Hi all!! I am just home from a youth meeting where our key young men were in the room. One of the things that came out was our potential in God. All of our futures are just potential until we choose to pay a price and trust God. What we have been seeing in Church is people being saved without a message even being driven into them and healings in the midst of worship. This is just a part of what we have been seeing happening at church. Part of what I said to the youth was "We are not into religious things but reality and for that reality there is a price to be paid"
We need to drop our preconceived ideas and thoughts on God and realise that for most (not all) it has been a concept we have followed rather than a relationship. Like a philosophy of behaviour rather than a true living being. Many wonder about what has been happening at church lately and the very straight avoid it, but the fruit has been amazing, as I said; salvations, healings, deliverance and a presence that cannot be described. In summary, leagues beyond what normal church has ever gotten us. As a Pastor I always search my heart as I never wish to lead people astray. "God show me" has basically been my cry. I hear the old adages like "I have seen this before", "this has been around", "What's the fruit". It challenges me to seek the truth, and yes it has been before but the degree to which we surrender is up to us. One of the phenomena that seems to rattle most religious cages is the laughter.....
Then I read an article that basically said this "Most of us associate laughter with humour. We’ve all experienced the side-splitting guffaw in response to a good joke, a funny story, or to an embarrassing moment. But gelotologists, (scientists who study laughter), suggest another trigger point altogether. This trigger is formally called the incongruity theory for laughter. The theory suggests that laughter arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together; when we expect one outcome and another happens. Generally speaking, our minds and bodies anticipate what's going to happen and how it's going to end based on logical thought, emotion, and our past experience. But when circumstances go in unexpected directions, our thoughts and emotions suddenly have to switch gears and laughter emerges out of the tension between what we expect and what actually happens.
In thinking about this I thought isn't that why we see so much laughter at our soaking services?? We have an expectation (Religious thought) of what Church/God/Life should be like and then WHAM!! Two different directions at once. Its like people who have a thought about what it should be like then they surrender and God shows up.
In the minds of many Christians, a chasm exists between the kingdom of heaven and the world in which we now live. The kingdom of heaven is seen as the place we are journeying toward, the better country the writer of Hebrews describes it. In contrast, our place on earth is seen as temporary; like Abraham, we are merely passing through. As a result, chasms stand between kingdom and earth, today and tomorrow, the physical and the spiritual. So we struggle to add things up in our heads and take the easy option. But if we will just step outside of ourselves for a moment and consider this thought. ....
What does it mean that we pray God's kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven? What does it mean that Christ repeatedly declared the kingdom of God is here and now among us? What does it mean that for lack of human praise the very rocks will cry out at the glory of their creator while the trees will clap their hands? What in your logical head does that look like?? Now in your spiritual mind what does it look like?? I am sure not seated in chairs nodding and thinking if we agree with a speaker or not based on our moral preferences. But it looks like Jesus, the one who contravened the laws of gravity and food production. The one who saw in the hearts of many and did incredibly offensive things like turning water into perfect wine for already drunk people or spitting in a guys eyes and letting him see. Or the richest and deepest thing to me was to say "He and the father were one",then "Lord make them one as we are". If that is not spiritual I don't know what is.
Well they are a few of my thoughts, but for those of you out there who may have dropped the baton and perhaps are avoiding the reality of a Spiritual Kingdom, I challenge you with this thought. How does the Kingdom you serve and are developing compare with the one the disciples were commissioned to build......
Mat 10:7 And as you go, proclaim, saying, The kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. You have received freely, freely give.
Mat 10:9 Do not provide gold nor silver, nor copper in your purses,
Or perhaps you are one of the dead that need to hear the voice of God and Live??? God has got to be bigger than our concepts.....Its all up to you... Jesus has done His bit...
Those are my thoughts. Pastor Rob
We need to drop our preconceived ideas and thoughts on God and realise that for most (not all) it has been a concept we have followed rather than a relationship. Like a philosophy of behaviour rather than a true living being. Many wonder about what has been happening at church lately and the very straight avoid it, but the fruit has been amazing, as I said; salvations, healings, deliverance and a presence that cannot be described. In summary, leagues beyond what normal church has ever gotten us. As a Pastor I always search my heart as I never wish to lead people astray. "God show me" has basically been my cry. I hear the old adages like "I have seen this before", "this has been around", "What's the fruit". It challenges me to seek the truth, and yes it has been before but the degree to which we surrender is up to us. One of the phenomena that seems to rattle most religious cages is the laughter.....
Then I read an article that basically said this "Most of us associate laughter with humour. We’ve all experienced the side-splitting guffaw in response to a good joke, a funny story, or to an embarrassing moment. But gelotologists, (scientists who study laughter), suggest another trigger point altogether. This trigger is formally called the incongruity theory for laughter. The theory suggests that laughter arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together; when we expect one outcome and another happens. Generally speaking, our minds and bodies anticipate what's going to happen and how it's going to end based on logical thought, emotion, and our past experience. But when circumstances go in unexpected directions, our thoughts and emotions suddenly have to switch gears and laughter emerges out of the tension between what we expect and what actually happens.
In thinking about this I thought isn't that why we see so much laughter at our soaking services?? We have an expectation (Religious thought) of what Church/God/Life should be like and then WHAM!! Two different directions at once. Its like people who have a thought about what it should be like then they surrender and God shows up.
In the minds of many Christians, a chasm exists between the kingdom of heaven and the world in which we now live. The kingdom of heaven is seen as the place we are journeying toward, the better country the writer of Hebrews describes it. In contrast, our place on earth is seen as temporary; like Abraham, we are merely passing through. As a result, chasms stand between kingdom and earth, today and tomorrow, the physical and the spiritual. So we struggle to add things up in our heads and take the easy option. But if we will just step outside of ourselves for a moment and consider this thought. ....
What does it mean that we pray God's kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven? What does it mean that Christ repeatedly declared the kingdom of God is here and now among us? What does it mean that for lack of human praise the very rocks will cry out at the glory of their creator while the trees will clap their hands? What in your logical head does that look like?? Now in your spiritual mind what does it look like?? I am sure not seated in chairs nodding and thinking if we agree with a speaker or not based on our moral preferences. But it looks like Jesus, the one who contravened the laws of gravity and food production. The one who saw in the hearts of many and did incredibly offensive things like turning water into perfect wine for already drunk people or spitting in a guys eyes and letting him see. Or the richest and deepest thing to me was to say "He and the father were one",then "Lord make them one as we are". If that is not spiritual I don't know what is.
Well they are a few of my thoughts, but for those of you out there who may have dropped the baton and perhaps are avoiding the reality of a Spiritual Kingdom, I challenge you with this thought. How does the Kingdom you serve and are developing compare with the one the disciples were commissioned to build......
Mat 10:7 And as you go, proclaim, saying, The kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. You have received freely, freely give.
Mat 10:9 Do not provide gold nor silver, nor copper in your purses,
Or perhaps you are one of the dead that need to hear the voice of God and Live??? God has got to be bigger than our concepts.....Its all up to you... Jesus has done His bit...
Those are my thoughts. Pastor Rob
