Some You Launch Salvos Against, Some You Wrestle.

We do not wrestle with flesh and blood. We wrestles with clowns, demonic entities.


There are going to be days when you engage in long-range warfare.


There are going to be days where you are WRESTLING.


It may be because the L-rd is wanting to develop other skills for you.


The L-rd has for you a full-orbed manual for doing the work of warfare and building.


There are some clowns you shoot, and there are some you pin into submission.


I bless each of you to see the progress you are making, even when that particular battle feels more sluggish or hard. I bless you to know when the L-rd is putting you through the paces of the basketball court, versus the football field, versus the wrestling mat, versus the weight room and the gym.

I bless you to discover which sport the L-rd is teaching you and I bless you further with the skillfulness, speed, and quickness to adapt.

πραΰς In the Face of Chaos

“Blessed are the πραΰς , for they shall inherit the earth.”

Matthew 5:5 ESV

Eric Hatch pointed me to the following article, which provides a fascinating study.

I will note that war horses, and we, as followers with, our Shepherd were made for war.

“My anger is hot against the shepherds,
“and I will punish the leaders;
“for the L-RD of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah,
“and will make them like his majestic steed in battle.”

Zechariah 10:3 ESV

A warhorse has to be poised. A war horse is a tank. A warhorse has to be able to handle all sorts of conflict and chaos and follow his rider’s instructions and lead and bit. A warhorse is powerful. And all of that power must be brought to bear and under control. When Paul writes the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23, contra the works of the HUMAN flesh, is a reference to the fruit that indwells and is cultivated in the human spiriti) is self-control. To have all that power under control, is to demonstrate meekness in the face of chaos.

This may not be your design, but this can become the result of plenty of training under the right rider. The right rider is in touch with his horse, and can direct them well and skillfully with a touch of the hair.

There are four types of touches in the world of horses, and this applies to humans. Get the analogy.

They are, in increasing order of severity, the touch that is felt in the hair, the touch that is felt in the skin, the touch that is felt in the muscle, and the touch that is felt in the bone.

Thanks to Joanna Lo for that analogy.

The L-rd works to handle us, as bruised, broken, and beaten as we may be, and as fright-filled as we may have grown over the years from woundedness and trauma, so that we respond to the hair touch. Gentle.

Meek.

πραΰς, gang.

Be at peace, knowing at some point, as the L-rd gets you used to a gentle touch, He will send you into battle to liberate others.

Be willing to allow him to remove the shackles of woundedness from you.

Believers Taken Captive To Do the Enemy’s Work

Believers can be taken captive to do the enemy’s will.

and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

2 Timothy 2:26 ESV

What causes this?

Look at the word “snare”. That’s the Greek word used to describe offense.

Translation: if you are a follower of Jesus and you are doing the work of the enemy, which may not be obvious if deception is in play, then it usually is because offense has entered in somewhere.

Not always, not ironclad, but it is a general and good rule of thumb to look for offense if you find yourself snared, or if you aren’t, then someone else in your circle is.

Paul, in the above missal to Timothy was writing about believers. Gentleness, patience, and self-control keep us from becoming ensnared, men and women of G-d.

It is good for us as believer and followers of Medsiah to periodically check in and discern with the L-rd if we have been ensnared.

And if we are taken up with something that is a persistent and stubborn mindset that is not in keeping with the L-rd, it ask Him to do whatever is necessary, in terms of forgiving, in order to become liberated from this.

Each of my friends who work in deliverance have a piece to offer here in which they specialize.

And all of those pieces make a coherent whole.

Between the Courts of Heaven, Leviathan, Unclean Spirits, DID, SRA, Agreements, Curses, and whatever else, there is a solution out there and engaging with the L-rd in his particular solution for your given issue is likely going to move you in a net positive direction.

We don’t do silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all methods around here. Each situatuon is unique, and therefore, the solution sets are also unique.

On this particular issue, though, offense is pretty much allowed in through some form of mistreatment or deception.

Those who are genuinely mistreated and those who think they are mistreated often need something the party that offended them cannot give them: wholeness.

Thus, our responsibility is to forgive the one who mistreated us, because they do not understand and to relentless turn to the one who can give us wholeness because He is whole Himself.

Gang, keep hacking away, because the L-rd can make you whole and remove your feet from the snare, if you are willing to deal with and release your offense.

Be blessed today and be at

From the Desk of Arthur Burk: Pertaining To Racism in the Early 60’s, An Edited Perspective, and Some Roots of Racism

Arthur writes:

“Hi, [Sally].

“I see racism as a core part of the Edomite Curse.

