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Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Why Pride? Why?
Why had I focused on the GIFTS rather than the GIVER, then influenced others on this?! Oh how I deeply regret seeding a lot of people with PRIDE!
The following chapters are the source of the previous post's epiphany.
1 Corinthians 12 (The Message)
Spiritual Gifts
4-11God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:
wise counsel
clear understanding
simple trust
healing the sick
miraculous acts
proclamation
distinguishing between spirits
tongues
interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19-24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
27-31You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything. You're familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his "body":
apostles
prophets
teachers
miracle workers
healers
helpers
organizers
those who pray in tongues.
But it's obvious by now, isn't it, that Christ's church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It's not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called "important" parts.
But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.
The Way of Love
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Eureka: pride leads to a downfall
I had been wondering why on earth I had always sought after power and glory for the longest time. I knew it was all about Pride and the search for my own significance, but nothing prepared me for the realization of what I think could be the biggest reason/source of my pride:
I dread being proven wrong.
I feel like Simon the Sorcerer (Acts 8:9-25) right now: wanting the Holy Spirit's power for how the power can be used for my own profit/glory.
Wasn't that so much like Satan? The pomp, the splendor, usurping God's throne?
Why was I on the throne in my life for the longest time? That, I will never know. All I know is that I finally realized that I had been feeding on the wrong gospel: in chasing and casting out the demons, through the knowledge, the self-importance, the hyper-awareness of my "talents," I became much like they are: jockeying for position, wanting to be important to men.
I feel like one of the old disciples: jostling for power and needing to be Jesus' darling.
I want to be close to Jesus. But it never should be this way: that I am so desperate for the power and the honor that comes with being near Him that I forgot Him, Himself.
Who is this abhorrent creature and why is she walking in my shoes?!
The world seems to think that Pride is okay; it even classifies it as a "virtue". If you could only see what I was just pummeled with: how Pride really is abhorrent to God, and thankfully, now to myself, you'd let go of it too.
I pray that we would stop beefing up our own importance and finally realize how small we are before God, and that the only reason we had been forgiven and given tasks to fulfill is because God is loving and merciful.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Exasperation, My Untamed Tongue, Perfectionism and Trusting God: A Long Ramble
I had mentioned, vaguely, in the previous email about some personal quirks of ex-roomie Keven's that just basically exasperated me. I just thought to make a disclaimer, lest people think that I am a hypocrite; plastic, to put it differently.
The women in my life are people that I love intensely. In my book, I have no middle ground: either I love the person intensely or I just don't care at all. When I lose friends, it's much like a miscarriage to me. When I lost my best friend (Graviton girls, you know who this is) a couple of years ago because of a misplaced, exasperated text message, I never totally got over the pain. It's still there, like a thorn in my heart that had been covered by the growth of gangrened flesh. When I lost Vida (UPLB People I believe you know her) before my (former?) best friend, it was as painful, even more so, perhaps.
(Vida and I are kind of repairing our friendship now, thankfully)
99.99% of the time, the reason why I lose these people is that I drop a word carelessly.
James says:
3:5-6
Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
OUCH.
When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. (Proverbs 10:19)
Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.(Proverbs 12:18)
I am so chastised by now. I had blamed everything on my penchant for verbal diarrhea (I think it's fitting to call it verbal cholera now).
My parents had been complimented about how adorable I was as a child, and with those compliments always came the comment about how talkative I was.
*amused*
Back then, that was sooo cute. But today, after so many broken friendships, spiritual abortions and what-not, I...
...Am sorry I could not withhold my tongue 99% of the time. I would like to erase parts of my previous rant, especially the part about being exasperated about ex-roomie Keven, but I would feel like a hypocrite to myself because then I would feel like I were just covering up my blemishes.
What for? To look "perfect"? The thought of covering up my imperfections reminds me of this pressed powder that was aggressively campaigned for in the 90s... It could purportedly cover all of a woman's facial blemishes. Do you remember the brand? I could only recall that it was in red packaging and may be from Splash, the Philippine cosmetics company..
Anyway, that is not the point. What I am trying to say is, besides making a disclaimer about my verbal diarrhea, that we women seem to want everything to be perfect. We want the world to believe that our lives are unruffled and just beautiful. We won't be able to relate to Bree Van de Kamp (now Bree Hodge) of Desperate Housewives, if we didn't have that streak of perfectionism in us. We hide underneath layers of foundation, makeup and whatever else, just to look like porcelain beauties. We hide layers of our lives under secrets, because it's either we don't think God or society would be able to accept our radical/unacceptable thoughts. We hide because we hate conflict. We hide... Because we feel unworthy of being seen. I think, that so many of us have become cowards.
I used to take pride in not being afraid to be tactless. Now I am horrified that I hide from the friends I cherish because I do not want to offend.
Yes, my tongue was damaging, but is hiding any better?
How do you strike a balance between loving confrontation and staying silent so as not to hurt?
I have only one answer to both:
PRAYER.
It is something I do not do often enough. Until today, though I realize this intellectually, I still opt to batter the women I love with my sharp words, exasperated that some of them went (or are going) the way that I was back, shaken and shattered and just recovering, from. Clearly, the issue here is that I do not trust God enough to complete the work He is doing in them. (I am tempted to curse myself for my faithlessness, but I won't cooperate with Satan right now.)
As for my tongue, that's the same thing. I have to trust God more to cleanse it. No wonder Isaiah had exclaimed:
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)
I can wholly empathize with him, because I realize how unclean my lips are: they had been given over to gossip and grumbling and complaints.
With gossip, I had been increasingly losing taste for that, so hurray, Glory to God's victory over that!
Grumbling and complaints, it's something God and I are working with. It's not easy being pruned and disciplined, and when life gets hard, I feel like I had been dealt a great injustice. But if I stop today, how would that glorify God? If I give up, I just let the enemy of my soul gain a massive victory. One soldier down would definitely impact much. Unlike in other battles or organizational hierarchies, God needs all the hands He can get. While He surely can raise the stones and turn them into Sons of Abraham, He chose to die for you and me, then to commission you and me for the work He has cut out for us. But I digress again.
To the women I love, I admit that there are moments when I am exasperated with you. Most of the time, I have these moments of exasperation because I recognize these same exasperating traits in myself. In the other times that I believe those aren't traits I own, it's either I am lying to myself or they just bring out the worst in myself: which God paradoxically uses to bring out the best in me.
I am sorry if I had said that I lose patience with you. The more apt term is that I lose patience with the way that I react to you. You and God have your own walk to live out. I was just, well, tapped, to help you on. If you don't do as I say, if you want your own way, I should not be too bothered, right? But the heart of the matter is, when I am too bothered, I am just scared you will fall into the ditch I fell into just moments before. When you say, with all bravado, that you can manage it, I am all the more bothered, because that was what I declared too.
Should I care less, then? Or should I let go? Stay more silent? Purse my mouth like a good mother should do when her child strays and let the kid feel the entire consequence when stuff happens, but keep my arms open for when she is ready to come back, and just silently give a hug?
I think some people would find it audacious that I see these women as my own children. When on earth did that start to happen? Months ago.. Weeks ago, I cared 95% for myself. Though people still accuse me of being self-centered, I wonder whom I care about more?
I wonder if they see that actually, it is man's nature to be self-centered ("rational self-interest," according to Economics)? I wonder if they actually have the insight that sometimes, they too, are self-centered indeed.
I thank God that the women who mother me were "self-centered" enough to spend more time with God in order to nourish me and the other women on their hands.
I guess that is what I should do: take walks, take dates with God more. Long more for Him, and less for people and things.
I sure wish that heartaches would be less. But in this battle that we call Life, these are part and parcel of that.
So I put on my armor, helmet, shoes, take up my sword and shield, and make sure that Jesus is a seal upon my heart, and fight on.
The women in my life are people that I love intensely. In my book, I have no middle ground: either I love the person intensely or I just don't care at all. When I lose friends, it's much like a miscarriage to me. When I lost my best friend (Graviton girls, you know who this is) a couple of years ago because of a misplaced, exasperated text message, I never totally got over the pain. It's still there, like a thorn in my heart that had been covered by the growth of gangrened flesh. When I lost Vida (UPLB People I believe you know her) before my (former?) best friend, it was as painful, even more so, perhaps.
(Vida and I are kind of repairing our friendship now, thankfully)
99.99% of the time, the reason why I lose these people is that I drop a word carelessly.
James says:
3:5-6
Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
OUCH.
When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. (Proverbs 10:19)
Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.(Proverbs 12:18)
I am so chastised by now. I had blamed everything on my penchant for verbal diarrhea (I think it's fitting to call it verbal cholera now).
My parents had been complimented about how adorable I was as a child, and with those compliments always came the comment about how talkative I was.
*amused*
Back then, that was sooo cute. But today, after so many broken friendships, spiritual abortions and what-not, I...
...Am sorry I could not withhold my tongue 99% of the time. I would like to erase parts of my previous rant, especially the part about being exasperated about ex-roomie Keven, but I would feel like a hypocrite to myself because then I would feel like I were just covering up my blemishes.
What for? To look "perfect"? The thought of covering up my imperfections reminds me of this pressed powder that was aggressively campaigned for in the 90s... It could purportedly cover all of a woman's facial blemishes. Do you remember the brand? I could only recall that it was in red packaging and may be from Splash, the Philippine cosmetics company..
Anyway, that is not the point. What I am trying to say is, besides making a disclaimer about my verbal diarrhea, that we women seem to want everything to be perfect. We want the world to believe that our lives are unruffled and just beautiful. We won't be able to relate to Bree Van de Kamp (now Bree Hodge) of Desperate Housewives, if we didn't have that streak of perfectionism in us. We hide underneath layers of foundation, makeup and whatever else, just to look like porcelain beauties. We hide layers of our lives under secrets, because it's either we don't think God or society would be able to accept our radical/unacceptable thoughts. We hide because we hate conflict. We hide... Because we feel unworthy of being seen. I think, that so many of us have become cowards.
I used to take pride in not being afraid to be tactless. Now I am horrified that I hide from the friends I cherish because I do not want to offend.
Yes, my tongue was damaging, but is hiding any better?
