Praying for others

One of the most interesting things for me in my walk with the Lord is praying for others….

There have been times when I really do not want to pray for someone and then the Lord touches them.

There have been times when I really do not want to pray for someone and then the Lord does not touch them.

There have been times when I feel the Holy Spirit leading me to pray for someone and nothing happens.

And then, there have been times when I feel the Holy Spirit leading me to pray for someone and something happens!!

How does this happen? Why would the Lord tell you to go pray for someone and not heal them? Doesn’t God desire all to be healed?

If you don’t know how to answer these questions you have been in the same boat as myself. Last night I was at IHOP’s “Encounter God Service”  asking these questions to the Lord. It has been a long, slow, and every now and then exciting journey to learn why God does what He does when I pray for others. I don’t think I will ever fully know why He does what He does because I am man and He is God, but because of that very reason (I am man and He is God) I believe He will share hidden things to me (Daniel 2:22).

Here’s an entry from my journal that I wrote last night:

Tonight as I went up to pray for others I was feeling the Lord’s presence. I began praying for a man with a skin condition and I continually asked him if there was a change and continued praying, no result. I then prayed for another man, going through the interview process again of, “How does it feel”, “Ok we’ll pray a little more”, and “Try testing it out.” Again nothing. I prayed for a total of three people for a combined time of approximately 30 minutes. There was nothing but  many, “Bless you’s” and “Thank you for praying”.

I then went to the back right corner of the building frustrated at God. I was confused as to why He would call me to pray for people and not provide the power and results of my prayer. I began to worship as the worship team began to lead the room in, “In Christ Alone.” As I worshipped I felt confidence to once again go up and pray healing over people. I felt the Holy Spirit just as I had the first time I went up. The only difference between the first and second time praying was that I brought a friend/classmate of mine to pray with me. I was really holding onto the “two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name, He would be there.”

This time the Lord revealed Himself in powerful ways. I was receiving visions over people (something that hasn’t happened in months) and we were seeing the God manifest Himself in our weak prayers!! My friend and I then split up and the Lord continued to use both of us throughout the room.

It was an honor being used as a vessel for Jesus’ healing power. Overall we saw an elbow healed, a man with hearing problems get healed, and we saw the Lord put a burden of intercession on a student!!!

After the service I went home and asked the Lord the 3 questions presented earlier. I felt more clarity on each one as I waited on the Lord…

God, how does this happen? (This meaning sometimes He heals, or doesn’t heal, regardless of what I pray or say.)

—This has always been an intimate topic for me. There have been nights when I do not want to lead worship and despite my heart and feelings in the moment of singing He comes.

—God is God. He does as He pleases. BUT HE LOVES PROCESS! The one thing I felt Him say to this question last night was, “I LOVE PROCESS.” He will use people to plant a seed, He will use people to water that seed, and He will use people to grow, mature, and eventually reap what was sown.

—The fact that God loves the process of restoration and of healing also ties in with the second question:

“Why would the Lord tell you to go pray for someone and then not heal them?”

—As previously stated He loves process.

—He also wants to promote faith and obedience. The faith comes from going, “Lord, You said You would heal them. I believe I hear Your voice and I believe that You will heal them. If not now then sometime down the road”. I have heard IHOP leaders say stuff like, “I feel like someone needs prayer for a left shoulder.” And no one responds. If that was me I would’ve been like, “I’m human, oh well.” But about a half hour later he’ll call the same thing forth and someone new is the room and they raise their hand and get healed. That comes from confidence that they heard God’s voice and faith that the Lord will fulfill what He originally said.

Doesn’t God desire that all would be healed?

—One of the mistakes we commonly make is that God always wants what we want. We need to realize His sovereignty in ALL situations. Even small prayer times, He is sovereign.

—God does desire that all will be healed. He sent Jesus to die that all who desire to be healed WILL BE HEALED (it just depends on whether God will heal them in this life or the next).

Read that last line again because that is the main point of this blog. God wants us to be healed so He brought us Jesus. Jehovah-Rophe (the God who heals). Whether on earth or in heaven we (believers) will be healed. Right now believers have resurrected bodies waiting for them!!!

Bday blessing

Bday Prophecy

Click on the link above.

(the first minute is just music lol)

This is from my birthday when I had a group of friends come over and bless/prophesy over me!! God is so good to me :)

Gold

Can I just tell you that I love the manifest presence of the Lord!

During class today I looked down at my hands and there were beastly chunks of gold. It was crazy!!! Now things like this have been quite normal over the past week or I guess re-occurring. I am not saying this to brag at all because there was a very important message behind it.

