Prayer in the Spirit

The Gifts of the Spirit 101

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How much do we all need the gifts of the Spirit 101 training course for today!

Did you know that all 9 are relevant for extending the Father’s love to the nations?

And in my book LOVE SPEAKS, and in the MASTERCLASS and TV Series, I teach that there are 4 of them in particular that are related to hearing the voice of God. More on that later.

Being raised a “Lutheran” I thought the Holy Spirit was just a Dove that showed up at the baptism of Jesus.

I had no idea that He was the personal presence and the “gift of the Father” through Jesus for us to walk with, learn to listen to, and to flow in His gifts.

Imagine my surprise when I received a double dose of His power simply by asking for it!

Are the Gifts for today? Can you prove it? Excellent questions!

SCRIPTURAL PROOF OF THE PRESENT REALITY

There is Scriptural Proof of the present reality of the gifts and an extension of the Kingdom of God upon the earth.

And 4 of them are taught uniquely in LOVE SPEAKS as Gifts to help us hear the voice of God!

Are they really for today?

Paul proves to us that the gifts of the Spirit are needed in this whole Dispensation and will be with us as powerful blessings until the end of the Age when Jesus returns.

He writes to the Corinthians,

“I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus…even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that YOU ARE NOT LACKING IN ANY GIFT, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our LORD Jesus Christ, who shall confirm you to the end, blameless in the Day of our LORD Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 1:4-8).

 

What do we learn from Paul in this passage?

  • (1) The gifts of the Spirit are an extension of the grace of God (verse 4).
  • (2) The gifts testify of the reality of Jesus and His Kingdom (verse 6).
  • (3) Paul wants all believers to be actively pursuing and flowing in the Gifts (verse 7).
  • (4) The Gifts are a part of this current Dispensation, and will be active until the return of the LORD Jesus Christ in the Second Coming (verse 8).

WOW!

Let’s ask a few questions.

What are the 9 gifts of the Spirit? Here’s the answer:

“But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the WORD OF WISDOM through the Spirit, and to another the WORD OF KNOWLEDGE according to the same Spirit, to another FAITH by the same Spirit, and to another the GIFTS OF HEALING by the one Spirit, and to another the EFFECTING OF MIRACLES, and to another PROPHECY, and to another the DISTINGUISHING OF SPIRITS, to another VARIOUS KINDS OF TONGUES, and to another the INTREPRETATION OF TONGUES” (I Corinthians 12:7-10).

Exciting right?

Have the Gifts of the Spirit always been in operation through God’s people?

Answer: 7 of the 9 have been in operation since the Book of Genesis! Only 2 of them are brand new to this Dispensation.

What? REALLY? Yes! Which 2 are brand new?

Answer: the Gift of Tongues and the Interpretation of Tongues (these were given to the Church on the Day of Pentecost as new gifts especially for this time of the “Church Age”; see Acts 2 for a further understanding).

Question: when did the gifts “die out” for the Church?

Answer: NEVER! Yes, it’s true that as the Church spread throughout Rome, in the first few hundred years they were not as practiced as they should have been. But the testimony of Jesus and the extension of the Kingdom in all the world has been witnessed in every generation of Salvation-History through all 9 Gifts, and they are needed for today and for tomorrow, until the LORD Jesus Christ returns!

HOW TO BECOME A REAL SUPERHERO

This Lutheran boy became a real SUPERHERO overnight…

The “real Avengers” are those who are filled with the Spirit (all believers have a measure) and are committed to extending the Kingdom of God upon the earth.

You too can learn to flow in the 9 gifts of the Spirit, and not just for your own blessing, but in reality they are for the blessing of others!

When Jesus began to establish His Kingdom in these realms, He opened the scroll of Isaiah to declare that the Holy Spirit was to be the love of God in action,

“The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD” (Luke 4:18-19).

Can you see it? The Holy Spirit flowing through the Church, on this side of the Cross, is extending God’s love, restoration, healing and miracles, deliverance and salvation…to all the world! The Ministry of Jesus continues through you and I!

Time to become a real superhero: pray for the sick until you see them recover; cast out demons and bring freedom; flow in the gift of prophecy and share God’s destiny with people. And the list goes on!

Becoming Supernaturally Natural

The gifts of the Spirit enable all of us Believers to be supernaturally natural!

Finally, what 4 Gifts are related to LOVE SPEAKS and are taught on in the MASTERCLASS?

Answer: Prophecy, the Word of Wisdom, the Word of Knowledge, and the Discerning of Spirits.

All of these subjects will be future Blogs. For now, I encourage you to activate your faith and flow in the Gifts of the Spirit! And that ends our Class, “The Gifts of the Spirit 101” and I encourage you to learn more.

