Where's that power eh?

Until we lose the propensity to validate our own doctrine with the manifestations of God's power, He will be sparing. He loves us too much to let us go there. There are still too many factions within the worldwide Christian community, despite leaps toward brotherly/sisterly unity. One day we will grow up, the sons/daughters will be revealed. One day the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth like waters over the sea. 1 and 2 come first. 1) Love God, and 2) Love your neighbor. Let's focus on excellence in this area, because right now, we are so not there.

A Season Of Dying

If you are serious about the Christian faith and have made a commitment to Jesus Christ, making Him your Lord and Saviour, you will be transformed. That is the essence of walking with God, you can't remain the same. He heals us, He teaches us, He guides us, touches our hearts and woos us, but He also, at times, wounds us and even slays us. In the true Christian walk there must be dying. Unfortunately and fortunately. Dying sucks. I have been in such a season for 2 and a half years. I currently feel as though I am in sheol. Not that my geographical location is such, but God designed it to be that way for me, because it has been ordained that this was to be my season of dying. Although I have a blessed life in anyone's eyes, it is a life designed by God to mould me. My particular personality type is extremely sensitive to having or not having certain things and God simply made sure that all my wells dried up. This sucks. Royally. I have had words with the Almighty about this, tears and even yelling. I have told Him things that require repentance later. I should have my mouth washed out with soap. He is patient and un-offended, killing me softly? Bringing me to the very end of myself. I hate it. I resent not having what my soul craves. Worst of all, I miss Him. He has also made Himself scarce, all part of the plan. At times my heart felt like Job, where satan could have his way, to a point. Job was not allowed to die. I know he wanted to, but it is not that kind of dying we need. In the season of dying we may want to escape, no, we will want to escape. That is the choice we have in that season. Will you run away? Will you escape? Will you quit? The temptation is very real. Some do. Some don't. Your mind plays with you, the devil plays with your mind. Inevitably you feel like a complete failure. In your eyes. God doesn't look with our eyes. I am beginning to believe that victory in the season of dying, is simply not running away, or quitting, but to persist, as ugly as it is, through the death. I am currently awaiting my resurrection. At least my faith hopes in a resurrection, because I feel dead, pathetic, useless. No power left in me. Except I have not run away. I have not broken into the wine cellar to taste what I know God asked me to put aside. Oh how I have fantasized about that award winning Merlot. I would sniff the cork. Something in me held me back from falling. I imagine God has set up walls of sandbags around areas of me that the devil is not allowed to cross. How comforting, how maddening. He is there, but still letting me die. The field looks very dry. I can't imagine anything could grow there. His plan is mysterious. At least, that is what I am (at this point emotionlessly) choosing to believe, by faith. A couple of days ago I was so thirsty in my barren land that I knew I had to find Him for a sip; I called on His mercy. I told Him how I was so thirsty and dead. I told Him I needed to be resurrected. I poured out my soul. He answered me. His Spirit told me something about Jesus. About how Jesus had to die to inherit a people. How Jesus did nothing wrong, yet God sent Him to the cross. How Jesus, the God-man, cried out like me, “Why have You forsaken me?” Jesus also needed to be resurrected. He told me that I, like Jesus, am purchasing something with my dying. That I am earning something, paying a price for something, something that will be mine, because He will make it so. My dying will earn me the right to something. Jesus paid the price for a people, He raided hell when He was dead. Apparently I am raiding hell of something in this season of dying. Time will tell. So, true Christianity is not about happiness, it is not a walk in the park, but a war. Not a war against people, as some have made it out to be, but a war to disarm the spiritual principalities of darkness. In order to do that, we mustn't have anything in common with darkness, or all satan has to do to get you out of the way is yank that chain. We fall, we sin, we are flesh, but through repentance, which is accessed through humility, we find grace. Grace picks us up after we stumble. In the season of dying, pride is God's target, because He knows, if we are in pride, we are in deception, and we will fall with little hope of getting back up. So here I am, in my season of death, with nothing but faith and hope and a “we'll see” attitude, awaiting His timing, His release of power, that will resurrect me into a whole new being all together (it will have to be). The old me could never have proceeded into the next season He has planned for me, I wouldn't last. He loves me too much for that.

