Shaken and Reformed

“Jesus needs to make it impossible to go back to church as we have known it for all our lives. He is reforming [the church], this is the great new reformation to get it ready for a new move. He is making the vessel bigger so that we can be what He want us to be.” – Kyle Bauer

It was our privilege to have Pastor Kyle on our church ministry team for several years before he and his family moved to Mexico. He is an outstanding man married to an outstanding woman with some outstanding kids. I am in a position to bear witness first-hand to his unusual sensitivity to the voice of the Holy Spirit. EVERY single time (and the instances were very minor, very few, and very far between) that as his leader and mentor I noticed something that I felt a need to address, whether in his ministry functions, his personal life, or in his family relationships, BEFORE I could arrange a moment to speak to him about it, he took the initiative to come to me saying something like, “You know, Pastor Mark, last night the Lord corrected me about something and I want to share it with you.” I realize, of course, that he comes from great stock as Pastor Jack and Anna Hayford’s grandson and Scott and Rebecca Bauer’s son, but he would never have become the man that he is without personally paying the price to run hard after Jesus. The Apostle Paul instructs us in 1 Corinthians 14:29 that when credible people feel they have received a “word from the Lord,” we should listen to it and carefully weigh it. I encourage you to do this with what Pastor Kyle shares in this video clip. As it is written in Revelation, “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

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The Gracious Gift of God’s Spirit

Came across this while preparing to preach from John 14:

“Jesus’ first disciples were not superdisciples deserving the gift of the Spirit because of their extraordinary faith and obedience. They didn’t understand things; their thoughts were often the thoughts of mere humans, not the thoughts of God. At the time of Jesus’ greatest need, they forsook him and fled, and Peter even denied that he knew Jesus at all. But in contrast to those of the world, who did not love and obey Jesus, they did love him and in their own imperfect way they did obey him. It was to disciples like these Jesus promised the Counsellor.”

Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 4, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 300–301.

What Every Sick Person Needs to Know About God

Streaming our service live from Antioch Church last week brought back memories of the days when Teresa and I did a lot of television. This evening, I stumbled across this old YouTube video of us guest-hosting Pastor Mike and Hazel Simons’ live telecast. Teresa and I talked about divine healing that day and towards the end of the broadcast, I sensed an unusual anointing as I talked about “What Every Sick Person Needs to Know About God.” Given the coronsvirus pandemic circling the globe today, my message from back then is more relevant now than ever before! The video quality of the YouTube video is not the greatest, but the audio is fine and I believe the content will encourage and inspire you. The divine healing theme was woven throughout the broadcast that day, but my actual teaching began about an hour and a half into the program. Teresa and I went on to record 331 daily episodes of our own “Word and Spirit” daily live broadcasts, including ten episodes dedicated to explaining the gift of spiritual language (commonly called speaking in tongues.) If you would like to watch any of our archived Word and Spirit programs, you can find several of them online by simply Googling “Mark Brand Word and Spirit.”

Are you ready to follow in Spurgeon’s footsteps?

A lot of preachers over the years have admired Charles Haddeon Spurgeon. We may be given an opportunity to follow in his footsteps.

“All day, and sometimes all night long, I went about from house to house, and saw men and women dying, and, oh, how glad they were to see my face! When many were afraid to enter their houses lest they should catch the deadly disease, we who had no fear about such things found ourselves most gladly listened to when we spoke of Christ and of things Divine.” Charles Spurgeon – 1854 London Cholera Outbreak

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