Dear Friends,

Last month I had the opportunity to spend a week in Burlington, VT at the Ignite Conference put on by Francis & Judith MacNutt of Christian Healing Ministries. This is a yearly conference for them that attracts about 400 people. The speakers were Judith MacNutt and John & Carol Arnott.

The first night Judith spoke on forgiveness, a topic that is often ignored. During the ministry time it was apparent many of those attending needed to deal with issues of unforgiveness. John and Carol both gave powerful talks regarding the Holy Spirit and the Fire of God in your life. It was exciting to watch them minister the power of a spirit filled life to those that came for prayer. During the conference people gave testimonies that both physical and emotional healing was taking place. It was great to connect with old friends and be part of a ministry that emphasis healing and equipping people to do what Jesus did.

Look Busy – Jesus Is Coming!
I had to laugh when I read this line in one of Brennan Manning’s books. It so poignantly expresses how many of us live out our Christian experience. We have this misunderstanding of not only who we are but who God is and what He both desires and needs from us. In his book, Alone with the Alone, George A Maloney writes, “The God we cannot understand or even appreciate is He who waits lovingly for us with an attitude not only of wanting our love but also, apparently, of needing our love.” We would probably respond that God doesn’t need anything. Consider this; God created us to love us that we might love Him back. While in the strictest sense of needing anything, He doesn’t need anything from us to remain God, but I agree with the author in that God does need our love, and that’s why He created us.

It’s difficult for us to grasp that God wants relationship with us, relationship that goes beyond just doing things for Him. We feel that if we are not busy doing something for God we should be. We have this nagging feeling that He is not going to be pleased with us unless we are engaged in some important Christian work.

I also believe God wants us to live every moment of every day that we have on this earth; both the good and the bad. One of the topics Brennan Manning writes about in his book, Ruthless Trust, is living in what he calls the “Nowhere.” The “now-here” is living life to its fullest. Not always thinking about the past, or worrying over the future but actually living the moment given to us each day. I would call that, “taking time to stop and smell the roses.” Often we are so caught up in what we have just done or what we have left to do before the next task, that we don’t enjoy what we are doing at the moment.

If we can move to a place where we understand that we don’t have to look busy to be loved by God, that we are already His beloved and His intention is that we live each moment of each day as much as it is humanly possible then we will caught a glimpse of what it means to rest in that knowing and we will not have to worry about looking busy because Jesus is coming!

WHOLENESS RECEIVES 0.5% OF YOUR AMAZON PURCHASES
AmazomSmile is a program where Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to Wholeness Ministries. As many of you shop on Amazon this could amount to you giving a significant amount of money to us over a years time. There is no cost to charitable organizations or to AmazonSmile customers. The shopping experience is identical to Amazon.com with the added benefit that the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate to the charitable organizations selected by customers.

IT’S EASY All you do is go to http://smile.amazon.com, register, and designate Wholeness Ministries as the organization to which you wish funds to be given, and they do the rest. Then 0.5% of your purchase price will be transferred to us at Wholeness Ministries.

Thank you for your continued support of Wholeness Ministries. We continue to see God do exciting things and there is much on the horizon we will share with you in the coming months.

God bless,

Mike

Dear Friends,

This last month I had the privilege of ministering at Josiah Center in Maplewood, MN. Pastors Dave & Julie Carlson are growing a congregation that is bringing significant changes in the lives of people. They are guided by this statement on their website, “We are committed to creating an atmosphere of God’s presence where the Holy Spirit is alive and powerful. A place where people are healed and empowered!” I can say from my experience with them that they are doing what they have committed to do.

I also had the privilege of meeting and ministering alongside Pastor Damien Wong from Life Church in Kailua-Kona on the island of Hawaii. Damien brought his 17yr old son Jesse Wong. Jesse is a very gifted young man that I later asked to minister along with me on Friday night.

