John G. Lake Ministries (JGLM) in Singapore

An Australian John G Lake Ministries (JGLM) team is finally coming to Singapore from October 17th to October 27th.  Enzo De Vincentis, the Director of JGLM Australia and Steve Mann, the JGLM Life Teams Australian director will be coming to town to hold some meetings.

If your church/ministry is interested to invite Enzo and his team, you can email me at jonathan@stillhaventfound.org. There may be a day/night or two left. Here is the schedule for his team and below that is a bit more about JGLM and how the ministry has impacted my life.

Meeting Schedules

19th to 21st October (Friday to Sunday) – Divine Healing Technician (DHT) Seminar
Friday
Session 1: 7.30pm – 9.30pm
Saturday
Session 2: 9:00am – 12:30pm
Session 3: 2:30pm – 6:00pm
Session 4 (and Healing Service): 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Sunday
Sunday Service (and Healing Service): 10:30am – 1pm

Venue
Victory Harvest Church
37 Jalan Pemimpin,
Clarus Centre,
Block A , # 06-2A,
Singapore 577177
(Walking distance from Marymount MRT station)

25th October (Thursday), 8pm – Christian Gospel Mission at Choa Chu Kang
27th October (Saturday), 10am to 2pm – Victory Harvest Church (see address above)

The full DHT sessions will take place from 19th to 21st October. So come if you want the full impact of a healing seminar with healing meetings. The last meeting on the 26th October would be a smaller and cozier meeting with the Australian JGLM team. It will probably be a more informal session that will include a lot of sharing and interaction.

On JGLM

JGLM (main American website) and its General Overseer Curry Blake are not that well-known in the world yet. I’ll try not to write too much in this post because I’ve written quite a number of posts in the past 2 years on JGLM and Curry Blake’s teachings. Suffice to say that what this ministry teaches has transformed my life. I’ve been blessed by listening to a lot of great teachers like Joseph Prince, Bill Johnson and Andrew Wommack. They have definitely contributed hugely to who I am today and what I believe and do. But listening to Curry and his radical teachings two years ago brought my understanding of God and Scriptures and especially my identity and who I am in Christ to a whole different level. It challenged a lot of what I had been taught and a lot of what is being taught out there that subtly prevented me from understanding the fullness of who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me.

Probably the greatest thing that can be said of someone’s ministry is that it has impacted many young people around the world to move out into the streets and do street healing. This is because what Curry teaches about who you are in Christ and what is needed to see healing destroys a lot of the limitations (e.g. the limitation of the need for the “anointing” as you’re already anointed and He abides in you, or of the need for an “atmosphere” because healing is dependent on the Word not the atmosphere, or of the need for the “presence” of God because God lives in you and His presence is always in and with you, or of the need for a “Word of Knowledge” because you go by the eternal Word of God, or of the need to dig out the past to see what is preventing healing because the Word of God never teaches this, etc.) that the typical charismatic teachings have placed upon believers.

I love the idealism and radicalness in what Curry teaches. When you hear him, you think everything is possible in Christ. No “buts”, no “ifs”. He calls it as he sees it and he teaches it as the Bible says it. What the ministry teaches is definitely one of the most biblical messages I’ve heard. It’s simple and straightforward. There are a lot of “traditions” and made-made theories in the charismatic churches that actually don’t stand up to what the Bible teaches. Just take one example. I was taught and the majority in the charismatic church still teach that when ministering healing to someone and you don’t see someone healed, you may need to dig up the past and find out what is preventing this healing and get the person to deal with it. I don’t want to get too much into this issue, but no where in the Bible does it say we have to do it. Nor did Jesus nor anybody in the Bible who healed do this! That fact alone should make us question this practice. Yet, it’s very accepted in the charismatic circles. And this has a lot of practical effects on our faith.

If you (either as someone praying for the sick or as someone believing for one’s own healing) believe that something in the past could be preventing this healing, how can you have faith for immediate healing based on the Word of God? It’s very simple – you can’t. You get what you believe for. If you believe something is hindering a healing, you’ll go and address that first and dig those hindrances out before believing that the person can be healed. And thus in a very important sense, you can’t have faith for immediate healing there and then when you pray/command.

One of Curry’s famous quotes is, “The only hindrance to healing is that you believe there are hindrances to healing”. That’s revolutionary simply because many people do believe there hindrances to healing – unforgiveness, sin, etc. Yet what Curry is saying is that the only hindrance is the fact you believe there are. Actually, there are none. The Word says you’ve been healed by His stripes. And the Word talks about faith. In a sense, if there’s any hindrance to healing, it’s that you don’t believe that you’ve already been healed by Christ’s stripes.

