Spirit, there will be seasons where you feel you are in tough spaces. There may be times when death and destruction and breakings and fire seem to rain from above and all around you is chaos and the Nazgul’s Dark Breath.
But, spirit, Your King, YOUR KING, is very present and orchestrating responses and leading charges and moving on your behalf. There is a voice that cuts across the battlefield donneybrooks, like unto a trumpet, a cry of command.
Spirit, that voice leads to preparation, deep loving preparation. Without any other preamble, or fanfare. It gets to the point, and cuts the confusion that messes with lines of understanding. And the ONLY obsession of the Commander is that a way to you, and a way for you is prepared. Deeply, and definitively set out. So there is no uncertainty.
And it is not just a tiny little footpath, spirit. Rather, it is a highway of holiness to your location, and through the enemy’s camp, leading to the despoiling of the Egyptians.
The mountains have been levelled and the vales and straths have been set into alignment to provide a footpath for your feet. And all of this preparation is unto one thing: the revelation of the King’s glory in the wilderness in your midst. He will make the desert a pool.
And He will break the crookedness, and in its place, set alignment, faithful, straight, and true paths.
So, I bless you, spirit, to receive that process that leads to the expression of His kindness and true purposes for you.
May your path, mind, heart, and every aspect of your life be cleansed of the gunk, and may you receive His deep refreshing.
I bless you to receive that work He does to make the paths clear. I bless you spirit to receive the athelas crushed and steamed to drive back the enemy’s toxic fumes of breath from your senses. I bless you, as the warrior you are, to receive revivifying aromas that bring deep rest and comfort and convalescence. May the King’s Foil fill your senses. I bless you with the reality that “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.”
And I bless you to rest as He comes to you.
Whole, and affectionate love and joy, spirit. In the name of Yeshua.
I invite your spirit, whether broken or who, shattered or put together, safe or hurting, on the run or at a save haven, to be present with me kn the name of Yeshua:
Spirit in seven portions, listen to the Word of G-d for you for today.
My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, the Fairest of Ten Thousand.
-Song of Solomon 5:10-
Spirit, as much as you have heard this used to describe Yeshua, I am ant you to rest in shalom and see how he sees you, His beloved bride, pure and spotless.
You, spirit, harried or at rest, sit a while with this reality. Soak in it, meditate on it.
You, right now,
You, following the harassment and abuse….
You, following the mistreatment….
You, following the hang-ups, screw-ups, sins, mistakes, misjudgments, foul-ups, and wreckage…
Spirit, you ARE dazzling and ruddy……
You ARE the Fairest of Ten Thousand.
You ARE the Apple of His eye, and His affection, tenderness, and adoration are yours. They are your treasures. From everlasting to everlasting. From the depths of His being to the depths of your being, He wants to provide a flow of water and love and when you are ready for it, fire, by turns. But He isn’t going to force anything on you. He will partner with you, spirit, in your seven portions.
I bless you to rest and to allow the King of Glory to carry you to the place where He will remove the shrapnel and the gunk and the pus and all the matter that is gumming up your inner workings.
I bless you with the revelation that Father’s lap is the surgical table, and even while you are on that table being worked on, even with all your hang-ups and deep in junk, WHILE YOU ARE DARK, you are still the most LOVELY in His eyes.
I bless you to rest in stillness and allow Him to work, and even should you pass out, He will keep you alive if you will allow Him.
I bless you to know not just the saving power of the Bridegroom, O Bride of the King and the Fairest of Ten Thousand….
I also bless you to know the KEEPING power of G-d, dear one, lovely and beautiful.
I bless you with all of that revelation, spirit, in the name of Yeshua.
I have seen multiple people claim they know what the apostolic is.
I typically either smile and nod, and tell them what they want to hear, or I roll my eyes, cringe for the moment, and smile and move along.
And the reality is that, typically, because of the counterfeit, because of legitimacy, and because of the craving for real power or authority, apart from principles, reality, and cause-and-effect, between 130 and 185 percent of what claims to be the apostolic is not.
So, kissing it here (K.I.S.S), let us be simple.
The frame, before G-d sends the Isaac, the enemy will send the Ishmael. In place of the releasing and liberating apostolic, comes the apostolic overseer and covering…..
And there is a lot of mixture, in the church, of what claims to be the apostolic. However, the truth is most of the “apostlolic” is really et up with the Antichrist spirit.
We read Ephesians 4:11-12, and we hear what the Fivefold Ministry, is for “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry”, and we FAIL ruthlessly to explain what SHOULD happen after that equipping. Paul mentions “equipping the saints for the work of ministry”, and we FAIL to build out that phrase, “the work of ministry”.
In Practice, following the precedent of the Shepherding Movement, and much of the Ruler Season (1901-2004), with its obsession with protocol and hierarchy and order and systems (to say nothing about whether or not those systems were ever truly life-giving), too much of the Fivefold was concerned with controlling other believers, due to woundedness and the lust for power.
