Moving right along let me explain how I fit in to this scene. Basically, I didn’t.
Patrick was a hunter and a military veteran. I think he did not yet have a college degree, and before he was saved was a big drinker and bit of a troublemaker. My family were nominal Christians but the most alcohol they ever consumed was a cup of rum spiked into the Christmas eggnog and shared by a dozen people! I think a bottle of rum lasted ten years. My family were engineers, nurses, teachers and before I got saved I wanted to be a Physicist in Germany; I spoke some German, and had been to Germany. I had been a boy scout, an Eagle Scout actually, and had fished and had shot a rifle for my rifle merit badge, but I never killed a deer—I never even wanted to. I got back into fishing to fit into the scene but was more happy to clean and cook the catch than to catch them.
I tried to fit in the best I could because I figured that was the best way to learn, and Patrick became a father to me in so many ways since my own dad was so distant. So I tried to play down our differences as much as I could and conform to his image of what a ‘son’ ought to be, one becoming a ‘man’ like him, and no, men do not cook Venison as Stroganoff! Who can even SPELL Cacciatore! Terriaki? You mean Terra-Yukky! No! Men do eat such things. Men eat very, very rare venison sliced with a hunting knife! Who needs one of those things, what do you call it? A fork!? Yes! Who needs it! You do? Oh, well, get a second knife!
I was having a hard time eating any wild venison at all and tried anything to make that ‘gamey’ flavor go away—I didn’t know flavoring venison to make it edible to Eddie was something close to culinary heresy. I butchered the deer, I helped preserve the meat, I sliced it up ready to eat but I soon learned that total deer meat abstinence was the best way for me to enjoy this meal.
Oh Deer!
I remember one year praying for Patrick and his younger son and the neighbor’s kid before they all went deer hunting. Patrick would hunt ‘prophetically’ he called it. Any gift manifesting to show him things was prophecy, but he would get a vision or word of knowledge of where a deer was and find it by following the Spirit. He was convinced this was how most hunters, and even sports athletes excelled in their fields, by following the leading of the Spirit like this, whether they honored God for it or not! Being ‘in the zone’ he felt was a spiritual activity at its heart.
Anyway, one year they were hunting in one a location and he saw a vision of a deer two hours away. He left his companions and drove the whole way there, got out of his truck, went into the forest just a few steps and caught himself a deer. (Bit of deer hunting humor there. You don’t catch a deer, but people who are not hunters say things like that. Did you catch a deer? No, ma’am, he’s far too fast so we shot it instead. You SHOOT a deer, you don’t CATCH one! You can easily catch a cold but you can’t so easily catch a deer!)
But this one year we were praying before they left and they all asked God to give them a deer. Only 10% of hunters shoot a deer in any given year, but Patrick always got two or three. But when it was my turn to pray something strange happened. I prayed and suddenly it was not my ideas I was saying. What I prayed was that yes, God would give Patrick a deer, but to let it be a struggle. To make him work hard for it and not to let it just be too easy, not on day one, or on day two either, so they would appreciate the reward.
I opened my eyes, embarrassed! Why did I pray such a weird thing? It was not my heart that asked for that! I would have asked for the exact opposite thing!
They left and came back a few days later with a fine buck, but it was such a struggle they said. I forget the story but they had a very hard time and finally if I remember it right they finally shot it but on their third day hunting. Later I realized what happened, I did not ‘pray’ this, I prophesied it and didn’t even realize I was doing it!
So Patrick was a musician and so was my real dad, and Patrick wrote a few songs himself, so he could not fault me for writing so much poetry but well, there is such a thing as writing TOO MUCH poetry you know! Enough is enough! So I began fishing, helping with the outdoor chores, landscaping, roof repairs, anything I could do that would show my appreciation and not earn me any disrespect from his young son who said I was ‘girly’ for helping wash dishes and tidy the house and things. Maybe I was trying too hard to fit in and was repressing my true self? But honestly, none of that mattered, what I was starving for was worth any sacrifice I needed to make to get it!—I wanted a living relationship with God, I wanted to prophesy like Patrick really, and if this was the cost I was very willing to pay it.
I began absorbing their teaching on the “Five-fold Ministry” church structure from Ephesians 4:11 and within a few months began to teach people in our church this doctrine. This verse states that the ministries in the Body of Christ include: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. We however still thought of it as a ‘church structure’ that men implemented, not understanding it’s the way the Body was created by God whether men accept it or not.
Nevertheless, this distinguished us and was a way, first, to say that the ministry of prophecy was an integral part of the way church was supposed to function; it was biblically established and was still valid today. It wasn’t extinct or a fringe ministry. And if a church did not incorporate prophecy into their function we would say they were ‘Three-fold,’ meaning they had evangelists, pastors and teachers, but not the roles that required supernatural gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
Flesh and Spirit
We certainly had a lot of prophetic experiences but what I now see was a very basic, even carnal understanding of prophecy actually. I mean it was flowing and manifesting abundantly in our midst but we only understood it as mere people might who had only been taught about the Holy Spirit and gifts by other Men.
