We are forever humans and have human responses and are meant to, but they are overflowed by Christ in us; and indeed unless we were first living human persons with human reactions, we should not be the persons by whom He unveils Himself.Norman Grubb in Knight of Faith Vol.4 through Nancy Gilmore and www.normangrubb.com
We used to notice in Bible House that people with stricter upbringings took longer, because they had to become real first,then God would meet with them. Chris Welch
If somebody said, give me a summary of Christian faith on the back of an envelope, the best thing to do would be to write Our Lord's Prayer.
Rowan Williams,Archbishop of Canterbury see reflections on the Lord's PrayerIn the last few months God has spoken to me that the Lord's Prayer is a Template, a Kingdom Blueprint of His entire operation. This was confirmed by Tom Dale in Waterlooville in recent days, but up until then I had not heard someone speak on such a grand scale about this prayer.
That it was huge as an individual prayer I had picked up from a Little Rock Preacher in the late 80s who was used to begin unfolding it, including our relationship to the Father, across the Body of Christ in those days.He went on from there to be one of the first ministries in recent history to minister on the power of shame that we inherited in Genesis 3, and earned a spoof take-off in one episode of the Simpsons where the sermon was on Shame, but as ever, the very opposite of the gospel, rather making humans ashamed instead.
Even at the level of a Prayer of Jabez, a constructed, crafted,template prayer for frequent praying into,2000 years of praying it, sometimes in the most "remote-controlled" church contexts, the power of its unfolding has been there. But I want us to get inside the power of this prayer as used by the Holy Spirit .
If you held a graphic form of the prayer in its 3 main sections up to a window,
then took another sheet of thin paper and graphically drew the verse "Unless a seed, fall into the ground , it abides alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit," and held that up to the light superimposed on the other sheet,
then if you graphically drew a representation of the growth phases of 1 John 2 :12ff Children, young men, fathers and placed that over the top of the other two:
you'd have something like an inverted arc, where the base of the arc is at the lowest point.
And it wouldn't matter whether you placed this combined blueprint up against the whole of church history,
or up against your own individual Christian history,
or up against the history cycle of a particular church
or even up against a Holy Spirit led meeting...
or the whole book on how church functions...the letter to the Ephesians
the shape would be the same, and the end is always the same, a bit more unveiling of the glorious Christ in flesh form. Us.
Apocalypse is derived from the Greek word apokalypsis. Although it's often used to describe a great devastation or cataclysm, the literal meaning of apocalypse is actually an unveiling, or revealing. Hence the word revelation, from which the Book Of Revelation (or, perhaps more accurately, revelations, since it reveals many things) gets its name.Wayne Blank
The three sections
Part One - Our New Standing
As new charismatics God charged our late 60s early 70s generation with the Holy Spirit commissioning of raising up the Holy Highway in the wilderness, of restoring the former cities and devastations, of being a repairer of the breach.
These are all prophetic phrases filled with Holy Spirit meaning, and Holy Spirit empowering for the task.
Our first question....how do we get to the big stuff, how do we get started?God's answer - praise and worship as a WAY.
Ed Miller, although rooted in Argentina, and being involved in its 1950s revival, had uncovered something much more important in his seeking the Lord in the secret place. He was the hidden figure behind Judson Cornwall's praise books and ministry, behind Calvary Chapel's Maranatha Singers and all the 70s praise vinyl discs, behind the rediscovery of praise and worship as the Living Way into God's Presence as a congregation in Jorge Pradas's churches throughout Argentina. Los Rios De Vida
Evangelists for centuries knew about setting a foundation of praise into their meetings, but not even most in the charismatic movement dared following the leading of the Spirit right through where praise and worship takes you. Yet many were finding this pattern anyway. It is very much the "how" behind our home gatherings in Grimsdells Lane Amersham, behind the early house church movement including the now large UK churches.
And it is largely the "interference" of worship groups, and human understanding, and limited 2 level Christian thinking (get saved, get baptised in the Spirit) that has paralysed the early vision of allowing God to be God in meetings.
Our Father, who is in heaven....
Whether silent, or noisy or however we do it, we KEY INTO, in our hearts, not our heads only, the One who is worthy of ALL our focus, the One who created all, the One who is in all, and the One who is to be manifested as the All in All, into whom King Jesus will return everything in Himself.
Hallowed, Holy is Your Name. Now. We are not waiting to see evidence with our eyes, though the more we see in the Spirit, this happens to be the overall picture even now.....but we declare the truth in any case, by faith. Because the devil's lies plague us continually. If we live from what we "see", from our leftbrain assessment of how things look, cynicism becomes this cycle of vanity. Things look terrible, then become more terrible, then look worse, so we believe worse, and we continue on a downward spiral.
