Hooking up with God

gadling.com

Those of you who have been following the Lord's work in my life and those who labor with me know that we have been prophesying of a transforming work in the heart of the New England church.  There is an underground movement in the church, a remnant of Christians who hide in metaphorical closets because they are ashamed to admit that they are waiting upon the Holy Spirit to change the sinfully mediocre status quo of New England religious traditionalism and superficial evangelical experiences.

After years of serving in ministry, I had learned that there is nothing one can do to "usher in a move of the Holy Spirit."  I was told by "charismatic" groups that we can "strike revival" in the hearts of men, that we can "lead a movement of the Spirit" into a "time of healing and change."  Yet when I never actually saw the revival, the movement or the time of healing and change happen, I grew disenfranchised with these forceful groups who seem to believe they have an "in" with the Holy Spirit.  It was almost as if they were saying that they knew the mayor, that he would get our budget plans approved, but the plans always stayed on his desk.  I was no longer impressed, no longer captivated by the waves of emotion and idolization of the Holy Spirit, leaving Jesus and the Father as the seemingly inactive persons of the Trinity.  I am not judging the hearts of these believers nor am I claiming they do not love the Lord with their entirety of their beings.  Rather, I am judging their fruit and testing the spirits as the Scripture instructs us to do.  No fruit.  I was promised a tropical paradise of delicious fruits unknown to men.  I found a cactus.  I moved on.

In the winter of 2009, a group of unlikely men were to led to serve the Lord together. Two black men from two different independent Pentecostal churches, one white hippie guy from a Presbyterian church, and one white guy who was raised Roman Catholic, attended a Baptist church, then attended a Pentecostal church and then grew tired of them all (I am this guy) recognized that the Holy Spirit had been speaking to each of them that something unique in this history of the Church was about to occur, particularly in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.  In our separate walks with God, He has told all of us the same thing: "I want to move, I want to heal the hearts of people, I want to offer them the fullness of who I AM, I want to do radical things in the life of the Church.  I want to use you in this process."  And through a strange course of events, including a trip to a casino and winter walks in a college quad, the Lord brought the four of us together.

Our initial thought was that we ought to begin with events, start preaching in the public square, start going to churches to teach, start hosting prayer nights, etc.  We longed to plan, wanted to hit the ground running and propel the movement of the Holy Spirit.  We began talking to each other about the movement of the Holy Spirit night and day.  We would meet for hours, meet long into the night, shirking our other responsibilities, to discuss how the Lord could move.  We would pray, plan, pray about planning, plan about praying.  We started talking to others in the church about the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Eventually, I had moments of frustration.  The movement was never enough.  We even dubbed our group of men, "The Movement."  During that time, the Lord really did some awesome things in us and through us.  We traveled throughout New England, we preached, we saw tens of people saved.  The Movement was happening!  Then the anvil from heaven dropped...

I was becoming the movement of the charismatic church for which I had developed such a distaste.  Promises of future change, overly "Christian-ese" sounding predictions of times to come when things would be better for the Christian church.  I would call for fasting and prayer because it is what I thought we should do if we wanted the Holy Spirit to move.  I would do anything to get the Holy Spirit to move, short of renounce the Holy Spirit.  I was obsessed with the movement of God.  A year into our ministry, the Lord disbanded our team through "natural life events" (relocation, new jobs, graduating college, new relationships, etc.) and redirected our lives.

I realized the great sin of my heart during the times of "The Movement" was that I was so focused on the movement of God that I had forgotten about God Himself.  I was so excited about seeing Him in action, that I only prayed for the action.  My walk with God became about the walk and not about my God.  I enjoyed the passion and not the relationship itself.  It is almost as if I were "hooking up" with God, really interested in the pleasure but not necessarily interested in spending time together and developing a deep and meaningful relationship.

