Stories of the Prophetic Gift

Narrator: Welcome to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, the place where you can get real answers to tough questions. Jesus promised you abundant life but poor choices and dark forces stand in your way. It is time to learn how to overcome the obstacles that keep you out of your promised land. Knowledge of God will pave the path for you to walk in his blessing.

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Dr. Ray: Hello and uh, welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. Very excited to be with you today, we've got a great show planned. I got a great interview, somebody I want to introduce you to. Again, this show is sponsored by the International College of Ministry the Holy Spirit-filled seminary. We're enrolling right now at icmcollege.org, icmcollege.org. If you want an accredited Holy Spirit-filled degree to get ready for ministry, go to icmcollege.org, yay! So a special guest today is a very, very, very good friend of mine who deserted me and left Orlando and moved up to North Carolina, I can't believe it. Broke my heart. Still my best buddy. His name is Pastor Dr. Joe Warner. Joe Warner is an amazing guy, absolute uh, not only amazing friend but uh, pastor. He's the founder of Freedom Fellowship Church in Orlando, Florida; I believe what, almost 30 years at Freedom Fellowship Church. He literally almost built the church by hand, Freedom Fellowship Church, incredible apostolic, prophetic church in Orlando. But a few years ago, he moved up to North Carolina. No,w he's working with his own ministry Prophetic Voice Churches and Ministries. Dr. Warner my buddy. Joe has been in over 35 nations, he's ministered in churches all over the world, all over the United States as a true apostle, prophet, is an incredible voice for the Lord. He's corny, he's cornier than I am which is hard to believe. He's a great guy. Anyway um, welcome, Joe, glad you're here.

Pastor Joe: Thanks Ray, it's good to be with you.

Dr. Ray: So what my idea today was, Joe uh, over the years you know you and I have traveled a lot together and been very blessed to get into some amazing situations, um, you know, in Sumatra and Bali and Spain. And how we get into these situations, I have no idea but in all our travels around America, there's just some incredible stories about the glory of God and how God uses the prophetic gift. And I love these stories because they, they build our faith, they build our confidence, they encourage us and so today I thought, you know, what, let's just tell stories of God's glory and how God has used the prophetic to touch lives. So you know, if you have a story in mind or just something that's on your heart, why don't you just go ahead and share, Joe?

Pastor Joe: Well obviously these aren't things that we can do in our own strengths. Scripture says we can do all things through Christ and so many, many, many years ago, I got baptized the Holy Spirit standing in the back of my Southern Baptist church and got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention because I began to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so I found all the manifestation gifts of the Holy Spirit, I made a list of them, and I decided um, that they were my tools. And so, I'm involved in helping people and so people matter to God, and people come from the craziest backgrounds and have crazy things happen to them and so without the gifts of the Holy Spirit, without the tools, it's impossible to really help people. People can go through years and years of counseling and suffering um, but one word of knowledge can solve the mystery of what happened to them, why they struggle with the things they struggle with. And so I really began to seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit because I needed the tools, because my heart's desire really was to help people. And so I grew up working on cars and racing cars so I had a master set of tools. So the concept of these tools um, really uh, stuck home with me and so I made a list, I began working and I spent years and years and years. The scripture says to earnestly desire spiritual gifts and so I felt like I had a command from the Lord. It's His command that I earnestly desire spiritual gifts. The scripture says not to quench the Holy Spirit, the scripture says don't forbid it to speak in tongues and so I really went after all the different gifts um, not so I could look good in the eyes of men but so that I could use them as my tools to unlock mysteries in people's lives. 

