

What others are saying about "THE 7 YEAR PLAN"

Dear Gary and Barbara,

I finally finished reading your WONDERFUL book! I was slow in reading it, but found it to be very encouraging and informative. I can tell you after all your rises, and crash and burns, I have a higher respect for you! You are truly a hero and a good friend! Through your successes and failures, great blessings and huge rejections, you have tapped into some important keys and have uncovered some mysteries that only could have come by counting the costs and dying to yourself. Thank you for paving the way for other leaders to walk into their fullness!

· In this book you will see how to overcome mountains and make them fuel to further your vision and divine destiny.

· "THE 7 YEAR PLAN" shows how a man overcame great disasters and turned them into learning experiences to further the Kingdom of God.

· This book shows us how through all your mountains in your life how to be a strong leader and to fight the good fight and become successful.

· This book shows that God's plans and purposes are being poured out to those leaders who will get over their circumstances and will step into the supernatural plans and desires of the Holy Spirit.

· Gary Bundy shows leaders how to excel even through the roadblocks of life to step into the perfect call and destiny of God.

· In "THE 7 YEAR PLAN", you will be encouraged to see through Gary's examples that you can step into the perfect will of God if you keep broken, humble and honest and sucking carpet fibers as each mountain passes!

· This exciting book shows that staying in the Spirit will bring you a great destiny in God no matter how big your mountains are.

Marc & Lydia Buchheit, Healing The NW & International Ministries

International Association of Healing Rooms-NW Regional Directors

http://www.healingthenw.com

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Dear Readers,

I am so blessed and excited about this new book 'THE 7 YEAR PLAN, Receiving and Stewarding God's Plan For You and Your Sphere of Influence' by Gary James Bundy. I recommend that every leader and believer to take time to read it. It will bless you in many ways for your life and your marriage as well as your ministry.

Read this book! It will raise your sights and release your energy. From this book, you can get practical advice, spiritual guidance, direction for your future, and influence those who are called to the ministry. There are amazing, wonderful as well as meaningful helps for anyone in ministry leadership...

THE BENEFIT OF READING THIS BOOK:

When you read "THE 7 YEAR PLAN", you will find out guidance and inspiration to your SOUL by the power of the Holy Spirit. You will learn how to find God's vision to you & yours. This book will help you to know how to walk by faith before the Lord.

When you read this book, you will learn about who the Holy Spirit is and His work through God's people. I believe Gary was lead by the Holy Spirit to write this book to benefit many families, and many leaders in the body of Christ in our time.

Evangelist

Dr. Gabriel Bainesai

Founder and president-

Divine International Evangelistic Ministry.

http://www.diem77.com

Executive Director, Hazon International Ministries

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Walk a mile in my shoes!

I have been reading Gary James Bundy's book, "THE 7 YEAR PLAN", and walked in his shoes throughout its pages. It is an inspiration to anyone wanting to walk on the paths of righteousness, seeking the will of God in all things, looking for the higher ground, following the less trodden paths, or called to participate in God's plans for His Kingdom. If this is your lot in life and you want to have an instructional and encouraging word, then this is a 'must read.' If you are just starting your walk with THE WORD then this book is a bridge over troubled waters, a signpost along your path, and shows you ways to avoid the pitfalls. Read it if you dare to walk the walk and talk the talk!

Thank you Gary for writing as you were led!

Blog Post by David Carl Lewis

*****

# THE 7 YEAR PLAN

Gary James Bundy

THE 7 YEAR PLAN

Copyright © 2009 by Gary James Bundy

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Rachel Miller

jmiller2029@hotmail.com

Cover photo by Kimberly Miller

http://www.kimphoto.net

Published 2010 by Gary James Bundy

Smashwords Edition 1.1, January 2010.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be

re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with

another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it

with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased

for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your

own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

This work is dedicated with much love to my mother, Mary Ann Bundy Bond, who has always wondered just what it is that I do. To my wife Barbara, for sticking with me through it all, and keeping me alive to do it. To my children who I could not be more proud of, Erica, Kimberly, Michael, Rachel, and Marianne. And to Bill and Ruth Earp, my mother and father-in-law who have always shown their love, no matter what.

I pray that you might better understand and know Father God more each day.

Blessings!

GJB

" _Where there is no vision, the people perish."_

Proverbs 29:18

"I will stand at my watch post; I will station myself on the rampart. I will look to see what [God] will say through me and what I will answer when I am reproved. Then Adonai answered me; he said, "Write down the vision clearly on tablets, so that even a runner can read it. For the vision is meant for its appointed time: it speaks of the end, and it does not lie. It may take a while, but wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay." Look at the proud: he is inwardly not upright; but the righteous will attain life through trusting faithfulness."

Habakkuk 2:1-4

Disclaimer

During the writing of THE 7 YEAR PLAN, I received or was led to several communications, articles and portions of articles by individuals, that expounded on a topic, concept or revelation in a manner that I believe should not be modified from their original form. I felt clearly led of the Lord to include them in this book, just as they were originally written. While I strongly agree with the content of these pieces and believe their contents to have been Divinely inspired, I do not consider these inclusions to be a blanket endorsement of either the individual writers or their organizations but instead leave that up to your own leading.

Gary James Bundy

### *****

### Table of Contents

Introduction

"Crucified With Christ"

Preface

Chapter 1 Hearing God's Voice

Chapter 2 Systems and Funding

Chapter 3 Prophetic Revelation

Chapter 4 The Prophetic Savant

Chapter 5 Apostolic Declaration

Chapter 6 The Distribution of Wealth

Chapter 7 Josephs and Daniels

Chapter 8 Why 7?

Chapter 9 Prodigal Son ((1973-1980)

Chapter 10 Joint Heir (1980-1987)

Chapter 11 Journey Development (1987-1994)

Chapter 12 Journey Development (Part 2)

Chapter 13 Going Global (1994-2001)

Chapter 14 Preparing for War (2001-2008)

Chapter 15 Preparing for War (Part 2)

Chapter 16 Preparing for War (Part3)

Chapter 17 What Do I Do Now?

*****
Introduction

Greetings!

This work is His work. This plan is His plan. It's all about Him, His will, His soon coming, His Bride, His glorification, and the establishment of His Kingdom.

He created us. He saved us. He has a plan for us, and specific time and seasons of time for us, in that plan.

You see... it's all about Him.

It's all about His plan for you to rule and reign with Him.

It's all about His plan for you to become a joint heir with Him.

It's all about you moving into His plan with His strength, His power and His provision to do His will for His glory.

You might be thinking to yourself that He could never use you - maybe because of how your life has looked up till now. Maybe you think that you are that piece that could never fit into His plan. But, once you arrive in that time and place that He created you for, you realize that you were not so oddly shaped after all, but simply crafted to abide perfectly in that uniquely structured place of rest which He has created for you.

If your life has come to a point where you are no longer trying to get Him involved in your stuff but instead find yourself desiring to become, 'Crucified with Christ', then come on in and sit and rest for a while.

It is my hope and vision, as you come with me to where I have been, where I am now, and where I believe we are going, that we will become one in Him; that you might see yourself in these places and that we might proceed together in Christ, into Heavenly places, to learn to enter into His rest, receive His inheritance, learn to rule and reign with Him and become His bride to spend eternity, one with Him, as His Body.

So, have a seat, get comfortable and oh - by the way, you might just want to hang on!

In Christ,

GJB

*****

Crucified With Christ

As I look back on what I thought was living

I'm amazed at the price I choose to pay

And to think I ignored what really mattered

Cause I thought the sacrifice would be too great

But when I finally reached the point of giving in

I found the cross was calling even then

And even though it took dying to survive

I've never felt so much alive.

For I am crucified with Christ and yet I live

Not I but Christ that lives within me

His Cross will never ask for more than I can give

For it's not my strength but His

There's no greater sacrifice

For I am crucified with Christ and yet I live

As I hear the Savior call for daily dying

I will bow beneath the weight of Calvary

Let my hands surrender to His piercing purpose

That holds me to the cross but sets me free

I will glory in the power of the cross

The things I thought were gain I count as loss

And with His suffering I identify

And by His resurrection power I am alive

And I will offer all I have

So that His cross is not in vain

For I found to live is Christ

And to die is truly gain

(© Phillips Craig and Dean)

*****
Preface

What if...

...You had a part to play in the Kingdom of God...

... you know that you are called to rule and reign...

... nothing was impossible...

For several years now we have watched as God has assembled groups of people, partners, ministries, and projects from all over the country and the world, with many more being joined together each day to carry out His plan. God does have a plan and you are part of it. He has clearly released a new outpouring of His Spirit that is setting the captives free and releasing provision. This provision is moving into the hands of those who will enter into His presence, hear His voice, and be obedient to do the final work of His great commission in a manner where God will get the glory and where nothing He decrees is impossible.

We have sought God's face and voice and have found ourselves enjoined together within a growing body of like-minded individuals as the fruit of that effort. This coming together (unity) in common purpose has in turn enabled a greater reach and scope for each of us individually as well as corporately.

" _Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit." Ephesians 2:19-22._

We continually need to seek Him for direction about how to walk this commission out. It is His strength "in our weakness" and the assembling of the body by God that makes this all possible.

" _But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-11._

We are now moving into more clearly defined relationships, corporate prayer, mapping, prioritization of opportunities, and the assembling and release of the resources needed to bring them to fruition.

All who have witnessed this assembly/gathering have become aware that no man has conceptualized what we are a part of; it is clearly one body with one mind and one purpose.

Thy Kingdom Come and Thy Will Be Done!

**Chapter 1 -** **Hearing God's Voice**

" _I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd." John 10:16._

Often when I tell someone that the Lord told me a certain thing, I am met with skepticism. But throughout most of my life I heard, and from time to time heard very clearly - that "still small voice".

Sometimes it is a revelation of something to be done or something about which to pray. Sometimes it comes as a "word of knowledge" or other "prophetic utterance". In every case it is to glorify Him and establish His Kingdom.

No matter what else is going on in my life, or how bad circumstances may look, my friends tell me that the one thing they know for sure about me is that I seek to hear His voice and continually endeavor to obey.

Recently, during a time when I was really questioning whether or not I was having any impact on anyone, two friends called me on the same day. Each told me almost the exact same thing. One was in Virginia reading about the 100th anniversary of the Azuza Street revival and the other was in California reading Bill Johnson's book, When Heaven Invades Earth. They both felt strongly led to call me, one right after the other. Without even knowing each other, they both told me that they were reading a book. God was speaking to them through the book, and with each turn of a page they were reminded of me.

This was a direct answer to a question that I had just asked as well as a prayer that I had been singing for many years in the form of a 4-Him song called "A Man You Would Write About".

" _I want to be a man that you_

Would write about.

Oh a thousand years from now

That they could read about.

Your servant of choice in whom

You found favor.

A man who heard Your voice."

To be known as one who "hears"; it was and still is, I believe, the highest form of compliment that can be given and it is a gifting that I constantly seek to develop in others.

Over the years the subject of "hearing" has become my favorite and I have many times made it the focus of my public speaking and one-on-one mentoring.

Without going too deep into the subject, it remains "what it is all about".

Whether you hear that "still small voice", have a scripture "jump off the page", receive multiple confirming messages from a variety of sources or simply witness "beyond coincidence" circumstances, be assured that God is speaking to us in a variety of ways. My prophet friend, Duane Udd, has coined the term "God-incidence" when referring to these events. You can and most likely do "hear from God" on a fairly regular basis...if you're listening.

Not listening, it turns out, is the single biggest hindrance to hearing. Hearing and not obeying, likewise becomes the single biggest hindrance to us being blessed, and God getting the glory.

Unfortunately, if you are known as someone who hears, it is very obvious to others when you don't or when you do hear but decide that you have a better idea.

Throughout the Word of God we find individuals who failed to receive what they heard from God or would not obey when He spoke to them. Oft times prophets of God were not received by the people they were sent to - but that is a subject for later.

Christ instructed His disciples not to "go out" until they had received the Holy Spirit and were led and empowered by Him. We must do no less if we really desire to walk in His plan.

Many others simply will not listen, and even when they do, will not obey. The truth is that many are called but few are chosen. Mostly because many do not want to set aside their lives to truly follow Christ.

To be a Christian is to truly be a "follower" of Christ.

Jesus said that they who truly followed Him heard and knew His voice and obeyed Him.

" _My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." John 10:27._

" _Pilate therefore said to Him, 'Are You a king then?' Jesus answered, 'You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is of the Truth hears My voice.'" John 18:37._

" _Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me." Revelation 3:20._

Many are not hearing and therefore do not understand. This "not hearing" explains a lack of understanding about forgiveness.

" _So that, seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest they should turn and their sins be forgiven them." Matthew 4:12._

This "not hearing" explains a lack of understanding about healing.

" _For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing and their eyes they have closed lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn so that I should heal them." Matthew 13:15._

This "not hearing" explains a lack of understanding and perceiving.

"And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand and seeing you will see and not perceive'." Matthew 13:14.

One of the first things that I remember hearing was that I was to ask the Lord for the ability to deliver solutions that were beyond my own abilities, so that He would get the glory. Secondly, that I would give Him permission to do whatever work in me that He needed to do, so that I would be able to be used. And thirdly, that I would make Him the Lord of my circumstances, so that I would always be where He needed me to be, when He needed me to be there.

I am reminded daily of the ways that He has moved in and through me over the last three and a half decades and the many testimonies that have changed my life. I am a prophetic visionary by calling and my favorite revelations from Him are the glimpses of what He is about to do.

Recently God has been speaking to me primarily on three subjects:

  * The writing of this book to convey the testimony of how this all came together and some of where I believe it is going.

  * The facilitation of the development of "7 Year Plans" for these specific spheres of influence, including the resurrection, at God's instruction and leading, of some long dead and forgotten key technology for this purpose.

  * The establishment of a Northwest Coalition of Apostles and Prophets (NWCAP) to facilitate the identification, empowerment and mobilization of key Northwest Apostolic and Prophetic leaders and resources. Also, promoting "Regional Revelation and Relationship for Global Impact".

So...how's your hearing?

*****

Chapter 2 - Systems and Funding

I was once told that all business or organizational failures could be directly attributed to a failure in either systems or funding. For the most part I think that this still holds true.

However, in doing God's business, there are a number of other factors that can come into play in the form of spiritual confrontations. All of these confrontations pretty much boil down to whether or not the business or ministry visions, and those stewarding them, are truly submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and that they are walking in the power, priorities, and the authority of the Holy Spirit. It is important that the participants are submitted in true humility to each other, esteeming each other above themselves. Are we really operating in this way? Or, do we sometimes have a better idea?

" _But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Live in peace with one another."_

1 Thessalonians 5:12,13.

Many today, especially here where we are in the Pacific Northwest, have now finally come out of the left-over individuality created in the sixties that considered any authority to be a bad one and would therefore not participate in "any" corporate works.

Today, we see constant new revelations regarding God's thoughts and plans concerning these things, specifically in the hands of those He has called to engineer things His way. The walls have begun to come down and we are being led to work together in the Spirit as never before.

For years I have joked about starting a consulting company called, "All the Right People in All the Wrong Places". This came about after seeing literally hundreds of projects and organizations where the primary problems always boiled down to who was running the show and whether the existing team was, individually and corporately, properly placed and in correct alignment with true and proper authority. A single flaw in either aspect generally resulted in the eventual failure of the systems and funding.

Likewise today we are learning that the people are the key, with relationships being the priority.

Recent revelations concerning the roles of the modern day Apostles and Prophets, the Kings and the Priests and the Josephs and Daniels, seem to be what is most important. All, of course, need to be centered on the headship of Christ.

So, what if, in any given sphere of authority, God placed all the right people in all the right places doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing, with the right infrastructure in place to manage it?

What if all these people had a vision and "counted the cost" as Jesus taught us in His Word, so as to complete the work that God had ordained? Do you think that He just might begin to release the resources to the faithful in ever increasing amounts as their faithfulness grew?

What if every person in a given sphere of influence and distribution system could share their piece of the puzzle in a manner that supported the creation and approval of the individual pieces, their relationship to each other and their corresponding financial requirements? What if these approved and organized components were then submitted to those who possessed, managed, and distributed the resources in a way that greatly reduced or in some cases eliminated, the initially perceived costs and time requirements because of God ordained collaborative synergy?

What if business plans and funding could be "fast-tracked" or virtually replaced altogether by project oriented teams for as long as they were needed and then be disbursed and reformed into other teams who were located anywhere on the planet?

What if each and every participant was facilitated to clearly and distinctly communicate what they were called to do, what it would cost, how long it would take, and what the fruit would be? What if they could operate in complete agreement as it related vertically and horizontally, to every other piece in the plan?

What if we were called to work together to touch all of the nations in preparation of His soon coming?

**Today we can do all of these things.** Truly His people, His systems and His funding are coming together for His purposes. According to His Word, God is releasing wonderful creative and witty ideas to His people for "such a time as this".

*****

Chapter 3 – Prophetic Revelation

This book is about Apostles, Prophets, and their roles in equipping you, the body of Jesus Christ, to fulfill what God has called you to do. Some of you may be new to these terms, while others may be quite familiar with them. You may even be in the discovery process concerning Apostles and Prophets in this season of God that we are experiencing. Most of you know who you are. But, just in case you want to pass this along to those coming up behind you, who are not sure about who they are, I am going to - with a little help from some others - elaborate.

For many years before ever hearing the terms Prophet, prophetic or prophesying, I would get revelation or perceptions about things but did not understand the source of the revelations. During the 1980's, my wife Barbara and I were privileged to meet Don and Katie Fortune, who later became close friends and neighbors. Katie had written several books about our God given motivational gifts and with the direction of the Holy Spirit she created a series of tests that help people know their motivational gift sets. Katie explains: "Motivational Gifts are God-given spiritual gifts found in Romans 12 which shape our personality types, provide our inner motivation, and direct our thoughts, attitudes and actions." Everyone (young or old) has one or more of these gifts - and understanding our gifting has much to do with whether life is fulfilling or frustrating, fun or frantic. This set of 7 God given motivational gifts are listed in Romans 12:6-8. They are the gifts given to all of us before we are born that reveal our unique personalities. They are prophesying (renamed perceiver for clarity), serving (helps), teaching, exhorter (encourager), giver, administrative (leadership) and mercy (compassion).

If you desire to know more about your unique God given motivational gifts, please contact Katie and Don Fortune about their books, tests, and ministry. Visit her website at: http://www.heart2heart.org.

" _We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his_ _faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully." Romans 12:6-8. (NIV)_

After taking a "God Given Motivational Gifts" test, my results were a strong prophetic, administrative, and giving gift set. The combination of these three motivational gifts is how God had uniquely created me and they had been in operation in my life even before I accepted Christ. The prophetic motivational gift or "perceiver gift" as it was referred to in their books, explained that "sixth sense" that I had always seemed to have as long as I could remember. Now I knew that this was not a "sixth sense" but God given revelation, once I gave my heart and life to Him. The results of my test explained fully my ability to perceive a solution, administrate the delivery of it and then give it away freely, creating the foundation for who I am. Operating within this set of gifts delivered complete satisfaction and fulfillment as I entered into the destiny for which God has created me.

After accepting Christ and later receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, I learned about the operation of the spiritual gifts given to the Church by the Holy Spirit which is found in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11. The motivational gifts are part of us and we essentially own them but the gifts of the Holy Spirit work through us as He wills. There are nine manifestations of the Holy Spirit that flow through the life of a believer. There is so much wonderful in depth teaching about these gifts that I would encourage you to study this further on your own.

" _Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines."_ _1 Corinthians 12:7- 11 (NIV)._

We are encouraged in the word to desire the gift of prophecy after we follow the way of love.

_1 Corinthians 14:1 says; "_ _Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy."_

The American Heritage Dictionary defines prophesy as:

" _To reveal by divine inspiration. To predict with certainty, as if by divine inspiration. To prefigure; foreshow. To reveal the will or message of God. To predict the future as if by divine inspiration. To speak as a prophet."_

There is one more set of gifts listed in Ephesians 4:10-13 which was given to us by Jesus Christ. They are called the five-fold ministry listed in order as: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Only a small portion of the Body of Christ is operating in these gifts because they are given for the equipping of the saints. We all recognize people who are part of the five-fold ministry. Billy Graham is an evangelist. Joyce Meyer is a true teacher and Bill Hammond is a classic prophet. I found it very fascinating that there are three sets of gifts, with each set being given by an individual member of the Trinity. The Father gave the motivational gifts, Jesus Christ gave the five-fold ministry

gifts and the Holy Spirit gave the gifts of the Spirit.

*****

Paula A. Price, in her book The Prophet's Dictionary defines prophetic as:

  1. The name given to the predictive spheres of supernatural communications acts and influences from the spiritual world and its citizens.

  2. The ministry and work of the Prophet.

  3. The disciplines and practices of revelatory ministry.

She goes on to define revelation as:

" _Truth uncovered and demonstrated or made obvious or clear. The disclosed word of God."_

For more insight about the prophetic, James Thomas Nicholson explains the modern day role of the prophet in his book, Oracles on Fire: The Nature, Role, and Function of the Hebrew and Christian Prophets.

He states: _"The ministry of the prophet in the Old and New Testaments is a ministry that is greatly misunderstood. There is a tendency to limit the ministry of the prophet and to relegate it to the Old Testament period, and to the developmental period of the early Church. There continues to be a great deal of misunderstanding concerning the Old Testament prophets in general and the New Testament prophets in particular, especially in the light of their unique nature, their specific role, and their ministerial function."_

The Apostle Paul writes to the Church at Corinth:

" _Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, administrations, and various kinds of tongues. All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?" 1 Corinthians 12:28-30._

The Apostle Paul also writes to the Church at Ephesus clearly illustrating that God has specifically set certain ministry gifts within the Church for the express purpose of promoting maturity and unity. Ephesians 4:11-13 shows that there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers set in the body until the Church comes into the unity of the faith and experiences the _"knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man...."_

The Apostle Paul writes to the Church at Ephesus that God has set certain ministry gifts within the Church in order to equip it for service:

" _And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ until we all obtain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ."_

God has given Christ to the Church to be its head and Christ has given the minister to the Church to serve in various roles and functions. Christ gave some to be apostles and some to be prophets in order to serve, to equip, and to perfect the saints. The Greek word "Katartismov" means perfecting or equipping, and the phrase "pros ton katartismov" means "for the perfecting or equipping of" and is broken up as follows: the prefix "kata" is part of the compound term meaning "a standard by which judgment may be passed," and when found joined to the word "artismos" it means "to repair, to adjust, to fashion or work with the hands as a craftsman." The meaning of this Greek phrase within its context means "the fashioning or setting in order of the lives of believers, based upon a judgment of their relation to God's standard, the written Word of God".

The Church desperately needs all of the ministry gifts that are set in the Church. The Church must not be found guilty of elevating the ministries of evangelist, pastors and teachers, while neglecting the foundational ministries of the apostles and prophets. In Matthew 23:34-36 and in Luke 11:49-50, Jesus prophesies concerning the ministry of prophets and apostles:

(Now here is the good news about being an Apostle or Prophet... gjb)

" _For this reason also the wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and apostles and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, in order that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation...."_

" _The ministry of the prophet is a ministry gift given to the Church and set in the body by God in order to promote unity and maturity."_ End quote.

All of this said, sometimes those who have the prophetic gift find ourselves "becoming" the message. This has become true in my case. I no longer just deliver the message. Now I "am" the message. The good news for those who hear what God has revealed to you and receive the prophet will also receive the Prophet's blessing - as God intended.

My friend, Dr. John Roddam, sent an article to me last year that I really appreciated. He said that the message of the article reminded him of me by revealing to him the burden I carried and the inability to escape from it. Sometimes having just one person that "gets it" can be a great blessing.

As I read through the article for the first time, I felt as if every fiber of my being was exposed. Its message I could never have conveyed on my own. The article, "The Prophetic Savant" by Chip Brogden, has become my all time favorite writing aside from the Word of God. Every time it is read aloud to a group of people, which I often do to increase the appreciation of the prophetic - everyone who hears it is transformed. The revelation of this article opens their eyes to the value of the gift of the prophet and the prophetic to the body. See if there isn't someone you know that this article might remind you of, maybe even yourself...

*****

Chapter 4 - The Prophetic Savant

The prophetic Savant by Chip Brogden

<http://www.watchman.net/>

" _sa-vant' (n.): 1. A mentally defective person, who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field; 2. A person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else."_

"...The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad..." (Hosea 9:7).

"What then is genius? Could it be that a genius is a man haunted by the speaking Voice [of God], laboring and striving like one possessed to achieve ends which he only vaguely understands?" A. W. Tozer

(*The use of the male pronoun in this writing is for convenience only. We mean no partiality to our brothers and no disrespect to our sisters.)

" _The prophetic savant is a person afflicted with a heavenly autism, making him nearly incapable of normal relations with those around him. Accused of being aloof, cold, and distant, he is apt to hide himself from people, withdrawing into a world of his own. He never seems to be all "there". Even if he forces himself to come down to Earth for a moment, those around him may have the sense that there is an unspoken dialogue going on somewhere inside of him, a secret communion carried on beneath the surface that never allows him to be fully "in the moment"._

How do we explain this? As a prophetic savant he sees, hears, and relates to the world differently than the rest of the population. They have not seen what he has seen; they have not heard what he has heard. And so he finds very little camaraderie, very little sympathy or understanding, no one with whom he can open his heart and share his soul, because he no longer speaks the same language, and they no longer speak his. Of course, he may have surface-level exchanges with anyone. He is approachable, not haughty, or high-minded. He may even be personable and likeable. Yet there is something so otherworldly in his demeanor that he is more often frightening than friendly, in spite of his best efforts. He is a spiritual autistic, and no matter how hard you try to know him, he is generally unknowable, and to a certain degree, he resists all attempts to know him.

If a prophet is anything, he is extra-terrestrial - above the Earth. He walks the Earth with others, but he is not of the Earth. He is from beyond; he is from above. If we trace his history we will find that he may or may not have had a normal childhood. He may or may not have come through extraordinary experiences. But at some point in his life, either as a child, or as a young adult, or as an old man, something from another realm broke through the thin membrane between Heaven and Earth and took hold of him. It may have been a burning bush, or a Voice crying out to him from beyond the veil, or a Heavenly Vision, which brought him briefly into contact with something and Someone that he could not completely fathom.

However it happened, for one moment at least, the clouds parted and the veil was rent, and he saw something that is un-seeable; he heard something that is un-hearable; Heaven itself was opened up to him, and he saw into another world. The thing he saw and heard now burdens him like a mantle that has been draped over his shoulders. He feels its weight, for it is with him day and night, whether he is eating or drinking, working or resting. It is the impression that everything around him is a lie, and what he has seen and heard is the Truth, and this Truth is not static, but it is living, growing, and increasing within him from the day it comes to him in the form of a seed.

For a long time he struggles to find words and vocabulary to express the inexpressible. He cannot explain why he feels the need to try and express it, but for some inexplicable reason something drives him to open his mouth, or take up his pen, and make it known. Whatever it is, it will not permit him to savor it or keep it to himself, and it seems intent on coming to the surface and interrupting the normal course of his life. This process can be frustrating and painful, so much so that he may give up several times, content to simply walk in what he has seen and heard and leave it at that.

But try as he might, he cannot run away from what he has seen and heard, and he cannot deny the compulsion to bring it forth. On the one hand he cries out for a "normal" life, while on the other hand he knows he cannot deny what has been revealed to him. When he does achieve some modest success in articulating something of Heaven he is pleased for a time, but soon grows impatient with it, and eventually is dissatisfied with it altogether, because it cannot do justice to what he has seen and heard. And so the process begins again, the continual search for words to more perfectly express what he is trying to communicate (and a subtle fear in the back of his mind that he may never be able to adequately express it), which leads him to invent words which may have never before existed, or to look for Spirit-inspired words in some unknown tongue that can be translated into something others can understand.

The prophets of old correctly called it the "burden of the Lord", for it is like a woman who must live the rest of her life being in perpetual labor, delivering the same child over and over again. What relief there is only comes in discharging the burden, but that is not to say it ever really leaves: it merely allows the prophet time to catch his breath until the next contraction doubles him over again. The burden is with him the rest of his life, and he never fully discharges it.

Even when he tries to be disobedient to the Heavenly Vision and flees from the presence of the Lord he is pursued and hunted down like some kind of a wild animal who has gotten loose, knowing it is only a matter of time before he is captured again. The Voice never leaves him; the Vision never lets him go. When he refuses to speak then the fire which is already kindled only burns hotter, until he ends up doing what he has resisted doing all along, just to relieve himself of the unbearable tension and inward pressure. He cannot extinguish or quench the fire no matter what he does, he can only be obedient and find temporary relief, until the next word comes, and then off he goes. He may beg God to send someone else, and may protest his inability to speak, or to write. But he is already ruined for anything else, and even when he denies the Lord Who called him and returns to his former occupation, it is all dull and lifeless, and he meets with nothing but frustration and failure. There is no way to escape it. He knows he is called to something higher, even when he is clinging with everything he has to something Lower.

Like a wild horse, he resists the dealings of the Lord and must be broken before he will obey. Eventually he learns not to resist the Lord, but to cooperate with Him. He becomes pliable and bendable in order to survive. His very life now is bound up with what he has seen and heard. He cannot be disobedient to the Heavenly Vision, and if it means he dies, then he dies. If it means a renunciation of everything he once believed, then he renounces it - reluctantly at first, then cheerfully. If it means suffering the loss of all things, then he lets them go.

Over time the one who has seen and heard becomes the very essence of what he has seen and heard. The Man becomes the Message. He bears the Testimony in himself, and becomes one with it. He needs no preparation to speak; indeed, preparation does nothing to help the message he brings, and it often gets in the way. His whole life is the preparation, and since he is the Message, it is with him constantly. He can no more separate himself from the Message than he can separate his head from his body. If there is an "On/Off" switch then it was long ago turned on and then disabled so that it can never be turned off again. After many seasons of God's dealings he finally perceives that this is what the Lord has sought for all along, not just to GIVE him a Message, but to MAKE him a Message; to gain for Himself a Messenger and capture him completely, embossing the Message into his very being.

And so he goes about his daily business, constantly haunted by that Voice, torn between the menial task at hand, which calls for his physical and mental exertion, and the Higher Calling which seeks his undivided attention. He knows he should do all things, great and small, as "unto the Lord". But he also knows that Heaven and Earth are locked in mortal combat over him while he stands there in the middle, torn between the two, desiring to depart the Earth altogether and be with Christ, but knowing that it is more profitable for his brethren if he remains. Heaven calls him to rise up, but Earth tells him to keep his feet firmly planted. His heart is constantly breaking and longing to go, to ascend, to rise up, to stop seeing through a dark glass, and see face to face, without the distraction of the natural, the fleshly, the temporal, because he knows the Earth is not his home. Yet he struggles with the fact that Earth is where he must live and work. This accounts for why he may sometimes seem difficult to be around.

As a savant he possesses insight and skill, which others do not possess. But it is a gift, not anything of him, nothing of which he could boast. If you were to ask him if he considers this to be a blessing, he would probably say it is more like a curse, because it sets him apart from others even when he tries his best to be hidden and to blend in. He cannot read the Scriptures as others do, for after only a few verses the Heavens are opened up to him again and he is lost in its depths. A single passage may keep him occupied for months as Heaven unfolds it to him, and he cannot tear himself away from it.

His preaching is affected, because he cannot decide in advance what he will say, and even when he would like to bring forth something new and exciting, he usually ends up saying the same thing, like, "Repent!" He often does not say what he wants to say, and does not say it in the way he would like to say it. If he wants to be serious, he finds himself laughing. And when he wishes to be friendly, he finds himself screaming at the top of his voice to a startled congregation of people, who wonder how this fellow was ever allowed access to their inner sanctum in the first place. When he leaves a place he almost never sees the result of his labor, and only eternity can reveal the true significance of what was said. For now, it is all hidden, and he has to live with the fact that his fruitfulness will never be measured in terms that human beings, including himself, can see and appreciate.

He cannot go through the motions of religion like most mortals. It is a dead, shallow thing to him because it cannot compare to the reality of what he has already experienced. He finds it difficult to listen to another person preach when he knows they have not yet ascended to the heights nor plumbed the depths that he has already navigated. And when he tries to lead them into these heights and depths himself he is often misunderstood or rejected altogether. So either he attends the meeting and suffers in silence, or stays home and suffers in solitude; but either way, he suffers.

His seeing is affected by a sort of; "spiritual dyslexia". While others view things from a one or two dimensional viewpoint, he sees them through several dimensions at once - forward, backward, reverse, upside-down, right-side up: life and death, light and dark, Spirit and flesh, heavenly and earthly - which often puts him at odds with his more pragmatic and doctrinally-correct brethren. He is so at one with what he has seen that he speaks of it as having already happened, because he has, in essence, already experienced it and lived it. It is the Prophetic Tense, which calls those things that are not as though they were. In his world, the world of the Spirit, they exist already. We call it "prediction" because we cannot yet see it with our natural eyes, but he simply stands outside of Time and views Past and Future as one unbroken and continuous Present.

His hearing is affected so that he is increasingly sensitive to his surroundings, even though it seems as if he is not paying attention. He is listening, but he is listening inwardly. He no longer trusts his natural ears, because the Heavenly Voice and the inner witness are more reliable. Thus, he is able to hear God speaking, while the rest of the crowd says, "It thundered!" or "It was an angel!" He is also able to hear when God is not speaking, and does not get carried away with the multitudes that claim to speak, see, and hear things from God when they have not heard or seen anything from Heaven. He cannot bear to listen to them.

His concentration is affected in such a way as to make him appear obstinate and unyielding to others. The truth is that he is actually quite flexible and pliable before the Lord, but before man he is as solid and impenetrable as a rock. No amount of persuasion or argument from man will move him - but the slightest touch from the Lord will bring him to his knees. Having discovered the One Thing that is needed, he will tenaciously and ruthlessly shun the "many things" which crowd in to seek his attention, for he sees everything else as a distraction. Indeed, he is quite willing to sacrifice the good in favor of the holy. And when the Lord has him focused on a particular thing he is as a beam of light fastened upon a singular point until everything melts before it.

Even his praying is affected, for he can no longer pray as he wills and for what he wants. He seemingly has no will of his own. Instead the Heavenly Voice bids him to pray with a heavenly perspective, and all too often the heavenly perspective is at odds with the earthly perspective. So when his brothers and sisters pray for blessing and increase, he finds himself praying for destruction and decrease; and when they are resisting and praying against something, he finds himself asking God to perform the very thing the rest of the world is against.

To the rest of the world, the autistic savant is a bit of a retarded genius, an unfortunate mixture of idiocy and brilliance, caught up in a world of its own. The prophetic savant bears a similar stigma. But if you engage him at all, you soon discover that he sees all of this as absolutely normal; the way it is supposed to be. He no longer wishes for a normal life, because the life he has now IS normal: he has lost his own life in exchange for a new life. He lives in the heavenly while he walks on the earth. He does not think of himself as special, as anything other than a regular person, but often wonders aloud why others cannot see what he has seen when it is all so self-evident and plain. To him maybe, but the rest of us are blinded by the Light he exudes without knowing it."

*****

Chapter 5 – Apostolic Declaration

Are we listening? It is important that we do listen to the voice of God.

In 2008, I was in a meeting in San Diego with Kingdom Ventures founder Bruce Cook. He asked me, as well as the two gentlemen with me, about our individual roles and contributions to the Kingdom of God. Because it was late, about 10:00 PM on a Sunday night, and we were a bit hesitant about talking about ourselves, we skirted his question not answering it very well - possibly immersed in a little false humility.

Bruce realized that if he was really going to find out who we are, he would have to get a prophetic word directly from the Lord. He explained that on this trip he was without his normal traveling companion. This friend just happened to be very prophetic and Bruce asked us if we would mind if he called his friend to see if he might have a prophetic word from the Lord for us. We were all for that idea, especially as it took us off the hook a bit. The person on the other end of the phone did not know anything about us beyond our first names and for sure did not know why we were meeting or anything about our organizations or projects.

I want to share this prophetic word for two reasons. One is that we all need a little reminder of how God sees us instead of how we see ourselves, or how the enemy would like us to see ourselves in a negative way. Secondly, I firmly believe that all prophetic words spoken over us should be confirmed by others, then read and re-read in a declarative manner, speaking God's will for us into being.

Here is the transcript of the prophetic word spoken over me that night:

" _Father, I thank you for Gary. I thank you, Lord, that he has looked up into You and has touched Your heart. And Lord, that he is just in a place right now of getting a deeper understanding of his identity and that his identity is about to take a "quantum leap" into some new things that are going to take him above a certain place where he's been so that he can look around_ (at) _where he's been so that he can collect everything that he's gone through and walk into this new place with a sure foundation of everything that You have done as the deep work you have done in him."_ Several months later, my wife and I were invited to attend the Quantum Leap Conference in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, where we really did leap into some new things.

" _And the Spirit of the Lord says that the work that I have done in you is so to, that to be able to do the great job ahead of you, the greatness that you are becoming and the things that I have done in you has made_ (given) _you the ability to walk into the wisdom and insight and the depths of the things of where I show you the mysteries of the things to unveil as I begin to process you into a new place, says the Lord."_

" _You will begin to see yourself in a place of high influence and affluent in and around the area that you live_ (recently we were invited to 'house-sit' in a beautiful home on the water at the marina in an affluent area) _and in other places of this nation and in other locations in this world around you because I'm going to use you to influence and change the heart of business people to look at things in a different way than what they have seen._ (this has been prophesied over us many times) _For the Lord says that I have put you in a place where I am molding you to be a new business model, a new concept, a new platform by which things can be done in a way that makes it possible for business to be done quickly and more efficiently than it would be possible for things to happen in shorter periods of time."_ This really defines the role we play in the relationships that God brings our way.

" _For the Lord says that you are being fine tuned so that you understand how to walk 'desert sensitive' into business and into family issues so that you can be taken any place. I can take you anywhere, take you any place,_ (and) _drop_ (you there) _, and you'll be able to do exactly what I need for you to be able to do and succeed."_ Within a year, we were living in the desert.

