Apostolic government

A while back I set out what I believe the new apostolic reformation would look like and how it will be different to what many of us have experienced before. I believe understanding around this is evolving, so am pleased to add what I believe is a a new piece in the picture about how the apostolic should operate.

One of the problems in the past has been that apostles have operated somehow out of a form of hierarchical order, whilst all the time distancing themselves from the idea of hierarchy by emphasising their ministries' relational context. Well, while it was true to a degree that this was relational not positional, they never really got away from the underlying hierarchical nature of the relationship. This was often exercised in the form of doctrinal control over what was allowed to be taught in the churches, and the right to remove or appoint people within the network to "represent" him (and it always was a him). The apostle was in many ways like the MD of the organisation ,and largely set the direction and made the key decisions. Certainly you couldn't do anything that he wasn't in agreement with. The others were taught to have to submit to the authority of the apostle, even if it meant in practice - when at its best - that this was within the context of service and love. At its worst, it could become somewhat controlling.

The way this worked was essentially a hierarchy. The justification for this seemed to come from Ephesians 4 says that Jesus gave the church gifts "first apostles, then prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors".

This verse translated into apostle is top dog, then the prophet, then the evangelist and then the others. At the top of the network was always the apostle.

It was Paul Manwaring who I believe said that "God's government is family". This is crucial. What he was saying is that God's governmental order operated through the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Each one submitting and honouring each other is perfect unity and love.

The expression of this heavenly family is our model for earthly apostolic government. After all you can't have an apostolic government seeking to bring heaven to earth which does not look like the government of heaven can you!   I believe that true apostolic relationships will build governmental relationships on heaven's model of family as illustrated by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It is worth pondering for a second on the meaning of the name "apostle" itself. The word was selected by Jesus from Roman culture. It has no old testament antecedents. The word "apostle" means "sent one," but in the society of the day this had a particualr context, and it probably shocked Jewish people to hear Jesus use it like this. The apostle was a roman word for a general who the emperor sent into territories to conquor and then romanize it. In other words, the mission of the apostle was to take territory and make the people into a reflection of roman society, to spread the culture and civilisation of Rome to these new regions. Therefore the real mandate of an apostle is to bring the culture and reality of heaven to the earth.


So what about the "first apostles" bit then...?

Recently, in the unlikely setting of a small church in the Cévennes in Alès I heard a message courtesy of Pete Carter that really became to unpack a whole new way of understanding the way that the Ephesians 4 ministry gifts operate.

Key points are as follows:

1) The truly apostolic is represented by Jesus - not Paul. Jesus is the apostle of our faith and the model of the apostolic. The true mark of an apostle was thus that he did what Jesus did - bring in the kingdom on earth. Check my last couple of posts to see what this means.

2) Apostles are called to equip the body of Christ for works of service. Therefore the key test of the ministry of a true apostle is whether it equip the saints to do the work that Jesus did in bringing in the dominion of heaven on earth. This means that the role of an apostle is to make an apostolic people - who bring heaven to earth - living in the supernatural. The role of a prophet is to make us prophetic people and an evangelist, evangelistic people.

In practice this means that apostles are people who carry a dimension of heaven, have the gift of imparting that to the church, and opening up heaven in a church or region and can equip a church to break through and bring heaven to earth. This takes gifting that carries revelatory anointing into the things of the spirit and can open up portals or realms in the heavens. Something of Todd Bentley's ministry was breaking into this before he fell away during the Lakeland revival. I believe that  he was starting to carry an apostolic mantle, but never carried it through. There are men emerging as apostles like this. I believe that Bill Johnson is one.

3) The apostle is not the top of some hierarchical structure, he or she is the foundation stone of the church. That means that the apostle is the thing on which the rest of the building is built. So when the bible says "first apostles, then prophets...." it is talking about function not position.   This means that unless you have in place a proper apostolic foundation in the church the other ministry gifts can't function properly. 

So in practice this means that unless the apostolic foundation of a church has been laid (i.e. that it is centred on and equipped to bring in the kingdom), the other ministry gifts won't be functioning correctly. They will be dysfunctional.

