Arrived back to find this email from http://www.christianlegalcentre.com/
The purpose in posting this is not to stir up more friction in what has become a fragile issue, but in the manner of Prospect magazine to face issues and give them some thought before they lead to larger and more volatile outcomes. Prospect magazine had Muslim authors way back in 2003-4, criticising some of the dual standards of their own kind. Long before the London 7/7events in 2005 focussed our attention more locally, Prospect magazine published articles questioning the relative silence of the moderate muslims wherever issues of Al-Qaeda demanded strong outrage.
Prospect is not by any stretch of the imagination a Christian magazine, but it has been interesting to follow stories that it handles become major national concerns within the following months and years. It seems to predate BBC coverage by a factor of 3 months on average.
This issue raises the general question of how loud music and noise can be. Have Christians still the centuries' old right to sing their hearts out on quiet Sunday mornings surrounded by resting people for whom Sunday means nothing but a chance to catch up on your sanity, before the rush of the next week's activity?
Ok, if that is so,how come Muslims have the right to use their call to prayer in certain places in Britain? More importantly does this give the same right to ex-patriate secular English people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt to call for less volume in the Muslim call to Prayer?
Whether secular English people have any residual memory of the fact or not, Churches' right to sing and worship freely have come at a huge price in this land. This will be felt even more keenly in the States, since at least one of the causes of people leaving here, was the lack of freedom to worship as a person's conscience saw fit. We probably need more freedoms here not less. As the article reminds us, most Brits have really appreciated the colour and liveliness of African, Caribbean and African American worship. Certainly, apart from the high technical standards and beauty of trained choir voices , particularly in the Cathedrals, virtually anything is better than the singing in an average Anglican church over here. All born again people feel this intensely, but out of politeness and concern to find points of shared belief, often do not say anything.What they really feel is excruciating pain , listening to poor souls struggling through words that have no relevance for them, but singing out of a strained belief that this somehow pleases their Creator.
Better to get properly connected with the Lord first, then be singing out of the internal joy that a restored relationship brings.
Church may be Forced to Close over Muslim Neighbour Singing Complaint
A LONDON Church was effectively ‘silenced’ by a Court after a decision by Magistrates to uphold a noise abatement notice, not to play excessive sound, after just one Muslim neighbour complained about noise levels of worship in a church which was next door to the house he purchased.
Singing Songs of Praise on a Sunday is normal Church activity. Using amplification is a normal part of Church life and it was argued at the Court hearing that the normal use of a Church building entails worship and cannot constitute noise nuisance.
Immanuel House of Worship Church has been meeting at 89 Vallentin Road in Walthamstow since it bought the premises in 2006. The Church was built in 1894 and was formerly used by the United Reformed Church, when the Church owned all the land on which the current properties are now built.
The property next door to the church, No 87, was formerly the Manse (vicarage) until 1989, when it was then sold by the United Reformed Church. In 2005, No 87 was sold to the current occupants. Mr and Mrs Baha Uddin. From 2005 – 2006, the property was empty and vagrants frequently hung around church. Currently, the IHOW church offers a nursery to serve the whole neighbourhood and has an impressive list of neighbours who welcome the church and who do not regard their worship as a problem.
However, Mr and Mrs Uddin complained about the level of noise of worship coming from the church for just 40 minutes a week and an Abatement Notice was served on the Church Trustees on 6 May 2009 under Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 79(1) (g). The church appealed to the magistrate court and the hearing took place on 5 and 6 October at Waltham Forest Magistrates Court.
Mr Ade Ajike, a Trustee of the church said: “When we moved into Valentinn Road in 2007, we had renovated the property and bricked up the three windows facing house No 87. We also double glazed all the windows, except one stained glass window, and spent £10,000 to carry out sound-reducing. In fact, the Council’s environmental department at the time said it would be enough just to brick up the windows.
“After moving in we invited Environmental Officers to visit the premises and we got the OK. We also visited neighbours and took them potted plants , and had no problem until Mr Uddin made his official complaint in August 2008.
“Gary Vickers, an Environmental health enforcement officer visited Mr Uddin’s house on 10th August (Sunday worship service time) and on 12 August issued a letter to us saying that in his opinion, the volume from the music was of statutory noise nuisance level throughout the neighbours’ property. He suggested to deal with matter through sensible negotiation, informing our Pastor that ‘the church had to keep the noise down so as not to offend the Muslims living in the area’. He told us ‘this is a Muslim borough, you have to tread carefully’.”
During August, IHOW took action. They reduced hours of Sunday worship from 4 hours to 2 hours 30 mins, of which music is played for about 45 minutes. They reduced their weekly services to one service on Sunday, and all mid-week services held are skeletal services without music. Sunday evening services were reduced to once a month. The Trustees also took the decision not to hire out the premises in case noise would aggravate Mr Uddin, a move which has cost the church additional revenue. However, the visiting officer changed and questioning got more hostile.
Mr Ajike said: “Officers questioned the church why they needed amplifiers when 50 years ago the Church would not have used drums and amplified music. On 6 May 2009, an Abatement Notice was issued against the church alleging an unreasonable level of noise nuisance caused by excessive loud amplified music and drums.
“Since then we have stopped using drums and further reduced our worship time to 20 minutes beginning from 11.30am on a Sunday morning. We have also restricted church services to once a week. Despite all our action, Mr Uddin, who actually lives in what was the former Manse (vicarage) to the church, would stand at church’s main entrance door and shout his complaints and demand our Pastor come out to speak to him during his sermon.”
The IHOW has sought the advice of the Christian Legal Centre over their plight and to appeal this week’s decision. CLC has instructed leading Human Right’s expert Paul Diamond to represent the church at the Appeal.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, barrister and director of the CLC said:
“The charge of nuisance in law must involve proving there is a substantial interference with comfort. Surely, any reasonable person would think that singing for 40 minutes or so once or twice a week would not cross this threshold. Worship in a Church is to be expected. The Environmental Health Officers do not seem to have taken this fact into account. This is a vibrant Afro Caribbean community of Christian believers whose worship of God is fundamental to the expression of their faith. The richness and vibrancy of groups like the London Gospel Community Choir is based on the Afro Caribbean expression of faith through music. ’
If you would like to donate to support the Christian Legal Centre in this case we would be very grateful. To do so, please click the legalcentre hyperlink at the top of this post.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Friday, 9 October 2009
If you are a musician.....
If you are a musician and you have become a Christian, then been filled to the rafters with the Holy Spirit and after this have experienced floods of tunes, and spontaneous songs flowing through you simultaneous to those.. who you are playing with......when just about all the notes fall miraculously into place...but you haven't a clue what you will be playing next....
when unlike in jazz, where you know what cycles of chords you are riffing to, here you go over the cliff edge, with no particular framework...or if there was one...it may change....
Well if you do all these things and as you do them, a most amazing Presence of the Lord falls heavily on the room.....
As I say...if this happens to you...Do you honestly think you'd bother with singing songs of suicide, of broken relationships, of endless knots you have tied in your life just because you fouled up...but rather than fess up...sing songs of blame on everyone else...the government....your family....global warming....
Hmm. I don't think so. I think you too would stick around and learn more of what it takes to be skilful playing, prophesying, announcing the Kingdom...In Sound!
Folks I was here at this very event, I think it was in San Diego, with precious persecuted saints from India, the Phillipines, tricky bits of upper Nigeria, some even from mainland China, from Russia. There were people there who had had their houses burned down and escaped with their lives.I felt very humbled and privileged to be standing anywhere near them.Transform Leicester on a 30 fold fruit ratio!
From Facebook Notes - Chris Welch
Transform Leicester on a 30fold fruit ratio
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posted today at 12:04
Nigel and Elaine Waterfield were featured here.http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/07/inspire-free-magazine.htmlThey are pioneering a local version of Transform - in this case Transform Leicester. Befor we start can I say 30 fold fruit is going to mean the phrase from Jesus when He said some 30 fold, some 60 fold and some 100fold. Where He talks about increase.I am not connecting 30 fold with Nigel and Elaine or Transform Leicester.
This is what I am saying.When they were down recently, they mentioned that while Transform can target broken lives, if the new Christians respond to Jesus they usually get blown out straight away by the local churches.Why?You could say at a surface level the churches are too middle class. But I'm going to stick my neck out here and say something else is going on. And it's a spiritual thing NOT a class thing.Proof: whatever class Jesus was, and His earthly background contained a whole mix of influences, the reason He could touch no matter who, had nothing to do with class....it was to do with spiritual authority.Churches are filled with 30 fold Christians or less. Many are saved enough to go to heaven, but scarcely saved enough in their own lives. Once people realise to be a hundredfold Christian has nothing to do with effort, since believing a little bit on the Name of the Lord may be enough to get you across the pearly gates....but believing a bit more of your being onto Jesus Name, may get you to be a 60fold Christian....while simply to give up self effort at all and simply place the whole of your being on the Name of Jesus is enough to become a 100folder!It's not self effort. it's the Living Jesus bringing things to pass in your life.Once we are really saved...as much on the outside as we are on the inside....we will find it a doddle to take the most broken of lives along with us in our slipstream of faith!
Point 2.The Kingdom (from an earthly point of view) is MAD.If you want to finance something...just get Chrysler or Ford, or Mitsubishi, or Coca Cola to do it! Sorted!
Nope. That's not how it works in the Kingdom. It's a series of widows giving their last mites to a supernatural increaser.....God.
Yonghi Cho believed for the biggest church in the world in South Korea. He arranged for a big building "by faith??!!??". But it wasn't until a little old lady brought her one possession of a rice bowl and presented that before the Lord that something happened.
In the Bible there is a Cain order of giving....a bit on the side.
And an Abel order of giving. Giving your whole sheep that you have tenderly reared.In a way I don't want Nigel and Elaine to read this. As you see in the Inspire magazine Nigel has muscular dystrophy. If anyone should move out to the suburbs it should be them!. But they obeyed the call of the Lord given at a Worldwide message tribe related event (I believe) to move FROM the suburbs to deprived areas, in order to love on folk and reach them for Jesus. It's a breaking thing to do, because as Graham Pulkingham found in the 60s in the Houston downtown suburbs , you are faced up with the fact that humanly you have nothing to give!! http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2008/12/third-level-approach-to-ministry-ii.htmlThis , to me is hundredfold stuff. Not the bit on the side in those Anglican and Methodist Bring and Buy sales we have here in church halls.
England and the USA we need to get a Life! A hundredfold one!