We were never intended to live from what we could materially see. We live from the Spirit. From the "seeing" that pulls things out of the Kingdom into material form. God is totally OTHER. His Name is forever holy. Holiness is substance. It is mediated through the Holy Spirit. But though God is other, His very Word sustains every element of this creation by His Word of power. In Him we live and move and have our being.....
If we are going to have a meeting, we need to touch this OTHER THAN, this HOLY ONE, this One in whom is ALL LIFE. I am not interested in anything less in a meeting of gathered saints.
Our Father is a relationship, the legitimacy of which is spelled out in Ephesians chapter one to three. But it is a corporate relationship. It's not me and God separate from you and God. It's got to be the same God to be authentic. Ephesians is a corporate book.
Part Two - Inside Readjustments
Ephesians and indeed all the New Testament letters describe what Christ has done for all humans once for all in His death on the cross. We have died. At our spirit centre. With Christ. Our life is hidden, bound up with, interleaved with Christ. Now. If we made the internal (not just intellectual) decision for Christ, we are accepting what has already been won for us, and the old spirit of unbelief and separation from God can be legitimately booted out so we experience it as fact! What makes it fact, is not our acceptance of it, it was always fact since Christ's finished work. But faith leans on these facts, and it's a bit like police returning to your house with all the squatters in. When you tried to say "get out" nothing happened. But when the police return referencing the whole of British Law, the squatters soon shift. The whole of humanity, including Buddhists, think that by analyzing the house filled with squatters we come to some improvement. We, on the other hand simply refer to the Christ policeman, and say, there is no issue here, you have to leave!
But ofcourse, if it was just "separate squatters" it wouldn't involve us taking up our cross and following Him.
The problem is all about who we think our identity is.
The precursor to our discovery is:
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will Be Done
This is the inner heart permission that God needs to go further.
If Christ-Chris has booted out Satan-Chris at my spirit centre. If as Ephesians says the Spirit truth of me is as one who is seated with Christ in the heavenly places....NOW....
where are the problems coming from?
The Middle Section of the Lord's Prayer Involves our hidden operating system
Our hidden hindering operating system is out of sight to all apart from the Spirit of God, and those who themselves have had their "log" removed. They are splinters, but how powerful are those splinters. They are hidden scrawlings on your holy place walls in your inner sanctuary.Ezekiel 8:10 They are NOT who you are, because when Christ replaced you as you in your inner centre at conversion, that is the true YOU. That is the one that comes forth more and more in the meetings by the Holy Spirit. "The Body fitly joined by that which every joint supplies". The Body is not built by Quaker suggestions of truth, by mere contemplation alone. The Body is built by Christ you supplying your brethren. Christ you is not a living soul, Christ you is a Life giving Spirit.Only Christ builds Christ. See, you are more outstanding than you thought....but IN HIM!
So the hidden operating system which causes all your problems and those of the entire Body of Christ, and "masquerades as the Old Man" is a system of inner thinking that is positioned between your true Christ as You spirit centre which the whole of the New Testament is adamant about, and your surface personality that you "present" to the world. All a mature, Father level Christian is, is one with the "MIDDLE MAN LIE" removed.
You've heard the glowing reports...."Oh Freda is so wonderful, Christ really comes through her." This can either mean that Freda is a mature believer, or that if you are a soft, luvvy, "people type of person", and she is too, then you are perhaps more open than an Apostle Luke man of learning and study kind of guy at receiving
this "edition of Christ" in this form.
In the Body to begin with we relate primarily with "like types". Later on we see the truth that "we see no man after the flesh", and we appreciate Christ coming through every one of the 12 tribe characters.
But in the case of a mature Freda, the only difference between her and everyone else is that she's got nothing in the way of her authentic Jesus Person at her spirit centre. She is in fact free to be fully her and fully Christ.
As you are.
When Paul said about" casting down speculations and thoughts and highmindedness:
2 Corinthians 10:5 "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,...."this is the area of our being that is being addressed.
People over the years have often remarked, "How come the modern churches sit quite comfortably on the high street, whereas the first churches had difficulty meeting at all apart from in secret. And how come the early preachers caused cities to be in uproar." The early preachers hit the scrawlings, the strongholds, which had the principalities over cities attached to them! Modern preachers just hit intellect.
This is now true more than ever in the West after 200 years of "Enlightenment" thinking. This can be summed up by figures such as Richard Dawkins as restricting our thinking to leftbrain reliance. to working everything out according to step by step thinking and calculation. It is reasoning upwards from a given set of rational parameters." Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us not to "rely" on our insight, but instead to "trust in the Lord with all our heart". By acknowledging Him in all our ways He will make straight our paths.
This is the GATEWAY to thirdlevel living. To the Christ life becoming unveiled in flesh form.
