Transcription
Yeah. And I for to to ask maybe what would you say to to to ask maybe what would you say to the pastors and Christian leaders who are here at this conference who are hearing these guys unpack unpack some of the finer theological points on prophecy and healing and over realize I could all of these things that there can be this feeling that in order to move forward I need to be an expert in order to move forward I need to learn everything about this and then maybe in 10 or 20 years I can take a baby step. So I I so you felt like you went too slow. What would be your encouragement to those who are in process of learning don't feel expert enough and would like to move their other churches forward?
Well, a couple thoughts. One, come to a conference like this. They've already done the way to go. Second thought is um you've got to take seriously, you know, those passages that say pursue earnestly pursue the spiritual gifts, especially if you prophesy and uh just the biblical teaching just we just got to do that. We got our people need it. And I I just I think about the hurting just the people need physical healing in our church. And when somebody gets healed, just the difference it makes. I mean, it's just incredible to love pray for healing. And when you see people healed, it's just ah just the shepherds, we've got to unleash all the healing God wants to unleash. And same for prophetic words of encouragement. I mean, what uh Michael Miller, Erin, if I could just use your example when he began speaking to you back in the booth, you know, it's exactly where where you are. And I I can only guess, Erin, that that is really encouraging to you that God knows. God knows. And so we we just I just don't want to get to heaven and have family miss out on anything that God wants. So I think just recognizing that it's really a loving thing to try to have a biblical. So I understand Jack talking about hung groups. That's the place to get started.
So you got pastor, he's going to go home. Uh they're going to sit down with their staff and they're they're going to have three hung groups going to start in the next three weeks. Okay. What do they do? Like what's just sit around and say God speak and then like they don't hear anything audly. So he just sits there for a really long time. Like what's the how do you do that? You guys hear me? Yeah. Okay. Uh so uh my mentor was Ston Whmer. Nobody knows who he is today, but back in the uh '80s and '90s, he was the most loved and hated pastor in America. And he was hated by conservative evangelicals because he was so good at leading people into the gifts of spirit, conservative evangelicals. And uh so I asked him uh how do you His church was amazing. So many people could do prophetic ministry, healing uh every week somebody got healed in his church. And and so I said, "How do you teach?" I mean, how do we learn to do this? He said, "Let's home groups." And he said, "We uh" he said, "If you're not in a home group, I do not consider you a member of my church." He said, "We got 5,000 people coming here. 2500 people are doing ministry. That's my church." So those 2500 all home groups and that's where they learn how to do ministry. So typical home group would would uh start with uh you maybe some singing or worship and then we would just stop and say let's uh let's ask the Lord if there's anybody here he wants to touch or give a message to or pray for and so 15 20 people all bow heads and uh and then if you got an impression you give it and that's where you learn you fail. Oh, the other big thing we said at the home group teach is if you're not willing to fail you will never never move any of the spirit you have to be willing to fail. Every good athlete is a is a bad athlete who didn't give up and and and so he created this environment that was conducive to failure. We just make jokes about our failure and all that. So I never had word but I saw him do the most amazing stuff uh when I'm at a conference and uh 35 500 people in the room. He's walking on the stage. He comes back up. There's a lady here that has cancer. Would you please come down and we'll pray for you? Ministry came to pray for people. The lady came down. He said uh he stopped for a minute and he said, "You flew in on Tuesday and you came here specifically to be uh pray for for cancer. Would you please come down?" No. Lady comes down and he just says, "Um, you're wearing a pink dress and you're sitting in the back of the room. Would you please come down?" Ladies in the gray rope pink dress gets up, walks down to the front and I'm just I mean it's like Elijah and Elisha are back and I I go, "Man, that must have gone off like a fog horn in your mind." And he goes, "Oh, no, Jack. Just the opposite." It was so subtle. If I hadn't had been paying attention, I would have missed it. I thought we were through in the ministry. I'm just going to pray for bone joint problems. I was walking off the stage and I just had an impression about this lady not coming down that had cancer and I walked back up on the stage and I said it's just an impression just he said it was so slight I almost missed it and I go flew in on Tuesday and he said well when she didn't come down Tuesday flooded through my mind and a lot of people come to the conferences on Thursday a lot of people come on Tuesday to uh see beautiful Southern California and I thought that must have meant she flew pink dress sitting in the back he said when she didn't come forward uh I just saw for a couple seconds pink floating over the uh back of the room and I thought that must mean she's wearing pink dress sitting in the back and I went John you just called out that woman in front of 3500 people based on those flimsy impressions he goes yeah do it all done I go why and he says that's just the way the Lord speaks to me and I've better success getting uh learning how to hear the way he speaks than getting him to speak the way I want him to. So that was that was like my first example of pay attention to these strangers. So they tell me well that's what they're going to do in their home groups and I and I never had John do you think if I went back to my church and got a home group do you think that God would speak to me but I don't know why I wouldn't.
