OpentheWord.org

Over the past couple of months, I have been doing a series on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the importance of spiritual gifts. It has attracted the attention of cessationists who don’t believe the spiritual gifts are for today and that they ended with the death of the last apostle, John, around 100 AD.

Along with this, I have garnered a few negative comments about my series including one that reads:

“If you believe what God said, tongues are for a sign and the Jews require a sign. This took place in apostolic times. Signs of the apostles. When they died, those times and signs died with them. Paul said in the passage this man alludes to that he would rather speak 5 words with understanding than 10,000 words of an unknown tongue. This man perverts the whole chapter. Today’s unknown tongue is either rehearsed and fake or they come from an unclean spirit. Stick with the Book.

The writer is pretty blunt insinuating that those speaking in tongues are either faking it or even worse being influenced by the demonic.

So it’s time to tackle this theological controversy on whether the gifts of the Holy Spirit are intended for today and in this first of my two-part series I will look at five of eight reasons why I believe the spiritual gifts are not only intended for today, but are necessary.

As part of this, I will also hopefully deal with some of the arguments that cessationists use to oppose the gifts.

Let’s look at the day it all started and the words of the Apostle Peter after the Holy Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost and the 120 disciples poured out into the streets of Jerusalem speaking in tongues in Acts 2.

In his sermon, Peter told those gathered to repent and believe and they would “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself” (Acts 2:38-39).

Peter said the gift of the Holy Spirit was not only for them and their children but also for those who were a far off, or those who hadn’t even been born yet.

Then to make sure that everyone understood, what he was saying, Peter adds that this gift was intended for “as many the Lord or God will call to himself.”

This is in the future tense.

Anyone who believed in Jesus could receive this gift of the Holy Spirit if they wanted it, because, like today, even back then some didn’t, as they accused the 120 of being drunk in Acts 2:13.

They had spiritual gift naysayers in 33 AD and we still have them 2000 years later.

The Day of Pentecost was a very explosive introduction to the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts and the biggest problem with such a dramatic entrance is the bigger the unfurling, the greater the need for clarity and closure if the gifts were going to come to an end.

In fact, the Bible is full of verses that do exactly the opposite. In 1 Corinthians 12:31 and 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul tells the Corinthians to ‘earnestly desire’ the spiritual gifts. Then in 1 Corinthians 14:39, Paul expressly tells the Corinthians to both earnestly desire the gift of prophecy and then warns “do not forbid speaking in tongues.”

There is no hint in these verses that the gifts were soon coming to an end, in fact, it is quite the opposite.

There is only one verse that specifically addresses the end of the spiritual gifts, when Paul writes quote, “but if there are gifts of [c]prophecy, they will be done away with; if there are tongues, they will cease” (1 Corinthians 13:8).

Paul then explains when this will take place, when he writes quote, “For we know in part and prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes the partial will be done away with (1 Corinthians 13:9-10 NASV).

Paul says that when the perfect comes, the spiritual gifts will done away with because they will no longer be necessary as we will have full knowledge.

So everything hinges on what Paul was referring to when to he wrote about the arrival of the ‘perfect.”

A few diehard cessationists argue that the ‘perfect’ refers to the completion of the New Testament canon, and the writing of the Book of Revelation around 90 AD t0 100 AD.

Continuaitonists counter this by saying that the perfect refers to the second coming of Christ when we will have full revelation and the spiritual gifts will no longer be necessary.

Because Paul goes on to say:

12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

When Paul is talking about seeing face-to-face, he is not talking about a book.

While a few cessationists still use this verse to promote their position, most now agree that Paul is referring to Christ’s second coming. Some even grudgingly admit that the verse suggests that the gifts are intended to function till the second coming of Christ.

This is one of their classic cessationist arguments opposing the gift of prophecy. They suggest that if God is giving people prophetic words, this would be equal to the scripture, meaning that we could arguably add more chapters to the Bible.

This argument makes no sense because thousands of Old and New Testament prophecies were not included in the Biblical canon.

Even one of Israel’s most reprobate kings, King Saul, started prophesying when he encountered a company of prophets in 1 Samuel 10:10.

Why weren’t his prophecies included? Why aren’t they there.

In 1 Kings 18:4, we know that aside from Elijah there were at least 100 prophets in Israel, who would have uttered hundreds if not thousands of prophecies.

Why weren’t their prophetic words not included?

They were not included for the same reason that prophesies given in the Corinthian church were not part of the New Testament canon. They were personal for the individual or one particular body of believers and they were not intended for the whole church.

So for the same reasons that thousands of prophecies given in the Old New Testament periods were not included in the scriptural canon, modern prophecies are not included.

Nevertheless, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 14:4, prophecies of this nature can edify and build up individuals or churches, for whom they are specifically intended.

However, that is simply not the case because we know from the writing of the early church fathers decades after John’s death that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were still very much in operation.

In his book Dialogue with Trypho, Christian apologist Justin Martyr who lived between 100 AD to 165 AD wrote, “For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to the present time.”

Early Christian theologian, Origen of Alexander, who lived between 185 AD and 253 AD, wrote that he had seen many instances of healing and prophecy but didn’t go into much detail about them because he was scared of being ridiculed.

Yes, it appears there were cessationists then too.

Fame theologian Augustine, who lived around 400 AD, cited several dramatic divine healings, some that came with God-inspired dreams, in his book City of God. He even complained that the church wasn’t doing enough to tell the world about them.

Now it’s true, that the usage of the gifts did fall off for several hundred years after around 400 AD, but this should not surprise us, because the same thing happened in the Bible. We had periods of time when the gifts were not functioning.

In 1 Samuel 3:1, we read, “And word from the Lord was rare in those days; visions were infrequent.”

The rarity of the word of the Lord or prophecy at that time was due to the backslidden nature of Israel.

The prophet Amos even warned there would be days of a “famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). There would be days when the gift of prophecy would be rare.

We also know that after Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, there was another period of 400 years when the prophetic gift rarely functioned, again due largely to the backslidden spiritual climate at that time.

From roughly 400 AD on, we don’t see powerful displays of the Holy Spirit until the Great Awakening which started in the 1700s.

Again this happened for much the same reason it took place in the Old Testament, people’s hearts were cold.

But even during this dark period, there were groups, such as the Cathari and the Waldenses, in the 12th and 13th centuries who functioned in the spiritual gifts. The Roman Catholic church labelled them heretics and brutally slandered and persecuted them.

While cessationists typically discredit these groups by calling them heretical, If modern continuationists and even cessationists lived at that time we would have all been branded heretics as well.

When you watch cessationists videos, they often cite the abuse of the spiritual gifts, with video examples, as a way to discredit the spiritual gifts.

Certainly, there is plenty of that to go around, from the false prophecies regarding Trump to the misuse of the gift of tongues.

But is this evidence that the gifts are no longer for today?

It isn’t because the same thing took place in both the Old and New Testaments.

Paul wrote about the misuse of the spiritual gifts in the services at the Corinthian church where everyone was speaking in tongues at the same time causing mayhem. Paul added that anyone visiting would think they were “insane” in 1 Corinthians 14:23.

Paul’s warning suggests that the Corinthian services were bordering on the chaotic so did he tell people they could no longer speak in tongues? No, he said the opposite, he said ‘forbid not tongues.’

But he did bring order to the services by limiting how many people could speak in tongues and prophesy during a service to three each.

In the Old Testament, they had the same problem. Moses warned of false prophets, as did Jeremiah, who said the false prophets in his day spoke words from their imagination in Jeremiah 23:16. Obviously, the gift was being abused even then.

We not only have abuse and misuse of the spiritual gifts taking place in the Old and New Testament periods, in Matthew 24:24, Jesus warned that in the days leading up to His second coming, false Christs and false prophets will make an appearance.

Spiritual gifts would also be abused in the future.

Now this would have also been an ideal time for Christ to tell everyone that prophecy would no longer exist, but He didn’t. Instead, the Lord just warned about the abuse.

In order to have false prophets, you must have true prophets.

Ultimately, the abuse of the gifts is not the fault of the spiritual gifts, but rather the users.

In the second of this two-part series, I will discuss my final three arguments on why spiritual gifts are for today. And as part of this, I will provide several examples of how the Holy Spirit manifests His gifts among those who don’t even believe in them. Yes, words of knowledge, gifts of tongues, and even prophecy are being released to cessationists. It’s hard to believe, I know, but it is true.

Thanks for joining me on my podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to talk about one of the more controversial Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gift of Tongues.

A friend, Jim Marteniuk, told me about his intriguing encounter with tongues a few years back.

But before I tell that story, let’s define the gift of tongues. It is a gift that allows people to speak in a language they do not know through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can also provide a gift of interpretation through which these tongues can be interpreted.

Tongues can come in basically two forms. It can appear as an actual human language which is what happened on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell upon 120 disciples of Jesus. That group poured into the streets of Jerusalem miraculously speaking in languages they did not know. People were hearing them speaking in their native tongue and because of that miraculous display, 3,000 people were saved that day.

But Paul also mentions in 1 Corinthians 13:1, that tongues can be an angelic language, which no one would understand unless someone with the gift of interpretation was in the room.

When Jim had his unusual tongues experience, he had been a Christian for a couple of years and was living in North Battleford, a small city in Northern Canada.

This is the same place where the 1948 revival broke out, which brought us teaching on the Tabernacle of David and the laying on of hands.

On Friday nights, Jim often went out with John Stewart, his church’s youth pastor, to share their faith in the community.

They had gone to Bruno’s a restaurant in the city, which has since closed, and were sharing their faith with a group of young people. When the group left, an East Indian couple, who were sitting at a nearby table, said they overheard their conversation and wanted to hear more about God.

They were professionals. The husband was a doctor and also taught classes at university and his wife was a psychologist.

As John and Jim shared their faith, the wife asked if they happened to be some of those crazy people who spoke in tongues.

When John said they were, the husband replied, “Well, I speak five different languages why don’t you speak in tongues for us?”

John quickly volunteered Jim to do it. Jim said he was caught a bit off guard by this and responded that he wasn’t sure he could, but John said let’s pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help.

When Jim started speaking in tongues, he immediately realized that it had changed and he was speaking words that he had never said before.

They noticed an immediate reaction from the East Indian couple, whose eyes widened. They were noticeably shocked by what they were hearing. When Jim finished, the couple immediately asked if he had been trained in linguistics.

Surprised by this response, Jim said no and then asked what had happened.

The husband said that Jim had spoken in a Tamil dialect and when John asked what the Holy Spirit had said through Jim, the husband abruptly answered, that “it was none of their business.”

The couple left shortly after that.

Jim and John were as shocked by what happened as the East Indian couple. Jim actually contacted the husband a few times after this encounter to encourage him to embrace Christ. but he wasn’t sure if he ever did.

Today, the gift of tongues defines the Charismatic movement and is arguably the most controversial of the nine spiritual gifts that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12, which includes prophecy and gifts of healing, among others.

Even the East Indian couple brought up those ‘crazy people who speak in tongues.’ But surprisingly, the gift of tongues can even be despised by charismatics, who actually believe in spiritual gifts.

A good friend of mine, Peter, who God has used in the spiritual gifts tells of the first time he spoke in tongues.

Peter was saved in a charismatic church, and shortly after committing to Christ, he moved away for a few months.

While he was gone, the church went through a Charismatic renewal resulting in regular expressions of the spiritual gifts during services.

During the first service Peter attended when he returned home, someone spoke in tongues. Peter had never heard this before and said it sounded strange. After the service, he asked what was going on. When he was told it was tongues, because it sounded so weird, Peter immediately reacted saying, he would never speak in tongues.

But that all changed a few months later while he was worshiping during a service and suddenly strange words started pouring out of his mouth.

He immediately stopped singing and after the service talked to the pastor about what had just taken place.

The pastor asked Peter to demonstrate what had happened to him and over the next several minutes he said the gift of tongues exploded out of him and he thought it was going to blow down the walls. He thought he was going to blow down the walls of the church, it was so powerful.

Though no one laid hands on him, Peter believes he was filled with the Holy Spirit during the worship service and despite his preconceived ideas about the gift, he was now speaking in tongues.

I have since heard several testimonies of people mentioning their experience with explosive tongues and I have had others tell me that at times their tongues have become almost militant at time. I suspect these types of tongues are similar to what happened on the Day of Pentecost.

It’s obvious by what happened on the Day of Pentecost and to Jim Marteniuk, that the gift of tongues has uses in evangelism. But does it have a purpose other than that?

The Apostle Paul says it does and in 1 Corinthians 14, he warns the Corinthian church that multiple people speaking in tongues at the same time during a church service can bring confusion, resulting in non-believers concluding that they are “insane” in verse 23.

To counter this, Paul limits the expression of the gift of tongues during a public service to a maximum of three people speaking one at a time, provided there is an interpreter, someone with the gift of interpretation.

If there is no interpreter or if three people have already spoken, Paul says in verse 28 that people should only speak in tongues to themselves. You can still speak in tongues but don’t speak so loudly that others can hear it.

