I am sharing two notes:
I received the first note from an IHOP in South Atlanta. I'm sending it - not for the purpose of highlighting IHOPs at all - but because I long for Long Island to be drenched in love. Our prayer is quite sincere, "Montauk to Manhattan: Every House a House of Prayer". The note below is a "word" of encouragement. Please join us in praying for the Body of Christ Long Island/NYC to be drenched in Awakening as a House of Prayer so that Jesus will have His inheritance - every tribe and tongue and nation.
The Second is in line with the first in that since I went to Atlanta (see prior posts) I have been praying for the "wine" of the Holy Spirit ( WHATEVER that is . . .) to be poured out upon this region. Two nights ago, I had a dream about wine being poured on my head. I can't help but think that God is giving us keys and urging us to step into OUR inheritance as His Sons and Daughters.
That being said, I'll be at the House of Prayer tonight 7:30-9:30 and then again from 10-6 on Thursday for the Collegiate Day of Prayer and Friday 10-10 for the Burn. The primary focus will be these two issues. Awakening/outpouring and beseeching the Lord of the Harvest to send laborers into the Harvest. So . . . here's the two notes I promised . . . .
"This word was delivered by Ken Copeland and has direct bearing on the awakening that broke out at IHOP in Kansas City. It has since broken out in prayer related ministries all over the nation and around the world. It has recently broke out here in the Atlanta Area at IHOP-Atlanta. We have also seen it released at ASMHOP.
Let me encourage you, 2 Chronicles 20:20 says, "Believe in the LORD your God, and you will be established; believe his prophets, and you will succeed.” If you cry out, the Lord wants to meet you where you are.
(Tongues) “This ‘Great Awakening’ that is hanging heavy over the United States even tonight. This ‘Great Awakening’ that’s hanging heavy around the nations of the world but most especially in this country and in Canada. This ‘Great Awakening’ that is hanging there, just hanging there to be realized and to be, to be flowed and released throughout this nation and throughout the nation of Canada, and then in turn throughout the rest of the world.
“The prayer, the prayer, the prayer, the prayer that’s gone forth. The prayer that is going forth, that’s where the power release is. That’s where the trigger to these things is, that’s the way you release them in your church. And thus saith the Lord thy God, “In this hour these churches that are teaching and training people to pray of which are on this list and many others also, those are the churches where the explosion and the Shekinah glory of God will be manifest first.
“The praying churches will walk in it first. And they’ll say, “My, revival broke out over there.’ No, answered prayer broke out over there.’ The ‘Awakening’ will come out of congregations. There is a hunger in this nation for holiness. Holiness—real truth, Bible purity before God—and people will run into houses of worship where the glory of God is residing and hanging heavy. And they’ll say, “Clean, clean, clean! Oh to be clean, to be clean.” And they’ll run into that atmosphere and My blood will cleanse them from the top of their head to the soles of their feet.
“And My Word will take root on the inside of them, and this nation is headed for a Holy Ghost wake-up call. It is on us now—you rejoice, for we’ll see it before many hours go by. Hallelujah.
_________________________________________
"Good poems are like good wine, you don't just gulp them down. You “TASTE” them, savor them, enjoy the moment, anything else is a waste! God’s presence is more like the finest wine, which the civilized know, you Taste, you savor, you enjoy, and you take your time with. Too many when they encounter God, rush through it like an amusement ride for the thrill, when they should be savoring it, tasting it, enjoying his love and presence. The interesting thing about “good wine” is the more you drink the more intoxicated you become, wine produces “joy” “merriment”. So too with the “wine” of God’s love, once tasted it produces Love, Joy, Peace, as we abandon ourselves to the effects of the wine of his love. We should take time to savor these effects and realize he does not give us wine, “HE IS the wine”. It is Him, we drink of, it is Him, we partake of, it is Him, who fills our souls with the new wine of his amazing love and intoxicates us with his affections.
