Searchers

I saw this today and it resonated so deep with my heart I just had to share it.

Taste God and see that He is good

This was a response by Todd Peirce to a post about Penal Substitution. I loved it so much I had to blog it as well!


In the garden Adam and Eve's perception of God was corrupted by Sin and the lie crept into their minds. They now saw God as someone to be feared and hid in the bushes. We have inherited that mistrust and wrong perception of God from Adam. Penal substitution is just a natural wrong understanding of what happened at the cross, it seems so logical but that conclusion has been corrupted by the lies that still invade our minds.

Colossians 1:19. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 1:20. and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 1:21. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour.

It says we were enemies in our minds because of our evil behaviour. When we sin the first thoughts that flood in are God is angry or disappointed and we feel like hiding from Him. I believe the world is full of people that are still trying to hide from God due to their behaviour. That is why I believe that what Paul wrote in II Corinthians is key to changing peoples faulty perceptions of God based upon the Lie. We can shine the light of the gospel into the bushes and let them come out and see that God loves them.

II Corinthians 5:18. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 5:19. namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 5:20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 5:21. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

God says to taste and see that He is good. That says that until we taste we assume that He is not good. My hope is that someone who reads this might be encouraged to taste of God and see that He is good.

~ Todd Peirce

From Jesus with Love

A wonderful prophetic thingy from my old friend Ruth Harris

I became who you are
uniting myself with you, to save you
I continually transform your body into mine.
I am your atonement, incarnate in you
I am now in my body in heaven, presenting you to father.
Now your dust sits on the throne.
I have taken you with me
I am Jesus who rose into heaven
all knowledge of god is found in me
I took you to myself in union with the holy spirit
I abide in you, living each moment of your life
I bind myself to you living your brokenness and lostness and healing you from within by exchanging your humanness with myself. I live your life with you, in you and around you. Cleansing it and offering it to father, being your obedience, doing for you, what you cannot do on your own.

Inside your humanity I live the relationship of love and intimacy that I have with my father from all eternity

I am deeply abiding inside you forever.
I redeem your whole life past, present and future. I present your cause before the father. I take up your prayers, consecrate and purify them and present them for you to the father. Father who delights to answer me, answers you. In my name and through my body and blood you are redeemed.

I exchange me for you. Trade me your sin and I will trade you my holiness. Trade me your anxiety and I will give you my peace. Trade me your doubt and will give you my faith on your behalf. Trade me your disease and I will give you my health. I ask for what is yours and take it to myself, I drink it as the cup of wrath on your behalf and give it back to you as grace, wholeness and healing. I trade my life for your sin and brokenness. This is what love is and does.

And if you partake in me you can experience intimacy with father too. Your standing with god in not in your own strength but in me. All that is mine is ours. I am your true, dependable advocate
i came to make my blessings known far beyond the depth of the curse that came upon you. I remake your humanity. Father chose you, I found you, I carry you to the throne and stay there holding you and presenting your cause.

You are seated with me and father guided by the holy spirit. We are one. I in my father, you in me, my father and I are one, so you are one too.

Rain

This is a beautiful analogy from Rob Bell.
Father's love is so much better then we can ever imagine!

New Day

A challenging clip from Truefaced.

A New Day is already here for the living.

There's a wolf out there...

~ Jeff Turner

There's a wolf out there, masquerading as both a sheep and a Shepherd; a wolf ho thirsts for the life blood of the saints; a beast who takes pleasure in watching the sons of God shaking in their boots in fear that something as benign as enjoying life will land them in Gehenna. 

He relishes in beholding us pockmarked with depression, fear, sleepless nights and joyless prayers, all because we cannot rightly see who the Father is. 

He sits in the front row of most Evangelical churches, howling 'Amen' each and every time the 'preacher' spews forth curses, and law and legalistic gibberish. 

He loves to watch the little children terrified as the preacher waxes disgustingly eloquent about God's bestial house of horrors in the underworld. 

He cheers as we trumpet a gloomy, hopeless last days message that causes sons and daughters with great potential to expect little more than hell on earth in the days to come. 

He loves watching artists and authors, poets and playwrights, movie producers and musicians shipped off to Bible colleges, only to be stripped of their callings and individuality, and instead turned into mindless, unthinking, soulless, plastic preachers. 

