Sondra Martin Hicks
Mike, as I understand it, you have seen literally 1,000s of miracles all over the world over the last 25 years. Is that right?
Mike Endicott
Yes, that's absolutely right.
Sondra Martin Hicks
Well, so many of us pray for people, and we don't see those kind of results. Could you just tell us how you got started? And have you always prayed this way? Are you doing something different? Or why are you seeing such great results?
Mike Endicott
I'm doing something very different. I think 20, maybe 23, 24 years ago, up until then, I had been praying like, everybody does, and seeing some results, but not much, but some nice ones and mostly to do with emotions, and relationships and memories and things like that. But very little, physical stuff. Then one day, a lady who was working on my team, gorgeous lady, she and her husband working for me, her name was Shirley and she contracted lung cancer in her 40s. By then I had been really on every course you can imagine that the church could dream up for people to go on who want to learn how to pray effectively. We threw everything at that poor lady, we I mean, I haven't got time to list it all now.
But you think of what you ought to try and clear out to make room for God. We did it and, and eventually she died. I was very unhappy, miserable about that, you know, a huge sort of effort of prayer went in, I mean, 1000s of intercessors going like crazy. Well, we have the loss, and nothing happened. Then I was lecturing, actually, in a large tent, I mean, sat 70 people, I think that sort of size. One day and I had this prepared speech, which is all to do with healing, theology, and all this sort of complicated stuff, which I had learned from other people. And I went through it, and I got to the end. And that was very nice. And they all said, Thank you, and they left. And that was good. And then I had to do it again in the afternoon to a fresh audience. And during the lunch break, I was praying, eating a sandwich and saying, Lord, I can remember it very well.
You know, the way the church does this, to be honest with you, Lord doesn't appear to work that well. Compared so do you think you could possibly show me how Jesus did it? That that was prayer was meant with silence, except when the next lock came in, because it's half the same lecture and the 70 came in and sat down, then they bought more chairs in, they were sitting on the floor, in the central aisle, you know, on the carpet there. Two rows up the middle, across the front, either side of me, on the platform in me around the back, they opened up the back of the tent, because it was a pretty hot sort of day. And there's a bank outside and two rows of people sitting on the bank. And I thought what on earth is going on here?
Anyway, starting I got my mouth opened to give this big lecture and absolutely dried up. It wasn't a word came out of me. It's the first time that's ever happened. It was horrible. You know what it's like when you get a little word in the back of your mind sometimes and this little word in the back said, Tell them about Jesus. Well, where do you start? I mean, gosh, so I just stood up and said, I know a couple of things about Jesus. One is he never actually refused to heal anybody. He might have hesitated once or twice, but not for more than a minute. He never made excuses for not doing it like you're too old, you're not a good enough Christian or something, never did that. Always said yes to everybody who came to him. Second thing I know is that Jesus said that he was only doing what He saw the Father doing.
So it must be that the only way you can look at that logically is to say, well, you know, therefore Jesus wants to see healed everybody who comes to Him. Which tantamount is not what happens in our ordinary prayer life. So the third thing I offered them really was as far as I know, Jesus is still alive. And so who wants a miracle in their lives this afternoon? I said that and I thought, Oh, what have you let yourself in for Michael. I was sort of praying, you know, silently for a trapdoor, and the arms came up waving in the air, and it must have been, well, they must have by then there was about 100, and over 100 people in that tent, that are crammed in waves going around like a, like a cornfield, you know, in the wind. And so we started to work with them.
But the amazing thing is that we never actually prayed for anybody because they were presenting problems, I wouldn't know how to pray about them, you know? And people walking up to us and just tell him and say, Oh, thanks, that's lovely, I feel is much better, you know. And we all we don't smile at them. So I don't know what was happening. I hadn't got a clue what was happening. But but there you are. I think at the end of the day, about a third of all the people we prayed with received a significant improvement in their condition that afternoon. People say, Oh, gosh, that's an awful lot, you know, but actually, it's not when you when you get into the kingdom of God and praying, you know, in Kingdom ways, what you find is that that's pretty low figure really, for a gathering like that. It's normally much higher than that.
Sondra Martin Hicks
What stood out to you that day?
