Pete Cabrera Jr. and Friends in Singapore

by stillhaventfound on October 29, 2012 · 2 comments

Pete Cabrera Jr. is coming with a group of friends to Singapore from 9th to 11th November 2012. I first heard of Pete through some friends when I was in the States in 2010. Some friends I got to know during the Curry Blake (John G. Lake Ministries) conference I attended mentioned about him in glowing terms. Anyway, for those into street healing and watch YouTube videos of street healings, Pete’s extremely well-known for his pretty amazing healing videos. Check them out here: Pete Cabrera Jr. YouTube Channel.

Pete will be coming with a group of friends to Thailand (early November) and then to Singapore from 9th to 11th November. The meetings will be held at Good Gifts City Church and under the umbrella of the Reva Network. You can find all the information at Reva School Of Healing where you can register for the event online for free.

This is definitely an event not to be missed. I love what these people do. Unlike many of such kind of events Christians go to, these people are just ordinary Christians like you and I – yet are true practitioners going to the streets to heal the sick. Come and learn and be equipped and receive the revelation that we are all equipped and anointed to heal the sick!

DATES

9-11 Nov 2012

TIME

9 Nov: 7.30pm – 10pm
10 Nov: 1pm – 3pm, 4pm – 7pm (Healing Service)
11 Nov: 2pm – 6pm

Venue

Good Gifts City Church
14 Arumugam Road
Lion Building C #07-01
Singapore 409959

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John G. Lake Ministries (JGLM) in Singapore

by stillhaventfound on October 1, 2012 · 0 comments

John G. Lake

An Australian John G Lake Ministries (JGLM) team is finally coming to Singapore from October 17th to October 27th.  Enzo De Vincentis, the Director of JGLM Australia and Steve Mann, the JGLM Life Teams Australian director will be coming to town to hold some meetings.

If your church/ministry is interested to invite Enzo and his team, you can email me at jonathan@stillhaventfound.org. There may be a day/night or two left. Here is the schedule for his team and below that is a bit more about JGLM and how the ministry has impacted my life.

Meeting Schedules

19th to 21st October (Friday to Sunday) – Divine Healing Technician (DHT) Seminar
Friday
Session 1: 7.30pm – 9.30pm
Saturday
Session 2: 9:00am – 12:30pm
Session 3: 2:30pm – 6:00pm
Session 4 (and Healing Service): 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Sunday
Sunday Service (and Healing Service): 10:30am – 1pm

Venue
Victory Harvest Church
37 Jalan Pemimpin,
Clarus Centre,
Block A , # 06-2A,
Singapore 577177
(Walking distance from Marymount MRT station)

25th October (Thursday), 8pm – Christian Gospel Mission at Choa Chu Kang
27th October (Saturday), 10am to 2pm – Victory Harvest Church (see address above)

The full DHT sessions will take place from 19th to 21st October. So come if you want the full impact of a healing seminar with healing meetings. The last meeting on the 26th October would be a smaller and cozier meeting with the Australian JGLM team. It will probably be a more informal session that will include a lot of sharing and interaction.

On JGLM

JGLM (main American website) and its General Overseer Curry Blake are not that well-known in the world yet. I’ll try not to write too much in this post because I’ve written quite a number of posts in the past 2 years on JGLM and Curry Blake’s teachings. Suffice to say that what this ministry teaches has transformed my life. I’ve been blessed by listening to a lot of great teachers like Joseph Prince, Bill Johnson and Andrew Wommack. They have definitely contributed hugely to who I am today and what I believe and do. But listening to Curry and his radical teachings two years ago brought my understanding of God and Scriptures and especially my identity and who I am in Christ to a whole different level. It challenged a lot of what I had been taught and a lot of what is being taught out there that subtly prevented me from understanding the fullness of who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me.

