Paranormal Connections

You may or may not be aware of my involvement with "Now Interpret This!"  We teach dream interpretation and prophetic ministry, as well as provide a dream interpretation service for regular folks who need it and/or want to support our outreaches. We have always had interns scattered all over the country, or even the world, but I recently got assigned an intern that is not unreasonably far away from me.  We can actually get together in person every once in awhile. 

Our last get-together was to take a trip to a new age fair.  We are looking at places to get some practice and break out of ministry to only Christians.  We found out about this opportunity too late but decided to go anyway and make some friends and see if this is something we would want to do next year. 

We walked through and were seemingly invisible to all except a little paranormal girl.  She was overseeing a booth for the local Paranormal Society and had lots of photos set up on the table.  If you've followed this blog long, you know I'm all over that!  I book it on over there and she's showing me all her spirit photography.  The first one I looked at had a picture of a guy sitting on some stairs and a baby stroller next to him and a dark spirit looming over the stroller.  Looked like Darth Vader, I kid you not. 

So I'm looking at em and I go "Hey! Are you guys good at telling what's real and what's fake?"  She goes "Yeah!"  I say "Good, cause I got lots!"

Much to my intern's amusement, I invite myself behind the table, sit down next to her and excitedly start pulling out angel pictures, fire coming out of the bible pictures, burning bushes etc.  I was too busy pointing and explaining to see her reaction.  She verified them as real by the way, or at least she couldn't see any of the normal lighting/camera rationalizations, and I was trying to pick her brain about what can cause a camera to do weird stuff.  I don't want to be putting stuff out there if its not real.

Anyway, I got invited to hang out with them.  After getting connected on Facebook, it looks like they mostly hang out in graveyards.  I'll probably pass.  We went from there to coffee with a guy who wanted to talk to us about having a dream interpretation booth at 12 Days of Praise, which is an entirely Christian audience.  Talk about a juxtaposition.

In more efforts to break out into a different audience, we added an extra live chat to our site.  I invited strictly people who consult physics, astrologers, tarot readers and such.  Out of 130 sign ups, 4 showed. One of them informed me that our event was the same time as Paranormal Connections and she was trying to keep an eye on both. As time went on, she started engaging more and more with us.  She has a prophetic intercessory gifting, she doesn't know what that is, but I explained it in non-religious language.  She eventually revealed her real name and asked to connect outside of chat, so we're talking.  She wants to use her gift the right way, and is tired of the torment of not being able to stop what she sees happening.  For now, she tells me what she sees, I pray and declare, and she stands in agreement. 

So yeah, fun fun!  And maybe the paranormal people are my new demographic?  I could handle that!

Two For One Night

The other night, my sister got home and there was a teenage boy she's acquainted with out on her sidewalk pacing back and forth waiting for her to get home. He'd been in a fight and hurt his punching hand. She took him inside and got him settled down and prayed for his hand. The pain left right away and there was some other thing on the same hand that he said kept getting lighter and going away. He left and she settled in for the night when there was a knock on the door.

He was back, this time with a girl in tow, who had a broken hand. So my sister sat them down, explained that Jesus died on the cross for our healing as well as our salvation, it was available to anybody that wanted it, and she prayed for the girl's hand. She got done, asked her to check it out and the girl started to open and close her fingers. She was so excited and kept opening and closing them, then she started poking around because she could feel the break before, where the bones were separated. No break.

Then she looks directly at Jill and says, "Do you believe in 2012?" This had obviously been bugging her. Jill said "What do you mean? Like the apocalypse?"
"Yeah." She explained that the bible says that no man knows the day or the hour, but that God does give us signs of the end times." The conversation veered down some different roads from there, God's love, the book of John, Grandma's church, etc. They left really happy.

