Didn’t our hearts burn within us?
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.
You gotta love youtube!
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I know a church that has declared that for them, 2008 is the year of prayer. That makes me wonder a few things:
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.
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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:
Luke 21:17-19 (Listen)You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.
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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.
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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?
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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!”
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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.
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 g
uess 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.
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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.
All others, watch and be blessed!
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In line with my decision to blog about all things mundane Acts 19:11, I had a fun time at The Mission, the outreach we are doing on Tuesday nights.
I worte in earlier posts about some young men that got right and are now doing some spirit filled hip hop. Well I am leading their home group as a missions base. Each week they try to get as many friends from their former life to come to a group we hold on their back porch.
The group starts at 10 p.m. and I leave around midnight. In those two hours anything can happen.
Last night we had over 20 folks there with about four who had never steped into a church in their lives. I preached on sanctification through the power of the Holy Ghost. Some real Keswick type doctrine (I am pentecostal you know). Then I had ministry time. This is when it gets fun.
Last week I cast the vision for the group. At the end, I said that everyone who was there was going to receive power to reach their lost friends and a burden for the lost. I told them that I was not going to have an altar call. The fact that they were there meant that they were in. If they did not want God to use them to reach the lost for His glory then they would have to leave. One girl did. I saw her through the sliding glass door a little later crying. Appearantly she was trying to get out of the house but she couldn’t. The Holy Ghost would not let her.
She said, "I kept saying, ‘I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here’ but I couldn’t." She showed up back on the porch weeping. She recommitted her life to Jesus, received deliverance and the Baptism in the Holy Ghost. Needless to say, she showed up back this week.
This week all the lost confessed their need for salvation and many were touched. To make a long story short, I left at midnight. I wanted to leave before the police shoed up. There were a half dozen young men rolling around on patio laughing and yelling under the power of the Holy Ghost. We could not get then to quiet down. The mother of the young men came out to try to get them quiet. Her nine year old son followed. We prayed for him and he hit the ground praying in tongues for the first time.
As Bill Johnson would say :Good stuff.
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This is not going to be a theological post. I am not going to debate anyone. If you disagree, that’s fine. Move on.
I have received an array of correspondence from people who happen to stumble upon this blog who come to say the same thing,
I want to see the power of God in my ministry.
I have good news for you, God wants the same. But where do you start? The truth is, there are two ways to catch a log on fire.
So the easiest way to see the gifts in operation in your life is to get around people who have Holy Ghost activity in their lives. Pray with them, minister with them, study the Word with them. There is a giga-church in my area that is lead by a man who is a strong Bible teacher and evangelist. Guess what every leader in the church is? This is a spiritual law. Trust me, it works.
If there is nobody in your circle of influence that functions in these areas I have great news! You are the beginning of a revival! Here is what you do. Get two or three people who are as hungry as you and you begin an ongoing prayer meeting. When I was hungry for the gifts, this is what I did. I had a couple people and I would say, “We are going to pray until something happens!” And we did.
Sometimes someone would get a vision, or someone would get a song they would sing or someone would get a verse from the Bible that was for us but we would pray until something happened. You should do the same. Whether you are called to take care of the little ones, teach the Word, or heal the sick, you will do it better with the power of the Holy Spirit working through your ministry.
There is no excuse for a powerless Christian.
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This post is a little on the long side but it is the most exciting post I have made on this blog. Read and be blessed!
We had a regional youth rally at my church this past Saturday night. It was the goal of the organizers to have a salvation orientated rally and not a revival tent meeting. I tried to be a good boy but the Holy Ghost decided to come to church with me and you know how He likes to get His way!
At the end of service many of the people had left the sanctuary to the food outside. There were about 40 to 50 people left at the altar. I got on the mic and called for those who wanted more to come to the left side of the altar area. Almost the entire crowd moved over. What could I do?
My friend and I began to lay hands on the youth and believe God that He would meet their needs. The anointing began to get think in the room when I came back and laid hands on a certain 15 year old girl for the second time. I had seen her before and had prayed for her in the past but I did not know her. I knew she had a call on her life but had no idea of her spiritual condition or her background.
As I began to pray for her a tremendous anointing came over me. I began to prophesy a healing gift over her life and commanded it to be activated. I kept quoting Matt 10:8 over and over again. she was crying and twitching and jerking all over the place but I could not stop praying for her. I prophesied about her call and the call of the lost, I compelled her to “choose ye this day” and kept calling forth the anointing. As she was crying she kept telling God that He can have complete control of her life. It really was quite awesome. After a while she hit the ground sobbing and I moved on.
After she laid on the ground doing this laughing crying thing for the better part of 20 minutes she started to get up. I had been praying for a hard case right next to where she was so when she stood up I had her lay hands and pray for this other person. As soon as she did it was lights out. I don’t mean the peaceful kind of falling backwards into the gentle arms of Jesus, I mean as soon as she touched this person they utterly collapsed. I called another person and the same thing, “BAM!” Straight down. The budding prophetess was sitting on a pew so I had the girl lay hands on her. Immediately she began to weep. I had her lay hands on someone else and after they hit the ground I had her pray for that person some more.
Just then I noticed a middle aged woman sitting in the middle of the sanctuary and something in my spirit was stirred. I knew we could not let this woman leave. Not knowing if she was saved I walked over to her to ask if I could pray for her. She said I could so I began to bring her to the front of the church.
