Divine Justice

Bill Johnson spoke one time on the theme of divine justice and it made me think about this subject and do a little study.

In Exodus 22:1-5 God lays out his principle for justice against theft. Basically the thief when caught must repay five to two times the value – depending on the value. The greater the value, the greater the repayment. Bill made the point that this points to a greater reality – God’s justice against the greatest thief Satan.

John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I’ve been mulling over that God is a God of justice – he loves to give justice. Numerous scriptures illustrate this (Matt 12v 18-20 etc)

But the best example is Luke 18

Luke 18:1   And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Here we learn that any delay is NOT an indication of God’s lack of heart for justice – the phrase ‘will he delay long over them’ is an indication of God’s tremendous heart. He longs for justice and any delay is no indication that God is uninterested or impotent. In fact this story does not explain why there is a delay. It instead teaches us two things. One – to remind us that God is a God of justice and will bring it about. Two – that the widow’s actions of repeatedly crying out for justice are a sign of faith. Jesus was concerned that this kind of faith must remain on the earth until he returns. We are not told why but perhaps the amount of injustice or the length of the delay would cause this type of persistent faith in the goodness and justice of God to shrivel up.

THE POINT. This is what God has been speaking to me about – and it applies to every area of ministry but especially to those who minister to the poor, broken, addicted etc. It’s this – whenever we lose someone to suicide or someone who was getting free goes back into drugs or even overdoses from drugs or whatever situation we face where we have loss, instead of questioning ‘why God’ we must use our pain and anger at the situation to cry out to our FATHER OF JUSTICE that he bring about HIS DIVINE JUSTICE. “Lord, give us two people set free from drugs for this one lost. Give us five clean drug addicts for this death. Give us three cases of cancer healed for this one lost. LORD we have been stolen from by a great thief and WE YOUR CHILDREN CRY OUT FOR YOU TO BRING YOUR JUSTICE BECAUSE YOU ARE GOOD AND YOUR LOVE ENDURES FOREVER AND YOU ARE JUST AND YOU SAID YOU WILL BRING JUSTICE SPEEDILY!

We should live in this place. Stand in this gap. Cry out for this breakthrough. I believe this is how we can help turn what the enemy has planned for evil into good.

So – whatever your situation, whatever your loss, whatever has been stolen or killed or destroyed. Cry out for divine justice today.

Long range breakthrough

I was talking on the phone the other day to a friend in another nation who expressed that he was experiencing some serious oppression in an area he’d previously seen real freedom. He thought it would be good to pray the next time we saw each other but I said let’s pray now. So we did and as I commanded the spiritual oppression to leave it did immediately and very noisily – I had to hold the phone away from my ear!

I was telling this story to my friend Wendy and she said that recently she prayed for a friend with a stomach ache through ‘facebook chat’ – literally typing the words ‘be healed in Jesus name!’ Her friend immediately typed back ‘all the pain is gone’

Then Caroline mentioned that her friend had also had massive deliverance whilst speaking on the phone to someone.

I take note when I hear 2 or 3 similar stories that God is on the move and speaking about what he intends. The apostle Paul saw miracles through handkerchiefs – we’re the generation that will see even more through twitter, facebook and mobiles!

Oh and if you’re sick while reading this ‘be healed in Jesus name’

One step closer

We moved one step closer to a permanent home for Kingsarms today when Roydon and I finally signed and exchanged the contract for the Crayola building. We’re not ready to move in quite yet (!) but it’s a massive hurdle overcome. It was actually a bit of an anticlimax in the end – over 2 months of waiting thinking that it could be signed any minute and in the end we didn’t even have a bottle of champers ready to celebrate. I took the obligatory photo of Roydon signing and we were done! A huge sigh of relief and thank you Lord for one more step taken. I’m increasingly excited at how we can use this 30,000 square feet to extend the kingdom of God. A guy in our church recently had a dream where he was standing in the A&E on ampthill road and there was a huge queue of people outside the gates. The nurses and doctors were wondering why the people were not coming inside and in the dream he went out to investigate. When he reached the people he found that instead of queing for the hospital they were in fact waiting in line for our building (located at the other end of ampthill road) and as he approached the building he saw it had a huge green cross on the side and the clear sense that there will be two healing centres on amphill Road. Bring it Lord! What adventures of healing, salvation and kingdom advance will come from this place?

