Friday, June 19, 2009

Multiple Miracles!

Several weeks ago I went with a Pastor from Kentucky to Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta. The Pastor was here because he had heard some stories through Sid Roth’s TV program and My Dad’s appearance on there. He had also read my Dad’s book and wanted to see it for himself. That day, our goal was to see the Kingdom of God come with power and destroy the work of the enemy.

Mission accomplished.



RIGHT FOOT, RED FOOT, BLUE FOOT

We got to the Hospital and just hung out for a few minutes, asking the Holy Spirit what He was doing. I was with another brother who immediately took off after a young lady that was totally demon possessed! (She ended up getting delivered of her demons!) He went after her and I just sat down on a bench where lots of folks were hanging out. A young man came walking out of the hospital on crutches, strongly favoring his right foot, which had seen better days. It was totally mangled and you could barely call it a foot. It was bruised, broken, bloody and poorly wrapped in a bandage. With great care he made his way over to the bench and then sat down with a thud, unable to put any weight on it.


I was sitting next to him and asked him what happened to his foot. He said that he was in a car with his girlfriend, coming home from a party, late at night. They got into a terrible car accident and his foot and ankle were crushed. His girlfriend was in much worse shape and when the paramedics showed up, they sent her by helicopter to another hospital. He was taken to a hospital where he was quickly bandaged up and the wound was cleaned. When they were treating him, he kept asking about his girlfriend and they wouldn’t tell him her condition because of privacy laws (they weren’t married). So before they could set the broken bones he jumped up and walked out of the hospital, still bleeding mind you, to go find out what happened to his girlfriend. She wasn’t doing very well and needed several surgeries, but was now recovering at Grady Hospital.


Fast forward to today. It had been 6 days since this all had taken place and now we were in front of the Hospital where he had been visiting his girlfriend and also had seen a doctor. They told him that he had to come in and have the bones re-broken so they could set them, since it had been more than 72 hours since the injury. So here he was, in pain, visiting his girlfriend who was in pain and about to have his foot and ankle re-broken. He was having a bad day.


I told him why I was talking to him in the first place. I told him that I noticed his crutches as he walked up and that I wanted them. He looked at me like I was crazy. I told him that I had several pairs of them hanging on the walls of our church and that I knew the perfect place for his! Again, he looked at me like was totally NUTS! I told him, “Let me explain”. While I was speaking to him, this huge man came walking by very slowly, in obvious pain and sat down next to me on the bench. Now there were three of us on the bench. I then told him about the Kingdom of God and the effect it has when it comes on people like him, who have injuries and need crutches. What brought it home is when I explained to him “On earth as it is in Heaven”.


The big guy next to us was watching and listening intently now as I asked if I could pray for the guy’s mangled foot and ankle. He was like, “Sure, go for it!” But before I would pray I had him stand up and try to put weight on the foot and rate his pain. Every ounce of pressure on the foot brought intense pain. Just standing there on his crutches he was in intense pain. His pain was a 9 or 10. So we prayed. I don’t know what it is, but over the years we have developed a real breakthrough in pain and especially broken bones. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was so confident that I directed my Pastor buddy from Kentucky to watch his face. I told the pain to “GO!” And it left!


The look on this guy’s face with the busted foot was a million dollar look. His eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped. I said, “Where’d the pain go?” He was dumbstruck. He literally couldn’t communicate. I could tell that he had absolutely NO grid for what had just occurred. It was awesome. We had him check the foot, put weight on it and then put ALL his weight on it. He had NO PAIN!!!



HEALING LEADS TO HEALING

The big guy sitting next to us was obviously affected. I could see a tear in his eye and I asked him, “Are you seeing this?!” He said, “Of course!” I said, “This is REAL, you know!” He fired right back, “I know, I know!” I asked him what was wrong with him and he said something about his leg. He had a long standing injury and lots of pain. He had plates and screws in his shin, limited mobility and some pain. I told him that God is no respecter or persons and what He would do for one, He would do for another! He let us pray for his leg and the pain left! He had tears coming down his face and I asked him if there was anything else as he was still moving pretty slowly. He called me close and explained to me where his REAL pain came from.


19 years ago he had an injury where he crushed one of his vertebrae. The doctors had done EVERYTHING they could do and for 19 years he had been in excruciating, blinding pain. 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The only relief came from serious drugs (Opiates) and after so many years of using them, he was hooked. He said that his normal pain level is a 10 and the drugs would take it to an 8. He was actually at the hospital to pick up his prescription. He had taken the drugs a little while before and was at an 8. I told him that God could take care of this and he weakly smiled, scared to believe, even for a minute or two. Before he could think about it, I had him do something that caused him pain. He was walking like a mummy, very stiffly and not bending his back at all! I had him try to bend front to back and back to front and he could barely move either way. I had him try to bend side to side and he could hardly move at all. Then I told him, “Watch this!”


I put my hands on his back, commanded the pain to go and the vertebrae to be healed in Jesus name. We commanded the Kingdom to come to his body. When I told the pain to “GO”, I felt the presence of God surge out of me into his back. I knew he was healed. So I asked him the same question I asked the other guy, “Where’d the pain go?”


He started to check it, the tears ran down his face and he said, “It’s gone!” I had him bending side to side and front to back, all without pain!
He even missed his bus while talking to us. I started to apologize but he stopped me saying, “I’ll get another bus, this was WORTH IT!”

