India 2008 - Part I

Almost ten years ago, the Lord began speaking to me about India. Every time I heard about the nation, its people or culture, my heart was stirred. I began to ask the Lord and over the next few years, He started to show me that I have a call and mission to work in some capacity in the nation of India. I didn’t know what to do, where to do it or who to do it with… but now I do!

“Hope put off makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

Over the last several years I have turned down nearly 20 – 30 invitations to come to India and do all manner of things, from crusades to working with orphans to church planting. Each time I would ask the Lord about the invitation I would hear an emphatic “NO”. As the years passed, it got to be increasingly frustrating. One trip was set and ready to go. The dates were selected, the team was preparing to raise funds and everything was heading in the right direction. But just a few weeks before the trip I all but audibly heard the Lord say, “Don’t go to India!” So I immediately canceled the trip.

But this year, after turning down yet another invitation to minister in the country, things began to fall into place. Earlier this year in March we were introduced to a woman that is a native Indian who ministers here in the States. Her name is Shampa Rice. We were instantly drawn to Shampa because Heidi Baker had recommended her to us. Heidi, as you may know is leading an epic revival in Africa and all over the world with nearly 8,000 churches planted in the last ten years. The orphans are taken in, the sick are healed and the dead are raised! Bottom line: if Heidi is recommending Shampa, then I’m listening!

So we invited Shampa to come and minister at our church in March and within a few seconds of meeting Shampa, the Lord made it clear to me, ‘This is who you are to work with in India”. Over lunch Shampa invited us to come and work with them and do a youth conference in the summer and I readily accepted the invitation. Over the next few days, we would hear her vision for the nation and people of India and just fall in love with her. Their heart is to work with the persecuted church in Northern India, as well as rescue child sex workers and the children of child sex workers on the streets of Calcutta.

In setting up the trip, we learned that although they had been ministering in India for many years, they had only recently moved back to Calcutta after being here in the States for about 7 years. This meant that they have a thriving work with pastors and leaders (over 500!) in the mountain regions of Northern India, but a relatively new mission base in Calcutta, Shampa’s hometown and the base of their operation. We set up a trip to spend some time with them in Calcutta and “catch” their vision to rescue child sex workers as well as schedule a youth conference in the northern part of India, at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains.

THE TRIP
India is an experience in every sense of the word. The sights, sounds, smells and spiritual atmosphere of India are second to none. The first thing you notice (besides the heat and humidity) is the sheer amount of people! There are over 1 billion people in India, whose land mass is a little bigger than the state of Texas! That means that over 3 times the amount of people in the US live in 1/3 the space that we have here! Translation: that’s a bunch of people in a very small place! It’s VERY crowded in India. I can hardly remember a moment, a scene in one of our long drives where there weren’t dozens of people littering the landscape or background. The cities of Calcutta and Delhi are incredibly crowded.

More than that, about 99% of the people there ARE NOT Christian! The demographic in the areas we were in was roughly 75% Hindu, about 15-18% Muslim and the remaining balance was Sikh. Christians barely make up 1% of the population of Northern India, although the southern states in India are experiencing quite a surge of believers as the Gospel has been preached there for many years. What this means in the North (where we were) is that the radical Hindus and Muslims run EVERYTHING, spiritually speaking. They will allow Christians to congregate, have a building and do meetings, but in many places where we went, if the Christians go offensive, i.e.- preaching the Gospel publicly, the radicals will come down and pastors or church members will go missing, get burned alive and a whole assortment of other horrible things.

For the last several years, we have been in some terrible places here in the States as well as around the world. I would say that on the living conditions portion of this trip, we weren’t shocked. What I was taken back by was not the living conditions, although they were horrible for much of the population, we were most shocked by the DEEP spiritual darkness over the people and over the land. It’s absolutely shocking for an up and coming cosmopolitan and culture rich city like Calcutta to be so deeply entrenched in the basest forms of idolatry I have ever witnessed. Idols were EVERYWHERE. Shrines to demonic gods covered the streets and sidewalks. Every cab driver had a personal altar in his vehicle, many times with fresh flowers picked daily as an offering to his demon god of choice. There are multiplied millions of “gods” to the Hindus and the people get the choice of whom they will serve. How convenient.

