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Love Your Enemies – Tuesday Thoughts

Very few people have genuine, unearned enemies.  Most times we had a part to play in people not liking us.  Even when we accidentally offend someone, we often are to blame for our conflicts.  But Jesus said that if we are truly in Him, offenses will come and we are to deal with them the same way He did, with compassion and forgiveness.

The other day we got a series of notifications that someone had been commenting on videos from The Mission on Youtube.  To say these comments were hateful is an understatement.

Jesus asked His Father to forgive the men who murdered Him because they did not know what they were doing.  Have you ever found that odd? I never understood that because these guys killed people for a living.  Clearly they knew what they were doing.  It was no accident.  It took a bunch of effort.  It worked.

I think Jesus was saying that they did not know that they were the very tool of Satan.  They didn’t know they killed the Prince of Peace.  If these men knew the gift they had before them they would have done anything to not allow Him to die.  But die He did, and Jesus forgave His murderers.

Now this is nothing compared to that but it is an offense against Christ nonetheless.  Jesus warned men that they are storing up wrath when they call Holy Spirit a demon and in fact that is what this misguided person has done in his youtube comments.

I am a fairly clever guy.  I grew up in rough neighborhoods and am well able to light people up verbally.  I have a degree in written communications.  I can write a witty come back. But while my flesh began to take on the offense of Christ, I remembered that His reaction was not to bring the sword but forgiveness.

As the comments began to morph from mocking Holy Spirit to insulting the people of The Mission I realized that the man does not posses the Spirit of Christ and in fact does not know what he is doing.  I deleted his comments, blocked him from commenting on our videos, and forgave.

Truth be told?  Jesus said that the generation He visited would not pass until they saw His wrath.  He told the folks that vengeance was His.  And in AD 70 it all went down in a really ugly way.

I challenged people today:

Today, you don’t fear conflict. You don’t react with religious denial. You thank God that the exposing of your insecurities will bring healing.

Father do your work in me and bring healing to every offense.  And while you are at it, let that dude keep watching the videos and get gloriously converted.

Ladies, Don’t Settle, Don’t Be a Loser Magnet – Thursday Thoughts

Some women are a magnet for losers. In this timely prophetic word, Pastor Carl Thomas ministers to the hearts of women who are trapped in a cycle of bad relationships.

Leave the worldly cycle of bad relationships and move into Kingdom relationships.

The Greatest Pitfall in Your Path to Ministry – Wednesday What’s up

Don’t allow the enemy to minister the cup of bitterness to you and steal the call of God in your life.

When Jesus refused the cup of sour wine and gall (bitterness) He was making the statement that even though men acted like they were trying to help, He knew they were still His persecutors and were trying to curse Him.

Many times friends and family try to steal you from the call of God on your life by sowing doubt, disappointment, and outright bitterness into your life. You can’t allow them to use their failures to steal your call.

Jesus has you right where He wants you. Be faithful and fruitful where He has planted you.

Leadership Thoughts on Tuesday – One Team One Goal

I hold a pre-service meeting every Sunday exactly 40 minutes before the service for with every person who has a part to play that day.  Though we are a church, the reasons are valid for any organization:

People need to know where we are going

I seek the Lord to determine how He wants me to minister that week.  It is then my responsibility to hold true to the word of the Lord and do everything within my power to faithfully minister that revelation.  If the Lord has instructed me to preach a salvation message then have an altar call at the end of service, all the ministry teams in service need to know that is where we are going.  They need to pack for that journey accordingly.  Whatever they wanted to do that Sunday has to take a back seat to that vision.

We all need to work from the same page

I just got off the phone with Khamille our worship leader.  Holy Spirit spoke very clearly to me about what He wants to accomplish this Sunday.  She needs as much time as possible to assemble a set list that supports that work.  The church is not just a collection of players, it is a team with a coach and a game plan.  We are not a collection of ministries.  We are one ministry advancing one agenda.  I lead that ministry and I need the players to be in their position.  You want your best receiver running down the sideline to catch a pass from the best quarterback on the team.   You wouldn’t have the kicker run off the sideline and try to catch a pass in the middle of a play.  That would be crazy.  But I see the equivalent all the time in church services.  The coach calls the play and the players join together to bring the win.

I need to gauge the room for potential pitfalls

I don’t want to find out when I get on stage that the lighting guy is not able to make it that day, or we don’t have the graphics for my announcement.  The worship team will not be able to minister with excellence if they find out at half way through the service I want them to play a song they don’t even know.  This has saved me so many times I could not even begin to count.

The Holy Ghost moves in unity

As a Spirit filled church we have given Holy Spirit liberty to move as He wishes in service.  That should never be an excuse for lack of preparation but it does require people to be flexible so that our service is not just a performance.  In our morning meetings I share leadings I am perceiving and we pray as a team.  The folks in that room have more power to block the move of God that Sunday then any witch or warlock in service.

All it takes is a sound man who does not care or a worship leader bent on their own agenda or a lazy overhead operator to allow the people to be completely side tracked and miss their day for life transformation.

