My wife is a praying woman. She has an incredible grace to draw forth wisdom and counsel from the Spirit of God. A few years ago, prolific utterances began to flow from her vessel whenever we’d pray together. I began recording and transcribing them.

My new book, Cleansing the Temple, was birthed this way.

One day when we were praying together, three Scriptures flashed before her that instantly bore witness with both of us. They were Acts 5 with Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 8 with Simon the sorcerer and Acts 19 with the burning of the magic books. As with the burning of the magic books in Acts 19, the Holy Spirit revealed His desire to burn up the corrupting values in church culture today that are restricting the true manifestation of the glory of God.

When judgment fell on Ananias and Sapphira, the fear of the Lord also fell on both the church and the world (Acts 5). It had a polarizing effect on those who heard of it. Today when many pastors are toning down on the demands of Christ and the workings of the Holy Spirit to spike up the numbers of church members, we need to see that there was a certain exclusivity and distinct dividing line at work in the early church. Notice the effect:

“But even though people admired them a lot, outsiders were wary about joining them. On the other hand, those who put their trust in the Master were added right and left, men and women both” (Acts 5:13-14, MSG).

As a result, the glory and power of God increased and multitudes continued to come to the Lord. Sincere repentance was the fruit of it all.

This is a necessary work that must be done today for the church to be cleansed of its iniquities and impurities. Holiness and the fear of the Lord must be restored in the church as a result of these judgments. This work must be done before the Lord returns for His glorious church.

The book touches on many other aspects of judgment and glory, but this is the central issue.

This is a real word from the Lord for this hour. It will prepare the church for the tumultuous decade of the ’20s that’s just a few months away.

I hope you will get a copy of the book and buy one for your pastor and local elders, too.

Every minister should get a copy. This will be a great resource for years to come. Proceeds and royalties from the book will be used to support mission works in poor nations. {eoa}

Bert M. Farias, revivalist and founder of Holy Fire Ministries, has authored several books with an emphasis on helping to restore the true spirit of Christianity in the church today. His recent release, Cleansing the Temple, will help prepare the church for the tumultuous ’20s decade that is just ahead of us. Follow him at Bert Farias and Holy Fire Ministries on Facebook and @Bertfarias1 on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Lauren Daigle shared how Miley Cyrus helped launch the beginning of her music career. Daigle shared the story while being interviewed on the red carpet at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards.

Daigle said, “OK, so it was the day I was kicked off American Idol. I ran into Miley Cyrus in this nail salon, and she said, ‘Mom, Mom, you’ve got to meet this girl. I can tell just from the way she talks she needs to be on radio.’ And so I flew and met her mom, like just one day, so she didn’t manage me or anything, but we met up and she was really encouraging.

“And then—talk about another full circle moment—we were at the Grammys about to perform, and Miley heard me backstage with her manager and someone in the management team, and they came running up, and they’re like, ‘Girl, thank you for doing this. Like we love your music.’ I was like, ‘Miley was the beginning. Like, she figured it out.'”

Have you ever experienced the pain of an infected toenail? I have often wondered, when dealing with the discomfort of an ingrown nail, how something so small can cause a pain so great!

Or perhaps you have suffered from a deep wound or an ugly gash that has developed into angry infection around the spot of injury.

An infection is your body’s way of communicating, “Hey! I need some attention! Could somebody help me out here?!”

The redness, the pain, the swelling and sometimes even the pus that accompany infection are your body’s way of announcing that there is a deeper need beyond the place of injury. A medical response to these conditions might include an antibiotic, warm compresses, a pain reliever or even surgery.

I wonder if some of you reading this today have an infection of the heart? I wonder if your soul has perhaps been infected by too much pain, by exorbitant amounts of disappointment or with repeated rejection. Life this side of heaven is oftentimes injurious to the human heart, and the result is an infection that shouts loudly, “Hey! I need some attention! Could you help me out here?”

The symptoms that are rampant in the septicity of ignored affliction can include a swelling of bitterness, hurtful words that are hard to control and an anger that colors all of your responses to life.

If an infection of the soul has invaded your life, I can assure you that Jesus wants to heal you, not hurt you. There are things that happen in life that are excruciatingly unfair and devastatingly life altering. In these moments, the only one who can heal you is Jesus. The only one who can bind up your wounds is your Savior. The only one who is able to offer the sweet gift of peace is the Prince of Peace Himself.

