Episode 1: The Kindom is Here
Season 1 · Episode 1
The Kingdom is Here: Why Jesus' Message Needs to Take Center Stage
Show Notes
In this very first episode of Between Heaven & Earth, Justin and Amy Howard sit down to launch a new season on healing and deliverance, beginning where Jesus began: the kingdom of God. They explore how the kingdom is not merely the heaven we go to when we die, but a present reality breaking in all around us, displacing the dominion of darkness and putting broken things back together. With warmth and honesty, they unpack why ordinary believers, not just professionals or experts, are invited to pray for healing, and they offer gentle next steps for the curious, the wounded, and the eager alike.
In This Episode
- The kingdom of God was Jesus' primary message, and it is not just the place we go when we die but a present reality breaking into the here and now.
- Healing and deliverance are not merely signs pointing to Jesus like a road sign; they are the very stuff of the kingdom itself, like a tulip breaking through frozen ground.
- Jesus entrusted ordinary, imperfect people, sending out the 72 and telling them to rejoice most that their names are written in heaven, keeping intimacy with God above results.
- We crave professionals and experts, but Scripture (like James pointing to Elijah) reminds us that ordinary believers are called to pray and step out in faith.
- There are only two kingdoms; when God's kingdom shows up, the darkness is displaced and the way life should be begins to take root.
- This season loosely follows Amy's Kingdom Prayer Ministry Training, now called EncounterEquip, addressing common questions, pushbacks, and testimonies about healing prayer.
- The Howards offer practical next steps: search the Scriptures and sit with your emotions if this is new, pursue forgiveness and a spiritual director if you've been wounded, and sign up as an apprentice if you're eager to go.
Going Deeper — Discussion Questions
- When you hear the phrase 'the kingdom of God,' what picture has traditionally come to mind for you? How does the idea of the kingdom as a present reality that is already here, but not yet fully consummated, challenge or expand that picture?
- Justin and Amy describe our tendency to crave 'professionals' and 'experts' rather than stepping out ourselves. Where do you notice that craving in your own faith, and what would it look like to trust that God is inviting ordinary believers like you into this work?
- Jesus told the returning 72 not to rejoice most in their power over demons but in the fact that their names are written in heaven. Why do you think he refocused their attention on intimacy with God rather than success, and how does that reshape how you measure a 'good' day of following Jesus?
- The episode distinguishes between signs that merely point to the kingdom and signs that are the very stuff of the kingdom itself, like tulips are to spring. How does seeing healing as part of the kingdom coming, rather than just proof that Jesus is God, change the way you might pray for someone?
- Amy speaks honestly about the risk of disappointment, of praying and not seeing the outcome we hoped for. Have you experienced that kind of disappointment with God? How might it become 'an invitation to start a conversation' rather than a reason to stop?
- For those who have been wounded by immaturity, manipulation, or abuse they witnessed in healing ministry, the Howards suggest a journey of forgiveness. Is there a 'room' you have walled off because you've seen things go poorly? What might it look like to invite the Lord into that space again?
- The episode closes by describing three kinds of people: those for whom this is brand new, those who used to walk in it but drifted away, and those who are eager to 'take the mountain.' Which of the three best describes you right now, and what is one concrete next step you sense God inviting you to take this week?
Full Transcript
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0:03Introduction
Welcome to Between Heaven and Earth. We're your hosts, Justin and Amy Howard, husband and wife and parents to six amazing boys. We're church planters, coaches, and leaders of a mission agency right here in beautiful New England. We're thrilled to have you join us. Together, we will discover what it means to be a follower of Jesus bringing heaven and earth together in your family, neighborhood, and community. In each episode, we'll explore how to cultivate an understanding of what the Spirit of God is doing in and around us. Our goal is to empower you to thrive in the collision of kingdoms and join Jesus in his great project of restoration until his glorious return.
This podcast is brought to you by Encounter Culture Mission Collaborative, a mission agency dedicated to working with ordinary followers of Jesus to mend, make, and multiply disciples right where they are. If you enjoy our conversations, please like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. Let's dive in. Well, welcome to our very first episode. We are so excited that you are joining us today. And we never thought we'd be podcasters, did we? Yeah, no. This is way above our pay grade, I feel like. I don't know. This is one thing that takes—I look at this stuff that's on the table that's recording us right now, and I'm a little overwhelmed.
Yeah, yeah, we should call one of our kids in here. They'd love to push all those buttons. Yes, we have a few children that would absolutely love to do that. They probably already have when we weren't looking. No, they did. That's why the settings were all off. No, they did. And that's why our editor had to come in and kind of redo things. But anyway, we're here, and this is the first episode. We've been wanting to do this for a number of years now. Yeah, you've asked and we've listened. Yeah, yeah, no, that is so true. I can't tell you how many times we've been asked. "You guys have a podcast, you know?" I mean, mainly because Amy is so amazing.
