faith

We analyze when we should be actualizing. We process instead of obey. We see this life as our own experience ignoring His vision beyond today.  

I hear the Word and feel the goad, then get angry at the bumps in the road.  

My vision only sees the next oblivious of those my path infects.  

"All I can do is all I can do," the mantra of the stuck consistently plays in my head while bleeding out my pluck.  

Responsible man doing your job, plodding a reasonable course, at the end of the day you've made your hay and you eat it like a tired plow horse.  

Eternity beckons, and creativity calls. But in these twilight years, my engine stalls.  

All my dreams are dead but one, all converged and before I'm done my tale will be one of two: I have fulfilled what He called me to, or I have stayed with reasonable folk pulling under the plowman's yoke?  

Stepping into what you can see is living a life of safety. But faith cannot with human reason commence. It breaks the bridle of common sense.  

It leaves the furrow in the dale of the dead, never to be stabled in the plowman's shed.  

Grace joins our needs with His plan. Truth in love gives faith to fallen man.  

His idea is resurrected for His glory. Forgiveness, healing and purpose becomes our story.  

God has implanted that amazing seed, and it waits to be watered with Word and deed so that it can accomplish eternal preservation, magnifying His great love in every tribe and nation.

The substance of things hoped for enters when you answer the door. The evidence of things unseen is Jesus bringing in His immeasurably more than you can ever dream or conceive. With your head up and eyes open, believe!

fear

6.18.26. Fear is not just a spirit. Its a region, a realm that is outside the presence of God. -Isi Igenegba

 When Adam sinned the first thing he did was try to cover himself (the very first CYA), and the second thing he did was place himself out of sight of God. When God came to walk and talk with him, God said, "Adam, where are you?" It wasn't that God did not know where Adam was. He was pointing out to Adam that he was now living in fear, a place away from His Presence. Adam's response to God was, "I was afraid..." because the action of sin takes us out of the abiding presence of God. He had committed the one action God had told them never to do, and that placed his mind, his heart, his psyche in a realm where, from his perspective, God could not access him.

Fear is the result of sin. And fear distorts reality. "...so I hid..." Adam's sin placed him in such a distorted state that he actually believed he could hide from God. The reality is, of course, that's not possible. But living in the land of fear because of sin... what else could he have done? Own it?

This is the ploy of the defeated one, the devil. His plan is to get you in a place where you think you have to stay away from God. How childish we are to think that the Most High God could be limited in any capacity. He knows all, He sees all, and He is everywhere. 

 The psalmist wrote in Psalms 139:7-11 NKJV

[7] Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? [8] If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. [9] If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, [10] Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me. [11] If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” Even the night shall be light about me...

So I ask myself, "Where are you?" God knows, and He has a destination in mind and has planned every turn and stop, every panaramic view, every vista, every valley, every hike, etc. Am I hiding? What am I hiding from God, keeping from Him? When I get in a place where my interaction with Jesus is cooled down, what lie from the defeated one has imbedded itself in my thinking? When I deny times God is calling me into prayer and worship, why do I demur? I must confess it is usually because I am either acting in a way unpleasing to God, or I've latched on to a selfish emotion or ambition.  

I wonder how God would have responded if Adam would have just owned it and "come boldly to the throne." That's what we have to do with fear, with deception, with sin. Call it what it is, or even if you don't know, come boldly, quickly, emphatically before the throne of Grace and get it sorted. When its easier to go hide in our business of life, in our t.v. shows, in our work, even in church, we know we have crossed the border into fear.  

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Proverbs 1.7, 9.10. Sometimes we are genuinely afraid of being found out, punished, banished, hurt. The fear of God is not this kind of fear. The acknowledgement and respect of the Lord and His place in the world and your life is a more relevent way to say it. When we acknowledge God's rightful place and respect His authority-that is the beginning of wisdom. 

When we abide in a God-acknowledging place, we reject living in the realm of fear. And even if we have transgressed, we should not allow ourselves to believe that broken communication with Him hides us from Him. He provided the answer to our transgression in His Son's life, death, and resurrection. Love keeps no record of wrongs, God is love. Perfect love, His love casts out all fear.  

