Showing posts with label Christ In You. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christ In You. Show all posts
Monday, 4 November 2024
Louis Tucker and Richard Krupa Christ In You
Working Man's Gospel Episode 4
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Travels with John & Fred — January 9 – 23, 2006
Listen, think about it!
In Genesis 3, some really small action took place. Adam stretched out an arm in false believing. From that false believing and "false" faith action is all that you now see as a canker spread right through every nation on earth.
Is it any wonder then, that through our "small" actions as we share the simple message of what Christianity means, (that like leaven, this time the new leaven,) great things are going to grow from this similarly tiny seed, as it engrafts in every nation on Earth. This account is from Fred Pruitt and John Bunting see Fred's blogpost . Can I make it clear I was not on this trip, this is being shared to give you another angle on how God is building.
Travels with John & Fred — January 9 – 23, 2006 — Georgia, Florida, Alabama
Abraham, Apostle Paul, Christ in you, Col 1:27, faith, Gal 2:20, Grace, law and grace, new testament, union with Christ
By Fred Pruitt
After hearty celebrations of the holidays with families and friends, Dr. John & I set off on another adventure in early January. We had driven north before, so why not south this time? So John’s shy wife Linda (people think I’m kidding because she seems anything but “shy,” but so she is) had gotten on the phone with people she knew, and many she had never met though had been in contact with, and fixed us up a schedule hitting a few stops in Georgia, Florida and Alabama.
John and I are continually asking this question: why are we doing this? And now seems appropriate to delve into it again. We had had a long rest between the end of our fall trip and the beginning of January. Life is comfortable at home, and certainly neither of us are past being “needed” at home for various father and husband responsibilities. Our wives love us and I like to think pine for us just a little when we’re gone. We pine for them, too (but we’re men and we don’t talk about it).
But why get up out of this comfort zone and go ride around in a little car all over the country staying in houses with people we often don’t know? It would be answering a simple question if we had some tangible product we were selling, something you could hold in your hand, or at least a “program” you could apply. And that this tangible “product” would produce quantifiable guaranteed results. Or that we were building some structure that we could point to and measure our progress. But we “have” none of that, and offer only a Person (God in Jesus Christ) as the foundation and daily reality of life, and bring only ourselves as we are in Christ, and we trust that He lives as us.
So the first answer to why, is the first answer that came to us, causing all the other answers: it is the compulsion of the Spirit, which is a drive of love. Before we ever got in the car, there was the drive of the Spirit to get out to wherever we could to give what God had given us.
Each successive step has come from the preceding one. With each step, we know a little more, and also ask a little more. I understand more what Paul meant when he said in Philippians 3: “Not as though I have already attained.” It isn’t a “self” attainment, some higher degree of sanctity, that Paul is talking about, but rather the constant seeking of love to fill places with itself. Love does not rest because it is its nature to go out of itself, away from its own comfort, to only find release and rest in expending itself in reproduction of itself.
What John and I are learning (and sharing hopefully) through all these travels and visits, is not something special just to us and “revealed” to us because we’re out “doing God’s work,” but we are only learning and living what is happening in all of us in our regular daily lives, each and every day. The “love drive” I speak of which compels us to do what we do, is the same “love drive” in each of us, which compels us all who are in Him, to do what we do. Christ has come into us to be, first of all, foremost and foundational to everything, the Love of God in us. The true “other-love.” And this is what we find to be true every moment of every day — that He by our lives is manifesting in the world around us as love.
He’s the water, and we’re the structure people come to to draw the water from — the well. Which is the final purpose of our going, that these wells would spring up everywhere where there have been only deserts before. The wells are ourselves in Christ and He in us, each of us the starting points for innumerable rivers of living water flowing out of each of our middles, to water and bless the world.
In a nutshell, that’s all we’ve been sent out to share. And we are finding hearing ears everywhere we go.
And with that as our context John picked me up early in the morning of January 9th. We were under the gun already at 6 AM — we had to be at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant near Chattanooga, Tennessee, by lunchtime for a lunch date. We were meeting with a man John had met on a trip several years ago to Romania. Eddie Cantrell is a pastor at a local Baptist church in the area, and he and John had hit it off when they met on a mission trip and had the same “message” to give in their talks – union with Christ. Eating at Cracker Barrel satisfies the southern cookin’ hankerin’ I get every now and then, so I was agreeable to the meeting as well.
One thing I’ve learned on my trips with John Bunting — we don’t dawdle — so it was no problem getting to the lunch date on time. (We are often very very early – we were once a day early somewhere and we didn’t know it!) We phoned Eddie and he met us and we had a great chat about the good things of God and how things were going with him, while thoroughly enjoying the biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, and the various other things that go with them.
From there on to Dallas, Georgia, to visit Ray and Lee Epperson. I remember it was warm enough that we sat out on their back porch for a couple of hours. We’d been cooped up in our houses for the past couple of months in Kentucky, so it was a pleasure to sit out for a while. We had lively conversation throughout the night with Ray and Lee regarding our union with Christ.
The next night we drove from Dallas over to the Lake Lanier/Gainesville area, where our hosts, Bill and Lynn Davis, had arranged for us to stay at a lakehouse nearby. Bill and Lynn had set up a group meeting for the evening. I knew I was in the right place when we got there at dinnertime. They had brought in barbecue, and among the selections was Brunswick Stew. I’m partial to Brunswick Stew when it’s made right, and this turned out to be made just right. I hadn’t seen Brunswick Stew since I moved to Kentucky, so I knew I was back in Georgia and we were to be greatly blessed!
But aside from that, the Davis’ sponsored our first formal “meeting” on this trip. They had invited a few friends from their fellowship in. Jim played the guitar and led in song and then John and I took turns giving short talks. After that we had a good session of questions and discussion at the end.
The next morning we headed south to the Atlanta area, where we had two people to see in the afternoon, and then a get-together at a church in the evening. In our non-dawdling way, we had plenty of time to kill for our lunch appointment when we arrived in Atlanta. So I thought John should have a little tour. I had gone to middle and high school in Atlanta, as well as sowed many of my wildest oats, in the very part of Atlanta where we were going. And I thought I knew it like the back of my hand, in a 40-year-ago-memory-gap sort of way. I was surprised more than once, though, as many things were more or less where they had been all those years ago, but the ways to get to them had become all askew. Still I found my way to show John my house from high school days and many other landmarks, but John’s favorite part of the tour, no doubt, was when I had him go down all these side streets off Peachtree Street in Buckhead to an old three story brick structure that surprisingly, to me, was still standing — and then I began singing my high school alma mater. (I tell my wife at least my high school is still standing. Hers is a K-Mart now.)
We met a wonderful lady for lunch, Rosemarie Lownik. She is one of the many people who have come to us via the internet in one way or another. Like many others, what we are sharing is what she was already hearing in herself and from other sources, that she is Christ expressing Himself in her daily living, and we found another new heart friend. After lunch Rosemarie had to get back to work and we next visited an old friend of John and Linda from their high school days.
Then, as traffic was gearing up for another daily freeway-jamagananza, we set off to the other side of Atlanta to meet with Reggie Screen, pastor of a church in Lawrenceville. John had visited there in 2004 with Dan Stone. Reggie and his people had received John and Dan with openness and excitement in 2004, and the same was true for our visit. After dinner with Reggie, we met with his midweek group and he gave us the floor. As has become our habit, we nod to each other and somehow one of us begins to speak, and this time John began sharing his testimony. Afterwards I got to give along the same lines. (And during the time John was talking, he got a couple of telephone calls from his children and grandchildren wishing him happy birthday). Reggie and his people again were delightful and responsive heartily to the words John and I had shared.
The next day found us riding due south for Florida. After barely a month of winter at home, I was already prepared for some warm weather. Hoping for some, anyway. We got to Ocala in mid-afternoon and spent the night with old friends, Rock and Deb Gibboney. It was old home week for us all since we hadn’t seen each other in many years. We had a great time of sharing with Rock and Deb until mid-day the next day, when John and I pulled off toward the ocean. It turned out we had an extra day in our schedule and neither of us had seen the sea in a while and it was so close ….
So we headed on over to the Daytona area which was pretty much deserted, being January. We got a room on the beach that looked like it had been the setting for a thousand keg parties, but it had active high-speed internet, so who was complaining? And it was on the beach! We treated ourselves to a steak dinner and enjoyed the surf when we returned. There’s something about the ocean, even just a few minutes of it. It always speaks to me of the mystery of God and ourselves.
The next day on the way out we had breakfast across the street from the Daytona 500 Speedway. When we were in the parking lot of the restaurant we could hear the cars driving around inside the speedway, they were so loud. It made me think of all my friends who love NASCAR.
Our next stop was Sanford, Florida, at the church of Pastor Theory Stringer. We had been corresponding with Theory for a few months, after he and his church member George Magu (a man from Kenya) found us via the www.christasus.com website. Pastor Theory had invited a number of other local pastors to his church for a Saturday afternoon meeting. We had an informal session in their sanctuary, with Theory and the other pastors asking to hear from us regarding living in union with Christ. Each of us gave our take and then we had a lively discussion. One portion of our session that made an indelible impression on me, was how firm Theory and others with him were on being “slaves of God.” It is a truth we easily pass over from time to time, but Theory reminded us how total our slavery is in being bondslaves of God, doing the will of our “master” from the heart, and in that is freedom. To finish the evening they took us down to the church basement for a wonderful dinner put together by some of the ladies.