And so I've had all kinds of crazy things happen. I went through a season of really praying for words of knowledge because I realized what a special gift it was, and so I had been praying for many years for words of knowledge, to begin operating my life. And one time I was ministering in San Antonio, Texas. I'm sitting on the front row, I'm a guest speaker, and um, the Holy Spirit spoke to me as I'm sitting there He said I'm going to give you words of knowledge today. So I always have a yellow tablet where I can jot down things that the Holy Spirit says to me and so I got out my yellow tablet and I said that's great, Holy Spirit, tell me what are they. And He spoke to me he said um, I'm gonna tell you when you stand up to speak and you're not allowed to speak until I give you a word of knowledge. So I get introduced as the guest speaker, there's 300 people there, and I stand up, thank the pastor for the invitation, and then I said uh, nothing. And a minute goes by, five minutes go by, I'm dying, the pastor's staring at me, the whole church is staring at me but you know what, I think the Lord was testing my heart to see if I really was hungry to begin to operate in this gift and so minute number nine, the holy Spirit said this to me, He said there's a man on the back row. He had a blue blazer, he works construction. A big piece of lumber fell off of some scaffolding, hit him on the shoulder and that his arm was disabled he wasn't able to work. It was his first time in church, he didn't know how he's going to take care of his wife and he had a lot of fear and that his wife was with him and that she was barren. So all of that came to me in just a moment. When the Holy Spirit speaks, He can give you a download that could take 20 minutes to explain but He can give it to you in like just mere seconds. And so I don't see that well so I'm trying to look in the back row to see if I see a guy in a blue blazer. But if I just spoke it, that's all I did was speak that, and he stood up in the back of the room and I asked him, he and his wife to come forward. And they came forward and he took off his jacket and he confirmed that he worked for construction and that a 4x4 had fallen off some scaffolding in his shoulder so we prayed for him and God healed his shoulder on the spot. Ae and his wife both got saved and then the Lord really spoke to me and told me that they were going to have a daughter and that her name would be Abigail and so we pray over his wife that the barrenness will be gone and that's how it all started. I went back there two years later, and I travel all the time, many, many different places and people often say to me, do you remember me? The answer is no and anyway, this lady walks up to me and she says, told me the story of what I just shared with you and introduced me to Abigail. And so both of them got saved they're vital part of the local church, all because of a spiritual gift.

And so I don't even know how people live their lives without functioning by using the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They were given to us for this purpose and so, since then I, I couldn't count the amount of words of knowledge that I've had. Most of that happens when I'm doing personal ministry or counseling. I had a lady who had so much fear of abandonment that she um, it reached the point she couldn't let her lo- her husband leave to go to work because she is so afraid. And so we're really praying for her, we're trying to solve the mystery where does his fear come from, and Lord spoke to me and told me that her great-grandmother had been stranded on her island when she was a little girl and I thought that sounded crazy to me but I asked her to go talk to her mom, talk to her and find out if it was true; and it was true. And the women of that family had struggled with fear of abandonment generationally, that curse being passed down, that incredible fear. The grandmother was rescued. So we broke that fear off of that lady, she never struggled with it again. So that's an example of how when you're counseling people without the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you're very, very, very limited in what you can get done.

Dr. Ray: You know one thing that you, you've spoken of many times, a lot of people don't speak up, is that the Holy Spirit gives you boldness. So here you are in San Antonio and if you guys are listening to me, you've ever spoken at a church, you know when you get up to speak at a church the first thing you do is you speak. So you've got this- the Lord has said I want you to get up and not say a word for- was it nine minutes? And I'm going, I'm thinking the whole time that, that took nerve. I mean, that took a boldness that you could not have had on your own. So that's one thing that I've seen in you over the years is incredible boldness that you just can't do on your own strength.

Pastor Joe: Yeah, it gets tested. I think the Lord enjoys it when we step out. He says without faith we can't please God so when He speaks to us, faith, obedience is the correct response and it's not a issue of you debating whether or not you're comfortable doing something, the issue is simple obedience. When you know that the voice of the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, you do it. So one time I was out with my family, we had this little station wagon, had all my kids, it was Christmas Eve, we're out looking at Christmas tree lights, we're driving around all these neighborhoods and we drove past a kingdom hall where the Jehovah's Witnesses are and they don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he's one of many sons of God, and the Lord spoke to me and said use your car, block the entrance and go up there and declare the deity of Christ.

