Joel Michael is a pastor, writer, and Bible teacher with Ignite the Spirit, a community he coordinates that's all about introducing people to Jesus and letting them see what the Father's heart really looks like. Back in 2021, everything shifted for Joel. He caught a fresh glimpse of who Christ actually is, and it wrecked him in the best way.

Since then, his heartbeat has been simple: help people stop running from a God they're afraid of, and start running to a Dad who actually loves them. He does this through preaching, writing, mentoring, and just walking alongside people, especially those tired of trying to earn what was already given. Joel's big thing? You are who God says you are. No more striving. No more fear. Just freedom, purpose, and the guts to believe that God isn't in the business of condemnation. He's in the business of restoration.

Hi, I'm Angel.

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God chose for us to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Pastor Joel.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Nigeria.

How did you come to meet Jesus?

I was born a believer because I was born into a clergy home.

I mean, I'm a PK, like they'll say, the pastor's kid.

So, but before I was told that the prophecy came that I was going to become a prophet.

Of course, as children, I mean, seeing things that your parents went through, they're going through, you wouldn't want to be such, you know.

Basically, when they speak the truth, they tend to suffer, tend not to enjoy the pleasures of life.

However, I knew the Lord by myself, not because I did not know him, but from an understanding place.

I knew him when I went to school back then in 2000, and I had this exclusion from my parents.

I'm very emotional.

I used to be very emotional, so I had the exclusion and it was far away from where we were, and I felt just all alone.

So, I had to bounce into my Bible.

I was seeing things I never knew.

I mean, I was seeing things I'd read before, but never saw it the way I saw it.

I started hearing voices speak to me, comforting me and telling me what I had to do.

Now, these voices alone is so much comfort that I did not even think about my parents or my family anymore.

I was just by myself, enjoying the pleasure that he was giving me by his voice and giving me authenticity, giving me so much strength and power to speak his words.

Even when I was mumbling words, I was not able to articulate them very well, but I could speak with all authority, and I saw the power of God.

After speaking, it made me wonder, and I kept on diving into the word because just what I read now, I'm seeing it come alive, and I'm intervening people's affairs, and it's calming situations down.

It's made me want to go back to scripture and dive deeper.

So, that's how I heard the Lord, and I was also a snob.

I basically was groomed in my house by myself or with my siblings.

We go to school.

We come back.

We don't just communicate except in church.

So, I had the snobbish attitude where I don't give a damn about anybody but me and my family.

So, the Lord spoke to me audibly.

I heard that you cannot get my people like that, and my mood changed, and I started communicating with people the word which I hear.

You know, that's how I started 2000-2001.

I just pushed on continually.

In the midst of those times, I had health challenges.

Previously, before then 1991, I am a miracle.

I had two major surgeries at age 10, and they were so disturbing to my family how I almost lost my life with those sickness, the sickness that happened that time, but it kept on lingering because the doctors gave me 10 years to live, but by the grace of God, I lived past that time and then had to do another surgery again, but I kept on managing myself.

In the midst of this, I wasn't able to drink water well.

I wasn't able to eat very well.

I mean, I would literally eat and throw up.

I would take water and throw up water because it would not go through my esophagus, but I lived like that, and I kept on preaching.

The beautiful thing you would not believe that in the times I'm unable to eat, especially in the times I'm broken, sometimes I spend the week crawling, rolling on the floor because no strength, no water in my system.

Once I have that ability to speak the word to anybody, you see the strength comes alive.

I don't know where it comes from, but you see me start speaking like something.

I speak words with power, and then afterwards, the real me comes into place.

I'm not so weak.

I heard the Lord speak to me, my strength is made perfect when you are weak, and I'm wondering why couldn't I just say normal?

Why couldn't I just communicate normal?

But when it comes to the Word of God, I am very much alive.

So I see the power of God so manifested in me, even up to date.

That's how I found.

That's how I had my personal relationship with the Lord as of 2000, 2001.

I always reflect on what God did in Genesis by creation being what it is, and then us as

humans being created, specifically Adam at this point, and then that the technology that I imagine

it took to create the earth, which is the voice, speaking it into being, and then you would think

that an easier path would be a telepathic or a cell phone connection to Adam, where the CEO,

where God, the owner, right, founder, says, I'll just call in and see what Adam's doing.

