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Spiritual Authority in America

I woke up on Wednesday morning, February 6th, 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 that 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

Let’s drop it with the amorphous trite Sunday School answers and get into something useful.

What is holy?

Holy doesn’t mean what we think it means.

It does not mean obedient servant.

We like to use our vocabulary and ideas of holiness to communicate something that is perfect. But that is such a lowball, Sunday School answer of what holiness is.

Holiness is not mere perfection, or merely free from sin.

It also includes implemented reality. That is, when something is holy, it is a sustainable system. Holiness it it’s extreme form means the item or entity in question is not just being in some etheral, otherworldly state, but it is accomplishing something transformational in the loves of what it touches.

“Being holy” therefore means you are implementing what G-d MADE YOU TO DO. It means execution of the highest order, and bringing others into contact with the Holy One who is deeply loving, deeply transformational Father of Lights.

That which is holy executed in connection with the Source of All Who Is Holy.

This is a present my friend got from his parents. It is a YETI cooler. Now, for those of you that don’t know, YETI products keep their encased products cold or hot for an extended period of time.

YETI products execute their job quite well. They provide a sustainable ecosystem that is disproportionate to the materials used.

Okay, gang, are you getting the picture.

You were made not just to be set apart, but rather, in your TRANSFORMED set-apartedness, to do something that is life-giving and a contribution to your setting. You are a holy (sustainable) system, ready to implement.

Not some POOR, MISERABLE, WRETCHED, BASTARD, WORM SINNER IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY G-D that he somehow deigns to tolerate and has to clean you out and put a shot of bleach into you in order to tolerate you and get rid of the daily stench.

We are commanded to regularly come before the throne of grace BOLDLY, NOT TIMIDLY OR FEARFULLY in order to find grace and help in our time of need. And our need is to be transformed daily so we can implement what we were made to implement.

Dude, Imma say this again. Get into the freaking car and drive off into all G-d has for you. Implement. The pictures of holiness-as-implementation are all around you.

You are not a 30-year old cracked Igloo.

You are a spanking new YETI.

#justdoit

Some thoughts occurred to me while hearing a friend talk about HOA fees. Those are below:

I will say this, if the HOA is headed by a witch and they choose to insert a hidden covenant within the HOA contract, then they and their demons are going to have their hands full while I partner with the King to strip them of their authority.

Covenants within contracts hammer believers regularly, and they don’t even realize it.

As you are living there, Mike, just be careful of how much you are accepting.

I would exhort you to place your, contacts on your dining room table, and if you discern the presence of predator spirits, then call those clowns the spirit and remind them that they do not own nor have legal rights to you, your paycheck, your household, or your possessions.

Here is a principle that most believers won’t have exercise when they are part of HOA’s because they don’t think it’s a big deal, and so they don’t bother and allow the enemy to snipe stuff that ain’t theirs: what you pay taxes on you own.

You pay taxes in the form of HOA fees/dues. Therefore you can use that legal right to start seeing change effected that is favorable to the Kingdom, if you want to use that route.

Shoot, if I was paying HOA fees, I would start calling that out.

Don’t leave any free money on the table, friend.

Love you [both].

When institutional church is set up as a commandment, regardless of the level of commoditization, children are led to believe an institution is the arbiter of their legitimacy rather than the Most High G-d.

And if:

1) The church only legitimizes duty,

2) the church attaches worth only to the individual so long as they perform a necessary function vital to the life of the church,

3) the church refuses to seek helping the individual in unpacking their design, equipping them in their design, and releasing them to fulfill that design,

4) the church only instead wants the individual to contribute to the furtherance of the church’s agenda

5) the church has no culture of affection, culture of value for the inherent dignity of each individual, and culture of dignity for the identity of the individual, and

6) the church treats the individual as little more than a replaceable widget or number,

then obedience to a mechanical agenda becomes the end goal in sight, and the children as adults are taught to become little more than consumers or resellers instead of factories producing new truth.

And we start a vicious cycle all over again that only breaks when someone leaves that toxic cycle and embraces their design.

Church is meant to be the ultimate unpacker of design, not the ultimate machine to grind them up.

Setting your kids up to fail, honestly, is a matter of refusing to train them up in accordance with how their Father hardwired them and forcing them to fit into some preconceived ideal mold that has obedience as the end game.

And obedience is the task of slaves, rather than sons and friends, which is a contradiction of John 1:12, John 15:15-17, and Romans 8:16.

I was never much one for posting responses to abortion that only castigated women for not keeping their legs closed, not accounting for legit rape.

It’s only a partiplal solution, and I look for fullness in a solution.

