Sid Roth - Mommy, Who's That Man Standing Behind You?
My guest has seen thousands of young children experience the tangible presence of God and operate, children, now, in the gifts of the Spirit. She says, if a child can do this, so can you and your children.
Sid Roth: I don't know how she did this. Amy, you're raised Baptist. Your grandfather is the Baptist minister. You love him dearly. He's not too receptive to speaking in supernatural languages, tongues, being baptized in the Holy Spirit. How did this happen to you at 18?
Amy Gagnon: Well, it started when I was in college, and the pastors in the area, in the city, in Redding, where I went to college just got back from the Toronto Blessing, and they started having night services. And one of the pastors, his son, was in school with me, and he invited a bunch of us to go to the service. So as we were in that service, they're taping these lines up and asking people to stand on these lines and putting their hands out to receive the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. I had never seen anything like this ever in my life.
Sid Roth: I'm sure.
Amy Gagnon: As I stood there and people were falling down in the presence of God, they were laughing. They were crying. They were rolling around. They're having encounters with the Lord. I slipped away to the back of the room, and I...
Sid Roth: It probably scared you.
Amy Gagnon: It's what it did. I started crying not because I was moved by God but because I was afraid of what was happening. So that's when I called my grandfather, and he's the patriarch of the family. When we have any questions, he's the one that we go to for counsel, as well. So I called him, and I said, "What is this"? And he said, "That's the devil". And that actually did not feel right to me when he said it, so I respectfully let him tell me what he thought. This was really hard, to not agree with my grandfather. I had to turn to the Lord and say, "God, I do not believe this is the devil". The reason I did not believe it was the devil was because people were operating in the gifts of the Spirit. Their lives were being changed. They were being filled with joy, freedom. There was a revival happening among our students, and I knew at that moment, that can't be the devil. He comes to steal, kill and destroy. This has to be God, and in that moment, that is when the Lord started to reveal His Holy Spirit to me. So I started having dreams and visions. One night, as we were preparing for our church service, before the service was starting, we'd just walk around the room and pray and ask God, "Hey, Lord, what are you doing? We invite Your presence. We invite Your Spirit". And I had this open vision, almost like a conveyor belt, where children of all sizes, all shades of color, all ethnic backgrounds were coming past me, like, thousands of children coming past my eyes, and the Lord said, "This is what I've called you to. I've called you to the generation of children," and to me it wasn't a generation of from this age to this age. It was a legacy, a legacy to transform how the way we connect to children, relate to children and teach children. I went to school. I didn't know what to do, so I decided to become a Christian education major.
Sid Roth: So, now, without even knowing, you were preparing the right way.
Amy Gagnon: I was. My dad just wanted me to go to college and get married. That's all.
Sid Roth: Oh, speaking about getting married...
Amy Gagnon: Yes.
Sid Roth: For 3 months, you started having a recurring dream. Tell me about that.
Amy Gagnon: Yes, so there was a season of my life where I was in an apartment, a small apartment, and I had a single bed, and I was laying in my bed, and I would wake up every morning finding myself smashed up against the side of the bed to the wall, and I remember every night I was trying to make space for the Lord, for Him to lay there. I was creating space for Him. And in that moment, for 3 months, every night, I had the exact same dream, and the dream was, we first started in this couple's home, and it was like a Bible study, and there was somebody playing the guitar. But I couldn't see their face. And then it transitions to, we're standing in a kitchen, and we're talking to a bunch of people that I recognize, but they don't naturally all come together in a group setting, so I didn't know how this worked. And then later I was having a discussion in their backyard, and I was talking to this man. I didn't see his face, but we were having a detailed conversation. And this would happen for 3 months, night after night after night. And so when I was journaling with the Lord and asking Him what this was, he said, "This is your husband". And 6 months later, my husband now and I started dating, and he told me... We had been friends for 4 years. He told me that he was going to ask me to marry him in 6 months, and I'd better be ready to answer. And I said, "I can't because the Lord showed me in a vision who I'm going to marry, so we have to see". Well, a like, a month later, everything in the dream started happening. This couple had moved into town, this older couple. They opened their house. When I walked into their house, their living room was the living room in my dream. When we went into the kitchen, the kitchen was their kitchen. The people in that kitchen were the people in my dream.
Sid Roth: Wow.
Amy Gagnon: And my husband put his arm around me. He was leading worship, and then later we were having a discussion in the backyard.
Sid Roth: You looking- God shows her her future, shows her with these recurring dreams her husband. They get married. They have a family, and her 2-year-old is a very unusual 2-year-old. Something started happening supernaturally with her.
