Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Cheryl: Good morning.
Jeff: Good morning. Am I working? I'm working. Hi guys. The kids are here like that. Well, welcome everybody. Welcome everybody on livestream. Great to have you here. Pastor Brian is at a weekend-long wedding event today, so we don't have the pleasure of having him here. Jacque is home. We want to keep praying for Jacque. We will be praying for Dave Thompson. We know both of those are feeling so well. They are down with a little Covid, so we want to just pray them through to the other side of that. Brian does a lot better with Jacque than without. He wasn't really happy to have to go do a wedding all by himself. but duty called. She will get here online today.
The last two times that we were up here, we were talking about the ministry of healing. We ended with part two and it's been a little while since we were here, but we are going to pick up with part three. This morning's message is on the ministry of healing. I've said it before, but just to say it again, the reason that we even embarked on this is because I think many of us understand that there seems to be a clear sign that the father is bringing his church into a season of answered prayer. Not just Hope, but his church. It includes Hope. And so I just felt like it's really a great time to talk about prayer and to talk about the ministry of prayer and to talk about the ministry of healing, because we all want to be inspired. We want our faith to be enlarged, and we want to begin to pray more. Because if we are in a season of answered prayer, then clearly the more we pray, the more answers we are going to see. And so we want to be inspired to pray. We want to see faith rise up in us to pray. Cindy's waving the children because we forgot to dismiss them.
Cheryl: Children are dismissed. Go have fun and be good. And go and have fun.
Jeff: Sorry, kids. Thank you, Cindy. Actually, we were supposed to do some announcements too, weren't we?
Cheryl: Announcements.
Jeff: Wow. So go ahead. You had an announcement to make?
Cheryl: We have coming on the 18th, a ladies' brunch. Take the time to come. Ladies, let's be together. It's on a Saturday morning. It's lovely. It's going to be at Jacque's, is it?
Jeff: I don't know.
Cheryl: I'm not sure. Here. Okay. It'll be here. It'll be wonderful. It'll be a good time. It's at 10:00 AM. Oh, that's right. We are going to paint rocks. We are going to paint rocks. I have some of those rocks in my garden that someone has painted and they are very meaningful to me when I come across them because they have words on them and it just— you know how the holy spirit will inspire you. When you see something, when you see a word and I'm just inspired by those rocks. Not only I see them, but other people will be seeing these rocks that we paint. It will have cause and effect. It will be good. So please come. Think about coming.
Jeff: The other announcement is for the joy group, that's 50 and over and a number of us here qualify for that. We've scheduled a couple of fun things to do this summer. Coming up in two weeks, Wednesday evening, June 29th, I have reserved 20 spaces with the Wayzata Bay Charter company on Lake Minnetonka for boats and burgers. We are going to do a Lake Minnetonka dinner cruise, and you are all invited. For the dinner and the two-hour cruise and a decent tip for the people that take care of us, it's going to be $48 a person. You can sign up at the back. There'll be a sign up on a clipboard back there, or you can go to the church planning center and you can register for the event there.
Rachel has that all set up as an event for you to sign up for. The doc is at the city of Excelsior, the port of Excelsior. We are going to load on the boat at 5:15. It leaves sharply at 5:30, and we are going to enjoy some burgers and some fellowship and a beautiful cruise on Lake Minnetonka. So sign up for that. I got 20 spots reserved and I want to fill them all. Actually, if we get a really massive turnout, it's a great place to invite friends to meet people in the church. And it'll be just fun to be together. We won't be the only ones on the boat. We can't afford to charter the whole boat, but we'll find places to be together and to just enjoy our time.
After the service, Pastor Robert and Tequaris are going to serve communion. I want to let you know that. Back to the message. We are going to continue on with the topic of prayer and this morning, the subtitle is "Partnership with the Holy Spirit". If you look at the ministry of Jesus, everything that he did, he said he saw his father doing. In fact, we have a scripture for that. It is John 5:19. If you want to put that up, Corey and Cheryl, maybe you can just read that: John 5:19.
