Knowing Jesus vs. Understanding Principles

Many may grasp a strong understanding of kingdom principles. They may know the power of the name of Jesus. Even the demons understand the power of His Name. But understanding Jesus and kingdom principles is not the same as knowing Jesus. To those who understand but do not know, He will say, “Depart.”

How do we know Jesus? We worship Him, declaring His goodness. Worshipping a God who we believe chooses to do good and bad in the name of sovereignty is not Jesus. The “Gospel” is translated: the too good to be true news. Believe it or not, God is good all the time despite what some people think. He doesn’t shift with our opinions and isn’t moved by our theology.

Another way we can know Jesus is by love. Without Jesus, we don’t know love. Love is a cycle of loving others as you love yourself. Unhindered, unselfish, persistent, unconditional love. Jesus is the source of love that we tap into. From that love, power flows out. Out of our love for Jesus we are quick to receive what He has for us.

What if God rejected our best? How insulting! We can be so quick to insult the Lord by refusing to accept, whether by stubbornness, shame, religion, or ungodly beliefs, the gifts that God has for those who love Him. Be thankful, receive, and when you feel nothing but disgust with personal encounters with others and discomfort in your circumstance, go back to love. Love is more than feeling and emotion. It is beyond your senses. Love is Jesus. Against all odds, love never fails.

In the Soup

The finished work of the cross did not manifest on the day of Jesus’ death, nor did it come into fruition on the day of His resurrection. The finished work launched on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came. Jesus said it was expedient for Him to leave so that He could send what the Father promised. Enter Holy Spirit. He could not have sent Holy Spirit without His death and resurrection.

To have a God who is so slow to anger, we can be so quick to insult Him by substituting His Holy Spirit with programs, events, strategies, or seeker friendly methods for growing His church. In this place of comfort, religion, and man made authenticity, the church has been receiving its affirmation from man rather than from God.

“Why do I need the gifts?” some may ask.

To serve people and to show them that Jesus loves them.

“I don’t need supernatural healing. There’s medicine for that. I don’t need to speak in tongues. God can hear my prayers in my language.”

As true as that may be, it is the ministry of a believer to speak with new tongues and to heal the sick. We cannot limit God to our state of natural because when we do, we lose a generation to hell. The baptism of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with your salvation, but it may have everything to do with someone else’s.

What happens when you’re in the soup? In trouble? When there are no natural means necessary and it’s either going to take a miracle or bust. Many cross a situation of this kind, leaving their true character exposed. What is revealed is often very ugly as ungodly beliefs make their way to the surface. Ungodly beliefs were not produced by these events, but they were revealed. This is why we must build ourselves up in our most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping ourselves in the love of God.

One man, Jason Westerfield, founder of Kingdom Reality Ministries in New Haven, CT, is a believer who loves Jesus with His whole being. He is married with three children, two sons and a daughter. On his oldest son’s fifth birthday, his youngest son drowned. It was a time where flesh cannot overcome Spirit, where doubt cannot overtake faith, and where death cannot steal life. An emotional time of speaking life, praying in the Spirit, and believing the Word of God says that we, as sons and daughters of God, can raise the dead with the authority of Jesus Christ. His son was raised from the dead. When the unexpected hits, we are to be ready in season and out of season. We need to be equipped to believe that nothing is impossible with God. We do this by living a Spirit-filled life where know the Word of God, believe it’s Truth, train our ears to listen to God, pray in tongues, and respond to what He says.

Think about this. Jesus' disciple Luke was a doctor. How many times did Jesus look at Luke and say, "What do you think this guy's condition is? Do you think you can sow him up? What kind of treatment does he need?" Of course not! Jesus gave Luke power and authority to heal all sicknesses and to cast out demons! Not by natural means but by imparting that supernatural power and later by baptizing Luke in the Holy Spirit! Luke not only wrote the "Gospel of Luke" but also the Book of Acts! God's Supernatural > Natural and Luke knew it.

