Focus

​   When you choose to praise God in the midst of a storm, the storm loses its power and authority over you. When you focus on the storm you become part of it. It is obvious that this nation is in a storm right now, and our tenancy as humans is to try to identify and focus on all the problems. Like the disciples, we are very good at identifying the wind and the waves and all the reasons why things are bad, but there is so little focus on the one who is always good. 

   It amazes me that any one of the twelve disciples would have been trying to kill each other any given day before their encounter with Jesus because of the enormous differences in their backgrounds. Yet when Jesus, the REAL presence of God stepped on the scene, something became more important than their differences. When true prospect comes, we realize we were all made in his imagine, and we stop trying to make others in our image.

   There is aligning force that takes place when you get your focus right. This is why Jesus was able to calm the storm. He was able to release peace from the abundance of peace that came from his relationship with his Father. Many of us see parts of our world seemingly spinning out of control around us, and yet, all we can release is more fear and anxiety because that is all we have in our hearts. Ultimately, this is because our focus is on the problems and not the answer. You can only release what you have. This is what Jesus meant when he said “If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.”

   I will not be impressed with the Devil’s work, because I have a book that says that he and his works were defeated 2000 years ago on a tree. He can’t undo that. The devil can make a lot of noise, and trick us into co-laboring with him by getting us to focus on him and the problems he is causing, but he can’t undo the Cross. Hate might be basking in the spot light we are currently giving it, but that doesn’t mean that it has defeated us or the blood of Christ. It just means it is a good lier, and we as a people are still falling for it.

   Jesus said before he left that all authority had been handed back to him, but then he passed it on to us. When Jesus was here, he said he was the light of the world, but when he left he said you are the light of the world. The question is are you acting as light, or acting as darkness? We can only release what we are aware of, and we will become like what we behold. The enemy would like us to become more aware and focused on darkness rather than light so we will reproduce more darkness. I am not talking about being in denial about the problem, I am talking about becoming consumed by the answer. It is the love and presence of our daddy in heaven that is the answer.

   I am not saying there are not things that need to change. What I am saying is when you try to change yourself and those around you in response to darkness, you usually end up with more darkness. When we respond to darkness with our own reasoning, it usually ends up in finger pointing. We become “experts” in knowing what is wrong with the world and how to fix it. The best the the flesh can produce is more flesh, and flesh is always carnal. Our response needs to be based off of his greatness and light. The only way we are going to produce the fruits of the spirit is by abiding in him.  Jesus said apart from me you will produce nothing.

   True peace and love grows from surrender to God and his goodness. Anyone with this surrender won’t be beating others down with their expertise, because surrender doesn’t produce pride or a know-it-all attitude. Surrender to God produces a humble attitude that washes the feet of those who are cursing you. Jeaus said bless those who curse you! Could you image what it would look like if that attitude caught on in the political realm of this country? Even if just the Christians would begin to live this way, the results would be unmeasurable.

   My prayer is as that the people of God, we would learn to know who God really is. We show so often by the fruit of our lives that we don’t know Him or his ways, or the Covenant that we now live in. When we begin to be light, it will pave the way for our nation to come into light.

God is NOW!

I have a friend at my Bible school that was born with one leg shorter than the other. One of my other classmates prayed for her, and while he prayed, her leg grew out instantly.

There is a word that has been in my heart for a while now, and it is God is NOW! There are many of you who have turned sour on God because of your past experiences with religion. You were shown an imperfect view of him, and you have judged him because some actions and teachings of those who claim to be his followers, and have not given him a second chance.

I discovered these three categories that people in the church sometimes fall into that hurts the image of God. (As a disclaimer, I know that some are going to miss understand at first, don’t worry, I know about Rev 1:4,8, just hang with me..) Do not feel condemned by these! Just about all of us, including myself, have spent time in each one of these areas. My point is not to make anyone feel bad, but to point out some traps that we can fall into that will cause us to miss God when he is right in front of us.

