Conflicting Sounds

It’s a bit after 2:00 am. A few minutes ago, I woke up and could not go back to sleep. I had a few things on my mind I needed to deal with so, I quietly got up and went into our living room to talk with the Lord. A few minutes after rising, I started my audio bible program to listen to the book of Ezra while following along with an open bible in my lap.

As I started to listen to the narrator, I also heard a beautiful piano soundtrack that accompanied the reading of the text. The music seemed out of time and confusing, not like what I was used to hearing. It soon became apparent to me the sound engineers made a mistake and placed a flute soundtrack on top of the piano music. It was hard to follow along, listening to the person reading the text with the conflicting soundtracks playing in the background. I was glad Ezra was only ten chapters long.

When I finished reading, I turned off the audio bible. The piano music that accompanied the audio bible stopped, but the flute music continued to play. At that moment, I realized my error. Last night, Jan and I were listening to some beautiful flute music on YouTube. When we went to bed, I closed my laptop but did not turn off the YouTube channel. When I opened my computer this morning to listen to the word, the flute music started once again.  I had two channels playing music at the same time, YouTube and my audio bible program.

Then I realized why the Lord had me get up to take care of some personal business. The day before, I made two decisions that were in conflict with a previous instruction from the Lord. The unresolved conflict did not allow me to sleep. My soul was restless. Just like the competing soundtracks on my computer that made it hard for me to hear the word, I had given the competing voices of human reasoning the freedom to speak. Their sound compromised a word the Lord had given to me previously.

This is a very unusual time in history. We need to be focused and clear in our thinking. We also need to be quick to rectify those things that impede our ability to hear His voice.  The Lord desires clarity in our lives. If we continue to allow outside voices to create a conflicting sound in opposition to the Lord’s voice, we will struggle to hear His instruction just like I struggled to hear the bible text being read through my computer. 

This is a loving warning for all of us from the Lord regarding the days ahead. He has things to say to us that will not be heard if we continue to allow competing voices to obscure the sound of His voice. 

The Clanging Cymbal of Our Opinion

Over the years, I've noticed we can make Scripture say what we want it to say when our opinion on a subject has become entrenched and unmovable. I know this because I have been guilty of the practice. Like you, I have “proof texts” for everything I think an opposing opinion might offer as evidence proving their opinion is superior to mine and vice versa.

This is why Jesus must be our ultimate authority even above our interpretation of a bible text or preferred translation of the bible, something none of the earliest disciples possessed. I know this can sound like borderline heresy to some, but such is the life of faith. There will be times when two believers who both love God and live lives of integrity will disagree over the interpretation of a text or how to represent our faith in culture. In these instances, only Jesus can be the ultimate mediator, not our opinion on Scripture, our worldview, or how we think our faith should be represented in culture.

Living with honor while holding divergent opinions requires a pliable heart. Pliability is not a loss of biblical integrity or compromise of our ethics. It is a manifestation of mature love. Some of the most remarkable men and women I know in God’s Kingdom have very different opinions and interpretations about a life of faith, and yet they are still able to move forward under the banner of love and accomplish great things together. 

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (I Corinthians 13:1).

Going Deeper

When something crosses our path and challenges our perspective, our first response is many times crafted from a variety of issues like our unresolved fears, pride, past acts of betrayal, or the pain of relational abandonment. These are surface responses that are reactive in nature. They can hold us captive on the surface until we choose to break free and go deeper. 

This deeper place is where the Spirit reveals truth with greater clarity. It is where we need to go to receive a healthy evaluation of the content of a message that is currently challenging our reality or perspective. This deeper level is where the Spirit brings insight and wisdom that is not crippled by a first-level interpretation fueled by our emotional response to the painful events of life. 

The prophetic voice of the Church is a shared calling for all who believe. It is not limited to a group of people who are known to speak prophetically. God wants to take all of us deeper. The deeper place is where revelation is waiting to be discovered that will shift human hearts and redirect the destiny of nations to align them with the mandate of the Great Commission.

When we finally arrive in that deeper place, we will have an opportunity to humbly allow God's Spirit to counsel us and craft our message. In some cases, we might actually be asked to recraft our message for greater impact.  In that deeper place is where we will discover our prophetic voice, a voice that speaks the truth in love.

