Satan is not concerned that we begin to swell up with pride at our great revelation. God is.

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.  2 Cor. 12:7

God has taken this task upon Himself, to keep us from the sin of exalting ourselves.  Thank you God for being that kind of God.  We love You, Your faithfulness to us is a consuming fire, that we desperately need.

Psalm 34 this poor man=The righteous

Blessed time  of Bible study last night.  Looking at Psalm 34 and noted that verse 6 and 17 are similar.  Verse 6  This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
And saved him out of all his troubles.  ("poor" could also be translated afflicted according to the side notes)

Verse 17  The righteous cry, and the Lord hears

And delivers them out of all their troubles.

We noted that the poor/afflicted man and the righteous man seem to be interchangeable.

This led to the thought that the only thing that makes us righteous is admitting and knowing that we are not righteous and that we need God to come to our rescue.  

What a blessing to know a God who knows us so well that He had a plan in place to handle our failures.

Also the Bible study made me hungry to do a deeper study of the word "crushed" in this verse Psalm 34:18 "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

And saves those who are crushed in spirit."  I am wondering if it is related to this word in Isaiah 53:5 "But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed."    So we were blessed by our study and left hungering for a greater and deeper understanding...I am pretty sure that is the way a Bible Study is supposed to be!

Unity and giftings in the kahal of God

UNITY and giftings in the kahal of God.

Years ago in YWAM I was taught “Unity is corporate humility”.  I am just beginning to be given revelation as to the meaning of this. 

Unity in marriage is so hard to attain and maintain.  That is just 2 people!  We are called to unity in local, corporate expressions of the Body of Christ.  So, it is impossible to achieve in marriage, and the sooner we come to that “death” the better, how much harder is it among a group of “individually gifted” brethren, who have to submit their giftings to the Lord and to each other?

Part of the truth of the gathering of God’s redeemed at a local level, commonly misnamed the “church”, is being in each other’s lives speaking the truth in love.  All the giftings working together, each one submitted, even to the voice of the Lord speaking through the youngest, newest spirit led member of the group.

“Pastor” is one of the giftings but somewhere along the line, OUT OF FEAR, it became THE gifting.  The other “5 fold” ministries folded and only this one remained.  Then adding insult to injury, we began to educate and train people for this position and it became an unhappy mixture of “gifting and education” and God hates mixture.  The “Pastor” is an important balance in the five-fold giftings that God gave for the gathering of His people, but all by itself it is not a balance but a hindrance to the move of the Holy Spirit!  The “Pastor” is always about protecting the sheep, guarding, keeping everything safe and sanitary.  “Teachers” stretch people, challenge their understanding of God, push people to a deeper place in God, make them uncomfortable and encourage “lively arguments” over the things of God that we are passionate about.  “Evangelists” keep pushing our hearts over the “four walls” and out into the streets, they have an anointing to make such acts normal and every day, they reveal the heart of God for the lost and keep it ever in the forefront of the local work of God.  “Prophets” reveal what God has done in the past, what He is doing in the present and what He will do in the future, they are key in preparing the Body for the future, but they are also equally key in equipping the Body to truly and fully live in the moment.  “Apostles” are (to me) the thumb, being “in God” in such a way as to demonstrate, the “apostolic meekness” that spends itself making the other giftings more effective.  Keeping the other giftings in balance and sharp.  Guiding the local body and connecting them with other bodies or gatherings to strengthen connections and to open the eyes to the greater work of God, the “salvation history” living and active among us.

Only prayer with humility can be used of God to turn this ship around.  I have no idea what that will look like, but I feel it will be “small” and broken and humble and not at all like what we are currently used to.

Tozer being Tozer

"The scribe tells us what he has read, and the prophet tells what 
he has seen. The distinction is not an imaginary one. Between 
the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is 
a difference as wide as the sea. We are overrun today with 
orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they? The hard 
voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the church 
waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the 
veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the wonder that is God."
-A.W. Tozer

"We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a 
compromise but an ultimatum."
-A.W. Tozer

And a great and true message from Dalton Thomas 
here:

http://www.daltonthomas.org/blog/2015/1/7/recovering-the-doctrine-of-the-vengeance-of-god

LOVE TRUTH - Art Katz

"Truth is expensive and painful, and yet I have not an end of praise for the God who is the God of truth, and whose Spirit is eminently and first the Spirit of truth before He is the Spirit of power.  And more than we have realized the absence of Pentecostal power is in exact proportion to the absence of the Spirit of truth in the earth and among God's people.  And if you want again to see Apostolic glory, which is more than "Amens" and "Hallelujahs", if you want to see again the shadow of a simple fisherman falling on the sick and healing them if you want to see signs and wonders following I think that God is going to have to restore the Spirit of truth to us in such proportion as that if any man come among us and give a part and allow that to appear for the whole, the Spirit of God shall kill him on the spot and he should be carried out feet first.  How many of us would be willing for the restoration of the severity of God, the divine severity of God against a partial lie in order to enjoy again the magnitude of the glory of the Spirit of power that existed in the apostolic age?  Do you hear what I am saying?  There is a world dying for the want of the demonstration of this power, and it shall not return until God's people are willing also for the magnitude of truth, because the Spirit of power is first the Spirit of truth and when that Dove departs He takes His power with Him also.  And if you will understand this and I... I am not trying to be loving, I am loving...how much in our charismatic sessions ... I am not speaking about these immediate days, but experiences that we have all had, when we come away with a leaden feeling and the "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" rattle in our ears, but some how our souls have not been uplifted, how much of that has had been an  exercise seeking to fill the void, which would be filled had the Holy Dove  been there in fullness...  Oh children love truth.  Love truth and you will not love it except you be wiling to suffer for it.  And if you are willing to suffer for it, you will find yourself at the cross.  For surely is there one among us in whom there is no deceit, no acting, no posturing, no deception, no subtlety of lies, no ambition of heart, no braggadocio and vehement statement, "Yea though all the world deny you, yet will  I deny you never."  There is a cross to which God is bidding his people come, if they are to be established in this last age, from which we shrink because it is painful, but when we see Him who suffered for the truth, when we see the God who is truth, crucified we are willing also to enter into that portion of suffering which is ours.  We can say with Paul, "that the suffering of the present time is not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."  (Suffering and glory)   Art Katz  transcribed by me over a period of about 30 minutes because I found it to be soooo very precious.  the message is
"The Cross of Christ 2 of 3"
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=21349&commentView=itemComments

