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Acting On Prophecies

Heidi Baker from Iris Ministries, in her and Rolland’s book, There is Always Enough, tells about her response to prophecies…

Probably, like many reading this book, I have received prophecies for years that in our ministry the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the crippled will walk, the dumb will speak, the dead will be raised and the multitudes will come to Jesus. As time went on it seemed these prophecies became stronger. People began to minister those words over me more and more. I especially remember Randy Clark prophesying over me in 1998. After that I would literally go out and look for every blind person I could find. Living in one of the poorest nations on earth, they’re pretty easy to find. There are blind people all over, so I’d go up and just grab them and say, "I know you don’t know me, but I’d just like to pray for you." I’d pray for them and I’d lead them to Jesus. Every one of them would get saved. I never felt like I failed because they came to Jesus, every one, but none of them saw. I must have prayed for twenty blind people, and none of them saw. But I kept praying. I kept remembering those prophetic words that the Holy Spirit poured into my heart. There was such a powerful presence of the Holy Spirit as those words were spoken over me. I just said, "I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up. One day they’re going to see."

Tanneken Fros, one of our long-term missionaries, and I were in a little mud church up north. We began to pray for another blind lady, and she fell onto the ground. Her eyes went from white to gray to brown, and she was healed and seeing. Her name was Aida, the same name that I have in Mozambique. We were so excited. We could hardly wait to pray for the next blind person. As we were left that little mud church, everyone was singing, dancing and jumping. They were so thrilled…

This dedication. Her faith in those prophecies that they would come true. Her determination to continue against all of the failures that faced her. The certainty in her heart that she would see it come to pass. It made me think. What prophecies do I have over my life? What have I done about these prophecies? What has been my response to them?

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Plumbing in Entre Rios

When I got to the mission here in Entre Rios, I was first shown to my room and then shown how to use the shower. It was not that the shower was hard to understand at all, just that there was no water in the shower. To get water for the shower I needed to go outside and turn on the mains tap.

chipping away concrete
Making a path through the concrete for the pipe.

After inquiring about why the situation was like this, I was told that there is a great amount of water being lost underground through the pipes. This could be seen clearly by the amount of water pouring out of the ground and pipes at the lower part of the building on the downhill side.

Rather than live with things as they were, I offered to help out with the re-plumbing of the place. I told them that I was a qualified plumber by virtue of one of my good friends being a plumber (just as I am a qualified electrician because my cousin is an electrician – runs in the family you see). Also having re-plumbed my house also helped.

The original tap
The original tap that needed to be opened to take a shower.

All of the materials were present, and a small portion of the pipes had already been joined, although were not in place. With a bit of planning and work, and help from Guido, we had almost the whole place plumbed within two days. After this, there were only a couple of extra things to do, such as running water to another small bathroom that is hardly used and fixing the kitchen tap.

During the last few days there has been a leadership teaching running all day which has limited what I have been able to do. There are a couple of leaks still to be corrected, and some burst pipes that I have managed to fix too, including one that filled the storage room within seconds. Putting in some taps here and there to be able to cut off the water to different sections and fixing the leaking taps and toilets are also on the list.

toilet with burst pipe
The pipe on this toilet burst, filling the dining room with water.

dining room floor
The dining room filled with water.

Even now the place is tremendously better than it was before. One of the ladies came up to me and thanked me tremendously for what we had just done with the plumbing. She told me that the plumbing had been in disrepair for a whole year. They had been getting so desperate that they were considering paying a plumber to fix the problem – something that was far beyond the meagre budget of this small mission.

finished product
The pipes in place and finished (the old tap no longer works).

When things like this happen and I am able to help out, I often consider it as though God had placed me in this place for that very reason. Perhaps not, but in any case I have been able to help these people in a very practical way.

burst pipe
The pipe that burst, filling the storage room within moments.

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Wake up, Church!

Quoted from There is Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker.

Many people in the Church are frustrated because they don’t see a harvest. They’re frustrated because they have so little fruit, and they wonder why. They keep going to the same people. In the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:15-24, the rich didn’t want to come. They were busy enjoying their money and possessions, and made excuses. The poor can’t do these things, and they are eager to come to the banquet when they are invited. God says there are no excuses, but the Church keeps going to the wealthy and well-fed, and wonder why they don’t respond.