“My perception is that there are three primary strongholds that are intended to pervert the essence of the Trinity.

“According to Ephesians 3:14-15 and Luke 3:38 God the Father is associated with the human community and anything that fractures community is a perversion of the nature of the Father.

“I use the term Edomite Curse to capture that, because of Obadiah 10ff. God’s fury was over the savagery 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽, not the act itself.

“So fundamentally the propensity of human community to blame instead of standing with those who are hurting goes back to Adam and Eve, and then Cain, and millions after them.

“Our religious culture nominally says we are not to hate, but broadly does not teach people HOW to love — especially across cultural (or racial) differences.

“Tonight in my live broadcast, I am going to specifically describe how I have come to love the African American, high crime, “hood” here in Spartanburg.

“𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱. One can and MUST learn to love. Exhorting people and having a token African American on staff and holding symbolic foot washing services when the television cameras are rolling is not the same.

“But if we are only exhorted not to hate, and not taught and held accountable for how to love, we are pawns of the devil.

“After the love in the heart comes action with the feet. But love first.

“My opening point in the message tonight is that passivity on the part of righteous people about racial injustice, WILL bring condemnation from God against those very people.

“There is a massive self-righteousness in the White middle class church. Lots of people have never done anything negative to an African American or Latino or Asian. But they haven’t ever done one little thing to change their deplorable situation either.

“[Sally], I came out of that. In 1963 our family flew into Miami, bought a car, and spent 90 days driving across the US. We took the southern route. This was a year before the Civil Rights march and the landmark legislation.

“My dad was a White, Protestant, minister and he was as racist as it came. We drove through the South in the summer of 1963, stopping a many relatives homes, many churches, shopping as needed, getting gas.

“NEVER in that trip did I see a Jim Crow sign, or a colored drinking fountain or any of those extremely ubiquitous signs of entrenched racism.

“Why? Because my father carefully edited the trip in terms of visual images, and never discussed at all the racial tension in the US.

“I read about it all years later and was stunned. I WAS THERE! And I saw NOTHING.

“Today’s TV makes it hard for White middle class Christians to not know, but it is still easy to ignore.

“And God has some pretty brutal things to say about “righteous” religious, “God-fearing” people who habitually sidestep racism.”

I may lose half my following tonight, but if so, it is people who shouldn’t be hanging around us anyway.

So there is my rant. The nickel version of what I will share tonight.

Cafeteria Masculinity and Femininity, LGBT Confusion, AND Kingdom Eunuchs in Matthew 19:12

What follows promises to be short and sweet. Whether you take offense is a personal choice, and something you might have to work out. I do not claim to answer every point any community asks, but there will be a couple of issues that I will point out, as they flow through this topic

First, it would appear sexuality, male and female, was created on the Third Day with the introduction of the plants and dry land, and that reproduction and the spread of creation requires male and female interacting one with another.

Now, the exceptions aside where gender switch happens in biology, which happen to be a gross minority, and understanding that many of those switches occur in order to create a male/female binary, most of creation by a wide margin requires both parts interacting one with another.

G-d created them male and female, and G-d intended that generation and multiplication happen across the board. This is His design, and well beyond any counterflowing viewpoints.

Second, while conversing with my wife about the transgender issue, and following a conversation with a brother who came out of the transgender arena and back to relatively healthy masculinity, something occurred to me that this brother helped bring to light.

Those who adapt different sexual identity from how they were designed mostly do so with a pick-and-choose system. There is rarely consistency of any sort. That is, trans people generally seem to execute a cafeteria masculinity or femininity.

And the L-rd has made us for more than merely to pick and choose. He did not intend for us to walk in confusion.

Third, I had a conversation with a pastor friend of mine, and he postulated the following question, in light of Matthew 19:12, which reads:

“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Matthew 19:12 ESV

What if we get used to either marriage or sexual deviance as the only two acceptable options, when there might be a third option that few are willing to entertain? Namely, the calling to a life of eunuchhood.

And what if we are forcing people to choose between this (marriage) and that (deviance) when their real expression should be celebacy?

It is an interesting concept to consider.

I do not think healthy and close same-sex friendships are a bad thing. As a Redemptive Gift of Mercy, I have a few of those that I would consider close friends, maybe some intimate.

What I have an issue with is….

…when we think that closeness and intimacy and physical touch means we were meant to embrace a solution that violates all kinds of principles that have been clearly laid-down and later uncontested in the canon of Scripture.

And when He gives principles, and law, and statutes, He does not do it to be a killjoy, but to protect us and to keep us from destruction and from paths that are dead-ends and will keep us from walking out the greater purpose for which we were created.

