Encounter Night // Feb. 19th, 2021

[Music] jesus when he is high and lifted up he starts drawing people listen jesus did not come to do difficult things he came to do impossible things we're here for the presence of god we're here for whatever god wants to give us we're here for the oil of healing we're here for the oil of deliverance we're here for the oil of the baptism of fire god's going to come into the building and he's going to put pressure on us what not to not to bring condemnation to us not to make us feel bad but so that we can prepare ourselves to host the next level of glory jesus is not the pinnacle to attain he is the foundation in which your life begins he is the shoulders that you stand upon the victory he gained you begin with [Applause] come on everybody let's give god praise come on let's give him a shot of praise who's ready to worship who's ready to worship say me we're going to begin by reading the word of god as we always do it's great to see you for encounter tonight i'm going to start by reading from psalm 149 verse 6 that says the following let the high praises of god be in their throats in two edged swords in their hands who's got a mouth who's got a hand god wants your hands in your mouth tonight to be active this room has been prepared by people there have been people praying here today there have been people fasting not only in preparation for you but in preparation for what god wants to do in this space so just know that this room has been prepped not only by people but this room has been prepped by angels the angels of god are here tonight and in preparation for your arrival they have been ministering and preparing this room in hopes that you will understand who you are your purpose and the reason for you being born is to be a worshiper of the most high god do you believe that and i believe with all of my heart the word that i just keep hearing over and over again today for this for this night is high praise i believe that it is through our worship tonight that god is going to accomplish much i believe that people will be healed without the laying on of hands i just believe that healing will happen in the room as we worship the lord i believe that deliverance will happen as we worship the lord i believe that people who yet to are to know the lord will be saved tonight i believe there'll be salvation in this room i believe that god is going to accomplish much through the high praise of his people are you excited i'm excited won't you go ahead and lift your hands if you feel comfortable and let's just go ahead and begin to worship you know it's often that we wait on the worship team to lead us into worship why don't we lead the worship team into worship come on everybody so let's lift your voice if you have a prayer language use it if you want to pray in english use your voices he sits enthroned upon the praises of his people so come king jesus we have created a throne for you tonight so come and rest upon the praises of your people we pray that you be blessed in this place that you be glorified in this place come on lift your voices that you be honored in this place we bless you we are grateful for what you have done thank him for his blood thank him for his sacrifice thank him for the cross thank him for the resurrection thank you jesus for coming back to life because you came back to life so can we so can we we're so grateful for your cross that has given us salvation healing deliverance and access to the throne so we come boldly tonight before the throne room of our god that we may receive grace and help in this time of need there's many of us who have needs but god our nation is in need so we come to you in this time of need and we ask that you give us exactly what we need god to be ministers of reconciliation to be ministers of hope to be ministers of light so come holy spirit pour out yourself pour out your power pour out your gifts pour out your glory and our promise is this god whatever we receive we'll give it away freely we will receive freely we will give in jesus name and everybody said it good amen come on let's worship give him your best on the shores of my soul i gave you permission to wash my tears away [Music] and to take all my disappointment and fill me with joy once again [Music] [Music] come [Music] to wash my tears away and to [Music] once again my it's on [Music] [Applause] [Music] your kindness it has lifted me to see the way that you see come on the kindness it has lifted me to see the way that you see you uh foreign uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] is dancing you [Applause] is [Music] the yeah come on lift up a shot of praise in this place [Music] you see the beauty [Music] purify me again let the weight of your glory bring me back to my knees [Music] you have a purpose you see the outcome yes you do you have intention you're bringing freedom you will fight what you [Music] find me here [Music] let the weight of bring me back to my knees can start it [Music] we come together [Music] we come together [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] fire purify me again let the weight of your glory bring me back to my knees [Applause] [Music] i'm not [Music] me bring me back to my knees [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] we oh together [Music] [Applause] [Music] jesus [Music] jesus [Music] [Music] jesus [Applause] [Music] me back to my knees [Music] me [Music] one [Music] [Applause] is [Music] jesus christ [Music] so so [Music] holy [Music] [Applause] holy [Music] holy [Music] [Applause] you seem crazy [Music] forever [Music] oh [Music] [Music] you'll see [Music] [Music] uh [Music] jesus jesus we feel your presence he's in the room the keys yes [Music] [Music] [Music] yes [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] hey [Music] my [Music] the dance [Music] god [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] the veil was torn into [Music] is [Music] is [Music] the end of the eyes [Music] hey [Music] is [Music] angels [Music] [Applause] is [Music] ah [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] hello [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign lifting arms [Music] lifting your arms [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] i [Music] [Applause] we see [Music] [Music] we are we are singing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] ah hey [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] it only [Music] [Music] [Applause] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] boxing [Music] me [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] i wanna be close close to your side so heaven is real and death is alive i wanna hear voices of angels above singing as one come on [Music] [Applause] [Music] the great i am [Music] loving the world [Music] living again singing as one [Applause] is [Music] [Applause] the great i am [Music] he's the great i am [Music] majesty there is i am great i am the worthy i am the great i am [Music] there is [Music] great i am hallelujah the great i am the great [Music] praise the name of jesus praise his name come on lift it up [Music] [Applause] so in exodus chapter 3 god asked moses to go he said it says that he was concerned god was concerned you know god can get concerned he's not concerned about politics he's not concerned about things that we get concerned about but he looked out upon the people and saw that they were mistreated and abused they were suffering and god with great concern reaches down and calls moses and he says i'm sending you to go deliver my people and moses says well who am i that i would go and stand before pharaoh and and what do i do when they ask me who sent me and god said well that's easy just tell them the i am sent you tell them i am sent you i am what i am salvation i am healing i am deliverance i am peace i am wholeness i am power whatever it is you need whatever it is they need that's who i am that's who i am and that i am is here tonight he is here tonight once you close your eyes because i do believe that he wants to minister to some folks tonight we're gonna have plenty of time for ministry at the end of the night but there's one specific thing that i believe the lord is most concerned about in this moment it's the same concern that he saw when he looked out it is a perk it is a it is a person without life a person who is empty a person who is void a person who is lifeless without his son jesus christ now i know that on a friday night in a room like this in an event like this you would assume that everyone in here knows jesus christ as their lord and savior and i'm not asking anyone to question your salvation if you know jesus you know that you know jesus if you talk to jesus you know that you talk to jesus but there's a big difference between knowing jesus and knowing about jesus there are a lot of people who know about jesus and according to jesus he said on that day many will say lord lord did we not did we not come to meetings did we not go to church did i not say a prayer and he will say depart from me i never knew you i never knew you now again i'm not asking anybody to question what they may have but if you're here tonight god's greatest concern his greatest concern tonight is that anyone would walk out of this place outside of his grace outside of his salvation outside of his covering he wants to be close to you he wants to know you and so if you're here tonight and you would say pastor i may know a little bit about jesus but i do not know him i do not know him as my lord and savior i am not in a personal relationship with him but i want to be in a relationship with him again this is greatest concern it's the reason that he has gathered us together tonight it is his will that all be saved say all all be saved so this is your opportunity he with grace he with love has postured you and positioned you here tonight to tell you this one thing he loves you dearly he loves you so much that he laid down the life of his own son so that you may be with him forever it's the good news of the gospel jesus willingly lay down his life for you the scriptures say that if anyone would confess with their mouth that jesus is lord turn from their sins and give their life to him that you'll be saved you'll be saved so i want you to bow your heads and i want you to close your eyes and the reason that i want you to do this is i want to give everyone space to make that decision right now if you've already made that decision i want you to be praying for the people around you right now i want you to pray i want you to pray and if you'd like to make that decision just just extend your hand so that i can pray with you i want to pray with you right now and you are not alone i promise you you are not alone extend your hand high this is a very safe place to make that decision awesome i see praise god who else you're not alone this is a night where you can leave here with assurance assurance that you will be in heaven assurance that you have a relationship with jesus christ who else amen amen praise god you can put your hand down just pray this in your own word say jesus thank you so much for laying down your life for me thank you so much for reaching into my dead situation in bringing resurrection power on this day i give you my life i confess that i am a sinner and i need your grace i need your love so please forgive me of my sins and now come fill me fill my heart with your presence fill my heart with your hope