She has amazing teachings and she is producing unbelievably beautiful material that I think is just super timely. It's super timely, and for the church, for healing, for wholeness, for seeing people get set free in our current cultural climate and our context. And there's something also very beautiful happening. We're going to dive into some pretty cool stuff here today. But I think that there is a confluence, if you will, or like a gathering together of, like, deeply theological, deeply reflective, psychological, spiritual, like, I mean, it's just kind of all physical. It's all coming together. It's all being integrated when we think about the coming of the kingdom. Yeah. You know?
3:03The Kingdom of God: Jesus' Central Message
And so the message of the kingdom of God is the primary message of Jesus. This is the message that he taught when he walked the earth. And so we're actually going to be starting a series. I'm pretty excited about this, really. We're going to be starting a series on healing and deliverance. And it's intended to stir interest in how God wants to heal. He desires to heal the whole person. And we have a role to play in that, don't we? Yeah, yeah, we do. We have a role to play as believers. All believers. All believers, in bringing heaven and earth together. And that's what healing is. It's bringing heaven and earth together, the way life should be, and heaven on earth.
So this first session roughly, or this first season, is roughly going to follow Amy's Kingdom Prayer Ministry Training, now called EncounterEquip. Not by repeating the teaching material, but instead tackling some of the most common questions that you have, and pushbacks that you have, and testimonies that you have surrounding each topic. And you can listen to these podcasts on their own, but we highly recommend registering for an upcoming live EncounterEquip ministry training course at encounterculturene.com—so that's encounterculturene.com—or, drum roll, please. I wish I had a drum roll. But the online digital course, which will be launching so soon.
I can taste it, I'm so excited about getting this kind of equipping in the hands of ordinary believers. Yeah. Yeah, so you can grab Amy's book on Amazon. It's called Kingdom Prayer Ministry Training, Amy Howard. Not the woman who sells crochet things.
Very prolific saleswoman for crocheting arts and stuff. Yeah, I'm a different, different Amy. Different. That's a hundred percent not my jam, right? Yeah, so you can grab her book on Amazon, Kingdom Prayer Ministry Training. We'll provide a link below in the episode notes. So, the first session, we want to talk about the kingdom of God as it relates to healing prayer. Because I feel like—and maybe you can comment on this—my sense is that a lot of people who have been exposed to healing teaching, teaching on healing, come—there are different rivers or different streams. And the stream that you take, and that we've been taking in our 15 years of ministry together, is starting with the kingdom of God.
5:49Why Ordinary Believers, Not Just Experts
Yeah, so what are some of the most common questions you receive about the kingdom of God and how it relates to healing prayer? Yeah, I mean, I think that the first question is really one of paradigm. So there are these incredible waves that the Holy Spirit has orchestrated through the church throughout the centuries where miraculous healing has taken place, and I mean that is a signal fire for what he's like. He loves to make things whole. He loves to put them back together. He loves to tend to the sick and the poor. But we do this funny thing as humans. We really want professionals. We want the person that's gonna do it right.
We want the person that has the education. Especially in the West, we really want an expert. We want someone that, you know, that is certainly—that can be held accountable if things don't go well. It's—in the West we want the educated expert, and in the East we want the spiritual guru. Yeah, yeah. And what's interesting about Jesus' model in the New Testament is that he didn't go for the experts. He emphasized relational nearness to the Father.
It's really difficult to get a big group of people all moving in the same direction. I've been in leadership for years now, and I know just from parenting—I mean, getting the dishes done at the end of the day, getting other people other than myself to do the dishes well, I—it's like a near impossible task. And some of that is just, yeah, that's my own personality. But no matter how many times I lead by example, I write things on the whiteboard, I give people incentives, I give them, you know, potential things that are not gonna go nicely in their lives if they don't do it—it still is a risky thing to hand off a task to other people if you could do it better.
Oh yeah, I mean, the dishes, for instance, right? Exactly. It's an absolute mess. They're never really—or the dishwasher is filled halfway. Or someone put the entire compost bin in the dishwasher without even rinsing it out. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah, right. Jesus, he took 12 people and managed to give them the authority to heal and deliver. That's actually the primary thing—he gave them authority and power to do was to drive out demons and preach the kingdom of God. We're going to look at that in a minute. But then he did something that, I mean, I just think, by rational standards, was a really bad idea. I mean, God only has good ideas. Mm-hmm.
Rationally, for a human, sending 72 people out means you have a really low threshold of control. Right. I mean, those 72 people, some of those people are going to be weird. Some of them are going to have odd personalities. Some of them are going to be introverts, some extroverts. I mean, they were Jewish. Some of them are not going to have really great theology. Right. I mean, they were Jewish followers. So we know they had a baseline, very clear biblical foundation. That's right. That's what the Scripture is through and through. That's right. But Jesus sent them out with a lot of power. Yeah.