So, here are some fuller, more nuanced thoughts.

Pertaining to babies and abortion, there are a couple of situations: those that choose to have sex, and those that have sex forced upon them:

If you are choosing to have sex, then one or more babies is/are likely going to come from that. No one is forcing a single or a couple to have a baby. That is the responsibility that comes with playing. So, have the kid, own your responsibility, or keep them in your pants.

If you did not choose to have sex, but it was forced on you, there is counseling that likely needs to be had, and.you have my sympathy (I am related to a number of rape victims), but killing what is growing inside of you, or could be, is not going to fix anything, but rather, it is going to make things worse.

As for the “deformed baby” argument, and “it’s only going to suffer” argument, I have one question. Do you honestly think you can keep ANYONE from suffering? As if we can prevent suffering by killing. We get dealt a hand, and we have to play THAT hand with savvy. You are suffering. I am suffering. Everybody suffers.

When a baby comes into being, and a sperm and an egg join, it is only because the Father of Lights, who dwells in eternal Majesty, determined that the hand that would be dealt to the resulting infant was worth playing as a weapon against the kingdom of darkness.

Playing that hand is a gambit.

But He is a Gambling Fool, recklessly so.

And we are tools and weapons in the King’s hands (Isaiah 54:16)

And we were designed to walk in temperence and a process that includes suffering for a season (Isaiah 54:1-15) in order to prevail against the kingdom of hell (Isaiah 54:17).

I have said it before, and I will say it again.

If you want the glory of Isaiah 54:17, then you must first pass through the fires and process of tempering of Isaiah 54:1-16.

For those who are rape victims, I am truly sorry, and though I cannot relate to you, I know the one who bore the weight of THAT injustice and conquered against it and its weight.

For those who chose sex, this is how it happens. The process. We we’re made to be fruitful and multiply.

And neither case is justification for telling G-d he is not allowed to play “that hand”.

Work through the wound with Him, but don’t fall for the deception that you can make a problem go away by taking something or killing something.

It does not work that way, and there is ALWAYS fallout from mishandling the gift inside of you, even if the circumstances sucked.

Just my tuppence.

#aweaponformedbytheblacksmith
#theparacleteshammer

Reposted with permission

Arthur writes:

GRRR. . .

“Sally” was a life giver.

Not a bad thing.

Her extended family got used to seeing her as an ATM machine that they could tap at any time, with no credit limit.

Not a good thing.

Sally ran out of emotional and physical energy recently and decided to start limiting the withdrawals people could make from her life.

A really wise thing.

Her extended family is furious at her for making them walk in reality, eating the consequences of their own choices. She has violated the social contract they developed for her, after honoring it for years.

A highly predictable thing.

Now she is sick and is struggling with the lack of dopamine rewards she used to get from enabling, as well as struggling with the label of traitor that her family has put on her.

A really brutal thing.

Breaking out of a co-dependent relationship is tough when you finally find the courage to walk away from the person involved. It is harder than making peace in the Middle East when you have to stay in a family, and train them to embrace responsibility and not shove their junk off on you.

A cruelly complex thing.

Sometimes I think restructuring a codependent family is harder than coming off cocaine.

Sally could use a hug from God today.

And tomorrow.

Since this isn’t going to be over any time soon.

On-point, as usual. We need hugs from the L-rd when we are choosing to be the catalyst for restructuring a dysfunctional family.

With respect to Becky Sampson for asking for clarification.

DISCLAIMER: Hard language ahead.

Not an exhaustive list, but…

Ready or not, here is my perspective, in no particular order

1) Lack of interaction with/bad interaction with healing and deliverance ministry.

The church has spent a lot of time with its collective head in the sand in many ways, denying the presence of the demonic, and refusing to engage in spiritual warfare and deliverance and healing of those who have pervasive struggles against which the normal methods of ministry and counseling have not even made a scratch.  It’s not a counseling session where you follow the trail of pain that we need, but rather an encounter with the true and living G-d through a willing vessel who is not going to call you crazy, and who is capable of dealing with you in light of Father’s love and His power.   For far too long, the rest of the church that denies the need for deliverance needs to admit it.

But that is not all; many wings of the church that practice deliverance, suck at it.  And they need to increase in their skill and trust-building in effectively handling the demonic without making the person the are counseling into a war zone.  Enough with the competent powerless, or the powerful idiots with no people skills.  We need to fuse skillful counseling with a willingness to take out the trash when it’s needed, by which I mean real demons, and do it in a tender fashion without being jerks.

2) Lack of interaction with survivors of SRA/DID/CRA.

