Category Archives: Culture

Seed or Heart of Awakening?

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Today the Lord was speaking to me and said, “Do you have the seeds of awakening within you?” I thought on this for a few minutes but did not respond. Internally I could say yes. The seeds are definitely there. The word has been awakened to me, even for years. I have seen and experience Gods spirit and presence in very tangible ways. I even wear a ring with a drop of oil in it that came down from heaven in a meeting. Surely the seeds are there.

Then the Lord asked “Or do you have the heart of awakening?” I pondered this question. Much like many God asked in times past. The Lord then said to me “many can have the seeds of awakening. These are the ones who plant the concepts, the desires for, and the expectations that moves faith.  Many can carry the seeds but can they carry the heart of awakening?”

As I pondered this I came to these conclusions. The heart of awakening is the burning passion and even burden that cannot live without it. It is carrying something that brings life to the seeds planted. The heart of awakening has the life flow within it. It has the seed, the watering and the knowing how to step aside as only God can bring the increase. Many that have the seeds might try and birth forth only what God can truly bring to life. But for those who have the heart of awakening they are being seed planters in this hour, waiting for hearts as fertile soil to allow the seeds to take hold. The real call for those who have the heart of awakening is to water the seeds that awakening would spring forth in the earth.

The Lord then spoke to me and said “You have the heart of awakening inside you. The heart of awakening is formed as many seeds of awakening have been planted. These seeds have taken over not just a part of your heart but your whole heart. In this hour the internal struggle is you have been a seed planter and this has been your first season. Your second season will be your heart releasing awakening. The transition is moving from releasing seed to releasing water, the flow of the spirit. Awakening is not just seeds, but spiritual life flow. Many are thinking the seeds is the awakening. The awakening will come from the seeds. It will not look like the seed. It will spring forth but take different shape. Even as it appears it will not yet be seen what it shall truly look like. Is this not how my heart is? You know it but its appearing on the earth is different than expected.”

Culture is defined by the adoption of values and beliefs!

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“US culture has been defined by less than 500 intellectual cultural philosophers who influence 7 gates and supporting networks since our birth as a nation.” – Randall Collins, a sociologist and author of Discovery of Society

Culture is defined by the adoption of values and beliefs. These values are accepted or rejected by who resolves the problems and issues of the day. The greater the problem resolved the greater the influence a person gains. We must learn how to reframe the debate! It is not about donkey and elephant, it’s about lion and lamb. No political candidate will EVER resolve the current problems.

With a  national debt that would require $180,000 per individual to retire the debt of 16 trillion, and total debt obligation of 202 trillion, do you honestly think any person, any candidate has the wisdom to make any difference. There is only one who can shift all things and the economic woes of America will disappear when awakening occurs. Entitlement mentality will go, an industrial revolution will occur as witty inventions are formed at alarming speeds. A shift of values will shift culture. Abortions will end, poverty will be met with. Crime will drop and loss of property will stop through natural disasters as God’s blessing will rest upon a nation once again.

The political divide that has occurred in the body of Christ over this election is appalling to say the least and damaging to the unsaved to say the most. I have seen so many take a political stance with more passion than they have for their Lord and savior and the only one true answer. How foolish we appear in the eyes of God. How soulish we have become for our comfort. The world is looking to us and they see us once again divided at times. We should be crying out from mercy from above and a move of God. All things we are upset with in this hour are because of lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life. All things we need fixing is because of an unwillingness to live a disciplined life. As I just heard this week “Awakening is intentional and not something we wait for” It comes when we start doing what God requires of us. Instead of say if God tells me to fast, to pray, etc, we align with His word and do what he has said. He said WHEN  you fast and pray, when ….. then God will react and move. We become the portal though which heaven can move through.

The greater the problem resolved the greater the influence. Body of Christ we are not having influence because we are not bringing answers to the table. We must both value and believe we have answers. We must not just give lip service and some well thought out dissertation from the tree of knowledge, like we are hearing now. We must be willing to put action to words which requires the tree of life. Amazing how many are voicing so many things politically but no real action. I don’t know if they are trying to convince masses without deeds, or trying to convince themselves the compromises they must make are justified.

The same things needing answered in the government is needed in the church. Leaders with integrity and wisdom. Structure. Disciplined lifestyle etc. We have the greatest of all answer to touch all things. The one for the longing of the soul. The one who will fill every need, every desire and bring peace in the midst of storms, acceptance in rejection and friendship in loneliness.  Let us vote for kingdom principles. Let us vote for the greatest place heaven can have a chance of flowing through! Let us also realize the spiritual government of our Lord and creator, the one we say we have our rights truly from, supersedes any man made government that has evolved. Seek the Kingdom first and all these things will be added to you!