Let me give an example of this. Many churches have laid down evangelistic foundations without apolstolic ones. There are "successful" large churches which have honed this down as a technique. What this consists of is a strategy of enticing non Christians into the church service through cool marketing and various evangelistic strategie, and out reachess. Once in the church the meeting is carefully crafted to avoid any particular activity that put the non Christian off God. So in order to be "seeker sensitive" the church will restrict what the Holy Spirit is allowed to do, it will not let the Holy Spirit touch people freely, it avoids overt manifestations of the Spirit, and controls the meeting quite closely. It aims to be very professional, but very few supernatural expressions of God are allowed or take place. It reaches people with a modern appeal to the gospel message.

Well, fine, but people will not have an encounter with God in an environment like that. They are effectively managing God out of the meeting. The non Christian may be enticed by the environment, but it won't be a God encounter. The thing is though, if you want a big church, these tactics have been proven to work - as they are taken from the American mega churches.

The result though is potentially a church with little presence of God, where people live quite dry Christian lives, and where Christians grow ever more frustrated with the shallowness of the life there as they follow human programmes and strategies. There are indications that many members of the American mega churches are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the life inside their church.

If you had an apostolic foundation in place then the thing that the church would first seek to do would be to build the kingdom in their midst - bring heaven to earth, signs, wonders, healings, restoring lives, building loving community and family, joy and pace, right living. Then, secondly the prophetic foundation would teach the people to hear from God and speak forth from God with all the power and impact that the revelatory realm brings (words of knowledge, wisdom, prophecy etc). With both foundations in place the Holy Spirit would be at the centre of the meeting and would be building a community where heaven encounters earth tand brings transformation. What might happen in such a church is that a non Christian comes into a meeting and - as Paul says - hearing the secrets of his heart revealed, proclaims "indeed God is amongst you". How often does that happen these days?

Then the evangelist would start to function, and build the evangelistic into the church. How much easier would this be? They would take the people out to train them how to bring words on the street, to heal the sick and cast out demons and demonstrate the power of God before then proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The kingdom becomes a lifestyle that operates outside the church. Now we are starting to see a church that resembles Jesus ministry.... But it starts with getting the true apostolic in place first, then the prophetic and then the evangelistic.

All these roles - apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher pastor - are expressions of Jesus ministry. He wasn't at war with himself in how these were outworked, and neither should the church be.








 





   

Languedoc scenes

The Kingdom of God

What exactly was the central object of Jesus ministry? Getting people saved? Building the church? Proclaiming the good news of personal salvation? Not really. In fact the central goal of Jesus ministry was proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Matthew calls it the Kingdom of Heaven, but its the same thing. Just check out what he did and said. He was constantly telling people about the Kingdom of God, speaking in parables about it, demonstrating it, and releasing others to do the same.

One time a few years ago I was skirting through the Gospels when God highlighted the words kingdom of God on every page until I realised that I had been missing something fundamental. I and many around me had spent the last twenty years "building" or "restoring the church". We believed in the idea of the Kingdom of God, but our focus was on the church and growing the church. Our aim was to build a big church and get people saved and disciples and added  to the church. Hands up if you recognise that! And how many are even still wondering what is wrong with that?

But God was highlighting something radical about Jesus' ministry which has become a touch stone of what is different about this new move of God - God is speaking about the KINGDOM.

So what is the Kingdom? Okay, this is the first thing - the kingdom of God is not a concept. That is to say, it is not an idea. It not a way of describing something, like the way we use words like "socialism" to describe a set of ideas, or practices.

I've heard lots of different ideas about what the kingdom is. Some think its helping the poor, or others that its living out "kingdom values" - such as living in an honestly, right way, doing right etc. These maybe some of the fruit or actions that come from people who live in the kingdom but its not the kingdom itself.

So what is the kingdom? It is a superior spiritual realm that governs the material world we live in. It has substance, that substance is spirit. It is the rule of heaven on earth, and it rules in a tangible and material way on the earth when it comes. Being spirit means that it is invisible, but that does not mean it isn't real and tangible.

