Tag Archives: miracles

Maturing – Part One

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P1320286 compressedMaturity requires stages and a progression that cannot be skipped.

We start with being completely wrapped up in ourselves. This is the mind of a toddler that thinks the whole world is an extension of him or herself. There is no distinction between what goes on out there and what is inherent within.

Growing a little older a child begins to understand that he is different than others and that others are not him, but the circumstances of the child’s world still directly reflect the child himself. What happens in the child’s world and to the people in the child’s world is still completely about the child.

At about the age of 12 our mind grows to understand that others are distinct people separate from us. We are able to step out of our own experience and put ourselves in the shoes of another. This is called the age of reason.

From here we immediately move into the independent stage. The teen years are critical for separating ourselves from our parents. Anything that parents put upon teens by way of expectations of maintaining the parents sense of self, supporting the parents egos, or playing out the parents un-lived hopes and dreams, will be automatically and often quite ruthlessly rejected by the teen.

For the teen must differentiate at all costs in order to mature.

Those who manage this differentiation go on to find their own successes. They express their passions, know their dreams and are freed in creative expression to find solutions that take them forward. They find out what they are good at and what they uniquely have to offer and bring to the table. Here we experience independence.

Only after this are we able to truly become interdependent. After all interdependence depends on two or more independent individuals. There can be no collaborations without complete people, for only a strong sense of self leads to powerful synergy with others.

Interdependence has us drawing from others and giving to others in a way that does not diminish either party. Those who are not yet independent cannot give or receive without feeling diminished and/or aggrandized, for their sense of self is not yet fully formed.

All of this to say that it is important to recognize where you are on the maturity scale and work accordingly in that place and towards the next stage.

For those of us who were traumatized in any way during childhood there is a possibility of being stuck at the age when trauma occurred. Trauma interrupts the natural development of any of us. Our emotions get stuck at that age, our reasoning gets stuck at that age, our perspectives get stuck at that age.

If for instance you or someone you know is always reflecting what people say and do as being about themselves, it is a pretty good sign that they are emotionally and cognitively operating from a child’s place.

I myself was stuck emotionally for quite some time at 9 years of age. For it was at the age of 9 that I was raped coming home from school one day. It took some hard inner work, the help of prayer ministers and psychologists and the simple healing of Jesus Christ to get me past that point.

But the amazing thing with healing is that once the stuck place (you know how we used to call a record that would skip and skip on the same spot a broken record), is healed, once the scars are erased in the power of Jesus Christ we go on to grow and mature at amazingly fast rates of speed.

As I have prayed and minister healing to many individuals over the years I am convinced that these ‘stuck’ places that began at childhood are often the root of many of our inabilities to get on with life and success.

There is a lot more to speak of regarding this, but I wanted to give a glimpse into some of the inner realities of our lives. Noting loud and clear that all of it can be healed and we can be freed to mature and find great satisfactions in life.

I’m a living testimony.

Prayer Ministry

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renewal pic tovel!Over a dozen years ago I began my own deliberate journey of inner healing. At the time I wouldn’t have named it this, as I really could not foresee what or who I might be going forward. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

But life at the time was falling apart around me. I was stuck and needed help, and so began a six-month commitment of prayer ministry. That six months turned into about six years of deliberate healing – a journey I would forever more be grateful.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I would one day be blessed to stand alongside others in specific inner journey’s. That’s where I am today and have been for some years now.

Trained in a number of methodologies the basic premise and work is simply coming alongside another as we together seek the Lord’s wisdom and clarity and healing.

Where there have been lies we break them. Where there are strongholds from years gone by we say ‘No More!’ And where chains of compromise have become thick and heavy we simply declare them smashed.

All of this is done in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for after all it is only because of his work on the cross by which we claim any freedom whatsoever. In and of ourselves we are stuck. But in God, everything opens up. Everything becomes fresh and new.

We simply are new creatures in Christ. Free to shine. Equipped unto strengths. Friends of God.

Today we do this work one-on-one in the Vancouver area in addition to this being the foundation of inner healing and deliverance that we take to the nations.

In agreement and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we are breaking strongholds, restoring emotional strengths, and bringing deep spiritual refreshment everywhere we go.

“And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
    the restorer of streets to dwell in.” Isaiah 58:12

Understanding

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P1240873 compressedNot the heart. “Not the Heart!”