Need of Resurrection

I've wrapped myself in silken threads to keep out the cold and to hide the inadequacy of my current self. The envelope surrounds me in this season He ordained for me, a season of darkness and restriction. How I long to see the light and feel a warm breeze on my face, to stretch my limbs and spirit and to feel alive. It has been a long season of death punctuated by glimmers of hope and glimmers of transformation. New life. Faith. Will He bring to birth? Will He complete the work that is me? Will my heart soar on new wings? The old me feels dead and gone. I don't know myself. I don't trust me. I need a resurrection. I need a safe place to come out of this cocoon and have the warm wind of His Spirit blow over me until all the scars of death and darkness are replaced with beauty again.

The Battle For Hearts (Sermon Notes)

Prov. 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Isaiah 29:13 These people come near me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men.

Matthew 15:7-9 These people draw near Me with their mouths and honour Me with their lips, but their hearts hold off and are far away from Me.

Jeremiah 31:33 I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

Mark 12:30

And you shall love the Lord your God [a]out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your [b]life) and out of and with all your mind (with [c]your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. [d]This is the first and principal commandment.

What can we derive from this scripture and the others, what common thread runs through all of them?

Would you say that you can love someone with your mind, but not with your heart?

What about this – can you love someone with your heart, but not with your mind? Both are possible.

So what do these scriptures and questions demonstrate about the heart and the mind? They demonstrate to us that the heart and mind are two different things.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? I mean, how confusing! Why force people to do mental gymnastics when their salvation is at stake?

I believe He used parables because they spoke to the heart. His parables engaged people on a heart level and revelation came to those whose hearts were ready (the revelation came from the Father for their understanding).

Jesus responded to those who bared their hearts to Him despite what their well trained minds knew of the Jewish religious laws. Jesus was controversial, a threat to their religious system, yet many came to His feet. Why?

Because of pain. They came because of some pain in their lives that the law could not cure. They needed a real time encounter with this God-man who cared about them, who cared about their hearts and wasn't threatened by their pain. Jesus wasn't someone who gave pat answers, He gave real answers, by addressing the heart.

If you trip and scrape your knee, your nerves will tell your brain you have injured yourself, the pain may be excruciating and you can see the scrape and the blood. Now how effective to your healing and freedom from pain would it be to tell yourself:

“Get over it, you shouldn't feel it, because Jesus died on the cross and by His stripes you are healed?”

Most of us probably agree that that sounds pretty silly, but this is how we treat our hearts. We take care of that scraped knee, clean it, ice it, bandage it and protect it until it heals up, but we tell our hearts to shut up when they scream, because hearts tend to offend the religious mind, or we're ashamed or afraid, because satan lied to us somewhere along the way and we believed him. So we bury our hearts.

There is a spirit that lies to us (usually a religious spirit) and tells us that “we must act and be what the scriptures say we must be or we are not real Christians and God will be displeased with us”. It lies to us and says if you don't feel what the scriptures say you should feel, or or if you don't walk in victory because Jesus died for it – then there is something wrong with you.

It supports it's arguments with more scriptures about how you are faithless and like a wave tossed in the ocean or like a dog going back to eat it's own vomit or like a man who sees his image in a mirror and when he turns around forgets what he looks like. It piles on the shame and guilt until we run and hide in a pile of fig leaves. We run from God, instead of to Him. All He wants is us to run to Him, for everything.

Jesus said that in this life we will have trouble, there will always be something the Lord will use to potentially work on us. When scripture says we will be transformed from glory to glory it is speaking of a process. The seasons of our lives are cyclical in nature, yet moving forward if we are surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus

Now, when satan lies to us, he usually uses some element of truth and then twists it. We ARE weak, we ARE faithless and unbelieving at some level, we do fail, we do fall and probably on a daily basis. The lies and twisting of the truth are designed to keep us trying harder in our own strength to be good Christians and the easiest way to do this is to ignore our hearts. This is a trick of the devil to keep the Church from experiencing God. When you pour out all your grossness to God, you empty it out to Him, which creates a vacuum that He will fill with Himself. The heart is where the real you is, and the real you feels pain and needs to be rescued. And only God can rescue the heart.

