I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
When Jesus is un-institutionalized (freed from the confines of religious organizations), He begins to demonstrate His power and presence.To function as the body of Christ we need Jesus realized, not Jesus institutionalized.
The body of Christ isn’t an organization. It’s a movement that follows the living Jesus. It doesn’t institutionalize Jesus.
“Church” has far too often drifted away from being the body of Christ with Jesus as its Head and become a man-led institution.A religious institution is a poor substitute for Christ-revealed intuition as recorded in the Bible and spoken in your heart.
Institutionalized Christianity often lacks the vibrancy of spontaneously following and obeying the living, resurrected Jesus.For years I only saw the institutionalized Jesus. Then my eyes beheld the living Jesus and I’ve been enthralled by Him ever since.
In the body of Christ, each member is directly connected to the living Jesus, the Head. Spiritual paralysis results when members ignore Him.The body of Christ is a Jesus-led movement, not a weekly meeting for religious amusement.
How to un-stitutionalize Jesus: 1) Talk to Him like He’s real; 2) Ask Him to speak to you; 3) Listen to what He tells you; and 4) Do what He says. Immerse yourself in the Bible because the risen Jesus won’t contradict it, but will make it come alive to you.
By doing what Jesus says, we learn what He means. Hearing sermons can never substitute for daily obedience.If we’re not actively teaching people about what we’re learning by following Jesus, we will stunt our spiritual growth.
When we gather as Jesus’ body, what happens in the meeting should be His choice, not our choice or a pastor’s choice.Jesus said, “Don’t look back,” but people tend to look back to study Him in the past, more than trying to find Him in the present.
Until Jesus becomes a daily, present reality to you, we’re not yet experiencing biblical Christianity.The living Jesus wants to give us power to resist and overcome our false feelings, tormenting thoughts, and defective desires.
When we see people’s heart, we love them more deeply. Ekklesia allows Christ-followers to see each other’s heart.Ekklesia values every member of the body of Christ and believes in their ability to hear and share what the Spirit is saying.It allows us to test out and develop our spiritual wings in the safe environment of the gathered body of Christ.Ekklesia trains Christ-followers to actively pursue the living Jesus, not to sit passively and let someone else do it.
Ekklesia is a way the early Christians connected with the living Jesus and with one another.When an English Bible says “church” it causes people to think of modern churches, not about the way Christians met in the Bible as ekklesia.
Jesus isn’t a story, Bible study subject Or sermon topic. He’s alive and present!
Greek cities in the ancient world were governed by open Town Hall Meetings, where any citizen could speak, which they called “The Ekklesia.” When Jesus chose a name for a gathering of His people, He called it My Ekklesia (Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting).
The body of Christ needs to rediscover Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting. It’s a gathering where the living Jesus is free to demonstrate His reality through anyone present.God’s intent is that “now through the ekklesia (Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting) the manifold wisdom of God would be made known.” –Eph. 3:10.
Jesus wants His followers to be living stones that He can use to build His spiritual house–His Town Hall Meeting. –1 Peter 2:4-5.He is calling present day followers to be “built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” –Eph. 2:22. Living stones need to be built together on the living Jesus, not on religious programs or organizations.
Christians need to depend on the only unshakable Rock–the living Jesus who is the Cornerstone which religious builders rejected.Jesus wants to demonstrate the kingdom of God by building His Town Hall meeting on that Rock through the supernatural revelation that He is the Messiah–the Christ, the Son of the Living God. –Mt. 16:16-20.
When we gather in Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting to wait for His direct revelation, He gives us the keys to demonstrate the kingdom of God–the government of the living Jesus. –Mt.16:19.Jesus’ Town Hall Meetings manifest the kingdom of God because, unlike the Greek ekklesia, they’re built on sharing Divine revelation, not on free speech.
The buildings where the Greek ekklesia met crumbled. However, Jesus assured His followers that the gates of Hell will not be able to overcome His ekklesia. It’s not a physical building made of stones, but an assembly of “living stones” brought together and led by the living Jesus, Himself.
