A good friend of mine asked me today: “What is the difference between grieving and quenching Holy Spirit?”

I immediately went to the Scriptures looking for an answer and this is what I came up with.

Ephesians 4:30 says, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” 

Many people might read this verse and get confused wondering how in the world do you grieve Holy Spirit.

I would suggest that the answer to this question lies in the context in which this verse is placed.

There are a number of sins that are listed in verses 25 to 30.  I would suggest to you that when we practice such sins, either willingly or unknowingly. we entertain the possibility of hurting or grieving the Holy Spirit.

When I lie, steal, get angry, brawl with people, slander people or sin sexually, these are all obstacles that hurt my relationship with Holy Spirit.

When I hold malice and bitterness in my heart toward those that have hurt me instead of forgiving them, then these are matters that separate me from God.

If I do not practice repentance and forgiveness because I am proud, then I am grieving the Holy Spirit.

This can only be rectified by repenting of my sin and/or forgiving the person that hurt me.

And then there is the matter of quenching the Holy Spirit.

In Scripture “to quench” means “to stop.” This is different than grieving.  Grieving is about my internal response to the sins of my life and the hurts perpetrated upon me.  Quenching the Spirit is stopping Holy Spirit from moving in and through our lives.

My friend Kathie Walters shares how while she was still living in England,  one day she found herself challenged by God as she was walking home from a grocery store.

Holy Spirit told her to raise her hands and to sing and praise him publicly as she was walking.

Well, of course, this was a matter of contention for her because she was afraid that she would be mocked or misunderstood by the people that saw her.

The Lord said to her: “Do you wish for a religious spirit to return to you?”  Immediately she began to worship the Lord in the streets.

We must always be aware that Holy Spirit is wishing to move through our lives.  The person that is free in the spirit is always making room for Him to move.  We quench or stop the spirit from moving when we do not allow Him to move.

This can happen at an individual level but also at a corporate level.

It is a sin that is different from some of the other sins but is often masked by religious tradition.

As people we have ideas of how God should and shouldn’t move.  We even have ideas on what He should and shouldn’t say.  He is God and has His own mind and His own ideas. Where our thoughts and ideas clash with His, then I would suggest to you that we must submit to His ways so that something greater might be produced.

Some of my greatest experiences came when I didn’t suppress Holy Spirit from moving through me.  Some of the greatest meetings that I have been in we didn’t even know what God was doing but we let him do it anyway.

Submitting to God is trusting in Him that He is good and that His ways are higher than our ways.  When I submit to God good is always produced.  This is my experience and I submit to Him every time He speaks.

In order to advance into our destiny, we would do well to neither grieve nor quench Holy Spirit, amen?

“But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.”

(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:7-13)

Verse 8 says, “When Christ ascended he gave gifts to his people,” and before that in verse 7 it says, “…to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

I am not even going to try to attempt to state here that I understand the five-fold ministry any better than anyone else.  In fact, I feel most of the time that I don’t understand it at all, but one thing that this scripture does say is that it is given as a gift from Christ to his people.

Christ as God can only do good.  That is his complete heart and motivation.

When he ascended and gave to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors he was doing something that was “GOOD,” and not bad.

I just had a vision and saw that these offices were to be like rarefied gemstones to the church.  They have great value because there is something within them that is placed there by God and they are valuable because of this.

I have met many men and women of God who would fit within the categories of the five-fold ministry.  What strikes me about them is that each one is unique.  They do not fit within a cookie cutter mold.

As their ministries are released within our midst something is released into the body that would not otherwise be released.  There is a revelation, an impartation, an understanding, an angelic anointing, a healing, a deliverance that they carry that is meant to do what God sent it to do in our lives, and as this is released we become different and changed.

Our ministries become more effective and not because we have learned something, but because that which they carried was deposited into us and we grew as a result.

What does this mean?  I really don’t know if I can express this in words, but I will try.

