The Hellands in Holland

A gathering of friends at an English estate nearly turned to tragedy when one of the children strayed into deep water. The gardener heard the cries for help, plunged in, and rescued the drowning child. That youngster's name was Winston Churchill. His grateful parents asked the gardener what they could do to reward him. He hesitated, then said, "I wish my son could go to college someday and become a doctor." "We'll see to it," Churchill's parents promised.  Years later, while Sir Winston was prime minister of England, he was stricken with pneumonia. The country's best physician was summoned. His name was Dr. Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered and developed penicillin. He was also the son of that gardener who had saved young Winston from drowning. Later Churchill remarked, "Rarely has one man owed his life twice to the same person." Ron Hutchcraft,  Wake Up Calls , Moody, 1990, p. 22.

  O ne young woman had been suffering for five years with a debilitating muscle sickness called Fibromyalgia. Her muscles would lock up and keep her from being able to function. After praying for her on a recent trip she began saying that she could do things she had not done in years. The next day she walked for six hours straight in a busy downtown center without having any pain. She can now run, jump, bike and function normally. The crippling sickness is gone in Jesus name. The worship leader of our church, Robert, was at a relative’s birthday party where he began sharing stories of recent healings. His cousin told him that his uncle had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in his hand and wrist. His uncle had not felt his fingers in years. When Robert prayed for him, he felt tingling and warmth come into his hand. He gained his feeling back instantly, something he hand not felt in eleven years.             As news spread throughout Robert’s family and workplace that he could pray for the sic

             Who can you find at a psychic fairs?: palm and tarot ca rd readers, mediums, psychics, new age healers, crystal balls, and our church, New Life West. In the midst of all this spiritual and paranormal activity, we have discovered that a psychic fair is an ideal place to share the love and power of Jesus Christ using the power of the Holy Spirit. During one recent weekend, we saw many healings in the name of Jesus Christ as well as people asking Jesus to come into their hearts. Here are some of the stories.             One of the free workshops that I offered was called  “The Spiritual Power of Love in Action.” I read First Corinthians 13 and told everyone about the supernatural power of love and how my spiritual source (Jesus Christ) would heal people in just a few minutes. I told my personal story of being healed of Cerebral Palsey as a child and asked who needed healing in the room. Three ladies came forward and all of them recieved instant healing.            

The Gift of Giving Water And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded." Matthew 10:42 NLT You can always give without loving, but you can not love without giving. –Amy Carmichael             As pioneer missionaries in Amsterdam , the Netherlands , we have the privilege of planting the first IPHC churches in our country. That means that the spiritual DNA of these first churches will go on as they start new churches. Since first starting with a small group in our living room, we decided to fully support another IPHC church planter and his family in Azerbaijan . We have been doing this for more than five years and will joyfully continue investing in their lives and ministry. This really is one of our greatest joys and privileges, yet we have decided that we wanted to give even more.             Every Sunday at the beginning of our service we have our children walk around with flower pots with large labels

Today I have the opportunity to speak at Huizen van Licht (www.huizenvanlicht.nl) in Den Haag. I have been asked to speak about motivational gifts and the gifts of the spirit as described in 1 Cor. 12. I thought I would include the following link for people wanting to learn about motivational gifts. Click on  http://victorylifechurch.org/vlc/resources/  and then scroll down to the different motivational gifts to find out more. Blessings

            As a six-year old girl, I was molested. After that incident I began getting horrible nightmares where I dreamt that I was no longer loved by God. These dreams stopped though when I asked Jesus, with tears in my eyes, to come into my heart. At age 15, I was baptized by my father who was my pastor. When I was nineteen, I felt like God was leading me to go to the south of Italy where I served as a missionary for eight years. My time in Italy was very difficult and when I returned to Holland I came back with an extreme psychological and physical burn-out. I found myself completely exhausted.             My desire to do things for God has always been great, yet my strength was always limited. I was able to go to a Bible School and also work at a children’s home and orphanage  in Holland . However, I struggled continually with depression. In the midst of this, God gave me many good friends with whom I could pray and do things together. There was one friend  who suff

UNDERSTANDING AND USING PROPHECY AND OTHER GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT Gifts of the Spirit.    (1 Cor 12:7-11)                                                                                                                                        1. Words of Wisdom (v. 8) supernaturally knowing what to do in certain situations. 2.      Words of knowledge (v. 8) knowledge of things you don’t know in the “natural”. 3.      faith (v. 9) a supernatural empowerment to believe for a specific event. 4.      Healing (9) of body, mind or spirit. 5.      Miracles (10) over-riding natural laws of creation or time. 6. Prophecy (10)  ability to hear God’s voice and share it with others. 7. Discernment of spirits (10) sensing if spirit activity comes from God, man or a demonic influence. 8. Tongues (10),      speaking in unknown languages. 9. Interpretation of tongues (10) – Interpretation (not translation) of a tongue given in a public meeting or personal prayer. Tongues + interpre