The next day was Sunday and we were scheduled to meet our next contact, someone we’d never met, at a church service in Orlando. We didn’t even know what our friend looked like, just the address of the church.
Showing up more than an hour early we of course found it deserted, so a few cups of coffee later we returned to find people parking and walking into the building. John and I didn’t recognize anybody, but we went in and sat down toward the rear. Service got started a while later with lots of rousing songs and it seemed like at one time or another, almost everybody in the congregation got up and either went up and grabbed a microphone and sang, or picked up an instrument and played. We were in a good ol’ fashioned country church, the kind neither of us had been in in a good while, and there was shoutin’ and lots of movement, onstage and off! We weren’t even sure who was the pastor until a quiet unassuming man got up, staying below the platform and never “ascending” the pulpit, and with a Bible in hand began expounding on the scripture. He was Brother Harvey Turnage, a beautiful man who surprised our socks off by preaching about living and knowing God in the NOW, experiencing the goodness, mercy and perfection of God in our present moment living. He was singing our tune, and after church we joined Brother Harvey and a host of others for lunch, and left him with a copy of “Hearts of Flesh.”
Later we found out by phone from Brother Harvey that he had read in “Hearts” that we knew Norman Grubb. “Yes,” I told him, “we were privileged to have known him and been friends with him.” Then Brother Harvey told me he’d met Norman Grubb “about 40 years ago in Memphis,” and he said he’d been preaching that message ever since. Brother Harvey and I have since talked several times and he is a tremendous Spirit man. It was a privilege to have met him and his little congregation in Orlando. We hope to see him again.
Our contacts, Les & Polly Houghton, brought us together. We also met them at the service. We didn’t know them before, either, but they knew people we knew in New England. And that’s how these trips come about. Everything is as John says, “Serendipitous.” That’s a good word. It really does work like that, though. Everything falls into place as we take each successive step.
Our next stop was the Melbourne area, hosted by Mark and Jo Ann Parker. They were tremendous hosts, and had arranged four meetings for John and me, two in the mornings and two in the evenings. Most of our meetings are “one night stands,” with the occasional two-nighter. And even with a two-nighter, no one usually calls on us to share more than two sessions. But FOUR? Did we have that much to say?
As usual, the Spirit loves an empty place, and “we had nuthin” as the saying goes, so we ended up having four really tremendous sessions. It was mostly the same people so were able to have continuity. We started the first morning with the basics of our understanding of who we are from the scriptures, moving quickly into the frustration we run into in our spiritual lives. That sparked lots of interest and back and forth, and our session which began at 10:00 lasted until nearly 3:00 when people finally had to split up. In the evening session we spoke a great deal about faith and living Christ by faith. The next morning we started out with a question and answer session that again went until mid-afternoon, followed up by a night session that delved into the purpose of our sonship in God, that we might be joined in the Father’s & Son’s redemptive purposes, that life is no longer about us and our well-being, but now the life flows out of us to touch the others around us. And the first afternoon between sessions we managed to slip in having coffee with some friends who came up from another city, and then the next day had dinner with one of our new friends in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area, Phyllis Muesig. So the time ended up being filled, and filled mightily with the life of the Spirit in each and every person!
Melbourne was our southernmost point in Florida for this trip (we’ll be back), so the next morning we headed back north on I-95 to Titusville, to meet and spend the day with Patrick and Pam Bielen. We had been writing each other via email but it was our first meeting. It had been obvious to us before we met that Patrick was turned on about our life in union with Christ, but we truly had no idea of his passion for it until we spent the day with him and his wife. We started talking in their living room the moment we got there and went all day. Pam made a great chicken enchilada for lunch and we kept right on talking while enjoying the best Mexican food in Titusville bar none! Patrick works with gang kids in juvenile detention, a REALLY tough job, and while he can’t “officially” give Jesus, he has many stories where Jesus slipped Himself in anyway, to some miraculous results. He is doing great work and we believe with he and Pam to see many lives affected and brought to Jesus out of the darkness he encounters everyday. We can certainly remember Patrick and Pam in our prayers.
Next we stopped a night upstate in Alachua, just outside Gainesville, to see old friend Steve Pettit. At least old friend to John. I had only met Steve once before we had a night with him, but John had been with him many times. Steve and his wife were as gracious as they could be, giving us a day for R&R and doing a little wash.
The final major stop in our tour was in Tallahassee with Billy and Patty Hattaway. They are also old friends to many of us. We spent the first night having dinner with our hosts and talking about the things of the Spirit. The next day they gave us a tour of the area, especially the athletically oriented sites associated with Florida State University, which John enjoyed thoroughly, since he knows all the coaches and all the players. I just liked looking at the sights.
That night Billy and Patty had invited friends in, and John and I plucked our one string again. We spoke again about one of the themes that have been constant on all our trips, that we enter into our rest in God through faith, and this is our entering into the fulfillment of Ephesians 4:14-16:
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
John has continually said everywhere we’ve gone: “There is a Graduation Day!” And this is what we testify. There is an entering into the “rest of God,” and it is in simple faith that we enter. “All things are possible to him that believeth.”
We concluded our evening at the Hathaway’s with another heart discussion about these things. It was obvious to us that night, and it was obvious to us everywhere else we’d been as well, that there had been great stirring of the Spirit among us all. More and more to us Jesus’ words are proved: Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35)
The next morning Billy and Patty saw us off with a good hearty breakfast. We had a last chance for me to stop at a tourist place to get some Florida coffee mugs to take home, and then we turned northward into Alabama. We stopped and had lunch with another friend, Bill Espy, in Dothan Alabama. After spending a couple of good hours with Bill we drove up to Birmingham to see our old friend Doug Eblen for the night. Doug has been in bad health but when we saw him he had some improvement and we were glad to see it. I have known Doug as long as I have known John and they both are precious to me beyond words. We spent a good evening with Doug who showed us some of his best and latest treasures (he likes old rare books, especially of William Law or Jacob Boehme), and he has some true rare gems, to be sure. Someone could spend a lifetime just studying his collection.
That was our last night on the road, and we were up early the next morning to drive the last few hours home. I was meeting Janis who was with our daughter in Nashville, leaving John to drive the last three hours by himself to Louisville. John and I drove through the rain from Birmingham to Nashville, only a few hours, and met up with Janis and Jessica for lunch, and then in a very anticlimactic way John and I split up at that point — he just backed his car over to mine and I got my stuff out — and I guess there our trip officially ended, in a mall parking lot in Nashville, Tennessee.
I think it was there in the parking lot, meeting my wife and daughter, with John, that I see all over again what this is all about. It really is about the people. It’s about love and friendship, truth, light, respect, and all the other things that figure in regarding “people.” “Jesus endured the cross … for the joy that was set before Him.” What was the joy? A big mansion in the sky with a Ferrari out front? More jewels in his crown than anybody else? NO!!!! WE were the joy set before him. All of US.
And now that’s what we’ve joined into when we have come into Christ and He into us. We find we cannot help ourselves from some involvement in some way that we might be the bread of life for others. That’s the “new nature” that we now are. A nature of love.
And that’s the end of our January 2006 trip.
In Genesis 3, some really small action took place. Adam stretched out an arm in false believing. From that false believing and "false" faith action is all that you now see as a canker spread right through every nation on earth.
Is it any wonder then, that through our "small" actions as we share the simple message of what Christianity means, (that like leaven, this time the new leaven,) great things are going to grow from this similarly tiny seed, as it engrafts in every nation on Earth. This account is from Fred Pruitt and John Bunting see Fred's blogpost . Can I make it clear I was not on this trip, this is being shared to give you another angle on how God is building.
Travels with John & Fred — January 9 – 23, 2006 — Georgia, Florida, Alabama
Abraham, Apostle Paul, Christ in you, Col 1:27, faith, Gal 2:20, Grace, law and grace, new testament, union with Christ
By Fred Pruitt
After hearty celebrations of the holidays with families and friends, Dr. John & I set off on another adventure in early January. We had driven north before, so why not south this time? So John’s shy wife Linda (people think I’m kidding because she seems anything but “shy,” but so she is) had gotten on the phone with people she knew, and many she had never met though had been in contact with, and fixed us up a schedule hitting a few stops in Georgia, Florida and Alabama.
John and I are continually asking this question: why are we doing this? And now seems appropriate to delve into it again. We had had a long rest between the end of our fall trip and the beginning of January. Life is comfortable at home, and certainly neither of us are past being “needed” at home for various father and husband responsibilities. Our wives love us and I like to think pine for us just a little when we’re gone. We pine for them, too (but we’re men and we don’t talk about it).
But why get up out of this comfort zone and go ride around in a little car all over the country staying in houses with people we often don’t know? It would be answering a simple question if we had some tangible product we were selling, something you could hold in your hand, or at least a “program” you could apply. And that this tangible “product” would produce quantifiable guaranteed results. Or that we were building some structure that we could point to and measure our progress. But we “have” none of that, and offer only a Person (God in Jesus Christ) as the foundation and daily reality of life, and bring only ourselves as we are in Christ, and we trust that He lives as us.
So the first answer to why, is the first answer that came to us, causing all the other answers: it is the compulsion of the Spirit, which is a drive of love. Before we ever got in the car, there was the drive of the Spirit to get out to wherever we could to give what God had given us.
