March 1, 2001

Monica,

I am so glad you are learning to follow the Holy Spirit instead of rules or the teachings of men. I am gleaning from many teachers on TBN, but I see some error in all of them. We are earthen vessels.

I was thinking about a teaching that Oral Roberts expounded and many picked up. When he was nearly dead in the hospital, this leader in the faith healing movement cried out to Father for healing. He was led to tell his wife to write out a check for the entire amount of their bank account and give it as a seed of faith for his healing. He recovered and many are sending money into his ministry as seed money to receive their healings. Now sending money to his ministry may well connect them to him and thereby connect them to his healing anointing.

However, I can well imagine someone lying nearly dead in a hospital and telling his wife to write out a check and send it to someone so he gets healed. When he dies and appears before our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus can explain to him that he could not buy his healing. On the other hand, anything the Lord would have told him to do to receive would have produced the healing if he had been seeking God. For example, nearly dead in the hospital, he could have been told to send his wife home to take a baseball bat to the big picture window of their house. If the Lord had told him that when the pane broke the pain would break, you can be sure he’d have been healed the moment the window was shattered. But it would have been his obedient act of faith that healed him, not a formula. The church has loved formulas as much as they have loved the law. Let’s get God boxed up nicely and neatly so we can understand him. Guess what! God thinks he is God. In fact, he has the epignosis of that thought. He just plain does whatever he wants too. That is why the guidance of the Holy Spirit is so vital and so wonderful.

Well, you guys probably don’t need to hear me preach on this subject although encouragement can’t hurt in a church that as of yet is pretty weak on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I saw some more tear-jerking healings on Benny Hinn yesterday. A 78-year-old man was told by his doctor that he would never get out of his wheel chair. A woman who knew a doctor with more authority persuaded the man to go to the Benny Hinn Crusade. He was healed so thoroughly that he was running back and forth on the stage like a young athlete.

A woman, in her 30s I’d say, had been born with spinal bifida had had ten operations, and had been in pain all her life. In that crusade, she was completely healed. She said she never in her whole life knew what it felt like to be without pain. God is so good! I am absolutely sure he wants to heal people like this through his kids out on the streets, in grocery stores, in the park, wherever we and the Holy Spirit "happen" to be.

After the last paragraph, I left to get my mail, but I am back with more potpourri.

Job is the oldest book in the Bible. I wondered what Job had to do with the pattern of things for the Bride of Christ. I can see more now that I better understand that we have a free gift of righteousness, not just a robe rapped around us to hide our ugliness, but real righteousness that we receive by faith. The restoration that is about to and is now even beginning to take place is just like the last chapter of Job. We are going to get back double of everything that the devil stole from us.

I could not make such an application before because I knew that what the devil stole from me he did by using my own carnal nature to deceive me. But he did cheat us, deceive us, out of much. All that is about to be restored. We like Job were declared righteous before Satan stole anything from us. He had no right to our dreams, our talents, our health, or wealth. It is all about to be repaid. Get ready to be overwhelmed with blessing.

Shifting the subject again, do you know that there is an anointing to enjoy God’s blessings? That is why rich people out of Father’s will and blessing can be so miserable with all their things, and a poor person in Father’s will can take so much pleasure in a simple thing. I know the fellowship with God is a major part of the satisfaction. But there is an anointing to enjoy the things we get. That is why you will find that if God is calling you to give something away and you hold on to it, you will never enjoy it the way you used to. In the same way if Father is trying to call you from one task to another or from one group of believers to another, etc., you will soon neither find joy in the old task nor fulfillment in the congregation that used to satisfy.

Love,

Dad

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