G'morning!
This week has been a bit challenging for me spiritually. Emotionally I've been all over the map, so I haven't been as engaged as I'd like. Through it all though God is faithful. The students here have had close to $10,000 come in this week! The school is almost completely paid off. A DTS here costs about $8000, and a lot of students can't afford that, but they come on faith, and God is faithful.
This weeks teaching was about worldview. We discussed many different kinds of worldviews, and spent some time on the prevalent worldviews here in America, Naturalism and Post-Modernism. Basically, there is no God, and everything got here by chance, and there is no absolute truth, all ideas of truth are equal and we have to be tolerant of everyone's view of truth. I don't think a lot of people realize how culture effects their view of God. There are more than a few church denominations that no longer teach the whole Bible, or won't evangelize to certain religions, or have just become passive because they're insecure in their faith, and this idea of "we have to be tolerant of other belief systems" has caused them to stop sharing the word.
John 14:6 -- "Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Seems pretty clear and straight forward to me. Take some time to analyze how our culture has effected your faith. What do you believe? What do you value? Do you believe and value what culture teaches, or what the Bible teaches?
Just some food for thought.
As I told an agnostic I met downtown earlier this week: Keep seeking truth, it's out there, and the truth will set you free.
Christopher.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Sunday, December 2, 2012
The Importance of Prayer and Intercession
I have a testimony to share, because God works in mysterious ways, and He's pretty awesome.
So, this past week, there has been a person that's really been laid upon my heart, so much so that I've started getting up at 4:30am to pray for them, then at six I'll read my Bible for an hour, and then start my day. As the week continued I keep getting this feeling that I wasn't able to shake. God kept saying to me "disobedience will lead to failure", and I knew it somehow had to do with them. I knew that if nothing was done, they may lose everything they had gained. I knew there was something holding them back. So Friday night, I decided to stay up and pray because the unsettled feeling I was having had gotten to the point where I wouldn't have been able to sleep. The word intercession was on my heart, but more than just prayer. The idea was in my head of physically standing between the attacker and the victim. I told God I wanted to intercede on their behalf. God told me that if I did so, it would go beyond prayer, that I may very well take an attack meant for them. Me, being me, said sure without any understanding of what that was going to mean. I received a message from them while I was praying, where they were honest about what was going on with them. It took me twenty minutes to reply, and afterwards I had a lot of peace. I thought perhaps the confession was enough to change the circumstances. I ended up falling asleep on the floor at three in the morning knowing that the attack against them was over. So Saturday I woke up feeling confident. Come three in the afternoon, I was really starting to feel alone, and insecure, and vulnerable. It got to the point where I fled to the man house because I just felt so oppressed. It felt like my faith was a house of cards, and it was crumbling down. I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, and it was if there was a fog. I couldn't tell what was a true thought, and what wasn't. I felt that I had sinned and that sin was keeping me from seeing God. I went to bed around six, and woke up at a few hours later, and I felt so much better The difference was night and day. I prayed about what had happened and God brought to mind what he had said about intercession, specifically about standing between an attacker and victim, and taking a hit directed at someone else. I later received a message from that person saying the oppression they had been feeling for over a week had mysteriously evaporated, and they hadn't felt it all day. Now this freaked me out at first. Our speaker had mentioned that we aren't the Saviour. We can't, and shouldn't be the ones trying to save people, but we should lead people to the Saviour. If I was the one to take the spiritual blow, wouldn't that make me the saviour? And God said yes, it does, but, He allowed it because He wanted me to learn something. So this is what I learned: Now, I have issues believing anything I can't see or feel, as such the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a bit of an issue for me. I know in my head that Jesus stood in the gap for us, and took our punishment upon himself, but it's never gone beyond head knowledge. Now a little over a month ago it was prophesied to me that I would get a 'personal revelation' about Jesus' death on the cross. I had no clue how God was going to do that, but that's exactly what happened. Jesus let me take a burden from someone else for a short time, to show me exactly what He did for all of us. Mind. Blown. God is amazing, and I love Him.
So, this past week, there has been a person that's really been laid upon my heart, so much so that I've started getting up at 4:30am to pray for them, then at six I'll read my Bible for an hour, and then start my day. As the week continued I keep getting this feeling that I wasn't able to shake. God kept saying to me "disobedience will lead to failure", and I knew it somehow had to do with them. I knew that if nothing was done, they may lose everything they had gained. I knew there was something holding them back. So Friday night, I decided to stay up and pray because the unsettled feeling I was having had gotten to the point where I wouldn't have been able to sleep. The word intercession was on my heart, but more than just prayer. The idea was in my head of physically standing between the attacker and the victim. I told God I wanted to intercede on their behalf. God told me that if I did so, it would go beyond prayer, that I may very well take an attack meant for them. Me, being me, said sure without any understanding of what that was going to mean. I received a message from them while I was praying, where they were honest about what was going on with them. It took me twenty minutes to reply, and afterwards I had a lot of peace. I thought perhaps the confession was enough to change the circumstances. I ended up falling asleep on the floor at three in the morning knowing that the attack against them was over. So Saturday I woke up feeling confident. Come three in the afternoon, I was really starting to feel alone, and insecure, and vulnerable. It got to the point where I fled to the man house because I just felt so oppressed. It felt like my faith was a house of cards, and it was crumbling down. I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, and it was if there was a fog. I couldn't tell what was a true thought, and what wasn't. I felt that I had sinned and that sin was keeping me from seeing God. I went to bed around six, and woke up at a few hours later, and I felt so much better The difference was night and day. I prayed about what had happened and God brought to mind what he had said about intercession, specifically about standing between an attacker and victim, and taking a hit directed at someone else. I later received a message from that person saying the oppression they had been feeling for over a week had mysteriously evaporated, and they hadn't felt it all day. Now this freaked me out at first. Our speaker had mentioned that we aren't the Saviour. We can't, and shouldn't be the ones trying to save people, but we should lead people to the Saviour. If I was the one to take the spiritual blow, wouldn't that make me the saviour? And God said yes, it does, but, He allowed it because He wanted me to learn something. So this is what I learned: Now, I have issues believing anything I can't see or feel, as such the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a bit of an issue for me. I know in my head that Jesus stood in the gap for us, and took our punishment upon himself, but it's never gone beyond head knowledge. Now a little over a month ago it was prophesied to me that I would get a 'personal revelation' about Jesus' death on the cross. I had no clue how God was going to do that, but that's exactly what happened. Jesus let me take a burden from someone else for a short time, to show me exactly what He did for all of us. Mind. Blown. God is amazing, and I love Him.
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