“A Supernatural Staging Ground” by Garris Elkins

When Jan and I lived in Berlin, Germany our ministry assignment during that time was to strengthen and encourage churches and leaders in Europe. As we traveled each week we were constantly crossing national borders.  More importantly, we were also crossing ancient spiritual frontiers not defined by modern maps.  The personal attack from the guardians of these spiritual frontiers was intense, bringing us face-to-face with spiritual strongholds embedded deep within the European continent.

One night I was awakened at 3:00 a.m. I got up and walked into the entryway of our apartment. Standing in the entry way was a group of angels. I had never seen an angel prior to that night.

The color of the angels was stunning.  They resembled neon signs that emitted all the colors of the rainbow. As I stood looking at them, it was like I was seeing light passing through a glass prism.  The colors were not reflective, but came from some deep place. I felt that if I tried to touch them my hand would continue to reach through them without making contact with the source of the color. What was unique about this situation was only one of the angels paid any attention to me.  The other angels were busy with some kind of preparation. This all seemed strangely familiar to me. Then, I realized what this was – it was a tactical staging area. 

As some of you know, prior to my last 30-plus years of serving within the Church, I was a police officer.  As a young police officer I was assigned to what was then a new and developing concept within police work, a specialized police unit called SWAT. SWAT stands for “Special Weapons And Tactics.”

As a SWAT officer, I would train every day to get my body in the best physical condition possible.  I became familiar with a variety of weapons and martial arts. Each month our team would train in daylong intensives led by FBI instructors who had just returned from combat duty in the jungles of Southeast Asia.  These ex-Green Berets and Navy Seals drilled us in the procedures that would keep us alive and give us a tactical advantage in dangerous high-stress assignments. 

Whenever my phone would ring with a SWAT “call up”, I would grab my duffel bag of equipment and my weapon and meet our unit commander and the rest of my team at a predetermined location called a “staging area.”  A staging area is a command post where communication systems are set up to handle a developing situation and where SWAT team members could gear up and receive their briefing.  From the staging area we would then be deployed to engage the threat.  The intelligence gathered from our scouts and the readiness of the team all flowed from what we did as preparation in the staging area. To this day, I still view the operation of the Church from a similar tactical perspective.

That angelic encounter changed forever how I see spiritual conflict.  I have come to realize that before God moves visibly in our world He “stages” His forces for battle. This staging first takes place beyond the veil of our natural sight in the spiritual realm. Too many times we become consumed with the emotion and struggle we experience on this side of the veil and miss the reality that is developing on the other side.

We are in a staging season.  God is assembling His angelic forces over our homes, our cities and our nations. He is releasing new levels of faith to be acted upon at His command. We must be careful not to base the strategy and tactics of our engagement only on what is seen through our natural eyes.  We must be like the servant of Elisha when the King of Aram was sending a mighty army to fight against Israel. Elisha asked that his servant’s eyes be opened to see the army God was staging against the King of Aram behind the veil of natural sight.

“When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. “Oh, sir, what will we do now?” the young man cried to Elisha. 16 “Don’t be afraid!” Elisha told him. “For there are more on our side than on theirs!” 17 Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!” The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire”. II Kings 6: 15-17

To this day, when I meet with someone in tune with the working of God’s Spirit, I notice the point when our conversation begins to make a shift. That shift happens when we move from just casual conversation towards something that sounds more like a spiritual SWAT briefing taking place in a tactical staging area.  When I talk with people who have seen beyond the veil our conversation becomes visionary and strategic.

Recently, Jan and I met with Ivan and Erica Roman who are planting a church in the area where we live in Southern Oregon.  After saying our hellos, we moved into a visionary and strategic kind of discussion.  I have had these kinds of conversations many times with leaders in various cities and nations.  As Ivan and Erica build their team to plant a church they will be inviting others to see behind the veil with them into what God is preparing to do through their ministry. This is called vision.  A heavenly vision precedes an earthly strategy.

The vision we attach to our lives and ministries must have its birthing place from behind the veil. Our calling as the Church is to import the reality of what God is preparing in the Spirit behind the veil and then make it known in this world.  Heaven becoming a reality on earth is the strategy of God that redeems the cultures of this world to become the Kingdom of our Lord.