Transform Leicester on a 30fold fruit ratio
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posted today at 12:04
Nigel and Elaine Waterfield were featured here.http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/07/inspire-free-magazine.htmlThey are pioneering a local version of Transform - in this case Transform Leicester. Befor we start can I say 30 fold fruit is going to mean the phrase from Jesus when He said some 30 fold, some 60 fold and some 100fold. Where He talks about increase.I am not connecting 30 fold with Nigel and Elaine or Transform Leicester.
This is what I am saying.When they were down recently, they mentioned that while Transform can target broken lives, if the new Christians respond to Jesus they usually get blown out straight away by the local churches.Why?You could say at a surface level the churches are too middle class. But I'm going to stick my neck out here and say something else is going on. And it's a spiritual thing NOT a class thing.Proof: whatever class Jesus was, and His earthly background contained a whole mix of influences, the reason He could touch no matter who, had nothing to do with class....it was to do with spiritual authority.Churches are filled with 30 fold Christians or less. Many are saved enough to go to heaven, but scarcely saved enough in their own lives. Once people realise to be a hundredfold Christian has nothing to do with effort, since believing a little bit on the Name of the Lord may be enough to get you across the pearly gates....but believing a bit more of your being onto Jesus Name, may get you to be a 60fold Christian....while simply to give up self effort at all and simply place the whole of your being on the Name of Jesus is enough to become a 100folder!It's not self effort. it's the Living Jesus bringing things to pass in your life.Once we are really saved...as much on the outside as we are on the inside....we will find it a doddle to take the most broken of lives along with us in our slipstream of faith!
Point 2.The Kingdom (from an earthly point of view) is MAD.If you want to finance something...just get Chrysler or Ford, or Mitsubishi, or Coca Cola to do it! Sorted!
Nope. That's not how it works in the Kingdom. It's a series of widows giving their last mites to a supernatural increaser.....God.
Yonghi Cho believed for the biggest church in the world in South Korea. He arranged for a big building "by faith??!!??". But it wasn't until a little old lady brought her one possession of a rice bowl and presented that before the Lord that something happened.
In the Bible there is a Cain order of giving....a bit on the side.
And an Abel order of giving. Giving your whole sheep that you have tenderly reared.In a way I don't want Nigel and Elaine to read this. As you see in the Inspire magazine Nigel has muscular dystrophy. If anyone should move out to the suburbs it should be them!. But they obeyed the call of the Lord given at a Worldwide message tribe related event (I believe) to move FROM the suburbs to deprived areas, in order to love on folk and reach them for Jesus. It's a breaking thing to do, because as Graham Pulkingham found in the 60s in the Houston downtown suburbs , you are faced up with the fact that humanly you have nothing to give!! http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2008/12/third-level-approach-to-ministry-ii.htmlThis , to me is hundredfold stuff. Not the bit on the side in those Anglican and Methodist Bring and Buy sales we have here in church halls.
England and the USA we need to get a Life! A hundredfold one!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Cracking the Packer-Jersak Binary code
How the false concept of Dualism keeps us locked in stalemate for centuries.
Most struggles on this earth are left-brain antler locks.
The Devil who first got us to live Dalek-like, basing our entire existence and foundation on the left-brain, instead of living from a heart position of fluidity and trust, then provides each different party with the necessary material to get us all steamed up .
In the continuation of the Tuning series we will be looking how we tune with each other and construct the first octave, moving from one note to the first 12. But the first thing we need to establish is the most important Biblical principle which we learned in the second level, after being baptised in the Spirit:
Unity is established like this.In the Spirit first. "Maintain the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace....until you reach the unity of the faith."
Unity is never begun in the left-brain. Unity is a Spirit. We do not have it. Unity has us.Unity is asking us to join it. Unity is the family atmosphere of the Godhead. The three in one God. The Father. The Son.The Holy Spirit. And now, as Frank Viola's book from Eternity to Here describes so wonderfully, their arms are outstretched for us, the Bride, to share this with us.The book The Shack covers similar ground.
So if the devil can get us hooked into left-brain one sided positions of the glorious huge panoply that is Truth, he has got us!
The reality is that we don't have truth either. We can have truths. But really it is the amount Truth has us.In our innermost parts.
Before John Poole disappeared off the scene, just beforehand he was preaching a key message in the Kansas City Shepherd's Conference 1975.(The same conference that Ern Baxter shared the door opening word for a generation of us entitled "Thy Kingdom Come".)
John's theme was Unity. He said we have to pray the prayer of David. "Unite my heart to fear Your Name" Psalm 51.
It is useless to attempt a Christian unity if each individual is still divided within themselves.!!
Although I cannot match the articulation of a Packer or a Jersak, I thought it would be good practice to try. All I know in my spirit is both venerable guys are roaming around the same mountain, but without the one key that Norman Grubb has provided along with other "pressers into the truth" like Jacob Boehme, Madame Guyon and a handful of others, these guys could be nose to nose for a while to come.
Like Calvinism and Armenianism, (God's sovereignty v. our Choosing) this is another humdinger. If like Brad you have been recently blitzed by a revelation of how much the Father's heart is for ALL MANKIND, and personally for Brad himself and each of us in turn as individuals, you have to question what is going on in the idea of "Penal substitution?"
This angry voice from heaven "Convert or I'll bash you in" theology needs addressing. Because like the other chestnut for atheists "If the gospel is true, how come the Church has been and still is such rubbish, and a perpetrator of so much evil?", both have been used by the devil himself to deter so many from knowing the truth. So with an honest heart Brad wants to get to the bottom of it all, to really present God as He wishes to be known. The revelation has come first...he now wishes to articulate it with clarity.
Well, my heading refers to the fact that a dual system , so for the heading I changed that to binary, - a dual system where it is God and a separate self-powered me warps the whole system and forever puts people on either side of a chasm. Exactly the same occurs with Armenianism versus Calvinism.
It's worth stressing this point....if you put 20 believers of one persuasion together in a room with another 20 believers, while they remain in the left-brain....YOU SIMPLY HAVE NO MEETING.
Yet as they all focus on God, maybe singing " Turn Your Eyes onto Jesus,Look Full into His wonderful face, And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim, In the Light of His wonder and Grace."....About 10 minutes in, the Presence of the Lord will be amongst them. He will be speaking to and through them, and whether or not they get their full theological answer that week, they will all know they have been with the Lord of glory, and some element will be written across their faces.
For me this false dualism reached its zenith at the high point of the second level, the charismatic movement around 1990 in the title of Benny Hinn's book "Good Morning Holy Spirit". He didn't mean to do wrong. Anymore than Frank Sinatra meant for a 1000 sermons to be preached on him singing "I did it my way". Frank actually meant I did it according to my own style that God gave me when He made me. Benny really does say "Good morning Holy Spirit" just as many of us pray to a transcendent God. But what the book represents to me is the farthest point you can go, still believing you are "an independent self". You and the Holy Spirit. Whereas the whole reason why the 3rd level is unique is that God takes you back to Genesis to where the whole thing went wrong, so each individual can begin to rebuild his or her life again, as Christ as them.
Then onto this foundation He can bring a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom winds of the 2 winds prophecy** can really begin to blow. **post bottom
This Genesis rediscovery leads to a fresh understanding of theology which joins many who are currently divided. Actually in this new level there will be a whole compound explosion of glory as people begin to find each other again. Bad news for the devil!
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The recent acceleration in the revelation of God the Father
has forced Brad Jersak to seriously question the concept of Penal Substitution.
This is the post and many comments, below is my reply.http://clarionjournal.typepad.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2007/09/methinks-he-bud.html#more
http://www.theocentric.com/theology/gospel/cosmic_gospel.html is an interesting handling of universalism, balanced with individual response...but that is not the current discussion.
Here in a town called Liss,Hampshire UK a L'Abri (Francis Schaeffer) church has split into three over different variations of Calvinism and Armenianism. This type of debate has not been part of my Christian life. I was staggered to hear these things, two hundred years after the ping pong match between Whitfield and Wesley.I am grateful that the above discussions on this blog are carried out in a considerably less acrid manner.There are historic moments in our history which defy complete human analysis. Books and books have been written on the history of the Reformation: Its political and cultural effects.The reasons why Martin Luther's theses should have caused such a seismic shift from what was happening before. However we trace the origins of the change through to the aftermath, Christians would largely agree that something Divine was going on. A divine invasion into our natural order of things. A step change in our history.People are divided about whether the Azusa Street Revival was yet another step change. Certainly, in terms of numerical increase in the church worldwide,and therefore in terms of the corresponding cultural changes, caused by conversions numbering millions, Pentecostal and charismatic influences have had a much bigger effect than are currently acknowledged in universities. In the words of Anita Roddick of Body Shop: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance! Or if you think the church is small now, how do you think it would have been without the Pentecostal additions.Something new happened in the eighties and nineties as has been alluded to by Brad. A much greater revelation of God as Father is now sweeping the Church.This I believe is only the opening of the flower which awaits its full bloom. If my blog is accurate then what seems only to be a gentle murmur of considerably less import than the rush of Pentecostalism, is actually the still distant rumble of an imminent storm that will change history forever.There is a third level of revelation arriving which renders much of our present questionings totally mute. Questioning, debating, seeking out matters is the glory of kings. Our royal divine task here on earth.But there comes a time when you have sung " Blowing in the Wind" for 50 years, and played Moody Blues "Question" from "A Question of Balance" until the LP,cassette,CD now mp3 ceases to amuse, but now appears childish. Left-brain thinking for left-brain thinking's sake.A time when you just have to say "Bono...I have found what I am looking for and it is like this."Counter-intuitively, John Crowder states in his book " Miracle Workers, Reformers, and New Mystics" that each time he has laid down his conscious reasoning powers at the Cross, far from losing anything,he finds it is returned in greater measure, if anything with less looping, less short-circuiting around old thought patterns.The first commandment was always love the Lord first with all your heart,second with all your soul then third with all your mind.Somehow the order is crucial in the next step we are all about to take together. In fact it always was so, but somehow in these immediate days we are actually going to take this order to heart. And because we never did, we have spent far too long in the questioning stages. The truth is that both Packer's position and Brad's posits are simultaneously true.Armenianism also, is simultaneously as true as Calvinism.
