For the first few weeks of the New Year, a television commercial depicting Mr. Mayhem has made a New Year’s Resolution—no longer will he cause wanton destruction of property and life. It’s a nice touch, grabbing one’s eye immediately. It’s a real contrast to previous commercials where Mr. Mayhem causes, well, mayhem.
Then just this week a new commercial ran in which Mr. Mayhem, for a reason I didn’t catch, decided to do like almost everyone else, and abandon his New Year’s resolutions. Mr. Mayhem is once again on the loose, a dominant issue in our lives.
The other day, at Daily Tehillem, it was Psalm 23. While I’ve read the psalm many times, and various comentaries, the last two verses struck me as wonderful prayer:
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
A prayer not only for me, but to be directed toward others, on the behalf of others. For in this prayer I see first the victory G-d blesses us Continue reading “Faith and Hope as Lifestyle”→
Ultimately a poser is one who must pretend to be something they are not. I’d not heard the term until my son poked a little fun at his girl friend’s father, calling him a poser for his sweet ride—a shiny black Jeep, which contrasted his own black Jeep (photo above).
Slog. I’ve never heard it used before. It sounds like an Appalachian drink made with moon shine and a touch of molasses. It has an Earthy ring to it. Slog. It could be a great name for a dog that you take to the groomer for a bath and who comes home only to roll around in the hog pen. Slog. I can hear it used as a substitute for the sixties term “waste.” As in, “Wow, man, did we get like slogged last night.”
Listening to myself say, “slog, slog,” I can almost hear the sound of my boots as Georgia red clay grips the sole trying swallow me, nearly stopping my progress down a wet, tree-lined trail. That’s a bit closer to the definition of slog, too. Slog on. Keep pushing onward despite the overwhelming pressure to stop. Slog on to finish the boring, repetitious, task, the tediousness of the work that lulls us to nearly sleep.. Seems like there is a lot of ways to use slog and not be in danger of a cliché for sometime to come.
Slog on, then, has to do with fighting against some opposition, pushing hard to overcome, and move beyond some difficult situation. Apostle Paul used the term “press on” in his letter to the Philippians (3:13,14)
. . . one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of G-d in Christ Jesus.
Slog is an okay name for a dog, too, as well as a drink.
When the going gets tough, the tough slog on. Keep calm, slog on. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Zing!
It finally dawned upon me the significance of coming to accept one’s royal calling. It comes as an offshoot from the other morning when I considered my worthiness and value to G-d and to the Kingdom of G-d. It actually began as I lamented my unworthiness and unsuitability to service. Apostle Peter wrote (1 Peter 2:9):
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
These things were not new to me. I certainly had known them. But I’d let doubt and faithlessness into my head. Too many years having negative thinking imposed upon me had tarnished my royalty, if I had any at all. I’ve recognized the royal bearing of a Saint. I’ve just never really included myself in that category. A.W. Tozer. King David. Joshua. Naturally, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. . . But Me? The Saints are gathered around the table, Y’shua’s at the head. I’m standing somewhere beneath an arched doorway watching. Even if led to the table, even if I were to speak, I’m more inclinded to ask what they’d like to eat, or do they have enough coffee. When Elijah, Moses, and Y’shua gathered together on the mountain, what did Peter say? Shall I set up some tents and mix us a snack? Even Abraham, faced with Y’shua and two of His angels, said to stay there and he’d fix a bite, then sent out to the field for a fatted calf. Some little bite to eat. When we all get to Heaven, and gather around awaiting our places, we won’t hear a peep out of those preachers I’ve heard say, “There are some serious questions I have to ask when I get to Heaven.” Oh, no. We shall be so filled with awe at The Holy Presence, we may not be able to stand. Talk about getting dizzy. (Which I’ve been for the last two weeks, with one doc thinking it’s vertigo and another saying, “Let’s take a few brain scans.) There will be no questions on that day. And all the crowns we earned while on Earth, our golden badges that were stored up for us in Heaven? Those stripes some of the Saints have worn proudly while strutting on stage, er, alter, of their churches. Will we not bow down and cast our crowns at the feet of the One Who Is? We will then know it was not us earning those crowns anyway, but Him working though us. Oh, it will be glorious. But it won’t be like some think it will, yet it will exceed our dreams and imaginations.