Elijah was ascending to the Father and Elisha was aware that this mighty man or gift from God was about to leave the earth.  He went with Elijah on his journey in order to receive his mantle upon his departure (2 Kings 2).

The following conversation unfolds between the two on the other side of the Jordan River:

Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”  

“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied

How in the world could a man give a portion of his spirit to another man?  This is not possible.  It would have to be a miracle from the Lord.

And there is a mystery or a lesson inside of this story for all of us.  The man or woman of God who is given as a gift from the Lord to the church is a vessel that contains the glory of God like a deposit in a special way.  Every one of us who walks with them can inherit a portion of their spirit or the anointing that they carry.

On many occasions after I have received one of the five-fold into my church and after they have left, many of the things that occurred in their ministry began to occur in mine, and this not by any conjuring of my own.

I have received prophetic words like one of the men that came into our midst.  I have seen gold dust appear like the person that first prayed for me for this to occur.  I have had smells occur like another person whom I invited into our midst.  I have had dreams like the dreams of the man who first prayed for me.

These people carry things for the church and not just themselves.  When we are aware of this, we can ask God to deposit the same anointing in our own lives and He will and He does.

I know I am probably stretching some people today, but so be it.  God wants the Church to receive the five-fold into its midst so that it can grow the way God intended.

It is not all about the knowledge that these people carry, but it is about what is on their lives.  As we receive them we receive what they carry and we need this to be equipped to do the work that God has called us to do and advance into our destiny.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matthew 18:1-5)

I had a dream a few nights back.

In it a young minister that I am friends with was sitting in a cubicle next to me.

Into his cubicle came a very well known minister–one that I have admired for almost 10 years, but with whom I have never personally had any relationship.

In this dream I learned that the young man in the cubicle was in a close relationship with this minister.  He was actually working for him.

I got so angry that I woke up, jumped out of my bed, and ran into the bathroom screaming at God because of His lack of justice.

Ambition!

It consumes me at times. I desire things that are not godly and wanting them does my heart harm.

I have three young boys at home and another on the way. I still don’t really know what it means to be childlike as in the context of this scripture.

I wish I was like a child but I don’t think I am.

In fact I would have to say that I am more like a man when it comes to this.

I am aware of the question always rolling through my heart, “Who is the greatest living today in the Kingdom?”

Even yesterday I was looking at the ministry of a young man in the US, who was 26 years old.

He already has a TV ministry, a recognized worldwide evangelistic and healing ministry. I thought to myself, “Why not me, Lord?”

This is the truth!  Ambition at times consumes my heart.

If I didn’t tell you this you would still likely know the truth of it because you can probably see my motivations more than I.

My desire is to become like Christ and to die to the need for recognition.  Yet I continue on and on in ambition, so what is my real desire. Only God can truly judge this.

I pray that in the end I will have learned to really love my neighbor and to put my brother above myself.

I pray that I will be able to lift people into higher spots than myself and rejoice when my brother seems to succeed more than I.

I pray that peace will come into your heart and mine in the face of this distraction so that we will be able to accomplish much for Christ despite this failing in our characters.

May Holy Spirit help us “become like little children” for Christ.

The Ten Commandments, which can be found in Exodus 20:1-17, were written in stone and all of Israel was commanded to follow them when Moses came down from Mount Sinai.

In Ezekiel 11:19 we hear the Lord saying, “I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”  And Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves (NLT).”

The amazing thing about The Ten Commandments is how it identifies sin in our hearts.  Not one man, woman or child could look into those 10 statements and not see their evil within it.  God knew this when He wrote it. The law becomes like a mirror to the SIN SICK heart, showing it what it already knows of itself and its condition.

But that is not the end of the story. God has always had a redemptive plan even in the giving of these 10 laws.  He was foreseeing the coming of His son into the earth and how salvation would come to all through His great sacrifice.

Keeping The Ten Commandments is not my focus in life, but rather my focus is living a life pleasing to the Lord. 

If I should make a mistake I am quick to repent of it.

My focus is on having Holy Spirit guide my steps and life.