He loves watching dysfunctional people perpetuating the myth of a dysfunctional deity who's only interested in us sharing in his dysfunction! 

He loves it all! Why? Because all of it is designed to make you miserable; to drain the color from your eyes and suck the joy and wonder of living right out of your soul. This tyrannical monster is not to be tolerated, debated with, and certainly not accepted as a brother. 

Enough is enough. Down with the fuhrer and his anti-gospel gestapo. It's time for a Gospel revolution that shakes this monster to it's foundations! It's time for a reformation that brings the whole ungodly structure down into it's own footprint! It's time for the life, liberty and love of the Godhead to be screamed from every rooftop, street corner and pulpit! This is revolution! Are you on board?

Modern Gospel

~ Jeff Turner - Sound Of Awakening

 Here's the modern 'gospel' in a nutshell:

God the Father had been imbibing the wine of his own fury for around four millennia, and finally, due to his weak constitution, he found himself spiralling into an angry, drunken rage! Having had one too many cups of wrath to drink, the father began to make his way up stairs towards junior, the apparent 'object of his wrath' and the cause of all of his woes. But thanks be to...god...big brother Jesus was on alert, and upon hearing daddy's heavy, drunken feet trudging up the steps, burst out of his room and intercepted him. Big brother endured blow after blow after blow from his enraged parental unit until finally, daddy's wrath had been fully vented. As though emerging from a trance, suddenly, the father found himself sober. He turns around to behold the tear stained face of his youngest, and now hysterical, son. Having vented all of his wrath on his eldest, daddy now looks at junior and exclaims, "No worries son! We're cool now! I beat big brother in your place! I've gotten all of the fight out of me and now we can be buds! Seriously. You can trust me son."

An over simplification? Yes.

A still accurate portrayal? Yes.

Good News? Heck no.

How could one ever feel comfortable in the presence of a 'father' who needed to maim and kill another in order to keep him from doing the same to you? Just as a child can never fully relax and be at ease in the presence of an alcoholic father, no believer can ever be truly at rest with such a notion of God lodged between their ears. What if the ubiquitous unrest and anxiety that plagues humanity can be blamed almost entirely on an interpretation of God the Father that makes Him look more like a Furor than a father? More like a Hitler than a healer? What if even our dysfunctional 'christian' families are simply mirror images of our own misinterpretation of God's dealings with men? What if our brokenness and bankruptcy is the byproduct of our toxic folklore concerning the Father of our spirits? I think most of us can agree that the 'what if?' isn't even necessary, we all know it's true.

The crying need of the hour is for the Church to recapture the image of the Father. We need sons who have learned to behold Him as He is and who are then able to express and project that image to a broken and bleeding humanity. Are you out there? Have you seen Him? Have you heard His voice? Have you tasted His sweetness? Then what are you waiting on? Let your tongue be untied! Let your voice be as clear and sharp as glass! Let your pace be swift and intentional! Run and find the broken wherever they lay, and declare to them the heart of the Father who has saved them!

This is real. Lives are at stake. God is Love.

Perfectly Loved and Accepted

Many thanks to Colin for this post, take the time to read it through - wonderful!!
 

What would we look like if we knew we were Perfectly Loved and Accepted?

~ Colin Lagerwall

Some thoughts on who we are and how we work, and how the Gospel is the Power of God for the salvation of humanity.

I have for some time thought about how we interpret our own selves by how someone like Paul or James or others have written their own thoughts down, explaining the Gospel to those to whom they wrote....and then we take those thoughts of theirs and keep trying to interpret our own beings and minds based on their explanations.....we often make quite a mess of our inter-interpretations as we relate these explanations to our own minds, especially in the light of our 2012 understanding of human makeup..

One of these is the explanation of our 'nature' ... two natures, or the old and new nature, or I and Me, True and False nature ...and other variations of this same thinking...

And whilst I don't want to cross paths with anything to do with the Gospel as recorded on the writings of the early church fathers, I have wondered how we would interpret some of the things from a 2012 vantage point, having discovered a lot more of our internal mental and emotional workings....In other words, if one had to approach someone totally unchurched, un-christianized, how would we explain what happens inside of us, and why it is that we divide ourselves up into different natures, and how do we interpret that with the Law and the Gospel...