Cheryl: Jesus gave them this answer. Very, truly, I tell you, the son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his father doing because whatever the father does, the son does also.
Jeff: Jesus' whole life flowed out of relationship with his heavenly father. He actually says here that he did what he saw his father doing. He followed his father's example. So it seems that it would be a great way for us to live too because we have the same heavenly father and we can live out of our relationship with a heavenly father as well. And then another thing he said, we are going to read John 8:25-27. You want to put that one up, Corey. This is where he is giving an answer to the Jews.
Cheryl: Who are you? They asked just what have I been telling you from the beginning? Jesus replied, I have much to say in judgment of you, but he who sent me is trustworthy. And what I have heard from him, I tell the world. They did not understand what he was telling them about his father.
Jeff: What I have heard, I tell the world, so Jesus said things. He heard his father saying. So all of Jesus' cues for ministry came out of relationship with a heavenly father. We can't do any better than that. It's best if in our ministry to people, if in our prayer time, in our lives that we live in communion with a heavenly father and we take our cues from holy spirit who indwells us as Robert shared just a few minutes ago. That was amazing, Robert, very powerful. Isn't that amazing that the Hebrew word for Holy Spirit also means breath. That's very cool. A couple weeks ago, Robert shared about our identity and one of the things that he kept going back to as he was sharing that message was that our identity is rooted in intimate communion with Christ, that our identity is found in Christ. It's in our relationship with him. It's in our relationship with Messiah. It's in our relationship with Holy Spirit. That's where we find our identity. That's where we find meaning to life and that's how we want to live our lives: out of that relationship, because Jesus did the very same thing.
Everything that Jesus did in ministry, everything came out of who he was and out of relationship with the father. That was the source. He understood who he was so he gave out of that. When we grow in our intimate relationship with the Lord, we become confident in who we are as children of God, as lovers of God, as friends of God. We become comfortable with the calling. We have as the people of God. And so then we begin to live out of who we are. We live out of the reality that we are connected with God. We are messengers of God. We are holy because he is called us to be holy. See our lives are set apart for his purposes. And as we begin to grow in our understanding of that, we become confident in his purposes for our lives. And so then when we live that way, every single encounter that we have is a God encounter, every single one. We go in and out of stores sometimes and Cheryl will lean over to me and she'll say, "We just impacted the people in that store because we were there."
Cheryl: I often enter a store saying, "Okay, I'm going in. What's going to happen?" You know things that I don't know of just because we've entered with awareness. It's important.
Jeff: One of Cheryl's favorite words: awareness. If you spend any time with her, you'll hear it a lot, awareness. You have to be aware of who you are and where you are and what God wants you to do. It's just what we want to have happen. We want to become just a normal part of who we are in a normal part of the way we live. We just carry grace. We carry healing. We carry the goodness of God. We carry the kingdom of God wherever we go. And rivers of living water flow through us and out of us.
When it comes to the ministry of healing, it's very much the same thing. When we pray for healing, we want to be in communion with the Holy Spirit. We know the word. We know all the truths. We know all the right things to say. I don't know about you, but so many times I feel like we just end up saying the same prayer mantra of healing every time we pray: in the name of Jesus, by the blood of Jesus; we rebuke the devil. We all know those words. Not that they are not all true. They are true, but it's not just about saying the words. It's about connecting with the holy spirit and following his lead and releasing what he wants to release in that moment. And it's different. Every time, it's different.
Cheryl: He will surprise you. He will bring new things.
Jeff: I remember one time, I had a really very close friend. I was involved in ministry with him for many years. Suddenly he had this really serious colon cancer, and the doctors gave him weeks to live. Carl Anderson and I went over to pray for him, and I was just, I was just like, Lord, I don't know how to pray. How do I pray for this? How do I pray for my friend? In just the way he does, he spoke to me and he said, "I want you to impart my benefits to him." So the benefits of the Lord, do you have that one, Corey, Psalm 103? Let's put that up. Cheryl, if you want to read that one, that's at the bottom of page two there.