To drink a “cheaper wine” would be unthinkable, this wine was the most expensive ever made and it cost God everything. He offers it to us freely and bids us “Drink up” to our fill, for there is always more of his love wine. The hurts of this life, are numbed by the strength of his love and we are quite too intoxicated to notice when he takes out those hurts with his divine surgery & replaces them with the oil of gladness in our hearts. The “ecstatic joy” he fills our hearts with, makes us impervious to what is going on as we are healed in his presence & his love fills us with ecstatic joy till we think we will die and we don’t care. Others, who have not “tasted” this divine wine, are aghast at our drunkenness and scandalous joy, but they just don’t understand, they have not tasted yet.
We become “possessed” by that which we give ourselves to and the effects of this wine of Bliss show. We do not live from hurt, we live from love. We do not live from anger, we live from Joy, and we do not live from worry and strife but from Peace that flows through our hearts like a river of wine, intoxicating all who drink from that river. We learn there is no higher calling in life than to drink from this river of God’s love wine that flows from his heart to ours; it is our destiny in life. And like all merry wino’s we wish to share our bottle of Joy with all who will partake, for there is always more where that came from the river of wine never runs dry.
Bring me into a house of wine; array love over me."
-Song of Solomon 2:4
r.k.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Richard Rohr on Scapegoating
THE SCAPEGOAT
Question of the Day:
Whom do I scapegoat?
On the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16:21-22) a goat was brought into the sanctuary. The high priest would lay his hands on the goat and all the sins and failures of the people from the last year were ceremonially laid on the goat, and the goat was sent out into the desert to die. The assumption here is that evil can be expelled elsewhere, and the goal of religion is personal “purity.”
What immediately follows from the scapegoat story (the “escaping” goat) of Leviticus 16 is what is called “The Law of Holiness” (Leviticus 17-27), which largely defines holiness as separation from evil—which is exactly what they had just ritualized. In general, this is the pattern of most first-stage religion.
Three thousand years later, human consciousness hasn’t moved a great deal beyond that, despite the message of the cross. Jesus does not define holiness as separation from evil as much as absorption and transformation of it, wherein I pay the price instead of always asking others to pay the price.
From the cross, Jesus is shouting to history, “No more scapegoats! Look how wrong you can be.”
THE SCAPEGOAT
Question of the Day:
How does dualistic thinking create violent people?
We Christians, who dare to worship the scapegoat, Jesus, became many times in history the primary scapegoaters ourselves—of Jews, heretics, sinners, witches, homosexuals, the poor, the natives in the New World, slaves, other denominations, and other religions. It’s rather hard to believe that we missed such a central message.
The pattern of exporting our evil elsewhere, and righteously hating it there, with impunity, is in the hardwiring of all peoples. After all, our religious task is to separate from evil, isn’t it? That is the well-disguised lie! Any exclusionary process of thinking, any exclusively dualistic thinking, will always create violent and hateful people on some level.
This I state as an absolute, and precisely because the cross revealed it to me. The crucifixion scene is our standing icon stating both the problem and the solution for all of history.
Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 143
Question of the Day:
Whom do I scapegoat?
On the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16:21-22) a goat was brought into the sanctuary. The high priest would lay his hands on the goat and all the sins and failures of the people from the last year were ceremonially laid on the goat, and the goat was sent out into the desert to die. The assumption here is that evil can be expelled elsewhere, and the goal of religion is personal “purity.”
What immediately follows from the scapegoat story (the “escaping” goat) of Leviticus 16 is what is called “The Law of Holiness” (Leviticus 17-27), which largely defines holiness as separation from evil—which is exactly what they had just ritualized. In general, this is the pattern of most first-stage religion.
Three thousand years later, human consciousness hasn’t moved a great deal beyond that, despite the message of the cross. Jesus does not define holiness as separation from evil as much as absorption and transformation of it, wherein I pay the price instead of always asking others to pay the price.
From the cross, Jesus is shouting to history, “No more scapegoats! Look how wrong you can be.”
THE SCAPEGOAT
Question of the Day:
How does dualistic thinking create violent people?