fill my heart with love fill me with your holy spirit i ask that not only i receive a baptism of salvation but i receive a baptism of your spirit so come holy spirit and rest upon these new believers in jesus christ fill them with your presence fill them with your power activate their gifts bless them god may you feel every dark place in every void in their life may they leave here not the same not the same god we thank you tonight for salvation we thank you for life he's in jesus name we pray and everybody said it good come on let's give me praise for salvation come on welcome welcome these new believers come on your brothers and sisters amen amen amen for those who said the prayer you're part of a family now you're part of a family look around these are brothers and sisters some of them are really weird just get used to it all right just get used to it it's great to see you tonight on behalf of the gathering place church we just want to welcome everybody who's here won't you go um find a seat if you can for those of you don't have a seat get nestled in the floor and we'll get going here in just a moment greet those around you on your way [Music] [Music] who's having fun so far say me me too me too it's good to be with you we haven't met yet my name is matt i'm a senior pastor here at the gathering place on behalf of our family we just want to welcome raise your hand if you're not from the gathering place not from the gathering place family about 50 percent gather place family you want to welcome these guests they're here tonight yeah awesome great to have you who's from out of state raise your hand all right a few who's out of state okay a few what's your state yell it out georgia i know some were going to be from georgia i was hoping at least one would be from georgia tonight that would be wonderful we had a guest come one night and uh a guest that everybody was anticipating and he called me early that morning and he said my flight's delayed i'm not going to be there just go home go ahead and you know you just you speak no no those people will throw rocks at me they did not come to hear me they came to hear you where are you at well i'm going to be landing in atlanta you know it's going to be close you know a couple hours before you know kickoff and i said i will be there waiting on you and sure enough i drove to atlanta and picked them they were they're kind of older in years and i was just you know rushing you know come on we gotta go i broke many laws coming across the state line but we got them here right in the middle of worship we got them here i wasn't going to get up and these people throw rocks at me no so we're here tonight uh obviously to worship the lord and to receive the word and uh we have a guest in the house um blake healey is here i'll introduce him formally in just a moment but i i do want to take a moment uh just to give you the opportunity to sow into ministry we don't charge anything for these events and um you know we we we try our best just to offer a gift not only to our church family to our community but for any who would want to come and just receive from the lord and i believe that everyone is going to receive tonight if you haven't already i believe that you will have an opportunity to receive from the lord can i hear a good amen and so but we want to give you the opportunity to sow into ministry as well blake has not charged a dime he said we will come i just want to serve your house but we also want to bless him and bless his ministry so our ushers are going to come for those of you that do checks and and paper cash checks for those of you under 30 or pieces of paper with little routing numbers and checking account number you may or may not know what that is just pretend like you do and we have some digital forms for you to give and uh sure as you go ahead past these buckets if if you do want to sow into the ministry though just know that everything received tonight's just going to go to to blake and his family and five kids right come on i got five as well when you're a church planter or a pastor you gotta you you come with critical mass you bring a church with you in case nobody shows up you can still have church right and so uh we'll have an opportunity to bless him here in just a minute a couple of um logistical things just so you know we have restrooms in uh this back door uh directly in the back they're in the only back door on the back wall if you go out there there's a bank of restrooms to the right and to the left one is for males and one is for females you you can see the signs and pick yours and then we've got a couple of of uh bathrooms out in the lobby as well and so take care of that also know that there is merchandise in the lobby there's both encounter merchandise and blake and his team have brought some some merchandise into books he's going to tell you about a couple of books one of them in particular um is the reason that i reached out and called him that when i read that book it sparked some things for me opened my eyes to some things that um was actually happening and i didn't know what it was and i think he's going to talk about that a little bit uh tonight as well and so we're just blessed and honored to have blake and his team well is it okay if i know if your team stands up can i just acknowledge if you came from atlanta will you guys welcome them so you guys are all students at the school is that correct supernatural school of ministry and so thank you so much for coming tonight blake and his wife april married 13 years ago right before you moved to atlanta to to help plant bethel atlanta and they have five kids and he is the director of the supernatural school of ministry that has been going for 13 years now and they have seen a lot of students come into the ministry and really the goal of the ministry is just to help them understand uh as the apostle paul says who they who who jesus is it always starts with him who he is and what he's done and because what he's done what that what that enables us to do because of him and his blood and everything that he purchased he has postured us and positioned us to be great kingdom agents so to know who jesus is to know who we are in him to know what jesus has given us and to help us discover gifts and operate in those gifts we believe that the gifts of the spirit are alive and active today can i hear good amen god did not leave his church powerless he said in acts chapter 1 verse 8 you will receive power by safe power we receive power when the holy spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses the power is for evangelism if we're not using what god has given us to reach a lost and dying world we're using it in vain god did not send his power so that we could flop around on the floor and have a good time can i hear a good amen now that's great and i hope it happens i hope i get shot through the sheetrock tonight amen if it happens we'll leave the hole there and we'll put a plaque over it but the power is not for us just to have a good time with the person of the holy spirit the power was always intended that we may receive and then give away one of our prayer team members tonight i forgot who it was i think it was heather she came up in in and she saw an angel put a treasure chest down in the middle of this room and there were blue jewels being dispensed throughout the room and i believe with all of i believe all that's within me that god is going to show up tonight and he is going to dispense things you are going to receive deposits now what you do with those deposits is completely up to you but i hope and pray that we will receive and then go freely give away amen everybody so we're about to receive the word of god and i hope that you posture your hearts to receive i hope that you posture your minds to receive and i know i know i know i know that you're going to receive an incredible word uh from the lord himself through pastor blake so once you do this once you let's honor god uh by honoring the person that's going to give the word if you will to stand up and let's honor the person bringing the word tonight and give god all the glory [Applause] ah thank you awesome thank you all right how's everybody doing doing good awesome how could you not after worship like that we could just do that the rest of the night that's fantastic oh my goodness oh well uh hello my name is blake thank you thank you um yeah and i am i feel like god has something kind of fun and special for for tonight so i want to i want to first kind of spend a little bit of time building some some background of where we're going to go um just out of curiosity so i get a little bit of a gauge of where we're at how many of you have ever uh read any book that i've ever written before awesome cool i know the favorites are that's good um how many of you ever uh how many of you this is the very first time you're ever hearing me speak awesome cool all right well um so just i'm gonna give you a little bit of a kind of a background a framework for where i'm coming from and then we're just gonna go where the holy spirit wants to go does that sound good perfect because that's the only plan that i have uh so my first memory is seeing an angel i was about two years old i was sitting in the back seat of my parents minivan we were at the drive-through window at the bank and my mom was just kind of chit-chatting with the teller and i remember she was uh listening to some worship music that was playing on the radio i remember looking up and i saw about a about a half dozen of these baseball sized lights just kind of drifting back and forth in time with the music and i just remember feeling this sense of kind of a piece as i was seeing seeing these things there my second memory is seeing a demon i was in my parents bedroom which always embarrasses my mom just a little bit that i share this story so being the playful son that i am i share it all the time um i was in my parents bedroom my parents were in the kitchen which in this particular house was directly above their their bedroom and i remember i was i was three years old i was standing there i was looking up because i could hear my parents talking upstairs and i couldn't really hear what they were saying but by the by the tone by the kind of uh pentameter of what the way that they were talking i could tell that they were in an argument so i was standing there looking up trying to trying to hear what they were saying and as i looked up i saw this uh face morph out of the ceiling it was it was long and it was pale and it had these uh sharp pointed teeth and it uh pulled away from the ceiling and drifted towards me which i didn't appreciate very much so i did the most advanced spiritual warfare tactic i knew at the time which was to jump to my parents bed and pull the covers over my head which apparently worked because after a few minutes i i peeked out from behind my quilted shield and it was gone and so uh for for as long as i can remember i've seen uh angels demons and other spiritual things not so differently from the way that i'm seeing all of you right now um and i want to just talk a little bit about that gift and more importantly kind of where where that uh where that gift has has led me personally because i think there's something there for all of you but before we dive into that i wanted to share just a little bit about a couple things that i saw during worship tonight is that okay cool um so i i love being in