I pray this blog finds you all doing well….as many of you know I have been spending a tremendous amount of time engaging the Holy Spirit on the subject of religion…it seems to me (and you that know me well know i have strong feelings against religion) that religion is stealing everything from us that Christ called precious and magnificent….all His promises to us that are Supernatural have been dumbed down to reasonable and man obtainable processes by the institutuion of religion….as a result, we dont see the biblically promised outcomes in our lives we are quick to explain why with new theories that are not scripturally pure therefore driving us further from the Truth we are claiming to be striving towards…that is our problem…we have defaulted to so many devices, programs, and theories that we have lost the one thing we were promised…the Way, the Truth, the LIFE….I urge you today to put aside all the thoughts, routines, and religious processes that threatens the simplicity of your RELATIONSHIP with CHRIST…I am closing with a thought from Oswald Chambers found in “my utmost for His highest” dec 20th…
“The calling of a New Testament worker is to uncover sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Saviour, consequently he cannot be poetical, he must be sternly surgical. We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful discourses. We have to probe straight down as deeply as God has probed us, to be keen in sensing the Scriptures which bring the truth straight home and to apply them fearlessly.”
Basically, we cannot afford to be religious! Why? Because peoples lives hang in the balance…including our own….so may the God of perfection bless you and keep you. may He cause His countenance to replace your own, and may He afford you absolute restoration through your reception of His precious Son and the filling of His powerful Spirit.

I have been spending a lot of time in the book of Isaiah this past month and I discovered something through the prodding of the Holy Spirit…in Isaiah 11:1-5 I believe some amazingly stout things were projected for us… first off Isaiah speaks of the Messiah in verses 1 and 2…then in verse 3 and 4 he describes the way in which the Messiah under the covering of the Holy Spirit would operate…”He will delight in the fear of the Lord and He will NOT judge by what His eyes see, NOR make a decision by what His ears hear: but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and He will decide with fairness for the the afflicted of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, and faithfulness the belt about His waist.”

As I read the description of the way in which Christ would operate as He lived as a part of humanity I was stirred to this thought…HE BECAME LIKE ME, SO THAT I COULD BECOME LIKE HIM (1 john 4:17)….He did not come TO me, but came to display the fullness of God FOR me (john 1:18)…Jesus left the equality with God to become the equality of me (phil.2:5-8)…He became FLESH (john 1:14)….yet the Spirit of the Lord rested upon Him and the fear of the Lord was His delight so He was exalted above all in order to make way for us to become like Him (2 cor. 5:21)….He told His disciples in acts 1:5 “but you will be covered (baptized) with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” and continued in verse 8 “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”. Power to do what? well lets read on…He completes that thought by saying “and you shall be My witnesses”. Witnesses? Does that mean Jesus story tellers? Or is it looking religiously strict? No! I believe He was saying you will receive power in order to REPLICATE Me? YOU SHALL BE JUST LIKE ME. Christ has not called us to simply testify of Him, He has called us to be just like Him. That is the beauty of the both the grace and mercy found in the atonement of His death and resurrection. He came that He might give us life and life like His (john 10:10, eph. 2:1-22)!!

Please dont miss this…He constantly challenged His followers with statements like the one found in mark 8, “having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?!” was Jesus really asking if the disciples were physically blind and deaf? No! He was saying why do you use your carnal senses without yielding them to the supernatural work of the Spirit?! Because when you do that you render yourselves unable to receive what I came to give you! What was being said was, “having eyes do you not perceive by the Spirit, and having ears are you not receiving understanding through the Spirit?”  In other words, you are not truly living!! Isaiah states, “He will not make judgement by what He sees, nor make a decision based on what He hears”!!!

We must be a blood purchased people who by practice have disciplined our senses to discern the supernatural life (Heb.5:14) that is offered by our Father through the Christ (John 10:10). Of course there is a great crowd of critics that would like to offer the notion that the work of the Spirit was for a period of time, specifically the time of the apostles, which I see as a theory that is really only consistent with the wiles of the Devil. Afterall, if God is the same today as He was yesterday, and will be forever…then so is His Spirit.

There are numerous accounts of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, not just the New Testament, and here is one of my favorites:        ”The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me (Isaiah), because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the of vengeance of our God and to comfort those who mourn…” Isaiah 61:1-2.

Sounds a lot like the same work that Jesus did under the covering of the Holy Spirit, and the same command given by Christ to those who would come to a saving knowledge and understanding of Him after Him. His Spirit is the gift we receive through Salvation. We have become the righteousness of Christ and have had the Spirit (the fullness of God) deposited within us (2 corinthians 5)!! So wouldn’t it make sense to now engage that same Spirit who was upon Christ, the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and power (Isaiah 11, Acts 1)?!  To delight in the fear of the Lord, and to not make judgements by what our eyes see (letting circumstances steal our focus upon Truth), nor make a single decision by what our ears hear (letting man’s theories and critics shape our view of the Christ)….but rather with discipline walk in right standing with God by living according to His Word and NOT according to our cultural christianity and religiosity. To give our senses to the work of the Lord through the Holy Spirit and judge by obedience and not by sight, to make decisions based on the Spirit’s promptings rather than the opinions offered by men!

