A Church Without Walls

While still on topic, I've invited our regular guest, Drew Shih, to dialogue with me about my book, Hearing the Heartbeat of God, that came out in May. Join us in this conversation about some of the journey the Holy Spirit has had me on and what God has been teaching me in the process.

Challenged by one of my friends that all my guests and examples have been people in some form of ministry, I reached out to my friend, Eric Stelter, who has been in the construction business and run his family business along with other business ventures. Equipping and inspiring people who live and work outside of "professional" ministry contexts is one of Eric's passions. I regularly point people to him if they want to see what it looks like to hear from and follow Jesus in radical and practical ways. There is a lot of Holy Spirit power packed into this one. You're going to love this!

As we continue our journey with the Holy Spirit in hearing God, in healing and in deliverance, I want to take a step back to have a conversation with another Heidi (Hughes) to talk about how we discern what we are hearing is from God. Discernment is the common denominator in all our cooperating with the Holy Spirit. Heidi will share stories of getting it wrong, of our need to be regularly in Scripture to know the voice of the Good Shepherd, and how we need people in our lives to help us discern.

This week we are diving deeper into the reality and weirdness of the spirit realm as we talk with my friend and prayer partner, James Kearny. James shares how the Holy Spirit "jumped him in" to this kind of ministry when he was delivered from an evil spirit. And we will talk about what is often a missing piece of this kind of work, and that is discipleship - walking out the new life and freedom and authority we receive in Jesus. Buckle up!

In the same passage where Jesus gives his disciples authority to heal, it is also authority to cast out demons and raise the dead. For most (church) people the idea that demons exist and that we have authority to cast them out is so far removed from our grid that we don’t know where to begin to enter in. This podcast may be your beginning.

After jumping in the deep end on healing with Bob Ekblad in our last episode, I want to explore some of the biblical foundations. We will look at Jesus as our model for what God's heart is about healing and what the healing ministry of the Holy Spirit looks like. And we will get prepared to step out with the Holy Spirit in praying for healing.

In this episode we venture into healing waters , talking with Bob Ekblad about his journey with the Holy Spirit in the ministry of healing prayer, in particular, praying for physical healing. People have all sorts of skepticism and questions about this topic so let me know what questions you have and we can pursue answers in future podcasts. For now, be encouraged that God does heal and be inspired and challenged to step into partnership with the Holy Spirit.

As we are learning to hear God and be led by the Holy Spirit, one of the main questions I hear is, "How do I know it is God and not just me?" This is a good and really important question. We will see what Jesus has to tell us and explore some core questions to help guide us.

We've been exploring how God speaks and we hear, and how we are led by the Holy Spirit. In this episode we will look at one of the ways the Holy Spirit does stuff, what Paul calls "the gift of prophecy" (1 Cor 12:10) The most basic way I understand this is that prophecy is hearing God - for others. We will explore some of the layers going on in how we interact with a prophetic word and look at some life-giving ways to help guide how we share a prophetic word with someone.

Continuing with our questions about God the Holy Spirit, I talk with our friend, Drew Shih, about his journey with the Holy Spirit and his take on what the Bible means when it says "Don't quench the Holy Spirit," "Don't grieve the Holy Spirit," and by the haunting statement from Jesus that the only sin that won't be forgiven is the "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit." Drew brings a lot of humility and compassion to this conversation.