IT'S A PERCEPTION THING

     God has a viewpoint on everything, a perspective that is different than ours. It is part of what He means when He says that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways. But He is not saying or even suggesting that His thoughts and His ways cannot become our thoughts and our ways. Perhaps it is easier to assume that His ways and thoughts cannot become ours because then we think to ourselves that we are not responsible for what happens or what doesn't happen. However, God has that kind of thinking trumped by His words in Galatians 6. "God is not mocked.” He goes on to say there are consequences for intentionally sowing bad seed.

      Moving on to the topic at hand, spiritual breakout, let’s press in.

     Breakout is not a term we have heard commonly used in the Kingdom of God. Especially within the community of those who pray, a more common term is breakthrough. Breakthrough suggests that God is trying to penetrate INTO something that He is shut out of. "We expect a breakthrough in the peace negotiations at any time..." says the TV journalist (Not for the Gaza strip though, today).

     Or, “breakthrough” suggests a letting up of something that is adverse, like the weather. "We expect a break in the heat wave by the weekend..." says the weatherman.

     Or the believers pray for new vitality in the church and they talk about a breakthrough that is coming. The word breakthrough comes out more in prayer than almost anywhere else. But I think God has another perspective.

     If God is pushing for anything, I think it is a breakout. He has basically been held hostage within His own house in a lot of ways. Not the least of them is in worship, fellowship and love for the brethren. He has been studied, examined, tested, defined, and... CONFINED. But He is planning a breakout and He is rallying help. He does not NEED help, but it has always been His way to limit Himself to the agency of humanity. It has also been His way to involve sons and duaghters of God in the affairs of His family business.

     He is brooding over His house and a divine discontent for church au natural or church a la carte is percolating. Some of us are catching on and running to enlist in the rank and file militia that He is raising.

     Now lest you think that this means the church is declaring war on itself, let's back up and take a look at US history for a moment. There is an informative observation there. 

     As discontent with British oppression of the colonials grew in the 1700s, the sentiment for revolution grew. More and more of the rank and file found themselves volunteering to resist and to mount a vigorous resistance. The British turned the heat up to scare off the faint hearted, the weak, the old and young and to strike fear into the hard core rebels.

     There were some colonials who were vocal in the beginning and maybe even stepped up to be counted who subsequently withdrew, shut up and disappeared. Some of them even advocated for patience and peace and leaving well enough alone. They resisted the resistors though they were not friends of the King any more than they were friends of the devil. They were victims who had become used to the status quo.

     Others steeled themselves even more to fight and die for liberty and freedom. For many of them, their strength and resolve came from God Who forged their backbone in the fires of His righteousness. It was crucial that they keep their focus on the real enemy or they would make unnecessary enemies of their scared friends and find themselves fighting each other. Not good.

     Now pay attention here.

     The valiant rebels did not turn their attentions from the British oppressors to focus on the retiring, unwilling, scared, uncertain colonials. If anything, the internal disquiet only stoked the fires of the valiant ones because they were ALL being victimized by the oppressors from without and within. They raided the enemy camp. They would not be held in the prison of oppression. They broke out of the hold of their captors and jailers and abusers.

     God is not held captive in the church, but in the world systems that have invaded the church by the craft and subtlety of The Perpetrator, Satan. The church is victim here and God is the liberator, the Captain of the Hosts.

     He will not be caged, nor will He suffer His own to be caged by the oppressions of darkness that have shut down worship and fellowship and devoted love of the brethren.

     Understand what is going on here and if you have the heart for it, take up the call to daring praise, breaking new ground in what your personal worship life has been. Take up the call to fearless worship and brave the contrary tides that resist drawing nearer and nearer to The One who loves your soul.

     I don't know what to tell you specifically to do different than what you have been doing, but I am urging you to find out from God where fear or preference has drawn confining lines around you and make a plan to break out of that captivity. God is with you and you are surrounded by a new breed of believer that is doing the same thing. Band with them in accord and unity and draw around you the company of those who are reaching for worship and fellowship and devotion for the brethren as they exist in the heavenlies. You can be part of making heaven touch the earth.

