[12] I am writing to you, little children, because for His name's sake your sins are forgiven [pardoned through His name and on account of confessing His name].
[13] I am writing to you, fathers, because you have come to know (recognize, be aware of, and understand) Him Who [has existed] from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have been victorious over the wicked [one]. I write to you, boys (lads), because you have come to know (recognize and be aware) of the Father.
[14] I write to you, fathers, because you have come to know (recognize, be conscious of, and understand) Him Who [has existed] from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong and vigorous, and the Word of God is [always] abiding in you (in your hearts), and you have been victorious over the wicked one.
[15] Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.
[16] For all that is in the world–the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one's own resources or in the stability of earthly things]–these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].
This is the Amplified version which spells out for example that the two little children references in other translations are different .
Now in a Jewish culture now converted it could be that you can literally write spiritual growth terms much more in line with natural growth age groups .
But they are spiritual growth phrases .
Compare Jerusalem Gates One and Two .
The Sheep Gate and the Fish Gate .
Spiritually the first two things that happen surrounding us being born again is the exciting knowledge that if we repent before the Lamb that was slain to take away the sin of the world, we won't just be forgiven like some weekly ritual in ab Anglican or Catholic Church , Jesus will actually give us His life in exchange for our former main identity which was always spirit .
If we ask God to be made a new person and be born again Jesus will do it . He delights to do it .
Then it's so good we fish for others . We so long for everybody to know this . Real life is the faith life .
We were not meant to live by widgets alone , devil lies to us . He gets us to do things to be somebody in his mathematical pyramid called the world system .
Faith is outside the whole system . It's " Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God ".
We are living beings . Every day God speaks -psalm 19 .
Learning this new realm we have pastors . I have been writing in the last weeks and years that the shepherd word is used differently in the Bible . They don't run whole churches ....the churches were too big for any one ministry to run , and because Jesus is Head of His Church .
This whole entrance realm to spiritual life is the spiritual child realm ....which we never leave ....we just add to . We are relearning the whole of life again but this time acknowledging God is here with us .....actually closer ....Galatians 2 20.
Spiritual life as even New Age people find is organic .
But we are specifying the new and living way of Jesus . His Zoe life from above . A replacement of our old spirit man for His fused to our new created spirit .
If we get hold of these true foundations we will grow more accurately as Christians and our church growth will look more like the Bible and less like a solo rabbi synagogue .
THE BREAKDOWN OF THE WORLD SYSTEM ON US
For all that is in the world–the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one's own resources or in the stability of earthly things]–these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].
MAKES A LOT MORE SENSE WITH GALATIANS 2.20.
Everything is .....what is God doing in me as me next . Seeing God only .
To do more than God is doing that's Hamartia or transgressing ..,stepping over the line
To do less is to refrain from giving , to be lazy , to be cowardly ....this also is the sin of omission.
The lust of the eyes is seeing what God isn't showing .....it's way more than being covetous ...it means thinking of plans and infrastructures God isn't in . Unless we are wrong ....I can't think of anything in the New World Order Plans that accurate . The very solutions to what are laid out as problems .....neither are accurate . The lust or desire of the inner eyes is on a totally wrong frequency . Let alone getting to
the subjects of sexual things or the kind of riches to do with pyramid status .
And the reliance on man , on the matrix ,on our own abilities and self powered self strutting soul confidence is a reliance on the Genesis 3 independent self .
But there's also the young man realm in the spirit and the father realm . This is how the Father stage of Growth is described by Norman Grubb.
As each week progresses I take random photos and film of what I'm involved with plus incoming details. Some of my posts are made into Facebook reels with media. If you are on Facebook you can easily get through to my profile from the lefthand side of this page. The setting is public.
I read Different Drum by M Scott Peck and Post Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson around 1989 when I was put out of Emsworth Church ( precursor to New Life Church ).
These books plus chapter 31 of Norman Grubb's book " Yes I Am" are really helpful in describing your Song of Solomon Chapter 5 experiences .
You don't just GROW in a linear fashion ....
More of the same ......no.
The wilderness isnt like Egypt , and Canaan isn't like the wilderness .
The life we live now is not like a mother's womb , nor is a resurrected body like our current clay one .
The three growth stages in the natural are not like each other and just more of the same .
Teen age and young adulthood isnt the same as childhood .....it features two new things HORMONES and JOBS
Fatherhood isnt the same . Before there was YOU.
NOW you are responsible for other's lives .
Water isnt just a Bendier Ice ....its properties are totally different . It's liquid .
Steam isnt a question of a more advanced liquid .
Steam isn't two dimensional .....steam goes in any direction
M Scott Peck says we leave socialisation to get real inner answers to truth , to how life operates , to our own true identity which literally nobody can help us with . We are unique .
Having said that I think Myers Briggs Personality tests . THE FOUR WOODS OF TABERNACLES / FOUR GOSPEL WRITERS . And the fourteen types of ministry expression across 1 Corinthians 12: 27-8, Romans 12:6-8, and Ephesians 4 .11
All these have something to tell us about the sort of ways in which we work .