Let me give an example of two stories told by healing evangelist, Todd Bentley, who held a crusade in Indonesia. On this occasion he declared that his crusade grounds were under God's authority and a place where God's kingdom would reign during the time of his crusade. This was a football pitch where he was having his crusade meetings. During this time demonized people were set free, sicknesses were healed and blind people saw, the lame walked. But the point of this story is best illustrated by two specific events that occurred during crusade.

There was a Muslim boy who kept passing the football pitch every day to go to his Mosque. He was deaf in one ear. He was a good Muslim boy and avoided this evangelist. One day whilst walking home he had to pass close to the foot ball pitch and his foot touched the pitch as he crossed by it. In that instant his ear popped open and he had his entire hearing restored instantaneously. He was so amazed that he came running into the crusade and went toward the stage to tell people that Jesus was real and that he had been healed. He also gave his life to Christ. He was healed because he came into contact with the realm of heaven when he touched the grounds.

In the same crusade across the city there was bar where people with no interest in God were sitting drinking. There was a man covered in large tumours. The bar owner for some reason was fed up with the music and changed the radio station and tuned in to this crusade. As the sound of the worship and preaching came in over the airwaves the  atmosphere in the bar began to change and the tumours on the man literally began to melt off him in the bar. These were large tumours, that melted away as the presence and substance of God's kingdom filled the atmosphere of that bar. The guy was so amazed that he ordered a taxi and literally rushed over to the site of the crusade to tell people and he gave his life to Jesus.

Jesus came talking about the kingdom he didn't come talking about an interesting concept, he came demonstrating the reality of God's kingdom by healing people, casting out demons and raising the dead literally. He called his disciples to do the same.  The only way we can do that is to live out something miraculous that comes from a higher order - the kingdom of heaven.

Bill Johnson calls it bringing heaven on earth, which is really what Jesus did. It is a new order where there is no sickness, no sin, no pain, no poverty, no suffering or oppression, where there are eternal resources, wisdom, freedom, joy and peace. It's expression on earth in relationships is love essentially. Its government is family. But I digress. The essential here is that this is a tangible spiritual reality that is something, can be felt, can be experienced and changes real stuff around us.

Here's the other thing  - this kingdom is situated inside every one who is born again and a new creation in Christ. Our primary mandate is not to save lots of people and pack our churches, it is to release that Kingdom in the earth and transform society. One of the fruits of that will be that people will be saved. They will also be healed physically and emotionally, restored in relationships, enabled to live right lives again, live in peace, and joy and have a positive effect on those around them.

When Jesus came to announce the kingdom he was coming to say that there was a new order in town, that the new realm that Daniel has spoken of, the God's kingdom had come literally and was now available for all who wanted it.

This was the fulfilment of the prophecy in Daniel 7 v 13:

"As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him, He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion and shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed" 


Jesus said that the kingdom is inside us. Our job is to work out how we live out of what has been put inside us and how to release this kingdom on the earth. Once we "put the kingdom first" all resources will be supplied and the growth of the church will take care of itself. If we truly learn to live and release the Kingdom we will be living in revival, not relying on our own church programmes and activities to bring people in.

If you don't live from the kingdom, from heaven, you try to run churches through good administration and organisation and cool evangelistic marketing. It is human resources not kingdom resources that we begin to rely on. This wasn't how Jesus operated or how he taught us to operate.

I want to spend the rest of my life learning about this kingdom and how to release it, because releasing this kingdom is not something people have taught most of us to do over the last 25 years.

Lets do what Jesus did and put the kingdom first!

The Faith Movement

The great late Kenneth Hagin, granddaddy of the Faith movement 

Back in the 1980s I used to go to the CMI Bible Week and browse the CMI bookshop looking at all these amazing dynamic looking books that hinted at a life that contained so much more. Typically these books written by guys like Kenneth Hagin, or Kenneth Copeland, Buddy Harrison, or other American preachers. They had exciting titles and held out promises for ordinary believers like me to access into that realm of the impossible and unobtainable which we knew was there, but somehow never in our experience.

These were books about faith. FAITH! Yes, these books had the keys - how to be promoted in life, how to sow and reap finance, how to prosper emotionally, financially, in health, how to `succeed! The key was always faith. FAITH!

