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Jan. 29, 2018 - Praying Medic

01:24:06

104 Seeing in the Spirit With Blake Healy

In this episode, I discuss seeing in the spirit with one of my favorite authors, Blake Healy. Resources Blake's Book The Veil

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	Hi, I'd like to welcome you to our show.
	I'm your host, Prang Medic.
	We're talking about life as a child of God and all things related to His Kingdom.
	Thanks for joining us.
	If you're a new listener to the show, you can find articles and books and other resources on my website www.prangmedic.com.
	Now let's jump into this week's show.
	All right.
	Hey, listeners, this is Praying Medic, and I have got a treat for you today.
	We are going to be talking with Blake Healy, one of my favorite teachers and authors.
	Those of you who know me on Facebook, you've seen me post Links to Blake's book, The Veil, a hundred times.
	It's one of my favorite books.
	He is one of my favorite teachers, and we're gonna welcome him to the podcast.
	Blake, how you doing, buddy?
	Doing great.
	Really excited to be here with you.
	It's my pleasure, and I know that the people that are listening on the podcast are going to love this.
	I'll also put this out on YouTube, so get it out to as many people as possible.
	So, I ran into you years ago, not personally, but I ran into your book, The Veil.
	It was recommended to me by some friends who are seers.
	I think it might have been Michael Van Vlijmen, actually.
	You recommended your book to me and I got my hands on that book and I was blown away.
	I'm sure you've heard that a thousand times.
	Yeah, I'm sure.
	And then, and what happened was, you know, I'm very interested in Seeing in the Spirit.
	I teach on it.
	Mike van Vlijmen teaches on it.
	We've both written books on the subject.
	And then, you know, and I always recommend other people's books if they're good resources.
	And then it looks like about a year ago, the book went out of print and I was very distraught because I had been recommending this book to so many people.
	And then I'm like, Oh man, you can only get it through secondary markets and it's like 35 or $40 and it's not available, you know, as a primary book through a publisher anymore.
	And I was like, Oh, that really sucks.
	Cause this is a great book.
	So then I got contacted by one of the gals, I guess, from your publishing company and said, Hey, would you like to interview Blake?
	We're going to be publishing his book, reissuing it.
	I was like, are you kidding me?
	That's awesome news.
	I'm so excited.
	So what's the backstory there on the book and the publishing?
	Just, you know, for people's curiosity.
	Yeah, sure thing.
	Yeah.
	So I originally published The Veil, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was five years ago now, which is crazy.
	And so when I first was, you know, finishing the book, I mentioned in the book how I had rewritten the book three different times and different styles and things like that.
	And I finally settled on this style that felt good to me.
	It felt, you know, it was different.
	I didn't really have anything to compare it to as far as the structure and the style.
	And, you know, it wasn't, you know, trying to be convincing or, you know, that kind of traditional style of Christian book.
	And so in that, I was talking with different friends that had put books out before trying to get, you know, good advice about how to get the book out there.
	And honestly, unfortunately, a lot of the stories that I heard sounded really rough, you know, of these just really challenging, you know, really hard to get in the door and then When you get in the door with someone, you'd have to really put a lot of large financial investment in up front.
	We had just had our first kid and we weren't making tons of money.
	All that stuff was just a little bit nerve-wracking.
	It was right around then that I discovered that there were some really good self-publishing options just through Amazon and different companies like that.
	Up until that point, I'd always heard that that was a bad way to do it.
	You end up with a garage full of books and spending all this money and all that.
	But these relatively new platforms had come together, and so I published the book independently through those.
	It was doing pretty well.
	Again, I didn't really have much of a gauge.
	It was doing well, and then after, just relatively recently, I had a publisher contact me wanting to know if I wanted to republish the book with them, put a few little updates into it, also sign with them to do a couple more books.
	And just kind of try to push the book to a wider audience just because I, honestly, I'm not the best business person in the world, so I hadn't really been pushing the book much on my own, just kind of, you know, was getting out there on its own.
	And so, yeah, I ended up signing with them just because they had a really, you know, everything they brought to me, the whole structure of their company, I really liked what their heart was with wanting to get these kinds of messages out there.
	They really understood the book as well 'cause that was another concern, was that people would really want me to change the style.
	And I was definitely open to feedback, but some of the core ways that I decided to approach things in the book, I just didn't really want to change.
	And they were really understanding of that, really understanding of even some little things about just the way I like to design certain things And so, yeah, they updated the cover a little bit and had some good feedback about just some relatively minor additions to kind of fill the book out just a little bit more.
	And unfortunately, I did have to take the book down just in the manufacturing process.
	I kind of agreed on a certain time that I would take the book down so that they could kind of ramp up their side of Yeah.
	things.
	And I remember looking online and seeing these used copies going for 30 and $40.
	I'm like, Oh no, please don't buy those.
	Wait a little bit longer.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, here's something I don't, you probably don't know about, but I have a lot of friends who are authors.
	I just got connected to a lot of people on Facebook.
	Steve Bremner, Jesse Berkey, Jeremy Mangersheen.
	I just have a lot of friends who are authors.
	Some of them are self-published, some are not.
	And I do a lot of teaching.
	for aspiring authors on different routes and options for publishing.
	So that story to me is very interesting.
	I'm self-published.
	I'm pretty much an Amazon exclusive author.
	I like the self-publishing route.
	I have a leg up on a lot of people that my wife is a graphic designer.
	She's worked as a graphic designer professionally for probably 15 years before we met.
	And she actually worked for a publishing company.
	So when it came time for me to start writing books, my wife was like, hey, I got this.
	I'll do your cover designs.
	I'll do the interior files and all this stuff.
	And I'm pretty good at marketing.
	I'm kind of a social media maven.
	So it wasn't difficult for me to go into self-publishing and have a lot of fun with it and make a go.
	I totally understand though.
	You know, it's not for everybody and there are definitely some, you know, some hurdles and some things that people don't like about self-publishing.
	So now, did you publish with, is it Charisma or who is your publisher?
	Yeah, Charisma is the new publisher now and they've been really great to work with.
	Okay, well that's good.
	I've heard some horror stories from some friends of mine, Tyler Johnson and a few other people, who got into, they signed some contracts and ended up being not so happy with the way it all worked out.
	Yeah, I definitely heard some of those myself going into it.
	Well, it's good to hear that Charisma is taking care of you.
	So that explains my question, which was, you know, why did the book go out of print?
	I understand once you sign a contract with a publisher, they want you to remove copies and they want exclusive rights to publishing and that's cool.
	That's definitely how it should be done.
	So the book is now in available again and people can get it on, I'm guessing on Amazon and most outlets, Barnes and Noble.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They're putting it out there.
	We're just about anywhere that we'll take it.
	Okay.
	That's cool.
	Good to know.
	I can now start putting links out again for my friends who want to know, you know, Hey, is it going to cost me 40 bucks to get a copy of this book?
	That's happy, that makes me happy because I love to refer people to good resources.
	I have no problem, you know, Mike Van Vlijmen was nice enough to let me steal almost an entire chapter out of one of his books.
	Oh wow.
	We were both going to be writing books on traveling in the spirit and I had a significant problem that I couldn't solve.
	And it was a question that I knew I had to answer before I could publish my book.
	And so Mike ends up publishing his book on Traveling in the Spirit.
	And I'm reading through it and I, you know, the first day that it's out, he actually sent me a PDF copy of it before he published it.
	And I'm reading through it and I get to chapter five and I'm like, oh my gosh, he answered the question that I didn't have an answer to.
	And I texted him like, hey dude, I'm going to like steal your chapter five and put it in my book if that's okay.
	He goes, man, he goes, take whatever you want.
	He goes, I don't care.
	It's all good.
	We're brothers.
	So I, you know, I like sharing good information and he has helped me a lot.
	Your book has helped me a lot too.
	No, thank you.
	You know, when I was reading through your book, what happened for me was, I had suspected some things to be true of the spiritual world, seeing different things in the spirit, things that have to do with angels and demons and demonic devices and different things.
