a new resource for you...

It’s my pleasure to share with you a great new resource for you to find Christian literature, music, dvd’s, even jewelry and other gift items. My wife, Joanne, has a passion to resource people and help them to find what they need for their ministry or their own Christian walk and now she’s started a new business. It is called “Grace Unlimited Books.” We would love for you to stop by and check out this great new site. It has everything you can imagine and right now everything in the whole store is 10% off. If you are a pastor of a church and are interested in purchasing a large quantity of items for a class or something you’re doing at church, please email Joanne and she’ll work with you to help you get the best price. It is our desire to help serve the Kingdom of God with this new endeavor.

Check us out at http://www.graceunlimitedbooks.com/!

healing before ministry

A friend sent me this devotion today by Os Hillman.  In light of my previous posts, I thought it fitting to share it here:

 

Healing Before Ministry

By Os Hillman, April 24, 2007

 

“And after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.”  Joshua 5:8

Before the nation of Israel could go into the Promised Land they had to be circumcised. Circumcision is painful, bloody, and personal. God requires each of us to be circumcised in heart before we are allowed to enter and receive the blessings that await each believer in the Promised Land.

This circumcision can often be very painful. Circumcision requires losing our old way of life. The process of spiritual circumcision may mean a loss in areas that have been a part of our lives in order to draw us to the Savior. God understands this. Consequently, like the people of Israel, we must wait until we are healed before we begin to be effective in our calling. If we launch out too early, we will be ineffective and may risk infection and disease and will not be at our full capacity. God wants each of us to walk in His healing grace.

The people of Israel fought only two battles when they were coming out of Egypt. In the Promised Land they fought 39 battles. Each of us must be prepared to enjoy the benefits of living in the Promised Land. However, we must also be prepared to wage war against the enemy of our souls. Make sure the Lord has provided the needed healing to your circumcision experience before you enter the Promised Land.

the gate of forgiveness

I want to look at one more gate that we must pass when we’re in the process of healing, which is probably the biggest and one that we may have to stay at for awhile.  This is the gate of forgiveness.  Like the city gate that the angel opened for Peter, we will only be able to walk through this gate by the grace of God.  It is not something we can do on our own.

 

I believe forgiveness is the ultimate of processes, especially in relation to healing.

 

Forgiveness is not “forgive and forget,” as many people believe, causing them grief that they cannot forget what was done to them.  This only brings them to believe that they have not forgiven.  Forgiveness is also not erasing what has happened and not applying consequences to the offender’s behavior.  In fact, forgiving someone is almost more for our benefit than theirs. 

 

One of the definition of forgiveness is to “release your right to revenge” against those who have harmed you.  This is not a feeling, but a decision, much like love is also a decision that we make to choose someone else’s good over our own.  The emotion of releasing someone of their sin against us may not be automatic, most likely it won’t be.  It takes time.  Process.  Work.  Depending on the offense, it may take many times of us choosing to release someone.  But as we are committed to put the offending party in God’s hands and not take it into our own hands, we will find that eventually there will come a feeling of forgiveness toward that person. 

 

It’s an act of our will, realizing that we can do nothing to reverse time and “do over” the situation, and entrust them to God.  He will deal with their hearts.  And even if they never repent or ask forgiveness of us, we will be free for we will have obeyed God. 

 

Again, this is not something we can do on our own.  It may be that we will need friends to help us walk out this forgiveness, or that we may need counseling to let go of the emotions, but the first act is a decision to forgive and we will see that God’s grace will open up the gates and set us free.

 

pass the guards

Passing through admission is hard, but still harder can be the passing of the guards.

Guarding us from our healing are the obstacles of accusation and guilt.

Accusation and guilt will come at us with a fury, accusing us of causing the pain to ourselves. If we’re not careful, it will bring us into agreement with the enemy that we deserve the pain we now find ourselves experiencing. You know the voice, either in your mind or the one from the mouth of a messenger, usually someone you love and trust.

Accusation tells you it’s your fault, guilt makes you feel like it is. There are a couple of things that will help us bypass these two hurdles.

One, search our own hearts. Make sure that for any part of the situation that we may have been to blame we “own” and ask forgiveness, whether it be to a person we’ve offended or to the Lord. Sometimes, the enemy can do us a favor through accusation. If we are humble enough to look at ourselves through God’s eyes (not the enemy’s), we may find the part we played in our pain and can be forgiven for it and grace can be applied. (That obviously is not the plan of the enemy of our souls. He wants nothing more than us to give up.)