I was sitting in Starbucks last week and the Lord spoke to my heart through some readings I was going over for my small group.  He inspired me to write this in my journal:

"I am overwhelmed by the presence of God.  I feel an overwhelming prompting, an urge, that a movement of God is stirring in the restlessness of His people.  The urge to 'do something' must be assuaged with obedience to the Godhead.  An intimate fellowship with the Trinity will result in a marked change of the few ordained to walk the narrow path.  We must not focus on the movement of God, but God Himself.  In an our humanity, we believe that God moves in certain times, but that He remains static in others.  Our God is dynamic, always moving, yet His movement cannot be read by a gauge or thermometer.  Surely we must recognize that we have not discovered a coming revival, but have had the blindness to His movement removed.  Our excitement for 'what God is doing next' ought to be replaced by a passion for God because God is always doing.  Yes, a mighty thing is to come, but more dynamic and mighty than the thing to come is the God who initiates the thing.  Therefore, be still and know that He is God; wait upon the Lord Himself, not the signs of His coming."


I have learned that we cannot lead a movement of God.  Only God can lead a movement of God.  Only God is qualified to determine which of His servants He chooses to place in positions of earthly leadership.  Yet note that the earthly leaders' lives are marked by intimacy with God and His Spirit.  If you hear a speaker say, "We can lead the charge of God's army" or "we have the power to lead a movement of the Holy Spirit," approach that movement with scrutiny and apprehension.  Despite the blessings we have as adopted children of God, we are not God.  I hope we never get so zealous for God that we stray from the God for whom we believer we are so passionate.

As an aside, the members of "The Movement" team are still in connection with one another and have added two more to our roster.  We are still a team, though inactive.  We have learned that it is not so much about our ministry, but about our God.  One member just got engaged, another is actively working on his own record label, another is leading a campus ministry movement and is about to graduate college, another is a college student about to inherit the last person's position of leadership in campus ministry, another just became a deputy sheriff and the other is a leader in his local church and just started a new job working for the fire department.  And we will minister together again soon, should the Lord lead us to serve together again.

Oh how I am in need of constant reminders from God that ministry is not about the ministry, but about the God who commissioned us to minister.  There is a danger in hooking up with God.  On judgment day, He might say He never knew us.  I mean, how well did you know someone that you just "hooked up with?"  God supports intimacy in commitment (marriage).  He regards our relationship and ministry with Him the same way.  No hook ups.  True story.

The theology of personality for beginners (like me)...

onemann.blogspot.com

"I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." - Gal. 2:20 ESV

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:10 NASB

The Lord has instructed me to read the book of Jeremiah.  In reading this book of the Bible, I am learning more about God's character, more about His nature and the way that He addresses problems within His family (the church).  God's desire is for His children to know Him intimately, to be familiar with His personality and His style of leading and guiding.  If a student genuinely desires to understand the significance and meaning of a particular piece of art, it is better to study the artist than it is to study the art.  While a student may be able to recognize a piece of artwork by its style and therefore connect it to its creator, it is even better to have an advanced knowledge of the artist so that we may learn of the depths of heart and character that produce the brushstrokes which constitute the artwork.  In doing so, the student can remove his own subjective projections of the art's meaning and respectfully submit to the intentions of the original designer.

Similarly, the more we understand the Lord, the more we can understand ourselves.  When we learn of the Lord's personality, of His character and His qualities, we better understand His handiwork.  Because we are His handiwork, His workmanship, we can have a deep comprehension of God's creative and majestic artistry.  We do not study ourselves to determine how we relate to God, but study God to learn how He relates to His creation.

Sanctification is the process by which the artwork of humanity admits that it can no longer define its own meaning and submits to its Creator, to learn of His desire and affection for each of His creation, and to become more and more like the Artist on a personal journey towards conformation to the original intention of the Sculptor.  This is why I believe it is ridiculousness to say, "I cannot do this type of ministry" or "I cannot share my faith" because "it is my not my personality to share" or "I am only comfortable in this type of setting."  We cannot use our individual personalities to excuse our inaction.  As we are sanctified, our personality becomes more like the personality of the Lord.  Because the Lord is perfectly wise, He would not instruct us to do those things that conflict with our "personality style" because we do not have one of our own.  When we accepted Christ, we denied our individual right to define our personality.

