Surf’s Up! November 23, 2007
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The name of a powerful animated movie…….just watched after the last post……..about a young penguin who loves to surf and wants to be somebody…..He goes to this contest on this island only to find out in the initial stages that he is a terrible surfer.
There is this legendary surfer, called Big Z that the boy idolizes who was said to have died 10 years before this time…….and the boy finds out He is alive…..and the reason Big Z is hiding is because He couldn’t deal with the pressure of winning and finding out that there was somebody who was MUCH better than him(the antagonist-tank).
So here you have this young penguin whose lack of self-esteem pressures him into valuing success in a wrong headed way….facing an older penguin who was VERY successful until He found someone FAR better than him and he couldn’t deal with the reality of being a loser.
They both go through a journey that helps them overcome their wrong focus and their value of themselves based on BOTH their performance and their past. Why not try doing something for the fun of it? Because it is good to be alive with good friends?
Maybe when church becomes like that, it will change for the better.
Thankfulness November 22, 2007
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last night I was feeling very depressed…..thinking about life and how some things have gone……….I felt like I had come to an impasse, that some things were of no use fighting for and that I should concentrate on that which seemed to be more successful at the present time.
But at the same time, I felt irritated about how God seems to delay His purposes and His renewal in this region. I said to myself, “If you won’t come in power and in manifest glory, what is the point of playing church and having really nice meetings for the next 20 years? That is not something I really want……I am not interested in meetings going nice on Sundays. If I am not stunned by the expression of God in our midst to the point that I am not really sure if I want to come to church the next sunday because of the presence of God…….you know……scared to come, but scared to miss it……..then I am not interested in playing nice, nice church…..or some nice formula or structure.
You know what? I think He really liked that. He wants a body of people who are desperate for HIM to show up…..not just to have a nice, nice time. Anyway……I had a dream that kind of shook me up.
In this dream, I was in my old bedroom back at mom and dad’s house. Suddenly, I found my hands bound as if by an invisible force. I knew instictively this was the enemy trying to bind me under His will. I cried out to God for help and the dream ended.
The interpretation? The enemy wants to bind you in what could have been, and in what might have been in the past. But what God wants for us is to be thankful in what we have now, and that He has ordered our steps to bring us to this place for fruitful purposes. He wanted me to be thankful for what I HAVE, not for what I have missed.
God HAS, in fact, ordained all of the steps of this church for this very reason…..to give us an opportunity to engage the manifest presence of God in this generation. But there is an order of process for us being brought up to this place. We see in Malachi 3 that God suddenly comes into His temple and the FIRST thing He does is purify His leaders. We also see in I Chronicles 13 that one of the things He does is establish His order by removing the order that is centered in man’s ingenuity and strength but not a part of God’s order. God seems to first tackle the things that must be removed so that the God things(Isaac) that are coming will have room to grow without being attacked by a rival vision(Ishmael). It is not that God didn’t love Ishmael…..because He blessed Him anyway……..but the two couldn’t co-exist together.
I cannot be a man of two orders…….either mine will have to go and I will embrace the Lord’s, or I will choose my own order and wander in the wilderness for the rest of my life………
God showed me that my dreams were like Moses son. Moses received His commissioning from God at the burning bush and headed for Egypt to deliver His people. On the way God was going to kill Moses until Zipporah circumcised their son. God showed me that sometimes the problem with our dreams NOT going forward is that they are not properly circumcised……there is too much flesh in them to be of use……..kind of like a horse that is not fully broken……Until that flesh is cut away and I will not begin to see what God is using that dream for in terms of GOD’S AIMS for that dream……..rather than my own aims……..
Has my dreams failed……or are they being circumcised to reveal a different idea in them then the one I have? Maybe God has a better way of bringing them to fulfillment that will create a more lasting fulfillment……maybe I like 15th best because I can get it NOW and with less sacrifice……….hmmm……sounds like the flesh to me……
So thankfulness in this season is about loving God’s process and not getting frustrated because it is going fast enough. It is about taking our eyes off of the past and off of our comfortable order of yesterday and pressing forward into the beauty of the unknown and into a walk of faith that gives me the opportunity to walk with God and to co-operate with Him in the fulfillment of his purposes.
It’s about getting your focus right and your head straight and understanding that God actually WANTS to do these things…….but in a way that will truly last……and that’s a good thing.
