This week I really struggled with my message.  I knew exactly what I was going to preach.  I knew the text, I had an outline, I had references, I was ready.  Except I wasn’t.

I have no desire to bring a sermon.  I step into the pulpit to bring a message from the Father and yesterday I had a sermon but no message . . . until the third song of worship.  At that point the Holy Ghost came into the room, gave me a vision, and told me what to preach.  Actually He gave me a vision, two sentences, and an altar call.  I had to figure out how to preach it.

So with a few minuted till I was going to be welcomed on stage I furiously scratched out the message the Holy Ghost gave me.  I preached it and the Holy Ghost confirmed it with signs and wonders.

Now, that’s preachin.

I believe God tells people things all the time.   So if  I believe in hearing God what is the problem?  Glad you asked.

I am at a place that the phrase, “God told me” has one of three meanings, and two are not good.

1. I am a mature Christian who hears God.  Purpose: Live in unity with God and God’s people.  Scripture: Acts 21:13  Likelihood: least likely.  Description: I am a person who is submitted to heavenly and earthly authority.  I am submitting what I believe God told me for you, as my leader to test.  I would like to walk in submission to this direction from God and I would like you to prayerfully consider what I think the application of this word is.  Please hold me accountable to this direction since I know how serious God’s spoken word is.
   Likely Example: “Since you have asked me to take a leadership role in this area of ministry, I feel I should tell you that before I started serving I felt God told me I was going to lead this area of ministry.  I was just planning to come to church here but God told me so I started serving.  Please help me stay in God’s will and not take on things God does not want me to.”
2. God has to audibly speak before I will do anything I don’t feel like doing.  Purpose: Get credit for being a martyr by obeying God and make it clear God is really inconveniencing you.  Likelihood: probable. Description:  I know about God.  I may have walked with Him for a season.  I clearly heard Him tell me to do something I don’t want to do and I will not do it without someone lavishing praise on me for obeying God.  I am willing to try obeying God but if this is not enjoyable real fast count me out.
   Likely Example:  In service God told me that I am supposed to go to church here.  He said my kids will walk with Him if I serve here and that I will come into my ministry calling here.  Pastor, can I lead a connection group?  Can I be on the worship team?  When can I preach?  I want to write curriculum for Mission Kids.  I want to lead a Mission Trip.  You can count on me to … oh look…. they use candles at New Age Worship Church.  I am still with you.  I will be back.  These folks will not be seen again till tragedy revisits their home.
3. You’re not the boss of me. Purpose: Protect pride.  Likelihood: Bing! Bing! Bing! We have a winner!  Description:  I believe that I am above other Christians.  I am sharing this with you so you can tell me I am right and to tell you that if you disagree with me, you disagree with God.  You might want to refer people to me so I can minister to them.  God thinks I am going to be the biggest, the greatest, the most anointed, the most widely recognized and the most respected ever.  If I submitted any of this to five fold leadership it is possible that my over-sized ego would be damaged.  I might be inclined to lay on my bedroom floor and suck my thumb in depression.  I can’t let that happen so I have convinced myself that I am infallible, and by telling you “God said” I am trying to manipulate you into agreeing. 
   Likely Examples:  There are so many it is hard to list just a few.  I know you can’t stand me but God said you are going to be my wife.  or God told me to share something on the mic, that’s why I did not ask first.  or God told me that people would not understand my call.  or God told me I don’t need to get water baptized.  or God said that tongues is not for me. or God said I should live off my parents well beyond adulthood.  or God showed me in intercession a problem with your ministry.

Real prophecy comes from the heart of God and will always be drenched in humility.  It will ooze with submission to God and His plans.  Pride, rebellion, self-exultation, and manipulation are never from God.

• Ghetto parenting is cursing around, and at, a child.
• Ghetto parenting is brawling with your man or your woman in front of your child.
• Ghetto parenting is letting your child roam the streets until somebody else’s mother has to tell the child to go home.
• Ghetto parenting is putting your child off on friends and relatives because you want to hang out in the street.
• Ghetto parenting is getting so hooked on substances that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has to remove your children and place them with strangers.

Now, you would not think that this would need to be stated but to some it is a surprise that there are varying levels of parenting.  Some people took exception to the article.  They were not mad at “ghetto parents” but mad at the woman who coined such a phrase.  Sometimes things get so ridiculous that they have to be pointed out even at the risk of offending people.  Otherwise, people begin to think that the ridiculous is the accepted norm.

