In a post a few weeks ago, I talked about being a part of what God is doing instead of trying to fit God into what we’re doing. This post falls in line with that, but it takes it to a deeper level and gets a little more specific. I thought it would be good to share some of the ways that our crew here in Eagle River have found work well in planning and preparing worship events and worship sets in general.

***disclaimer*** This is NOT a “5 surefire steps to a blah blah blah…” This isn’t meant to be a cookie-cutter strategy, these are just a few things that we have found work well for us.

Dump the baggage. We want to be in line with God’s plans for the event, and want to remove any distraction or aspect that could distract us from focusing in fully on Christ. So, before we even start brainstorming an order, flow, or other creative elements, pray. Set aside any junk or baggage, confess anything that needs confessing. Basically, get rid of any junk.

Ask and then listen. God knows best, I think we can all agree on that. In prayer, ask God what He wants to do, ask God what He wants us to know. And then, once you ask, listen to how God responds. It’s nice to have something to write with so you can jot down things as they come. It’s also nice to pray as a group, that way you can discern as a group what you feel God is saying to and showing you.

Take it from there. God is creative. We are made in His image. We are designed to be creative. So let’s take what we’ve gotten in prayer and start to build on that. Here is where a lot of songs, scriptures, flow, and an order of events usually come in.

Check back often. Go back often, in prayer, and ask God if you’re on the right track. If something feels off, ask what it is and then work to correct it and continue on.

We’ve found that in doing these things consistently makes things go a lot smoother overall. When we as a group seek God’s will and guidance and discern together where God is leading something, there is less room for egos, there are less disagreements, and there’s less tension between those involved in planning.

Again, this is not a step by step guide to great worship or event planning. It’s just a few things that we’ve found that work and I thought it might be helpful to others.

Make God the center of what you do, and no matter what, the end result will be good.

d

I like country music. (I know some of you are tempted to void the rest of the post based on the previous statement, but stay with me). I was listening to the radio and a Garth Brooks song came on called Unanswered Prayers came on. It’s a song about how he meets his old high sweetheart at a football game and he thinks about his feelings for her back then and how he prayed that he would marry her, but is thankful that he didn’t marry her because he never would have met the woman he did marry. There was a segment in the song that really stuck out to me.

She was the one that I’d wanted for all times
And each night I’d spend prayin’ that God would make her mine
And if he’d only grant me this wish I wished back then
I’d never ask for anything again

I’m sure just about everyone can recall a moment when they essentially prayed, “If I get X (person/job/gift/whatever), I’ll never ask for anything again.” I can remember one very specific moment when I was fifteen when I came to God with a request like this. Now, when I think about requests like this that I’ve made and others have made, I think of how it must sadden God when we say this.

To say that if we get something, we will never bother God for anything again, I think we totally miss it. We totally miss who God is. God loves us so incredibly much and wants us to come to Him for everything.

Paul said to pray continually, and part of praying continually is asking God to do stuff. We ask God to heal, to protect, to provide.

I feel like, so far, this post isn’t written very well and I’m not sure how to rectify that, but I want to emphasize that we as Christians are called to pray continually, and pray with power and with authority. (That was a very long, maybe run on, sentence).

I am actually going to take my own advice and spend some time in prayer with our Father as soon as this post is finished.

Go. Pray. Now.

d

Lately I’ve been having this desire for something; something that I’m not sure if it’s God revealing something that He wants me to do or just something that I want to do. And that’s where the uncertainty of the matter comes in. If it’s something that God wants me to do, then I know that I should do it. If it’s just something that I want to do and it’s not part of what God’s will is, then I shouldn’t do it. I’m trying to schedule a time to pray about this subject with two people I’m close with to discern if this is God or me. In fact, this looks like a good time to look at how to tell if something, (an idea, thought, whatever), is from God or not. There are four key areas to discerning if something is from God.

Is it scriptural?
Does the Word of God back up, or support the idea that is being presented? Sometimes this question is easier to answer than others. For example, if I thought God was wanting me to take something from someone else, would that be a Biblically based thing to do? No! Because most everyone will recall one of the Ten Commandments was to not steal. And this idea goes directly against that. The result = not from God.

Does it bear fruit?
Is the thing on the table a one-time-hooplah that’s not going to have any impact on things in the future? Then it’s not from God. God works all things together for His plan and His glory, and if the idea at hand isn’t going to be part of God’s plan, then do you think it’s really His idea?

Who does it glorify?
This one is pretty straight forward. If what’s being discerned glorifies or points to anyone outside of God, then it’s not from God. God is God, and He is the only one who is worthy of glory. Enough said.