Gang, being taken into a place of frustration because we think marriage or deviance are the only two acceptable and G-d-ordained possibilities, and we force people into relationships rather than permit them to entertain a lifetime of singleness can rob us of some fine treasures the Father wants to express.

G-d did not make us to solve one problem by creating twelve others.

And perhaps we would do well by letting and celebrating G-d’s design in expressions that are other than the norm and that do not violate cause and effect.

I have seen much destruction when we present or we allow the culture and the SOTA (Spirit of the Age) to teach us and our children what helathy relational expression looks like.

And lest we forget, a man or a woman will reap what they sow. His design for relationships is for relationships where the possibility of multiplication and fruitfulness is a real possibility. Engaging in sexual relationship structures that guarantee both a lifetime of frustration and zero chance for multiplication was never his intent.

For those who wish to pick this apart by marshalling the argument of barrenness (“well, barren people are not able to have kids. Are you condemning them as well?”), then you missed the point and the nuance of what I am saying.

For the barren couple, the possibility of childbirth is very real, and repeatedly we have seen throughout Scripture the L-rd speaking about and dealing with barrenness.

So, no, I am not going to insert the barrenness red herring into this discussion.

What I am saying, is that when our expressions of sexuality violate the fairly-clear cause-and-effect relationships pertaining to human sexuality that the L-rd gave us, we find ourselves in a dangerous place.

And when we fail to recognize or we purposefully neglect other of His principles, such as the principles pertaining to eunuchs in Matthew 19, we will likely increase the chances of our frustration.

Perennial frustration and powerlessness and futility are not the portion of the child of G-d. Seasons where we have a bit of testing and refining and difficulty are. But G-d did not create us and destine us for permanent powerlessness.

So, as you consider masculinity and femininity, be sure to embrace ALL of that which pertains to you, and I implore you to deeply consider whether or not you are allowing woundedness, deception, offense, or buy-in of a cultural system to chart the course of your relational expression.

Those legal/moral passages in Scripture, regardless of the testament in which they are found have a purpose, and they form a fence and boundary markers and building blocks that protect us and with which we can build.

So, build well and defend well what He has given to your charge.

Be blessed, gang.

Unpopular Opinion: There are Precious Few Songs I Do Not Care For

Rumors I intended to mow down worshippers or believers or worship leaders, or [insert a target you perceived I went after in the last post] have been greatly exaggerated.

To the scowling, all things are scowl-worthy.

To be certain, there are few songs that I have had a chance to despise. Also, unlike a lot of the criticism that may or may not gather around me, I am not looking to slash and burn others.

I can point to about a handful of songs that just do not do it for me, for any number of reasons.

And I can point to about 12,000 cuts that move me in a positive direction and in the direction of worship. And yes, Newsboys “Breakfast” does that for me.

Moreover, I have attempted to be very careful in calling out this or that teacher or leader or whatever-the-case as an example of a false teacher.

I realize this may shock some, but the text reads:

“have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkeness.”

not

“have nothing to do with the unfruitful workers of darkness.”

My aim is to deal with the actions, rather than the people behind the actions.

Be also advised that my personal opinion is something I am probably going to share. What you do with that opinion is your business.

When actions get confused with people is what happens when homosexuals assume that, because I am talking about homosex or homosexuality, I must be talking about them.

I am with the people who say that those of us who criticize should take a hand at writing and composition. This is true, and we absolutely should have a hand in providing the church some of what we hope to see, otherwise our words are mere blah blah without legs or fruit.

So, in the interest of time, I will say what I appreciate when I find a good cut.

  1. Substance. What is going on lyrically and musically? What is being said.
  2. Originality. What is being expressed (and there is a whole heap of truth that has gone unexpressed)? Chris Pfohl once said it accurately: “For all of the powerful, poetic and faithful sayings available to us in scripture, that’s all you’ve got? Blows my mind.” Precisely. For all we have, and we are utilizing so little. The Givers among us would blush at the lack of diversity present in the breadth of expression.
  3. The dance between the subtle and skillful on the one hand and the obvious and the crude on the other. I have witnessed a whole set of followers of Christ get taken up with “making it plain” and “what you see is what you get”. They have become truth-tellers and are completely innocent as doves. However, they have lost the art of expressing as skillfully and subtly and as wisely as a serpent.
  4. The truths and, more specifically, the proverbs and poetry of Scripture, written in a Giver language, need to be unpacked delicately, the way a peony, or a cherry blossom, or a rosebud is unpacked. It is teased out. There are fires for refining and hammering, but there are also garden plants that will open for a sunray that will be damaged by things that are heavier than a feeding butterfly. The picture of a bumblebee feeding in clover, as it moves from bud to bud, tells the story well. And we have lost that art of seeing the skillfully-honed craft of a song dealt with in that fashion. For many, what is adequate is the TRUMPET, ELEPHANT, BLAM BLAM, FANFARE, BANG AND A FLOURISH. And there is very little that feels like it is being teased and unpacked and woven together. But we need the picking through, gently, and a lot of it.