I could follow that thought with a boatload of doctrines at loose in the Charismatic church right now but I will defer for later.  I would, however, like to point out Charismatic Christianity’s version of ghetto parenting.  For the purpose of my typing laziness, I will shorten Charismatic Ghetto Parenting to CGP.

Ok, so you love getting touched by God.  You love laying on the floor enjoying His presence.  You love sitting under anointed preaching.  It makes you feel good to be around people hungry for God.  That’s great.  But if that touch, presence, preaching and hunger does not manifest in the ability to understand that God wants you to raise the children He gave you, then at best you have hardened your heart to the true word of God and at worst you have been deceived by a false spirit.

Newsflash:  You are not your own.  Bring real glory to God.  Get off the ground, prepare a meal at home, and raise godly children.

On one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window, I was led into a train of thought concerning the condition of the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in the most open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. As I looked out of the window, I seemed to see them all . . . millions of people all around me given up to their drink and their pleasure, their dancing and their music, their business and their anxieties, their politics and their troubles. Ignorant – willfully ignorant in many cases – and in other instances knowing all about the truth and not caring at all. But all of them, the whole mass of them, sweeping on and up in their blasphemies and devilries to the Throne of God. While my mind was thus engaged, I had a vision.

I saw a dark and stormy ocean. Over it the black clouds hung heavily; through them every now and then vivid lightening flashed and loud thunder rolled, while the winds moaned, and the waves rose and foamed, towered and broke, only to rise and foam, tower and break again.

In that ocean I thought I saw myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating, shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning; and as they cursed and screamed they rose and shrieked again, and then some sank to rise no more.

And I saw out of this dark angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with it’s summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this great rock I saw a vast platform. Onto this platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling, drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean. And I saw that a few of those who were already safe on the platform were helping the poor creatures still in the angry waters to reach the place of safety.

On looking more closely I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of the sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of the consequences in their passion to “rescue the perishing.” And I hardly know which gladdened me the most – the sight of the poor drowning people climbing onto the rocks reaching a place of safety, or the devotion and self-sacrifice of those whose whole being was wrapped up in the effort for their deliverance.

As I looked on, I saw that the occupants of that platform were quite a mixed company. That is, they were divided into different “sets” or classes, and they occupied themselves with different pleasures and employments. But only a very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.

But what puzzled me most was the fact that though all of them had been rescued at one time or another from the ocean, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten all about it. Anyway, it seemed the memory of its darkness and danger no longer troubled them at all. And what seemed equally strange and perplexing to me was that these people did not even seem to have any care – that is any agonizing care – about the poor perishing ones who were struggling and drowning right before their very eyes . . . many of whom were their own husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and even their own children.

Now this astonishing unconcern could not have been the result of ignorance or lack of knowledge, because they lived right there in full sight of it all and even talked about it sometimes. Many even went regularly to hear lectures and sermons in which the awful state of these poor drowning creatures was described.

I have always said that the occupants of this platform were engaged in different pursuits and pastimes. Some of them were absorbed day and night in trading and business in order to make gain, storing up their savings in boxes, safes and the like.

Many spent their time in amusing themselves with growing flowers on the side of the rock, others in painting pieces of cloth or in playing music, or in dressing themselves up in different styles and walking about to be admired. Some occupied themselves chiefly in eating and drinking, others were taken up with arguing about the poor drowning creatures that had already been rescued.

But the thing to me that seemed the most amazing was that those on the platform to whom He called, who heard His voice and felt that they ought to obey it – at least they said they did – those who confessed to love Him much were in full sympathy with Him in the task He had undertaken – who worshipped Him or who professed to do so – were so taken up with their trades and professions, their money saving and pleasures, their families and circles, their religions and arguments about it, and their preparation for going to the mainland, that they did not listen to the cry that came to them from this Wonderful Being who had Himself gone down into the sea. Anyway, if they heard it they did not heed it. They did not care. And so the multitude went on right before them struggling and shrieking and drowning in the darkness.

And then I saw something that seemed to me even more strange than anything that had gone on before in this strange vision. I saw that some of these people on the platform whom this Wonderful Being had called to, wanting them to come and help Him in His difficult task of saving these perishing creatures, were always praying and crying out to Him to come to them!

Some wanted Him to come and stay with them, and spend His time and strength in making them happier. Others wanted Him to come and take away various doubts and misgivings they had concerning the truth of some letters He had written them. Some wanted Him to come and make them feel more secure on the rock – so secure that they would be quite sure that they should never slip off again into the ocean. Numbers of others wanted Him to make them feel quite certain that they would really get off the rock and onto the mainland someday: because as a matter of fact, it was well known that some had walked so carelessly as to loose their footing, and had fallen back again into the stormy waters.