Paul said from now on don’t know people according to the flesh, even though we used to even understand Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him that way no more! That’s 2 Corinthians 5:16, right? Well we basically knew people and even still related to Jesus, the gifts and everything after the flesh you can say. We understood the Spirit but as regular men would understand it—I mean Him. We did not yet have what I now can see is a Divine Understanding of prophecy and the Spirit, etc.
That sounds funny I am sure, but consider an American who travels to a remote tropical island and meets people who never met an American before and only heard stories of this place they call America. They would understand him in one way—but it would be only according to their own culture and habits, beliefs and customs. But if one of them themselves were to visit America, let’s say, and they stayed there for ten years or so, they could return to their island and explain this foreign visitor more accurately as he really is because now he understands Americans more as an American sees themselves, but also more as an American actually is.
That’s a very human example. But we all start here seeing God through the mind of the Flesh. We understood the Spirit largely as carnal people might at first. We all start here! Let’s be honest!
And people often say God can gift a person and it can elevate them up higher than their character can keep them. People get gifts but can abuse them by using them with carnal motives. That’s basically what I’m trying to say, but also not to say it too harshly. We still incorporated prophecy into our lives as much as we could but still largely saw things as mere men might, as mere men who functioned in a supernatural gift.
I’ll have to explain that better later. After I share a little more about my own experiences hearing God in two-way conversation and being taught by Jesus and the Holy Spirit and sometimes the Father—that may help you to compare and contrast how Man understands God and things of God, like prophecy and gifts—and how the Lord himself sees things which is just so much different. But at that time, we did not have so much of a mature heavenly perspective. But like I said, we all start there!
Apt to Teach
So I learned as much as I could about prophecy and the prophetic ministry but I never really believed I could ever join their ranks as one of the ‘prophets’—certainly never on an equal footing.
Our doctrine was generally biblical, based on commonly quoted verses and stories and also we were heavily and predominantly influenced by Rick Joyner’s teachings. He was the inspired force behind the network of ‘Five-fold’ churches in our state that Patrick attended before having the big falling out with them, so we still maintained a connection to Rick Joyner’s teaching as a foundation. This was before the Internet so the only way we could actually learn what he taught was if someone had a book, and I think I saw a VHS tape of a sermon from him once. Sharing ideas was not as fast as it is today, for better or worse.
So we had a conceptual understanding of prophecy much like other Spirit-filled churches who embraced the gifts of the Spirit. And also a lot of our own experiences.
And we also made a clear distinction that there were ‘those who prophesied,’ but then separate from them were ‘the Prophets,’ and that is probably a meaningful and valid distinction in some ways. In other ways it’s bogus. God can give the most important direction or revelation through a lowly, non-famous, non-leadership-position holding, part-time janitorial staff floor-mopping new Christian. God told me he has given some of his best direction this way. We do need to endorse people we vouch for as ministers, for public trust and accountability, but we cannot ever discount a word from God because the vessel it came through was not on paid staff or famous or holding a leadership title in our church!
Paul talked about how he met the church leaders in Jerusalem, the ‘super apostles’ as he called them in 2 Corinthians a little sarcastically I might add … and in Galatians he then said, “those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.“ A few verses later in 2:11 he even says, “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Cephas is the Aramaic name for Peter it seems. Anyway, men create positions of authority and roles in their churches, men elevate other men into these positions—but God does not think this way. The Kingdom does not operate this way. Man’s church surely does—but God’s Body does not.
So my hope of ever being included in that coveted group of ‘Prophets’ in our tiny church was largely kept from me. We even had a special prayer meeting one time and we prayed for prophetic impartation and to understand our gifts and callings better. When my turn came Patrick laid hands on me, asked God to show him my calling and future service to God and yes he looked into my future and told me what he saw: I was called to serve God … as a teacher.
A … teacher?
The Bible says a mature believer, a servant of God, must be able to teach, apt to teach, but still in our group no one was ‘called’ to be a teacher. Either you were a pastor like Patrick and ran a church or you were a prophet like Patrick and were called to have this exciting walk with the Lord. We didn’t know what an apostle was, we just said it was a pastor with two or more churches, not understanding what it really meant. And there were evangelists, mostly on TV, which we disdained. We were not good at evangelism. God constantly told us to stop trying to reap the wheat from inside the barn. I heard this word maybe a dozen times. We were not good at evangelism!
But Teachers? Well, they were the ‘also ran’ ministers in the Body. To say I was not called to anything except being a teacher was pathetic. It also meant I would not be allowed to preach in church. Why? Because to do that you need to be a ‘preacher’ which was fairly synonymous with being a pastor. Preaching was exciting, loud, energetic, animated, done in front of people during a church service! Teaching was BORING! It was done quietly, in private, in the living room during the week. This is not a biblical definition, which should have raised a red flag, but that’s the way we understood things. A teacher was to be seen and not heard; or rather heard and not seen, or better yet, not seen or heard and just let the preachers do everything!
