The Holy Ghost saved my sons life yesterday. When I write that, I don’t think I am exagerating.

About two weeks ago I decided that I did not want my son to wear those little flotation things on his arms in the pool any more. I began to get irritated just looking at them. My son protested vigorously. His mother was on his side. He complained and complained but I had made my decision. He is six and it is time to swim.

That same day there were a couple other little kids in the pool who could swim. One of them showed my son a swimming stroke and my son began to stick his head under water, flail around, and pop back up. To go from terrified to get in the pool without the water wings to sticking the head under water and flailing was great progress.

Since then, I have taken him to bigger and bigger steps. Yesterday, after church, we went swimming in the pool and he swam from one side of the pool to the other in the deep end. Of the four times we did it in the afternoon, he only needed rescued once (the second time). I was incredibly proud.

Last night we went to a birthday party for a friend of mine. Half way through the party, someone told me that my son was wet. When I got to him I found out he was reaching for a ball and fell in the pool. He swam back to the side and got out. Two weeks earlier, he would have drowned. You read all the time about kids drowning at parties and I always wonder how that could happen. My son could have been the next on that list.

So today I recognize that the Spirit of God knew that my son was going to fall in the pool last night. Why didn’t He keep my son from falling in? I do not know. But I recognize that it was His prompting that brought my irritation with the water wings.

I sat on the couch this morning and replayed the events of last night with my son. I said that if he had not learned to swim that he might have been in heaven this morning instead of with me. He could not fully appreciate that but my wife and I sure can. I love my son so much I don’t know what I would do without him. All I can say is “Thank you Lord!”

It is so easy to not trust that God is working on your behalf. But you can trust the leading of the Spirit of God.

I was in a church service recently and the person at the pulpit relayed a “prophesy” he had heard. There was a local boy who had gone into anaphylactic shock after eating chicken nuggets the day before. The manufacturer had since recalled the nugget because it contained gluten, which this child was allergic to. The boy had oxygen deprivation for a while and had some brain damage. A minister went to visit the boy and opened his bible and landed on a healing verse int he psalms. He felt this was a sign and declared boldly that God would raise the boy. Praise God.

The prophesy was declared from the pulpit the next morning by another minister. God was credited as having said that the boy would live and that it would be a testimony. By the end of that service the boy was dead.

Dan Edean recently wrote a post in his blog (the name of which I cannot spell) about bad christian advise. In talking to my wife about it, we found a common theme. The majority of bad counsel we have received was less bad advise and more correctly presumptuous expectations.

Let me explain.

When I got married we immediately had kids. Our finances were not in order, I had a pretty bad job and my wife made more than me. Our brand of church pretty much required that the wife stay home and take care of the kids. We were told not to worry because God would double my income in response to our faith. I am still waiting for that to happen seven years later.

I was strongly advised to get the first job could after graduation college and that God would raise me up. So, with my military experience, IT background, corporate communications degree under my belt and past leadership roles listed on my resume, I got my first post-college job washing cars. For disclosure sake, I did move up to a sales manager role in that company but quit because the job was awful and compromising.

Could God have doubled my income? Of course! Could he have raised me up to lead that company and turn its ethics around? Of course! But He never told me He would do that. I presumed He would on the advise of others. That is not faith.

The valuable thing that I learned through lots of bad advise is this, faith is not the absence of logic. It is, perhaps, the presence of an assurance in the face of logic. Aside from that assurance you only have presumption. And presumption don€™t pay the bills!

Hebrews 11:1 Listen

11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

That evidence is what was once called assurance and it is missing in too much of what the church is doing today.

Surely that minister at the side of that child’s bed wanted to believe that God would raise that boy. But guess what, God never said He would. If He did, then the boy would not have been buried yesterday.

We do the church harm when we cannot discern faith from presumption. This is the reason many mock the pentecostal movement. Real faith is sometimes saying, “I don’t know.”

Holiness is the habitation of God.

From the Smith Wigglesworth Devotional.

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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.

Christian Videos

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)

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.

