Mushrooming and hearing God

And other ramblings and stories

The other day I discovered a book about how God does not speak with us.  The author (a pastor) firmly believes that Christians cannot hear from God directly.  I didn’t read it.  The title itself, and advance knowledge of the general thesis was nauseating enough for me.  Publishing a book like that is kind of like popping a high-five with the devil, celebrating keeping people spiritually deaf.  It’s like a relationship where you get to read The Letter of God all you want, but by no means are you allowed to ever have the audacity to pickup the phone and call Him.  Jesus said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4  It’s important to point out what Jesus did not say.  He did not say “…but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.”  He used the word proceedeth which is ongoing.  By no means am I saying that in any way, shape, or form something should be added to the holy canon of scripture.  But the heavenly manna that we all need is the ongoing, continued, every-day word of God proceeding from His mouth!

Kris Vallotton: I don’t think the Coronavirus is the worst thing that’s happening

There's something spreading around the planet, and it's more dangerous than the Coronavirus

There’s something spreading around the planet, and it’s more dangerous than the Coronavirus. This was transcribed from a message by Kris Vallotton called The Obedience of Faith. Kris Vallotton is a prophet, and the senior associate leader of Bethel Church, Redding, CA.  I wholeheartedly agree with this word!  The following is from Kris Vallotton’s message.

4 DANGERS OF THE ROCKSTAR CULTURE IN MINISTRY TODAY

A PROPHETIC VISION

This was a vision I saw as I was praying. In the vision I saw Jesus in my church, standing in front of the stage at a table, with a large ladle in His hands. He was serving our church hot soup. It was warming, and really hit the spot, like hot soup on a cold winter day. People were walking around enjoying the soup with smiles on their faces, content with the warmth in thier bellies.  Then all the sudden, in a blur, Jesus was drawn up and disappeared, like he ascended to heaven suddenly. Now there was a steaming pot of soup with a left-behind ladle still rocking back and forth from when Jesus dropped it. In a few moments, it became apparent, that there was nobody to serve the soup. Eventually people in the church started complaining that they weren’t getting any soup (because no one was being served).  In the vision, not being in the situation, but seeing it from above, I was thinking “Oh, will someone should just pick up the ladle and start serving the soup. No big deal.”  However, to my surprise, people would walk by the abandoned ladle and say things like “Oh, I’m not going to do that!” It was somehow too low for them. “That’s not a job I want to do.”  When I saw that in the vision I started to weep bitterly.  I was deeply grieved at what I saw.  As I wept, what came to mind was what the apostle John experienced when he started to weep as he realized that nobody was worthy to open the seals of the scroll described in the book of Revelation. That very accurately reflects what I was experiencing in the vision.

The Hope Factor

How it can make a 24000% difference

Curt Richter had a special relationship with rats. In 1950 he put rats in a bucket with circulating water, to see how long they could swim before they would sink. Under normal conditions, a rat could swim for an average of 15 minutes before giving up and sinking. However, if he rescued the rats just before drowning, dried them off and let them rest briefly, and then put them back into the same buckets of circulating water, the rats could swim an average of 60 hours before drowning. If a rat was temporarily saved, it would survive 240 times longer than if it was not temporarily saved. That’s the same as 24,000% longer. A little hope goes a long way. The rats that had HOPE kept swimming.

Preaching the Gospel is Preaching the Gospel

Not drilling wells

Jesus didn’t send his disciples into cities, and say   “When you go, be nice, trendy, hard-working, law-abiding citizens, start successful businesses, be super culturally relevant, and pray…   And wait…   Wait for that moment.  That moment someone asks you why you’re such a great person and why you’re so successful. Then, and only then, preach the gospel to them.” Actually he told them to preach the gospel, heal the sick, cleanse lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Matthew 10:8   It’s dumb for us to do everything that helps us spread the gospel, but never actually preach the gospel. That’s just dumb. I understand that there are many “covert ministries”, and spheres where much wisdom is required, and I’m thankful for Christians who God has positioned to bring influence in the various mountains of culture. And I understand that in most cases, it would not be a good idea to jump up onto the table and start proclaiming a blistering bible message. However, I’m afraid that we’ve become kind of like hunters sitting in our hunting blinds, and we’re so preoccupied with the process of sitting in waiting and perfecting our animal calls, that we never take the shot. We just watch the game stroll by and we pat each other on the back, and pride ourselves in how close they got to us without getting spooked.