Deep Calls to Deep
Bill was there that day we prayed for impartation I remember and he also prayed for me and so much was going on. He said I was going to compose music like Beethoven. I was taking a class in music theory at that time and had many CD’s of Beethoven’s music and that meant something important to me. He said the Lord was imparting things to me so deeply—so deep, so deep, he kept saying. This was primarily an impartation for prophetic gifting and Bill saw it going so deep, so deep! …. But it was Patrick’s opinion, Patrick’s vision that really mattered. And according to him I was called to be a teacher; that’s all. Nothing more, maybe less.
I don’t want to overstate it, but it nearly crushed me and broke my heart and I wrestled with that for a very long time afterwards. Being a prophet, at least being a pastor or a ‘preacher’ were the only meaningful roles a person could serve the Lord in, and I was not called to be any of the above! They could clearly see that I was prophesying from the start, from the first few weeks I was there, and also they were praying for the impartation of the prophetic gift this very day! So there was hope that God might someday speak a prophetic word to me and use me like that, right? Well not really.
Prophetic gifts were mostly inherited from our parents we believed (wrongly I must add). There are a few verses that talked about Old Testament prophets being the ‘sons’ of prophets,’ yet even in this there are prophets who are NOT the sons’ of prophets, like Amos! I think this is mostly misunderstood because people think it meant they were somehow direct blood relatives of a prophet but in fact, first, every human is, especially in their culture every single Hebrew certainly was! But second, the term was used more like how they called James and John the Sons of Thunder, it was an identity based on association, attitude, character and not literal biological son-ship. They hung around the prophets and were therefore ‘sons of the prophets.’ This is also what is said in Acts 3!
Forget the fact that in the New Testament EVERYONE is given the Holy Spirit, meaning God is IN and can speak TO EVERY believer—My sheep hear my voice!—Ye, all may prophesy, etc. So we taught that officially too, but in practice, a REAL gift was given at birth, like Patrick had, and this was evidence of your REAL calling, otherwise it just wasn’t God’s will for your life. Why fight it?
Other people only saw gifts manifest when they got Spirit-filled we knew, but again the gifts would openly manifest on their own. Why years later would you now ask God for what God obviously didn’t choose to give you already? Why are you trying to be something you are not?
All of this of course is bad theology since Paul said to ‘eagerly desire spiritual gifts, ESPECIALLY prophecy.’ And to pray in tongues and then to ask God to let you interpret! This means you start out NOT prophesying and not interpreting! And if you ask … God will add it to you! Why? Simply because you seek it! The Kingdom advances by force and the forceful lay hold of it. Ask, seek, knock!
Here in 1 Corinthians 14 he even tells us to seek the gift of prophecy specifically! Why would a Christian reading this verse ‘seek it’ if they already had it? Why be told in the Word to SEEK what God would never ever give you? You see? It simply means God will in fact add.
There are actually many reasons why a gift may not manifest in someone’s life on its own, confidence being the primary one. Also wrong doctrines, wrong identity, fear, doubt, unbelief—but we didn’t always see it that way.
There is actually no discussion or emphasis on the value of human lineage regarding having spiritual gifts in the New Testament. None. Paul only said to Timothy he knows his mother and grandmother had strong faith and so he was confident Timothy would have strong faith as well. He didn’t say it was due to their genes—it’s more likely it would be from family culture and a mother’s prayers and upbringing.
And in 2 Timothy 1:16 he said to fan into flame, or stir up, the gift of God which was in him … how was the gift there? … through the laying on of Paul’s hands! This was not there from birth, or by his family lineage—Paul gave it to him!
Then people bring up the four daughters of Philip, the guy who brought revival to Samaria with miracles, signs and wonders and did it on his own—but he was an evangelist and not a prophet. And I think probably anyone living in his household would start to prophesy, including the cook, gardener and milkmaid, which is more close to what Joel said would happen, and what did happen at Pentecost—because the SPIRIT was poured out and that is why people prophesied. That’s even what Moses said in Numbers 11, he said he wished the Spirit would be given to everyone and they all would prophesy. Do you see it? It is not the gift of prophecy being poured out, but The SPIRIT of God and this is what naturally causes people to know what God is thinking, to hear what God is saying, to become intimate with Him and know his ways—and that is what makes them prophesy.
So yes, while a certain gift may be strongly represented in a particular family, that is certainly possible, but it still would not be ‘genetic,’ because the gift is inherently SPIRITUAL not somehow fleshly and ‘in the genes.’ The flesh counts for nothing Jesus said in John 6:63. It is the SPIRIT that we need to focus on to understand spiritual gifts and things like prophecy, healing, etc.
It’s more likely that a mother or grandfather was very close to the Lord and asked God to bless all their grandchildren and their faith was in receiving that gift particularly! That’s what makes more sense to me now.
