Sometimes in the middle of winter, we grow weary for the springtime to arrive.  At times it seems as if spring will never come.  But it will. Song of Solomon 2:10-14, " My beloved spoke and said to me; Rise up my love, my fair one. And come away.  For lo the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.  Then the fig tree puts forth her green figs.  And the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.  Rise up my love, my fair one and come away!  O my dove in the clefts of the rock.  In the secret places of the cliff.  Let me see your face, let me hear your voice.  For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely." 

Jesus is inviting us to come deeper into our relationship with Him at this time.  If we want to leap into the excitement of the spiritual season of spring, then we must come to the secret place and spend time with our Beloved Christ and allow Him to whisper into our hearts the secrets of His heart.  The Lord is calling us into an excitement with Him in a new season for the Church.  If we would go deep into His heart and abandon ourselves to His love, He will lift us to new heights. 

I have learned so much of what it means to be Christ like.... but I have a LONG WAY to go.  I long to hide myself in the secret place, and climb to the clefts of the rock which require my complete trust in the Lord as He carries me through the places of spiritual difficulty. It will be in these seasons that we will see the greatest transformations of our lifetime. We can't be content to simply be ourselves anymore, we need to allow Christ to have a bigger role in our lives.  

In the Beatitudes we are told, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied.  Being thirsty and hungry is a good posture to be in to receive the promise of God, that we will be filled.  In this place of crying out for more of God, we come to His table and receive the promise we will be satisfied.

The world makes such a promise to us, but is never able to fulfill that promise. The world system and all it offers, leaves us empty, sometimes wounded, and often very weary.  

Jesus tells us to come to Him all who are weary and He will give you rest.  As we rest in Him in this season of upheaval, He wants to satisfy us with more of His Presence living inside us.  We are the Dwelling Place where He chooses to live.  The fresh Wind of the Holy Spirit must be invited to blow over us to bring a refreshing, and the power of the Living God to sustain us.   

Do not settle for what was...instead, respond to the invitation for more, and reach deep inside the Father's heart and allow Him to do a new thing in you and watch it spring forth in this new season of your life.  

A Double-minded Person is Unstable in Everything

Every individual who makes a decision for Christ in their lives has to come to a place where they choose between the old sinful patterns of behavior and this new life in Christ.

Our problem as humans is all too often we have trusted in ourselves for so long that it is hard for us to turn over our will completely to God.  So we battle within ourselves over our old desire to the pleasures of sin and this new behavior that will glorify God.  In many cases individuals make decisions in life that take them down a deep dark path that leads them to a place teetering on complete self destruction and sometimes death.

 Many people who get saved, find they still continue to struggle with the destructive thoughts and behaviors from their past, but now they have become keenly aware that this lifestyle is no longer acceptable in their new relationship with a Holy God and there lies the conflict.   And it is here that some waver between two opinions, two lifestyles, and James 1:8 calls us unstable.  We are unstable in our marriage, unstable as a parent, unstable as an employee or employer and unstable in other relationships including our relationship with God.  So why do some individuals feel pulled back into the past that they have come to despise?  Why do they struggle with a lifestyle of sin?  In Ephesians 6: 10 we are told, “we wrestle with principalities and powers of darkness.”  Could this mean that there are forces that hold us captive to decisions from our past?  In some cases, the answer is yes.

So it is here that we must look at the need to break off the powers of darkness that at some point we gave permission to come into our lives.  In this process of deliverance we need to look at what weapons God has given us for this very purpose.  Jeremiah 1:10 says that before we can plant or build, we need to “root out, pull down, destroy and overthrow “demonic strongholds.  Many times this work is not done sufficiently and we jump ahead to building on top of layers of dysfunctional behavior and lies.  If we were to build a house on a piece of land that already had a dilapidated run down building on it, we would understand that before we do anything else, we must remove the building, including the foundation of that building to make room for the plans and design of the new structure. It is the same for us.  We need to remove the old foundation of beliefs and patterns of thoughts that are rooted in sin, so that we can construct this new glorious building that will bring honor to the Lord.  Once we demolish the demonic strongholds, then we can prepare to build up the individual with the Word of God.

In scripture we learn that when the strongman is bound, the area in which he once occupied must be filled or he will return and bring his friends and the condition will be worse for the person.  So we must begin to fill this vacated area with truth.  If we simply break a person free from the grip of the enemy and never teach them how to keep themselves filled with the reservoir of God’s Word, the person will continue to be tormented and struggle with sin issues.  Our adversary is relentless, and Daniel 7:25 warns us that he will do everything he can to wear down the saints.  He wants us to give up.  But when we learn who we are in Christ, we begin to believe God’s promise of success, and the power from on high to persevere in order to win the prize. 

