You Can See in the Spirit with Michael Van Vlymen (Ep. 22)

0:00 Welcome to Global Outpouring. I'm Philip Buss and I'm Sharon Buss. We have a very special guest today on our podcast, Michael Van Vlymen, a man that is being used of God in a powerful way and he has come from a place of being just an ordinary guy, but pressing into God. God is using him to show us that we can see in the Spirit.

0:41 Well welcome Mike. I just am so happy that you are here with us. We've just had tremendous meetings over the weekend and we will put the links to our YouTube channel where you were our speaker for the weekend. We'll put them down in the show notes and people can get more of what they're going to get a little bit of today. You've been writing books because the Lord has been showing you things. How many books do you have? I've got 15 books so far. Wow, that's tremendous. I'm holding one, Powerful Keys to Spiritual Sight, and it's effective things you can do to open your spiritual eyes. You've also written How to See in the Spirit, How to Do Spiritual Warfare, Angelic Visitations and Supernatural Encounters, and what's that one about? Is it Supernatural Transportation?

1:33 Supernatural Transportation, yes. That was one that I wrote not too long ago. Well we're excited and you've been sharing some tremendous experiences that you've had and how you went from not seeing anything at all in the Spirit to where you're seeing a whole lot. God has given you a unique ability to explain things in a simple way and we appreciate that. Thank you. That's one of the things that we're doing here on this Global Outpouring podcast. We're talking about contending in the Spirit for the global outpouring and really the global outpouring is one by one. Each one of us gets our own outpouring of the Holy Spirit and equipping in the Spirit and then engaging. So you're engaging and you're equipping and you're contending and you've contended to get to this point. So would you share with us just a little bit about your childhood and how you got to this place where you began to really pursue God?

2:34 I would be glad to. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm really honored to be here with you and my story really begins like a lot of people's story. In church I was enamored by the Bible stories that I was hearing as a youngster and I wanted that kind of life that we were hearing about, the life where Daniel was saved from the mouths of the lions by the angels of the Lord and how David slew Goliath. I was totally enamored by those stories. I wanted that kind of life as a five-year-old but growing up in a cessationist church I realized a couple years later they explained that that was not available today for people that believed in Jesus. So it really sucked the wind out of my sails. It stole my passion at eight years old and really set me on a course away from the things of God and that was kind of my background starting out. But you know the great thing is the Lord is faithful.

3:41 Yes he is. So you grew up and you were kind of, were you even lukewarm? No, I would say I was disinterested. If I couldn't really be a part of what God was doing or what God had done I really was not interested in it at all. Even though I believed because I was taught to believe that Jesus is God and Jesus is our Savior and I asked Jesus to come into my heart back several years before I just did not have the passion to even be engaged with someone else's story. So I was just kind of disinterested going through even though my dad was a pastor of a church I did not have a passion for the things of God after I was told that I could not really be a part of it. But you know thank the Lord he is very faithful in revealing the truth to those that are looking for the truth and at a time in my early 20s I needed his miracle working power for my own deliverance and I cried out to him. He revealed himself to me in an overwhelming way and showed me that he's still the God of the Bible and still did the miraculous and I had my passion rekindled some 20 years later because of that.

5:09 So you had a tremendous deliverance. Yes I did. And you found out that Jesus is real and that his power is just the same as it was. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. And you kind of left behind that cessationist thinking. I didn't have a choice because God had revealed himself so powerfully in my life that I did not have a choice to even deny that what God was doing. I had met a charismatic man that prayed deliverance over me and he knew the secrets of my life and he knew what was going on in my life. He knew what I needed. I mean and it wasn't generic in any way. It was very specific the Lord had told him and it really showed me that God still is involved in our lives even though I was told that he's not actually involved like he used to be. And so once I discovered that then I was taught starting out by the same man that God still does the miraculous, angels still come to help us, the Lord Jesus still appears to his people and it really kind of set me on fire afresh to learn more about what I was supposed to do in my own life and how to engage with God and have that supernatural biblical life that we read about that I wanted that and the Lord was teaching me how to have that.