Mike Endicott
Oh, Sondra, what really, I hadn't realized it, then it did take weeks and weeks for me to click, you know. Is that what I've actually done is done it the way that Jesus taught His disciples to do it, because they didn't go on all these training, courses that died, come on, they hadn't traveled the country looking for residential retreats where they can be taught something by the good and the great, they just walked around with Jesus. And when he sent them out, to train them, he just said, look, the only thing I want you to do is to just proclaim the good news of the nearness of the kingdom of God, and heal the sick, that'll do. And off they went.
That's the sum total of the training, I suddenly realized that because King and kingship and kingdom is all the same word, really, depending on your translation, I found that what I've actually done is saying, you know, Jesus hated everybody. Jesus only did what the Father was saying to do and Jesus is still alive. Therefore, all I was really doing was proclaiming the great good news. The kingdom of God is here and working. What I done was to follow very precisely the training that Jesus had given to His disciples. That's what we carried away. That's what we began to work on and study. That's what we began to throw out all the old stuff and training we've been given and gone from great events to great events ever since.
Sondra Martin Hicks
Okay, so you know, there's a lot of talk now about how the body of Christ is moving kind of from a churchy religion more into the kingdom age. It sounds kind of like you're already on to that. So as a Christian, how am I to walk in this kingdom of God instead of religion? How do I walk in this kingdom of God in prayer?
Mike Endicott
That's a big subject, really is. But um, the trouble is, we have to try and keep it simple because Jesus says if you don't, I mean, I paraphrase his expression, but if you don't look at it, like a six year old, you'll miss it. So we've got to avoid being complex and complicated about it. But basically, you start from the realizing new things, that you might not realize before we might not have done. The first thing that I want I want us to realize is that we are all part of what I call the royal succession.
You may be aware for example, that in the UK we've got a new king that's because he's in the line of succession from his dear mother who died last year, the queen so he is now, being the eldest son, has become what I call royal sufficient. Now, let's have a look at this in God's terms and just understand where we are. Now this applies to absolutely everybody. This isn't something for me. Absolutely everybody, right? This is how it works.
The Father sent the Son, okay, into the world. Now what happens then is the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. And then what we know is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have sent us. You see what I mean, there's a direct line down there. Yes. What we are actually called to do as Christians is to carry on with what Jesus was doing. Now the church should tap reset very nicely, really I hope, to hate to sound cynical, but really, as long as we involved in sort of social justice programs and being nice to people, and so on, we're doing, you know, portraying God, but actually, Jesus spent most of his time teaching people to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God and healing the sick.
We are the direct line of inheritance of that. So it's very important for us to understand that we do have duties and responsibilities as it were, I mean, Prince Charles, who's become our king now has actually changed quite a lot in his approach to things he used to get upset about. And he's now behaving in a slightly different way. Because he's, he's taken on a slightly different role. And that's what I spend my life doing is trying to encourage prayer givers, to change, to improve to grow in their relationship with that flow, coming out of Heaven, of desire. So that's, that's the way that we do it.
Sondra Martin Hicks
Well, if I was frustrated with my prayer life, you know, I'd be all in or if I was not seeing prayers answered, I'd be all in. What if I'm the person who actually sees a lot of prayers answered, and I have a great communion with God, why would you encourage me to change the way I'm praying?
Mike Endicott
I wouldn't encourage you to change it because I don't think that's wrong. What I would say Sondra is that and believe it or not, that can be hugely improved. If you want improvement, you can have it. The reason is very simple is that what we need to do is to seek a closer and closer relationship with Jesus. You might think yours is great, folks and that's wonderful and I hope it is. But what we're seeking here is harmony.
The way that through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the way that Jesus wants to work with us is in partnership, in the deal, yeah, his authority, his power, we speak out the right words and get things going and then he got the power to do the business to demonstrate the kingdom. So it's very much a question of seeking harmony with Jesus. I mean, you know, it's just a question of whether you feel invited by this or not. I mean, everybody who's still married to their spouse thinks that they've got a good relationship with them.
But, you know, we all know at heart, these things can improve. And it's the harmony that needs to be once. There's a very simple reason for this. And that is that the greater the harmony between me and the Lord, the greater, the easier it is for him to work through me. Yeah.
Sondra Martin Hicks
How do I get tthat harmony? Do I say, Lord, what do I pray for? How do you want me to pray? What do you want to do here?