Common, Unclean, Dishonoring

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Hebrews 12:14 —14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

Today we have so many topics we hear preached on but one, holiness. We just did a weekend in this area and for many it was an eye opener. We are just not as holy as we think we are. The Bible says to follow holiness which without no man will see God. A current generation is desiring to see God. The word “See” means with the actual eye. It is the word we get optometrist from. And following means to purse, run after, to press into.

For the most part we view holiness by definition. Holy means to be set part, consecrated etc. It is a process we enter into at salvation. But holiness means the process has come to a point of existence or is completed. The main reason we seem to be stuck in consecration or sanctification is because we remain at the cross instead of desiring to go to the throne. The cross is more than salvation and freedom from sin. If that was the totality of what it represents then we are hopeless indeed. The cross is the beginning of living a holy life to become holiness before God. The cross focuses on us and the throne on Him. For the most part we want to continue in sin or in what we know to be unclean or profane, knowing there is a provision of forgiveness, mercy and grace. The cross starts a process of becoming clean before God. As were the throne is a present tense cleansed.

So the question is why are we not moving from cross to throne, from a process of being holy to a process of holiness. There e is a very simple reason. When we see holy and holiness in scripture we also see other words along side, unclean and profane. We immediately jump to the simple conclusion we know what is unclean, or profane and thus we know what holiness is. It is the opposites of these. But the definition of these words carries far more weight. You see what has happened is we have taken holy things and polluted them. We have made holy things common and thus made them unholy. We do not have reference for God, His spirit, His word, His worship, His leaders etc. We have grown accustomed to things and we no longer hold them as valuable. The words unclean also means to take away honor were honor was once given. It means to take away the purity of something and make it COMMMON!

Even the cross has become common place. Salvation has become simple and all-inclusive instead of exclusive. We have 2 main types of meetings as believers, cross and spirit. Cross being son, self and overcoming problems and sin. Spirit being gifts, manifestations and teaching. We do not have “Father God” type meetings. (Fathers loves – Toronto is cross meetings) I am talking about the holiness of God, awe-struck, sovereign presence, breath of God type meetings. We love to hang in cross and spirit meetings because nothing is really required out of us. We don’t have to live a disciplined life to participate. But Father meetings requires only the holy approach. We have seen revivals and moves of God around the cross and spirit but not fully around the Father. The awakening that is coming will encompass all three and bring the fullness of Holiness.

The most defining thing of why we no longer see holiness, is things that should be holy are treated as common. We believe meetings and gatherings will just be “common” so we don’t attend. We believe there is no value in attending, or if we do go we don’t really participate whole heartedly. Our conversations are unholy in Gatherings as we talk not about kingdom but what is common. Our actions, our thoughts, drift into worldly things Even that which should be holy we treat as common, such as communion, preaching, worship.  When we look upon the world we have no standard of holiness, so we view the world differently and define what is unclean not by Biblical terminology but by cultural acceptable terminology. As Leonard Ravenhill put it, “it is no longer adultery, it is having an affair. It is no longer fornication; it is sex outside of marriage. We have taken the sting out of sin”. Sin has become to familiar with and common as well.  We no longer call things in the world unholy or unclean. We open the door to all to come and join in with a meeting that is supposed to be Holy and we wonder why God is not showing up.

We need to search our hearts and see the places we have made God common. Where have we not showed honor and thus allowed unholiness or that which is unclean to come in.  Leaders preach a message on holiness and see what God will do as you restore things back to being uncommon and clean again.

Culture War

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We all see the culture war occurring in front of us daily. We hear reports, have discussions and form our opinions how to resolve things. Many Christians fight for cultural preferences as if they are heaven or hell, or eternal issues. Then when we bring forth things of the kingdom we don’t fight for these or absolute truth with the same passion and we wonder why the church is losing the culture war. We are not only not relevant, but have allowed the culture around us, by our own voice, to be most relevant .

As Children of God we are not fighting for political gains, cultural influences or even to change culture. We are to be children first of a spiritual political group call the Ecclessia of the Kingdom. We are to be part of an economic group called the Blessed of God. Philippians says our conversation is in Heaven. The word conversation means business, conduct, administration, and employment. We are to be concerned about the economy of God, which is the spiritual well being of Gods Kingdom on the earth and how it influences the hearts of men. We are to bring the influences of the Kingdom of God and allow truth to influence first the culture of the individual heart, to the point of it bringing cultural change because of the internal kingdom shifts within those hearts.  We can easily see this pattern in scripture as people abandoned idols, changed religious practices and changed their values, and what they spent their lives on as truth prevailed in their hearts and caused cultural shifts in their lives. When enough of the masses shifted individually we then saw a cultural shift within a nation. This is a spirtual awakening and not convincing words of mans wisdom. This pattern is in scripture and in human history.

