-Kingdom Economy: Do No Participate in The Spirit of Fear and Worry

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(Picture via Wikipedia)

It is time for the American Church to stand up and be all that we are called to be. In the wisdom of the world it is a time to shrink back, retool, and curtail or cut everything back that isn’t necessary. But the Church is called to follow a different path than the world.

My Children—Do Not Participate in the Spirit of Fear and Worry!

The enemy has sowed fear in the world economy but the church and Christian families must reject that spirit of fear or worry and participate in a Kingdom Economy—Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. (See: Matt. 6:24-34clip_image002)

We can no longer serve two masters—if we continue to identify with the world we will continue to live in fear and we will have every reason in the world to worry. God says that his children are not to worry!

That is exactly what Jesus said and I don’t believe that he was just preaching a nice 3-point Sunday sermon. No, He is the creator of the universe and if anybody knows how it really works it should be him and he says not to worry!

I can hear you saying—”Now Michael you just don’t know what my family is going through right now—we can’t pay our bills and we don’t know where to turn. All our credit cards are maxed out and they have doubled the interest and the minimum payments plus we are 3 month behind on the mortgage—yet you say not to worry1”

I don’t say anything—that’s what God’s own Son says to his people then and now.

I am in the same boat many of you are in wondering where the money is coming from to pay my bills and keep food on the table—but I have learned to stop living in fear and to trust God in the midst of it (well at least most of the time). My business is off 35% and that would usually mean my income would be too but the numbers don’t make any sense right now and at the end of each month I have just enough to pay for everything.

Three out of four of my adult children (ages 29-38) are out of work and the 4th one just took a job that pays 1/2 of what he use to make. One son had to move back home with his 2 kids so our expenses here actually increased significantly. Originally, I had planned on retiring in October and was well prepared but I lost most of my retirement funds with everyone else.

Yet in the midst of it all God was patient and gracious enough to put up with my fear, grumbling, and worry for the last 4 months—finally I’m starting to get it and my priorities are changing. Good–by worry, Good-by fear, and hello Praise the Lord no matter what! But I’ll probably need to re-read this post the next time I pay the bills.

I’ll leave you with one more Bible lesson to be shared and lived—You see my friends we are called to live by faith (I Kings 17:7-24clip_image002[1]):

There was a widow and her son living in Zarephath of Sidon. She only had a small amount of flour and oil to make one small final meal for her and her son—then they would surely die. Along came this foreigner named Elijah who asked the woman to share her last meal with him and she did. You all know the story—that little dab of oil and flour never gave out and better yet she later received healing for her son who was raised from the dead.

Nice story but what does that mean for us today? The same God who provided for the woman and her son is still God today and his Economy still provides. The God who fed 5,000 is our Lord and Savior– We are called to continue to give even in our own time of need.

We are called not to worry, Called to live by faith, and Called to continue giving. That’s God’s Kingdom Economy. And guess what—he will also bless us with healing and raise the dead just like he did for that poor widow who gave out of her poverty and need.

May God bless us all, may he rise up and bear us with healing on his wings, and may his praises be upon our lips and in our hearts everyday. Amen.

-American Church: Good-Bye Cultural Christianity Hello New Reality

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(Dr. Mohler via Wikipedia)

All sorts of articles, polls, and publications have sounded the warning trumpet lately—calling attention to the ‘decline of Christianity in America. What we really are experiencing is the death of ‘cultural Christianity’—the kind that I talked about before– in the 50’s growing up with everyone in my neighborhood identifying themselves as Christians except the Jewish family down the street but they believed in the same Biblical morality as every other American.

Times have changed indeed—the culture wars are basically over and the church has substantially lost—even among a whole lot of folk who identify themselves as ‘Christian’. Here is a recent quote of Dr. Albert Mohler addressing the new cultural environment that the American church could soon be facing:

“We are going to discover that cultural Christianity is what eventually disappears in a secularized age.