Here’s a glimpse of what happened at the conference. We started Friday night with a significant time of worship that drew us into the presence of God and set the tone for the evening. My message was centered around the power of the Good News and demonstrating that power through prayer. As we came to the time of prayer I had people line up across the front of the room and moved from person to person praying for them as I felt the Lord leading. Because I sensed such a gifting in Jesse Wong I asked him to join me. As we went down the line together his gifting was obvious as he was able to quickly discern with some exactly what they were dealing with and how we needed to pray. It was fun to watch him minister to people with such gentleness, compassion, and power. Watching his father I understood where he learned this.

Because there was so much power a number of people “rested in the Spirit” as we prayed for them. When they were able to move they went to one of the prayer teams for further ministry. Later, I began to hear testimonies of backs healed, legs growing, eyes and ears healed. As the ministry continued we began to hear testimonies of Inner Healing and in some cases Deliverance from the influence of demonic spirits. All of this is done so quietly most of the people in the conference didn’t know it was going on.

Dave and Julie have been using my book, “Why Not Waste Time With God” in the school for the last several months. Saturday afternoon I taught a session on the book and further encouraged people to not just read about this but to actually do it. I was encouraged as a number of people in the school came to share with me how the book had changed their lives. Understanding that God wanted to spend time with them was a new concept. When they actually began to do it they were surprised at how significant the time was and the impact it had on their lives.

PERHAPS YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK AGAIN, OR IF YOU HAVE READ IT, DO WHAT IT SAYS!

Many of us draw our value from who we know, what we do, and what we have. Do you long to experience the intimacy, joy, and freedom that comes from being deeply connected, soul and spirit, with your Father God? If so, you must prepare yourself to “waste some time” with God. You will be able to break free from dependence on others for approval. You can stop your pretense and striving for approval, and instead, sitting quietly with your Father God, you can be confident that you are significant, accepted and loved. You can purchase “Why Not Waste Time With God” from Wholeness Ministries Bookstore.

Thank you for all your prayers and support. You have been faithful and we have been careful and faithful with the support you send us. We appreciate your trust and your prayers.

God bless,

Mike

Dear Friends,

I heard a man say, “If you claim to know what you don’t know, you will never know what you do know.” This was a bit of a brain twister until I began to grasp what he was saying and apply it to my understanding of what it meant to be God’s beloved.

For many years I thought I knew how much God loved me. I thought I understood what it meant to be God’s Beloved. As a result, my relationship with God was comfortable, safe and about as exciting as a bowl of yogurt. Sort of like the place that many of our relationships end up when we take each other for granted. The passion and fire of our “first love” is reduced to a pile of barely smoldering embers. I only began to understand in the last few years that what I thought I knew I didn’t really know.

For instance, it was life changing for me to discover what it means to live by grace and not performance. I knew and understood that He loved me because I was doing things for Him. But I did not understand that He also loved me when I was not doing anything for Him, when I was hiding my sin, running from Him, playing the impostor. To simply come to the place of living in His grace, (defined as a state of being protected by God), helped me to see that there was so much more about Him that I did not know.

If I had stayed in that place of comfort claiming that I did know God, I would never have come to the place of wanting to know Him more. When I began to understand how deep His love is for me then I began to grasp the verse in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s incredible!

You might ask, “How did this happen, that you came to a place that you wanted to know?” It came about as I made a conscious decision to spend more time in His presence. Brennan Manning wrote in his book, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus, “The longer you spend in the presence of Jesus the more accustomed you grow to his face, the less adulation you will need because you will have discovered for yourself that He is enough. And in the Presence, you will delight in the discovery of what it means to live by grace and not by performance.”

If you were to ask me, “Do you know God?” I could say both yes and no. Yes I know Him as much as I can at this point in my life, but no I do not know Him as well as I will next year. My quest is now to know what I don’t know, which will help me to understand what I do know. My question for you is, “Do you truly know how much God loves you, how valued you are?” I suspect not. What are you going to do about that?

My book, Before You Get Here subtitled, Baggage To Drop On Your Way To Heaven, has been an invaluable tool to help people discover freedom from the invisible burdens that oppress and defeat many Christians today.