FREE GIFT: here is a link to this full 17 minute teaching from my new LOVE SPEAKS MASTERCLASS. Enjoy this link today, and start off your learning by enrolling the MASTERCLASS with a special 20% Discount! Just enter this Code when you sign up for 20% off!

CODE: 20GodTV

Click HERE for more info on the MASTERCLASS.

Become a Dreamer of Dreams!

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Have you dreamed lately?

I only ask because dreams are one of the 7 Common Ways that Love Speaks, from my new book, Love Speaks: 21 Ways to Recognize God’s Multi-Faceted Voice.

In fact, they fall as #11 in the book, and if you have faith to believe it, God is communicating nightly with you in your dreams and in visions of the night seasons.

Did I say, “nightly”?

Really?

Yes. Quite possibly.

That means tonight!

Throughout 6,000+ years of salvation-history, God has been dialoguing with us through the amazing prophetic language of our dreams in the night. From Genesis to Revelation, from Revelation to today, dreams are consistently one of the most amazing ways of Love Speaking.

Dreams can be either literal or symbolic. Most often, I believe they are symbolic, and they are made up of parables and metaphors.

Jesus utilized these tools of communication to teach vast truths, and the Book of Revelations’ visions contain them, too.

Our dreams are filled with metaphors.

Here’s what Adam Thompson and Adrian Beale have to say about this from their amazing book, The Divinity Code (published by Destiny Image, Shippensburg, PA, 2011), page 72.

“God speaks to us in parables because they relate to us and have greater potential to be anchored in our minds. He also encodes His wisdom using metaphors because they are more readily received, they create a hunger in us for the interpretation, and they bypass our heart’s natural self-protective tendencies.”

You might remember those dreams that God gave Pharaoh and how Joseph was filled with the Spirit and properly interpreted their symbolism to help prepare all of Egypt for coming famine.

You and I are likewise filled with the Spirit in these “Last Days” and God wants each one of you to get better at both recognizing how He is speaking to you through dreams and properly interpreting your dreams.

Learn to do both!

How do you learn to interpret?

The #1 way is: read your Bible & be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Sounds simple, right? Read your Bible more and more often, as God utilizes the Word as His primary source of leading within dreams (for the believer).

And you need the Holy Spirit, as He is the Great Interpreter of your dreams!

For example, if you see an EAGLE tonight in your dreams, it could mean one of a dozen Scriptural possibilities for you, including,

God, the LORD Himself, yourself as a Seer/prophet, being lifted by the Spirit (achieving something not by human effort), strength, wisdom, or judgement, or many more!

And here are some Scriptures that have an EAGLE as these possible interpretations:

Isaiah 40, Matthew 24, Exodus 19, I Samuel 9, 2 Samuel 1, Deuteronomy 28 & 32, Psalm 103, Revelation 12, John 20 & Daniel 10 (and there are even more).

Dreams can build faith, bring illumination, confirm direction, or even be warnings from the LORD.

Here’s a great story from the life of evangelist Reinhart Bonnke.

One night, both he and his brother Jurgen had the same dream, thousands of miles apart, and neither one of them knew it at the time.

In the dream, Jurgen was crossing a huge suspension bridge and then falling into an abyss.

After this dream, Jurgen asked God in prayer to confirm that it was indeed a warning from Him by verifying it in some way through his brother.

In the mail soon after, Jurgen received a letter from Reinhart, detailing the dream, with the same night as he had received it. The witness of the two dreams led Jurgen to receive Christ as his Savior!

Recognize and expect that tonight could be a night of dreaming with God!

Try praying this tonight as your head hits the pillow,

“LORD, speak to me tonight in my dreams! Meet with me as I sleep, and help me know Your ways.”

Become a Dreamer of Dreams!

Carl Wesley Anderson, April 14th, 2018.

Learn even more through reading Chapter 11 of my book, “Love Speaks.” You can purchase it here: https://www.lovespeaks.today/book.html

Does God Check His Voicemail?

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Carl here. I grew up in a Lutheran world where prayer was pretty much practiced as leaving a message on voicemail for God to check later: you pray, you’re pretty sure someone is listening up there, and you go about your business.

Easy, right?

Obviously, God must have had a lot of unheard messages on His voicemail, because all around me, nobody seemed to be listening for a reply to their prayers.

That would be much harder. That kind of prayer life would require responsibility on my part. Far too easy to just give God a call and leave Him a prayer message.

When I became a true follower of Jesus, I began to realize that not only was He listening to me, He was responding!

Responding in love!

Love Speaks (that is a catchy title for a book, right)?

Many Christians believe they have never once confidently heard a reply from the Lord after they left Him a prayer voicemail. And why is that? According to Scripture, there could be multiple reasons. Here are just 3, along with possible solutions:

  1. Sin BLOCKS the communication lines. “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).

    The answer: repent! I actually practice a daily repentance for my sins. Repentance to the Father, in Jesus’ name, brings you into intimate fellowship with Him, and positions you to hear in fresh ways from the Word and the Spirit.

