In every great move there is a tearing down. Gideon, long before he does mighty exploits, is called to tear down the altars of his father and in its place build an altar to Lord His God so that it becomes a sanctuary, a meeting place. “His father’s altar to Baal stood as a symbol of dead religion, an affront to the living God. Despitie Gideon’s initial apprehension, he obeyed and his actions signaled a shift towards a new spiritual stirring.” (J.D.King)
The reformation is probably the largest example of a tearing down yet there are many more. In the 19th century in Scotland there was “the great disruption,” where almost 500 ministers abandoned the Church of Scotland and their Anglican roots to form the free church, gave us some great preachers like Bonar and his brothers.
Of course you had the confessing church with Bonhoeffer, rejecting the corruptions of the Lutheran church. The Jesus movement of the late 60s and 70s was led by anti- establishment “Jesus freaks.” I long to see this generation, the ones that are younger than me have their own Gideon moment/movement. A new wine skin for new wine.
Of course, the old guard will be, for the most part, against it, because second and third generations almost always morph into religion and establishment. Every field that seeks to continue to produce, must go through crop rotation. It’s time, I believe, for the present “church,” to be rotated. We’ve sucked all the nutrients out of the ground and our crops have suffered greatly for it, smaller, less fruitful and the yield almost down to nothing. Time for a new crop, new wine, therefore, time for a new wine skin.
There is a remnant people who have/will tear down the idols of their fathers, dead religion. It may have had life at one point( it may not have) but certainly God is calling this generation back to their first love. Yet just as when the Israelites were released from Babylon to go back to their beginnings, only about a third did, two thirds staying behind in the comforts and ease of Babylon.
The modern established church is a very comfortable place to be. It has a program for everything. It has a “senior pastor,” who will do all your thinking for you. Coming out of that is a horrifying thought for those who have worshiped there for generations. Yet, in the end, who will search for “the old paths?” Who will desire to return to their first love? The remnant.
It is not that men are inherently weak, it’s that’s God is inherently all powerful. The strongest man that ever lived, whether in body or mind or spirit, finds his proper state before and all powerful God. He falls on his face as one who is dead. He would cry out with the prophet “I am undone. He would not have the capacity to stand in His presence. He would only see his unworthy state. It takes fire from the altar, to alter his state, to enable him to stand, to have the audacity to say “here I am, send me.”
In Isa 40:28-31 God speaks. He announces Himself as . The everlasting God. 2. Lord. 3. Creator of the ends of the earth. He never faints. He is never weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He is not powerful, He is power itself and the very source of it.It is His to give and He gives it to the weak. He is not mighty, He is might itself and from the abundance of His eternal strength, He gives to those who have no strength. Who are these recipients? Who are these weak people? They are the ones who have come to understand that apart from the Spirit of God, they can do nothing, therefore they wait.
Our understanding of our own weakness kicks down the door of our ego’s and allows the light of God to penetrate the very depths of our beings. Death to “self,” is an emptying process. We must decrease so that there can be an increase. An increase of what? The Lord Himself, in us. By dying to ourselves and emptying our “self,” we are creating capacity. And into that capacity flows the fullness of God. ….That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with the saints, what is the width and the length and the depth and height -to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God (Eph 3:14-21)
For those who are filled with the fullness of God, having waited upon Him in our weakness and low opinion of our “self,” shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint. And so the “weak,’ and those who have no “might,” shall fly, shall run and shall walk. In the dying to their “self,” they have increased their capacity and are therefore filled from inexhaustible fountains.
This is the making of the mighty men and women of valor. Warriors for Christ in the battle of the ages. Those who have humbled themselves. The broken and the contrite. The weak and the meek. They all fellowship with God in high and lofty places. To get there they need the wings of eagles. To run the race we need the strength of God. And to walk this narrow walk of faith we must have the power of God
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope makes us not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.(Rom 5:2-5)
The opening verse to this chapter reads “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. And through Him we can rejoice in hope and the glory of God. Yet we are told that we do not just glory in God, we glory in our tribulations. Imagine that, glorying in our trials and our tribulations, in our sufferings. You will not hear that preached in Charismatic circles. Like Job’s friends they would accuse a suffering saint of sin, or lack of faith. They have tried to turn faith into a weapon that destroys and nullifies suffering and trials and tribulations. Yet faith is what gives us access to grace. By trusting in God we glory in His unmerited favor. By trusting in His Son, the Lord Jesus and His work on Calvary we enter into the glory.