Cheryl: Praise the Lord. Oh my soul and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases? Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion? Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles?
Jeff: Those are the benefits of the Lord. Aren't they amazing? Don't you like those? Say them over yourself every day. Declare the truth about what God has for you. He forgives all of my sins. He heals all of my diseases. That's a good thing to say every morning and every night, every time you feel a pain. The older you get, the more often that is. The Lord said to me, release my benefits; impart my benefits to him. And so that's how I prayed. [Inaudible 49:36] and we prayed. I said, "Lord, I impart the benefits of the Lord. I impart your benefits to him. I impart your forgiveness and I impart your healing and impart that you renew his youth like an eagle. That's how the Holy Spirit showed me to pray. And of course I wasn't the only one who prayed. Carl prayed for him. Ian Andrews, I brought him and Ian prayed for him. A whole group of people that loved him, prayed for him. And then he radically changed his diet. He got in on some immunotherapy and he is still alive in ministry today. So it wasn't just my prayer. But the point is, God told me what to do. So I wasn't just stumbling around, wondering what to do and praying the same words I always pray. I just found a long time ago that that prayer template for healing didn't result in a lot of good— I mean, I didn't see a lot of results. That's not true, but there is more that's required. There is a faith connection with the holy spirit. There is a partnership with God that releases the power that results in the healing. That's what we are looking for.
Cheryl: When God says do it this way, this time, it's like a growing for you. It's like a lesson. It may be new to you and then you just say, okay, I'll do that. And that was what was needed. And it was a connection with this hearing, what God said to do right then, which is important. I was praying for a lady a very long time ago. And I said, "What do you need prayer for?" And she says, "I have fibromyalgia." And I'm like, what is that? Because it was long ago and new on the scene. And I was just like, “That sounds terrible,” that word. The Lord is inspiring me as she is telling me what I need prayer for. As I started to pray for her, something in me rose up to declare that this thing could not live in her. This thing could not be here. And so I simply prayed that prayer, but with my fervor, I just let it come and prayed for her. She went and sat down and in two weeks she said, "I got a clean bill of health from the doctor. I have no more fibromyalgia and it has been years." God can heal you from that thing. He can.
Jeff: I think the first time we talked about this, we were talking about how to hear the holy spirit. We talked about different ways the Holy Spirit speaks. A common way for me is to hear his voice in my head. He talks to me. A lot of people are visual. So you see visions, you see pictures, you see videos. A lot of people get scriptures to declare to pray. So you pray out of the scriptures. The Holy Spirit gives you a specific scripture. One of the things that happens often is that— we were talking about this this morning. It just comes out of you.
Cheryl: Yeah. It's a surprise.
Jeff: It's not premeditated. You don't even think about it before you do it. In this case, it just came out.
Cheryl: Did I say that?
Jeff: Yeah. Did I say that?
Cheryl: One time, long ago, this person was talking and talking to me about what they needed. Here is what happened. As they are talking to me and I'm listening to them, I hear another voice. And the other voice is God telling me what to say to them about what they are telling me. I'm like, what? This is so easy. So I stopped them after they told me everything. And I said, "Now I have to tell you that God was listening to our whole conversation. And this is what he wants to say to you about these things." And it was amazing. It was amazing. I just thought it's just what they needed. And it was a beautiful thing. I was very surprised. I also carried that with me, to listen. As people are talking, I am hearing God's voice. What is he wanting to say? It's really good. And for those of you who are saying, oh, I could never do that.
Cheryl: Oh no, that's what I was saying. I could never do that, and I did.