No, nothing could prepare us for the experience visiting one of the most popular demon entities in Calcutta, the idol “Cali”. Here in the center of this city with high rise buildings, the VERY profitable IT industry and all its wealth is a shrine to a demon where they still do public, animal blood sacrifices, EVERY DAY. Every day, for several hours they sacrifice 50-60 goats to a demonic idol, served full time by Brahman priests! What’s most strange is that businessmen in $500 suits stop by the temple on their way to work and then have one of the priests anoint their head with goat blood offered to an idol, which they will then take with them to work and sit through meeting and after meeting that day (with enterprising American businesses looking to save on labor costs) with the goat blood offered to a demon proudly displayed on their foreheads!

How bizarre!

When we turned on the TV when we got back to our hotel, instead of the typical American late night talk show hosts like David Letterman or Jay Leno, you have these Hindu holy men, celebrities of the Hindu culture on every other channel. I don’t yet speak the language (Bengali) but without understanding of the language, you cold tell that their shows are to teach and train people how to be better Hindus and worship the demons more effectively. Instead of music videos, they had music set to images of holy sites and shrines of demons. It literally was overwhelming depravity and spiritual darkness.

Yet, in that place that is to spiritually dark and hostile to the Gospel, God has sent some wonderful servants to show the people there His heart and His ways!

THE MISSION: CALCUTTA
Thousands upon thousands of young women and boys are born into the lower caste system in Calcutta and immediately begin service in the sex industry in the red light district; many of them are the result of their business “encounters”. What this means is that multiplied thousands of these KIDS are being exploited and abused. Not by savages from some untamed culture, but many times by the most prosperous upstanding citizens of the country. Shampa was telling me that what makes it incredible is that India, unlike Africa, is NOT a recently developed culture, coming out from a savage past like many of the villages and tribes in Africa where just a few years ago people were practicing cannibalism and other unspeakable atrocities. No, India is one of the world’s most ancient and refined cultures, her people are some of the most brilliant minds the world has (with a literacy rate higher than here in the States, mind you) yet they are held captive to the most disgusting forms of spiritual captivity you can imagine!

Shampa, whose mother was a believer, was born in Calcutta and for many years has carried a vision from the Lord passed to her by her mother, to rescue these kids from that environment and give them Jesus! They are going to bring them out of that unspeakable horror and bring them into a boarding school type facility where they will live for Jesus, have a family and be loved. And we’re going to help them.

To be continued...

What We've Been Up To!

Sorry about the infrequent updates. LOTS has been going on. Literally, we've been meeting, sometimes night and day for a month. There is a fresh move of God on the earth today and we have been thrust in the middle of it. Things have settled down a little this week as we are discovering that the Glory of God is HERE TO STAY!

I'll write more about that and the things that have been happening in our city, but until then, you can read some of the miracle reports that we have seen in the last month RIGHT HERE. This outpouring of the Glory of God has definitely made things go up a notch or two with regular healing of blindness, deafness, tumors and cysts shrinking and terminal cancers being HEALED!

Come on Jesus!

PS - I'm heading off to India this week with a team from our church. I am sure I will come back with some awesome stories of God's Power being displayed. If you think of it, pray for us!

What’s Going on Here?

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Lakeland Outpouring? www.freshfire.ca What started as several nights of meetings has become at the time of this writing, a global phenomenon where multiplied thousands have been touched and healed through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. What’s going on here has been fed by what’s going on in Lakeland, but actually started several weeks before anyone here went to Lakeland.

During a weekend of meetings with Surprise Sithole with Iris Ministries last April, there was a palpable hunger for God released and every meeting ended with a pile of people on the floor, crying out for more of God’s presence, power and glory. The presence of God in those meetings was profound! Lives were changed; people were delivered and set free of many bondages as we became desperate for Jesus!

OUR VISIT TO LAKELAND
So, coming AFTER our meetings with Surprise, a few weeks ago, I began hearing reports by email about a "REVIVAL" or "OUTPOURING" going on in Lakeland, Florida under the ministry of Todd Bentley. Now, I am pretty much used to folks in the ministry exaggerating the effect or outcome of meetings and I was skeptical, to say the least. After the reports kept coming in and after watching snippets of several services on GodTV, I was relatively sure in myself that this was NOT a major move of God. I saw so much flesh and what I believed was hype that when people began emailing and calling asking for my opinion, I told them, "It doesn't really look like the real thing".

