And the hand of the people of Israel pressed harder and harder against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin the king of Canaan
Judges 4:24 (ESV)
Thoughts Here
Gang, I am doing a read-through of scripture, and this text really hit home for the Exhorter, especially given it deals with an aspect of breaking the Canaanite Curse, one of the Seven Curses against design.
Time after time, I, and others, have encountered those who believe the only thing necessary to break a curse is to utter a renunciation, or have a court case, or __________ (fill in the blank with tour chosen thing to utter). And frequently, Exhorters who are built for the long haul of endurance are hunting for the magic spell or incantation or eight key. THE SOLUTION TO ALL MY ILLS.
And while renunciations are excellent, they are not the whole picture.
There must be, resident within the Exhorter, a commitment to grow and increase through consistent righteous actions of sowing and reaping in order to break a stronghold through overcoming.
Exhorters MUST, non-optionally, and non-negotiably, build a reservoir of endurance and strength.
They have to develop life-strong, sinewy muscle (Muscular System of the body is Exhorter) in order to win at many situations.
Press HARDER AND HARDER. Over and over and over. Keep pounding. Hammer to nail. Pull and push and develop. There is a reason that well-built people are referred to as chiseled and cut and ripped. Such adjectives speak of a PROCESS that happens layer by layer.
Such an appearance is pleasing to the eye.
And such an appearance will be the result of building out groups of musculature. In the gym. In the kitchen. In the community. In the secret place. In all of the places.
Gang, especially Exhorters, it’s time to get cut and peel back some things that you have tolerated in previous seasons.
When we ask questions of others, and we have the opportunity to engage in something we desire, we have then been given two things. Resources, if you will.
Rights plus responsibilities.
We do not celebrate Christmas, and this may or may not create friction with others, because there are expectations, some twisted, that frequently attend the celebration of that day.
Expectations of stuff. Expectations of purchasing on borrowed money. Expectations of rolling with a yearly pressure that may be tied to celebrating the birth of the King, or not.
That said, we as a family usually go and watch a movie. This is something that has its roots in my first marriage but makes a lot of sense. And frequently, those movies are times where the L-rd sits with me in the movie theater and talks to me about what is playing.
And I frequently see principles in said film.
This year we were delayed in seeing the film, and we finally got to see our chosen movie yesterday.
And as a huge Marvel fan, we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home.
And in this film, Peter has dealt with the reality that his secret identity has now become revealed to all. And in frustration, he visits a friend, Steven Strange, in order to ask him to make reality such that people forget who he is. During Strange’s incantation, Peter begins asking him to make exceptions, and provisos, and the balance of the movie is then given to the mess that comes from Peter wanting reality his way.
He wants the rights without the responsibilities and he continually messes things up, which then ultimately leads to a near-destruction of reality. On the way, his Aunt May dies. And other villains from previous realities come to mess with the natural order of things.
And the only way he can fix the mess is by accepting reality the way it is. And enabling Strange to cast the incantation that causes everyone including, his loved ones, to forget who he is
Gang, we have been given a reality and a set of causes that mesh together with a set of effects.
And that reality, when we don’t opt out of the whole of it, can be beautiful, though difficult.
But it is far worse to want some of reality and ignore the rest. That twists reality into something that it wasn’t made to be.
When we do that selective appropriation of reality, we avoid the problems G-d intended us to wrestle with.
And we avoid the following two passages.
“Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds.”
“You meant it for harm, but G-d meant it for good.”
G-d, in bringing us to growth, leads us through trials and hands us problems to solve.
And He may or may not force the issue.
The issue is, when we ask Him for a chunk of reality that includes hla major blessings, are we willing to cultivate the skills necessary to scramble over and around and by that set of rocks in order to possess all He has for us in terms of blessing.
We may not fully appreciate the blessing until we have been given the curse to wrestle with.
Now, be careful when you read what I write. By “curse” I don’t mean G-d literally curses us. By “curse” I mean “problem to solve”.
Now, why did I use the word “curse”?
