Prodigal Father Part 1: All That Is Mine Is Yours

In stark contrast to the incredibly deep spiritual direction that this post is going to take, I’d like to start out with a reference to Zoolander.

“But wait!” you say, “I haven’t seen Zoolander!”

Don’t worry – it’s not a thinker movie.

Check out this clip:

When things don’t go his way, Derek has an identity crisis and, staring into a puddle, asks: Who am I?

His reflection is no help.

I have felt this way before. I’ve never lost a modeling competition (I won them ALL), but my foundations have been shaken a good deal. And I’m not just talking about west coast earthquakes.

But Jesus has been speaking to Matt and me lately about our identity in Him. Our adoption, our sonship, our co-heir-ship.
And I was brought to the story of the prodigal son where Holy Spirit highlighted some things I had never seen before.
I noticed that these brothers both had lost sight of their identity. Neither of them was living in what it meant to be sons and coheirs.

Growing up I can remember thinking “that brat, asking his dad for a bunch of money! And that dad is kind of a push over…he didn’t even flinch.”

Interesting. The dad didn’t even flinch.

I wonder if that isn’t where the son went wrong. Was the asking for his inheritance wrong, or was it the way he spent it?

When I was a kid I loved going to my grandparents‘ houses for all the obvious reasons. My dad’s parents’ house not only had my Grandpa and Grandma IN it, but also a pool, a pool table, a TV bigger than me, and a substantial stock piling of Dole pineapple juices in tiny little cans.

I am not sure if Grandpa himself liked these, as I have actually never seen him consume one…but they were always there. And I loved them.

Mom and Dad didn’t want us to be little crazy kids, though, and tear through our grandparents’ house eating anything we wanted so I was always instructed to ask Grandpa or Grandma first before I had one.

And, every time, Grandpa’s response was: “Of course! You can have anything you want.”

He almost seemed confused as to why I was asking.

So I would enjoy a can poolside with my cousins. The 90s were awesome.

However, I’m not sure Grandpa would have been quite so thrilled if I had opened up the can and poured it down the drain.
While the juice was blessing me and filling me and taking care of me it was all mine to have as much as I wanted. If I had been flippant with it, that would have changed.  It seems to me that the son’s offense wasn’t in wanting his inheritance. He grieved his father when he took that inheritance, along with all his other stuff (probably also given to him by his father) and left.

So not only did the dad not flinch at the request, but he divided the inheritance right then and there and gave half to his younger son. My study Bible says that was very uncommon.

But then our Heavenly Father IS uncommon! He made us co-heirs. Through Jesus we have received adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba! Father! (reference) And we know that Abba translates as basically “Daddy,” which is an incredibly close and intimate term for father.

(An aside: I love the poetic irony of God. He set up how inheritances should work in the old testament and then BLEW THAT UP in the new testament. I find that so magnificent.)

These sons weren’t being intimate with their father. The younger took his freely given inheritance and squandered it, while the older assumed that he couldn’t have his. The one felt that he had to leave and be his own man while the other thought he had to unquestioningly serve in order to gain approval. Neither was wanting to be close with and known by his father.

What if I had always just sat there in my grandparents’ house knowing that they had pineapple juices and assuming that, if I was good enough, they might bring me one, but never asking for it? My grandpa can’t know what I need unless I am talking with him and letting him know me.

And so bitterness consumed the older brother. His inheritance sat right there in front of him, and he never asked to participate in it. In self-righteousness he even spits out that he has always “served” his father, when it doesn’t really seem like that was a requirement put on him. The father doesn’t even acknowledge the statement in his answer, but instead just asserts “you have always been with me”.

If we are serving our Father in order that He might bless us, I believe our motivation is wrong and is setting us up for bitterness and even worse, distance. Our heavenly Father wants to know us. He wants to be with us. Jesus endured the cross for the joy of having us restored to Him. That is a Father who is going out of His way to get us to Him. Why would He go all that way and then stand at a distance once He has us and make us serve Him? If our serving of Him is born out of thankfulness and joy, and wanting to honor our Father who has freely given us so much, then the outcome is more closeness, not mere admittance.

It goes against our “it’s a hard knock life” mentality to graft into our noggins the concept that we did nothing, nor can do anything to earn our inheritance. We weren’t good enough. We aren’t now (in our own power). And we won’t be in the future (I’m pretty sure I’m going to sin around 2pm today when I get angry cause Darcy will refuse her afternoon nap). In the same way I never did anything to earn my grandpa’s love and pineapple juice. I was a total user in his house. I played pool upstairs, then I played in the pool outside, then I drank his pineapple juice, and then I lounged around and watched TV, and then I trotted along behind him while he did some chores, and then he would take us all out to dinner where again, I could “have anything I wanted”…!?!?!?!

All he needed in return is that I loved him and was his.

Heavenly Father has been getting at this point with me lately. The Bible says that in Him we are: saved, redeemed, more than conquerors, sons and daughters, brought close, seated with Christ, free, heirs, a royal priesthood, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and on and on. We didn’t deserve it, but there it is.

What am I supposed to do with all of that?

That needs to flavor my life somehow.

And I think that it’s more than where we spend our Sunday mornings (or Saturday nights in our case) or what music we listen to as we drive around town. It’s more than how we tithe and what homeschool curriculum we buy.

The closeness we are invited into by our Father does not have to wait around until after death. In fact the father in the story tells the older son that his brother had been dead, but was now alive. We have been made alive in Christ!

