Good News

The Gospel is not the news that you can be involved with Jesus, if only you get your religion right. The gospel is not news of what can be at all. It is the news of what is. It is the news that you are involved. It is not a dream.

Through bearing our rejection, Jesus has access to us in our darkness. Indeed, he used our rejection to establish a relationship with us at our very worst.

The stunning truth is that Jesus exists in union with his Father and the Spirit, and with us in our darkness. He has included us in his world, in his life and communion with his Father, in his anointing with the Spirit. He is sharing his own heart, his own knowledge of the Father, his own assurance and hope and joy with us all. He is putting his communion with His Father inside our endarkened souls.

Quoted from Baxter Kruger-Across All Worlds.

Rich

Loving One Another

I so enjoyed these thoughts from my reading this morning, I’m including them here.

Rich

Loving One Another
George A. Maloney

From the first time we wept as infants left alone by our mothers, we began learning that no one can be happy without love. By ourselves we are helpless, threatened, anxious, and fragile as cut flowers. Without our roots deep in the common soil, touching the roots of others, we dry up and wither. Only by touching another do we know where we leave off and the mystery of the other begins; only by love can we penetrate that mystery. As babies raised without the touch of love pine and die, so do adults if they separate themselves from those who would love them and be loved by them.

The energy of God meets itself coming and going when two of God's children meet heart to heart, eye to eye, loving and being loved. That love that moved the sun and other stars precipitated the Word, Jesus Christ. He was enfleshed as man so that we could by knowing and loving Him be gathered up in the arms of God the Spirit, out of the swaddling clothes of our flesh.

God wants to give Himself to us in every possible way: first through Jesus, who loved and touched His people with human heart, human hands; then through the Holy Spirit, who knits us all into one seamless cloth that wraps the world; and finally through the hands of another human being, laid on us in love, as ours are laid on that other person. When we open ourselves to this other person, we open ourselves to God and God can touch us, like the sun touching the heart of an unfurled flower. Closed, we can't be reached. But a life spent loving is a life spent open. To reach out and receive, we must open our hands; to be loved, we much first love. The wife or husband [or friend] next to you is more than your spouse [or buddy]. He or she is your path to God. In the face of a wife laboring in birth or a husband crushed at the loss of his job, you see the face of God, open to your love, wanting you to give it.

Deeper, deeper you go, till you touch the place in the other where God is, dropping your own veils of ego, self-defense, falseness as you go, until you both stand before each other and God naked as newborn babies. At this moment when you see God in each other, you see. . . the image of Christ as He might have looked walking the earth. As the veils fall, we see God not through a glass darkly, but face to face in the light of love, in the one through whom God sees and touches us. And each moment in which we give and take love, we touch God.

Without God, we cannot love; without the other, we cannot show our love. . . In our love for others, we express the link between flesh and spirit, as God expressed it in the Incarnation. Like God, we are an intimate community of love, pouring ourselves out so that we can fill others and be filled.

Growing up means 'growing out,' dropping our walls and opening in selfless love to another. We become a two-way channel through which the uncreated energies of God flow. The more love we give, the more love grows in the place we have planted it.

Love has everything to do with the ordinary events of daily living, since the giving of all we are and the receiving back of all we can be happens in the workshop, the nursery, the office. When we discover the energies of God in each other, we pour those energies into all we do, reconciling the world to the Father.

True love - God's love - is to see others as God sees, knows, and touches them. To love truly is to see with the eyes of God, to go beneath the skin and plunge straight to the heart, where the other shows him or herself to be as unique as if alone in the world, the sparrow whose fall God notices, the lamb for whom Jesus died. True love is caring for the other, mindful only of the others good. It is being quick to hear the others need, to serve the other's growth toward his or her true self and carrying the other into deeper touch with God. The prayer of Jesus before he underwent death was that we would be ONE as He and the Father are one (John 17:21-23). It happens as we love one another.

--Excerpted from Loving the Christ in You.

The Purpose Driven God

Does it all come down to God being driven to accomplish, squeeze out of us, the biggest bang for his buck?
Here’s a wild thought, perhaps there is a much higher priority within His heart (other than what he can accomplish through us), maybe it’s as simple as him wanting us to be with him and him with us! Egad, not that simple is it?

