This Might Be It...

This might be the last post to this blog. Before you get too disappointed and whiney and start crying on me, let me explain.

It was over four years ago that I started writing this blog. The purpose was, and still is, to expose the workings of the religious spirit that has way too much influence over the churches in the Santa Maria valley. To this day, I am not sure there are more than a handful of people who believe that really is a problem. I think I have made the case pretty well and am not sure there is anything left to say. Besides that, everything has to come to an end sometime.

It does not really seem right to be writing about things that really are not important to me in order to make some money. On the other hand it does not seem right to write about what is important to make some money. Did you understand that? What is important to me is to open the minds of both Christians and non-Christians to all the possibilities of the Kingdom of God.

You see, I have had something happen to me lately that I do not quite understand. I had the Holy Spirit impress me to read the prophets. I will admit it has been quite awhile since I did that. I had not even completed reading Isaiah when I noticed my mind had changed about pretty much everything in my life. I am not sure anything really changed, but everything seemed better, like my whole life had somehow generally changed for the better. I am not going to go into detail, but literally everything in my life just seems to be falling into place and making sense. (Do not ask me to explain that because I am not really sure what I am talking about. I am just much more optimistic about God being in control.)

To summarize, this blog began as an expose' of a religious spirit, written for The Church in Santa Maria and, by extension, the whole Church. That reason now seems to have run it's course. My new perspective is that there are a lot of people who could have their lives changed by an encounter with Jesus. (Duh!) The problem is that most of them do not want to hear it at all.

I am currently in my second tour of counseling people with substance abuse problems in places where any form of "religious" discussion is taboo. The good news about that is the Holy Spirit always has a way of getting to them. As I have written before, "God's will does not always make sense initially, but it always makes sense ultimately."

This post was originally written to introduce a new venture in blogging. That did not work out the way I had hoped it would in the time frame I needed to have it happen. I am back to thinking about what to, whether to, and how to do something similar, but maybe not exactly the same. One, more time, if that did not make sense to you, no worries. I am not at all sure what it means either. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Competing Voices

We often have a problem distinguishing the voices we hear. We are not talking about your friends, mother, father, spouse, employer, etc. We are talking about voices that cannot be confined to any particular person, but may be combinations of some of those voices. That probably sounds a little confusing. Hopefully it will make more sense by the time we finish here.

I write a blog as you all know. Sometimes people make comments to posts on the blog. It is my decision to determine whether to post those comments, edit them, and/or respond to them. My decision is to publish all comments as they are written. (Although I have recently had to rethink that position because I seem to be getting spam comments of late. Any that appear to be spam will not be published.) There once was a dissenting voice to that decision. That voice was made up of multiple voices supposedly representing a multitude of voices. That voice gave me the option of taking down the whole blog or finding another local church with which to fellowship. I firmly believe the Holy Spirit directed the writing of this blog, and in fact, it was within the confines of that same, local church that I originally recognized the working of the religious spirit in this area. I assume you know which option I chose.

When confronted with the voice of man or the voice of the Holy Spirit, I feel confident most all of us would choose to follow the latter. We do have scriptural precedent for that, by the way. Acts chapter 5, starting at verse 17 tells the story of Peter and friends being told by a religious spirit (Yes, I know it was speaking through the high priest at the time.) to cease and desist from preaching the name of Jesus, healing people, casting out demons, and leading people to faith in Jesus as the Christ. (Loose paraphrase.) If you go back and look at that passage, you will notice an angel speaking to Peter, telling him what he should do. The voice of the angel is in direct dissent with that of the high priest. Recall that the high priest, at that time in history, had, to some measure, the power of life and death over the Jews. It was he and his associates that had convinced Pilate to crucify Jesus. Peter chose to listen to the voice of the angel rather than that of the high priest. The end result was the disciples received a spanking from the high priest and went on about their business, making thousands more disciples.

My motivational gift (Romans 12) is not encouragement. However, some have found encouragement from my life or my words from time to time. That is the way it should be when we are operating in God's kingdom.   Paul asks the question in 1 Corinthians 14:43, "How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation..." Whenever people gather together, Jesus is there to minister to them and to those they touch (Matthew 18:20). It does not matter what gifts they may or may not have. It is the Holy Spirit who is doing the work.

The purpose of this post is simply to encourage the author and the readers to consider what voices they may be listening to. Hopefully, the answer is the voice of God. The voice of God? How does one know if one is actually hearing the voice of God? This is one of those concepts that is so simple, we have made it much too difficult. It must agree with the written Word of God. Note, it is not that it must agree with what anyone else thinks the Word says, but rather what the Word actually says. If you do not understand that, 1 John 2:27 might help. If it does not, hit me up with a comment or an email to thechurchinsantamariaca@gmail.com. God bless.

