Making a Righteous Sound

Speaking the truth in love requires sound. A silent church that hopes to get back to “normal” without addressing the elephants in the room will have missed an opportunity to express the sound of truth in this time of growing anarchy and censorship. Yes, we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but we are also to be His voice. An honorable protest is part of our rich cultural history. Violent riots are the work of a spirit of anarchy and never lead to righteous outcomes. Civic leaders who have abdicated their assignment to protect a community will have to answer to a higher authority for their compromise and complicity. Evil taking place even within the smallest part of a city is like leaven. A tiny bit of leaven left unchallenged will eventually corrupt the larger host. We need to find our voice as believers, or someday our descendants will ask why we were silent. The fear of man will not be an excuse that will stand the test of integrity.

The Global City Gate

I shared the following paragraph with someone who is substantially gifted in the technology surrounding the use of the Internet, website design, and social media applications.

I wrote, “The city gate is where the business of a community took place in ancient times. The city gate of our time is the Internet and its various applications such as websites, apps, and in some cases, social media. People are no longer limited to a geographic location to conduct business. Our city gates are mobile and widespread. Look at the transition from Blockbuster to Netflix. Even now, new “city gates” are emerging and challenging Netflix.”

The world we live in, whether it be a small village in the heart of Africa or a metropolitan setting in Europe, is immediate, rapid, and connected. Because we all conduct business at a global gate, no longer limited by access to a local and culturally isolated city gate, what we share, read, or transmit is read immediately on a global scale. 

It is wise and compassionate to make sure we are vetting our sources and the condition of our hearts before we transmit information that supports our passionate position on a particular subject. Even the information we transmit in the confidence of its accuracy is not always a full picture of reality. The opinions of other people will help us develop a fuller and more accurate perspective than the perspective we initially brought to the city gate to sell. 

When the cultural pendulum is swinging in such wide arcs as it is doing at this moment, we need to give each other an extra measure of grace as we freely share our opinions. I have friends who hold perspectives that differ from mine, but they handle our differing points of view with honor and decency. We share a mutual respect for each other in our diversity of opinion. Those are the kind of people I enjoy doing business with at the global city gate. 

Of One Heart

Being of one heart has a greater impact than being of one mind. In a close environment where people work together toward a common goal, hearts that follow after God in love, create a healthy and cohesive work environment. 

The apostle Paul encouraged us in the second chapter of Philippians to be of one mind. That one-mindedness was the by-product of living together in an environment of love. Love is always a matter of the heart.  Many times, we miss what creates a by-product by focusing on the by-product and not what produced the by-product.

If a leader requires all team members to be of one mind, typically, that translates as being in lockstep obedience with the worldview and preferences of the team leader. That requirement actually creates a weakness in the team. It is a false unity and restricts Spirit-led creativity that only comes through a diversity of opinion. It also limits the breadth of expression and insight required to engage greater Kingdom exploits. 

For example, if you are a team leader who releases edicts of how your team should respond to the issues of culture in an attempt to maintain team discipline and portray unity to those outside the team, you are creating followers, not leaders. Work first and foremost at building a team unity around the fruits of the Spirit, not your opinions. If the hearts of your team members are right and expressing love and honor toward each other, even if they say or do something that differs from your opinion, it will all work out in the end because their hearts were right. This is the kind of working environment that creates trust and honor in a team because people know they are loved in their diversity, not only in their conformity.

The Next Generation of Revelation

While the faith once delivered to the Church is unchangeable and true, our ability to grasp the fullness of that faith may not happen in a single generation. What one generation considered either true or false based on personal or cultural interpretation might be challenged by the next generation. The interpretation of matters of faith carries both risk and reward. 

There is something called Meta Induction Theory that suggests our accepted scientific theory can change over time. Pesticides once declared safe are now known to cause cancer. The earth was considered flat until proved otherwise. Germs were unknown because they remained unseen.

Every area of life goes through a process of discovery where our current level of knowledge experiences a process of turnover called “half-life knowledge.” Ideas or our interpretation of those ideas can become obsolete or disproven over time. Some of what our great-grandparents considered as scientific reality is no longer considered true.

A spiritual form of Meta Induction Theory can apply to our faith. In my generation, we have seen the role of women in ministry return to the original intent of God and not be isolated to a few corrective verses that had a specific cultural application. We realized the gifts of the Spirit were for today and not to be left behind in the dusty pages of history. The role of apostle and prophet has stepped back into their rightful place alongside the other equipping gifts.