With a lot of authority, said, "Go drive out demons and preach that the kingdom of heaven is upon you." Yeah. And I think the critical bit about that story, besides the fact that he actually sent 72 people out to do something as wild as drive out demons, I think the critical bit is actually at the end of that account, where the 72 come back and they're rejoicing. It's this real locker room moment. "Ah, the demons submitted to us. I mean, there's so much power and authority available in you, Jesus." And he said, "Yes, I saw Satan fall from the sky," but then he changes the whole conversation. And he said, "That's not what you get excited about.
Ground yourself in this reality that your name is written in the book in heaven, that you are known by God." Yeah. So he refocuses the whole conversation, not on success, not on failure, not on how much power you're walking in. The entire conversation is: your primary reality is your vertical conversation with the Lord. Yeah, it's communion. It's communion with God. Yeah. So, risky business. Risky business for the kingdom of God is just... Totally risky to send out 72 people. Somebody—who—very different people, praise. Very different. Who may have known the Scriptures through and through, but may not have been super emotionally healthy. I mean, at a crowd of 72? Yeah.
I bet maybe some of it was a hot mess. They could involve people like us. Well, that's true. That's a scary thought, actually. Human. What are we even doing here? Humans. It's humans. Right. We love to say there is no A-team. There is no A-team. It's just us. That's right. It's just us. And we crave professionals. We really do. That was so evident even in the early church. There was a craving for the pros to show up. You see that in James 5, right? James had to tell his people, "You too can pray for healing." And Elijah, the great superstar of the Old Testament—he was a guy just like you. He was a human just like you. He prayed for the rain to stop and it stopped.
And he prayed for the rain to start again and it started. Even James, that first generation of disciples, had to remind his people, "Don't wait for the professionals. Start praying." Yeah. So we are those who are caught in this tension. We live between heaven and earth. We live in the already but not yet. The kingdom is already here. It's not yet fully consummated. It's not yet fully here until the Lord Jesus touches down, you know, and begins to set up his reign and his rule, his government all over the earth. You know, and so we're talking today about this clash of kingdoms, because the kingdom of God isn't this gentle thing necessarily that first comes in on the scene.
I mean, there are gentle aspects to the kingdom, but Jesus says that if I'm, you know, driving out demons by the finger of God, then you will know that the kingdom of God is breaking in upon you. Yeah. And so there is this type of—there's a clash. There is an invasion happening. There is a—it's going to feel different. It's going to feel different. It's going to feel and be different than the normal, than what you see around you. It's going to feel different. And you're probably not going to be very good at it at first, because the reality is we're growing. We're learning to follow Jesus. We are disciples. We're followers of Jesus. We're growing up.
Jesus spent a lot of time in the New Testament teaching his disciples how to solve problems they couldn't otherwise solve, and how to manage difficult situations, culturally fraught situations, demons they couldn't drive out. Really some really bizarre and challenging moments that Jesus actually had to teach them. But we keep using this word "kingdom." I feel like it's worth kind of defining what, you know, what does that mean? Because I don't—I don't know about you. I kind of grew up with this idea that, you know, Jesus says "kingdom of God" all the time in the New Testament. And I think I just kind of had this—I don't know if anyone said it to me.
13:40Already, but Not Yet: What the Kingdom Is
I just had this idea that that meant the heaven I go to someday when I die. Yeah. Well, which—kind of, when you circle back, we can talk about why, why doesn't it—it seems like a lot of the church that maybe we've grown up in, or, you know, just church in general, this seems to be a topic that is set on the back burner. If it's even up on the stovetop. Well, yeah, I mean, this idea of the kingdom of God—if it's Jesus's number one teaching, why don't you think that we've heard a lot of it? I mean, I feel like the kingdom of God has been just brought to the fore maybe since the 70s. Jesus movement, the vineyard movement, or Ladd.
I mean, George Eldon Ladd, who is a New Testament professor at Fuller, Fuller Seminary—he has this, probably my favorite book on the subject. A number of books on the kingdom of God, actually, but his biblical New Testament, biblical theology is amazing. But I digress. When we think about the kingdom and why it hasn't been taught in our churches so much, why is that? I mean, I think if you think the kingdom of God is just the place that you go when you die, it's not very exciting. There's not much to talk about. It's something that you don't really have to deal with yet. And every time Jesus teaches about the kingdom, you think he's saying, either you go to heaven or hell.