We are a very complex creation, so amazingly made that our emotions, bodies, minds and spirits seamlessly blend into one incredible combination, collectively called 'the human being', or a Person...

Our hormones and chemicals within our bodies have a very distinct part to play on our minds and emotions, and I do not want to dwell on that too much, other than to mention that our physical fitness, excercise and diet can play a very important part in our overall sense of well-being...

That being said, I want to focus on the other side of life, and that being our emotions and minds, undergirded by our spirit-being.

We are designed to live in the knowledge of 'being loved'....

As parents know full well, a child grows and develops best, both emotionally and mentally, in an environment of love, acceptance and discipline (correct guidance and teaching to gain wisdom)

This is our home-base...love and acceptance in all it's variations of forms and expressions..

To be accepted, loved and valued without measure, is how we are designed to live and grow best.....

One may say "But that is impossible, we live in an imperfect world where that kind of environment does not exist"

Perhaps ? Perhaps it's not impossible !

Let's look at non-acceptance and what happens to us when we grow in an environment of non-acceptance.

If I begin as little boy or girl to feel unaccepted, or not perfectly loved for who I am, I begin to look for acceptance and affirmation somewhere, because it is what we need for healthy development....

So I might start throwing tantrums to get this attention, I might start whining or showing off....and invariably get scolded for doing so, which reinforces this behavior, or pushes me into hiding within myself...

We are complex beings and we have many side-shows of varying reactions to not being loved and accepted, too many to even begin to mention here...

A side-note here, and that is to mention something pertinent to the very early stages of development...breastfeeding a baby for as long as possible is one of the best ways to give a newcomer to this world the love and comfort and acceptance he or she needs at the earliest stages of one's life. (As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word)

And breastfeeding is one of the things that our modern lifestyle seems to have no time for, so the necessary love and acceptance required in a child's development is already compromised from the start...ok, that's just a small sideline...

Other pitfalls are absent fathers, even if they are home; and both mothers and fathers with their own emotional and relational issues that carry into this newcomers life, further reinforcing this lack of a perfectly loved and accepted environment..

So....how does the newcomer to this world begin to react to feelings of rejection and shame, which are the symptoms of the lack of perfect love and acceptance ?

Although there are many variations to rejection and lack of acceptances outworkings, they can be boiled down to a few basic reactions.

A lack of love, acceptance and security instils fear and shame, and fear and shame causes a sense of hiding within oneself, combined with a putting on of a brave front, or a pretence of who you are to cover the shame you feel about yourself...

And shame is also reinforced by the reaction to your 'unacceptable' behavior, which in turn reinforces futher shame and more pretences.

These pretences are learned from the society you grow up in; you learn to present what is best accepted in the company you keep, and that can be many different types of company, even varying a few times during any given day

(eg I can have one presentation for my work place, another for my home, another for my golf-buddies, another for my shopping days, and of course, saving the best one for my church)

These presentations are learned and developed from an early age, because it is here at this young stage that the fears from unacceptance are instilled, and the development of these presentations become an integral part of my life, patterns of thinking, and actions borne out of the inverse reactions to the fear and unacceptance.

A note to add with regards to fears....

Our reactions to fears can be as such :

• If I fear lack, for example, brought on by an absent father and an environment where there was alcohol abuse in the family, and there was never enough food in the house, or by the post-war depression, or current recession....this fear of lack can cause greed, hoarding, overspending, stealing, workaholic tendencies, and many more reactions
• If I fear being vulnerable and open to others, I can develop a hardened disposition where I can easily kill someone without blinking an eye.....
• If I fear not being accepted, I can develop jealousy and envy to those who seem to be accepted..
• If I fear not being good enough, I can strive to prove myself good enough, and this can have severe adverse outworkings, like arrogance, unhealthy competitiveness, etc.

These reactions to fear and shame are so many and so varied, that it would take a book to describe just some of these reactions....and every person reacts in their own specific way, or ways, depending on the circumstances.

These reactions to fear and shame are what Paul calls the 'Old man', or what others have described as the Law man, or the Adamic nature, or the Me and not the I, or the Ego or the False Identity......

We need to see something clearly....We do not and never had two natures ! We are not divided between good and bad, and if we feed the good that good will win, or if we feed the bad, it will win....