Instead, the Bible tells us that in the cool of the day, God would walk with Adam and have conversations, yeah?

And it's so powerful in the transfer of importance, of care, of kindness, and it feels as though you've had that experience by listening and hearing the voice of God.

Is that accurate?

Yes, it's completely accurate.

At some point, there's an expectation, like you said, you know, how God should minister to you, but it just comes differently in the cold, yet amidst the noise.

This brings me up to a part I remember the time I just got married, and we just had our first child.

Anytime, any place I'd go to, maybe to the restroom, to my room, to the study room, my wife just goes alongside with me with a kid.

She just wants to hang out with me, and I was wondering, am I going to hear God speak to me?

Because this is cloudy.

I mean, they just want to be around me, you know, the believers always make a beautiful sound, but he said to me, you would hear me in the noise.

You would learn to hear me in the noise.

So whether the scripture called it the cold of the evening, the evening necessarily most times are not cold.

It's a time where there are reflections of what has happened previously, that same day or before, where it's more like a riotous thinking, yet the Lord still would speak in the cold of the evening.

I love that.

So I know that he does speak, not by how we wanted to speak or what medium we wanted to speak, but he definitely speaks in that cold, calm voice like he did with Adam.

Love that.

What's the biggest challenge in ministry today for you?

Religion.

So I know it sounds different because religion is almost what we all practice, but there is, pardon me to use the word religion from religion.

So the general part of it that we all practice religion, but there is another sense of religion where it's dogmatic, where it has to be by the creed of some persons outside the scriptures, yet it appears to be like it's in the scriptures.

For example, we've been graced to live the life we live.

We know grace to be the free gift of the Lord, yet there's a bondage that we are in the grace.

So let me use this for example.

You speak to people about the Lord as a commission or as a church.

You go to the streets, you get them loosed from their chains, the chains of sin, the chains of bondage, whatever chain, and those chains seem to be rusty, you know.

So we bring them out, wash them clean by the word of the Lord and words that we hear and words that we read through the scriptures, yet while we put them in the church, we put another form of chain.

This time the chain is unique, is gold plated, and people don't seem to see it like a chain.

Scripture says you put a burden upon them that you yourself cannot carry, for it's a rising.

This is the kind of religion I'm talking about.

Not generally that we serve God, but this is a kind of religion.

Making people feel serving God as against him being a father.

What do you believe is the remedy for such a challenge?

Well, we keep preaching.

We do not have the power to change any individual.

Scripture says he will build his church, Jesus said that, and the gates of hell will not prevail.

We keep speaking the word that does not belong to us, but belong to him.

So he will do the work while we speak, we're praying to see it on their behalf.

We just keep speaking until it is done.

And the thing is while we speak, we believe that they have taken it, even if they don't seem to take it.

Someday it's going to show, it's going to pop up.

Just like Jesus said to the disciples when he was hungry, he saw the fig tree and then he wanted to eat from it, but he didn't find fruit and it cost him.

When he came back, it didn't seem like anything happened.

But next day the disciples showed him, master, look at the tree that you spoke to, it's dead.

You know, so that's the same way I view it when we keep speaking the word of the Lord is a seed.

It doesn't just pop up immediately for men to behold, but definitely there will be an that people will see the blossoming tree.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

What's a message you leave for future you?

Keep digging into the word.

There's so much we would see from the word that we are not seeing right now.

It feels like we know it all, but there's so much we would see.

It's just a revelation opening our hearts to revelation.

Master, this has been a great honor.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

The Lord is his word.

If you do not know his word, you do not know him.

So it's important that we go through his word, in his word, that will become his manifest here on earth.

There's Christ in me, the hope of glory.

People begin to see the Christ in us.

And in that, he is not a God that destroys, but a God who gives life.

He's a father.

We do not pray fearing our father.

We pray with the relationship we have with our father.

So we speak those things that we want.

We collect those things that we want from him because he has given us all things that pertains to life and godliness.

This is the way.

His purpose of coming here is not to condemn men, but to bring them back, back to himself.

And therefore has made us, has commissioned us to be people who bring men back to him.

Master Jarell, a pleasure, I treasure.

Thank you for being on what has inspired my 12 and a half months.