These limitations suggest that the gift of tongues is largely intended for personal use and if that is the case, what are the purposes for this gift?

Paul writes that quote “The one who speaks in a tongue edifies himself;” 1 Corinthians 14:4. unquote

The Greek word translated edifies speaks of construction either building something completely new, adding an addition or repairing a damaged dwelling. The same word is used when Jude adds that we can build ourselves up in our faith, by praying in the Holy Spirit in verse 20.

The gift of tongues can not only bring a greater release of the Holy Spirit in your life, it can also repair emotional or spiritual damage.

In 1 Samuel 30:6, we are told that David encouraged himself in the Lord after his men threatened to kill David because they blamed him when the Amalekites kidnapped their women and children while David and his men were away at a conflab with the Philistines.

Though David obviously didn’t speak in tongues, he was depressed and fearful and found a way to encourage himself in God.

When we go through similar difficult times or challenges, the gift of tongues can repair emotional damage and even deal with depression caused by the words of others.

In 2011, a study headed by University of Albany anthropologist Christopher Lynn and reported in the American Journal of Human Biology found that speaking in tongues may help people deal with stress.

In the study, the researchers examined the stress markers reflected by cortisol levels in the saliva of 52 Pentecostals living in New York City.

They analyzed the cortisol levels of all churchgoers on Sunday and found them to be high indicating higher stress levels. When they tested them again on Monday, the cortisol levels were significantly lower indicating lower stress levels which Lynn attributed to speaking in tongues during the Sunday service.

Paul writes, “For the one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people, but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries” (1 Corinthians 14:2).

Later in that same chapter, Paul adds in verses 14 and 15, “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unproductive. What is the outcome, I will pray in the spirit.”

A friend of mine had an interesting thing happen to him. During a time of prayer, a friend, who he hadn’t seen for probably 15 years came to his mind, as he was speaking in tongues. And then he felt this unusual urge to continue speaking in tongues for an extended period and he believed he was actually praying in tongues for his friend.

For the next week or so, whenever he prayed this person would come to his mind and he would speak in tongues.

Though it seemed that the Holy Spirit was using his gift of tongues to pray for this friend, he had no idea why or what he was praying.

However, a few months later he discovered that this friend had gone through a difficult coinciding with the period the Holy Spirit was praying for him through my friend’s gift of tongues.

But we also need to understand how the gift of tongues works. Paul says “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays,” which Paul also refers to as praying in the spirit.

According to the Bible, we are composed of a spirit, soul, and body. Our spirit is a separate entity which is essentially who we are. Our body is that physical contraption we live in and our soul, which is our mind, will, and emotions, is how our spirit expresses itself within our physical body.

Normal prayer requires us to use our minds. We think and we pray. However, when we pray in tongues, Paul says it is our inner spirit that is praying, not our mind.

And this is what showed up in neuroimaging scans conducted on the brains of people speaking in tongues.

According to a 2006 article in the New York Times, entitled: “A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking in Tongues”, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of five women as they spoke in tongues and then sang Gospel songs.

Basically, they studied the blood flow in their brains which reveals which parts of the brain were being used as they spoke in tongues compared to when they sang.

When these people spoke in tongues, the scans showed a drop off in the usage of the frontal lobes which is where we do our thinking and is used prominently when we speak or sing.

Secondly, there was also a drop off in the area responsible for language even though they were speaking and thirdly there was also reduced activity in the ‘left caudate’ which is the area responsible for emotional and motor control which suggested that the women had ceded control when they spoke in tongues.

This is exactly what Paul said was happening when he said our spirit is the one initiating the tongues and the mind is essentially bypassed.

Paul talks about praying in the spirit in another passage, Ephesians 6, the great spiritual warfare chapter where he talks about principalities and powers and putting on the armor of God to fight the demonic realm.

He closes off this spiritual warfare teaching by encouraging us to “With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit” (verse 18).

Again he talks about praying in the spirit or speaking in tongues, but this time he talked about specifically in the context of spiritual warfare.

In fact, Paul encourages us to ‘pray at all times in the Spirit.’

While he encouraged us to pray with our minds and with the gift of tongues in 1 Corinthians 14, when it comes to spiritual warfare Paul emphasizes praying in tongues.

This spiritual warfare connection may explain what seems to be an additional feature of tongues, encryption.

In today’s modern tech world, we have several communication programs that allow us to secretly communicate with other people, such as Signal and Telegram, which come with end-to-end encryption.

This means without the proper deciphering code nobody intercepting these messages would be able to understand them.

This is essentially what happens to a person when they speak in tongues when Paul says, “in his spirit, he speaks mysteries” (1 Corinthians 14:2).

These mysteries which we speak through tongues can, of course, be understood by God.

Though our mind can’t comprehend what is being said, it also makes me wonder if Satan has the same problem.

In Daniel 10, we read how Daniel, who was in captivity in Persia, understood that a war was brewing in the heavens in verses 1 to 3 and entered a time of prayer and fasting about what was taking place.

Three weeks later, after he prayed and fasted, an angel showed up telling Daniel “from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words” (verse 12).

The verse says that Daniel’s words were heard, and it seems to imply that the angel had also heard them. However, it took three weeks for the godly angel to deliver the message because the Prince of Persia, a demonic angel, hindered the godly angel from delivering the message.

Though the message was eventually delivered after Michael the archangel stepped in to help, it shows that Satan can hinder prayer.

But as I read this story, I wondered if the demonic realm also heard Daniel’s prayer which gave satan time to prepare and strategize on ways to hinder the delivery of the answer.

But if you pray in tongues, it is a mystery. The demonic realm has no idea what you are praying about or even who you are praying for. The Holy Spirit could be using you to pray for a pastor in Africa, a family member, or perhaps the leader of your church.

This makes it difficult for fallen angels to hinder these prayers.

Paul writes “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unproductive. What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also;”

Then Paul says in the very next verse, “I will sing with the spirit, but I will sing with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).

Since praying in the spirit refers to tongues, we must conclude that singing with the spirit is singing in tongues. Paul was singing or worshipping God with the gift of tongues.

Some have even suggested that the ‘spiritual songs’ mentioned in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 could also refer to singing in tongues.

In recent months, I have found myself increasingly doing this during worship services. At times, I sing the words, but at other times, I sing along in tongues, but I do it softly to myself so I don’t disrupt others.

As I do this, I sense a greater release of the Holy Spirit in my life, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

When we sing in tongues, we exalt God in ways we could never do in English and this is important because the Psalmist writes that “God inhabits the praises” of his people (Psalm 22:3).

I believe singing and speaking in tongues can bring a greater release of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and as well during church services.

So in conclusion, if the Holy Spirit has given you this gift, I encourage you to use it more. If you don’t have the gift, you may need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and should ask believers from a Charismatic Christian church to lay hand hands on you and pray for you.

If you have already been filled with the Holy Spirit and don’t have this gift, then follow Paul’s advice and earnestly desire and pray for this spiritual gift.

Thanks again for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and I want to discuss my brief encounter with the Gift of Faith, which is one of the nine spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit handed out to members of the Body of Christ who have been filled with the Holy Spirit mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12.

This includes the gift of tongues, interpretation of tongues, discerning of spirits, words of knowledge and wisdom, prophecy, miracles, and the gift of faith.

Paul states that every person receives at least one of these gifts or manifestations of the Spirit of God. Of course, some like the gift of tongues or healing are simple to understand.

But how does the gift of faith function? I hope to use what I believe was my one and only encounter with this gift to explain how it works and as well its purpose.

About three decades ago, my wife and I had moved out of the city we had lived in most of our lives due to a work transfer.  We were in the new city about a year and a half, when I received a phone call from my boss asking if we wanted to return home.

A lot of good things happened while we were gone, particularly spiritually, and both of us felt it was time to go back.

Of course, we had bought a house in the new city and needed to sell it. As we pondered the sale, we considered the possibility of selling it ourselves instead of using a real estate agency that would charge a few thousand dollars for their service.

While in the throes of making the decision, a brother in Christ, who knew we were moving back, called because the Lord impressed on him, probably through a word of Knowledge, that we should consider selling the house on our own rather than using a real estate agency.

The phone call confirmed what we had been feeling.

Our initial plan was to hold an open house each weekend until it sold.

I made signs to post around the neighborhood and created information sheets to hand out to the people who showed up.
As we prepared the house for sale, I began to experience a horrid struggle with unbelief.

As our first open house approached, I half-jokingly told my wife that I only had faith to believe four people would come through. I made up enough sell sheets and coffee to handle four visitors.

Sure enough, four people came through. But the house did not sell.
During the following week, I was again plagued with these doubts and unbelief. As the weekend approached, I had faith that eight people would look at our house.

I doubled my faith, I guess.

Incredibly, eight people came through. But still, the house did not sell.

As each day passed during the next week, the intensity of my unbelief only magnified. It began to grow within me.

With the next weekend approaching, I remember standing in our bedroom, trying to psyche myself up for 16 people to come through. Doubling what I believed the previous week.

As I was mustering up the faith, I felt the Holy Spirit ask me, “Do you want 16 people to come to the open house or do you want to sell it.”

I glumly answered, “Sell the house.”

At that moment, I distinctly felt something well up inside me, a surge of faith that lasted only a millisecond, and as quickly as it had appeared it was gone.

I can’t over-emphasize how brief it was, but nevertheless, it was very real and then it instantly disappeared. Just poof it was gone.

After that brief surge of faith ended, the unbelief returned and I trudged on preparing for the next weekend’s open house. I was not sure what to make of the experience.

That weekend, only two groups came through — a couple and an older man and his 20-year-old son.

No one made an offer or seemed to show any interest, and we were now considering our next option of listing the property with a real estate company.

It was the middle of the week when a man called saying he was interested in buying our house and wanted to take a second look.

I thought, the couple was coming back, and was shocked when I answered the doorbell and saw the 20-year-old son standing alone in front of me.

He did another quick tour through the house and then told me he wanted to buy. We quickly agreed on a price. Dumfounded, I got out the papers and we started filling out his ‘offer to purchase.’

In the process, I found out he was a truck driver for Coca-Cola.
As we filled out the offer, I asked for a deposit of a few thousand dollars, which is standard for most real estate transactions, as it discourages people from backing away from the deal.

At that point, he said that he only had $500 to put down. When I insisted on more, he said that was all he had, and if I couldn’t agree he would pull out of the deal.

I accepted.

The next step in the ‘offer to purchase’ involved completing the financial arrangements. I asked him how much he would put down as a down payment, and how much would be borrowing from the bank?

He told me that he was going to buy the house with cash.

Initially, I thought he was borrowing the whole amount and told him the bank would require a down payment. He corrected me and said he was buying the house with cash. He would be borrowing no money.

Here was a 20-year-old truck driver for Coke, who only had $500 for a deposit, but now insisted he was going to buy this house valued at the time for nearly $100,000 with cash.

It didn’t stop there.

It got worse.

He then asked for a significantly extended possession date to give him time to cash out his investments.

What investments does a 20-year-old driver for Coca-Cola have, I wondered?

Against my better judgment, I reluctantly agreed. The deal was completed, and he left.

The unbelief and undoubt that had surged through my life the previous three weeks turned into a raging waterfall. We were now in a position where he could walk away from the deal and only be penalized by losing the $500 deposit.

When I turned in the papers and check to my lawyer, he told me that the deposit should have been much larger.

I knew that and was already having problems falling asleep at night worrying about it.

With this deal in our pocket, my wife and I headed back to our home city with the intent of being a new house.

All the while I was consumed with unbelief. I believed the moment we purchased a new house, the 20-year-old would walk away from the deal and we would be stuck with two houses and two mortgage payments.

My wife was well aware of my struggle. Fearing the worst, I was convinced we needed to rent instead of buy.  But we looked and found a house. I put in a lower offer thinking secretly hoping they would reject it and we could walk away from the deal and rent instead.

But they accepted.

Throughout this whole time, I was overwhelmed with unbelief, worry, and fear. But incredibly despite my fears, the deal went through. This 20-year-old truck driver for Coke, who only had $500 for a deposit, managed to come up with just under $100,000 cash for the purchase.

Looking back, I realized I had been given a gift of faith that Paul talks about in Corinthians.

The gift of faith is not to be confused with believing faith listed in Ephesians 2:8-9 which tells us that we are saved when we believe in Jesus for our salvation.

Nor is it a fruit of the spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22 which is a character trait, that speaks of an individual who has a positive outlook on life because of their confidence in God to provide all their needs.

The gift of faith refers to a supernatural faith supplied by the Holy Spirit.

The word gift (which is the Greek word charisma) used to describe the spiritual gifts in I Corinthians 12 verse 4 is rarely used in the New Testament era. At its root is the idea of mercy.

Because it is a gift, there are no strings attached. God gives the gift because He loves us and wants to help us.

Once I received the gift of faith, it was a done deal. Though the money was still in the buyer’s bank, in fact, it was in our account.