Dr. Ray: So you blocked the driveway?

Pastor Joe: I blocked the driveway. My wife, my wife is like, I'm glad He spoke to you. They just got out of their service or whatever you call it at the kingdom hall…

Dr. Ray: Right.

Pastor Joe: There's about a hundred people standing outside and I'm, I, I'm not nervous, I don't even know what I'm going to do, all I knew is that I was supposed to go up there. So they look up when our station wagon blocks the entrance and I go walking up and uh, the head guy standing there in a three-piece suit, and I go up to him, he starts to say something and I said in the name of the Lord, be quiet. And about 15 scriptures about the deity of Christ that I had never memorized, I'm familiar with them but I never really actually memorized most of them, are coming out of me and I'm poking him in the chest and saying Jesus is, boom, scripture. Jesus is, boom, scripture. And that went on and I was saying it very loudly and I- he couldn't speak, the Lord would not allow him to speak. Then I turn around, look at the congregation who are all standing outside and I said that you have just heard the truth of the word of God. If you continue to walk the path of the Jehovah's Witnesses, you will be separated from God for eternity and I preached the gospel to them. The boldness lifted off of me, I ran for my station wagon, already asked my wife to be in the driver's seat and we took off.

Dr. Ray: [Laughter]. You know, you and I have talked about this a lot because that's an incredible story. I mean, how much boldness would it take to go up and get in the face of a Jehovah's Witness preacher? I mean, I've had to deal with, I mean, block their driveway? Again, a lot of people don't realize the Holy Spirit will give you a supernatural boldness you wouldn’t have, you know, have on your own, um. 

Pastor Joe: And at the moment, it's really not scary if you've already decided beforehand I'm going to obey and do whatever it is the Lord tells me to do.

Dr. Ray: Yeah.

Pastor Joe: He gives you the grace, He gives you the strength to do it.

Dr. Ray: Right.

Pastor Joe: So there's nothing really special about me, um, I just decided to obey.

Dr. Ray: Yeah. 

Pastor Joe: And it gets to be fun. I really don't like boring normal Christian…

Dr. Ray: Yeah.

Pastor Joe: …life. I was with Ray one time and we were in um, Pine Hills, Florida and it was a really dark…

Dr. Ray: I remember that, I remember this story.

Pastor Joe: …and um. So Ray and I are walking up to a church and it’s in a really bad neighborhood and it was a, a black church and the pastor was a good friend. As we're walking toward the church, this huge guy is guarding the doorway. They had a guard posted because the neighborhood was so dangerous. And without ever thinking, the Lord told me um, that he was Fat Albert, and I just went hey, hey, hey, and he goes I'm Fat Albert and Ray's about to die and then he looks at me, he goes how did you know that? He said that's my favorite cartoon character, I got a picture of him on the wall of my room. And so sometimes the Lord uses the funny quirks of our personality without us even knowing it. But I thought Ray was going to pass out my way.

Dr. Ray: Yeah, that was me. I was about, I'm looking for a door, looking for a way to escape and I'm thinking, you just did not call this huge African-American dude about six foot five, three hundred pounds, Fat Albert. I'm thinking we're dead, we are absolutely dead. And the guy loved it. He absolutely loved it. He grinned from ear to ear.

Pastor Joe: [Laughter] One of my favorite stories with Ray is we were in Spain and they decided to do a prophetic service in a Muslim neighborhood.

Dr. Ray: Yeah.

Pastor Joe: And Ray, I don't know what to think. We're there as guest ministers and we're, we're freaked out a little bit and so we go there that first evening and uh, there's probably, Ray, what would you guess? 125 people there?

Dr. Ray: Yeah, that was a packed house, yeah.