" _And, it's not just business, but there's ministry, there's anything that I place in front of you even if it's just a person that I place in front of you, you will be able to take that person and successfully make them the greatness that they're supposed to be. If it's a group of people, you'll be able to take that group of people and bring them and take them into the places that I've called them to be."_ This precisely describes our calling.

" _So the Lord says that I've seen your heart and I've seen what you want to do concerning 'impartation' of what you've been given to others so that they might succeed where you have had the success and the success and the climbing up into higher levels of success."_ A couple of years ago, the Lord gave us the names "Hazon" and "Hazon Development, Inc." for our non-profit and for-profit entities. Hazon is Hebrew for "prophetic vision". He also gave us our "tag line" of "Impartation for Supernatural Endeavors", which fit us perfectly as we are always seeking to "impart" wherever we go.

" _So, the Lord says I am pleased with you. Go forth! I'm stepping you forth. I'm seeing an Apostolic, an Apostle Mantle upon you to be an Apostle that equips the things of God, whether ministry or business. You will be able to do that, exceedingly abundantly above, and there lies what you think you can do, for you will see that happen and you will see the Father's legacy through you and the lives of others and as they are elevated, I elevate you with them so that they can live and you can live in a place where the fruit is good and well pleasing to Me, says the Lord."_

"I will stand at my watch post; I will station myself on the rampart. I will look to see what [God] will say through me and what I will answer when I am reproved. Then ADONAI answered me; He said, 'Write down the vision clearly on tablets, so that even a runner can read it. For the vision is meant for its appointed time: it speaks of the end, and it does not lie. It may take a while, but wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.

Look at the proud: he is inwardly not upright; but the righteous will attain life through trusting faithfulness.'" Habakkuk 2:1-4.

The Kingdom Perspective

Recently I read somewhere that the Church today was, according to the author, divided into three categories. This was probably a gross over-simplification, but it stuck with me. He went on to describe the modern Church first as those who go to church on Sunday morning and have little other Christian appearance throughout the week. Next would be the believers who take their faith into the marketplace and maybe some into the nations. The third category is believers who are Kingdom minded and are involved in the establishment of The Kingdom of God. It sort of struck me as good, better, and best.

The Kingdom of God way of thinking is truly the mind of Christ at work. He is busy transforming and redeeming everything, including our ideas of how it looks and works. The Kingdom of God is first and foremost the government of and by the King, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Just like any leader coming into power, He has His people in mind for various positions and roles, not unlike a new President would bring in his own Cabinet.

The new members of an incoming President's Cabinet may not have ever been heard of the day before they were announced and they certainly are not there soley because of their own efforts, but they are invited because of their relationship with the President. They have favor with him and their role in his administration is to help him accomplish his plans for the governing of the nation, including a budget.

Terry Somerville put it very well in his article "Walking In The Kingdom Perspective".

" _All over the world there is a shift of emphasis in the Body of Christ. We are moving from a Church focus with man at the helm (though trying to do God's will), to a Kingdom focus with Jesus Himself ruling every member of His body._

This change has profound implications for how we do things. Here are a few examples:

Since the reformation the Church has focused on the Word of God as the foundation. The problem has always been man's finite ability to comprehend eternal truth. Good men have fought each other over how to understand the Word. The Kingdom of God is bigger than what we see. In the natural we see eternal things only through a glass darkly. Yes, the Word is true, but in the shift to the Kingdom emphasis the focus is on intimacy with God. We need to hear Him. Not simply what someone says He said.

Secondly, leadership in the Church emphasis age has been through structure, and positions. Many in the Body of Christ are called to five-fold ministry but most are never recognized by organizations. As a result, most ministry gifts have not functioned; the Church has not been built up properly and has remained weak and immature. Now, in the Kingdom emphasis age, Christians recognize that God, and not a title, makes a minister of someone. Instead of receiving a man of God based on position, we receive them because we honor the gifts of God in them. This is how it worked for Paul and the other Apostles. It's a matter of the heart and relationship. We know them and know God speaks through them. It's also expanded the realm of ministry to settings in the marketplace as these men do God's work wherever the Lord assigns them. Another implication of this shift is to Body ministry. In the Church emphasis age, we pastors worked hard to come up with programs to involve the people in the church. Participation was based on programs and frankly many (maybe most) didn't fit. In the Kingdom of God emphasis, the Lord Himself fits every person into the Body. We all have a place. What's more, it is operated by divine co-ordination as each one hears from the Holy Spirit. The effect is a powerful advancement of the Kingdom of God throughout the earth. Finally, the venue for ministry has moved from inside a church building into the world. We realized that the Church focus was always on building its self, but the Kingdom focus is God's heart for the whole earth, and everything, and everyone in it. This is where most members of the Body of Christ find their place of powerful ministry."

Praise God! Things are changing. There's hope for the blessing of God to be seen on earth in our time!"

In his article, "The Emerging Apostolic Resource Centers that facilitate the Great Harvest", Todd Bentley further elaborates on these concepts saying:

" _Promotions are coming from the Lord and a change of authority, identity, and position. The Lord will increase our metron (sphere of influence). This will be given to those building the character of the apostolic._

In Acts 11:30 we have the ministry of Barnabas and Saul. Again, in Acts 12:25 and in Acts 13:2, it is Barnabas and Saul. Then, in Acts 13:13, we have Paul. And in verse 46, we have again Paul and Barnabas. What happened to Saul and Barnabas? When apostolic anointing came upon their lives in Acts 13:2 there was a new level of authority, government, and influence. God changed the very face of their ministry.

There is going to be increased promotions from the Lord where your authority, identity, and position will change. And, almost seemly overnight, God will entrust you or your ministry with a new apostolic commission.

The first thing about the apostolic is; Paul was an apostle by will of God, not man. (2 Cor 1:1).

Elaborating on the role of Apostolic Centers, he goes on to talk about Apostolic Counsel and Networks.

(Acts 15:6) "Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter."

" _There will be an increase of apostolic prophetic roundtables and Jerusalem counsel meetings in different strategic locations. These meetings will be cross-streams of ministry and provide a clearer understanding of what the Lord is saying to the Church today! Rather than meet with just our local elder teams in our church, elder teams, prophets, and Church leaders in different nations, regions, and cities will meet to seek the Lord and share key revelation concerning Church issues, city-taking strategy, and spiritual transformation._

I believe in inter-dependent relationships between believers, and other expressions of body life within the Body of Christ, within geographical regions or nations. In the Book of Acts and the Epistles we read of 'the Church in the city of...' whatever the city happened to be. Many times the letter was addressed to 'the body of Christ in the city of...' It was in this manner that the Church was viewed by those who gave servant leadership over the Church. These apostolic networks serve as a means of connecting and blessing the Body of Christ through times of worship and celebration as well as vision-casting, teaching, apostolic, and prophetic ministry. Networks will be built upon strong inter-dependent relationships that seek to see the Kingdom expanded. Networks connect people with one another and like vision. Networks see that the Kingdom in the city and region is bigger than any one expression of the Body of Christ. We need one another."

Regarding Apostolic Business and Wealth, Todd Bently goes on to say:

" _God will fund through his Church and these apostolic centers, world evangelism, social justice and humanitarian aid for the widow, poor, and orphaned._

Acts 4:33-37 'And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all whom were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need. And Joses, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.'

Some even suggest that Barnabas, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, who later traveled with Paul, was the rich young ruler. God has his Joseph's and Esther's today.

There will be, and is already, a strong anointing on the Prophets, Priests, and Kings. The Kings are businessmen and women who make it possible through wealth and resources to administrate the Kingdom. If the prophets cast the vision, and the priests work in the field, and there is no money, then the vision will not be fulfilled. Churches need to do more to give place for the businessmen and women to teach on business in the Kingdom, investments, and how to build godly infrastructures in our ministry."

*****

Chapter 6 – The Distribution of Wealth

I think that it is very important here to convey and re-convey that this chapter is not about conventional financial analysis, business plans, and conventional funding although they do play a critical role. It is about Kingdom finances, not the world financial systems. Thus there is a focus on the apostolic and prophetic as well as the other Biblical spiritual characteristics that demonstrate various types of anointing, roles, and callings in Kings and Priests and the Joseph and Daniel anointing which are important key topics. I will expand on these subjects further in the text.

The distribution of wealth, in every instance, is all about "who's at the helm" and if God places them there. People that God places in authority must be fully submitted to Him and His plans. God can improve everything we have ever done or imagined doing. We, on the other hand, cannot improve His plans, but only receive and steward them as He directs - or foul them up in ways we cannot comprehend.

For many years now, Kingdom minded people have been aware that there is a calling to create, steward, and distribute wealth by being in alignment with God's plans. However, many people have more questions than answers and in many cases we continue to "see through the glass darkly" - understanding of some pieces of the puzzle and yet still not having the whole picture. Bits and pieces of this puzzle had been revealed to me but now suddenly it seems as if the picture is being revealed faster and time is being compressed. The prophetic word is being more universally received and we have more of the picture, participants, infrastructure, and processes of the end time transfer of wealth.

C. Peter Wagner, in his 2002 article, "Releasing Wealth in Apostolic Times" explains things as he had seen them up until that time:

" _I think the time is ripe for those of us who are apostles to begin to understand the crucial role we have in God's plan to release the wealth of the wicked for the advance of the Kingdom of God. Chuck Pierce and I have been talking a lot about this in recent days. Some of you would have received his important 5-page intercessory memo of August 1: "31-Day Prayer Focus to Release Wealth." Chuck also has a strategic chapter, "The Transference of Wealth," in his book_ The Future War of the Church (Regal Books).

In the chapter called "Unlocking the Supply", Chuck speaks of the keys of the Kingdom and writes 'God is saying to us in this hour that He is ready to give us keys, these keys will unlock the supply we need to advance His covenant purposes' (p. 160). He says that in order to do this we must identify the 'illegal domination of demonic structures from region to region' (p. 161), and then recognize that 'apostolic authority must be established in a field if we are to reap the harvest in that field' (p. 162). In other words, there seems to be an important, most likely an essential, relationship between this divinely ordained transference of wealth and the gift, office, and ministry of Apostles.

To elaborate, Chuck goes on to say, 'how Apostles are received is a key measuring stick as to how the Lord will release blessings or judgments on a territory. Apostles also have authority over the demonic rulers of a region. They have the ability to demonstrate supernatural power that draws a whole region to our life-giving God' (p. 164). From this I think that we can conclude that if full-stage spiritual warfare is to be done in a region, the generals of that warfare must be Apostles. Intercessors and Prophets are also necessary, but without Apostles, Intercessors and Prophets can only expect partial results.

Prophecies for Releasing Wealth

In recent years you have undoubtedly heard more than one prophecy that God wants to release tremendous amounts of wealth for advancing the Kingdom. My sense is that we are not talking just seven or eight figures, but nine and probably ten figures. Others may have different dates, but the best I can pick up is that these prophecies started around 1992. As an example, I recently heard Khian Seng Tan of Christian Growth Resources in Singapore tell an audience that he received one of these prophecies in 1999. The essence of the prophecy was, 'I am about to pour out unprecedented wealth to My Bride.' Tan pointed out that the time of their life when many men spend the most money is when they get married. Their bride is a priceless possession. But Jesus' wedding is rapidly approaching. Little wonder He feels that now is the time to spend extravagant money on His Bride. Tan said that he sensed that the indicated amount would be from the millions into the billions.

All of this is puzzling. It is puzzling because a steady stream of prophecies has been flowing for about ten years, but these financial resources have not yet been released in the magnitude anticipated. I personally have no doubt at all that we have been hearing the true word of the Lord. The Prophets to whom I have been referring are not false Prophets, nor are they flakes. If it were just one, we might suspect that an individual could have missed it this time, but it is not just one. A substantial number of recognized and respected Prophets have been agreeing with each other and saying these kinds of things.

I have made a private list of potential sources of funding that have surfaced over these ten years. Some have needed one or two things to happen in order to generate the anticipated funds. But in some others the money is actually there in the quantities we have been talking about. However obstacles to its transfer to the kingdom (none of them considered insurmountable obstacles, by the way) have been preventing the release of these resources. All of these funds have been earmarked for the fulfilling of the Great Commission. The last time I looked at my list, I had identified eleven of these potential sources of funding.

We know, then, that God desires to release this wealth. We know that the purpose is God's own heart—to seek and to save that which was lost. If this is the case, why haven't we seen it happen?

Timing

My conclusion is that we are dealing with an issue of timing. For some reason God has been saying, 'I am going to do it, but it is not yet time'.

If this is true, one crucial question remains: What needs to happen that hasn't happened yet that will cause God to say, 'Now is the time.'?

Several suggestions have been offered through the years. Some say we are not holy enough. Others say that we do not worship correctly or that our Christianity is superficial or that our level of giving is too low or that we do not have enough compassion for the poor or that we allow our unborn babies to be killed or that we do not pray accurately or that we worship Mammon or that we have too many divorces or that our evangelistic messages do not require enough commitment or that we do not support Israel as much as we should. You could undoubtedly add another half-dozen items to the list.

The Government of the Church

I do not question any one of those statements. I think that every one has validity. However, and realizing that some may disagree with me, I personally am not sure that any of them should be seen as the determining variable in this equation. I think that the determining variable might well have to do directly with the gift and office of Apostle.

I believe that it makes sense to postulate that God might well hesitate in lifting the Church to a new and unprecedented level of financial resources until the true, biblical government of the Church is actually in place. According to Ephesians 2:20, Apostles and Prophets are the foundation of this ecclesiastical government, and 1 Corinthians 12:28 adds the fact that Apostles are first in its order. How, then, could God entrust this wealth to the Church until the Apostles have been recognized in their rightful place? It would be like loading cargo into a truck with no tires. The cargo, good as it might be, could go nowhere.

The good news is that the biblical government of the Church has actually been coming into place over the past 30 years. In the 1970s the gift and office of Intercessor began to be recognized, in the 1980s the gift and office of Prophet began to be recognized, and in the 1990s the gift and office of Apostle began to be recognized. My personal reckoning is that this process was completed, at least in its initial stages, in 2001.

If that is the case, why, then, haven't the funds been released?

Marketplace Apostles

The answer to that may well relate to what have been called "Marketplace Apostles". It is helpful to think of the Church as two interrelated spheres, the "nuclear Church" and the "extended Church", much as sociologists distinguish between the "nuclear family" and the "extended family". The nuclear Church is the Church, as we have traditionally known it, congregations of God's people that meet together on Sunday and groupings of these congregations. The extended Church is what we have commonly thought of as God's people in the marketplace.

1 Corinthians 12:28 says that God gave to the Church "first Apostles". It seems reasonable to conclude that He would have given Apostles both to the nuclear Church and the extended Church. Almost all of the recent process of recognizing the gift and office of Apostle has focused on Apostles in the nuclear Church. Progress has been rapid and we are becoming quite comfortable with that phase of apostolic ministry. Now is the time, in my opinion, that we need to do similar work on understanding the role of Apostles in the marketplace or the extended Church.

The Bottom Line

It is important, as I have mentioned, to keep in mind that the bottom-line purpose of this massive funding is to advance the Kingdom of God, to make disciples of all nations. As we have entered the 21st Century, we are seeing the development of a new wineskin of world missions. For one thing, missionaries are now being sent abroad in greater numbers from Third World nations than from Western nations. For another thing, the standard mission boards, both denominational and Para Church, which operated strongly for the past 200 years, are now being supplemented by mission outreach led by Apostles. Apostolic missions are the new wineskins. Churches related to the New Apostolic Reformation comprise the fastest growing segment of Christianity on all continents. According to David Barrett, they are currently the only mega-block of Christianity now growing faster than the population and faster than Islam.

As I argue in my book, Spheres of Authority, we now live in the second apostolic age. Apostles are the ones who understand this new wineskin of missions and who know how to advance the Kingdom by multiplying churches and transforming society.

I bring this matter up because it seems to me that the crucial question facing us at the moment is: How would this imminent transference of wealth end up in the hands of those who have already proved that they can multiply churches, transform society, advance the Kingdom of God, and fulfill the Great Commission?

Four Links in a Chain

I think the answer to this question will take the shape of four links in a chain. There are four major sets of players, but, like chain links, each will overlap some with the link on both sides.

Link #1: Providers

The providers of this wealth may be believers, but it may also come from unbelievers. Two biblical examples of a large release of wealth are the Egyptians providing for the people of God in the exodus and Cyrus of Babylon providing funds for the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. In both cases it came from pagan idol worshippers.

I think at this stage intercessors play a crucial role. Satan will try to block the transference of wealth at this point and aggressive spiritual warfare can push back the forces of darkness and bind the strongman who does not want these goods released. Intercessors can remove these spiritual obstacles.

I don't see any specific apostolic role in this first link, although apostles may well be involved from time to time.

Link #2: Managers

The funds that are released will need to be managed skillfully. The money cannot be spent all at once, nor should it be. A skillful manager can invest these funds in a way that huge streams of finances will be available for extending the kingdom on a regular, ongoing basis rather than seeing a financial flash in the pan.

Who could do this? Some nuclear Church apostles deal with funds in seven or eight figures. But very few, if any, have the ability and the experience to manage funds in the nine or ten figure category. Not every marketplace apostle could do this either. But this does seem to be a role of some anointed marketplace apostles. I see the managers as one assignment of marketplace apostles.

Marketplace apostles, however do not typically have broad knowledge of where these funds need to end up. This is where nuclear Church apostles are needed.

Link #3: Distributors

The distributors are those who have been able to gain knowledge of the world on a broad scale. They know how the kingdom of God is actually being advanced in nation after nation. Their information comes from a broad spectrum of apostolic networks, denominations, church forms, theological emphases, and philosophies of ministry.

Even more importantly, distributors will have built personal relationships with apostles around the world. This is important because apostles are the spearhead of the new wineskin of missions. Distributors will, by and large, be nuclear Church apostles and most often they will be horizontal, as over against vertical, apostles. The managers will transfer the available funds to the distributors.

Link #4: Field Marshals

The field marshals are nuclear Church apostles, usually vertical apostles, who know better than anyone else how to spend the money for the advance of the kingdom of God out there on the cutting edge. They have a track record of multiplying churches and penetrating society with kingdom principles.

It is the task of the distributors to see that all the funding necessary ends up in the hands of the apostolic field marshals who have the experience, track record, productivity, character, vision, integrity, and wisdom to use these funds in a way that will please God.

Disclaimer by Peter Wagnor

The ideas in this memo are fairly new, especially the concept and role of marketplace apostles. Throughout I have tried to use a tentative tone, although I wouldn't have written it at all if I had not reached certain conclusions. Let's talk about this. What fine-tuning do we need? What may be some of our blind spots? Is this an important issue at all? In these early stages of suggesting a possible innovation, it is necessary to hear and understand as many points of view as possible.

I (Peter Wagnor) am going to post this on the ICA (International Coalition of Apostles) website which is password protected, but I will also post it on the Global Harvest Ministries website, www.globalharvest.org which is open to the public. If you write a response to this memo, I will consider posting it on both websites also so that others can follow the dialogue." End quote.

I received a copy of the article from Peter Wagnor a year or so after it first came out and read and re-read it many times since. Many subjects included in his article are now taking place. Recently there has been a re-occurring word about linking "prophetic revelation" into "apostolic declaration." There have been references to "keys" involved. I believe that we are now seeing, maybe for the first time, that the keys are being identified. Hopefully, by the time you have finished reading this book, you will agree.

Examples of what Peter Wagnor shared in his article are reflected through organizations like the U.S. Strategic Prayer Network and the Global Apostolic Prayer Network as prayer declarations have been spoken over our nation to free it from defilement. Here in the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States, we have been called to prophetic gatherings concerning defilements of the land, the early settlement of this country, First Nations, the old atrocities committed against the Chinese, issues regarding the current security of our borders, and many other issues. During these gatherings, we have seen many Apostolic and Prophetic leaders rise up from obscurity and begin to take stewardship of their callings and visions. The timing and the establishment of correct apostolic leadership is one component that I have observed closely over the last several years. What I have observed regarding those who are called to be Apostles and Prophets is that there seems to be a progressive process.

First: there is a recognition of the one called by someone already walking in that calling or anointing.

Second: there is a calling into position and authority.

Third: the acceptance by him/her to the calling of God on their life.

Fourth: whether or not the person allows the maturing process to help him/her actually stand in and function in his/her calling.

I have personally witnessed believers going through this cycle but many are not arriving into a fruit-bearing established position. Often it seemed that years and even decades passed as people grew into the calling of God on their lives. Now I see some coming into position in months. Most recently, we have witnessed the process taking hours and even minutes. God is accelerating everything. The positioning of these key individuals linked with the correct kinds of infrastructures will be, I believe, the first steps in the release of Kingdom wealth.

Over the years I have received many prophetic words, visions, and dreams all focused on this final moment in time when all the pieces come together. One of the dreams explained clearly to me what it was that was holding back the release of the resources. Here is the dream:

In the dream, I was a child again walking in the fields with my grandfather who raised Walla Walla Sweet Onions. It was a small farm of about twelve acres surrounded by a stream on two sides. The stream had a small concrete dam with a spillway that could be opened by turning a large old rusty wheel. When it was opened it sent water into the large irrigation ditches surrounding the onion fields and from there it was diverted into smaller ditches and then into the individual rows in the field.

All I wanted to do was go to the dam and open the spillway into the fields, but my grandfather would not let me. When I questioned him as to why he would not let me turn the wheel, he replied that the fields were not ready and that we first had to walk every inch of the main feeder ditches and make sure that the water would not be diverted by obstructions and wind up somewhere that it was not supposed to be, leaving the crop without water.

We then went out with a shovel and walked the field, clearing out the existing channels and digging new ones, or closing off existing ones, until the whole field was ready to receive the water exactly where he had decided it needed to go or not go.

Then the Lord began to explain to me that His fields were exactly the same. Until we had together cleared the channels, dug the new ones, and closed those that were no longer correctly working, there could be no release to the field. It was with that revelation that things really began to come together for me regarding the importance of God's people stepping successfully into their clearly defined unique vision, calling and maybe most importantly, their "alignment".

In a second revelation, the Lord conveyed the importance of the "alignment" of each individual in a given sphere of authority.

I was heading up a group of people who were working, for some time, on a set of tools and services for communications within prayer networks and other developing ministries when we began to have a lot of "politics" in the organization, especially regarding the general direction of the organization and the prioritization of its projects and resources.

I had become quite distressed at some of the recent disagreements going on and their growing negative and disruptive effect on our organization and its primary vision and calling. Looking for a solution where there appeared to be none, I went into prayer asking God for an answer.

As a lifetime saltwater boater and former licensed yacht captain, I have worked with boats, large and small, most of my life, and so it is not too surprising when God speaks to me or gives me visions and dreams in nautical environments and terms.

While in prayer, I had a vision that was so vivid that it was like watching a movie.

In this movie, the camera was zooming into the main salon of a large yacht. Sitting at the table was a lone man with a piece of paper in his hand. Suddenly, I realized that I was the man sitting there. Then I heard the Lord say, "Have everyone on board with you go to their staterooms, lie down on their beds (births) and tell them to wait on Me until I give them a number. Then have them bring their number to you and see if their number matches one on the piece of paper in your hand." At that moment, the number "278" appeared on the paper I was holding. Immediately, I knew that this was a compass heading.

The Lord then told me to check each person's number. If it did not match mine, they were to return to their "births" one more time and wait until they had received a new one. Then return and repeat the process. God's instructions were that if a person's number did not match the one on the paper I was holding then they were on a different "heading" and could not proceed with me. He also added that we could not hoist anchor and depart for our destination as long as there were people on board this vessel that were not going where I had been called to go.

After I had this vision I was curious as to where I would wind up if I left my office on a heading of "278". I was not surprised to find that it took me directly to our chief software developer who had been working on what I believed was our primary project and the topic of the "disagreements" we had been experiencing.

It immediately became obvious that our resources were being held up because we had some improper alignment going on with some folks who wanted to take our ship to a different destination.

Properly aligned authority is mandatory. We know from many sad experiences that just one misplaced person can bring down the whole house.

There is one thing that I think is critical, and that is the purity of the hearts of those who are called and are endeavoring to steward, distribute, and receive the resources. It is this degree of purity of heart that often decides the correctness of the alignments and interestingly enough, the proper alignments that often lead to the purity.

When believers who are called to be Kingdom builders respond, and begin to function in proper alignment in God's calling and God's timing, with a well defined God-given vision - no matter how large or small - I believe . . . the resources will begin to flow and there will be a great harvest.

" _He told them, 'The Harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field'." Luke 10:2. (NIV)._

*****

Chapter 7 - Josephs and Daniels

"Then Pharaoh said to Joseph: 'Behold, in my dream I stood on the bank of the river. Suddenly 7 cows came up out of the river, fine looking and fat; and they fed in the meadow. Then behold, 7 other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and gaunt, such ugliness, as I have never seen in all the land of Egypt. And the gaunt and ugly cows ate up the first 7, the fat cows. When they had eaten them up, no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were just as ugly as at the beginning. So I awoke. Also I saw in my dream, and suddenly 7 heads came up on one stalk, full and good. Then behold 7 heads, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprang up after them. And the thin heads devoured the 7 good heads. So I told this to the magicians, but there was no one who could explain it to me.'

Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, 'The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do: The 7 good cows are 7 years, and the 7 good heads are 7 years; the dreams are one. And the 7 thin and ugly cows, which came up after them are 7 years, and the 7 empty heads blighted by the east wind are 7 years of famine. This is the thing, which I have spoken to Pharaoh. God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do. Indeed 7 years of great plenty will come throughout all the land of Egypt; but after them 7 years of famine will arise, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine will deplete the land. So the plenty will not be known in the land because of the famine following, for it will be very severe.' And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. 'Now therefore, let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, to collect one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the 7 plentiful years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that are coming, and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. Then that food shall be as a reserve for the land for the 7 years of famine which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land may not perish during the famine.'"

(Genesis 41:17 36 NKJV) (Bold mine...GJB)

While researching the topic of "Josephs and Daniels", I came across this excellent article, written by Peter Tan. Because I did not feel I could improve it in any way, with his permission, I have decided to include it in its entirety.

THE JOSEPH WAVE OF WEALTH

Peter Tan

Http://www.eaglevision.com.my

The Joseph wave is one of the great moves God is going to do in these last days in the realm of the redemption from the curse of poverty. God's people will experience all the fullness of Christ's blessing. In this move God's people will experience an abundance of provision where there will be no lack or poverty when the rest of the world will experience recession and famine. Christians will live brotherly community life as the early Church did in the book of Acts 4.

Let us look at Gen. 37:1-5 now; "Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. This is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more."

There are 5 characteristics of the Joseph wave:

Strong Dreams and Visions

One of the characteristics of the Joseph wave is that they will have strong dreams and visions in their life. It is not the ordinary type of dreams. These dreams and visions will steer the entire course of their life. Dreams and visions are the seeds of the future given in the present to human vessels that we may hold fast to them and bring them to pass in the coming years.

Those strong dreams in Joseph's life were again a dream about being the head and not the tail. Look at his two dreams. The first one says the entire sheaths bow before him. The second one says the sun; moon and the stars bow before him.

So the first of aspect of the characteristic of the dreams and visions is about being the head and not the tail. It is similar to the promise in Deut. 28:13. The dreams and visions will cause them to rise up and excel in life. They will not be satisfied with being mediocre. If they were to open a sundry shop or a shoe business, they will not be satisfied with just a small one with just a normal good income to live by. They will want their business to be the best and the biggest. That is that kind of vision and characteristic they have and the Holy Spirit seeds it.

We realize that success does not come easily in life. Success comes through hard work and discipline. And the only way for a person to be motivated to get into that realm of discipline is for them to get a strong dream or vision. It gives them the motivation to want to give their very best and reach the highest possible in life.

The dreams and vision that the Joseph wave has is so high that they do not know how it is going to be fulfilled. But something within them is burning all the time. The dreams and visions will probably occur in their lives many, many times in different forms and manner. Prophecies may even confirm it.

The second aspect of the characteristic of the dream that Joseph had is the impossibility of it being fulfilled in the natural. In Gen. 43:8, the brothers said to him. "Shall you indeed reign over us, shall you indeed have dominion over us." Even Joseph's father was puzzled. In vs.10 his father said to Joseph, "Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you...."

There will be a lot of question marks in the dreams and visions because of the impossibility of the dream being fulfilled in the natural. You won't be able to understand the headship position God wants for you. These dreams and vision are not from the natural man. Neither are they from their parents or peers. It is not a natural induced good ambition. It is something that comes from God in the spirit realm and sown into their life.

The third aspect of their dreams is that they will have opposition to their dreams and visions. The opposition will come from some of the most unlikely quarters, sometimes from people you love or even your kinsfolk.

The forth aspect of the dream and vision is that they will keep talking of their dream and vision because it occupies their consciousness. It will be the talk of their life. The dreams and visions so occupy their lives that they will always keep mentioning it wherever they go and it is the main motivation force of their life. There will be people who will mock and ridicule their dreams and visions but they still go on and talk about it. Gen.37:7, Joseph mentioned his dream to his brothers and in vs.8 he mentions again of another dream to them in spite of their earlier opposition to it.

Favor

The second characteristic of the Joseph wave is that they will have a very high degree of favor and grace upon their life with certain people. They will not find favor with everyone because that would do away with all opposition in their life, which is not true. Joseph did not have favor with his brothers but he had favor with the right people, for example his father, Potiphar and Pharaoh. So will the Joseph wave have favor with the right kind of people?

They will be like a son in finding favor with father figures. Whether it is in the working place, their careers, in their education, they will have that remarkable characteristic, because it is a favor from God. They normally end up as a 'teachers pet' or the company key figure that the boss depends on partly because of the personality and the grace and favor of God.

What kind of grace and favor will they find? It will be a father and son relationship or for ladies, a daughter and father relationship in many instances. Example Gen.34:4, Potiphar was willing to entrust his whole house to Joseph like a father would do to a son. Later when he was in prison in vs.21 Joseph was entrusted with the running of the entire prison, which is unprecedented. Obviously the relationship with Joseph and the chief jailer was not an ordinary one. To allow a prisoner to run the entire prison is unheard of even in modern times. Such was the grace and favor Joseph had.

The second aspect to the grace and favor of the Joseph generation is the ability or anointing to bring about material blessing and natural position. Joseph was given a coat of many colors not because he deserved it but it was a gift to him.

The Joseph anointing is different. It is not just getting your worth that you worked for. It is an anointing to receive gifts. To depend just on the wages you work will never get you into the Joseph wave. There has to be an anointing that comes upon your life that enable you to receive gifts and material blessings or position given freely to you. Not because you work for it but because you love God. Although hard work and discipline is necessary to the call of the Joseph wave, it is not the only ingredient. With the grace and favor upon your life, you don't have to chase people around for business. People will be chasing you for business. It's a different perspective altogether, although hard work is still involved.

Visible Hand of God

The third characteristic of the grace and favor given to the Joseph wave is that God's hand of blessing is visible. Sometimes when God blesses you, you will find some people commenting that it is because you are smart, clever or whatever. But it won't be like that for the Joseph wave. It will be more of people saying that it is because God is with you. The testimony will be that the glory goes to God. The grace and favor will be visible from God. That has been the characteristic of Joseph's life as can be seen in Gen. 39:2-3. They will recognize that you and God are in partnership. Even Pharaoh recognized it as in Gen. 41:38.

Testings

The fourth characteristic of the Joseph wave is that they will be tested in the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life. They will have to be overcomers. When you handle prosperity you must face up with the love of money and covetousness because it can kill you. God is not going to anoint you to the Joseph wave and let you be killed. Remember the warning in the Gospel of Mark 4:18-19. Not everybody can handle prosperity.

Before God brings the Joseph anointing on a person's life God has to deal with his or her internal life.

1 Tim. 6:10 gives a warning to those who desire to be rich. Many people who desire to be rich end up very sorrowful because they spend 24 hours of their day trying to get riches and never succeed. Day and night they are dreaming of it till they have no more spirituality left in them. They don't love the Lord anymore as they use to. They don't have time for the Word, because of their other interests. Which is why there will be a testing to those called into the Joseph wave. You will be tested in all these areas before the fullness of prosperity comes. If you fail the test you will have to go around it and reset again, until you pass it and go from the wilderness years in the land of Canaan.

There are many who are called to the Joseph wave who have not entered into the land of Canaan. Canaan for them is a far off place, and they can only see it but not taste it, because they have not passed the tests yet.

Notice in the temptation of Joseph with Potiphar's wife. All the three areas are covered. When he said `no' to Potiphar's wife he was saying `no' to the lusts of the flesh. When he was accused of rape, he lost the respect people had for him. In this aspect he overcame the pride of life. Lastly he lost all his property. Everything he had worked for under Potiphar's time he lost it when he was sent into prison. He overcame all these by holding on to his conscience and by being right. He was sent to prison not because he did a wrong thing but because he wanted to please God.

Those called into the Joseph wave will be given opportunities to be tested. You will be given opportunities to compromise your Christian principles for a quick million or ten million dollars. A quick profit here and there. Every time you say `no' to compromise you seem to walk one step downward instead of one step upward. However hold fast to your Christian principles even though that may mean your business may go bust and you lose a lot of money just because you refuse to compromise.

The prosperity that comes to the Joseph wave will come through hard work and diligence. It won't just come to you in your prayer closet just sitting down and thanking the Lord and confessing continuously you're the Joseph wave and doing nothing about it.

God prospers the work of your hands. Gen. 39:7 speaks about the diligence of Joseph whether he was recognized or not. Some people will only be diligent when they get attention but are not when they don't get it. Joseph's diligence was such that it was unquestioned. He doesn't need his master to check on him because his master could trust him. Joseph was the type of man who does not need reporting and he would be the same whether the master was there or not. Joseph's diligence was self-motivating. It was a part of him. His diligence was in all kinds of work not some type of work only. Some people will be diligent in some kind of work and they avoid all types of menial tasks. For Joseph it was all the same. Whether it was sweeping the floor at Potiphar's house or ruling in Pharaoh's palace, it was the same. The type of work but irrespective of the work did not rule his diligence. The Joseph wave has a liking for hard work whether they are seen doing it or not and for all types of work irrespective of whether they are menial or respectable. Prison or palace demands his full diligence. Joseph persevered in spite of set backs in his life. It looks like you're forgotten. But whether you are remembered or not you do it unto the Lord.

Worship

_The fifth_ _and final characteristic is the strength in prayer, praise and worship life or the acknowledgement of God being the very source and strength of your life. In other words you're a worshipper of God in your life. You acknowledge God even in the smallest or biggest thing that God is involved. You invite God not in the huge big projects but even in the smallest thing like finding your keys. Gen.41:15, 16 Joseph acknowledged God was the source of his life. The Joseph wave will prosper because they recognize God. Whenever they have the opportunity they will acknowledge that God is the source of their prosperity whether it is before their friends at the stock market, or before their board of directors of a public listed company, or before the rulers of the government. It won't be a people ashamed of acknowledging God's help. They will stand up head and shoulders tall in the Lord and say it is not they but it is God who has helped._

The three points in the fifth characteristic of the Joseph generation is strong in prayer, which is being dependent upon God, strong in praising, which is giving glory to God and strong in communion with God which is worship and hearing from God.

All these five characteristics can also be found in the Book of Daniel. It is the anointing that we can qualify, as the Joseph anointing that will bring you to be the head and not the tail.

_In this modern era, even when Joseph is dead and gone the anointing remains. If that same anointing comes upon your life as it came upon Joseph and Daniel you will be the right hand man or ruler of the nation. You would be an influence over an empire or over a kingdom. That's powerful. May God establish that anointing over your life._

*****

Chapter 8 - Why 7?

" _The number 7 is the most common in biblical prophecy, occurring 42 times in Daniel and Revelation alone. In Revelation there are 7 churches, 7 spirits, 7 golden candlesticks, 7 stars, 7 lamps, 7 seals, 7 horns, 7 eyes, 7 angels, 7 trumpets, 7 thunders, 7 thousand slain in a great earthquake, 7 heads, 7 crowns, 7 last plagues, 7 golden vials, 7 mountains, and 7 kings."_ From: http://www.prophecycode.com/numbers.asp

" _The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified 7 times."_ _Psalm 12:6._

Seven (7), represents perfection, and is the sign of God, divine worship, completions, obedience, and rest. The "prince" of Bible numbers, it is used 562 times, including its derivatives (e.g., 7th, 7s).

From the 7 Days of Genesis to the 7 Seals of Revelation, Scripture is saturated with the Number 7. Essentially all Biblical scholars, regardless of their stance regarding the meaning of numbers in Scripture, have recognized its special symbolic significance. Simply stated, it is impossible to miss. God laid the foundation of its meaning when He introduced this number in the context of His finished Work of Creation (Gen 2:2):

God introduced the Number 7 as a symbol of the completion of His initial creative act. But the work that He ended on the 7th Day in the first book was really just the beginning of the Biblical revelation of all history that He consummated in the last book. And it is here that we see the Divine consistency of the Number 7 as a Biblical symbol; God used it with exactly the same meaning when He revealed the end of time, described as the completion of the "mystery of God", in Revelation 10:5.