Rich

An Extended Conversation

For those wanting a little sneak peek into the lives of two madly in love brothers with Jesus, then jump into the water, the temp is great and so is the heart to heart musings.
This was some of our sharing this morning via Yahoo Messenger, Dave from Rhode Island sitting in a Panera’s coffee shop bakery and me, Rich here in Stratford Ontario without my first cup of coffee.

Rich

Part 1

Rich: Bro the essence of that reality unfolding in our lives the lost and found ones is consuming me in my writings
Rich: I will not back down from the only thing that spells freedom
yahdavea: He who has ears to hear
Rich: His love spoken to us in truth
yahdavea: I love you and your passion
Rich: tanks Bro
Rich: I love that line from Field Of Dreams
Rich: where Terry Mann says to Ray, Ray, as misguided as you R, I wish I had your passion
yahdavea: yes wow
Rich: because Terry use to be consumed with passion, but it died in him
yahdavea: wonderful moments in that movie
yahdavea: right!
yahdavea: He was once so passionate but the life and its cruel realties hit him hard
Rich: without knowing how passionate he is about us, religion is what we've opted 4
yahdavea: yes
Rich: He too needs to know the Truth as we all do
yahdavea: enjoying your post, Achilles Heel part 2
yahdavea: yes
Rich: and Ray in that movie was a type of the Holy Spirit wanting to set/make so many free from the Matrix of lies
Rich: thanks
yahdavea: Yeah, Ray, the passionate one, seeking the "what-if?"... Something greater than himself, pulling on him.
Rich: Jesus is saying, I will build the church, and I know they will come
yahdavea: not all but those who seek will find
Rich: yes
yahdavea: This week I have gotten so blinded bro
Rich: ?
yahdavea: the worries had set in
yahdavea: And I so need just to chill with Jesus
Rich:
yahdavea: Last week I could have conquered the world with Jesus it seemed
yahdavea: This week the cares and worries came in
Rich: the fresh assault of worries or whatever is a great place to discover the realness and closeness of Him right inside of us
yahdavea: yes
Rich: thank God you haven't evolved past this Bro
yahdavea: evolved past this?
Rich: meaning
yahdavea: you mean trying got just dismiss and try to move on?
yahdavea: It didn’t make sense there
Rich: you're either going to have slick, pat Jesus answers for you and whomever, or you will dispense Life and grace to all out of this hounding what appear to be setbacks
yahdavea: Dismissing what is happening to me and just trying to move on without stopping
yahdavea: Yeah, I have been so reminded how easy it is to forget our First Love
Rich: it is out of each of these being plunged into worries/fears we have the freshness of Him wanting to draw us so much deeper into reality
yahdavea: Geesh, the Rich Young Ruler sure plays into this
yahdavea: yes
Rich: not taking us out of the world, but while we're in, Him causing us to discover all that is ours moment by moment
Rich: YES!
Rich: Jesus' so called hard word to him was full of Truth and freedom, but the depravity that was exposed in him through Jesus' words , he chose to give into the lies instead
yahdavea: and succumbed back to self-effort
Rich: the young guy was on a mission, to B more God like
yahdavea: that's exactly what has been tugging at me bro
Rich: Jesus in love 4 him, had to show how that was suicide

You can read Part 2 over here.

Made For A Purpose

I have always loved this line from the movie Chariots of Fire, "I believe that God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. When I run, I feel His pleasure."
This was Eric Liddell trying to console his distraught sister Jennie (who feared her brother had become negligent regarding his “calling” to be a missionary to China), and yet wanting her to see a much bigger picture of who God is right then, right there in his participation of the 1924 Paris Olympics.

What I am surmising is only conjecture and yet I do not see it being so far removed from the truth of this same God and Father that Eric was discovering while he was likewise being drawn ever deeper into knowing whose he was.
From what I can detect, Eric was living and walking in a knowing of whose he was, the security of that unconditional love freed him to allow Christ in him to supernaturally naturally express himself as Eric, and that was going to be done there at the Paris Olympics no more or less than when he eventually arrived in China as a missionary.