On Earth, well that’s a different story isn’t it. We are to recognize our royalty. We are to walk in it. Y’shua washed the feet of His disciples, bending down to them in the process. It had to be that way, He told Peter, who thought it a betrayal, it was that or nothing. Just for a little while longer we are the True Royalty of Earth, we are the Y’shua, the only Y’shua, some people will every see. We must also recognize nobel oblige, the obligation nobility brings upon us. For it is all about balance. (Of which I plan to regain.) We wear a crown and we bend to help someone in trouble or in need. We wear a crown and we get dirty. We are the Royalty of Messiah Who walked upon Earth to demonstrate how a Shepherd serves the Spiritual Body of Messiah while on Earth. He came as the suffering Messiah, demonstrated a way of life, and died, finally resurrected to life and risen to sit on the throne of Heaven.
It seems to me that we have a reversal in perspective. The Jewish people to Whom our Lord came awaited a Conquering Messiah that would rebuild the Nation Israel as sovereign. The people wanted too often to take Y’shua by force, make Him King on Earth, defy the Roman rulers. They simply didn’t grasp the role of Y’shua. The Gentile “Church” has been deluded to look for a Suffering Messiah to come to Earth to sit on the throne the Earthly people have built for Him. He’s a Messiah that loves and loves and loves. A Messiah that would return to a strong self-built church nation. After all, they seem to say, Y’shua came and conquered sin for us. So we are perfect, god-like, containing divine selves. The Messiah they await isn’t the Conquering Messiah of Revelation, but the babe of Matthew.
What is totally forgotten is that out of the mouth of the One Who says He loved us so much that He died for us, also comes a sword. It is the double-edged sword, of which one side is of justice, of wrath, of death.
How then does the True Church on Earth perform, behave, continue on? First, it follows the model established in the earliest days of evangelization. The Apostles ran the Church. I believe the Apostles were granted All of the Divinely given gifts. The Apostles were leaders, empathically driven pastors, learned teachers, evangelists winning souls to Messiah’s Kingdom, and they were able prophets, able to discern and wield the sword of justice. I could look up more than enough support for such a statement, though I’m sure you know them all, if you study G-d’s Word. This Five-fold Ministry of Apostle, Pastor, Evangelist, Prophet, and Teacher is what I was introduced to in Sri Lanka. Asoka Perrera, a Sri Lankan I met while ministering in Israel, kindly allowed me to stay with him in his town not far from Columbo, Sri Lanka. It was during the war between the Tamils and the Senegalese, yet his Church, The Apostolic Church of Sri Lanka, was alive and well with both Tamil-born and Senegalese-born men, women, and children. I was blessed to preach before a congregation while there, and to travel most of the country visiting various villages, seeing how the Church functioned The reason, I believe, for the Five-fold Ministry concept is that not all the gifts are vested with each member in Church leadership, as they were in the initial days of Messianic understanding, with the Disciples of Y’shua, the Apostles. Pastor Marvin William’s (Trinity Church, Lansing, MI) preached on this, encouraging all at Trinity to discover their unique, G-d-given gifts and to practice them. He said some will have only one, everyone has at least one; he said some will have more and be able to move between the gifts. I believe this is the reason some pastors are such a wonderful teachers; and explains why some also seem to lack the pastoral gift. Now there are other ministries evidenced in the writings of of the Early Church Founders—The Apostles. One of the first was identifying people to assist the Church Leadership, which meant the Apostles. Deacons were selected to provide table service, ensuring that the food brought for all the community dinners were adequately distributed and that some widows didn’t go without, and I’m supposing those that went without may have been bedridden, unable to attained the great banquets celebrations of food and Apostle’s Teachings. There are other ministers in the Church, of course. Those are not Leadership roles, necessarily. Pastor William’s listed, I think, thirty or so gifts, among them were gifts in prayer, mercy, even giving resources. Of course, another gift is the give of praise, worship, music.
The Modern Church, following what might only be considered a business model, has deacons acting as “elders,” as if they are the Board of Directors of the Church. While the deacons aren’t gifted in music ministry, or even mercy, or teaching, it seems to me that too many churches the deacons act as managers overseeing the ministries of those they simple can’t trust to perform their gifts as they feel inspired by G-d.
