Stale Bread

It feels like I’ve been in a whirlwind here in Liberia. After a quick introduction on Sunday, I was launched into a fierce set of meetings, morning and night, for three days.

I am not a calm and casual preacher. I pour my heart and soul into the message the entire time I am on my feet. Actually, it is more a matter of allowing the Holy Spirit to pour like a river through me. When I am done an hour later, I am completely drained, soaked in sweat, and barely able to stand. This is how it always is for me.

After the morning service, my driver takes me back to the hotel where I collapse for a couple hours, shower, and head back for the evening session. Then back to the hotel when we are done and repeat. I’m okay, but I’m getting a little fuzzy.

But the response is great! The Spirit of the Lord connects with everyone immediately. It’s as if they are already prepped and ready with open hearts to receive everything God has for them, and He rejoices in giving to them. I rarely know what I am going to say before I get up, but as soon as I do, I can feel the Lord turn me into His message for the service. Then it is a matter of just hanging on and following the flow of the river that He pours out. For the next hour, I am in that flow and am barely aware of anything else. And then when it is done, it is done.

I am told that this is the way preachers in America used to preach back a generation or so ago. It was never a matter of preparing your message, but more a matter of preparing yourself to yield unto the leading of the Holy Ghost. Open your mouth and He will fill it. But now, Bible colleges teach our young all the methods of outline and organization to fully prepare your speech or lecture to the congregation. And if you feel lost, that’s okay because you can simply purchase your message off the internet for a small sum, complete with video, outline and bulleted points. How convenient! Maybe they also have the canned applause.

But stale bread and sour wine will never inspire hungry souls.

There’s no faking it here. The Spirit of God is moving too strongly with these people. I am continually told that they don’t like American preachers because we do not preach the same message we did 50 years ago. I have literally heard that hundreds of times. They like our money and will come to the great mega crusades because we pay their pastors to bring their churches, but the next day after they are gone, everything goes back to the way it was.

Is it a small wonder that we are seeing so many miracles here and so few in America? Yesterday, just to make a point, I had one person who was in pain stand up and another person come over to pray over her. Healed! Then I did it again. And again. Each time the healing was immediate. I can do this all across Africa, from Kenya to Liberia any day of the week.

Why is that? Maybe they just expect a miracle. Maybe they just need God more than we do. Maybe a lot of things. I honestly don’t know. I will leave it to the smart theologians to write a book on how to do healings – they’ve never done it themselves, but I’m sure they can tell us all about how its supposed to be done.

What is my point? Theology and modern religion has lost it’s heart. We’ve become institutional and programmed to the point that we have lost the art of surrender. We know too much. The Bread we bring forth is no longer fresh from the oven of the Altar. It’s stale, hard, dry and tasteless. Our wine has gone sour and is more like vinegar than the wine of the Holy Spirit. We need revival so bad that it hurts.

But we are the last to realize it.

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Touch Not Mine Anointed

“ Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” (Psalms 105:15)

I think it is no secret that Satan would try anything to destroy the Church. To keep the flock from straying under Satan’s influence, the Lord has placed the church under the authority of the pastor. Deacons and elders play a subordinate role in most churches, and we are supposed to be subject one to another, but the truth is, most often the pastor is fully in charge and the flock is supposed to submit unto him.

But who does the pastor answer to?

I have heard Benny Hinn say that we should not reprove the pastors because we are not to “touch His anointed”, using David and Saul as the example. Let me remind you that while David would not come against Saul, Samuel had no such inhibition, nor did Nathan, Micaiah, Amos or any other prophet of God.  The king may be in charge, but by God, he’d better listen to the prophet!

That scripture, however, has nothing to do with reproof of a pastor. It is about protection from the enemy. David is speaking in Psalms 105 about how God protected Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from those who would come against them. He was not talking about reproving pastors and holding them accountable.

So who holds our pastors in check or guides them when they stray? That is the job of a prophet.

A true prophet has a solitary walk. In order to be able to reprove kings, his message cannot be influenced by anyone. He must remain separate, consecrated unto God alone. His job is to stand in the gaps (Eze. 13:5) and call the church, and most especially the leadership, back to a place of repentance. He is not called to be popular or make friends. Jesus said that no prophet is honored in his own country and among his own people. Why? Because he doesn’t tell them what they want to hear. When you do see a prophet that is honored in his own country, it is most likely because he is a prophet of “peace and prosperity”.