I believe Eric’s involvement as a runner before, during and after the 1924 Paris Olympics was only a natural metaphor or expression of something far grandeur in scope, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” As his and our sibling in Christ, Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,”
This is a race to the finish, fighting the good fight of faith (trust) in the one who has called us to be His!

What unimaginable delight and pleasure must cause our God and Father’s heart to do cartwheels as we discover His delight and rapturous joy in what he has made fully available to us? When we begin to tap into, discover the purpose he made us for was for him alone, there is poured into that moment a series of continued moments of delight our minds can not keep up with.

I want to close this by saying, this world is “filled with guns and war” to quote an old song by Larry Norman, and if this mystery of Christ IN us is not broken down to us and for us right where we are, live, and folks there are some nightmare dark and putrefying shit holes in this world, then it is a gospel, a message that only works for a few good people.
Joseph’s world of shattered dreams and illusions while still incarcerated discovered a reality that defied human reasoning; his prison became a palace only because of His living presence!

Rich

Measuring Ourselves

I’m not trying to nail anything down here just thinking, but the stirring that is happening throughout the earth regarding the massive exodus from established expressions of religion and trying to launch something new is it because there was a knowing in measuring themselves they came up short?

If we have not grasped the truth of His love, life, in us as us, won’t it be the same old thing only wrapped up in a new set of duds? Who told you were naked in the first place?
The longing for God the Father that has been awakened in so many, wanting to gain a whole new dimension of closeness is not found in anything short of his spirit making known, revealing His heart for us!
It’s going to take whatever it takes to bring each and every person in this freshly awakened journey to come to the end of being sick and tired of swallowing a whole new batch of gos-pills marketed in an enticing format.

Rich

Let My Sons Go

I loath labels, tags applied to anything pertaining our relationship with God, but for conversation sake I will have to use them.
One of the things I see that have been more and more visible is man once again getting his grubby itching fingers all over what God alone is doing. Some might refer to this new understanding of our Father’s heart activity as a “grace awakening” unfortunately I see the same old thing, the naïve, gullible believers being seduced and funneled into a cause, a movement, rather than simply allowing the Father to BECOME the ruling reigning true parent to these being awakened to his grace!
Haven’t we all had enough of being brought up under the tutelage of surrogate and foster parenting?

Wasn’t it a very similar scenario with Paul in his broken heartedness over the church in his time, “Who has bewitched (charmed) you.”This staring out was the direct intervention of God almighty in their re-birthing and then slowly and subtly drifting away from their birth-right to continue to grow in the grace and true knowledge of their loving caring Father. Their true heart felt affections were being redirected toward religious mind sets beginning to once again carefully observe the rudimentary elements of touch not, taste not, and so much more.

The religious mind is convinced that without their assistance simply allowing God the Holy Spirit to reveal and make Jesus Christ real to them is much akin to believing in magic or osmosis.
I’m convinced that anyone messing with His own is about to experience the wrath of His grace, and when and where it will be applied, please understand it will as in all things BE for their own personal freedom as well.

Rich

Charming Appearances

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier if somehow those with serious problems were tattooed in a highly visible way (maybe on their foreheads) to denote these unobservable issues?
This goes along well with what I shared here on my other blog, Warning Labels.

Say for example a person was a child molester and tattooed with C M, a rapist R, a crack addict CA, wife beater WB, a religious-moral-ethical-good person R etc, but unfortunately there are no magic solutions to readily being alerted to that hidden deep within the heart of humanity.

What none of us sees apart from the exposing discerning view of God is our total and complete depravity which has permeated all of those born from the loins of the first Adam, we were born in sin and shaped in iniquity!
It is imperative that this be understood from the get go, Jesus did not come into the world to condemn or judge us, but to bring out of his unconditional love for us, a way of escape, but that way would be meaningless unless we owned up to what he exposed in the heart. This was unmistakably presented to those who claimed they could actually see or know what was in their hearts. The story revolves around Jesus healing a blind man, he pushes the envelope in saying, “I have come into the world to bring sight to the blind, but for those who say they ‘can’ see, they will remain in their blindness.”

