Sometimes I think I would be able to make better decisions today if I had even the inkling of an idea of what the future might hold. I mean, wouldn’t it make sense to have some kind of a plan worked out in case of debilitating sickness, injury, death, economical collapse, hair loss, World War 3 or overwhelming success? Trouble is, Father doesn’t seem to go along with my reasoning. It suits him fine to keep tomorrow hidden while I learn to trust him for today.

It’s true that it’s written somewhere in scripture that each day has enough trouble of its own. But isn’t that all the more reason to have a back-up plan to handle tomorrow’s trouble quota? Guess not.

Ok, so don’t freak out on me now. I’m not implying that we’re not to be good stewards of whatever is entrusted to us. Or that Father frowns on the common sense plans that must be made on almost a daily basis. I’m sure there are times that he even helps some folks with a long term plan for what he’s revealed concerning certain things about the future. But it seems to me that for the most part, his plans and strategies unfold on an hourly and even minute by minute basis as we hold his hand, keep our ear to his heart and let him lead us through each day. Oh, he’ll drop some enticing hints about the future, but mostly he leaves out the particulars in case we get it in our brain to run ahead of him. Or maybe just because he likes to surprise us. I know that lots of ICs that had a 2 year, 5 year and 10 year plan have been surprised, because they weren’t around at the end of the ten years.

Anyway, most of my plans work for about five minutes. At least boredom is seldom a problem.

David F

Posted: July 23rd, 2008 under General.
Comments: none

I was recently talking with a sister in the Lord and we were sharing about Father’s love for us, and she made this statement that stopped me cold. She said: When God looks at us he sees Jesus. I had a sudden flash back into the my institutional church experience, and how I had heard that same statement. However a contrary thought came to me, yes, Christ is our righteousness, but when God looks at us he sees us ! It was like this pretty little crystal image I had of God looking down at me with a smile on his face not because of me but because he saw Jesus, hit the cement floor and crashed into a million little pieces. According to Jesus’ infamous statement to Nicodemus, Father so loved us that he gave up his son. Uh, hello, we weren’t saved yet. The point is this, Jesus’ sacrifice is what enables us to have a free full, direct relationship with Father. He doesn’t just put up with us because we’re now ’saved’, we’re special to him and he now rejoices because Jesus set us free to be able to live this wonderful relationship.

bob humphrey

Posted: July 20th, 2008 under General.
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As I was on my lunch break today I flipped over to the Christian talk radio station just in time to hear the Focus On The Family “Family Friendly Movie Review” of the new Batman Movie. The reviewer said that due to violence, a high body count, acts of deception and strong language it was not very family friendly. He gave it two and a half stars out of five.

I couldn’t help but think of a best selling book that is sweeping the Christian community. This book is loaded with violence. We’re talking murder, a person sawed in half, a lady gets thrown out of a window and ripped apart by dogs, heads are cut off, a dude gets eaten by worms, another guy gets stabbed in the gut and lies in a road for hours as he slowly dies, a woman drives a tent peg through a dude’s temple, just to name a few of the violent acts in this book. And talk about a high body count! Entire cities wiped out including the woman and children and soldiers burned alive and others drowned. There is also loads of deception in this book. There are several cases of people pretending to be people they aren’t as well as several acts of betrayal. And I’m not even going to get into the acts of adultery and the several prostitutes introduced in this book. Yes, that’s right, it’s your family friendly Bible. I wonder how many stars the reviewer would give this book for family friendliness?

Loren

Posted: July 18th, 2008 under General.
Comments: 1

A couple days ago I installed an all-in-one (printer, scanner, fax, copier) to work in conjunction with my laptop. The equipment worked great, but when I tried to go online to address incoming emails, my computer was so slow I couldn’t complete communication to anyone. And when I tried to sign off the useless page, it refused to respond to the prompt to close the window. It simply sat staring at me like a zombie in a trance. I reached down beside my desk and grabbed the 12 gauge shotgun that I keep handy for just such a time as this. Although my shoulder still smarts from the violent recoil of two barrels firing at once, the satisfaction of watching the offensive hardware blown into a million peaces far outweighed the pain.

Leaving my fantasy for a moment… a friend pointed out that it was all the additional software that piggybacked on the “easy install” of the new equipment that overwhelmed the memory banks of my poor laptop. The software had nothing to do with the essential operation of the all-in-one, but had everything to do with setting me up to spend more money on things I don’t need. The resulting information overload paralyzed what really was essential.

