Tag Archives: holy spirit

Her wrist was healed.

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Recently I was visiting New Life Church in Kelowna, BC and I was talking with some young people. I felt the Lord lead me to shake this girls hand and she reached out and I saw that she had a brace on her wrist. I asked her about it and she said it was just something that happened at work. I like that, “just something that happened”! I asked her if I could pray for it and she took off her brace right away and said she had been waiting for this all day. She told me the pain was a 7 out of 10. I held her hand in mine, I welcomed Holy Spirit, we could all feel Him it was awesome. I asked her to tell me if the pain went down, to which she said yes it is a like a 3. WHOOO HOOO! I was soo happy and humbled by what He was doing. Then I held it again while asking Holy Spirit to come… wow He felt so good. Then she said all the pain was gone! We all celebrated. Then she left with her brace in her pocket. Nice! God is sooo good!

Counting the cost and adding up the value

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Bill Johnson said, “You get what you need for free and you pay for what you want!” It costs to follow what you believe God is calling you to, but it turns out what costs you, you didn’t need. My wife and I left our full-time career and followed what we believed the Lord calling us to. We left our comforts and security for a life of risk and faith. We went out on the ledge of Christian faith and jumped off. We have never lacked what we need, ever. When we needed it, the Lord has always been faithful at the right time with the right amount.

Once, while in Nicaragua, we needed $150, we had nothing and a man who was visiting from the US, stopped dead in the middle of his conversation with us and said: “You need money! The Holy Spirit just said I need to give you money! I need to give you $150!” – just when we needed it, we got it. I remember another time we had no food left, all but one thing of oats was left for our family of five and we planned on having that for breakfast and, as if by chance, a pastor called us from another town and offered to pay for our whole family to come stay there while we ministered in his church. The timing was perfect. In amongst the hungriest of people we found the most supernatural generosity. Time and time again we have seen God perform miraculous provision as we have followed Him. Even today I marvel as someone donated tires for our van just before we have to head to Edmonton, (a 3o hour drive in winter with bald tires) and another generous person from Yukon Bible Fellowship donated enough money for all the gas and another donated money for repairs. And before we left for the Yukon, someone felt lead to pay off our $20k debt!  We are not getting rich following Jesus, but we are living rich following Jesus and lacking nothing. :)

Today as my hope was dropping, I am purposely remembering all that He has done, all He has provided. And today I can truly say, what we needed we got for free, but what we wanted we had to pay for. And what we paid with we didn’t need anyway, so there was no loss only gain. We wanted to go where He said go, we wanted to say what He said and it cost us all the false security and comforts we thought we needed. Although, in the moment, I miss the simplicity of a steady pay cheque and I am constantly challenged to remember His faithfulness, when I think about the big picture, I would trade it all again for the knowledge of His love demonstrated in His provision for us. I would gladly exchange my false comfort and security for the security and comfort of knowing that my God is able to do what He said He would do.

Even as I was writing this, another generous person from Yukon Bible Fellowship, donated more money to us for our trip. God is sooooo generous and knows what we need even before we ask for it. It felt like it cost a lot, but all it has really done has removed the dependency on things that we’ve realized we never really needed.

Localization

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is imperative that we become students of the culture, spiritual climate and sensitivities of the people we are ministering too…

Introduction

It is extremly important that we operate in an honoring way toward any nation we are attempting to start an Ignition Center in. Learning about the country, the town, the culture, the spiritual climate and the local community will give us an advantage in transforming that community.

Language

Even though English is a fairly common internationally recognized language, all attempts to transition the program into the local language is one of the first easy ways we can show honor to the people we want to influence.
When we choose teams of leaders for the Ignition Centers from BSSM grads, preference will be given to the grads that speak the local language of the culture we are going to.

Traditions

There is a lot to be said about the appropriate value of traditions within the church especially because holding on to traditions can be the symptom of a religious spirit. However, it is not our job to wage war on every tradition in the community in hopes of driving out every religious spirit. We partner with Holy Spirit to discern the spirit of the tradition and then wage war on the spirit not the tradition. This will transform the traditions of men and avoid attacking what makes them feel safe.

Culture

We must become aware of the cultural norms, practices, traditions and sensitivities and, unless biblically contradictory, we must make every effort to assimilate into their culture. This the easiest way we can show honor to the society we want to influence.