Each successive step has come from the preceding one. With each step, we know a little more, and also ask a little more. I understand more what Paul meant when he said in Philippians 3: “Not as though I have already attained.” It isn’t a “self” attainment, some higher degree of sanctity, that Paul is talking about, but rather the constant seeking of love to fill places with itself. Love does not rest because it is its nature to go out of itself, away from its own comfort, to only find release and rest in expending itself in reproduction of itself.
What John and I are learning (and sharing hopefully) through all these travels and visits, is not something special just to us and “revealed” to us because we’re out “doing God’s work,” but we are only learning and living what is happening in all of us in our regular daily lives, each and every day. The “love drive” I speak of which compels us to do what we do, is the same “love drive” in each of us, which compels us all who are in Him, to do what we do. Christ has come into us to be, first of all, foremost and foundational to everything, the Love of God in us. The true “other-love.” And this is what we find to be true every moment of every day — that He by our lives is manifesting in the world around us as love.
He’s the water, and we’re the structure people come to to draw the water from — the well. Which is the final purpose of our going, that these wells would spring up everywhere where there have been only deserts before. The wells are ourselves in Christ and He in us, each of us the starting points for innumerable rivers of living water flowing out of each of our middles, to water and bless the world.
In a nutshell, that’s all we’ve been sent out to share. And we are finding hearing ears everywhere we go.
And with that as our context John picked me up early in the morning of January 9th. We were under the gun already at 6 AM — we had to be at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant near Chattanooga, Tennessee, by lunchtime for a lunch date. We were meeting with a man John had met on a trip several years ago to Romania. Eddie Cantrell is a pastor at a local Baptist church in the area, and he and John had hit it off when they met on a mission trip and had the same “message” to give in their talks – union with Christ. Eating at Cracker Barrel satisfies the southern cookin’ hankerin’ I get every now and then, so I was agreeable to the meeting as well.
One thing I’ve learned on my trips with John Bunting — we don’t dawdle — so it was no problem getting to the lunch date on time. (We are often very very early – we were once a day early somewhere and we didn’t know it!) We phoned Eddie and he met us and we had a great chat about the good things of God and how things were going with him, while thoroughly enjoying the biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, and the various other things that go with them.
From there on to Dallas, Georgia, to visit Ray and Lee Epperson. I remember it was warm enough that we sat out on their back porch for a couple of hours. We’d been cooped up in our houses for the past couple of months in Kentucky, so it was a pleasure to sit out for a while. We had lively conversation throughout the night with Ray and Lee regarding our union with Christ.
The next night we drove from Dallas over to the Lake Lanier/Gainesville area, where our hosts, Bill and Lynn Davis, had arranged for us to stay at a lakehouse nearby. Bill and Lynn had set up a group meeting for the evening. I knew I was in the right place when we got there at dinnertime. They had brought in barbecue, and among the selections was Brunswick Stew. I’m partial to Brunswick Stew when it’s made right, and this turned out to be made just right. I hadn’t seen Brunswick Stew since I moved to Kentucky, so I knew I was back in Georgia and we were to be greatly blessed!
But aside from that, the Davis’ sponsored our first formal “meeting” on this trip. They had invited a few friends from their fellowship in. Jim played the guitar and led in song and then John and I took turns giving short talks. After that we had a good session of questions and discussion at the end.
The next morning we headed south to the Atlanta area, where we had two people to see in the afternoon, and then a get-together at a church in the evening. In our non-dawdling way, we had plenty of time to kill for our lunch appointment when we arrived in Atlanta. So I thought John should have a little tour. I had gone to middle and high school in Atlanta, as well as sowed many of my wildest oats, in the very part of Atlanta where we were going. And I thought I knew it like the back of my hand, in a 40-year-ago-memory-gap sort of way. I was surprised more than once, though, as many things were more or less where they had been all those years ago, but the ways to get to them had become all askew. Still I found my way to show John my house from high school days and many other landmarks, but John’s favorite part of the tour, no doubt, was when I had him go down all these side streets off Peachtree Street in Buckhead to an old three story brick structure that surprisingly, to me, was still standing — and then I began singing my high school alma mater. (I tell my wife at least my high school is still standing. Hers is a K-Mart now.)
We met a wonderful lady for lunch, Rosemarie Lownik. She is one of the many people who have come to us via the internet in one way or another. Like many others, what we are sharing is what she was already hearing in herself and from other sources, that she is Christ expressing Himself in her daily living, and we found another new heart friend. After lunch Rosemarie had to get back to work and we next visited an old friend of John and Linda from their high school days.
Then, as traffic was gearing up for another daily freeway-jamagananza, we set off to the other side of Atlanta to meet with Reggie Screen, pastor of a church in Lawrenceville. John had visited there in 2004 with Dan Stone. Reggie and his people had received John and Dan with openness and excitement in 2004, and the same was true for our visit. After dinner with Reggie, we met with his midweek group and he gave us the floor. As has become our habit, we nod to each other and somehow one of us begins to speak, and this time John began sharing his testimony. Afterwards I got to give along the same lines. (And during the time John was talking, he got a couple of telephone calls from his children and grandchildren wishing him happy birthday). Reggie and his people again were delightful and responsive heartily to the words John and I had shared.
The next day found us riding due south for Florida. After barely a month of winter at home, I was already prepared for some warm weather. Hoping for some, anyway. We got to Ocala in mid-afternoon and spent the night with old friends, Rock and Deb Gibboney. It was old home week for us all since we hadn’t seen each other in many years. We had a great time of sharing with Rock and Deb until mid-day the next day, when John and I pulled off toward the ocean. It turned out we had an extra day in our schedule and neither of us had seen the sea in a while and it was so close ….
So we headed on over to the Daytona area which was pretty much deserted, being January. We got a room on the beach that looked like it had been the setting for a thousand keg parties, but it had active high-speed internet, so who was complaining? And it was on the beach! We treated ourselves to a steak dinner and enjoyed the surf when we returned. There’s something about the ocean, even just a few minutes of it. It always speaks to me of the mystery of God and ourselves.
The next day on the way out we had breakfast across the street from the Daytona 500 Speedway. When we were in the parking lot of the restaurant we could hear the cars driving around inside the speedway, they were so loud. It made me think of all my friends who love NASCAR.
Our next stop was Sanford, Florida, at the church of Pastor Theory Stringer. We had been corresponding with Theory for a few months, after he and his church member George Magu (a man from Kenya) found us via the www.christasus.com website. Pastor Theory had invited a number of other local pastors to his church for a Saturday afternoon meeting. We had an informal session in their sanctuary, with Theory and the other pastors asking to hear from us regarding living in union with Christ. Each of us gave our take and then we had a lively discussion. One portion of our session that made an indelible impression on me, was how firm Theory and others with him were on being “slaves of God.” It is a truth we easily pass over from time to time, but Theory reminded us how total our slavery is in being bondslaves of God, doing the will of our “master” from the heart, and in that is freedom. To finish the evening they took us down to the church basement for a wonderful dinner put together by some of the ladies.
The next day was Sunday and we were scheduled to meet our next contact, someone we’d never met, at a church service in Orlando. We didn’t even know what our friend looked like, just the address of the church.
Showing up more than an hour early we of course found it deserted, so a few cups of coffee later we returned to find people parking and walking into the building. John and I didn’t recognize anybody, but we went in and sat down toward the rear. Service got started a while later with lots of rousing songs and it seemed like at one time or another, almost everybody in the congregation got up and either went up and grabbed a microphone and sang, or picked up an instrument and played. We were in a good ol’ fashioned country church, the kind neither of us had been in in a good while, and there was shoutin’ and lots of movement, onstage and off! We weren’t even sure who was the pastor until a quiet unassuming man got up, staying below the platform and never “ascending” the pulpit, and with a Bible in hand began expounding on the scripture. He was Brother Harvey Turnage, a beautiful man who surprised our socks off by preaching about living and knowing God in the NOW, experiencing the goodness, mercy and perfection of God in our present moment living. He was singing our tune, and after church we joined Brother Harvey and a host of others for lunch, and left him with a copy of “Hearts of Flesh.”
Later we found out by phone from Brother Harvey that he had read in “Hearts” that we knew Norman Grubb. “Yes,” I told him, “we were privileged to have known him and been friends with him.” Then Brother Harvey told me he’d met Norman Grubb “about 40 years ago in Memphis,” and he said he’d been preaching that message ever since. Brother Harvey and I have since talked several times and he is a tremendous Spirit man. It was a privilege to have met him and his little congregation in Orlando. We hope to see him again.
Our contacts, Les & Polly Houghton, brought us together. We also met them at the service. We didn’t know them before, either, but they knew people we knew in New England. And that’s how these trips come about. Everything is as John says, “Serendipitous.” That’s a good word. It really does work like that, though. Everything falls into place as we take each successive step.
Our next stop was the Melbourne area, hosted by Mark and Jo Ann Parker. They were tremendous hosts, and had arranged four meetings for John and me, two in the mornings and two in the evenings. Most of our meetings are “one night stands,” with the occasional two-nighter. And even with a two-nighter, no one usually calls on us to share more than two sessions. But FOUR? Did we have that much to say?
