Jerre led in worship…
♪ My words are spirit and they are life… They bring life and they provide life… My words are seasoned with grace… And they bring edification to every person under the sound of my voice… And I will speak that that which is true… And I will speak the truth in love… I purpose myself to become love personified… I purpose myself to give ground to give up my rights, not to enforce my rights… And to lay down my life for others… So that the name of Jesus is exalted… I am forgiven and I am cleansed by the blood of Jesus… I am made whole… I am righteous by the blood of Jesus… ♪
Pastor Ray shared…
Thank You, Lord, for the direction of Your Holy Spirit all the time. Every day. 24/7 You show us the way. Revealing to each one of us individually Your plan, continually bringing us together and showing us the corporate plan, the plan for Your body. Thank You for it.
Yesterday, I found this older book about Alexander Dowie. I read about how he in Chicago built a place for a healing place, next to where the world’s fair was. His whole purpose was to see people healed. It was kind of a forerunner of John G. Lake. I was looking at some things in John G. Lake’s book. How many years ago was it when Pastor Lynne brought this book?
Erika replied…
It was 1995. We were in a morning prayer group in the pitch dark in the old building. We had one light and it was a hole in the outside wall that let in some lighting. We were waiting for her sitting on the floor and when she came in and threw this book down on the floor. She began to talk to us about the things that were in that book. Personally for me and I think for the ministry, it changed things dramatically. I’ve never been the same.
Pastor Ray continued…
There’s something I wanted you to see about the beginning of John G. Lake’s ministry. His family had been sick and dying and they dealt with it over 30 years. This had been going on for a long time.
[excerpt begins]
“But in February 1891, John G. Lake married Jennie Stevens of Newberry, Michigan.” They eventually married and had seven children, but “less than five years into the marriage, several well known physicians diagnosed her with tuberculosis and an incurable heart disease. Soon after that, she became an invalid. At the doctor’s recommendation, Lake moved his young family back to Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, where he had grown up as a teenager. The northern climate was supposed to ease his wife’s condition. But for Lake, it seemed that nothing could ease the rising grief, which had nearly reached flood stage.
Again, Lake was surrounded by sickness and disease—an invalid brother, a sister dying from breast cancer, another sister slowly bleeding to death and now… his dear Jennie. He stood by helplessly. Where was his strong man’s gospel? And was it strong enough to hold back this tide of oppression?
More desperate than ever before, Lake fell back on what had worked for him in the past—Dowie’s Healing Home in Chicago.
Lake and his family decided their brother would be first. He had been an invalid for 22 years, so they carefully loaded him up and took him to Chicago. In a matter of just moments after healing ministers laid their hands on him, he was healed—he got up and walked out!
Next, the Lakes took their 34-year-old sister who was dying from breast cancer. She had been operated on five times and had to be carried on a stretcher. She too was healed!
Then there was the sister who was bleeding to death. Her case was perhaps more trying for Lake because, being only about a year apart in age, they had grown up especially close to each other.
One night, Lake’s phone rang—it was his mother. She was calling to let him know that his sister was nearly dead, and that if he wanted to see her alive, he’d have to hurry. When he arrived, she was unconscious and had no pulse. Now what could he do? Lake wrestled deep within his soul.
And then it came to him!
He rushed a telegram to Dowie in Chicago. The message read: “My sister has apparently died, but my spirit will not let her go. I believe if you will pray, God will heal her.”
Dowie’s reply came: “Hold on to God. I am praying. She will live.” And she did! Within the hour, the whole family rejoiced—another Lake had been snatched from death!
That left only Jennie.
On the heels of all the family celebration came the evening when death seemed to settle in heaviest over Jennie. But why? So much had happened—such wonderful displays of God’s healing power had moved through the other three. Somehow they had tapped in to the very life force of God. But how did healing really work—what made it happen?
On this particular evening, a minister friend of Lake’s stopped by to visit. After standing for a while beside Jennie’s bed, the two men stepped outside for a walk. As they made their way through the moonlit night, the minister spoke up out of a heart of compassion: “Brother Lake, be reconciled to the will of God.”
In contrast to the stillness of night, those words hit Lake like a slap in the face. The more he thought about those words the angrier he became. He realized that what this minister was really saying was, “Be reconciled to let your wife die.”
Let her die? He couldn’t do that! Where was the strength in that kind of gospel?
Suddenly, wind kicked up in Lake’s soul—and a storm blew in with a vengeance. Surely God had been insulted by such a suggestion!
Then the storm turned to rage. And Lake headed for home. When he got there, he walked up to the fireplace, took a Bible off the mantelpiece, and threw it on a table. So where was the power… especially now, when he needed it most?
The book fell open to Acts 10—verse 38 caught his eyes: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about dong good, and healing all that were OPPRESSED OF THE DEVIL; for God was with him.”
