Category Archives: Holy Spirit

Come Run With Us! (PART 2)

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God never calls a person or a people to a vison He has not already imprinted in their personal or corporate makeup and purpose. In essence, the vision exists already in our spiritual DNA, put there by God as we are formed in our mother’s womb. It must be discovered through our relationship with God. As that relational aspect deepens, a partnership flourishes and reveals the vision, giving us a way to fulfill our purpose. We can only discover it—we don’t devise, develop, or design it. It is a prophetic seed planted in the cracks and the crevices of our soul and spirit awaiting the divine moment of disclosure.

When the vision is articulated clearly there is an apprehension of God’s revelation for our existence and address in whatever location we find ourselves. We are not here in our present location as a church accidently, nor are we, as individuals bound together in this local body by chance. We are here corporately and individually for a specific reason—to do something no one else can do at this precise moment in this particular place. This is the sovereign choice of an omnipotent God.

To comprehend and embrace that vision is our responsibility. If we do so—God will supply the provisions for us to apprehend what He intends. And in the process of capturing God’s corporate purpose we set into place the foundational qualities required for a local church (a body of believers in a specific location) to sustain healthy growth and life-changing impact. The vision fulfilled is the destiny of Eagle’s Wing Church—a God-given dream that becomes an on-going God-guided reality. Without a vision there is nothing to drive the dream and it soon disintegrates like a child’s fantasy—an imagination without application.

Vision brings clarity and definition to our purpose— it’s the “who we are.” It reveals our identity. Vision fleshes out our purpose—it’s the “why we are here.” It reveals our giftings.  And ultimately this vision creates strategies and structure to fulfill our purpose—it’s the “how we accomplish what we are here to do.” It reveals our destiny. We cannot reach our destiny unless we recognize our identity and release the giftings the Holy Spirit has deposited within each of us.

A vision believes the future now by focusing on it through God’s eyes. The Bible calls that faith, and without faith, it is impossible to please God. Therefore a God-given vision, discovered and implemented, is indispensable for achieving God’s prophetic purpose for our existence here on the third planet from the sun in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Come Run With Us (Part 1)

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God often speaks through prophetic words at the most unexpected times through the least likely people, or at least he does when he speaks to me. I happen to believe God still speaks and He uses people just like us to deliver life-changing or life-affirming words from His heart through their lips to our ears. The ability to hear what God is saying and share it word-for-word is the essence of the New Testament gift of prophecy, which according to the apostle Paul, we are to “…desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you might prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1). This is something God gives all of us permission to pursue.

This past Thursday I received such a word while meeting with a prayer group at the “There Is More” Conference. I was not expecting it. If fact, I was overwhelmed by it. My prayer-partner for the morning, an unassuming gentleman, opened his mouth and out tumbled a genuine word of affirmation and direction from God. He didn’t know me from Adam. All he knew was my name, state, and country of residence—only because that information was printed on my conference badge. God’s prophetic declaration, filled with power and authority, began to reverberate deep within my spirit. I saw William’s lips moving but I heard God’s voice. I have chosen to share the totality of this word with you, even though some of it is very personal to me.

 “I see a hard shell like a turtle shell on your back. It is not a bad thing—it is a good thing. This shell protects you. You are a free-thinker—a rebel, but you are not rebellious. You are focused and know where you are going, but you have been wounded by groups in the past. You have a group that is following you now, but there are many others who will come. You know where God is leading—the pathway is clear to you. Write it down, so others can read it and follow.”

Yes, God has given me a clear and distinct vision for Eagle’s Wing Church. From the beginning, we have tenaciously pursued this blueprint, confident God had called us to plant a different kind of church.  Different meaning what most believers would call unconventional, one that refuses to conform to the codes and conventions of what has become modern “church as usual.” I believe with all my heart God has called us to be a “church unusual”—one that operates with kingdom codes and conventions thus creating a kingdom culture where King Jesus dwells in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.   