We are one person with one nature !

However, if we fear within and are ashamed of ourselves, we hide or squash the fears and the shame inside of us, and develop these pretences to present ourselves acceptable to society.....and this effect seems to be two separate natures...the good and the bad, the old and the new.

These squashed fears and shame do not disappear, because they are part of 'you', but because of our skill in hiding these unacceptable feelings, and the skill in learning an acceptable behavior, we develop two types of personalities...the good and the bad.

Now if we are provoked enough, given the right conditions, this 'bad' personality comes out of hiding, tempers flare, wives get beaten husbands get the cold shoulder, people get killed in road rage, etc.

And when it's all over, back into squashed hiding it goes and the good guy gets the go-ahead to show society who 'you are' again.

These two sides of the coin are the most common within mankind....What can develop with some people who have suffered major trauma, is the development of multiple personalities, where the pains are hidden to the degree that they are totally obliviated from conscious memory, and with the pains and memories hidden, so is the 'person' attached to those memories, and then different visible personalities are developed to maintain a reasonable and acceptable show in society.....but that's another branch of the complex reactions to Fear and Shame......

When we see 'sin' in humans, what we are seeing is THE REACTIONS to Fear and Shame...

To control this sinful behavior might have some positive effect, but the problem is that the root of this behavior has not been dealt with...and what happens then is that because a lot of effort and will power is placed in this behavior control, it becomes tiring, and invariably the person trying, fails...and with this failure, more shame is instilled, and with it a sense of judgement is instilled, particularly if 'The Fear of God' is brought into the situation....and more fear develops, so a growing vicious cycle ensues, and the death of this person is the result...

This 'death' could be physical, but mostly it is not....most often it is the loss of life in the sense of this person not being able to live a normal wholesome life as he or she was designed to do (Eat of this Tree and you will surely die)

How does this whole dilemma get sorted ?

If Fear and Shame are the root of bad behavior, the solution would be that which both prevents Fear and Shame, as well as healing the after effects of previous damage done to the mind and emotions due to a life-time of living in Fear and Shame

(a further note is to understand that these thought patterns of Fear and Shame and methods of dealing with them, are learned and passed down from generation to generation, and we are born into families with these set patterns 'hide and seek', patterns that we don't recognize, because we think they are 'normal')

What does our Creator have for us that is a permanent solution to our human problem ?

Perfect Love casts out Fear

Perfect Acceptance removes Shame

Is there such a thing as Perfect Love and Acceptance ?

From humanity ? I doubt it ... in fact, a definite "No...humanity is unable to give perfect Love and Acceptance"

Especially if we understand we all carry these patterns that have developed over thousands of years, that no one is by any stretch of the imagination "Normal"....so who would set the path straight for a Normal presentation, with no fear, no shame, normal thought patterns, having been perfectly loved and accepted ever since forever ?

Enter the Gospel....The Good News !

When Jesus was asked "How do we relate to this God?".... Jesus answers "Begin by saying Our Father"

He further says that this Father, who He (Jesus) has known and has been loved by and accepted by forever, will look after all our needs, that we never have to fear lack...He will provide, no need to get envious or jealous of another..

The Good News says that we have a Father who loves us unconditionally, perfectly; accepts us even if we totally mess up... Not a potential Father if we say and do certain things that make us His child, but the revealing of the Father we have always had, but did not know....

The Good News that tells us that He has removed all remembrance of our wrongs, not for His sake, because His love for us was able to see that our wrong doings were all based on reactions to Fear and Shame, but it is for OUR sake that He has removed remembrance of sin, so that we would not live in Shame and Fear of judgement.....

A Love that is so consistent, never ending, nothing can ever cause this Love's River to stop...a Love that sees right into your heart and sees everything, burning through all the Fear and Shame because Love does not induce Shame, it removes it...an acceptance that has no end and no beginning, that no 'bad' could ever turn this Face from it's fixed gaze of the Purest of Love and Acceptance pouring from His Eyes.......

What if we knew this Love ?

WHAT IF HUMANITY KNEW THIS LOVE ?!

What if we knew that this Person has always existed and this Gaze of Love has alway been fixed on us, long before we were even conceived, because it was this Person who Created us for the pleasure of living in the awareness of His Perfect Love and Acceptance?