The word translated as finished is the Greek teléo, which generally means to bring to a close, to complete, to end, to fulfill. This word appears again in Revelation 15:1 which explicitly states the reason for 7 angels with 7 plagues:

" _And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, 7 angels having the 7 last plagues; because in them is filled up (teléo) the wrath of God."_

This verse displays a double emphasis on temporal consummation; the word translated as last is eschatos, whence eschatology, the study of the end times. God reiterated its connection with the Number 7 a third time in Revelation 16:17:

" _And the 7th angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, it is done."_

_This is characteristic of the Bible. Most symbols are clearly defined in the text and used quite consistently from Genesis to Revelation. The Number 7, the numerical symbol of Fullness, Completion, and Perfection, is a prime example of this consistency, as illustrated by this entry from the_  Tyndale Bible Dictionary  _(emphasis added):_

" _In Scripture, 7, symbolizes completeness or perfection. On the 7th day God rested from his labors and creation is finished (Gn 2:2). Pharaoh in his dream saw 7 cattle coming from the Nile (41:2). Samson's sacred Nazirite locks were braided in 7 plaits (Jgs 16:13). 7 devils left Mary of Magdala, signifying the totality of her previous possession by Satan (Lk 8:2); "7 other devils" will enter the purified but vacant life of a person (Mt 12:45). However, on the positive side, there were the 7 Spirits of God (Rv 3:1). In the 7th year the Hebrew slave was to be freed (Ex 21:2), having completed his time of captivity and service. Every 7th year was a sabbatical year (Lv 25:4). 7 times 7, reiterates the sense of completeness. In the Year of Jubilee (at the completion of 7 x 7 years = the 50th year), all land is freed and returns to the original owners (Lv 25:10). Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, is 7 times 7 days after Passover. "7ty," which is literally "7s" in Hebrew, strengthens the concept of perfection. There are 70 elders (Ex 24:1) in Israel. Israel was exiled to Babylon for 70 years (Jer 25:12) to complete its punishment. "7 times 7" (Mt 18:22) reiterates this still further. The Lord was not giving Peter a mathematical number of times that he should forgive another person, but rather was insisting on limitless forgiveness for a brother's sin."_

A Compound Symbol of Completion and Sanctification

" _Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the 7th day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them is, and rested the 7th day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed [sanctified] it."_ _Exodus 20:8._

When God introduced the Number 7 as a symbol of the completion of His Work of Creation, He also associated it with sanctification (holiness), declaring that He "blessed the 7th day, and sanctified it." Thus God laid the foundation for its application throughout the rest of Scripture. It is a double symbol signifying both completion and sanctification. These ideas naturally cohere because sanctification denotes the setting apart or separating of a person or thing as wholly devoted or completely given over to God, as when He separated the Levitical Priests saying "they are wholly given unto Me" (Num 8:16), or again when Paul prayed that "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly" (1 Thes 5:23). This is the essence of the Fourth Commandment, which mandates the complete cessation of all mundane work and the complete devotion to the things of God. The Christian fulfills this through faith in the finished work of Christ, our eternal Sabbath (Hebrews 4:10).

The Fourth Commandment permanently embedded the threefold association of completion, sanctification, and the Number 7 into the fundamental rhythm – the very heartbeat – of Jewish life. Just as God ceased His work on the 7th day, so the Jews rest from their work on the 7th day and sanctify it unto God. This set the basis of God's sacred pattern of time that completely dominates the Old Testament calendar. It is the origin of the 7 day week now common to the entire world. Obviously, it is very important to God that we recognize and understand the meaning of this number. He used it reiteratively on multiple scales (days, months, years) throughout His ceremonial laws and in His design of the Jewish religious calendar. The Lord ordained 7 days for the sanctification of the altar (Exo 29:37), 7 days for the sanctification of the Priests (Lev 8:33), and a series of weeks for the cleansing of leprosy (13:1). Likewise, the sanctifying blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled 7 times (8:11, 14:7), and following the pattern of the weekly Sabbath on a higher scale, He ordained every 7th year as a sabbatical year when the land was to lay fallow (25:2).

The 7 Feasts of the Lord exemplify God's reiterative application of this number in the structure of His ceremonial circle of time. It begins with the Feast of Passover on the fourteenth day (2 x 7) of the first month followed immediately by 7 days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Feast of Pentecost then comes fifty days (7 x 7 + 1) after the first Sabbath following Passover, a pattern God repeated on a higher scale with the Year of Jubilee set for every fifty years (7 x 7 + 1). The whole cycle of 7 Feasts culminates with three connected "holy convocations" of the 7th month, beginning with the Feast of Trumpets followed by the great Day of Atonement which God integrated with the Year of Jubilee and the numerical pattern of "7 times 7" (Lev 25:8-10): "And thou shalt number 7 sabbaths of years unto thee, 7 times 7 years; and the space of the 7 sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the 7th month, in the Day of Atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family."

God designed the 7 Feasts to accomplish a variety of purposes. They exemplify the symbolic meaning of the Number 7 and indelibly imprint it on the mind of all who read the Bible. They also reveal a prophetic calendar that now stands as an eternal memorial of the great Work of Christ."

How God revealed the cycles of "7s" in my life.

While in prayer one morning, during the time that I was researching the significance of the number 7, I clearly heard the Lord say, "In your life, I worked to produce change and teach you within 7 year cycles." He began to show me that from the time of my salvation in 1973, there were a series 7 year cycles. Each 7 year period had its own title. This new revelation confirmed that the 7 year window or period was to be one of the focuses for the writing of this book.

In the coming chapters, I will share the significance of the 7 year cycles, my testimony of how God has worked in my life, and hopefully provide some useful information for you on how to receive and steward God's plans for your life.

*****

Chapter 9 - Prodigal Son (1973-80)

It was the spring of 1973. I was nineteen years old and standing in the middle of a Denny's restaurant in Northeast Portland, Oregon, along with all of the other drugged out hippies and outlaw bikers that had taken over the place. I fit right in. I had been up on amphetamines for days. I weighed 135 pounds, and I was near the end. Even my druggie friends no longer wanted anything to do with me. I was - even for them - too far gone.

Overwhelmed by a string of traumatic events, I began my downward spiral at age fourteen, experimenting with drugs during "The Summer of Love" in 1967. Over the next several years, I went deeper and deeper into the use of pot, LSD and eventually methamphetamines.

Following the death of my best friend in a head-on collision in 1971, I really went off the deep end and I was determined on getting high enough to make all the pain go away. It was not working, and I had reached the proverbial end of the rope. I was as far gone as I could be while still breathing - slowly realizing that there was no way out. It was then that I cried out to God and told Him that the only way that I could go on living would be if He would intervene in my out-of-control life.

A few days after I cried out to God for help, I was invited to take a trip to Portland, Oregon, and wound up in a Denny's restaurant wondering how much longer I could go on like this. I was burnt out. Just at that moment, a guy came up to me who happened to look just like me. He had long unkempt hair, a headband, bell-bottom jeans, and he was wearing an old army jacket. He appeared to be just your average hippie, but I sensed that there was something very different about him. This young man looked me right in the eye and simply said, "You're a mess!" My response was, "Absolutely!" Then he really captured my attention by telling me, "I've got just what you need!" So, I said, "Great! Tell me all about it!"

The young man invited me to join him and a few of his friends who were sitting in a booth. Interested in knowing more, I asked the guy what he had and he again he told me, "I've got just what you need." So, I asked, "How much is it?" His reply startled me, "There is no cost to it. It's already been paid for." He went on to say, "Not only is it paid for, but I'm going to introduce you to my Main Man." "Well, that's very cool," I replied. I'm thinking that I'm going to get turned on to some drugs, and whatever he's going to give me will let me go to sleep, which I hadn't done for almost a week. On top of that it was free and I might get introduced to this guy's source. What a score! While I was being amazed at my good fortune, the young man asked me a question that completely through me off guard. He asked me if I was happy. I knew I had been happy once. I was quite sure that at sometime I had been happy, but I couldn't remember when that was – something deep in my heart just broke. And then he asked another question that would change my life forever. "I want to introduce you to Jesus Christ and would you pray a prayer along with me?" And I did. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I was instantly - right there in the middle of that Denny's restaurant – radically saved, healed, restored to my right mind, and truly alive for what seemed like the first time!!!!

To this day I do not know the name of the young man who introduced me to my Savior, Jesus, but I know that some day I will be able to thank him because we will meet again in our eternal home. I left the restaurant a new creation. My hippie buddies groaned, "Gary's got religion!" But I didn't care because I was vibrating with new life in Christ.

Soon after, I returned to my hometown in Walla Walla, Washington. I felt led to go into a phone booth in front of a grocery store. There, sitting on the shelf, I found a small box with a slot in the top. Sitting next to the box was a single piece of paper lying face down on the shelf. I turned it over to find a form to fill out for a "Free Bible Drawing". After filling it out and dropping it into the box, I headed home. Several days later, I was informed by my Mother that someone had come by the house and left the Bible that I had "won". Interestingly, they did not leave their name. To this day, I have no idea who gave me my new Bible. Someday, I will get to meet them and to thank them. Since that time, I have never found another of those "Free Bible Drawing" boxes in the area where I lived.

Over the next few months, my heart, spirit, and mind were transformed as I read the Bible for hours at a time. This was my first experience in intimacy with God and this intimacy continued to increase daily. None of my friends or family had this "Born Again" experience, and there was no one I knew who could disciple me. Actually I did not even have an understanding of the need for discipleship yet. But I was learning to hear that "still small voice" of the Lord as He began to instruct me, guide me and, direct me. My new Bible went everywhere with me and soon I began to share my testimony with people that God put in front of me - many of them accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior _._

" _When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice." John 10:4._

One of the very first things that I was prompted to do after I was first saved was to pray a three part prayer that went like this:

First, He prompted me to pray that I might be used to deliver solutions beyond my capability, so that He would be glorified in those solutions.

Second, that I would give Him permission from that moment on, and for the rest of my life, to do whatever work in me that He needed to do, whenever and however He wanted to do it, so that He could use me as He needed.

Third, He prompted me to pray that I would always give Him permission to be the Lord of my circumstances, which meant that He would put me where He needed me to be and when He needed me to be there.

Right away God began to put me "where" He wanted me to be and "who" He wanted me to be with. Sometimes He separated me from people He no longer wanted me aligned with. Eventually, it became quite clear that His desire was to be Lord over all in my life. The "who, what, when, where and why" were all His now.

There is something about being a "bond-servant" that takes a while to sink in. If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to someone who was a slave and now has been given freedom by his or her Master. But the freeman makes a decision to return to serving their former master, by his own free will. It is "Not my will be done, but Thy will, Father God". We also need to remember that it is also His will for us to rule and reign with Him and so, while we are humbly submitted and serving God, we are also being trained up to be joint heirs with Christ.

" _If we endure, we will also reign with Him." 2 Timothy 2:12._

" _To him who overcomes and does My will to the end, I will give authority over the nations."_ _Rev. 2:26._

" _Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory." Romans 8:17._

We are also called to become modern day Kings and Priests...

" _And have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth." Revelation 5:10._

We are called to become one with Him, as His Bride.

"... _Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." Revelation 21:9._

When I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, He began to restore my life and I began to hear the voice of God with more clarity. The Holy Spirit began a long process of deliverance, emotional healing, and renewing of my mind from the things that had been done to me, and that I had done to myself. Some of it was instantaneous deliverance from past hurts and some of this process took years.

Although my salvation was miraculous, to say the least, I was on a journey that would be without much discipleship from other believers. There was no one that I was accountable to and who could speak into my life. Many times I would buckle under trials, tribulations, and temptations that triggered a return to my former patterns of self-medication. But over time, self- medication no longer held its attraction and gradually I was set free from addictions that once held me in bondage. It was not an easy road and I learned many hard lessons. But the Holy Spirit was with me every step of the journey, bringing truth and strength.

" _And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28._

Several months after my salvation in 1973, I decided to pursue an education. After getting some guidance counseling from the local community college I was told that my scores were high in logic aptitude. I picked a business and technical college to attend in Lynnwood, Washington. Before starting classes they had me take an IBM programmer's logic and aptitude test and I placed in the top 2% of all test scores they had recorded up to that time. I was saved and healed from drug abuse and now I was fascinated because God had given me a new mind. Logic and reasoning became a completely new facet of life as I started business school to train in data processing for management systems. As I completed the classes in business, business law, and accounting my scores placed me in the top of the class. Later I learned computer programming in different programming languages such as Assembly, Basic COBOL, Fortran and RPG for the IBM 360 mainframe computer. I knew that there had been a miracle in my life.

" _We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: 'For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." 1 Cor. 2:12-16._

During the last quarter of school, I was sitting in class when two men in business suits entered the classroom and asked to speak to me. The instructor pointed me out and excused me to go into a meeting room to talk with them. At first, I was just trying to figure out who they were and what I had done to deserve their visit. It turned out that one gentleman was the V.P. of Computer Operations and the other gentleman was the Computer Center Manager for a local bank. They were there to find a new recruit to hire in their division and the school administrator recommended me. The bank representatives informed me that I could have a free ride to pursue whatever career I wanted in banking information technology. All educational expenses from then on were to be paid by the bank. So I decided not to finish the last quarter of school and start work right away in bank computer operations division.

The job would start me out as a bonded courier for the Seattle Regional Computer Center that serviced seventeen local branches. I was given a new company car and the keys to the banks, where I was responsible for gathering all of their cancelled checks and food stamps, and then transport them to the computer center for processing. Next I would hand deliver the inter-bank distributions to the regional clearing house and later return to the banking computer center with the combined transactions from all of the other bank computer centers in the region. What a great on-the-job education I was receiving about regional computer operations and functions, which was preparing me for what God would launch me into later in life. Of course, I did not know this at the time.

By then, I was married and we were waiting for our first child to be born. My career was growing with a great future ahead. But I was about to experience a radical change. I hate endings. They very rarely come with any kind of warning and even if they do, there isn't time to prepare - or, so it seems.

On December 10th, 1974, I was about to head out on the first run of the day when the call came in that my wife was heading to the hospital to deliver our son. Within minutes, the call came in for the V.P. of Computer Operations from his wife telling him that she too was on her way to the hospital to have their baby. Only one of us could take the day off and since my boss had priority, my wife would have to go to the hospital without me. Meanwhile, one of the worst snowstorms of the decade hit and now it was time for me to head out to gather the transactions, knowing that the run would take extra time because of the weather. I was in a total tail spin. I was not happy. So, with no choice but to head out, I loaded up the car for the run to the branches and the clearinghouse.

The procedure I followed was to load seventeen large leather bags into the back of the car and then place the clearing house transactions on the dashboard so that they would be in constant view for the drive to the clearing house. Needless to say, my mind was not on my job that day. The car was loaded and I headed out into the blizzard. The snow was about six inches deep on the road and driving was slow. Suddenly, I realized that the transactions that should have been on the dashboard were not there. I remembered setting them on the top of the car while trying to get the other bags loaded into the back seat. My emotions had been running in high gear because I was not there for my wife and the birth of our son and as a result, I had driven off with the envelope of transactions still on the roof of the car!

I quickly stopped just a few blocks from the computer center and checked the roof of the car. Of course, the envelope was not there. My heart sank. Now I began to backtrack and soon spotted it lying in the slush in the middle of the road. It had been repeatedly run over and were completely destroyed. I had no choice but to return to the bank where I worked and explain what I had done. After explaining what had happened, I waited to find out what would happen next. I was asked to join my supervisor in the conference room. He told me that his boss overheard me as I explained that I had lost the transactions. I was informed that the transactions could be replaced with little effort, but because his boss knew about the mistake, by company policy, I would now have to be fired. The irony of it was that I was being let go, with an excellent reference.

All that I had worked for now seemed to be gone. It felt like a rug was being pulled out from under me in ways that I could not comprehend. The Holy Spirit then reminded me, as He would many more times in the coming years, that it was God who asked me to give Him permission to put me where He wanted me and to work in me in whatever manner He saw fit. In reality God was in control and I was learning to be dependant on Him in all circumstances.

Not long after the abrupt end to my banking career, I was hired as a management trainee for Olsen Investment and Management. There, I met Todd Southwick, who became a life long friend. Todd was a management trainee for one of Olsen's companies, Alfy's Pizza, and as he was now being promoted to his own store there was an opening for a new management trainee. So, with Todd's help, I was hired to work at Alfy's as the new management trainee.

Bruce Olsen, the owner of Alfy's and my new boss, was one of those special people who always conveyed his belief in you. Every time he saw you, Bruce would tell you that you were uniquely created, part of a bigger picture and you could do anything and become anything that you could imagine. Once a representative from the Dale Carnegie classes came in and suggested that I might get my employer to split the cost of sending me through their training. When I approached Bruce with the idea, he responded, "If you needed that training, I would not have hired you." Nothing like a good positive affirmation! I ran on that one statement for years.

Once behind the counter, I found that I enjoyed the work. There was an audience of folks to talk with just on the other side of the counter and I was given increasing authority as I worked up through the management training. I was having a blast, learning about business, had a great mentor in Bruce Olson, and once again assumed that this was where I would be for the rest of my life.

Did I happen to mention, that I hate endings? They very rarely came with any kind of warning . . .

It was August 13th 1975 and it was my twenty-second birthday. I was in heaven. During the previous year, my wife and I had Michael, our son, who was now nine months old. We bought a house in Edmonds, Washington. I also purchased a motorcycle that I loved to ride. The job was going great and I was working my way into higher levels of management at Alfy's. That morning I went to the mailbox to find a birthday card from my grandmother with a check enclosed. I got on my new motorcycle and headed off to enjoy a ride since I did not need to be at work until late afternoon.

In those days I loved nice clothes and often on payday, I would head over to Stan's, a men's clothing store near the restaurant. Stan always knew I was coming and he took time to have some items laid out for me to see. He really knew what I liked and I usually purchased whatever he had set aside for me. That day was no different and with my extra cash in hand I bought a new suit and shoes, then, dressed for work, headed back out on my motorcycle.

I decided to take a ride up the freeway to the Everett Broadway Alfy's location where my friend Todd was now the manager and have something to eat before heading back to Lynnwood to begin my work shift. While I was there, Todd asked me if I would run down the street and get him a small can of paint.

It was a beautiful day and everything in my life seemed perfect. I could not have been happier. As I headed off down onto Broadway I was thinking about the emptiness of this big five-lane street. Looking into the mirror, I could see that it was just as empty behind me. When I looked back up there was a car, sitting in the left turn lane facing me and as I entered the cross walk into the intersection, the man in the left turn lane proceeded to make a left turn - right in front of me.

It happened so fast that there was nowhere to go but into the side of the car. I hit the car with full force while traveling at thirty-five miles an hour, which threw me over the top of the car.

When I came to I was lying in the middle of the intersection. To put it gently, a couple of my limbs were - although still attached - not quite where they were supposed to be. My left femur was completely shattered, my right wrist broken in three places, my back was injured, and the accident ruined a perfectly good helmet and totaled my new motorcycle.

The next eight days were a bit of a blur to say the least, but I eventually came around enough to inquire about my wife and if she had been in to see me. I was informed that she had not come to the hospital and when I called her to ask why, she broke the news that she had been seeing someone else for several months during the evening hours while I had been at work. Now that I was in the hospital, she had the opportunity to clean out our home, take our son and move in with the other guy. (By the time I was recovered enough to return to our home, the bank had repossessed it and all of my personal possessions were gone.)

In a single moment, I had lost everything. Even the clothes I was wearing at the time of the accident were cut off of me and thrown away. For the next week in the hospital, I was alone with my broken pain-wracked body, grief and loss. My only comfort was the Bible in the drawer next to me, and the presence of God. I had never known such anguish and yet had also never been so aware of His presence continually with me. It was in this place and these circumstances that God was building a foundation that I would need now, and even more, later in life, to stand on. This foundation would prepare me to go just about anywhere and endure almost anything that would come along. It was indeed "in my weakness" that He was strong. I was learning that great revelations and vision would always be tempered by great trials and tribulations, and that even in the middle of many signs, wonders and even healing miracles, there would be places of weakness left in me that would somehow serve as the connectors to total dependency in Christ - often to the mystery of those around me.

" _Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:_ _For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:35-39._

The Apostle Paul had both visions and a thorn. He said _, "_ _I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And, I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things; things that man is not permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say. To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor. 12:1-10._

Once again, I had been reduced - this time, down past the flesh, into the bone. Later the doctor that operated on me shared that he had literally flipped a coin to decide whether to amputate my left leg at the hip or try to repair it. Lucky for me, the surgeon said, it came up heads. The doctor and his assistants did a remarkable job putting me back together.

After a couple of weeks in the hospital, they decided to send me home. But I no longer had a home. With nowhere else to go, my friend Todd came and took me to his place for my recuperation. Thanks Todd! After a few months, I was able to return to work.

Did I mention I hate endings? One more time . . .

A week or so after returning to work, I arrived at the store to find that most of my crew was out with the flu and we were shorthanded on staff. For the next several days, I needed to come in at 10:00 AM to open and then work until 3:00 AM to close, without a break in between, except for an occasional catnap in the office. There was no one else to fill in the hours.

On the third day of this rigorous schedule, as I was coming around the corner into the hallway, after running across the dining room in order to answer the phone, there was suddenly a very bad sound coming from my leg as I ran. The metal plates and screws that had been holding my mending bones together broke free. The bone had compressed as it healed, which stressed the metal plates and screws. All of my extra time on my feet at work so shortly after the surgery had pushed my leg to the limits. Somehow, though I am still not sure how, I drove myself the fifteen miles to the hospital where they informed me that I was on my way back to surgery. During surgery, the doctor took out all of the original metal work and then added a steel rod inside the femur extending from my hip to knee. The pain after the first surgery was horrible but the second surgery was much worse. Another lengthy recovery time was needed. I was never placed into a cast and the bone continued to compress as it healed. Over time, I permanently lost close to two inches in the length of my left leg.

Back to square one...again.

My life seemed to be defying explanation. People just shook their heads. How could one person get hammered so frequently? What was I doing wrong? Oh, that this would be my last major trial, but that was not to be so.

Many years later, I was talking with Todd and I began to reminisce about the great times we had while I was staying in his house while recovering from the accident and once again after the second surgery. Todd asked me if I had lost my mind! Didn't I remember that I was in his home because of the motorcycle accident and that I had lost everything including my wife and son? I did indeed remember all of that, but more importantly, I remembered Todd's friendship and ministry to me, as well as the hugeness of God's love and His provision for me, in the middle of the worst place I had ever been. I had much to be thankful for. When I began writing my testimony, I thought that I might just write about all the good things in my life. I was quickly reminded:

"... _we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who_ _have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28._

" _I_ _n this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." 1 Peter 1:6, 7._

So, I had found myself back at Todd's, broken once again. Powerless to help myself, stripped, with no clue about the future, except the knowledge that God was with me and He would never leave me or forsake me.

While recovering from the second surgery, I left Todd's and headed back to Walla Walla to stay with my parents. Now I had come full circle as I moved back in with my Mom and Dad. What would come next?

Not long after arriving back in Walla Walla, I reconnected with an old girlfriend and we believed that there was something more than just friendship between us. Soon we decided to get married. There had been a small financial settlement from the motorcycle accident, which I used to start investing in real estate. Things were looking up...for a while.

It was during this time that I began to receive lots of input from various sources regarding Kingdom finances and how things worked in the Kingdom of God, often in stark contrast to the world's way of doing things. One day in particular stands out and the events of that day have become two separate but related stories that have been told and re-told ever since.

A friend from high school and I agreed to be equal partners and form a new company called "Son Properties". We agreed that I would do the business and finance management of the business, including the acquisitions and negotiations, while my partner would manage all of the new construction, rehab and maintenance. We both contributed equal amounts of capital and the combination of our skills opened the doors for us to acquire several pieces of property resulting in twenty-six separate rental units and tenants. Once a month, we would get together to go over the finances and pay the bills with checks that required both our signatures.

One of our properties we purchased was a thirteen unit apartment complex. We had recently hired a resident manager who was also a contractor. We were reasonably sure that this new manager was going to work out well for the business. However, in about the third month the resident manager was working for us, he stated that he seemed to be having problems collecting the rents from our tenants. This was very unusual as the oldest tenant had been there for five years and the newest one, eighteen months. Our tenants had in the past paid their rent on time and sometimes even early. Needless to say we were very young and because of our inexperience pretty much trusted everyone. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

After doing some investigating and talking to some of the tenants, we discovered that the manager had already collected all of the rents, but was telling us otherwise and keeping the funds. He had even instructed the tenants to not talk to us under threat of violence against them. By the time we gathered all of the information we could and called the police, we had lost our income for that month. The manager had been arrested, but now we now had a serious cash flow problem. We decided to meet at my home and discuss what to do next.

While waiting for my partner to arrive, I had the TV on and Pat Robertson was on the Christian Broadcasting Network's show, "The 700 Club". Pat was sharing testimonies about people who had experienced miraculous financial breakthroughs, even in the midst of impossible situations, when they gave financially, as the Lord directed. While I continued to watch the program, I was immediately aware that we were in one of those impossible situations and I began to pray, asking God how He wanted us to proceed.

When my partner finally arrived, we sat down and went over the business bills for that month. They totaled $1,400.00. We had exactly 10% of that, or $140.00, left in the bank. I asked what he thought we should do and he replied that it was really my job to manage the finances and that he would go along with whatever I decided. Right then I felt that I was to write a check for $140.00 and send it to CBN, so I asked him what he thought about the idea, and again he said to go ahead and do whatever I felt was right.

I went ahead and wrote the check, which we both signed. I addressed the envelope, put the check in, sealed it up, walked it out to the mailbox, put up the flag and headed back into the house. As I approached the door, I heard a sound and turned around just in time to see the mail man putting down the flag, picking up the outgoing mail and then placing the incoming mail into the box. I quickly walked back to the mailbox, gathered the incoming mail and went back inside and sat down next to my partner and began opening the mail.

In the stack of mail was an envelope from the gas company, which I assumed was the bill for one of our properties. It turned out to be a check from them for $1,400.00.

Several months earlier, I had been out of town and had left several signed checks so that the bills could be paid while I was gone. Somehow we had managed to pay the gas bill twice and instead of crediting our account, they chose to send us a refund!

Over the years since that event, I have asked other people if their utility company has ever sent them a refund when they over-paid. But not one person that I've asked this question has ever had this happen to them to their recollection. Needless to say my partner was pretty blown away by the way that God answered our prayers and that the whole event had happened in the course of just a few minutes. He had seen God at work with genuine signs and wonders. He then went on to inform me that he was aware of the positive changes in my life in the five years since becoming a believer in Jesus Christ.

We had both been raised Catholic and the Gospel was not new news to him. He also patiently listened to my testimony of salvation, but then said that he did not want to accept Christ and publicly become a Christian. I asked him how he could witness the kinds of things he had seen in my life, and others, including this amazing event he had just witnessed that day in our finances, and still say no to Jesus? He explained to me that he had observed, from watching people who truly give their lives to Christ, that they had not only experienced a dramatic transformation but also trials and tribulations came as they were perfected into Christ. To this day, I do not think I have ever heard even a mature believer so clearly convey this truth about following Christ. He understood and knew that it was about a relationship with Jesus, but he admitted that he was not willing to lay down his pampered and protected life and die to self.

Many years later, he was shot to death in the doorway of his own home. A drug purchase gone awry brought a gunman that took his life. The man was never caught. I pray that somehow he had reconsidered and given his heart to Christ before that day.

In 1978, the economy tanked and the interest rates rose to previously unheard of rates. Our credit lines at the bank were cut off. Our business ground to a halt and we lost our properties. During that time I began looking for something new to do and was offered a chance to take some training with an insurance company in California for two weeks.

For several years I had been interested in the great American success stories of the industrialists and philanthropists and was always reading the latest from the success and motivation crowd. I read many books on the subject from authors such as W. Clement Stone, the founder of Combined Insurance, Og Mandino, Norman Vincent Peale and others who were successful. I wanted to learn more, so off I went for two weeks of training from some of the best in the world. Much of that training I still draw on to this day. However, when I arrived back home from the training classes, I found that my life was about to change again. Another ending - my second wife had moved out of our home into her old boyfriend's home while I was out of town. Once again I was part of a failed marriage. How could this be happening again? This was getting to be a familiar part of my life and I did not like it, nor did I understand it.

Very early on in business, I had learned that the sooner you take full responsibility for broken things, the sooner you can get on to the solution. Now, there would be no point in going back to affix blame in the situations I found myself in, but I'm sure that with just a little wisdom I might have headed them off. Unfortunately, wisdom can sometimes be slow in coming, especially when you are busy "leaning on your own understanding".

" _Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have_ _peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only_ _that,_ _but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. "Romans 5:1-5._

By January of 1979, my marriage, business and home had gone down the tubes again. While trying to deal with all this, I received a letter from a girl I dated before I married my first wife. As my mother would put it, "she was the one that got away".

I met Barbara not long after I became a Christian and I no longer looked like a hippie on drugs. Feeling the need for a companion in my life, I had asked God to send a girl who would love me and be my partner for life. When I met Barbara, I knew that she was the one for me. However, circumstances got in our way and by the fall of 1973, I left Walla Walla to attend school, without Barbara. Five years had gone by since Barbara and I had last seen each other. When I received the letter from her telling me where she was now living, I traveled to Spokane to see her. We soon married and we now have just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.

I remember once long ago hearing a prophet say that there was a time coming when God would use the most unlikely people to glorify Himself and He would hardly notice their conditions. The prophet said, "He would even use men who had been married three times". I laughed at such a notion and promptly dismissed all that he said. As it turned out, Barbara became my third wife.

After moving to Spokane to start married life with Barbara, I went to work for Exchange Enterprises and became a Barter Broker. Through this organization, I would analyze numerous companies and then make recommendations to them about using the barter system to reduce their overheads and become more profitable. In the analysis we would sort the company's expenses from the largest amount down to the smallest and looking for things that could be purchased with barter instead of credit or cash. This was a great opportunity to meet numerous business owners and managers and I received an education of a lifetime in small business.

I loved this business. Barter is a good tool if used right. Basically the idea is that you can use unsold goods and services at a retail value to purchase other goods and services that your business needs. In reality, your business only paid a small percentage of the retail value for those items and so, you are effectively buying at a discount equal to your markup. A one-dollar item buys you another one-dollar item but you may have only paid fifty cents for the item wholesale.

In the case of a service business, you are using unsold hours or days to purchase your needed items that can be bartered. You literally have no cost for the hours and days of service that you have now made available through the exchange. This is a far better proposition than just letting them go buy with no ability to redeem them. Not only do you greatly reduce or eliminate the cost of the things that you normally would have to pay cash for but you also didn't have to make a sale, pay income taxes (you do pay income tax under today's laws) and then deplete your cash. The frosting on the cake was the opportunity to make new business contacts which helped grow your cash business.

There was just one critical flaw in the barter business, which is, I am quite sure, why you seldom hear about them today. The owners of the brokerages were literally creating a barter currency to create a barter economy. They were taking their profits in cash and barter credits. This should have worked just fine, given that the owners were moral and ethical men. However, they often were not.

With the currency in their control they began to buy up, from the members, any appreciating assets, such as real estate, gem stones, jewelry or collectables that showed up for barter on the exchange. That might have been all right but they then began to generate their own credits without goods and services to back them up. Somewhat like our government's ability to print money without the currency being backed with gold.

Some of these barter exchanges, which had been a great addition to any business, grew very rapidly, but the appreciating assets were removed from the exchange with fake credits. Consequently, when the barter exchanges folded, the members were left with worthless credits in an economy that now no longer existed. I worked for two of these owners before I understood what was happening and in each case I gave the owners warning that what they were doing was wrong. After the barter businesses folded, the government took care of the crooked owners but I was out of work again.

Did I mention that I hated those endings?

During those first 7 years, I struggled because I was not able to earn my way and build a career. A wounded heart kept me seeking the approval of others. There was always an awareness of God's presence in my life but I did not understand that walking with Him meant to seek His strength and not my own. I was continually trying to do it better by looking for answers but often I had the right answers to the wrong questions. Some days it was hard to discern the difference between foolishness, attack, discipline and pruning but one thing I knew for sure - it all worked for the good. Usually, the more I was out of my comfort zone the more evident His presence surrounded me. Father God reminded me continually that He would never leave me nor forsake me. There was a spiritual battle between what I believed about myself and what God and His Word had to say about me.

" _Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does._

The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant. Its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him." James 1:1-11.

God was stretching and maturing me. He was doing it through "trials and tribulations", while preparing me for the high calling of all believers, which is "to rule and reign" with Him.

*****

Chapter 10 - Joint Heir (1980-1987)

By 1980, it was becoming evident that I was best at trouble-shooting, business and systems analysis and creating custom solutions, which could all be used in business consulting. However, spiritually I did not remotely understand the "prophetic" calling on my life.

It would be quite awhile before I was attuned to hearing and obeying the Holy Spirit enough to bear any spiritual fruit. Praise God, He can and will use you, regardless of your condition, but He wants us to submit to His refining in our lives in order for us to bear fruit.

By this time, it seemed that I would probably never just go to work for a company and then retire after forty years. I seemed to be constantly thrown opportunities that looked like a job that I could do for the rest of my life, only to find out that the opportunity was actually just a chance to speak into the life of someone, usually in a key leadership role. Unfortunately, they sometimes did not want to be "straightened out" and often I realized that there was nowhere to go but out the door. Sometimes in obedience and sometimes just in self-preservation I would often be painfully aware of where the current path was heading, often towards certain destruction of the individuals and their organizations. At times, a door would open just enough to receive more on–the-job education and experience that I would need later on in life.

In one such case, I was invited into ERADCO, one of our state's largest land syndicators, to learn about real estate syndications and securities laws. The job required that I have a securities license, so I was enrolled in a ninety-day training class to get ready to take the licensing test. This class also included training about real estate acquisitions for syndications, along with the sales and legal processes required to make it all go.

During that time Barb and I were beginning to hear God's voice more clearly, which created some very interesting testimonies of how God was working in our lives. We also became very aware of just how important hearing and discernment could be. When God yelled "duck!" you didn't want to be asking why. Obedience became very important and the training was 24/7.

One night after a late meeting and dinner, I was headed North on I-5 and coming up through downtown Seattle. It was a miserable night. Exhaustion had set in after a long day. It was raining, and the wipers were on high and barely keeping up with the rain. As I drove under the Seattle Convention Center overpass, the windows cleared for a moment and just then I heard that still small voice say, "Move over one lane". I turned my head to look over my shoulder to the right, saw a car coming up behind me and waited for him to go by and then while still looking to my right, changed lanes into the next lane to my right.

As I looked back, straight ahead, I came out from under the Convention Center and back into the downpour. Just then I realized that just a couple hundred feet beyond the Convention Center, there was a grey 240Z sitting sideways, with his lights out, in the middle of the lane I had just been in. Had I not changed lanes, I would have never seen him and I would most certainly been killed, along with whoever was in the car which apparently had emerged from under the Convention Center, hit the deep water and spun out. No doubt the driver was sitting there in shock as I went by - missing him by inches.

When I got home, the first thing out of Barbara's mouth was, "Tell me what happened on the way home." She had a dream where she was telling my mother that I had been killed in a car accident. She suddenly woke up and sat upright in bed with the strong conviction to pray for my safety right then! When we compared our experiences, we discovered that she had been praying for me at exactly the time that I went under the Convention Center.

Meanwhile at ERADCO, it all looked perfect. I loved the sophisticated work environment, the owners of the company and the qualified investor clients. I could do this. During the training, Barb would grill me repeatedly on the sample securities exam questions until I knew the answers. Soon, with Barb's help, I was getting 100% on all of my training tests. This was going to be easy. When I actually took the exam, however, I failed by one question. I went immediately to prayer over this and felt God saying that this was now a closed door. I could continue to re-take the test until I passed it but felt that I was not to go this way and instead take a different path. Now I had basic training in land syndication and securities from the best folks around. This type of education would not have been available to me through conventional education channels. This would become the norm in my life. Often there were expansive and sometimes intense learning processes involved.

When I had come out of computer school in 1974, I heard clearly that I would not enter into a normal education process but would instead be trained by God for the things that I had been called to.

At first, I hated it. It seemed that every time I got involved with something that I enjoyed and felt I could stay with, there would come those turning points where I would have to choose between obedience and desire, or to put it into more exact terms - God or Mammon _._

The dictionary puts it this way:

_Mammon_ _(_ _noun)_

" _Wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion."_

It was taken by medieval writers as the name of the devil of covetousness, and revived in this sense by Milton.

In his article, "The radical Jesus: you cannot serve God and Mammon", Douglas E. Oakman states:

" _The linguistic evidence points to Mammon as signifying wealth collected in the bank, or the storehouse, or the treasury: wealth which then becomes the object of trust for the powerful-wealthy to the exclusion of God and neighbor. More importantly, Mammon is based in a system that exploits the many for the benefit of the few. To serve Mammon is to be alone in one's self-sufficiency; to serve God is to have concern for others and to practice reciprocity."_

(Douglas E. Oakman "The radical Jesus: you cannot serve God and Mammon". Biblical Theology Bulletin. Fall 2004. FindArticles.com. 16 Jul. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LAL/is_3_34/ai_n6260529)

The New King James Bible speaks clearly on the subject:

_You_ _Cannot Serve God and Riches._ _"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and_ _mammon." Matthew 6:24._

" _And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous_ _mammon_ _, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home." Luke 16:9._

" _Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous_ _mammon_ _, who will commit to your trust the true riches." Luke 16:11._

" _No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and_ _mammon_ _." Luke 16:13._

There are two thoughts here. The first and last of these four verses clearly state that we must choose between serving God or mammon. Mammon is finances entrusted to you by God for His purposes. But, the middle two verses refer to an overlooked message, which is your stewardship or use of the "un-righteous" mammon. Now we are at the heart of the financial aspects of Kingdom building and the front lines of spiritual battle.

In the early 1980's, our family began to fellowship with other believers by joining a church and we began to get a little better handle on who it was that God had called us to be. We were learning foundational truths in regard to just what it meant to be a follower of Christ. For me specifically, I began to understand more about finances and the Kingdom of God. As a family, we learned what God said about tithes, offerings, and "first fruits". We saw many miracles in regard to having financial needs met. Frequently we would have a financial need and we would go to prayer asking for direction. The Lord would tell us to give away what we had in our hands and that became a very common occurrence.

We have shared the following story many times about when our income had just ended and we were facing an eviction notice, a shut-off notice on the utilities and on the phone. We just did not know what to do next except turn our hearts and situations over to the Lord. Barbara and I had recently joined in a small home fellowship and we were probably the most regular attendees of that group. Even if no one else showed up, we were always there and supported the couple leading the home group. It was the high point of the week for us. Therefore, we went to the next meeting, knowing that we were pretty much at the end of our rope financially but that situation was not going to keep us home that night.

During the worship time, I had a very strong leading to take the remaining ten dollars in my pocket and put it in the offering basket that was sitting on the table. Later, I talked with Alan, our home group leader, explaining that I felt led to put my last ten dollars in the basket and that we had some needs without explaining what they were. Alan joined with me in a prayer of agreement and I put the ten dollars in the basket. As he was praying with me over that offering, Alan was led to pray that I would receive a "hundredfold" return on this offering.