Jeff: When she first started actually doing altar ministry, she was very frustrated because she said, "I can't hear God's voice. I never hear God speak. I never know what to do." But she made herself available. When you put yourself in a spot where you need Jesus to move, guess what he does. He moves. All of us, at some point in our lives, we start out where we are not sure we can hear the voice of God or not, but guess what. You all can. If you haven't experienced it yet, it doesn't mean that you won't. That opportunity is there for all of us. We are all children and the father; he speaks to every one of us. We just have to learn how to hear him. We all hear differently, but he speaks to all of us.
Cheryl: One of the most important things I think that each of us needs to have in us is the "want to". I want to do this. I want to speak into people's lives. That's like our purpose.
Jeff: I just wanted to touch on three specific things that I think are real roots to sickness. One of course is the devil. One is our own soul and one is our body. It's pretty simple. We are going to read acts 10:37 and 38. We are going to see what role the devil has in our sickness. So,
Cheryl: You know what happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee, after John began preaching his message of baptism and you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing, all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
Jeff: So it says, Jesus healed all who were oppressed, oppressed by the devil. In one sense, all sickness is an oppression of the devil because sickness entered the world as a result of the fall, as a result of his manipulation of Adam and Eve. That's how it all came into the world to begin with. So it all is rooted back to his plan to destroy all the good things that God created. That has been his goal ever since he was thrown out of heaven: to undermine everything good that God has done. And so in that sense, all sickness is oppressive and it's rooted in the devil. But at the same time, I need to tell you that my end, as best as I understand it, not every sickness is a demon. You can disagree with me if you want, but if you assume you have to cast out the devil every time someone's sick, I think you are mistaken.
You need to listen to the holy spirit and he'll tell you how to minister to that individual for that specific sickness. For example, here is a couple where we did deal with the devil. This is a very interesting one. I was in Ukraine. I was ministering in the Bible school in Ukraine and I had a young woman come up for prayer. She was an athlete, actually, but she had been in an accident and she had injured her neck and she had lived for years with chronic pain in her neck. I said, okay, we'll pray, and I was listening for the Holy Spirit to show me what to do. He says, cast out the demon of pain. I said, "Lord, she was injured." I said, "This is not a demon. This is an injury." I'm telling the Lord this.
Cheryl: Let me correct you.
Jeff: Let me correct you, God. He says, no, you don't understand. He said when people have chronic pain for a long time, demons root themselves in the pain. Demons will always find ways into weakness. Not all mental illness is demonic, but demons will take advantage of mental illness to oppress people. One of the things with people who struggle with mental illness is there might be a physical healing they need in their brain. But one of the things, until that healing comes— if you have friends who are struggling with mental illness, one of the things you can pray for is you can just cover them in the name of Jesus against spiritual oppressors who want to take advantage of that weakness. You can clear the air. You can bind the devil from oppressing them so that they at least have clear spiritual air around them. And you can release the presence of the holy spirit so that even though there is malfunctioning in the brain, they still don't have that spiritual oppression.
But in this case, the Lord said to cast out a demon of pain. So I did.
I said, okay, you demon of pain, come out of her. And she was healed, instantly healed. So it always pays to listen to the Holy Spirit. One of my favorite ones, for years I taught Sunday school here, fourth, fifth and sixth graders. My favorite thing to do was to teach them how to pray for the sick. And so we would, we would spend all 4, 5, 6 weeks and I'd teach them all about the things I'm teaching you and we would practice on each other. And then I, and then we'd open it up and we'd have Pastor Brian announce that if there is anybody in the congregation that needs prayer for healing, you can go to Jeff's Sunday school class, and the kids will pray for you. What I taught the kids to do is the person would share what their need was, and then we would say, "Holy Spirit, come) and we would wait and we would all listen to the Holy Spirit. And then we would go right around the Sunday school class, and everybody would share what the Lord showed them. Oftentimes, for the kids, it was visions. It was pictures. Many times, it was pictures.