So these people used to meet and get up as high on the rock as they could, and looking towards the mainland (where they thought the Great Being was) they would cry out, “Come to us! Come and help us!” And all the while He was down (by His Spirit) among the poor struggling, drowning creatures in the angry deep, with His arms around them trying to drag them out, and looking up – oh! so longingly but all in vain – to those on the rock, crying to them with His voice all hoarse from calling, “Come to Me! Come, and help Me!

And then I understood it all. It was plain enough. The sea was the ocean of life – the sea of real, actual human existence. That lightening was the gleaming of piercing truth coming from Jehovah’s Throne. That thunder was the distant echoing of the wrath of God. Those multitudes of people shrieking, struggling and agonizing in the stormy sea, was the thousands and thousands of poor harlots and harlot-makers, of drunkards and drunkard makers, of thieves, liars, blasphemers and ungodly people of every kindred, tongue and nation.

Oh what a black sea it was! And oh, what multitudes of rich and poor, ignorant and educated were there. They were all so unalike in their outward circumstances and conditions, yet all alike in one thing – all sinners before God – all held by, and holding onto, some iniquity, fascinated by some idol, the slaves of some devilish lust, and ruled by the foul fiend from the bottomless pit!

“All alike in one thing?” No, all alike in two things – not only the same in their wickedness but, unless rescued, the same in their sinking, sinking . . . down, down, down . . . to the same terrible doom. That great sheltering rock represented Calvary, the place where Jesus had died for them. And the people on it were those who had been rescued. The way they used their energies, gifts and time represented the occupations and amusements of those who professed to be saved from sin and hell – followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. The handful of fierce, determined ones, who were risking their own lives in saving the perishing were true soldiers of the cross of Jesus. That Mighty Being who was calling to them from the midst of the angry waters was the Son of God, “the same yesterday, today and forever” who is still struggling and interceding to save the dying multitudes about us from this terrible doom of damnation, and whose voice can be heard above the music, machinery, and noise of life, calling on the rescued to come and help Him save the world.

My friends in Christ, you are rescued from the waters, you are on the rock, He is in the dark sea calling on you to come to Him and help Him. Will you go? Look for yourselves. The surging sea of life, crowded with perishing multitudes rolls up to the very spot on which you stand. Leaving the vision, I now come to speak of the fact – a fact that is as real as the Bible, as real as the Christ who hung upon the cross, as real as the judgment day will be, and as real as the heaven and hell that will follow it.

Look! Don’t be deceived by appearances – men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea! Look at them from the standpoint of the great White Throne, and what a sight you have! Jesus Christ, the Son of God is, through His Spirit, in the midst of this dying multitude, struggling to save them. And He is calling on you to jump into the sea – to go right away to His side and help Him in the holy strife. Will you jump? That is, will you go to His feet and place yourself absolutely at His disposal?

A young Christian once came to me, and told me that for some time she had been giving the Lord her profession and prayers and money, but now she wanted to give Him her life. She wanted to go right into the fight. In other words, she wanted to go to His assistance in the sea. As when a man from the shore, seeing another struggling in the water, takes off those outer garments that would hinder his efforts and leaps to the rescue, so will you who still linger on the bank, thinking and singing and praying about the poor perishing souls, lay aside your shame, your pride, your cares about other people’s opinions, your love of ease and all the selfish loves that have kept you back for so long, and rush to the rescue of this multitude of dying men and women.

Does the surging sea look dark and dangerous? Unquestionably it is so. There is no doubt that the leap for you, as for everyone who takes it, means difficulty and scorn and suffering. For you it may mean more than this. It may mean death. He who beckons you from the sea however, knows what it will mean – and knowing, He still calls to you and bids to you to come.

You must do it! You cannot hold back. You have enjoyed yourself in Christianity long enough. You have had pleasant feelings, pleasant songs, pleasant meetings, pleasant prospects. There has been much of human happiness, much clapping of hands and shouting of praises – very much of heaven on earth.

Now then, go to God and tell Him you are prepared as much as necessary to turn your back upon it all, and that you are willing to spend the rest of your days struggling in the midst of these perishing multitudes, whatever it may cost you.

You must do it. With the light that is now broken in upon your mind and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your heaven in going into the very jaws of hell to rescue them.

Now what will you do?

Do you know God’s proper name?  I know you are a loving Christian who wants to really know God.  But how can you say you know Him if you don’t even know His name?  We know His name because we truly know Him.  Come with us and you can know Him also.