" _A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold. When He had said these things He cried, 'He, who has ears to hear, let him hear!'" Luke 8:5-8. (NKJV)_

The next morning a friend of mine that I was doing some product development consulting with came by to pick me up and he said, "This has never happened to me before but I was led this morning to give you this." Then he handed me a check for six hundred dollars. I was amazed especially because this man was a Mormon. Then it hit me. I was reminded of what we had prayed the night before. So I went back to the house and told Barb what I had done with my last ten dollars the night before. After hearing what I had done, Barbara started laughing. It turned out that while I was in the living room, putting my last ten dollars in the basket, she was in the kitchen with my friend's wife giving her her last five dollars and in prayer also believing for a "hundredfold" return.

" _Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him. The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous." Genesis 26:12,13._

I then informed her that since we had six hundred dollars now, that we should expect nine hundred dollars more, which would be a "hundredfold" return on our fifteen dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars was the amount we needed that day to pay our rent and utilities. As the day progressed, various people showed up at the door saying that they felt that the Lord had instructed them to come and give us money. Our faith was rising while the total increased over the course of the day. Around eleven o'clock that night I looked at Barb and half joking, said, "Well, God better get on the stick here". There was only another hour to get the last two hundred dollars in the door to round out the fifteen hundred that we were now expecting to receive.

No sooner did I say that than there was a knock at the door. Marcia our upstairs neighbor in the apartment building where we lived was standing at the door. She said with relief, "I'm so glad I caught you before you went to bed. I was at church this evening and a man followed me clear across the large parking lot to my car. He said that all day long the Lord had been speaking to him about giving money to the Bundy's." He knew that she was our neighbor and that was why he chased her across the parking lot to give her a check. The check was for two hundred dollars. We were floored but rejoicing! Therefore, we received all of the funds that were needed that day. Our family learned that whenever we had a need just ask, "Lord what is it that you need us to give?" Whether it is time or money, God reveals what we need to give to cause the release of the provision.

The next day Barb made a comment to me that now all she needed was school clothes for our youngest two daughters. Rachel and Marianne were only a year apart in age and wore the same size in clothing. We left to pay the bills with the money that had come in the day before and when we came back, in the middle of the living room floor was a big pile of clothing. A little girl living nearby was given all new clothes by her grandparents for school. Her Mom went through her daughter's closet and removed all the clothes she no longer wanted and decided to give them to our girls. Many were brand-new and most hardly worn. My wife was in tears looking at this big pile of good, very nice clothing and she jokingly said, "All we need now are shoes for our girls". At that moment there was a knock on the door and the little neighbor girl walked in with an Albertson's grocery store paper bag completely full of shoes and dumped it on top of the clothing.

We experienced many miracles at that time in our lives and we began to understand that we had been called to share the testimony of God's Kingdom finances. Believers need to know that Father God "owns the cattle on a thousand hills". He is not broke. He has all the resources that we will ever need. He has designed us to participate with Him in the Kingdom and development of the Kingdom of God on earth. He is looking for those who are willing to be conduits. He has given us many testimonies of provision from the littlest tiny things to very large things.

I remember when my father-in-law, Bill, had given us a little aluminum boat. I was quite happy to have this little boat and use it on the nearby lake. In fact, I was so happy about the boat that I remember saying aloud, "I just couldn't think of anything more I need, except maybe a little piece of rope to put on the bow of the boat so that I could tie it up at the dock". Right after saying that, I got in my car and headed off to a meeting but somehow took a wrong turn and wound up in a dead end street. I was quite dismayed because I was running late for this very important meeting. I drove down the dead-end street and when I finally turned around, lying there, in the middle of the road in front of me, was a coil of rope. Now, I was quite sure that that coil of rope was not there on the way into that dead-end street but now it lay there in the road as I turned around to come back out and, it was the perfect length.

" _Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this." Psalm 37:3-5. (NIV)_

Another time I thought, "I just can't imagine things going any better than they are". God had blessed us with a nice home. Work was going well. We had a home fellowship. Our children were settling into the new area and church. I made a comment to Barb that the only thing that I could imagine that I would like to have was a telescope for the living room because we had a great view of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound. We left the house to run some errands and when we got back, I hit the remote control button to open the garage door and there on the garage floor just inside the door was a brand new, nice big telescope in a box. A young lady who was staying with us thought I might like her telescope and placed it in the garage for me. I am quite sure, to this day, that I heard the Holy Spirit laugh and say, "I came by while you were gone".

In the mid eighties, I got an opportunity to work with VR Business Brokers in Spokane. At the time they were the nation's largest business brokerage franchise. In order to acquaint myself with the business, I attended VR's training and then went to work looking over the one hundred and fifty or so businesses that were listed for sale. My combined data processing, accounting and barter background gave me an interesting perspective on the status of these businesses and after reviewing them all, I became aware of a number of interesting facts about the businesses that were for sale.

The main thing that I discovered was that virtually none of the businesses for sale became available because of planned exit strategies. An "exit strategy" is the method by which an investor or founder expects to leave the business with his capital intact, increased and in hand. This can take place in the form of a sale but may also be a merger, going public, or any other transaction that gets the cash back out of the deal, sometimes while retaining ownership. What I found instead, were unexpected situations where a partner had died, a partnership ended, a divorce or any number of unforeseen, unplanned events. About the only planned events that I encountered were retirement situations and even then, it was more of a forced situation than planned event.

It was also evident that most small business owners had only one thing in mind and that was to expense everything out and reduce the tax bill. This is a fine notion, if you want to go on forever running your business, but the moment that you want to sell, it becomes very hard to substantiate any kind of value when you have shown only minimum profits, in order to beat the tax man. Often I would run into situation where the owners wanted out of the business but had worked so hard to not pay taxes that the businesses were virtually un-saleable and in some cases un-listable.

In order to list a business for sale, the seller needed to provide inventory information, profit & loss (P&L), balance sheet and tax return information for several years. Many times, while an owner wanted a quick sale, they could not come up with the required information to justify or arrive at, a sale price. While interviewing the owners who were already listed, or who wanted to list, I often found that they had boxed themselves into a corner. Now that they had to sell, they were easy prey for those seeking to capitalize on their self-induced situations.

This was not only another amazing opportunity to learn about business, but was also, almost without exception, an opportunity to minister to people who might not otherwise ever grace the doors of a church. In some cases they were very much in bondage to their situations and many times I got to be the delivery system to bring God's love and redeeming grace into these situations. This was "marketplace ministry" many years before that term would be widely used.

God always came in to these situations to save and not condemn, and often, I would be warmly received and then have an opportunity to make suggestions on how to better the situation by adding value or suggesting possible deal structures that could speed up the selling time. He always had a way to improve on the situation and minister to the needs, for any who would receive Him in me.

Sometimes the situations were what we called \- Just walk away!

One day, I stopped by to say "hi" to a friend who was working in a Chinese restaurant. When I came in, she introduced me to the elderly Chinese woman who owned the restaurant. She told the owner that I was a business broker and the owner got very excited and asked me if I could sell her business for her. I told her that I would be happy to try to help but would need to ask a couple of questions. First off, did she have an asking price in mind and if so, how had she arrived at that price? She told me that she had no idea what the place was worth and asked if I could appraise it.

I told her that with out spending a lot of time I could give her a ball-park number, just by knowing the approximate value of the furniture, fixtures and equipment and her average take-home for the last two or three years. Upon hearing the questions she smiled, bowed her head slightly to whisper into my ear, and said, "I take home eight thousand a month but no show on the book." Rather than hear anything else unlawful, I told her that I could not understand her because of her accent and quickly left.

On another occasion, a friend asked me to help him buy a restaurant and lounge. As a buyer's agent, I started researching for a suitable business for him. I found an opportunity to acquire a restaurant with real estate, and then with just a little effort, substantially increase the value of it. As I proceeded to try to make a deal with the owner, I learned that he could not produce any financial records. Now while this might have been a deal breaker to most, to me it was a great opportunity because no one else would dare tread here. Long story short, I had to audit the business on my own time, with very little help from the owner. I gradually learned that he had just been taking cash out of the register and had not paid taxes or completed any accounting for almost two years.

The good news was that the folks who had sold it to him several years earlier wanted him out but they did not want the restaurant back. Therefore, we were the only bidders. It was a win-win for everyone for us to take interest and we were able to leverage our efforts into a nice equity position.

All of this business stuff was really, it turned out, just about the hearts of men and who they were serving and in many cases, whether or not I would be received long enough to deliver the message and in many cases, the way out. Solving people's financial dilemmas or helping them take a different look at their business was often all that was required to get their attention. It is still very much that way today. The other thing that was becoming obvious was that hundreds of opportunities were waiting to be acquired. I had far more business deals coming at me than I could ever respond too.

Unfortunately, I was still "leaning on my own understanding" and knew that I could not possibly handle one percent of the business deals at hand. I had not yet heard the Lord revealing to me "doing the impossible and operating in budgets that I could not comprehend" but that would come... later.

Meanwhile my "analytical custom solutions mind" engaged more and more onto the solution of how to "receive and steward" these resources. God's timing here was everything. What I had in mind to do in weeks, He was willing to walk out in my life over years and even decades of time. Now, over twenty years later, it is finally becoming clear. "All things do work for the good..." and for sure..."His ways are not my ways".

While at VR, learning the ins and outs of business brokering and once again, getting the education of a lifetime, I got an added bonus. VR Business Brokers was not only the nation's largest franchise business broker, but it had also become the sole distributor of new franchise opportunities for the nation's largest franchise packager, Francorp.

Francorp, located just south of Chicago, had completed over two thousand franchises and had teamed up with VR to market the new ones. So in addition to over a hundred and fifty businesses we had listed for sale, we also sold several dozen new franchise opportunities.

Franchising was, and still is, a very specialized business development model requiring individual legal documentation in several dozen states and then a separate set of documentation that covers the remaining states. Aside from that, you have to have a successful prototype business usually with at least two or three years of good track record, a teachable system and something that can be duplicated anywhere.

With franchising you can develop a national franchise model, often for less than what it would take to re-create one company-owned store. When raising large amounts of capital for corporate development, such as you might do with a public offering (IPO), was not an option, you might instead do your corporate development with franchising, where you sell your proven business system to owner/operators. It is a great way to go. Many of America's most successful businesses are franchises.

During my time at VR, Francorp decided to take the VR/Francorp partnership to the next level and have VR Brokers become the scouts for new franchise opportunities. While I was there, Francorp accepted six new businesses for franchising and two of them were from me. I could spot these opportunities a mile away and my radar was always on for the next one.

Because of my success at identifying these potential new franchisors, I was invited to fly back to Francorp to tour the facilities and get an inside look at just what it took to launch a national franchise. I also had the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of founders of some of America's and the world's best-known companies. It was quite an education that still gets used almost daily.

The one thing that I noticed, while at Francorp, was that virtually everyone I met there was or at least appeared to be a Christian. It was, I believe, God in them that was causing this great creation of wealth because of their heart for giving. Most of the partners from Francorp were, I am sure, giving beyond what the rest of us could ever imagine.

" _And_ _you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get_ _wealth_ _, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." Deuteronomy 8:18._

*****

**Chapter 11 - Journey Development** **(** **1987 – 1994)**

Nothing is Impossible. In 1987, I started a software company.

One day a recruiter from a local technical school called me up and asked if I knew how to program a Macintosh computer. Even though I knew a half dozen programming languages and had been a hard core "Mac guy" since they had come out a few years earlier, I had never programmed one. My response was, "No". Then, the recruiter asked if I had ever worked with the "4th Dimension (4D)" programming language. I said, "No". Next, the recruiter asked if I knew anything about medical software. Again, the answer was, "No". The next question was, "Did I know anything about orthopedic surgery?" and I answered, "No". Again, I was asked if I knew anything about neurosurgery and one more time, I said, "No". I could not believe that after all my negative replies the recruiter then asked, "Well, do you want the project?" My answer was, yes! And... that is how the Lord launched me into starting a Mac 4th Dimension software company.

I was invited into a small software company in Everett, Washington that was working with a neurologist and an orthopedic surgeon to create a custom application that would meet the needs of each of their individual practices, as well as their combined work at the hospital and in their offices. The software development company was using a new relational database application building product called "4th Dimension" or "4D" as it was later shortened to. Originally, this software was intended to be the relational database to be installed on all new Apple Macintosh computers. Guy Kawasaki, also known as "The Mac Evangelist" had recruited many of the developers who were writing software for the Mac. Guy left Apple to head up Acius, 4D's parent company. Since I was a big fan of both the Mac and Guy Kawasaki, I was encouraged to take the jump into becoming a full time 4D developer.

Now, thirteen years out of programming mainframe computers, I was now a part of a Mac software development shop, trying to learn one of the most powerful and complex programming languages around while simultaneously, attempting to absorb by an intense crash course on neurology and orthopedic surgery. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

During this time, my wife, four daughters and I were living in Issaquah, Washington. We attended church at Casey Treat's Christian Faith Center, near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport but my job was in Everett, Washington. On Sunday we completed two round-trips for morning and evening services and during the week, I would leave Issaquah early, drive to CFC for two hours of early morning prayer then drive to Everett for a long days work before returning to Issaquah. On Wednesday nights, we would add another round-trip to CFC for the mid-week evening service plus we were also part a home fellowship group on another week night. A full schedule for the whole family!

Overall, I was working 50-60 hours a week, spending sixteen, plus hours at church which put me on the road driving another 16 hours a week. It was kind of like working two and a half full time jobs but because of the prayer time at church and worship time while driving, it seemed effortless.

After joining the early Morning Prayer group, the whole thing began to take the feel of a great adventure. I was constantly on the lookout for the next move of God in my daily routine. CFC started this two-hour prayer meeting around a teaching by Larry Lea using the pattern of the Lord's Prayer. We would take the full two hours to go through it, expanding corporately on each line. It was a wonderful experience and has remained with me ever since.

One morning I left CFC for Everett feeling like I wasn't touching the ground. The presence of God was very heavy as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for work. Driving up Hwy. 99, still praying in the spirit, I said out-loud, "Lord, please use me today". Then I heard the Lord say, "Go to a pay phone". There was no doubt in my heart about what I had heard Him instruct me to do but I did not understand why. I waited on Him while I began to look for a pay phone. Phone booths were still abundant at that time.

I was approaching the SeaTac Red Lion hotel and decided to pull into the first driveway. This was good. The Red Lion had pay phones. Maybe I would encounter some old long lost friend in the hotel or just maybe...

Finding a parking spot in the hotel lot was the next adventure. After twenty minutes of driving around and looking, I was about to give up, when someone pulled-out and I took the empty space. Quickly I jumped out of my car and went in search of the payphones. At the front desk, I was told that the bank of phones was up a hallway to my right and so off I went, still expecting to see someone I knew. As I came around the corner to the wall of phones, I also encountered dozens of people in line to use them. The shortest line must have had at least six people in it.

Now, I just stood there trying to figure out what this was all about. What line was I to be in and did God want me to call someone. Suddenly the woman in front of me passed out and I caught her and lowered her to the floor. She quickly came to and I asked her if she was all right and did she need help. She informed me that her husband was on his way down to meet her for breakfast and that she probably just needed to eat but could use some help in getting up into a nearby chair. Once seated, she thanked me and shortly thereafter, her husband arrived. Then I heard the Lord say, "There, I used you. Now go to work". Only God could have so orchestrated the whole series of events. This event remains with me to this day as the model for divine appointments.

When I arrived at work, I was informed that our development company had a new revenue stream writing printer drivers for HP and they wanted to dump the custom medical application development project and the new 4th Dimension programming language that they thought they would be able to learn "on-the-fly".

I was then asked if I would be interested in starting my own company and taking over the project. This would immediately give me a 400% increase in earnings. Seeing a great opportunity to jump off a cliff blindfolded, I rose to the challenge and went home with the project.

While all of this was going on, my wife and I began to get the leading from the Lord to move to Everett, Washington. A new church plant was there and our family started attending before moving to the area. We prayed and asked God how He was going to relocate us and to provide for the move. He prompted us to ask what we wanted in a house and to write it down and leave nothing out.

We knew that we did not want to actually live in Everett but nearby so we could attend church there and I would be near to the doctors for whom I was writing the software application. That was the beginning of the list and then we added from there. A home large enough for us and our four children, with a view of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound, no last months rent or deposit, at least partially furnished, washer and dryer, fireplace, and at the end of the list we added fire wood. The whole family got involved in making this desire's list.

The following Sunday, at the church in Everett, a lady who was a homebuilder in the area heard our need for a house. After explaining our situation to her, she told us that she had just completed building a home for herself and now needed someone to take over her existing lease, where she currently lived. She asked if we would like to see it and so off we went. As she showed us the home in Mukilteo, we realized that the home was everything we wrote down on our list including at the very bottom when she said that the firewood would stay for us to use. God is good!

Now we had a home and a new software development business. While starting the project in the original company, I, at least had some other programmers to talk to, even though they pretty much kept to themselves and tried to remain focused on their own projects. Since 4th Dimension was a very new product, there were no user groups and very little, if any, tech support. You could call "Acius" and ask how a specific command worked, but they would not talk to you at all about the code you were writing or the applications that you were trying to build. I found myself working completely alone and attempting what most would consider a completely impossible feat. However, I believe that this was what God intended. This environment was definitely training and preparation for "Doing the Impossible 101". Later I learned that I had become one of maybe a hundred development companies worldwide that were specializing in this development platform and that the learning curve was considered by most technology recruiters to be about two years, or four-thousand hours of experience, in order to be hirable in the open market.

To make matters worse, the doctors I was writing the application for, were constantly adding new features to their "undocumented" design, constantly asking when it would be finished, and at what cost. None of their questions could be answered as long as they continued to do "design-on-the-fly". The pressure was on.

One day while I was working on some new code, I realized that I was off into some very deep water and pretty much just found myself completely in over my head. No amount of staring at the screen and keyboard brought the solution I needed. Working in very complex logic flows, I had pretty much just exceeded my own ability to keep track of where I was, and where I was supposed to be going. Suddenly, I was overcome by the seriousness of this situation. The doctors had put their trust and a whole lot of their money into my ability to create a tangible working example of their combined vision. Now I would have to explain to them that the funds they had used to develop this software had produced a lot of unfinished, totally unusable code. The whole project was not dead, but the most exciting components of the software just didn't work. There was no one to call for help, which left me feeling completely alone.

As it happened, that was the day of the week that Barbara and I attended our church home fellowship. As we walked into the room that evening, I was immediately approached by the leader of the group, who promptly commented that I appeared to have a problem and asked what was wrong. I did the best I could to explain the software code problem to him, knowing that he would not understand, or so I thought.

After hearing my plight, he asked if he could pray for me. If I ever needed prayer, it was now. Admitting defeat in this project would be the end of my new company, my reputation and everything that went with it, not to mention my income. After a moment of quiet prayer, he put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, "The Lord has a word for you. He wants you to know that before there were computers, there was God".

It was as if I had never really considered that before and I suddenly realized that God had the answers that were needed. All I needed to do was ask Him and wait on Him for the answers. There was an immediate impartation of the rock-solid faith that He did indeed, not only have the answers, but had pre-ordained from the beginning of time, to impart them to me. This realization came with a peace that overwhelmed me and completely removed all of the worry, anxiety and fear that I had carried into the room that night.

After the meeting we returned home and I went back to my computer for some late-night coding. When I first sat down and looked once again at the "dead-end" place in the code, I began to feel anxiety, worry and doubt creeping back in on me. It was then I remembered what had been spoken over me earlier that night. Faith that God had the answers rose back up in my spirit. I closed my eyes and waited on Him for some time. Then I opened my eyes, looked at the screen and began to type code that was not being generated in my own logic and reasoning, but instead seemed to be just flowing out of my hands without thought. I cannot tell you how long I worked that night, seemingly just spilling code onto the screen, but eventually I stopped and went into "debugging" mode.

Debugging is a term for running the program until it breaks, fix the problem, run it again until it breaks, fix it, etc. until it finally works without flaws.

Normally this debugging phase of development can take up a large part of the total effort, perhaps taking up to eighty percent or more of the programming time. This time, however, the program just ran, without bugs. The best programmers in the world seldom ever write perfect code the first time but this time I created a unique, one-of-a-kind application component, by totally surrendering to God and trusting in Him. This was not about what I had done, but more correctly, what He had worked in and through me. First, God dealt with my anxiety, doubt, worry, and fear and then replaced them with the revelation and faith required to draw vision into reality. It was, and still is, all about Him. I was beginning to enjoy being enrolled in the "Doing the Impossible (with God) 101" course. During this education process, I was learning the building blocks of what would become the core of all for future ministry and business activities.

In the case of doing the impossible, God often drops something into our path that we just know we cannot overcome on our own. We have a choice at that moment in time between magnifying the problem and magnifying our God. Worship is the way through to the revelation of the solution or the manifestation of His power or both. He designed the impossible situation to teach you how to do the impossible, so that He can get the credit and be glorified. You have a free will to make a decision on what should be magnified, Him or the problem. If you are interested in knocking down walls by blowing a ram's horn, more than using dynamite and heavy equipment, or you are just plain sick and tired of hitting walls and defaulting into powerlessness, then this call is for you.

I believe now, more than ever before, God wants us doing the impossible. Running in our own strength may not be an option some day. Best we get trained up in it now, while it's a choice instead of trying to master it when there are no choices left. This is not something you just go out and do on your own, but be watchful for when He places roadblocks for your training.

"Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20.

" _Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26._

" _Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." Mark 10:27._

" _For nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37._

" _Jesus replied, 'What is impossible with men is possible with God'." Luke 18:27._

Operating in our weakness and in God's strength is a concept that is not at all hard to find in the Word of God. Often, I find that God moves mightily in and through me and others I know, when we are most beaten down, tired, hungry or just not feeling well. In those moments, we have learned to offer ourselves up to be used anyway. God can then use us in ways that defy our own abilities and once again, He gets all of the glory. Often He moves in and through us without our foreknowledge and what He is delivering becomes just as amazing to us as it is to those who are receiving it.

" _In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." Romans 8:26._

" _But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." 2 Corinthians 12:9._

These spiritual concepts, which I did not quite understand then, later became and continue to be, an important part in my personal life, business, and ministry.

Provision

Eventually, we moved across the street from the house we had been rented and began to fill up the new house with programmers and office equipment. One day my wife pointed out that there was no longer a single piece of furniture in the living room and that I really needed to get an office. While praying for a solution and a plan on how to proceed, I felt that I was not to take on an office until we had at least fifty thousand dollars in the bank. After that, I just sort-of put moving into an office out of my mind, thinking that building up that much reserve would certainly take a while.

Not long after receiving this revelation, a friend called to tell me that he had met a man who was really into Mac computers and he thought that I should give him a phone call. As we were talking, I was being very strongly led to invite him over, even though my schedule was more than full. Therefore, I invited him over and we began to compare notes about our experience with the Mac and business.

About three hours into our conversation, he suddenly stopped and after a brief lull in the conversation, asked me what I needed to move my fledgling company forward. I told him that we, as he could see, had pretty much outgrown the house and really needed an office. He then asked me how much would that take and I shared my recent revelation about the fifty thousand dollars I felt would be needed to comfortably make the move and get us into our next projects.

After a few minutes of contemplation, he then explained that he had always wanted to do something like this. "Like what?" I asked. "Like giving you what you need," he replied. When I asked him what he had in mind, he said that he wanted to give me fifty thousand dollars, as a gift to get things rolling. A week or two later, he did just that. With those funds we moved into a nice new second story office above the local coffee company. The coffee and the code were really starting to flow.

Anointing To Spoil

In 1989, just before our move into our new office and completely immersed in the day-to-day operations of our newly formed corporation, Journey Development, Inc., I met Dade Wall. Dade, for many years, had been teaching school on American military bases in Germany. He was back in the states for a short time and we proceeded to have one of those "Divine Appointments" where you just know that God was up to something.

Through an interesting chain of events, I was invited by Dade to attend a meeting being held by a friend of a friend. Dade told me that he was strongly impressed by the Lord of the importance of my attending this meeting, which was called "The Anointing to Spoil". While I had no idea what this "Anointing to Spoil" was all about, and had never heard of the guest speaker, Al Houghton, I was immediately convicted that I was indeed to attend this meeting.

On the morning of the meeting, as I was waking up, I heard the Lord clearly say, "The last shall be first." I was immediately aware that this was the Word of the Lord, but just as aware, that while it was a very significant word for me and was a crucial component of that particular day. As I drove the short drive to Bellevue from my home in Mukilteo, I once again received this word: "The last shall be first."

After arriving at the meeting, I found myself with fifty or so others in the room and soon we were immersed in a teaching unlike any I had remembered hearing. This revelation called "Anointing to Spoil" was, among other things, about the purity of the hearts of those called to participate in an end time transfer of wealth, and what kinds of purification processes they would have to endure before they could be fit for use in establishing the Kingdom. The insight to this "Anointing to Spoil" is that as we hear and obey God and give where He says to give our tithe, there will come a resource release. Not from the guy we gave to. It isn't necessarily about me selling my time anymore. It is not about getting someone to sign an agreement to buy stuff from me anymore. Now this may not apply to you, but this is how it has looked to me. Therefore, when I meet someone and I ask, "God, what can I do for this person?" and when God tells me what to do for him, I step out in obedience and make a commitment to do it. It may mean, "Hey, I don't have any money right now and I know you need money. But if God will give me the money, I will give it to you for a car or a business or whatever it is." As I step into that process, there comes a release of resources and it may come from the most unexpected sources.

Here's the dangerous place - some of us want to see that release of resources for ourselves. And, take my word for it, many of the people that were in that seminar lost everything they owned over the next couple of years. Everyone that I have ever talked to who was at the seminar lost everything, because God said "I'm going to purify you because I have a call on your life and I don't care if you don't get it. I'm doing this with you". Some, I am sure, walked away from that calling because it cost too much and they were not willing to pay the price. Now, some of those people have started to come back around and they are appearing in my living room, seventeen or eighteen years later.

I am now working with two people who were in that meeting years ago. When I mentioned the "Anointing to Spoil" meeting, excitedly they said, "I was there!" and I asked them, "What happened to you after the meeting?" and they both answered, "We lost everything!" Desiring to know what happened next I inquired, "Tell me what happened after losing everything?" "We began having Divine Appointments", they explained, "and projects began dropping into our laps and all kinds of things began to just happen."

We are here to learn how to manage resources for The Kingdom of God. That's what this is about. It's not about how to increase your net worth or your cash flow, although those things may happen. Will we deal with those issues so that you can better steward resources? Absolutely! But, that is not what this is about. This is about an attitude of the heart, where you give God permission to use you, even if it costs you everything, and if you are not ready for it to cost you everything, you should walk away now, because it might. It might just cost you everything.

I have worked with high net worth individuals who have told me, "I would like to do business with you, just as long as I don't have to pay the price you've paid, because I sure don't want to go through what you've been through in order to do what you do." My response would be, "Yes, I don't want to go back and do any of it over, but I don't regret one little bit of it. It was God purifying my heart and preparing me for future events."

Here is something that we must understand. God wants to use you but if you want to be used by Christ in the manner that He called you to be used, then you might have to be crucified too. And, some of us aren't willing to go there. Some of us are not really willing to lay it all down at the foot of the cross. He says, when you lay it all down, when you give up your house and your spouse and your family and everything else to go and follow after Me, I'm going to restore it back to you ten-fold, a hundredfold, in this lifetime and in the Kingdom to come - there is a reward coming.

All through the first session of the "Anointing to Spoil" meeting, I could not shake the presence of this one portion of scripture, "The last shall be first". Throughout the rest of the day, I kept hearing that same word repeatedly without understanding how this applied to me.

Towards the end of the day's teaching, Al instructed two men to stand on either side of him and one at a time they were to go into the group and bring one person forward for personal ministry. As they did what he had asked them to do, they gradually brought each person in the room forward and he ministered to each one individually. It suddenly occurred to me that, as near as I could tell, virtually everyone in the room had been taken forward, except me.

Just as I was convinced that I was about to be left out a man came up behind me, leaned down to my right ear, and whispered, "The last shall be first". He led me up to the front of the room where Al placed his hands on my shoulders, looked me right in the eyes, and said, "The last shall be first". The presence of God was very heavy and I was sure that I was headed for the floor. To this day, I cannot recall a single word spoken after that!

After that meeting, my life changed dramatically. The Lord began removing the ceiling in regard to what He could do if I would just hear and obey, allowing Him to begin the purification process. Then the warfare really began...

In his book Marked Men, Al Houghton states:

"... _We make choices daily, which reflect Lordship by glorifying one of two masters. Choices, which honor God's word and uphold personal integrity, reflect true worship. Actions, which violate personal integrity for financial gain, reveal mammon worship, honor Satan, and potentially end in eternal destruction._

A personal mammon test can be as simple as whether or not to tithe or as complex as choosing to embrace a prophetic vision where the spiritual repercussions drag us into a Job-like adversity. The Church has been encouraged to embrace God's prophetic promises of a "wealth transfer" not realizing the spiritual repercussions of such a move...

To embrace such a vision is to assault the very foundation of Satan's throne. It is possible to walk a straight and narrow line of biblical integrity while groaning inside due to the magnitude of personal warfare manifested in a lack of provision from attacking the enemy's largest stronghold. This seems to have been the pattern for many who embraced the "Anointing To Spoil" only to discover this biblical vision becoming the main point of spiritual contention. To embrace a prophetic promise, which attacks the very foundation of Satan's throne, can eventually result in dissuading us from continuing because the personal price is so great!

The early Church proved victorious over mammon by sowing into each other's needs. Barnabas, a Levite, passed the Lordship test. Ananias and Sapphira failed it. The rest is history! The Bible is full of individual and corporate mammon tests that God initiates and demands that we walk through. We need to understand that this is not a minor issue. It is a major issue. It becomes the central thread in the book of Revelation, and those who fail the "koo-ree-os" test choose a course of action that will very likely end in demonic fullness and judgment. Yielding worship to mammon forfeits God's fullness.

At the end of his life and ministry, Paul had a very few people who had embraced the cross and walked it out to the point where they could stand together. To walk with Paul, you had to depart from self-serving and embrace God-serving. Paul refused to disciple individual Kingdom-builders.

Paul walked through an amazing magnitude of adversity, and throughout the process, he attributes it to God's purpose and plan in his life in order that grace received to endure becomes strength made perfect in weakness. His heart is transformed and he becomes a vessel of honor delivered from self-indulgence, self-promotion, personal kingdom-building and the entire spectrum of what mammon offers."

*****
Chapter 12 – Journey Development Part 2

Meanwhile back at Journey Development...

Initially, we wrote software for neurologists and orthopedic surgeons. Later, we took a project for Law Enforcement, working first with a joint county narcotics task force and then later with a State Patrol Intelligence Unit. Then we began to get inquiries from around the country and globally for a variety of city, county, state, and federal law enforcement organizations.

I grew up in an environment of law, law enforcement, and corrections. Dad was a bail bondsman and Sergeant at the state penitentiary located in Walla Walla, Washington. My Mother was a legal secretary and law office manger and many of our family friends were lawyers, police officers and corrections workers. I, on the other hand, had been pretty much the black sheep of the family and as a young man a little more on the outside of the law. Consequently, I found it quite fascinating that I had now joined in with the rest of my family becoming part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

We took the initial programming work of a joint county narcotics task force and re-worked it into a suite of applications that could be re-sold through our development channels into other law enforcement agencies. I was constantly amazed at how much I was learning about the inner workings of this system. Sometimes it was just plain funny. One day I received a call from the new head of the national police for an African country that had just changed its name and their form of government. After speaking at length with this man about his country's law enforcement technology needs, I asked him who were the "bad guys" he was dealing with. The man on the other end of the phone laughed and said, "Why, my predecessor, of course!"

The custom software business is very up and down, like any kind of contracting. There was always the balance issue between keeping good programmers and good clients so that there was always enough work, but without taking on too much. Likewise, there was the use of funds issue during the quiet times. Do you hold back to cover overhead and keep the office open and maybe some folks on hand for internal development projects, or, do you spend what you have on marketing? It always seemed to be one or the other with never enough for both.

Once we had moved into our new office and ramped up production a bit, the question was always there regarding priorities with the budget. During this phase of my "school of hard knocks" education, the daily test was, would we follow God's leading or, because of our "great combined intelligence", lean on our own understanding.

The start of the day was an hour in my office with the door closed while I was in worship, Bible study, prayer and seeking God for revelation regarding that particular day. Unfortunately, I was doing this part alone and sometimes what I was getting in prayer was not matching the crew's wants and needs. Often, I was inappropriately out-voted and then succumbed to the pressure of "you never listen to us" virtually giving up the helm in a sort of mini-mutiny. This was my major battle in business. Would people come on-board and move in faith to do what we were being asked, with me firmly at the helm? I was, in those days, and for years after, often more concerned with keeping the troops on-board and happy, than I was at keeping them on what I believed to be the God ordained task.

On one such occasion, an employee, after being somewhat alarmed at my sense of peace during a stretch of time without a client, came in with a marketing idea that he thought we should move on. He had, of course, received a full buy-in from the rest of the staff before presenting his idea after exclaiming how bad things looked and that we needed new clients now. Now according to the unified crew, "We had to do something"! They had overlooked the fact that we had never spent a penny on marketing or advertising outside of a yellow-pages ad prior to that time. We had steady clients and work up to that time therefore it was just a matter of waiting on God, but I was ready to hear about the marketing idea.

The marketing program my employee presented was the creation of a three-by-five advertising card. It would be inserted into a card pack with dozens of cards from other businesses and then be mailed out to a common set of potential customers. Seemed like a decent idea. The cost was relatively low, compared to many other options that we had looked at in the past. We had a good graphic artist on our team who could design the card and we imagined the great flow of business that would soon follow, or so we hoped. We were now starting to deplete our cash reserves while waiting for the next client.

As the artwork and schedule for this new marketing program came together, a very interesting thing happened. My otherwise unified crew, at least regarding this new marketing plan anyway, had become divided, right down the middle over the final drafting of the card. Someone had suggested, as a final touch to the artwork, that as a Christian owned company, we should insert the Christian fish symbol into the lower right corner of the ad card. This suggestion promptly turned into a two-sided debate as to whether we should market as Christians to Christians or to go covert and maximize our ability to reach the un-saved in the marketplace. Both were good sound concepts but now they needed a tiebreaker and I was the one with the last vote. Suddenly I was back in control...sort of.

This debate became quite heated over several days before it was presented to me and now, no matter which group I sided with, the others would not be to happy. So, I went to the source of all wisdom and locked myself in my office to seek God's answer to the question . . . add the fish symbol or no fish symbol? What came to me, was as usual, not what I expected. When you seek the Father's wisdom, rarely does He select from your imagined list of standard choices.

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways'," declares the LORD. Isaiah 55:8.

In this case, His answer came to me. "Have them pray about this, until they, and you, are in agreement."

Now, this was a praying group. We had for a long time, taken every Wednesday afternoon, stopped working and dedicated the time to prayer and ministry, not only to the crew, but also often to friends and guests from other companies in the area. On one occasion, we had actually shut down business for the day, loaded up into a couple of cars and drove the six-hour round-trip to Vancouver, Washington, just to pray for someone else's company.

Therefore, I shared the revelation God had given me and everyone went right into prayer. They wrote down their impressions and placed them in the middle of the conference table. No surprise that on the first round of votes everyone agreed and the fish was installed on the card. Lesson learned. Get everyone in agreement to what God wants. That leaves all the politics outside. Or, from time to time, be forced to throw out your crew and get a new crew.

The odd thing was that I knew in my spirit that while we were to do this advertising, there would not be an immediate cash flow from it and that we would remain in total trust and dependence on Him. We were, after all, in school here and there were many more lessons to be learned.

Three months went by with work trickling in but nothing from the new advertising yet and it was now time to do our second quarterly card deck marketing. My crew wondered whether we should do it at all but decided that we should stay with it. The new question was whether to stay with the first artwork or to do something different. This time they worked well together and I proudly watched them develop a new design and put it all together in a timely manner. Just when I was patting myself on the back for having such a unified team, someone said, "Don't forget the fish!" All of a sudden, we were right back to the divided camp. This time it was the "stick to the original" verses the "try something new" camp.

Once again, I heard the Lord say, "Have them pray until they are in agreement again". With that familiar mandate conveyed once more, they got right to it and unanimously agreed that God wanted it without the fish and we went into production without it. To the best of my recollection, that card deck marketing did nothing to add more business at that time.

Just when it seemed we were headed for closed doors, a small job came in via a man who worked at Scott Paper Company. It started as a very small project, just enough to keep the doors open and not much more. Over the next couple of months it ramped up a bit. One day while we were in a meeting at Scott Paper, suddenly the engineering manager that we were working with grabbed my paperwork on the table and turned it over as another man walked by the open conference room door. When I asked what that was all about, I was informed that the project we had with him was "kind of" under the radar. It seems that while the engineering guys were all Mac guys to the core, the head of the Information Technology Department, who had just walked by, was a dyed-in-the–wool, (Blue that is) IBM guy. He hated Macs, forbidding their presence in his sight in the company.

It was not long at all before the engineering department's covert project was discovered and we were evicted from the building, but not before we had gleaned a huge understanding of engineering management and long range planning. Scott Paper was not only running their plant, they were also designing the construction of a new plant. We learned about planning and operations. However, we were now back to dead stop without a client...again. Oh...and the company funds were now almost gone. Somewhere, deep in my spirit because of all this preparation, training, anointing to spoil impartation, etc., was the knowledge that God had something for me to do. And, if I could tap into just what that was, I could count on the provision to do it. There was also the growing awareness from all of these events that in setting captives free would come a release of provision or "spoils".

" _The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of His splendor." Isaiah 61:1-3._

With this revelation firmly in my heart, I went to prayer and asked one thing, "Lord, what do you need me to give, and when and to whom, in order to get this organization running? Who needs to be set free and how?"

The immediate answer to my question came in this form – "Give away your time and talents".

Now time was something that I had way too much of and I had been here before. I did not know what to expect, but I agreed answering, "Please show me who you would have me give my time to and when?"