As usual, the Spirit loves an empty place, and “we had nuthin” as the saying goes, so we ended up having four really tremendous sessions. It was mostly the same people so were able to have continuity. We started the first morning with the basics of our understanding of who we are from the scriptures, moving quickly into the frustration we run into in our spiritual lives. That sparked lots of interest and back and forth, and our session which began at 10:00 lasted until nearly 3:00 when people finally had to split up. In the evening session we spoke a great deal about faith and living Christ by faith. The next morning we started out with a question and answer session that again went until mid-afternoon, followed up by a night session that delved into the purpose of our sonship in God, that we might be joined in the Father’s & Son’s redemptive purposes, that life is no longer about us and our well-being, but now the life flows out of us to touch the others around us. And the first afternoon between sessions we managed to slip in having coffee with some friends who came up from another city, and then the next day had dinner with one of our new friends in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area, Phyllis Muesig. So the time ended up being filled, and filled mightily with the life of the Spirit in each and every person!
Melbourne was our southernmost point in Florida for this trip (we’ll be back), so the next morning we headed back north on I-95 to Titusville, to meet and spend the day with Patrick and Pam Bielen. We had been writing each other via email but it was our first meeting. It had been obvious to us before we met that Patrick was turned on about our life in union with Christ, but we truly had no idea of his passion for it until we spent the day with him and his wife. We started talking in their living room the moment we got there and went all day. Pam made a great chicken enchilada for lunch and we kept right on talking while enjoying the best Mexican food in Titusville bar none! Patrick works with gang kids in juvenile detention, a REALLY tough job, and while he can’t “officially” give Jesus, he has many stories where Jesus slipped Himself in anyway, to some miraculous results. He is doing great work and we believe with he and Pam to see many lives affected and brought to Jesus out of the darkness he encounters everyday. We can certainly remember Patrick and Pam in our prayers.
Next we stopped a night upstate in Alachua, just outside Gainesville, to see old friend Steve Pettit. At least old friend to John. I had only met Steve once before we had a night with him, but John had been with him many times. Steve and his wife were as gracious as they could be, giving us a day for R&R and doing a little wash.
The final major stop in our tour was in Tallahassee with Billy and Patty Hattaway. They are also old friends to many of us. We spent the first night having dinner with our hosts and talking about the things of the Spirit. The next day they gave us a tour of the area, especially the athletically oriented sites associated with Florida State University, which John enjoyed thoroughly, since he knows all the coaches and all the players. I just liked looking at the sights.
That night Billy and Patty had invited friends in, and John and I plucked our one string again. We spoke again about one of the themes that have been constant on all our trips, that we enter into our rest in God through faith, and this is our entering into the fulfillment of Ephesians 4:14-16:
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
John has continually said everywhere we’ve gone: “There is a Graduation Day!” And this is what we testify. There is an entering into the “rest of God,” and it is in simple faith that we enter. “All things are possible to him that believeth.”
We concluded our evening at the Hathaway’s with another heart discussion about these things. It was obvious to us that night, and it was obvious to us everywhere else we’d been as well, that there had been great stirring of the Spirit among us all. More and more to us Jesus’ words are proved: Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35)
The next morning Billy and Patty saw us off with a good hearty breakfast. We had a last chance for me to stop at a tourist place to get some Florida coffee mugs to take home, and then we turned northward into Alabama. We stopped and had lunch with another friend, Bill Espy, in Dothan Alabama. After spending a couple of good hours with Bill we drove up to Birmingham to see our old friend Doug Eblen for the night. Doug has been in bad health but when we saw him he had some improvement and we were glad to see it. I have known Doug as long as I have known John and they both are precious to me beyond words. We spent a good evening with Doug who showed us some of his best and latest treasures (he likes old rare books, especially of William Law or Jacob Boehme), and he has some true rare gems, to be sure. Someone could spend a lifetime just studying his collection.
That was our last night on the road, and we were up early the next morning to drive the last few hours home. I was meeting Janis who was with our daughter in Nashville, leaving John to drive the last three hours by himself to Louisville. John and I drove through the rain from Birmingham to Nashville, only a few hours, and met up with Janis and Jessica for lunch, and then in a very anticlimactic way John and I split up at that point — he just backed his car over to mine and I got my stuff out — and I guess there our trip officially ended, in a mall parking lot in Nashville, Tennessee.
I think it was there in the parking lot, meeting my wife and daughter, with John, that I see all over again what this is all about. It really is about the people. It’s about love and friendship, truth, light, respect, and all the other things that figure in regarding “people.” “Jesus endured the cross … for the joy that was set before Him.” What was the joy? A big mansion in the sky with a Ferrari out front? More jewels in his crown than anybody else? NO!!!! WE were the joy set before him. All of US.
And now that’s what we’ve joined into when we have come into Christ and He into us. We find we cannot help ourselves from some involvement in some way that we might be the bread of life for others. That’s the “new nature” that we now are. A nature of love.
And that’s the end of our January 2006 trip.
Monday, 27 September 2010
The Meaning of "Being Yourself" by Fred Pruitt
I really recommend you following Fred Pruitt's blog
It has only recently come to me in a deeper way how much the words, “be yourself,” cause a stir among people who consider themselves the “redeemed” of God.
When I have written those words in the past, I don’t think I really realized how they hit people. It seems, to some, to be the philosophy of “the world.” Indeed, it is the modern cry of the more psychologically astute society we live in. Asserting one’s “self” and not letting others drag or tear us down is a personal theme of these current times.
But that needn’t lessen the meaning of those words to those who have inwardly received, through Jesus Christ, the “Divine Nature.” Because hearing the words “be yourself” and to, as a Christian, be afraid of them as if they are somehow license to sin, is to completely miss the meaning. The fear in being troubled by those words presupposes that one’s “self” in Christ is somehow wrong, and a thing to be avoided and nullified if possible.
The opposite of “be yourself” would be to “be something you’re not.” Wouldn’t it?
To be something we’re “not,” would, then, necessarily, involve putting on some sort of mask or costume, to appear as if we are not really who we are. We don’t like our “real self” as we perceive it, and therefore seek to put forth a “better” representation of ourselves, playing a part we think others, including God, want to see.
That’s what “the law” is all about. The “law” involves “putting on” something from the outside, a set of rules or goals, that we think by putting on and acting as if this is really us, will somehow grease the wheels and get God into action.
Years ago I was traveling on business. I was up for a break from driving and I saw a Christian bookstore in a little strip mall, so I decided to stop and check it out. I went into the little shop and started browsing the shelves, when the lady-owner came over and stood beside me. Instead of just greeting me and asking if she could help me, instead she clasped her hands in a “holy manner” and said, “May I say that God loves you and I love you in Jesus Christ?”
Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that statement. A Great statement! But there was something in the way the woman said it, that seemed forced, or false, and all I could think about was getting out of there. Not that the lady didn’t mean it in the sense that she WANTED it to be true — she WANTED it to be true that she loved me in Christ — but the statement was almost screaming to me “this isn’t really true, but I’m saying it to you in hopes that it is!”
Now of course, the joke is, the statement WAS true! If she was indeed in Christ, and I had no reason to think she wasn’t, then she DID love me completely in Christ Jesus. She didn’t have to say it or prove it. It simply was the fact between us! But, my impression was that from her perspective, she didn’t KNOW it was already fact, and she was trying to make up for it by this forced, insincere-sounding statement.
Crazy, huh? Trying to be Who we already are?
Comment by Chris Welch
Somewhat puzzled I heard Mother Basilea Schlink say Go the way of the Lamb , it is a way of great power. This was Lutheran speak, or perhaps Older saints speak for one of the greatest truths in the universe. Forget Superman, although even he had his Clark Kent….the most powerful force in the universe, (a bit like the unstoppable grass stalks that dislodge huge slabs of concrete)is the naked life of Christ. We, as Christ did with His Father, go around as ourselves, without flash add-ons, “helpful extras”, nope….just naked…just us….but conscious of Him living His life as us….and we follow that life through all the rat holes,all the situations that very life causes us to be in….like a helpless Lamb to the slaughter….but somehow God does this crazy superman stuff around us…currently opening the world up to this new idea of Christ living as us….maybe opening cities up…maybe the odd individual here and there suddenly in the Kingdom. And we have this deep knowing that it is Christ working this stuff in us. Why are we so sure? Because…everywhere…just everywhere right through the New Testament epistles it says this is how things will be. Its running right through like lettering through a stick of Blackpool rock
It has only recently come to me in a deeper way how much the words, “be yourself,” cause a stir among people who consider themselves the “redeemed” of God.
When I have written those words in the past, I don’t think I really realized how they hit people. It seems, to some, to be the philosophy of “the world.” Indeed, it is the modern cry of the more psychologically astute society we live in. Asserting one’s “self” and not letting others drag or tear us down is a personal theme of these current times.
But that needn’t lessen the meaning of those words to those who have inwardly received, through Jesus Christ, the “Divine Nature.” Because hearing the words “be yourself” and to, as a Christian, be afraid of them as if they are somehow license to sin, is to completely miss the meaning. The fear in being troubled by those words presupposes that one’s “self” in Christ is somehow wrong, and a thing to be avoided and nullified if possible.
The opposite of “be yourself” would be to “be something you’re not.” Wouldn’t it?
To be something we’re “not,” would, then, necessarily, involve putting on some sort of mask or costume, to appear as if we are not really who we are. We don’t like our “real self” as we perceive it, and therefore seek to put forth a “better” representation of ourselves, playing a part we think others, including God, want to see.