The Release of Dormant Callings

In this time of cultural pause, unrealized callings empowered by a prophetic promise will rise to the surface to be discovered and released. God never wastes a season, no matter how challenging it might appear. Each chapter of life is filled with the potential fulfillment of a promise. Dormant promises rising to the surface and being released in the middle of the painful seasons of life has been the history of God working in His people since the Creation.

22-years ago, I stepped off the platform at the De Bron conference center in Holland when a prophet named Jean Darnall, reached out a took me by the arm and said, “Young man, you will write for God.” To be honest, writing anything was the last thing in my bucket list. That word remained dormant and unattended until ten years later when, as a tired pastor in need of spiritual refreshment, I was invited to a leadership gathering at Bethel Church in Redding, California. During that visit, I had a deep and profound encounter with God. In that encounter, the word about writing was ignited and released. That was 8 books and 2,000+ blog articles ago.

Prophetic promises have seasons attached to their fulfillment. Those seasons are used by God to release the most impact once a promise is activated and engaged. Each of us carries these promises. Some of them are forgotten. Others are put on the back burner of our memory because they did not align with our desires at the time of their delivery. 

In the coming days, expect promises either forgotten or neglected to come to the surface of your consciousness and ask for your engagement. In the challenging and stressful seasons of life is where God does some of His most unique promise-fulfilling work. 

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. 

Creating a Healthy Prophetic Environment

A prophetic ministry requires two elements if it is to remain healthy and endure over time. It requires revelation and an environment. Some good people put out word after word without considering the environment where a prophecy has the best chance to live and thrive and express the character of God's Kingdom. If you are beginning your prophetic journey or you have been doing it for a long time, make sure that you nurture the environment where your words take root as much as you desire to speak the word of the Lord.  Future generations will thank God for both the content of your words and the healthy environment you left behind.  

Surviving a Spiritual Free-for-all

I was talking to someone recently and shared with them whenever God begins to move, there will always be a mixture of opposing spiritual forces. This is what took place in Acts 16 between Paul and a fortune teller. Paul confronted the demon speaking through the woman, and she was set free. As a result of their actions and the cultural turmoil created by their obedience, Paul and Silas were arrested, beaten, and thrown into prison. 

God is all-powerful, but that does not mean when He first steps onto the stage of a circumstance, all the dark performers will automatically depart. They must be confronted, or they will continue to speak just like the fortune teller did in Paul's day. When God begins to bring wholeness to an individual, a family, or a nation, His presence will expose and dislodge embedded deceptions. It can look like a spiritual free-for-all until a matter is settled by a demonstration of God's power. 

If you find yourself in the middle of a spiritual free-for-all, find out where the Spirit is moving and follow Him. He will be faithful to show you the way forward through the debris field. 

Heaven's Concierge

We are the keeper of the keys of heaven. The phrase “the keeper of the keys” has been used to describe someone who maintains, watches over and defends the interest of their employer. A modern-day hotel concierge - the keeper of the keys -  can trace the roots of their role back to France in the Middle Ages where the word was originally used. A concierge was given authority to lock and unlock the castle of the person they served.  

In Matthew 16: 13-20, an interesting dialogue takes place between Jesus and His disciples. Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples gave a variety of responses revealing how the religious culture of the day viewed Jesus. Then the Lord pressed the disciples personally and asked, “But who do you say that I am?" In typical Peter fashion, he answered for the group, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said to him 'Blessed are you, Simon Barjona because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.'"

Jesus then told the disciples upon that revelation, He would build His church, and the gates of hell would not be able to stand against the advance of God’s Kingdom. To empower us to accomplish this task, Jesus went on to say “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”

The revelation of Jesus Christ, who is seated above all things in a place of ultimate authority, is the Kingdom key that can unlock all gates of deception. The keys of our authority are cut to the profile of Jesus Christ. Only the revelation of Jesus has the power and authority to unlock doors of opportunity or opposition. We are not the source of that authority. We are the concierge of Jesus' authority. We open and close doors as directed by the Spirit.

