“And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (Isa. 10:27, KJV).

A vital part of the new-wine doctrine that God is restoring is the revelation and belief in the anointing. The anointing is the power of God. Miracles happen by that power. God’s primary way of releasing miracles is by placing His anointing within His servants and then flowing through them as they walk in their God-given authority.

God performed signs, wonders and miracles in Egypt through Moses by splitting the sea and delivering His people by His power. It was when Moses spoke or lifted his staff that these miracles were released.

God also performed mighty wonders through Elijah. Through him, God multiplied flour and oil for a starving widow, called down fire from heaven, raised the dead, and parted waters. Elijah’s spiritual son, Elisha, received his mantle, and God used him as well to perform many miracles. By God’s power, Elisha multiplied food, provided oil for a widow, healed a man of leprosy, raised the dead, and parted waters. Even after Elisha’s death the anointing still rested upon his bones—so much so that when a dead man’s body touched them, the man came back to life!

In the New Testament, Jesus performed many miracles—healing the sick, casting out demons, opening blind eyes, opening deaf ears, and raising the dead. Everywhere Jesus ministered, the casting out of demons and the healing of the sick always accompanied His teaching. “So he traveled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons” (Mark 1:39, NLT).

Jesus then told His disciples that they would do the same works He did, and even greater (John 14:12). He commissioned them as apostles, instructing: “Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received!” (Matt. 10:7–8, NLT). The apostles and other fivefold ministers throughout the book of Acts did the same works as Jesus, just as He said would happen!

People need freedom from demons and healing from sickness today just as much as they did in the time of Jesus and the early church in Acts. Healing and deliverance should not be limited to a few ministries or happen only once a year at a conference. Every church should be healing the sick and casting out demons by the power of God. The sheep (believers) need more than teaching—they need the power of God.

The Anointing Destroys the Yoke

It is the anointing that destroys the yoke (Isa. 10:27). Oppression, curses, sickness and strongholds can be broken only by God’s power. At times, God may heal or deliver someone as they cry out to Him alone in their room, but His primary way of releasing miracles is through His anointed servants—those through whom His power flows.

In the book of Acts, believers were continually in awe of the signs and wonders performed by the apostles (Acts 2:43). God’s method of releasing His anointing is through the fivefold ministers He appoints, equipping them with higher levels of anointing as the foundation of the church. Apostles and prophets in particular are often entrusted with greater measures of power to establish His kingdom on earth. The Bible says, “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul” (Acts 19:11).

To order your copy of Kathryn Krick’s book, Ignite Revival, visit Amazon.com.

In the same way, God anoints apostles and prophets today to perform extraordinary miracles. This does not mean that every apostle or prophet will perform extraordinary miracles, just as not every one of them in the Bible did. The level of anointing on each fivefold minister depends on their specific calling and their measure of faith.

Scripture declares, “These signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons…they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17–18, NKJV). Every believer is called to walk in God’s power, yet among the fivefold ministers, some carry greater faith, and through that faith God uses them as vessels to perform greater works.

In the old-wine doctrine, people tend to resist God’s working through His servants in power. Many believers today want to see God perform miracles, yet they become uncomfortable when those miracles happen through a vessel. What’s striking about this mindset is that it looks nothing like the church we see in the book of Acts. Every miracle recorded in the New Testament was performed through a person—a servant of God whom He chose to anoint and use.

In the time of Jesus, the Pharisees’ hearts were hardened to the truth and beauty of what God was doing. God was healing, delivering, and reviving people through Jesus, but rather than rejoicing, the Pharisees were fixated on finding fault. When Jesus healed the man who had been blind from birth, instead of praising God for the miracle, the Pharisees accused Jesus of being a sinner and of breaking the Sabbath. They even interrogated the man who had been healed, trying to get him to agree with their accusations (John 9). The pride, skepticism, and jealousy in the Pharisees’ hearts blinded them to who Jesus truly was. They refused to acknowledge or honor Him because He walked in power, and they did not.

Because it is rare today to see vessels of God walking in true power, and because there are still prideful hearts like the Pharisees’, it has become common for people to do exactly what they did to Jesus. Some even go so far as to accuse God’s servants of operating by demonic power, just as the Pharisees did to Jesus. After Jesus delivered a man who was blind and mute because of a demon, and the man was able to see and speak, the Pharisees falsely accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan: ​​“But when the Pharisees overheard what the people were saying about the miracle, they said, ‘He casts out demons by the power of Satan, the prince of demons!’” (Matt. 12:24, TPT).

God will not be manipulated, and He will never go against His Word. To act like the Pharisees—refusing to accept God’s moving in power through His chosen vessels—is truly a wicked way. For the power of God to be restored in the body of Christ, we must come into alignment with God’s ways of releasing His power.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

—2 Chronicles 7:14, KJV

There are many churches today where members remain in bondage because there is no anointing present to deliver them. If pastors would humbly acknowledge where God is moving in power today and lead their congregations to those places, the people could be set free! And if ministers would humble themselves to recognize that they need what an anointed servant of God carries—if they would seek impartation—then God would pour out His anointing upon them. They too would begin to deliver the oppressed and heal the sick within their own churches.

This is happening even now! I’ve seen many pastors come humbly to my church, and as God led me to release impartation to them, they began to walk in the power of God. Today, people are being healed and set free regularly in their own congregations. But many ministers still struggle to humble themselves and come to the place where God can truly entrust them with His anointing.

Jesus said, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11, NLT). You must first go low before God can lift you high. He cannot pour out His mighty anointing upon those who refuse to humble themselves.

In the days of Jesus, the Pharisees held their congregations back from encountering Jesus in His love and His power. Tragically, many leaders today are acting in the same ways as the Pharisees of the past. But God is saying, “If you will humble yourselves and genuinely pray—if you will truly seek after My heart—you will hear My voice guiding you to My revival and to where I am moving in power.”

If leaders and believers alike would humble themselves and pray to hear God’s voice, they would find Him guiding them to align under the modern-day Peters and Pauls. There, they would receive impartation, be healed, and be set free, and in turn, they would carry that same power to bring healing and freedom to others, releasing revival and healing across the land.

Divine Structure

In God’s kingdom, there is a divine government structure. He gives every believer authority, yet each one carries a different measure of authority and a specific area where they are called to exercise it. This is similar to how government operates on earth. For example, in America there is a president, senators, governors, judges, police officers, teachers, and parents. Each one operates within their assigned sphere of authority. Parents have authority over their children. As they lovingly discipline and guide them, those children grow to become assets to society, helping to advance the nation’s ideals of freedom, equality, democracy, and the pursuit of happiness.

Within the sphere of school systems, teachers carry authority over their students. Police officers uphold order and justice in their jurisdiction, and through their rightful use of authority, the values of the nation are protected and preserved. The same principle applies to judges, governors, senators, the president and even those in the workplace, such as business owners and leaders.