God is saying, "Wake up, Church! Wake up, Church! The Church isn’t ready for the wedding feast. The poor need to be called." The Lord is looking for servant lovers who are passionate for Him, who are filled with love for Him, who are longing for the Bridegroom’s return, who can taste the feast and know it’s about to begin. They can’t stand any more to stay in their comfort, to wait around for someone to be saved. They will literally run out and call in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. If we will go, they will come. (p.165)

In the two years that I have been living in Argentina, my hard heart toward the poor and the needy has softened. For too long my attitude was of "us" and "them." Now I see all people as "us." There are no "them’s" left. When approached by beggars my thoughts have changed from giving by guilt to deciding how much I should give and wondering if it is enough. Sometimes I put my arm around them and we walk somewhere that we can eat together. But this is not enough.

To palm off our responsibility as Christians to care for the poor with a coin or note is not enough. It is not what Jesus told us to do. We were told to love and care for them. Not push them away with hardly enough to buy their next meal while we spend dozens of times more than we have just given them on just one meal. We must do more. We are commanded to do more.

The Lord is calling for servant lovers who will call in the outcasts, who will go into the dark corners of the world and compel the poor to come. And they will come. They’ll come by the millions. Who will go and leave their life of comfort and call in the broken? Who will go and be a learner? Who will go and lay their life down for Jesus among the poor? The Lord Jesus wants His house to be full. It’s time for us to go out to the poor, to the broken, to the homeless, to the dying, the lonely, and call them to come in. Thousands and thousands of missionaries and ministers need to go out to the darkest places, to the poorest places, to the forgotten places, because the wedding feast is about to begin and so many of the poor haven’t been called. Rush out and call them. They will come.

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How Would You React?

Quoted from There is Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker.

So as we were praying for a pastor to help these street girls, the Lord just spoke to my heart, "Louis." He’d never been to school. He couldn’t read or write until we got him into one of our literacy programs. He never had a Bible school class. He was just working in our construction department. I went over to him at campismo and said, "Louis, do you think Jesus could use you to help pastor these girls with Lucia?" Louis began to weep. He just began to cry in the sand. We don’t have buildings. We were out there in the sand under the trees, and he began to cry, tears dripping into the sand, running down his face and down his scarred hands. And he said, "Oh, Jesus would honor me with such a thing? Jesus would let me do such a thing for Him? Of course. What joy, what great joy! Of course I’ll go. Oh, I would love to go. I would love to pastor these girls and the orphans from the floods." And Louis is out there with Lucia ministering.

As I read this I wondered how I would react if offered such an opportunity. Would I think something like, "Oh at last they have recognized me, at last I can do something better than this!"? Or would I react like Louis, with humble gratitude to serve and honor my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?

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Giving Your Minimum

Multitudes of church members are satisfied with giving their minimum to God, not their maximum. I’ve watched men and women during offering time in church. They open their fat wallets and search for the smallest amount they can give. This type of attitude will never do! Jesus gave his whole life for us, and we give as little of our lives, time, and money as we can give back to God. What a disgrace! Repent!

From Brother Yun’s book ‘THE HEAVENLY MAN‘.

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What are “labels” except division

So many times I have heard people talk about this denomination or that denomination or this “religion” or that “religion” and so on. The reality is that we are all simply people standing before a living God. All of this talk simply creates divisions; an “us” against “them” mentality.

Having grown up without knowing much about God, save for some time spent in a Sunday School briefly, when I found Him, my life was not spent in one denomination but many different ones. From one to another to another I went, partly because of my family’s constant moving, and partly because I was not looking at the outside or structures, but rather searching for people that lived what they believed. If I found it in a Catholic Church then that was fine for me. If I found it in a Baptist church then that too was fine. As was any denomination that was there.

My belief was not always welcome, but I always found it hard to describe what I felt about all of this to people. Normally I would just tell them that it does not matter where people come from or which denomination or religion they come from, but only that they love God and live this in their lives.

Now, in reading this email, I found this explanation that seemed to be so much clearer in explaining how we are simply people before a living God, nothing more and nothing less. The labels are nothing.

Let me state here and now that man, not God, started every denomination, institutional church, and house church on the face of the earth. Some may be following God’s will, some only think they are following God’s will, and most are just doing what they want to do with no thought to God’s will. We aren’t interested now in explaining how or why they do what they do, we simply wish to state that man does all these things, not God. The Kingdom is within you. There is only One Church, and that is the Church that Jesus is building. There is only One Flock, and One Shepherd. Everything else is periphery.