What’s also exciting is today a lady from KA was praying for a man with two hearing aids. He was completely healed! Another sign that today is a significant day of kingdom advance.

One last story. Went treasure hunting with a group in Chelmsford yesterday. We had a clue of guy in brown jacket outside argos whose son was sick. We stopped a guy and his wife and told them about our hunt. He immediately replied that his son was dead and that they had just found out. The man and wife were just walking home from the doctors where they had had a scan to find their 16 week unborn child had died in the womb. We knew immediately that we were standing on holy ground as we ministered the love of God to this poor broken couple in a busy shopping centre – the wife in tears and the husband close to it. The guy also opened up about his 4 heart attacks and we were able to pray for healing for him aswell. What a God we serve who knows our hour of greatest need and sends 2 random strangers on an errand of His mercy.

Key Quotes from Bethel trip

I’m running to catch up on returning from Bethel but I though you might like to see the key quotes that I recorded while I was there from the various speakers. You can get the full document here…

Here’s some of my favourites

“When a person learns to host the presence you can go into any situation and change the odds. The Lord is wanting to teach us to give place to the Person (of the Spirit). Host the presence – it’s a lot easier than having to think up a good prophetic word or heal them. Just host the presence and give it away.  The Lord is raising up a new company of people who host the presence. There is a major shift in thinking”

“In denominationalism we gather around truth and when we disagree we split. In apostleships people gather around fathers.”

“At our local college the contractor did not put any paths in. He planted lawn everywhere and a one year later he saw where the paths lay that had been made by the students and faculty and built paths there. The main thing is the wine – the wineskin must serve the wine.”

“Either go or send – one of the two. Every believer has that responsibility. This is the apostolic mandate.”

Thoughts from Bethel

Not much time to blog this week since returning from Bethel but for those who weren’t at King’s Arms this Sunday Julian Adams and I gave a brief outline of some of the highlights of the trip. You can get it here

Final day

Well we’ve headed into our final day and it started with a Q&A session with Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton. As per last year it was one of the best sessions. These two guys are so packed with wisdom it’s unreal. I’m going to spend the plane flight home trying to capture everything I’ve learned.

After the morning session I got chatting to Jim. He’s an American who’s lived in Ecuador for 25 years. They started with 1 church with a few missionaries. 24 years later they are now 25 churches some of which have over 1000 people in them. Recently they had a team of students come down from Bethel. On one day the students and locals visited a hospital – and prayed for over 200 people (two complete floors). 75% of them were discharged from the hospital after medical examination. The administrator of the hospital invited them to come back any time!

This is the normality of life at Bethel. I’ve been blown away again at the exaltation of Jesus in this place. Their view of the glory of Jesus is so high, the love of God so extensive, the power of the Spirit so massive, and the identity that we have as believers in Him so mind-blowing that it leaks out everywhere they go. Recently a team went into the mall on a treasure hunt and found a guy and told him he was God’s treasure. “You’re kidding he shouted, I’ve heard about this and I’ve always wanted to be the treasure”. This typifies the effect that these people are having on the community.

Of course it’s not perfect – no church is. But we’ve been ministered to by so many, prayed for and loved and learned so much. More for Bedford Lord!

Profound thoughts

Yesterday was the first whole day of the conference and it was packed.  It was such an incredible atmosphere to be in – wherever you look there are gifted and anointed men and women of faith. It’s just stunning. We’re getting  anyone who will to pray for us! Roydon and Jan have been having a great time here and particularly in the morning session Jan got completely toasted by the Holy Spirit as God’s power poured into her. She laughed and laughed for 15 to 20 minutes as the Holy Spirit ministered to her – it was great to watch! Julian spent most of the day on the floor as God overwhelmed him again and again. We were walking through the resources centre to meet Faith, a friend of Pete Carters (a good friend from England who’s here). When we met her sitting innocently behind her book stall she shook Julian by the hand and he literally dropped to the floor as God’s power hit him. Faith them started prophesying into Julians life with great accuracy – as bystanders looked on and laughed enjoying the moment of another Holy ambush!
It’s not all drunkenness though (some of you will be pleased to hear!). We had some amazing teaching yesterday covering topics from worship to intercession to strategic planning (Roydon loved that one!) to finishing the evening with Bill speaking on taking the culture of honour to the next level.