	I had heard some testimonies from people, I had experienced some things myself, and when I read your book, your book gave me confirmation after confirmation of things that I suspected, things that I thought were true.
	I was just right down the line like, Yes!
	Yes!
	I knew it!
	I knew it!
	So, your book was just really good confirmation for me.
	Oh, thank you.
	I don't... I mean, when I was reading your book, I was like, dude, this guy has seen in the spirit since he was like a little kid.
	And you did not know that that was not normal.
	No, yeah, it was pretty much from the, you know, even some of my first memories involved seeing the spirits.
	I've always seen them ever since I was a little kid.
	But yeah, you know, it was one of those things where up until I was 12 years old, I didn't really have a grid.
	Part of it was we weren't going to any churches or anything that had a grid for that kind of thing even being possible.
	And so I, you know, when I was little, little, it just kind of blended in with everything else.
	You know, to me, it wasn't any more unusual than any of the other things that I was seeing as, you know, as far as just like normal life stuff.
	And so, you know, I think my parents were kind of mutually ignorant in the sense that they, you know, kids say funny things all the time.
	And so if I would talk about, you know, golden ladies dancing, you know, down the hallway or a giant flying dog that I saw, you know, that was not, you know, too outside the norm.
	And then by the time I started getting a little bit older and started getting a little bit more, um, Feedback not not in a direct sense, but like, you know friends at school things like that making weird faces if I you know Talked about something weird.
	I you know in retrospect.
	I mean, it's kind of shocking how quickly and easily it Became to just not talk about that stuff just because it not not in a not in a strong way or a harsh way But it just didn't get a positive reaction Right, because you're talking about experiences other people are not having.
	Right.
	And what you talk about is borderlines on, for most people, okay, so you're basically hallucinating.
	You're seeing things that nobody else sees.
	Sure.
	And you get a few strange looks and pretty soon you're like, okay, maybe we shouldn't talk about that.
	It was funny, I remember the thought process because I was a missionary kid growing up, so I moved around a lot and we're, you know, in different parts of Europe and
	Western Eastern Europe and so we you know, I was around a lot of kids who didn't speak English and even the other missionary kids that I was with was a really small group of people and so I Some of it may have been just the you know, again, I'm not around a lot of people who speak English I'm not getting that feedback early and young and I remember we moved back to the US when I was nine years old And that's the first time I remember getting some of those weird looks and I remember thinking of it literally as you know, okay well
	You know, I'm used to moving around to different countries and used to learning that, oh, it's perfectly polite to do this in this country, but it's considered very impolite in this country, and so just learning different customs and things like that.
	And so, since I was moving to a new town and a new place, I thought, oh, I guess it's just impolite to talk about the golden people, you know?
	We were literally thinking that, like, oh, I guess they just don't talk about that.
	And, you know, since I was used to adapting, I just kind of, it was, you know, it became easy to adapt around that in that way.
	And for you, and this, you know, unfortunately for some people who have tried to read your book, and I need to say this, I have recommended your book to a lot of people over the years.
	And I have had some pushback from people who said, I tried to read that book and I couldn't get through the first four chapters.
	It terrified me.
	Yeah.
	And I was like, yeah, well, you know what?
	You have to get past page 80.
	And once you get past page 80, then everything kind of is a whole lot better.
	And they're like, I don't know if I could do it.
	It's just, you know, this poor kid being tormented by demons every night.
	I was like, yeah, well that's part of the story, but you have to get past that because there's good stuff after that.
	Totally.
	I struggled so hard with how much of that to put in, where to put that in, and I can't tell you.
	That part got revised more than just about anything else just because I knew I had to talk about it.
	I didn't want to pull any punches because I You know, you soften it too much and you kind of, you lose the testimony, you know, of the whole thing.
	But also, I didn't want to, you know, scare people away from the book.
	And so, yeah, that put a lot of thought and work into it.
	And I, even to this day, I don't know, you know, I still wonder, like, should I have shortened that up?
	Should I have softened it up a bit?
	No, I think it was really good.
	It's a very compelling, you know, everybody has a different writing style.
	I'm more of a storyteller.
	I do teaching, I do storytelling.
	I have some books that are just me telling stories of, you know, people I've seen healed in the ambulance, things like that.
	And then I have some straightforward teaching books.
	Here's, you know, a bunch of scripture.
	Here are some misconceptions.
	Here are my own personal experiences.
	You know, here's some things that you can try and do some exercises.
	Kind of, you know, straightforward teaching.
	Your book, the way you approach it, is very different from any other book that I've read on the subject of seeing in the spirit.
	Because, you know, Mike van Vlijmen and me, and other people who have written on the subject, tend to be teachers.
	You're a good teacher, but your book is just straightforward, almost like a diary.
	Yeah.
	And I really appreciate that writing style.
	The thing is, there's plenty of people out there in the world who are writing teaching books on seeing in the spirit.
	And what I have to admit, when I first read your book, I was like, okay, this is interesting, but it doesn't actually give you practical steps, instruction, teaching exercises.
	Well, The Lord showed me.
	He's like, that's your job.
	Blake has a different assignment.
	Blake is going to just explain, without a whole lot of teaching, what this experience looks like, feels like, you know, the emotional impact of it.
	And you guys can do the teaching and the exercises and all the other stuff.
	Your book, even though it is very different from most books on the subject, I think you have a unique perspective that, you know, I have, like I said, I've recommended this book to thousands of people and anyone who's finished the book has come back to me and said, wow, that was amazing.
	You show the potential that people can reach if they're so inclined to do it.
	See, my book and other people who have written on the subject, We, you know, we're better at teaching what's, these are some things you can try to do.
	There's some scripture, here's some, you know, my experiences.
	You're a forerunner.
	That's what I would say.
	You're a forerunner and it's kind of in the sense that, you know, Ian Clayton is a forerunner in some certain things and David Hogan is a forerunner and Heidi Baker is a forerunner, you know, raising the debt.
	These people are forerunners in the sense that they have gone as far as you can with this and they've shown us, the rest of us, what's possible.
	Your book is that kind of book for seeing the Spirit.
	This is what's possible.
	If you apply yourself, if you engage, if you really want to see this stuff, here is what's possible.
	So, in that sense, it is a very valuable book, at least, you know, from my perspective.
	I appreciate that.
	So, I have a question for you.
	Do you believe that anyone can see in the Spirit?
	I do, I do.
	It's interesting.
	I may have mentioned this in the book, but as soon as I discovered that what I had was a gift when I was 12 years old, and the very minute, even my first few thoughts around understanding that this was a gift, I was just immediately and completely convinced that it was something that was meant to be available for every Christian.
	And, you know, at the time, I couldn't have given you a good theological reason why.
	It was really just a gut feeling.
	But it's one that I've had since moment one of understanding what was going on with me.
	You know, the way that I look at it is, you know, the whole forerunner concept, which is one that I do like, is that there are people who are naturally gifted in something that even to some extent maybe didn't earn you.
	I certainly didn't earn this gift in any way.
	I received it before I could earn it in any way.
	But I do think forerunners exist to show us what's possible, to show us what's available, to show us what God has for us.
	And so I do believe that it is meant to be available for everyone.
	Do I think it's the most important gift that every single person should have?
	No, not really.
	I think it is one of a myriad of ways to interact with God, to get to know God better.
	But I do believe that anyone can learn how to see in the spirit.
	I'm going to disagree with you respectfully.
	Oh, please do.
	And I'll explain why, and I think you'll jive with what I'm saying.
	Yeah, sure.
	The reason why I wrote my book I'm seeing in the spirit is because I had read a lot of other books by you know James Gaul and Kevin Basconi and I think Welton had his book out by then and a lot of other people and every single person that I read on the subject spoke about seeing in the spirit as if it was a gift.
	And the Lord has given me a different perspective on it.
	He has told me, he's shown me, this is not actually a gift.
