Too much process? Jane Fonda and Derek Prince

In the 80s many of us bought and even used Jane Fonda's Exercise videos. Many of the practices on these videos have now been outlawed by health authorities, or at the very least modified.

How humbling....how used....we felt...when we discovered the true reason that was driving Jane Fonda's "Feel the Burn". It turned out that she had bulimia. A whole generation was copying a woman who was secretly fuelled in her intensity by a complete disorder.

Why mention this? Sometimes it is so difficult as we delve into each others lives as Christians to work out when there is just "too much process" going on. Two of us were writing to each other about a subject on Facebook, and my friend described some of the hoops he goes through in finding the Presence of God. And I thought.....hmmm....how much of that is just too much process!!!!

A bit like Jane Fonda then, we learn that no small amount of Derek Prince's highly exotic output concerning

Curses

Spiritual Warfare

Demonology

may have been simply that......too much process. Or was it all ordained by God just that we as a Church would be a lot more switched on to spiritual realities concerning our warfare?

What a great verse it is : Submit to God,resist the devil and he will flee.

What is submit to God? Well my answer now is not very pentecostal. A Pentecostal sees "separation". He sees this separate person that is him, coming before this "out there" God, and adopting a submissive attitude or pose.

Now I see submit to God much more in terms of reversing Genesis 3.

Laying down the whole baloney about being a "separate empowered" being, which it turns out is a delusion, since in the moment we operate in this lie, we are really being empowered by the devil's lying spirit of arrogance, and we aren't in fact separate at all.

But now, submitting to God is seeing God for who He is

The ONLY TRUE LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

and the life I now live from ,since asking Jesus into my life.

The second strand that occurred in Genesis 3 is that humans now believe complete and utter balderdash concerning the very NATURE and CHARACTER of the Father. As we begin to get revelation on how wonderful God the Father really is.....scales drop from our eyes.

WE SEE GOD ONLY.

WE see everything in relation to Him and His loving plan.

This is what happened to Derek Prince shortly before his death.

Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship - Jack Frost published by http://www.destinyimage.com/
In these endtimes, before a major spiritual reformation hits the earth, there will first be a deeper revelation of the heart of the Father that breaks the orphan spirit on the earth today. This is not an automatic product of salvation. Unless our orphan heart is displaced by the revelation of Father's love, even as Christians we can end up battling oppression every day of our lives. Such was the experience of the late Derrick Prince.
Eighty Years Finding HomeDerek Prince was arguably one of the greatest Christian leaders and evangelists of the 20th century His evangelistic crusades routinely drew tens of thousands of people to each meeting. Across more than 50 years of ministry, he saw millions of people saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, healed of diseases, and delivered of demonic oppression. Few Christian leaders of the last century
established ministries as credible and anointed of the Lord as his. Yet, by his own admission, Derek Prince himself battled demonic oppression every day of his life until he was 80 years old. Millions were set free under his ministry, yet he himself could not find freedom from the oppression that dogged him on a daily basis. It took nothing less than a powerful personal experiential revelation of Father God's love to set him free once and for all. Here is the story in his own words, as appeared in his February 1998 newsletter:
My understanding of God was revolutionized by a personal experience in 1996. Ruth and I had been sitting up in bed one morning praying together as we normally do, and I became aware of a powerful force at work in my feet and lower legs, and it moved upward until my whole body was forcibly shaken by it. Ruth told me later that the skin on my face changed to a deep red, but at the same time I was aware of an arm stretched out towards my head, seeking to press down something like a black skull cap upon me.
For a few moments there was a conflict between these two forces, then the power at work in my body prevailed, and the arm with the skull cap was forcibly taken away and vanished. Immediately, without any mental process of reasoning, I knew that I could now call God my Father. I had used the phrase "our Father" for more than 50 years. Doctrinally I was clear about this truth; I'd even preached a series of three messages on knowing God as Father, but what I received at that moment was a direct personal revelation.
Let me share with you my interpretation of this experience. I was born in India, and spent the first five years of my life there. Twenty years later, after I was saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit, I became aware of some dark shadow from India that always hung over me. I understood it was one of India's gods that had followed me through life, seeking to oppress me. There was one particular way that this god oppressed me. Every morning I would awake with a dark foreboding of something evil awaiting me. It was never anything precise, just some amorphous darkness. This unknown evil never actually happened, but every day the foreboding was there.
After I was baptized in the Holy Spirit the foreboding diminished in intensity, but it never disappeared. I did, however, discover that if I set my mind to praise and worship, the foreboding would lift from me, yet it always came hack the next morning.

Can you identify with Derek's experience? How many times have you gotten up in the morning feeling like you don't have a home, that there is so little expressed love, little comfort, conditional acceptance, and a diminishing hope for experiencing lasting peace and rest? You feel a sense of oppression, a sense of foreboding, a sense of impending disaster. Most mornings you face another day of pain, another day of fear, another day of people saying all the wrong things about you, another day of not measuring up in the eyes of the people who matter to you the most, another day of wondering whether or not you will survive.
How do you go on living like that? How do you go on, knowing that tomorrow you have to get up and do battle with all of it again? Is not the cross of Christ more powerful than the darkness we have to fight our way through every day? This has nothing to do with salvation but everything to do with experiencing and understanding Father God's love.
Continuing his story, Derek says:
The day that black skull cap was pulled away the foreboding vanished, never to return, and from that morning it became completely natural for me to now address God as Father, or my Father. I now have a personal relationship, not just a theological position. I've been enjoying this new relationship for about two years.
Ever since I was saved I have believed that if I continued faithful to the Lord, I will go to heaven when I die, but I never really thought of heaven as my home. After that arm with the black skull cap was taken away, however, it has now become natural to view heaven as my home. Shortly afterwards I said to Ruth, "When I die, if you want to give me a tombstone you can just write on it two words: Gone Home "
Derek's experience illustrates the truth that it is one thing to know God as Father, but another thing to experience Him as Father in a deeply personal way.

Although Derek Prince was born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, and powerfully anointed and effective in ministry for over 50 years, until he was 80 he still had an orphan heart and battled oppression every day.

John the apostle, in the first of his three letters, clearly separates knowing from believing: "We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us..." (1 John 4:16a NAS). It is easy to believe in our minds that God loves us, but like Derek Prince we can live our entire lives never knowing that love in our hearts in a deeply personal experiential way
Don't Wait 'Til You "Go Home" to Go HomeEven as Christians we can live—and die—with an orphan heart. Many, unfortunately, do just that. It almost happened to Derek Prince. Had it not been for his profound experience in Father's love in 1996 when he was 80 years old, he might well have finished his days on earth without ever truly feeling like a son in his Father's house.
You don't have to wait 'til you "go home" to experience a homecoming-, you can enter that place of rest, refuge, and safety right now. Jesus said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10b NAS). Abundant life means a fulfilled, satisfying life here on earth as well as eternal life in Heaven, and a fulfilled life means displacing the orphan heart with a heart of sonship.
Jesus Christ came from the Father and after His resurrection, returned to the Father so that we too may abide in Father's embrace. John, in fact, says that He "is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1: l8b NAS). That phrase speaks of deep intimacy, unity, and oneness. And where Jesus is, He wants us to be also.