I was going to title this post, “Revival is a White Thing” for dramatic effect but I don’t believe that so I opted out.
I went to Toronto, I have been to Lakeland, and I saw countless Brownsville services on tv. I have been to Todd Bentley meetings, Patricia King, Reinhart Bonnke, Benny Hinn, Rodney Howard-Browne, Randy Clark, Jack Frost, Heidi Baker and a whole bunch of other folks and it was basically the same. They are all white events. Is revival a white phenomenon?
I know, you have a buddy on your worship team who is black or you have a latino family in your prayer team but that is not what I am talking about. There are and were some people of color at these events. But that is the exception. The fact remains that Pentecost was born in multiculturalism but by and large that is gone.
This is not a quota thing. It’s a Kingdom thing. I look at the folks sitting on the stage in Lakeland and pray that a shift will happen. But this goes both ways.
The Church of God in Christ is the largest Pentecostal denomination in America. It is also an almost exclusively black denomination. Are they producing no revivalists that can cross racial and denominational lines? Are there no fire baptized COGIC ministers who want to see their churches better reflect the Kingdom? Are there no prophets in the COGIC that want to bring their distinctives outside their denomination?
Or does this come down to musical tastes? When I became a Christian I had a hard time finding music that is both anointed and sounds good. I would be fine never hearing another guitar solo, acoustic guitar, or seeing tight pants or hair in the face. I am also not really trying to hear anything with an organ and a drum slapping BAM boom BAM boom BAM boom BAM boom while the bass player plays a run. That’s not really music to me. Unfortunately for me, I found that if I want the anointing I have to watch worship leaders fulfill their childhood ambitions of being rock stars.
My city, Delray Beach integrated its little league teams for the first time this year. That’s right. 2008 is the first year the black and white little leagues were not segregated. I believe this is a prophetic sign that things are going to change in my town starting with my fellowship The Mission. I hope this is a sign of larger things to come.
Indeed Paul said in Romans 15:18-19 that only the proclamation of the gospel that is accompanied by healing, signs and wonders, that display the power of the risen Lord, represents a full proclamation of the gospel: Rom. 15:18-19 (NIV)€” I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done€” by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. [italics and boldface mine]
I have heard people ask why Todd does not take his gift out of the church and into the streets. I have seen it written that he only sees these manifestations where he has whipped the crowd into a frenzy and there is some sort of mass trance.
I know a church that has declared that for them, 2008 is the year of prayer. That makes me wonder a few things:
What was last year?
What will you move on to next year?
If you didn’t pray before, were you a church? (Mark 11:17)
Prayer is supposed to be the key to other things. It is not a goal unto itself. If the goal of the church is to get people to pray then we have come up waaaaaaay short of the call.
I hear so many excuses people have for not reaching the lost that it makes me wonder if we are reading the same Bible and redeemed by the same Blood.
Every time I hear people say they do not move in faith because they do not want to offend people what I really hear is that they are scared of rejection. They would rather a hell-bound world think they are nice then to gather the Lord’s harvest. Jesus would never offend anyone right? Yeah that’s it. That’s why they killed Him. He played nice with everyone.
For those dealing with this let me quote a Bible promise for you:
God has been talking to be lately about believing Him for the impossible. The fact that the statement is a non-sequitor means nothing to God. But I ask you, what is impossible to you?
For many believers I have met, the very thing God spoke to their heart about is often the thing they feel the least amount of faith for. Is there a promise you received soon after salvation that you have still not seen come to pass? Is it possibly painful for you to even believe that it could still come to pass?
I came across a video about a woman who died. There was a missionary nearby that heard from God that he would raise the dead one day. As soon as he heard that there was a woman who died nearby, he thought that this was the moment that his promise would come to pass. He had not given up hope.
Have you given up on God’s promise? I want to challenge you to hold on to the promise. Pray it through until it comes to pass. Watch this and be encouraged.
November 14th, 2007 by Carl Thomas | 4 Comments | Filed in prayer
Thursday morning I have a fairly big meeting regarding the future of my ministry. Would you pray that God’s plans are revealed, embraced, and advanced?
We had The Mission Tuesday night as usual. But things are never usual at an urban outreach.
I preached on living a double life and how Jesus never changes. I gave a warning about playing in the anointing and then playing in the world. I felt the need to warn the people who come and minister and then lead a double life on the outside. The Mission has become their God time break and then they leave and go back to nonsense.
Don’t fool yourself. Randomly pick 10 on fire young people in your church and visit the pictures on their MySpace page. I guarantee you you will find near pornography on many of them.