	It is an innate ability everyone has.
	We perceive it to be a gift because some people have developed it or some people are given an advanced stage of development.
	And culture looks at them as unusual and weird, and they go, oh, you have a gift that I don't have.
	But what the Lord has shown me is, look, you have a spirit, and your spirit has eyes, and your spirit has ears, and your spirit has all the senses that your physical body has.
	So it's not like people aren't born with spiritual eyes or spiritual ears.
	They are.
	They just have to learn how to develop The ability to perceive what their spirit is seeing.
	And I liken it to how a child learns to walk.
	Some children develop the ability to walk sooner than others.
	I have seen children that were able to walk at the age of six or seven months, which is highly unusual.
	But if you're, you know, 11 year old or 11 month old child and you can't walk, You don't look at a six-month-old child who can walk and go, oh, they have a gift that I don't have.
	Right?
	They have an ability that everyone has.
	They've just developed it sooner and more fully than other people.
	Same thing with piano or playing guitar.
	Anyone can learn how to play piano.
	Anyone can learn how to play guitar.
	Some people seem to be a bit more musically inclined, but if you practice and practice and practice, you'll develop that ability.
	And if you get really good at it, some people say, oh, you're really gifted.
	And you might say, well, no, I actually, I'm not that gifted.
	I just practice a lot and I developed my ability.
	I never saw visions until I was 48 years old.
	I had never seen visions, never seen, I never even had really dreams until from, I had dreams when I was a teenager.
	And then at the age of about 21, I stopped having dreams.
	And I don't mean like I didn't have dreams.
	I had dreams and I didn't remember them.
	I did not have dreams period.
	I just didn't have for like 25 years, no dreams, never saw visions, never saw anything supernatural. 2008, I had my first dream in like 25 years, and from that point on I've been dreaming like crazy, and I learned how to see in the Spirit.
	I learned how to see visions, and the Lord took me through a training process.
	Where I had to just sit alone, quietly meditate and train my mind to focus on what my spirit was seeing instead of what my natural eyes were seeing.
	And so for me, my perspective is because I was not born that way, I didn't have it.
	I've never really been, I mean, I have a lot of friends who were like, Oh yeah, I've been seeing angels and demons since I was, you know, three or four years old.
	Like, yeah, well you had about 40 years of experience on me.
	My development has been much different, and I teach that it's actually an ability we all have, but a lot of people just never get around to developing it.
	And I think people like you are given an advanced stage of development by God so that you can be a forerunner, so that you can show the rest of us idiots what's possible.
	Like, you know, this guy's got something you have, you just need to develop it and exercise and you can go to where he's at right now.
	So, anyway, that's how I explain it.
	Yeah, I definitely see it that way, for sure.
	You know, it's, even as I mentioned, you know, with myself, like, even some of what I, you know, one of the things I think even contributed to me continuing to seeing the spirit was that I was not around other American kids very much at that kind of, you know, five years old.
	to nine and 10 years old.
	And I almost in some ways got, because one of the things I have noticed with, especially with other kids, when I'm teaching, especially kids to see in the spirit is, I think just about every kid sees in the spirit, but we, again, whether it's socially, whatever it is, we learn not to, whether it's socially, whatever it is, we learn not to, or we learn not to focus on that.
	Or we learn.
	Right.
	Shut it down, yeah.
	Because parents tell you, oh, that's just your imagination, right?
	And if revelation from the supernatural world comes into your mind, You know, through what some people would call your imagination, but I think that's a bad name.
	You know, when you see things other people don't see, you either call it hallucinating, or you say, oh, it's just your imagination, or if you're hip to it, you go, oh, you're seeing visions, you're seeing the spirit.
	And if adults are not seeing the things you're seeing, obviously, it's like, yeah, well, that's just your imagination.
	You learn, kids are culturalized and they're normalized to shut down their imagination, to shut down their spiritual senses.
	I have, you know, talked to a lot of people who have kids, they communicate with angels, they see angels.
	You know, communicate with them.
	And the parents have wisely decided not to shut it down.
	Not to discourage them because they've seen what happens when you discourage kids from engaging the supernatural.
	Later on when they want to actually use that, you have to go back and reopen the gates and repent of some Wrong thinking.
	Certainly.
	So, let me ask you this.
	You know, everybody wants to be able to see angels.
	What advice do you have for people who are not seeing in the spirit, not seeing angels?
	What tips, advice, hints would you have for anyone who would like to increase their ability to see those things?
	Yeah, I've been teaching, or like I said, since I was 12 years old, I've been actively understanding this is a gift that I have, working on it, exercising it, building that muscle on purpose, rather than it just happening.
	And I've been actively teaching about it for the last 10 years or so.
	And there's a lot of little things, but for me, it boils down to two main things.
	And it's kind of different sides of the same coin.
	The one side is an important one is just trying.
	Because, you know, I think when I've had, especially my students, because I teach at the Bethel Atlanta School of Supernatural Ministry here in Atlanta, Georgia, and we do a class on seeing the Spirit.
	And one of the things that I've noticed with some of these students who have started learning how to see in the Spirit is so many of them tell me, Oh, I've noticed these, I've seen these little hints, these little invitations to see more, you know, a little streak of light, something that looks like heat distortion or, you know, an outline that's just kind of like a vague light.
	I've seen these things before, but I just ignored them.
	I didn't ask the Holy Spirit about them.
	I didn't engage with this at all.
	And, you know, so I think some of it is Believing that it's true and by that engaging and practicing, trying to look in the spirit, as simple and obvious as that is, you know, taking time to practice and look is a huge, huge, huge part of it.
	And on the, on the other end of the spectrum, I, or you know, it's kind of the other side of the coin moving towards the same place, if you will.
	I'm increasingly finding that, and I didn't address this perfectly in the veil, I'm actually working on nailing this part of my journey a little bit better in my second book, which I'm working on right now, is letting God and your relationship and ongoing conversation with the Holy Spirit build your understanding of what you're seeing, because I don't think
	I think that even though I've been seeing the Spirit since I was very, very young, I still, to this day, know that I don't see everything.
	And I know that by a simple point of fact, that I've consistently, regularly seen more and more and more things as life has gone on.
	And, you know, when I was first practicing, when I was first 12 years old, sitting at the back of the church, learning that I had this gift, and just like sitting there, all right, what's going on?
	Some things I could focus in on and see them clearly as, you know, as I would see you if you were sitting in front of me.
	And some things I would just see in a vague outline.
	It looked like someone had, you know, rubbed Vaseline over the lens of my eyes.
	And, but then the next week, when I would see that thing again, I could see its feet clearly.
	The rest of it was still blurry, but I could see its feet.
	Then the following week, I could see its, its, its whole legs and its hands.
	And then the following week, I could see its whole body, you know, just, you know, give a particular angel as an example, but then I couldn't see its face.
	And sometimes over months, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over days, and sometimes in the course of a single sitting, these things would slowly uncover bit by bit.
	And some of it was just the consistency, but some of it was as soon as I understood This, it made room for me to see this.
	As soon as I understood this revelation, it gave a platform for me to understand the next thing, which made me see the next thing more clearly.
	And so, recognizing that this isn't just about, there's nothing wrong with, I really want to see angels, like there's nothing wrong with that desire.
	But if we expand that desire to, I want to understand how my Father's Kingdom works, and I want to go on a relational journey with Him to learn that, then I think that mindset sets us up to, in my opinion, get at the core of what God is after with, I believe, this and just about every spiritual gift, which is a deeper connection with us.
	And it's only natural that from that place, you know, more activation, more ministry, more healing, more of the doing side of these things come about.
	But I think that if we make the first priority, connecting with him and understanding what kind of business our father's in, to me that mindset has attributed to more people starting to see more much more quickly in my times of teaching here at the school.
	Okay, you listed two things and I would like to talk a little bit about them and just explore them a little bit deeper.
	So, you mentioned those subtle things, the little glints of light, little ray of light, a little orb of a circle of something over there or a shadowy thing moving.