I am quite sure that the ink was not yet dry on my last statement, when the phone rang. In the world of custom solutions you learn over time who makes a good customer and who makes a poor customer. I had experience now in recognizing the difference and being able to close quickly on the good ones and shut the door quickly, though kindly, on the bad ones while keeping in mind the bad ones might come back around as a good client later. Even though you need to get on with your day, you need to treat even the unlikely client with kindness.

Now, with all that in mind... about that phone call...

It was late on a Friday afternoon and I was heading out the door when the phone rang. A very nice woman begins to tell me about the books that she and her husband had written and that she planned to write a new one but she needed some custom software to compile data for the book. She explained that she planned to give out about a thousand surveys with multiple questions, compile the results using custom software, and then write a new book based on the results. By this time, I was sure that she was probably not a potential client but I continued to hear her story.

As she proceeded to tell me about her vision for the software, the kind of data that she needed the software to analyze and the kind of reporting that would be required, I was mentally racking up the programming costs in twenty-five thousand dollar increments. As I hit a hundred thousand, I realized that she had no idea of what she was asking in terms of difficulty, time or money. By now I was waiting for that perfect moment to begin letting her down easily. Just as I was convinced that I needed to not get involved in this project, I heard that still small voice that I know so well, telling me, "Here you go. This is the person. Now is the time. I want you to say, 'Yes' to her and I want you to do the work for free." By the way, did I mention that what God asked me to do was, as usual, not what I expected? Once again, when you seek the Father's wisdom, rarely, if ever, does He select from your imagined list of standard choices.

Caught in the middle of hearing God saying to tell her "yes" and my natural logic wanting to say "no", I heard myself say to her, "Yes, I will take your project and I believe that I am not to charge you." As I answered her, the presence of the Lord descended into the office. I knew without a doubt that this was a Divine Appointment for us both. She could not believe what I had just offered to do and began to tell me that she had called about fourteen different developers, who had all told her they could not help her. In obedience to what God was telling her to do, she had tried one last time and the Lord led her to our company.

Excited to move forward on her project, she asked if we could meet her the next day. Normally, I ran everyone out of the office around three on Fridays and had a firm rule of not doing any business on the weekend. Billable hour programming is a very well paid addiction and most of the team would go 24/7 if allowed to, forsaking all other aspects of a normal life. Now, we were going to get started by breaking one of my main rules.

Once again, I heard that still small voice - "Say yes to her."

As I began to write down her contact information, it was then that her name began to register with me. Katie had been an active leader with Women's AGLOW International for many years including being the editor of the AGLOW magazine and producer of their TV programming. Over the years since, she wrote several books on the God given motivational gifts revealed in Romans 12 and she taught about motivational gifts all over the world. Katie had just recently taught about the gifts at the church we attended in Everett! My wife had taken her first Motivational Gifts test from Katie back in 1978 at an Aglow retreat. She was very excited to know that our company would be helping Katie with her next project! We met with them the next day and enjoyed every minute.

Because of this Divine Appointment, the Bundy's and the Fortunes became good friends, and later on, neighbors. In addition, we became well versed in teaching about motivational gifts and understanding our own God given gifts. Through the work done on the software that compiled the data for her next book, "Understanding Your Spouse's God Given Gifts" we really began to understand how our gifts work together as a married couple. Today, as new people come into our lives, we eventually getting around to testing their motivational gifts set in order to better communicate and work with them.

Many thanks to Don and Katie for their profound impact on our lives. For some great fun, have Katie tell her side of the story sometime. The books to look for that Katie wrote are: God Given Motivational Gifts, Your Children's Motivational Gifts, Understanding Your Spouse's Gifts" as well as many other booklets, articles and pamphlets.

Katie's call came on a Friday. On the following Monday, I got another call...

Monday morning I received a call from John Barnett at Puget Sound Power and Light in Bellevue, Washington. He asked if he could come up north to our office in Mukilteo, Washington, for a visit, as he had a couple of questions that he wanted to ask me in person. I was always up for company especially with an espresso stand right downstairs, and so I invited him to come on out.

When he arrived he reminded me that he had come with two questions. The first one was, "What did I know about Capital Projects Management Systems?" It so happened that we had, by God's design, just received a crash course in engineering management from a Fortune Five Hundred company. Now we had not only developed a system project, but also, had learned all the terminology, politics, etc. to work in this kind of an environment and just about anywhere in the world. God had prepared us for this moment and I now had a great opportunity to give Him the glory, which I was about to do, when John asked the second question. "Why does your nine month old ad card have a fish on it, while the six month old card does not?"

Now some people consider that an open door to witness...and so I did. I explained that all of the folks at Journey Development were Christ following believers. In fact, we were all Spirit filled, tongue talking, prayer warriors, who believed that ministry and work were inseparable, and they were all Kingdom Building believers to boot! Now that should have probably killed that deal dead, but that was a risk I would have to take, and take it I did.

Much to our surprise, John said that was what he was hoping to hear and gave us a project for his division at Puget Power. Amazing how God works in our lives and businesses! For the next several years, we developed their "7 year" planning system, which we named CPMS, or the Capital Projects Management System. We went into development of the software application and entered into an agreement to retain marketing rights and re-sell the application in a partnership with Puget Power, to other power companies and utilities through strategic alliance and joint venture relationships with the nation's leading engineering firms.

At one point in the development process, I was a bit alarmed to hear John say that he urgently needed to talk to me. He sounded pretty serious and I was immediately concerned that we might have some kind of a problem. When I arrived to meet with him, he asked me into his office and closed the door. This was not looking good. He never did this. Then he said to have a seat and went to his desk to sit down. This must be very bad. I braced myself for what might be the end of our project with him.

He informed me that everything with the project was fine but he wanted to ask me a question, "Did I understand how God was going to use me and this technology for some future major purpose?" I could not help but laugh as I asked him, "Did you have a dream last night?" He said, "Yes, he had and it really shook him up." He just wanted to know if I knew already what he had been shown in his dream. I told him that I had known for a long time but had no idea about how it would look just yet. None of us ever do.

Within our company, God was very much at the heart of what we were doing and He began to send us the very best developers and our favor increased in every aspect of the business. During that time, we analyzed projects and opportunities with a biotech firm called Immunex, Alaska Airlines and a number of other Puget Sound companies. While over viewing what each company needed, we learned all about their different areas of expertise and vertical markets that our company's resources might be applied to. We were becoming known as a reliable provider of on-time and on-budget custom software. By this time, we had created sixteen different "vertical market" applications in the medical, law enforcement, and engineering fields. Now we were prominently listed in the international 4D Developer Catalog along with all of the applications that we had developed. We were very seriously looking at going public and we were very sensitive to our corporate giving. Miracles and testimonies were numerous and all was very well.

One of the many things that set us apart was the knowledge that we could partner with every customer, retain exclusive rights to the software that they were paying us to develop, and then provide a revenue stream back to them. This would, with any success at all, either greatly reduce, or eliminate their initial cost of development and potentially create a new income stream for their company. This also served to motivate each client to do additional projects with us as they monitored our growing visibility in the global custom software marketplace.

In addition to our own clients, we became by invitation, very involved with Apple Computer. I was eventually invited to become a Founding Member of the Apple Consultant Relations Program along with eight other West Coast Developers. After a while, we were getting projects from Apple for some of their clients, including the State of Washington.

In addition to being the Founder and primary vision carrier for Journey Development, I was the one responsible for landing all of the new accounts and the primary interface between the clients, and our development team and I oversaw all of the programming, as well as having all of the P&L responsibility. I knew that this was too much for one person to be responsible for, in regards to the well being of the company, should something happen to me. Although I tried continually, I was not able to find the right person to fill my role.

It was all on me and I was continually giving this burden to God. He would continue to get the glory. Constantly other development companies asked me, "How did you land that deal? How did you create that solution?" The answer was, though seldom received, "God."

During that time period, I really became aware of how much more I needed to delegate some of the responsibility to others in the firm when a friend arrived with a painting of the Titanic that I had admired in his office. We joked about how even the best built ships could go down quickly under the right circumstances, especially if the owners began to think that not even God, could sink the ship. I was not in that frame of mind at all, because I was giving weight of responsibilities back to Him each morning but I realized that it was prophetic in nature. Feeling that God wanted this painting in my office, we hung it up on the wall as a reminder that things can change quickly.

Not long after that, my wife had a very vivid spiritual dream. She saw me wearing a Captains hat and I was at the helm of a boat that was heading for a dock. In her dream, the boat suddenly began to sink just before reaching the dock and the helm of the boat was unexplainably sheared off. It arrived at the dock almost completely submerged. In addition, my head with the nice Capitan's hat on it was missing as well. Her interpretation of this disturbing dream was that, with both the helm and my head missing, it represented authority being removed. Ouch!

The Pruning

It was on June 12th 1992, oddly enough, exactly sixteen years ago today, as I am writing this. My new VP of business development, who had just received a large raise, was driving me crazy talking about how bad she wanted to buy a new Lexus. The brochure had been on her desk for weeks and there was no end to the talk about it. So on that day, I told her that we were going to go to Bellevue Lexus and she was either going to buy that car or she would have to forever quit talking about it. And so we went.

I have to admit I was taken in. This was one nice car. She was driving a nice Honda but really wanted this Lexus and now thanks to her new raise she could afford it. I, on the other hand, was driving a 79' Ford LTD with a rebuilt motor and tow package for my boat. I did not need nor want to buy a new car. Much of the profit from the company was going back into the business as planned for the first 7 years and a new car was not part of the plan right now.

Long story short, we went to Bellevue Washington, in the Honda. She bought the Lexus. They took in the Honda as a trade-in and sold her on the stereo upgrade that would take a few days to get ordered and installed. Now we needed a way home so they offered up a brand new Lexus LS 400 as loaner and away we went back to the office.

On June 15th, Barbara and my 13th wedding anniversary, we went back to Bellevue Lexus to return the loaner and pick up her new Lexus. As we were leaving, the sales manager concluded that if the VP could buy a new Lexus, then certainly her boss might be convinced to buy one as well. With that in mind, he suggested that I take that beautiful bronze LS 400 home and just go ahead and keep it for a couple of days to see how I liked it.

Now the last thing I wanted to do was buy that car, even though I was enjoying it as much as anyone could. In addition, I did not want to make another round trip to Bellevue to return it in a couple of days. The sales manager was on a mission to convince me when I remembered that it was our wedding anniversary. Perhaps I should consider taking the car, get dressed up, and take Barbara out to dinner somewhere. This was sounding better by the minute. With the perfect anniversary evening playing over in my head, I finally said yes, left the lot in the new Lexus and headed onto the freeway.

It was five p.m., downtown Bellevue, in the middle of rush hour traffic. I felt like I was flying a new corporate jet after driving my old LTD for so long. I got on the I-405, headed North and moved all the way over to the left lane, turned on the cruise control to sixty-five, looked down to try to get the stereo up and running and looked up to see the car in front of me had suddenly stopped!! I grabbed the wheel, put both feet on the brake, and stood up as far as I could inside the seat belt and stopped the car. All with out leaving a skid mark as the anti-lock brakes had worked flawlessly. The car had stopped just inches from the car in front of me. While I was patting myself on the back, a 73' Ford Maverick hit me from behind doing an estimated sixty miles an hour. His car was destroyed and he bounced clear back across the freeway into a concrete wall and then half way back across the freeway before he stopped. The Lexus was shoved violently into the car in front of me, which set off a four-car-chain wreck. My head and neck was whipped forward and backwards several times.

As the State Patrol arrived, I got out of the car. They asked if I was all right and when I answered yes they went on to check the other victims. I was left standing there not realizing that I was rapidly going into shock. Lesson learned - if you are in a car accident, stay in your car and insist that you be seen at the emergency room. A tow truck was called. I got a ride back to Bellevue Lexus and gave them back their new car, now with $16,000.00 worth of damage to the rear of the car, and got a ride home. I had no idea how seriously I was injured and I did not seek medical care. The next morning I woke up in pain from head to toe and my head was pounding!

For the next several weeks, I went to a chiropractor followed by massage therapy to help with neck and back pain and traumatized muscles. I felt like my head was swelling and told anyone who would listen that, "I can not seem think or reason well." They said that it was just a whiplash injury and that I would heal soon. Over the next several weeks, I slowly lost more and more of my ability to reason even to the point of getting dressed and forgetting to put on socks or forgetting to shave. My wife was very concerned by this time because she knew what my patterns and habits were. Something was very wrong.

By mid-August, about two months after the accident, I asked the chiropractor if he thought it would be alright for me to take my annual ten day fishing trip to the West side of Vancouver Island. He thought that I would be fine to do that and so I picked up a couple of friends and headed out. This trip proved to everyone else that something was indeed very wrong with me. I did not sound like myself and I looked unwell but the worst was yet to come. Even though it was obvious that the tide was going out, I decided to beach my boat on a small-uninhabited island so we could explore. My friends who believed that I must know what I was doing, got out and went ashore. Of course, as the tide went out, my boat was left high and dry on land and we wound up stranded in the middle of nowhere overnight. Fortunately, it was very warm, we had food, and by the next day, we were able to float off the beach with a little push and shove.

After arriving home from the trip, my wife heard what happened and she knew I needed help right away. I was always safety minded and a very experienced boater who would have never put my passengers at such risk. She insisted that a neurologist see me.

The neurologist's exam showed that during the impact, my brain had literally been fired into the front of my skull and I had received a lot of damage because of the slowly increasing swelling in my brain. The results of the injuries left me sliding off into a deep dark hole. My short-term memory was affected and my logic, reasoning, personality and emotions were disappearing fast. I was getting worse every day that the brain swelling continued.

Prior to my visit with to the neurologist, my new VP did not understand why I seemed to have a sudden loss of interest in the business. She declared to the developers in the company and all of my customers that all I was interested in was fishing. According to her, I no longer cared about the business and after all, she and the crew were doing all of the work. Therefore, without faith that I could run the company or the projects, they left one by one, and I just sat there and watched it happen. I knew what was happening but no longer had the emotionally ability or reasoning to know what to do about it. By this time, I could no longer run software that I had written myself. My days as a computer programmer and businessperson ended in this season.

Barbara closed up the Journey Development office, laid off the remaining crew, packed the office by herself, moved the boxes and furniture into our home, and then spent the next three years trying to take care of me and deal with the loss of the Gary that she had married. I had died and forgotten to fall down. I knew who everyone was but no longer experienced any emotion except the grief for the deceased...me.

We went from a million in net worth into the red in a matter of weeks. Our home was placed on the market and we needed to move. One day I walked down the stairs into the basement garage and on the way asked God, "Why are you doing this to me? Didn't I do what You asked by working twenty hours a week and giving away forty hours, taken in the needy, mentored the down and outers and used most of my resources for ministry? What is going on here?"

As I entered the garage, I came upon a box of paperback books and lying there on the top was a book I had never seen before. It was very old. The book was Good Captains are made in Rough Seas, by Katherine Kuhlman. I bent over and picked it up, opening it in the middle of the book, and read that page. Here is what I read, "And the woman asked, 'Why Lord? Why are you taking everything away?' And the Lord said to her, 'You have been a large green tree, giving shade to many. But now, I want to prune you so that you can really bear fruit'." With that, I said, "Yes, Lord." and entered into trusting Him to walk me through this.

My doctors informed me that it might take 7 years (that's an interesting number) before my brain injury would heal. Then the Holy Spirit said, "No. It will be ten years but then I will use you in a whole new way." I remember thinking that ten years would probably just blow right on by and looking back, I'm sure that it did.

The business was lost because of the accident since I was the only one who brought in the new clients for the programmers. The motorist who hit me from behind admitted fault and my attorney felt that we needed to not only cover the medical bills but the loss of the business. The attorneys for the opposing insurance company decided to try to prove that I was going to loose the business anyway. Lawsuits began and off to court we went.

An evaluation of the business showed that we had been growing almost eighty percent a year with increasing profits that were reinvested in the company. Therefore, the opposition was entirely wrong. Meanwhile they had turned off the loss of wages for me once I reported the loss of the business. Depositions from everyone we had ever worked with, friends, doctors, and counselors were taken by both sides. This was long emotionally painful process. Therefore, after losing everything, surviving two years of no income, and over forty depositions, I was encouraged to settle out of court for a hundred thousand dollars. Our attorney took her third plus her expenses (which were huge) and the large unpaid medical bills were taken care of leaving us with a couple of month's wages after all was said and done. In hind sight, we should have settled directly with the insurance company. We would have ended up with the same amount without two years of headache and lawyers fees.

Slowly, little by little, over the next several years, I began to climb back out of the hole.

*****

**Chapter 13 -** **Going Global (1994-2001)**

What if you could facilitate anyone, in any location, at any time, to participate in any project, in any capacity, as long as there was proposal and accord? All it would take is just a little global infrastructure and some agreement. Sometimes I wonder which will take the most effort. These are the thoughts that God began stirring in my heart and mind.

In the early summer of 1994, I started to heal a bit from the car accident and while talking with a friend; he asked what I was going to do next, as my previous life was completely gone. My answer was that what I would really like to do would be to go to the San Juan Islands and play with boats all summer and try to get well again. With that my friend said, "OK!" and then hung up.

I have always been a boat person and grew up with a father who was commercial fishing at a very early age and he owned boats most of his life. I had my first boat at fourteen and have been in love with the water and the boating ever since.

A short while after my friend hung up on me, I received a call from Gene Jordeth, who owned ABC Yacht Charters, the oldest yacht charter company in America. It just so happened that Gene was the broker for a trawler that I had been interested in buying just before my auto accident. We had decided, in the spring of 1992, to sell our home, buy a forty-nine foot trawler, and move to the San Juan Islands. With our software company going well and clients all over the country, it no longer mattered where we lived, so we thought we would go live aboard and entertain friends and clients onboard. The car wreck stopped that from happening.

It turned out that my friend knew Gene and after hearing my desire to be in the San Juans on boats, called Gene to see if he might give me something to do at ABC Yacht Charters. After hearing the request, Gene remembered me and opened a door for me to come and work in the charter business for the summer. There was no better place, in my opinion, to get well, than on the flying bridge of a big boat, breathing that salt air and climbing up and down the ladders. Perfect rehab. My job was as a checkout skipper going over the systems and inventory of the boats with the charter clients and then making sure that they could handle the boat well before letting them leave with it. It was up to me to approve them and sometimes I would require that they take a half-day of training or even take me with them for the first day, if I thought they needed the extra instruction. Upon their return, I would again review the systems and inventory of the boat and check it for any damage before letting the client checkout. Sometimes I would get to deliver boats between marinas or into various locations in the San Juan Islands. I would have gladly done this job year round but in the San Juan's when summer ended, so did the charter business.

Following that summer of boating, healing and learning about the yacht charter industry, I began to look for a new start for my life.

About that time, I received a call from someone who wanted to know if I would be interested in getting the best education in the world on the Internet. At first I was really put off. I was told that there was an opening at Spry and that it paid ten dollars an hour. I would get two weeks of very good Internet training and then work in tech support.

My reply was to ask if they had actually read my resume. I had, after all, founded and run a software company, even though that was gone now. Convicted by the Holy Spirit that this was a door that He was opening and that I needed to swallow my pride and accept the fact that I was starting my life over, I said yes to the job and found myself in downtown Seattle at the Spry offices in Pioneer Square.

This was an unbelievable opportunity at a crucial time in the development of the Internet. Spry's founder Dave Poole, had gathered several pieces of brand new technology which included an email client, an FTP (file transfer protocol) client, the first web browser "Mosaic", and put them together in a plain brown box, stamped it with the words "Internet in a Box". He had just created the hottest thing going in the World Wide Web availability for the average person on the street.

Following "Internet in a Box", Spry developed SpryNet, which, when I walked in the door, was the number one rated Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the world. But that was just the beginning of the story. Spry had just been sold to CompuServe for a hundred million dollars and was now CompuServe's Internet division. Up to that point CompuServe and AOL along with Prodigy, were all just online communities. The Web hadn't really been offered to the general public yet and many did not want it commercialized at all, but instead, hoped that it would remain the domain of education and the military where it was conceived. That notion was about to end - in a very big way.

The training I received was the most extensive I had ever experienced. The SpryNet executives had made a great choice to support any Internet tool that was being used on SpryNet. When I walked in, there were over thirty separate pieces of Internet software. A "cram course about the Internet" was an understatement.

During my eight or nine months there, we went from thirty-five employees to over three hundred and fifty. We went head-to-head with AOL for online services, with a thermometer graph hanging in the hall showing the daily totals of CompuServe and AOL's number of subscribers. Our Tech-Support and Customer Service Department went from thirty or so to over one hundred eighty.

As if all that weren't enough, we were creating the first web browser for Windows 95 in a partnership with Microsoft where we would give away a copy of "Spry Mosaic" and a one month free SpryNet ISP account with every new copy of Windows 95. This was a great deal except that half the company was breaking their necks to get the browser ready for the Windows 95 roll-out while the other half was consumed with the Justice Department because of the "other" part of the Microsoft deal. At one point, just prior to the Windows 95/Spry Mosaic roll-out, it got so ridiculous that the Spry management issued a blue t-shirt that, in Microsoft looking white font, appeared to say "Microsoft" but actually, upon closer examination, actually said, "Microsowhat". It was quite a time.

During the first few days of training, I realized that I would not be able to do this job for very long without turning it into something better and so I began to look for the keys to the bigger doors. The first thing I did was to let the division V.P. know that my intention was to be running the Internet Division within three months or I would be on my way out the door. While we both understood that I would, most likely "not" be running the division, it was understood that I came with a great deal of experience and they were happy to see me aggressively heading for the best spot I could acquire. They did not know of my previous head injury and just how limited I really was, but they did know that they had just hired a former founder and CEO of a software company for ten dollars an hour. This would, for sure, get interesting.

I was a born troubleshooter and I just loved dealing with the customers' problems. I remember thinking one day that I could easily just do this the rest of my life, except for the ten dollars an hour and the four hours a day riding the bus back and forth. Soon I began to walk the halls praying in the Spirit whenever I got the chance. Quickly I found two other believers and we began having our own little hallway ministry to whomever we encountered. Interestingly enough, it turned out that David and Charles were working as Network Operations and Customer Service management respectively. Between the three of us we literally touched every facet of the infrastructure, projects and clients that made up the company. A three-strand cord of prayer warriors, standing in agreement, while working in a company of otherwise non-believers is powerful. Anything was permitted at the company. There were even a few drag queen, Satan worshipping folks evidenced by their extremes in clothing and behavior. Everything was accepted, except of course, having a Bible on your desk. However, that did not stop us and we soon loved our way into every group around us and were often sought out for counseling and ministry when things were not going well for folks.

By now I was really enjoying being totally dependent on God to provide what was needed to give to whoever He put in front of us. My head injury no longer seemed to matter as I was now running almost entirely in the Spirit and had all but left behind the logic and reasoning which now only were there to allow me to interface with the people I was ministering to. The other thing that became obvious to me then was that "ministry" was reaching the person by the delivery of whatever it was that they needed. God seemed to be moving every bit as much in the delivery of a new marketing idea or line of code as He was in salvation, healing and deliverance. Sometimes it was a combination. Ministry and business blended until they were one and I have not turned back from that idea since then.

Working Customer Service was a completely new ministry for me because you never knew who or what problem was going to be waiting for you on the next call. No one ever hindered what we said to a customer and every call was an adventure. The extremes were comical at best. One day a twelve-year-old girl called to ask if she could buy the Internet there, then immediately after her call, there was a ninety-minute call from the Head of Information Technologies at the Pentagon. We were the experts in their eyes and the days were never boring.

One day a man called who had a huge loud noise going in the background. He explained that he was calling from the middle of a hurricane. He was alone and could not escape and was praying that God would send some help when he looked down on his desk and saw the SpryNet disk sitting there with a toll free number on it. He called just to have someone to talk to and I was able to minister to him and pray with him until the winds let up.

On another occasion a very elderly man called to get help setting up his computer. I talked to him for a good hour. A couple hours later he called back and explained that I had been so much help to him that he thought I might be able to help him again. I asked what the problem was and was horrified to find that the problem was that his wife had walked by his desk, got caught up in the cords and had fallen taking the whole computer down on top of her and he couldn't get her out from under it all. I finally got him to calm down and hang up and call 911 instead.

Gradually I became known in the company as the guy who would take on just about anything. I let the Customer Service Manager know that I would take any call or situation that no one else wanted and even offered to take on the new recruits for training. The rules were to keep calls to ten or fifteen minutes but no one ever commented on the length of time of my calls which went on for as long as I chose to engage. Many customers commented on the unusual Customer Service experience but it was really just God touching lives in a unique way.

One day as I was coming into the building, I stopped to talk to the receptionist at the front desk. I explained to her that I had always thought that the receptionist in a big company should really be the highest paid of all the employees. Receptionists are expected to know who everyone is, where they are located in the building, what they did, where they were at any given moment and how to handle just about anything and everything that came along in person or by phone, not to mention deliveries, etc. While talking to her, I explained how things had progressed in Customer Service and my newly self-created fire-fighting and trouble-shooting role. I then told her that if she ever had a call that she didn't know what to do with, I would take it on. Even if it were an irate customer, that no one would want to deal with. I would take the call. She took me up on my offer and several times a day she would call and say, "Here's one for you!" and then pass off the live wires. I loved it.

Eventually the head of the division came looking for me. He asked if I really liked the tough stuff as much as he had heard that I did. Being the kind of person who loves the challenge of running into burning buildings, I said, "Sure, what have you got?" He handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it and said I should call this man. When I asked what the problem was, he informed me that this was the name of a Fortune 100 company President that had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on magazine advertising for their new private labeled Internet tools that we were building for them.

Now for the rest of the story...our company was three months behind schedule for this client and no one had let them know. In situations like this, I loved to say yes to the challenge, pray for the right thing to say and then always asked God to make a way and glorify Himself in it. In this case, the word that I got was "honesty" and so I called the contact number for the company and introduced myself. I told him I was the new man in charge of schedule issues and gave him the straight scoop on what was going with his project. Then I asked him what I could do for him and his company to become the best business partner they had ever had.

Amazingly, he was so taken by my honesty and desire to be a good partner that he began to thank me for just straight shooting with him. This had not happened often for him in business; instead, he was constantly lied to and misled. He said that I was quite refreshing and added not to worry about the delay in the project. Do your best to get me an accurate delivery date and we will work it out. The truth will set you free!

That one call opened the eyes of the division heads to something that no one else was doing and they began to talk about creating a position just for me to continue handling the tough problems that arose. Eventually they came to me with an offer to be the company's first "Custom Solutions Projects Manager". I was handed responsibility for all new, first-time projects in our division. The key was honesty and this truth seemed to unlock people in a very simple "turn-on-the lights" kind of fashion. Applying simple truth to the situation, combined with a little wisdom and discernment, usually created quick fixes for what others had believed were major disasters.

On my first official fire fight in my newly created role, I was asked by the head of the division to talk to the man running the email tech support department. When I got there and asked what the problem was, I was informed that the email tech support was running ninety-three days behind. Can you imagine sitting at your desk waiting patiently for ninety-three days for an email answer to your tech support problem? Neither could I.

In my spirit I heard the word "truth". I asked what the customer base was being told about the ninety day delay and I was informed, "Nothing". They had simply watched for three months while the situation got worse and worse and no one seemed to be able to solve the problem.

I told them to tell the customer base the truth, that they had inadequate resources to provide email support, empty the queue, increase capacity, announce the new email support service and then keep it at no more that twenty-five to thirty percent capacity. They needed to do a little better job of long-range planning. The whole thing was killed and resurrected in a couple of weeks and was working great when I left. If an idea had never been done before or if it was in place but having problems, it wound up on my desk. I was having way too much fun.

From then on, I was constantly being called into new situations by the management, executives and even the sales engineers in the field. Coming from a custom solutions background and understanding not only the sales process, but also the engineering, marketing and other facets needed to define and deliver a solution, I was frequently brought in when things were bogging down with new clients. Generally, I was introduced as the company's troubleshooter. Sometimes that kind of introduction was preparation enough to get folks ready to hear what was needed to make things smooth out and run right. In the end though, it was always God who got the glory even though most folks didn't want to hear that. I knew the source of all these solutions and eventually, so did many others.

CompuServe had a large sales force calling on the Fortune 1000 selling custom web browsers and Internet sites. These custom web browsers contained the company's name and when loaded into a computer, fired up the company's private labeled web browser and logged into SpryNet creating an Internet Service Provider (ISP) account that went directly to that client company's website. We were doing this with the Fortune 1000 and virtually all of the computer companies, modem manufacturers and software companies. Anything with a package had a free disk enclosed. People like Hilton and the PGA were handing out free disks to anyone that would take one and enjoying the revenue sharing from the new ISP clients being created. Everyone was winning. Our business model was that we had no competition (except Microsoft and AOL) and that virtually everyone was a potential partner.

It became my job to meet with client companies, help out the sales engineers to define the deals and then make sure that the projects survived the rollercoaster ride through our many different divisions and departments and out the other end on time and on budget, usually in just a matter of weeks. Not only were the sales and development time the shortest in history but because of the speed that new technologies were being developed, the shelf life of a new product was sometimes only months before they became obsolete.

About that time, there were a couple of major shakeups in the Internet industry. Netscape came out and it was free. Internet Explorer from Microsoft followed it and we suddenly knew that not only were we not going to remain Microsoft's web browser but we also could not possibly compete with them. We took the path of least resistance and supported their software as well as ours, eventually getting out of the browser business altogether to focus on our battle with AOL.

Sometime later, a marketing person at AOL got this idea to mail out free CD's to everyone in the country, or was that the world? And, they just kept doing it. I must have received dozens of them in the mail. We were starting to lose not only the browser wars but now maybe even the online wars. At least we still had SpryNet, for a while anyway...

Eventually CompuServe was parted out to Mindspring, then Earthlink and finally to AOL. It was a time of aggressive "acquire or be acquired", or sometimes a little of both.

Life was exciting and good. I thought I would stay in this industry forever. Then one day while on the way to work as I was heading down the freeway, I felt that "all-too-familiar" feeling; something like getting a shot of Novocain right before a root canal. I knew this feeling all too well. It was that deadening of emotional attachment, just before you were ripped out of one place and moved to another. I quickly responded by reminding God that it was His idea for me to give Him permission to put me anywhere He wanted or needed me to be and nothing had changed. I was still all in for whatever He wanted to do. I was instantly at peace as I headed on to work.

Upon arriving into the reception area of our building, I was quickly aware that there were an unusual number of people milling around and some of them were crying. This did not look good. I started praying in the Spirit, preparing for whatever was coming at me next and was then approached by my boss who informed me that they had let go about ten percent of the company that day. Maybe this was what I was picking up on as I came down the freeway. I prepared myself to minister to those who were in the worst shape. Many had really prospered during the great ride that we were all on together and celebrated with new cars and homes, enjoying the good life. Now it was all falling down around them.

Before I had a chance to ask about the layoffs, my boss started talking to me and told me that the company dissolved our division entirely. In a kind of slow motion haze, I heard her tell me that I was one of the layoffs. Now a sane man would have fallen apart, but instead, I was hit hard by the presence of God and began to laugh and literally dance in the hallway in the middle of all of these very sad people. I absolutely knew that it was God moving me, once again, to a new place to do His will. In the middle of His presence and in His perfect will, there will always be perfect peace, and I was overwhelmed by it and in total surrender to whatever He wanted to do next. The only problem I could imagine was how Barb was going to respond when I let her know what had happened. When I called to tell her, my fears dissolved as I heard her say, "Great! Now we can attend the revival meetings in Silver Lake Chapel with the guest speaker Basil Howard-Brown." This was a blessing. Now instead of hating the endings, I had become excited about the new beginnings.

Just before the layoffs at CompuServe, God began to reveal to me as well as two Christian friends who worked with me, just how spiritually dark the technology business really was. We knew many other computer technologists who worked at Microsoft, Real Networks, Nintendo, and other northwest companies and we had a burning desire to reach them for Christ. Most folks that worked with us were total introvert techno-geeks who were drawn to the world of computers because it gave them an environment that they could control, could do them no harm, and where they could be totally protected in some way from the outside world that they didn't seem to fit into. There were many wounded folks in the ranks and none of them would ever experience Christ but that He came in seeking them.

Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." Luke 19:9, 10.

We began to receive and confirm a vision to piece together a plan to create ministry groups inside the technology companies that could minister to the needs of men and woman who would work twenty-four hours a day, if they were allowed to. We developed an association whereby the members could apply their technology abilities to God's work from anywhere to anywhere for as much or as little time as they wanted and for as much or as little as they wanted to charge. Volunteering would be encouraged.

We created "The Association of Christian Technologists" - ACT for short, with an infrastructure that began to support a global association of Christian technology workers with local chapters in the technology companies. While praying over the vision for ACT, we were all in agreement that this would be all about Him, His will and His glory and it would not be about us. The domain name for the ACT website was www.actbyfaith.org and so we went on to set up our new email addresses at that domain name and mine was gary@actbyfaith.org.

In those days when you created a new email address at SpryNet, the mail server created your password for you and it was issued to you with the instructions needed to set up your email account. My two friends and I just about fell out of our chairs when we discovered that my new computer-generated password was "then0gary". It was a sign to me that that I must continue to die to self.

Once I was laid off and I had the privilege of attending a week of revival meetings with Basil Howard Brown, it became apparent that the work that we were doing on ACT was now the main assignment and I locked myself away focusing my attention on getting this job done. It meant many hours alone just hammering out all of the details required to support a global, technology based association.

During the creation process, I was hooked up with Bill Spurlock who at that time, headed up the HTML Writer's Guild. Bill was a huge help in getting things documented and I'm sure that without him, the job would not have been completed. Even though we collaborated together on ACT for quite some time, we never met, except by phone. It's now been over ten years since we last spoke. If you happen to know him, send him my way so that I can properly thank him again.

In the fall of that year, we were invited by our friends Don and Katie Fortune to move to where they lived on a beautiful beach in Kingston, Washington. It was a great place to work, being one lot up from the beach, and with a little help from my friends we were able to finally launch ACT. It took the better part of a couple of years to accomplish. One of the things that became a fascination for me was the creation of rapid growth, technology based environments. At Spry/CompuServe, they literally rocketed into business but were off the stage in record time. AOL had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create the infrastructure required to support their marketing efforts only to discover that their marketing was working far better than they ever imagined and the infrastructure could not keep up with the increasing business. If I remember correctly their next round of funding was something like 1.3 billion.

With this in mind, I was very apprehensive about letting anyone know about ACT except by word-of-mouth invitation and even then, I was quite concerned that the demand would quickly out pace our ability to deliver services to the members. Getting a website up was one thing but managing a global association was quite another. We were now "going global" very rapidly. The Web and email had changed everything. Brick and mortar were, for now anyway, becoming outdated.

Simultaneously while at CompuServe and while we were getting ACT designed, we noticed that there were an unusually large number of opportunities for development of resources, ranging from individual intellectual properties to whole companies. There were always many more opportunities than we could ever receive and in many cases they were ours for the taking. It appeared that we might have the solutions to help these individuals and companies and therefore were expected to take a part and participate. Missing pieces caused desperation and a kind of bondage in those who possessed the incomplete resources but were unable to complete their visions. Anytime we offered solutions that set the captives free, we saw an offer of release of resources back to us, usually beyond what we felt that we could ever receive or manage.

More and more, we realized that this was a move of God and leaning on our own understanding and capabilities was completely out of the question.

" _Unless the LORD_ _builds_ _the house, its_ _builder_ _s labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain." Psalm 127:1._

We began to pray over this situation and felt very strongly that a primary component of ACT needed to be a Joint Venture development component so that members of the association could find and connect with the missing pieces which were, in most cases, just additional talent. With this new, yet somehow quite familiar, revelation, we formed a division of ACT that we called "Vision Acquisition and Development". Though many saw the title and assumed we were some kind of hostile takeover outfit, the true meaning was that we were focused on the "acquisition" and "development" of vision.

I was now desperate for the management team and funding model to get this thing properly developed before too many people found out about us. I was constantly seeking the Lord on what to do next to keep things moving in an orderly fashion and yet not let the news of what we were doing spread too fast. To this day, it remains one of my primary focuses.

One day I learned of a man in London who had am email newsletter for Christian Technologists and so I emailed him and ask to learn more about what he was doing. He replied and asked to know more about ACT. I wrote a page and a half long email telling him the Reader's Digest condensed version of what was on the well hidden ACT website. He was so interested and excited that he decided, with out asking me or telling me, to enclose my email in his next newsletter. Some of those folks who had received his email then enclosed the whole thing in their email newsletters and all of a sudden, we had just notified about eighty thousand, as close as we could figure, potential ACT members but had no possible way to support them. The cat was way out of the bag now!

Right in the middle of trying to process this mess, I received a call from the Interactive Task Force Coordinator for AD2000. Pete was interested in coming to see me because he had been working for years with some of the biggest ministry and missions organizations in the world. He went on to share that they had been trying for a long time to do a project very similar to ours and his greatest challenge was keeping the key people on his team as they were always in high demand and easily recruited from out of the core team into other interesting projects. I perceived Pete and his group as the Calvary, riding in over the hill to rescue me. I needed some serious resources and Pete was, for sure, the keeper of the resources on a global level. This was good...I thought.

Pete showed up at my home for a couple of days and after he assessed the situation stated what I already knew. It was the same situation as CompuServe's email tech support problems that I had encountered in the past. Not enough staff and infrastructures to support the business. It was imperative that we take down the website and go back into hiding while we put enough foundation under it to do the job. He also told me that we needed a "heavy-hitter" Board of Directors and some serious funding. Pete began making phone calls right there in my living room to people heading up the foundations at Boeing and Weyerhaeuser. Everyone was interested and wanted to hear more.

I followed through with his advisements to turn off the website and he promised that we would have what we needed to be successful. Eventually, after many months, Pete came back long enough to let me know that he would be forming the International Christian Technologists Association with his staff and he felt that it was best if he no longer participated with the ACT project. I was crushed. I had spent a couple of years on my face and in isolation to birth this work and it had been stillborn, or so it seemed. When Pete shared this news with me, I knew that this was God's will and that I would have no part in it. Even though I knew it was the right decision, it completely took me out for a while.