When we see how much of this is man’s doing we are liable to become upset over it all, but God just bypasses and transcends the boundaries we put up between one another. God is just too big to confine Himself to working within one little sect, whether they are “in” or “out” of the religious system. God has never blessed a denomination, and He never will. He blesses people, not movements. He judges people, not systems. He only sees one thing, and that is His Son. He only gives us one thing, and that is His Son. If you have the Son, you have Life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have Life. This is the only thing God is looking for.

Sent in an email from Glory of His Cross Prophetic Ministries, titled “One Flock, One Shepherd” by Chip Brogden.

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Missionary Conference in Virasolo (The Conference)

Arrival
Having arrived at the church, we were shown to our rooms. Mine was the pastor’s office, converted to a bedroom with two beds. The girls lived in a house attached to the side of the church. My room was located in the middle of everything. Next to our dining room, immediately behind the stage wall to of the church, and above the kitchen and meeting place for church members.

The facilities were basic, providing the necesities, but their hospitality was excessive. We were always fed with newly cooked food, even if there was enough left over to make another meal out of it, and were given enough drink to quench even the driest of thirsts. There were always people around to make sure that we were comfortable and to check if we needed anything else. And people were always available to show us around the local area, which they did. But they were never overbearing or crushing. I felt very comfortable here.

Having organised myself for the night, I wandered into the main church building, following a narrow hallway with several doorways on the right leading into the auditorium. I choose the third and enter into a large area filled with over a hundred people. The opening service had begun.


The church that held the Missionary Conference.

The First Night
During the course of the night, each of us were introduced to the people attending, making our way to the front to say a few words and then returning to our seats. Nancy spoke that night, about Missions and the importance of it. My turn would come the next day when I was to speak at a workshop at 10am.

Exhausted after the meeting, I turned in for an early night almost immediately afterwards. No sooner had I fallen into bed than there was a knock on the door. Upon dressing I discovered that it was somebody concerned that I would not be able to get out to the toilet without a key for the outside door. They offered me the key and left. I quickly fell back into bed again. Half an hour later there was another knock on my door. Again, after rising and dressing, I open the door to another person checking that I was able to get out to the toilet that night should I need to. I assured them that all was well and that I had a key so they could rest easy. Then fell back into bed.

The normal hour for sleeping is normally close to midnight, so these calls from people around 11pm were very common and they would have expected that I would be still awake. I wasn’t, and at a few minutes to midnight, a persistent knock at my door finally dragged me out of my deepening sleep. Upon rising, I discovered the the group who had been making a bunch of noise downstairs, almost directly underneath my room, were now leaving. I thanked them for informing me, turned and grabbed my newly given key, and followed them out, bidding them farewell and locking the door after me. Sleep came very easily.

Delivery Day
It was only a little after 6am that I awoke to my alarm. Underneath my room I could hear noises and movements of a number of people. Things were scheduled to start at 8am, so I wanted to be sure that I would be ready in time. A quick shower and I was ready to go and it was still only 6.40am. So after some morning routines I join the people downstairs for some mate and a chat. At around 7.15am I overhear some worried ladies talking about how the two girls have not yet risen. The girls rose only shortly afterwards.

Around this time, one of the men rises and announces that he is going to search out some “facturas” for breakfast. These are sweet croissants and other concoctions from the bakery that make for a very standard breakfast here. Then looking over my way, he offers me a ride around town to show me a little of the place. I don’t wait for a second invite and quickly climb on his scooter for the ride. We head down the streets looking for an open bakery.


Heading out to the bakery on the bike.
Continue reading “Missionary Conference in Virasolo (The Conference)”

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Missionary Conference in Virasolo (Getting There)

“Rob,” the message came to me with urgency, “the taxi is outside waiting for you.” I had been talking with my friend Lehman about plans and ideas and had lost track of the time. Mostly packed, I quickly stuffed my computer and associated bits into my bag where they would fit and then raced out the door, concerned that the rush may have meant I had forgotten something. It was too late now anyway. Our bus was leaving in 25 minutes.

When I reached the taxi, Norma and Nancy were already there waiting to go. Throwing my bags into the boot, I climbed into the front and we were off. The taxi wove us through various pathways and roads on our way there. Leaving our area, we bounced and bumped along the badly eroded dirt roadways at speeds approaching 20 kms per hour. It was only once we reached the main roads, surfaced in asphalt, that we could travel at the regulated 60 kms per hour.