Before I go any further I want to make abundantly clear that I am not talking about indulging sinful desires or thoughts. I am talking about taking all the pain, the doubts, the anger, and the questions that your heart feels and bring them in open honesty to God. Let your heart talk. God is the only one who can, and will do, something about it.

The greatest miracles are not physical healing or bottomless wine at weddings, but the healing of the human heart. When your heart is healed your life will transform. The devil is acutely aware of this, which is why I believe his greatest efforts, are aimed at the church, keeping her in the chains of religiosity, a form of spirituality, but without power to heal and transform. We look like we have it together, because we know how it should look, so we fabricate, much energy goes into this, it's really quite exhausting.

So what is God to do with us?

One method I believe He uses, is to apply as much pressure as is required for us to snap, so that we no longer care what we think He thinks and finally be honest with Him.

Lamentations 3:33 (Amplified translation)

“For He does not willingly and from His heart afflict or grieve the children of men.”

Cross references:

Lamentations 3:33 : Ezek 18:23, 32; Hos 11:8; Heb 12:5-10; II Pet 3:9

Unfortunately, the strongest of us take longer to snap and whatever we've been using to help us cope, or escape, has so much power over us by that point that we even see people with famous ministries, even those with churches, or those who appeared so much like they had it all figured out – fall with a resounding crash from which few recover.

If we, the church of Jesus, continue to fear taking our heart's honest feelings to the Lord, we will never know the depth of His love and power. Our lives will continue to be steeped in hypocrisy and we will miss out on the joy of living as His dearly loved children.

What did Jesus mean when He said the Kingdom of God belongs to those who become like little children...? Think about that for a minute.

When a little child hurts herself, gets upset by something, or doesn't understand why something is happening, what does she do? What is her first reaction?

She expresses herself without shame.

She runs to daddy.

He comforts her first and tends to the wound.

Lastly, he takes the opportunity to teach her something about the situation (a “teachable” moment), but only after she is secure in his love for her. Without that security in his care for her (which he just proved tangibly) it will be difficult for her to receive any wisdom.

I'm sorry to say, but many of us Christians get this completely backwards.

God is not interested in you doing it right, He is interested in you, the whole you: the good, the bad and the ugly. We all have ugliness and beauty. Everything God created was good, including us, but corruption came into the world through sin.

We are corrupted, but God is the restorer.

When we become restored, we can then be a channel of God's restoring power. This is not the same as passing on Biblical head knowledge.

Many people know the Bible inside and out and their lives don't change (extreme eg. Satanists). By saying that I am not saying don't know God's written Word, you do need to know it so that you can discern God's voice from the voice of your own soul and from the voice of the enemy.

Some may ask, but what about, “the truth shall set you free”?

What is truth? Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. Jesus is truth. “Whoever hears My voice hears Truth”, He said, and “Faith comes by hearing”. These examples speak of a living, real time, right now encounter with the Living God. It's the encounter with the Living God that makes the difference. No one remains the same after they encounter the Living God.

So what do you think happens when you let your heart speak to God all it's pain and questions? Do you think He will get offended and never talk to you again “you faithless, unbelieving child”!? Or rather, will He give you bread instead of a stone and a fish instead of a snake? When you run to Him in your pain and confusion and ask Him the hard questions do you think He will hold Himself, and the truth, from you, or do you think He will give you the revelation of Himself that you need?

The bottom line is that we, as children of God, need to know on the deepest level that God cares for us.

The only way to know someone really loves and cares for you is when you know you have been at your worst and they still love you.

That is unconditional love.

Now I know that intellectually most of us actually know this, but I can tell you that most of our hearts do not know this, because we have not taken our ugliness, our deepest anger, even anger toward Him, or our heart's sacrilegious thoughts, to His throne for His answer. We are too afraid, because we've believed lies about His character, we still believe deep down somewhere that His love is conditional, but guess what?

How will we ever know, personally, for real, if we don't take everything to Him?