Like, you think every time he talks about the kingdom of God, he's basically saying, are you in, are you out? Do you make it at the end of the day or do you not? And after that, it's just not very interesting. So he's talking about the way life will be. Yeah, it sounds like he's talking—I think we come to it thinking, a lot of times. That's right. The way life will be when I die. I'm going to die. I've got a mansion just over the hilltop. Yes. You know, someday I'm going to go to be with him in heaven. But Jesus' actual teaching is that the kingdom is right here. It's among you. Right. He said that it actually entered the scene with him. Right. And you can grab hold of it.
You can taste it. You can experience it now. So what is the kingdom of God? You teach on this in your first session in Kingdom Prayer Ministry Training. We're not going to rehash the whole teaching. Yeah, yeah, sure. But for our—what do we mean? The kingdom of God is any place where God is king. I grew up in Maine. If you're driving up 95, there's a road sign at the very beginning of Maine, from New Hampshire into Maine, that says, "Maine, the way life should be." That may be a tall order for the state of Maine. It is certainly a tall order for the state of Maine. I love Maine. Acadia National Park is beautiful, and there are a lot of wonderful, beautiful places. You're a New Yorker.
You wouldn't understand them. There are a lot of unlovely places in New York too. I'm just kidding. So the way life should be—we say the kingdom of God is the way life should be. And we get a picture of that in the Scriptures, right? When—in the book of Revelation, or even some hints in Isaiah—this idea that when God is fully, when Jesus is on his throne, when he comes back and returns to earth, there will be no more crying or tears or pain or death. Isaiah says he's gonna, on that mountain, he's gonna destroy the shroud that covers all nations. The last thing to go is gonna be actual physical death. So we believe that as the kingdom of God is coming, that's what's showing up.
Heaven is actually entering the scene. We also believe there are only two kingdoms. So I think it's comfortable to imagine there's sort of neutral territory. Like, I just live in the neutral world where nobody's king except for sometimes me. And actually that's not the way the Bible presents the kingdom of God at all. The Bible presents a clash of kingdoms: that at the fall, dominion over humanity—who are in a state of now mortality and enmity from God—we're now under the dominion of Satan. Scriptures call him the ruler of this age, or the ruler of this world. And when Jesus comes, it's actually his kingdom.
So he's the king of his kingdom that's now staging a hostile takeover of the dominion of darkness. Displacing. The dominion of darkness. That's right. And when God's kingdom shows up, things shift. They change, don't they? And the way that that's evidenced is the way Jesus evidenced that things shift and change. And so when we talk about healing, when we talk about deliverance, when we talk about the proclamation of the gospel and people believing the gospel, the darkness is being displaced. That's right. And the way life should be is taking root. That's right. Okay. So, you know, when I was in college, we had a class on missions.
18:48Signs of the Kingdom: Healing & Deliverance
And one of the things that my professor taught on was that those who carry the gospel manifest the gospel, or they show forth the gospel through word, sign, and deed. And the word, of course, is the proclamation, the preaching, the teaching of Jesus, the teachings of Scripture. Deed would be like feeding the poor, or building hospitals, foster home, foster parenting, those kinds of things. Deed is a piece that has often been missing in some of our church traditions, primarily because it's for the experts, as you said, or the spiritual gurus. But what is sign?
You know, so I mean, if the gospel comes—and, you know, John Wimber, in his book Power Healing, or Power Evangelism, he says, "The gospel's to be both proclaimed and demonstrated." But I would argue, right, demonstration can be broken into sign and deed. And Wimber was talking about demonstration being sign primarily, I think, in his writing. But this idea of sign—we're talking about, like, signs and wonders, like Joel 2. Acts chapter 2, you know, that when the day of the Lord approaches, God's going to release signs in the heavens and signs on the earth. So what are these signs? And what do they have to do with the kingdom of God?
Yeah, I think you can think about signs in two different ways, right? I mean, if you read the book of John, for example, there are all these things that Jesus did that pointed to himself, that sort of proved he was who he said he was. They were like signposts pointing to himself. Like an exit ramp. Like, if you take this exit, you're going to go to... You're going to end up in Bangor. Yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. So if I'm traveling up 95, I see a sign to exit for the town I want to get to. Now the sign is not the town itself. It's not my destination. It's pointing me to my destination.
We would say that things like healing and deliverance—specifically healing especially, but deliverance as well—aren't just a, like, a road sign. They're the stuff of the kingdom itself. So there is sign in the sense that, like, tulips are a sign of spring. So a tulip isn't something other than spring, but we look at a tulip and we say, "Ah"—or, I guess in Maine it was crocuses. Crocuses came up first, you know, even when the snow was still on the ground. Well, there wasn't spring in Maine. It was mud season. Our part of Maine, we didn't really have a lot of spring. It was just mud. It was like winter, mud, summer. We used to place bets on when the river would thaw. Yeah. Oh, that was so great.
