India Post #5 - Power

We serve a powerful God and He makes His ways known throughout His creation. Praise the Lord.

I find that I’m in a place of seeing God’s power and being satisfied and at the same time wanting more. The last few days of ministry have gone well and I truly do see Him working. He moves in supernatural ways and His desire is for us. His desire is to bless us by giving us more of Him, our only true need.

Prophecy is such a powerful tool that He has given us and something that is becoming a bigger and bigger work in my ministry. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14: 1; 3 “Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy… He who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.” I’ve seen the power of this many times before and the ministry recently has given more examples that exactly fulfill this scripture. I know for all my non-charismatic brothers and sisters this may seem a little out there, but I testify to you that it is powerful and this scripture backs me up. The prophecy given does not carry the weight of scripture and like prayer, disciplines and everything else in the Christian walk, it is something that we can practice. A person that loves the Lord and desires to do His will in encouraging others will say something that is truly of the Lord, at the same time it is possible to slip slightly and say something that isn’t exactly what God would say. That doesn’t make the believer a false prophet. A false prophet seeks to devour, deceive and destroy. He stands against the Lord and uses counterfeit, even demonic, power to persuade people away from the true God. Whereas, the believer prophesying will allow the Holy Spirit to confirm the words within the heart and mind of the person that is receiving the word. As Ryan put it they can “chew up the meat and spit out the bone.”

India Post #4 - Opportunity

I have come to a deeper realization over the last week about just how precious our time is and how much we ought to take advantage of every opportunity we have to advance the Kingdom.

My short term mission in India is a world of difference between my long term ministry in Tanzania. I see the Lord’s work in both of them for sure, but they are different. Its something that I was talking to Lauren about and we were both seeing the stark difference. In Tanzania, it’s the long haul and so much of what we do is based on long term relationship building and seeing the day to day progress being made by those we minister to. It is a blessing and I rest assured that Tanzania is where God has called me to deeply impact the lives of my Treasures. Then there’s India right now. I feel as though I have to take advantage of every opportunity to ensure my mission is the utmost successful. It seems to put a little pressure on me.

Before this time, I didn’t have the most thorough short term missions mindset and now I’m having to develop it out of the larger mindset that I am indeed a long term missionary elsewhere. Before this, I had been on three outside of North America missions trips. The first one was to Poland was blessed, but it wasn’t because I felt called there, but rather I was going where my girlfriend at the time wanted to go. The following two were to Tanzania, where I had learned God would call me long term, so my focus on the here and now of those trips was overshadowed by the larger ministry to come. Because of all that, my best picture of short term missions has actually come from observing short term missionaries come in to Moshi and minister amongst the people there. That picture is hard to take in because some people walk in their short term mission with excellence and others for the most part waste their time. I know that sounds harsh and I admit that I can’t see the whole picture, but nonetheless, for all intensive purposes, it appears they would’ve missed out on what the Lord really wanted to do. Trading the Lord’s highest purpose for a few good pictures and a stamp in their passport.

India Post #3 - Honor

Written on August 24th, 2010

The last two days of ministry have been wonderful. The Lord has done so much and we see His hand on us and His presence going with us. We have been able to meet some amazing people, heroes of the faith that may never get their story told beyond what you read in this blog. Nonetheless, the Lord knows their name and is well pleased with them.

Yesterday, I had the distinct honor to minister with my team to local pastors and church leaders throughout the region. The pastors would come through one by one or two by two and would go through essentially four stations of ministry. First they would have communion administered by Pastor Claude. Then they would enter the main room and have their feet washed. Following that would be a time of laying on of hands and soaking in impartation. The final spot was for the delivery of prophetic words and Bible verses. It was a wonderful time and the presence of the Holy Spirit was thick.

I will talk about this time and the burden that I felt for the people at a different time, but I want to tell you about Pastor Claude and the honor I had to minister to him. He is an incredible man. There is a circuit of village churches throughout the area and it has been through him that over 100 churches have been planted. Over 100! That’s incredible. In a land where so much darkness has been allowed by the futility of the people’s minds, the true Heavenly reign is advancing and the Lord has given an apostolic anointing to this man to be used in incredible ways.

India Post #2 - Faith

Written on August 22nd, 2010

I’m learning to walk by faith in new ways. Two big things have happened in the last month and if it weren’t for the graciousness of Rita and Lydia to trust that I am following the Lord, I undoubtedly would look like a loose cannon within Hidden With Christ. No TOA missionary has ever left for two weeks to go on another missions trip and certainly no one else has gotten engaged to a short term missionary in a matter of weeks. While, all this is going on around me, I find myself forced to walk in it by faith that this is what God is doing and I do indeed see His hand on these things.

We met Sunday night as a team for worship, prayer and impartation. A means to build each other up for the task at hand. We would begin our formal ministry the next day through a morning prayer walk followed by prayer and prophetic ministry to local pastors and their wives. As we prayed, it came to Ryan that we are to pray for our eyes to be able to see those things that go on in the spiritual realm. It was already on my heart as well and my Bible was open to share on 2 Corinthians 4:18 which I shared in my post a few days ago. We need the eyes to be able to see into that spiritual realm and engage that which is eternal. It takes faith to do so.