This Person is called Father...the Father of whom the whole family under Heaven and Earth is named....and He is Love....

What if we had someone who had known this Father's perfect Love and Acceptance His whole life, and was able to show us this Father, and show us His own wholeness....which is also ours when we know we are Perfectly Loved and Accepted, untainted by Fear and Shame and all it's outworking symptoms of "Hide and Seek", (Hiding from shame, Seeking approval), now able to live out our lives in the same wholeness of our only nature, the one nature made in this Father's own likeness....

What if we really knew this ?!

[Now, I need to address this as well:

What if we were first told that this Person who is Love, rejects us as well, rejects the very fabric of our being, who we are, until we accept His Son?

What if we were told that this Person was not our Father until we had first run through some hoops, and one of them being to accept His Son or else He would reject us, but not just reject, but hold us over an eternal rotisserie of torture forever....

That He was even capable of this kind of treatment of us......

He, who is known as Perfect Love and Acceptance...humanity's only hope of being free from the outworkings of Fear and Shame , is also known as Fear and Rejection Himself, the Ultimate Fear and Shame inducing influence, ever ?]

The only way that He, who is Perfect Love and Acceptance, is to totally heal and remove all traces of Fear and Shame induced living in humanity's lives, is for us to understand that He always has been Father to us, even in our ignorance, and that He always will be Perfect Love and Acceptance to us....and if we saw that He sent his firstborn Eternal Son to us to show ALL of us what His thoughts are towards us, thoughts that will never change....an example of who WE ARE ....

This Son ... Perfectly Loved and Accepted....just like us ..... but never tainted with Fear and Shame because this Father is incapable of inducing Fear and Shame ..... is Jesus, OUR Brother !

To see Jesus, to see how He is Eternally Loved and Accepted, to see His nature, is to see our own....because He and us have the same nature, and when we live in the knowledge of Perfect and Eternal Love and Acceptance, our ONLY nature comes to the fore....

We lose our Fear and Shame, we come out of hiding, we stop pretending with all it's shows and facades, we stop our jealousies and envying without even trying, we begin to see each other in the same Light that we see ourselves, good-natured people, made in the same image and likeness of our Father ....

What if the World knew who they are, seen through their Father's eyes !

What would we look like if we knew we were Perfectly Loved and Accepted ?

Jesus, the Word

By Gaye Stradwick

Have you read the descriptions in Paul's Epistles of who you are in Christ and what he has done for you, and felt your spirit leap within you?

And have you also read some of the words of Jesus in the Gospels and felt a bit flat and overwhelmed by the standard he sets?

The reason is Paul's Epistles were written to you! But the words of Jesus were written to people under the Mosaic law.

But even then, Jesus was not just saying "the law sets one standard and I am setting an even higher one"...

but by sometimes contradicting and the law and sometimes lifting the bar higher, he was saying “This is who I am! This is the authority that has been given to me by my Father! I transcend the law - this covenant law and every other law! I am the way, the truth and the life!"

He was saying you no longer have the promise of a Saviour in your written law - here I am in the flesh - I have authority over all law! Matt. 28;18 "All authority (all power of rule) has been given to Me in heaven and on earth." Amp.

Not only the law was fulfilled when Jesus came, the promised Saviour had come!

He brought a new commandment, a new law - the law of love!

John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

Everything in the old law that did not align with this was now done away with! The Mosaic law had to align with the law of love!

Today, Christians need to learn the same lesson as those Jewish folk had to learn 2,000 years ago. John 5:39: "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. 40 But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life."

Jesus clearly said that he was over every commandment and written law. Yet today we take fragments of New Testament Scripture and make them into rules and laws. Once again now, we often look for life and security by making a neat package of rules and regulations from words written to people 2,000 odd years ago, who lived in a different world. And not only do we live by rules ourselves, we hold our brothers and sisters to them as well!

How different would what we have today look if we really lived by the over-arching revelation of love in the person of Jesus Christ - and by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God -instead of rigid rule keeping, and beating each other over the head with those rules.

What’s in a WORD?

