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

My People Love it This way

When and where did what God pointed out start becoming more important than that which it pointed to?
Didn’t Jesus come to a decrepit, defunct, bankrupt system called Judaism that had replaced the one this religion was supposed to be all about?

Isn’t it always the same way, those seeing themselves as the anointed door keepers of the truth being willing to go to the death defending a lifeless thing.
How many times has the Father initiated in the heart of a person, something so full of life, so fluid, so beautiful and freeing, only later to be turn into a canned container of Florida sunshine.
It usually wasn’t the one who simply received the revelation of His heart that wanted to start something, like as in steering it into a ‘movement’, or making it more presentable to more folks, as in a building, heck, let’s not stop there, let’s turn it into a denomination for crying out loud!

This isn’t a new phenomenon, when Jesus wanting one more time to make known the Father to his disciples took three of them up to a mountain top where he was transfigured before them. Long story short after all of the spectacular stuff subsided, Peter not being short on words says, “Lord this is the coolest thing ever, we should package this, box it up, heck right now I bet ya if I looked around us we could find enough materials to make three churches here, one for Moses, one for Elijah, but of course Lord, the nicest one would BE for you!!

Like clock work, down through the centuries, time after time the one, who delights in revealing His heart of love for us is soon aborted, exchanged for the shadow instead of Him alone. Every time someone has a personal encounter with the Lord (this is supposed to BE the norm by the way) and they begin to see the truth, they start living out of that truth, expressing the reality of Him as the truth.
Soon some one comes along and says, ‘you know that revelation that dear brother had, we need to preserve that for ever. Let’s build a box and put that revelation in it, heck, we’ll even call and name ourselves after that revelation just in case some would sadly mistake us for someone else, God forbid.’

Our uniqueness only fully comes alive in knowing our heavenly Father on a one to one basis. We are re-born for LIFE, not to become canning jars that hold lifeless past revelations pickled for posterity sake.

Here’s where it gets dicey folks, has grace once again, the revelation of it become what is worshiped rather than the Father of all grace?
Folks it doesn’t have to be some wild vile wicked thing that turns (steals) our hearts from Him, remember all the good and bad come from the same source, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This breaks my heart every time I read it; "will you put up with a little foolish aside from me? Please, just for a moment. The thing that has me so upset is that I care about you so much—this is the passion of God burning inside me! I promised your hand in marriage to Christ, presented you as a pure virgin to her husband. And now I'm afraid that exactly as the Snake seduced Eve with his smooth patter, you are being lured away from the simple purity of your love for Christ. It seems that if someone shows up preaching quite another Jesus than we preached—different spirit, different message—you put up with him quite nicely. But if you put up with these big-shot "apostles," why can't you put up with simple me? I'm as good as they are. It's true that I don't have their voice, haven't mastered that smooth eloquence that impresses you so much. But when I do open my mouth, I at least know what I'm talking about. We haven't kept anything back. We let you in on everything."

The light that is shinning ever so bright in this hour is not grace, but Him our Father of ALL grace, let’s love the one who loves us!
In Him we live, move and find true freedom to BE.

Rich

Unconditional Love....

....But trusting God conditionally


I have been and I’m still experiencing what it means to be awakened out of the ‘death’ life/sleep I inherited along with all humanity through what Satan offered us in the garden.
As long as I am alive within this jar of clay the father of lies will have access to my soul that is not yet fully saved, transformed.

The offer to man through the father of lies was one of being, having control of one’s life, rather than being dependent upon anyone e.g. God.
This is so ingrained within us to even think, let alone act any differently from what we see as are genetic disposition, that our only hope must be found in the Truth of God the Father’s total unconditional love for us.

I have and I know I will battle as long as I live with fear, this thorn in my flesh was not aborted when I was reborn, it was left there and is working for my good, being all part of the dynamic tension of learning Christ as my only Life! Let me say this, as long as we have flesh with Satan in it, fear is always there but maybe not realized.

Let me try and spell-flesh this out in a way that you as well may identify with.
It came to me this morning that I seem to be operating more often than not contrary to how my Father is relating to me in and with His total unconditional loving acceptance.
Meaning, am I trusting Him in the now moment with conditions attached to what I call trust, if so, isn’t this still ALL about trying exercise control?

There is NO one who has had or ever will have any control over any aspect of their living no matter how much money or connivances they posses. In a moments notice everything I know can change from good to bad, from bad to insane, that’s a given but, I have been given a sacred trust.
That trust is in knowing and celebrating my poverty, weakness, emptiness, why, because His strength is made perfect in such wonderful things.