Testify!

I am so thankful that I never forsook my Father and I never really had “prodigal” wandering years.

But I don’t want to live like the older brother either. He was waiting around for his inheritance that was already there, and was living like he couldn’t have it until later – like some family heirloom samurai sword that you can look at but never EVER touch…And that confused, self-righteous bitterness blocked the closeness that they could have been enjoying all along.

Why does it feel weird to be close to heavenly Father? Why does it feel odd to trot along behind or beside Him while He moves about His kingdom just as my Grandpa and I walked around his property? Why does it feel odd when I hear someone refer to Him as “Daddy” or “Papa God”? That is what Abba means…and yet…

Can it be that in wanting so much to not be the prodigal son, we have become the stingy son? And we have put that stingy-ness on the Father as well.

In another coming post I am excited to share more about what our inheritance in Christ is. But for now ask Holy Spirit to speak to you and to establish (maybe for the first time in your life) WHO you are in Him. Jesus, impress on our hearts the awesome fullness of the place you have made for us: adopted Sons and Daughters who did not deserve it, but who want so much to represent you, our lavish Father.

What Happens When "Nothing" Happens?

Okay.

Corrie and I have wanted to be totally honest throughout the life of this blog.  We want to share the unadulterated truth of our journey, our struggles, and our beliefs even when that truth seems to run counter to what we're going after.

Namely: healing, a deeper and more real experience of the person of Jesus, the kingdom.

After going to that healing conference at Bethel, wouldn't it be a beautiful thing to be able to write to you: I'm healed!  It's done!  Maybe I didn't feel it then, but I woke up the next day, or two days later or whatever and it was gone!

At this point Corrie and I would definitely consider a gradual healing to be a miracle.

Where My Body is at Now

Today as I write, my body isn't feeling all that great.  The joints that were crooked are still crooked.  The fatigue and adrenal exhaustion are still exerting their influence.  And the general pain, though not super intense, is still there.

After the healing conference, I went through a time of feeling pretty bad.  In fact, I had to increase my daily dose of prednisone (a steroid that suppresses pain and inflammation) from 30mg to 40mg.  This issue of prednisone is one that Corrie and I would love to be rid of.  It's typically pretty toxic and can have some negative long term effects.  We really want for me to be able to get off of it completely.

And in the last couple months, we've tried.  I dropped the dose first from 40mg per day to 37.5mg.  Then after two weeks, again to 35mg per day.

But shortly after, my body showed signs of REgressing rather than PROgressing and I had to go back up to 40mg and am still working on regaining my strength.

On the positive side, I have been gaining weight, which is huge for me.  It's nice to be able to hold my own against those light spring breezes  :)

What God is Doing in Us Now

There are quite a few details to that summary of my body's state right now, some of which are quite interesting and carry flavors of the miraculous working of His kingdom.  But those details aren't actually the point of this post.

The point is: We went to a healing conference where miraculous healing was clearly happening, where Jesus was clearly leading us.  Yet, we did not and currently are not experiencing the full extent of healing that we've been pursuing.

So what in the world do we do with that?

Battling this sickness for eight years is hard enough.  It could seem like salt in the wound to come home from that conference with what seems like nothing to show for it.

Offended by Disappointment

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is stuck in prison with no hope of escape.  He's heard about the miracles that Jesus has done and is doing.  He saw heaven open over Jesus and heard the Father's voice bless him for crying out loud.

But now, in prison, when HE needs rescuing, he doubts.  "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (vs. 3)

Basically, "Are you really who I thought you were?  Because here I am, needing saving, and you're not doing it.  So maybe I should look for another savior."

I'm going to be bold and say that I think a lot of Christians join John the Baptist in this line of thought...especially when faced with persisting sickness, or any other type of disappointment for that matter.

And I'm going to be even bolder and say that this type of thinking brings death.

I don't mean to be insensitive or cruel.  But I speak from my and Corrie's own experience.  Everything in us wants to ask the question, "WHY?  Why, God, have you not healed me?  We need you to save us, and you aren't doing it.  So now we have to make sense of this current set of circumstances."

But when we dive in to this line of thought, our minds often inadvertently start undermining one of two things, or both: who Jesus is...and...who we are.

Who Jesus Is

Maybe some start looking to something other than Jesus to save them.

But more likely for us Christians, we tend to look to another version of Jesus.

We unwittingly remake him into someone who matches our disappointing circumstances rather than hang on in faith and patience until our circumstances bow at his feet.

This is where, I think, the thoughts come in that say that he must have a higher plan.  His ways are not our ways.  He's building my character.  Maybe he wants to heal some but not others, but not me.

And before we are even aware of what's happening in our minds, we reason ourselves right out of faith and into what has felt to me like paralysis.  And instead of a Jesus who came to bring light wherever there is darkness, to heal wherever there is brokenness, to push his kingdom violently into our existence, we start to believe in a Jesus whose power was great 2000 years ago and will be great again 2000 years from now.  But in the present, he really doesn't do much.

And now the Bible, the written revelation of God, is no longer the final authority on his character.  But our reasoning, our experience has usurped its place.  All of our "if then" statements make so much sense to us.

"If I am still sick, then it must be because..."

And these conclusions SEEM right!

Proverbs 14:12: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death."