Each one, when operating rightly in their God-given authority, contributes to the greater good and the advancement of purpose. God’s vision is for all believers to become vessels of Him, walking in authority, speaking His Word, moving mountains, and revealing His love. As we live this way, heaven is brought to earth, and transformation comes to the world, one soul at a time.

God assigns each of us different functions to fulfill His divine vision. He has appointed apostles and prophets as the foundation for equipping the body of Christ and establishing the work of God. To them He entrusts the highest levels of spiritual authority.

As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by.Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed.

—Acts 5:15–16, NLT

This scripture reveals that there was clear recognition of Peter’s position within the kingdom government — as an apostle who carried an extraordinarily high level of anointing, similar to Paul (Acts 19:11). The reason why all were being healed was the people simply aligned themselves with God’s order of releasing His power, through His kingdom structure. They recognized Peter’s place of authority in that divine order and positioned themselves to receive the anointing flowing through him.

As people came to where Peter was ministering, demons and sicknesses had no choice but to leave. Peter carried a level of anointing that overpowered even the highest ranks of demonic forces. God has made it truly this simple for people to be healed and set free. It is religion (operating in the old wine) that makes it complicated. It is religion that closes the door to God’s help.

Jesus was in the same city as the Pharisees, and it would have been so simple for them to receive salvation, healing, freedom, and transformation. All they needed to do was humble themselves and show up where Jesus was ministering. The power of God would have touched them if they had just positioned their hearts to receive. They were physically close to Jesus yet spiritually far from Him because of pride.

It is just as simple and easy to encounter Jesus’ power today, to be healed, delivered, and receive impartation. God has brought a global revival! But when pride fills the heart, it blocks the flow of God. Instead of stepping into revival, many remain outside of it. They are still praying for revival while resisting the very move God has already released.

God gives apostles and prophets the highest levels of anointing, and He entrusts pastors, evangelists, and teachers with the next level of authority. This does not mean that every apostle carries the same measure of anointing or authority. The amount of anointing varies according to each person’s specific calling and their level of faith. For example, a truly anointed pastor leading a large congregation may carry a greater anointing and authority than an anointed apostle who is called to minister to a smaller group. Each of the fivefold offices carries and exercises authority within their own spiritual territory. Likewise, every believer has authority within their own God-given dominion. Each believer is given authority over their personal spiritual life to resist the devil, reject his lies, and make him flee.

However, spiritual authority over others, to cast out demons, to heal the sick, to shepherd, or to teach is not given to everyone. God must first see that a person is trustworthy before He increases their level of authority. We are all called to share the good news, but not all are called to be teachers or fivefold ministers (James 3:1). As Ephesians 4:11 says, “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” (NKJV).

God releases the greatest levels of authority and anointing to apostles and prophets, followed by evangelists, pastors, and teachers, so that they may pour out that anointing into the believers. This is the divine principle of impartation, as seen when Elijah released his mantle to Elisha. Just as a student needs a teacher who possesses greater wisdom and understanding in order to grow, so it is in the kingdom of God. God raises up fivefold ministers and fills them with great anointing, wisdom, and spiritual knowledge so that believers may learn, grow, and receive impartation through them as they humbly submit under their leadership. This is God’s divine structure.

The power of God will be restored to many more churches and believers as leaders and all believers embrace God’s kingdom government structure. Through this divine order, miracles flow mightily, and impartation is released, empowering believers to walk in the same anointing and authority.

Order

God is also restoring divine order to the body of Christ. He is a God of order (1 Cor. 14:40). Where there is no order, chaos and confusion take over, resulting in division. The Bible warns about this: “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand’” (Matt. 12:25).

This is a spiritual principle: The more united a group is, the more powerful it becomes; the more divided, the weaker it becomes. When division enters a church, it limits what God can do. His power cannot move mightily in a house that is not in unity. There are several ways a church can fall out of order, one of which is a lack of submission to leadership. A football team is led by a coach—one head coach who carries the vision for how the team will play and win. The coach determines the starting lineup, the plays, and the adjustments needed when the opposing team takes the lead.

The team’s success depends on its unity, on every player’s willingness to respect and follow the coach’s direction. If even one player becomes rebellious and prideful and believes they know better than the coach, it weakens the entire team. Imagine that player suddenly giving different directions right before the next play; confusion and division would take over, almost guaranteeing defeat. This is exactly how it is in the church. For every true leader of a ministry, God gives a specific vision and anoints that person to lead. He equips them with the grace to teach, to handle difficult situations with wisdom and discernment, and to navigate spiritual warfare and persecution against the church.

Unfortunately, a lack of honor for, awareness of, and submission to the anointing upon the leader God has chosen is common in many churches today. We are in a spiritual war, carrying out a divine mission. As the body of Christ, we are a revival army—and every army must honor its captain. In the same way, you must have reverence for the leader God has placed over your church. This is not something to be done lightly but with the fear of God.

It’s common in many churches for people to treat church as something casual, forgetting the sacred purpose and weight of what God is doing there. It is also common for some to act like prideful players, believing they know better than the leader, assuming authority, and leading others into confusion. But when every believer comes into alignment, united under godly leadership, the church becomes strong, moving forward in power, advancing the kingdom of God, and destroying the works of the devil with great speed.

Order in the church also includes honoring and following the principles of God. In many places, especially within the old-wine way, people pray however they feel led, according to what they were taught, or by imitating what they have seen others do. But God has specific principles for how demons are to be cast out and how the sick are to be healed.

We are to model our prayers after Jesus and the apostles in the book of Acts. They ministered by walking in their authority in Christ. They didn’t beg God to deliver someone. They commanded demons to go. Their prayers were simple and full of power, without striving, theatrics, or loud performance. Because they truly carried the power of God, their simple words released mighty results. When Jesus commanded a demon to leave, it was with few words. Throughout Scripture, when Jesus, the apostles, or other ministers prayed for the sick or oppressed, it was always one person ministering to another or to a crowd—never several people laying hands at once or shouting commands together.

We see this principle clearly in Acts 5:15: “As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.”

Another example is found in Acts 8:6–7: “When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.”

And in Acts 19:11–12: “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.”

In all these examples, miracles occurred as one servant of God walked in their authority in Christ, and the anointing flowed through them to touch the people. When Jesus prayed for the sick and delivered the oppressed, He demonstrated this principle of walking in authority.

The principle of authority means that when one person carries delegated authority over a group, their word, instruction, or command is honored and carried out by those under that authority. Students in a classroom understand that they are to obey their teacher. If a single police officer gives a command to a crowd, people listen. When a mayor, governor, or president issues a mandate, citizens understand they must follow it.

It works the same way in the spiritual realm. When demons recognize that a leader — or believers within a church — are not operating in true spiritual authority, they exploit the lack of order. They find loopholes and hide. It’s like a classroom where the teacher doesn’t understand or exercise their authority. In those cases the classroom becomes chaotic and students take advantage of the situation.