We are in a time of Kingdom history when God will be making His plans known in vivid forms of revelation. Some will see angels making battle preparations. Others will receive strategic downloads from heaven that will contradict the highest forms of human logic and reasoning.  Prophetic artisans will have released upon them a new level of creativity to usher in a deeper reformation within the arts, cinema and music.

The Chariots of Fire, along with all of God’s supernatural resources, have been staged and are now standing ready to be released upon the earth in greater measure. At God’s command, and in response to our faith, a supernatural wave of God’s presence is about to be released. His presence will fall in unexpected places not yet imagined.

We are being invited to exchange an earthly vision for a heavenly one and begin stepping forward in confident faith towards what is not yet visible to natural sight.  God has been staging His resources for this time in human history.  As we step forward in faith we will never take that step of faith alone.   God made a promise that He plans to keep, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

“The 50 Year Letter” by Garris Elkins

About 20 years ago I changed how I counsel couples who come to me wanting to get married.  I used to struggle with why I didn’t like the more academic approach of having couples read books and take tests to direct their new relationship. There is really nothing wrong with this approach – it just didn’t fit with me.

The change that came 20 years ago arrived as a word from the Lord to me, “Have them write a letter of what they want this relationship to become in 50 years and I will give them the desires of their hearts.”

Right after that word came, I had a couple come in for marriage counseling and I shared with them how the Lord had changed my approach to our time together.  At the end of our first meeting, I asked the couple to craft a single page letter to share with me what they desired to take place in their marriage in the coming 50 years.  For our next meeting I asked them to bring their completed 50 Year Letter. 

At our next meeting, I asked for my copy of their letter and quietly read it to myself as the couple watched.  Like all couples in love, they were holding hands and making eyes at each other. After reading the letter I thanked them and asked them to schedule three more appointments with me.

When this young couple left my office, I reread the letter and highlighted the areas they wrote about – love, communication, family, finances, dreams, ministry and so on.  For the next few months as we met together, I unpacked each of their desires and added personal and biblical insight.  They eventually got married and began to live out what was written in their 50 Year Letter.

The assignment I gave to this couple, and to many more like them over the years, was to keep this letter in a safe place and bring it out each anniversary and read it aloud together.  When they finish reading it each year, I asked them to then ask each other where they were in comparison to the desires expressed in their 50 Year Letter. My hope was that each year the letter would become a yearly marriage tune up or, if needed, it could become a call for a major overhaul. 

God enjoys giving us the desires of our hearts.  There is a condition in His giving us our desires – we must first delight ourselves in Him.  Delighting in the Lord means that His values become our values and what makes Him happy makes us happy.  

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  Our delighting in God precedes His giving us the desires of our heart.

Now, when I meet a young couple to counsel them for the first time, before I give them their writing assignment, I share how God feels about marriage and how much He wants their marriage to succeed.  It is from the desire of God’s heart towards them that a delight in Him emerges.  A God-directed passion and a delighting in God together is where growth as a couple takes place. This is why I believe God changed how I counsel couples wanting to get married.

In my office file cabinet is a section filled with 50 Year Letters written by many couples over the last 20 years.  From time-to-time I take out some of the letters and pray for the couples. I pray that the passion they had for each other in the beginning, and the delight they shared together in the Lord, would be burning stronger than ever with each passing anniversary as they read their 50 Year Letter.

"Exchanging the Now for the New" by Garris Elkins

As I drove to my office this morning I turned on the CD player and a worship song began to declare these words, “Take me where I’ve never been.  Take me where I’m scared to go.”  Those words began to touch me and I found myself pressing the replay button letting the words sink deeper into my heart.

The “never been” places in our lives are those new places where we might be afraid to go because they are unfamiliar, untested and unknown. The fear that can surround our future is the very place into which God invites us to step as we learn to trust Him at new and deeper levels.

Today, I am sharing with our pastoral staff the long-term ministry-transition plan the Lord has revealed for Jan and I.  The plan was actually given to us before we arrived in Medford, Oregon in 1999.  We have been walking out that plan for the last 13 years. Making the plan visible and verbal today is causing a whole host of emotions to rise up within me. 

Our transition will take a few years to fully accomplish, but will take a visible step forward today. This is the beginning of the closure of three decades of doing ministry in this known and familiar pastoral assignment.  With every closure there is always an opening if we are willing to look by faith into our future.  Moving into the new requires that we let go of the now. We need faith to do this. If we are willing to let go we will have the empty hands required to receive the new season God has been preparing for us. 

