Holy Ghost in the kitchen

So that is pretty much the view we were forced to cope with all weekend. Lake Tahoe is beautiful!

Amazing things happened to me the entire trip including the ride home. After a fairly long time of just being drunk in the Holy Ghost, we made a stop in Carson City, and then headed back to Redding. Business was as usual, as it had been on the trip at least, until we started to prophesy over each other. A little ways into it I started to manifest a lot. I don't really know what was happened, however one person said that I was receiving the prophetic words given to other people for myself.

Their was definitely something major happening. It is hard to describe. I'll just mark it down as a very significant day (weekend and season) in my life for a few reasons. More on that some other time. :)

Today was our moving day - again. So I am writing from my home for the next two months. I will have my own room for the first time since moving to Redding and will be sleeping on a regular bed for the first time as well. There is an office big enough for Jeremy and I and there is also a pool (feel free to come over!). It should be a fun and exciting summer as many new things are going to happen. God is on the move! He is only waiting for us!

While talking on my cell phone tonight at a birthday party in the kitchen I started to get drunk. I figured that I shouldn't keep it all for myself so I distributed some to a few others. I was talking with a revivalist in Miami, FL who just connected with one of my old pastors. I am so excited to hear the revival reports that are going to come from them out of South Beach!

How will we respond to crisis?

I read an article last night that was talking about cancer as being a third wave disease from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. What would happen if the 40,000 workers who were exposed to the toxins at ground zero came down with a cancer type that has no treatment? I can tell you what I would do, I would organize a team to go to New York City to see every last one of them healed!

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast almost two years ago, a team from Bethel went to minister to the evacuees that were living in the Astrodome in Houston, TX. God showed up in amazing ways as people were healed of things that had kept them in bed or in wheelchairs and God even healed a man who walked by the team as they were praying for someone else!

Not that I can't ever experience a normal life, but I believe we are already living in a crisis situation where many are dying without knowing Jesus. I have had the tendency to live my life as normal amidst the brokenness of the people surrounding me. Each day is an opportunity to save someone from their own crisis situation - there is no need to wait for a national disaster to jump into action.

The people that we see during our normal activities could be drowning inside and desperately in need of a touch from God. However, without the covering of a crisis, it is easy to dismiss their demise as one of a million problems that can't all be fixed by one person. It doesn't have to be one person, but unfortunately in the church today the majority of the EHRs (Emergency Healing Revivalists) are just a handful of people (and I am NOT one of them yet). They are the few that produce the vast majority of the testimonies. The saying that 20% of the people get 80% of the work done may be true, or the percentage could be even more lopsided in the scarcity of the revivalists that harvest most of the crop.

Revival comes when God moves, but it also requires radical obedience by His people. When Peter was threatened to never talk about Jesus again in Acts 4, his response was to ask God for more boldness. He didn't back down, but asked for God to do more of what had just gotten them in trouble (healing the sick!). Lord, grant your servants boldness to take risks when we face disasters on a personal level in our daily lives!

A step in the right direction

So after a ridiculously productive morning in which I had everything I wanted to do for the day done by 8:15, I feel like I somewhat squandered the rest of the day. That might be the problem with waking up early is that if you run out of things to do you feel as though you are wasting time.

God has really been putting it on my heart recently that it is time to step out in faith and see Heaven invade earth. Time to get back to the passion that I had back in November and December when I wanted to see people get healed every day. That means that every day I need to be out giving God the opportunity to give people a life-changing encounter. So with that being on my heart, my faith has been increasing and my prayers times have gotten more passionate. Well, during my prayer time two days ago I felt that I was getting a word of knowledge for a man who was in there. I didn't talk to him that morning, but this morning I felt the same impression so I approached him. It turns out that he didn't have pain or deafness in either ear, but if he had and he had gotten healed, I think it would have been one of the more obscure times that people have gotten healed - at 5:30 in the morning!

