I’m sensing a blending of two streams of thought within the body of Christ. Years ago when I first starting leading worship the Lord led us into a long season of spiritual warfare and the songs reflected that. There was a strong focus on deliverance ministry as well as healing…this was the time that Cleaning Stream was getting started. This was an awesome time of experiencing God’s power and it help me understand the proper concept of Luke 10:19.
Over the last few years the Lord has had me focus my sermons on His love, His goodness, that we are His beloved, and the ministry focus has been on restoration and healing, especially those that have been hurt by the “church” with an interesting focus on healing needed by women.
This has branched off into obtaining an understanding of new (to me) things and jumping into the wine of His presence, enjoying the wackiness of being intoxicated with His love, embracing my relationship with God as Abba Father and that He has nothing but good for me because He is LOVE! Some of the ministries that are clearly helping me understand that are John Crowder, Ben Dunn, Todd White, and others. To be honest …this is really, really good stuff and desperately needed because the church has to realign it focus back on God and not just a short meeting on Sunday mornings.
In the first season our focus was one facet of God…to the point that many in this type of ministry saw demons behind every rock and every problem that came their way.
In the current season we are still focusing on one facet of God, albeit a much better a needed focus because as I’m learning you can’t conduct spiritual warfare without knowing who you are in Christ and you can’t know that without knowing and embracing His love and goodness.
But now I feel that the Lord is bringing a balance to the force.
Paul clearly tells us that we are in a battle, that we wrestle (fight) not with flesh but with the spiritual enemy, that we are to use spiritual weapons of warfare…in other words we are at war regardless of how good God is. Now don’t jump to conclusion just yet.
We need the time in His presence, the time of refreshing, and the times of wackiness not only for ourselves and our relationship with Abba, but to leak on others as well. Bill Johnston describes it very well…you just go into some place and the presence of God just leaks out you on people nearby and they get healed and touched by God.
We also need to know that the spiritual enemy doesn’t care or respect the goodness and love of God…they see this as a weakness. Remember they were in the very presence of God for a long time until they rebelled and were kicked out of Heaven.
So what do I see happening? An understanding of who we are in Christ, the full awareness of the power of His love, ministering anytime anywhere with the goodness and love of God, but with a clear understanding that we often have to take it to the enemy and use the authority His has given us as sons and daughters of the Most High to set the captives free! So love the person – deal with the enemy.
Marty Best is a prophet and a prince from Shelton, WA.