In order to flesh out this blessed hope, we have to learn from suffering and tribulations. We learn patience and trust which leads to hope. Therefore tribulations is the birthplace of hope. By patiently enduring our cross, we begin to see how much the flesh dominates us. As we stand there in the fire, the flesh begins to burn away. And yes, if one were to peer into your trials and tribulations they would see the Son of man standing there with you. And this hope that is forged in the fires of trial and tribulation causes us to be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for we know it is the power of God unto salvation.
Those who patiently endure and overcome shall stand in that day, unashamed of our Lord, for He has walked with us, every step of the way, through the high mountain passes and in the depths of the valleys. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts for our Lord for He has been our companion through it all. He has stuck closer than a brother. He has been so faithful to us and therefore we could never deny Him. This is our strength. This is our glory, the glory of the God that dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our closest companion, the lover of our souls and the one who has never left us not forsaken us. This knowledge, lived out in our lives, is the hope and the glory.
Luk 6:32 For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them.
It is said about free speech that it only really counts when you tolerate speech that is extremely offensive to you. That is actual free speech. If you only tolerated speech that you like, then you are actually devoid of toleration and you are a totalitarian. You are headed down the road of dictatorship, the same road that Mussolini went down, the same road that Hitler and Stalin went down, the same road that every tyrant went down and all of them ended in pure hatred and destruction of whole groups of people. When I first came to America, it was liberals who defended neo-nazi groups and the argument went something like this “I hate what they are saying, but I will die defending their rights to say it.” It was liberals who had the saying “live and let live,” meaning let everyone do their own thing, lets not compel anyone to be something they are not. You do not have to major in political science to know just how much that has turned around in 30 years, the former guardians of free speech have now traded places with those who would have suppressed it. So, only tolerating speech you like is no toleration at all but rather it is the opposite, it is fascism.
For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them(Luk 6:32) Jesus is saying, in effect, “so you love those who love you, big deal, everybody does that.” True love, Jesus love, is measured by how much we love those who do not love us. How do we react to those who do not like us? To those who hate us? To those who reject us. To those who cheat us and harm us? Are we just like the world or do we have something supernatural inside of us, Jesus, that has changed our very disposition? Too often brothers and sisters we are just like the world, it should not be so. The world only tolerates those who agree with them, they do not have love they have hate. How about us? Do we love even when we are not tolerated? Do we render evil for evil? Imagine if God the Father had rendered evil for evil? We would all be dead and rotting in an eternity separated from our Creator.
If we can recognize the truth of what free speech means, then surely we must recognize the truth of what true love is? It blossoms not on decadent beds of roses that we ourselves made, no, it blossoms in the fire and the dungeon and the heat of hatred. True love finds its expression when it is reviled. True love finds its expression in the arms of forgiveness. It is cradled in a cot of mercy. When it is attacked it has the opportunity to render its attacker of their true power, the power they have over you. True love stands alone atop the highest mountain for all to see. It is unsullied by the rage of human emotions and is grounded in the will of man surrendered to the heart of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. As the days darken, true love, the love of God, will be assaulted on every side and if we respond correctly then God shall be filled glorified around the world “for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” Let us glorify God in this manner.
Many evangelical churches and most pentecostal or charismatic churches you go into today, raise their hands in worship. Like everything else in Christendom, there can be the mechanical act of doing something because it is supposed to be done, or there can be the true living dynamic response to the very presence of the Living God. Every single aspect of the natural worship of Christianity can be reduced to some dusty empty ritual that has long since replaced the living reality of God’s manifest presence. It is interesting when you watch secular concerts that you see arms aloft all over the stadium or concert hall, swaying to the rhythm of the song. Good music entertains us and can move us, Gods manifest presence invades every part of who we are and never leaves us the same. It creates in us a thirst that can never be quenched by anything other than His presence. It tears down and builds up, it raises us up from the dark valley floor to the lofty heights of His glory.