There it was—Lake saw it! The light of the Word shone brightly into his soul, revealing the truth and the power: Jesus is the Healer and Satan is the oppressor: Satan was the one who had been dousing Lake and his family with oppression and sorrow, sickness and death. Satan was the problem—Jesus was the solution. It was so clear!
In the past, though Lake clearly saw that sickness, disease and death were obviously not from God, he still had not fully understood that behind all these tragedies was the devil. And just as importantly, he saw that God was with him. God was not just with Jesus, John Dowie, and other famous healing evangelists and preachers, but God—and His power—was with John Lake. John Lake could pray and the sick would recover. He had the same faith and the same Holy Spirit available to him.
Well, that changed everything. He had stumbled onto a powder keg of boldness that was about to explode. Now the winds really blew, and a fury of faith churned deep inside Lake.
Yes! Jennie was going to be healed. He was sure of it. And it was up to him to do something about it. Now Lake knew who he was dealing with—Satan. And he also knew that he had every right to do something about tit. Jesus had given him that right—and the power to go with it…
Yes, healing was coming, but this time, Lake decided it would be different. This time, he was setting the time for it.
The time—9:30 a.m., April 28, 1898.
Lake called and telegraphed friends, instructing them to pray at the appointed time, because at precisely 9:30 a.m., he would lay his hands on his wife and she would be healed. It was that simple.
The appointed time of healing came—and with it—the power of God!
Lake put his hands on Jennie and the paralysis left, the coughing left, her heart became normal, her temperature normal and her breathing regular. Then, with a voice as big as her husband’s boldness, Jennie cried out—“Praise God! I am healed.” Lake was startled. He had not heard such a powerful voice from her in years. … From the time he was a boy, Lake had pushed and shoved and twisted his way through the darkness of sickness and disease just to get a grip on the power of God—the lighting of God. And now the struggle seemed over. Now Lake had gotten hold of enough of that power for himself, his family, and thousands more.” [end of excerpt]
If you would like to purchase the book “John G. Lake: His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith,” please contact LW Store online or call 763.315.7015.
If you know anything about John G. Lake, I think he was from Spokane, Washington, pretty much everyone was healed and healthy. And that’s how the healing rooms began. I wanted to go through that just to show us something: his wife was not healed because of his “desperation” for her to be healed. It was his revelation of what the Word said that God could do. In years past, different things would happen in my own family when I was little. We’d be desperate for change but we didn’t know what to do about it. Desperation doesn’t make the Word work. He was desperate to know the power of God and when he got the revelation from that scripture in Acts 10:38 that it wasn’t just for Jesus and it wasn’t just Doctor Dowie or other healing evangelists, it was for him too. It’s for us. More of Him and His Word. Standing on His Word.
Erika…
That would be revelation for the church, that He would grant unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, that we would know the hope to which we have been called and the inheritance that is ours in Christ Jesus. We need that revelation on a continual basis. Our eyes opened to see what He has done, what He has given, what He has granted, what we possess, what we are able to do, whatever He calls us to do, we have to see it and we have to seize it and walk in the light of it. So that’s the continual prayer for the church. That we would see, that we would know, that we would understand, comprehend, and walk in the light. Even as we go out in these last days, we’re not going down. We’re not going under. But we’re going up and over for greater and greater revelation to the church of the living God.
Prayed…
Revelation of the power of God to deliver and set free
Overcoming power in this life
Thank You for the revelation of Your Word
To lean over and stretch out even further
We lift up the Master’s plan, His whole plan
Today and into tomorrow, better things lie ahead if the Church rises up
Leaving the old ways and shaking out the old plans
Standing strong on the Word for today
Thank You for the revelation of faith
Entering into a greater revelation of faith
Signs and wonders begin to happen
Brother Hagin would say, “We’re right on the edge of it, right at the threshold”
For the Church has been called to access it more and more of the presence
Enter in, enter into the revelation
We do enter in and cooperate with You
Now we’re shifting into the right gear with You
All the parts and members will not miss a gear
Each one, one by one, take your place and take your stand
Execution and implementation of Your plan
Words to work to go out and pierce to change and rearrange
It’s not for a few, but for each one of you
Step out and move
Some kind of developments that are supernatural
They’re an advance for the gospel, a widening of the ways
Some kind of developments in these days—Holy Ghost developments
Some will be words spoken in an unusual tongue
Some will be words spoken in the English language or whatever kind of language normal to you
Words spoken by the Spirit to enter new territory
We’re back to the expanding, not leaning on our own understanding
We’re open to the flow and to go
That which belongs to you, that which was given to you, that which I’ve said and have shown you, possess the land!
Which is long overdue… lay hold of it
We deny the enemy any right to take ours—No more, no longer!
These are new areas that we’ve never been to. We get a revelation of that, I pray. We’re treading or walking into an expanded territory, realms, and rooms—expansion in to the new.
Group begins to worship…