WiFi is invisible but that doesn’t prevent me from connecting with it. Same with the invisible Jesus.You can’t see the invisible Jesus but you can feel His presence when you let Him live and work in your heart.
People aren’t satisfied to hear a weekly lecture about WiFi. They want to be personally connect to it. That’s the way I feel about Jesus.
Trying to be a Christian while ignoring the invisible Jesus is like trying to post on Facebook while offline. However, when Christians have an ongoing connection with the invisible Jesus, they’re continually spiritually fed by Christ living in them.
The physical Jesus entered God’s supernatural dimension. The invisible Jesus returned to earth with the Holy Spirit.The visible indications of Jesus’ invisible presence are the characteristics that the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).
The invisible Jesus can’t be contained or monopolized by organizations called churches. Let Him live in and thru you. The invisible Jesus is the essential part of Christianity.
When Christ-followers gather and connect with the invisible Jesus, He moves them around with the gentle breeze of His inner wind.Like touching your phone, if you touch Jesus with your heart, it pulls up invisible connections and enables you to stream His flow.
To gather as Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting allows a group of people to consciously connect with and stream the invisible Jesus together.Spirituality mature believers (elders) serve as overseers (like officials in football) when Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting gathers.Watching the living Jesus invisibly lead His Town Hall Meeting is an incredible experience.
The kingdom of God enables conscious connection with the invisible Jesus and lets Him continually stream inside you.Those who are willing to hear, let them stream what the invisible Jesus is saying to His Town Hall Meeting. (Revelation 2:7.)
Every lie you tell makes truth harder to find. Every twist on truth distorts it. Lies dis honesty. If we humans were as good as we try to make people think that we are, the world would be in much better shape.
Lying doesn’t sugar coat life. It vandalizes it. The truth is the most reliable story and I’m sticking to it.
The truth doesn’t need large numbers of supporters. It is what it is.
Honesty is simple. Lying is complicated. Simplify. Truth is more valuable than money, yet people continually toss truth aside.
Before you say something, give it the lie detector test. Run it by your conscience. To lie is to welcome ongoing fear–the fear that your lies will someday be exposed.
Anytime you open your mouth, or type on a keyboard, you have the opportunity to be honest. If you don’t want to feel guilty, tell the truth.
Beware. Words can express half truths, the whole truth, or no truth. Humans can hide the truth, but we can’t change it.
Second lies are easier to tell than the first. The world needs more peacemakers and fewer pain-makers.
Dishonest people attempt to deny reality. Honest people courageously face it. Truth will outlast lies and one day rise to the surface.
When you see facts As threats You’re in debt To dishonesty.
To disguise The truth Is unwise And full Of lies.
If you embrace deceit You don’t defeat The truth, But you do delete Your self-esteem.
It’s easier to tell A pack of lies Than it is To “single-ize” One solitary lie.
The living Jesus wants to lead Town Hall Meetings for the kingdom of God. Will we let Him?
Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting (JTHM–“Ekklesia” in Greek) is an assembly of believers, called together to hear and be led by the Spirit.If you’ve never attended Jesus’ Town Hall Meetings, you’ve missed out on amazing demonstrations of His presence and love.
Learn to hear what the Spirit is saying to Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting, the gathered body of Christ.Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is built on the rock of revelation and Hell’s city gates can’t prevent it from invading human hearts.
Jesus builds His Town Hall Meeting on the rock of revelation. It depends on people having ears to hear what the Spirit is saying.Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is a gathering where we lay down our opinions and then listen to and do what the Spirit says instead.
When Christ-followers gather as Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting, to listen to and obey the Spirit, Hell is driven out of people’s heart.Unfortunately, Christians have been trained to listen to what the preacher is saying, but not to what the Spirit is saying.
Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting allows ordinary people to share from their heart as they are prompted by the Spirit.The revelation-based, Jesus-led Town Meeting is built around humble, heart-felt interaction with Him and with one another. It is a love fest between the living Jesus and His followers.