And we have to do our firstlevel secondlevel and thirdlevel according to our type .
Marks start out by doing stuff . Most of us are having to stop doing stuff and allow God to break all activity coming from the works appeasement drive . Marks can fascistically demand we do everything .....but to begin with others are told to do very specific things but a lot is learning to wait on God which means in Hebrew , bind with God on Union .....and acknowledge God in all things .
He will be turning some of our places of weeping into springs . Psalm 84.
The idea is not that we stop doing everything but that we really know we have died and it is Christ living in our members . And then we can move purposefully , Swiftly , without jostling ....like Joel 2...marching straight ahead ....whatever that means for our unique persons .
God gives us single eye seeing ....to see only God going on and get in on it .
Charismatics expecting us to fall in line with them as though thirdlevel is a slightly more directed charismatic realm , aren't beginning to capture what Galatians 2.20 means , especially the more God adds the KHAVOD powers of the Melchizedek priesthood .
It just isn't the same realm , anymore that the nest realm of baby birds looks anything like the realm they move into once the mother starts overturning the nests so they fly.
This is a post about the "middle realm", the contest for the Holy Place, the fight and struggle that goes on in the "second heaven" and the surprising realisation that at least a part of that realm, and the key part is inside us. We're going in via Andre Rabe, via Carol Decker and via a song of mine.We're going to learn what the "fullness of the times "is and the present reality of the typology of the Tabernacle.You'll never think quite the same about the Parable of the Sower either. From the Chapter "Apprehended" from Secret Of Contentment ISBN 978-0-9563346-0-2 - Andre RabeWhat is this strange ... yet familiar attraction
this awareness of Your person that draws me beyond myself
It's not a desire for pleasure or any type of reward
it's a hand upon my spirit that pulls me toward
a consciousness of our union
without distraction.
What will You say ...
Where will You take me ...
You are utterly unpredictable yet completely dependable
and I revel in this uncertain security.
Uncertain, because You continually surprise me.
Secure, because I'm at home in Your embrace.
The more intimate our acquaintance
the greater the intrigue
of Your boundless person and infinite mind.
Here I belong; here I will abide.
I found the secret of satisfaction
yet there remains this mysterious magnetism
to explore Your height and depth,
to open my spirit eyes as wide as You.
And as I experience a vision of Your greatness,
I expand beyond the narrow confines
of earthly logic and my natural mind
to perceive what cannot be understood
and know for certain what cannot be explained.
END
This morning I felt to write on Facebook:
Brokenness is a phrase Gene Edwards and Ed Miller used a lot. I think it's a secondlevel word. We're in a new generation now. It gave too much prominence to the pot. I think Daniel Yordy's diagram is far more accurate.How many remember the lyrics of China in Your Hand by Carol Decker of T'pau?Lyric writer Carol Decker explained that it is the effect that if you hold a china cup to a light, you can see your hand through it - therefore 'china in your hand' means something that is transparent.[1]
China in Your Hand
From the album Bridge of Spies by T'Pau
Written by Carol Decker and Ron Rogers...
It was a theme she had
On a scheme he had
told in a foreign land
To take life on earth
To the second birth
and the man was in
command
It was a flight on the wings
Of a young girls dreams
That flew too far away
And we could make the monster live again
Oh hands move and heart beat on
Now life will return in this electric storm
A prophecy for a fantasy
The curse of a vivid mind
Don't push too far
Your Dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself
China in your hand
Come from greed
Never born of the seed
Took life from a barren hand
On eyes wide
Like a child in the form of a man
A story told
A mind of his own
An omen for our time
We take a flight on the wings of fantasy
Then you push too far
And make your dreams reality
Yeah! china in your hand
But they're only dreams
And you shouldn't push too far
When asked what the lyrics meant, Ron Rogers co-writer said he wasn't sure, but Carol said it's about Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"..... So it's saying something like : what originally began as a theme in an author's mind could in these days of genetics take on outer form as we juggle around with life itself. We could make the monster live again.
But on another level this speaks of
that diaphanous layer below the conscious mind that conjures our future, that draws our future to itself. It can and MUST be invaded by the Holy Spirit, lest we draw to ourselves many outer forms of the monster that was always the design of the devil to draw to earth. But conversely He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. Here world means kosmos(Greek): the limited world of those (as Ern preaches) moral intelligences submitted to the devil's lying reign.
Can I briefly press this home as it is related to the scheme of this post?
Our first position as non-Christians is to ignore or possibly categorically deny any Devil. This is falsehood.
Our second position as Christians , and more so Spirit-filled Christians, is to absolutely be aware of the devil. He can scare us witless...and we like many Christians go around spouting about the "god of this world", thinking world means the same one God created and includes everything within it. This too is falsehood.
As Ern preached: The Earth is the Lord's and the Fullness thereof.