These two areas in the church — submission to godly leadership and praying according to God’s principles — are among the main places where disorder has taken root. But in this time of revival, God is restoring divine order to His church.

As apostles teach the principles of the kingdom of God and the importance of order, and as prophets release the fear of the Lord, spiritual eyes will be opened to understand the true meaning and necessity of walking in God’s order.

Kathryn Krick is a rising online influencer, apostolic minister, and the lead pastor of 5F Church in Los Angeles, where miracles happen and people are healed, delivered, and transformed as the prophetic anointing flows powerfully. She travels the world ministering with a passion to see people encounter the power of God, be set free, walk in abundant life, and be transformed into mature, anointed vessels of God. Her new book, Ignite Revival, is available on Amazon.com.

Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our
struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

— Ephesians 6:11–12

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
— Martin Luther King Jr.

No matter how loudly people are shouting in your face, never mistake the chess pieces for the hands moving them.

I’ve had people shout in my face and attack our stage, try to unplug our amps and squirt superglue on our keyboards during a worship service, and even play kazoos to drown out the sound of our voices when we raised them in praise. They act like our enemies, but we know better. They are just pawns in a larger strategy being manipulated by dark spiritual forces trying to extinguish the light. If they knew better, they would do better.

There are numerous military terms for what spiritual war is like. A proxy war is when you attack an ally of
your enemy or encourage one of your allies to attack one of their allies. A similar move is called a false flag operation. You put soldiers in the uniforms of an enemy’s ally and have them attack a neutral country
unprovoked. This makes it look like your enemy is the aggressor and causes counterattacks and strife. You
can sit back and reap the rewards of the deception.

Both are pretty good descriptions of what we are experiencing today. Darkness is manipulating the
language of culture to attack the people of the light, and too many of us are falling for it. We’re caught in the difficult place of standing up for what is right and being labeled as haters for it. The reward for taking a stand for truth, righteousness, and justice is to be called a bigot, a homophobe or a nationalist. I have been personally labeled all these—and even worse! The rhetoric is toxic. The problem is that too often we are embracing the same tactics by shouting back. When we defend ourselves in anger, we can sound like the very people they are accusing us of being.

Once you scapegoat a person or group as “the problem in our nation today,” you’ve done half the
devil’s work for him. You’ve already seeded discord and strife in your own heart. And you’ve brought the fight into the natural realm and out of the spiritual realm. That’s fighting in the wrong territory.

Godly warfare is not fought against people; it’s fought in the spiritual realm by embracing God’s
promises and lifting them back up to Him in prayer. It’s fought by proclaiming the victory the cross has already won. It’s fought by showing we have a different Spirit—a Holy One—behind our actions and attitudes.

That’s the way Jesus fought. Jesus knew who He was and to whom He belonged. He knew who was in
charge. He prayed and then did only what His Father showed Him to do. And by doing so, He cracked open a dark, legalistic world and let in the light of salvation.

I remember being in Afghanistan, behind Taliban lines in the mountains outside Kabul, with a missionary from India who became a great hero and mentor to me. I was the only American I saw the whole time I was there, and everyone seemed afraid for me. My Indian friend, though, was less concerned. “God called us to do this,” he told me, “so He will make a way, and He will protect us.” He seemed to have no fear. He continued, saying, “Sean, when you go to these places, you’re going to sense heaven celebrating, ‘Finally, someone has shown up here! We’ve been waiting so long for you to arrive!’” My friend knew who he belonged to and who had the real power.

Romans 8:19 tells us, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” The earth is longing and groaning for the sons and daughters of God to show up and release the light of the gospel. In every village I went to in Afghanistan, I brought my guitar, and we worshipped, even though we were behind Taliban lines. There’s just something about hearing the call of God to go to a place and then showing up and bringing the kingdom. It’s like heaven applauds. I remember singing as the stars came out in the evening, filling the sky. It was as if I could hear the heavens proclaiming, “We’ve been waiting for you!” We were in a war zone, but in those moments I had no fear. The presence of God was greater. I’ve rarely felt so truly alive.

It’s not a matter of courage as much as perspective. You have to know who you are, who you belong to and who is calling the shots. It demands seeing things from a heavenly vantage point. We must “come up
here”—come up now—and view things from God’s higher point of view.

We often think this happens only in the mission field, but every place can be like that if you get a spiritual
perspective on it. It might be in your workplace, in your local coffee shop, on the street in front of your
house, or at a park in the middle of your city. There are dark places all over where the earth is groaning,
waiting for a son or daughter of God to lift up a song and a prayer and call heaven down into that place.

Real change begins in the place of prayer. As the sons and daughters of God, we’re called to come to the
throne of heaven and lay down our concerns. We are called to be like the righteous kings of Israel and Judah and not let false gods build their temples all around us. We are to speak up for what is right and oppose that which is evil and exploitative. We’re called to bring the things that are wrong before the throne of God the Father—the true authority of the universe—for justice.

Moses was a powerful man of God, but he was also known for his meekness. He had this habit, when
faced with adversity, of falling to his face in prayer. Other Bible prophets acted similarly. Just look for the
phrase “fell on his face” in the Bible, and you will see it all over. The Book of Matthew even tells us that
Jesus “fell with his face to the ground and prayed” before facing the cross (26:39).

Falling to one’s face is an act of surrender, of contrition—but surrender and contrition to what? To
God. To His Word. To His promises. It’s an act of faith. It’s an acknowledgment of where the real power lies. It’s an act of saying, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” It’s an act of recognizing God as the highest authority and turning judgment over to Him.

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Knowing Who We Are

All of this begins with knowing who we are. You can’t kneel nonviolently in prayer like this in the face of
violent opposition unless you know to whom you belong—unless you know the battle is not yours but
the Lord’s.

Identity has become a loaded term in recent times, but the question “Who am I?” is still one each of us
must answer. The word identity comes from the French word identité, derived from the medieval Latin phrase identitatem, meaning “sameness.” In other words, we get who we are not from some internal mixture of gifts, talents and desires as much as by comparing ourselves with others and determining who we are the “same as” and who we differ from.

Psychologist René Girard calls this mimetic desire, meaning we mimic those we look up to by wanting the
same things they have. This is how advertising works. They show you a cool, famous person with something, and you naturally want it too. We tend to desire the things of the people we want to be like, because down deep we think it will make us the “same as” them.

This happens without us consciously realizing it. If I asked you why you wanted something, you’d probably answer, “I like it. That’s just what I want.” We rarely realize that it’s because we want to be like
[fill in the blank], who we think is cool and secretly want to be like. This is how peer pressure works as well. It’s hard to be the one voice in a group that believes or speaks differently. We want to look and sound like our favorite celebrities, movie characters and music artists. This is why the media is so powerful: Through its constant exposure and access to millions of minds, it shapes culture, and culture shapes human attitudes and actions.

