Thursday
The Revival at the End of the Age?
Friday
Two Brothers
- A robe represents righteousness, so Dad is forgiving the boy. The first thing the son is reminded of is that he really is forgiven. It’s easy to miss that, and the boy didn’t even consider it an alternative with Dad.
- A ring speaks of authority: the son has authority within Dad’s realm. Again it’s contrary to his expectations that he is not a servant himself
- The son came back looking for a servant’s position. Dad gives him sandals: only nobility wore sandals, I’m told. “You’re part of the family. You’re nobility here.” At the very least, it’s provision for the sandals he’d lost, presumably in the pig farm.
- And then instead of the recriminations the boy expected, Dad has a party celebrating his son’s return. There was no accusation whatsoever: just joy. And the joyful party is a big one. A fatted calf can feed a whole lot of partygoers. Either they went on for days or they invited the whole neighborhood.
- “Look, I’ve served you for many years!” (implying, “and you haven’t even noticed!”)
- “See how good I am! I always obeyed your commandments (unlike some sons of yours that I could mention).”
- “You’re cheap! You never offered me a party (not even a little one for my friends. Without you, Dad).”
- “It’s not fair! Your favored son hasn’t been anywhere nearly as righteous as I have, but you treat him like royalty!”
- Relationship w/ God: “You’re always with me.” Don’t lose perspective: we’re just welcoming him back into what you have always had. It’s hard to have a great party celebrating our return when we haven’t run off & done stupid things.
- Authority: “All that I have is yours.” This boy whined that Dad didn’t offer an animal for a party with his friends. Dad says, “Look, it’s all yours. Do with it as you like.” We older brothers forget that we don’t need to ask someone else to give us what is already ours. It’s Dad’s kingdom, but it’s our inheritance.
- Relationship with the Family: “It was right that we should make merry….” It’s easy to lose track that we need to celebrate what God is doing in others, and sometimes that’s more important than working in the fields.
- This isn’t about you. It’s about your younger brother.
Wednesday
Discover, Develop, Deploy
Saturday
Gatekeeping in my Neighborhood
But the elation was short-lived. Our home had everything that we knew to ask for, but there were some things we didn’t know to ask for. In our first week living there, I learned of three drug dealers on our block. I watched drug deals go down at the front door of the house across the street while my kids played in my yard. They knew about that dealer, and they told me about the other two dealers on the block, and which houses they lived in.
This was absolutely not OK with me. I talked to the authorities, and they told me about the standards of evidence that they needed in order to intervene. I talked to other neighbors, and they shook their heads and “tsk tsk’d”.
Then I talked to God. More precisely, I whined at God. “God, why is this going on? This isn’t right! Make it stop!”
It seemed as if he let me vent for a while, and when I paused to catch my breath, He interrupted. “So what are you going to do about it, Son?” Hunh? That stopped my whining immediately. Once my head stopped spinning, I asked more intelligently, “Uh… what can I do?”
He gave me some prayer strategies: some specific ways to address the situation in prayer, rather than through legal means, social means, or whining. The specific strategies aren’t important except that they involved me obeying Him, and they involved me making some particular declarations over my neighborhood. Throughout the process, God used the metaphor of a gatekeeper with me: the one who decides who can come in and who cannot.
So I obeyed: I prayed the things He said to pray for, the way He said to pray it. It was odd stuff, so I did it in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning: I didn’t want someone calling the cops on me!
His instruction to me was to establish some "gates" at the entrances to my neighborhood. That felt really weird. I didn't see anything in the natural, looking with my "spiritual eyes," they looked like the gates of an ancient walled city.
Fundamentally, the decree to the "gates" was: "Welcome in the Holy Spirit, and the human spirits of the people who live here, and their legitimate guests. Keep out every other spirit, human or demonic."
Suffice it to say: it worked. Within 30 days, the three dealers were gone. The one across the street sold the house to a family with a daughter the same age as my daughter. The other two just picked up and left, leaving empty houses. All three houses were soon remodeled.
I was stunned. I don’t think I’ve ever seen prayer answered in more detail than I did in this adventure: first our house, then the removal of the drug dealers. Life was good!
Then my next door neighbor invited a woman to live with him. She brought guests: two silicon implants for him, two full-blooded wolves for herself, and a host of demonic co-habitants. Life was no longer good.
I called every government agency I could think of that might have some authority with wolves: federal, state, and local agents told me time and time again: “No sir, wolves don’t belong in a residential neighborhood, but yes sir, she does have the necessary permits for them. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
I ignored the time that they lunged from the back of her Toyota pickup and nearly ate me. But when they tried to eat my daughter (they didn’t succeed, but just barely – she was unscathed), I confronted the neighbor: politely, gently, because he was a wimpy little guy and I didn’t want to intimidate him. But the wimpy little guy got big and snarly when I suggested that the wolves shouldn’t live there: he cussed me up one side and down the other in his rage, and vowed in no uncertain terms that they were not leaving, not today, not ever!
Hokay! That’s not going to work!
So I tried prayer. Again, I whined at God; again, He interrupted, but more quickly this time. “What are you going to do about it?” Again my slack-jawed “Hunh?” Then He went on, “You’re my representative in that neighborhood. It’s up to you. What’s your decision? Do they stay or do they go?”??
That floored me. I didn’t have a theology to deal with that kind of a question, but I didn’t hesitate. The wolves wanted to eat my daughter, and God was saying that it was up to me? “Heck no! They cannot stay. They have to go!” and I knew I was speaking with the authority of a judge announcing a decree.