Again. Head in the sand to a problem that “does not exist if you cannot see it.”

For those who do not know, SRA is short for Satanic Ritual Abuse,  DID is short for Dissociative Identity Disorder, and CRA is short for Christian Ritual Abuse.

DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a label that covers a broad variety of conditions that mostly cover the segmentation of the human soul into what we call “parts”-and each part has its own unique personality.  Unlike the undissociated person, which we call an integrated person, the dissociated person or the person with a part is dis-integrated.

Unlike Satanic Ritual Abuse, with DID and parts, the spirit may or may not be affected.  The root cause of DID is usually some kind of trauma (intentional or unintentional), such as a hard childbirth, neonatal surgery, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or some form of abuse.  A part of the human psyche peels apart from the rest and serves as a container for the abuse, so protecting rest of the person’s soul (hence the term part) and when abuse of some sort happens in further instances, that part or another part of the soul comes to the forefront in order to endure the difficult situation.

Basically, SRA typically involves those that are part of a coven (a group of witches) or Satanists (as the perpetrators of the abuse) that work to destroy the human spirit and divide the soul of an victim through a series of rituals whose hallmarks include violent death and resuscitation, sexual abuse, physical abuse, or other forms of torture and nasty treatment.  Usually, those who are survivors have any number of different personalities and parts of their spirit that have unique identities, and some of whom may hate Jesus as a result of the process that resulted in their mental and spiritual state becoming separated and parsed out (think of a glass shattering, and you will have some idea).  Separate parts and fragments.  These fragments are often the age of whenever the trauma took place, and they can each have a unique identity.

CRA, which is a term I coined, is regular abuse that is perpetrated by Christians, especially those in positions of authority or leadership, on victims in a regular way.  Given this is a relatively new and little-understood term, it has not made its way into the mainstream, but I would not be surprised, given the level of authority that believers carry, if there are not quite a few of those who are no longer walking with the L-rd because of massive trauma or abuse.  Just some thoughts for y’all to chew on.
I am rather vexed at the lack of flexibility or pulpit-guarding that happens at the expense of helping real wounded and damaged people with skill.  That goes for those who are hammered and whose spirits and souls (a spirit is different from a soul: Hebrews 4:12.) are shattered by the practitioners of darkness and wickedness.

We need people who are willing, even if they are not capable, and are willing to grow into the capacity to love on angry parts, altars, full systems, and switching, and are not scared when their clients move between personalities.

We need people who will handle and work with a portfolio of those who have survived the abuse dished out by covens, termed survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse. .

And we need people who will handle and work with those who have survived the  regular abuse dished out by pastors, what I term Christian Ritual Abuse.

With a stubborn refusal to grow embittered and jaded.

The church is greatly screwed up in places, if you will ask many a pastor.  But it can be fixed and repaired.

3) Lack of equipping and releasing.

It is not just about equipping the saints for the work of ministry, but, per John Wimber, it is about releasing and letting go of your finest talent so they can reproduce in accordance with the command of G-d.

4) The Spirit of Jealousy, a perversion of the Father.

Father gives every good and perfect gift.  Jealousy focuses you on what someone else has, and blinds you to what He gave you.  We need to stop focusing on the infinity in someone else’s life, and work at unpacking the infinity in our own lives.

5) The Victim Spirit, a perversion of the Son.

Sons have resources and create.  Victims cannot see the resources to use in order to implement.  Jesus implemented the Father’s vision on earth using the tools the Father gave him.

6) The Mesmerizing Spirit, a perversion of the work of the Holy Spirit.

This is an issue of focus. The Mesmerizing Spirit is a pickpocket and a thief, and our job is to not get distracted by the one bad thing that would cause us to jettison a good package, or focus on the one good thing, and thereby swallow a camel of bad issues.  Do not strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, gang.  See the whole package, and yet honor G-d’s design.

7) The refusal to equip AND release.

It is one thing to not see the need to do this which is the difference between this and #3, but to plainly see it and refuse to release, is a form of rebellion against the work of G-d going forward and multiplying, and yet, pastors, full of envy and covetousness, refuse to equip, and refuse to release.  As a result, the Holy Trinity has to operate apart from the usual structure of leadership and sovereignly teaches people by Himself and then has to release those people.

What leaders often do, instead of this, is what I like to call (per my friend, El Jefe de California) “equip and annex.”  Annexation is another word for “control”, or “take over”.

Wait a minute, with all this authority, should we not be outwardly focused and not focused on how many people kiss our rings and touch our robes, or pay homage to our likenesses?