Another case in point is when Jesus called the religious guys the offspring of Satan, “You are of your father the devil” he said to them. Please keep in mind this description was not pined solely on this demographic.
The flesh Jesus said at best only replicates the flesh, thing is, that hidden impetus within our humanity known as the father of lies and all religion, is a shape shifting lying prince of darkness, masquerading as an angel of light. The overt readily recognizable depiction of what we commonly call the flesh observed as a killer, a drunkard, a prostitute, a thief etc. is quite visible but, the shape shifting one in humanity is equally great at morphing himself through others as he did and continues to do and the recognition of this is much harder to discern.

The story of the two sons in the gospel account in Luke 15 is a classic highly defined picture of what I am saying here. The overt in your face fleshly behaviour of the younger son who runs off into pleasure-vile with his father’s money is not easily mistakable, but the older son who stayed home was seen as righteous, good and a loving son.
The bewitching or our being charmed is as close to that which is hidden within our flesh, thank God he has made a knowable way of escape!

Rich

The Naked Gospel

I've really enjoyed reading this e-book by Andrew Farley.

Rich

Coming Out Of The Closet

It is truly amazing how furious and fiercely the longing of God is toward the lost, broken and hopeless, and I am one of those who have been rescued by such an arresting unconditional love.

A friend sent me the links to a four part conversation with Paul Young being interviewed about his life and the writing of the story that turned into the book, The Shack. To say it impacted me is the understatement of the century; I am sensing afresh the boldness of His love for me to begin the baby steps needed to come out of the closet of shame and fear.

http://www.newday.org/ontheair/index.php?program=34122

God is using religious institutional systems (they are no threat or rival to God) and otherwise to drive people to helplessness. To expose power, to expose those things that need to be transformed!

More than anything I want to be real, transparent with myself, the Lord and with others, on the other hand, fear and shame is something that is designed to want to keep me known for who I’m not.
So much has been and continues to be stirred up in my life and I’m beginning to recognize the hand of my loving, caring heavenly Father in it all.
If I was to simply be released from painful circumstances and situations without being set, made free on the inside, what the hell good would it be to have to face those very same things again without the fear and its grip on me broken?

I am seeing that grace has no attraction to it without being vulnerable, transparent, and weak, swimming in an abundance of inner depravity. Performing will never earn or buy God’s favour and fear is something that drives us all to do just that perform.
In watching and listening to Paul Young open up and share about the depravity within his own life and how grace transformed him, I could easily relate to him.
On the other hand someone who has never seen or admitted to their inner brokenness of shame and depravity, grace no matter how loud they proclaim it has no more appeal than a conceptual buzz.

Rich

Welcome To The New (Real) World

There are numerous stories of those who heard of the “new world” and for many different reasons sought it out, many leaving all they ever knew in their birth country to venture into the unknown, aka, the new world.
What they knew and understood about this new world and their actually getting there and trying to put down roots was a whole different reality, just read the history books.

The truth (reality) offered to us in Christ is not merely a change in perspective it is the only way of living in this world but not of it!
So many of us who have been translated, transported through the portal of grace into the family of God the Father, are trying to operate in this new frontier with a remaining old mind set, is it any wonder there are such incongruent clashes happening repeatedly?
Just when you think you have an inkling as to what it is all about, suddenly you are entering something far stranger than the story bound Twilight Zone.

There is so much on and in the heart of our loving Father that He desires to share with us but, much of it we cannot bear as of yet. The ability is there resident within our spirit union with the Father, but our soul e.g. our mind is far from being able to grasp this intuitive language and reality that is trying to ‘fully’ define whose we are and who we are!

There is no ability to live in this new order, new world with an old mind set, as if there really was a secret of mixing oil with water, law with grace-ha! The momentum of the unforced rhythms of grace is violently and aggressively dealing with that which is totally hidden to our understanding, keeping us bound inwardly to an identity that is no longer ours.
As in the song The Battle Hymn of the Republic, where it says, “He is sifting out the hearts of men beneath His judgment seat”, is a case in point, He is trying our hearts motives, attitudes reasoning’s and inclinations.
This is all part of our inward emancipation; the impetus is birthed out of our perfect union with the Father, it is His purpose for us to be fully conformed and transformed by this abiding and unalterable reality of His unconditional love.

The rabbit hole only gets deeper!!