There are times that I am overwhelmed with life as it is dealt out to me.  There seems to be a steady barrage at times of temptations and evil, and yet I am not destroyed or overcome by the evil I face.

The enemy will roam and try to destroy but as long as my gaze is upon the Lord I will succeed in the face of every trial. The Lord always provides a way forward and out.

It is not that I live trying to keep the letter of the law found in The Ten Commandments, but rather when I walk in Holy Spirit, my life begins to look a lot cleaner.  It is not me succeeding in keeping the law but rather by walking in the spirit, Jesus inside my heart keeps me from sin.

It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me and He is able to keep the law completely.  It is the Spirit of God in me that keeps me from sin and not me.

Every time I face a temptation or a trial I ask the Lord to show me the way out.  When I humble myself to His voice and carry out His will I succeed in the face of many trials, temptations and snares that the enemy would have for me.  As long as my gaze is upon the Lord, I remain in the vine and in His voice is fullness of joy.

I am not sure if I am succeeding in relating these thoughts.  It could be that by listening to Holy Spirit we walk away from many of the trials we would face otherwise.  It isn’t that He tells us to be clean and we listen to Him and are clean.

He might say something like “worship me in the moment” and as you worship him, you are transported away from sin and even through time.  Months pass by and you have not struggled at all with your former sin–all because your focus was on worshiping God and not the sin.

And it wasn’t your worship at all that set you free, but only your obedience to obey a word from the Lord.

He said go down to the river and dip yourself seven times and you will come up clean.  You said, “But God that is one dirty river and there are cleaner rivers in my country of Canada.  Let me go to the river in my own community, it is cleaner.”

But the word wasn’t to go to a river in Canada.  The word was to dip in the Jordan.

The same act of dipping in one river would not produce freedom, but dipping in the river God told you to dip in produces freedom.

When God speaks there is always freedom, even when you don’t necessarily like His plan.  But if you carry out that plan and submit yourself to it–rid your heart of rebellion– you will be free, because he whom the Son sets free is free indeed.

Obedience gets rid of your heart of stone and allows God to put a heart of flesh within you.

Through obedience to the Spirit and not the letter of the law our natures are transformed by God and by no power of our own.  When we are in the spirit it is very difficult to sin. Praise God!

“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:17)

We live in a time when the West has become very rich and very powerful. And it seems that in our own self-sufficiency and power we have given up on the Lord our God. May I remind you that it was in the name of the Lord that many of the nations in the west were founded.

Not that long ago, a friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook of a school in the United States. While by law you are not allowed to pray or mention the name of Christ in schools in the US, this picture showed in one school an image of the Buddha under a tree of life.  It was on display for everyone to see.  A sure sign that we have lost our Christian ways in the nations of the west when we allow such things to occur.

In our self-sufficiency we have become proud. We have turned from the living God to foreign gods and to humanism. We have become proud and obstinate. We have rebelled against the Lord our God.

However, I believe that great periods of turmoil are coming in the near future that will become opportunities for the people of the West to turn back in repentance to the Lord their God.

Just as it was in the time of King Rehoboam.

The first part of Chronicles 12 says that when Rehoboam was established as King he became strong and then he and all Israel abandoned the Law of the Lord.

When Rehoboam faced the Egyptian Army and their King, Shishak, the sheer number of soldiers arrayed against him was too powerful. He understood that defeat was imminent.

In that moment a prophet of the Lord came to Rehoboam with a message. He said that the Lord says, “You have abandoned me; therefore, I now abandon you to Shishak.”

The response of the King and the nation of Israel in that moment was rather interesting. Instead of arching their back and trying to justify themselves, they recognized the truth of the rebuke and repented acknowledging that “God was just.”

They didn’t even ask God to stop the attack, but accepted their fate.  But God saw their repentance and told them he was going to help them.

“Because Rehoboam humbled himself, the LORD’s anger turned from him, and he was not totally destroyed. Indeed, there was some good in Judah.” (2 Chronicles 12:12)

I pray that in this moment of crisis our nations will once again acknowledge the Lord our God. I pray that humility will rise upon our leaders and our people when difficult times do come.