	And they're like, yeah, yeah, I remember seeing those things and I kind of just blew them off, you know, dismissed them.
	That has also been, I think, my experience.
	My kids, when they were growing up, they would see those things and I was trying to encourage them, look, that's something, that's not your imagination, that is something that exists in the spiritual world and you need to pay attention to that.
	I would agree with you that my perspective on learning to see in the Spirit is primarily a matter of focus.
	It is focusing your attention on what it is that God is showing you.
	And I think the biggest mistake people make or the biggest handicap they have is they don't focus.
	Blow things off.
	Ignore it.
	Attribute it to something else.
	Imagination.
	I'm too busy.
	Don't want to look at that.
	And so you miss a lot in what God is showing you because you're not focusing.
	When the Lord was teaching me how to see in the Spirit, I just decided I was going to sit in the back of my ambulance.
	It was winter.
	It was very slow.
	We were only doing one or two calls a day.
	I sat in the back seat on the bench in the ambulance for hours and hours and hours.
	And just allowed the Holy Spirit to show me different images.
	And at first when I started doing this, there were these blurry, out-of-focus, two-dimensional images.
	And they were just pictures and images of things and people that I recognized.
	And I very quickly realized that what the Lord was doing was He was showing, He was teaching me to focus on these images.
	The more I focused on them, the more clear they became, as you said, over the course of days and weeks of doing this, and I was doing this day after day after day at work.
	It was slow time of the year, and we would just hang out on a street corner waiting for a call.
	And I would just lay in the back of the ambulance with my eyes closed and just say, okay, Lord, show me stuff.
	And he would show me all these images.
	And the more I focused on the images, the more clear everything became.
	The two-dimensional flat images became three-dimensional.
	At one point, they were mostly still images and then they turned into moving like videos almost.
	Then I saw overlapping scenes.
	Then I saw multiple scenes.
	I started to see translucency with, you know, angels and different things.
	The whole way that I saw was becoming more complex.
	I was seeing things more clearly.
	The colors were brighter.
	Everything was in focus.
	It was more sharp.
	There wasn't the blurriness anymore.
	That Was kind of my process of learning how to see in the spirit.
	But the thing is, it took me months to learn how to do that.
	Of every day, week after week, just spending time alone, focusing, looking, more details, and gradually it would get sharper and sharper.
	And the other thing that was happening at that time was, the Lord was asking me, what does this mean?
	I was like, I would guess.
	So we're having this conversation, me and the Lord in my mind.
	I would guess what that image meant and it would stay there.
	If I was wrong, the image would stay there.
	Guess again.
	So I guess again.
	And if I was wrong, it would stay there.
	It would stay there until I guessed right.
	When I guessed correctly what he was trying to convey to me, I would see a new image.
	And then I would guess what that image meant until I got it right and then it would disappear and I would see another one and another one and another one another one I saw thousands of images Over this period where the Lord was doing two things.
	One, he was training me to focus my mind on the subtleties and training me to get clear images in my mind.
	Second, he was training me to learn his spiritual language.
	Because one of the big problems that we all struggle with is, okay, great, you see this thing in the spirit.
	What does it mean?
	What is its relevance?
	How does it connect to anything?
	And the thing that I guess makes me kind of laugh is like, okay, great, you want to see angels.
	Why?
	You just want to entertain yourself and see angels?
	You know, I'm bored.
	I want to go see some angels.
	Well, if you see angels, you're seeing them for a reason.
	Have you ever asked, you know, the Lord, why am I seeing this angel?
	What is the reason for it?
	I know that you talked in the book about going out in the, you know, spiritual world and seeing things.
	Didn't an angel come to you and warn you about, like, not treating this just for your own amusement?
	That's funny.
	It was always interesting for me just because that is something I struggled with so much.
	I think especially from that 12 years old to 22 years old season where I, you know, I would try to use it all the time, you know, especially right away.
	And I'd get in trouble partially because of my immaturity and partially just because, you know, I was still learning what to make of this, you know, what to do with this.
	And, you know, I went to one extreme, like I remember early on.
	I, you know, I didn't put this story in the book because it's a little bit embarrassing.
	There's this guy at the back of the church, I see this demonic thing hanging out on his shoulder, I discern what it is, walk up to him, and I'm like, okay, you know, someone saw something demonic on me, I suppose I want them to mention it, you know, let me know what to do about it.
	Now this guy was probably in his mid-40s, I was 13 years old.
	And walked up, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, hey, you should probably stop looking at pornography.
	And for some reason, he didn't find that very edifying, encouraging, or comforting.
	You did not say that out loud, did you?
	Yeah, out loud at the back of the church.
	I mean, there wasn't too many... Oh, Lord.
	So I learned that that maybe was not the most current way to use that gift.
	And so I make mistakes like that, you know, going on.
	And then other times I'd get frustrated because I know, especially for me, Because I'd see something, I'd understand a little bit of what it meant, I'd share it with someone, but then they'd have 14 more questions about why this, why this, why this.
	I just didn't have the language, the understanding, or the familiarity with all of it to nail down what that meant, or if that meant anything significant to the moment.
	So I'll kind of do two different two-fold things to talk a little bit about that.
	One, I remember one day it started to click for me when, because I used to get frustrated because some stuff I would see and it makes sense.
	It's like, okay, that angel is wearing armor.
	It's leaning up against the wall.
	It's standing up very straight.
	It's got this very attentive look in its eye that looks, feels in every way like some kind of guard or protection angel.
	That's everything about the way that angel looks evokes that.
	And so sometimes it was pretty straightforward like that.
	But other times, you know, worship is going on and I just see this swirly, dancey light thingy that looks like it's made out of something between, you know, lava and orange soda.
	And, you know, what is this thing?
	This is weird, this is confusing, this is abstract, what am I supposed to do with this?
	And I'd get frustrated, you know.
	I remember one day I walked into church and, you know, I was going through my teenage years, this whole thing, so I was getting angsty for other reasons all throughout all this, but I walked in the back of the church and worship's going on and there's this kind of just Stuff that looks like, if you've ever seen a video or been up in the north and seen the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, there was this light that kind of looked like that.
	It was this wavy light in the middle of the stage.
	It was about 10 feet by 10 feet and it was just kind of oscillating back and forth in this What seemed like a more or less arbitrary pattern, really consistent pattern, but it just seemed arbitrary.
	It was just kind of oscillating in this like, together apart, together apart sort of way.
	I remember my attitude was terrible.
	I'm like, what?
	What is that?
	What is the point of that?
	Why is that there?
	Why do I care?
	Why am I seeing it?
	What am I supposed to do?
	And so, this is my conversation with the Holy Spirit.
	And so, All of a sudden, I just feel this little tug, and I notice this older lady who's sitting in the front row of the church.
	She's sitting down.
	She's leaning forward.
	Got her fingers crossed and just kind of leaning on the tops of her hands.
	And I had this feeling pop up.
	It didn't pop up in the front of my mind.
	It popped up in the back of my mind.
	And if what happened afterwards didn't happen, I probably wouldn't have even noticed it.
	But this little judgment towards this moment popped up in my head.
	Now, it was something that was culturally going on in my church at the time.
	Again, not anything that anyone taught or anyone actively said.
	It was a back-of-the-mind thing.
	And this cultural thing that was there but not actively present was.
	You know, we had a church that had a really strong value for worship, and it was one of the giftings in the church, which was awesome.
	But the idea somehow got in the back of the cultural mindset that if you're not physically, actively engaging in worship in a passionate way, then maybe you're not being as much of a worshiper as the person to your right.
	Again, even me saying it that explicitly is not at all what the culture was, but it was in the back of the mind.
	You know, it was in the background of the cultural mindset there.
	And so, I had that feeling pop up.
	Again, it's enough in the background, but I didn't really register it.
	And the second that feeling popped up, my vision switched and I saw straight through the woman like it was an x-ray.
