Struggles

I have struggled with many things in my past. Failures, mistakes, bad decisions that led to more failures and feeling like no one has benefited from my existence here on earth.  No matter how much preaching I hear or how much I read the Word, I still struggle with this.

The lyrics of a song I heard recently spoke about dwelling on our past, but all God has to do is speak our name and we are set free. When I heard this song, all the teaching in my head reversed like movies do as we press the rewind button and you see everything that happened back up in fast motion.  My head had to catch up with my spirit in the teachings of it’s ok to fail because God knows that we are going to fail. He is well aware that we are human. For goodness sakes, He created us.

.  If you are like me, you spend more time beating yourself up about things you could have or should have done in your life.  All this does is gives satan an open door to cause you to waste even more time in your life to be focused on the wrong thing. In reality we need to pick ourselves up, brush our knees off and start the journey again.

. A very wise and anointed apostle has said many times, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” I have learned that this statement is so true in more than one way.  The key to being successful in changing our life is to stop and think about what you think about. If your thoughts keep you in bondage, think differently.  If your actions hold you back, act differently.

It is much easier said than done, but the concept is really quiet simple.  If you want to get something else, you’ve got to do something else.  God has already forgiven us for our past, we just have to forgive ourselves and let it go; and this would be a good change of mind. Forgiving ourselves would get us one step closer in God’s direction and it would break one more string that satan has attached to us.  I want something different, do you?

~Christi Duncan

Healing the Hurts

When you grow up riding and racing motorcycles, pain is something you learn to live with. I saw friends sustain major injuries or even lose their lives, but I loved to ride and nothing was going to stop me. I wasn’t looking to die young, but the truth is, once I accepted the possibility, I became a better racer. Over my 35 years of riding, I endured multiple concussions, broken bones, nerve and ligament damage and a major head injury, but I always bounced back. Believe me, I have experienced several healing miracles in my life – the kind that has the doctors at a loss – and I always knew it was God.

But the injuries catch up with you after time. For more then 10 years now, I have had chronic pain. The pain would start in my neck and back then radiate into my legs and arms. Even as someone well acquainted with pain, I would sometimes be overwhelmed by the intensity of it. My doctors all said the same thing: damage throughout my spine was pinching my spinal cord. Surgery was not a valid option because of the lack of good vertebrae remaining. Basically, there was no hope whatsoever.

When you’re in intense pain, everyday becomes a blur. I withdrew from people because it was hard to concentrate on conversations. Light and noise were unbearable. I could not form a clear thought let alone verbalize it. My communication with anyone was a struggle. My communication with God was non-existent. To say I had a short fuse would be an understatement.

Everyone makes mistakes, but during those years my judgment reached an all time low. When you are operating out of the feelings and emotions that I was, poor decisions became routine. I constantly struggled in my mind with thoughts of failure as a husband, father, friend, son and business owner. I was missing out on times with my boys I would never recover. How much longer would my wife stand by me? This ongoing battle combined with the unbearable level of pain produced thoughts of hopelessness, faithlessness, and suicide.

At the end of 2010, my life was at its lowest point. Something just had to change. I was scheduled to see a new surgeon, and I decided that I would give God just one more chance. I told Him that I knew He was not the author of my condition and that He wasn’t behind it. I reminded Him of the times He had spoken to me and performed miracles in my life. I repented for hiding from Him and then I asked Him to allow one of two things to happen: I wanted to either live medicine-free (through a miracle or a successful surgery) or I didn’t want to continue living at all. The truth is, at that particular moment, I really did not care which way it went; it just had to change.

I took the two weeks before my appointment to wean myself off the narcotic pain medication the doctors had me on, so I could go to the doctor’s appointment with a clear mind. After reviewing the MRI, my new doctor told me that he could definitely help. It was a major surgery and, even though there was more damage than he expected, he continued to offer me much needed hope.

