Psalm 126, like many other psalms, describes in part, the joy of the returning exiles from captivity in Babylon to Jerusalem. Try for a moment to put yourself in the place of an Israelite. He sees his country invaded and destroyed. He sees the centerpiece of all that is holy to them, the temple, destroyed. Then he is loaded up and carried away in chains. He looks back only once and sees the smoke of destruction still ascending to the very heavens which seem to have abandoned him.
To know Jesus is to encounter Him. Now this encounter can come in a thousand different ways. It can come in dreams and visions, quite rare in my experience. It can come in alone times of prayer, this is most common for myself. It can come corporately, relatively rare nowadays I would say. This manifest presence, this shekinah, this felt presence, always leads to changes in our lives.
It’s very dangerous to elevate men. It happens time and again in Christianity where men are revered, relied upon for doctrine and answers to every question. It is not only dangerous I believe, but sinful and harmful. Every single Christian must be grounded first and foremost on the solid Rock of Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit alone. Once this is established, then other mens opinions and teachings can be considered in the light of your own revelation and illuminations from God and from His word.
As many may know, the Lord asked me several months ago to write a poem for every Psalm. This was and is a daunting task. I believe that the Lord asked me to do this last year because last year was one of the toughest years of my Christian walk where I got to walk through the deepest and darkest valley yet. And because of that, the Psalms touched my raw spirit in ways that only the Psalms can. For Christians, victories are won in the depths of the valley and strongholds are broken down. This is where the fight is taken to the enemy. This place is his dark domain. This is a place that we would never voluntarily come to. We would never come to this place willingly. Yet this place is where we see the gates of bronze broken down and the bars of iron cut in two. Below are the last few poems that I have written, I am up to Psalm 114. May they bless you………………
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (Gen 1:2-5)
Are you hurting today? Have the trials of life overwhelmed you? Has the enemy come in like a flood and you can see no way of escape? Psalm 61 says “From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” (Psa 61:2)
What is the source of your love, your joy, your peace? Cast an eye across the landscape of your life. What would your life look like without talking to God? Would it look much different from what it is looks like right now? Does your wisdom and your direction come from the Word of God and the Holy Spirit? Or, do you draw from your own wells? Recent surgery has interrupted my normal schedule. For the last week it seems that, day and night, there has always been someone around or I have been tired and outta of it with pain meds and so on.
The eternal love of God is without limit. Oh the beauty of such a love for such a one as me. Have you tasted of this love? Have you closed your eyes and reached out and grasped a piece of eternity? Have you experienced something of the vastness of God? He wants to be known. He wants us to know the breadth and the length and the depth of His love. To know that which passes knowledge cannot be learned, its a revelation, an illumination by the Spirit of God. That we, so small and so frail and so insignificant, can be filled by something so vast that it renders the word vast obsolete. Its other-worldly words we need. This is the riches of His glory. Come all ye men, paupers and kings, all paupers and know the riches of His glory. He has called you to this.
Oh love without ending
As vast as the sea
Oh mercy divine
Forever it will be
Oh infinite grace
It has no end
Eternal redemption
The heavens you’ll rend
And all these flow down
From a mountain so high
That it reaches the heavens
And bursts through the sky
When I survey
The heavens above
I’m awed by the vastness
I’m awed by your love
One day i’ll stand
On eternities shore
How vast is your love?
I’ll guess no more
Only then I’ll know
How vast is the sea
Only then I’ll know
Love eternally
Do you thirst after God? Wait upon the Lord brothers and sisters and He will revive you. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him…………….Brother Frank
TO ALL WHO THIRST
As the deer panteth for the waterbrooks
So my soul longeth after thee
Oh my Father in Heaven
Can you hear my desperate plea?
Do you walk in the Love of God? Have you been freed from all earthly ties? Is your Christianity an adventure? Whether in trials or victories can you see the majesty and beauty of the story God is writing with your life? Are you a living epistle? Do you have joy? This peace that surpasses all understanding, have you ever walked in that? When you think of death, does it excite you? Have the scales of this world fallen from your eyes? Can you see that you walk in the light from above? More importantly, can others see any of these things in your life? The Christian man is a strange man according to the world, and so he should be. Are you strange? Are you a puzzle to those who know you?