Remember my previous post? What was that all about? I think about what I saw in the spiritual realm where I was fixing my eyes and I saw what the people in the plane were enslaved to. It took faith for me to believe that and to pray into that. It took faith for me to post about what I saw. Undoubtedly anyone could have read that post and figure I’ve gone off the deep end. Biblically, to be able to receive words of knowledge or words of prophecy are totally normal. And yet we often find ourselves too timid to embrace those gifts which the Holy Spirit gives to advance the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a false humility and a limitation on the vastness of God to say that prophecy couldn’t come from our lips and that a word of knowledge couldn’t come to our minds. We are so afraid of what others might think that we resort to not engaging those supernatural things that take a higher faith, thus settling for a more domicile version of the Gospel and relationship with Christ.

India Post #1 - Around You

Do we realize the realities that are going on around us at every moment?


I got on the flight from Nairobi to Dubai and was going about my business as normal. Joking with the Tanzanian girls in Swahili, trying to look as American as possible, looking forward to the in-flight movie and the good food. I sit down in my chair and browse what movies are going to be showing while we are in the air. “Iron Man 2, haven’t seen it, heard good stuff, yeah I’ll watch it.” My screen wasn’t working and I decide that if it doesn’t work then I’ll grit my teeth, smile and choose to read, pray, intercede and prepare a sermon. I tell the attendant my screen isn’t working and leave it in the hands of God. Does He want me to watch this cool movie or feed myself spiritually and engage the lives of the people around me? If it comes down to what He wants it could just be a coin flip, right? She resets my screen and after missing the first ten minutes, I get to watch the rest of the movie. Good movie.


It finishes and I decide to finish my chapter in the book that I mentioned in the previous post. I can’t even finish the chapter without the Holy Spirit calling me to intercession.

Intercession

The Lord has been teaching me a lot lately about intercession. This has largely come through the reading of a book simply titled Intercession. I’m a pretty regular reader, but this book has taken me embarrassingly long, mostly due to the fact that I’ve actually had a bit of a social life over the last couple months. Imagine that. No worries though, my social summer climaxed at getting engaged on Sunday and with Melissa taking off on Tuesday, I’m officially a loner again and that will only increase after I get back from India and most of the other missionaries go on furlough. Yay! I have time to read again…

Anyways, intercession. To be honest, I’ve gone a lot of my Christian life without that word even in my vocabulary. When I first heard of it, I figured it was synonymous with prayer or at best really intense prayer. This book has opened my eyes in so many ways and yet I realize I’m only at the start of this journey. Intercession is so much more than just prayer I’ve been finding. Prayer is a big part of it, but it also has to do with fasting, waiting on the Lord, praying in tongues, seeing with spiritual eyes, hearing from the Lord with specificity, and taking up a position for those whom you intercede on behalf of.

I feel as though I’m about to go through a spiritual baptism of intercession. I know that word baptism brings about different thoughts for people. There is a physical baptism that all believers should go through as an outward sign of the inward reality. There is also the baptism of the Spirit, yay controversy! Don’t worry I’m not going down that path, or at least not exactly. I believe that as we walk in the Spirit of God and in step with sanctification, we get new levels and more outpourings of the Spirit. The way that He does this is much like the physical baptism that we all go through. I am anticipating a spiritual baptism of intercession on new levels very soon.

A Story

How do you start a good story? How do you live a good story? Over the last few weeks, I have found myself in the midst of one of the best stories I’ve ever heard. Its one of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard, because I know who the Author is and I know that He does all things well. The real life story has all the suspense and great scenes that you would want in your favorite fiction book, but this is real. The Writer has chosen to use real people in real places in an effort to not only bless and write a good story, but so that people will observe and read the story and point to Him as the Giver of all good things. This is one of the many amazing stories that He’s planned since the dawn of time. It is impossible to fully capture the depth of the story in a finite world when its already been written by the eternal God. At any point in the story, any small thing, a newspaper thrown away, a rejected internship, a stolen identity could have upset the story, but it was in fact written masterfully. So how am I suppose to start this? Do I start it when I first came on the scene on April 8th, 1986? Do I start it at the age of four when I gave my heart to the Lord and His plan of redemption, blessing and purpose began in my life? Do I start it when I first got called to Tanzania? Or when I left California totally single and not knowing what God was going to do? My feeble words couldn’t match the masterful penmanship of the Lord and yet here’s my attempt to tell one of the best stories I’ve ever heard… or been a part of.

I was at the Hidden With Christ office in Tustin. As I was walking through our small office space and looking at the hangings in the hallway, I was pleased to see newspaper clippings of past and current Hidden With Christ missionaries. Lydia, Jodie and the first director Melissa Hermann were in an LA paper, Rita’s son Andy was in an OC paper and I thought that it was a cool way to witness and potentially fundraise. As I commented on them, Rita told me that it would be a good idea to contact local papers back on the central coast where I grew up and see if they would be interested in running my story about moving to Tanzania. I took on that idea and subsequently contacted a couple newspapers up in San Luis Obispo county. I was in a story that ran in the Paso Robles Press, Atascadero News, and Paso Robles Gazette. Also I was in a totally separate article in The Tribune which goes throughout the county. I was pleasantly surprised when it led to some support that came in as well as a donated laptop, on which I’m writing this story. While those things are good, the Lord had so much more planned.