At that time it was Sybil Bonnet. She was our Sunday school director at the time. She is with Jesus now, but she would come into the class and she was ascribed. All the prophetic visions that the kids got, she would write them all down. At the end of the day, we would give the people those prophetic pictures. We had one couple come back and they walked through every single picture that the kids had given him and, and shared with the kids, how every single one of them spoke right into their lives. That was really cool. But in this case, we had a mother in the church who was really struggling with sleep. She couldn't get to sleep that night. So she came in for prayer. So we went around the room and all the kids shared. One of the young men in my Sunday school class was a pretty prophetic kid. He said, "I saw a demon in her brain and we told the demon to leave and he packed a suitcase and he left."
So I said, "Okay, why don't you go ahead and do that?" And I didn't pray. I had him pray. Usually what I do is whatever the Lord showed the kids to pray, I would have them pray. I said to the young man, "Go ahead and pray that prayer. Let's tell that demon to pack a suitcase and leave." So that's what he did. We prayed for her. He prayed that prayer. She went home and she slept that night and every night after. When the holy spirit shows you what to do, do what he says and you see miracles happen. We are in a season of miracles. See, we want to step into this. We want to be encouraged and have faith to begin to pray and to hear the holy spirit and to watch the things that he does because it's going to get more exciting, not less.
Another one, for years, we did alpha. I did it with the youth ministry, and so we had lots of kids coming in. There was one young woman who was coming, who had dissociative identity disorder, which we used to call it multiple personality disorder. They changed the name for whatever reason, and it's been shown that, especially with children who experienced horrific traumas, as they are growing up. It actually is a protective thing where they'll actually have a whole other person that lives kind of— it's a way of escaping that trauma. It's a way of coping with horrific trauma. Children who were subject to satanic ritualistic abuse, oftentimes, suffer with this. But in this case, we had a woman who had this and the Lord spoke to me and said this is a demon. She had a secret friend. And so I said okay. We rebuked the demon, and told him it had to go. We included her in the prayer, telling the friend it had to go, and she got healed. In that case, it was demonic. It's not always demonic, but in that case, it was demonic. Do you understand? How do you know? The way we know is by the Holy Spirit shows us what to do. And when he, and when he shows you what to do, trust that it's him and do it.
I learned so much of this in all my travels to Ukraine. One of the things that's really helpful is you can pray anything the holy spirit tells you to, and they can't understand what you are saying. So you can't offend anybody. A lot of times when I pray for people, the translator would interpret my prayers, but I would just say don't interpret this. Sometimes if they understand what you are praying and you are casting out demons, they might get offended. You have to kind of pray it under your breath. The condition of the soul. Let' go to 3rd John 2. This is a short one, but it's— sorry. I should go like that and cover the microphone
Cheryl: Beloved, I pray that in all respects, you may prosper and be in good health just as your soul prospers.
Jeff: Isn't that interesting scripture? You would prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. The prosperity of your heart is a precursor to your health. We all know, right? One of the biggest problems we have with physical health. That's emotional stress. If you live with constant stress, it will impact your health, your physical health in a negative way, right? Yes. We also understand that anger, if you carry a lot of anger, resentment, unforgiveness, that that will affect your health. There are a lot of issues with the soul that have a direct repercussion in how we are healed. I don't if you remember Catherine Coleman once was on Johnny Carson. She had a detractor named Dr. Nolan who had written a book about how everything she did was fake. And so Johnny Carson had had Dr. Nolan on to talk about his book and how Catherine Coleman was a fake. And so then he had Catherine Coleman on to give her equal time. And Johnny says to Catherine, he says, "Dr. Nolan says that most of the people that get healed in your ministry suffer from hypochondria, not real sickness." And Catherine Coleman says, "Yes, Johnny, that might be true, but don't, you know, hypochondria is the hardest illness to cure.