worship because there's always just it's always amazing to see how the presence of god responds to to his children showing up to celebrate who he is and you know i've been a pastor's kid and a missionary kid my whole life so i've been to a lot of church services and every single time although there's things that are thematically similar uh the way that uh heaven responds the way that angels respond to worship is unique every single time um which i think is cool and it was neat because i um i saw this big fire kind of in the very middle of this this room here kind of started right about here-ish and went all the way you know to nearly back to the sound booth over there and there was this this big pile of stuff and i you know i uh you guys probably have somewhat similar uh sort of terrain here you know uh every fall there's like a million pounds of leaves that fall down in my backyard and tree limbs need to be cut down on branches and things like that and you pile that stuff in a big pile and you burn it at the end right is that you guys do that okay originally from california and if i say that everyone seems horrified there but we i know that we all probably do that around here um you burn it why would you do that it's because the entire state of california is very flammable so i know that my uh uh uh so this is a weird comparison but there was just this huge pile of stuff in the middle kind of like when you're about to you know do a do a burn polish tree limbs you know uh stumps just all this dirt leaves everything all piled up in there and it was neat because i saw um uh bad things i saw like chains and like shackles and heavy weights and things like that but they're all thrown in this pile i saw good things i saw gold and i saw jewels and i saw treasures and even as we were worshiping i saw angels coming down adding adding jewels and gold and things like that to the pile and the beautiful thing is whether it was a bad thing or whether it was a good thing it was all burning and burning up in worship you know as being released as worship to god and i and i've heard from from your pastor a little bit about just some of what you've been doing on these these in encounter nights and i can just um i could feel it when i walked in but i can see it in in what's going on in the spirit that there's just um there's there's a culture of worship that you've been building up in this place and i i promise you that is compiling and building and will grow bigger and bigger and bigger and that i believe that anyone who comes in here regardless of their background will be it'll be easier and easier every single time for them to just engage in worship even if they don't know what they're doing exactly just yet that's because the the presence the the ease the the all of the things that have been thrown thrown into that pile of worship will just burn really easily so that was a that was a neat thing to see one other just quick thing that i saw that was that was neat right at the end there i noticed that at a certain point the angel stopped throwing all the treasure and the jewels and things that they were throwing into the fire and they started throwing them on top of people and they were landing on their shoulders and on their head and kind of kind of piling up and i thought i wonder what's going on they look kind of silly it's like a little you know messy pile of gold here that's like my kids play with glitter it's you know kind of everywhere um and as we sang that last song just kind of declaring declaring the lord's name declaring who he is one of my favorite things to do in worship i saw all of us as we were standing and singing this fire coming out of everyone's mouths and this um this heat just kind of entered the room and all of the gold and all the jewels melted but it didn't just melt and kind of melt away it melted into shapes and melted into like uh like like a oh gosh what's it called epilep is that what it's called kingly shoulder pads let's call it that i'm sure there's a proper name for that but you know what i'm talking about um and uh and and crowns even the jewels just kind of moved into a certain way and they all shaped into these beautiful shapes and i just had this thought i haven't really thought it through uh much yet but i just had this thought occur to me of like oh man we've it's we are most in alignment with our identity when we're declaring who god is you know and it's kind of felt like that like declaring who he was was kind of bringing us into alignment with who he made us to be and who we are and so that was just kind of fun so thank you for letting me share that with you guys um so i kind of want to give you just a little bit of background um and then you know we'll go from there so uh so like i said i've been seeing this stuff for for as long as i can remember now i kind of break my life up at least this part of my life into into three sections and the first section i like to call mutual ignorance where my parents got saved shortly after i was born so i grew up in a christian home but we were going to a church they didn't really believe that the gifts of the spirit were meant for today it was an amazing bible teaching church just as an in-depth value for just study of the word and i really love that foundation but again they didn't really believe that the gifts of the spirit were meant for today and so wouldn't wouldn't have really had a context for the kind of experience that i was having now because i was you know little when i would point out the uh ladies dressed in gold who were dancing uh during worship at church or the big black flying dog that i saw over our downtown area my parents thought i just had an overactive imagination and i thought that their disinterest in the uh dancing golden people or the giant flying black dog was this same kind of indifference they said when i would you know point out an airplane or a fire trucker and the other things i found exciting as a little kid and so for a while there was just kind of this uh mutual ignorance i didn't know that anything that i was seeing was out of the ordinary and my parents didn't really know that i was experiencing anything out of the ordinary does that make sense you doing good okay some of you are looking a little that's okay we're fine tell me how we feel later um so um so some time uh went by now during this period kind of from zero to nine years old i would see angelic stuff and demonic stuff and about equal measure now even though i could tell that that demons were kind of you know a little bit scary looking i didn't really feel any any sense of fear from them you know it was like when you when you go to the zoo and you see like a lion or a tiger you know i could tell like oh that's a that's a predator that's a you know big strong animal but there's a sense of separation there's this sense of distance and so there's no real feeling of danger and so it was it was kind of like that well when i was uh nine years old that that suddenly and unexpectedly shifted i remember my my mom was putting me to bed one night and you know she prayed for me put me to bed walked down you know closed the door and i saw this shadow walk into my room so walked down along the side of my bed stopped at the foot of my bed and all of a sudden i felt this this overwhelming sense of fear just tremendous fear out of nowhere from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes i felt cold i felt paralyzed i felt like there was like straps across my chest i could couldn't move could barely breathe and just this absolute terror just went through me and i i laid there unable to move for somewhere between five minutes and three hours i'm honestly not entirely sure it's kind of hard to tell when you're terrified um and eventually it kind of worked out this little shimmy move where i was able to get enough momentum to kind of rock myself over so i would landed a face down in my pillow and was able to go to sleep i woke up the next day i went to school and i saw all the normal angels and demons that i would normally see throughout the day no sense of fear all that that kind of feeling of separation was totally back and then thought well you know that was weird and that night laid down or rather walked into my room to go to bed and that shadow was already standing there at the foot of my bed the second my mom walked out again this overwhelming sense of fear and so this happened night after night and every night there was a little bit more there was more kind of frightening images more demonic things that would come into my room every single night and it'd get worse and worse and worse and every time it was just accompanied by this horrible overwhelming fear now uh i am at this point we were we were missionaries when i was growing up so we were missionaries in russia and finland and a few other places in europe and you know at the beginning we we my family was going to churches that didn't believe the gifts were meant for today we went on the mission field uh the holy spirit just kept showing up uh even though we didn't believe that he was supposed to which is very inconvenient i remember one of my if this is offensive to you if you can talk to me later but i remember this one time my dad was was baptizing new new uh new people who have been saved and there's this russian guy and grew up in a young russian guy grew up in communist russia never heard anything about jesus before before us and he baptizes him and he comes up speaking in tongues and my my dad is like believes that you're not supposed to do that but no one's told this guy to do that no one's taught him to do that he just started doing it's like do i baptize him again i don't know you what do you do and so we had had to shift shift our our understanding of of god's plan a little bit in that time but so we went to a church that believed in the gifts but they didn't really actively train people and how to go after them or how to pursue them and so even though i knew that you know prophecy was kind of a thing and you know i had this vague idea of this stuff i didn't really fully understand it so it still wasn't enough to really give me a grid for the things that i was experiencing and so i was and so i you know i didn't really know what was going on i kind of had two thoughts i thought either either i'm going crazy or the devil had just uh flipped open the phone book landed on my name and said i'm going to ruin this guy's life neither of which was very hopeful or exciting for the younger ones in here a phone book is a big book where you used to have everybody's name yes i know it's a silly idea but it used to be necessary so that's before you had a contacts list and you know and so i i was scared to tell my parents exactly what was going on and so i just told them i was scared i didn't tell them everything that i was seeing and my parents gave me all the all the good things that good christian parents would do they gave they prayed with me they gave me scriptures to declare they let me you know play worship music while i was trying to sleep and none of it none of it helped none of it uh did anything to to just stem the tide of this fear and this this frightening demonic stuff that i would see increasingly every single night and so this went on and on getting worse and worse uh for three and a half years so finally when i was 12 12 and a half uh we ended up moving across the country and kind of by accident ended up going to a