All I know is that the answer we are looking for will be found in the Spirit and in faith, not the genes or biological bloodline.
And I suppose our church officially taught something close to that but no, we didn’t really act like we believed it. We still leaned towards the simplistic understanding that things like that were simply inherited. And if not evidenced at birth or spontaneously somehow manifesting on its own already after being Spirit-filled—sorry! You missed the spiritual gifts lottery.
God Chooses as WHO wills, exactly?
And I’m not supposed to be preaching or teaching now, but the Lord asked me to just say a few brief comments on this right here. So let me say that when diversity in the Body is mentioned in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 it says these gifts are distributed as God chooses.
1 Corinthians 12:11—All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. (ESV)
And … 1 Corinthians 12:18—But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
But then why say this:
…. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
Why ‘earnestly desire’ what you already have? Why are we encouraged to do this if God has already decided not to give it to us? Unless no, it is because God is more than willing to give us those things we do not now have simply because we ask, seek and knock!
Someone will say, no he means desire the greater gifts like faith, hope and love, not prophecy, healing and miracles. But no, keep reading. The Love Chapter intervenes and people lose their train of thought but keep reading and then we’re back again into Chapter 14 where he openly says:
1 Corinthians 14:1—Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. (ESV)
So yes, pursue Faith, Hope and Love AND ALSO PURSUE prophecy, healing and miracles.
So the missing piece to this puzzle that makes theologians so confused is faith—that there are people who know God as their Dad and they ask him for stuff! They persist as Paul says to do but as kids naturally do anyway with adults they love.
Kids who are close to their dad like this get what they ask for, they get a lot, they get a lot more than anyone else simply because … “Can I have ice cream? … please, please, pleeease.” This is the best, ideal model of faith and the key dynamic to spiritual gifts people just misunderstand.
God apportions as he chooses. Sure. God chooses to give gifts as he wills. Sure. But people who are close with him help him decide what he chooses and make up his mind on what he wills simply because “Please, please, please, please, pleeease!!!! …. Well OK! Here, have two scoops!” …. You see, the missing dynamic that makes all of this great darkened mystery of spiritual gifts become clear as crystal is simply the fact that God answers the prayers of people who love him and pray to him with a pure heart and eager expectancy—Who knew?!
So eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. God will add. Ye ALL may prophesy!
I talk about this misconception much more fully in 10 Things on Prophecy, but it is one of the most misunderstood areas of spiritual gifts because Bible teachers so often fail to take into consideration the reality of people who have an authentic relationship with God, like a friendship, like a family bond.
If people have strong attitudes against other people freely receiving gifts from God—people not under their chain of command, people not related to them or not within their ‘inner circle’—they tend to come up with all kinds of wrong doctrines to limit what other people can have, contrary to God’s actual liberality and generosity. The heart of Man always leads us astray, even (or especially) with regards to Bible interpretation.
But these things were not yet well understood by us. We believed a little of this and little of that basically. So yes, we prayed to impart the gift of prophecy to the young men in the church, all three or four of us, but there was still a nagging doubt lingering. How would that matter to ask God to make us prophetic if he simply does not want us to be used in that way, which if he did would already be obvious, and it’s clearly not true now so why bother to ask for it to come later?
Think about it. You would never be called to be a REAL prophet unless it was something God planned from the womb, right? God doesn’t make mistakes or change his mind, does he? He already has a plan for you from birth, doesn’t he? So maybe these other people were just wannabe prophets trying to get in on the action, and so OK, pray for an impartation to make them happy, but really? If God wanted you to be called to be a prophet wouldn’t it already be self evident to everyone?
We said to know what people’s callings were, ask the children and they will tell you who is what, who does what. Really? So we don’t need discernment from the Holy Spirit, we just need to ask the 9-year-olds what God’s will is for our adult callings? And if the 9-year-old doesn’t see it, it’s not real now and never will be in the future either? Are you sure?
And maybe all this doesn’t matter to most people but wow, it certainly mattered to me! And yes, this just broke my heart, over and over, but I soon decided that, well, if that’s what the Lord’s will was, to use me as ‘just a teacher’ and nothing more, nothing important, nothing prophetic, nothing spiritual and nothing exciting … well then I would do that, and do it with all my heart and to the best of my sincere ability.
So I embraced this lesser role, heart breaking and crushing my innermost hopes and dreams as it did … but if that’s what the Lord wanted, that’s what I would do, I would see to it that his Will was done.