The surgery turned out to be a great success. Recovery takes time, but I have stayed ahead of the “normal” healing process for my body. As I continue to restore my relationship with God, He is also repairing some of the other things that I thought were lost. It is good to know that my heavenly Father is not surprised at what He sees when He opens me up. I am being renewed day by day. It sure doesn’t feel like it all the time, but I remind myself that, because God said so, it is so. I know God loves me. He didn’t want Jesus to have to suffer on the cross, but there was a price in order for Him to save and heal me. Thank God He was willing to pay it!

~by guest contributor, Dave Frederick

What’s Separating You?

I had a dream this morning that went something like this… lots of people from my church were all in one building that I knew to be our “house.” I was walking through this house with Apostle David, and we were looking for a place in it where we could all come together to meet at one time, but all of the rooms were too small.

Some rooms were appointed with comfortable leather couches, but the couches were jammed so closely together that only a couple of people could sit on them at a time. Another room looked like a kitchen area, but you couldn’t get to the food in the pantries because there was a lot of furniture in the way, blocking all the cabinets. There was one rather large table in this same room that looked as though many people could sit around it, but it was crammed into such a small space that one whole side of the table was inefficient, and no one could sit there. Apostle David said to me, “Now, this table worked when it was in the other room, so why isn’t it working here?” We looked at the lay-out and realized the table was designed to be in a big open room, but it had been taken and crammed into this already cluttered room, so the functionality of the table was lost.  I replied to him, “This table wasn’t built to go in this room. It’s supposed to be somewhere else.”

As we left that room, we entered an upstairs hallway in which a handful of people were standing, crowded along a railing or banister. They said to us, “If you see so-and-so as you walk on through this house, will you give them a message from us?” I asked them why they didn’t just go give them the message themselves, and they replied, “We tried to go tell them, but there wasn’t enough room for us where they are. We tried to fix that by sending these messages over the rail to them, but we don’t think they can understand the message.” Suddenly, I realized each of these people had a golf club and were whacking golf balls over the rail. When I leaned over the rail, I saw that the balls were hitting the people down below in the head. I couldn’t hear what the people below were saying, but it was apparent that the balls were hurting them and they thought the people upstairs were attacking them with the balls. I turned to one of the people with the club and said, ‘They can’t hear what you’re saying, and the way you are launching this message at them makes them think you are attacking them, hurting them on purpose.” The people with the clubs said, “We know that. That’s why you need to tell them that isn’t what we mean. If they would just open up the balls when they land on them, they will be able to see the message.” I looked at Apostle David and said, “The rooms in the house are too small, and the people cannot communicate from one room to the next. There is confusion in the house because of the separation. People are hurting others by the way they’re trying to communicate. What should we do?”

Just then, it was like I was looking down at my box of Christmas ornaments with all of the little cardboard dividers in it meant to keep the ornaments from bunching into each other. Instead of a box of ornaments, however, it was our “house” with each little box separated from all the others like cubicles in an office. I was thinking, “Well, that’s not good. No wonder they cannot communicate… they are cut off from each other.” Just then, a giant hand reached down past us and lifted up the cardboard dividers, causing all of the cubicles to be one large, open space. When that happened, I woke up and the Lord told me there has been a spirit of confusion and separation keeping us all from being able to communicate and work and live together, and that the spirit was empowered by the separation each of us has between ourselves and Him.

When I got to church this morning for prayer, these verses came to me from Romans…

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? (Even the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” ) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:35-39 (NLT)

I believe this vision is for my own local church, but I also believe it is for the Body of Christ as a whole. There is a lot that can be learned from the dream, but I believe the most important thing is this: Walls of separation are put in place by religious, controlling spirits that come to divide and confuse. God has said that nothing can separate us from His love that is revealed IN CHRIST. We are THE BODY OF CHRIST, and His love is to be revealed in and through us. We can jump up and down and scream and holler at the devil and his religious spirits all day long, but they are empowered by the fact that we, as a body… as THE BODY… do not reveal the love of GOD through us. When that love is revealed through us, when we truly see it, then nothing can separate us from that same love… from that same love that is found IN HIS BODY.

