Geography Is Irrelevant – Part I

“Geography is irrelevant to the Kingdom of God!” Those are the words that David Hogan spoke to me several years ago and they produced a conviction in me where I know that I know that everywhere we go, God goes with us! It doesn’t matter if you are in America or Africa, Georgia, Tennessee or Alabama, if you preach the message of the Kingdom of God, results will follow. For years I struggled with the lack of results and tried changing the method. But what needed to change in us was not the method, but the message!

Everywhere we go, when we preach the right message, we get results! The last few weeks as we’ve been out on the road, preaching in different cities and communities we’ve seen the power of the Gospel at work. The deaf hear, the lame walk, souls are saved and believers are equipped as we preach this glorious Gospel of the Kingdom!


THE GOSPEL WORKS IN GADSDEN, AL.
We took a team from the church to Gadsden, Alabama where a hungry group of believers form several different churches asked us to come and do some training and equipping and take people out on the streets. We normally do a Friday night equipping and ministry meeting followed by an outreach on Saturday morning/afternoon. The meeting on Friday night was good and there were actually several healings and miracles that happened during ministry time, but we hardly even include those testimonies anymore. Healing is the Children’s bread and should be as natural as having a meal. But I tell you that what happened during the outreach time that day was awesome!


EFFECTS OF POLIO HEALED!
During the outreach in Gadsden, one of the teams ran across a man suffering from the effects of polio. He had withered limbs and could only walk with the help of his cane. His legs had very little strength as a result of the polio. The team told him of the Kingdom of God and commanded strength into his legs. He literally felt virtue enter his legs and for the first time in years began to walk without the aid of his cane! The cane now hangs on the wall of our church as a display of the glory of God!


HOLY GHOST HIP REPLACEMENT!
Our team encountered an elderly gentleman who was sitting on his front porch. He was waiting for a hip transplant surgery, was in constant pain and had lost much of his mobility. The ball joint in his hip had deteriorated significantly. We told him of the Kingdom of God and asked if we could pray. As we prayed, we commanded the hip to be healed and Heaven to come into his body. We then asked him to stand do something that he couldn’t do. Within a few minutes of prayer, he told us that the pain was completely gone! Moments before it was in severe pain (An 8 on a 10 point scale). So we asked him to do things that caused pain before and he did so, all without pain!

We left him by telling him, “Looks like you just got a Holy Ghost hip replacement!”


THE GOSPEL WORKS IN RINGGOLD, GA.
The following week we headed out for a whirlwind ministry trip to Ringgold, Georgia just on the border with Tennessee. In 48 hours we would preach in Ringgold, GA, Chattanooga, TN and Dalton, GA. To make a long story short, one of the elders of the church there in Ringgold attended school with one of the ladies in our church. After hearing of the miracles and healings happening here, he, his wife and another elder from their church in Ringgold visited the church a couple of times. They went back telling the pastor and the congregation in effect, “We need what they have!” So we arranged a trip and headed out to do some equipping, training and take people out into the streets.

Normally our approach is to equip to the believers “as they go!” There is always cool stuff happening in the meetings, but that’s not our emphasis. Normally the bulk of what we see happens out on the streets, not necessarily in the church… but not this time!


61 YEARS OF DEAFNESS DESTROYED!
At the meeting there was a lady present that had been deaf for 61 years. She had recently seen a measure of healing after prayer from an African missionary who visited the church, but the deafness returned the day after. She had become an expert at reading lips and had hearing aids that gave her enough hearing to get by.

Several members of our team took their time with her, reading to her the scripture and encouraging her in her faith. After a few minutes of continual prayer the folks praying with her started snapping their fingers near her ears. After a few minutes she jumped one of the times that they snapped in her ears. She could hear, without the hearing aids! They tested her hearing and she could hear perfectly!!! The next day, she ran up to one of the team members and said, “Say something!” They asked her, “Can You Hear?” very softly. She jumped up and down saying, “YES! Yes! I can hear!” She ran up to me in the church and gave me huge hugs and kisses, grateful for what the Lord had done for her.

61 years of the enemies work destroyed in Jesus Name!


