You Were Created For: Worship and His Presence!

If you look at the history of the Body of Christ one of the greatest contentions has been worship.  Differing styles of worship have led to many church splits, strife and conflict, and even worse one group choosing to go to war with another.  After meditating on my devotional for the day, "I am First A Worshiper" and then after spending time ministering to the Lord, Father impressed on my heart the centrality of worship to all life. We see the theme of worship throughout the Bible, God even devotes a whole book Psalms which is David's worship to the Lord.  We know from the book of Revelation that worship is central in Heaven and there even angelic beings created for 24/7 worship to the Almighty.  The Holy Spirit then began to point me to the root of worship in the Bible beginning with our Original Design in Creation.  I knew that deep in my spirit that worship was central in the Genesis Creation, yet I didn't know the specifics.  In researching this I discovered that a better Hebrew translation for Genesis 2:15

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to worship and to obey.  We can also look at Genesis 3:8 to see the centrality of the Presence of God and man's fellowship with Him.  Since worship is part of our original design and mandate from the beginning, the there is a dimension of who we are that will never come alive until we are worshipers.  Jesus reveals this in John 4:23 & 24 in His discussion with the Samaritan woman, 

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.  God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  I love the phrase "...the Father seeks to be His worshipers." because I see the Father's heartbeat looking for people who are completely passionate about being worshipers, meaning that He is central in all of life.  When we relegate worship to singing, listening to music, or a certain style of praise then we miss the point, "Worshipers understand the importance of having a deep heart connection with God." (from Steve Backlund's book Victorious Mindsets).  It is said of David that he was "the man after God's heart" and what is central throughout David's life is worship, the throne that Jesus sits on is named "The Throne of David".  David won some of the most incredible victories in battle often with worshipers leading the charge.  The Expositor's Bible Commentary says that Adam was put in the Garden of Eden as a priest to worship his God not simply as a worker to work the field.  It is so foreign to our natural mind or our modern society that worship is central to our very life, if it has any importance in our modern life it is often compartmentalized into the Sunday morning hour.  Yet the Father is seeking His worshipers, will you say yes to this most elevated of all ministries.  In Ezekiel 45:4 we see this highlighted of the ministry directly to the Lord Himself by the Levites and priests.  In the New Testament we are called members of the "Royal Priesthood" so we are given the freedom to minister to Him directly.  We are the "Royal Priesthood" because through Jesus Christ we have been given access to the very Throne of God, Ephesians 2:18 says "for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father".

A Worshiper,
Bret

Thanksgiving A Key to Open Promises

After realizing that I have been in bondage to some old and destructive mindsets about my identity, life, and God I was inspired by the Holy Spirit to go a different direction.  These old mindsets are like going down dark, tree-lined pathways in a life-less winter forest; only these are not physical pathways but actually pathways in my mind that have a terrible ending, death.  In Romans 8:6-8 we are told, "For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God."  The flesh is a whole identity, mindset about life, and mindset opposed to relationship with God that is apart from what Christ has done for us.  I was led to pick up a book to aid repentance called "Victorious Mindsets" by Steve Backlund, in it I read about the power of Thanksgiving.  As I read this the Holy Spirit connected the concept Steve talked about, thanksgiving because it is a gate (Psalm 100:4) enters into a new realm of living and the promises of God.  There are 750 promises in the New Testament which are all ours "in Christ", because we have been born-again and grafted into the family of God but how do we access these promises.  The Holy Spirit spoke to me to, "Give thanks for the promises to open them like a gift."  Thankfulness has not always been a consistent part of my mindset and yet I was sensing without it I would continue to go down the dark pathways in my mind that led to death.  We are thankful to someone else when we receive something from them, because we are acknowledging they had a choice to give us this and that we appreciate it and them.  Has Jesus Christ given us something, He has giving us so much but can we not only name but experience the New Life He has given us.  To open one of the "precious and magnificent promises" as 2 Peter 1:4 says we need to thank Him for receiving it.  Being thankful for the promise entails remembering the sacrifice that He made to bring this promise to us to give us new life.  For example Romans 8:1, "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  What did Jesus do to give us no condemnation?  He took on all the condemnation for our sin as though He were in our place (death-crucifixion) and He also took on the condemnation of the world (insults from the religious, beatings, everyone abandoning Him, mocking, etc..).  When I begin to see the depth of what He did on my behalf to take on condemnation and give me no condemnation then this leads me through the gate of thankfulness into a place of praising Him (enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise).