A Time to confront the Enemy

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a special group of ladies that meet once a month and pray for the Church and the Nation.  Usually our time together consists of some quiet time to listen for the Lord's leading in how to pray.  During this time, the Lord led me to 1 Kings 18 which is the familiar story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven and confronting the false prophets of Baal.

In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 we read that there is a time for everything.  God works in seasons, and He wants us to know those seasons.  In verse 8 it reads...a time for peace and a time for war.  And right now we are in a season to advance the kingdom of God, this is a "time to confront the enemy".  In 2 Samuel 11:1 "In the spring when the kings went to battle, David sent Joab with his servants and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem."  David was not where he was suppose to be and the account that follows begins with the lust of the eyes and spirals downward from there ending up with adultery and murder.  When we are not in the place where the Lord wants us, we open ourselves up to the enemy to seduce us into sin. So it is important to know the season God has determined for His Church.  Here is the word the Lord gave me based on 1 Kings 18.

Verses 1& 2: "And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year saying, "Go present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.  So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab, and there was a severe famine in Samaria."  The first thing we learn from these verses is that there was a famine in the land.  Actually, there had been a three year drought and the famous showdown between Baal and God was over which one would bring rain to end the drought. Verses 3&4: "And Ahab had called Obadiah, who was in charge of his house.  (Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly). For it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave and had fed them with bread and water." Obadiah was most likely a believer that worked for Ahab and certainly was conflicted between his job, his boss and his God and God's people. So we can assume from this that it was not safe for Elijah to return to Ahab because he was a wanted man. But he did anyway. Here is what the Lord is saying in this,  we are coming into a season where God is asking us to confront the strongholds of the enemy head on.  Let's look back at chapter 17:1-6 "And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word.  Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, "Get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the Brook Cherith  (it is interesting to note that the hebrew origin of this word means, separation) which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook."
So we learn that the Lord had instructed him to go to a place that was out of the jurisdiction and reach of Ahab and separate himself from any confrontation so that at the appointed time, he could be refreshed for the season of battle between the prophets of Baal and God. It's important to understand the reason Elijah called for the drought in the first place was in chapter 16 verses 32,33 where we learn that Ahab "set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.  And Ahab made a wooden image.  Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him."  So the drought was a direct result of disobedience, defiance, and the occult worship of Baal and Asherah.  Ahab at this point had married Jezebel who was a zealous worshipper of Baal and his supposed wife, the goddess Asherah according to Canaanite mythology. In her zeal, she ordered the death of the prophets of God, because she wanted to force everyone to believe in her gods.  Baal was considered to have power over the forces of nature, therefore those who believed in him expected him to produce rain bringing an end to the drought.  Listen, we are in a time of history where we are suffering from a spiritual famine.  For a country where close to 80% of our citizens own a Bible, many of those people have never read the Word of God.  So they are deficient in knowing what is Truth.  Our culture is constantly demanding that we bow to all gods, except to the One true God.  And it is our time to "Arise and shine for the Light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon us." Do we believe that?? Next week all of Christianity will celebrate the victorious resurrection of our King and the reign of His kingdom forevermore.  If we truly believe that God declares that the glory of the Lord is risen upon us, then we must believe He is calling us to confront the enemy of the Church. Because the Light has come to eliminate darkness.  As light bearers, we are the ones called to carry the light into dark places confronting and exposing.  Those spirits that hold many in captivity to the powers of darkness, have even wrecked havoc with those who have made decisions for Christ.  Scripture teaches us, that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in us.  But most times, we as believers do not operate from that dunamis, dynamic explosive resurrection power! We settle for a form of godliness denying its power.
Back to our text in 1 Kings, verse 21; "Elijah came near to all the people and said, How long will you halt and limp between 2 opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him.  But if Baal, then follow him.  And the people did not answer him a word."  Now I find that curious that the people didn't respond.  Was it from doubt? unbelief? fear? What was their problem? Why didn't they speak up?  What is happening to us today that we don't  respond with boldness like Elijah? Let's face it, it will cost us! We have come under "political correctness." What's amazing here is, if we stop to think about it,  Elijah didn't even have the same access that we have today to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and look what he accomplished.  Before Christ and His ascension into heaven, and the day of pentecost, believers were limited to the power of the Holy Spirit. Praise God that we can walk in the Spirit of God all the time as long as we understand that we must yield to Him.  It is time to put away our flesh, and clothe ourself in the power of God.