How do you strike a balance between loving confrontation and staying silent so as not to hurt?
I have only one answer to both:
PRAYER.
It is something I do not do often enough. Until today, though I realize this intellectually, I still opt to batter the women I love with my sharp words, exasperated that some of them went (or are going) the way that I was back, shaken and shattered and just recovering, from. Clearly, the issue here is that I do not trust God enough to complete the work He is doing in them. (I am tempted to curse myself for my faithlessness, but I won't cooperate with Satan right now.)
As for my tongue, that's the same thing. I have to trust God more to cleanse it. No wonder Isaiah had exclaimed:
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)
I can wholly empathize with him, because I realize how unclean my lips are: they had been given over to gossip and grumbling and complaints.
With gossip, I had been increasingly losing taste for that, so hurray, Glory to God's victory over that!
Grumbling and complaints, it's something God and I are working with. It's not easy being pruned and disciplined, and when life gets hard, I feel like I had been dealt a great injustice. But if I stop today, how would that glorify God? If I give up, I just let the enemy of my soul gain a massive victory. One soldier down would definitely impact much. Unlike in other battles or organizational hierarchies, God needs all the hands He can get. While He surely can raise the stones and turn them into Sons of Abraham, He chose to die for you and me, then to commission you and me for the work He has cut out for us. But I digress again.
To the women I love, I admit that there are moments when I am exasperated with you. Most of the time, I have these moments of exasperation because I recognize these same exasperating traits in myself. In the other times that I believe those aren't traits I own, it's either I am lying to myself or they just bring out the worst in myself: which God paradoxically uses to bring out the best in me.
I am sorry if I had said that I lose patience with you. The more apt term is that I lose patience with the way that I react to you. You and God have your own walk to live out. I was just, well, tapped, to help you on. If you don't do as I say, if you want your own way, I should not be too bothered, right? But the heart of the matter is, when I am too bothered, I am just scared you will fall into the ditch I fell into just moments before. When you say, with all bravado, that you can manage it, I am all the more bothered, because that was what I declared too.
Should I care less, then? Or should I let go? Stay more silent? Purse my mouth like a good mother should do when her child strays and let the kid feel the entire consequence when stuff happens, but keep my arms open for when she is ready to come back, and just silently give a hug?
I think some people would find it audacious that I see these women as my own children. When on earth did that start to happen? Months ago.. Weeks ago, I cared 95% for myself. Though people still accuse me of being self-centered, I wonder whom I care about more?
I wonder if they see that actually, it is man's nature to be self-centered ("rational self-interest," according to Economics)? I wonder if they actually have the insight that sometimes, they too, are self-centered indeed.
I thank God that the women who mother me were "self-centered" enough to spend more time with God in order to nourish me and the other women on their hands.
I guess that is what I should do: take walks, take dates with God more. Long more for Him, and less for people and things.
I sure wish that heartaches would be less. But in this battle that we call Life, these are part and parcel of that.
So I put on my armor, helmet, shoes, take up my sword and shield, and make sure that Jesus is a seal upon my heart, and fight on.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Idolatry: Let's do Something About it! (Reposted)
By: C. Peter Wagnar
Most of my Christian friends are saying that they would like to see their cities transformed. Few of them would need to be convinced that what we are seeing all around us, day in and day out, seems to be resulting much more from the activities of the forces of darkness than from the kingdom of God in our midst.
Taking Our Cities for God:
Is there something we can do about this? We must begin by praying, as Jesus instructed us to do: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But we cannot stop there, because a major way that God has chosen to answer our prayers and manifest His kingdom in our communities is to use Christian people as His front-line agents in bringing it about. Are we ready for Him to use us?
Ever since John Dawson published his book, Taking Our Cities for God (Creation House) in 1989, the body of Christ has been diligently seeking to understand and to apply the different means that God has been providing us to take our cities. We have come a long way, and many wonderful things have been happening. But few of us would be able to say, "Yes, we have taken our city for God! It is transformed! God's kingdom now far overshadows the kingdom of darkness in our city!"
Why? Why, after years of exponentially increased prayer, of high-quality books and articles on city-taking, of ministries that have come into our cities with well-attended conferences, of revival signs in city after city, of pastors' prayer summits, of leaders gathering in large numbers for annual Fasting & Prayer events, of Marches for Jesus, of organized prayer walking, of massive Promise Keepers' public repentance, of powerful and motivating sermons from our pulpits, and of many other exemplary corporate Christian activities have we seen such relatively scant progress? Several leaders, myself included, have been agonizing over this question for months; Happily, some promising answers are emerging which I believe will help us, by the grace of God, begin to se the breakthroughs that both God, and we earnestly desire.
It has only been fairly recently that the Lord has been impressing on me the urgent need to deal aggressively with idolatry if we ever expect to see our cities transformed. If you read the literature that has been coming out on the subject, you will see that this crucial issue has been largely overlooked. The major reason for this, in all probability, is that few of us have really understood the nature of hard-core idolatry, and that is why I am writing this. Let's get our thinking straight on idolatry, and let's do something about it!
DEALING A BLOW TO IDOLATRY IN OUR CITY:
This leads into one of the strongest statements I will make The finest of our leaders may competently apply all the excellent insights that God has given us for city transformation over the last few years in the highest levels in our cities, but if we do not also deal a significant and simultaneous blow to idolatry, we will mot see our dream for city transformation come true.
The reason I dare to make such a bold statement is that the Bible is so clear about the way that God refuses to move in the way He desires to move if the pathway is clogged with idols.
Take, for example. Jacob. God had called Abraham out of the matrix of sun-goddess worship in Ur and Haran, and Abraham had pledged his total allegiance to the Lord. Isaac followed him, and then Jacob, who was to give birth to the tribes of Israel. But, by that time, through household servants or in-laws or other means, idolatry had crept into Jacob's household. God was ready to take Jacob to a new level in Bethel where He would change his name to Israel and promise him that a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body (Gen. 35:1 1).
"PUT AWAY FOREIGN GODS!"
But the prerequisite for God's will to be accomplished was to abolish the idolatry in their midst. Jacob obeyed, Jacob said to his household and to all that were with him, 'Put away the foreign gods [i.e., idols] that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel and I will make an altar there to God' (Gen. 35:2-3). This was a radical demand, but there was no question that it had to be done if Jacob's household was to be everything God wanted them to be. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and all their earrings which were in their ears (Gen. 35:4).'
What happened? And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob (Gen. 35:5). The hand of God was definitely on them so powerfully that they enjoyed total protection from potential enemies. Getting rid of their idols made all the difference in the world.
WHAT ABOUT JEWELRY?
Notice that items of jewelry entered the picture. They turned their earrings over to Jacob. Why would they do this? It is not because God frowns on the use of decorative jewelry, but there was something about those particular earrings that were giving honor to foreign gods? Namely certain demonic spirits, and not to God. In other words, the earrings were idols. As we have seen, honoring those spirits by glorifying them through ornaments is a way of committing spiritual adultery, and God is a jealous God. He simply will not put up with it.
An example occurs to me. Back a few years ago when I was teaching my adult Sunday School class in Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, California, we prayed for the sick on a regular basis. One Sunday morning a class member brought a friend who had been suffering for months from a chronic headache that would not go away no matter what. I prayed for her in my normal way, and I saw certain things happen which led m to believe that she would be healed, but when I finished, the headache was still there.
Then God drew my attention to a piece of jewelry -a pendant around her neck which had a graven image of the Queen of Heaven in the form of a counterfeit Virgin Mary. "Do you always wear that?' I asked her. "Yes," she replied, "I have worn it for years. I never take it off." o I did what Jacob might have done, and said, "Well, take it off now!" She looked shocked! She said, "I could never take that off. I love her, and she loves me. She takes care of me." I said, "She isn't taking care of your headache very well, is she? It's your choice. Take off that medal and get rid of your headache, or leave it on and keep the headache." I turned as if to go, but she told me to wait. I could see that she was agonizing, but finally with trembling hands, she took it off and put it on the table. I prayed again, and the headache left for the first time in months!
Then I said, "Do you want me to take that necklace?" Another long pause. "No," she said, "I'll take care of it. "So she picked it up and put it in her purse. I never saw her again, but I could almost guarantee that if she had her neck, the headache would have been back.
NEUTRALIZING THE POWER OF THE PHILISTINES:
Israel had been taking too many hits from their archenemies, the Philistines. The problem? Israel was committing idolatry! So at a critical moment, their leader, Samuel, said, If you turn to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away foreign gods and the Ashtoreths [i.e., the idols ] from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only and He will deliver you from the Philistines (l Sam. 7:3). Once again God's people were missing God's best for them because they had a dual allegiance-to God and to their idols. God does not allow you to have it both ways.
Fortunately, when they realized the error of their ways, they repented for their sin, and they decided to give their total allegiance to God. So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only (l Sam. 7:4). As a result, the Philistines were subdued, and they did not come anymore into the territory of Israel (l Sam. 7:13). I believe that we could see similar results in our cities today if we decided to deal decisively with hard-core idolatry and thus rid our cities of our contemporary Baals and Ashtoreths.
HOW STRONG CAN IDOLS BE? PAUL KNOWS!
One of the best examples of the power of idolatry to block the entrance of the kingdom of God into a city is Paul's experience in Athens. Paul reaped abundant spiritual fruit in Thessalonica and Berea before he went to Athens, and he reaped abundant fruit in Corinth and Ephesus after he left Athens. But in Athens he saw very few converts and he left no church behind that we hear anything more about. What had blocked Paul's ministry there? Idolatry! Paul's spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols (Acts 17:16). True, cities like Thessalonica, Berea, Corinth, and Ephesus had their share of idols, but not like Athens. Athens was notable in ancient literature for its unusually extravagant idolatry. Athens was called a forest of idols. Some said that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a human being. One estimate calculated that the city of Athens housed more idols than all the rest of Greece combined!
How hard did Paul try to take Athens for Christ? As hard as he could. In fact, the consensus among homiletics professors is that Paul preached his most brilliant sermon in Athens - the Sermon on Mars Hill. But the forces of darkness, led by the goddess Athena, had built almost impenetrable defenses against the Gospel through festivals, pilgrimages, rituals, unholy sculptures, ornate demonic temples, blood sacrifices, altars inside and outside of every home, sacred pillars, and public invitations by civic officials for the demonic principalities to maintain possession of their city. Paul had met his 'match in the spiritual realm. That is how powerful hand-core idolatry can be!