It has not been easy. In fact, every inch of ground we have gained has been taken at great expense. This territory God is calling us to claim, re-conquer and occupy is not cheap or worthless. No, it’s our heritage as sons and daughters of God. This priceless birthright has been lost, stolen, and/or given away down through church history, but God is now calling out a people to fully take back what the Lamb of God purchased with his blood on the cross. We are part of that people.

If not us—who? If not now—when?

Yes, I am a rebel, if a rebel is one who refuses to settle for less than everything God has promised. Yes, I am a rebel, if a rebel is one who believes the promises of Jesus like the one found in John 14:12—that “…he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.”

Therefore, I choose to obey the word God gave me last Thursday on August 15, 2019. I choose to write this vision down over the next few week and post it publically so anyone who wants, can read it and follow it. I am doing this in full faith believing God will bring those of like spirit and heart to join us. I am doing it because those of you who are currently a part of Eagle’s Wing need to know where we are going, so that you might count the cost and decide if the destination is worth pursuing. And, I am doing it to obey God’s word, because full obedience always brings God’s blessing and the fulfillment of that word.  God says, “Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:2-3).

Come run with us!

Unity, Diversity, and the Mixing Bowl

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God’s heart soars with satisfaction when unity arises out of diversity. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that God loves diversity because it reflects his infinite complexities and his amazing attributes. He did not create a uniform planet filled with identical flora, fauna, or folks. No, he loosed unimaginable diversity in myriads of ways at every level in every aspect of creation. God’s creativity is beyond imagination, off the charts, and anything but cookie cutter.

How do I know? Simply look around. Take yourself as an example. You are unlike anyone else on this planet—past, present, or future. You are unique because God is unique and he made you in his image and his likeness. He is not looking for you to think like someone else, act like someone else, or look like someone else. He made you so you would be you! God loves the differences that each of us bring to the table—the richness of our differing makeups, backgrounds, and talents.

Yet nothing excites him more than when unity rules our diversity. This is not a political thing, a religious thing, a racial thing, or even a “love” thing. This is a Holy Spirit thing! You see, only the Holy Spirit can create unity through diversity and he does it by taking our differences and blending them smoothly into one body (a.k.a. the church—that’s the community made up of people not the building in which they meet).

The Spirit’s method is similar to making a cake with a mixer. As a child, I helped my mom make cakes by operating the mixer for her. I confess my motive was a little less than noble and thoroughly selfish—I secretly coveted the opportunity to lick the cake batter off the blades once the batter was complete.

The mixer is designed to blend different ingredients into one mix. The individual and diverse flavors of the flour, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, milk, and the other ingredients are not lost when blended together. Instead, together they produce an enhanced flavor.

But for this to happen, you need one missing element—a bowl. Without the bowl, the ingredients are spun out and away from one another in every direction. The centrifugal forces of the mixer blades throw out, but the bowl captures the blended components and maintains the unity of the diversity of whatever batter you choose to make. The mixing bowl is the key to the success of the blending process.

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Likewise, God uses the mixer blades of life’s circumstances to force our differences through the mixer. He is intent on building a better batter—one that is diverse, yet unified. A body made up of differing parts that functions as a whole, instead of independently and individually. And he uses the Holy Spirit as the bowl to capture our individualism, our differences, our gifts, and our talents together until we become unified through the blending. In reality—the Holy Spirit is the unifier.

The devil wants the blender to magnify our differences and then separate us based on those differences, but the Holy Spirit desires to blend our differences—to unite our diversity into one compelling force.

Unity is not uniformity. And uniformity never celebrates our diversity.

Yet God does. He celebrates diversity’s sweet batter in unity’s mixing bowl.

The Hawk of Heaven and the Bush Hog

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imagesBush hogging helps me clear my head (no—that’s not hunting wild hogs in the bush). It’s a farm implement one hooks to a tractor and mows the grass, weeds, or bushes that have gotten a bit out of hand. This week I climbed aboard my Ford 2600 tractor, set the height I wanted to cut, engaged the power take off, and off I went. For the next several hours it was just me, the tractor, and the field I was cutting. I had plenty of time to chill out and think even though the temperature was hovering close to one hundred degrees.