That’s what “the law” is all about. The “law” involves “putting on” something from the outside, a set of rules or goals, that we think by putting on and acting as if this is really us, will somehow grease the wheels and get God into action.
Years ago I was traveling on business. I was up for a break from driving and I saw a Christian bookstore in a little strip mall, so I decided to stop and check it out. I went into the little shop and started browsing the shelves, when the lady-owner came over and stood beside me. Instead of just greeting me and asking if she could help me, instead she clasped her hands in a “holy manner” and said, “May I say that God loves you and I love you in Jesus Christ?”
Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that statement. A Great statement! But there was something in the way the woman said it, that seemed forced, or false, and all I could think about was getting out of there. Not that the lady didn’t mean it in the sense that she WANTED it to be true — she WANTED it to be true that she loved me in Christ — but the statement was almost screaming to me “this isn’t really true, but I’m saying it to you in hopes that it is!”
Now of course, the joke is, the statement WAS true! If she was indeed in Christ, and I had no reason to think she wasn’t, then she DID love me completely in Christ Jesus. She didn’t have to say it or prove it. It simply was the fact between us! But, my impression was that from her perspective, she didn’t KNOW it was already fact, and she was trying to make up for it by this forced, insincere-sounding statement.
Crazy, huh? Trying to be Who we already are?
Comment by Chris Welch
Somewhat puzzled I heard Mother Basilea Schlink say Go the way of the Lamb , it is a way of great power. This was Lutheran speak, or perhaps Older saints speak for one of the greatest truths in the universe. Forget Superman, although even he had his Clark Kent….the most powerful force in the universe, (a bit like the unstoppable grass stalks that dislodge huge slabs of concrete)is the naked life of Christ. We, as Christ did with His Father, go around as ourselves, without flash add-ons, “helpful extras”, nope….just naked…just us….but conscious of Him living His life as us….and we follow that life through all the rat holes,all the situations that very life causes us to be in….like a helpless Lamb to the slaughter….but somehow God does this crazy superman stuff around us…currently opening the world up to this new idea of Christ living as us….maybe opening cities up…maybe the odd individual here and there suddenly in the Kingdom. And we have this deep knowing that it is Christ working this stuff in us. Why are we so sure? Because…everywhere…just everywhere right through the New Testament epistles it says this is how things will be. Its running right through like lettering through a stick of Blackpool rock
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Attending Church - Fred Pruitt
Attending Church?
from Fred's blog
By Fred Pruitt
Someone wrote me last year because members of local churches were telling him he was out of the will of God because he did not belong to a church or attend church regularly. He wrote me twice asking about the issue. This is the first answer.
As far as your question is concerned, let me give you my brief touch on that.
I think it is true that the Spirit brings many of us up in our beginning days in that church structure you have described, giving ourselves over to those authorities within those structures.
But when you grow up, then you are free to go and develop as you see fit. Inside or outside the established structure. If what Paul had set up still continued to exist in the form in which Paul originally built it, we might be hard-pressed to abandon it. But he was setting up structures to fit his particular time in particular places he visited. I do not think anything close to a duplicate of what Paul built, structurally, has come down to us in our time, though everybody on every street corner claims it does church “the Bible way.”
It is also clear to me that, had the Lord wanted to build a particular order and church structure that would persist throughout time, the instructions would have been clear and concise, like the minutely specific instructions
he gave Moses for the tabernacle. The reason there are so many different ones doing so many different things is obvious: we have been left with no such clarity. The only clarity we have now is the answer Jesus gave the woman at the well: God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.” People of course think because they have services in which they worship in a particular “way” is that worship in Spirit and Truth, but to me Jesus is not talking about Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, but an every-moment-of-every-day way of life. Every moment “to live IS Christ.” THAT is church.
Back to this growing up thing. I believe we are free to do as we please. Yes, that will shock anyone who doesn’t know the freedom we are living in, but no matter. Either it will intrigue them and cause them to want to find out about it, or it will enrage them out of envy, and they will seek to destroy us one way or another.
Those imprisoned by the law and self-effort cannot see the freedom of oneness in Christ. They can only view it as a threat to the structures and man-made doctrines and traditions they hold dear. So it’s no wonder Pastors and elders speak against you and warn their flocks about you. Rejoice! “For if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more his servants?” (Matt 10:25)
We are free from the structures of the past, and may build new ones in our lifetime, which will also pass away when we are gone. Paul built a foundation, of Christ in us. We build on that foundation. Paul’s only warning was that what we build must also be Christ. So noted, Paul.
We live by the principles of the New Testament, not the dead letter of the words. So we don’t always have to flip open our Bibles to find out what “they” did, and how they did it. The Spirit is new in our time and is doing new things.
He is throwing off the old structures of men. Sometimes figuratively, by wiping out physical and organizational structures in men’s hearts and minds, while leaving them functioning in the temporal world. Some are called to be
“in the structure, but not of it.” The structure isn’t evil — only the “self-effort” to maintain and propagate the structure.
Or He may throw off for some of us the structures and authorities in quite a literal fashion. But we are certainly under authority to Christ and it is His structure (the household of the saints) we are actively building. This
may have no temporal counterpart, but be visible and viable only in the Spirit.
The thing is, is for you to continue in the freedom in which the Lord has set you free. You are free from the law — and all its structures and authorities. You may “go to church” if you wish or not if you wish not. You are an expression of the will of God, who has joined Himself to you as one person with you, so your “will” now expresses His will in all you do. That’s a big pill to swallow and they will fight you tooth and nail on that one, pointing out to you all your inconsistencies and evidences in your life why that could not possibly be so, but you see “in a way they know not,” and
what you see is true! Stay with the truth!
Because how you live by the inner law of an indestructible Life Who is willing and doing of His good pleasure in you. Do not doubt! You are walking around as He every moment of every day. How can you get any more “in church”
than that?
I am very sorry that there are those around you who are saying, “You are probably still saved … but you must be knit in somewhere and currently because you are not knit in a church fellowship at the moment you are out of the will of God.” Actually, it is GOOD FOR YOU to hear that, so that by that contrast you might know and walk in the Truth.
Well, brother, the first thing I will say to you is those brothers are full of shite!!!
ACW Comment - this, in the true Biblical tradition of I count all things as dung(polite word) except for knowing Christ.
RUBBISH!!! Trash talk!!!! They are full of themselves and think too highly of themselves and have taken it upon themselves to declare who is or who is not in the will of God, something which has not been given to men, and much will be required of them for this presumption. Has a new pope been elected and is he Irish now? These fellows must think they speak “ex cathedra!” Unless God kept me for a reason I would walk away from such brethren and have no more to do with them until they have been broken by the Lord of such foolishness and presumption! Your problem in yourself is not that you are not walking in who you are, but you have not yet the confidence in that reality which has overtaken you, and so they can dig at you with these ludicrous accusations and words which do not come from the Lord, by reminding you of their traditions of men which they are saying are the laws of God. So let’s look to what we can do about that!
My brother, the New Testament is first and foremost a deliverance from the bondage of self-orientation which may masquerade as “good,” but at heart is really self-looking-after-self, into the unbounded joyous liberty of LOVE. No bondage or compulsion is of the New Covenant!
Now listen to this. Here you are, more excited about Christ than you’ve ever been, more turned on, more alive, than perhaps anytime you’ve been in Christ except maybe your first euphoria of new birth. (I don’t know that about you but it has been that way with me, and I’m thinking to some degree, knowing what has gone on with you these past two years, that it has been that way with you, too.) But back to what I am saying. You have gotten so excited about the things of God and His life in you, that not only have you not forsaken fellowship, but you have TWICE flown over the Atlantic Ocean to another country, in order to be with people who are feeding you, finally, with the True Bread of Life, instead of the pablum and starvation diet you have been getting in your local churches over the years. Now, brother, that is what it is all about — about LOVE!!! You came over here to the US, not out of compulsion, of obeying some “scriptural precept,” but because LOVE drove you to it, and you could do no other!
Now that IS the New Testament. Nothing about the New Testament is about compulsion or obeying “scriptural principles.” It is, from start to finish, Alpha to Omega, about the Love of God and love of the brethren. We start living immediately, from day one, out of “the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.” We don’t choose with whom we are knit in Christ, but God is the One Who chooses this for us, and when He does, we cannot help ourselves but be with those whom we love in any way we can.
Oh, I know all those arguments — “you must be in a local fellowship, you must this, you must that,” and all those things have their time and place, but when God calls us to something else, He brings it out of us through our own desires (that are His in us) and through the circumstances of our lives.
Several things from my own life come into mind. When I was first born again, I was not in a church, and was under no one’s direct influence. But I immediately began seeking the fellowship of other believers, never thinking I was doing it to be “obedient,” but rather because it was the drive of my heart at the time. I experimented with a few churches and groups, but finally the Lord moved us from Georgia to California and put Janis and I in the same local fellowship for a few years, and at least in the beginning, I was happy as a pig in a wallow to be there. I loved everything about it. I wanted to go every time the doors were open. I didn’t want to miss anything they had there. I ate it up!