Pastor Joe: There are ladies with the black burqas on and all that stuff, and it wasn't exactly a friendly atmosphere to say the least. And so we get started and Ray’s standing in the center of the auditorium and I'm next to him and this guy comes walking down the aisle and he did look like a terrorist and I thought well, here we go. Um, it wouldn't surprise me if he shot us, I mean, he looked so full of rage. And as he's coming down the aisle, Ray looks at him and gets a word of knowledge about him being molested when he was a boy that was so accurate that as he got to us, he fell on his knees and began to weep and he got saved. And at the end of the whole thing, he threw his arms up in the air and shouted Jehovah is God. And so I will never forget that; but I thought that we were dead men at the time.

Dr. Ray: Yeah, I do. It's, it's almost funny. You and I have laughed a lot with the prophetic. You know, it's a very serious gift but, it-  we get into hilarious situations. But sometimes I think that's just God's mercy, giving us a break, you know? And um… I remember one time

Pastor Joe: When I…Go ahead.

Dr. Ray: I remember one of the funniest stories was, I was in this church down in Mississippi, a small town, a huge church, 3,000 people in the service, and I got this word of knowledge and the service is on television and I'm traveling with a friend of mine named Bob and they always put you up on stage. I'm up on stage, Bob is sitting off to my right, I got a word of knowledge that there's somebody here that's being healed, that’s deaf in their right ear, and the Lord is touching them right now, God is healing them right now. Who is that? Raise your hand, raise your hand. Who is that? You can hear crickets chirping. Nobody. Three times: who is that? Raise your hand. Who is person? I know God's healing your right ear, raise your hand. Nobody. Nobody raises their hand and I'm going, I'm thinking to myself oh well, I'm on television. Oh well, okay, dokey, all right, moving on, moving on. You know, three shades of red, preached the sermon. We finally, we left, we're driving home with our friend Bob and all of a sudden, Bob goes hey Ray, I just want to tell you something. You didn't realize this, but you know, I used, I couldn't hear out of my right ear and as soon as you said that, I began to hear out of my right ear. And I said Bob! So I stopped the car and began to beat him up [laughs]. I wanted to slap him. Why didn't you say anything? He goes, oh man, I don't know. I was just so happy I just couldn't say a word. 

Pastor Joe: I'll tell you one of my, one of my favorite things to do is I love ministering in Israel. And we're ministering in Ashdod and it was an evening, Saturday evening, and a special revival service going on. I don't remember if you were there or not. And um, I preached and we're praying for people and we're praying for people in a healing line and we're praying for people to get baptized in the Holy Spirit, we're praying for people to get physically healed, we're just really praying over people and this very, very, very old man came forward. And when I looked at him the Lord told me that he had congestive heart failure and that, to pray for his heart. And so he doesn't speak English so all I did was put my hand on his heart he begins to yell. And uh, that he's, that he's on fire. He felt the heat in his chest and God healed his heart. And so, as he's standing there praying for me he has his hands out like this and I look at his wrist and there was the stamp from Auschwitz with his number on it. And so when the service was done, it was almost midnight, I went and talked to this old man with an interpreter and I found out that most of his family had died in Auschwitz, his wife, his children. He was in his late 80s, in his 90s, and he'd gone to uh, synagogue that morning like he did every Saturday. And he decided that God was alive, He wasn't in the synagogue. And so he decided that night to go to something other than synagogue. For the first time in his life, he walked into what he called a missionary church and- which is where we were. And so that night, he had told the Lord if You don't demonstrate to me that you are real, I'm going to take my life tonight because I can't stand any more suffering. And so he came to that service tonight, life and death in the balance, God completely healed his heart. He was outside running up, down steps, laughing, and I got to sit down with him and lead him to the Lord. And so a word of knowledge, a gift of healing um, seeing somebody from Auschwitz at the end of their days uh, coming into the Kingdom, forgiving the people who killed his family and getting genuinely saved and healed all in the same evening. I would say in all of my days that was probably one of my best memories of something happening in other nations. It was so glorious that night, I mean, this man would not stop praising God. So I uh, we literally began to see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in this room. Uh, I pray for that- I've been having dreams and visions about things that God's doing in Israel and so um, I always look for opportunities to go back but I'm not going back to be a tourist. Ray will tell you I'm not a good tourist. I go because I'm called to go there and minister and uh, to see an outpouring like in Acts 2. And Israel, where it all started, is really the desire of my heart and we're beginning to see it.