part2This is how it works.While there existed a false dualism between the Creator and the creature, there was never an end to both dilemmas.But this dualism is false.It was inherited in the Fall.In Genesis 3:5 when the devil sold us a series of con trick lies the first one was that the Father was no good. He was as Ern Baxter said "holding out on us". And the remedy, the quick fix, was to become like Godknowing both good and evilmaking our own choicesas though we were beings in our own right.A lie being perpetuated even up to this present day by evangelical atheists Richard Dawkins and Brian Eno.We could however never exist as beings in our own right...for the scripture cannot be broken which saysIn Him we live and move and have our being.What evangelicals and Watchman Nee term conveniently as "soul power" is a complete fiction. When God stooped over us to breathe into Adam and he became a living soul, there was never any division that meant the soul had its own power. It needed spirit to drive it, and through the soul out to the body.As Ern Baxter memorably described in "Thy Kingdom Come", when we went as sheep each one to our own way...it actually was not completely true, as the devil subtly moved in unseen to become the new spirit operator.And this was a permanent change, throughout generations by inheritance.We were only ever containers for one spirit deity or the other, either the One true God, or the False usurping god, who actually is no god, but only a powerful angel.And it was only to be new birth that would exorcise permanently this false deity, and by it we would become Christ in our individual forms. Again so fused into our spirit and soul, then body, that people really would mistake us for being no different, just as they refused to believe that Jesus in His earthly form, having laid aside His own personal weight of glory and substance, to become only a vessel for the Father here on earth, was also regarded by unbelievers as being no different.This was true of those who knew Him best, His own brothers and sisters.You see if the Bible is true and we are only branches to His whole vine, (not just the trunk!). If we are just containers and vessels containing at one time the Devil, now by new birth Christ, this has ramifications both for the discussions on this post and for Armenianism versus Calvinism.When Satan rebelled he became the first and permanent child of wrath. This was such a terrible state of affairs, that when God was seeking brethren, and a Bride for His Son, He determined that they could never again be chosen from a state as permanent in its outcome as heaven. You rebel in heaven, and the effects are devastatingly permanent.Therefore an environment had to be created where failure was less permanent. You could only suffer a temporary death, not a permanent death like that of the angels. It is said that hell was not made for humans, unless we choose to go there.Here is the clever bit. The double blinder that God the Father has pulled.The wrath spirit that permanently rests on the Devil, who made his permanent and fixed choice to set himself against God...yet that has no intrinsic home in God's character, who is only love...this wrath spirit that mankind mistakenly chose when they chose this "false independent position" needed flushing away in a permanent bin.So Packer is right. God is permanently wrathful against this spirit that began its rebellion in heaven....but Brad is right because God the Father is looking down only in love on the human containers who were daft enough to fall for the Devil's con trick. What humans feel as wrath is God's ire at the inherited spirit of the devil that resides in every human container that has not asked Jesus in to their heart in order to drive it out.So yes we have a problem with condemnation.But not the problem we think we have.Rather than fess up to our false independence position which is really Satan in our members, we mope around in this needless mire of condemnation.
Part of the "false indepence" lie is to ascribe every problem to us. In an inverse kind of way it makes us look big. But it is utter balderdash.Jesus wants us to take the cross in all seriousness, have a total blood transfusion, and a body transfusion, in the sense that His own Body and Blood were used as trash containers to ferry all our Devil containing existences down to hell with Him, and to rise in complete victory, in order to enter into our containers as us. As our personalities. As our bodies.Looking to many as though nothing at all has happened. But those who are born again know something did happen. On their insides.That makes them totally different.So yes, the Father was totally angry. But not at the container. Only at the devilish spirit in the container. And as long as we remained containers for it, we were judged already, Jesus said. But He who believes on the Son is immediately not condemned.John3:18.A Calvinist and Armenian will battle on for millennia as long as they both fight their left-brain corners, but also cling onto their dual existence falsehoods, which are all part of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This notion that I could ever have a separate existence in my own right.Somehow now fused to Christ, my will is enfolded into His will. Indeed I am called by that very will. I am pulled by it like a magnet...but like love itself to a lover is drawn, it is not a concept that violates my integrity, but rather is warm and wonderful.Now as I am moved to speak a Word of faith, is it Him or is it me?As I do what he did for me: go to the Cross for others, to fill out what is lacking in His own sufferings. Is it Him or is it me?All this renders to nought hours and hours of fruitless discussion about faith, about will, about penal substitution.Instead we see the full import of how we, the whole Body of Christ on Earth become a display to principalities and powers...again making a show of them openly.Why. Because in the midst of glory indescribable, one worship leader rose up and took possibly a third of heaven's angels with him.Into rebellion.But we, in a cold harsh environment, surrounded by the devil's works and hurt and harm, choose to rise up instead and become containers for God's glory, when all is dark. This is the very fist that God raises towards the enemy in utter triumph crying "See! See! Behold what I have achieved through My outstretched arm. A people who know what it is to be delivered. Who in darkness have chosen Me, and whose glory far outsurpasses anything you ever had."see God's wrath chapter here:http://www.unionlife.org/yesIam#CH7
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reply on Facebook Group Theology Thoughts where also posted
Wow...not quite sure how to respond to this paradigm shift... but I like it :-) Thanks for putting this down. I feel closer to God for reading it. Julian Roath group founder.
Monday, 5 October 2009
The world Famous Evangelist !!!?! Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits sings a prophetic song to the Church
Tuning To God : Part Two - Concert Pitch/Normal Pitch
Saying this is where it's at you know
Couldn't understand now
If I realised that the chances were slim
How come I'm so surprised when the tide rolled in
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
Well I'm sick of potential
I'm sick of vanity now
I'm sticking to essential reality now
I don't know what's worse
Try to make a silk purse
Living an illusion living in confusion
I'm gonna live on solid rock....
Well a house of cards
Was never built for shock
You could blow it down in any kind of weather
Now two solid rocks two solid blocks
You know they're gonna stick
Yeah they're gonna stick together
Because the heart you break
That's the one that you rely on
The bed that you make
That's the one you gotta lie on
When you point, your finger cos your plan fell through
You got three more fingers pointing back at you
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I'm solid rock now
Greenwich Meantime sounds posh, but for those in Britain it denotes normal time. English people have a problem with the phrase "concert pitch". It sounds too posh. So now I ask them if they would like me to tune their piano to normal pitch.
Which is exactly the same.
What is tuning to normal pitch viewed spiritually? Christ was the most normal guy that ever lived. There was nothing a bit off about Him that Moliere, or Brecht, or any other playwrite such as Shakespeare could caricature. Once into His Ministry after His baptism into water and the Holy Spirit, yes, He did extraordinary things....but , if you could stand His penetrating insight into the depths of your soul, He was the most joyful of guys to be around. He was....er....normal.
If a person has asked Jesus into his or her life, once you strip everything away. Once you touch rock bottom in your life, like Mary Magdelan (some question whether the commonly held view that she was a prostitute is in fact so...perhaps that was another Mary, or not a Mary at all) or the apostle Peter after his denials of Christ.....once you reach this place, however it happens for you....
All you are ever going to discover is this:
The reason you fail so is that you believe you have a separate life in your own right. This is the hubris we gained at the Fall. It's the healthy taste of hell, whereby in our failure we learn we cannot manage our own life. We were never made to. We were always only ever containers. Spirit containers of either a false spirit deity - the devil, or now a container of Christ.
We don't all have to experience what Job did. What David in the Old testament did.What Abraham did. What Jacob did. But however it works out in your life, none of us it seems gives up believing this "independent self" lie without one heck of a fight. Like the Book of Proverbs says, we prefer to sit in the seat of scoffers for a very long time. And this is after we become Christians.
Singing all the songs.
Doing all the meetings.
Maybe as in my case living in community for years.
Perhaps in ministry for years and years, preaching our sermons, always wondering why there is an almost complete lack of fruit.
What is it as a Body of Christ in the Earth that we are tuning to? Why is it all taking so darned long?
It's obviously not just tuning to "asking Jesus into your heart and believing on the blood of Jesus to forgive sins" That is believing upon God for righteousness apart from anything we do, and entering into this new life where things work by faith! This is correct but look around you...it obviously isn't enough! This is to worship the God of Abraham only.
It's obviously not to tune only to the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit message". A message of supernatural enablement. A Holy Spirit who is still apart from us. Or maybe in us, to help our poor "independent life status". (see that lie again?) This is to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was the one who spent his life uncovering water wells. But look at the charismatic movement! Have you noticed the deluge of people all rushing into the Kingdom impressed by charismatic churches? No. There's still something else to tune to.
It's obviously not tuning to the first bits of Jacob's life. Manipulating everything for his own self-preservation. But there is something different later on. Jacob had a name change. Something at the very core of how he lived his life from thereafter changed. And taken as a whole package this is what we are tuning to : The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! THE WHOLE PACKAGE.
So this is what Jesus meant when He talked about building a solid and normal life! We build upon a rock. Not the Sunday school tale of building upon some laws, ideas or precepts of Jesus. We build upon Jesus Himself.
Let me break that down, before your Sunday school brain rises up again.
Building upon the rock as opposed to upon sand is:
You,leaving behind this dreadful and damaging lie that you are an independent being, strutting around making your choices, living your life...
instead catching yourself in the act....squaring up to yourself and saying
YOU DON'T HAVE A SEPARATE LIFE....right now you are either falling back into independence which is a whole Satan lie
Or you are Christ going on as you, through your soul, through your body. And in this way you start consciously only doing what Christ is actually doing through you. It's a learned thing. It's a faith thing. But pretty soon you become aware when He hasn't budged an inch...but you have.
This is how Christ lived His whole life and is what he meant when He said I can only do what I see the Father doing.
This is building your life upon a rock! As the world famous evangelist!!!! Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits sings in Solid Rock:
Chris Welch has tuned for LSO, LPO, NIGEL KENNEDY. ANDRE PREVIN. DEMIDENKO, MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR, THE BARBICAN, FAIRFIELD HALL. CROYDON, LONDON COLISEUM, ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL. CARL DAVIS, PAUL WELLER, JOOLS HOLLAND, TOBY SMITH EX JAMIROQUAI and many others
Saying this is where it's at you know
Couldn't understand now
If I realised that the chances were slim
How come I'm so surprised when the tide rolled in
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
Well I'm sick of potential
I'm sick of vanity now
I'm sticking to essential reality now
I don't know what's worse
Try to make a silk purse
Living an illusion living in confusion
I'm gonna live on solid rock....