I was very angry with God for a time. If this was the fruit of all that work, then why bother"? I pretty much told God that I had had enough of serving Him and did not want to be part of such a vision anymore. The following months were as dark as any I can remember but I finally began to realize that to serve Him and His will required death to self and self-serving and total submission to His plans without regard to the end result and whether it matched up to what I had planned.

I eventually asked God to show me the whole thing the way that He saw it and He immediately showed me Pete struggling for years but he kept hitting a wall. God had intended that Pete head this vision up all along but he was missing some pieces to complete the work. The revelation of what those pieces were was a part of the solution for him and he then carried on. Only in Heaven will I ever get any reward for that work, which is how it was always meant to be, according to His plans, which are perfect in every way. At times, I wanted to blame Pete for what happened but God said to bless him. No one ever said it would be easy.

California

About the time I quit being mad at God, I was talking on the phone to my mother-in-law, who had some years earlier moved to California and she asked me, " Now that oldest three daughters are grown and the youngest almost eighteen, why not move to Fallbrook, California, and live near them?" The next thing I knew we were headed to California. I spent the first months there working on the development of Vision Acquisition and Development as a possible stand-alone, non-profit development entity. In California everything non-profit took much longer to get going than it had in Washington, where you could form a new non-profit in an afternoon. In California, it could take months.

When we decided to move to California, we believed that we would live in a little studio apartment, do street ministry, and live a very low-budget lifestyle but God had something else in mind. One day as we were praying about what we were going to do next, the Lord strongly impressed Barbara and me that He had a lifestyle in mind that didn't match what we were thinking because we were basing our decisions on what we could see. He wanted us to stretch our faith a lot! We sat down at the kitchen table and began to pray over a proposed budget, the one that God wanted for us, one line at a time. We then hung the budget up on the refrigerator door and began to daily pray over it.

Very shortly after we did that, Barbara told me that God had showed her a help wanted ad for me that she was afraid that I would not receive because she knew how much I had wanted to get the non-profit going. I asked to see the ad and as soon as I looked at it, the Lord said to call on it. The ad was for a V. P. Business Development spot for a small Internet company and to my surprise, the owner was a believer. I was soon at his door and he hired me immediately. Our new monthly income was exactly what was on the budget that was still posted on the refrigerator door.

Soon after moving to Fallbrook, I become involved with the local Businessmen's Fellowship and every Saturday morning attended their group breakfasts at Denny's. A Christian realtor that we met told me about this group of men and encouraged me to go and meet with them. For the next three years, I attended the meetings and eventually participated in similar meetings in several other local towns in San Diego County. Each month there would be a regional dinner meeting where the men would bring their wives and a sometimes fairly well known speaker would come. During one of the meetings, I was healed of asthma and Barbara received a healing from the muscle disease, Myasthenia Gravis, which she had suffered from since she was in her mid-thirties. God is more than able.

As time went by, the dot.com business and industry began to go the way of the previous technology bust and work began to dry up for my employer. Before long, I was out of a job again. On top of this latest unplanned job ending, I started to have health problems and it was difficult to maintain a positive attitude. I was doing better after the head injury from the car accident years back but now had a more serious situation to deal with. In 1980, a kitten that was given as a gift to my daughters, scratched me. Within just a few minutes, I spiked a very high fever and wound up in the hospital where they pumped me full of antibiotics until I came around. This event radically compromised my health and immune system that had become a chronic reoccurring lymph system infection.

When the symptoms of lymphatic infection would manifest, I knew that I would have about fifteen minutes to get to an emergency room before my temperature spikes and I would pass out. During a one-year period, I experienced many infections that according to the medical books take about six weeks to recover from. However, I was having them back-to-back and rarely recovering from one episode before being thrown into the next one. I had become pretty much totally disabled by them and each new event brought on a deeper sense of hopelessness. Eventually, the infections began to take a serious toll on my heart and I began to have attacks where my heart would race to a hundred-eighty beats a minute or more. It was really more like quivering and there was not much blood going anywhere. Dealing with this really knocked me down even further emotionally and the inability to work with these health problems became overwhelming.

By 2000, I had ridden out the technology crash, the dot COM crash, the Y2K scare and we had been trashed in just about every way imaginable including financially and medically. My wife and I were emotionally drained by it all. I had had enough of business, ministry, and technology - all of it! There had to be something that I could do to making a living for us without all the physical and spiritual attacks and headaches.

One evening, while we were playing cards with Barb's folks, I expressed my frustrations and my father-in-law asked me why I did not find work doing something with boats. I loved boats and here in California the boating season was all year long, unlike Washington where it was maybe three or four months. This was a good idea! Here in sunny Southern California there were tons of boats. I was quite sure that if I were to get my Captain's License, I could get a job running a boat in no time and live happily ever after. What could possibly go wrong with that idea?

After a little research, I found that I had most of the requirements needed to get my Master's License. All that was needed was the completion of the course work at San Diego Maritime Academy and documentation of ninety days of recent sea time during the previous twelve months. Unfortunately, I had not been on a boat since coming to California. Now I needed to find somebody who would allow me on a boat for ninety days, in order to meet that requirement; then I could go to school and get my license. After that, I would just skipper boats for the rest of my days - sounded good to me.

I went to the phone book and looked under yacht charters, thinking that I might pick up right where I had left off in the yacht charter business back in Washington and was drawn to the Star and Crescent Boat Company. On a side note, I had no idea what the significance of "Star and Crescent" was. That was another story.

When I called them, I informed them of my need to get recent sea time and asked if there was any job of any kind on one of their boats where I could get the needed sea time. They explained that they ran the ferries, the water taxis, with some yachts that were used for weddings and dinner parties, and they ran a fleet of harbor tour boats. Then the guy I was talking to surprised me by telling me that he liked my voice and wanted to know if I would consider being a narrator on one of the harbor tour boats.

So it's like this, you want me to ride around in San Diego harbor all day on the top of a big boat, talking to strangers and you'll pay me? - tough decision. I became, during my shifts, the voice of The Spirit of San Diego - a one hundred forty-six foot, three-story high boat with hundreds of new people to talk to every day. The tours were run everyday right smack in the middle of the Pacific Fleet with its aircraft carriers, submarines, Navy Seals on maneuvers, helicopters and jets. I was really in Heaven now, and all for $7.50 an hour.

Little did I know what God was preparing me for.

*****

Chapter 14 – Preparing for War (2001-2008)

9/11

During my time at the San Diego Harbor Tours, I became knowledgeable about the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet and the Navy in general. All week long, we watched as thousands of tourists from all over the world came and took the tours. They wanted to know everything there was to know about what they were seeing. I was expected to have all the answers.

I was free to talk about anything I wanted to. For the most part, I just spent the days that I worked as a narrator just answering questions and describing what was going on in our field of vision. It was all left up to me, what I said and did, with one exception; I could not share my faith on the job, unless someone else initiated the conversation, which did happen occasionally.

This began to wear on me a bit as I pretty much reside in an attitude of prayer most of the time and was constantly getting revelations that I would have really liked to share. But, that was not to be. From time to time though, someone would open up a conversation and it would go wherever the Holy Spirit wanted it to go. But, for the most part, I had to stick to the San Diego Harbor show.

There were two very important lessons learned while I was there - God did not need my words to get to someone and He seldom, if ever, moved in my timing. I knew these things but putting them into practice was a completely different ball game. I started talking to God about not being able to share my faith, assuming that He wanted me to do so. He asked me a simple question, "Would I be willing to not share my faith for six months, if it were to result in one person being touched in a way that set them on track in the Kingdom, according to God's plan for them?" Now, of course, the answer is a no-brainer but it would require months of obedience and laying down my own desires and agendas. What choice was there? I agreed and began to wonder, as the time went by, just who the target was.

One day, one of the guys that I worked with invited me out for a beer after work. Most days, the crews of the different tour boats, ferries and water-taxis would meet at a local watering hole that I pretty much just wanted to stay away from, mostly just to keep clear of the smokers. But, that day when I was invited, the Lord said to go with him and I did. As we entered the somewhat seedy bar, I began to really turn up my discernment about just what it was that I was to be doing here. What came to me was to have a beer and to drink it slowly while everyone else was having several and some were having pitchers. It was very interesting to remain sober while watching everyone else "tie one on".

At first, the conversation was just shoptalk. One thing about being on the boats all day with that many customers and all that was happening on the harbor was that there were many stories to share.

After a while though, the conversation suddenly died down between my friend and I. He seemed to suddenly be very serious and so I just sort of waited for him to lead off. After awhile, he said to me, "I want you to know that I've been watching you for months. I know you are a believer and I have just been waiting for you to start up on me about my smoking and drinking. But you never did. You've just became a good friend and never judged me." He then went on to tell me that he had come from a good Christian home and after some rough times, had walked away from the Church and had taken up this life-style. He then explained that he had been talking to God about coming back to where he needed to be and he had made a deal with God.

His deal was that if I said yes when he invited me out for a beer, then he would know that it was time to re-new his relationship with God and give his life back over to Him. This had been a test. After telling me of his decision to re-commit his life to God, he asked me to pray for him right there in that smoke filled bar and then we got up and left. To the best of my knowledge, he stopped smoking and drinking, returned to church, made his family very happy and discovered the girl he had been waiting for.

Some things take time and dedication. Are we willing to pay the price, even for just one person?

On another occasion, sometime later, I had again voiced my frustrations in being muzzled in front of all these people. I really did at times just want to cut loose and tell them what was on my heart. This time, as I was reminding God of His great commission, just in case He had forgotten, God reminded me just how little He needed me to complete His plans and then added that He could do more with a single glass of water than I could do with all of my very best words.

I woke up the next morning thinking about that question . . . a glass of water...very interesting. That afternoon, I was on the top outside deck of the Spirit of San Diego talking to a couple hundred people when, in the middle of my sentence, a very elderly man began to cough and he couldn't seem to stop. I became fearful for him and was watching him closely just in case he suddenly needed help. He was obviously very embarrassed but no matter what he did, he could not seem to quit coughing.

I continued with my narration, while at the same time praying in the Spirit for him and asking for discernment regarding anything I might do for him. Just then, I was reminded of that glass of water and so, I set down the microphone, walked over to the bar and got a glass of water, and took it to him. After taking it from me and drinking a little, he stopped coughing but then began to cry. I was not sure what was wrong but waited for him to stop just in case there was something more that I could do for him. It was then that he looked up at me and explained to me that as near as he could remember; no one had ever shown him that kind of an act of kindness. He went on to tell me that he saw something in me and by offering him the water he had really been touched deeply.

"And whoever gives one of these little ones a cup of cold water] only in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward." [ Matt 10:42. (NKJV)

Not long after starting my job at the Harbor Tours, Barbara and I moved from Fallbrook to a loft in downtown San Diego. We put the car in a parking garage and walked almost everywhere we went. It was just eight blocks to the waterfront, the restaurants, and hotels. We were living in the heart of the Gas Lamp District and were surrounded by outdoor dining and entertainment. It was a great time.

One morning while still in bed, I was just barely aware that Barbara was already up watching TV in the main room of the loft. Suddenly, she said, "Gary, come here quick!" I rolled out of bed and walked across the loft to the TV just in time to see a jet fly through an office building. It was September 11, 2001, and I had just watched "live", the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. At first, I thought that I must be watching a trailer for a new Bruce Willis "Die Hard" movie but quickly realized that this was not a Hollywood creation. Barbara and I just sat and watched the unfolding events while going into shock.

We continued to watch the live news for quite awhile and then it hit us. We were sitting less than a mile from three aircraft carriers, unusually in port, all at once. Certainly the Pacific Fleet in port would be the next target. Then the shock really set in. After a short while, I realized that it was time to go to work but I was sure that there would be no vessels leaving the dock that day. Just to make sure, I called into operations and was told that the Spirit of San Diego had over a hundred and fifty passengers booked on the first harbor tour and that I should get down there immediately.

As I walked to the harbor, I was greeted by what had become a ghost town. There were no people in the usually full, outdoor restaurants. The streets were quiet. Everyone was still indoors glued to the television. When I got to work I found the harbor quiet. No boats were moving anywhere on what had been one of the busiest ports in the country. Then the second shock; the San Diego airport, located right on the bay, in sight of downtown San Diego, was dead quiet. It had gone from being the busiest single runway airport in the country to suddenly being empty. Over six hundred take-offs and landings a day just stopped, and along with it, the San Diego economy.

That morning, we were the only moving vessel on the harbor. The airport was still. All flights had been grounded until further notice and here we were, giving, or trying to give, a harbor tour to dozens of people who were all, along with the crew, completely in shock. To make matters worse, we were all very aware of the three aircraft carriers sitting there in front of us. I think that the majority of us fully expected to be vaporized at any moment. I realized after choking on the first few sentences that I was not going to be able to narrate and thankfully, I was relieved by one of my crewmembers. We all sat in absolute silence while we circled the harbor as he perfectly narrated a two-hour harbor tour.

Over the next week or so, there were several thousand layoffs on the San Diego waterfront. With the tourists gone, the hotels and restaurants dried up and the Gas Lamp District turned into a ghost town. Within weeks, Barbara and I packed up and headed back to Washington. We knew our time in California was over and God was moving us onto a new assignment.

Prophetic Intercession

In January of 2002, we settled into Mill Creek, Washington. I had asked Barb where she wanted to live and the top priority for her was to be near our two daughters living in that area. Our daughters were also part of a church that we had attended from its early days of planting until we moved to California. It was going to be great to fellowship there and be with old friends again. The church size had increased from about 350 to 1,500 while we had been living in California.

The first service back in that church, I had a very clear word from the Lord to begin an early morning intercessory prayer group for that church and the area where it is located.

We had been friends and neighbors with the pastor for fifteen years and we all had watched our families grow together over the years. Now one of our son-in-laws was the worship leader and an associate pastor there. I approached the Pastor, my son-in-law and the Women's Ministry Pastor explaining what I believed God had spoken to my heart about starting a prayer ministry. All three of them liked the idea.

For many years, I was told that I was an Intercessor and should really pursue this calling on my life. In all honesty, I did not know an Intercessor from a hole in the ground, but I was about to get an education.

" _I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior."_ _1 Timothy 2:1-3._

Intercession is called for in scripture and Christ intercedes on our behalf continually.

" _Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made_ _intercession_ _for the transgressors." Isaiah 53:12._

To be an Intercessor is one thing. To start an intercession ministry is quite another. It seems that there is an opposition whose fury becomes unleashed at the mere mention of intercessory prayer. We were also in a new season and the Holy Spirit was preparing us for war. This was to become quite an ordeal.

The first obstacle turned out to be an administrative assistant who had been given the keys to the prayer room, and who was firmly against my possession of a key to a room that no one was using at the time. She stated that I needed to be part of the church for at least six months before heading up any ministry even though I had been part of the church at its inception. It became obvious, all too fast, that this was a major stronghold. There appeared to be an adamant force in place against prophetic ministry and prayer.

To cut to the chase, it took months before I was able to get that key. This was, as it turned out, not about the person but for sure about a stronghold of demonic activity that had revealed itself as soon as God began sending in His Apostolic and Prophetic people who were genuinely moving in the gifts of the spirit. Wherever the enemy took a stand against what God was trying to do in the churches, we saw huge attacks on the leadership. There was an epidemic of all kinds of disasters to those in leadership and many left the ministry. At the high point of this activity, I desperately wanted to understand what was going on and began contacting people we had known for a while and who were more seasoned in these things. What I found in five phone calls were that people were experiencing all kinds of ministry failures and splits in churches where they had been attending for years. Much of this disruption centered on new moves of the Holy Spirit that were not being received by those who believed things should stay unchanged.

After a six month wait we finally started our assignment and the intercessory prayer group began. It was up hill all the way but eventually it turned into a five day a week two-hour session. During these sessions, we would pray in the Spirit for an hour or more and then come together to share what we were receiving from the Lord. There was always a clear word from the Lord, given through multiple people in exactly the right order that revealed His message to us and gave us our prayer assignment. This message then became our focus for the day when the meeting was over. God was very much talking to His body but it seemed that very few were listening. No wonder with the levels of opposition that we were encountering. The opposition had a name and that name was Jezebel.

If I had ever heard the term Jezebel before, I could not remember. Now it was the primary topic of conversation just about everywhere I turned. What I learned was that there is a spirit who wanted to block the gates against any penetration and advancement of God's Kingdom in these places that we, as Intercessors, had been called to open in prayer. And, it was not make-believe when it came to the warfare involved. Many that I knew personally would go through unbelievable attacks, resulting in nervous breakdowns, split churches, back-sliding, broken marriages and more. As for me, I had a front-line assignment and received some near fatal wounds in the process.

Heading back to the house after work one day, I suddenly felt as if I had been slugged in the chest, really hard! I knew immediately what it was and where it had come from. Suddenly I could not breathe and as I came into the house, I called out to Barb and collapsed on the floor. Barb didn't waste any time and called 911 and the paramedics rushed me to Stevens Hospital in Edmonds. Once there, things got very strange, very quickly.

It started with a doctor in the ER. My wife had once been a scrub nurse in open-heart surgery and she was well versed in my medical history. I had a history of asthma since age one but the ER doctor insisted that I was having a heart attack and deemed that I needed to be rushed to another hospital where I would receive open-heart surgery. Barbara followed the ambulance, knowing that this was quickly turning into a major spiritual battle and so she prayed in the spirit all the way.

Once at the other hospital, I felt like terrorists had kidnapped me. The doctors and nurses would not listen to anything that my wife told them and I was struggling to breathe and barely conscious. I was very aware of the demonic activity in the room and even at one point asked Barb if she was seeing what I was seeing and she said yes. The cardiologist seemed intent on not treating my breathing problem while gearing up to do open heart surgery on me. I was sure that I would not get out of this alive and I did not ever remember feeling quite so helpless.

Next, the doctor decided to inject dye and perform a heart catherization test to see what arteries were blocked in my heart. Barb told them that they should not do this without consulting a hematologist because I had a very low platelet count and they would be placing a canula in a major artery to insert contrast dye. She was alarmed they might not get the bleeding stopped when they tried to remove it. They ignored her and proceeded on. The good news was that they found what Barb had been telling them all along, that my arteries were not blocked. Now they were facing what she had warned them about. They had placed the canula into my femoral artery and it was leaking blood and would not clot so they placed a clamp on it and sent me off to my room.

The next morning, I woke up and wanted to sit up and see what was going on with the clamp but instead heard the Lord tell me not to look. Right after that, the nurses came in and began removing the blood soaked bath towels that they had packed in around me. I had very nearly bled to death. The echocardiogram taken that morning revealed that my heart was enlarged probably from the infections that my body had battled. There was a very large heart murmur as well and the only thing that could be done was to wait until I was very ill and put me on a heart transplant list. Over time, my heart rate would slow down as my heart continued to enlarge.

Later that same day, my breathing worsened again. The doctor would still not treat me with a nebulizer to stop the bronchial spasms. My wife was desperate to get the nurse assigned to me to listen to her. The nurse said that she had already called the doctor and he said no breathing treatments. Barbara was trying to be calm but she knew I did not have much time left if something did not change soon. She told the nurse that when she was taking medical training that looking at the patient was more important than anything else. By now, my lips were blue and I was sitting up gasping for air. The nurse called the doctor one more time and he finally ordered the nebulizer treatments for me but by now they had already given me three rounds of Ativan to relax me. The Ativan was not working until the first breaths from the nebulizer. Once oxygen was released into my system the Ativan kicked in and I pitched forward towards the floor. Barbara shouted at the respiratory tech and they both caught me before I hit the floor. That night Barbara did not leave the room and made sure that I was cared for properly. I did not come to until early the next morning. A pulmonary specialist confirmed that I was having a major asthma attack and was close to pulmonary failure. He could not understand why the other doctor withheld treatment.

Over the next few days, much of the staff coming in and out of my room seemed to have demonic strongholds and I felt constantly under attack. At one point, the only thing I had strength left to do was to say the name of Jesus. The next person who came into my room was a Spirit-filled nurse and the whole atmosphere changed instantly. The war we are in is real and the "Name Above All Names" is still the best weapon we have against the attacks of the enemy.

The Resurrection

Right in the middle of all of this education on intercession, Jezebel and the rest of it, I received an invitation from my friend Bill Shaker to attend a ministry back-yard barbeque at his place. There would be many friends attending and I was looking forward to going. Bill's house was located on a short side street along the I-90 freeway in North Bend, just East of Bellevue. His backyard was right alongside of an East bound off-ramp and the seating was arranged so that our backs were to the house and we faced the large hedge that separated the property and the off-ramp but you could still hear the sounds of cars and semi-trucks traveling on the freeway.

We were listening to one of the many guests share what God had been doing on the West Coast regarding the conversion of many Moslem leaders and even whole mosques to Christianity. During the presentation, I clearly heard the Lord say that there was a woman behind me who "had what I needed" in order to do what God was calling me to and that I was to go to her and ask her for a "double portion" of her anointing.

" _When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, 'Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?' 'Let me inherit a_ _double_ _portion_ _of your spirit,' Elisha replied."_

2 Kings 2:9.

I was fascinated by the speaker but was also trying to get some understanding of what I had just heard and so, just sort of went into a "hard-loop" process that resulted in no action. Gradually, my attention went back to the speaker and I just sort of "brushed off" this odd sounding instruction. Not much time went by before I once again heard the still small voice of the Lord repeat the same message to me. Oddly enough, I did not seem to be registering the importance of the need to obey but instead just kept on trying to figure out the message. By the third time the message came, I snapped out of my "processing the message" mode and actually turned around to look and see if there really was a woman behind me. There were many women in the area but I knew instantly which one He was referring to. I went up to her and explained that God had spoken to me three times about approaching her and that I was sure that she would think that I was crazy when I shared the message.

This woman was with two friends and all three of them started receiving major revelation about this encounter. I started feeling like visiting royalty instead of some kind of a nut. They told me that this request was something that they had been waiting for. Then they started talking together about Barak. I did not know who Barak was but they kept talking about the Barak they had been watching for. It turned out that they had received several prophetic words over the previous two years that God was sending them a Barak, who would minister with the woman that God had pointed out to me, whose name was Deborah.

It seems, they explained, that the Deborah and Barak thing was a big deal. I had no idea what they were talking about but they said that they wanted to wait for things to quiet down a bit and then they wanted to pray with me. After a while, the people began to leave and as things quieted down the four of us came together again. At this point Deborah felt that she and her two friends were to pray over me as I had requested.

Deborah stood directly in front of me, facing the house, with her friends on each side of her. I was facing out to the hedge with the off-ramp from the freeway on the other side of it. As they began to pray in the Spirit, we all closed our eyes. Suddenly, all of the sounds of the remaining guests, the cars and semi-trucks coming off the freeway, or driving by, just stopped. It was as if I was no longer in Bill's back yard but was instead standing out in the middle of a desert. There was no sound at all. I was afraid to open my eyes. All of a sudden there came a new set of sounds. I was straining every fiber of my being trying to figure out what I was listening to but was still afraid to open my eyes.

It was then that Deborah said, "Can you hear that? What is it?" The three women then began to compare notes on what they were hearing and it became clear that we were all hearing the same things. They were the sounds of what I can only describe as a Middle Eastern public market. We were hearing the sounds of people speaking in a number of languages, none of which were English, many people milling around and passing bye, carts of various kinds clacking as they were being pulled to market plus the additional sounds that seemed to be coming from children and animals.

Just then Deborah exclaimed that she knew where we were. She went on to explain that the previous year she had been here in that very place and had missed a bus there. We were amazingly standing on the Emmaus Road in Israel. We then all got very quiet and just stood there listening to these unexplainable sounds and then slowly began to pray in the Spirit again as the sounds diminished. The moment that Deborah stopped praying, the sounds all went away. For just a moment, there were no sounds at all. Then, just as if someone were gradually turning up the volume, the sounds of the people nearby, the off-ramp and the freeway all returned to normal and we opened our eyes.

To say the very least, we were quite shaken by this event and remained speechless for quite some time before we began to compare notes once again and kind of "came down" from the experience. As I regained my awareness of my actual surroundings, I wondered just how long we had been off into this experience. Looking at my watch I was immediately catapulted into a whole new set of revelations as I realized that it was 5:00PM, June 15th, 2002, exactly ten years to the minute from the moment of the auto accident that had erased my life as I had known it. I was instantly reminded of the Lord's Word to me that it would not be a 7 year recovery but ten and then He would use me in a whole new way. Even now, many years later, I continue to get revelation from this single event. The Emmaus Road walk and the Barak anointing continue to be major focuses of all that we do today but initially we had no idea what they meant. Right after this encounter and continuing on, even today, there has been a steady unfolding of what all this relationship was about.

One of the first things I experienced was a complete new revelation, anointing and calling on my life. Everything was changing rapidly and there came a completely new perspective of things of the Spirit. My mind was being renewed and restored as well.

This Deborah and Barak thing fascinated me and I began to really seek the Lord about what it was all about, for now and for the future, by studying Deborah and Barak in the book of Judges.

As for the encounter beginning June 15th, 2002, and progressing until now, the impact has had, shall we say, "Biblical proportions" in my life personally and especially in the definition of who I am and what God has been doing in and through me ever since.

For the next year and a half or so, I worked alongside Deborah and learned much about prophetic ministry and the role of the Prophet. I had never experienced such anointing in ministry as I did during that time. It was not uncommon for worship to go on for hours and personal ministry time to include everyone in the building.

At times, this level of ministry actually scared me a little as I was still trying to understand what was going on. I can remember many times pulling up to the building and not being sure that I was able to go in. There was such a presence of God on this work and this time and place that I began to understand a real, correct, fear of the Lord in a way that I had never known before. It was, for sure, all about Him and His plan for me and those I was working with and ministering to. We never quite knew how it would go. No matter the preparation, it was always allowed to go His way. Sometimes there would be a prepared message that would be, as I picked up the microphone, thrown away, only to be replaced by a fresh prophetic utterance designed for those in attendance.

My time in the car on the way was always one of worship and waiting on Him for direction prior to arriving and was different each time. Sometimes, I would be directed to be willing to go into the building and just remain in an attitude of prayer with no thought of speaking at all. Other times, I would be given a clear message to deliver. In every case, what He gave us was always fresh and new.

One morning I went in prepared to not say a word but in worship began to receive a specific word for the entire congregation. I began to pray in the Spirit and asked that if this were indeed a message that was to be delivered that the Lord would speak to Deborah and let her know that I had something to share. Otherwise, I would not share it. This was part of the maturing and training by the Holy Spirit. While I waited for a confirmation, Deborah's husband who had been in the sound booth behind me approached me. He walked up to me and told me that the Lord had let him know that I had a word for the church and he handed me a microphone.

I told him that I would need to have Deborah make way for me so he then stopped her in the middle of what she was sharing, and told her that he had been instructed to bring me a microphone in order that I could deliver what God had given me. She seemed quite pleasantly surprised, which I could not quite figure out why, and she asked me to come forward.

Later, I was informed that in the entire history of their ministry, he had never heard from the Lord that way and had never came out of the sound booth to deliver such a word to anyone, including his wife. It was noted by many that day that God was putting protocols in place for a future time when that kind of discernment would be critical to the well being of the body of Christ.

Everything during that time was about an increase in walking in the prophetic and the Deborah and Barak relationship but I was always aware that what was going on then was only preparation for the future. I needed to mature in this walk and the only way that was going to happen was by complete and utter dependence on Him.

We were sent to work with Deborah for one year then we were removed. There were new assignments ahead. Many, I am sure, did not understand what happened when we left but I knew who was at the helm. Barb and I agreed. Never a dull moment while in God's training school. It would not be long before the Barak call on my life would become another major focal point but more on that later.

*****

Chapter 15 – Preparing for War - Part 2

A New Heart

In 2003, I was taken to the hospital with another severe lymphatic system infection. Since we had experienced this many times before, Barb would monitor the proceedings and make sure that they got all of the information straight. The normal process was for me to get an antibiotic cocktail and often be admitted to the hospital for several days or more. I was now experiencing increasing heart problems because of the damage that the reoccurring infections had done to it and so Barb always kept a close watch to make sure that I was not suffering at the hands of the physicians.

During this particular trip to the ER, after checking my vitals, the doctor exclaimed that I had no heart murmur and a normal pulse rate. At first, Barbara thought the doctor needed a hearing aid because you could not miss the sound of my heart murmur. She had already told him that I had a history of heart problems that included Atrial Fibrillation (A-Fib). I also had an enlargement of the lower portion of the heart, which sometimes caused my heart rate to drop down to forty beats a minute. Needless to say, he was missing something here.

Barb asked him to review my past medical records, which he did and new tests were ordered. I underwent a whole new set of heart exams including an EKG, echocardiogram, MRI and various blood tests. I was also admitted to the hospital to treat the lymph infection and cellulitus.

Normally when I am in the hospital, I have many opportunities to minister to others, especially the staff. One evening a woman who was cleaning the floors came and asked if I was the man who prayed for people and I ministered to her. The nurses on the floor often came by to visit and eventually agreed that God had sent me to the hospital just to minister to them.

Two days into my hospital stay, the head nurse came in and told us the results of my tests. She excitedly said, "Mr. Bundy, your doctor wants you to know that your tests are back on your heart. Your heart is a normal size, it had a normal sinus rhythm, its electrical system is firing correctly, and you no longer have a heart murmur. Hummm . . . the cardiologist said that the only hope I had for an enlarged heart was a heart transplant. Oh and how do holes in your heart just go away on their own? I soon found out that they do not go away on their own without surgery. It would take a miracle!

Barbara told me that she had been praying for me for several years and when she asked God to heal my heart, she heard Him say that she was not to believe for a healed heart, but instead, a "new" heart. Now it seemed as though He had done just that. On the night she brought me to the ER, she asked God one more time to heal my heart because she knew that my enlarged heart could not withstand another major infection. Since she used to work as an OR Tech in open heart surgery, Barbara fully understood just what an amazing miracle I had received and began asking me if I understood what had just taken place.

In all honesty, it was not quite sinking in. There was no way, after all, for me to open myself up and take a look. I did, however ask my nurse what she thought had taken place and she explained that she believed that God had given me a new heart and all of the other nurses on that floor, were calling it a miracle! Really, what else could they call it? The whole floor was buzzing and people were looking in to see for themselves.

When the doctor arrived, I told him of my wife's belief and the confirmation from the nurses and asked for his take. His response was to put his hand on my knee, look me right in the eye and tell me that all he could say was that whoever the physician was who last touched me was the one that I should give the credit to, as he personally had done nothing for me. With that, he winked at me and left the room. This new heart has had a normal resting rate of sixty beats a minute ever since.

Two things happened right after this event that seemed to add another level of anointing and acceleration to what we were doing. The first thing that happened within an hour of arriving home from the hospital was a meeting with Tim Taylor, who most recently has been the Washington State Coordinator for the National Day of Prayer along with many other Kingdom Building duties. Tim and I had not met in person and while I was in the hospital, I was mindful that I had an appointment with him and was not sure they were going to let me out in time to keep it. While praying about whether to call him and postpone the meeting, I was led to trust that I would indeed get home in time. I did, just barely. That meeting turned out to be an open door to many future relationships, all through an amazing set of "Divine Appointments".

It was a Sunday when I came home from the hospital and that week I shared with my friend and pastor, Cliff Tadema, about what had happened and he asked if I would share my testimony at all three services the following week, which I agreed to do. The next Sunday I shared my healing testimony and watched as people grew in faith believing for their own healing miracles. Often I would arrive at the building early for prayer while the worship team was setting up and practicing, continuing to intercede through the service. At the end the service I was available to pray with the people who came up needing prayer, often for all three services. The day I shared the testimony of my new heart, more and more people than usual kept coming forward for prayer.

As people began to come forward after third service, I noticed a woman standing off to one side holding one of those huge "coffee table" Bibles. It was so big that I was surprised that she could stand there holding it for so long. I knew that it was her intention to wait there patiently for me to finish praying for everyone else before coming over to me. Sure enough, she waited patiently and then, when everyone else had gone, she approached me. By now, I was pretty much worn out having been there for four or five hours of ministry and badly in need of a break and some food.

She walked up to me and then surprised me by announcing; "Now I know why God had told me to take the magnets off of my refrigerator!" Now, I might be prophetic but I had no idea what she was talking about and in my current state of mind just sort of glazed over and waited for her to explain herself, which she did not do. It seemed like forever with her staring at me, waiting for the expected response, which was not forthcoming.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she once again, in a slightly exasperated tone said, "Don't you understand? God told me to take the magnets off of my refrigerator!"

Now I was starting to get worried and took a step back, looking out of the corner of my eye for someone to come and release me from this encounter. No one seemed to be paying attention as most were just trying to get out of the building.

Then, with one last frustrated attempt, she said with her voice now raised significantly, "You've got to understand! I was on my way to church. I had locked the house and was opening my car door when God told me to go back in and get the magnets off of my refrigerator!" Then she said, "Oh never mind! I'll just show you!"

She then opened that great big old Bible to reveal three identical heart shaped magnets, each inscribed with a scripture verse, "I will give you a new heart." Ezekiel 36:26.

It was right then that it finally began to sink in. God had indeed not only given me a new heart but a new spirit to go with it and now a confirmation that could not be ignored. That woman, whose name I do not know, gave me those magnets, thanked me for my testimony and then left. To my knowledge, I never saw her again after that. If you know her, please thank her for me. After that I knew that I had been touched and it had been confirmed in such a wonderful way that even now the three hearts are a favorite testimony of God's love and intimacy.

The Process

In July of 2003, we were led to incorporate an organization originally conceived in 1997 at the Association of Christian Technologist, called Vision Acquisition and Development, Inc. Vision was a bit of a play on words, and was actually all about acquiring and developing vision.

For a couple of years, we watched as God sent us a variety of people and projects from around the country to work with. We got involved with technology projects, non-profit development and business development and we also got involved with regional, state, national and international prayer network creation and development projects. About that time, I got a new call in my life to step into something greater, and some of the people that I was working with decided that they did not think that I knew what I was doing any more. Soon I realized that I had a rough decision to make. While visiting family in Spokane, I went for a drive one morning into nearby Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. At home, in Anacortes, when I need to get out and get some fresh air, I often went to the marina and walked the docks. I love the water and the boats. In Spokane, there was no place to go to the docks so I headed to Lake Coeur d'Alene to walk the docks at the Coeur d'Alene Hotel.

As I was driving down the freeway, I was really starting to feel overwhelmed by the changing relationships with my partners that had been, up until then, very exciting. I told God, "It just feels to me like these guys are doing what they perceive to be the right thing, but it's not what you called me to do, and I don't know what to do next?" And I heard the Lord say, "If it seems to you that they are asking for your shirt, then give them your jacket as well. If they are asking you to walk for a mile, then walk for two." Then, very clearly, He said, "I want you to resign as Chairman of the Board and I want you to give up your controlling interest in this company." Just then, I pulled off the freeway exit into Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and the brand new time and temperature clock there said 5:55 AM and 55 degrees. I said, "God, that's 'You', isn't it?" He replied, "Yes, it's me and five is the number of grace. You just need to listen and do what I say and it will be OK."

Immediately He gave me a vision of myself driving a beautiful boat on Lake Coeur d'Alene. It was one of those summer days when it was going to be a hundred degrees outside and it was already, even though still early in the morning, really nice and very beautiful on the lake. I walked down onto the dock and encountered the captain of the boat that picks up the hotel guests to take them across the lake to the golf course. I began to talk to the captain of the vessel about his beautiful custom-built boat, explaining that I was a licensed captain who had worked in the charter industry and then asked him, "What does a guest have to do to go for a ride on this thing?" He replied, "If you want to go for a ride, just come back later and you can go for a ride on her." So, I returned about fifteen minutes later and found a seat on the boat. He took the people over to the golf course and then, after everyone else had gone ashore, he said something astonishing, "I know that since you are a licensed captain, you would probably like to run this boat. Take the helm for a while." A half an hour after God showed me the vision of myself driving a boat on Lake Coeur d'Alene, there I was, in the middle of Lake Coeur d'Alene. It was 6:30 in the morning I was driving this beautiful custom-built boat with this big grin on my face and this great sense of peace from releasing my concerns to Him and now enjoying the peace, immediate confirmation and blessing that quickly followed.

Once we were home from our trip to Spokane, I prepared to give away my controlling interest stock and began to ask whom it was to go to. As soon as I got the name of the person, I went to my wife and she confirmed the gift and the recipient and we proceeded to give the stock away. Not long after resigning, several people came to me to tell me that they now felt led to do some things together in ministry and business with me that could not have been done within the previous organization. Now I moved even further into what I was being called into.

It was then that my wife came and asked what we would call the new organization, knowing that I would not suddenly stop being me, doing what I was doing, and recognizing the need for corporate structure to operate within. I told her that I did not have any ideas and would be happy to hear any suggestions that she might have. Later she returned and asked me what I thought about "Hazon." I asked her what it meant and she informed me that "Hazon" was Hebrew for "prophetic vision". After that we formed a non-profit called "Hazon" that held a majority interest in a for-profit called Hazon Development, Inc. which we operate in today.

Ending one organization and starting over again was not a pleasant experience but in hindsight this was the pruning needed to take us to the next iteration of what we had been called to. Immediately following this re-structure, God began to explain to me what He had been teaching me in my previous ministry and business organizations.

This new process was made up of a series of individual concepts that we had put up on a white board over the course of about six months. We would get an individual word or concept followed by a season of time, sometimes over several weeks, of examples and testing to help us understand a new way of doing business. This time of testing and preparation seemed to increase our discernment and experience as we walked through these individual, and then later combined components, that introduced a complete process for bringing together resources and visions. Later assembling the components into entities that resulted in and expanded reach and scope for all of those who would participate.

We began to understand the individual steps, groups of steps and the completed processes. The Lord began to speak to us about this complete process. We originally thought that maybe it was going to be a process that we would package somehow or promote and sell to other organizations but, as it continued to come to us, we began to realize that what it really was, at least initially, was teaching us how to recognize, receive and process our own ministry and business partners and projects. Only recently, have we been released to impart this process into others. Today it is the core process of the Hazon Group.

The process runs full-circle from "Divine Appointments" to sharing testimony, within a calling and anointing, properly aligned and contained within the needed infrastructure for duplication and distribution. As you receive this impartation and become familiar with this process, you will begin to encounter your own DA's and then eventually as it happens more frequently, begin to recognize where they already are, at a specific point in the process. They might be just getting started, or fully matured. Either way, the process can now be passed on from us to you and from you to others in the ongoing work of identifying, empowering and mobilizing the next wave of Kingdom Builders.

