Focus of Ministry
By Phil Scovell
It was
during 2003 when the Holy Spirit told me what I would be doing for the rest of
my life. It was nothing I personally had
ever heard of before nor was I innately skilled in the area He identified. Furthermore, the Lord did not "call"
me to an "anointed calling" as it is so often referred to by those
who are the "Anointed Ones," or the "Called." This implies, of course, that you may have had
a choice in the matter or, perhaps, you negotiated an agreement, somehow, with
the Almighty in order to reach an extraordinary harmonistic accord. My situation was totally unsolicited on my
part. What that means, in plain language,
is that I never would have chosen what He told me I was going to be doing. Let me explain.
Seated in
my small bedroom office one afternoon, I was studying some training material on
the subject of prayer and how it could be applied to someone suffering from
PTSD, which I was doing at that very moment, and it was my third time facing it
as a Christian. Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder is often attributed to war veterans returning home and facing
depression at various levels. It used to
be called shell shock or combat shock.
It simply meant that you had experienced horrible things which likely could
never be removed from your memory.
The general
psychodynamics of this disorder manifests in various ways. Sleep disorders, eating disorders, nervousness,
nightmares, anxiety, mood changes; all classified as mild. Even as a young boy, I heard of men my
father's age, coming home from war, with such behaviors over which they had no
control. For example, a World War II vet
walking down a street and, without warning, hearing a car suddenly back fire, and
they would instantly hit the ground just as they had done on the battlefields
of
On the
other end of Posttraumatic Syndrome Disorder, is erratic behavior, the hearing
of auditory voices, drug addictions, failed marriages, anxiety and panic
attacks, and not only suicidal tendencies, but some were even successful taking
their own lives for various reason. Yes,
it was all real. Now we know that PTSD
is much more widespread in society and it isn't restricted to war; not a
literal conventional war being fought, at any rate, but the war of the mind and
emotions.
"How
does it manifest in society?" Let
me briefly tell you my story. Then
search for, on the front page of my website, the title of "I Flew Kites
with Jesus," and more of the details of my story will be told as a
testimonial of what God can do through prayer.
On
I had
turned the final corner to our home. The
chill Iowa November winds and the fallen leaves from all the trees had turned
crunchy, and blew all around my feet as I turned uphill to my home. My feet suddenly stopped. Cars were parked in front of our home and
filled our gravel doublewide driveway. I
recognized most of the cars. I'd seen
them off and on for three weeks during the time my dad was in the
hospital. Additionally, since my father
was a lay preacher, we had company and visitors all the time. So what I saw was not abnormal. The wind swirled around me and I pulled my
jacket tighter. I was cold; so very cold
all of the sudden. I knew these people
were at my home because my dad had died.
Somehow, I was able to will my feet forward and kicked weakly at the
tiny tornado of dried leafs whirling about my ankles. I had no doubt that my dad had died just by seeing
all those cars parked there at my house all at one time, including our pastors,
and although dad and our pastor were close friends, something told me the news
was going to be only one thing; dad was gone.
Six months
later in early May, just a couple of weeks before school let out for the
summer, I began noticing faint brown spots in my right eye. I saw them when looking up at the puffy white
clouds and then back down to the dark green grass of the school's large
playground. They were so faint, I
couldn't detect them in my vision when seeing the dark green grass but with the
white clouds slowly drifting passed as a comparison, I could clearly see them. In the classroom, I saw them again by looking
from the blackboard, which a couple of years earlier had been changed to green
for some reason, but the green of the board was dark enough to create a stark
contrast between it and the white sheet of paper I held in front of me at my
desk. I told my mother. She, in turn, took me shortly thereafter, to
a retinal specialist. This was because
my father, a few short years earlier, had lost one eye due to his retina
detaching. Multiple surgeries simply
couldn't save the eye. He went blind but
soon his good eye started having the same symptoms I would experience later a
few short years distant. That retina,
after a couple of surgeries, was repaired.
He was able to read normally, with glasses, and he could drive normally of
course, with that one eye. What vision
he had, however, wasn't to last long because he died at the age of 46 when I
was 11 years old. In my case, neither of
my eyes could be saved after 13 major eye operations on my two retinas.
My mother
and I went to visit the surgeon in his office for the last time as he tested
what light perception I had remaining from my final surgical procedure. I could detect a small amount of light a few
feet away, although, when outdoors, the sunlight was so bright, it hurt the
watery scrambled mess through which I had to see. I could not walk alone and unassisted. As we left the hospital, I well recall the
crunch of the gravel under our feet when we walked over the parking lot to our
car. Mom walked me around to the front
passenger door and taking my hand from her arm where I held it, she wrapped my
fingers around the door handle. It was
hot from being in the sun most of the morning.
Mom climbed in after unlocking her side by reaching over to unlock my
door. , this was before seatbelts and
automatic door locks. As the car rolled
out of the parking lot, I now knew that I was legally blind.
We had
recently moved from
Some people often ask me when I
adjusted to my blindness. They are
surprised when I tell them, "I've never adjusted to it." First, this flies in the face of conventional psychological indoctrination our schools and
rehabilitation organizations, federally funded, teach. In the 1960s, I was even told what type of
job I should have as my career.
Preaching and teaching God's Word wasn't on the local governmental list.
Learning to cope was the main
psychological method of teaching you how to adjust, as it was called, to your
blindness and so it is even yet today.