“I have become all things to all men so that I may, by all means, save some.”
Paul

We must also remember, a Christian culture is not a western culture. The goal is to make the message relevant to the culture we are influencing not to try make the culture adapt to the message we are delivering.

Demographics

We adjust our scheduling and teaching to fit the demographics of the people we are trying to reach. A young women is not expecting the same message as an older man. If we have a room full of young 20-somethings, we make it our business to preach a message that is relevant to them.

Burning without Scolding

While burning with passion and conviction is paramount in reaching the community, being aware of cultural sensitivities will help us show love and honor in our interactions. For example in the Japanese culture it is really impolite to say “no”, so often our passion can come across abusive or abrasive.

Spiritual displacement

Principalities and powers that govern a region are displaced by manifesting the hidden, manifold wisdom of God to the unseen kings. We do this by infiltrating every level of the society with love.

Good time was had by all…

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Well we started last week officially what we are now calling the “Revivalist Equipping Nights” for all those aspiring to lead or who feel called to lead what God is so evidently doing at YBF. It was fun. I spoke about intimacy vertically and horizontally. The priority for heart to heart connections with the Father and with each other. Then we proceeded to break up into small groups and practice the David model for intimacy. We ended the evening getting each other filled with Holy Spirit… it was a time of tipsyness! LOL *hic* It was really great!

Come together…

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A prophetic message to the body about the process of carrying the anointing from the city of ‘idolatry, religion and confusion’ through city of ‘hype-the-father’, through the house of ‘works and sold-inheritance’ to finally rest in the city of the ‘foundation of peace’ where ‘God passionately seeks you with all His heart’.  I am not sure where this fits in theologically and whether or not there is application anywhere else, but I thought that the message was interesting as a concept of how we move the presence of God back into the house. It seems like a global word for revival, learning how to return the presence to the house of Israel or a safe place for Holy Spirit to show up. Perhaps as a global church we are all at one stage or another of returning to a priority for His presence. Burning to be in His presence, to see His face. And perhaps it is time we moved from personal experiences to corporate experiences. Interesting word study Pastor Rick mentioned. In-Corporate - in the corpse or body mmm that’s a tasty encounter waiting to happen. Ray Hughs said unity is a corporate humility or a knowing of why God is visiting us. I like that. There is something about what God wants to do when He gets into a corporate setting or onto a body of unified people. Unity with Passion is essential to carrying the presence as a corporate anointing. Passion can suffice as a personal thirst for His presence, but the word we need to host His presence as a corporation is, “Come together, right now, over Him”. Both the gathering and the togetherness of our spirits is important. He can be seen by the love we have one for another. That, “Where 2 or 3 gather + together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Jesus

Anyway enjoy! There are a few mistakes and some insecurities that drive me nuts… but I think it is still a relevant message.
[audio:http://www.ignitioncenter.com/audio/01 Come together right now over me.mp3]

I was wrong!

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I was wrong. The best way to release and increase the kingdom wasn’t through a better system or open source curriculum or even people doing the ‘stuff’. This statement seems rather ridiculous when it is written out, but it was an all to real realization the other night when I had one of the craziest encounters with His consuming, furious love.
I had talked myself out of going to the prophetic conference in town, for all the ‘right’ reasons, “…we just got back from ministering in Nicaragua, I’m tired and need to rest…” etc.. So I decided, because of the subtle hints of my friend Holy Spirit, that I should go. Sometimes we need to act in the opposite spirit than that of which we are.
We arrived at the dry lake bed with parched people doing the ‘normal’ horizontal watering of their proverbial soil… it was rough. I needed more, and pushed in again, by dancing then lying on the floor to receive all He was making available… it was good, but nothing near what was about to happen.
Heidi Baker, in her tender way, declared she was going to do something different, which really isn’t that different for her. She said that the alters are open and we were going to press in to God and give Jesus a drink. This was all my friend an I needed. So along with all the chapped-lipped Christians desperate for something else, we ran up and dove face down at the apostle’s feet. For most of the duration of her message, she laid hands on my friend and I, as she soaked, prayed, preached and poured out her heart to heaven. I felt the throngs of His love physically flowing through me as I lay there face down, it was incredible, but still nothing compared to what happened next.
I think the Spirit was telling me, “Servants beg face down, but lovers lie on their back!” So I turned over and lay on my back, the whole time Heidi was laying hands on my head and chest intermittently. It ‘physically’ felt like I went from the experience of God touching me, to having Him enter me. Like another level of His love.
There is more! There is more of His love than we can imagine or dream about.
With this new encounter came the an overwhelming thought,
“I don’t ever want to leave!”
… and I mean ever… I decided I was going to hold onto this moment forever, no matter what. Well that was the beginning of the longest incoherent, trance-like state I had ever been in up until that moment. For 24hrs I couldn’t walk without staggering around and falling down. I could barely open my eyes or speak without laughing spontaneously.  I was reminded of the biblical references where Peter said, “These men are not drunk as you suppose!” and when Paul said to the Ephesians, “Do not be drunk on wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” My friend and I were filled, and we were drunk, drunk, drunk in His intoxicating love. It was completely marvelous and yet this was only a hint of what is available.
It wasn’t till the next day in a very controlled church service that I began to sober up. It was a pity. We spent the better part of 24hrs on our backs or crawling around under the weight of His presence. This isn’t a new thing. The biblical and revivalist fathers of old experienced this all the time. It was said of Smith Wigglesworth that he could bring the anointing so strong that most people couldn’t stay in the same building under the weight of God’s presence. A physical weight, they could feel baring down on their bodies.