Thank You Father for New Life,
Bret

Born to Win

Recently as I was walking through my daily work routine at the Church, the Holy Spirit dropped this phrase into my mind "You were born to win".  I had recently admitted to my wife that because of my background in life, I always expected defeat with an occasional small victory thrown in to keep you going in life.  I had recently been meditating on Romans 8:37 "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us."  Since I had been experiencing the frontal attack of intimidation and fear for many years with small breakthroughs but not complete victory, this phrase by the Holy Spirit was shocking.  It did not rise up out of my own thoughts but from a deep place within that seem to shift my whole being, like an earthquake does to land.  This phrase seemed to reach into the very core of my being to change my very DNA.  In 2 Peter 1:4 it says, "For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust."  It is through the promises of God actually getting inside us that we become partakes of the divine nature, we are transformed by our agreement with what He has done for us.  As I went back to the phrase the Holy Spirit spoke to me, I saw that in the beginning when God created the Heaven, the earth, and Adam and Eve that their commission was to rule and reign over the earth.  Genesis 1:28 says, "God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."  As John Eldredge points out in his book "Wild at Heart" you don't give instructions to subdue something that is not wild, and the earth outside the Garden of Eden was wild.  God did not bless Adam and Eve to be frustrated, defeated, struggle, and only hope that their children will make it safely through life, He blessed them with a powerful (grace) blessing to overcome the earth spreading the glory of God over the entire earth just like God had established in the Garden of Eden.  The Garden of Eden was God giving Adam and Eve an object lesson and a prototype for what the whole earth was to look like, yet the rest of the earth was wild so they would need the strength and blessing God had given to overcome it.  We all know the story, that Adam and Even chose independence and self-sufficiency only to end in the Fall and separation from God.  So even though in our DNA is a desire to win "in Adam" there is also the sin that entangles us, we like Adam get caught up in self-effort, striving, performance, competition, greed, and then fall.  Because when Adam and Eve had children they were in their image, no longer in the image of God.  We are born again not by water but by the Holy Spirit and born into being united with Christ.  We have the DNA of Jesus Christ Himself, we have a new nature, and we are new people (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Jesus was born into this world to win!  Jesus Christ as the 2nd Adam would win the victory in every place that Adam lost, over deception, temptation, sin,  disobedience, separation from God, independence, Satan, fear, death, and being orphans.  Jesus Christ, the God man, would face the biggest Giants of the human race and defeat everyone of them through humility, submission to the Father, dependence, obedience, sacrifice, and finally laying down His life out of love.  On Christ's 3 1/2 year mission on the earth, His face was always toward the Father and the destiny the Father had for Him, which also meant squarely facing the Enemies of humanity.  When the Bible announces that "...we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." this is speaking to the very DNA of our beings is transformed.  Not that we will sometimes have victory but that we will continuously be victorious over things like nakedness (lack of resources), peril (torment & attack of the Enemy), and sword (human enemies coming after us).  It is not through our self-sufficiency, our orphan-hearted strivings, or the latest successful human attempts to conquer a problem but through Him would loved us (Christ Jesus).  I heard one pastor and author Bill Johnson say it this way, "God never leads you into a battle He has not meant for you to win." Yet when we appeal to an orphan heart we have varying degrees of success and failure in life in the short-term but I believe God is not interested in blessing our efforts.  In another post I talked about being child-like, the verse in 1 Peter 5 says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Our pride and self-sufficiency come out of an orphan heart, which is made up of lies not our true identity as sons and daughters of God.

An Overcomer,
Bret

Orphan Heart versus Rooted and Grounded in Love

An "orphan heart" is one that has it's roots not in love, acceptance, and security but in rejection, abandonment, fear, and insecurity.  In Ephesians 3:17-19 the Holy Spirit through Paul says, "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." Christ comes to live in our spirits when we are born again by receiving Him but for Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith is connected to us being rooted and grounded in love.  If we grew up in an environment of rejection, loneliness, fear, performance, image, or others where unconditional love is not the basis of relationship within a family then we are going to have some bad roots.  These roots are belief systems about our identity, worth, relationships, and how we function in life that are lies/curses/deception.  One author said "bad root, bad fruit".  Recently the Holy Spirit was giving me revelation into one of the most important times in our life to receive the truth about our identity, in the womb.  Modern scientific research is pointing to the reality that babies in the womb are affected by their mother's choices, words, attitudes, and even the environment.  The start of life, conception, is also very important in terms of a child's development of their identity, in the Hebrew culture one of the most important times to bless, communicate the truth of the child's identity based on what God says, is at conception.  The Holy Spirit recently exposed in my own heart, the very roots of the "orphan heart" as being conception to birth, when the three powerful roots of abandonment, rejection, and hopelessness came in as my identity.  Many would question how we could know this and that this seems strange.  In 1 Corinthians 2:10-11 the Holy Spirit says through Paul, "For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God."  So the spirit of a man which is united to the Holy Spirit knows the thoughts of a man, so we can even discern if a person was cursed, negative words and circumstances were around the child, or if there was blessing (life-giving environment of love and acceptance).  While in the world we are concerned about the physical formation, heartbeat, development, and finally birth of a child, the spiritual climate that a child is developing in a mother's womb is very important.  There are over 70 references to the womb in the Old and New Testaments, many of these verses talk about God actually forming us or knitting us together in our mother's womb.  If it is not that important why is God so intentional that Jesus be blessed in His mother's womb, blessed by Elizabeth, then Simeon and Anna blessed Jesus just after His birth.  This was to affirm and legitimize Jesus because it was God's original design that all children be blessed at each of the 7 stages of development throughout their life (from conception to old age).  Blessing is the good words of affirmation, love, acceptance, purpose, identity, and destiny that speak life into us as we grow.  The Holy Spirit showed me the importance of blessing when He took to me Genesis 1 and revealed that humans were created in the image and likeness of God but were not empowered to rule and reign till after they had been blessed by God.  The Holy Spirit asked the question, "What follows blessing?"  Then the answer came, "Fruitfulness and multiplication" just as it says in Genesis 1:28.  Blessing is not just an nice spiritual word, this was actually at the center of all Creation in the beginning, it is foundational for all of life.  This is why Paul seems to literally explode with revelation in Ephesians 1:3, when he says " who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."  The heavens were opened up and poured out on you so you could receive every spiritual blessing, may our minds be renewed and healing brought to our hearts so we can receive.

Blessings,
Bret