We were made to tread upon the serpent, not tread upon each other.
8) The barrenness caused by the Spirit of Jealousy.

The Spirit of Jealousy likes to perform spiritual hysterectomies among believers, both male and female.  Father will avenge those who have been stricken with barrenness and will care for them.  We need to call it out when we see it and correct it, no matter the manifestation.  Our job is to speak to those corrupted or those in the process of being corrupted by it in order to awaken them so they can move forward and reject the SOJ’s grip.

9) The denial of the supernatural.

This as well as #11 just need to be blown apart to smithereens.  Craig Keener, in his masterful, two-volume work called Miracles, blew apart every argument against the veracity of miracles.  Our faith is designed for the miraculous to be seen as the normal.

10) The usage of Christian Humanism, by which I mean we use our natural faculties to provide answers to spiritual problems.

I was in London last week visiting with my friend, El Jefe De California, and he made mention of this concept of Christian Humanism, and assaulted it without mercy.  Basically it is taking a naturalistic mindset and using it to solve every problem.  The problem with it should almost be self-evident.  Namely, that if we can use our natural brains to solve problems, then maybe we are not solving big enough problems, and our vision is too small, and we are not touching the problems with the level of problem-solving acumen that the Spirit of G-d can use in us.  Are the weapons of our warfare spiritual, or are they merely natural or mental?  Are we solving problems smaller than our skillset, and are we even tackling spiritual problems.  Such as deliverance from Bipolar, the healing of Alzheimer’s, the healing of Downs Syndrome, and a whole host of problems from the chin up.  Spiritual answers, rather than the grey matter of book knowledge between our ears.

Having solid argumentation that utilizes the best of the mental faculties that were given us by our all-knowing Father is one thing.

Basing the totality of our faith upon that savvy is something entirely different.
11) I numbered my list wrong and missed #11.

12) The paradigm set in place by David Hume that denies miracles.

David Hume basically argued that because all humans have basically the same experience (called the Uniformity of Human Experience), because one group of humans has never seen a miracle, miracles do not exist.  This argument  of course is absurd, because if any human has a different experience than another human being and witnesses a miracle, then the argument is completely and unequivocally refuted.

13) The obsession with defining discernment only in relationship to detecting true or false doctrine.

Many “naturally-thinking” Christians, especially cessationists, have come to view discernment as only the capacity to discern whether a message is sound (See “Strange Fire” by John MacArthur, pp.37, 38. 72, 124, 125, 241, 242, where MacArthur only relates discernment to occasions where a message is being spoken, and not one occasion where discernment of the presence of a demonic or unclean spirit is discussed).

14) The belief that children have a junior Holy Spirit.

We send our kids for 40 hours a week of instruction in a public school that does not honor G-d, and in that institution they learn how to think critically and analyze, and then, on Sunday Mornings, expect them to color a sheet featuring Noah’s Ark, complete with smiling animals (the Flood was a global judgment, complete with drownings and suffering), and then expect they will grow spiritually precisely because we act like they are not perceptive enough to be receptive to spiritual things, when we have not even taught them the lesson of Noah’s Ark.  Instead we dress it up and make it child-friendly.  Because the human spirit cannot be engaged until the child has been baptized in the spirit of this age and critical thinking that could rip apart those flannelgraphs and coloring sheets that we have been teaching them to subsist on.  The kids are not going to be hungry for meat if we feed them Goldfish and Kool-Aid for DECADES!

I rest my case.

If we raised them and engaged their spirits from conception and blessed that spirit to be dangerous, then they would grow in the things of G-d VIGOROUSLY!

For further material on ministering to the spirit of your child, whether he or she is in the womb or outside of the womb, see the following:

https://theslg.com/cd-albums/ministering-to-babies-in-the-womb
15) The denial of women their rightful place to minister in accordance with their design.

A woman was designed to possess her birthright.  If her birthright is to pastor, and if Father has called her to pastor, you best not act like the pot questioning the Potter, demanding to know why He thinks he has to right to call her to pastor.

16) The misogyny and the misandry rampant in the church.

See point #15, where we expect women to only stay home, fat, pregnant, submissive, and teaching children, or women of their own sex.

And based on pop culture, we treat men like the castrated, brainless, drunken, perverted idiots that they most CERTAINLY WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE.

If you spend your life castrating and performing hysterectomies upon fellow believers, then you will rob it of its vitality and it will live its like believing its a disempowered mass of bitches and bastards, whose primary jobs are to drink and screw. Period.

I hate to use that language, but we are so messed up when it comes to our identities, that we think we are legitimately illegitimate.