By acknowledging Him in ALL our ways.....is a very mundane, boring looking entrance to 3rd level living and to be truthful, because of its unspectacular nature when God brought the 3rd level Word via servants such as Ed Miller, Norman Grubb,Sam Fife, and Jack Schisler, in the late seventies and the early eighties the whole of the UK missed it, and the charismatic movement has been going round and round praise mountain ever since.
But this is just the middle section of the Lord's Prayer.
Matthew 6
11‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
So whether we are talking about the internal adjustments we ourselves are making throughout the course of entire lives, or whether we are looking at the Church worldwide maturing in Christ, or whether we are talking about one individual Holy Spirit meeting....(and let's do that for a moment), it's all very similar:
This is where the opening celebration, and or worship, and or adoration dies back a little and the Holy Spirit takes His Body into the equivalent of a Holy Place kind of readjustment area.
The three kind of adjustment areas
But the word means so much more in its context; it means this huge trial that's coming, this huge crisis that's coming. Lead us not into crisis, don't, please God don't push us into the time of crisis before you've made us ready for it. Don't push us until you've given us what we need to face it.
The second level or stage of growth is an acceleration stage . The Word accelerates us out of our unbelief as to who we really are, and into a firm belief that we have died, and it is Christ who lives in us as us.
Most of the church have terrible teaching on these Spirit realities, and people suffer far more than they need to because as a world church we are still more or less totally ignorant about the extremely thorough job Christ did for us on the Cross.
Part Three - Father Level Intercession - The Power and the Glory
As we mature into Father level, we go through the most incredible testings that humanly we would not be able to sustain, and it is one of the main methods by which God gets us to recognise who we are really living from.
This is equivalent to many pictures throughout the Old and New Testaments.
It is equivalent to Jacob's wrestling match with the "messenger of God" at Peniel.
Or to Elisha pressing through all the sons of the prophets trying to discourage him about receiving the double portion of Elijah's anointing.
Or Moses' testings for 40 years in the Wilderness culminating in the visual picture of his life in God as a burning bush that never burns up!
Or it's equivalent to the incredible testing of the 12 disciples as they saw their Master led away to be falsely accused and crucified, with the implication that any close followers would be so treated also.
Jesus knew as He stood in the Upper Room with the disciples John 13:31 that "now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him." Instead of taking this phrase along the lines we were taught in RE lessons, as Jesus' favourite alternative self-description, get your Holy Spirit specs on, because this is enormous.
Jesus had all the glory He needed in heaven. He laid that glory aside. NO this is a very specific glory.
This is a new type of glory. This is Jesus as the second Adam. This is Jesus as "the son of Man". This is Jesus tracking as us. Roadtesting the same overcoming life He was going to be pouring out on and inside us after the Cross. Do you get the enormity of what point He had come to after 30 years without the Spirit baptism, and three years of Spirit Ministry.....BUT as a MAN!!!!! Now is the Son of Man glorified. In other words "we're ready to roll this one out!!!!We've got the template.....now we go into action. This one seed is going into the ground, to bust apart, and be raised as a fruit bearing Vine that brings forth seed after exactly this kind!!!! Did you catch that?
In John 14:30 Jesus said " the ruler of this world is coming, but he has nothing in me."
This is what this section of preparation is for in our lives. This bit of the Lord's prayer template is to discover anything left in us of the Ezekiel 8:10 scrawlings left over in the Fall. That the devil can find nothing in us for whatever is our equivalent of the Psalm 134 "Standing by night " in the House of the Lord. And standing fully armoured, and Worded up according to Ephesians 6.
This is the final Intercessory stage of the Lord's Prayer.
You say, it's not marked as any intercession, what do you mean?
Yes, this is the renewed ManChild. This is the Child of Promise born to the Woman, the Church.Revelation 12. This is the final form.
If it is in a Holy Spirit meeting context, this is when the lighting goes on full, we stand to our feet.
We declare fully conscious of our 3rd level position in the Holy of Holies, and caught up in the heavenlies of God:
Boldly, without a jot of hesitation,
Totally clean
Totally confident
Our Word of Faith
Yours is the The Kingdom,the Power, The Glory....
Forever and ever Amen.
The Spirit and the Bride say "Come Lord Jesus, Come."
---------------------------------------------
The Anglican Church as an example of Disobedience.
I have used Rowan Williams examples because they are good, but I do not want to imply that the practices of the Anglican Church are acceptable. Rowan Williams, very similar to Orthodox leaders in European and Russian churches spend much time in contemplation and meditation. The BBC page that is linked here is really very good, and in many ways more than that, profound. Now as Daniel Yordy has written, if we are born again the Spirit encompasses ALL WE ARE, and in real terms, ALL WE PERMIT HIM TO BE TO US.
Rowan Williams, from this contemplative passage on the riches of the Lord's prayer clearly shows he allows the Spirit to come through his thinking on many of these issues.