This is kind of strange but here it goes… I have some of the dryest skin in the history of history. When I do not put lotion on it can get really bad. The past few days I have been busy and have completely forgot to put on lotion. During the beginning of class I looked at them and was like, “Oh crap, my first day of working at Applebee’s and they’ll see my nasty dry skin.” I was extremely frustrated. As class went on I began to look at my hands more and more and all of the sudden out of nowhere chunks (LITERAL CHUNKS) of gold were on my hands! I then heard the Lord say (clearer than usual), “Even though you might not like your core, I love it and want to make it beautiful.” And that was it. I actaully typed more, got convicted, and deleted because that’s all He said. But it is soooo true. He sees our broken weak weak weak weak weak weak self and adds his gold to it. He purifies our hearts.

“God I thank you for taking me in and loving me. In my weakest most vulnerable moments You make me strong. I ask that I would see myself as You see me. That You would continue to work on me until I am walking in obedience. God I am asking that revelation of who I am in Your eyes would be revealed to me in the name of Jesus. Strengthen me God. Thank you for dying for me, thank you for loving me at my worst, God I thank you for being there, for sending Your Spirit to dwell in me, and I thank you for Your gold, God for this gift that You gave me. Reveal more, reveal the mysteries of heaven that they may dwell and burn in my heart, God I ask that I would truly long for the day of Your sons return. Purify my mouth God, that my words may be holy, and that I may be set apart for You. Lord bless me and keep me, cause Your face to shine on me. Oh God that I would reflect Your heart…

Amen

Youth Group

Over the past 3 weeks my and two of my closest friends have been helping out at a youth group. And last night we were able to go out with the Youth Pastor, Pastor Joe. We had alot of things on our heart that we wanted to talk to him about and apparently he had some stuff too. Overall it has been kind of rough, but I felt that last night we saw breakthrough, so I thought I’d share it here.

The worship team at this youth group has been without a drummer so I was able to play last night and that was really cool. Brittany has been meeting all the girls and I believe has already had impact with them. After youth group last night Xander, Britt, and I went out with Pastor Joe and the youth group worship leader to talk about what they want us to do. Overall they would like us to help lead worship. I think it is so cool how God brings people together, if Xander, Brittany, and I had one strength it be music and that is the thing they are lacking. How cool is that?!? Another awesome thing that we are excited about is that the youth group just got a builing that holds a thousand people but there are 40 ppl in this youth group, so I thought that was interesting. A guy came up to Joe and handed him the keys and ownership to the building and said, “Do what you want with it.” And he also said, “Kutless is coming to play here for you guys.” So that is also cool. The one thing that concerned me was my work schedule. I am already asking off Thursday nights and Friday nights because of Basketball and Prayer Meetings, so I knew that I would not be able to request off Wendesday nights. The Youth Pastor was really cool about everything and told us not to worry about it.

Another cool thing that happened last night that came after youth group was when a guy came up to me and asked if I would play drums at his church!!! His wife was the worship leader for the youth and we all just fell in love with them, they are such a great couple. So I might be able to drum for 2 worship teams a week. God is so good in opening doors and closing doors. :-)

God’s Love

    1 John 4:8 says,  “God is love.” When you look up love in the dictionary you will see that it is a noun and a verb. You can love someone and you can also have love. When you read what John wrote here you need to realize that out of anyone, John knew God’s love. He had experience after experience of the love of God. Jesus washed his feet and allowed him to lay on his breast. John watched Jesus die on the cross and as he watched the death of his Savior he saw Jesus’ love as He gave His mother to John. John’s identity was in the fact that he was the one whom in Jesus loved (John 13:23). He was confident in God’s love.
    In 1 John 4 John talks extensively about love. In verse 10 he tells us what love is. 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Propitiate is an interesting word. The definition is, “win or regain the favor of (a god, spirit, or person) by doing something that pleases them.” Something was not right when Adam and Eve sinned and God knew that something needed to be done. In order to get God’s favor back for humanity Jesus showed us all what love looks like. He came to the earth as a man, lived his live like a servant, and in the end he ultimately died on a cross for our sins.
    I do not think we will ever fully grasp what kind of sacrifice this was. It was a sacrifice for Jesus to come to the earth and to give his life, as Christians we always think of this as the ultimate sacrifice and I believe that it totally is, but I think there is more behind this sacrifice that we have to search out. God also made a sacrifice. In John 3:16 it says, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life.”  God gave us His only son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did not give up on us when we failed Him, but He continuously pursued us. We have seen Jesus’ love in His coming to us and loving us, and we have seen His Father’s love as He has given us His son. But the Holy Spirit also sacrificed. Before Jesus’ death the Holy Sprit never dwelled inside man, people would feel his presence but never was he actually inside them! The Holy Spirit shows extravagant love and humility. He chose to dwell inside of us! I believe that someday we will see things that he has done for us and we will be in awe of the work of the Spirit.
    In 1 Corinthians 13 it talks about love. There is much humility in love. It does not boast! If I were Jesus the first guy I would visit after the resurrection would be all the doubters, but instead He was humble and visited Mary, a nobody. Love is also patient. Jesus showed some of the ultimate patience with his disciples, there were so many times they asked some of the most pathetic questions and Jesus chose love, He was not easily angered by their questions.
    His love is beyond comprehension. Someday we will meet Him and we will be shocked at His love for us. Just the fact that He is ravished by our weak love shocks me. When someone sits in the prayer room and chooses Him, he is overtaken! His desire is that not one human would go to hell. He wants to fascinate our hearts for eternity, and He will! He is always looking upon us with love, because He is love!