This is so ideal in my mind, where they just show up at your house, where God just shows up at your house! How cool is that? The problem is, God shows up at our houses more than He shows up in the churches. It's sad, but He's a gentleman. He doesn't go where He's not wanted, or if they wanna keep Him on the bench the whole time, He obliges. She knew when she was talking to the girl about healing, that God was just gonna have to do it. She never said maybe she'd be healed. It was a simple done deal. Woulda been awkward if He hadn't healed her. Lucky for us, He likes to do that stuff.

You can see people get healed too, start here.

Fulfilling the Love Command

I have a friend who's a pretty good cook.  He feeds me lunch most days because I live a long way from where I work and if I didn't eat lunch with him I'd be sitting in my truck eating PB&J.  No, it wouldn't be that dire, but it wouldn't be BBQ chicken with beans, coleslaw and homemade bread.  Sometimes it's the only decent meal I get.  And it's not just me.  He cooks in quantity and invites other people that need some decent food and company or takes food next door, last weekend he was helping with a benefit dinner for someone with cancer.  He spends months away at hunting camp where he is the official camp cook and I think people involve him for that reason.  I hired him to do some construction work for us and he'd have dinner going by the time we got home from work.  It's just his thing.

Last week over lunch we were discussing what it takes to love people, (it takes God's love coming through you, you can't summon it up on your own very well) and he's feeling bad because he's kind of anti-social and doesn't really get out there and meet people and talk to them.  Not exactly spreading the love ya know?  This has actually been an ongoing conversation and it keeps circling back around to him feeling guilty.  But this time when I left, the mail came and he got his order from Penzey's Spices.  He was unpacking the box while still mulling over our conversation and wondering what he was supposed to be doing, when he found this:

Is that not the coolest thing you've ever seen?  You mean it's that easy?  We've been drilled into believing that serving God is toil and drudgery and sacrifice and you just gotta suck it up but that's not what Jesus said.  (Matt 11:28, John 15:4-6)  So he's on the right track.  He's found his ministry.  By feeding people he can actually feed people.

Maybe he is called to the wilderness, like John the Baptist.  (I wonder how Gary would fix locusts and wild honey?)  Not many people would be willing to make that their mission field, but there's no place he'd rather be.  And let's face it.  It's a lot easier to love someone who's appreciating your culinary genius than it is to love someone who's giving you attitude because you're doing the door to door thing and you just invaded their life.

One thing I've been learning, is that being about your Father's business is not hard.  If it is, then you're doing it wrong or doing something you shouldn't.  I'm not saying you don't have challenges and trials, but there's something to doing what comes naturally, what you're graced to do and that you have joy in doing - it's not work. Adam labored, he didn't toil.

The other thing I'm learning, it that if you get your first New Testament commandment (And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. Mark 12:30) firmly in place in your life, everything else is automatic.  John Crowder said in his book The Ecstacy of Loving God, said "The Christian life is really not that complicated.  If we can get the love part right, everything else will fall into place.  St Augustine said "Love God and do whatever."  Unfortunately our striving little souls even try to make a dead work out of loving God.  Have you ever heard a grumpy old preacher tell you that "Love is not a feeling," and to do good things even when you don't feel like it?  Sounds like stoicism to me.  Many teach that after we have believed in Christ, we should do many things.  But this is not true.  According to the Scriptures, after we believe in Christ and receive His Spirit, we have to love Him.  Perhaps the apostle Paul put it best in 1 Corinthians 16:14  Do everything in love."

And even loving Him is something you don't tackle on your own.  We love Him because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)  You have to let Him love you first.  You have to receive of His goodness and see Him as a perfect Father who only wants good things for you.  When you get that revelation, it's easy to love Him back, but your ability to give love is always going to be to the degree that you are able to receive love.  You can't give what you haven't got, make sense? 

