Seeing The Beauty In Everything

For the past few months I've been preparing for an art show that I'm going to have at Un Mundo. I do watercolor paintings of things found in nature. I decided that, since my show is going to be right by the farmers market , I would like to get some things at the market to paint.  So after the farmers market opened, I started going down on Saturday mornings. One morning I was talking to a friend that has a farm stand there, and told her I was looking for something to paint.  She was telling me some of the things she thought would be nice subjects to paint...a small ear of popping corn, a head of lettuce with water drops on it, etc.  and she said "Oh, but you're the artist...an artist sees beauty in everything!"  I thought for a minute, and said, "Well, I try to"... That evening Desi spoke at the well. She talked about the people she saw as she walked home from the farmers market that day, and how she loves people, and to see what's in  their hearts. Someone made a comment about us needing to truely "see" eachother (not just with our eyes). "Oh", I thought. That's what I do with my art!"... But, then I thought, "do I do that with people?"

The following week I was looking into getting business cards.  I decided to look  in a thesarus for words describing my work . I looked up the word observe, which means" to see, notice". Some of the synonyms are " to behold, contemplate, espy, perceive, scrutinize". "Espy" was a new word to me, so I looked it up.  It means to "catch sight of". Some of the synonyms are "discover, find, glimpse". I decided to wait on getting the cards, but  all the while I was thinking,  "An artist sees the beauty in everything..." and "...Do I do that with people?"

My bio for my show says,"...She is drawn to the intricate beauty of simple objects that are often overlooked." My subjects are feathers, leaves, shells, flowers,vegetables, etc. I look so closely at them, that I find it overwhelming at times. I've had people ask me if I've ever considered doing a painting of a bird. Are you kidding!! A whole bird?!! I see so much detail in a single feather!

When I do a painting, it is a process. Watercolor painting takes careful thought and preparation.  You can't just paint over a mistake.  It takes forethought and patience.This is heightened even more for me because of the type of paintings I do. I have to control the paint, and the amount of water I use.  Sometimes I have to work quickly in a specific area. ...use a sponge, change brushes, etc.

These are the steps I go through when I do a painting:

1. Find a quiet place to work with good lighting.

2. Pick subject matter.

3. Figure out placement of the subject and direction of lighting.

4. Pick out paper and brushes of various sizes, paper towel and watercolor sponge.

5. Make  light sketch of subject, being careful to note areas of shading, etc.
6. Select and mix colors. 

7. Lightly put down the first layer of color.

8. After it dries, put down the second layer, beginning to define various colors and shading.

9. Continue adding as many layers as needed in order to bring about the desired likeness, giving it time to dry between layers.

10. Add the  fine details...textures, whisps,etc., usually using fine-tipped brushes.

11. Apply shadow under the object.

12. Make one last inspection, and add any final  touches needed...definition of lines, shading, etc.

13. Put my signature on it.

Sometimes I start over, if I'm not happy with the results.

How did I learn to do this? I Didn't just sit down one day and decide to paint.

I went to School for it. This involved taking the requirements for an art major, which involved many aspects and types of art...Pottery, Sculpture, Drawing, Art History,etc. At first I didn't have an area of expertise, but eventually  I narrowed it down to what I enjoyed the most and what I was good at, which was drawing and watercolor painting. Later I also added paper making.

My drawing and painting classes were 3 hours long , and involved hours and hours of practice, both in class and out of class. We had an assignment due once a week, which  entailed a critique in front of the whole class. After five years I graduated with a degree in Art. Even though I spent all of that time learning technique, I hadn't developed my own style.

It wasn't until years later that I discovered my personal style, then I spent long hours practicing and perfecting it.After a while it became natural to me. I still have to plan it and think it through, but it has become a part of me. I'm not just following steps, I am also trying to convey a message, which is to stop and take a closer look. I've discovered that it is a form of worship for me. I was made to do this! I do it because it's part of who I am.  When I show my art to someone, I am taking a risk and being vulnerable. I've gotten to be very careful about it. I've found that my hard work or even my style is not always appreciated. "Oh... thanks".... Having no idea of the work it took, or the intent behind it.

