Most all the world knows the reputation of Jesus. He was God manifested as a man on earth who came from heaven, born of a virgin woman, free of sin. He did great miracles in His life and left behind many life-changing teachings that will continue to help all who believe in Him and follow His words. At age 33, He was crucified, died on the cross, and after three days in the grave, He was raised from the dead and returned to heaven.
His legend lives on even though most people do not follow Him as if He has risen. No matter how big the legend is, for most, Jesus is not remembered because He is not seen. If He’s not seen or remembered, it’s easy to follow other beliefs, including the world’s ideas. It’s easy to get caught in the idea that being faithful to someone is only profitable when that someone is right in front of you.
The thing is, Jesus is not away; He is here. It’s just that most people can’t see Him because to see Him; you have to be in the Spirit. A place that people either don’t believe in or don’t understand.
But I come with good news; Jesus is Alive, and I’ve seen Him. (More than once.) I’ve talked to Him, and He talked to me. He is real, and I’m convinced of it. I believe this idea is so real that when it came time to leave everything in my life for Him, I did it, and I did it with all my heart. Now I want to spend the rest of my life only telling people that Jesus is alive and He can change their life forever.
This is also why I named this website Alive4Us; I made sure to give it a name that represented Him through the eyes of His resurrection. He is not dead; He has risen and is alive for us so that we can be alive with Him and for Him forever. Every teaching that I write comes from a place of spiritual awaking that I received from the revelation of Jesus. I have no degrees to speak of. I don’t have years of schooling. What I do have is a visitation from Jesus Himself. His words are Spirit; therefore, they not only make Him spiritual but also make us spiritual. And that’s what I count on to be a witness for Him.
I’ve experienced Jesus in many ways. Through His word, Spirit, and voice. I’ve also seen His image in dreams and visions. I’ve talked to Him several times as He appeared to me through dreams and visions. All of these experiences were different, yet very similar, because they all pointed me in one single direction; gather all things that went out of His kingdom and bring them back into the body of Jesus Christ. If it belongs to Jesus, He wants it all back, restored into His family. One thing I’ve learned firsthand from Jesus is that He will not forsake anything that was given to Him by His Father. He loves it all, and His death and resurrection prove it.
The Spirit world is real.
It’s difficult to say that one particular experience with Jesus is the best; they all serve the will of God and represent what Jesus is there to accomplish. Just experiencing Jesus in person has changed my life forever, and I want to tell everyone about Him. That said, it’s hard to replace the first time Jesus appeared to me. It was then that I realized He was alive, and I could talk to Him in person. When I had this dream in 1998, it was the dream that changed my life forever, and I fell in love with God in a different way. I left everything to follow Him from that moment forward.
Some people say the physical world is the real world, but I believe in a better hope than this world. I’ve seen the new world in the Spirit, the beginning of creation, and even visited the consciousness I had before I was physically born. The spirit world is alive, and if we are going to be in God’s likeness, then we must understand that the world He lives in is real, just like Him. All of these things happen in the Spirit, not the flesh. Many believe their life began when they were physically born, but I’m very confident that we were alive well before that. (More on that later.)
My point is that Jesus is not a myth or a fairy tale. He is, however, a Spirit. A real living Spirit who is hidden from all who seek Him in the flesh. If you focus on the physical world, you look for Him in the wrong place. That includes His second coming as well. (I will be talking about that in future writings.)
Every time Jesus appeared to His followers after His resurrection, it established them greater in the faith and kept His testimony alive. His resurrection is the single most significant event that we have today because it not only forgives us of sin, it frees us from the captivity that flesh had on us. When He appeared to me, it resurrected my consciousness out of the grave to a new mindfulness of the Spirit. Once your mind is opened to the Spirit, you will experience many things you thought were impossible.
The impossible acts of the Bible make sense to me now. I’ve experienced many of those things in the Spirit, which makes the Bible come alive. The Spirit wakes up your Bible and you with it.
The lead-up to the first dream.
This is my testimony. It will not be the same for everyone, but if you seek God, He will give you your own that glorifies Him. Picture this; I was a preacher living in Rocky Mount, Virginia. I had recently finished a few classes at a small Bible School and was traveling and preaching in churches as what I thought was an evangelist. I hadn’t been one to dream much before that time, at least from what I could remember.
I began dreaming some terrifying dreams that started to show me that there was wickedness in my heart that I hadn’t discerned yet. Over time, I learned that I wasn’t who I thought I was in the Spirit. I was preaching and trying to do all the right things to please God in the flesh, but my heart was unclean. I didn’t know what to do with it or how to escape it.
These dreams began to show me that my actual sin wasn’t what I did in the flesh; it was what was in my heart. I began to see my need for God more clearly. When you can’t see what’s really in your heart, you will always judge your salvation after the things you do in the flesh. I learned that God was after something more important than my flesh. He was after the inward man and wanted him to repent and be saved, which is something I had not done yet, at least with the right intent behind it.
