Continued…

January 31, 2012 • 1:32 pm 0

Crumbled Walls…

Crumbled Walls…

Because… Church is not contained in the 4 walls of any building.  Church is contained in the hearts of those who form the body of Christ.

Because…Church doesn’t have to meet with in the 4 walls of any building.   Church happens when we as an extension of Christ’s body come together and He works through us.

Because… It is time to for the walls to crumble.   For church’s everywhere to break the barriers of their 4 walls and allow the Body to rise up.

Because… This is not a call to get rid of the church communities that exist.  This is a call, to those communities, to  rise to up in response to the calling of the Spirit, and have one voice, one spirit and mind.   To be one Body.  His Body… His Church.

Because… This is a call to the Body of Christ to LOVE like they have never done before.

Philippians 4: 1-3  Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Crumbled walls are possible… Just ask Joshua what happened at Jericho…

To be continued…

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December 1, 2011 • 4:53 pm Comments Off

Hey…

This post to direct you here…

http://cpkiii.com/

Peace

Filed under: God's View

October 27, 2011 • 1:31 pm 6

Love Wide and Deep…

Paul Prays this:

Ephesians 3:16-19

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Then tells us how Christ will accomplish that far reaching love….

Ephesians 4:11-16

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

We, His followers, are the wide, long and high and  deep love of Christ.   We are his Body.

 

 

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September 6, 2011 • 5:01 am 0

Portions at His table…

God’s word will fill you full one day, and just give you nuggets the next.  You pour yourself into studying His word, and you come up with just a crumb of truth.  Are the crumbs good enough for you?  God does not give you more than you can handle at any given time.  Although He reveals His complete truth to you all the time, your understanding of that truth, or the part of the truth you are dealing with in your life may just be a crumb.

Math 15:22- 28 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”  23Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”  24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  25The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.  26He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  27″Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  28Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Through Christ’s death we have a seat at his table. We eat from the Masters table of truth when we read the word, and sometimes just wonder what it all means.  But if we live by the Spirit, in the times of not understanding the Truth,  God’s word will come to us in the portions that we need.   Feast or Crumbs.   God will provide his Truth for us.

Lamentations 3:24 I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

Matthew8:11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

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August 12, 2011 • 5:12 am 3

A study of truth…

For the past two weeks. I have been studying truth…

For the follower of Christ, the ultimate expression of “what is true” is found in the Bible, in Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6).  The Greek for true or truth is “Alethes” and means to tell the truth. Alethes is derived from the original Greek word A or Alpha. Alpha is the beginning of every thing, and Christ said In Rev 22:13 “I am the Alpha and omega” By saying I AM…the truth Christ expresses his divinity as God. Christ being the Alpha the beginning, and has been here from the beginning, the truth is derived through Christ, and He is our truth of how we are to live.

Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

John 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 8:32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

John17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

Christ Is the Alpha, Christ Is the Word, Christ Is the Truth, Christ Is God

Eph 4:20-24 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.The truth of Christ turns us away from our _ old self_ and our __deceitful desires__, and renews the _attitude_of our __Minds_1

John in his Gospel and first letter to the churches writes about what living this truth looks like.

John 1:6-10 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1 John 2:4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.

1 John 2:20-23 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 21 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

1 John 3:18-24 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

The truth is in our heart and will condemn, but God will overcome.  The truth will give us confidence as we approach God.  His Truth is how we are to live, and His command is:  Believe in Christ and to Love  one another.

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July 30, 2011 • 6:26 pm 3

In the soil…

I was cleaning up some old notes and came across the following and thought it was worth sharing. 

———————-

Do you have those days where you struggle to grasp God’s word?

Do you have those days where you just aren’t seeing clearly what God wants you to learn?

It is not like you are sick and dealing with suffering, or you are dealing with a job loss. No, it is just a day of not clearly seeing what God wants you to learn.A day that seems to have no lesson to be learned.

You try, you really do try. You dig in to His word to learn, nothing. You bow to pray, nothing. You raise your voice in worship, Nothing.

It is not that you don’t feel His presence, or know His name. You just have a hard time, seeing His way…

Well on those days, hold fast to your faith. Those are the days that the evil one loves. The days when you can not be sure….

Those are the days, when you push through the mundane. Those are the days(well everyday) we should trust God for who he is  with more earnest. The devil wants us to have more and more of the days when we aren’t sure of the Hope, and uncertian God is there.

The days when it is hard to hear are the days God is preparing the soil of the heart for His word. Fertile soil is tilled and tuy rned over, and prepared with the nutrients, so it is ready to accept the seed.

Satan wants our heart any where but in the soil.

Path…I hear you and do no care.
Rock…I hear you but do not dare.
Weeds…I hear you but do not share.
Soil…I care to dare so I can share my Hope everywhere.

Path…Heart hardened unyeilding.
Rock…Heart eager not-rooted
Weeds…Heart Learning yet unwilling
Soil… Yielding of self eager to learn willing to spread Hope everywhere.

Matthew 13:18-23

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July 18, 2011 • 12:14 pm 0

It is easy to be dangerous…

What does it mean to know enough to be dangerous?

When I think about knowing something, it implies that I had to learn what it is I know. Things like breathing and eating for the most part, your body does on it’s own. Everything else we have to learn to do. This means we have the ability to learn complicated and even the simplest of tasks.

Lets take walking for instance. When you are little someone could just explain to you how to walk, and you may understand that it takes standing on two legs, balance and then placing one foot infront of the other. But until you stand up, until you put one foot infront of the other, you only know enough to be dangerous.