	And it kind of focused until the point where I kind of registered on where her heart was.
	And as I looked, I noticed there was this light moving through the four chambers of her heart.
	And it was moving back and forth between the chambers of her heart in this rhythmic way that was moving with her heartbeat.
	Well, all of a sudden, I look at that.
	The pattern looks familiar.
	I look up back at the center of the stage, above the stage where everyone's leading worship.
	And it's, even though it's a different size, it's the exact same pattern of light and pattern of movement as what's happening in her heart.
	And as soon as I recognized that it was the exact same pattern, the exact same movement, I looked around the room and saw that there was tons of people, I kind of had this x-ray thing happen again, where I could see that their heart had this light in it that was moving in exact rhythm with this light.
	And then I just heard the Holy Spirit say, I'm syncing the rhythm of their hearts to mine.
	And that was one of many, many, many, honestly hundreds of moments where I learned to Look and listen and hunt for what the Holy Spirit was saying and doing with the things that I saw.
	Not just try to get what I consider to be the explicit value of something, or what I would consider to be important, or what I would consider to be the reason that he would put something or do something.
	or would have something going on in the spirit.
	And moments like that helped me develop understanding and learn how to look for what the purpose is of even these strange and abstract things.
	And now I would say, and I know that a lot of this has to do with my personality.
	I tend to be more of an observer by nature.
	I like to watch, I like to understand, I like to kind of pick things apart and put them back together.
	And so I don't, I try to strike a balance between these two things.
	But I often like to suggest that I think, you know, it's based even on my own experience.
	like the number of stuff that I see in a given day, the number of stuff that I could see if I just turn it on at any given moment, you know, I could, I could, you know, I can go to, I live near Atlanta, Georgia, and I could, I could run down to downtown Atlanta right now, start looking in the spirit and I could spend the rest of my entire life just start looking in the spirit and I could spend the rest of my entire life just saying the good things that I And every, you know, I could do that because there's enough, you know, there's enough to see there's enough going on that I could do that.
	Now my wife and kids probably wouldn't appreciate that.
	And you know, what would that be?
	And even if that, you know, if somehow we could practically make that work, would that be the most, would that be the highest calling of my life?
	Would that be the way I could be the most effective for God's kingdom?
	You know, I sometimes I don't think so because because unless I'm if I feel the need to respond, at least in the way that I would think that I should to every single thing that I see, I can kind of get like a bad superhero mentality I can kind of get like a bad superhero mentality where I think everything that I see is my responsibility.
	And to me, that either does one of two things.
	It sets me up for burnout or it limits me to only seeing the things that I meant to do something very explicit with.
	If I open up my mind to the idea that I can see lots of things and in fact, maybe by design, I can see more than I expressly need to see.
	Then it's not just about what am I supposed to do actively with this, but it's also what can this teach me about who God is and.
	And because in my mind, God doesn't just want us to know what we're supposed to do.
	He also wants us to understand how He works and how He thinks.
	And so that's kind of a long answer to some of that question, but I kind of go both ways where I think that sometimes the value in seeing something can be as simple as, oh, I understand what you're up to a little bit more and can live my life accordingly just a little bit more.
	Yeah, well, I appreciate you going into a little bit more depth in how you put all this together.
	You know, I have a friend who talks a lot about The concept of hearing revelation that is intended for other people.
	It's like if you put up a radio receiver in your home, you can pick up a lot of different radio channels and traffic.
	There's stray radio frequencies going through everybody's house all the time.
	Does it mean you're supposed to focus in and listen to all of it?
	Probably not.
	A lot of it's not intended for you.
	There are things going on all around us in the world, in the spiritual world, most people are kind of oblivious to.
	Does it mean that you have to be focused on all of it?
	Does it mean all of it is for you just because you see it?
	Does it mean it's intended for you?
	Maybe not.
	I see a lot of people every day when I go to the grocery store or go to the hardware store and I see them.
	It doesn't mean that I'm going to have an interaction with them.
	For me, it always comes down to this question.
	And I'm just going to go off on a rabbit trail here.
	Sure.
	For some reason, Christians, and I don't know, maybe charismatic Christians, tend to be really interested in conspiracy theories.
	I have all these friends who just can't wait to the next episode of Alex Jones and the latest conspiracy theory, and they're just going down all these rabbit trails of everything from chemtrails and HAARP and weather control and mind control and all this other stuff.
	They send me links to videos all the time.
	They're like, you gotta check this out.
	You gotta check this out.
	Oh, I saw this and I read this.
	You gotta check this out.
	I'm like, look, hang on a second.
	I have a limited amount of time in my day to watch videos, read articles, and chase little rabbit stone holes.
	What I have learned is most effective is I, you know, what did Jesus say?
	The son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the father doing, right?
	So Jesus could have done a lot of things.
	Jesus could have interacted with a lot of people, could have been a lot of places, could have done a lot of things, but he was always focused on what the father is doing and saying.
	I think the great value of all of this is try to focus on what God specifically has for you to do, people he wants you to interact with, ministry he wants you to accomplish.
	And block out everything else.
	And that's what I do, unfortunately, for a lot of my friends.
	I just have to tell them, look, please don't send me those links.
	I don't have time to go tracking all this stuff down.
	God has not put that on my radar.
	He just hasn't.
	You know, I have friends who are like really interested in, you know, vaccination theories and chemtrails and everything else.
	I'm like, look, God has never put any of that stuff on my radar.
	I have to focus on what God is putting on my radar at any given time.
	And there's a lot of distractions, a lot of things out there you can see, a lot of things you can be, you know, interested in and pursue, but it doesn't mean that that is your assignment from God.
	If you understand what your divine destiny is, if you understand your divine assignments, that helps you, I think, focus on the things that you need to focus on and ignore the things that need to be ignored because there's a lot of stuff out there that probably needs to be ignored.
	Well, I think when you focus on what God is specifically speaking to you about, it does help you understand His Kingdom, His heart, and His plan, and how He wants to use you to impact the world.
	Now, I have a question for you.
	I was teaching in Tucson at a school, Supernatural.
	I offered to pray for people after I got done teaching and this gal comes up and she has ringing in her ears.
	And I was like, great.
	Why couldn't it be something else?
	I just, I have a horrible track record for praying with people with ringing in the ears.
	I had prayed for a lot of people and I'd never seen anybody healed of ringing in the ears.
	So, I had been teaching on, you know, seeing in the spirit and things of that nature during the lesson.
	So, the Lord says, why don't you close your eyes and take your own advice and see if I show you anything.
	So, this lady is standing in front of me and I see something.
	The nearest thing I can describe it as it looked like a branch of a cactus stuck on top of her head.
	Like somebody had just taken this branch of a cactus about three inches in diameter and just stuck the spines right into the top of her head.
	And I was like, oh, that's weird.
	Why is there like a cactus stuck on top of her head?
	I was like, okay, I think I read about this, you know, in Blake's book, Demonic Devices.
	I just did a prophetic act.
	I reached over and I pulled this thing off of her head in the spirit.
	And she was like, oh my God, what did you do?
	She's like, that's crazy.
	The ringing stopped.
	The ringing in her ears stopped and she said, I feel like there's an open spot in my head where I can feel cool air rushing into my head and the ringing was completely gone.
	I have some friends who see in the spirit very acutely and they see these demonic devices on people.
	Sometimes they see, you know, bombs, booby traps, different demonic devices that have been attached to people.
	I read your book, you know, chains and shackles and all these different things.
	Mm-hmm.
	Can you talk a little bit about those devices in the spirit that people are not aware of and how you deal with those things and what practical tips you could give for people on that?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's interesting.
	I see a fair number of those, and my general advice would be, even as frequently as I see those things, as familiar as I have gotten with dealing with them and praying about them and doing that, Every single time it's funny because I feel the same like nervousness in my heart whenever I'm doing something especially when it's Dealing with some kind of sickness or something.
	There's a tangible, you know Problem, you know going along with this thing.