The point is there is more love for us hidden in God, than we can imagine or dream of. There is always more and there is always higher. The metaphor for this increase seems incredulous to me considering the salvation theology that says His presence comes to live in us. So what is this ‘more’ and why have psalmists and worship writers for generations penned the echo of our hearts over and over again? How can we have more of the ‘all’ that lives in us? Could it be that we don’t really see ‘all’ of what we have; that we don’t comprehend the height, depth and breadth of He who is in us? That somehow, we need to see more, comprehend more and experience more of Him who lives in us. And then what?

When we experience intimate, heart-to-heart, deep love we can’t help but love. It reduces the fist commandment to an overflow of the love that we already experience in our hearts. We become agents of His love, reflecting Him in the communities we live in. All over the world the agents of love are being released and are changing the world as more and more people experience the mystery of the kingdom. Love is contagious and cancerous (yes I am using this work on purpose), especially cancerous to the works of the enemy and the gates of hell which can not prevail against it.

“We love, because He first loved us.” [NASB] 1 John 4:11

The bible says you can’t love without being loved by God. I didn’t write that, it is in the word… so that means that any love we are experiencing today is a run off or an overflow of love experienced by someone who at one point was connected to God.
The word ‘Theophany’  from the Ancient Greek Θεοφάνεια – Τheophaneia(meaning “appearance of God”), refers to the appearance of a deity to a human, or to a divine disclosure.

“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” [MSG] John 13:34-35

Next Stop Whitehorse.

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Well we are headed to Whitehorse, Yukon to help with a mini supernatural leadership workshop, Monday nights with Yukon Bible Fellowship Foursquare Church. We are pretty excited. Feels like a Holy Spirit setup. We will be going for 3 months to start. Then we will see what happens.

Any BSSM Grads want to help us for 3 months from July – Sept 2010 in Whithorse, Yukon? If so, contact us. You would be helping with fire-starting and outreach.

Healing released in Diriamba

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It was an amazing weekend in Diriamba. The Holy Spirit came faithful to His promise to show up whenever we call on him.

On thursday night, I shared a testimony of a twisted foot being healed. The presence of Holy Spirit was on me so strongly. I knew God wanted to do it again. The leaders in the class were reminded of a guy, Francisco, who does maintenance for the church. He had a twisted hand. Someone went to look for him and returned to the classroom a few minutes later. I planned to teach the leaders the healing model so took this opportunity to demonstrate it to them. I was holding Francisco’s twisted hand with both my hands while I prayed a simple prayer. As I prayed, I could feel his whole hand pivoting in mine while his wrist remained still. It was amazing! When we finished praying I asked him how it felt. His hand was still twisted, but the pain was gone! So I asked him if I could pray again. Once again, while we prayed I could feel his hand pivoting in mine and his fingers and knuckles straightening. It was so good. The translator and I could barely believe our eyes.