If Paul found the idolatry of Athens so formidable an obstacle, it should not surprise us that our cities today are so hard to take for the kingdom. I frankly doubt if any American city is as thoroughly idolatrous as Athens was, but that does not mean that idolatry is not a powerful barrier to the Gospel of the kingdom in Virtually every one of our cities. Paul brake through the other cities, and so can we.
SAN LA MUERTE OF RESISTENCIA:
Resistencia, Argentina, while probably not as idolatrous as Athens, had given itself over as a playground for several powerful demonic principalities. Resistencia was the target of one of the decade's first city-taking efforts, led by Ed Silvoso of Harvest Evangelism. My wife, Doris, and I, along with Cindy Jacobs and several others joined Silvoso in a three-year effort to see a true spiritual breakthrough in Resistencia beginning in 1990.
The highest-ranking spirit in that Northern Argentina city of 400,000 was San La Muerte, literally translated, "St. Death." Thirteen shrines to St. Death throughout the city offered easy access for worship to the entire population. His idol was a skeleton.
Why did people worship this spirit? Because he had promised them a "good death!" It is hard to imagine a people so hopeless and full of despair that the most they could hope for down the road was a good death! In fact, many had miniature idols of San La Muerte surgically implanted in parts of their bodies, such as under their nipples, so that wherever they went, San La Muerte would go with them and give them a good death.
The few Christian pastors of the city joined forces with Silvoso's team and declared war on San La Muerte and his cohorts. Open spiritual confrontation was the order of the day. Multiple strategic events took place in carefully-planned sequence over a 36-month period. The culmination was to be a massive public evangelistic campaign, featuring all the leaders of the Argentine revival.
While the city was notoriously and openly idolatrous, it took some time to recognize the fact that a good bit of this idolatry had spilled over into the body of Christ as well. Many believers were found to be acting like the ancient children of Israel under Samuel-they had their modern counterparts to Israel's Baals and Ashtoreths somewhere on their persons or in their homes.
"Burn the idols!"
Doris was preparing to travel to Argentina with Cindy Jacobs for the climactic evangelistic campaign. As she was reading Scripture the morning she was to leave, The Holy Spirit told her that in Resistencia they must burn the idols, like magicians did in Ephesus. Ed Silvoso, Cindy Jacob and the resistencia pastors agreed. So the evening before the evangelistic crusade, all the city's believers came together for prayer. The leaders explained how important it would be to do spiritual housecleaning in their homes before they came to the meeting. They began mentioning the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness; pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Morman, pictures of former lovers, pornographic material, fetishes, drugs, Ouija boards, zodiac charms, good luck symbols, crystals for healing, amulets, talismans, tarot cards, witch dolls, voodoo items, love potions, books of magic, totem poles, certain pieces of jewelry, objects of Freemasonry, horoscopes gargoyles, native art, foreign souvenirs, and what have you.
The believers agreed to obey God and to cleanse their homes, even if it meant giving up what might have been expensive items. They were to wrap each item in newspaper to protect privacy, and then cast the objects into a 55-gallon drum set before the platform the following night. The drum was heaped to overflowing! They poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. This was a major power encounter because the witches and warlocks had surrounded the area and done their occult sacrifices, killing animals, burning incense, and sending the most powerful curses they could muster toward the evangelists. When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris screamed and manifested a demon. Which Doris immediately cast out!
THE FALL OF SAN LA MUERTE:
Many unbelievers came to Christ that night, and each one was instructed to go home, do their own spiritual housecleaning, and bring their objects to the bonfire the following night. As this went on, night after night, San La Muerte's power diminished. The breakthrough that the believers had prayed for occurred. Eighteen new Churches sprang up, and the evangelical population increased many fold over the next few years.
As if to headline how the aggressive onslaught against idolatry had succeeded, God permitted a spectacular event to occur one week before the evangelistic campaign. Resistencia's high priestess of San La Muerte had been smoking in her bed. She fell asleep, and her bed caught fire. The only things that were consumed by fire were the bed, the woman, and her idol of San La Muerte located in the next room! No wonder the city was ready to hear the word of God!
Most of my Christian friends are saying that they would like to see their cities transformed. Few of them would need to be convinced that what we are seeing all around us, day in and day out, seems to be resulting much more from the activities of the forces of darkness than from the kingdom of God in our midst.
Taking Our Cities for God:
Is there something we can do about this? We must begin by praying, as Jesus instructed us to do: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But we cannot stop there, because a major way that God has chosen to answer our prayers and manifest His kingdom in our communities is to use Christian people as His front-line agents in bringing it about. Are we ready for Him to use us?
Ever since John Dawson published his book, Taking Our Cities for God (Creation House) in 1989, the body of Christ has been diligently seeking to understand and to apply the different means that God has been providing us to take our cities. We have come a long way, and many wonderful things have been happening. But few of us would be able to say, "Yes, we have taken our city for God! It is transformed! God's kingdom now far overshadows the kingdom of darkness in our city!"
Why? Why, after years of exponentially increased prayer, of high-quality books and articles on city-taking, of ministries that have come into our cities with well-attended conferences, of revival signs in city after city, of pastors' prayer summits, of leaders gathering in large numbers for annual Fasting & Prayer events, of Marches for Jesus, of organized prayer walking, of massive Promise Keepers' public repentance, of powerful and motivating sermons from our pulpits, and of many other exemplary corporate Christian activities have we seen such relatively scant progress? Several leaders, myself included, have been agonizing over this question for months; Happily, some promising answers are emerging which I believe will help us, by the grace of God, begin to se the breakthroughs that both God, and we earnestly desire.
It has only been fairly recently that the Lord has been impressing on me the urgent need to deal aggressively with idolatry if we ever expect to see our cities transformed. If you read the literature that has been coming out on the subject, you will see that this crucial issue has been largely overlooked. The major reason for this, in all probability, is that few of us have really understood the nature of hard-core idolatry, and that is why I am writing this. Let's get our thinking straight on idolatry, and let's do something about it!
DEALING A BLOW TO IDOLATRY IN OUR CITY:
This leads into one of the strongest statements I will make The finest of our leaders may competently apply all the excellent insights that God has given us for city transformation over the last few years in the highest levels in our cities, but if we do not also deal a significant and simultaneous blow to idolatry, we will mot see our dream for city transformation come true.
The reason I dare to make such a bold statement is that the Bible is so clear about the way that God refuses to move in the way He desires to move if the pathway is clogged with idols.
Take, for example. Jacob. God had called Abraham out of the matrix of sun-goddess worship in Ur and Haran, and Abraham had pledged his total allegiance to the Lord. Isaac followed him, and then Jacob, who was to give birth to the tribes of Israel. But, by that time, through household servants or in-laws or other means, idolatry had crept into Jacob's household. God was ready to take Jacob to a new level in Bethel where He would change his name to Israel and promise him that a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body (Gen. 35:1 1).
"PUT AWAY FOREIGN GODS!"
But the prerequisite for God's will to be accomplished was to abolish the idolatry in their midst. Jacob obeyed, Jacob said to his household and to all that were with him, 'Put away the foreign gods [i.e., idols] that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel and I will make an altar there to God' (Gen. 35:2-3). This was a radical demand, but there was no question that it had to be done if Jacob's household was to be everything God wanted them to be. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and all their earrings which were in their ears (Gen. 35:4).'
What happened? And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob (Gen. 35:5). The hand of God was definitely on them so powerfully that they enjoyed total protection from potential enemies. Getting rid of their idols made all the difference in the world.
WHAT ABOUT JEWELRY?
Notice that items of jewelry entered the picture. They turned their earrings over to Jacob. Why would they do this? It is not because God frowns on the use of decorative jewelry, but there was something about those particular earrings that were giving honor to foreign gods? Namely certain demonic spirits, and not to God. In other words, the earrings were idols. As we have seen, honoring those spirits by glorifying them through ornaments is a way of committing spiritual adultery, and God is a jealous God. He simply will not put up with it.
An example occurs to me. Back a few years ago when I was teaching my adult Sunday School class in Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, California, we prayed for the sick on a regular basis. One Sunday morning a class member brought a friend who had been suffering for months from a chronic headache that would not go away no matter what. I prayed for her in my normal way, and I saw certain things happen which led m to believe that she would be healed, but when I finished, the headache was still there.
Then God drew my attention to a piece of jewelry -a pendant around her neck which had a graven image of the Queen of Heaven in the form of a counterfeit Virgin Mary. "Do you always wear that?' I asked her. "Yes," she replied, "I have worn it for years. I never take it off." o I did what Jacob might have done, and said, "Well, take it off now!" She looked shocked! She said, "I could never take that off. I love her, and she loves me. She takes care of me." I said, "She isn't taking care of your headache very well, is she? It's your choice. Take off that medal and get rid of your headache, or leave it on and keep the headache." I turned as if to go, but she told me to wait. I could see that she was agonizing, but finally with trembling hands, she took it off and put it on the table. I prayed again, and the headache left for the first time in months!
Then I said, "Do you want me to take that necklace?" Another long pause. "No," she said, "I'll take care of it. "So she picked it up and put it in her purse. I never saw her again, but I could almost guarantee that if she had her neck, the headache would have been back.
NEUTRALIZING THE POWER OF THE PHILISTINES:
Israel had been taking too many hits from their archenemies, the Philistines. The problem? Israel was committing idolatry! So at a critical moment, their leader, Samuel, said, If you turn to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away foreign gods and the Ashtoreths [i.e., the idols ] from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only and He will deliver you from the Philistines (l Sam. 7:3). Once again God's people were missing God's best for them because they had a dual allegiance-to God and to their idols. God does not allow you to have it both ways.
Fortunately, when they realized the error of their ways, they repented for their sin, and they decided to give their total allegiance to God. So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only (l Sam. 7:4). As a result, the Philistines were subdued, and they did not come anymore into the territory of Israel (l Sam. 7:13). I believe that we could see similar results in our cities today if we decided to deal decisively with hard-core idolatry and thus rid our cities of our contemporary Baals and Ashtoreths.