	I Approach it with Complete knowledge that I am 100% helpless unless I hear from the Holy Spirit how to deal with this or how to approach it.
	And I've not personally, at least, gotten to any spot where it feels like, at least for me, here's the one, two, three steps on how to do this.
	I remember one particular time I was still a ministry student in Bethel in Reading.
	And I was on the prayer line, someone came up, they had back pain.
	And even though I've been really involved in the Prophetic from a young age, healing was something that was relatively new to me upon going to school there.
	And, you know, I'd pray for people to be healed, but, you know, the active, intentional way of really going after it was just, again, I just hadn't been really familiar with it up until that point.
	I thereby hadn't really applied, you know, my experience of seeing the spirit to that.
	And I remember this was really the first day for what we call it ignorance or whatever else.
	So this is halfway through the school year, but I thought, oh, I wonder if I should just look in the spirit and see what's causing this person's back pain.
	And it was the first time it occurred to me.
	And so I looked at their back and I saw this clamp around their spine, right in between their shoulder blades.
	And it had like a turnkey on it, like a mechanical clamp and it had a turnkey.
	So I touched the spot and said, hey, is it right here where it hurts?
	And they said, yeah, it's exactly the spot.
	And I said, honestly I felt kind of silly, but I felt like I was supposed to turn the key.
	So I said, hey, this is what I see.
	I'm just going to pantomime turning this key right now.
	You let me know what happens and so I did that and you know lefty loosey and all that did all that right and I Just turned this key and the person said they literally felt it loosen loosen loosen and the pain left and
	There's still, at least for me, a lot of mystery in this because it's like, okay, that's not literally a clamp that is on their back, that literally the solution to it is it being loosened.
	It's a representation of a spiritual attack or a spiritual oppression.
	But there is something about the physical act of faith of, okay, I feel like this is what I'm supposed to do, so I'm gonna do it.
	I had a more dramatic one recently where This woman came to me and she had been diagnosed with cancer.
	She had already been through some, not full-blown chemotherapy, but some other surgeries and treatments and she had just gotten a report that it was back and it was worse and it was in the lungs and it was Coming in these certain nodes and stuff like that.
	I'm not a doctor, but it was looking bad and So I just looked in the spirit and I saw these black long black needles And they were running across the front of her chest and in a horizontal line, just kind of right across the top of her heart from lung to lung.
	And then there was another set, there's about four or five of them, then there was another set running from about where one side of her lungs were up and up into her collarbone area.
	And then it was sticking out in this one of them was sticking out of her skin just in that one spot there.
	And again, to me, I could feel the like, A lot of times when I see sickness or things like that in the spirit, I do feel confused by it.
	I do feel like, ah, I don't, it feels like a knot or I don't know what to, how to approach on time, you know, kind of thing.
	But I saw that little bit sticking out of her skin and I just felt this impression to pull that out.
	And I just said, hey, I see this thing sticking out here and I'm going to pull that out.
	And so I reached up and pulled this thing out.
	And I saw this blackness come spewing out, and it was gross.
	Like, it looked like you had popped some kind of pus-filled thing, and it was just spewing out this black, you know, stuff.
	Apologies for the sound effect.
	That was gross.
	But it was just coming out, coming out, coming out.
	And then I just prayed, you know, a blessing on her, and that's what I felt like I was supposed to do.
	And then she went to the doctor for an exam and got examined, and there was no sign of cancer whatsoever anywhere in her body anymore.
	And so that was a really cool, you know, dramatic one.
	But even as, you know, obviously in telling the story how intuitive it sounds like, well yeah, turn the key or pull that thread out, for me at least it still felt very On the edge of, okay, I'm just trusting the Holy Spirit and I am trusting that he's telling me to do this rather than, well, I should just do this or just do that.
	So those are a couple of stories at least to me.
	Yeah, that's been my experience and I think this experience of my friends.
	I have this one friend, he saw something like a bomb strapped to a person's chest.
	He was just going to remove the bomb.
	He's like, oh, it's a bomb.
	You know, it's going to remove that thing.
	And an angel spoke to him and said, don't touch that.
	That's a booby trap.
	And if you pull that thing off, you're going to do some damage to that person.
	So I would echo your, what you're saying is, you know, when God shows you things, it's all about relationship.
	It's ask the Holy Spirit.
	Okay.
	I see this.
	What does it mean?
	What am I supposed to do with this?
	I don't want to be presumptive and I don't want to do something.
	But when you get that feeling, you get that nudge, like, okay, I feel like the Lord is telling me, just take it off.
	Or in some cases, don't take it off.
	My friend Steve Harmon does a lot of deliverance and emotional healing on people with satanic ritual abuse.
	And in the inner world, the altars and the fragments and the parts of the soul, lots of booby traps, lots of complex structures that demons put in place.
	And Steve's, you know, discussions with me, he's like, You would not believe how complex some of the stuff can be.
	You have to do everything step by step.
	You have to remove this first, break this curse.
	Then you can remove that.
	Then you can take this structure down.
	If you do it out of order, you're going to screw things up.
	So I think it's good to have caution.
	I think it's good to...
	To look into the Spirit when you're doing healing ministry or, you know, prophetic ministry, and see what the Lord is showing you.
	But of course, you know, the relationship thing is, okay, I see this, what am I supposed to do next?
	Yeah.
	That's the whole do what the Father is doing thing, I guess.
	Definitely.
	One of the things that I, when I'm teaching the prophetic, when I'm teaching seeing in the Spirit, I say it often enough to annoy my students greatly, is that, you know, the most powerful question in any kind of prophetic ministry is, Holy Spirit, what do you have to say about that?
	Because we never want to assume that just because of a gift that we have or an ability that we have, that we are seeing or discerning something, that we have already also heard what God has to say about that thing we're discerning or seeing.
	And I've seen plenty of people just cause a lot of pain and discomfort because they discerned something and then put their opinion about that thing out.
	Which, if you know that you're doing that, it's not a bad thing.
	But if you say, this is what the Lord is saying, but it's just your opinion about something you discerned, that can be a little bit more messy.
	That can be messy.
	That creates problems.
	So, I have one more request from you.
	Sure.
	Can you tell the listeners about your experience at Disneyland and how God taught you about the demonic through an amusement ride?
	Yes, yes, I can tell a story.
	One of my favorite stories.
	Oh, it's a good one.
	It's a good one.
	I like it a lot.
	So, for those of you who have read the book, you know that from 9 to 12 experienced a lot of demonic torment, attacks every night and seeing scary stuff.
	And, you know, even though I saw a lot of bad stuff and it got increasingly bad as time went, the real part that was hard was not necessarily just what I was seeing, but just this feeling of fear that came along with it.
	It was really overwhelming.
	But when I was 12, I went to a church that knew about the prophetic, and at least had a, there was no one else there who saw in the spirit the way that I did, but they at least had a context for it.
	And so, as soon as I discovered that what I had was a gift, and, you know, discovering that also gave me the courage to really tell my family what was going on, because I had been not really letting them into all of it, just because that was, I just didn't understand it myself.
	That fear stuff broke completely.
	And even over the course of one week, and even in that week, it didn't have any of the sting that it used to.
	Now, it would still try to come back like once every six months, once every year or so.
	But, you know, either through praying or just even sometimes choosing just not to engage with it.
	I would, you know, overcome that, and it would never last longer for one, maybe two nights at the most.
	But even to that point, there was sometimes I would run into something.
	Now, because of my experience, like, never really liked horror movies or, you know, most scary things, just because it would trigger those feelings again, and I just didn't really like that.
	But sometimes, every now and again, there would be something that triggers that feeling that would otherwise not necessarily be related.
	Like, you know, a horror movie, that's kind of obvious.
	Something that is just not directly related, but still triggers that feeling.
	And so, this one time, I discovered this when we went to Disneyland.
	Now, we lived in Southern California, and when you're a local resident, you can get, like, season passes and things like that for very inexpensive.
