Prophetic rain, healings and testimonies!

So this past weekend we did some ministry at a Church down south of us. They have a huge heart to see revival in their community. As we drove down there Cody told me that yesterday he had prophesied that it was going to rain today at 3pm and 3:30pm and that it would be a sign of what God was doing through their Church. Little did we know... 

So we got there and were greeted by some members, we talked about God’s heart for the neighborhood, shared some cool testimonies and then prayed with them. We felt like a prayer walk would be a good idea and maybe meet some of the folks living there. While we were praying we shared how we felt that breakthrough would come as the Churches unite. At that time we knew about another Church having a lunch thing and so we headed there. On our way there, right at 3pm, it rained for about 30 seconds. We laughed and praised God, feeling renewed in our expectancy of that which God was doing. By the time we got to the park the party was over, but we met the leaders of the Church that was hosting the event, and their words - we have come here to unite the Churches and serve the neighborhoods. We laughed and praised God for such a wonderful divine appointment.

I looked at my watch and since Cody’s word was right on the first time at 3pm, i felt my heartbeat raise as we neared 3:30pm, in fact, i was a little worried that this next down pouring would be a little bit bigger than the first. And guess what, at 3:30p the rain started to come down again, this time however it didn’t stop. We walked back, enjoying (somewhat) the fresh rain, and got completely soaked. God doesn’t ever hold back. :-)

We had a great time, reconnected with friends and family. We saw God speak truth to peoples hearts, He encouraged us all through testimonies of what He has done in the past and will do in the future. And some people got healed! This one man had neurological damage in his hands, he had no feeling in his fingers or palms - guess what - now he does! Another man had intense pain in his thumbs - guess what - he doesn’t anymore! Another sweet 82 year old lady was so eager for her hearing to be restored that she took out her hearing aids during the teaching - guess what - she started hearing again! 82! Nobody is too old to get healed, God loves them all and wishes them all to be in perfect health! That’s what Jesus died for! The head pastor had ringing in his ears from a fireworks explosion years ago. 1 ear got 100% healed, another about 80-90%, we’re expecting a full healing testimony soon! We also saw some knees healed and just all round encouragement and excitement for God Himself. He truly is so good.

Quote: John G Lake's Ministry

"Dr. Lake came to Spokane. He found us in sin. He found us in sickness. He found us in poverty of spirit. He found us in despair, but he revealed to us such a Christ as we had never dreamed of knowing this side of heaven. We thought victory was over there, but Dr. Lake revealed to us that victory was here, a present and possible reality. We regarded death almost as a friend, but Dr. Lake came and revealed to us the Christ, all-glorious and all-powerful, that is triumphant, compassionate, and lovely, and our night was turned into day and despair was turned into laughter. A light shone in the darkness and we, who found Christ at last as He really is, only have words as the words of Thomas, who said, "My Lord and My God." John G Lake Biography

Brother Andrew sharing Jesus with the Taliban

"Peace is not the end of conflict and war, nor the result of so called 'peace talks'. It's rooted more deeply in inner peace with God and people around us," says Anne van der Bijl, the Dutchman who's better known as Brother Andrew. Now in his eighties, he still serves the persecuted church and preaches the Gospel to her persecutors. "Peace is a fruit of justice, as the prophet Isaiah says, not of prayer. That's why Jesus said: 'Blessed are the peacemakers'; He didn't say: 'Blessed are the peacetalkers'."

"The main thing that's preventing peace today is our own 'enemy mindset'," says Van der Bijl. "We build defenses and send out troops all over the world to 'bring peace', but everyone knows that we're not able to establish peace. As the Church of Jesus Christ we've lost the art of bringing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to our enemies. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches that we don't really have enemies: 'Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you'. This is followed by: 'Blessed are the peacemakers.' I can't love my enemy if he remains my enemy, so I first have to clear the barrier that makes me think there is an enemy."

"What makes us unique as the Church of Jesus Christ is our call to the 'ministry of reconciliation', to be peacemakers in our time. Where do we make peace? Wherever there's conflict and war. When we become friends with those who are considered our enemies, we become effective fighters against terrorism. You will see that the doors and hearts of people are wide open, and if we do what Jesus commands us, there will be supernatural results as well. That's how I got entrance to the Hizbollah, the Hamas and the Taliban."

How did you get access to the Taliban?

"I just go there. I find out where they live and show up at the door step. They ask what I come for and I tell them about Jesus. We've become way too diplomatic and careful in our approach. Next week I hope to visit the Taliban again. They now say: 'Anne, this is your second home'."