6:41 So what was the first thing that he taught you? Well the first thing that I believe he really taught me was that as believers we are powerful and we can see people set free. So that understanding of the authority that believers carry, he showed me that can literally change everything in a person's life. You can bring salvation and deliverance to a household because as believers we have authority to do so. The enemy can have people bound up, the believer can go in and begin speaking in power and authority and just change the course of someone's life. That was huge to me. I thought who would want to live any other way but serving the Lord and seeing people set free. So that was one, that was probably the first thing that I saw. The second thing that I began to see was the power of prayer and intercession. So even those that didn't want to be set free or didn't want to serve the Lord, many times, well the Lord showed me that many times people's, even though the Lord gives us a free will, many times their will is subverted by the enemy so that they can't even make a clear decision of their own. That's right. So the Lord showed me that through intercession and prayer we can free up the will of people so that they have the ability once again to make a clear good choice for their lives.

8:12 Yeah. The people in their right mind are going to make the right choice. That's exactly it. And the enemy is constantly trying to twist our minds so that we're not thinking clearly. We're not in our right minds. We're under deception. And the thing is a lot of people believe erroneously, I think, that if they have a loved one that's choosing not to serve God, they have the idea, well God gives them free will. That's their choice and many times it's not their choice. If you have a loved one or someone you know that makes a choice, would you like the nice delicious sandwich or the mud sandwich? And they choose the mud sandwich. It's not because they have a free will.

9:00 So people, if they have a free will, they will make the choice that benefits them. So somewhere along the line they gave in to, like they gave their will in a way. They did. And many times it's through friendships that develop, many times being in the wrong atmosphere and environment or other things that come upon a person's life that just gradually steals their will from them and they just begin to go in the wrong direction and can't seem to pull themselves out of it. But through the power of prayer and intercession, we can help those people be free.

9:40 That's right. Now isn't that what, there were three things that you said that brought you into a place of seeing and prayer and intercession. What was the third one? The third one was worship. Some of my most profound experiences in God have been born out of worship. And I've seen that the atmosphere of worship in and of itself can bring deliverance and change the atmosphere in a place just by the presence of God being manifest in that place. And worship definitely brings that atmosphere. God is enthroned on the praises of his people. And that's not just a metaphor or a beautiful poetic saying. That is an absolute truth. So when we worship, the presence of the Lord comes and anything is literally possible.

10:31 So those people that are contending for miracles, I know they've heard it said, worship the Lord, pray with a spirit of thankfulness that the Lord is changing things. And that's very true. Yes, it is. So you were pursuing God, but at the same time you were working a secular job. It's not like God had called you to be a pastor. Right. What were you doing? For the past 30 years, I've been fixing coffee machines and working for a vending machine company and repairing various types of equipment. So that was my full-time job. I worked 60 hours a week for as long as I could remember. And now I'm being called to really spend more time with the Lord. And it was challenging at first. It was and it wasn't challenging.

11:24 My spirit man was so overwhelmed and enthused, I wanted to spend as much time with the Lord as possible because I tasted his presence. I had seen his salvation. I'd experienced his deliverance. I thought, I don't want to live any other way. But on the other hand, I had my secular job that was eating up a lot of my life. But the Lord had to teach me how to navigate all that. But it's been quite a journey, that's for sure. So give us a couple of examples of things that you had to navigate that our listeners might have to learn to navigate. Okay. Well, you know, when the Lord first began to teach me about spiritual sight and why our eyes do not see as believers when we are supposed to see, the Lord taught me to spend more time in prayer coming before Him, not just to give Him my laundry list, but to wait upon Him to talk to me and give me revelation and the things He wanted to tell me. That was a new concept for me. Having grown up in a church where you basically, when you prayed, you gave your list of things to the Lord and then you went on about your way.