One time when we were still attending that church in California we came home to Georgia and visited Janis’ sister, who went to a very legalistic pentecostal church. It was a denomination that normally had very small congregations, but one of them, in the Atlanta area, had in the previous few years grown phenomenally large, almost as big as one of today’s “mega-churches,” and it was having a true revival there. Hundreds were coming from all over north GA, not just from that denomination but from every one, for their Sunday night service where many were finding Christ for the first time or for great infillings of the Holy Spirit and demonstations of gifts. It was the most exciting thing happening in north Georgia in those days, and thousands upon thousands were affected wonderfully for and by the Lord. Knowing my sister-in-law went to the same kind of church, I asked her one day what she thought of that church in Atlanta. She replied, “Well, our pastor warned us against it, because women are wearing pants there.” All that tremendous move of Christ, and all her pastor could think of to say, was to run it down because women were “wearing pants!” That reminds me of your situation, and also what Jesus described in Luke 7:31-35. Anybody with eyes to see could tell God is mightily moving in you! But all they can think of to speak against it is “from the weak and beggarly elements,” and to bring up some made-up rule of church attendance, to bring you back into the bondage of legalism once again. Did they never read in Colossians that Jesus took the law of shoulds and oughts (which was against us by testifying to continually what we were not by constantly telling us what we “should” or “ought” to be and do), and NAILED IT TO HIS CROSS???? (Col 2:12-23) How did these people miss that????
The Lord eventually took us 3000 miles away back to our hometown in Rome GA. And then other desires and situations arose in our lives, and we gave ourselves with all our hearts to them, as unto the Lord. One thing we began participating in was a movement called Cursillo, a wonderful weekend-retreat movement which worked in main-line churches and took people apart for a weekend of talks and devotions, with some wonderful effects on many of the participants, giving many who had never had a living relationship with Christ a first-time experience of that. It was a great time, filled with LOVE and JOY. And again, nobody made us do it. We wanted to!
It was the early 1980s, which was also the time of the heyday of Union Life Magazine. In 1980 I met for the first time personally with Norman Grubb, (I had met him in a meeting once in 1973 but had no conversation with him), and that one conversation totally reoriented my life from outer things to the inner realities of the Spirit. And we immediately were as excited about Union Life and being with other UL-ers that we did the same things you have done — we left our home in Georgia and went wherever we could to meet with others who were seeing this same truth, too. First we went to Louisville, which is about 500 miles from our home, then to other meetings in others places throughout the next few years. I tried to make it to every meeting that was feasible to go to, and in those days they were having “Union Life Conferences” all over the country, from California to New York and New England, and I went to them in nearly every part of the country.
Now during that time, Janis was invited to be a guest musician at a local church in our area. It was a “mainline” denominational church, that was newly experiencing a small revival in its midst. So the pastor was doing some different things, one of them inviting Janis to come in and share her music for a few Sundays. At the time I had just read a passage in Jacob Boehme, where he describes a disciple whose excitement and loving desire is so strong that he cannot keep away from finding the depth of fellowship in the deep things of God, so strong that he crosses sea and land to be with others who are sharing Life with him. We go to church one Sunday at this local church and the pastor has started “taking roll” of those who were not in attendance, rebuking the congregation sharply for even thinking of not attending Sunday services, and expressing the intent of visits with the absentees to bring them back into obedience. Having just read that article, and thinking about how during those days nobody “made me” go to the UL conferences or seek fellowship with them, that it just came out of the love bubbling up in my heart, I saw this principle clearly. If you have to “make people” do it, then it is out of compulsion and not love, and that is what you will get. Love wilts under intimidation.
Let us get this straight! You are no longer under the law. The law of Moses was supplanted by the New Covenant, and no new “new testament law system” was instituted in its place. You are dead to the law. This is plain in almost all of the epistles of Paul. Through Christ you ARE walking in the Spirit, and you know that you are doing so by a simple faith-recognition of that fact. It IS your truth! You are moved, motivated, by the LOVE of God, and not by the compulsion of men. I do not say these are not well-intentioned people. They may be. But they are bringing people into horrible bondage by saying God has commanded something which He has not commanded.
In Christ you are made FREE! This freedom goes along with and is both a product of and result of (paradoxically) the LOVE OF GOD, which is now your inner motivator of your entire life. You are free to love and because of love you are free. God forces no one. The New Testament is not about blessings and curses if you obey or disobey the law, but about all the Promises of God in Christ Jesus being now fulfilled and in Him it is all YES and AMEN! It IS Done! It IS Finished!
“As you have received Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him!” (Col 2:6). Now, of course, the first thing we do with that is turn it into a “commandment,” i.e., something which is demanded of us.
But HEAR the words: “AS you have received Christ Jesus the Lord —”
What does “AS” mean? It means “like” or “in the same manner,” doesn’t it?
So then, HOW did you receive Christ Jesus the Lord?
By faith. By simple recognition that He is Lord, that He has come into you to live in you and be your life.
You know this BY FAITH — by receiving it as fact, right?
Now then, this scripture changes from a “commandment” to walk or behave a certain way, but into an admonition to live and walk in Him the same way that we received Him — BY FAITH!!!! By simple receiving it as fact that He has come into you, and as you received Him in that manner, now you walk in Him in the same way — “receiving” by faith that He is walking in you as you.
It’s probably best you walk away from those folks and don’t contend with them, but if you do, please feel free to quote me! They don’t know what they are talking about, and have little clue what real LIFE is in the New Testament. They are in the same situation as those Pharisees to whom Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they testify of Me. And ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” (John 5:39).
Now, I am not making a pronouncement that these folks are not born again — I never make that statement, but always leave that to God. But I do say they are walking in this same false spirit that denies Christ by wrongly applying the law. And though they may be (and probably are) His, still they are disconnected in consciousness from the fullness of His Life in them by wrongly going around through “obedience to precepts and scriptural principles” are trying to establish their own righteousness. We have all gone through that, and we can only pray for those brothers that God will use the law to slay that false consciousness of flesh in them, that they might know themselves as great big nothings, as Paul speaks of in Gal 6:3. May they find their own nothingness, and in that total descent into zero, find the All in all of God that has been there all along.
Truly the Truth is living and functioning in us all, but perhaps for a time we don’t see it, like people in an airplane may not see the approaching city which is there and always has been, because they are separated in sight by a layer of clouds which give the appearance that there are only clouds below. But descending through the clouds, we can instantly see what was ALWAYS there, the city of our destination. Now in the same way this truth of Christ in us as us is functioning in us as God wills from the moment we wake up to Christ in any way, though it may be some time before we are in sight of what is always there, due to a cloud cover of an old consciousness which gives a false appearance in our vision, but like the plane descends through the clouds to open a whole newly seen reality, God peels back the layers of our misunderstanding and blazes the Light of Christ into our vision, burning us forever with the vision of One only, God in Christ as All in all in all in all.
So that’s it! Live in it. Be BOLD!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablum
Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed by the Mead Johnson Company in 1931. The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word pabulum, meaning "foodstuff". The name is also used metaphorically, especially in literary criticism, to refer to something bland, unappetizing, or with little content value.
from Fred's blog
By Fred Pruitt
Someone wrote me last year because members of local churches were telling him he was out of the will of God because he did not belong to a church or attend church regularly. He wrote me twice asking about the issue. This is the first answer.
As far as your question is concerned, let me give you my brief touch on that.
I think it is true that the Spirit brings many of us up in our beginning days in that church structure you have described, giving ourselves over to those authorities within those structures.
But when you grow up, then you are free to go and develop as you see fit. Inside or outside the established structure. If what Paul had set up still continued to exist in the form in which Paul originally built it, we might be hard-pressed to abandon it. But he was setting up structures to fit his particular time in particular places he visited. I do not think anything close to a duplicate of what Paul built, structurally, has come down to us in our time, though everybody on every street corner claims it does church “the Bible way.”
It is also clear to me that, had the Lord wanted to build a particular order and church structure that would persist throughout time, the instructions would have been clear and concise, like the minutely specific instructions
he gave Moses for the tabernacle. The reason there are so many different ones doing so many different things is obvious: we have been left with no such clarity. The only clarity we have now is the answer Jesus gave the woman at the well: God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.” People of course think because they have services in which they worship in a particular “way” is that worship in Spirit and Truth, but to me Jesus is not talking about Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, but an every-moment-of-every-day way of life. Every moment “to live IS Christ.” THAT is church.
Back to this growing up thing. I believe we are free to do as we please. Yes, that will shock anyone who doesn’t know the freedom we are living in, but no matter. Either it will intrigue them and cause them to want to find out about it, or it will enrage them out of envy, and they will seek to destroy us one way or another.
Those imprisoned by the law and self-effort cannot see the freedom of oneness in Christ. They can only view it as a threat to the structures and man-made doctrines and traditions they hold dear. So it’s no wonder Pastors and elders speak against you and warn their flocks about you. Rejoice! “For if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more his servants?” (Matt 10:25)
We are free from the structures of the past, and may build new ones in our lifetime, which will also pass away when we are gone. Paul built a foundation, of Christ in us. We build on that foundation. Paul’s only warning was that what we build must also be Christ. So noted, Paul.
We live by the principles of the New Testament, not the dead letter of the words. So we don’t always have to flip open our Bibles to find out what “they” did, and how they did it. The Spirit is new in our time and is doing new things.
He is throwing off the old structures of men. Sometimes figuratively, by wiping out physical and organizational structures in men’s hearts and minds, while leaving them functioning in the temporal world. Some are called to be
“in the structure, but not of it.” The structure isn’t evil — only the “self-effort” to maintain and propagate the structure.