Is it affirmed by other believers?
This is, in my opinion – I could be wrong, the most important step in discerning if something is from God. I believe this for two reasons. Not only does it put to the test if something is from God or not, often by looking back at the previous three steps. This also is the point where it’s generally discerned if this is a good idea or a God idea. There are plenty of ideas and visions out there that are scripturally based, that glorify God, and that would bear fruit, but if it’s not what God has planned, then it’s not something that should be carried out.

As for my own idea that I’m not sure if it’s from God or not, if it’s affirmed then I’ll share about it, but to avoid any unnecessary buzz, I’m going to try to stay pretty quiet about it.

I can’t believe that this series has stretched out to a month long. Here’s the final excerpt I’m going to be sharing from this paper. You can find all of the posts related to this series here. And now, the final excerpt.
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A very popular and effective way to go about the process of inner healing is through what’s known as prayer ministry. In a nutshell, prayer ministry is a group of people working in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to bring about inner healing in a person’s life. And there are some very key parts to the process of inner healing through prayer ministry.

“Affected people usually know not only that something is wrong, but that their problem might be caused by evil spirits” (MacNutt, 1995, p. 76). A person knows his or her own body and thoughts best, and usually he or she can tell when something just doesn’t feel right. As a person who is in the group performing prayer ministry, there are a few key areas to observe when diagnosing whether or not a person is being oppressed by an evil spirit: spirit, mind, will, emotions, and body (Log et al., 1999). Although one must always use caution when attempting to discern if the problem a person is experiencing is caused by demonic oppression or something else. Long et al. (1999) warn to, “Never presume too quickly, on the basis of observed symptoms or behaviors, that afflicting spirits are the cause of a presenting problem. Be careful to hold in mind the whole spectrum of potential causes of suffering, being open to be guided in other directions [by the Holy Spirit] (p.244). What this means is that it is never wise to immediately jump to the conclusion of saying that a person is being afflicted by an evil spirit and that you should examine other possible areas before diagnosing the cause of the problem. Francis MacNutt (1995) also gives the same warning that the problem might be caused by something else and that he’s been in situations where people have faked signs of demonic oppression just so they would receive attention. Just because a person is reporting signs or symptoms that are similar to spiritual oppression, one must always be careful and never rush to that conclusion.

Once it’s been determined that there is a problem or an oppression by evil spirits that needs to be dealt with, the ones doing the prayer ministry should try to go back and see where it might have started. It is a good thing to look back and try to find the source of the oppression, or an incident or ecperience that would allow evil spirits to come in and gain some influence and control. Examples of this would be but not limited to sexual sin, drunkenness, drug use, occult activites, or contact with persons or places with demonic power (Long et al., 1999). The purpose of doing this is to remove the reason the demon has to be there. And once the demon has no reason to inhabit the person anymore, it is much easier to, with the authority and backing of the Holy Spirit, tell it to come out.

Sometimes an evil spirit will come into a person because of a weakness or wounding that they are carrying around with them, not necessarily sin. If that is the case, “it is important that, following upon the healing and deliverance, we ask that Jesus’ life come into that person’s life to fill up whatever was missing” (MacNutt, 1995, p.192). This is imperative because like the picture Jesus paints of demons in Luke 11, the demon will go out and try to find others it can bring back to re-inhabit the person. But if Jesus’ life is in the spot where the demon once resided, it won’t be able to move back in.

According to Francis MacNutt, When doing prayer ministry, it is important to note that while deliverance always requires inner healing along with it, inner healing does not also require a deliverance session (1995). There are times where all that needs to be healed is a wound or burden someone is carrying around with them that isn’t necessarily sin, but it is something that prevents them from living the life that God intended them to live.
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There you have it, five excerpts addressing the wonderful subject of inner healing. There is so much that can be said about this topic that it’s almost impossible to cover everything, but I hope that this was informative and educational and raised some questions about God and how He still works. Again, if anyone has questions, don’t hesitate to ask me either through leaving a comment or by tracking me down on Facebook. Thanks for being a part of this series and reading the stuff that came out of my head.

It’s been fun to share these ideas.