In whatever ministry or business you run, get your folks together, cast the vision, and give them the opportunity to be a part of the big picture.

Thursday Theology: Cessationists Do Not Believe in the Authority of the Word of God

Time and again in Scripture we are warned of false teachers and are told to test revelation.  The first step in testing a teaching is to compare it to other scriptures on the same matter.  When the bible is silent on a matter it becomes a matter of conscience and cannot be held as a fundamental doctrine.

Examples:

In Acts 18:24-26 The Holy Ghost was nice enough to show us this error was refuted even before the Reformation.  Lining up with the corrective word in that passage should be enough.

All through the Gospels and the book of Acts we see Jesus and the disciples performing miracles.  Paul taught that we are to “Pursue love, AND earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” If love was the point of the gifts, why would Paul teach to pursue both?

Again, the Holy Ghost knew the error of today would come so He had Paul write, “earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.”

Beware of people who teach that the Bible is not the infallible word of God and is no longer valid for teaching today. One day, each and every believer must come to understand the authority of the Word of God.  I pray it is on this side of eternity.

Do You Like Child Prostitution?

Confession:  I am too harsh on Charismatic Christians much of the time.
Confession 2:  Because I read articles like this, She’s 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel, that probably won’t change.

The pentecostal movement birthed the greatest missions era since the diaspora.  People got touched by they Holy Ghost and took the message of Jesus to the ends of the world, India included.  They birthed the temperance movement in the US and a host of social causes.

Today, many people get told that the purpose of the infilling of the Spirit is for our personal pleasure.

While people across America try to bribe the anointed preacher to lay hands on them just one more time, soul-starved girls by the millions are sold into prostitution.  Did you read that?  People sell their own children to other people for the sole purpose of prostitution.

Now here is the hard part:

If the Christians over there, were the same type of Christian as you, would the circumstances for these girls be any different?

Do something about it.

Operate in Spiritual Gifts – Wednesday Whats Up

Do you want to operate in spiritual gifts? Here are the simple keys to receive and operate in spiritual gifts:
Clean your heart of pride
Have compassion
Be willing to fail

Tuesday Tech: The Paperless Office

I must admit, I am a bit of a techie.  As such, I have aspirations others may not have.  One of those aspirations has been a paperless office.  Today, I am well on my way.  Let me explain.

Years ago I was in the mortgage industry.  I worked for a fairly corrupt man who wound up losing his business to a cocaine addiction.  But that has nothing to do with the story, its just an interesting tidbit.

This guy ran the entire mortgage business without paper.  All documents were scanned and the preferred method of delivery of all docs were via email.  When we received faxes (which in the mortgage business was plenty) they went straight from the modem to the server.  It was a great setup.

So now I am switching over to a paperless office.  My new Brother printer has an auto-feed scanner and the software that comes with it will scan it to a pdf with OCR.

Many folks coordinate all the files though Evernote but I am not quite ready for that jump.  I don’t trust the cloud for everything.

Files I need to share go on Google Docs.

Recently, I have coordinated our trip to Nicaragua paperlessly.  The applications were scanned and shredded.  Denise Davis and I tracked the payments on a spreadsheet in Google Docs.  Individual donations are entered in Church community Builder where we also dedicated a group to the team.  I have recorded videos to encourage folks regarding fund raising and shared them with YouTube.

In the future, we plan to digitize our entire giving system, right down to the offering envelopes.

Questions?

Thursday is for Theology: Why Theology is Important

By way of definition, theology means the study of God.  For some reason that thought causes a split.

For many, the study of theology has slipped to merely hermeneutics, a valuable field in itself, but no substitute for theology.

For others, theology has them taking the road less traveled.  They think that there is an uncharted path that has yet to be discovered into new realms of revelation.

These are both serious errors.

God is not a book.  There is a book that is inerrant in its representation of God’s will through the ages.  And if we chart this unfolding story of God’s interaction with man we can test other revelations to see if they fall in line.  This is vital.  But without this examination of God’s current interaction it is all a history lesson.  We no longer are studying who He is, but who He was and that’s bad.

Conversely, when we throw away the past only to look to the future, we are bound to relive the most egregious errors committed by the heretics of the last century or so.  The cycle goes like this:

I am the master prophet with the magic revelation decoder ring.  Nobody gets revelation like me.  Traditional people can’t receive from me because they are religious and/or have a hardened heart.  God is doing a NEW THING!  Don’t miss out.  You cant get there without me.

I am at the place where I see these thing crop up and you watch the train wreck happen in slow motion.  In fact I had a phone call with Randy Bohlender one day where we confessed to one another that we watched one guys popular ministry through squinted eyes knowing it was headed for the rocks.  The tell tale sign?  Pride.

Pride tells you that you only need that inner prompting and nothing else.  It’s a trap, and folks who love the Word won’t fall for it.

Study God.  Study how He talked to people in the past.  Study His language and patterns.  Study how He has revealed Himself in the past.  Study how He is working in the lives of people today.  Its really important.

Getting Below the Drama: Wednesday What’s Up

Where does your identity come from? What part does criticism have to play in it?
Get beyond trying to rise above opinions and get below them.