Corrie and I have written and declared over and over and over: Jesus heals.  His name is Healer.  He can heal.  He WANTS to heal.  Even, he HAS already healed.  The Scriptures are absolutely rock solid on this.  Sickness should not stay where Jesus is present.  Therefore, in the body of a believer, sickness is a squatter.  It's illegal, and God has authorized us to evict it.

Similarly, in the body of anyone who is in the presence of a believing believer, sickness is still a squatter.  Because we believers get to bring healing to the world to show them God's overwhelming and REAL compassion.

So if we get offended at not seeing healing yet, and we redefine Jesus, we start to believe that maybe he's not the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Maybe he's not Jehovah Rapha.  Maybe he did not bear our illnesses and carry our diseases (Matthew 8:17).

Or maybe my Father, instead of wanting our family to be free of sickness, which is merely the result of sin and the curse of it, wants us to endure it so that we can get stronger.

As a family that battles sickness, this version of Jesus and the Father is not one that gives me and Corrie life and hope and joy and the will to keep fighting.  Instead it has in the past led to depression and angst and being angry at God.

But if we take God at his Word, his unadulterated, plain and simple word.  Then his goodness, his power, and the sheer magnitude of everything he has made available to us...they bring life!

Who We Are

If, in our offense, we don't undermine Jesus' character, then we are left to question who we ourselves are.  If Jesus is our healer, if the Father takes no pleasure in sickness but instead wants to get rid of it, then there must be something about ME that is keeping me from being high enough on God's list of priorities to think about.


He must not love me or like me or care to invest in me as much as his other children. 

So we beg and plead for God to please come to us, to look at us.  To consider us.  And in so doing we actually accuse God of not being compassionate, of not being caring, or of just being oblivious.

And we start to believe that we aren't worth his time.

But let me just say right now, we--me, Corrie, our family, and everyone in this entire existence--we are all worth all of his time.  We are not worthless sinners saved by grace.  We are precious sons and daughters of the King who were lost but have been redeemed by the high high price of Jesus' blood.  We are worth so much because he has declared it so.  We are worth the very life and death of Jesus.

Unoffended in the Truth

Jesus answers John the Baptist by simply restating Isaiah 61, the commission of the Holy Spirit over his life.

Matthew 11: 4-6: "Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed is the one who is not offended by me."

What he is calling out to us is this:  "I am still your Savior.  What you are experiencing right now is competing for your loyalty, your heart and mind, your faith.  But do not waver.  Do not doubt.  Do not look for salvation in your own reasoning and explanations.  If you remain in me, if you stay steady in your faith in who I am, who I've declared you to be, in my truth, you will be blessed."

Thankfully, Holy Spirit in us gives us the tenacity to fight this good fight of faith.  We have to fight to take the kingdom.  That's why just a few verses later, Jesus says,

"From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." (vs. 12)

It is fully ours, and yet it takes a violent faith to keep pushing in to it.

That's where we are.  We are still waiting for my body to reflect the healing that Jesus already paid for.  But we are not shaken in our faith or our resolve at all.  In fact, both are stronger now than ever.  We have seen too much of God's power to stop pursuing more.  We have known too much of his heart to want to find a savior anywhere else.

So, when "nothing happens" it doesn't actually matter.  We keep holding on to the truth, immerse our minds in it, let it permeate our whole being until we're transformed from glory to glory.  But that's a topic for a later post :)

The truth is, "nothing" never happens.  In the kingdom, something always happens.  And that's exciting.

How Jesus Rocked Our World at a Healing Conference: Part 3

We woke up on day three of the healing conference, having just had a wonderful second night that really helped settle our hearts and answer some questions that we had after the first night.  As you may remember, we received powerful prayer for healing and were very blessed on that second night.

Then, the morning of day three came.  And again, like yesterday, my body was having the hardest day it had had in a couple years.  Except now, it had the previous day to compete with for the top slot on the pain scale.

What?

But Jesus, we are at a healing conference.  We prayed.  THEY prayed.  I didn't feel anything, but the people praying did.  So where's the healing?

These questions can, if we let them, suck the life right out of our countenance. And out of our faith. But they are legitimate questions to our natural minds.  If a = b and b = c, then a should equal c, right?  So what happens when c doesn't seem to show up?

This verse came to mind and is where we've landed:

Proverbs 3:5  Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Our own understanding is where we look at the situation, the fact that my body is tanking, and think, "Jesus must not be ready to heal me yet."  Trusting in the LORD is where the situation loses all power to determine our beliefs and conclusions because the word of Jesus and his finished work of redemption stand truer.

And so, back to the story.

Day three.  A lot of pain in my body.  Corrie again was left to take care of me and the girls on her own, taking them to the store and to the hotel pool by herself while I lay in bed, hoping my body would somehow be revived.

Surrounded by God's Love

But God already had readied his people to come alongside us and carry us through.

One of my mom's good friends, who lives in Redding and goes to Bethel and who Corrie and I have actually never met, got in touch with us.  She had some extra tickets for Friday's day sessions (which had been sold out when we originally decided to come to the conference) and wanted to know if we'd like them.

We got back to her, letting her know that my body was far too sick that day for us to go anywhere before the evening session.  Rather than let that be the end of it, she instead got us in touch with one of Bethel's pastors who himself had been miraculously healed of stage 4 cancer several years prior.  He and his wife dropped everything and came to our hotel room to pray with us.

And what a blessing.  Even though we were in a strange town, far away from friends, Jesus was covering us with people we didn't even know, who loved us.