Probably the greatest thing that can be said of someone’s ministry is that it has impacted many young people around the world to move out into the streets and do street healing. This is because what Curry teaches about who you are in Christ and what is needed to see healing destroys a lot of the limitations (e.g. the limitation of the need for the “anointing” as you’re already anointed and He abides in you, or of the need for an “atmosphere” because healing is dependent on the Word not the atmosphere, or of the need for the “presence” of God because God lives in you and His presence is always in and with you, or of the need for a “Word of Knowledge” because you go by the eternal Word of God, or of the need to dig out the past to see what is preventing healing because the Word of God never teaches this, etc.) that the typical charismatic teachings have placed upon believers.

I love the idealism and radicalness in what Curry teaches. When you hear him, you think everything is possible in Christ. No “buts”, no “ifs”. He calls it as he sees it and he teaches it as the Bible says it. What the ministry teaches is definitely one of the most biblical messages I’ve heard. It’s simple and straightforward. There are a lot of “traditions” and made-made theories in the charismatic churches that actually don’t stand up to what the Bible teaches. Just take one example. I was taught and the majority in the charismatic church still teach that when ministering healing to someone and you don’t see someone healed, you may need to dig up the past and find out what is preventing this healing and get the person to deal with it. I don’t want to get too much into this issue, but no where in the Bible does it say we have to do it. Nor did Jesus nor anybody in the Bible who healed do this! That fact alone should make us question this practice. Yet, it’s very accepted in the charismatic circles. And this has a lot of practical effects on our faith.

If you (either as someone praying for the sick or as someone believing for one’s own healing) believe that something in the past could be preventing this healing, how can you have faith for immediate healing based on the Word of God? It’s very simple – you can’t. You get what you believe for. If you believe something is hindering a healing, you’ll go and address that first and dig those hindrances out before believing that the person can be healed. And thus in a very important sense, you can’t have faith for immediate healing there and then when you pray/command.

One of Curry’s famous quotes is, “The only hindrance to healing is that you believe there are hindrances to healing”. That’s revolutionary simply because many people do believe there hindrances to healing – unforgiveness, sin, etc. Yet what Curry is saying is that the only hindrance is the fact you believe there are. Actually, there are none. The Word says you’ve been healed by His stripes. And the Word talks about faith. In a sense, if there’s any hindrance to healing, it’s that you don’t believe that you’ve already been healed by Christ’s stripes.

If you believe something in the past is preventing this healing, your eyes is diverted away from what Christ did for healing and diverted away way from the power we have in Christ to perform healing as you start to dig up the past and focus on the person and his/her past. (Now, I do believe that digging out the past can probably help deal with the sick person’s faith so that barriers to faith can be gotten rid of so that the sick person can receive healing for him/herself based on his/her own faith – but why would we want to do that when firstly that’s not the model in the Bible and secondly an easier way is to keep our eyes focused on Christ and who we are in Christ and what we have in Christ and let revelation and faith arise to see the sick person healed?) As far as I know, in the Bible, there’s really only one main instrumental factor to seeing a person healed. With this ingredient, anyone can get healed. That’s faith, as the Bible says so many times. And it could be the faith of the person receiving healing or faith of the person praying for healing. Curry’s heart is to train disciples to heal the sick. The burden should be upon US to heal the sick (the disciples were rebuked when they couldn’t get the sick healed – the focus was not placed on the sick to have faith for their own healing), and not expect the sick to have their own faith. This is where Curry differs slightly from the traditional Word of Faith movement.

OK, I know I’ve dealt with quite a lot of issues in the above few paragraphs and there’s lots more than can be said about these issues which I won’t deal with here. The main thing that I’ve learned from Curry is that it’s about the revelation of what Christ has done and who we are in Him and what we have in Him (incomparably great power for us who believe – Eph. 1:19). This revelation builds faith, which is the only factor in any healing in the Bible – in fact, the only factor in receiving anything from God. It’s not about getting some special anointing or gift or about working up an atmosphere or digging up the past. It’s just about knowing who we are in Christ. That’s really the message of JGLM. And that’s the message that has transformed my life and many others.

Pastor Joseph Prince is awesome in unveiling the goodness and grace of the Father such that it makes you believe that God really wants to bless you and it opens your heart up to receiving from God (i.e. having faith). The unveiling of God’s love, grace and goodness can’t help but produce faith in the heart of believers. In a similar way, Curry Blake’s main message is that God has made you a new man (Kenyon would say a “superman”, which is so true!) and this new man has authority in Christ, is seated above every principalities and power and has incomparably great power for us who believe. What this message produces is faith in the Christian’s life to believer that they indeed can do greater works and can heal the sick. As we hear of who we really are in Christ and catch that revelation, we grow in faith to heal the sick.