God often speaks to me during times like this from his creation. As I was grinding the imagesweeds into mulch, a rather large field mouse was forced out of his liar in the weeds and headed for a safer place. I didn’t think much about it until I made a round and headed back. Then out of nowhere I saw a reddish copper blur descending at breakneck speed toward the ground where the field mouse had fled. It was a rather large red-tailed hawk. In a blink of the eye, the hawk and his field mouse filet were headed for a private meal in a dining room in one of the pine trees that surround the field. It all happened in a matter of a few seconds.

imagesLater that afternoon, I flushed another large rodent out of his cozy condo in the underbrush and the very same thing happened—table for one and a free range mouse steak served rare off the grill in Chez Pine Tree. This hawk was racking up and waiting for me to set him up with the prime cuts.

As I pondered my contribution to the decimation of the of the field mouse population, I began to hear God’s unmistakable voice in my spirit. I had been witnessing far more than a lesson in nature’s food chain; I had been witnessing a picture with tremendous spiritual meaning. Let me show you what I mean.

Every person is like a garden or a field that must be tended or maintained very carefully. If we neglect that care—if we are inattentive to God—if we are careless and allow sin to take root—spiritual weeds start to grow. And if left untended for very long a fruitful garden or field can soon become overrun and turned into an overgrown jungle.

Weeds attract vermin like rats and field mice and allow them the cover to feed and breed without too much fear in the natural. Spiritual weeds also attract vermin of the demonic nature, and that undergrowth allows them to hide and carry out their work undetected. A little neglect, spiritually speaking, can quickly produce bondage in many different areas without a person even knowing it.

The only thing that gets rid of these spiritual weeds is confession and repentance—a high powered bush hog guided by you or me. Confession and repentance is our responsibility. Every so often, all us need to climb up on the tractor of prayer and unleash the bush hog on the weeds that have taken root in our own garden spot. (Stay out of your neighbor’s field—that’s his responsibility alone.)

“What about the hawk?” you might be thinking. “Where does he fit in all this?”

Oh, he’s there. Whenever we confess and repent, the enemy has no place to hide—no ground from which he can launch his attacks. He has to run, and when he does, the Hawk of heaven—the Holy Spirit—attacks with his talons bared and the enemy is no more. Gone in the blink of an eye.

What about your garden or field? Is it neatly manicured and mowed, or filled with underbrush and weeds? The Hawk of heaven is there—there high above your field…waiting. Why not crank the tractor and put the bush hog in gear?

Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice of the Church (Part 5)

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When you find the essence of something you find what it’s made of. Essence is its core—its heart and soul—its spirit—the life blood of what makes it tick. Without essence all you have is a façade.

God’s people were created to be a prophetic people. That is our essence in Christ. We are to hear what God is speaking and then speak it to the world in which we live. Being prophetic is not something we do, rather it is the essence of our being—it is our nature.

Well…if that’s the case what should a prophetic church composed of prophetic people look like?

First, a prophetic church reveals God’s heart. “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). Jesus came to reveal the heart of God, and in doing so, he demonstrated the infinite love of God. Our job has not changed.

Does your relationship with God stir up your own passions? Does it cause others to stop and wish that they had that kind of relationship with God? If it doesn’t—something is wrong. It is impossible to lead others into a place we ourselves have never been.

Secondly, a prophetic church fulfills biblical prophecy. Every Christians is the living fulfillment of biblical prophecy (or at least we are supposed to be) spoken thousands of years ago. Our existence, in spite of the devil’s attempt to exterminate us, is God’s promise fulfilled—his word vindicated. We are both living testimony and a prophetic voice crying out.

A prophetic church also provides a biblical standard from the Scriptures. We are the guardians of God’s word and our instructions are to pass it on to the next generation. Our job is to bring it alive as we teach, preach, and instruct. The Bible is not a Sunday school series of lessons or a curriculum for study. The New Testament epistles were written as letters to real people with real problems in real places. If we read them that way, it is easier to connect and understand the conflicts they faced. We are no different from them and the times we live in are eerily similar. We are connected and we must learn to appreciate that important connection as we preserve and accurately proclaim the Word of God.

