Healing the Deformed Church

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Introduction

This past Thursday, I had a very vivid dream I am going to share with you. But first, let me demystify dreams for you. Dreams belong to the Lord. He loves to communicate with us through dreams and visions.

How do I know this? In scripture, dreams and visions are the most common way God spoke to people. Dreams and visions are all over the Old Testament.

In Genesis 15, God’s covenant with Abraham is sealed by a dream of a blazing torch. Jacob had dreams from God. So did Joseph, Moses, Gideon, and Solomon.

Dreams didn’t stop there. They continued into the New Testament. In the book of Acts alone, there are twenty-one instances of dreams and visions.

And, of course, the entire book of Revelation is a documented vision. The Bible even tells us that there will be a certain time in human history when dreams and visions will explode. Take a look:

Acts 2:17-18 NLT – ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my Spirit even on my servants—men and women alike— and they will prophesy.’

God loves to communicate with us through dreams, visions, and prophecy, especially in these last days. It’s a great way to get your attention and communicate countless details in a moment’s time.

How to identify the origin of your dreams.

Yet, many Christians excuse dreams and visions as some coo-coo, mystical thing. That’s because Satan has his counterfeit, mainly all the new-age stuff.

Because the counterfeit exists, we do what we do best: eliminate it all. We don’t like to put in the effort to discern what is from God and what isn’t. But it’s time to stop being lazy.

Not all dreams are from God. Some come as a result of what you watched on TV or what you’ve been thinking about. Demons can insert dreams. But it is easy to discern when dreams come from God.

Demonic dreams are demonic. You wake up scared or anxious. You have some kind of lustful dream. You feel ashamed and embarrassed. Demonic dreams are easy to spot.

Other dreams come from your own choices. Maybe it relates to something you watched on TV or something that has been consuming your thoughts. Those dreams are easy to spot.

Everything else is most likely the Lord trying to get your attention. He can’t get you during the day because you are too busy. So He reaches out at night through a dream.

Every time you have a dream, you should run it through these filters.

1. Was it demonic? If so, rebuke it and discard it.
2. Was it from your own choices? If so, repent and discard it.
3. Was it from God? If so, write it down and search out the meaning with diligence.

Most of the time, when God gives me a dream, I don’t understand it right off the bat. I have to write it down and spend time searching out the meaning. I think it’s God’s way of getting me to spend more time with Him.

Sometimes I get the answer within a couple of days. Other times, it takes months or even years. That’s why I write them down.

When you don’t write it down, you reveal how unimpressed you are with the fact that God just communicated with you. The same thing happens when you get a prophetic word during church.

We must change our ways. We must choose to value when God speaks, whether through a sermon on Sunday, a tongue and interpretation, a prophetic word, a vision, or a dream.

When God speaks, we must discipline ourselves to listen intently and value the words as if they are gold. We should be taking notes on Sunday. We should go back and listen to those prophetic words on a regular basis. We should write down the dreams He gives us.

How many of you need to repent for acting unimpressed when God is speaking to you? Go ahead and raise your hand. Confess your sins to one another so you can be healed.

Now get out your notebook or the notes app on your phone, and write down the correction you just received from the Lord so you don’t find yourself in this same predicament tomorrow.

Value correction from the Lord. Act on it and write it down. Value dreams and visions from the Lord. Write them down. Value the words He speaks through sermons every Sunday. Take notes on what hits you between the eyes.

Dreams belong to the Lord. They are not coo-coo. They are not mystical.

There are dreams that are not from the Lord. Discard them quickly. But pay close attention to the dreams and visions that are from the Lord. They are more frequent than you think.

Last Thursday, I had a dream from the Lord. I was in a church service. It was a large building that was full of people. It was not our church. I was the guest speaker at another church.

While waiting for the service to start, I went to sit down in the front row next to a mother and her child. The little boy was about the age of seven.

I noticed the boy had deformed hands. Each hand only had three fingers. The mother told me how she had been to many healing services to no avail. She was losing hope.

As we were talking, worship started. Everyone stood up and began to sing. However, I wasn’t singing. I was praying. I was asking God to heal the little boy.

Shortly after, I look over at the boy and watch as he lifts his hands in worship. As he does, his hands are instantly restored. He goes from having deformed, three-finger hands to five-fingered, beautiful hands.

I get the mom’s attention. As you can imagine, she is overcome with thankfulness. We both wanted to tell the whole congregation, but they were so engaged with worship we had to wait.