Dr. Ray: You know it's, to me I, just think as you were talking. You know, when you, when you move into prophetic with words or other spiritual gifts, words of, you know, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, it- to me, I watch lives changed right in front of my eyes but it also changes my life and it builds me up. I know sometimes you and I will talk after- I remember we were doing a service this year up in Chicago and with what, 200 people in a line for us to pray for them, one at a time- well you had about 200 people in your line, I had 200 people in a prayer line for me- and somehow, some way how through the miracle of God, we were able to give a prophetic word to every single one of these people. And I know after it's over we just look at each other and go I, I can't believe that just happened, I mean, I'm still… 

Pastor Joe: I, I remember that night the pastor said in three evenings we prophesied over 1,200 people. Um, one of the ladies in my line, she looked at me and she said you remember me? And I said I'm sorry, I don't. And I, I pray for her. The Lord told me she was like the cartoon character Gumby and that she had been stretched and stretched and stretched. So when I said that to her, she began to cry. She said that's the third time in three years you've given me the same word and she said the amazing thing is today at work, my boss came to my office and gave me a gift and I opened a gift and it was a Gumby with a note that said thank you for your willingness to be stretched at work. 

Dr. Ray: Wow, wow. You know, and Joe, these things just, they build people's faith in the reality of God that God is real and God still cares about them and God's touching them and God's involved in their life and it builds their faith that it- I mean, like the bible says a prophetic gift was, edifies, exhorts and comforts us. We've seen that over and over and over and it's all, it's all to build people's faith in Christ. I mean, it's not, we don't seek the gift for the gift itself. You know, you and I, we flow in this gift to bless other people so other people can see and experience and have faith in the reality of God. Um, and it changes, it changes lives, I mean…

Pastor Joe: It really is a gift. All we did was obey- the scripture and says if you earnestly desire this and you pursue these things and God would be gracious to us and give us these gifts. And so I uh, at one time I was praying for a gift of healing because there's so many sick people that you encounter, especially in other nations and they don't have hospitals, they don't have doctors, and so I really, I was in a season of focusing on that gift so if somebody said to me that they were sick, my automatic response was to pray for them. And so I was in uh, I was in New Jersey at a church and I was there not speaking, my friend was speaking, and when he got done, he said uh, I believe God wants to use Pastor Joe to heal people tonight and I'm thinking, he does? And so I, I'm a little freaked out and so I go forward and I stand there and this lady comes up to me and her mouth is full of boils and this has been going on for six weeks and she's taking all this medicine, she can't speak, she can't swallow, I mean, it was horrible, I mean, it was horrible and all I did, I felt nothing. All I did was lay my hands on her and say the name of the Lord Jesus be healed. That's all the faith I had. I didn't pray some great prayer of faith, I just, I just prayed in the name of the Lord and went to the next person. 10 minutes later, I hear a shout. She's on the front row, sitting there and all the boils, every single boil left and she was able to eat and drink. And so God literally did a miracle. And so exercising the gifts- we were at a church and there was a man in a wheelchair and he had been in a horrible traffic accident and he was a pastor and he was from Central America and he'd been in the wheelchair for 18 years and he was um, couldn't move from the waist down; he was paralyzed. And I'm praying for many, many people that night and the Lord, when I passed the man, the Lord said pray for his feet. And so I just sat down and began to pray for his feet. I'm just praying in tongues and praying in the Holy Spirit, praying for his feet and then the Lord said to have others and so I had all my team, we'd all take turns praying for his feet; and this went on three or four hours that night. In the course of the evening, the Lord would say now pray for his knees and so we would do that. So we kept praying for him, praying for him. Somewhere around 12:30 at night, that man stood up with a shout, got out of the wheelchair, and began to walk the, began to walk the uh, auditorium. It was a very uh, progressive kind of thing, I would love it if the first time I prayed for him he jumped out of the wheelchair, but I don't get to dictate how it happens.