But, in our lives, in every circumstance what we need to do is just man up in the instance of transgression, and take it all straight to God. "God, I need a word. I need wisdom." "Holy Spirit, I need discernment." Or "Jesus, I did this..." Just come boldly before the throne of grace, trembling, if you must, just come to Him. Bring it all to Him and the fear will be gone. Because the moment you take the first step toward Him, you stepped out of that region, crossed the border of the realm of fear immediatly and into His Presence. Freedom stands at the gate of His presence and fear cannot follow you in!  

Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom!

Holy Spirit

Lerachef is the Hebrew word for hovering. It is the first recorded action of the Holy Spirit in the Bible.  The first recorded place the Holy Spirit was doing this was over the waters of the formless and void earth, where darkness was on the face of the deep.  The Spirit of God, the second person of the Trinity of God the Most High mentioned in the Bible came to a dark, vacuous, wreck of a place, and was hovering over the very place where chaos (the deep) abides.  Before God spoke the Word over this wreck of a place, the Holy Spirit came to hover over it, quietly, like an engineer, or an architect scoping out the rise and fall of landscape before deciding where to begin work. 

I wonder, did the water ripple under the Holy Spirit’s scrutiny?  Was there a slight breeze coming from that examination?  Was there wind ushering from that Holy inspection?  He was hovering over where chaos lived, at its front door, but there was no trepidation, no fear.  Just hovering.  Taking it all in, perhaps measuring.  Perhaps gathering the blueprint of the amazing operation that was about to commence. But chaos was quiet, obedient, and completely still. A beautiful peace, just hovering.  How long?  And then, God said…

When talking or writing of the Trinity of the Most High God, we use this order:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Father is first, because He is the generator of ideas, the provider, the protector.  But the Holy Spirit was the next person in the Trinity mentioned in the Genesis account, not the Son.  The Holy Spirit came hovering over the site in preparation for the spoken Word, the Son, for what He would do.  

It is interesting that before the Son, Jesus of Nazareth began His ministry among humankind, there was one who came before Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Mark chapter 1, verses 2 and 3 tell the story of how it was The Plan to send a messenger to prepare the way before Jesus.  “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’”  John the Baptizer was born of a mother who was barren up to that time, and a father who was a priest serving in the Temple of God.  It was a miracle that his mother, Elizabeth, became pregnant.  When Mary, the mother of Jesus came to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, the infant in her womb leaped and was filled with the Holy Spirit in the presence of Jesus, also an infant in Mary’s womb.  

It was John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit, who prepared the way for the Lord by preaching repentance in the wilderness by the Jordan River, where he baptized those responding to his message.  John told the people that gathered to hear him, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose.”  He was, by the Holy Spirit, preparing for something completely new, very intense, and life changing.  And when he had baptized Jesus, it was the Holy Spirit Who descended like a dove from the sky and hovered over Him as the Father spoke of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”

Hovering again, just before guiding Jesus deeper into the desert for forty days and the chaos of temptation by the evil one.  Hovering of the Holy Spirit equals Divine preparation and guidance.  It is what the Holy Spirit does.

After Jesus had completed His mission of Redeeming humankind, and He was getting ready to leave this earth, He made His disciples a promise.  He said in John 14.16-18, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him; for He dwelleth in you, and shall be in you.  I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.”  And in Acts 1.8:  “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Acts 2.1-4:  “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

But there is one more purpose the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us.  He seals us until Jesus returns.  He marks us for God, for our inheritance from God through Christ Jesus.  Ephesians 1.13 & 14 tells of it.  And its the Holy Spirit in us that holds God's full wrath from coming upon the earth.  It's the Holy Spirit in us that brings clarity and peace to any location or situation we come into.

Hovering.  Preparing.  Guiding.  Comforting.  Helping.  Empowering.  These are the obvious and patent works of the Holy Spirit, second in order of scripture of the Trinity of God the Most High.  God the Father had a phenomenal idea, and before the Word (Jesus) was spoken, the Holy Spirit hovered and prepared the work, faced off with chaos, heralding a new thing.  God gives humankind an idea, the Holy Spirit is there facing off with chaos, hovering, preparing, guiding, comforting, helping, empowering us to accomplish it. 