But perhaps the most stunning feature of this whole ordeal was it didn’t matter how much I disbelieved, after I received this gift of faith my unbelief and doubt could not change the circumstances. The sale of our house was as they say in French, ‘fait accompli.’

I didn’t have to continue believing to see it happen.

We need to understand the gift of faith is completely separate from our own faith. In the middle of my struggle with unbelief, the Holy Spirit threw me a life preserver.

I can’t over-emphasize how brief this gift of faith was when it welled up in my spirit. That surge of faith lasted a millisecond, but Jesus did teach that faith the size of a mustard seed could move a mountain. Something extremely small can be extremely powerful.

There is an interesting encounter in the Book of Acts involving Peter and John, which I believe provides more information on the gift of faith.

Peter and John were heading to the temple to pray in Acts 3, when they encountered a man, lame from birth, asking for alms.

Peter looked at the man and stated, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6).

Peter grabbed the man by the hand and he was immediately healed and stood up leaping and walking. It was an incredible miracle that astounded everyone who saw what happened as this lame man had been a fixture at the temple.

Peter then turned to the gathering crowd and explained what they had just witnessed. First, Peter talked about how it was faith in the name of Jesus that healed this man.

But then Peter adds a peculiar second statement in verse 16 he says that it is, “the faith which comes through Him (Jesus) has given him this perfect health.”

Notice that Peter did not say the healing that comes through Jesus gave this man perfect health, Peter said that it was the faith that comes through Jesus that healed this lame man.

In other words, this man was not healed by Peter’s faith but rather by Christ’s faith. I believe at this moment, Peter received a surge of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural gift of faith.

But this verse also suggests that the gift of faith is a manifestation of the faith that Jesus functioned with during His ministry on Earth. It’s a portion of Jesus’ faith that He displayed during His three-year ministry.

The Holy Spirit knows our weaknesses and will manifest or release this gift in our lives in our moments of desperation. It was an act of mercy for me and my wife as we tried to sell our house and mercy to the man who had been lame from birth.

I believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, faith, wisdom, knowledge, prophecy tongues and their interpretation, miracles, healing, and discerning of spirits are intended for our personal benefit and as a benefit to the whole church and others.

They are supernatural gifts of mercy given to us because of God’s love. We need to value them and as Paul writes in Corinthians earnestly seek them.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast and we will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith, in this podcast, I want to discuss the greatest hindrance to the moving of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts in people’s lives and in the Church today.

Many would probably agree that for the most part, the North American church is not moving in the same Holy Spirit power as we see demonstrated in the early Church through the Book of Acts.

While some wonder why this is happening, others argue that it is not only true but to be expected.

Over the last few months, we have seen a significant push against the spiritual gifts and the filling of the Holy Spirit by those in the church referred to as cessationists or those who believe that the spiritual gifts are not for today.

Now they still believe that God can perform miracles, but are convinced that since the end of the first century, the Holy Spirit is no longer releasing spiritual gifts to people.

On the other side of the spiritual spectrum are the continuationists, or those who believe the Holy Spirit’s miraculous gifts are as important and necessary today as they were in the early church.

Most cessationists believe that the revelatory and miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit ended with the death of the last apostle, the Apostle John, who died around 100 AD, as this corresponds with the writing of the Bible’s last book, Revelation, and the completion of the canon.

However, I have even seen other cessationists date the end of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD.

They point to the Apostle Paul’s recommendation that Timothy takes some wine for his stomach’s sake in 1 Timothy 5:23, as evidence, that Paul no longer had a functioning gift of healing or at the very least it was starting to wind down. 1 Timothy was written between 62 Ad and 66 Ad.

However, it is obvious from 1 Timothy, that the Apostle Paul didn’t believe that because, in the previous chapter, he told Timothy, “Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was granted to you through words of prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders” (1 Timothy 4:14 NASV).

Why would Paul tell Timothy not to neglect his spiritual gift and later in 2 Timothy, written around 67 AD, tell Timothy to stir up his spiritual gift, if the gifts were all but done?

Whatever the case, cessationists don’t believe that the filling of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts such as healing, miracles, tongues, and prophecy are intended for the church today.

The bulk of cessationists are found within the confines of the Southern Baptist Convention or Southern Baptist Church and recently they have become quite aggressive in expressing their opposition to spiritual gifts.

In October 2023, they held a Cessationist conference at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. It featured prominent cessationists such as John MacArthur and Justin Peters.

This conference coincided with the release of a documentary also called Cessationists. It was part of a concerted effort to prove that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for today.

Now it’s easy to dismiss this controversy as simply theological bickering between the brethren, but Tim Challies, a noted Christian author, suggests there is a bit more to it than that.

Challies is an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Canada, and he is a convinced cessationist. In a recent article entitled, Cessationist: The Film, Challies acknowledged the seriousness of this debate when he said: “The things about the debate between cessationism and continuationism is that one side must be wrong — and quite seriously wrong.”

Challies admitted that one side in this debate is ‘seriously wrong.’ In other words, this is not a flippant discussion that we can blissfully sluff off.

If the continuationists are wrong, then what we refer to as manifestations of the Holy Spirit are emotional outbursts or even fraud or perhaps even worse.

If the cessationists are wrong, then they are missing a key element in building the church and the Kingdom of God — the power of the Holy Spirit.

When we watch the major pushback against the Spiritual gifts by Cessationists, it could be argued that their message is the greatest hindrance to the moving of the Holy Spirit today.

Certainly, they have had an impact, as the 13 million members of Southern Baptist church are trapped by an ideology that the filling of the Holy Spirit and His power gifts are not for today.

Many are missing out individually because of what they have been taught, because what you believe affects what you practice.

However, I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is hindered by those who disagree or oppose the gifts because when the Holy Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost, many mocked those speaking in tongues by saying, “They are filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13).

These early charismatic believers were actually accused of being drunk.

However, the Holy Spirit bulldozed through these mocking critics, and 3,000 people were saved by this powerful display of the gifts.

There will always be critics and because of this, I believe the biggest hindrance to the moving of the Holy Spirit today is found among those who believe the gifts are for today, but are apathetic about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and His powerful, energizing gifts.

They either don’t care or don’t think it is important.

In Ephesians 4:30, Paul warns, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Thayer defines the Greek word for grieve this way, “to make sorrowful, to affect with sadness, cause grief, to throw into sorrow, to grieve and offend.”

While there are several ways to grieve the Holy Spirit, I believe one of the major ways we do this is by undervaluing the Holy Spirit’s ministry and all that He offers in terms of gifts.

In one word, APATHY!

As we read the Gospels, we see powerful examples of Christ’s ability to heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, and perform miracles.

But we often miss the most important detail. While on earth, Jesus had set aside His deity and was functioning fully as a man, and consequently, the Lord performed these miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit.

John writes that Jesus had the full measure of God’s Holy Spirit inside Him (John 3:34) and we see that on display in the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.

When she was healed after touching the hem of Christ’s garment, Jesus said quote “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me,” (Luke 8:46 ESV). This power that flowed out of Jesus was the Holy Spirit.

When the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of a higher-ranking Evil spirit, Beelzebub, Jesus replied that he cast out the demon by the Spirit of God in Matthew 12:28.

The Holy Spirit empowered Jesus to deal with the demonic.

Incredibly I have heard some cessationists argue that deliverance is also no longer for today. It reminds me of the criticisms of the Toronto Bless in the 1990s because demons were manifesting in the services.

But the same thing happened when Jesus showed up at a synagogue in Capernaum in Mark 1, and an evil spirit began to manifest in the service, as a man began to shout out.

The fact is when the power of God shows up evil spirits are forced to reveal themselves.

Jesus served as an example of what can happen when people are empowered with the Holy Spirit, so we should follow the example of the Apostle Paul who instead of warning the Corinthian Church that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were coming to an end within the next 20 or 30 years, exhorted them “to earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Paul used the same Greek word, zēloō, a couple of chapters earlier when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:31 that we are to “desire earnestly the ‘higher gifts.’”

So in fact, he is repeating his exhortation to earnestly desire spiritual gifts.

So what does Paul mean by this?

The word zēloō means, “to have strong affection towards, be ardently devoted to, to burn with zeal, to be heated or boil with envy, to strive after.”

We need to zealously desire spiritual gifts. We need to be passionate about them, particularly for the gift of prophecy.

But in addition to seeking spiritual gifts, we need to pray for more of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Many of us are familiar with Jesus’ parable in Luke 11, where a man had a friend show up at his home unexpectedly. He went to a neighbour’s home late at night waking him up and requesting three loaves. When the neighbor told him not to bother him, the man refused to leave and kept persisting, and finally the neighbor relented and gave him the bread he needed.

Then Jesus said, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:10).

This parable is often cited as an example of why we need to be persistent in our prayers to receive an answer.

Now, I don’t want to disappoint you, because, persistence is an important key to successful prayer. However, when Jesus talked about asking, seeking, and knocking He was not talking about prayer.

Jesus finished this teaching with these words, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (verse 13).

When Jesus talked about asking, seeking, and knocking, the Lord was talking about receiving the Holy Spirit.

When was the last time, you asked or in other words prayed for more of the Holy Spirit in your life?

This even includes praying for spiritual gifts. Paul told the Corinthians that if they have the gift of tongues, they should pray for the gift of interpretation in 1 Corinthians 14:13. So praying for a spiritual gift is part of asking.

We should be praying not only for more of the Holy Spirit, but spiritual gifts.

Jesus then said we need to seek the Holy Spirit. Now, you only take time and effort to seek something when it is important to you.

How much do you value the Holy Spirit?

Then have you been knocking on the door, persistently and repeatedly asking for the Holy Spirit, as the man did in the parable when he asked for bread?

What is equally important about asking, seeking, and knocking is the tense of these verbs because it’s continual. It means we need to keep on asking for the Holy Spirit, keep on seeking the Holy Spirit, and keep on knocking.

Or how about when Jesus stood up on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles and proclaimed, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38).

And in case there was any doubt about what Jesus was referring to, John footnotes this by stating in the very next verse, that these living waters were referring to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus wants the Holy Spirit to be flowing out of you. This is the desire of God.

But we can’t discuss this passage without focussing on verse 37, where Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

To have the Holy Spirit flowing out of you in power, you must first thirst for the living water.

According to Thayers, the Greek word for thirst describes “those who are said to thirst who painfully feel their want of, and eagerly long for, those things by which the soul is refreshed, supported, strengthened.”

It is real. This type of thirst is real. You can’t make this type of thirst up.

Now, like anything you can fake it. In other words, you can appear religious without being truly thirsty for the Holy Spirit. The outward appearance looks similar, but it lacks that sincere inner desire.

The biggest hindrance to the release of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the church is apathy or a lack of desire.

Only you know the true state of your heart and the most important thing in dealing with this is honesty.

If you lack a true desire for more of the Holy Spirit in your life, confess this to the Heavenly Father, and then ask the Holy Spirit to give you a greater desire for His presence.

Over the past few months, I have gone through a process of personal renewal. Look it is easy to fall into a state of complacency, especially in the West, where we lack nothing.

I have been asking repeatedly for more of the Holy Spirit to be released in my life. I don’t know how else to express this, but as I did this I started feeling this desire for more of God building inside me. I can actually feel it happening inside me.

Along with this has come a greater release of the Spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit. We need more of the Holy Spirit and more of His power in our lives.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Source:

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to talk about the importance of being filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit.

A strange thing happened to me, years ago, while I was attending seminary. The school I attended had an interesting theory about the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. It was simply, ‘Seek not, forbid not.’

In other words, it did not forbid the gift of tongues, but neither did it encourage them.

The reality was however that the major emphasis was ‘seek not.’

Now I had been saved in a charismatic church that strongly believed in the gift of tongues and spiritual gifts and I was still attending that church while at seminary. It was a Jesus people hippie church, the oldest person who was 25 at the time was the pastor.

But as I continued at seminary I started developing a negative attitude towards those who spoke in tongues. I looked down on the gift and them.

I remember the evening I was attending one of our church’s home prayer meetings. I had been a Christian for a couple of years and had never been filled with the Holy Spirit and I felt an inner urge that I needed to do this.

I asked for prayer and several people gathered, around me, laid their hands on me, and began to pray and suddenly the Holy Spirit fell upon me.

I felt what can only be described as an inexplicable Joy. And then a strange thing happened.

I felt this burning sensation, without pain, start in the pit of my stomach and slowly began to move its way up my stomach and my throat.

I had no idea what was happening. But I had my suspicions that this was the gift of tongues. So I pushed back this sensation and it stopped. It appeared again a few seconds later, and I pushed it back a second time.

If this was tongues, I was having nothing to do with it.

Over the next few days, this inexplicable Joy continued.

At the time, I was volunteering at a Christian book table at our local university. As I sat there, I still had this overwhelming joy and that burning sensation appeared again, and as I had done before I pushed it back down.

Nothing much happened until I saw one of the members of our church, Wolfgang with his trademark hippie look, long blonde hair, and full beard, walking down the hallway of the university.