God is unchangeable. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The rest of what was once delivered to the Church might require many generations to unpack its fullness. We are in a moment of tremendous reset where some of what we thought to be true and unchanging was only the first generation of a much larger revelation. Remain teachable. Hold everything with an open hand. God is placing fresh revelation in the hands of those who are willing. 

The Purpose of New Wineskins

When Jesus taught about new wineskins, He wasn’t referring to the latest model of ministry. He was talking about the condition of our hearts. From a repurposed heart will flow new ways of relating to a culture that creates models of ministry to serve the purposes of God. When we equate and restrict the purpose of new wine to the creation of a new model of ministry, we will miss the purpose of new wineskins. New wineskin models of ministry are the byproduct of a changed heart.

What I Do and Why

There are times, especially when we are new to the things of the Spirit, that we try to find “our gift.” At those early stages, there is nothing wrong with that pursuit. A problem can emerge later on when we become overly focused and enamored with our particular gift at the expense of more important issues.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with the Lord, asking why He had me work for so many years in a pastoral role when that was not my primary spiritual gift. The pastoral gift has never been revealed as my primary assignment in any gift assessment test. Prophet has always come out on top of all the tests I have taken. The gift of pastor belongs to Jan. She is the best pastor I know. We make a great team. 

The day I had that conversation with the Lord He said, “I had you spend all those years in pastoral ministry, even though it was not your primary gift, so you would know how to create a healthy environment for the prophetic movement.” At the time, those words sounded presumptive to me, and they might sound that way to you as well as you read these words. Such are the ways of God.

I write every day. It is a personal discipline and has become the resource pool for several books and a few thousand blog articles. Not everything I write is prophetic like a predictive word. Most of what I write are I Corinthian 14 kinds of words to strengthen people with encouragement and comfort. Some of the Old Testament prophets we quote with regularity only spoke a predictive word or two over their lifetime. We were never designed or assigned to be a predictive prophetic dispensing machine. Waking up to the need to produce a predictive word each day is a fast lane to compromise and a loss of credibility. 

Our spiritual gifts are like seeds we plant in hopes of a fruitful harvest. If the environment where a seed is planted is not healthy the seed will not live long enough to create a generational harvest. I have come to realize the environment in which a gift is delivered is as important as the gift itself. They work together.  In the end, this is called balance. 

Our Capacity To Do Battle

God is increasing your capacity for spiritual warfare. What worked in the past will not be sufficient to engage the battles in your future. This increased capacity is a work of God, not a capacity you can produce.

When I was a cop, one of my fellow officers got in a shootout with an armed robbery suspect. It was a hot July night, almost 100 degrees. My friend saw a man dressed in a heavy wool coat and a watch cap driving through town casing stores. The unusual attire caught the officer’s attention so he followed the vehicle. Like many criminals, the suspect provided a minor equipment violation that allowed the officer to legally make a car stop. 

When the officer approached the vehicle, the suspect bailed out of the car with a semi-auto 30-06 rifle and began shooting. The officer returned fire with his revolver as he ran backward, attempting to find cover behind his patrol unit. One of the suspect’s rounds hit the doorframe of the police vehicle fragmenting and wounding my friend. At that point in the gunfight, the officer had fired the last round in his six-shot revolver.  That last round hit the suspect in the upper thigh, and the gunfight was over. 

I was a department training officer so I grabbed some time to debrief my friend on the shooting. I asked him what he would do differently. His immediate response was, “I would want more bullets.” Back in those days, cops carried six-shot revolvers, not autoloading pistols that officers carry today with magazines holding almost three times the number of rounds as a revolver. The higher capacity of modern handguns is a far superior fighting weapon compared to the limited capacity of the revolvers we carried back in the day.

Having enough capacity to stay in the fight is critical, not just on the streets, but in our spiritual lives. When we put on our spiritual armor, we are actually putting on the Person of Jesus Christ, not a skill we learned at a workshop on spiritual warfare. When God increases our ability to fight the good fight, He is increasing our capacity to know and reveal Him in the challenging situations of life. He is our capacity.

The next time hell opens fire on you and those you love, ask the Lord to increase your understanding of His power and presence in your struggle. That is your most trustworthy battle weapon and defines your capacity to do battle. What God reveals to you at that moment will never run dry, leaving you facing the enemy alone and outgunned. 