This demonstration of God’s love set the stage for an awesome encounter with God. The faith of the leaders was growing as they heard the testimonies and watched God touch Francisco’s hand and heal a woman’s back pain. I spoke with them about words of knowledge and how God highlights a particular thing that he wants to accomplish in that moment. Everyone waited on the Lord for a word of knowledge and several things were called out like bone disorders, bronchitis, ear problems among others. People raised their hands and then I encouraged them to start praying for one another, to invite the Holy Spirit to come and minister to them, to command any pain to leave. It took a few minutes of clarification and reminders to keep it simple and suddenly you could see the joy start to erupt as people realized that they were healed and those praying realized how God had just used them in power. As testimonies came forth, more of the leaders came forward for prayer and I welcomed those who were just healed to pray … And more testimonies came forth … and more requests!! It was like supernatural dominoes as pain and affliction bowed at the name of Jesus. At least 9 people were healed in the meeting that night (knees, forearms, bronchitis, sore throats, ear problems, backs). The joy was bubbling over as they gloried in the demonstrations of God’s love.

On Friday night, I shared with the leaders about SOZO, focusing mainly on the father ladder. I walked them through the tool corporately to give them a taste of the healing that it brings to walk through forgiveness of people and see the Godhead in a different light. Afterward, I took them on an encounter, a “first date” of sorts, to start their journey with the person of the Godhead that they felt least connected to. It was beautiful to see so many men and women touched by the presence of God, completely surrendered in the hope of knowing Him more. Many people testified after, through tears of joy and release, of a love that they had never felt, a sense of being in a place that they had always longed for. What a privilege it was to listen to their intimate love encounters.

Saturday was the icing on the cake. We learned together about Supernatural Evangelism, getting drunk and then taking the love out to the world. The healing that they experienced over the past few days and weeks had evidently become a new wine skin. The people were courageous and filled with a sense of hope and adventure as they dipped their invisible cups in the river and drank as much as they wanted. They were excited by the accuracy of their hearing when they went out with treasure maps to find the treasure that Holy Spirit was leading them to. One guy in particular, was dancing in the park with excitement when his treasure found him! A man matching several of the clues on his map approached us and asked us to pray for him. He was healed immediately and it glowed in the smile on his face. The team was as happy as he was. Back in the classroom we shared testimonies of people healed and treasures found and the leaders were filled with excitement. They couldn’t believe all that they had encountered in the past few weeks.

No matter how many people you touch or encourage, I’m realizing that every outreach is an inreach because every time Holy Spirit moves in power you are once more in awe of the mystery revealed again … “Christ in you, the hope of glory!”

Prophecy and Encounter week…

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Well it was another exciting week this week in Diriamba, Nicaragua. The leaders were tired this week because they are planning an anniversary for the first week of March and they have been going non stop since our team arrived in January. So with Chris’ wisdom I decided to keep the teaching light and the encounters high. I taught on prophecy this week, the gift and the office.

Leaders doing prophetic art

We welcomed the Holy Spirit at the beginning of class as always, but ended in practical applications of prophecy. We did ‘words of encouragement’, ‘words of knowledge’, ‘Holy Spirit games’ and their favorite, ‘prophetic art’. This week was also the week I taught about the importance of getting drunk in the spirit, what it looks like and how to do it; so we got drunk. Well just a little:). I think I will repeat that next week!

We closed this week off with a trip to heaven where people went into the heavenly palace, through all the rooms and before the throne where God gave them tools, weapons and clothing for their purpose on earth. Hearing the testimonies was one of the most amazing times I have had teaching.

The Spirit reveals!

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Leadership Training Classroom

When I go to Diriamba I have the privilege of spending most of Friday with the pastor, answering questions about revival culture. Since I taught ‘Unpunishable’ by Danny Silk last week, most of the questions have been about Unpunishable. It has been difficult to get the concept across these last 2 weeks, so this Friday I said, “Tag, you’re it Holy Spirit!” and I resigned my need to convince the pastor and decided I would spend the day, trying to understand what was so difficult about this subject for him.

I watched the most incredible thing happen. I watched how Holy Spirit moved on a man as we talked, transforming his mind and revealing,  in a few seconds, the mystery that I had worked 2 weeks to try to explain.

I was humbled and moved as realized I spent 2 weeks trying to reach his heart through his mind and Holy Spirit reached his mind through his heart. WOW! Honestly, it was one of the most amazing things I have witnessed.

The other thing we keep noticing about this man is the incredible sense of responsibility and love he has for the people. He wants so badly to see them succeed that he works tirelessly to go after the Kingdom even laying awake night after night trying to grasp truth so he’ll be confident of how to deliver it. I noticed that even though Unpunishable scared him he pursued it with all of his heart and mind so that he could own it before he brought it to the people. His devotion to God’s people and to truth is simply awesome.