The Missing Influence

If I step back and take a good look at the goings on in the simple church,  as well as many other church (grouped gatherings) movements,  I see people, endowed by the grace of God with an insight into the way God intended things to operate among peoples and nations, an ability to discern truth and righteousness,  a generous heart, and an understanding of the value of life and the individual.    

These are good people who are valuable to all peoples and the nations of the earth because of these things, but who often have become focused inwardly on what they do as a fellowship and what they do within their faith group, rather than on establishing the good principles of truth and justice, fairness, rights and responsibilities that belong to each person where they live, especially in government and in business. 

I recently listened to the first lecture in the free Constitution 101 series of Hillsdale College online. I was struck by the in depth thought of those who founded our nation, and how deeply their faith was interwoven thru the development of the plans on how we would be governed. They did not just establish this nation to be free of religious persecution, but rather to implement the principles of government that are ordained to make men free to serve both God and each other.  

If governments are ministries of God for good, church people are needed there, especially simple church people.  God has given the earth to the sons of men, and daughters too,  but we often let it run amok without any voice for truth and righteousness and the good that God intended for us.  We squabble in facebook and in online blogs about things that are the Lord’s business to correct and to establish.  Did the Lord Jesus not say that he would build his church and that the gates of hell would be invaded by it?   We have left the gates of hell alone to keep the hearts and minds of people entrapped by deceptive doctrines about government.   How do we get our attention back on the things that affect how we live in this world, and the world we leave to our children? 

We do a disservice to the plans and purposes of God when we leave government to others and focus our energies instead on how we do church.  We should not be fear mongers,  or slanderers,  or people of discontent,  but we need to take up the charge of establishing our towns and our counties, our states and our nation to operate the way that God intended, and not to be shy about it.  We were made to be a blessing in the earth.   The preacher used to be a man of influence in our towns,  but we are each called to be the preachers, the evangelists, the disciple making people.  Good government is really about discipleship.  If we leave the discipleship of the world to others,  we have an enemy who will take up where we have left off. 

The Path of Prayer

The Path of Prayer

When you pray, you are touching heaven. You run to the throne of grace that you might find mercy and grace to help in time of need. Touch the throne of heaven with an open heart that will receive. Open up your heart and let the sunshine in. When we pray, we commune with God. He not only hears us, but we hear Him because He speaks. And when He speaks His words are spirit and they are life. Our spirit hears them, more than hears them, receives them, and so we speak them. When we do, we release them in this world to accomplish that which He has sent them forth to do.

Is anyone sick among you? Pray the prayer of faith, hearing the spirit of God and rendering the words that He speaks and the Lord will raise up the sick, and if they have any sin, it will be forgiven them. Is this a time of trouble? Seek the Lord. Speak as He commands, and the waters of life will gush forth from heaven. He will bring life to this dying world thru the rock of Jesus Christ by the words that flow from your heart and your mouth. The Rock lives within you.

It is out of the heart the mouth speaks. Be quick to hear.  Open your heart to his grace and to his mercy. Speak those things that are from above. They are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Listen for them. Listen in prayer. Not quietly, but speaking with the Lord, allowing him to put the words in your heart and in your mouth. These are the words of the kingdom of heaven.

For with the heart man believes, and with the mouth man speaks to salvation, and healing, and deliverance, prosperity, and peace, righteousness, and joy. Pray without ceasing, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Did you need a reason to pray in another tongue? This is it.



The Plans

I wish I understood what magnificence he planned for me.

I wish too, I understood, what wonders planned for you.

If I could see where he has gone, and where he leads me to,

Then I might be what he will be, because he's taken mine.

What is it Lord that makes me look, at heavens so far out,

And yearns to know, how far they go, and what it’s all about.

I cannot see where you will lead, I cannot call your name,

Because you are so very high, and I so small, the same.

I cannot breathe, because your heights have taken breath away,

And yet I ponder still the word that calls me from them now.

You are so high, and lifted up, and rest upon that throne,

And yet you raise and lift me up, to sit with you alone.

From there I see more clearly still, the plan you made for me.

And know this journeys but a step into your own glory.

Praying is Permission

We went out last night to Ned Houk Park to see the star fields. 
The Milky Way is beyond amazing -
     so vast,  so many stars, so many galaxies. 
The God who made all those made me and lives within me. 

This morning when I considered problems that need solving,
He spoke to my heart and said,  "Give me permission".

This God of all Glory asked permission to bring heaven to earth. 

If I pray asking for the earthly things I need,  knowing that prayer

     is giving Him permission to do them, 
     then it is easy to pray believing. 

Now I understand why prayer is so necessary. 
He wants to be moved. 

The Lord of the Star Fields needs permission to move on earth. 

Jesus prayed this way. 

     "Our Father who art in heaven,... thy kingdom come, 

       thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,".

This request is of course the will of God.

Asking gives heaven permission to bring it into
       the garden of my life. 

I am sure that its the same for you.   Amazing Grace. 

So Grateful...

I am so grateful that God does not change what His word says for me...

And... I am also grateful that when I believe what His word says, 

He will prove what His word says to me.  

God is faithful.   Be grateful. 

Man and the Star Fields

I asked the Lord of the star fields, why are they there?

Why did you put so many of them there?

And he said, “Because I had the space to do it. “

They are so many stars,  all sorts and kinds.