There is an interesting sentence in The Message’ book of Mark 6. It had been a day of miracles. Jesus had turned five loaves and two fish into enough food that fed five-thousand people, and with leftovers.

The disciples were sent across the lake on a boat, the people were sent home, Jesus took some time to pray. Up on the lake came a storm. And there came Jesus, walking toward them on the water.

Obviously the disciples were terrified as Jesus came closer to them, and yet once close enough he assured them of who he was and not to be afraid. And then he climbed into the boat, which immediately brought the storm to an end.

And here is where we read, ‘They were stunned, shaking their heads wondering what was going on. They didn’t understand what he had done at supper. None of this had yet penetrated their hearts.”

Did you read that? ‘None of this had yet penetrated their hearts.”

Isn’t that the way.

We can have miracles all around us. There can be God in our midst. The uncountable come to stay, and yet we don’t let it penetrate. We don’t get it.

When I think back over my years, that stone wall of my heart, that was bondage for me.

It was a wall thick with judgments about the way life is to go. Laden through with self-righteousness, it was like a mesh of re-bar and concrete. And into that mix, was a stance of defensiveness against vulnerability; an inability to have anything ‘touch’ me.

Thing is, we can either spend our energies opposing God, opposing miracles, opposing health and healing, or we can use our energies to allow vulnerability; to drop our guard and to stop managing by ourselves.

But of course, this is a huge risk. For starters, we will never be the same. For miracles of heart and soul, life and limb, have nothing of control in them whatsoever.

So if we want control, I guess we do without the miraculous.

Surrender is key.

We might rather have our hunger. We enjoy rather, our drama and illness and disease. We like our self-righteous stances of less-than and poor-me. After all, what would we talk about, if not for our troubles?

We say we want the fixes, we say we want things to go better, we say we want health and healing, but our hearts are stoney, cold and indifferent.

We refuse to be comforted, we hold tight our paradigms of ‘this is a bad cold world’, and… we get what we expect.

It’s as though we want the miracles, but we don’t want to be changed. Just like the disciples amazing things can be happening all around us, but we’ve hearts and eyes that cannot comprehend.

Let it go. Allow the living God to penetrate. We must put down our best thoughts and our own understandings, put down our drama and our self-pity, put down, on the table, our stony hearts.

Where we demand justice, to allow grace.

Where we hold tight to death, to allow life.

Where we must be right, to allow uncertainty.

Where we condemn, to allow new paradigms.

Our hearts will be changed. The things we once held to so tightly will fade away. We won’t understand much, but we will be free, healthy, and whole.

How might we allow the Spirit to touch our hearts today?

Laid Bare

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P1320286 compressedEvery so often there are moments in our lives where there are intersections of sorts. We cannot see them coming, often don’t realize the occurrence when in the midst, and can barely put words to them on the back end.

I had one of these intersection ‘moments’ my last trip to Uganda. The whole trip was an intersection moment, and I’ve been pondering it ever since, and I’ll try to put some words to it today.

We go through life with a buffer system of sorts, ways of coping with our days and managing all that comes to us. It is a system that we rarely think of except in those times when it isn’t there.

For instance, have you ever been very ill, with not only your physical defenses down, but your emotional ones as well. Where everything is heightened and responses are that much more intense and critical, where sadness is that much deeper and comfort harder to come by.

This was my experience on my last trip. While you can read about the work of that trip HERE, the experience of being laid over with weakness was its own thing entirely.

While in that weakness came a deep work for the Lord for others, and in that weakness God had the most space to work, that same weakness facilitated a deep work in my own being.

So many things have shifted since that trip, I look back and will be forever grateful and thankful. With weakness laid over, I cried and cried on that trip, prayed and prayed, and with my innards stripped bare, laid every part of my life at the feet of the Lord.

I sat in sorrow, rested in silence, and walked in the moments. There was nothing else to do. I was simply there, and in that time and space some sort of earthquake deep within my being took place.

I can’t give all the particulars, but my kids lives are different after that trip, my own days are changed, and the outflow from deep inside has a different tenor.

And I think about how we so avoid these deep works. It obviously took me going to Uganda, allowing a weak space in service of others, with a stripping of all regular coping mechanisms, for the Lord to break through some deeply held constructs within my own being.

So why do we doggedly avoid the laid-bare places?