So based on that great prophetic word I went back to say church I'm still his professor at Dallas seminary and uh and I I get a home group which people and I say okay now we're going to just wait and watch for wait for an impression that comes in or some kind of sensation in your uh uh body and uh and God's going to speak to us and show us people to pray for. So I just told him that totally confident without ever having heard God myself. Uh and he healed somebody bad. That's how we started. Um and he did and he did. He spoke to some people, some people were wrong, some people were right, some people got healed that night. And that was just the start. And uh that was our that became the best part of church. And to me, a home group is still the best part of church. I love being in a home group. And I always have one.
Can I tag on to that? Some of you may have just heard Jack describe how John Wbert was getting words. You think that is so freaky? Where's that in the Bible? Well, you know 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul's talking about prophetic ministry in the court gathering. He says, "And if a revelation comes to one who is sitting, you say, how how does that happen?" Paul doesn't define it. He doesn't say, "Oh, you have to have a feeling. You have to see a picture. You have to get an impression." It's just the spirit disclosing something. I think God deliberately didn't define specifically how that happens because there's a multitude of different ways in which God can speak. You remember when Paul in Acts he said he saw that a man had faith to be healed. And I wonder does that mean saw in the sense I perceived how did he perceive it? Did he actually see something? You've had that experience. You know maybe something across the face of this guy that indicated he had faith to be healed. Um all the people emoji Michael prophesied a call. He'd be healed though. All right. I'll give you one example. Um I don't mind mentioning her name. Uh some of you may know the name of David Roose Ris. He was a great worship leader leader leader leader leader leader leader leader leader in vineyards now in Canada. He was my next door neighbor in Kansas City. He was the worship leader at the home of the Kansas City Prophets. And I'd never met David. I didn't know him. I never certainly never met his So, my first time in Kansas City, I'm taking into a room. Phil was in the room. I got a shot. Phil, I I didn't know Phil from Adam's Orphan. He didn't know me. And he he's sitting in the corner of the room. He looks at me. He said, "Your father is not living." You know, he gets a 50-50 shot there. And he was right. And he said, "You had the most unusual relationship with your earthly dad." And he began to describe it. I just broke weeping. And then this lady, she sees over here and she's looking at me real strange. And it was an Roose I found out later. She she gets pictures of hats. Weird. And the hat tells something about the individual. She she's looking at me. She said, "I just saw it's kind of the time of the medieval reformation period. The scholars will wear these strange looking hats. The scholars hat. just surrounded by books and you love to read and write. I thought that's weird, but isn't it great God can do that? I mean there whether it's we have a lady in our church who um she gets impressions from movies. She had an impression the other night about the movie mannequin that came out years ago. I never saw it and that that there there was going to be somebody in church Sunday morning who feels like a mannequin. They're plastic. They're artificial. They're dead inside. They've been crying and you wouldn't believe the kind of ministry that happened as a result of that. So don't don't freak out when people say, "I saw a pink color just flo across the back of the room." God can do. He's creative. He's artistic. He's poetic. And he loves to surprise us. That doesn't mean that every weird thought and image you can get is from him, but he he doesn't define specifically how revelation comes. said it comes. Josh feels as though we should pack the puke emoji. I just want to say that like you know he doesn't think the puke emoji is weird like Cole got healed.
Yeah. Okay. So what he's referring to was on Sunday night I I had a prophetic word from the stage for Cole. Where you at Cole? There he is. He's real. There's Cole. And um and I I saw an image of an emoji that was a puke emoji and and I had what? So you know you never use Do you never use the puke emoji? I don't use emojis at all. You mean to add emoji I thought you were saying pink emoji. I could puke. It's vomit. It's green vomit going to text it. He's doing it now. on the big screen. So, but I asked I asked the Lord about it. I mean, random pictures can flare across your mind at any time. I asked the Lord is this you go. You just did. I saw it. It's right there. And I asked the Lord is this you and I. I feel like you said said yes. It is so graphic. So when when someone texts something to you that you really detest, that's when you send the puke emoji. So I can help you put your next email if you want to the perfect. Can I finish the story? Okay. So it actually started and I was just kind of processing it with the Lord when Michael Miller had a word about indigestion, but it was more general. And then I pointed and Cole was wearing a white shirt. You had a white shirt. felt like you specifically had indigestion that you threw up just the other night, I think is what I said. And you started nodding your head real big like that. And so uh Cole came up to me after the service today. He said, "Man, I've been so first of all, Cole had not uh he been having indigestion for years and uh it's really affecting him." And so after we prayed for Cole for healing, he has been testing it out by eating just apparently terribly greasy foods and for the glory of God. For the glory of God. All right, Cole. How are you feeling over there? Feeling great. Feeling great. Give that guy a pizza. Okay. So So is there anything else you want to say about that story? That's it. I mean, just because we we can debate on whether this is weird all day and there's YouTube clips when they come to Michael with Pete emoji, but but by the end of the day, someone was sick and they're not now, right? Well, and Acts 10 and 11 and Cornelius sees I mean, how would you feel? You're eating your your sandwich one day and then down from heaven comes this sheet with all these animals and you know, good kill and eat. I'm just imagining this barnyard scene like like all it's a little weird, a little weird. So, think about Jesus making mud balls with his spit and put it on somebody's eyes and then you know there's another page. He doesn't use mud mud mud mud mud mud mud mud mud mud. He just spits in a guy's eye. He did. He spit in a blind man's eye and healed him. Now, I'm not recommending you do that, but you know, you take classes at seminary and hermenics how to interpret the Bible. And one of the principles, we never found it, did we? We never taught it. This is that the principle of weirdness has never been a criterion for determining whether something is true or not. Because if you rule out weirdness, you're going to rule out a whole lot. To steal an illustration from one of my sermons, we believe that a virgin gave birth to the son of God, floated into heaven and is coming down on a white horse to judge the living and the dead. We've already drunk the Kool-Aid. Let's just go along with this. Okay. There's nothing that gets weirder than a white horse is floating out of heaven.