A meeting where Christians are passive and unengaged isn’t the revelation-based Town Hall Meeting (Ekklesia) Jesus describes in Matthew 16.Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is a gathering where His followers meet to listen to the Spirit and then say and/or do what He says.It gathers to give every member of His body the opportunity to share what the Spirit is saying to them.
The living Jesus is the “Head of the body”–His Town Hall Meeting.The “epistles” in the Bible are letters that were written to Jesus’ Town Council Meetings in various cities.
Follow the living Jesus. Be Spirit-led. Where do you go to Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting?Jesus said that He would build His revelation-based Town Hall Meeting, but over the centuries it morphed into church.
Many people want to ignore, hide, or deny the fact that Black lives didn’t matter in much of America’s history. However, ignoring and/or justifying racism in the past or present is divisive. Here are a few historical facts.
Black lives didn’t matter when they were sold to the highest bidder and forcibly separated from their families.
Black lives didn’t matter when the Founding Fathers refused to apply the principles of America’s founding documents to Black people.
Black lives didn’t matter when slaves were whipped or tortured in America for not fully cooperating with the people who were stealing their labor and trafficking them.
Black lives didn’t matter when they were frequently insulted, mocked, and looked down on by White people & in American media.
Black lives didn’t matter when more than 4,000 Black people were lynched by White mobs as courts and law enforcement rarely held anyone accountable.
Black lives didn’t matter when Black people were made to live under the continual threat of violence if they didn’t “stay in their place.”
Black lives didn’t matter when the United States Supreme Court legalized Jim Crow laws that treated Black people as if they didn’t matter.
Black lives didn’t matter when Black people weren’t allowed to testify in court.
Black lives didn’t matter when they were treated differently and denied equal rights because of their skin color.
Black lives didn’t matter when Black people weren’t allowed equal access to jobs and equal pay for equal work.
Black lives don’t matter if the police are more willing to kill an unarmed Black person than an unarmed White person.
Black lives don’t matter when their long history of pain and heartbreak is denied and unheard.
Black lives didn’t matter when they were subjected to race massacres in Tulsa (1921), Chicago (1919), Detroit (1943), New York (1863), Washington (1919), Springfield, MO (1908), East Saint Louis (1917), Memphis (1866), Wilmington, VA (1898), Elaine, AR (1919), Atlanta (1906), Vicksburg, MS (1874), Clinton, MS (1875), Eufaula, MS (1874), Camila, GA (1868), Slocum, TX (1910), Colfax, LA (1873), Opelousas, LA (1868), Thibadox, LA (1867), New Orleans (1876), St. Bernard Parish, LA (1868), Rosewood, FL (1923), Ocoee, FL (1920) and various other places.
Want freedom? When people are free They will disagree And see Things differently.
We have the right to try to persuade others. We don’t have the right to verbally attack, manipulate, or coerce them. Insulting people is not, and never has been, a human right. It’s simply unkindness.
Respecting human rights begins with respecting the right of people to disagree with you.To verbally attack and/or try to intimidate someone for simply disagreeing with you is to assault their right to free speech.My freedom of speech doesn’t give me the right to scorn, insult, or belittle other people.
Freedom and rights are not the same thing. As humans we have the freedom to do wrong, but that doesn’t make doing wrong a right. Just because you are free to do something doesn’t mean you have a right to do it. If you claim something as a right, but doing it bothers your conscience, it’s probably a sin, not a right.
If you claim something as a human right, you have no right to deny that right to other people.The American Declaration of Independence proclaims that rights are God-given & inalienable, not that they are earned or deserved.
If you’re on social media, watch TV, or follow politics, then you know that the right to not be offended doesn’t exist.We all have the right to disagree with other people’s opinions and/or beliefs, but we don’t have to be mean about it.
Too often people surrender the most basic human right: The right to think original thoughts.
A closed heart never grows into a big heart. A closed heart suffers alone but an open heart flourishes with joyful and inspiring insights.