It isn't just blindness; it is all forms of disabilities, handicaps, and
physical impairments. Forgive me for
using all the politically correct terms but I am trying to prove a point.
I heard a blind man once, who had
reportedly become successful in business, say during an interview on television
when the same question was put to him, "How long did it take you, sir, to adjust
to your blindness?" He thought for
a brief moment and then said, "About 10 minutes." I suppose he was trying to say that he was
smart enough to realize there were other things he could learn to do even as a
blind person. He was rite. He made millions selling a popular software
program written for the blind so, in short, if there weren't millions of blind
people to sell software to, what might he have done then? I was just thinking out loud somewhat sardonically,
too, so forgive me. At any rate, I have
not ever adjusted to my blindness nor do I ever plan on doing so. If you want to know why, it is based upon a
simple fact. I am a born again Christian. When I die, or, if you have ever heard about
the second coming of Christ, as a Christian, I will go with Christ when He
comes for His own. I will see better at
that moment than I did at birth. It sounds
like it will be worth the wait to me.
Additionally, I recently discovered something I can live with right now,
today, in the Bible: I wonder if you can, too, along with me, live with it,
that is.
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him;
for we shall see him as he is.” (John 3:2 AV)
Do you SEE it?
Let me get back now to the PTSD part
of who, and what, I now am.
As I said,
one very early spring day of 2003, the Lord told me what I was going to be
doing. Notice, I did not say, He "called"
me into a certain form of ministry. In
May of 1985, as I prayed for a couple of hours in my office one evening, the
Lord told me His will for my life. That
means, He told me, literally, what I was to do in His name. He called it being an
"intercessor." I didn't even
know what He meant. Oh, sure, I knew
what the word meant, at least partially, but it wasn't for another three months
before the Holy Spirit began revealing the nature of intercessory prayer, and
2003 before I learned exactly the nature of intercessory prayer in which I
would be ministering.
The year
2002, was the major experience of PTSD I experienced which largely related to
my father's unexpected and unanticipated death, along with my blindness. Yes, many other life experiences would be
factored into the mix and if you are interested, my website is filled with true
stories where I was healed by the Lord through the ministry of prayer and
largely, once I learned how to pray, on my own.
"What
is it that you do in the area of prayer?"
Since some
may be reading about this ministry for the first time, I will answer your
question. My recommendation, on the
other hand, is that once you've finished reading this article, is to logon, as
already suggested, to the front page of my website and find the link for,
"I Flew Kites with Jesus."
From there, go directly to the section entitled "Building the
To be
specific, the Lord told me to prepare to minister two those with Dissociative
Identity Disorder, (DID), or multiple personalities, and with women who had
been sexually abused. My first reaction
to this news was, "No way!"
First, I knew nothing about either one of these issues. Secondly, my seminary training had not
covered these psychological topics.
Third, and worst of all, I had no desire, to walk right into what God
had just said He told me to do. In
short, I was afraid and big time. He, as
always, wouldn't drop the subject. So I took
some basic training to at least know what these things were about and how
prayer could not only work for me but work the same for others by setting them totally
free from such suffering. To make a long
story short, I obeyed and did as the Lord said and went fulltime into the
ministry of intercessory prayer and the renewing of the mind.
Although
over the years, I have prayed with anyone, and everyone, regardless of what
their needs were when they called, I have recently felt the need to return to
what I was originally told by the Lord and that was, "You will be working
with women who faced sexual abuse and cases of multiple
personalities." These may be two
totally different issues but they often are found together.
"Why
move to more of this type of ministry?"
First, it
is exactly what the Lord told me to do in 2003.
Secondly, DID cases take longer because, as the intercessor prays
through areas of suffering with the infirmed, you need to be more available. Thirdly, more time is required after the
oneness of mind experience because the intercessor needs to remain available
for the person for often a year, if not longer, to pray through other issues
that were buried by the DID. Finally, I
spend more time with DID cases teaching and discipling them in how to walk with
the Lord in their new found relationship which is when they are minus the
psychodynamics of alternate personality fragmentation.
The way I
minister now is with anyone who calls. I
will still do that as I have time and when I don't, I will do my best to recommend
others to whom you can go for intercessory prayer. Keep the following in mind:
1. If we already have
prayer sessions in progress, nothing will change for you.
2. Those with whom I
have prayed in the past may still make contact for new appointments.
3. Yes, you may ask if I have openings regardless of the issues you may be facing right now, but please understand that depending on my availability I may need to refer you to someone else with whom you can go for intercessory prayer.
4. This
is also why I have placed "Building the
Additionally:
1. I am continuously
making available new teachings and regardless of what I teach, the elements and
methodologies of intercessory prayer will be present in various ways in those
free online audio recordings.
2. I personally have
some additional plans of conducting teaching sessions via conference
telephoning.
3. I may also be conducting
actual prayer sessions via the same method of phone conferencing so others can
learn by listening live.
4. I may likewise
include recordings of actual prayer session from which you may use to learn, if,
that is, I decide to implement and incorporate such recordings, with permission
only, of course, and a few other ideas of which I will share in the near
future.
Finally,
you may be wondering when this all begins?
The answer is, now, and if you have any questions, please email me.
Complete In Him,
Phil Scovell
Safe Place Fellowship International
Mountain Time Zone
Phone: 303-507-5175