Acts 10:34 says “God is no respecter of persons” — i.e., He does not play favorites — unlike, perhaps, your mother or father who, being human, would have had to go to great lengths not to favour one of their children over the others. This assertion is backed up in several more Bible verses (Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6, Ephesians 6:9, and many more).

You are just as important in Papa God’s eyes as the pastor of a mega-church. Perhaps not in anyone else’s eyes, though — but Papa’s eyes are the ones that see clearly. What He sees, what He says, is what truly matters.

And when you pray to Papa to ask Him for something, why do you think He would not answer you? Do you think you are too sinful? He answered the prayers of many sinners in the Bible — simply because they asked Him. Some of them were in the very act of sinning and did not repent, yet He heard their prayers and healed them. Do you think you are too unimportant? He answered the prayer of a runaway slave who had been mistreated by her mistress. He hears. He sees. He cares.

No matter who you are. No matter what you’ve done. Papa God CARES.

A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck, groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen would cure him, according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”

Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.

(Niemi, Maj-Britt, “Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind,” Scientific American Mind, February 2009 issue.)

“Mr. Wright,” we are informed, then read negative newspaper reports regarding Krebiozen, and began to relapse. His doctors decided to lie to him, telling him they were giving him an extra-special dose of Krebiozen, and again he improved and became much better. Finally, however, Krebiozen was completely discredited in the newspapers, and Mr. Wright died within days. (ibid.)

Faith Story #2

Two women, one Swiss and one American, had to share a room. The Swiss’s mother had told her that she must always sleep with the window open, or she would get sick. The American’s mother had told her that she must always sleep with the window closed, or she would get sick.

Not surprisingly, they had a difference of opinion as to whether to keep the window open or closed the first night. They finally decided to sleep with the window closed, and the next morning, the Swiss woman was sick.

So the second night they slept with the window open, and the next morning, the American woman was sick.

Faith Story #3

A woman who had been suffering from chronic bleeding for twelve years was in the crowd. No one could cure her. She came up behind Jesus, touched the edge of his clothes, and her bleeding stopped at once.

Jesus asked, “Who touched me?”

After everyone denied touching him, Peter said, “Teacher, the people are crowding you and pressing against you.”

Jesus said, “Someone touched me. I know power has gone out of me.”

The woman saw that she couldn’t hide. Trembling, she quickly bowed in front of him. There, in front of all the people, she told why she touched him and how she was cured at once.

Jesus told her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace!”

(Luke 8:43-48, God’s Word)

The Incredible Power of Faith

All three stories demonstrate the incredible power of faith. “Mr. Wright” had faith in the drug Krebiozen. The American and Swiss women who shared a room had faith in what their mothers had told them. And the woman with chronic bleeding believed in Jesus’ healing power. And in all three stories, each person saw their faith make a real, physical difference in their lives.

The big difference was in the object of their faith — who or what they believed in. Mr. Wright’s faith was in the drug Krebiozen — that it would heal him. And as long as he was able to believe, it did. The Swiss and American women had faith in their mothers. And what their mothers had told them came true. And the woman with chronic bleeding had faith in Jesus’ healing power — or maybe in His clothes! And when she touched them, she was healed.

There are many more faith stories: the placebo effect, magnets, special bracelets, special machines, special combinations of herbs — people swear by them and there are anecdotal accounts of miraculous cures, even as science struggles to prove or disprove the efficacy of a multitude of treatments. But we need a faith object that we can rely on forever. There is only one.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the LORD blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.

(Isaiah 40:7-8)

On Sunday, this person came up to us and thanked us for praying for them, although in truth we had not started yet. I did not ask them how they were doing, as obviously from the prayer request we had received, the situation was pretty terrible. Yet I couldn’t help noticing how radiant, how peaceful they looked — by gosh, they were GLOWING! Still, I did not ask for an update, as I was sure the situation could not possibly have changed yet.

Finally, on Monday, I had time to sit quietly and wait on God and ask Him to guide me as to how to pray. And I sent a prayer response to that prayer need. Very quickly a reply came back that the day after the prayer request had been submitted, there had been a breakthrough, and the situation was much much better! I was puzzled and perplexed, but soon it came to me that the very act of submitting a prayer request is in itself an act of prayer which is received by the Father directly. Not only that, but the confidence that others are (or soon will be) praying for my need gives me a boost of faith and hope, which will certainly bring the Kingdom of Light into the darkest situation.

In some ways, we ministry team members are mere bystanders who are privileged to participate in the process of prayer. But the prayer request submitted online is received directly by Papa God, and He immediately goes to work on the situation. Once again: this ministry is all about Him.

The lion‘s share of this work is God’s. All the credit, recognition and thanks that is often directed towards us, really belongs to Him.

Yes, we do do something, we admit:

1. Our focus is Papa God — He is our desire. We spend lots of personal, interactive time with Him because He is so desirable, so wonderful, so beautiful and we enjoy hanging out with Him.

2. We get to know when He is speaking to us or showing something to us or giving us some feeling or nudge. And because He is so precious and so lovable to us, we want to respond to Him and His messages.

