The Spirit of God gives life!! John 6:63

We’ve been seeing the Holy Spirit release that life as He releases His power on those we’ve been ministering to. God has been filling and empowering His people while we’ve been ministering His word and power in different settings.

While ministering at recent meetings, in a Santa Ana Hispanic church, God filled and empowered many there in a great way. One of the leaders encouraged us to pray specifically for the young people as they needed a little heating up in their walks with the Lord. The Lord definitely heated them up as he released Holy Ghost Fire upon many of them reaching into their lives with his love, grace and holy fire. The fire of God fell in Orange also at a Hispanic fellowship there as well.

We also had a powerful time as we co-led the worship, actually the Holy Spirit truly led it, and as we taught and ministered at a meeting in North County. God blessed us with an awesome time of worship, teaching and ministry and shared Holy Ghost stories from the mission field. We also had some blessed koinonia fellowship too. A young Hispanic man we met was visiting that night. Mercedes began to talk with him in Spanish and he accepted the Lord as Mercedes prayed with him before the meeting even got started. God will often work and move in places and times we aren't expecting it so we must as Paul said: "Be prepared in season and out of season."

Reflections from the Mission Field

A church leader with whom we are friends recently found out one of the insights of what happens when you step out to serve the Lord in missions. He had just returned from a mission trip in Latin America and was amazed to find that when you step out to be used by God to touch other’s lives on the mission field you find that God is grabbing hold of you and ministering to you and working in and on you just as much as through you.

Welcome to the mission field, we’ve experienced this phenomenon many a time. God not only works through you but in you and on you when you seek to step out to serve him and especially on the mission field, which is the center of His heart and will. He shapes and molds you through the many situations, trials and difficulties you face, as the Scripture says “conforming you into His image.”

I had to laugh out loud when receiving recently an e-mail from a friend from France, who was on the last Balkans mission trip, who said "I miss our times together, except for the times when we were starving...that I don't miss." I had to laugh as it brought back memories of our trip but also of how God lets us go through tough things that are often hard to endure to buffet our flesh and conform us more and more into the image of His Son. He works everything together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Reflections On Those Who've Gone Before Us and Paid the Price

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We’ve learned many things through these mission endeavors and have also learned many things from those with whom God has connected us now and in the past.

One person we learned a lot from in the early days of her ministry was Jill Austin of Master Potter Ministries. She just recently passed from this life and went home to be with the Lord. We have written some reflections on those sometimes hard but wild and often humorous early days of her early ministry and how it impacted us. Read and watch about it on our new blog. Click here to check it out.

Prophesying Without Knowing It

It was just about a year ago when we were out at lunch after a service we preached at down at the border area when I was talking with a friend. We were talking about how we felt that the US was headed for a huge financial crisis that could shake it to the core. It's pretty radical that it has actually happened! We can sometimes be speaking prophetically without realizing how much God is in the midst of our words. This also happened a few years back while in New York. We were taking a picture in front of the World Trade Center and I looked up and said, “Someday this will all come down.” I had no idea that one year later it would actually happen. God is more present in our lives, thoughts, and words than we are paying attention to sometimes. It is good to pay attention and hear what He is saying.