Let Me Build My Kingdom First--Part 4.2

Sometimes I just do not understand what God is doing. (sic.) Somewhere in these pages I told the story of my telling a local pastor that God told me something. His response was that my hearing from God was of great concern to him. He then offered to pay for me to visit a Christian psychologist so we could find out why I thought I was hearing from God. What is wrong with that picture? Anyone who follows my teaching knows immediately. Psychologists, Christian or otherwise, practice (and I do mean practice) in the area of the soul. That dear readers is the essential problem with The Church in north America today. Not only do the leaders, (pastors, teachers, authors, etc.) operate all too often in the soulical realm, the rank and file members of The Church do not have the discernment to know it is happening. To be fair, neither do the people doing it realize they are. Oh wait, that is the problem that creates the problem. Or something like that.

(Now I am really baffled. That paragraph looks like it should be the first paragraph of the new post I already have a title for, but I am pretty sure it goes here. Oh well, we will forge ahead anyway and see where this goes.)

Humility is impossible when we are operating according to what we think is right. This is where it gets really dicey. That sounds completely counter-intuitive. We have to do what we think is right. It is just that our concepts of right and wrong have to be right. We have to have a standard against which to measure right and wrong. As Christians the only standard we can use is the Bible. We can quote our favorite people in the faith whether they be  G. Campbell Morgan, Watchman Nee, Jack Hayford, Bill Winston or whomever, but if we allow any one of them to be our authority for right and wrong we have slipped into wrong.

(Okay, I get it now. The title of the next post is "Competing Voices" which follows this very nicely. The teaching on the grace of God will have to wait a little longer.)

The prevailing thought within The Church today seems to be that bigger is better. Well, let me tell you, that is the prevailing thought in the world. If that is the best we can do as Christians we are in real trouble. Come to think of it, being in real trouble, and not recognizing it, is the whole purpose for this blog.

We are either about building the Kingdom of God or we are about building our own kingdoms--always. The truly humble man or woman has come to realize that when he or she works at building God's Kingdom, God gets busy building his or her kingdom so that person will have the treasures to bring out of his or her storehouse to meet the needs of others. We all have something someone else needs. Humility dictates we offer it to them without regard to whether they receive it or not.

"...Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Matthew 13:52

God bless!

Let Me Build My Kindgom First, Part 4

Sometimes, as people, we tend to leave things unfinished. This happens for any number of reasons. We get busy with something else and never get back to what we were doing. Children and husbands are especially good at this one. Perhaps we simply procrastinate. We think we will get to it, or back to it, but we just do not. Something like that happened to this post. Let us just say, I was not ready to write it when I wrote the first three installments in this series over a year ago. Hopefully I am now and it will make some kind of sense to you readers. God has a tendency to put things on hold until we are ready for the next step. He is always ready to take us to new levels of understanding, insight, and revelation, but He is never going to push us beyond what we are able or open to receive.

We have been going through the fourth chapter of James' epistle on Saturday evenings. Some version of fellowship has been more important lately so it seems to be taking the whole teaching time to get through just a couple verses on any given evening. That is just as well, since the book of James can be pretty intense. He does not mince words in pointing out our shortcomings. Pardon me if I am simply slower than you are, but I recently realized I had always thought James was writing to someone else. I mean, how could "adulterers and adulteresses" in verse 4 apply to me? Then it gets worse.

But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." (vs. 6) There is a lot of teaching going around of late on the subject of grace. In fact, the other post I did not finish over a year ago is on that subject. Some of the teaching on grace going around is good, some very good and some not so good. More on that in the next post--or at least the one I intend to finish soon. For the purposes of this post, we simply want to point out that it is the humble who receive the grace of God. That, of course, begs the question of who the humble are who would be eligible to receive that grace; what is it that qualifies one to receive grace? And I would be remiss were I not to ask, "Is it my lack of humility that is blocking more of God's grace in my life?" (Do not be too quick to answer that question for me.)

I am a very blessed person by most people's standards. I have a wonderful, and growing family and circle of friends, good health, plenty of "things", and all my daily needs are met. Were those standards, God's full measure of grace, I must be a model of humility. Except I am not. I still say and do things I should not. I am too quick to point out the shortcomings of others. I have even been known to mutter foul language under my breath when things are not going as I would like them to. (True and something of an embarrassing confession.)

It is probably best here to just make the point and let you all decide the truth of it for yourselves. Here it is. Ready? Drum-roll please. There is more grace available than we have ever imagined, but we are not seeing it because we have a skewed idea of what humility is.