church that was really active about training people in the gifts of the spirit especially prophecy and so as we went there and kind of started getting acquainted with this church my mom dragged our whole family to this you know basic training in the prophetic class and i remember sitting there and hearing for the first time about the different ways that god speaks that it's not just this you know maybe idea that i had of like the clouds parting and this you know deep sean connery-esque voice you know saying saying something that that he might give you an impression or a picture in your mind's eye or that there's all these different ways that it that he wants to speak to you and and even though they weren't necessarily explaining exactly what i was experiencing it was the first time that i had heard anything that gave me a grid for the stuff that i was i was seeing and so i was finally comfortable with sharing with my family the full extent of what was going on and so they took me to speak to the some of the church leaders there and even though none of them had experienced the exact same thing that i had they'd at least heard of people who had this this kind of gift and i i remember um a lot of things happened at that point we'll kind of hit those in a second but one of the coolest things was that as soon as i had this third option show up that again my options were either i'm going crazy or the devil has decided to ruin my life and suddenly this third option showed up of maybe this is just a gift that i haven't learned how to manage yet how to steward yet that completely changed the way i was approaching what was happening and all of that fear that i experienced for three and a half years ended over the course of one week and in that week even though i saw the same things that i had before they carried none of the sting that sense of fear that sense of overwhelming it completely completely went away and i want to pause for just a moment here hit a little cul-de-sac and then and keep going on but um i've met a kind of two groups of people when i when i talk about seeing the spirit i have met a shockingly large number of people who've had a very similar experience to me um it's very common for for people to have an experience especially when they're young of seeing in the spirit and experiencing fear and either just you know not knowing what to do with that or that causing them to want to shut that gift down and then i also experience a large number of people who maybe like the idea of of seeing angels and seeing the spirit and pursuing a gift a gift of a gift like that um but are frightened about the idea of seeing demons like oh can you just like get the angel part and like skip the you know demon side is that like it's like a buffet you know can you walk past the salad bar you know um and the thing that i want to emphasize is and you know this is giving away the ending but we'll get to it again from another angle of the the only way that anything that we see in the spirit is useful is if we see it in the context of who jesus is if we see it from any other lens we might misinterpret we might misunderstand and especially if we see something demonic we might be afraid god is not afraid of the demonic he is not he's not he experiences no fear at all especially with regard to anything that the enemy does and so if we see something in the spirit and it makes us afraid that's that's okay you don't need to feel shame about that or i'm so unholy we just need to recognize i'm not seeing it the way jesus sees it right now and so i need to adjust to where i'm seeing those things while seated in my father's lap while while knowing the authority that i have in him and when we're seated in that place and seeing what the enemy is doing from there it's there's no fear in it whatsoever in fact it brings peace because we see how small what the enemy does is in the in the scale of what god is doing does that does that make sense so i want to say that as encouragement for either people who have experienced that in the past or people who might be have some trepidation around gifts like these is i think it's one of the tricks that the enemy wants to play he wants to give out the message that this is a scary door don't come through this one because the reality is is when you walk through that door with jesus it kind of undermines a lot of his plans the enemy's plans that is to be clear make sense okay leaving the cul-de-sac moving on down the line um so my life completely changed i i went from thinking that i might be going crazy to wow i have a gift and i want to learn how to use it to benefit other people to bless people to to you know do good things for the lord and so uh everything was perfect from that point and nothing ever went wrong after that the end um so uh if phase one was mutual ignorance and phase two was absolute terror uh phase three was uh about ten years of figuring it out um so it seemed to me that if if god was going to give someone or anyone a gift that he would do it to make us a more effective servant that we could that we could serve his will better that we could bless people that we could um you know help help one another out so i said all right i'm gonna figure out how to do that and some of that went great you know i'd look and i'd see in the spirit i'd see angels dancing and ministering to people during worship and i'd you know go to the worship team afterwards and say hey i saw this and i saw that and i saw this happen during this song and they'd be really blessed they'd be encouraged and you know oh that's awesome that heaven is responding that way to to you know the way that we're doing worship i'd go to the pastor and i'd talk about how as he was as he was teaching i would see angels uh come into the room and kind of like uh pick up these mechanisms out of people's heads and twist them this way and that way almost like they were adjusting their thinking or adjusting their minds and you know different things like that i'd share that with him and he'd be really encouraged you know about oh yeah you know heaven's partnering with the things i'm teaching the lord's changing people's minds adjusting people's hearts that's that's awesome and so that stuff went great and then other times things would you know wouldn't so go so great i'd because some of the stuff i could see and it made sense you know okay angels showing up they're wearing these beautiful robes they're dancing and jumping around well well we're all worshiping together those are those are worship angels that makes sense you know um angels coming they they adjust the thing in someone's head out you know they're partnering with with teaching and then renewing people's minds that's awesome and other times i'd see something that looked really abstract you know we'd go into ministry time and i'd see this orangish bluish reddish blob of light kind of move this way and then that way and then go away and i'm like well if god shows me something i'm supposed to share it right i'm supposed to you know why would you show me if not so i go the pastor there was an orangish bluish greenish thing that uh went that way and then that way and then it left my pastor he was so sweet so what do you think that means i don't know so what do you think we should do i don't know and then i just awkwardly walk away because i'm just doing my duty and you know time went on i'm like well you know i see angels and demons i why god wouldn't show me this demonic stuff he didn't want me to do something about it and so i remember after service one day i'm sitting at the front i'm like i gotta talk about this sometimes so i look up like it's gotta practice you know all right heaney meanie hermione uh i saw someone i knew a little bit in the back and so i'm like all right i'm gonna do this you know i'm 13 years old you know walk up this guy he's like 45. um i walk up to him he's like 80 feet tall you know at least it felt that way and i walk up to him and i'm trying to i'm like okay how do i like package this in a way that's going to be helpful because you know it's to serve people it's to bless people you know so um i'm looking and seeing this little demon on his shoulder and what it's doing i'm like okay i walk up to him and i'm like okay just keep it straight forward and simple you know i walk up to him i say hey i couldn't help but notice that there was a uh demon on your shoulder and i think that maybe you should stop looking at pornography now for some reason he didn't feel very comforted or helped by that in fact he was quite upset and now i know that's not shocking to you guys it was surprising to me though because uh i thought why would god show me something if he didn't want it to to be something that would help people you know and you know just obviously it didn't seem very helpful and so sometimes i had a great success and sometimes i had what did not feel like success and beyond that there was a lot of challenge around you know i felt like i maybe just barely understood little bits and pieces of of what i was seeing and so but anytime i'd share anything people would have a dozen questions about you know even if it was something clear like i saw angels coming and dance well why did they dance during that song and not this one you know and why did they do this and why were they wearing these robes and all these questions that i did not have the answer to and again i thought lord why would you why would you give me this gift you want me to use it to help other people to to serve you without an instruction manual or something you know now bit by bit piece by piece uh i started to to grow and i remember one one time i was sitting at the front of the church and there was this there was this one angel that was always standing if you imagine our church being more or less this shape we our entryway was right about here and there was a door to the lobby and there's this angel that was always standing to the right of the door and he was tall and he had this uh silver armor on standing very straight looking very serious looking in the distance spear in one hand you know every bit looking like a guard you know standing at attention always right there and i said you know i think i just kind of thought on that in my head as a protection angel and as i was looking at him i just kind of had this thought of you know i i appreciate that there's a protection angel there but what if a demon tries to come through a window and is is it literally a matter of if like a demon tried to come through this door that that angel could out maneuver that demon would that be whether what god wanted to do or what the enemy wanted to do is that how that would be determined and beyond that you know i appreciate that there's a protection angel standing there but don't we have the presence of god with us don't are we full of the holy spirit are we covered in jesus blood what what additional protection would a protection angel actually provide i mean i appreciate it you know but what's the what's the point of that unless i had that thought and i was just kind of rolling these things around in my mind i suddenly had a picture show up in my mind this little it's like a little short film that just suddenly appeared in my brain and i saw this this kingdom and there was a king and he was sending an ambassador to a foreign country and as he sent out this ambassador he sent a little honor guard with him about about 30 soldiers and they walked