Cultural Christianity has been so much a part of the environment of our ministry and of the expectation of our churches that it’s going to be a very different situation for the pastor of the First Baptist Church to worry about being arrested rather than to worry about whether he’s going to get the first seat in the restaurant.

… When you start looking at a lot of the logic of what is becoming endemic in the culture toward the future, we’re going to be in a very different situation than we’ve ever faced before.

And we’re going to discover that we are not as many as we thought we were.

… We’ve got to prepare students to be ready for that and to be able to lead churches to be able to understand what it means to be the church when we no longer have the cultural supports that we had counted on, wrongly, I think, all these years.”

—Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr. [Baptist Press, 4/23/09]

-Introspection and Revival

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I have been posting about ministry standards lately. I found this on Adrian Warnock’s blog–a quote from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the importance of self-examination in Christian living and revival, a timely message for sure:

“It is one thing to believe the truth, it is a very different thing to apply it. We did listen, and apply the truth, initially, otherwise we would not be Christians at all. But it is possible for us … to go on, content with just listening to, or reading the truth, and never applying it to ourselves, or examining ourselves in the light of it. Is this not one of the most alarming possibilities in the Christian life?

… read the life of any man who has ever been used of God … in connection with revival, and you will always find that he was a man who had examined himself, and had become alarmed about himself. It has always been the thing that has led him to God and to prayer — his astonishment at himself.

But if we do not examine ourselves we will never truly pray, and our lives will be lived entirely on the surface. Now, how little we hear about self-examination! Oh, we believe in having a quiet time, a short reading of Scripture, a hurried prayer, and we have done everything. But where is self-examination? How much talk is there about mortification of the flesh? (Colossians 3:5clip_image002, Romans 8:13clip_image002[1])

… allow the truth to search you … apply it to yourself … preach to yourself … talk to yourself … meditate about these things … bring yourself under conviction …[do] not let yourself escape. But …do not stop at that … allow the Scriptures to lead you to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the cleansing of His blood. In other words, any Christian who is depressed and morbid and introspective is really failing to apply the doctrine of justification by faith only. If you stop in your sins, if you stop in the dust and the ashes and in the sackcloth, I say, you are not scriptural.

You must go on from that and look to Him, and apply again the truth to yourself. You must be certain that you end in a condition of thanksgiving and praise, with a realisation that your sins are covered and blotted out, and that you are renewed, and that you are able to go forward.”

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Westchester, Illinois, Crossway Books, 1987), pp. 80-83.

-Is Anointing More Important than Character?

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I just read the current Fire in My Bones article by J. Lee Grady: “No More Monkey Business in the Ministry“(Link NLA). It is truly amazing how this article continues along the same line of the post I wrote yesterday. Grady documents a few more that boldly continue in the ministry in spite of major moral failures.

He quoted one pastor, Jamal Harrison-Bryant, who was accused of adultery, fathering a child out of wedlock, and divorced by his wife yet continued pastoring:

Yet Bryant preached a now-famous sermon in the church in which he used King David’s story of adultery with Bathsheba to defend himself.

“I am still the man!” he shouted from the pulpit as worshippers stood and cheered. “The anointing on my life is greater than any mistake.” He made it clear that he had no intention of being defrocked or disciplined. To Bryant, anointing surpasses character.

Grady follows with the teaching of the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 3:2-7 and makes the following 3 points:

1. There are definite qualifications for Christian leadership.

2. Those who do not meet these qualifications must step down.

3. The church will not thrive if discipline of leaders is neglected.

Response: This is a timely post and well worth the effort to read and digest. The question that keeps coming back to me the last few days is this– Is anointing more important than character in ministry? Some seem to think so in Charismatic and Pentecostal circles. But answer is obviously no if we take the Bible seriously.        

-Protestant, Catholic, or None of the Above?

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(-Image by wallyg via Flickr)

When I was a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood and everyone our family knew were Christians. But no one really called themselves Christians, it was somewhat assumed–everyone was divided up as either Catholic or Protestant.

