Building an “As You Go” Lifestyle

One of the things I learned early on in my journey into the charismatic and things involving the power of the Holy Spirit was that so much of it is meant to be done on a daily basis as we go throughout life. I remember hearing Bill Johnsons preach once and he was explaining how a visitor came to Bethel church and asked to go out with their “mall ministry.” Bill was confused and said something to the effect of “we don’t have a mall ministry. What are you talking about?” The guy referenced all the stories Bill would tell about people getting divinely healed at the mall. Bill’s response was something along the lines of “Yeah, we don’t have a mall ministry. We have parishioners who shop.” So much of life as a believer is, I think, meant to be ministry flowing naturally out of who we are in Him as we go through our daily life. We are meant to build an “as you go” lifestyle.

Matthew 10:7-8 says, “As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” The context of this was when Jesus sent out his twelve apostles to go minister, but I think there is a principle we can glean from this passage that goes beyond the specifics of what Jesus sent them to do. I believe that as followers of Jesus it is perfectly fine to be intentional and have times we set aside to “do ministry.” There is nothing wrong with that. However, I believe that Kingdom is meant to be a lifestyle, not a task we do. The way we minister to people and expand the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven will happen most effectively if every single believer simply lives an As You Go lifestyle.

You see, the vast majority of people who call ourselves “Christians” simply go to church on Sunday and try to “live a good life.” But “being good” is not remotely the same thing as “being dangerous to powers of darkness.” And I don’t think being good is something to attain to. Being dangerous, however, is very much something I aspire to be. And the most effective way to do that is to live an intentional life where every day is ministry as a natural outflow of who we are. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God already pre-planned things for us to do. Not because we have to do things to earn His love or favor or blessing, but because we *already have* His love, favor, and blessing the works are a natural outflow of who we are—or at least they should be. And if they’re not, then its perfectly fine to be intentional about building it into our lives much like we start building any other habit.

This means that if we see someone who is sick or injured and we are out in public (the same applies if we’re not in public) then its perfectly fine to approach them and ask if they want prayer for healing. The more we do it the better we will get at reading the situation, hearing from the Holy Spirit about what to do, etc., but its better to start *somewhere* than to do nothing and then wonder why God never shows up. In many ways its pretty simple. If I don’t pray for someone, they won’t get healed. If I do pray for someone it is significantly more likely they will get healed than the guarantee that they won’t if I don’t.

I want to push this idea one step further though. When I hear people talk about divine healing and an As You Go lifestyle I only ever hear them speak in terms of physical healing. Why can’t we do the same for emotions? I believe inner healing work should be a significant part of an As You Go lifestyle, but most people aren’t equipped to do that, and I think that’s sad. The basics of emotional healing are honestly pretty simple. We pray, we ask God to do something, He does it to a greater or lesser degree, and as needed we pray more/again to solve the problem. Yes, there are ways we can get really good at it, and yes there are all kinds of prayer tools and such out there that are beneficial, and yes, we can also work with a prayer minister one-on-one to really target deep issues. I think all of those things are valuable and important, but if I had one wish in this area it would be that the Body of Christ as a whole would get really good at dealing with emotional things with one another as they randomly come up in life.

When we get triggered by something emotionally, there are some specific reasons why praying for that matter right at that time make it far easier to access and get healed than it is by repressing the feelings and then trying to drag them back up later to deal with and heal. But because most people are not well-equipped to help someone pray through something right in that moment, most of the time we let those opportunities pass us by. I firmly believe that every person alive should do deep inner healing work because everyone has “stuff” they need to deal with. And yet a comparative few:

1) can afford it (as most people who do this do it full-time and thus need some form of income to be able to do what they do)

2) stick with it long enough to see deep transformative results

I think part of this is due to a lack of understanding about the need. If more people understood why this was needed they would get help themselves without waiting until the emotional pain got bad enough they couldn’t *not* do it, and also more people would learn how to help others heal their emotions and then we could do inner healing on-the-go like we can do with physical healing. For example, just the other day I was on the phone talking to a friend and something came up for him. I forget what the issue was, but we literally spent less than 5 minutes praying through the thing, and then went right back to whatever we were talking about before. We didn’t have to make a big deal about it, it didn’t require us to spend an hour digging into his past to uncover every single possible hidden thing that might have related to it in some way, and we were able to address the matter in prayer and keep going with normal life. Now, to be fair, that was made possible by two things—first, I’m pretty good at inner healing so I have some of the skill, experience, and applied spiritual power needed to walk through something like that quickly and easily, and second, both of us have a mindset where inner healing can be part of a lifestyle so I didn’t have to do any teaching, convince him that we could do it in a few minutes, or any of the other things I find I usually have to do in order to quickly help someone with something. But my heart’s desire is that we as the Body of Christ collectively would become not only good at this, but so accustomed to this being part of the As You Go that most of the time people don’t have to set aside an hour or two of time for special inner healing sessions because they just get healed as a result of living life in community with others. It’s a very doable goal, but it requires people to first recognize the need in their own life and in the lives of those around them, and then it requires a community of people to make a change.

Now whether you currently live in a community of people where this is already happening or not, I want to leave you with some tools to start moving forward on your own inner healing journey. I am going to share links to a bunch books to educate yourself (the first one is a simple prayer template I use all the time and I highly recommend it because it’s fast to pray through and easy to learn) to a lesser or greater degree about inner healing and deliverance, to flower essences you can use to help speed along the process of emotional healing, and links to prayer ministers I recommend if you want to do a deeper dive on your own emotional healing and personal transformation journey.

Books:

Flower Essences:

Prayer Ministers

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