around with with the ambassador as he went down the road and they um came to this foreign country and they walked in i noticed that in the foreign country there were thousands of soldiers thousands and i thought to myself gosh those those 50 soldiers aren't really going to do much if if this army decides to attack this ambassador but i realized in that moment in this picture that the the purpose of that honor guard was not just that they would protect that ambassador along the road or they would protect that ambassador from the foreign army it was more than that it was a statement it was that king saying my power goes with this person and as soon as i had that thought i realized that it was not just about the literal protection that that angel would provide but the statement that the lord would send a protection angel to stand at the door of the place that his sons and daughters worshiped and what statement he was saying about the value he put on his people and what they were doing there and as soon as that thought entered my mind all of a sudden the angel's posture the way that he stood the way that he stood with such attention with such focus with such dedication just started to stand out i don't remember who said this quote and i'm probably going to butcher it but it's something to the effect of if you want to if you want to know how good a leader a leader is don't look at the don't look at them look at the way that people follow them and the way that that angel was dedicated to hit to the task that he had said a lot about the value that he had for the one who had given him that task i remember another time i was i was 15 years old and kind of had a bad attitude this particular day i think you kind of have a bad attitude from like 15 until like 19 or so depending depending on who you are um sometimes until 30 just depends um and i you know i had a lot of ups and downs during this period where i'd feel like okay i know how to share this i know how to be effective i know how to to bless people with this and other times where it was not going so when i feel like i'm just confusing people or or hurting them or any of these these things and this is one of those times where i wasn't wasn't feeling too too up on things and i uh it was a worship night that we were having in our church and it was a little bit late and i walked in there's just a couple people playing a little acoustic guitar on the stage and i went and i sat down and just found a spot and i looked in the spirit and i saw this bluish greenish whitish blob of light in the middle of the stage just uh oscillating back and forth in time with the music like this and again reminder bad attitude i thought what is that what is that thing why is it there why is it wiggling around what am i supposed to do with this as promised bad attitude and so i sit down there feeling frustrated and i turn and i look and there's this older woman who's in the uh the front row she's probably in her mid-90s and she was uh sitting in the front row and she's kind of you know leaning down like this and i had this thought show up in the back of my mind as i saw her sitting there now to explain this thought for just a moment i i want to tell you just a little bit about our church our church was really amazing we had a and one of the things that was really amazing about it was we had just this really fantastic worship our our worship pastor there was um really connected to a bunch of different worship pastors in the area kind of led and pastored them you know a whole bunch and um he also uh uh evangelized a lot of uh secular uh band members and things like that and would kind of bring them into the kingdom and pastor them as well and it was uh so because that we had really high quality worship really good music and you know it was really really awesome um now one of the negative side effects of that very positive thing was a little bit of a it's not anything anyone would have said you know explicitly but there's a little bit of a culture of like if you're not jumping up and down if you're not shaking around if you're not you know doing the the holy spirit boogie um then you might not be really engaging in worship you know if you're just kind of sitting there then maybe you're not really leaning in no one would have said that explicitly but it's a little bit of that kind of thought you know what i'm saying so i had that thought oh she's not really that engaged in worship it's a very long way of saying i judged this woman and the second i i had that uh judgmental thought i just felt this conviction hit my heart and i looked in the spirit and i saw straight through her and i could see uh i could see her her bones i could see her internal organs and i looked and i could see her heart and as i looked at her heart and saw it beating i realized that inside her heart was this bluish greenish whitish light that was oscillating back and forth as it moved through the four chambers of her heart as it beat and i heard the holy spirit say i'm sinking her heartbeat to mine and i looked around the room and i saw through everyone i could see their hearts and the exact same light was moving back and forth so piece by piece bit by bit in a thousand little moments like that i started to build a little bit more a little bit more of an understanding of the the spirit realm and how it works and how i can understand it i want to share uh one more story and it this isn't the only thing that happened that kind of brought me to this place like i said it really was a thousand little moments like this but um one of the biggest struggles as i as i started to get comfortable with understanding the things that i saw was eventually not knowing which things were the most important all the time i'd walk into the church and the pastor you know we had been kind of had a natural rapport over several years he'd come and say hey like what are you seeing i didn't and i as i learned more about how to see and understood more of what i saw i that question got harder and harder and harder to answer because i would walk into a room and every single person in that room had a personal angel that was following them around that was that was carrying things that were meant to help that person in their life and the things that god had called them to do every single person around them had a spiritual ecosystem a a culture that was around them based on their their prayer life their worship life their the things that they were going through the things that they were thinking about um when we would worship corporately together there's things that would show because of that there were things that were always there in in the church when we were together there were things that were going on because of what was going on nationally internationally and everything in between not to mention other stuff and so the answer to the question what are you seeing it was only getting more complicated what was the right thing to point out what was the best thing what was what was going to be the most helpful what was what was the most pertinent the most valuable and it was getting hard to answer then i had another problem i'm just going to address briefly here we'll probably talk more about this tomorrow some if you guys are available to every christian it's funny because at the time i couldn't have given you a good biblical reason or a good theological reason but just with with the knowledge that what i was experiencing was the result of a gift i was immediately convinced it was something that was meant to be available for every christian but up until that point i had very little success in imparting that gift or equipping other people to experience the same thing but something happened when when i was 15 that wasn't the only thing that that fixed this or corrected this or straightened this out but was was probably the biggest start to me not only understanding how how to interpret the things that i saw in the spirit which things were the most important to talk about or how and why this would be a gift that other people could experience um and that story goes a little bit like this i was i was 15 and i was on a mission trip with my with my youth group and uh we were doing uh some street ministry in paris and then had uh i went to serve a youth ministry that was in england and my you know my youth pastor used to always put something kind of fun or relaxing at the at the end of all of our uh mission trips probably so that we wouldn't go home and tell our parents that he worked just like dogs the rest of the time i now suspect um and so for this particular uh particular trip he had ended with a big youth conference that was that was going on and uh so there's this really big conference uh there's about three thousand kids that were going to this thing it was being held in this big double decker stadium seating uh cattle auction house in the english countryside and the um in fact there were so many kids coming to this thing that there's not enough room in the local hotels for for uh all the kids that were coming so they had set up a bunch of tents in the cattle fields around this auction house and so we were all staying there which in retrospect was not the most sanitary place to sleep but you know and so flash forward last night last session of the conference and we're going to be flying out the next days and we're all really tired because it's been 10 10 11 12 day uh missions trip and so we're in the back and the upper deck of the um of the stadium seating there and i'm sitting there and i'm listening to the preacher preach and again like i said i've been a pastor's kid and a missionary kid my whole life i've been in church a long time and so i can tell by the by the tone by the rhythm by the kind of story that uh that he was telling that that he was in about to invite people up to the front to receive jesus for the first time now i'd uh i'd been saved since i was uh three years old when i got saved at the post office it's a separate story and so i felt that the best thing for me to do at that particular moment uh was to take a quick nap so it's a very spiritual decision and so i leaned back and i put my feet up on the empty seat in front of me and i am i was getting comfortable and for no particular reason one more time opened my eyes and looked down at the stage one more time and for the first time in my life i saw jesus which made me sit back up he was standing in the margin between the stage and the chairs and he was pacing just like this and i quickly noticed that whenever he would turn to go back the other way he would keep his gaze fixed somewhere at the back of the room he wasn't letting keeping his eye off something and so i i followed his line of sight to this girl that was in the back of the room she was at the back right where the the first kind of road the stadium seating started there was this divider between where the stadium seats were and the rest of the chairs were she was resting her head against the divider kind of like this and as soon as i realized that jesus was looking at her i heard a voice in the back of my head say he sees no one but her and and i could feel the this intensity this intentionality this this purposefulness with the way that he was looking at her the way that he was walking it wasn't anxious it wasn't nervous but it was it was purposeful and it was intense and intent and it was it was there was so much intensity to it that it felt like how