The more we "see" God in all, even and especially the bad things, the more we pull the rug out from underneath the devil's slender and lying claim to how things are run on Earth. But this seeing goes on underneath our conscious thought level. It's our instinctive level. It's where we really "see" everything in our life from.
Here's three examples of people who outwardly are one thing but underneath something is going on that affects them more, one positive two negative:
A man I tune for lives in a large house in a large wooded acreage near Ascot. It is near London.It is not too far from the Queen's outer London residence in Windsor and Windsor great park. You can only imagine the cost of such a house and property. He loves landscaping his property and adding lovely features. Every time I go there is something new. Yet this man is sad. Not at the surface level, but underneath. He seems to live a life of total depression. Possibly, because he knows all his money comes from shredding flesh- or the manufacture of weapons to kill people efficiently. And, up until recently, this involved virtually blank cheques from our government.
Meanwhile, when I visited Kenya in 86, my parents and I were taken for a tour round a hillside forested property by the 16 year old daughter of a Salvation Army Captain who was mostly absent and working among the slums of Nairobi. The daughter was virtually a second mother to his children. She was not bitter. She had a beautiful, pure spirit. Her inner eye which shone out of her outer eye was bright and beaming.They had virtually no money, yet at any time as she did with us, she could pull down the most amazing bananas, lemons,limes,oranges and mangoes fresh from their trees. The water in their stream was crystal clear and fresh, and they lived in a small community of neighbours who shared responsibility between them for care of the children, when others were at work or needed to study.
Stephen Fry is constantly referred to as our national treasure as one of the most articulate and knowledgeable of souls, yet at the level I refer to in this post he is constantly riding the rollercoaster of a bi-polar condition. There is always the danger that too soon there will not be a Stephen Fry.
Finally, in this introduction, where I am collecting together component materials, I want to refer to the post's title. My only connection with Carol Decker of T'pau is to do with a particular song I wrote called "Give It all You've Got." Originally it was written with Carol in mind because it is the same theme as a lot of T'Pau's songs, and also apart from Suzi Quattro, she was one of the only sassy female vocalists you used to hear back in the 80s. It was just prior to Margaret Becker's emergence with Charlie Peacock.
My song was written during the optimistic period of "The Only Way is Up" by Yazz, and it was in this period some of us were discovering the heady atmosphere of multilevel marketing or MLM with Companies such as Amway. Just as America has taken team power to a totally new level in recent centuries, the discovery that marketing needn't always be linear but could be multi layered, revolutionised the whole way sales could be operated. So , in less jargon, instead of having a traditonal marketing force with one sales manager managing a traditional pyramid of a line of salesmen under him....you can have an infinitely(almost) changing layered pyramid of sales people each earning commission from those they have in turn told and explained the product to.
This is the simple genius behind 2 tells 2 who tell 2 who tell 2 who tell 2, and pretty soon you are living from a small commission payment coming from an awful lot of people.
As people's jaws drop to think that I could ever be involved with such a thing, I'll move on after just these sentences.
MLM is mathematics;neither good nor evil. It is democratic, because anybody can have a team under them. When the marketplace becomes flooded, you pick another innovation or productline and start again.
MLM cannot function well while each and every individual is living in self for self mode.MLM referred to this as "survival mode". MLM only works in self for others mode, what MLM called "contribution" mode. Having just read "Yes I am" by Norman Grubb, I couldn't believe what these business people were saying. Not to put too fine a point on it, in the late 80s and 90s like Caleb and Joshua we saw the future, but it was ripped away from us because carnal minds labelled the system as evil, without seeing that what was evil was the compounded spirit of self for self that was evil. The system itself just is. 2times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times a monthly commission of say £50 from each makes £16000, whether it's a Christian £16000 or a mafia £16000. But that isn't what this post is about.
When I came to record "The Blood Song" on my double CD I wanted a section encouraging a response to this, so I wrote to Carol Decker to see if she'd be up for it. I made my position clear, and as a Leftie Labour agnostic/atheist she made hers clear, so it never happened. Helen Burgess of Ellel Ministries helped me instead. The song then leads into a psalm Francois Du Toit quoted a few weeks ago :Psalm 36
Youtube notes:First written for Carol Decker of T'Pau during the heady days of Multi Level Marketing and Yazz "the Only Way is UP" Give It All eventually ended up sandwiched on my CD1 of Early Harvest as part of a long track entitled the Blood Song. It ends with a version of Psalm 36(dated22/7/94) that came during a time of waiting on God.. Band includes Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo and Iona, and also musical director of Belinda Carlisle on bass,Steve Cyster on guitar, John Graham (Rev James Graham's son and friend of Roy Castle" Recordbreakers") and Helen Burgess of Ellel Ministries sharing vocals with me AC Welch, recorded at River Studios London 1997 and Mango studios Chichester 1998.
The Holy of Holies
Ephesians 1 and 2 and Colossians 1 are an open proclamation of the secret hidden for ages, namely Christ in Us the Hope of Glory.