He is the original and always completely effective anti-depressant.  He is the original attention getter, calling our senses to danger that we do not see.  He is the bringer of that peace that goes beyond our human understanding.  And like a blanket that brings warmth, dispels worry, and instills confidence, the Holy Spirit covers the lives of those who believe and follow after Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Life. If you feel like you're drowning in a sea of chaos, just start singing, "Holy Spirit, Thou art welcome in this place," or "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Invite the Holy Spirit into your chaos, grief, anger, sadness, frustration. Do it. Watch what happens.

Father

Colloquium cum Deo Altissimo

(Conversations with the Most High God)

Father

The word-picture You supplied to us about Who we call the first person of the Godhead is the Father. And whatever that means in the integrity of the Divine, humans understand it clearly. I am a father, and this is how I understand God, our Father. I can begin to know You by what Jesus said about You: speaking to humans, He said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father Who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” I can relate to that.  

When my sons came into the world I had ideas about what kind of experience I could provide for them. Three words in this sentence give me a broader picture of Who the Father God is: Ideas, experience, provide.

It was Your idea, Heavenly Father, it was all Your idea. You were not created, You have always existed, and we cannot fathom that beyond the words.  But everything we at least know about, and  there is so very much we do not know about, the idea of it all came from You, Father. You were not alone in Your I Am-ness, so you made the angels to be what we know of as Your Divine Council, the Ben he Elohim, the sons of God. You wanted to create beings that could share in Your creativity, Your idea of comradery, and to witness Your Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnipresence. And when You laid the foundations of the earth the sons of God, the Ben he Elohim rejoiced at it. 

You wanted them to experience all that with You. With them, with us, You wanted to share the experience of a new thing You were doing, like I dreamed of sharing the things I know about and like to do with my sons. The creativity I have fostered in my sons is an idea that comes from the Heart of The Father, God-You! I want my sons to understand what I understand, to learn how to use that knowledge to create their lives, their existence, to bring experience to themselves and others, even their children. Father God, I see that You are for us, about us, investing Your cleverness, Your tenacity, Your genius, Your Personality, Your humor, and ultimately Your divinity through Your only begotten, Jesus.

And with that comes provision. I have, with the money I have worked for, provided cameras, skateboards, computers, snowboards, sports equipment, musical instruments, cool clothes, books, education, correction, discipline, and everything that could spawn creativity for living the life they choose. I provided them the freedom to choose, because You provide us with that freedom. You said that whatever we bind and loose in heaven and in earth will be bound or loosed. You provided the ability to see something that does not exist as though it does, and the power to make it happen with Your permission and even Your help and guidance. I can see Your beautiful heart, Father God, in small part in the heart You have provided me. You created these things, it was Your pleasure to do so, and You pronounced them good. In every conceivable way You have modeled how a good father should behave, so that we have every opportunity to create goodness and beauty in truth. You have given us so much more than we can ask or conceive. Thank You, my Father God.

But, even more than all this, You planned our salvation before You had even laid the foundations of the earth. You foresaw our sin, our wanton evil desire that would derail Your idea of togetherness for a time. You saw the glitch before time, and had already made a way of restoring union with You, because You are I Am! What an invincible love! What an indomitable heart! What a Father You are!

GOD

 Colloquium cum Deo Altissimo

(Conversations with The Most High God)

- by D. Aubrey Crawford

Before there was space, matter, and continuum, there was You.  In my finite understanding, You were I Am, You are I Am, and You will always be I AM. (Inhalation, exhalation) YHWH.  I can say the words, but full comprehension is beyond me: perfect tri-unity,  Three distinct Persons in One: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Originator, Activator, Motivator.  I Am, I Do, I Will, or any sequence thereof, humans identify you as El Shaddai, Adonai, El Elyon, The Most High, YHWH of the Elohim, to all creation.  