The Future: So Much More Than Just Teaching
NOTE: Long after I left their church I did work many years as a teacher, but only after becoming a lawyer. I was also a magazine editor then a magazine publisher. Then I also served the Lord as a pastor, and then the Lord called me as a prophet, I mean for real, as in a ‘Prophet.’ Then he sent me out as an apostle, a real assignment for revival that nearly killed me. He gave me a healing ministry mantle, and a gift of miracles too! All this they would have seen when they prayed for me at that time! In fact, the Lord even told me yes, they did see all this when they prayed for me and saw my future serving him prophetically and in missions and traveling the world … and they not only told me none of it but only told me I was called to teach, and only to teach. Sarah did say she saw me writing books one time, and I’m so grateful for that! But how can I understand this? It ruined my self-confidence and shattered the dreams I had in my heart as God was already calling me into the prophetic ministry, he was already prophesying to me so much and was training me, and in fact clearly had plans to use me in so many ways more than they led me to believe.
Now I do teach a lot, I write, I train, I equip. But that’s not what he said. He didn’t say I would prophesy AND teach, and heal AND teach, or go on mission AND teach. He said I would ONLY teach—that’s the rub.
It’s actually still difficult to talk about this.
My walk with the Lord was affected for so many years and I endured so much trouble that I might have been spared if things had not gone so crazy. Prophecy was certainly functioning in our midst generally but also clearly in my life personally and demonstrably. Other gifts of the Holy Spirit, even healing and other miraculous things, were also manifesting certainly every week in our small group in the cornfield … yet what was also manifesting was the flesh, ambition, jealousy, control, fear of losing control … basically Man’s ways. And this is the big take-away from this entire season.
A few years ago Jesus actually told me this, that “My church is sick, sick not with a disease but with Man’s ways.” We have gifts of the eternal Lord, gifts of the Kingdom of Heaven, but they are used and abused by carnal agendas, carnal motives, carnal understanding. Our growth from here on is not about needing more anointing or gifting. We already have this. The growth we need to avoid such problems is in our character being conformed to be more like Christ so we won’t hinder and abuse the proper functioning of the gifts. It is also understanding the New Self and the impediments to seeing this new creation that God has already made.
The New Self is like a superhero I saw, but our past memories, our earth identity is blinding us to the real nature of God already within us. Can you sin? Sure, and we sometimes do. But the New Self is already made in the image of God in righteousness and true holiness! (Ephesians 4:24) How can this be? The Incorruptible Seed has already given birth to us—we are already born again of God—only we forget. We have old, bad habits and have free will and often copy bad things we see other people doing but it is against our nature to do such things. We mostly need to renew our minds, crucify the Flesh and walk in the Spirit and then we would be seen to ACT NOW visibly in accordance with the Truth of WHO WE ALREADY ARE inwardly but sometimes invisibly. Otherwise we continue to act the way unsaved people around us act, the way we used to act before we were born of the incorruptible seed. So renew your mind, walk in the Spirit, it’s all going to be OK!
But what exactly is the Flesh?
And so maybe this is a good time to digress for just a moment, and ask you a question: What is the flesh? When we say this most people blush; they think we’re talking about the sexual nature of people. But if that were true, then all sexual relations would be sinful, and if that were so then marriage would be evil and all babies would be born from sin, but that is not true. Sexual relations between man and wife are protected and even encouraged by the Holy Spirit. The marital bed is holy!
Also there are many sins of the flesh that are not sexual in nature. So really, when the Bible says the ‘flesh’ is hostile to God, to live ‘in the flesh’ is death, and that ‘the flesh’ cannot please God, what is he talking about? This is what Jesus later told me, the ‘flesh’ he said is five things: the human level understanding, the human level intellect, human level perception, human level motives and human level desires.
So yes, sexuality factors into that equation certainly but it is so much more than just that. Mostly it’s about the normal human attitudes, mindsets, motivations and ‘normal’ thinking that is driving our daily actions. So yes, the Flesh can be in control of a church, someone’s ministry—even someone’s prophetic ministry.
The Bible is God’s word, but how you understand it may still be based in Man’s carnal understanding of things. How you reason through the application of a scripture in any given situation may be using the right scripture but it can be done in the wrong way—or even be the wrong scripture used in the wrong way! Think about how you perceive a situation. It’s not your fault you can’t understand God’s mind or understand how he views a situation. You are in your eyes innocent but your perception may still be completely wrong nevertheless! What your real motives are for preaching a certain doctrine, preaching a particular sermon, what you really desire in a given situation …. this is where we are failing. Not in the realm of gifting but in how we manage the gifting.
Dream of a Church of Cockroaches
OK, so let me get back to my story because that opens a topic which alone could be a whole book in itself and it’s not what I was asked to write on now.
So I was having prophetic dreams from the very first summer I met the Buckman’s and started going to their church.
At that early time of course I didn’t know Patrick’s history with the fallout from the three Five-fold churches in our state but I had actually previously met some of the kids from those churches before I was a Christian—and most of them were as worldly as we were!
