A Gathering For House Church Planters - Saturday, May 3, 2008

If you are serious about planting house churches in this coming move of God's Spirit, then I hope you can join us for a gathering on Saturday evening, May 3. The purpose of this gathering is to come together as house churches and house church leaders and to seek God for His strategy for planting multiplying house churches throughout our area. Our plan is to eat together, pray & worship together, to share what God is telling us about what He wants to do in our area and to find ways to cooperate and mutually encourage each other. The plan is to meet in the home of Al & Patty West (directions will again be posted on our website), to have a potluck dinner and to see where God leads us. And you are invited. So, we hope you will put this time on your schedule: 6:00PM, Saturday, May 3. Bring something to eat & share, and something from the Lord you believe He wants to share with us as a group. If you have any questions, feel free to call or e-mail me (509-928-3360).

 

And That's How Jesus Does House Church

 

Those of you who are regular victims, er, readers of this newsletter may remember my letter for October 24 of last year ("Jaime's Journey: An Ongoing House Church Tale"). In it I introduced you to the story of our friend, Jaime, who is an important part of our house church. Much has happened in Jaime's life over the past six months. She has healed up from her surgeries and has been growing in her faith.  But what transpired this week is so profound that I felt compelled to share it with you. Part of Jaime's journey into the Kingdom has involved a prolonged deliverance from satanism and the demonic. Her struggle with the demonic has been intense, but I purposely did not force answers on her, waiting instead for her to "ask the question" (we Christians have a nasty tendency to give answers to questions that people haven't asked yet, and we wonder why they don't listen to us. Answer: Because we spend most of our time talking to ourselves, rather than listening to the questions they are asking). Several weeks ago Jaime called and told us that the demonic was harassing her to the point that she could no longer fight it alone. "Please help me," she asked. We quickly arranged to meet with Jaime and her mom, along with several prophetically gifted people from our house church network. Before we went, while I was praying about what we should do and how we should proceed, the Lord led me to Luke 11: 24-26, "When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first." I sensed the Lord saying, "It's time for Jaime to take a stand". When we met with her and her mom I asked her to describe what was going on. She informed me that a demon had been harassing her, but now there were eight of them. I told her, "Jaime, you've had a very biblical experience." I then read this passage to her and asked, 'How many demons were there in this passage?" We quickly did the math, "One plus seven of his friends; that's eight! The same number as in this passage!" The expression on her face was priceless and told me that "she got it"!  I walked her through a re-commitment of her life to Christ, and explained what Paul meant in Ephesians Chapter 6 about "standing firm" against the devil. We ended the night by taking communion together and praying.

 

Over the next few weeks Jaime experienced some dramatic victory over the demonic realm. They would come and she would rebuke them in the Name of Jesus and they would leave. But I suspected that the battle wasn't quite over. Soon, the demonic realm took a different approach. They began harassing her in her sleep. She would go to sleep and have terrible nightmares of demonic attacks. She reached the point of being afraid to go to sleep due to fear of nightmares. We prayed over her, which seemed to help, but the ultimate victory seemed elusive. Last Monday evening I picked Jaime up to take her to a neighborhood outreach that we are both connected with. On the way our discussion turned to why God was allowing her to still struggle with the demonic. I said my conclusion was that God was training her to do spiritual battle and to develop an obvious prophetic gift. Jaime sees and hears the prophetic realm like few believers I have known. Oh, yes, Jaime is also legally deaf, but can hear due to a cochlear implant (we joke that it's her Borg implant that keeps her in touch with "the Collective"). I joked with her that it is obviously God's ironic but divine sense of humor that He has given the prophetic gift of hearing His voice to "the deaf girl". That evening, early into the outreach, Jaime reached over, nudged my arm and motioned toward the door. I realized she was saying that she needed to leave. We quietly got up and left the meeting (from a room of around 20 people). "I can't stay in there," she said. "What's wrong?" I prodded. "There were eight demons in that room. I could see them clearly and they were all glaring at me. They were sucking up all of the air in the room so that I couldn't breathe," she said.  I've learned not to argue with what Jaime sees. While not prophetically gifted myself, I trust those around me who, by their lives, have demonstrated that they are. As we headed for home I decided we would stop by the workplace of Randy, the senior prophetic person in our house church network. Before he was a believer, Randy grew up in a satanic home and had experienced many similar things to what Jaime has experienced. I thought it would be good for the two of them to talk. And talk they did, for the better part of an hour. Randy is a gentle but gifted prophetic mentor and he answered many of Jaime's questions. As we concluded our time together we agreed that God had Jaime on a very steep "learning curve" with respect to both her prophetic gifting and her experiences with the demonic. What Jaime needed was a genuine encounter with Jesus, and that is what we prayed for. We simply didn't know how God would respond . . . .

 

After I dropped Jaime off and arrived at home my wife and I got a phone call from Jaime's mom. They wanted us to come back over that night. We agreed and headed back for Jaime's house. When we arrived there we were surprised that the purpose of the "call back" was to present us with a gift. Unknown to us, our time of standing with them throughout Jaime's surgery in October/November (read the newsletter) had touched them more deeply than we knew. Over the past several months (literally), Yvonne (Jaime's mom) had knitted for us an afghan/quilt with the words "faith, hope, love & peace" embroidered in the corners. They presented it to us as their way of saying "thank you" for all they felt we had done for them. We were humbled and blessed by such a personal gift. We hugged & thanked them and headed home, grateful to God for His grace in their lives, and thinking that the evening was over . . . when it was really only beginning.

 

When it was time to go to bed, Jaime headed downstairs to her room. Tired but thinking about everything she & Randy & I had discussed, she sat on her bed and prayed something like this: "Jesus, I've got a lot of questions, and I wish you would come and give me some answers" . . . . and He did!  According to Jaime, Jesus appeared in her room, sat on her bed and for the next 5 hours talked with her and answered all of her questions. She said the room filled with a spiritual light that was brighter than the sun. Jesus told her how he had known her before she was born, had seen all of her struggles and that He had called her for a purpose. She now understood God as a Father who would never leave her. He also told her that "something big is coming" for His Church and that He is going to teach Jaime and His Church how to fight the spiritual battle with power. When the visitation finally ended (Jaime said it felt like 5 minutes, but she looked at her watch and it had been 5 hours), Jaime said that all of her fears, worries and anxieties had been "washed away". And that, friends, is how Jesus does house church. While you and I would want to give Jaime our "pat formulas" for how to do spiritual battle with the demonic, Jesus had a better way. He simply gave her Himself. And I'll take a personal visit from Jesus over your (or anyone's) deliverance formula any day!

 

My wife and another mature woman in our house church have spent time with Jaime since then and, yes, it was very real and she is doing fine. Jaime's visitation, along with other significant events over the past several weeks, have confirmed for me again that we are, indeed, on the verge of a powerful move of God's Spirit. The River of God's Spirit, the River of Ezekiel 47, is preparing to flow in power the likes of which His Church has not known in anyone's living memory. He is visiting people and putting everything in place. He is preparing a channel through which to flow. Is your house part of that channel?

 

"You Wanna Do What In Your House?!"