Rich

Motivational, Inspirational, Hyperbole

How does one not take seriously extravagant and exaggerated statements or figures of speech to be in fact the truth unless we are blinded by the puffs of smoke pushed by gusts of wind?

There are those who continue to see their giftedness as something to benefit others floundering in life, they have what I call a predisposition toward being optimistic, effervescent, seldom given to worry or depression always buoyant in a world that depresses the hell out of most sane folks, surly you know the type.
Sadly if these qualities are not the by product of the certain unshakeable power and stability of His unconditional love, then we’re merely building our lives upon cosmetic botoxing.

Becoming further established in the reality of the Father’s unconditional love is the only thing able to displace the fear and torment that continues to try and keep me as a spiritual quadriplegic. God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. The power and sound mindedness are but expressions of what it means to be loved unconditionally.
Maybe this gives some clarity to the scripture that says, “The righteous are as bold as a lion.”

The reality of being loved is not a motivational, inspirational pick me up that dissipates when the first wave of assault comes crashing into my no fly zone.
I am learning that my Father isn’t nearly as interested in changing my circumstances as he is in wanting to infuse my entire being with the true knowledge and enormity of His love, which frees me to embrace life and all that it encompasses head on!

Rich

Vine and Branches

“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. "I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”

I will most likely touch upon additional thoughts that I started here yesterday with, “Closed and Open Doors,” as this continues to be an area that Father is wanting to open up to me in ever clearer ways.
Once again I quote from my friend Bill Landon’s book, “Life After Death.”

“As I stated in the introduction, the Bible is the one objective source of confirmation that I accept on matters of truth about life, God and spirituality. This position can only be applied successfully if the Scriptures are used correctly.”

Before I go any further here I want to emphasize a needed and necessary point.
Because of sin and the death affects that came into an entire race of people, which which was totally unnatural became the norm for us. Because of what Adam and Eve did in imbibing from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it has become the fixed inclination (fulcrum) of our hearts to trust in ourselves, to lean unto our own understanding and in all our ways acknowledge we are the ones (gods) in control of life.
Sadly this inclination was not aborted in those who were re-birthed, if it was then why was Jesus forcefully stressing the following, “If you continue to abide within this relationship I have called you into, you will know the Truth and the truth will make-set you free.”

Our loving and compassionate heavenly Father is dealing in direct proportion, going to the depth of the habitual sin habit pattern inclination of us turning to ourselves verses being freed to turn to Him as our only Life.
The truth will set us free, but it is my experience that before the fruit of this becomes evident within our lives, the truth will make us very miserable!
A perfect word for that might be, “disillusioned!”

"Please remember that we human beings have the ability to choose to use any tool correctly or incorrectly. Contrary to what many believe, correct use of the Bible is not a massive intellectual exercise. Further, receiving instruction from the Bible does not require special instruction from a seminary or the blessing of any organization of men. We only need an understanding of a few relatively simple rules to be able to work with the Father in using His marvelous book. If we choose to ignore or violate these rules we will have to deal with the consequences of that decision and the Bible will be a snare to us instead of a guide.
The Bible is a wonderful writing but is, unfortunately, also an extremely dangerous one. For reasons completely known only to the Father, He had this book constructed in such a way as to make it completely usable only when we study it in surrender to His teaching through the Holy Spirit’s revelation. I understand at least one reason for doing this. This is a safeguard to prevent us from unraveling the mysteries of the spiritual out of our own intellectual efforts alone.
This prohibition is not a mean-spirited act on the Lord’s par. We are kept from successfully discovering spiritual truth on our own because the whole purpose of life in this world is to develop a personal living relationship with God. As such, it would be counterproductive and even harmful for the Father to allow the truth of reality to be accessible without some collaboration with Him. In God’s plan, our growth in intellectual understanding is only a secondary attribute in the larger area of developing our living relationship with the Father.”

Rich

God, Do You Have Any Thoughts On This?

I love this question posed over at Douglas Weaver’s site, “Where do you go to church.”

Ever since I heard this question posed by Darin Hufford over at the Free Believer’s Network- Into The Wild pod cast (Worship in the Wild), “What is worship to you” verses, “This IS worship,” I have been freed, launched, catapulted even further to abide within ‘what is worship’, ‘what is church’ to me, etc. etc!