Today, as we reach out in faith and begin walking towards our new future, Jan and I will be taking hold of something that will feel as new as it did to us 30 years ago when we took hold of our first ministry assignment. With God, each season is new.

"God's Opinion About Us" by Garris Elkins

This week, I am preparing to teach out of Mark 3 where two groups of people have expressed personal opinions about Jesus.  His family thought He had lost His mind and they wanted to "rescue" Him from His ministry.  The teachers of religious law declared that Jesus was possessed by the devil.  If people had opinions about Jesus they will also have opinions about us.

We all live with the labels people have pasted upon our lives.  What we do with those labels will determine how we live our lives.  We can live in bondage to what others think about us or begin to peel off those manmade labels, formed from a limited human perspective, and invite God to re-label us with His opinion.  

As I prepared this week's message, I felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit to craft a paragraph that I feel was dictated from the very heart of God stating His opinion about us.  Take a moment and read these words out loud over your life - especially those places where you have labored under the opinions other people may have about you that do not reflect God's heart for you. 

“You are special to Me. I have chosen to not see you in your brokenness, though I know it is there.  I see you as My Masterpiece, framed within the life of My Son, Jesus Christ. You are a completed work in My eyes, the finished product of My love. You are beautiful to Me.  My opinion about you has been crafted from of the storehouse of My love. I did not go outside My love to find the words to form My opinion about you. When others fail to see you as I do, turn to Me and let My words of affirmation wash away those hurtful labels and opinions that have been placed upon your life.  My opinion is all that matters. My opinion about you is My will for you.”  

"A Choice with in a Choice

"A Choice within a Choice"  is a short video excerpt from a message I shared during the Sunday morning service at New Hope in Salem, Oregon.  It is about making personal decisions within the larger decisions God has already made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT2py3NVzgk&feature=plcp

“Label-Makers” by Garris Elkins

Most of us walk around with labels attached to our lives.  Some of these labels were attached to us by our parents others were attached in seasons of personal failure or by unresolved fears that currently inhabit our lives.  We will live out the false identity of these labels unless they are removed and new ones are attached.

When I was a little boy I can still remember some of the labels that were put on me by the kids at school. Some of these labels were hurtful.  Most had to do with my appearance or my inability to perform in some athletic event.  These labels have an ability to cling to our lives well into adulthood unless we let God remove them and replace them with a label that reveals how He sees us.

One day Jesus called a man named Levi to get up from his tax collector’s booth and follow Him.  The story is revealed in Mark 2: 13-17.

13 “Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. 15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum? 17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

Jesus liked to hang out with what some people called “scum.” His love was radical.  He purposefully positioned His life to be near those whom the culture might reject.

According to Jesus, spiritually “sick” people, like the Pharisees, didn’t see their illness.  People like the tax collectors and disreputable sinners saw their need and were drawn to the Great Physician for healing.

The sickness of the Pharisees was thinking they had it all together. They felt they had arrived and had nothing more to learn. They perceived their mission in life was to label people so they could distance themselves from the “scum” and live out their warped sense of self-righteousness.

Those who gathered at Levi’s home realized Jesus had something to offer beyond the imprisoning labels placed on them by the Pharisees. They would soon be re-labeled by Jesus.

When Jesus told Levi to follow Him, Jesus was inviting Levi into an undiscovered destiny. Following Jesus would move Levi away from old labels towards something new that he would discover by simply being with Jesus.

In some ways, I think our understanding of discipleship today is too process-oriented.  Our current models of discipleship are many times more about gaining knowledge and accumulating ministry skills at the expense of having an encounter with Jesus. 

The discipleship process of Jesus gave people permission to peel off old labels of sin and dishonor and then paste on God’s label of a new identity.  God’s label reveals newness and invites us to something we never thought possible while living under the influence of an unrighteous label.

When Jesus asked Levi to follow Him He was asking Levi to come and watch.  Watch how Jesus dealt with the identity of the woman at the well.  Watch how Jesus talked to Zaccheus.  Watch how Jesus dialogued with legalists. Watch how the woman caught in adultery would be told, “Go your way (into a new destiny) and sin no more.”  Watching Jesus offered the disciples another way to live.