I talked about how you can probably live a mildly Christian life and make it to heaven but if you want to be part of the end time harvest it is going to cost you something. And if you throw your hat into the ring and seek the anointing of God, and turn back to the world, the devil will be waiting. Choose wisely I told them.
The conviction fell and I invited all those making the choice for Jesus to come forward for prayer. Among them was a guy I will call Jimmy.
Jimmy had come off and on. He has a (fallen) angel that visits him at night. Sometimes it tells him that he is Jesus. Other times it tells him to do really bad things. I am not making this up. about a month and a half ago he came and ran out of the house at the altar call. I later found out that the angel had told him to come to the meeting, listen to the message, and then kill me and two other guys. After the message he left because he did not want to kill us. Thank you Jesus! This guy is about 6′4″ and over 300 lbs (135 kg, 21.4 stone).
I was happy he wanted prayer . . . for a minute.
When I began to pray he almost instantly began to manifest. He began to grunt and growl. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw and began to snarl. His eyes turned blood red and he began to stare at me as if I was a lineman on the opposing team. Apparently I had stumbled onto something.
I began to command the demon to stop manifesting and to come out of the man but it would not budge. When the manifestations would increase I would rebuke the demon and tell it that it could not put on a show. I would then command it to leave until it began to increase the manifestations again. There was a minute when the people kind of gathered around, stopped worshiping, and began to stare in wonder. Fortunately my disciple let them to begin worshiping God who is the only one who can truly deliver.
I have found that one of the keys to deliverance ministry is to establish that the enemy has no authority in the person. I normally lead the person in a confession regarding the birth, life, death, resurrection, and the second coming of Jesus. After this I tell the demon that they have no authority and that it has to leave. Sometimes confession of specific sins is required or the renouncing of sin, but you get the idea.
So I say to this guy, “Repeat after me, Jesus is alive.”
He says, “Jesus is a lie.”
Huh? Maybe I heard him wrong, “Repeat after me, Jesus is alive.”
“Jesus is a lie.”
Wow, that sounded pretty clear that time. That was a new one for me. Not exactly knowing where to go from here I say, “Say – Jesus – IS – ALIIIIVVVEE.”
“Jesus … IS … A … LIIIIIEEEE.”
Hmmm. I was a communication major in college so I can make a sentence more than one way. You want to play games? I can play games.
“Say, Jesus lives.” HAH! Try to mess that one up! Got you devil!
He looks me dead in the eyes and says,
“I am alive.”
Wow! Wasn’t expecting that one. We are now on uncharted territory for Carl Thomas Ministries (if there were such a thing). I pulled the ole ace in the hole and the devil trumped me with a joker. But now I was stuck. This thing was like engaging a pitbull. You can’t just attack it for a minute or two and then walk away. One of you is going down. And every time this thing would manifest this spirit of fear would try to jump on me. And I knew if I let it take root that this guy would split my head open.
And I really did not want that to happen. I like my head just like it is.
So I decided that since Jimmy asked for ministry, that was all the authority I needed. I grabbed this guys head with both hands and began to command every demon in his life to leave. I normally don’t use that language because it is not necessary. I normally just declare freedom and the devil has to leave. But we were way beyond niceties.
I told the devil to get out of him and leave in the name of Jesus. Then Jimmy began to cough so hard I though I might see his liver. You might not believe this next part but I then saw all these demons standing around looking kind of bewildered like, “What happened?” It was almost funny.
I had someone open the front door and I told them, “Get out!”
Needless to say a real soberness came over the prayer time and several others were delivered that night.
The devil truly is defeated and has no authority in the believer. We can all agree with that, right? But does he have authority in my appliances?
The next day my washing machine completely died. It seems every time I have some sort of spiritual breakthrough, something breaks in my house. Once I had a really seasoned minister who has been mightily used in revival come to dinner. The garbage disposal decided to die as they showed up. I have lost my microwave in these times, my refrigerator, my car has broken down as has my van and various plumbing issues. These regularly happen when I see these types of things. This all leads me to believe that the devil does not mind me so much but he hats my appliances.
Coincidence? Maybe so. But it is annoying none the less.
Remember that old Steve Martin movie, The Jerk? “He hates these cans!”
I have taken a cadre of young revivalists to try and infect youth groups from all over Florida. While I am gone I have asked some of my friends to post for me. Here is the bio of today’s blogger:
Pastor Mark Hadfield: Mark of Made to Praise Him is Senior Pastor of Inverness Community Church. Mark is leading a church into the glory realm. His writings are challenging and enlightening. I enjoy watching as his church finds its footing in the supernatural. Beyond this Mark has been a friend in time of need.
