Know the King

What if the most-quoted verse on spiritual authority has been read backwards for two thousand years?

Most of us were taught to read Matthew 16:19 like this: I bind, and heaven backs me up. I loose, and heaven follows. So we stood in prayer meetings declaring, commanding, and binding - sincere, full of faith, and quietly exhausted because nothing seemed to change.

But the Greek that Matthew actually wrote says something different. Whatever you bind on earth shall have already been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall have already been loosed in heaven. Heaven decides first. The steward discerns and agrees.

That single verb tense changes everything.

In Know the King: Keys of the Kingdom, Cindy Warner traces the rediscovery of what Jesus actually meant when He gave Peter the keys of the kingdom - from the pagan cliff face of Caesarea Philippi, through Isaiah 22 and the steward Eliakim, to the prodigal son's robe, ring, and sandals. Along the way she shares her own story of nearly fifty years in Spirit-filled ministry, the binding-and-loosing teaching she taught and later renounced, and the moment the Holy Spirit shifted her direction in prayer for good.

If you love Jesus and sense that something about the way you've been taught to pray doesn't quite line up - this book is for you. If you've never heard of binding and loosing - even better. You get to start where it all begins: with the King who holds the keys.