Deitrick Bonnhoffer said, “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.”

The Christian life is a crucified life.  “Take up your cross and follow me…” was the command of Jesus.  “I am crucified with Christ” was the confession of Paul.

But just as we must all take up our cross daily and be crucified with Christ, before we get to Calvary, we always pass through Gethsemane; the place where our will meets the will of God.

Gethsemane is not as dramatic or striking as Calvary, and perhaps for this reason, its importance is often overlooked.  But it is here, in this garden, that the battle is fought – and either won or lost.

The Roman soldiers did not take Jesus life when then crucified Him.  He had already laid it down Himself.  You cannot kill a man who is already dead!

This is why Jesus said, “…I lay down my life that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord…” (John 10:17, 18).  But notice, Jesus did not say this, while he was being crucified, but before.  Before the nails, the whip, the thorns or the cross JESUS HAD ALREADY LAID DOWN HIS LIFE!

Jesus was victorious at Calvary because He was victorious in Gethsemane.  The disciples faltered and fled at the crucifixion because they slept in Gethsemane.  Gethsemane is the place where you make the decision every day to get on the cross or to run from it.

Watch Christ for all Nations TONIGHT on Daystar at 9:30 (CST)

ON TONIGHTS BROADCAST: A man miraculously healed of AIDS, plus, a powerful message from our FIRE Conference in Taiwan

Afterwards, my friend and fellow evangelist Michael Koulianos interviewed both Evangelist Bonnke and myself for his television program called “Jesus Image”.  Michael has an extraordinary love for Jesus that permeates everything that he says and does.  Our conversation was centered around love for Christ and His presence and as we talked we could sense that presence filling the studio…it was powerful.

I’ve included some behind the scenes pictures of the day below:

Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke Preaching on Christ for all Nations Television show

Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke Preaching the Gospel

Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke Ministering on Christ for all Nations TV Show

Evangelists Bonnke and Kolenda Praying for Prayer Requests

Michael Koulianos interviewing Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke

Michael Koulianos Interviewing Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke

Michael Koulianos Interviewing Daniel Kolenda

Michael Koulianos Interviewing Daniel Kolenda

Michael Koulianos and Daniel Kolenda

(from left to right) Daniel Kolenda, Michael Koulianos, Rebekah Kolenda

David says in Psalm 63:5, 6, “…My mouth shall praise You with joyful lips when I remember You upon my bed and meditate on You in the night watches.”

The ancients had divided the hours of the night into “watches”; for the Jews there were three of them.

The dark, still hours of the early morning are when unsettling thoughts emerge from the shadows and dormant fears awake to trouble the mind.  Sleeplessness is a lonely affliction.  Fear is a merciless foe.  A weary mind that will not rest drains vigor out of the body, soul and spirit.

This Psalm was written when David was hiding in the wilderness of Judah.  He had been betrayed by many of his closest friends – including his own beloved son, Absalom, who was now plotting to seize the throne for himself.  Oh the worry, the heartbreak and pain that must have consumed David’s mind.

But David had a secret.  He transformed those worrisome watches into worshipful watches and found his mouth filled with praise and his heart filled with joy as he remembered the goodness of the LORD.  Rather than meditating on his troubles, worries and fears  he decided to meditate on God in those sleepless watches of the night.

David decided not to feed his fear with worry, but to feed his faith with worship!  That’s what you should do the next time you cant sleep.

Also, check out the video (After the pictures).  If you like this blog, you’ll love the book!

The Studio

Recording the audio version of "Your Kingdom Come"

Siegfried and I preping

YES...you will also hear from my beautiful and VERY pregnant wife

Listening as Rebekah records and reading along

Yesterday I told you about the severely crippled man who was accidentally brought on the platform and set in the center of the stage.  When I saw him sitting there my palms began to sweat and my heart rate went up.  All that faith that I thought I had was suddenly missing.  I’m sure you want to know what happened next.  I have to warn you – this is not what you were hoping for.  I prayed for the man and nothing happened.  No healing.  No miracle.  No manifestation.  Nothing.

I spend a lot of time on this blog telling you about the many amazing and awe-inspiring miracles that I see and experience as I minister around the world.  But I want to be very real with you.  Sometimes the most important lessons are learned, not on the mountaintops, but down in the valleys.  I want you to understand something about faith that is very valuable and if you will receive what I am telling you now, it can set you free.