For music that fits this sort of rough list, see the links below.

I am going to preface this set of videos by starting with the original cut for “Our G-d Reigns” by Deliriou5?, precisely because we have divorced the chorus from the lyrics and we repeat that chorus as filler, when it is meant to be its own complex, well-penned cut.

Kiss Your Feet was originally a Deliriou5? cut. But this cover by Jeremy Riddle was well-done.

This is just a small sampling of what I do enjoy.

My issue when I have an issue is that something has been overplayed, or does not go deeply enough or far enough in its intended direction. Every one of the above does.

Oh, yeah, and disclaimer. These are just my opinions. They are not the gospel, and you are not required to agree. It really is okay. I just happen to be an expert on my opinion. Take a breath and enjoy, or don’t. Agree, or don’t.

And as per the usual, be blessed, gang.

Unpopular Opinion: I Hate the Cut, “Waymaker” And Other Blasphemously and Criminally Thin and Shallow “Worship” Music

This is not a full-on complete blasting of one worship song. Rather, it draws a plumbline on one song in order to make a point about what seems to be occuring to worship music.

One of the things that vexes me about modern worship is twofold:

1) the lack of substance.

2) the lack of singing TO G-d, rather than about G-d or about us.


Take Waymaker, for example.

It’s catchy, the lyrics it does have are wonderful and it is somewhat powerful and goes in the right direction, but it ultimately becomes grossly underwhelming in its execution and consummation.

It grossly fails to capitalize on it strength in calling out the nature of G-d, and it waxes both criminally and blasphemously thin in the declaration of that multi-faceted nature in sharing His names.

Now, take between Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 34:7.

There are over 100 distinct names of G-d, both directly mentioned and indirectly implied or implied, between those passages in Genesis and Exodus.

For example:

Elohim (G-d)

Ruach Elohim (The Spirit of G-d)

Adonai Elohim (The L-RD G-d)

HaShem (The Name)

The G-d of Shem,

El Elyon (G-d Most High),

Qanah Shamayim Va-Aretz (The Purchaser of Heaven and Earth)

Adonai (L-rd)

The Shield of Abraham

The Smoking Firepot, the Flaming Torch

G-d of the Unbreakable Covenant

Melech Adonai (Messenger of the L-rd)

El Roi (G-d of Seeing, G-d who Sees)

Lahai Roi (The Living One Who Sees Me)

El Shaddai (G-d Almighty)

Your G-d/Their G-d (the significance here is the idea of Him being a “Personal G-d)

Ha Shafeyt Kol Ha-Aretz (The Judge of All the Earth)

El Olam (The Everlasting G-d)

I Am With You

G-d of the Spread

The G-d Who Does Not Leave

My G-d

G-d of the House

The Fear of Isaac

G-d of Alienation

G-d of the Camp

G-d of Immigration, Dwelling, and Sojournings

The G-d Who Is Witness

A Man Who Wrestles With Us

The Man Who Responds to Persistence

The G-d who Stands Beside Us

The G-d Whose Face I Can See

G-d of Dreams

G-d of Interpretations

The G-d Who Gives Strategy

The G-d Who Speaks to Pagans

The G-d Who Makes us Forget Hardship

Ish Milhamah (Man of War)

G-d of the Depths Beyond Magic (Exodus 8:19)

And that is a sampling of the list I have compiled.

Add to that The Anchor, the Ancient of Days, The Key of David, the Son of David, the Shepherd and Bishop of Our Souls, the Gate, the Door, the Light of the World, Our Son and Shield, Our Husband (Isaiah 54), The G-d Who Visits, The Branch of Jesse, Shiloh, the Man of War, the Potter (Jeremiah 18), The Blacksmith, the Paraclete (the Great Exhorter), and Most Importantly…..

Father…..

There was a time when G-d was not creator, but given Jesus was eternally begotten of G-d, there was never a time when He who begot the Man of Sorrows was never our Father.

What happened to modern worship that it grew thin and forgot to capitalize on the mines of Moria and all the seams of Mithrill and veins of jasprous gemstones?

Enough of this thin-surface, convictionless, unendlingly trite, shallow, overly-simplified, knee jerk reactions to small wiggles of the Almighty’s presence, as if His full depth cannot be accessed.