Several people I know attended the meetings and all said the same thing, "The TV doesn't do it justice, the presence of God is AWESOME. Go!" I was still unconvinced and struggled with some of the ministry style and verbiage being thrown around at the televised services. What started to convince me was seeing John Kilpatrick and Steve Hill at the meetings and make reference to the glory of God they were feeling there. That was all it took. I went to Brownsville in 96 and experienced the glory of God there firsthand.

So on Monday night, April 28th, I made the decision to go and check it out. If I had any doubts about the authenticity of what was going on there, they all faded away when I sent an email out to our church, telling them that I was going. When I pressed "send" the presence and glory of God fell on me so strongly that it almost took my breath away. And it's been on me ever since. We spent two days in Lakeland and attended two services. The healings are real. One young lady that we met in line is a missionary in Africa. She was born deaf and during one of the services, she received her hearing! The presence of God is REAL. During worship especially, the glory or "weight" of God's presence would descend on us. Several times, it got so strong that it almost hurt! Yes, there is flesh and I wouldn’t do or say many things that are done and said in the meetings, but God met us there!

During one of the services there, Bobby Conner prophesied that this glory would be incredibly contagious and transferable and would be stronger at home than it was at Lakeland. Before we even got home we experienced this. I picked up the phone the day after our first service and called my Dad to tell him what God was doing and as I spoke to him the power of God fell on him and he had to pull his car over to the side of the road, the presence of God was so strong. I spoke to another friend from Oklahoma and just speaking about what God was doing, the presence of God fell on him in his car as he shook and vibrated under the Presence of God!

What was different about this presence that we were feeling in that it came back to our hotel rooms with us! It came back to our bedrooms and was with us in the car! The electricity and weight of God’s presence was so strong one morning down there that it took me almost 15-20 minutes to get my contacts in, I was crying so much!

BRINGING IT HOME
Our team came straight from the services in Lakeland and most of the team went to an impartation service that we were holding at the church that evening. Would you know that the same presence, power and glory that our team experienced in Lakeland came home with us and got all over our church body too?! Many folks in our church that have seldom or ever experienced the manifest presence of God shook, cried and vibrated under the electric glory that God has graced us with! We have been walking in a wonderful level of healing and the miraculous, but this took things up a notch! Miracles are so easy in the glory!

I came straight from Lakeland and had to honor a previous ministry trip I had scheduled in Alabama, although I wanted to be home with our home church. A couple from our church came with me, folks that had not been to Lakeland and before our first service in Alabama I released on them what was on me. In the booth at Applebee’s they shook and nearly fell out in the glory of God as the “weight” or “kabod” of God’s presence came on them!

In Alabama, many of the folks there had not even heard about what has been going on in Lakeland. The same glory of God that we experienced fell in those meetings, and even stronger! The Sunday service in Alabama ended in an almost 3 hour pile of quivering, sobbing and vibrating humanity, all deeply under the presence or “weight” of God.

Since then, we have been having meetings every night for several days and in each service, the presence of God gets stronger! Several healings have happened during the services, most even without prayer! But what is stealing the show is the presence of the Lord. Many have reported that the presence they are feeling at home or in our services is STRONGER than what they felt in Lakeland. I would agree!

THE KABOD OF GOD
What hit me the day before we left to go to Lakeland I had felt only one other time. I went to a conference in Toronto in 2004 and while there, the presence of God came on me resting like a weight. It actually feels like someone is sitting on my chest. Breath is almost labored, but gloriously so! It feels like trying to breath under water! In Toronto, this presence cam eon me for about 15 hours and during that time, the Lord spoke some things to me that have dramatically altered the course of my life, producing good fruit.

When I hit the send button on the email to our church, the presence came again. It came and it has not left! It literally feels like a weight resting on you. In this atmosphere, the Lord has started showing us that it’s the glory of God! In the Old Testament when the glory of God is mentioned, most of the time a Hebrew word, “Kabod” is used. The literal translation of the word Kabod is “weight”. What’s been happening here is that the literal “weight” of God’s presence is coming in people and not leaving! It’s messing with our lives as even the most basic tasks become quite difficult under the weight of God’s presence. Tommy Tenney has talked about the glory of God and said, “The anointing (for ministry) is exhilarating and invigorating, the glory is incapacitating!” But in a wonderful way! It’s like God saying, “Thanks for all your help, but I’ll just step in and take care of things”.