As I was being distracted, the burning sensation returned, but this time it was traveling three to four times faster than it had before and zipped up my stomach, my throat, and out of my mouth and I was speaking in tongues before I had a chance to stop it.

And, then, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “Now you are numbered among them.” I was now one of those who I had previously despised.

I am sharing this because I believe the Holy Spirit is beginning to move in a new way and it is more essential than ever we have the Holy Spirit power in our lives.

In John 14:12, Jesus said that anyone who believed in Him would perform greater miracles than even the Lord did, and then four verses later connected this promise to the coming of the Holy Spirit.

If we are going to perform greater miracles than Christ, then we need the Lord’s source of power as well. When Jesus was on Earth, He set aside His deity and functioned fully as a man empowered by the Holy Spirit.

When John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the water, we are told that the Holy Spirit descended on Christ in a visible form like a dove.

John writes that Jesus had a full measure of the Holy Spirit in John 3:34 and Luke states that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit in Luke 4:1.

It was through the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus performed miracles.

When Jesus cast an evil spirit out of a man in Matthew 12, the Pharisees tried to discredit the miracle by claiming Jesus cast out the demon by a more powerful evil spirit, Beelzebul.

Jesus replied quote, “It is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons” (Matthew 12:28).

When the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was instantly healed, Jesus said “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me” (Luke 8:46). That power leaving Jesus’ body was the Holy Spirit.

If we are to perform greater miracles than even Christ, then we need the power of God in our lives. Like Jesus, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that is what happened when the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost.

But notice what happened. Luke writes in Acts 2:4 that quote, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.“

Like Jesus, the disciples on the Day of Pentecost were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now there was more happening than just tongues because we read that not only were people bewildered by what they were seeing, but some mocked the disciple, and made a strange accusation.

Luke writes in Acts 2:13, “But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

They accused the disciples of being drunk and this was so noticeable that Peter felt he needed to address this accusation by stating, “For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.”

Peter had been caught totally off guard by what was taking place.
He didn’t deny what was happening but came up with the feeble excuse that it was too early in the day for them to be drunk.

Now, if you are walking through a mall and heard someone speaking in a different language, would you immediately turn and say ‘Oh, they must be drunk.’

No, you would only accuse someone of being drunk, if you saw the classic symptoms, slurring, stumbling, erratic behavior, blood-shot eyes,. These are the hallmarks of someone drunk.

So why were the disciples accused of being drunk on the Day of Pentecost? Though we are provided no specific details, something else must have been happening.

My wife and I were at a church conference during the 1990s. We were experiencing what was known as the Toronto Revival or Blessing. I don’t know how many have heard of this. But during this time, there was a massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit, probably similar to what we saw on the Day of Pentecost.

At the conference, I remember watching one of the elders of our church, become so drunk in the spirit, he couldn’t even stand. I mean looking at him you would think he had been drinking alcohol all night.

He couldn’t stand and was crawling along the floor on his hands and knees. His words were slurred and he was dribbling saliva. His eyes were bloodshot. Anyone looking at him would have thought he was drunk, but he was not drunk from alcohol, he was overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.

During the Toronto Blessing, the Holy Spirit was so strong during church services that it would cause people to collapse to the floor which we refer to as being slain in the Spirit.

At times, you had to watch where you were walking as there were so many people sprawled on the floor because of the power of God.

Sociologist Margaret Poloma describes being slain in the spirit as quote “the power of the Holy Spirit so filling a person with a heightened inner awareness that the body’s energy fades away and the person collapses to the floor“.

Now we may look at these types of things as being quite strange, but they were common in past revivals.

For example, it was common to see people being slain by the Holy Spirit in the First Great Awakening which took place in Europe in the 1700s, and the Second Great Awakening which hit America in the early 1800s as they often talk about it in their writings.

John Wesley, who led many of these revival meetings, described it this way in his journal, quote:

“Many of those that heard began to call upon God with strong cries and tears. Some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked: some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently, that often four or five persons could not hold one of them… I immediately prayed that God would not suffer those who were weak to be offended.”

We even see examples of this in paintings of the revival meetings. In an engraving of a Methodist revival meeting created by Jacques Gérard in 1819. It portrays a meeting underway and in the foreground, people singing and praying over a man who had fallen on the ground.

Another drawing from around 1830 pictures of people attending a revival meeting and we clearly see a man catching a woman who is falling.

All I am saying is when the Holy Spirit is moving in power things start happening.

We see it occurring in the Bible. In Ezekiel 1:28, the prophet fell down on His face when he encountered the Glory of God. In an encounter with a Godly angel, Daniel said his strength left him and he fell to the ground speechless. Later during that same encounter, we see Daniel crawling on his hands and knees trembling (Daniel 10).

When King Saul encountered a company of prophets, we are told that the Spirit of God came even on him, leading him to strip naked and lie on the ground for most of the day in 1 Samuel 19:24.

Most commentators state that he was probably not completely nude, as the word can describe just taking off of armor and outward clothing, but most also agree with the famed Old Testament Bible Commentators, Kiel and Dilitzsch that Saul was in an “ecstatic state of external unconsciousness.”

Saul was not drunk, he was on the ground because of the power of the presence of God. When the Holy Spirit moves on people, strange things can happen.

In the New Testament, we see two distinctive and unique works of the Holy Spirit that are available to Christians because of the work of Christ on the cross.

The first is the work of Grace that comes with being born-again when we believe in Jesus for our salvation. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

When we believe, the Holy Spirit plays a critical regenerative role in this process.

However, there is also an important second work of Grace which involves being filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit.

It is a distinctive second act that takes place after salvation when we are filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit like the disciples were on the Day of Pentecost.

This filling of the Holy Spirit is evidenced several times in the Book of Acts. I want to look at a couple of them.

The first involves Philip in Acts 8. We are told that after the death of the church’s first martyr, Philip went to Samaria and preached the Gospel. But more than that having been just filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, he showed up with Holy Spirit power.

We read that demons were being cast out of people and many lame and paralytics were being healed. As a result of the demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power, people were getting saved and water baptized.

But Luke added since the Holy Spirit had fallen on any of the new believers, the apostles sent in Peter and John:

We read:

“Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, 15 who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.“

But I like how Luke explains it. He says Peter and John prayed and laid hands on the Samaritans and quote “They received the Holy Spirit,” which flowed out of Peter and John as they laid hands on them.

We see the same thing happen in Ephesus, in Acts 19, when Paul encountered 12 men who Paul immediately knew something was missing in their lives.

They had been baptized by John the Baptist, so Paul baptized them in the name of Jesus meaning they believed in Jesus and were born again and then we read what happened next quote:

And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. Acts 19:6:

“After Paul laid hands on them they were filled with the Holy Spirit and manifesting two spiritual gifts, prophecy and tongues.”

The problem with these two stories is that we are only seeing senior apostolic ministries in action.

This is why we need to look at a third incident involving the Apostle Paul, after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus when he first believed in the resurrected Christ and was born again.

After being struck blind by the encounter, Paul, who was then called Saul, was led by the hand to Damascus.

While Saul was in Damascus, the Holy Spirit spoke to a disciple called Ananias in Acts 9:12 telling him to lay hands on Saul and pray for him to be healed of his blindness.

We read:

17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:17)

After Ananias laid his hands on Saul, he was not only healed but instantly filled with the Holy Spirit. Though not specifically mentioned here, in his letter to the Corinthians, it was obvious that Paul spoke in Tongues and prophesied.

Though Paul would go on to write several books of the Bible, Ananias is never mentioned again. He never wrote a book in the Bible. He wasn’t a pastor, evangelist or an apostle. He was just an everyday Joe, who was filled with the Holy Spirit and powerfully used by God.

As he laid his hands on Paul, the Holy Spirit flowed out Ananias, empowering Paul who became the most dominant force in the early church for the next several years.

This means each of us can pass on the Holy Spirit to others. This means each of us has the power inside us to change the world.

So if you are saved and have never been filled or baptized in the Holy Spirit, you need to seek out Spirit-filled believers and have them lay hands on you and pray for you.

And if you already have been filled, but are feeling a bit dead spiritually, you may need to rekindle your relationship with the Holy Spirit

In Ephesians 5:18, Paul writes, “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” The word filled is in the present imperative tense, which means be continually filled with the Holy Spirit or keep on being filled with the Spirit.

This verse suggests that we can sometimes spring a leak so to speak.

If your flame has gone down, you need to rekindle your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Paul told Timothy to stir up or rekindle the gift that was in him through laying on of Paul’s hands in 2 Timothy 1:6-7.

This is done by praying for a greater release of the Spirit in your life and even by activating your spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues. You may even want to have Spirit-filled people lay hands on you.

The fact is we all need more of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and we will talk to you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the touchy issue of forgiving our parents. I know of instances where parents have been dead and buried for years and yet are still alive in their children’s minds because of unresolved issues.

I attended seminary many years ago, and a hundred yards from my dorm was an old abandoned rail line running along the edge of the school’s property.

From time to time, I would wander out to that old rail track and walk along the line praying.

But more often I did something completely different.

You see, I had a dark secret.

I was a Christian. I had been filled with the Holy Spirit.

But at times I would walk down that track and I would take that verse out of the Bible that says we love God because He first loved us and I would horrifically twist it.

I would start chanting under my breath that I hated God because He first hated me. It became like some religious mantra that I would utter again and again and again.

If I was in a particularly foul mood, I would shake my fist at heaven and scream at God “I HATE YOU!”

If anyone was watching from the dorm, they might mistakenly believe that I was praying. `

But I wasn’t.

Despite what the Bible says, I believed God hated me.

I eventually went for counseling and was told, that if my opinion of God didn’t change, I would eventually fall away from the faith.”

I had a twisted perception of God and unfortunately, many of us do and now it might not be as extreme as mine.

For example, you may believe that God is rejecting you or you may feel that you aren’t good enough to be used by God or that God prefers others over you.

You don’t necessarily feel like this all the time, but there are moments when these disturbing thoughts pop into your head.

So why do people develop such twisted perceptions of God?

In 1994, the Journal of Scientific Study of Religion published a study that found that children perceive God in much the same way that they perceive their parents.

In the study, 143 children were presented with a set of characteristics such as kindness, and patience, and then asked to rank how much these attributes applied to their parents and also to God.

The authors stated:

“Regardless of race, socioeconomic status or religious affiliation, children in our studies reported thinking about God often and perceiving God as similar to their parents in nurturing and power.”

In other words, children transfer the perception that they have about their parents onto God.

This can be both good and bad.

For example, if they believed they weren’t good enough to keep their parents happy in school and sports, they believed that they were failing God as well.

People can even struggle to believe God loves them unconditionally because their parents’ love was conditional based on how well they did or behaved.

Believe it or not, there is a very good Biblical reason for this.

In Genesis 1:26, we read that God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”

The two keywords in this verse are likeness and image.

The Hebrew word translated ‘likeness’ means to model or shape. In other words, God created us with a mind and emotions which enables us to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

However, the second word —‘image’ (Hebrew: tselem) — is a bit different. It means to be a representative figure. At times the Old Testament writers used ‘tselem’ to describe idols such as in 2 Kings 11:18, when it was used to describe a Baal idol.

In some strange sense, it seems that God intended men and women to be the idols that represented Him, not carved wooden or stone figures.

But this begs a bigger question if everyone is created in the image of God, who are we supposed to represent God to? It would be fruitless walking around and telling everyone, “My, oh my you look divine today” because we all look divine.

So what was the purpose of this?

I believe God intended parents to be a representative or idol of sorts of what God was like to their children.

As children interacted with their parents, they gained an understanding of what God was like. This became a natural bridge leading them into a personal relationship with their Heavenly Father as they got older.

But then came man’s catastrophic fall into sin. In an instant, these perfect idols were scarred and disfigured. This unknowingly leaves all children to varying degrees with a distorted perception of what God is really like.

This can include such flawed perceptions as God loves others more than you because you believe that your parents loved your brother and sister more than you.

Maybe you don’t feel you can ever meet God’s expectations. Could that be based on the feeling that no matter how hard you tried, it was never good enough for your parents?

We all have flawed parents who unfortunately are the byproduct of their parents.

We must understand that it’s intergenerational in the sense that it has been passed down from one generation to the next. In some instances, it might even be classified as a generational curse.

Most of us have no idea, what our parents endured growing up and we need to cut them some slack.

I find it curious that in the middle of the Ten Commandments, we are told to honor our parents. Is this because, if we can’t or won’t honor our parents, we will also struggle to honor God?

Here is the point, God deeply desires to have a personal and trusting relationship with you and one thing that can hinder this from happening are resentments that you hold against your parents.

Though my case may seem extreme, there are instances when it can even go further.

In his book, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, psychologist, Paul Vitz concluded that our childhood has a profound impact on our spiritual views.

Vitz was a professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences based in Arlington, Virginia, a Catholic graduate school, at the time he wrote the book in 1999.