12:35 And that was prayer. That was prayer. And even in services, when the pastor would say, okay, now we're going to wait upon the Lord, usually when they would say that, it was no more than a minute or two minutes that that would even happen. And that doesn't even happen in all services. Yes, and that doesn't even happen. So the Lord was teaching me, no, I want you to come aside and be like David, where David says, on you Lord, I wait all the day. Is he being poetic? No, he's not. He's being accurate. He's being truthful that when you get in the presence of God, you will want to stay in His presence all the day, literally. So the Lord was teaching me that, but it's hard to do that and work a 60-hour job or even a 40-hour job. So the Lord had to teach me how to come aside and fit that into my normal life and actually make that my normal life to be aware of His presence all the time and not step in and out, but just to step into the Spirit and stay there.

13:42 Yeah. And then like you tried to do it in the evening, then what happened? I did. I tried to spend time waiting on the Lord in the evening and because, you know, the world is still going on in the evening time, phone calls would happen. People would call. The phone would ring. Noises, people knocking on the door. The kids had needs and they would, you know, even if I said, please don't bother me for the next hour, I want to spend that hour in prayer, you know, 20 minutes later, the kids would be knocking on my door or coming and whispering in my ear. So it was not working out too good, but… Distractions. There was too many distractions to really set aside that time just unto the Lord. And the Lord was telling me the importance, do not share this time with anything else, but dedicate this time to me. If you want to know the deep things of the kingdom, to know the secrets of God's heart, then you need to really give Him that time. And so the Lord led me to go to the middle of the night when everything is quiet, everything is shut down, and then to come before Him in that time when everyone is asleep and then we could have that time together. But that in itself was challenging.

14:59 Because you try and you got to get up the next morning and… Yes. He gives you grace, doesn't he? He does give you grace. That's one thing that I learned that the scripture that says those that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. And that is really true. And plus he taught me going forward because many times I would be so tired I would just go to wait upon the Lord in prayer and I would fall asleep. And I kind of felt condemned, but the Lord he encouraged me. My flesh was trying to condemn me. The voice of the enemy, well, this isn't working for you. This isn't something that you need to do. And even people that knew what I was doing would try and dissuade me. God doesn't want you to try that hard. God doesn't want you to really spend your time seeking Him. If He wants to find you, He knows how to find you. And just all kinds of crazy advice that has no basis in biblical truth.

15:59 And it was really just a distraction of the enemy because the Lord taught me that if I would wait upon Him in the night watch, He would meet me there. He would give me revelation. He would open my spiritual eyes and my spiritual senses. And He would show me the things that He wanted to show me and use me in the ways that He wanted to use me. Can I interject something? Go ahead. Yeah, well, after you gave this and been one of your messages, and I highly recommend you go to YouTube and hear these. Because I get up usually once or twice in the night and I thought, okay, I'm going to try this. I got up. And kind of like you did, I sat down there and, you know, I'm just being quiet. And I fell asleep, kind of woke up with a crink in my neck. But I felt I did this. You know, it was different than what I've tried before. You get up, you look at the clock. And so you automatically your mind thinks, well, I've only got like three more hours. I've got to get up. You know, I can't do this.

16:59 I'm going to bed. But you know, I did it. So it was like about an hour. And then I tried it again last night. You know, it was the same thing. You know, and a little bit more. But it just, it feels like it's starting to work. You know, even though maybe it doesn't look like, but it's the feeling like because you're doing it under the Lord and he's honoring what you're doing because it didn't happen to you overnight. Yes. How long did it take? Yeah. How long did you? That's, that's really true. The shift began to happen. And even though I wasn't really seeing the kind of breakthrough, I knew something was happening. But I, for a long time, I would fall asleep because I would be so tired. I would, my intention, my spirit man was willing, but my flesh was weak. I would fall asleep and I would tell the Lord, I'll try again tomorrow. And I did. I was, I was adamant and relentless that because I knew the Lord had met me in such a spectacular way. I knew that he was not going to kind of tease me by showing me what was possible than not giving it to me. He was going to honor my coming before him. I just knew that. And, but I kept falling asleep and then I would apologize to the Lord and say, I'll try again tomorrow. And this went on for a couple of months. And I remember one night as I was waiting upon the Lord, I fell asleep.

