Category Archives: Gifts of the Spirit

An Updated Rerun Series

Click on following link for earlier article: Part 1.

If you have read my two series, It’s Your Decision…Run or Fight! and Sifting Through The Ashes of A Spiritual Defeat, then you know that 1994 was not one of those years Frank Sinatra sang about in his hit song. It was not a very good year. In fact,  it was an absolutely, miserable one for me.

And 1995 was not much better.

By early summer, I was just looking for a back pew in a church where I could hang out, keep quiet, and hopefully, put myself back together again. My life and calling were disaster zones.

A church, thirty miles away, seemed to be the answer to my prayers. The pastor was a man with a shepherd’s heart. Its congregation was around seventy or eighty members in size and fun to be around. The worship music was awesome. And the meetings were informally held in a school gymnasium.

It seemed the perfect fit for me.

Though giving prophetic words was not what I hoped to be doing, I knew the Lord used me on good days and bad days as a prophetic voice. So, to be safe, I went up to the pastor after the first service.

“Do you have any rules about giving prophetic words at your church?” I asked him.

He smiled and shook his head. “No, we don’t,” he said. “We encourage people to give prophetic words.”

Over the following four weeks, I broke every rule he said that he did not have. Each Sunday, he was upset with me about something.

“You said there were no rules,” I whispered in exasperation one time.

“That was before I knew you,” he exclaimed. “And I’ve never met anyone like you in my thirty years of ministry.”

Finally, we met for lunch, hoping to settle our differences. It’s not that we didn’t like each other or anything like that. It’s just that he was comfortable with prophetic BB guns and I was an AK-47 assault rifle. We were miles apart in our prophetic thinking.

“Listen,” he said toward the end of our conversation, “why don’t you just submit yourself under my ministry. Then, when the Lord tells me to release you into full-time prophetic ministry, I will let you know. All of the doors of our denomination will then be open to you.”

“What if you don’t hear the Lord’s voice for my calling and life?” I asked.

He blinked. “I had not thought about that,” he replied with his eyes looking down.

The meeting ended with us giving each other hugs and going our separate ways.

The next day, I received a letter in the mail from a member of the church who was not even aware of my meeting with the pastor. She wrote that I was rebellious and needed to submit myself under pastoral authority. And if I failed to follow her so-called godly counsel, she felt my prophetic calling would never come forth. As in never, ever!

I was upset and did what Hezekiah did when he received a letter from an enemy of Israel. I walked around, reading the letter to the Lord.

“Lord, she says I’m rebellious and that I need to submit under pastoral authority. I don’t even understand pastoral authority, what is it?” I went on and on until finally I had finished.

Then I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Too much pastoring in the church.”

(Continued in Part 3)

Click on following links for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Just as a reminder: when Jesus walked in His earthly ministry,  He was the living word who only did what the Father showed Him and only spoke what the Father told Him.

Now, with our memories refreshed, let’s look at a New Testament incident which we have heard over and over again.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery and having set her in the center of the court, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” (John 8: 3-5)

Jesus was sitting in one of the Temple’s courts, teaching a large crowd of people. Maybe, He was explaining His “rivers of living waters” statement which had recently caused a controversy among the Jews.

But as He taught, a commotion interrupted His teaching. A crowd of men, scribes and Pharisees, dragged a women into the center of the court, and then these men pointed out her sin of adultery to Jesus.

The scribes were not really a religious sect like the Pharisees, but were professionals who copied the Law onto scrolls. The scribe’s work was tedious and demanding, but because of their total involvement with the Old Covenant, the scribes knew the Law and were also teachers of it.

As for the Pharisees, this sect of six thousand men memorized the whole Law. They devoted their lives to following the Law’s dictates and calling Israel back to a strict observance of the Law.

And usually, the scribes and the Pharisees agreed with each other.

But the Pharisees had a problem: lust. And since, the Law elevated men to leadership positions in the Temple and to a higher place of worship in the Temple and also used male circumcision as an Old Covenant sign, the Pharisees figured that men were preferred by God and much closer to God than women were.

Thus, the Pharisees blamed women for their problems with lust and also for the sins of fornication and adultery.

So, now we can understand why only the woman stood in the center of the court, guilty of adultery. The man, who was the woman’s lover and also caught at the same time as the woman, was given a pass by the scribes and Pharisees.

After all, it was the woman’s fault, and not the man’s fault.

Jesus did not buy into the logic of the scribes and Pharisees.  Instead, He eventually said:

He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw  a stone at her. (John 8: 7)

Who knows? Maybe, each of the male scribes and Pharisees wished he had been in bed with this woman rather than her lover.  And maybe, this particular woman was one that each of these men lusted for.

As we all know, the male scribes and Pharisees exited the court and left the woman alone with Jesus. Then the Lord admonished her not to commit adultery again.

Now, this incident was trumpeted by the crowd who witnessed the whole episode throughout Jerusalem and Judah. You can easily imagine what the people said, “Jesus actually cares about women and sees them as having standing before God.”

Now, why did the Father do this?

(Continued in Part 10)

A Updated Rerun Series

Prophetic marriages can really be something, right?