"One day I visited a large, notorious Quran school where 90% of the graduates immediately join the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. A war factory of human weapons, targeted to wage war against the infidels, which is the Americans and NATO. I arrived at a square where hundreds of these students waited in line for military exercise. There was a microphone in the front. The head of the school and a minister of the government gave a short talk, and suddenly the microphone was handed to me: 'Anne, it's your turn'."

"I was surprised as I only came to visit. So I went to the microphone, pulled out my Bible and said: 'This is the only book in the world that tells us that God loves us, that our sins can be forgiven, and how we can go to Heaven when we die.' I told them about Jesus. I believe every Christian should be able to speak about his faith in Jesus unprepared for at least 15 minutes. Sometimes you get a chance like this to share the Gospel, and it would be pity to waste such an opportunity."

"After my talk, the leader of the Quran school, who's also a high official in the Taliban and government circles, came up to me and said: 'Anne, would you please come back and tell us more about Jesus, also to our graduate class?' By the time they graduate, they all have a beard and a high degree, and are ready to take on the battle against the 'great satan', America and NATO. I asked the leader how many guys he had in his final class, and he said: 1,300. This is an amazing mission field! They also ask for Bibles, books and computers. Together with the Bible Institute we already brought them hundreds of Bibles, and I believe many more will follow. We want to reach 300 Quran schools!"

"Recently I visited a leader of the Islamic Jihad. I told him that so many Muslims come to Jesus because they've seen Him in a vision, a dream, a revelation. He looked at me with such a hunger, that I stopped talking and prayed with him that the Lord Jesus would give him a fresh revelation of the Peacemaker, the Son of God. At the end of my long evangelical prayer he said: 'Amen!', straight from his heart. I thought: 'Just one more step. Lord, you have to give him a revelation of Yourself. I did what I could do'."

What can we do ourselves?

"The solution is to make Jesus Christ king of our lives. To ask Him: 'Lord, what do You want me to do?' To submit our whole life as a voluntary service to Jesus Christ. This gives incredible peace, where-ever we go."

Source: Anne van der Bijl
-----------------------------------------------
(c) JOEL NEWS, 2010 | republication only with full credit line www.joelnews.org

Muslim woman encounters Jesus through a dream

God is revealing Himself to the Muslim world through dreams and visions. When Muslims are questioned on this phenomenon, many of them reply that they have encountered Jesus in their dreams.

One of the recent stories is of an Egyptian lady who stopped a Christian man on the street. The woman said, "You are the one!" The Christian man didn't understand what she was talking about. She told him, "[In my dream] you were walking with me and Jesus, and you had that same striped shirt on, those glasses, those pants and those shoes. Jesus was telling me He loves me and wants to have a relationship with me." In her dream she asked Jesus, "What do I do?" And Jesus told her, "Ask this man tomorrow when you see him."

Pray with us that more Muslims would encounter Jesus through dreams and vision.

God's hand in India

Yesu Mahotsaw is an annual gathering of believers from Good Shepherd Community Churches in North India. About 6000 people gathered together to worship the Lord. Amazingly most of these people have come to know Christ in the past 5-7 years.

The lame walk!

Check out this amazing testimony of one of my friends from Bethel Atlanta. 

Knee Healed!

Random picture from previous outreach

Testimony from Lacey, serving at OM USA.

Last Week I was riding my bike around a local track, and I saw a lady walking.  She had a slight unevenness to her walk.  As I looked at her, I heard the Lord say that she had a knee problem.  I felt the need to go pray for her, but I saw that she was on the phone so I circled the track a few times so that I wouldn’t interrupt her.  After making a third circle around the track and seeing that she was still on the phone, I decided to take a leap and ask her, “Do you have a knee problem?”  With a stunned look on her face she said “Yes and a foot problem too”.  After she gave me permission to pray for her, she and I both invited the presence of the Holy Spirit to come and heal her foot and knee all while her friend was still on the other end of the phone listening.  I felt the presence of the Lord all over her and asked if her knee felt any different.  With an excited look on her face she said “Yes, it is better”.   I asked her to do something that she couldn’t do before so she bent her knee up and down saying over and over how good it felt.  She left me with an encouraging word and walked off with a sense of joy about what the Lord had done.  As we parted she yelled, “Thank you so much.  My knee is better!”

“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” Matt 10:8

Kris Vallotton - Prophecy 101

God's stamp of approval

Last week Joseph and I had lunch in Atlanta with a new friend. We were just hanging out, getting to know each other over lunch. After that we went to little 5 points, which is known for being a more “spiritual” area. There’s a bunch of unique shops, from coffee to tattoo. I even found a little hookah store! 