Word for SW Washington November 21, 2007
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The Door is Open
Not Closed
My heart grows with love for you
each passing day
As the sun rises and the dawn breaks over the Land
So my intention grows with each passing hour
I Love you with a deep and abiding Love
That casts out all your fear
Come close, My Beloved, Closer Still
And I will kiss you tenderly
I will show you that the pain is past
and truly the days of Isaiah 54
Are come upon you to be fulfilled
So sing a new song of Joy and hope
Believing in the greatness of Him
Who holds you in the palm of His hand
Ask Him to open you eyes
To what is REALLY going on
Not what you currently THINK is happening
I will show you the tremendous victory
that lay before you,
If you will only be still in your spirit
Look to me and ask.
Beloved Church, All is not as it seems to be
Nor as it seems to you
For the Lord God is getting ready
To Break forth in Righteousness and Power
To render a verdict on behalf of the saints
And on behalf of the remnant of Grays Harbor
And South West Washington
Be Still My Love, Sing to me a new song
Prepare yourself.
God is purifying you, because God is COMING
Ready or not.
Born in a Stable November 17, 2007
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You are still born in a stable
There, in the mess…….
In the last place I would assume you to be
You surprise me with joy
In the lowliest of places
You show yourself strong in our weakness
Hold me in your arms
Hold me in your hand
Show me your steadfast love
And free me from the need to be strong
Free me from this urge to run
Teach me how to stand
and to remember……how good it is
To be in your will………..
We are outcasts, like you
Born in a stable and rejected
Men look at us like we are from mars
As though we have come from a different world
They are right……we have.
Lead me home, my Savior
Teach me to be……with you again,
And you through me
Lead me back to the place of our love
Show me how to shine with your light
Let me be a light in the darkness
A hope to those who are hopeless
A light of mercy to those whose hope is gone.
I will let go………I will let go….
And Be……..in You and you in Me
Let Jesus be born in this stable…….
Let it become a temple, a holy place
A holy moment…………..Let it be
A light dawning over the horizon
The morning of a new day………
A hope……….
YOU. And YOU in me.
Come Jesus……..come into this stable
And make it your home.
“Dwell with Me………
Abide in Me……
Let me teach you
Let me breathe on you
I will trust you with great things
If you will go through the process,
And become holy and true
Do you understand the need for this?
I want to set you free from your own strength
And from the trust in your own abilities
Into the limitless possibilities of God
And God’s work IN you and THROUGH you
What does it take to get a man to let go?
To walk with their Lord……
To step out of the boat in faith,
And walk on the water?
Take a risk! I was born in a stable.
Believe I am bigger than your problems
Or your fears or your deficiencies
Or the words and plans of men
Either I am God or I am not.
Isn’t that what this is all about?”
Okay, Lord…….I have a lot to learn
I will listen, I will humble myself and learn
I will dwell with you and be…….Hopeful
You will come into this situation
You will be mighty and strong…..
Not me being mighty and strong……but You
I will learn to co-operate, to dwell, to listen
To see the hope of my calling
And the glorious riches of the saints
And the mighty working of your power
That same strength that raised your Son from the dead
I choose this process and this moment…..
I choose you in this moment
Not to run, but to be……..your own.
The way out November 15, 2007
Posted by tytanshammer in Random Thoughts.add a comment
“You are concerned where you fit? Listen to Me: The doors are now open and there is a place for YOU at My Table. No longer is it a matter of whether or no, nor is it a matter of where, but now it is about you believing me for good things and a good place.
Do you really believe I can overcome? Or will you be like the Israelites and sit in your misery and complain?
Do you really believe that I will fight for you? That this is YOUR struggle or mine? That really is the issue…..will you believe what goliath says……what discouragement and fear say? Or will you believe in ME when I say we can do this…..when I say YOU, Adam, can do this……..when I say YOU, my church, can do this.
Do you believe it? Then come to ME…..sit at my feet and rest. do not fear tomorrow or what others are doing…..set your face steadfastly on me and I will do the rest I will become your bridge to a new day. But this is a test, like the tests of the israelites……..You must pass the test to move on…….do you trust me? Don’t run away or go back…..stand in faith and look to ME to provide…..and I will do the rest.”
Worship Principles of Jesus Temptation November 8, 2007
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God showed me 3 principles for worship and creativity that are found in His temptation. These are guidelines for creativity and moving into the various arenas of the culture…….what our creativity should have as its focus and should be accomplishing. When Satan tempted Jesus, his basic tact was to try to find shortcuts for the Lord to accomplish his work in his own way. But Jesus joy was to satisfy his father in bringing the sons of earth home to the Father(John 3:16), and the reason that we cannot be separated from the love of God is because Jesus could not be separated from His love of His Father and fulfilling the Joy of His father. So out of this study, I found 3 principles that helped me form statements about worship and creativity in General.
