True to God

Roughly 5 years ago my wife and I were members of a Spirit-filled church in McKinney, TX. While there I ended up befriending some wonderful brothers in the Lord. One of them was a man whom we will call John.  He and his wife were citizens of countries in West Africa. They were a really sweet couple whom Christine and I really enjoyed spending time with. This brother and I were in the beginning stages of a friendship and so we started sharing our hearts with each other on various things. He was a lay-minister who traveled and preached in various churches.

During the spring of 2006 he asked me to go with him to a church in Irving, TX and minister with him to a group of African brothers and sisters, a few of whom went to Christ for the Nations. I gladly obliged and we scheduled a trip over to this church on March 3, 2006. While I was waiting for John to pick me up at my house that Friday evening I found myself going outside to check the mail. When I did I found that I had received a ministry newsletter from a long-time friend and spiritual father in the Lord. I opened the letter and found the following message: Don't worry about the spectacular, just get the routine. Relax and be the person you are.

That was the basic theme, some of it word-for-word. I took this as a word of instruction from the Lord in regards to how he wanted me to conduct myself amongst the brethren that evening. The Lord was just telling me to stick to the basics and be the person he had made me to be. Years before in 1997 I received a prophetic word from a prophet in Big Spring, TX. His word to me was, "Do not conform yourself to other men's patterns. You will have your own style of ministry that is unique to you." Those words have always hung with me and here the Lord was, some 9 years later, telling me the same thing through another brother, albeit in slightly different words: Just be who you are and relax. Stick to the basics.

As John and I were driving to Irving that evening he told me that he wanted me to preach to the brothers at the meeting for about 20 minutes. He told me I had the latitude to minister whatever and however I wanted to. As I prayed about what I was supposed to teach on I just felt that I was to cover the subject of Faith and particularly the topic of Song. I covered this topic in the blog Here in October, 2010.

We arrived at the church and as we got out of the car I found my eyes fixing a on sippy-cup that was left sitting on a windowsill on the exterior of the building near where we parked. As I looked at the cup I felt the Lord impress the following thought on me: That is the cumulative maturity level of whom you will be speaking too tonight.

So we walk into the building and now I have my message to give and I know my audience. The meeting starts and the time arrives for me to speak. I stand up, thank everyone for having me, pray and start ministering from the scriptures on a very simple concept: Hearing God's voice in Song. I use Job 33:14, Colossians 3:16, Ephesians 5:19 and 2 Kings 3:15 just like we did in our previous post in October. As I was teaching I noticed something about the people I was ministering to: They looked almost sedated. Everyone was very calm, very still, almost like they were watching a movie. At first I was concerned that I wasn't making sense but I just kept speaking. I finished my teaching and then I sat down. Later I realized that they were just "absorbing" what I was saying like a sponge absorbs water. They were just soaking it in.

John took the pulpit after I finished. When he did he must have seen the after-effects on their faces. But instead of realizing that they were spiritual babies with tummies full of milk that needed to be rocked and burped, he interpreted the atmosphere in the wrong way. After he preached for a few minutes and found that he wasn't getting the level of emotional response from them that he wanted, he simply looked at everyone in the room and said that the enemy had come into the room and was lulling everyone into passivity through a spirit of witchcraft. So he made everyone stand up and start rebuking the devil. All of the sudden the entire room was whipped into a frenzy. Everyone started standing on their feet and screaming at the devil and rebuking everything in sight. While all of this was going on I yawned about 3 or 4 times. I couldn't stop yawning, literally. I tried but I couldn't stop. I kept trying to hide it as I was sitting in the front row right in front of where John was standing just rebuking the devil. I didn't want him to see me because I didn't want him to think I was under the sway of the devil.

While I am standing there yawning the Lord spoke to me just as clear-as-day and said: This is Charismatic Chaos. When I heard that I paused and thought back on the book John MacArthur Jr. had written years before in condemnation of the gifts of the Spirit (tongues, prophecy, healing ....). His book was entitled Charismatic Chaos. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard this. While the book did point out many deficiencies in Charismatic ministries, Mr. MacArthur in effect threw out the proverbial 'baby with the bath-water' by preaching Cessationism. Cessationists teach that tongues, prophecy and various gifts of the Spirit stopped years ago and are no longer for today. That is not true. Just for the record I do not endorse that theology.