Here is my question to me and you who are saying you are trusting the Lord of and for your life, future. First, once again it is a fact we have no control over our circumstances or situations, but, we will never have taken away from us the ability to Chose to turn to our Papa to be to me in my now moment exactly what he says He is, I AM!
The likeness of His son will NOT be fully formed within me as long as I am attaching conditions to my trusting Him.
So am I trusting Him only to get my own way, or because I want to learn as Jesus my elder brother did. Although being perfectly God’s only begotten son, was made perfect through that which he suffered, learning obedience through those designed sufferings.

I/we will miss out more than we even know in trying to trust Him with my hidden conditions/agenda attached to my so called ‘trusting’ Him.
Am I trusting Him so that things will turn out better, or am I trusting Him to BE to and in me all that He has promised?
Is He satisfied with my lip service of, ‘I’m trusting’ you Papa, but with unseen (to me) conditions and agendas, but not trusting, worshiping Him with my heart and my future?

Rich

I am slowly learning that fear is actually something Father is using to set me free from, choice by choice, turning to Him with fear howling at me I discover what is mine now, and not will be there tomorrow.

Papal or Paper Worship, No Bull

Papal or Paper Worship, No Bull

Did Jesus say of the coming Spirit: "He shall guide you into all the truth"? Surely to be guided into all the truth is something more than having the truth presented, conveyed, and written down!

Did Paul pray for believers that they might be given "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him" (i.e. Christ)? Surely that is an imparted faculty, ability, in the believer, and more than natural equipment!

For anyone who may not listen to the God Journey, the last pod cast (The Doctrine Police) certainly fits in well with the thoughts expressed here by Austin Sparks.

It seems man at his best will inevitably wrongly (try to) separate, divorce what God has perfectly joined together, the letter of the scriptures with His quickening spirit, ergo, “And so we could repeat the story in numerous instances. That 'The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word' is not disputed by many, but sometimes the breaking forth may prove revolutionary for one whose apprehension has been quite mistaken.”

Whether it’s the misguided worship of that chiseled into stone, or that printed onto paper, the end result is anything but a living expression of the One claiming to BE the Way, Truth and Life.
The need today is no less than it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus in his post resurrected body (it says He appeared to his disciples in another form) joined in the conversation of those who claimed to know the scriptures and yet were barely alive carrying within their souls such grievous dashed hopes of Jesus actually really being who he said he was. (For anyone interested, the words of Sheryl Crow~If it makes you happy, sure fit in here) It goes on to say, after drawing their hurt hearts out into the open that he opened their minds to import the hidden weight and truth that the mere letter knowledge failed to rescue them from.

Rich

A few additional words from A Sparks flow nicely into this picture.

One of the greatest needs of our time is to plough our way down through the heavy and tangled growth of Christian doctrines to the virgin soil of spiritual life and reality. A master-stroke of the great subverter, in his purpose to neutralize spiritual effectiveness against his kingdom, has been the resolving of Christianity into an endless system or series of doctrines, most of them in conflict with each other. By these Christianity has been crippled and frustrated, turned in on itself, and a state of civil (or uncivil) war has been created.
The Church cannot move, as an integrated and single-fronted body, against a very powerful and wily foe, because it does not believe together; its mind is divided into so many conflicting interpretations.
This means that authority has almost entirely disappeared. Men have repeatedly tried to correct this by forming creeds, confessions of faith, principles and practice, etc., but these only serve to form groups, widen breaches, harden antagonisms, create superiorities, and foster complacencies; they never solve the problem of spiritual dividedness. They engender suspicion, breathe an atmosphere of fear, and stimulate a mentality of heresy.

Spontaneous Combustion

Typically, we think that worship is something we do. We sing hymns, praise and worship songs or we pray. But could it be that worship is not something we do, but rather a moment by moment acknowledgment (discovery) of who God is?
By that I mean, if we can know for a certainty that God is IN all things, and that ALL things work together for our good, then we can thank him no matter what life throws at us.
To me, that is true worship - a spontaneous expression of gratitude to our Lord and Saviour, no matter how trying the circumstance, because we know that through it He is intimately concerned and involved with every single aspect of our lives.

The wide eyed, child like wonder that erupts within our soul in discovering what Father has been actively doing in wanting to fulfill the purpose we have been re-birthed, 'to Know Him'!