Subversive indoctrination is all around us: from the subtle things that happen in schools to the violence of
video games and to the radicalization of hate that can happen in online forums. Satan has had centuries of practice in how to manipulate culture and identities to his own ends. This is why we urge parents to pay attention to what their kids access through their screens. My wife and I are very intentional about this
with our four children. We must be the ones to set boundaries and guidelines. Parents need to talk with
their kids about what they’re experiencing, how it’s affecting them, and how these things are designed to
prey on their insecurities.

How many times do we need to hear a story about someone who was just a normal kid, and then
suddenly, they went on a shooting spree after being radicalized online? It’s horrifying, and it’s happening
every single day. Young adults are being groomed, targeted, and isolated while falling for dark conspiracies designed to manipulate, incite violence, and create mayhem.

Identity is usually considered to be who we are as individuals—how we stand out from others—but it
begins with how we fit in with our friends and society as a whole. Every generation approaches it differently, and those differences tend to be obvious. We are formed by the interactions around us and the gifts, talents, and desires inside us. Our identity is formed between outside voices and the things God has placed inside us. It’s a crucible of sorts—with heat and pressure from both directions.

Jesus got His identity from His Father and did only what His Father showed Him to do. As He said it, “The
Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19). When Jesus was baptized before the beginning of His ministry, He heard His Father’s approval from heaven:

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from
heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
— Matthew 3:16–17

There were times when the disciples would wake up, and Jesus was nowhere to be found. Where was
He? He was off spending time with His Father—time that was more important to Him than His ministry
itself. Crowds would be looking for Him, hungry to hear Him speak, and He’d be off walking in the hills,
conversing with His Father.

To put it simply, Jesus wanted to be like His Dad.

Forming our identities should follow the same pattern. The approval of the Father in our lives will
shatter the performative cycles we create to feel known, seen and heard. We need approval from an
authority figure and the love of our parents—particularly our fathers—because these things are crucial to fully understanding our worth.

According to the 2020 census, though, about 23 percent of children grow up without a father present, a
percentage that has doubled since 1968 and continues to increase. So many fathers have left their families. So few are willing to stick around and work things out rather than choose the easy option of walking away. No wonder children feel abandoned today and get caught up in a cycle of striving for approval that’s unstable. Instead, we need the affirmation of a father and mother who are committed to each other. Without this kind of love as a foundation to who we are becoming, it’s far more difficult to build a happy, fulfilling life where we act in obedience to heaven rather than striving for the approval of fickle peers and a manipulative society.

Jesus’ ministry was initiated by the approval of His Father, which He received before He preached His first
sermon or performed His first miracle. We need the same affirmation from our fathers and from our Father in heaven, who gives it freely to His sons and daughters through Jesus. Without a similar connection, we lose track of who we were created to be and try to “find” an identity that will make life meaningful and joyful.

We may give our lives to Jesus at a church service, but if we don’t continually feed our minds with biblical,
truth-based material—reading the Bible itself is, of course, the best possible “soul food”—we can easily be overcome with what Jesus called “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for
other things” (Mark 4:19). These things fill the worldly media we consume. The world doesn’t know—or even really care—who you are called to be or why God put you on the earth.

When we are unsure of who we are becoming and randomly snack on what the world feeds us through
every new image we scroll past, we’re susceptible to being blown every which way by the winds of opinion around us. It’s evil’s play to keep us uncertain because then we never really accomplish anything of note. We’re just sleepwalking through life, swept along by the currents of this world. We become orphans trying to gain approval wherever we can find it, and that’s a dangerous game. There’s nothing solid to rely on. We grow discouraged, disconnected, disheartened, and disillusioned. We long for significance and to be loved and respected by others—to be truly seen—but instead it’s constantly implied that we don’t measure up, we’re less than we should be, and no one really cares anyway.

Let me make a prophetic statement over your life, right here, right now: It’s time to put down your phone and pick up your Bible.

Sean Feucht is a speaker, author, missionary, artist, and activist who founded Burn 24-7, Light A Candle, Hold the Line, and Let Us Worship— global movements mobilizing worship, prayer, compassion, and civic engagement across six continents and hundreds of cities, with multiple Let Us Worship albums reaching number one on iTunes in Christian Worship and several topping all genres for multiple days. His work rallies churches and the next generation to pursue revival, bring hope to hard places, and stand for integrity in the public square through worship-centered initiatives, events, and resources. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Kate, and they have four children—Keturah, Malachi, Ezra, and Zion—and make their home while serving through national ministry travel. His new book, No Turning Back, is available on Amazon.com.

There are moments in life when pain presses so heavily against the soul that it feels almost physical—when you’re awake in the midnight hours, wondering if anyone sees, if anyone hears, if anything will ever change. In those raw places, heaven does more than listen. It responds.

These stories don’t simply recount survival. They pull back the curtain on spiritual battles unfolding in everyday lives. They show us the people the world often overlooks: the wounded, the weary, the ones carrying scars in places others never see. Society may label them “too damaged” or “beyond help,” but heaven sees something different.

From Hell’s Grip to Heaven’s Throne

Joshua Miles grew up in a God-fearing household with a pastor father who lived the Scriptures. But you cannot inherit salvation. “I still made my own life’s choices,” he admits. And the man Joshua chose to become was dangerous. The streets of Montgomery, Alabama, knew him well. Bullets had flown at him before—fifty rounds from AR-15s that somehow left him untouched. He mistook God’s protection for his own invincibility.

Then came what everyone thought was the flu. It was early 2020, before the world had a name for COVID-19. Josh’s fever climbed to 116 degrees. For days it raged, cooking his brain in ways doctors couldn’t diagnose. He kept working, kept pushing—until the morning his father loaded him into the truck to race toward the emergency room.

They never made it. Somewhere on that interstate, Josh’s body surrendered. A stroke, a heart attack, and a seizure struck simultaneously. His soul lifted. Suddenly, he could see everything—the truck weaving through traffic, the city lights below, every perspective at once. But what struck him most was what he felt: his father’s prayers rising like heat through the atmosphere, tangible as smoke.

“The highest respecting moment from my father is the fact that his first reflex was to pray,” Josh recalls. One hand on the wheel, one hand raised, his father called out the name of Yeshua and spoke in tongues, declaring life over his dying son. But the prayers had not yet reached their destination. And neither had Josh.

In an instant, the aerial view vanished. Josh felt himself sucked downward—not far in distance, but dimensions away. The journey grew heavy, empty, filled with turmoil. He was going to hell.

“It’s not about fire,” he explains. “You literally feel the absence of God. That is the torturous feeling.” Without the presence of God that fills our earthly atmosphere, everything burns. Your body, your mind, your spirit. You are being cooked from within by the sheer emptiness of existing apart from your Creator.

The darkness was darker than black—yet somehow Josh could see through it. Millions of souls stood on shelves of glowing molten rock, suffering in a dim orange haze. Demonic figures moved among them. Every negative feeling humanity has ever known compressed into each passing second: paranoia, regret, bitterness, thirst—not merely for water but for the living water his soul had rejected.