So if you're having a problem walking in love, then you need to get with God and ask Him to pour His love out on you.  Ask Him for help with your hangups.  When it comes to hangups, our parents can mess us up.  Even good parents.  We tend to view our Heavenly Father through the lens of our earthly father, so it's self-explanatory if you had a lousy dad, but if you had a father who loved you but was reserved even, about expressing it, you're going to have to get past that.  And if you were such a wild child that your parents were so busy disciplining you that there was not much time left in the day for positive interaction, you might view God as harsh and waiting for you to screw up.  You need to ask Him to help you see Him for who He is.

My own Dad was good at fixing stuff and I always had something broken, but I got the idea that I was bothering him when he was busy, so I either learned to live with the broken stuff or I would go to Mom, who would convince Dad and it would get fixed.  For years that was my relationship with God.  Put up with brokenness, or get somebody else to pray because He doesn't pay attention to me.  Thank God I got past that.  I can receive, therefore I have something to give.  Wow, that went off on a tangent!  Anyway, take it easy on yourself.  You're probably doing better than you think.

How I Spent My Birthday Weekend

We actually had a good conference in the old home town last week.  This is a really big deal because speakers don't come here and a whole team came.  We have 700 people in our town, maybe...  That's probably pushing it.  So to have these people come was pretty amazing.  It's like they were the missionaries and we were the remote tribal village.  I didn't really know what to expect, and I had to work, so I only went to the evening sessions.  Mom was free for the whole deal though and got a lot out of it.

So Mark preached some on revival and called some people up front for healing and made them pray for each other.  Everybody got healed.  Then the rest of the audience that needed prayer for healing came up and got prayed for.  I just had a little cold and didn't feel I should go up for that.  Then he said anybody who wants the fire, get up here and so I made a beeline.  Mark explained a little bit about how they had just spent 7 weeks at the Bay of the Holy Spirit Revival and I have been live-streaming it now and then and know that they are focused on spreading this all over and Mark and Kathy had gotten impartation for that and impartation from many others including Smith Wigglesworth.  So Mark put a hand on my head, and Kathy put a hand on my stomach and they made sure I got it.  "She's not getting it, breathe in honey.  You got to take a deep breath. There it goes."  And yeah, I felt it.  Very cool.  So then I was dragging chairs out of the way because people were falling and bonking their heads, some of the catchers were a little unprepared.  And I went and sat down on the stage and just took it all in.  Everybody was every which way on the floor.  I have never been slain in the Spirit and am wondering what it's like.  My friend Debbie came to and crawled over and sat down by me. "Isn't this fun?"  So that was Day One. 

Day Two, I had to work again, but they got taught a little on going out in the community to minister to people, they broke up into groups and asked God where they were to go, and who they were supposed to find.  They would then go and pray for the person for whatever they needed prayer for.  For the evening meeting, which I went to, all the groups went up front and told us what happened out there.  They had 7 groups, with 3-4 people in each group so 20-some empowered Christians converged on the area.  The stories were awesome!  People got healed of arthritis in the grocery store, chronic pain, spider bites, people got their finances prayed over and people were in tears just knowing that God saw their situation and cared enough to send them someone.  And all these people that went out realized how God can work through them.  The best story of all was two girls that were scared to go and almost chickened out.  They may have made the most impact of anyone.

It's such a small town that nobody was supposed to name names, but they all gave enough clues that I knew who they wound up ministering to and if I didn't, the person sitting next to me filled me in, and I knew people who had been praying and concerned about those people.  These were definitely divine appointments.  The groups weren't real sure they were hearing God right and were stepping out on a limb, but I can tell you, I know these people, they needed ministry and the groups did awesome.

You see, revival is in us.  We're all praying for revival, but it's not like we have to convince God that it's a good idea.  We have gotten denominational revivalists in the area before, but they aren't very effectual because they don't empower anyone, they preach a little and they leave and nothing really changes.  Mark and Kathy are about empowering the average Christian because they know they aren't going to stay and make things happen.  That's our job.  I think too many people have the idea to pitch a tent, hold a meeting and say "Come ye" when Jesus actually told us to "Go ye."  God's people have to step up.  And these people made time to go out and made a point of finding those people that God wanted them to find, but you can work this in the context of your daily life.  Just ask God to set you up, and then be watchful for your opportunity.  He knows what your skills, gifts, personality is and He won't put you into a situation that you aren't equipped for.  See the Ice Cream, Divine Appointments and Debt Forgiveness post for more on this.