Modern prophets of peace and prosperity in this generation like to lean heavily on the scripture in 1^st Corinthians 14:3 in their effort to “speak unto us smooth things” (Isa. 30:10), but they never call us to repentance.  According to Jeremiah, however, that call to bring the church to a place of repentance is the litmus test of a true prophet of God (Jer. 23:22), a test that many of today’s blessing prophets fail.

Prophets are called, as the priest in chapter 14 of Leviticus to scour and cut out the leprosy in the house. If the leprosy is cured, then the house can remain. If it is not, then the entire house and everything left in it are to be burned outside the camp. When the leadership of any church is not able to be reproved, leprosy will grow unabated in that house. Satan is ecstatic because he can continue to lead the pastor away without the terrible interference from God’s prophet. It is now only a matter of time before that church falls.

The real losers in this are the unsaved. Sinners will not flock to altars that have lost their anointing.

And that was Satan’s goal all along.

“And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”  (1Kings 19:10)

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No Anointing

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”(Matthew 5:13)

Whenever I have a get-together, I always invite Barry.  Yeah, things can go just fine without him, but when he’s there, he adds an extra spice to the party. I guess he’s sort of half nuts, but the half of him that’s nuts is a real fun nuts. He’s kind of like the sweet and sour sauce that goes with your egg rolls … that is, if you like egg rolls. You can eat them dry, but without the sauce, it tastes like something is missing.

Church is a lot like that.  Oh sure, we have wonderful churches, with great pastors and real nice people. And I’m sure you all love your church services. But something just seems to be missing.

Ever wonder why so many folks out there are not flocking to your church? And I’m not talking about sinners – I’m talking about Christians!  Ask them sometime. You’ll find (if you can get around their initial polite responses) that they need something more than what they are finding at church. Something is missing and they are left still hungry when they leave. What is that thing?

It’s not the setting or the message or the music or the people. It’s something that is difficult to put your finger on, but whatever it is, it isn’t satisfying that hunger that so many people have in the depths of their souls.

I brought my family just recently to a service where someone was preaching that I knew was a real servant of the Lord. And it was good … sort of. All the right theological elements were in place, the preachers said a lot of great stuff, and it was good to be there.  But something was missing.

As we drove home, my wife pointed right to it – there was no anointing.  Great message, wonderful preachers, nice place … but no anointing.  Egg rolls without sauce.

Now I’m sure that a whole bunch of you are going to say, “But oh, we have the anointing in our services!”  Then why are hundreds of souls not flocking to your altar to get saved every week?

Think I’m being excessive? Back in the 1970’s, we had 30 to 50 souls at the altar every night and twice on Sunday! And it was because the power of the Holy Spirit was literally pouring out on us every night. Three hundred souls a week … for years.

If you haven’t been saved long enough to have experienced the revivals in the early 70’s, then really, you have no idea what you’re missing. If you weren’t there for the old Brush Arbor revivals then all you have to compare your services to are the narratives that were written by those who were there. We have not seen anything like it for 40 to 50 years. The Brownsville revival is the closest we’ve had and that was twenty years ago.

Once you have tasted of a Holy Ghost anointing, you will never be the same and you will never again be satisfied with “church as usual”. It is the sweet and sour sauce to your egg roll services; it’s the salt that flavors the meal that you are serving to saved and unsaved alike.  It’s the thing that draws souls to the altar in droves. It’s the very essence of the Spirit of God.

And it’s missing.

So what do we need to do to get it back?  I’m sure that everybody’s loaded up on volumes of Christian self-help books written by every pseudo-expert who has a new word from God to tell the rest of us … for $19.95 of course.

And maybe that’s the problem.  We’re so busy trying to figure it out that we’re not letting God take control. Maybe if we threw out our prepared messages and burned our theological books, we could be free to follow the leading of the Holy Ghost. But no, we’re afraid to do that. We have to do our Christianity according to the way we’ve been taught to do it. We have designed our System, and by God, we’re going to carry it out! God brought us to the dance, but we want to lead the way we learned at Arthur Murray’s Dance Class, so instead of waltzing with grace, we end up stepping on His toes.

When we are ready to admit our failure, God will be more than ready to pour out His anointing on us again, even more than what we have experienced in the past.  I have always said that the way to victory is through surrender; the way to wholeness is through brokenness; the way to God is through repentance.

Let’s start there and see where it leads.

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Just Wonderin’

I have a few questions that I can’t seem to get answers for.

When we have a healing line, sometimes I can feel the Holy Spirit flow into them as they get healed, and sometimes I can’t. Why is that?

We just had another healing line today. This time in the church in Ozoro, and this was one of those times I couldn’t feel anything.

