I have never seen anything like it in my life!

Yesterday I got back from an amazing few days away visiting Bedford for the "Heaven Touches Earth" conference. I signed up for it a few months ago (see 24th March) and boy am I glad I did. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it in my life. There was a guy there called James Maloney who prophesied to people in such an amazingly accurate way that you could almost hear jaws hitting the floor all over the auditorium.

This is the sort of thing we heard as he picked people out to prophecy over : "I see you at a little coffee table, on a big comfy chair by the window, is that right? (person nodes, yes), you have a big bible with verses underlined in it (yes). God has given you three promises recently that you have been thinking about (yes), you've underlined them, one is in the psalms. (yes). That will come true." He also prophesied what was wrong with people "you have a problem with your left knee" and then healed them. Although I guess it's always good to wait for confirmation of healings, the staggering thing is that he didn't say "who has such and such condition?" he said "you have this condition...God heals you right now".

I am sitting there watching this and it's like it's not real but I know it is. Every skeptical bone in my body wants to find some naturalistic explanation other than God, but there is none. I spoke to some of the people afterwards who said "every word was true".

My spirit is crying out within me "let this change you, reach out for this, break out of your  small definitions of what is means to live by the Spirit, press forward again for healing and prophecy and power, know that there is a God in heaven who loves you with a love that is so real and tangible that it will release rivers of joy into your life. Don't settle for trickles of the Spirit. Don't do 9 volt DC Christianity, plug in and do the 240 volt AC version".    

It was great to see Julian Adams there too who brought some great words of knowledge and released more of God's healing power. He had a word about a lump under someone's left arm and by the time the person had raised and lowered their arm in response the lump had shrunk. I think it was totally (or almost totally) gone by the next day.

The worship was good too with lots of new songs and some great Jesus culture stuff. Would love to have some Jesus culture worship songs at kings. They are so Jesus focused.  

As for the teaching the style was informing and engaging but a bit difference from what I'm used to. It was more Pentecostal (not sure if that's the right word) or how to explain it. It wasn't a standard three point structure or argument but lots of gems rolled out, like tipping diamonds out of a small black velvet back onto a table.  

Here are some gems from one of James Maloney's preaches:

• God is not just able to heal he is healing, he is called Jehovah  Rapha in the bible or Jehovah Raphael Spanish or in English Jehovah Ralf!
• this [impartation] is a gift of tremendous fruitfulness for you. The time of wilderness is coming to an end. He wants you to bear much fruit
• you are being transformed from glory to glory. Not from mess to glory but glory to glory. You need to find the glory in your current situation to move to greater glory in the next.
• What you adore emotionally, spiritual etc you become like
• Sonship is positional, friendship is relational and experiential. Jesus calls his disciples friends.
• The key to miracles is not prayer or fasting or morality, its intimacy with God.
• If God is first in your life your family will be first. All that God first, family second and church last is a bunch of bunk
• Many prophets suffer from PMS - prophetic mood swings.
• The gift does not endorse the person.
• Lakeland was not about Todd Bentley it was about the place.

I stayed over for the Sunday meeting and that was great too. I have blogged more elsewhere on this so I'll leave it at that here. I may blog some more quotes I took down at the conference tomorrow.