Archive for the 'Faith' Category

The Mission

Published
by
carl
on July 17, 2007
in Christianity, Doctrine, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Missions, Preaching, Prophesy, Revival, Salvation Story, ministry, salvation and visions
. 8 Comments

This post is one part testimony, two part prayer request.

I have done lots of posts about a Tuesday night outreach I have been leading. last week a lady from my church wanted to come and see what was happening. She later confessed to me that t one point she was actually scared for her safety. I shouted Halleuijah! That means we are attracting exactly the crowd we feel called to reach. The young urban knuckle heads.

Last week we had almost 40 people in a living room and man did it get hot! I was there worshiping when the Holy Ghost said, “Why don’t you take off your shirt?” Mind you, I had on a t-shirt underneath, but I was thinking, “I am about to preach.” Thankfully it was a new shirt because I preached the Gospel that night in a wife beater to a group of young men who find that suitable attire.

Among the (many) people flopping around on the floor was a Mormon girl who missed her flight back to Arizona because of a traffic jam on the way to the airport. One guy who got saved was the roommate of a crack dealer that has been coming (we believe that this dealer is the gateway to nothing short of a revival so please pray for his deliverance and salvation).

This Saturday we are going to have a big blowout with performances and almost a real service. We are expecting over 100 to show up. Here are the flyers: (click them for a larger view)

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Would you please pray for the lost to be saved? We have gone into every hood we can find inviting people. We really need the grace of God in this thing and are hoping for a real move of God. This is not going to be some Billy Graham crusade. We are praying for the supernatural to manifest. We want miracles, signs and wonders. This generation has heard the Gospel but has never experienced the full Gospel. It is my goal to make that an unavoidable fact.

Popularity: 51% [?]

Report from a Todd Bentley Meeting

Published
by
carl
on June 27, 2007
in Christianity, Faith, Healing, Holy Spirit, Prophetic and Revival
. 2 Comments

Last night I took a fellow minister friend of mine and a handful of students to see Todd Bentley for a one night impartation service. My friend did not know Todd and was not familiar with his ministry. I told him, “If there is anything religious in you it will be offended.” Todd is out there no doubt. But the point of this is not to talk about that. It is just about the meeting.

It took us about three and a half hours to get to Ignighted Church in Lakeland, the host church. Man do they have a nice facility! We got there right before the doors opened and got the entire front row on one side.

If you have ever been to a Holy Ghost / Charasmatic meeting they are pretty much the same. The anointing may be different and God may do something different but they are all marked by free worship, preaching with a prophetic edge and a demonstration of the power of God.

The worship was great and really free. The ended the set with a song the worship leader wrote that I must get a copy of. The lyrics were something like

I believe in miracles
I believe in wonder
I believe all things are possible for God

or something like that. It was really good though.

Then Todd came up and did 20 minutes of healing miracles from the past couple days followed by praying for the crowd en mass. One thing of note. You can always tell the maturity of a church’s ministry team by how they handle the oppressed. A woman ran to the front during the healing call basically losing her mind. After about 15 minutes she began to seriously manifest - you had the shrieking, screaming, growling thing begin to happen. Todd asked for the church’s deliverance ministry to come and minister to her. They did not freak out. A bunch of burly guys did not wisk her to a back room. A couple older ladies and a man came and ministered deliverance to her. No yelling, no grandstanding. They just did it.

Church did not stop. Todd never stopped preaching.

There were lots of healing testimonies. After that he preached on the recovery of all things. If you follow his ministry you know that this is a common theme in Todd Bentley meetings. After that he said he was going to pray for everyone in the room. And this is where it got exciting.

We all lined up all over the church, in the halls, in the overflow room, in the kids ministry. Todd went down the line and anyone who did not look affected, they got prayer from one of his assistants. When he got to me, I bent over. I really felt the presence of God. Right then his assistant came and began to pound on my back and yell “Bamm! Bamm! Bamm!” with each thump. I think he was yelling. It may have just been the noise of him thumping me.

Either way, I went to the ground and felt the strong presence of the Lord. I was going to stay on the ground but I said, “I did not drive almost eight hours round trip for that.” So I got up and got in line somewhere else. A disciple of mine followed.

Todd came by and it was much the same. I was laying on the ground and said again, “I did not drive almost eight hours round trip for that.” So I got up again. This time to the children’s church room where there were maybe a hundred people singing and worshiping in the tell-tale lines. I lined up at the end of a row with my disciple at the end of the row behind me. I was desperate for a touch from God and was almost worried that I would go home empty.

Todd was walking the rows doing the “touch, touch” thing. When he got to me at the end of the row I put my hands out in front of me in kind of a “hold on” motion. I said, “I need an impartation.” in an almost desperate voice.

Right at that moment, he began to manifest the Holy Ghost. He began to shake wildly and started yelling. Right then the anointing hit me like a bolt of lightning and I began to scream WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (You know what I am talking about) And so I was shaking and screaming, and he was shaking and screaming and I thought to myself in a surreal moment, “Todd Bentley and I are screaming at each other.” Except he was screaming in some sort of prophetic impartation, put the anointing on him Lord, kind of way and I was screaming in an Oh My God I may explode at any minute kind of way.

Todd touched my body and I staggered forward. He touched me again and I fell on my face. literally. Then instantly I began to scream from the unbelievable touch I was receiving. As I writhed on the ground I turned almost completely behind be. I wanted to see if my disciple got touched when I saw something I had never seen in my life. I tell lots and lots of stories about things I have seen in Holy Ghost meetings and thought I had seen it all. I hadn’t.

My student said that when Todd and I were yelling he said to God, “I want something like that.” He had no idea.

I looked over at my disciple and I see his feet about a foot off the ground. I thought to myself, “That’s something new.” I managed to look up and Todd had him in a bear hug…lifted a foot off of the ground…and yelling. After a few seconds he dropped him and moved on the line. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. We both resumed laying on the ground yelling.

A few moments later I saw his ministry assistant walk by and say, “That’s what he does when he puts his gifting on someone else.” pointing to my friend. Cool stuff. I was unable to walk for a while and did not drive till after we ate at the pizza hut across the street. Who knows what the waitress thought of the Holy Ghost manifesting men at the table that night.

update: I just found the Senior Pastor’s recollection of the night here. Pastor, if you ever see this, you have a really nice church. I love the flags!

Popularity: 49% [?]

What Faith is Not

Published
by
carl
on May 11, 2007
in Christianity, Doctrine, Faith, Healing, Holy Spirit, Prophesy and Prophetic
. 3 Comments

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.”

Popularity: 51% [?]