I know I am long overdue. Something of substance is on its way...

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in almost a month now, but as time allows I will try and post more often. God has been doing oh so very much in me as of late. I have been tested and tried more in the past few weeks than I have in quite some time. But in the midst of it all, God has been doing a mighty work in my heart. He has been showing me things that I could not even begin to put into words regarding my heart, relationships, and family. But He seems to have oh so much more to do.

I plan on coming home and writing up a post conjoining two word studies that I have done, but I am just too tired to do it tonight, so until tomorrow...

I like all of the verses to the hymn "Jesus Loves Me"

Ok, so I know I didn't make much sense in house church this past sunday, and so I will be trying to organize all my thoughts and what I tried to express in a way the may actually be understandable as a reflection of what God has been doing in my heart, rather than the mumbled mess that was not so well conveyed. 

But for now, here are a few quotes from Revolution by George Barna. It's stuff we already know, but I liked the way he presented it in straightforward succinct manner. 

"Believers will not have an institution such as the local church to use a a crutch or excuse for wimpy faith. Each Revolutionary consents to be personally responsible for his or her spiritual state--whether that's growth or stagnation" Pg. 104

"Christians who are involved in local churches are actually less likely than Revolutionaries to lead a biblical lifestyle." Pg. 115 

"Compared to the 'average' Christian I encounter in our national surveys, I estimate that the 'average' Revolutionary is substantially more Spirit-led, faith-focused, scripturally literate, and biblically obedient than their more traditional counterparts who are embedded within a congregation." Pg. 116

P.S.- If you don't already know them, click on the title (or here) to see all of the lyrics to "Jesus Loves Me" and click here to see Jennifer Knapps version.

Real post coming soon!!

The weather here is insane. A tornado went straight through our town, it is taking roofs off left and right. It flung a trailer on top of someone's  truck!! There is flash flooding, and hail ( golfball to baseball size) , and low-lying clouds with ground reaching lightening. The winds are hitting 85 mph!!!Our lights are goinging out every 5 minutes, it is supposed to be like this until 9pm.

The red section is right near us! On the TV, it has gone passed red, and moved on to a more severe purple!!

My theatre professor said she likes house church, so I figured I would tell her more about it...

An assingment this week in theatre was this:

Choose any familiar space where people gather. Discuss the dynamics involved in how people move in this space, how they address one another, and how the experience allows for any sort of communal engagement.

And I answered it like this:

Text below includes a bit of commentary that is in orange.

When asked to name a familiar place where people gather, the first place that comes to mind is Bob’s house. Every Sunday morning, and even during the week, multiple people gather there to discuss what God has shown us in our time with Him. This is where we, the Church, meaning the people who make up the body of Christ - not a building, meet. Bob’s house is not huge, but it holds the 10-15 of us who comprise this house church. We move and function rather like a family in a house does. At any time I could go grab a bit to eat out of the fridge ( It's not like it's not on the counter waiting for me to snatch a piece), or hop on the computer to “Google” something ( or get Bob or Beege to look up what the thorax of a monkey is so that I can continue to make my stinkin' note cards) , just like a member of the household. I may even go pick up the living room. ( Not that Mrs. Sharon keeps a messy house, just that all us cold people like to drag out every blanket ever made and then leave them all over the place with our pillows)I address everyone as if they were my family (essentially we are family in Christ), and they address me like-wise. People gather in the living room, kitchen, or around the table and just “hang-out” until everyone gets there. Then around 10:30am (if we are lucky) everybody goes into one room to collectively talk about all that God has shown us. It’s not any formal meeting with one person talking the whole time telling you how to be a Christian; it is the body of Christ communing. Here there is no “head-honcho”; there is no child, simply Saints. Every person has the exact same opportunity to hear from God as a “pastor” or “preacher” does. And in the house, everyone can share the revelation from God that they have received. Or they can share the verse that has made the difference in how their week has gone, or simply how they have been changed to be more like Christ that week. There is no one person who is too young to speak, some house churches have 4 and 5 year olds that bring a Word from the Lord that revolutionizes the way that we see things. If you have a question, you ask it. If you have a Word, you speak it. If you have a song, you sing it. No one is spoken down to and no one is demeaned. Everyone is there to uplift and exhort the body of Christ, even in a gentle rebuke. This is the “communal engagement”. ( Just so you know, the term "communal engagement" was how my Anth. teacher described the gathering on monkeys, and now that I have related that term to house church, I automatically picture us as the gathering of a bunch of monkeys).The entire lifestyle of the Saints is a “communal engagement”. Think about it like the human body. Each part of the body is in constant communion with the rest of the body. Each part works together in harmony (communion) to function; the heart, lungs, hands and feet all have their role, and if they don’t fulfill that role then the entire body is hindered and can’t function as it was designed to. The arm simply cannot pop off and decide not to function for a day, it must fulfill its role every moment of every day. If it did pop off, then the blood would not be able to get to it, and it would eventually loose everything that made it alive. Like-wise, a member of the body if Christ must be in constant communion with Christ, and His people. I cannot cease to function without hindering the rest of the body of Christ. And choosing not to function would mean that the blood of, which gives me life, would no longer be able to flow in and through me. The gathering of the Saints is the communal engagement, and it just happens to be at Bob’s house.




