I met Jessica last summer in a Texas Government class at ACC. I offered her a ride home one day after class, and that was how our friendship began. We began studying together a couple times a week. Soon I met her roommates Lily, Pearla, and her sister Joyce. I love all these chicas so much!

Last February, God gave me a dream about Lily. In the dream, there were about 30 Latino students together in a living room, and Lily was leading them as a house church. After I dreamt this, I called Lily right away asking to meet up. We got together and I shared the dream with her and told her God was calling her as a spiritual leader in the Hispanic community. I think she was a little surprised because she didn’t really know God at the time. But this led me and these roommates to start meeting up to read God’s Word and get to know him.

Lily has really gotten to know God over the past few months, and she has a close relationship with Jesus now. She said that she prays to him and trusts him in every life difficulty, and he always comes through! Just last week, Jesus worked an amazing miracle in her life. Her legs were a little bit uneven lengths, and this was causing pain in one of her feet. We prayed in the name of Jesus and her leg grew out so that her legs are even now! Praise God!

Last night Jessica and Lily met up with me, Meghan, and Grace, and we read through John 4. It was so powerful and Lily and Jessica had great insight into the Word. God was really highlighting the distinction between spiritual water and spiritual food in this passage. We must drink the living water, which is being filled with the Spirit (John 7:37-39), but we must also eat the food, which is doing God’s work. Our lives should be a balance between these two things.

We went back to their apartment, and got to drink some living water as we prayed together. Then we got to eat some good food from God when Lily decided to get baptized! She was buried with Jesus and raised up with him! Hallelujah!

Pray for this sister as she moves to College Station this week… Lily, wherever you go, Jesus goes with you!

We live in a church culture that underestimates the value and power of baptism. Every single example you will find in the book of Acts, as soon as someone put their faith in Jesus, they were baptized. Now we have to go through this long process of filling out a “baptism application” form and wait for a date to be baptized by the pastor in a church. Well the only thing on my baptism application form is I have decided to follow Jesus, check! And the authority to baptize? Who has it? Who gives it? This is what Jesus said:

Jesus came and told his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

If only the clergy can baptize, then only the clergy can fulfill the Great Commission. If that is the case, we have a serious lack in the number of workers and we all need to get ordained!

This week, some of us from the All Nations and SCPx family helped out at InterCP’s Missions Leadership Training. These young Korean American students are giving up a year of their lives to go live in the Middle East and to share about the straight path to the Kingdom of God through Isa al Masih (Jesus the Messiah). These close friends of mine challenge me every time I am around them because they are so all-or-nothing for Jesus, ready to take up their cross and follow him, and filled with the Father’s deep heart of compassion for the nations. You want to see some mighty prayer take place? Give an InterCP person a map. Praise God for the great work of mobilization that he is doing through this group!

As we shared last week about church planting strategies and the multiplying dna within the seed of the Kingdom of God, we realized that these students had never been released to baptize new believers! Not only that, but many of them had never been baptized themselves. Erik had them go outside immediately to be baptized, and as they dedicated themselves in obedience to God, heaven opened over us!

One of my favorite quotes: “As soon as the works of the Scriptures are taken out of the hands of the common people and put into the hands of trained professionals, a movement ceases to move forward.” – Erik Fish at the Las Vegas Baptisms

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

<!--StartFragment-->

A story of Grace!  Part 1

I am a fisherman.   I am a fisherman.  I am a fisher of men!   One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from when Jesus calls some of his disciples along the shoreline in Matthew 4:19 and says: "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."
 

Have you ever caught a big fish before? If you have, in my humble opinion, you have just experienced an act of God’s grace!  As an experienced fisherman, I enjoy the challenges of putting the best presentation of bait before my prey, but all the while, I genuinely recognize that I am at the mercy of God and His elements during every fishing adventure.   I’ve fished in the midst of nasty storms  with pelting rain and sand as well as in sunny, warm, and serene ocean tides.  I’ve caught fish in both conditions and am genuinely aware that though I do my best, God is Lord over the beasts of the air and the fish of the sea.  