everything was being drawn in to focus more on what he was doing it felt like like unnecessary systems were shutting down just that i could focus more i felt like my hearing was getting smaller like my even my feeling was getting smaller just so that my eyes could be more open to see what i was seeing and so it was distantly that i heard the preacher begin to invite people up to receive jesus for the first time but as soon as i as soon as i heard him my eyes snap back to the girl and i saw for the briefest of moments she had her head rested down on the divider and then she peeked up now i saw him move but it didn't take him any time to get there jesus was was pacing there at the front and then he was standing right there in front of her and again i can feel myself being drawn in i can feel the magnitude of what he's doing and in that moment she one more time just lift her head off the divider and peeked out the moment she she lifted her head for the second time i saw these chains appear all around her coat they covered her completely from her from her neck to her ankles they went down in uh four long strands and at the end of each was a demon and they pulled and twisted the chains in such a way that it caused her to slump back down but that didn't matter because jesus leaned forward and he kissed her on the forehead and as soon as he did that every single link in the chain exploded like firecrackers just and the demons kind of flew back from the loss of tension they didn't make that sound and as the last link in the chain broke there was this this bright flash of white light it was so bright that it completely blinded me and my vision slowly faded back in when it did i couldn't see the stage i couldn't see the chairs and i looked down and i couldn't see myself all i could see was jesus and the girl and jesus was standing there with his arms open wide the big smile on his face and the girl was was wearing these robes and i know that it's something that's kind of a christian cliche but she was wearing these robes that were whiter than white the whitest purest thing i've ever seen before or since and she'd leaned forward and she hugged jesus around the waist and when she did i looked up because i felt this sense of heaviness from above me and when i did i saw this this hand and it was it was a big hand each finger was about as big around as a baseball bat and the index finger was extended out and it came down and it uh touched me on the forehead and as soon as it touched me on the forehead i meet all of reality snapped back into place the stage the chairs everything and the snapback was so sudden that i uh uh i found myself standing i'm not entirely sure when that happened uh but the snapback to reality was so sudden that i stumbled and fell backwards into my chair which is good because as i mentioned i was on the upper deck and so fine falling forward to be a slightly different testimony need a plaque for that one too [Laughter] and so i sat there for a moment just feeling like a truck had run over me and i kind of came to my senses just in time to lean forward to see the girl running up to the front to receive jesus even though she already had and so that was awesome that was a very powerful and affecting and special thing to see but what changed me and what started me on this journey of of understanding this this gift that i had experienced my whole life and honestly understanding any and all spiritual gifts is what happened right afterwards so i'm sitting there in my chair feeling shell-shocked feeling kind of overwhelmed by what i had seen and until eventually you know everyone around me stood up and started walking out i thought i guess it ended at some point now i'm i'm pretty good at getting lost in my own neighborhood in broad daylight uh so i was not entirely confident in my ability to make it back to the correct tent um so i got up and i looked around i saw one of the girls from my youth group and i thought okay if i follow her i'm not going to get too terribly lost and so i'm still just kind of feeling shaken and i sorry i'm following this girl keep my eyes locked on her as i just kind of trudged through this crowd of 3 000 people now like i said this is a girl from my youth group i knew her a little bit we weren't close friends or anything i didn't really know that much about her but as i was walking there focusing on her with the still feeling overwhelmed from what i had seen a few moments ago i saw everything that there was to know about her life i saw every decision she had ever made i saw every moment of joy every moment of peace every moment of fear and every moment of pain i saw them one after the other pop not like it was a movie not like it was a slideshow like they were memories that that i had just suddenly never knew that i had but suddenly did and they weren't just um again they weren't just memories it was like they were memories of a close friend of a sister of a daughter of of someone i cared about they were affecting both both in the positive way in the negative way and then i saw her entire future i saw all the decisions that she could make i saw all the decisions that she would make i saw the perfect plan that the lord had laid out for her life and i saw which parts of that plan she would choose and which parts of that plan she would not choose i saw the fullness of her potential and how far she was going to make it along that line of potential and all of that all of those memories all of those emotions all those feelings just swirled together and congealed into this overwhelming feeling of love and it was so immense it was so overwhelming that i couldn't hold it all in my mind at one time it was like a like trying to grip a beach ball or a basketball that's too big for your hand i couldn't get a grip on it i couldn't hold on to it i couldn't hold the whole idea of it in my mind at once and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it began to physically feel painful so much so that i had to pull myself away from looking at her and turn away but when i did i turned and i saw a person that i never met before but when i looked at this person i saw everything there was to know about their life i saw every decision they had ever made i saw every decision they would make i saw the fullness of their potential and how far they were going to make it along that line of potential and again i felt completely and totally in love with this person that i had never met so completely so fully that it became painful and again i had to pull myself away from looking at them but then i looked this way and saw everything there was no about this person's life then i looked this way and saw everything there was to know about this person's life and unfortunately as i mentioned i'm in a very large crowd and i'm ping pong from person to person to person the the rate at which this is getting overwhelming the the same emotion the same feeling the same sequence happening over and over and over again faster and faster and faster and again this this wasn't just an idle feeling it didn't want anything from the person it didn't demand anything but it but it needed to be expressed it needed to be shown i wanted to pray for them i wanted to prophesy over them i wanted to hug them i wanted to kiss them i wanted to pick them up in the air and spin them around i wanted to grab them by their face and scream how much god loved them but anytime i thought of anything to do in response to that love it was so painfully and woefully inadequate compared to it that i felt paralyzed so finally i got a bright idea and looked straight at the ground and felt like a genius so i'm trudging through a crowd of 3 000 people staring at my feet when i kid you not someone's foot kicks out in front of me and i see everything there is to know about their life i see every decision they've ever made i see every decision they will make i see the fullness of their potential and how far they're going to make it along that line of potential and i fall completely and totally in love with this person before i even see their face and so thankfully i somehow made it back to my tent and thank god when i woke up the next day it it was gone because i don't know how it would have functioned if it kept going on that way a lot of things kind of converged in that point in my life i was 12 years old when we started going to the prophetic training at our church and we had this uh cultural rules you had to do three years of prophetic training before you were considered a seasoned in the prophetic you know salty enough i don't know it's a terrible joke i'm sorry but um and so i just become seasoned at 15 and um and you know i dedicated a large portion of my life to growing in the prophetic to learning how to see in the spirit more to growing these things i thought that maybe i had an idea of what god's love looked like i thought maybe i had an idea of the kinds of thoughts that god has for his people but at that moment i realized i had not yet begun to scratch the surface of the depth of love that god has for every single person on this planet his love is is immense it is massive it is unending it is bigger than anything we've ever said it's bigger than anything we've ever done it is bigger than our biggest mistake it is bigger than our biggest victory it's bigger than our greatest weakness it's bigger than our greatest area of strength like i said i used to get confused i would i would my our pastor would walk up hey blake what do you see should i talk about the demonic things so that we can you know work on fixing those things that get free of those things would that be the most helpful should i talk about the way i see the angels responding to worship about about the way that that heaven puts so much emphasis so much value on his on when god sons and daughters come together to worship should i talk about the way that i see god transforming people's minds or healing people or setting people free in ministry time and when when we're worshiping when when the the word is being taught what's the most important thing what's the most valuable thing i started to realize after having that experience that i was approaching it the wrong way there's one anchor there's one foundation there's one compass that's the way that we navigate anything and everything with regard to the spirit his name is jesus and the love that he showed by giving his life for all of us it's the only thing that makes sense it's the only foundation it's only the only basis by which we are meant to understand everything that's going on in the spirit without it uh even with good intentions what do you talk about but with that as the center with that as the compass with that as the foundation with that as the anchor it doesn't matter what i talk about as long as i talk about how it points back to jesus i can talk about what's going on with the demonic as long as i point back to how jesus looks at that or how jesus responds to that i could talk about what's going on in worship as long as i point out how that's connected to the heart of jesus about what he's done for us if i relate everything back to him and it's all meaningful it's all valuable it's all doing something good does that make sense and though i have a lot of good theological reasons now that was one of the first big revelations about why i had that built-in conviction that the gift of seeing the spirit was meant to be available to every christian and why