Blog update

I basically moved my writing space to a Wordpress site located here:

http://markrandallpixley.wordpress.com/


This site serves as a repository of my journey much still relevant some of my own favorite post are here like the one about my brother (Majesty form the Dust)or my dream list, but my most recent thought process is at the other site...thanks for visiting.

-Mark

Looking at the past from the lens of the future...

I recently almost "finished" a piece of gear that I have been building for my recording studio for the last 3 years...I say almost because of user error I decided NOT to trust the build documents and I wired it up backwards...a little poof of smoke and I began a painstaking journey to track down a very obsolete transistor among nearly 200 very small, tightly connected parts...oy vey!

When you are trouble-shooting electronic devices you always start at the output of the device and work your way back...its a tried and true method to trace out where the problem is...and you should always trust the build documents...lesson learned...read, believe, and pay attention!

With this lesson in mind I want to suggest some adjustments for how we approach the God of the Old Testament with reference to our future and in particular judgment since that specific element has tremendous capacity to color our perspective of Him.

When believers talk of the future the dialogue almost always carries a hefty amount of ambient noise coming from our understanding of how, who and why God judges...almost everyone is reminded of Noah and flood, and perhaps Sodom and Gomorrah and those history lessons inject a certain amount of uncertainty into our confidence of a loving devoted Father character so we like to distinguish the "new" Father from the "old" angry God...

Never mind verses like Psalms 7:11 where it says God is angry everyday at the wicked...if we are honest, we must find ourselves asking can He be trusted to NOT wipe us out like an ant colony under the magnifying glass of an 8 year old?

Let me offer how I am navigating this...and please bear with me because I have to take a different path for just a moment, and that path relates entirely with how I connect to God in the first place.

To give you a point of reference I am currently reading "From text to Tradition" (Schiffman)/"Back to Sources" (Holtz)/"Healing unplugged" (Johnson&Clark)/"The Book of Enoch" (Noah)/"St. Patricks Confessions" (St. Patrick)...if you can see the dualistic extremes here, consider yourself perceptive...

For those who do not notice the significance of the titles let me bring it into focus...I am currently (and normally do this) cycling through books that are both incredibly academic rooted in known history by scholarly experts and also reading material that quite frankly comes from a very mystical point of reference.

One side of my input is rooted in academia and is quite objective, the other is rooted in "perceptions/visions/charismata/" and is incredibly subjective...this is how I function, I am both a mystic and pragmatic, I believe in prophetic acts like pouring out wine on the land to heal it, AND practical acts like pouring a glass of wine for my friends and neighbors...its not confession vs. community its confession with community...wine on and wine in...

The problem with the piece of gear I was building was I hooked up the electricity wrong...where it was looking for a positive wave, it got a negative one, and where there should have been a negative signal it was positive...a puff of smoke was the result (to quote Revelation "Let the reader understand")

So follow me for just a minute and lets see if we can reverse the polarity of our God image from the past...what if God destroyed the ancient world NOT mainly because of mankind and his sinfulness (remember lamb slain from FOUNDATION)...what if God was actually intervening because of a different dynamic at work...a dynamic you cannot see through the lens of academia but you CAN see through a mystical view?

I would encourage you to look up the primary verses concerning God judging both the ancient world and the future one and see if there is not a mystical element included in the passage somewhere...an element of fallen angels, powers, whatever, even in Revelation we have very mystical demonic influence that God personally deals with...

We always tend to view the past purely from a historical perspective and fail to see it mystically, and vice versa, we like to imagine a mystical future but fail to see it pragmatically...like believing in some mystical rapture but failing to believe the nations are actually physically healed and the last enemy is actually defeated, that science discovers how to cure cancer and death etc...

I am becoming convinced that God destroyed the ancient world to eliminate an "unnatural" influence of fallen angels/powers/etc...and that consistent with His models of justice He sent TWO witnesses into Sodom to gauge the degree of demonic influence and NOT simply human sin (which He has always had a cure for) and when the Bible says "Noah was perfect in his generations" it might possibly be referring to his DNA and not his behavior... because the same Bible that says Noah was perfect also says none are. (The Hebrew word for "generations" allows this perspective).

Because of this adjustment to my "things past" perspective I am adjusting my "things to come" lens...and this slight adjustment allows me to see a consistency that makes God quite predictable and fairly safe, although like Aslan it does not make Him tame...

The unintended consequence for changing the mystical/pragmatic lens for the past requires that I also change it for the future...if I must adjust the amount of "mystical" I inject into history, then I need to be consistent and inject the same amount of "pragmatic" into the future...its the way things work in the natural world any adjustment on one side of the equation must be taken into account on the other side...