Transformation > Revival

Revival has a starting point and a stopping point. Transformation doesn't fall into the old form. I don't want to say we are looking for transformation. The kingdom of heaven does not come with close observation. Many expect a "move" of God, inferring that the responsibility is no longer ours, as believers. However, God has reconciled us back to the place where dominion is ours on the earth, to multiply what is godly and subdue what is evil. We are not looking for transformation... Rather, we are bringing transformation with Holy Spirit.

Let's go to square one for a moment. What does the transformation we are bringing supposed to look like? The answer: Heaven on earth. Heaven isn't gained by good sermons, programs, events, or cover dishes. Heaven is Jesus and Jesus is love. His love is transformation... totally supernatural, yet somehow tangible; tangible, yet supernatural. Transformation is a cycle of Christ’s love.

The Lord operates in cycles. The greatest commandment is a cycle. Love God. This is the source of all love because God is love. Then love your neighbors as yourself. It’s impossible to accomplish one without the other. You can’t give away what you don’t have. Edify yourself (by praying in tongues) and edify others (by prophesying). Cycles don’t end.

Transformation is heaven on earth, where the sick are healed, the dead are raised, people are liberated from the trauma of a past they don’t wish to remember, and where they are loved unconditionally with the everlasting, powerful love of Jesus.

It Doesn't Make Sense!

"It doesn't make sense!"

These famous last words haunt skeptics and excite believers! The human mind cannot contain God, nor can we understand why He does what He does. We were given the option to know Him, not understand Him. He cannot be confined to a book, restricted by our theology, or held at arm’s length from people. No matter how advanced we believe our understanding is of God, He seems to take pleasure in leaving us speechless by appearing outside of the box we thought we had Him trapped in.

There would be nights that I would wait on the Lord. His response would often come in gold dust. As I would retract my hands, I would see gold sparkling across them. I, then, would begin to cry and wonder, “Why is God mindful of me?” Then I begin to ask, “Why gold dust? It doesn’t make sense!” As if God was worried about being too materialistic by giving gold. Mark it as a sign and a wonder to show His tangible love.

There have been three times my wife and I have seen the Lord supernaturally put arches in flat feet. In one meeting where this happened, one lady had cancer. She wasn’t healed of the cancer but she wasn’t resentful that her friend received a healthy set of supernatural arches in her feet. She rejoiced with her friend! Our response to God, why He does what He does, and His timing should never be in anger. He isn’t second guessing what He does or who He is, even if we react bitterly towards Him.

Why does He shower people with gold dust? Why did He put arches in our friend’s feet in a meeting where someone else had cancer? Nobody can say why. It doesn’t make sense… to us! There’s no formula to God. He is moved by faith, hope, and love because He is faith, hope, and love.

Healing Prayer Template

We have access to multitudes through social media, email and video chatting. While there are benefits and backfires to these technological interactions, we can communicate the same powerful love of God to a virtual world in which these multitudes have settled. As communication methods are on the rise, mediums of ministering, encouraging, edifying, and releasing the kingdom are now at our fingertips.

I have seen emails come in the system asking for prayer for those who are in critical condition. I typed a prayer for healing in response. The next day, the first email I read was uncharacteristically joyful and began with: GOD IS A MIRACLE GOD! Both men were healed and doctors were stunned, baffled, and in awe of the sudden recovery!

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word. God's Word is Spirit and can bend reality to conform to His perfect will, so that all men can know salvation (Greek: sozo; saved, healed, and delivered). These New Covenant rights reflect the completed work of the cross. Sins, like our sicknesses, have been forgiven, as our bodies have been healed. All bought, once and once for all, by the Blood of Jesus: the God-man!

Below is a template for a prayer of healing you can email or message those who are sick. There is no formula... Just faith! Feel free to adjust for personal prayer, like the name of the victim of infirmity and the condition of which they suffer. Whenever Jesus commissioned someone to preach the gospel, He commanded them to heal the sick. You are called to do the same out of love!