i understood for the first time why paul so eagerly encouraged people to pursue the gifts of the spirit especially prophecy in first corinthians 14 it's because there's too much there's too much good there's too much glory there's too much of god's love there's too many things that he wants to say too many things that he wants to show us too much of himself that he wants to reveal to us for one or ten or a hundred or a hundred thousand people to be the only anointed ones if every person on this planet were operating in the full measure of every gift of the spirit all at the same time for a hundred years we still would not have even scratched the surface of the magnitude of the love that he has for us i even realized that my idea even though it was not wrong it was incomplete this idea of if god gave me a gift that's to make me a more effective servant the first purpose of why god gives us spiritual gifts is not to make us more effective servants the first reason that god gives us spiritual gifts is to make us closer sons and daughters and yes a good son and a good daughter will be a servant to their family and to their parents but they do it with a very different motivation with a very different authority and from a very different place than an employee you know i love teaching about seeing the spirit i love training people and pursuing the gift of seeing in the spirit and the prophetic and other gifts of the spirit but but i love them because they reveal who god is they reveal god who god is to to one another so that we can know more of him so we can love more of him so we can experience more of him but they also reveal who god is to people who don't know him yet so i want to pray for you guys for a moment if you would i imagine that you wouldn't come to a meeting like this or at least wouldn't make it to the end unless you've had some kind of experience with with god's love maybe that's an experience you can point to clearly or an encounter you could point to clearly or a moment in worship or a moment of study in the word or worship or whatever else or maybe it's just kind of a general feeling but um i just want to encourage you for for tonight that that wasn't just a moment that wasn't a mountaintop experience that wasn't just an encounter that was a window into your home into the place that god has prepared for you into into the place that you have been invited into through jesus the place you've been adopted into again you know if we have more time we can talk about and i'm sure we're all feeling a lot of awareness of the world's need for everything that jesus has we're feeling it a lot right now it's kind of always there it's one thing to be able to share the idea of jesus it's another thing to be able to live as a walking person who knows jesus so i just wanted to take a moment just to kind of refresh that love to refresh that experience to refresh that connection with with who he is so if you would just just uh sit comfortably where you are good job uh close your eyes if you are not terrified to and it's gonna get comfortable if you would thank you so much for these hungry people people who will give up a friday night to to spend an hour worshiping you to spend time hearing hearing some teaching about about who you are know that some of them came here tonight feeling full i know some of them came here tonight feeling empty i saw no many of them came in here somewhere in between let us right now release wherever they're at just a new baptism of love let's release an encounter with your presence if there's a memory you want to take us back to lord i ask that that would just be revealed right now in our mind a moment in worship a moment when we were younger a moment a few weeks ago a moment we were studying your word a moment where the gospel was opened up to us for the first time whatever it is i just reignite that moment in our minds right now that that we would experience it right now as if it was if this were the very same moment i pray for those who who maybe are just can't think of one of those moments that none of those are coming up that maybe they haven't had that personal encounter with god's love that moment where they feel the eyes of the lord upon them and the affection that's behind those eyes the kindness that's behind those eyes and to those people i just release an encounter with your love i'm just going to stay here for a couple minutes and i know that staying for a couple minutes can be a little bit awkward and if you know if you need to go to the bathroom or something i'm not going to like shout at you or anything you know do what you need to do but the very first descriptor of love in first corinthians 13 is that love is patient we are often encouraged in scripture too to wait upon the lord and that i know all of us have probably had this experience i that one of the one of the most frightening things you can do is just look someone in the eye without saying anything without doing anything other than making eye contact and even though it might be a little bit awkward or i might feel a little bit weird i just want to take a moment just to stand there and let the lord look at you and you look at him i do just want to take a moment to say that sometimes because of our experience because of our history because of a belief we might have a cracked lens that when we picture god or or think of engaging with him we can feel harshness or or condemnation or disappointment but i do want to encourage you if there if there is that moment if there is that pain if there is that fear concern i believe that the lord wants to bring healing to that lens healing to that experience healing to that belief system healing to that piece of your history and i would ask you two to be brave and engaged knowing we've been promised that there is no condemnation in christ jesus so that if we feel condemnation that's just a little smudge on our lens i can see that some of you are feeling that heart connection you're feeling that that gazing upon the lord moment if you're there i just encourage you to stay there for a minute and i imagine that some of you are probably feeling like well i'm just sitting here i don't really feel anything am i supposed to like feel something or think something or i just want to encourage you though that we're all coming from different places and some of us take to certain gifts of the spirit or certain aspects of the spirit really naturally it's very easy and some of us have a little bit more challenge with it it's not because there's some deficiency it's just because often our natural strengths might be in a different area but the bible says that that my sheep hear my voice which means that you're you're fundamentally designed to hear what he has to say and to know him and to recognize him so i don't want you to feel any condemnation if you're not able to connect you're able to see something but i also don't want you to dismiss it as ah that's just not my thing or that's just not my gift you certainly don't experience god the way the person on your left or the person the way the person on your right does but we are all designed to experience him so i'd encourage you even just by faith even if you're not feeling anything to just sit here in his presence because even that is a form of worship so [Music] [Music] um yeah we just invite more of your love lord invite more of your presence we just expand our capacity to experience your love not out of selfishness not out of a i want the biggest blessing kind of mentality but because we know that your love is transformative it changes us it challenges us it grows us it matures us and it also expands our capacity to be a blessing to others to be to be a witness of who you are [Music] about to wrap up here in a couple minutes but i just saw a couple things when we were sitting here i just um so we were just sitting here i saw a couple angels bringing down um keys they're all different sizes and all different shapes to certain ones of you some of them look like like car keys or motorcycle keys i just feel like the lord was re releasing um just a response to practical needs for some of you that some of you there's some practical needs whether it's financial or just uh job-wise or just some some you know just practical situational stuff that's just been it's been so heavy on your mind and heart that's just even made it i feel like it's even kind of stolen some of your um some of your quiet time with the lord and not not even out of anything other than it's just this thing is just such a big concern and i see the lord just releasing solutions to just unlock those things solutions to those problems so if that's you just want you to receive that in your heart right now for some of you i saw these older keys they were like the big old-fashioned like on a ring you know uh iron kind of key it's like an old door in an old house i heard the lord say those were keys to inheritance i felt specifically that there was um especially in this kind of uh interesting year and a half or so we've had uh there's been some family kind of disconnects some some kind of unplugs some even some just kind of breaks in in connection i felt like it was in multiple directions i felt like it was brothers brothers and sisters it was sons and daughters and it was mothers and fathers i know this is super vulnerable so i'm not going to make you do this but if that's just something that's happened in the last year and a half or so uh if you'd be willing to stand up i'd really appreciate that just because i feel like the lord wants to just release some breakthrough into that and it doesn't matter if it's on their side or your side um but from the last year and a half there's just been some some disconnect stuff you know it's kind of that can be a different thing but if that term just disconnect just kind of rings to you so if you uh if you're sitting down i'd appreciate it if you extend your hands to the people who are standing up and if you're standing up just kind of put your hands out in front of you lord we just release breakthrough into these situations lord we just say that you are a god of family you're a god of connection you're a god of intimacy you're you are a restorer you're a healer we just release keys to restore inheritance whether it's brother to sister sister to brother whether it's mother to father whether it's whether it's to sons and daughters whatever direction it it is going and on each ring i saw i saw two keys one was an iron key and one was a glass key the key of iron was was to just unlock your right like your inheritance the glass key was actually a key of humility to be able to to recognize and acknowledge uh perhaps some of your uh contribution to the get to the disconnection some of the responsibilities that you might have whether they're teeny tiny ones or if they're big ones i just release healing to these family situations i pray that they would get phone calls tomorrow or people who have said i don't want to talk to you anymore just come and say that they want to reconnect i just released keys to learn how to navigate difficult situations big disagreements important boundaries and lines very important issues issues of the kingdom but how to do it through connection through intimacy within family we just say healing and restoration even to impossible situations right now in the name of jesus i just want to encourage you that as you think about that person as you as that person