We've experienced this many, many times. People will come to you. They need prayer for healing, but you are listening to the Holy Spirit and he is telling you to deal with an issue of the heart. He says, is there some anger you have against your father? Is there something there with your relationship with your father? And you can end up ministering to somebody the whole time over issues of the heart. You'll never ever pray for physical healing because the root of the sickness is in a condition of the soul and the Lord wants to heal the soul.
That's one of the things that is very special about hope and Pastor Brian and I were talking about this quite a number of years ago, but a lot of people come here broken and the presence of the Lord and the blessing of the Lord that is here helps people to recover from their brokenness.
Pastor Brian said it's one thing to live your whole life with a pain in your shoulder or something like that, but it's another thing to live your whole life with a broken heart. Which one is more debilitating? Which healing is almost more valuable, the healing of the heart or the healing of the body? 1:08:43 For many of us, we need our hearts healed so that we can actually enjoy life again. Many times, the healing of the heart, the healing of our soul results in improvement in our health.
I had an interesting experience. Once we were at a conference and there was a guy— there was a whole special move of God in this time. I don't know if you remember. You might have heard of a guy named Ed Silvoso. He was from Argentina and he had seen a massive move of God in Argentina. He moved to the states and he was working with a lot of stuff. This was a conference that he was putting on for pastors. There was a guy that had a pretty good reputation, just a layman who had a really cool reputation for being able to hear God and do what God said and seeing amazing things happen. One of the cool things that this guy did is he led Carl Pollard to the Lord based on the Lord, showing him that he needed to go talk to Carl Pollard. He prayed with him to receive Jesus. He was a cool guy. He was at the conference and he came with his wife and his.
After one of the meetings, he and his wife approached me. She said, "Jeff, the Lord told me before I came, that I should ask you to pray for me. And I would get healed. I have a problem with migraine headaches." And I'm just like, what? God told you to have me pray for you. You have to be joking. She would get this rod in her head, this rod between her ears.
Cheryl: Did she tell you that or did you see?
Jeff: She told me that. That was how she described the migraine. So it was just like, okay, here goes. The partnership oftentimes is a three-way partnership. There is the person, there is the Holy Spirit and there is you. So Lord, what do you want to do here? Just always listen. In this case, I, the issue with her mother came to me. I said, "Is there something in your relationship with your mother?" And she said, "Oh, yes, I really struggled with my mom." She grew up in a Christian home, but she said she was just so defiant sometimes. She said, "In fact, I remember a time, I was taking piano lessons and my mom made me practice. I was so angry and I was so defiant that I got on the piano and I began to pound on the piano just to hurt her. I was pounding on the piano saying, “I hate God. I hate God. I hate God." I said, "Wow, well, how about if you just say a little prayer repentance over that, and let's see where the Lord takes it." So she prays this prayer, just asking God to forgive her for doing that for trying to hurt her mom and is saying those words and having that temper like that. And she hardly even got done with the prayer and she fell on the ground and she began to wail. I mean, just wail for probably all of 30 or 45 seconds or a minute.
She got up and her headache was gone. She was completely healed. It was just something that had been carried for a long time and it exposed itself in a physical problem. But the root was in her soul. Well, how do you know that? You don't know it. You don't know any of that. That's what's wonderful: God tells you what he knows that you don't know. That's what's so wonderful about being a partner with the Holy Spirit. That's what's so wonderful about being a child of God. I'm just Jeff. We had that season where we had faith healers. There was that season when the anointing rested on these specific men and women, Katherine Coleman, Aimee Semple McPherson, A.A Allen, William Branum. They had these big tents, revivals and thousands, and thousands of people got healed.
