Author: theparacleteshammer

Presented without comment. This is why I don’t support some football teams.

Not sure if this will turn into a multi-part series on some of the SOTM Dynamics, but I definitely got something this morning as I was breakfasting with my family. Often, as the expectation is that I will bring forth some portion of Scripture during breakfast, I will get something, five minutes into the text, and recently the lion’s share of the revelation has been coming from the Gospels.

This morning, the topic was prayer. I have been going through Matthew with the kids the last several mornings and going, more-or-less, verse-by-verse.

Today as I was with them, I was in the middle of lecturing (yes I do lecture my children) on prayer while frying eggs. And then I felt the Elbow of Heaven to hit that passage on which the L-rd talked with the crowds, on what some think was the Horns of Hattin, about prayer.

And so, at the first verse I read, went

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites -Matthew 6:5-

Plain as day. The Hypocrites. Now, in Yeshua’s day, “the hypocrites” could be deduced by the context. He is likely referring to the religious leaders.

But for our context, think of the religious leaders of our day who do not practice what they preach, and also think of the following euphemisms.

“But All Christians Are Hypocrites!,” “Not Perfect, Just Forgiven,” and [insert Your Favorite Triteism/Catchphrase]

We hear these sorts of things all the time. And they

Much of the currently prevailing belief about hypocrisy follows the lines of, “Everyone is a hypocrite”, or “only G-d is perfect” or something similar, “so why even bother at fighting hypocrisy?”

The truth is, Yeshua called the Pharisees and Saducees hypocrites, and thus, we are RESPONSIBLE to reject every hint of hypocrisy. Consistency of behavior is what gets people, who are considering the L-rd, to take Him more seriously.

Saying one thing and doing another is not typical Christ-following behavior. It’s sin.

As with all sin, turn tail from it and RUN. Don’t excuse it. Don’t qualify it. Don’t tolerate it. Cut it off.

No, not all Christ-followers are hypocrites. And the assertion of that statement does not make the statement “every Christian is perfect” true. Rather, followers of Yeshua are to SHUN hypocrisy. Period.

And the times of hypocrisy, as with other sin, as we grow in depth of relationship with him, should bear evidence of decreasing.

Hypocrisy In Prayer

Back to the text….

As I was speaking to my kids, I mentioned that we really were designed to not pray rote or pray the same thing every day, but rather, we were to pray consistently in alignment with the inner witness of the Spirit’s movement.

That is, instead of praying a “holy” checklist of acceptable prayers (bless my family, bless our nation, bless my pastor, touch this or that situation) out of hypocrisy…

When our relationship is designed to be living and breathing…

It was always Father’s intent that we find and cultivate the consistency of hearing Father’s heart in that connection time that we call “prayer” and go after the one thing that He is going after.

Instead of presenting a “Honey-Jesus-Do” list and looking impressive, we best work by hearing where He is in the moment of our connection time (John 5:19).

Instead of approaching the L-rd all the time as the transcendant G-d Who is Light Years and Realities Beyond and Outside of Us, we should cultivate the interaction that shows a revelation of His Fatherhood and Father’s heart.

For it is intimacy and authenticity, not unity and authority, that are the hallmarks of this season.

Instead of praying like devout believers, we were designed to pray like we were continuing a conversation with G-d our Father as Our Father.

Resisting hypocrisy in prayer, we find the conversation we were always meant to have.

Rejecting hypocrisy, we pursue authentic relationship.

Instead of praying to be seen by people, we were made to pray to be seen by the One who already sees us, El Roi.

If that authenticity is in praying for family, then pray for family.

But if it is hearing Him speak to a specific issue, then we ought to follow through against a specific issue.

Follow the consistency of your relationship with Him.

And resist hypocrisy.

Resist the trap of presenting yourself as having relationship with Him and behaving as if you don’t have relationship with Him.