Something that that Jack spoke into a moment ago, Jack, you talked about uh you have to have space to fail. And I can imagine somebody out here thinking, yeah, you know, you try to share the gospel. So in evangelism, you fail and somebody doesn't get saved and everybody just moves along. But prophecy to speak the word of the Lord and to misrepresent him potentially potentially. How do we make space for failing at prophecy and how do we defend that biblically? So Jack or whomever which is just it's like a game of 500 play football just throw it up. Whoever it wants to just go for it jackpot jackpot. Well certainly it's easier to do a jack set do I mean that just that's space to fail. Yeah I think don't train on Sunday morning. But biblically theologically how how can we defend that prophecy can be missed? Agabus. Agabus. Do you want to explore that a little bit? So Agabus well I mean I mean I knew the text but it was Sam's book that kind of brought to my attention. Sam do you want to unpack the prophecy of Yeah. Like that sounds familiar. In Acts 19 and in Acts 20 Paul twice says explicitly I am constrained by the spirit to go to Jerusalem. He tells me that when I go I'm going get the tarby out of me persecuted. All right. Paul knows this is believed in the spirit. Spirit spoke to him constrained by the spirit. So on their missionary journeys he comes to ty t y r e not t r e to ty and the disciples there say through the spirit don't go to Jerusalem. And then Philip's four daughters who are prophetic um they basically chimed in and then Agabus comes along who's a recognized prophet and he says um here's what I see happening to you. And he talks about how he's going to be bound and how he's going to be beaten and the Jews are going to try to kill him or carry him off. And Paul says you are breaking my heart. He said I know the spirit of God told me I'm supposed to go to Jerusalem. So, and of course when he goes, the things that happened there are not identical with even what Agabus saw in his vision. So, what happened? I think what happens is very simple. I think um the disciples at Ty, Philip's, four daughters and Agabus probably had a vision of some sort, maybe a dream where they saw Paul being beaten, being persecuted, being tied up and bound and carried off. That was the revelation and they were spot on. That's that's God doesn't make mistakes. Revelation is always in there. But then they interpreted that to mean he shouldn't go to Jerusalem. This is a warning that he should not go there because this is going to happen. Then they applied it by saying Paul don't go. Well, the revelation was right. The interpretation, the application were misguided and off base. So I that's why in prophecy all three elements are always there. People accuse us and you all even did a program on this. They say that we believe that God misspeaks or that God reveals things that are false. Of course, we don't believe that at all. But if we open up the Bible to a certain passage right now and I could pick one and there are six of us on the platform, we might have six different interpretations of that text. Okay, wait a minute. The inspired inherent and fable word of God is right before us. I can read it in black and white and yet five of us are probably wrong, maybe all six. And and yet we don't throw out the gift of teaching. Well, if you're going to miss it, we got to reject the gift of teaching because we can't have misinterpretations of divine revelation. We do that all the time. It's why we have Bible studies and classes and we read books. So why do we treat prophecy so different? God reveals something infallibly true. We misunderstand it. We misspeak it. We convey it incorrectly. We apply it incorrectly. How do I get off on all that? I just start prophecies. And anything else, Sam, that you add on the how would you defend prophecies can be missed in such a way that it doesn't make you a false prophet that needs to be cast out. One reason is because as best I can tell, the language of false prophet is always used of unbelievers, non-Christians who deny the incarnation of Christ, deny the deed of Jesus. Um, I don't