Oh, and this is my official 200th post. I didn't want that last goofy thing to be my real 200th post, not that this is much better, but still...

Some things I have been thinking about

"I can give you one simple reason why we don't have revival in America. Because we're content to live without it. We're not seeking God - we're seeking miracles, we're seeking big crusades, we're seeking blessings. In Numbers 11, Moses said to God, 'You're asking me to carry a burden I can't handle. Do something or kill me!' Do you love America enough to say, 'God, send revival or kill me'? Do you think it's time we changed Patrick Henry's prayer from, 'Give me liberty or give me death,' to 'Give me revival or let me die'? "*

~ Len. Ravenhill

America is so absorbed in self: self-help, self-esteem, self-respect...pretty much self-worship. We don't seem to care about the 30,000 children that are dying EVERY DAY from preventable causes!!!! (starvation being the main cause) Yeah, I am talking about the approximately three that have died since you started reading this post. But we can drink our 5 dollar coffee; we can pay our tithe every Sunday to help build a new multi-million dollar sanctuary. We can pray for the orphans, but send no relief. We can put on a mask of being good "Christians" and knowing a lot of bible verses, but we still have the same unchanged heart that we had when we first claimed to have "gotten saved". And we schedule our annual "Revival" where we rent a tent and serve food to draw the people in. Maybe 10-50 people will come up and "give their life to the Lord", only to follow the example of all the other "Christians" in the church who read their bible once a week, then go to a building every Sunday to get "feed" the word of God. If you can call it food, it is more like watered down milk. This is not revival. It's not Christianity. This is hypocrisy. It is being lukewarm. It is is vomit. (Rev. 3 :16)

The beginning of the Great New Hebrides Revival in Scotland came when a young man stood before the church and held up his hands, asking how could God bless him with dirty hands. He kept asking if his hands were clean before God. The young man kept quoting Psalm 24:3-4,

"Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart."

A great revival broke out where Duncan Campbell preached, and almost the entire island was saved. Revival started because one teenage boy got up to said a prayer, and didn't stop until he poured out his heart. And all who were around were convicted and convinced that they must have clean hands and a pure heart. (1 Cor. 14:24) One prayer that was led by the Holy Spirit changed a town for centuries.

Whether the town was going to follow or not, that young man knew personal revival that day. He knew that he had to have clean hands and a pure heart. That spark lead to a country-wide revival. Revival is when we count the cost. It is forsaking all we have in this world and following hard after Christ. (Matt. 19:21/Mark 10:21)It is visiting the widows and orphans. It is staying unspotted from the world. (James 1:27)

So why don't we pray like that? Why don't our hearts ache for the lost? Why are we content to let Americas Christianity be sitting in a pew every Sunday? Why aren't we sharing in the sufferings of Christ? Why is it that the religious leaders of Jesus' day hated Him and killed Him, be we are content to sit under the same sort of religious leaders every Sunday? Why are we not on our faces every day and night crying out to God for Revival?