After turning in the keys to our old apartment, Jeremy and I went to Winco so he could get some groceries. I was on the phone most of the time with a guy who I was hoping to work for. It is possible that things could still work out, but I am not so sure. Thankfully, I have other contacts that I can look to from people that I have talked to in the past week. While I was on the phone we passed at least a dozen legal targets (wow, I haven't said that in a while! A legal target is someone in a wheelchair, wearing a cast, with hearing aids, etc...). Finally, after I got off the phone, Jeremy realized that he forgot to get oatmeal, so we headed over in that direction. Right before we got there I saw a legal target (I almost feel bad for saying that, but it is the truth that God is setting us up when we don't have to get a word of knowledge to know where someone is in pain). So after following Jeremy for just a moment to the next aisle, I immediately turned around to talk to the guy.

I'll admit I noticed a sticker on his wheelchair that tipped me off that he was a Christian so I knew that I at least had that open door. I talked with him for a few minutes and found out a little bit about him before finally praying for him. I discovered something that I have never realized before in approaching people - I didn't pray for healing how I normally would have because of what I knew about him. Well, lucky for me, God can still do whatever He wants, regardless of the words used in my prayer.

It is a step in the right direction for me. I know this may come as a shocker, but that is the first time that I have prayed for someone when not on a planned outreach in quite a few months. As a friend told me last week, "the worst thing that could happen is that they say no." She was right. It is possible that I will inadvertantly offend people along the way, but better to plant a seed and give God an opportunity to change their life forever than to allow the fear of offending people to cripple me into being scared of approaching anyone and keep me from walking into the fullness of my calling.

It's summertime and the weather is hot!

It's that time of year again. I can't believe that I am in the beginning of another summer "vacation" from school after I knew that when I graduated from college two years ago, that I would never go back to school. Summer can be great or it can be horrible. It can be a time of burning with passion for God or a time of wondering how you wasted that much time and never did anything productive. I am determined that this summer will be one of setting goals and reaching them rather than having the problem of wondering what happened during the three month break from school.

I know it is going to sound like I have a lot of goals, but reality is that there are a lot of things that I still need to work on and the summer is a great time to do it. So here you will have a list of my goals in no particular order, because they are mostly things that I want to have part of my daily routine.

1. Find a full-time job as fast as I can. I want to be able to save at least $1,000 (minimum!) this summer to go towards either Jesus Culture England or towards school next year. I would really be happy if I could save $2,000 or do I hear $3,000 over the summer.

2. Read the Bible for an hour every day. There is so much that I have been missing out on because I don't know the word well enough. I already know more than I did a year ago, so that is good, but alas, I need to get in the word more.

3. Spend a few hours a day at the Prayer Chapel. I would actually rather say "spend a few hours soaking and praying at home" but since I don't know what that will look like yet, I will for now say at the prayer chapel.

(How many hours does David think there are in a day? He is crazy!)

4. Read other books on revival or related topics for an hour each day. I would like to spend additional time on weekends reading as well. There are quite a few books that have been on my "to read" list for a while now.

5. Get my body in shape. At first this will just be doing some stuff at home that I will not mention because I don't want to embarass others by my supernatural strength and it might morph into working out at a gym three times a week if I feel that I am making significant enough contributions to the summer savings fund (see #1). We'll see.

6. Meet at least once a week with my crazy revivalist friends. I desperately need to be around them so that I can glean from their strengths and grow fully into who I am called to be. This is beyond just hanging out, this is to strategize, to challenge each other, to experiment (Bethel/Redding is just a big laboratory), and to spread revival. I gotta get myself around people that are getting out of the box and out of the house out into the community!

What are your plans for the summer?

La Paz, Mexico - Highlight video

Here it is. Now that I am done with it I wish I had done more with it, but oh well, not bad for the first video I've ever made.