3. We copy Him. Like toddlers, we imitate Him. We do what He does; we say what He says. We don’t let people egg us on or discourage us or puff us up or lead us down the garden path. The only One who has the right to lead us down the garden path is our Papa God. We follow Him. We respond to Him.

And… that’s it. Papa God does all the rest. It’s all about HIM. And we are crazy about HIM!!!

Footnote for the curious: We learned to interact personally with Papa God from the biblical and Holy Spirit-inspired teachings and example of Loren Cunningham and Joy Dawson of YWAM and Mark Virkler of Communion With God Ministries. Anyone can do it!

Well, now you can, with Prayer Clinic Online! Prayer Clinic Online works very much like an online help desk, where you submit a support ticket and receive back via e-mail first an automated response and soon a more personal response from a technician. In this case, however, the support tickets are requests for prayer, and the technicians are ministry team members specially trained to hear from God.

It is important to note that Prayer Clinic Online does not offer counselling or advice. Rather we act as a direct line between you and the Father at times when you feel you’ve been disconnected. So we do not tell you what we think; we report to you what we hear the Father saying. It is also essential to realize that we are imperfect human beings, and we can miss it. Whenever you receive a message from God through another human being, it is absolutely essential to test it before swallowing.

For more on this, please check out the following: What we do.

And can only certain kinds of people find intimacy with God? Are some of us just so dense or so unspiritual that we can never ever come into any kind of give-and-take relationship with the only One who truly, deeply satisfies?

No! We were all specially designed to be in intimate relationship with our Creator from the beginning. That’s why we ache, we hunger, we thirst, we are not content with what we have. We still need, deeply need… Him. And because He is good, He reaches out to us, He calls to us, He desires with an incredible longing to draw us into the centre of His Heart. He truly does. And every single one of us is specially designed with the most awesome capacity to know our Creator. And every single one of us CAN know Him.

Do you hear Him calling? Even if you do not, if you hunger and thirst and desire to be satisfied, say “Yes!” Say to Him,

“Father, you are calling me, although I cannot hear you, and I say ‘Yes!’ I am blind and deaf, Father, and I do not know how to find you! Father, if you truly love me, reach out your hand and take mine, and lead me into the centre of your heart!”

He cannot resist your heart’s cry.

When my son hit the advanced age of one month, he became able to stay awake for a short time after feeding; he also started to wake up only 20 minutes after I’d put him down for a nap. I realized then that I really was going to have to sleep-train him. So I followed the Ezzo technique, and we soon settled into a comfortable routine of three hour naps. He started sleeping through the night by age 10 weeks, which was an incredibly wonderful blessing for his exhausted parents!

As he grew, he became more wakeful once again, and I would have to re-train him to sleep at this new level. Back to square one. Since I had already trained him once, I knew what to do. This happened over and over as he was growing: Every few weeks or month, he’d jump up a new developmental level and start waking after a very short nap. Then I’d re-train him to sleep, and we’d be good for the next little while.

The spiritual realm is very similar: as we jump up new spiritual levels, we find it more difficult and challenging, and must learn once again to rest in Him.

Todd Bentley once said: “New levels, new devils!” and I find it is true. This morning I asked God why I was struggling with feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and frustration, and He reminded me once again to rest in Him. It isn’t as easy now, but it is just as desperately needed, and I trust that very soon my beloved Papa God will have “rest-trained” me for this new spiritual level — at least, until we move up to the next one!

In the rest, we are able to resist the pressures of urgent externals and maintain our awareness of the gentle, peace-filled Holy Spirit within us. We can walk through tense and stressful circumstances and respond not out of anger or frustration, but out of faith and confidence in our Father, and obedience to the Holy Spirit’s promptings.

We rest physically when possible, and we learn to rest even while doing great exploits or mundane household tasks.

We become the rest.

I have met so many Christians who are running as hard and as fast as they can. They are exhausted — and what they want to know is: Is it enough? Am I doing enough? Should I be doing more? This is NOT a place of rest!

If you find yourself identifying with those questions, then you have not begun from a place of rest. You need to stop running, stop trying so hard to be good enough. Just REST. When we rest, we can’t prove ourselves anymore. We can’t justify our existence, the space we take up or the air we breathe. We can just BE. We are forced to admit that it is GOD who makes us worthy, not we ourselves or anything we can say or do.

The amount of activity in your life does not indicate whether or not you have begun from a place of rest. An extremely busy person could be conducting their busy affairs from a place of trust and intimate relationship with God; a person who does absolutely nothing could be fretting about what they should be doing and missing God’s heart altogether. Rest is about drawing close to God, letting Him be the source of our identity and value.

Stop trying to earn it. That is a never-ending hamster wheel; eventually you’ll fall off exhausted, feeling like a failure. Instead, STOP. REST. Come to God honestly and tell Him, “Okay, God, here I am. You want me to rest? I’m here now. I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m not good enough. I feel like I have to keep trying harder, and I’ll never ever make it. You want me to rest? I’m here to face all this, and you, right here, right now.”

Then, just WAIT. And REST. And let Him and His Rest permeate every cell of your body, every nook and cranny of your being. Don’t get back on that treadmill until you can carry that rest — the supernatural peace of God — with you.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;

but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)