Guitar Center

A cool story….

So there is this large guitar/music store called guitar center. My roommate David needed to go and get some stuff so I decided to go with him. We decided to go into these “sound proof” guitar rooms where you can just pick up guitars and play. We started playing and just the joy of the Lord was there, a kid named Al saw us from outside and decided to just come in and sit. We continued playing not even saying anything just playing and he saw my IHOP shirts and realized we were Christians. He then asked us if he could play and after he did we talked about the Lord for a long time. He kind of shared his testimony and then we shared a brief testimony. He told that he had been having panic attacks and we laid hands on him and began to bless him and we asked the Lord for healing right there in the middle of a really scary music store!!! GOD IS SO COOL! I love how he uses us daily :)

God’s Faithfulness

Faithfulness is something that is hard to come by in our generation. We have been raised to think that faithfulness is lost. Faithful means, “loyal, constant, and steadfast.” I am here to tell you that our God is faithful and that he calls us to be faithful also. There are so many examples of God’s faithfulness in scripture. I don’t even need scriptures to find God’s faithfulness because when I look at the way that he has continuously pursued me I see his faithfulness. There are times in my life where I think there is no way God is going use me but he was faithful.  We as Christians (no matter how old or young we may be) need to set ourselves before God and believe that he will show himself to us because he is faithful.
It is amazing that constant shows up in the definition of faithful. That is our God, consistent. In the Bible the Lord tells Israel that He will be their Lord and that they will be His people and throughout time Israel has done so much evil in the sight of the Lord. He then came in the form of man and Israel denied Him and crucified Him! The price that He has paid for that nation is so great I do not believe that we can fully comprehend it. Even with Israel denying to call God their one true God he continuously pursues them, because He is faithful (consistent) to His word.
In 2 Timothy 2:13 Paul talks to Timothy about God’s faithfulness. In chapter 2 verse 12 Paul says, “If we endure, We shall also with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. These are all pretty obvious, if we endure and make it through life we will go to heaven and if we do not and deny Jesus, He too will deny us and we will spend eternity in hell. Paul then throws us a curveball in verse 13. He says, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny himself. In John Wesley’s commentary on this verse he said something profound. He said that the, “He cannot deny himself” part of the verse is speaking of God’s word. He said that if God has spoken something he cannot deny it, he always remains faithful! Amen! I like that commentary. If God has spoken to us he will follow through, he remains faithful.
Faithful also shows up in Matthew 24 and 25, but the chapter I am going to focus on is Matthew 25. In Matthew 25 Jesus mentions very briefly how important faithfulness really is. He tells his disciples a story of a man who gives some of his servants money. He gives some more than others and when he returns some of them doubled what they received and others did not do anything with what they had received. The interesting point behind the faithfulness that Jesus is talking about in this story is what I like to call, “Being faithful with what God has given you.” The master in this story was not expecting the servant that he gave the one talent to produce ten talents. The master gave one guy five talents and another two talents, they both doubled what the master had given them and the master’s reaction was the same for both of them. He replies, “Well done, good and faithful servant! We need to be faithful, or loyal, with what the Lord has given us. The owner was just as pleased with the servant who got two talents as the man who got ten.
Jesus is honestly just looking for faithfulness in our lives. Whether we bring in 100 people to the kingdom or 1 we need to go for it! The thing is that we have no idea how much we have been given so we need to be able to share as much as possible and we need to believe that God will do his  part and be faithful.

Trey Moore!!!

