sins that God was showing her. I really prefer this method. I will lay my hands on a person and tell them that God is going to reveal specific sins that they need to repent of. He always does. They then have the opportunity to either submit to God or resist His Spirit.
This girl was broken. As tears rolled down her cheeks she mouthed words of repentance for sins that only she and God knew of. After that I lead her in a prayer declaring Jesus as Lord and requesting to be saved and filled with the Holy Ghost so she can have power to not do those things again.
Afterward she looked up at me with the glow you can only see on the face of a new believer. I asked, “how do you feel now.” She said, “I feel really, really good.” I said “That is what forgiveness feels like. How’s your back?”
“The pain is gone.”
I said, “Of course it is. Welcome to the Kingdom.”
Popularity: 47% [?]
Have you ever seen a real life healing miracle? I mean the kind that you can see with your eyes. The kind that takes no faith to believe.
There was a season that I had some sort of flat feet anointing. It is really wild to see an arch develop in a flat foot. I saw a 3-year-old child get arches one time and her parents lost their minds.
Lately I have gotten the “It does not hurt anymore” type of healings. I am happy for those but I really want to see more.
I was at an assisted living facility this past weekend and came across a man who lost his sight a few years ago. I told him that I was going to pray for him and he was going to be healed.
I anointed him with oil and prayed the prayer of faith. When I was done I asked, “Can you see now?” He couldn’t. I repeated the exercise three more times but he still could not see.
I considered telling him that God did not heal him because he lacked faith or because God did not want to heal him (just kidding, I don’t believe either one of these things) but instead just prayed a prayer of blessing. I really hate that moment after you pray for someone who was not healed. I would like to never experience it again.
But I am not going to avoid that feeling by departing from the commands of scripture to pray for the sick. I am going to seek the face of God and continue to believe that He wants to do unusual miracles today.
Popularity: 43% [?]
My family sat down for devotions on Resurrection Sunday when my 6 year old son announced that he wanted to read a story about the resurrection that he had written. As the family sat around the dinner table waiting for the story to begin, my son cleared his throat then said, “I think I need a microphone.”
I told my son that real pentecostal preachers don’t need microphones.
I think we might be going to church too much.
Popularity: 31% [?]
This week is the beginning of a tent revival in Dallas. Here is the website and here is a link to an article in the paper.
Churches from all over the Dallas area are participating with both worship teams and preachers.
“I feel like God has just confirmed my steps,” said Mr. Martin, 27, a lay leader of Dallas Bible Church, the revival’s host.
Prayer sessions will occur each morning and preaching each night in a 600-seat, 9,000-square-foot tent on a lot at 4005 Gaston Ave. That’s right by a Starbucks and near Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and Criswell College.
If anyone is in the Dallas area, how about checking it out and reporting back?
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