Let me simply ask this, what if God is more than willing to take responsibility for things He allowed, but expects us to take responsibility for things we have done...it was Him who cast the devil down to the earth, and it was Jesus who came and defeated that same fallen creature and ALL of the effects, and now that we have been given authority over that metric, we are now expected to use our authority and complete the original mission which was to expand the garden across the entire planet driving out the serpent in the process...

What if the future is incredibly pragmatic since the past is quite mystical? What if we will conquer death as the last enemy and THAT'S what inspires the return of Jesus to receive a Kingdom he can hand up to His Father?

Frankly our current eschatology (which I believe borders on the doctrine of demons since it gives them all the power) has the church cowering and hiding waiting for a rescue rather than a Bride handing her Groom a wedding present of a planet restored to hope and love...

And that's where I will end this future speculation...in the mystical union of pragmatic love...God will never give you someone He does not expect you to love...if we want to see the future we probably should walk into the darkest demonic place we know with love and see if we can drive out serpent influence that has been dealt with from Heavens perspective.

Somewhere I read that He taught us to pray: "Thy Kingdom come on earth AS IT IS in heaven"...this is what He wants us to pray towards a kingdom here that looks like it does there...

So how do we do that both pragmatically and mystically?

Well I am not about to abandon a three year project because of a little puff of smoke and a bunch of distortion...it's my baby, I made it with painstaking love and attention...it can be recovered I just need to start at the output and trace the problem backwards until its fixed, yes some parts might need to be tossed, removed, replaced, but on the whole it still has tremendous value.

Lets start with the output...Heaven looks like love...and just trace it back to the parts that have been burned...rectify them with His victory and push on until the planet is "re-pristinated"

Salt

A lot of people I know love McDonalds french fries...personally I can't stand them, as well as almost all fast foods....I wish it was because I am a health nut and concerned about what I eat, but that influence in my choices has yet to rise above a whimper...no...its mostly because of the salt, I can't stand the amount of salt they use.

I don't eat salt. Don't cook with it, never use it except to gargle sore throats and melt ice on the driveway.

So when I read that Jesus tells me to be the salt in the earth a part of me says "Really? Why not pepper or oregano, cinnamon would have been cool..."

But this directive is especially important to someone like me...see I have a prophetic bent and that tends to make me odd, sort of naturally out of sync with the crowd and prone to see whats wrong rather than what is missing...at least that is how it has normally functioned...I'm not defending it, just observing it.

And that is the crux of how my gift has been twisted by my nature, environment, the fall, whatever...instead of seeing what is missing and calling it into existence, I have mostly seen what is wrong and complained...(often quite loudly).

I need to be salt, I need to act like salt, I need to flavor my world like salt does...this requires not stopping or even reacting to the negative side that fills up my immediate vision, I need to intentionally push past it into a bigger perspective.

Salt in the ancient world was the equivalent of modern day "sell-by-dates" and refrigeration ..it was how you kept good food from going bad...if you did not completely "salt" a slab of meat then in very short order it went from something edible to something deadly.

Most of the contexts I have heard of this verse make the issue of salt about evangelism and impacting the world as a witness...I will not discount that meaning, it has merit, but for me the framing needs to go deeper...it needs to go into my core and how I react.

I have a hair trigger for being critical, I don't mean to be, frankly I do not enjoy a set of eyes that walk into a situation and immediately see whats wrong, I am trying to train myself to see differently, but life habits and natural bents are hard to change, but I also realize that part of my particular gift package has merit.

I have walked onto construction sites as a superintendent and saved contractors thousands of dollars because I could see what was wrong the minute I landed...I have been in auditoriums where the sound guy was pulling his hair out over feedback and I gently pointed out a guitar lying on its side off stage feeding vibration back into the monitor...so there is benefit for my "edginess".

When it comes to the church, worship, models, community, the future etc, ad infinitum...my natural tendency is to see whats wrong, to isolate the problem, treat it like cancer and start lopping off limbs without thinking...its that hair-trigger response that makes me regret so much of my history...

So salt for me needs to be an extremely focused and disciplined perspective that needs to start the minute my brain smells the coffee in the morning...I need to remember that often I am in a huge landscape of heaven with very near-sighted eyes, yes I see clearly, but its not the things up close that I should focus on...the landscape is breath-taking and I should be enjoying it rather than complaining about the dog poop on the lawn.

Yes the dog poop needs addressing, but it is completely incapable of destroying the majesty of what God is doing unless I give it that power...and frankly the Holy Spirit probably has a pooper scooper and its not a big deal to Him, besides as the ULTIMATE OPTIMIST, He has made it clear that everything is useful to Him, even things like poop...worst case scenario would be that even un-removed poop will become fertilizer and nutrients to the landscape He is gardening...