They prayed more faith-filled prayers against sickness, prayed prophetic words and promises over our marriage, and really built us up in the presence of Jesus.  Again, I didn't feel anything in my body, but they felt God's presence as they were praying.

Corrie and I felt his presence as well, not physically, but definitely in our spirits.  We were given new joy and laughter in the midst of my terrible pain.  We were given hope that God is indeed breaking this sickness.  And we were humbled by the prophetic words about our marriage and God's power working through us together.

After they left, we slowly got ready to go to the third and final session of the conference.  But this time, thanks to my mom's friend, we had seats reserved for us on the ground level.  We had been in the balcony on the previous nights, but this friend did everything she could to make sure that there was space for us on the more mellow, more comfortable, and just all around better lower level.  We shouldn't have been able to sit there, since it was reserved for people who paid for the whole conference.  But they didn't care.

To them, we mattered more than the rules.

Like Jesus healing on the Sabbath.  Or forgiving the adulterous woman.

And when we arrived that night, there were people we had never met waiting to help us in.  My mom's friend was out of town and wasn't even there, but she had called in reinforcements to help us unload the girls from the car, carry our baby stuff, show us to our seats, and make sure we had everything we needed. We were covered.

Surrounded on all sides by these people who loved us, we were ready for the incredible third session.

The Third and Last Session

Just before it started, another man who I hadn't met stopped and prayed for me.  He stayed very calm and not worked up during his prayer.  And suddenly he asked me, "Are you hot in here?"

No.

"Wow.  Crazy.  God is doing something right now, 'cause I'm burning up."  I looked up at him and sure enough, he was taking off his sweater as beads of sweat started forming on his face.

Yet another until-now-strange supernatural occurrence.

The session started with more worship led by Jeremy Riddle (which was fun because Corrie and I loved his song "Sweetly Broken" when it came out back in college).  Rebecca again was on her feet with her hands high praising Jesus.

After giving a mediumly brief message on healing, Randy Clark outlined how the rest of the evening would go.  They were going to play several videos, each of which would have several different healing testimonies.  They were interviews conducted with people who had been healed at similar gatherings.

Randy said that, if any of the testimonies were the same as or similar to what we were dealing with, we were to stand up after the video.  We would treat these testimonies as words of knowledge, meaning that a video showing someone healed of cancer would be similar to Randy saying from the front, "If you have cancer, I think that I am hearing God say he's healing you tonight."

So the lights dimmed and the first video played.  And the first girl on the video said, "I was just healed of...LYME DISEASE."

What?!

My heart beat like 30 times in 2 seconds and tears came to my eyes.  Corrie was taking care of Darcy, walking her in the back, but she also had a similar reaction.

"Jesus, is this for real?  This can't be real.  I'm not actually about to be free of this thing once and for all, am I?"

Then, I matched up with several other testimonies on that same video.  People talking about joints that couldn't bend all the way or that were just totally locked, pain in different parts of their body.

It was basically a checklist for a bunch of the things that are wrong in my body.

"Oh please Jesus."

So the video ended, and I stood up along with quite a few others sprinkled about the auditorium.  And at that point, it didn't matter to Corrie how fussy Darcy was.  She rushed back to be by my side.  And the people close to us gathered even closer to lay hands on us and pray.

And as we stood, me in a lot of pain, I kept checking different joints to see if they were loosening (particularly my right elbow, which is almost completely frozen).  They kept praying.  Nothing was changing.

Randy asked from the front who was getting healed, and all over the auditorium people were waving their hands.

Not me.

After a couple minutes, everyone sat down and the next video played.  When it was over, Randy asked the new group of people, plus anyone who hadn't been healed yet from the first video to stand back up.

So everyone gathered back around again to pray.  There was no supernatural evidence happening at this point, like prophetic words or strange sensations.  But again, we could just feel everyone's love.  And again, people weren't just praying for me but for Corrie as well.

(Note from Corrie: Several women gathered around me and actually wept with me for my pain, for all the days that I have had - like that day - to carry an unnatural amount of weight to keep our family going. And I just want to say that this was not worked up weeping. It was an honest sharing in the deep pain that I don't always display. I really believe that Jesus would  have done the same if He were sitting there with me.)

Even when the next video played, people didn't stop praying.  I sat back down, mostly because of my pain and tiredness, but people didn't leave for their seats like before.  They wanted to stay with us, to keep battling on our behalf.

Miracle #1

As waves of prayer for us kept coming.  We were able to witness what Jesus was doing for other people in the room.  Three people in particular really stood out.

At one point during the evening, we could hear a sudden uproar of excitement and commotion about six rows behind us.  We could see a group of people all standing around this twenty-something girl with their phones out recording, taking pictures, yelling, "WHOA!  Oh my goodness!!"

This girl had a metal plate in her forearm that you could see under her skin.  Well, she USED to have it.  But these people, her friends, were all watching as it disappeared in front of their eyes.  The bulge under the skin just shrank to nothing.

She had apparently been healed of AIDS and gotten saved a few years prior at the Healing Room ministry in Santa Maria.  But Jesus' grace and compassion don't ever stop...so he wasn't done healing her.

Miracle #2

Then, about 4 rows in front of us, in the very front row next to the stage, a woman fell to the floor sobbing, quite loudly actually.  Randy walked over to her with the mic to ask what was going on, but she couldn't pull herself together to answer yet.  Her husband, who was standing with his own tears coming down his face, said, "She knew she'd be healed tonight.  God said to her, 'If you go tonight I'll heal you.'"