As you might have just figured out, I am pretty passionate about fishing!  In fact, during a passionate fishing frenzy over 10 years ago, me and my brother SP went on an adventure after Friday night fellowship at RCCC  ( youth group for me, YAF for SP) around midnight but we could not find a bait shop that was open in the wee hours of the morning.  We got duped by one bait shop that advertised in the Fisherman magazine that they were open 24 hours over the weekend.  We ended up sleeping in my Honda Civic overnight waiting for another bait shop to open at 5am in order to fish!  In the morning, we read Psalm 8 and claimed a promise of God’s blessing over us as we went out to conquer the Atlantic ocean from the surf of New Jersey.  I honestly don’t think we caught anything that day, but SP is still my brother from another mother even though he hails from a state 3,000 miles away from NJ!

Matthew 22:37-39 (New International Version)

³⁷Jesus replied:  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."^{[a] 38}This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

I suppose there are two major things that I enjoy about fishing that I believe relates to this passage.

First, the encounters with God and His presence through  the sound of  crashing waves and sprays of sea salt mist.   It is a place where my soul readily connects with God.   Deep soul searching conversations with God seem easiest on the beach for me.  Pouring out emotions, feelings, perceptions, to the One who has said that the descendants of Abraham would be like the sand on the shores of the sea!   During some of my early morning fishing adventures, seeing the sun rise above the horizon is an event that has brought joy and refreshment to my soul.  A sunrise reminds me that God’s mercies are new every morning!  During my  night time fishing adventures, seeing the moon and stars in the sky reminds me how small I am, yet how awesome and loving God is!  Honestly, I believe that we all need to find out ways in which we connect deeply with our Creator.  Just like many people search for strong signals for free wireless connections or cell phone reception, we need to seek out places where our souls readily connect with God.   We need to make space in our lives to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength.     How do you connect with God most readily?

Second, I enjoy the kind of love and fellowship that I can share with those with whom I fish.  There is something about fishing that forms our character.  A bond of friendship that is strengthened.   On a recent fishing trip while fishing on a beach in Belmar, NJ, I received some powerful encouragement.  I had arrived on the beach with two of my friends, Yuri and Ken at around 7:00pm.  We spent over 3 hours in conversation with God and one another.   Often, my conversations with people at the beach while fishing are life transforming.    The wind, waves, and sand keep good secrets.

But it is not just about the fishing.  It is also about the journey of life.  On a recent drive back, I experienced a powerful prayer time in the car ride back home with my house mate Ken! In a way, fishing enables me to love my neighbor as myself especially when I catch a big one and can share the goodness of God with my friends and family!

Back to the story!  Well, we were fishing almost 3 hours and the only thing we had caught were two ugly skate fish which kinda look like small sting rays.  Ken and Yuri had the blessing of catching these nasty fish whose wings are sometimes amputated and sold in Chinese food markets for $2.00 a pound!

So in frustration, as the shameful member of the no fish caught club, I took a whole fish, called a bunker and chopped it into three pieces!  I hurled two pieces into the surf as "chum" and then took a hook and placed it thru the mouth and upper lip of the fish going thru its nose.  I cast it into the sea with little faith, much unbelief, and a hint of cynicism.  I then went over to tell my friend Ken, that we should begin to pack it up in a few minutes.  He told me he had one last piece of clam bait and that he wanted to use before we left.  I proceeded to walk over to my rod and then bam!  The rod doubled over and line started screaming off the reel.  I walked  to the left and moved closer to the surf to try and control the fish and prevent it from taking off into some wooden pilings to the right of me.  I could tell it was a big fish by the amount of power and stress it was putting on my rod and reel.  I knew that fish this size know how to throw hooks out of their mouths and swim toward sharp barnacle infested pilings that can cut through almost any fishing line.  Line continued to scream off the reel but I knew the fish would be getting tired soon if I could just keep the line pressure on the fish.   After a more few minutes of fighting the fish, I was able to take in line on the reel and the fish was getting closer and closer to the shore line. I gave the pole to my friend Ken so that he could keep the line tight.  The fish was thrown onto the angled surf with a wave and I then ran over and grabbed the 40 pound test flourocarbon leader line that held the chemically sharpened hook in the fish’s mouth.   I was able to drag the fish up the incline onto the level portion of the beach.