The second thing is to fall upon the grace of God and ask for His help, wisdom and healing. Whenever we find ourselves failing, hurting or in sin, what the enemy wants to do is to drive us further from God, but if we allow accusations and guilt to drive us to God, we will find soon enough the old guards running away, because we only become stronger in the grace of God. This is why Paul could say “I glory in my weaknesses…God’s strength is perfected in weakness.” It wasn’t that he was glad to be weak, but he knew that when he “owned” his weakness, God’s strength could be revealed through him.

Even when we’ve been a source of our own pain, God promises not to “stick our noses” in it, but to help us in spite of our struggles. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (Italics mine.) God is not going to beat us up, because we’re wounded, whether or not we’ve had a part to play in it.

Grace says that all our shortcomings and failures have been reconciled in the Cross, so guilt and accusation cannot keep us from experiencing the healing God wants for our lives. Let us push past the guards and refuse to allow accusation and guilt to control us into living in the pain.

gate of admission

Healing is a process…but what is that process?

First I believe we find healing as individual. Just as a doctor should look at each patient, realizing that they present to him unique backgrounds, environmental, and physical scenarios which affect the patient’s treatment, so it is with the process to healing the emotional/spiritual wounds of a person. We all come from different places in our lives and we have had input from many different arenas that make the process of healing a highly individualized one. Even people who go through the exact same event together will respond differently, due to the glasses through which they viewed that event.

That said, I do believe that there are some gates we all have to walk past, regardless of our “glasses.”

One is admission. The Bible calls this “confession.” Sometimes when we say confess, people think they have to confess to doing something wrong, even though they may have no guilt in the situation. But this is not necessarily the case. When I say admission, we must “own” the fact that we have been hurt. It is a rejection of denial. It is admitting, that yes, this situation or person damaged me and I am in pain.

Funny thing about this is that we don’t like to admit this. We get angry and rail, talk, scream or cry. We will get stoic and not talk about it. We will deny the pain. But until we do, until we “own” the pain, we can never get healed. One of the best things I ever learned about emotions is that anger is a secondary emotion. It masks one of three other emotions. It’s a protector of sorts. Anger hides fear, frustration, or pain (among many others). We experience these things and anger comes to cover it, keep them hidden. It’s a survival mechanism.

So to begin walking out of our wound, our emotional or spiritual pain, we must admit, or confess, that we’ve been offended or damaged. Look at it, be honest with ourselves and God, and others. Own the pain, but don’t stay there. Keep walking past the gates that keep us locked away.

process of healing

“…gifts of healing…working of miracles…”

These words come from 1 Corinthians 12, found in the list of spiritual gifts that can be released through our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Miracles are those instantaneous happenings of health or supernatural occurrences we can ask for, but most of the time don’t see coming until they happen. Gifts of Healings come more through process.

Process is not a word any one of us like, but it is essential to understanding healing, especially in the emotional or spiritual realm of healing.

It takes us awhile to get into the situations that produce pain and wound in our lives, either because they are a product of choices that we have made the brought us to this place of pain, due to relationships that have gone sour which we expected to last longer than they did, or people who we trusted and believed in failed to follow through on who they promised to be in our lives…or a mix of these and more. It doesn’t really matter how the wound came, but the fact is that we’ve been wounded and it’s not going to be overnight getting healed.

It’s a process.

One of my favorite illustrations is the story of Peter’s deliverance from jail in the book of Acts. (You can read it in Acts 12.) Here he is, jailed for preaching the truth of Jesus’ resurrection, and the church is praying for him. As a result of their prayers, instead of going to trial the next morning, an angel comes in the night, slapped Peter awake (talk about faith…he was asleep!) and tells him he can leave. Note that Peter had to walk out of his cell, walk past the other cells and sleeping guards, out of the prison itself, clear out of the city.

My point is this, deliverance comes when we forgive, and ask God to heal us. It’s one of those instantaneous miracles. But the process of walking out of the wound that binds us takes some time. God doesn’t just transport us from one condition of woundedness and pain into one of wholeness, without us walking through a process. What takes us a while to get into, takes us a while to get out of, but we’re never alone on this journey. Notice in the story of Peter, the angel guided him all the way out! God’s grace will be our companion on the journey if we will only allow him to take us through the process.