In other news, I am finding that I am getting back into really enjoying soaking again after several months where it has been difficult. It sounds dumb, but I used to just do it every spare moment I had. I am getting back to that again. Before school, after school, after youth. Watch out world, I'm about to be full of Jesus!

prepare today for the great harvest tomorrow

So tonight I went out on our Friday night outreach at church. I will preface what I say with being glad that I went, so don't take this the wrong way. It started out as our group split into the specific outreach that we would be going on, followed by breaking our Treasure Hunt group into smaller teams. Soon after several of the students began barking at each other talking about who was more anointed and would see more people get saved tonight. Although I know they weren't being completely serious about their arguing, it still annoyed me that this was even happening. We should be encouraging one another, not tearing each other down! Other than asking them to get along I stayed out of it because I did not want to be included in it.

As one group left someone stated to me that while my group is still "stuggling" to fill out our treasure maps with what God was showing us, they were going to be out winning souls. Then repeatedly as they left they shouted back to me that they were going to see more people get saved than my group. Now I know that this person has a sarcastic sense of humor, but do we really need to throw competition into the church as though it is a rivarly game in college football? I think not.

Anyway, it was a much different dynamic this week. One guy I didn't know at all and two other guys could have been leading groups. We went to Safeway and couldn't seem to find anyone on our lists. After a stop at Walgreens in which two of our guys prayed for a missionary from Sudan we headed off to get gas and then go downtown. As we got near, the guys wanted to stop at the Safeway that we were passing so I pulled in. After walking around for a minute some of the guys spot some people. One guy starts to pray for a lady and as he does I feel something in my right ear that had caused me to write down "deafness - right ear" on my paper when we were at the church. So after he is done I ask her if she has any problems with her ear and she does! She had gotten punched in the ear and it damaged her ear drum. C'mon God! Her hair was covering up her ear and she wasn't wearing a hearing aid so I never would have known!

I was getting really tired and so I was definitely ready to go but so when we got back to the church I decided to go soak and then read some at the prayer house. I am glad I did. I read some out of a book called "The New Mystics" by John Crowder. It was just really inspiring me to go after God and change the world through the gospel of power with demonstration of signs and wonders. Then on the way home I got to thinking about one of the dreams I have which is to see complete transformation of our country's biggest cities. I just began seeing myself doing power evangelism in Manhattan as the beginning work of seeing New York City won for the Kingdom. Oh was it beautiful! We were feeding the poor and homeless as well as seeing multitudes saved, healed, and delivered. I couldn't help but get excited to read that John Alexander Dowie saw the city of Chicago get transformed completely! And I can go beyond what he did! I can't wait!

That Ain't Right (Part 1)

As I talked with my paralyzed friend the other day I realized how my fight to see the disabled healed carries so much more weight than I realized. I don’t really know how many people there are in the world who are significantly suffering due to health problems but it has to be hundreds of millions if not billions. It is so easy when faced with such a big problem to just throw ones hands up in the air in disgust not even knowing where to start.

Earlier this week I decided that I needed to start over in my quest to right what the devil has made wrong. I am tired of offering sympathy to those who are suffering. Although I have been told that I am full of compassion for others, the difference between it and sympathy is doing something about it. So I am gonna do something about the suffering that is going on in the world.

I don’t know what it will look like, but I know that I can no longer sit back and wait, merely hoping that it will happen. What is it? God’s spirit being poured out on me in such a way that the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the gospel is preached to the poor. In the past I would have just thought that it would look like crusades in as many countries as was feasible, but today I realized that I can’t afford to end up like any past revivalist who died without passing the baton to the next generation of leaders, equipping the body of Christ to do the same, and making sure that people realized that the power was from God and not from them.

Prayer is the backbone of ministry and yet that seems to be one of the first things to go when life becomes busy. I am determined to make sure that my bank account is full so that when I need to make a big withdrawal, I have enough in my account to cover it time and time again. As I prayed I believed that God was going to release his healing anointing to heal my friend as well as the countless others that I will come across in my time on earth.

Remember how Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness? Then I am sure you also remember that the prayers of the righteous man are powerful and effective.