All I can begin to comprehend is that in the beginning, in Your Tri-unity, and possibly with angels witnessing, You created the heavens and the earth.  All I know of the heavens is what I can see in the sky, and that is Your Tabernacle, Your temporary throne room, like a cosmic tent.  All I know of earth is that it is a speck of sand in oceans of space, the heavens above the sky, and it is little more than Your footstool.  You are the creative Source, the Generator of this immense idea, the universe, stars, planets, galaxies, solar systems, nebulas, black holes, comets, worlds within worlds.  And in the obscure far-reaches of all it is a little blue marbled speck on which You created humankind.

From what You have made and where You have made it I think You have a fondness for obscurity and meniality.  You love making grandness from the very least likely sources.   We seem to be hanging precariously on nothing in space, our earth, spinning continuously on axis, while hurtling wildly around our star, the sun, which is caught in the current of galaxial forces whipping around the galaxy’s center at an unfathomable break-neck speed.  There is a profound danger and wildness about it all.  But it is all directed by You, like safe danger, but maybe not so safe.  You like wildness, perhaps, because You are untamable.  In a way, it resembles human life: you can’t know anything about it until you live it: the essence of experience.  Whether it is ordered chaos or chaotic order, it is amazing, awesome, perfect, deeply beautiful, and hauntingly exhilarating!

Under it, above it, through it all, holding it all in its perfect place is Your unseen power, Your Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence.  Every particle I am made of, every particle of space dust in every sector of its vastness, You hold in place, sustain, perpetuate, and direct according to Your will.  The Most High God.  El-Elyon.  YaHWeH.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Church

There was an old song my Aunt Wanda used to sing.  "My House is full, but my field is empty.  Who will go and work for me today?  It seems my children all want to stay around my table.  But no one wants to work in my field.  No one wants to work in my field."

Fellow Christ followers, I do not care how cliché it sounds, nor how many suit-wearing preachers try to denounce or qualify this statement:  YOU ARE THE CHURCH!  As the Apostle Peter wrote in the Bible, you are Living Stones God is using to build His House.  It is a house of life, love, and purpose.  The buildings we gather in are built of dead stones, lumber, morter, concrete, and steel.  Those are merely places of meeting.  They are not holy, except for the actual living stones meeting inside them.  Yes, anywhere God meets with His Living Stones, His Church is holy, but only because You and God are there.  Everywhere you go you carry the Holy Spirit inside you.  At home, at work, at the doctor's office, at Cosco, you are the Church.  The fields that are ripe for harvest is every person that passes thru your presence who is not walking daily with God.  

God didn't do His wonderful mighty work of Salvation for us to go to a building and sing songs and hear the Word preached, and call it worship, or church.  It is a good and useful thing to do, but the purpose of it is to be built up in our faith in order to be the Church elsewhere.  It is merely one place where worship begins, and that place can literally be anywhere-where 2 or 3 are gathered.  If there's you, Jesus in your heart, and the Holy Spirit you brought, you can have church, be the church, and even grow the church!!!  

The gifts God has given to us in the "five-fold ministry," the gifts of the Holy Spirit living in you, and other gifts were not meant to be utilized in what we call a church setting, though that should be a good place to learn about them and practice them. They were given for the support and guidance of Living Stones, and to attract and call others to Conversion.  Where are these "others?"  Usually not at church.  Usually anywhere else, but.

Luke 14:16-24 NLT

[16] Jesus replied with this story: “A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations. [17] When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell the guests, ‘Come, the banquet is ready.’ [18] But they all began making excuses. One said, ‘I have just bought a field and must inspect it. Please excuse me.’ [19] Another said, ‘I have just bought five pairs of oxen, and I want to try them out. Please excuse me.’ [20] Another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ [21] “The servant returned and told his master what they had said. His master was furious and said, ‘Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ [22] After the servant had done this, he reported, ‘There is still room for more.’ [23] So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full. [24] For none of those I first invited will get even the smallest taste of my banquet.’”

https://bible.com/bible/116/luk.14.16-24.NLT

Jesus was not telling His guys to bring people to church, He was telling them bring them to Heaven with them for eternal fellowship.  Bringing people to Jesus does not equal bringing them to "church."  There was no "church" then, as we understand it.  Jesus was commanding they bring anyone and everyone who would come into fellowship with Himself so that He could continue building the Church with living stones.  