At this point, I woke up with a huge smile on my face. The presence of God was not only in my dream but in my bedroom when I woke up. It was comforting, joyful, and peaceful.

I wrote the dream down, told Beth about it, and pondered its meaning but didn’t get anywhere. So I held it in my heart, trusting God would clarify it all at the right time.

I received the clarity.

The next day, I got a text message about a City Elders event going on that morning. I usually don’t do things on a whim, but this time I did. While at the meeting, we all began to pray. As we were praying, the Holy Spirit taught me the meaning of the dream. 

I wasn’t even thinking about the dream at the time. Simply gathering with the body of Christ in prayer opened the spiritual realm so that I could grab ahold of what God had for me.

This is the reason you are drawn to Sunday services. There is something unexplainable that happens when we gather and seek God together. It’s like the windows of heaven are opened.

If I were you, I would go to every gathering you can where the Holy Spirit is welcome. Show up on Sundays. Show up on Tuesdays for prayer school. Go to other events where the Holy Spirit is moving.

When the true body of Christ gathers, breakthrough happens, healing manifests, answers from heaven come, and demons are cast out. It’s incredible.

That’s why I prioritize Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings here at NoLimits. There’s something special that happens when we gather. But you only get to partake when you show up expecting.

If you show up with a bad attitude or out of obligation, don’t expect to receive anything from God. But if you show up with a pure heart ready to seek God and serve His church, get ready for His goodness to be made manifest just for you.

So, at the City Elders gathering, during prayer, the Holy Spirit explains the dream to me.

The withered hand represents the deformed church led by the three-fold ministry. It has pastors, teachers, and evangelists but rejects the other two leadership gifts.

The healed hand represents the beautiful, powerful church led by the five-fold ministry where the Apostle and Prophet’s leadership gifts have been welcomed and restored.

The requirement for restoration is surrender. Healing didn’t come until the little boy lifted his hands in worship. Nothing else brought healing except surrender.

For the church to be restored, we must surrender completely to God. We have to abandon our own ideas about church. We must ignore the expectation of how others think we should do church.  We must surrender to God’s design and be led by the five-fold ministry leadership gifts.

I’ve been evangelizing and didn’t realize it.

In my second year of Rhema Bible College, we had to choose our path of ministry, whether it be pastor, evangelist, missions, children and youth, or the ministry of helps.

What do you think I chose? You probably thought, pastor, since you know where I am now. But this was twelve years ago, and I was compelled at the time to choose evangelist.

Interestingly, the year after graduating from Rhema, I started a blog called Collaborate Worship to help churches improve their sound and worship ministry.

It later became a YouTube Channel which now has over five million views, representing almost every country in the world.

This is not what most would consider evangelism. Yet my voice has now gone into hundreds of thousands of churches all around the world, enabling them to reach people more effectively.

This is also when the teaching gift came alive within me. The Holy Spirit gave me the ability to simplify complicated things and communicate them in a way people can understand.

This enabled me to create online courses through Collaborate Worship. I now have more than eight thousand students in my online school.

But wasn’t I called to Pastoral ministry?

Then, in 2018, I was hiking the trail I forged in the wooded area behind my house. Out of nowhere, God’s vision for NoLimtis Church downloaded into my spirit. I sensed the pastoral mantle being put on me.

Although my dad was pastoring the church then, he had been ready to pass it to the next leader for years. Many assumed I was next in line, but I didn’t think so.

How could I be a pastor? I wasn’t even thirty yet. With a man bun on the top of my head, I sure didn’t look like a pastor. As a blogger and worship leader, I didn’t act like a pastor.

While all these thoughts were running through my head, I sensed the Spirit of God ask, “Who said I want you to pastor like someone else?”

The question stunned me. I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I felt like I had no other choice but to answer the call. So, with a bit of hesitation in my voice, I said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

You can now see the fruit of an evangelist, teacher, and pastor operating in my life. These are not things I sought out. They are things that found me, and I obeyed the call.

Two years into pastoring, in 2020, I began to have prophetic dreams and visions. I had a few leading up to this point spread across many years. But now it was almost weekly. Sometimes several times a week.

One of the most memorable was when the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the vaccine would cause more harm than the virus. This was before they were even talking about the vaccine.

Most people don’t realize this, but prophecy is primarily warnings and corrections for the church. The Spirit of God graciously reveals where we will end up if we don’t change.