My view in the front seat was obstructed by a plastic sign jammed into the upper corner of the windscreen on my side. It contained the phone number of the taxi company and proved to be the perfect size to reduce the vision from my right eye to virtually nothing. So I found myself leaning left and right as we weaved our way through the meandering traffic just to see anything. It was just after 1.40pm in the afternoon. Our driver was pretty crafty in the paths he chose, and managed to cut through a service station, and squeeze through tiny gaps in the traffic to deliver us at the bus terminal with only minutes to spare.

The bus was waiting for us down the other end of the platform and after checking our bags into the storage space underneath the three of us clambered aboard and found our seats. I was seated on my own, next to a woman that managed to sleep for most of the journey. This was not the comfortable buses with wide seats and a food service. Those buses only travel between major destinations. Our destination was small and local, and our bus was narrow with two seats either side and an aisle that was filling up fast.

As a local bus, if there were people wanting to get onboard then it stopped. If people wanted to get off then it stopped. There were designated stops for the bus, but they were more of a guideline than a hardened rule. I guess these were the places that people knew to wait for the bus at least. As more people got onto the bus, there were no seats left for them to sit, so they just stood around in the aisle, bags at their feet.

People of all sorts were on our bus. From the local gaucho cowboy with his big belt, felt hat, and traditional clothing, to two modern girls decked out in the fashionable tight jeans and loose top typical to this part of the country. A father and son with their shopping for the week stood in the aisle saying nothing, while a middle-aged mother of three or four (it was hard to tell for sure) spent most of her journey telling the kids what they can’t do and should have done.

Five long hours later and we roll into the township of Virasoro, our destination and home to the Fourth Missionary Conference (of Virasoro). As soon as we had gotten off the bus and retrieved our bags we were met by the pastor and ferried in his car to the church hosting the conference.

We had arrived.

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The Debate About Christmas

This is a great perspective aligner on the whole issue of Christmas that has been going on this holiday season in the USA. I fully agree too – let’s get back to the core of Christmas and not get bogged down in the trivial.

I am nearly confident that if Christ were born in 2005 the brief verses involving the magi in Matthew 2 would read something like this:

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” [But those who believed in the deity of the Messiah prevented the magi from worshipping Him because they were pagan Gentiles and did not call Jesus the Messiah but rather by the Greek name, Christ. Frustrated by their blocked attempt to worship the one who came to bring hope and salvation to all men, they returned to the east.]

The evangelical Christian movement today finds itself deadlocked in an ideological battle over Christmas. The American Family Association boasts nearly 3 million members and has an active campaign to put Christmas back into the holiday shopping season. Bill O’Reilly mentioned on The O’Reilly Factor that businesses should be thanking Christ for the holiday season that boosts their sales. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has ordered that the Capitol tree be renamed the “Capitol Christmas Tree” after it was changed in the late 1990s to the “Holiday Tree.” Never before has there been such an overt war against secularism at the holidays.

Satan is clever, make no mistake. It is possible for us to take our eyes off the deep issue, think we are fighting the good fight, only to discover we have our sights misaligned and are missing the target. Satan spends his time making sure Christ’s birth never gets the attention it deserves. How we play into that process is crucial to the bigger picture of the Church being salt and light to a dark world.

Before Christ was born, the ancient Romans had more holidays than any other culture in history. They were wild partiers who took every opportunity they could to drink, carouse and fornicate. In many ways, their religion was constructed around these opportunities to act like the gods they worshipped. One holiday was the winter solstice festival, appropriately named Saturnalia after Saturn, the god of farming. This celebration lasted from the Dec. 17 to Dec. 23 and was filled with decorating and partying. They even had evergreens that they would chop down and put up to celebrate the life of trees in the harshness of winter. This holiday eventually devolved into debauchery—so much so that the word saturnalia came to mean “orgy.” Early Christians coincided Christmas with Saturnalia to avoid religious persecution.

So where did the gift-giving and Santa Claus come into play? As early as the fourth century, Saint Nicholas, a bishop in modern day-Turkey, was known for a gift-giving lifestyle that benefited those who were impoverished. He once presented three dowries for three poor daughters to avert them from turning to prostitution in order to earn income for their family. There are also links to German and Dutch folklore that trace back to Christianity. Eventually, around the 17th century, these tales evolved into the notion we have today of Santa Claus. It is in the late 1800s that the commercial appeal of Santa Claus and Christmas took off to the astronomical economic figures we see today. It appears, unfortunately, that the birth of the Messiah has mostly played a backseat role to the mythological gods and folklore.