After the stories, Mark called everybody up front that needed healing.  Those that didn't need it were supposed to go pray for them.  Nobody went to this one guy so I went over and asked him what he needed and he just had pain so I thought I really lucked out.  I like praying for pain, it's instant gratification, there's no "well, go back to the dr and take the tests and find out in a couple weeks."  You know right away.  The man however, did not feel like he lucked out with me.  He was looking around for someone better and another guy came over to help and he was more talkative to him although I was the one praying.   So I was going to town praying and suddenly there was a hand on me and I turned to see another lady from the ministry team joining in and I lost my train of thought so she stepped in and actually laid hands on his leg, where I was sure he'd be uncomfortable, so I'd had my hand on his shoulder.  I prayed again and she said when I prayed she could feel stuff going on in there.  So he got  pretty well healed.  I think there was a small amount of residual pain and I was all set to pray again but the other guy said "No, you're healed, this is a healing not a miracle and over the next couple days you'll be fine blah blah blah." The guy getting prayed over seemed satisfied with that but then I said "Yeah, but sometimes you gotta pray 2-3 times to get the miracle."  Oh well.   Then the lady helping me out said "You were so cute over there!"  Yeah, I'm cute, that's why I never get taken seriously.

Adventures in Prophetic Evangelism

(Preface:  I am new at this!)

I'm learning to use my senses in the spirit realm and some senses work better than others for me.  I see some, but don't always believe my eyes, I hear some, but I miss a lot, I can feel sometimes, mostly just Friday night meetings, but I can SMELL!  I have no trouble smelling in spirit realm or trusting my schnoz.  The nose knows man!  The biggest problem is always ruling out anything in the natural that I might be picking up on instead. 

So I have a customer at my work that whenever I go to her door, which is everyday, I get hit by this rose smell.  It's winter time, so that's odd, and it can be storming and blowing or whatever and the smell is even more pronounced.  Months of this go by and I'm just enjoying the roses when I get there and kinda wondering but not really pressing into finding out what this is all about.  I was kinda looking around for a reasonable explanation, looking for porch potpourii (hey, you never know what people do) and I hadn't found anything.  So last week I said "Ok, God, what's with the roses?"  And I had a vision of Jesus standing at her door with roses waiting for her to let Him in.  My first thought was "Oh no, He's been out there a long time!"  Well duh, she's probably in her 50's, but it's different when you think of Him killing time up in heaven, vs. standing out in wind and rain and snow and hail.

So now I have some responsibility here because I was shown.  And I have very little dealing with this lady because I just drop her stuff off and run.  Sometimes I see her on the street and we say hi.  I think she's a seer because she looks at me like seers look at me and I wonder what she's seeing.  I figure she's a new ager, which is good, cause they do not think you're nuts for having visions, so the easiest way will be for me to come right out and tell her that Jesus has been hanging around her door for awhile and she might wanna let Him in.   

So, I'm waiting for my opportunity.  A couple days go by, no opportunity.  I don't wanna just let this pass.  Then yesterday, she came down her driveway to talk to me.  I said "Hey, do you have something rose-scented by your door?"  She goes "What?" As if I am a crazy person, so I repeat the question.  She doesn't have any secret roses out there so I say, "Ok, then it was what I thought I saw then."  Oooo, she's hooked now!  She's leaning forward and asking me what it was!  So I explain the whole deal with my spiritual senses and the rose thing and then asking God what it was and then the vision and she is actually taking me seriously.  I get done telling and her eyes got really big and she starts to tell me what she saw!  She saw Jesus in a rainbow over her house.  So then we are acting like crazy people in the driveway yelling and hugging and jumping up and down.  So she's on Cloud 9 and I'm trying to figure out where I go from here.  I have a little better feel for where she's at.  She's cool with Jesus, but doesn't see Him as the one way, or realize her need for repentance.  So I think this will be a process and a to-be-continued story...