“You see every single thing that replays over and over,” Josh says—every chance God gave him, every moment of protection he’d mistaken for luck, every squandered opportunity to turn his life around. The regret was crushing. And the worst part? “You know this was the most just decision you’ve ever seen made.”

He belonged there. He knew it. But somewhere above, in a truck hurtling down an Alabama interstate, a father’s prayers were shifting the atmosphere.

Josh felt a transition, a pulling upward, a journey that felt like light-years traveled in the span of a microsecond. Colors streaked past so fast they blurred into white. Weight disappeared. Then, in an instant, he stood somewhere else entirely: heaven.

The first thing he felt was reverence—an overwhelming humility that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with awe. “The presence of God is so powerful that you just don’t feel like you belong in his presence,” Josh explains. “It’s a humbleness. You don’t have to look. You can feel it so much.”

He found himself before the throne, with prisms of light forming a being and a seat that were both transparent and solid. Unlike hell, Josh knew immediately this was not his permanent destination. He could feel something happening inside him—a reprogramming, a rewriting of his spiritual code. Everything was perfect. And all he wanted was to be obedient.

Then he was back—gasping in a truck seat soaked with sweat, his father still praying, still believing. His clothes were drenched through. This was real.

The aftermath was brutal. Josh couldn’t walk properly or speak coherently. Doctors said he would never fully recover. But strangely, he could still sing. He could still drive. God had preserved the very gifts He intended to use.

When Josh regained the ability to tell his story, his bishop suggested a simple church interview. Within weeks, it had millions of views. God’s timing was surgical: a pandemic had locked the world indoors. Eyes were glued to screens; hearts were desperate for something real.

“If I didn’t come back, that’s where I would’ve stayed,” Josh says of hell. But he did come back—pulled from the pit by a father’s prayers and a God who wasn’t finished with him yet.

Today, Josh carries a message that burns in his bones: “Every time we wake up, and we open our eyes, there should be extreme levels of gratitude because you get another chance to get it right.” He’s stood in both places. And he’s living proof that even from hell’s grip, the hand of a praying father—and the mercy of an eternal God—can still reach down and pull you through.

From Trauma to the Throne Room

Cheryl Beck knew the feeling of dying the way most people know the feeling of falling asleep—intimately, repeatedly, from a childhood spent at the edge of oblivion. Born into a Luciferian cult that considered her expendable, she had left her body more times than she could count as a little girl, flying with angels over treetops while unspeakable things were done to the shell she’d left behind. But this time was different. This time, she was 42 years old, lying in a hospital bed on the very floor where she worked as a nurse, and the telemonitor strapped to her chest was about to flatline.

It had started with a myelogram—dye injected into her spine to diagnose the source of her chronic pain. What the doctors discovered would have been unbelievable to anyone who didn’t know her history: compression fractures running the length of her vertebrae, a C4-C5 break in her neck, hip fractures, a chunk of pelvic bone missing, a face that looked like cracked glass beneath the skin. The accumulated wreckage of ritual torture, all healed crooked and wrong because the cult’s doctor had dismissed every injury as the complaints of a “hypochondriac child.” But the procedure itself triggered an anaphylactic reaction that swelled her brain and organs. Then came internal bleeding. Then the heart attack.

She was drifting in the ICU when her heart decided to do aerobics. That’s how she described it later—not fluttering, but full gymnastic routines inside her chest. As a nurse, Cheryl knew exactly what to do. She pressed the event button on the telemonitor and waited. Then everything went quiet. Her heart settled, and then she realized it wasn’t beating at all. She wasn’t breathing either. There was no pain, no gasping for air, no panic—only stillness so complete it felt like the whole world had pressed pause. Then came the pull: her spirit drawing inward from her fingertips and toes, gathering at her center like water spiraling down a drain, and then—pop—she was out.

Cheryl hovered above her hospital bed, looking down at her own body with the clinical eye of a woman who had spent her career assessing the dying. She could see through the walls somehow. Her friend was going crazy at the telemetry station down the hall. Someone was calling a code blue.

She turned away from all of it, looked up, and there he was. Her son, Samuel, stood before her, enveloped with her in a globe of white light so bright it should have been blinding but wasn’t. He was tall—a young man of twenty-three, the age he would have been if he had lived. The age he would have been if he hadn’t been sacrificed on a Christmas Eve altar when he was three months old, offered to the god Kronos so that Cheryl’s father could ascend in the cult’s hierarchy.

She threw her arms around him. Joy erupted from somewhere deep inside her, a laughing-crying-singing sensation she had never experienced. There was no pain here. For the first time in her existence—the broken bones, the nerve damage, the constant grinding ache—all of it was gone. There was only peace, and this boy she had never gotten to raise, this son she had been forced to watch die.

She stared at his face, trying to memorize every detail. His eyes held a depth of wisdom that made her feel like the child between the two of them—not wounded wisdom but something pure and luminous. He had been taught of the Lord. She could see it as clearly as she could see his smile. Whatever horrors had been done to his infant body on that altar, his spirit had been safe. He had grown up in the presence of God.

“Look,” Samuel said. To her right, something was happening in the distance—a point of blue light that swelled into a window, then a doorway, then a portal large enough to swallow galaxies. And somehow her vision zoomed toward it, telescoping across impossible distances until she was peering into the throne room of God.

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The floor at God’s feet moved. Cheryl’s vision zoomed closer, and she gasped.

The floor wasn’t a floor. It was people—millions of them, each one no taller than the sole of God’s sandal, yet each one distinct and alive and worshipping. They were dancing, and as they danced their robes changed colors in perfect synchronization with the music, like a halftime show orchestrated by heaven itself. “I want to go there,” Cheryl thought. “This is where I belong.”

Then she was zooming backward, pulled away from the portal, deposited once again in front of Samuel.

“But I want to stay,” she said. Samuel smiled—a warmth that contained no judgment, only love. “Mom, you have to go back. You have a lot of work to do.”

She argued. Someone else could do the work, surely. Hadn’t she suffered enough. Samuel just chuckled. “Mom. You have to go back.” Three faces flashed before her eyes—her living children, seven and ten and twelve years old, waiting for their mother to come home. “OK,” she whispered. “But as long as I’m unconscious, I want to spend time with you.”

She didn’t think to ask for miraculous healing. All she wanted was to hold her firstborn son for as long as heaven would let her. Then—zoom—she became a ball of light, and she was slamming back into her broken body just as the code team burst through the door.

The pain returned like a wave crashing over her. She could feel the heart attack now, feel every damaged nerve and fractured vertebra screaming back to life. But they didn’t have to resuscitate her. Her heart had started on its own. Cheryl Beck survived. She would go on to speak publicly about the cult that had stolen her childhood and her son, despite the danger, to dream of building a ranch for children rescued from trafficking, to live with a pacemaker and unshakable hope.

But she had seen. She had held Samuel and watched the robes of the redeemed turn colors at the feet of God. She knew her son had been raised in glory and was waiting for her in that place where the music never stopped.