What ultimately resulted was we allow illegitimated “covering” types to equip and then ANNEX.
If you want to know few of us trust when you say “the fivefold is the only biblical ecclesiology (form of church government)”, or “only the fivefold is the proper form of leadership”, well, this is one reason why.
Typically, whomever institutes the fivefold in a place installs themselves at the top and calls themselves the apostle over the organization.
And, unfortunately, in practicing that ministry this way, we have rejected the implied exposition that pairs the reality of Ephesians 4:11-12 with the longer ending of Mark 16 and Matthew 28:18-20.
Make disciples, teaching them to observe what I have instructed you, and lo I am with you until the end of the age.
Preach the Gospel to every creature, and send them forth with the signs following.
Here, Yeshua NEVER commanded anyone to control another human.
…NEVER commanded anyone to limit another or shrink another….
…and NEVER commanded anyone to subject what He told them to do to another person who was supposed to act as an intermediary…
On the one hand, the doctrine of covering, natch, will lead to this control. On the other hand, the Great Commission and the accounts of Luke 21 and the work of Acts lead naturally to one thing: freedom. A free people walking directly with their King, and developing into the leaders they were made to be, will increase the real, Isaacite (as opposed to the counterfeit, Ishmaelite) apostolic. It enables rather than disables.
Put differently, IN THE WORDS OF JOHN WIMBER, we equip, and then, as a result of the balance of the biblical text, RELEASE those people, and allow them to do what HE told them to do. Build a platform under them for their success and fulfillment.
Counsel is one thing.
Control is another.
….no, not allowing…..that word choice is terrible.
Allow me to share something.
I want to share part of my testimony here.
Near the end of my first marriage, when we were trying to salvage it, my first wife, who cheated on me, made a disturbing statement.
“I am a strong godly woman, and I AM ALLOWING DAVID TO BECOME THE HEAD OF THIS HOUSEHOLD.”
That statement disrupted not only my spirit, but also the spirit of Jeff, who is my adopted father and was present.
Even allowing someone, permitting someone, releasing someone, loosing someone is inadequate.
We are responsible to REALIZE and ACKNOWLEDGE that G-d designed humanity to be free, and to crave liberty, and whether or not we permit or allow it, they will move toward that direction with whatever tools they have, see, or realize are on hand.
The Book of Numbers in the Torah acknowledges this reality, because in that book, G-d shows us how a loving Father takes a full nation of only slaves, and begets a nation of sons, within one generation.
When freedom is the direction of a people who have gotten a taste of liberty, lesser structures will not satisfy. To wit, the structure embodied by the phrase “apostolic oversight” is risky when applied to free people, because it lends itself to structures that push people toward ring-kissing, boot-licking, and being subjected to the grand poobah who is more capable of hearing G-d for you than you are for yourself. It creates a spiritual welfare system that forces us to depend on a priestly caste.
That is a caste system we set up. And the priests, the Brahmins who serve their Shiva, sadly end up destroying the flock rather than nurturing it.
That’s what false apostles look like.
Now, describing the true variety.
Apostles primarily, biblically, because they establish new works, look at foundations. They do not sit at the top. They are muddy and grubby, and considering the roots of a thing. They are not bishops or political masters.
They go out and do. They might understand heaven’s blueprint. But they are most obsessed with establishing the kingdom where it is not rightly established, and pointing out obstacles to that establishment.
Believers were made to be powerful and dangerous, and walk hand-in-hand with the King and their Father. Your Father wants to be your first father, ahead of any man or woman.
Second, apostles enable an enviroment where real fathering can take place.
And in the words of Arthur Burk, let me ask this question to a fatherless generation, that includes myself.
What resources does G-d the Father lack with which to father us HIMSELF?
Anything?
Does He lack anything? No.
Now, is it fair just that we do not have access to parents or figures willing to parent us? Perhaps.
However, it is better for us if we are able to receive G-d as father leading us before we engage with another person, because that person can turn into someone we mooch from.
We were not made to mooch from them.
And if G-d in Exodus and Numbers are a blueprint for how He deals with His people.
If His first revelation to pagan humanity was as Father (Israel is my SON, MY FIRSTBORN. LET MY SON GO!, IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL KILL YOUR FIRSTBORN.)….
If He intended to break the slave mentalty by sequentially leading a generation of slaves into the wilderness so then HE HIMSELF could transform them into a generation of sons….
And that was Old Covenant, and we are under the New Covenant…
…then why would we expect Him to do anything less than amping up and intensifying the process of fathering us Himself?
He deals with us as sons, and not as slaves.
He deals with us via connection and intimacy in this season, NOT protocol.
He works at fathering us Himself.
It’s not about obedience. It is about intimacy and connction and family.