Recently on a prayer walk I had a picture the Holy Spirit go out over the water and He began to beat His wings rapidly drawing water up into the air until a man was formed...the Father and Son laughed and said "He's always doing that, He loves to hoover, and we can't keep Him out of the water!"...

If you are a skeptic...(and often I am even for my own experiences) this mental picture/revelation might seem...frivolous and pointless with little bearing on the day to day life of a believer...

But for someone like me it is an important "salt" adjustment...it is a perspective I need to keep fresh, that the Holy Spirit (the One left here with us) is continually hoovering, creating out of the chaos, He is un-intimidated by the darkness and void and dog poop.

So regardless of how much I see wrong, regardless of the noise I hear, regardless of the smells that I think spoil the landscape, I need to be the one with a perspective that preserves the good, that saves the valuable, that redeems the sacrifice of life given for a bit longer and keeps it from going completely bad...

I need to spoil the spoiling...I need to be salt...and the larger perspective is I am to be salt in the EARTH...that pretty much includes everything...(gun control, global warming, same-sex marriage  empire, substance abuse, sex-trade, apathy, gender issues, etc...)

Oy Vey.

Government...the church kind

I've been on a bit of a journey and rather than open up to much about the internal journey (which has been incredibly painful, yet incredibly productive) I will expose some of my thinking mechanisms in a slop-fest sort of collage.

I've spent a huge part of my life studying and immersed in church government, architecture (the relational kind), and models...my passion has been the church for the greatest part of my thinking life...

From Watchman Nee, to Peter Wagner, from  Abbott Loop and Vineyard to FourSquare and AG I have read Viola, Barnes and Barnhouse, Moody, Finney and the Heavenly Man.

House church, organic, pagan-less, Apostolic, shepherding, purpose-driven, seeker-friendly to drive-through and web-based...

I cut my teeth on Bob Mumford, Derek Prince and Ern Baxter, New Wine, Old Wine, house church, and on and on...have sat under Apsotles, Prophets, Bishops, Deacons, Presbytery, Pastors, Shepherds, Councils and Messianic...

I've read and listened to just about every venue and expert on church models, wine-skins and government until I'm frankly tired of it all.

Some has been great, some has bordered on cultish...recently started reading Alan Hirsch, and find him very educated but basically its the same thing I've heard repackaged about a thousand times, although it fits a little better in our culture and seems to have a better mission than a lot of other things.

So yeah...I'm kinda a church government student.

But lately...some of my journey has me exploring windows of perspective I have never considered...and I have been revisiting some of the foundational scriptures with a newer perspective and having "what the heck?" moments...

Rather than take you on the journey and how I got there on some of my newer approaches I'll just unload them here for you to think about.

1. All Apostolic Ministry has as its core design "Establishing Justice as a  Covenant Ambassador"

•  That means our model of "church planting" is not be the primary function of Apostles (I have scripture)
• "Establishing Justice" may look miraculous, may manifest as healing's etc, but is ultimately about transforming cultures/nations/people groups...
• Apostles came from the Jewish Culture not the Greek (Paul was actually an Apostle of the Sanhedrin first) so our definition should follow that model. 
• (I think healing is a great example of establishing justice, the cross is the legal answer of heaven to the question of disease, whenever we pray for someone and they get healed justice has been administrated into the physical dimension ..THIS is what I mean by establishing justice, this and more)
• I think we miss the fact that Jesus in using the word "apostle" (Luke 6:13) is using a Greek word that is used almost 700 times in the Septuagint from the Jewish "Shaliach" which was typically a legal Representative of the covenant...(even today the "Shaliach Tzibur" is a someone who is sent as a legal ambassador)...it simply means "I send this one" in Greek... 

2. All Five-Fold Ministry is temporary and transient:

• The verse that gives us five-fold has a big ol' "Until" we tend to ignore
• The New Testament model we have been given is transient and follows the contours of the culture
• The church as an entity is actually temporary itself, it ultimately becomes a Bride, there is no temple in the New Jerusalem.
• According to Eph.4:14 the purpose is to raise up adults who can think and speak for themselves, once they are adults, by definition they are on their own...

3. Our current Western Model is not working:

• Big Homer Simpson "D'Oh" right here...
• At best, the very best of our best churches will only ever reach 39% of the city they are in...
• (The REAL number of the population that is actually transformed by our church model is frankly an indictment, so the question needs to be asked what is the real purpose of the church/Revelation 1-3 seems to place the purpose in a different context than our current church culture does) 
• 10% of the people in the average church do 90% of the work and get burned out/bitter/used up
• 90% of our congregations are not being equipped in their own specific calling/vision/assignment they just do what the <1% tell them to do.
•  James 1:27 is not being done on the average, and whats worse is not even a priority, if this is Gods idea of religion how many other things have we missed?
• Our missions efforts mostly replicate whatever model we are in, this alone testifies we've missed the assignment.