HOW STRONG CAN IDOLS BE? PAUL KNOWS!
One of the best examples of the power of idolatry to block the entrance of the kingdom of God into a city is Paul's experience in Athens. Paul reaped abundant spiritual fruit in Thessalonica and Berea before he went to Athens, and he reaped abundant fruit in Corinth and Ephesus after he left Athens. But in Athens he saw very few converts and he left no church behind that we hear anything more about. What had blocked Paul's ministry there? Idolatry! Paul's spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols (Acts 17:16). True, cities like Thessalonica, Berea, Corinth, and Ephesus had their share of idols, but not like Athens. Athens was notable in ancient literature for its unusually extravagant idolatry. Athens was called a forest of idols. Some said that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a human being. One estimate calculated that the city of Athens housed more idols than all the rest of Greece combined!
How hard did Paul try to take Athens for Christ? As hard as he could. In fact, the consensus among homiletics professors is that Paul preached his most brilliant sermon in Athens - the Sermon on Mars Hill. But the forces of darkness, led by the goddess Athena, had built almost impenetrable defenses against the Gospel through festivals, pilgrimages, rituals, unholy sculptures, ornate demonic temples, blood sacrifices, altars inside and outside of every home, sacred pillars, and public invitations by civic officials for the demonic principalities to maintain possession of their city. Paul had met his 'match in the spiritual realm. That is how powerful hand-core idolatry can be!
If Paul found the idolatry of Athens so formidable an obstacle, it should not surprise us that our cities today are so hard to take for the kingdom. I frankly doubt if any American city is as thoroughly idolatrous as Athens was, but that does not mean that idolatry is not a powerful barrier to the Gospel of the kingdom in Virtually every one of our cities. Paul brake through the other cities, and so can we.
SAN LA MUERTE OF RESISTENCIA:
Resistencia, Argentina, while probably not as idolatrous as Athens, had given itself over as a playground for several powerful demonic principalities. Resistencia was the target of one of the decade's first city-taking efforts, led by Ed Silvoso of Harvest Evangelism. My wife, Doris, and I, along with Cindy Jacobs and several others joined Silvoso in a three-year effort to see a true spiritual breakthrough in Resistencia beginning in 1990.
The highest-ranking spirit in that Northern Argentina city of 400,000 was San La Muerte, literally translated, "St. Death." Thirteen shrines to St. Death throughout the city offered easy access for worship to the entire population. His idol was a skeleton.
Why did people worship this spirit? Because he had promised them a "good death!" It is hard to imagine a people so hopeless and full of despair that the most they could hope for down the road was a good death! In fact, many had miniature idols of San La Muerte surgically implanted in parts of their bodies, such as under their nipples, so that wherever they went, San La Muerte would go with them and give them a good death.
The few Christian pastors of the city joined forces with Silvoso's team and declared war on San La Muerte and his cohorts. Open spiritual confrontation was the order of the day. Multiple strategic events took place in carefully-planned sequence over a 36-month period. The culmination was to be a massive public evangelistic campaign, featuring all the leaders of the Argentine revival.
While the city was notoriously and openly idolatrous, it took some time to recognize the fact that a good bit of this idolatry had spilled over into the body of Christ as well. Many believers were found to be acting like the ancient children of Israel under Samuel-they had their modern counterparts to Israel's Baals and Ashtoreths somewhere on their persons or in their homes.
"Burn the idols!"
Doris was preparing to travel to Argentina with Cindy Jacobs for the climactic evangelistic campaign. As she was reading Scripture the morning she was to leave, The Holy Spirit told her that in Resistencia they must burn the idols, like magicians did in Ephesus. Ed Silvoso, Cindy Jacob and the resistencia pastors agreed. So the evening before the evangelistic crusade, all the city's believers came together for prayer. The leaders explained how important it would be to do spiritual housecleaning in their homes before they came to the meeting. They began mentioning the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness; pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Morman, pictures of former lovers, pornographic material, fetishes, drugs, Ouija boards, zodiac charms, good luck symbols, crystals for healing, amulets, talismans, tarot cards, witch dolls, voodoo items, love potions, books of magic, totem poles, certain pieces of jewelry, objects of Freemasonry, horoscopes gargoyles, native art, foreign souvenirs, and what have you.
The believers agreed to obey God and to cleanse their homes, even if it meant giving up what might have been expensive items. They were to wrap each item in newspaper to protect privacy, and then cast the objects into a 55-gallon drum set before the platform the following night. The drum was heaped to overflowing! They poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. This was a major power encounter because the witches and warlocks had surrounded the area and done their occult sacrifices, killing animals, burning incense, and sending the most powerful curses they could muster toward the evangelists. When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris screamed and manifested a demon. Which Doris immediately cast out!
THE FALL OF SAN LA MUERTE:
Many unbelievers came to Christ that night, and each one was instructed to go home, do their own spiritual housecleaning, and bring their objects to the bonfire the following night. As this went on, night after night, San La Muerte's power diminished. The breakthrough that the believers had prayed for occurred. Eighteen new Churches sprang up, and the evangelical population increased many fold over the next few years.
As if to headline how the aggressive onslaught against idolatry had succeeded, God permitted a spectacular event to occur one week before the evangelistic campaign. Resistencia's high priestess of San La Muerte had been smoking in her bed. She fell asleep, and her bed caught fire. The only things that were consumed by fire were the bed, the woman, and her idol of San La Muerte located in the next room! No wonder the city was ready to hear the word of God!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Love Languages Test
Do you find it difficult to understand why your friend won't respond to hugs? What if she shirks from your compliments? Do you feel rejected when he or she does? Then maybe you guys just speak different love languages.
Click this to know how you understand and will respond to love. :)
Thanks Ate Ming, for telling me about the Love Languages. :)
Click this to know how you understand and will respond to love. :)
Thanks Ate Ming, for telling me about the Love Languages. :)
In Search of God
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
(John 1:1-5, New International Version)
You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
(Matthew 7:16, New Living Translation)
Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other."
(John 13:34-35 The Message Bible)
Discernment and prayer go hand-in-hand with the search for God. A lot of us walk around blindly in search for the “perfect religion.” We stumble around in the darkness, trying on things, believing that the Truth is a set of rules and laws to follow. We look for perfection in the lives of the religion’s adherents, and we try to see if they “walk the talk.”
The things of the Spirit, however, are discerned by the Spirit.
The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. There's no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God's Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God's Spirit is doing, and can't be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah's question, "Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?" has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ's Spirit.
(1 Corinthians 2:14, The Message Bible)
As a seeker, I had gone through just a bit in my search for Life and God. While others have “been there, tried that,” running the gamut of religion from Orthodox Christianity down to Polytheism, or even the lack of God in the concept of Nirvana, I was fortunate to have gone through just one false religion that had allowed me to see that getting to know God isn’t all about doctrine or religious structure.
The religion I had gone through, the Baha’i Faith, is a religion that believes that all religions are just progressive steps leading to one God. That “all roads lead to God”.
What I noted there, though, was that everything they did felt dead. I was longing for Life, but it wasn’t there. I had been wanting and needing the kind of Life I had tasted, while praising and worshiping Him in YFC’s* Youth Camp. I had longed for Jesus. I could not believe in their “prophet,” because I had seen one of his letters, which was addressed to the “Son of the Wolf.” For me, a person who had to denounce and slander his enemies isn’t like the Jesus I had known.
But before we get to my epiphany and reconciliation to Jesus, I’d like to talk about how I had lost faith in Him.
My teenage mind was wondering why there were so many religions, and I wondered which one was right. I knew that Life had to be there somewhere.. But where is it? Where is it among all those differently-shaped churches? Who was the true Messiah? Jesus? Mohammed? Was the Pope really of Jesus? Why did the Jews forsake Jesus? Did that mean He was not the true God?
In my search I would have wanted to try the Jewish religion; I wondered which “Christian” church had the true Jesus in it; I wondered if Jesus really was the Son of God.
Though I was fortunate that God already had a safety net for me before I reached my teens and my personal hell began: I was raised on a steady T.V. diet of The Flying House and Superbook, plus He had given me opportunities to read the Children’s Bibles on my own, and He had allowed a teacher in my school to minister to me, I still needed to find out for myself who God really is.
So my search led me to reading up on Wicca, on other religions, on cults, and though I never cast a spell, because I was scared to, I did nearly try to get my future predicted by a friend of mine who practiced Wicca. The meeting never happened.
Then the Baha’i Faith happened in my life. While I was there, I kept crying out to God that this religion seemed so dead! With childish praise songs and weird rituals, no concept of sin, and an all-embracing “faith” which allows people to worship Jesus with everyone else, I got more and more confused. I cried out to God more, asking Him to show me whether their “prophet” really was “the essence of Jesus come back to guide again for our age.”
Of course, since the dead man, Mirza Hussein Ali, was NOT the Son of God, God had to lead me back to His own Son, Jesus Christ.
What I learned from the experience is that:
- God is not found in religion. He is a Person, and He wants to show you His love.
- While He is not in religion, He is found in His people.
- Walking with Him is a walk of faith: not of doctrine or of works.
- You will know Life when you experience it.
- When you ask for Faith, or for a knowledge of who He truly is, He will answer your cry.
- God is revealed in the Bible, first and foremost, because the Bible is the Word, and the Word IS Jesus. (John 1:1-5)
- Being desperate for Him and for freedom would always be answered by God.
When you truly are seeking for God, don’t ask for signs and wonders; ask for the Truth, ask for Faith to believe, ask for your eyes to be opened, and He will answer your call.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
(Matthew 5:6)
*Youth for Christ, a Catholic Charismatic Youth Organization
Why Do I Need to be Baptized?
If there is anything that makes the seekers of our generation so scared of moving out of their dead religion into a relationship with Jesus, it’s the thought of needing to undergo Water Baptism. For most of us, it’s a sign of allegiance to the “religion.” What we do not understand is that it is actually essential to our salvation.
Circumcision was the mark of the covenant that God had with the Jews of old. With circumcision, God had put His mark on His people, setting them apart for holiness, and in return, giving them access to the promises He had for them.