Or He may throw off for some of us the structures and authorities in quite a literal fashion. But we are certainly under authority to Christ and it is His structure (the household of the saints) we are actively building. This
may have no temporal counterpart, but be visible and viable only in the Spirit.
The thing is, is for you to continue in the freedom in which the Lord has set you free. You are free from the law — and all its structures and authorities. You may “go to church” if you wish or not if you wish not. You are an expression of the will of God, who has joined Himself to you as one person with you, so your “will” now expresses His will in all you do. That’s a big pill to swallow and they will fight you tooth and nail on that one, pointing out to you all your inconsistencies and evidences in your life why that could not possibly be so, but you see “in a way they know not,” and
what you see is true! Stay with the truth!
Because how you live by the inner law of an indestructible Life Who is willing and doing of His good pleasure in you. Do not doubt! You are walking around as He every moment of every day. How can you get any more “in church”
than that?
I am very sorry that there are those around you who are saying, “You are probably still saved … but you must be knit in somewhere and currently because you are not knit in a church fellowship at the moment you are out of the will of God.” Actually, it is GOOD FOR YOU to hear that, so that by that contrast you might know and walk in the Truth.
Well, brother, the first thing I will say to you is those brothers are full of shite!!!
ACW Comment - this, in the true Biblical tradition of I count all things as dung(polite word) except for knowing Christ.
RUBBISH!!! Trash talk!!!! They are full of themselves and think too highly of themselves and have taken it upon themselves to declare who is or who is not in the will of God, something which has not been given to men, and much will be required of them for this presumption. Has a new pope been elected and is he Irish now? These fellows must think they speak “ex cathedra!” Unless God kept me for a reason I would walk away from such brethren and have no more to do with them until they have been broken by the Lord of such foolishness and presumption! Your problem in yourself is not that you are not walking in who you are, but you have not yet the confidence in that reality which has overtaken you, and so they can dig at you with these ludicrous accusations and words which do not come from the Lord, by reminding you of their traditions of men which they are saying are the laws of God. So let’s look to what we can do about that!
My brother, the New Testament is first and foremost a deliverance from the bondage of self-orientation which may masquerade as “good,” but at heart is really self-looking-after-self, into the unbounded joyous liberty of LOVE. No bondage or compulsion is of the New Covenant!
Now listen to this. Here you are, more excited about Christ than you’ve ever been, more turned on, more alive, than perhaps anytime you’ve been in Christ except maybe your first euphoria of new birth. (I don’t know that about you but it has been that way with me, and I’m thinking to some degree, knowing what has gone on with you these past two years, that it has been that way with you, too.) But back to what I am saying. You have gotten so excited about the things of God and His life in you, that not only have you not forsaken fellowship, but you have TWICE flown over the Atlantic Ocean to another country, in order to be with people who are feeding you, finally, with the True Bread of Life, instead of the pablum and starvation diet you have been getting in your local churches over the years. Now, brother, that is what it is all about — about LOVE!!! You came over here to the US, not out of compulsion, of obeying some “scriptural precept,” but because LOVE drove you to it, and you could do no other!
Now that IS the New Testament. Nothing about the New Testament is about compulsion or obeying “scriptural principles.” It is, from start to finish, Alpha to Omega, about the Love of God and love of the brethren. We start living immediately, from day one, out of “the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.” We don’t choose with whom we are knit in Christ, but God is the One Who chooses this for us, and when He does, we cannot help ourselves but be with those whom we love in any way we can.
Oh, I know all those arguments — “you must be in a local fellowship, you must this, you must that,” and all those things have their time and place, but when God calls us to something else, He brings it out of us through our own desires (that are His in us) and through the circumstances of our lives.
Several things from my own life come into mind. When I was first born again, I was not in a church, and was under no one’s direct influence. But I immediately began seeking the fellowship of other believers, never thinking I was doing it to be “obedient,” but rather because it was the drive of my heart at the time. I experimented with a few churches and groups, but finally the Lord moved us from Georgia to California and put Janis and I in the same local fellowship for a few years, and at least in the beginning, I was happy as a pig in a wallow to be there. I loved everything about it. I wanted to go every time the doors were open. I didn’t want to miss anything they had there. I ate it up!
One time when we were still attending that church in California we came home to Georgia and visited Janis’ sister, who went to a very legalistic pentecostal church. It was a denomination that normally had very small congregations, but one of them, in the Atlanta area, had in the previous few years grown phenomenally large, almost as big as one of today’s “mega-churches,” and it was having a true revival there. Hundreds were coming from all over north GA, not just from that denomination but from every one, for their Sunday night service where many were finding Christ for the first time or for great infillings of the Holy Spirit and demonstations of gifts. It was the most exciting thing happening in north Georgia in those days, and thousands upon thousands were affected wonderfully for and by the Lord. Knowing my sister-in-law went to the same kind of church, I asked her one day what she thought of that church in Atlanta. She replied, “Well, our pastor warned us against it, because women are wearing pants there.” All that tremendous move of Christ, and all her pastor could think of to say, was to run it down because women were “wearing pants!” That reminds me of your situation, and also what Jesus described in Luke 7:31-35. Anybody with eyes to see could tell God is mightily moving in you! But all they can think of to speak against it is “from the weak and beggarly elements,” and to bring up some made-up rule of church attendance, to bring you back into the bondage of legalism once again. Did they never read in Colossians that Jesus took the law of shoulds and oughts (which was against us by testifying to continually what we were not by constantly telling us what we “should” or “ought” to be and do), and NAILED IT TO HIS CROSS???? (Col 2:12-23) How did these people miss that????
The Lord eventually took us 3000 miles away back to our hometown in Rome GA. And then other desires and situations arose in our lives, and we gave ourselves with all our hearts to them, as unto the Lord. One thing we began participating in was a movement called Cursillo, a wonderful weekend-retreat movement which worked in main-line churches and took people apart for a weekend of talks and devotions, with some wonderful effects on many of the participants, giving many who had never had a living relationship with Christ a first-time experience of that. It was a great time, filled with LOVE and JOY. And again, nobody made us do it. We wanted to!
It was the early 1980s, which was also the time of the heyday of Union Life Magazine. In 1980 I met for the first time personally with Norman Grubb, (I had met him in a meeting once in 1973 but had no conversation with him), and that one conversation totally reoriented my life from outer things to the inner realities of the Spirit. And we immediately were as excited about Union Life and being with other UL-ers that we did the same things you have done — we left our home in Georgia and went wherever we could to meet with others who were seeing this same truth, too. First we went to Louisville, which is about 500 miles from our home, then to other meetings in others places throughout the next few years. I tried to make it to every meeting that was feasible to go to, and in those days they were having “Union Life Conferences” all over the country, from California to New York and New England, and I went to them in nearly every part of the country.
Now during that time, Janis was invited to be a guest musician at a local church in our area. It was a “mainline” denominational church, that was newly experiencing a small revival in its midst. So the pastor was doing some different things, one of them inviting Janis to come in and share her music for a few Sundays. At the time I had just read a passage in Jacob Boehme, where he describes a disciple whose excitement and loving desire is so strong that he cannot keep away from finding the depth of fellowship in the deep things of God, so strong that he crosses sea and land to be with others who are sharing Life with him. We go to church one Sunday at this local church and the pastor has started “taking roll” of those who were not in attendance, rebuking the congregation sharply for even thinking of not attending Sunday services, and expressing the intent of visits with the absentees to bring them back into obedience. Having just read that article, and thinking about how during those days nobody “made me” go to the UL conferences or seek fellowship with them, that it just came out of the love bubbling up in my heart, I saw this principle clearly. If you have to “make people” do it, then it is out of compulsion and not love, and that is what you will get. Love wilts under intimidation.
Let us get this straight! You are no longer under the law. The law of Moses was supplanted by the New Covenant, and no new “new testament law system” was instituted in its place. You are dead to the law. This is plain in almost all of the epistles of Paul. Through Christ you ARE walking in the Spirit, and you know that you are doing so by a simple faith-recognition of that fact. It IS your truth! You are moved, motivated, by the LOVE of God, and not by the compulsion of men. I do not say these are not well-intentioned people. They may be. But they are bringing people into horrible bondage by saying God has commanded something which He has not commanded.
In Christ you are made FREE! This freedom goes along with and is both a product of and result of (paradoxically) the LOVE OF GOD, which is now your inner motivator of your entire life. You are free to love and because of love you are free. God forces no one. The New Testament is not about blessings and curses if you obey or disobey the law, but about all the Promises of God in Christ Jesus being now fulfilled and in Him it is all YES and AMEN! It IS Done! It IS Finished!
“As you have received Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him!” (Col 2:6). Now, of course, the first thing we do with that is turn it into a “commandment,” i.e., something which is demanded of us.
But HEAR the words: “AS you have received Christ Jesus the Lord —”
What does “AS” mean? It means “like” or “in the same manner,” doesn’t it?
So then, HOW did you receive Christ Jesus the Lord?
By faith. By simple recognition that He is Lord, that He has come into you to live in you and be your life.
You know this BY FAITH — by receiving it as fact, right?
Now then, this scripture changes from a “commandment” to walk or behave a certain way, but into an admonition to live and walk in Him the same way that we received Him — BY FAITH!!!! By simple receiving it as fact that He has come into you, and as you received Him in that manner, now you walk in Him in the same way — “receiving” by faith that He is walking in you as you.
