Sacrifice of Praise

Hebrews 13:15
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. (NIV)

The Amplified ends with "which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name."

And the Message ends with "Let's take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus' name."

We are no longer under the Jewish law. We no longer offer a blood sacrifice to atone for our sins. Jesus did that for us once and for all.

The sacrifice we are to offer is to openly profess His name, thankfully acknowledging and confessing and glorifying Him by what we say in Jesus' name.

And yet often our time is spent openly with God in that quite place inside, in our own home. We think of praise as what we say in church on Sunday when the praise and worship team leads us through a series of songs in that direction.

Well, that is not enough. We are to take our place outside with Jesus. We are to go outside the four walls of our house and speak His name in what we do, how we act, how we react, and what we say.

We are to be Jesus to the world around us. We are to give Him all the glory and when we reach out and touch someone we do it in the name of Jesus.

This is the sacrifice of praise we are to openly make daily.

His Glory

I believe "Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" in the Lord's prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) is telling us that whatever His will in Heaven is, we want the same here on earth. And for that to happen we need to be in the Glory Cloud of His presence. We need to be under His anointing.

When that happens deliverance happens. Healing happens. Miracles happen. And all in the blink of an eye. No one has to do anything. God moves and people are set free.

Yes, I believe God answers prayer with or without the presence of the anointing. The difference is in the timing. When we are in His Glory, we are in timeless reality and what could take days or weeks or years to happen in the natural, if at all, happens in a moment of time.

More Glory = Less Time

Now you ask, can someone be in an atmosphere of healing and not be healed? Yes, they can. Where we are physically is not necessarily where we choose our mind and spirit to be. We have the right to ignore the presence of God and as such will not be touched by what is freely available.

Isaiah 60:1-2
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. (NIV)

Praise and Worship can tap into the Glory Realm. It can bring down a strong anointing of God in the congregation of Spirit filled believers. Holy Spirit's presence permeates the atmosphere and people are touched. The anointing is an accelerator. It speeds up the process. The enemy has to flee in His presence.

Psalm 91:1
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. (NIV)

We need to dwell in His presence, in the secret place. But, how do we get there? Praise and worship can play a great part in opening Heaven so the anointing is present.

Our music should being with praise--fast tempo songs that make us dance, jump, and shout to the Lord. It should continue until worship comes, not until the program or order of service says it does. Not two fast and one slow song. No, we stay in an atmosphere of praise until worship comes. And the our songs should be intimate, slow songs of love to God.

As we soak in His presence we will begin to feel the thick, heavy presence of the Lord. After the Glory comes down, the anointing, we need to wait. We need to wait for God to move. If we move out on our own we will be ahead of God and miss what He has for us. We need to minister out of God's Glory and not out of our own gift. When Holy Spirit moves, then we move with Him.

On Suffering

John 10:9-10
Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (NLT)

Jesus did not come for us to suffer. He came for us to have abundant life, a rich and satisfying life. But that does not line up with satan's plan. No, he comes to steal and destroy.

Yet how often we hear about how we have to suffer for God. And so not true. It is one of the myths that keeps a child of God from receiving a healing touch. They honestly believe the lie of the enemy that tells they they are suffering for the glory of God.

John 9:3
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Some think this man was born blind for the express purpose of having Jesus lay hands on him and give him sight. Yet the works of God were not displayed until Jesus healed him. Our sickness does not glorify God; our healing does.

It is life before Christ that was filled with suffering. We were lost and blindly following the lead of satan. Sickness and despair were a normal part of our lives. We lived from paycheck to paycheck and from doctor to doctor. It was not an abundant life. It was living for the sake of living.

When we found Jesus, we found the only way out of the grip of satan. We found the truth that had been hidden from us, masked by a cunning enemy. All we have to do is put our trust in Him for our daily lives and Holy Spirit will keep us on the right path. And that is the only path that leads to an abundant life here on earth and a path that leads to an eternity in Heaven with Jesus.

Matthew 16:23 
Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." (NIV)

When suffering tries to come upon us we need to do what Jesus did and command satan to get behind us. He has no authority in our lives and he has not power except for the power we give him. With Holy Spirit in us, we have complete power and authority over satan. It is time we used that power in our daily lives.

Using Spiritual Gifts

1 Corinthians 12:7
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. (NLT)

It is so hard to separate spiritual gifts from our worldly thinking about the talents we were born with. Natural talent is not a spiritual gift. Spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the church, the body of Christ.

We each have things we excel in and things we are not very good at. I am not an artsy person. You can put me in a room of paintings and I will not appreciate them like my wife, Dianne does. She sees the beauty in each and I just see pictures. Put her in a room of computers and she sees a bunch of stuff while I see the differences between them and sometimes understand what they are being used for.