These passages are Spirit passages. They are Life and Truth. They are not religious niceties. They are reality and Spirit reality is infinitely more real than anything a few molecules with massive holes between them could contain. Our present material world has more gaps in between the substance than substance.
They are the FIRST thing that we as mature Christians, by the Spirit, by the supernatural gift of utterance lay in the lives of one day old believers.
The incomparable Christ :- Colossians 1:13-29
And because he is who He is, he has caught us up together with Him.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
It is a gift. It is not of ourselves. It is lavished on us.He has caught us up into
"an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth." From a throne point of view the fullness of the times was the point in history when everything turned on its hinge. The hinge was the Cross. The intersection of glory and judgment. We do not say "who will go up for us?" or "who will go down into hell for us". It was a done deal at that precise time. This was the fullness of times.
When we get caught up in Christ's reality we are being caught up in what is eternally true : The fullness of the times. And we are told what that is.
The summing up of all things in Christ.....hmmmm....things in the heavens....and things on the earth.... like as if they were one thing ? Before this they were never one thing.
Psalm 85
In the 70s I got 3 songs from Psalm 84 and 85. I wasn't looking for them. They landed on me !
One was from Psalm 85: 8-9 RSV Bible: Let me hear what God the LORD will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
[9] Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land.
And it goes on
[10] Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
[11] Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
This is connected with the ladder ascending into heaven that Jacob saw, and the subject of this series Psalm 24.
Note:1) it is God's NORM that glory may dwell...remain...hang around....on our land.
2) God speaks PEACE to His people. What peace? The peace of Ephesians 1 and 2. The dividing wall of hostility is broken down. He Himself has made peace. Peace between the rebellious person and the right demands of the Law and Covenants. Peace between Gentiles and God. Peace between the sons of the covenant , the Jews, and those who were far off (us Gentiles) who have now been brought near.
3).How can God be sure Faithfulness will spring/is springing up from the ground. Transplanting the seed of the Kingdom is nothing less than Christ Himself. Having come here and overcome as a Man, Jesus comes again in the Person of the Holy Spirit into every single believer....He is faithful, and it is His faithfulness springing forth in believers who learn the truths of grace and the reality of Jesus living our life as us.
4) All these things are NORMAL for those who turn and keep on turning to the Living God who speaks this peace, and they turn in their hearts. It is a heart religion. "Out of the heart flow the issues/ the outflowing rivers of life."
The KINGDOM is NOW
We don't preach a Kingdom that is future. We preach the Eternal Now. We preach the I AM.
God refers to Himself as the I am...because it's like a blank cheque. He can be for us all things. He can be for us what we need for Him to be right now.
"The Kingdom is near you even in your mouth."
We believe in our heart, we confess with our mouth.
The Practice Run In 1972 we asked ourselves some big questions. How do we ever get to the bigger picture of revival? God answered totally (we felt) counter-intuitively by teaching us the way into His Presence through praise and worship. I was thinking this week about my attitude at the time .
I think I felt I was doing God a favour by learning to praise Him. But the more we obeyed in this, what started out as a "new liberating activity" soon became a door on a whole new world.
A way of being.
A conversation.
A language.
A Presence of the Holy One Himself.
The more we learned the less we knew. The cocksure way of presenting ourselves in praise and worship activity gave way to an increasing sense of awe that we'd ever been invited to this party in the first place. Yes definitely the more we learned the less we knew.
In Amersham in little house gatherings, then in Paderborn,Germany with a new German friend who had just returned from travelling with Judson Cornwall (trained by Ed Miller) through to a "coincidental" personal arrival later in Emsworth Church where Ed Miller was at that time a frequent visitor , we were learning that there are stages we pass through even in worship meetings. Here, I am talking about meetings with "flow"....not the micromanaged meetings where songlists dominate, or where "anointed" showmen do their entertainment spots. I mean meetings where the I AM God is actually no.1 on the agenda.
Helen Rubio has spoken of the 1st , 2nd and 3rd heaven realms where we enter into God's Presence. We enter into His courts with praise. We praise because it is a command. No matter what is going on.No matter how we feel. Not some sort of Hitler command, because we are responding to God first loving us. He instigated our ability to have a relationship with Him. But particularly because we are fallen beings, we awaken from our slumberous state where we slip back into blaming God for our situation, we rise up and speak the truth again...that at all times He truly is worthy of praise. He just is. He is glorious and cannot help it!!!
There are often extraordinary battles in meetings at this point, but as we press through this "2nd heaven" waging warfare against soupy,heavy,treacle like atmospheres, it is like a plane rising through the clouds breaking into God's eternal sunshine again. You can often feel exactly the point where a meeting changes gear. And from here we are able to get direction for the rest of the meeting.
Now, if we pray for somebody, it is from a position of inner knowing that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. It's a different kind of prayer!