19 Years of the devil’s work destroyed!


Friday, June 12, 2009

Stopping for “The One”

Over and over I have heard Heidi Baker speak and write about stopping for “the one”. She uses the parable that Jesus told of leaving the 99 “found” sheep for the one that was lost. It really does show the heart of God when you bypass the crowds to go to that one special person that is on the heart of God. Over the years we have seen this play out as we go out, seeking to bring the love and power of God to our community. There will be nights when it seems like the Lord is drawing us to that one person and seemingly past other people. Just a couple weeks ago we had such a powerful experience where we searched a large apartment complex for “the one” and we found her!


TROUBLE SHOOTING

One of our teams had been referred to a large neighborhood several weeks before. They had been plugging away at this particular complex for several weeks without a lot of outward fruit. They had been praying for the sick and prophesying over everyone that moved but hadn’t really seen a breakthrough. The hunger for discipleship seemed quite low. That night I decided to go with them and check the place out, wondering to myself if perhaps we needed to just pull up stakes and move on. I mean, Jesus told us in Matthew that if it didn’t work when we preached to go somewhere else!


So Betty and I went with them. We got to the neighborhood and it seemed like a pretty decent place. Everyone seemed happy; lots of people were out and about. It’s a strange neighborhood in that it’s in the middle of nowhere, totally hidden from public view. The complex consists of several very large apartment units that are “stepped” throughout a large neighborhood of large rolling hills. The front of the apartments is a complicated mess of balconies, stairways and hallways. Very few people were actually out in the parking lot, they were all sitting on their porches and balconies with a bird’s eye view of the neighborhood. When we got there everyone was looking at the 6 of us, all white, some young, some middle aged and so on.


As soon as we got there I felt a leading from the Lord to just hang back and watch. The kids went out ahead of us, found folks and began to prophesy and preach the Gospel. I watched the reactions of the crowd and still didn’t feel lead to jump in. So we sat and waited. Betty was ready to go and preach, but hung out with me as I told her to just sit tight. We were there much longer than I would normally sit doing nothing; after all, we were there to preach! However, I had an unusual compulsion to wait on the Lord, even though that’s what we do throughout the week and before we go on outreach.


After some time of just sitting there I asked Betty to walk with me. I wanted to see the entire neighborhood and felt that somewhere in the labyrinth of apartments and balconies there was some “one” that needed the Lord here tonight. So we walked… and walked! The place was huge! We passed building after building, group of people after group of people going up and down several hills, all the while looking out for an open door. People stared, wondering why we were there, but didn’t do more than the occasional smile. We made our way to the back of the complex and came upon the last apartment building. We passed a small group of 5-6 people; they were all drinking and from the sound of it had been at it a while. But one of the guys in the group called out to me and said something in his drunken haze, I can’t remember. What I did know was that was my open door. I turned on my heels and went over to them.



THE ONE

The group was rowdy and not making a lot of sense. They were talking about some basketball game and slamming Vodka like there was no tomorrow. We made a little small talk, told them of the Kingdom of God and asked if anyone was sick. Several left the group and several others clammed up, some trying to hide their drinks, suddenly uncomfortable. I told them to not let their beer go warm on account of me! We did what we do and honestly, they just weren’t paying attention. I was silently asking the Lord for Prophetic Words to blow them away, but nothing was coming. I looked at Betty, wondering if maybe she had something and she shrugged her shoulders, telling me without words, “I’ve got nothing”. I was just about to walk away and leave them alone when a young lady, sitting on a staircase about 20 feet behind them squeaked out “You can pray for me.” She was probably only 19-20 years old, beautiful, but obviously troubled. I saw right away that she had wrap on her wrist and asked her what was going on with her wrist. Her head hung low and she told us she hurt it. I asker her how and she didn’t want to give up all the details.


We went over to her, sat down on the stairs with her and asked her what was up. Again, I was asking the Lord for some great prophetic word, but was getting nothing. So we listened and asked her what she needed prayer for. Tearfully, over the next half hour she told us about losing her daughter, losing her home, losing everything really. All of this was because she had a serious anger problem. We knew it was a demon. In her rage, she had hurt other people, going to jail and losing her daughter. In her rage she had punched holes in walls and recently, through a window. She unwrapped the bandages on her wrist and showed us some terrible cuts that needed immediate medical attention. She had done this the night before when she flew into a rage. I was thinking, “This little thing is capable of such amazing anger, rage and violence… wow!”


We didn’t have prophetic words, we didn’t have anything flashy. All that we had was compassion and a listening ear. After her testimony of the horrors of what the demon had worked on her life, we simply told her the truth. We told her that we ranged over her entire complex looking for her. We told her of a God that would single her out among everyone in her neighborhood to bring her life, hope and deliverance. Tears ran down her face as we told her that Jesus could set her free of this anger. We plainly told her of the horrible consequences of her sin, but the power of God to deliver her from her bondage. Without any convincing, without any hype and strangely for us, without even a demonstration of God’s power she gladly repented, turned from her life of sin and asked Jesus to forgive her and set her free of anger. As we prayed, the glory of God hit us all as she tangibly felt the anger leave her body.


She eagerly gave her life to Jesus on the steps of the apartment. Why? Because the Lord had us bypass the crowds and stop for her, the one.