Then Ken’s alarm went off at 10:02pm as I reached into the fish’s mouth to remove the hook embedded in the side of fish’s mouth. At that moment of grace, a sense of great joy filled my spirit as I was reminded of God’s goodness and provision in my life.  The 37 inch wild Striped Bass that I landed helped to feed some of my friends lunch and dinner a few times over!!!  Everyday at 10:02am and 10:02pm, for the last three years, I pray with likeminded kingdom workers to the Lord, for Him to send out workers into the harvest because the harvest is ripe and the laborers are few.  I was acutely reminded of God’s faithfulness and prayed to the Lord of the Harvest to send  out workers!!

<!--EndFragment-->

You ask God, “What is Your will for my life?”

Sometimes God responds, “What is in your heart?”

Does the Lord care about your heart?

Does He care about the things your heart desires?

Yes!

As my children grow, I often ask them, “What do you want to do when you’re older?” I look to see how God has uniquely shaped them – their gifts, the things they’re passionate about – and the things that concern them about the world they hope to change.

Fathers watch for the dreams of their child’s heart, and encourage them to go for it.

As your heart is set on loving Jesus, He shapes the desires of your heart. As you keep Jesus first in your life, pursuing these desires of your heart is an act of faith in the God who designed you in His image.

This is a season to dream with God. The world is shaped by those with the courage to risk failure and reputation to pursue the God-shaped design of their heart.

In the beginning, God told the first people (paraphrased), “Be fruitful and multiply. Tend the garden. Fill the earth…just don’t eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

God had some general instructions, but He left a tremendous amount of freedom up to Adam and Eve to decide how to tend the garden and where to go as they pursued God’s challenge for them to fill the earth. He left a lot up to them for how to dream and imagine and shape the garden and the earth according to the design God put inside them – their initiative and creativity would reflect His very nature. They abused this freedom and disobeyed the one thing He told them not to do. But God wasn’t done yet. He started a process of redemption in history to restore in us what was lost in the garden.

So, what did God want to restore that was lost in the garden? It’s a theological question humans have wrestled with for millennia. Early on God saw fit to give His people a complex system of laws in order to stay in covenant relationship with Him. Why did He do this? Paul says the Law was our tutor to bring us to Christ. I believe part of the reason for the Law was to show us that living by a system of rules and laws can never bring us to freedom and restore God’s dream for the planet.  Waiting for explicit commands sometimes can inhibit us from pursuing things God’s already planted in our heart to pursue.

When Christ died and rose again, what did He accomplish? Did He set us free to dream with God again out of a transformed heart?  Or did He just start a new system of Laws?

Today, God is restoring this aspect of dreaming with Him to see the world filled with people who dare to accomplish great things for God out of the passions of their heart.

The last year, my wife and I have been on an interesting adventure. We’ve experienced divine leading, supernatural open doors, specific direction, and times of waiting on the Lord. We’ve laid our lives before the Lord and said, “We’ll go anywhere you want to send us.”

The funny thing is, often we don’t sense God saying anything about where to go next. As we’ve prayed and sought God, we started to experience a part of God’s nature we had never experienced before.

We felt the Lord saying,

“What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? What do you dream about? You can do anything. You can go anywhere.”

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

(Psalm 37:4)

Here’s the conclusion we’ve come to:

“When your heart is set to obey the Lord, and He gives no specific direction, it’s time to press toward the desires of your heart.”

What is in your heart?

There are seasons when we must wait on the Lord for specific instructions. We should always be tuned to alter our plans according to His specific leading. But here’s the side of God I believe He is calling many of us to know in this season: When you delight yourself in the Lord, pressing into the desires of your heart is an act of faith.