Well a house of cards
Was never built for shock
You could blow it down in any kind of weather
Now two solid rocks two solid blocks
You know they're gonna stick
Yeah they're gonna stick together
Because the heart you break
That's the one that you rely on
The bed that you make
That's the one you gotta lie on
When you point, your finger cos your plan fell through
You got three more fingers pointing back at you
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I'm solid rock now
Greenwich Meantime sounds posh, but for those in Britain it denotes normal time. English people have a problem with the phrase "concert pitch". It sounds too posh. So now I ask them if they would like me to tune their piano to normal pitch.Which is exactly the same.
What is tuning to normal pitch viewed spiritually? Christ was the most normal guy that ever lived. There was nothing a bit off about Him that Moliere, or Brecht, or any other playwrite such as Shakespeare could caricature. Once into His Ministry after His baptism into water and the Holy Spirit, yes, He did extraordinary things....but , if you could stand His penetrating insight into the depths of your soul, He was the most joyful of guys to be around. He was....er....normal.
If a person has asked Jesus into his or her life, once you strip everything away. Once you touch rock bottom in your life, like Mary Magdelan (some question whether the commonly held view that she was a prostitute is in fact so...perhaps that was another Mary, or not a Mary at all) or the apostle Peter after his denials of Christ.....once you reach this place, however it happens for you....
All you are ever going to discover is this:
The reason you fail so is that you believe you have a separate life in your own right. This is the hubris we gained at the Fall. It's the healthy taste of hell, whereby in our failure we learn we cannot manage our own life. We were never made to. We were always only ever containers. Spirit containers of either a false spirit deity - the devil, or now a container of Christ.
We don't all have to experience what Job did. What David in the Old testament did.What Abraham did. What Jacob did. But however it works out in your life, none of us it seems gives up believing this "independent self" lie without one heck of a fight. Like the Book of Proverbs says, we prefer to sit in the seat of scoffers for a very long time. And this is after we become Christians.
Singing all the songs.
Doing all the meetings.
Maybe as in my case living in community for years.
Perhaps in ministry for years and years, preaching our sermons, always wondering why there is an almost complete lack of fruit.
What is it as a Body of Christ in the Earth that we are tuning to? Why is it all taking so darned long?
It's obviously not just tuning to "asking Jesus into your heart and believing on the blood of Jesus to forgive sins" That is believing upon God for righteousness apart from anything we do, and entering into this new life where things work by faith! This is correct but look around you...it obviously isn't enough! This is to worship the God of Abraham only.
It's obviously not to tune only to the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit message". A message of supernatural enablement. A Holy Spirit who is still apart from us. Or maybe in us, to help our poor "independent life status". (see that lie again?) This is to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was the one who spent his life uncovering water wells. But look at the charismatic movement! Have you noticed the deluge of people all rushing into the Kingdom impressed by charismatic churches? No. There's still something else to tune to.
It's obviously not tuning to the first bits of Jacob's life. Manipulating everything for his own self-preservation. But there is something different later on. Jacob had a name change. Something at the very core of how he lived his life from thereafter changed. And taken as a whole package this is what we are tuning to : The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! THE WHOLE PACKAGE.
So this is what Jesus meant when He talked about building a solid and normal life! We build upon a rock. Not the Sunday school tale of building upon some laws, ideas or precepts of Jesus. We build upon Jesus Himself.
Let me break that down, before your Sunday school brain rises up again.
Building upon the rock as opposed to upon sand is:
You,leaving behind this dreadful and damaging lie that you are an independent being, strutting around making your choices, living your life...
instead catching yourself in the act....squaring up to yourself and saying
YOU DON'T HAVE A SEPARATE LIFE....right now you are either falling back into independence which is a whole Satan lie
Or you are Christ going on as you, through your soul, through your body. And in this way you start consciously only doing what Christ is actually doing through you. It's a learned thing. It's a faith thing. But pretty soon you become aware when He hasn't budged an inch...but you have.
This is how Christ lived His whole life and is what he meant when He said I can only do what I see the Father doing.
This is building your life upon a rock! As the world famous evangelist!!!! Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits sings in Solid Rock:
Chris Welch has tuned for LSO, LPO, NIGEL KENNEDY. ANDRE PREVIN. DEMIDENKO, MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR, THE BARBICAN, FAIRFIELD HALL. CROYDON, LONDON COLISEUM, ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL. CARL DAVIS, PAUL WELLER, JOOLS HOLLAND, TOBY SMITH EX JAMIROQUAI and many others
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Tuning - Part Two - Normal Pitch/Concert pitch
Greenwich Meantime sounds posh, but for those in Britain it denotes normal time. English people have a problem with the phrase "concert pitch". It sounds too posh. So now I ask them if they would like me to tune their piano to normal pitch.Which is exactly the same.
What is tuning to normal pitch viewed spiritually? Christ was the most normal guy that ever lived. There was nothing a bit off about Him that Moliere, or Brecht, or any other playwrite such as Shakespeare could caricature. Once into His Ministry after His baptism into water and the Holy Spirit, yes, He did extraordinary things....but , if you could stand His penetrating insight into the depths of your soul, He was the most joyful of guys to be around. He was....er....normal.
If a person has asked Jesus into his or her life, once you strip everything away. Once you touch rock bottom in your life, like Mary Magdelan (some question whether the commonly held view that she was a prostitute is in fact so...perhaps that was another Mary, or not a Mary at all) or the apostle Peter after his denials of Christ.....once you reach this place, however it happens for you....
All you are ever going to discover is this:
The reason you fail so is that you believe you have a separate life in your own right. This is the hubris we gained at the Fall. It's the healthy taste of hell, whereby in our failure we learn we cannot manage our own life. We were never made to. We were always only ever containers. Spirit containers of either a false spirit deity - the devil, or now a container of Christ.
We don't all have to experience what Job did. What David in the Old testament did.What Abraham did. What Jacob did. But however it works out in your life, none of us it seems gives up believing this "independent self" lie without one heck of a fight. Like the Book of Proverbs says, we prefer to sit in the seat of scoffers for a very long time. And this is after we become Christians.
Singing all the songs.
Doing all the meetings.
Maybe as in my case living in community for years.
Perhaps in ministry for years and years, preaching our sermons, always wondering why there is an almost complete lack of fruit.
What is it as a Body of Christ in the Earth that we are tuning to? Why is it all taking so darned long?
It's obviously not just tuning to "asking Jesus into your heart and believing on the blood of Jesus to forgive sins" That is believing upon God for righteousness apart from anything we do, and entering into this new life where things work by faith! This is correct but look around you...it obviously isn't enough! This is to worship the God of Abraham only.
It's obviously not to tune only to the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit message". A message of supernatural enablement. A Holy Spirit who is still apart from us. Or maybe in us, to help our poor "independent life status". (see that lie again?) This is to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was the one who spent his life uncovering water wells. But look at the charismatic movement! Have you noticed the deluge of people all rushing into the Kingdom impressed by charismatic churches? No. There's still something else to tune to.
It's obviously not tuning to the first bits of Jacob's life. Manipulating everything for his own self-preservation. But there is something different later on. Jacob had a name change. Something at the very core of how he lived his life from thereafter changed. And taken as a whole package this is what we are tuning to : The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! THE WHOLE PACKAGE.
So this is what Jesus meant when He talked about building a solid and normal life! We build upon a rock. Not the Sunday school tale of building upon some laws, ideas or precepts of Jesus. We build upon Jesus Himself.
Let me break that down, before your Sunday school brain rises up again.
Building upon the rock as opposed to upon sand is:
You,leaving behind this dreadful and damaging lie that you are an independent being, strutting around making your choices, living your life...
instead catching yourself in the act....squaring up to yourself and saying
YOU DON'T HAVE A SEPARATE LIFE....right now you are either falling back into independence which is a whole Satan lie
Or you are Christ going on as you, through your soul, through your body. And in this way you start consciously only doing what Christ is actually doing through you. It's a learned thing. It's a faith thing. But pretty soon you become aware when He hasn't budged an inch...but you have.
This is how Christ lived His whole life and is what he meant when He said I can only do what I see the Father doing.
This is building your life upon a rock! As the world famous evangelist!!!! Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits sings in Solid Rock:
Well take a look at thatI made a castle in the sand
Saying this is where it's at you know
Couldn't understand now
If I realised that the chances were slim
How come I'm so surprised when the tide rolled in
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
Well I'm sick of potential
I'm sick of vanity now
I'm sticking to essential reality now
I don't know what's worse
Try to make a silk purse
Living an illusion living in confusion
I'm gonna live on solid rock....
Well a house of cards
Was never built for shock
You could blow it down in any kind of weather
Now two solid rocks two solid blocks
You know they're gonna stick
Yeah they're gonna stick together
Because the heart you break
That's the one that you rely on
The bed that you make
That's the one you gotta lie on
When you point, your finger cos your plan fell through
You got three more fingers pointing back at you
I wanna live on solid rock
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I wanna give I don't wanna be blocked
I'm gonna live on solid rock
I'm solid rock now
Chris Welch has tuned for LSO, LPO, NIGEL KENNEDY. ANDRE PREVIN. DEMIDENKO, MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR, THE BARBICAN, FAIRFIELD HALL. CROYDON, LONDON COLISEUM, ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL. CARL DAVIS, PAUL WELLER, JOOLS HOLLAND, TOBY SMITH EX JAMIROQUAI and many others
Can John Crowder really script Havant Church?
This afternoon I was carrying onto the next bit of John Crowder's "Miracle Workers,Reformers and the New Mystics" and I reached the section I reproduce below. It is like a huge section of today's church script - both meetings - if we worked from one, with other sections from my series on Third level Approach to Ministry. Havant Church is going through a bit of a change. When we went to RIVERcamp and heard Mark Stibbe on "The Second Seal", (you can order this from the RIVERcamp website)Peter Stott felt a release of a word he first began sharing over 20 years ago.
2 Timothy 2:19 Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal,
"The Lord KNOWS those who are His" and
"Let everyone who names the name of the Lord abstain from wickedness."
In short....after intimacy....comes a tremendous cleansing. But as well as this message, there was a sense of us as men being Gatekeepers to this new move. Perhaps that is the real reason for the current all out war on our minds to try to paralyse us. I'm talking about the floodgates of the availability of porn, and unhealthy media.
Really, the true battle is right here....men standing up and pulling a fresh wave of the Holy Spirit straight out of heaven!!
