Ditch Theology

It’s time to ditch theology.

It’s not pleasant, sufficient, or helpful to know about divine things. It is more helpful to do them.

I’ll listen to you wax philosophical about things only after you’ve actually experienced them.

The Name of God

“Now I know that the Lord saveth His anointed;
he will hear him from His holy heaven with the saving strength of his right hand.
“Some trust in chariots, some in horses,
but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”
Psalms 20:6-7

I was stopped when I read this again (for the 100th time!) I like it a ton, but it finally hit me: the psalmist is not comparing the strength and might of the Lord God with the strength and might of the tools of this world. He is comparing the NAME of the Lord with the tools of this world.

“We will remember the NAME of the Lord,..”

Just the mere mention of God’s name should stop chariots and horses. Trust, confidence and that overwhelming sense of victory should arise at the slightest reference to that name. For the author of this psalm anyway, he had a reckless confidence in just the name of God.

I imagine him on a battlefield with the enemy bearing down with all of their war machines; arrows in hand with the bows stretching taunt, horses frothing and breathing in step with their pounding hooves. Trumpets blasting the sound of the charge barely drown out the din of war elephants sounding the alarm. Chanting from the foot soldiers adds to the calamity.

Then, this one guy, a poet-warrior leaning on a rock watching all of this effort straightens himself and says “Jehova.”

The animals all stop instantly. The war elephants settle and the charging horses slow to a trot and stop. The archers look back and forth at each other and loosen their bows. Generals look at the animals in total confusion, then their eyes drift across the field to this lone warrior-poet-king.

The pagan priest, knife in hand over a lamb, stops cold to see what the newly awkward silence is. He looks over his shoulder away from his false altar. All that can be heard is the bleating of the lamb.

That is the name of the Lord.

Revival Opinion 01

If revival were to break out in another country, would you go?

Many of the people I met at the Florida Outpouring had come from all corners of the world. They paid their way, invested time and money, and made major life changes to see what God was doing.

Would you?
Give us your revival opinion on our Revival Opinion Poll!

Community and Context

Our brains cannot feel pain. They cannot, in fact, feel anything. It is pure objectivity for ourselves.

Though we can feel our body, it is usually in the context of pain only; when some invasion into the system occurs we can feel it. However, a large degree of that same objectivity expands to encompass our bodies. Sometimes, that objectivity can even include our mirror reflections.

However, show us a picture of any particular body part or a video of us moving and we experience extreme disassociation. We have all had the experience of hearing our own recorded voice and not recognizing it.

Sitting here typing, my tapping fingers are a part of me, but I do not experience them in the way I would experience another’s tapping my arm.

This experience causes us to not know ourselves. We all ask “who am I” and “why am I here”. These are questions that result from our inability to experience ourselves.

In searching for God, in searching for relationships, in joining gangs and cults, we are searching to answers these questions. We were created to not experience ourselves, which means we seek to gain context.

The thing about context is that it is about location AND meaning. Whenever we find false identity, we find it in these two things.

Our purpose and our place (in both space AND time) satisfy this.

With community, especially CHRISTIAN community, we gain context by the person sitting across from us. That person is not only an immediate answer to location and purpose (they are looking at us and our service to them gives us great purpose). They represent God in the Body, eternally confirming location and purpose; our divine purpose in the intended location He placed us.

We not only need the Body for ephemeral reasons. We need the community for psychological affirmation. We need the Body to affirm what we suspect God has for us. The community gives us context.

A New Florida Revival? Yonce in Deland?

I have just caught wind that a new revival may be igniting the Florida coasts again. The word is that Hank Yonce, an international revivalist and crusade leader, along with his wife, Natasja Yonce are really starting to light things up.

People from coast to coast are now making regular visits to their ministry in Deland, Florida, Releasing Glory Ministries (www.releasingglory.com). If their itinerary is any testimony to their reach, they are already looking forward to a passionate outpouring in Latin America, as well as coast to coast in the U.S.

They are already starting to draw the talent of revival, such as Keli Horn and Andrew Phillip.

Check out their ministry and send us some feedback!

Goals, Death to Self & Oceanic Plateaus

I have wavered between total hopelessness and total hopefulness all month.

On the one hand is the resolve to “do it all”; make my dreams a reality, setting and sticking to my Goals and Plans, writing everything I want to write, traveling to all of the places I want to travel, sticking to one thing and doing it well, creating breakthrough for myself and everyone around me.

On the other hand, I want to escape into my musing with the Lord. I want to let Him tell me my dreams, let him reveal my plans and goals as I go, write only when the inspiration sets into me, travel only when the way is paved for me, sticking to whatever is before me that particular day, living in monotony while everyone around me seems to be experiencing life to the full.

These things split my energy, personality, and vitality in two. Suffice it to say that I am feeling overwhelmed and incapable.

Several nights this month I had consulted a few people in ways that turned their life around. I spoke with Stephanie, Brigitte, and Steven. All three were greatly relieved to hear what I told them. They all commented time and again on how helpful and encouraging the information is.

Then, I look at my life and I get down. I look at my financial situation, and I sigh in my spirit. The moment I realize that I am depressed by looking at my finances, I recognize that I am getting some degree of significance or security, some sort of ego needs met, by my financial position. And quickly I realize it is wrong. I push myself into a state of mind where I get my security from where God has me.