There are actually churches practicing the Five-fold Ministry Construct. Now, I’m only familiar with two particular Churches that I believe are of the LORD. There are other churches that SAY they are Apostolic International, or Apostolic Faith Mission, or Apostolic SomeThing. I don’t know about them. They may or may not be righteous Oh, The Apostolic Church of Sri Lanka, by the way, is totally a product of Sri Lanka, inspired and led by Sri Lankans, not missionaries from out of the country. There is another Apostolic Church that was formed independently long before the Apostolic Church of Sri Lanka. It is in Penygroes, Llanelli, South Wales, not far from my mother’s village. It was a product of the Welsh Revival of the early 1900s. It is Pentecostal, as is the Apostolic Church of Sri Lanka. Pastor William’s, in his teachings on Gifts, made mention of the gift of tongues, but said that it was a topic needing an entire series of teachings on it own. It’s controversial, I know.
Graphic Courtesy of PreachIt.ORG
The Welsh Revival. You know how people will say, “I should have been born [in this period, or that period].” I’m quite taken with the days of Israel when King David reigned, in the abbys of Wales in the 1100s, and in the late fur trapper, and early cowboy era of America—1838 to the 1880s or 90s. Well to have lived in the days of Pastor Evan Roberts, to have seen the way the Revival took off, to have experienced the work of the Spirit of G-d moving and changing a whole
Celtic Cross, Carmarthenshire, South Wales.
generation of Welsh men and women and children. Wikipedia has some information on it, but it’s not as clear or accurate as some of the organizations in Wales that have maintained the historic accounts of that Revival. In American, we had the Azuza Street Revival that followed the outpouring in Wales by a few years. It impacted a small group of people for a few years, and it may have spawned many of the Pentecostal movements of America today, but it wasn’t by any stretch the Revival of Wales.
We don’t need a national revival in America today, as many are calling for. We need to look in our own backyard, in our own houses. If one church were to be set upon by a couple old prayer warriors, as I believe happened in Wales, it would ignite a church congregation and be like a fire in the grass lands, spreading far and wide. And the Mainstream Media wouldn’t touch it with one camera or one second of air time. And yes, some think the Toronto “Out Pouring” and the Lakeland, FL, version were Revivals, I believe they were only smoke and mirrors.
Glory to God in the highest,
and on Earth peace among those
with whom he is pleased!
—Luke 2:14
Two-Thousand years ago, a multitude of Heavenly hosts broke out in praise of G-d at the announcement to shepherds that the long-awaited Messiah had been born. In Heaven, Glory to G-d. On Earth, peace to all people. Oops. To whom is the blessing of peace giving. During the Christmas season, we hear Glory to G-d and Peace on Earth. Misquoted.
“The point is that, even though God’s offer of peace goes out to all, only his chosen people — the people who receive Christ and trust him as Savior and Messiah and Lord, will experience the peace he brings.” —John Piper
If you don’t know Y’shuaJesus as your Lord and Savior, then sorry, no peace from Heaven. No inner peace. Period.
““Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” said Y’shuaJesus. (Matthew 10:34).
Metaphoric Sword. A knife that cuts the cake. A division. When Y’shuaJesus was born, He jeopardized peace on Earth.
“I believe in this passage Jesus is pointing to a reality that many of us are becoming familiar with: his teachings aren’t exactly popular. Following his teachings? Doing the things that Jesus did? Loving the way Jesus loved? Well, at a minimum that’s going to invite conflict into your closest relationships,” wrote Benjamin L. Corey in his blog.
“Jesus didn’t come to bring a period of tranquility where everyone holds hands in a circle—he came to bring upheaval to the ways of this world. He came to flip tables. He came to disrupt a faux version peace. He came to speak up for the oppressed, to loose their chains, to welcome the sojourner, and to make room for those the religious elite want excluded from God’s table,” Mr. Corey wrote.
Y’shuaJesus brought a sword, metaphorically, that causes division, and is contrasted by peace and tranquility of an individual’s soul with whom G-d is pleased. Our relationship with G-d our Creator, is made possible by our belief in Y’shuaJesus, in His deity, in His humanity, in His atonement for sin. We please the Prince of Peace . . .
“I will praise the name of God with a song;
I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the LORD. . .”
—Psalm 69:30.31.
“. . . what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
—Micah 6:8.