The basic teaching was along these lines - God wants to do you good, he said it in His word and we know His word is true, so if you simply believe, you will have it, faith is the key.

These books also spoke about laws, like the law of faith. One of the laws of faith was that of sowing and reaping. Sow offerings and reap a financial harvest sometimes 10 times, 100 or 1000 times greater. Another law was the law of confessions of faith - the word of God confessed with faith is creative. Key verses included Mark 10 believe in your heart,confess with your mouth that it will come to heart and it will be yours. Anything you ask for believe in your heart and it will be yours.

They had phrases like "God said it, that settles it, I believe it". They taught you that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, so you just had to repeat the word of God long enough until you finally heard it. Hearing meant that you finally believed in your heart and not just your head.

There were some good basic truth as well - such as the fact that we all have faith as a gift, but we need to learn to develop it, to develop our faith muscles, to be rooted in the word, believe the over circumstances.

This stuff was exciting, you somehow felt that these books, messages had keys and principles that we needed to know to access this realm.

Today Kenneth Hagin, who was the grand daddy of this lot, has passed on to be with Jesus. But his descendants are still with us and a new generation - Kenneth Copeland, Earl Johnson, Creflo Dollar and others. They preach a great message and basically the message hasn't changed much.

Now the Faith gospel had its critics. Firstly there were the corrupt TV evangelists who misused the messages for their own personal gain. But more substantially there were theological critics. Many people rejected this because it seemed like a great big bless me party, and it ignored the purpose of bringing in God's kingdom. Others drew theological lines in the sand when they heard teachings by Kenneth Copeland on the subject of suffering, which seemed to indicate that if you were suffering it was because you were not exercising your faith properly. In fact many people felt that there was a huge incongruence between the life of  unlimited success, prosperity and health that these guys preached and the life that Jesus himself lived.

Some movements not only rejected the Faith gospel, but they so completely rejected it that they have taken almost nothing from them,and left their people woefully ignorant of the basic principles of faith and the inheritance that they have in God. I consider the NFI movement broadly in this latter category (with some exceptions), whereas my earlier church group Ministries without Borders taught the principles well, but put them into a much more balanced church context.

Whatever you think about the Faith Church movement one thing you can say is that they have a good knowledge and foundation of the word of God when it comes to faith, principles and laws. Kenneth Hagin was a prophet, an excellent teacher of spiritual things and he totally lived the stuff he taught. He taught by example and his life was very supernatural. I'd also say that a core teaching message that ignores faith and the promises of blessing is also completely unbiblical. God wants us blessed and prospering supernaturally.

But the real problem with the Faith Gospel as it is called is that it just doesn't work. I know because I tried it for years. I tithed and sowed financially and saw little or no return. I prayed for healing and then saw no result and kept believing - i.e. trying to talk myself into believing it. I prayed for jobs and various things and did my best to confess, believe and  listen to the promises repeatedly. It rarely worked. lets be honest. This stuff sucks!

A faith minister would say "thats the problem you tried it", or "you didn't believe in your heart,just your head". They would tell me that God's word is true today, yesterday and forever, and if I rightly applied the word and believed I would have a result like a mathematical solution - literally. Promise + faith + confession = result every time. You see it is a science.

If you were in the faith movement and needed a healing you would meditate and confess the word of healing until you felt that you had enough faith, then you would go for prayer and decide/try to believe in your heart, because whatever you believe in your heart you shall have.  You would show your faith with your confession. Even if you were not healed you would hold onto the confession. You would not ask God or the preacher again for healing because that would indicate that you had not believed. If you weren't healed you knew it was because you didn't believe.

Okay, so what is my point? It is not that the faith gospel is nonsense. It isn't. Of course the faith gospel isn't the whole counsel of God, and of course it has been badly applied at times.  But there are foundations of understanding there that we need. Guys like Todd Bentley, Bill Johnson, Randy Clark all understand these principles even though they aren't in Faith Churches themselves.

But no, my point is this - the faith gospel doesn't work quite simply because it has reduced the whole thing down to principles and laws. The key to breakthrough in the realm of faith is not how well or not you are applying the principles and laws but relationship. The key is RELATIONSHIP.