On a larger scale. Thank about the lieutenant in the Army just out of West Point in his first combat duty. He may know battlefield and war tactics. He may understand weaponry. But until he is in command of the battlefield and fires or directs the weapons, he only knows enough to be dangerous. His choice when it comes to action is only limited to the knowledge he has. He has not been battle tested, and quickly learns he has to rely on those with more experience.

Have you ever been in a situation where you think you know how you should react, because you have spent years studying for that very moment, only to not know exactly what needs to be done. The knowledge is there but the actions just don’t happen. Like the situations described above most everything we do, even actions that become automatic, have to be put together with action. That action and learning how our knowledge translates when in action becomes wisdom. Wisdom doesn’t always mean having the right affect or outcome.

As we experience more and more, wisdom is the understanding of how our knowledge when applied will affect the outcome of a situation or activity. And with that wisdom our choices for action become more refined, and the affect on the outcome becomes more certain. We understand that link between balance and motion when walking, and the Lieutenant learns when to advance, flank, hold the battlefield, and even retreat.

Well when it comes to doing God’s will, when it comes to doing his work… I don’t want to be dangerous anymore. I want to be effective. Dangerous is easy, effective is hard.

Ecclesiastes 2:12-14

12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,

and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do

than what has already been done?

13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly,

just as light is better than darkness.

14 The wise have eyes in their heads,

while the fool walks in the darkness;

but I came to realize

that the same fate overtakes them both.

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July 12, 2011 • 2:43 am 5

Who do you sentence in the Moment…

I haven’t written about my one word lately… Moment.  This weekend though I had a moment that needs to be shared.    This is a wide net being caste, I get that…but knowing what I do now after this moment.  If I am am doing this many others are as well…

A while back I wrote about condemnation, and this weekend I was brought face to face with how condemnation was alive in my own life.

To set the stage.  Sitting at a table of with 9 Men this weekend,  5 white men, 4 Black men.  The topic we were discussing:  What keeps us from interacting with people who are not like us?  We were talking about the general concept of this, but because of the mix of the group we focused on racial issues.  And honestly what was said and shared could be said about any two groups of people.   The idea of projection of lifestyle came up.  We talked about how our experiences, and perception of reality project a certain expectation of  life style on a person or group of people.  We expect them to act a certain way.

One of the men offered this:  I am a black man, well educated, and been in the Military.  You would not know this unless you asked or I told you.  Just like I would not know about you until I asked or you told me.  To this day, I walk down the street and if I am approaching a white woman she will switch her purse to the opposite shoulder.  I have learned to expect that.

Immediately the teaching of Jesus and the plank in the eye came to my head.  Quickly I turned to Matthew 7 and read through the passage.

   3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

I looked up at this man and said:  The word is not projection, it is condemnation.  The word condemnation means to sentence someone to a punishment. The woman switching her purse is using her reality to judge and condemn you to a certain lifestyle or action.  Heck even I have had/have those thoughts, and I have condemned you and others to that lifestyle.  So much so that you now expect a certain reaction from a white person when you meet them…  GULP!!!!

See how this gets all twisted?  99% of the time when you meet someone for the first time you know nothing of substance about them and you form and opinion even before the first words of introduction are spoken.

I am not suggesting these people are our enemies, but Jesus in Luke uses that context of enemies to tell us how we should love those different than us:

Luke 6:32-26   32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

In no certain order as I/you type/read this list:

The unchurched,the unbeliever, the dope dealer, the man on the street asking for money, the alcoholic, the TV preacher, the side walk prophet, the emotional wreck, the angery, the prideful, the lustful, the homesexual, the black, the rich, the white, the poor, the Asian, the Hispanic,  the Muslim, the Hindu, the the adulter, the prostitute, the greedy, the people that live next door, the person who sits alone at lunch at the office, the person in the BMW, the person buying the 64 inch 3d TV…. Heck just even typing this list I can think of the ways I have condemned each one in my own thoughts.

And this is where Christ comes in.  It is only  with him and through him and because of Him that we can over come that condemnation.  That in the moment we meet someone we see them for how Christ sees them, and accept them for who they  are love them,.  Then let Christ do the real work in their hearts.

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July 11, 2011 • 7:41 am 2

Who’s do you sentence…

Condemnation

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June 30, 2011 • 12:23 pm 2

Time to do people work…

It doesn’t matter where you go to church, or what bible studies you are in.  It doesn’t matter if you are wearing the latest “christian” fad, or proclaim your faith by action.   We can talk eschatology, theology,  and doctrine.   Really we can, but…Not sure any of that matters to much these days…

What matters is are you working as Christ Commanded us to work?

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Works = ergon:  business, employment, that which any one is occupied

                    a) that which one undertakes to do, enterprise, undertaking

Christ is in the business of building the church, and by signing on as a disciple we have work to do also.

Matthew 28:18- 20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Christ employees his disciples to do as he did and make other disciples.   Our work becomes his work, and our work is the people that God put’s in our path everyday. Either by action or words, every person you encounter is an opportunity to work for Christ.  Every person is an opportunity to build into Christ the Church.

Spending two weeks at camp with 6th graders one week and 7th & 8th graders the next, and I sit here today missing the relationships I built with those kids.   I miss the work of building into them the Kingdom of God,  and His work to build the body of His Son the Church.

When  interacting with someone, with Christ as the goal, the relationship however brief takes on a deeper level of connection.  The person is able to see Christ through you.  If you let him, Christ will use you not only as part of the church, but as a worker also.

How are you working to build into Christ?

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View’s of God

1 Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

Job 38: 1-3

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The True Story

A Woman's Choice
Until She Comes Home

Continued Here