One of the Problems With Our Political Climate: Our Collective Partial Blindness

Personally, I had some thoughts on President Trump’s State of the Union address.  I was under the impression, and have been under the impression that a Mesmerizing Spirit took over in Washington sometime during Bill Clinton’s administration, when we decided that the moral fiber of our elected officials was not a key issue.

And this mentality has continued till the present, when conservatives made the same shocking assertion, and we proclaimed that we were not electing a pastor, but a president.

So, this blind belief, the smokescreen of electability, and others, left us with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with Trump winning the election.

Okay, let me draw it down to the issue.  The issue is not “can G-d use this man? (G-d can use whomever He darn well pleases.)”

The issue is, “Are we blind?”

Even partly blind is still not fully seeing.

If we can complain about a Democrat but not see a Republican, or a businessmen, with the same lens, then we are still partly blind.  If we refuse to collaborate and discuss with he other side, then we choose a position of blindness and mesmerism.

This goes for conservatives as well as liberals.

Furthermore, we blind ourselves with the brace of a lack of legitimacy, and a call for justice and rights at the expense of relationship.

G-d never made to to be creatures who have to choose between rights only or responsibility only always. There is a delicate balance and shift between the two postures relentlessly across the course of our lives.

It also shows we have determined to live as a partial and divided nation for the short game of overturning a Supreme Court case and not for the long game of winning the hearts of men.

The News of a Letter

I woke up to Sam Roberts asking me if I had seen Arthur’s most recent newsletter.

Mind you, we just gotten done having a discussion earlier this week about the political environs in both our nations the previous night.

And she told me to pick it up.

So I did.

I was floored. The man rarely speaks to political issues, and his eye for the detail and the well-reasoned read is phenomenal.

Arthur’s Thoughts: Spiritual Authority In America

I woke up on Wednesday morning, February 6^th, quite angry. 

I scanned the horizon for a cause. 

I had gone to bed well.  No ugly dreams.  Woke up after nine hours.  Not too shabby! 

Checked emails to see if one of my peeps was in trouble.  Didn’t see anything.

I gingerly made my way to work, keeping a tight cork on the volcano so no innocent people got buried in lava.

Finally, I realized thatFrom the bar to the boardroom, reconciliation and collaboration are not in vogue. 
The cultural climate today very much resembles the ramp-up to the Civil War. From the bar to the boardroom, reconciliation and collaboration are not in vogue. 
The cultural climate today very much resembles the ramp-up to the Civil War. From the bar to the boardroom, reconciliation and collaboration are not in vogue. 
The cultural climate today very much resembles the ramp-up to the Civil War.  I was feeling the nation.  The night before, the President gave his State of the Union Address and across the political spectrum, the responses were framed around hate with an intent to exacerbate the deep divisions we face.

From the bar to the boardroom, reconciliation and collaboration are not in vogue. 

The cultural climate today very much resembles the ramp-up to the Civil War. 

In 1844 James Polk was a dark horse candidate who won the election on a Democratic ticket, defeating Henry Clay the Whig.  Polk worked hard to establish legitimacy in office by changing tariffs, negotiating international treaties, reforming the banking industry and challenging Mexico.

President Polk wanted the southwest portion of the continent and Mexico showed no desire to cede it on any terms.  In spite of warnings from Mexico, Texas was annexed by the US in a fairly sloppy manner which led to an ambiguous border. 

Polk – and many Americans – desperately wanted war with Mexico for political and economic purposes.  He deliberately moved some American troops into the contested land along the border. 

On April 25, 1846, the Mexican cavalry bit on the bait and attacked the Americans, killing a dozen or so.

President Polk cranked up the political rhetoric with his proclamation to Congress that America’s “cup of forbearance has been exhausted, even before Mexico passed the boundary of the United States, invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon American soil.”

Congress obliged with a declaration of war, even though many northern Congressmen had issues with it.  The invasion of Mexico (an Exhorter nation) by “Old Fuss and Feathers” (an Exhorter general) was successful.  The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was a travesty, but it ceded the Southwest and California to the US on February 2, 1848.