  2. We don’t EXPECT Him to answer. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

    The answer: start believing that not only will God hear you, He has wonderful plans ahead, and He is planning on prospering you!

  3. Maybe He’s being QUIET: “The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior, He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy (Zephaniah 3:17).

    The answer: learn to listen to His quiet love all around you, and be secure in this stillness!

So does God check His voicemail?

The answer is NO: He doesn’t even have a mobile phone!

What’s way better than all the instant communication, mobile phones, and the personal assistant of Siri (for all you iPhone users..)?

I mean, seriously, what can be better than Google or Siri on the information highway?

How about:

GOD IS ALWAYS PREVIOUS.

Meaning: He is Providential; He is Omniscient; He is Omnipresent; He is ALMIGHTY!

Memorize this verse and remember it the next time you go to prayer and are thinking of leaving a voicemail:

“It will also come to pass that BEFORE THEY CALL, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I WILL HEAR” (Isaiah 65:24).

 

***To learn more about this fascinating subject of hearing the multi-faceted voice of God, check out my new book, “LOVE SPEAKS: 21 Ways to Recognize God’s Multi-Faceted Voice.”

More info on our Official Love Speaks Website

https://www.lovespeaks.today/

 

 

 

green martyrs

The Green Martyrs of Ireland at the Ends of the Earth

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Never heard of the once-renowned “Green Martyrs” of Ireland?

Neither had I, until I studied Thomas Cahill’s excellent book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. In it, he shares how Ireland was unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without persecution: there was no shedding of blood. There were no Irish “red martyrs” as St. Patrick and others brought the reality of Jesus to the Irish with little or no opposition.

People became Christians through a gospel of both the love and power of Jesus Christ: even the Druid priests were converted when they saw the power of God displayed above the dark powers they were accustomed to.

The Irish monks in their ingenuity thought up another form of martyrdom that did not require persecution and bloodshed: they would come to call themselves, “Green Martyrs” and give their whole lives dedicated to worship and prayer.

The Green Martyr was one who followed the cost of discipleship that Jesus laid down, the “deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me” kind of commitment that leads to a self-sacrificial existence.

They chose the most remote corners of the Island, places like Skellig Michael, a rocky outcropping some 8 miles southwest of the tip of the Irish coast. Literally, “the ends of the earth” as their maps simply did not go any further than this point.

To this day you can still see the ruins of perhaps the best-preserved ancient monastery in Ireland.

I was taken out to this island on a boat trip to celebrate my 23rd Birthday while on my first missionary journey many years ago.

Skellig Michael is an ancient outpost of continuous prayer, consisting of a collection of beehive stone huts surrounding a small oratory building.

Skellig Michael on the Skellig Isles

And here’s a little secret (you read it here first: Star Wars Episode 7 was filmed there with Luke Skywalker on Skellig Michael! The monastery ruins were featured briefly at the end of of Episode 7 and will open Episode 8 when released later this year)!

I think God is shining a spotlight on a very special “place” on the earth, known only to Him for 600 years. For generations, rotations of 12 monks came to live here and dedicated their lives to study, prayer, fasting, community and worship.

It’s kind of like the original 24/7 model of prayer. It links current movements like Pete Grieg’s 24/7 Prayer Community based near London, or Mike Bickle’s IHOP Community based in Kansas City, or even the radical expressions of worship coming out of Bethel’s Redding Community or Jesus Culture.

Perhaps without realizing it, all of these modern movements have their roots in the ancient “Green Martyrs” of Ireland!

So here are 3 possible applications to becoming a modern “Green Martyr” (without having to move to Skellig Michael in Ireland):

1. Cultivate a lifestyle of radical commitment to God in prayer.
You can learn to cultivate a daily, hour by hour dependence upon the Spirit by new levels of self-control and self-discipline. Pray more! Pray fervently. Fast & pray, too. Try checking in with the Holy Spirit every hour of the day.

2. Read & meditate on scripture, daily.
The monks did. I visited the ruins of Nendrum Monastery, between Belfast and Downpatrick in Ulster, Northern Ireland. It contains the best-preserved ancient sundial in Ireland, where I noticed there were 8 markers which marked 8 distinct times of the day that these men and women of God would pause in their lives, pray, and meditate on Scripture. Try this: set some markers on your mobile phone to alert you to pause and pray throughout your day!

3. Find a spot in your home to dedicate as “holy space” to God.
The Christian Celts called these places, “thin places” because the veil between Heaven and Earth was so thin and they could sense the glory and presence of God lingering there. This could be a prayer room, or even a favorite chair where you commit to daily communing with the Spirit of God, interceding for others, or just reading Scripture. And the more time you spend in communion with God, the more you personally carry a “thin place” with you, wherever you travel, and can bring the presence of the King of Kings to others who need Him.