Intricate things, unusual things, everything one can imagine.

Lord, weren’t we enough for you?

And he said, “I made you last.”

The focal point of the heavens,

The yearning of the heart of God,

All reaching across time and all space

To touch God’s man.

I think perhaps we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Forgiving River

I was tired last night, so wasted time watching TV, but there was a change in the usual condeming guilt that follows because of the unfinished tasks and the lack of time spent with important people, the Lord included.
This time I went outside and watched the heavens. I considered the vastness of the galaxies and the glory of God. There came a sense of forgiveness, not just mine, but like a river, one that overflows all the error and lack of this life. It was mine to immerse in, and of course, it also flows over all those I know.
Forgiveness is much more than being forgiven when we are sorry. It has a washing power that takes away the strength of the things  that come to overpower me. It diminishes them even when I have yielded to them. They have less strength against me.

Forgiveness gives me peace. It feels like love.

Love Listens

I am overwhelmed with the awareness of the love of God for people. Today in my office sat a tall man, in his mid thirties, having a broken heart and a rebellious attitude. He has lost more money, mostly thru his own foolishness and the corruptness of others, many of whom are church goers, than most people will ever earn. He had some land to sell. Katharine and I listened to his story.

He was foolish with his inheritance, and prideful. He bought everything he could, and gave away much. But his heart, angry and yet hungry, was still wanting to know the God of his creation.

As we talked and he bragged about his rebellion, his encounters with the sherriff and his in-laws, he seemed to want us to say he was an outlaw. But, we didn't. Every now and then we would talk about the reality of the life of God and the person of God. His eyes would redden and get misty. He bragged on his sufferings as though that would earn him a place with God, but we didn't let that pass. There is only one who has suffered to earn us that place, and it was a free gift to him from God alone.

Then, we told him he could hear God. He got a startled expression... is that true? Why hadn't he ever heard him before? Because of what we have learned, it was now easier to answer. He had heard him, but he wasn't listening for God. So we told him a little of how to be honest with God, and how to listen.

He left our office to go back about his business, but I expect to hear that something changed.
He came from no where, stayed a long time, and we kept seeing that God wanted to keep talking to him, wooing him, paying attention to him. We should have been doing other things, but the awareness that God loved him constrained us. I would not exchange what happens in our little office for all the church services in town.

Falling Down and Getting Up

When you tell about the life and peace that you have because of the Lord, you gave the word of God. You are standing strong. Full of faith and assurance about God's power towards you. It is the word of heaven. You tell what heaven is producing by the goodness of God. And we love to hear it.

But, how offensive it is to God's enemies that you should declare the goodness of God outloud in the earth. How frustrating that you don't leave off the declaration, even when things happen that seem to steal away the evidence of what you have said.

However, if you cannot be persuaded from your course of speaking, then perhaps you can be persuaded that what happended was from the Lord, or at least allowed by the Lord. Anything to make him seem a little less good. Anything to take away just a little from the glory of his name. God's enemies hate his name.

But, James is quite clear in chapter 1:
12 Blessed is the man that endures temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. 13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

Christ is in us, the hope of glory, and we have already understood that whoever we forgive, he forgives. Therefore, what we allow, he allows. If we enter the direction our lust of the flesh would have us go, then we have allowed the tempter to entice us. And we have that right. The Lord has given us the rights of heaven. We will bear the fruit of the truth that we embrace. Therefore, James continues to warn us about our flesh. Because the Lord of heaven does not change, he cannot be moved from his goodness towards us:

15 Then when lust hath conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. 16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

The Lord does not change in the outpouring of goodness and gifts upon us. If we sense a change, it has been that we changed direction. This is not the purpose for which he has spoken to us from heaven and drawn us up to be seated with him in heavenly places so that heaven may invade earth. We are to be fruit bearers of the word of his goodness made alive by the Holy Ghost. At no time is it his intention to have us live in anything but the kingdom of God.

18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. 19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20 For the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God. 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Our goodness is a display of his goodness. And if we experience anything else, we need to receive - fully believe - the engrafted word at every moment of our day. Our life and peace depend upon that word of his goodness to be operational in us. We need to live from heaven, to be elevated there by the Holy Spirit, and to remain there according to what he has said. And if we are led astray from heaven's influence by the pressures of the flesh, then it is what we have allowed. He is holy. He did not change, not for a minute.

The one thing that he has allowed is that we should live in the flesh for this time, for the benefit of those who are here that don't yet know him and have not yet experienced heaven. And the day we stand against our own flesh and respond in love in spite of persecution or offense, that is the day the world sees his goodness in the fruit of his creatures which we are. That is the day they see Jesus.

How high are the heavens

Last week I visited the Hubble Telescope site and found out about how many galaxies we know from the reaches of space where the scope can see. There are so many that even the galaxies can't be easily counted. And in each one are billions of stars. Not millions, not thousands... but billions. Does that stretch your mind? If not, you are not seeing out beyond yourself.

All this array, so vast, so immense, is still in order. Still held together by the harmonic that runs the universe. Ha, I used that word so easily in college. Now, I see its bigger than the word itself. My God made it all. And as small as I am, in the midst of billions, yet he has let me know him and ask him for my simple needs.

If all this order and expanse can be handled by him. What am I worried about? I will pray as he directs, and he will answer me. Just because he wants to... He loves me. and you.