I believe if you go into an Anglican church where he is preaching some measure of the Spirit of God will be manifest, or tangibly felt. But you know what? My Christians friends were staggered how much of the Presence of God came through when they were invited to participate in a friend's Jewish wedding. And my atheist English teacher preached two assemblies on the weird "God" effect he had experienced as he visited the "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem way back in 1971.
But I want to use the Anglican Church as an example of extreme disobedience according to the very express instructions of scripture, plus years lived in Spirit led churches in Britain (4), in France (2) and in Germany (1).
Jesus could not have been clearer to the woman at the well. "The time is coming and now is when ....all who worship Me will worship in Spirit and in truth."
Now all my Christian life all the Anglicans who do not know the Spirit Baptism as a genuine ongoing experience, all to a man and woman, twist scripture to their own experience, and their experience is like Rowan Williams, that of restricting the movement of the Holy Spirit to their still controlling main faculty : namely their conscious mind, their step by step thinking part of their brain. Never mind that still leaning on, basing yourself on, trusting in your own insight is DIRECTLY and clearly pronounced as wrong in Proverbs 3:5-6, they for their whole lives fight tooth and nail to make their little stand with their flag based on their intellectual posture.
In Job 38, after 37 chapters of the most intense suffering, Job has a direct encounter with God. But this is a God who directly confronts Job at his main stronghold. This is the hidden area underneath all his responses to his friends, most of whom were hugely off the point anyway. As I've said in the middle area of the Lord's prayer, this is our actual operating system. This is where we are not "seeing" God. In order for our bellies to flow with living water, God has to address these hidden blockages and strongholds. The truth is God's Kingdom is not fully come, where one of these strongholds lies embedded within the last person on Earth. These strongholds are the tentpegs that the devil uses to maintain the whole canopy of his kingdom over the whole earth. These are very much the target area of a mature Body moving in Ephesians 6 armour.
God is not in the least bit interested in any of Rowan Williams excuses as to why he maintains the Anglican Church according to his own particular preference for living from the Intellect.This is a stronghold. We don't reason ourselves up to the Kingdom. We do not pick up the next Holy Spirit instruction primarily through our intellect. We connect with the Living God on our insides. God has declared through Jesus exactly what our worship looks like. It is worship in Spirit and Truth. The Belt of Truth that we gird ourselves with is around where we most sense where our spirit is, in our middle parts, we dont wear the belt around our forehead like a pirate patch!.
The only agent of the Godhead currently instructed with the sole task of preparing the Bride is the Holy Spirit. Not Jesus. Not the Father. How can He do this if we as a Church are ignoring Him? Are refusing to be baptised in this Spirit?
Romans 8:14 is very explicit : For all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Nobody else.
Rowan Williams openly encourages the support of a liturgical structure that opposes all those legitimate sons of God who visit English churches every Sunday that do (as it says in 1 Corinthians 12, ) have a "hatha". Each one hatha scripture,a song, a hymn, a teaching, a prophecy....whatever. The liturgy prevents and blocks the natural move of God in a church every Sunday, every week of the year. There is no other description of church meetings, apart from brief instructions of the types of prayers that should be offered elsewhere in the letters. With such a simple single instruction, you would have thought that people as intellectual as Rowan Williams would be able to carry it out. But no, defiantly, each week, he supports the continual offense of the Holy Spirit.
The Body is fitly joined by that which every joint supplies. This is as true in meetings as in Body life through the week. Everytime the liturgy is used, imagine a bit less blood circulating. Imagine people having to amputate limbs because those limbs did not have adequate blood.
Or think of Anglicans and liturgy, however doctrinally correct the words are, as a bunch of people announcing they are going in to have a swim in the sea each week. But instead, they roll up their trousers Monty Python style and only paddle five feet away from the shore. Imagine people laughing at them. "That's not swimming. Why don't you put your trunks on and come right in? Let the sea support you! You know.....swimming!!!"
Liturgy isn't swimming. You can't say,"the Holy Spirit is leading us to say the same words each week." You haven't lost control. Your feet are still on the sand. You aren't swimming at all. You fraudsters! You are not being led by the Spirit! So according to Romans 8:14 above, you know what that means?
Rowan Williams just runs a collection of synagogues. He instals one rabbi per service, who only has to know procedure and be able to concoct a homily, plus various other social services in the week, and for this they are salaried all the way into a retirement. Other than training for layleaders and lay preaching, others who have choir skills, and floral arranging, there is no real question of reproducing other believers as Christ as them to take their place. This would only hinder the structure. The job for life pyramid created underneath each vicar would only be upset if other ministries matured. Rowan Williams actually supports a whole infrastructure that hinders growth, and stops the spread of Christianity in Britain.
