Our new campaign to raise the money to complete the filming of Jeff’s World is up and running at http://igg.me/p/108891
bob humphrey
A conversation with some close friends a couple of days ago reminded me of a time in my late teens when I helped my great uncle get his favorite invention ready to ship out. Ben Fitzpatrick had invented the Fitzpatrick rotary piston engine. It ran on compressed air, had very few moving parts and produced incredible leverage within a small chamber using an eccentric motion that no other engineer was able to understand. When he showed them the blue prints before he produced the first one in his garage, they said it couldn’t work, and later when opportunists stole the machine and took it apart they couldn’t put it back together again.
The motor was completely without vibration and was reversible at top speed. To demonstrate its power, he fitted it to a mini-bike with which he then pushed a semi truck. His machine was used to pull ships into Long Beach harbor and in the wheel hubs of giant earth moving equipment. It was used to power helicopters and sold to a hot tub manufacturer.
NASA wanted to use it for rocket launching pads, and various companies tried to negotiate with my uncle for exclusive rights to his product. But Uncle Ben wouldn’t negotiate with anyone, and limited the potential of his invention to the number he could produce from his one car garage. When he died the secret of his machine died with him.
Father was showing us that many of us who enjoy relationship with Christ are like my uncle and his machine. We have the potential to “do all things” through Christ. We can use the power he’s given us to set others free, heal the sick and even raise the dead. Those without his indwelling Spirit can’t understand how the power is produced and have no access to it unless we decide to exercise it for their benefit.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t really believe that we have that kind of power available to us. We’re well aware of our faults and weaknesses. We assume that our failures hinder God from using us. They don’t. Jesus has overcome those problems and has qualified us for whatever we need and for whatever the lives of those around us need. He’s waiting for us to realize that God is really that good and to take him at his word. We ask him to do things that he’s expecting us to do, and when he doesn’t, we think it’s because we’re not worthy. Well he is, so what are we waiting for?
David Fredrickson
As most of you know, we are currently in the process of making a feature length motion picture called “Jeff’s World.” But why did we decide to do this? For me this movie really strikes a passionate cord in my heart. I have tremendous passion to see people grab a hold of who they really are in Christ…who He created them to be. And I don’t just mean that on a lofty Biblical/spiritual level. I mean that on a rubber meets the road individual level. There are things that were woven into us by our Heavenly Father that are unique to each one of us. There are dreams inside of each one of us, passions we alone carry as individuals, and different interests that make each one of us tick. This is the music within us. These are the songs that Father placed within our hearts that are unique to each one of us individually. Only you can sing the song that Father placed within you. Only you can paint with the colors Father causes you to see. Only you carry that particular beautiful fragrance He has given you. We become an amazing heavenly symphony as we walk in love with one another. My passion has long been for people to be free to be who they are and embrace it. Who we are just flows out of us as natural as can be when we’re free, and I know this brings such joy to Father’s heart.
The problem is there is a great mutator out there that does nothing but twist, distort, and mangle all who come in contact with it. It’s goal is to rob people of their identity and force them into its own mold. It steals the songs and dreams within their hearts and mutates them into conforming clones. And the greatest tragedy of all is that this mutator claims to be of God. But not only does it claim to be of God, it claims to be the only way by which we can know and grow in Him. It not only distorts us, but it also distorts our view of God. Who is this great mutator? Organized religion.
The movie Jeff’s World tells the story of a man who is a gifted artist but has been born and raised inside the belly of organized religion. His hunger to please God (according to what Jeff has been taught about Him) has him stuck inside a world in which he is a square peg living in perpetual desperation to fit inside a round hole. Although the movie is hysterical in its presentation it touches on some deep issues such as what is real leadership/ministry? The division religion has created between sacred and spiritual. The way religion trains us to ignore our hearts’ desires. The mixture that exists inside religion – it’s not just black and white. It also pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of organized religion revealing the competition, man pleasing, hypocrisy, and love of mammon that often exists. This movie will have people laughing and shaking their heads at the same time saying, “Ain’t that the truth.” Yet people are not bashed, but rather shown as they are… people…not two dimensional characters…but human beings with real desires, motives, feelings, pasts, and dreams.
Why make Jeff’s World? Because people need to be affirmed that they are not crazy…that song within them was put there by Father. It is not He who resists them, but the imposter known as organized religion.
Please help us finish this movie. Click on the link and make a donation.
Loren
Yesterday we finished another segment of Jeff’s World in which I play the senior pastor, Bruce Carlyle. As this was my first major acting role, I had to learn that in order to portray the heart of any character the actor must study his background and understand his personality, conflicts, motives, etc. Once you’re able to “get into character” the lines come naturally and the character is more believable.
Years ago when I lived in the bay area I remember visiting a large, well known church where all the associate pastors dressed alike and had the same preaching style. I supposed they reasoned that if they looked and acted like the senior man they might have a shot at being as “successful” as he was. They did a good job studying him, because they could have passed for clones of the guy.
Religion encourages adherents to study the scriptures and do what is written. Christians are taught principles of spiritual life. They read the Bible and other books and learn all about the heroes of the faith both then and now with the goal of trying to be like them. They may imitate Paul’s preaching, but can’t match the demonstration of power through him.
Godly character cannot be taught or copied. There’s no substitute for learning Christ, and those that try to do and speak for him without learning him become caricatures that the whole world recognizes as false.
Of course it’s always easier to perform than to allow the character of Christ to be worked into us through pain and suffering. It’s easier to “put it on” then to put on Christ. But the other side of the coin is that he’s already done the work; our part is only to receive and yield. Then what we do flows naturally as an expression of our life being integrated with his.
David Fredrickson
I recently was talking to a friend who was undergoing some financial stress and began to encourage him that Father did indeed have a plan to help him out. Now that would have been the nice appropriate thing to say to dodge the situation, but what I said next even surprised me, causing me to step back and ponder the significance of it.
I told him not to just pray about it, i.e. toss a prayer message in a bottle into the spiritual river of God and hope it arrives before you go completely broke, but to have a peer to peer conversation with Holy Spirit about the matter, as if you were asking a friend about what to do. “Bob, how dare you compare yourself on the same level of God!” Whoa there religious Bob. Didn’t Jesus tell his disciples I no longer call you servants but friends? Doesn’t Paul describe us as being seated WITH Christ in heavenly places? Isn’t Jesus the first born of many brethren? Okay, so enough of this Old Covenant perspective of prayer and ferreting out the ‘will of God’. Ask him plainly and expect him to respond just as plainly, just like a friend would do. There’s nothing mystical here, it’s called relationship.
bob humphrey
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