And we in the apostolic were made to foster the environment so permeated by love and kindness and justice and mercy and grace and tenderness, that it enables believers to connect more intensely with THE FATHER with HIS SONS. And yes, ladies, if I as a man can be the bride of Christ, then you also can as a woman can be the son of G-d. Congratulations, life is uncomfortable for everyone.
But it makes people uncomfortable to allow He HIMSELF to father, because we look for Him to send someone with skin on. He never promises that.
He only promises that He, as the ultimate Father will, together with the Son, make His home with us.
The apostolic does run toward fathering, and toward foundations, but all of this is to push for a twofold reality.
Apostles, put in their right place, seek to foster an environment, free of obstruction, where the parts of the engine glide past one another, much like the function of motor oil, so that what comes naturally from them is the fostering of an envionment that enables the connection and flow to be established, and happen more easily, between G-d and man. It’s not about the dude or chick that is anointed. It’s not about them protecting you and me. It is about our obsession that you meet with HIM. It’s about Him meeting with His kids. Personal relationship that is intense and intimate. For the only covering that matters, with no respect to the predatory Shepherding Movement, is the one provided by G-d the Father.
As to the Redemptive Gifts, the Redemptive Gift that makes the best Father is the Gift of Ruler/Judge/Deliverer. The Principle of Freedom that leads slaves out of bondage into freedom. Dominic Torretto is one such example of the Ruler who seeks to father well.
And his dad wanted that for his sons, even though the way he went about it was kind of messed up. You still see the fathering in this vision here when Dom is underwater, before the mother, his bride, Letty, the Prophet rescues him.
And the Prophet says to the Ruler, “none of it is worth a thing if I lose you.”
Apostles fade into the background while Dad Himself meets with His kids and the minutes just slip away as the intimacy slips away, and people begin to hear G-d more clearly for themselves. They know the Father heart, and yearn for others to have that, not to control those hearts, but to release and send out those hearts as they themselves have been.
So, whatever else has been written about the apostle, if it
Would that all the people were prophets…..capable of hearing G-d for themselves.
Moses cried out for the complete and dangerous liberation of people to pursue G-d for themselves to a place of full freedom and flow of revelation and vision and understanding (what constitutes the prophetic) in freedom.
Yet, here we are under the New Covenant, looking for apostles to be covering and our daddy’s and control us and lead us into further bondage because we may have rejected the fruit of the spirit of self-control.
Maybe we need fewer of these “apostles” and more connection with Father Himself. As people who walk in the principles, we are more than capable (Romans 8:37) of engaging personally with Him in His love and seeing that connection bring a multiplication in all arenas of our lives, causing a flourishing. Sons build and fight. Part of His fathering of us, and part of the DNA of a son, is that we learn how to build; we accrue, manage, and transform raw materials into products that are useful for the agenda of the kingdom; and we learn how to fight and who to fight. When we subject that organically life-giving connection to the caprice of another person’s discernment, as too many lived examples have shown, we retard or destroy the fullness of life, shrinking our supply, and making our spiritual life unsustainable.
This is now how we were designed, in order for the Kingdom to flourish and us to flourish, we must be free.
And G-d is the one who will hold us accountable, per about 5 referneces.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
Psalm 10:13
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,
Matt 12:36
So then zeach of us will give an account of himself to God.
Rom 14:32
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are cnaked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Heb 4:13
but they will give account to him who is ready lto judge the living and the dead.
1 Pet 4:5
We are responsible to be free, with the King at our side as our bridegroom., and G-d as our Father before all others.
40 years ago, when I needed a Father, it was Yeshua who introduced me to the reality of true fathering by offering that chance to be fathered by him, and in the ensuing decades of coverings doing a really bad job of fathering, many to the point of abuse, He never once left my side as He walked with love surrounding me. And Just over a year ago, the L-rd used a woman of G-d to connect me to the Father Himself. And she is one of the most important people in my life. And this last year, I have had the honor to see survivors grow in that connection. And THAT is my favorite thing in the world.
One problem, however, is that His offer to father goes unreceived, because so many want a person on this earth in this fallen world to take on that responsibility. And that is not what He has designed sons for. He designed us so he could be with us.
And that connection point, process, and moment is what we in the real apostolic live for. Period. On stronger-than-the-gates-of-hell foundations, we seek for others to connect with Father Himself.
And the ministry of the real apostolic gets ignored in favor of this Ishmaelite, lesser-than, weak substitute. We can and we must do better.
Gang, this is a bit of an unusual post, but I am asking y’all to stay with me.
We look for and celebrate the design G-d places in us, and, sometimes, that means we follow some unorthodox methods to identify that design.
Now, anger has often been characterized very negatively, and that is not without good reason.