Do we actually believe God is big enough to give us the desires of our heart, protect us wherever we go, and that pursuing the desires of our heart is actually a journey into encountering Him in deeper ways?

For the world, we have good news to offer. If you delight yourself in the Lord, you’ll discover the dreams of your heart are already in His will for you.

This is an hour for dreaming and going. This is an hour for you to respond in faith and honor God by praying and responding out of the dreams of your heart.

If your heart is set on loving God and obeying Him, then I want to ask you,

“What do you dream of?

Where do you want to go?

What do you want to do?

Dream with God and trust Him to shepherd you as your pursue the dreams of your heart!

-- Erik

Failing Forward!

I HATE failing!  I hate feeling like a loser.  Failing and losing are often very close siblings.    Sometimes there is no difference between the two.  I remember several times being very rude and unloving to students in my youth group when I was losing in a basketball game back in the early 90’s when I was in my prime athletic years.

The competitive fire in my heart would tend to get the best of me!  Honestly, the basketball court has been a court of ‘discipleship’ in my life.   Other sports like softball, baseball, and even tennis have been affected  by my desire to win as well.  I’ve seen some of the most ‘fleshly and sinful’ parts of my personality come out during the ‘heat of battle.’  Expletives, elbows, and explosive tirades were par for the course!  I guess I could call those days, ‘bad hair and youth pastor days’, since I had more hair back then to be bad!  Only the grace of God moving me forward to be more like Jesus kept me from becoming a member of the ‘brood of vipers.’    And as I lose more hair each year, I think I am moving closer and closer to Jesus!  Btw, I remember Paul Yao, a distinguished member of my youth counselor Hall of Fame saying: ‘Mike, why does it matter to you so much?  Why do you have to win all of the time?’  Words of wisdom, brother Paul.  No wonder, you’ve always had less hair than I’ve had!  Haha! Is Jesus bald, sometimes I wonder, jokingly?  All the pictures I’ve seen of him show him with long hair.

Anyways, not playing sports was not an option when I was young.  However, I do remember taking a year off from playing basketball in order to not be tempted to get angry. 

Likewise, participating in the Great Commission is also not an option, even though a sabbatical year for ministers is fairly well respected.

Here’s the revelation, I recognize the way God made me over time.  Sometimes, my Korean friends joke about Korean men have something called K-rage.  I guess, being ethnically Chinese, I’ve had C-rage?  But many times, since I was born in America, I’ve felt more American than Chinese.   So maybe I have A-rage.  Or, ABC-rage?  Well, whatever you call it, God has given me a lot of passion for Jesus.  And you know what, I believe that IF I can channel my ‘rage’ or better put ‘explosive energy’ toward the things of God- powerful things will happen!  

Here is an application of my focused desire for  the kingdom that occurs daily.  Everyday, I pray a Luke 10:2b like prayer:

‘Lord, the harvest is ripe, and the laborers are few!  Send out workers!  Send out Henry, Diamond, Nicky, Cat, to the lost communities of Rutgers University!  God send out David to St. John’s to represent who YOU are to legalized drug dealers! (Pharmageeks rule!) God send out ______ to ______ with the power of your Holy Spirit!   Lord, help me and my family to be an answer to this prayer!’

After setting my alarm for 10:02 am and 10:02 pm  and praying this prayer for almost 3 years, I believe that God is answering my prayers!  Students around the nation are following Jesus on their campuses and fulfilling the Great Commission.  Students are gathering for prayer in order to seek the Presence of God.  With a prayer furnace background, many are baptizing students, serving one another communion, loving one another, giving to each other’s needs as they arise, and expressing the power and love of Jesus on or around their campuses!  Genuine expressions of the church ala Acts 2:42-47 are being seen around our nation’s university campuses. Praise God!  Or ‘Slava Bogu’ as my best Russian brother in New Brunswick, Yuri, would say!  