While the war we fight is ideological, we have apparently chosen to fight a battle over semantics instead of lost souls. Whether Christmas (from old English, meaning “Christ’s Mass”) or holiday (also from old English, meaning “Holy Day”) season is employed as the term of choice, Christians appear to have taken issue with the non-use of the term “Christmas” in stores.

While I don’t have an issue with the auspices of the debate, I think the larger war is left unfought.

Tell me, what relevance does Christmas have to a corporate executive who does not have a faith in Jesus Christ? Further, how do upset Christians appear to that executive when they demand that he recognize a holiday that he doesn’t understand or to which he doesn’t ascribe? As believers, why would we even want a corporation who cares nothing for the birth of Christ incarnate to capitalize on His observed birthday and name in their holiday advertising? Despite how duplicitous it is for these companies to fail to mention it altogether, it seems heretical for believers to demand that unbelievers trumpet Christ for financial gain.

It is as if the moneychangers returned to the temple demanding this time that the temple, be renamed a market. That idea is horrifying to us, yet we allow the celebration of our Savior’s birthday—the entrance of hope into the world and one of the holiest days in all of redemptive history—to remain commercialized and more about what Santa may bring the kiddies than about the hope of salvation to all our weary, wayward souls. We have let Christmas become what it is—an argument over semantics. Well, ’tis the season.

There are people who turn away and turn off the magi of today from worshipping because their corporate creed does not fit our warm, fuzzy sentiments about a holiday whose true meaning we only half-heartedly embrace amid the more tangible celebration of gift-receiving and merrymaking. We should be pointing them to the reason we have to celebrate in the first place!

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our salvation. Unfortunately, it’s never been a holiday dedicated solely to its impact on all of humanity. Much of the debate today centers around the narrow-minded and hypocritical view some Christians take toward their perceived rights of ownership on the holiday season. It is almost as if we are trying to be recognized by the world for what we think, and in doing so, we have distracted everyone from what it is we celebrate.

My suggestion is humble and simple: instead of worrying over whether we call it a holiday season or Christmas—neither of which is actually historically accurate given, its unholy origins and current forms of celebration—let’s invite everyone we know to be magi, recognizing the star in the east, the Light of our lives, and coming to see and to worship the King wherein we find hope, joy, peace and life to all.

If we are fighting the ideological battle at its root—the heart—then those who disagree with our choice of semantics or holiday displays will discover that the hope we celebrate at Christmas is universal and relevant to all mankind. We will not have to engage in the battles we are in because our message would be more easily embraced this way. Not through attempts to strong-arm unbelievers into a faith they do not yet understand because they have not been invited to come and see the King for themselves. This year, let’s show them that Christmas (or the holiday season) is about more than an idealogical battle; it’s about a Savior.

Mike Parrish serves as the Minister of Students for Southside Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is a visionary communicator called to unite the Church by rethinking its strategic purposes in the world and teaching believers that they are catalysts for cultural change.

Received in an email from a friend but believed to be sourced from RelevantMagazine.com.

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The Voice of the Conscience

David Kirkwood sends out a regular e-teaching every month. This month the topic was “The Inward Voice.” Explaining that even though the written law was given to the Jews back in the days of Moses, people already were living by a law that existed since the beginning. This was the conscience. Below is a quote from his message showing that well before there was a written law people followed their consciences…. probably even more so than they do today.

As much as two hundred years before Harkhuf, a grand vizier of Egypt named Ptahhotep, who served under Pharaoh Isesi, in his old age authored a collection of thirty-seven moral maxims that were addressed to his son. At least one thousand years before God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel (the recorded law), he warned his son against both lust and greed. Here are maxims 18 and 19:

If you want friendship to endure
In the house you enter
As master, brother, or friend,
In whatever place you enter,
Beware of approaching the women!
Unhappy is the place where it is done,
Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them.
A thousand men are undone for the enjoyment of a brief moment like a dream,
Then death comes for having known them…
When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. [Note this line!]
He who fails through lust of them,
No affair of his can prosper.

If you want a perfect conduct,
To be free from every evil,
Guard against the vice of greed:
A grievous sickness without cure,
There is no treatment for it.
It embroils fathers, mothers,
And the brothers of the mother,
It parts wife from husband;
it is a compound of all evils,
A bundle of all hateful things.
That man endures whose rule is rightness,
Who walks a straight line;
He will make a will by it,
The greedy has no tomb.

From the ShepherdServe.com website.