So I came together with some of my disciples to reach a certain people group.  There were about 7 people meeting on a patio in the south Florida heat.  The Lord has touched this group and it has grown … and grown … and grown.

We had our outreach The Mission last Saturday and had 110 people show up.  Lots of people got saved.  It was a “Yeah God!” kind of night.

This past Tuesday night we had our normal meeting in a living room.  The problem?  We had 57 people show up.  Imagine 57 people worshiping in the living room of a 1800 square foot house.  When I preached I had about four square feet to move around.  I literally had a one foot by four foot area to move around in.  There were people stuffed into every imaginable spot.

The good part is that when time comes for ministry, you don’t need catchers because you can only fall back a foot before you hit someone.

The bottom line:  I do not know what to do now.  Tuesday night we had several drug addicts cry out for deliverance confessing Jesus.  We had a guy who got out of jail within the last week.  A whole bunch of people responded to the altar call about sexual purity and almost ten responded to a word of knowledge about rage.

I have to find a way to pastor these people.  I can’t continue to bring these folks in someone’s living room and we simply do not have room to grow.

I do not know what to do now.  Please pray.

I had another visitation last night.  I am really really excited about my outreach coming tonight.  I have no idea how many people will show up.  I think it will be somewhere between 50 and 200.

Less will be a little embarassing.  More will outnumber the space of the facility (not that I am against that).

Please pray that Jesus shows up.

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 wish I had time to write of all the things that God is doing. I really am blown away by what I am watching around me. I try to start a new post but before I can write the whole thing there are new things to write.

Let me just get one down here.

There is a girl I am discipling that is about to be a senior in high school. She got a job at a large gym. One day her boss said that she could use the facilities if she wants to have a church meeting. The boss is not a believer and the girl had only been working there a few weeks.

I showed up to preach at this national chain gym at 10 a.m. this past Saturday morning. There were about seven people that showed up for her outreach and all got saved. I have preached lots of places. But preaching to a bunch of lost people in a XXXX’s gym on a Saturday morning had not been one of them.

When I finally had the “altar call” there were people bawling. I was simply amazed. I was driving home with a few of my disciples when I said to them,

One day you are going to be telling the story of the day you held an outreach in XXXX’s gym on a Saturday morning and a hlf dozen people got saved and one even got baptized in the Holy Ghost.