I recall a conversation I had with a fellow some years ago. He was intentionally not entering into an area of giftedness and a specific ministry because he knew he would come face to face with his pride. So instead of going forward and dealing with his inner stuff, he held back, refused the gifted ministry places, and consequently, hung onto his pride quite effectively.

The logic is off. But I think his candid decision marks a lot of us at times. We hold back from the gifted places and the intense ministries of heart and mind, because we do not want to confront our inner demons. We don’t want to find out what is lurking behind the shadows. Mediocrity and less-than serve us very well, thank-you very much.

It is no secret that giving of ourselves is the best way to personally grow. We cannot help but mature when we make our life about others and not ourselves. The fellow who avoided ministry and advocated self protection, personifies selfish living to the extreme. It might feel nicer, but nothing changes, growth isn’t given a chance, and no one is blessed. No one.

And the intersections whereby the Lord moves us, and where transformations take place, are ultimately rejected.

Rather than this sad scenario, go for the ministry, go for the gifted places, make space for intersections and deep movements. It won’t be nice, but it will be good. For as the writer of Proverbs says, “The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed; those who help others are helped.” 11:25

The weakness by which I was brought low, completely lifted off of me at Amsterdam airport. Halfway home I ‘was back’. Feeling strong and normal, but never the same. Thank-You God

Start In

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life is a journeyI have no idea what to write about. I’ve been working on Advance Daily’s for a few hours now, trying to get a bunch of them out and ahead of the game.

My mind feels a little dry and with not much else to say.

But writing, I have found, is much like cooking.

In cooking I hardly know what I want to make at any given time. After years and years of cooking my mind goes blank and my creativity dries up when given the task of one more meal to make.

And yet, I’ve found a trick when it comes to cooking. I just start cutting an onion.

Yup, that’s right, I simply get an onion out, the cutting board, my knife, and start in. And somewhere in the process of getting the skin off the onion, of making my slices, the next step takes form.

I get some olive oil heating up in a pan, and then one ingredient after another comes to mind, other vegetables, spices and seasoning, accompanying starch or meat, and without a lot of strain there is a meal ready to be savored.

Writing is the same, we simply must start in. Some months back my daughter was crying the blues that I wasn’t ‘teaching’ her how to write.

Now I am a writer, and I know how this works. So I just kept telling her, “Just start writing.”

“But… but… but…” she protested, “I want one of those writing books, a this and a that…”

“Just start writing.”

It took some time, quite a bit of time, but finally she started in, and within some minutes had a stunning poem about her dog that had simply flowed out of her.

Today this poem graces her bedroom wall.

And this is writing. Where our hearts simply overflow and where words are put to emotions and character and experience.

Life is the same. Exactly the same.

While we are looking for formula and for instructions and for lessons, we miss that life is here to be lived. That we figure out living as we live, not before.

We must just start in.

Show Up

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make a differenceI’m feeling a bit nostalgic this week. The decision has been made to pull from the shelf, the Renewal Weekends I’ve been hosting for the past three years. It is simply time.

With 50 women who have participated over these three years, the weekends have been rich times of being washed with the goodness of God over our hearts and spirits.

Every single weekend was a fresh revelation of the heart of God. And every single weekend saw miracles of heart and souls and even bodies.

And I learned two primary lessons hosting these retreats. The first thing I learned was to,

1. Show Up

I started hosting these weekends during the initial and hardest years of my marriage’s separat ion. And many weekends I would come simply awash with grief and with my soul cast-down.

With little to give, a few times with literally nothing to give, I showed up, and God did the rest. I learned, really learned, that when I am at my very worst, that if I simply show up God takes over from there.

The most amazing weekends, the weekends with physical healing and the most powerful anointing, were the weekends when I came flat out broken in terms of my own person.

Which leads me to the second thing I learned.

2. It’s Not My Work

I really got it, over those weekends when I had nothing to give, that this isn’t my work. The power of the Holy Spirit to breathe through hearts and minds, spirits and bodies, is not our work.

The incredible revelations of God’s heart over every particle of who each woman is, was not my work.

I really got, It’s not our work. And this will never leave me. It is a large part of why and how I am in every aspect today. We are simply the canvas upon which God paints.

And as conduits of God’s grace and love, we simply must be available, so that the living God can blow through at a hundred miles an hour. We really are just the vessel.

