I have grown to dislike this season more with every passing year. When I was a child my poor mother would go into debt every year, not on extravagant presents but just so her children could have something. Maybe that is one of the reasons I dont have a lot of time for it. Maybe it is because every year there is less and less focus on Jesus. Around my house I am known as the grinch because I dont care much for all the present buying, in fact I tell them, with a smile on my face, that if it was up to me I would ban all present buying, but I a deadly serious, I would. My heart is pained at what this season represents to the world. I will be pleasant enough to everyone, but my heart is not in it at all. If I could just sit with a company of saints and sing Oh Holy Night and consider the day, whatever day it was, that the Lord was born and rejoice in that, that would be better than anything. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, it is simply how I feel.

The victory for the saint comes in the depths of the dungeons. Those who will prevail are those who shall endure and overcome. If we love God more than life then we shall endure until the end and not just endure but cry glory even in the midst of gross darkness. The enemy shall never silence the praises of His people even though he would try to kill every one of us to shut the mouth of Jesus. The enemy killed every child of a certain age in a great slaughter and laments were heard all over the land, but, hark the Herald angels sing, glory to the new-born King, above the weeping of grieving mothers the cries of our deliverer was heard. The enemy failed and Christ prevailed and as it was then so it ever shall be until that day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.

If you were to watch my dog Jack go for a ball you would be pretty impressed. I have a little ball throwing gizmo that helps me launch it much further than I could ever possibly thrown it. While it’s still behind my back, half way through the swing, Jack has already figured out the trajectory of the ball and is off and running without ever looking back. The ball will bounce once in front of him and while never missing a beat he leaps up and just at the very apex of the bounce trajectory he snatches it out of mid-air and lands perfectly, it is poetry in motion. Now he will do this action 100% of the time and 99% of the time he gets the ball. Yet, even when he misses it is still poetry in motion because every single time he is 100% committed, he will catch it spectacularly or he will miss it spectacularly.

There is something about the way Jack goes for this ball that speaks to me. His passion, his commitment, his expectations are all really impressive. The most impressive thing about Jack is that it does not matter that the last time he went for it he missed, he just goes for it every single time. God is always looking for a passionate people. Yes you might miss the ball sometimes but do you have the passion, the commitment and the expectations when you hear God speak? Are you off and running in the direction that God sends you knowing that there is going to be a ball dropping right in front of you? The Scriptures tell us that without faith (trust) it is impossible to please God. When He sends you off in a certain direction do you go for it, do you believe that God is in it and He knows what He is doing? Or are you always looking back and second guessing him? It is not the catching of the ball that God loves, it is the passionate pursuit of Him and His ways. You are gonna drop the ball, you’re gonna miss the mark, but that is just you, that is just natural. What is supernatural is to trust in God with all of your heart and keep pursuing Him over and over again. God loves diligence. He is not a rewarder of the guy with the biggest ministry, He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. This is what gets Gods attention.

Trials and tribulations will ultimately bring out the best in genuine Christians and the worse in the religious man. The harder the circumstances get for the genuine Christian, the more he is forced to his knees and driven deeper into the heart of the Father. He is humbled and contrite as he understands how weak he is and how much flesh he still has.

Ultimately the results of this is more love, more peace, more forgiveness and more understanding. The harder the circumstances become for the religious man, the more bitter he becomes. He has no joy or peace. He will not forgive his enemies and his hatred for those he perceives to have caused his sufferings increases dramatically. So, the trial, the deep valley, is death to one and life to another. The flesh dies and the spirit arises.

As I was walking recently, the Holy Spirit spoke some words to me. ” There is nothing more important than the condition of your heart.” It lingered with me for weeks as I pondered those few words. All of my Christian life I have periods where I retreat into myself and kinda shut down, withdraw from the maddening crowd and simply go along on auto pilot.

In Kansas we can go months without rain. The ground gets baked hard in the sweltering heat of summer. If a rain comes it typically does not penetrate the hard ground, instead there is a flash flood. The ground is wet for a very short period of time and then it is as hard as it ever was.

There are periods when it rains every day in the spring. The ground soaks up the rain and then it rains again and again until it is saturated. When the ground is saturated it takes only a slight rain to cause flooding. The creeks and the rivers are swollen and the landscape is in danger of being changed by raging waters.

