In Life in the order of Melchizedek I I introduced blog readers to Nicholas and Pam who have so far been used mainly in Northern and far Northern territories. I didn't want to make too big a thing of this, and didn't include surnames or many personal details....but simply, they are forerunners of a different type and pattern of church-building....the Holy Spirit variety.
It looks higgledy piggledy. Often last minute notice. But they are meeting people God wants them to meet. So keep praying.
In the February newsletter, they have specifically requested that because of sensitivity we respect certain privacies.
So to summarise what has been going on in the country of operation, two amazing strands have occurred. Christians "on the ground" have been literally tugging at them from all sides to get them to come and lead other family members to Christ. These concern small family meetings or small house meetings , or meetings in their own apartment.
In Parliament various MPs of significance have been giving their lives to the Lord as Nicholas and Pam have been sharing. That is all I can share I am afraid....
but this is what they say of your prayers, and ours here and wherever Nicholas and Pam are known..........
Through your prayers we have experienced a level of favour in the last six months that has been amazing. ..............We write these things not to put the spotlight on us, but on Jesus, who has given us unprecedented doors of opportunity to walk through. ............. The gospel in essence is simple, but what has been amazing is the boldness and strategy with which to communicate with people their need of God and His salvation. The truth is that other Christians have done the hard work of preparation through prayer in the parliament and we have had the privilege of reaping an easy harvest.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Shout Out to Shawna
Lydia Joy has just sent this shout out which I echo....and probably Dan would also echo...but I don't want to put words in Dans's mouth.
Hey Chris............this has nothing to do with your post.......I was listening to Sarah MacMillan a singer whose music SHAWNA recommended to me, and I thought of our dear Shawna and began to miss her........so, have you heard anything from her of late? Here's a shout out to Shawna - I MISS YOU!!!
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I am preparing stuff for posting. You will understand why it took so long when you see it...but I believe it is one of the greatest unsung messages from last year and needs transcribing. It is a message from Peter Stott, and I fully expected God to arrange for him to share the same thing from the Florida platform when he went there. I felt it opened into things that I've only really heard Norman Grubb touch...but this was new...and it bridged the Thy Kingdom Come message of Ern baxter and the present day....more soon
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Lydia Joy and I are reading through the new Arthur Blessitt book on his 38 year Cross Walk and have been sharing notes on Facebook...more soon
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The practical ramifications of theis 3rd level walk are so different from what we have known before...in a way Rob Rufus' recent messages see Hong Kong City Church archives....tap in to some of this...so I wanted to give some practical examples that people are walking out...more soon
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People on Facebook know that I have been away for a week restoring a grand piano, which finished well I believe. I discovered my mobile could just about handle Facebook...so I felt less cut off from everybody. ....In amongst all the inanity, it can be a useful tool and some inanity is fun. I would urge everyone that wants to to discover it's positive capabilities.My friend Paul Noble has just started a Facebook group called "Prophetic Voice" for example.
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SHOUT OUTS Work.!!!! Shawna's reply at 2nd March in the comments section
Hey Chris............this has nothing to do with your post.......I was listening to Sarah MacMillan a singer whose music SHAWNA recommended to me, and I thought of our dear Shawna and began to miss her........so, have you heard anything from her of late? Here's a shout out to Shawna - I MISS YOU!!!
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I am preparing stuff for posting. You will understand why it took so long when you see it...but I believe it is one of the greatest unsung messages from last year and needs transcribing. It is a message from Peter Stott, and I fully expected God to arrange for him to share the same thing from the Florida platform when he went there. I felt it opened into things that I've only really heard Norman Grubb touch...but this was new...and it bridged the Thy Kingdom Come message of Ern baxter and the present day....more soon
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Lydia Joy and I are reading through the new Arthur Blessitt book on his 38 year Cross Walk and have been sharing notes on Facebook...more soon
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The practical ramifications of theis 3rd level walk are so different from what we have known before...in a way Rob Rufus' recent messages see Hong Kong City Church archives....tap in to some of this...so I wanted to give some practical examples that people are walking out...more soon
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People on Facebook know that I have been away for a week restoring a grand piano, which finished well I believe. I discovered my mobile could just about handle Facebook...so I felt less cut off from everybody. ....In amongst all the inanity, it can be a useful tool and some inanity is fun. I would urge everyone that wants to to discover it's positive capabilities.My friend Paul Noble has just started a Facebook group called "Prophetic Voice" for example.
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SHOUT OUTS Work.!!!! Shawna's reply at 2nd March in the comments section
Monday, 9 February 2009
Revelation 3:20 Prophecy and "Dust Cloud of Glory"Prophecy.
This is a continuation of the last post.
These are three excerpts from the Portsdown Community Church Conference last year in May 08. This is a word I was given,which was for the whole conference....but especially for those hidden soldiers who have been pressing on through for as many as 30 or 40 years...upon whose progress the current generation is building.
These are three excerpts from the Portsdown Community Church Conference last year in May 08. This is a word I was given,which was for the whole conference....but especially for those hidden soldiers who have been pressing on through for as many as 30 or 40 years...upon whose progress the current generation is building.
This is a comment by Peter Stott on the last prophecy, but also far more than that in describing where we find ourselves now.
This final excerpt is a prophecy given to Peter Stott just before the Conference, but spoken in the Conference, about the cloud of glory he saw coming to Europe.
I have briefly described "Key of David" meetings . If you did not see this post, you will find it helps clarify a bit of their function.
Peter Stott has taken a team from our church of all ages, sex and giftings to the Key of David Conference in Madrid this weekend. To give you a flavour here is their fresh report.
Thank you all for praying for us in the Key of David conference, here, it has been a powerful time and we believe many folk have gone through a time of real heart change as we looked at the "Father's heart". The Lord was dealing with issues of shame and ungodly beliefs - this teaching is one of the most effective things we have found to see real and lasting change in people's lives. It is also (perhaps inevitably) one of the most contested things we have seen - so your praying and covering these trips is ever more needful. Thank you.
One of you shared a word with us before we left about remaining focused through the time and not being deflected. This was such a reality - and there were various times when the conference could have been taken off course and it took quite a determination to keep it on track with creating tensions.
Ever, God was faithful and His presence this morning with us all was almost tangible - it is in that dynamic which He moves in power and revelation.
One excellent feature of the time was the way our team flowed together - there was such a complementing of gifts and of age and everyone felt free to contribute. It was quite amazing and an expression of the values we have been working on for years. Thank you team!
We are now at Madrid airport awaiting departure and praying that UK weather will allow Gatwick to remain open and snow free!
Much love to you all,
- Peter
Here are some features representing the DNA here.
- No one is more special than the other
- Everyone is expected to hear God and minister
- they are in Madrid as a disparate crew of all ages and experiences to facilitate what is going on in the Madrid Christians..not to build their own thing
- they are not there to build fresh walls and structures
- a whole Body ministry picture is built as each joint supplies
- Apart from one recognised international minister (Peter) no one else has any recognised standing - but their ability to move in love one with another means that they are able to import a Powerful Presence of the Living God
- This was what so blitzed me all those years ago when Graham Pulkingham and the Fisherfolk came to Dr Challoner's School in Amersham,nr London.('73)
- This is exactly the pattern that Jesus used, moving around with the 12 who were learning while they did stuff. It worked then and it works now.
- Notice the stuff that God is bringing is all about relationship, the Father...and taking away shame!!
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
It's here we planned world takeover....
It may not look much now...but this was the Demi-Lune in Amersham new town ,north-west London area.It was 1972.The period when druggies would meet here over a coffee. We however were trying to reach them. A lady from Old Town Baptist church called Olive (around 40) and me (14). She read me this passage over some coffee.....
Isaiah 41:1-5
1"(A)Coastlands, listen to Me (B)in silence, And let the peoples (C)gain new strength; (D)Let them come forward, then let them speak; (E)Let us come together for judgment. 2"(F)Who has aroused one from the east Whom He (G)calls in righteousness to His feet? He (H)delivers up nations before him And subdues kings He makes them like (I)dust with his sword, As the wind-driven (J)chaff with his bow. 3"He pursues them, passing on in safety, By a way he had not been traversing with his feet. 4"(K)Who has performed and accomplished it, Calling forth the generations from the beginning? '(L)I, the LORD, am the first, and with the last (M)I am He.'" 5The (N)coastlands have seen and are afraid; The (O)ends of the earth tremble; They have drawn near and have come.
and then she asked
Why do we not see this?
Why are we not there?
How do we get there?
So in our little way we plotted world take-over that day. Before that time, it was not a concept. After that day, the pigeon-hole had already been created for Ern Baxter to slot his teaching into.
And ofcourse, we are still asking this. Rob Rufus. Terry Virgo, who actually came to Amersham at around this time. Many others.......
Part of the answer came in 1972. A few months later. Not an obvious answer to left-brain English people. This came through Merv and Merla in a Fountain Trust Conference.
Praise.
Olive taught loads of us youngsters about it after she got back. We had no idea that it was a gateway to so much.
Then came the vision of the Kingdom.
A vision of the Church
The structure of the church - giftings and ministries
Then I left the area, and learned about seeking God through Ed Miller and Jorge Pradas.
How meetings can be run in the Presence of God.
But even this, wasn't really getting to it. The early blogging in Dan's Vaults talk about how I then met up with Norman's crowd and learnt the specifics of "Alphabet Soup".
See, growing up in God is not obvious. Not from a left-brain point of view. Quite how I got to Emsworth, from the campus of Exeter University wasn't obvious either. But I did.
Today, I felt God want to use me to encourage people. And as if to confirm that, the new Arthur Blessitt book came and sure enough it was the same sort of theme, in his background. More about that later, when I've read it and compared notes with Lydia Joy.
I want to encourage you all, with me to say...the same Jesus who lives in the greats we read about...lives in you and me. If you like, we are Big Name ministries...why? Because the One with the Big Name (Jesus) lives in us and ministers through us. As I wrote before...no matter what sort of stage we're at Christianwise....right now...today....a full-grown 33 year old Jesus, lives inside us by the Spirit....and we can operate today in the same order that He runs everything in...The Melchizedek Order.