Finally, a prophetic church moves when the presence of God (the cloud of his Spirit) moves. We are not a monument or a museum to the past activities of God. We are his body right now in the present. We must discern what God is doing…now! The message of his word never changes, but our methods and ministries must. Otherwise we will not reach the next generation.

The Spirit of God uses different means and methods to communicate the infallible message of God. We must join him in doing that. What worked ten or twenty years ago will not work now. The culture we must reach speaks a new language and employs different technology. Also, what works in one area of the country may not work in your area. Just because one church is successful with a methodology in their area does not automatically mean it will work in ours. We must tune into what the Spirit of God wants to do through us in our own community.

We must move out of the past and into the future with God. We carry the lessons of our history, wisdom, experience, and maturity with us, but we must trust the Holy Spirit to lead us or we will fail. God has moved, but most of the church is stuck in the ruts of the past where God once rested. Ruts are nothing more than graves with the ends kicked out. A prophetic church leaves no ruts because they are constantly moving in concert with the Spirit.

(In the next blog we will consider the final four components of a prophetic church.)

Reclaiming Biblical Healing (Part 13)

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Based on the previous twelve articles, we now have a biblical foundation from which to reclaim biblical healing—the same type of healing Jesus practiced and passed on to his disciples. But the gathering of information without the implementation of that knowledge being put into practice is useless. We have to practice what we learn to bring about change in the body of Christ.

How do we do that?

First, I challenge you to examine the truth. Is what you’ve read in these blogs what the Bible teaches? Is this what Jesus did? Did he authorize and empower his followers to do what he did? Get your Bible out and study the passages for yourself. Compare what has been written and what Scripture teaches. If they do not agree—disregard what I’ve said. But don’t disregard it because it questions what you’ve been taught in the past or because you have unanswered questions. Toss it only if goes against the biblical record. Examine it for yourself!

Secondly, if it is true—embrace the truth. Don’t be afraid of it or hold it at arm’s length. When you embrace something you wrap your arms around it and pull it deep into your heart. It becomes a part of your belief system and what you believe you act upon. As you embrace truth it becomes a part of who you are—far more than a belief.

If you examine and embrace the truth, the third step is a natural progression—you will experience that truth. To experience truth means you must appropriate the faith you have in what God says he will do and believe it will (not may or might) happen in Jesus’ name. If you embrace biblical healing you will pray for it because you have faith in God—the kind of faith that believes it is the will of God to heal. Experience is nothing more than stepping out in faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Once you experience it—you are hooked. It becomes real.

If you are willing to experience the truth then you will experiment with the truth. By that, I mean you will listen to the voice of God and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. What if nothing happens? What will you do? Most people throw their hands up and chalk the failure up to the sovereignty of God—it must be his will. Our question should be why God? How do I pray or minister in such a way that you will is not hindered? What is the source of this sickness or torment? What is the root and how do we get at it? How do I bring your healing power fully to bear on this issue? When one way doesn’t work, we don’t quit—we find another way to pray. We keep asking, seeking, and knocking until the will of God is brought to bear on the issue. We experiment. We keep trying until victory comes.

The final step comes out of this experimentation—you must express the truth. We have to transport this truth outside the safe and secure walls of our churches and take is to the world. God did not authorize and empower his body with the anointing, authority, and gifts of healings to create a circus event inside the church building. He did it so his people would take his presence and power into the darkness and bring light and deliverance to those who are in bondage. God has called us to search out the aisles of the grocery store and Wal-Mart, to set triage care centers at the gas station and the work place. He has called us to take the truth to the places where people are. We are to go—that is Christ’s mandate.

To reclaim biblical healing requires we must do all five of these things—not three or four—but all five. Only then will we walk in the manifest presence and power of the living Lord. And only then will we reclaim what has been lost.