18:21 I woke up at two o'clock in the morning or so. And I said, Lord, I'll try again tomorrow. And the Lord said, what's wrong with right now? And I thought, okay, I'll try again right now. And I fell asleep again. And then I woke up an hour later and I said, I'll try again tomorrow Lord. And the Lord said, what's wrong with right now? And I did it again on the fourth attempt. When the Lord kept prompting me, don't give up, just keep waiting on me. On the fourth attempt, my physical body did not have the capacity to wake up, but my spirit man became fully awake. And I could see in the realm of the spirit, my spirit man was just came to the forefront of my being and the Lord could give me revelation and I knew what was going on. And I just realized that the Lord had given me a key for breakthrough to not allow the physical to dictate this journey that he had me on. So even though my body was tired, that I was to push past that, not striving, but just keeping in a position to offer myself again to the Lord and again and again. Because it wasn't something I knew I could try really hard and it's going to happen. I just had to make myself available and he would do the work.

19:40 Beautiful. So that's what I was seeing happen. Beautiful. You know, you mentioned a story, an experience where, you know, you had begun to see quite a lot already and you were often seeing demonic things. But there was one time in particular that I would like for you to tell the story about that really stubborn looking entity. Yes. Yeah, that was a really interesting thing. I was sitting on the edge of my bed at night and I was praying for the family before turning in myself. You weren't intending to sit up and pray at that point. No, I was going to just pray blessings over the family and safety over the family and then lay down and go to sleep. So as I sat there on the edge of the bed, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit, I'm sure, to look up by the doorway and I looked up by the door.

20:31 And there was a very tall, evil looking man and it was an evil spirit. And he had big horns coming out the side of his head like steer horns and they were very wide. And he was very wicked looking and he was very…he was glaring at me in a very menacing way. And I thought to myself, how did this thing get in my house? Because, you know, I know I'm a servant of the Lord. I know I'm seated in heavenly places. This is not right. This thing should not be in my house. And so I began to rebuke him in every way I knew how. And what happened was nothing. As I rebuked the spirit and rebuked him and rebuked him in Jesus' name and called for the blood of Jesus against him and all these things, he just glared at me. The expression never changed. And it threw me a little bit. Actually threw me a lot a bit. He just… It would be.

21:30 He just continued to glare me down and I'm thinking, I don't understand this. But after about 20 minutes, the spirit flew away. And behind where he had been standing, a vision, a spectacular vision opened up where the Lord showed me the destiny of my family members. And it was incredible and overwhelming. And it changed the way I prayed for my family. Which was what you were doing to begin with. Was, yes, exactly what I was doing to begin with. The Lord was giving me a revelation to help me to pray for my family. But the spirit was trying to block that. Because if you know how the Lord sees your family and he can show you their destiny and show you their future, you will pray from a different place. And the enemy does not want you to pray from that place of faith. So he was trying to block it. But I came to the Lord later and I asked him, I said, Lord, this is not right. I don't understand this. I know that I'm seated in authority with you. I know that I'm seated in Christ at the right hand of power above principalities and powers. How could this thing withstand me? He wasn't even bothered by the rebukes that I was handing out to him. And the Lord in his goodness and mercy, he just very gently instructed me that the enemy, the Lord told me, the enemy is a deceiver. He said that every time we speak, our words carry great power in the realm of

23:02 the spirit. And every time we speak, something shifts in the spirit realm. That's what the Lord told me. And he said, what happens is the enemy was maintaining an appearance as if your words had no power when exactly the opposite thing was true. That the enemy wants you to believe your words have no power because most believers, if they don't see a manifestation and answer to their prayer, they will stop. They will grow weary and they will stop. And the enemy, if he can just hang on for a few minutes, then he will not have to leave. He will not have to relent. But the Lord was showing me in that moment that our prayers are powerful and that we are not to stop ever because of the fact that we do have authority and our words are powerful, that we are not to relent, we are not to give up. Even if the enemy acts like he's not going to leave, he is going to leave, period. There is no question about it. So that was a great lesson for me. It taught me something about prayer.