Today, He can speak through a child who cannot talk yet...and say something like "You must love Jesus." This actually happened in Waterlooville, Portsmouth, in a tuning customer's house, a few days before I was tuning there. It blew my atheist customer away!!!! So if He can do that He can use you to full capacity,whenever He wants!!! I was 19, when he blasted epilepsy through my forefinger out of a French lady's life,instantly and completely John G Lake style, while we were having breakfast. (But there was a cost to this, and a price I paid, before this stuff started...more another day)
But I wanted to encourage us all again with these verses. The very things the devil hits us over the head with to condemn us...are the very things that Jesus said would be so. READ THIS.
Luke 17
7"Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come immediately and sit down to eat'?
8"But will he not say to him, '(J)Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink'?
9"He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he?
10"So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'"
Similar to this in the Psalms of Ascents (which we need to look at some time) Ps 120 - 133 there is this Psalm ...
Psalm 131
Childlike Trust in the LORD.
A Song of Ascents, of David. 1O LORD, my heart is not (A)proud, nor my eyes (B)haughty; Nor do I involve myself in (C)great matters, Or in things (D)too difficult for me. 2Surely I have (E)composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned (F)child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me. 3O Israel, (G)hope in the LORD (H)From this time forth and forever.
And this follows 2 very tricky psalms, 129 and 130. But now there is a quieting. A humility. An interest ONLY to get involved with what Jesus is actually doing through you
whether its Baked beans
or raising someone from the dead
or cleaning up someone who is in a right smelly state...
What it is is now irrelevant. Just the joy of knowing, right now, in my little body, the King of the Universe is doing this through me.
Such a far cry from Genesis 3:5 - You don't want to do that!!! You want the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!! You want to be gods in your own right. You want to be doing anything and everything, running yourself ragged, having the weight of the universe on your shoulders...because you are so important as independant gods in your own right!!! I thought so. Here's your death stamp ! Blam! Got you!
How different is Psalm 131. and the attitude of the servant in the above parable in Luke 17.
Jorge Pradas and Ed Miller taught us this parable in the context of praise and worship. We serve the Master until He is ready. Praise waits for you O Lord.
Praise and worship is the practice run!!! In the 3rd Level we dice with our lives. We risk our lives on Him, knowing if He doesn't show up....we're kind of stuffed...up the Swannee!
And during the period when the servant is tempted to think that nothing is happening....actually the devil is telling us complete porkies!!!! because in that precise instant miracles are being birthed in the Spirit....a Spirit Highway is being created in the heavenlies for us of the works destined for us and only us, from before the beginning of time!!!
With this in mind it is good to read John Stevens' comment to Alphabet Soup Part 2 (Alpha and Omega) without getting too bogged down.
Jesus ministered at 4 or 5 levels simultaneously ...more in future posts. But what it shows us is
- He can take a multitude and address them from scratch
- He can speak more directly to all His followers
- He can take 12 every day Joes and (Josephines) and reproduce His life more exactly in these specific few...more about this in a minute
- Then further to this I want to explore the Prophetic events. The times when the Spirit blurted out through Him....You know this is the Feast of the Pouring of the Water...well I am the Water of Life. These type of prophetic fulfilment events are recorded frequently in John...because more than the other gospel writers, he was a prophet...so particularly picked up on it.
- The last level was ofcourse the one-off events that He particularly came for, that no man will ever do again....die on the Cross to save everyone who believes on Him, ascend into heaven, then begin the whole operation again by pouring out the Holy Spirit. This level of Ministry is unique to Jesus.
There are on the Earth right now very charismatic leaders like Rob Rufus, like Andy Elmes here in Portsmouth, like Morris Cerullo, like Rheinhardt Bonnke, those associated with Hillsongs.
They have all touched heaven. Andy Elmes put everything aside to join a prophet called Vaughan Jarrold (Londoner)in New York and Upstate New York...to seek God. And He caught something there, that he continues to minister from. Morris Cerullo was caught up into the heavenlies and saw footprints through which he could see people in hell....his very steps were going to be rescuing untold multitudes. And this is a true vision. After 60 years continuous ministry. Arthur Blessitt had Jesus walk with him in the late 60s and his face glowed, such that his wife knew who he had been with. When I was baptised in the Spirit, nothing happened for ages, while everyone else began to speak in tongues. I was told prophetically to act in faith, believe that I had received...and as soon as I did that things started to happen. But at that point I was given a choice. It was like another level or stage. But the obedience the Spirit was demanding was to shout at the top of my voice...Hallelujah. I'd never done anything like that...and I sensed the entire pressure of the comfortable realm of London Middle-Class Suburbia pressing down on me, telling me not to be such a fool. But in the moment I obeyed...it was like another level of fire. I became instantly utterly paralytically drunk and had to be helped downstairs. This fire and shaking continued for hours. And in the power of that anointing I went into school with others and we began preaching and turning things upside down for Jesus.
OK....got all that.....
But somehow all these people...including myself...never knew how to reproduce more than people who know how to get baptised in the Spirit. Which is kind of cyclic.But Jesus did. He knew how to minister in the 3rd level, and reproduce fathers after His own kind. Yet all the while encouraging people to move in the 2nd level of giftings and empowerings.
So let me repeat an earlier post. I am not against warehouses of Christians who are Spirit-filled. All the above ministries have the charisma to produce these. What I am saying is....while doing the warehouse thing....Jesus was also moving in these other levels also. Nor am I saying ...only move in the 3rd level....cos not everyone is ready for that level yet. What Jesus showed us is that it is possible to minister at all these levels simultaneously. And He came as a man to show us how. By the power of the same Holy Spirit.
So what is wrong with warehouse Christianity is not the thing itself....it's where it is going. If you are running 2nd level operations...that's fine...but where is your arrow pointing? If your direction is towards the 3rd level...that's fine. It doesn't matter that you are not there yet...all that matters is that you are at least heading that way. Jesus operates His Church in the order of Melchizedek. We may have structures, which change from year to year. Jesus doesn't even see those. He sees the direction arrows pointing out of people's hearts. "Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee, in whose hearts are the Highways to Zion."(Ps 84) No, what is wrong with warehouses, is if the direction arrows are only pointing to the roof of the warehouse, or for a bigger warehouse, or stadium. Paul said I come amongst you only to sense Christ crucified among you. It has an aroma in the Spirit. All these people learning Christ in them as them. How it works...individually, corporately. Anything else is stagnancy....Pretty songs...good preaching from one charismatic speaker around whom the whole great pyramid is built...a few good healings here and there.
Is that what you want guys? Obviously this blog is not for you. But if , like me, you're greedy and want the lot...well I'd encourage you to keep reading. I think God gave me this 2 week taste of 3rd level Smith Wigglesworth/John G Lake living when I was 19 just to encourage me....to impress on me that it exists...... I think a lot of the interim has been discovering the mundane bit of 3rd level life....the sort encountered by the servants in Luke 17. It's given me time to hunt down the 3rd level and hopefully pin it down a bit....like hunted quarry. But I believe Florida showed that the time for a 3rd level fully functioning worldwide corporate expression of Christ is really only seconds away. I want to be a part of it.
In the next post is a prophecy given to me in the last Portsdown Community Church Conference in May 2008 which is particularly relevant to this "lost" generation of seekers. Not lost in the sense of unsaved...lost in the sense that they disappeared from view suddenly...and never ever really emerged out the other side.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Alphabet Soup - The Second Helping
One Woman’s Answer: What To Do When Your Life Resembles Alphabet Soup!, by Page Prewitt
This is the second and final part of Page’s superb article, “One Woman’s Answer—What To Do When Your Life Resembles Alphabet Soup!” Part 2
Confusion between Soul and Spirit
You are not just spirit and body (figure 1). Your “bugaboos” and your problems and difficulties in life come mainly from the third part of you: your soul. Let me hastily add here, though, that not only do your problems stem from your soul, but also your joys and exhilarations spring from your soul. Your very experience of life on this earth is because you have a soul that operates in full capacity. But until you understand it, the negative capacity of your soul messes up your life so badly that you don’t know how to enjoy the positive capacity of your soul. This is because you are jerked around and tossed here and there, not by your soul, but by what the enemy tells you about your soul.
Your soul has two capacities (figure 2). This is vital to know. One capacity of the soul is emotion; the other is reason. You will notice on page 12 that I have written the word feel under emotion; and under reason, I have written the word think. This is what the soul can do: it can feel and it can think.
The spirit has three capacities. One of these is desire, through which we express real love (the Greek agape, the love of God). Our human spirit is also where, even apart sometimes from mental reasoning and understanding, we know. The remaining capacity of the spirit is will, which has its fruition in choice. Free choice originates in God, and we, made in His image, are endowed by our Creator with like freedom of choice.
The Real Problem: Satan’s Lie
If you have been seeing yourself as an “independent” person and acted from that belief, realize that you have gone for Satan’s lie about the believer. You have gone for Satan’s lie about yourself. God only sees union with Himself; Satan sees and sponsors this divided outlook. This is the sin of unbelief— unbelief about who God says you really are.
God has said that He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17). He has also said that He is the vine and believers are the branches. He is their owner, and believers are His bondslaves. He is the deity placed in the temple. We, the believers, are the temple to manifest and display Him. He is the husband, furnishing the seed to the productive wife. Believers are the wife, wedded to this One. He is the treasure, and we, the believers, are the vessels that contain Him.
The branch, the vessel, the temple, the wife...all are dependent. The branch is dependent upon the vine, the vessel upon the contents, the temple upon the deity, and the wife upon the husband.
The analogy of the owner and the slave shows that the master is the one who owns the slave, and as in Romans 6:17, the slave is never his own owner or his own operator.