Gifts of Access

Many of us have lived with a misunderstood interpretation of Proverbs 18:16,  “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.” We thought this verse meant our personal ministry gift is what opens a way for us to gain access to important relationships that a non-gifted person would not be able to enter. While that can be true in some cases, it is not what the verse is saying.

With the advent of more readable translations of Scripture, the understanding of Proverbs 18:16 has being clarified, “Would you like to meet a very important person? Take a generous gift. It will do wonders to gain entrance into his presence.” The verse, when correctly interpreted, means if we are being led by God to meet with someone in a place of authority, we should prepare a gift to bring with us. The gift will open the door and grant us the favor of an audience.

The word “gift” is used elsewhere in the Hebrew text to describe the dowry gift given to obtain a wife, offerings offered in worship, a gift given to a ruler as a gesture of goodwill, or a gift given in secret to pacify someone’s anger. In its original usage, it had nothing to do with our ministry gifts. 

Some of this misunderstanding has created an unhealthy hierarchy in the Church, leading some to believe only certain people with certain gifts can be used by God to speak to people in places of authority. Proverbs 18:16 is actually a verse about wisdom. There are times when a natural gift will open a relational door to deliver a spiritual gift. We need to discern under the guidance of wisdom what that gift might be. This makes all of us, not just the visibly gifted ones, a potential deliverer of a breakthrough word - a word released after the delivery of a gift had opened the heart of the hearer.

Making a Way

In the sphere of cultural influence called Arts & Entertainment, people are being touched by God. Each day more and more celebrities are coming forth and publicly confessing Jesus Christ. This is a Barnabas moment for the Church. Some are concerned with the authenticity of these testimonies. God asks us to embrace any evidence of faith, even a young and still developing faith. When Paul was touched by Jesus on the road to Damascus, many in the Church were afraid to him, thinking Paul was still an enemy and had not changed. I am thankful Barnabas was willing to stand in the gap and open up the way for Paul to enter into fellowship. That introduction made by Barnabas is still having a profound effect on the Church.  

"When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus" (Acts9:26-27).

The Clean-Up and Set-Up

In a dream, I saw a large conference center. It was just used to host a gathering of hundreds of people. When the event was finally over, and all the attendees had departed, a stillness settled over the facility. Looking around the room, I could see it needed straightening up, the trashcans emptied, and the floor vacuumed. The structure was architecturally sound, and its design appealing and inviting. Nothing had changed in those areas. It merely looked used and in need of refreshment. Before the next group arrives, the facility will need a thorough clean up from the past and a fresh set up for the future.

I know the dream had to do in part with the busy season Jan and I experienced in the last couple of years. It has a broader application for some of you who have been running hard. Like us, I invite you to not let the busyness you experienced in the past or the emotional debris that still clutters your thoughts to get in the way of the new events that are approaching your life. God wants to use this time to prepare you to be ready to receive the next gathering He is bringing your way. 

At the end of the image, I saw a lone janitor quietly working through the empty meeting room. He was enjoying the quiet space and the alone time as he picked up trash, straightened chairs, and swept the floor. He was singing a song as he worked, its melody echoing throughout the emptiness. His song was a prayer. 

The last season was filled with the execution of essential plans and activities that will produce significant fruit. This time of quiet work and reflection has equal significance. In this interlude of clean up and set up, God will whisper to you what He has planned for the next season.  He enjoys this alone time with you as much as He enjoys the events themselves.  

The Accelerated Dismantling of Our Faith

Perhaps one reason for much of the angst and concern in certain quarters of culture and within the Western Church has to do with a dismantling that is taking place. God is dismantling ways of thinking, theologies, and worldviews we have accumulated in the last few generations that do not reflect God’s heart or His mission on Earth.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, Scripture no longer remained in the hands of a few clerics who told the people what to believe. When the Word of God was released to the masses in written form, it brought about the Reformation. In scope, impact, and immediacy, the Internet far exceeds the potential of Gutenberg’s printing press. We are living in a moment of history where an accelerated dismantling of our assumptions is taking place – assumptions we have carried defining them as truth. Much of this dismantling is taking place because new insight, information, and historical context are now available at the click of a keyboard. 