After being divorced in early 1992, I received a prophetic word later in the same year:

“The Lord will place the woman you are to marry in front of you. So don’t go looking for her.”

At the time, I thought, what a silly prophetic word. I can’t afford to pay attention. So how can I possibly  support a wife?

Fast-forward ahead two years to a home church meeting where I prayed for a lady named *Virginia. And Virginia was standing in front  of me when I prayed for her.  Soon, we began dating each other.

But this was 1994, and I was going through the worst financial and spiritual warfare struggles of my life. I was barely able to hold my head above water, and Virginia had her own bag of issues. So, our relationship was on-again and off-again during the months that followed.

Then, in early 1995, while driving my truck home from Virginia’s place,  I was talking to the Lord about my dating situation. “Lord, You need to get us married. What’s Your problem?”

All of a sudden, the truck cab filled up with laughter. It was as if  Jesus and His angels were laughing. The laughter was so loud and contagious that I joined in, tears ran down my face. I slowed the truck down so I would not end up in a ditch because of my laughing convulsions.

Hmm, I thought at the time. Is the Lord laughing because He knows something that I don’t know or is He just happy for me?

I chose to ignore the former and opted for the latter.

Next, the Lord spoke to my heart in July, 1995. “You will get married on an anniversary.”

And guess what? A  Christian neighbor came over to my apartment later on  the same day. He was excited. “I saw an anniversary card at the drug store and felt the word anniversary was important to you,” he said.

Unbelievable confirmation, right?

Now, at the time, I was confidant that I would marry Virginia because of the 1992 prophecy. There were no doubts in my mind. We just needed a few miracles from God to make it happen.

But then, nothing happened for months and months. Virginia and I discontinued dating because of our issues. But even in the midst of all of this discouragement, I felt that I needed to just hold onto the prophetic words and something good would eventually happen. Faith moves mountains!

But then God pulled a switcheroo on me. A big, big switcheroo!

(Continued in Part 2.)

*Virginia is a fictitious name for the woman.

An Updated Rerun Series

Click on following links for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

So, what can a New Testament believer do to help bring a personal prophetic word to pass in his (or her) life?

D. Waiting And Waiting And Waiting.

But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

If any American region knows about waiting, it should be us Southern Californians, all 24,000,000 of us. We wait on expressways. We wait in banks. Grocery stores. Libraries. Post offices. Walmarts. LAX. Disneyland. We wait everywhere. It’s a fact of life. Period.

But is this the type of waiting referred to in Isaiah 40:31?

The Hebrew word qavah, which is translated into the English word wait in Isaiah 40:31, means more than just hanging out and passing time while doing nothing. It’s number one interpretative definition actually conveys the thought of “to twist or to bind like a rope.”

Now, consider that rope making has been around for thousands of years. Natural fibers, such as jute, sissal or common vines, are woven into strands which are then woven into ropes, usually three-stranded ones .

Hold the picture of a woven rope in your mind for a moment or two, okay?

The second interpretative definition for the Hebrew word qavah implies “to be strong, robust” as in the notion of tying fast with a rope. And even the third interpretive definition imparts the idea of “enduring, waiting for or expecting with strength.”

Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait for You. (Psalm 25:21)

Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land… (Psalm 37:34)

Scripturally, waiting on the Lord does not imply that a believer sits around, doing nothing, and still hopes that his personal prophetic words will come to pass in his life. It won’t happen!

Waiting on the Lord means winding and weaving yourself around the true vine – Jesus – so that like a rope, you will be strengthened and renewed to receive the promises offered by your prophetic words.

If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

(This concludes this series.)

Click on following links for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

Even as an agnostic, I knew two scriptures and one unusual story. John 3:16 – from my Bible school days. John 11: 35 – from playing Trivial Pursuit. And the unusual story – from listening to a stereo record album.

You see, in my college days, I enjoyed folk music and one of my favorite groups was Peter, Paul and Mary.  A song that I really liked by the trio was Jesus Met the Woman at the Well. I listened to it over and over again.

Then as a new Christian, I discovered that Peter, Paul and Mary’s song was actually taken from the Bible. And it is this story which was the second early act that Jesus performed, that sent shock-waves through the men-only leadership system of the Temple.

And Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (John 4: 6-7)

Jesus did the unspeakable: He spoke to a woman in public.

Yes, the woman was a Samaritan and, most of the time, Jews avoided Samaritans. The reasons the Jews did this was because they despised the mixed Gentile ancestral heritage of the Samaritans and their style of worship.

But being a Samaritan was not the number one issue in this instance.  It was because the person was a woman.

At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or “Why do You speak with her?” (John 4: 27)

Not only did Jesus break the accepted religious protocol of His day, but He did something even more amazing than that.

The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4: 25 – 26)

Jesus tells a woman that He is Messiah, the Christ. So, when did His twelve men disciples finally discover this same truth?

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 16: 16 – 17)

Simon’s revelation happened about two years later.

Now, was this just a mere coincidence that Jesus revealed who He was first to a woman?

For I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. (John 12:49)

…Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. (John 5: 19)

Amazing, but true! It was the Father’s decision to honor a woman.

Now, why did the Father do this?

(Continued in Part 9)