Royal brats

3 keys how to steward greatness

God is not impressed with our experience or expertise.  He’s impressed with faith.  However… There is a problem with faith.  The problem with faith is that it will make you great.  For example, if you have great faith, then you will see great miracles.  Miracles are like expensive cars.  The more of them you own, the more other people think you are great. They may even start calling you “Apostle So&So.”  Imagine that.  So the temptation to use faith to make you great is real.  

5 keys for more breakthrough in healing the sick

Recently I read through many of the stories of Jesus healing people.  Seeing people miraculously healed is one of the most exciting experiences in the world.  It’s the moment when you see that sparkle in someone’s eyes as they start to realize they can’t locate the pain.  Because it’s gone! The problem with all these stories of Jesus healing people is that they were all so different.  I wish he left us a formula.  I wish he did it the same every time, so we could just learn the methodology and go for it. He didn’t do that though. He’s more interested in partnership and relationship, than just giving us a manual for healing people, and leaving us on our own.  The stories vary in so many ways.  You find various levels of faith, various methods of how Jesus went about healing people.  You also find various reactions to Jesus healing people, and that some repented as a result of healing, but some did not.  Here are five issues that I have had to deal with for the ministry of healing the sick to blossom in my life. 

The Prophet Of Love

Who went to meet the lover of his soul on Valentines Day

Three years ago, on Valentines Day, a great man, who many came to call “The Prophet of Love” went home to meet the lover of his soul.
I had the honor to know Bob. He was a dear friend of our family. I never met anyone who knew scripture like he did.
And he truly lived to please the Lord.  Many who heard him for the first time, might think he was just some corky, mystical hill billy, but he was a great prophet, and he was the real deal.  He could also interpret dreams like nobody I’ve ever heard of.  He blessed my parents, and our extended family tremendously through interpreting dreams, which he would do using scripture he knew so well.  My earliest memory as a kid being exposed to the prophetic, was hearing how Bob predicted with precision to the day, a horrible earth quake that struck San Francisco, when the bridge was damaged.  As a kid, that really impacted me, that God could use someone to actually predict something like that with such accuracy.

The conversation with a liberal, Jewish, atheist businessman that flipped his world upside down

This was a conversation I transcribed from a podcast with Kris Vallotton. Kris was exhausted, and not interested in talking with anyone. However this liberal, Jewish, atheist businessman just wouldn’t leave him alone.
Kris Vallotton is a prophet with a unique calling that often involves ministering to leaders of nations, and people from various walks of life, outside the church.
He has prophesied to individuals about becoming presidents of nations, and these prophecies have been fulfilled.
God opens many doors for him to influence, and minister to people in very high positions of government from both sides of the aisle, politically speaking.  He has a very unique Joseph/Daniel anointing to prophetically speak into people’s lives in ways that literally transform them.
He also is the co-founder and leader of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) in Redding, CA where I completed the BSSM program in 2011-2014. It was three of the best years of my life, and I highly recommend everything Kris has written.

A crucial component of walking in signs and wonders

The long lost doctrine the church has neglected for far too long!

All of us have a special drawer we use for storing spiritual things that we don’t really see any use for. Kind of like the junk drawer in the house, where you keep all the stuff you don’t want to throw away, but you’re not sure if you’ll ever use it. For many years impartation was one of those things I would just take with a complimentary smile, only to later stuff it into the drawer of “not sure if it works, and not sure if it’s real”. Starting out as a pastor’s kid, and living as a missionary kid from the age of 11, I can’t remember how many times I would head up to the front of church to get prayed for by a minister for some kind of impartation of anointing. Sometimes I would be touched powerfully by the Holy Spirit, but sometimes I would not feel anything. It’s not that I was in doubt or bitter or anything, but I just had a hard time seeing any measurable results from this spiritual ritual, we spirit-filled Christians love to practice.