Yeah. Like, when it would finally break up and the big chunks go floating down past our house. Yeah, that's what I loved about Maine, is the deep cold winters. Yeah, my kids love that too. I don't miss that. I loved it. So good. Yeah. When you said the exit sign that gets off in Bangor, I was like, oh, yeah, I miss it. I miss it too. It was a good time. Now we're only three miles. Three miles. Yeah, three hours south. Yeah. So it's not that bad. We're not too far. We are in a different zone now. Different planting zones still. Yeah, I know. We'll talk about that sometime. We love the planting.
So anyway, the signs of the kingdom, if you think of them more along the lines of—yes, they point to Jesus. Yeah. Like tulips do, or crocuses do, point to spring, but they're also the stuff of spring itself. So healing isn't just a one-off "I'm proving that Jesus is God." It's also the very kingdom of God coming. Right. So Jesus then wasn't healing or driving out demons just to prove a point that he was God, and that, you know, and he was going to give us the Bible. Right. You know, the New Testament—he, this was—the signs were accompanying him because he was bringing the reign of God to earth. That's right. He's reversing the curse, if you will. That's right.
I mean, and it does speak to God, right? I mean, God designed systems to heal, right? And he's in the healing itself all the time. And in the fall, death sort of infiltrating everything and breaking everything means eventually entropy is the law of nature. I mean, everything is going to die. It's going to—it's, it's going to—your body's going to die. The flowers are going to die. Everything's going to die. And when Jesus showed up, it's like he hit the reverse switch, and things started to come back to life, and things that even should have been able to heal—that weren't healing—started healing. Like, like your body is made to fight off disease. God made it that way.
And he's written into the fact that it's still healing, right? The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. You don't—when you cut your hand, you don't wring your hands, and unless you have a serious ailment, you don't think, "Oh my goodness, I really hope this cut heals." I mean, you have confidence that your body, that God is in your body in such a way that your body wants to heal. It wants to—I mean, doctors, the best doctors don't actually heal. They can get rid of the bad stuff and they can encourage an environment of healing, but the healing itself, that's God. Yeah.
And when Jesus showed up on the scene, he was, like, removing the things that were preventing healing—like demons, they're preventing healing. And he is expediting the process of restoration. So he is breaking in with his kingdom with power and making the broken things well, making the sick things well, making the hurting things—putting them back together. The tulips are bursting through. That's right. Even unseasonably. In the thawing ground. Yeah. That's really good. I love that metaphor of the tulip coming through the frozen ground. It paints a different picture, doesn't it? Yeah, and it reminds me of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the coming of spring in the tale.
Yeah, that the spring is on its way. It is. And it's a very different feeling, right? Because we're not, as ministers of the gospel—normal, everyday people who are following Jesus—we're not setting up to just prove that Jesus is God. We're actually working to bring about the restoration of all things in his power. Right, so the kingdom is actually taking root. It is a project that's taking root in our physical reality. That's right, that's right. Why do you think that that is so uncomfortable for some followers of Jesus, or for some sort of paradigms? 'Cause I mean, sign—it's like, okay, well, maybe my headache went away, or someone's got healed, maybe.
But what does this have to do with anything? Yeah, well, I mean, it certainly is that when Jesus comes back, he's gonna put everything back together, he's gonna have done away with everything that opposes him, everything that sets itself up against light and love on the earth, and he's going to restore everything. He's making all things new. But honestly, I think we like solutions where we don't need God to show up, especially in the church. Yeah, no, that's fair.
26:12Stepping Out: Risk, Disappointment & Growth
I think when we set about to solve problems, it feels very risky to say, "I'm going to begin walking down this road where I'm praying for people," and what if God doesn't show up, or doesn't show up in the timing that I want him to? I mean, I might make him look bad. Mm-hmm. I might, you know, people might lose their faith in God if I pray and they don't get healed. And it's also just—it's less messy, and it seems quicker and easier to say, let's let the professionals put together a great system to combat, you know, the march of secularism, or to, you know—here's a better program, or here's some more great songs. And I mean, I love all of those things.
I love a good program. I love good music, worship music. I love those things. But if that's the way we are—if that's the only way that we're setting about bringing the restoration of the kingdom—we could do that without God. Yeah, well, and that also doesn't really ask much from the people of God, from those who have been redeemed. It's kind of—it's easier to just slap a program on it or a strategy on it, whereas the other actually means that we stop for the one, and we take time and we listen and we love people, and we pray with them and we pray for them. And we risk looking silly, and we also risk being angry with God. Disappointed with him.
Disappointed, angry, frustrated—we risk, like, "Oh man, I prayed, but you didn't do what I wanted you to do right now." Well, what a wonderful invitation to start a conversation, right? I mean, that's what he wants. He wants us to have the real, gritty, challenging conversations. "God, the world isn't right right now." Yeah. And you did these things, you showed up this way in the New Testament. It's the only way where you taught your disciples to live. I mean, a first century—and I have to contend with that. I have to say, you didn't create an exit strategy. You didn't make two kinds of disciples, the kind that don't need you to show up and the kind that do. Yeah.
