This past week, my sister Elise came to visit me at The Prayer Room for a few days. We had a great time in the prayer room together, going to small group and Encounter service, treasure hunting through Texas Thrift, making the world’s best and simplest marinated chicken, and even visiting the Fort Worth Water Gardens and Sundance Square.
Best of all, Elise got a few very special testimonies! On Wednesday night at a small group, she received a prophetic word that was partly related to her ministry being tied to kids, that they would be drawn to her like to the Pied Piper. The next day, two little girls in a store bathroom struck up a conversation with her through the stall door and created an open door for Elise to minister to their mom. It was such a fun confirmation!
The next day Elise asked Jeremy, the TPR leader who had given her the word the night before, to pray for her back. Her spine had been curved slightly to the left for years, was very sensitive to touch, and had been informally diagnosed with mild scoliosis. Related to that, when she sat with her knees pulled up in front of her, her right knee was noticeably higher. Jeremy and I prayed for healing, and Jeremy actually felt the muscles rippling and moving under his hand even as Elise swore she wasn’t budging. She asked me to press on her back to test it out because previously even the slightest touch would cause pain. I then gave her her first painless back massage in close to ten years! When she sat down to test the alignment of her knees, they were completely level and even! We’re all so amazed at what Jesus has done for her!
Check out the video below or click HERE to watch it on Youtube (click CC to view captions).
It’s been a fun month for prophetic testimonies!! I’ve personally had four or five separate occasions the past few weeks of people giving me prophetic words out of the blue when I was least expecting it, and that’s not normal for me. (Yes, they were very encouraging and several of them were about the same thing!)
We’ve reached the point in our School of Supernatural Ministry semester that our students are ministering not only to each other but to staff and visitors as well. Two weeks ago, four students served 15 visitors through prophetic ministry. Some of these visitors had never even been to The Prayer Room before. They were deeply blessed to encounter the heart of God through the words of our students.
A couple came in with their son, who had a developmental disability. One student felt led to ask him, “What’s your favourite fish?” and said he saw Jesus grilling up some fish for him. It turns out, he was on a special diet and could only eat fish! The family was touched to be so known by God.
Another couple came in with a specific question on their hearts regarding a property decision. A student gave them a word about a property that was exactly what they needed to hear and brought so much peace and clarity about the situation!
Two students who were partnered together for the ministry time experienced a great flow of team ministry. Over and over, God gave one girl a picture and the other girl the interpretation. So many people were blessed by God using them both together!
My favourite recent SSM testimony was the student who came up to me outside of class and told me that she had encountered a woman who needed help with her car. She was nervous, but she obeyed the nudge of the Holy Spirit and asked the woman if she could help her, and then if she could pray for her! This is what it’s all about. We want students to encounter God in a way that it breaks the hold of fear and affects the way they live as powerful witnesses of Christ everywhere they go!
Prophetic Equipping Workshop – 65 attended!
On March 31, we did a Prophetic Equipping Workshop in place of our normal Encounter service. We had around 20 visitors on top of our usual crowd, and some of them were completely new to TPR. Andy and Jeremy taught on how to hear the voice of God and share it with others, and then everyone in the room gathered into groups of three or four and practiced prophesying over each other. My favorite stories were the people who came in skeptical, and were blown away that God would actually speak clearly to and through them!
One of our staff members brought her parents. She had been telling them for months about things that God was doing and how she was hearing His voice, but they didn’t really know how to take it seriously. When they came to our training night and started seeing accurate prophetic ministry in action, they were amazed. An SSM student gave the mom a prophetic word about yellow roses, and come to find out, she had actually been planting yellow roses just that morning!
Another young man who was not a believer came with a friend, and he actually heard the voice of God for himself for the first time! I don’t know what his history with God is, but he now knows experientially that God is real and wants a relationship with him.
The teaching from that night is available to stream or download on TPR’s Recent Messages page.
(Full disclosure: I love to recommend resources to help you in your journey, and when I do I use Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through my links, I may receive a small commission. But if there’s a resource you want, I encourage you to get it wherever works best for you!)