Sounds perfectly logical.  But it is a trick of the devil.

The next time someone knocks on your door with a copy of their magazine asking these questions let them know you can both have fellowship knowing the name of God, JESUS.  They probably won’t be excited about that answer.  This is how you will know that they are not really Christians.

“I have been calling us to a new simplicity and purity. What we have had is an intrusion of extra-biblical stuff posing as “revelation” and established fact that has no place in Scripture. The effect has been to create a division between two groups of people – the elite who have this special knowledge that they believe makes them mature or more gifted vs. those who don’t have that knowledge or who don’t have that attitude about themselves. The latter group simply lays down their gifts and eventually goes away.

I’m convinced this is the reason why churches where the Spirit is allowed to move are almost always small while the seeker sensitive churches tend to be large. The seeker sensitive churches are entirely accessible, simple and intelligible, untroubled by esoteric knowledge gained from extra-biblical sources. Charismatic churches have endless barriers of weirdness built from all that extra-biblical nonsense that passes for truth. People turn away from the barriers and go where things are simple and intelligible. So while they don’t allow for the things of the Spirit, the seeker sensitive churches grow and charismatic churches don’t.

It’s all so unnecessary. We can have both worlds, but we’re going to have to stop accepting as truth these things that have no basis in God’s Word. We’re going to have to stop making things so mysterious and complicated. For instance, never did Paul send in an advance prayer team to spiritually map a region, study its history and identify its territorial spirits so that the gospel would be successful there. Never did he do silly things like bury communion elements in the ground. Never does any human being in Scripture summon demonic powers into the heavenly court for judgment as I’ve heard done so often in recent days. Nowhere are we given authority to convene any heavenly court. Several times recently I’ve heard it stated as fact that if you’re a cancer survivor you have more authority to pray for cancer. Nonsense. We’re healed by his stripes, not by surviving the disease we’re praying to heal. These are just a few examples of the kind of thing that has infiltrated us and every other charismatic church I know.

It’s time to come back to the simplicity of doing things the way they are modeled for us in the Bible. We ask. God does. The words don’t need to be perfect. The revelation doesn’t have to be complete. We just have to talk to our Father.

So I’m calling us to a new purity of devotion and a simplicity of approach that makes it all so much more accessible to the average guy and that doesn’t create a spiritual elite that kind of puts everyone else down. Our average Joes and our timid ones have simply laid down their gifts and walked away.

But that’s changing. The more I’ve spoken this into us the more people have picked up their gifts and begun to walk in them. Sharing dreams. Visions. Words. Praying aloud. Having fun again. Growing again. I think we probably spent 45 minutes last Monday talking through all this – and some bit of time today as well. It’s healing our fellowship. God shows up just as He did before, but it’s sweeter and more restful. People feel safe to take the risk and move forward.”

Forgive the annoying gypsy music in the background.

Second, it is great to let the Holy Ghost control your reading list.  nuff said

There are some great concepts in this book.  One was that when many companies make the turn from good to great, often times, it was not because of the things that they started doing, it was the things they stopped doing.  They got focused on things they could be the best in the world at.

On top of that, they were fanatical about having the right people on board more than they were about making sure they were going in the right direction.  The reasoning was that if the leaders understood the ultimate goal then they would do everything in their power to make sure the company was successful.  Folks who did not understand the goal, were unable to lead toward that goal, or were downright lazy were quickly fired.  Rates of attrition were not as important as only having people in leadership who could get you moving toward the goal.

Lots of other good stuff in the book and it confirmed much of what God has been talking to me about lately.  Glad I didn’t have to read 300 pages to find that out.

That’s right, just three payments of $19.99.  Unfortunately I have seen people give much, much, much more.  The world laughs at this for a reason, it does not pass the giggle test.  So few people challenged it for so long it now passes as doctrine.  It seems the more you are willing to spend, the greater the anointing you are promised.

The church is sleeping.

Quit idolizing minsters and get anointed by God to do His work.

• The Ambassador put out a statement that his restoration team has released him to minister again.  Praise God.
• Perry Noble did a post on Ten Questions that unchurched people are not asking.  Good stuff.
• Chris Elrod did a list of things he does not understand.  My favorite?

  Folks that show up to church only a few times a year but expect the pastor to drop everything to provide them with his undivided attention.

• Steven Furtick wrote a post about the “secret sauce” people think he might be using to grow his church.  The church went from his living room to this in about three years.  He might have something to bring to the table.