As predicted by the political observant of the time, this treaty disrupted the tenuous balance of power over the slavery issue and effectively triggered the Civil War 13 years later. 

The defining tone of the rhetoric in that season leading up to the Civil War was hatred, personal demeaning and a deliberate focus on peripheral issues, instead of careful conversation about the core issues.  Whenever possible, complex issues were reduced to a simplistic right/wrong litmus test of political orthodoxy.

The same is true today.  Congressmen and women invited highly adversarial people as their guests at the SOTU, in order to fan the flames of division.  The press was extraordinary in seeking out sound bites that could be framed to offend.  And so, anger was empowered over our nation.

Leading up to the Civil War, religion was part of the problem, not the solution.  The Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodist all split their denominations over the issue.

In his epic Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln commented on that paradox.  

“Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.  Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.  It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.  The prayers of both could not be answered.  That of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Today there are passionate citizens in our Tribe who believe Donald Trump is God’s man, doing a majestic piece of work. 

 
There are others who are horrified at the man and consider him a plague on the earth.

And, as in the pre-Civil War era, civilized debate is hard to come by.  Positions are settled.  Tempers are hot.  Words are absolute. 

Relationships are fragile in the light of the radicalization of thought and the normalization of rejection and alienation.

In other words, we are positioning ourselves well for something awful if the inflammatory debate continues to escalate. 

What is the alternative?

I start with the Curse of Jotham.  Jotham appealed to God.  God agreed with His complaint and the two sides in the subsequent localized civil war destroyed each other.  And that is what happened with America.  The slaves cried out to God for justice.  He heard.  And America lost over 600,000 people in direct deaths during our Civil War in addition to an incalculable collateral damage to the nation.
Compare that with 400,000 US deaths in WWII.

It behooves each leader in the Tribe to revisit the abundance of passages in Scripture about leaders who abuse those under them.  The American church has chewed up and spit out a stupendous number of people in the last 50 years. 

We will have no moral or spiritual authority when we have not handled leadership authority with integrity.

Second, the crisis was triggered by illegitimacy in fact, but was rooted in illegitimacy of the spirit. 

Abimelech was the son of a concubine, not one of Gideon’s many wives.  Illegitimate.

 But the core issue was Gideon’s legitimacy struggles.   In spite of all the drama leading up to the battle with     the Midianites and the enormity of the victory over   them, he still lacked legitimacy.

That is why he demanded as booty enough gold to make himself an ephod – a priestly garment. God had called him to military and political leadership.  In that place, God would bless him.

When he reached for legitimacy through spiritual posturing, it became toxic for the entire nation.  

So each individual needs to explore his own basis for legitimacy.  To the degree that we use spiritual posturing to prop up a deficient sense of legitimacy, to that degree we will have no moral or spiritual authority in the nation.

Finally is the issue of rights and responsibilities.  The anger throughout our nation, on the right and the left, is rooted in a focus on rights. 

No matter what the issue, whether personal or global, the bias toward rights inflames debate.  Nowhere do you see that more clearly than the great religious debates.  Few of them are directed by builders, doers, people deeply invested in their personal responsibility.

Today, more and more Christians opt out of voting.  Most opt out of researching judges and obscure issues.  Few believers understand the electoral process and fewer still have bothered to ever attend a precinct meeting.  And hardly any could name two city officials in the town where they live – much less the issues facing them.

Next time someone scalds you for having a political view that they don’t share, walk away from the conflict and look inside to see where you could raise the bar on your own personal responsibility as a citizen. 

My belief is that the external climate is going to continue to spiral down for a period of time.

It behooves us as believers to be seriously concerned about raising the level of our spiritual authority.

That comes one choice at a time, not one argument at a time.
 
Arthur Burk
February 2019

Analysis

And, gang, Arthur is spot-on right. We are not getting it. In many ways we are speaking into an echo chamber with uncivil debate and discussion that rips asunder sworn friendships.

We have not learned how to interact the way Ginsberg and Scalia interacted.