Then he said, "Son of man, get all these words that I'm giving you inside you. Listen to them obediently. Make them your own. And now go. Go to the exiles, your people, and speak. Tell them , "This is the message of God, the Master.' Speak your peace, whether they listen or not."  Ezekiel 3:10-11 The Message Bible In order to effectively communicate God's message, we need to first digest them; internalize them, make them our own. When we  have allowed them to enter into the deepest recesses of my heart, then they can change us at the core of our being. Nevertheless, we must also be actively listening and internalizing how the culture around us thinks. When this takes place, we will be able to fluently speak God's words to the culture we live among in a way that they can understand. ( The late Dr. T. L. Osborn) A  good example of this comes from the life of the late T.L. Osborn. Osborn was a pioneer in mass crusade evangelism outside of the Uni

My name is Michelle*. For more than a year I was invited to go to Celebrate Recovery, a program offered at New Life West. I did not want to go because I did not want to be converted or join a group wh ere I would not be accepted. However, one evening, I finally did go to CR and what I discovered that evening began a journey of self-discovery and growth with God who continues to this day to change my life. I grew up in a Roman Catholic family where my grandpa was more Catholic than the pope and every Sunday we went to church. However, when I turned six, suddenly church and faith were eliminated from our family life. My parents taught me that we can only trust in rationality and science and that you can not trust in anyone except for yourself. I missed the feeling of someone or something being there whom I could trust so I began worshipping that which would gave me security in life: a job or money. Then in May 2012, the crisis hit hard in my field of work. I lost my job and found my

Chiune Sugihara was the vice consul for Japan in Lithuania during 1939-1940. During his time there, he realized the horrible plight of the Jews for whom it was nearly impossible to travel. Against orders of his superiors, he decided to begin handing out transit visas in order to save these people's lives. In one day he would give out more visas than regularly given out in a month. During the last days of his time in Lithuania, he would spend 19-20 hours a day hand writing visas for people to escape Lithuania. He did this at a great personal risk, but is credited for saving over 6,000 jews. When asked why he did what he did  he said, "I myself thought this would the be righ thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives...The spirit of humanity, philanthropy...neighborly friendschip...with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this difficult situations--and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage." Some people

The Lord  God  has given me       the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain  the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—   wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. Isaiah 50:4 (NRSV) In order to teach, I first need to be taught. In order to lead, I first need to be led. I can not give away that which I have do not have. As a young adult I remember asking God for a leader I could follow and be mentored by. His first response was that he was my leader and my teacher. It is possible that we can learn first and foremost from Jesus himself. Paul said, "I did not recieve it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I recieved it by revelation from Jesus Christ." (Gal. 1:12). There are remarkable examples of this concept in Paul's writings. For example, in Ephesians 4:20, 21 it says "You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him... " Yet in the original greek it does not say you he

 Last year I got a stack of World War II movies for a bargain at a local store. In that stack is the priceless true story of Hugh O'Flaherty during World War II. O'Flaherty was a priest in the Vatican in Rome. This ingenious priest was the mastermind of an underground movement to house and save over 6,500 jews and allied soldiers. He was so audacious that the nazi germans painted a large circle around the vatican saying that if O'flaherty crossed that line he would be killed. This did not hold him back. Instead he would disguise himself as a nun, a street cleaner, a beggar, etc. in order to get into travel incognito throughout Rome to help refugees. He was so daring that he even dressed up as a German general in order to go into a German prison and give last communion to a fellow priest who was to be exectuted. The stunts and risks that he took were amazing. For example, they housed many Jews and refugees in a house next door to the gestapo offices. They seemed always t

As a young man, Phil did not know or really believe in God. However, one day something bizarre happened. He had a motorcycle accident where a car ran over both of his legs and he just got right back up and kept on riding. This was the beginning of his journey to discover that there was a God desiring to know him and use his life.  I went to school in Chile with Jenna and Aaron his two kids. It was in Chile where I got introduced to a truly Apostolic and Prophetic work. I remember Phil preaching with his American accent how a healthy church has babies. (It plants churches). This was more than a theory, it took place as now the Vineyard Churches of Chile have spread throughout that country as well as to other Latin American nations.  It was also at that church in Santiago when I was first exposed to the ministry of prophets and prophetic presbyteries. One guy told me simply how much God loved me and I recall feeling as if I was laying in the hands of God for the next 24 hours. (