Here is the John Crowder extract:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Extract from Miracle Workers, Reformers and the New Mystics by John Crowder. Chapter 5 Hidden Streams page 122
ANCIENT DESTINY
We can't keep our pulse on everything the Lord has done throughout history. But the first step to catching up on the groundwork He has laid for us is simply to draw close to Him. In this day and hour, we are being given the key to open and close gateways of good and evil from the past. We are being given the Key of David, which unlocks doors that no man can close and closes doors no man can open. That key is rooted in intimacy. David was a man of worship—a man after God's own heart. Jesus is the Son of David. The fruit of one who walks intimately with the Lord will always be Jesus. The church, like Mary, is called to give birth to an expression of Jesus on the earth. We are a womb to release the invisible into the realm of the visible. To do so, requires intimate union with the Holy Spirit.
Restoration of these ancient streams is our legal due in this hour, but moreover, it is God's loving desire for us. Above all, He wants to restore intimacy. How is this divine passion being revived in our day? The Lord's hand has been restoring the Tabernacle of David (Amos 9:11) through the worship and intercession movement of recent decades. David's Tabernacle was a place of 24-hour praise and worship, where one could have open and intimate access to the presence of God before the Ark of the Covenant, without going through the Mosaic rituals.Worship is a powerful place of intimacy which engages our hearts (in Isaiah 6, we read that a hardened heart is the first step in blinding our spiritual eyes and ears). Out of this intimacy, we learn to hear God, and prophecy is born. Out of prophecy, we learn to obey God's specific directives that release miracles, healings, signs, and wonders. And out of the miraculous, evangelism and harvest are released. Revival starts with worship.
The harvest boils down to intimacy. Why does God want souls saved anyway, except to draw hearts back to Him?
It is beyond belief what is coming to the face of the earth. Beyond articulation. The intensity of spiritual activity will make us either great men or crazy men. By the end of the age, men will be fully possessed by God or they will be fully possessed by the devil. But it will be impossible to live in those days without being possessed. We are designed to be consumed by God's love. We have a choice to be fully consumed by Heaven or hell, but we will be consumed.
With this full consummation of love, we are about to see the reproduction of every Spirit-filled ministry from the time of creation poured out in one lump sum. God is redigging old wells because the destiny of many ministries were cut short. When God plants a ministry, His chief intent is to see it multiply and reproduce.The work of a minister is not just to evangelize, prophesy, pastor, or teach. The work of a minister is to duplicate himself—to raise up other evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers, and apostles. In fact, such reproduction is specifically a chief focus of apostolic ministries, since apostles are called as fathers, who raise up children and establish churches as "wise master builders." But all of these fivefold office gifts were given "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Surely, countless ministers have gone on before us without reaching this ultimate level of success: Bringing unity and maturity to all, and causing all to attain to complete fullness of Christ. Not all have fully reproduced.
Of course, the success of a ministry is not measured by how many people we have in our services—not even necessarily by how many people we have raised up to function at our own level of gifting. True success comes when the baton is passed on to the next generation and they exceed our level of ministry and gifting. The true test of adequate equipping is when the successive generation takes more ground than we did. The children must reach further than the fathers. They must go farther-build higher-on the foundations we have laid.
ANCIENT DESTINY
We can't keep our pulse on everything the Lord has done throughout history. But the first step to catching up on the groundwork He has laid for us is simply to draw close to Him. In this day and hour, we are being given the key to open and close gateways of good and evil from the past. We are being given the Key of David, which unlocks doors that no man can close and closes doors no man can open. That key is rooted in intimacy. David was a man of worship—a man after God's own heart. Jesus is the Son of David. The fruit of one who walks intimately with the Lord will always be Jesus. The church, like Mary, is called to give birth to an expression of Jesus on the earth. We are a womb to release the invisible into the realm of the visible. To do so, requires intimate union with the Holy Spirit.
Restoration of these ancient streams is our legal due in this hour, but moreover, it is God's loving desire for us. Above all, He wants to restore intimacy. How is this divine passion being revived in our day? The Lord's hand has been restoring the Tabernacle of David (Amos 9:11) through the worship and intercession movement of recent decades. David's Tabernacle was a place of 24-hour praise and worship, where one could have open and intimate access to the presence of God before the Ark of the Covenant, without going through the Mosaic rituals.Worship is a powerful place of intimacy which engages our hearts (in Isaiah 6, we read that a hardened heart is the first step in blinding our spiritual eyes and ears). Out of this intimacy, we learn to hear God, and prophecy is born. Out of prophecy, we learn to obey God's specific directives that release miracles, healings, signs, and wonders. And out of the miraculous, evangelism and harvest are released. Revival starts with worship.
The harvest boils down to intimacy. Why does God want souls saved anyway, except to draw hearts back to Him?
It is beyond belief what is coming to the face of the earth. Beyond articulation. The intensity of spiritual activity will make us either great men or crazy men. By the end of the age, men will be fully possessed by God or they will be fully possessed by the devil. But it will be impossible to live in those days without being possessed. We are designed to be consumed by God's love. We have a choice to be fully consumed by Heaven or hell, but we will be consumed.
With this full consummation of love, we are about to see the reproduction of every Spirit-filled ministry from the time of creation poured out in one lump sum. God is redigging old wells because the destiny of many ministries were cut short. When God plants a ministry, His chief intent is to see it multiply and reproduce.The work of a minister is not just to evangelize, prophesy, pastor, or teach. The work of a minister is to duplicate himself—to raise up other evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers, and apostles. In fact, such reproduction is specifically a chief focus of apostolic ministries, since apostles are called as fathers, who raise up children and establish churches as "wise master builders." But all of these fivefold office gifts were given "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Surely, countless ministers have gone on before us without reaching this ultimate level of success: Bringing unity and maturity to all, and causing all to attain to complete fullness of Christ. Not all have fully reproduced.
Of course, the success of a ministry is not measured by how many people we have in our services—not even necessarily by how many people we have raised up to function at our own level of gifting. True success comes when the baton is passed on to the next generation and they exceed our level of ministry and gifting. The true test of adequate equipping is when the successive generation takes more ground than we did. The children must reach further than the fathers. They must go farther-build higher-on the foundations we have laid.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Tuning. Part One. Tuning to God.
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Watchman Nee thought it was interesting how Peter was a fisherman, and his calling was to become a fisher of men. Paul was a tentmaker and became a masterbuilder of "God's tents" or churches all round Asia Minor.He still pursued earthly tentmaking to fund his suicidal trips to establish the gospel in hostile virgin regions. He even had to justify his tentmaking operations at one point to explain that he wanted to make the gospel available free of charge!! How radical!!! Isaiah:55verse 1. He obviously hadn't heard of Christian Bookseller's conventions! (see Jack Fortenberry's book "Corinthian elders")
Well this post is to say that a part of what I do in the Spirit seems to reflect what I do as an occupation. I tune.
If I was reporting to you as one who believed I could do this "under my own steam", "as an independant being", I would be lying. Like a lot of Christians in these days busy unwrapping their giftings, post a good dose of Cross activity, I am reporting more as an objective observation, an impassive and surprised observation of how the species Alan Christopher Welch seems to operate from time to time amongst the other gifts to the Body of Christ.
At the moment there is not a recognised position of tuner , like say pastor, or prophet, so I will continue to work undercover as God leads. I have always said that piano tuning was my cover,even with my clients. Some of which have given their lives to Jesus, and the gospel continues to spread throughout their environments.
Tuning to God
The first aspect of tuning in the Spirit is to pick up God FM. No this is not a new radio version of Rory and Wendy's God channel. This is the frequency in Psalm 19 :1-4 .
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. [a]
4 Their voice [b] goes out into all the earth,
This week I have been musing on the work of ministries and especially apostles and I have come up with this. Ministries help believers tune into God FM; once the frequency is picked up strongly, ministers can retire to the edges of a meeting, or viewed at the level of churchbuilding they can move onto a new territory.
What is my basis for saying this? Well, mostly observing genuine Spirit activity, as opposed to the common Network manifestations, or Christian believer warehouses. And one rather thin passage of scripture, which is not generally the best way to build doctrine.Have a look at this!
1 Corinthians 5: 1-5 1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature[a] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
The issue I am raising here is not the issue itself, you understand. Actually, to fill you in, by the time of the next Corinthian letter this guy had repented, and because the church were still not quite mature they kind of overdid the judgment thing. This by the way is how you recognise immaturity. 
People are still living by the Knowledge of good and evil, even if this means the last word of an apostle, instead of the current reality...one repented DUDE! So they were obviously still slagging him off!No, the point I am really raising are the words in blue that are describing Spirit stuff. In fact a carnal non-born again spiritist is going to interpret these words in a completely different way.In God's realm what this means is that an apostle lays an experiential foundation among people about coming into the genuine Presence of the Lord as a corporate Body. This passage will freak out those who are just raised on Norman Grubb and God being everywhere.
I am sorry. I am not going to change the Word of God just to suit a particular stream. The phrase here is very deliberate:4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present...
This says two things.1.You can be assembled and the power of the Lord Jesus may not be present. See, Jesus is alive and real and we don't presume on Him. His Presence must be an experiential reality.
2.God honours the authority of the ministries He has raised up. This is linked in with the idea of humans being "gatekeepers" in the earth.See Peter Stott on Psalm 24. So the particular spirit foundations that God has used to lay through a person like Paul are also the boundary lines through which God chooses to move. I think the Pope by the way, takes this way too far. No scripture anywhere speaks of world leadership...apart from one...the Antichrist...which is pyramid stuff.
The aspect of tuning in this post relates to the first stage of tuning a piano. When setting about tuning a piano to Normal Pitch, that is Concert Pitch, you begin with an external pitch source. Even if you have perfect pitch! The note A 440 beats per second which is the fourth A on a piano, needs to be A. It cannot be 439 beats, or 441 beats. It has to be bang on. So you use an electronic tuner or tuning fork for comparison.
When you begin tuning you start in the middle octave. There are 3 strings per note. Each string has to be exactly the same as the other two. And after you have tuned them, they have to stay the same! In a home, for about 6 months! In a concert hall, you are lucky if it lasts beyond the interval!
Three strings perfectly tuned to fool the listener there is only one string playing only one note!
Epistemology
I learned this word off Mark Heath's blog. They didn't teach us this word in our Bible College. It's the sort of word you mustn't use at a drinks party, even if you are on the fruit juice! Everybody else will just not understand you.
It is a philosophical word to mean how we ascertain that what we perceive to be truth really is the truth. "The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity."
Here is a stunning truth built into nature.
When those three strings are in tune you can tell in two ways.