That very weekend, they moved out. No explanation. The guy that cussed me out and shouted that they were staying, took their wolf-house down himself, packed it into the Toyota truck and moved it away. We never saw the wolves again, or their owner with the implants, except once, and the Police arrived en masse with drawn weapons to make sure that didn’t happen again. No explanation for that either.
Since then, I’ve tried to exercise this authority in other ways, and when I felt that I was following God’s leading rather than my own, I have found that things often unnaturally change.
I have also found that I need to increase my skill in wielding this power: I watched a porn shop close after I made some decrees, only to be followed by another in its place, and that one was more firmly rooted (though it had a “going out of business!” sign on it regularly). A pagan worship center was closed, only to open up again a couple of blocks away. Both have since gone out of business
These are curious stories, and true ones, but what’s the purpose?
I have developed a couple of guiding principles from these events, and the others that surrounded them (this was an interesting season in my life!):
1) God delegates authority to His representatives in an area. (My “area” of influence was only a couple of blocks; others’ territory may be smaller or larger.)
2) He takes that delegated authority very seriously. When He gives authority, He means it.
I guess there’s a third principle:
3) I probably ought to exercise the authority that I’ve been given, and I probably ought to exercise it for good purpose.
I know I’m nothing special. May I suggest these principles for the life of the church in this season? May I suggest these principles for you?
The Pilgrimgram comes from an elder Pilgrim about the thing we call "church." Seldom politically correct, this is what I hear God saying to and among His Church today. Feel free to share it with others.
Legitimate Ministry
Revival: Future or Present?
The Pus of Life: Liquor Puris
- Time. Just as your body has a natural and effective immune system, which takes some time to work. Your spirit also has an immune system, and your spirit’s immune system – in a healthy spiritual person – will protect your soul (your mind, will, emotions). The regular maintenance of a love-life with Jesus is enough to handle most of our small pus-filled infections (aka “pimples”). This is why we need to live a life of spiritual passion, not (primarily) spiritual discipline: it is a better immune system. And just living a life in love with Him will be sufficient to keep much of the enemy’s drivel from infecting our soul.
- Topical antiseptic and careful hygiene. The purpose of both antiseptic and hygiene is cleanliness: in this application, not letting infections start and/or grow. Purity is an effective weapon against the enemy. There’s a reason that wisdom teaches us that if there’s an area of our life that we’re tempted with, we maintain a higher standard of purity there, so as to not be tempted. That’s why recovering alcoholics don’t drink socially. (But someone else who is not tempted towards drunkenness may have a beer with dinner.) This is also why fasting is a powerful tool: it works to reduce the natural desire of the flesh to take leadership of the soul, subjecting it to my spirit’s leadership.
- Heat. Medically, that’s a hot compress to help the pus drain out more quickly. Metaphorically, it’s still a process of turning up the heat. Spiritually, we turn up the heat – we apply external heat – by worshiping more or with greater passion, by sitting under more or more anointed teaching, by participating in more prayer gatherings or participating with more intensity. Turning up the heat is a great strategy to fight off the infections of the enemy. It’s also a powerful tool for igniting passion in our spirit. (I would add that while a life of passion is “the normal Christian life,” that life should not depend on a schedule heavy with prayer gatherings, additional church services or conferences: those are the gravy on the meat, not the meat itself.)
- Antibiotics. There are times that our body just can’t win the fight. And there times that our normal Christian life – our personal practices and our community practices – just aren’t enough to overcome a particularly vigorous infection. There are times when we need to get ourselves into the hot-seat and get a bunch of seasoned warriors to lay hands on, anoint with oil, and go to battle on my behalf. James 5:14 is not limited to physical sickness. There’s a time to visit the healing rooms. There’s a time to sign up for Cleansing Streams or Sozo Ministry or whatever inner healing & personal deliverance ministry you trust. There’s a time to gather an increased level of prayer support for a season.
Keeping up with the horses.
"If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you,
Then how can you contend with horses?
And if in the land of peace,
In which you trusted, they wearied you,
Then how will you do in the floodplain of the
Turnabout And Fair Play.
Do you remember 8 years ago. When
When the “liberal media” attacked him, demeaned him, smeared his reputation, we were saddened and angered. In the eight years he’s been in office, they have not relented, but only increased the pressure. Some would argue that this fact was foundational in the successful election of
During the recent election season, I heard similar dismay about
Those among us who had supported
Now
The precedent is clear: the supporters of the defeated candidate increase the mudslinging, the civil disobedience, the vilification. That’s what this nation has done so well after so many elections before: if there was disrespect shown during the election, then there were many and awful things said against them during their office: the victorious candidate was vilified, pilloried and subverted at every opportunity.
I am proposing another response.
1) Pray for him: Pray for the man. Pray for his office. Pray for his family (I can’t imagine raising children in the White House).
2) Honor him: speak of him with respect. Yeah, I know: the disrespect, the vilification is part of the process of preparing for the next election: don’t do it.
3) Seek the welfare of his government: Pray towards, speak towards, even work towards the success of his policies, his administration. In Jeremiah 29, the prophet is writing to the exiles: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (
One last statement before I finish:
Bad Things from God?
The funny thing is, God seems to take it all in stride. He accepts the blame for crud that happens. I have two primary examples.
Wednesday
The Church: a Flexible Body or a Building of Stones?
Leadership by Friendship
I'm indebted to Graham Cooke for sparking this idea in me.
Saturday
The Power of Glory
If God is the only one who gets to be clothed in glory, then I can sit back and look forward to that day. But if I am designed to carry glory – whether His glory or my own – then these things should happen when I show up as well. Wherever I go, the glory of God goes. Wherever I go, the results of glory should show up: people should be changed, goodness should replace evil.
So here’s the bottom line commission: go forth and splash the glory of God! Go leak glory! Everywhere you go!