We can be that way with eachother...not taking into account the process we've each gone through.

The people, experiences,events, etc, in our lives are like brush strokes which bring form and distinction to each one of us.

Ephesians 2: 10 in the Amplified says,

"For we are God's [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus,[born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand ) for us [taking paths which he prepared ahead of time],that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made readily for us to live]."

And 1 Peter 5 :10 in the Amplified says,

"And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace [Who imparts all blessing and favor], who has called you to His [own] eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will Himself complete and make you what you ought to be, establish and ground you securely, and strengthen and settle you."

He is committed to each one of us, and cares about every detail of our lives.

Let's be patient with ourselves and eachother as the Lord makes us what we ought to be.

May we appreciate and respect the care that has gone into each one of us, and behold (espy) the beauty of the Lord in simple, everyday people.

                                                 - Maureen Level

Covenant Relationship

I feel like everything I’ve been going through lately, and everything I’ve been learning, has been connected to the idea of covenant relationship: of reaching a point where you make a commitment to honor someone else regardless of the circumstances, or the possible outcome. Eventually you have to make a choice to trust someone, and ultimately to trust God, with your heart. You have to be willing to expose yourself without control over the result and trust that you will be ok. Friendships and relationships get into the nitty gritty, ugly and annoying parts of people. When that happens it reveals the choice you’ve made in the relationship: either you have committed to the person and that ugly junk won’t have any power to alter how you relate to each other; or, the junk is going to slowly erode whatever good there was. Covenant relationship means that the result ceases to matter. You may not know where things are going, or how they will end, or what the purpose is. At some point you just have to decide that it doesn’t matter, and you commit anyways.

I have committed to the Well, no matter what happens and no matter what it looks like, whether or not I agree with everything and whether I have a key role or not. I have chosen to be here, and I have chosen to commit myself because I trust that God knows a lot more than I do. I don’t care how uncomfortable I get, or how awkward. I don’t care what disagreements happen, or whether I feel like I am contributing. There is a bigger purpose and a bigger plan than me. That is true in friendships, and that is true here. What is more important? What is the bigger picture? 

I feel like God is taking us down to that point of making a choice. You might not understand what’s going on, you might not get where someone is coming from or why they are making the decisions they are making…. So what? It’s not your prerogative to understand. Part of covenant is realizing that you won’t get everything about someone else, that you won’t be on the same page, that the way someone approaches something is the exact opposite of what makes sense to you; and you choose to honor them anyways! Can we recognize what matters, reach the realization that we’re family, and choose someone’s else’s needs over our own? 

Commitment isn’t about knowing all the options, possible outcomes, and pros and cons and then making a reasoned choice. It’s about choosing blindly to trust in something outside of your own ability to comprehend. It’s about letting go of your own limited intellect and letting someone else have control. God is a lot more capable than you or I in any given situation. It’s uncomfortable and it’s scary, but if you want to grow and receive all that God has for you, you’re gonna have to get over it. God rewards risk. Risk results in growth. Without risk and the fear and uncomfortableness that come up when we no longer have control, God is never put in a position to show us who he is. We stay content in our little firmly enclosed boxes, only stretching ourselves on our terms and when it makes us comfortable. If growth is only on your terms, than it probably isn’t growth at all. 

Love isn’t about you. 1 Corinthians 13 describes love as “not self seeking.” So in the relationship, what are you looking to? I’ve been learning that the definition of love is to honor where the other person is at, to respect their boundaries even if they aren’t the same as mine. To choose what the other person needs over what I need. To go at a slower pace because the other person needs to. To stay at a shallower place because someone I love needs to. Love is about picking someone else’s comfort over your own. Philippians 2:3+4 says it like this: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” And within the Well, I want that to be something we excel at. I want to be known for the fact that we love well, that we love selflessly. If we can all put ourselves in the position of lifting up the people around us, of being what someone else needs over what we need… we will cultivate a community and atmosphere of safety, growth and covenant.

                                                                        - Leah Level

  

Dwelling in the Land of Encounter

(NKJV) Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Another word you could use here for filled is encounter.