So, if you are a believer, to even “see” yourself as an “alone-I” who has the ability to operate himself—even that seeing is sin. The Scripture says when we find sin present with us to confess it. So the remedy is just to confess it. Call it sin and confess it. By confession I don’t mean “sackcloth and ashes.” Confession is no more than agreeing with God. It’s as if God says, “Look what you have been doing. You have let the enemy get you confused and mixed up. See it. Confess it.” It’s as simple as that.
The worst sin you will ever find out you have committed is the sin of wrong believing about yourself. And in doing that, you have allowed Satan to misuse you. That is what is wrong with every non-redeemed person, and with every born-again person who commits sins, minor or major—small ones that just “mess up” your life or blatant Biblical sins. Serious sins like theft, murder and adultery always stem from wrong seeing about ourselves as believers.
The result of living like this is not a life of sin-consciousness, but a life of true liberation. Bondage lies in wrong believing...to not see yourself as who you really are, one with Him. Wrong believing about yourself will immobilize you.
Wrong believing about yourself can cause conflict in a marriage, in the work place, with your children and in other situations. Satan, in your “independent self” believing, manages to get his hooks into your “members.” The Bible talks of believers in these terms: “sin in my members” (Rom 7.23). “Members” means your soul and body (your “flesh”) and not your spirit. Satan gets his hook in there and he is the confusion. He is the cause of the confusion. I’m not talking about the feeling of confusion I discussed earlier, but the confusion that results from the conflicts caused by wrong believing.
A Practical Example
Let me give you an example of how something seemingly small and insignificant in your life can be completely immobilizing to you. This past summer when my husband and I were in North Carolina, his car needed washing. Being in a very small resort center, there was no automatic wash place like I am used to back home. The place I took the car to was one of those where you plug the money in and then squirt off your own car. The coin slot was one of those flat things you lay quarters in and then slide in, where some mechanism picks up the change and deposits it, and then you have access to the hoses and water.
I put in the required three quarters and the machine only took two of them; the other was left in the slot. Of course it would not operate without the full amount, and I did not have another quarter. The way the machine is made, there is a small hole beneath the quarters. So I decided to reach in and just pop my quarter out. Well, I got my quarter, but my finger got stuck. It was the same kind of situation as when you’re having trouble getting a ring off.
I said to myself, “This will come out in just a second.” But then I realized my finger was not coming out. It was stuck! You know sometimes you can get a stick caught underneath your automobile, and if you pull hard, you can just jerk it out? So I thought, “Just jerk it out. It doesn’t matter if it hurts a little.” Then I re-thought: “That is your human finger! You can’t just jerk it out!”
I could not go anywhere to get help. Nothing but the tip of my finger was caught and yet I could go nowhere. I was immobilized. All kinds of redeeming thoughts went through my mind: “If only I had some soap; there’s a restaurant nearby—I can scream and maybe they’ll hear; maybe someone else will come in for a car wash.”
Finally, I said very meaningfully, “God, you have got to get my finger out.” I gave a soft jerk, and out it came. Later that week I realized what a great illustration this was of how one little sin thing in my life can completely immobilize me.
If you have been seeing yourself as an “independent” person and acted from that belief, realize that you have gone for Satan’s lie about the believer. You have gone for Satan’s lie about yourself. God only sees union with Himself; Satan sees and sponsors this divided outlook. This is the sin of unbelief— unbelief about who God says you really are.
God has said that He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17). He has also said that He is the vine and believers are the branches. He is their owner, and believers are His bondslaves. He is the deity placed in the temple. We, the believers, are the temple to manifest and display Him. He is the husband, furnishing the seed to the productive wife. Believers are the wife, wedded to this One. He is the treasure, and we, the believers, are the vessels that contain Him.
The branch, the vessel, the temple, the wife...all are dependent. The branch is dependent upon the vine, the vessel upon the contents, the temple upon the deity, and the wife upon the husband.
The analogy of the owner and the slave shows that the master is the one who owns the slave, and as in Romans 6:17, the slave is never his own owner or his own operator.
So, if you are a believer, to even “see” yourself as an “alone-I” who has the ability to operate himself—even that seeing is sin. The Scripture says when we find sin present with us to confess it. So the remedy is just to confess it. Call it sin and confess it. By confession I don’t mean “sackcloth and ashes.” Confession is no more than agreeing with God. It’s as if God says, “Look what you have been doing. You have let the enemy get you confused and mixed up. See it. Confess it.” It’s as simple as that.
The worst sin you will ever find out you have committed is the sin of wrong believing about yourself. And in doing that, you have allowed Satan to misuse you. That is what is wrong with every non-redeemed person, and with every born-again person who commits sins, minor or major—small ones that just “mess up” your life or blatant Biblical sins. Serious sins like theft, murder and adultery always stem from wrong seeing about ourselves as believers.
The result of living like this is not a life of sin-consciousness, but a life of true liberation. Bondage lies in wrong believing...to not see yourself as who you really are, one with Him. Wrong believing about yourself will immobilize you.
Wrong believing about yourself can cause conflict in a marriage, in the work place, with your children and in other situations. Satan, in your “independent self” believing, manages to get his hooks into your “members.” The Bible talks of believers in these terms: “sin in my members” (Rom 7.23). “Members” means your soul and body (your “flesh”) and not your spirit. Satan gets his hook in there and he is the confusion. He is the cause of the confusion. I’m not talking about the feeling of confusion I discussed earlier, but the confusion that results from the conflicts caused by wrong believing.
A Practical Example
Let me give you an example of how something seemingly small and insignificant in your life can be completely immobilizing to you. This past summer when my husband and I were in North Carolina, his car needed washing. Being in a very small resort center, there was no automatic wash place like I am used to back home. The place I took the car to was one of those where you plug the money in and then squirt off your own car. The coin slot was one of those flat things you lay quarters in and then slide in, where some mechanism picks up the change and deposits it, and then you have access to the hoses and water.
I put in the required three quarters and the machine only took two of them; the other was left in the slot. Of course it would not operate without the full amount, and I did not have another quarter. The way the machine is made, there is a small hole beneath the quarters. So I decided to reach in and just pop my quarter out. Well, I got my quarter, but my finger got stuck. It was the same kind of situation as when you’re having trouble getting a ring off.
I said to myself, “This will come out in just a second.” But then I realized my finger was not coming out. It was stuck! You know sometimes you can get a stick caught underneath your automobile, and if you pull hard, you can just jerk it out? So I thought, “Just jerk it out. It doesn’t matter if it hurts a little.” Then I re-thought: “That is your human finger! You can’t just jerk it out!”
I could not go anywhere to get help. Nothing but the tip of my finger was caught and yet I could go nowhere. I was immobilized. All kinds of redeeming thoughts went through my mind: “If only I had some soap; there’s a restaurant nearby—I can scream and maybe they’ll hear; maybe someone else will come in for a car wash.”
Finally, I said very meaningfully, “God, you have got to get my finger out.” I gave a soft jerk, and out it came. Later that week I realized what a great illustration this was of how one little sin thing in my life can completely immobilize me.
So in Conclusion
If you are a believer, the Spirit in you is going on all the time—know ing, loving and willing. What you are thinking and feeling is also going on simultaneously in your soul. Make the distinction between these two. And never deny your feelings; that will make you psychologically sick. But realize that you are not your soul. You, at your center, are spirit—one with the Lord and Creator of the universe.
Yes, there are times when I look around—at others amid perplexing situations, or even within myself—and all I see for a moment is “alphabet soup.” But, this does not occur often. When it does, I retrace my steps to see where unbelief entered.
Sometimes this takes only a moment or two. Once in my experience, it took several months, and I spent those days in what I now call my “black hole” of unbelief.But on that occasion and on less serious ones now, I check myself by claiming that I am Christ in my form, that I am an expression of the Living Savior. I acknowledge to myself that I today live, not as the illusory “independent Page,” but as “Christ-Page.” I step out of unbelief into faith.
This article is available in booklet form and can be ordered from Zerubbabel press.
As at 2001 - Page Prewitt lives in Boone, NC, where she is a full-time Teacher/Sharer at our Total Living Center. She has dedicated most of her adult life to bringing to others the pure message of Christ in you as you as taught to her firsthand by her mentor Norman Grubb. She has been a true example of the “hope of glory” that comes as a result of allowing Christ to live one’s life. Page is the mother of four adult children and the grandmother of eight young grandchildren, all of who live on her same street.
If you are a believer, the Spirit in you is going on all the time—know ing, loving and willing. What you are thinking and feeling is also going on simultaneously in your soul. Make the distinction between these two. And never deny your feelings; that will make you psychologically sick. But realize that you are not your soul. You, at your center, are spirit—one with the Lord and Creator of the universe.
Yes, there are times when I look around—at others amid perplexing situations, or even within myself—and all I see for a moment is “alphabet soup.” But, this does not occur often. When it does, I retrace my steps to see where unbelief entered.
Sometimes this takes only a moment or two. Once in my experience, it took several months, and I spent those days in what I now call my “black hole” of unbelief.But on that occasion and on less serious ones now, I check myself by claiming that I am Christ in my form, that I am an expression of the Living Savior. I acknowledge to myself that I today live, not as the illusory “independent Page,” but as “Christ-Page.” I step out of unbelief into faith.
This article is available in booklet form and can be ordered from Zerubbabel press.
As at 2001 - Page Prewitt lives in Boone, NC, where she is a full-time Teacher/Sharer at our Total Living Center. She has dedicated most of her adult life to bringing to others the pure message of Christ in you as you as taught to her firsthand by her mentor Norman Grubb. She has been a true example of the “hope of glory” that comes as a result of allowing Christ to live one’s life. Page is the mother of four adult children and the grandmother of eight young grandchildren, all of who live on her same street.
Alphabet Soup - Part One
One Woman’s Answer: What To Do When Your Life Resembles Alphabet Soup!
By Page Prewitt
Foreword by Norman Grubb
The obvious meaning of such a title for this booklet as “Alphabet Soup” is that our lives are in some form or other a proper mix-up. Some things you can “spot and select”; lots you can’t. Is there such a thing as a life which is a clear, straight line? Don’t all lives appear to be a mix-up? Is there really the possibility of a straight line?