Today, if you are called by God to advance, and you are confronted by a gate of hell, insert the revelation of Jesus Christ into the lock and turn the key by faith.  The tumblers of deception that formed the mechanism of hell's lock will give way to the authority of the Lord. This is the duty of someone who is employed as heaven's concierge on earth. 

Premature Labels

I once knew a young man who was trying to find his voice in the faith community. He was sharp and possessed great potential. I believe he had and still does have a calling on his life. Then he made a turn. He turned toward judgment, the premature kind that immaturity is drawn toward. The young man discovered an affinity with those who create labels of judgment and feel it’s their mission to label people and churches with whom they disagree. It was sad to see. He did find his voice, but the sound he was making did not represent the heart of God.

It is too easy to prematurely define people and their motives before we fully understand their reasoning or life-experience. We use our current understanding of truth and reality to craft our premature labels. We have seen this take place in the history of science, medicine, and health habits. The Earth was once considered to be flat. Germs were an unseen and unknown threat, and the benefits of healthy eating and exercise were not yet understood. Those premature positions created labels crafted from premature judgments made before a fuller understanding was realized. 

The most dangerous labeling of all takes place in the area of faith. Be careful with labels. Only God knows how to properly label an individual or group who live outside the context of our current experience or level of comfort.  God’s labels always have a redemptive element. Most of the time, ours do not. When we become a self-appointed label maker, we step into the dangerous territory of accusation.  That is the devil’s favorite playground.

Led by the Impulse of God's Spirit

For the last few months, the Lord has been directing Jan and me by the impulses of His Spirit. While we have tried to live that way all of our lives, it has not been as purposeful as it has become of late. A shift in the spiritual realm is taking place. We believe living only in response to the impulse of the Spirit will position our lives to be of greater use to God and His Kingdom purpose.

Our understanding of the way God is prompting us to live was given greater clarity by the Passion Translation's interpretation of Romans 8:5, “But those who live by the impulses of the Holy Spirit are motivated to pursue spiritual realities.” The word “impulse” jumped out at us and captured in words what we have been experiencing.

Our world is filled with impulsive reactions and reasonings. Not all of these impulses are from God. To discern the source of an impulse, we have to step back into the protective enclosure of emotional and spiritual rest where God’s peace can surround us and become a buffer to the constant onslaught of negative impulsive reactions. Even well-meaning believers can fall prey to these impulses, wanting us to join with them in a slavish response to every impulsive newscast, advertisement or invitation we receive.

When I read about the life of Paul and the other early disciples, I do not see a frenetic form of faith running in all directions responding to each impulse offered by a nervous culture or dysfunctional people. They lived waiting for the impulse of God’s Spirit to direct their steps. They refused to live under the influence of the unsettled emotions and the undisciplined responses of other people.

Choosing to live in response to the impulse of God’s Spirit will bring a peace that is hard to explain to those who continue to live each waking moment in slavish obedience to the constant tug of impulsive people and unsettled cultural institutions.  Today, choose to enter a place of restful waiting and only allow the impulse of God’s Spirit to draw you out and to offer your response.

God is Increasing Your Spiritual Range of Motion

You feel like you are being stretched to the breaking point. That is not what’s taking place, nor is it the purpose of what you are experiencing. 

God is not causing your pain. That is your response to the rigidity and inflexibility He wants to remove. He is using what is taking place to loosen you up in preparation for a future that will require you to move in new directions. This current season of stretching is designed to increase your spiritual range of motion. 

This new range of motion will allow you to view life with fresh insight enabling you to see from Heaven's perspective. These stretching moments will be repeated again and again in your future as you grow and mature. In the future, they will not appear as daunting as what is taking place at this moment. Your fear will give way to expectation. 

When future challenges arrive, you will be able to reach farther and adapt more easily to the twists and turns they present without breaking and succumbing to fear when they begin to exert their initial pressure and resistance. God is making you ready to fully engage what He has planned for you to encounter in the future. Let Him have His way and you will arrive ready to engage the goodness He has prepared.