     Be assured that God is doing His part. He is gathering the governors and leaders of His Kingdom and bringing new coordination to the Bride by way of the accord and unity they are forging together. You are not alone. We are not alone. The quest for new ground and breakout is a worthy one. Let’s pray…

     Father, strengthen my friends whom I have not met yet to rise in answer to the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who comes in the name of The Lord. Open the spirit of their mind to receive the knowledge of the Lord and bring understanding of Your perspective to their heart of hearts. Out of a renewed mind, make Gideons of all of us, willing to defend to the death those whom you sent home from the fight against the oppressor without holding them up to any ridicule and disdain. Strengthen us in Your love and let the breakout that You are calling for reach magnificent proportions throughout the camp of those who love you.

Towards the will of God...

Bill Word, Facilitator

Fellowship of Brothers

www.fellowshipobrothers.org

wmwordjr@yahoo.com

DARING PRAISE AND FEARLESS WORSHIP

Wildfire in the Kingdom of God is sort of scary and it is commonly associated with new freedom and liberty in worship, prophecy and prayer thought to be excessive. Maybe we've all seen excesses and fringe behavior that we vowed not to duplicate or permit. But we cannot survive as spiritual beings and impose sweeping limits on the celebration and worship of God.

Michal, David's wife, got offended at David's liberty. You should hear my friend, Steve Samford, talk about her. The consequences of her reaction to David's dance cost her dearly. Her distaste did not stop at the worship and celebration. She despised David himself. Herein is the danger of reacting to those who turn over new ground in worship and praise, prophecy and prayer. If it offends you, the danger is in that you may come to despise even those who are closest to you. Your reward will be barrenness and loneliness and very awkward aloneness. Why? Because God is always breaking new ground and He will do it with those who will and without those who won’t.

If the choice is to be where God is or where God used to be, which would a thinking person want?

David said something prophetic to Michal. He said it will get more vile than this but it will turn to honor before those for whom you pretend to be embarrassed (maidens in the street), Michal.

Isn't it clear that God confirmed David? HE heard David's words to Michal. HE didn't correct David. David had lots of children, BUT his wife, Michal, bore none of them. David had children with those hand maidens and with Bathsheba. Michal wilted all alone. I don't have a complete picture of how David's words to Michal were fulfilled, but I know what He said has come to pass in the generations of and since David.

David told Michal that it would get more vile than whatever she accused him of in the streets that day. Whatever else that means; it says that the senses of those who cooperate with and serve the anti-Christ spirit have only just begun to be affronted. Man-made, institutional religion has not even yet begun to hear and see what will happen as God continues to break new ground in celebration.

Praise has become and will yet become more daring. I know that some of you translate daring into defiant, but, remember, God confirmed David and punished Michal. He confirmed liberty in worship and ignored the reaction of the traditionalists. David's words to Michal even betray that David knew what he was doing. He said, "I will abase myself even more and even before my own eyes."

Perhaps a synonym for daring is boldness or vice-versa. But God is limbering up a bunch of us old folks and freeing up a bunch of you young folks to break new ground in celebration praise, prophecy and prayer. New instruments and new implements even some of the old ones are vibrating with the life of the Holy Spirit and breaking out of established molds. It's like fire on dry kindling, WILD but not exactly the kind of wildfire that so many of the spiritual police of man-made religion are scared of.

It is the heat of desire for God that is making us fuel for a heavenly pyre - it won't be quenched - it will just keep breaking out because this is the season of Revelations 4 when the worship that takes place in eternity will touch ground with flames that kindle upon us, but do not consume us.

At the core of this liberty is fearless worship. Again, the terminology might be scary to some. I am sure Michal trembled at David's retort if she knew her husband even a little. He was good to his word and so is Father God. HE is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth and He intends to tabernacle with these brazen, bold, daring types - NOW - not in some far-off dreamscape of the city foursquare.