TO BE CONTINUED…

UMT Intensive Report – Weeks 5 & 6

Sorry it’s been awhile since the last update. We’ve been on the road a bit over the last couple of weeks and the traveling and doing some equipping take some big chunks of time. We’ve been several places and I will write an update soon as to all that the Lord is doing. As usual, healings, miracles, salvations and the saints being equipped! But first, I wanted to wrap up with a report of the last couple of weeks at the football games.

WEEK 5
After the previous week’s blowout we had a bunch of hungry folks ready to advance the Kingdom of God show up for our fifth week of outreach in our UMT. We went to three different schools and sent 3-4 teams to each school. During soaking before the outreach I got a warning in my Spirit that the enemy was angry about the harvest we brought in the week prior and would be throwing everything he had at us this week. Sure enough, wouldn’t you know it that almost all of our teams had a very difficult night with a LOT of mockery, ridicule and rejection. Our team was snubbed at almost every turn at the high school we were visiting and I was assuming that was the state of most everyone else. One of the teams told the story about a young man that had a torn ACL and was in pain and wearing a brace for his knee. After receiving prayer, he was jumping, bending and moving his perfectly healed knee! That’s a healing! Those ACL injuries can take as long as 6-8 months to heal properly with rehab.

In spite of that, the general tone of the night seemed to be rejection and mockery. So after outreach, I was busy consoling people that it’s not always wide open heavens and to not be discouraged when a 17 year old young lady on our team, sheepishly raised her hand and said almost embarrassingly, “Well, I had a good night!”. They had gone to the school where the week prior there was something of a healing revival. Turns out that the young man who got out of the wheelchair was not only there and healthy, but he actually started in the football game that night! Imagine that, going from unable to walk in a wheelchair to starting on the football team in 7 days! Not only that, but there was such a stir caused by the healing revival the week before that our team simply and easily led 25 kids to the Lord that night! All told, more than 30 kids got saved that night and there were about a half dozen miracles.

Not bad for a “slow” night.

WEEK 6
Week 6 was our last week of the program, which is little more than an invitation to come and be with us as we bring the Kingdom to local high schools. After 5 weeks of outreaches, a little bit of teaching and encouragement, the change was evident. Over the last few weeks you could literally watch some of the folks attending transform before your very eyes! We had people that had never led anyone to the Lord lead their first person to the Lord, people that had never given prophetic words begin to prophesy accurately and people that had never witnessed a healing or miracle see and demonstrate the power of God through their own hands! More than just the results we see when we are out there; the most exciting thing for me is to watch believers get “turned on” to their commission to advance the Kingdom of God through signs and wonders.

It was, as I call it, “nice”.

So out we went to three different high schools once again and Jesus came with us. The high school I went to with a group was one that we had never been to before. We’ll definitely be back! Walking up, you could tell that this place was ripe and ready for the Gospel! Ten steps in the door, one of our teams spots a guy with a cast on his arm, approaches him and tells him about the gospel of the Kingdom. That was where they stayed ALL NIGHT. For the next 2 hours, they hardly moved. Crowds of kids came up to them asking for healing, salvation and prophetic words. After a couple kids on the team got some prophetic stuff for a group of kids, other young people came up to others in the group and asked them, “Can you do what they are doing?” (Meaning, getting prophetic words and words of knowledge). They replied, “Sure”.

One of the girls on the team had prophesied before, but never “wholesale”. That night she sat there and for two hours she gave accurate prophetic words and words of knowledge like an old pro! Another one of the ladies on the team had never seen a healing “out there” and that night she saw two instant miracles happen underneath her hands! You need to picture the site, a middle aged woman absolutely surrounded by high school kids, hanging on her every word! In fact, she drew such a crowd that the faculty came up to her and asked her to leave! She was escorted out of the gate by security! The kids she was ministering to were crying “Let her keep going!” But not before a group of young guys heard the Gospel and came up to one of the young men on our team and asked very literally, “So, we need to get saved and make Jesus King, how do we do that?” We were more than happy to oblige. Before the night was over, we saw a bunch of folks getting saved, lots of healings and miracles and TONS of prophetic words being given, demonstrating the goodness of God through signs and wonders!

The night ended like all good nights end at the football game, with a security guard escorting us out for preaching the gospel!

Come on Jesus!