My wife Christine, my son and I have just returned from a quiet secluded area of tarmac where Ben was getting the hang of bike riding. Now imagine if we had done this on the main island road on and off Hayling Island. Holy Spirit meetings are in the same way the safe place where people learn to "balance on a bike". Where they learn to take those initial steps following the Spirit, and once confident He leads them out into to learn Spirit- living in their environments.
Rowan Williams does allow Holy Spirit churches, but does nothing to promote them, or to make clear that this is the only designated way according to scriptures, to learn the way of the Spirit.
Christine has found out in her nursing placements that the most proactive teachers of nursing students are army nurses. These fully trained nurses can be sent anywhere at anytime. One week they are off in a helicopter fetching back the wounded from anywhere in the world. The next week they are caring for these wounded in Hedley Court ,Surrey. Another week they are in our local hospitals. They live each day with purpose. Army training is all about passing that training on, over and over. Army nurses reason that any second longer that a new nurse remains ignorant about a procedure , is a second robbed from her usefulness in a crisis.
Rowan Williams certainly is not military service minded. In view of the faith crisis in Britain, where the Anglican choice is simple: a choice between running good Jewish synagogue services that Anglicans enjoy, or listening acutely to the Holy Spirit to install every feature of the gospel listed in the scriptures, so that Britain may be won for Christ, Rowan adopts the former every time. He has been head of the largest church structure in Britain now for many years and still has no intention of following Christ according to His ways.The intellect is the way the Spirit is forced to meet Rowan, when the first commandment , to love God with all our heart, our soul,our strength, our mind shows the totality of the Spirit invasion God wants to accomplish in us that the term LORD not ring like a hollow tolling bell. LORD means every loose and fixed part of our being!!!
Our Father, which art in heaven.....HOLY,unutterably HOLY is Your Name. Much more holy than an Anglican service. Much more holy than an Anglican minister trained only in the mind, and never taught grace, and the Person of God made available in a love reltionship through the Holy Spirit. Instead of passing on the power of grace, Anglican ministries reproduce their own ignorance Sunday by Sunday, further paralyzing the country spiritually. Our own school vicar spent his midweeks away from Amersham up north grouse shooting. The poor guy didn't have a clue, and reproduced his cluelessness throughout our school of 700 boys, many of whom would never have been in, nor seen a real church gathering in their lives. And this is how the British are raised.
But as ever, if the two main wakeup calls in the Anglican Church of the early charismatic movement through Michael Harper and Graham Pulkingham, followed by Holy Trinity Brompton and the Alpha Courses in the 80s, still fail to bring fruit, truly the same scriptural pattern will always follow, the bread the children refuse will be shared among the outsider, that "every mouth be stopped". The Lord's prayer prayed both in earnest, and in remote-control throughout two millennia will still be answered.
But not necessarily among those who prayed.
The New Covenant Church, the one in Acts,even this seed too had to fall in the ground and over centuries die, reach a near total death-knell in 1400s Catholicism, only to turn a corner in Luther and rise ever higher since then. Why? Though the church was instantly born from on high in Acts, it contained within it also seeds of Old Covenant Jewish behaviour, so both had to go into the ground, for there is only ONE LIFE FORM that survives death.
Or put in another analogy, there is only one Church form that is totally safe. The Church that is continually born from above. Our Father who art in heaven. We have a City that comes down from above.
The night that Jacob slept on his stone pillow is a wakeup call to us. It should tell us all we need to know about church. He said in Genesis 28: 16 and 17 "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." and "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven."
The place wasn't special. God doesn't need a special place, he requires open hearts. As each Spirit meeting soon proves to our senses dulled from alien environments, the Presence of God is then revealed, made tangible, but the only thing that changed was we became aware of it. Reminding ourselves of where we are actually permanently positioned, in the heavenlies in Christ, we find God's glory has always been here in the earth. Our separation delusions dull our spiritual eyes. God is giving us salve that we might see God only and have but a single eye.
12‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
So whether we are talking about the internal adjustments we ourselves are making throughout the course of entire lives, or whether we are looking at the Church worldwide maturing in Christ, or whether we are talking about one individual Holy Spirit meeting....(and let's do that for a moment), it's all very similar:
This is where the opening celebration, and or worship, and or adoration dies back a little and the Holy Spirit takes His Body into the equivalent of a Holy Place kind of readjustment area.