Femke has revolutionized the course of my life. As a teenager I remember hearing horrible stories about Amsterdam and thinking, I will gladly go anywhere (Africa, South America, etc.), but I don't want to go there. Now that I have lived here seven years, I love it. We met each other at an internship at Metro Ministries (www.metroministries.com) in New York City  working with inner-city children in 2001. It was the same time as the Twin Tower attack. I remember seeing her and thinking that she was pretty, but I was sure I would go live in a Spanish speaking country. To my amazement, the moment I though that, she started speaking Spanish to a Mexican girl standing by her. This was just the first of many surprises that led me to discover that she was the woman of my dreams. After Metro, we had and year and a half long distance courtship with her in Amsterdam and myself in Oklahoma. When I visited her, I followed her around to the 4 to 5 children's clubs she did a week. She w

  Upon first moving to Europe, I set out to find the top people who were presenting the gospel successfully in a secular, post-christian context such as Europe. My neighbor was an American guy who had come to know Christ through a Church in New York City with a Pastor called Tim Keller. He started giving me access to all of Keller's sermons and my world was rocked. I now have hundreds of his sermons on my computer, all of his books (in Dutch) and my teaching and ministry bare the fingerprints of this master teacher. What makes him so good you may ask:   Tim Keller does not ever preach with a us vs. them style. His intelligent discourses cross the huge intellectual gulf that is often present between secular culture and Christian (sub) culture. His constant hammering on grace saving us, not religious moralism or secular autonomy, really cause us to re-evaluate why we do what we do. He is one of the best at teaching with confidence and assertively, while showing respect and u

Neil Cole's book Organic Church has been very formative on my life and ministry. Through his writings, I now articulate that I want to become an expert on Prayer, Discipleship, Leadership Development, Church Planting, and starting a Movement (in that order). You can 't skip a step. However, the most powerful tool I got from him was his Life Transformation Group idea. ( http://www.cmaresources.org/files/Cultivating-NeilCole-chap8.pdf ). This is basically where you get groups of 2 or 3 who regularly go through 11 accountability questions, read 25-30 chapters weekly out of the Bible and pray for friends and family to meet Christ. The first year I did this I saw my one group multiply in many more. More importantly, it got me reading on a consistent basis large amounts of scripture and taught me what it is to have deep friendships with other men. I have only met him once in person in Germany at a conference, but his teachings have born much fruit in my life and ministry. I alway

A great example of a word of knowledge just flopping out of your mouth without you realizing it is when my mother years ago in Chile recieved a cake from the neighbor lady. Suddenly she said, "There is glass in the cake." She did not know why she said that, but when she cut the cake open, she found glass. The milk bottles were made of glass at that time and a bottle had broken. That sudden information coming out of my mother's mouth potentially saved someone from an injury or worse.

My parents and my sibling have had more formative influence on my life than anyone else. I grew up looking up to everyone of them wanting to be just like my father and my big brother Aaron. My father was an Evangelist and the co-founder of the Pentecostal Bible School in Chile. I remember traveling with him and watching him preach, teach, and pray for the sick. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. As a young teenager, I was a carbon copy of my brother, Aaron. His prayer life was very formative of my own. Whenever my father had to travel for an extended period of time my mother would experience odd, inexplainable things take place around the home. One day after having left my father at the airport, a large glass light cover  fell where I normally played in my room for no apparent reason. My mother told my brother and it was then as a 14 year-old that he began praying every day for at least an hour. Nothing else happened in the months my father was absent. Also, I remember

Here is a useful teaching I got a few years ago at a New Wine conference here in Amsterdam on using words of knowledge in ministry. I use these notes to teach on this gift and more importantly to challenge people to step out and grow in hearing God's voice supernaturally (which by the way should be quite natural).   Words of Knowledge- Insight or information not known naturally but supernaturally.   One of the revelatory gifts which include words of knowledge , wisdom, prophecy and discernment.   1.        JESUS’ ENCOUNTER WITH NATHANIEL – John 1:43f   Ministry to   believer             Philip witnesses to Nathaniel about Jesus – but Nathaniel shrugs it off – “can               anything good come out of Nazareth?” v46 a)      He thought he understood scripture b)     He may have been disappointed before – maybe hurt searching for Messiah. c)      Jesus says   “here is an Israelite in whom there is no guile” v47 (This is a prophetic insight – revelation – word