Two reasons. One, because the poetic nature of the way “curse” pairs with blessing.
Two, because too frequently, WE CURSE the difficult or inconvenient problem G-d gives us to solve, because He treats us as sons.
Slaves do not get problems to solve. Sons, rather, are they who get the problems to solve.
So, take heart, love. Because if you are getting problems when you pray, it is likely because G-d is trusting you as a son.
Be at peace, and if you need to solve a nettlesome problem, please feel free to reach out. I and others, as fellow sons, can help you to solve that problem.
G-d wants to bless you, but in order to do it, He has to calibrate you in order to equip you to solve problems.
Someone missed the transition from communicating about church to communicating about G-d
The above image was seen on my personal wall and so I am re-posting it here with my thoughts:
As a pastor, I would like to address a notoriously faulty paradigm here.
How does “don’t make church a high priority” translate into “no concept of G-d”?
If we communicate truth, and we move from one concept to a different concept, without language for a smooth transition that connects the two realities, then the flow will be choppy.
We live in a church age where where church members and preachers have equivocated “G-d” and “church”, and subsequently used the two interchangeably.
Or G-d and Christianity, and then utter retardations such as “Christianity is the only valid religion” or “Christianity is the only way to G-d”.
And as we all know, Jesus said:
“The Church is the Way, the Truth, and the Life”.
And we have made the church responsible for spiritual growth. And we have abdicated our responsibility, to, flowing from our personal relationships with the Trinity, raise our kids up in the nurture and the admonition of the Church.
Are you getting it yet? Too many of my cynical Generation X are done with the “Church is G-d” Bolshevik.
The issue is not church, but growing up without parents who impart through the spirit to them, not the reality of church, but the reality of G-d.
If I impart knowledge of an institution and then farm my kids out to someone else in order for them to be instructed in Scripture without doing that heavy lifting myself first, then I don’t know how much good the church will do or be.
I will also say this.
Most of my wounds spiritually came from believers in institutional churches who refused to make discernment a priority or listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit also a priority, while judging me by my exterior, repeatedly and brazenly, which in turn led to slander and false accusations.
I’ve been a believer for 37 years, and have been raising my kids without an institutional church’s backing for the last several years, and it’s not because I have a theology degree, but because I listen to and hear Him.
It is amazing to me that, in the first 3 steps of this sequence, G-d HIMSELF, the Word of G-d, Jesus is not mentioned. Just a damn institution which may or may not get my kids closer to the L-rd if it does not know how to equip and release according to design.
So, if the sequence is to truly be logical, I would replace “church” in each step with “G-d”.
Over and over, I have seen all kinds of memes and posts that refer to institutions and seem to imply the institution is the same thing as the Man, and that simply is not the case.
A church is only as healthy as the strength of the personal relationships its members have with the Holy Trinity apart from the power and authority structures they attempt to place on one another.
Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up: a servant who becomes king, a godless fool who gets plenty to eat, a contemptible woman who gets married, and a servant who displaces her mistress.
Proverbs 30:21-23 NIV
When someone with a spirit of slavery is installed into office rather than a problem-solving son, the earth, the land writhes. It does not settle down at ease.
Sidebar: And for the record, those who think I am a rabid Narnian and a supporter of the Dwarf Trumpkin, I have been an equal-opportunity offender.
Our responsibility is to hunt for an unpack what was placed into us inherently. It’s not to look for someone else to fix our junk.
When we beg for someone else to manage and fix our problems for us, we are robbed of the dignity of developing rich tools to fix the problems with which we are faced.
When people are cut off from anything that enables them to see their own dignity, the dignity that will empower them to fix a problem or set of problems, and to see the gifts and tools that are already in their own hand….
When they believe they do not have unless they or a benevolent rogue take what is someone else’s…..
They enable something far worse than real lack….
They enable the mindset of the spirit of poverty and the spirit of slavery, which leads to envy and jealousy, and as a result, they will never get ahead.
Be careful when a politician sets forth a problem, for you have no idea what their solution is to that problem, and it could involve the drafting of another’s time, resources, or gifts.