God doesn't give you break through, blessing and favour because you applied law but because He loves you and you asked Him. Its because He is your father and you are His son.

For the first time in my life I began to discover break through in areas like finance and healing when I started to come to Him and seek intimacy with God. I started by asking Him to show me how it worked. I started to develop my own relationship with the Holy Spirit and learnt how to let Him guide me in the way I pray.I began to discover the secret place, that sanctuary where there is intimacy with the Father. In that place I found that God started to reveal His secrets to me. In that place God showed me one time that I had everything I needed in heaven, and if I gave an offering ,I'd be able to release these riches.

From that place I decided to sow. I sowed 200 euros and received a 2000 cheque the following day from my agency as a back paid bonus that I had asked for 12 months earlier which they had pretty much refused and I had forgotten about. I have no idea why they suddenly changed their mind. I carried on sowing, and my boss called me in and told me she was giving me a £5 an hour pay rise I hadn't asked for. With the bonus my salary jumped by £7.50 and hour. That was about £1300 more a month.

A year later, facing a crises in work and the real threat of redundancy I went into that place and I felt led to decree under the leading of the Holy Spirit that I would not be laid off but that I would come into a greater responsibility, a promotion. I stood in His presence and decreed this. Three months later my boss took me aside and told me that I was being promoted to another two grades. I took over a new team. The following year it happened again and I am taking over an entire section.

It was after spending hours seeking God's presence and asking God for healing that I saw my first healing in early 2009 at church after 20 years. It was almost the only healing the church had seen in two or three years, and it came as a first fruit before healing became a feature in that church. I've seen more healings since and the church has come into a lot of healing since then. But I saw a change because I started to come to Father and to ask Him,and to cultivate that relationship. Not because I applied laws and principles outside of relationship. I never saw a single person healed ever when I applied faith laws and spiritual mathematics.

By the way, another key to this was putting God's kingdom first. God showed me that this didn't mean putting God's commitment to God and the church above my career as I had been taught, it meant seeking His kingdom  - you know - break through in healing, salvation and seeing the heavenly world on the earth. If this is where your focus is then the faith promises will awake and come alive to you. They will find you and seek you out. You won't need to spend hours quoting verses, the favour will seek you out. It will come to you!

Having said all this,I have to say that knowing the basic principles of faith - thanks to these faith teaching guys - is and was an essential foundation. These teachings give you an educated basis from which to understand God and His kingdom and then move out in faith. But if you really want these principles to work, soak them in oil from His presence and exercise them in the place of intimacy with Him.

One of the things that this new move of God has brought in is that emphasis on relationship and intimacy with God. And there seem to be more healings, manifestations and supernatural activities and break throughs in these movements than in the large well orchestrated Faith churches I see around today. Could it be that God is saying something?

Just a thought!

Miracles are easy in France

What would happen if instead of talking about God we actually went out with Jesus to do miracles in the street? The other day I had the chance to find out. We were at a meeting in Ales with a small group from the Bethel church in Redding, a guy called Chuck Parry and three of his team.

I kind of knew it would be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be as amazing as it turned out to be. That morning when I awoke the first thing in my head was "today I am going to see the hand of Jesus at work". I think that turned out to be a thought from above.

Anyway, we turned up at the meeting, there were not that many people there, and it was a very rainy wet day. There was not much of a warm up before they announced that we were going out to do some miracles on the street. I wasn't aware that this was going to be part of the day, so okay...lets go. They asked who wanted to do a "chasse au tresor" (treasure hunt), and I reluctantly lifted my hand, really regretting that once again I had put myself forward for one of these dreadful assignments that somehow never seemed to come off when I did them, but I hey, surely it would work one day, right?

However, that afternoon during the worship I also knew that I was going to pray for someone in the street and see them healed, something I had been wanting to do for a long time. So I had a sense of anticipation.