The real war is not about political or economic agendas. The real war of culture right now is if the Kingdom of God will hold influence in the earth and if the souls of men will be influenced by it. It is a war between good and evil. Between darkness and light. It is a war between the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. A war between the breath of God or the breath of man. It is a war of what our focus is, what is temporal and passing or what is eternal and everlasting.

Freedom or Liberty?

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A nation celebrates its birth today and recognizes its freedom, but can we truly feel its liberty? With so many nations in turmoil and the earth groaning in this hour for the manifest sons of God, who will truly walk in more than freedom but liberty? Freedom is the power to determine an action without restraint.  It is individualistic.  This is not always good and many times leads us into corruption. Hence what we see politically in our nation. Liberty deals more with the rights of a person who is under governmental rule. Liberty is to a corporate people. Liberty means freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control external or foreign rule, obligation and hampering conditions of being able to do, think or act. As we see we have lost sight of liberty for the sake of freedom.

Our founder fathers sought after liberty more than unrestrained freedom. Whom the son sets free is free indeed. But do not use that freedom to be entangled again with sin. Freedom that is not under liberty is actually a person own interpretations to not be restrained by liberty. The biblical foundation for liberty is where the presence of the Lord is there is liberty. God’s presence is governmental and has the ability to hold restrain upon freedom that it will not become a condition that hampers a nation.

Today the Holy Spirit said “How are people using their freedom? Are they using it to voice their opinion and rights or are they using it to fight for liberty? Who is using the freedom of Christ to bring the Liberty of the kingdom of God upon the earth to shift nations?” for me this is my meditation today.

From Sub-culture to Counter Culture

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In this hour of the Church, with so much upheaval and division over political agendas and candidates, we need to be sure we are advancing the Kingdom of God and not the kingdom of man. As  those who are the true Ecclesia, we must begin to take our role as governing the spiritual realms to establish a Kingdom upon the earth that the structure of man, both political and economical, would be willing to participate in and draw wisdom from it.

As the Church, we have become a subculture like any other subculture within our nation. We have less voice than the recent rising voices of homosexuality, women’s rights, etc. This is due to the eroding away of the Church’s culture of morality and holiness and allowing ourselves to lose footholds we once had in place. For the most part, we have become irrelevant in the decision making process of our government.

We are in dire need of a true spiritual awakening. An awakening that would once again position us as a voice within a culture. Our biblical knowledge from the tree of good and evil is not enough  to convince the gainsayers that we have the goods. We must eat from the tree of life to confound the wisdom of the wise and allow virtue to flow forth touching hearts and shifting culture.

In our last Awakening Fires gathering, our speaker Eric Reeder, had a divine revelation from Act 3. “Why are we constantly passing by what is broken to go and enter into a place (the temple) that Jesus said was no longer relevant?” Amazing revelation! When we look more closely, we can see that once virtue flowed, holiness came and position in culture was shifted from inside the walls to Solomon’s porch. That positioning caused a great stir as it came from a Psalms 133 posture. The previous Psalms were spoken as they ascended the steps of the temple to the porch. Psalms 133 was spoken as they stepped onto the porch.

This touching of a small part of the culture, a man begging at the gate Beautiful, allowed Peter and John to have a platform, Solomon’s porch, from which to begin to educate the people. As I look at things, it appears we want all or none, when in reality the Biblical pattern was portions were given to show stewardship of truth before more was given.  Eventually the whole was impacted and felt the effect of the Kingdom. Not all became Christian, which is not really our assignment. Our real assignment is to make disciples, thus disciple nations. That is about Kingdom impact more than conversions. Conversions without true deep discipleship will not change nations but will create a subculture within a nation. For the most part, this is what we have done. We have healed them at the gate to only drag them into the temple into what is no longer significant, thus keeping them in an old model and not putting them on Solomon’s porch, a place of audience before nations and a place nations came to hear the wisdom of God.

Maybe we need to stop walking by what is broken. Maybe once people are healed, we need to no longer bring them into what is insignificant. Perhaps we are not the voice of the hour because we have not stewarded what is within us by allowing the virtue to flow out of us to impact the world around us.