Some of the students from the ministry school i go to, have an outreach there each week, going into the different shops, starting up conversations and blessing the locals. It’s a very creative area, maybe not too every ones taste if you know what i mean...

Joseph had something that he wanted to talk to one of the shops owners about and that’s where we went. This guy had the emo look with a ton of rings (some of you reading this may know him). His store had everything from a black cat, some live bunnies, Christian crosses to hindu deities. 

We walked around and i was quiet surprised at how connected i felt with God in there. From what i was taught in Church we’re supposed to stay away from places like that. “It’s dangerous” to go there... My thoughts: they’re just people, and they are so hungry for true love! 

I was just starting to enjoy being there and releasing the Kingdom when Joseph picked up a little box - to buy. Everything inside of me went all crazy. “Don’t buy that, it will give a demon an open door into your soul” - that’s what i was thinking. And then almost as if Pappa took my head in His hands tilting it up and down, i found myself thinking... “this guy, that looks like he is from the dark side, is now going to experience the love of God through a Christian buying something from him that carries a lot of worth.” Does that make sense? Think about what is most precious to you. Now imagine God, who you previously thought to be quiet distant and disappointed in your line of work, coming into your store and buying that thing that is so precious to you. Wouldn’t that just melt your heart? God, Love, just came to me, and told me that what i do, what i have, is important to Him. That would rock my world right there. I matter to God. 

I was pleasantly surprised at the turn of events and i’ll finish with a quote along the same lines... 

“All of creation begins and ends with the Father longing for relationship with you as His beloved child. He created you to live your life as if you have a home. Did you wake up this morning and hear the loving voice of your Father say, “Don’t worry that you don’t have everything together; it’s OK. I don’t expect you to get it perfect. I love you so much just the way you are. You are the son/daughter i love and in whom i am well pleased”?

Or did you get up thinking, Nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me. I’ve got to have devotions today, and pray enough, and get my three Bible chapters a day in, and do all the right Christian stuff, just so i can get a crumb from the Master’s table today? You will treat yourself and others according to the way you think God feels about you. If you know you are loved unconditionally, you will love yourself and others with the same kind of love. But if you feel you have to perform in order to be of value to God, then you will portray the thought to others that they need to perform in order to be of value to you. Either you live your life as if you have a home, or you live your life as if you don’t have a home. Fear... or Father’s embrace!”

(Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship, Jack Frost, P26,27)

Home Groups

We have a family that goes to another Church, yet comes out our home group when we have it. For me it’s a picture of the unity that can come from Love. Our home group leaders washed our feet and prophesied over us a couple of weeks ago and it was so ridiculously special. And then this family invited us to their home group to do the same there. 

I went over quite excited until i realized that their youth were between 10 and 16 years old - i’ve never prophesied over such young people! For a moment there i forgot that God actually has as much plans with their lives as He does with mine at 26. And it became real apparent from the first greeting that He was there Love them, and draw then closer to His heart through our words and actions. 

We kicked off by giving some testimonies about Jesus Culture and my wife and I’s trip to the Middle East in May. The one where a girl had metal in her wrist from a accident and after prayer and God’s divine awesomeness, the metal was gone. Completely gone. I touched her wrist, i know. That got them going... And then we explained some on prophesy before we broke up into boy and girl groups. 

And then God was there. We had a great evening with them, and one girl who had dislocated her knee, after being prayed for said that all the pain she had had up to that point - was gone. She’ll go back to the doc today and so we wait for a full conformation of the depths of God’s grace. 

Last night we had home group again and even before we started Love was there. The wife of this same family, shared with me how she had hurt her ankle and that her achilles was too long or something? There was a term she gave which was way above my IQ. I called her husband and had him gently lift up her ankle, focus on God’s love and releasing it through his spirit, and then he prayed after me. The moment we stopped praying she got The Touch. She got real excited as her ankle got really hot, and then her whole body started tingling. She got up and walked around without any pain. She rolled her feet in perfect circles (something she couldn’t do over the last 6 months) and put pressure on it for the first time. God healed her! 

Then she asked me why is her whole body tingling and not just her ankle? It’s only her ankle that needed healing. And i just said that God loves all of you and He is here to show that to you. It was so precious for me to see a husband and wife encounter God like this for the first time. 

Home group blew up with amazing worship, encouraging words and some creative miracles. I love physical healings, but when I see my friends and family get a emotional breakthrough everything inside of me goes My God Did That, He Is Awesome!!!

For me being a missionary means that I’m sent out by God, doesn’t really matter where I go or to whom I go, I am going in His power and love. 