After studying the biographies of some of the world’s most notorious atheists Vitz uncovered a common denominator in many of them. They came from broken or abusive homes, while others were impacted by the death of their father.

This included atheist Madalyn O’Hair who died in 1995. It was her 1960s lawsuit that resulted in the banning of prayer in American schools.

Vitz points to the memoir written by her son, W.J. Murray where he described the horrible relationship that O’Hair had with her father.

In his book, My Life without God, Murray described the day that his mother actually tried to kill her father with a ten-inch knife. Though she failed, O’Hair screamed, “I’ll see you dead. I’ll get you yet. I’ll walk on your grave.”

O’Hair’s horrific, hate-filled, relationship with her father may explain her vitriolic hatred of God and Christianity.

Or how about famed atheist and German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who died in 1900.

He didn’t come from an abusive home, but his father, who was a Lutheran pastor, died of a brain disease when Friedrich was just five years old.

At this age, Vitz says children believe death is a choice and blame their parents for the pain their death caused.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Nietzsche aggressively opposed Christianity later in life and developed what became known as the ‘God is dead’ movement, eerily paralleling his childhood experience.

Divorce, depending on a child’s age, can also have a profound impact on children as they sometimes blame themselves for their parents’ split.

Studies have shown that divorce can have a profound impact on children, emotionally and behaviourally.

A 2002 study conducted by the British government’s Youth Justice Board, entitled Building on Success found that while only 20% of youth were from broken families, they represented 70% of the young offenders.

A study entitled, For better or worse: Divorce Reconsidered by M. Hetherington reported that 25% of children whose parents divorced will experience prolonged emotional problems compared to just 10% who came up from non-divorced families.

The study noted that these issues often don’t start showing up until they are adults.

So if divorce can significantly impact children’s behavior, can it also distort their perception of God?

Or how about being abandoned by parents?

The 700 Club recently interviewed Hermes Giannis, whose father abandoned him forcing his mother to raise him alone.

Growing up, Hermes found success in baseball and was doing so well that while in high school he received several offers of university scholarships.

But he was influenced by the older players on the team and he turned to drugs, alcohol, and partying. His marks declined and he was eventually kicked off the team and lost his potential scholarships.

After having a serious accident while driving drunk, a Christian medic told Hermes that God saved his life because not many people survive the type of accident, Hermes had been involved.

Hermes shrugged it off, stating, “I just didn’t understand that God would save me, you know, that there was somebody out there who loved me. I didn’t feel loved.”

Hermes continued with his drinking and drug-infused lifestyle.

But things started to change when a friend invited him to church. During the service, the pastor had a word of knowledge about a man in the service, that so accurately described Hermes’ life that he turned to God.

Though he was now a Christian and attended church, he still struggled with alcohol, which would rear its head when he encountered difficulties.

Hermes said this struggle was tied to the father he never knew because he hated his father.

A few nights after his wife threatened to leave him because of his drinking problem, Hermes had a dream, where he found himself wrestling with a man, that Hermes knew was his father.

He was shown in this dream that he needed to let his father go and forgive him for abandoning their family, which Hermes realized he needed to do.

The forgiveness process took several months. He first started by praying for his dad which resulted in him feeling compassion for his father. Then Hermes started forgiving him and he forgave him again and again and again.

After repeatedly doing this several times, Hermes finally and completely forgave his father.

This became the breakthrough that led him to break his alcoholic addiction and today, he serves as a pastor at an addiction treatment center.

This is the key to dealing with our wrong perceptions of God. We need to forgive our parents.

Several decades ago, I was walking down the street in the city where I lived when my mind was flooded with a memory of a negative incident that had happened to me years earlier.

I have no idea what triggered it, but it was part of a package of about five negative memories from my past involving my dad, that would play like a video in my mind.

They would come out of nowhere and suddenly I was reliving this incident like it was happening right in front of me.

The same thing had happened many times previously, but this time I asked God why it was happening.

At that moment, I felt the Holy Spirit say that this was happening because I hadn’t forgiven my father who was involved in those five incidents.

Thousands of things happened to me as I was growing up, none of which I have a hope of remembering, but there were five, I couldn’t forget.

I felt the Holy Spirit impressing on me that I was having these flashbacks because these distant memories were being kept alive by emotional charges of anger and resentment that I had towards my father.

These emotions had become attached to these memories and kept them alive.

If I wanted them to stop, I needed to forgive.

At that moment, I chose to forgive my dad.

And some of those memories I needed to forgive more than once, in fact, multiple times.

I remember the night I was pulling into the driveway of our home when I had another flashback of one of those five memories that I had previously forgiven.

Puzzled, I didn’t know what to do, but I felt I needed to forgive my dad again, a second time, for the very same incident.

I learned a valuable lesson that night.

Forgiveness is like an onion.

As you peel off the first layer by forgiving, another layer appears. You keep on doing this forgiving again and again, as the Holy Spirit brings this to our remembrance until you peel off that last and final layer and the onion disappears.

After being plagued by these five flashbacks for years, I can no longer remember most of them.

Because having finally forgiven those incidents, for the first time, they had a chance to grow old and become one of the thousands of things from my childhood, I have forgotten.

And as I went through the process, the anger and hatred that I had with God, began to fade as well.

I am convinced that unresolved issues between us and our parents can potentially hinder our relationship with God. They can serve as impediments even blockages, and we must deal with these issues by forgiving our parents.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and today I want to talk about the laying on of hands, which the writer of Hebrews describes as one of the foundational truths in chapter six verses one and two.

I was reading an interesting story in the Daily Mail a few years back. The Daily Mail is a popular secular paper in Britain and the story involved the miraculous healing of Maya Joseph.

The story’s actual byline reads:

“A disabled dwarf who spent ten years in a wheelchair claims she has been miraculously healed by a church leader’s touch.”

Maya Joseph who was 35 years old at the time the miracle happened in 2011 is 4’7.”

She was confined to a wheelchair because of a severe curvature of her spine. Doctors said she would never be able to walk again.

Confined to a wheelchair, she constantly dealt with pain and was in pain when she was wheeled into St. George’s, an independent Anglican church in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England.

Rev. George Booty pastored the church at that time.

Maya told The Daily Mail what happened next:

“I was sat at the altar in the Church and he (Rev Booty) laid hands on me, prayed, and said lift up you legs — and I could. He wasn’t expecting it and I certainly wasn’t. I just said: ‘Thank you, wow, what’s amazing.’”

“I went into the service with real pain but walked out with none. My body has just got stronger and stronger since then.”

Maya’s leg, which was twisted, started straightening over the next few days and she told the Daily Mail, quote “I’m going for walks every day and feeling fitter than I have done for years. My doctors are amazed when I tell them how I was cured.” unquote
.
Rev George Booty also explained his side of the story by telling the Daily Mail:

“I am just a channel through which God is healing. I don’t want to sensationalize it. I just want to carry out whatever work God wants me to do.”

The story demonstrates what many of us are missing about the Holy Spirit and the power of God.

But it is demonstrated again, in the incident involving the woman with an issue of blood in Luke 8. She had been struggling with the issue for 12 years.

Now we must understand that at this point Jesus was functioning fully as a man who had been filled with the Holy Spirit.

When the woman saw Jesus, she pushed through the crowd that was jostling Christ, touched the fringe of the Lord’s cloak, and was instantly healed.

Jesus immediately turned around and asked who had touched Him, stating “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had left Me” (Luke 8:46).

Jesus had actually felt the healing virtue leave His body and flow into that woman. But here is the important point, many believe that divine healing falls from heaven and it doesn’t, it comes from inside a person filled with the Holy Spirit.

When there is a group of people praying for the healing of an individual and that healing takes place, it means that this healing power flowed from at least one of the people involved.

So what is going on?

The Bible tells us that it was the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. This meant it was the eighth day and for the previous seven days, a priest poured out water at the base of the altar.

But, they didn’t do it on the eighth day, and it was on the eighth day, that Jesus stood up and made this profound statement:

38 “The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38 ESV)

And in case there was any doubt about what Jesus was referring to, John footnotes this by stating in the very next verse, that these living waters were referring to the Holy Spirit.

But this verse says that if you believe in Jesus out of you will flow rivers of life-giving water. The Holy Spirit will flow out of you.

We are not talking about dribble here or a slow irritating drip, we are talking about a river of life-refreshing water flowing out of us.

Flowing means movement. In other words, the Holy Spirit wants to be continually flowing out of you. It means that the Holy Spirit doesn’t want you to become stagnant. Dead water.

There needs to be movement. This can happen in a variety of ways, through the use of our spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues and prophesy. It can happen when we pray prophetically.

I believe it can also take place when we lay on hands and pray for other people. When we do this I believe to varying degrees (which I will explain in a bit) there is an impartation of the Holy Spirit into that individual.

In Acts 19, while at Ephesus, the Apostle Paul encountered 12 men who had become Christians, believing that Jesus was the Messiah. But Paul noticed almost immediately that something was missing and asked if “they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed?”

When they answered in the negative, Luke writes, that Paul laid his hands upon them, and “the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.”

When Paul touched them the Holy Spirit flowed out of Paul into these 12 men and they were powerfully transformed. There was a transference of Holy Spirit power through the laying on of hands.

And then in his letter to the Romans and to Timothy, Paul stated something different. Because now he was referring to a congregation and Timothy, who had no doubt previously been filled with the Holy Spirit or were familiar with the baptism of the Holy Romans.

To the Romans, Paul stated “For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established;” (Romans 1:11), and to Timothy, he stated that he needed to rekindle the gift that was inside Timothy, ‘through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6).

Through the laying on of hands, Paul was imparting spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit, carrying spiritual gifts, was flowing out of Paul into the lives of other spirit-filled Christians.

I am convinced, that when we lay hands on people the Holy Spirit flows out of us, bringing refreshing, power, living waters, life, gifts and even healing. I don’t understand how this works, but I do know that each of us is the Temple of God, because we have the Holy Spirit inside us.

Now don’t get me wrong, that flow can vary. For some, it can be dribble and for another a flowing river.

In other words, there can be blockages that hinder the flow of the Holy Spirit. I want to discuss three of them.

The first one is resistance.

Just before he was martyred, Stephen says to the crowd gathering to stone him, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did” (Acts 7:51).

People can resist the Holy Spirit.

Though Jesus was sensitive to the moving of the Holy Spirit out of His body, I have never felt that myself, but I did feel something sort of related.

Now, you may think that this is weird, but several years back I had laid my hands on a person and was praying for him. And suddenly I had this sensation of something surging back into me through my hand and arm.

I immediately thought this was strange and then I felt the Holy Spirit say to me the word ‘backwash.’ I later looked up the word backwash to understand what this was referring to.

Backwash occurs place when you have a strong flow of water hitting a stationary blockage like a wall. When it hits that wall, the water literally bounces off and begins flowing backward returning in the direction that it had come from.

If I am correct in my interpretation of what was happening there, as I was praying for this individual, the Holy Spirit flowed out, but there was resistance in the man, a blockage, that stopped the flow from entering him and actually turned it back towards me.

Perhaps there was a hardness of heart, unresolved issues, spiritual and emotional, or fear and cynicism. I am not sure but it was a literal wall blocking and resisting the Holy Spirit and this resulted in the flow coming back into me.

The second type of blockage that can interfere with the flow of the Holy Spirit is called quenching.

Paul writes, “Do not quench the Spirit, do not utterly reject prophecies, but examine everything; hold firmly to that which is good,” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).

In his book, Quench not the Spirit, Myron Augsburger writes that the word quench means to ‘choke out, to suppress or subdue.’

It literally included the idea of extinguishing.

But the concept of choking brings up another idea. Because we are also able to put a crink or twist in a water hose, that is so tight that the water can no longer flow.

And that can happen to us.

We can have choke points or constrictions that prevent the Holy Spirit from flowing out of us.

One of the major causes of this quenching is unbelief and I believe it can happen to both those on the receiving end and as well those who are imparting the Holy Spirit as they create a choke point preventing the Spirit from being released through them.

Mark writes that when Jesus returned to His hometown, Nazareth, the Lord was unable to perform many miracles there because of their unbelief.

But notice how Jesus frames their unbelief:

 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not dishonored except in his hometown and among his own relatives, and in his own household.” 5 And He could not do any miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He was amazed at their unbelief” (Mark 6:4-6 NASV).

He tied their unbelief to a rejection of the prophetic, which is exactly what Paul did when he said, “do not quench the spirit, do not utterly reject prophecy.”

The quenching is tied to a rejection of the gift of prophecy, which can happen through failed prophetic words or prophetic abuse.

Back in 2020, many individuals prophesied that Trump would get reelected. They were wrong, but I believe these failed prophecies had the potential to cause people to despise all prophecies because of these fake prophetic words.

When that happens it can create a quenching of the spirit.

This happens because we are unknowingly blaming the Holy Spirit.

Those failed prophecies were not God’s prophetic words, they were manufactured by men.