But then God began to move in a fresh new way. And then along onto the scene came John Wimber, How many guys know that name? John Wimber started the vineyard church. He was a rock and roller who got saved, drug addict who got saved. If you read his story, he started going to a, I think a Baptist church. After he had been going there for two or three weeks, he went to the pastor and he said, "So pastor, when do we start doing the stuff?" Pastor said, "What are you talking about? He said, "Well, you know, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead. When do we get to do the stuff?" He just went on a journey to do the stuff, and the Lord ended up launching him into a worldwide healing ministry. But the difference between John Wimber and anybody that preceded him is that what John Wimber did is he taught the church how to step into the healing anointing. And he began to teach this isn't about me. This is about you. You can do this. John Wimber is one of my contemporary heroes of the faith, because he brought me into a realm of the supernatural that I didn't know I could have, but I could. The only reason that I can tell you these stories is because I learned a little bit and I tried it. That's all.
Cheryl: I just want to say something about what I heard you just say. It was just me and a lot of us have that thinking about ourselves, just me. It's just me. But when I would say that about myself, I would start to think about, my thinking is not what God's thinking is of me. He has us in a very, very special, powerful place as his children and who we are. He loves us. And he thinks so highly of each of you. So when you have the thinking of it's only me, you are a great person. According to God, there is greatness inside of each of you. We need to start walking in that and stepping into that, not with pride, but with confidence and the knowledge of who we know God says we are.
Jeff: Yeah, good. Sometimes sickness is just physical. Jesus healed physical sickness. Take up your mat and walk. I have to tell one story. It's one of the coolest stories of the Lord directing a prayer. This is quite a few years ago when I worked at north central Bible college. We had a Greek teacher who was really an amazing woman of God, but she was a Greek teacher. And so in her Greek class, she had a student who was getting really sick, coughing, and just really struggling. In the Greek class, they were praying for this student, but the student kept getting worse and getting worse. And finally, he came to Greek class one day and he says, "This is not getting better. I'm just getting worse. I think I'm going to have to drop out and go home."
And so the teacher said, well, "Let's just pray one more time. This time, she said, "I want everyone to just listen to God. And let's ask him how to pray and what to do here." So they all waited on the Holy Spirit. Just like I told you, they went around the room and each person shared what the Lord said. They got to this one person, and the person said, "I don't know, this doesn't make any sense, but I see this box. What could that possibly mean?" A light went on in the teacher's head when he said this and she said to the students, "Do you have a humidifier in your apartment?" And he said, "Yeah." She said, "Have you ever changed the belt?" He said, "I didn't even know there was a belt." She said, "Go home, buy a new belt, put a new belt on your water heater." He took the old belt off and it was bad. He put a new belt on and in a week, he was better.
How do you know? Isn't that cool? That's one of my favorite stories. We rebuke the devil. We plead the blood. We do all this stuff, and all he had to do was change the belt on his humidifier. But it required the holy spirit to show us that. That's why we want to partner with him wherever we go and whatever we do when we are at the altar ministry, when we are praying for each other after church. I love how prayer happens around here: every Sunday after church, before church, we are praying for each other and we'll just let the Holy Spirit lead us. So cool things can happen. Cheryl really had the word of the Lord. She said we can't teach this without doing it. So if you are okay with it, we are going to practice right now. Are you okay with that? A little nervous? It's one thing to talk about it and another thing to do it, right?
Cheryl: Who needs healing?
Jeff: Here is what I want to do. I think we'll do it in small groups. I think we want to get into groups of say five or six people, not too big. We want to make sure that in every group at least one person needs healing and then maybe somebody who has a little bit more of an a-type personality. If you would facilitate your group, you just have to nominate yourself or be nominated somehow. In every group, somebody can just kind of facilitate it. We are going to get into groups. You are going to pick a person to pray for. And then we are going to invite the Holy Spirit and we are going to listen for two or three minutes. It doesn't take long for the Lord to speak. And then we are just going to go around your circle and just share anything the Lord gave you, a picture, a scripture, an idea on how to pray, a word from the Lord. Don't take a lot of time. Just share the simple revelation. And then just together, you can kind of figure out how the Lord is saying to pray and then pray that way. Oftentimes, if you got the revelation of how to pray, you can pray it, because you got that anointing. We'll just see what the Lord does. Are you okay with that? Might as well practice.
