A New Season

Over the past few weeks, my postings here on the blog have taken a definite turn, so to speak.

I have talked about "the church I would want to belong to."

I have written about "Doing the stuff".

And I have referenced the teachings of John Wimber on numerous occasions.

I have written about the Kingdom of God and the "now" and "not yet" of that Kingdom. How we see evidence of the dynamic rule and reign of God in our time and space, but do not see the Kingdom complete ( see Revelation 21:3-5 For what the Kingdom of God will look like when we see it in its fullness).

I wrote about the call on every believer to participate in the Kingdom. Even though some have been called to serve in offices such as Apostle, prophet, Pastor/teacher, and evangelist, every believer gets to play in the Kingdom. There aren't any A-teams, B-teams or C-teams in the Kingdom of God. Just believer's filled with the Holy Spirit of God interacting with others. Praying for healing, feeding the poor, visiting the ones in jail and prison....you know..."doing the stuff!"

I don't believe that we need waste time or effort to pray against the darkness in our towns and communities. I don't see in Scripture any reference to praying or railing against the darkness of our enemy. We push against the darkness with the light of God. What does that mean? Jesus said, in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world." So, as God's light to a society that is spiritually blind because of sin, we overcome the darkness through the telling of the Gospel and then allowing God to back up His Word with demonstrations of Power.

What is the end result of these power encounters? Well, we should see healings...We should see people freed from demonic bondage. We should see people falling love with Jesus more and more. In a nutshell, we should see the darkness driven back because of the infusion of the light of God's word.....God's power....and God's presence. People coming to the saving knowledge of who Christ is and what He has done to liberate us from the rule and dominion of the devil and his kingdom.

God has been dealing with me over the past 5 months about starting a meeting where the dynamics of the Kingdom of God could be seen, taught and modeled.

It's is not enough that we talk about a Power greater than ourselves who could restore us to sanity. We have got to introduce those in addiction to that Power.

We have talked about it long enough.
We have sang about it long enough.
To be honest with you, I have spent much prayer in seeking how God would want to do this meeting.
I don't have any answers other than one that completely caught me off guard.

God told me, "It will be my meeting. I will build it one week at a time."

I wanted to put together a frame work of how I thought the meeting should go. God said, "No."
I wanted to plan out what direction this meeting should be headed in.
God said, "No."

I understand that this is not the norm. But from my perspective, the norm hasn't been working to well.

This meeting is going to be about putting the emphasis back on Jesus and not on me or anyone else.

I told you it was going to be strange.

In other words, all I know at this point, is that we are to show up.....worship together....then simply see what God is going to do.

The call to recovery  has not changed for me.
The call to teach has not changed for me.

God has shown me that I am to shut down the meeting at Rapha, that I am to move it to another location.

The one thing I do know is that we will continue to meet on Saturday night at 7 p.m., so I will keep you informed.
For those of you who have visited with us at Rapha on Saturday nights, I hope that you will consider coming and being a part of what God is leading me to do.
There will be plenty of room and everyone is invited.

I will be giving out more details in the near future.

Please know that I am not starting something to be in competition with any other meeting or church in town. I am simply following what God has told me to do. We are simply going to be a different flavor of church/ meeting. Different doesn't mean better....it just means different.

If you could sum up what God is calling us to...
And the direction we are taking....

It would be in these words that my wife gave to me....

"Following in the STEPS of the carpenter"

God on you....

mb