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By Richard Gazowsky

Over the past few weeks I have become acutely aware of God’s intense desire for man to obey His voice. Just today I had a vision of God’s intense power, grace, wisdom, and glory; and yet, this great and mighty Being who rules the universe will wait (out of His own desire) for one puny man to obey His will. The view of this picture that makes it so absurd, is realizing that this puny man isn’t even aware that the command God has just given him is the secret to a successful future. In other words, if man does not obey God’s will, God loses nothing, but man loses everything. I have seen this happen in my own life. God gave me a command to do something and because I put it as a low priority among other things to do, it got forgotten about. Then as I woke up to the fact that I was walking in disobedience, it was too late and too difficult to do the task. Bringing myself into obedience often causes extreme levels of stress and anguish. This conflict can turn into such a spiritual battle that the battle itself gathers the attention, and the resulting miracle of the obedience is lost in the din. This brings me back to the original scenario; simple obedience is quick and easy and allows me to enjoy the benefits of the original word. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

For a long period of time there has been an invisible “glass wall” between Godly leaders, the business world, and the political world. The business world and the political world, however, are the two areas that control most of our lives “in the flesh”. These two realms have been off limits to most of the influence from the kingdom of God, especially when it comes to the general influence over a whole nation. The United States has been the leading country where the kingdom of God has influenced the areas of government and business, and of course this goes back to its founding. The colonies that formed along the eastern boarder of the United States were almost exclusively Christian communities that had fled religious oppression in Europe. Thus, in a unique time in history, godly men and women formed the principles that governed business and government, and there was no glass wall! Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

I’ve received a record number of emails & comments from last week’s blog/message. If you haven’t read it, I would advise you to read last week’s blog before you read this message in order to give you a clearer understanding of what I’m about to say. Let me recap what happened. For the last 3 years, our ministry has been raising up an incredible team of young prophets. They have literally prophesied around the world from Germany to Bangkok, as well as every day at our own congregation in San Francisco. Suddenly, a week ago, God had me shut down the prophetic team in a matter of seconds. He made it clear that none of the youth were to prophesy; they were to remain in a “cone of silence”. The most common response I received as a result of this action was from pastors calling me “radical” and telling me I was “walking in radical obedience”. This is the title that has been thrown at me for the last twenty-plus years of ministry. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

On the 7th of January the church that I pastor held a conference called the “Winds of Change” (refer to blog by that title). I didn’t expect the winds of change to come so violently to my own ministry and constituents. On the first day of the conference a prophet from China was asked to come forward and share a prophetic word. The prophet sensed that the Lord was calling us to seven days of repentance. This call was not a typical call that we Americans hear, asking us to repent of our prosperity and success, but instead the Lord was calling for a deep repentance in areas of our lives that we have not completely pleased the father. Wow! It was weighty but it was also refreshing. On the 6th day I was in a long meeting with seven prophets and political leaders, and the same prophet turned to me and said, “The Lord has spoken to me and has asked me to tell you something that I do not want to share. I love the prophetic youth that prophesy in your church; they are so accurate. During this conference they gave me and my prophetic team many prophecies that were incredibly accurate but the Lord has told me to tell you to stop the youth from prophesying.” Their words hit me like a sledge hammer in my chest. I had never expected this. For the last three months the Lord had been speaking to me that the youth who are prophesying need to be skilled in the use of the word of God, the Bible. I had already initiated this training but I had not expected God to shut the whole prophetic youth ministry down. The prophet, knowing that I occasionally cast lots for confirmation, asked me, “Would you be willing, Richard, to cast a lot before the Lord to see if the word that I am giving you is truly from the Lord?” Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

The “Just in time” manufacturing principle is a concept that has been around since Eli Whitney and the invention of the cotton gin. The concept deals with the manufacturing of items and keeping a lean inventory. It lies within the manufacturing of items such as cell phones, computers and automobiles, which run on lean manufacturing timelines to enable the manufacturer’s response to marketplace changes and innovations. A friend of mine lost his entire fortune because he had ordered a shipload of five megabyte hard drives, but before his ship could dock in the San Francisco harbor, other manufacturers were already delivering one hundred megabyte drives at a price cheaper than his cost. All of his inventory became useless in the eighteen-day journey from Singapore to San Francisco. Companies have found that having huge warehouses full of parts can be as dangerous as the current and volatile American economy itself. This caused early manufacturers to promote the concept of “just in time” manufacturing. It became a clear model of some of the dramatic changes that I see occurring in Christian organizations. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