“HE is able to divide between Joints and Marrow, soul and spirit…”
“HE is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart”
Hebrews 4:12, more accurately translated.
Real talk, gang.
Hebrews 4 is about Jesus. The whole thing is about Jesus.
And given it is about Jesus, let this reality sink in, Verse 12 is not talking about the Bible, unless the writer of Hebrews switches the implication of the objective case in Verse 12.
Proof of this? Verse 13
“And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
Not “no creature will be hidden from IT’S sight.”
HIS sight. He divides.
Those who incessantly say the Bible is the Word of G-d while refusing to say Jesus is the Word of G-d and refusing to give Jesus HIS due in that office as the Word need to seriously consider the strength and work of the PERSON who was the Word of G-d BEFORE giving credence to the Bible as the Word of G-d. For the Bible is only the Word because Jesus is the Word. And the Bible’s Wordness derives from Jesus’ Wordness.
He is not the testimony if it.
Rather, it is the testimony of Him.
It’s fine to know the text of the Bible.
But what makes one a follower of Jesus is the one who Knows Jesus, the Word of G-d Himself.
Know the difference. And learn to relate to the Man as well as you know the book.
When you remove something that has metastisized at an alarming rate, what instrument do you use? Answer: a scalpel. Or a sword. That depends on the context.
Likewise, when you are in Denial about a result and the truth, and the stronghold is allowed to gather strength, that stronghold rooted in denying or hiding from reality creates an oppression. This oppression, left unchecked, will result in the Fourth Head of Leviathan, which we will discuss in the post on that head.
In order to survive and then thrive, you MUST tear down that stronghold, or fall under its weight. In order to tear down that stronghold effectively, you must deal with the root of Denial.
Denial. We heard it when Bob Jones said Bill Clinton had a mantle of humility. We heard about it when people suggested on one side that the morality of the President has little to do with whether or not he or she can govern. “We are not electing a pastor but a President.” We got to the point with Clinton when he said “he didn’t mean it as adultery”. We suspend judgment when it is our people, but heap it when it is the other party or group.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden is grasping for legitimacy because we allowed the President’s office to get that raucously defiled. This creation of the Office of the President-Elect, complete with Presidential Blue backdrop is a Denial-laced grab for legitimacy, because he has not been sworn in.
And many of us appear not to give a damn nor bother to pray for the toll this passed-around nonsense is taking on the marriages and families of those in positions of influence and public service.
So, Donald Trump can be the wrecking ball all you want until the cows come home.
Bill Clinton can be humble all Bob Jones claims.
Bush 43 can be the one who wants to “restore dignity to the Oval Office” while he commits us to an open-ended battle campaign with zero end in sight.
Clinton can give us surpluses until we are blue in the face…
Both Republicans and Democrats can spend us into oblivion with impugnity…
And we can pass around lists that say Republican are for limited government…
Even though Trump and Bush 43 asked for stimulus packages totaling in the billions of dollars….
However, it will not mean a thing as long as we are single-sided in our attacks and corrections and rebukes.
We still have not come out of our Denial yet, church. Neither have our government officials. And I am not convinced they want to.
The problem, indeed, is that SHIELD is a nothing more than a front for HYDRA. Those of you who have never seen the MCU movie “Captain America: Winter Solider” may not know what I mean by this. So, here are the pertinent movie clips.
And we are conserving and liberating nothing, except for the cancer that is present. Our responsibility is not to let one party or group play us off one another. In ANY arena, political or otherwise.
Spiritually speaking, this Denial and “my-partial-perspective-is-the-whole-picture” mindset is what allows things to grow without our knowledge or consent: In government, in the private sector, in the church and in the academy (looking at you, Liberty University sex scandal).
The Mesmerizing Spirit and this partial-as-whole perspective create a defilement of our times, our seasons, and our capacity to accurately discern the rhythm of times, seasons, and our moving forward in a horizontal manner with the constellation of our relationships in the surround.
When you are vested in the success of a political party come hell or high water, regardless of the actual truth, you have crossed the line into Denial.