And we have little basis for viewing through the opposing party’s views and hunt for the win/win.

As a result we are seeing the Sixth Head of Leviathan unleashed, Jotham’s Curse brought down upon us in our mutual wrath, and very little effort invested in skilled discussion of each of the issues.

Instead we would rather see how quickly we can tear appear Democrats as not Christian because of the slaughter of the innocent.

Where is the skillful work for the win/win?

If we vaunt one Commandment and ignore the other nine, where does that leave us?

If we laud the principles governing human relationships but scoff the principles governing nature, what do we have?

Indeed, were we to consider our own position worth cinsidering and only scoff competing positions, whether we think the evidence is worth our time or no, where does that leave us?

Unwilling to humanize one another.

Schlepping toward the sea faster than you can say “Second Level of Principles.”

And I think perhaps, Arthur was hearing some of the anger of the land.

So, what’s it gonna be, gang?

Deeper authority is available for those willing to pay the price to earn it, in deeper realms than we are currently thinking.

Or we can continue the madness of ignoring the principles and assuming we can argue our way into safety.

I was always told that there was more I had to offer….

And someone spoke up and said that, for a long time, they had a desire to support me, which is a humbling reality.

So, evidently, my blog is moving to another domain, and as that domain is released, I will attempt to export my content from here to that new blog.

And as things get set up there, I will notify all of y’all to update your following settings, so as to continue to access me.

Kindest Regards,
The Paraclete’s Hammer

Sally gets the run-around and a huge workout in the Sapphire tribe. Here is another of her testimonies.

I don’t know what this group thinks about theophostics. But basically they teach when something bothers me I need to ask the Holy Spirit when is the first time I felt this way. Follow whatever path He leads me on, even if it makes NO sense. When I get to the initiating event, ask Him what is the lie I was believing at that point, and then what is the Truth He wants me to know about it instead. Just to show how crazy the path can be, my husband’s pen clicking led to my grandfather’s open mouth chewing and spewing saliva at the table, to a revulsion of all the germs, to my mom vigorously washing me off every time I was touched by locals as a baby when we lived were overseas as missionaries and germs were rampant. As an RN she was terrified of me getting sick. It ended up that I needed delivered from a spirit of death. that was 4 years ago. Pen clicking hasn’t bothered me since.

Word to the wise gang, and this cannot be overemphasized enough. Follow the trail, no matter where it goes and no matter how much sense it does or does not make.

I am going to be perfectly clear, gang.

I have seen more Facebook ads against abortion and glad that the President spoke out against abortion in the last few days than in the last dozen years combined.

The stand for “do not murder” is admirable.

But in the words of a good friend of mine, when you are for one commandment but against the other nine, you aren’t doing your job.

I don’t expect to win a popularity contest with this blog post.

The danger of what has happened in the last few days is as follows.

If the pro-Trump-anti-Democrats among us are right in their partial judgments for the stated Trump agenda, then this post will do what any incorrect material should do: fade away.

But if my hypotheses are correct and we are only hearing a part of the truth, then the effects of that cause reach to some very negative ends.

When you post about how good it is that we are against abortion, but refuse to also speak against unconstitutional, undeclared wars that are also unjust, then I do not believe our G-d is using these politicians in office, nor our President.

And when you want to support a regime (the United States in this case) that in silence permitted the sadistic bayonet sodomy of a leader because they thought regime change was a good idea, then I don’t think G-d used that set of politicians either (Ezekiel 18:23).

If we save the aborted, and talk about overturning this or that SCOTUS decision, but do not make a Mercy-Season case to transform the hearts of men and win the war in the individual souls, then the soil can and may still remain locked up.

And if we save the aborted but continue to condone, in our silence, the killings of innocents abroad through gross violations of our nation’s founding principles, then we have a serious problem.

And when we only speak correction to–and scoff–one political party or caucus, garbed in white, but refuse to speak of the judgment that awaits those on the other side of the fence for their sons of omission, then we may be engaging in the Prophet’s Root Iniquity: Fractured Relationships. And in our hypocrisy, we may be doing more harm than good, by reinforcing our echo chamber.