Having said the above and being fully appreciative of how Curry’s teachings have changed my life, I also want to say that it’s not about one man. I don’t agree 100% with Curry on everything he says, just as I wouldn’t agree 100% with any man. I’m not a blind follower but you don’t have to agree with everything a man teaches to support him and his teachings. There are times where I would cringe at some stuff he says in relation to grace – at least in his past messages. But regarding his main message on the New Creation and Divine Healing, I think he’s spot on. Regarding the New Creation (who we are in Christ, etc.) message, I’ve been reading EW Kenyon and loving his writings a lot. Awesome stuff! Kenyon speaks in absoluteness the same way Curry does. Curry’s not particularly unique in this area. What he teaches is similar to EW Kenyon. I think he’s slightly more unique in his healing message – which is really the absolute and radical application of the New Creation message to healing. There were a lot of good healing ministers in the 19th and 20th Century and I haven’t read a whole lot of them so I can’t comment on how similar or different Curry is from them. But my impression is that Curry’s divine healing message, while similar to many of the rest, also has its own slants. One thing he focuses on greatly is ministering healing. He’s not as concerned as much for people receiving healing as he is in training people to minister healing (because he’s only one person – it’s better to train people so they can have a greater impact on the world). I think many healing ministries work on building the faith of the sick to receive their own healing or building the faith of the sick in the healer so the sick can come to the healer to receive their healing. But Curry’s focus is on training believers and teaching believers the revelation that they have everything and all power and authority in Christ so that these “divine healing technicians” will go out and heal the sick based on their own faith and revelation that they have incomparably great resurrection power in them to get rid of sickness – not depending on the faith of the sick.

If you’d like to hear some of Curry’s teachings, you can listen for free to his Divine Healing Technician (DHT) Seminar. The other set of teaching is his New Man Seminar. Both are maybe 17-20 hours each in total. I’ve listened to both a number of times and so have many of my friends. The DHT is his main teaching on healing that he’s been teaching for years. The New Man teaching is the new one which is also extremely powerful. He would say that the DHT flows out of the New Man. The New Man seminar is about the New Creation and who we are in Christ. That’s the foundation to the Christian life in the New Covenant. That is the foundation for healing. Know who you are in Christ then go and heal the sick. Listen to these teachings and I promise you your life will be transformed! It’s really like nothing you’ve heard in the typical charismatic church!

Also, if you’d like to read a bit more about my thoughts on Curry’s teachings, you can go to check out the many posts in my blog’s Curry Blake category. Some particular posts:

- Curry Blake’s Divine Healing Technician (DHT) training course
- Healing and Idealism
- Two ways to minister
- Why you should eat your Curry (Blake) before paying the Bill (Johnson)
- Bruce Latshaw on Vineyard’s vs. John G. Lake’s Healing model

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Prophetic Training Workshop

by stillhaventfound on July 21, 2012 · 2 comments

Hi guys, haven’t written for a long time. So many things to share but so little time to write :) Anyway, this post is just an advertisement for a friend and cell member Euclid who’s conducting a prophetic training workshop.

Euclid’s a young guy who moves in the prophetic and has a passion to train people to hear God’s voice. For readers of this blog, you know I am interested in this area and I’m particular interested in the training/discipling aspects of it.

Be it healing or the prophetic or whatever supernatural stuff, the focus ought to be on training others to do it (because everyone can!) more than doing it yourself and being seen as the “great man of God”. OK, while I’ve been part of those crazy lines where we line up to be prophesied over to get a “word from the Lord” from the “great man of God”, I’m kinda getting sick of that now. There’s something wrong with our charismatic Christianity if we still look up to these people as though they have something we don’t. Christianity was never meant to be like that – well, OT Christianity maybe, but not since Jesus came and the Holy Spirit was poured out upon us! It breeds an unhealthy form of dependence on these people and I’ve always felt these prophets need to be teaching others to hear from God for themselves, more than hearing God for the public out there – unless of course the public are unbelievers then that’s cool. I’m not saying there’s no place to prophesy over other Christians. I think that’s totally biblical, but we can’t always be relying on a Word from others!