He comes to you with His arms stretched out, as His one compelling desire is to offer His sustaining warmth and comfort to your broken heart. Just one word from Jesus can relieve your pain and give you the ability to hope once again.

However, sometimes when the wound has been especially deep and has festered for even decades, the Great Physician must do a surgical procedure on our souls. He must remove the heart of stone that has been calcified after years of inattention and grievous maltreatment.

Would you give your injured heart to Jesus today? Would you allow Him to heal you and to cut away that which is infected and angry? We all find ourselves on the operating table of God from time to time in our lives. The joy and the peace that are found as He lovingly removes the remnants of agony and then gently adds the antibiotic of the Word are a miracle treatment indeed!

If there is an infection in your soul, take it to Jesus. Don’t ignore it or stuff it even more deeply into the recesses of your heart. He alone is able to remove the abscess of abuse and rejection. Only Jesus!

For more inspiration from Carol McLeod, listen to the podcast!

Carol McLeod is an author and popular speaker at women’s conferences and retreats, where she teaches the Word of God with great joy and enthusiasm. Carol encourages and empowers women with passionate and practical biblical messages mixed with her own special brand of hope and humor. She has written 10 books, including The Rooms of a Woman’s Heart; Defiant Joy!; Holy Estrogen!; No More Ordinary; Refined; Joy For All Seasons; Let There Be Joy!; Pass the Joy, Please!; Guide Your Mind, Guard Your Heart, Grace Your Tongue; and Stormproof, which releases on March 1, 2019. Her teaching DVD, The Rooms of a Woman’s Heart, won the Telly Award, a prestigious industry award for excellence in religious programming. You can also listen to Carol’s “Jolt of Joy” program daily on the Charisma Podcast Network. Connect with Carol or inquire about her speaking to your group at .

The Lord spoke to my wife and me at the beginning of this year that the first 90 days of 2019 would be a time of fast-paced building. We felt that those days were a time where the Lord would lay a foundation we could build upon for the rest of the year in the body of Christ. As the first 90 days have come and gone, I believe that meant the foundations God wanted to establish in people’s lives and everything they put their hands to. But I also believe God is now calling us to double down and reinforce our foundation. If you double down in this season and focus on establishing a firm foundation, you will be able to build something for the kingdom of God that will last.

We may first go low and do the necessary things that may not seem as flashy or important in the world’s eyes in order to move forward and build high. When an architect designs a high-rise building, he has to double down and lay a foundation just as deep into the ground going down as he will build above.

In 2 Kings 18, we find out that Hezekiah became king at the young age of 26. Hezekiah was a great king and was successful because Hezekiah understood the principle of doubling down. The Bible says this about King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:3-5, “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to everything that David his father had done. He removed the high places, broke down the sacred pillars, cut down the Asherah poles, and crushed the bronze serpent that Moses had made. … He trusted in the Lord God of Israel. Afterwards, there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah or among those who were before him.”

What made Hezekiah so great? Because Hezekiah knew how to double down. As soon as Hezekiah became king, the first thing he did was go into the house of God and remove the high places, tear down the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden images and break the golden serpent into pieces. Hezekiah’s first move as king was to clean out the house of the Lord from all of the idolatry that had been defiling it for so long. He did these four things and went low to do only two things to go high, to build and to plant.

God is looking for those who understand the importance of doubling down and working on the foundation of their lives before they build or plant what God has placed in their heart to accomplish. If you build a beautiful house with the best materials on a poor foundation, it will not last! God wants to sow seed into good ground. God is raising up those who will double down with no toleration for idolatry and those who will value their foundation in God more than anything they may be destined to do. Doubling down is spending time in prayer, choosing to fast and allowing the Lord to process us and keep our hearts pure and our character and integrity strong.

I want to challenge you today, double down and become like King Hezekiah who went low, tearing down what needs to be torn down and breaking what needs to be broken so God can move and do something new that will last! {eoa}

Joe Joe Dawson is the founder and apostle of ROAR Apostolic Network and ROAR Church Texarkana. Joe Joe is married to the love of his life, Autumn Dawson, and they have three children: Malachi, Judah and Ezra. The Dawsons live and teach a lifestyle of revival and awakening. Their desire is to see every believer fulfill their God-given destiny and live life to the fullest in God. Joe Joe is also the author of Living Your God-Sized Dream and Recipe for Revival. To connect with Joe Joe or for more information, visit .

This article originally appeared at .