End of the year thoughts

Year ending thoughts...

14 and ½ years and still have my “learner's permit” in the marriage license. I think that is what they should hand you when you first get married a learner's permit, because a license implies, “you got this” and about 2 days into it, (if your eyes are open) you realize, “I soooooo don't 'got this'.”

The latest lesson has been a deep and good one.

We were asked on a Sunday morning by the Associate Pastor, “Who have you been overlooking?” Sunday morning, seemed like a good message, and so I began looking around. Nothing. Then about 2 days later my notes fell out of my Bible and I asked God again. (God smiled, because He likes to answer us when we come back and ask the questions again.) “Your wife”... “You treat her like she is the one person in the world (and maybe the kids too, be careful) who you need to correct and “keep her head from getting too big.” Months ago, God said to follow the advice of Ann Voskamp, “praise her and hug her 4 times a day” …. Well you may as well tell a caterpillar to fly!!, but now with this new revelation and some repentance and the grace to fall and get back up, this has been the plan. Even in the “trying and the failing” of it, a “new and glorious morn'” has dawned in our marriage.

All praise to Him, and my apologies to anyone to whom I have ever given marriage advice, ESPECIALLY to those to whom I gave advice when I was not even married. What a proud, ridiculous, idiot!

So here's to a new beginning, here's to a learner's permit that never expires!

All full of the Holy Spirit, just had a 'visitation' riding high then I came down the mountain and crashed, just like the disciples, my job, my marriage, are designed by God to give me opportunity to realize the depth of my need. To put me in a place of realizing my total destitution and my continual, I say, continual, need of accessing the resurrection life. Nothing else will “work”. I invent formula's and concoct plans and do do do a lot of stuff and it is all for nothing, because only the resurrection life of Jesus flowing out of my death to self, my realization of the reality of the total destitution of all that I have to offer, only there, only there at the foot of the cross does anything “good” originate.

Genesis 33 Jacob and Esau. Jacob, limping, broken, going out first to absorb what could have very possibly been the wrath of Esau. Jacob, bowing to him repeatedly, telling Esau that he was no longer a conniving cheater, in acknowledging to the angel, his name, his name was changed. Jacob was given the gift of seeing Esau's face as if it were the face of God.

A truly broken "church" disarms the resistance of Israel.    A gathering of people released to a love of God that is unconditional, not looking at "who's in and who's out" based on some virtue, or correct doctrine or any other thing that would be trusted, except the living God who raises the dead.  The pride of the power that is going to be broken includes many "good things"
all of which fall short of the ONE thing, the best thing, the only thing, the resurrection life of Jesus Christ flowing in and through a believer and a body of believers.

John 13 Jesus Knowing He is a Son, was free to be a slave.

Oh for a "living sacrifice" that does not talk back to or argue with sovereignty.  Have Thine own way Lord, Have Thine own way!   There is a war, but there is a rest in the war.  Works that are no longer mingled or mixed.  Seal it Lord, Give it Lord!

Holy Ghost the movie, that was a gift my wife gave me for Christmas. I have watched it twice already, it is not perfect and I am not looking for perfect. It was a beautiful thing to watch and uplifting and challenging. It touched me and goaded me on, so it is a good thing.

Small gathering-- Our family journeyed to a Christmas Eve service at the largest church in our area and it made me aware that a work has been started in me to no longer be content with “the stage” and the “audience” type of service. The Bible seems to make it clear that we are to come together in a small enough venue that 'each one' could bring a psalm, a hymn, a spiritual song. 'Each one' would come in to the service “prayed up” and ready to be used by God to minister to others and to the Lord. Our giftings would flow and grow and as we get too many people to allow this to happen another small group would be released from there. That is my vision not sure how it will all play out, I have no desire to run ahead of the grace of God. 

Matthew 15:13 and One tree

Got this this morning listening to Art Katz and i'll post it

 here. 

"God is absolute and He is full of mercy, no flesh can live 

that out, no flesh can make that real, but only the 

resurrection life of God. No effort of our own can "behold

the 

kindness and the severity of God", only Him, only His life,

 Father forgive us and break us take us through death to

 resurrection for your glory.


and

Matthew 15:13 "Jesus said, , “Every plant that my heavenly

 Father has not planted will be rooted up. " Praise God for

 the truth that we are grafted into the one tree, Israel, and

 their promises and their blessings, and in the end the

 preterist and replacement tree will be rooted up, BY HIM!!