It’s time we tore down the walls of separation between ourselves and our God. Only then can we destroy the walls of separation keeping us from effectively being ONE BODY.

Clearing the Briar Patch, part 2

Yesterday, I shared my testimony of how God delivered me from the hate I had carried concerning my mother’s death. The reason for sharing my testimony was to provide you with a context for what God is doing during this time of seeking. For you see, God has proclaimed that He is healing and restoring the land of our hearts, removing the briars and the weeds (much like He did in the vision of my testimony). So I began wondering, what is the purpose of briars, what do they do?

When I was a kid, my sisters and I use to love going out into the woods to play. However, there were some areas of the woods to which we were denied access. Why? There was a hedge of briars that had grown up. And quite frankly, the pain of trying to get through that hedge simply wasn’t worth it. We just accepted that there were some parts of the woods in which we just couldn’t play.

Sometimes we allow the spiritual briars in the gardens of our hearts to grow out of control until it’s no longer just a briar bush but a briar hedge. An impenetrable wall of pain that keeps us from going deeper into the forest of God’s love. But God has begun a new thing in this time of seeking! He has released His fire on the lands of His people and consumed the briar hedges of pain and sin that have been denying us access to the deeper things of God.

I know that for me, I have already been set free from a hedge of rejection in my life during this seeking time! However, now the hard part comes. God has supernaturally provided us with complete access to all He is by obliterating the briar hedges of our hearts. Now we must be bold and courageous as we allow the Master Gardener access to the roots of those hedges. For you see, now we have to allow the Healer to heal the land of our heart with His love.

Consider what Ephesians 3:16-19 says. “…That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, BEING ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

God doesn’t just want to clear the briar patches of your life, He wants to restore the precious ground of your heart! So be strong and of good courage. Allow God access to the roots of the briars. As you do, you too will experience the miracle of love, healing, and restoration that can only come from the pierced hands of the Master Gardner.

Surrender

“If you are willing AND obedient, you will eat the best from the land” ~Isaiah 1:19

I surrender to the conjunction.

IF I am willing AND obedient, the word says. It’s not enough to be willing. It’s not enough to be obedient. I must be both IF I am to eat the best of the land.

Even before Pastor Kenneth began preaching about boundaries this morning (click here for the awesome series called Puzzled), I had a clear thought of this verse in Isaiah followed by a mental picture of myself. I was sitting down in the dead center of a large rectangular area that I knew God had drawn for me. As I was sitting, I was drawing with my mind another rectangular area somewhere else. My mind…my thoughts…were occupying the rectangle that I had drawn, while the rest of me sat on my butt in the middle of the rectangle that GOD had drawn. I was obediently sitting inside God’s boundaries, but I certainly was not willingly sitting inside God’s boundaries. No wonder I have not been eating the good of the land! I’ve been so busy trying to mentally occupy a different place  that I have not even begun to fully occupy the place which He has made for me. I’ve just been sitting in the middle, pouting because I wanted to be somewhere else! Ouch!!

It seems to me that more people have a problem with the “obedient” part of that verse in Isaiah. For me, it’s the “willing” part. I have been obediently following after God’s will for my life, but I have not been doing it willingly. How do I know? Because I have said out of my own mouth, more than once, that if it wasn’t for God, I would do such and such. In other words, God is keeping me from what I will for my life. It’s God’s fault that I don’t get to do what I want to do. Now, I have never come right out and said that I’m blaming God for this, but I didn’t have to.

I thought I was surrendered to God’s plan and purpose for my life, but I realized today that I was not. Not fully. Surrender involves completely turning over all of me to His will. That means not only my spirit and my body, but my soul as well. To truly be surrendered, HIS will must become my will.  Not MY will be done, but HIS.

Now, I know we “know” this… but I think if we were all honest with ourselves, we would recognize certain areas in our lives in which we have not fully given ourselves to God. Thankfully, God makes it easy to get it right. It’s called repentance. It’s called surrender.