So before I met the Buckman’s during my first summer as a Christian I met up with an old girlfriend from back home who was a Jehovah’s Witness and a single mom of three. I knew her many years already but when I got saved I led her to the Lord immediately and then I met several Christians that were living right there in my own home town where I grew up! So naturally I brought her to their local fellowship since it was so close to her home … but there was strange friction with one of the pastors who had a son my age. This boy led the music at the youth group but he was rude, carnal and flippant. His dad was one of the main pastors and he hated me and I had no way to know why. Shortly after bringing this lady into their fellowship the pastor’s son seduced her. The newly saved girl was promiscuous but so was the pastor’s son!!
I later then met the Buckman’s who lived more than hour away and backed away from fellowship with those people in my home area. Patrick would begin to slowly tell me about some problems with their network of churches but wouldn’t tell me the whole story, nor should he have!
But then I had a dream.
I was writing a lot of poetry and so I wrote it out in an overly serious style and like a poem I gave it a title, “Cockroaches of a House Defiled.” The gist of it was this: In a vision I was inside a church and went down into the basement, floating above the floor since it was so filthy. I saw cockroaches everywhere in the church all living in a large pile of rubbish, and I could clearly see three sizes of insects:
First there were a few very old and large bugs that had been spray-painted with red paint a long time ago. In the dream I knew that it had been a brother of mine who tried to expose them but didn’t have the right poison so he used red spray paint instead of poison and merely marked them. This had been many years ago in the dream and so the paint had mostly worn off but it was still visible in the crevasses of the insects’ shells.
Then I saw a second generation of cockroaches that were about half the size of the older generation, and then a third generation, very numerous, which were babies of the second generation. I was still floating in the air and I began to gravitate over towards the pile of rubbish and I became so disgusted and grossed-out because it felt like I was about to touch it and get covered in their filth. Then in the dream just as I was really about to freak-out I heard a voice say that dealing with this problem was not my job. [End of dream.]
It was so clear and vivid and every detail was stuck in my mind with a kind of clarity that it was hard to forget. I never had a dream like that before! But yes, many like that since!
When I shared it with Patrick and Sarah they were excited and started to open up more about the real nature of the problems they had with the previous church near my home town who they knew the dream was about, the infidelity of the senior pastor who they called an apostle, and the elders who knew of his sin but protected him anyway, kicking Patrick out instead of bringing correction and repentance to their head pastor. He shared the vision he had of their meeting with me then, about the strong spirit of ‘control’ there, and things like that. What’s more when I mentioned in the dream that there was a man who a few years ago had tried to stop the cockroaches but lacked the right poison and just painted them instead, they both knew exactly who it was! A man named Arthur! Amazing!
Discernment, By Any Other Name
What also functioned in me even from those early days was what I began to call a keen spiritual discernment, which is often called the gift of discerning of spirits from 1 Corinthians 12:10. I had a very sharp sense of what was going on around me in the spiritual realm and often had minor but specific spiritual insights from the Holy Spirit about the nature of a demon nearby, a problem that was about to happen, and even a foreknowledge of what the Holy Spirit was doing around me.
For example, in a church service I would often know which song they were going to choose to play next. In Patrick’s church they never played a rehearsed play-list but would skip around playing random songs from a wide collection of music everyone knew well—Patrick would just call out “Psalm 100,” or “As the Deer Pants,” or whatever he felt led to play but I often clearly knew in the spirit what he was about to call out, maybe before he even did!
Then I would know who would prophesy in a service. One week it was very memorable. I knew Elder Brown was going to give a prophetic tongue, which was not so unusual. But I also knew this time that instead of giving the interpretation himself that it would be given by Clement!! Clement was an older man who had just gotten saved and had never prophesied before! He was still working through a lot of habits and mindsets, but not only did I know that he was going to be given the interpretation, I also knew that he would not be able to handle it. From fear or nervousness or just inexperience I knew he would choke back the interpretation … but not to worry, I also knew that Tom Locke, an insurance broker, and also a novice in prophecy would step up and give the interpretation instead!
Then it began to play out—first the tongue: high, loud and clear; then Clement and um, well, ahh, I think the Lord, well, um, oh never mind! Until finally Tom spoke up, The Lord says, BOOM, and he gave the word! I forget what it was, but yes, Thus saith the Lord!
After I went up to Clement and asked him, “What happened? You had the interpretation.” But how did I know he asked? “I discerned it in the spirit,” I said. But right next to me was Dan, a friend my age who was learning to play bass guitar, and he said, “Yeah, Clement, you had the interpretation!”
“What? Dan? How did you know?”
“The Holy Spirit told me,” was all he said.
The various ways the Holy Spirit manifests in a diverse group of people is very intriguing. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. So if we can let it all flow it will work together for everyone’s benefit, to build the people up, sometimes to correct them if that’s what they need, but it all fits together for the overall welfare of the Body as a whole, as a community, as a family. But we’re all learning how to function and flow with the Holy Spirit and it’s not as simple as you might think. There is actually a lot to learn.