4. Our "New Wine-skin" models are not working either:

• Stats for this group are worse than for traditional churches
• Not sure we're even supposed to be making new wine, Jesus in Luke prefers the Old.
• House-church, organic, whatever you want to call it seems to eventually mimic the model it came out from.
• Protestants on the average are more legalistic than the Roman Catholic Church we protested from, if you doubt that try asking questions of those in leadership and see where that gets you.

5. The primary ministry assignment of the church should be the healing and releasing of the land and people through the teaching of repentance.

• The New Testament example of the "message" focused on repentance because Jesus had been raised from the dead, not the second coming.
• Jesus was resurrected in a PHYSICAL body, this fact is critical to the gospel message and is not primarily about salvation from sin, it is about restoring the planet.
• The resurrection of Jesus was a greater act of creation than the Genesis vignette, that should mean something to the land.
• Our tendency to ignore land and history smacks of ignorance and arrogance, scripture is full of references to both.
• Greek dualism has corrupted our concept of sacred/secular until we are no longer effective in our communities
• Authority is directly related to taking responsibility and everyone is "local" somewhere.
• The sheep ALL belong to Jesus, even the lead ones, therefore any model that does not release but demands "disciple-ship-submission" is suspect...(Jesus actually released many without discipling them, the Gaderean demoniac is a prime example), we disciple nations by releasing people, not the other way around.
• People on the whole are slaves to an empire that Jesus defeated, our challenge is to release them from every kind of bondage and not control them.
• Land is important to God...it should be to us.

These are just a few of the adjustments I have seen in scripture (and really have quite a bit of back-up for) as I have been re-adjusting my models and paradigms.

I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water, but as I have re-read church history and reconnected some of the Jewish mindset I am really troubled by some of the power models that seem to be the norm in our churches. 

I recently read an article about inner healing where the author basically said that unless you were submitted to a Senior Pastor you should never try to get someone delivered from demons because you would have no authority...what a crock of bull manure...but this kind of thinking is VERY common especially in charismatic/Pentecostal hierarchy type churches...never mind the fact that there is not one verse in the New Testament that puts a "Pastor" in charge of a church, let alone the idea of a "Senior Pastor"...Constantine brought some very demonic thinking and control models into the church that has served hell quite well.

But try to bring that up in our current model and see what kind of reaction you get...and lets not even go on to mention "money" the tithe and supporting your local ministry/storehouse...really? 

So whats the bottom line?

Well its obvious we are in for some serious transitions in our culture, empire is over and those at the top are not happy about it, just watch what is happening on the world economic stage... but God could care less about sustaining something He never sanctioned in the first place...the church has always been the possession of Jesus, and He is kind enough to let us play with it from time to time, but He is also serious when He says He wants it back...

I'm ready for a change...there is definitely a shift happening...the Teutonic plates are moving...this is obviously a bit of a ramble I will congeal it soon enough...until then...follow the White Horse, He's the guy that wins.

Addendum: Let me be clear that I am not making hard and fast rules here, these are simply observations and notes I am taking on this experiment, nothing here is conclusive...I reserve the right to completely re-write all of my models since I'm doing it now...that alone should tell me that I need to hold to these concepts loosely and try to find a place of wonder and reverence between the borders of what is and what is to be...I'm not suggesting any of this as definitive answers since frankly we haven't even begun to ask the right questions yet...these are formulated notes and not answers...that much should be obvious by the "snarky" tone that is typical of someone who drinks to much coffee late at night. 

A Grand Election

I need to post this and I truly hope many of you will read this with an open mind...I hope it does not offend but I think it is time I said some of this.


My oldest daughter Leah Beth Payne has been saying for weeks now that God has commanded us to give thanks for all in authority (1Tim. 2:1) and I think before we as children of the Most High can begin to wag the finger about all the hot button issues and this election we need to look inside the church first...  

So let me give you my evolving perspective on some of these things...   



1.Gay marriage...

When you look at the core issue here its about "same-attraction/homo (the same as)covenant-intimacy...and when I look at the Evangelical church I notice we are always ONLY intimate and in connection with the ones who are the SAME as us. 

And we have very little regard for real covenants.

We gather together based on the same likes, and the same "do not touch" kind of rules and we exclude any who are different from us...when was the last time you visited another part of the body of Christ in your city? Do you think your church is the only one? Probably not, but you do believe in some metric that it is better than the others or you would go to another church in town...you would find the one that is most like you in your beliefs.

But let someone begin to question the "same-old, same old" and covenant is out the window...they are normally rejected as rebellious, treated like a leper and sentenced to exclusion...actually kind of what we do to the gays...all out of fear that others will question, and we all know what kind of rebellion that will lead to...we only want to be in covenant with those who think and act exactly like we do...kind of like same sex marriage.