So now the mandate is to freely give this teaching and training, processes, tools and relationships to those that God sends our way beginning with the Apostles and Prophets, the Kings and Priests and the modern day Daniels and Josephs. You can now begin to walk in this process, which we believe is all about His plans and provision for your role in His Kingdom building purposes.

This Kingdom provision will happen in the hands of those who have been refined by the Holy Spirit, preparing them for Kingdom building. If they come into this or if you come into this walk for your personal gain without hearing from God, without using it for His purposes and plans, it may not turn out the way you think. It may affect you in ways that you will not enjoy. If you were led to read this for that reason, I would encourage you to put it down and walk away. People have tried to walk in this for their own purposes, for their own reasons, plans and they have often been very unhappy with the results. This is about allowing your heart and mind to be purified and prepared, so that God can use you for His glory.

The three initial prayers that I told you about led us into experiencing and understanding a set of concepts that eventually evolved into this process. We want to impart this to you so that you can pray over it and look at it and watch as God begins to use it in your life for His purposes. It is not the "end all" for Kingdom Building but only the small piece that I was asked to convey in order to help you discover and walk in your part.

Concept One: "Divine Appointments"

The first concept that we received was "Divine Appointments" (DA's). God began to speak to us, and I say us, because it was to our core management team at that time, about the significance of DA's and how to recognize them. This is all about how we all originally met and what God did to put His mark on our relationships.

At first we thought, like we unfortunately frequently do, that because God was speaking to everyone about DA's, we must be about to have a major one. You know, you get a vision or a prophetic word and you think, "Well, that will probably come to pass tomorrow." Well, twenty years ago, I got a vision to start a ship ministry and we have barley left the dock yet but we are still working on it. We thought it was going to be next week and we initially did the same thing with some of these process steps. Now we knew that the first concept was about Divine Appointments. God was teaching us saying, "I want you to know the difference between who you think is a Divine Appointment and who really is and then, how to fully process that encounter into a full Kingdom manifestation that glorifies God according to His plan."

Suddenly, we began to have people walking in the door who had, by the world's standards, all of the necessary credentials to really benefit our organization. However, we were told to discern, to listen to what God said about those we would encounter. Our group would then pray about him or her and sometimes God would say, "I don't want you to say yes to that person's offer." At times, we had people come in the door that "supposedly" were wealthy and who we thought were ready to fund everything we would ever do. All we had to do was just let go of a little bit of control and step, just a little bit, out of the calling that God had called us to. In every case, God told us not to do that. His instructions were, "Love them, receive them, minister to them, usher them into the Kingdom, disciple them. But, do not enter into business with them and do not enter into ministry with them." And then, oddly enough, they would turn out to not be who they said they were. It happened over and over. But, as we got down to the reality of it, we started seeing the real, the fun stuff, the stuff that God was doing.

Dr. Gabriel (Gabe) Bainesai is one of my best friends and one of my favorite DA stories.

Dr. Gabe first appeared to me, in 1989, in a vision or a dream, and to this day, I do not remember which, and he spoke very clearly to me, telling me what it was that I was to do. He said, "Stop striving because the work was already done, enter into The Father's rest, become a joint heir with Christ, receive the inheritance, learn to rule and reign, and accept that I just needed to receive all that God had for me". When I asked him how this could be. He simply replied, "Your Father has been here before you." It was if somebody called you up today and said, "Your uncle Fred just died and left you an inheritance." You would answer, "What do I need to do to get the inheritance?" This is where God wants us today with these divine appointments. They are there for a reason.

Gabe appeared to me in a dream or a vision and then, fifteen years later, I meet him and invite him over and he comes to visit, walks into my living room, sits down and says to me exactly what he had said to me in the dream fifteen years earlier. I instantly recognized that face that I had been searching for all those years. He has continued to deliver this message to me ever since and without him and his obedience to continue to deliver that message, along with a large dose of The Father's love, I am sure that I might have given up the battle a long time ago. If you have these kinds of events in your life, they just might be DA's. It is very important that you learn to receive and steward these gifts from God.

Many of my favorite DA's have become more than friends and really are family. Gabe and I first met in the home of Robert and Joyce Ricciardelli who were another DA and are now considered to be more family than friends. Robert created Visionary Advancement Strategies and does a regular subscription email that goes out worldwide.

One day my wife Barbara was cruising the InJesus.com electronic newsletters site looking for any newsletter that might be of interest to me. We already subscribe to a number of their newsletters including Fullness Online and The Elijah List and consider them an important part of daily devotions and useful tools.

While looking around on InJesus, she came across Robert's newsletter and noting the "Vision" thing, thought that I would be interested and signed me up. The next time I went to my email, there was Robert's newsletter. My first impression was to try to figure out how I had received it, as I was certain that I had not subscribed. My next impression was to read it all the way through, after which, I heard The Lord say, "Write Robert, (who I did not know), an email thanking him for moving out in his calling to do this newsletter and for the blessing that I received as I read it." I had never, ever, written to a magazine, radio station or anyone else along those lines before but I did as I felt the Lord was saying to do.

After hitting the "Send" button on my email, I got up and headed down the hall to the living room. As I entered the room, I heard the Lord say: "Now he's going to call you." To which I said, almost aloud, "Oh, right!" but restrained myself, given the source.

I did not know where the newsletter originated because Robert might be anywhere on the planet, with the technology available today. At that very moment, the phone rang and I answered as I always do, with, "Hi, this is Gary". From the other end, I hear a male voice say, "I can't believe you wrote me an email!" By the tone of his voice, I immediately assumed I did something wrong here, but I was not sure what. Therefore, I asked whom I was talking to, and what does he mean that he cannot believe I wrote him an email. Turns out that Robert had been told several times over the previous week or so, by several different people, that he absolutely must meet this guy up in Anacortes, about two hours away, named Gary Bundy. He had just finished a phone call where he had heard the message yet again and had replied, "Alright already. I'll go meet Gary Bundy!" Then he hangs up just in time to hear the "You've Got Mail!" new email alert and he looks over to see an email from yours truly. Might just be a DA.

As time passed many of these relationships have weathered the storms as we remind ourselves of how we met and what God did to forge the relationships that are His and for His purposes. The Divine Appointment is the key. It's all about "who" God has called you to work with and maybe more importantly, who He has called you "not to" work with.

I have a number of very dear friends that I have known for many years and God has said about them, "Gary, you've got to accept the fact that these people are not a part of what I've called you to do. It doesn't mean that you stop being friends or having fellowship, or anything like that. It just means that they don't just automatically come along to where you are going or at the same time." Know the difference.

I have gone through this alignment process together with my friends and sometimes their friends who they brought into relationship with me. In addition, sometimes, they feel upset, left out or left behind as we are rocketed into our callings. We would love to please them, but that is not obedience. Other times we really want them to participate but God has simply not given them the same revelation or it is we who are being left behind, as they take on their anointing, roles, and callings.

So, we really have to get this straight. If God has called you to team up with the person three rows behind you and two rows over, to do a project, then that is the only person that He has called you to do that project with. You can get a vision for the project and go off to solve it, but not get the job done, because you are not properly aligned with the people God intended you to be with. DA's and most of the rest of these other concepts are always first about discerning, hearing and obeying. We believe that as you learn the process that you will also learn to have a continual, high-speed conversation ongoing with God.

You will say, "A minute ago, when I was on the way to the drinking fountain, the Lord told me to go on past the fountain and go down the hall instead and I had a DA with somebody." or "I accidentally took the wrong exit. I was supposed to get off on the 520 and I wound up staying on the 405 and I'm going to be forty minutes late for my appointment." Now, we don't exclaim, "Oh no!" Now, instead, we say, "We're about to have a DA." We arrive somewhere that we had not intended to be and then encounter someone that we wouldn't have otherwise met, for God's purpose. When we discern the person and situation, we can recognize a Divine Appointment is taking place. Our next obligation is to ask God, "Is this You? Am I supposed to do something with this person? And, do they feel the same way?" And, if the answer is yes, our obligation is to now go back to God and find out what He has in mind here.

I was introduced to one of my good friends, Cliff Tadema, in 1980. The first day we met, we recognized it as a DA, and we both said, "You and I are going to do something for The Kingdom of God." We have been watching for and doing those things ever since. We have had dozens of those DA's with each other and with other people while we have been together.

One day after I moved to Anacortes, I was talking to Cliff, who was in Lynden, about an hour away, I told him that I had been working there that summer doing yacht charter and the season had ended. Instead of returning to where we had been living, Barbara and I had just rented a house there and decided to make Anacortes our home. I asked him what he was up to and if he ever made it to Anacortes. His reply was laughter and then he informed me that he had just agreed to be the senior pastor of a church in Anacortes and had been asking God for an intercessory prayer partner. This was a DA for sure.

On another occasion, I called Cliff to see what he was up to and he told me that he was going to have coffee with a missionary from Zimbabwe, named Duane Udd, and asked if I would like to join them. We met at the local Starbucks and sat down at an outdoor table with Duane sitting next to me and with Cliff across the table.

As they talked, I began to feel an increased discernment regarding Duane but couldn't quite put my finger on it. As they continued to talk, I was led to pray that God would give me "some kind of a sign" as to whether I was to do something with him or maybe specifically "not to" do anything.

Cliff asked Duane where he was living, to which he replied, "With my folks out at Lake Campbell." I then told him that I had just been in the home of some other missionaries to Africa who also lived at the lake and he replied, "That would be my parents." I then let him know that I had been asking the Lord for a "sign" as to whether or not Duane and I might be called to do something together. I then took out my brand new cell phone that contained a camera and showed him the only picture that I had ever taken with it... his mother. We agreed that qualified as a sign and that this was indeed a DA and we have been friends ever since.

So, this understanding of DA's is a really important thing to learn. Sometimes the DA is just a confirmation to what God already has you doing.

One day I was writing a kind of "working document" defining and elaborating on some of the projects that were on the horizon but that had not quite landed yet. Usually, I really struggle with writing, except when it is the result of something that God is doing. I began to pray for clarity and additional revelation as to just what He would have me write about and most importantly that it would become documented revelation and not just some good idea.

As I was writing, I realized that the last few paragraphs had just sort of flowed out of my fingers while I was praying and that I had not really had a related thought process at all. It was sort of like writing while you are daydreaming.

Now I frequently read that way, completing a page only to realize that my mind had been somewhere else and I had not retained anything that I supposedly had just read. However, I had never had that experience while writing.

In reviewing what I had wrote, I found a description of an International Ministry and Missions base where leaders from around the world would come and experience a Spirit filled synergy with other leaders that would send them back out with new levels of empowerment to touch the nations for Christ.

As I read the words that seemed to have just appeared in my text, I heard the Lord say, "This is mine. Do not touch it. I will do it for My glory."

I had no idea what this was about and for sure had no idea of how I could ever contribute anything to such a concept but left it as it was and moved on with my writing.

A couple of weeks later, as I was in prayer one day when that text appeared in front of me just like a "heads-up" display in a jet fighter where the text is projected onto the windshield in front of the pilot in a manner where it can only be seen by the pilot or like a teleprompter for a speaker or newscaster.

In this vision, the words appeared to hang in the air in front of me and I quickly read them and recognized them as the text that the Lord had added to my other writing. As I finished reading the text, I heard a voice say; "Who do you think you are?"

Now there could be no missing where this was coming from and so I quickly replied, "I am a son of the Most High God, bought and paid for by the shed Blood of the Lamb and it was He who wrote this and He who will bring it to pass for His glory. So you, satan, can take a hike!"

Immediately, the text disappeared and a great peace settled in over the room. It was right then that a missionary friend, Tracy Bonner, called me to ask if he could bring someone by. He was sure that God wanted his new friend and me to meet. A short while later, I was introduced to Robby Butler who had been in key roles at the U.S. Center for World Missions in Pasadena, California, for about twenty-four years before moving to Anacortes. He had, I was informed, been living in town for about a year and wondering the whole time if there wasn't just one person there that could relate to his life's work at the Center and share in his passion to reach all of the nations for Christ.

Upon meeting him I shared my experience of writing in the Spirit about the creation of an International Ministry and Missions base and showed him what I had written. It was a kind of answer to prayer to him and a huge sign to me that God was firmly in control and that if we would just "write down the vision and make it clear so that others could run with it", He would do the building.

Robby, along with a significant number of my other Divine Appointments, has continued to open my eyes to the impact that one person can have on the nations.

One day, as we were together in the car on the freeway, I was driving and Robby was praying and, out loud, he asked the Lord to continue to reveal what He would have us do together. As the words came out of his mouth, the Lord clearly said to tell Robby that He said, "We are already doing it". And we have been ever since.

When you get that "green light" and you know that you have a DA going on, your next obligation is:

Concept Two: "Finding Out What They Need"

When God first shared this with me, He told me that this line of questions; "How can we help? What is your vision? What have you been called to do? What do you personally need? What would it take to get you, your business or ministry to where you believe they should be? Where are you hitting a wall? would be the littlest key ever handed out and that it would open the biggest doors that had ever been opened. It would set the captives free and release the spoils.

At one point we were working with a business development guy that was working with an inventor that he was working with and we asked him: "Have you ever asked this inventor what 'he' thinks that he needs?" We discovered that the question had never been asked and when we asked the inventor directly, he literally just stopped in his tracks. Nobody had ever asked him.

They all came and they said; "I'm a banker. You need banking. I'm a chauffeur. You need my limousine. But, they never came and said, 'What do you really need?' We have found, and because The Lord has really impressed this on us, that this is the mechanics of what we want to impart. If you have a DA with somebody and they are in ministry or business and now days we don't differentiate too much at all, you must find out what they need. First what they "think" their primary need is and then, with discernment, what their real need is.

We are living life now and we don't differentiate any more between ministry and business. Are you getting this? There's no more ministry or personal, business. We're not doing that anymore. We are doing the presence of God, 24/7, delivering whatever "it" is. If it's a Bible, if it's a sermon, if it's a healing meeting or deliverance or it's a new technology or it's funding or it's a drive across town. It doesn't matter any more. If you're pumping gas in a gas station, then that's your ministry. Put it in the car as if that were Jesus Christ's personal car. That's the ministry; delivering whatever is needed into whatever situation you are in. Become a God delivery vessel and let Him dictate the cargo. There are times that we feely give of what we have and there are other times where there is an exchange and a profit but meeting the needs of your fellow man is the activity that releases resources for God's plans to be completed.

We have found that if we have these DAs and we really seek God on what He would have us do, and we step out in obedience, sometimes, even when we don't initially appear to have what we are asked to give, in that step of obedience, God provides in an unexpected way and we release a captive. Whatever that person thinks they are lacking, even if they are wrong, can and often does, become their bondage.

If you're a business man and you wake up on Monday morning thinking, "Man, I'm in a ten-thousand square foot manufacturing facility and I don't know how I'm going to take this new order because I've got to have twenty-thousand square feet in order to produce it. And, I don't know how to stop my plant and get to the next thing." That's your bondage. You are no different than a heroin addict lying in a doorway. You are still in bondage to something that has exalted itself to the place that God alone should occupy. Finding His will in the matter is true freedom.

If I have the solution from The Throne Room because I'm waiting on God to get an answer and I deliver that answer, tangible or intangible, I am then setting a captive free. Often, we find that in doing so, we are also releasing the "spoils", the resources, talents, wealth, witty ideas, relationships and more, which have been held captive as well, into God's purposes, and the hands of those that He has intended to steward them.

" _Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's_ _well-being." 1 Cor. 10:24._

**Concept Three: "Finding The Offering and The Calling** _"_

Who are they? Where have they been? What are they doing? Where do they think they are going? Do they have a vision to do something that is Kingdom Building?

We always ask the questions, "What do you have a vision to do? Where are you hitting a wall? Are you interested in learning how to go over, under, around or through that wall in a way that you may have never considered? And more importantly, are you willing to know that three people who hear clearly from the word of God or God's "still small voice" believe that you are headed North into a wall when you should actually be going South and the wall shouldn't be in your path at all?

Some people are not willing to take what they've prepared, to do their vision, and lay it down.

They come to me all the time. They've got a big stack, the three-ring binder. "This is the vision God gave me. This is what I'm doing and I'm going to do it even if nobody else comes along with me. I'm doing this vision!" And, they get slammed into a brick wall, a hundred and eighty degrees from where they are supposed to be going because they thought that God needed their help to do the vision. God does not need your help to do His vision. He needs your obedience to do His vision. We cannot improve God's plans. He can only improve our plans, if we constantly hand them back in a never-ending cycle.

Everything that is handed to me now, I hand back. Not only do I hand it back, but I hand it back sometimes with a multitude of counsel now. I hand it back with a lot of people and people say, "Why did you ask your Directors and Advisors about that? Don't you have the power to do that?" Yes, I have the power to do that, but I want their input. I want to hear from them.

We look for the gifting and the calling in people we encounter. When I met Dr. Gabe, I found a guy that had been locked away. Here's a man who came from Ethiopia, winds up with a couple of PhD's, two Masters and two Bachelors degrees and has written, I think at last count, thirty-seven books. He writes books in his native language of Amharic. I have had the pleasure of looking at some of his articles on The Holy Spirit and I find it to be some of the best information on The Holy Spirit that I have ever read. The marvelous thing is that he has little or no intention after publishing the books to sell them. God told Dr. Gabe to give them away. He works nights in a hospital and he is self-funded even when he goes to Ethiopia for a month or two at a time. He goes into a city and meets with every pastor he can find and he gives away all of his materials. And guess who's mad at him? The other ministries who sell their books and materials. They are really upset because he's giving his stuff away. But, the Word says, "Freely you have received, so freely give." So, what's their problem?

So, we have this DA. I mean God collides us together. He might as well have been a 747 crashing through my roof. We crashed into each other, in a way that neither one of us could understand. And, God said, "Ask him what he needs." He said, "I need to go back to Ethiopia." Then I pray and ask, "OK, that's what he believes that he needs. God, what does he not know that he needs?" God said, "He doesn't know that he needs to quit working nights in the hospital. He sort of knows it, but doesn't have any idea how to do it." My reply was, "God, if you will give us the way to help him quit that job, we will help him do that." When you find DA's and you have asked what they need, and if you see that they have a ministry and a calling that is bearing fruit, God might give you a revelation that they could bear fruit in a much larger area.

Therefore, we look for this process; Divine Appointments, find out what they need, find out if they have a ministry and a calling.

Concept Four: "Fruit Bearing Heart to Witness"

Have they already been seeing some fruit in what they are currently or in what have been doing? Is their life a testimony to what God is doing, versus what they are doing for him in their own strength?

In the Old Testament, God bore witness to Himself, but now, we are called to be the testament, to continually, day by day, be creating fresh new testimony of what He is and has been doing in and through us.

Concept Five: "An Invitation to Promotion"

Is there a calling to a higher purpose, greater work, responsibility or participation with others? See if they've got something they're doing well.

In the military, a great officer moves rapidly through the ranks consistently being rewarded with greater and greater authority and accompanying responsibility. This is a visible model of the structure of The Kingdom. This is the first level of the concept of promotion.

In Mathew 25:21, the Parable of the Talents we see this in action:

_"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!_ '"

In addition to the individual's role, we also might encounter the corporate manifestation of that person's life. Our world is full of those whose visions have taken on great corporate presence, in many cases, worldwide. Should we do any less with Kingdom Building endeavors?

Unfortunately, many believe that "corporate" is some kind of evil concept and that "corporations" are all evil entities run by evil people. In reality we are called to be unique individuals operating corporately, especially as it pertains to the Body of Christ. The word corporate actually comes from the Latin word "corporare" or to 'form into a body".

Is there something that they are doing really well that can be duplicated? I am always looking for that next great, duplicate-able, opportunity. You can think of it like franchising. I don't know if you know about franchising, but the concept behind franchising is that you've got a business like a restaurant and it's really good and it's successful and it's got systems and training and you can teach anybody how to work in that restaurant very quickly. It's packaged. It's marketed. It's all refined. Now you can duplicate it all over the country. This is part of what we seek to identify within the entities that we encounter. If you are having success in a city, we would like to see you have success in a region or nationally or internationally and we are happy to come alongside, as God directs us to, and help in those processes and then impart the ability for them to do likewise.

The bigger the calling and the more obedient we are to walk in it, even though we might not appear to have anything to offer, when we first enter into it, the more the resources begin to be released and begin to come in on the scale needed to do the work that we were called to do.

I believe in The Kingdom of God, there is an exponential increase eternally taking place which tells me that when God says, "If you're faithful over a little, you will be given much, and since you have an eternity to work in, the odds are, if you're faithful over much, you will even be given even more. Not by addition, but by exponential increase. You're two will become four; your four will become eight.

Most of you know the story of the doubling of the penny. If you double a penny every day for thirty days, you wind up with $10,737,418.24. So, would you give me a penny today and double it every day for the next thirty-days? God wants to move us into exponential increase in resources and in promotion. He wants to blow the lid off your belief systems, your channels of provision, your capabilities and your ability to execute His plans. We have to go there - if we are truly going to rule and reign with Him.

Just out of curiosity, I tried to run the doubling out just a second month. On the twenty-ninth day of the second month, the amount has become $5,764,607,523,034,235. Just in case you are wondering, that is "5 quadrillion, seven hundred and sixty-four trillion, six hundred and seven billion, five-hundred and twenty-three million, thirty-four thousand, two-hundred and thirty-five dollars". On the thirtieth day of the second month my calculator goes into exponential notation because there are two many numbers for it to display.

" _Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end." Isaiah 9:7._

The thing to note here is that God's exponential increase is not just a doubling but more often is a ten-fold or even hundred-fold return. The calculator becomes very worthless very quickly when trying to fathom the numbers. I am again reminded of His mandate to "Do the impossible with budgets we cannot comprehend".

" _Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." Mark 10:27._

I got to looking at this vision, and some people think that I'm a little bit of a visionary. I got to looking at this vision before me, and I was awe struck. "Yes, that's quite a nice vision. "Ok, God, how are we going to do this? This is kind of a big vision." And then, the Holy Spirit spoke very quietly to me and He said, "It's easy. We'll just do the first part first." But, I said, "God, how am I going to keep from being overwhelmed." And, He said, "Let's do the first project, first." And, I said, "OK, what's the first project?" And He said, "I thought we would do this little round blue one with the water on it." And I got a picture of the hand of the Lord, holding the Earth. And then He said; "Whenever you are overwhelmed, just come up here with me and look back at the first project and you'll see that it's really no big deal. It's just the little blue one with the water on it."

If you've been responsible with a little bit, you're going to get more. And, we believe that's an infinitely variable, eternal process that's going on. How long you stay at each stop, I think, is only dependant on how long it takes you to learn what you need to learn in that place. My wife has stayed with me while we went "round the mountain for forty years" like the Israelites looking for the Promised Land. Round and round and round and many, many times she came to me and said, "Why are we doing this again? Why are we back in the same place again? What haven't we learned?" Well, we hadn't learned to listen for a starter. And, we hadn't learned how to let God purify and prepare us. But once we began to do that, we began to see promotion and we see this across the board. We invite people to receive and most importantly, learn, in His strength; to walk in the promotion that God has called them to.

Gabe has prayed with me and ministered to me through some really rough times and has been one of those stable, steady friends in the Lord. I began to say, "Lord, what can I do, what can I really do, what do You want to do?" And He said, "I want you to hand him stewardship over all of Hazon's ministries." And I said, "Yes, absolutely!" So then, my question to Gabe wasn't, "Would you take the job?" My question was, "Will you allow God to promote you?" Because I know that you think that you are running your own ministry, aimed at Ethiopia, with a vision to do four or five other countries, but God says, "You've been faithful with a little and He could really use you doing all the countries. Are you willing to take the promotion?" And, he said, "Yes". And, the moment he said, "Yes", the anointing to do that work crash-landed on him, and he's a different person now today than he was before. So, we really want to encourage you to begin to ask God; "Where do you really want me?" Because, as you move in your promotion, and we've seen this over and over and over, maybe a hundred times now...If I say to Cal, "Cal, I believe that God has called you to head up this ministry over here, would you go pray about that." And, he says, "Yes" to the calling and he actually steps into the authority...he has to receive it. Not his version of it. He has to receive God's version of it and step into it. When he steps into it, we see an increase in provision immediately. We see an increase in future promotion. We see an increase in protection and we see an increase in unlimited opportunities, which yesterday he could not say yes to, but today he can because now he is properly aligned with the Father and thus, has the other resources that he needs.

You may have noticed in our Hazon corporate materials that under "Hazon", it says, "Impartation For Supernatural Endeavors". I asked God what our tag line was supposed to be, and that is what He gave me.

Impartation: Teaching, laying on of hands, praying, whatever we have to do to deliver, whatever it is He wants delivered. I don't necessarily want you to come and join Hazon and I don't even care if you never donate a penny to Hazon or do business with Hazon Development, Inc., although, you may be called to do either or both of these things. What I do want you to do is "plug-in" to The King of kings and The Lord of lords and His plan for you and your role in touching the nations. Find out what He called you to do. Just like we did with the ship ministry vision that He gave us twenty years ago. And, when you do, you will be amazed at what He can do in and through you, once you step into that place He's called you to.

He gave me that crystal clear vision for a ship ministry twenty years ago but recently, He has said to me, "You have a vision for a ship or maybe two. Would you steward a thousand?" Now, I don't know how to do that. But, God says, "Yes, I know, but I do." So, ok, let's go. I don't know how to do this. So, show me.

Within a couple of months of having that conversation with the Lord, I had one of those DA's with someone (he wound up in my living room) who works as a project manager with the U.S. and Canadian militaries in Victoria, B.C. That man works in a place where on a daily basis they are tracking around five-hundred ships in the Pacific Ocean at any given moment. They always know where the ships are, when they are coming. Days before they come to port they know who's running that ship, who the crew is, what the cargo is, where they're headed for and... Oh, by the way but I'm sorry, you can't just drive your ship, unannounced, into the Straight of Juan de Fuca anymore. He told me that through this facility and one other facility on the East Coast, they are currently tracking up to a thousand ships in the Pacific and the Atlantic.

So, the Lord made it perfectly clear to me that it doesn't matter what you know, or don't know. Sometimes, the less you know...the sooner you get dumb... the faster you can tap into God's Kingdom. As long as you walk in the door and say, "Hey, I've analyzed two-thousand businesses and you're stupid if you don't listen to me, you're missing it." I don't care what your expertise is. You're missing it. Dr. Gabe has more education than just about any human being I've ever met in my entire life but until I bullied it out of him, I never knew that - because when I encounter him, I encounter God. He doesn't come and say, "I have all these degrees and I've written all these books." He would never tell you that, on his own. He says, "I have some certificates." That's what he says. He says, "I went to school and I got some certificates. How can I bless you? How can I pray for you? How can I lift you into what God has called you to do?" Let God be glorified.

*****

Concept Six: "Team Prayer and Communication"

This is all about intercession and the communication of what God is revealing to the recipients of these DA's and resulting opportunities. It is the role of the intercession teams to receive further insight into the nature of the relationships, the opportunities, the promotions and the provision that results in attaining the results that God has intended. It is all about asking what it is that He wants to tell us next to take us to the next step along the way.

We believe adamantly in prayer. We believe, through our own education and experience, especially over the last four or five years, that it's become more and more important to quit going to God with just our grocery lists.

The Bible says, "Whatever you need, you have not because you ask not." There is certainly always a time and place for you to lay your needs at the foot of the Cross. I'm not saying don't ever do that, but, I am saying, "Make it a priority to go spend time in the presence of God, just listening until you hear His voice, however it comes." It may come in a "still small voice", it may come because you cracked open the Bible and you see a verse that you don't know how it ever got in there. It may come to you because three people in a row come to you and say, "Boy, this may sound funny, but the Lord's been telling me that you are supposed to start your own business." However it comes, it may come in circumstances. It may be that every time you turn around, somebody's handing you a new book on getting in the presence of God. Just open up, be willing, and you will find that the leaves falling out of the trees are speaking to you.

Team prayer and communication, when you get together with others and wait on the presence of God, causes Him to reveal, as is His desire, His purposes and plans.

" _For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles— if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power."_ Ephesians 3:1-7.

There are some people who are called to be intercessors. Some people are called to be prophetic intercessors. I run around with a group of people who hear from God in ways that just boggles my mind some times. Make sure you're plugged into some kind of a prayer network that you're not just praying with, but also, listening to.

Sometimes today in the church we think that prayer is: well you know, we have operations, finance, the building fund, the prayer team, the ushers, and it's this operational mentality about prayer and we're covered because Linda is in the basement with Betty and Mary Lou and they are praying, so we have that covered.

There needs to be an elevation of those prayer people to the point where we recognize that they are spending time in the presence of God to hear His voice in a way that others sometimes can't. It's very important for you, and the other people that you know that pray to convey what you are hearing in prayer and not just what is being said. Also, pray that the right people are listening to that conveyance.

Prayer can achieve some interesting things. Nothing is impossible. What if God wants you to lord over ten cities? What if He wants you to run a thousand ships? What if He wants you to move a hundred billion dollars from one person to another and it can't be done except that you're in the middle of the deal, that no matter how hard they try, they can't function, but you step in and it's like a knife through butter. Start asking. You might be amazed. Time is short. God's got some work for you to do.

Concept 7: "Mapping of Resulting Business and Ministry Opportunities"

The mapping of these opportunities begins with whether entities are operating in a for-profit or non-profit, mode. From there, we need to look at whatever piece of the picture we have and then begin to build out, up or down until all of the components have been defined, submitted, approved, budgeted and funded.

From there we can begin to analyze for potential synergies with other projects and participants.

If we are looking at non-profit, faith-based opportunities, the primary facets that we are looking for are a pure heart and valid needs being met.

If we are looking at for-profit opportunities, then we are looking for those opportunities that via mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and product or service offerings that have a potential to create wealth and produce ministry support and ideally, will fit well within other existing focuses and offerings.

Our primary recommended method of mapping of opportunities should be via a multi-year planning system that can provide the ability to manage large sets of projects globally for individual entities or groups of entities working in collaboration. These systems can enable the participants to build out long range plans top-down, bottom-up or both at once and can answer the questions: Who has a vision to do what, over what period of time, at what cost and what return and how do the individual components relate to any other components within the system.

We endeavor to be able to facilitate a variety of collaboration opportunities between individuals and any number of entities that desire to do so.

You should be able to log into a system that can facilitate collaboration either within just your organization or within a pre-defined group of entities that makes them aware of each other's projects so as to be able to request project analysis, financial analysis, development help with certain projects, and a number of other cost and time reducing functions within the group that you are collaborating with.

Concept Eight: "Contracts and Agreements"

One of my favorite examples regarding, "Contracts and Agreements" is of Paul Hogan who played "Crocodile Dundee". He had a business manager that he worked with for years and years and he once said in an interview that I saw, that they had never had a written agreement between them. He said, "The guy told me what he would do, and then he did it". Unfortunately, those kinds of relationships are few and far between.

Our tact with agreements and our recommendation to you is to go with the absolute smallest agreements that you can possibly go with, that will move your opportunities forward, in agreement with your CPA, your attorney, your spouse and whoever else you are working with. I always ask people that I work with what it takes, in the way of agreements, to make them comfortable. Whatever it takes is what we do.

Some people want the whole package. Non-disclosure, non-circumvention, non-compete and a hundred page contract, drawn up by expensive attorneys and requiring a great deal of time and money to accomplish. The lion's share of which, deal with what we are threatening to do to each other if we don't perform. Unless you have a legal team and a large legal budget combined with a real intent to chase someone through the courts if they do you wrong, it's probably not going to be the element that makes your deal successful.

In many cases, the bigger the legal costs to do the deal, the worse the results.

Often however, we just want to skip over the part where we define who's going to do what, for who, and for how much. Sometimes it's easy to run on relationship and optimism and overlook the things that the more operational, financial and legal folks would consider to be elementary.

We did three years of custom programming work some years ago for a company and we never had a written agreement of any kind with them, and then one day they came and said that their legal department said that they had to have a written agreement. So, they paid us a huge sum of money to draw up a whole bunch of paper work that they promptly threw into a drawer, and it was never looked at ever again, but somebody said they had to have it.

Be submitted to the people that you are submitted to. If you have a Board of Directors and they want you to have twenty-page agreements, then have twenty-page agreements. If you fall in love with your next-door neighbor and you want to do a deal with him and you can do it with a smile and a handshake, just be obedient. Be obedient with these things. We don't need to tie up millions of dollars writing agreements. We need to keep our agreements simple. This is the thing we love about joint ventures.

I have, for a long time now, believed that I'm supposed to consider all new relationship agreements to be, for at least the first few minutes anyway, joint venture agreements.

A joint venture agreement simply says that you and I are going to attempt to do the same thing. I might have a tractor and some seed and some irrigation pipe and you've got some dirt. Let's grow some corn. We both want the corn to be the most corn, the best corn, sold for the highest dollar and we will split it at whatever ratio we agree to but we are not in competition at all. These are the kinds of agreements that we would like to see you come together with. These are the key agreements, I believe, in Kingdom Building. They begin by asking: "What do we have and what do we need?" What can we do together?

These agreements might escalate, from time to time, upward into a merger or an acquisition.

A few years ago, we entered into a new relationship that followed our model of assuming and looking for a joint venture, but within the first hour of conversations, we discovered that the other party's prayer was for God to send someone to them who would acquire a controlling interest in their company and free them to focus on R & D while someone else ran the company. So in that case, we went from joint venture conversations right past merger and into acquisition mode.

These kinds of deals are agreement intensive and must be done by good attorneys taking whatever time and money is required. Short cuts here can cost dearly.

In some cases, what was originally hoped would be a joint venture actually works better as a strategic alliance, where you maybe sell software and the guy next to you sells computers but you're willing to put each other's coupons in your products. That's a strategic alliance. We fully encourage strategic alliances wherever you can form them, especially in complementary situations.

Concept Nine: "Project Management"

Project Management includes all the aspects of prioritization: resource allocation, HR components, timelines, budget forecasts and multiple project interdependencies, plus a whole lot more. Today this can take place via a variety of "online" project management systems that allow for remote access and collaboration. I will get into more detail about this subject in later chapters.

Concept Ten: "Witness"

The Lord said to me one day, "I want to talk to you about something that I asked you to do, and you're not quite doing it the way I wanted you to." So, I said, "What is it?" And, He said, "I want you to share the testimony of what I'm doing in your life. I want you to encourage and empower other people to know Me and to learn to walk in the impossible." And I asked, "How can I do that, I'm already talking to everyone I encounter." And, at that very moment, the phone rang and it was an invitation to be on the radio to share what God was doing in my life. If we will just say yes to the opportunities, the callings, the promotions, God will provide the missing pieces and "Nothing will be impossible".

I believe that He has called you to do this. I don't believe that there is anyone reading this who is not. God put you here for a reason. Please pray about these things. Ask God what He would have you do.

*****

Chapter 16 – Preparing for War - Part 3

Capital Projects

In January of 2005, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "I want you to resurrect that software development project that you did for Puget Sound Energy." I kind of laughed and said, "Don't you understand, that software application is long gone. I wouldn't know where to begin to go and look for it." And He said to me, "Fine, don't." Quickly repenting, I asked for His guidance and leading, then started digging around inside of archive folders inside of archive folders in my computer and was directed right straight to an archived copy of this piece of software that I had, without realizing it, been in possession of all along.

The code was completely secured with development passwords and the people who had worked on the project and might know the passwords were no longer available. I had searched all over the Internet and had never been able to find them. Back in prayer, I told God, "There is no way that I'm ever going to get this opened. I do not know or remember what the password was that would allow me to open the application." The Lord replied, "I'm going to show you how to do it." He then led me to the 4D Developer Directory of those that work in that software language used by my former company 'Journey Development' and where all of our applications had once been listed. The Lord spoke to me again, "I will show you the man who can help you."

I opened the directory, which contains listings of hundreds of 4D developers worldwide, and I prayed over it and I ran through it waiting on the Lord to show me the right guy and He finally said, "That man, right there!" I read his credentials and said, "Hey, you're right, (as if God could possibly be wrong). He might just be able to help me." It turned out that he lived in Deer Harbor, Washington, on Orcas Island about twenty miles from my house. He was most likely the nearest 4th Dimension programmer in the world to my current location. I love how God works in these situations. Plenty of signs and wonders so that no one can miss the fact that it is Him at work here.

So, I called the developer and shared with him my desire to open and modify this code knowing that this is impossible without the password or passwords. It was created so you could not crack the security in this thing. The software that we had been using to develop our application is the same one the U.S. Army had used to build their web presence and, as near as I know, it has never been hacked. He listened to my dilemma and then agreed that this was an impossible situation and then silence. After a long pause, he added, "At least that's what I would have told you up till now. But, last week...I met a guy." God's timing again!

He then agreed to take a look and see if there was something he could do to get me back into the design mode of the application. One day later he called me up and declared, "Yes, I'm as good as I think I am! I discovered all of your passwords therefore it is wide open and we can update the code into the most recent version of 4D."

The most frustrating thing to me about the security that had been put into the program was that I was the one who put in the passwords originally. However, that was years ago and with the addition of a head injury, try as I might, I could not remember the password. Imagine my surprise to learn that the master password securing the whole development environment was "JESUS"!

Today, we are in the process of resurrecting this piece of software that is a one of a kind for long range planning and budgeting. Upon completion of the upgrade it will allow for the creation of long range plans for individuals, organizations, businesses and governments. As a web based application, the program will be able to receive input from a variety of sources from virtually anywhere in the world. Development projects can be created and defined into this multi-year planning system and then be exposed to people from a specific defined group or from virtually anyone who has been given access, from around the globe.

One of the most exciting aspects of this system is it's potential use for the facilitation of associations, coalitions and alliances, which I believe are key components in the assembling of His body for the establishment of His Kingdom and His return.

Counting the Cost

" _And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him." Luke 14:27,29. (NKJV)_

The combination of receiving and communicating the vision combined with an ability to receive a variety of input that can reduce time and cost factors, not only facilitates "counting the cost", but also greatly reduces, or in some cases, nearly completely eliminates the cost.

