The best way to minister SpiritFirst involves spiritual gift capacities as the primary means of determining strategy. Once we set the goal of operating and functioning by spiritual authority and power, we surrender to the work of Holy Spirit most easily through the spiritual gift capacities He has given us. This often sets up the person’s faith for a surrender to what Holy Spirit is doing in the ministry time because they cease attempting to be in control of their own redemption. So, this approach sort of “clears the way” for both the receiving and the releasing, both the person receiving ministry and the one releasing ministry.
Consider how the gift capacities listed in Scripture fit so well into specific prayer ministry: knowledge, wisdom, healings, discernment, prophecy, and tongues/interpretation have a powerful place in the process of personal ministry! Consider also how learning to involve all these gifts in intercession becomes a proving ground for using these gifts in specific prayer ministry. Prayer ministry prepares us for prayer ministry.
If you can hear the heart of God for a city or nation, you can hear the heart of God for a person or family. If you can hear the heart of God for your leaders, you can hear the heart of God for a stranger. If you can hear the heart of God for more general considerations of spiritual atmosphere,
you can hear the heart of God for the issues of a hurting heart. Then, if you can receive God’s strategy to pray for your leaders, city, nation, and atmospheres, you can certainly re
ceive God’s strategy to pray for someone sitting in front of you, to know what God wants to do in their heart right here and now!
Discernment is discernment whether is discerns the spiritual condition of a place and time, a city or nation, or discerns the spiritual condition within another person. Healings are healings whether they address the pain of a headache or the death spirit of cancer or they touch the deepest, hidden places of the heart marked by abuse, trauma, or generational recompense. Wisdom as spiritual strategy can open your eyes to what God is doing in a region or what God has set up a person to receive who is sitting in front of you – in fact, the very reason they are sitting in front of you is that God has set them up to receive ministry!
Positioned with Authority
While all believers have authority and power and all believers are leaders at some level, all believers do not have the same positional authority or access to all the gifts. Jesus bestowed kingdom leaders on the Body so they could position prepared people to produce ministry. This positional authority is a matter of alignment and assignment: you have the authority of your assignment, and you can be aligned with an assignment in such a way that you share in the authority of that assignment.
Not everyone has the same level of assignment authority, but all believers have some assignment authority that begins with th
eir own bodies and personal domestics and may be extended by Jesus, who has all authority in heaven and earth, to include nations. This assignment carr
ies a “in heaven and earth” level of kingdom authority: that is, a person’s leadership assignment or scope or sphere of authority brings heaven’s authority, decisions, and responses into the that assignment so that leader represents the kingdom of God on earth. That person has access to the right of the Father where Jesus intercedes for the will of the Father.
To understand how “the keys of the kingdom” operate, we need to examine the operation and function of kingdom authority. The keys were given to those Jesus prepared to receive them. Jesus had the keys, then Jesus gave the keys to the apostles. Then, those who devoted themselves to the apostle’s assignments functioned in the same authority at the level of leadership they were given. While many were doing miracles, signs, and wonders, Luke reports that “God did many miracles at the hands of the apostles,” even at the time Stephen and other leaders were aligned with the apostles and did miracles, signs, and wonders, consistent with the scope of their leadership.
So, the issue of when and where and how to do ministry begins with heavenly assignment and kingdom leadership because everything God is doing has purpose at its root. The keys are “kingdom keys,” and the authority is given to get God what He wants. Start there. Stay there. Ministry there.
For FreedomRooms, we function in the authority of an international assignment, FreedomMinistry International, and we f
unction according the assignment and in the authority of the assignment. So, we are prepared to worship and intercede at an international level, minister at an international level, so we can release ministry at a local and personal level. Whatever we do in alignment with that assignment has that level of spiritual power and authority available to whomever we minister. All of it follows the assignment, so we are always heading our ministry toward discipling leaders even if we are praying for their hurt knee to be healed or kicking a strong man out them. While they may not walk the pathway to restorative transformation or the pathway requires them to walk for a decade to experience the fullness of that process, we are still heading that way when we pray for them in FreedomNite, FirstDay ministry time, in a seminar, or in FreedomRooms. We are always assuming this moment of ministry is part of a larger, international assignment that is called to bring wholeness to the whole man.