Cheryl: And those of you watching on livestream, if there are people with you, let's do this in our homes.
Jeff: Yes. Or another thing on live stream, if you don't need to pray for each other, pick somebody who is not there. Ask the holy spirit how to pray for them and you can pray for them. Sean Jones is on live stream. Sean, I want you to put your hand on your back and your hand is going to heat up. The anointing of the Lord is going to come through the hand into your back and you are going to experience his healing as we are praying here. That's what I want you to do.
We are going to get up. Just find 4, 5, or 6 people you can be a little bit comfortable with. If you don't know anybody, you are just going to have to make a new friend. But that's good too. As we've said before, if you don't know what else, anything else to pray, you can always pray for the father to bless the person you are praying for. Jeff and Judy need a group. So somebody, find their way over to them. I know it's a little awkward, but we can do it. We are adults. Marvin Cody, you can go left or right. You got two small groups. So join either one. How are we doing? Hallelujah, Holy spirit come. We just trust you to come. Thank you, Jesus. Just give him time to speak to you. You just be quiet and just listen. When you are listening to the Lord, it's usually better not to be praying at the same time. Just turn on your ears. Thank you, Jesus. Sean, we just released fire God for you right now. Your hand is on your back.
Larry and Robin, we know you are watching by livestream, so we just want to speak over you, Robin. Thank you. Jesus. Larry, you should have your hands just laid on her right now. As you are listening to the Lord and what he is going to say, Robin, I'm getting the scripture for you. The Lord says I know the plans that I have for you, plans for good and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. That's your word to take forward. Just declare it over yourself because it's true. Thank you, father. You've charted a course of prosperity for them to prosper in your goodness and in your faithfulness and in your presence and enjoy and in health in Jesus name.
Lori Johnson, we know you are watching on live stream. We are praying for you. We know you've suffered with years of pain. And so we bind up every demonic power, every spirit of pain that has tried to take advantage of that, we break its stronghold in Jesus' name. We release the grace, the flow of grace that cleanses washes and heals to you in Jesus' name. Just lay your hand on your back glory and just insist, Just insist in Jesus' name that every spiritual power rooted against you has to leave right now, right now, right now. And Holy Spirit, we ask you to come and just fill that space that they've left open with your presence and your power. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
I don't want to rush you, but if you find you've come to the end of your prayer time, just have a seat. When I can see that most of us are completed, we'll just weigh in on what we saw the Lord do. We'll give the Lord a little time here.
We have a couple of groups still praying. You don’t have to stop, but I do want to just get a little feedback from you guys, those of you who have prayed. How many of you heard the Holy Spirit or felt the holy spirit show you something? How many of you heard the Lord giving you some type of direction, you got a picture or a scripture? Let me just see your hands. Put your hands up if you felt like the Lord spoke to you. Very cool. If you didn’t, it’s okay. We are practicing. But the more you make yourself available the more you are going to hear his voice. It’s a normal part of the Christian life. How many of you were able to pray for somebody based on what the Lord showed you? Did you get to do that? That’s cool. Anybody here feel like God touched them or healed them? Yes. Yes. Thank you, Jesus. Wow! It gives me goosebumps. Very cool.
This is something we can— we will have a prayer team up here after the service here today. So if you didn’t get what you needed, come and get prayer. We want to practice prayer. I want you guys to begin to make it a habit to come and get prayer if you need something, because the more we pray, the more we are going to see answers. It’s just as simple as that. The more we put ourselves in a place to hear from the Lord, the more we are going to hear from the Lord. And that’s what we want. We just want it to be normal to be in communion with Jesus. When we are, like Cheryl, we are always in a place where we can give something away. That’s a lot of fun. It makes life an adventure. Let me just bless you, Remember communion. Pastor Robert and Tequaris will be serving communion. We will have the prayer ministry team up front.
May the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and to be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen. Thanks, everybody.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 6-12-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.