We make excuses and half-anointed tripe and call it “anointed”, and we settle for a thimbleful when G-d has….OCEANS FULL of HIS FULLNESS available to us.

More than enough.

Just saying.

Honor Is Meaningless If Dignity Does Not Lead…

Until we recognize the primacy of dignity,

AND that honor without regular reference to dignity is precluded from existence, we will never have an actual culture of honor. And the Holy Spirit will continue to be glaringly absent.

Dignity is what cures shame.


Dignity is inherent and must be recognized and celebrated in each person we meet.

We have mission statements that talk about honor and cultures of honor and apostolic this and prophetic that, and Danny Silk this and Bethel that, but until we heed the warnings and intentionally deal with the perennial LACK of actively and aggressively proclaiming the message of and breaking the anorexia of dignity endemic to the body of Christ, Honor will be a worthless pile of shit.

“Honor is for what you do. Dignity is for who you are.”

I see a whole lot of lip service given to honor, and comparitvely and vanishingly small is the attention given to dignity.

We must AGGRESSIVELY vocalize and actualize dignity.

And that is the only thing that will handle shame and put it in its place.

Just saying.

Social Conditioning and Government Buzzphrases Uttered During Worship: From the Desk of Chris Pfohl

Chris is a honorable friend who deals in the exquisite beauty and essence of things. Today, during a corporate worship setting online, a worship leader uttered an easy, low-hanging fruit from a phrase that is commonly used.

The phrase was innocuous enough.

“We are all in this together.”

However, it has been drilled and repeated and used as a basis for establishing a controlling agenda that he had to say something. And I am with him, BECAUSE as leaders of followers of Yeshua, we have a dearth and no shortage of poetic, imagistic, lovely, and divers things to say as comfort and you use a socially-conditioned phrase. Are we as followers of Yeshua, Jewish and Christian, so devoid of original thought that we have to resort only to a half-dozen banal things? That we have to let the government tell us what to say because it is easily-accessed and we have to expend little effort to say something.

Chris writes:

Its on every television commercial, news cast and now the tip of everyone’s tongue, including the church, and its nothing more than social conditioning.

Saying it within the context of worship is filthy defilement, plain and simple.

For all of the powerful, poetic and faithful sayings available to us in scripture, that’s all you’ve got? Blows my mind.

Part of my job as a believer, and part your job as a believer, follower of Christ, is to, in the words of Tiffany Dupont, wonder at the loss of “the thought well-thought, the word well-spoken, and the deed well-done. As in the great books.”

And also, part of our job is to not become part of that loss.

When we settle in our speech, word, thoughts, and deeds for the idiocies the culture or government or institutions hand us, we assist in the decay.

Push against the lexical decay, gang. Push for and express some original thought.

And resist the pressure to conform.

By the way, just because I said something or agreed with something does not mean you have to.

As a disclaimer, I want you to each to be free to take what I say, write, or agree with here and run it through your own grids of interpretation and application.

This may not work for you. I do know some of my friends tire of the idea of the government control, and you can jettison that thread if you wish, or keep it if you wish.

The big bottom line here is I want each of you to cultivate the skillet of having the capacity to skillfully express things in your own words, and resist the temptation toward letting others do the thinking for you.

Be blessed, gang.

Seasons of Powerlessness Are One Thing, But Permanent Powerlessness…..

… Is entirely different.

Gang, we live under a better covenant than that of Moses, wherein is written….

Moses was the ground floor for us. Or better yet, the foundation and basement.

And I count no fewer than 10 desperate realities that come when we walk with him.

This says to me that we are choosing powerlessness or allowing this lack when we do not have to.

And developing a theology for why G-d withholds blessing, causes miscarriage, does not fight His enemies is stupid.

Our job, is to follow. And He will bless us.

Until then, I am not going to try and develop a theology that apologizes for G-d not doing.

Rather I am going to expend myself in helping you walk in all He has for you.

When we align with what He wants for us, He WILL send His terror against His enemies. The hornet will defend us.

My question is, where are you not aligned.

Some are aligned and bad things are happening.

I am not talking about the single incidences.

Rather, I am talking about the incessant lack of His manifestation in response to a persistent and stubborn, stiffnecked resistance to doing what He asked us to do.

As Yeshua corrected the Pharisees for stubborn and unyielding resistance to the will of G-d, so presently does G-d allow things to happen when we resist stubbornly.

And we must skillfully parse out what is happening.

Not merely provide a canned knee-jerk response for why this or that happened.

Robust research, skillful consideration, careful weaving together of our principles of Scripture, and a living walk with the L-rd that is not merely a salvation prayer so we can do whatever in hell we want.