We Christians, who dare to worship the scapegoat, Jesus, became many times in history the primary scapegoaters ourselves—of Jews, heretics, sinners, witches, homosexuals, the poor, the natives in the New World, slaves, other denominations, and other religions. It’s rather hard to believe that we missed such a central message.
The pattern of exporting our evil elsewhere, and righteously hating it there, with impunity, is in the hardwiring of all peoples. After all, our religious task is to separate from evil, isn’t it? That is the well-disguised lie! Any exclusionary process of thinking, any exclusively dualistic thinking, will always create violent and hateful people on some level.
This I state as an absolute, and precisely because the cross revealed it to me. The crucifixion scene is our standing icon stating both the problem and the solution for all of history.
Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 143
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Meditating on The Attributes of Holy Spirit - Spurgeon
"Thy good Spirit."
- Nehemiah 9:20
Common, too common is the sin of forgetting the Holy Spirit. This is folly
and ingratitude. He deserves well at our hands, for he is good, supremely
good. As God, he is good essentially. He shares in the threefold
ascription of Holy, holy, holy, which ascends to the Triune Jehovah.
Unmixed purity and truth, and grace is he. He is good benevolently,
tenderly bearing with our waywardness, striving with our rebellious wills;
quickening us from our death in sin, and then training us for the skies as
a loving nurse fosters her child. How generous, forgiving, and tender is
this patient Spirit of God. He is good operatively. All his works are good
in the most eminent degree: he suggests good thoughts, prompts good
actions, reveals good truths, applies good promises, assists in good
attainments, and leads to good results. There is no spiritual good in all
the world of which he is not the author and sustainer, and heaven itself
will owe the perfect character of its redeemed inhabitants to his work. He
is good officially; whether as Comforter, Instructor, Guide, Sanctifier,
Quickener, or Intercessor, he fulfils his office well, and each work is
fraught with the highest good to the church of God. They who yield to his
influences become good, they who obey his impulses do good, they who live
under his power receive good. Let us then act towards so good a person
according to the dictates of gratitude. Let us revere his person, and
adore him as God over all, blessed for ever; let us own his power, and our
need of him by waiting upon him in all our holy enterprises; let us hourly
seek his aid, and never grieve him; and let us speak to his praise
whenever occasion occurs.
The church will never prosper until more reverently it believes in the
Holy Ghost.
He is so good and kind, that it is sad indeed that he should be grieved
by slights and negligences.
- Nehemiah 9:20
Common, too common is the sin of forgetting the Holy Spirit. This is folly
and ingratitude. He deserves well at our hands, for he is good, supremely
good. As God, he is good essentially. He shares in the threefold
ascription of Holy, holy, holy, which ascends to the Triune Jehovah.
Unmixed purity and truth, and grace is he. He is good benevolently,
tenderly bearing with our waywardness, striving with our rebellious wills;
quickening us from our death in sin, and then training us for the skies as
a loving nurse fosters her child. How generous, forgiving, and tender is
this patient Spirit of God. He is good operatively. All his works are good
in the most eminent degree: he suggests good thoughts, prompts good
actions, reveals good truths, applies good promises, assists in good
attainments, and leads to good results. There is no spiritual good in all
the world of which he is not the author and sustainer, and heaven itself
will owe the perfect character of its redeemed inhabitants to his work. He
is good officially; whether as Comforter, Instructor, Guide, Sanctifier,
Quickener, or Intercessor, he fulfils his office well, and each work is
fraught with the highest good to the church of God. They who yield to his
influences become good, they who obey his impulses do good, they who live
under his power receive good. Let us then act towards so good a person
according to the dictates of gratitude. Let us revere his person, and
adore him as God over all, blessed for ever; let us own his power, and our
need of him by waiting upon him in all our holy enterprises; let us hourly
seek his aid, and never grieve him; and let us speak to his praise
whenever occasion occurs.
The church will never prosper until more reverently it believes in the
Holy Ghost.
He is so good and kind, that it is sad indeed that he should be grieved
by slights and negligences.
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