*3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4: But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.*
1. My Worship needs to be an expression of the message of Heaven, that which is proceeding out of the Father’s mouth just now, not an attempt to meet an emotional need in men.
*5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6: And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7: Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. *
2. My worship should not be an attempt to meet the demands or expectations of men but an expression of a loving Father and a process of relationship with Him and from Him through me to others around me. (Tempt means to twist God’s justice, to shortcut his process in your life….in essence.)
*
:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9: And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10: Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve*
3. My worship is not to make me or anyone else happy, but to bring Jesus his reward just now in the earth. That reward is me.
It is Jesus purpose in the earth to bring His Father his reward, which is to bring his sons home to him through the doorway that is the cross of Christ. It is Christ-likeness in me that serves as the window through which the Father engages His sons and I act as an interpreter of his message. Oftentimes in worship, the music portion of the worship is the expression of emotion( either from God or to Him) and the lyric is the expression of the mind of God or the mind of men to God.
For example, the young people’s sound is the sound of Samson, the sound of agitation or the sound of alarm that is designed to rally the troops, to awaken them from slumber and to uncover the enemy which is in the midst of the people. As a rule it tends to irritate and agitate the spirit. Some might say it isn’t worship because it doesn’t make you feel the way other worship makes you feel….but that concept is Operative theology not Biblical theology. True worship always is defined by the message…..and some of those messages are not designed to make you feel good but to bring you into agreement with the message of heaven and the heart of God as HE expresses it. So we have this war cry of the young ones that is agitating the body at a time when the church needs to seriously be rising up to go to war and to meet with God to begin pushing back the works of the flesh(the phillistines) and the works of darkness in the church(*Can you think of anything in the last 10 years to be alarmed about?*).
It is when we see the message of heaven through the sound and the lyric that we begin to understand the various roles for the different generations of worship styles……they all have a place and a role…..kind of like a set of tools in a carpenters chest, you use different ones depending on what is going on in the Spirit. For example if there is a strong demonic spirit of hopelessness or fear over the congregation, that would be a time to employ a hymn that moves in the opposite spirit from hopelessness(like Great is thy faithfulness or something). Hymns are tools for raising up a standard against the enemy when he comes in like a flood, and for sowing the doctrines of God into the hearts of men. The scripture memory songs from Hosanna are modern day examples of this.
Worship is going to become a lot more balanced as we begin to see what the FATHER uses these different worship sounds for. When we see what HE uses jazz and rock and blues and country and classical and other musical styles for…….his purposes in them then things will start to come into balance as we begin to prophetically perceive the order of God in the body of Christ. Otherwise we will have just another wrestling match over whose flesh is to get pleased and the worship team and creative people will be the rope.
God bless…….
The invasion is about to begin…. November 8, 2007
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We are like Britain, preparing for the invasion of normandy pre-June 1944. Everyone is getting to their assigned positions. Some are being moved away to be placed in their battle groups, others are being moved here. Some are in the air, others are at sea, some are on land. Some are tank commanders, others are army special rangers going far inland to do special ops, still others are engineers, mechanics, medics, chaplains……….everyone has a part and there is a building excitement that something good is about to come.
Meanwhile, in the army of the enemy, there is a mad scramble by the forces of darkness to shore up their defenses. The power of fear is rampant, through propaganda and threats, to keep the people from seeing their deliverance is at hand. Atrocities are being committed. The Princes are moving in their heavy artillery, trying to anticipate where the King will make his landing……….where? Where? WHERE?
But it is all for naught………the power of darkness is breaking and soon the dawn will burst forward…..and the spiritual countries that he has kept in darkness will be free……..We will land with a force of a hurricane…..with power……with the glory of God. The cost will be high…….but it will be worth it. Jesus will receive His reward, for He is worthy and worthy to be praised and honored and served, He will have his reward in the earth……
And we are the army of light being prepared to launch this massive invasion………….Are you getting the mindset yet?