And one day, when her work was finally done, she would join him there.

The Lungs from Heaven

Mike Olsen was dying by degrees. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a cruel disease that slowly turns living lungs to scar tissue, had reduced this former pastor and actor to a man tethered to oxygen tanks. The diagnosis carried no explanation and offered no cure, only waiting. But God was already speaking in the language He has used since ancient times: signs and wonders woven into the fabric of ordinary moments.

One night, Mike and his wife, Patty, were driving home from visiting a friend when Patty began to sing an old song by John Michael Talbot, “Father, I Put My Life in Your Hands.” As she sang, she lifted invisible burdens toward heaven—the finances, the fear, the impossible weight of loving someone who was dying.

Mike joined his voice to hers, and then, out of the darkness, a deer materialized directly in their path. There was no time to swerve. Going 55 miles an hour, they had no choice but to cry out the only name that matters: “Jesus!”

The deer vanished. It wasn’t struck; it didn’t leap aside. It vanished, as if it had never existed at all.

They sat trembling on the shoulder of the highway, searching the darkness for any trace of the animal. Nothing. Mike, ever the student of Scripture, began turning the encounter over in his mind, searching for its meaning. He thought of Psalm 42:1 (MKJV), which says, “As the deer pants for the water,” but that didn’t fit. He considered his son’s Irish dancing nickname, the Leaping Deer, but that also proved to be a dead end.

Then it came to him: the tribal banners of Israel. The deer was the symbol of Naphtali (Gen. 49:21), a name that means to wrestle or struggle. In that moment, Mike understood. Six months before the transplant call would come, God had dispatched a messenger in the form of that deer to tell him, “I see you. I know. Do not be afraid.”

The prophetic tapestry continued to unfold. Just days before Mike received the call that donor lungs were available, a woman he had never met came to pray over him, at his wife’s invitation. Without any knowledge of his transplant status, she stopped mid-prayer and said, “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I just saw a vision of lungs coming down from heaven and being placed into your chest.”

Days later, Mike stood in his backyard workshop, crafting folk art, when the voice of God interrupted: “Put that stuff up. You need to go now.” He obeyed. Minutes after he walked in the house, the phone rang. The hospital had lungs for him.

The surgery took 12 hours. The first lung was successfully transplanted. But as surgeons began closing Mike’s chest after the second transplant, disaster struck. A clamp was removed too early. Mike bled out on the operating table.

In that moment between heartbeats, Mike Olsen left his body.

His first thought was characteristically wry: “At least I’m going up—that’s a good sign.” But the ascent was not uncontested. Dark voices swarmed around him, accusatory and mocking: “You’re not good enough. Who do you think you are?” Mike recognized the enemy instantly and wielded the only weapon of consequence: “In the name of Jesus,” he said, “leave me alone and shut up. I am a child of God.”

Silence fell. And then he saw light. Rainbow-colored brilliance swirled around him, and the lights began to sing. Myriads of angels sang, “Mike’s coming home! Mike’s coming home!” But another voice interceded, gentle yet authoritative: “No. He’s just here for a visit.”

What Mike encountered next defies human language. He stood in a brightness that extended as far as sight could reach. And in that brilliance, he felt what he had preached about for decades but had never truly known: Jesus was everywhere. Every molecule of that realm pulsed with His presence. The glory of the Lord filled the temple, and Mike was standing inside it.

In an instant, every worry he had carried on earth seemed absurd. The finances, the health fears, even his spiritual insecurities dissolved like morning mist in the face of absolute grace. The slate was not just wiped clean; he realized it had been clean all along. The reality finally dawned on him: “It’s all Jesus, Mike. It was never about you.”

And then his heart turned toward another. Somewhere on earth, a family was grieving. Someone had died so Mike could live. Someone had donated the very lungs now being stitched into his chest. Emotion overwhelmed him as the thought crystallized: “I want to thank my donor.”

He sensed a presence behind him and turned. There stood Jesus, and beside Him a figure Mike somehow instantly knew to be the donor. The forms were not entirely distinct; Mike couldn’t discern gender or features. But the knowing was absolute. Mike had met his lung donor in heaven.

Jesus stepped forward, placed His hand on Mike’s left shoulder, and said gently, “Mike, these are your new lungs. Just receive them.”

“Yes, Lord,” Mike whispered.

And with that holy agreement between heaven and earth, Mike began to descend, floating back toward the operating table, back toward the body that awaited him, back toward a life extended by grace.

Mike Olsen came back from death with a message that burns in his chest as surely as those new lungs breathe: God sees you. God loves you deeply. Stop worrying about what He’s already handled.

Each of these testimonies points to a truth that transcends individual healing: The same Jesus who heals our brokenness on earth will welcome us into His presence in heaven, where all pain will cease and joy will be eternal. Your brokenness is not your disqualification—it’s your commission. Heaven is calling your name.

Randy Kay died for over thirty minutes in 2005 and encountered Jesus in heaven, an experience that transformed him from a biotech CEO into one of today’s leading voices on near-death encounters and eternal realities. He is the best-selling author of Dying to Meet Jesus, Revelations from Heaven, and Heaven Stormed, and hosts the popular podcast and TV program Heaven Encounters, reaching millions worldwide. An ordained pastor and international speaker, Kay lives in Carlsbad, California, with his wife, Renee, and together they enjoy their children and grandchildren. His new book, Heaven Encounters, is available now on Amazon.com.

But to you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. — Malachi 4:2, NKJV

Now we’re turning to a nutrient so powerful that it acts more like a hormone than a vitamin. Of all the
numbers you can know for your health, this one may be the most important: your vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D3 is essential for maintaining bone density, muscle strength and healthy teeth. Without enough
Vitamin D, the body can absorb only about 10–15 percent of the calcium you consume. Deficiency usually leads to rickets in children and osteomalacia (soft, weakened bones) in adults. Vitamin D3 directs calcium and phosphorus from food and supplements into your bones, teeth and muscles, ensuring they remain strong and resilient.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countless people became severely ill. Yet despite being in contact with
thousands of patients and traveling frequently, neither my wife, Mary, nor I became sick—not once. One major reason: We kept our vitamin D optimized.

Vitamin D is your body’s frontline defense against viral and bacterial infections. It’s the immune system’s
thermostat, helping regulate inflammation, prevent overreaction and strengthen resistance to disease.
Vitamin D is also known to reduce the risk and severity of the flu and other respiratory infections, especially for the elderly or those with chronic illnesses.

How to Boost Your Vitamin D

The best way to raise your vitamin D level is through supplementation. As we age, our ability to convert
sunlight into vitamin D steadily declines. Younger people can usually make enough from time outdoors,
but most older adults can’t—especially during the winter or if they live in northern climates. When the
weather turns cold and people bundle up in coats and sweaters, their skin is no longer exposed to the sun and vitamin D production drops dramatically.