We have seen some tremendous crises and uprisings occur already, but it doesn’t seem that our leaders have humbled themselves. In fact, it is safe to say that it seems that they have become more proud, allowing every form of wickedness to creep into our society unchecked.

We must humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift us up. We must acknowledge that He is God and that the precedents for life and living that He has set are truth. We must repent of our wicked ways and turn to Him with all our hearts.

Then we too will discover the truth stated by David in Psalm 51: “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” (Isaiah 58:6-9)

It would seem that even in Israel fasting became a religious ritual that people did the wrong way.  Fasting was often a last resort in order to please God when all else was about to fail around them.

When your lifestyle is not pleasing to God, fasting is meaningless, according to this scripture in Isaiah.  Don’t just fast for fasting’s sake.

We must always be aware that God’s eyes are on us. We must weigh our motivations in the light of God’s countenance and gaze.

When we go about our days do we practice religious rituals to try to appease the God known as Jehovah? Or do we commune with him and out of this relationship seek to do as He asks?

Sometimes He asks us to fast.

Fasting when God tells us to fast is a very powerful way to accelerate breakthrough all around us.  I have seen such fasting promote people into higher realms of the spirit, but it is not the fasting that accomplished this, in and of itself, because if that was the case then you would be accomplishing it by works.  And yet, faith without works is dead.

There is a part of the fast that can break the bonds and the chains of oppression.  When we fast, things can be loosed off of our lives and the lives of those around us.

Jesus said that some kind of demons only let go through prayer and fasting (Mark 9:29).

When we fast we are in warfare in the spirit in a way we couldn’t be otherwise.

I told the Lord a long time ago that if He wanted me to fast then He was going to have to make it clear because I did not want to practice fasting out of ritual.  I didn’t want to have a form of religion that lacked power.

And so when I fast usually I have heard a word from God which confirms that I am to fast.  When I hear this word I get excited because I know that the fast is going to produce something powerful because God has ordained it.

This passage in Isaiah creates excitement in my heart.

I look to this and declare that these things that are promised through fasting will come to pass in my life and the lives of those I love as well.  When I fast, I believe that it is going to accomplish a breakthrough that could not be accomplished any other way.

Recently I was preaching in Montreal.  The people were very hungry for the things of Holy Spirit.  They invited me to preach on the last day of a 21 day fast.  The atmosphere was charged and the miracles, signs and wonders followed the preaching of the word.

When we fast expecting the results of our fast to produce what Isaiah 58 declares, then many powerful things do happen.

Yes, when we fast according to Isaiah 58, healing occurs, the glory comes down and breakthrough occurs in our lives.

I pray today that you will see the power of a God-ordained fast and that your spirit will come to life as you meditate on this passage.

I pray that you will stop fasting out of a dead form and that you will come in line with the living God and His Word and when He declares a fast you will hear His voice.

May you see all of these great things come to pass in your lives and families.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” (Ephesians 4:1)

I just started reading Ephesians 4 and couldn’t get past this first verse.  Think about what Paul is saying here for a moment: “As a Prisoner for the Lord.”

How many of us actually live with the understanding that our lives are not our own?  How many of us have really left our fishing nets in order to take up a life sacrificed completely to our Lord?

We certainly have examples of people through history who live this way, but how many in our own time are willing to surrender all and become a Prisoner for Christ?

What does it mean to be a prisoner for Christ?

I am not certain that I know this completely, but I do believe that there is a measure of no longer living by my own desire and coming into agreement with the desire of the Lord for my life.

The only way I understand the desire of God for my life is to seek that answer in prayer.

Many hours of our lives should be spent in seeking the Lord’s desire.  Our passion in this life should be what he wants for us, and this is not just so that an all powerful God will be happy with us, but rather when we come into agreement with God we actually find rest for our souls.