When Jesus came, He brought a different kind of circumcision. He cut off our sins, and gave us the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to live a changed life. To prepare the people for the Holy Spirit, John the Baptist had come before Jesus, to compel the people to repent of their sin, and to baptize them in water.
Taking a bath cleans our bodies of dirt. Water baptism is a process by which Jesus can cleanse us of our own sins. We can then come to God the Father with a clear conscience, because by our water baptism, an outward demonstration of our faith in Jesus’ having cleansed our selves of sin, we signify leaving our old, sinful lives, in order to embrace the new life Jesus has prepared for us.
As we use water to clean everything possible, water is also necessary for Jesus to cleanse us of sin. And guess what, He is also called the Living Water.
In the Bible, rebirth and new beginnings have happened when the Israelites/Jews have gone through water.
Jesus’ deity was confirmed by God after He was baptized too.
As we take up our Cross and walk after Him, let us follow the example He set for us: get baptized, wash our bloodied clothes in His living waters, and walk a blameless life in Grace, where our sins are constantly washed by His blood.
References:
Acts 2:38, 2:41
Romans 6:1-4
1 Corinthians 10:1-2
Colossians 2:11-12
1 Peter 3:20-21
Circumcision was the mark of the covenant that God had with the Jews of old. With circumcision, God had put His mark on His people, setting them apart for holiness, and in return, giving them access to the promises He had for them.
When Jesus came, He brought a different kind of circumcision. He cut off our sins, and gave us the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to live a changed life. To prepare the people for the Holy Spirit, John the Baptist had come before Jesus, to compel the people to repent of their sin, and to baptize them in water.
When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature.
(Colossians 2:11, New Living Translation)
Taking a bath cleans our bodies of dirt. Water baptism is a process by which Jesus can cleanse us of our own sins. We can then come to God the Father with a clear conscience, because by our water baptism, an outward demonstration of our faith in Jesus’ having cleansed our selves of sin, we signify leaving our old, sinful lives, in order to embrace the new life Jesus has prepared for us.
As we use water to clean everything possible, water is also necessary for Jesus to cleanse us of sin. And guess what, He is also called the Living Water.
In the Bible, rebirth and new beginnings have happened when the Israelites/Jews have gone through water.
- Noah and the remnant of Adam’s seed were enabled to start anew after the flood.
- The Israelites/Jews had passed through the Red Sea, as parted by Moses, before they came into the Promised Land.
Jesus’ deity was confirmed by God after He was baptized too.
As we take up our Cross and walk after Him, let us follow the example He set for us: get baptized, wash our bloodied clothes in His living waters, and walk a blameless life in Grace, where our sins are constantly washed by His blood.
How blessed are those who wash their robes! The Tree of Life is theirs for good, and they'll walk through the gates to the City.
(Revelation 22:14, The Message Bible)
References:
Acts 2:38, 2:41
Romans 6:1-4
1 Corinthians 10:1-2
Colossians 2:11-12
1 Peter 3:20-21
Burden
Do you have a burden for a certain place? If you do, then start praying for that place. Let us not be complacent with praying for the nations.
Did God show you a certain country or city or a place? Did you feel like He wants you to pray for the place?
Then get down on your knees to pray.
Do you read about so much mess and chaos in a place, from the news?
Start praying.
Don't fall into despair.
You know your God can fix anything; He is just asking for people to go down on their knees to pray.
Did God show you a certain country or city or a place? Did you feel like He wants you to pray for the place?
Then get down on your knees to pray.
Do you read about so much mess and chaos in a place, from the news?
Start praying.
Don't fall into despair.
You know your God can fix anything; He is just asking for people to go down on their knees to pray.
Revelation 22:2 (Amplified Bible)
Through the middle of the broadway of the city; also, on either side of the river was the tree of life with its twelve varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh crop; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing and the restoration of the nations.
I don't know what those leaves symbolize; but to me, this is a sign of hope that God desires to heal the nations.
Pray for His will. He desires to heal our hearts.
I don't know what those leaves symbolize; but to me, this is a sign of hope that God desires to heal the nations.
Pray for His will. He desires to heal our hearts.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Political Opinion
Frankly, it's not gonna work, because whatever ruler we have, they were set there by God. For He has the power to set people on high, and He has the power to uproot too.
Even Erap was set there by God. When Cito Beltran had been called by God to minister to him, it was not to show approval, in my own opinion, but to give him the chance to repent. Just like him, we are called to repent too. Of the collective rebellion of our land, of the collective addiction to gossip.
No, no one will find gossip distasteful overnight. But as people are called to worship God, as people taste and see that Jesus is good, infinitely better than the spirit of gossip and rebellion and even idolatry that abounds, then we will find these things: these rallies, The Buzz and Lolit Solis, even our own idols (whether fame, money, a loved one, ourselves and our talents), only then will Jesus give us the righteous leader that we want.
I like Gloria. For all her faults, let's face it, she quietly sealed deals and a lot more for our country. Though a lot of us may see the despair, I actually do not understand how we all could not see how fortunate we are.. Put us beside Cambodia, Sudan, North Korea, aren't we much more wealthy? Imagine if your leader were Pol Pot or Kim Jong Il! Where would we be today?
I thank God that we are a democracy and that He will not allow dictatorship to rule our country again. I thank God that we already are free. We just have to walk in our freedom.
Stop it. No longer rebel. Stay silent. And quietly work for peace. For God honors the faith of the righteous and the peacemakers. Let us not cry out for our kings to resign. Rather, let us denounce rebellion: the rebellion in our hearts, and the rebellion we take to the streets. Understand that God is sovereign and He rules nations.
And no, He is not optional.
Even Erap was set there by God. When Cito Beltran had been called by God to minister to him, it was not to show approval, in my own opinion, but to give him the chance to repent. Just like him, we are called to repent too. Of the collective rebellion of our land, of the collective addiction to gossip.
No, no one will find gossip distasteful overnight. But as people are called to worship God, as people taste and see that Jesus is good, infinitely better than the spirit of gossip and rebellion and even idolatry that abounds, then we will find these things: these rallies, The Buzz and Lolit Solis, even our own idols (whether fame, money, a loved one, ourselves and our talents), only then will Jesus give us the righteous leader that we want.
I like Gloria. For all her faults, let's face it, she quietly sealed deals and a lot more for our country. Though a lot of us may see the despair, I actually do not understand how we all could not see how fortunate we are.. Put us beside Cambodia, Sudan, North Korea, aren't we much more wealthy? Imagine if your leader were Pol Pot or Kim Jong Il! Where would we be today?
I thank God that we are a democracy and that He will not allow dictatorship to rule our country again. I thank God that we already are free. We just have to walk in our freedom.
Stop it. No longer rebel. Stay silent. And quietly work for peace. For God honors the faith of the righteous and the peacemakers. Let us not cry out for our kings to resign. Rather, let us denounce rebellion: the rebellion in our hearts, and the rebellion we take to the streets. Understand that God is sovereign and He rules nations.
And no, He is not optional.
HMP!
Pwede ba?! Tama na yang "Resign GMA" na yan!
1 Peter 2 ito, o!
Submission to Rulers and Masters
13-15
Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.
--->> ALSO, I like GMA. :p
1 Peter 2 ito, o!
Submission to Rulers and Masters
13-15
Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.
--->> ALSO, I like GMA. :p
No Plan B and Two Other Lessons
After a crazy 48 hours before and a battle that had been won, here I am, re-realizing the gravity and the depth of my faithlessness.
I had been told by God for the past two or three days that I have to be faithful to what He gives me. I thought I had to be faithful to my secular job. Apparently, I had to be faithful to Him, after all.
Meaning, whatever He says that I should do: whether it is to let go of stuff, people, and to drop everything, or to always update this blog (He says it’s a daily thing), I have to be faithful.
Frankly, I am as yet too drained to really think about a proper “sermon” here. But these are my lessons of the day:
1) We Christians have to be faithful to Him first, above all. The world can wait, He can pull strings, as long as we are faithful.
2) Blessings follow obedience. In other words, obedience first, before the blessing. Deuteronomy 28 explains this point so clearly, it’s downright scary.
3) God’s ways indeed are mysterious. Lest we think that He is misleading us by making a promise then things and opportunities other factors point to a different direction, stop right there. He does not mislead, for His ways are perfect. One thing I learned is that, in situations like these (forked roads, multiple doors that have opened), always go back to the first thing God promised you, for God has no Plan B. Whether you feel like you are being led through a crazy roundabout path, or worse, a wilderness, God will actually bring you back where He intended you to be in, in the first place. Wildernesses are necessary, and He will not allow you to go through these without due reason. Plus, as was said in the Bible (see previous article for scripture notes), He allows you to be told misleading “words” or even lies, because He wants to test your heart.
It is Jesus’ part to fulfill the promises He has set for you. Your only task is to fix your eyes on Jesus. So no more looking to the left or to the right. Let Jesus lead. Just FOLLOW.
;)
I had been told by God for the past two or three days that I have to be faithful to what He gives me. I thought I had to be faithful to my secular job. Apparently, I had to be faithful to Him, after all.
Meaning, whatever He says that I should do: whether it is to let go of stuff, people, and to drop everything, or to always update this blog (He says it’s a daily thing), I have to be faithful.
Frankly, I am as yet too drained to really think about a proper “sermon” here. But these are my lessons of the day:
1) We Christians have to be faithful to Him first, above all. The world can wait, He can pull strings, as long as we are faithful.
2) Blessings follow obedience. In other words, obedience first, before the blessing. Deuteronomy 28 explains this point so clearly, it’s downright scary.
3) God’s ways indeed are mysterious. Lest we think that He is misleading us by making a promise then things and opportunities other factors point to a different direction, stop right there. He does not mislead, for His ways are perfect. One thing I learned is that, in situations like these (forked roads, multiple doors that have opened), always go back to the first thing God promised you, for God has no Plan B. Whether you feel like you are being led through a crazy roundabout path, or worse, a wilderness, God will actually bring you back where He intended you to be in, in the first place. Wildernesses are necessary, and He will not allow you to go through these without due reason. Plus, as was said in the Bible (see previous article for scripture notes), He allows you to be told misleading “words” or even lies, because He wants to test your heart.
