First Stone In Place

"And on this rock I will build My church"...Matthew 16:18

Every kingdom work begins with the foundational stone or belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Christ...........the chosen one by the Father sent to be the propitiation for our sins. The Christ........the anointed one chosen to stand in for humanity and carry upon himself the full weight and punishment for all sin for all time. The Son of the living God..........Son not by birth or lineage, but Son by position. Second part of the Trinity.........Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Upon this simple truth will be erected a living temple made of people who have been brought under the atoning work and blood of Jesus.

My aim is to let God build his church at Rapha. I dare not have a say so in the process. Mine is only to do and obey. I desire not to implement anything that would detract from God is wanting to do. A page has truly turned in this journey he has called Vicki and I to. Even though that chapel has sat on the property at Rapha for a number of years, after last Saturday night, it has taken on new meaning. It is the altar now on which we will climb and become living sacrifices. A place where God's stones will gather and proclaim his majesty and greatness.

We have all talked about last Saturday evening and the affect it had on us. But last Saturday was not the high water mark of what God is wanting to do. That will come when we begin to see the harvest in the lives of people. I know that each person who comes to the meeting will come for various reasons, but ultimately, I want us all to meet God. To spend time in his presence as a community of believers and be changed forever.

See you Saturday night....7 p.m.

God on you........

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Provison

Listening to a Bill Johnson CD yesterday only confirmed some things that I knew but did not have language for.
1.) God is our provider
2.) His provision is not limited by human institutions
3.) World economics do not hinder what God truly wants to do
4.) Jesus is all sufficient........in every area of my life........in every way.

Genesis 26:1 begins with, "There was a famine in the land." This conjures up images of dry, broken earth. Fields that should be green with vegetation lie cracked and are a dull brown because of the dry earth.

Who could forget last years drought, that some say is being carried over this year. During the summer last year, there was this uneasiness about water levels and whether some cities would even have enough water to supply to their people.

Truth is, I think last years drought was God's way of getting our attention and telling us that there is more at stake here than water. We are suffering from a drought of trust. God is wanting us to walk our lives out under his direction, but many seem bent on supplanting God with their own plans and ways. Our rejection of God, as a nation, only brings hardship and bondage. Yet within all of this, there is always a remnant willing to do and say whatever God lays on their hearts.

It doesn't take a prophet or a scientist to realize that our economy is in dire straits. Gas prices going through the roof, followed by food prices on the increase. We have a government that is so self-centered that the people suffer because of it. It doesn't look good. Unless of course, God is your provision.

Do you remember the verse at the first of this posting? "There was a famine in the land......."
If you drop down to verse 12, you will read ,"Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him." There in the land of famine, a man did the most insane thing by planting a crop. You see, God is not limited even by the laws of nature when it comes to his desire to give us a harvest. But..............(the big one) You must plant! You must ignore what is going on around you and under the direction of God, lay your crop out. Tend it, take care of it, pray over it and realize that God, and Him alone, is the only one who can increase what you put in the ground.

Quit looking around at the situations and ask God what and where does He want you to plant?
He is the all sufficient provider.
He is the great I AM.

I truly believe that our Saturday night meeting is a fertile place to plant in land that is experiencing famine. It is not anything that I or anyone else has done, but God has chosen to bring forth harvest.
pray for all of us involved in the meeting that we are good stewards of what God is giving to us.

God on you........

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Don't Waste Your Life: Risk

As Steve Camp put it so well in his song;
"Living Dangerously in the Hands of God."

to live dangerously is not to live recklessly but to live in complete assurance that God has his hand not only on us, but on our situations and daily struggles.
Don't stand on the shore wacthing everyone else enjoy the water. Jump! Jump into the deep end with God.

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Hello? Anyone There?

Psalms 5:1
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing.
Do you ever truly ask God to listen to you? Did you ask him for his attention when you pray? Not from a standpoint of "I'm special....I deserve your full attention" but from the place of being a child of His. I like how King David put this....."Consider my sighing." He wasn't talking about taking deep breaths, he was talking about a longing, a groaning that takes place deep within a person. A longing brought about by a need or situation they are facing where there aren't any answers. He says, "Hey God! Don't just listen to me......search my heart." This is, in fact, the very nature and way of God. He searches our hearts when we pray to find the motive behind what we are praying for.

Psalms 5:2
Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.
David truly understands the divine pecking order here. David, King....warrior....prophet....psalmist.......realizes that there is a King above him. One who has given to David all the authority and success that he possesses.

Psalms 5:3
In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.
David begins his day in pray. The King of a nation that God has specifically chosen to be his own, rises from his bed each morning and spends time in prayer. Not only that, but after praying, David waits expectantly for God to answer his prayers. I don't think this means that David sat around until the answers came, but He did move through his day with a spirit of expectation that at any moment he would see the answers to what he had prayed.

I think the greatest disservice we do to God is go and meet with Him and not expect anything. To go and gather with other believer's and not expect Him to come into our midst. Not expect Him to work in us or touch us or speak to us. I expect God to come!
I try not to limit what He wants to do through unbelief or doubt. I simply want to worship Him.

That is what our Saturday night meeting at the Church@Rapha is all about. EXPECTATION!
We don't know what is going to happen in the service. We don't want to hold to our order of service too tight and not allow God a place to move.

I talked with the men yesterday about how great last Saturday night was. As great as it was, today was a new day with God. We learn that we have to lay Saturday down and move on. IT is so easy for us to get swept up in a moment where God manifests in our midst and we see Him move on people. Life goes on and we have to move with Him. We can't live on last Saturday night for a week. There are things that have happened this week to people that wasn't a part of the equation last Saturday, so we need to come together to meet with God this week.