Well, the Holy Spirit will not let me write any more on this post. I am assuming that is because there is too much more to say. So I am going to hit the publish button--after the "preview" and probably the "check spelling" and "edit" buttons. Then on to part 4.2 and we will see what happens. See you there. God bless!

Same Blog, Different Post

It seemed like a long time since I had written in this space. That was confirmed when I logged in and saw the previous post was written over two months ago. The interesting thing about that is there has not been much complaint from people who have read this blog in the past. I may be over-analyzing things, but that would lead me to believe either, no one is reading it anymore, or the readers are simply not being vocal about my recent lack of writing anything in this space. I believe I will go with the latter concept and feel better about myself.

Lately I have not been feeling so good about myself. I started a new, part-time job, working with people who have run afoul of the law for driving under the influence of one intoxicating substance or another, usually alcohol. That has solved any financial stress, but I am once again into a situation in which people are forced to come see me. I always prefer it when people want to see me. Maybe I am simply hoping for too much.

In any event, it is sometime shortly after 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning, when most, sane people should be asleep and I am watching words appear on my computer screen in hopes that I can later publish them for someone who cares. I know it's a God thing because even I do not do this, at this time, by choice. I do not even do this blog by choice. Not really. If I did, I probably would have taken it down a couple years ago when it became a point of contention between the elders in the church I was attending and me. My only guess there is that it was time for me to leave that church and they figured it out before I did. I still do not understand it, but, if you are reading this, you likely think this blog is more important than what men might say about it. I will only partially, grudgingly agree. There was a time when I thought I might have written the last post. It crossed my mind at the time that the blog might morph into something more of a teaching kind of thing than a lonely voice in the wilderness, as it were. It now begins to look as though that is not the case.

All that is to say, I have been a little distracted with some of the affairs of life that I thought might have been sorted out by now. There are still some that seem to be unresolved, but perhaps this post serves to get things going in the right direction again. I noticed at log in that there have been 5900 odd page views over the whole time this blog has existed. I know most of them are not mine so thank you if you continue to read what is posted here. I now expect to be writing a little more often, whatever that means. Then next post should have more substantive content, but we shall see about that. In the meantime, pray for me if I come to mind. God bless!

Outside Influences

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but sometimes I do realize when things happen in such a way that only God could have been behind them. In those situations, I am always reminded of a definition of "coincidence" I saw many years ago. Coincidence is when God performs a miracle and chooses to remain anonymous.

Yesterday two different emails came into my in-box from unrelated, but high-profile men of God. (Well, the emails came from the same person, but the articles they contained were from those two men.) They had the common thread of being from men who love The Church, the body of Christ, but who are also objective enough to see that the manifestation of the The Church in 2013 is not a perfect Church, "...not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing..." (Ephesians 5:27) Of course these men were speaking to The Church generally, but we must see their words as applicable to the smaller part of the body here.

Os Hillman writes, "In the early church there was an emphasis on developing a heart toward God. This was the Hebraic way...Loss of intimacy with God has been...a result of the influence of the Greek spirit. The primary focus has been teaching and discipleship instead of the development of a personal and intimate relationship with God. This has resulted in a form of religion, but one without power."

Jack Hayford writes, "We're within frightening reach of being able to grow bigger churches while failing to grow bigger people. We are increasingly tooled and trained in technology and management techniques, better resourced with music and media effects, and better housed and staged for added consumer appeal...Amid our heavyweight enterprises at refining style, we are growing weak in substance."

Thankfully it does not take a genius to see these two mighty men of God are asking questions about how The Church is and how it should be. Do they recognize what they are describing are observable affects of religious spirits at work within The Church? Of course, we cannot answer for them, but knowing one of them personally and the other through his writings I feel comfortable saying they both know the truth of Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." If you are not willing to take my word for it, perhaps you can take their word for it. We are locked in spiritual battle that will likely affect The Church until Jesus returns. At present it is not perfect, but we can make a difference once we recognize the real enemy and fight it wherever we find it. God bless!

Who I Am

Author's note:  It was eleven months ago, more or less, that I started this post. The balance just would not seem to come. I am leaving it as it was and finishing it. As a result, since it is not in chronological order, it may seem a little disjointed at least at the beginning. Thankfully, all you faithful readers of this blog are also intelligent enough to re-order as necessary and fill in the blanks.

As I wrote at the end of the previous post, it might have been awhile until there was another one. I just have to get on the same page with the Holy Spirit--and sooner would be better.

It is not difficult to imagine people reading many of the posts to this blog, especially the last two and asking themselves, "Who does he think he is?" It seems like it might be a good idea to answer that question. I know the answer to the question and many of my friends do as well. Here it is for the rest of you.

