Without wisdom and discernment,
Devices that stream
Media and entertainment
Are turned into altars
Of time-devouring devotion.
Then they alter our life
With their seduction
And demeaning content.
Here’s popular media deception: Calling abortion reproductive health care and reproductive rights. Abortion aborts reproduction by destroying a prenatal life. There’s nothing reproductive about it.
Church services don’t seem to offer any services. They seem more like a lecture series than services.
Church is often called Sunday services, yet neither the word services nor the concept of services is used in the New Testament to refer to a gathering of the body of Christ. There are 50+ “one another” statements in the New Testament where Christ-followers are called to serve but nowhere where we are told to attend services. Yes, Hebrews tells us to “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together,” but even that doesn’t say to attend services. Yet, church seems to be all about Sunday services. Why?
Sunday services can be programmed and controlled by a pastor; what Christians do throughout the week can’t be. Church seems to fear loss of pastor control, so they focus on Sunday services which are some of the most tightly controlled human meetings anywhere. For a great awakening Christ-follows need the freedom, the training, and the encouragement to follow and obey the risen Jesus–the Holy Spirit–anywhere and everywhere! Churches set up a hierarchical system to keep people quiet & controlled, but in the kingdom of God people are led by the Spirit from within.
God’s plan for your life is that you completely surrender your life to His plans. Many people have heard about Jesus rising from the dead, but few people are hearing directly from the risen Jesus and obeying Him. Let your heart freely overflow with the life-giving current of “Christ in you” that releases the fruit of the Spirit throughout your being.
Jesus doesn’t put the Dead Sea into His followers. Instead, He releases ongoing inner rivers of living water. Those invisible rivers are the most important rivers on the planet.
Christ-followers are now God’s temple. The rivers that Ezekiel writes about (in Ezekiel 47:1-2) are supposed to be flowing from within our innermost being and out into the world around us.
Inner “rivers of living water” are outflowings of the presence of the risen Jesus as the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. They will freely flow from any Christ-follower who determines not to hold them back consciously or unconsciously and courageously refuses to quench the Holy Spirit’s promptings no matter what circumstances, culture, desire, fear, or tradition demand. All we need to do is to truly and fully and persistently “let go and let God”–let Him freely flow in and through us all day long.
True Christianity isn’t how much theology you know. It’s how freely you allow Jesus and His inner rivers to flow in and through you. Too many Christians want to be “in the know” instead of “in Jesus’ flow.” It’s time we get in, stay in, and overflow with the Holy Spirit’s supernatural inner flow. Refuse to settle in and get comfortable in the Dead Sea!
When people don’t see God working around them, it’s because they’ve ignored or denied God’s working within them. Begin to notice the miracles happening in your own heart as God lovingly tries to steer you toward Himself and away from self-destruction.
Free will is either a myth or a miracle. If you truly have the ability to make choices, that’s supernatural, not programming. Free will demonstrates that you can make choices that aren’t determined by the physiological make-up of your brain. To allow yourself to have no sense of the miraculous is to miss out on much wonder, awe, and inspiration.
A physical miracle can get your attention, but a miraculous change in your heart is greater because it will turn your life around. If you’re stuck in a damaging desire, a tormenting thought, a fearful feeling, or a bad behavior you need an inner miracle. In humility, kindness, and simplicity we often encounter the miraculous.
Aha! A great idea isn’t always the result of a rational process. Often, it’s an inner miracle of supernatural revelation. Hope when things look bad, faith when life feels like it’s falling apart, peace in an emotional storm–those are inner miracles! Perhaps people who say they have no time for the miraculous neglect to notice that being aware of time is itself miraculous because nature itself isn’t conscious of time.
If it wasn’t for an undeserved inner strength that comes to assist my own effort and ability, I would have little mental health. In a moment (at age 19) I was forever changed as I heard someone describe the amazing way Jesus had changed him. Reading the Bible with an open heart helps me see miracles in history, but also the miracles happening around me and within me.
Laws and commandments can change behavior, but they can’t change a human heart. It takes the miracle of caring and compassion to do that. Science can explain much about how nature works, but it’s a mystery how nature works to inspire and refresh the human heart.
When Christianity ignores the direct and ongoing working of God in human hearts, it becomes just another religious philosophy. To be a Christian is to be miraculously restored to a relationship with the Creator thru the blood of Christ and empowered to follow and obey Him.
Much that we consider
To be mundane
Because it’s familiar
Is miraculous.
Half-hearted Christianity is full-scale deception. “Lukewarm” isn’t good. Anything that shuts your heart down toward Jesus is unchristian.
Wholehearted Christians stir things up with their passion for Christ. Many church attendees are easily freaked out by a wholehearted Christian. Sports teams never try to tone down the enthusiasm of their fans–but churches seem to prefer toned down attendees.
When Christians are half-hearted, casual religion replaces rigorous discipleship. Half-hearted church attendance is meaningless. Only wholehearted devotion to Christ will fill the hole in your heart.