Dustin

Aren’t you proud of me? It’s Friday and here’s the post I promised. Same as usual, this is part IV of my paper on inner healing. For parts I-III click here. This part continues where part III left off.
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Unfortunately for The Church, the common practice of healing would not last long. In some areas in the middle ages, it was even believed that God not only wasn’t healing people, but that He was directly afflicting people because of the common belief that all people were evil. Gabriele de Mussis, a lawyer in northern Italy wrote in 1348 that, “After the mortals had thus been warned, the quivering spear of the Almighty, in the form of the plague [bubonic plague or black death], was sent down to infect the whole human race, aiming its cruel darts everywhere” (Aberth 2005, p.99). Those words show how, even though this man was a Christian, he believed that God was actually the one punishing the human race through the terrible disease that swept across medieval Europe. Another popular belief among Christians since the time of the early church is that illness and sickness of all sorts, spiritual, mental, and physical, are all crosses to bear from God and that it was actually God’s will for them to be afflicted like that. MacNutt (2006) says, “If we believe that, then to ask for healing is to oppose God’s will and to refuse the cross he offers. In such a view it may be permissible to ask for relief, but it is far better for the sick people to accept and bear their suffering” (p. 33). In other words, if it was believed that the afflictions someone was suffering from was from God, they should, instead of seeking relief, bear with it and continue on. This was a popular belief among Christians even thought it goes against when Jesus himself said “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). However, this worldview of believing that God is the one who afflicts people with terrible illnesses, like the plague, took hold in this time and has carried all the way into the modern day church.

Today, we are able to identify terrible happenings like wars, oppression, and genocide; all of which are effects from the Fall (MacNutt, 2006). It’s not uncommon in today’s society to watch television and see a story about something horrible that’s happening to someone or a group of people in your own neighborhood, city, state, or nation. There is a general consensus among people of all beliefs that the world is messed up and in need of some serious work to restore it to the way it should be. However, the idea of healing isn’t a very well received topic, even in the church where is should be a central value. The idea of a demonic oppression or infestation is not an acceptable concept in many mainline Christian churches (MacNutt, 1995). In some places, even suggesting or bringing up the topic of inner healing and deliverance, or casting out demons, could have negative consequences for the one who brings it up. However, despite the common views against inner healing, there is a revival and a movement going on in the area of healing ministry. “The climate is changing. People are hungering and thirsting to know God in a direct, experiential way. And the sick need healing, just as much as they did in Christ’s day” (MacNutt, 2006, p.18). And healing goes beyond illness and oppression from spirits; if healing the way it has been described were to flood over the earth, wars could end, hatred and prejudice would be a thing of the past, and injustice would just be a word, not something that is actively happening in the world. Francis MacNutt even wrote in his own book, Healing, that his own experiences convinced him that these divine and inner healings happen regularly.
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I think that next week will be the last part of this series and will wrap it all up with talk about prayer ministry and what that looks like. Thanks for reading, and please share and comment if you agree/disagree or if you think I’m just totally whacked out.

Thanks for reading and joining in on this series of looking at the often forgotten aspect and desire of God.

Dustin

I have blind spots – and I’m not talking about the one when I’m driving.

I have parts of me that I am not aware of.

Quirks.

Issues.

Struggles.

Sometimes when I see one of these blind spots it startles me and I wonder how I didn’t notice it.

Sometimes I try to deny that there is actually something in that spot.

God, through directly speaking to me or through other people, generally tells me that there is something there.

God wants to expose harmful blind spots in my life and heal them.

God wants to expose harmful blind spots in your life and heal them.

Will you let Him?

Will you open yourself up to see if there’s something that needs to be dealt with that you’re unaware of?

Will you trust Him to heal it?

Because I’ll bet you this…

He wants to.

Like the things I have in my life that God has been and is bringing into the light and saying, “Dustin, this is something that we need to take care of.” I believe that we all have areas that God wants to restore. Here’s an example using me. Friday night while talking to someone very close to me who I trust a lot, I said something that hinted at a blind spot in my life. The person I was talking to totally called me out on it and didn’t let me back track and brush it off as nothing. After we talked a little bit and I prayed and asked God what that was about, He brought up memories from my life in which this blind spot formed. I then proceeded to give that issue to God and choose to no longer hold onto it, but let Him take it from me.

It’s amazing in times like that when you can really feel and see the work that God is doing in you. It’s not always fun or easy, but God never said it would be. However He did promise that it would be worth it.

I have blind spots. But hopefully, I have fewer than I did last week.

Dustin

So, I’m a bad blog owner and didn’t deliver to put this post up on Friday like I said I would. To compensate for this, I would like to extend the offer of a free hug from me to you next time I see you if you so chose to accept this offer.

Now to the good stuff…

This is part three of the paper I wrote this fall about inner healing. You can read part I here and part II here. Now for part III: healing in the early church.