Beware the Lotus Eaters!

You have a difficult circumstance from which there is seemingly no escape. Suddenly, God gives you an idea that turns the situation around resulting in VICTORY! Your enemy is defeated! You celebrate! You rejoice! You’re now ready for the next step in God’s plan for your life! As you set off on your next great adventure, filled with confidence, you enter into a beautiful place of rest and peace. Surely this is your reward! You relax and take your ease, allowing your mind to rehearse your former victory over and over as you revel in your accomplishments. Now…where were you heading? Where was the next place you were supposed to occupy in the spirit? The drive you once had slips away as you daydream about places you might go and things you might do… someday.

Wake up! You have been lured into the land of the Lotus Eaters!

The Greek poet, Homer, wrote the fantastical journeys of the hero, Odysseus, and his men. Odysseus (you may recall from your school days) was the mastermind behind the Trojan Horse: a clever ruse that resulted in the Greek victory over the once impenetrable city of Troy. As you can imagine, the people rejoiced and celebrated their triumph, sailing away from Troy ready for more conquests. Riding high on their victory, Odysseus and his men make a raid on a city, plundering and pillaging goods.

As they escape with their treasures, Odysseus’s ships are blown off course and they find themselves on a beautiful island. The natives are peaceful and provide the men with lotus flowers for food. Soon, the men find themselves in a blissful state of tranquility. They rehearse the victories of days past and dream sleepily of a homeland they may or may not ever see again. Purpose is sucked away by apathy. Daydreams become clearer than reality. Motivation slips through their fingers like the sand in the hourglass of time that is wasting away. Unless they are awakened, they will sit idly by forever and never accomplish one more thing.

Think about it…how many of you can say, “I was once so on fire for the Lord, but now…I was once passionate about prayer, but lately… I used to lay hands on my family and believe for their healing, and I saw it happen immediately, but the last time… I remember the time I had a great financial need, and I sowed a timely seed only to see that need met supernaturally, but…” I’m not talking about rehearsing past victories as you face a new battle. I’m talking about the ways we find ourselves stuck from time to time, wondering how we got into a place of apathy when we know for a fact that we have experienced victory in the past. If we are not watchful and awake, we will find ourselves like Odysseus’s men: trapped in a sleepy state of contentment, happily rehearsing old victories with no motivation to move forward.

How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? [Yet] a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

~Prov 6:9-11

Poverty of spirit will result in natural poverty. When we allow ourselves to fall into the lair of spiritual lotus-eaters, our motivation to press into the things of God slips away. A ceiling develops over our lives and ministry, and we begin living off stale manna from days gone by. We’re content with what we have already done and are not interested in pursuing more. We become worthless, ineffective, and forgotten. Generations of Christians have done this. Denominations have fallen victim to this. What about you?

The Church cannot afford to be content with rehearsing our past victories while ignoring the things God intends for us to take care of today, tomorrow, and in times to come. Friends, there is more in front of us than there is behind us! Our best is yet to come!!! So, put the lotus flower of contentment down, stop living in the past, and let’s get going! There are great adventures yet to be had in the Kingdom of God!

~Linda

You Were Born to be Wild

We always think of tiny newborn babies as sweet and innocent… completely devoid of any sin. But where does it come from? Does sin just suddenly leap on you from behind the bushes one day, like a lion on its prey? No, you entered this world with a sin nature… a nature like the first Adam. So, whether you realize it or not, from the instant you were born and the doctor spanked your little bottom, you were born to be wild!  That’s right; you were born to be crazy, wild, rebellious and even insane.  Some of you were born with a tendency to be homosexual, others with a tendency to be a gossip, and others of you had genetics that pre-dispose you to become an alcoholic. You were literally born to be wild.