The first as I have mentioned is the absence of beating. Remember all these beats are is the differential between strings. If one string is at 441 beats per second and the other is at 440 beats, all you hear is an annoying stray one beat per second "wowing effect".
The second way is a compound unison effect which is greater than the sum of three parts. I cannot describe this to you. But you feel it jabbing you when it's right.
And this is exactly the thing that God has built into His Body in the Spirit. He has built it into His Word.
He has built it into 3rd level, or 3rd heaven worship as we gather around His throne together. This is what we are learning in the Key of David meetings.
He has built it into ministries. And He has even provided an extra overlay of supernatural discernment gifts and ministries for an extra filter system.
It is the sound of heaven. Yes heaven has a sound. A language. And as we mature in Christ we get better at perceiving whether the sound is there or not. In a preacher. In a church. In a movement.
We perceive someone as educated as someone who has read and learned widely across a set of disciplines. This breadth of understanding can open doors for someone. But you know, this need only be a largely left-brain collection of knowledge.
Very often the perception is of a very learned professorial character, such as Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, having articulative authority, yet, absolutely no idea how to keep their house. People who came in to sort things out could not believe the mess.
This sound of heaven is not a left-brain perception. Learned college types can only get so far weighing preachers up. When preachers are speaking new revelations for the Body of Christ, you need to have more than a bunch of left-brain facts with which to weigh what they are saying.
You need to listen for the sound of heaven on what they are saying. So far charismatic preachers have had it relatively easy. People in the Body of Christ have largely been living from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So if you can come up with a sermon derived from enough Bible verses, most people are happy. When Tony Morton visited our church last he spoke out of his extensive patter learned from a valid ministry in the Holy Spirit over 25 years or more of international ministry. Sounded great. However this writer was virtually vomiting. It did not have the sound of heaven. Tony disappeared from ministry within weeks
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Where do we build up familiarity with the sound of heaven. By slowing down. By meditating about 10 times the amount we do now. By catching the Word on our innards rather than just in our frontal left lobes. By being around genuine Holy Spirit stuff. By being like the willing servant in the Old testament, who let his ear be marked/branded at the doorpost. By letting God do the work prophesied in Isaiah 54:2 where He extends the borders of our tents....which involves stakes being driven into virgin territory...in us...in our church life...in our normal life.By being willing in the Day of His Power.
This last one is a biggie. Once you click on your insides...you will find an immediate step change in your comprehension of the Word. This is totally counter intuitive, since virtually everybody will tell you it has to do with the amount of hours you read your Bible. But Jesus said in John 7:17 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God"NASV.This is a revelation on this verse that came from Ian McCulloch the founding leader of Emsworth.
Chris Welch has tuned for LSO, LPO, NIGEL KENNEDY. ANDRE PREVIN. DEMIDENKO, MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR, THE BARBICAN, FAIRFIELD HALL. CROYDON, LONDON COLISEUM, ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL. CARL DAVIS, PAUL WELLER, JOOLS HOLLAND, TOBY SMITH EX JAMIIROQUAI and many others
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For extra reading
The Sword of Christ..Soren Kierkegaard through Merril Thompson on Facebook
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Thurs at 14:36
Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them--in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person has become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together. Every call from God is always addressed to one person, the single individual. Precisely in this lies the difficulty and the examination, that the one who is called must stand alone,walk alone,alone with God. Hence, everything that makes its appearance statistically is not from above. If anyone construes this as a call, you can be sure it is from below.
Friday, 2 October 2009
Anne Frank footage released on You Tube
The only existing footage of Anne Frank has been released on You Tube.
The point of focussing on Anne Frank is not because she was a saint, an extraordinary believer or something. She was just an extremely gifted and articulate girl who would have grown up to have had a successful career in whatever path she chose. And her writings open a window on a girl becoming a woman, on what it was like to be locked away in refuge. On what it is like to be shutaway as a small community of very different individuals trying to live together. The banality of many of the events against an extraordinary background of terror, disappearance, extermination, and an ever advancing war machine. Below Emma Thompson explains why her writings and remembering this individual are important.
The point of focussing on Anne Frank is not because she was a saint, an extraordinary believer or something. She was just an extremely gifted and articulate girl who would have grown up to have had a successful career in whatever path she chose. And her writings open a window on a girl becoming a woman, on what it was like to be locked away in refuge. On what it is like to be shutaway as a small community of very different individuals trying to live together. The banality of many of the events against an extraordinary background of terror, disappearance, extermination, and an ever advancing war machine. Below Emma Thompson explains why her writings and remembering this individual are important.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
The Curse,It's Purpose and Overthrow (Part 1)
Lydia Joy did a post in the rather quiet month of August in which she hoped the pause was a regathering of strength for another onslaught in all of our blogs. This is no truer than in the start of this series by Daniel Yordy.
Just as with my material, or any others whose work is on this blog, this material is for weighing, for planting as a seed, for keeping your heart open on. Because one thing is for certain. God stuff grows and has increasing relevance.
Apart from being born again, Daniel has a strand of spiritual DNA in common with me, yet like me is open to where the Holy Spirit might lead to fill out his learning of Christ. Just as I have taken in a lot through Morris Cerullo events, Daniel has found a lot of what has been forming within him has come in the context of Joel Osteen's church. As he describes here, Joel's teachings are strongly opposed by many in the States. But I would like to think it is the same type of opposition that Rob Rufus goes through for preaching a raw grace message.
The DNA strand that we both share is a history which includes input from Eldred Linden,Sam Fife,John Clarke,Buddy Cobb - who sadly at the moment is not speaking with him, and some input from Ed Miller and Annie's Visions. (see my booklist)The Curse, It's Purpose, and Overthrow (Part 1)
From: Daniel Yordy
www.dyordy.com
I want to start this letter with a phrase from Revelation 12:5 ". . . and her child was caught up to God and to His throne."
This line describes the normal Christian life; a life we are only now beginning to understand and live in. The first half of Genesis chapter 3 is known as "the fall" of man; Revelation 12:5 is describing his return.
The fall of man did not happen in a moment. It began when the serpent opened his mouth to speak; it did not end until, maybe, the moment Cain killed his brother, Abel. I don't know that there is a lower point than that.
But God set an incredible sign post inside the first "day" of man upon this earth, the first one thousand years.
Genesis 5:24. "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him."
God is not a respecter of persons. What was available for Enoch has always been available for every descendant of Adam.
This event with Enoch happened 57 years after Adam's death, and only 13 years before the end of the first "day." God does things like this, setting a testimony, planting a sign post, pointing out His intention and purpose.
We cannot understand the revelation of Jesus Christ, the 'apokalupsis,' without understanding the curse. The curse is found in Genesis 3:14-24. It is exactly what Paul was referring to in Romans 8 when he said that "the creation was subjected to futility."
Inside this curse are 7 particular things that came upon the human race. All of these things were broken in the cross of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the Christian church has continued to live under and submit to the curse. God has a purpose for the curse; it brings us to Christ. But we must understand God's full purpose for it.
The curse is no more a part of us than a chrysalis is part of a butterfly. The chrysalis is a holding place until such time as the butterfly is ready to cast it off. Then, the purpose of the chrysalis is to be cast off, for in the casting off of that outer shell, the life that is inside the butterfly flows in strength to every part of its being.
God is a fighter and the ethos of the victorious warrior is written all through His word. God's purpose for Satan is that we might defeat him. God's purpose for the curse is that we might cast it off. God cannot form Christ inside of us by speaking a word, only. In the unsearchable wisdom of God, Christ in us needs an enemy to defeat and a restraint to cast off. And inside of this incredible crucible are the wondrous ingredients of affliction, of devotion, of pain, and of endurance.
Here are the 7 parts of the curse. I will share my present thoughts. I do not think for one moment that I have the full picture.
Part 1: Verse 14: "On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life."
Lucifer was created as the highest of all angels. He was larger in size and glory than the greatest of all the stars. The earth was nothing more than a speck of dust to him. From the beginning he despised the very idea that God had created him to serve this lowly worm that God called "man." Now he is bound to the earth, he cannot leave it. His only sustenance, his food, his energy, must come from one source alone, the misery and suffering of man. God gave human flesh to Satan for his food, the dust of the earth. So long as we live in a consciousness of separation from God, we are food for fallen angels. That's just the way it is. And we escape that curse by one means alone, by living fully in the consciousness of our complete union with Christ.
The flesh and Satan's feeding on the flesh are just like the tar baby in the "Brer Rabbit" story. You see that there is something wrong with your human nature, so you knock it about, get it under foot, bring it under control, and what do you discover? Now, you are stuck to it even more. And the more you try to suppress the flesh, the more you struggle to get it into "obedience" to God, the more stuck to it you become and the bigger deal it is.
Stop it. The cross is sufficient for us. We turn our backs on "the flesh" and give ourselves utterly to the only life we now know, the life of Christ inside of us.
The whole world lies under the sway of the evil one. (1 John 5:19) The dragon deceives the whole world. (Revelation 12:9) There is not one point of knowledge or understanding in this world that is not bogus. All of mankind is living in the matrix. We do not help anyone by trying to "fix" the world. Certainly, we see things that are false. But the moment you fix one thing that is false, it becomes something else that is just as false. I am much more concerned about the dangers coming from Christians having control of the US government than I am about "socialists" gaining control of it. (And it is not the beast that makes me weep, but dear precious believers in Jesus trying to ride the thing, trying to get it under their control.)
Part 2: Verse 15: " . . . and you shall bruise His heel."
The heel that Satan bruises is the heel of the Seed of the woman, which is Christ: Christ as He walked the earth 2000 years ago, and Christ as He reveals Himself in us.
The heel is the part of the body that carries the weight of the body upon the earth. Under the curse, Satan has the authority to wound the Redeemer, to wound that part of Christ's mature body that walks upon the earth.
Revelation 12:4 ". . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her child as soon as it was born."
This wounding is part of God's plan. In whatever way we have ever been wounded, yes, it is by the barbs of Satan, but we are utterly in God's hand and He with us works all things together for good. This is not a platitude; it is the determination of God.
Part 3: Verse 16: "In pain you shall bring forth children."
Yes, there is the physical individual element of this that every woman endures when faced with childbirth. As I watched my tender wife bear our first son, I knew no man could ever hold a candle to the strength of a woman.
But that is an outward result of the curse; we are much more concerned with its larger purpose and its casting off.
Revelation 12:2 "Then being with child she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth."
When my first son was born, there were several women in the same hospital wing giving birth that day. Ours came last. We heard horrifying screams and curses. "Make it stop!" Then, when all the ladies had their babies in hand, they asked my wife what was wrong with her. She had not screamed.