If my heart is good, if the waters that flow from heaven flow through me, if my heart remains supple and soaked with the dew that falls from heaven, then it takes very little for the glories of heaven to flood forth from me, living waters that refreshes my soul and others. If my heart is hard, it takes a lot of water just to soften me up. Oh that I would learn to remain close to the source of life itself that I might be useful in season and out of season, that I would be a source of life to others.

The freedom to do what is right, towers above the prison and the chains of commandments.One is initiated by love, the other is enforced by the whip. Holiness comes from freedom and freedom comes from love . And this love inspires and draws us and compels us to honor and respect and obey our Father in heaven because His love is the very air that we breathe and the air before the throne is rarified air and if we cannot breathe this air then we die.

Consider the spiritual life of the Christian. Unless you are engaged in one paradox after another you must reconsider your walk with God. Religion is the opiate of those who in their own minds have arrived yet true Christianity is in a constant state of flux. And by state of flux I do not mean what that phrase typically means in the negative which is uncertainty. In the Lord we are sure but we always beware when we stand lest we fall. This is not a state of anxiety but rather one of diligence. We know from the Scriptures that the Lord is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him which leads us to our first paradox. Seeking that which we have found. In John 15 Jesus says that “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” This word abide is a continuous action verb meaning to continue to abide. In other words it is not a one time thing it is a state of being.
I want you to consider the following paradoxes and see how they apply to your life.

1. We are dead but always dying.
2. We have entered but are always entering.
3. We have found but are always seeking.
4. We have encountered but are always seeking to encounter.
5. Our old man died but we are always putting him to death.
6. We were saved but are always working out our salvation.
7. We have arrived but we journey on towards our destination.
8. We are with Him but we journey on towards Him.
9. We are full but we are hungry.
10.We are clothed in white garments but are naked.
11.The Kingdom has come but the Kingdom is coming.
12.We are victorious but we surrender.

These are just a few examples of the paradoxical life in Christ. If you are genuinely saved then all of these paradoxes brings life itself. It is constantly moving and is alive with abundant life and draws you ever closer. If you are merely religious and have had no actual encounter with the living God and try to live the paradoxical life in Christ it will lead you to dissatisfaction and anxiety and away from God. Consider this, for the children of Israel the passage through the red sea was liberation and a way of escape. For the Egyptians it was death.

In the end, everything of this world is just that, of this world. Only the authentic will do whether that is freedom or justice or beauty or peace. Of course God is these things and only in Him can we have these things, all else is counterfeit, some better than others, but in the end mere copies of the original. The Mona Lisa is a tremendous copy of the woman who sat for the painting. The most incredible landscape painting is still only a painting, the real star is the landscape itself. And so peace in the world, even the greatest peace will only ever be fleeting because it is not the original. Justice in the world is tainted by our very humanity and therefore by necessity falls woefully short of the original, no matter how good it looks or begins. Everything about humanity, outside of God, is counterfeit and dying. It is only the eternal that is pure, whether that is good or evil. We must commit ourselves to the eternal and find true meaning there. In the end, there can only be that which is good or that which is evil. Everything else is an allusion, a counterfeit and fleeting.

My dear sister Fiona asked if she could post this piece and direct folks to her website. I am happy to post this. God bless you sister………………bro Frank

Frank is kindly allowing me to share with you a blog the Lord has had me doing for the past few months. The blog is based upon William Gurnall’s book, “The Christian in Complete Armour”.

The Lord led me to Mr. Gurnall’s book, and laid it on my heart to do a blog that follows the teachings found in Mr. Gurnall’s book. You can find the first chapter of my blog here:

http://gleaningsfromgurnall.blogspot.com/…/06/chapter-one.h….

I strongly recommend that you read the chapters in order as they do build upon one another.

For background on the book itself, please go to my other blog: http://growingasadiscipleofchrist-fionab.blogspot.com/…/a-m….

Thank you, Frank, for allowing me to share this with others. I truly believe that serious-minded believers need to learn how to correctly utilize their armor so that they are able to defend themselves when necessary, and properly engage the enemy when asked to do so by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

There is so much noise in the average persons life, noise and activity and business. Yet, at the beating heart of who we are, is Jesus, the lover of our souls. I dearly wish that a great hush would fall over the church. That all the noise would simply be replaced by a holy quietness. The musicians would put down their instruments, the talkers would stop talking and there we would remain until the Lord came upon us. The cry of our hearts should be audible in the congregation. The longing seeking heart should replace the noisy professionals. Just one cry, crying out the name of Jesus with all the longing of a desperate heart would surely bring heaven down to earth. Rain would fall on a dry and dusty land. Our hands would be open to heaven like a chick’s open mouth in anticipation of being fed.

