Our Guest Michael Maiden
SID: Now, my guest, Michael Maiden, says all believers can prophesy. How can you be so certain?
MICHAEL: Well, first of all, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, that all can prophesy. Joel prophesied about the Holy Spirit being poured out and sons and daughters, and old men and young men, everybody, every generation can prophesy. It’s part of God’s great gifting to us through the Holy Spirit.
SID: Well, what is your experience when you teach people that have never heard such things? Give me an example when you teach, as far as the percentage of people that begin to prophesy.
MICHAEL: The book of 1 Corinthians 14 talks about, it says pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, and especially the gift of prophecy. I teach on that and then we have people pray for each other. I’ve done this around the world so many times, and 85, 90% of people feel like they’ve heard from God. They give someone a prophecy and there’s so much joy. The room erupts with satisfaction and joy when people hear God’s … Jesus said this in John 10, “My sheep know My voice, hear My voice.” So people find so much joy, and really excitement, when they know the Holy Spirit is speaking to them.
SID: Now, when people still say, “I did what you said, but I hear nothing.” What is usually the problem?
MICHAEL: Every Christian has heard God’s voice. In fact, probably every person. When we say we haven’t heard God’s voice, it’s because there’s other noise. There’s static, as you said, in our hearts that we have to calm down, we have to bring peace. When we’re at peace, we are best able to hear God’s voice. It’s so important for us to get to that place of peace, because that’s where we can feel and be led by the Spirit and hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. God’s speaking, sometimes people are in so much turmoil, or anxiety, or pain, or confusion they just can’t hear that still small voice.
SID: Oh, Michael, as I look at you now, you were very successful a while ago, but you got diagnosed manically and clinically depressed. How large was your church at that time?
MICHAEL: We had a church, about 4,000 people in 1995, and I was just so young. I was 37. Our treasurer, a local businessman, we had our accounts with him and he embezzled $20 million from us while we were building our building. We were building a 5,000 seat, 4,800 seat auditorium. So we were in the front page of the paper at, 10 times, headlines. I had 6 lawsuits, 15 concurrent attorneys. Our church attendance dwindled from 4,000 to about 150 people. I became seriously manically and suicidally depressed. I knew I was depressed because I was finishing my PhD in psychology, so we talking about the timing of the Lord. I was 37 and I thought my life was over, but Jesus healed me.
SID: Tell me what happened to your son while this was going on?
MICHAEL: Yeah, my oldest son started self-medicating. He was just a young man, 12 or 13, and we were homeless. So many negative things happened, and he started just trying to take care of his pain.
SID: Did you say homeless?
MICHAEL: Yeah. We were homeless for six months and we actually lived with people that were kind to us.
SID: That had to be such a comedown from where you were.