My wife entered the birthing room as prepared as a new mother could be. She did not want pain killers. I was there, and though useless outwardly, I was a strength to her. But she also had a close friend there with her. They had been working together for months, practicing breathing, practicing letting go, practicing pain.
Those who were unprepared rejected the pain of the birth. My wife, though she certainly did not welcome it, understood its purpose and knew how to yield herself to it. To let it do its work and to bring herself into the flow of its rhythm. To yield, to release, to submit. And to focus on her friend and on the breathing.
This is the hour we are in. It is Jesus who holds our hand and says, "Put your eyes utterly upon Me and trust Me. Breathe in when I say; breathe out when I say. Relax when I say, and push with all your might when I say, "Push.'" And so we must. What is about to hit this world is beyond any of our abilities to prepare for it or to cope. Don't tell me everything is going to be all right. It is not! Being in "the secret place of the most High" is where we live; but staying calm while 10,000 people drop dead around you is no simple thing. (Psalm 91).
Part 4: Verse 16: ". . .your husband, and he shall rule over you."
This is not a blessing, it is not God's 'order,' it is a curse.
"In Christ . . . there is neither male nor female . . . for you are all one in Christ." Galatians 3:26-29
Yes, outwardly, women have been brutally and shamefully mistreated by men for these 6,000 years. Those who walk in union with Jesus have no part with such a thing, no matter what legalistic, poorly translated verses they come across, it's not in them.
But that is not what this element of the curse is talking about. Notice that there is no husband in Revelation 12. Do you understand what that means, bride of Christ? What happened to your husband? He was put to death upon the cross of Jesus Christ. You have no more tie to him than any long-forgotten corpse. Name a person who died 2000 years ago and tell me what power their broken, unknown skeleton has over you or me. So it is with that old husband, Adam. He is long millenia dead and forgotten. We do not carry him on our backs.
And yet, and yet, so very sadly, for 6,000 years, and especially, for the last 2000 years, the woman, the church, the bride of Christ has lived as if she had that old dead husband chained to her back.
When Paul said in Romans 7, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death," he was referring to an ancient Greek practice of punishment. The Greeks would take the corpse of a murdered victim and chain that corpse to the back of the murderer. The murderer was then free to go, but he could not escape the rotting, horrid, vulture-picked corpse chained to his back.
Paul was voicing the mentality, the thinking, the mindset of the "carnal mind," of the one who sees himself or herself as a "self" walking separately from God. Paul thought he was dismissing that whole way of thinking, first, when he said, "I thank God through Christ Jesus my Lord," and then in Chapter 8 when he made the emphatic statement that the carnal mind, the thinking that we have a corpse, the Adamic nature, our old husband, Adam, the fallen human nature, chained to our back, that that whole way of thinking is DEATH! Paul thought he was setting the believer in Christ free from that mentality.
But that is not what worked out in Christian theology. No, the thinking that we who are married to Jesus Christ, are still also married to Adam, that we still also have a fallen human nature that we cart around, that we are responsible for, that stinks, yes, but we can never get rid of it, not in this life. That whole way of thinking that Paul called "DEATH," became central to Christian theology, in Catholicism, in Protestantism, and in much of evangelical Christianity today.
Dear Christian people make placards of our pastor with devil's horns on his head and stand with loudspeakers declaring that we will all burn in hell. More than once in the last 3 years, my children and I have walked through that gauntlet to enter the worship service. And these people who do belong to Jesus, think they are sent to do this because my pastor does not teach that Adam is chained to our backs. They honestly and sincerely believe that anyone who does not teach that Adam is chained to our backs is not teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amazing! Indeed, Christians are more dangerous than socialists.
I have come to the end of my writing time; the other 3 parts of the curse, the 3 most critical parts, will have to wait until next time.
But I do not want to end this on any negative note.
I will speak more later of Revelation 12:5 "And her child was caught up unto God and to His throne," much more, but I will say this much of this, most precious of all verses in the Bible.
I am filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3), God flows out of me like a rushing flowing river (John 7), He surrounds me like a mighty fortress wall. I walk always in Him and He in me. It is not possible for me to "go" somewhere else in the universe, or in heaven, or anywhere else, and find God more than what I walk in right now.
In all of His holiness, there is no more holy place than where I stand right now. In all of His heavenly glory, there is no more glorious place than the place I live in right now. In all of His almighty Power, there is no greater power than that which is working in me right now.
These words that I speak are not strange. They are as true of you as they are of me. I am describing the normal Christian life. If I have to "go" somewhere to find God, then God is not here, and if God is not here, then God is not.
God, open our eyes, that we might "see" that which IS and has always been.
"The expectation of God."
These words are, for me right now, the very breath of God. Let God breathe them into you as well.
"The expectation of God."
In all things, in all ways, at all times.
From: Daniel Yordy
www.dyordy.com
I want to start this letter with a phrase from Revelation 12:5 ". . . and her child was caught up to God and to His throne."
This line describes the normal Christian life; a life we are only now beginning to understand and live in. The first half of Genesis chapter 3 is known as "the fall" of man; Revelation 12:5 is describing his return.
The fall of man did not happen in a moment. It began when the serpent opened his mouth to speak; it did not end until, maybe, the moment Cain killed his brother, Abel. I don't know that there is a lower point than that.
But God set an incredible sign post inside the first "day" of man upon this earth, the first one thousand years.
Genesis 5:24. "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him."
God is not a respecter of persons. What was available for Enoch has always been available for every descendant of Adam.
This event with Enoch happened 57 years after Adam's death, and only 13 years before the end of the first "day." God does things like this, setting a testimony, planting a sign post, pointing out His intention and purpose.
We cannot understand the revelation of Jesus Christ, the 'apokalupsis,' without understanding the curse. The curse is found in Genesis 3:14-24. It is exactly what Paul was referring to in Romans 8 when he said that "the creation was subjected to futility."
Inside this curse are 7 particular things that came upon the human race. All of these things were broken in the cross of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the Christian church has continued to live under and submit to the curse. God has a purpose for the curse; it brings us to Christ. But we must understand God's full purpose for it.
The curse is no more a part of us than a chrysalis is part of a butterfly. The chrysalis is a holding place until such time as the butterfly is ready to cast it off. Then, the purpose of the chrysalis is to be cast off, for in the casting off of that outer shell, the life that is inside the butterfly flows in strength to every part of its being.
God is a fighter and the ethos of the victorious warrior is written all through His word. God's purpose for Satan is that we might defeat him. God's purpose for the curse is that we might cast it off. God cannot form Christ inside of us by speaking a word, only. In the unsearchable wisdom of God, Christ in us needs an enemy to defeat and a restraint to cast off. And inside of this incredible crucible are the wondrous ingredients of affliction, of devotion, of pain, and of endurance.
Here are the 7 parts of the curse. I will share my present thoughts. I do not think for one moment that I have the full picture.
Part 1: Verse 14: "On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life."
Lucifer was created as the highest of all angels. He was larger in size and glory than the greatest of all the stars. The earth was nothing more than a speck of dust to him. From the beginning he despised the very idea that God had created him to serve this lowly worm that God called "man." Now he is bound to the earth, he cannot leave it. His only sustenance, his food, his energy, must come from one source alone, the misery and suffering of man. God gave human flesh to Satan for his food, the dust of the earth. So long as we live in a consciousness of separation from God, we are food for fallen angels. That's just the way it is. And we escape that curse by one means alone, by living fully in the consciousness of our complete union with Christ.
The flesh and Satan's feeding on the flesh are just like the tar baby in the "Brer Rabbit" story. You see that there is something wrong with your human nature, so you knock it about, get it under foot, bring it under control, and what do you discover? Now, you are stuck to it even more. And the more you try to suppress the flesh, the more you struggle to get it into "obedience" to God, the more stuck to it you become and the bigger deal it is.
Stop it. The cross is sufficient for us. We turn our backs on "the flesh" and give ourselves utterly to the only life we now know, the life of Christ inside of us.
The whole world lies under the sway of the evil one. (1 John 5:19) The dragon deceives the whole world. (Revelation 12:9) There is not one point of knowledge or understanding in this world that is not bogus. All of mankind is living in the matrix. We do not help anyone by trying to "fix" the world. Certainly, we see things that are false. But the moment you fix one thing that is false, it becomes something else that is just as false. I am much more concerned about the dangers coming from Christians having control of the US government than I am about "socialists" gaining control of it. (And it is not the beast that makes me weep, but dear precious believers in Jesus trying to ride the thing, trying to get it under their control.)
Part 2: Verse 15: " . . . and you shall bruise His heel."
The heel that Satan bruises is the heel of the Seed of the woman, which is Christ: Christ as He walked the earth 2000 years ago, and Christ as He reveals Himself in us.
The heel is the part of the body that carries the weight of the body upon the earth. Under the curse, Satan has the authority to wound the Redeemer, to wound that part of Christ's mature body that walks upon the earth.
Revelation 12:4 ". . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her child as soon as it was born."
This wounding is part of God's plan. In whatever way we have ever been wounded, yes, it is by the barbs of Satan, but we are utterly in God's hand and He with us works all things together for good. This is not a platitude; it is the determination of God.
Part 3: Verse 16: "In pain you shall bring forth children."
Yes, there is the physical individual element of this that every woman endures when faced with childbirth. As I watched my tender wife bear our first son, I knew no man could ever hold a candle to the strength of a woman.
But that is an outward result of the curse; we are much more concerned with its larger purpose and its casting off.
Revelation 12:2 "Then being with child she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth."
When my first son was born, there were several women in the same hospital wing giving birth that day. Ours came last. We heard horrifying screams and curses. "Make it stop!" Then, when all the ladies had their babies in hand, they asked my wife what was wrong with her. She had not screamed.
My wife entered the birthing room as prepared as a new mother could be. She did not want pain killers. I was there, and though useless outwardly, I was a strength to her. But she also had a close friend there with her. They had been working together for months, practicing breathing, practicing letting go, practicing pain.
Those who were unprepared rejected the pain of the birth. My wife, though she certainly did not welcome it, understood its purpose and knew how to yield herself to it. To let it do its work and to bring herself into the flow of its rhythm. To yield, to release, to submit. And to focus on her friend and on the breathing.