Moses cried out for the Presence of God in Exodus 33 and asked that God’s presence would go with them.

“And he said to Him, If Your presence does not go with me, do not carry us up from here. “ Exodus 33:15

That is exactly what God s doing. His presence is walking with us and we and others around us are aware of it! Isaiah 60 says,

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of Jehovah has risen on you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah shall rise on you, and His glory shall be seen on you.” Isaiah 60:1, 2

That word for glory is "Kabod” or “weight” Isaiah 60 is being fulfilled! We have declared this scripture and certainly the times and peoples of earth are dark! But God’s glory (weight) is here, resting on His people! We have prayed and asked God to send His glory and He has! Rejoice!

"The voice of him who cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of Jehovah, make straight a highway in the desert for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked places shall be made level, and the rough places smooth; and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken." Isaiah 40:3-5

For years we have done exactly this. We’ve cried out against injustice, we’ve sought to bring equity to the world’s system. We have attempted to bring the high things low and the low things high and make the crooked placed straight. But NOW, in God’s timing, the glory (or weight) of God is being revealed!

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS?
Exactly what Jesus did. When Jesus started His ministry he went to his hometown, was handed the scriptures and quoted this scripture,

"The Spirit of the Lord is on Me; because of this He has anointed Me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And rolling up the book, returning it to the attendant, He sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say to them; Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.” Luke 4:18-21

Jesus was AWARE of the Spirit of God RESTING UPON HIM. He took this power, presence and glory to the lost masses, preaching the Gospel to the poor, healing the sick, binding the brokenhearted and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor! We should do likewise!

So when the glory or “weight” of God comes upon you, DRINK DEEPLY! Let it permeate; let it saturate you until you are AWARE of this fact, “HE IS WITH YOU! HE IS IN YOU!” Rest in His presence! Don’t be so quick to jump up and “work”. Let His glory overshadow you and change your nature, habits and desires! Fall in love with Jesus!

On a personal note: The presence and glory of God has rested on me for over a week now and I can barely sleep and hardly even want to eat, which is impressive because I am a big boy! Within one week of feasting on the glory I have lost 13 pounds! This is the most genuine and tangible presence of God I have EVER felt. And it's incredibly contagious and transferable! MANY in our church have reported the glory resting on them for days now changing their habits, desires and lifestyle! All we want is more of Jesus!! Now tell me that's not an authentic move of God!

Blessings,
Ryan Lawson
www.ngca.org

We're In a Move of GOD!

Folks, we're in a move of God! Perhaps you've heard what's started to break out at Lakeland, Florida? (If you haven't, go here: www.freshfire.ca)

Anyway, we went down there and God really touched us. We brought the fire of God back and a move of God has started here as well! You can get more details by keeping up to date with the latest bulletins that we're sending out.

Click here to read the latest bulletin about the Outpouring.

Two Noteworthy Miracles

I wanted to share with you a couple of noteworthy miracles that have happened here recently. These are miracles that have really increased our faith and encouraged us that truly, “nothing is impossible with God!” As we have been sharing them among ourselves and others that we meet, they have brought a “spark” of encouragement to their faith to press in for the impossible to become possible!

DEAF AND MUTE
A couple of weeks ago we had a wonderful woman of God spend the weekend with our church family. Her name is Shampa Rice. She’s just awesome! One family attended the meetings and brought with them their little four year old boy who has severe hearing problems. I’m not sure exactly how much hearing loss he had, but it was bad enough that his speech had been affected. When he spoke, he spoke unintelligibly and only his parents could really understand him. He came in with these huge hearing aids on both ears and it had what appeared to be a drainage tube attached to them. Definitely not something that a little 4 year old needs!

Now here’s the best part.