Within the community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit there is NO divorce, schisms between what it says in the letter (of the Scriptures) and the life quickening-empowering spirit, nor will there ever be one!
It’s the natural man working, operating independently from His spirit that produces such an un-malleable rigid template that keeps so many from enjoying and experiencing the reality of His abiding closeness in them as them.

I continue to marvel over the corrupted and erroneous thinking that it all boils down to the “right way verses the wrong way” of doing things, but what about His Way, and that is spelled Jesus!
The template he uses is who He is, Love, but to those who have not experienced the essence of who God the Father is, love is but a cryptic message that cannot be deciphered.


Rich

Loving One Another

From the first time we wept as infants left alone by our mothers, we began learning that no one can be happy without love. By ourselves we are helpless, threatened, anxious, and fragile as cut flowers. Without our roots deep in the common soil, touching the roots of others, we dry up and wither. Only by touching another do we know where we leave off and the mystery of the other begins; only by love can we penetrate that mystery. As babies raised without the touch of love pine and die, so do adults if they separate themselves from those who would love them and be loved by them.

The energy of God meets itself coming and going when two of God's children meet heart to heart, eye to eye, loving and being loved. That love that moved the sun and other stars precipitated the Word, Jesus Christ. He was enfleshed as man so that we could by knowing and loving Him be gathered up in the arms of God the Spirit, out of the swaddling clothes of our flesh.

God wants to give Himself to us in every possible way: first through Jesus, who loved and touched His people with human heart, human hands; then through the Holy Spirit, who knits us all into one seamless cloth that wraps the world; and finally through the hands of another human being, laid on us in love, as ours are laid on that other person. When we open ourselves to this other person, we open ourselves to God and God can touch us, like the sun touching the heart of an unfurled flower. Closed, we can't be reached. But a life spent loving is a life spent open. To reach out and receive, we must open our hands; to be loved, we much first love. The wife or husband [or friend] next to you is more than your spouse [or buddy]. He or she is your path to God. In the face of a wife laboring in birth or a husband crushed at the loss of his job, you see the face of God, open to your love, wanting you to give it.

Deeper, deeper you go, till you touch the place in the other where God is, dropping your own veils of ego, self-defense, falseness as you go, until you both stand before each other and God naked as newborn babies. At this moment when you see God in each other, you see. . . the image of Christ as He might have looked walking the earth. As the veils fall, we see God not through a glass darkly, but face to face in the light of love, in the one through whom God sees and touches us. And each moment in which we give and take love, we touch God.

Without God, we cannot love; without the other, we cannot show our love. . . In our love for others, we express the link between flesh and spirit, as God expressed it in the Incarnation. Like God, we are an intimate community of love, pouring ourselves out so that we can fill others and be filled.

Growing up means 'growing out,' dropping our walls and opening in selfless love to another. We become a two-way channel through which the uncreated energies of God flow. The more love we give, the more love grows in the place we have planted it.

Love has everything to do with the ordinary events of daily living, since the giving of all we are and the receiving back of all we can be happens in the workshop, the nursery, the office. When we discover the energies of God in each other, we pour those energies into all we do, reconciling the world to the Father.

True love - God's love - is to see others as God sees, knows, and touches them. To love truly is to see with the eyes of God, to go beneath the skin and plunge straight to the heart, where the other shows him or herself to be as unique as if alone in the world, the sparrow whose fall God notices, the lamb for whom Jesus died. True love is caring for the other, mindful only of the other's good. It is being quick to hear the other's need, to serve the other's growth toward his or her true self and carrying the other into deeper touch with God. The prayer of Jesus before he underwent death was that we would be ONE as He and the Father are one (John 17:21-23). It happens as we love one another.

--Excerpted from Loving the Christ in You.

Rich

I Relinquish

I am so grateful for the deepness of His love for me speaking into those unknown, unrecognizable places within me, bring forth an undeniable definition to who’s I am!
Father in his most perfect way was messing with my heart the other day, Saturday morning, as I took my over the speed limit excitable Breaded Collie for walk out into the winter wonderland of over a foot of freshly fallen snow.