Recently I had a vision of three candles, 4 palm trees, and the winds of change. I realized that this vision was concerning the new year and that it was a warning from God about 2010. David said that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. A candle is one of the most sensitive ways to detect the changing direction of wind; even the smallest breath points the flame of the candle. So it is in your spirit; the flame of your spirit will tell you the direction that the wind of change is flowing. This is so important! Those who are spiritually sensitive can beat the “bell curve” and have access to the changes that God is bringing to the earth long before those who are spiritually insensitive. A palm tree is specifically designed by God to survive through the most severe trade winds and storms. One reason for the palm trees resilience is that every branch has its own root that extends into the ground. This gives it thousands of fingers underground and each branch has the flexible stem and root system that can bear the high velocity of winds. This crafty design by God presents an incredible spiritual picture of how you and I can survive in prosperity, or the “winds of change”. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

This Christmas we have seen the price of gold rise to heights previously unbelievable. According to one economist, the price today is still extremely low. If just a few of the paper currencies were placed on a gold standard then gold would instantly be selling at 11,000 dollars an ounce. He told me you could check this with a simple calculator. Wow! This really got me thinking. I wondered why is it that governments prefer paying per cash which fluctuates so dramatically daily and causes such havoc in the market, but I soon realized that they want it that way. Gold is extremely undervalued because it makes nations accountable. Gold is difficult to handle; it is heavy and worst of all, if you put your nations money supply on a gold standard you don’t have the freedom of printing all of the dollar bills that you want, and no corrupt leader ever wants accountability. They don’t want us to ever know or understand what they are doing behind closed doors. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

In the arena of trusting God completely a battle that intellectually strong leaders always face is when a miracle occurs from some simple act of obedience, but then the person tries to explain it or calculate it. Even worse is the person trying to reproduce the effect on a mass scale. This may lead to disastrous results. A religious leader could have a miracle occur in his personal life concerning some health drink and then try to get every Christian around him to experience the same phenomenon that he now so genuinely believes in. A danger is that this can even grow into a pyramid marketing campaign where the leader is now selling the health drink and making money from his brothers and sisters, and I don’t have to tell you how dangerous this is. In a “gentler” way, a Christian can expect the same experience that happened to them to be imputed to every person they meet. Keep reading →

By Richard Gazowsky

Just a few days ago, my family arrived home from nearly a month of intercession for Indonesia. The Lord told us that our purpose was simply prayer, but He did not let us know what to expect. When our first Sunday abroad came, my family woke up ready to go to church. I was in a city where I knew many pastors of huge churches on a first name basis, but for some reason the Lord told me that I could not attend any of them. Instead, the Lord sent me to the closest church to our hotel. When my family arrived, to our dismay, we discovered that it was a Korean-speaking Catholic Church, without English interpretation. We realized that we would sit there for one hour not understanding one word that was being spoken. Many times I have found God places me in a situation where I have to be obedient and happy in an uncomfortable position. Just before the service ended, my family and I realized that we were on a stunning mission from God to minister to a beautiful, young Chinese girl. Let me let her tell her story in her own words. What follows is the email that she sent me today: Keep reading →

by Richard Gazowsky

As God pushes us forward into higher levels of authority and responsibility, it is astonishing to me to discover that even when I am in the pinnacle of spiritual intensity, satan can suddenly put a wicked thought into my head. If this has happened to you, then I congratulate you, because God is pushing you forward, and we must all come to the place where we learn how to deal with it.