After I prayed for that crippled brother and he didn’t get healed, I must admit; I felt humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed, disgraced and depressed.  I think I actually felt worse for myself than for the crippled man!  In that moment, the Holy Spirit shone a light on my own heart and I saw something I had never been aware of before.  I suddenly realized that I had hitched my reputation and ego to the train of God’s glory.  If He did a miracle, I felt gratified.  If He didn’t do a miracle, I felt humiliated – as though I had some ownership in HIS wonders.

This is the NUMBER ONE mistake that people make (in my opinion) when considering miracles.  Miracles are NOT about us.  Miracles are ALL ABOUT JESUS!  People are amazed to see the miracles that happen at our campaigns, but I truly believe that I could stand my 7-year-old son on the platform in my place and, if he prays in faith in the name of Jesus, he will also see mighty miracles.  Miracles are the easiest part of my job because I don’t perform them!

Most people reading this blog will never have to pray for someone on a platform with 5,000 people looking on, but many of you have the same fear and it has often kept you from stepping out in faith.  “What if I pray for someone and nothing happens?” is the question.

This is another one of the questions that Sid Roth asked me a couple of days ago when I was on his television show called, It’s Supernatural.  I want to tell you what I told him.

Years ago I asked this same question to evangelist Bonnke, “What if I pray for someone and nothing happens?”  This was his answer to me, “If you have to pray for 100 people in a prayer line and the first 99 don’t get healed, pray for the 100^th one as though every one before him had gotten healed!”  My friend…that is faith!  It is unmoved by what the eyes see.  It rests in the promises and power of God.

Someone once said to me, “Faith is spelled R-I-S-K.”  I know what they meant by that and there is certainly truth in it.  But I would like to say it differently.  I say faith is spelled R-E-S-T.  Or here’s another way to say it; faith is spelled T-R-U-S-T.

You see, if you’re always afraid of what will happen if you pray for someone and they don’t get healed, you will soon stop praying for people.  Faith and fear are at opposite ends of the spectrum and fear is bondage (Heb 2:15).  Fear enters in where there is a feeling of personal risk.  So if you are afraid of what will happen if you pray for someone and they don’t get healed, it is a good indication that you may have taken personal ownership of something that does not belong to you in the first place…God’s glory.

Until you are able to rest in the finished work of the cross you do not understand faith.  Until you are able to be unmoved by what you see you do not understand faith.  Until you have unhitched your reputation from the train of God’s glory, you don’t understand faith.  Until you understand that it is NOT ABOUT YOU, you don’t understand faith.

Im not claiming to know all there is to know about faith. In fact the longer I am enrolled in the School of the Holy Spirit, the less I know.  But there is one thing I am sure of…once I unhitched my ego from the locomotive of God’s glory, I experienced a freedom as never before.  Now I could pray for the sick without feeling any pressure or anxiety.  If they got healed it was not my doing and if they didn’t get healed it still wasn’t my doing.  I relinquished both the credit and the blame.  What was important for me to do was simply to obey and to believe and the rest was His responsibility.  Do you know what I discovered?  I discovered that faith is rest!  What a liberating truth!

The more you try to make miracles happen the less you will see them.  The more afraid you are of what might not happen, the less you will pray, obey and believe.  The more you rest in faith and move forward in obedience, the more you will experience the miraculous.  Your job is not to be the savior, the healer, the wonder worker or the deliverer.  Your job is to lay your hands on the sick, to pray for them in Jesus name and to believe God’s word no matter what.  The rest is up to God.

So, in answer to the question, “What if I pray and nothing happens?” here’s my advice…keep praying! 

…more on this tomorrow

(…Continued from Friday)

The picture above is from an amazing event where I ministered several years ago.  I had just finished preaching my heart out and now it was time to pray for the sick.  Little did I know, I was about to learn a new lesson in the subject I had just preached about – Faith.  Fired up by my own sermon and brimming with confidence I stepped off the platform and began laying hands on the sick who were situated right in the front.  I approached a man in a motorized wheelchair who was severely crippled.  His hands and legs were twisted, shriveled and lame. I turned to the ushers who were flanking me and said, “Lift him out of the wheelchair!” and I continued down the prayer line.

Im not sure what caused the miscommunication that took place next.  Perhaps it was the language barrier – we were in Hong Kong.  Perhaps it was due to the noise – it was a very loud meeting and a huge venue.  I’m not sure.  All I know is that after I had laid my hands on the last person in the front row, I turned back towards the stage and now that man in the wheelchair was sitting front and center on the stage in front of over 5,000 people!  Apparently, when I told the ushers to lift him out of the wheelchair, they thought I said to lift the wheelchair onto the platform.