Choosing to Recognize Dark Realities

Using words like witchcraft, demon possession, and spiritual warfare will cause some people to roll their intellectual eyes like they are talking to a mentally deficient hayseed. I’m glad the first followers of Jesus didn’t feel this way or leave those encounters out of the biblical text. They are real, no matter how they make us feel or how we choose to dismiss their reality. Perhaps one of hell’s most effective tactics is to have us dismiss these issues, maybe not in our theology placed somewhere on a distant bookshelf, but in how we choose to see and engage these battles in everyday life.

Just yesterday, I was reminded on a personal level about the reality of spiritual warfare. This morning I felt the freedom of God’s Spirit as a result of Spirit-directed prayer and communion with Jan last night. A subtle work of hell no longer has influence in an area of my thinking. I can feel the freedom. Yes, you can feel freedom.

If you are moving forward into relational or cultural strongholds held and protected by the enemy but destined to become part of God’s Kingdom, you will meet head-on the full force of hell. These are battles over spiritual territory, and they are not relinquished without a fight. For a person to have lived a life never contending over personal spiritual territory means some areas of that life are held in tolerable captivity, the kind of captivity a person learns to live with, in either ignorance or dismissal. 

In the pursuit of a hipster, need-to-be-cool-at-all-costs kind of faith, we can end up not entertaining the possibility of an encounter with dark strongholds because they are considered outside the realm of natural thinking. These unchallenged spiritual realities will continue to influence our lives and the world in significant ways until their right to stand in our way is challenged. Unchallenged, they will ride across generations of families and cultures on the back of a powerless expression of faith. It is too easy to dismiss these dark realities and just move on, thinking everything will eventually work out. That thinking itself is evidence that hell has been at work. As a result of faith without engagement, we can end up walking around the very encounters that would have resulted in our personal freedom and the freedom of our families, friends, and the institutions of culture.

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. 

Accusers and Accusations

An accusation, especially a public accusation, can be devastating. Imagine the sin you deplore above all others. Then imagine you wake up tomorrow morning and began reading through social media to find out, to your horror, you were being wrongly accused of that sin. You would then begin to read statements from people who chimed in to the comment section agreeing with your accuser saying the equivalent of “I had my suspicions!” No amount to public comment or explanation from you would ever be able to retrieve your previous reputation. 

Accusations are a tactic of hell. That is why Satan is called the accuser of the brethren. Be care to whose opinionated wagon of accusation you choose to hitch your honor. Accusers are a dime a dozen. Redeemers are few and far between. Redemption takes courage and will require the integrity of silence in the face of ongoing accusation until a process of restoration is complete. Anyone can publish a list of sins and bring accusation before the full story is known. Be careful. Be wise. Be slow to speak and even slower to believe the first draft of any accusation.

A Revival of Scripture

The only trusted way to know how to interpret this life is to bring our opinions to Scripture and let God’s truth evaluate the quality of our understanding. If we bring Scripture to our opinion and allow our opinion to override and reinterpret what truth is, we will open our lives up to error and deception. This is not new in Church history. It has taken place historically just before a revival or reformation when the truth about an aspect of our faith is rediscovered.

I am beginning to see more pastors and teachers returning to the simple preaching of God’s Word in public gatherings. This is not a robotic form of teaching without creativity or the ability to adapt the delivery of the message to a changing culture. This kind of teaching creates a stable platform upon which to build our lives. It also helps us disciple our emotions and opinions under the instruction of God’s Word.  

For several decades increasing numbers of people within the Church have allowed human opinion to supplant Scriptural truth, and the by-product has been everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. We are about to experience a revival of Scripture. That revival may be one of the most significant revivals in our lifetime.

A Trustworthy Chain of Events

There are only two things in this life we can stand upon and be secure. Those two things are the love of God and Scripture. Nothing else can provide us with the secure footing required to navigate through the challenging seasons of life. 

Scripture tells us that the perfect love of God casts out our fear. This casting out is not something we do alone as an exercise of our faith while God watches from a distance as we struggle in our pain. When a dark season arrives, we are invited to follow God’s lead in confronting our fear. 