Dr. Ray: Yeah.

Pastor Joe: I just had to be obedient, pray for his feet. And so that's where it started and it wasn't just me praying for him, I had probably six or eight people praying for him but literally got to see him completely restored and healed. The funniest story of my life, which, I was in my Baptist church, I'm in the office, I just got baptized with Holy Spirit, I don't know what to do, I, I know that we lost several hundred people from our church that time because we really experienced a tremendous move of God. And I love my Baptist background and I love those people that uh, some of them were pretty freaked out that people were speaking in tongues because they've been taught that tongues are the devil and they shouldn't allow those things, that the gifts have ceased and all of that. So anyway, it's the week after I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, I'm in the office and the phone rings and there's a man on the phone. He said my name is Earl and I'm in a wheelchair and I'm about to go to the hospital and have back surgery and they don't think it's going to be successful. They told me I'll probably never walk again. He said, but the Lord told me that if I'll come to your office that you'll pray for me and anoint me with oil and I'm going to be healed and I'll be there in 10 minutes. And he hangs up and I'm like, I'm like, I don't know, is this a prank, is this a jo- what is this? And so 10 minutes later, this van pulls up with his wife, they get him out, he’s in the wheelchair, and rolls in the office and I'm like, you know, I know the scripture says to anoint people with oil but I've never anointed anybody with oil. And I grew up as a mechanic so I'm like, what kind of oil do you use? Well, I didn't have any oil so I went out in the little shed there and I got a quart of 10w30 Pennzoil

Dr. Ray: [Laughs]

Pastor Joe: and uh…

Dr. Ray: 10w30.

Pastor Joe: 10w30 Pennzoil. That's what I had. And I walked to the office and I'm thinking what am I going to do? What am I going to do? So I've never anointed anybody with oil so I'm like well, I wonder how much oil you use? I'm like, I gave the guy whatever's left in the quart, just poured it over his head and then I prayed the great prayer of faith. Lord, help.

Dr. Ray: Yeah, right.

Pastor Joe Warner: I was, I was scared to death and I'm telling you, I just, I just cried out to God and this man begins to scream. He's screaming my bones are on fire! His back was on fire. And God completely healed that man. He got up out of that wheelchair, he… did… he was so excited, I mean, he's completely healed, left the wheelchair, looked at me and said well, thank you for that, and walked out. I'm left with a giant puddle of oil on the carpet and an empty wheelchair. And so, I have contemplated that for 40 years of ministry. And the Lord deliberately sent somebody to me to show me that my future had to do with operating in the supernatural realm because the supernatural realm should be natural for believers because we're supernatural people, we have the Holy Spirit. I was sitting in a restaurant, minding my own business reading while I ate lunch and I looked across the restaurant. There's a lady over there by herself, the Lord just spoke to me a word of knowledge and He said she has a dollar and 86 cents in her purse, that's all she has. Her husband's been beating her, she's got three children, she doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know where to go, and she's just sitting over there. I thought oh Lord, can I do this after lunch? The Lord said get up. So I got up and I walked to the other side of the restaurant, stood in front of her, and I told her, I said I know you don't know me, but I believe God has a message for you. Can I share it with you? And she said yes. So I sit down and I said well first of all, the Lord says you have a dollar and 86 cents in your purse. So she pulls out her wallet she has a one dollar bill and she counts out her change, it’s 86 cents, and she looks at me, she goes yeah, that's exactly right. I said the Lord told me that your husband's being physically violent. She begins to weep and we go through this whole process and she came to know the Lord and she got saved and got a hold of her husband, he got saved, took him through anger management, they became one of the best families in our church simply because I got up and walked over to the other side of the restaurant and was obedient to what the Lord said.

