Dreams from the LORD 2003-2006
25 July 2006
2 Corinthians 2: 11: “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
Job 5: 12: “He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise.”
Esther 8: 3: “And Esther spake yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet, and besought him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his device that he had devised against the Jews.”
“We are not ignorant of his devices.” This is true of the Word of God, but not true with most church people I meet. Satan has done an excellent job of infiltrating Christian churches with false doctrines to the point that these churches become conformed to the world (spiritual death). Revelation knowledge destroys the gates (the strategies) of Satan. I remember I had fellowship with an elderly woman back in Ames, Iowa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was definitely baptized in the Holy Ghost. She stood up in this church and said, “If the Devil walked into this church, nobody would know it!” Amen. I went to that church two or three times: the power of the Holy Ghost (revelation) was not there.
The power of the Holy Ghost unblinds and unshackles us so that we are better able to learn of and defeat the strategies of Satan.
I don't even know what to begin looking for when I go to Church...
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to Church last Easter for the first time, Christ definitely spoke to me. He said to my heart as I was looking at the congregation, "Perhaps they don't understand... but look how hard they try." It made me realize that not everyone was as lucky as me to have God so present in their lives, and that somehow I'd been holding it against them. I had a moment of forgiveness with Christ, and a tiny revelation. Just because his followers weren't perfect doesn't mean Christ wasn't who he said he was....
The Church I was baptized in definitely had the Spirit... but it was very commercialized, and I got tired of it after a while. I want to go to a smaller congregation where there is more a sense of family, not all this theatrical stuff, light shows and stage performances and whatnot... I need something simpler that doesn't distract from what's really important: communion with God.
Theresa: Your "problem" is that you have a lot of spiritual depth for your age. I meet Christians all the time who have been saved for twenty, thirty or forty years and they still suck on the milk bottle--they are still shallow and unspiritual (carnal).
ReplyDeleteA long time ago, someone told me that my problem was that I was honest and that I was a poet. Which probably meant that I wasn't going to do too well in the world system (I knew that when I was an atheist 17-year-old; I didn't believe in God, but I was desperately seeking truth. I began to read Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" at age 17. Eventually, my frustration with man's philosophy lead me to the Cross of Jesus Christ). Desperation and hunger for God got me saved; I have little or no time for pukewarm Christianity.
I am not a naturally gifted poet like you, but I do like to read inspiring poetry. I probably have a heart of a poet, but I am not so good at expressing poetic thoughts like you and T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
About going to church. Don't force the issue. If it is God's will, you will meet someone and they will invite you to their church and it will be perfect timing.
About commercialized churches. Leonard Ravenhill once said that when the Presence of God is not in a congregation, that is when the theatrical stuff takes over. If the Presence of God is in a congregation, you don't need all the churchy church light shows and stage performances. Simplicity is beautiful and powerful.
"The Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power."