24:10 Yeah, that was very significant to me. You've said a couple of words that I think are very significant and we say them all the time, but we don't necessarily think about what they mean. You use the word believer and it's so critical that we actually believe what we believe. And this lesson that you were just explaining has to do with actually believing what we believe. There are people who would call themselves believers, but they're not very strong in what they believe. No, and that really leaves them powerless to deal with the things of even everyday life.

24:53 They can come before the Lord in prayer and lift something up or pray about something without really believing God's going to answer their prayer or that they can do anything about it. It's like having a book of promises, and we do. We have a book of promises and covenants, but if we don't believe those covenants and we don't act on them, then we're powerless. We have to believe what the Lord has told us. If we're even going to engage in with the weapons He's given us to engage with, a person that does not believe is not going to continue on in prayer. They're not going to intercede. They're not going to even believe that they have the hope that things can change. It just shuts people down before they even begin if they don't actually believe. And that's why people need to stay in the Word, stay grounded in the Word, know what the promises of the Lord are towards His people, and know what we've been given. And if they meditate on the things that the Lord has given us, then we'll have a greater sense of who we are and what we're supposed to be doing and a boldness that you won't have if you're not in the Word.

26:09 Yes. It's so critical that when we're interested in getting into these supernatural things, and I think that that's one of the issues of why our churches have so few people and particularly so few young people that are willing to even come to services because there's no activity of the supernatural. They're not believing. They're not seeing any signs and wonders. They're not seeing…but in our pursuit of signs and wonders, we can get way off on the wrong track if we're not grounded in the Word. Oh, that is so true. Yeah, I've seen that the past few years especially as we teach a lot about things that are considered supernatural. And they are supernatural. They're miraculous.

26:56 Maybe that's a better word, the miracle-working power of God. But people, they get enamored. They do with the signs and wonders. And if they don't have the grounding, they can easily take the idea of signs and wonders and just run straight into the ditch with them and we see it over and over. People…and here's the thing, the enemy will be happy to give you signs and wonders. If that's all you want, he will lead you down a different path and give you plenty of signs and wonders, but that's a place of danger. And that's a place where the enemy will lead people away from the Lord using signs and wonders. That's why you have to remember that when you're talking about this topic, if you're talking about signs, a sign is supposed to lead you somewhere, point you in a direction. If the sign does not point you in the direction of Jesus, you are going in the wrong direction.

27:54 Well said. Well, well said. So the idea is that it should be normal Christian life to be able to see in the Spirit, to be able to see signs and wonders, to be able to do miracles. And that should be normal, but it's because it's in the Word. It flows out of our relationship with Jesus through and in Him and through Him. All of these things can be manifest, but it's through our relationship with Him, no other way. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for being with us today. We've been so enjoying this conversation. And again, we recommend that our listeners go to the links that are down there in the show notes. You'll see links to Michael's website and links to… He's got a YouTube channel also. We'll put that down there. And links to our YouTube channel and the event that we just had, the Sons of God's Solemn Assembly. God bless you and have a glorious day.

28:58 If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your review helps the show reach more people and spread the good news of God's global outpouring. Check out our website at globaloutpouring.org to find out more information. Connect with us, get a link to our Facebook page and our YouTube channel. You can browse our online bookstore for amazing anointed material. Until next time, this is Sharon Bus… And I'm Philip Bus. God bless you with His overwhelming, loving presence.