The other day I heard Bob tell someone that I used to pack so much into a sermon every Sunday that he was unable to process it before being hit with another load the following weekend.
And then there’s the seminars that tell us how to worship, how to pray, how to witness, how to prosper, how to disciple, how to lead, how to follow, ad nauseum.

No wonder so many Christians get spiritual brain freeze and miss the essentials, such as loving God and one another. They feel so overwhelmed and under equipped they end up just trying to survive during the week. Then comes the spiritual high point when they sit in a pew staring at the platform talent on Sunday morning.

Paul’s brain was packed full of information before he met Jesus. But he was glad to say that he came to the people knowing nothing other than Christ crucified. That everything else amounted to a pile of dung blocking his way to knowing Christ. No wonder Jesus rejoiced that Father had hidden the things of the kingdom from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.

David F

Posted: July 15th, 2008 under General.
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I’ve been underwhelming myself lately. I’ve been thinking about the story of Jonah. I wonder if God had a lot more in store for Jonah. I’ve never heard of such a powerful complete transformation of such a wicked city. The story of Nineveh would’ve been on CNN had it happened today. Jesus even references himself to the ’sign of Jonah’. The guy had it going on, and yet what’s so tragically lacking in Jonah’s story is any sense of fellowship with God. Sure, sure he has his epiphany in the fish, but come on who wouldn’t? Even the guys throwing him overboard found God. No, the guy was a grumpy old man from start to finish, despising God’s mercy and loving kindness.

Maybe the real sign of Jonah is that once Jesus did rise after three days we would be free to live in Father’s mercy and loving kindness instead of just talking about it.

Posted: July 13th, 2008 under General.
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As Bob mentioned, we recently returned from a week in North Carolina where we had an awesome time with a couple different groups of people who have been loving God and one another with greater freedom in the last few years since laying down some religious ways. One group included 40 of us from different parts of the country who had formerly operated in a more traditional understanding of what some call the “five-fold” ministry gifts. One lady in that group told of an unusual encounter that challenged her theology. So now it’s my turn to repeat a story.

She was visiting a recreational area where she had just turned aside from admiring the view when she spotted a man examining some steep cliffs with a pair of binoculars. She sensed Father urging her to approach him, so she walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. The man lowered his binoculars and looked intently at her when she said “God just wants you to know that he loves you and cares for you.” The stranger turned, put his forehead on the hood of his car a wept. He finally told her that she had saved his life, that he had just lost his wife and was planning to take his own by casting himself from the cliffs. He eagerly accepted her offer to pray with him and hungrily received the words of life she shared with him. A few moments later she left him to get something she needed in the tourist facilities which had large glass windows providing a unhindered view of the
natural beauty without. As she left the facility to return to her vehicle, she noticed the man she had prayed with wandering through the parking area as if looking for something. Once more, she felt prompted to go to him. When she reached him, he was kneeling in a puddle of muddy water. “Please baptize me!” he said. A myriad of objecting thoughts crowded her mind, thoughts about a woman baptizing a man in a mud puddle where he couldn’t be fully immersed, by what authority, etc., etc. But she was sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit that the inaudible voice urging her to “just do it!” overrode her religious scruples.
So a lone woman baptized a male stranger in a mud puddle as an amazed audience stared at the spectacle through windows made especially for viewing.

God 1
Religion 0

David F

Posted: July 7th, 2008 under General.
Comments: none

We recently returned from North Carolina where we had a chance to visit with a variety of people. We made friends with a lot of new folks in enjoyed sharing our journeys and and learning how father is working in each of our lives.

One story that really sticks out to me is one conversation I had with a sister. I had earlier shared about how I discovered father’s unconditional love for me, she came up to me and related her story about how she discovered father’s unconditional love for herself. She was a member of a nearby Baptist church teaching Sunday school with the pastor’s wife. On one Saturday night while she was praying, father revealed his love to her. She got so excited she went in the next day and promptly quit teaching the class. When the pastor’s wife asked her why, she said I no longer need to do this to gain his approval. No matter how much the pastor’s wife tried to talk her out of it or to defuse the impact of the revelation she was unsuccessful. Not long afterwards she let the Baptist Church and is now walking and exploring her new freedom in her relationship with father.

bob humphrey

Posted: July 3rd, 2008 under General.
Comments: none

We’re back! After being MIA for almost two weeks, the blog is back. We lost most of the archives dating back through April. Spread the word that we’re back and thanks for your patience.

