Disciples Who Hear God's Voice

  In Kenya, a young man asked me if I thought God gave special grace to major church leaders so that they could say and do the kinds of unbiblical things he is seeing from the American church without losing their anointing. He asked this because of a preacher he listened to out of Tulsa OK, who uses profanity in sermons, wears women's clothes to preach in, and among other antics, squirted syrup all over an open Bible during a sermon to illustrate, well, no one really knows. Does God give a guy like that special grace to teach nonsense? I told the young man in Kenya that I thought it was the exact opposite. I told him what the Bible says about teachers, that we will be held to a higher standard for what we teach, not given special passes. ____ If you're wondering what that story has to do with the video above, it's this: Recently, a number of prominent leaders, ministries, movements, and "prophets" have been coming under considerable scrutiny for being lovers of mo...

Last week, I brought up the topic of spiritual attack coming against the church. In my previous post, I said that I get strangely rejuvenated in situations like these. It may be as simple as the fact that the reality of the darkness always makes me more aware of the light, but it may be something more spiritual. I think God manifests himself more in and through us when we are more aware of our need for Him. Obviously, we need Him all the time, but in the midst of attack, we REALIZE we need Him. One thing I'm noticing across our church body is that we seem to be hearing God speak more clearly than usual. In a normal month, I'll usually come across 2 or 3 stories where people hear God speak and receive some kind of confirmation. However, in the 30 minutes following the sermon last week, I heard 5 or 6! I've continued to hear more and more throughout the week. Most of these testimonies would be a bit difficult to try to explain here, but one excellent example gives us the titl...

We have begun our season of prayer and fasting--incase you were wondering why you were so hungry! We kicked things off on Wednesday with a worship night that felt quite powerful to me. I was on stage banging away on a hand drum called a cajón, but I could hear the congregation singing and shouting pretty passionately the entire time.  That worship night marked the first of several special prayer nights that we will hold throughout the season of prayer and fasting. We're hoping that people make a special effort to join in to corporate prayer if possible.  On Sunday, we are also planning on changing up the liturgy a little by moving the sermon earlier in the service to leave more time for worship and ministry time at the end. Even though it wasn't originally a part of the plan, this first Sunday of Lent will have a couple of baptisms to kick it all off.  ______ As this season of prayer and fasting kicks off, I find myself rejuvenated in prayer , not necessarily because of t...

Around this time last year, I preached a sermon simply called Fasting in a sermon series called Make Disciples. In that sermon, I gave the following definition of Biblical Fasting: Abstaining from food and sometimes water for spiritual purposes: expressing sorrow, seeking intervention from God, and subjugating your flesh to the Spirit .  Starting on February 18, we will enter into a time of fasting as a church. In my last post, Anyone Up for a Nice Long Fast? , I described the two fasts we will be choosing from: The Daniel Fast or a Sun-up to Sun-down fast. Again, you're free to modify either of those to make them less or more extreme. Go check out that post for the logistics. In this post, we need to focus on the benefits and risks of fasting as a church.

The season of Lent starts February 18 and ends on Easter Sunday, April 5. As a church, we will be joining together in fasting.  We will choose a type of fast that works for us individually, and we will fast from Monday through Saturday, and break the fast each week on Sunday as we celebrate together.  For more information on the theology of Fasting, please watch this message called Sermon on the Mount: When you Fast   Here are two options to choose from for a fast that you can dive into for this season of Lent.

The biggest question in Power Evangelism is the title of this post: What if you pray for a stranger, but they don't get healed? I am both happy and sad to say that I have figured this one out the hard way. On Friday, February 6, at the Remnant Radio Conference in San Diego, I'm going to teach on Power Evangelism and answer this question, but here are the cliff notes of what I'll say.  When it comes to healing in Power Evangelism, there seem to be two approaches: Healing as an Opener and Healing as a Sign.  Healing as an Opener I don't personally take this approach often, but this is what most people think of when they imagine Power Evangelism. This looks like offering to pray for healing as your introduction to the conversation. Understandably, if the person actually gets healed right after you say "hello," it's going to be a pretty easy transition to preaching the Gospel. Here's what you can say to get into it: "I'm a Christian, and I pray f...