Being a prisoner for Christ is really the safest place to be.  When I am a prisoner for Jesus, the enemy might try to hurt me, abuse me and accuse me, but his fiery darts have very little weight.  My Father’s arms are fast around me and I feel safe.

“Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” 

We can’t practice cheap grace in Christ.  Our faith is not for the appearance of men.  What we do in secret is not in secret at all, but is in plain view of God and all those that are discerning of spirit.

You cannot hide what you are in the inmost being from anyone.  It is there for all to see in plain view.  You are only lying to yourself if you think that your sin is hidden.

To be a prisoner for Christ means we must wrestle against the flesh.  What we inherit in Christ is by faith, but we must lay down the old in order to inherit the new.

And the wrestling is not difficult because grace has paved a way for us to be set free without much of a fight.  Our own desire, once dead is dead, and the desire of Christ begins to burn deep within our hearts for all the world to see.

I did not and do not know how to lay down my own life, but Christ inside of me knows all things.  Holy Spirit is able to make a smooth path for us to walk as long as we are obedient.

There are many stubborn hearts and many people who do not die easily.  But blessed is the soul that sees the way of God and walks obediently into it without a fight.

The quicker you learn to walk to God’s voice the more your life will radiate the glory of God inside of you.

And being a prisoner of Christ has rewards and honours both on this side of life and much more in the next (Mark 10:30).

Don’t be afraid to become his prisoner.  The journey is marvelous and the peace is great.

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:16)

In Christ it doesn’t matter where we come from or what is our background.  From high society to low society we are part of a family, and each one of us cannot live without the other.

I love getting together with people from all denominational backgrounds. I have friends all over the world and from many varied backgrounds.

What I have come to understand is that not too many of us think the same way, but when we are in Holy Spirit, grafted into the Vine, differences do not amount to much.

Each one of us is part of a bigger organism.  We are part of the body of Christ.

The hand can’t say to the head that “I don’t need you” because that would be foolish.  Your itchy face needs a finger to scratch it now and then J

I might minister in a very poor community today, be with a bunch of rich people tomorrow and with the middle class the day after.  What I have noticed about every person that I have met is that they are human and desire a touch of the supernatural.

Those that are drawn to my life often want to see the things that I have seen. They believe they can do that by reaching into and through my life.

If I can help them in any way at all, it is by suggesting to them that God wants to talk to them as much as He wants to talk to me.  I try to show them the normality of the exercise.

People in every walk of life have come to me: sports stars, government folks, scientists and people on welfare.  They have come to me to hear about how God operates in and through my life because they see that something is real about the way I interact with Him.

Very rarely do I hear people ask me about my theology when they come my way.  They usually ask me what it is like to experience a vision or a dream.

They want to know what seeing heaven or an angel or Jesus is like.  They want to know what experiencing a miracle or a healing is like, so I just tell them. Or better still, show them!

And it is not just that the body needs what I have to offer.  I need the body as well. God’s people bless me as much as I bless them.

I love going into a place where folks are starving for the Lord and want to ask me a thousand questions.  It is not just about me in that moment.  It is about us coming together for something greater than ourselves.

We each have a part to this great work.  The person who spends 100 hours working with a very distraught soul to set them free is just as important as the person who leads a thousand to the Lord.

We don’t know what people will accomplish with their lives.  We have to respect the work of each part of the body.

One denominational skin will not work to lead all mankind to Christ.  There have to be many perforations within this organism so that the oil of the spirit can pour into every part.

One kind of preaching does not suit every hungry heart.  People will want to see themselves in the person in front of them and not everybody can see themselves in me, or you.

And then the number of souls in the earth is so large that it is impossible for any one group to reach them all.  Together we will accomplish this task.

God will move in our lives in the body in such a way that the work that we are to do will get done, not one of us alone, but all of us together.

I pray that you too will see the marvelous organism that is the body of Christ.

“[The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” (Colossians 1:13)

This is what God did when we were saved.  Our salvation was instant and by grace.