There is the presence of God to be found in glorious, enthusiastic and energetic worship, the kind of worship that lifts your spirit. It can lift up the head and invigorate the heart and fill you full of joy and you leave strengthened. This is good worship. Yet there is another kind of presence of God in worship, the kind of presence that there seems to be such a famine of throughout the land. The first kind of presence we spoke of lifts your heart, the second kind of presence invades every part of who you are. It falls from heaven like a heavy dew, heads are lowered and hands are raised. All becomes quiet, one barely breathes as the Spirit of God slowly penetrates our very being and the ground upon which we stand becomes Holy ground. It saturates our very DNA.
The first kind of presence uplifts us, the second changes us fundamentally. As living waters pour into us then it rises up like a great river that is so full that it overflows its banks. The banks themselves begin to crumble and fall into this river of pure life as it swells up and floods every part of who we are. The landscape is being changed by this flood, the very topography of our lives is being altered by its powers and everything that is not securely rooted to Godly foundations are simply swept away. Changed forever. And when the flood recedes we are left with a glorious afterglow. As the deer pants for the water-brooks, I wonder, do our hearts pant after this kind of encounter.
The Lord Himself does not need professional worship teams. He does not need people to encourage us to stand up, jump up and down and raise our hands. In the Welsh revival two young women singing either acapella or simply backed by a piano typically sang “Here is love, vast as the ocean.” And there was love, in the very midst of them, vast as the ocean, flooding the hearts and minds of all who attended. Brothers and sisters, in all our modernity, what have we lost? In the program of churches and the professional class of worshiper leaders and pastors we have lost the simplicity of it all. And in the losing of it we now have to entertain the people. Spirit led worship is exactly that, it is Spirit led.
In work we have a routine. In life we have a routine. Prisoners in prison have a routine. Oftentimes we are slaves to the routine, it is what gets us through life. Yet, there is nothing routine about the Holy Spirit of the Living God. He is dynamic and you can never know what way the wind will blow next. Have we sold our souls for a routine? Routine in the home, routine at work, routine at church. Routine people do not change the world. Routine people do not do wage war on the battle-fields of life. The Spirit of God is dynamic and those filled with His “dynamis,” change the environment around them because the environment inside them has been filled to capacity and is overflowing its banks. Lord fill us again to overflowing with the kind of presence that invades every part of who we are.
The Remnant church is, at it’s core and most fundamentally, God’s witness here on earth. Truly we have been called first and foremost to be a witness. Now most saints know that this word in its Greek form translates to martyr. Does that mean that every saint, every witness since the beginning of the church has been called to martyrdom? Certainly not. Yet let us not forget brothers and sisters that in every century God’s people here on earth have been persecuted and martyred for their faith. The danger for us saints in the Western world in the last 100 years has been that we have not been so-called. Other saints around the world cannot say that, whether that is Africa or Asia or China or the Middle East, they have continued to be persecuted and martyred for their faith. For most of Europe and North America, this has not been the case with some noticeable exceptions during periods of war and so on. Now, one would imagine that living in an atmosphere where one is allowed to worship freely without any state or religious interference that Christendom would thrive, yet, if we look at the state of Europe and North America we see something that at best, is a shallow faith. In the case of Europe we definitely see a post Christian society. In North America what is predominant is a cultural Christianity, a cross-less Christianity and a Christ-less Christianity and some cross-pollination or in many cases a hybrid of the all of these. Cultural Christianity would be a Christianity that is simply shaped to suit our culture. In this kind of Christianity Jesus would rarely be mentioned and God would be seen as some kind of Santa Claus. A cross-less Christianity would cover movements like the prosperity gospel, name it and claim it groups, Word of faith believers and health and wealth believers. Or again, a hybrid of all three. A Christ less Christianity would cover dead denominations for whom the Word of God has ceased to be authoritative even in pretense and where all things are acceptable, this would include things like gay marriage and gay ministers, abortion, divorce and so on.