I have a dream, that one day, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father!

Taking the risk to succeed often requires the willingness to ‘fail’.  For many of us who are following Christ, I believe the best terminology for these events in our Christian life is ‘failing forward.’ ¹

One of my friends Erik Fish said that if we aren’t experiencing failure, we probably aren’t being fruitful!

May we all choose to follow Jesus to the lost communities around us!  May we be emboldened by His spirit to live powerful, forceful, prayerful and vibrant lives so that Jesus is made Lord in the hearts of many!  May we relish the honor and privilege of seeing many people bend their knees and confess Jesus as Lord, repent of their sins, be baptized, and be filled with God’s Spirit!  

  ¹ I think this term was coined by Christian leadership guru John Maxwell.

Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30rWm84z-zg



On February 12, 2010, the president of Haiti, President Preval, called the nation to 3 days of fasting and prayer in place of the celebration of Marti Gras. Over a million people showed up in the main square. From 6am to 6pm they cried out to God to heal their nation and repented of their sins. The Prime Minister came but could not address the crowd; he could only weep for an hour. Then President Preval came and the pastors laid hands on him and prayed for him. Over 3000 people were saved, and 101 of those had been voodoo priests.



I can imagine someone who doesn’t know God watching this video and thinking, what is this? These people experience a devastating earthquake. They lose friends and family members. They lose houses, jobs, and possessions. The whole nation is in upheaval. Why are they worshiping God? Why are they praying to the God who allowed this to happen? Why are people coming to faith in Christ? Why are they not enraged at God?



I can imagine this person who doesn’t know God thinking maybe these people are acting out of fear. They are afraid God will do it again and send more natural disasters, so they are praying to avoid his wrath. They are praying to appease his anger. But if you watch the video, you know that cannot be. There is no fear in their faces. There is Love. Hope. Desperation. Reverence. Brokenness. But no fear.



I can imagine a theologian thinking these people are worshiping God because they know he is worthy to be worshiped. The heavens are his, the earth is his, he can do as he wishes, and no matter the circumstances, he is worthy to be praised. Maybe that is true in some cases. And it is certainly true about God that he is worthy. But I don’t that’s why the people worship…



The reason they worship him is because they love him. They cannot help but stay in his presence. They cannot help but raise their arms in praise. I bet their arms were about to fall off after three days in the air. But I doubt anyone noticed or cared. They have to praise him.



But why do they love him when such horrors have come upon their people?



When all your physical comforts are taken from you in a second, and you are left without shelter, without food, without hygiene; when all your emotional comforts are taken from you and you are left without family, without home; when all that you have left is your own physical body keeping your soul on this earth, and even that physical body is perhaps broken and hurting, what will you turn to? What will you do with the next second of time when there is nothing that can be done, to undo the horrors, to go back to how it was before? What can you do but worship God? What can you do but cry out to him? Where can your soul turn but straight to where it always belonged, in the hands of your loving Father? What can you think to do except what was always inherent within you, to lift your eyes to God, and rend your heart bare before his eyes? And when his presence meets you in that moment, when repentance breaks off the bondages of many years, when you hear his Spirit weep along with your groaning soul, yet adorn you with an unknown shelter, an unknown strength, an unknown love, what will you do but worship him more, and resolve in your heart to never leave this place? Where else can you go? And what else can you do? And why, now that you are in his arms, would you want to go somewhere else or do something else even if you had everything back? There is nothing better than him. It is clearer than ever before. They love him because they cannot help but love him.



And so these people that have been broken, that have lost everything, that have suffered much devastation, have only this now. That God is still their God. And that God loves them. And strangely, they find that that is more than enough. That is life itself.