Now sometimes I am a little slow so I did not immediately see what God was doing. But suddenly it dawned on me so I asked the lady, “Would you happen to need a healing?” In fact she did. She did not want to get specific but she had pain in her female areas. I said, “There is a young woman with a healing gift down here and I am going to have her pray for you.”
Mind you, this girl has not stopped the laughing crying thing since I first laid hands on her a good 45 minutes earlier.
She prayed for the woman, woman hit the ground, I instructed the girl to keep praying (trying to shorten this long post). After about five minutes I have the girl pray for a couple of people and they went lights out.
After a while I had the woman get up. There were about 10 youth still around and I really wanted them to leave having a clear understanding what God did and what He did not do. I talked to her and she said that she has fibroid type tumors on her ovaries and that they were very painful. I asked her to poke around and look for the pain. She said that it felt about 50% better. I told her that means Jesus is in the building and that we would pray some more. (girl prayed, woman fell, girl laugh-cry prayed some more)
A young girl I know walked in the back of the sanctuary. I called her over and had the girl pray for her. When she went to get off the ground five minutes later she did not know how she had gotten there. I am talking lights out!
note: If you have read this far don’t get weary! The best part is still coming!
While the girl was praying for the woman the anointing began to get really thick in the room again and the presence began to get tangible. I was just waiting so see what was going to happen next when the keyboard player from the youth group band walked in. This 15 year-old boy has the sweetest spirit and comes from a family that is red hot for Jesus. I later found out that he was eating with everyone else when he heard that we were praying in the sanctuary and wanted to come play the keyboard in the background while we prayed.
One thing I have not told you about him (and that he had only told one other youth leader) is that he has muscular dystrophy. His sickness was advancing to the point that his muscles were constricting all over his body. He could only walk on his tippy toes because he could not get his heel to the ground. He could not stand up without holding on to things because his balance was so bad. He did not know what had been happening in the sanctuary but the Holy Ghost did and it was this boy’s day for a miracle.
I called him to the front and had the girl pray for him, she cry-laughed, he fell and she continued to pray for him. After a while I gave my first checkup and asked him what he was experiencing. He said that he felt strength entering his body. Here is how MD is described in wikipedia:
The main symptom of Duchenne muscular dystrophy is rapidly progressive muscle weakness associated with muscle wasting with the proximal muscles being first affected, especially the pelvis and calf muscles. Muscle weakness also occurs in the arms, neck, and other areas, but not as severely or as early as in the lower half of the body.
I knew that he had described his condition as a “weakness all over his body” so strength had to be good. Laugh-cry girl continued. A while later I asked him what was happening and he said he felt something happening to his legs. We got him on his feet and he could stand upright without holding onto anything! He was shocked. I had him walk here and there lifting his knees as he did. He walked back, laugh-cry girl prayed and he fell.
Somewhere in the midst of this the woman got up and could not find the pain in her abdomen no matter how hard she pressed.
We did the fall down get up pray fall down thing with the boy about 10 times in a row. On the next walking adventure he was shocked and amazed that his heels were touching the ground!!! He could walk flat footed, heel-toe like the rest of us. The group of kids in the sanctuary had gone to children’s church, and youth group with this boy for years and they had never seen him walk like this. There were tears of joy and amazement all over the place.
At this point I was tired. I had the kids call their parents and I talked to the girl. She did not remember much that had happened but it turns out her father is the pastor of a small Brazilian church. Her parents showed up to get her and I tried to explain what happened because every time she would start to talk about it the laugh cry thing would start again.
The next day at church I saw the boy and he was walking fine. All the symptoms are not gone. He does not have full range of motion and he is still weaker than an average 15 year old but he is walking flatfooted and in fact can lift his foot up so only the heel touches the ground. Remember, he could only get the balls of his feet on the ground in the past. I was overjoyed watching him give his testimony in the Jr. High service.
He told me that when he got home he told him mom who began screaming. His dad and sister came down stairs and he repeated the story and his sister began screaming. This family is so close and loving that it is almost weird so I can believe it. His father quickly said,
“I am the priest and prophet of this home and I will determine if you are healed. Walk across the room!”
Once he did the father declared,
“This is the work of the Lord!”
Maranatha!
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Who has any info on this? Appearantly Rev Ralph Sexton has had extended meetings that have seen quite the move of God. There was supposed to be a two week tent meeting and it turned into six. Before you dismiss it as jus another camp meeting watch this.
That’s fruit baby! Here are photos of the same.
I have an idea why this has happened. In an article in the Ashville Citizen-Times they reported,
Sexton began this revival in a cornfield six weeks ago with nearly 30 area pastors and churches who came together for a single cause: healing, soothing, saving and bringing God into troubled personal lives and into a world in a state of unrest and war.
I heard David Copeland exhort a crowd along the same lines. If we can stop looking at what revival can do for our church and start looking at what revival can do for God’s people and God’s purpose on the earth then we all might see the move we have been crying out for. Remember that the very creation is crying out for the revealing of the sons of God.
Sexton is quoted as saying,
“In our communities, there seems to be a hunger to return to basic moral and faith values,” he said. “We have an unsettled world. Every continent has a madman and every country is asking for peace and safety and we’re finding none.”
What do you know? The Gospel still works. We don’t need to reinvent it or repackage it.
Maranatha!
More report in the Wilmington Star
UPDATE:Hal Donaldson wrote in thte PE about disunity in the church being its greatest problem.
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