This is why I think this booklet is a rarity. I like it being totally personal, not a preachment, but the secret of knots tied and untied, and how to have them untied. And Page Prewitt takes us straight through from A to Z in sharing how the knots were unraveled in her own life, and then how to lay the finger on the many knots in every life until they are untied. Page so unmixes the mixed-up soup that we too are enabled to lay our fingers straight on those mix-ups, the reasons for them and the way to unmix them. She keeps it plain by concentrating on her own answer to the secret, showing how others can do the same.
She starts with a page or two on personal salvation and how she herself came clear in receiving Christ as what we call a sinner saved by grace. So the booklet is based on the new birth experience as a given fact, and it is from there onwards that Page handles the mix-up of the soup’s ingredients and comes out with the “straight line” which all of us hunger to have and know as the straightness of our own lives. The rest of the booklet then deals with these mix-ups which in various ways tear our lives to pieces and in plain honesty are in capital letters in all lives, which are just as much knotted in those who call themselves Christians as those who do not.
The answer is plain enough in Bible terms, though not so often referred to, and still less often so thoroughly untied. To get that answer we have to unravel what we might call the “self knots” in each of us. The whole weight and value of the booklet is in showing what the knots are and how they get untied, so that we may boldly then lay a forger on those same knots in our brother Christians.
So thoroughly does Page handle this, and with certain simple diagrams, that it would be a tautology for me to take up details in a foreword. Very simply, she focuses on the exact meaning, right interpretation and right uses of the subdivision of the human self which is lightly mentioned in Hebrews 4:12 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in three words: spirit, soul and body. What is the self, how do these three parts interact, and how do I get them rightly and fixedly “tied up” so that I can be bold in pointing to that same problem and its solution in nearly all my brethren?
This booklet tells about some of the quite desperate wrestlings Page herself experienced before coming to where, with unhesitating boldness, she can lay a finger on that same knot in you. And just because that takes us to the depths of the depths and drastically uncovers hidden areas which the god of the false misuse of self has so cleverly covered over, it is lamentably the fact that the vast majority of declared and born-again believers turn back at that spot. There is the same major Cross in it for us as there was for Jesus himself.
Alphabet Soup puts the most profound truth on this whole vital “spirit, soul and body” problem and its solution in simple terms. And here it is important to take note that there are quite a lot of folks these days who will use a correct term for what we are talking about and yet still not know what that really means. This included Page herself, which forced her to find the right and ultimate answer. And you’ll find that this little booklet does give that answer. And it is then that at last the soup sort of “unmixes itself,” and each item can be both edible and enjoyed.
We have really come to where Page Prewitt probably is the leader over all of us in a thoroughgoing explanation of what is meant by these three terms— what each is and how they properly mingle—so that I can boldly say I am Christ in my form. How that subtle self of ours has at last been torn out of Satan’s hold on it since the Fall, and in its place we find what a self in focus is. As James says, “Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
This account shows precisely the opening of that “secret of secrets” to Page and explains her God-given ability to use her Spirit rapier to pierce camouflages in others, which has caused many to turn away just as they did with Christ, The Self. Page shows our human selves in their ultimate purpose— the eternal relationship for which we were created, then fell from, and now to which we have been redeemed.
So I greatly recommend this booklet to every hungry reader who does want to get the soup unmixed and enjoy each particle in its right proportion, and be able boldly to point that fact out to his fellow Christians. If you really want to know the true meaning of who you are as a self—and that’s the only final meaning to our life’s search—this booklet can bring great light to you.
Norman Grubb
Part One
Life for me had become a hopeless search for a reason to live. My search was rewarded when Norman Grubb, a retired 80-year-old missionary from England, began to share with me what the Bible said about me. I was thrilled and shocked by what I saw and heard. My dilemma, liking what I heard but not daring to believe it to be true, plunged me into a search to check out Norman’s teaching. As a result of that search, I became convinced that what Norman taught was what the Scripture taught—that real life was God living out through His children.
Knowing this to be true did not make it a reality in my life. I was desperate for Christ to take over my mess of a life and live it for me. My focus was always on “me” and how terrible I was. Then one evening, while standing at the stove in my kitchen, the Lord said to me, “Dare to say about yourself what I say about you.”
It was at that moment that I first said I am Jesus Christ in His Page Prewitt form. As I said that, I appeared to myself anything but what I thought Christ would look like. I had been waiting and waiting to look and feel differently before I would declare myself to be the Page form of Christ. God’s word came and I obeyed (the obedience of faith— our only requirement—Rom. 1:5).
I said it and believed it. I don’t know why—desperation, I guess—but I took it “hook, line and sinker.” Since that day I have never doubted the truth of it. God has been faithful and has never let me down.
God in His precious love for me knew I was desperate and sent Norman with His truth in the nick of time. I believe, had I not caught on when I did, I would have eventually killed myself or would be in a mental institution today.
Knowing that there was another here (Christ) to do for me what I had proved I could not do for myself (live life) began to put me at ease. The pressure, the condemnation and the selfhate began to lift. I began to experience a freedom and a poise that I had never known. It was now up to Him to live and be how and what He wanted to be through me. I had failed miserably, so I had nothing to lose.
My outer circumstances didn’t suddenly become wonderful. Life as a wife and mother remained hard. My husband continued to dislike me and felt free to say so. Dealing with my four children was still very difficult, but I began to see it all in a new way. I started to see that things were exactly how God wanted them to be. Life was not a nightmare that had trapped me; it was God’s situation for me. He was in my circumstances and was in me to handle whatever circumstances He sent my way. I was Christ in my form, not because I said so, but because the Bible said so.
I also knew there was a time, before I became a Christian, when I wasn’t that and that I became “Christ in my form” at the time of my conversion. But before that day in my kitchen, I had only been aware that I had been born again, that I was saved. When I made my statement it was the first time that I acknowledged aloud—to myself and to God—that as a Christian, this is who I am.
So let me go back to the “beginning.”
How I Came to Christ
From my early childhood, I had a desire to know God and a desire to be a right person. I knew I didn’t know God, and I wanted so to know Him and to go to Heaven. I knew I wasn’t “right” and wanted so badly to be right. My mother would say to me: “Little girl, you had better change your ways.” I wanted to change my ways—but how?
I finally concluded that probably only priests, missionaries, ministers and nuns (and possibly my saintly grandmother) did right, knew God and were going to Heaven. There didn’t seem to be much hope for my becoming a nun, but I thought that maybe one day when I was old, I would be like my grandmother—wear my hair in a bun and sit pleasantly doing needlework.
One time as a teenager, spending the night with a friend, she asked me, “Page, are you saved?” Too embarrassed to ask what she meant, I vaguely nodded assent. Whatever did being “saved” mean?
When I was seventeen years old, living in Coral Gables, Florida, I found out. I was invited to a Youth for Christ meeting and heard Ephesians 2:8-9 quoted: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
There was that word again— ”saved”!
The result of hearing that was that I soon received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and was “born again.” I was saved!!
But until I found that being saved meant more than just “going to Heaven” and that who I had become when I was born again was Jesus Christ in my form, my salvation did little for me but assure me of Heaven. Life for me was as if I had written the seventh chapter of Romans. What I didn’t want to do, I did; what I hoped I would do, I didn’t. The bondage of being a Christian was as bad as the misery I had in my search for God.
College,Marriage and a Family
After I had moved away from Florida, gone through college in North Carolina, married an attorney, moved to Mississippi and borne four children, I finally discovered the living truth of Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” And I myself began to really live.
It was not so much that my life situation got better (for actually it got worse!), but that I experienced a total change in my way of seeing myself and life around me. And even though there was much that brought me to near desperation, there is nothing about those years I would want to have been changed. I see it all as God’s perfect purpose and plan.
Some time after I first said that I was the Page form of Jesus Christ (who I am), the day came when I needed an explanation for how—although I knew I was an expression of Christ—sin and failure played such a mammoth part in my experience.
I had found the basic answer concerning my life years before when I saw the truth of who I really am. Now, God was getting ready to show me the next step: what to do when knowing and saying who you are is not enough.
I have found the key to living this Christian life as Paul said it could be lived. Taught from the Scripture, and with the help of Norman Grubb and countless friends, I have, by positive and negative “pulls,” come to see the missing explanation.
No Independent Human Self
In a word, for me, it has been finding out there is no such person as an “independent self.” Today I not only affirm who I am, but I have been privileged by the Spirit to lead many other believers into this same acknowledgment. Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ, used to say that until you see those you introduce into the Kingdom bring in others, you haven’t experienced real in-depth fruitbearing. I even have “grandchildren” in the faith of knowing that they are expressions of the Living Christ.
Now, after years of experience in real-life situations, I can say I know how to fully operate as a “knower.” I “know” who I am and I now know how to operate as who I am.
The term “independent self,” as such, is not found in the Bible. The idea, however, pervades the Scriptures in the lives of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament believers. We find it in the teachings of Paul and in the words of Jesus. Jesus said it, Paul explained it, John confirmed it. And I dug until I found the hidden treasure.
This truth has been available for all believers, and there have always been those who saw it. In our age, however, there is a resounding emphasis on the self. We can say that since Freud in more modern times, and even as far back as Aristotle, attention has been drawn to the self. But today’s quest is almost a hallmark of our times.
So it seems appropriate that the Holy Spirit is giving to God’s people the true answer to “know thyself.”
This is what I have found for myself. I already knew God and had found Him always complete. What a joy (what a relief!) to finally know myself, and to find that I, too, am complete. As Peter says, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life” (2 Pet. 1:3). And James adds that we are “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).
At a recent conference in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, I was asked to speak and began by saying, “I want to talk about when saying ‘who you are’ is not enough.” Over the last few days there, I had talked to individuals whose lives were not working out to their own satisfaction. They told me, and I knew it to be true: “I know and say who I am. What is the problem?”
I could see there were problems in their lives, and they would proceed to relate them in depth. There seemed to be a dilemma over life, even when they could see and know and say that they are Christ in their forms. In fact, the longer their experience in this was, the more frustration they had when life just was not “working out.”