We are fully aware that people often come to the place and time of ministry with their own expectations, but we always minister in God’s expectations. To do that, we must be ministering from God’s point of view, with God’s heart, with the Passion of the Father!
Procedures and Protocols
So, we always begin FreedomRooms sessions with prayer. That prayer is the opening salvo of war! That prayer is also the moment in which we set the atmosphere of the room and the procedures for the ministry. In that time of prayer, I expect to receive what Holy Spirit wants to do next, the first step to how He wishes to work with the person sitting in front of me. In that prayer, I reveal to every spiritual person and reality that I am proceeding in the authority of the assignment and the power of the Spirit.
I apply Ephesians 3:10-11 to the moment: “God’s purpose in this is to reveal His strategic wisdom in all its many facets to unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenlies. This was His eternal plan, that He fulfilled through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I am about to reveal God’s strategic wisdom for this person sitting in front of me to the rulers and authorities that think they have a right to influence and control some aspect of that person. When the kingdom of heaven arrives in that person’s life through my assigned ministry, I want what hell has been doing to meet with the what-God-wants for that person. I will be revealing God’s strategic wisdom to spiritual reality.
Now, that sounds like a pretty deal because it is! However, in the moment that is usually pretty much part of the moment. Bells don’t ring. Angels don’t sing. Thunder doesn’t shake the place. Well, sometimes maybe…my point is that while all that eternity is behind and around what we are doing, the person isn’t overwhelmed by that greater perspective. The person should be experiencing this in a way that does something of which they are not even aware – and you are only aware of enough to proceed through the entire session responding to Holy Spirit.
In other words, you need to proceed to do, prayer, command, decree, cast down, cast out, heal, restore, and reveal through discernment, both discerning the need and the cure, so that you are aware of what Holy Spirit is doing through you in ways that only you may be aware. You share what is going on with the person only at the Spirit’s direction.
Avoid the idea altogether that the person needs to hear you describe the big black spider demon building a web in their pancreas or the massively entangling octopus spirit wrapped around their hypothalamus! They don’t need to hear that so they can have faith that you know what you are doing! Of course, I know you may see this in the spiritual reality. Of course, I know that you may smell death, the stench of lust, or the mixture of spiritual fragrances, but they don’t need to hear about it in order to get free! Of course, you may have pictures and impressions of all kinds of things that make Hollywood’s best efforts at horror movies look like Sesame Street, but that doesn’t mean the person needs to think that they are a walking demon zoo!
People often do stuff like that to impress themselves and others with their spiritual capacities, to create the need for themselves, or in the misguided assumption that the person needs to know this as some kind of a spiritual right to full disclosure. Nope. Holy Spirit reveals these realities to you through discernment of spirits so you know what to take hold of, how to proceed with healing. In leading a person through freedom or healing, we may need to ask questions that allow the person to properly repent, forgive, and surrender to the power of the Cross. Take care that your display of discernment to the person doesn’t seem more about getting them to surrender to you and your awesomeness by leaving the impression that it is your abilities and capacities that will assure their freedom!
At the end of the prayer I pray beginning the session, having made certain that the room and those assisting me are properly positioned and comfortable, I usually know where to start the process. I am usually surprised about the starting point, and the person receiving is usually thinking about something totally different in the sense that they think the symptoms or results of the issue are what should be addressed. Even when the initial interview has revealed specific, key issues, Holy Spirit may have a strategy for the ministry time that I would find interesting as His partner in the process.
At any moment in any session, there is only one leader in the room. Holy Spirit. Then, there is only one person taking the lead, at any one moment, to minister what Holy Spirit wants done. During the session, the team will function with moments in which one or another of the team members will take the lead and do the releasing, speak the words, command the demons, or carry out the prophetic action, but the one leader in the room is always Holy Spirit. As the leader your job isn’t to lead God but to provide the kind of leadership that guarantees only Holy Spirit is in charge. You never surrender that leadership reality to demons, the person receiving, or another team member who has gotten off track or confused.
Demons thrive on confusion, terror, and pride. Freedom flows from revelation, love, and humility. The quietest whispers of humility has more authority than the loudest shouts of pride.