But if we despise all prophecies in general because of these failed prophecies, we are blaming the Holy Spirit for these false prophecies. By doing this, we can end up quenching the Holy Spirit in our own life and by doing so we create a choke point preventing the Holy Spirit from flowing into us, or from even flowing out of us.

The third thing I want to discuss is Paul’s warning in Ephesians 4:30, not to Grieve the Holy Spirit. It literally means “to make sorrowful, to affect with sadness, to cause grief, to mourn.”

So what does grieving the Holy Spirit refer to?

This is a bit more difficult to interpret, but I believe grieving the Holy Spirit happens when we devalue the role and importance of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and the church.

In one word it is apathy. I don’t care. But it is more than that it reflects the attitude that I don’t even want to care.

We look at the Holy Spirit and His spiritual gifts and ability to empower us, as not being important. Not a priority. Not a need.

Paul writes that we are “to earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1). The Greek word, zēloō, translated earnestly desire is a strong passionate word from which we get zealous.

It means “to have strong affection towards, be ardently devoted to, to burn with zeal, to be heated or boil with envy, to strive after.”

We need to zealously desire spiritual gifts. Passionate for them. Particularly for the gift of prophecy.

Here is a bit of a checklist to check your spiritual condition.
If you have the gift of tongues, when was the last time you exercised this gift?

I believe the Holy Spirit is starting to move to today and we all need more of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and today I want to talk about praying prophetically.

I am really sensing in my spirit, that the Holy Spirit is stirring people to pray, both individually and in groups. In fact, late last year, my wife and I joined with some friends and we are gathering to pray every Monday night.

Prayer is important.

So what is prophetic prayer, well before describing what it is, I first want to discuss a story on Faithwire, involving Pastor Timmy Hensel, who, along with his wife and two children, were attending the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade and celebration on Wednesday, Feb 14, 2024.

Timmy Hensel pastors a Foursquare Church in Raytown, Missouri. He and his family were standing along the parade route and they they decided to go to Union Station, where the players and coaches would be speaking.

They were sitting watching when Hensel felt the Holy Spirit urging them to leave.

When he mentioned it to his wife, she was getting the very same vibe, even though their favorite football player was just about to speak.

How many of us in a similar situation would have shrugged off. But they obeyed and after they left, Timmy and his wife started receiving texts asking if they were alright because gunfire had broken out at the very spot where they were sitting in the crowd.

The shootout that started during a confrontation between two groups ended up killing one person and injuring over 20 people, including children.

Hensel told CBN that when he looked at aerial photos of the scene, he saw blood on the ground exactly where his family had been sitting.

According to researchers, the average person has over 6,000 thoughts pop into their head in a typical day and among those, Pastor Hensel and his wife discerned Jesus’ voice and correctly heard that the Holy Spirit was speaking to them.

In an interview with CBN, Pastor Hensel said:

“It’s not just Sunday. It’s every moment, and so he is speaking all the time and [we need] to train ourselves to know the tone of the Shepherd’s voice, to know that He is speaking, He is guiding, and I’m really grateful for that.”

Then Hensel added:

“I would encourage others to practice listening. We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of praying, which is good, but listening is just as important because He has something to say.”

The Holy Spirit is speaking to us all the time, and amidst the clatter of thoughts that bombard our minds in a day, we must learn to discern Jesus’ voice.

It takes practice and training and as Timmy said, the Shepherd’s voice has a different tone. The tone is different with each individual, but this difference will set it apart from the thousands of thoughts that pop into our heads. We must learn to distinguish it.

Jesus told His disciples in John 10:27:

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

This is a statement of fact. All who believe in Christ are hearing the voice of Jesus. However, though we are hearing God’s voice, not everyone is recognizing it for what it is, as God speaking to them.

When the Holy Spirit speaks to us, He sometimes uses words and other times images, but our receivers are sometimes not tuned in to God’s frequency.

But this is the very essence of prophetic prayer.

Prophetic prayer involves receiving revelation from the Holy Spirit, that you would otherwise not know on how to pray or what to pray about a situation or a person.

And there is a verse in Romans that emphasizes how important it is that we know how to pray.

It reads:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

Paul talks about the Holy Spirit interceding through us through inward groanings when we don’t know what to pray and the way he just casually mentions it suggests Paul believed the Romans would know exactly what he was talking about.

However, today, most of us have no idea what Paul was referring to. But the essence of this verse is that when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit will pray through us.

Then in the following verse, Paul adds that the Holy Spirit “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (verse 27).

This passage highlights the importance of not only knowing how to pray but also praying per God’s will. It is so important, that the Holy Spirit is willing to intervene to make sure it happens.

Well, it wasn’t until the Toronto Revival hit in the 1990s, that we understood what Paul was talking about, when the Holy Spirit would come upon people and you would get these heavy physical crunches and heavings inside our bodies.

Some were so intense it would result in people actually groaning, not from pain, but from the intensity.

It started happening to me.

I could actually feel this intense heaving happening inside me and others could see it taking place as my body actually visibly moved. This was the Holy Spirit praying through me, as Paul described in Romans 8.

I remember a strange thing that happened in connection with this. Our family loved to watch the Sound of Music and every time we watched it, I would start to get these heaves. It happened every time.

I had no idea if the Holy Spirit, was praying for Austria where the movie was based, the Von Trapp family, who really existed, or perhaps one of the actors. But every time, that movie came on I started getting the heaves.

Aside from internal groaning prompted by the Holy Spirit, I believe another way that God desires to guide our intercessions is through prophetic prayers.

This doesn’t mean that you have the gift of prophecy or that you are a prophet, it means that God wants you to pray prophetically.

And I believe praying prophetically adds power to your prayers. It’s powered-up prayer.

Some describe it as praying with God instead of praying to God.

In 2 Kings 13:18, the prophet Elisha had a word for King Joash that he would defeat the Syrians. Elisha gave Joash an arrow and told him to strike the ground with it.

Joash struck the ground three times.

Elisha was angered when Josh stopped at three stating Joash should have struck the ground five or six times because he would have destroyed Syria, but because he only struck the ground three times, this meant the nation would continue to plague Israel.

The striking of the ground with an arrow was a prophetic act.

Similarly, our prayers can have a prophetic edge, when we pray how God wants us to pray.

I remember years back, the church my wife and I attended was going through a very difficult time. An important meeting was taking place, and certain things needed to happen.

I was fearful how easily this all could go south and felt a burden so I went to the church early to pray.

But I was praying with a shotgun and interceding on any possible outcome I could think of. Suddenly, a thought popped into my head, and the Holy Spirit seemed to be suggesting that I pray one particular thing. It was very brief.

Since I was using a shotgun approach anyway, throwing that brief prayer into the mix was no big deal.

However, as soon as I prayed it, the fear and urge I had to pray suddenly and instantly left me.

I had prayed God’s will and it was over, no more prayer was needed. In fact, any more prayer on the subject would have been a complete waste of time.

I believe at that moment I was praying prophetically.

And the meeting that followed played out exactly as it needed to.

As I mentioned earlier, we are meeting with a group who are praying weekly. It’s important. I think people need to start gathering to pray.

In December, we were praying for a Christian family who had a premature baby in very serious critical condition, and who had to be sent to a pediatric hospital in another city. While there, the baby developed sepsis, a very serious condition.

They put the baby on life support and told the parents unless there was improvement, they would be taking the baby off life support by Friday. The family was prepared for the worst.

While we were praying earlier that week on Monday, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me on how to pray. It involved praying two words, ‘come home.’

Now If you asked me if I was absolutely positive this is what God was asking me to pray, I would have said No, but nevertheless, I believed this was how the Holy Spirit was urging me to pray.

I felt I needed to say the words ‘come home’ in my prayer. It didn’t matter how I framed it, but I believed there was something prophetic about those two words and I needed to pray them.

Though I thought it was strange, I figured out different ways that I could work those two words into my prayers without sounding too bizarre.

In one sense it didn’t matter what I said around those two words, I felt I needed to utter the two words, ‘come home’.

It was time for this baby to come home.

A week later, I had a chance to talk to a family member and she told me there had been a miracle during the week the baby was on life support, and the baby was doing much better.

And then she used the exact phrase that I thought I needed to pray. She said, he was supposed to ‘come home’ in December, but that got changed with the sepsis.

After all, I had gone through with those two words when she said them it immediately caught my attention.

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I felt the Holy Spirit was confirming that I had prayed how God wanted me to pray.

Now I realize many others were praying for that baby, and I was just one of many, but I felt those two words were important and like the act of hitting the arrows on the ground, they had an anointing and needed to be proclaimed.

This is what prophetic prayer is.

In Jeremiah 1:9, God told the Prophet Jeremiah, “I have put my words in your mouth.”

And then two verses later in Jeremiah 1:12, we read:

12 The Lord said to me, “You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled.”

We all hear God’s voice and through this process, the Holy Spirit may try to communicate how we should pray in certain situations. In fact, we should be asking the Holy Spirit how we should pray, and when we get this guidance we need to pray prophetically.

God then watches to ensure His word is fulfilled. This doesn’t mean you are a prophet or even have the gift of prophecy, but if we listen, the Holy Spirit can tell you how to pray and these words can pack a prophetic anointed punch.

DEAN: Welcome to our podcast today. We’re doing something a little bit different. I’m interviewing Diane Harrison on the Gift of Prophecy.

Diane serves as the prophetic coordinator of LifeLinks, an international network of churches, and has written several books on the Gift of Prophecy, including The Power of Prophetic Teams, and This is That: 100 Questions and Answers About Prophecy.

And she’s also written, I think, several manuals as well. So welcome today, Diane.

DIANE: Thank you.

DEAN: So maybe we can start off by explaining your role as a prophetic coordinator with LifeLinks and a little bit about LifeLinks as well.

DIANE: Sure. For quite a few years, I was doing workshops in local churches, mostly LifeLinks churches, and doing prophetic workshops and you know, just on weekends or whatever, for quite a period.

And as things progressed, I started being asked to help churches maybe bring in prophetic culture.

So what we had done in our local church, I’m now doing that with churches, not just LifeLinks, but other churches that contact me.

First, they want to know if there is anything healthy about prophetic ministry. The fact that we’ve been a part of the same local church for 40 years, which is really getting to be a long time, I think sort of proves to other local churches, especially pastors and leaders, that you actually can raise up your prophetic people in a local church and that it can be a benefit to the congregation and to the leaders where you’re sort of working together with the staff.

So within LifeLinks, I’m sort of a go-to person on the prophetic.

Last year, for example, Dave Wells [an apostolic leader within LifeLinks] was doing a men’s conference in Vietnam over Zoom. And so he gave me a call a couple of days before. He says, “Diane, we want prophetic ministry for that conference. Can you arrange that?”

So I arrange it, or I’ll get another request can you help here, or can you help there?

And so it’s not that I would have necessarily a yearly schedule. I’m sort of a bit on demand, which is really helpful that I’m no longer at my job.

So I say I have a perfect life now because I just work in prophetic and, and have grandchildren.

DEAN: You actually go into churches and hold prophetic. training sessions.

DIANE: Yeah, exactly. I do that. But it’s not usually just a one-off like that. Often there’s a prophetic leader that I can work with, where I sort of work in a bit of a mentoring role and I’m available to help them as they come across things or they want suggestions for different areas of ministry or how to get started.

So I usually have ongoing relationships with people.

People may not necessarily know me ahead of time, but they know of our network or they might know of Dave Wells and we would get a request that way.

I sometimes get contacts just from a website or just people contacting me directly, where I don’t know the people at all. But the majority of the ministry is through word of mouth or people searching and seeing information on say the Harvest City website.

DEAN: Dave Wells is the pastor ….

DIANE: Joel Wells is now the pastor of Harvest City, but like the 25 years or so where I was just doing workshops it would often be Dave, the apostolic leader at that time who would recommend me to churches.

So it’s actually a great opportunity.

I really like being able to come in initially when people are learning about the prophetic and just sort of helping bridge some things.

Part of the reason is because of my own personal experience over the years. When we came into faith at the tail end of the seventies, we caught the tail end of the Jesus revolution. If people heard of or seen that film.

When we gave our lives to the Lord, we just thought that salvation and being filled with the Holy Spirit was all a package deal.

And so at that time, I got released in prophecy, which I didn’t know what it was. It was very uncomfortable and it wasn’t anything that I looked forward to.

And there wasn’t a lot of teaching at that time, so I blundered through and made a lot of mistakes. After a few years, it gave me the idea, that there’s got to be better ways for people to walk on this track without making all the same mistakes that I made.

I was just fortunate enough to have enough grace with the leaders that we were working with, even though there were adjustments and awkward moments, they called the gifting out of me.

Now I feel that part of my job or my call is to identify giftings in people and encourage them in that respect.

DEAN: So, what exactly is the gift of prophecy? Maybe just elaborate so people get an understanding of what we’re talking about here.