Mike Endicott
Yes. That's right. If your prayer life changes to not to please do this, please do that, your prayer life changes to what do you want me to do? What do you want to do next? But that that's a whole subject in itself, of course, is prayer. Because we're not always, if we're honest about it that good at listening and hearing what God has to say, we tend to travel on our feelings quite a lot, don't we? And that's not always great, but it's often is. So uh, no, I'm not trying to say that anybody's doing anything wrong, I'm trying to say is there's a massive leap forwards that we can all take, if we understand that harmony is key. I mean, the picture that I like to, I don't know, there's so many pictures.
For example, you know, our relationship with the world has got to be unchurched. Everybody has got to be the same as what I mean, we're moon's effectively, we're not suns, we're moons and we set out with the basic humility of realizing that we are not sources of light in the world. I am reliably informed that if you are bold enough to go out in the yard at three o'clock in the morning on a cloudless night, you can probably read the newspaper in the moonlight, you know, is that true? I have told it, it's that you can do that pretty much. But that's because the moon is is not looking specifically at what the moon does all it's like to stare at the sun. Yes, because it's focused totally on the sun. It just reflects, it bounces off into the world. So the moon in that sense, in the light sense is in total harmony with the sun.
The other way I often think about this Sondra, is now this depends on what country you're in as to what your sort of agricultural history is. So in the UK, before tractors and things, we used to use huge, great horses to pull plows and things. Some people use oxen, didn't they in those sort of, you know, earlier centuries. But the thought, you know, you can have a picture in your mind of a horse pulling a plow through a field and you can lean on the gate as it were in your imagination and watch that happen and think, gosh, you know, I'd love to do that. Because plowing the field is what the kingdom is trying to do in the world.
So let's get there and so right. Okay, horse, you're gonna stand over there, I will link up, you know, and get get the harness put on me and I'll start dragging it forward, if I can remember how the the big old horse did it, right. But that isn't the picture that God is after with his children. What he wants to do is to give you a picture of two horses, the big old one who has always done it and knows how to do it and that's easy and you, a sort of struggling filly I don't know what a young inexperienced oxen is, but but strapped onto it with a harness. Yeah.
For harness those of you whose spiritual think Holy Spirit, that's its job is to link you across so that you know, or you might decide it's good to step left step right, or to speed up a bit or slow down a bit, the better thing to do is to be harnessed and listen to very carefully what the big man is doing and go with him. And it's the two working together that achieve the result that we we need. Yeah. So harmony is what it's all about really is searching that seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you He said.
Sondra Martin Hicks
What do you think this might be, what say, the church in the West, maybe has kind of forgotten because it seems there's in some sounds, a falling away, because people are frustrated, they've been praying, they're not getting their prayers answered, things aren't getting better. They're stressed in the world. There's COVID, there's this, there's that?
And is it that we've been praying the wrong way? It's just God is here for us. We need you to do this God. And so you know, like if our loved one becomes ill, or someone important to you, the first thing you do is God, please heal so and so. We don't stop and say now wait, Lord, what's going on? What's the purpose? Is there a purpose? How do you want me to pray? Is this why a lot of people are getting very frustrated and saying, God just doesn't answer prayers so I'm out of here?
Mike Endicott
I think there's an awful lot to do with it, that there's no evidence, you see very little evidence that God actually exists. I mean, yeah, we're in an I want world, aren't we? I think there are other reasons why people stay away. But just imagine what the church would look like if it was all about the business of what I call, Level One Christianity instead of level two, three, and four. That we are actually out there, and inside our own churches proclaiming the good news, and seeing the sick healed. That is one powerful church. You know, and I think that's absolutely right.
What's happened if you look back at the early church, or I don't know, up until about 300, I suppose 350 A.D., what you see is a society of people who still were basically a synagogue society, worshipping Jesus, but proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God to one another. And that's it. Keep your own personal skills and counseling skills and all these things. Leave them on one side, folks. Yeah. They just get in the way. Just allow God to be do it the way he wants to do it. It's actually much more powerful than the way we want to do it. So what I'm saying is that they did it that way. If you want to look it up, it's a lot of that comes from the back end the monks gospel where that's what they did, proclaimed it and God worked with them to see the partnership thing.