I know, it takes some guts. But what we are doing, when we are honest with God, is inviting Him into our experience and there is nothing He wants more. That's exactly what He wants, because He can then reveal Himself as our all-sufficiency and work it out.

The truth is, we don't have the power to be what He desires us to be, no way, no how.

It is only by His power that we can be a new creation, but we need to be honest, bring everything honestly before Him, stop hiding.

Bringing it all to Him is the mustard seed of faith required that will grow into that large tree that will minister to others. There is no striving required in spilling our ugly guts to Him, it only requires a level of humility and enough faith to believe He might hear us and actually care (that's the mustard seed).

When we stop trying to heal ourselves and we bring it all to Him, His power will pour into us for the healing we need.

I can speak from personal experience, that when you bring all your heart's pain and shocking emotion to the Lord (not just to the paper book, but to the Lord first), His response will be to show you how deeply He loves you. It will be deeply personal (and yes, sometimes He will use the paper copy of His word to speak to you, or direct you to receive counselling to further your restoration, that's all good, but it doesn't replace Him).

He may not answer instantly, but He will answer you, and the timing will be perfect. He will break through and rescue you, He will heal you, he will put His arms around you, and give you the revelation of Him that your heart needs.

This will transform you from glory to glory.

This is how it happens. It doesn't happen by trying to be a better Christian in your own strength. When you learn to go to Him first and with everything, you will also learn to discern His voice and walk with Him daily.

You will hear His direction, feel His peace, access His grace and strength for each moment you need it and hear His heart.

It is through this experience that you get to know His heart for you and then accurately reflect His heart to others.

Also, the more we understand God's heart, the more we will be able to interpret scripture accurately.

The Church (at large) has been in a time of pressing, a time of fire. The reason for this is so we can truly know Him and be channels of His heart to the harvest that desperately waits for Jesus, not for religiosity and another set of rules for the mind to live by, but a real relationship, where God writes His law on hearts, because that is where real life flows out of. Part of me is inclined to believe the world knows that, and has been waiting for the church to get it, so that we can offer them the real Jesus, the real God of love and power.

We must not be afraid to step into God's presence. He bought you already, He wants all of you, right now, the way you are. Own your brokenness and emotions, then you can give them to Him. If you don't own them, you can't give them to Him. If you're in denial, you can't give them to Him.

Ask Him to show you what you've been hiding from Him, ask Him to reveal to you where shame has kept you from being honest with yourself and with Him, or where decisions made from your soul have set your life on a road of disappointment. Remember, He is able to redeem and heal what you are willing to lay before Him. He is able to turn us around and make beauty from ashes.

Talk to Him, share all your feelings with Him – He will not turn you away, but draw you deeper into His heart of love.

Do you need breakthrough? Do you need revelation? Ask. His word says we have not, because we ask not, and when we do ask, we ask with wrong motives.

Where is our heart? What are our motives?

There is a God who created you with a purpose in mind and that purpose was to bless and prosper you. The first step in that process is getting to know who He is. Healing your heart is how He does it and Holy Spirit is here to help.

Refuge In You

(Vineyard Music: from 'Hungry' album)

Lord I have found a refuge in You

A hiding place where I can enter in

I meet You there and tell You all my troubles

You touch my heart and I am comforted

I love You, I need You, You're my saving king

Holy, awesome, God of everything

Refuge, Shelter, I'm safe beneath Your wings

Jesus, Your love has covered me

You're my defence when I'm afraid

When troubles come I call Your name

I lift my eyes to the highest place

The dark clouds break and I can see Your face

Pain For Gain

He's breaking the Church, unless we become broken we won't let His glory shine. We are being broken for the sake of the lost and for the sake of our blessing and inheritance. When we are in pain and turn to our Father, asking, seeking and knocking, He has promised to answer us. We get the answers in our pain, for the world's pain. If we don't allow ourselves to feel pain and brokenness we will never dig deeply enough to get real with God. This is what the world needs, not preaching more religion. Not empty words, not hypocrisy or theory, but OUR EXPERIENCES WITH GOD. REAL EXPERIENCES OF HIS LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS in times of pain, need and our own deficiency. When we can truly say, "I WAS LOST, but now am found."

