Tuning. Part One. Tuning to God.

Watchman Nee thought it was interesting how Peter was a fisherman, and his calling was to become a fisher of men. Paul was a tentmaker and became a masterbuilder of "God's tents" or churches all round Asia Minor.He still pursued earthly tentmaking to fund his suicidal trips to establish the gospel in hostile virgin regions. He even had to justify his tentmaking operations at one point to explain that he wanted to make the gospel available free of charge!! How radical!!! Isaiah:55verse 1. He obviously hadn't heard of Christian Bookseller's conventions! (see Jack Fortenberry's book "Corinthian elders")

Well this post is to say that a part of what I do in the Spirit seems to reflect what I do as an occupation. I tune.

If I was reporting to you as one who believed I could do this "under my own steam", "as an independant being", I would be lying. Like a lot of Christians in these days busy unwrapping their giftings, post a good dose of Cross activity, I am reporting more as an objective observation, an impassive and surprised observation of how the species Alan Christopher Welch seems to operate from time to time amongst the other gifts to the Body of Christ.

At the moment there is not a recognised position of tuner , like say pastor, or prophet, so I will continue to work undercover as God leads. I have always said that piano tuning was my cover,even with my clients. Some of which have given their lives to Jesus, and the gospel continues to spread throughout their environments.

Tuning to God

The first aspect of tuning in the Spirit is to pick up God FM. No this is not a new radio version of Rory and Wendy's God channel. This is the frequency in Psalm 19 :1-4 .

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. [a]
4 Their voice [b] goes out into all the earth,

This week I have been musing on the work of ministries and especially apostles and I have come up with this. Ministries help believers tune into God FM; once the frequency is picked up strongly, ministers can retire to the edges of a meeting, or viewed at the level of churchbuilding they can move onto a new territory.

What is my basis for saying this? Well, mostly observing genuine Spirit activity, as opposed to the common Network manifestations, or Christian believer warehouses. And one rather thin passage of scripture, which is not generally the best way to build doctrine.Have a look at this!

1 Corinthians 5: 1-5 1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature[a] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

The issue I am raising here is not the issue itself, you understand. Actually, to fill you in, by the time of the next Corinthian letter this guy had repented, and because the church were still not quite mature they kind of overdid the judgment thing. This by the way is how you recognise immaturity.
People are still living by the Knowledge of good and evil, even if this means the last word of an apostle, instead of the current reality...one repented DUDE! So they were obviously still slagging him off!No, the point I am really raising are the words in blue that are describing Spirit stuff. In fact a carnal non-born again spiritist is going to interpret these words in a completely different way.In God's realm what this means is that an apostle lays an experiential foundation among people about coming into the genuine Presence of the Lord as a corporate Body. This passage will freak out those who are just raised on Norman Grubb and God being everywhere.

I am sorry. I am not going to change the Word of God just to suit a particular stream. The phrase here is very deliberate:4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present...

This says two things.1.You can be assembled and the power of the Lord Jesus may not be present. See, Jesus is alive and real and we don't presume on Him. His Presence must be an experiential reality.
2.God honours the authority of the ministries He has raised up. This is linked in with the idea of humans being "gatekeepers" in the earth.See Peter Stott on Psalm 24. So the particular spirit foundations that God has used to lay through a person like Paul are also the boundary lines through which God chooses to move. I think the Pope by the way, takes this way too far. No scripture anywhere speaks of world leadership...apart from one...the Antichrist...which is pyramid stuff.

The aspect of tuning in this post relates to the first stage of tuning a piano. When setting about tuning a piano to Normal Pitch, that is Concert Pitch, you begin with an external pitch source. Even if you have perfect pitch! The note A 440 beats per second which is the fourth A on a piano, needs to be A. It cannot be 439 beats, or 441 beats. It has to be bang on. So you use an electronic tuner or tuning fork for comparison.

When you begin tuning you start in the middle octave. There are 3 strings per note. Each string has to be exactly the same as the other two. And after you have tuned them, they have to stay the same! In a home, for about 6 months! In a concert hall, you are lucky if it lasts beyond the interval!