For years the law demolished us

Our heart and soul our simple trust

With no accountability

It ruled in its verbosity

Twisted WORD misunderstood

And good turns evil and evil good

Using “submission” (a voluntary state of meekness)

As enslaver’s chain

And “accountability” (to be an open book)

For personal reign

WORDsmiths groan in painful measure

As the WORD is robbed of intrinsic treasure

And the sweetest SPIRIT is quenched once more

While HE THE WORD waits at the door

For if in wresting it was defiled

Let it now be reconciled

Let ears be opened and HIS heart be heard

And let us now redeem the WORD

Harrison  Burns

(Turn of the century Christian poet)

The Victorious Cross

A great quote from Joel Adifon ~

The more we grow in the ways of the LORD, the greater the possibility for us become dangerous threats to the agenda of the kingdom of darkness.
Desperate to stop us from attaining the full stature of Christ, the enemy will do everything he possibly can to focus our attention on new teachings and take our eyes off of the Teacher.
As great as miracles, signs, and wonders are, they are not the Gospel.
The enemy loves watching Christians spend hours of their lives reading dozens of testimonies, watching street healing videos, going to signs and wonders conferences, and trying to live vicariously via their favorite pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love hearing and reading about what God has done.
I think solid teaching on healing in the Kingdom is definitely important for feeding one's spirit man with faith.
I love watching videos on believers taking the power of God to the marketplace.
BUT...
...Papa, has been rocking me lately and bringing me back to the Source of all of these things.
The Source of power is not the latest video, mp3 teaching, or conference.
The Source is the Gospel and the Gospel is summed up in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.
We should be glorying in nothing other than the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
If any other thing besides the Cross becomes the focal point of the messages we preach, we're missing something.
Come on Church! :)
Let's not have a been there done that attitude with the Cross, as if it's some elementary teaching that is only for baby Christians.
The Victorious Cross of Jesus Christ is the source and summit of the Christian life.
It was never meant to be Christianity 101.
Preach the Healer and healings will manifest.
Preach the Deliverer and demons will be scattered.
Preach the One who sanctifies and holiness will be a natural fruit.
Preach the Lover of souls and people will be saved.
It's all His work! :)
We're just hanging on for the ride.

There is no need to put on an act!

There is no need to put on an act, the Christian lifestyle is not a choice, it is a spiritual orientation, so to speak; it is precipitated automatically by the indwelling Christ, or it is not even real. For the soul abiding in Christ, it is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. This is either the natural outcome of a real relationship or it is the manufactured facade of self-righteousness. The lies fall away and the clarity emerges as we grow in grace and as a result, all things are pure, the Christian lives rightly because that is such an attractive opportunity, people are perceived as that precious, and the hoped for outcome is yearned for by an involuntary hunger. It is such an automatic fruit that it is not even an issue. ~Bob Greaves

The Scriptures

This is a copy of a post on Harvest Now by Steve Hill
I was going to write something similar as a follow up to my last post Trees and Forests, but this really captured it for me. No point in reinventing the wheel!


The Scriptures
Mar 3, 2011 at 17:20
Category: Centering on Christ
Steve Hill


Friends, It is common for many to refer to the Bible as "The Word of God". However, this is not how the Master identifies it. In John 5:39- 40 Jesus confronts the religious scholars of His day, "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you might have life."

In the scriptures the designation "The Word of God" applies only to the Living Word, Jesus. This same Jesus declares that the purpose of the scriptures is to testify of Him and that it is entirely possible to study them and miss Him. If we make the Scriptures "The Word of God" rather than Jesus, we have created an idol. Your faith is not to primarily be in the scripture, your faith is to be in Jesus. That is why Jesus opened the understanding of the disciples so that they could see all that was written in "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms" concerning Himself (Luke 24:44- 45). The primary purpose of the scriptures is to create a history and a context in which Jesus can be clearly seen. The scriptures are not the Word of God. The scriptures testify to the Word of God.

Actually the only words that scripture records God writing directly are the ten commandments. The testimony about the rest? " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work." (II Timothy 3:16).

Now here it can get technical but "by inspiration of God" is a very different reality than "by the finger of God". For example, under inspiration the gospel writers wrote four very different accounts of the life of Jesus. Those accounts highlight their different personalities, educational backgrounds, life experiences and writing styles. Yet we do not say one or the other was more inspired. The Word had become flesh in them and was expressed through them. God did not posses them. God did not control their pens. God inspired them. They testified to Jesus.

