Where Is Your Heart?

And Jesus said ... "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God. For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”

Mark 7:6-8 NLT

The Problem

"What causes most trouble for most Christians of all ages is not legalism or lack of faith or theological controversies; it is Jesus Himself, who bestows freedom so evenhandedly and dangerously on those who do not know what to do with it. The church always gets panic stricken for fear of the turmoil that Christ creates when he comes on the scene; and so it takes His freedom under it own management for the protection of the souls entrusted to it, in order to dispense it in homeopathic doses when it seems necessary. The church claims to represent Jesus on earth, but in fact it often supplants Him. It must tremble in all its joints when confronted with His portrait. Ecclesiastical traditions and laws have domesticated Jesus, and today all the churches are living off the success of the attempt." Ernst Kasemann

Amazing Grace

What Is Church?

(This is not a test, but a reality check.)

Pentecost was the birth of the Early Church.
Pentecost means "fifty."
Here are 50 questions about the church.

1. What is church?
2. Why do people go to church?
3. Where do you go to church?
4. Why do you go to church?
5. Do you enjoy church?
6. Are you a member of a church?
7. Do you go to other churches?
8. Do you feel you have a part to play in church?
9. What do you do in church?
10. Who do you talk with in church?
11. Do you have intimate friendships with others at your church?
12. Where do you sit in your church?
13. Do you see the same people at church?
14. Do you invite people to church?
15. Who leads or does most of the talking in church?
16. Do you remember what is said after church?
17. Do you invite anyone home after church?
18. What do you talk about after church, when leaving?
19. Do you feel a conviction to change after what you've heard at church?
20. How often do you go to church?
21. Would you want to go to church more often?
22. Do you give of yourself or of your finances at church?
23. Do you feel obligated to give in every offering at church?
24. Do you participate in worship (sing, dance, bow, etc) or just listen at church?
25. How important to you is church?
26. Are you satisfied with your church?
27. What would you change about your church?
28. Does the clock control or limit your experience at church?
29. Do you ever disagree with what is said at church?
30. What do you do when you disagree with something said at church?
31. Who determines what will happen, and when, at church?
32. Are traditions important at your church?
33. What is the focus or vision of your church?
34. Are your needs being met at your church?
35. Do you feel God's Presence at church?
36. Do you ever see a miracle at your church?
37. Is there any fasting, sacrifice or prayer done at your church?
38. Are there any gifts of the Spirit operating in your church?
39. Are all the gifts of the Spirit operating in your church?
40. Do you believe in a Spirit-led church?
41. What does the taking of communion mean in your church?
42. Do you have a passion for your church?
43. What does holiness mean to your church?
44. Should anything be done to change church?
45. Did anyone in the New Testament build a church building or organization?
46. Did Jesus tell anyone to build a church building or organization?
47. Why did people change church?
48. Why do people keep building more church buildings

My Testimony

Some of you may be wondering about the painting at the head of my blog. It's one of mine. I was a professional artist for over 20 years. That talent was a gift from God, but He had other plans for me. I was asked to lay it down and take up His mantle. It wasn't easy. I gave away or burned many of my paintings as a sign of my commitment, which was difficult for my friends and family to understand. In giving up a lucrative career I lost most of the things which I had valued, including my dream house, new car, boat, and more. God graciously left me with what was most valuable, my wife and daughter.

I had been raised in church all my life; I was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit at 18. I then went to Bible College for 4 years (what a disappointment that was). Afterwards, I continued painting, making a name for myself. I got married to a beautiful woman and we had a lovely daughter. I was the picture of success, and the envy of some. What a joke. After nearly 20 years of gratifying my flesh, acquiring things, and doing things my way, on the inside I was miserable and my life was a mess. Nothing seemed to satisfy me for very long. A few weeks before turning 40 a voice spoke to me saying, "It's now or never." (It wasn't Elvis either.) Those words changed the course of my life. That night, as God spoke to me, I realized that I needed someone, someone who I had been neglecting for a long time. His name is Jesus. I told Him I was sorry for the way I had lived my life, and asked Him to forgive me. I told Him that I desperately needed His help. God began to teach me how to trust him completely, then He help me with my marriage and my finances, both of which I had woefully mismanaged. By trusting God for everything and being patient, I became more thankful for the things God gives, instead of grasping whatever I wanted by any means available. By trusting Him, I saw God do things I thought were impossible. All I had to do was to obey Him, and He would do the rest. As a result, He led my wife and I away from friends, family, and from the Seattle area into the 'wilderness' next to a mountain in Eastern Washington. There we lived in a 28' travel trailer for two years while I built our new home. God provided the money and the help. By sowing His Word into my life God became my healer, my protector, my strength and my refuge. On that mountain I spent a lot of time praying, fasting and interceding for people and for our nation.

Just prior to our move to Eastern Washington God had led me to a young man in 1988, who would become a lifelong friend, who would help to disciple me in the ways of God. He lived what he believed, his name is Sheldon David, truly a man after God's heart. Over these past 21 years I have spent a lot of time with him and by his example I am learning faith, love, submission, humility, passion, perseverance, worship, church life and much more. In 2008 God asked me if I would be willing to leave everything, including my hopes and dreams, and asked me to follow Him. I said, yes! Now God is giving me new vision and new hope to share with a lost and hurting world; he is teaching me how to encourage my brothers and sisters. We will soon see the Heavenly Father revealed in ways He has never been seen before, in literal manifestations of His abundant love and awesome power over the earth and its inhabitants.

The best is yet to come!

Birth Pangs of a New Day

Prophecy from Sheldon David, as seen on: cloakofzeal.blogspot.com/

My children are beginning to know the birth pangs of a New Day. I am that Day, declares the Lord. The gods of this age are reeling, loudly and tenaciously reeling, because that DAY is close at hand. Night is falling!

A birthing is upon My people. The order about to be born will not be the same as before. Many who were leaders in past moves of God will be passed over in this great delivery. Many in the old order will attempt to keep people following the traditional way, yet I have aborted that way, declares the Lord. The thrust upon My new people is to reform the Church; this will be done through a seemingly rebellious nature that tears and shreds false covenants and religious mindsets. Yet these people are not rebellious; they are holy. They will not TRY to convert everyone to their way, yet they do have a solidly stated and heartfelt passion to be faithful to their Lord. In this passion they will disregard the prized teachings of many prestigious elders, becoming a new path to follow. This order will appear to be the enemy of the Church, but will be My friend and ally whom I anoint to tear down worldliness in My House. Their mission will continue until Jesus Christ is seen as Priest and King within His Church.

Proclamation for National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer

WHEREAS, The Senate of the United States; devoutly recognizing the Supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And Whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His Divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

Abraham Lincoln,
President

William H Seward,
Secretary of State