I guess at a heart level I have been secretly harboring a real loathing/resentment toward winter, the coldness, ice etc, especially having to work out IN it every year.

As I was walking Atticus, my treasured friend and pup, I was awestruck in the pristine splendor and beauty that captured my heart. I stopped and saw Him right there in the midst of something that has never been a friend to me, Mr. Winter. It was like breathing what then came forth from my heart, “Father I relinquish this dislike/hatred for winter, I choose to let it go, I no longer want to miss seeing/knowing you in any season that I must go through.

In a heart beat, I was instantly freed to further experience His abiding closeness in and to me as I breathed in the cold morning winter air, knowing that a door had just been opened up to me to dive even further into experiencing His love for me, even within, “Winter.”

Rich

Discovering His Love

A situation occurred last week wherein my attention was drawn to discovering something that happened after the fact.
I’m not even sure now looking back on it as to what it was; all I know is Father pointed it out to me. “Do you know why you didn’t react in that particular situation; it was because of my love freeing you.”

The weird thing about it was in pondering this situation it seemed perfectly natural for me to simply respond the way I did, and had it not been for Father pointing this out to me I would have totally missed it.

What I saw in this was a wonderful sense that He was doing far more than any of my senses were able to detect from deep within me.
It became startling clear to me if this most natural response came forth from me as a result of His love freeing me, then I could continue to rest in the security of this same love to bring forth all He desired in my life.
Wow, what a discovery!

I found what Darrin and Amy where sharing over at the Free Believers Network so illustrated even further what Father was making real to and in me. Take a listen to, "The Essence of Christianity."
In my opinion Father is so wanting to bring further revelation and understanding into my/our lives regarding the fact that we are alive only because of the life of another living in us as us.

Rich

Hidden With Christ

The caption under this picture reads as following; "A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him to find her."
This spoke powerfully to me of Him hiding as it were Himself, not from me but for me, to seek Him with all that is within me!

"I remind every follower of Jesus that discipleship means nothing less than being ready to obey Christ as unconditionally as the first disciples. Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes. Never confuse success in ministry or knowledge of the Bible or mastery of Christian principles and ideas with Holiness and authentic discipleship. They may well be the corruption of discipleship if your life is not hidden with Christ in God."

Rich

The Secret Things

The secret things belong to the Lord and unto those he chooses to reveal them to.
Our true identities will forever at least this side of heaven remain a well kept and guarded secret, as it were a secret identity, and no one apart from God the Father is able to share this secret with us.
Who we are will only be defined in and through His heart of love for us, a love that knows no short cuts in going the distance to win our trust and affection.
Although the lies we may still believe are designed to bring havoc and destruction into our daily living, it is His nature to destroy that which is trying to destroy us.
What a Saviour this one who calls me Brother and his friend, who whispers in my ear. "You Are Loved!

Rich

Fire

I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

When disciples surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, when we submit to the truth that we reach life only through death, when we acknowledge that the grain of wheat must vanish into the ground, that Jonah must be buried in the belly of the whale, that the alabaster jar of self must be broken if others are to perceive the sweet fragrance of Christ, when we respond to the call of Jesus, which is not come to a church meeting but “Come to me,” then the limitless power of the Holy Spirit will be unleashed with astounding force. The discipline of the secret will be a compelling sign to the Church and the culture. The body of Christ will be plunged into a revolution.

Our God is a consuming fire!

The rule of His reign is not a matter of words but of power, a source of transformation and information. The spiritual life is simply life itself lived with the vision of faith.

From the book, Storytelling, Imagination and Faith, William Bausch shares this.

“An old Mississippi country preacher believed in his bones that the Word of God is a two –edged sword. One Sunday morning he mounted the pulpit and prayed: ‘Oh Lord, give thy servant this mornin’ the eyes of the eagle and the wisdom of the owl; connect his soul with the gospel telephone in the central skies; illuminate his brow with the Sun of Heaven; possess his mind with love for the people; turpentine his imagination; grease his lips with possum oil; electrify his brain with lightning’ of the Word; put perpetual motion in his arms; fill him plumb full of dynamite of The glory; anoint him all over with the kerosene of salvation, and set him on fire.”

Rich