Glenn Kaiser Podcasts November 3, 2007
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Glenn Kaiser is known for his music…..his hard rock and blues……but what most people don’t realize is he is one of the best preachers you will ever hear…….He knows his scripture and He delivers it in a hard hitting style that is reminiscent of the holiness preachers of the past…….He reminds me that our creativity has to be biblical and it has to be real. The study on colossians is fantastic………
How to do somthing different? November 2, 2007
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Something Bryan Duncan alluded to on his blog on his web site…..about how stuff in church……heck, most stuff creative in general right now is so much the same old stuff. He was at a outreach festival……he sat through five hours of music….the same kind of stuff done with different music over 5 hours. Even in worship it tends to get repeated over and over until the body just doesn’t hear the message anymore because it has become a repeated drone that they have learned to tune out.
I think the real problem here is that creativity in the bible was always linked very strongly to the prophetic….as much as it is to strong teaching. Much of the creative ideas that Israel got was from revelatory experiences. The Davidic Tabernacle was an environment that resembled the part of scripture where the musicians and Samuel gathered around David and created the whirlwind of God’s presence. It think David created the Tabernacle on that sort of basis…….a place where He could create a whirlwind where God’s creativity could touch earth. It was in the presence of the creator that true creativity could blossom and truly be different WHILE being true to the Bible.
But few people want to work with the Holy Spirit like that. Why?
1. It’s costly…….Being in the presence of the Lord will cost you a lot…..maybe even your life……just ask Stephen.
2. Repetition is easier……..Just do what everyone else is doing and do it slightly differently.
3. It’s easier to control without God………..when the Holy Spirit get’s in there he tends to do things that cause more upset than calm. When God invades a place his first action is to set his order…..which usually means tearing down the old one………that’s where the fight usually begins.
4. Creative people’s goals aren’t God’s goals. The conflict comes when you are the stephen who must lay down your life for the paul who will come after you. Or you are the Jonathan who will lay down your life for the David who comes after you. you think ‘yeah, but I don’t want to lay down my life…….’ Sometimes losing your life so somebody else can have the glory is hard………
5. The Holy Spirit doesn’t use you the way you expect. When God uses you as the tambourine player and your King Saul and his people look at you like you are evil and begins to persecute you for obeying God. Then years later you realize God planned it that way on purpose…….that can get to you……..You look at God like ‘Whose side are you on, anyway?’
So you obey God……..You create…….you try to be a breath of God and it is like the devil, the world, the church and God himself are ganging up on you………you wonder if the fight is worth it?
Yes…..it is…………because the life that is released is well worth the the pain of the process. Birthing true creativity is never easy and never quick…..ESPECIALLy if you are doing it with the Holy Spirit. He never does what everyone else is doing and He never picks anything easy. He wants to do something that will come into its own FIVE or TEN YEARS FROM NOW……which sticks you doing something NOW that nobody else is doing……….and everyone looking weird at you.
Secondly….everyone has a tendency to not believe in what is being done, because if it is of the Holy Spirit it tends to deal with something that most people have a blind spot on……..the sick need a doctor Jesus said……remember? So here you are telling them about something that they have a partial revelation about….and may have to wind up getting into a fight with them about so that later on they can come to the realization that it really IS God………..But how else are you going to get people out of prison?
Thirdly He picks stuff that makes YOU face things in YOU that you don’t particularly want to deal with…..you are trying to hide from those things…..and darn it! God uses the process to make you come to grips with your own self issues, self will, selfishness in general…….ever been there?
There are times when you want to give in in the process…….but only the TRUE creativity that is done with Him releases people from prison….Why? Because only that which comes from the Father can set men free……….you have to be abiding in the vine……there is a lot of Christian Creativity that is not abiding in the vine………..there are a lot of successful Churches that don’t have a snowball’s shot in Jamacia of bringing an open heavens over their region or seeing a release of the Spirit……..because the church wasn’t built according to the process or desire of the Father…………so you have a 3-5000 member church……but totally powerless and off the radar in heaven…..the Father loves them…..but no authority will be given to them……….just what I like to call the Playskool anointing……just enough to get by, but not enough to hurt anybody…….
I’m sorry to say……I cannot settle for same old same old……or a rehash of somebody else’s formula…….or nice easy church that makes everyone else comfortable and Sunday’s Go well with no issues……………I have to have the real stuff……..the big dance…….I don’t want a nice easy life……….I want God’s will………even if it is hard to get through……I want his heart…..or I don’t want this at all……..
Some creative people want to just go with what everyone else is doing…………..but God isn’t there……and I won’t be there either…….God wants to start a revolution….and His ideas aren’t even on the Radar right now…….I guess because they are not profitable, comfortable or easy………But Hey, I have nothing to lose…………