He, like most everyone else that night received prayer from our main speaker. But after an instant healing did not manifest, several folks in our church gathered around him, asking mom and Dad if they could pray. Little kids, mommies, grandparents and businessmen all pressed in to “take care of this”. So many people from our church in fact that I had to ask them to back away and let the little kid breathe! You should have seen the look on their faces… I would say the look that they had could best be described as “restrained jubilation”. You see, we’ve been seeing LOTS of deaf ears opening up; almost everyone we pray for lately gets their deafness healed. It’s like they all KNEW what was going to happen.

So they pressed in and began all praying for his healing. Someone asked his parents if they could remove the hearing aids and they did. They kept praying and then began to test the little boys hearing, asking could he hear them. After a few minutes, they got the Mom and Dad to speak to him from behind and the little boy swung his head, responding to their calls! You should have seen the face on his Dad!

His dad came in acting calm, cool and collected, but after hearing his little boy call his name clearly and respond quickly to the slightest whisper, again and again, they were floored! Dad was SO blown away that he simply couldn’t believe it. For more than an hour after his child started hearing and speaking, he kept testing his little boys hearing, in total disbelief, each time his child responded. Tears streamed down his face and he worshiped God. I asked him what this did for him and he said, “This stuff is real!”

STAGE 4 CANCER
Just uttering that word, “cancer” and many people have a hushed awe fall over them. To add to it, “Stage 4” in the medical realm is almost a death sentence. There is no Stage 5. Stage 4 is the end of the line, death is near. But there is a name that defeats Stage 4 Cancer; it’s called the name of Jesus and the Power of the Holy Ghost!

So we received a call from a good friend of ours, asking if we’d speak with a friend of his. This guy’s brother in law had recently received the Stage 4 Lung Cancer death sentence from his doctors. He is 45 years old and has five beautiful daughters. When we heard of that, our heart went out for the family, but more than that, a cry inside said, “NO!” This man has 5 beautiful daughters to walk down the aisle and give away in marriage! “NO!” 45 year old daddies and husbands should NOT die of that disease! Even though he lives about 4 hours from our church, we immediately began to plan a way to get to him and see that this disease got off of him!

Spontaneously, after speaking to this gentleman’s brother in Law, my Dad called and said, “Let’s go!” on a Saturday afternoon. Sure it would make for a late night, but what better thing is there to do than to destroy cancer and release an entire family from the grip of this disease? So my Dad and the brother in law hopped in the car and began making their way to the young man dying with cancer. They received approval that it would be good for them to come and pray and on the way, my Dad got the brother in law filled with the Spirit and speaking in tongues for the first time in a long time!

THE DIAGNOSIS
In December of last year, the guy dying with cancer, Steve, began having breathing problems. When he went to his doctor, he received the terrible news that he had serious lung cancer, with a large tumor growing at a tremendous rate in his lung. They ended up going to a Texas oncology unit, apparently one of the best in the country and received the grim diagnosis that he had Stage 4 inoperable lung cancer. The doctors literally sent him home to be with his family and to be as comfortable as possible before he would die. SO he went home. He had long since stopped working due to his failing health and couldn’t even get out there to swing a golf club, one of his favorite pastimes.

So my Dad and the brother in law show up charged and full of faith, defying the diagnosis of cancer and proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven is on the earth! They spoke the word of God, released the fire of God and imparted the life of God! Surely, cancer couldn’t abide the LIFE!

He immediately began to feel more energy and strength than he had in some time.

Several days later, he went back to work for the first time in months.

A few days after that, he felt so good that he played a round of golf.

Three weeks later, as he went in to his doctor’s office and in his own words, from an email written just a few days later:

“We went this morning to have the 1st X-ray/scan since we were diagnosed. We did lab work, had the X-ray, and went into a patient room for our exam. “The Doctor” came in, said the blood work looked great, said my lungs, heart sounded great, said my liver, body etc looked and felt totally normal. He interrupted the exam and said "Oh I forgot, you had a lung scan today, let me go track it down." He was gone a minute or two, he came busting in the door and said in a loud voice "Your tumor is GONE!” We said what? He said come and look, it is GONE! He took us to the viewer and sure enough, the primary lung tumor that started all of this appears to be gone. Clearly by his voice and reaction, this was not expected; clearly God could not have given us more clear evidence of His involvement.”

Steve is healed. He will be walking down the aisle with all 5 daughters.

Proof that Jesus is King and cancer is NOT!