I want to share with you a story that will encourage you. I am 33 years old
and a Worship Pastor at a church in Reno, Nevada. When I was young I lived
in Salem, OR. I went to school and church at Salem Christian Center which
was an Assemblies of God Church. You visited there when I was 11 years old,
and my family and I attended one of the night services. During the altar call
you called for people who wanted a touch from God and I went forward because
I felt I wanted a deep touch of God in my life. I was struggling in school,
so two years previous to your outreach meeting my parents had taken me to an
eye doctor to get glasses. The ones he gave me were thick like coke bottles.
Anyway, when I went forward for prayer I didn’t know what I wanted God to
do in my life, I just knew that the spirit was drawing me. So I went forward, knelt at the altar where there was several hundred people and closed my eyes. You came by and laid your hands on the back of my head, and went on to the next person. When I opened my eyes after you prayed and my glasses were blurry and when I took them off I could see clearly. I was so happy and but kept it quiet for a few weeks about the healing because I knew my dad would be mad because of the money he spent on the glasses and the eye doctor. Which he was mad about, but now he praises God for my healing. I have had and still have 20/20 vision. God completely restored my vision and healed me. Praise God for that. I know that sometimes in ministry we never know the impact we have had on peoples lives, and if the fruit remained. I wanted to let you know if was by God’s design you went to Salem, OR and that you ministered to me, cause for the last 22 years I have used that testimony to build others faith and to lead many people to Christ. Thank you for your faithfulness and responding to God.

I praise God for you,

Kurt

Now for the good news: This can be the greatest year of your life.  Despite all the bad news and the threatening conditions you can do things this year that you never thought were possible. This is no hollow boast. My bold confession is based on a spiritual law!  When evil does its worst, God will do His best.  Let me demonstrate: When Pharaoh raged Moses appeared. When Goliath roared David came forth.  When the world seemed hopelessly locked in the grip of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel leveled him with prophetic authority. Ruth and Boaz, the greatest love story of the Old Testament came in the darkness of the time of the Judges. Isaac obtained a hundredfold harvest in the midst of a grinding drought.  When the New Testament Church seemed doomed, their chief persecutor, Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle.

Here is your promise: Isaiah 60:1-5, “ Arise, shine; For your light has come!  And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. ² For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the LORD will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you. ³ The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising. ⁴ “ Lift up your eyes all around, and see: They all gather together, they come to you; Your sons shall come from afar, And your daughters shall be nursed at your side. ⁵ Then you shall see and become radiant, And your heart shall swell with joy; Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you.” 

God will make grace, power and miracles available at this time in history that were never available before.  It is His law to surpass the evil of each generation with goodness.  If you want to know what the heart of this letter is, it is all about enforcement.

The real threat is that you would be deceived into small plans when you are supposed to have big ones.  We always enlarge the threat of failure and diminish the damage of not trying.  Regret is the real cancer of life.  When you look back on your life, you hardly ever regret trying something that was seemingly impossible.  What brings us pain are those memories of lost opportunity and the gnawing feeling of what might have been if we had just tried one more time.

Heaven wants expression.  Our heart must not just mouth the words, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” our life must match it with plans that are born from prayer and we must act on those plans with fierce boldness!

In John 17… He says “I pray not that you take them out of the world but that You keep them from the evil one.  This simple phrase separates us from all of the world’s religions!  Our faith is the only one that is designed for life behind enemy lines!

Look at the religious world.  You will find it replete with monasteries for hiding, rituals of escape and arduous methods for maintaining contact with their God. We are the ones who are never left or forsaken.  We are the ones who carry our own temple of worship where ever we go. We are the ones with the indwelling Spirit of God who can give power, guidance, joy and peace through any storm.  We are the ones who are hard wired to transform adversity into even greater victory!

Happiness has little to do with removing problems and challenges.  It has almost everything to do with being fully alive. When your life is big enough, the trials don’t count!

We cannot be sissies and crybabies who seek crisis avoidance instead of life involvement.  If appeasing life and escaping its din is happiness, then the cemetery is the happiest place on Earth!

Jesus had walked with His twelve for sixteen chapters before He told them “Until now you have asked nothing; ask and receive that your joy may be full.”  (John 16:24)  Our goal is not a painless, easy life; but a life invested in adventures against evil. Our joy comes from being fully deployed, firing on all cylinders and preoccupied with loving, giving, planning, and executing divinely imparted orders.  This divine preoccupation will act like tank treads rolling over and crushing the problems of your life.

updated; I found out i can’t stoop to pull open the kitchen drawers, haha. my spine was so corrected at the base, that my posture won’t allow me to stoop over haha. wow, so i had to actually bend the knees a little to open a drawer that wasn’t that far down in the first place. i can do pushups and crunches without any pain, and sleep on my back no problem. i can also breath better, because before i had a shortness of breath where i couldn’t inhale as much oxygen as i can now, due to lack of proper posturing, so it actually effected my lungs. it’s amazing what God’s healing power can do.

Specifically, I was ushering and didn’t want to take my eyes off the crowd, so I wasn’t focusing on checking my back when he called on me. i only believed, placed my hand on the base of my spine, was praying in belief, and I thought i heard God say, just check it later, because i couldn’t focus on that while doing my usher job at the same time. well, it was after most people had left the service that i remembered to check my back. while pressed it, the pain was as sharp as ever, but it completely left while i was pressing against it. i kept checking it for about an hr off and on, because it seemed so different not having the feeling of pain anymore. well, it’s definitely gone for good thank you God

if you’ve asked for healing and confessed healing on a part of your body, just continue to thank God for it. don’t give up declaring that it is healed. Just keep seeking him and putting him first in your life. i can’t explain it other than to say it’s the mercies of God, the power of God, the healing of Jesus, the anointing that destroys yokes and burdens, and the absolute total love of God. he is our doctor more than anyone else. the original physician and healer. he is so technical with it and exact in an instant, and i received it by his faith that he gave to me, which he has given each one of us to whom believes in his name and in the blood of Jesus.  -Jason Clegg

Plowing over end time fear

If you want a simple description of the End Times the Bible says,” Men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”  (Luke 21:26)

The end times then are a battlefield of toxic messages, images of dread that produce fatigue and crippling emotions.

Your first order is to intercept these toxic messages and replace them with powerful new ones from the Bible and your own spirit.

You can control your emotions by talking back to them. The proof of this is in what Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  This command cannot be obeyed unless we the power to tell our heart what to do.

David directly challenged his emotions in Psalm 42:5 “Why are you cast down, O my soul?  And why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.” Here you see David challenging the credibility of his feelings and commanding them to hope in God.

You must flood your soul with victorious messages.  Don’t allow voices of dread to go unanswered.  Put them in their place!  Remind yourself of how many times God pulled you out of seemingly impossible crisis. Take a statement like, “I can’t believe I’ve lost everything and I have to start over at this age” and replace it with, “This is my chance to start anew and do better than before because I am smarter and stronger now”.  Replace questions of dread: “why did I have to be born in such an evil time as this?” with questions of hope like, “Isn’t it an unspeakable honor to be on earth for God’ greatest acts?”

www.mariomurillo.org