When you are vested in the protection of a church’s reputation regardless of who was harmed by the abuse (Mars Hill, Hillsong, the Southern Baptist Convention’s mishandling of Beth Moore who called them out on their sex abuse culture), then your attitude is part of the problem.
When Denial strikes, prophets go hazy with their sight, planes fall from the sky because of imprecise engineering, and whole movements in the church go batty because they lose their focus. I am looking at the German Lutheran church for starters, where Martin Luther, the Exhorter, wanted a number of reforms, but moved to embrace anti-semitism and wasted the latter portion of his life combatting and slandering the Jewish people.
This problem of Denial and non-reality can affect anybody regardless of their gift, but it is particuarly and disproportionately damaging to the Exhorter.
Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, FDR, Ben Franklin, Walt Disney, the Assemblies of G-d, the Apostle Paul, Moses, Solomon, the state of California, Hollywood. All have had seasons where they were massively wide of the mark while being effective in other areas, and for some of them, that distraction and non-reality cost them their birthright.
And yes, when you are a President that says “I alone can do this,” then there might be an issue embodied in that mindset.
Or you are a king who, for the sake of political peace, you marry many foreign women…..
Or you are a daughter of a pagan king and are sold as a commodity to cement your father’s political relations (Jezebel), and you swear you are never going to let another person control your destiny or aspirations….
Or if you are a skilled animator who pressures everyone around you to the point where you think that because you are Walt Disney, no one of your staff will unionize….
This diorama of reality is not about one specific set of pot shots against one person. It is about helping to illustrate the worst of what happens when we embrace non-reality.
Defining Reality
Reality is the latest manifestation of the Fourth Principle. before that, it was referred to as the Principle of Sowing and Reaping, and, before that, the Principle of Pain and Suffering.
By reality, I mean embracing WHAT IS as the L-rd sees it. He sees more fully than we do. So, right off the bat, we are talking about recognizing that we see only part of the picture, or, as one Exhorter put it:
…we know in part, and we prophesy in part
Paul to the believers in Corinth.
Gang, reality means embracing the L-rd’s agenda and applying our part for what it is, into the whole, and refusing to see our portion as the whole situation. Broadly speaking, we regularly see less than the L-rd, for some reason….
So, our responsibility is to ever look to the L-rd for direction and input as we progress into our journey.
We seek His agenda and what of His agenda He has placed within us.
Some Implications of Reality
Our responsibility in hunting for His agenda (Reality) is to refuse the popular phrases or excuses of the Charismatic Movement such as:
” I do not have the time to. research this/seek for that/therefore give me the finished product, because I came expecting….”
“I do not have time to process these raw materials. G-d will send me somoeone who will provide the finished product.”
“I do not have time to do this work or that assignment or that thing over there or this thing over here.”
It is one thing for us to ask for help when we really need it, but to engage in every situation by waltzing in with a bang and a flourish and expecting others to give to you finished products from their resources with zero understanding of the cost to them, or the sequence of Giving and Receiving is something entirely different.
There is an entitlement mindset pervasive in the body of Christ that loves to claim divine intervention for Every. Single. Situation where our poor planning or lack of resources is a factor.
Uttering Praise the L-rd and G-d Came Through when He actually came through is not a problem.
However, when we poorly plan and poorly execute and someone comes in and bails us out and we refuse to thank them for fixing our problem in our blindness, and we refuse to make course corrections or adjustments so we do not have the same problem in the future, then we have a larger root problem, and are not far from walking in non-reality.
We simply have to walk this cause-and-effect thing we call Reality more cleanly. If we are chronically late, for example, then we need to figure out why we are late and fix the problem.
We must intentionally sow good seed in order to reap a good crop.
Now, I am not beating up people who have a wound or some trauma or some junk where G-d is working in a long-term process with them to bring them to a better place. Each of us has some issues and stuff and none of us has arrived at the place of sheer perfection. If you are actively attempting to work at bettering your situation, that is one thing.