DIANE: Sure. Well, it’s one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If you want to learn about the gift of prophecy, look at 1 Corinthians 14, that’s probably the main reference that I’m using for teaching on prophecy. But prophecy, I really believe, involves expressing the heart of God towards people or towards a group of people.

It’s a very versatile gift because you can speak to someone individually, or to a group, but we believe that it’s God using a person, like myself, as a vessel for words.

It could be songs or expressions. We would say prophetic expressions to be spoken to an individual. I’ll say individually. I mean, it can be a church or a gathering community of people.

But I strongly believe what has framed the ministry that we’re involved in, is found in 1 Corinthians 14, which talks about prophecy being given for the purpose of comfort, edification, and exhortation.

So I’m very thankful that in the early 1980s, when I was learning and growing and starting to teach prophetic gifting, I came across a book by Graham Cook that was just called Your Prophetic Gifting. He said that the gift of prophecy is a tool to encourage people, to help them in their lives, and to edify, sort of lift them up above their day-to-day problems or experiences. It is like encouragement that comes from the heart of God.

We believe prophecy is an impartation that comes from the Holy Spirit. The way that I describe prophecy is that we’re a vessel, you know, we are a delivery person. As a delivery person, I believe that God gives us love letters that are to be given out to people around us, the perimeter of people that we’re in contact with.

And so I use a quote from Mother Teresa who says, “I’m a little pencil in the hand of a loving God who’s sending love letters to the world.” And that to me expresses the heart of prophecy.

It says in Revelations 19 verse 2, I think it’s verse 2, [Revelation 19:10] where the spirit of prophecy is the heart of Jesus or something to that effect.

With a prophetic gift, I want people to know we need to be expressing the heart of Jesus.

And so the gift is to draw people towards the heart of Jesus and not to push them away. There’s been a lot of bad practice in that area, and so I really feel a call to establish what healthy prophetic culture can do for individuals and for a church setting.

The reason I’m passionate about the gift of prophecy and the reason why now, even though Todd and I are in our retirement years, I’m actually very passionate just about releasing as many people in the gift of prophecy as I can.

So I’m not looking for an end date here.

I might be like the queen and just go till I’m 92 years old or however old the queen was when she passed away because I really feel that if people could just grab a hold of the benefit of the gift of prophecy for their own life and, and for reaching out into their community and family. Through this gift, lives can be changed and saved, actually.

Living in Canada, one of my burdens is our northern [First Nation] reserves where there are massive suicides. I think of young people, especially those who are caught in this trap and, the pit of suicide as young as 10 years old. I feel if they could just have a word of encouragement and a word speaking some promise and destiny over their lives, that it could intercept their lives. This applies to adults as well.

And I have shared some experiences about how I feel a word in season can actually just keep people going the distance in their faith.

DEAN: You cited, I think it was Joel chapter 2 verse 28, where it says, “It shall come to pass I will pour out my spirit on all flesh,” and you believe that the spirit of prophecy is going to become more prevalent.

DIANE: Yes, because the end of that verse talks about the Spirit being poured out on my sons and daughters, where it talks about old men seeing dreams, and young men seeing visions.

So I really see the growth of prophecy happening, and I feel like young people really, can be trained in prophecy.

In fact, this summer we were at a Christian camp and we worked with 60 youth.

And so they asked if I would teach them to prophesy? And I was like, yes, I will. Because I don’t want kids to think they have to wait till they’re 30 years old for God to use them and they can be so effective. I feel for teenagers, it can really just give them a sense that they matter.

God wants to use them. He loves them. He wants them to share with their friends and just to be able to, again, communicate that heart of Jesus. So I believe that children actually can prophesy, which is one of the questions that I discuss in my hundred questions and answers on prophecy.

I do believe that adults have to know how to talk to children, because I’ve seen situations where they’re using adult language, but I’ve also seen, for example, in the Christian school where teachers have said to a grade three class during a time of prayer is anybody seeing any pictures or does anybody have anything they’d like to say?

And so in kids’ expression, they’ll say, ‘Oh, I saw a picture of Stephen and he was fishing and pulling in all these fish off a boat’. And so for a child to use that picture, it’s a relevant picture. But if you used other language, they wouldn’t understand you. They’d have nothing to say.

DEAN: That verse in Joel is very interesting because he talks about your daughters, your sons, and young men.

So he’s emphasizing young people, that God was going to pour His Spirit on the young people, and then Joel says the old guys like us, you’re gonna be able to dream dreams. But he was emphasizing that God wanted to pour His Spirit upon young people.

DIANE: Exactly.

DEAN: Because it’s emphasized three times in that verse, specifically the young.

DIANE: Right. And that verse from Joel is repeated in Acts word for word. So we know that there’s weight when a verse is repeated like that.

And it’s very refreshing. At that same camp meeting [mentioned earlier], for example, we had some teams that offered prophetic ministry. We had a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old on ministry teams with adults.

So one was my granddaughter. So I knew she wouldn’t say I have the gift of prophecy, but she said, I have my Jesus time. And in my Jesus time, He tells me things.

And adults are so receptive to a teenager or young person speaking words that are meaningful to them, but they know that a kid isn’t going to be making those things up. It just helps them have faith that God really does want to speak to them.

So I think we’re moving into a time where we’re going to see more and more young people, more and more children.

DEAN: I think that’s where it’s going.

DIANE: Yeah. Right. Because many, many prophets are actually talking about the next move of God with young people.

And so as part of it, I feel like my husband and I, our call is really to equip young people as the best that we can. So one of the churches that we’ve really had fun working with in Edmonton, that pastor is in his 20s. And he and his wife have such a great heart for the kingdom.

And so it’s a privilege to be able to go into those kinds of settings and just help them be released in the gift of prophecy.

DEAN: So in your book, you also talk about the four levels of prophecy. Maybe you could just provide sort of an explanation of what you’re referring to. I think you were talking about the gift of prophecy…

DIANE: When you look at prophetic material teaching, there is a lot of content that doesn’t always agree with each other. You can find differences.

So one of the differences is that often people only talk about three levels of prophecy. I include four levels of prophecy.

The Spirit of Prophecy: The initial one we would call the Spirit of prophecy and that’s where we would use probably an example from the Old Testament where actually [King] Saul was out to kill David and as he would get close to the group of prophets, the spirit of prophecy came on Saul to the point where the people said ‘Is Saul now a prophet?’

So it’s a setting. In that setting, Samuel had a company of prophets. I believe that’s happened today in some settings where usually there would be a great presence of God, often a worship time.

A spirit of prophecy is where there’s such a sense of the presence of God that almost anybody can prophesy or everybody wants to prophesy.

So there’s like a boldness that comes upon people who wouldn’t feel confident or they wouldn’t even think that was a gift that they had. So that is sort of a big downpouring of a spirit of prophecy.

I would say that it probably only happens occasionally. I pray it’s going to happen more and more.

The Gift of Prophecy: So in terms of levels of prophecy, I actually use a diagram showing a shallower level of a swimming pool and then going deeper.

So, I would say that the gift of prophecy starts out, let’s say on the shallow end of the pool, but it’s a mixture of man’s thoughts and, and God’s thoughts.

But you’re activating what you feel and you’re learning. So one of the things that I do believe is that we don’t get to choose our gift mix whether it’s prophetic, whether it’s, you know, prayer intercession, whatever the gift is.

But I believe you get to decide if you want to grow in that gift.

And so the initial spirit of prophecy is again, that mixture. And like it does say in the New Testament, ‘that we prophesy in part’.

And so there’s nothing wrong with being a mixture, and then as you grow, there should be less of man and more of God as you’re growing in your gift.

DEAN: You’re hearing the voice of God clearer.

DIANE: Yes, you’re just able to hear and you’re more familiar. You’ve learned and you’re more confident because I actually believe a big part of releasing people or helping people be released in their prophetic gift is that they begin to understand what they have.

When I do workshops and seminars on prophecy, I would say a good number of people who come know they have something, but they don’t really know what it is.

It could be they’ve had dreams. It could be that they sometimes know things ahead of time before it happens or they’ve had those experiences.

That’s why I just encourage a bigger, big group of people to come and learn.

Prophetic Ministry: As time goes on, people begin to recognize that a person is likely going to have a prophetic word, especially in certain environments.

So, for example, they become known that if there’s going to be, say, a baptism in the church, people begin to rely on the fact that this person will probably have a prophetic word. So as that begins to get established, that’s, I think, when you move into a deeper level, which would then be a prophetic ministry.

You’re becoming known. for the fact that you can be relied on to hear God’s voice for someone else. And I think before I just go on to the next area, one of the things that we really teach right from the beginning is that prophecy is a gift to serve.

It’s a serving gift, and so, many people sometimes have the idea that they might be doing someone a favor by prophesying over them.

And we actually just teach that whether you’re called to be, your prophetic ministry or using your prophetic gift is actually what you’re called to use as a servant. 

And it’s actually an honor for you to be able to speak over someone’s life, where God is entrusting you with His heart and His words so that someone can be blessed and know that God is real.

The Holy Spirit is real as He touches on areas where there’s no other way that the person speaking would know about, other than God had told them.

So then we go from prophetic ministry. Prophetic ministry can be someone’s whole lifetime and be very effective and valuable. Again, I do believe that you can grow and develop in your gift and you can get to the point of having a prophetic ministry.

The Office of a Prophet: I don’t believe that you can will yourself to be a prophet. And so that’s where there’s a lot of confusion. There’s been again bad practice in this area.

Many people, when they have a very strong prophetic ministry, say to them you’re a prophet and you know it gets very confusing for the individual.

Especially I would say in the 90s there used to be bad practice where there might be a prophet that came to town and set up in a hotel room.

There’d be a whole cross-section of people there from maybe different churches. No churches, a big combination.

This actually happened to my mother-in-law in one of those meetings where she was called out to be an elder in her church, which is a governmental position.

It wasn’t right.

And there was no one there to judge the word or to reinforce the fact it was true or not. And so that’s probably mild in the kinds of things that happened in bad practice.

But I do believe that a prophet’s calling is ordained by God and it’s really a call where the person’s life service is called up to that level with a governmental aspect.

And so Graham Cook, for example, as I mentioned him early on, he would say how long does it take to become a prophet? He would say 20 years. Or with teaching and training 12. Now, he would have written that in the early eighties.

I would say it’s less time because there’s more teaching. There’s more opportunity. It’s more widely accepted, but at the same time what I feel has happened is that, and this is going back to some churches, they were only interested in prophets.

And so my heart. began to be for the prophetic people with the gift of prophecy.

You had all these people with prophetic gifting and the benefit that they could be, but they didn’t have any place to function.

And that’s really, I think where I started wanting to go and help people understand you can train your prophetic people. It’ll be a great blessing to you.

And also it was it for the prophetic people. If that’s what you know is your main gift, it was an opportunity for them to grow and function in that area.

So I haven’t totally answered the question on prophet, but we would use that term of a fivefold ministry where in Ephesians people are called to be an apostle, pastor, teacher, evangelist, and the office of a prophet.

And I do think that Prophets have different flavors in their calling, and so that also can get a bit confusing because maybe a prophet’s called to the sphere of a local church.

Maybe they have a different territory, maybe they’re called to a certain people group. Maybe their flavor is something else.

For example, I don’t know if I should mention a name or not, but one of the prophets that I actually really appreciate and the ground that he is breaking is Sean Boltz.

Now he’s probably in his early forties, but he’s been pioneering in prophecy for some time, probably from the time he was a teenager. I do believe he’s a prophet and he’s called to the entertainment industry. And so he’s doing a lot of good work in actually helping to encourage Christian films or films with Christian content.

He’s meeting with different movie directors. God’s given him favor in that area. And, his main gift is through word of knowledge, which probably is one of the prophetic giftings where people can be stronger.

And, you know, that’s probably another little conversation, but I like the fact that we have a lot of agreement in this area that prophets are called to, some people use the term seven mountains, but I would use the term the basic pillars in our society.

So a prophet could be called to business, could be called to entertainment, could be called to a church, could be called to I’m trying to think what all they are off the top of my head.

DEAN: Media, I think was one of them.

DIANE: Yeah, media. Not everyone agrees with that flavor, but I really feel that these are days when we don’t want to box in the Holy Spirit in how he’s equipped people in their gifting.

And I really strive to help people develop in the flavor that God has called them to in their prophetic gifting, not to try to clone themselves or model themselves after someone else.

I’ll use myself as an example. Quite often, on our prophetic leadership team, I had people whose main flavor would have been evangelism.

They still are like that.

They would go into a gas station to pay for gas and lead the person behind the counter to the Lord. They were just so skilled and gifted in evangelism.

I used to be frustrated with myself because I would not think of the right thing to say until I left or long after. Or in my workplace, I wouldn’t catch what I could have done, et cetera.

So I spent some frustrating years trying to make myself be something that I’m not naturally. Now, if anybody asks me a question, or God will sometimes point people out to me, as that happens, I’m quite free to [share with them], but to just put me at an evangelism booth somewhere, I’d just choke up.