Randy gave the woman some time to compose herself before coming back to find out what had happened.  She got up on the stage and plugged in her iPhone so that it could project some pictures that she had of her foot.  It actually looked a lot like my right ankle which is unnaturally turned out from the arthritis that has damaged the joint.

She then took off her shoe to show everyone her completely straight ankle with full range of motion and no pain.

Miracle #3

Another lady got up on the stage and shared her story.  She had suffered from Lyme Disease for 37 years.  Yes, THIRTY-SEVEN years.  When the video played, she too felt the same excitement that we had felt, and, whether it was during the video or after I don't know, Jesus completely took away every one of her symptoms right then and there.


But here's what really amazed us.  Everyone's hearts were so oriented toward compassion and love, toward not letting anyone leave without being fought for.  The ministry team immediately sent her straight from the stage to where we were sitting so that she could take up arms against the Lyme Disease in my body.

And she was the kindest most compassionate lady.  She sat, probably feeling bad that she was healed and I was still not feeling anything, and prayed for me for most of the rest of the night.

As We Were Leaving

After all of this and (we found out later) about 160 other healings that night, it got late and we needed to leave to get our girls to bed.  Corrie had already gone out to the foyer, sad to leave my side, but needing to settle and care for our two very tired girls.

I still felt no different than when the evening began.

But on my way out to meet Corrie and the girls in the foyer, I was stopped by a woman telling me, "There's a man who really really wants to pray for you."

At this point, I was tired, a bit discouraged, in pain, and just wanting to take care of my wife who had been so heroically taking care of our daughters while I was receiving prayer.  So I said, "Well, I can't stay right now.  My family is waiting for me and my daughters are melting down.  If he really wants, he can come out and meet us while we pack up our stuff."

She said, "Great," and left, presumably to go get him.  Again, as I was on my way to Corrie, a kind man, Zack, came alongside and asked if he could pray for me.  Getting a bit MORE tired now, I said, "Sure, but wait until I get to my family."  I figured this was the guy that the lady had gone to get.

So we got to Corrie and the girls, and he was about to start praying with ANOTHER guy came up and said his name was Ben.  He seemed to have some kind of authority around there, because it seemed like people knew who he was.  And somehow he did look familiar.

He was the guy who "really really" wanted to pray for me before I left.  He said that he saw me in the auditorium from his seat and that I appeared to be glowing white hot.  He felt the Holy Spirit moving him to pray for me.

Ben and Zack prayed.  Power-filled, faith-filled, authority-filled prayers against this sickness.  Prophetic words about our lives and God's vision for us. 

And with that, we were blessed and loved and had met God again.  My body felt no different, but our spirits were a thousand times strengthened and infused with the love of Jesus for our family.

I want tell you where I'm at now, physically, and how Corrie and I have processed through everything that we experienced there.  But telling the story of day three has already made for a long post.  Thank you for sticking through to the end! I'm going to sign off for now and save the rest for the next post.  So stay tuned!

By the way, it turns out that Ben is a pastor at Bethel, and that we had seen him in the movie Sons of God.  A great movie really worth watching.  It's free online, by the way!

Also, I looked him up on Facebook and found that he's leading the Awakening Europe conference this summer along with another preacher Corrie and I love to listen to, Todd White.  All of it is definitely worth checking out.

To read the other parts of our Healing Conference series:
Part One
Part Two
Darcy's Interlude

How Jesus Rocked our World at a Healing Conference: Part 2

Corrie and I woke up the morning after our first night at the healing conference mentally and spiritually ready for day 2, whatever it may bring.  (If you missed what happened on day 1, you can catch it here.)  But physically, my body was in for the worst day it had had in a very long time.  No exagerrating, I hadn't felt this debilitated by pain for at least 2 years.   But on this day, 4 hours from home in a strange hotel room with no familiar friends around to support Corrie, my body tanked.

I couldn't get out of bed at all.  So I laid there for several hours wondering what in the world was going on while Corrie, being strong and a champion, took care of the girls.  She played with them, took them out on the town, fed them, smiled for them.  All while she was worried and afraid for me. 

Everything in us wanted to question, "Are we doing the right thing? Should we just go home? How are we gonna make it through the rest of this if my body won't even function?"  But we both had heard Jesus, and we just couldn't let go of that.

Four o'clock finally rolled around, and my body had garnered enough strength to be able to slowly get out of bed and shuffle around to get myself dressed.  Corrie had to do my socks and shoes for me, since it hurt to much to reach down that far.

Both of us feeling scared and disheartened, we ventured out again to get dinner and to head to night #2 of the conference.

Trying to Figure All This Out

As we waited in our seats for the session to begin, we were watching everyone, again.  The imagery from last night was still fresh in our minds and we couldn't help but wonder, "I wonder if THAT person was one of the people on the floor last night." Or, "Maybe THAT person got healed of something last night."

We just watched, wondered, and kept talking to Jesus the whole time.

At this point, we were still wary. And I had one key question.

What was the underlying motivation behind the events of last night?

To the observer, casual or otherwise, it really could have seemed like hype and sensationalism.  That's what stuck with me as I was wrestling through it all.  Were these people in it just for a fun, feel-good experience?

If so, we didn't want that.  We want Jesus, the authentic Jesus.  And we know that everything he did was motivated by love.  Yes, he had very real, feel-good, life changing encounters with people.  But it was never about the show or the experience itself.  It was always about love.  His eyes were first on the person.  His heart was moved by compassion.