It’s probably best you walk away from those folks and don’t contend with them, but if you do, please feel free to quote me! They don’t know what they are talking about, and have little clue what real LIFE is in the New Testament. They are in the same situation as those Pharisees to whom Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they testify of Me. And ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” (John 5:39).
Now, I am not making a pronouncement that these folks are not born again — I never make that statement, but always leave that to God. But I do say they are walking in this same false spirit that denies Christ by wrongly applying the law. And though they may be (and probably are) His, still they are disconnected in consciousness from the fullness of His Life in them by wrongly going around through “obedience to precepts and scriptural principles” are trying to establish their own righteousness. We have all gone through that, and we can only pray for those brothers that God will use the law to slay that false consciousness of flesh in them, that they might know themselves as great big nothings, as Paul speaks of in Gal 6:3. May they find their own nothingness, and in that total descent into zero, find the All in all of God that has been there all along.
Truly the Truth is living and functioning in us all, but perhaps for a time we don’t see it, like people in an airplane may not see the approaching city which is there and always has been, because they are separated in sight by a layer of clouds which give the appearance that there are only clouds below. But descending through the clouds, we can instantly see what was ALWAYS there, the city of our destination. Now in the same way this truth of Christ in us as us is functioning in us as God wills from the moment we wake up to Christ in any way, though it may be some time before we are in sight of what is always there, due to a cloud cover of an old consciousness which gives a false appearance in our vision, but like the plane descends through the clouds to open a whole newly seen reality, God peels back the layers of our misunderstanding and blazes the Light of Christ into our vision, burning us forever with the vision of One only, God in Christ as All in all in all in all.
So that’s it! Live in it. Be BOLD!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablum
Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed by the Mead Johnson Company in 1931. The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word pabulum, meaning "foodstuff". The name is also used metaphorically, especially in literary criticism, to refer to something bland, unappetizing, or with little content value.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
I've made some changes
I know it's messy. But I'm sick to the back teeth of people thinking this is some weird elitist site.
Then when I heard Rob's message "Taking away the veil" (see the link) for the 2nd time I realised we really are on the same hymnsheet. You see once people understand the Genesis 3:5 thing, you begin to see ...yes...for the first time in history...we're seeing a real removal of the former lies of Satan, to begin to see the Christ life formed corporately and individually in us.
At the moment many are calling it Law. But it's this remote-controlled living where we try to conform according to laws and statutes...
when there's no need for remote-controlled living
we're now battery-powered by Christ Himself through His own Living Spirit of Life!!!
Then when I heard Rob's message "Taking away the veil" (see the link) for the 2nd time I realised we really are on the same hymnsheet. You see once people understand the Genesis 3:5 thing, you begin to see ...yes...for the first time in history...we're seeing a real removal of the former lies of Satan, to begin to see the Christ life formed corporately and individually in us.
At the moment many are calling it Law. But it's this remote-controlled living where we try to conform according to laws and statutes...
when there's no need for remote-controlled living
we're now battery-powered by Christ Himself through His own Living Spirit of Life!!!
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
It's this simple..........PERIOD.
ADAM reached out an arm and grabbed a fruit.
As he did so a false spirit entered his spirit chamber.
Permanently.
At the Cross, this false spirit was ejected from our spirit chamber.Permanently. Now we reach out an arm, leg,.....anything....believing it is Christ as me...in my form. PERIOD.
As he did so a false spirit entered his spirit chamber.
Permanently.
At the Cross, this false spirit was ejected from our spirit chamber.Permanently. Now we reach out an arm, leg,.....anything....believing it is Christ as me...in my form. PERIOD.
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Why John 15 is not the same as New Age
The most "Third-Level" of all Jesus' teaching is in the discourse He had with the twelve disciples over the Passover meal immediately before His death at Jerusalem. John Ch13-17,especiallyCh 15-17.
The concept of Christ in you as you is often confused with New Age secularism.It is actually no coincidence that as the hidden depths of the teaching of Jesus Christ are being brought out into the open, even more so this year than ever before, that in the last 30 years or so there has been such an increase in New Age belief.
Before the paddywagon wheels Christians away for general insanity, I wanted to hammer a few things in this post.
Whilst, yes, We Christians are The Vine, we are equally accurately the branches of the Vine.In the sense that branches are The Vine, then yes, we are that. But the Vine in our own right, nope, we are not.
I am not Jesus Christ. The second Person of the Godhead who laid all aside to become a normal man injected as a second Adam into Mary's womb, having no earthly father....this man, was Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I have never been to Nazareth. I have no relation (yet) with the land of Israel. My brother , who worked on a kibbutz, has more relation with Nazareth than me.When I asked Jesus into my heart, His Spirit came in to live His Life as me. It's just I was never told about this...which has caused years of confusion. As it has in most Christian's lives.I am Jesus Christ in Chris form, born in Ghana, come out of Berkhamsted and born again in Amersham, but I am not Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As we receive Christ's Spirit into us when we are born again, the old spirit which drove us is kicked out, and we begin a new history of Him forming Himself in us, using similar techniques by which the Father matured and "grew" His Son whilst on Earth. We are the Branches. "Branch expressions" of the The Complete Vine" . But the Complete Vine we are not. His Church are the Branches.Some have gone before and are interceeding with Jesus for us in heaven. The rest of the branches are on earth. But we are all the Vine. The Vine is not the trunk. The Vine is both the trunk and the branches.
Watchman Nee wrote "The Normal Christian Life". In it he describes the traditional view that comes through the Brethren teachings, and indeed through most of the Church, that we have two natures, and the one we feed the most wins out. Most of the Church live with this schizophrenic view of themselves.
The Bible says quite clearly we have died. Our spirit that was completely fused with satan's spirit , what the Bible describes as :We were by nature children of wrath...that is .....joined to that nature of Rebellion that has already been eternally judged. When we say nature here, this is at the spirit level. This is the spirit force of self "out for its own ends " that drove us.
Now Jesus dealt with this spirit once and for all at the Cross, then He gathered up the you and me bit of our spirits and "hid us with Himself (Christ) in God." That is, our root spiritual self is so entwined and interleaved with Him, it is impossible to separate out again. And the moment we ask Jesus into our lives, it is this new fusion that comes into us. There are NOT 3 things going on here. We were darkness. Now we are Light. It does not say there is a middle realm now where we are "self-running beings" choosing a bit of Light here and a bit of Darkness here.And this lack of definition is enough to paralyse the Charismatic and non-charismatic Church.
(The first and second levels...to grossly simplify and thereby annoy Southbourne Free Church.)This "self-running lie" which we picked up like a virus in the first ever rebellion, and the Bible calls the "mystery" of sin, is the reason why Christians cannot make their Christian lives work outside of meetings. As soon as we get caught up again in the futile myth of the independant self we are just seconds away from producing bad fruit again...because although our spirit centre has eternally switched over, we have just effectively produced a landing strip again for the spirit of error to work his "works of the flesh".
And it is the Romans 7 pressure cooker experience that proves it to us. Because 1st and 2nd levellers do not want to hear this stuff, God has Plan B to prove it to us. As soon as we have had enough, and are prepared to actually listen to His Word...then comes Romans 8 Living, and a whole new realm opens up. It is ofcourse not us doing this, as 1st and 2nd levellers assume, it is actually Christ being allowed for the first time to live His Life through us for any stretch of time.Outside a meeting.He'd have done it ages ago, but we were too busy kicking and screaming.
So as the parable of the Cave said....our end game is not getting Warehouses of born again and baptised in the Spirit Christians all going out and reproducing the same...but still unable to live life, and still unaware of what the Bible is actually on about.If that was so, then Christine and I,her in Alfreton,me in Amersham, would have arrived by most 2nd level standards, the year we converted in 1972. Because both of us were leading people to Christ , and unknown to each other, both were praying over people to get them baptised in the Spirit. Terry Virgo would be thrilled.
Mark Driscoll would have made us elders at age 14!!!No. No. No. No. The end game is to get everyone to know what went wrong in Genesis 3 verse 5, and to actually LIVE Christ's remedy. As much as I love Josh Mills and the fact that the glory of God regularly manifests in gold on him. Recently this happened again in Plymouth. I just get the impression from things he has said, he still has precious little idea of how you actually live a normal life in Christ outside meetings. He behaves like an extreme sort of 2nd leveller, that just knows how to splash about in the 3rd level in meetings? Josh, is this fair??
The Holy of Holies is real. Joshua knows it. But the glory is the actual manifest Presence who hovers above the Mercy seat. What about the wooden Ark of our lives, covered with gold inside and out, with the Living tablets of Christ living His Life out through us in Marks and Spencer's?The Cart Maintenance schedule in the parable is the mistaken "self-running" delusion that as a self-operated Person you have to pray for 3 or 4 hours to get the glory. No, what you have to do is renounce the 2nd level belief system which is part of the Fall anyway, and do Romans 12 verse 1 in this new context. Let Him live His life through You. If that means talking to a Samaritan woman at a well, and you miss your 5 hour quiet time...well praise God...you probably needed to...because now God gives you "food to eat" that others know not of. See John 4:32 .
I sometimes joke with Peter Stott that I need to go back to work, to recharge prophetically.I chose piano tuning because it is a good activity for waiting on God. I have done this for 27 years, and Peter will tell you what happens in meetings. Folks, this stuff works!!!!
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