The first is a group that worships God in the past. They take a move of God from the past, and use it to create a formula, so they can try to continually replicate the good ol days. They think that all change is of the devil, and God couldn’t possible do things in a new way.

Understand that God will never change the Bible or its message, which would be wrong change. But there is a right kind of change that God uses to reach different people groups.

The problem is this first group creates man-made traditions, boundaries and doctrines that are meant to “protect” the anointing, but actually end up replacing the Holy Spirits leadership. There are many denominations today that began as Spirit led/filled groups, but because they tried to put God in the small box of their understanding, they are now dry and dying.

The second group worships God of the future. This group is always putting God in a far off, unrelatable place that will happen someday. They think that all we are trying to do now is survive. We have to suffer, grope for hope, be miserable and fearful, but one day it will all be okay. We will all understand in the great by and by!

This group keeps praying that God would hurry up and return because they are convinced that the evil present in the world is overpowering the church. They feel hopeless and fearful when they see the world events because they don’t understand who lives on the inside of them.

The third group is kind of a counterfeit, but they don’t know it. They claim to believe that God is not only in the past and future, but he is present now, but the fruit of their lives and thoughts do not show it. They will pray for you to be healed, but there is no shock or disappointment when nothing happens.

This third group is like a vacuum cleaner salesmen who comes and throws dirt on your floor, and says “this vacuum will sweep that up perfectly” but then walks away and doesn’t demonstrate it. When sickness, financial problems, or any other hardship comes against them they react exactly how the rest of the world reacts, with fear, stress and worry.

This may be the most harmful group. While the people who look to the past, and the people who look to the future do not do much to prove that God exists, they also don’t do much to disprove it. This third group that claims God does still do miracles now, but they cannot demonstrate it, confirming the doubts of the world that Christians are just crazy people hoping in fantasies. I have to confess this has been my story for much of my life, but I am no longer satisfied with it.

God is God of the now! Yes, he existed and did great things in the past, and there is much value in reviewing those things. Yes, he is in the future, and he is preparing a glorious dwelling for those who will accept him. But you can’t have a relationship with a memory from your past, or a story about what is going to happen in the future.

Those things are important, but they are abstract, and you cannot connect with them on a daily level. If you were lost and dying of thirst in a desert, would the water someone gave you two years ago, or the water someone would have given you two years in the future help you now? 

Jesus set the example of what the Christian life is suppose to look like. He, as the express image of the Father (Heb 1:3), took great concern for people’s needs, not just in the future, but in the present. He calmed their storms, healed all their diseases, fed them, and embraced them. Those who walked with him he instructed daily, giving insight into the heart of the father.

His example was always meant to be the “normal Christian life.” It is a life of demonstrating the power and love of God, setting people free of bondage, sickness, and oppression. He reminded of the past. He spoke about the future. But he brought the (present) presence of God where ever he went. In fact, he said the works he did in the present confirmed what he said about the future was true (John 10:37,38).

Jesus said in John 14 that he would not leave us as orphans. An orphan belonged to someone in the past, and may belong to someone in the future, but they are currently called orphans because they have no one to care for them now. The word orphan in the Greek means: parentless, comfortless, fatherless. Jesus said that he would pray to the father and he would send a helper (his Holy Spirit) to abide with us. The word “abide” means: not to depart, to continue to be present, to be held, kept, continually.

This is God the Fathers heart for all mankind. He desires to be with you right now where you are. Psalms 46 says, God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.

I thought it was funny it said a “very” present help, so I looked up the word very in Hebrew, and it means: exceedingly, abundantly, much, force. He is exceedingly, abundantly present for you. He isn’t hiding in the past and he isn’t just waiting for you in the future. He is present with you now.

There was a survey I heard recently that said that around eighty percent of people under around twenty five have never seen anything real in the church. (And we wonder why they are leaving so fast!) This is a terrible tragedy! For a long time I believed that it was better, and took more faith to believe in God without seeing any proof of his existence. Now I see that this mindset has become a wall that has kept people from seeking God they way he desires.