Matthew 9:35-36  "And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd."

Matthew 14:14 "When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Luke 7:13 "And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, 'Do not weep.'"

 No matter how weird--or normal--spiritual happenings feel, they should always...always...be fueled by love.  God is love.  He is not concerned with a show or a spiritual party just for the heck of it.  Love moves him.

So even though all of those Holy Spirit manifestations that we had seen raised other questions for us, those would be much easier to answer if we could answer this one: Is this moved by love and compassion? Or just excitement and "cool-ness"?

Questions Answered

The night started much the same as the first night, with a set of awesome worship.  Then Bill Johnson gave one of the best sermons I've heard. Period.  It was on healing, yes, but also on the nature of the kingdom and Jesus' mission here on earth.  Absolutely world-rocking.

Actually, the sermon was one of the wrecking balls God used to help tear down our protective walls.  Not only was the message itself great, but Bill's spirit emanated love and humility the whole time.

At the end of his message, Bill lead the whole assembly in a couple voice-only impromptu worship songs.  And then, God began to show up.  But in a weird way.

At the end of the singing, everyone just started singing out notes, not with words or melodies, just notes.  Tones, almost.  And as these tones kept ringing out over the auditorium, a beautiful harmony started to form.  I don't know how to describe it in writing.  It sounded complex, like it was always moving and fluctuating, like there were dozens of harmonies all harmonizing with each other.

Granted, it could possibly have been the science of music and acoustics...maybe.  Or it could have been heaven's chorus breaking in to ours and the two blending together as God met his worshipers.

On the flip-side, though, the sermon was fairly long, which meant the girls were getting "restless" and we were going to have to leave before the actual healing prayer time.  So during this strange harmony...thing...we packed up and snuck out the back into the foyer.

And here, God sent another wrecking ball in the form of several students of Bethel's School of Supernatural Ministry.  I'm sure that God must have used the words, "If Matt and Corrie want to see love, then, by jove, let's show them love."

He often says by jove.

As we were walking through the foyer, we were stopped by a group of three students who had seen my obviously poor health and wanted to pray for us.  At this point, I was thinking, "Wow!  In the midst of everything going on here, someone noticed us and has gone out of their way for us. BUT--they might just want to pray for us so they can see God do something cool and get another notch in their supernatural power belts.  Or...they might actually love us."

We quickly learned it was the latter.  They showered love on us so heavily, I could feel their compassion just washing over us.  And they prayed powerful, faith-filled prayers for healing.  Commanding the sickness to leave. Commanding health for my body.  Not taking no for an answer.  Prophetically declaring that this disease is not our destiny but that the tunnel is ending soon.

And they prayed to build up my spirit, that I was a son of God, strong, a warrior.

And here's how I really knew that love was at work.  A couple of them branched off to pray for Corrie.

YES!!

Some people see that I'm sick and pray for me and usually with wonderful intentions.  But they can often overlook Corrie.  That she needs prayer just as much as I do.  That this sickness is not just mine but hers too: we are one, after all.

When these strangers prayed not just for me, but for Corrie as well, Oh! I knew love was working.  They had eyes and hearts and prayers for my wife.  If they really love me, they'll love what I love, who I love.  And their hearts will break for her too.

And on top of that, one or two of them (I don't remember) spent the whole time not praying, which can be perceived as the more glorious role to play, but sitting and talking with Rebecca and holding Darcy.  They wanted Corrie and me to just be able to receive and to not have to worry about how the girls were doing for the moment.

Hello love.  Hello wrecking ball.  Goodbye walls of self-protection.

Now the weird didn't really matter.  One of the girls, while she was praying, would kind of twitch from her stomach as she was praying.  Sometimes she would yell out when it happened too.  The others would say things like, "Whoa!  Did you feel that?"  "Yeah, yeah!  God's presence is really all over him."  I didn't feel anything (other than the emotions), but it didn't matter.

The weird didn't matter so much anymore because the love of Jesus legitimized it.  His love for us, through these people, made uncomfortable things feel like the safest things in the world.  And we knew then, if this is the spirit here, who are we to say that the weird stuff is actually weird at all.  Maybe it's just God being himself.  And he's the standard for normal.

One More Prayer

So, feeling totally wrecked (in a good way), we eventually made our way out to the parking lot where one more man, totally moved by compassion, came chasing after us.  He said that his hands were burning while he watched the others pray for us.  And as soon as we left, they all told him to run after us and pray too.

So he did.  The same faith-filled, love-fueled, hell-shattering kind of prayer as the others.  And once again, we got the message from Jesus.  "I am here. I love you.  I see you.  Trust me."

We left that night incredibly thankful we had stayed.  Filled with hope and believing that, in the spiritual, the tides were turning on this disease.

And there was still more to come.  This was only night #2...

To read the other parts of our Healing Conference series:
Part One
Darcy's Interlude
Part Three (coming soon...)

How Jesus Rocked our World at a Healing Conference: Part 1

You may remember from this post that back in mid-January, I had to cancel nearly all of my tutoring appointments because of how poorly my body was doing.  It could have been quite discouraging.  But thankfully, Jesus had been leading Corrie and me into a renewed fervor for seeking more of his presence and healing power.

And he was answering our pursuit!