So if God is calling us to confront the enemy, then we need to know who the enemy is.  Let's look at this worship of Baal, Asherah and the Occult that was so prevalent throughout the land.   Baal was considered the male god over the forces of nature and worked through false prophets who operate in divination and the female queen of heaven Asherah, who was his supposed wife.  Asherah was the goddess of fortune telling and was worshipped through temple prostitution.  So we see through Jezebel's worship of these gods, and her influence over her husband and eventually her seduction of many throughout the kingdom there was a huge sexual perversion and evidence of the occult that operated hand and hand and created a stronghold which needed to be torn down.  I think it is safe to say, that today those same influences are being imposed on us in America. Every form of sexual perversion, and the occult both abound and are becoming more and more acceptable even within our churches. And our opponents are zealous to force us to accept and bow our knee to their gods.   It is worth noting that when Elijah confronted the false prophets of Baal, and the power of their god, he not only trusted that God would reveal His power through the altar that Elijah erected, but he would then have to destroy the stronghold by destroying all the false prophets.  Now that does not mean that we as Christians go around killing everyone, but we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers of darkness.  This means in our season of war, we must tear down the strongholds that our enemy has built up, tear down the spiritual strongholds and then replace the void with Truth spoken in love based on God's Word. Before you go into battle, make sure your heart is right before God, and that you know your position in Christ and pray from that position of authority.
Here are the steps needed:  1. Identify the strongholds of demonic activity, and repent for your own participation when applicable, then repent on behalf of the Church. 2. Aggressively take the authority that God has given us to use His POWER to destroy their strength. 3. Speak God's promises and His Word of Truth into the atmosphere and decree and declare prophetically His purposes.  Let's once again call fire from heaven to destroy and dismantle every demonic altar our adversary has erected.  This is a season of war.  This is a season of advancement.  Go confront the strongholds of darkness and speak light and life into the atmosphere.  God tells us in His Word, that greater is He within us, then he that is in the world!  We will win this battle if we step out in faith, call upon the power of God, and confront the enemy head on! 

Community in Communion With Christ and One Another

I grew up in a small town community and most all our neighbors went to the same local church.  We did many things as a community so I remember a time when we shared life together as a community. 

But in our society today, we are drawn in many different directions, that even in our families so often we don’t have a sense of community. Our neighbors went to school together, and then to church together, and we played on the ball field together at the Little League.  We even did neighborhood small groups together.  As families we would read scriptures together with the other families on our street.  One of my favorite things we did was on the first snowfall of the year, we gathered our grills and lawn chairs and the community would arrive in our side yard with hotdogs, chips, soda, side dishes and we would have an outdoor celebration in the snow.  Anyone crazy enough to come was invited- and no phone calls had to be made.  Everyone knew that was what we did on the first snowfall of the year.  We would toss the football around, play snow games while the adults sat in lawn chairs wrapped in blankets trying to keep warm.   Then there was the neighbor 2 doors down who always hosted the neighborhood pig roast.  There was more people than backyard!. We knew the local police officers, the mailmen, the principal of our elementary school.  And our parents would send us to the local market to pick up groceries and if we didn’t have enough money, the store owner would say, “bring it next time”.  Boy those days are certainly gone. 

As I grew older and left my hometown, I have always hoped to find a church that reminded me of the church I grew up in.  A community church, where a community lived, worked and worshipped together.   What a concept!!  I think as good of a model that was at that time, I believe God really has more for His Ekklesia and is taking us to a place where worship is vital and the cross and Christ crucified is the centrality of the gospel.  Centered around that we need to embrace our community and draw them into the love of the Father poured out on the cross.  We may need to ask ourselves a few questions.

With all the things going on in our lives, we have to stop and consider, are we trying to manage everything on our own, or are we doing it with others? Are we doing it empowered by the Holy Spirit living within us?

If we look at what the early church looked like in Acts 2:42-47 it gives us insight into what God desires for His people.  It reads:  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people.  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

The early church members worked together for the good of the community, exactly as the Lord intended.  So we need to ask ourselves, how are we contributing to the needs of our community?  Are we breaking bread and fellowshipping with them? Are we helping them when family crisis arises?  Are we helping them we they have pressing needs?  Are we living out our faith in our community or do we save that just for the church?  Do our neighbors know we love the Lord? Have we shared our testimony with them?   You see, when we live out our faith in our community, this scripture in Acts tells us, God will add to the church those who are being saved.  Maybe that’s why our friends and family aren’t getting saved, because we don’t think they want to hear about God’s love for people or maybe we are spending too much time with church activities with no time left for doing life together with those individuals who desperately need the Lord..  

Here’s another question we are asked: Are relationships developing as we serve?