However, I want to say something about anger. In most situations that include anger, there is a choice of what we do with the anger. Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians to “Be angry and do not sin” implies that it is possible to engage in behavior that includes anger while also not crossing lines into behavior that is sinful.
Now, I am not saying that this is the case all of the time, but I believe the blanket exhortation to avoid anger is not generally helpful.
And like Clyde Fant, I am of the opinion that “righteous indignation is a twenty letter word for anger”.
Let me say that again two different ways. The need to use the words “righteous indignation” too often proceeds, from my experience, from a religious spirit or a spirit of being afraid of the full G-d-given experience of human emotion and free will.
To respond, instead of trotting out religious language for anger and USING THAT to justify an emotion of which we are afraid, it would be better to ascertain the root of our anger so we know what to do with it. Otherwise, we could be covering up a problem that our heart, mind, spirit, soul, or reins are trying to bring up.
Often, anger is rooted in two things: our sense of that which is just, and a violation of justice. It is not just because we are being selfish, arrogant, or proud.
To be sure, too often we are guilty of accusing of pride those who do not struggle with pride.
While some of you are wrestling with the idea that some believers do not struggle with pride, I will continue.
Indeed, there are qualities Father has built into certain of us that really incite zeal for excellence and effectiveness.
And coupled with those qualities are aspects that causes us to become rankled when excellence or effectiveness are mangled.
It is not pride or arrogance; rather it is anger as the King intended it to be the tool it is for provoking us to raise standards and hunt for better ways.
For example, when believers settle for a status quo try to move into something they know the King has for them….
…are corrected by other believers who either do not understand or do not want to understand try to correct us in accordance with a lower standard, then that friction creates issues.
In order to honor how the L-rd has uniquely made us, we really must move beyond avoiding all expressions of anger, hunt for and yearn for the G-d-ordained expressions of anger, nix religious expressions that blanket judge any expression of anger or frustration, and move into allowing ourselves to be pushed for “what is excellent…”. I would even bet money that those who are easily angered by slack-jawed expressions of faith have “what is excellent” in mind and are pushing for that excellent place.
There is a story behind this cut. Some of this is pulled from memory of wikis and online articles that are no longer available, as well as literature to which I have no current access.
The title of the cut refers to events that occurred on August 30th, 1995 when Martin, Stu G, Stewart Smith, Tim, and Jon were still known as The Cutting Edge and were pondering going full-time. On that day, Martin Smith; his wife, Anna; and bassist Jon Thatcher were involved in a near-fatal car accident, which left Martin badly injured.
After the accident, while Martin was convalescing physically, he wrestled internally with depression. During that time in the hospital, he was partly-inspired by reading Bill Flanagan’s biography of U2 to make the jump. As a result, the Cutting Edge became Deliriou5?, with the 5 possibly representing the 5 band members (while also noting that Stewart Smith’s keyboard was missing a letter S), and the question mark representing a transition from the questions of “What if we fail?” (doubts and fears) to the statement “Just imagine if…?” (Possibilities).
Also, the police report stated there were four people in the car at the time of the accident….
This is a reminder, gang, that no matter how dismal, nasty, or uncertain the future is, there is a place in the King’s presence, and a destiny He has for you.
He does not look for you to wander or to be without hope. In the presence of your enemies, He prepares a table before you. Each of y’all.
Without remorse, without repentance, without argument.
And His tender bid to you is to come and see, to come and dine, and to come and drink.
Not one condition. Not one blockage. Not one wall.
So, yesternight, I and a friend went to a Switchfoot concert in Birmingham at Avondale BrewCo. What I originally thought was this was a concert. What it turned out to be was an assignment to understand some land dynamics present.
While I did enjoy the music a LOT, there were some aspects of this city that captured me, especially given my grandfather was adopted in Birmingham.
Sometimes I am in a place and the land speaks to me. Other times it feels like the land is receiving from the King.
In the case of Birmingham, there as an aspect that felt like home.
But that was not all that’s as there.
Instead of being in the middle of the crowd, we were on the edge of the crowd, and the people around us ended up moving away from us.
Further, in the course of the evening, the people moved from a disorganized crowd to arranging themselves in concentric circles around the stage as if they were in an amphitheater.
In the spirit, however, on the ground of the location where we were, I actually discerned the presence of a sound portal that was built into the ground and part of which was arranged like an amphitheater.
Grass terraces and concrete steps for the levels.
Sound portals parallel the Redemptive Gift of Giver, and they focus the sound of Heaven, and especially the star song that is communicated by the Sons of G-d in an area to resonate the sound of G-d’s justice in a situation: Justice and dominion as embodied in the Son, Yeshua. When they are misaligned, a number of bad things happen, much of which can be chalked up to an increase of lawlessness. When they are aligned, they cause the area in which to resonate with frequencies that are Kingly.
Also, beer as a industry and beverage strikes me as Giver, and in Giver communities like Charlotte and blue-collar communities, beer has a heavy presence.