Here’s what the Sword of the Lord created through Apostle Paul:
“About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.” —Acts 19:23-27.
The tradesmen rioted. Neither Paul nor any Christian actually committed violence in Ephesus. The Sword of the Lord, as shown here, isn’t an instrument of violence. There is a violent reaction to the way Christians serve the Lord, however. In the case of Artemis, and his tradesmen, there was an immediate, and potentially irreversible economic affect to the preaching of the Lord’s Apostle to the Non-Jewish people.
Why do people follow Y’shuaJesus, then, if such a choice brings such interpersonal discord? Y’shuaJesus created a bit of a stir among his own followers. As a result many “turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’ ” —John 6:66-69
While we, as Believers, may—no, will—experience strife, trouble, trials, and intolerance, from many people, we have an assurance of Peace, we have inner peace, and we have assurance that we shall for ever live in the Lord’s Peace.
Will You not revive us again,
that Your people may rejoice in You?
—Psalm 85:6
When I think of a Holy Ghost Revival, I think of the tent meetings, or camp meetings, popular into the 1960s. I also think of The Reverend Billy Graham and how his humble beginnings in a tent turned into crusades that would affect nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries.
Initially, Rev. “Graham scheduled a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles in 1949, for which he erected circus tents in a parking lot. He attracted national media coverage, especially in the conservative Hearst chain, although Hearst and Graham never met. The crusade event ran for eight weeks—five weeks longer than planned. Graham became a national figure with heavy coverage from the wire services and national magazines.” — Wikipedia
There is more to a Holy Ghost Revival than tent meetings. There’s the Welsh Revival.
“For nine months, between November 1904 and August 1905, God anointed and used a 26 year old coal miner, by the name of Evan Roberts, to release a powerful revival movement of the Holy Spirit which produced 100,000 converts and which profoundly affected the spiritual life of Wales and the world.” — Welsh Revival Library
There’s the Azuza Street Revival. It began when the Holy Spirit used William Seymour at the Apostolic Faith Mission, 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
“The first secular news reports of the revival appeared, on April 18, 1906 – on the very day of the San Fransisco earthquake. The Los Angeles Daily Times sent a reporter to an evening service on April 17, and he filed reports that were highly critical of the meetings as well as of the people who attended them. The introductory headlines to the article were ‘weird babel of tongues,’ ‘new sect of fanatics is breaking loose,’ ‘wild scene last night on Azusa Street,’ ‘gurgle of wordless talk by a sister,’ all carefully calculated to give the appearance of religious mania or madness. (See separate article) Nevertheless, Bartleman reported that this brought the crowds! Many of them were true seekers but there were also the ‘crooks and cranks,’ even hypnotists and spiritualists came to investigate!
“An article published in ‘Way of Faith,’ October 11, 1906 probably penned by Frank Bartleman gives a friendlier description: “The centre of this work is an old wooden Methodist church, marked for sale, partly burned out, recovered by a flat roof and made into two flats by a floor, It is unplastered, simply whitewashed on the rough boarding. Upstairs is a long room, furnished with chairs and three California redwood planks, laid end to end on backless chairs. This is the Pentecostal “upper room,” where sanctified souls seek Pentecostal fulness, and go out speaking in new tongues and calling for the old-time references to new wine.” There are smaller rooms where hands are laid on the sick and “they recover” as of old. Below is a room 40 x 60 feet, filled with odds and ends of chairs, benches, and backless seats, where the curious and the eager sit for hours listening to strange sounds and songs and exhortations from the skies, In the centre of the big room is a box on end, covered with cotton, which a junk man would value at about 15 cents. This is the pulpit from which is sounded forth what the leader, Brother Seymour, calls old-time repentance, old-time pardon, old-time sanctification, old-time power over devils and diseases, and the old-time ‘Baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.’ ” — Revival Library
Revivals have been controversial, as pointed to in the article in the Revival Library concerning the Azuza Street Revival. It’s the fruit, or the outcome, of a revival that can be used to judge whether or not it truly is a Holy Ghost Revival. In Wales, for instance, “the movement kept the churches of Wales filled for many years to come, seats being placed in the aisles in Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea for twenty years or so, for example. Meanwhile, the Awakening swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America.” (Orr, J. Edwin. The Flaming Tongue. Chicago: Moody, 1973.)