Ever since Finger of God came out in 2007, I have loved Darren Wilson and Wanderlust Productions’ series of documentaries exploring the supernatural invading the natural. There are so many stories of crazy healings, words of knowledge, casting out demons… and the stuff that’s harder to explain, like gold dust randomly showing up. Every time I watch them, I’m filled with excitement and faith for what God can do, and how He uses ordinary people stepping out in faith to do it.
Discovering the book Filming God by Darren Wilson was a special delight for me. In it, Darren reflects on filming the first two films, Finger of God and Furious Love, including how he was called into this journey as a skeptic–an average Christian who loved Jesus but thought most of the supernatural experiences some Christians talk about was nonsense. After a dramatic encounter with an angel (yes, an actual angel), Darren tentatively began seeking out the supernatural and trying to capture God at work on film.
The timing of reading this book was perfect for me. As I step into leading the School of Supernatural Ministry at The Prayer Room, I’ve had to confront again all my old feelings of inadequacy and lack of faith regarding things like healing. As I read Darren’s story, this guy having these awesome experiences whom I’ve looked up to since I was 16, he was so transparent with his own struggles and I found I could relate to every word.
I find myself falling into the trap of sometimes wanting to protect God from Himself. I realize that I’m dealing with an invisible entity here, and no matter how much I have seen or experienced, it still stretches me to step out and pray for someone to be healed because deep down, I’m wondering if I’m just praying to my own imagination. I’ve prayed for people so often where nothing happened that when I’m faced with a situation of real need and desperation, I get nervous that once again I’m going to pray and nothing will happen, and this need and desperation in front of me is going to turn into bitterness and defeat. I don’t want to subject this person to that, so I will withdraw my own bold faith and fall back on the safer, “comfort this person” prayer.
I think this reasoning is birthed from my own stupid assertion that I really have anything to do with anything supernatural that is or is not happening. What I have begun to learn in my travels, though, is that in the end, it’s not really about me at all. Let me give you two stories to illustrate my point…
The above quote is from chapter 5, which was possibly the most relatable and encouraging chapter of the whole book for me. The entire chapter is offered as an excerpt on wpfilm.com, and I highly suggest you READ IT RIGHT NOW AT THIS LINK RIGHT HERE. Seriously.
The other part of this book I super appreciated was that Darren is NOT gullible or naive, recounting every bit of supernatural hearsay that comes his way. He is only including stories from sources he personally and thoroughly trusts. Many times, he witnessed the stories personally. Chapter 3 explores his decision to include the things like gold dust in the film, concluding that even though some is more than likely hype and overexcitement, at least some of it had to have been from God. The Author’s Note vouches for the humility and credibility of the people sharing these stories:
These are stories I have either witnessed firsthand or have heard from people I have grown to know and love and who are, in my opinion, credible witnesses. They have nothing to gain from telling me these stories; indeed, some have asked me to not include them in my films… Do people lie about the spiritual things that happen to them? Of course they do. Could some of these people be lying to me? I would be naive if I said no. But no one ever told me a story because they thought I might put it in a book. Many times the camera wasn’t even rolling. There is little motivation to lie… In the end, it is up to you to decide whether or not you believe them or me.
Reading this stirred me up to believe again that God is bigger than the box I’ve put Him in, He really does want to move through me, and it’s mostly not about me at all! It also stirred my hunger to ask God to do crazy things like this, to demonstrate His presence and His love by signs and wonders.
(Posted a little bit belated on Friday because I had to get Taylor’s permission to publish this first.)
Last week, I made plans to meet up with a friend of mine at Disneyland. This was a very special meeting because Taylor and I had never met in person, but we had been good friends through Facebook for years, and he was going to be in town with his family as a last hoorah before he started college. I only live about 50 minutes away, so we planned to hang out at Downtown Disney for just a couple hours (since I don’t have an annual pass and I already had an evening commitment). We were both super excited.
That morning, he texted me to ask if I believe in praying for healing. Um, YES!! I assumed he was just doing some study or something on it, and texted back two long paragraphs of theology explaining why I believe this can and should be a normal practice for Christians.