I was watching TV the other day when a commercial for a local “church” flashed on the screen. The handsome, smiling pastor began to list the reasons that made First Church the one to go to. As he spoke, each virtue appeared on the screen, boldly underlined all the way down to “convenient parking.” Obviously, since church in the religious world is a commodity you must “go to” in order to reap the alleged benefits, it’s very important that you can park conveniently once you’ve made the effort to show up. The commercial ended with a picture of the “church.” It had a very tall steeple pointed directly to the heavens where one must assume God is gazing down with favor on the architecturally appropriate structure with the convenient parking lot. Certainly he must be pleased as he watches the clientele leave their vehicles and wander into the building where the Sunday morning ritual begins. His smile must grow as the offering basket is passed. This will provide for the commercial, the smiling pastor in the commercial and the pretty building with the convenient parking.

Yes, things are much tidier now than they were when Jesus walked the dusty streets of his home town. And Isaiah said that the Savior wasn’t much to look at. As The Message puts it, he was “..a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away.” And then he said things such as, if you wanted to be like him you had to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him to who knows where. Wasn’t much of a salesman. Would have made an awful commercial. But then, he didn’t need anything we had to give, and he had nothing that could be bought. He came to give himself, to bear our sins, our burdens, our injuries, our punishment. He came to deal with ugliness in a desperately ugly way. And hanging on that cross, naked and mutilated, Jesus drew all men to himself.

David F

Posted: June 20th, 2008 under General.
Comments: 1

God’s been talking to us a lot about our perspectives lately. It’s interesting to me how sometimes a drastic change in our lives can occur when nothing changes except our perspective. Of course that is no small change. And once our perspective changes it often has a domino effect and causes several other circumstances in our lives to change. I think our perspective of Father and who we are in Him has a far bigger impact on our lives than we often realize.

Take for example the issue of righteousness. If righteousness is something a person feels they must obtain and fight to stay in, that person will live a life of continual misery as he fights day in and day out to stay in Father’s good graces. God becomes the great conditional lover whose love for us constantly changes as our performance does. But if my perspective is that His righteousness is something that Father freely gives to us because of Jesus’ completed work on the cross then I find myself at peace with Him and with myself and resting in His love. I am able to just enjoy my relationship with Him. And then my behavior soon begins to change because it is through that loving relationship with Him that we are changed. So my perspective has a huge impact on my relationship with Him.

Here’s another biggy that God was really showing us last week. Do we see ourselves as servants or sons? If I am a servant than I am not worthy of anything. I must work to make God happy and that’s how I please Him. Nothing He has is mine, but rather I am only a steward. But if I am His son, then I am an heir to all He has. Not only that, He loves me as His very own child. His love is no longer based on how I perform but rather on who I am. I am not a worker in His house, I am a family member. And as His son I have access to Him all the time. Also as son I am allowed to have differences with my Father and through our relationship work through those together. A servant is never allowed to say what he thinks or express any differences with his master because it is his duty to follow orders. A servant only has a working relationship with his master. It doesn’t take long to see which perspective most Christians have of their relationship with God.

I think it is as Father changes our old perspectives to His perspective that we truly find His life and freedom growing inside us.

Loren

Posted: March 4th, 2008 under General.
Comments: none

Our lives in this born again life are meant to walk in the Spirit, not jump in and out or stagger around wondering whether we’re dotting all the ‘i’s or crossing all the ‘t’s in our fear of losing favor with the one who died for us ‘while we were yet sinners’. Walking in the Spirit is not totally of our own doing we need help. No, we need a relationship. We can’t do it on religion. Man shall not live one religion alone… OK it says bread, but we make the bread just like we make our religion.

He gives us His Spirit. But just walking? Hmm. There’s something more I believe than just walking. Isaiah talks about mounting up on the wings of an eagle. Running and not being weary. I’m beginning to see there is transformation He wants to bring in our lives. Now that we’re free of the obligations to religion, something new is about to happen.

bob humphrey

Posted: March 1st, 2008 under General.
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