Empowered by the Spirit

Empowered by the Spirit

I struggled more than a year to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gift of speaking in tongues. However last week, I was able to lead four people into receiving the gift of speaking in tongues and I only provided five minutes of instruction before we prayed.

I also struggled for years to heal the sick, but last week several of us laid hands on a person’s damaged knee and their pain was greatly diminished within minutes.

These events are now normal in my life, and I want to teach you how they can be normal in your life too!

I let my tongue hang loose and asked the Holy Spirit to take it over, but NOTHING happened!
Talk about depressed. My wife received the gift of speaking in tongues easily. I got nothing. Of course, I needed to first overcome my scorn and disdain and judgment against it. Then, I prayed, asked for it, fasted for it, sought it and drove hours to get prayed for to receive it. All to no avail! I sat there with my tongue hanging out, saying “God, move my tongue” and nothing happened. Why not? What was I doing wrong? No one could tell me!

So I lived depressed, feeling like a second-class Christian, unable to receive. Finally one morning, I was meditating on Acts 2:4, where they spoke in tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

A flash of revelation – I MUST do the speaking!
1) THEY spoke and 2) the Spirit gave the utterance (i.e. the Holy Spirit formed the syllables). So I can’t just let my tongue hang loose. I have to do the speaking, but choose not to form the syllables with my conscious mind. Instead, I tune to the flow of the Holy Spirit within me and speak whatever syllables FLOW out of me (Jn. 7:37-39). Thus, He forms the syllables, and I am speaking in tongues.

I step out in faith – walking on the water…
Of course, my mind had a fit. It told me I was speaking gibberish. The syllables were nothing – just made up. So now I need to choose: Do I believe when I ask for the Spirit, that I receive the Spirit, or do I think I get a serpent or a stone? I decided to place my faith in God’s Word, and I continued to speak, and now 44 years later, I am still happily building up my spirit by speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 14:1-4).

Have faith in flow – what a BIG step!
Who had ever taught me to have faith in flow? Who had even taught me that there was a river flowing within me, and that if I would tune to the flow within, I would be tuning to the Holy Spirit? I had never heard that! There was no theology concerning flow, period.

Now I teach people to have faith in the flow within them, and we cover this principle in great detail in our booklet How to Receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Establishing HEART Faith
If we don’t doubt IN OUR HEARTS, we can cast mountains into the sea…we can do miracles. Well, I had no idea what the difference was between head faith and heart faith. However, one morning as I prayed for revelation, God flashed before my eyes the understanding that heart faith is when He fills all five senses of my spirit with Himself!

As with Abraham, the Father of faith, I need a rhema word and a vision from God of the promise already fulfilled. This I ponder, speak and act on day after day, incubating God’s spiritual reality, until it is released into my world. Simple, easy, amazing. So I have lived out of this revelation for over 40 years, and it has allowed me to participate in things much greater than my natural abilities would allow for. Obviously, you can too.

When I muttered, “Never enough,” the Lord spoke and showed me, “More than enough!” I adopted His picture and words and rejected mine.

When I said, “I am sick,” He said, “By My stripes you are healed.” I dumped my picture and confession, and adopted His vision and truth.

When I said, “I see division,” He said, “Don’t see division, because what you see, believe and speak is what you receive.”

He taught me to live in heart faith. It changes everything.

Miracles on the streets… The evidence of the NEXT revival!
OK, we all want miracles. I believe that in this currently unfolding move of God we will see believers performing miracles – normally, naturally, and continuously – on the streets and in the malls, as well as in conferences as we engage with those in pain and suffering.

Obviously, this is what Jesus did, and this is what He commissioned and empowered us to do, and satan has done everything he can to make sure we don’t do it. Well, satan is going to lose, and believers are going to win!

Miracles come as we move in the compassion of Christ, reaching out with intense love, concern and care, touching those who are in pain, speaking healing to their bodies. We are clearly told we can be like Elijah, who prayed seven times, and got his results. The Bible encourages us to do the same (Jas. 5:17,18).

How about if we provide you a toolbox of prayer approaches you can use to see people healed? Jesus sure used variety. We can too, assuming we know what tools we have available to us. We can ask the Holy Spirit, “What do You want me to do next as I pray for healing for this person?” and then follow what His flow is leading us to do.

I guarantee that as you practice using these tools with focused intent for three months, you will see greater results in your healing prayer and leading people into supernatural encounters with Almighty God. And isn’t that what it is all about? I think so.

Empowered by the Spirit