Life is a mixture of pain and joy. When you close your heart to pain, you also close it to joy.Trying to protect yourself from having a caring heart is like trying to protect yourself from the oxygen in the air.
When you sit down and have an open, one-to-one conversation with anyone on the planet, you discover that they’re a lot like you. Human differences are paltry. Human similarities are profound.
If you’re afraid of opening up your heart, be courageous. Open your heart like an unfolding flower and you’ll experience the warmth of being human. Closed hearts are stagnant and need to open up to fresh air.
Love that last requires a heart that refuses to be shut down by pain. A closed heart stays overcrowded with worries, pain, and anxiety, because it has no outlets.When we hear a person’s words but don’t hear their heart, we mistakenly believe that we’ve listened to them.
An open heart allows love to freely flow. A closed heart shuts it down.When we open our heart, we forget about self and begin to flow with growing compassion for others. An open heart loses its self-focus in the joy of encouraging others.
When you open your heart to understanding, you’ll begin to know more than you can ever figure out with your mind.A broken heart is like a broken coconut shell. It gives you free access to the milk of life.
You weren’t created to be a secret agent. Bond! Open your heart and bond with other people. Pride is the greatest obstacle to an open heart. You control the door to your heart. No one can open it without your permission.
Have an adventure today. Find someone you think is different than you and listen to them with an open heart.A closed heart tries to hide itself from hurt, but an open heart gives hurt no place to hide.
People who are courageous enough to open their heart find that other people will follow their lead.A tender, open heart is the greatest treasure there is. It’s the pearl of great price. A hard heart and a hard conscience make for a hard life.
Open your heart and people will follow. Compassion is contagious. A closed heart is a blind heart. If you train your heart to stay open to people, compassion will continually flow from within you. Trying to protect your heart by keeping it closed is like trying to protect your phone by keeping it shut down.
Closing your heart minimizes your capacity to care and imprisons you behind the cold, hard bars of hurt, anger, and resentment.A closed heart is easily deceived by desires and feelings. It is continually alienated from true self-awareness. The more you let your heart care, the more of life’s joy you will share.
Live trees dance with the wind. Dead trees resist it ’til it breaks them. Take a chance and let your heart flow with joyful dancing. To truly experience inner harmony, you need to train your heart to sing on key. A closed heart is deficient in joy receptors.
When you close your heart in response to pain, you don’t heal it; you lock it in. When you let pain shut down your heart, temporary pain becomes permanent bitterness.
People connect when they’re honest about their brokenness. They collide when they protect their pride.If you listen without analysis or defensiveness, you’ll soon begin to hear someone’s heart.The shortest distance between two conflicting viewpoints is an open heart willing to see both sides. Closed hearts collide. Open hearts connect.
An open heart so overflows with light that there’s no place for darkness to hide.A closed heart has accepted being fake and doesn’t want anybody to shake it up or wake it up.
The more you analyze people, the less you are able to connect with them heart-to-heart. When love is kept shut up in the heart, it fossilizes. Freely show and express it!
When a broken heart collapses inwardly, it withers in pain. When it opens up, it heals and connects with other human hearts. A closed heart stays ensnared in its own feelings and desires.
When you open your heart to people, you discover that they are truly amazing.A closed heart projects fantasies onto people. An open heart wants to hear what people think and feel. It learns to see thru other people’s eyes and hear thru their ears.
A closed heart has learned to encounter people superficially and to ignore their needs and concerns.Your heart doesn’t need to be protected from transparency and trust. Those are the things that heal it! When walls are welcomed by the mind, they soon surround the heart.
Rigid thinking and a closed heart will create much misunderstanding and conflict in your life. The more you close and hide your heart the more you’ll open up to lying and dishonesty.
Unity doesn’t come from agreement or logic. It happens when people open their heart to care about one another.
A closed heart blocks out God’s whisperings. It falsely believes that He’s not speaking. A closed heart in unaware of miracles.
A closed heart is blind And can easily find Excuses to be unkind.