If you only accept half of the truth or half of the revelation G-d gives you, and reject the other half that is uncomfortable to receive, then what you stand to reap is a Canaanite Iron Bowl and a lack of or devouring of revelation.

The President and all of Congress has some serious issues, and uncritical support of his actions is not a recipe for renewal.

And the insanity of our political discourse is tainted by the Curse of Jotham.

So, call me divisive. Call me whenever you wish. But our behavior on social media is not identifying the whole problem, nor will it break the Mesmerizing Spirit, nor repair the breach.

#stopthemadness

THE USUAL DISCLAIMER: These are just my thoughts, some strongly-worded as they are. I very much appreciate differentiated thoughts from y’all. So, feel free to share those disputes and share as you wish.

The Problem

Something that peeves me about the Charismatic Church on the whole.

If we hunt for a new prophetic word every week for one year, and we never take any time to develop the first word that we get to see if really is true, then we are left with 52 prophetic words that are left untested, or, if tested and approved, they are undeveloped.

Why would G-d do that to us?

Sometimes the prophets need to shut up and let us take the time to develop a word or they need to flat-out reject the word given because it is off-base or tangential to what G-d is doing in them.

Reasons For the Problem: Little Testing, Process, or Proving

Call me crazy (yes, David has said some crazy and off-the-wall things), but I think one of the reasons we have only a 13 percent (Arthur Burk pulled this stat in one of his teachings and he once stated, either to me personally or in one of his other teachings that this stat came from Elijah List) success rate in prophetic ministry is the following lack of discipleship.

We have little to no process of walking with young up-and-coming prophets and prophesiers through a process of testing and proving of words, long-term, combined with a crazy lack of focus. This in part results in an abysmal rate of failed words.

Failure to test and approve words leads to a lack of success in the department of the prophetic. Furthermore, failure to develop what has been tested and approved leads to immaturity in the prophetic. This is why the prophetic giftings critically need the gift of teaching to help them deepen. And the job of those with the office of Prophet are designed

“to nurture the young prophets coming up, and, goodness knows, young prophets coming up could seriously use some nurture.”

Arthur Burk, The Redemptive Gifts of Individuals, Disc 2: Prophet, Cut 1: Three Kinds of Prophet, Timestamp 0:28-0:35 (2000, Sapphire Leadership Group).

Often times, we look at a word through an overly-simplified lens of:

Is it right or is it wrong?

If it is right, we immediately apply it, whether or not it has germinated, flowered, grown, been harvested, and processed. If it is wrong, we burn the word up in the flames and if we are not careful we shut down someone who is learning to operate in gifts the L-rd has given them, and they can become dissuaded from operating ever again (Ephesians 6:5 NIV).

Rather than shutting down a young prophet, it is a good idea to walk with them through a long-term process of seeing if what they are hearing carries a value. Coaching them through some sort of process where they are able to themselves judge what they are hearing.  This will help them to deepen what they may be hearing, and also to help develop the words they hear so they can be applied in the life of the local body or community where the words originate.

The Right of Correction and To Whom It Belongs

From here, let’s consider correcting the prophet that is wrong, even the broadly respected voice. If we are not allowed to correct the nonsense that we get from the “prophetic voice” if that voice is wrong, then we are enabling something that is off to flow in our midst.

My thought: slow down and don’t be quick to swallow everything that comes from every big name out there.