Perhaps an illustration will help.  There are those who are only comfortable in their usual environments, who dread traveling internationally and are happy to remain at home.  We may consider this person not to be a "risk taker" because risk taking is not a part of his personality.  However, this person places His faith in Jesus Christ and through the process of spiritual maturation (sanctification), the person finds that He is drawn to serve in the underground church of China.  By nature, the man is not one to travel or take risks, but the Holy Spirit changes his heart and leads him to travel far from home into dangerous lands.  My thought is that the man's original nature or personality is not his actual personality, but his position of comfort in the flesh.  The Lord draws the man's spirit into Himself, regenerates Him through the power of the Holy Spirit and by the blood of Jesus, and the man now walks as the workmanship of the Lord into the deeds prepared in advance for Him to do.  The believer's actual individuality is that which the Lord created and planned for Him.

On a more practical level, there are many of us who say that evangelizing, the sharing of our faith in Christ, with others is not "our personality" because it requires the introvert to become an extrovert or the sheepish to become bold.  While the Lord has called some to be speakers in stadiums and others conversational witnesses in the grocery store, He has called us all to evangelize.  We must not use our "personality" as an excuse not to fulfill the commands of the Lord because our personality is the Lord's.  The "personality style" of the Christian is that of his or her Creator.  This is what it means in the Scriptures when it says we die to ourselves and become alive to Christ.  We die to the right to declare our own meaning and submit ourselves to the will and personal definition created by the Lord.

The Lord has us all on a journey towards a better understanding of His personality and His character.  My prayer is that we will become more like Him.  Together we can learn about our collective personality as designed by the Spirit of God.  True story.

Child porn and broken cisterns

preacherprater.blogspot.com

Jeremiah 2:11-12 - "But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.  Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror." 

I find the above verse very interesting.  God is prophesying through the prophet Jeremiah, who is telling of the coming judgement of the southern kingdom of Judah for worshiping idols and forsaking the Lord.  It is not the judgment that I find interesting.  The Lord and I both know that if I were to be judged according to my deeds, nothing but a lake of fire would be suitable for the evil committed by my hands and heart.  It is the Lord's reaction to the people abandoning Him that I find the most revealing about God's character.

The Lord is appalled by the choice of the people to worship false gods.  He instructs all of heaven, all angels and heavenly beings, to be horrified at the action of God's lost people.  God is righteously angry that His people would exchange their glory, their honor to be His people and to serve the one true God, to worship at the altar of false gods.  He isn't just a bit perturbed or indignant, He is disgusted and sickened.

I imagine God felt the same way I felt when I read about a retired Granby police captain who was arrested for possession of one of the largest child pornography collections in the history of Connecticut.  His collection included what the New Haven Register describes as horrific photographs of infants and toddlers being sexually abused.  The irony: the retired captain was responsible for investigating child pornography cases and was even a speaker at conferences held to train law enforcement on catching pedophiles.  A man charged with protecting innocence and apprehending those whose nauseating crimes trouble the souls of even hardened murderers was a perpetrator himself.  

God feels the same way about His people exchanging their glory for worthless idols.  God goes on to say, "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jer. 2:13).  Cisterns are pits that collected rainwater and a broken cistern is pictured at the top of today's blog.  God makes it clear that He is wonderful and that his edicts are good for His people.  He also makes it clear that by ignoring God's offering of Himself and creating their own alternative, these Israelites are left with broken cisterns that cannot even hold water.  God offers Himself, the best that He can offer because He is perfection, yet the Israelites have chosen a faulty and fleshy method of self indulgence.

God is disgusted, appalled and horrified by the Israelites' actions because of their blatant and willful disregard for His commandment to have no other gods before Him.  God is also heartbroken and frustrated because He wants to give His children His best, yet they choose the world's worst.  He charges them with possessing His Glory, but they forsake it for their own gratification.  Like the retired Granby police captain forsook his charge to protect the sacred innocence of children, the Israelites forsook their opportunity and responsibility to obey the Lord and live in His glory and blessings.