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After Jesus was taken up into heaven and his disciples remained on earth, the Holy Spirit came upon them in power in an event known as the Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). From there the disciples were filled with the power from God to continue the work Jesus had started. The apostle Peter healed a crippled beggar and witnesses were amazed by what they saw (Acts 3:1-10). As more and more people began to accept and believe what Christ had said, people were being brought out into the street in the hope that Peter’s shadow would fall upon some of them as he walked by and they would be healed (Acts 5:12).

After Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament, accepted Christ, he began doing the same works that the other apostles had been doing.

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her (Acts 16:16-18)

The apostles and those the apostles ministered to were seeing first hand the miraculous works that those who believe and follow the words and teachings of Jesus are capable of. In fact, healing was such a big part of the early church that in the book of James, it was written that healing is something that we are supposed to do. It says, “Is anyone of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14). This passage makes it seem that healing should be a very common part of what the Church is all about because everyone could use healing to some extent or another from evil oppressions and influences.

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This is the shortest excerpt of the series and we’ll hit the home stretch next week with part IV. Again, check back next Friday (I’ll actually put it up on Friday this time) for part IV of this series where we’ll look at the fall off and resurgence of healing in the Church.

Dustin

The Kairos Retreat this past weekend was incredible. It was at North Star Bible Camp just outside of Willow, Alaska and it was one of the most beautiful three winter days I can recall seeing up here since I moved here in 2003. God really did some big things in my life as well as in the lives of others who were there and it was truly an amazing 3 days.

For me personally, I had a prayer ministry session with two amazing women and in that time God really gave some clarity to a situation that I was literally heartbroken over. It was actually kind of funny, (not funny-haha, but funny-interesting), because as I was getting ready for the prayer session, I had imagined how it would go and what God would say. But, like always, God had something else in mind which was a ton better than what I was thinking would happen. By the end of the session I felt much better about what God was doing and wanting me to do.

That was the biggest moment of the retreat for me, but there were several other people who had incredible moments of vulnerability with themselves, with God, and with the others there. There were testimonies of people realizing that they were believing a lie that they were a failure and unloved. There were testimonies of people beginning a relationship with Christ after knowing about Him. All in all it was an amazing three days of bonding and developing our relationships with our Saviour.

God never fails to amaze me at times like this.

Dustin

Here’s part two my the weekly series I’m doing containing excerpts of the paper I wrote on inner healing. Last week looked at our need for healing and how it goes back to the beginning with Adam and Eve. This week, we look at Jesus’ ministry and how healing played a large role in what he did during his time on Earth.
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“A significant portion of His [Jesus’] ministry was that of setting people free from the bondage to evil spirits” (Long, Shay, White, & Willcox, 1999, p.228). In the Christian faith, evil spirits are fallen angels that instead of aligning themselves with and serving under God, they align and serve under Satan and continuously wage war on the kingdom of God and those who follow Him. When Jesus was on earth, he decided, out of his love and compassion for humanity, that it was time for these spirits that had been oppressing and afflicting people to be cast out and sent away. To do this, one must first understand a little bit about what an evil spirit, or demon, is and does. Since evil spirits are bodiless beings, they desperately want to attach themselves to something with a body that they can then influence and gain some level of control over. Jesus describes a journey of an evil spirit by saying:

When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept and clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go and live there. And the final condition of the man is worse than the first (Luke 11:24-26).

That story Jesus tells paints a clear picture of how desperate evil spirits are to have a place to inhabit and they tremble at the thought of being homeless (Long et al. 1999). The idea of evil spirits desiring a resting is well demonstrated in the gospel of Mark where Jesus is casting out an evil spirit. It says:
Then Jesus asked him [the evil spirit], “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area (Mark 5:9-10).
The words spoken by the spirit show their fear of being without a place to inhabit.

Because Jesus was compassionate towards people and wanted to see them set free, he was willing to travel around to heal and free those who were afflicted. He would do this even when some of the religious leaders of the day protested. The gospel of Matthew states, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14). What it doesn’t say is that Jesus felt obligated to heal them; it says that he had compassion on them. Jesus possessed the heart of God the Father and wanted desperately to see people, his people, set free from what was holding them down. The compassion, love, and mercy Jesus showed towards those he was around was so great that he healed people much to the chagrin of the religious leaders. On the Sabbath, when Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he healed a crippled woman (Luke 13:10-13) and because he had healed her on the Sabbath and the religious leaders considered that to be work, which wasn’t allowed, they criticized him. But Jesus quickly rebuked them. “His willingness to violate the tradition of his religious authorities shows the strength of his compassion for the sick…” (MacNutt, 2006, p.73). Jesus’ healing ministry can be summed up with just a few words. He healed because he loved, and this was an important part of Jesus’ mission on earth.