Gal 2:20 “I have been crucified in Christ, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
This post is a continuation of a theme that the Lord has put on my heart for the last couple of weeks and the last several posts.
Is there a reason why the Church today is so anemic? What is missing from us that makes us so like the world? What is the answer to the fact that the modern day church is not walking in the power of God? We see so many dynamic personalities, but we see so little of the Holy Spirit. The most dramatic presentation of the power of the Holy Spirit is a changed life. This is truly the greatest miracle of all, yet, how often do we see that nowadays?
Brothers and sisters, are you standing on your own two feet today? In any river there is a current. The river of the Living God has a current, that current is the Holy Spirit. Do you flow in the Spirit? Do you flow in the river? The river flows from the throne and the river returns to its own. On either shore of the river of life is thick forest, thick undergrowth, life in the natural. To follow the path of the river from the river bank is hard work. Men will hack their way through this, exhausting work. They will work with all of their might to make some progress down the river. Yet Jesus asks us to enter into the river, into the deepest parts where your feet cannot touch the bottom. To go out into the deep is a scary unnatural thing. Every part of our flesh wants to stand upon its feet.
To live beyond the edge of hope
Is to dangle daily from a rope
In a perpetual dance with death itself
Beyond this world and all its wealth
There is a world of blue and green
But to the dark eye its all unseen
A world of orange, red and yellow too
But from the rope its beyond all view
For from the rope there’s shades of grey
And sleepless nights and endless days
And every now and then some light
But just enough to confirm the night
There was a time I dangled from this rope
At the edge of hell and beyond all hope
I lived my life, just hanging there
Crushed and broken, suspended in the air
Then Jesus came and cut me down
He raised me up to wear a crown
A pauper raised to walk with kings
A voicless man but now who sings
Of all the glories of the Lord
Who came with Word and deed and sword
And conquered hell and death and sin
Restoring joy and hope within
Now all the world is bright to me
No matter what my eyes can see
No longer dangling from the rope
I walk with Jesus, I walk with hope
And above the clouds I know its true
The sun shines bright and the sky is blue
And when a shaft of light appears
It warms my heart and quells my fears
Now if your dangling from that rope
And this lie cries out, “there is no hope”
Cry out to the one who can cut you down
He will raise you up and you will wear a crown!
The moments I have spent in your sanctuary, rob me of all of my words and render them all meaningless. I feel heavenly words in all of me, not just in my brain and in my mouth, but in my very essence. Who and what you are is in my very DNA in your presence, and every particle of me glows with who you are in your presence , and I know that I cannot dwell there for I would that I would never leave that place. And so that I can go on living I must only dwell there for a moment, but oh what a glorious moment, these moments are my very life. Read the rest of this entry »
You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today?Read the rest of this entry »
There is a time for shouting and praising God, but if we are ignoring the knocking, then we must stop shouting. If our lives are not reflecting the Glory of God, if we are not becoming like His Son, daily, then all of our shouting and praising God will just be so much noise. How tragic for the church of the living God if, when He looks down, He does not see praise but just a group of people making a noise.”Read the rest of this entry »
“Jesus has many who love His kingdom in heaven, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire comfort, but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share His feast, but few His fasting.All desire to rejoice with Him, but few are willing to suffer for His sake. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of the bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of His passion. Many admire the miracles, but few follow Him to the humiliation of the cross. Many love Jesus as long as no hardship touches them.”
This is a vision that I had as I stood on a terrace in Croatia. My wife and I went there last year on our 25th anniversary. Before I went the Lord had shown me that I would meet someone there and that it would be significant, just did not know that He was talking about Himself. The whole piece was my vision, He gave me a new way of writing my testimony and of writing about coming into His presence, then the Word that He gave me for the church, I wrote in red at the end. I pray that this will challenge and convict you………….
Madam Guyon writes…………….I am deeply grieved that so many in this day(she lived 300 years ago, people never change)even some good people, allow themselves to be led astray by the enemy. Has not God warned us against false prophets and lying wonders of the last days? All true prophets have spoken in the name of the Lord-”Thus says the Lord.” The enemy gains great advantage because people love extraordinary manifestations, signs and wonders. I believe the inordinate love of external signs is used of the enemy to draw people away from the Word of God and from the inward way of faith.The signs that come from God encourage you to die to yourself. (Intimacy with Christ..p21)
A Call To The Remnant 