As the known and familiar is being taken apart, don’t allow fear or anger to direct your response to the discomfort of the process. The things being dismantled are not sacred in God’s eyes. We have made them sacred in our tradition. Our misconceptions are being dismantled and reconstructed into a way of faith that many of us have never known in our lifetime.  If we are willing to follow the leading of God’s Spirit and not allow the spirit of fear and control to have its way, we will see God do remarkable things in us and through us once we have been dismantled and put back together again. 

The Dispersed Ones

Between the Day of Pentecost mentioned in Acts 2 and the persecution noted in Acts 8, a span of 3-4 years had transpired. During those years, the Church gathered around Solomon’s Collonade. It was a beautiful time of sharing resources, feeding the poor, and seeing signs, wonders, and miracles taking place. The Church was being added to daily. In all that goodness, there was a problem. The Church was not dispersing into the cultures beyond the familiarity of Jerusalem. The fulfillment of the Great Commission mentioned in Matthew 28 was in jeopardy of being stalled. That all changed when the persecution of Acts 8 happened, and a scattering took place.

Every new season in Church history will experience a moment of dispersal, either physical or theological. We can struggle with the idea of being scattered away from what is familiar, especially when we might be experiencing a good season like the gathering of the first generation of believers around Solomon’s Collonade. 

We are in a moment of dispersal within the Church. This dispersal can appear confusing to some who do not understand the Great Commission and the ever-expanding nature of God’s Kingdom on Earth. It is too easy for us to remain in a good place at the expense of the best. If you are being dispersed, do not fear what is taking place. God could be repositioning your physical life or challenging a point of your theology to increase your effectiveness in God’s Kingdom. If you allow God to have His way, He will show you the way.

The Crowd

When the crowds came to Jesus, he did not try to hold them. He fed them and walked away. Compromise comes when we try to hold the crowd. 

If you have experienced a certain degree of success, you may have attached some of your ego and identity to that success. This is a challenge because it makes it harder to let go of what is known, familiar, and affirming. 

Jesus was always walking away from “success.” He healed people and walked away. He fed the crowds and walked away. He did this because he knew his success was not to be enshrined and become a stationary monument. Even his disciples wanted to build memorials to his ministry. 

In this transition, you will need to walk away from the crowds if you are to remain healthy spiritually. 

Compromise rears its ugly head when the applause and evidence of your success tell you to create systems to hold onto the blessing. You may find yourself trying to recapture what happened in the past or building a memorial to your successes. Let the crowds follow Jesus. The only safe place for them to assemble is around him. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place.)

Going Tactical

When the first jet struck the Twin Towers 18 years ago today, I stood stunned as I watched the attack unfold. After the second jet hit the second tower, something paid a visit to my life that had been virtually dormant for 24 years. When the attack took place, it had been over two decades since I last donned my SWAT uniform, carried a weapon, and stepped into places of danger. At the moment I realized our nation was under attack, I went tactical once again.

I remember walking into our bedroom and assembling my kit. A kit contains the gear a SWAT cop or a Special Ops person carries into combat. It was as if no time had passed. My training and preparation were silently guiding me as I continued to listen to the unfolding newscast while assembling my gear atop the bed in our master bedroom. Like most Americans, I did not know what was coming next. Whatever was coming, I would be ready. Once my gear was together, I recall the shift that took place that morning in my thinking. I awakened to a new reality most of the world lives in on a daily basis outside the insulated suburban bubble where I was pastoring.

Today, on this sad anniversary of 9/11, I am still tactical both physically and more importantly, spiritually. In our culture, I see a lot of huffing, and puffing bravado tossed around by people who have never stepped into harm’s way. Along with the bravado is the polar opposite. It is a version of spirituality that lives in a dream world of an untested faith fueled by a misunderstanding of what Jesus meant when He said to turn the other cheek. This is the same Jesus who allowed Peter to carry a sword and the same Jesus turned over tables in the temple. Jesus meek and mild never existed. The Jesus of that illusion will get people killed both physically and spiritually.

While advancing age and circumstance may alter our ability to perform at our peak in the natural, our ability to be spiritually tactical never wanes. So I want to ask, have you assembled your spiritual tactical kit? What’s in it? Do you know how to use it? If something dark and disastrous were to spiritually assault your life or the lives of your loved ones, are you ready to do battle in the spiritual realm? Is your faith tactical?