God is in the business of encountering people if you haven't realized that you should probably try reading the Bible some time.
Over and over the Bible tells of ordinary people with ordinary lives who had an encounter with God (usually more than one) and were transformed into heroes!

Encounters and revelation from God can't be earned but are pure gift from God .Grace empowers  us to live at another level and in return we have a greater impact on the world around us.

Increase comes through encounter!

Being poor in spirit is a magnet for encounter.

When you are poor in spirit you become hungry in Spirit. If your hunger is paired with a promise from God than you begin to feed on His Faithfulness. If you feed and you taste and see that He is good you will continue to feed. When you continue to feed you will get Filled! Boom Encounter! Ps. 37:3

If you have a realization of need  but for you it doesn't result in an increased hunger for God than it's unbelief not poor in spirit. It's realizing the need without believing that God will encounter you.

 If you feed and grow weary and quit it's unbelief that you will get filled, or unbelief in His Goodness.

Remember: (NKJV) Hebrews 6:12 that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Another  enemy to encounter is lowering the standard God set to something that you can obtain without God showing up. Chore check list Christianity! No supernatural intervention needed here just some good old fashion human will power to do a couple good deeds so the big man upstairs doesn't get cranky.

Yuck!!

This is so wrong because it is actually a set up to avoid encounter and is the sin of substitution. This behavior is also rooted in unbelief in that the individual doesn't believe that God wants to encounter them or that they don't believe an encounter with God is really necessary.

So if you have fallen into these traps and want out there is great news for you! You are not disqualified by your past! If there is breath left in your lungs God is ready to give you a fresh start! He's in a good mood and the Kingdom
Of God is at hand, so reach up and lay hold of your encounter!

Peace In, I'm out!
                                                     

- Tyler Worley 

I’m Ready To Be Messed Up!

I still don’t have answers to a lot of the questions I’ve been asking lately. But one thing I do know:
GOD IS IN A GOOD MOOD!
My Papa is HAPPY. He loves me. He LIKES me. He is always thinking about me. He is excited when I wake up in the morning because He’s ready to spend time with me and share His heart with me — He wants to be my friend.

How discouraged have I been lately because I’ve felt misplaced, or because I’ve felt like what I was offering was either insufficient or went unnoticed or unappreciated?
This past Saturday, Holy Spirit was renewing my mind on the subject of God wanting to be my friend. I was deeply moved when He showed me that He feels the same way when I miss out on Him! He told me He wanted to fill that spot in my heart for perfect friendship; that He wanted to rid me of all my insecurities about myself and fill me up with confidence of His incomprehensible love for me; that He wanted me to be so messed up by His love for me that my heart would no longer be preoccupied or distracted by the desire for man’s approval or applause.

This week at Kingdom Culture, our speaker Chad Cline talked about how so often believers can become jealous of new believers who are in flames for Christ…they think things like, “why can’t I tap into that same fire anymore? I’ve been following Jesus for ___ years…” Well, here’s the secret that religious Christianity doesn’t teach: YOU CAN.

There is always MORE!
I don’t want just fragments of joy, moments of laughter, seasons of prosperity and dancing and singing. I want to live every day with all of those things. And the crazy and amazing truth and reality is this: I CAN! Because Jesus paid for it all.
He paid the ultimate price for me to live in constant righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit; it’s readily available to me at all times. “Ask anything in My Name and it shall be given to you” = persistantly demand what is rightfully yours in Heaven because Jesus already paid the price for you to receive it! He’s in a good mood because He beat sin, and because of that, He gets US.

“He rescued me BECAUSE HE DELIGHTS IN ME.” (Psalm 18:19)

I am His highest treasure. I was the joy set before Christ when He took on the cross!

The Church can get so cautious when people long for an experience with God. “It’s about worshipping God, not getting an experience”, they say (…and I used to be one of those people).
But the Lord has been renewing my mind to understand that HE IS the experience. If there’s no experience, no encounter, no internal change of heart and mind, no external demonstration of the Kingdom after time spent with Him, then we’ve missed the purpose of the Gospel, and we’ve missed out on Him!