Three strings perfectly tuned to fool the listener there is only one string playing only one note!

Epistemology

I learned this word off Mark Heath's blog. They didn't teach us this word in our Bible College. It's the sort of word you mustn't use at a drinks party, even if you are on the fruit juice! Everybody else will just not understand you.

It is a philosophical word to mean how we ascertain that what we perceive to be truth really is the truth. "The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity."

Here is a stunning truth built into nature.

When those three strings are in tune you can tell in two ways.

The first as I have mentioned is the absence of beating. Remember all these beats are is the differential between strings. If one string is at 441 beats per second and the other is at 440 beats, all you hear is an annoying stray one beat per second "wowing effect".

The second way is a compound unison effect which is greater than the sum of three parts. I cannot describe this to you. But you feel it jabbing you when it's right.

And this is exactly the thing that God has built into His Body in the Spirit. He has built it into His Word.

He has built it into 3rd level, or 3rd heaven worship as we gather around His throne together. This is what we are learning in the Key of David meetings.

He has built it into ministries. And He has even provided an extra overlay of supernatural discernment gifts and ministries for an extra filter system.

It is the sound of heaven. Yes heaven has a sound. A language. And as we mature in Christ we get better at perceiving whether the sound is there or not. In a preacher. In a church. In a movement.

We perceive someone as educated as someone who has read and learned widely across a set of disciplines. This breadth of understanding can open doors for someone. But you know, this need only be a largely left-brain collection of knowledge.

Very often the perception is of a very learned professorial character, such as Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, having articulative authority, yet, absolutely no idea how to keep their house. People who came in to sort things out could not believe the mess.

This sound of heaven is not a left-brain perception. Learned college types can only get so far weighing preachers up. When preachers are speaking new revelations for the Body of Christ, you need to have more than a bunch of left-brain facts with which to weigh what they are saying.

You need to listen for the sound of heaven on what they are saying. So far charismatic preachers have had it relatively easy. People in the Body of Christ have largely been living from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So if you can come up with a sermon derived from enough Bible verses, most people are happy. When Tony Morton visited our church last he spoke out of his extensive patter learned from a valid ministry in the Holy Spirit over 25 years or more of international ministry. Sounded great. However this writer was virtually vomiting. It did not have the sound of heaven. Tony disappeared from ministry within weeks

Where do we build up familiarity with the sound of heaven. By slowing down. By meditating about 10 times the amount we do now. By catching the Word on our innards rather than just in our frontal left lobes. By being around genuine Holy Spirit stuff. By being like the willing servant in the Old testament, who let his ear be marked/branded at the doorpost. By letting God do the work prophesied in Isaiah 54:2 where He extends the borders of our tents....which involves stakes being driven into virgin territory...in us...in our church life...in our normal life.By being willing in the Day of His Power.

This last one is a biggie. Once you click on your insides...you will find an immediate step change in your comprehension of the Word. This is totally counter intuitive, since virtually everybody will tell you it has to do with the amount of hours you read your Bible. But Jesus said in John 7:17 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God"NASV.This is a revelation on this verse that came from Ian McCulloch the founding leader of Emsworth.

Chris Welch has tuned for LSO, LPO, NIGEL KENNEDY. ANDRE PREVIN. DEMIDENKO, MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR, THE BARBICAN, FAIRFIELD HALL. CROYDON, LONDON COLISEUM, ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL. CARL DAVIS, PAUL WELLER, JOOLS HOLLAND, TOBY SMITH EX JAMIIROQUAI and many others

%$%$%$%$%$%$%$%$%$%$%

For extra reading

The Sword of Christ..Soren Kierkegaard through Merril Thompson on Facebook
Share
Thurs at 14:36
Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them--in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person has become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together. Every call from God is always addressed to one person, the single individual. Precisely in this lies the difficulty and the examination, that the one who is called must stand alone,walk alone,alone with God. Hence, everything that makes its appearance statistically is not from above. If anyone construes this as a call, you can be sure it is from below.