	And so, I was homeschooled at the time, so rather than, you know, doing P.E.
	or things like that, we went to Disneyland all the time.
	Which is a great plan.
	So, and especially once I had a car, you know, I could take my sisters regularly.
	And, you know, since we lived about, you know, 15, 20 minutes away, we could just drive, go on a couple rides, and go home because we had these, you know, relatively inexpensive passes.
	And my favorite ride at Disneyland, without question, is the Indiana Jones ride.
	Super cool.
	I always liked the Indiana Jones movies when I was a kid.
	It's got this big, crazy temple and everything.
	You go in this big Jeep and bounce around, and the music's playing, you know.
	All the fun stuff.
	But there was this one spot on the ride that would always just freak me out.
	It would just totally trigger the exact same feelings that I had.
	And if you've ever been on the ride, it's towards the end.
	And there's this, you know, you're having a little adventure on this Jeep and your Jeep, you know, quote on steer quotes here, uh, breaks down in front of this very large snake and the snake kind of lunges at the car, the car lunges at the snake and then, you know, zip off to safety.
	And, you know, again, I was 16, 17, 18 years old.
	And so I knew this was a ride.
	I knew this was fake, but for whatever reason, Every time we'd come around to that snake, it would just really trigger that feeling of fear, and I'd have to close my eyes.
	And, like I said, we'd go all the time, and this was my favorite ride, despite that one part.
	And so, every single time, I would be, you know, I would be convinced, like, this time, I'm gonna keep my eyes open.
	This time, I'm gonna keep my eyes open with the snake part.
	And we'd loop around the corner where the snake was.
	I'd catch the look of the snake for one second.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	Close my eyes.
	Close my eyes.
	You know, forget it.
	Maybe next time.
	And that's what happened again.
	I can't even tell you how many times I would, you know, all right, I'm going sometimes multiple times a day because, you know, we'd go in the middle of the day when there's very few lines.
	I would get to that spot.
	All right, this time I'm for sure, I'm keeping my eyes open.
	Nope, I had to close my eyes.
	It was nice because it would just trigger that feeling of fear so strongly.
	I mean, and it was embarrassing because I was like 17, maybe 18 at this point and like I'm here with my two little sisters who are laughing the whole time and maybe a little bit laughing at me because it just gets me every time.
	And so one particular day, I finally got a breakthrough the hard way, is the way I would say it, which was I We're going on the ride, normal day, middle of a Wednesday or whatever, and going through the ride, everything's awesome, you know, bumping around, having a good time, and then we come around to the part with the snake yet again.
	And once again, I'm gonna keep my eyes open.
	Once again, I see it for a split second.
	Nope.
	Closing my eyes.
	Closing my eyes.
	I'd been on the ride enough and closed my eyes at this part enough that I knew the exact bumps and, you know, okay, this is us bumping up to the snake, this is the Jeep breaking down, this is us lunging towards the snake, and this is us drying off.
	Like, I had the rhythm of it memorized, so I knew when I could open my eyes.
	Bend.
	We're pulling up.
	The music's going, da da da da da da da da do.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And the ride breaks down right in front of the snake.
	In fact, it breaks down in mid-lunge towards the snake.
	And then all of the lights go out.
	All of the lights, except for, and I kid you not, the light that is shining on this horrible And I'm sitting here, and it's a very weird experience because everything physically is panicking.
	My heart is beating.
	My blood is pumping.
	I am hyperventilating.
	My brain is screaming at me, like, this is fine.
	The ride is broken.
	Rides break all the time.
	This is just a dumb ride.
	But I'm freaking out.
	My heart is beating.
	This is just a ride.
	It's broken.
	They're going to fix it in two minutes.
	It's fine.
	It's not a big deal.
	It's a big rubber snake.
	But still freaking out, panicking, panicking, panicking.
	And then the lights come on.
	Now, not the fancy like, you know, strobe lights and colored lights that they use when the ride is running.
	These were like the maintenance lights.
	They were just big, you know, just fluorescent.
	Like warehouse lights?
	Warehouse lights, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And it came on just as they were fixing it, I assume.
	And I looked around and, you know, like I said, this was my favorite ride.
	It was a cool ride.
	But I was shocked at how different it looked with lights on.
	You could see that you were just in a big warehouse and these were just, you know, standard warehouse lights.
	You know, I could see the track that the Jeep ran on.
	I could see the, you know, the volcano that you drive past.
	It looked pretty good, but with the lights on, I realized that it was, you know, literally just this big papier-mâché-looking volcano with tissue paper and a box fan underneath to make it look like fire, you know.
	Yeah, it looked okay when you're zooming by, you know, and all the lights are flashing and everything, but it, you know, with the lights on, it just looked silly.
	And so then I turn and I look at the snake.
	And, you know, I could see that it's made out of just, you know, cheap foam rubber.
	I could see, you know, they didn't even hide it.
	I guess they used the lighting to hide it normally, but I could see the machine that made the snake work.
	I could see the hydraulics that made it function.
	I could see that, you know, the foam rubber was peeling away from some of the mechanics on the bottom, that the, you know, one of the teeth was a little bit cracked, you know, just from wear and tear.
	And, you know, even the color and the paint of the snake didn't look quite as good.
	It must have been, you know, some kind of fluorescent paint that they had shown a black light on normally or something.
	And, you know, eventually, three, four minutes later, the lights go back down, you know, the normal ride lights come back up and fix whatever the problem was, and we finished the ride.
	And from that day forward, I've been able to ride the Indiana Jones ride with my eyes open.
	You know, I love that story just because it so encapsulates at least my perspective and my experience around especially demonic and especially demonic fear, torment, which is the enemy wants you to see the world with the light just right, with
	From his angle, where you're seeing things from the perspective that he wants you to see them, with the dramatic music, with the rush, with the speed, with the feeling of the need to hurry.
	With everything just in the right angle, just the right lighting.
	And we, because the interesting thing is I knew, obviously, that it was a rubber snake.
	I probably could have guessed what kind of machine ran the snake.
	You know, I probably could have made a pretty good estimation about how everything works without that experience, but I hadn't yet experienced how it worked.
	And, you know, I think sometimes we try to logically, you know, convince ourselves we shouldn't be afraid.
	We even quote good, right, correct scripture that, you know, God has not given us a spirit of fear.
	But if that's just something that we think is true, that we have not yet experienced, and we don't necessarily have We don't have a revelation, we have an idea.
	And so, the beautiful thing is that we have the light of the Holy Spirit who can shine the light on all of this stuff to show you what's really going on, to show you what's going on from His perspective.
	This is an encouraging story in a lot of ways, but one thing I do like to highlight with it is I do get a lot of people talking to me that say, well, I don't want to see in the Spirit because I'm scared of seeing the bad stuff.
	And, you know, even though I experienced a lot of, you know, fear and torment at a young age, I've never once been scared of anything that I have seen while in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
	You know, even though I've seen bad stuff, and I've seen bad wounds on people, or demonic things, when you are seated where you're supposed to be, as a son, as a daughter of God, in His presence, you see that stuff in the right context.
	And it's not this big scary monstrous thing that's going to get you.
	You can see the mechanics.
	You can see how this is all mostly a show, you know?
	And so, yeah, I like that story because it's funny and also it illustrates how much breakthrough we can get just by letting the light of the Holy Spirit shine on the things that we're seeing.
	Yeah, I love that story.
	When I first heard that story on the podcast on Bethel Atlanta, I thought, wow, I would love to hijack that story and share it with people.
	And now I got you to tell it to my audience, which is cool.
	It illustrates so many amazing things about God and about the kingdom of darkness.
	You know, the kingdom of darkness wants these demonic things to look bigger than life, wants us to be in fear, Wants us to be in torment.
	I probably get more questions from people who struggle with fear and anxiety than just about anything else.
	Yeah.
	And a lot of that comes down to part of what helps people deal with fear and anxiety is emotional healing.