So a small handful started out with the "chasse au tresor" thing - where you ask God for clues as to where to go, someone's name, their appearance, their need and anything else that comes to mind. The theory is that God will give you clues and you'll find the treasure that you are looking for - a person that God wants to do good for. My only problem is that I couldn't get any words of knowledge. Whatever I came up with seemed ridiculous, and I had no confidence that it was from God.

Anyway, an American guy from the team called Kris joined us and took us out to go find our clue.  Kris was a lot more confident about my capacity to hear from God a word of knowledge than I was. I guess its not supposed to be that way around? Anyway, two of us had the word "fish" on our list of clues, so we headed to the super market with the clue, ridiculous as that sounds. On the way we passed a garage and Kris stopped us and asked one of us who spoke French to go into the garage and ask "where is the guy with the problem with the hip". Okay, I thought, so he has had a word of knowledge, great, so in we went and asked this small group of guys. Guess what happened? They looked really blank, and confused, and said no-one had a hip problem! Hmmm....

In fact they looked at us really weird and asked who had sent us. I evaded answering, thanked them very much and left. Kris didn't seem too put off by this, and told us:

"you know what, I'll tell you something about people - they don't always tell the truth."

Hmm, I thought, those guys didn't seem to be telling us any lies. This is sounding a bit like a scam so far...hmmm. But I decided to give it more time and keep an open mind. Unfortunately things didn't get any better! We found a place with blue and electric light, which was someone's clue and Kris went in to see the lady with a translator and came out five minutes later with no joy. Hmmmm.....maybe this stuff isn't all its meant to be?

Then we went to the fish counter and I saw a woman wearing a blue coat and boots which was on my list so Kris encouraged me to go speak to her, show her the list and ask if she had any particular health needs. He had asked me what came to mind, and nothing had, so he tried a health problem such as a bad leg or knee. Sounds suspiciously like guessing, hmmm. So, anyway, I approached, and she was very nice but had no health problem in her knee, and in fact assured me that she had no health problem at all, but was very nice about it.

Hmmmmmmm....some how this wasn't reassuring, and we wandered around wondering where to go next. It would have been easy to get discouraged or cynical at this point, but that wasn't in anyone's mind, and we walked around looking for someone we might pray for.

Then Kris saw a woman in the supermarket aisle who obviously had a problem with her foot, and he went over to her, so I followed and began to translate and speak to her with Kris. We made friends, asked her about her foot, and she confirmed that she had a problem with her left foot. We asked if we could pray for her and she said yes. Then Kris said "I can see that you love Jesus", and she agreed. She was a Catholic. Then he said "you have a problem with your hip" She said "yes, thats right, I have a prothesis". Then he said "you have a problem with your left shoulder as well, God wants to heal that" She looked surprised and said "yes, I do, I was born congenitally deformed on my left side". (It wasn't evident to me that she had a hip and shoulder problem, just that she walked oddly). Then Kris said you have a problem with your stomach here, and indicated just below the stomach. She said "il devine tout!" (literally "he devines everything!") and said she had had three caesarian sections and this had left her with problems there. So I explained this was God revealing this, that it was because God wanted to heal her and not to invade her privacy etc. She was very open. He then said " also the bladder" and I said "sorry I can't translate that" so he showed again where and she agreed again. In fact this woman seemed to be a walking health problem, and Kris had correctly seen four or five specific problems that she had.

We prayed for her, commanding health and healing into her body in Jesus name, and she went really quiet, and and Kris said "from today things will be different". Then Kris asked her to put her hand on her heart and pray for the Holy Spirit to fill her, which she did, and we asked if she could feel that. She said she did and she said she had these "frissons" go through her body when we'd prayed for her healing. You could see a peace on her. We asked her to test out her healing and she bent down and said yes that better now. She was really blessed and wow.

Thank you Jesus!

We caught up with the other guys and explained what had happened. As we stood there Kris told one of the guys to approach a woman nearby and ask her if she had a headache. So he did and they both walked off in a long discussion that went on for about ten fifteen minutes.