This is not a denunciation of going to a building called "church."  It is a reminder that the Ekklesians, the called out ones, the Living Stones are, indeed, the Church and is not begun, limited to, or retired within material walls built by human hands.  Taking Jesus with you into every situation, building, locality, visitation, occupation, mediation, arbitration, everywhere you go is the job of every Living Stone, His spiritual building material.  Worship is merely doing what He would do, would have you do.  Where you are is the Church. When you are being the Church where ever you are, that is worship, and may or may not have anything to do with singing songs and listening to preaching in a material building. I encourage you to increase your perspective accordingly.

expanded

We live in a world swimming in an ocean of pain.  "Life is sufferring," is the first noble truth attributed to Siddartha Gautama, aka, the Buddha.  The Dread Pirate Roberts hurled the phrase "Life is pain," at the over-privileged Buttercup in response to her complaining of her unfair predicament in The Princess Bride. 

Pain touches every living soul. Today we have institutions, mind and body doctors, counselors, pain management specialists, advocates, drugs, massive industries all specified for the treatment of pain and sufferring in full scope.  There are political and social machines profitting from the generation of false pain.  How popular it is for people to make pain their excuse for failing to fulfill their responsibilities, not taking care of themselves, their families, their jobs. Some make their pain an excuse for poor behavior, even destructive behavior. Today, pain is exploited, creating burdens on family members and society at large. Real and imagined, pain and sufferring is part of living in a fallen world. 

His mother named him pain.  

There are translative inferences he lived with some sort of pain.  Whether a physical disability, mental anguish, or pain because of family trouble is not made clear in scripture.  Yet, the Bible says that he was more honorable than his brothers:

I Chronicles 4:9-10 NKJV

[9] Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” [10] And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested. -1st Chronicles 4.9-10 NKJV

"So God granted him what he requested."  

Who knows what kind of pain Jabez dealt with. His times were harder probably than anything we can conceive of today. But this snapshot of a story is so relevant for our time.  This is all that is said of Jabez in the Bible, but it is purposefully placed in a time of great uncertainty.  It is like an island of solace in a sea of all hell breaking loose.

He did not seek to exploit his pain.  Instead he made his goal to be an honorable man in the middle of it.  Counter culture much?  But he went a step further.  Jabez, this man of pain, had the audacity to ask God for more.  He was already elevated by his desire to be honorable and by his accomplishment of it.  That took decisive and radical perseverance.  His request beyond that was not for selfish gain, but the opposite.  How do I know it was not a selfish request?  Because God granted it. 

 "Expand my territory."  

In the land where he lived, expanding literal territory involved brutal violence to gain it,  unceasing vigilance to keep it, and back-breaking work to make it productive. If he was asking to have his land holdings expanded, he was asking, in essence, for more pain.  Figuratively, he was asking God to make him a better person.  Some commentators say he wanted to expand his influence.  Maybe.  But becoming a better person would naturally expand one's influence.

"...that You would keep me from evil,"

This guy definitely had a bead on something transcendent.  Merely, the desire to be honorable is honorable.  Somehow, this guy, in the middle of such a wild uncertain time, knew that going to the trouble of being honorable was something God held in high esteem.  We talk about God's love for us, but this fellow must have taken it personally-"God loves ME!"-to have the cajones to ask God to make him an even better person!  More than a request to keep evil from happening to him, the fulcrum of this request was not wanting to do anything malicious.  And the root of that chaste desire seems to be that he just did not want to be the cause of pain for anyone.

"...that I may not cause pain..."  

If we can live our days and not cause anyone pain, if we can stay away from anything and everything that would cause us to behave in a bad way, God's ear would be hard turned toward our hearts and our voices.  Sumarily, the lesson we can take away is we can accomplish any and all of this, if we can learn how to take our pain to God, and leave it with Him. 

" I'm trading my sorrows, I'm trading my pain, I'm laying them down for the joy of the Lord." -Darrell Evans

 Learn this and your territory will be expanded.  Make your request to God.  I bet His response will be, "As you wish."

Thanks, Jabez.  "Mommy's little pain."