Now it’s one thing to pray for a person on the front row, but it’s another thing to pray for them while 5,000 people are intently looking on.  I found my legs were a little weak, and my palms began to sweat…

…Ill tell you what happened next TOMORROW

“What is the Secret to Accessing the Miraculous?”  When Sid Roth asked me this question yesterday on his “It’s Supernatural” television program, my first thought was, I wish I had 30 minutes to talk about this instead of 30 seconds.  The reason is that I know many people will dismiss my answer as a cop-out or a corny spiritual cliché because it is too simple and un-convoluted.

“The secret”, I told him, “is that there is no secret.”  Or at least, it SHOULDN’T be a secret.  The key to accessing the miraculous power of God is the simplest and most basic belief of Christianity.  It is what brings us into the Kingdom of God, justifies us before God and allows us to please God in the first place.

The key to accessing the miraculous is simply faith in the finished work of the cross.  I know no other secret and I challenge anyone to point to anything in Scripture that gives us any other key to accessing the miraculous power of God besides faith.

Remember when the lame man at the Beautiful Gate was healed?  Peter said to the crowd of amazed spectators that gathered, “…Why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? …His [Jesus] name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know.Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.”

The greatest spiritual discoveries are simplest and most basic truths.  It seems like everyone is searching for a tip, a trick or a new revelation.  The new books keep piling up.  Training centers are springing up everywhere.  Teachers are a dime a dozen.  And yet, it seems that the more we learn about the miraculous the less we experience it.

Perhaps what we really need is to UNLEARN most of what we have learned, and strip it all back to the utter simplicity of Gods Word.  I’m talking about a simplicity that is so elementary that it is offensive; an insult to our intelligence.

In ancient times (before Staples and Office Depot) writing materials were often difficult to come by.  For this reason parchments were often re-appropriated for different uses.  A scribe or author would simply scrape or scrub out the original text that was inscribed on the parchment and write something else over the top of it.

Believe it or not, priceless New Testament manuscripts were sometimes recycled in this way, much to the chagrin of anyone who recognizes their incalculable value.  These came to be known as “palimpsest” (a Greek word meaning “scraped again”) manuscripts and scholars have gone to a great deal of trouble to transcribe the underlying text of these palimpsest manuscripts using chemical regents, keen eyesight and more recently, computer technology.

Perhaps the most famous palimpsest manuscript is known as the Ephraim Codex.  The Ephraim Codex is so called because at some point around the A.D. 1200’s someone copied 38 sermons from the 4^th century theologian, Ephraim of Syria, over the top of much of the Biblical text!  Thanks to the German Biblical scholar Tischendorf, who first deciphered the manuscript, the Ephraim Codex is today among the most significant biblical manuscripts in existence.

I’m sure the scribe who superimposed Ephraim of Syria’s sermons over the top of the Biblical text thought he was doing something important.  But, if he only would have understood that the real treasure was the original words underneath.  To get to the treasure, great pains were taken to peel back the layers of overlaid commentary to reveal the simplicity and the power of God’s Word.

If there is a “secret” to accessing the miraculous power of God, it is a secret because it has been obscured by the commentaries of a thousand teachers, each one piling on to the infinite list of prerequisites, pretexts, and procedures that are being taught as necessary.  If we can only strip it all back to the basics, we would discover the secret has been there all along: “Only Believe.”  My friend, if you are searching for the secret, I can tell you already — when you discover the secret, you will discover that the secret is really no secret at all.

– Ill talk more about this tomorrow

I just have to share this amazing quote with you from the prolific author, evangelist and pastor F.B. Meyer.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about this one:

“There are four different planes of power – the lowest is the physical, above that is the mental, above that is the moral, and above all is the spiritual. It is only when a man moves on the Spiritual level that he has power with God.  It is because too many ministers and Christian workers are content to live upon the intellectual level or upon the moral plane, that their work is impotent to touch the mighty stronghold of Satan. The first question, therefore, to put to every Christian worker is: on what level are you working; on what level are you living? For if you are speaking on anything less than the Spirit level, you should know that your life will be largely a failure.”

~F.B. Meyer (Quoted in Andrew Murray’s book, “The State of the Church” an urgent call to repentance and prayer, page 41)

Im sitting in the airport now after recording with Sid Roth in Charlotte, NC on his well known, It’s Supernatural television show.  I got to meet some other wonderful guests as well whom God is using in extraordinary ways around the world.  The Church is a wonderfully diverse and multifaceted phenomenon that reflects the infinite creativity of the inexhaustible God.  What a joy to be a part of HIS body. I’ll be sure post the show schedule when I find out when it will air.