After 27 years in the States I believe I have encountered most sects of Christendom It has been was very depressing to meet people so sold out to a doctrine, so lacking in love for Jesus Himself and so obsessed with portions of Scripture that are so often taken out of context as to make no sense on any level and on these differences they build divisions. Our grand obsession should be Jesus.

No matter where you go, if you find people whose grand obsession is Jesus you wont go far wrong. I want to meet people who love Jesus with all their hearts and souls and minds and body. I want to meet my brothers and sisters from every background, from ever tribe and from every tongue and from every nation. I want to walk along the pilgrim way a while with my fellow sojourners. It refreshes me and revives me and lifts me up.

I have met so many people who think the church is just fine and everything is the way it has always been and anyone who says anything different is generally castigated. There is a sizable remnant who do see it and I thank God for them. They are, of course, rejected and generally hated because they are in effect, party poopers. They don’t go along with the flow, they disrupt the flow, like a large stone in a flowing river, they cause turbulence and turbulence is uncomfortable and folks don’t want to be uncomfortable. They are for the most part sleeping and they do not want to be woken up. And this remnant are constantly shouting ” wake up you sleepy Christians, wake up, Christ is at the door and the bride must make herself ready to receive her King.”

How many of us can relate to lying in bed, warm, comfortable and cozy. Its winter outside and you are wrapped up in your bed. Then the alarm goes of. Who likes the alarm? It compels us to arise, get up! It is not a pleasant noise, in fact it is designed to be a most unpleasant noise. If it were pleasant we would simply roll over and go back to sleep. The rising remnant of God are His alarm. He is sounding His warning that the time is short. The message is hated. Generations of movements such as the prosperity gospel and the word of faith movement have seeped into Christendom like a contagion. A cancerous contagion that has infected us. The dream of many in the very early church was that they would be counted worthy of martyrdom for the sake of Jesus. How far we have fallen. This notion would almost always be rejected out of hand in our day. False prophets ply their trade in churches across the globe. They come and tell folks that this coming year will be better than the last, God has great things in store for you and breakthroughs will be yours. Now, you can add to that general theme, but it is always some variation of it..

The true prophet of God does not arise to tell folks things they want to hear, the very opposite is true. The prophets of God will always be rejected and despised. God is, in these last day, raising up a generation of prophets. Men and women who can see clearly the true state of things. They see that Jesus is on the horizon and it is a fire that burns in them. They see the approach of gross darkness prior to His return and they sound the alarm. They run from camp to camp and compel people to make sure they have their armor on, because they are going to need it. In most camps they find rejection, because even although it is written, they do not “see,” and they do not see it because they do not want to see it. If you see it, I want to encourage you today. God sees that you see. Yes you are misunderstood but that is part of the price. You find yourself isolated? Another part of the calling. You march to the beat of a different drummer? You speak of things the Lord has “shown,” you and people look at you like you are an alien? Then my friend and brother and sister in Christ you are on the path that the Lord has called you to. It is of course a calling. No one fully volunteers to be unpopular and to be hated and despised and rejected even and especially within their own communities.

The remnant of God are the broken of God. He breaks them by His own hand. Yet He does it in cooperation with His children. It can be traced back to a prayer that might have went something like this. “Oh God please use me, whatever it takes for me to be useful to you, so be it Lord.” Now, when you prayed that prayer you knew you touched heavens throne. What you did not fully realize was just how brutal the breaking would be. What you discovered in the midst of it was that despite the pain of it all God was faithful. You may have had long periods where you cried out “My God my God why has thou forsaken me,” but always in your heart of hearts you knew He was right there and He was your very sanity. You knew that no matter the circumstance or seemingly never-ending series of circumstances that He was shaping you, refining you, cleansing you. You were inevitably heading towards that place Paul found himself in when he said that he had learned to be content in ever situation. He had known what it was to abound in the things of life but he now knew what it was to be abased and still praise God. He knew how to have a full stomach and praise God and he knew how to be hungry and praise God. These are things that he learned, these are the lesson of God. At the start of that chapter in Philippians Paul starts out, and this is the point of the chapter to “stand fast in the Lord.” To the remnant saint who is reading this I say stand fast in the Lord. You are no alone, you are loved and you are called.