A short while ago, my wife Sandy had a dream. Now, I must mention to you that Sandy is 4′ 11″ and is the sweetest, most gentle person I have ever met–she would never hurt a fly. So, when she told me this dream, I was shocked by its content. In the dream, Sandy was walking up a large stairway into a very tall building. When she arrived at the top, she saw a veil that was hanging across the flat roof. She looked through the veil, and saw that just beyond it was a beautiful, luxurious pool. On the other side of the pool was Jesus, sitting on a throne. Sandy climbed into the pool with a large bowl in her hands that was like an upside-down umbrella. She dipped it into the water and the Lord said to her, “That is the prayers of the saints.” So she carried the large bowl filled with the prayers to the place where Jesus was sitting. But right before she got there, a bat flew out of the sky and bit her ear. She forgot about the bowl filled with prayers and began rebuking the bat, which fell down into the water.

As she continued to rebuke it, blood from her ear dripped onto the bat. The bat then turned into a baby and she continued to rebuke it, in Jesus’ name. Then the baby turned into a man who was much larger than she. He was dressed in a sleek, silver suit. He carried a hatchet in his hand. She suddenly called out for Richard, (which would be me), her husband. I appeared in the dream and instead of talking to the man, I turned my back to him. When I did, his attention was taken away from Sandy and he tried to hit me on the back with his axe. The axe bounced off my back. He continued to hit me in the back with his axe, but it had no effect. He finally collapsed, died, and disappeared. Sandy woke up from the dream and immediately told it to me.

I understood exactly what the dream meant. satan has access to Holy places. For example, when Job was praying, the Bible says that Lucifer came in among them. As a matter of fact, in the Book of Revelation, Paul tells us that satan even comes before the throne of God in Heaven and accuses the brethren. What Sandy’s dream showed was that these attacks had no effect on me, because I paid no attention to them. As quickly as satan’s thought came into my mind, I would turn my back, change my thinking and think about something else. This is a very easy discipline if you give yourself to it. And here’s what I believe is the key to making it easy. Never take anything that satan says in your head as serious. He is a liar, the father of lies, so anything he says is ridiculous and senseless babble. The quicker you can ignore it, the better off you will be, no matter how intelligent or real the thought may appear to you.

I am the first to admit that God is a very serious God. A famous friend of mine was once being prayed for by my wife. She asked that the anointing on his ministry be passed onto his children. Suddenly, he raised his hands over his head and threw them back at Sandy saying, “No way! I do not want this anointing to pour upon my children. It is too weighty and it causes me to suffer too much.” When Sandy shared this with me, it reminded me of Israel’s response to Moses climbing up Mount Sinai.

If you remember, Moses was not to be a go-between for God and Israel. God wanted to meet everyone. But the people resisted it because of their fear of God, and His purity, and they said, “If anyone touches the mountain, let him be thrust through with the spear.” That fear of God has carried on throughout Israel’s history. As a matter of fact, when the High Priest, on Yom Kippur, was to sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holiest of Holies, he would tie a cord around his ankle and place hundreds of bells in the skirts of his garments in case he would think or utter an evil thing in the very presence of God, and God’s anger be kindled and strike out to kill him. Think about it. Get this picture in your head. There are a couple of Jewish men holding a rope on the other side of the curtain. On the other end of the rope is the High Priest, with incense, to present what was hopefully an acceptable offering to the Lord. The two men know that if the bells stopped ringing, they were to jerk the rope and pull the High Priest’s body out of the Holiest of Holies. But is this the way we are to come into the presence of God now?

I don’t believe it is. Many of you know that we have been through some pretty serious troubles. Everything from having promised money being taken by fraud, to physical medical attacks on my wife, and all sorts of tribulations. But the truth of the matter is, and I say this honestly and directly to you, during this process, I have been trying to get closer to the Lord. The closer I get to Him, the more I discover that He is not like me; His ways are incomprehensible, which means I’m going to have to trust Him on ever-increasing levels. Honestly, this makes me love Him all the more. I am fascinated by God’s wonders. I personally believe a lot of this comes from the way you approach God Himself. If you take yourself too seriously, and believe your own P.R.–that you are a businessman or minister of God and you are trying to impress people around you with your deep spirituality, then God’s probably going to freak you out, because He is not impressed with you. He most likely thinks you look pretty silly. But if you don’t take yourself too seriously, can laugh at your fallacies, make fun of your own mistakes and still be driven by an innate desire to crawl into His presence in desperation, my advice to you is to go for it with the passion of a man in love, and get ready for the wildest adventure that any human could ever experience! But at the same time, tie a rope to your leg.

Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”