Chapters include: The Importance of Forgiveness, The Traps of Unforgiveness, Harmful Words and Harmful Connections, Let Yourself Be Loved By God, The Recovery of Intimacy, and more. Copies are available at Wholeness.org in the bookstore and at Amazon.com

Many of you have been faithful supporters for years and I appreciate your faithfulness. Like everything else our expenses creep up from year to year but God is faithful in providing for our needs. Join us in praying for others to come along side as new supporters of Wholeness Ministries. Thank you for your love and prayers. We are experiencing exciting times and know that 2017 is going to be an even better year than 2016.

WHOLENESS CAN RECEIVE 5% OF YOUR AMAZON PURCHASES!
AmazomSmile is a program where Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to Wholeness Ministries. There is no cost to Wholeness or to you the customer. IT’S EASY All you do is go to http://smile.amazon.com, register, and designate Wholeness Ministries as the organization to which you wish funds to be given, and they do the rest. Then 0.5% of your purchase price will be transferred to us.

God bless,

Mike

Dear Friends,

Last month I was invited to conduct a 3-day healing conference at Ruach Israel, a Messianic Jewish Congregation located in Needham Massachusetts. I met Rabbi Nathan Joiner two years ago at a conference in Vermont. We immediately connected and became friends. He was very interested in bringing the healing ministry into their community, and so we talked about how do to that and in full agreement with his senior Rabbi we were able to accomplish that in March of this year.

This was my first time to attend a Messianic Service and it was fascinating. We started with the Friday night Shabbat Dinner and ended with the Havdalah on Saturday, which is a celebration to close the Sabbath. Before I arrived Nathan had started recruiting and training some to be on prayer teams, as they wanted people available to pray for the sick during their normal Saturday services.

Using my book Learning To Do What Jesus Did, I introduced them to what I describe as Level 1: Entry Level Healing. These topics are: Understanding the role of faith and authority, how to pray for physical healing, how to hear from God and what Inner Healing is all about. They were very receptive and excited to learn.

One of the exercises I do is a practical way to hear from God. After my teaching on hearing Words of Knowledge, I break people down into groups of three and then pray for God to speak to them about someone in their group. Well over 75% heard something immediately. They are always hesitant to share but as they share what they are hearing most of the time it is right on as confirmed by the other members in their group. Then when I repeated this exercise well over 90% heard something. It’s fascinating to watch God bring people into an understanding that he does talk to them.

Derrick Steele who traveled with me did the teaching on Saturday afternoon on Faith and Authority. This is so foundational as we need to not only understand the role that faith plays in healing but the authority we have available to us through the Holy Spirit. Derrick is great prayer partner and an excellent communicator.

Saturday night after the Havdalah I went into the healing ministry time and I prayed for all those that wished to be filled with a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit. Many of them experienced “Resting in the Spirit” for the first time. It was a powerful time of watching God move as only He does. I gave some words of knowledge for healing as did another young man and then invited them to go to various prayer teams for healing.

We heard testimonies that people received healing for assorted pains in backs, necks, and hips. One young girl shared with me that she prayed for a lady and actually saw her leg grow! They were both excited. I also heard of a gentleman who asked for prayer for one of his eyes as it was cloudy due to cataracts. He told us it cleared up! One lady had chronic ringing in the ear that went away. And in the process of ministry there was some deliverance taking place. I’m sure we will hear of other stories as it was evident that God was present and doing some powerful work.

This experience gave me a new appreciation for the Messianic community where I found a caring and joyful community where Jewish life and love for Messiah Yeshua go hand in hand.

WHOLENESS RECEIVES 0.5% OF YOUR AMAZON PURCHASES
AmazomSmile is a program where Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to Wholeness Ministries. As many of you shop on Amazon this could amount to you giving a significant amount of money to us over a years time. There is no cost to Charitable organizations or to AmazonSmile customers. The shopping experience is identical to Amazon.com with added benefit that the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate to the charitable organizations selected by customers. IT’S EASY All you do is go to http://smile.amazon.com, register, and designate Wholeness Ministries as the organization to which you wish funds to be given and they do the rest. Then 0.5% of your purchase price will be transferred to us.

Thank you for you continued support of Wholeness Ministries. We continue to see God do exciting things and there is much on the horizon we will share with you in the coming months.

God bless,

Mike