So I had what I called ‘discernment’ about the events as they were unfolding but if you need to put a label on things Dan might have had what we might have called a ‘word of knowledge,’ which is a specific idea spoken to a person, in this case it was about the same event. ‘Word of knowledge’ is also considered a certain kind of prophetic manifestation from 1 Corinthians 12:8, and it is commonly a manifestation in the healing ministry. Others might call all these things just ‘prophecy’ in general.
Much later I began to experience what the Lord told me was the Mind of Christ. This is a higher manifestation of the Spirit than gifts of prophecy in fact—it seems to come from being more intimate with the Lord. I will wait until later to explain it in detail but the main part of enjoying this ‘supernatural organ’ is tapping into the ‘limited omniscience’ of the Son of God. It is not the Full Omniscience of the Father ruling every atom in vast galaxies—but that of the Son on assignment in a specific place in a specific time. Part of this causes you know people’s thoughts—that’s not prophecy, it’s the Mind of Christ. To know the events unfolding around me without being told but to know them within my own thoughts is actually the Mind of Christ, not simply discernment and not really a prophecy.
But at that time I had never even heard of such a thing, so I just called everything that was happening a sharp or keen sense of spiritual discernment because that was what Elizabeth said that one time when she prayed for me that I would have. So since I heard God prophesy this to me, I just assumed that is what was always manifesting. It matters less to me now what we define a certain manifestation of the Spirit as, but we do want to be clear and correct, but it all flows from the same Spirit anyway and everything the Lord does ought to be cherished, nurtured and allowed to grow no matter what it’s called. More on the Mind of Christ later, or you can see my article on-line.
For Whom? The Bell Trolls!
Another time I was at university and during class breaks they would play a loud bell to mark the end of a class period, and then at noon they would play chimes over the campus-wide P.A. System, and often they were old Christian hymns but also pop songs and Christmas carols, but played by bells. I was walking to class this one day and heard the chimes and suddenly knew in the spirit that the students, in the name of diversity and ‘political correctness’—what we now call being ‘woke’—would attack the playing of Christian hymns on campus to try to have them stopped, even though they were just chimes.
I told a Christian friend who didn’t believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit still functioned today, so to him they certainly didn’t, and he dismissed my ‘fears’ out of hand … well, sure enough a few weeks later we heard the news that a group of students was challenging the public state university over the issue of playing Christian hymns over the loud speakers! Several people prayed and after a few weeks the school threw out the complaint for several reasons—one was in the name of diversity!
Fratricide—a Sword of Judgment
Another time I was working at the student-run radio station and I was running the Christian music segment, which was hosted early Sunday morning. And it was one of the hardest things I had to do. I think I had to get to work at 5 am, which itself meant I had to be asleep at something like 10 pm on Saturday night which meant I had to skip every normal social activity on Saturday night at school. But also I was alone in the station at the start of my shift and had to turn on the whole transmitter and power supply by myself and I barely knew what I was doing—also we had no music newer than maybe twenty years old! Try to make a three hour show interesting to university students when all the music was that old, so boring and mostly completely unknown to me. I never even heard of Keith Green before I worked there, we didn’t play him in the Episcopal church! The Contemporary Christian music scene was just beginning at that time and I remember Rich Mullins just released his song Our God is an Awesome God. That sent shock-waves through the Body, literally, but did we have it at the radio station? No! We had the most progressive and cutting-edge collection of every modern, punk and folk music released in the country … everything except for Christian music.
So I had a really hard time keeping it together, plus I can’t speak clearly and I had no helpers usually, and well, one Sunday I was walking to the station, before dawn, tired, nervous, alone, maybe I got three hours of sleep that night, maybe four, and I was just passing by a fraternity house that was still in full swing party time—music blaring, lights on, drunk kids running around chasing each other down the hallways—yes, even as dawn approached. And well, I was so irritable and cranky and tired and upset I just vented all of my frustration at that awful fraternity. I shouted, “In Jesus’ Name, I REBUKE You! I COMMAND you to get off this campus in Jesus’ name, NOW!!! GET OUT!” Wow, was I upset.
Well, tirade over I huffed and puffed and went to work a happy man.
I forgot all about it until the next week when I was walking across the lawn near that frat house in the day time and WOAH! I could ‘see’ a giant sword hovering in the air over the frat house! It was at least 50 feet long and I could ‘see’ it in my spirit—it must have been like a sign of judgment hanging over their roof! I had no specific word to describe this or any clear idea of what it meant—I ‘discerned’ it with only a ‘word’ of vision—anyway after pausing briefly, mostly in shock, I just went on to my class.
Well I didn’t have long to wait to find out what it meant because just a few weeks later I passed by that frat house again and they were putting all their belongings and even their furniture out on the lawn in front of the building. I asked what was going on and someone told me they were being kicked off campus. What? Why? How?