There comes a time when an injustice goes too far. That time is now. What would you do if your home was completely destroyed by a natural disaster and you had no shelter, only the clothes on your back (if you were lucky), you have no source of food and you haven’t eaten in weeks? In Mozambique, severe flooding has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and without government aid as we are fortunate to have in the United States, many people are suffering and facing horrible conditions.



The above picture is of a refugee camp where the shelters are sticks with grass over them. That camp was visited by Iris Ministries and was brought food for its 6,000 refugees. Iris Ministries is actually a great example of equipping the body of Christ, raising up leaders, and preaching the Gospel to the poor. And I shouldn’t neglect mentioning that through their ministry the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the dead are raised!

The deaf hear, the mute speak, the blind see, and the lame walk!

So I wound up being put on the team that was all people from the worship team for Sunday morning, er afternoon church. So while everyone else loaded up in our vans, we waiting to get picked up by the pastor. We drove into town down some dirt roads, which was odd since the street would look the same as the one next to it minus the pavement, and picked up 3 men. Now there were 10 of us in the van.

We drove some more and stopped on the side of a street. A few got out to go pray for someone and I was told to stay with the van. So four spanish speakers and two english speakers were left in the van with not much to say to each other. So one of the guys pulls out his guitar and starts to play some worship songs. Luckily my fellow english speaker had learned that song in Spanish and so I played the djembe. We then sang it in English, switching back and forth between the languages. It was great.

After probably 30 minutes of worship we were all getting very hot as there was no breeze where we were. Soon after that the rest of our group came back reporting that the son of one of the men we had picked up was healed of asthma in the waiting room of the hospital! From there we went to the gas station and when the pastor said the attendant had pain in her foot we got out to pray and God healed her!

The drive to the church was an hour outside of La Paz. They told us that the people were migrant farm workers. Knowing this I think we all had very low expectations of what the church would be like. I think these expectations were lowered even more based on the dirt road that we drove on for miles. It is one thing to drive on a dirt road in a city. It is a whole different thing to drive on a dirt road in the middle of the desert where you can see no buildings at all.

I was starting to wonder if they would have any power at the church and I didn't even think that the church would be in a town, but rather just on a plot of land somewhere. Well, eventually we start approaching the farm land and it wasn't anything like what I had expected. Other than the desert backdrop, it looked just like anything I had seen back in Florida. Then we approached the town.

It reminded me of hearing stories of people that live on remote islands where groceries and other supplies are shipped in once a week. Even though it was just an hour outside of La Paz, it was remote enough that it probably does face some of the same difficulties as a small island.

They drove us around the town which took just a minute or two but described to us the slave-like conditions of this massive warehouse that provided a garage type home for some 3,000 people. We returned to the church and after quickly setting up their speakers and microphones the service started just after 12:30.

They had me play djembe which was interesting since I didn't know any of the songs and the worship leader didn't speak english. It was an interesting experience to be worshipping God with no fewer than 10-15 mosquitoes flying around you.

After worship they brought up a young boy who has been deaf and mute since birth. We began to pray for him and within a few minutes he responded to us snapping behind his head. So while our group leader preaches and our lone spanish speaker translates, the two girls and I take the boy out of the service to continue praying for him. Over the next half hour or so he begins responding with great frequency to snaps and then begins to speak what the boy who had been healed of asthma says to him.

The smile on the boy's face was priceless. Since it was such a special moment I kept switching between praying for him and getting the miracle on video. Praise God I had a video camera with me! Our greatest moment with him was probably when the young helper sat behind him out of view, spoke and then he spoke what he heard! When we went back to the service we showed the congregation the boy's progress and then went into praying for the people for healing.

I prayed for one of the young men that rode with us and God healed his shoulder. Then I told him to pray for his mother's ankle and God healed it too! Since there were only 2 people other than our team member that knew any english I just went around laying hands on everyone without knowing what was wrong. Others did the same. Our two girls prayed for a woman whose ear opened up. At the end of the service 20 people lined up to share the testimony of what God completely healed. Not bad considering there were probably between 30 and 40 adults there (plus another 40-50 kids).