Rather, our job should be to raise MEN and WOMEN to be the DANGEROUS SONS and BRIDES that they are!  Equip and release!  Do not administer IV sedatives, narcotics, Ritalin, and other controlled substances, and then two decades later wonder why the hell these men and women won’t do the dangerous jobs of rescuing us, when we abused them by drugging them.
17) White-knuckle Christianity.

Obedience is not the point. Rather, freedom is. We were not made to be slaves.  Rather we were made to be the Brides of Christ, and the Sons of G-d.

18) The caste system between leaders and the common folk.

Forced submission between a pastor and his congregation where there is no trust, is not life-giving.  Rather it fosters the spirit of slavery that yells, ” Take Us Back to Egypt! We don’t want responsibility for our lives.  Provide for us, and we will build your pyramids and live in tolerance of a backwards existence.

19) The heretical doctrine of covering.

Covering as it is taught in Scripture has NOTHING to do with people in positions of leadership in the church.  The doctrine of covering that is currently taught in many churches, especially those of a Charismatic/Pentecostal Persuasion, is rooted in the Shepherding Movement and teaches that believers must be submitted to someone who mentors them and leads them in EVERY DECISION they make.  This is fueled by a spirit of Antichrist which wants to micromanage and control others.

The only places “cover” is used in Scripture have to do with blood covering sin, love covering sin, and covering the nakedness of Noah’s wife.  Nowhere in Scripture are we told that submission to a covering somehow increases our protection over those with no covering, and this is seen in practice across the board.

20) The practice of anti-Semitism against those of us who are of Jewish blood.

As a man of Jewish descent, I am insulted on every point from diet to dress, by every non-Jew who commands me to eat ham when I don’t want to, to remove my tallith, and why do I not celebrate Christmas or Easter.  And then there are Jews who are killed and gassed, and hated for the favor of the L-rd on us.  Christian mistreatment of the Jewish people does happen, unfortunately.

21) The lack of affection and tenderness among believers.

Speaking the truth has to be done with love and some eye toward how the conversation is framed.  We either practice sloppy agape or we just bash people prophetically.  Both extremes are not as effective as tempering the one with the other.

22) The viewpoint that our chief birthright is to hunt for and lambaste heretics (witch-hunts).

We have a deep tradition in Calvinist, Reformed, and Protestant Christianity of looking for why someone is wrong in their practice of Christian teaching, and for exposing them before the world, because, in our eyes, they are unfruitful works of darkness.  And we waste time that could be put to better use pursuing what we were made to do in chasing those we think are heretics (cue the obsession with Joel Osteen and Mark Driscoll and Arthur Burk and Bill Johnson and….and…and) that someone think our job is to be the whiniest group of jerks on the planet.

Look, your job as a follower of Christ, Jew or non-Jew, is to do what He designed you to do, not whine about how sinful someone’s sin is.  Exposing really unfruitful works of darkness, and telling it like it is, is not but a small part of our life.  Instead of tearing at others, go do what G-d made you to do.
23) Our refusal to live in accordance with all three parts of Revelation 12:11.

We love yelling about the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our Testimony, but that part about “not loving our lives so much that we shrink back from death” is part of the deal too, and it is required if we want to overcome the Dragon fully.

24) Our unwillingness to care for the widows and the fatherless and the poor.

The Mormons have it hand over fist over us on this point.
25) Our choice to treat and ostracize those who have committed certain sins that we hold above all others.

Pick your sin, gang.

There it is, gang.  Just some thoughts here for your pondering.  Please make sure you eat the meat and spit out the bones.

Abortion is an act that devours generations. It does not right any wrong, even one so noisome as rape. It diminishes authority that can be earned through the crucible of motherhood.

Every day for each child is ordained for them.

Every. Single. Day.

Interrupting that ordination process and sequence and that potential robs everyone, including the mother or the father who is the victim of rape.

And when Father allows pregnancy out of wedlock, it is because He deems that the destiny of that child is more important than the curses that flow from acts of sin.

Curses can be easily dealt with, regardless of their type. Even the curses of illegitimacy can be handled.

But that child’s life is the L-rd’s answer to the enemy’s attempt at destroying the lives of two individuals who choose, or one woman’s life or mans life who does not choose.

The trauma of rape and the myriad issues that plague “unwanted” pregnancies can be dealt with, by the G-d of Logistics.

That child is a destiny, regardless of the circumstances that led to their existence.

Children are the L-rd’s repeating pattern, the L-rd’s fractal against the assaults on legacy.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, and thank you and Dad for having me.

#letthereaderunderstand

#fathersbearchildrenaswell

#fathervoices