We believe that God has hidden and then revealed this capability for such a time as this.

In order to assemble His body, each piece must first be picked up, cleaned off, set free and empowered to function in the manner that they were created for. Knowing His voice and His will are the beginning of that process.

Lies and Truth

During this time of "preparation for war", we have, at the leading of the Holy Spirit, experienced a wide variety of training and have received the necessary weapons of warfare needed to tear down the enemy's strongholds and set the captives free into their God ordained anointing and calling.

In virtually every case, there was a Divine Appointment with someone that the Lord wanted us to work with which allowed them to speak and minister into our lives. Then they followed up by training us in that area of ministry. We were then able to train others with what we had learned. The types of ministries that imparted into us were women's ministries, men's ministries, healing ministries, worship ministries, emotional healing, and deliverance. Each has, primarily, contributed to a major transformation in us personally and then in the lives of those who are in our sphere of influence.

During the year or so that we immersed ourselves into deliverance ministry education, Barb and I, as well as a couple dozen other people that we were in various ministry partnerships with, went through our own deliverance and training and received some very amazing insights in the process _._

Deliverance is oft times confused to be something that applies to a demon possessed person. Some might think of it as exorcism. What we are referring to here is not about possession but instead we are dealing with demonic oppression that is designed to hinder the anointing and calling of a believer and the identification of the weapons and strategies that have been used against them that may still be in place and have influence over them. For the most part, we are specifically interested in the application of deliverance ministry as it applies to those in leadership, or with leadership callings on their lives, who are encountering repeated hindrance in their lives.

Virtually all of us who participated in personal deliverance ministry experienced huge breakthroughs in our own walks and ministries.

While participating in the deliverance process and training, God-given anointing and calling were revealed, as well as some of the lies that the enemy had planted in my mind, which over time, had been accepted as truth by me. In our lifetimes, our experiences and traumas, along with the repetitive cycle of mentally reliving them, begin to support the lies that we are being fed until we accept them as truth. Satan is more than happy to orchestrate whatever situation is needed to solidify his lies. He continues spewing lies at us until we finally believe them, making the Word of God powerless in our life. That is, if we have ever even heard the truth of the Word in the first place.

" _For_ _God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."_

2 Corinthians 4:6.

We know that Satan is a liar and cannot create, but only imitate with contradiction, the original intent the Father designed for our lives. These lies are a "counterfeit" of the truth, which by definition is: "Made as a copy of something...in order to defraud or deceive people." It only makes sense that whatever is written on us by God before our birth is exactly what the enemy attacks, to keep us from becoming all that we were created to be.

" _You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry,_ _written_ _not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human_ _heart_ _s." 2 Corinthians 3:3._

A revelation of a specific set of lies about you, when turned around, must then reveal the truth about you specifically, and most likely, to mankind in general, as all temptation that we encounter from the enemy is "common to man". The temptation here is to accept the lies as truth, which we will do unless we know the truth.

" _No temptation has seized you except what is_ _common_ _to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." 1 Cor. 10:13._

As I studied the anointing and calling that was revealed about my life, I began to pray over them asking God for additional revelation. He led me to the specific scriptures that conveyed deeper truth about what God was saying such as extra focus on specific facets, which is also a message to all believers. It is amazing how many things that we think are truths, directly contradict what God has said in His Word. After reading and re-reading the scriptures, power has been taken from the lies that were so firmly embedded in my past. There will, however, always be new replacement lies waiting to be inserted. Daily time in the Word and in His presence is the answer to the preventing of the attempted derailment of our calling in His Kingdom.

Believing that you can't read or understand the Bible, or that you cannot be good enough and have done too much wrong to be loved by God, are some of the core lies that are designed to keep you from a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and His open door to a living, loving Father God. Some of my accepted lies were: God doesn't love me, no one can love me, people will get hurt if they love me, nothing will work in a relationship, I'll never have anything, and God can't use me the way I am, etc. It is deceptions like this that keep us from knowing the truth and experiencing the freedom that can only come from knowing Him and His Word. They lead to bondage and powerlessness. God desires that His children are set free.

" _Jesus answered, "I am the way and the_ _truth_ _and the_ _life_ _. No one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6._

" _So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." John 8:36._

I am including the documentation of what The Holy Spirit revealed to me after going through personal deliverance to give you an idea what this looks like. They are not only truths for my life but yours too. Each of us has our own unique God given anointing and calling as the destiny for our lives. In the following is my personal list with the scriptures underneath each one for more clarification. In marriages, you will see the overlapping of dual callings for the couple.

Calling and Anointing

1. He Knows God's Presence.

"Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people." And He said, "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." Then he said to Him, "If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here." Exodus 33:13-15. (NKJV)

2. Hears His Voice and receives God's answers from the Throne Room. (double anointing).

"The utterance of him who hears the words of God,

And has the knowledge of the Most High,

Who sees the vision of the Almighty?

Who falls down, with eyes wide open." Numbers 24:16. (NKJV)

3. Healing for himself and others; physical, emotional and spiritual. (double anointing.)

" _Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard."_  Isaiah 58:8. (NKJV)

4. Ministers wholeness to others through the Holy Spirit.

" _Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."_ Romans 15:13. (NKJV)

" _But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior."_ Titus 3:4-6. (NKJV)

5. He knows and hears.

" _And He said, "To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that 'Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand'."_  Luke 8:10. (NKJV)

6. He knows he is an heir with Jesus and understands how to be a joint heir.

"The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together." Romans 8:16-18. (NKJV)

7. Jesus is showing him how to receive for himself and for others what they need and how to rule in inheritance.

"...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power." Ephesians 1:17- 19. (NKJV)

8. Intercession - He knows how to pray in the gap.

" _Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior."_ 1 Timothy 2:1-3. (NKJV)

9. Covert Ministry - others do not always know what he does.

"And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me, and made Me a polished shaft; In His quiver He has hidden Me."  Isaiah 49:2. (NKJV)

10. He is a giver and knows that he can give what he does not have.

" _But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully."_  2 Corinthians 9:6. (NKJV)

11. He is a conduit and knows secrets from the throne room and that are hidden in safe places.

" _That He would show you the secrets of wisdom! For they would double your prudence. Know therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves."_ Job 11:6. (NKJV)

12. Stewardship of Kingdom Treasures.

"I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the Church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the Word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints." Colossians 1:24-26. (NKJV)

" _I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel."_

 Isaiah 45:3. (NKJV)

13. Gift of Faith.

"For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith." Romans 12:3. (NKJV)

14. Authority and knows the authority of believers.

" _When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan."_ Proverbs 29:2. (NKJV)

" _The centurion answered and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, "Go" and he goes; and to another, "Come" and he comes; and to my servant, "Do this" and he does it." When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!_ Matthew 8:8-10. (NKJV)

15. Witty ideas.

I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. Proverbs 8:12. (KJV)

16. Establishment of the Kingdom.

"See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven. Now this, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made,

that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a Kingdom, which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." Heb. 12:25-28. (NKJV)

17. Creation of wealth.

" _And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day."_  Deuteronomy 8:18. (NKJV)

18. Prophetic Word.

"And we heard this Voice, which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation."

2 Peter 1:18-20. (NKJV)

19. Salvation for others.

" _The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,_

Because the LORD has anointed Me

To preach good tidings to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,

And the day of vengeance of our God;

To comfort all who mourn,

To console those who mourn in Zion,

To give them beauty for ashes,

The oil of joy for mourning,

The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

That they may be called trees of righteousness,

The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified." Isaiah 61:1-3. (NKJV)

20. Truth for himself and others.

"Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." John 8:31-32. (NKJV)

21. Discernment of spirits.

" _For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."_ Philippians 1:8-11. (NKJV)

22. Worship.

" _But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth."_ John 4:22-24. (NKJV)

23. Leadership. (double anointing)

" _And God has appointed these in the Church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues."_  1 Corinthians 12:28. (NKJV)

24. Humility.

" _And God has appointed these in the Church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues."_  1 Corinthians 12:28. (NKJV)

" _The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor is humility."_

Proverbs 15:33.

" _By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches and honor and life."_  Proverbs 22:4. (NKJV)

25. Spiritual Authority.

" _For I also am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."_  Luke 7:8. (NKJV)

" _Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases."_  Luke 9:1. (NKJV)

How many of these scriptures were you able to say, "That's for me!" If you had a hard time receiving them for yourself, I would encourage you to re-read them, asking the Holy Spirit to make them real to you personally. Turning on His light in your life is the only way to dispel the darkness.

Barak's Call

As I began to pray over this section and the "Barak Calling", I was immediately led to an email that I had received from Darrell and Carlene Dahlman from Pacific Ministries, where they were sharing their "Best of 2007", which included a reference to Bill Johnson's excellent messages.

At the top of the Bill Johnson list, when I went to check them out, was a message called "The Commission" that perfectly summed up what The Lord has been showing us for the last several years. We are called, just like Joshua was called to clear the land of the "ites" and receive the inheritance. Barak was called to assemble ten thousand men to go into battle to defeat and overthrow the oppression of the Cannan"ites." For some time we knew, because of very specific confirmations, that there would be ten thousand people who would receive this impartation and would "collaborate" to win the war in this season. This facet was later further confirmed as the Lord led us into the understanding of the roles of Deborah and Barak and also the revelation of how they would specifically apply to this modern day version of Deborah and Barak relationships.

" _She (Deborah) sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, 'The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: Go, take with you ten thousand men...'."_ Judges 4:6.

Barak was not just called to assemble the Generals on the field but he was also called into an alignment with Deborah. This was a God ordained relationship and the correct alignment with the Judge and Prophetess of Israel was a key to his success in battle with the enemy. After God gave them the victory over their enemies, Deborah ruled Israel for forty years. Barak was the military General. Together they obtained and walked in that victory.

I have had, and continue to have "Deborah's" in my life and they have been with me in ministry in different lengths of time. There is great power in this alignment when we are working in agreement and properly positioned in authority on the battlefield. The enemy hates this alignment and always comes at you with the greatest of opposition.

Currently, I have had a divine appointment with a Deborah that was clearly destined of God to facilitate a working relationship for the fulfillment of my God given vision. When

My wife and I met with her to discuss why God put us together, Deborah, without prior knowledge of my vision, shared her article with us of her revelation from God of a Global Network. I in turn replied, "You have just summed up my book!" Since that time,

The Lord has set us in a working relationship within Hazon.

The following is her article that, it turns out, was written about the same time I was writing this book. Another "God-incident".

Waiting in the Upper Room

May 28, 2008

_This is truly a time of great change. The Church has come through a season of preparation, 2000-2007. 2008 is the "new beginning" that the Lord has been declaring. This year is so vital and so pivotal. We have not, in the history of the church been here- ever! This is the never before experienced time of the "manifestation of the Sons of God" Scripture tells us that, "as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name". John 1:12._ _All_ _believers, men and women, boys and girls are the Sons of God. Just as believing men and women, boys and girls are the Bride of Christ. "For there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28._

Since January this year there has been a shift and change. Breakthrough has been accelerated. That is because we are stepping into the Glory realm. The Glory brings acceleration. The Glory is His presence - Holy Spirit in full reign!

Those who have been crying out to God for more, those who have heeded the Lord's call to seek Him, to press in and to pray for HIS Kingdom to come, aligning their hearts with His heart, those who have walked in obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit and have allowed themselves, even at great sacrifice, to be positioned by the Lord, ,those who desire to see God's Kingdom purposes manifested on the earth as they are in heaven with no agenda to promote themselves, to those I say get ready! Stand fast. The time is upon us. The Lord has given us great favor. He has gone before us and has set things up. We walk according to His Word and He makes His purposes come to pass through our obedience to follow His command. That is favor – favor goes before us.

The Lord God by His Spirit has carefully orchestrated a global network of sold out, hard after God, "Sons of God". This network covers the world. Those who are a part

Of this network and are "in place" waiting for that which God has promised are in a "global upper room". Acts 2:1 says, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place." Those in this global upper room network are indeed in one accord in the Spirit and in their focus upon the promised outpouring of God's Spirit - His Glory! They are all "together" in one place – the placement of each one by the Lord Himself where He has instructed them to wait. (Some have grown impatient and abandoned their position. To them I say, REPENT! Turn around, accept your assignment and return to your post before it is too late. Don't miss out!)

This is a global positioning of expectation to be baptized with Glory Fire. Acts 2:2-3 tells us, "And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." Pentecost!

We are fast approaching Pentecost. The Global Upper Room is waiting and praying with great expectation. Calling forth the outpouring of Glory that is so powerful, so glorious, so unlike anything we have ever seen or known. It is explosive! Outrageous! There are no limits! The windows of heaven are fully open! Just as Pentecost in the book of Acts, in which they did not fully understand what to expect or what the results would be, this tsunami of the Spirit of God is beyond our ability to fathom. Flames of fire will suddenly burst forth around the world upon each place in this network. This is a Global Glory Fire! We will be ABLAZE with Glory!

Just as in that day of Pentecost, when this happens multitudes will be saved and added to the church with fruit that remains. This outpouring will usher in the global harvest.

This global "Net" is like the net Peter cast out into the sea upon the Word of the Lord. The "sea" represents mass humanity. The "Net" is to catch the "fish" – souls! This Glory network will bring in the last days harvest. The "catch" will be so great that we will have to work together to bring it in. There can be no "lone ranger" ministries. The body of Christ will have to function as a body. Every part working together for the purposes of the Kingdom of God. There will be miracles, signs and wonders galore! The Bride of Christ shall arise in all her Glory! All of creation is waiting. We are truly embarking upon the "new thing" God is doing. One step at a time as we follow JESUS, our KING!

Our Father, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!

Come Holy Spirit come!!!

Blessings,

Deborah Johnson

Sonflower Ministries

_Email:_ sonflowerministries@yahoo.com

Prior to receiving this revelation, I had an interesting experience. One day, this week, after a particularly windy afternoon, I noticed that the cap (also known as a spark arrestor), from my chimney's stovepipe was laying in my backyard. It apparently had blown off. I found this rather curious because it has been in place for close to four years. In addition, It remained intact through several severe wind storms in which trees were blown over for many miles around. Because it seemed odd to me I inquired of the Lord about it. (I often have things happen, that are prophetic symbolisms).

The answer in my spirit went something like this: The wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing the cap off. No longer will even the tiniest spark be contained but will be blown where the Spirit (wind) moves it and fanned into flames at His will.

Apostle/Prophetess Deborah Johnson is the Pastor of The Lighthouse Church in Coolin Idaho. She is the founder of Sonflower Ministries...Declaring the Glory of the Son. With a particular emphasis on prophetic intercession, she operates in the Glory and trains others to abide in the place where His Light dispels the darkness. Tearing down strongholds and healing heart issues which hinder us from experiencing the true love of the Father, thus setting His people free to live victorious lives. She also trains up and releases those called into the five-fold ministry. (End of 2008 article)

After 5 months of seeking the Lord in prayer for His proper placement and alignment, Deborah Johnson has joined us on the frontline and is currently now, President of Hazon Development, Inc. and is a key component of our team. Her email is: Deborah @hazondevelopment.com.

In his message, "The Commission", Bill Johnson says, "The safest place, for us, is on the front line of battle and the most dangerous place, is protecting what you already have... We are here to occupy for the sake of advancement... When we fail to have an enemy, we fail to have signs and wonders."

When I first heard these words, I could not help but relate them to the current issues of global missions that declare that there are some who go out and some who send. We all need to be one or the other, as God leads. While I tend to focus on the Generals, it is also clear that for every General there are millions at home supporting those who are the sent. It is the job of the senders to stay with the provisions and steward them in support of those who go out.

In Barak's case, he was called to assemble the Generals on the battlefield. Some came and some did not. I know the feeling well. This has become a major focus for me. The one thing that I love to do above everything else is to have the one-on-one or small group strategic vision sessions with those Generals who understand the "front-line" mentality and the power of agreement and collaboration within coalitions. Even just agreeing to have the initial meetings is often a point of immediate release of anointing, and the following signs and wonders, in the lives with similar callings. Many times getting the warriors just to consider assembling, not to mention the working together, seems more like battle than the battle itself. There is great Kingdom building capability when these gatherings take place and the Word explains what the enemy would like us to forget.

" _How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up? For their rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede."_ Deuteronomy 32:30, 31.

There is great exponential increase in power within every facet of what we do when we are aligned properly within "God's Plan" for us. This plan, His plan, is very much about the assembling of His body. Jesus requested of the Father, what He had heard the Father say, is that we would be one, as He and the Father were one.

" _I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father,_ _are_ _in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one."_ John 17:20-22.

Timing is, and has always been, an important issue regarding anything we do in the building of the Kingdom. While the issues of who, doing what, over what period of time, with what intended result and how these different relationships, synergies, and activities, relate to one another are very important but they are not the only elements. God's plans clearly include and convey all facets and dimensions of the plan. No detail is left out, including the timing. His timing. Obedience always includes God's timing. When we miss God's timing, we generally miss God's intended results.

Barak went out knowing the timing of what he was being called to do. He was listening to those who knew the timing. Deborah knew the timing. The princes of Issachar knew

the timing. Knowing the times and seasons we refer to as an "Issachar" anointing.

" _Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do..."_

1 Chron. 12:32.

" _The princes of Issachar were with Deborah; yes, Issachar was with Barak, rushing after him into the valley."_ Judges 5:15.

Some people, in the coming days, will mature quickly in the Lord and see breakthroughs in three months that took us thirty years to see. The foundation that they will be standing on is being laid down through our lives right now. They will seem to be "suddenly" and they will do the "impossible" because of the anointing and timing of God's purposes and plans. Barak was included in the great men of God because he moved into an impossible assignment, with total dependency on God, in obedience to the Word of the Lord through Deborah and with the proper alignment with Deborah, the Judge and Prophetess of Israel. He was even willing to not get credit for winning the battle. This is the same heart that God requires of all of us.

" _And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies."_ Hebrews 11:32-34.

*****

Chapter 17 – What Do I Do Now?

The time is now

We have all been called to participate in His plans for His Kingdom. Now, how do we proceed?

Let us start with eight (the number of new beginnings) basic questions:

1. Do you have a vision?

2. Where, if anywhere, is it being hindered?

3. Do you have a multi-year plan?

4. If you have a multi-year plan, how many years is it projected forward?

5. What would you do over the next 7 years, if money were no problem?

6. What would you say and do, if someone approached you with an asset that you could develop that is meant to be given to you, to support your ministry, mission or humanitarian aid organization, or program?

7. What Synergies, Alliances, Partnerships or Coalitions do you have in place to facilitate development of your vision, organization or program?

8. What higher-level Synergies, Alliances, Partnerships or Coalitions are you currently a part of to accomplish greater works than you, or your organization, can do alone?

Acquiring the Vision

(Questions 1 & 2)

To have a vision is to have a revelation of God's plan for you and those in your sphere of influence. It must come from Him, be empowered by Him and serve to glorify Him.

_"And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see_ _vision_ _s."_ Joel 2:28.

" _Where there is no vision [no redemptive revelation of God], the people perish..."_

Proverbs 29:18. (The Amplified Bible)

Are you asking for a vision from God but not receiving it?

Impure motives can hinder God's plan for you. This is why it is so important to make Him the Lord of your life so that you can discover His plan for you.

" _What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."_ James 4:1-3.

" _For_ _everyone who_ _ask_ _s_ _receive_ _s; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."_ Matthew 7:8.

" _If you believe, you will_ _receive_ _whatever you_ _ask_ _for in prayer."_ Matthew 21:21.

" _Therefore I tell you, whatever you_ _ask_ _for in prayer, believe that you have_ _receive_ _d it, and it will be yours."_ Mark 11:24.

" _For everyone who_ _ask_ _s_ _receive_ _s; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."_ Luke 11:10.

" _Until now you have not_ _ask_ _ed for anything in My name._ _Ask_ _and you will_ _receive_ _, and your joy will be complete."_ John 16:24.

" _Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him. And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us."_ 1 John 3:21-23.

Spirit-led Multi-year Plans

(Questions 3, 4 & 5)

For Kingdom building organizations that desire to move into, or enhance existing, multi-year planning, a few basic steps are required:

  1. Define the "End-Game".

At Hazon, for example, "The Vision" is for a "7 Year Plan" that has three primary components:

  1. "Identify, Empower and Mobilize" ten thousand Hazon Associates worldwide with our tools, processes and collaborations for Kingdom building.

  2. Conduct business in at least one hundred nations, to generate that support.

  3. Provide a variety of support to ministries, missions and humanitarian aid in every nation.

  2. Define the organization's members who can or will participate in the creation of the plan.

In a small organization this may be limited to just a few key management staff. In a larger organization, it might include your Directors and Officers and, may even include everyone in your sphere of influence such as all of your employees or all of the members of your church, ministry, or other organization.

  3. Define their job descriptions and areas of responsibilities.

In our long-range planning system, we facilitate two levels of activity; Planning and Operations, within three levels of breakdown: Projects - Budget Items -Work Orders.

As a result, each "User" or contributor to the system and its ultimate product, THE 7 YEAR PLAN, must be defined according to their authority within the system.

Each "User" has a unique profile that lets the system know what functions that they are approved, by the Administrator, to initiate.

These functions include: Project, Budget Item or Work Order creation, approval, delegation, budget submission and approval, work delegation, etc.

To put it quite simply, this is what would be required if you were to begin to "write down the vision so that others could run with it", "Count the cost" and "Do the impossible". (These steps assume that you have access to a core technology that can contain this information.)

" _Then the LORD answered me and said: "Write the vision and make_ _it_ _plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision_ _is_ _yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him but the just shall live by his faith."_ Habakkuk 2:2-4.

" _And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him."_ Luke 14:27, 29.

_He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be_ _impossible_ _for you."_ Matthew 17:20.

With this set of tools and processes, we can facilitate the next levels of what we are being called to do, the "Revenue Based Ministry Support" and "Collaboration".

Revenue Based Ministry Support

(Question 6)

For many years now I have asked key ministry and mission leaders a simple question, "What would you do if someone approached you with an asset that could be developed for the support of your organization but you do not know how to proceed with that development on your own?"

The answer has always, with maybe one or two exceptions over the last two decades been, "I'd pray for their success and remind them to send me a check when it all worked out." In cases like this, they are being handed something that just takes a little effort to find the right person to partner with in order to add the value intended. Most leaders, unless they are also business development or real estate development oriented, just let these things go right on by.

At Hazon, we seek to "impart" the idea that God provides in some mysterious ways that often are not obvious at first glance or that require a specific person or entity to participate in order to get them to fruition. It is our goal to equip leaders to receive every avenue of provision that God might provide, so that they might truly be "lacking nothing."

" _There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."_ Acts 4:34, 35.

Those who have vision and the ability to identify and collaborate with those who possess the missing ingredients to their success are creating today's wealth rapidly, especially in technology.

Collaboration Concepts

(Questions 7 & 8)

During the technology and "dotcom" days of the nineties, we learned that everyone was a possible partner and almost no one was a direct competitor. This is more so today than ever before. Today's global companies are partnered with anyone and everyone that can give them a market distribution channel or enhance their products and services.

These collaborations take on a variety of forms and knowing how which one works for what, is a key factor in choosing the right vehicle to get you where you are going.

One of the primary projects going at Hazon Development today is the creation of infrastructure not only for a variety of different collaborations and organizations but also for the education of Hazon Associates to duplicate this service for the benefit of our various business and ministry partners.

Collaborations can result in a variety of benefits including: new relationships, lowered costs and reduced time requirements. Here are some examples of collaboration that can produce these benefits for you and your organization.

Synergies

" _Combined action or functioning."_ (American Heritage Dictionary)

The concept of synergies is based, first, on an outside or an internal dedicated resource focusing on the observation and analysis of the content of your planning system, looking for redundancies. Redundancies can signal potential opportunities for new or expanded existing synergistic relationships.

Redundant efforts can result in wasted time, greatly increased costs, and inefficient use of human and other types of resources. By identifying identical, similar or related projects, within that sphere of influence, be it an individual organization, association, coalition, etc. there is an opportunity to combine resources and increase your potential.

This potential synergy identification is a primary motivation for acquisition and use of a long range planning system and is a significant motivating factor for participation, and utilization of the system and expanded relationships, in one or more of these various, larger picture, collaborations.

Associations, Alliances and Coalitions

An Association is a group of people organized for a joint purpose. An Alliance is a union or association formed for mutual benefit, especially between countries or organizations.

A coalition is an alliance for combined action, especially a temporary alliance of political parties forming a government or of states.

Of special interest, especially within the topic of Kingdom building, are the coalition aspects of "forming a government" and "combined action". Coalition government is created and implemented within and by the participants in the coalition. It is self-governing in nature and specifically for a common cause.

Many people are using these terms and attempting to participate in these concepts but often without clear understanding of their definition, operation and intended results and so, their involvement frequently leads to great dissatisfaction and unwillingness to participate in future synergistic opportunities.

It is easy to understand that a person attending an "Alliance" meeting while expecting Coalition results can leave the meeting feeling as if nothing was accomplished. Their own definitions of the terminology, unless clarified, can lead them to false expectations and little or no desire to proceed with their involvement.

As Russ Snyder, packing his dictionary, put it so well; _"Words mean something."_

If you want to see something accomplished as a group, especially the formation of a (Kingdom) government, make sure that your Associations and Alliances are also forming Coalitions.

Joint Ventures

At Hazon, we approach every new relationship, for at least the first five minutes anyway, as a potential fifty-fifty joint venture. Once we get to know each other then things may change but we always assume that we have half of a potential new joint venture.

A joint venture is an entity formed between two or more parties to undertake economic activity together. The parties agree to create a new entity by both contributing equity and they then share in the revenues, expenses, and control of the enterprise.

The venture can be for one specific project only, or a continuing business relationship such as the Sony Ericsson joint venture. This is in contrast to a strategic alliance, which involves no equity stake by the participants, and is a much less rigid arrangement.

The phrase generally refers to the purpose of the entity and not to a type of entity. Therefore, a joint venture may be a corporation, Limited Liability Company, partnership, or other legal structure, depending on a number of considerations such as tax and tort liability.

Reasons for forming a joint venture:

(From Wikipedia)

Internal reasons:

Build on company's strengths

Spreading costs and risks

Improving access to financial resources

Economies of scale _and advantages of size_

Access to new technologies and customers

Access to innovative managerial practices

Competitive goals:

Influencing structural evolution of the industry

Pre-empting competition

Defensive response to blurring industry boundaries

Creation of stronger competitive units

Speed to market

Improved agility

Strategic goals:

Synergies

Transfer of technology/skills

Diversification

Top Down and Bottom Up Communications

"But he's scary smart, he networks down as well as up, and he absolutely supports his people." Time magazine, quoting an unnamed senior U.S. military officer in Iraq who was describing his commanding General, David Petraeus.

" _In a flat world, top-down decision-making is replaced by bottom-up empowerment. Widely distributed companies cannot use an authoritative command/control structure. Instead, market leaders will find ways to remove the red-tape shackles from their project teams and empower them to get work done and make local decisions_."

Tenrox White Paper: "The Rise of the Project Workforce, Managing Projects and People in a Flat World". Page 3 © 2006 Tenrox)

Today, when we empower leadership to "cast" a vision within an organization, we always include a "bottom-up" communication model.

Our favorite method of impartation of a concept within an organization is via "Revelation and Relationship" and is generally expanded by invitation to those already participating in some form of activity with those doing the inviting.

A regional coalition that we are working on is based on "Regional Revelation and Relationship for Global Impact." This coalition is a group of ministry and mission leaders who all relate to the unique role that the Pacific Northwest has, as a whole, in reaching the nations for Christ.

No matter how far down into the sphere of influence the vision gets, we always want to make sure that the lowest level, or the last person to get the information, has a clear communication channel back to the vision holder. Specifically so they can meet the needs of those down in the sphere that are attempting to participate fully or in some cases need to make initial decisions about their degree of participation.

All concepts in our top-down "relationship & invitation" model are based on several assumptions. These are:

1. The primary leadership of the audience has read THE 7 YEAR PLAN, and answered the "Key Questions". They are open to receiving the gifts being offered and the training to use them effectively.

2. The recipients of these gifts are open to analysis of their individual situations, or training to self analyze and corresponding implementation or training for self-implementation, of the solution or solutions.

3. This primary audience begins participation in a manner that exposes their sphere of influence to the vision and mission in such a way as to impact the other ministry and business resources in that sphere.

4. This extended audience agrees to participate with the leadership of that sphere of influence or other like-minded individuals or organizations in other "higher-call" collaboration activities.

In a broad based, more "grass roots" generic model, the primary motivation for participation becomes the best use of time and money as opposed to alignment with a specific leader, purpose, or organization. The desire for these time and money saving solutions are what opens the audience to the potential for better understanding of the big (Kingdom Building) picture. In this model, the "impartation" of the gifts becomes a secondary event, imbedded into the implementation of the specific solutions being presented.

The time is now!

Even as I am writing, the confirming word continues to come in just as it always has.

Three recent emails cause my wife and me to be very amazed as we read them. Are these people somehow eavesdropping on our every thought and conversation? Or, are we all just hearing the same message, from the same God.

In the first one, a local prayer leader shares a vision that describes precisely what we have been called to impart, using the terminology of the engineering of a power grid, designed for the transmission and distribution of "Power & Light":

" _Connection...Last month, one of our core team members had a dream. A web-like electrical 'flickering grid' appeared. Actually, there were many flickering grids. They would flash and then go out. Then she saw them being plugged into a transformer, beginning to power up and stay lit."_

Very interesting word picture! In our area, there are many networks of Christians, and various ones flicker here and there at appointed times. But there is a need for an active connection to be built into the grid.

In the second confirmation we received, Chuck Pierce's latest word speaks directly to our past, present and most importantly, future, regarding the issues of: development of testimony, the image of our future, alignment with others, rearrangement of leadership, enhancement of skills, dormant talents, God's leading, new positioning, super-abundance, transfer of wealth, and coming forth in a new way.

" _The Lord is saying, 'Incline your ear and come to Me. I decree that you are going to hear how to come forth. You will not come forth in the same way as you did in the past because the Lord is not calling you forth in the same way'."_ (From: "WAIT! The Lord is Realigning and Developing Our Faith in the Next THREE MONTHS" by Chuck Pierce), November 10, 2007, Elijahlist.

In the last confirming word, Rick Joyner (November 11, 2007, Elijahlist) chimes in with:

The Most Valuable Gift in the Times to Come: Knowledge and Wisdom to Know What to Do

" _The Church is going through a transition right now. The form of the Church that has evolved through the last few centuries will not be able to survive the coming times. Like John the Baptist was honored by the Lord, we should honor the Church of the past for all that it has accomplished. But another type of leadership is being raised up that we must now follow. One will decrease and one will increase."_

As we have discussed, leadership in a transition is different from the type of leadership that may be effective in other times. The leader in transition must discern the times and know how to respond to them. The Lord had a severe rebuke for those who knew the signs of the weather better than they understood the signs of the times. In recent times, weather forecasting has become increasingly accurate, but, in general, the Church's discernment of the times does not seem to have kept up, but it will. How?

In I Chronicles 12:32, we are told about "...the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do...." Issachar was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, which became one of the twelve tribes of Israel. How did this one tribe understand the times and have the wisdom to know what to do? We are given the answer in Genesis 49:14-15, when Jacob is prophesying over his sons.

_He says this concerning Issachar: "Issachar is a strong donkey, lying down between the sheepfolds. When he saw that a resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant, he bowed his shoulder to bear_ _burdens, and became a slave at forced labor."_

_Issachar saw that the resting place was good, and he saw the land was pleasant, but he gave himself to doing the hard, practical work, even becoming a slave. This servant's heart enabled the Lord to trust the sons of Issachar with what will be the most valuable gift of all in the times to come--the knowledge_ _of the times and the wisdom to know what_ _to do in them."_

Preparation and Discipline

" _It has been said that in the present information age, information is the most valuable commodity, but accurate information about the future and the wisdom to know what to do with it will soon be many times more valuable than all other forms of information combined. It was this combination of being able to interpret Pharaoh's dream about the future, with a word of wisdom to know what to do about it, which enabled Joseph to be promoted to be the Prime Minister of Egypt in his time. Those who combine these gifts will soon find themselves likewise elevated to high places of influence._

Many people seem to feel called to Joseph's ministry, as people quite often tell me, but it is rare to find anyone who wants to go through the preparation for this like Joseph did. Not only did his brothers reject him, but also they sold him into slavery. Then, being a slave was not enough discipline--he had to be falsely accused by his master's wife and thrown into the dungeon. Still interested in this type of ministry?

Often I have watched many very gifted people bear little fruit in their lives, mostly because they refuse to go through the discipline required to be trusted with high level authority, which is influence. As a general principle, the easier something is to attain, the more insignificant it is. If we really want a significant ministry, it will not likely happen fast or with ease. That is why we are told to emulate those who through faith and patience inherited the promises. The more significant the ministry, the more faith and patience it will likely take to attain it.

It is for this reason that most people, even very gifted people, usually live lives of frustration and regret because they only wanted to do the fun part, often considering themselves above the hard work required to actually bear fruit. These are the ones who may shine brightly for a moment, but then quickly flame out like a meteorite. They simply do not have the substance, the depth of character, knowledge, wisdom, and devotion to work hard to keep the fire burning for long. These usually pass their later years in bitter frustration, living in the past because their present is so shallow and their future so dim.

It requires hard work to be a "son of Issachar," and not many are willing to do it. It was for this reason that the Apostle Paul was actually required to make tents. We may think this was a tragic waste of the great apostle's time, but the Lord would not have trusted him with the great revelations that he was given if he had not been willing to stay moored to the practical, even the mundane, and turn it into worship to the Lord. What we teach, we also have to live if we are true.

Having a vision is the fun part, but there are few who are willing to do the practical and usually hard work that it takes to make the vision a reality. It is also easy to start losing your vision as you get into the details. Don Potter once shared an insight that I thought was very important about King David. David was a prophet, and if he had focused just on that he might have been the greatest prophet of all. He was also a musician and psalmist, and had he just concentrated on that, he might have been the greatest ever, but he was called to be a king and administrator, and that is where he really left his greatest mark. Being a prophet and musician served his ultimate calling, but he kept the main thing the main thing."

Army of Servants

" _Now most who have never held a position of leadership want to be a king or the top leader, not realizing the ultimate hard work it takes. There is an unending stream of maddening details that every leader of a significant work must attend to. The glory of human recognition wears off fast, though that seems incomprehensible for those who have not experienced it. Even so, the power can be like a drug, very addictive, and one that will sap your life, which happens to anyone except those who remain Christ's slave._

Although servant leadership is talked about a lot, it is truly rare, and may only be truly found in the Church, but it is actually hard to find there too. Even so, before the end of this age, it will be the only kind found in the Church. True leadership is a burden; it is a cross, and not many are willing to take it up. The leadership of the world is self-seeking and self-serving, and is by far the most common leadership found today, even in the Church.

If you want to know one sign of the times that marks the fact that the end of this age is near, it will be the Church becoming a radical and effective force in the earth. This will begin with a new breed of leadership. The Church will become an army that eclipses any other army in history for power and effectiveness, but to save lives, not take them. We will also see the Church specializing in the way that different departments of the military specialize, while working together like the military instead of competing with each other."

" _At the same time the Church becomes such a radical force, she will become a Bride without spot or wrinkle. Just as Solomon prophetically foresaw the Bride in Song of Solomon 6:10: "Who is this that grows like the dawn, as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun, as awesome as an army with banners? She will be beautiful and as awesome as an army at the same time. We are about to see both of these characteristics become increasingly manifest. The Church is going to be something beautiful to see, and she is going to be more awesome than any army has ever been."_

Rick Joyner, MorningStar Ministries. email: info@morningstarministries.org

Elijahlist Publications, 310 2nd Ave SE, Albany, OR 97321. www.elijahlist.com.

email: info@elijahlist.net Phone 1-541-926-3250.

I pray that you will let these last three words soak in and "light the way" to what I have shared with you, and hopefully, imparted into you...discovering, and walking in God's plans for you and your sphere of influence in the establishment of His Kingdom.

Shalom!

####

Gary James Bundy

One of the very first things that Gary was prompted to do after he was first saved was to pray a three part prayer that went like this:

First, He was prompted to pray that he might be used to deliver solutions beyond his capability, so that God would be glorified in those solutions.

Second, that he would give God permission from that moment on, and for the rest of his life, to do whatever work in him that God needed to do, whenever and however He wanted to do it, so that He could use Gary as He needed.

Third, Gary was prompted to pray that he would always give God permission to be the Lord of his circumstances, which meant that God would put him wherever God needed him to be and when He needed him to be there...be careful for what you pray.

Since that prayer, Gary has accumulated over thirty-five years of Executive level Business Development, Finance, Real Estate, Software Development and Internet experience as a company Founder, CEO, President, Chief Information Officer, Business Analyst, Acquisitions Manager, Development Consultant and Custom Solutions Projects Manager. As a business and real estate investment analyst, Gary has analyzed over 2,000 businesses and has been a principle in over 100 business and real estate acquisition projects. In addition, Gary has participated at an executive level in more than 100 Internet startups and has developed a variety of software products and services covering the areas of Real Estate, Business, Finance, Engineering, Medical and Law Enforcement.

Gary's business, real estate and technology experience has included everything from small startups to Fortune 500, state governments and nonprofits including the creation of a foundation for Christian schools and The Association of Christian Technologists.

In addition to his business and ministry activities, Gary is a lifetime saltwater boater and in 2002 became a licensed yacht captain. Gary has participated in sport fishing and the yacht charter business in Washington's San Juan Islands, British Columbia and in San Diego California where he performed over 500 hours of public speaking in 2001 while crewing on the 148 Ft. harbor tour vessel, "Spirit of San Diego".

Today, Gary's primary interest continues to be "Hear, obey...and giving it all away!" so that God gets the glory while teaching others to do the same.

Gary lives in Liberty Lake, Washington with his wife Barbara. They have five children, Erica, Michael, Kim, Rachel and Marianne and eleven grandchildren.

**F** or additional information, contact:

Gary James Bundy

PO Box 693 Veradale, WA 99037 garybundy1@mac.com

(or)

Hazon Development, Inc.

info@hazondevelopment.com
