RED LETTERS.....

Matthew 3:15

And Jesus answered said unto him, "Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness."

Jesus walked out all that the Father commanded Him to.
Here we see his encounter with John the Baptist and John's hesistation to baptize Him.
Jesus lets John know that this is part of God's bigger purpose and plan. That what is happening goes farther and deeper than a simple baptism.

Jesus, through the baptism identifies himself with sinful men and women.
"I am one of you."
"But I am not like you."
Jesus' life will be the ransom to free you from the power of death and sin.

The comfort I take in the verse from Matthew is that Jesus was making sure that he did not let anything be undone that the Father wanted accomplished. He was in compliance and surrender to the Father's will.
That is where I want to be.
That is the place where we all are called to walk.
No excuses about sin or our human condition.
God called.
He empowers.
He provides.
We are to walk it out.
Perfection?
I'll let Him define that.
He knows about the human condition. The thoughts and attitudes and behaviors that we hide behind. He is willing to break through all of that and still fill us with His Holy Spirit for His Kingdom work.
Thank you Lord.....

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Being.....A State of Life

I feel as though we have moved from the nursery into "big" church.
We didn't understand everything that went on.

We didn't even understand how we were to feel.

But we knew that something different was taking place around us and in us.

The songs were more different than anything we had heard before. They focused solely on the greatness of God, His word and his character.

The songs were played not with multiple chords and intricate arragngements......no.....they consisted mostly of one chord. Voices moving in and out of the words. voices that sang solo and sometimes touched each other to create a sound that struck our hearts in ways we had never known. God was there.

The songs were not bound by time limits or restrained by the musicians. Each song was allowed to build and become what it was suppose to. Each strum of the instruments and each beat of the drum was like a clock that measured the life of the song. These songs were heart motivated and not from the mind.

Last night as we gathered in that room to worship, a window was opened and we glimpsed into a new realm of praise. We were lead there to be amazed at the heart of God. Not in reference to us or what He has done for us, but in the pure majesty of God Himself.

Rick and Beckie Trussell came to offer to us worship that we had never experienced. For this I am grateful. We, as a people, need to be stretched beyond what our comfort level is. Pushed by the Spirit to see what is over the wall and then sing.

A lot happened during that time of worship last night that I do not have time or space to write about. Rick and Beckie have left and returned home. But the camp resonates with a new sound and identity. We worshipped.

God on you.......

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Narrow? You Bet!

Running the Internet today visiting some of the usual sites, I find that there is a division in the body of Christ.
One group holds fast to the text of Scripture. The live under the mandate that God does not change (Malachi 3:6). They believe that the Word of God is the means to hear God, and that all we need is found in the Word. They believe that God sent the promised Holy Spirit to be our guide that would lead us into all truth. I think we miss that word sometimes. We glide over it. We move past it quickly since it is such a small word. "ALL" truth.

The other group in this rift loves God.
They love to worship and join together as a community of believers and sing to the heavens with one voice. No one would doubt their passion and commitment to worship. But what I have seen is that they have no sound theology. Everything is open for discussion and acceptance. They speak of levels of anointing that God wants to send. They speak of "destiny" and "inheritance." They paint a picture of a better life just out of reach of the "everyday" believer.

There is probably enough wrong with each group to write a blog a mile long. In fact, I'm not sure if I qualify to even write this account. All I know is that there is something wrong in the Body of Christ today. We have become a self-centered group of people whose personal needs exceed the call of the Kingdom. It's almost as if we are telling God, "Hey...when you bless me enough, then I will go for you.....so you better take me to the next level." How warped is that thinking. Do you not realize that the next level (if such a thing exists) would consist of more hardship and more persecution. You won't hear those spoken of from many pulpits. The next level would cost you even more than you are prepared to give.

In Matthew 20 we read of the mother of Zebedee coming to Jesus asking Him to grant here sons "Special" seats in the Kingdom. You know......right up there next to Jesus. Center stage and in the spotlight. The inner circle.

Jesus replies, "you don't know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?"

Mama's boys replied, "We sure can".

Jesus said, "You will indeed drink from my cup."

Now this would have given me pause for thought. "drink from his cup? His experiences?"

Sometimes we cry out to God for things that sound good on the surface, yet we are totally ignorant of what we are asking for. I remember talking with a young man who said, "You know, I want to die for Jesus. Go to another country spreading the gospel and give my life for my savior." The more he spoke, the more you could tell that it was all about him and whatever glory might come of this death he was eager to embrace. I told him, "you know...dying for Jesus is easy. It's living for him that is hard."

Maybe that is what this is about.
Fulfilling our call where we have been planted.

Becoming students of His Word.
Following by the Spirit of God.

In faith, live life on His terms.

Loving all.
Serving daily.