You can go through my messages from the latter part of 2020 through 2022, and you’ll find that almost all of them are prophetic messages. The Lord was correcting our church.

In 2022, Beth and I began to operate in tongues and interpretation on a regular basis. We began digging deeper into prophecy and releasing God’s specific instructions for our church.

Although I didn’t recognize it until a few days ago, there is proven evidence of four of the five-fold ministry gifts at work in my life. From evangelist to teacher to pastor to prophet.

I didn’t seek these things out. They found me as I was obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Which by the way, I never felt qualified for any of it. I just did it anyway.

The Ministry of an Apostle

This leads me to ten days ago. I was studying the book of Luke and ended up in chapter nine. It starts off like this:

Luke 9:1-2 NLT – One day Jesus called together his twelve disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out all demons and to heal all diseases. Then he sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 

Jesus then gave them further instructions, like, “Don’t pack a bag or take food or money. Stay in the same house until you leave. And if they reject you, leave quickly and abandon them to their fate.”

The disciples went out and did what Jesus told them to do. Then they return in verse ten:

Luke 9:10 NLT – When the apostles returned, they told Jesus everything they had done.

Do you know why I highlighted the word ‘apostles’? Because verse one called them ‘disciples’. Then, they came back as ‘apostles’.

When I read this, the distinction jumped off the page. The Holy Spirit has a way of highlighting the things you need to pay attention to as you read the Word of God.

So how do you identify an apostle according to this scripture?

They have power and authority from Christ to cast out all demons and heal all diseases. And they are obedient in their assignment to tell others about the Kingdom of God.

Up until two months ago, I was completely uninterested in casting out demons. I thought it was cool that Jesus did it but never intended to study it, teach it, or demonstrate it.

Then, you know what happened. I taught about casting out demons for the first time on Sunday, May 21. It wasn’t by choice, either. It was in obedience to the Holy Spirit.

On a side note, you should know that every message I bring you is this way. I wait for the Holy Spirit to show me what you need, and He is faithful to do it week after week. It’s amazing.

So I teach about casting out demons, hoping I can just end the message with an uneventful alter call. Then I end up getting delivered from a spirit of infirmity I didn’t even know I had.

Since then, several people have been delivered from demons, and there are many more to come. The Lord is done with demonic oppression in His house. He’s stirring us up to cast it all out.

The Lord is establishing Godly leaders.

In the midst of all of this, I go to a City Elders banquet. I’ve been to these several times over the last two years, but for the first time, I connected the dots.

City Elders is on a mission to re-establish godly leaders in both government and the church. They understand that the church is designed to lead cities and nations, not just churches.

As we know from the prophetic word given to us this past January, our church is called to disciple the City of Owasso. We are to make it a safe haven until Jesus comes.

At this City Elders banquet, I finally realized they have the blueprint to fulfilling this prophetic word. God has revealed to them the process, and they have made it available to us.

This is exciting because it means God is not only working in Owasso. He is working all over to establish godly leaders who demonstrate the Kingdom of God.

God is not interested in building a bunch of churches. He is interested in building His Kingdom. He wants His kingdom to come, His will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

I now have a deep desire to establish God’s Kingdom that I’ve never had before. I actually understand what God wants. He wants the nations. But it starts with the cities.

Before, all I could think about was building a church. Now, all I can think about is building His kingdom. There’s a huge difference.

God has called me to this city.

God is sending me into the city. He has commissioned me to lead this city into the kingdom of God. He has given me power to cast out all demons and heal all diseases.

And as good as Owasso looks on the outside, yes, there are demons to be cast out of this city. The entire city is held captive by religious, pharisee spirits. We’re going to set the city free.

God is also sending me into the realm of the LGBTQ community, a realm completely untouched by the power of God. But not for long. There is going to be a massive move of deliverance.

All this time, the Lord has been preparing me to be an apostle. And I am shocked, overwhelmed, and honored that He would choose me for this assignment.

Once again, I feel unqualified. But I have learned by now that the Lord does this on purpose. Otherwise, I would step into this new assignment in my own power, and it would fail miserably.

I don’t even have that choice. I can’t pull this out of myself. The Lord will have to qualify me through His power. This brings me to a recurring dream I’ve had over the past year. I’ve had it at least five times. The first time was in August 2022.

My Recurring Dream

I was headed down HWY 169 South when traffic came to a screeching halt. Luckily, it was at a place where there was a gravel section connecting each side of the highway.