Last Sunday my wife and I decided to drive a couple hours up the coast to see Gary Oates at Our Fathers House Satellite Beach. My grandmother lives near there so it was a “twofer.”

It has been a while since I was in a service where both the attendees were over 18 and were worshiping freely. If you are not into charasmatic worship then I would suggest you avoid this place at all costs! There were people both young and (mostly) old dancing, crying, rejoicing and singing to the Lord. There were flags, streamers and bells. There were dancers (but not the skin tight body suit with breast implant type that I have seen and tried not to look at at other “river” churches. If you have not encountered this, thank the Lord and don’t look for it.).

If you have ever been in this type of church and then come back after a long time it is funny how foreign it looks to you. I was watching all the liberty in the worship and remembering when that was me running and dancing as if at any moment the Lord Himself would reach down from heaven and touch me. I have gotten quite off track here but I had to laugh when I was startled by the sudden burst of a handful of shofars. It really has been a while.

Anyway. . .

This was the last day of a healing conference. I went because I am contending for a healing anointing and we like a change of pace every now and then. I pray for people and they get healed here and there. Most feel God’s presence. Some feel better. Some get healed. I want all healed.

After the service I prayed for a young lady who was having mental issues. She had significant breakthrough but other than that I do not remember experiencing much.

After spending some time with my Grandmother we began the drive home.

Half way back we got a call from one of my best friend’s wife. My friend had been admitted to the hospital and was possibly facing surgery. I told the wife that I would drop off my family and head straight to the hospital.

Now hear this: I was on my way from a healing conference when I got a call that one of my best friends was sick.

About two hours later I arrived at the hospital with a ministry friend ready to see some action. We prayed and declared healing in the name of the Lord. It felt like heaven had descended in that hospital room. The anointing was so thick I could barely stand. My friend immediately was free from pain. As we were finishing, the doctor showed up and we left the room.

There was a guy the hall who was in serious pain. I prayed for him. The next morning (Monday) my friend told me that not only was he was able to sleep through the night for the first time in days, the man in the hall was relieved of his pain. My friend is always looking to gather souls for Jesus so he spent their time together witnessing to him.

That morning the doctor came in and said that the tests showed that he had gallstones and an inflamed gallbladder. His wife was expecting that later in the day, further tests would show that he was healed and that surgery would not be needed.

The next day (Tuesday) my friend’s wife was here at the house dropping off the children before heading to the hospital when he called. The doctor came in and said that he was going into surgery to have his gallbladder removed that afternoon.

AGGHHH!!!

Sure enough, at 3 p.m. my friend had surgery for an extremely inflamed gallbladder that had 4 gallstones.

This is the part of healing ministry you don’t hear reported as often. Some don’t get healed. I do not know why. I may never know this side of Glory but I will continue to hold onto

Matthew 10:8 Listen

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay.

Just trying to be honest.  I think it was Wimber who originally said that faith is spelled R I S K.  One day, things won’t be like this.

Hosanna!

I have a couple quick posts I wanted to make before returning to my “Distractions from the Gospel” series.

The other night my wife was reading part of a book from the most famous female preacher in America as part of her devotion when something came flying out of my mouth. I remarked that those books don’t seem to be that good because women seemed to have to constantly read an ever increasing amount of books from the author on the same subjects. My wife said, “Wow.”

Early in my walk I read “Good Morning Holy Spirit” by Benny Hinn. It really rocked my world. Sometime later I came upon another of his books. I didn’t even read the whole thing because I got the message from the first.

I began to wonder why women continually buy an ever increasing amount of books and pack auditoriums seeking to hear the message that did not change them when they read it in previous books or when they heard it on tv. This is quite the marketing phenomena.

I decided that if I ever had a women’s conference I would title it, “Be more confident, Take control of your thoughts, and The key to pleasing everyone.” I surely would pack every arena in America.

Know why? This is what women deal with.

For men, it is lust and pride. Women, its this “I am not good enough, every other women has it together but I don’t” thing. I hate to be brutal but accept the fact and get your eyes on Jesus. It’s the only thing that combats pride. It’s the only thing that combats lust. It’s the only thing that will work for you. Stop looking at yourself. It will not help.