My life as worship to Him.

God on you.......

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Teach Us To Pray

In his book, Spiritual Man, Watchman Nee writes, "Nowadays Christians appear to treat prayer as a means to accomplish their aims and ideas. If they possessed just a little deeper understanding, they would recognize that prayer is but man uttering to God what is God's will."

One of the strongest statements I ever heard someone say was on a teaching tape from a series by John Wimber. He stated, "The flesh or sin nature is not permitted in prayer. No mixing of man's will in God's work is possible."
What does this mean?
God does not will himself to follow what man initiates. He is not bound by some mystical, eternal code of ethics that forces Him to follow man's petty petitions.
As His creation, it is our duty to seek out the heart of God and then breathe back to Him in our prayers what His will is.

Why would we think that Jesus' command to FOLLOW HIM would end with our prayers and that our prayers could become a vehicle for our own human desires and will? We have somehow not grasped the idea that we truly were bought with a price and we truly do belong to Jesus.
Every day I am made painfully aware that my life is no longer mine to do with as I please. The pain comes from my old nature wanting to have it's way. Screaming at me, "Go ahead and follow this Jesus but don't surrender everything!"

I have given my life once to Jesus.
I give my will every day.
Some days are easy.
Some days are a struggle.
Many believer's don't want to hear this. They want a pseudo-feel-good-theology.
My prayers are covered in tears a lot of the time.
My prayers are sometimes without words. Just groaning and weeping.
This is the school we are called to.
Each day is a teaching lesson.
I learn the shallowness of my own life in relation to the fullness of God.
That is what brings Joy to my heart.
That is the hope that causes me to rise up every morning.
That in communion with Christ, As I find His heart and will, I can truly breathe back to Him, in prayer, his plans for me. Then, as it says in Psalm 5....I wait expecting!

God on you......

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This Saturday AUGUST 9th

Rick and Beckie Trussell will be leading worship this Saturday evening at the CHURCH@RAPHA.

It will be an evening of community coming together with one simple goal.
To give praise and honor to the one true living God.
The God who sustains us.
The God who has saved us.

Service starts at 7 p.m.
Very casual dress.
See you there

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Accounting 101

Luke 9:25

For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

We tend to live our lives without thought or care as to the eternal ramifications to the decisions we make.
We have a band-aid mentality when it comes to dealing with the issues and situations life throws at us every day.

We want to do only what is necessary to stop the pain now. Never mind the consequences that may come later.

Even in our relationship with Jesus, we want him to come and take the pain, remove the hurt and make everything better. What does it profit us to gain relief from pain if we don't see or understand the eternal things of God.'

In the Matthew passage we are told that there is a trade off.

Either decide for the temporal things of this world, or decide for the eternal presence and relationship with God. Since most live by their appetites a.k.a. sinful nature, we feed the one that screams the loudest. That would be our sin nature.

In the process of doing so, we are losing our very lives.

We can't see because the sin appetite demands attention now.

We can't hear because the sin appetite demands to be fed now.

Verse 24 reads:

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

All a matter of dying to self.

A surrender of will and choice to live by the will and choice of God.

A walking out daily of refusing to have my way in order to embrace His way.

God help us all....

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Last Night!

The past two week ends have been a struggle spiritually.
It has not been an easy time, but I guess the most important thing to come out of this is to realize that we are all growing, trying to hear God.

As worship leader, I missed it last night.
The songs that I picked were not what was needed.
Here again is the learning process. Of course you'd think after 15 years I'd be better at it.
I'm learning.
When worship is going on, the one thing you don't want to do is watch the room and respond to how they are responding. If the crowd is flat and doesn't seem to be entering into worship, you have a tendency to want to do something to pump them up. Unfortunately, that is manipulation and I think God doesn't look to favorably on this.

The message was on "leaving the past".
Saul/Paul was the main focus of the teaching.
Paul's life prior to his Damascus road encounter with Jesus as compared to Paul's life after the encounter.
It was the encounter with Jesus that became the defining moment in Paul's life.
What occurred after this encounter was the "leaving of the past" for Paul.
no longer was he the enemy of the church.
He became the voice of the church.
Paul never forgot the terrible things that he brought against the Church of Jesus.
He never allowed it to define him. Paul took the past and used it as fuel to move forward with Jesus.

In Philippians we read where Paul lists all his accomplishments before he met Jesus as compared with his current life. Paul said that they count for nothing. In fact Paul says that they pale in comparison of the knowledge of knowing Jesus. He counts them all in the negative column when weighed against his relationship with Jesus.

Seems to me that today people simply want to forget what they have done.
Remembrance of your past does not mean you have to heap guilt, shame and condemnation on yourself. It is a reminder that fosters gratitude for what Christ has done in us and for us.
"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do; forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

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