Today, with the work I do, be it in Prayer Ministry on home ground, or in Ministry to dozens in Africa, I know the same is true.

As I simply show up, God does the rest.

As human beings we tend to make things so much more difficult than they are.

But it really comes down to, show up and let God do the rest.

Heading back to Uganda in less than two weeks I am expecting the same.

I’m showing up, and God will do the work.

Healing

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kids 2I’ve been learning about miracles. Waiting on the Lord for miracles. Been anointed time and again for signs and wonders.

The anointing has been increasing incrementally over the last few years, and exponentially the last few months.

Having been in the business of emotional healing and heart miracles for some time now, years of inner healing and deliverance has me completely confident that when I pray/declare something freed off of a person that it happens. It is done.

Strongholds are broken. New opportunities await. Lies are released. Freedoms are found. Bonds are finished. Strength is imparted.

There is no doubt. No double-mindedness. No wavering.

But when it comes to physical healing, I am still a novice.

Still learning, still experimenting, still trying to figure it out.

Two weeks ago, praying for person after person, there came a woman who had trouble with her colon; it would come out of her body when she used the toilet.

I am really glad that no one could tell what I was saying as I with quiet dismay softly prayed out loud,

“God, I haven’t the slightest clue what I am doing.”

“Nor how you heal this kind of thing. I simply ask that you heal her.”

I then received a picture of the fibers around her colon being stitched back together, so I declared this, spoke what I saw and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I don’t what happened for her, if anything. But the picture I received gives me hope that perhaps something healed for her that day.

A dozen or more people down the line, came a boy of about 12 who was deaf in his left ear. Again, in dismay and softly out loud, this was my prayer that time,

“God, I am afraid of having you pour through me. I feel as though you will consume me if you pour through. But today, I give you permission to destroy me if that is what it will take to heal this boy. I am okay with your destruction of me if it will heal him.”

And the boy was healed.

My hand was over his ear as I was praying that rather unorthodox prayer. I felt nothing, but upon testing he could hear.

We smiled, and those in line who had witnessed clapped.

And I wasn’t consumed, and I wasn’t destroyed, I’m here to tell about it.

What I am learning is that healing comes when ones heart is moved by God’s heart for another. This in turn moves God’s heart, and with two hearts in tandem for someone else, healings are the result.

But I am still afraid.

Afraid to pray individually over person after person for hours on end.

Afraid of exhaustion. Afraid of being consumed. Afraid of being poured out. Literally.

Simply afraid.

The day I prayed strongholds off of an entire area I was exhausted afterward. And with fifty children and twenty adults then pressing in for handshakes and hugs and well wishes, I was simply relieved that Moses had fired up the motorcycle and all I had to do was make a run for it and we were gone.

There are a lot of growing pains to go through in the months and years to come. I am glad I don’t have to learn it all at once.

And I am glad that God is big enough for my fear, and I am glad that God will wait on me as I adapt and grow into this calling.

And I am glad to know that what was hard years back is now easy today, and therefore, what is hard today, will simply be easy in the future.

That day of healings, as I was leaving there was a boy of about 7 years of age. His right hand was lame. It hung limp and useless. I touched his hand, spoke some words while I massaged it, willing healing to come.

I encouraged him to flex his fingers, to open and close his hand. The other children all around helped to tell him what I was wanting, and he began to move his hand, flexing his fingers in and out.

I don’t know if his hand has been healed or not.

But I realize that healing is the same muscle as being healed. We must flex it, and test it, and want it bad enough to risk it not happening, and to keep on asking anyway.

Capturing God’s Heart – Redemption – Volume 7

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Redemption

That place where God comes down and makes everything right

That place where we are redeemed.

In the old Testament we find redemption in the book of Ruth

The story of Naomi and Ruth is a beautiful story. One woman was older and the mother of sons, the other younger and married to one of her sons.

And the sons die, leaving no recourse for the women.

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Capturing God’s Heart – Freedom – Volume 6

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Today I share what I have found to be a simple yet profound process of bringing the freedom of the Lord into very specific areas of our lives.

Receiving Jesus Christ as Savior is the first step towards this freedom. And then as we continue to walk with Him we can begin to bring His freedom into very specific areas of our life, increasing His light within our own hearts and lives, experiencing freedom and the lightness of the Lord in increasing measure.

Freedom in any area of life comes about through a process before the Lord.

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