I was perplexed as to why no one was using the turnaround point. They kept driving forward into standstill traffic. They missed their chance! I took my chance and turned around.

Now, I was headed down HWY 169 North. Interestingly, this is the direction I needed to go anyway. I was headed to preach at a small church north of Owasso.

I made it to the church rather quickly. I walked in, and five people were praying, but none of them greeted me. It’s like they didn’t even know I was there, even though I was the guest speaker.

So I went back out into the parking lot and decided to check the weather on my phone. It was over a hundred degrees outside, and I wanted to see if it would cool off before the evening service.

On the radar, there was a huge winter storm coming from the North. The future cast showed that it would move all the way down the US and into Mexico. In less than an hour, it was supposed to be snowing, and it was currently over one hundred degrees!

I went back in the church to see if anyone else was aware that we were under a winter storm warning. Everyone I talked to kind of nodded their head as if they already knew but acted like it was no big deal.

Also, at this point, the church was almost packed. And the room was bigger than the first time I went in there. The service was supposed to start at 6. At this point, it was 6:30. They were waiting for more people to show up before starting.

I decided to go back home until everyone was ready. Shortly after I got home, I looked outside and saw that the grass was almost covered with snow.

So, I decided to change into something warmer before going back to preach. I didn’t like what I put on, but it was time to go. So I frantically tried to find the right outfit.

Then I couldn’t find my backpack with my laptop and sermon notes. I knew I was late and was aggravated with myself for going home. Then I woke up.

In the recurrence of this same dream, the common thread was that I was headed to preach and did not like the clothes I had on. Yet, I couldn’t find anything else to wear.

In the most recent version of this dream, I finally said, “Whatever. I’m going. I have to go preach regardless of what I have on.”

The meaning of this dream is so rich. But I just want to highlight one part of it today. My next assignment in the church requires a change of clothes. I can’t wear what I am used to wearing.

Through a dream, God prepared me a year ahead of time for what I am now stepping into. Do you see why it is so important to write down your dreams and seek out their meaning?

Restoring the Apostle and Prophet gifts.

Back to the dream from this past week. The Lord is healing the deformed church by restoring the Apostle and Prophet leadership gifts.

I have accepted the call of an apostle. Although I don’t feel that I am ready, the Lord says that I am. So I will trust Him and obey what He tells me to do.

You don’t have to call me Apostle Kade. I’m not here for a title or to try to force you to honor me. I simply ask that you pray for me constantly so that I fulfill the call with great boldness.

The role of an apostle is not glamorous, as some have mistaken. Apostles must possess supernatural patience and endurance. Why? Because the Lord sends them into uncharted territory. And they must keep pressing forward even when it feels like all hell is raging against them.

The Apostle doesn’t sit in his chambers barking out orders. No. The apostle is on the front line paving the way for the church to experience victory.

I’m not even sure how this will unfold from here. I just know that I can trust what the Lord is doing, and I will follow His lead.

As I am faithful to follow Christ, you can rest in following where He takes me because it will be exactly where you need to go. Maybe not where you want to go, but where you need to go.

Jesus is recalibrating His church. We can’t operate as rogue believers who gather once per week. We must come together as an army submitted to the leadership structure God designed.

We must trust that God knows what He is doing in appointing apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to lead the body of Christ.

If we are to establish God’s Kingdom in Owasso, we must submit to His leadership structure. It can’t work any other way.

I love how Rick Renner explains this. In his book, Apostles and Prophets, he says:

“Individually, every believer carries the Holy Spirit within, but when all the members of the Church are joined to become a larger body, all those various portions of Christ are divinely connected. United, we experience a fullness we cannot know apart from each other.

God’s long-term plan is for each member to be divinely joined to others and to function as the real, living Body of Christ on the earth with His heart, His pulse, and His hands and feet in order to touch others and carry the Gospel where it needs to go.

But to bring this plan out of the “mystical realm” into reality, something else that’s divine must occur. This God-breathed plan requires the help of the Christ-given fivefold ministry gifts who are anointed to do their respective parts in assembling and building the Body of Christ so that this Body can house the fullness of the Spirit – the fullness of Christ Himself.”

The time has come. God will no longer tolerate a deformed church. Either we submit to His design or get out of the way.

With you as my witnesses, I humbly submit to Christ. He has called me to be an apostle. It doesn’t matter if I like the new clothes or not. I choose this day to put them on.