“The Word, in print, is supposed to lead us to the Word, the Person. The process is incomplete without the encounter.” - Bill Johnson

I know my finite self could never contain the full weight of God’s glory. But I am hungry and desperately longing for more of Him. I want to fall flat on my face, laugh uncontrollably, dance and run around like a mad woman, literally out of my mind for Jesus because of being in His Presence. Because I want to be near to Him…because I want His heart and nature to engulf my heart and nature. I want to be so encapsulated by His goodness that my only response is to be deaf to the judgments of man and instead share with the world the Love of Jesus.
I want to be so messed up by His love for me that people will be transformed just by walking past me in the line at Kroger or drinking coffee next to me at Un Mundo. I want to see people in my city be freed from every fear, every doubt, every lie they’ve ever been told simply because they came across a woman who carries the manifest power and glory of God on her shoulders and actually believes it.
I want to stop with the agendas of Christianity.
I don’t just want to invite people to church, or to a program or minsitry or Bible study.
I don’t want to just talk about the Love of God; I want to bring it!
If all I have is theology, if all I have is a book about God, then the world is screwed.
The world needs God Himself! The world needs Love. Boundless, religiouslessness, scandelous Love. And that kind of Love is a byproduct only possible through an EXPERIENCE with the Author of Love.
So I’m going for the experience. I’m going all in. I’m ready to be messed up from His love. I’m ready to look like a complete fool, to face my fear of how people see me so that I can see Jesus. Love the crap out of me, Papa.
I’m ready for more of YOU!

                                                    - Aly Todd 

Mediocrity

Passion brings mediocrity to light. In mediocrity everything around you (people, circumstances, and your environment) effects you. Mediocrity is one big blame game. Never taking responsibility for it's self, it has thoughts like: "No one understands me," "People always reject me." Another common mediocre thought is: "If my living situation was different I'd really be fulfilling my calling." Mediocrity means: Average or ordinary. Average or ordinary living normally comes about by average or ordinary thinking. Strongholds are in the mind.

That's why in Romans 12:2 it says,"Do not be conformed to this world, but be TRANSFORMED by the RENEWAL of your mind. . . "

Being transformed by the renewal of your mind is more then just reading some scriptures and listening to the right kind of music. Scripture memorization is not what Paul is talking about here. He's talking about a total mind change, a total change in thought patterns. When you have a certain way of thinking they say you actually carve pathways in your brain. Breaking out of those pathways is supernatural. Paul is saying, "Jesus wants to give you brain surgery." The renewal in the mind Paul is talking about here isn't some cerebral concept or mental assent. This is a raw and real renewal from His presence. As he "changes our minds" we literally are transformed from the inside out. Bill Johnson says: "It's not just that our thoughts are different, but that our way of thinking is transformed because we think from a different reality - from heaven toward earth!" and "Renewal comes as revelation leads you into a new experience with God"

While mediocrity is average and ordinary, in the Kingdom God calls us to be extraordinary (EXTRA ORDINARY). With mediocrity everything around you effects you; on the other hand, in the kingdom everything around you bows and is influenced by what's in you. Like Apostolic catalysts, the culture and atmosphere of the kingdom of heaven (which is within you) invades the culture and atmosphere of the kingdoms of the earth.

In Matthew 13: 33 Jesus said "The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a women took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened." Leaven is a catalyst. Anything it touches gets influenced by it. Nothing in this world or my environment can shake what's in me. That's good news. That's why Jesus could hang around prostitutes, drunkards and the rest and not be shaken or altered. Instead everything and everyone was shaken and altered by Him. Because what was in His core spilled out of Him. Jesus could only speak peace to the storm because He had peace within Him. Awesome! My environment won't affect my calling, it won't alter passion. Instead my calling and passion effects my environment. Being around the mediocrities doesn't change us from being extraordinary!

- Micah Level

Testimony!

"Last Friday I was working out at the Gary Lutz Goffer Dome when one of the guys who was in the gym walked into the weight room. It was only him and I in there and he immediately started telling me that he wished his ankle would shop hurting so he could play basketball, and that he had rolled it earlier that day on his front steps. I told Him that I believed God wanted to heal him and asked if I could pray for his ankle. He accepted my offer and so after i asked him his name I commanded the pain to leave in Jesus name and then I had him check it out. I asked him if he felt anything when I prayed and he said yes, so I asked him what he felt and he said all of the pain was gone! I then cheerfully asked him if he wanted to workout with me but he quickly responded, "no I'm going to play basketball!"

After my workout I went out to the basketball court and he was running full speed and cutting to the basket. I shared the testimony with Roger Sparks who was working there at the time and we both rejoiced at God's kindness."

- Tyler Worley 

"The idea of asking God to give us things like longer or shorter legs seemed useless to me when I first heard about it.. of course I knew God COULD do it, I asked, "what's the purpose?" It took me a while to embrace and understand that God is our Papa who likes to give us things just because He can. There doesn't have to be a need for Him to do something; part of being His children means we get to have awesome gifts from our Father. I had been trying to grow my hair out for 2 years, and at a certain point, it just stopped growing. I had always dreamed of having super long hair, so when I heard that God would do "useless" things like this, I asked him to grow my hair out. The whole Level clan and Meredith and Jessica laid hands on my head and prayed in Jesus Name for my hair to start growing. Instantaneously, my head felt hot and tingly. My hair has been dyed blond, so it was apparent when my hair started growing, because it was coming out brown -- my hair grew 1/4 of an inch right then and there! And my hair has been continuing to get longer and longer since then!!

I went to my friend Maria's house about a week ago, and she kept periodically bringing up that she had lower back pain. At one point later in the night, when she mentioned it, I received a word of knowledge about one of her legs being shorter than the other, so I shared that with her and sat her against the wall to check. She was unable to flex her feet completely, but I could see from the placement of her ankles that her left leg was about 1/4 inch shorter than her left. I commanded the left leg to even out with the right in the Name of Jesus, and it grew! I had told Maria about when my legs were grown out and we shared laughs about how weird the pulling feeling felt on our legs! After this, she was able to flex her feet upwards,and she said her back felt a little better but it still hurt. So then I declared her body to be the temple of God, where no pain is allowed to reside and commanded in Christ's name for the pain to leave. Maria then tested her pain level by laying flat on the floor and sat straight up with no pain -- something she was not able to do in months! Praise Jesus!! THIS IS OUR GOD!!"

- Aly Todd 

"Two months ago I wasn't sure where I stood in my beliefs regarding healing and miracles.  I was wrestling with them, afraid to really believe in them, but not sure why.  As I began to be exposed to them more and hear people's testimonies, the conclusion I came to was that God certainly was powerful enough to do those things, that, sure, He used people to heal and perform miracles, and He healed many people.  But He would never do that for me.  I wasn't special enough... I didn't have enough faith... I couldn't hear His voice.  I didn't even realize the lies I was believing!  But two months ago I was challenged by my own lack of faith.  What if God wasn't healing because I wasn't asking?  What if I was so afraid of Him saying no that I wasn't giving Him a chance to say yes?  What if He wanted to heal me and wanted to use me to heal others, but I was allowing fear to stand in His way?  Why was I afraid to ask? 

Then God started healing my heart.  He started revealing things in my life that had caused certain thought patterns, hurts, lies, fears.  He started showing me how my relationship with Him had been damaged by hurt in relationships with other people because the more others hurt me, the more I believed God must be the same and He might hurt me too.  When I realized that was what I believing with my heart and with my life, even though I absolutely knew it to be untrue, I could do nothing but cry and pray.  God was so gracious to me and came near.  He began to reveal more and more of His heart for me, showing me who He is and how much He loves me.  He began to affirm and validate me.  I stopped looking to people for my validation and gave God alone that authority in my life.  He has been so wonderful with it!  And part of my journey was beginning again to wrestle with what I believed about healing. 

While I believed God was powerful and COULD heal and HAD healed many people, what it came down to was that I didn't believe God would heal ME.  So I started asking Him.  For the first time I started allowing Him full access to my heart, being honest with how I felt, even when I knew my emotions weren't consistent with truth.  I openly acknowledged where I was emotionally, giving Him the opportunity to meet me there and draw me to Himself.  I allowed myself to admit my own brokenness and I started to allow His love to be the balm to those wounds and stopped trying to heal my own heart.  He swept me off my feet.  He pursued my heart with abandon.  He poured His love over me and into me. A huge way that He did this was through healing.

I scheduled a footscan for Tuesday, 2/14/12.  Valentines Day.  I prayed the entire week before for healing, wrestling with my faith, or lack thereof.  I asked for courage to ask people to pray for me.  That Saturday before He didn't let my faithless fear stop me from receiving what I had asked for.  Two people received a word of knowledge that someone needed healing in their feet.  I was singled out.  I shyly allowed them to sit me down in the center of the crowded room, desperately praying that SOMETHING, anything, would happen.  “I just want to know You see me Lord!”  And did He ever!  My leg length was checked and one leg was shorter than the other.  In simple faith, Stephen and Micah prayed over me, commanding my leg to grow out, to be even.  It did immediately.  Then they prayed for my feet, that God would restore the arches and they would be made whole.  That was a little harder to gauge.  There was not a visible difference.  A foot pretty much just looks like a foot, especially when you're not putting weight on it.  I couldn't feel much of a difference.  But I was trying with everything in me to cling to the faith that God was my healer and He would do it.  Those next three days were hard!  I was fighting a constant battle for faith.  On Tuesday I went in for my footscan.  To my amazement my numbers were down 16 points!  I went from extreme severe pronation (turning of the ankles and flattening of the feet) to a high moderate.  You could physically see the difference in the pictures of the bottoms of my feet.  AND my feet were even, no longer throwing my body off kilter.  My hips and shoulders were no longer rotated and unbalanced.  My faith level rose drastically.  

I continued to pray for healing.  Another footscan only a month later revealed even more drastic results, although now my body is rotated the opposite direction.  I continue to be under the care of my chiropractic doctors and therapist as they monitor my progress that they are unable to explain and give me regular adjustments and therapy to help my body keep up with the changes that are happening.  They are amazed at what is happening!  My unbelieving doctor told me that this is a miracle because things like this do not happen!  People's feet never regain arches once they are flat.  It's simply a fact of life they have to live with.  Unless God Himself intervenes.  And God is intervening.  That same unbelieving doctor even teased me and said “you need to stop praying 'cause if you keep this up, you're going to put me out of business!”  Hahaha!  Yes!  Thank You Jesus for Your heart of healing, not just for my feet, but for my heart!"

- Sarah King 

Autopsy of Unbelief

First off I am a believer of Jesus Christ, and I believe He is the God of signs wonders and miracles; yesterday, today, and forever!  I believe God's intent for the church (us who believe) is to display His manifold wisdom to all of His creation through the working of faith with power. So in this love for my God I come against the giant of confusion and fear right now in the name of the living God!

The enemy of our souls who's name is satan is a deceiver whose main weapon is fear for the purpose of destroying faith in Jesus. He has been trying to convince believers to walk in fear and to bury their God given talents in the ground. He hates God's children especially when they move in God's power and anointing, and he loves to twist scripture to try and get people confused about God's will.

Well, it is too bad for him that God has given us authority to tear down demonic strongholds and tread evil under our feet so here we go!

God has told in scripture that evil does actually have power, even power to work signs and wonders. But don't worry God has also said that the power of evil will never stand against His Truth. It is as easy for believers to destroy the enemy's works as it is for light to expel darkness!

God has given us a grid in which we can use to discern true signs and wonders against fake ones. Check out these scriptures:

(NKJV) Mark 13:22 "For false christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect."

(NKJV) Revelation 13:13 "He [the evil one] performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men."

(NKJV) Deuteronomy 13:1 "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, (NKJV) Deuteronomy 13:2 "and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods'--which you have not known--'and let us serve them,'"
(NKJV) Deuteronomy 13:3 "you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul."

After looking at these warnings the key phrase to look at  is,

 "saying, let us go after other gods..."

In all of these above warnings the counterfeit signs and wonders were being done with the main intent of pointing people away from Jesus to other so "other gods."