During Jesus’ time on earth he also bestowed upon his followers the power to heal and drive out demons. “He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness (Matthew 10:1). Jesus never intended to be the only one to go about healing the sick. His plan all along was to disciple and to teach his followers so they could be a part of the work that he was doing. But authority over demons doesn’t just mean praying a simple prayer and the demon will leave. To cast out a demon one must be using the power and authority of God to fully do what Jesus was intending them to do. MacNutt (2006) says, “We notice at once this is not merely a technique He taught his followers about how to pray for the sick: God’s power has to back up the prayer or it will not work (p. 70). In other words, a prayer is just words if the power of God isn’t behind it. And when performing a healing or deliverance, the power of God must be present with what is being prayed for any real healing to take place.

The way believers were to have the power of God to back them up in their prayers was for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit to be forever present and among those who believe and follow Jesus. “In Jesus’ famous Last Discourse (see John 13-17), we find that His main promise was to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples – and to us (MacNutt, 2006, p.73). This was the promise that Jesus gave to his disciples as he left them and was taken up into heaven. It was a promise that they would be able to continue with the work he started and fulfill the commission he had given them to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming the good news and healing the sick.

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You can read part on of this series by clicking here.

Check back next Friday for part three.

Dustin

This semester I wrote a research paper in inner healing and deliverance. While I was writing this, I had several people ask if they could read it once it’s finished and I thought that this would be a good place to post some excerpts from the paper and see what you think about it. (Am I trying to get more blog traffic? Maybe, but this is how I’m gonna do it.) This paper was written based on what I’ve read, what I know, and what I’ve seen and experienced in my own life.

This first excerpt talks about our need for healing and how that goes back to the beginning; it goes all the way back to Genesis.

If one is to look at the subject of inner healing, one must first go back to the very beginning and observe a key matter: what is the need for it? In the Christian faith, Jesus Christ is the only Son of God and He was sent to save and restore the world. Francis MacNutt (2006), a Catholic Priest and pioneer in the revival of inner healing ministries who has written several books on the subject of inner healing, asserts in his book The Healing Reawakening: Reclaiming our Lost Inheritance that, “We will remain forever in the dark if we do not understand why God sent His son to be Savior of the world. Why did Jesus come among us in the flesh? He came because we had lost our inheritance and he intended to restore it” (p.27). This is a key statement in looking at inner healing because if someone doesn’t know that inner healing is needed, how then will healing take place?

The need for healing starts in the very beginning. Going to the Bible, it is easy for a person to see that humankind had committed a great travesty and was in need of reconciliation both to God and to them. According to the Bible, in the story of Adam and Eve, God created them in His image to live, work, and take care of the Garden of Eden. They could eat from any tree in the Garden, but they were forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This didn’t last long though as both Adam and Eve both ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They committed the first sin, and the consequences were severe both for them and for everyone who was to come after them. In Genesis 3, it says:
To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16-19, New International Version)
The incident of Adam and Eve’s sin was a tragic time because humankind had officially committed what is known as “the fall” and the result was that we could no longer be in the direct presence of God, as well what God laid out in the passage. In this sin that Adam and Eve committed, we had lost what God had originally intended for humans and thus we had lost what God had intended to give to everyone. Francis MacNutt (2006) goes on to state in The Healing Reawakening that our inheritance was lost when, “the human race sinned and fell from fellowship with its Creator” (p. 28). For Christians, this may have the darkest time in history, for it was the day that humans fell from a real relationship with God.

It was not going to stay like that forever though, the Bible tells us that God had a plan to reconcile the world to him and erase the work that sin had done in the world. The plan was for God to send his son, Jesus Christ, to bear the burden and pay the price of sin for the entire world. When Jesus came in human form, he spent three years of his time on earth ministering and teaching those around him. And in his teaching and ministering, healing was a large part of what he did. In fact, Jesus’ ministry could be summed up with three points or three main goals. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was near, he fought to take back what had been claimed by the kingdom of Satan, and he came to heal the sick; He came to heal them physically, spiritually, and emotionally. In another one of his books, Healing, Francis MacNutt (2006) says that, “The time of the Messiah [Jesus] would be a time of healing, of liberation, and of salvation” (p.41). In other words, the time of Jesus would consist of people being healed, people being set free, and people being saved.

I think I’ll make this a weekly series and post some more excerpts over the next few weeks. Hopefully this will stir up some really good discussion about God-stuff.

Dustin