This is the hour we are in. It is Jesus who holds our hand and says, "Put your eyes utterly upon Me and trust Me. Breathe in when I say; breathe out when I say. Relax when I say, and push with all your might when I say, "Push.'" And so we must. What is about to hit this world is beyond any of our abilities to prepare for it or to cope. Don't tell me everything is going to be all right. It is not! Being in "the secret place of the most High" is where we live; but staying calm while 10,000 people drop dead around you is no simple thing. (Psalm 91).
Part 4: Verse 16: ". . .your husband, and he shall rule over you."
This is not a blessing, it is not God's 'order,' it is a curse.
"In Christ . . . there is neither male nor female . . . for you are all one in Christ." Galatians 3:26-29
Yes, outwardly, women have been brutally and shamefully mistreated by men for these 6,000 years. Those who walk in union with Jesus have no part with such a thing, no matter what legalistic, poorly translated verses they come across, it's not in them.
But that is not what this element of the curse is talking about. Notice that there is no husband in Revelation 12. Do you understand what that means, bride of Christ? What happened to your husband? He was put to death upon the cross of Jesus Christ. You have no more tie to him than any long-forgotten corpse. Name a person who died 2000 years ago and tell me what power their broken, unknown skeleton has over you or me. So it is with that old husband, Adam. He is long millenia dead and forgotten. We do not carry him on our backs.
And yet, and yet, so very sadly, for 6,000 years, and especially, for the last 2000 years, the woman, the church, the bride of Christ has lived as if she had that old dead husband chained to her back.
When Paul said in Romans 7, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death," he was referring to an ancient Greek practice of punishment. The Greeks would take the corpse of a murdered victim and chain that corpse to the back of the murderer. The murderer was then free to go, but he could not escape the rotting, horrid, vulture-picked corpse chained to his back.
Paul was voicing the mentality, the thinking, the mindset of the "carnal mind," of the one who sees himself or herself as a "self" walking separately from God. Paul thought he was dismissing that whole way of thinking, first, when he said, "I thank God through Christ Jesus my Lord," and then in Chapter 8 when he made the emphatic statement that the carnal mind, the thinking that we have a corpse, the Adamic nature, our old husband, Adam, the fallen human nature, chained to our back, that that whole way of thinking is DEATH! Paul thought he was setting the believer in Christ free from that mentality.
But that is not what worked out in Christian theology. No, the thinking that we who are married to Jesus Christ, are still also married to Adam, that we still also have a fallen human nature that we cart around, that we are responsible for, that stinks, yes, but we can never get rid of it, not in this life. That whole way of thinking that Paul called "DEATH," became central to Christian theology, in Catholicism, in Protestantism, and in much of evangelical Christianity today.
Dear Christian people make placards of our pastor with devil's horns on his head and stand with loudspeakers declaring that we will all burn in hell. More than once in the last 3 years, my children and I have walked through that gauntlet to enter the worship service. And these people who do belong to Jesus, think they are sent to do this because my pastor does not teach that Adam is chained to our backs. They honestly and sincerely believe that anyone who does not teach that Adam is chained to our backs is not teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amazing! Indeed, Christians are more dangerous than socialists.
I have come to the end of my writing time; the other 3 parts of the curse, the 3 most critical parts, will have to wait until next time.
But I do not want to end this on any negative note.
I will speak more later of Revelation 12:5 "And her child was caught up unto God and to His throne," much more, but I will say this much of this, most precious of all verses in the Bible.
I am filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3), God flows out of me like a rushing flowing river (John 7), He surrounds me like a mighty fortress wall. I walk always in Him and He in me. It is not possible for me to "go" somewhere else in the universe, or in heaven, or anywhere else, and find God more than what I walk in right now.
In all of His holiness, there is no more holy place than where I stand right now. In all of His heavenly glory, there is no more glorious place than the place I live in right now. In all of His almighty Power, there is no greater power than that which is working in me right now.
These words that I speak are not strange. They are as true of you as they are of me. I am describing the normal Christian life. If I have to "go" somewhere to find God, then God is not here, and if God is not here, then God is not.
God, open our eyes, that we might "see" that which IS and has always been.
"The expectation of God."
These words are, for me right now, the very breath of God. Let God breathe them into you as well.
"The expectation of God."
In all things, in all ways, at all times.
ADDENDUM
The New Creation By: Norman Grubb
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Friday, 18 September 2009 at 16:30
"The Lord God called to the man, `Where are you?"Genesis 3:9The effects of (Adam and Eve's) disobedience were the opposite to what the natural guilty world would expect God's reaction to be. We would think God would, in anger and wrath, turn His back on the two. But it was precisely the other way around. It was Adam who hid from God, not God from Adam. Here was God "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" and looking for Adam. But where was Adam? Hidden in the bushes. Nor was God displaying some wrathful retaliation, but only questioning Adam ... to bring the reality of the disobedience home to him.For when He came face to face with the three; the serpent and Adam and Eve, there was not a word of condemnation or wrath against the two, but only His full curse on Satan. To Adam and Eve everything God said was to clarify to them the "beneficial" consequence which they, thankfully, could not escape - a way of life which always has sorrow at its roots. God said in effect, "Eve, you will have sorrow one way; Adam, you will have sorrow another way." That was all.And of course, the point of the sorrow would be that the whole human race through all its centuries of history would always be inwardly miserable, always knowing they were missing the mark and meaning of life, always seeking a phony happiness which would always escape them ... and thus, always at the heart of every man, however covered up, is a sense of lostness and a longing for fulfillment. That alone was God's judgment on His disobedient children, a judgment totally for their benefit.Yes, I Am posted on FB by Megan Anne Fey 19th Sept
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Friday, 18 September 2009 at 16:30
"The Lord God called to the man, `Where are you?"Genesis 3:9The effects of (Adam and Eve's) disobedience were the opposite to what the natural guilty world would expect God's reaction to be. We would think God would, in anger and wrath, turn His back on the two. But it was precisely the other way around. It was Adam who hid from God, not God from Adam. Here was God "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" and looking for Adam. But where was Adam? Hidden in the bushes. Nor was God displaying some wrathful retaliation, but only questioning Adam ... to bring the reality of the disobedience home to him.For when He came face to face with the three; the serpent and Adam and Eve, there was not a word of condemnation or wrath against the two, but only His full curse on Satan. To Adam and Eve everything God said was to clarify to them the "beneficial" consequence which they, thankfully, could not escape - a way of life which always has sorrow at its roots. God said in effect, "Eve, you will have sorrow one way; Adam, you will have sorrow another way." That was all.And of course, the point of the sorrow would be that the whole human race through all its centuries of history would always be inwardly miserable, always knowing they were missing the mark and meaning of life, always seeking a phony happiness which would always escape them ... and thus, always at the heart of every man, however covered up, is a sense of lostness and a longing for fulfillment. That alone was God's judgment on His disobedient children, a judgment totally for their benefit.Yes, I Am posted on FB by Megan Anne Fey 19th Sept
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
What about Christmas? Facebook Question
Pic: In these days where they are trying to get us to say "Winter festival", Is the whole idea of Christmas not really valid anyway? Hint: Do not ask this question anywhere near Jamie Weeks.Elaine Waterfield
what I would like to know is, am I that nuts to not believe in Christmas. Since becoming a Christian in my spirit I have just felt less and less fond of this time and when I read about it its all based on pagan festivals,, Jesus wasnt even born at Ch...ristmas. Nor was there a scripture in the bible to do this, I also think that its a bit of an insult to celebrate the King of Kings birhday on the wrong day...I remember his birth and death every day and when I see all the debt people get themselves into I just wonder whats behind Christmas anyway. I am very much more for celebrating shabbatt, whats your opinions?Read more
22 minutes ago · Comment · Like / Unlike · See Wall-to-Wall
Chris Welch
This is the deal. Christmas is a spinoff. A good idea. A culture thing that is not necessarily bad for that. Like any church or nation that is around long enough experiences perhaps events that are meaningful enough to keep remembering together. For the States its Independence day and Thanksgiving day. It's of that order. And yes,Christmas now has veered right off into debt directions, when in actual fact the way we all used to celebrate it when we were growing up was a family time when all else was put aside to come together. This however is not the same as the Jewish festivals which are of a titanically different order, but also gather the families and people together in a lovely way. The Jewish feasts are a revelation from God, upon which the whole of history rests. Prophetically they are the hinge points of God's manifestation of Himself through flesh. They are the first, second and third levels of how He gets to live His life through us...in the same way that Jesus learned to live God the Father's life through Him. So what does that mean for you? Well many Christian groups do not celebrate Christmas. And many Christians do. You are right to question it all. What drives me nuts with English Christians and the Anglican church more specifically is they do away with the true revelation of the Bible, in order to focus on the invented myth of Christmas. ...Not entirely true though, since over the years they have sought to bring people back to a remembrance of Christ's incarnational arrival here, and for that we must bless them.
what I would like to know is, am I that nuts to not believe in Christmas. Since becoming a Christian in my spirit I have just felt less and less fond of this time and when I read about it its all based on pagan festivals,, Jesus wasnt even born at Ch...ristmas. Nor was there a scripture in the bible to do this, I also think that its a bit of an insult to celebrate the King of Kings birhday on the wrong day...I remember his birth and death every day and when I see all the debt people get themselves into I just wonder whats behind Christmas anyway. I am very much more for celebrating shabbatt, whats your opinions?Read more
22 minutes ago · Comment · Like / Unlike · See Wall-to-Wall
Chris Welch
This is the deal. Christmas is a spinoff. A good idea. A culture thing that is not necessarily bad for that. Like any church or nation that is around long enough experiences perhaps events that are meaningful enough to keep remembering together. For the States its Independence day and Thanksgiving day. It's of that order. And yes,Christmas now has veered right off into debt directions, when in actual fact the way we all used to celebrate it when we were growing up was a family time when all else was put aside to come together. This however is not the same as the Jewish festivals which are of a titanically different order, but also gather the families and people together in a lovely way. The Jewish feasts are a revelation from God, upon which the whole of history rests. Prophetically they are the hinge points of God's manifestation of Himself through flesh. They are the first, second and third levels of how He gets to live His life through us...in the same way that Jesus learned to live God the Father's life through Him. So what does that mean for you? Well many Christian groups do not celebrate Christmas. And many Christians do. You are right to question it all. What drives me nuts with English Christians and the Anglican church more specifically is they do away with the true revelation of the Bible, in order to focus on the invented myth of Christmas. ...Not entirely true though, since over the years they have sought to bring people back to a remembrance of Christ's incarnational arrival here, and for that we must bless them.
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