I am pretty sure they would not mind, as long as I give them credit, so I am going to let the recording group, Casting Crowns begin to help answer the question at hand.

I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean
Vapor in the wind

Still You hear me when I'm calling
Lord You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am
I am Yours

Not because of who I am
But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who You are
I am Yours. Whom shall I fear, 'cause I am Yours.

I am nobody really. Then again I am somebody because somebody had to call our attention to the workings of a religious spirit--whether we listened or not. Now God is on record and we are responsible. Somebody had to do it and nobody else did. I will admit to possibly having delusions of granduer thinking that some of this blog could be turned into a book someday. Judging by the numbers of people reading the posts such a book might well sell twenty copies. Okay so it was not my best idea ever.

With that said, the blog is turning a corner (subject to change of course) to becoming more of...hmmm. It looks as though the blog is going to take a more practical turn. We will be doing a little more teaching, but our focus will be on countering the religious spirit through our actions. (I have no idea what I am writing about now, so I guess we will all find out together.) What I can tell you is, that at my age, one would think I should know a lot more than I do. What can I say? When I know it, you will know it because God has given us, "...this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." (2 Corinthians 4:7) Some of us are just older dirt than others, and those who are have a responsibility to pass along what we have learned. I am taking that responsibility perhaps just a little more seriously and personally now. God bless!

Still More on the Religious Spirit--Part 2

I am feeling a little provoked by a comment to this blog this morning. That is not a bad thing. Maybe it gets me back to something I should have done--in fact thought I would have done--several weeks ago. If you read the last post, it likely seemed incomplete. It seemed the same to me as well. I had thought there would be a follow-up and explanation sooner than this. Today I moderated a comment, which you can read, asking whether the next installment were coming soon. It is.

Did you take any time at all to meditate on the verses from James? They were chapter 3 verses 13 through 18 if you want to take a second look. To rehearse just a bit, the phrases "meekness of wisdom" and "bitter envy and self-seeking" from verses 13 and 14 are set in juxtaposition with one another meaning one or the other is our state. This applies to each and every one of us and to everything we do. To be as simple and straightforward as possible, we do everything from one of those two motivations. We are either acting in wisdom, which meekness tells us is not our own, but is from above, or our motivation is self-seeking. James even strengthens self-seeking by telling us that comes from bitter envy. If that does not initiate an "ouch" in your spirit, well, you might want to spend a little more time thinking about it.

I am fairly confident that I have never actually met a person who does absolutely everything in meekness of wisdom. I will give something like a shout out to the late Rev. Dale Holford. He is a great man and I still miss him being here on earth for me to talk with on occasion. He was in his late seventies when we had several conversations about people who acted out of self-seeking. He gave me some eternal perspective, which I, of course, did not fully appreciate at the time. The thing about a person who operates in the meekness of wisdom is that he or she is meek enough to understand the wisdom does not come from them and also too meek to tell you that. (Were this a Psalm, there would be a "Selah" there.) It is hard to find people like that.

In juxtaposition, finding people who are self-seeking is not difficult at all. They are literally everywhere. Of course I have to be very careful with my examples lest I become convicted myself. However, since this blog is really about the religious spirit, it might be best to take our examples from it's activities. (Whew, I was afraid I was writing myself into a corner there.) Okay, I am just going to tell you how I was first affected by a religious spirit, before I had any idea what it was. It was a lot of years ago and is going to be new information to most of you. Give me a little grace please.

Eugene Ryan was my speech teacher at Hancock College in the early 1970s. I really did not like the man at first. In fact I tried to change teachers, but was not able to do so. Today, I credit "Old Man Ryan" as he once referred to himself, for whatever ability I have to teach, preach, and speak as well as I do. He was a stickler for proper grammar, pronunciation, enunciation, and even posture during our classroom speeches. He taught me a lot and I found out during the two classes I had with him that I was more at ease doing public speaking than many of the other students were. That translated well to Bible college and homiletics classes. By and by I found that I really enjoyed people telling me how good I was at it. I mean I enjoyed it to the point that receiving the accolades became more important than teaching people how to live better lives--which, after all, is the point of sermonizing. I trust I have said enough that you understand the point? If not, then let me say, it was more important to me to be thought well of than to have lives changed by what I was doing.

This is getting a little longer than it probably should be so to sum up as briefly as possible, when we do things because they make us feel good, we are in danger of participating in what James called, "earthly, sensual, demonic" wisdom. (Think religious spirit.) We may be able to revisit this concept in the future, but if you can handle one more counter-intuitive thought, operating in the "meekness of wisdom" will make you feel good. That good feeling will come from the spirit rather than the soul. When we get to that point, literally everything in our lives will ascend on a heavenly trajectory. God bless!