My point is this. I do not have a natural talent to paint pictures. She does and if she practiced she might even be able to sell her work. On the other hand, although she has quite a bit of experiential knowledge of computers, when someone has a problem they do not call Dianne, they call me. Before retirement, I was able to make my living in the computer field because of my natural talent.

1 Corinthians 12:7-11
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice[b]; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. (NLT)

We all have been given spiritual gifts so we may serve others in the body of Christ. Perhaps it is the gift of healing, or the power to perform miracles, or perhaps the ability to prophesy. But how often are these gifts used as a means of income production? The Holy Spirit did not give a gift so we could make money off of it.

And it is not us who determine which gift to have. It is the one and only Spirit. And that gift may be given for all time, for a season, or even for a particular instance where it it needed. When we are laying hands on the sick we may get a word of knowledge about the person we are praying for. We do not move in words of knowledge all the time. But God knows when that person needs a boost of believe to be able to fully receive the healing to come. When they hear that word, they know without a doubt that only God could have known and therefore that God is present.

When the healing anointing is present during one of our meetings, many lay hands on the sick and see miracles occur. It is the anointing that heals, not us or the person praying. It is Jesus. When they leave the meeting, that anointing may linger for a little while, but next week they may not be seeing the same results. Holy Spirit gives the gift in His time for His purpose, not for our benefit.

When books and CDs and speaking engagements revolve around income production, we are off track and using the gifts for personal gain and not to serve the body. Don't get me wrong, the body is served whenever Holy Spirit is present. It is us that are misdirected and as the result of our actions we may cause others to take the same path.

2 Thessalonians 3:10
Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: "Those unwilling to work will not get to eat." (NLT)

Think about Paul. He lived off his tent making business and used his spiritual gifts to benefit the body of Christ. Shouldn't we to do the same?

He Heals All our Diseases

Psalm 103:3
He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. (NLT)

It is important to realize God has NO limitations in what He can do. He does not need mankind to perform miraculous events in our lives and in the lives of others. As born again believers endued with the Holy Spirit we have the authority and power to see the same miraculous events occur through our hands as Jesus did when He walked the earth as one of us, as a man.

There is no reference in my Bible to aches and pains coming at a certain time in life. Yes as we grow older we are mature in life and hope to be mature in our faith as well. Yes old people die of old age now just as they did when Jesus was with us as a man. However, we are to be just as physically healthy then as when we were younger. The body wears out and God calls us home.

Do we get sick? Do we have physical issues that need to be dealt with? Yes we do, but how we deal has a lot to do with who we are in Christ. Do we accept the word of man over the word of God. Do we allow words of death spoken by man to affect how we live? We certainly can and most do. This is exactly what the enemy is working toward. Satan wants us a slave to medicine. a slave to man, a slave to him.

When someone does place their trust in a doctor God does not desert us. He is still present in our lives. Holy Spirit is still in us. But our Faith is not with them. It is with man. When someone puts their faith in man, we still pray for them and pray that the people healing them are doing the best they can and that God intervenes.

If God depended on man to heal, then why does God replace metal in someones body inserted by man with original parts? Why does God replace organs repaired by man? We have seen this happen time and time again.

God is the healer. But He uses you and I, our prayers and our hands to do the healing yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Thoughts on The Church

Woke up this morning thinking about the church today and how far off we have gone in our thinking and actions. God established a temple for His people to worship Him. In order for that temple to exist there had to be men to oversee it. They came out of the synagogues of that time and were led by Rabbi's. This was the "church" before Jesus came onto the scene and the "church" Jesus was brought up in. In order for this organization to do what God had ordained it to do, the people were instructed to tithe a tenth of what they had to support the established "church" of that time.

Along comes Jesus and His "church" is out in the marketplace and the countryside. It was anywhere He went. The crowds followed Him. They sought Him out wherever He happened to be. Yes, He did preach in the synagogues also. This was where the Jews were and those were the people He was sent to call unto Him. But, most of the stories we read about in the Bible are when He was between destinations, on the journey from one place to another. We are never told of Jesus taking an offering from the people. Although that must have occurred as Judas was the keeper of the coins and those funds must have come from somewhere.

Spring forward a few years and we have Saul, a member of the established "church" hunting down Christians. Then Jesus came to Saul in his travels and struck him off his horse. Saul's experience was so profound that he did a 180 and began to preach the Gospel to the gentiles. He never sat under the teachings of any of Jesus' original followers. No, Saul (now Paul) was given the same Holy Spirit who taught Paul all things.
 