Remember the “Green Martyrs” and become one, in full devotion to Christ! -Carl Wesley Anderson. Please visit our Official Love Speaks Page to learn even more!

https://www.lovespeaks.today/

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before You” (Psalm 22: 27).

Sky

The GREATEST SIGN (of the End-Times)

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News reports have been buzzing all week with the sighting of the “Blood Moon” & solar eclipse in the night sky. This kind of “sign” in the sky will not appear again for 18 years. Many “prophecy experts” around the world are calling this a “sign of the end-times” and yet, I would like to focus your attention instead upon, the GREATEST SIGN and it comes from Jesus Himself.

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the whole world for a witness to all nations, and then the end shall come” (Matthew 24:14).

Jesus gives us a list of about 5 “categories of signs” (including world-wide natural disasters, wars and others). These all happened in the actual generation following His resurrection (about 40 years) leading up to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They are also potential indicators, to the final generation of people, that His coming is approaching soon. I personally believe that His final “sign” in the list has been in motion 2,000 years until now, and is nearly complete.

Thus, we are about to see the GREATEST SIGN be fulfilled in front of our very eyes, and it is possible it will happen in the next decade or two. The GREATEST SIGN is the final proclamation of Jesus to all nations: the story of the divine life of Jesus, the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross to forgive sin, the resurrection of Jesus and His defeat of death, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, and the pouring forth of His Eternal Life to all who will call upon Him and say, “YES!”

It is TIME TO ADVANCE THE KINGDOM! In the midst of spiritual darkness, your light will shine the brighter. It is NOT TIME TO RETREAT. It’s TIME TO KEEP ON ADVANCING until the witness of Jesus in the nations is finished.

God has been active in calling people to prayer and action, behind the scenes, (and not featured in world headlines), for many decades.

Back in 1934, just prior to the outbreak of evil and spiritual darkness of WWII, the Spirit of God called out to a young man in Wales named Rees Howells, and challenged him,

“Rees, do you believe that I can give the gospel to every creature?”

“Yes, LORD.”

“I am dwelling in you. Can I be responsible for this through you?”

What followed was a prayer directive, and has become known as, “The Every Creature Commission.” A new commission from the Spirit of God, for Rees and his team of intercessors in Wales to pray every year for 10,000 new laborers, both men and women, to be sent into the harvest fields, for the next 30 years!

That is approx. 1935 to 1965. They prayed, and thousands of people responded worldwide, in answer to this intercession.

Just a few examples: Billy Graham opened his now-famous Los Angeles campaign in 1949, and was jettisoned onto the world stage, proclaiming the gospel to millions in a huge awakening.

In the 1950’s alone, there were over 500 full-time evangelists traveling all over America in their famous “sawdust tent crusades” and saw countless people brought to the Savior.

There are also currently over 1,000 documented “awakenings” in small and large places all over the world. Revivals are breaking out all over, though you won’t hear of them on BBC News or CNN.

This incredible wave of the Spirit began to burst forth upon every continent during those initial years, & it continues through today.

Consider these facts,

*There are approx. 6,800 languages on earth. Only 1800 of those are left without a proper translation of the Bible. Of those 1800, Wycliffe Translators have missionaries working on 1500 of them!

*Many, many missions groups of all varieties are advancing the gospel into the unreached people groups. I had the privilege recently of meeting and hearing Loren Cunningham, original founder of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), speak at a Base near our home. He shared some incredible stories of the dedication of many young missionaries to carry the gospel to the un-reached, and how he felt that within about 10 years, in coordination with a number of other missions agencies, we could potentially reach the whole world and expose them to the gospel!

Will you begin to understand that the “GREATEST SIGN” of the end-times is not “Blood Moons” and solar flares, or natural disasters or wars. It is, quite simply, the finishing of the advancement of the Gospel to all nations, and then the end shall come.

It’s time to finish the “Every Creature Commission” and turn our daily prayers and expectation to, “Even so, Come LORD Jesus!”

So let me pose the question: what can you personally do to re-prioritize your time, your financial giving, & your prayer life, in alignment with this GREATEST SIGN?

At a recent Leadership Summit, I was honored preach a short, passionate message (about 15 minutes long) on the theme of this Blog. Please take a few minutes and hit the play button, or click on the “hotlink” to download the file, and listen when you have time. NOTE: this message includes my impression of the famous William Wallace “FREEDOM” speech from Braveheart in the Intro!

Enjoy and please share with your friends to stir them to missionary action & inspire their prayer life.

The Greatest Sign by Carl Wesley Anderson