I mean, a first century rabbi—we were talking about this the other day—a first century rabbi was not just creating people that were gonna sort of teach the same things that he taught. He was—if you were a real disciple of a rabbi, you were learning to live the way they lived, to do what they did, to eat the way that they ate, and to hold your fork the way they held—I mean, I don't think they had forks—but to be in the world the way they were in the world. And Jesus brought those disciples, his 12 disciples, and then the surrounding people that were following him—he brought them close to teach them how to be in the world. Yeah.
And when they then—he said, go and make disciples, and he breathed on them, in John, John 20. 20, 21. Yeah, he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. In the same way the Father sent me, now I'm sending you." So he sends those disciples out to go and make disciples of all nations, with the same Spirit that he'd received at his baptism from the Father, to go and do the things he taught them to do. Yeah, no, that's—the only kind of disciple he made. That's right, yeah. And that John 20:21 passage, I think, is so crucial. It is absolutely pivotal.
If you grew up in the church, Matthew 28, it's the Great Commission: go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to obey. Yeah. Everything—that we forget about that "obey" part, 'cause we tend to focus on just teaching them. Yeah, not teaching them to obey. Teaching them to obey. Yeah, it's something that we really have been learning from the Discovery Bible Study. Yeah, so good, so good—that oftentimes obedience precedes faith. It's kind of interesting. But in John 20:21, Jesus breathes on them and says, "As the Father sent me, so I send you." So in the same way the Father sent me, in that exact same way I'm sending you—that means that signs will accompany you.
Well, I mean, you look at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. I mean, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism. He then went out in the wilderness to be tempted, to be refined, to suffer, to be tempted by the enemy. And then he showed back up in Nazareth, and his sort of inaugural speech, his inaugural sermon, was reading from Isaiah 61. And he tells the people there, this is what that Spirit, who descended on me—this is what the Spirit of God is on me to do. And then he lists out these things that he then went and did: to open the blind eyes, and to release the prisoners, and to set free the captives, those who are bound.
And if you read the rest of Isaiah chapter 61—I mean, oftentimes a rabbi would just quote the first, or read just the first few lines of that section. Right, and everyone would have called everything else to their mind. And then they would have recalled the rest of that passage to mind. The same thing with the Psalms. And so Jesus is bestowing the garland of grace instead of a yoke of despair, right? I mean, he's—he's binding up the brokenhearted. He's binding up the broken, the day of the vengeance of the Lord, the day of the vengeance of our God. Yeah, there's real justice coming. There's real justice coming. In the side of Jesus. In Jesus Christ. Yeah, like, he is the justice. Yeah.
It doesn't look the way we want it to look, but—and we'll talk about that in a couple of episodes. Yeah, talk about suffering. And suffering and justice and forgiveness. Yeah, so I think, just to go back to the message of the kingdom-wise, and as pronounced in the church, as in Jesus's ministry. Now you mentioned just the disappointment—that we don't want to be disappointed or upset with God, so it's hard for us to step out in faith. The other one is just the professionalization of ministry. Like, we want the professionals to show up and to do this stuff. Yeah, I do. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know... I'm still waiting.
I remember when we were church planting, you were like, "When are the grownups going to show up?" And there was a very real need for grownups just to hold some babies. Yeah. You know? And the wise men and women who've been walking with Jesus for a long time. I don't want to finish—the need for that. No, yeah, no. Totally, totally. Yeah, absolutely. So we prayed for those. But sign, sign—it is the thing itself. Yeah. It points to something, but it's also the thing itself. It's also the thing itself. And the other reason maybe that we don't think much about the kingdom is because we think it's just the heaven I go to someday when I die. Yeah.
And that's definitely not the thrust of Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God. It's all about a system, a government on the earth that has been set up by the god of this age, which, you know, Paul calls the evil one, the god of this age, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And Jesus is coming as God to displace the wicked governmental systems of this present darkness. Amen. And he's breaking in with power and authority, setting the wrong things right, inviting people back into relationship with God, reconciling them, and making people righteous to be in right standing with God, so that they will join his project of restoration until the day he comes again. Yeah. Amen and amen. Amen.
And the most important thing isn't that they're getting stuff done. It's that they are growing in relational proximity with him. Yeah. Intimacy. Yeah. Come on. Amen. Well, yeah. So what's—you know, what does it look like for us to be solution-oriented here? So, you know, here we are, you know—you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, "Man, I want to do more of that." Yeah. You know, maybe you're like, "I've tasted"—and I feel like there are maybe three different kinds of people. It's like, this is totally brand new. What am I listening to? Yeah. And then there's another person who says, you know, "Well, I used to do that, but I don't really do much of that anymore."