Then he texted back– and nope, turns out he wanted to actually go DO it that day!
We agreed to both spend some time asking God who He had in store for us to meet that day, and we both wrote down several “clues” that we sensed that would hopefully lead us to certain people God was highlighting. One of Taylor’s was “white hat,” and one of mine was “little girl in a Minnie Mouse dress”. We also decided that anyone with evidence of injury was fair game too.
We knew our number one goal was simply to create an opportunity for God to touch people with His love. We weren’t there to pressure anyone; we just wanted to pray, bless, love, and invite God to move.
I was so proud of Taylor. He stepped out with so much boldness and gentleness, and we prayed for a lot of people with canes, etc. We didn’t see anyone get dramatically healed, but everyone we prayed for seemed genuinely grateful, and we believe that God is still moving in their lives and bodies!
Sure enough, Taylor found his white hat! It was worn by a woman coming out of a shop with her husband and kids. We asked if we could pray for her, and she was enthusiastically receptive and her husband even laid his hand on her along with us and agreed out loud with our prayer as I gave her a word I was feeling for her out of John 12:24.
We also met a man who was a deacon at his church and was about to have surgery. We both prayed for healing and he was really touched. Seeing his faith and joy really blessed us too!
I spent most of the afternoon looking for my Minnie Mouse dress. I even went in and out of several kids’ stores. I saw several teenage girls with Minnie ears or t-shirts, but I knew I was looking for a very small girl with short dark hair and a full Minnie Mouse dress.
Finally, I saw her, almost exactly as I had pictured her that morning. She was with a woman wearing a long dress and a hijab, walking toward the security checkpoint.
To be honest, the prospect of approaching a Muslim and asking if I could pray for her in the name of Jesus kind of freaked me out. I’ve only ever done something like that once before. I didn’t know if there would be a language barrier or if she would be receptive.
“She’s going in the gate. I don’t have a pass,” I told Taylor, with some mixture of disappointment and relief.
“She’s only going through security right now. You can go there without a pass,” Taylor pointed out.
Crap, he’s right.
I probably wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t with Taylor, but with his encouragement I followed her and the mini Minnie through the security line, pausing to chat with and pray for the cast member.
Dangit/good, they’re still in range.
By this time, the woman had joined a larger family, all very definitely Muslim.
I started marching after them, muttering something like “Frick, really, Jesus? Of all the…. Taylor, I have no plan, I HAVE NO PLAN okay come on Jesus…”
I knew I could claim their attention for only a brief minute before they entered the gates of the Happiest Place on Earth, so I got the attention of the woman I had first seen and tried to explain that I had been praying that morning and God had shown me her little girl and I’d been looking for her all day. I showed them the list of clues I had written on my phone earlier and asked to pray for them.
“Yes, of course, we pray all the time, you can pray anytime!” the woman responded.
“Yes! May I pray for you right now?” I asked.
“Uh, how will you pray?” she asked. By this time I had the entire family’s attention.
“I’m a Christian, and I will pray in the name of Jesus,” I responded with more strength in my voice than I felt.
They paused a moment, but agreed to let me pray. I asked if they had any specific needs, and they requested prayers for good health for the family.
So I prayed for health, and blessing, and revelation of Jesus, and for the love of God to touch their hearts. They walked away with smiles and gratitude. I walked away feeling glad I had obeyed and done what God had laid before me, but wondering if our prayers had made a difference at all to them.
My mom later told me a story of a Muslim who reported that after years of living in the US, she’d never experienced an American’s hospitality, and conflating America and Christianity, before being saved she had never imagined Jesus reaching out to her. I was encouraged that maybe my short, weak, awkward prayer stirred up a little bit of curiosity about the Jesus who would show an American girl a Minnie Mouse dress and send her to pray blessings over a Muslim family.
Overall, I call this day a success. Taylor and I didn’t see the miracles we imagined, but we did get to bless and pray for many people and plant seeds of grace in their lives. We got to encourage each other and stir up our faith. We got to practice a lifestyle that we both want to walk in more– not just the healing, but of seeing the people around us through God’s eyes, and saying “yes” when He asks us to move.