Our job in part in receiving words, first and foremost, should come through not the filter of the Scripture, but through the Filter of the Holy Trinity. My own view, no one else’s necessarily, is that we do not worship a book and use a book as our primary filter. Rather we let He Himself, the Word of G-d, filter this stuff. We worship G-d, not a book. The Bible is not the Fourth Member of the Trinity. We listen to Father (Exodus 20:1-20, Son (Revelation 1:15), and Holy Spirit (John 14:26, 1 John 2:27). Truthfully we have gotten away from hearing the Voice of G-d Himself, and we have done a horrid job by saying “the Spirit will line up with the word” and “if it doesn’t line up with the word, throw it out” and we have failed to see that we better run our thoughts through the two way street. We have neglected the other lane. We have in many places rejected the fact that our view of the word on the page had better line up with what G-d himself is saying. Many believers have chosen a hermeneutic that is only the Bible, and reading the bible with our brains, or interpreting words with our natural brains, and many times we have rejected the principle of letting the Holy Trinity read the Bible with us and to help us interpret the text. As a result, we read the text apart from the Spirit, and we let that natural, mental or emotional, feeling or cerebral, heart or brain soulish interpretation govern our view of G-d’s doings, and as a result, we call that which is G-d heretical.

If we have the filter of Scripture for interpreting experience, we need to only do so if we are reading the Scripture and asking He Himself what He means by that statement. We are to read the text in the context of a living, breathing, vibrant relationship with the Holy One of Israel.

Secondly, and only after the Trinity is firmly in place, do we add the filter of Scripture to our interpretation. Because it is only with the vivifying power of the text read in the presence of G-d Himself that we can rightly divide the text, correctly handle it, and rightly apply it to a situation that requires the list found in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

Hunting For the New Word

Further, if we go hunting for a new word from this or that major voice, then we are buying into a pernicious form of welfare Christianity. When we depend on someone to hear for ourselves, when we will not do the work of hearing Him for ourselves, we have opened a bad door up.

Now, granted, let us be reasonable. There are times when we need some outside counsel to help clear up a situation, but those are the exceptions, or, if there is not a curse or covenant or agreement operant, they should be the exception. We do work in community and community can help, but the company of the prophetic community should not be our go-to, or our firstfruits stop. The need to have someone speak to us counsel is not what I have in view. What I have in view is those situations where believers hunt for the word from someone else, or need this or that anointed person to bless them with a word, or else their lives are going to fall apart if this person prophesies over the person on either side of them, but passes by them.

Look, it is entirely possible that the reason that person has passed you by is because the L-rd Himself wants to lay hands Himself on you and prophesy over you.

Just some thoughts, gang.

Be blessed. And I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

#Sonship

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath…
-from Mark 2:27-
Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the 👽, may be refreshed.
Exodus 23:12

Put another way…
Just think about this concept.
Dwell in this concept,
Abide in it,
Meditate in the fields of Beer Lahai Roi, gang.
(David’s getting creepy, talking about dwelling in concepts and using alien Emoticons. I think he has been hanging around Elvis Mack for too long)
♠️♥️♦️♣️ Suit yourselves. Ahem. Giggle. Yes, I have been hanging out with him a bit long.
Here it is, do not miss it.
The Sabbath was designed to carry you, not you to carry the Sabbath.
From the Torah, it was designed to be a time of refreshment. You were meant to be carried along in rest by the Man of Rest, by Yeshua, the L-rd of the Sabbath.
Let Him and the Day of Your Rest carry you and breathe new life into you.
Let Him 🎁 you a season of refreshment and cleansing.
Let all of your beasts experience a day where they don’t have to work, but they can be.
Six days give, One day receive.
Raw materials, an extra day’s manna, deepening revelation, and extraordinary farther down in the depths of Him Whose depths cry for your depths.
And ask yourself, “Is the Sabbath carrying me or am I carrying the Sabbath?”
Carrying the Sabbath is something you were not designed to do.
It makes about as much sense to carry the Sabbath as it does to carry the Missouri River.
Your job, on the day of rest, is to just float along and let the Sabbath and the L-rd of the Sabbath surround you and cool you off.

This right here is worth five minutes of your time. Just as an affirmation of those who are designed to flow with the L-rd and not be subjugated to a perverted ministry Leadership structure that thinks it really is a manifestation of true Fivefold ministry.

This is Arthur Burk, from his series, “Life After Church.”