The three kind of adjustment areas
- Our Daily Bread : having faith for our needs, our environment. Just the fact of bringing this under the Holy Spirit searchlight is a death to us, for we really want to work everything out in our own strength. We even don't mind praise and worship, as long as the real issues of where we live our lives remain untouched. But this is the WAY of God, that leads us to the Truth about ourselves, and who He is, which leads to the manifestation of His unveiled Life in the third section of the Lord's prayer.This IS the first part of our acknowledgment of HIM in all our ways
- Forgive us as we forgive :The second main adjustment is absolutely central to our unblocking of the Rivers of Life already at our Centre. God has declared Himself permanently as a Self for Others Life. His Life has a Cross in it. There is a Cross in the heart of God. Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.This is the nature of the Life at your centre and my centre if we are Christians. It is one of the essential and outstanding proofs of our Christianity. After becoming Christians we found we loved people. We could see God in them. And ofcourse, we became lovers of the household of faith.The more we "see no man after the flesh" we begin to identify wrong behaviour as "not authentic" behaviour. Bad behaviour comes out of wrong "seeing", either on the side of both or one party only. If we catch ourselves and look for God going on, we snatch things back out of the realm of two flesh people "humanly" at loggerheads, and we begin to see the truth in the situation underneath. Most misunderstanding comes from us limiting God to what we know of Him already. Ephesians four and five are about life in the Body, life in work environments and life in family environments. Wherever our life does not function it causes us to reach into more of the provision already supplied at our inner centre. Interestingly a non Christian Lord in the sense of an employer, is very little different from someone bringing correction in the Body of Christ. Lordship to a section of our life that is unsubmitted to God's Kingdom is equally as painful whether it is administered to us by a Christian, or by a more derived form of His life....an out and out atheist. This was one of the many fun discoveries made in the Christian community in Emsworth Bible House. It hurt equally!
- Lead Us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Rowan Williams continues:
But the word means so much more in its context; it means this huge trial that's coming, this huge crisis that's coming. Lead us not into crisis, don't, please God don't push us into the time of crisis before you've made us ready for it. Don't push us until you've given us what we need to face it.
The second level or stage of growth is an acceleration stage . The Word accelerates us out of our unbelief as to who we really are, and into a firm belief that we have died, and it is Christ who lives in us as us.
Most of the church have terrible teaching on these Spirit realities, and people suffer far more than they need to because as a world church we are still more or less totally ignorant about the extremely thorough job Christ did for us on the Cross.
Part Three - Father Level Intercession - The Power and the Glory
As we mature into Father level, we go through the most incredible testings that humanly we would not be able to sustain, and it is one of the main methods by which God gets us to recognise who we are really living from.
This is equivalent to many pictures throughout the Old and New Testaments.
It is equivalent to Jacob's wrestling match with the "messenger of God" at Peniel.
Or to Elisha pressing through all the sons of the prophets trying to discourage him about receiving the double portion of Elijah's anointing.
Or Moses' testings for 40 years in the Wilderness culminating in the visual picture of his life in God as a burning bush that never burns up!
Or it's equivalent to the incredible testing of the 12 disciples as they saw their Master led away to be falsely accused and crucified, with the implication that any close followers would be so treated also.
Jesus knew as He stood in the Upper Room with the disciples John 13:31 that "now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him." Instead of taking this phrase along the lines we were taught in RE lessons, as Jesus' favourite alternative self-description, get your Holy Spirit specs on, because this is enormous.
Jesus had all the glory He needed in heaven. He laid that glory aside. NO this is a very specific glory.
This is a new type of glory. This is Jesus as the second Adam. This is Jesus as "the son of Man". This is Jesus tracking as us. Roadtesting the same overcoming life He was going to be pouring out on and inside us after the Cross. Do you get the enormity of what point He had come to after 30 years without the Spirit baptism, and three years of Spirit Ministry.....BUT as a MAN!!!!! Now is the Son of Man glorified. In other words "we're ready to roll this one out!!!!We've got the template.....now we go into action. This one seed is going into the ground, to bust apart, and be raised as a fruit bearing Vine that brings forth seed after exactly this kind!!!! Did you catch that?
In John 14:30 Jesus said " the ruler of this world is coming, but he has nothing in me."
This is what this section of preparation is for in our lives. This bit of the Lord's prayer template is to discover anything left in us of the Ezekiel 8:10 scrawlings left over in the Fall. That the devil can find nothing in us for whatever is our equivalent of the Psalm 134 "Standing by night " in the House of the Lord. And standing fully armoured, and Worded up according to Ephesians 6.
This is the final Intercessory stage of the Lord's Prayer.
You say, it's not marked as any intercession, what do you mean?
Yes, this is the renewed ManChild. This is the Child of Promise born to the Woman, the Church.Revelation 12. This is the final form.
If it is in a Holy Spirit meeting context, this is when the lighting goes on full, we stand to our feet.
We declare fully conscious of our 3rd level position in the Holy of Holies, and caught up in the heavenlies of God:
Boldly, without a jot of hesitation,
Totally clean
Totally confident
Our Word of Faith
Yours is the The Kingdom,the Power, The Glory....
Forever and ever Amen.
The Spirit and the Bride say "Come Lord Jesus, Come."