Beneath the peaceful blue skies, one million people are soaked in the rain of the Holy Spirit. In the midst of the silence, two million arms lift the weight of God’s glory. At a loss for words, their hands wave praises to the only God. The seconds feel like hours worth of revelation. The hours feel like only seconds have gone by. By the time the sun sets, the legs are shaky, the arms are numb, the eyes are falling into sleep. But the spirit says not enough. I’m satisfied, and it’s not enough. More of the presence of God. More time doing nothing but gazing. Doing nothing but worshiping. Doing nothing but waiting on him to speak. I cannot leave this posture of worship. It is what I was made for. It is where I belong. It is at once ecstasy and rest. Like nothing else in the world.



So the onlookers will marvel. They will guess, they will theorize, but they will never understand. Until they taste the presence of God for themselves. And then they will look at this earthquake, they will look at this revival, and they will say, GLORY BE TO GOD! FOREVER AND EVER! And no explanation is needed.

Jesus moves so quickly I can't even believe it!

I'm in a class called "Shamanism." It's about these Shamans (healers) who practice spiritual healing through making voyages into the spirit world and partnering with animal spirits to suck out sickness from a person's body. Yeah I know, crazy! But real. And very demonic. I was gonna leave the class. I remember telling people about it.... the response was "you should be careful" and "are you gonna drop?" It's dangerous to be in a place like that right? Well I prayed about it and Jesus was like, um hello, how else are these people gonna see me if the light never invades the darkness? So I stayed in the class. I have never been so alert in class before. haha. Because I have to pray in tongues the whole time! We actually watch videos of  Shamans healing people in class, and listen to recordings of trance-inducing drum patterns to see if they bring people into a trance. It is so freaky, and I can smell the demons. Everyone in that class is all about the spiritual realm. One guy practices witchcraft. One girl is a fourth-generation Shaman. Others have had near-possession experiences and crazy spiritual encounters.

Well, after class, I would always walk with people and try to get to know them a little bit. We would have conversations about our spiritual encounters. Everyone was so intrigued by hearing all this that we decided we should get coffee once a week after class to share more about our spiritual experiences.

So this past Wednesday I had coffee with a girl name Raelea. She is one of the most loving people I have ever met. Light beams out of her. I just knew she was a person of peace! She told me all about her beliefs that all religions are the same truth, and about harmony with the universe, and she told me her spiritual story. Then I shared my spiritual story about Jesus. She was completely in awe of my relationship with Jesus- especially the part about him talking with me! She kept saying, "That's so beautiful!" And from then on, she was all questions about Jesus, for the next two hours! We talked about everything. What Jesus did at the cross, how he rose again, what will happen at the second coming, who the beast is (because she had read revelation), when satan will be bound, who is going to hell, who the Holy Spirit is and why he came, etc! It was sooooooo intense. Then she started thanking me and saying that I couldn't even understand how amazing this conversation was, that she was a changed person. She said, "if you die tomorrow, it will be okay, because you have changed someone's life." She said that the past three of years of searching out spiritual Light have just accumulated in this moment, and she sees that Jesus is the fulfillment of all great spiritual truth! And she says she is now a follower of Jesus! Whaaattt! And then she starts talking about how we should "spread the word" through music! Because she is a musician. I'm like yeah! that is my dream! So we start walking to the Campus House of Prayer so that I can play a song I wrote.

On the way the Holy Spirit prompts me to boldly say, "Jesus is the only truth. All the other religions are lies." At first she has a hard time with this, but then she slowly recognizes the truth in this. (But she is back and forth on this, still struggling with the hell factor, understandably.) She asks, "What about Shamanism class?" I answer, "It's demonic." She gasps and says, "I knew it! I really felt that it was evil this whole time!" Then she figures out that I went there as a missionary and she is thanking me so much. "Thank you for coming to class to save me!" haha.

We get to the prayer house, and eventually, my prayer family comes in (because we pray there every night). Raelea stays to pray with us. We decide to prophesy over her. She is completely blown away by every picture/word that is given to her. She goes, "Guys, that was spoooot- on!" Thank God for my wonderful family that is so filled up with the Holy Spirit that they are ready at every moment to rock someone out with prophecy! Love you guyssss! Then we pray for baptism of the Holy Spirit over her. Then we prophesy over our brother Martin, and she gets a word for him! Yes Lord!