So I definitely endorse what Euclid is doing. This workshop is catered to anyone. It’s held in the home of my cell group leader Lawrence. The cell group I attend, by the way, meets formally only about once a month and we consist of charismatic Christians from different churches (many of whom are from New Creation). Any of you are welcome to visit us – I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy yourself there. But anyway, for this event, even if you don’t know me or Euclid, feel free to come – you’re guaranteed to feel welcomed! And Euclid is a good trainer and is very grace-based in his view of prophesy. Here’s the info:

—

Catered to all, from those who has no idea how God speaks to those who have experience in prophesying.
Only 20 slots available on a “first come first serve” basis.
Personal coaching after the whole workshop will be available to those that need it.

Lesson Plans
1st lesson: Belief system & Identifying ways that God can communicate to us.
2nd lesson: Basic introduction to prophecy.
3rd lesson: Advance prophetic training.
4th lesson: Refining individuals.

The lessons are broken down to 4 separate days over the period of 2 months.
Dates: The 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month August and September. (Aug 4, Aug 18, Sept 1, Sept 15)
Time: 8pm to 10:30pm
Location: CharisLodge at 367 Pasir Panjang Road (aka Lawrence & Elina’s Home)
Fee: $4 for the training Manual that will be handed upon the first lesson. (required)

Contact Euclid at this e-mail to register or if you have any further inquires: euclidtan@yahoo.com.sg

PS: Do have your dinner before coming down. (Unless you are fasting or on a diet)

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Reaching the World through the Prophetic

On a similar note, some of you may know that Esther and I have been focusing a lot on internet/online marketing for the past half a year. I’ll probably talk more about that in future, but for me this internet marketing business is a means to an end – to get my finances in place so that I can focus on my passion which is healing. But we’ve learned a lot of skills and we also want to use it in ministry.

We’re hoping to work with Euclid and other “prophetic” people to start an optimized website (or a few) targeting those in Singapore searching for “fortune telling” and other related keywords. What I’ve learned from Bill Johnson and others over the past few years is that we Christians should be able to do this better than the new age and other kinds of people who can “read people’s minds” or “tell people’s futures”. Whether it’s about telling people’s future or not, we should be able to speak God’s immediate word of love to these people to touch their lives. I’ve heard tons of stories of people in America going to these “new age” fairs and ministering to “psychics” or whoever. And these new agers get surprised and touched by what these Christians know and can do because Christ lives in them. I think this is definitely the future of the Church as we go out to the lost and minister Christ’s love to them where they are, and not just invite them to an organized form of Christianity.

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My books and Who I Am…

by stillhaventfound on February 15, 2012 · 2 comments

I have been going through my stack of books for the purpose of clearing them and giving them away (see below). I thought I’d do a short write-up of 10 of my favourite non-Christian books (as can be seen above) – and why I like them. I wouldn’t say these are my absolute top 10 of all time, but they are definitely some of my favourites. Actually, I’m going to add one more book that isn’t seen in the above picture so that makes 11.

1) Harvard and the Unabomber by Alston Chase: What a book to talk about! Haha! It’s only mentioned first coz it was first in the picture above as it was the tallest :) The unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) was a Harvard graduate turned American terrorist. I bought the book because I wanted to read a real life story of someone influenced by ideals similar to mine – ideals related to his negative assessment of modern society, not the terrorist part! I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusions of the author. Perhaps this Amazon reviewer put it best:

Alston wants to place a lot of the responsibility for the Kaczynski’s anger on the General Education curriculum then taught at Harvard. I thought it strange that the books and authors Chase mentions are books by my idols! But I draw very different lessons from the works of Dostoyevsky, Melville and Mumford than does Chase. There is a lot that can be said about the Gen Ed curriculum, but based on an intense personal experience with most of the writers mentioned here, I know them to embrace humanitarian ideals and to move beyond despair. To lay the causative influence of the Unabomber here is mistaken.

2) Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer: This book isn’t in the picture above because I lent it out to a friend about 8 years ago and it was never returned. Into The Wild is one of my all-time favourite books. I know there’s a movie on the book and I watched it, but I loved the book. The books is about Christopher Johnson McCandless who is very similar to Ted Kaczynski in his negative evaluation of modern society. I actually wrote at length on this website about Into The Wild. This book introduced me to Henry David Thoreau who has become one of my favourite authors. I think in the 300 or so books I’m giving away (see below) are about 5 different biographies on Thoreau.

3) Until Death Do Us Part by Ingrid Betancourt: This is an autobiography of Ingrid Betancourt’s “struggle to reclaim Colombia” which I read about 9 years ago. Colombia is one of my favourite countries and I spent about 4 months there studying Spanish. Latin America is definitely one of my favourite places to go to in the world. I actually completed a minor in Spanish and Latin American Studies. I think the thing that initially attracted me to Latin America was reading about the Catholics living out their Christian faith during the 70s and 80s, the Liberation Theology era. There are a lot of studies of great struggles in Latin America and movements and peoples that seek to stand up for the oppressed. A messy place and a messy history, but a rich and exciting history nevertheless.

4) Gaviotas – A Village To Reinvent The World: An amazing story of Colombian visionaries creating a sustainable village. It’s stories like these that make me fall in love with Latin America.

5) The Death of Ben Linder by Joan Kruckewitt: I just realized this is the third book related to South America! This book is a real life story of a North American in Sandinista Nacaragua. Very similar to Chris McCandless (see Into The Wild above) in that Ben lived out his beliefs and eventually died for it. Inspirational.

6) Living High & Letting Die by Peter Unger: I got to know this book through Peter Singer’s writings. I wrote about Peter Singer and Peter Unger here: Poverty and the Moral Responsibility of the Rich to the Poor. This is a philosophy book on ethics by Peter Unger who was inspired by Peter Singer’s writings on how we are responsible for letting the poor die. I’ve been very impacted by Peter Singer in this area and I’ve written a few articles on this site about this area. A synopsis of the book:

A small amount of money sent to a charity like UNICEF will ensure that fewer poor children will die. Yet even when aware of this most people send nothing. Peter Unger examines this all-too-common example of letting die, generating a bold and controversial look at moral assessment.

7) Riches For The Poor by Earl Shorris: A book about the amazing story of the Clemente Course created by Earl Shorris that sought to teach the humanities – art, logic, philosophy, poetry – to the poor so as to empower them to break the cycle of poverty.

8) The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: A seemingly simple yet profound book which I wrote more about here: Encountering Anne Frank and the Mask we all Wear. I was very moved by the book and included in the books I’m giving away are about 5 different biographies of Anne Frank.

9) Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman: A book that has had a great impact upon me. This was one of the first popular current affairs / sociological book about modern society that I read and it helped me understand how TV made people dumber :) I wrote more about this book here. I love Neil Postman’s writings and have probably read most or all his major books. Very good reading!

10) The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff: A book about a psychotherapist who spent 2.5 years in the South American jungle living with Stone Age Indians which “demolished her Western preconceptions of how we should live, and led her to a radically different view of what human nature really is.” An interesting book that will make us reflect on our modern society, its values and way of doing things.

11) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: An amazing book. Others may love it for different reasons. For me, the book is about the heroic non-conformism of its protagonist Howard Roark. The theme of non-conformism is one of my favourite and Into The Wild and this book are strong in this area.

So there you go. Non-Christian books which have impacted me, whose values are very similar to mine. Social justice and non-conformism to modern society’s values are two very strong themes in the above books and in my life. The second is there, I think, partly because the first is compromised.

