God and Sons - the family business

Am I about my Fathers business?

I long to hear from God the same words that Jesus heard. "This is my son in whom I am well pleased." Romans tells us that we are adopted sons and heirs of God, therefore it is perfectly possible hear these words. We will have our Spirit cry Abba Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.  (Romans 8:16)

"This is my son in whom I am well pleased" are words that were used by Jewish Father's announcing their sons had come of age and were equals in the family business. If I am to be involved in the family business, it is a 24/7 process. I must align with the activity of God and fulfill his purposes on earth. This is not a Sunday or evening process, but one that requires my attention and awareness on a constant basis. I believe that with time I can get better at this.

This is part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ because as a disciple I must follow and emmulate the way of Lord. Jesus said " I tell you the truth The Son can do nothing by himself ;  he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

I must observe and know my Fathers activity and work for him and with him.

Enountering God and Faith

"The Holy Spirit is the Dunamis of Heaven. An encounter with God is often a power encounter. Such encounters vary from person to person according to God's design . And it's the lack of power encounters that leads to a misunderstanding of God and his Word. Experience is necessarry to build a true knowledge of the Word." - Bill Johnson.

How faith works appears to be deeply connected to the way we do life with God. It would appear to be the experiential nature of our encounters with God that bring about the continuing development of Faith. It is the development of the encounters of God over time that build real relationship. To be a true disciple of Jesus Christ we need to be in relationship with him, and the rest of the Trinty, beyond doing a daily reading and saying the odd prayer.

Knowing God beyond the single plane of reading about Him, is to have regular interactions with God in a variety of forms that you understand. This would appear to crucial in the development of a faith that will survive in the rigours of the 21st century. This is a very similar time to setting of The Book Acts where most concepts are acceptable or at least have a right to be spoken. In the Book of Acts it was the power encounters with God that built faith, that changed the world.

If we are going to have faith that will survive the test of our culture and flourish we need to encounter and have realationship with the living GOD.

I find it interesting how God interacts with His people and the world. Last week I was working with some young people - a small group of over 18's. God prompted me to ask to two questions.........

(1) How do we respond to the great commission in our everyday life in the 21st century?

(2) What is the role of the Holy Spirit in this process?

We had an interesting dicussion with each young person, which reached a prayer and action point as to what this means for each of them. This happened just after one of these young people gave a recent sermon.  This sermon was about God's overflow in our life. This is surely an important part of the process of interacting with the Holy Spirit, as this interaction results in an  overflow of God that effects those around us. Which would seem to be a positive process and that would facilitate the Great Commission. This is indeed an outworking of faith and as James says: "Faith without works is dead."

At the conclusion of the young people's discussion, one stated that we need to be "supernaturally natural". There was some discussion about that might look like for each of us. However the strand was being developed by God, because I was given a book by a friend of mine called "Naturally Supernatural"  by Gary Best.  I immediately grabbed it because God seems to be strongly suggesting a theme. I started to read the initial chapter which is about passion for the Great Commission. Which seems to result in a natural overflow of the Spirit of God, as read in Acts 1:8.

 Is this (passion and resulting overflow) a reality today, in the 21st Century?

We are going to explore this further with our under 18 group. I will keep you posted, as we outwork the leading of  God.

Its a new day

What a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday i had lost my work keys, which may not seem that important but was a minor crisis to say the least, seeing they opened almost the whole property. I did not want to go to my Boss and say I had lost them. So I was praying quite hard, and as explained yesterday nothing seemed to be happening. My wife and mother in law were both praying as well. I knew they had to be somewhere in the house.

This morning when my wife woke up she had had a dream which which told us the general vacinity of where they were. I belive the choice made yesterday to stand in faith made the difference. It is always the right choice to move toward God in faith.

It is always a new a day when I step forward in faith