New Picture Location

I’m switching over to Picassa online albums.

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Sara’s Picasa Albums

lakeland testimonies

This week we’ve continued to hear some remarkable testimonies from lakeland. Up to now, 13 people have been raised from the dead in relation to this outpouring of the Holy Spirit – and this week a man’s amputated legs began to grow back and he began to see through his glass eye. What?! How crazy is this! More God! Blow our minds a little, God, it’s okay. Check it out for yourself on GodTV (direct TV) or online at GodTV, Ignited Church, or Fresh Fire Ministries website. You can also check out clips on YouTube.

Also this past week in Lakeland, Ignited Church began to host evangelism training and everyday hundreds of people are going out into Lakeland preaching the gospel and praying for healing – and God is healing and saving all over the place!! Awesome – that’s right church, we need to take it to the streets!!

Teaching a Calvinist to Dance

My mom passed along a link for this article from Christianity Today. I thought it was pretty swell. I liked how he crossed some bridges here in sharing his testimony. It reminded me again of Lakeland, knowing there were so many people there from various denominational backgrounds and how the things that we tend to identify as separating us, maybe show us how truly similar we are in our love for the Lord.

Teaching a Calvinist to Dance
In Pentecostal worship, my Reformed theology finds its groove.

Lakeland Adventure…part one.

While reading C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce this morning I came across a line that I liked very much. As the main character talks to one of the inhabitants of heaven this inhabitant says, “We know nothing of religion here, we think only of Christ.”

My experience at the Healing Revival in Lakeland, Florida really came down to that – thinking only of Christ. I had to lay down some mind sets, some offenses, some pretenses…to focus on the One who over the past several years has had a seemingly wonderfully time breaking down my boxes and showing me the wisdom in foolishness. Though I must worship Jesus with all my mind, yes, I must walk by faith and not by sight – by the Spirit. And spiritual things, can only be discerned by the spirit. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” 1Corinthians 2:14.

This week in Lakeland was a lesson for me about that scripture. To discern what was happening in Lakeland, I had to go through my spirit, not my mind, which is unfortunately not my tendency most times. It was easy to get caught up in analyzing and reasoning through everything I was seeing and experiencing – and to derive things as “folly”. Let’s be honest people can look silly to the world when they are desperately hungry for Jesus. At the beginning of the week, I just had to close my eyes again – to focus on just the One.

I have to share, though, that I was super encouraged by my experience in Lakeland. Walking into the arena with thousands of other hungry believers (and unblievers too) was amazing. It was not about Todd Bentley. This was about Jesus, and the atmosphere in the arena seemed to only confirm that we all knew it. Worship was powerful, and in fact this is when many of the healings took place. People just engaged with God and He moved and healed them. Many were healed also when people in the crowd just began praying for one another. There was such an atmosphere of the love of the brethren in that place, I don’t even quite know how to explain it.

What you may not know is that every morning there is a service that takes place at Ignited church, where the revival started and the purpose of this service is primarily teaching. Every morning pastors and ministers from all over the world from different churches and ministries (not necessarily affiliated with Todd Bentley or his ministry) are preaching God’s word and undergirding the evening sessions with solid teaching. I appreciated this so much and thought it brought great balance to the revival – to examine the Word and what it says about healing and faith. Many people were even healed during these morning sessions.

Most of all. In everything, Jesus was exalted high above. None of the meetings were really planned at night – it was all led by the Lord, so each night was different. But it was apparent that everyone was submitting to whatever God wanted to do. Some nights the worship would go on for easily two hours and you kind of felt like you were in His throne room as we all cried out “holy, holy”. It was all about Jesus – all about turning our eyes to Jesus and humbling admitting -“God we need you. Jesus we want you.” The Gospel was preached every night and many made a decision for the Lord.

There is more to share and I will do so in later blogs. Check out my teammates blogs to hear more about our experience!

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.

Mark 9:38-41

Have you heard about Lakeland?

About a month ago a conference started in Lakeland, Florida during which the main speaker began to pray for healing for those in attendance. So many were getting healed at this conference that the speaker decided to keep going. If God was healing, let’s keep praying, was the idea. So now it’s been about a month, and the meetings continue! Cancer is being healed, the blind see, the deaf are hearing. I’ve heard one testimony of someone begin raised from the dead. Lyme disease – healed, scoliosis – healed, tumors -healed, the lame are walking. Scars are vanishing. All in the name of Jesus and by the power of His Spirit.

This move of God is being telecasted online on GodTV every night. You can watch for free. And the reports are coming in from the nations of healings going on everywhere!

People are getting healed via the internet, TV, cell phones, prayer chat rooms. Something is going on down there in Florida.

And after several days of watching it all on the internet, our team couldn’t help it anymore, we had to go see for ourselves what God was up to. We’ve seen and heard many reports of people going to the meetings, coming back home, praying for people and seeing them healed. It’s spreading like wildfire!

Healing was part of the ministry of Jesus. He healed the multitudes. And He is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow, and He is revealing to us again that He and only He is God of all, and the great physician. It’s awesome to watch.

So I’m heading to Florida! Let me know how I can be praying for you! I’ll be there with some of my team for the next week.
Watch for yourself on GodTV or check out some of the videos from YouTube.

Skeptical of stuff like this? Be encouraged that God wants us to be discerning! So I would encourage you to look at the fruit of this revival – are people coming to know Jesus and is His name being lifted high? Keep yourself in God’s Word and listen to the Holy Spirit who directs us to all truth. But don’t forget, sometimes God uses the foolish to confound the wise.