And, in brewing companies, there is usually live music as well as lots of SOUND and carrying on, and people generally enjoying themselves in conversation or connection of some sort.
That was no exception in this case.
Pondering what this means, I am certain the King was doing things with us there to bring cleansing to the land.
Further, I also became aware of what I can only classify as a portable fire portal, as there appeared in the spirit a column of fire around us. My friend also had relayed to me that there are times when they are frequently in a place and people will not be seated anywhere near them. In those instances, the King is at work.
And that night was definitely an occasion for us to go vertical. And the words to Dare You To Move definitely hit differently, and they felt like exhortations to sonship and building the thing or engaging with the thing you have always been intimidated to build or engage.
“I dare you to move I dare you to move I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor I dare you to move I dare you to move Like today never happened Today never happened before”
“Welcome to the fallout Welcome to resistance The tension is here Tension is here Between who you are and who you could be Between how it is and how it should be, yeah”
Also, Switchfoot concerts have punctuated SIGNIFICANT events for me, marker stones at intervals of about 10 years. The last time I saw them live was July 2013. And that preluded a significant season then, as now. A transition is taking place.
From this, I learned a very valuable lesson.
Sometimes, the reason the King sticks us in a certain place is completely different from the reason we originally planned on in going to a place.
So, gang, I will share more on this as the days progress, but I share all this to say, the reason you are in a place may not be the reason you originally went to that place. Find out what the King wants you to do in this season, and go do that.
Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Now the L-RD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Genesis 11:31–12:1 ESV
Victim Spirits Make You Settle
Gang, when we are begin setting ourselves to engage with the L-rd in a particular way He has given us, and then we choose to settle….bad things happen. Truly, it is the Victim Spirit that causes us to begin to settle.
Settling means we have reached a place of believing the prevailing attitude of contentment with the provision of the natural or soul-based realities of life are enough, so much so that settling results in us not moving forward to possess the fullness of what the L-rd has for us. We allow ourselves to walk in so much Deyanu (the Hebrew phrase from the Seder of Pesach that, roughly translated, means “it would have been enough”) that we allow ourselves not move forward to possess the whole of what Father intended for you.
Is there a place for Deyanu and having peace with current circumstances? Yes, provided we are not settling and refusing to go after all the King has for us? If there is something more for us, then Deyanu can be deadly. If He has called us to rest for a season, Deyanu can be good for a season. And we need to discern what is needed in the current season, versus transition to new season.
It means, in the sevenfold parlance of Matthew 23, that we ultimately and progressively preach and do not practice….
The Victim Spirit will tell us to preach/confess things, while simultaneously laying a sort of suffocating cloak or mantle around us that will begin to progressively mess with us, choke the life from us, strangle us, push our spirits in such a way that they move away from us because we no longer have sufficient life to support their presence, and eventually become the burial shroud or grave clothes around us.
This is why the Prophets and Exhorters and Mercies and Givers among us are so critical. They will realize that something is going on and will sound the alarms that not all is well, in order to provoke us to fight for the whole picture, each in their own various ways. They are the Four-Alarm Fire Alarms to the rest of the body.
So, in Matthew 23, here is that settling of the Victim Spirit that wages against godly desire (For those who have not heard me teach through Matthew yet, I call that gospel the Gospel of the Tenth Commandment or the Gospel of Desire. It is godly desire with which the King infuses us, that causes one to wage war against settling.
On the other hand, the Victim Spirit tells us the following:
Do not enter into the responsibility of the Kingdom to Build according to Design (23:13), and you keep others from so doing (becoming factories, which empowers the Third Head of Leviathan, which I will deal with in a future post).
Make proselytes of your incomplete settling and do not engage in the full execution of your G-d-given Authority. Teach those proselytes it is okay to not follow through to press toward and move after their own fullness and fulfillment (23:15). As long as they attempt to do so. Give up at the first sign of any resistance. Contentment with the resources we already have on the natural or soul leel will cause us to stop moving toward birthright, which requires we embrace a certain level of pain which have been filtered and allowed by Father to refine and prove us, testing our mettle and our endurance. Feeling fulfilled and content and BEING fulfilled by possessing all He has for us are not the same thing.
Make oaths and do not engage with the fullness of the Responsibility for walking out the fullness of that oath, and you set up altars and spiritual structures for connecting with G-d via the fence laws and rules but there is not real and complete and riddle-solving encounter, but you end up blinding others in the process to all else except the rules and as a result, the Religious Spirit comes in and makes them do everything except the one thing they were supposed to do (23:16-22) And as a result, you are now a blind guide and a blinding guide.