I did pray extensively for a young girl with club feet who was in a wheelchair. I forget if she had any other problems, but even though I felt an anointing there as I prayed, we saw no improvement. Around 4 in the afternoon church was over and we left to go meet up with the rest of the team that had been at our missionaries' base (different from the base where we stayed). Exhausted, we slept most of the ride back, well, most of the ride after we got back on paved roads.

Once we got back we quickly grabbed some of the left over lunch which was now essentially the time when we normally had dinner. Then we left to go the boardwalk for our evening outreach. They had a worship band that was made up of some of the best worshippers in the city. They were amazing! After a few songs, the local church did a drama, then two people on our team shared testimonies, followed by our team doing the drama. They had no way of playing their music for it so they had me play the djembe and the keyboardist from the band play as well. It actually turned out better than with the CD because I could go with what they were doing and the keyboardist followed me!

Immediately after the drama was over I was introduced to preach. Although there was a crowd gathered I must say that probably all but a few were from the church and most of the ones that weren't were probably being talked to by people on our team. Nevertheless, one man raised his hand saying that he needed healing when I asked but he had been at our meetings all week.

A little while after I was done I went to get back my video camera from one of our guys and on my way I was grabbed by a woman from the church to pray for someone. The woman had partial deafness in both ears and had rhumatory arthritis in her left foot. I prayed for her foot first for maybe 30 seconds and all the pain left! Then I prayed for her ears once and in under a minute she had complete hearing! Glory to God! I tried to ask how deaf she was but they couldn't quite figure it out but just answered that it was pretty bad.

As a group that night our team lead 20 or 22 people to Christ including a police officer and another man who had said that Jesus was bogus. That man apparently had refused a prophetic picture and then after I preached went back to the guy who made it for him and our guy led him to Christ and got him filled with the Holy Spirit!

One of our leaders prayed for a few siblings who had all been cursed by witchdoctors and went blind at age 18. Yo, don't mess around with witchcraft. She started breaking things off of them and leading them through repentance and at least one of them (I forget the whole story now) regained partial sight!

When we were leaving after getting some more ice cream one of our guys stopped to pray for a man on crutches. He had been walking with crutches for the past 6 years due to a knee injury caused from a car accident. After praying for him the man started to walk around so I got out my video camera and got it on tape! Then our guy was asked to pray for a woman with a brain tumor. They were touched and as they left the man gave his crutches to his wife to hold as they walked away!

Why revival tarries

"If we were as scared to miss fire baptism as we are to miss water baptism, we would have a flaming Church and another Pentacost."

- Leonard Ravenhill


"Oh! for a heart that is burdened!
Infused with a passion to pray;
Oh! for a stirring within me;
Oh! for His power every day.
Oh! for a heart like my Saviour,
Who, being in an agony, prayed.
Such caring for OTHERS, Lord, give me;
On my heart let burdens be laid.
My Father, I long for this passion,
To pour myself out for the lost-
To lay down my life to save others-
"To pray," whatever the cost.
Lord, teach me, Oh teach me this secret,
I'm hungry this lesson to learn,
This passionate passion for others,
For this, blessed Jesus, I yearn.
Father, this lesson I long for from Thee-
Oh, let Thy Spirit reveal this to me."

- Mary Warburton Booth


Today I read Leonard Ravenhill's book "Why Revival Tarries." If you want to see revival, you should read this book. If it doesn't grip you then you should check your pulse and call a friend to have them raise you from the dead.

A friend from school loaned it to me saying that she thought I should read it. I believe that I got out of it what she was hoping: an increased burning passion to pray and preach the gospel. I am just glad that I decide that I would read it today instead of after missions week.

In a way, the book scared me. I am scared that I could lose the intense passion that so gripped me as I read. It scares me to think that I could forget about something that moved me that much. It scares me to think that I could get too busy to have time to pray and think that I am being more effective in helping people.

Well, here we go, off to Mexico. Many updates will come when I get back. It's revival time!