A few profound thoughts from the day

Standing in line

Standing in line for registration I bumped into Charles the guy who prayed for me last year at this conference. It was a life changing encounter last year for me and was so good to see him again. We also bumped into a lady who a few years ago went to Mozambique with Randy Clarke and Heidi Baker. She told us that in one village the first thing Heidi did was to call forward every sick person. Up came the blind, the lame, the deaf and people with withered and crippled limbs. Every single one of them was healed. She then preached the gospel and multitudes of muslims gave their lives to Christ. Wow.

I was encouraged because Heidi prayed for over a year for blind people before she saw a single one healed. All she had was the promise of God that the blind will see.

Kris Vallotten spoke tonight at the first session calling us to love the lost with no agenda. Like Daniel loved Nebuchadnezzar and Joseph loved Pharoah, we’re called to love from the heart even those who are opposed to God’s kingdom. There is a reformation in the church that will reform the world.

Quote: “If I have to tell someone that I’m a man then I’ve got a big problem. If you’re a new creation and you have to tell someone then your words probably aren’t going to help.”

BBQ Bethel style

Great news from the UK – Caroline’s back is almost 100% better (it improved while we prayed at the church prayer meeting on thursday and she’s now almost completely pain free). Plus apparently we had 8 or so healings on Sunday – thank you Lord!

We had a great time at Bethel yesterday. Worship was incredible as per last year when we were here. In the afternoon we went to a BBQ organised by Simon Munday for the Brits who are in town for the conference. We bumped into some old friends and also met some of the other Bethel students from the UK. The real fun started when Simon Munday gathered all 30 of us in the lounge and the students began to pray. The power of God hit us one after another as the students prayed and prophesied over each one of us. Man alive! I of course ended up on the floor and received a number of confirming words about God giving me blueprints for this next season of ministry and taking a step up in leadership. What struck me again was the supernaturally natural way these guys live their lives – one minute a normal bbq – the next we’re on the floor! And it all seems so normal!

Monday. After an obscenly large breakfast at Lumberjacks ‘the place where real men eat’ (come on!) we came up to Bethel to visit the prayer room. In passing I was in the bookstore (you know it makes sense!) and was talking to the lady serving who was telling me that she had MS for 20 years and came here five years ago and was totally healed. At the time she couldn’t stand for any period and now she stands in the store for 12-13 hours at a time and lifts 50 pound boxes of books without a problem during her day managing the book store. She’s been free for 4 years now and loves to tell her story.

Healing room

Having arrived safely, slept well and enjoyed an interesting bagel breakfast with square scrambled egg (go figure) we headed up to bethel church to see the healing room. Every Saturday morning from 9am to 12pm they set up a place where anyone who’s sick can come and receive prayer. My dilema was that there’s nothing wrong with me except a dry patch of skin on my left forefinger and with the best will in the world and irritating though my skin condition is, the thought of turning up to have 2 or 3 people pray over it was more than I could bear. So I decided to accompany the others whose needs were a tad more pressing.

After filling in a short form we went into a dark room with around 150 people. At the front were around 7 musicians leading worship – it was a cross between a jam and a worship session as one would take turns leading a song and then another. It was a really fun atmosphere and the people anchoring would continually exhort you to expect healing in this room before being prayed for next door. And that’s what seemed to happen. People came to the front periodically to share that they had been healed – Julian got some prayer and his leg grew and back pain relieved.

What struck me was the light and fun atmosphere – it wasn’t heavy at all but neither did it feel disrespectful to God. It was fun but reverant and full of expectation. After about 2 hours our group was called through and we were individually prayed for. I accompanied Julian and he had all the pain from his long standing back condition disappear and also his sinus’ open so that he could breathe far easier. He then slipped into a vision and was describing to us an amazing garden that he could see while the power of God hit us and we rolled around laughing. All in a days work

So day 1 and I’m already reminded how serious we can be and how Jesus said that his yoke is easy and his burden light and that we can do nothing without him and everything with. It was the same lesson I learned coming here last year – how can I learn it so it sticks?