Jesus Culture Atlanta

I was at Jesus Culture Atlanta last week and God showed up with a big bag of love. Scot Thompson did a workshop on healing revival. Of the 500 in his workshop, eighty people were healed. One was healed of cystic fibrosis. Two had metal disappear. A little girl with Turrets got healed. A torn acl was made new. And a girl with celiacs disease was healed and had a very fun lunch.

A lady had crushed her foot badly, and they had put metal pins in her toes that would shove into her foot when she exercised, causing great pain. The pins disappeared. She tested it out by doing things that she couldn’t do before.

A girl had social anxiety disorder. She had stress-induced bulimia, for which she saw a therapist and took medicine. She felt all that lift off of her and gave a testimony to the 500. On outreach that day, she got the words “depression” and “suicide.” All afternoon, she looked for that but didn’t find the person. That night, she said, “Is it somebody here at the church?” During worship, the Lord told her it was not someone at the church; it was for her friend. He told her to text her right then. Her friend texted her right back and asked her to call her. Weeping, the friend said she was sitting in her room with a bottle of pills and a razor blade getting ready to kill herself when she received the text about God’s love and plan for her.

In 1993, a man had had a parachuting accident at 15,000 feet. His parachute malfunctioned and he hit the trees, bounced off the ground and broke his back in three places, shattering one area. He was in constant pain all those 17 years, and a huge bulge had formed on his back. He came to pick up his wife from the workshop. He received prayer, and all the pain left and the bulge disappeared.

We also sent out all 1500 on the streets and malls of Atlanta and had some amazing stuff happen at the hands of this fearless generation. The Jesus Culture Band lead worship and Jake Hamilton recorded his new live album. 

Check out Jesus Culture here...

Check out Jake Hamilton here...

**Although i was there, the actual testimonies and statistics I got from http://bit.ly/bvxw5T

Hovering over the Gulf

With so many emails and prayer requests going out about the oil spill, about God judging the Gulf even the US, this painting from a friend came as a refreshing reminder of Father’s positive redemptive purposes for the Gulf. 

“I had the picture in my mind for a couple of weeks, but I wasn't real sure of the full meaning. I kept seeing Father waving His arms over the face of the deep. His glory shown all about Him and the ocean was very dark. As I began painting it, I remembered the prayer sent out from Mahesh. I had already been praying about the blood of Jesus redeeming the Gulf and it dawned on me the painting was our prayers.  With each stroke I could see the oil and the blood in the water. I felt the Father's breath on the water breathing life...until finally the water was redeemed to it's original state. The painting became a prophetic act of my...our agreement with the Father for His redemption of the Gulf.”

**Painting and story used with permission of artist. 

Jesus knows your phone number

The wife of a man in western Algeria became very sick. Her husband tried everything, taking her from doctor to doctor and nothing worked. He was advised to try sorcery, which also failed. One night he had a dream in which a man appeared to him and said, “You’ve tried everything but nothing has helped your wife get better. Only one man can help you and I will give you his number.” The man awoke and called to his son, “Hurry! Get me a pen and paper!” The son returned and his father quickly wrote the number down. Though the father had never had any contact with a Christian, the Holy Spirit gave him the number of Rachid, head of church planting and follow-up for OM Algeria. He called the number.

Rachid answered, having no clue who the man was, and listened to his story. Rachid answered, “I cannot help you but there is One who can, the Lord Jesus Christ.” He led the man to the Lord and his wife was soon healed. As of this writing, she was still opposing the gospel, but please pray that the Lord would open her heart

Healing service in the Middle East

While in the Middle East we were blessed to lead a healing service, the one where you invite all the sick people to come and after telling them how much Jesus loves them, you demonstrate His love by healing the sick... It was so much fun!

This one old lady from India kept coming up to me with different pains in her body. I would pray for her back and she would thank me and start crying and smiling, and then 10 min later come back with a pain in her leg or something. I think she just liked getting hugs and wanted someone to just love on her.  It was so precious. 

Two of the more extreme healings was of a man who had gone blind from diabetes. We prayed for him and after quote some time he started seeing a little, and then more and more. It was so awesome to see him recognize his wife and waiving at us when we waived at him. God is so good!

The other one was a older woman who had taken a 4 hour leave from the hospital where se was staying. She came in a wheelchair and still had the needle and tubes in her arms for medicine. Apparently she had tremendous pain in her legs and this was her last hope for healing. I was off praying for someone else and suddenly heard a big commotion behind me. Laughing, clapping and dancing - the old lady was the one dancing on the stage, Jesus had taken away all her pain and gave strength back to her legs!

My friend told me when God heals His people it’s because of our covenant, and when God heals people on streets or anywhere where there isn’t really any “faith”, it’s just pure grace - because He loves and because He is good. Our trip just made this so much more clearer for me.