Then secondarily if you were Protestant you were also identified as a Baptist, Methodist, or whatever. Oh yes, there was the family at the end of the street that was Jewish–they were Americans also.

I remember being asked at the start of every school year whether I was Protestant or Catholic, we had Bible study once a week–Catholics went to the Catholic class and Protestants to the Protestant. My best friend in 6th grade was Jewish, don’t remember where he went during that time.

If you went into the army in those days your dogtags reflected 3 basic choices–Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. Never really knew anyone growing up that had no religion at all. America has obviously changed in the last 50 years or so.

Somewhere along the way In the 70’s and 80’s, born-again Christians who continued to recognize Biblical authority started calling themselves ‘Evangelicals’ to be differentiated from some of the more liberal main-line Protestants.

Now according to a recent poll, the country is far more diverse and divided than it use to be when it comes to religion. Now ‘none’ — no religion at all– is a larger group in America than Catholic and Evangelical has replaced Protestant as the most popular generic Christian label and one of the largest denomination groups is ‘non-denominational Christian’.

In a MinistryToday article- “God as a Fashion Statement” –it says the following about the growing “None” classification–

they represent a growing 15% of the population but as one researcher noted:

“These people aren’t secularized, they’re not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they’re not thinking about it at all.”

The survey found that among the ‘nones’, 40 percent of them had never experienced any kind of religious ceremony (e.g., baptism, christening, bar mitzvah), and a shocking 55 percent had been married in some sort of non-religious ceremony with no religious reference or trappings at all. Even more shocking , one state–Vermont has 34% of its population in the ‘none’ category, far more than any religious group in the state.

The article ends with this observation:

“The challenge to Christianity, does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.”

I found many articles on the Internet citing the poll, nearly all proclaim and conclude that America is far less religious than it use to be. Something most of us already know. Another indication that change is ahead for the American Church one way or another.          

-What I’ve been Hearing Lately

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In response to David Wilkerson’s “An Urgent Message”, I have been searching out some of the things that I believe that the Lord has been telling me lately to see if they compliment his message in any way.

Here are some of the things that I believe that the Lord has been telling me over and over again in the last 6 months or so. As with any message of this sort discernment is in order:

-America has turned a corner and it will never be the same for better or worse. I don’t know exactly what that means for the future of America but it is not the wrath of God but a time of choices. It will be a time of blessing for those who accept what the Lord offers and not so for those who reject his grace.

-The economy of America is going to go through some major upheavals but a ‘Kingdom economy’ will be available to the churches and Christians who respond. Already the lord is beginning to give out incredible inventions to faithful Christians that will change not only America but the whole world. Many Christians who faithfully respond to God’s ‘Kingdom economy’ will find themselves in positions of influence like Joseph and Daniel of old.

-It is a time where God’s justice will be in play. Those who are in tune and help the poor, release the captives, bind-up the broken-hearted, and heal the sick will receive incredible blessing from the Lord on many different levels.

-The American church is called to make major changes and the new wineskins will be demonstrated by key churches across the whole country. Canada also.

-I was looking in the last 7 years for a major revival to dramatically change the American culture and bring it back towards the Lord. Something changed last year and a corner was turned last fall around the time of the Jewish new year. The picture I now see is one in which the culture is going one way and the faithful church is turning away to follow a different path under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This will bring the church under an increasing degree of persecution in the future but also increasing signs & wonders, miracles, healings, and blessings from the Lord.

-Right now the American church is at the crossroads. Some major main-line denominations are already in the process of choosing to continue with the dominant culture away from Biblical Christianity. The evangelical churches are now at that fork in the road. It is a time of choices.

Again, it is a time of choices. Some choices will bring discipline and judgment, others will bring incredible blessing.         

-David Wilkerson: "AN URGENT MESSAGE"

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(-Picture of Times Square via Wikipedia)

On Saturday March 7, David Wilkerson put the following warning message on his blog:

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE – EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath.

<<Read the whole message>>

Response: Do any of you prophetic folks out there have any light at all on this word? This thing has gone all around the world in 24 hours. I have no light on this at all.