At that time, I learned of an upcoming healing conference happening at Bethel Church in Redding.  By upcoming, I mean in a week and a half.  Keep in mind, this was during a time when we had a 4 year old, a three month old baby, a fast-approaching deadline by which we had to move out of our apartment with no place to actually move to yet, poor health for me, and Corrie's regular job at the church.  

With all of these things on our plate, it was not the ideal time for us to take a trip.  But this conviction to pursue healing and more of Jesus' kingdom reaches deep into our hearts.  So I told Corrie about the conference and she, being the amazing wife and passionate pursuer of Jesus that she is, was totally on-board.  And though it wasn't convenient or easy to take the trip right then, we had the "peace that surpasses understanding."  The peace that feels nonsensical to our natural mind, which wants to fix all the storms in our lives. The peace that focuses on Jesus, the source of calm in those storms.

So we drove all morning on Wednesday, checked in to our hotel exhausted, and mustered our energy to head down the street to the conference.  Corrie and I were excited and nervous this whole time.  We had no idea what to expect.  All we knew was that Jesus was urging us to come here, and that it would be different than what we were used to.

Where We've Come From

Corrie and I have for a long time now been hungry for more of Jesus.  Not that he has ever deprived us of himself, but we have felt him telling us, "There is more to my heart and my kingdom than you've seen so far.  Come after me.  Come and see."  Much of that hunger has actually been fueled by this sickness and our desire for total healing.

And that hunger has led us to his Word where we see the Holy Spirit working in power in the lives of the church.  The sick get healed.  The trapped get freed.  Lives are changed and forever different because Jesus has come.  That's what we want for ourselves.  A real tangible difference made by a real encounter with Jesus.

Our church experience for most of our lives was filled with wonderful believers, who loved and were incredibly loved by Jesus.  With wonderful and powerful teaching about Jesus and salvation.  With many very good things.  But the ways of the Holy Spirit and His kingdom are still relatively new to us. 

What all that adds up to is this: We've been getting more and more comfortable with the uncomfortable things that we usually associate with the Holy Spirit and "charismatic" Christianity.  At least in theory we were comfortable with them.  Things like falling down when getting prayed for, demons manifesting in people and needing to get kicked out, speaking in tongues, prophesying, maybe even laughing and dancing…and MAAYYYYBE even shaking under the power of God.

Even as I write this, part of me feels uncomfortable with those things.  And yet, I can't say "no" to them just because they're uncomfortable or messy.  Because, what if?  What if Jesus is in them and I miss that part of him because it rubs me the wrong way?  Or it threatens my dignity?  Or it's messy?

Jesus abandoned all of his dignity for the sake of winning me back.  So who am I to hold on to mine?

What if I let my own reasoning and clinging to propriety rob me of fully knowing a God who is not proper or safe at all, but good and loving nonetheless?  Not to mention powerful.

These were some of our thoughts leading up to this conference.  They're all easy enough to espouse when you're a week-and-a-half and a four-hour-car-drive away.  But it's a whole different story when you're in the auditorium with your wife and two little daughters, wondering, "Jesus.  What are you going to do?  And please let it be you.  And, oh yeah, please heal me also."

The First Night

We got to the auditorium eager for Jesus and healing while also watchful and a bit guarded…just in case.  There was a fantastic time of worship, during which Rebecca blessed our hearts by standing and singing and raising her hands and giving herself wholeheartedly to Jesus.

You could tell that Darcy would have, but, in her words, "I'm just a baby."

Pretty shortly into the service, after the worship, we started seeing "things."  The man leading the service that night, Randy Clark, asked people who needed healing to stand.  He asked others nearby to gather around to lay hands on and pray for them while he also prayed from the front.

All around the auditorium we started hearing people making many, for lack of a better word, uncomfortable noises.  Some yelled.  Some started laughing.  Some cried out in what you could almost call a scream.  

All over the auditorium people were lying on the floor, some even shaking in various ways.  

An Interjection

I want to throw in a couple thoughts here that I'll share in more detail in the later posts about this conference.  These different reactions that we were witnessing, the yelling and falling and shaking can be and were unsettling.  Our mind wants to come up with all the explanations for why this isn't okay, why it isn't God, why it must be at best the people making it up or, at worst, Satan.

You see someone lying on the floor shaking and you think, "Jesus doesn't do this.  Demons do."  But then you talk to that same person and they tell you that during their time on the floor, they were seeing Jesus look into their eyes.  They were feeling him touch their body with waves of heat and electricity flowing from his hands, healing them.

Or you hear someone nearly scream and think, "Why would Jesus terrify someone so much to the point of screaming?"  But then that same person says that they were screaming in pain because God's power was so heavily cleaning them out.  One person even had a vision that Jesus was sticking a flaming sword into his stomach.  And the strange thing is that these people aren't traumatized or damaged.  They're beaming, peaceful, joyful, made new even.

And though these things sound so weird, I am reminded that the Bible is FULL of God doing weird things to people that may have been extremely unsettling.  But the fruit of them was none other than Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  And Jesus said, "You know a tree, whether it's good or bad, by its fruit."

Our Initial Reaction

But that night, watching all of this for the first time, we were not sure what to think.  I was standing to receive prayer, but nothing like that was happening to me.  I wasn't feeling anything in my body like heat or electricity or healing…nothing.  No physical signs that God was actually doing anything. 

We naturally started to wonder, "What's going on?  Is this stuff real?  Are these people crazy?  Are they just stirring themselves into an experience but not really connecting with Jesus?"