If Christianity makes you half-hearted and complacent, you’ve somehow overlooked God’s grace. True Christianity is nothing less than loving, submitting to, and obeying Jesus wholeheartedly, but church trains people to be passive spectators and rarely makes room for wholehearted enthusiasts!
Some of my most frequent God-assignments are:
I think the strangest God-assignment I’ve ever had was to carry (often with other people) a full-sized Salvation Army Flag (that proclaims the blood of Jesus and fire of the Holy Spirit) around an inner-city neighbor once a week or more, praying as we walked, for more than a decade.
God often whispers, like a gentle breeze in your heart, urging you toward righteousness, however, His inner nudges are frequently unnoticed. When you refuse to complete the assignments that God puts in your heart, you’re rejecting Him as your teacher.
Ask God to give you an assignment and He’ll direct you to an amazing opportunity to show kindness. God’s assignments often seem simple and insignificant, but if you obey them, you’ll experience amazing things. When I obey a God-assignment, I usually experience incredible confirmations and demonstrations of His leading.
When God entrusts you with an assignment and you ignore it, you hinder your relationship with Him. Your self-assignments and your God-assignments seldom match. Without self-denial it’s easy to ignore God’s choices.
Our desires continually try to lead us away from God’s assignments. It takes courage to say no to self and follow God instead.
To embrace God’s assignments, we have to ignore our desires. Then we discover that abandoning self-focus is a key to happiness.
If you’ve ever experienced an inner urging directing you to do good and/or to avoid doing wrong, you’ve heard the voice of God. When you feel an inner urging to be kind to someone, that’s an assignment from the Holy Spirit.
If more people would pursue God-assignments instead of self-assignments, the would be a much better place. When you’re caught up in self-assignments and unaware of God-assignments, beyond all your activity life still seems meaningless.
When Christians gather to let each person do what God assigns them, the meeting is beautifully coordinated by His presence. Instead of gathering as spectators, church could meet that way, and everybody listen to God so that each person could say and/or do what He assigns them.
If God’s not working in your heart, changing and directing it, you’re actively resisting Him and quenching His Spirit. If your heart is more devoted to anyone or to anything than it is to God, you have an idol.
Let the living Jesus hydrate your heart with His inner rivers of living water. Take Jesus to heart. If He’s just in your head, there’s a good chance that your spiritually dead. Distraction and denial don’t overcome guilt. They just hide it for a while. Guilt is overcome by receiving God’s forgiveness.
got your God-assignments?
–Be an inner eagle–
There are uplifting currents
Hidden in your mind
And undetected in your heart,
Thoughts of hope
And rising streams
Of inner warmth,
That can lift your spirit
And keep it high
Like an eagle
Sailing on the invisible
Updrafts of the sky.
Extend your inner wings wide
And begin to ride
Christ’s healing flow
That will lift you
From the inside,
As you glide
Above your turmoil
And soar to peace
Within.
When the risen Jesus is vibrant and living inside of you, you don’t need crutches. Let them go!
It’s not surprising that unbelievers reject the resurrection of Jesus, but it’s shocking that so many Christians still cling to crutches and live like Jesus is still dead. To freely walk empowered by the risen Jesus, Christians need to lay aside their religious crutches.
When Christians depend on religious crutches, instead of on the living Jesus, they can easily stumble into the clutches of deception. Religion can be a tool for connecting with God, but it’s too often a crutch that’s used to replace Him.
Sermons are like crutches. They’re helpful if you’re spiritually hobbled but they’re not the way to Christian maturity and a lifetime of faithful discipleship. (The living Jesus is the way.)
Christians don’t need secondhand explanations about Jesus. We need to experience His presence and directly hear from Him. If you follow a pastor, you’ve missed the point. A pastor should train you to follow Jesus.
If you believe that a pastor can hear from God and understand the Bible, you can, too! Read it and listen to God’s Spirit. Then do what He tells you.
Jesus first! Our political views are crutches that don’t come from Jesus. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
When a sermon
Is finally done
And you remember none
Of it,
What just happened?
A lifetime
Of forgotten sermons
Leaves too many Christians
Empty.
Jesus, come
And walk
With me.
I need more
Than a Sunday
Religious talk.
No matter how much
A person has been sermonized,
He’s coming up short
If he hasn’t realized
And surrendered to
The reality of Jesus
And His inner flow.
A church stage
Can easily become a cage
That makes people dependent
On one man’s sermons.
Instead of listening
To another religious talk,
Christians could
Go for a walk
And pray for
Whoever they meet.
That might be more powerful.
Try it and see.
When you think
You’re done
With your prayer,
There’s a good chance
You’ve barely begun.
Talk Christianity
Is like talk radio.
It’s easy
To tune it out.
Christians are supposed
To overflow with joy,
Not to flood their conversation
With hostility and profanity.
When a life
Isn’t chosen
To go from prenatal
To the cradle,
It’s fatal.
Safe abortion is never safe for the innocent human life that it takes.
Replacing prenatal care with prenatal worthlessness greatly devalues all human life.