The Well: Living Water

A desert is a place devoid of streams, rivers or lakes; there can be no life there apart from the underground streams that become accessible through an Oasis or a well. If there is no place where the underground streams can surface, then the water has to be accessed through digging and actively drawing it up as needed. Labourious, but sufficient nonetheless. Once drawn up it nourishes those who are present at that moment to drink it, or infrastructure must be built to keep drawing the water out and distributing it for specific purposes.

Once you have this water source, you are saved, there may be desert all around you, but you will be a garden sufficient for the nourishment of those whom God puts in your path. I think that is a key element in the equation of sufficiency. If we are careless with what God has given us – not taking sufficient time to draw from the well of His presence, we will begin to wilt. We can give of ourselves generously however, in the place of His calling, doing what we see Him doing when we sit with Him in the secret place, and not run dry. As we are faithful to draw on Him as we pour out that Living Water through our own hearts to others, our “gallons per minute” increase to meet the demand.

It is all about spending time at the Well, without that, we won't last, we won't have fresh water for ourselves or others, and we may turn to whatever substitutes are available. Unfortunately these may sustain a form of life for a period of time, but it can't produce good fruit, there can't be healthy growth, if any at all. This form of life may be diverting for a time, but eventually it will produce it's own type of fruit, as Jesus said, “By their fruit you will know them”, (what their source is).

Sources of water have been fought over since ancient times, scripture tells us that Earth used to be watered from a mist that rose and fell, as well as from underground streams, however that changed with a significant climate shift that caused heavy rains and some famous flooding. No longer was all of Earth watered equally with a mist and accessible underground streams, the garden of Eden a not so distant memory, but the drastic shift in the climate that brought deserts to the earth was a result of the increased, widespread and prolific perversion of mankind. This is a picture of the spiritual condition, as the “visible speaks of the invisible”. What we do affects nature and not just by physically polluting it. Scripture tells us that nature “groans for the Sons of God (a unisex term like Man, as in mankind) to be revealed”, like a mother bringing forth children, the earth is instrumental in bringing forth the mature Sons of God. Sons who are in relationship with the Father.

So with that in mind, should we be surprised when we find ourselves in a dry place, forced to dig for water, battling forces that are hellbent on preventing the Children of God from “subduing the earth” - turning it back into the garden of Divine intimacy, beauty, nourishment and health? In places where Oasis exhist there are also fierce battles, and many, many, attractive substitutes, to keep people from drawing on the source of Living Water. It is as though we have an enemy. The destroyer of life will do anything to prevent the children of God from succeeding in their divine commission.

We have been given the means to transform the world around us, it has been slow going. Why? We are in a spiritual war and one of satan's greatest tactics is to turn what ought to be authentic relationship with God – into mere religiosity, form without power, stagnant rules of man that put people in bondage rather than set them free, decimating our hearts. There have been genuine revivals, outpourings of God's Spirit, healings, miracles, signs and wonders, but we build theology around it, enshrine it and begin to worship the infrastructure instead of the Source. The Source would not share us with anything less than Himself and so He withdraws, hoping we'll notice what we did, hoping we'll notice the impotence of our foolishness. If we notice, we pursue, we grow and we increase. If we don't notice, and continue with our new status quo of maintaining and worshiping an outdated infrastructure, we become stagnant and spiritually sterile.

One of the reasons we don't pursue Him when He withdraws His manifest presence, is that He often withdraws into the wilderness, into the desert. We may initially realize His manifest presence has left, but when we catch sight of that desert we get scared and we convince ourselves that He wouldn't have gone there, so we camp out where we experienced Him last, hoping He'll return to where we are, but that probably won't happen, as His Word tells us...”Behold, I am doing a new thing, do you not percieve it?”

Why the wilderness? Why a desert? In my own experiences I have learned that this is where He reveals His heart to us, when we choose to follow, trusting, by faith, to put all our eggs in His basket, we enter a realm of intimacy and maturity in God that He only opens to us as we prove our love this way. Eventually the wilderness and the desert will test all our resolve, even while He cares and provides for our needs (which He determines). We will run into questions about what He is doing and what He was thinking – either that, or we will tell our heart to be quiet and keep a stiff upper lip... but then we have lost the whole point.