But it is entirely a different thing when sloth is part of the equation, and you are allowing life happen to you. The spirit of passivity does not belong to the highly effective son or daugher in the Kingdom; they happen to situations.
You must, in walking in Reality, know the difference between pawning your situations off on others, asking for help if you are stuck, and working at the areas you know something about and have means to fix.
It is critically important for each of us to have a goal in mind and, pending our relentless consultation with the L-rd about those plans, move toward the goal that should result in us possessing our birthright.
And in engaging Reality, we must all learn how to….
Embrace the Right Level and Kind of Pain
Indiscriminate pain avoidance is not the domain of those who wish for Reality. Rather, our responsibility is embracing the right kind and level of pain.
Your Pain….Productive Or Not…You Decide…
You have a score of choices with respect to what you do with your pain. And there are two types of pain….productive or unproductive.
Grossly put, unproductive pain is pain that comes into your life situation from which you fail to derive any lesson of any sort. You do not connect with the L-rd in this pain, and as a result, the adversity brings little to know growth.
Productive pain, on the other hand, is pain from which the L-rd is able to instruct you.
Most pain starts out as unproductive. It is the lesson that makes the difference in whether or not the pain moves from the Unproductive category to the Productive category.
For example, years ago, my father abandoned me and my parents divorced. For a long time I could only feel the sting and the heartache of my father’s absence, and this was compounded by the fact that he died a few years back.
What helped transform this pain from unproductive to productive was me helping others who had lost fathers to abandonment or alcohol or death, and blessing them. Taking care of my sons and my daughter.
Sometimes, walking in the blessings that come from walking in reality means embracing others who need when you are in a place of lack and stepping into places to bless and encourage in areas where you have received little to no human encouragement.
We have a perfect Father, and we lack no father, even if our eathly fathers abandoned us. Given we have a perfect and loving Father, what do we lack in terms of tools, affection, and depth of capacity to love and father others?
Nothing.
Reality dictates that we lack nothing with which to father. Not wisdom or resources. Not heart or spirit. Not emotions. Not understanding, knowledge, or wisdom. And certainly not a sense of justice or the capacity for a heart oozing with compassion. Because our G-d could related to our frailties, we also can relate to the weakness of others, and the lack in others.
Because He received from Our Father, we also can receive and then give to others who lack.
Provided we are wiling to move beyond slavery and into the embrace of our Father and give that embrace to others.
We love, because he first loved us. We have freely received SO MUCH, and so we are able to give even in areas where we have lacked.
This is reality that comes from the Father of Lights who has given us his son. How much will He not also give us all things.
Translation: G-d gave us everything He had in the embodiment of His Son. What’s a little bit of stuff? Especially when we are sent to be life-giving to others.
Since I first connected with the P/C movement in college, I have struggled with a number of issues. Things like elitism, condescension, pretenses of intimacy, control, manipulation, covering, the fivefold ministry, and many of these I have written about.
But, a pattern has arisen that I could not verbalize until just a few minutes ago.
And I finally put my finger on what it is….
What it is that drives so many of my generation from the usual corporate expressions of worship….
What it is that keeps us who want and yearn for relationships with groups of other believers….
What it is that keeps us from moving into depth one with another….
What keeps us from fulfilling any sense of duty to one another (Greek αλλαλους)…
And, maddeningly, what keeps us from becoming a body….
This quality has kept us from behaving cohesively…
It is a sense of entitled secrecy.
Presentation Vs. Vulnerable Reality
We have failed at humility, transparency, honesty, and straight-shooting, in favor of slicked-up presentation, and appearances. And my generation is sick of those presentations that do not find root in bare reality.
Because of a presentation that is nothing more than a distraction from what is really happening behind the scenes, I despise the phrase “brother” and do not usually reciprocate in kind.
That bald-faced fakery is why I despise being called Dave by anyone other than those who respect me.
Secrecy, and the hidden hand. Guile, shrewdness, and all kinds of glad-handing, verbal barfing account for my sickness with most of what passes for “fellowship” (gag!).