Dr. Ray: It's interesting how that all ties together. I mean, it's prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, and the Lord will show you something and there's a reason for it. I know many times when I minister, God shows me things in a person's past that kind of gets their attention and then He'll show me things in their present to give them hope for their future. Um, and it all, it all ties together. But to me, Jesus gets glory for this, faith is built, lives are changed, and the bible says, you mentioned the very beginning, First Corinthians 14:1. Pursue love, earnestly desire spiritual gifts; and it's a commandment for all of us and Christianity, it makes Christianity fun and exciting and enjoyable. And before we go, you've got a story that my listeners have just got to hear because this may be my favorite story. It's the story of the flight back from Dallas. A young lady, now before you go, about the young lady that happened to be very beautiful who sat down next to you, on the plane, on the flight back from Dallas; you got to tell that story.

Pastor Joe: Well, I was flying home, I’d been overseas, I’d been in um, uh, Peru I think, and um, I'm flying home and I'm on the plane and this lady sat down next to me and when she's walking down the aisle and I looked at her the Lord told me that she had uh, we were in Dallas, was flying to Dallas. The Lord told me she just tried out uh, for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, that she didn't make the squad and that she was suicidal and so she sat down next to me and she's beyond beautiful and I'm sure every man that meets her hits on her. And I just said you know uh, may I tell you something? I feel like that God said I think He has a message for you and she said yes and so I said this is what the Lord said to me. And she looked at me and she said I spent my whole life preparing myself to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. She said I didn't make the squad, and she said there's nothing left, there's no reason to go on. I looked at her and said and you're contemplating suicide and she said yes. And so I forgot where I was at on an airplane and I uh, share the gospel with her, that her worth and her value doesn't come from her appearance doesn’t come from being a cheerleader and all of that and uh, she came to the kingdom of God and I'm really praying over her and praying against suicide. She experienced deliverance on the airplane I forgot praying in the spirit, praying in tongues on the plane, people all around us are um, don't know what to think but I, I didn't care at the moment. This girl really got set free and she really got set free and it was just a glorious thing. 

Dr. Ray: That's uh, that's amazing. So, the rest of the story I think goes, so you're at baggage claim and your wife comes to meet you.

Pastor Joe: Yeah and before my wife can step and hug me this beautiful woman steps between us grabs me and kisses me on each cheek and hugs me really good and walks away and I look at my wife and go I still got it. And that was a great moment, great moment, it's one of the better moments of my life. 

Dr. Ray: But, but again, God gets the glory. I think again, the supernatural, it builds our faith. I tell my students all the time and say you, you've got to prophesy words of knowledge, words of wisdom, these gifts, I mean, they build faith, they build our hope, they, they're you know, they let us know that God is real and God cares about us and um…

Pastor Joe: Yeah. 

Dr. Ray: And it's, you know, I don't seek the gifts for the sake of the gifts, I seek the gift because it's for the common good, it's for the good of other people. You know, it's not…

Pastor Joe: They save people's lives; it save people's lives.

Dr. Ray: Yeah, it can save a life, yeah.

Pastor Joe: And you know, part of the prophetic is we, we have prophetic dreams and so I had a dream one night and I always have a yellow tablet with me and I wrote it down in the middle of the night, and in the dream I was ministering to a woman. I saw her working in uh, topless bars and all of this stuff, I saw her, I saw her being molested in youth, I saw spirits involved, I saw demons, I saw this stuff in the dream. And uh, oh, and in the dream her name was uh, Angel. And so, I went in that dream- I- there was just a demonic thing that controlled her- it was an intense dream. And so a few weeks later, this girl came walking in the back door the church off the streets and um, her real name was Stephanie but Angel was the demon. And Stephanie got saved, and because of the dream, I knew who the spirits were. And for a period of six or eight months, we ministered to Stephanie but one night, I'm sitting there looking at her and she totally changed. She went from being Stephanie to ripping off her clothes looking more like a prostitute, she became Angel in front of me and the spirit looks at me and says I know you, I saw you in your dreams. And I said yeah, in my dreams you came out. And I'm telling you all hell broke loose. It took four men to hold her down and she was foaming at the mouth and this thing came out of her, she got completely totally set free. She had to forgive all that molestation that happened in her family, all that craziness. Today she lives in Tennessee, she has six kids, she's doing absolutely great and all of that happened because of a prophetic dream. So that's happened to me many, many, many times. So I really pay attention when I have prophetic dreams because they're for somebody. They're to help save somebody's life.