One of the hardest things in the prophetic is timing. Is it really time for America to experience God’s wrath? Have we really gone past the point of no return? And what of the Christian community, how is God calling us to respond? I see no hope or guidance in this message at all.

He seems to be saying that the bottom will completely drop out of the economy and that it will be worse than even the great depression–that riots and civil unrest will follow.

Is there any other prophetic folks saying anything like this anywhere? Like I said, I have no light on this and I have a hard time relating to it at all, but I will be in prayer.   

-The American Church- "Mistaking Crowds for Churches"

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       (picture via Wikipedia)

Another interesting quote about the state of the American church–found it on MinistryToday Online Magazine:

“The biblical New Testament church is vanishing from society today. Anything and everything is acceptable as long as it builds a crowd. Jesus wasn’t as interested in building a crowd as He was in telling the truth. Our responsibility as pastors and leaders is not to give people what they want necessarily but what they need.”

Bob Pearle, pastor of Fort Worth’s Birchman Baptist Church and president of the Grapevine-based Southern Baptists of Texas, a conservative state convention.

In his latest book, The Vanishing Church, Pearle rails against the growing segment of American churches-particularly nondenominational, seeker-sensitive megachurches-that build their “product” to meet consumer demand based upon churchgoers surveys. “It’s a bankrupt philosophy,” the conservative preacher adds. [star-telegram.com, 2/28/09]

-The ‘Clergified’ Church

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I found this quote today in the MinistryToday magazine. It is right on target with what I posted yesterday:

“We have to recognize that we’ve created the system that we loathe. I don’t think the reason 15 percent serve is because 85 percent are lazy. We’ve created a system that glorifies the clergy and marginalized the laity. We got the outcome we created programs for. We’ve become ‘clergified.’

There’s a three-tiered structure: laypeople, clergy and missionaries. … All religions tend to create a class of people who are above others so 1) they can revel in that and 2) the rest of us can say it’s their job.

Christianity was started without any of those structures, and ended up like so many false religions do when they create a ministry caste structure. When we see real movements of God take off, they happen when people are free.”

Lifeway Research director Ed Stetzer [rev.org, 2/09]  

-A Word for the Church: “Everyone Gets to Play”

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In the last post- “God Will Supply” -Dr. Bill Hamon gives his testimony about how God did supply what they needed. At the beginning he gives a short word for the church in 2009:

“As we continue to press through in 2009, I encourage you to listen to what the Lord is saying to you individually and to the body corporately. This is a year to “Arise and Shine to Align for Reformation.” God began a reforming process in the church in 2008, and He continues to mold and shape us into the vessel that He needs us to be to see His kingdom manifest in the earth.”

I really do believe that the Lord is beginning to remold and reform the American Church. At least the part that is faithful and trying to response to his Holy Spirit. This is a word that keeps coming back to me since the first of the year.

One of the issues that I believe that He wants to deal with is the huge gulf that exists in the American Church between Pastors/Preachers and so-called Laity or regular members. So many Christians have become just spectators in a Sunday morning show put on by professional musicians and professional ministers. This is particularly true in the huge mega churches in America and around the World.

The first Reformation brought the cookie jar down from the top shelf and made the Bible available to all members in their own language, not just the educated clergy.

One of the major issues of this current move I believe is to emphasize the “Priesthood of all Believers”–we are called to become the ‘Kingdom of Priests’ that was foretold in the scriptures–a Kingdom that manifests his presence on the earth:

“He has anointed me all of us-the entire Body of Christ-to preach the Gospel of Jesus and to heal the broken hearts, and to cause the blind to see, to cause the captives to be free, to proclaim the coming of the Lord.”

It is time for the whole church to be taught and trained to go into the world making disciples where we work, healing folks in the malls, providing for the poor, teaching in our homes, and praying for sick and sharing our testimonies in our neighborhoods.

As my old Pastor John Wimber used to say: “Everyone gets to play!”