Sid: I am so excited about the new book by Ken & Jeanne Harrington called “Shift.” Why? Because we’re getting ready for the greatest outpouring of God’s Spirit in the history of mankind and the gifts are going to be front and center. But will the gifts be a blessing or will it destroy you? It’s based on your character and Ken in your book you talk about that we’ve found that our thought patterns, which really control us actually start in the womb. Teach a little on that.
Ken: Well, were made up of body, soul and spirit and when we’re first conceived, neither our body nor our soul, which are kind of our mind will and our emotions is mature, but our spirit is. You can actually see that in the Bible where John the Baptist, while he’s still in his mother’s womb, when Mary walked in pregnant with Jesus he leapt in the womb. Why, because his spirit recognized that God had entered the room. So that thought or that aspect that the spirit is actually mature and never changes its growth, it doesn’t have to grow, it’s already mature and it directs all of the thought. Now when, but it’s separated from God, it is the same as the body and soul is, it’s no better it’s just a different entity, what it does for us because it can hear everything that’s going on, obviously as John the Baptist did, then it starts to try to protect this body and soul that it’s encased in and starts to develop the thoughts. So let’s say you’re in a home where there’s constant bickering and fighting, well then the baby inside the spirit starts to say, okay you need to protect yourself, it’s going to be a harsh world, you know when all the yelling starts, just be careful with yourself. We actually had testimonies from people where the baby was conceived illegitimately and the boyfriend didn’t want the baby was trying to encourage an abortion. And the mother actually said that as soon as the father would enter the room and start to talk the baby would stop moving and would not start again until the father left. And when that baby was born, as soon as the father would enter the room as a little room it would kind of go hide. And so that thought pattern was already locked in before it was even born and before it even knew why they didn’t want the relationship with the father, because they were afraid that he was going to kill them.
Jeanne: For myself, I couldn’t understand why I was always looking forward to the future and couldn’t live in the now. Just wanted what was going to come.
Sid: You weren’t able to smell the roses?
Jeanne: No, I was always looking forward, and then I realized I had been conceived out of wedlock and my parents lied and said, that I was premature. I should have been born two months later, and when I realized that I repented before God, and he realigned my time inside my spirit so that I could live in the now and enjoy the now.
Sid: You know, a lot of people suffer from rejection that came because they were conceived out of wedlock and the baby’s really can sense rejection can’t they?
Jeanne: And they take on a shame nature, so they take on blame and shame when it isn’t even there’s. And there is a curse in the Bible in Deuteronomy about this that it makes them feel like they can’t go into the Assembly of God. And that’s what the accuser does, he accuses, but God wants you to come closer to Him, He loves you and if your parents conceived you out of wedlock, it doesn’t forbid you from coming close to God, He so wants you, He so loves you and what you parents did is not your sin.
Sid: You know, one of the things I love about your book is that you point out these supernatural ways of correcting character flaws is the prayer you have at the end of every chapter. How did you come up with that whole concept Ken?
Ken: Actually it was Jeanne, she had felt that all along that too many books just teach, it’s kind a like a monologue and we wanted people to actually interact and so Jeanne would take each chapter and just pray and ask God, you know “How do You want to activate this? What should be our response to God and to these truths?
Jeanne: And so we wanted not to just read, but actually do and we really are firm believers in we get a truth, let’s not just hear it, let’s do. And so when Ken would deal with judgments or I would deal with judgments; when God showed us things about our life we would actually pray and we’ve been counseling a lot of different people and we discovered difference between people and they really grow and go ahead are the ones that actually don’t just learn the stuff, they actually deal with it. They actually do and so where our lives are out of line, out of the plumb line of God’s Word and we have to face God and we have to turn from our sin, our wrong thinking. Some of it isn’t necessarily evil, it’s just our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, our concepts are wrong and we find in the light of the Word, His concepts and we see that our thoughts are opposed to His thoughts then we pray. And we wanted the book to activate what they just read.
Ken: A lot of people think that they have to be full and mature and they have to have everything together before they can do anything, but what I’ve learned even in apprenticeship and everything, is that if I know something and two weeks from now and I’ve done it, I can teach somebody else. So I don’t have to be light years ahead of people, all I have to do is stay two weeks ahead of everybody and I’m still the expert.
Sid: Well, you know you talk about the whole principal of preferring other above yourself; tell me that story about when you were counseling a couple that didn’t like what you were doing and started saying bad things about you, but you didn’t defend yourself.
Jeanne: It was a very awkward situation and there had been adultery involved and people knew them and they were coming to us and they were also trying to breakup other people’s marriages with their relationship. And when we counseled them according to the word, thou shalt not this isn’t right, let’s look at the roots, let’s find why you’re doing these things, they got very irritated and angry and began to spread gossip and say how our counseling was at fault. But we knew because you cannot share what people are going through we couldn’t justify anything, so we just kept silent and prayed and loved. And in the end maybe our reputation suffered for awhile but their marriage was healed and sometimes we have to lay down what’s good for us.
Sid: Was that difficult in not being able to defend yourself, especially when you’re in the right?
Ken: Well, it hurt you but really all it does is a death to your own pride, it’s what I look like. The Bible says that God honors his Word, above His Name, so His Word, being His pledge, His integrity, I give you my word for something; His Name, His reputation. Now if God honor’s His Word, His integrity above His reputation, who am I to be any different and this is what we take. How does God see things so then I can act the same way, because Jesus says, “As I am in this world, so are you.” So and He said, “The things I do, you can do and even greater.”
Sid: When you decided not to defend yourself, did this open a supernatural for the healing of their marriage?
Jeanne: You know, it also opened the door for healing of a couple of other marriages that bang they all went through the same crisis about the same time.
Sid: Do you remember your daughter’s school teacher? Tell me that story quickly.
Jeanne: Yes, it was a daughter that we had adopted that was part Eskimo part Cree and she had a lot of difficulties because she had had a very troubled life before we got her. And so the teacher would counsel her and the teacher would allow her to draw and draw and draw, instead of her doing her school work and then share stories of the teacher’s childhood abuse. And our daughter would come home so discouraged and so distraught and also she wasn’t doing the work because this teacher wasn’t encourages her to do the work. And I tried to talk to the teacher, and one day I phoned and the teacher walked away from the phone and Lord said, don’t hang up. So I waited on the phone for a half hour and when the teacher came back she was shocked I was still on the phone.
Sid: Why did you wait for a half hour?
Jeanne: Because the Lord said not to hang up.
Sid: Okay.
Jeanne: Wanted to be willing to keep the channels open and then the Lord, said arrange for a meeting with the school board but don’t say anything, don’t fight, don’t defend yourself. She was basically saying that we were a very bad parent. And so we arranged to meet with the school board, we arrived on time, the teacher was late, and then she was rushing around not making any logical sense and then she started taking pills to calm herself down and the board member said, we see the problem; and the meeting was over and a week later she resigned. She was having a nervous breakdown. And so I think all her emotional pass was catching up with her but she was transferring it to our daughter which our daughter was failing in all of her classes and passing in all of the other teachers’ classes.
Sid: You know what you teach in your book and that’s a perfect example of it, that the difference between the world and the kingdom of God and you come in the opposite spirit of the enemy to defeat the enemy.
Jeanne: That’s the only thing that works.