Researchers have found a clear connection between where you live and how healthy your immune system is. The farther north you live, the lower your vitamin D levels tend to be and the higher your risk for
autoimmune disorders, infections and certain cancers.

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How Much You Need

Most adults do well taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily to maintain a level around 60 ng/mL. Some people, particularly those who are overweight, may need 5,000 or even 10,000 IU or more per day to reach the same blood level. The reason is that vitamin D becomes sequestered in fatty tissue and isn’t as available for use throughout the body.

Vitamin D2 is still used in medicine to treat rare conditions such as rickets, hypoparathyroidism and
severe calcium deficiency. It’s available by prescription in doses of 50,000 IU, typically taken once a week.
However, for everyday supplementation, D3 is safer and more effective.

Why Calcium Matters

The body loses about 500 mg of calcium from the bones every day. Without adequate vitamin D, that
calcium isn’t replaced and bone strength gradually declines. Vitamin D drives calcium and phosphorus
into the bones, teeth and muscles, where they’re needed for strength and structure. This is why vitamin
D deficiency can lead to tooth loss, muscle weakness, and brittle bones, especially after pregnancy, when the body’s mineral stores are depleted.

A daily calcium supplement paired with vitamin D helps restore what’s lost. Good food sources of
calcium include leafy greens, almonds, yogurt and fortified plant-based milks.

Foods That Contain Vitamin D

Vitamin D is found naturally in very few foods. The richest dietary sources are fatty fish such as salmon,
sardines and mackerel. Four ounces of wild-caught salmon contain about 1,400 IU of vitamin D, while farm-raised salmon has about 15 to 25 percent of that amount. That’s why choosing wild-caught fish
whenever possible makes a real difference.

Other foods, such as milk, yogurt, orange juice and cereal, are fortified with vitamin D, but the amounts are usually far below what’s needed for optimal levels. These fortified foods can help, but supplementation is still necessary for most people.

When Too Much is Too Much

As with any nutrient, balance is key. A vitamin D level above 100 ng/mL is considered high, and levels above 150 ng/mL can be dangerous. Excessive vitamin D can raise blood calcium levels too high, a condition called hypercalcemia. Mild hypercalcemia occurs when blood calcium measures 10.5–11.9 mg/dL, moderate between 12.0–13.9 mg/dL. A calcium level above 14 mg/dL is a medical emergency that can cause nausea, vomiting, dehydration, confusion, irregular heart rhythms and even coma.

That’s why it’s important to check your vitamin D and calcium levels regularly. If calcium is high (above 10.5 or 11), your doctor may also test your parathyroid hormone. Occasionally, an overactive parathyroid gland (called a parathyroid adenoma) is to blame, and it may need to be surgically removed. These cases are rare, but they highlight the importance of knowing your numbers and following up when something looks off.

Prevention Is Always Better

Too often, patients come to me after a diagnosis of metastatic cancer, and I can’t help but think how much of it could have been prevented. The body always gives early warning signs—elevated inflammatory markers, high PSA, or low vitamin D—but if no one checks, those signs are missed.

An ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. When you pair a healthy, anti-inflammatory diet—such as the Mediterranean or healthy keto plan from my book Beyond Keto—with daily vitamin D, K2 and key nutrients like DIM, you strengthen your body’s defenses against disease.

Vitamin K2, in particular, works hand in hand with vitamin D3. It helps regulate calcium metabolism, directing calcium into the bones and keeping it out of the arteries. This not only strengthens your skeleton but also protects your heart and blood vessels.

You were designed to live with vitality and purpose—not to fade away in sickness. God’s best is
that you live long and strong, equipped with knowledge and empowered to take charge of your health.

Don Colbert, MD, is board‐certified in family practice and anti‐aging medicine. He has also received extensive training in nutritional and preventative medicine, and he has helped millions of people to discover the joy of living in divine health. In addition to speaking at conferences, he is the author of the New York Times best-sellers “The Seven Pillars of Health” and “Dr. Colbert’s ‘I Can Do This Diet.’” His new book, Live Long and Strong, is available on Amazon.com.

Beyond the sacred furnishings of the Holy Place stood the most mysterious and awe-inspiring part of the Tabernacle: the Holy of Holies. After passing the Golden Menorah, the Table of Showbread, and the Altar of Incense, the priest approached the place where the presence of the Lord dwelled between the cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant. Yet one final barrier remained before entering that sacred space where God’s voice was heard and His manifest presence revealed: a thick, heavy curtain known as the Veil.

You shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet material and fine twisted linen; it shall be made with cherubim, the work of a skillful workman.…You shall hang up the veil under the clasps, and shall bring in the ark of the testimony there within the veil; and the veil shall serve for you as a partition between the holy place and the holy of holies. —Exodus 26:31, 33

The Holy of Holies was so sacred that only the high priest could enter it—and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Inside was the Ark of the Covenant, and within the Ark were the Ten Commandments—written not by Moses but by the very finger of God. The Lord gave the laws of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, on Mount Sinai, and Moses wrote them down. But the Ten Commandments were different. God Himself inscribed them on tablets of stone. These commandments are so holy that they have formed the moral foundation of Western civilization. In fact, every major religion in the world draws from the moral law found in these ten truths written by God Himself.

Above the Ark were two golden statues of a class of celestial beings, or angels, called cherubim. The Hebrew word cherubim means “near ones.” The cherubim are guardians of God’s holy presence. They are first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 3:24 after the Lord drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden for their rebellion—after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. —Genesis 3:24

The visible presence of the Lord rested between the cherubim, and when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sins of Israel, the Lord would speak to him from between the golden cherubim.

To get into that sacred place, the priest had to pass through the thick, weighty Veil. Some say it was so heavy that it took several men to hang it. And here’s something mysterious: There was no slit in the middle. So how did the high priest get through it?

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According to some mystical Jewish traditions, the priest was supernaturally transported—or translated through the Veil into the Holy of Holies. I don’t know whether that, in fact, happened, but the Veil was clearly an obstacle since no one knows for certain how the priest got past it. This is why I believe that for us today, the Veil represents more than a physical barrier. It’s a prophetic shadow of spiritual warfare. It points to the thick, heavy presence of the enemy we must press through if we are to enter the Holy of Holies, the place where we experience the deepest communion with God.

Today, many believers don’t want to talk about spiritual warfare. They love the idea of God’s blessings, but they don’t want to deal with the devil. Some even think Satan and demons are only a problem for unbelievers. But that kind of thinking is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand—and it’s a dangerous deception.

The devil is real. Demons are real. And they absolutely target believers. If we’re going to lay hold of God, we have to learn how to war in the spirit. We have to learn how to overcome. Seven times in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, Yeshua says, “To him who overcomes.” In Revelation 3:21, He declares, “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” We cannot walk in victory without learning how to defeat the enemy.

Building Strength Through Warfare

We even see this principle operating through the life of Yeshua. Before Jesus launched His public ministry, He was baptized in the Jordan River, and the moment was powerful. The heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove, and He heard the Father say, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:22). But immediately after that, Yeshua was “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1–2).