I know because I did this to others for years...I had all the neat little labels, they were "wounded" had an "orphan spirit", were "immature", needed "inner healing"...and I believed and projected they would eventually come to see things my way, or we would never ever have a relationship...and of course it would be their fault for being different.

For years I have ONLY gone to conferences, hung out with like minded people as me, been part of groups that were like I was, and I never even entertained the notion of celebrating communion with an Orthodox believer, or a Catholic, or even a Baptist for that matter...I stayed with those "like me"...my intimacy centered around those who shared my model of life.

And most of you are just like me...we are not homophobic as much as we are "anti-homo-phobic" in other words...we are most afraid of those NOT like us.

We need everyone to believe exactly like we do or we cannot fellowship on any level of intimacy...covenant is reserved for those MOST like me.

I wonder why?

Shouldn't opposites attract? Its true in magnets and physics...but not in church.

Do I think homosexuality is not an issue? Of course not, but its a little weird to be so judgmental at a group of people who do not claim to know the God who connects with "who-so-ever-will" when we (who claim to know Him better) won't.

So you choose to gather with those most like you, but Jesus hung out with those MOST UNLIKE himself and actually got a reputation for it...but we are so proud of our reputations, as a matter of fact "reputation" is an essential part of our leadership model, but its funny when you go to the Bible, Paul and Jesus did not regard that as nearly as important as we do...and I suspect a HUGE amount of our "sameness" and intimacy with only those like us is based on protecting our reputation. Paul says Jesus made himself of "no reputation" and Paul completely abandoned his for the sake of the gospel...but the gay community does not give a damn about reputation and they are often-times much more supportive of their own than the church is...but the core issue here is we are not much different from them in that we are seeking intimacy ONLY with those like us.

That goes for God as well as our church...we essentially believe He is like us but we would never admit that.

I read several post on facebook tonight from Pastors who were basically saying if you supported Obama you were on the wrong side and were against God...(obviously the same side as us!)

But when the Angel of the Lord showed up to Joshua He did not pick a side, He said "neither"...Gods position is probably much different than we suppose, but we have a hard time seeing it since we are only connecting and "loving" with those like us.

God is NOT on our side and we would be wise to not have one.

As far as I can tell, calling out for judgement on America is really risky business because according to scripture judgment BEGINS with the house of God...are we ready for that kind of scrutiny?

As far as homosexuals and the Kingdom, they are no different than you were before you encountered the kindness of the Lord...it was His kindness that led you to repentance, not His judgments...they simply have not encountered his kindness yet.

When was the last time you determined to demonstrate the kindness of God to a gay person? When was the last time God was kind to you?...today is my guess.

We overcome evil with good, (not protest) and we do it everyday starting with the day Gods kindness encountered you.


2. Abortion:  

When it comes to aborting the fruit of the womb, and eliminating a pregnancy for convenience I can trace a lot of that back to the general condition of the church where we have adopted models of life that do not require we grow up and take ownership for our own destiny and life, further-more the church as a whole has continually marginalized and discredited other cultures, other people groups...this will eventually find expression in marginalizing life in the womb.

What do you think of when I say "Sharia Law"???

But it is a culture and a people group that we have marginalized.

Did you know that Sharia Law prohibits gross compensation in business without a reflecting value present? In other words if some parts of Sharia Law were in place our economy might not be where it is. 

We guard against the alien and have essentially abandoned the widow and the orphan (making HUGE generalizations here to make a point I hope you understand I see you as an exception). Is abortion a heinous crime? Of course it is. I cannot reduce the impact of how that affects the land or our country...(let alone the troubled and usually abandoned women who endure it)...but Jesus said:

 >ALL AUTHORITY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH HAD BEEN GIVEN TO HIM< ...all is pretty inclusive.

"go therefore"...in other words He is transferring authority to us...and where we refuse to take responsibility, we cannot enforce His authority...our current models of church are built on convenience, we time the worship service, we make the offering as painless as possible and we are in and out faster than a one night stand in the red light district all for our "intimacy fix" with the Lord.

We have elected pastors to do the heavy lifting for us so we can be free to do whatever we want to do the rest of our lives, so we are in at 10 out by 12:30 and off we go to live life unencumbered by real responsibility for those around us let alone the seed of nations and people across the street.

One day each of us will stand completely alone before God and give an account for our time here and our pastor and our church will not be there, it will be just you and Him.

Is it really convenient to do church rather than be the church?

Do you really think this is the model that Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against? Because last time I checked the divorce rate was the same as the world, pornography and substance abuse (prescribed by professionals) is just as prevalent in our convenience model as the world. I have heard of at least 3 worship pastors in the last few months that had been caught having long time affairs...so intimacy seems a little bit...casual and no one is asking how come.