God worked with them, with signs and wonders to basically to prove that what you're saying is true. Right now unhappily, once Christianity became legal, in Roman Empire terms, is that we began to build something else, we began to build something that we call church. And it's really when the church began to grow, that our knowledge and sense of living in the kingdom, we began to lose it. So when we got the because the early church said, we are God on Earth, which actually was reserved more or less for the priesthood, not for ordinary people.
But so if you had something wrong with you, we'd go there and ask them to get in touch with God, because you assumed they were nearer, they told you that they were nearer to God, then you were, doesn't work so well. So what do you do? So the whole idea of things like pilgrimage came into being, there's nothing wrong with pilgrimage, but there's an assumption that God is more in some places than he is others is not exactly theologically nice. Then of course, the whole idea of saints came in. If that doesn't work for you, we'll pray that the saints have a personal saints you can talk to and all these things.
And so we began to develop techniques. And if you come on through the last 150, couple 100 years, techniques have developed and developed and developed and now it's the most complicated thing. It's all about, how do you get God to come down from his cloud, which is probably some few miles away? How do you get him to come down and help? So but we have forgotten, the one thing that two things we've forgotten, that follow from each other. One is that the cross is a victory, it is finished, it's complete.
What do they say it's completely finished. And once more, it's finished completely. I mean, it's a dumb thing. And what it's done, is it's enabled the grace of God to flow constantly into the world, which is quite contrary to what most Christians believe and understand from life. But it is the truth is in Kingdom terms, that grace is flowing all the time. The difficulty is that we've forgotten altogether had to catch it. The grace when it comes, so because we can't receive any more. Right? What happens is we miss it.
Hence the teaching of Jesus, which says, proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Because what you do when you do that, is that you raise people's expectation of God. And they will get their hands up as it were, they start to catch when that happens. And that's the one thing that Jesus taught us that we've forgotten completely, that you don't have to get God to do anything. He's done it all. It's called the cross. It's called Calvary, it's a total total success. It's all where the grace is pouring in. And what we forgotten is that we ignore that we just keep going back and back to heaven all the time. So please, God, do this and please, God do that.
Sondra Martin Hicks
Well, how do I learn to catch this grace?
Mike Endicott
Oh, well, that's the whole point, I suppose. It's not just that you learn to catch, but you need to learn to help people to catch if you see what I mean. And you do that through learning to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. Yeah, the way we pray these days is very, Sondra, like Santa Claus. You know? You know, when my sister and I were young, we used to sit in front of the fire with my mother about a week before Christmas, and she would ask us to write out on a sheet of paper, writing paper. Do you remember writing paper your hand back with a list of what we'd like? A list of what we'd like Father Christmas to bring us you know, on Christmas Eve. She would insist on reading them to make sure she said that our handwriting was readable by Santa Claus. And we had a brass toasting fork, you know, or I don't know 18 inches long. And we used to fold up the paper, the letters and put them on the end and then hold them in the fire just over the top of the flames. And it would go black and gray and turn into ash and go up the chimney.
There you are. It's on its way to Father Christmas. When you wake up on Christmas morning, whether you got that stuff or not, you don't just equate them back. I mean, you're thrilled if you do get something, but you don't equate back to your list at all. You know, rarely do you get what you want, because you normally asked for something much bigger and better than your parents can afford to give you. He said in hindsight, but that that is very like the way we pray, we list in our minds what it is we want, and then we do that, you know, offer the our wants less. So all the time, what we're doing is out of our compassion, or whatever we are trying to get God to do what we want all the time, we're not honest enough to admit that. But that's a large extent of our prayer lives. And a lot of that actually is about healing the sick. How do we, how do we start to advance in that?
The answer is we have to start being prepared to set aside all we know because actually, we know an awful lot, you know, but we got to learn to be totally honest with ourselves here. That God is not there for our purposes, we are there for his purposes. That's why we're here. So we need in our prayer life, the best way to start honestly of all, is to is to learn to pray privately with God and just say, Look, I'm gonna sit here and just tell you what I think of you, which is normally pretty good stuff. Then just tell me what do you want me to pray for? Then what comes into your head pray for it and start that way so that he begins to use you rather than you using him. And usually the results of that will start to improve immediately. Yeah.