Paul went on his journey to spread the Good News. Along the way he established "churches" made up of groups of new believers meeting in homes. There was no hierarchy; no persons placed between the church body and Father God. There were no offerings taken to support the "church". Instead they were told to share all they had with each other. There were no handouts, no food stamp programs or disability benefits. They helped each other in their needs as they got back on their feet. And they believed the Scripture that says if a man does not work he does not eat. Even Paul worked making tents.
 
This new "church", the body of believers in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, did take up offerings to help support other bodies of believers in other areas of the world. You might say this was the first example of supporting missions.
 
Then in about 300 AD things changed. Man, led by former Jews who had become Christians, formed a formal established church. No longer a body of believers as Jesus and Paul had established, but a brick and mortar one. One that had to be supported because it needed people to run it and it needed funds to maintain it. A blending of the old (synagogue) and the new belief in Jesus.

Instead of passing down the message by word of mouth, which had been working and bringing many into the Kingdom of God, a new order was established. A formal set of manuscripts was created out of the many letters that were being passed around. These were added to the already known Jewish writings and made into the Old and New Testaments we know today. Because of the lack of duplication methods, only the leaders of the new established church had them so they became the teachers. And Christianity was launched into a new era.
 
While the people were the "church" and sharing this Jesus to the world as commissioned by Him years before, signs and wonders was prevalent with all believers as the Holy Spirit moved both inside and outside of the "church". God's miraculous touch brought people into the Kingdom and took care of those already in the Kingdom.

When man took over, the signs and wonders seemed to have disappeared. But God's order was removed and replace with the new order of the new church. Holy Spirit was replaced by the priests. They took over the teaching of the gospel message to the people. They introduced fear of God to make converts to Christianity instead of signs and wonders. God did not take away signs and wonders. Man moved away from them. They had lost belief in the measure of authority and power given to each believer.
 
The new church is here today. It is not part of the established church which over centuries of revelation and revolution has splintered into numerous different sets of beliefs. It meets in homes and in the marketplace. It seeks to unite established churches into the one true church, the body of Christ. Signs and wonders abound in this new, Holy Spirit inspired work.
 
It is time to stop playing church and start being the church Jesus came to have. A church with the full authority and power inherited from Him. A church without walls that takes care of its own members. A church that reaches out to a lost world with the gospel message and with signs and wonders.
 
What about you? Are you ready to choose a church like the one described in Acts? Are you ready to take a chance and see the kind of change living in the Kingdom of God can make in your neighborhood?
 
I am not suggesting everybody run out of the established church. I am saying look around and become the church Jesus called us to be. Be the community of believers that reaches inward to each other in need and outward to the community. Be the church that unites with other established churches to do the work of the ministry in your area. One church. One body of Christ. One message for all.

Praying in the Spirit

Galatians 3:2,5
Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ. (NIV)

The Holy Spirit is not a benefit we get for coming to church. It is not a reward. Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead. He is one of the three; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:38
Peter replied, "Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (NIV)

We receive Holy Spirit into our lives as a result of our decision to turn to God, our repentance of those sins we are aware of and an agreement to repent of those we do not as they are revealed to us, and our baptism in the name of Jesus Christ.

Mark 16:16-18
Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned. These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe: They will cast out demons in my name, and they will speak in new languages. They will be able to handle snakes with safety, and if they drink anything poisonous, it won't hurt them. They will be able to place their hands on the sick, and they will be healed.

What is the evidence of that baptism and infilling of the Holy Spirit in our lives? The evidence of our being saved?

Jesus says it clearly in Mark when He says that those who are saved will do miraculous signs. And He speaks to four signs that follow the spirit filled believer.

1. They will cast out demons in the name of Jesus
2. They will speak in new languages [other tongues]
3. They will be immune to deadly poisons
4. They will lay hands on the sick and they will be healed

1 Corinthians 14:14-19
For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. (NIV)

When speaking about praying, Paul tells us he prays in tongues (his prayer language) as well as praying with his mind (in his vocal language or known words). And he speaks about singing in tongues and singing with known words.

Jude 20-21
But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. (NIV)

Jude, the half brother of Jesus, explains that we build ourselves up in faith when we pray in the spirit, in our prayer language. The more we build ourselves up in this manner, the more power we receive from above.

Ephesians 6:18 8
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. (NIV)

Once again Paul is speaking about praying in the Spirit. When we place those we are praying for and those requests we have into our mind and then pray in our prayer language, we believe our spirit reaches up to God's Spirit and lays those needs at His feet.

So, is having a prayer language evidence of being Spirit filled? Yes, it is. But it is not the only evidence. We are filled when we are saved. We are saved when we believe. We are baptised when we confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.

Evidence of being saved is the fruit of the Spirit visible in our lives. It is the change that only God can make in the person we used to be. It is Christ shining forth to the world around us. It is casting out demons in the name of Jesus. It is laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover. It is being Jesus in the marketplace by showing His love everywhere we go.