Ok so that is just Day One. It gets crazier the next day. I go over to her apartment to read the Bible with her. Her roommate Tiffany is there, and she is all wanting to talk with me because apparently Raelea came home the night before and was all excited and said she had the craziest night of her life! And that she met a "crazy Prophet girl." BWAHA! Tiffany is asking me all these questions because she is suspicious of me because she is churched, and it sounds to her like I'm part of a cult. (makes sense that is sounded that way because I used a lot of free spirit talk with Raelea "oh I'm not part of a religion, I just go with the flow of the Spirit" lol.) She says she doesn't go to church here in Austin because all the Christians "don't do anything," as in they don't go out, they don't smoke pot, they don't get drunk. She asks me if I smoke or get drunk. I say I get drunk on the Holy Spirit. So then she is asking me all these questions about the Holy Spirit. Anyway, the three of us end up reading through a lot of Acts. The Word of God speaks for itself, and Tiffany wants to get baptized in the Holy Spirit! I pray over her, and then she says she feels a peace like she has never felt in her whole life. And then the Lord releases a word for her that speaks directly and speficically into her life. And she is all flipped out and wanting to get her walk with God right again.

I don't remember why I start sharing healing stories from India. Tiffany goes, "Oh my god she should pray for Bob!" I'm like, who's Bob? Bob is Raelea's ex-boyfriend who broke BOTH of his arms 10 days ago while playing football on a UNICYCLE! Craaazy! So Raelea calls him and re-shares the India healing stories and asks if her friend can come over and pray for him. He's like, "sure if she doesn't mind weed." So we go to Bob's place. It is THE place. The crackhouse. People are walking in and out of the door without warning. Picking up and dropping off drugs. Everyone is sitting on the couches in a circle, listening to chill music, nodding heads and singing lyrics and smoking pot. I don't know the lyrics so I just nod my head and enjoy the Holy Spirit. Then eventually Bob remembers why we are there, and he asks, "um were y'all wanting to help me get better or something?" So I ask to lay hands and pray for him. Raelea and Tiffany come over and lay hands too without me telling them to do that! He takes his left arm (his worst arm) out of the sling, and I command the bone to be healed in Jesus' name. I don't have to ask because I see it on his face but I ask how he feels. He is tripping out. He is trying to explain the crazy sensation he feels all over his body. then he stretches out his arm and it almost straightens completely! Then the pain starts coming back. So I pray again. Again he feels the Holy Spirit. But there is still some pain left. But Raelea, Tiffany, and Bob definitely all have faith that something just happened. They agree that it is going to heal over night.

As we leave both the girls are sooo excited. they just had their first adventure with Jesus! And today I called Raelea, and apparently Bob texted her and said that his arm felt amazingly better this morning! Praise Jesus! He is turning that crackhouse into his kingdom house!

So this experience was amazing for me because I experienced for the first time what it means to go "from house to house proclaiming the gospel". It is not door-to-door evangelism like some people interpret it. It's just doing church with people in their homes and letting the news spread through natural networks of friends.

Please be in prayer for Raelea. She is under a lot of spiritual warfare because she is a vital person of peace for a difficult-to-reach community- artists, musicians, hippies, universalists- these are her friends. Satan is attacking her with all these other "cool" beliefs because she tends to think everything spiritual is cool and really good. At the same time she is really touched by Jesus. I'm praying that she will want to get baptized soon (she almost got baptized that first night but something held her back). That will really solidify her faith. 

Praise the Lord for what he's doing! THis is not just with me, we are seeing breakthrough in so many different communities! Crazy stories, like Meghan's brother wanting to read the Bible. I attribute it to the increase of prayer this semester. God gives us the grace to pray 2-3 hours together every night and we are being empowered by the Holy Spirit like never before. Jesus, Lord of Lords, is so MIGHTY! his GLORY is invading the earth! Hallelujah!

When Students Travel For Jesus

9022010