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The Anglican Church as an example of Disobedience.
I have used Rowan Williams examples because they are good, but I do not want to imply that the practices of the Anglican Church are acceptable. Rowan Williams, very similar to Orthodox leaders in European and Russian churches spend much time in contemplation and meditation. The BBC page that is linked here is really very good, and in many ways more than that, profound. Now as Daniel Yordy has written, if we are born again the Spirit encompasses ALL WE ARE, and in real terms, ALL WE PERMIT HIM TO BE TO US.
Rowan Williams, from this contemplative passage on the riches of the Lord's prayer clearly shows he allows the Spirit to come through his thinking on many of these issues.
I believe if you go into an Anglican church where he is preaching some measure of the Spirit of God will be manifest, or tangibly felt. But you know what? My Christians friends were staggered how much of the Presence of God came through when they were invited to participate in a friend's Jewish wedding. And my atheist English teacher preached two assemblies on the weird "God" effect he had experienced as he visited the "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem way back in 1971.
But I want to use the Anglican Church as an example of extreme disobedience according to the very express instructions of scripture, plus years lived in Spirit led churches in Britain (4), in France (2) and in Germany (1).
Jesus could not have been clearer to the woman at the well. "The time is coming and now is when ....all who worship Me will worship in Spirit and in truth."
Now all my Christian life all the Anglicans who do not know the Spirit Baptism as a genuine ongoing experience, all to a man and woman, twist scripture to their own experience, and their experience is like Rowan Williams, that of restricting the movement of the Holy Spirit to their still controlling main faculty : namely their conscious mind, their step by step thinking part of their brain. Never mind that still leaning on, basing yourself on, trusting in your own insight is DIRECTLY and clearly pronounced as wrong in Proverbs 3:5-6, they for their whole lives fight tooth and nail to make their little stand with their flag based on their intellectual posture.
In Job 38, after 37 chapters of the most intense suffering, Job has a direct encounter with God. But this is a God who directly confronts Job at his main stronghold. This is the hidden area underneath all his responses to his friends, most of whom were hugely off the point anyway. As I've said in the middle area of the Lord's prayer, this is our actual operating system. This is where we are not "seeing" God. In order for our bellies to flow with living water, God has to address these hidden blockages and strongholds. The truth is God's Kingdom is not fully come, where one of these strongholds lies embedded within the last person on Earth. These strongholds are the tentpegs that the devil uses to maintain the whole canopy of his kingdom over the whole earth. These are very much the target area of a mature Body moving in Ephesians 6 armour.
God is not in the least bit interested in any of Rowan Williams excuses as to why he maintains the Anglican Church according to his own particular preference for living from the Intellect.This is a stronghold. We don't reason ourselves up to the Kingdom. We do not pick up the next Holy Spirit instruction primarily through our intellect. We connect with the Living God on our insides. God has declared through Jesus exactly what our worship looks like. It is worship in Spirit and Truth. The Belt of Truth that we gird ourselves with is around where we most sense where our spirit is, in our middle parts, we dont wear the belt around our forehead like a pirate patch!.
The only agent of the Godhead currently instructed with the sole task of preparing the Bride is the Holy Spirit. Not Jesus. Not the Father. How can He do this if we as a Church are ignoring Him? Are refusing to be baptised in this Spirit?
Romans 8:14 is very explicit : For all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Nobody else.
Rowan Williams openly encourages the support of a liturgical structure that opposes all those legitimate sons of God who visit English churches every Sunday that do (as it says in 1 Corinthians 12, ) have a "hatha". Each one hatha scripture,a song, a hymn, a teaching, a prophecy....whatever. The liturgy prevents and blocks the natural move of God in a church every Sunday, every week of the year. There is no other description of church meetings, apart from brief instructions of the types of prayers that should be offered elsewhere in the letters. With such a simple single instruction, you would have thought that people as intellectual as Rowan Williams would be able to carry it out. But no, defiantly, each week, he supports the continual offense of the Holy Spirit.
The Body is fitly joined by that which every joint supplies. This is as true in meetings as in Body life through the week. Everytime the liturgy is used, imagine a bit less blood circulating. Imagine people having to amputate limbs because those limbs did not have adequate blood.
Or think of Anglicans and liturgy, however doctrinally correct the words are, as a bunch of people announcing they are going in to have a swim in the sea each week. But instead, they roll up their trousers Monty Python style and only paddle five feet away from the shore. Imagine people laughing at them. "That's not swimming. Why don't you put your trunks on and come right in? Let the sea support you! You know.....swimming!!!"
Liturgy isn't swimming. You can't say,"the Holy Spirit is leading us to say the same words each week." You haven't lost control. Your feet are still on the sand. You aren't swimming at all. You fraudsters! You are not being led by the Spirit! So according to Romans 8:14 above, you know what that means?