Those who will dare to embark on fearless worship will shun earthy inhibitions in order to draw nearer and nearer and nearer to the Father God, The Lover of their souls.

There is always some ignorance that must be overcome to draw nearer and go beyond that which stopped us before. We have been coached for eons that no one may draw near to or see God and live. After all, He lives in unapproachable light. Right?

That terrible incantation has for too long dampened the desire of those who would dare to believe that God really did want ALL of Israel to go up the mountain with Moses so He could show Himself to ALL of them. And why didn't all of them go? They said it themselves. You go, Moses, we are scared.

Well, the new breed that is rising to the quickening of the Holy Spirit are finding a strengthening to overcome the fear AND the ignorance. They are making for the Holiest of Holies, the lap of Father God and we are in the fullness of time to reach the secret place of the stairs. A very important prophetic understanding of scripture is breaking on the landscape from where it has been hidden, like so many others of the Lord's "mysteries," right in plain sight on the pages of His book.

Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.

It is the glory of Kings to search it out."

That's IT. That's the prophetic understanding. Do you get it or am I imagining this? There is a promise in Hebrews 11:6. "Without faith it is impossible to please God, but those who would see Him must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

If He rewards those who seek Him, what is the reward? Wouldn't it be to FIND Him and even to FIND HIM OUT and His mysteries and His glories? Wouldn't the reward be to actually come to the knowledge of the Lord? Wouldn't that outstrip simple knowledge of the Bible or the Book of Church Order?

While everyone who has ever believed is included in the NT verse that says we are Kings and Priests unto our God, there is yet a new breed who are reaching to apprehend that reality, to take custody of it because that is why they, and we, have been taken into the custody of the Holy Spirit. We were not apprehended for no cause nor for any unworthy claim upon our lives.

We have given ourselves into love-slavery because the Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ and He is worthy. He has made a way and we will draw near in devoted, pronounced, daring and fearless exultation.

The tactics of man-made religion charge us to count the cost as though the cost is the righteous center of focus. This is not so. And the new breed isn’t buying it. For us, counting the cost means comparing the price the prize. We have been freely given the currency with which to make the transaction. It comes in three denominations: faith, hope and love.

When one gets even a dim view of the prize, fellowship on earth that is with The Father and with The Son, the price doesn't count. Even a simple man finding a pearl of great in a field will go and sell all that he has in order to purchase the field so he may claim the prize. How much more we who are the beneficiaries of the great grace of the Lord Jesus.

If I must die to behold him, slay me in all my flesh and the deeds of the flesh now. HE is worthy. Out of the offering of a grateful heart I will bring to Him daring praise and fearless worship. I will seek His pleasure to break new ground in daring praise and fearless worship within me. HE is worthy. And I know He will do it in us. He has exhorted us to reach for it. He has promised to fit us and outfit us for it. Paul wrote in 1 Thess. "The Lord sanctify you completely in body soul and sprit and He will do it."

Hearing God testify of David that he is a man after God's own heart, did our hearts not burn to be worthy of that testimony of God over us. Well, that desire in us did not originate with us. It originated with God. He put it in us so He could fulfill it.

Take up the chase. Run the race. Feed your appetite for the person of Jesus, my friend. Don’t starve it or ignore it, especially on the word of some jealous religious institution whose claim on us can only make us twice more sons of hell than we ever were. It is not longer of walking the walk or talking the talk or any combination of the two. TODAY, WE RUN THE RACE. We run so as to win laying aside every weight and sin that does so easily beset us. We run the race to finish. We have another Comforter. Whom should we fear?

Catherine Russell, my friend and a practicing Pastor of the Kingdom, a worshipper with eternity in her mouth, taught me this riddle,

"If you chase HIM, HE will catch you."

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.

It is the glory of Kings to search it out.

You know what to do... Oh God, please catch us and catch us up until we are whole heartedly lost in the knowledge of Your glory and caught in the folds of Your will. Do it Father...

Bill Word, Facilitator
The Fellowship of Brothers
www.fellowshipofbrothers.org
wmwordjr@yahoo.com
(361) 241.9939