There were probably around thirty people in line, and every one of them said the pain was gone, or their back was fixed, or whatever was wrong was now right. One lady had bad vision and now she could see. I stopped a couple times to admonish them not to say they were healed if they were not. Sure enough, a few of them would tell me that one problem got healed, but that I would have to pray over another problem. Then they would twist around or shake their hands and jump up and shout, “Praise the Lord, the pain is gone”. I’m pretty sure they weren’t faking it.

There was one lady that had “something in her stomach”. Immediately I thought of a lady in Uganda who had what felt like a huge snake rolling around inside her as soon as I laid hands on her. Sure enough, as soon as I laid hands on this lady, she started rolling around screaming. And then we went to tussling. Took a few minutes, but I think I got it. You can never tell with those things. Demons know how to hide so you think they are cast out, but usually you can feel a whoosh when they are gone.

There were a couple like her in the lineup, but mostly just aches and pains which were real enough to them to come up to get healed.

But I didn’t feel anything when they got healed.  Well, I take that back. There times I did feel it, but only faintly. There have been times in the past that it would feel like electricity or like a river of oil, so why not now?  Shouldn’t I feel something?

And another thing – if the Spirit of the Lord is flowing through me to heal all these people, what about me? Shouldn’t I be getting healed too? Or is this like a “pass-through” thing where It totally ignores you while it’s passing through? Not even a “Hi, how are you?” while it’s rushing through you?

The nearest I can figure is that the anointing is like a laser. It only affects the spot that it is focused on. But not always. Maybe. I think. Sort of.

I’ve listened to several so-called experts who have analyzed all this stuff and have lots of answers about how the healing power of God works. The problem is that most of them have never actually healed anybody. Why is it that those who know the least act like they know the most?

The older I get, the more I realize that the more I learn, the less I understand. Creation is that big and eternal things are that mysterious.

I know He’s looking down at me while I’m asking these questions. Maybe He thinks it’s funny. Maybe He could use a good laugh, so he lets me go on in my quandary. In the end, He is going to do it His way anyway.  Maybe we’re not supposed to know.

“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.”
(Proverbs 25:2)

Brother Dale

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Services in Uganda

I know everyone’s been expecting some exciting stories of what we are doing here in Uganda, but after three days of services, I don’t know what to write.

After visiting the Ladies of Hope in several of the villages around Mbarara, we had a service in the village where we chased out of the witchdoctors.

For such a small village, the place was packed. As we entered into the services, we watched a young man leading the kids in wild dancing and singing about Jesus. They were having so much fun that you couldn’t help laughing as you clapped along with them. And it struck me – these were the kids that were slated for death to be butchered on a Satanic altar.

But now they were dancing.

Yeah, did that get you? This was one of those moments that gets caught in your throat and you catch a glimpse into something deeper than our daily, comfortable lives. Something horrible was destroyed and something wonderful was restored to the Life of Jesus.

Then we went to a series of churches in small villages north of Kampala. It was the same program for us – Cindy with the women, me with the men, and then a service in the evening. Then move on to the next church.

I have done close to 1,000 services in 14 years, so after a while, they all seem the same. It’s not the message that I preach that is memorable – it’s the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I’m thinking that this should be standard for everyone, but the truth is, they haven’t experienced it anymore than we have in America. So when the evening service starts lighting up with the Spirit, it leaves them jumping up and down excited!

In one of the afternoon sessions with the men, I heard something new for me. A young man stood up and said that they had heard the false prophets telling them about how God was going to pour out all kinds of blessings all over them – and they believed it! – but now they realized that they actually had to do something! Revival was not free and there was a price to pay for it. For me to hear that is such a great relief. They get it. There’s hope.

You never know what will happen in a service, which person will be affected, and what fruit will come forth. Sometimes you never hear about it, but sometimes the Lord will allow you to catch a glimpse of what He is doing. I got one of those the other day when Noah told me about a young man who attended one of our services several years ago and was inspired to take the gospel out to his people and start a church. He now pastors a church of 700 people. He has been trying to find us so we would come and see what God has done.

What was it that lit that young pastor up? What is causing the celebration in the village of orphans? What creates such a fire that spreads in so many directions that we can’t begin to keep track of it? It’s not the words of the message. It’s not a great speaking eloquence. It’s certainly not my personality!

It’s Him. The Holy Spirit. He moves with invisible power, filling the air and igniting hearts. He takes them and fills them with vision and sends them forth, holding up the torch that was lit in that service, and shining Light into the world.

So yeah, a thousand services later, they all seem the same and there’s not much to say. It’s the anointing that makes the difference. That’s what changes the monotonous into the miraculous.

Brother Dale

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