Before we get all hot and bothered about the abortion issue (and I am not saying we don't get bothered by it) perhaps we should look at what the church has been aborting for a long time...and ask yourself...are there seeds that God has deposited in times of intimacy that I have conveniently aborted?

I understand these are not exactly the same...but we need authority to change our culture, authority that has already been released to us...so what are we authorizing? 

What if we were authorizing a spirit of convenience and lack of responsibility for life with Heavens authority? What if the world was simply reflecting us?

Just asking.




3. The economy...

I have a real problem making this connection...how is the economy of the saints even slightly tied to our national GDP? Or Wall Street? And if you are being affected on a personal level with these things why is that?

I am not ignoring the reality that we live in a world where poverty and changing economies have an impact on our daily lives, but last time I checked God did not promise any of us the "American Dream" and anyone else who did was fooling you.

 How does any of this figure into who we choose as President? It seems like we prefer shifting blame here...the President does not choose how you budget you money and what you do with it...and before you respond consider that Jesus had no issue paying taxes, He commanded us to give to Caesar what was Caesars and with that He basically undermined the entire "tax exempt" status of the entire American church culture...I wonder what difference would be felt in our economy if the Billions of dollars gathered every Sunday morning were taxed into our national economy? But no one wants to even entertain that idea we're to busy...with other financial ventures.

I am not trying to be harsh here...I just think we are approaching these things from the wrong side of our place in life.

There are unintended consequences for the way we take up offerings and do money as believers...by placing a check in the offering plate you have not  absolved yourself of taking care of the widow and the orphan, or the naked and homeless, or really anyone on the planet. If somehow you have bought into the notion that by paying your tithes you are entitled to a certain financial security, I have news for you and its very good...you are no longer under the  Old Testament Levitical model according to the book of Hebrews...so the curse in Malachi only applies to you if you choose it...you are invited to tithe into  a system that is quite different and is based entirely upon honor...you knew that right? 

I mean the financial model we are using as evangelicals, its all Biblical and what-not right?

10% to the local church for the Pastors...that what Jesus and the Apostles taught about money right? And once you've done that you are a good steward and you have not buried your money in the dirt...

(Just wondering... have you really ever read the OT verses about the tithe and how it was to be spent? Research some of the things we have been doing since Constantine and get back to me).

Seems like I cannot get away from asking tough questions here...but its only fair since a lot of believers I know are taking very tough postures towards this election and our culture and the "liberal media" (which has never claimed to be Christ-like as far as I can tell)...

The minute you tie your financial wagon to ANY system outside of what Jesus suggested you have no grounds for complaining...sorry that's the side benefit of being one of Gods kids.

I am not at all suggesting we are not called to be generous and I am further-more NOT implying that we go through life poor, quite the opposite...but the entire financial system that we are part of does have elements in it that exploit those who do not have good credit (cannot buy or sell without the mark) and it also exploits all sorts of people and when you look at the rest of the planet its a bit arrogant for us who live in the top 3% of the world wealth to be complaining about our national economy when others do not even have clean drinking water.

How do you think it looks in heaven when we are in the top 3% of wealth in the world and we cannot pay our cable TV/Satellite/cell-phone luxury bills and blame the President?

Pretty silly I am sure.

God probably sees an entirely different system of value, because His system looks at gold and makes it like dust to walk on, because He values other things much more.

I am simply suggesting that the authority of the church in the financial realm is directly connected to our willingness to help the poor and that includes those who are in our land perhaps illegally (the OT had very specific rules about not mistreating the alien)...I live in a State that has a reputation for its defiance of the aliens right to even be here...(Sure go ahead venture down that thought path, but let me remind you that we were not the first people here...they still exist here and are a huge mission's group we tend to ignore as we drive past the Casinos)...

Here's the point I am trying to make...a lot of my friends, believers I know have come away from this election complaining, discouraged and declaring incredibly judgmental postures and I think this is NOT helpful to our cause before the Lord.

Our culture is in need of radical change, and we have fallen in lock step with them in thinking the answer somehow is going to come from a system that is old and dying anyway, there are currently ONLY two cities on the earth right now, Babylon which is falling and the New Jerusalem which is descending...one is a system of power and control that enslaves exploits and manipulates, the other is one that "comes down" from a higher place and heals, serves, and releases the life of heaven on earth, but both are going the same direction...one is falling, the other is choosing to descend to a lower place to help those who need it most.

It is not political.  

That Babylonian Empire was finished when Jesus said it was... at the cross...the New thing is coming down like a Bride..beautiful and pure.