Amy Gagnon: That's right. She and I were in her room, and we had just bought this house. We were in a new neighborhood. We weren't familiar with things. We were unpacking, putting things away. My husband was away on a camp with some junior highers, a spiritual emphasis camp where they go and they encounter the Lord. So as we're getting ready, she looks at me. My back is to the door of the bedroom, and she said, "Mommy, who's that man standing behind you". To be honest, my first thought was terror. I thought somebody came into our home. Somebody was invading our home.
Sid Roth: Of course.
Amy Gagnon: And as I turned around, to my relief, nobody was there, and I said, "Nobody is there". And she said, "Mommy, that man right behind you". Again, I turned around, and as I'm turning my head, I really feel it was the word of the Lord that said, "Ask her about this man. What does this man look like? Who is he"? So I turned around, and I said, "Is that man still there"? and she said "Yes". And I said, "Is He good, or is He bad"? She said, "He's good, Mommy". And I said, "Oh, is that an angel". And she said, "No, Mommy". I said, "No"? She goes, "No, it's Jesus".
Sid Roth: Wow, that is something.
Amy Gagnon: She saw Jesus.
Sid Roth: How would you like your children to give you a report like that?
Amy Gagnon: It was amazing. And she would see angels. She would see Jesus. And then probably about several months later, she started seeing scary demonic things.
Sid Roth: You know, I was wondering about that. What does a parent do when you have a child that can see in the invisible world and sees evil things? What did you do?
Amy Gagnon: Well, we actually were besides ourself. We never experienced anything like this before, so we definitely had to figure out what to do quickly. So I actually knew of a girl that worked with me, and I had heard that she had seen things in the spiritual realm, so I asked her, "What do I do with my daughter"? And she had told me the first thing to do is believe her. Listen to her, and believe her. Create a safe space for her to tell you what she's experiencing. And so at that moment, we went back to my daughter, and I pulled in the Holy Spirit. I'm like, "Holy Spirit, what do we do"? So we started teaching her that greater is He who is in you than He who is in the world, and so when she encountered these scary things, we said, "Your voice and authority gets to tell those demons where to go," and so we said, "Go away in Jesus' Name," and they have to flee. They have to leave. They have to listen to you because God has given you more authority over the angels and the demons.
Sid Roth: Did she see that in her life, that authority?
Amy Gagnon: It was scary. Could you imagine being...
Sid Roth: Yeah.
Amy Gagnon: Like, angels come to people in the Bible, and the first thing angels say is, "Do not be afraid" because our natural reaction is, "What is this"? So she, of course, was operating in a lot of fear. Well, the Lord gave her her helper, her sister, who was 18 months younger than her, and told her, "I'll tell them to go away". So every time she was afraid, her sister was there to stand next to her until she actually saw that it worked.
Sid Roth: Imagine seeing that kind of authority at that age. I didn't even know there was an invisible world at that age. Amy, so life progresses. You're teaching the children that God told you you were going to be doing, and tell me about the glory that invaded your 4-year-old's classroom.
Amy Gagnon: Yes, so this was an evening service at Bethel, and usually those services can go for 4 to 5 hours. We're pressing into the presence for God to encounter the adults, and I always tell my team, we are not a second-class citizen. We actually get the same authority. We get to actually experience the same thing that the adults experience, and we get to do it with kids, so it's going to be faster. It's going to be easier. And so the night was going on. The teachers had taught their class, and they got to a point where they were like, "Should we put a video in? Should we just put a video in just for the kids because it's late"? And one of the teachers said, "No," because she remembered my words, "Not on my watch. We will not put a movie in for kids". And so she said, "Let's just walk around the room and just start praying," and they started walking around. The teachers started walking around the room with the kids there, just coloring and playing, and they started speaking in tongues asking the Lord, "What do we do"? And the teacher realized, "Oh, my word, these kids probably have no idea what we're doing. They have no idea that our language right now, our prayer language, is from God". So they used that moment to say, "Do you know what's happening right now? Do you know what language we're speaking? It's a language that God has given us each individually". So they taught that, and the presence of God, the Spirit of God, fell on these kids, and they started speaking in their own prayer language. They were rolling around on the ground. They were crying. They were laughing. They were filled with the Spirit, and parents were starting to come to the door just to watch these children encounter the Lord, and they themselves started to get touched.
Sid Roth: Oh, I'm getting touched just as you said that. I'm sure you are, too. When we return, Amy will pray for you and your children to encounter God. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Amy, how important is it to speak the words of God over your children? It sounds good, but how important is that?
Amy Gagnon: It is very important. This is where your children get their identity. This is where they get to hear who they are. And what you're speaking over them and declaring over them is what God has written about us, that they are powerful, that they have purpose, they have a destiny, that they have a life to live fully free with the Spirit of God, so this is an amazing opportunity to raise powerful children.