Growing! Up!I’ve just come back from a morning on the streets in Inverness (Scotland), ministering healing. A group of us have been doing this for 3-4 months now, but this morning was extraordinary.It wasn’t extraordinary because we saw somebody leave their wheelchair, missing limbs grow, restoration of sight or hearing, or rejoice in the death of cancer. We saw none of those things today - and how my heart aches and longs, with weeping, for these to be commonplace.It was extraordinary because God said two things to be me very clearly which broke my heart, and He said similar things to others in the team.
The first thing He said is “now, you take the land”.
Let’s rewind a little in order to understand that.
We’ve been blessed with this amazing sense of God’s presence on the streets ever since we started Healing On The Streets. Every Saturday morning we go to the busiest part of the city centre, set-up some simple PA, raise a 5 metre banner with the word “Healing” on it, and place 6 chairs for people to take if they’d like prayer. Then we all kneel in the busy street and pray, before inviting people to come for healing. The sense of His presence has been just astonishing. There have been times that some of us have been unable to stand under the weight of His glory and we’ve stayed down a little longer than intended. Then people come for healing – and they’re healed, either immediately or over a few weeks, but they’re healed, not merely comforted.
But this morning was different.
I guess it started last night. (Or maybe it started last week?)
A group of us went into town to pray and worship and we sensed an unusual spiritual oppression. We realised that it was outside of our immediate vicinity. I likened it to sitting in a bubble. We were in the glory, but not far beyond us it was oppressive. We walked around praying. We sat and worshipped. We sensed the bubble expanding and then we sensed a breakthrough.
Then this morning, in addition to the usual ministry, some new things happened. We had a teenage girl who was pregnant come along, wanting us to bless her unborn baby. I’m blown away that a girl that age doesn’t just want her baby on her own, but also wants the best for her baby. She’s precious and I hope we’ll see her again. We had a Muslim woman come for prayer, wanting her family to know God. Amazing! Finally, we had a really wholesome conversation with a kind-of-new-ager whose into reiki and has been preaching syncretism at us ever since we started. This morning he opened up a little. He’s actually very spiritually aware but still looking for a tangible connection with something higher. He talked about visiting our churches.
The “bubble” really had expanded!
God really impressed upon me that we need to keep stretching, pushing, expanding, taking new ground. He gives us an encouraging start and then asks us to build upon it. Isn’t that the heart of a good dad? To get you started, but then give you the experience of taking it further. Does God really need us to do His work for Him, or does He really love us enough to invest into us for our own joy and fulfilment?
Consider the parable of the talents, or the instruction through the prophet Isaiah to enlarge the place of your tents, and to sing for joy who are barren. He gives us the start (a talent, a tent, a promise). He gives us the equipping for the job (the supernatural anointing of the Spirit and His Son’s authority). He shows us what’s possible. He holds our hand. He says to us “you’re my children, you have the best possible start, now go and make something of it”.
I think there’s something squif with our view of God’s sovereignty if we just sit around waiting for blessing to fall out of the sky. There’s also something squif with our view of the Father heart of God if we expect to be jolted out of our comfort zones with an impossible and painful challenge, instead of taken by the hand, given a head start, and then encouraged to develop.
Come on church! How about it? What gentle prod has He given you and what are you going to do with it?
And the second thing God said?
I was standing in the middle of the street during a slack period when the chairs were empty, looking at the scene of people rushing by to do their shopping, and I heard the voice of the Father say very clearly “can’t you hear me calling to them, my orphaned children?”. I cried. I walked over to the PA, turned off the music, picked up a guitar and started singing “Come Through To Me” by Godfrey Birtill. And people came and sat in the seats and received healing.
He trusts us, He trusts me, He trusts you, with what’s dear to His heart. That’s staggering. So how does He feel if we shrug it off instead of doing something about it?
Come through to me €¦ naked heart €¦
Come deeper €¦ I know where you are.
Come through the storm €¦
Let it be still €¦ Come nearer €¦
Leap into my arms.
So let go, let faith rise.
Have no fear, you will fly.
So let go, let faith rise.
Have no fear, you will fly.
Come through to me €¦ broken one €¦
Come higher €¦ My daughter, my son.
My family €¦ I’m gathering €¦
Come closer €¦ I’ll make you as one.
This may be my one and only video blog thingy. It is about an open vision that I received.
Please remember that my comment policy is still in effect which basically says that I will not argue with people in my comment section. If you think I am totally wacked out, then remove me from your blogroll and move on.
and how my heart aches and longs, with weeping, for these to be commonplace.It was extraordinary because God said two things to be me very clearly which broke my heart, and He said similar things to others in the team.
uess it started last night. (Or maybe it started 