If you have been saved more than six months it is more than likely that church is no longer what it is supposed to be.  For far to many saints,church is no longer a place to be equipped for the working of the ministry and is instead the place of always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

Somehow, church becomes our world.  Sure, we venture out of it from time to time.  We go to work.  We go to the store.  But we rush back into our safe house so we can get away from “them.”  We kneel at the altar and ask God to deliver us from our jobs that have us in to much contact with “them.”  We pray for schools so our kids won’t be influenced by “them.” Some go so far as to arrange church activities on holidays so our Christian festivities won’t be spoiled by “them.”

The big problem is that Jesus sent us to share the Gospel with “them” and that’s hard to do when we have no contact.

I have been here.  When the center of our Christianity is church we surely know that we are missing the mark. As leaders, when we gauge believers by their faithfulness in listening to someone teach we have wandered off course.

Some believe that the problem is the structure of church all together.  Many ascended to leadership in a church and saw major flaws with the leadership.  Their hurts cause them to stay withdrawn because of perceived hypocrisies.  Others have come out of the conventional church because of their belief in a better structure. They believe that the church is not an institution but an organic creature that is to be small and without ordained leaders.  I am ok with that but many often leave the conventional church and don’t join anything else.  As with the hyperchurched, these groups allow their church experiences to distract them from the Gospel as well.

I was once in the place that all of my prayer life was consumed with the horribly dysfunctional church that I was a part of.  It seemed that all of my Christian life had to pass through that church mostly because of a controlling spirit that was channeled by the leaders.  When I broke free, I almost was affected by it enough to quit church all together.

After one week of this my wife declared that this is not who we are.  We are Christians and we go to church.  I got plugged into a fellowship that is preaching the Gospel and reaching and teaching the lost.  As I look around my current fellowship I see people who are both hyperchurched and hypercritical.  The good news is that I am of neither group. 

I refused to be distracted again, and so should you.

Here is the second part of my series titled Distractions from the Gospel.  Find part one here.

Read the following list and try to guess what they have in common:  Closed cannon, Cessationism, Transubstantiation, Third Wave theology, Asceticism, Dispensationalism, Sabbatarianism.

The common thread?  People who are consumed with the lost spend almost no time contemplating them.  I teach my students that the Gospel is the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection and the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

A complete and full understanding on substitutionary atonement is not going to save anyone.  A position piece on the requirements for eldership will not gain anyone entrance to heaven.  Even a proper stance on homosexuality will not help you with the second birth.

As false teachings crept into the body of believers, some falsely believed that more proper teaching would rid the problem.  As more leaders chased after proper teaching, the hairs that were being split got finer and finer.  Thanks to the blogsphere it is now possible to witness doctrinal debates over the context of a single Greek word in one of Paul’s pastoral writings (as if that matters). 

There is no theology based on a single Greek word that is of any significance.  And even if there was, it still would not get anyone saved.

Salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting the lost of their need for Jesus.  Sometimes He convicts their conscience of their sin.  Sometimes He offers the hurting a greater hope.  sometimes He meets a physical need with healing.  Whatever the gateway, He brings the reality of Jesus to the heart by the spirit. 

I laid hands on a 13 year old boy this past Friday night.  He was a good kid and a regular church attendee.  He is part of a discipleship class that was doing Bible study and leadership training.  During worship I felt lead to pray for him.  While we were standing there I asked him what was happening.  In an ongoing play by play he told me of an increasing bright light that he saw.  Out of the light stretched a set of hands.  Eventually Jesus came out of the light and called the boy to Him.  As this boy began to feel the embrace of his Savior he wept openly.  As the vision unfolded the boy was shown the lost all over the globe getting saved.  The boy knew this was his call.  You can’t get that at of a lexicon.

You cannot teach someone into an encounter with Jesus.  It requires faith.  Which is precisely the element that is not needed to promote your doctrinal position.