It is Jesus’ part to fulfill the promises He has set for you. Your only task is to fix your eyes on Jesus. So no more looking to the left or to the right. Let Jesus lead. Just FOLLOW.
;)
A Company of People Who Prophesy
A Company of People Who Prophesy
by Dee Bennett
by Dee Bennett
Your Sons and Your Daughters Shall Prophesy
At the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, we believe strongly that God wants to bring forth a company of people who prophesy (Acts 2:17-21). My husband, Kirk Bennett, and I lead the prophecy teams which minister every week at IHOP-KC. The unique team dynamic that we have created takes the pressure off each team member to come up with 'a word' for each person who enters the rooms for ministry. It also allows a prophetic synergism to take place, in which team members are able to 'build upon' the ministry of one another to an individual, as the Holy Spirit reveals more. We are very excited about the anointing that is accompanying us as our teams step out to prophesy in God's kingdom.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments, there is a thread of revelation by which God makes it clear that He wants to and will raise up a company of prophets. In Numbers 11:29, Moses says, "Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!" Moses says this during the time that he is leading the Israelites in the wilderness. He was overwhelmed by the need of the people to hear the voice of God in their individual situations. The workload was just too great for one man.
In Joel 2:28, a prophecy which is quoted in Acts 2:17, God promises that all shall prophesy: "And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Then, in Revelation 10:11, John is given even a stronger command: "And he said to me, 'You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.'"
Here we see a progression that is very significant. Moses says basically, 'I wish all would prophesy.' Then several times in redemptive history God emphasizes a promise that all shall prophesy, and at the end of the inspired Scripture, commands that there will come a time when we must prophesy. This is not a peripheral issue in God's heart, but central. Those who worship Him prophesy. Those who have the indwelling Spirit prophesy.
The Communication of the Indwelling Holy Spirit
The angel in Revelation 19:10 tells John, "Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." You can't separate prophecy from worship. When you worship God, the spirit of prophecy is released, and it is the testimony of Jesus Christ, who is God, who dwells within you. Matthew 10:20 says, "For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." Often this communication from the Spirit within you begins as a vague impression. Pay close attention to this. Ask the Lord about these impressions. Pray about them, and see if you receive more. Don't discount impressions, for they may lead you into the very counsel of the Lord.
Meditate on these impressions and let the Holy Spirit give you more. Worship God intermittently, with long and loving meditation on the Scripture. This is how to begin to enter into intimacy with the Lord, and the fruit of this intimacy will release prophetic revelation for you or for others. Intimacy with the Lord is the wellspring out of which the fruit and gifts of the Spirit flow. We have to abide in the Vine, as Jesus says in John 15:5, or we can do nothing. And we want to be people who walk in the Spirit. We want to be people who hear from God, who do great exploits and see signs and wonders. We want to become the message we are speaking.
The Genuine Voice of the Prophetic
Intimacy with Jesus is required to carry the heart of one who prophesies. You can still be accurate in your information through seasons, even if your heart is growing cold and drifting far from the Lord. King Saul would be an example of this. He was not pursuing intimacy with God, but the Spirit fell on him, and he prophesied all night (1 Samuel 19:24). We need an up-to-date relationship with the Lord, daily abiding in the Vine. We are living in a day in which the prophetic and sorcery are evident in the land at the same time. Counterfeit voices are everywhere, espousing lies to lead the unsuspecting astray. We are going hard after the voice of the Lord in this hour, assured that we will hear His voice; as Jesus said, "Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice (Jn. 18:37)."
Jesus' words always spoke of the Father in heaven. He was always pointing people to the Father. His words were about the kingdom of God. Fortune telling and sorcery lead people to the one 'prophesying', drawing people to them and away from God. Prophecy is not self-seeking and it takes dying to self to speak on behalf of the Spirit of the Lord. We must know the difference to discern the genuine voice of the prophetic.
There are four identities, or paradigms, through which we teach our team members to prophesy. They are (1) the paradigm of the Son (one who knows God as Father), (2) the paradigm of the friend of the Bridegroom (one who respects and cherishes the Lamb's wife), (3) the paradigm of the priest (one who goes before the Throne on behalf of others), and (4) the paradigm of the forerunner (one who prepares the way of the Lord).
The Paradigm of the Son: Knowing God as a Loving Father
When a person ministers, their ministry is always influenced by their understanding of who God is. Our knowledge of God always needs to be growing and transforming us. Knowing that we are beloved of the Father just as Jesus was beloved of the Father is paramount. Jesus came to testify of the Father. We testify of the Father, just as Jesus did. If our view of God is harsh, critical, abandoning, or legalistic, our ministry and the way we live our lives will reflect that. But if we know in our hearts that God is a loving, tender Father and Shepherd who cares for our hearts and enjoys us, we will live and prophesy out of this reality.
We can look into the reality of Jesus and the Father, how close they were, and their love and intimacy. I look into this relationship, and see no veil between them, and how they always have perfectly clear communication. I love that! I can see reflected in the relationship of the Father and the Son the close communion that the Father desires to have with me.
You see, I have to know God as the One who wants to be near me, who wants to spend time with me, and who is preparing a place for me. I have to know that I am beautiful to God before I can see others as beautiful to Him. This transformation has to happen in our individual lives.
The Friend of the Bridegroom: Cherishing the Lamb's Wife
The friend of the Bridegroom identity flows out of the understanding that Jesus is the heavenly Bridegroom, the great Lover of souls who desired to be with us so fervently that He became human and shed His blood on the Cross to purchase us. The understanding of the bride is important to grasp here. We are the Lamb's bride, as is each person we minister to, potentially, even if they are not yet saved. We are speaking to the Lamb's wife when we prophesy. How would you speak to someone's wife? We want to speak over her the cherishing heart of the Lord. We must walk in the identity of a friend of the Bridegroom, one who woos her to the Lord, and celebrates her with Him. There is no place for criticism, judgment, or condemnation. Rather, she must be made to experience the fact that she is the most important person on His heart, that His banner over her is love, and that He is calling her away with Him. Jesus knew we were called Hephzibah - literally, "my delight is in her" (Is. 62:4).
The identity of the friend of the Bridegroom was expressed by John the Baptist in John 3:29, when he said, "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." Notice that the prophetic minister is not wooing the bride to himself or his ministry. He is a friend of the Bridegroom. However, he does stand and listen to the Bridegroom's heart for the bride, and he rejoices over it. This requires an active listening, a daily listening, in order to develop a heart that moves with the very passions of Jesus.
The identities of the bride and the friend of the Bridegroom are for each of us. Each person you prophesy to is the cherished bride of Jesus. The bride needs daily affection from the King. She can't live without Him, and He doesn't want a kingdom without her. He wants her leaning on Him, coming up from the wilderness (SOS 8:5). We were made to lean on Him, and He wants us to desire Him. The bride is also progressing in transformation. She is becoming progressively more and more like her Bridegroom. In Rev. 21:9, the bride has made herself ready. Part of this preparation is done when we prophesy to one another. We encourage, build up and strengthen the heart of the bride.
As He calls me beautiful and I truly know it, I begin to see others as beautiful!
The Paradigm of the Priest: Going Before the Throne for Others
The priestly identity is also woven heavily throughout the Old and New Testaments. The priest in the Old Testament had the function of coming before God on behalf of the people. Jesus becomes the great High Priest in the atonement, ever living to make intercession for us, standing before the Father. Second Chronicles 29:11 is a very powerful verse that describes the priestly function: to stand, to serve, to minister, and to burn before the Lord. This is a very personal call, as is the call to intimacy. No one can do this for you. You must stand. The Lord desires to hear your voice. You are the only one who can engage your own heart, and cause it to burn before Him.
Revelation 1:6 says Jesus made us kings and priests, or a kingdom of priests, to our God. In the Old Testament, all the prophets were priests. They spent hours standing before the Lord and telling Him how good He is. It was also their job to burn the sacrifice for sin. I believe this was often difficult for them, and they had to constantly check their hearts. For example, suppose my family, the Bennetts, came up to the temple to give our yearly atonement for sin, and all we brought were two little pigeons. I bet there were times the priests had to check their hearts. Suppose our family was very sinful that year and everyone knew it. Maybe the priest was tempted to think, "This is all they brought? They need to bring something more, like a fresh young bull." I really feel like the priests had to check their hearts when they came before the Lord on behalf of the people, asking themselves, 'Am I judging the people today?'
In the same way, being discerning, we discern sin in others. What is the priestly thing to do? We have to check our hearts, and go before the Lord in prayer on behalf of them. We need to ask the Lord why He is showing us this sin. Most of the time, it is only to pray for them. Very few times is it for any other reason, and never is it to go to another priest, and say, "Hey, do you know the Bennetts?", and talk about the negative things you see in their lives. It is difficult for us to understand the weightiness, the solemnity, of the responsibility we have to steward this information righteously. In the Old Testament, the high priest searched his heart before he entered the Holy of Holies. He knew the holiness of the Lord could kill him in that place.
The priest carried a vivid understanding of the sin in the land. And if they stopped going before the Lord, the kingdom went down. If the priests became corrupt as Eli's sons, so went the kingdom. There were also times when the king went to war, ignoring God by not consulting the priests. It did not go well for the nation. My point is that being a priest before God on behalf of our families, neighbors, and nations is a weighty and powerful calling. Like Hannah, you can change a nation by functioning in the priestly anointing before God. Hannah cried out to the Lord in her barrenness, and He gave her a child, Samuel. She realized the barrenness of the land was greater than her own, and she gave Samuel to minister to the Lord. She had endured merciless cruelty from her husband's other wife because she was barren for so long, yet she chose to promise her child to the Lord. She didn't hold on to him, to gloat or compete. She was the favorite wife, and doubtless her son would have been the favorite child. She could have gotten sweet revenge, but this was not the motive of her heart. What a woman! That was a priestly act, an act of sacrificial intervention that changed the course of the nation.