As you read this, if you are someone who has been saying, “I know who I am and I know what it is to be a believer,” but somewhere you have a “sticky wicket” that you can’t work out—in your interpersonal relationships or in some situation that you are part of—then, as a friend of mine often quips: “LISTEN UP!”
We Are Body, Soul and Spirit
Knowing I was Christ in my form and at the same time feeling all kinds of negative feelings was very confusing to me. How could fear, anger, hate, etc., and Christ all be fit together in this person I called “me”? It began to come clear to me when I saw a simple illustration in a Watchman Nee book. I have added to his illustration.
The circles give a picture of us as persons (Figure 1). We are tripartite— made in three parts: body, soul and spirit. The body is the house for soul and spirit. The soul is where we experience feelings and thoughts—emotions and reason. Our spirit is the part of us that is created in God’s image and is the seat of desiring, willing and knowing.
Before we can appreciate who we are in Christ, we need to understand who we were before Christ became our personal Savior -in other words, before we became born again.
In our non-Christian state, we were joined at our spirit center with the spirit of Satan (Figure 2). You probably don’t think this can be true, because when you think about Satan, you immediately think extreme evil. Satan is not necessarily always some killing, stealing, horrible person. The evil that he is (really, all the evil there is—period) all boils down to one simple thing: self for self. All the evil there is originates here: self for self.
How Evil Began
Satan, originally Lucifer, was created to be God’s light bearer. He would proclaim God. God did not make Lucifer into Satan. Satan did this by his own choice. In effect, he said “I will be equal to God, I will be like God, I will be God unto myself.” (Compare references from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.)
There is no truth in the belief that a created being can ever be equal to his Creator. Lucifer came out of God, and in his original form he came out as a self-giving self because he was “bearing” God’s light. But by his own choice of believing wrongly about himself and rejecting that “light,” he became a fallen form of God. He became a misused form of the self giving, all-loving being of God. He became Satan, a self-forself, an “I’ll be for myself” distorted form of God. God himself had eternally said “no” to being that, and in this God cannot deny Himself or lie. His eternal, fixed choice was to be forever the God of outpoured love. Lucifer chose the opposite.
Sometime after Satan’s fall, the Bible tells us that Adam fell and that all persons come into this world in the form of fallen Adam. So, as the circle represents, at their spirit center, all persons are joined to the spirit of Satan from birth.
Now to you, the reader. Before you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your spirit was in a “hook up” with Satan. Everyone you know who is not a Christian still is. The characteristic in all non-born-again people is self....self -for- self—an “I’m for myself” attitude. Even in their good deeds, the root is self. They are expecting to get something back for themselves.
If this is an unacceptable view to you, just begin to watch them, and sooner or later you will see this. For example, you will hear the whine of “I was so nice to her, and do you know what she did?...”
People do not like to hear this about those who are not Christians, and I don’t particularly like to mention it. I mention it, however, for two reasons. First, so you will realize who these people really are by nature. Second, because your heart and mind needs to be broken for others. You need to be more concerned. This concern includes (if they have not received Christ) your husband’s best friend, your golf buddy, the friend you lunch with, your precious sister or just “good ole Mary Sue” who waits on you at the drugstore.
Now let’s look at the circle that represents the “born-again” person (Figure 3).
We notice that the body of the Christian contains a soul, and a spirit that is now hooked up with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. How did this hookup occur? The Bible says it happened through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. You ask, “What has that got to do with me...Jesus Christ, in history, dying on a cross?” You might add, “I know that the blood of Jesus washed away my sins, but how does it work that it gets a switch going and gets my spirit ‘unhooked’ from the spirit of Satan and now ‘hooked up’ (united) with the Holy Spirit? How does that work?”
“One Died for All, Therefore All Died”
The Bible says we “died with Him” (Rom. 6:6) and “in Him we are dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). What does that mean? What does that mean to you? When I used to think about it, all I knew were those words. They made no sense, and I had no understanding of what they truly meant. Even though the Bible talked about me being dead, I knew that I was very much alive. One of the reasons it meant nothing much to me was that I was also ignorant then of the fact that before my conversion I was joined to this other spirit—this wrong spirit—and needed to get rid of that spirit.
The way spirit gets out of a person is through death—which is not annihilation or ceasing to be. When you die, the spirit goes out of your body. So when Jesus Christ took us to the cross in Himself, what he did for us was take on this sin nature. In some mysterious way—don’t ask me to explain it to you—for our sake “He made Him to be sin, [He] who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). He became sin for me! And He became sin for us so that “we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (also 2 Cor. 5:21).
Jesus Christ took on that sin spirit and He died, so the sin spirit went out. And when we take Him as our Savior, His death works the same thing in us. The way to get a spirit out of a person is for that person to die. So Jesus took that spirit of sin, died on the cross, and that spirit went out. But did it go out of me when Jesus Christ went to the cross? NO. It went out of me when I, by faith, took the work He did on Calvary to be my own.
So he died on the cross, and I died in Him. In some mysterious way—I don’t understand how—the Bible just says in Him I died and in Him you died too. In that death, the old spirit of sin went out. And death is only the means to life.
The body of Jesus lay in the grave for three days. There was no spirit in it, being dead. Then the Bible says that God’s own Spirit quickened Jesus’ body and resurrected Him. The Bible also says that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now therefore lives in you. That very same Spirit quickened you and brought you back to life. This is the new birth of John 3.
So that is how you, at your spirit center, became joined to the Spirit of God. Your spirit becomes joined to the Spirit of Christ through this work of Christ. In I Corinthians 6:17 we are told that he that is joined to the Lord is “one spirit with Him.” End of Part One...(details at around 2001)Page Prewitt lives in Boone, NC, where she is a full-time Teacher/Sharer at our Total Living Center. She has dedicated most of her adult life to bringing to others the pure message of Christ in you as you as taught to her firsthand by her mentor, Norman Grubb. She has been a true example of the “hope of glory” that comes as a result of allowing Christ to live one’s life. Page is the mother of four adult children and the grandmother of eight young grandchildren, all of who live on her same street.
By Page Prewitt
Foreword by Norman Grubb
The obvious meaning of such a title for this booklet as “Alphabet Soup” is that our lives are in some form or other a proper mix-up. Some things you can “spot and select”; lots you can’t. Is there such a thing as a life which is a clear, straight line? Don’t all lives appear to be a mix-up? Is there really the possibility of a straight line?
This is why I think this booklet is a rarity. I like it being totally personal, not a preachment, but the secret of knots tied and untied, and how to have them untied. And Page Prewitt takes us straight through from A to Z in sharing how the knots were unraveled in her own life, and then how to lay the finger on the many knots in every life until they are untied. Page so unmixes the mixed-up soup that we too are enabled to lay our fingers straight on those mix-ups, the reasons for them and the way to unmix them. She keeps it plain by concentrating on her own answer to the secret, showing how others can do the same.
She starts with a page or two on personal salvation and how she herself came clear in receiving Christ as what we call a sinner saved by grace. So the booklet is based on the new birth experience as a given fact, and it is from there onwards that Page handles the mix-up of the soup’s ingredients and comes out with the “straight line” which all of us hunger to have and know as the straightness of our own lives. The rest of the booklet then deals with these mix-ups which in various ways tear our lives to pieces and in plain honesty are in capital letters in all lives, which are just as much knotted in those who call themselves Christians as those who do not.
The answer is plain enough in Bible terms, though not so often referred to, and still less often so thoroughly untied. To get that answer we have to unravel what we might call the “self knots” in each of us. The whole weight and value of the booklet is in showing what the knots are and how they get untied, so that we may boldly then lay a forger on those same knots in our brother Christians.
So thoroughly does Page handle this, and with certain simple diagrams, that it would be a tautology for me to take up details in a foreword. Very simply, she focuses on the exact meaning, right interpretation and right uses of the subdivision of the human self which is lightly mentioned in Hebrews 4:12 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in three words: spirit, soul and body. What is the self, how do these three parts interact, and how do I get them rightly and fixedly “tied up” so that I can be bold in pointing to that same problem and its solution in nearly all my brethren?
This booklet tells about some of the quite desperate wrestlings Page herself experienced before coming to where, with unhesitating boldness, she can lay a finger on that same knot in you. And just because that takes us to the depths of the depths and drastically uncovers hidden areas which the god of the false misuse of self has so cleverly covered over, it is lamentably the fact that the vast majority of declared and born-again believers turn back at that spot. There is the same major Cross in it for us as there was for Jesus himself.
Alphabet Soup puts the most profound truth on this whole vital “spirit, soul and body” problem and its solution in simple terms. And here it is important to take note that there are quite a lot of folks these days who will use a correct term for what we are talking about and yet still not know what that really means. This included Page herself, which forced her to find the right and ultimate answer. And you’ll find that this little booklet does give that answer. And it is then that at last the soup sort of “unmixes itself,” and each item can be both edible and enjoyed.
We have really come to where Page Prewitt probably is the leader over all of us in a thoroughgoing explanation of what is meant by these three terms— what each is and how they properly mingle—so that I can boldly say I am Christ in my form. How that subtle self of ours has at last been torn out of Satan’s hold on it since the Fall, and in its place we find what a self in focus is. As James says, “Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
This account shows precisely the opening of that “secret of secrets” to Page and explains her God-given ability to use her Spirit rapier to pierce camouflages in others, which has caused many to turn away just as they did with Christ, The Self. Page shows our human selves in their ultimate purpose— the eternal relationship for which we were created, then fell from, and now to which we have been redeemed.
So I greatly recommend this booklet to every hungry reader who does want to get the soup unmixed and enjoy each particle in its right proportion, and be able boldly to point that fact out to his fellow Christians. If you really want to know the true meaning of who you are as a self—and that’s the only final meaning to our life’s search—this booklet can bring great light to you.