Maybe we don't pray because our hands aren't clean and our hearts aren't pure? Maybe our hearts don't ache for the lost, because our heart is too consumed with selfish desires to care about another persons soul? Maybe we sit in pews because that is tradition, and we are comfortable with that? Maybe we aren't sharing in the sufferings of Christ because we had to suffer enough this morning when we sat in 5 minutes of traffic in an air-conditioned car in the richest country in the world? Maybe we sit under the same religious leaders because we have itching ears and they tell us exactly what we want to hear ("oh, you believe in God, you gave your heart to Him, well then your saved, and He will give you love, joy, peace, and happiness. And I can't forget mustangs, mansions, and money!!! " Less popularly known as mammon!!)? Maybe we aren't crying out for Revival because we are content to live without it?

So, I must ask myself: Do I have clean hands? Do I have a pure heart? Am I unspotted from the world? Am I content to live without revival?

*Copyright (C)1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale, Texas

Religion 1001

OK, so this theatre class is becoming more of a religion class for me. This week I had to write a report on how Circus Maximus is like the local movie theatre. For those of you that don't remember Circus Maximus was the Roman arena where 50,000 people gathered to watch wrestling, and animal fighting, or Christians being chase by the animals until they died. Well I did the report and all, but it really got me thinking about how much Circus Maximus really is like the local movie theatre. Back in the day Christians never would have hung around there for "fun" or "fellowship". Circus Maximus meant death for true Christians, the ones that wouldn't renounce their faith to save their skin that is. I think the same can be said our local movie theatre, and the general entertainment that we find in America and the world today. It does not mean physical death, but by golly it could most certainly mean spiritual death. I mean, it is equivalent to walking directly into the enemies camp and sitting there and enjoying the exact same thing that they find entertaining. Sharing in the sin, vile, wickedness that the world likes to put on a movie screen. But we aren't content to partake of it at the theatre alone; we like to invite it into our homes to share with the world there too. Now I can't generalize and say ALL TV, and ALL movies, and ALL video games are bad, and that they ALL mean death. I do however find that almost all of them are. If there isn't sex, then there is foul language, if not that then crude humor, and if not that then rebellion, or lying, or dishonoring parents, or dishonoring GOD! I don't think that Jesus or the disciples thought that lounging around Circus Maximus was fun. And even if the movie as a whole isn't "bad", do I really want to devote my time to watching it. Do I want to spend even 30 minutes entertaining myself with the same thing that the world is? So this week God has been challenging me to not look like, partake of, or share entertainment with anything of the world, but rather to spend my time partaking of the things of the Kingdom that I am a part of.

And there are a few shows that aren't horrible, and can even be educational, or a few movies that uphold what is good, and right, and true, but I want to spend the time that God has given me wisely. So if watching those things is wise, and spurs me on to love and good works more than praying, or more than reading Gods living word, then sure, I just might go for it. This is just what God has been challenging me with this week!

"You're an idiot"- Title of "sermon"

An assignment for my theatre class was to attend a local church, synagogue, or mosque. I really wish I could have/would have said that it was against my religion to go to a church building. But Bekah and I went to a late service at Feeling Place anyway. I figured it would be bad, but I honestly was not prepared for it. Yes, they had the lights, the background, million-dollar structure, and the seeker-friendly-ness, but what got me was the emotion of it all. It would have been so easy to get caught up in it. I didn't sing the songs, or even really listen to the "sermon", I just watched the people. "All the devotion was emotion." Standing there, I saw just how easy it was to completely throw yourself into the hyped-up worship service, and from there you would be open to just about anything, including one of the dumbest "sermons" you could possibly imagine. Thousands of people sit under that EVERY Sunday morning, and it doesn't seem like I am doing anything to help rescue them from such a vain existence. The only difference from me and them, is that God had the mercy to open my eyes to see what I was fighting against. And He gave me and is continuing to give me the strength to fight the structure, the rebellion, the emotion…the anti-Christ in myself. And since I have freely received, then why does it seem that I am not freely giving, even to the sheep with blinders???