However, I have yet to resolve the fact that lack of finances depresses me because I feel unable to accomplish the things which God has put into my heart to do and create. In that instance, I also realize that one of my beliefs is that wherever you are, God has placed you there for a specific purpose. My mind is thus aswirl at least 16 hrs a day.

“I am where God has me.”
“I am unsure that I will survive where God has me; financially.”
“Why am I holding onto survival? What happened to death to self?”
“I started wanting things and so highly valued my ‘survival’ when I started writing down dreams and visions, and trying to create the dream list.”

And, round and round the cognitive dissonance wheel goes.

However, I should take the advice I have given both Brigitte and Steve. Goal lists and plans should never be attached to a sense of identity; it should never be attached to our sense of security and significance. (This is far easier said than done.)

One can do this by choosing to see themselves as God sees them. They can get security and significance knowing the truth about themselves which God has placed in them. This, too, is far easier said than done.

My own human experiment testifies to this intense struggle for those who wish for nothing but unadulterated truth, as seen in the dilemma that opened this entry.

The real world around us begs us to gauge our self-worth and value by our accomplishments, our level of success. This tangibility is hard to contend with.

I DO believe it is possible to get total security and significance from God. I have seen it only rarely, but I have met and seen individuals who have been able to, more often than not, obtain total significance and security (which I also refer to as ego needs) from God. Namely Terry and Donna Kruse, as long as I have known them, have, for the most part, lived a life that was disconnected from the world’s standards.

This I have, however rarely, brushed up against. First my trip to Spain, then the subsequent educational trip around the world, Semester-at-Sea, as well as my having moved to Lakeland, all stemmed from intense times of being totally submitted to internally collapsing all infrastructures of ego needs being met by anything other than fellowship with God. This process I have known as death to self or death to flesh.

This has been the result of a prayer I prayed long ago, which has led to my many seasons of lows (resulting from my cognitive dissonance between what my ego wanted and what God wanted in those seasons.) Almost 7 years ago I sought that God would show me how to die to my flesh and run into the deeper things of God.

Over the years since, like the trials of Hercules, I have faced the different mechanisms of man to feel a sense of control over one’s life. From accomplishments such as traveling the world to being the only person in the room who insisted on self-education to being the unique fellow who could trounce people theologically, or to be the Christian who swore because of his sense of grace, or poverty, or prosperity, or an impressive resume; the places where we can shop for feeding our ego monster are infinite.

As an example, I am currently jousting with Goals and the Envisioning/Planning Process. We now know that doing dream boards, writing goals and plans, speaking of visions and even implementing them can cause us to be in very positive “states”. These “states” are merely moments where we have programmed ourselves, like Pavlov’s dog, to have endorphins release into our brain and make us feel good.

I do not mean to sound negative on this point. Quite the opposite. It is for this very reason that I still hold strongly to doing the activities listed above and recommend them to clients and friends as I do them myself. These activities have brought me out of doldrums quite often enough to say that they are priceless and, barring someone walking in the truly deeper things of God and the miraculous, should not be quickly done away with.

However, how easy it is to fall into using Goal Setting as a means of obtaining ego and reviving the flesh!

Do you realize how few people write out a Top 100 list? I would be shocked to find if it was more than 1 in a thousand!

Do you realize how few people, of those 1 in 1000, categorize that Top 100 list, put it into a 5 year goal list, and narrow it down to a 1 year goal list, and even begin any of the goals?? 1 in 100 of those at best!

And, can you fathom how many of either groups wind up obtaining some level of significance or security from them? Nearly all, I would venture.

Now, perhaps this is only my struggle. I would not be completely surprised to find that I simply have the weakest will in the bunch. Of this I have very little doubt. Goal setting is valuable; but it need be only a tool, not a source of life.

Should you be one who ventures to read this and have a resolution on walking out a life of total submission to God and still be able to not only write out but implement Goal setting and plans and vision, I would beg that you do share your secret with me. I do not want secrets you read in a book, but that which you have gained by experience.

I found possibly one example from reading the autobiography of Ghandi. He came a point where he wrestled with whether or not one should have any possessions in the pursuit of truth. He even assessed whether or not he should keep his books. In time he drew on his law background and concluded that he was merely a ‘trustee’ to the things he had. His books, his family, his money was not actually his; he was trustee and steward over these things entrusted to him by God.

This example has been of some value to me. Now I need only to apply it! 

Coming back to the point, this period of time in my life has been hugely valuable as I face the depth of my ego needs, like standing underwater on the edge of an oceanic plateau, looking into the depth of the abyss, dark and limitless. I often feel overwhelmed by the currents of the tangible world, but this unseen gravitational force pulls me deeper and deeper. The more I sound the depths of my soul, the more I realize my frailty; and yet the more I yield to knowing Him, knowing truth. Like thousands of pounds of atmospheric pressure on every square inch of my skin, I feel that I can neither move nor stand still. So, I yield and let the currents and gravity pull me where it may.

Revival MEGA-shift

Yes, we are fully aware of the fall of the Lakeland Revival.

But REVIVAL, true revival, prevades throughout the earth! We want you to know that we are dedicated to continuing to searching out where God is moving, how and when.

We know that man is faulty, and things will be up and down. But we will not let that stop us from desperately pursuing God’s move here on the earth.

Continue to report on revivals in your area, of what you are hearing about! Also, we will be making some significant changes soon so that you can better interact on the things of God and His moves around the Globe.

Check back soon!