Norman Grubb
Part One
Life for me had become a hopeless search for a reason to live. My search was rewarded when Norman Grubb, a retired 80-year-old missionary from England, began to share with me what the Bible said about me. I was thrilled and shocked by what I saw and heard. My dilemma, liking what I heard but not daring to believe it to be true, plunged me into a search to check out Norman’s teaching. As a result of that search, I became convinced that what Norman taught was what the Scripture taught—that real life was God living out through His children.
Knowing this to be true did not make it a reality in my life. I was desperate for Christ to take over my mess of a life and live it for me. My focus was always on “me” and how terrible I was. Then one evening, while standing at the stove in my kitchen, the Lord said to me, “Dare to say about yourself what I say about you.”
It was at that moment that I first said I am Jesus Christ in His Page Prewitt form. As I said that, I appeared to myself anything but what I thought Christ would look like. I had been waiting and waiting to look and feel differently before I would declare myself to be the Page form of Christ. God’s word came and I obeyed (the obedience of faith— our only requirement—Rom. 1:5).
I said it and believed it. I don’t know why—desperation, I guess—but I took it “hook, line and sinker.” Since that day I have never doubted the truth of it. God has been faithful and has never let me down.
God in His precious love for me knew I was desperate and sent Norman with His truth in the nick of time. I believe, had I not caught on when I did, I would have eventually killed myself or would be in a mental institution today.
Knowing that there was another here (Christ) to do for me what I had proved I could not do for myself (live life) began to put me at ease. The pressure, the condemnation and the selfhate began to lift. I began to experience a freedom and a poise that I had never known. It was now up to Him to live and be how and what He wanted to be through me. I had failed miserably, so I had nothing to lose.
My outer circumstances didn’t suddenly become wonderful. Life as a wife and mother remained hard. My husband continued to dislike me and felt free to say so. Dealing with my four children was still very difficult, but I began to see it all in a new way. I started to see that things were exactly how God wanted them to be. Life was not a nightmare that had trapped me; it was God’s situation for me. He was in my circumstances and was in me to handle whatever circumstances He sent my way. I was Christ in my form, not because I said so, but because the Bible said so.
I also knew there was a time, before I became a Christian, when I wasn’t that and that I became “Christ in my form” at the time of my conversion. But before that day in my kitchen, I had only been aware that I had been born again, that I was saved. When I made my statement it was the first time that I acknowledged aloud—to myself and to God—that as a Christian, this is who I am.
So let me go back to the “beginning.”
How I Came to Christ
From my early childhood, I had a desire to know God and a desire to be a right person. I knew I didn’t know God, and I wanted so to know Him and to go to Heaven. I knew I wasn’t “right” and wanted so badly to be right. My mother would say to me: “Little girl, you had better change your ways.” I wanted to change my ways—but how?
I finally concluded that probably only priests, missionaries, ministers and nuns (and possibly my saintly grandmother) did right, knew God and were going to Heaven. There didn’t seem to be much hope for my becoming a nun, but I thought that maybe one day when I was old, I would be like my grandmother—wear my hair in a bun and sit pleasantly doing needlework.
One time as a teenager, spending the night with a friend, she asked me, “Page, are you saved?” Too embarrassed to ask what she meant, I vaguely nodded assent. Whatever did being “saved” mean?
When I was seventeen years old, living in Coral Gables, Florida, I found out. I was invited to a Youth for Christ meeting and heard Ephesians 2:8-9 quoted: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
There was that word again— ”saved”!
The result of hearing that was that I soon received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and was “born again.” I was saved!!
But until I found that being saved meant more than just “going to Heaven” and that who I had become when I was born again was Jesus Christ in my form, my salvation did little for me but assure me of Heaven. Life for me was as if I had written the seventh chapter of Romans. What I didn’t want to do, I did; what I hoped I would do, I didn’t. The bondage of being a Christian was as bad as the misery I had in my search for God.
College,Marriage and a Family
After I had moved away from Florida, gone through college in North Carolina, married an attorney, moved to Mississippi and borne four children, I finally discovered the living truth of Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” And I myself began to really live.
It was not so much that my life situation got better (for actually it got worse!), but that I experienced a total change in my way of seeing myself and life around me. And even though there was much that brought me to near desperation, there is nothing about those years I would want to have been changed. I see it all as God’s perfect purpose and plan.
Some time after I first said that I was the Page form of Jesus Christ (who I am), the day came when I needed an explanation for how—although I knew I was an expression of Christ—sin and failure played such a mammoth part in my experience.
I had found the basic answer concerning my life years before when I saw the truth of who I really am. Now, God was getting ready to show me the next step: what to do when knowing and saying who you are is not enough.
I have found the key to living this Christian life as Paul said it could be lived. Taught from the Scripture, and with the help of Norman Grubb and countless friends, I have, by positive and negative “pulls,” come to see the missing explanation.
No Independent Human Self
In a word, for me, it has been finding out there is no such person as an “independent self.” Today I not only affirm who I am, but I have been privileged by the Spirit to lead many other believers into this same acknowledgment. Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ, used to say that until you see those you introduce into the Kingdom bring in others, you haven’t experienced real in-depth fruitbearing. I even have “grandchildren” in the faith of knowing that they are expressions of the Living Christ.
Now, after years of experience in real-life situations, I can say I know how to fully operate as a “knower.” I “know” who I am and I now know how to operate as who I am.
The term “independent self,” as such, is not found in the Bible. The idea, however, pervades the Scriptures in the lives of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament believers. We find it in the teachings of Paul and in the words of Jesus. Jesus said it, Paul explained it, John confirmed it. And I dug until I found the hidden treasure.
This truth has been available for all believers, and there have always been those who saw it. In our age, however, there is a resounding emphasis on the self. We can say that since Freud in more modern times, and even as far back as Aristotle, attention has been drawn to the self. But today’s quest is almost a hallmark of our times.
So it seems appropriate that the Holy Spirit is giving to God’s people the true answer to “know thyself.”
This is what I have found for myself. I already knew God and had found Him always complete. What a joy (what a relief!) to finally know myself, and to find that I, too, am complete. As Peter says, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life” (2 Pet. 1:3). And James adds that we are “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).
At a recent conference in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, I was asked to speak and began by saying, “I want to talk about when saying ‘who you are’ is not enough.” Over the last few days there, I had talked to individuals whose lives were not working out to their own satisfaction. They told me, and I knew it to be true: “I know and say who I am. What is the problem?”
I could see there were problems in their lives, and they would proceed to relate them in depth. There seemed to be a dilemma over life, even when they could see and know and say that they are Christ in their forms. In fact, the longer their experience in this was, the more frustration they had when life just was not “working out.”
As you read this, if you are someone who has been saying, “I know who I am and I know what it is to be a believer,” but somewhere you have a “sticky wicket” that you can’t work out—in your interpersonal relationships or in some situation that you are part of—then, as a friend of mine often quips: “LISTEN UP!”
We Are Body, Soul and Spirit
Knowing I was Christ in my form and at the same time feeling all kinds of negative feelings was very confusing to me. How could fear, anger, hate, etc., and Christ all be fit together in this person I called “me”? It began to come clear to me when I saw a simple illustration in a Watchman Nee book. I have added to his illustration.
The circles give a picture of us as persons (Figure 1). We are tripartite— made in three parts: body, soul and spirit. The body is the house for soul and spirit. The soul is where we experience feelings and thoughts—emotions and reason. Our spirit is the part of us that is created in God’s image and is the seat of desiring, willing and knowing.
Before we can appreciate who we are in Christ, we need to understand who we were before Christ became our personal Savior -in other words, before we became born again.
In our non-Christian state, we were joined at our spirit center with the spirit of Satan (Figure 2). You probably don’t think this can be true, because when you think about Satan, you immediately think extreme evil. Satan is not necessarily always some killing, stealing, horrible person. The evil that he is (really, all the evil there is—period) all boils down to one simple thing: self for self. All the evil there is originates here: self for self.
How Evil Began
Satan, originally Lucifer, was created to be God’s light bearer. He would proclaim God. God did not make Lucifer into Satan. Satan did this by his own choice. In effect, he said “I will be equal to God, I will be like God, I will be God unto myself.” (Compare references from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.)
There is no truth in the belief that a created being can ever be equal to his Creator. Lucifer came out of God, and in his original form he came out as a self-giving self because he was “bearing” God’s light. But by his own choice of believing wrongly about himself and rejecting that “light,” he became a fallen form of God. He became a misused form of the self giving, all-loving being of God. He became Satan, a self-forself, an “I’ll be for myself” distorted form of God. God himself had eternally said “no” to being that, and in this God cannot deny Himself or lie. His eternal, fixed choice was to be forever the God of outpoured love. Lucifer chose the opposite.
Sometime after Satan’s fall, the Bible tells us that Adam fell and that all persons come into this world in the form of fallen Adam. So, as the circle represents, at their spirit center, all persons are joined to the spirit of Satan from birth.
Now to you, the reader. Before you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your spirit was in a “hook up” with Satan. Everyone you know who is not a Christian still is. The characteristic in all non-born-again people is self....self -for- self—an “I’m for myself” attitude. Even in their good deeds, the root is self. They are expecting to get something back for themselves.
If this is an unacceptable view to you, just begin to watch them, and sooner or later you will see this. For example, you will hear the whine of “I was so nice to her, and do you know what she did?...”
People do not like to hear this about those who are not Christians, and I don’t particularly like to mention it. I mention it, however, for two reasons. First, so you will realize who these people really are by nature. Second, because your heart and mind needs to be broken for others. You need to be more concerned. This concern includes (if they have not received Christ) your husband’s best friend, your golf buddy, the friend you lunch with, your precious sister or just “good ole Mary Sue” who waits on you at the drugstore.
Now let’s look at the circle that represents the “born-again” person (Figure 3).
We notice that the body of the Christian contains a soul, and a spirit that is now hooked up with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. How did this hookup occur? The Bible says it happened through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. You ask, “What has that got to do with me...Jesus Christ, in history, dying on a cross?” You might add, “I know that the blood of Jesus washed away my sins, but how does it work that it gets a switch going and gets my spirit ‘unhooked’ from the spirit of Satan and now ‘hooked up’ (united) with the Holy Spirit? How does that work?”