Aimee Semple McPherson, an amazing revivalist, grew up in a Christian home. But when she got older and realized that the miracles talked about in the Bible were not being demonstrated in the church in her day, she decided to become an atheist. She believed, either the entire Bible was true, or none of it was true.

Finally one night she said God, if there even is a God, reveal yourself to me. Do you know it takes more faith to pray a prayer like that than most churches demonstrate?

It takes much less faith to live with form without power (2 Tim 3:5) and just sweep every question about why God doesn’t heal or speak today under a rug of a man-made doctrine. It takes great faith to pursue something real from God that is more than just a story or an argument! I think God delighted in Aimee’s honest request. Not only did he revealed himself to her when she perused him, but he made her one of the greatest evangelist of all time.

So why do most churches not see manifestations of God’s presence? Why isn’t God confirming his word in churches they way he did in Mark 16:20? There are many reasons. But these three traps play a big part in occupying the church to keep them from asking the questions they need to be asking. I will give you hope that miracles are still happening in the world today. Since I have been at Bible school, there have been some amazing miracles here. God is rising up a generation that is no longer satisfied with the stories of past revivals.

Many of you have never really know God as God of the now. The good news is he is looking for people who will ask the honest question, “Where is God?” and then genuinely pursue the answer. One other thing to consider is that this cannot be a half hearted pursuit. Jeremiah 29:13 says, And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. You cannot add God to your list of god’s and expect him to benefit you. He wants your all of your heart, not just the scraps that are left over.

If you are tired of settling for just stories of God’s greatness, begin to study the life of Jesus and the apostles in Acts, who were the Biblical examples of what life should look like in the Kingdom that Jesus brought. Read books about past revivalist like God’s Generals by Robert Liardon, and study what revelations they received that led them into the miraculous.

Find people who are experiencing miracles and listen to what they have to say. Above all, don’t let your past experiences, and those of others, to become more authoritative to you than what God’s Word says.

Broken Communications

The Bible is a spiritual book. It is written to you Spirit, not your head. You will never be able to understand or fulfill the commands and calls of God with your nature mind. People have gone crazy and fallen into terrible deceptions through trying to understand the Bible with their head alone. This is what happened with the Jews and many other people through history, and is still happening today. I am not talking about a brainless, thoughtless gospel. There is a place for us to use our minds, but we are to renew them to think like Jesus thought.

A major part of that renewal is learning to hear and listen to the Holy Spirit. If you are not daily led by the Spirit of God and cannot discern his specific voice, it only takes one misguided sermon, one misunderstood scripture, or one well meaning friend with bad advice, to turn you from fighting for God, to fighting for the enemy. What was the difference between Saul, and Paul? Saul had the word of God, but not the Spirit to lead him. He tried to guess what God wanted from him based off his carnal knowledge of the Word, and ended up bring great harm to the Church. Paul on the other hand still had the Word, but also had the Spirit, and the Spirit led his actions daily.

God spoke clearly to me that this is the reason the body of Christ is so torn apart. The best military strategy in the world can be broken if the communication between the commanders is stopped, or if the enemy broadcasts false messages posing to be allies. Without communication and leadership, the allies are likely to destroy each other with friendly fire and lose the battle even though they were the stronger force. The worst part is, they will do it under the belief that they are fighting against the enemy.

God didn’t leave us to figure out his battle plans with our carnal intellect. He gave us the Holy Spirit as our helper and field commander. It is imperative that we get tuned into his frequency and hear his voice clearly so that we know what he is doing, and so we don’t end up fighting him the way the Jews often did. Though the disciples were fully trained by Jesus, he told them not to leave the city until they had received the Spirit. The knowledge they had learned from Jesus was not enough! They need the Spirit to help them to live as Jesus had asked them to, and we do also.