So as long as you look longingly upon the Babylon that is falling, you will have no choice but to weep as the rulers of the earth do...but if you lift up your eyes you can see and be a part of something that will never be subject to slavery again, is free and heals the nations.

And it starts by being thankful.

I would suggest the language of judgment and complaining, the posture of indignation and disappointment are not based in the Kingdom that is descending...they are a fallen posture we need to divest.

I hope you can hear my heart here...I am not wanting to criticize...I just think we are missing the forest for the trees.

You can "elect" or join the "elect"...I prefer the later...its a "Grand Election" we are called to...and it doesn't look like what we've been doing...its bigger, bolder, full of life and joy and not limited to voting or sitting in neatly arranged chairs for 2.5 hours a week...Grand by definition would not look like that.

Your mileage may vary.

Ok I'm done.

Hope you still love me.

-Mark

Serpents...(Yikes)

Since moving to the desert I have had a plethora of experiences with rattle snakes.

It started with my oldest daughter dreaming that I had gotten bit between my index finger and thumb on my right hand...a few days later she kills her first rattle snake...

(Side bar...she LOVES killing them and wants to collect enough skins to make something, this is the same girl who recently walked the corridors of one of our lands greatest courts praying in tongues! She had the Cyrus anointing of "access" working for her)...

But to be honest I sort of dismissed her dream...

About a month later my third daughter has a dream (not knowing what Leahbeth had dreamed) in it both of us got bit by a rattle snake, but this time it was my left hand between the index finger and thumb (but the exact same place on her right hand)...

Within  a few days I kill my first rattle snake...

Last week I have a dream where a friend of mine has a bruise on his heel, the Lord says "I want him to crush the serpents head, but it was your words that bruised him"...

So I email him and repent...turns out the night before he had torn his Achilles tendon playing softball and was on his way to the Doctor when he read my email...

So I go out for a prayer walk, to repent some more and its then that I kill my second rattle snake...

With only my sandal...really...it looked like a really fat stick on the side of the path...I had been doing spiritual warfare after repenting and walked past it...when I realized what it was...so I went back with no fear just a lot of adrenalin and beat the smithereens out of it with my sandal...

So last night I have a dream...in it I have mowed 1/5 of my yard and all the snakes have moved into the other 4/5's...2 rattle snakes pair off in front of me but they remind me of cobra's because they are rising up and taunting me...I shoot a gun at one of them and miss and they both slither off into the tall grass...

So I go to a coffee shop (really no pun intended here) to talk to the Police...there is a group of them sitting at the table, I explain my situation and tell them I will need to be shooting my gun off in the city limits, they say "We understand, if anyone asks you, we were never here"...meaning in a round about way it was ok for me to kill the snakes with my pistol even in city limits, but they could not authorize it themselves...

So I go on a prayer walk tonite...and yes I have NOT been to the boot store yet...so I am in sandals...AGAIN...yikes!

And yes you guessed it I encounter not 1 but 2 very large rattle snakes...

One after I crossed a bridge...a young woman was frozen in front of me with her little dog and a huge snake crossing the path between us...I waited until it had gone off the path and stood between her and the snake so she could pass...the snake was pretty upset and I have a recording of its rattle warning us to stay away...

So yeah...I'm pumped up a bit and continue walking, praying trying to refocus on praise and I walk about a 100 yards and just feel the tug to look behind me...sure enough about 20 feet from where I just passed another very large rattle snake was crossing the path...going the same direction (both were going South, but curl up facing the path<North>)

About 25 feet further past that was a young girl maybe 10 or 11 walking the path following me, not paying attention listening to her iPod not even looking ahead...I yell at her to stop and run back to where the snake is, stooping to show her what she was about to encounter...again I stand between her and the snake and invite her to pass behind me so she is safe and I "encourage" her to turn off the iPod and look where she is going.

Both of these snakes curled up right off the edge of the path (which is actually paved, and two lanes for bikes and pedestrians) both snakes pointing their fang side to the path....

Anyway I spent the rest of the walk warning people and rehearsing all the verses I knew about serpents, trying to get back to worship and adoration since that was the main purpose in the first place...

I thought about Paul shaking off the serpent into the fire...and wondered what gave him such a relaxed approach? What was it that made Paul so sure the venom would not affect him...I felt the Lord say..

"Paul's anti-venom was his mission" he knew he could not die outside of Rome, because he had a mission to accomplish...

I have been dealing with generational sin, cleansing the family lineage in my prayer times...I told a friend of mine it seems like all I ever do in prayer anymore is repent...

But I am not complaining, we could all do a lot worse than repent...it IS part of the foundation of our life in Christ and when you build on a foundation it becomes a part of the building even if it is "under" the more visible parts.

I love repentance it is one of the greatest gifts God will ever give you...without it you never even enter the kingdom...