When people think of witchcraft, few think of the New Age. Yet former Kundalini yoga instructor Mike Shreve says that’s exactly what the New Age and yoga are.

“My guru taught us that yoga was really [white] witchcraft,” Shreve says. “He called it witchcraft and compared it to other forms. … Black witchcraft is for evil purposes. Red witchcraft is for selfish purposes. But then, manipulating the life force within you in order to achieve God consciousness and become an influential, positive person in the world was called white witchcraft.”

But Shreve soon discovered that yoga opened him up to the demonic. And when Shreve surrendered his life to Jesus, the devil was not happy.

Shreve recalls one night when the enemy attacked him in his room.

“I looked up and saw this gray ball,” he says. “And it came through the wall. … It was throbbing like the pulsation of a human heart. Then, all of a sudden—I knew intuitively it was a demon spirit—it rushed across the room, slammed into my forehead and started trying to suck my soul out of my body. And immediately, I realized this was the demon I had yielded to when I did meditation.”

Listen to the interview to find out what happened next. (Click here or scroll to the top to listen.)

Paula White Cain declared “holy ground,” over President Donald Trump and the White House during her invocation at the National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden.

“We thank You for this wonderful White House, for our president, first lady, first family and administration,” Cain said. “We declare it to be holy ground. I will bless the Lord at all times, and His praise shall continually be in my mouth. So as we thank You for the goodness, for the prosperity of our nation, for Your blessing, for Your hand.”

White quoted multiple Scriptures as she prayed and prophesied over the first family.

“You declared in Jeremiah 1:5 that before he was ever formed in his mother’s womb that You had set him apart and ordained him. According to Psalm 139:16, that You ordained all of his days before one of them ever came into being, so not one day take You by surprise. We thank You that You have already given him the victory through Christ Jesus,” Cain said.

She also rebuked any demonic attacks against the family.

“We understand Ephesians 6:12, that we are not wrestling against flesh and blood but against principalities, wickedness and darkness, so we declare every demonic network to be scattered right now. We declare right now that there is a hedge of protection over our president, first lady, every assignment, the purpose they carry and the mantle,” Cain said.

Click HERE to watch the president’s remarks.

Cain concluded her invocation by praying for Trump to complete the assignment God has called him to do.

“Like the apostle said in Galatians, the apostle Paul said, ‘I was set apart in my mother’s womb and marked off by boundaries.’ Let him fulfill all the will of the Lord and do the assignment God has carried him to do for Your great name, Your great nation and for all Your people in the world. I decree this and declare this in the mighty matchless name of Jesus Christ, and according to Job 2:28, whatever I decree and declare is established. And everybody said, ‘Amen!'”

While Cain concluded the event, Vice President Mike Pence opened.

“Today we pray for America,” Pence said. “And as we pray, let’s pray with confidence, as was inscribed in those ancient words millennia ago, that if His people, who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray, that He’ll do like He’s always done through the long and storied history of this nation: He’ll hear from heaven, and He’ll heal this land, this one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

You’ve prayed the same prayers to no avail. You become discouraged praying and often wonder if God hears your prayers. But are we following the biblical way of praying? Are our pastors and leaders instructing us to pray Jesus’ way?

There are many different ways to pray. We know for a fact that prayer works! What about the times we pray continually and don’t see any progress? Could there be, not a better way, but a more effective way? I don’t want to say praying one way is better than the other. I do believe God hears all prayers. However, when we look at the way Jesus prayed, should we be following His example.

I’ve been to several different churches and tried many different denominations in my young-adult years. Except for one church, I never heard a message preached on praying audibly or the power of our words. As I minister around the world and pray out loud, and decree and declare, people look at me as if it is foreign. They are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it. They haven’t been taught to do it.

When we look at how our Father God created, He spoke to things. Jesus, when healing and delivering spoke aloud to the spiritual atmosphere, demons and health conditions. He prayed out loud. He modeled how to pray. David in Samuel cried out and called out, which is with an audible voice. As we search Scriptures further when they prayed to God, we find action-audible words such as “say, “said, “cried,” “called” and “spoke.”

In the Bible, prayer was audible. However, we haven’t been taught to pray audibly, and if we have, we are intimidated because our prayer might not sound as good as another person’s; therefore, we hold back.

