When Thomas Edison had completed over 9,000 unsuccessful attempts at perfecting a light bulb, a newspaper reporter asked him if he felt like a failure and if he should give up. Edison simply stated, "Why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitely over 9,000 ways an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp." Edison passionately pursued his love to discover and create, and it granted him the victory of over 1,000 patents to his name.
Bill Dupley shares a historical perspective of recent revivals, with a culminating challenge to each of us to "desire the fire" and to pass that passion on to our children. Now let's hear from Bill.
Bill Gothard teaches that anger is an inner alarm signal of rights I have not laid down, or if I did, I picked them back up again. I remember getting angry years ago when I was pastoring a church which was experiencing division. My reputation was being ruined by people gossiping and spreading untruths about me to people who had never even met me. The listeners would then take up a reproach against me, even though they had never connected even once with me. How unfair. I was ready to get angry.
Childlike abandonment releases tongues and creates a passion for the Bible - Barbara Becker
Being raised in a United Presbyterian parsonage, I was raised to believe that all that supernatural stuff was for the past. Now that we had Jesus and the church, it had passed away. I was a bit of a loner and liked to spend many idle hours as a child pretending to teach Sunday school, singing hymns, and praying by just making up words. As I grew older, I no longer continued what I viewed as childish play.
I wanted real life stories of how people received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of speaking in tongues, so I sent out an email asking for people to share their testimonies with me. Below are 20 such stories I received back. My guess is that if we did a survey of 2000, what we have below would be fairly typical of the 2000. So what do we learn from their true life stories?
Biblically speaking, vision and seeing in the Spirit are to be part of our evangelistic work. Not only did Jesus see vision all the time (Jn. 5:19,20,30), but look at the prominence of vision in the missionary work of the book of Acts. The scriptural evidence is overwhelming. Below is a listing of verses from Acts followed by testimonies on the web showing Jesus is still appearing in visions today, converting Muslims. We need to expect the voice and vision of God will be key in our evangelistic outreaches today. Evangelism is to be supernatural!
I concluded that stress was the major cause of my heart attack, so I became diligent to enter God’s rest (Hebrews 4:11). Part of this rest involves a heart that is at peace with myself and others. The peace of God guards our hearts (Phil. 4:6-7). Being emotionally troubled over relationships does not result in peace or rest for one’s heart.
I know for many years of my life, judging ruled rather than mercy and peace. Micah 6:8 says I am to DO justly and LOVE mercy. I had those two flipped: I loved judging and only did mercy. After being critical, I would feel anger or contempt about the person or the situation. This is not peace. These negative emotions surely damaged my heart and contributed toward my heart attack.
A cardiac nurse emailed me. She was convinced from what she had seen over the years that afib after a heart attack was caused by fear. Hmmm. Interesting observation.
I know the heart carries memories and I have written about that here. I also know that Jesus can cleanse memories of trauma stored in my cells and discuss that here.
Download this “Inner Healing for an Organ” – Prayer Worksheet and complete it (free and interactive), or you can do your journaling in your journaling notebook.
You will want to read this amazing article and watch the documentary:
