The storms of life

In his book Finish Life Like One of the Twelve (WestBow Press, 2025) Richard Morton asks, Where are the seniors? Why are they sitting in pews instead of being involved in active ministry? He blames the American Dream for this, the idea that after working hard all your life you've earned the right to sit back and enjoy life in comfort and ease. No more commitments, just play golf, travel, and throw away your alarm clock. Rick argues convincingly that this is not what the Christian Life is all about. That every believer, not just pastors and missionaries, are called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus right until they go to heaven. Rick frames his argument on the message of the Kingdom of God, which was the central teaching of Jesus and his disciples. He argues convincingly from Scripture that Christians today — all Christians — are called, equipped, commissioned and sent to do the same things that Jesus did: to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim God's kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit. And he frames this not as a heavy burden but an exciting opportunity that believers who are seniors and retired can easily enter into. Rick also shares stories from his own life and the life of his wife Sharon to illustrate how God can use us to advance his kingdom. As a senior himself — he turned 70 as he was writing his book — Rick provides practical, actionable steps for entering into the ministry of Jesus, and into what he calls Radical Retirement — finishing the final years of your life like you are one of the Twelve. Ingrid and I feel every Christian who is a senior and retired should read this book. Some will be challenged by it, and a few may even be offended. Many however will be inspired to dive back in and start following Jesus again with renewed vigor and passion. A great way to make use of Rick's book in your church might be for a group of seniors to meet together once a week and work through it one chapter at a time. You can buy Rick's book on Amazon .

One of the great things Ingrid and I learned during the early days of the Vineyard is that you could ask people to pray for your healing whenever you got sick. And more often than not, you got healed. But you can also learn to pray effectively for your own healing, as the following story demonstrates. Recently I had been experiencing a sharp pain in my upper right chest whenever I tried to breathe very deep. This had been going on for several weeks, but not being a very mindful person I tended to ignore it. I also thought it might have something to do with the upper-body weightlifting I was doing. Perhaps it was only a muscle strain from trying to lift too much. Or maybe my heart is feeling stressed from lifting weights that are too heavy for someone my age (71) so maybe I should just dial down a bit. Which I did, but the pain didn't go away. And it couldn't be my heart, could it, since that's on the left side of my chest, not my right. So maybe it’s just a muscle strain, and those are no big deal and if left alone usually heal by themselves after a few weeks. Anyways, those were my thoughts as I continued to try to ignore my condition. But after about another week had passed, I finally decided one morning to pray for my condition. I placed my left hand on my upper right chest where the pain was located and asked the Holy Spirit to come and release God's healing power on my condition. At that moment several things happened. First, I suddenly recalled that I had experienced similar pains in my life several times in the past, and they had all been associated with having pneumonia, medically verified by a physician. "Of course!" I thought to myself, "I've just got a touch of pneumonia. How silly of me not to have recognized it!" But then I remembered that pneumonia if it is allowed to persist can permanently damage lung tissue, so it shouldn't be taken lightly. The next thing that immediately came to mind was that the pneumonia I was experiencing might have been caused, or at least aggravated, by certain lifestyle choices I had made lately. Nothing sinful, mind you—just stupid behaviors. So I resolved to try and change those behaviors if possible. But that still left the problem of experiencing sharp pain whenever I tried to breathe deeply. Then another thought struck me. In Hebrew as well as Greek, the word that means "breath" can also mean "spirit." So could my breathing problem be caused by a spirit? This idea hit me with the force of a revelation (i.e. with a feeling of certainty) so I thought it was probably a word of knowledge. Which meant that I needed to do something in response to receiving it. So placing my hand again on my right upper chest, I rebuked the spirit of pneumonia by saying "Spirit of pneumonia, I break your power over my body and command you to leave right now!" Then I took a very deep breath. And the sharp pain was no longer there. But I still felt a kind of dull ache in my right chest when I tried breathing deeply, so having driven off the demon that had been trying to get his claws into me — figuratively speaking, but literally true in ways our natural mind can't understand — I spent several minutes laying my hand on my chest and asking God to release his healing power to heal any inflammation in my lung tissue and damage my lungs may have experienced. After praying like this awhile, I tried breathing deeply and still felt the same dull ache. But fortunately no more sharp pain. So I resolved to keep praying like this for myself every couple of hours, hoping that through "soaking prayer" my remaining condition would progressively be healed. I did this three or four times that day, and then I forgot about it. The next morning I took a deep breath. No ache, no pain. And as of a week later my condition is still completely healed. What can we learn from this story? As John Wimber tells us in his book Power Healing , sicknesses often have several different contributing factors involved in causing them. These may include organic (functional) breakdowns of physical health, like wounds causing damaged tissue or through invasive viruses or bacteria; environmental factors like poisonous substances; social factors like relationship problems with others resulting in unforgiveness and hardness of heart; and various levels of demonic activity. Effective healing often involves determining which of these is the root cause (i.e. the most important or fundamental contributing factor) and dealing with that first. The root cause of a condition can sometimes be determined by careful listening to what the person you are praying for says, but more often it involves receiving a word of knowledge (a direct revelation from the Lord) as to what is causing the problem. In my case, the Lord used the word play of breath-equals-spirit to show me that I had to deal with the demonic element first before my condition could receive further healing. But if the Greek/Hebrew word for breath can also mean spirit, does this mean that pneumonia is always caused by an evil spirit? No, but sometimes it can be. And in this case, I think it was, based on the outcome of the way I ministered to my condition. Hope you find this helpful. And if you haven't read Wimber's book yet, I urge you to buy it and read it . Cheers, Mitch

There has been a formatting problem with the online version of our book Simple Kingdom: Worship where if you clicked on a link to a footnote it would take you to that footnote, but clicking the back button on your browser wouldn't return you to the place where you had been reading in the book. This has now been fixed by embedding the footnotes directly into the text of the book. An alternative and probably better fix would have been to make the footnotes popups, but unfortunately the web hosting company we use for our site charges extra for that particular feature, and we're cheap ;-) BTW if you are (or want to be) a worship leader or write worship songs, we encourage you to read our book as it steps you through the whole process of crafting different types of songs, putting together worship sets, and practical tips on leading worship in church and/or home fellowship settings. And if you know anyone who is a worship leader or songwriter, please let them know about our book by using the sharing icons at the bottom of this webpage. Thanks!

We've finished the outline for our next book Simple Kingdom: Word and Spirit and are ready to begin writing it. I'll be posting draft chapters here on our website so those of you who are interested can read them as we finish them.

If reading my testimony has resonated in your heart and you want to know more about how one can enter into a personal relationship with God, this article which I've just uploaded to our Resources section can help show you the way. And for those of you trying to bring others into God's kingdom, feel free to use the article as a guide for explaining the gospel message to them. --Mitch

I've revised a few things in my personal testimony with some clarifications and additions. You can check it out here .

Times are difficult for the average person here in Canada. One indication of this Ingrid and I have noticed as we drive around is the number of cars we see that have a non-working headlight or brakelight. It seems people are trying to reduce their spending by not getting their cars serviced. This is not a good idea -- cars need to be maintained properly, and driving without working lights endangers both yourself and others. But with stubbornly high food inflation, rising housing and insurance costs, and wages not keeping pace, people are having to make hard choices about where they should allocate their money. Times are even harder for the poor in our society. While their are many kinds of poverty, and many reasons people may be poor, the ones the Lord has especially laid on our hearts are the poor elderly that live among us. For example, yesterday we did our weekly grocery shopping. Our first stop was Safeway, a chain of grocery stores here in Canada. As I walked around to get some items we needed, I quickly noticed some elderly people who looked like they were struggling to make ends meet. The old man who bought only a single litre of milk. The sad-looking elderly couple who slowly pushed their shopping cart through each and every aisle looking at items but not putting anything in their cart. I also noticed that the store had far more comfort food (chips, popcorn, candy, chocolate) on display than it had fresh fruit and vegetables in the produce section. That's another sign of how times are hard for people, prioritizing snacks that have low nutritional value (and high profit margins for the store) over healthy but expensive fresh foodstuffs. While the official rate of inflation here in Canada has now declined to just over 2 percent, the reality is that the cost of basic necessities (food, clothing, transportation and housing) for many people has risen by a huge amount over the last few years. This has impacted elderly people living on a fixed income, especially those who depend mostly upon the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS) since those government payments have not increased nearly as much as the cost of living. It's an old story, isn't it, of governments and news media making misleading statements and promises about the real state of the economy. For example, our Prime Minister here in Canada during the 1970s, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was a popular and charismatic figure during a time of revolutionary idealism. But in a news clipping from the 1970 Christmas Eve edition of the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper, Prime Minister Trudeau was quoted as saying that "Inflation no longer exists in Canada" and was reported to have also said that "the fight against inflation has been won" and "the government's anti-inflation performance was unequalled in any country in the Western world."

A friend recently asked if I had any advice on how to equip members of his church to pray more effectively for the sick. I responded by sharing with him some materials I had developed for this purpose many years ago when Ingrid and I were Ministry Team Coordinators at a Vineyard church. We had used these materials to conduct a series of workshops for members of our church and for visitors from other churches. You can download a PDF of our Ministry Team Training materials from the new Resources page on our website, and if you find it useful feel free to share it with others. Cheers,  Mitch

The draft version of the Introduction section of our next book Simple Kingdom: Word and Spirit is now finished. You can read it here .