What if the missing element to your prayers being answered is that you aren’t, “Speaking to your mountain (Matt. 11:23) ” “Calling things not as though they are (Rom. 4:17)” or knowing that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21). What if your prayers started getting answered by you speaking to your situation and praying audibly as Jesus did? Would it hurt to at least try something different?—not better, as I said before, but could there be a more effective way to pray if we followed Jesus’ example? In my book, Speak Out, I give biblical grounds for praying audibly. I am not saying we can never pray silently or connect spirit to Spirit with the Lord in prayer. I am saying there is much scriptural proof that Jesus, His disciples and many people in the Bible prayed audibly, so why shouldn’t we try it? {eoa}

Kathy DeGraw is a prophetic spiritual warfare strategist releasing the love and power of God to ignite and activate people, release prophetic destinies and deliver people from the bondage of the enemy. She is the founder of Kathy DeGraw Ministries and Be Love Outreach. She is the author of several books, including Speak Out, Discerning and Destroying the Works of Satan, Identity Invasion, Who is Speaking? and Warfare Declarations. You can connect with Kathy on Facebook, or visit .

President Donald Trump praised the miracle-working power of prayer during his National Day of Prayer address in the White House Rose Garden.

“Prayer works miracles, and prayer saves lives,” Trump told the crowd.

Trump opened his remarks with a prayer for Venezuela and invited the victims of the recent terrorist attack in San Diego to speak, as well as a woman who found Christ through a faith-based opioid addiction recovery center.

The guests all shared how prayer made an impact in their lives.

Trump thanked charismatic leaders including Paula White Cain as he praised the value of religious liberty.

“These United States will forever be strengthened by the goodness and the grace and the eternal glory of God,” Trump said.

Watch the video to see the full ceremony, including worship led by Jonathan Cain, remarks by Vice President Mike Pence, First Lady Melania Trump, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein of the Chabad of Poway, among others.

When it comes to comedy and faith, Chonda Pierce is unashamed.

Her bold, tell-it-like-it-is style has audiences begging her for more stories, and she delivers in the new documentary, Unashamed, in theaters May 7 and 9.

“It’s interesting, my life right now,” Pierce shares in a new interview. “I have my third documentary, and I’m still alive. You know, usually they do documentaries for dead people.”

As for the documentary, “It’s a lot of fun and frivolity in between some very serious conversations with others about what it’s like to stand up for the cause of Christ,” Pierce says.

The film features Pierce’s own interviews with major faith players like Mike Huckabee, Danny Gokey and the Benham Brothers.

But it’s not all serious.

Pierce, who is widowed, opens the documentary with horror stories about online dating. And in this interview, she gives even more details about the men she encountered on the world wide web.

Take a listen!

Most readers of this blog work in the kingdom marketplace. You do business as unto the Lord.

If this is true for you, I have one question:

Do you want to help people? Which comes first in your heart and mind—helping people or making a profit?

Certainly, success allows us to serve more people. We work hard to develop products, services, marketing and distribution systems to operate profitably. But do you do business to help people?

The amoeba cell of a kingdom business must ooze a ministry of helps.

If you want to help people:

• Launch your service quickly. There is no time for fine-grade sandpaper. Help people now. Refine as you go. As Seth Godin says, “Ship it.”
• Ask for nothing until you have moved first. Remember you are in business to help people. A Spirit-led business is operated by people who know the source of their revenue.
• Understand that it is difficult to find people to help. We can’t show up on doorsteps and proclaim, “This is your lucky day. I’m here to help you!” Many people do not want help. Keep moving.
• Some people ask for help but place little value on what they receive. It’s really not that important to them. The first signal that your help is negotiable is price haggling. Value is not negotiable. We help people who want help. “Can you do this for a lower price?” is the first wave of rejection of your offer to help. When Jesus was rejected, He dusted his feet and looked for others to help.
• Know that there is an abundant supply of people who need help. Is there a marketplace for how you help people? The world is flat. Perhaps people who live in your zip code are happy and needless. Reach out past Judea.

Build your business around the concept of helping others better. Who helps the most people, the most?

Instead of asking for referrals as a selfish seller of goods, ask people you have helped to tell others about how you helped them. Go and tell others what Jesus has done for you.

Don’t allow the heart of this message to pass you by.

Do you want to help people?

“Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church:

first are apostles,
second are prophets,
third are teachers,
then those who do miracles,
those who have the gift of healing,
those who can help others,
those who have the gift of leadership,
those who speak in unknown languages” (1 Cor. 12:28, NLT).