Tithe all the right money but give no thought to your current Reality and teaching others according to justice (decision-making process: an aspect of love), mercy (staying your hand from vengeance or revenge or vindictive retribution: an aspect of love: Luke 17:1-5, See The Bait of Satan by John Bevere for more material on the execution of this topic), and faithfulness (constant AND consistent treatment of your fellow: an aspect of love) (23:23). This is not managing the reality of your time in the right way, because you are settling for the partial managing of your reality (I am a good boy or girl because I gave my ten percent to the church and can ditch the rest or my Responsibility to engage with Reality as not a priority, which can lead to a nasty devouring of time as you seek for time that feels like it is getting extracted from you as the taxes set in.
Make your Stewardship to look right but still be partial in it because you are full of avarice and self-indulgence (23:25). Settilng for the appearance of looking like a faithful steward while harboring an altar of avarice, which is something the dirt poor can do as effectively as, if not moreso than, the wealthy.
Erecting edifices and systems that look living on the outside (looking at you, Jeff Bezos), but internally are full of grinding death, destruction, exploitation, and break Freedom, instead of the more painful work of moving toward the heart of the Father, Adonai Tsidkenu, Who Makes us Righteous and Who Is Our Justice and who is Eternally the Father Who Teaches Us How To Build and How To Fight.
And finally, treating the exhortations of the past as if you heard them, while embracing a heart that would see the exhortations of today killed off, and settling for a lesser form of fulfillment that ultimately leads to futility (23:2932). This fills up the measure the fathers who were muderers, and that word there for “fill” is the Greek word πληρώσατε from πληρoώ, pronounced like “play-rah-oh”, meaning “I fill” or “I fulfill”. These settlers are fulfilling not the life of men, but the mission of those who in previous generations brought death.
And truly, the Victim Spirit does not want us to engage with our inherent authority and power as G-d’s vice-regents. He does not want us to own our own portion of responsibility for our current problems. So, whatever the Victim Spirit can do to cause you to come up short, change directions, or oscillate, or vascillate, or to go partway, he will bring his friends, the Spirit of Heaviness and the Spirit of Slack (which will masquerade as the Spirit of Peace), and we can, from time to time, mistake vigilance and readiness and pressing through for not having peace.
There is more than you have been taught there is, gang. Desire and do more. The DESIRES OF YOUR HEART are so important to the King, because they given you motive to push through and to fight.
There are some days I would as soon forget, but then I remember, it is not about forgetting the days that forge us, but being removed from the trauma and redeeming the pain that came with those days. And this day was no exception.
This event, during my Senior year of college, followed another, June 1, 2001, in which I hit a drunk pedestrian, and in which he died.
And I still remember faces and incidents from both days, for the first was during Pentecost Weekend and I had just made the decision to drive south to spend time with a close friend who was going to become my new roommate, as June 2 was his birthday.
I do not remember much of the birthday, but I do remember the blood on the road, the moment when I laid hands on him, and asked the King for a miracle, and standing up because the Sheriff’s Deputies wanted me to take a blood test, and I remembered nearly passing out and the feel of being….mauled by something.
It was the spirit of premature death….
And in the first, it came about because someone wandered out in traffic in front of me.
In the second, I made the mistake of U-turning when a number of cars were behind me.
And in one motion, The Box (the name of my 1980 Toyota Corolla), was t-boned and totalled, and I should have been dead or seriously injured.
And I just had some bruising to my calcaneus (heel bone). That’s it. And a sore and pinched left foot.
This coming after a gospel choir concert in which my ex-pastor and his wife were present….
And I learned, the King allows Father-filtered pain simply because He is working through situations to grow us to know His love and connecting with Him in the middle of the furnace and the crucible.
A crucible for silver, and a furnace for the gold.
And these are the only ways the gold and the silver emerge purified, in the midst of the fire and in the presence of the flux.
And thus, began a multi-part story in which the L-rd began exposing me to how spiritual leaders can engage with witches in order to work nasty things against the King’s kids.
And I am not grateful for the damage and the suffering and loss, but I am grateful for the King being with me in the midst of the tragic circumstances to show me how to build and how to fight.
And this is another lesson in sonship.
Gang, the hard stuff is going to come.
But I can still repeat the refrain of the King through Isaiah the Teacher.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Isaiah 43:2
He is not going to allow all of you to be overtaken, gang. There is still a core center piece at the root of you that, no matter how divided, traumatized, wounded, or overthrown you are, the enemy is INCAPABLE of violating or overthrowing.
So, spirit, I bless you,
I bless you with the courage to see and to hear Him, as you rest in Him, as the hard things come.
I bless you with fearless understanding and love.
I bless you with the place of stillness following the destruction and the beating waves, and the pounding waters, and the burning furance. I bless you to allow Him to pour his balm and oil and wine into your wounds.
There is a balm in Gilead. And that balm is a mercy to your afflicted spirit and soul.
There is a love for you even when heartache happens.
I bless you to know even as you are fully known.