What I particularly want to highlight is the nature of these Amersham,Paderborn,Emsworth and now Havant Key of David meetings. After praise , so many times there is a time of intimacy "one on one" us and Jesus,but together. In the Argentinian manner we would seek Him on our face. Deep issues in our lives would be touched. Many would cry. Deep spiritual mysteries may suddenly become clear. Stunningly clear direction for problems that have long eluded us.New songs. Paticularly in Emsworth, some of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard came right here among something like ten of us particularly, or from sister churches in this way in Argentina,Spain and France. We never really sang UK songs, we had too many of our own.
Gradually we'd be up on our feet again but this time the worship would be purer,deeper...just more awesome.
Why I want to highlight this particular section of the meetings is particularly relevant for our discussion of Psalm 24. Remember,this was the practice run. This was the meeting version of what we are now to live fulltime in opening up the gates for our King!!!
What is that time on our face before God?Sometimes an extended silence, or being quiet while an instrument plays softly? What is contemplation? Meditation?
Let's answer obliquely with this parameter. It's the Holy Place. Not the Holiest Place yet. It's the middle place. Absolutely anyone can enter into the courts of the Lord. Only priests enter the Holy place. We have all been made priests but only in Christ by the Holy Spirit's power. Now in the Holy place there are NO WINDOWS. This is not a place for natural wisdom and light. This is a place of revelation. Of light coming from the candlestick. From the Holy Spirit.
This is also the place of the Shewbread. This is the place where 3rd level/father level ministries impart Jesus to those in the second stage of growth. Eating the shewbread, is related to the eating of the Body of Christ. The Blood cuts us off from our past and brings total cleansing to us. Eating the Body of Christ is literally nourishing ourselves with the Truth of who Christ has now made us. We have died. This false illusion of having a separate exstence - being self-empowered, which was really always Satan-I, has died too. We now become increasingly aware of our total Union with Christ. This is where we learn it. This is where we get nourished. This is Christ becoming us, from our insides out. see Psalm 45:13NASV "The King's daughter etc..."This is why, even in these meetings, when we get up again, when we enter deeper into worship, we feel cleaner, transformed, lighter inside. We find it easier to worship unhindered. I want to talk about this precise thing but in the wider context outside of meetings.
The Israelites had "practice runs" too. Their wilderness experience was a practice run for the Land. The walk they developed (or didn't) in the place of harsh conditions and lack, built into them the inner qualities needed for going properly into action later.
Jericho was a practice run. Yes ofcourse it was also the real thing....but spiritually, having to walk silently round a city six times and on the seventh holler and blow trumpets...was all a practice run for what they would STILL DO spiritually but next time with natural equipment too. They had to learn it was not the natural equipment that was saving them!!!
Another spiritual practice run was in Chronicles when the army had to stand still and see the salvation of their God....only allowed to use the method of praise!!!
In the practice runs we develop the internal sense of the Presence of God, of our conversation with God which is a language of the interior. It cannot really be articulated. It is like a catching fire on your insides.
TheREAL THING
The real thing is a people who have developed in the Holy Place, the 2nd stage of "young men" as it says in 1 John 2:12 ff, and are now fixed in their knowing. They KNOW that they are Christ in their form, their personalities, their bodies and now they become walking talking representatives of all the furniture and typology that we see in the Holy of Holies, the third stage of growth as Paul describes in the book of Hebrews.They go into action with their armour as in Ephesians 6:10.
We take a break while Nancy Gilmore shares some very interesting impressions on Facebook.
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"His body is on location for Christ" Nancy Gilmore
speaking of Bryan Coatney and his poetry." I see that's what our body is. It is a Temple for the Living God to live in and through on location . . a branch which the sap hatches it's fruit on. The Lord showed me my body once in a vision, I could see through my body, it was transparent. I could see out of both sides of my head with limitless ends, and I saw scales falling off my eyes through the back of my head and down my back with my neck and jaws being fixed in a locked position. . .and I was soaring upward. As God would have it, I just happened to be alone with Norman Grubb as we were talking about being 'whole' people in the Lord. When I saw the vision I said to Norman. OH Norman, I just saw myself in ascension! As calm as could be, he replied. "Oh my dear, that was Christ as you!" END
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Every church meeting that runs genuinely in the Holy Spirit is WEEKLY proof that the "place " that Jesus has prepared for us is in fact HERE, NOW. The fullness of the times is here. The Kingdom is here. We just don't perceive it. Which is why Jesus gives us a framework in which to learn it. What would that be?
When two or three are gathered in My Name, I will be with them. But when we go apart? When the meeting is over, nothing has changed. The Kingdom is no less among us. It's just our perception.
So where is this all happening then? And what are the gates that need lifting up for the King of Glory to come In ? Jesus spoke of roots and soil and WORD.
The Parable of the Sower Re- examinedMark 4:1-20Matthew 13:1-23Luke 8:1-15
Many of us that were brought up in church would have a cast iron template for this parable. We think in terms of different sorts of people. Even worse than this with religious specs on, we can get to thinking I in my "independent self position "am good soil. I am not like that riffraff over there!