If someone has a dream or vision or works a sign and wonder and says "lets go after Jesus", it is from God; if they say "let's go after other gods", it from the devil.

A sign points you to something like a street sign, and a wonder is something that is by definition;

Wonder-Noun: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.
Wonder-Verb: Desire or be curious to know something.

So the nature of a wonder is that it is something unfamiliar, or unexplainable that causes you to want to know more.

When you encounter something supernatural the question should not be can I explain this, but rather where or who is this sign pointing me to? Or who is this act causing me to be drawn to put my faith in?

Jesus addressed  this issue with His disciples and brought clarity about the working of miracles:

(NKJV) Mark 9:38 "Now John answered Him, saying, "Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us."
(NKJV) Mark 9:39 "But Jesus said, "Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me."(NKJV) Mark 9:40 "For he who is not against us is on our side."

By this statement we can see that it is impossible for someone to work a miracle in Jesus name and for it to be done under the power of a "deceiving spirit".

Notice Jesus's response was NOT: well you're right guys, I see these men are working miracles in my Name, but we should be skeptical because these could be deceptive spirits and you can never really be sure unless you know the people really well. Hahahha!

Even though they didn't know these guys or their character Jesus didn't tell them to stop. Good things were being done through the the Name of Jesus, and Jesus saw this as the qualifying factor to whether a miracle is from God or not. He also added that if someone is not against us they are for us! Basically, He was saying that unless someone is working miracles in the name of someone else they are on God's team, and to receive them with gladness.

The reality of things is also that not everyone wants to be on God's team, and not everyone takes pleasure in His truths. These people will easily be deceived if there was a powerful miracle done in the name of someone other than Jesus. It would justify their own desire to not follow Jesus. Paul also writes about this:

(NKJV) 2 Thessalonians 2:9 "The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders," (NKJV) 2 Thessalonians 2:10 "and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved."

So when someone works miracles, and tells people to follow someone or something other than Jesus, people who aren't saved and not interested in Jesus could easily be deceived.

This is the context of every passage dealing with counterfeit signs and wonders.

 Jesus' qualifier for a miracle to be from God was actually, "if they are not against us they are for us."

It doesn't exactly sound like Jesus was nervous about people performing miracles in His name as probable "deceiving spirits".

I believe it is impossible for one of Jesus' true disciples to be deceived by someone working counterfeit miracles, because their love for His truth is the anchor of their soul, not the lust for the supernatural.

(NKJV) John 10:5 "Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."

If someone goes off to become a disciple of some "foreign god" because of some miracle, it shows they were not His sheep in the first place.

In reference to the "deceiving spirits" lets take a closer look at that scripture in Timothy,

(NKJV) 1 Timothy 4:1 "Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,"

The context of this scripture is that the deceiving spirits would enter the church and entice people away from FAITH in Christ. So remember Jesus said that is it impossible for someone to work a miracle in His name, and then speak evil of Him. So in context Paul was not even referring to the miraculous in the passage, but rather reminding people of how deceiving spirits would try to trick people into unbelief, especially justification by their own works apart from faith in Christ's finished works on the cross.

Yet I think it's funny that this scripture (which is against unbelief ) is the one the enemy uses to twist and try to get people to fall into unbelief, and to reject signs and wonders in fear of getting deceived.

Most of this propoganda actually comes from people who believe the demonic doctrine that says that the gifts of the Holy Spirit died with the original Apostles.

If you are still wondering about the False Christs thing, Jesus wasn't talking about people working miracles in His Name, He was talking about people saying that they were actually Him. So yes if someone says that they are actually Jesus himself, of course don't believe them.

So in conclusion, God is not a God of confusion, and He didn't call us to a life of fear, but He had said concerning us,

(NKJV) John 10:29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand."

 Jesus has called us to a life of radical love and faith, a love and faith that destroys the works of the devil and  lets the oppressed go free.

So the next time you hear of something that you can't explain being done in Jesus name, you don't have to be afraid or skeptical, just see it as a billboard with an arrow pointing to the words "Jesus loves you!"

-Tyler Worley