I bless you to know you are being fought for by Love and Life Himself, even in the midst of when death seems to be poured out on you from every angle.
I bless you when you are being covered by predators, to know the Christ Himself is THERE to show you how to push back against the ANTI-Christs.
I bless you with skill, savvy, and truth, and wisdom, and eternal and unfailing lovingkindness.
Spirit, at your core, THEY WILL NOT OVERTAKE YOU.
I bless your confidence in Him to grow.
I bless you, not with shrewd strategies of avoidance, but with real and tender and bold LOVE and the EMBRACE of the Bridegroom when you feel hammered.
I bless you to not stop, even as you must embrace moments of stillness. I bless you with the cup of cold water from the One Who Feeds You Hand To Mouth With Ravens and Corvids, precious Elijah….
I bless you spirit with this reality in the name of Yeshua….
They like to help….and help….and help….and help….and help….
And will not stop helping…..
Meeting tangible needs…
Cleaning…
Praying…
Cleansing…
Praying off death spirits…
No guile…
Willing to stand up to bullies…
And they do not quit when a fight is involved and others are damaged beyond repair…
The just do not quit…
And they have no guile and no agenda…
Until or unless someone breaks them out of that tiny and small vision of serving and obeying…
Like a trauma…
Or a hard word of some sort from a friend willing to deliver that message….
Redemptive Gift Prophets are usually the ones with the chops and the authority to speak to both, and if mature, the blow can be softened by the Servant seeing and hearing the heart of the Prophet…
Candidly, Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, was, in his early years, possessed of the heart necessary t take on the task of making the world a safe place from bullies, but while his best friend, Bucky Barnes, was present in the early season, Barnes was a constant distraction for Rogers from his missions:
It took the grueling adversity of believing Barnes dead to get Steve into the right place of focus.
Then, being frozen in the ice for 70 years after interacting with another Prophet (Peggy Carter) got him more focused, as he was given the mission of leading the Avengers.
And with us, especially with the Servants, we have to be broken from our lesser goals and embrace the deeper things the King has for us, if we are to walk in our highest calling and the best version of ourselves.
And maybe, just maybe, we will in the process, regain some of what we lost.
In Rogers’ case, he received back his best friend, and then the love of his life, and after the Infinity War and Endgame was able to go onto a third act and another shot at many of the things he had missed out.
Those events, if they do not let the King in to heal them or the memory, can leave them in a low place for much of their lives.
The King attempts to break so many of us out of the mediocrity of the Grand Central Station of Obedience and into something deeper, but sometimes the higher, deeper, broader, more colorful place requires we endure a large measure of productive pain.
And as to Bucky (Prophet), the Prophet’s pain is of a different type and a different pathway, but it is no less significant.
In the case of the Servant, “throwing myself in, follow orders, serve” is NOT enough once the dissatisfaction with the low goal of obedience is quashed for a vision with purpose and an adventure.
The tracks or road or path get laid through obedience, but the adventure only gets embraced through creativity, and that comes only through sonship. Slaves obey, sons create.
Servants, who are so used to settling for something secondary, helping others, or BEING PUSHED INTO THAT ROLE AND ACCEPTING IT, were made to be dialed-in for one thing…
Yet….
GREATER…
…than meeting the felt needs of others: to create an environment wherein the King would be happy to come and dwell. They ultimately must be pulled from their secondary purpose, as with the Prophet from theirs (solving problems and fixing things), and get dialed into their primary purpose (creating the one environment that matters to provide a place that is comfortable and inviting so that the King’s purposes might get accomplished).
It took Steve losing his best friend and his former reality to move into something deeper.
It will take the Servant losing their smaller reality to move into the deeper purpose.
And, sigh, it will not be easy, but it will be worth it.
#PrincipleOfAuthority
The Example of the Servant Who Missed It and Lost Out Bigtime
I am going to leave one line here from one account, and I want you each to catch it, and i want it to sit with you, and I want you each, Servants, to move into greater things, because the typical Servant is adept at the ecosystem and working with the earth, incredibly well, or some dynamic that can become settling, if they are not careful.
Then Saul, went back to his father Kish at Gibeah, having received the kingship and the office, and resumed his lesser task of farming….
Do I need to qualify this by saying that it’s a rant? Do I need to write “trigger warning” because my use of certain words will equal butthurt?
No.
I am about to piss off some religious spirits. Good, ‘cuz in Facebook Land the usual tripe rarely does anything to help the advancement of Kingdom.
First of all, I am a Mercy by design. Don’t get that twisted. Too many believers think that means we show mercy, and then they stick us into a fucking box, but being a Mercy that means so much more than that.
Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t cuss, don’t chew, and don’t run with the girls that do…..that’s how went the refrain for the last 20 years in a denomination that stole my voice and told me I was a rebel. Good, I don’t mind being a rebel anymore, or one who shepherds rebels and the broken.