Growing up in church, I wasn’t a stranger to repenting. If you were like me, you repented a lot growing up because of struggling with sin. But God was about to teach me how to repent in the Spirit, which is something I knew nothing about. I loved God and committed to living for Him for the rest of my life. But it became clear that there was a spirit world that was unknown to me. My dreams revealed that. My daydreams and imaginations also revealed that. They told me the true nature of my heart, but I still didn’t have an answer yet on what to do about it until one night when I saw Jesus for the first time.
The first time I saw Jesus.
In my dream, I was in my house and heard sirens going off outside. I ran out my back door onto my deck, looked in the distance, and saw a house on fire. Something caught my attention on my right side, and as I turned, I entered into a vision (Within my dream.)
I was no longer on my deck outside my house; I was in a spiritual place. In an instant, I knew I was in a heavenly place different from my earthly home. Jesus appeared before me. His appearance was like a bright light. His clothes was like a royal garment. His face was all lit up with glory, and I was captivated. He was celestial, which means not only heavenly but also intangible. He couldn’t be contained as you would contain tangible flesh. He was the most beautiful image I had ever seen. When I saw Him, I immediately knew I was guilty of sin. Not guilty in a condemning way; it was more like He was so gloriously righteous that it revealed my sin and my need for Him.
I dropped to my knees and began to repent and tell Him I was sorry. (Although there would be much more to learn about what was in my heart, this was the first time I repented the right way. My repentance wasn’t only a confession of the mouth. I understood the righteousness in Him that I was not previously aware of before I saw Him. Through that understanding is how I was able to repent and worship Him.) He put His hand on my head, and my sin left me. He forgave me, and I knew it. It was the greatest love I had ever felt.
The dream changed, and I was now in what I thought was my backyard or what appeared to be a field. There was a mother there with her children. Her children were reckless and disobedient, refusing to acknowledge her. Jesus appeared as a man on the earth and sat with me watching them. He wasn’t much to look at in the flesh, but I could see His glory because of the vision. I knew He was my friend. He went to the mother, spoke to the children, gathered them together, and brought them to her. After that, He comforted them with her with many words. The dream ended.
This dream changed my life forever. First, it taught me that Jesus was alive and that my interaction with Him would be different going forward. It also revealed a world in the Spirit that I was completely unaware of, even though I preached the Bible as if I knew of it. Another big reveal was forgiveness. After that, I learned that I didn’t have to ask for forgiveness all the time. Once the understanding of righteousness revealed my sin, I was forgiven. That still applies to me today. (Once you understand forgiveness, it’s not that the sins of the flesh don’t exist, it’s that when they are revealed and you understand them, you immediately turn from them and are forgiven.)
Lastly, after I saw Jesus in that dream, my desire to see Him again increased significantly, which I will also expound on later. Over the next twenty years, I would see Him and talk to Him on different occasions. Each time, a new revelation opened my understanding of Him and myself. All of these visits were awesome, and I’m sure I will share them in time. For now, I still want to say with a loud voice; Jesus is Alive! The resurrection story is true. He is a living, quickening Spirit coming for all who belong to Him. Amen.
Jesus is all the evidence I need.
The most significant effect His appearance had on me over the years is the love it created in me for God and all of His kingdom. It put a big desire in me to see Him again and experience His presence through the face of Jesus. Because of that, I sought Him with more fervor than ever. Seeing Him alive created a desire to not only live for Him but to live ONLY for Him. Being in His presence puts you on a journey of becoming one with the entire family of God, and I didn’t want to miss out.
I know the world works hard to dismantle the physical evidence of the Bible while Christians work hard to prove its existence. But maybe we, as Christians, don’t need to gather physical artifacts to prove the Bible is historically true. As Christians, we need to experience Jesus in a real way. A way that is spiritual and doesn’t depend on the flesh to prove His existence. A way that’s not built on feelings and emotion but true faith.
I don’t need any physical evidence to tell me Jesus is Alive. Seeing Him is all the proof I need. The way that He changed my life and removed sin and death from my heart will last for all eternity.
In our ministry, we have one gospel to preach; Jesus has risen from the dead, and He is Alive. Everything we preach depends on this one truth. If you haven’t seen Jesus alive for yourself, stand with us, we’ll share everything we have with the sons of God.
I’ve learned that Jesus has not abandoned us; He is not a myth. Jesus is real; I’ve learned that He wants all of us to know it. Everything in His Bible that He says will come to pass is happening now or will happen within each of us. So whether or not you’ve seen Him or believe He is real, believe the ones who have seen Him and follow them. Let’s experience this journey together.
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