Are we working with others at our church in such a way that we are growing together as we serve?  It always amazes me how a community comes together in a natural disaster.  In order for people to survive, they pull together their resources and lend each other a hand.   They end up getting to know their neighbor even though they have lived next door for years.  Our life was designed purposely by God to need others involved in our life.  God doesn’t want us to do it alone. 

Now here is the big question:  Are we deeply sharing life together?  Do we have surface relationships that help us feel connected, but they are not deep, nor lasting at all? God wants us to feel we can share the good things in life as well as the struggles and know people care about us. We can only do this when Christ lives in us and we allow the Holy Spirit  to guide us.  

And that is the whole point, God says we were once not a people but now we are a people.  We are called to be a family, God’s special people working together for one purpose, with one heart and one mind.  How is that accomplished?  By spending time together and getting to really know one another, and to pray for one another’s needs.  As we spend time with each other, we also spend time connected to God corporately, through prayer, studying the Word, and worshipping the Lord. The Holy Spirit brings us into the place of God's heart where we become One Body.

Last thing to consider: Are you using your God given gifts?  God has designed each of us with specific gifts to bless others, and then He places us where we can walk in our gifts.  The problem is, if we are not in a place where we can walk in our gifts, then we will become disappointed and discouraged because we won’t feel useful.  God has a plan for your life, and when we are in the right place we will flourish in our gifts and we will have a wonderful sense of being helpful in the kingdom of God!  Ask Holy Spirit to lead you where Jesus can use you to bring glory and honor tho the Father.

So my question for you is this: Are you devoting your time to the teaching of God’s Word, corporate Spirit led worship, the fellowship with others, the breaking bread together and praying with one another?  Because if you aren’t, then I’m afraid you are not in the very plan God has for your life.  God doesn’t give us gifts so we can sit on the sidelines in church and not use those gifts to serve others.  Seek the Lord and ask Him where your gifts will be appreciated for His purposes. 

You will feel energized and blessed to be in a community of believers working together to expand the kingdom of God, not merely fill a building.  You will find it exciting to be in a church that feels alive with the power of the Presence of the Holy Spirit.  You will witness a steady growing in numbers as the Holy Spirit draws people into your fellowship.   Is Christ the main focus of your church family? Are you experiencing authentic heart felt worship to King Jesus who is worthy of extravagant praise? Are you blessed as you serve your community with others?  Are you blessed as you fellowship with another and establishing real meaningful relationships?  Are you reaching your community to serve those un-churched around you by announcing the gospel of Jesus in word and deed?  And is God faithfully adding to your numbers daily?

If not, then ask God to lead you where He will use you.   Ask the Lord to direct your path to a community in communion with Christ and one another.  This is a season to partner with heaven in reaching the lost in record numbers. Where evil abounds, grace abounds more.  God has given His Body the grace to take back what satan has stolen from Jesus.  The souls of men!! We need to be a passionate people pursuing our God, connecting with other likeminded people pursuing God so we can passionately advance the kingdom of God for His glory! 

Run Inside the Father's Heart

God is longing to do something new in your heart.  Although we are gripped by the images of abandoned and starving babies, abused women, hollowed eyes staring into emptiness, we see in the midst of the suffering, Love shining brilliantly in the darkness, bringing hope to a world perishing.  The Lord desires to rip apart your heart to expand your capacity to love as He loves. A love that can't be contained, a love that compels us to go, go somehow to make a difference. Go in a quest to find where Jesus is spending the most time.  In our journey whether in the streets of Philadelphia or countries around the world we will learn one thing, Jesus can be found walking among the poor, the brokenhearted, the starving, the destitute.  Jesus lives in the streets, the dark places.  Its so true, where sin abounds, grace abounds more.   We should not want to stay the way we are, we should want more, and more, and more of Jesus.  We should want Him to take us to a deeper place in His heart and be wrecked forever with His love. A love that changes everything, a love that won't settle for complacency, a love that runs into the darkness to rescue as many precious souls as possible.  A love that can not stay quiet. We should want nothing less than a passion that consumes the darkness. A burning love that never gives up, never gets tired, a love that wants more, and more of the things that matter.  A love that will only be content with knowing the pure love of the Father's heart for the lost, the unlovable, the brokenhearted, the prisoner, the abused, abandoned, forgotten, the people the world despises.  If we don't run into the Father's heart and grab hold of HIs heart, I fear the darkness will win and steal us away into a forbidden place.  Matthew 24:12 "Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold".  Run into His heart, feel His heartbeat, it is a place of refuge not just for you, but for the world.

Kenya Mission Trip 2012