I definitely have a very strong progressive and liberal streak in me. This is tempered somewhat by my Christian beliefs. Probably very few of my Christian friends understand my strong passion for social justice (and the extent I would go or would like to go in living out my beliefs – hey, I admire people like Thoreau, McCandless, Linder, Betancourt and Roark, though admiration from afar is very different from truly living it out) but I generally make myself get along with the Christianity community for a greater cause and mission. I do truly believe that my God is a God of love and love for the poor, marginalized and oppressed of society. In that sense I do believe God is a God of social justice and in many ways (not in every way) the progressives and liberals are expressing the heart of God when they show empathy for the oppressed and give their lives to making a difference in the world.

Bye bye books…

The reason I was going through my books is that I’m moving out of the place I’m staying and have decided to give away most of my books I’ve bought over the past 17 years or so. Over the past 10 years, I’ve already left probably over 100 Christian books in a church and another 200 plus Christian books with a pastor friend of mine. I don’t expect to see them again even though they have not been technically given away! Then I also recently gave away over 200 Christian books to another church pastor to be donated to his Seminary in India. Those are all Christian books I don’t really need since my Christian journey has taken me to different traditions and many of the books aren’t books I’m interested in now – normal evangelical books, Reformed books, progressive Christianity and even charismatic and Pentecostal books. I do keep a collection of around 100 or so that have to do mostly with healing, prophecy and grace that I’ve bought in the past few years – and also some secular books related to the mind and self-development. I think this is the direction I’m moving towards and so I’m keeping them. And I’ve kind of mostly stopped buying physical books now if I can since I don’t want to be carrying them around – I am starting to purchase ebooks (PDF or Kindle). I definitely prefer reading a physical book but it’s much more convenient to be able to bring my whole book collection on my ipad! I still do purchase physical books when I can’t find them on Kindle or if they are not suited to reading on my ipad.

My reading of books coincided with the time I truly became a Christian at around 16 years old. And from that time (the last 16-17 years or so), I spent the first 6 years reading a lot of Christian books (mainly conservative Reformed books, but also eventually progressive Christian books), the following 6 years reading a lot of non-Christian, non-fiction books that related to my interest in politics, economics, development, Latin American studies, social justice, globalization, poverty, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, etc., maybe about 2-3 years reading English as a 2nd Language (ESL) and TESOL-related books (I am a certified ESL teacher and did my Masters in TESOL halfway) and the last few years reading Christian books related to healing, prophecy and grace.

So besides the Christian books I’ve already given away or I’m keeping, I’ve got maybe around 500 non-Christian books left that’s split up into about 300 non-fiction books and 200 ESL/TESOL-related books. I’m going to keep my ESL/TESOL-related books because I may continue to do something with them in the ESL and education industry. The 300 or so non-fiction books (including some fictional literature books), however, I’m gonna give away. I have a lot of really good books that I don’t want to give away, but I also know that I’m not going to read them in future. I thought of selling them away but I know I’ll get peanuts for them. Therefore I wrote to UWCSEA (United World College of Southeast Asia) – the international school based in Singapore – to ask them if they would like them for their library use and they were interested and I handed it over to them at the end of 2011. Many of my books are still almost brand new and I know UWC and its values and they are pretty much the same as mine. Social justice is important for them. For example, Nelson Mandela is their Honorary President. Through my time working on various development projects in Singapore, I got to know many UWC students. And so I know this is a school I would like to invest in to bless them.

Anyway, these 300 or so non-Christian (non-ESL/TESOL related) books have had a huge impact on me and my thinking. They are mainly of liberal politics values and that’s still who I am today. And that’s why in many areas I don’t fit easily into the Christian subculture which is generally (in American and also Singapore) more towards the political right. I’ve always felt a greater affinity with the non-Christian progressives (than with most Christians) because of their passion to stand up for and help the marginalized and oppressed, which I’ve never seen very strongly in Christianity. Although not the main priority in my life now, social justice is still something I’m very concerned about. I think my passion for healing stems in a way from my passion for social justice. My heart right now is to learn to see the Bible come alive in my life as it truly should (greater works – John 14:12), to know Him more, to demonstrate His love to the world through signs and wonders and to eventually disciple people in the developing world in the message of God’s grace and love and the supernatural.

The above review of the 10/11 books was written as a memory of all the non-Christian books that have impacted me and that I’m giving away. Goodbye my friends… May you impact other people to transform the world!

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