“One Died for All, Therefore All Died”
The Bible says we “died with Him” (Rom. 6:6) and “in Him we are dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). What does that mean? What does that mean to you? When I used to think about it, all I knew were those words. They made no sense, and I had no understanding of what they truly meant. Even though the Bible talked about me being dead, I knew that I was very much alive. One of the reasons it meant nothing much to me was that I was also ignorant then of the fact that before my conversion I was joined to this other spirit—this wrong spirit—and needed to get rid of that spirit.
The way spirit gets out of a person is through death—which is not annihilation or ceasing to be. When you die, the spirit goes out of your body. So when Jesus Christ took us to the cross in Himself, what he did for us was take on this sin nature. In some mysterious way—don’t ask me to explain it to you—for our sake “He made Him to be sin, [He] who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). He became sin for me! And He became sin for us so that “we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (also 2 Cor. 5:21).
Jesus Christ took on that sin spirit and He died, so the sin spirit went out. And when we take Him as our Savior, His death works the same thing in us. The way to get a spirit out of a person is for that person to die. So Jesus took that spirit of sin, died on the cross, and that spirit went out. But did it go out of me when Jesus Christ went to the cross? NO. It went out of me when I, by faith, took the work He did on Calvary to be my own.
So he died on the cross, and I died in Him. In some mysterious way—I don’t understand how—the Bible just says in Him I died and in Him you died too. In that death, the old spirit of sin went out. And death is only the means to life.
The body of Jesus lay in the grave for three days. There was no spirit in it, being dead. Then the Bible says that God’s own Spirit quickened Jesus’ body and resurrected Him. The Bible also says that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now therefore lives in you. That very same Spirit quickened you and brought you back to life. This is the new birth of John 3.
So that is how you, at your spirit center, became joined to the Spirit of God. Your spirit becomes joined to the Spirit of Christ through this work of Christ. In I Corinthians 6:17 we are told that he that is joined to the Lord is “one spirit with Him.” End of Part One...(details at around 2001)Page Prewitt lives in Boone, NC, where she is a full-time Teacher/Sharer at our Total Living Center. She has dedicated most of her adult life to bringing to others the pure message of Christ in you as you as taught to her firsthand by her mentor, Norman Grubb. She has been a true example of the “hope of glory” that comes as a result of allowing Christ to live one’s life. Page is the mother of four adult children and the grandmother of eight young grandchildren, all of who live on her same street.
yes I am Link fault corrected
For anyone accessing Yes I am by Norman Grubb in the links section, the faulty page settings have now been corrected. Thanks to those at union life.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Some background sad news
Christine lost her Dad last night. I'm posting this to keep you informed in case posts are a bit erratic. Over the last few days I have been caught up in piano work.
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Passages of the Word - Time release capsules that are set to go off as we go through the Tabernacle?
This post is a question not a statement.
In Eastern philosophies they often mention this principle...kind of turns up in any karate/kung fu movie worth its salt...."when a pupil is ready...then the teacher appears."
Are there Bible verses hidden by the roadside into God that are cleverly primed to go off as we reach certain points.....kind of Lara Croft Tombraider-style...or Sonic the hedgehog or whatever.
Lydia posted Isaiah54: Sing o barren woman sing
This bomb went off for me when I was carried down to Emsworth by the scruff of the neck by a well-known English prophet. It was either this or stoning...so I took the former. Only to find God simply wanted to lavish his grace on me....and then one of the brothers brought this passage including "Enlarge the Place of Your tents".
After which, while enjoying 2ndleveldom to the full, God brought people my way who piece by piece put the whole 3rd level picture jigsaw together. One set of time release verses kicked in at this time : in Psalm 118 5From my (F)distress I called upon the LORD; The LORD answered me and (G)set me in a large place. 6The LORD is (H)for me; I will (I)not fear; (J)What can man do to me? 7The LORD is for me (K)among those who help me; Therefore I will (L)look with satisfaction on those who hate me. 8It is (M)better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man. 9It is (N)better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes. 10All nations (O)surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely (P)cut them off. 11They (Q)surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. 12They surrounded me (R)like bees; They were extinguished as a (S)fire of thorns; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. 13You (T)pushed me violently so that I was falling, But the LORD (U)helped me. 14(V)The LORD is my strength and song,
-------------------------------
I remember receiving this in my spirit and thinking well how could this be true
in such a nice church with such a strong Presence of God....?
Hmmm.....let's just say it was true...the rest is history. Emmanuel Ferradura went through the same thing in Spain, but when he visited us in Emsworth....with a "trying not to look too crucified" expression, he still managed to bring a teaching on how corn is made into bread
and as in the Feast of Tabernacles...this bread was going to feed the world. (Instead of asking me about this, post him on Facebook...but your answer may be in Spanish).
--------------------------
I just find it so interesting that Lydia Joy and Dan are revelling in this scripture right now.
For me...it is the embarcation point on the boat to the 3rd level. Cos you see the 3rd level is Huuuuuuge....and you need to expand your tents. Think MEGA!!!
---------------------
So to return to my original point . Can I just say that we have a lady in our church who when she brings a scripture, is always crying. Jacqui for those in the know. And the thing is this. Each verse of the Bible is so loaded with dynamite and grace and power....have we really got a verse at all, if it hasn't left our eyes totally welled up, and with us just feeling wasted!!!! So back to the soaking post.....MUSIC is the nearest thing we have to a spirit language in physical format. So it is no wonder that we are to use it to meditate and swoosh around on our insides these great verses of the Bible.
In Eastern philosophies they often mention this principle...kind of turns up in any karate/kung fu movie worth its salt...."when a pupil is ready...then the teacher appears."
Are there Bible verses hidden by the roadside into God that are cleverly primed to go off as we reach certain points.....kind of Lara Croft Tombraider-style...or Sonic the hedgehog or whatever.
Lydia posted Isaiah54: Sing o barren woman sing
This bomb went off for me when I was carried down to Emsworth by the scruff of the neck by a well-known English prophet. It was either this or stoning...so I took the former. Only to find God simply wanted to lavish his grace on me....and then one of the brothers brought this passage including "Enlarge the Place of Your tents".
After which, while enjoying 2ndleveldom to the full, God brought people my way who piece by piece put the whole 3rd level picture jigsaw together. One set of time release verses kicked in at this time : in Psalm 118 5From my (F)distress I called upon the LORD; The LORD answered me and (G)set me in a large place. 6The LORD is (H)for me; I will (I)not fear; (J)What can man do to me? 7The LORD is for me (K)among those who help me; Therefore I will (L)look with satisfaction on those who hate me. 8It is (M)better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man. 9It is (N)better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes. 10All nations (O)surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely (P)cut them off. 11They (Q)surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. 12They surrounded me (R)like bees; They were extinguished as a (S)fire of thorns; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. 13You (T)pushed me violently so that I was falling, But the LORD (U)helped me. 14(V)The LORD is my strength and song,
-------------------------------
I remember receiving this in my spirit and thinking well how could this be true
in such a nice church with such a strong Presence of God....?
Hmmm.....let's just say it was true...the rest is history. Emmanuel Ferradura went through the same thing in Spain, but when he visited us in Emsworth....with a "trying not to look too crucified" expression, he still managed to bring a teaching on how corn is made into bread
and as in the Feast of Tabernacles...this bread was going to feed the world. (Instead of asking me about this, post him on Facebook...but your answer may be in Spanish).
--------------------------
I just find it so interesting that Lydia Joy and Dan are revelling in this scripture right now.
For me...it is the embarcation point on the boat to the 3rd level. Cos you see the 3rd level is Huuuuuuge....and you need to expand your tents. Think MEGA!!!
---------------------
So to return to my original point . Can I just say that we have a lady in our church who when she brings a scripture, is always crying. Jacqui for those in the know. And the thing is this. Each verse of the Bible is so loaded with dynamite and grace and power....have we really got a verse at all, if it hasn't left our eyes totally welled up, and with us just feeling wasted!!!! So back to the soaking post.....MUSIC is the nearest thing we have to a spirit language in physical format. So it is no wonder that we are to use it to meditate and swoosh around on our insides these great verses of the Bible.
Friday, 23 January 2009
Only a biology teacher would do this
John Stevens is exposing his week's fast to the eagle eyes of his biology students and recording it all on this blog
Read about thin places too while you are at it.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
List of Recommended Favorite Soaking Cds from friends on Facebook
This post is dedicated to Penny Scott of Goldhill Baptist Church. This was the one Roy Castle went to.
THIS IS A RESOURCE POST THAT CAN BE ADDED TO BY ANY READER WHO HAS A GOOD SUGGESTION
Wendy Wilbraham: There are loads that I can recommend. Yesterdays was JoAnn McFatter - The Invitation. Some excellent ones also are; Alberto and Kimberly Rivera-Live Soaking Sessions 1 and no 2 has just been released but haven't heard it yet, Captured and The Longing are others by same people. Also, Kelly Warren - Here With You, Beautiful or Heaven's Whisper. Here ... With You particularly good. Is that enough for now or do you want me to write you out a list? Just ordered a large amount into J Source! Hope that helps.
*************************
Ursula Kuba wrote at 22:34
Chris! 100% Cool of the evening by Isi de GersignyOpen Heaven by Isi de GersignyKari Jobe - The more I seek you?Ummm....Alberto and Kimberly Reviera...Thats about it! I actually need to ask Jamie how to put a CD on my blog so you guys can listen in....
Wall-to-Wall - Write on Ursula's Wall
Ursula Kuba wrote at 22:35
ooohhhhh....Joshua Mills - the Drinkand Joanne McFatter....
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Jose Ascua wrote at 23:08
Deep unto deep by David johnston....recommendable..