The pursuit of God into the desert opens the door to a deeper knowing of His heart only after we open the doors of our heart to Him. As we pour out our hearts to Him in all honesty, emptying of ourselves (the good, the bad and the ugly), He comes and fills us, He not only provides for us physically, but emotionally. He satisfies our heart, and in doing so, reveals His heart for us. We get to know Him more deeply, in a way that would not have been possible in the excitement and rush of our mountain top experiences with Him. Wilderness, or desert times, when navigated well (in pursuit of God), will precede a spiritual promotion. It prepares our hearts to recieve and succeed in seasons of abundance, minimizing our ability to become corrupted. We will be able to discern God's voice among the throngs of others that will clamour for our attention in the lands flowing with milk and honey.

His Presence Like Water

What do you feel when you are waiting for someone, someone dear, and you catch sight of them coming toward you? You get a burst of emotion, a flood that washes away any other emotion that was, until that moment, holding your attention. That burst of emotion heralds a change, a new season, a transformation of your countenance and outlook. This is what it's like when God manifests His presence to me.

There are the in between times, the normal day to day of my relationship with Him, where His presence resides in my heart – the holy of holies; that place God portrayed through the ancient Israelites, when they built the tabernacle (dwelling place) for the Most High, according to the Heavenly blueprint He gave them. That was a shadow of His dwelling in heaven and a prophetic picture of God dwelling not just with, but within His children. How can Holy dwell with unholy, the dust of the earth? On the other side of mercy, grace and sacrifice. Love. Pure innocence came down and got dirty, to make us new, to make us innocent, to make us holy. His desire is to tabernacle within us, to never break the bond of intimate knowledge of His heart for us.

I love His presence. I have learned in the past few months, that although I may have much, it all turns to ashes without His presence in my life. I have learned that they who may have little in the world's eyes, have everything when they have His presence. God never fosakes His children, His Word tells us that, however, at times He does withdraw His manifest presence (the feeling of His presence) for a season and for a purpose. This is what happened to me. It was dry. It was a desert. Because I knew what it was like to live with His manifest presence, the absence of it was eye opening. Life without His manifest presence was drying me out, like a tree cut off from it's water source, slowly withering, until it became too much and I began to cry out to Him in sadness of heart, for I missed Him dearly and I told Him so.

The day I wept for His presence I moved like a living dead about my world. I managed to get to a friend's art show opening that evening and something strange and wonderful began to manifest. As I stepped into the art gallery I began to feel water rising around me, the supernatural water tap of God's manifest presence began to flow. The water rose around me and I couldn't speak, the waters of His manifest presence moved me around the room and into the next, where my eyes and heart fixed on a triptych titled, 'ONE'. As I inhaled, He filled me, and in a matter of seconds I knew Him like I had never known Him before. He took over my mind and flooded it with revelation that soaked into the dry ground of my heart. I saw Him. The tap of the water of His manifest presence was now fully on.

I found the artist and asked her about 'ONE', I asked her what she saw when she created it and what her interpretation was. She saw nothing and had no interpretation, the title was random – this is how she works – leaving it very personal to the viewer to make their own interpretation. She did tell me, however, that she prays before she paints, and that she anoints her hands with oil and blesses the work before she begins and while she paints she prays. It became very clear to me then, that God Himself painted this work, through submitted hands, for me. While I wandered my desert, He painted for me and planned this day, knowing the end from the beginning all along. What revelation, and what deep knowledge of Him and His mysterious ways, did this journey give me. He is faithful and He is love and He knows the end from the beginning. I can always trust Him.

Life is not easy. God did not say so either. He did say we'd have trials, and He said He would never leave or forsake us. This was true even when I could not feel Him. He knows the end from the beginning, and if we should ever question His lovingkindess let us remember His innocence and His sacrifice.

Lamentations 3:33

“For He does not willingly bring

affliction

or grief to the children of men.”