“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.” Luke 24:49 NLT

The Holy Spirit is the one who tells us what the Father is doing so that we will work with the Father and not against him.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-14 NKJV

How can we over look the importance of this scripture? If we really believe that Jesus was telling the truth when he said this, shouldn’t hearing his voice be our top priority in life? Let me ask you, if the body of Christ was really hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit daily, do you really think the Church would be so divided? Do you really think that pastors would be suffering so much attack from their own congregations? Paul said in Ephesians 4:3 that there is unity in the Spirit. The Spirit is never divided.

Right now in the Church, we have many self appointed generals who are giving it their best guess as to what is right and bombing anyone they disagree with. I don’t doubt that they have zeal for Lord, but they have the wrong orders. Like Saul (who became Paul), they are doing their best to destroy anything in that conflicts with them. This is what Paul said of the Jews.

For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Romans 10:2-3 NKJV

Jesus said God is Spirit, and he must be worshipped in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24). The Jews had the truth in the Word, but they didn’t have the Spirit, so the truth they had did not profit them. Jesus said it is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63). Without the Spirit opening our minds to true meaning of scripture, and revealing the deep things of God, we are just carnal minded.

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8:7-8 NIV

The carnal mind is, and always will be an enemy of God and those who truly follow him. It is a rogue soldier that answers to no authority, and will seek to destroy everything it doesn’t understand. It is impossible to follow God with properly when your mind is carnal. Jesus said,

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 NKJV

The Holy Spirit is predictable in that he is always good, he always acts in love and brings glory to God, and he is always true to the Word (although not always our understanding of the Word). But he is very unpredictable in his methods of doing things. All through the Bible, it seems that God always acted in unexpected ways to see if his people’s hearts were in the right place. He sent shepherd boys, slaves, and those who were least in their family to be kings and leaders. He sent his Son to be born in a stable. He sent uneducated fishermen to the educate Jews, and he sent the educated Jew to the uneducated gentiles. Jesus rarely did a miracle the same way twice, and new forms of miracles popped up throughout the New Testament.

Why the madness? It is because God never wanted us to fall into the pit of tradition. No one will ever be able to stand before God, and say, “I would have known you if you had came the way I expected.” There is no excuse, and no one will put God in a box. I have found through the Bible, and through personal experience, that God will often speak through what you despise or look down on the most. If you look down on people with tattoos, or people that are old fashion, or even your enemies, guess who might be carrying God’s Word for you? If you are proud in your knowledge, God might send someone who just got saved with a word for you. This is why the proud will always have trouble hearing from him. He doesn’t want us to follow our expectations, he wants us to follow the presence the way Israel did in the desert. Only those who follow the Spirit and hear his voice will be able to keep up with what he is doing. The Jews could not understand Jesus because he spoke the words of the Spirit, so they killed in the name of the God they thought they served.

To avoid making the same mistake, we need to be slow to judge and make sure we are not speaking against God own. Especially those who are anointed for ministry. We also need to evaluate ourselves to see if we are acting in the Spirit or in the flesh. There are many ways to do this but one easy way is to compare yourself to the attitudes of Jesus, the disciples of Acts, and other examples of scripture such as this one.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are  done in the meekness of wisdom… But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:13, 17-18 NKJV

I have made this passage a mirror for my actions. When I want to do something, I check myself with this scripture. I ask myself, “is this thought I have of, ‘the wisdom that is from above, ‘ or is it something I came up with to nail someone?” This is how scripture helps us discern the voice of the Lord.

Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God is a sword that pierces even to the division of soul and Spirit. In other words, it helps you divide the things that come from you from the things that come from the Spirit of God. We need to be able to hear the Spirit, but we need the Bibles help. We need both the Spirit and the truth to be complete.

There are many great teachings out there on how to be led by the Spirit and I encourage you to search them out. I have heard it wisely said that as long as you can live without hearing the voice of God, you will. Until you hunger for the voice of God to the point that you can’t live without it, you will live without it. The purpose of this post was to show with scripture that hearing God’s voice and being led by his Spirit was not meant to be optional. I hope this has stirred some hunger in you!

More than Sparrows

What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin ? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.  And the very hairs on your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.
Matthew 10:29-31 NLT