So we waited around, and, the other guy with us who was a young 24 year old American with YWAM asked Kris how did he see illnesses. Kris said that he sees them when he looks at people often, or it comes into his head. So he turned to me and said what do you see when you look at him?  Kris looked at me and said "nothing", and then he asked and what about me? And Kris looked at him and asked why, what do you have wrong? So the guy said I tore a ligament in my right knee three years ago whilst doing a marathon and I have have constant pain, constantly as a result and can't run. So Kris turned up his piece of paper and he had pain in right knee written down on it! So he asked me to pray for him. So I tapped his knee and said "pain jump off for good in Jesus name".

One second later, Kris asks - so how is the knee now, and the guy said "its gone, its completely gone". So we double checked whether he was usually in pain and he yes constantly, but it has completely gone.

Whoa! Thank you Jesus! We were really surprised for some reason.

So, we caught up with the other guy who had just finished speaking to the lady with the shopping trolley, and he said that yes she does have along standing really bad headaches, but she wouldn't let him pray for her. The American asked Kris how he knew to ask that, and Kris said, "word of knowledge". Kris advised the guy who had been speaking to her that if he saw her later he should just go and say "the headache is leaving in the name of Jesus" and just let her get healed.

By this time our time way up and we headed back. Not before we prayed for another woman who turned out to be in our meeting. At the meeting afterwards we had a feedback time from the various teams who had been out. The stories came in thick and fast. There was a non christian healed in a shop of metal in their body who was able to move following prayer. Another who was healed of some long standing problem who was so amazed that they asked someone to come and pray for their mother who was also very unwell. (I heard that someone did that several weeks later and the mother was also healed!). Someone who got healed asked where the church met so that they could come along.Others were touched and amazed. It seemed like everyone came back with a story to tell. Jesus had been out on the street that day with his people.

I thought we were finished,  and headed off for something to eat with the Bethel team. Unfortunately we found we had 30 minutes to kill before the restaurant opened, so we wandered back to the shopping centre.

Clearly Kris wasn't finished, and he saw a guy with his daughter buying a mobile phone in a kiosk. The guy had this huge leg brace on and Kris started to get enthused about what God was going to do. He said he could feel the power of God in his body. We waited for him to come out and then said hello and asked him about his leg. He said that his leg had been paralyzed in a car accident about seven years earlier. The guy was of Arab origin and probably a Muslim. Anyway I told him that we had seen miracles that day in the supermarket and we'd like to pray for him, would he mind if we prayed for him too? He was very amiable and agreed. So we prayed for his leg. Nothing seemed to happen, and he looked relatively nonplussed.  I felt I'd come to the end of what I could do, and said he needed to try it out when he got home. Kris told me to tell the guy that when he - Kris - put his foot on the guy's foot he would feel electricity going up his leg. So Kris gently put his foot on that of the guy, and he sort of went quiet and watched, then Kris said and God is healing your elbow as well, and the guy immediately began to stretch and twist out his right arm, clenching and unclenching his hand, looking surprised and taken aback.

Next to us Helen began translating for one of the women from the Bethel team who addressed the girl and said "I see that you like dancing" and the father confirmed that yes she does hip hop. Then the girl from Bethel said "you are going to teach dance" and various other things about God liking her dance etc. The girl was welling up and clearly touched. The dad was too.

Kris finished by telling the guy that Allah loved him, and wanted to show him His father heart. They left a bit kind of blown away.

Then we went to dinner. During the whole time I felt a sort of weightiness on me that I wasn't used to. Even during dinner I became aware of it, and it was so strong that I had a hard time concentrating and joining in the discussion. I knew it was God or from God, but even so it was slightly disconcerting. During dinner Kris prophesied over a couple of people, and they both went quiet and seemed moved - something I had now seen happen several times that day.

After dinner we had another meeting where Chuck Parry spoke. I strongly recommend people to check this out on the Ales church website: (in French and English)

http://beta.messages.ac-ac.fr/messages/193

Later we again prayed for people in the meeting and the guy in front of me with a problem of his leg was completely healed. I knew by now that this was easy, and was completely unsurprised when he was healed. Thank you Jesus! That's what is supposed to happen!

 This was the biggest activation I have had in walking in the miraculous. As the guy from the team said before we went out "I believe God is going to hit the 'easy' button". I found out that doing miracles is easy in France.

Who wants to go out and do some more?