DEAN: So you’ve mentioned that the word of knowledge can be a key part of the expression of the prophetic. And maybe you can just elaborate a little bit more about that.

DIANE: So with prophecy, I used to just teach that prophecy could be a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, prophecy, and it would all sort of flow together, which it can.

But what I realized now is that people can be really strong in a word of knowledge. In fact, that might be their best gift. And with that, I’ve just seen it be so effective as it’s actually a key to someone’s heart.

If an individual knows something specific that could only come from the Holy Spirit, it actually gives a real open door to someone’s heart, whether they’re a believer or whether they’re an unbeliever.

One of the stories, that comes to mind involves one of the guys in our group. He was in prophetic training and he was in a restaurant and when the waitress came over, he asked her, ‘Do you like dogs’?

And she said, ‘Yes’.

And then he said, I’m not even sure that she didn’t leave and then come back a couple of times. He wasn’t just sort of giving the bait in a way of how the Holy Spirit was speaking to him.

So he described the dogs she had. I can’t remember if it was a large white dog and a small black one or the other way around, but she said, “Those are the dogs that I have. Those are my two dogs.”

So she kept coming back to the table to say, “How would you know that?”

And as he explained, Jesus actually really does want to be personal with people and to let people know that He knows who they are. And so then he went on to just explain a little bit of the heart of Jesus and, spent some time with her.

And then she did end up coming to the church, which was in the neighborhood.

And I use that expression because sometimes we limit ourselves because we don’t recognize that we’re getting God’s thoughts.

We dismiss them.

So I would say that it’s one of the biggest advantages of prophetic training is that we learn that we actually are hearing God’s voice a lot, but we tend to dismiss it.

So our mind. is our biggest obstacle.

DEAN: And fear.

DIANE: And yes, and fear. But often people, if they are getting something from the Holy Spirit, will describe a physical manifestation. Like their stomach gets butterflies or they’ll just get a sense, a bit of an intense feeling like I need to do this.

So I find for myself, lots of times I will get words in a restaurant.

It seems when I’m traveling that I don’t know why, maybe because I’m more relaxed or not thinking about anything. I give more opportunity to the Holy Spirit. And so sometimes if it’s a busy place, I’ll write out a word that I’ve got for that person.

DEAN: Oh, is that right? You actually just write out notes.

DIANE: Oh, yeah. I’ll write notes and give these notes to them, and sometimes, even before I leave, the person will come back, and just be very thankful, and sometimes a bit teary-eyed.

It’s usually women that I’m giving the notes to.

I have this sense that God has people in a timeline, and I’m very relaxed now with knowing that prophecy can be one deposit of the Holy Spirit.

And I used to try to put pressure on myself to think, I’ve got to try to lead them through a whole salvation prayer, etc, etc. And I don’t think like that anymore.

You know, the Holy Spirit is very capable of moving people through a timeline, drawing them to really having an encounter of who Jesus is.

And I look back over our life and that’s how God drew me. It was step by step.

And so as I am actually teaching people, and having them be released in prophecy, I really want to help them be confident that they are hearing God and if you step out in what you’re hearing, the Holy Spirit doesn’t disappoint you.

And what’s the worst that can happen? Somebody can think you’re a little bit crazy.

You know, I have a guy right now where it’s been a sort of a silly situation in the sense of we’re decluttering and I’m doing a drop-off.

And this young guy has just been on my heart. And so I find myself praying for him at different times.

I’ve tried to have an encounter. So right now I’ve got a note in my purse. I invited him to come to come for an opportunity where he can hear what God wants to speak to him.

That didn’t work out.

So I have a letter now for him. So. I’ll give him the letter with my contact if I’m local. Lots of times I’m away.

Another encounter, we were at a timeshare experience and I was walking over to a clubhouse and there was a young girl out tending to the lawn.

And this is the thought that went through my head. She’s doing the wrong thing. I immediately had a picture of her with a whole bunch of young children surrounding her.

So I went over and I said ‘hi’ and asked if this was a summer job and just chatted in general conversation

And I said to her, you know sometimes God will speak to me about people.

And I’ve had this picture of you. And this is the picture that I have I said, “I see these children around, but you’re actually teaching them. And I feel like God has given you a teaching ability to work with young children. And this gardener work, isn’t really what you’re called to?”

And she was deciding whether she was going to enroll in university the next month.

And so helping her identify her heart’s desire to be a teacher, helped her take the right course. And, you know, they’re just simple, little things, but at the right timing, they can help guide people.

And it also gives them an awareness that God sees them, which is the most important thing.

DEAN: Yeah, God sees you. He cares.

DIANE: Yes, and He cares. And so, to demystify prophecy, I feel like the more that we can be relevant with our day-to-day experience, the better.

And that actually held me back for a lot of years because I thought what I do is every day and, people really are only interested in prophets or they’re interested in end-time prophecy.

You know, so it’s actually delightful for me that what people actually really want is the day-to-day practical.

And I held off writing a book for 10 years because I just thought, what I do was too basic,

DEAN: But it’s really important.

DIANE: It’s turned out to be what we do now in full-time ministry.

DEAN: So what advice would you give to people who feel they may have a prophetic gift?

DIANE: I would say try to find someone that they have trust or confidence in because there are a lot of options out there. If they know someone who’s prophetic, try to make contact and even get a recommendation.

For example, on my website, I have prophetic teaching videos that are helpful.

I’ve got a workbook, it’s got 10 practical lessons in prophecy. Why don’t you get a hold of that? It’s on Amazon.

Depending on the situation, I’ll say, feel free to contact me.

Quite often, it might be a person, that one person, but they do belong to a church or a community group and they’ll say, would you consider coming in and talking to our group?

DEAN: And your website’s dianeharrison.ca?

DIANE: That’s it. DianeHarrison.ca. And the materials that I use for teaching are on Amazon. And so, again, Diane Harrison, if you look me up.

DEAN: So you have, This Is That? 100 Questions and Answers About Prophecy, which I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve gone through it. Well, even underlining stuff, so, and you have a couple others.

DIANE: That’s my most recent book, it is a quick reference guide.

Another book that I published in 2013, The Power of Prophetic Teams, talks about my journey growing in the prophetic, but also how we incorporated prophetic ministry in our local church.

But to be honest with you, what people find the most valuable is this workbook, Prophetic Team Workbook Student Guide, on the 10 lessons. And there’s been, there’s an instructor guide that goes with that. It’s actually been translated into Spanish. So it’s probably the best tool.

And then the other one I have is 30 Days of Inspiration, which just gives some thoughts on the prophetic. Every day it gives someone a little prophetic exercise.

DEAN: Something they can practice.

DIANE: Yes. Because I actually don’t like just using content unless you’re using exercises because you can’t really learn about your gift unless you’re doing something. So, that’s why I do workshops. It’s hands-on.

We were just in Florida and there was a group that went through some of the training and they were saying how this book was the thing that helped them the most.

DEAN: Oh, is that right?

DIANE: It made them do something every day. And so they actually grew a lot. So now I’m, you know, now I’m thinking, okay, this is helpful.

DEAN: And you also have a prophetic conference coming up on March 8th to 9th, this year 2024 in Regina, Canada, where there will be more teaching on the Gift of Prophecy and the prophetic ministry.

CORRECTION: The price is $40 Canadian to view it online and $65 to attend the conference in person. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO LIFELINKS.ORG.

DIANE: So it is Friday night, there’s a worship and speaker on Friday and then all day Saturday on the 9th, and so it’s either in person, in Regina, at Harvest City Church, or online.

Last year, we had 300 people attendance, 200 in person, and 100 online. Yeah. And so we just invite anybody, it was great, I’m excited already for March.

DEAN: So they can sign up at lifelinks.org as well you get a link at dianeharrison.ca I take it.

DIANE: Yes. I better double-check. I’ve got a link there, but to get more information on the conference go to lifelinks.org because that’s where all the up-to-date information can be found and where you can register.

DEAN: Well, thank you very much for joining us today…

Hi, my name is Wayne Johnston. I want to talk about the passage, ‘in the fullness of time.’

A few years ago, my wife and I decided to spend Christmas with my family. We should have stayed home.

We lived in the middle of the Canadian prairies, and my family lived in Northern Ontario.

That Christmas was a bone-chilling -35 C (-31 F) for weeks on end. Our car was old and of course, the night before we left, our dog got out and didn’t come home.

I spent several hours, late at night in -35, looking for our dog, which I never found.

We notified the humane society and had friends look for him while we were gone.

The morning we were to leave, I went to fill up the car with gas, and the gas cap was frozen shut. I couldn’t put gas in the car. I decided not to use a lighter to thaw it out. I was smart enough not to do that.

But it was just one thing after another.

As we traveled, we got to Brandon, Manitoba (not even close to half-way) and spent the night in an inexpensive hotel, because I had gotten sick, possibly from food poisoning, and spent one day in bed.

Finally, we got to our destination. We laugh about it now,

If you have ever had one of those holidays from Hades, where it seems that everything that can go wrong and line up against you, does happen and is put in that box called your holiday.

And that is sort of what I want to talk about.

Galatians 4:4 is an interesting verse about the coming of Christ.

It says:

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.

The phrase, ‘fullness of time’, is what I want to focus on.

Wayne, do you mean the ‘fullness of time’ is in the perfect, most wonderful time to send Christ to redeem us?

No, it is more like my holiday.

The Greek word for fullness, ‘piērōma’, means what is filled, as in a container. It is like if I took a coffee cup in my hand and filled it right to the brim to where it would start spilling over.

That is what the Greek word ‘piērōma’ means.

It means literally to fill to the brim, and God sent Christ at God’s most perfect time. But in reality, it was a little like my holiday, where everything was lined up against Christ.

Now if it was up to me when Jesus would come, maybe I would have picked Moses to pass the baton to the Messiah. Possibly, I would have sent Christ to be born during the time of David or even Isaiah or when somebody special was around, who would have handed things over to the Messiah, and everything would have been great.

But that wasn’t God’s perfect time.

So what time did God pick for His only Son to come to Earth and be born?

Think again, not of a nice summer day, but rather it was -35, and the gas cap was frozen, and your dog had escaped, and everything had gone wrong

I believe our Heavenly Father sent His Son in the fullness of time, the worst of times, to prove that He was all in to redeem us.

First, there had been about 450 years of silence. The Old Testament had ended and there were about 450 years of basically silence.

No more major prophets had risen up. No more books of the Bible were written.

It was a time of silence. That was the cup starting to be filled.

The next thing that filled the cup was, the Jews had gone through Babylon, the Persians, and the Greeks and now the Romans were ruling over them.

Jesus was born during the middle of the Pax Romana, the peak of the Roman Empire, and Rome ruled over Judea with an iron fist.

So the cup is starting to get a little fuller now.

While Mary was pregnant, she and Joseph had to move halfway across the country to be registered for the Roman carbon tax, I mean for Roman tax purposes.

They then had to have their baby in a barn in a strange town.

That was making the cup a little fuller.

Another thing that made that holiday or that trip difficult was King Herod.

King Herod was half-Jew. He ruled for Rome over part of Judea, and secular historians have tried to discount the story of Herod having the babies or the innocents slaughtered in Bethlehem.

Yet, secular accounts make it pretty clear that Herod was a monster. He was a paranoid, sadistic monster.

He had members of his own family butchered and drowned because they disagreed with him, and he was paranoid that they might usurp his authority.

Cesar Augustus, who was emperor of Rome at the time, said of Herod that he would rather be Herod’s hog, than one of his sons because he would probably live longer.

It’s interesting because here is a secular account, by a Cesar nonetheless, that supports what the Bible says about Herod.

And in some ways, the Jews were a broken, divided people.

There were religious and secular Jewish rulers who were pro-Roman and said let’s do what we have to do to get along with them. Then other religious leaders just wanted to fight Rome and go against everything that Rome was trying to do.

In some ways, they were a very divided people.

Jesus also had the stigma of people not being really sure of who His actual father was.

Jesus was also born into a lower, working-class situation where there was little chance of getting ahead.

To top it off, he grew up in Nazareth, which had a terrible reputation of nobody good coming out of Nazareth.

And the last thing of filling this cup to where it was starting to dribble over, think in the context of today’s news over the past several weeks. When Jesus was young, they were warned by the angels that He and his family had to flee to Egypt as refugees to survive.

So we have the Jewish Messiah having to flee Judea because it was too sketchy and too dangerous to be in Judea.

You think of that in modern times, that is quite a thing for the Jewish Messiah to have to escape and take refuge in Egypt.

But that was the cup, that God sent the Messiah in.

That cup was filled with everything that I look at and go “No, don’t send the Messiah now, it’s too sketchy.

It’s too dark.
It’s too dangerous.
It’s too scary.

But that is exactly when our Heavenly Father decided to send the Messiah, and I thought my winter holiday was bad.

But I look at that situation, and it starts to become clear to me.

I believe God, the Father, let Jesus, His son redeemer, be born at the worst possible time, when that cup was full of the dregs of everything wrong and dark, so that Christ could be the light in the darkness.