The Paradigm of the Forerunner: Preparing the Way for the Lord
The fourth identity out of which we function in the prophetic is that of the forerunner. This is the anointing of John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the Lord. God says He does nothing without revealing it first to the prophets (Amos 3:7). The forerunner voice heralds a change of season, such as the second coming of the Lord. One of the distinctions of the forerunner in the Bible is that this person spends an unusual amount of time alone with the Lord, in solitude. They separate themselves violently from the norm. By violently, I mean it takes a focused, deliberate, violent turning away from other things - good things, permissible things - to walk in this reality.
We are inundated with so many choices in our society. We find ourselves wasting hours trying to make choices about things that we do not need, listening to voices that are at best distractions, and at worst, harmful to us. How do we teach our children to be forerunners? How do we help them recognize the voice of the Lord within them, and become voices themselves, instead of just echoes of our pop culture? We have to model the lifestyle of the forerunner, living simply, praying, fasting, and separating ourselves from even the good, to cultivate the only necessary thing.
I know a mother of four who gets up at 4:30 a.m. to spend hours in her prayer closet before the family wakes. This is an example of the spiritual violence that Jesus referenced when he was talking about John the Baptist. It is violent on the flesh. This woman separates herself in order to cry out to God, and to hear from Him, as it says in Hosea 2:14, "I will lead her into solitude, and there I will speak to her heart." I love that!
The forerunner proclaims good news. It is a happy message. It is a message that removes the barriers in people's hearts to receiving the truth of the love of the Lord, so that He will be received. It is a voice that, when spoken, will change your life and the world that you live in. John the Baptist was a joyful man, and his message was extremely powerful and compelling. He retreated to the deserts, about five hours outside of Judea and Jerusalem, but people came on foot, in the heat, to hear him. There was a spirit of repentance that accompanied his ministry. The people repented and were baptized. And he was a voice that remained steady in the face of persecution. He prophesied even under the pressure of the Scribes and Pharisees, who spoke strongly against him.
Joseph as an Example for End-Time Forerunners
In the Old Testament, Joseph is an example of the forerunner. As you know, he had dreams of his own, as a kid - dreams that were truly given him by God. But he spoke of them, and his brothers hated him for what he revealed about his destiny, and because he was their father's favorite. They conveniently got rid of him, and he spent his life locked up in prison and in servitude, being prepared. I don't believe he had any idea that he was going to deliver a nation, and his own family, in the future. It took years of being shaped and molded, in jail, to make him a deliverer. We dislike that part of the journey, but it is necessary for the prophet. Joseph's wilderness was so very long, like King David's. Both of them were given charge over nations after their wilderness experience. David was anointed king, and then spent years running for his life from Saul. Like Joseph, he had prophetic promises. You know they both had to be crying out to God in their hearts, saying, "What about Your promises?" And God was saying something like, "Not yet. More preparation is needed." I also love that!
I believe Joseph is an especially important example for end-time forerunners. He was brought before Pharaoh to interpret a dream, and he was under a great deal of pressure. He could have had his life taken at any moment for practically no reason at all. He was nothing but a prisoner, a foreigner, and meant nothing to Pharaoh. But Joseph had nothing to lose, and he spoke by the Spirit of God to Pharaoh. This is a critical example because some of us are going to be called out of our wilderness to prophesy on the spot to kings and leaders of nations. We are going to be no-name strangers, and we are going to get to interpret the signs of the times under pressure by the world, inspired by the Spirit of God. We are in our wilderness now, being prepared, individually and corporately. I believe the forerunner identity is corporate, as well as individual, and it is for the nations.
The Values of Intimacy and Accuracy
When we are speaking of what we value in prophetic ministry, we need also to address the values of accuracy and intimacy. Prophecy is meant to build up and encourage (Eph. 2:22; I Cor. 14:3). Although accuracy is highly valued, finely detailed and highly accurate prophetic words are not the "ultimate" goal. We need intimacy as well as accuracy. Both have to work together. The goal of our prophesying is that people would come into an intimate encounter with the Lord. Intimacy on the part of the prophetic minister brings forth accuracy in their ministry.
God's heart on this is expressed in Deuteronomy 13:1-5. "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods' - which you have not known - 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul."
It is possible to have your heart led astray in the process of receiving a word that is a sign and wonder. Suppose someone comes to you and really 'reads your mail,' as we say. They tell you facts about your history, your future, and the secrets of your heart. But rather than drawing you closer to the heart of God, the encounter leads your attention away from the Lord and you become unduly focused on the person who delivers the word. Perhaps you come to depend on them in the place of the Lord, or you develop an unholy ambition to attain to their anointing. It is so important to keep all prophecy in perspective, remembering that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9), and that no prophetic encounter should lead us toward the messenger and away from the Lord.
At IHOP, we focus on the one thing first (Ps. 27:4); ministry is secondary. Jesus longs for us to know Him and abide in Him (Jn. 15:5). We behold Him, meditate on His goodness, His beauty, His redemption of us. He is the One who sings over us with the voice of the Father, the voice of the King, the voice of the Bridegroom, the voice of the Judge (Zeph. 3:17). We thirst for His affection. His goodness to us is clean, pure, not self-serving or manipulative. This overwhelms us, stuns us, and encourages us. It increases our longing to see His face, our longing for Him to come quickly!
"I love You, Lord, for Your gentle and humble spirit. Come quickly! We desire You, because You desire us. We press our hearts into Your knowledge (Eph. 1:17-19)."
Reposted from:
Thursday, February 14, 2008
A Company of People Who Prophesy
A Company of People Who Prophesy
by Dee Bennett
by Dee Bennett
Your Sons and Your Daughters Shall Prophesy
At the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, we believe strongly that God wants to bring forth a company of people who prophesy (Acts 2:17-21). My husband, Kirk Bennett, and I lead the prophecy teams which minister every week at IHOP-KC. The unique team dynamic that we have created takes the pressure off each team member to come up with 'a word' for each person who enters the rooms for ministry. It also allows a prophetic synergism to take place, in which team members are able to 'build upon' the ministry of one another to an individual, as the Holy Spirit reveals more. We are very excited about the anointing that is accompanying us as our teams step out to prophesy in God's kingdom.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments, there is a thread of revelation by which God makes it clear that He wants to and will raise up a company of prophets. In Numbers 11:29, Moses says, "Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!" Moses says this during the time that he is leading the Israelites in the wilderness. He was overwhelmed by the need of the people to hear the voice of God in their individual situations. The workload was just too great for one man.
In Joel 2:28, a prophecy which is quoted in Acts 2:17, God promises that all shall prophesy: "And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Then, in Revelation 10:11, John is given even a stronger command: "And he said to me, 'You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.'"
Here we see a progression that is very significant. Moses says basically, 'I wish all would prophesy.' Then several times in redemptive history God emphasizes a promise that all shall prophesy, and at the end of the inspired Scripture, commands that there will come a time when we must prophesy. This is not a peripheral issue in God's heart, but central. Those who worship Him prophesy. Those who have the indwelling Spirit prophesy.
The Communication of the Indwelling Holy Spirit
The angel in Revelation 19:10 tells John, "Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." You can't separate prophecy from worship. When you worship God, the spirit of prophecy is released, and it is the testimony of Jesus Christ, who is God, who dwells within you. Matthew 10:20 says, "For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." Often this communication from the Spirit within you begins as a vague impression. Pay close attention to this. Ask the Lord about these impressions. Pray about them, and see if you receive more. Don't discount impressions, for they may lead you into the very counsel of the Lord.
Meditate on these impressions and let the Holy Spirit give you more. Worship God intermittently, with long and loving meditation on the Scripture. This is how to begin to enter into intimacy with the Lord, and the fruit of this intimacy will release prophetic revelation for you or for others. Intimacy with the Lord is the wellspring out of which the fruit and gifts of the Spirit flow. We have to abide in the Vine, as Jesus says in John 15:5, or we can do nothing. And we want to be people who walk in the Spirit. We want to be people who hear from God, who do great exploits and see signs and wonders. We want to become the message we are speaking.
The Genuine Voice of the Prophetic
Intimacy with Jesus is required to carry the heart of one who prophesies. You can still be accurate in your information through seasons, even if your heart is growing cold and drifting far from the Lord. King Saul would be an example of this. He was not pursuing intimacy with God, but the Spirit fell on him, and he prophesied all night (1 Samuel 19:24). We need an up-to-date relationship with the Lord, daily abiding in the Vine. We are living in a day in which the prophetic and sorcery are evident in the land at the same time. Counterfeit voices are everywhere, espousing lies to lead the unsuspecting astray. We are going hard after the voice of the Lord in this hour, assured that we will hear His voice; as Jesus said, "Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice (Jn. 18:37)."
Jesus' words always spoke of the Father in heaven. He was always pointing people to the Father. His words were about the kingdom of God. Fortune telling and sorcery lead people to the one 'prophesying', drawing people to them and away from God. Prophecy is not self-seeking and it takes dying to self to speak on behalf of the Spirit of the Lord. We must know the difference to discern the genuine voice of the prophetic.
There are four identities, or paradigms, through which we teach our team members to prophesy. They are (1) the paradigm of the Son (one who knows God as Father), (2) the paradigm of the friend of the Bridegroom (one who respects and cherishes the Lamb's wife), (3) the paradigm of the priest (one who goes before the Throne on behalf of others), and (4) the paradigm of the forerunner (one who prepares the way of the Lord).
The Paradigm of the Son: Knowing God as a Loving Father
When a person ministers, their ministry is always influenced by their understanding of who God is. Our knowledge of God always needs to be growing and transforming us. Knowing that we are beloved of the Father just as Jesus was beloved of the Father is paramount. Jesus came to testify of the Father. We testify of the Father, just as Jesus did. If our view of God is harsh, critical, abandoning, or legalistic, our ministry and the way we live our lives will reflect that. But if we know in our hearts that God is a loving, tender Father and Shepherd who cares for our hearts and enjoys us, we will live and prophesy out of this reality.
We can look into the reality of Jesus and the Father, how close they were, and their love and intimacy. I look into this relationship, and see no veil between them, and how they always have perfectly clear communication. I love that! I can see reflected in the relationship of the Father and the Son the close communion that the Father desires to have with me.
You see, I have to know God as the One who wants to be near me, who wants to spend time with me, and who is preparing a place for me. I have to know that I am beautiful to God before I can see others as beautiful to Him. This transformation has to happen in our individual lives.