Why would the Spirit of Elohim, the Spirit of God, orchestrate that? Why would He lead Yeshua into the wilderness to battle against Satan? It’s because the Lord was preparing Him. God wanted to strengthen His Son through warfare so He would be able to exercise authority over darkness and be the Healer and Redeemer the Father had ordained Him to be.

After Jesus overcame the devil, Scripture says He returned from the wilderness “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). He began to teach, and people marveled at His authority. But before that power was demonstrated publicly, Jesus first had to fight—and win—privately.

You see, even though He was the Son of God, Yeshua had to grow and learn. The Bible says He “kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). He wasn’t born into this world with a microchip in His head that downloaded everything He needed to know. God taught Him. And one of the ways the Father equipped Him for ministry was by having Him face the devil in spiritual warfare.

The Lord strengthened Yeshua in the Spirit as He learned how to overcome the enemy, and He’s going to do the same for us. Father God strengthens our spiritual muscles by putting us in a position to war against the powers of darkness that seek to keep us from entering God’s presence.

Beloved, we can go into the Holy Place in the spirit realm and encounter God. We can be led by His Spirit, represented by the Golden Menorah. We can know His presence is always with us, symbolized by the Table of Showbread. And we can commune with Him in constant prayer, as reflected at the Altar of Incense. But to get into the Holy of Holies—where we experience the closest, most intense fellowship with God—we must first overcome the evil one, just as Yeshua did. There is no other way. That’s what the Bible says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

Recognize the Tactics of the Enemy

Our fight is not against a physical enemy. It’s in the unseen realm. And the battleground where this war is often fought is in our thoughts.

Let me give you an example. In 1 Chronicles 21, the Bible says Satan moved David to take a census of Israel. David didn’t know Satan was influencing him. He probably thought it was his own idea. Many scholars believe that David’s decision to take a census was rooted in pride or a desire to trust in numbers and military power rather than the Lord. As a result of taking the census, David was disciplined by the Lord, and seventy thousand men of Israel died.

Now get this: David was deceived by a single thought, and that’s still how the enemy works. He puts an idea in your mind, and if you don’t recognize it and reject it, you’ll potentially act on it. That’s why we have to be vigilant.

For so many years, even as a Christian, I lived spiritually passive. I just accepted whatever thought entered my head. I didn’t know I had the power to fight it. I would cry out to God for help and ask Him for mercy, but I didn’t realize I had the power to reject the thought and focus on something else.

I want to encourage you to wake up! Ask the Holy Spirit to make you aware of what you’re thinking about and reject the thoughts that are from your flesh or the enemy. As soon as you recognize a thought isn’t from the Lord, come against it and say, “I reject you, Satan, in Jesus’ name. Get out of my head!”

We see Jesus Himself doing this in Matthew 16:21–23:

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

There is something powerful in opening your mouth and talking back to the devil. When Yeshua was being tempted in the wilderness, every time Satan tried to bring Him into bondage, He countered Satan’s strategy by speaking the Word of God (Matt. 4:3–11; Luke 4:3–13). In Jesus’ day, people didn’t carry around Bibles like we do now. Yeshua had the Scriptures memorized. You could say He had the Word hidden in His heart (Ps. 119:11). But when the devil came against Him, Yeshua didn’t keep the Word in His heart. He didn’t just think about Scripture—He spoke it. Every time Satan came at Him, Jesus responded with “It is written” and quoted the Word of God (Matt. 4; Luke 4). And eventually the devil fled.

This is a principle throughout the Word of God. Romans 10:9 tells us that salvation happens when we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth. And Jesus said in Mark 11:23, “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.” We believe, and we speak. That’s how we release the power of God.

If we don’t get engaged in spiritual warfare and learn how to combat the lies of the enemy that enter our thoughts—if we don’t allow ourselves to be trained by the Spirit of God to do spiritual warfare—we’ll never penetrate the Veil and enter the Holy of Holies. Without penetrating through the powers of darkness into God’s light, we will not be able to experience the fullness of the love, power, and beauty of God the way the Father wants us to.

Even as the Israelites had to drive out the Hittites, Amorites, Jebusites, Canaanites, and other enemies before they could enter the Promised Land, so you and I need to take authority over the powers of darkness if we’re going to enter the abundant land of Messiah’s Spirit. If we want to gain entrance into the Holy of Holies, we must learn to take authority over Satan, believe and confess God’s Word, and pray that He strengthens us with divine might in our inner man so we can rise up and drive out the powers of evil, unbelief, and darkness.

The Tabernacle is a pattern for intimacy with God that teaches us how we can know Him. And if we want to know Him in the fullest sense, we have to pierce the Veil! We can’t stick our heads in the ground and pretend the devil is not real. Satan is real, and we need to understand how he’s attacking us. We need to realize that the thoughts we think may not be coming from our subconscious mind or from other people. They may actually be from the enemy.

So we need to be alert. We need to discern when the devil is planting his lies in our minds and cast down every vain thought that exalts itself above the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). We need to overcome fleshly addictions, which a lot of times are being empowered by Satan. And we need to learn how to keep from being distracted from seeking the Lord, which, again, is often the enemy at work.

When we learn how to defeat the devil, we’re going to encounter God’s Spirit in a deeper way, even as the high priest passed through the Veil and experienced God’s manifest presence in the Holy of Holies.

The Veil Has Been Torn

As previously discussed, under the old covenant, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies—and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, when he would pour the blood of the sacrifice on the altar for the forgiveness of the sins of the children of Israel. But when Yeshua died on the cross and said, “It is finished,” everything changed.

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. —Matthew 27:50–51

God supernaturally ripped the Veil that isolated the Holy of Holies. And because that Veil has been torn, it’s no longer just the high priest who can enter God’s presence. Now, through the blood of Yeshua, everyone who has a relationship with Him has access by God’s Spirit into His very presence—not once a year but anytime. Hallelujah!

Beloved, the high priest didn’t casually stroll into the Holy of Holies. He had to get through the thick, heavy Veil—and so do we. Although the curtain may be torn, spiritual warfare remains real. We overcome not by our strength but by the blood of the Lamb, by the Word of our testimony, and by refusing to give the devil a foothold (Rev. 12:11; Eph. 4:27). The battle has already been won. God has given us the victory (1 Cor. 15:57). So let’s press through—and enter in.

Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider is the host of the popular TV, radio, YouTube and podcast broadcast Discovering the Jewish Jesus. His teaching is straightforward, authentic and revelational. The anointing on his ministry carries an eternal weight of glory that the Father uses to transform the souls of His elect. Rabbi Schneider is the author of several books, including The Book of Revelation Decoded, To Know Him by Name, A Journey Into Divine Love, Messianic Prophecy Revealed and Called to Breakthrough. His latest book, Decoding the Torah, is available now on Amazon.com.