It is as if we are more interested in coming off or appearing to be real and tender and affectionate with each other than we are in actually BEING real and tender and affectionate with each other.
A Possible Reason Why
Perhaps part of the reason we do not engage in reality is that we have been so wounded and damaged (cue Plumb’s cut called “Cut” from Chaotic Resolve) that we are fearful of exposing ourselves again. We get castigated repeatedly for not belonging to the church, and for picking expressions of the church that are not part of established and recognized congregations, and yet, those traditional routes for corporate expression are precisely the routes that brought us to a place of shipwreck.
And we are sick of hearing expressions that tout the fivefold as the right expression for church leadership that have not apologized for the toxic abuse of the extant forms of the fivefold.
Back to the entitled secrecy.
Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Todd Bentley, and The Passion “Translation”
Jimmy Swaggart helped initiate Jim Bakker’s downfall.
Jerry Falwell, evidently offered Bakker one thing in exchange for his help and then did another.
Swaggart, the second time he was caught in infidelity, said “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”
Todd Bentley never came clean with what happened to his first wife, and why he was justified biblically in divorcing her.
And finally, when straightly asked to identify and name the members of his translation team, Brian Simmons refused to. He talks about a translation team, by calling himself a “lead translator” and then fails to identify the group he is leading. By comparison, the translation teams for the NIV, the NLT, the NKJV, the ESV, the NRSV, the NASB, and even the KJV are all known.
I don’t care how you slice it, that sequence of events where we evade those for whom we are responsible is a twofold sin. First, it is secrecy of things that should be brought to the light, and secondly, it is either arrogance or fear of rejection that will create a natural gulf between leader and followers.
It’s as if, in each of these situations, there is either a an elitism or a massive wound that the leader is guarding, that keeps Charismatics or Pentecostal leaders from putting any “skin in the game” when it comes to humility or vulnerability or following through with Paul’s injunction to “be subject one to another out of reverence for Christ.” Where is the subjection that is the leader’s portion to those he is supposed to be serving?
Does anyone wonder why we are so riled up when Todd Bentley’s name is mentioned? It has diddly squat to do with a demonic spirit of vengeance and zip to do with our opposing his being restored to ministry. Instead, it has EVERYTHING to do with his refusal to repent and expose this crap, and be truly and biblically restored to his G-d and his family.
This right here is my guff with the Passion “Translation”. The refusal of a man to be vulnerable and authentic with those he is leading and placing the manuscript of the New Testament in alignment with the Greek originals.
Greek Is Only The Language of The Mind and Philosophy
The marketing rhetoric of the Passion lands as if Greek is a language of the mind and is devoid of emotion and passion. Let me say this. The nation of Greece has the Redemptive Gift of Prophet. When was the last time you knew of a Prophet by Redemptive Gift that was devoid of emotion and and zeal and heart. Are Prophets not the volcanoes of the body of Christ?
To sum up, I have witnessed a pattern in Charismatic and Pentecostal circles where, when leaders do put something forth for us to grasp, it costs them very little; it is a plastic extension, but not part of them. They extend very little of their own flesh and blood to us, and as a result, we never get to know them as they really are and there is therefore little intimacy, while we parrot “brother” and “we need to connect” and other triteisms. But the end result is, instead of the real unity and vulnerability to which they exhort us all, a farce and a show.
Gunning For Real κοινονια and στοργε
κοινονια is the Greek word for “community”.
στοργε is the Greek word that is described by maternal affection for a child.
You cannot make much of your accomplishments when you won’t also accept a complimentary amount of the priority of humility and submission to those whom you serve. If there is no risk, there will be no reward. If there is plastic risk, then there will be a plastic participation reward. If there is the risk of gold, silver, and precious gems, then the reward will be that valuable.
They are practicing terminal non-reality and expecting a massive harvest of community.
Be not deceived. G-d is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that also shall he reap.
If you plant corn, you reap corn. If you plant plastic, don’t expect cotton and life.
Expecting to reap much without embracing pain, vulnerability, humility, and submission to those whom you lead, the end result will usually be tragedy.