Dr. Ray: Yeah. Well before we go, Joe, these stories- if people are listening right now I hope these stories just build your faith on the reality of God, the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of Christ. And it's just amazing, these stories and uh, so if you would like- a couple of things about Joe. If you would like to contact Joe, Joe's given permission to give out his email and his personal cell phone which is available 24 hours a day.

Pastor Joe: Uhuh.

Dr. Ray: [laughs] Maybe not, maybe not. His email is atmjoewarner; atmjoewarner@gmail.com. If you'd like to contact Joe with questions or maybe have him come speak at your church, he's an incredible conference speaker, preacher, uh, your, your church, your ministry is going to be blessed. Before we go too, Joe, you wrote a really amazing book. Um, could you tell them about your book? Tell the people listening about your book? 

Pastor Joe: One of the things we do, Ephesians 6 says “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God that you might stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.” And so it says that the flesh and blood, “our battle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers of wickedness and world forces”, and so I began to focus on schemes and what are the schemes of the enemy and how does the enemy trip us up? So scheme by definition is a hidden plan for a person's destruction. It starts really early in their life and you can trace it through all the years of their life and so people can go through deliverance and they go through many different things but if they don't understand where the scheme came from and how it works, they just keep going through the same cycle. And so we wrote this book it's called Battle for Your Life. The subtitle is Defeating the Schemes of the Enemy uh, by Joe Warner and it's on Amazon and uh, it's a study book for small groups. At the end of each chapter there are small group questions and that type of thing. But people can go through this and see how the schemes of the enemy work in their marriage, their business, their personal lives, their family. We give hundreds of examples of how all that works, how you can get completely free from the schemes and stay free.

Dr. Ray: Battle for Your Life's the name of the book, by Joe Warner, amazon.com. It's a life-changing book, defeating the schemes of the enemy, uh, it really, we really are in a battle for our life- that book has changed my life too. Again, uh, atmjoewarner@gmail.com. Uh, we're getting ready to close and uh, Joe's, but you're my, you know, you're my best friend. I tell people that all the time. You've impacted my life in amazing, amazing ways. I believe the Lord called me to come from Memphis, Tennessee to Orlando, Florida primarily to meet you so uh, been an amazing journey together. We still minister together which is, which has been awesome so why don’t we- Joe you just want to close this with prayer? And uh…

Pastor Joe: Lord, I pray for Your people, You create a hunger in them to experience the Holy Spirit and His comfort as their helper, their healer, but also the one who empowers. And Lord I pray that the gifts of the Spirit would get released in the body of Christ, that we could walk in a supernatural realm that would be pleasing to You, Father, and cause people to get saved, healed, and delivered. In Jesus’ name, amen. Ray, it’s good to see you.

Dr. Ray: Good to see you too. Thank you everybody for listening. Please don't forget to share this podcast, download, give me a good rating, that really helps us get this message out. Thank you so much for listening, I am Dr. Ray Self.

[Music]

Dr. Ray: The International College of Ministry is a Holy Spirit-filled, fully online accredited seminary. Listen to this amazing testimony from Ron from Biloxi, Mississippi.

Ron: Well, what does ICM mean to me? I've learned more about who I am in Christ and how I relate to the Holy Spirit who lives within me. I've gained more confidence in my roles at church as a marriage and family pastor. I thank God for ICM and the passion for helping students grow and learn, such as me.

Dr. Ray: At the International College of Ministry, we are accredited and fully online. That means you take your courses anytime you want. You set your own schedule, your own time frame. You can do them early in the morning, late at night, it's totally up to you. We are now enrolling at ICM, icmcollege.org. Icmcollege.org. Mention this podcast in the comments section of your application and I will give you 10% off your entire tuition. God bless you.