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Culture of Honor

I really enjoy Bill Johnson’s teaching.

He made these statement in his teaching at Morning Star Conference:

He was sharing from John 5:39 “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” Bill said “the Bible is written so that it can only be understood through intimacy”

Later in the message he share – ” A culture of honor is celebrating who the person is while not stumbling over who they are not”

Prayer Assignments

Cast and Listen – part of intercession is to be specific and then listen how the Lord wants me to pray – I am learning to get out of the vague and ask more questions. Last night I was praying for a dear friend and her husband – to have times to truly connect – I heard Is 54v15 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you…. 17 no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.

Conduit

We are conduits (a means by which something is transmitted) of all sorts of things to one another.
Luke 6:45 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. So if we are filled with worry and anxiety – that is what we will pass on to others. But if we are continually being filled with God (Eph 5:18 – but ever be filled and stimulated with the Holy Spirit] – the more we have to pour out for good.
An example is my dear friend who had just listened to a great teaching and when her sister called with some family worries – my friend was able to speak life and confidence into her for prayer. Is 32 talks about us being a conduit of God for others. Is 32:1 See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. 2 Each man will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 3 Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen. 4 The mind of the rash will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.
So if your desire is to help others – fill up with more and more of the Holy Spirit. John 7:37-38 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (NKJV)

Epi – overflow

The Holy Spirit is described with three prepositions – He is with you. He shall be in you. He will come upon you. In Acts 1 again, where Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem—not to depart, but wait there for the promise of the Father—He then said to them, “For you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” This is the Greek preposition, which is epi. He comes upon you or He comes over you.
Chuck Smith says “this epi baptism of the Holy Spirit is the empowering of the believer for service. It is the flowing forth from my life in the dynamis (the dynamic)—the power of God’s Spirit working through my life in touching those around me. It is one thing to have the Holy Spirit with you—para. It is another thing to have the Holy Spirit in you, but even more to have the Holy Spirit upon you, or over you…being filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18)—or be continually filled with the Spirit.
But God also wants us to be overflowing with the Spirit. So many people have the Spirit just all bottled up inside and there is no flowing forth of the Spirit from their life. They are content to just be nominal Christians, just participating but never to overflowing. But it is God’s desire, God’s purpose, and God’s will that your life be overflowing with the Spirit.”
Chuck continues – “I am convinced that the greatest need in the church today is a renewal of the teaching on the subject of the Holy Spirit, in order that the church might come into the fullness of the Spirit. We need a renewal of teaching on the baptism with the Holy Spirit, where your life will be empowered to go into this world in which we live and be a witness for Jesus Christ. I believe that the only hope for our nation today is a spiritual awakening that will begin in the church with a fresh movement of the Holy Spirit upon the lives and the hearts of the church, who is seeking, who is thirsting, who is asking.”

Breaking and Entering

I love the title of John Ortberg’s article – Breaking and Entering – True Christian community does whatever it takes to connect a friend with Jesus. One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus (Mark 2:1-8) Are you this type of friend? Do you have one?  He writes… “Here is the truth about us: Everybody has a mat. Let the mat stand as a picture of human brokenness and imperfection. It is what is “not normal” about me. It is the little “as-is” tag that I most desire to hide. But it is only when we allow others to see our mat, when we give and receive help with each other, that healing becomes possible. Every effective Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is a Fellowship of the Mat. So are healthy families and churches.

Because everybody has a mat.

Maybe your mat is a raging temper, fear, or an inability to trust. Maybe it’s a need to be in control. Maybe your mat involves a terrible secret of some awful thing you did that you still feel guilty about. Maybe it is a crushing sense of failure, or inadequacy, or loneliness.

Community is made up of people with all their richness, but also with their weakness and poverty, of people who accept and forgive each other, who are vulnerable with each other. Humility and trust are more at the foundation of community than perfection.

If you want a deep friendship, you can’t always be the strong one. You will sometimes have to let somebody else carry your mat.”

John Ortberg is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Church.

Please pass the bread

I heard a podcast this week that could have the effect of making me feel guilty for having enough – but I choose to take it as a challenge to go before the Lord with every decision re: giving.  The speaker said “what if when Jesus gave the bread and fish from the small boy’s lunch to the disciples to spread to the crowd – they instead had kept it and ate it themselves – very grateful for something to eat?  I have pondered this often – am I stopping the flow of God’s gifts to the world?  When people say what is God doing about the suffering in the world – do I ask – what am I doing with the resources God gave me for the suffering in the world?  Then I opened my mail today from David Wilkerson’s church – in it was an insert of a mission to the poor – named …. get this “Please Pass the Bread”

Flow

I had another wonderful weekend and started Monday with a BIG stack of work to do.  I pressed into God for strength and I felt he showed me to flow with Him through all the work – then I looked at my memory verse – Col 2 ⁷ Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

I realized thankfulness helps me flow.

Matt 11:28 Message Version  Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Being Thorough

I find many times that when things are swirling around in my mind – things that keep coming back over and over I need to do more than a casual casting them to the Lord.  I also need to get still and ask Him what He wants me to do with the situation.   It reminds me of my memory verse today – and how important that we grow in our understanding and seek full and complete understanding.

Col 1:9 So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom.

Prepositions

We often know WHAT we are supposed to do – but the key is in the HOW.  A great guide to this HOW is to study the Scriptures prepositions.   A preposition may be defined as connecting word showing the relation of a noun or a noun substitute to some other word in the sentence (the squirrel in the tree; the preposition in shows the relationship between the squirrel and the tree.). Prepositions are words such as through, with, by, to, in…

Rom 8:13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Jhn 10:9 “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

Rom 5:21 so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Rom 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Gal 3:26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

2Ti 1:14  Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to {you.}