If we understand that the scriptures are primarily about bearing testimony to Jesus (even as we are to be primarily about bearing testimony to Jesus!) that changes how we read them. The scriptures were not intended to present a rational system about God but a relational story about Jesus. Rational systems are rationally determined which leaves the mind in control. That is why we can argue systems of theology forever- they are controlled by our minds. A reality controlled by my mind makes my mind god. Not a good story.

Relationships are morally determined, that is, they are determined by our choices to love and serve. The purpose of the scripture is to introduce us to Jesus so that we might know and love Him and in so doing love and serve one another. If we love Him, we obey Him. That is a good story. It leaves Jesus as God. There is no true knowledge of Jesus without relational obedience to Him.

If we talk about the scriptures as the Word of God there seems to be a tendency to take little bits and pieces, cut and paste them and declare that little bit to be "the Word of God". That way lies deception. There are enough bits that you can make the scriptures say almost anything you want. Your favourite little bit is not "the Word of God" . It is a portion of the scriptures that testify of Jesus. It only has meaning in the whole of the scriptures and ultimately only has meaning in relation to the revelation of Jesus.

Sand is little bits that have broken off the mountain and washed to the sea. To build upon sand it to build upon bits of the scripture broken from their place in the Rock. If we wish to build upon the Rock and know that our house will stand, we must build upon the Rock who is Christ Jesus.

When Jesus opened the disciples minds to understand all in the law, prophets and psalms concerning Himself there was, of course, no New Testament. Once portions that would become the New Testament began to circulate around Paul spoke to Timothy about studying to show your self "approved unto God" by "rightly dividing the word of truth" (II Timothy 2:15). There can be discussion about what this means but it seems to me that the most important division is between Old Covenant and New, Law and Grace, the nation of Israel and the Body of Christ. Many of the present errors of doctrine and practice amongst believers come from taking Old Covenant practices and teachings and dragging them into the New where they replace grace and the life of Jesus. What do I mean?

Tithing taken out of its Old Covenant context and applied as "the Word of God" for today. Giving 10% in order to be blessed makes God a miserly book keeper rather than a generous Father. But how does tithing speak of Jesus and His kingdom? If you actually study the three tithes of the Old Covenant and the other financial laws around them, it becomes clear that the focus was not just on provision for the priest and temple but on social justice for the nation and the care of the poor. Jesus came to set the captives free not put a legalistic financial burden upon them and then tell the poor they are cursed if they do not tithe.

Worship in the Old Covenant had its 24/7 practice and its experience of God who came and went from the tabernacle or the temple. When we drag that practice into the New Covenant we have people shouting at the ceiling for hours and asking God to come down and touch them and send revival. That is totally destructive of New Testament reality which is "Christ in you the hope of Glory". Such practice makes mockery of the words of Jesus who said that He had given us all authority and that we were to go and make disciples of the nations. Jesus cannot come down. He is already in your if you are HIs. Jesus will not send revival. He has sent you. Such 24/7 shouting and crying matches are manifest rebellion against the words of the Master. They are traditions that make his words of no effect.

What does Old Covenant worship teaching and practice show us about Jesus? It shows us a contrast. As was prophesied in the Old Covenant, God no longer dwells in temples made with hands but in His people. When God

dwells in His people, they never thirst again- they have nothing to cry out for. Their task is to take water to those who do not have it. When God dwells in His people, they have His indwelling presence to take to the world.

We could go on but, please, let us stop using the phrase "The Word of God" for the scriptures. Let us stop using bits and pieces of the scriptures as "The Word of God". Those bits and pieces are sand. Let us know that the scriptures testify of Jesus and that testimony is divided into two Covenants. Let us divide the two correctly. Let us discern what is Old Covenant practice and terminology and let that speak to us of Jesus. It is there to reveal Jesus, not for us to practice. The One who is the fulfillment has come!

Let us understand clearly that there is no life in the scriptures but that they testify of Jesus who does give life.

He is the only Word of God.

Wounded Healer

This is a quote from Henri Nouwen. Self explanatory really:

"Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not “How can we hide our wounds?” so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but “How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?” When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.
Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others."

Sometimes life's journey just seems to get harder, but the hope that my wounds may one day bring life brings life to me now.

Cool Quote

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."- C. S. Lewis