Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Quick Fix


Barriers to Experiencing the New Covenant

Do you know your identity in Christ but still feel “stuck”? Do you know that Christ is your Life but still feel “stuck”? Maybe you aren’t the one who is “stuck” but you know someone who knows the New Covenant who is. In this webinar, you will hear about how to deal with these barriers. One of the key elements of this Webinar will be the emphasis on listening to God to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal your ‘stuck” places. Space to attend this live webinar is limited to 100 people and we still have room for you and anyone you want to invite.

The following was the lead in to an email invitation I received, along with who knows how many others, to take advantage of discovering where the kink (barriers) in my spiritual hose might be and presumably preventing me/us from experiencing the “New Covenant.”

This isn’t about casting aspersion's or to disparage the person sending this email invitation, but somehow to cut through the bull shit smoke screen discerning what is really true and what isn’t .
It seems without fail in situations similar to this that the holy “trump-card” is usually pulled out, “judge not lest you be judged.” What the hell ever happened to where Jesus qualified judging, “when you judge, judge righteously?”
Somehow exercising any discernment is tantamount to black-balling a person, oh God help us!

Rich

Friday, February 26, 2010

Richard'z Rantz


Please feel free to check out my newest blog, http://rantz72.wordpress.com/

Rich

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Simple Truth


The purpose and goal of God has always been life. This may seem like a simple truth but it is nonetheless one we very often lose sight of. God’s love makes Him interested in the doings of the world but this is not His primary focus.
What I mean by this is that God is not centered on cleaning up world government or stabilizing the economy. The Father is not even primarily working toward social (bight my tongue) justice. How can I say this? I can say this because if any of these things were God’s primary focus they would have been accomplished long ago.
Rather, the Father is principally interested in our living. It is only when we have a proper focus on life that we can produce proper doing (activity).

Take as an example all the religious doings and law keeping that many in Christianity and other religions engage in. In all this activity that fills our days the simple issue of life is often lost in the bustle. As a consequence, all this effort comes to little enduring result. We were created by the Father to live in and by the life of Christ. The works and doings are really only secondary issues to God. Further, these are negative issues to the Father when they interfere with the operation of His life in His children.

Rich

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Richard'z Rantz


Hopefully soon this will be the name of my newest blog. Often the connotation with the word “rant” is seen as negative, that is not my intention, more to the point, I see it simply as a fleshed out version of what I do best, think out loud.
Often folks who are more fear filled than dwelling in the security of Father’s love see this, my ranting, aka thinking out loud as an emphatic “thus says the Lord”!
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Something that once again got my attention in listening to a pod cast was this, “we are all gifted so differently.” What the???
From where I sit, my perspective is that all who have been received of the Father have been given God’s unspeakable gift of His son, which is in fact the most gifted, treasured gift any and all could ever receive. Is it more to the point that He the “gifted One” in us as us, simply wants to uniquely express his giftedness through each of us?

For both my wife and I, it’s as simple as breathing when it comes to this issue of ‘gifting, giftedness.’ Christ was NOT an add on to a great thing we already had going, he came to BE our only life, and out of that life was a love we hade never ever known, and I don’t care how or where anyone cares to point to a certain someone that stands out to them as being “loving”!

Jesus seemed to be quite toxic in not patronizing the suggestion offered to him one day, “Good master what must I do, etc etc.” Jesus spins around and point blank addresses this blatant lie, “Why do you call me good, there is NO one good but God.”
It’s no wonder we have such erroneous misconceptions seeing that it was in our initial conception (born in sin and shaped in iniquity) we were all born into the world (matrix) system of seeing things all ass backwards, not so for Jesus, he addressed humanity’s skewed and twisted misconceptions in its tracks.
“Unless you see the source of all goodness in me as me, then it’s nothing but your version of ethics and morality thinly coating the external so not to see the inward depravity lurking less than skin deep.

Using my wife’s words here, when Jesus’ words penetrate our lives, addressing our blindness, there is a “seismic shift” that is unleashed; it is that which unsettles our neat and tidy sane world of orderly chaos!

Rich

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Heeding


At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God's hand until we learn to hear Him. "What I tell you in darkness" - watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will talk in the wrong mood: darkness is the time to listen. Don't talk to other people about it; don't read books to find out the reason of the darkness, but listen and heed. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.
After every time of darkness there comes a mixture of delight and humiliation (if there is delight only, I question whether we have heard God at all), delight in hearing God speak, but chiefly humiliation - What a long time I was in hearing that! How slow I have been in understanding that! And yet God has been saying it all these days and weeks. Now He gives you the gift of humiliation which brings the softness of heart that will always listen to God now. (By Oz Chambers)

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."

"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut"

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." (Quotes by Albert Einstein)


Rich

Saturday, February 06, 2010

I Know You Are, But Who Am I?


One of the many lines from the Pee-Wee Herman Show that I loved was, “I know you are but who am I.”
Have you been experiencing the wonder of your lovely little world like a rug, only it’s who you thought you were, being pulled out from under you? I have!
I love how certain we think we are; I’m not moody, subject to emotional swings, given to depression, I’m stable as they come, yeah, right you are. Most likely you haven’t met up with this lamb that is a lion, yet. Concepts at best might give one a bad case of mental diarrhea, but turning your life upside down, hardly.

It doesn’t take much scraping off of the veneer of so called stability we think we have to realize that any steadiness we have is but the gracious way our loving Father insulates us from grief. He only has to peel back a little in one tiny area of his protection in our lives and we learn right smartly how empty we are in ourselves.

I personally believe that what each of us is facing, going through, has no known man made template available to assist us while we are being extricated from the matrix of religion.
There is an intriguing definition of unbelief based upon Hebrews 3:12, “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” In the sense of that verse, unbelief is “turning away from God.” Conversely then, faith is “staying in the face of God.” When you’re in the furnace of affliction, sometimes the only expression of faith you can muster is that of placing yourself in the face of God.
Many of the Psalms are the chronicles of men who in times of great personal pain cried out-but they cried out in the face of God.

I love how the Father of our spirit hears and sees the cry, longing of our hearts. This morning on my way to breakfast with my friend, brother and boss, Father interjected a thought that turned my day into one filled with a fresh sense of His wonder in and all around me. “Son, you are not free from your circumstances, but you are free to follow me.”
As always, I was being given a wonderful new invitation to receive His embrace in discovering that even my circumstances can’t prevent him from opening up doors that no man can shut.

Rich