Let’s take a quick trip back through time.  We are in the Garden of Eden and we see Adam and Eve sin and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  They rebel against God’s system of thinking and opt for a system that can be “understood” based on Good and Evil.  By doing this, sin enters the world and so does “wildness”.  We watch as God comes to the Garden and cries out “Adam where are you?”  Obviously, God wasn’t having a “senior moment” and He didn’t forget where Adam was; instead He was making a statement as to the condition of Adam’s heart.  As of that moment, God no longer was able to identify with or connect with Adam, and Adam was “lost” to God.

So how does this affect you?  Adam, at that moment in time, set up a pattern of destruction that would flow down upon the generations of man and corrupt each of us eternally.  Sin gained dominion over man, and at that time we all became “wild”.  Paul said in Romans that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.  And if we study even further, we see that the sin wasn’t our own, but it was the sin of Adam passed down to us through our thought processes, our genetic disposition toward “wildness” and a multitude of other problems.  We are all born sinners.  Separated from God, we are all slaves to our “wild nature”, also known as our “sin nature”.

However, God in His mercy and power saw a way of escape for us.  He wanted to build a family and He refused to let Sin tie His hands and limit Him from getting what He wanted.  God can be quite sneaky sometimes, and in His grand scheme He began to hatch a plan that would take thousands of years to culminate.  He found a way to come and put Himself into the position of Man.  Through Jesus Christ, He came and tamed the wildness of man’s spirit through the connection we can have through Christ Jesus.  In fact, Christ was the whole point.  Not Jesus, but Christ.  Jesus left the earth and went to heaven, but He left behind the “Christ” (which means anointed of God) that we might be able to partake in Him.  Paul said this: “Christ in us is our hope of glory”.

So here is what all of that means: When Jesus died and took our place for our wildness, we got to take His place in His Free Spirit!  Instead of being slaves to wildness, we could be free in the Grace of Christ!  You may have been born an alcoholic, a homosexual, a single parent child, poor, rich, slave, free, wild and crazy, but God made a way of ESCAPE FOR YOU!  You don’t have to live by the circumstances that the wildness of Adam created, but instead you can live free from the power of sin through the Love of Christ.  All you have to do is ask Him to give you a new spirit and make the exchange of your sin for Jesus’ sinless spirit (CHRIST).  By doing so, you become joint heirs with Christ and one of the many beloved of the Father!  You can live free instead of living bound!  You can live in liberty instead of living in fear!  You can live in peace instead of in torment! You can live righteous, instead of living wild! You can live IN CHRIST!

~Apostle David Coker

The Many Faces of the Modern Church, pt. 3

The Retirement Center: We need our elderly members to be examples to younger generations. Their wisdom and experience are priceless. However, if seniors are all you have in your church, their rich legacy will die with them instead of being handed off to another generation. The Church is meant to be a rich thriving family. Families need seniors, young people, kids, newlyweds, 30-somethings and everyone else. We need to remember that God isn’t looking for His church to be a spiritual nursing home. He wants an active family of all ages!

The Vegas Style Church: In Vegas, you can literally drive thru church to get married, buried, or christened. God didn’t intend for His church to be a convenient, drive by experience. You’ve heard the expression, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” So many churches are like that. What happens inside the church stays in the church, never getting outside to impact the community surrounding it. God designed His church to be an effective and active voice in the community, not a drive thru.

It is time for us to redefine the character of the Church. We need to break free from the Houdini plan and record over our reputation as a bad episode of “Friends.” It’s time to throw away the key ring of the maintenance man, and pump life into the Church, refusing to be the waiting room for Heaven. We need to let what happens inside our churches effect the world around our churches. Let’s shed the old characterizations of an ineffective religious church and become the vibrant, powerful, and victorious Bride of Christ!

Driving Tips

How do you stay on course with God? It seems so easy to miss it. We look around at the Body of Christ and see people deserting their destiny on a regular basis… people on all levels from big time televangelists to friends on the pew next to us. Somehow, they got off course. Sometimes, we allow the failure of others to distract us or cause us to fear. After all, if “they” missed it, whose to say we won’t miss it??