If you believe something in the past is preventing this healing, your eyes is diverted away from what Christ did for healing and diverted away way from the power we have in Christ to perform healing as you start to dig up the past and focus on the person and his/her past. (Now, I do believe that digging out the past can probably help deal with the sick person’s faith so that barriers to faith can be gotten rid of so that the sick person can receive healing for him/herself based on his/her own faith – but why would we want to do that when firstly that’s not the model in the Bible and secondly an easier way is to keep our eyes focused on Christ and who we are in Christ and what we have in Christ and let revelation and faith arise to see the sick person healed?) As far as I know, in the Bible, there’s really only one main instrumental factor to seeing a person healed. With this ingredient, anyone can get healed. That’s faith, as the Bible says so many times. And it could be the faith of the person receiving healing or faith of the person praying for healing. Curry’s heart is to train disciples to heal the sick. The burden should be upon US to heal the sick (the disciples were rebuked when they couldn’t get the sick healed – the focus was not placed on the sick to have faith for their own healing), and not expect the sick to have their own faith. This is where Curry differs slightly from the traditional Word of Faith movement.

OK, I know I’ve dealt with quite a lot of issues in the above few paragraphs and there’s lots more than can be said about these issues which I won’t deal with here. The main thing that I’ve learned from Curry is that it’s about the revelation of what Christ has done and who we are in Him and what we have in Him (incomparably great power for us who believe – Eph. 1:19). This revelation builds faith, which is the only factor in any healing in the Bible – in fact, the only factor in receiving anything from God. It’s not about getting some special anointing or gift or about working up an atmosphere or digging up the past. It’s just about knowing who we are in Christ. That’s really the message of JGLM. And that’s the message that has transformed my life and many others.

Pastor Joseph Prince is awesome in unveiling the goodness and grace of the Father such that it makes you believe that God really wants to bless you and it opens your heart up to receiving from God (i.e. having faith). The unveiling of God’s love, grace and goodness can’t help but produce faith in the heart of believers. In a similar way, Curry Blake’s main message is that God has made you a new man (Kenyon would say a “superman”, which is so true!) and this new man has authority in Christ, is seated above every principalities and power and has incomparably great power for us who believe. What this message produces is faith in the Christian’s life to believer that they indeed can do greater works and can heal the sick. As we hear of who we really are in Christ and catch that revelation, we grow in faith to heal the sick.

Having said the above and being fully appreciative of how Curry’s teachings have changed my life, I also want to say that it’s not about one man. I don’t agree 100% with Curry on everything he says, just as I wouldn’t agree 100% with any man. I’m not a blind follower but you don’t have to agree with everything a man teaches to support him and his teachings. There are times where I would cringe at some stuff he says in relation to grace – at least in his past messages. But regarding his main message on the New Creation and Divine Healing, I think he’s spot on. Regarding the New Creation (who we are in Christ, etc.) message, I’ve been reading EW Kenyon and loving his writings a lot. Awesome stuff! Kenyon speaks in absoluteness the same way Curry does. Curry’s not particularly unique in this area. What he teaches is similar to EW Kenyon. I think he’s slightly more unique in his healing message – which is really the absolute and radical application of the New Creation message to healing. There were a lot of good healing ministers in the 19th and 20th Century and I haven’t read a whole lot of them so I can’t comment on how similar or different Curry is from them. But my impression is that Curry’s divine healing message, while similar to many of the rest, also has its own slants. One thing he focuses on greatly is ministering healing. He’s not as concerned as much for people receiving healing as he is in training people to minister healing (because he’s only one person – it’s better to train people so they can have a greater impact on the world). I think many healing ministries work on building the faith of the sick to receive their own healing or building the faith of the sick in the healer so the sick can come to the healer to receive their healing. But Curry’s focus is on training believers and teaching believers the revelation that they have everything and all power and authority in Christ so that these “divine healing technicians” will go out and heal the sick based on their own faith and revelation that they have incomparably great resurrection power in them to get rid of sickness – not depending on the faith of the sick.

If you’d like to hear some of Curry’s teachings, you can listen for free to his Divine Healing Technician (DHT) Seminar. The other set of teaching is his New Man Seminar. Both are maybe 17-20 hours each in total. I’ve listened to both a number of times and so have many of my friends. The DHT is his main teaching on healing that he’s been teaching for years. The New Man teaching is the new one which is also extremely powerful. He would say that the DHT flows out of the New Man. The New Man seminar is about the New Creation and who we are in Christ. That’s the foundation to the Christian life in the New Covenant. That is the foundation for healing. Know who you are in Christ then go and heal the sick. Listen to these teachings and I promise you your life will be transformed! It’s really like nothing you’ve heard in the typical charismatic church!

Also, if you’d like to read a bit more about my thoughts on Curry’s teachings, you can go to check out the many posts in my blog’s Curry Blake category. Some particular posts:

– Curry Blake’s Divine Healing Technician (DHT) training course
– Healing and Idealism
– Two ways to minister
– Why you should eat your Curry (Blake) before paying the Bill (Johnson)
– Bruce Latshaw on Vineyard’s vs. John G. Lake’s Healing model