As a culture, we are entering unfamiliar waters where the spiritual conflict will unfold in ways many have not experienced. This is not a place for the huffers and puffers or those who live in a spiritual la-la land. Life can be gritty and dangerous. When the light of truth displaces the darkness of deception and when hope displaces despair hell will come at us to bring its challenge. Being forewarned and forearmed will help us survive and overcome anything hell tries to throw at us - even a surprise attack on a peaceful morning.

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses”(II Corinthians 10:4).

God is Re-writing the Map of Our Nation

I was in a historic bank building in Jacksonville, Oregon conducting some personal business. The building has housed a bank since the mid-1800s. The interior of the bank looks a lot like it did 160 years ago. It has been preserved as a historic landmark. The room contains artifacts from that era. On the wall is a map of Oregon circa 1850. I walked over and stood in front of the map. Something immediately stood out to me. Most of the cities we know today are not on the map. Even Medford, Oregon, the largest community in southern Oregon did not yet exist. The Portland area was vacant of many of the cities we know today.

Yesterday, the image of the map came to mind. When it did, the Lord began to speak to me. He said, “I am about to put certain cities on the map. Cities that have lived out of the national spotlight will be highlighted by a work of My Spirit. That highlighting will illuminate something I will do in their midst that will come unexpectedly to those who have not been sensitive to My Spirit. To the watchmen, men and women in tune with My heart, this will not be a surprise. It will be an answer to years of faithful prayer. I am rewriting the map of your nation.”

When I first stood in front of the old map in the bank, my assumption of what should be on the map is what caught my attention. I approached the map expecting to see familiar cities noted, but their place in history had not yet begun. I am sensing the same thing today in the realm of the Spirit. While many of you are looking to Washington, D.C., or a major urban center as the next place of national significance, God has other plans. He is calling forth cities without national significance to become ground zero for the transformation of our nation. The national map is changing.

Prophetic Placement

The most significant prophetic words are not always spoken from behind a podium in a church service, or by a speaker at a conference. The most significant prophetic words are many times spoken in closed doors gatherings with world-changers whose target is the transformation of a culture or in a private office meeting with a political figure who governs a nation. Sometimes these words are delivered in what the world would describe as a "chance" meeting on the street. The significance of the word is not defined by the venue of its delivery.

The people who carry and deliver this level of prophetic ministry know they were positioned for the delivery of the word solely by the hand of God. It is too easy to spend our lives making a way for our gift instead of allowing God to make the way. That desire can limit the scope of our gift and our ability to be used by God in a more significant and powerful way.

The Embers of Revival Fire Still Burn

What was burning as a revival fire in the past and appears to have died out has not been fully extinguished. A burning ember of passion always remains. That ember has continued to smolder in the hearts of people waiting for a moment in time, as directed by the Spirit, to reignite and burn once again. Historic revivals never die. An ember of hope always remains somewhere in someone. To those who only see revival through natural eyes, the fires of revival can seem to burn out, but they always remain in the hearts of passionate people as embers of hope waiting for the right conditions to reignite.

Jan and I live in southern Oregon. For several years, our summers have included smoke from wildfires. It seems to have become a predictable summer event. Currently, we are living in the smoke once again caused by a large blaze about 70 miles north of us. Many of us are learning more about the science of fire.

This morning, I was reading a report about these summer fires and came across a fact I did not previously know. Some of these large fires are never fully extinguished until the arrival of rain and snow in the fall season. In some cases, even the rain and snow does not end the life of a fire. A fire named the Klondike fire that burned last summer was a 50,000+acre monster near Selma, Oregon. The fire lay smoldering through the winter and in the last few days, it has reignited. The reignition was because of lingering embers that kept burning in the stumps of large trees.

If you carry a passionate ember from a revival in the past, even though you do not see any outward evidence of a current revival fire burning, do not lose heart. Follow the leading of the Spirit. Be immediate in your obedience when God asks you to do something. Your faith may be stretched far outside your spiritual comfort zone, but do it anyway. The smallest act of obedience from someone who carries an ember of revival fire can be the single spark that sets a city or a nation ablaze for the glory of God. 

Discerning the Half-Truths

Over the years, I've heard people make a variety of statements that caused me to pause and ponder the credibility of what they spoke.