There's a word for this: self-righteousness.At the very least this parable is saying we are nothing without "the seed". And this seed is an entirely grace form of seed. We don't earn it. We don't do anything for it. We don't buy it. The only thing we do is Hear it.
And obey it , but by faith. A faith that comes from the very Divine seed itself.This is grace.
Whether or not this parable does mean different types of people in a born-again grace type understanding, it also is referring to what ONE INDIVIDUAL LIFE has to go through in order to become a John 15 "fruitbearer"
At the beginning we have no ears to hear. Yes, we have flappy things on the side of our head, but no inward capacity to hear. The capacity to hear comes by hearing the Word.
Sometimes it just seems to be a bit of dry head knowledge. I know a lady who got born again in Brighton through the cult "The Children of God". They only preached John's gospel. She was born again through a supernatural encounter with John 3:16." God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whosoever believed ON Him should have eternal Life." Everyone else just heard words. She heard Word. And Life became Eternal in her. Two weeks after this, her new Life told her to leave that cult immediately.
Later we have Word, but no root. Without root, which is the subject of this post, we have no strength to live that Word. We do a good meeting, but we're not living there full time yet.
So ofcourse, to get us living it full time God gives us another BIG ZAP of anointing and everything is wonderful and we live happily ever after...and we marry the prince or princess and the sun shines for ever more! THE END.
Nope. That's not what the parable of the sower says. The final stage before we get to pure soil is rocky soil, with harsh jagged weeds and thistles. We are told what these are.This time, not so much the previous persecutions, but some things that are more subtle and insiduous:
1. Life's worries
2. Riches
3.Pleasures
For these sort of things, the testings are outside the meeting room. It is NO coincidence at all that there is a whole wave of Christian people worldwide that don't go to church and many are on Facebook.This kind of development doesn't happen anywhere near meetings. This kind of development comes as a Romans 12 "laid down " life goes around in the world and has these great asteroids coming at it Pacman style.
Life's worries are what Norman calls things I don't like. Squeezes. Demands being made of me that I know, looking at my inventory ,I am never going to meet. Ouches. Pinches. But only in that environment do I learn they are in fact God's negatives.
I wasn't long into reading "Yes I am" when I met a Branhamite. (William Branham - the Last great prophet Elijah kind of thing) Now this guy was a former Pentecostal pastor who now had advanced Parkinson's, and consequently could not hold down his previous position...or rather his flock were certain he couldn't! So abandoned, he was now at the mercy of UK Social security.Isn't the Christian life just so loving!
But both he and I believed in healing. I was there tuning many times. I'd seen a lot of healings at the London Morris Cerullo outreaches in the early 90's, so "full of faith" I prayed for him. But ofcourse I wasn't full of faith I was full of enthusiasm from the London meetings, and.....nothing ever happened. Now at this point a "secondleveller" doesn't know how to cope. He's meant to get healed when I pray!!!
Now we know God is doing amazing things in this day, using folk in healing as never before. We also know from Barbara Rogerson's testimony that you can be quietly toddling along learning about Christ as you in normal life situations, when all of a sudden someone transmits to you one of the many transferable anointings that are going around these days. The Toronto Blessing or Father's Blessing was highly transferable!!!! Went right round the UK within weeks. So Barbara began to experience a facility in praying for things the second beforehand she'd never have dreamed of tackling.
In Bible House (see relevant Google label below)some issues surfaced in people's lives that were then dealt with in days or weeks. When they weren't, most were stumped. We were secondlevellers!!! There were longstanding situations that were prayed through and the breakthroughs were pretty outstanding.
However I knew my situation was hopeless in Emsworth and just knew that no leader was going to help. In the end I pressed in myself, and like so many that are on Facebook who have found their answers outside the system, we learned the true meaning of Romans 7 and started to experience our very own Romans 8.
2.Riches and 3.pleasures are very subtle. Because they need not be sin. And many times it is God meaning you to experience these blessings. But as in Judges 7:5, Gideon's 300 distinguished themselves by lapping at the water with cupped hands with one eye open for the enemy, so now God's people are distinguishing themselves by instinctual behaviours that mark them out, give themselves away, as being set apart for the next big operations that are up ahead. Remember, the 30,000 knew of the selection process, the 10,000 had no idea at all!
The key is not to develop behaviours. The Key is to have your Holy Place invaded by the Holy of Holies. To submit to the truths of the "Fullness of Times" and the total victory won for us at the Cross.
The Battle for the Holy Place
1.Why? Because if you are born again Jesus has already completely taken over your spirit.In fact according to the Old Testament twofold image of the 2 goats, you and I have died and our false spirit has been driven into the wilderness never to be seen again. You can't get a more graphic picture of annhililation. We are now Christ-us in our spirit centre. Any deliverance issues or problem issues are not here.This is the Holy of Holies. In you it's where Christ dwells.