Reclaiming Biblical Healing (Part 12)

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q10700606In our last blog we looked at three separate moments in church history that helped diminish the ministry of healing. I use the word “helped” because it was not a single event, but rather a series of events, teachings, and personalities that when combined swept away the clear instructions of Jesus and left us with a host of faithless theologies and unbelieving believers. Culture, theology, and politics in the church produced a reversal in beliefs and behavior.

Over time, all these things affected the Church’s teaching on spiritual gifts. It moved from a supernatural understanding to one based on natural aspects. Around 600 AD, Pope Gregory the Great issued a new list of spiritual gifts which consisted of wisdom, science, understanding, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear (imagine that—a spiritual gift of fear…huh? What about 2 Timothy 1:7 or 1 John 4:18?). Apparently Pope Gregory the Great thought the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and other places were incomplete. He choose not to include the gifts of healings, miracles, prophecy, word of knowledge and word of wisdom in his new and improved list. What the Pope decreed the priests taught and the people believed. Most of them could not read anyway so they had no way of checking what the Bible really said.

Another change took place with a division between the clergy and the laity. The priesthood of every believer was replaced with a priesthood of only the clergy that excluded the common people. And with this false division, a belief arose that soon became the practice of the church—only the bishop could exercise spiritual gifts.

Spiritual gifts did not cease, but regular Christians became fearful of exercising them. Ordinary Christians who gave prophetic words or employed works of healing or did miraculous things were labeled as heretics or witches. They were persecuted and put to death by drowning or burned at the stake. It became unhealthy, even deadly to use the very gifts Jesus had given his church to demonstrate the presence of the kingdom of God.

The interpretational methods of the Bible by the church also contributed to the loss of healing as a viable ministry. The corporate church began to use the miracles, healings, and resurrection that Jesus performed as proof texts to prove the deity of Christ. We tend to forget that although Jesus was one hundred percent God, he was also one hundred percent man. And during the 3 ½ years of his ministry everything he did—he did as man fully dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit and fully obedient to the Father. Otherwise you and I cannot do what Jesus said we could and would do according to John 14:12.  Biblically speaking, these things were secondary proofs, but not primary proofs. Jesus healed because God is good and it was a demonstration of the gospel of the kingdom.

Add to this that the church did not distinguish or understand the true meaning of suffering. Jesus and Paul talked about Christian suffering, but they were talking about  a persecution for following Christ, not sickness or infirmity. The church mistakenly defined suffering as anything that afflicted you—sickness, diseases, infirmity, poverty, pestilence, etc.—and declared it to be the cross you were to bear and glorify Jesus. In other words, when you are sick it is your cross to bear making you more Christ-like. Sadly, that belief still lives and breathes today in many churches. Many believers will talk about how God allowed, sent, or gave them this sickness or that disease so they could become better Christians. (By the way—that is why God the Father sent his Son to die on the cross. If something else could make you better, the Father wasted the Son.)

The Protestant Reformation recovered the Bible and salvation by grace through faith, but most of the other things that were lost, including healing, were not recovered. In fact, the Protestant Church of today thinks much like the Church of Martin Luther’s day, or the Church of the Dark Ages, or even the Jewish religious system of Jesus’ day.

We have invented all kinds of theologies to explain why God no longer does what he once did and then drape them in the trappings of biblical sounding excuses. Many churches and denominations believe the gifts of healing, as well as the other gifts, disappeared with the death of the last apostle or the canonization of the Scriptures. This is a powerless gospel and is not transforming the culture we live in. These excuses are nothing more than unbelief and a refusal to embrace the dynamic Jesus the Gospels declare. We have become guilty of the very thing that led to the crucifixion of Jesus—his wondrous works threaten our little religious kingdoms and he does not look or act like we think he should.

Biblical healing has been lost because we refuse to contend for it. Instead, we are willing to accept a series of flimsy excuses that attempts to explain why God won’t, don’t, or can’t. God has not changed—but over the centuries the Church has.