I once heard someone say, “If you are going to lead you need to read.” While that sounds good on the surface, it fails as a blanket statement. I have met a number of national-level leaders from developing nations that could barely read and owned no books. They were apostles providing wise oversight for thousands of people. I have known leaders in our affluent western culture that could afford to purchase and read a book a week yet struggled in the very elemental aspects of life and faith. Some of this “read to lead” mindset flows from an education-based model of leadership we have adopted that was not present in the Early Church when the Gospel was empowered by the Spirit, not the development of human intellect. 

Another comment I heard came from a man who supervised hundreds of churches for his denomination. He made a comment about a small town pastor as the dear man walked by, “He’s a 50-person pastor.” At the time, I barely had 10 people in my new church plant. The supervisor judged the quality and impact of the man’s ministry based on the number of people he could draw on a Sunday morning, not the impact the man and his church were having in their community.

You could supply your own list of comments that do not carry the content of full truth. We toss these comments around making huge and inaccurate assumptions about life and people. Today, discern what you are repeating without processing its content. I have found some of the things I parroted over the years had no depth of wisdom in their broad-brush proclamation. I no longer repeat those half-truths.

The Day After Pentecost

Yesterday, the Church all around the world gathered to celebrate Pentecost Sunday.  Pentecost was the day when the Spirit came in a sudden and unexpected demonstration of power. I try to examine what takes place after such events. I am not sure God wants us to think those powerful demonstrations had a single, isolated historic purpose. They happen because they are needed from time to time to correct our assumptions and shake up the status quo. This enables God to accomplish something through us not possible until a move of the Spirit pushes us off our spiritual lounge chair.

Immediately after the Day of Pentecost, we are told all the believers “devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.” Chapter 2 ends by describing the deep sense of awe the early disciples were sensing as they saw the apostles perform signs, wonders, and miracles. They were sharing everything they owned, helped those in need and worshipped together each day. In that context of shared community, the Lord continued to add to their number daily. What we see happening after the miracles on the Day of Pentecost was the emergence of a structure that resembled a community of faith. 

Each generation needs a personal Pentecost in order to move forward. As a result of that experience, God invites to a process of restructuring. This is not a negative and controlling form of restructuring, but a minimal life-releasing structure like the one seen in Acts 2 that allows our plans to be interrupted and our current level of expectation to be challenged.  

Creating a structure for ministry before a demonstration of God’s power will always weaken the resulting expressions of the Church and diminish the effectiveness of our mission. As a result, following generations – the offspring of our current level of faith - will themselves create structures and systems that will not make room for the very thing needed to create healthy models of ministry and bring about the fulfillment of the Great Commission in their day. 

Today, don't search for a new model of ministry or a new structure before the Spirit comes. These premature manifestations will drain your strength and limit your Kingdom impact. Instead, pray a very dangerous prayer - dangerous to tired and lifeless expressions of faith. Pray, "Come, Holy Spirit, come!" What God brings in response to that prayer will contain the very encounter you will need to structure a community of faith that will literally change the world. 

When Division Has Purpose

Yesterday, I saw in my spirit an image I think might describe some of what is taking place in the Church. I saw the image of a single cell like I was viewing it under the intense magnification of a microscope at the moment the cell first divided and became two cells. The two cells were not divided to become two separate entities. In their division, they remained within the same organism. Future health and expression involved a process multiplication. Their continued development required they separate and become two, then four, and then eight and so on. The division and separation was a process that allowed the development of something that could not yet be seen.

Under very close observation we discern only the division of the single cell, not the larger organic whole being created. This is true in biology and it is true in our understanding of God and the Church. While the basics of our doctrine and theology must remain intact or we will not have biblical faith, there is so much more that must divide in order to grow.

Today, be careful about the over-intense magnification of a particular issue before you understand the larger image that is being formed. We live in a time of “experts” and proponents of a single cell understanding of faith. This creates a concept of God and His Kingdom that is overly-simplistic and leads to bondage. Jesus addressed this issue. 

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23: 23-24).

Faith is not rigid. It can uncomfortably multiply without our permission under the influence of the Spirit and move the mission of the Church outside our current microscopic understanding. It is important to continually invite God to expand our vision. Faith never parks. The expanding expression of the Church is always multiplying beyond our current level of comprehension. 

We are being called by God to expand our field of vision in order to see something larger He is doing. If we fail to heed this call, we will continue to defend a single cell theory of faith and become suspicious of anything new taking place outside our current field of view and our current level of understanding.