Toward the end of the Twentieth Century, another purported revival began in Toronto, Canada. It was dubbed the Toronto Blessing. It began in the Toronto Airport Vineyard Fellowship January 1994. It greatly influenced another purported revival in Lakeland, Florida, at the Ignited Church on April 2, 2008. The Lakeland Revival began as a five-day service that continued for six months. While both these are purported to be genuine outpourings of the Holy Ghost, both have been criticized for excessive, inappropriate worship. Many pastors from large churches attended these events, and returned to their own churches bringing with them these same excesses. Uncontrolled laughter, and brief periods of unconsciousness were reported at these meetings. While many Christian leaders cite Scripture in support of events at these gatherings, others are more critical. A number of the churches that initially seemed to benefit from, and were impacted by, the purported revivals, are also churches that today are embroiled in controversy over their support of non-Biblical doctrines.
When all is said and done, there is little difference between any of the Christian Revivals and the the revival/apostasy cycle we read about in the Book of Judges, when the people of Israel turned to G-d after He raised a judge to lead the people, then after some years, turned again away from G-d. Some people through various movements, various times of Holy Ghost Revival, grown closer to G-d through His Son, our Savior, our Messiah, Y’shua Jesus. And that’s the real point anyway. One person, reached and changed.
For there comes a day when all people of Earth will give account of themselves before the Judgement Seat of Y’shuaJesus, LORD and JUDGE and REDEEMER. After that, the revived will feast with Y’shua at a banquet that won’t end. Then the real party will begin.
“One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts” – Psalm 145 v 4
“Carro me!” I asked my Dad. And he did. But then he left for awhile. And my mother and I left the ranch to live by the sea. My Welsh aunt joined us there.
“Cario fi!” I asked my Mom, speaking Welsh. By then I was two. She couldn’t.
By the Sea. Photo by Megan Jenkins Robinson 1952.
For over a year we lived by the sea, two Welsh women and a small boy. We spent the days on the beach. I didn’t know it, but my Mom sent my Dad a photo of me taken on my birthday.
A year later, a month after my third birthday, North and South Korea signed a peace agreement. I wasn’t aware of it. Not long afterward my Dad brought his Infantry company home. He’d led his company in battles including those at Sandbag Castle and Heartbreak Ridge. He’d received his second Combat Infantryman’s Badge and second Presidential Unit Citation. This time he’d not added to the three Purple Hearts from his jaunt in Europe with the 101st.
This man I didn’t know took Mom and I away from the sea to live in Wales for awhile to reconnect.
“Cario Fi,” I eventually asked of my Dad. He carried me through the green grass, through the hills of Wales where my Grandfather and my Uncle drew coal from the ground for their English overlords.
We returned to the States, though not to the ranch. I grew. Too big now for my Dad to carry me very far, he carried the burden for me in prayer. Throughout the years, without complaint, he carried me until a few years ago. Again he left. No more battles or burdens for him then. He left to rest with Lord Jesus. He left me in the care of the One Who’d always been there for us, even when I didn’t know.
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.
This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord. . .
“You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”
Kaleidoscope. It’s just a tube with mirrors and pieces of colored glass. One looks in one end and light enters the other. The tube is rotated and the viewer “observes beautiful forms,” which is what kaleidoscope means.
Our lives are kaleidoscopes, and should we dare to examine them, we see lots of beautiful forms. As we begin to make sense and find meaning in the larger picture the forms create, the tube of our world turns and those beautiful forms become a confused mess once again, or so it seems. That’s life, as is so often said. C’est la vie. To maintain an equilibrium we need some stability. Let the world try to disorient us, ever changing and reordering the colored chips of glass rattling around in the kaleidoscope of our lives. We can cleave to a Rock, to the One Who is the Rock of our Salvation—Y’shua Ha Mashiach, Jesus The Messiah. For as Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
1 Corinthians 14:33
Having grown up in the sixties, when love was free and meant never saying your sorry, I thought she was speaking another language. She wasn’t. She meant it.
For the first few weeks of the New Year, a television commercial depicting Mr. Mayhem has made a New Year’s Resolution—no longer will he cause wanton destruction of property and life. It’s a nice touch, grabbing one’s eye immediately. It’s a real contrast to previous commercials where Mr. Mayhem causes, well, mayhem.
Jonah’s Song 