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Lydia Grewell wrote at 23:28
I don't have any cds. I do have a link on my blog that I love, called soaking net..........
see Lydia Joy...yup that's her
Lydia part 2Hey Chris,I am glad you brought this up! I decided to search for music online and I found 2 more sites that I like with a lot of great variety of soaking music and some of it is easily downloadable to Itunes, or MP3 - http://www.soakingwithapurpose.com/http://www.secretplaceministries.org/pages/genre/soaking-worship-music.html
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Ian Dickinson wrote at 18:56
chris hi, anything by godfry birthill & i will always be father to you. sorry but we have already seen oz, good film, see you soon.
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Helen Rubio wrote at 14:13
Julie Meyer- I fall in Love, Misty Edwards - Eternity, Todd Bentley - Soaking in the secret place plus many of the others mentioned here!
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Rosie Esseveld wrote at 12:59
Hi Chris, well I really love Alberto & Kimberly rivera's "Captured" album for being encouraged, Leonard Jones & Bruce Dailey have a soaking album called Deep Waters- which is purely instrumental (mainly violin & keys/strings).
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Dan Bowen wrote at 10:00
Hey Chris, must admit I am TERRIBLE at putting aside time for soaking. My one and only is Isi de Gersigny's "Open Heaven" - it's amazing! I need to almost sedate myself before I will sit down and just bask in the glory!
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Anna Dominy wrote at 09:59
anything from alberto and kimberly rivera, ruth fazal (think thats her surname)
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Sheila Atchley
Hi Chris!
Just got your "soaking CD's" request. I'm a bit "old school" in my soaking...I love a VERY old (1998) CD called "Why We Worship: Intimacy". Oooooh, it is fantastic. I also use a CD called "Names of God" - the names of God spoken,with authority, to light instrumental accompaniment. Lastly, truthfully, my husband has a real Psalmist gift - when he sits and plays his guitar to the Lord...I get to soak to live music, and honestly, it is the most effective way for me. God loves it when Tim plays and sings to Him!
Emma Bunday wrote at 08:57
Favourite soaking CDsDavid Johnston - Deep unto deep (esp. good for guys)Alberto and Kimberly Rivera - 1. The Longing & 2. Deeper Still Jo McFatter - the Invitation - wow!good idea Chris - loving reading about everyone elses selections.
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Julie - See her blog - Hi Chris, somehow I misunderstood exactly what you were asking when you left the comment on my blog. Anyway, great idea! I don't have many cds that would fit the category maybe but I've had some pretty amazing times just laying back and listening to Kim Walker's "Here Is My Song". Every song goes into an extended spontaneous worship time which is amazing. Of course in order to soak I generally have to park my car in a parking lot somewhere and look like a fool if any happens to walk by lol!
THIS IS A RESOURCE POST THAT CAN BE ADDED TO BY ANY READER WHO HAS A GOOD SUGGESTION
I want to thank all the people that responded to my Facebook request - even if in the end I had to address each one's wall individually which took some time. I also want to thank Dan for addressing this subject
I don't want anyone to be under any illusion here though. Apart from the tracks that the leaders sometimes use in our meetings...I have never heard a soaking CD. Certainly not right through.
Don't get me wrong...what I have heard I love. Also, we have hours and hours of recorded material from Florida last year. Nope....but there is something interesting here. 2 of my friends had to be told what soaking was...it went like this.
Rachel Fieldhouse -
What are 'soaking CDs'? I tend to spend more time listening to classical chill collections as this really helps me to unwind while enjoying the beautiful location we live in - glass of wine in hand!
Chris Welch wrote at 10:39
Anna in America asked me that one - and she knew but not by that name. Remember in Grimsdells Lane, where after we had broken through in praise a bit...we'd go silent for a bit waiting on God...and maybe Ron would prophesy something or we'd begin praying out prophetically...or I'd get a song.....or it would just feel right to share a scripture or... share revelation...well nowadays...the sensitive musicians who play/sing/prophesy during this phase are recording this on to Cds...which is music to soak in the Presence of God to. What we learned in Ron and Pam's house, I learned further in my time with Martin Franke in Germany(he had just learned it off Judson Cornwall while going around with him)...then I took this into Exeter with me...see Val Fane....after this, when I arrived in Emsworth, the guy who had taught Judson Cornwall in the first place - Ed Miller turned up...and Emsworth was established in running meetings like this....what Peter Stott now calls "Key of David " meetings
Anna Andrews wrote at 22:37
You are the only other person besides my friend who has talked about soaking Cds. Are they just a particular type of music you enjoy? Can you give me some examples....
Chris Welch wrote at 22:46
anna just watch my wall...Ursula has already answered. You know the music Jordi,Timotee and others played when we were seeking the Lord....maybe on our faces.Well it is this,but has developed to be quite lengthy prophetic singing.In extreme cases like Josh Mills, you get inundated with gold dust if you are anywhere near him at the time.
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So the following friends on Facebook- see my friends ...but who may or may not know "soaking" as a phrase, nevertheless could soak you quite thoroughly are Anna Andrews, Emmanuel Ferradura (one amazing Argentinian guy) Jean Marc Dunys( I knew him while he was called Timotee) and his wife Ruth, Lois Fryatt, the whole Wentworth dynasty of which Helen Rubio ,Anna and Elizabeth are just a fraction, Elizabeth's hubby Jose Rubio and probably if pressed Rachel Fieldhouse herself...it was in her house that we were all inundated by the power of the Holy Spirit in April 1972.
Thing is....this was an earlier wave!! We were still discovering things that today seem commonplace. Who'd have thought you could franchise the middle bit of meetings!!! Surely only the Americans would come up with that!!! They've franchised water!!!. Only leaves air still"blowing in the Wind"....but give it time.
I would love to insert an early bit of soaking music from 1984 Emsworth Glory Conference, featuring Marcus Roberts:piano Mike Thom:keyboards and myself on flute. But the input on this computer is not working. And in those days it was all tape cassettes. Maybe I'll be able to include it some time.
Here are the responses.
Wendy Wilbraham: There are loads that I can recommend. Yesterdays was JoAnn McFatter - The Invitation. Some excellent ones also are; Alberto and Kimberly Rivera-Live Soaking Sessions 1 and no 2 has just been released but haven't heard it yet, Captured and The Longing are others by same people. Also, Kelly Warren - Here With You, Beautiful or Heaven's Whisper. Here ... With You particularly good. Is that enough for now or do you want me to write you out a list? Just ordered a large amount into J Source! Hope that helps.
*************************
Ursula Kuba wrote at 22:34
Chris! 100% Cool of the evening by Isi de GersignyOpen Heaven by Isi de GersignyKari Jobe - The more I seek you?Ummm....Alberto and Kimberly Reviera...Thats about it! I actually need to ask Jamie how to put a CD on my blog so you guys can listen in....
Wall-to-Wall - Write on Ursula's Wall
Ursula Kuba wrote at 22:35
ooohhhhh....Joshua Mills - the Drinkand Joanne McFatter....
Chris, thanks! This is awesome. ANyways....thought I'd let you know, I have updated my blog with 2 (very loosely called videos) of Isi's music.Video 1 ..... Video 2It was the only way I could figure to actually load the flipping things on to the blog. So I will make some more...sooon, they are just a tad timeconsuming! lol But there they, a start for people who want to hear them!
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Jose Ascua wrote at 23:08
Deep unto deep by David johnston....recommendable..
******************************
Lydia Grewell wrote at 23:28
I don't have any cds. I do have a link on my blog that I love, called soaking net..........
see Lydia Joy...yup that's her
Lydia part 2Hey Chris,I am glad you brought this up! I decided to search for music online and I found 2 more sites that I like with a lot of great variety of soaking music and some of it is easily downloadable to Itunes, or MP3 - http://www.soakingwithapurpose.com/http://www.secretplaceministries.org/pages/genre/soaking-worship-music.html
******************************
Ian Dickinson wrote at 18:56
chris hi, anything by godfry birthill & i will always be father to you. sorry but we have already seen oz, good film, see you soon.
******************************
Helen Rubio wrote at 14:13
Julie Meyer- I fall in Love, Misty Edwards - Eternity, Todd Bentley - Soaking in the secret place plus many of the others mentioned here!
*******************************
Rosie Esseveld wrote at 12:59
Hi Chris, well I really love Alberto & Kimberly rivera's "Captured" album for being encouraged, Leonard Jones & Bruce Dailey have a soaking album called Deep Waters- which is purely instrumental (mainly violin & keys/strings).
******************************
Dan Bowen wrote at 10:00
Hey Chris, must admit I am TERRIBLE at putting aside time for soaking. My one and only is Isi de Gersigny's "Open Heaven" - it's amazing! I need to almost sedate myself before I will sit down and just bask in the glory!
******************************
Anna Dominy wrote at 09:59
anything from alberto and kimberly rivera, ruth fazal (think thats her surname)
*****************************
Sheila Atchley
Hi Chris!
Just got your "soaking CD's" request. I'm a bit "old school" in my soaking...I love a VERY old (1998) CD called "Why We Worship: Intimacy". Oooooh, it is fantastic. I also use a CD called "Names of God" - the names of God spoken,with authority, to light instrumental accompaniment. Lastly, truthfully, my husband has a real Psalmist gift - when he sits and plays his guitar to the Lord...I get to soak to live music, and honestly, it is the most effective way for me. God loves it when Tim plays and sings to Him!
Emma Bunday wrote at 08:57
Favourite soaking CDsDavid Johnston - Deep unto deep (esp. good for guys)Alberto and Kimberly Rivera - 1. The Longing & 2. Deeper Still Jo McFatter - the Invitation - wow!good idea Chris - loving reading about everyone elses selections.
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Julie - See her blog - Hi Chris, somehow I misunderstood exactly what you were asking when you left the comment on my blog. Anyway, great idea! I don't have many cds that would fit the category maybe but I've had some pretty amazing times just laying back and listening to Kim Walker's "Here Is My Song". Every song goes into an extended spontaneous worship time which is amazing. Of course in order to soak I generally have to park my car in a parking lot somewhere and look like a fool if any happens to walk by lol!
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