2.The Problem is moving heaven from the Holy of Holies(the one inside you) out into the rest of your being.God's got a double technique here. Firstly , the experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is available on the day you believe...,though most Christian leaders never tell you. And this was no different in Acts.On two occasions the apostles had to ask "Did you receive the Spirit when you believed?" And on both occasions it was a negative reply. So the apostles prayed for the saints and in both instances they knew they were filled and they also began speaking in other languages praise unto God. So there is really no room for controversy here. you know when you are filled and you begin doing things that have no natural explanation. (Yes ,I'm aware psychologists try)
This is clearly not the whole thing though, or else why would there be the Parable of the 10 virgins. All ten had oil. Did you get that. All Ten had oil, but there was another supply that only five bothered purchasing. I believe that is what is being talked about in this post and the parable uses the phrase "I don't know you" of the five with insufficient oil.
Be Lifted Up you gates, be lifted up you ANCIENT doors.
A unique thing is happening in our day. The doors that slammed shut inside people from Adam's day onwards are now being challenged. A few saints saw this thing about "separation" and the need for us to be "single-eyed" again, but today it is being broadcast around the world to those who will hear. In Genesis 3 an existence so spurious, so ridiculous was spun by a lying devil, that it has taken until now, millennia later for numbers to see it. There IS NO separate existence as humans. We are either empowered by a sin spirit or by Christ's own Spirit of Life. Where this became complex was as Christians, who having Christ at their centre, still by their own ignorance or stubborn refusal to hear in the Spirit, carry on in the belief that they are self-empowered people with a bit of Holy Spirit anointing on top (if they're lucky). This one false belief system has disastrous consequences. Just as we could not live the Christian life before asking Jesus in, we still cannot until we acknowledge by faith the existence of One sole Spirit operator beneath our unique personalities and bodies
namely One Jesus Christ. It is not I (at my spirit centre) who live, it is Christ who lives within me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD.
What is revelation?
Revelation is a deeper knowledge than the sort taught in UK schools. Our surface thought patterns/ ways of thinking are best thought of us an amoral tool. Neither good nor bad. Step by step thinking.
Below this is the mesh, the filter system that drives us, that is where we are really at. What is so confusing for the person particularly locked in the "surface of things" is to have a prophet address the bit underneath. When we see in the Spirit, we see clearer and clearer the bit underneath, and we groan within because we know all the surface talk in the world can go on for years or decades, while the sludge underneath remains untouched. So naturally we can't stand the thought of someone having to go on suffering endlessly....so a prophet tends to want to act impulsively and clear the whole (what he she sees as a total waste of years)thing up and be done with it. Ask any prophetic/creative/artistic type and they'll tell you the disruptions they've caused around these types of issues.
Nowadays we are helped by a (slightly) clearer understanding of how our minds work. First the period after Jane Austin's writings, then Freud and Jung, then onto the 1963 book
"The Games People Play" by Eric Berne, and onward to PET brain scans of the current day, people can be helped through deeper issues with courses of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
But to really know ourselves through and through we Christians say we need the Light of the Holy Spirit. Psalm 36: In His Light we see Light. At this depth surely this is the only safe place for us.
The Holy Place and the Soil
Christians have spent decades attending "healing of the hurts" seminars. Morris Cerullo tends to pooh pooh this type of ministry because of its seeming endless navel-gazing nature. Both are wrong.
Jesus only took 3 years to transplant His life in the twelve disciples. Two things need to happen to move at this speed. We preach the positive of Christ living His life through us. But there has to be an equivalent experience of a Holy Place/ secondlevel period where we at the "young men" stage "take " the overcoming Word of Testimony and loving not our lives unto death make it ours. Become fixed in it. Whether through soaking. Through sensitive Holy Spirit meetings. Through contemplation on our own. In some way, we have to do what Jesus said:
Go into your inner room and SHUT your door....and meet with your Father in the secret place. (more on this in the 1989 3rd level message)
We have to allow Jesus to sift our soil. He wants to KNOW us. To know our Union with Him.
If we are going to be fruitful producers of His seed, that soil needs to be pure, simple soil.
Not Jesus and.
Single-eyed.
Seeing God only .(Rich Novek series)
As Carol Decker sang, we need to be careful about "pushing too far"...we don't know what we might set upon our selves....because in this realm, as Jacob found, we can faith in speckled and striped sheep....but it's not necessarily anything to do with God's higher plan for our lives.
Yongghi Cho faithed in the biggest church building in the world in the 80s having very nearly a million members....
But that's not how God builds churches...
that's how Americans build Ford cars.
God builds the Body by that which every joint supplies. He didn't even specify a building or any kind of externals. God is ONLY interested in transferring Word, transplanting seed.
ScrawlingsEzekiel 8 and especially verse 10
So I went in and looked, and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel.
Where are we seeing "more than God"?
Fears. Things we don't see God in. Things which appear overwhelming.
Riches/pleasures. The Pride of Life. Areas where we are not saying inwardly Psalm 100:3 It is He who made us and not we ourselves.