Healing Prayer Template

Dear Lord Jesus,

We thank you that You are the Word (John 1:1-5, 14) and You are the same yesterday, today, and forevermore (Hebrews 13:8). You didn’t do anything without seeing the Father do it first (John 5:19-20), and, by that, you knew the kingdom and will of God. You demonstrated that kingdom by healing all those that were sick (Matthew4:23-25, 15:30-31, Acts 10:38). You commissioned Your disciples to do as You did (Matthew 10:7-8, Mark 16:15-20, John 14:12). As You endured the cross, You not only took our sins, but by Your stripes we were healed (Isaiah 53:4-5, I Peter 2:24).

Your unchanging Word says that the prayer of faith shall save the sick (James 5:15) and that when two agree on earth concerning anything we ask, the Father in heaven will do it (Matthew 18:19).

We agree for complete healing in Jesus’ name! We command the body to come into perfect alignment just as you created it to be and we bind all sickness and pain in the name of Jesus Christ (Matthew 18:18).

You established these promises in the Word. We thank you for complete healing and the testimony to follow! We thank you for the New Covenant that you have given Your people through the finished work of the cross and Your resurrection! We thank you that your kingdom is empty of sickness, infirmities, diseases, and illness. We thank you Your kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). You came to give life and life in abundance (John 10:10).

Just as you said, “It is finished,” we receive the complete work by faith in Jesus’ name-

Amen

Where Train Meets Tracks

Unlike the fruit of the Spirit, being baptized in the Holy Spirit does not measure spiritual maturity. Just as we are saved by believing, confessing, and receiving, we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit by asking and believing we have what we say. Receiving from the Lord is grounded in faith and not in our "righteous works" or "holy high horse" status, wealth, knowledge, intellect, hermeneutics, or Biblical theology. Being baptized in the Holy Spirit equips us to do the works that Jesus did and greater.

The world around us cries out for tangible evidence that God is real, alive, and cares for His creation. This cry is rarely satisfied with debate, intellect, talk, sermons, religion, traditions, or theology. Jesus prayed that the kingdom and will of God would come on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom came with demonstration in power. After being baptized in the Holy Spirit, Jesus demonstrated the kingdom of God by healing all who were sick and oppressed by the devil. Jesus held a controversial countenance of love as He stared down the barrel of religion. The traditions of men make the power of God null and void. The spirit of religion killed Jesus and attempts, to this day, to create an atmosphere of unbelief. Anti-Christ isn't just anti-Jesus. Christ was not Jesus' last name. Christ means "the anointed one." The anointing only comes by the Holy Spirit. Anti-Christ is anti-Holy Spirit and anti-Holy Spirit power.

The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. The only way to fully preach the gospel is to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit with signs and wonders confirming the Word that is preached. The only gospel that Jesus preached was the kingdom of God. It wasn't the gospel of prosperity, healing, grace or even salvation. All of those are great and important for living an effective Christian life. They are under the umbrella of the the gospel of the kingdom. This is the only gospel that will usher in the coming of our Lord and it is only fully preached with signs, wonders, and miracles from our Lord working in and through His people that are fulfilling the responsibility given by receiving the fullness of power in the Holy Spirit!

Our salvation is not determined by being baptized in the Holy Spirit, but it could hold the key to someone else receiving Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit, besides sealing our salvation when we are saved, empowers us to be a witness when we are baptized (or filled) with the Holy Spirit. A witness is someone who can afford evidence. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the evidence at our disposal testifies of Jesus and His radical love.

The Holy Spirit shows Himself by enabling certain gifts. These gifts are useless without love. Imagine a train, the power of God in us, running smoothly on tracks, the love of God in us. If we're running with no tracks, we're going nowhere. Desiring spiritual gifts is not a selfish desire. We are told to earnestly desire (or zealously lust after) spiritual gifts because they are for the sole purpose of serving others and showing them the fierce love of our Lord.

The name of Jesus will bend reality to break every wall of defense a person has built so He can show His unconditional love for them. Spiritual gifts will never harm a person, will never contradict the Word of God, and will always reflect the heart, will, and kingdom of God. Jesus could do nothing without first seeing His Father commission the act. Jesus' life commissions us to do what he did and greater. This includes healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, walking on water, prophesying to strangers, and making disciples.

As Jesus was united with His Father by being filled with the Holy Spirit, we too, as the Body of Christ, can only be united together by the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.