The Friend of the Bridegroom: Cherishing the Lamb's Wife
The friend of the Bridegroom identity flows out of the understanding that Jesus is the heavenly Bridegroom, the great Lover of souls who desired to be with us so fervently that He became human and shed His blood on the Cross to purchase us. The understanding of the bride is important to grasp here. We are the Lamb's bride, as is each person we minister to, potentially, even if they are not yet saved. We are speaking to the Lamb's wife when we prophesy. How would you speak to someone's wife? We want to speak over her the cherishing heart of the Lord. We must walk in the identity of a friend of the Bridegroom, one who woos her to the Lord, and celebrates her with Him. There is no place for criticism, judgment, or condemnation. Rather, she must be made to experience the fact that she is the most important person on His heart, that His banner over her is love, and that He is calling her away with Him. Jesus knew we were called Hephzibah - literally, "my delight is in her" (Is. 62:4).
The identity of the friend of the Bridegroom was expressed by John the Baptist in John 3:29, when he said, "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." Notice that the prophetic minister is not wooing the bride to himself or his ministry. He is a friend of the Bridegroom. However, he does stand and listen to the Bridegroom's heart for the bride, and he rejoices over it. This requires an active listening, a daily listening, in order to develop a heart that moves with the very passions of Jesus.
The identities of the bride and the friend of the Bridegroom are for each of us. Each person you prophesy to is the cherished bride of Jesus. The bride needs daily affection from the King. She can't live without Him, and He doesn't want a kingdom without her. He wants her leaning on Him, coming up from the wilderness (SOS 8:5). We were made to lean on Him, and He wants us to desire Him. The bride is also progressing in transformation. She is becoming progressively more and more like her Bridegroom. In Rev. 21:9, the bride has made herself ready. Part of this preparation is done when we prophesy to one another. We encourage, build up and strengthen the heart of the bride.
As He calls me beautiful and I truly know it, I begin to see others as beautiful!
The Paradigm of the Priest: Going Before the Throne for Others
The priestly identity is also woven heavily throughout the Old and New Testaments. The priest in the Old Testament had the function of coming before God on behalf of the people. Jesus becomes the great High Priest in the atonement, ever living to make intercession for us, standing before the Father. Second Chronicles 29:11 is a very powerful verse that describes the priestly function: to stand, to serve, to minister, and to burn before the Lord. This is a very personal call, as is the call to intimacy. No one can do this for you. You must stand. The Lord desires to hear your voice. You are the only one who can engage your own heart, and cause it to burn before Him.
Revelation 1:6 says Jesus made us kings and priests, or a kingdom of priests, to our God. In the Old Testament, all the prophets were priests. They spent hours standing before the Lord and telling Him how good He is. It was also their job to burn the sacrifice for sin. I believe this was often difficult for them, and they had to constantly check their hearts. For example, suppose my family, the Bennetts, came up to the temple to give our yearly atonement for sin, and all we brought were two little pigeons. I bet there were times the priests had to check their hearts. Suppose our family was very sinful that year and everyone knew it. Maybe the priest was tempted to think, "This is all they brought? They need to bring something more, like a fresh young bull." I really feel like the priests had to check their hearts when they came before the Lord on behalf of the people, asking themselves, 'Am I judging the people today?'
In the same way, being discerning, we discern sin in others. What is the priestly thing to do? We have to check our hearts, and go before the Lord in prayer on behalf of them. We need to ask the Lord why He is showing us this sin. Most of the time, it is only to pray for them. Very few times is it for any other reason, and never is it to go to another priest, and say, "Hey, do you know the Bennetts?", and talk about the negative things you see in their lives. It is difficult for us to understand the weightiness, the solemnity, of the responsibility we have to steward this information righteously. In the Old Testament, the high priest searched his heart before he entered the Holy of Holies. He knew the holiness of the Lord could kill him in that place.
The priest carried a vivid understanding of the sin in the land. And if they stopped going before the Lord, the kingdom went down. If the priests became corrupt as Eli's sons, so went the kingdom. There were also times when the king went to war, ignoring God by not consulting the priests. It did not go well for the nation. My point is that being a priest before God on behalf of our families, neighbors, and nations is a weighty and powerful calling. Like Hannah, you can change a nation by functioning in the priestly anointing before God. Hannah cried out to the Lord in her barrenness, and He gave her a child, Samuel. She realized the barrenness of the land was greater than her own, and she gave Samuel to minister to the Lord. She had endured merciless cruelty from her husband's other wife because she was barren for so long, yet she chose to promise her child to the Lord. She didn't hold on to him, to gloat or compete. She was the favorite wife, and doubtless her son would have been the favorite child. She could have gotten sweet revenge, but this was not the motive of her heart. What a woman! That was a priestly act, an act of sacrificial intervention that changed the course of the nation.
The Paradigm of the Forerunner: Preparing the Way for the Lord
The fourth identity out of which we function in the prophetic is that of the forerunner. This is the anointing of John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the Lord. God says He does nothing without revealing it first to the prophets (Amos 3:7). The forerunner voice heralds a change of season, such as the second coming of the Lord. One of the distinctions of the forerunner in the Bible is that this person spends an unusual amount of time alone with the Lord, in solitude. They separate themselves violently from the norm. By violently, I mean it takes a focused, deliberate, violent turning away from other things - good things, permissible things - to walk in this reality.
We are inundated with so many choices in our society. We find ourselves wasting hours trying to make choices about things that we do not need, listening to voices that are at best distractions, and at worst, harmful to us. How do we teach our children to be forerunners? How do we help them recognize the voice of the Lord within them, and become voices themselves, instead of just echoes of our pop culture? We have to model the lifestyle of the forerunner, living simply, praying, fasting, and separating ourselves from even the good, to cultivate the only necessary thing.
I know a mother of four who gets up at 4:30 a.m. to spend hours in her prayer closet before the family wakes. This is an example of the spiritual violence that Jesus referenced when he was talking about John the Baptist. It is violent on the flesh. This woman separates herself in order to cry out to God, and to hear from Him, as it says in Hosea 2:14, "I will lead her into solitude, and there I will speak to her heart." I love that!
The forerunner proclaims good news. It is a happy message. It is a message that removes the barriers in people's hearts to receiving the truth of the love of the Lord, so that He will be received. It is a voice that, when spoken, will change your life and the world that you live in. John the Baptist was a joyful man, and his message was extremely powerful and compelling. He retreated to the deserts, about five hours outside of Judea and Jerusalem, but people came on foot, in the heat, to hear him. There was a spirit of repentance that accompanied his ministry. The people repented and were baptized. And he was a voice that remained steady in the face of persecution. He prophesied even under the pressure of the Scribes and Pharisees, who spoke strongly against him.
Joseph as an Example for End-Time Forerunners
In the Old Testament, Joseph is an example of the forerunner. As you know, he had dreams of his own, as a kid - dreams that were truly given him by God. But he spoke of them, and his brothers hated him for what he revealed about his destiny, and because he was their father's favorite. They conveniently got rid of him, and he spent his life locked up in prison and in servitude, being prepared. I don't believe he had any idea that he was going to deliver a nation, and his own family, in the future. It took years of being shaped and molded, in jail, to make him a deliverer. We dislike that part of the journey, but it is necessary for the prophet. Joseph's wilderness was so very long, like King David's. Both of them were given charge over nations after their wilderness experience. David was anointed king, and then spent years running for his life from Saul. Like Joseph, he had prophetic promises. You know they both had to be crying out to God in their hearts, saying, "What about Your promises?" And God was saying something like, "Not yet. More preparation is needed." I also love that!
I believe Joseph is an especially important example for end-time forerunners. He was brought before Pharaoh to interpret a dream, and he was under a great deal of pressure. He could have had his life taken at any moment for practically no reason at all. He was nothing but a prisoner, a foreigner, and meant nothing to Pharaoh. But Joseph had nothing to lose, and he spoke by the Spirit of God to Pharaoh. This is a critical example because some of us are going to be called out of our wilderness to prophesy on the spot to kings and leaders of nations. We are going to be no-name strangers, and we are going to get to interpret the signs of the times under pressure by the world, inspired by the Spirit of God. We are in our wilderness now, being prepared, individually and corporately. I believe the forerunner identity is corporate, as well as individual, and it is for the nations.
The Values of Intimacy and Accuracy
When we are speaking of what we value in prophetic ministry, we need also to address the values of accuracy and intimacy. Prophecy is meant to build up and encourage (Eph. 2:22; I Cor. 14:3). Although accuracy is highly valued, finely detailed and highly accurate prophetic words are not the "ultimate" goal. We need intimacy as well as accuracy. Both have to work together. The goal of our prophesying is that people would come into an intimate encounter with the Lord. Intimacy on the part of the prophetic minister brings forth accuracy in their ministry.
God's heart on this is expressed in Deuteronomy 13:1-5. "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods' - which you have not known - 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul."
It is possible to have your heart led astray in the process of receiving a word that is a sign and wonder. Suppose someone comes to you and really 'reads your mail,' as we say. They tell you facts about your history, your future, and the secrets of your heart. But rather than drawing you closer to the heart of God, the encounter leads your attention away from the Lord and you become unduly focused on the person who delivers the word. Perhaps you come to depend on them in the place of the Lord, or you develop an unholy ambition to attain to their anointing. It is so important to keep all prophecy in perspective, remembering that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9), and that no prophetic encounter should lead us toward the messenger and away from the Lord.
At IHOP, we focus on the one thing first (Ps. 27:4); ministry is secondary. Jesus longs for us to know Him and abide in Him (Jn. 15:5). We behold Him, meditate on His goodness, His beauty, His redemption of us. He is the One who sings over us with the voice of the Father, the voice of the King, the voice of the Bridegroom, the voice of the Judge (Zeph. 3:17). We thirst for His affection. His goodness to us is clean, pure, not self-serving or manipulative. This overwhelms us, stuns us, and encourages us. It increases our longing to see His face, our longing for Him to come quickly!
"I love You, Lord, for Your gentle and humble spirit. Come quickly! We desire You, because You desire us. We press our hearts into Your knowledge (Eph. 1:17-19)."
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