We did not earn it and we cannot do anything more to earn it.  We were drawn out of the devil’s dominion and brought into the dominion of His son.

Our mind is renewed in its understanding of this day-by-day, but we will be no more be saved tomorrow because of more understanding than we are in this hour right now.

This might be hard to wrap our heads around because we live in a world where it would seem that we have to earn everything that we get.

But this is not the case in Christ.  When we died to our old natures we inherited a new life.

The King walks into our lives and begins to give us good gifts.  It might be hard for you to receive a gift but this is how He operates.

I love the Christmas song called “Good King Wenceslas.”  The first stanza says:

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight
Gath’ring winter fuel.

The song continues on with the King calling his servant near to gather meat, wine and wood. Then they both set out on a journey to help this poor neighbor in his plight at his home near the mountains.

To me this is a picture of the grace and heart of God, and those who posses that heart cannot help but be so generous themselves.

God by grace gave us every gift we need.  All we need to do is remain in the sound of His voice, under the shelter of the most high and all good things will be given to us that we need to live and to have well being.

If you think you will earn it by doing more for God, think again!  You will not.

Everything that I have been given I did not earn…and I have been given lots.

What He did for me He can’t help but do for you because that is His word.

He is the God who blesses all mankind in Christ.

Isn’t that awesome?

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22)

Recently I was asked whether I had a mentor when I was starting out in prophetic ministry.

I have always had a mentor. Even now I have many mentors, but what does that look like and what does that mean.

We in North America seem to have this idea that we need one particular person to mentor us, so we seek for many years to find that person. While I have these sort of mentors in my life – that I can call upon whenever I need – I don’t generally point to one or two persons as my mentor.

You see life is significantly complex enough that one person cannot mentor me in all my needs, save of course the person of the Holy Spirit, because he is the only person that knows me completely.  He can nurture me and mentor me to become the person that God wants me to be in Christ.

The scripture that always comes to my mind when I consider my philosophy of being mentored is Proverbs 15:22, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”

There is a fine line that you walk between listening to God through your own visions and dreams and listening to God through the godly advice of those with whom you are in a relationship of accountability.

I trust that I hear from God, but I don’t always trust that I understand what he wants me to do and to know, and so I extend myself to my mentors to help me make sense of what God is saying to me.

Therefore every place I find myself becomes a potential place to be mentored. What do I mean by this?

It means that when I enter into any environment – whether church, work or someone’s home – I know that there is wisdom there for me. If I am humble, then I can be taught by anyone or anything – not that I am always humble – just ask those who know me best.

There is also the lesson to be learned from Balaam’s donkey. Advice can come from any source, so in my life I try to listen to the Spirit of God from wherever he wishes to speak.

Sometimes this is through mighty prophets of God, sometimes my mom, sometimes the people I work with, go to church with, meet in the street. If you are wise you can even learn from the poorest of the poor living in the streets. We must not be proud because God can speak to us through whatever means he wishes. If I live with this as my compass, then I can hear from God wherever and whenever he chooses to speak.

Many of my mentors are now long dead. I think of Augustine, Aquinas, Anthony the Desert Father, Saint Francis of Assisi, Aimee Simple Macpherson and Smith Wigglesworth.

Many of my mentors are people who don’t even know that I am being mentored by them including: Bill Johnson, John Paul Jackson, James Goll, Bob Jones, Patricia King, and Todd Bentley.

Some are the people that I serve with in the Ottawa Valley. I consider every Pastor I work with to be one of my mentors, someone from whom I can glean understanding and wisdom. Many of these men and women have been in the ministry much longer than me and have gone through the same trials that I have gone through, and therefore wisdom says, “Listen to them.”

God is starting to bring me even more mentors: some that are well known and some that aren’t. It doesn’t matter where these folks are from. The point is God will use anyone to speak wisdom into my life if I am willing to listen.

So the short answer is I have many mentors, but my main mentor is the Holy Spirit who guides me in all things because he is the wonderful counselor that Jesus promised would come.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17).

Who are your mentors?