calls you or you feel that compulsion to call them i feel you're going to feel that key in your hand you're gonna feel a little push a little push to say this or to go that way you might even feel a little correction a little redirection a little ah change change change the way that you're saying that change the tone you're saying that i know correction is one of those things that can i can feel a bit scary depending on what our background is well there's no one who can correct more lovingly than the holy spirit the beautiful thing about the correction of the holy spirit is that when i make my heart sensitive to what the holy spirit is saying when i let myself be correctable by him then my my children get a better father than i could give them on my own my wife gets a better husband than i could give her on my own my parents get a better son than i could give them on my own so we just receive what you have for us lord we receive that right to inheritance to connection to intimacy and we receive that gift of humility that's correctable that's teachable that's malleable in your hands lord in jesus name amen are you guys going to sit down because there's just one one last thing last thing was like a big bag of keys it was like a whole sack sack of keys and i saw these angels going from person to person and i heard the holy spirit say pick one i don't know if you're like me i'm kind of like please just pick one for me i mean come on this is stressful um a word that one of the um awesome prophetic voices of of our health house in uh atlanta gave at the beginning of all this uh chronovirus stuff that that he believed that this was a season for the sons and daughters of god especially those with a with a uh a gift of business on their life this was actually meant to be a time of acceleration and growth where where god is actually giving unique ideas a refresh a reset new new direction new new approach and i just felt like today it wouldn't have to just be business but especially if you're you carry that gift um that it's actually time to start dreaming about the future start dreaming about where where god's taking you next and what god's doing with you next so i wanted to ask two two groups to stand either people who have found it really hard to dream or think or plan about the future and people who are dreaming and planning about the future but are feeling that trepidation of like should i should i actually go for that should i actually go in that direction should i actually pursue the idea so either you're feeling kind of very stuck in the right now i can't i can't even think and plan about the future or you're seeing stuff for your feeling a little bit of trepidation if that's either one of you if you're either one of those things or anything in your spirit just kind of dinged when i said if you just stand up that'd be fantastic all right we got some people ready to go somewhere yeah i just felt like i know that many of you i'm sure i'm sure many of you know this but i just wanted to re-emphasize that this is this is maybe a cheesy way of putting this but i think sometimes we can think that god only cares about church stuff the truth is that there's there's nothing on this planet that god doesn't care about and there's no area there's no industry there's no sector of society that he doesn't want to send a son or a daughter to that carries his kingdom so whether you are an auto mechanic an engineer or a school teacher or a plumber or anywhere in between god wants to release his kingdom into every single area of this world and he wants to do it through his sons and daughters the foreign queen saw the glory of god in the way that solomon's table was set that means god wants to reveal his glory through interior decorating it's funny but it's in the bible the first account or the first uh indication of the spirit of god coming upon someone was a craftsman who was making the implements in the temple god cares about work cares about the things that we do cares about the dreams that we have not just because they're our dreams but because he wants to reveal his kingdom in every single part of the world again it may seem ridiculous but crazier things have happened the lord wants to lead people to him through the way that their oil is changed through the way that they're treated at a store through a piece of art so i just want you to put your hands out in front of you and lord we receive receive the grace to dream to dream big to dream small and to dream all the spaces in between to dream into our future and to boldly build plans and be directed by you toward those dreams we just received the truth that you've called us to be a city on a hill that can be hidden to shine brightly to reveal your nature through good works i just first just released this backing of divine purpose whether we're ministers in church whether we're mechanics whether we're business people whether we're artists or anywhere in between that we would feel the divine purpose of god in our life that that we would see the divine inspiration in our passions and the areas that we care about that we would recognize that we have been sent there with authority to bring god's kingdom to places that it is not on earth yet i also just release courage to reach into the bag and pull out what we want to pull out what we believe god is saying for us to be willing to take a risk to be willing to pursue something i just i just shake away that that fear of not succeeding of making a mistake of making a wrong choice this released boldness and clarity and peace and wisdom i feel like there are some of you who are looking for partners you're looking for people to partner with that if you felt overwhelmed about the idea of doing this idea alone i just want to encourage you god's going to bring brothers and sisters going to bring people with skills that you don't have around you and they're going to have a similar vision they're going to want to go where you're where you're going but they have the skills that you don't have and god's going to start bringing divine partnerships this is a very simple thing for those of you who are feeling some trepidation like it's hard to choose it's hard to nail it down it's hard to really want to commit i just saw this picture of you sitting down and just writing it down just writing out writing out the plan writing out the best version of the plan of what you'd want to see happen of what you'd want to do and even that feels a little scary it feels like it's on a piece of paper someone might have an opinion about that someone might think about that that might happen or that might not happen but even that simple act of writing it down of writing down what you'd like to see happen or where you'd like to go what that idea would look like i just see the wind of god coming on it see how this release a blessing on these dreamers on these people who are who are releasing the the practical application of god's love into every sector into every area into every industry all right you guys can sit down i'm almost done don't worry all right so just last last thing to to wrap up here um i understand there's some ministry folk hiding around here somewhere um if you guys wouldn't mind coming up and lining up here that'd be great and then if uh wonderful bethel students if you guys would come up over over this away all right that went great i didn't fall um so i just felt some wind on that on that grabbing on that and that choosing thing i know this is really tricky in uh church because we're supposed to be humble which means we're supposed to be like really small and devalue ourselves and all that hashtag sarcasm um but i am i felt kind of two categories here i felt like there were some people who um there's something that's on your heart that you want you want the lord to do you want to see him do something whether it's a breakthrough in your life whether it's a breakthrough in your family whether it's some of these kind of business or idea or dreaming kind of kind of ideas i'd love for you if you would be willing to come up here and partner with one of these people to to pray with you about that thing coming true about pulling on the heart of god the lord encourages us to ask seek knock to ask for what we want to go boldly before him and i know it's weird but there's something powerful when we when we stop kind of isolating ourselves and ideas or our thinking and find a brother and sister and just partner in prayer about it does that make sense to everybody and so if there is something that you want god to do in your life that you want to see happen in your life in a moment here we'll we'll wrap up and i'll i'll you know hand it back over but i i would love for you to come up and just partner with someone up here about that um the last thing and just for these wonderful four ladies over here who are alumni from our school of ministry um if you're just feeling dry if you're just feeling a little bit kind of done feeling a little bit overwhelmed i'd love for you to come up to one of the four of them and they're just going to say what they hear god saying over your life start declaring they're going to just going to prophesy over you and declare what they hear god saying over your life and so if you're dry if you're feeling hungry if you're feeling just that kind of done sort of sort of feeling i'd love for you to come and i just feel like they're gonna just release some encouragement and some some just refreshing loving and uh prophetic impartation from the lord does that make sense so if you want to see something happen if you're hungry to see a breakthrough that you want us that you want god to manifest you know i want you to come to those folks over here if you want a prophetic word four ladies over there clear cool all right if everyone can stand up real quick i just want to pray one last blessing on you guys um you know tomorrow we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the practical about about pursuing the gift of seeing in the spirit and i love teaching that i love talking about that it's it's fun maybe we'll have a little time for some question answer stuff and kind of talk about this this spirit stuff more but whether you come tomorrow or not the most important thing about seeing in the spirit or any gift of the spirit it's how it points back to who jesus is yeah so i just want to do one one last prayer if you just kind of put your hands out in front of you that'd be fantastic let us pray that you would lead us into more encounters with the nature of who jesus is that whether we've been a christian since as long as we can remember or we got saved just a little bit ago we would walk into a daily revelation a daily understanding a daily experience of revealing who you are to us of revealing what you did for us as we pursue gifts of the spirit as we learn how to prophesize we learn how to hear your voice to release miracles to enter your presence that always always always remember that you are the anchor you are the foundation you are the center you are the compass by which we navigate all of these things that all of it points back to you and all of it only matters in how it relates to you so i just released more encounters with your love in jesus name amen thank you very much everybody so i

Channel: The Gathering Place Church

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Length: 174min 46sec (10486 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021