Ice Cream, Divine Appointments and Debt Forgiveness

Some time ago, a group of friends and I had a challenge going to ask God to set up some divine appointments for us to witness to people.  (Their idea.)  I was very intimidated by this, plus I just don't like the whole go out and witness idea because I've seen too much manipulation and high pressure sales pitches by Christians.  So while I understand the necessity, I've also felt very negative about it.  I believe in hell, but don't like the idea of scaring people into the kingdom, so I decided that I wanted my divine appointments to be opportunities to show God's goodness.  I'm sharing my results so you can see that it's not that hard, and you don't have to have any special skills to be used.

The Ice Cream Story

I thought God told me to go for ice cream.  I realize that He may not have actually said that, but I believed it because He's a good Dad and sometimes good dad's take their kids out for ice cream just because... And if God says go get ice cream, well who am I to argue?  Anyway, when I got there, I ran into somebody who wanted my help, so it really wasn't about ice cream after all, although it all went down after I got my two scoops.  See, sometimes He has to be a little bit sneaky with me, He doesn't tell me the whole story because He knows me well enough.  Things might have gone a little differently if He'd said "Hey go down to Zip Trip because you need to talk to this biker chick that's having a bad day."  It's not that I wouldn't obey, but I would be very nervous over what to say and how to handle the situation.  So I got lured in with ice cream.  It was better that way.  Didn't the Bible say we have to become as little children?  I can be the Forest Gump of the Kingdom, I can believe it's just an ice cream trip.

The Haircut Story

I got a little smarter and saw this one coming, sorta.  I needed a haircut so I called and made an appointment.  I wanted a Monday and she said she never worked Mondays but she was working this one and I could have my choice of a couple time slots, so I picked the 1:00.  She said "Ok, I'll see you at one, one, one at one." (11/1, 1:00).  I hung up the phone and said "Oooooo God's up to somethiiiinnn!"  So I was excited.  Crazy God Adventure.

So the day rolls around and I had a half an hour before I had to leave and that's not enough time to start anything so I checked my email.  I got a prophetic word in the inbox (that's a message for me personally about things in my life to come, that someone heard from God for me) so I tore into that and it was long and detailed and AWESOME.   So I had a head reeling with all these groovy things that me and God are going to be doing together in the future assuming I cooperate, and now I have to go sit in a chair and hold still and be normal.  I have to simmer down.  I did simmer down on the drive over and was quite calm when I got there, until, DUN DUN DUN, I got out of the car and the Holy Spirit came over me.  Have you ever been reassured and terrified at the same time?  I mean, I was really glad He was with me, but I knew He wouldn't need to be unless I was about to get in over my head.

I walked in the door and instantly everyone shut up and turned to look at me.  I went and sat down, coulda heard a pin drop.  "Uh, don't mind me.  As you were."  They awkwardly eased back into their conversation.  They were talking about their tarot card readings and then one lady pipes up, I don't need to go have my cards read because I'm psychic.  And she proceeds to tell us a bunch of instances that she has predicted things, deaths, divorces, spouses cheating etc, and it became very obvious to me that she was a very gifted person who was tuned into the wrong channel and was broadcasting Satan's agenda, instead of God's.  Finally she wrapped the whole thing up with, "But I just don't like having to give that kind of news to people."