Rowan Williams just runs a collection of synagogues. He instals one rabbi per service, who only has to know procedure and be able to concoct a homily, plus various other social services in the week, and for this they are salaried all the way into a retirement. Other than training for layleaders and lay preaching, others who have choir skills, and floral arranging, there is no real question of reproducing other believers as Christ as them to take their place. This would only hinder the structure. The job for life pyramid created underneath each vicar would only be upset if other ministries matured. Rowan Williams actually supports a whole infrastructure that hinders growth, and stops the spread of Christianity in Britain.
My wife Christine, my son and I have just returned from a quiet secluded area of tarmac where Ben was getting the hang of bike riding. Now imagine if we had done this on the main island road on and off Hayling Island. Holy Spirit meetings are in the same way the safe place where people learn to "balance on a bike". Where they learn to take those initial steps following the Spirit, and once confident He leads them out into to learn Spirit- living in their environments.
Rowan Williams does allow Holy Spirit churches, but does nothing to promote them, or to make clear that this is the only designated way according to scriptures, to learn the way of the Spirit.
Christine has found out in her nursing placements that the most proactive teachers of nursing students are army nurses. These fully trained nurses can be sent anywhere at anytime. One week they are off in a helicopter fetching back the wounded from anywhere in the world. The next week they are caring for these wounded in Hedley Court ,Surrey. Another week they are in our local hospitals. They live each day with purpose. Army training is all about passing that training on, over and over. Army nurses reason that any second longer that a new nurse remains ignorant about a procedure , is a second robbed from her usefulness in a crisis.
Rowan Williams certainly is not military service minded. In view of the faith crisis in Britain, where the Anglican choice is simple: a choice between running good Jewish synagogue services that Anglicans enjoy, or listening acutely to the Holy Spirit to install every feature of the gospel listed in the scriptures, so that Britain may be won for Christ, Rowan adopts the former every time. He has been head of the largest church structure in Britain now for many years and still has no intention of following Christ according to His ways.The intellect is the way the Spirit is forced to meet Rowan, when the first commandment , to love God with all our heart, our soul,our strength, our mind shows the totality of the Spirit invasion God wants to accomplish in us that the term LORD not ring like a hollow tolling bell. LORD means every loose and fixed part of our being!!!
Our Father, which art in heaven.....HOLY,unutterably HOLY is Your Name. Much more holy than an Anglican service. Much more holy than an Anglican minister trained only in the mind, and never taught grace, and the Person of God made available in a love reltionship through the Holy Spirit. Instead of passing on the power of grace, Anglican ministries reproduce their own ignorance Sunday by Sunday, further paralyzing the country spiritually. Our own school vicar spent his midweeks away from Amersham up north grouse shooting. The poor guy didn't have a clue, and reproduced his cluelessness throughout our school of 700 boys, many of whom would never have been in, nor seen a real church gathering in their lives. And this is how the British are raised.
But as ever, if the two main wakeup calls in the Anglican Church of the early charismatic movement through Michael Harper and Graham Pulkingham, followed by Holy Trinity Brompton and the Alpha Courses in the 80s, still fail to bring fruit, truly the same scriptural pattern will always follow, the bread the children refuse will be shared among the outsider, that "every mouth be stopped". The Lord's prayer prayed both in earnest, and in remote-control throughout two millennia will still be answered.
But not necessarily among those who prayed.
The New Covenant Church, the one in Acts,even this seed too had to fall in the ground and over centuries die, reach a near total death-knell in 1400s Catholicism, only to turn a corner in Luther and rise ever higher since then. Why? Though the church was instantly born from on high in Acts, it contained within it also seeds of Old Covenant Jewish behaviour, so both had to go into the ground, for there is only ONE LIFE FORM that survives death.
Or put in another analogy, there is only one Church form that is totally safe. The Church that is continually born from above. Our Father who art in heaven. We have a City that comes down from above.
The night that Jacob slept on his stone pillow is a wakeup call to us. It should tell us all we need to know about church. He said in Genesis 28: 16 and 17 "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." and "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven."
The place wasn't special. God doesn't need a special place, he requires open hearts. As each Spirit meeting soon proves to our senses dulled from alien environments, the Presence of God is then revealed, made tangible, but the only thing that changed was we became aware of it. Reminding ourselves of where we are actually permanently positioned, in the heavenlies in Christ, we find God's glory has always been here in the earth. Our separation delusions dull our spiritual eyes. God is giving us salve that we might see God only and have but a single eye.
Holy Spirit Come To Us from" Early Harvest Double CD." A Double Song track reworked for four part a capella singing and sung in the "wet corner" of Chichester Cathedral with their choir under Alan Thurlow. You are listening to a thousand pounds!!Recent photos of Chichester Cathedral.
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