	I have found if you walk people through some emotional healing and deal with the wounded parts of their soul, that helps deal with fear and anxiety.
	And the other thing is, It's all about seeing things from God's perspective.
	Let the Holy Spirit show you His perspective, His truth, which shows you that, you know, the enemy is not quite as formidable as you think he is.
	He's just a lot of times just bluffing.
	So, I do appreciate you sharing that.
	I have one last question for you, if I could ask this before we go.
	You wrote in your book, That you would sometimes see, and this may actually be a couple of questions.
	I think you're the one who said you have seen in churches, you have seen piles and piles of, I don't remember if it was gold or money, things that represented finances.
	That seemed to lay there and not be utilized and like you're in a church that's very poor and you see in the spirit all these things that represent wealth and prosperity that seem to not be, people are not apprehending it.
	Mm-hmm.
	You have also, I think, I remember you talking about seeing angels carrying vats and buckets of like oil, healing oil and things of that nature in different church services.
	You've also, I remember this, and sorry, you wrote in the book about seeing demons getting decapitated by angels with these big swords and knives and stuff.
	Mm-hmm.
	Can you talk a little bit about those things and what, if any, revelation God has given you about them?
	Yeah, certainly.
	Honestly, it's one of the subjects that's closest to my heart.
	I just touched on it briefly, I think even in kind of almost a rant in the veil.
	That's actually what the core theme of the book that I'm working on right now.
	is about.
	So I am excited to be able to expand on that concept.
	But one of the ways that I talk about it there is, you know, people sometimes ask me like, oh, is it hard to see in the spirit?
	And, you know, I would say that it is, not usually for the reasons that people think.
	You know, the worst things that I see, the hardest things to see for me are not demonic stuff, It's not when I see people with wounds.
	Because I can feel God's answer for all of those things.
	You know, the things that are the most painful for me to see is how abundantly God has provided for His people, not just financially, but emotionally, with peace, with purpose, with direction, with all of these things, and how much of that abundance just sits on the table because we don't know or don't believe that we can grab it.
	And, you know, for me,
	Ultimately, I'm giving away the ending of my new book before it comes out, but what it comes down to for me in the core part, again, the application of it is something that is manifold, but the core part is that we need to actively engage, in my opinion, perpetually for the rest of our lives with an ever-growing revelation of just how good God is.
	And as simple and how easily, you know, most Christians, if I say God is good, they will say something like, all the time.
	You know, as easy as it is to agree with the idea that God is good, I think that He is so good that unless we're perpetually growing that revelation, we will, in some way, form, or fashion, limit our ability to experience that goodness, simply because we're unaware of it.
	And as a very simple practical example, I think healing is a great example, because I've prayed for hundreds of people to be healed at this point.
	I've seen a lot of healings, but I've seen a lot of it not happen, which I'm sure has been a similar experience for yourself.
	And most people who pursue, you know, supernatural physical healing.
	Now, every single time I've ever prayed for someone, I have seen the healing available.
	100% of the time, without question.
	It's different every time.
	Sometimes I see it on my own hands.
	Sometimes I see it on the person I'm speaking to.
	Sometimes there's an angel that brings it.
	Sometimes it's just flowing around the room so much that you could hardly miss it.
	Now, sometimes I can see the reason why someone doesn't get healed.
	I can see an active bitterness, an active unbelief.
	But other times, I don't see anything that should stop or block or inhibit this healing, and it still doesn't happen.
	And sometimes I see a long list of things that ought to block this healing, and it does happen.
	And so, again, most people that I know that have pursued healing have experienced some of these frustrations.
	But to me, if I, you know, this is kind of stealing from some Bill Johnson quotes and concepts, but like if I lower my expectation of God's goodness to my level of experience, I have set the ceiling on what my experience is going to be or how much of his goodness I'm going to receive because I'm not going to chase after it like there's more available.
	take the risk of praying for that person.
	I'm not gonna, you know, even for me personally, I wouldn't have taken the risk of praying.
	Like I have always with healing and things like that really struggled with the concept of, well, if they don't get healed, then they're not gonna feel loved and that feels bad.
	But you know, I've gotten to the place now where it's like, ah, I am limiting my belief and view of God's goodness.
	If I'm going to not chase after this, like it's really there.
	And even though that involves taking risk, the potential loss is well worth the risk.
	And so, you know, I think that's a big part of it.
	I see this with spiritual warfare all the time, that we view our place in the world as being small and, you know, you got to kind of, you know, if you can dodge demonic stuff and stay away from this and stay away from that and, you know, not rock the boat too much, you'll maybe get out fine, you know, rather than being ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven, you know, with the weight and authority that comes with that.
	And so, to me, it does boil down to, like, if I am in a perpetually growing revelation of God's goodness, then I have set myself up internally for a perpetual experience, a perpetually increasing experience of that goodness.
	Yep, I would agree.
	You know, I'm just going to share this with you.
	It's something that God taught me about healing and the dynamic that's going on when people aren't healed.
	So I had this dream, you know, two or three years ago.
	God just speaks to me through dreams a lot.
	So I had in this dream, I was praying for various people to be healed.
	I was in the emergency department at a hospital.
	I was praying for a doctor.
	I think he had arthritis in his elbow.
	I was praying for a small child and I was praying for a third person.
	And in the dream, I knew that the main thing God wanted me to do was to have the person feel his glory, to feel his presence.
	So in the dream, I was like, Lord, bring your glory, bring your presence.
	And I was praying for them to be healed, but I was also inviting his presence so that they would feel him.
	And in the dream, I knew, I just knew that I knew that Having them experience His glory was the main thing he was concerned about.
	Physical healing was secondary.
	And when people ask me, aren't people gonna be disappointed if they're not healed?
	Are they gonna be, you know, turned off, say God's not real, you know, they weren't healed.
	If God really cared about me, you know, why didn't He heal me?
	Well, what the Lord has shown me is, look, you're an ambassador.
	The main thing that I want you to do is introduce me to them.
	I will touch them with my presence.
	They will feel my glory.
	Don't worry about whether they're physically healed.
	I'll take care of it from there.
	You do the introduction.
	I will manifest my presence on them.
	And then when you're gone, I will take it from there.
	I will follow them around.
	I'll give them dreams.
	I'll speak to them.
	So for me, that takes the pressure off of the person's not healed.
	I'm like, well, everybody that I pray for, they feel God's glory.
	They feel his presence.
	They feel the warmth, the tingling.
	They feel the weightiness of his glory.
	And whether or not they get healed, I don't worry so much anymore.
	I know they're gonna feel his glory when the experience is over.
	And for me, that makes it worth it.
	Yeah.
	I definitely would agree with that.
	Well, hey brother, I'm gonna let you go.
	I know you've probably got stuff to do.
	I gotta get out and make my wife some breakfast here.
	Awesome.
	Blake, it has been awesome talking to you.
	Do you have a title for your second book yet or no title yet?
	I have a tentative title.
	We're still, I haven't gotten that fully approved by Charisma, which is now part of the process, which is interesting.
	So we'll, I'll probably wait to share that until we get that nailed down.
	Well, hey, when the second book comes out, I guess I get to have you back on the podcast.
	Oh, I'd be happy to.
	I'm very happy to.
	Because I have more stuff I want to ask you about.
	I enjoyed it thoroughly.
	I'd be happy to do it again sometime.
	That would be great.
	I know that, you know, the listeners would love to have you back on the podcast.
	Blake, thanks for being on the show with us.
	Do you have any last words you'd like to leave with the listeners?
	Yeah, if there's one thing that I would want people to receive from, you know, my stories, my experiences, and the stuff that I put out there, is that there's more out there, and God wants to take you there.
	And he wants to take you there as your dad, showing you how his business, and how, by extension, your business works.
	And so, just keep pressing in, and keep following him there, and he'll take you to places that you couldn't believe.
	Awesome.
	Good words to end on.
	Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
	This is Praying Medic.
	Catch you on the next podcast.
	I'd like to thank you again for dropping by.

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