And then there's the other person: "Let's go." Yeah. "Let's go. Let's take some ground. Let's establish the kingdom. Let's sell it all." Yeah. Let's go and see each of those. Oh man. Remind me which was the first one—being those that are like, "This is new to me." Yeah. Well, first of all, don't take my word for it. Go—I mean, if the most important thing is your intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the most important thing is the conversation you're having with the Lord.
35:08For the Curious, the Wounded & the Eager
So as you're listening, if you're—if you're noticing emotions that come up, if you're irritated, or you're questioning, or you're fearful, or you're glad—spend some time with the Lord with those emotions. If you have questions that are coming up for you, don't just say, "Well, they said it on the podcast, I agree or disagree." Go to the Scriptures and search out the way that the kingdom of God is presented in the Scriptures. What happens when the kingdom of God shows up? I mean, Jesus taught people how to engage it, right? Repent and believe. He demonstrated it. He did stuff. It caused problems. It was not all just, you know, crocuses.
The kingdom breaking in really was—it also provoked change and conflict. And I don't know who it was—I hear it was Mark Twain, but I've never actually been able to nail down the quote, so it might not have been him. But whoever it was, it said, "The only people who like change are babies with poopy diapers." I think you just described, like, every pastor's struggle. It's everybody's struggle. Nobody really likes change. I mean, right, it—change is hard. So I would say that's the first one, is make it your own. So if you're like, "I'm not sure about this," well, begin a conversation. Allow yourself a generous curiosity.
Say, "God, I don't know how I feel about that, but maybe I would like to." Yeah, meditate on Isaiah 61. Yeah, or Luke 4. Luke 4, Luke 4, being John 20. Yeah, Jesus' inaugural address. It's like, at the beginning of his ministry, he says, "This is my vision statement for my ministry." Isaiah 61. Yeah, so the second group—those are the ones that are like, "I used to do this," or "I remember that in the 70s," or "the 90s," or "but I'm not really in that vein anymore." And I think the first thing that I would say is, allow the Lord to search your own heart for places where maybe you've seen things happen that were not good, or you've seen abuses, really outright clear abuse, or just a lot of immaturity.
And in some ways, that was wounding to you. Yeah, or disappointment. Or disappointment. Yeah. We prayed for someone and they didn't get healed. Yeah, yeah. So this, I would recommend for that—I'd say, this is a good moment to begin just a journey of forgiveness, and maybe releasing the people that were involved to the Lord, so that you can hope again, so that you can begin a sort of a new storyline, with creativity and some courage and curiosity about the things of God, instead of just kind of walling off those different rooms because you've seen things go poorly. We do just very naturally want to protect ourselves from bad things.
And we've seen stuff not happen well, even when it's just immaturity. I mean, if you were younger and you saw somebody shoving people over when they were praying for healing, and you just decided, "Well, healing's not real because someone pushed somebody"—I mean, I get that experience, because you've just sort of—there's a lot of manipulation in that kind of moment, but that's not necessarily a good reason to write off healing. It's a good reason to maybe forgive that person that you saw. Ooh, snap. Yeah, no, no, I mean it. That's a thing. Because it's wounding—because it's damaging to see things that are hard happen, and we all are guilty. We all have bad ministry moments.
We all act out of our immaturity, or even our flesh and our sin. And if we wall ourselves off from what the Lord is doing because we're bitter, or because we have pain in those areas, and we stay there, it's really just going to shut down our own calling in the Lord. Like, the summons to follow Jesus—we'll say, "I'm going to follow you in all of these other places, but I don't—even if you are in those other rooms, I don't want to visit you there." So it seems like maybe a good action point for the first two. So the first one is, go to the Scriptures. Go to Isaiah 61, Luke 4, Isaiah 61, John 20:21, and then just live in the gospel of Mark.
Why don't you just live in the gospel of Mark for a month? Yeah, that'll be—you know? Stay there long enough. It'll hold your mind. And let the romance of the gospel, of the God-man Jesus, write some hope in you. I'm really, really—because this is the kingdom. This is the kingdom come. This is what he longs to bring to you and through you until the day he comes. So that's a good action step for the first group, like, "Wow, this is new," right? Yep. Okay, and for the second group, it's, you know, maybe it's time to find a good spiritual director. Yeah. Someone who can come alongside of you as a spiritual friend, as a spiritual guide.