Sid Roth: So, Amy, how do you teach children to pray for the sick?
Amy Gagnon: It's simple. Their prayers do not need to be elaborate. They do not need to be scripted. These prayers are simple. They just need to know that our God is who He says He is, and He's going to do what He says He's going to do, and they partner their faith with that.
Sid Roth: I want you to talk to parents who have said, "I'm turning my children's spiritual education over to my local church, and that's their job, not my job". Tell them.
Amy Gagnon: Yep. There is a thing called the Law of First Mention, and this means that what your children hear for the very first time, they will establish as foundation for truth. So if you as a parent get to establish this with your children, this is the place where you should be stewarding that. You should be stewarding truth, identity. The church should be the reinforcement. The church is the cherry on the top, but home is where your children will know how they are. God chose you, parents, to be their parent whether they are your biological child or whether you adopted them or whether you inherited them. God chose you. You were called to be the one that speaks identity and truth and knowledge and wisdom and tell them about who Jesus is.
Sid Roth: Well, you did a good job on your children because your daughter... Now, tell me about the time your daughter prayed for a man at church with a serious heart condition.
Amy Gagnon: Yes, we have four girls, and this is our third daughter. We were walking around church before it was starting, and we were talking to couples around, just introducing ourself or catching up with people. And this one couple in particular, we always stopped by and catch up. And the husband stopped me, and I was with my girls. It was me and my girls, and this husband stopped and said, "I need you to pray. We just got a report that I have a serious heart condition, and I'm having a life- threatening surgery to fix it, and I believe God will help me, but I just need others to partner with me, to believe with me". So we circled around him, and we started to pray, and the youngest at the time, my third daughter, she prayed, "Jesus, I just pray you heal his heart. Amen". And so we just got a report several weeks later from the man that later that week, he went to his doctor, his cardiologist, and said, "I want you to do another test before the surgery. I want you to go back, and I want you to test because I believe something is different. Something has changed". So they did another test, and he has two results, one with a serious, damaged heart and the other with a perfect heart. And the doctor said, "I do not know what happened. These are not the same hearts". And the man said, "I know". So he came to us, and he told us this was the report that he just received from his doctor. He had a clean bill of health, and he said, "I want you to know that when your daughter prayed, I felt something inside of me happen. I felt the power and the authority when she prayed".
Sid Roth: Your daughter...
Amy Gagnon: Yes.
Sid Roth: ...your child... When they have that experiential knowledge, they will never forget it, never, never, and you need this experiential knowledge, and those others that are watching, you need this experiential knowledge. Think for yourself. I want you to say this prayer and believe it to the best of your ability because this is the beginning of your pathway, whether you're young or my age, to have your own encounter with God that no one can ever take from you. Please repeat this prayer out loud, and mean it to the best of your ability. Dear God, I've made many mistakes for which I'm truly sorry. I believe Your blood washes me clean to the point that, God, You remember my mistakes no more: new beginning, fresh start, clean. Now that I am clean because of You, Jesus, come and live inside of me. I make You my Savior and my Lord. I want to have an encounter like a little child, like the little children that Amy teaches. I'm willing to follow You, but I need to know You. I need to experience You. I pray this in Jesus' Name. Amen. Amy, pray whatever God shows you for the young children watching and the children my age watching to experience God.
Amy Gagnon: Yes. Before I do, I just want to just say there are several of you watching right now, and you feel that it's been too late. I've already raised my children. It's too late to start. Or, I want my child, but I'm barren. I want you to know God is doing something right now. He is shifting things right now. The past is not what he sees. He sees the future. He sees the hope, and He sees the promise. So I would encourage you that there is never a time with God. He is timeless. He works within a time that we cannot comprehend. And I just want to pray right now for every child, every person. What I just ask right now, I just see You crashing in homes, and You're releasing your presence. You're releasing your spirit. You're opening children's hearts and adults' hearts to experience the new levels and depths of who you are. It's like a revival is happening. You're breaking open hearts right now. You're crashing in, and you're transforming minds. You're making things new. There is a life. There is joy. The joy of the Lord will be your strength now. There is a transfer. The things that you've carried that are heavy, the burdens that have been hard, God is transferring it right now, and He's exchanging it for joy, for love and of peace. And right now, I just pray as your children are playing, running around, doing homework, getting ready for bed or getting ready in the morning, that God is encountering them right now, that they actually are experiencing the presence of God. They're hearing His voice, and they're hearing Him move, and there are angelic angels being released. They are ushering the presence of God right now into your homes. Your homes will be beacons of light for the world to see. Your children are going to change this world. We just pray this in Jesus' Name. Amen.