I went to lunch and saw that same unbelieving kid who tried to calm down my ‘fears’ about the playing of Christian hymns on the loudspeakers being attacked, and he told me the details of the story. Turns out there was a surprise building inspection from the state building inspector’s office and they found so many problems with their building that were in need of such costly repairs that the fraternity house was flat-out condemned! That fraternity happened to be an independent organization within the national Greek system, meaning that it had no national presence and without their physical building, according to the Greek system rules, the entire fraternity organization was disbanded and they were kicked off campus! End of Story.
I remember he added, “I’m glad someone finally did something about that fraternity. It was one of the worst ones on campus.” They had a reputation for a lot of drunken misbehavior and I am sure I shared my prayer and my vision of the sword … but that kind of thing was not his cup of tea.
Rebuking a Fever
Another time a friend came into the cafeteria looking miserable. Jenny had a very serious flu that nothing could help. Her boyfriend, Tim, said she had such a high fever for several days and was so sick that she had to stay in his shared dorm room just to be taken care of. Tim had told me the story at breakfast and later that day after English class I was walking by Tim’s dorm room and I remember thinking that right at that very moment Jenny was up there in that room sick as a dog! So I just stopped for a brief second and shouted out, “In Jesus’ name, fever I REBUKE you!” So now this was one or two days later and at lunch Jenny walked in looking like something the cat dragged in! People asked her how she was feeling, how’s the fever, etc? “Better,” she said. The fever just suddenly broke.”
“Yeah, at ten past one in the afternoon,” I said.
“Y-y-yes,” she looked shocked and puzzled. “How did you know that?”
“Because that was the moment I was walking under your window and rebuked the fever in Jesus’ name.”
Awkward silence.
I wasn’t really trying to be brash just honest. Most of those Christian kids didn’t believe in prophecy or healing or the Holy Spirit or anything, so maybe I just wanted to rattle their cage a little. But also just to testify that God just healed her and so that’s something to be thankful for!
Lights out for the Power Team
Last story I want to tell about what I called having ‘discernment’ was going with an unsaved friend to see the ‘Power Team.’ They were a group of weightlifters who did amazing feats of strength like breaking a two-by-four over their face, or tearing a large phone book in half with their teeth. That kind of thing. Then they preached a message of salvation and people got saved and it was a traveling ministry. So me and this unsaved guy were in the upper seats watching the performance and the guy was going to run through three or four two-by-four’s being held by two other men and break them with the force of his own body momentum! Oh yeah! It was dangerous they said but they were professionals! Problem is, I suddenly knew he was not going to make it!
“He won’t make it!” I said out-loud!
“Oh yes, he will—it’s all a gimmick,” my cynical, unsaved friend said.
I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t just caught up in the excitement of the moment but that God had told me that he wouldn’t make it … but I didn’t have long to wait. A few seconds later, the guy was off! He ran into the row of boards, breaking the first one, C-C-CRACK, breaking number two, Crack, hitting the third which splintered but didn’t make a clean break and then the fourth was perfectly intact and quite strong and flexible and—BOING!—it sprung him back like a rubber band throwing a rag doll and—BAM!—threw him down flat on his back so hard that he hit his head against the floor, knocking himself out instantly.
That’s then I told my jaded companion, “I told you. God told me he wouldn’t make it.”
He recovered a few minutes later and they finished the stunt but we talked about that a little. Why would God tell me they wouldn’t make it through the stunt? They were trying to preach the Gospel. Why would God ruin their stunt on purpose? he said. That made no sense to my unsaved friend. Well, his logic made no sense to me! God didn’t ruin their stunt. Just because God told me their stunt would fail, does not mean God caused it to fail. And why would God tell me? Why not? God tells people stuff! You don’t need to over-complicate things that are really quite simple. I think God just wanted to watch the show with us and be a part of the conversation!
So was that a word of knowledge? Maybe. Was it a prophecy? Probably not. Mind of Christ? Never mind—it just seemed that God was just chatting with me about the show—I don’t need to put a label on HOW he spoke to me, that takes the friendship out of the fun. But again, I called these things ‘discernment’ mostly because when Elizabeth prayed for me that’s what she said I would develop—a very keen spiritual discernment. So I basically called everything what she said would I would have—’discernment.’ So that’s where my faith was strong, where my confidence was allowed to be firm and where my understanding rested. But I suppose I could just as easily have said it was ‘word of knowledge,’ or just ‘prophecy’ in general, but that’s not what Elizabeth said when she prayed, and I trusted her, so that’s where my confidence was.
Actually different gifts or ‘manifestations’ do function differently. I didn’t always hear ‘words’ spoken to me, I often could just ‘feel’ things in the spirit just like someone might feel the temperature or smell a smell. But ‘word of knowledge’ can manifest in strange ways too, which maybe I’ll talk about later. In healing you may ‘see’ a word over someone’s head, or hear a spoken word of the kind of sickness someone has, or in other cases actually feel the exact pain they feel—all of these are considered a ‘word’ of knowledge even when it’s a feeling and not a spoken word at all! … And watch out for the section on the Mind of Christ, it’s going to blow your … um, well, it’s going to be amazing.