We have a part to play in the expulsion of fear. We are called to partner with God in faith facing the things in our life that cause our concern, but it is His love that does the casting out. Our faith links us to His power and authority over fear. We can shout at the fear as loud as we want, but it is the power and authority of Jesus Christ that makes fear tremble and depart, not our zealous shout of faith. Once we are aware that God’s love is at work in our lives and hell’s lies are being dislodged, a peace comes that Scripture tells us is beyond our ability to comprehend.

If we are not aware of God’s love, and if we are not consuming His word as part of our regular spiritual diet, we will suffer the consequence of feeling adrift, alone and without stability when life throws a challenge our way. Our realization of the love of God brings us peace because we know He will never leave us or forsake us in the depths of our worst trials. Scripture gives us something stable to stand upon when life becomes shaky, and nothing is making sense. 

This is a chain of events. Once we know God loves us, and we allow His word to affirm that reality, a crazy, unexplainable peace begins to enter our mind. That peace has a traveling companion called hope. Hope arrives with a mission to carry us through our personal valleys that are shadowed by death and despair to deliver us to outcomes we never thought possible when the challenge first appeared. This all works together as a heavenly chain of events – our trust in God’s love and His Word, and the arrival of hope. 

Thought Police

Some mainstream social media platforms and search engines are demonstrating a level of control and censorship not imagined just a few years ago. Consideration of an opposing opinion is being denied and in some extreme cases defined as domestic terrorism. 

As frustrating as this can be, God is not muzzled. His prophets are taking note. Get ready to hear new levels of Spirit-inspired revelation that will reveal the wisdom of Heaven. This revelation will dismantle hell's attempt to control the culture.  Rome tried to censor the first believers in an attempt to maintain control. That attempt proved ineffective and futile. Truth expressed in love can never be silenced.

These forms of cultural censorship must be evaluated spiritually. If not, our frustration level will increase to such a degree that we could begin to mistakingly think God's agenda could be thwarted by human restraint. God is about to shout the sound of freedom upon the Earth. It will be a sound that no attempt at human censorship will be able to withstand. 

Making the Cut

The soul and the spirit need to remain separate in the formation of our worldview and theology. Only the Word of God can make the separating cut revealing the distinction between these two components of our life. Theologies and doctrines formed by human logic in the realm of the soul without examination by Scripture have entered the Church throughout history as subtle invaders resembling a Trojan horse. These errors can unpack “lies so clever they sound like the truth” (Ephesians 4:14).  

Contained in our soul are our emotions, will, and mind. It is that part of our being that gives us personhood, bringing animation and distinction to our lives. The spirit part of our life was created to house truth, and that truth is assigned to inform our soul how to respond to life, not the other way around. A mature believer is someone who has brought all the components of their soul in submission to their spirit. It is in our spirit where the Word establishes itself to begin the renewal process of our mind. Paul spoke about this in his letter to the church in Rome,  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”(Romans 12:2).

The writer of Hebrews tells us that Scripture plays an active and incisive role in this renewing process, “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God” (Hebrews 4:12-13). The narrow distance between soul and spirit can only be sliced by the edge of truth, not the wide and diverse opinions found in human logic. Without the Word actively at work in our lives cutting through the stuff of life, we will eventually succumb to the lesser influence of an undisciplined soul and the errors that will accompany that influence.

Be careful to not allow a blending of soul and spirit to create a hybrid faith. From that blending have come deceptions throughout Church history crafted to appeal to a mind that is not under the renewing discipleship of the Word and the guiding influence of the Spirit. 

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thessalonians 5:23).

Critics at the Doorway of Your Future

Your loudest critics have been positioned at the doorway of your future. Many have stalled at this noisy threshold not because they weren't gifted to function in the future. They stalled because they were unable to handle their critics with wisdom and grace. The presence of a critic is an indicator you are about to enter new territory. Press through these critical encounters with integrity and watch what God will accomplish.

Undone

This morning at Living Waters Church in Medford, Oregon, I was undone emotionally. The worship team took us to the heights of worship with the passion of their hearts and the excellence of their musical skill. As the worship team sang about Jesus taking His first breath after His resurrection, I could not contain my emotions. I actually heard Him taking that first breath. I was undone knowing that someday I will also draw the same breath after my own resurrection. "He is alive" is not a slogan. Jesus is real and tangible to all who seek Him.