Be desperate for God!
Be hungry for God!

God on you......

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Time to Move On

Exodus 40:36
In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle, they would set out.

This was an important lesson I learned years ago when I was pastor of the Saturday evening service at Gadsden Vineyard Church. Sometimes the meetings we held were so powerful in what God was doing, that we would live off of that night for 3 or 4 days. We continue to talk about it. Go back over it almost like a blow by blow description. What I found out that after 3 or 4 days of living on a Saturday night meeting, you'd wake up and it would be Wednesday or Thursday and God would have moved on. You spent the rest of the week playing catch up.

I truly believe God wants us to enjoy the moments where there is great intimacy between Him and His people. But.....................He wants us to realize that this journey is an every day-get-up-what-do-you-want-me-to-do-today journey. We do not have the luxury of living in the past, even with God. He calls us to remember the past. Remember His goodness, but live in the day. Live in the present here and now and not the sweet-sweet-memory of the past.

Get up and move when you see Him moving!

God on you........
See you Saturday night!

mb

Our First Meeting

There was much prayer and focus prior to last night's meeting and as such, I tried to keep everything loose and not get in the way of God. Since we had done a Saturday night Church for a number of years, the one thing I did not want to fall prey to was the mindset of trying to make the Rapha service look like what had been done before. I simply wanted God to come and for us to glorify Him through our worship and teaching.

The day was spent in preparation. The guys pitched in and cleaned up the chapel, getting it ready for the meeting. Equipment was set up, chairs in place and the room made ready.
The worship team arrived at 6 p.m. which gave us ample time to go over the worship music. This was a big plus that we were not able to take advantage of when we had the morning service. We started so early, it was hard for everyone to get to Rapha so we could run over the music.

The thing I truly liked about the worship was that it wasn't just me trying to hear God on the song selection. We pulled songs from each member and had a collective worship set.

7 o'clock came and we opened the doors to let everyone in. There were several visitors and former clients. It was good to see everyone. My hope is that we are able to get the word out so that everyone who came through the program will feel welcomed and want to come out on Saturday night.

Worship was like a pot of water put on to boil. It slowly heated up as the worship team moved through the songs and at one point, you could feel God's presence in a powerful way. The crowd took over the song we were singing and continued to sing and worship. The team simply stopped singing and continued to play as the room filled with voices crying out to God. It was a moment.

Each song seemed to build and take us to a new level with God. I stood there soaking in what was happening, knowing that we had heard right in making the transition from Sunday Morning to Saturday night. I can't explain the difference between a day time service and a night time service. It seems that everyone was more free and uninhibited in their worship. The room was more receptive to hearing God and not only that, but responding to what they were hearing.

Seth spoke and, as always, brought a powerful word from Matthew 14:22. He compared the disciples rowing and straining to row across the Lake to our own efforts in trying to live life on our own terms and in our own strength......Impossible! Seth has a unique to way of taking the Scripture and putting it in terms that strike the hearts of those in the room.

Ministry time was everything I had been praying for. Many came forward to be prayed for and have God touch them. It was wonderful having a number of people on the ministry team praying, being servants in this work. I stood and looked around the room at all the different groups of people gathered around someone praying and asking God to come and touch them and change them.

God was good to us last night.
But now it is time to lay last night down and begin the journey toward next Saturday. Please be in prayer for the meeting. Not that God would come and duplicate what happened last night, but that he would simply come and be in our midst.
See you at 7 p.m. / June 8th

God on you.......

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Welcome

We are entering into a new season here at Rapha with renewed hope and purpose. For 25 months, God has given us grace to conduct services on Sunday Morning. We have grown as a people and community of believer's. We have sent many out into the world as disciples and the reports we are getting from them is that their relationship with God continues to grow. That is our main purpose----make disciples, not church-goers. Men who hear God for themselves and have a passion to share with others what God has done in their life. Men who have become students of the Word of God.

Last year I received what I thought was a leading from God to move the Sunday meeting to Saturday night. As it turned out, the leading was from God but the timing was not yet. SO we waited and prayed over what we were hearing. This year it became very evident that what we had heard was truly God. A series of incidents opened the door for a move to Saturday night.

This Saturday Night we will host our first service. It will begin at 7 p.m. and Seth Barber will be our speaker. Our hope is that the service will be lead by the Holy Spirit and not an order produced by us, so we want to leave room for the Spirit to speak through others. Through Scripture, through a testimony, through a prayer request, and through worship.

There are a lot of new areas that the Church@Rapha is being led toward. Areas that exceed anything I could ever dream of and that is why I know God's hand rests upon us. Please be in prayer for us as begin this new meeting.

Please check back weekly for new postings concerning what God is doing here at Rapha.

God on you...........

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For Your Information:
The Church@Rapha exists as a separate entity from the Rapha program. We receive no funds from Rapha other than the use of the chapel. All monies taken up through our tithes and offerings are sent back out into the community to help and aid those who are in need. We do use a percentage of the money to take care of any physical needs of the service such as repair or replace any equipment we use in the meeting. As a church we are supporters of Nori and Barbie Kelley, missionaries based in Colorado. Nori and Barbie have produced a number of worship Cd's in different countries. They have recorded and released the first ever Russian Worship CD as well as the first Japanese worship CD. They travel the world teaching and helping new churches with worship teams. We deem it an honor and privilege that God allows us to be a part of the ministry Nori and Barbie Kelley are called to.