But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.(1Pe 4:13,14)
Brothers and sisters, I want you to notice the above scripture, especially the highlighted portion. Can you see what the Holy Spirit is saying? He specifically talks about the ” spirit of glory.” What is this spirit of glory that ” shall be revealed?” Obviously the context of 1Peter is suffering, For those who can rejoice in the midst of suffering there is a specific kind of glory revealed. Just like the refining fires reveals the gold that lies within the rock, then the refining fire reveals the gold that lies within the saint as it burns away the rock and the dross and we are left with pure gold. We see in Habakkak, in the midst of terrible suffering and judgement this scripture “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” (Hab 2:14)
Despite the vastness of the universe, we know that the Lord holds it all in the hollow of His hand. Our minds simply cannot conceive of the vastness of our God. How can it be possible for mere humans to know God? And what is this ” knowing?” The Scriptures in Ephesians three are not saying that we can know about Him, it is saying that we can know Him and the fullness of Him. As I read Ephesian’s three I penned the song/poem below. To know God is the most intimate of terms. The Scriptures tell us that Joseph did not ” know” Mary until after Jesus was born. Of course this was a reference to physical intimacy, which of course makes the husband and the wife ” one flesh.” This coming together is of course a sacred thing and this one flesh is a mysterious thing. Now consider the even deeper aspect of this ” knowing.” The spiritual knowing is something very mysterious.
To know and be filled with the ” fullness of God,” is a supernatural thing. There is nothing physical about it, it is above and beyond that. So one may ask this very legitimate question of all who profess to be Christians ” Do you ” know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:19) One must ” know,” the love of Christ, not know about it ( because the scriptures say it passes knowledge) if one is to be filled with the ” fullness of God.” This is the Christian man or woman. The man or the woman who can say ” For we do not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majesty( 2 Pet 1:16)
To know the unknowable you
Is all I want to do
To plunge the depths of your love
Is to soar in the heavens above
Oh to know what cannot be known
It to kneel before your throne
The Remnant’s role has changed down through the centuries, but always at her core she has been called to be a witness, an eye-witness to Gods glory. This is the essential heartbeat of Gods Remnant bride and always will be. In this role she has been used as a sanctuary, the sanctuary, the Holy of Holy’s. She is a tabernacle in the wilderness, she is Gods temple here on earth. She is a place for the weary and the lost and forsaken. At the same time she has always been despised by the religious spirit. These are people who confess God with their mouths but who have not received God’s glory, who have never encountered the glory of the living God. In these last days God has a special role for His Remnant people and of course this will only increase the hatred by those of the religious spirit. God says in His word through His prophet Zechariah that ” In that last day a fountain shall be opened up for the house of David,” and God Himself says again through the prophet that ( speaking of Christendom) “Two thirds in it shall be cut off and die. But one-third shall be left in it. I will bring the one-third through the fire, I will refine them as silver is refined and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name and I will answer them. I will say ” This is my people.” (Zec 13:8-9)
The flesh is a brutal thing and it certainly wars against the Spirit. In many situations I have been shocked to discover the depth of my own flesh. It makes me realize and know for a certainty that without Him I would plunge into the abyss. Thank you today Jesus for your unwarranted favor upon my life, I know what I deserve, I know for a certainly what i deserve even now and yet you have redeemed me and even when I am not faithful, you are.
Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me. (Matthew 11:6 ESV)
Dear ones – the Lord never minces words does He? He never pretends things are different than they really are? There is a spirit-scraping-bone honesty about everything He did and said while on this earth. He desires truth in the inner-most being, deep down, and unlike religious men and the church by and large today, He is satisfied with nothing less.
In this age of hyphenated, small “c” Christianity, the deep, purposeful, emptying work of the cross, has not only been lost, it have become somewhat of an offense to so many who name His name. Paul travailed for these babes, until “Christ be formed in them.” We have made the gospel so much about self-affirmation (humanism in short), not what the Word reveals it to be – self-negation. We have turned sanctification largely into a work of renovation rather what it truly is – demolition and the building up (the filling up unto fullness) of Christ in the empty shell that remains.He emptied Himself to come down and then He went willingly up to the cross of death to pour Himself out for us unto life, and He is the way; the pattern – so why is it different for us I wonder?
This link http://www.box.com/shared/6dc0jj6eao is a recording made in 2010 from a Tuesday night prayer meeting that we have. It explores the meaning of justice, what does it mean, what does it take to forgive our enemies? How many times? Should we pursue justice? Deep questions, hard answers and lessons. The first 30 minutes is the message.
have their own Gideon moment/movement. A new wine skin for new wine.
A Call To The Remnant 