Kind of walk you through a season of forgiveness. And walk you through a season of forgiveness. Curiosity. Yeah. About your own gifts, and—yeah. Absolutely. The curious piece is so huge, and allow those experiences to become doors of intimacy with God. Yeah. You know, it's like a—Hosea chapter two. Instead of walls. Yeah. That keep you from moving forward. But Hosea chapter two, you know, "I will make the valley of trouble a door of hope." Yeah. You know, the things that have caused trouble and maybe caused you to become a little jaded. Yeah. Or Psalm 84. "Blessed is the one whose heart is set on pilgrimage," right?
Yeah, so these become moments of encounter for you and the Lord, and let him call you into another season. And then the third one is: "Let's go take the mountain." Yeah. "Let's go take the hill." Yeah. You know, like, "I don't want to sit around anymore, like, I want to see power and love just, you know, rain. I want to see it just blast through me." Yeah, okay. Well, I—that's up to God, that—the measure of, you know, what he's entrusting you is at this season. I don't want to be—you know, I'm not trying to walk back the excitement of what you just said, but I also am saying, you need to sign up as an apprentice.
So there is a sense of, "I want to be apprenticed by Jesus in this. I want to become a learner with him." I mean, I just—how many of us would have really, really loved to join our dad at work when we were little, and do what he was doing? I mean, I remember just not being satisfied with the fake tools, or the, you know—like, I didn't want to just have the, you know, the kid version. I wanted to be with him and doing the things that he was doing. I mean, my dad was in computers and tech and stuff. So I made it. Well, my dad was a cop. Yeah, you would have—it would have been probably more fun than mine would have been. That would have been really fun and potentially incredibly dangerous.
But—and probably nothing you'd find your 12-year-old exposed to. Right, so a good dad's gonna, you know—Well, he did take me, actually, one time. This is a funny trail, but he did take me one time, because he worked the night shift, and I tried to stay up, you know, the midnight shift, but I ended up falling asleep at the—in the detective's office. So, I, like, stayed up until one, and that was, like—I couldn't do any more. Anyway, continue. So, apprentice yourself. Sign up as an apprentice. And there are some ways that you can do that.
42:38Next Steps: Hands-On Training
I mean, we offer ways here at Encounter Culture for you to begin to step out in a safe environment, for you to kind of begin to try this stuff, to begin to pray for healing, and to be in a group of people that are doing the same thing. So, sign up for an EncounterEquip training. We have several of them going on throughout New England, and up and coming so, so soon—we can taste it. Those are going virtual, those are going online. Yeah, it will be an online course. It will be offered a number of times a year. So, you can do it with your small group, do it in your church. We just recommend that you do it with other people. Yeah, go with.
Because it's literally hands-on training. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want to just collect head knowledge. You want to do this stuff. You want to pray for one another and begin to cultivate a culture and an environment of learning, and of where it's safe to try new things. That's right. You know, and not necessarily look super cool while you're doing it. Yeah. So, during those courses, when we do offer them online, you'll have the opportunity once a week to meet with a live, seasoned prayer minister and ask your questions and talk about the things that came up for you. So, it's not just a course.
It's also going to have some live interaction opportunities in some places, where you can ask your very specific questions. And also, we'd love to hear your questions and thoughts here. Where can people—right to Justin, if they want to ask questions that maybe we can even answer on this podcast. Absolutely. So they can write to podcast@encounterculturene.com. And we will answer as many questions as we can. And we really look forward to receiving those, because we want to address the stuff that's on top. Because usually the stuff that's on top is the stuff that the Holy Spirit is doing. Yeah. And so we want to tend to those things. But yeah, thanks for joining us today.
We are so excited to continue this season as we look at healing and deliverance, the clash of kingdoms, prophetic ministry. We're basically just going to dive into it all. We're going to have some guests too that I think everyone's going to really enjoy. But we invite you to like and share and subscribe. You can also review the podcast. And if you want to visit us too, it's encounterculturene.com. Sign up for an EncounterEquip. Sign up for an encounter weekend. Once you go through the training, you can be an apprentice with us, and you can begin healing prayer ministry in your church.
We'd love to see as many people as possible get trained, and yeah, we'd love to see as many people as possible have access to these tools and these teachings. And we are really excited to join you. We're really excited to come alongside you and see what the Lord is doing in and through you and your community, as we watch heaven and earth come together until Jesus comes back. Awesome. Till next time, see ya. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Between Heaven and Earth. We hope that you are stirred to curiosity and courage as we explored bringing heaven and earth together right where you are. Remember, you're not alone on this journey.
We're here to support you in understanding what the Spirit of God is doing in your life and responding in obedience to His good leadership. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please take a moment to like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and questions with us on our Facebook page, or by email, podcast@encounterculturene.com. Your support helps us reach more people who are eager to join Jesus in His great project of restoration. Also, check out our website, encounterculturene.com, for upcoming events and equipping opportunities for you and your church. Until next time, may you find joy living in between heaven and earth, and the courage to bring them together wherever you go.