Well, let’s go back to our driving analogy from the other day. I realize that people run off the road pretty regularly, but just because “they” do, doesn’t mean I have to! There are certain precautions I can take to guarantee that  my vehicle will stay on the road and not end up in a ditch somewhere. Here are some driving tips that apply literally AND spiritually!

1. Keep your hands on the wheel. We don’t live in an age where cars can drive themselves. Even the most balanced of vehicles will end up going off the road when you take your hands off the wheel for long enough. YOU have been given the stewardship of your destiny. It is up to you – not God, not Jesus, not anyone else – to stay on the road. If you try to put your hands on something else and drive with your knees, you may have the allusion of being in control for a while, but in fact you are always one second away from a crash. Same thing with giving the wheel over to someone else for a while… you might have started that vehicle in a certain direction, but if you give control of your destiny to someone else, you’ll go where they want instead of where you planned.

2. Keep your eyes on the road in front of you. Don’t read the billboards, don’t birdwatch, don’t text on your phone, fiddle with your iPod, or spend all your time looking in the rearview mirror. Face it, there’s a lot to look at out there and what’s straight in front of us can become a little boring sometimes. Before you know it, you’ll be looking for interesting signs along the way or spending all your time looking up. Opportunities may “call” on you, taking your focus away from your task at hand. You may even get lost in daydreams of days gone by, but remember… you CANNOT drive forward while looking in your rearview mirror!

3. Stay on the road! We all zone out from time to time. When you “come to” yourself and your surroundings look unfamiliar, don’t panic! Too often, we become alarmed when we are unsure of where we are and we abort our mission. Just keep going until you get your bearings. If you turn around and try to go back, you’ll waste so much time!

4. Ask for directions! You know, sometimes we are genuinely lost. So often, we get hopelessly entangled because we don’t want to admit we’re lost or we don’t want to ask for help. Roads shift around, new exits and access ramps are built, old landmarks are torn down. Getting lost is not cause to give up on your destination when all you have to do is stop and ask for directions! There are always wise counselors who have more travel miles than we do from whom we can ask for suggestions. And, of course, you can always pray and trust Holy Ghost to lead and guide you in the right direction.

Where Are You?

Have you ever been traveling along on auto-pilot, thinking about other things than where you’re going, when suddenly you look around you and your surroundings seem totally unfamiliar? You panic thinking you missed your turn somewhere while you anxiously search for some clues to your whereabouts. Before long, you come upon some familiar stretch of road and you realize with relief that you are still on your planned course. But for that one moment, you were lost!

What would have happened if you had slammed on your brakes and turned around? You could have driven miles and miles backwards before you realized you had been on the right road all along. What if you dodged off the road onto a side road, looking for an alternate route and getting hopelessly lost in the process? You could spend hours driving hither and yon until you find someone to guide you right back to the road you were on in the first place. No, your best bet would have been to stay your course and ride it out through the panic of the moment when you weren’t sure if you were heading the right way.

This same panic often hits us in our walk with God. We can set off in a direction we believe to be God’s, and our mind can begin to wander towards other things. Suddenly, we look around at the path we are on and think, “Where am I? This doesn’t look right! I must be on the wrong road.” If we’re not careful, the enemy will use this moment of confusion to take us right off the course God has set for us. Some often turn around and head straight back to old, familiar things in order to try to find their bearings. Others suddenly veer off the road and get hopelessly entangled in distractions. They may find themselves lost in the things of the world, or they may even find themselves lost in some other doctrine, chasing after whatever the current whim is in the church world. Either way, they often spend weeks, months, and years on sideroads searching for their destination before they finally stop and ask the Holy Ghost for directions. Once they find the road on which they once were, these weary travelers often lose hope thinking of all the time wasted in their wanderings and give up completely on following after God’s plan for their lives.

Where are you? Are you travelling God’s planned course for your life or did you double back somewhere along the way? Or are you wandering some sidepath searching for yourself? Ask God to show you where you are in relation to where He wants you to be.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at some driving tips to keep us going safely in the direction God has planned for us. In the meantime, examine yourself.