I want you all to check this out! I found this guy named Trey Moore online. He is a professional baseball player…. Click on the link:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=mooretr01

This guy is named Tre, BUT HIS REAL NAME IS WARREN!!! And his birthday is October 2nd… My new life goal is to meet this man :-)

A little something…

I had no clue people still read this thing, so I thought I would give out some stuff that I have been meditating on and thinking upon. And don’t worry these are free ;-)

In class this week we have been reading John 13-17 over and over. We read it and continuisly studied it for about 4 hr’s over the span of 2 days. I have been shocked by a few things while meditating on this….

The first thing came as Jesus was washing his disciples feet. His servant heart and humility. Washing someones feet is about as low as you can go and it wasn’t like washing normal American’s feet. One of my friends went to Isreal and he told me that you can have up to one inch of dirt on your floor if you left your door open because of the strength of the wind. For Jesus to wash his disciples feet was a huge deal! This did not take ten minutes, I believe it could have taken a few hours (10 min per disciple?)…

On top of washing his disciples feet, Jesus washed Judas’ feet. I think I could have washed my enemies feet, I really do. But the thing that gets me is the love that is in Jesus’ heart as he washes his disciples feet. Even Judas. It says in John 13 that Jesus loved all of his disciples until thee end. He loved Judas until the end. When we look at the verse where Jesus tells us to love our enemy and when Paul says, “Bless your enemies” we can all look at the story of Jesus’ love for Judas to the death and realize that he showed us a great example of this!

The other thing that popped out to me was really really really really really really cool. In John 13:21 it says, “Jesus was troubled in Spirit” after that in John 13:23 it says, “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” First off John’s life identity was that he was the one that Jesus loved. He was confident in the Father’s love. THAT IS AWESOME. The second thing I realized is the true love that took place between John and Jesus. Most scholars say that John is 13-17 years old during John 13. This kid (John) realizes that his best friend is troubled so he lays his head on Jesus’ bosom. John was there for Jesus, he knew the cost to follow Him and he chose to love Jesus.

Today Jesus is looking friends. He wants those who will stay up with, those who will love him. He wants those who will sit with him and feel his heart…

God’s Mercy

I have been overcome this week by God’s mercy. I looked up the definition of mercy and when I did my view of mercy changed. The definition of mercy is: “Compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” I always believed that mercy is when I am in sin God still likes me but the line that really pops out to me is where it says, “Whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” Our God is such a powerful God. There are times when I personally feel like there is no way I can search him out and yet he wants to reveal himself to us and not only does he want to reveal himself but he also is willing to have mercy on us.
Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Everyone of us are in need of mercy. We have all sinned and those who think we have not then we are sinning or lying. We are in desperate need of a Savior who loves mercy. Our Savior Jesus Christ does not only love mercy but he actually is mercy! Mercy represents who Jesus is. He has shown mercy over and over again in the Bible (mercy shows 282 times in the NKJV) and he is still showing mercy today! One thing that we need to get a hold of is that just because God will always love us and grant us mercy doesn’t mean that we are allowed to continue in the sin that has a hold on us. God does not give mercy and then allow us to continue in sin because he is a jealous God, he is giving us mercy so that we might be able to realize that what we did was wrong and then return to him with all we have.
There are many examples of mercy in the Bible but my favorite example is found in the New Testament. The story is found in Luke 18, it is a very simple story and there are several meanings behind it. Jesus is walking toward Jericho when a blind beggar cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The crowd tells the man to be quiet but he cries out again, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus asks the man what he needs and the man tells him he wants to see. After hearing this Jesus tells him that his faith has made him well and the man received his sight. Throughout the past week I have been reading this story and I’ve learned a great deal of God’s mercy and how we need to view it. Now if I were this man I would not be crying out for God’s mercy, it would be the last thing on my mind. I would be going, “Jesus! Heal me!” but the blind beggar knew that he was not going to get any better without Jesus, so throughout this past week I have been asking Jesus, “Why did he ask for mercy?” I felt that Jesus was saying it all begins with mercy; our hearts are tenderized as we realize what Jesus has done for us, who he is, and the mercy that he wants to give us. The blind beggar knew the thing that I have been learning all week. He knew that mercy is from someone who is superior or “One’s power to punish or to harm.” He had revelation of who Jesus was and still able to ask for mercy.
As children of God we need to know that when we are struggling that God is not an angry God and that he loves to show us mercy. When we realize this we will be able to truly walk out faith. I believe that if Christians can get the right understanding of mercy that the devil will have a hard time coming in and convicting us of our sins and making us feel guilty. We just need to realize that God is good and his mercy endures forever!