So I said, "Well, do you only see bad things?"
She says, "Well... Some of it's not so bad." 
I said, "You know, this is really weird because twenty minutes before I came here, I got a message from a prophet and he told me about my future and then I come here and that's what you guys are talking about."
And they were all "Oooo freaky!" And they all wanted to know what the prophet said. Normally you should be careful who you share that kind of stuff with, but I had an attentive audience and an opportunity to show the difference between a prophecy and a physic reading without making anybody feel like trash.  (They were convicted as soon as I walked in.) So I kinda told the highlights of the thing and there was one negative in my prophesy that was a good example of how God does it vs. Satan.  With God, it's always uplifting, even the negatives wind up being positive.  He works all things together for good.  Either that, or He reveals the bad so that you can change things and not have to go down that road. 

So I got done and they were like "Wow!  That's so good!  That's so exciting!"  and I'm all "Yeah, I know!"  And the psychic lady says,  "So that's why you asked me if I only saw bad stuff..." 

And My Favorite Story Ever! (So Far)

I talked to a guy who told me he quit going to church because the pastor told him he would go to hell if he didn't forgive and he didn't agree with that.  I shrugged and said that I'd always been taught that I had to forgive if I wanted to be forgiven.  He got beligerant and said " I believe John 3:16 period."  I backpedaled and said "Yeah, John 3:16 and Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved"  and then I brought up the thief on the cross, so he got happy since I was building his case for him.  Then I said "I'm curious what your take is on Matthew 18." 

Side note: Matthew 18 is the story about the guy that owed a bunch of money and couldn't pay, and the guy he owed let him off the hook.  Then when the one who had owed went to collect from somebody else, the guy that forgave his debt found out and had him "delivered to the tormentors."

He said he would read it and get back to me.  I left and prayed for a revelation for both of us. I got mine, but that's a whole 'nother post.

Day 2:  I see him again, but he doesn't bring it up so I don't either.  I figure he's read it, realized that I set him up, and hasn't got his argument together yet.  I can't wait!

Day 3:  He tells me he read it and wants to talk to me about it "but not right now." 

Day 5:  He says "Guess what!  I owed the IRS a bunch of money and I called them, I don't even know why I called them other than I was really in a nasty mood.  I got this black lady on the phone, she was really nice.  Something in her spirit, I could feel through the phone, and it settled me right down.  I said 'Look, how much do I owe you people?' and she put me on hold for 3-4 minutes.  She got back on the phone and said 'You're all taken care of except for the interest and fines, and we're just going to waive that.'  He waited for my reaction.

I was dumbfounded, (and a little slow) I had never heard of the IRS giving somebody a free pass before.  I said "How can you be paid off?"  (Oh me of little faith)  He threw his arms up and said "They're just gonna let me go."  I yelled "Ha!  and slapped my knee.  I pointed at him and said "Matthew 18!"  He goes "Yeah, I know."

Day 6:  Sackcloth and ashes.

Day 7:    I saw my friend again and he says that earlier he had to go do some errands and he pulled over in the Stites Baptist Church parking lot and sat outside listening to some guy preach Matthew 18 for 20 minutes.  I laughed and said  "Nothing like being bludgeoned over the head with it, is there?"  He said he thought I might find that funny.  When I wrapped up the laughing, I said "Yeah, He's done that to me too.  He loves us too much to leave us in deception."

So, you want a piece of this action?  There's perks in it.  I got ice cream, got prophesied over, the last guy made me lunch.  Being a part of his miracle story was the best thing though.  God goes so far for us.  I'm in awe.  

So I challenge you - no, I double dog dare you - to say  "God, I wanna be used by You.  Put me in the right place at the right time.  Set me up!  Put me together with people whose mindset towards You will be changed forever because they've met me."

God knows your strengths and weaknesses, he knows how much free time you have (that was a hangup for me with this challenge - all of this happened while I was going about my normal life)  He is not going to put you in a situation that you are not equipped for.  No matter what your faults are, He'll work around them.  Your service is too good of an offer to pass up.  He'll just start you off easy.  There are people that He tells to get on the next plane to China and they get on the next plane to China.  I'm not there yet, you're probably not in any danger of that either.  I get sent out for ice cream.  That's doable for me.  How about you?