As I sat and meditated on the words the Lord spoke to me and as I watched the room around me, my mind quickly began to adjust to the Lord's line of thinking. All of the sudden I began to realize that the emotional frenzy that everyone was being whipped into was nothing more than a manifestation of the flesh. I realized that I was being true to the style that the Lord had given me by keeping it basic, by being calm and preaching foundational fundamentals (Fundare). And the Lord was subsequently bringing people in the room to a place of rest and stillness. This rest and stillness before the Lord does not always appeal to that extreme end of the spectrum of hyper-Charismatic ministry of which my good friend, as I learned that night, was obviously a proponent. (Note: I still love him as a brother. We just had some wrinkles to iron out.)

The next morning I got up to pray. I went into the living room and felt led to grab the dictionary and look up the word Chaos. I found this definition: empty, void, disorder, to yawn.

To yawn. Chaos can be loosely defined as yawning. Did you read the post on Water? At times the things that happen to us physically are similitudes. A prophetic similitude is something that is happening to us physically that represents the spiritual message that the Lord is trying to convey. When a prophetic similitude occurs in our lives it becomes a sign in the natural realm of how God is thinking, speaking, and/or acting in the moment. What was happening to me in the meeting was a prophetic similitude. I was yawning in an uncontrollable manner as a sign that God saw all of the carnal activity in the room as nothing more than charismatic chaos. It was empty and void of life. It was disorderly. It was one big spiritual yawn in his eyes.

I want to say this. I am not against people being expressive in worship and in times of fellowship. I am not against strange things happening. Speaking in the tongues of angels can seem odd to some (Acts 2). Walking around in your underwear prophesying to foreign countries can seem odd at times (Isaiah 20). God speaking through donkeys is odd to me (Numbers 22). The prophet's vision in Ezekiel 1 is mind-boggling. These things are odd, demonstrative, expressive and strange to some. But those things are God. They are in line with obedience. They produce good fruit to those those who heed the call of God. We are for those things, not against them.

But the point of this writing is this: We have to be true to the message of God, even if the content or the manner of delivery is not what people are expecting. We have to be true to the word and who God is in us. We have to be true to the calling of God on our lives whether others like it or not.  Sometimes truth is expressive, odd, quirky and out of the mainstream. And sometimes it can be real basic, real plain, real foundational. We have to understand that what the Lord has us do, what he has us say and how he has us say it might not fulfill the expectations of others.

"...For some say, 'His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.'" 2 Cor 10:10

"My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words..." 1 Cor 2:4

"By setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." 2 Cor 4:2

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." 2 Timothy 4:3

"They say to the seers, 'See no more visions!', and to the prophets, 'Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions." Isaiah 30:10

Many people caught up in main stream Christian religion have already made up their minds as to what they want to believe and how they want their paradigms reinforced to them. Most people already have their minds made up before the the Lord has had a chance to confirm or deny what they believe. But regardless, the remnant, the very elect of God has a responsibility to abide in the vine by obedience.

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:4

That means that we have a responsibility to not only pursue and study out the revelation of God (Spoudaza and Qara) but then to set that truth before others plainly as the Spirit of God leads us.

"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it....So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say." John 12:49,50

First we seek God with intensity. Then we act and speak in obedience as we are led. And with that said, to put it all in context, the message of God's judgment is a part of that in our hour. We need to know the times and how to respond to it. A few days ago I heard the following verse in my heart as I was praying:

"...men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do..." 1 Chronicles 12:32

The men of Issachar understood what the times where all about and they knew what to do about it. The monarchy in Israel was in a state of flux in their hour. They understood that it was a time of extraordinary transition and they knew how to respond to it. And because of it they were rewarded. The name Issachar means, "He will reward." If we want to be rewarded in our time we have to know what time it is and what we should be doing about it. Now is the time to respond. Now is the time to be true to God. 

JEB
http://www.miraclesinmerida.blogspot.com/.