The point?  We do the same thing daily.  Every time we choose to do something that satisfies our flesh and does not please God, we appall Him.  Each time we choose to have sex before marriage, He is appalled.  Each time we choose to deny Him to feel social acceptance, He is horrified.  Each time we get drunk, He is disgusted.  It is not because He is surprised by our actions; He is God after all.  And it is not because He ceases to love us or have mercy upon us.  His grace and mercy for the repentant are limitless.  Still, I will hop off of the popular evangelical bandwagon that highlights the love of God and completely ignores His jealousy and justice as if they were the more annoying characteristics of God from which He is slowly recovering.  He is appalled, horrified and disgusted because we have chosen our worst over His best.  In the eyes of the Lord, our best effort in the flesh is a stinking offense compared to obedience to the Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  Our best day in our flesh still earns us a seat in Satan's house.

I will not spend any further time identifying what behaviors or attitudes we may have that appall the Lord.  My pastor Josh Feay preached a sermon some time ago and I believe it was the best sermon I ever heard him give.  He was talking about sin and in regard to sin he said, "Just stop."  So whatever behavior or attitude you may have that the prophesy of Jeremiah could possibly address, I will quote my pastor.  Just stop.

We can drink fresh water from the spring of life or dig out our own broken cisterns that cannot hold water.  Let's learn from Israel's true story.

Jesus messed up my schedule

plannerhack.com

I recently started a new job with new hours, causing me to live a brand new lifestyle.  In doing so, I feel like I have lost my bearings on the "normal routine."  I am trying to figure out when to sleep, when to eat, when to exercise, when to do household chores, etc.  It is not easy to enter into a new chapter of life, despite the blessing of new beginnings.

Regardless of my newly forming schedule, I have always struggled with remaining on top of the little things.  Despite my numerous efforts to be structured and organized, I seem to lack the structure and organization that I so desire.  It amazes me how I can speak in front of a crowd of hundreds without worry, but I cannot seem to stay on top of my laundry.  I can respond to 911 calls and read quietly in the ambulance as my partner speeds down streets to a person at death's door, but ask me to remember where I put my keys and it will take me some time to remember.  It frustrates me that I am wired that way.  I have always envied those who can remain consistently stable in their management of daily tasks.

Last night, I was on my way to the gym when I was reminded that I might have an appointment during the time that I planned to go to the gym.  I rushed home, changed quickly, maintained a reasonable yet rapid rate of speed on the highway and arrived at the place of my appointment only five minutes late.  However, I arrived to find that my appointment was not last night, but it is scheduled for next week.  I was so frustrated that I missed my gym time to go to an appointment that I did not actually have to attend.  When I went home later on, I found my appointment card that indicated my appointment is indeed next week.

When I left the place of my appointment, I had an hour to spare until my next scheduled meeting.  I asked God what I was to do with my spare hour.  I was annoyed with myself, yet I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit.  When I asked God what to do, He told me quietly in my heart to find a place where I would not be distracted.  I pulled into a parking lot and asked God what He wanted me to do.  The Holy Spirit shared with me that He wanted to spend time with me, but I had not scheduled time to speak with Him.  He spoke 1 Timothy 4:8 to my heart.  "For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things..."  I was so concerned about the gym and my appointments, that I had forgotten to actually spend time with the maker of my body and mind.  God simply wanted to spend time with me, to talk to me about some thoughts He had about my life and my future. He directed me to His word and His company.

God used my weakness (my inability to remember appointments if I do not write them down right away) to bring me to Himself.  He orchestrated the events of my day in perfection to bring me to His throne.  I had not planned to spend time with Him, but because He loves me, He planned to spend time with me.  This true story reminded me of something that my friend Jackie had shared with me recently; God wants me to spend time with Him, for me to experience the fullness of intimately knowing the God of the universe.  I tried to schedule God out, but His people called my people and I had no option but to agree to a meeting.

There are some things that my planner cannot predict or plan - the divine and perfect will of God.  Don't schedule God out of your day.  He will cancel your appointments if you do.  True story.