We serve an Awesome Lord!! This weekend I had the pleasure to co-teach a prayer / ministry seminary designed to help folks live the Holy Spirit filled life Jesus promised us that we could live.
Co-teaching this class was quite a stretch for me – I mean, I know the information, but to teach it… that’s a different level… But it was good. No one threw any tomatoes, the pastor who was mentoring me on the class didn’t banish me as a heretic, and folks where still talking to me afterwards… By all counts – it was a good class. =)
grin * With that said, it did start a little rocky… The class was to start at 7 pm Friday evening – at 6:45, I received a call from the pastor informing me that he was suck at a middle school track meet (he’s a coach during the “day”) and would not be able to attend that night. Luckily, we had already planned for me to teach the first part of the seminary… however, I must admit that I was a pretty nervous starting everything off by myself… =/
That first evening, I gave my testimony as it pertained to walking in the Kingdom. Then I dived into an overview of the Kingdom of God: What is it? How does it apply to us? The elements of Jesus’ ministry. The ministry style of Jesus. Being naturally supernatural.
The Set-Up:Throughout the Gospels, Jesus only commanded us to do seven (7) things. Sounds simple enough…
- Love God with all our being
- Love one another
- Heal the sick
- Cleanse the lepers
- Cast out demons
- Raise the dead
- Preach the good news
[@more@]At the end of the evening we practiced “doing the stuff” as Wimber used to say. Walking timidly, we asked the Spirit to come – and boy did He! God showed us some hurts and pains that people needed healed…
The next morning, we all gathered again (about 12 of us – including the pastor) for the next part of the class. To keep this post from getting too long, I will simply state that over the course of the next nine hours we covered the following topics:
- The mind of Christ – an altered worldview
- The gifts of the Holy Spirit
- Common errors
- Interpretive keys
- Defining the gifts
- The Gifts in action (Biblically and practically)
- Emotional Healing
- Divine Appointments
- Power Encounters
The best part(s) of the whole weekend was Friday and Saturday evenings when we put into practice what we learned. We invited the Spirit to come and show us what He wanted to do. He gave us some direction – so pastor started praying for an attendee while I described what was happening as the pastor went through the Five Step Prayer Model.
Afterwards, we turned all the attendees lose to pray for one another.
This was the best part – equipping and teaching normal, everyday people that they can go out and do the same things Jesus did. The ministry is not reserved for those ‘spiritual’ people on TV or in big ministries. The work of the Kingdom is for everyone – no matter where you live or how old you are!
Five Step Prayer Model
- The Interview
- The hear form the person being prayed for
- Listen with love and compassion
- The Diagnostic Decision
- What is God doing?
- How does He want you to pray?
- The Prayer Selection
- Physical
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- The Ministry Time
- Do what the Father is doing at that time
- Keep one ear tuned to 77.7 K-GOD
- The Post-Prayer Directions
- Not counseling, just general counsel – Scripture reading, come back for more prayer if needed, ect
As I end this post, I want to say that God showed up in amazing ways this weekend. Tears and snot where flowing as the Lord worked on emotions, hearts and spirits. I will not mention specifics as they belong to the people whom God worked with and are not for me to tell, but I will say that there are some restored folks walking around – physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? -Jesus