So yeah my prayer life is a lot of repenting and always will be if I'm honest.

I think there are all sorts of parallels to draw from the space between the "fore-finger" and the thumb, between the 1/5 and the 4/5 parts of my yard, between the snake in front of me and the one behind me...

1/5 of my kids are male...4/5's are female...

4/5's of my kids are married, 1/5are not...

Courtney had also had a dream where we were looking for my son, he had gone missing, so we were walking up this hill and all these snakes were coming towards us, she and her sisters didn't know what to do and I said "Pick them up and throw them" and as I showed them the snakes all turned into sticks behind me...

Yes there is cleansing of the generations that needs to happen, yes there are things on the time line and after the bridges that needs attention, but ultimately...I need to get the the place Paul was and allow the mission to take my focus rather than some snake bite...

At some point all this inner healing and Sozo's and healing the land and removing curse from time needs to be shaken off into the fire of the Holy Spirit and my focus needs to be on getting to Rome to tell a certain King, he is not Lord, Jesus is...

Until then...I will keep on repenting, shaking off the things that are poison and try to attach to who I am...but I also think I will go buy some boots...

Mission not possible

I've been rethinking much of the church...

Frankly I'm already tired of the negative aspect of it...the basic premise that it is not working should be obvious to anyone who is honest, and if you are not honest you are probably a large part of the current empire system we call church, sorry to be so blunt.

There are pockets where it does work, there are a handful (at best) of communities where the church is making a significant impact for good, but even there the measurable metric is not the driving factor in the community...not yet anyway.

I'm not suggesting that church in itself is not good, just that its impact on the local level is probably a zero sum equation, it does some good for some people, but by that fact alone it probably alienates and has unintended consequences that affect just as many others in a negative way.

I can give you specifics but its probably a dialogue we aren't exactly ready for yet.

What I do notice is the incredible pressure we put on pastors who have genuine shepherds hearts but truly lack the wiring for the assignment we need most...its a bit unfair and a lot like asking Florence Nightingale to organize the D-Day invasion, it horrifies her sensibilities and guarantee's her strategy will do more harm than good...

And that is exactly the metaphor we need at this moment...your mission in God is a suicide mission but the kingdom cannot accomplish the victory already purchased without your participation...its D-day...

The language of Jesus and the early Apostolic church completely supports this model, it is one of being sent into a hostile environment, with not promise you will survive, only that you will win, language like "they loved not their loves unto death", overcoming in the New Testament is not about over-powering, its about sacrifice and the blood of martyrs and selling all and going...

Its a suicide mission that guarantees life...

Jesus demonstrated it, the Apostles demonstrated it, Paul told Timothy to prepare for it, Revelation is full of it and we have to embrace it if we want to reach our destiny in God.

Shepherds cannot lead that charge...it goes against their very nature to comfort and sustain green pasture like stillness for the flock...and yet these are the ones we have put in charge of the invasion...that's really not a good strategy and definitely not the Biblical model.

What if to reach your dream, your assignment in God it would require you to sell all you have, give it away and just go in faith to another place? 

Do you really think a local pastor is going to be able to sign off on that? Of course not, the system requires your presence and tithe to keep the rest of the flock safe and secure, but the idea that we are called to lay down our lives and obey regardless of the cost is certainly not alien to the teaching of Jesus or the Apostolic mission....actually both pretty much require it...

This is where the comments will filter in about being "to heavenly minded to be any earthly good" and about living in "balance" both concepts not found in the New Testament...whats balanced or "practical" about turning over money changers tables and calling for more prayer, or preaching until a riot ensues and you get thrown in jail?

My point is this, you are never going to be satisfied until you give your all to your mission in God whatever that is for you, and it is NOT your Pastors job to guide you, sustain you, or arm you for the battle, his primary job is to comfort you, let you rest and recover, and provide a safe place for you to heal...beyond that the local pastor is primarily just a nurse in a hospital away from the battle, except for a few who are sort of like M.A.S.H. units in the heat of it.

SO you should stop expecting them to help you reach your dreams...if they are God dreams they will require everything you are and a pastor cannot require that, it perverts the call...

So lets stop placing this kind of expectation on the typical Sunday church Pastoral model...it is simply NOT going to happen and the primary proof of this is sitting in the pew with the unfulfilled assignment every week...if our model of pastoral culture could have accomplished the Mission of Jesus (and how your mission coincides with that) then we would be there by now because this model is at least several hundred years old.

Stop looking for the answer there, you are not going to find it.

This brings up an entirely difficult discussion about what in the fatal fires ARE we doing, since we don't seem to be advancing the Kingdom Mission, but that would require us leaving our safe and comfortable hospital pews and actually looking at the battle plans...

Selah.