As we follow Jesus, we will come across places in our lives that need re-labeling.  We can continue to live under the “scum” label or choose to peel it off, even in the middle of circumstances where we have yielded to our personal brokenness. Once the old label is peeled off through confession and repentance, we can then attach the new God-label to our lives and begin living forward into the personal destiny God has planned.

I am going to preach this text on Sunday.  This morning, I called Mary, our Office Coordinator, and asked if the church had a label-maker.  She said we did and I asked her to set it aside for me. On Sunday, I want to walk through our sanctuary and re-label people.  I’m going to create some new labels like, “Beloved”, “Hopeful” and “Joyful”, and hand them out to people as a sermon illustration.

I am also hoping that some of you reading this today will reevaluate the labels you are living under and make sure they are from God.  If a label is not from God, peel it off and throw it away and ask the Holy Spirit to give you a new one.  

“Installing the Signs of God” by Garris Elkins

In the center of the valley where I live is a midsize city – Medford, Oregon.  We have a large shopping mall anchored by several national chain stores.  Sprinkled across the valley are other malls where you can get most anything you would desire. The Rogue Valley is a wonderful place to live.

A few years ago a Facebook page was created asking Trader Joe’s to come and establish a store in the Medford area.  I was one of thousands who “liked” that Facebook page.  Trader Joe’s has filled our pantry for many years with unusual and delicious foods.  In the past we would have to go to Redding, California or to Eugene, Oregon to make our Trader Joe’s purchases – both of these cities are a long drive from Medford. About a year ago we began to hear early rumors that our request for a Trader Joe’s would become a reality.  Foodies all across Southern Oregon felt a rush of culinary bliss.

A few months ago construction began on a new mall in the heart of our city that would house the new Trader Joe’s.  Along with the Trader Joes would be a Fives Guys Burgers and an REI store.  REI is an upscale sporting and outdoor store that is known for quality goods.

For the last few months, I have passed the construction site each morning on my way to our church.  This morning as I drove by the job site, I saw something interesting.  A large flatbed truck was carrying a sign with the words on it “REI.”  The sign was huge, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet.  The sign was being carried to the job site for installation announcing that REI was present in Medford, Oregon.  Behind the truck carrying the sign was a procession of contractor vehicles that would obviously be needed to help erect such a large sign.

As the truck carrying the sign crossed in front of me, I heard the words of Mark 16:17, “These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe.” All the trucks following the lead truck carrying the sign were accompanying it to its new home.  This reminded me so much of Church history when God would send some supernatural sign into a region to establish His presence and then a great move of God would follow.

I grew up reading older translations of the Bible that used the word “follow” instead of “accompany” to describe Mark 16:17. Today, I went back to some of my language study aids and found that the word “follow” or “accompany” both work linguistically, but there is a more distinct definition for these words.

The miraculous signs that  “follow” or “accompany” those who believe actually means, “to always be present, to attend one wherever he goes” (Thayer). In other words when God’s Spirit begins to move our belief positions us to be present with whatever God is doing in that particular location.  Our belief also puts us in a place to attend to the requests of the Lord wherever He goes. Our belief makes a way for us to be part of what God is doing.

There is a divine balance between belief and following.  While we initiate acts of faith that can release something supernatural into our world, these acts of faith are only in response to something the Father is already doing.  Jesus did what He saw the Father doing.  He spoke the words that His Father spoke.  Jesus walked out the revelation He received from the Father, and as a result, supernatural events took place because heaven became a reality on earth.

The life Jesus lived provides for us a model of how to live our lives in response to God. Our ability to “see” what God is doing allows us to capture those points of revelation and import them back into our lives and communities. These responsive acts of faith, bringing heaven’s revelation to earth, are where the miracles, signs and wonders happen.

This morning I had the urge to pull my car in behind the procession of contractors who would be erecting the REI sign and then accompany them to the job site.  The urge I experienced in the natural is what I want to take place in my spirit when I see God moving into some new area of my life or community.

In the natural, I would have been late to work had I followed the procession of trucks carrying the sign.  Speaking in a spiritual sense, we will never be late for anything eternally important if we choose to change our life-plans and accompany the signs of the One Who makes them happen.  The signs were, after all, what He did to get the attention of His culture and He has plans to do the same in our world today.