More Holy Ghost

Two days after the great harvest of souls I told you about, I visited another local church with the same visiting minister. Again I was asked to lead the people in prayer, this time mostly for healings and blessing but as we prayed for physical healing God chose to do the greater work and heal spirits, filling 3 more with the baptism of the Holy Ghost! 

A Blessing

I was looking over some of my reports this morning preparing to write a few posts about convention results from the past few months. As I looked at the results I began to realize how good God has been to me. Not only because of the great results, but because of the great opportunity He has given me. Since the start of September I have been privileged to minister to almost 13 thousand people! I’ve been to one church 4 times, so if you exclude three of those meetings as ministering to the same people, then I’ve still been blessed to minister to about 11000 individual people. It is humbling to think about the fact that God is choosing to use us at this time. I can’t help but smile as I write this. A few years ago God promised me I would speak and minister to thousands of people. I was just a first year Bible School student and everyone said I was being a typical young man, dreaming big. I was ridiculed and some men I still respect greatly encouraged me to forget about what I thought God had spoken to me. I took their advice and worked hard with my local pastor. But God did not forget His promise! Today I rejoice not by my accomplishments, I’ve done nothing to deserve any praise, but I rejoice because I serve a God who keeps his promises! And I rejoice because I have some promises that are not yet fulfilled! I write now to encourage you. I feel someone will be reading this who is struggling, you know God has promised a blessing in your life but as of yet you have seen no evidence of the miracle. I tell you, be not weary in well doing, for in the due season you shall reap! We serve a God who keeps his promises! 

Log Man Walks

At a recent convention we say many people filled with the Holy Ghost. At the end of the service a lady came forward to give a testimony. Her husband had been in bed for a long time. She described his condition by saying he was like a log, stiff, unable to move. During the service her son came to get her out of church because the man seemed to be getting worse. She went home, told her husband that God was going to heal him so they could go back to church and receive the Holy Ghost. She laid hands on him and prayed and God healed the man instantly. They came back to the meeting and received the Holy Ghost! 

Just 1 Mile

Recently we went on a trip just to get out of the house. We toured around the city and visited a site near the border of our neighboring country. We live in a Muslim country, but our neighbors practice another religion. As we drove we passed by a herd of cattle and a thought hit me. Here these cattle are just food but if they lived just 1 mile east they would have been worshipped like gods. I couldn’t help but thinking that that one mile would make a world of difference for those cows.

Of course we are all a little like those cows. Now before you scream I didn’t say any of you are cows, I said we are LIKE these cows. It is not the big things in life that determine our success and failures. It is never the big problems that drag us down from possessing the promises of God. It is usually just one mile, just a little thing that was never dealt with properly and it put us in the land of defeat instead of the land of promise.

I know in my life there are a number of little things that always lead to my struggles. I rarely fight a new battle, but battle against the same “principalities of darkness’ over and over again.

I’m making it a matter of pray to remember to give God the little things in life, those weights that so easily trip me up. I want to live in promise and it is so close! I believe many of us are just a prayer away from victory, just a service away from our miracle, just a mile away from our victory! And I plan on making it to my promise, one little thing at a time! 

Another Tongue

Last week I was at a service with the pastor whose son calls me “Praise the Lord”. The pastor told me that as he was preparing for the service he spoke to his son in English, asking him “How are you?”, “What is your name?”, etc. He was trying to get his son used to hearing the sounds of the English language. When the pastor stopped speaking in English his son pulled on his shirt and said, “Daddy, talk in the Praise The Lord language again!” Because I am ‘Praise the Lord’ and I speak English, English is now the ‘Praise the Lord’ language! I love being around kids, they say the best things!  

Convention Results (Part 2 of 3)

During the second of the three conventions I preached one week we saw some more great things. As a reminder, God had promised me that I would see miracles for people that had been praying so long that they thought their need was impossible. Once more God kept his promise.

That night we received 8 testimonies from among the 60 or so who were healed.

The first was a fairly typical testimony. The man had been suffering with back pain for many years and God instantly healed him, the pain was gone! As any of you who have suffered with chronic back pain know, that is a great blessing! However, that was just the tip of the iceberg compared to the other things God did that night.

One man came forward, he did not describe his exact condition but had  explained that he had been afflicted with a sickness for 9 years and that night he found relief and healing in Jesus! One woman had been in severe pain for 4 years and God healed her – instantly taking away the pain.

Another man came forward and explained that he had had surgery 5 years ago and that his ribs had been broken but not set properly. For 5 years he had been trying to do his job under the pain of having broken ribs. These kinds of things don’t really happen at home, we’d just go back and get the ribs set properly but many people here can’t afford the surgery let alone a follow-up visit! But thankfully I know a doctor who works for free! When we prayed to Jesus he set the man’s ribs and healed the bones instantly! It was amazing! The man said, I feel like there was never anything wrong with my ribs. He kept rubbing his hand over his rib cage saying, I can’t feel the problem, I’m healed!

We received testimony of a lady who had been praying for the Holy Ghost for 8 years but had not received. She felt like God did not want her to have this great gift but when I told them that God promised me he’d meet needs for those who had been praying for years she came forward in faith and received the Holy Ghost!

Another lady had an open wound that would not heal. The doctors had tried to stop her bleeding earlier that day but she was told there was nothing they could do to stop the bleeding. I don’t know exactly what was going on or why nothing could be done, but this lady came to church with an open bleeding wound and left with the blood flow stopped and the wound healed as Jesus touched her!

The final two testimonies are among my favorites. Two men in the congregation had had throat problems; they had growths on their voice boxes and were barely able to speak. One man was told surgery could be done but it would cost more then he could afford.  The second man was a choir member and he was told he could never sing again because of the effect of the growth on his voice. We prayed for these two men and God instantly healed them both. They grabbed the microphones, testified and then began to sing praises to Jesus! That which they had been told would be impossible they were doing and it was all because of Jesus!