By the end of the night, there were people literally all over the auditorium having supposed encounters with God.  But Corrie and I just weren't quite sure.  We got back to our hotel room not knowing whether we should stay and go back again the next day.  It was all just so uncomfortable. 

But you know, that evening turned out to be a fantastic opportunity for both of us to hear Jesus.  Not to go by our feelings or natural thinking, but to set those aside to listen to His voice and to see what HE would have to say.  And in the midst of both of our wrestlings, we each heard him tell us, "Stay. Don't leave.  If you leave you'll be leaving out of fear and judgment, and you'll be missing what I have for you while you are here.  Don't give up.  Not yet."

So, together, we decided to stay.  At that point, we didn't know if what we had seen was really Jesus.  But we DID know that Jesus, the real Jesus, was with us and wanted us to stick with him.

Intrigued?  Read the second installment here...

To read the other parts of our Healing Conference series:
Part Two
Darcy's Interlude
Part Three (coming soon...)

In Marriage as it is in Heaven

Apparently, I'm slightly behind the times because Corrie already wrote a fantastic post on this verse a couple years ago.  But I've recently discovered that the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6 has one of the most foundational verses for healing in the whole Bible. Jesus, praying to his Dad says,

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Jesus came, bringing the kingdom of God with him, invading the kingdom of darkness that had been reigning in the earth since the fall.  And here he tells us what that means exactly:  God's will happening on earth in a way that represents the way things are in heaven.

Jesus is telling us to pray--to fight--for God's will in heaven to happen on the earth.  So we have this commission then to go out and change the world until it looks like heaven.  And that's what Jesus modeled for us by healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching the gospel, rescuing the poor, loving enemies and friends alike, saving people from sin.

So when I see someone on the street with a cast on their foot, I can know that there will be no casts or broken feet in heaven.  I get to fight to change that right now.  I get to lay hands on the sick and see them recover, like Jesus promised.  Or when I have a friend with a stiff neck, I know there are no stiff necks in heaven.  So I can pray and see the neck healed.  That's what the Bible says.

But here's what's really exciting:  this goes far beyond just healing our bodies.  This extends into every area of our lives, including marriage.

Corrie and I just went to a fantastic marriage workshop/Holy Spirit surgery session, so marriage is fresh on both of our minds right now.  And our question is this:

What are we believing God for in our marriage?

One of the more common sentiments about marriage in our culture is, "Marriage is hard work."  And that's it.  It's often said with this look of weariness and relief-that-I've-actually-made-it-this-far.  It's a look that should be more fitting for a soldier having just returned home from war.  I know I've been there.  But Jesus is offering me this hope:  God is excited--eager--to give us more than that.  He loves me and my marriage.

I agree that marriage is hard work.  But I don't want to let the fact of the struggle steal my faith for the blessing and passion.  It can be easy to lower our hopes and goals for our marriages over time as disappointment, hurt, and difficulty creep in.  We start to think, "Well this is just how marriage is.  Maybe God is using it to refine me, to make me more holy.  Passion was good at the beginning, but it's not needed anymore."

Corrie and I love each other so much, but we have gone through some difficult seasons.  We've gone through seasons of feeling like just business partners, of not really liking each other, of causing more frustration or sadness than joy.  Especially during the last couple of years as God has been uprooting unhealthy and hurtful things from us.  For me, selfishness, et al!!!

Anyway...moving on...It has been easy at times to think, "Well, this is just us.  This is the kind of marriage that we get: hard with some sprinklings of awesome. "

What's up with THAT?!  That's not God's plan for us at all.  Proverbs 5 says that there is a place, in the kingdom, where I can REJOICE in my wife, where her love is intoxicating to me.  That sounds more like, "Awesome with some sprinklings of hard." 

I know to some of us that may sound impossible after __ years of marriage.  But the Bible says it's God's heart, his will, and Jesus told me to pray for that to manifest in my life.   I get to pursue it with all my being until it comes.  And I pursue it with the full force of heaven, the approval of my Dad, and the power of the Lion of Judah to move mountains. 

In my last post I mentioned that we don't want to let our experience of sickness overpower God's revealed will for healing.  So even if my healing doesn't come at a particular prayer time, we don't try to rationalize it, we keep pushing for more until it does. 

Well, Corrie and I are ready to apply this to our marriage too.  We're determined to not let the times of struggle steal what we know our love CAN be, and IS.  We know that Jesus has a vision for our love of each other that is more passionate, joyful, and fulfilling than we've experienced thus far.  And we've been letting God teach us how to love each other in a way that reflects his love for us and that creates such an intimate powerful connection between us that no power of hell can sever it.

So my prayer for us is, "Jesus, your kingdom come in our marriage.  In heaven there is no bitterness, no selfishness, no distance.  In heaven there is unlimited intimacy and oneness, giving, self-sacrifice, passion, and fire.  Thank you Jesus that the cross's redemption is so far-reaching, even into transforming our marriage."

Bodies don't have to be sick in the kingdom.  It's not what Jesus paid for.  Marriages don't have to be broken, full of pain, sources of strife in the kingdom.  They can instead reflect the oneness that Jesus has with us.  The passion that he has for us.  His passion is a fire that is constant forever.  And if we are called to be like him in our marriages, then I've got to think that passion for our spouses, true LIKING of our spouses, excitement about our spouses has got to be possible for the long haul as well. 

Yes it's hard work.  But it's hard work on the road to the wonderful blessing that marriage is meant to be.