Rich Novek, myself and many others have found it so hard that we've all been in circumstances where even what we feel are the basic male roles of supplier, and success model have seemed to be removed from us....big time. I don't know of anything more embarrassing than having my wife fill in a lot of the gaps in these days.
Also, this Saturday I am about to go to my first grammar school reunion after 34 years. Usually only the "successful" ones bother turning up. I'm going for different reasons.
Ed Miller used to say beware the churches that are not a mess. They are the ones where the mess is covered over and is not allowed to show itself. Daniel Garcia one of the main leaders now of Los Rios de Vida, Buenos Aires said a great thing. He said, "at the start of a construction project all the mess is on show, but gradually as construction continues, rooms are created to deal with some of the mess so that after a while disruption is managed better."
Left-brain intellectual reasoning concerning the events surrounding Jesus and the disciples have little sense of meaning. You have to hear these statements in the Spirit. Jesus was slamming wrong spirits that were uttered by the twelve as they happened. His words would have stung like lightning because they were not aimed at their understanding but were fired at this sub-mesh of "wrong seeing" that is like the scrawlings on the wall of the Temple.
Here are some examples:
when they offered to call fire down from heaven on a rebellious (as they saw it) town
"You don't know of which spirit you are"
Wow we're the kiddies we were casting out demons sick were being healed
"Careful, remember I saw Satan himself fall like lightning out of heaven itself because of such pride"
Keep away kids, only grown ups allowed here
"Let the children come for they are a picture of the sort of people that make up the Kingdom."
And so on. Similar to male circumcision , this was circumcision of the heart going on here. Equally if not more painful. Literally ripping down some of the scrawlings from the walls of their Holy Place.
Conclusion
Since the momentous day two or three weeks ago when Daniel Yordy posted his first part of Psalm 24, and I before reading his, had a lot of the revelation above hit me in one fail swoop that very afternoon, perhaps the greatest feature is Daniel's point that our spirit is not buried in our centre but is in all of us. I am not sure about his conclusion that our will is turned over completely to Christ. Probably all our component parts go through stages of yieldedness, maybe three levels of them.
But for those like myself and Rich and possibly earlier Daniel, that came to rockbottom over the fact that we just flat out DID NOT WANT the WILL of GOD no matter how much people tried to reason and sermonise...but we discovered these two incredible verses...
Rich discovered All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if ON SOME POINT YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY (the hinge), THAT TOO GOD WILL MAKE CLEAR TO YOU . Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (Phil 3:15-16)
For me it was the liberation that came from the verse "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philip. 2:13)
There are some that make too big a thing of the work of clearing scrawlings off the wall of the mind. There are some that make too light a thing. The work that Francois Du Toit is doing is to point out that the Word is now to us a Mirror of Christ who has come to live His kind of Life in us.He is going to get us there. That is why Christ'sLife in us is called the (definite/firm) HOPE of GLORY and why the FIRST things that we preach are the basis, the foundation for all else:
The APOSTOLIC FOUNDATIONS and certainties of the Epistles
and especially
Ephesians Chapters 1 and 2 and Colossians 1.
Left-brain Post-Notes
Andre Rabe's poem and the reference to brokenness try to get us beyond the realm of sermons and note-taking, and the traditional talk of how much "brokenness" is occurring...by getting us to concentrate our inward eyes on the Living Jesus, and a very real relationship with Him
Carol Decker's song and the verses of Give It all (my song) are included in order to introduce the idea of a mystical side of our thinking which has the power of drawing into itself what it "sees". That in order to "go for it" (my song again) an internal decision has to be made below our surface thinking.
We need to change our thinking when we refer to "world" and be clear which of two Greek words we mean.
The reality is that the veil was torn in the Temple from top to bottom supernaturally at the very point that Christ died signifying our total acceptance in the HOLY of Holies. When we become born again,Christ comes into our spirit and expels the previous spirit we lived by.This is effectively our Holy of Holies at our centre.
Psalm 85 speaks of the ONE THING that God has joined together out of "things in earth and things in heaven" Ephesians 1 speaks of the peace God has supernaturally created."The walls of hostility are broken down"
The Kingdom is NOW. Our "practice run", particularly in the last 40 years has been learning sensitivity to the Presence of God in Spirit-filled meetings. This has become a reality....but what about outside? The Kingdom is just the same....it's just our perception , "our seeing" that changes.
The level that our "seeing" occurs is in the unseen layer below our conscious thinking, but above our spirit which remains in constant union with Christ. So what we are calling reality at our "seeing" level is really a lie. This is why Jesus said "If the (very)light that is within you turns out to be darkness ....how great is that darkness...in other words can you see how powerful that darkness has been and how it has eluded detection for all this time.
A re-definition of the Parable of the Sower this time as the steps in one life towards becoming a fruitful soil.
Going Into our Inner room to relate with our Father and also to take a good look at the scrawlings on our Temple walls, and removing or replacing them as God gives us instruction