More on this next time…

great quote

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and I could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

-Erma Bombeck

 

establish the kingdom, build the church

Some really good thoughts from “Permission Granted to Do Church Differently in the 21^st Century” by Graham Cooke:

“There will be hundreds of different types of churches, all finding their place together in the Body of Christ. The next dimension will be taken up with a very strong Kingdom ethos. No single Church will rise up with the whole revelation, anointing, or understanding of what God is doing.

No single church will be the prototype. In cities, towns, and rural areas we will find numerous types of church, each holding a piece of the jigsaw. It will only be when we bring the pieces together in a Kingdom setting that we will begin to demonstrate the Kingdom desire that sits closer to the heart of God.

Building church without a desire for the Kingdom puts a restraining order on it from heaven in terms of how far the work can go. If we do not build with Kingdom in mind, then we build something that reflects our own ego. What we are constructing has its foundation in empire—a personal domain of the anointed man of God whose own anointing is greater than the church he has built because the people are passive observers of all that God is doing with him. How tedious it is to be part of a church where the anointed one is sold out to his own ministry.

In his mercy, the Lord has allowed us time to grow up and work these things through. Transition is about the destruction of empire and the refocus on Kingdom. It is better for us to fall on this rock and be broken and humbled before God than for it to fall upon us and crush all that we have built in the name of Jesus...but with an eye out for ourselves.

We must humble ourselves and put everything into his hands so that he can decide whether we are trustworthy. If God did not own the getting of our ministry, He will not own the having of it—not without making Himself unrighteous. If we cheated others, broke our word, trod on people, used and discarded people, or promoted ourselves to get where we are, we need to repent right quick! Make restoration where God leads, because the shaking has already begun.

Other churches matter. Say it every day: “Other churches matter. The kingdom is more important.” Establish the kingdom and build the church, in that order. As you build the church, build kingdom into your people. Other churches matter. Pray for them; have a heart for their growth. Have a desire to participate in the development of the whole body of Christ across the whole area.”

(Italics and bold, mine.)

Thanks to Emerging Grace for turning me on to this book. It’s been exactly what I needed!

Easter update

What an Easter! I have to say that this has definitely been one of the top 5 Easters I’ve celebrated in my life…if not the top. God showed himself so strong on our behalf, and broke through all our hopes and dreams and took us further than we could’ve imagined.

On Saturday afternoon, we finished our presentation of the Way of the Cross with 176 people having walked through the presentation. It was great!! We have never had a response like we did this year. So many people came through and were touched, challenged and changed.

Then Easter morning we had standing room only at church, with right at 100 people attending our 7:30 AM Sunrise service and breakfast. What a great time of celebration! We had several visitors from the days before return to worship with us. There was just an overflow of love and celebration for the day, a reminder of what joy the disciples must have felt that day, seeing Jesus alive!

We give God thanks for his great favor and love poured out on all of us this Easter!

As soon as I get them, I’ll put pictures from the Way of the Cross on here so you can see what we did!

favor for the way of the cross

Tonight we hosted our first night of "The Way of the Cross." (See previous post for more details.) It was incredible. Because it is a self-guided experience we space people out so they have time to go through the spaces on their own. At one point it was standing room only in the waiting area to go into the sanctuary! We had 99 people go walk through in only 3 hours. Tomorrow we're doing it again for four hours! Can't wait to see how many we have come this time.

We were blessed to have not only the front page of the paper, as you see in the previous post, but also they put us on the front page of a weekly supplement which includes sales papers, etc., and goes to every household in the county! Talk about favor!

In doing this now for four years, we've never had the favor that we're experiencing this year. Not only that but the most we have ever got to walk through our presentation was 35 people over two days when we did it at our previous church. We didn't care, because we thought of it as a spiritual discipline for ourselves, but were always disappointed that it didn't seem to matter how much we promoted, not even our own church really supported it.

But tonight we were clocking about 1 person every 2 minutes coming to the presentation and leaving blessed and saying their coming back tomorrow with friends!! Praise God for his favor and his grace!

the way of the cross

Check out this article about our Easter "The Way of the Cross" Presentation. If you're in the area, stop by and check it out this Friday from 6-9 PM and Saturday from 10 AM-2 PM.