Because, Michael and Renee, you have zero business being pastors.
A Mercy is known because they show the heart of G-d. His tender heart. His loving, emotional, accessible, affectionate heart.
And above all, His warm Bridegroom’s heart that viciously rages against all manner of boxes that say “holiness and righteousness look like this”.
“Holy” means so much more than limp-wristed, set-apart-ness. It means we get together our tools that the King has given us, all of them, and we build something together. It means we execute.
Calling “set-apart” as the definition for “holy” stops short and makes me vomit.
The Wright Brothers, their project funded by their bike shop in Dayton that changed the world, that is HOLINESS.
And when we recite the first statement of the Westminster Catechism, we miss the full point.
What is the chief end of man?
“To glorify G-d”
And too damn many believers stop there…..
And they ignore the rest of the story….
The whole statement is “to glorify G-d and enjoy Him forever”
“To enjoy Him forever”.
“No”, the religious say to us, “G-d’s so blasted holy that we are not allowed to enjoy Him”. We are only allowed to glorify Him, and that is used as a club to beat believers upside the head, and abuse them if they come across as too carnal…..
They say “glorify G-d the way I tell you to glorify Him”.
We get told, this behavior or that language doesn’t glorify Him and so we lance, bolt, skewer, dart, and shoot anyone that does not fit our idea of what “to glorify Him” means.
So, ”to glorify Him” comes with so much damned religious baggage that too few people really get to hear what it actualy means. And we tell people do do this approved list of do’s and don’t’s. And we violate or sear the conscience of too many people when we miss the aspect of connecting with G-d that involves enjoying just being with Him.
As a result, we lost the plot, as they say in Australia.
What if you just walked how He hardwired you? What if you embraced your unique design. Even if that does not mean you “preach the gospel” or you are not a church-planter, or you multiply financial wealth, or you develop the next thing?
And what if we got our mouths off of what “glorify G-d” means, and onto what it really means.
It’s not just about obey and be a slave or even a servant alone.
Really, it means “walk in your design and enjoy the journey with the King”.
Too often, we use triteisms that curse or block or trigger people to respond or tune out.
And we need to get this thing so that it is more approachable.
And the heart of G-d is this, and the Mercy that walks squarely in their design says this:
Be what He made you to be. As Chris Pfohl would say, “let your freak flag fly”. Contribute your unique sound to the sound of heaven, and let Him do in you what you were made to do.
Be you. And for those who are scared of this statement, I will qualify it so you can be happy. This once.
Be what He designed when He knit you together in your mother’s womb.
All forms of guilt because we think we did not engage in behavior that glorified G-d even though it was our design, those sins of misapplied guilt based on false information rooted in the religious spirit, will lead to death of some part of us. There is a sin that leads to death. One of those sins is the sin of religious self-flagellation or feeling guilty over some aspect of our design.
Another of those sins is attempting to control the behavior of others through fear or intimidation.
Feeling guilty over something that is part of His design MIGHT be a curse…
Or a heart belief…
Or a spirit belief….
Our overfocus in what we think is glorifying G-d by squelching His good design in us has turned into a religious cultus or occult knot led by an antichrist spirit designed to destroy us.
What Really Is Antichrist?
Also, allow me to define antichrist with a touch more nuance.
It’s the spirit of “instead of”, not “against”.
αντί, preposition in Koine Greek, meaning “instead of”
ANYTHING but the one thing we need. Substitute who we really are for something that “glorifies G-d even though our heart is not in it. Flurry of religious activity. Paired with the religious spirit to bring a flurry of activities that people think glorify G-d, but leaving the heart of the matter out of the work of worship.
Jerusalem, Teacher City, Philistine Curse. One thing. One thing missing from the full package.
Meanwhile, G-d is comfortable with us as us.
He wants us to be us, and He really wants us to do what we enjoy.
As a Father, He most behaves like a Father when He is enjoying us and taking pleasure in us AS we enjoying the things that bring us joy.
I will be honest, we on the East coast, except for Florida, the former 13 colonies, have this dour and sour attitude. I have a couple of close friends from California, land of dreams, that beautiful Exhorter state, and there is a joy and an ease of thought and living among many California natives. You’d never confuse Cali for New York. Or Tejas.
And we in the East need that infusion of the West’s joyful mindset on some level.
So, as you connect with the King, know Him. Yada, KNOW Him. That word, ידע, means “to know something or someone”, and it is found in both places like Proverbs 3:5-6, and Genesis 4:1, when Adam KNEW his wife, Eve.
Know Him, and KNOW that He adores you and adores how He made you, and He is not afraid of you doing what brings you joy, for in that, in your design, He will be glorified. Forever.
And if people want to tune out because I used a cuss word in this one, then let them. This isn’t for them. And I won’t placate the junk because they require it.