I believe it is time for the true disciples of Christ to rise up and walk in righteousness and faithfulness…. with disciplined senses in the supernatural….disciplined to the promptings of the Lord’s Spirit…..Shalom 

this blog is for those who continue to journey with us in your prayers and petitions…those who loved us thru thick and thin…and for those who know that what some may view as crazy, immature whims may in fact be the path of obedience for us….we love you and cherish your prayers….i have spared a lot of the “details” because this entry is about the joys of a  journey of progress, not the pointing finger of loss and frustration…. 

for the last four years i have been wrestling thru what exactly the Lord was saying to me….i know i am called to be His mouthpiece but i was unsure of what avenue that meant for me to travel….well the Lord began to shape things up for me through a series of dreams and conversations….i will spare you the details on that but just know that they have prophetically defined where i am today…through all this i knew the Lord was saying “recognition and impact”…not my recognition but His, not my impact but His…..and He continued to say to me, “brad, if you will learn to surrender, fully surrender, i will make you a modern day joseph…i will make you influential to the influential”…..so i resigned from the church i was employed by and started to quest in His word for the biblical method of surrender….as i searched i found that to surrender the way guys did back in “bible times” it looked so very different from any example i had in my own life and in the lives around me…so i prayed for direction…i felt the Lord was leading us to a place…simply that…a place to recklessly surrender….the Lord continued to show us Atlanta, Ga….so in october of 2005 we left for hotlanta..jobless, therefore “income-less”, and so excited about life!…up until this point in my journey with the Lord had been one where i would listen for 10 secs and then run strong for an hour only to find out that He wasnt finished explaining the directions to me before i ran off…so in this move i learned for me the first step of surrender was to learn to wait..not sit and stare like some might think of waiting, but a selfless attentive catering to His principles, mandates, and commands…this process changed me and my family in ways that are still hard to explain…but changed we long to remain….anyway the second thing that was being accomplished thru our move was that we were totally dependent upon the Lord for our provision…when you go from the security of a paycheck (even though it is a false security) to not really sure how things are going to meet up it changes your prayer life, your social life, your priorities, and your resolve….things that were once important quickly lost their glimmer in the moment of “crunchtime”…also going from home owner to apartment renter caused us to grow closer, mostly because the 1100 sf paled in comparison to our 4200 sf we had left behind…hahaha….but we trusted and He was true to His promise to tend us….i had made a commitment to not look outside supernatural provision for our family financially until january…i was believing the Lord for our provision and trusting Him to fund our freedom to serve Him solely…(this account so far is void of scripture references but please know that every decision recorded in it was saturated by His word)…i guess the Lord was wanting us to see just how big He wanted to have us trust Him because about a month after living in atlanta He began to open a door for us to have a home…not financially mind you, but a series of divine appointments we found ourselves divinely purposed to purchase a home…a big one at that, nicer than anything we would have EVER entertained before…but God was so deliberate with us about this there was no denying His promptings…so we prayed….well (leaving out a ton of miraculous details) we put an offer on the house as an act of obedience….unable at this point to even produce an income much less have proof of one…but we knew He had directed us…that is when He spoke to me again, so soft, so gentle, yet so firm, and so detailed…”this house is for Me…the top floor is for revelation from me and intimacy with me…the second floor is for rest for your family and renewal for your minds…the first floor is for community and fellowship with your peers leading to their salvation…and the basement is for healing and replenishment for My warriors…it is My house…tend it”….so now we had a vision with our obedience…now we just needed the funding….so we sat down and made a budget of what we thought it would take to do all the Lord was leading us to do…so with budget in placed we prayed…..then the phone call that changed it all…God’s man, His channel of provision for our lives and promptings was on the other end of the line with a prompting from God for a specific amount of money specifically for our family…the money the Lord had told him to give was exactly our budget needs….and the thing that killed me was when he said,”brad, is it cool if i just start sending you checks in january?” January! the very month i had believed to be the sign that if God had not provided for our needs that He wanted me to fend for my family by getting a job….that was two years ago…in that time we have seen over 30 families stay in our home that were dealing with issues of ministry burn out, ministry wounds, marital issues, health issues, or various other struggles….God has used this home…it is His afterall…and i have continued to not work a job…but to serve Him as He sees fit…it is an amazing place to be where you have nothing to entertain but the Lord’s voice on where you need to be or where you need to go…over the past two years i have watched the Lord put me in places of influence that i would not have ever gotten on my own and He continues to open doors of opportunity to be His channel of blessing in the lives of very influential people….so i still continue to speak of God’s truth and His unending love for His people…sometimes to thousands…sometimes to hundreds…and often to a handful at a time….that is afterall what He has called me to do…i got a new address, but i walk in obedience to the same call…”Go and make disciples….” so i guess in conclusion i say..TO GOD BE THE GLORY, FOR TO HIM, THROUGH HIM, AND BY HIM ARE ALL THINGS…TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Do you ever get frustrated when you hear people talking about hearing things from “GOD”? Or do you get a little cynical when someone says “GOD” spoke to me or “GOD” told me …? Chances are you get a little sideways at those people’s comments because you have never heard Him audibly for yourself, or personally seen Him in a burning bush, or had Him write the answers to your life on your bedroom wall. In fact, most of us at some point in our journey have questioned if God is real and in turn have wondered if our prayers are just words hitting the ceiling of our circumstances and therefore a big waste of time and effort. Maybe even some of you are there right now, and I want you to try something before you throw in the towel on the whole “GOD” deal. After all, what if you are not crazy? What if He really is listening? What if He actually has a word or answer for you concerning your situation?

     The problem lies in the fact that most of us are listening for God with our ears or better yet we set these systems of tests for Him like Gideon did in the bible. Things like, “God if you want me to… then make the phone ring right now!” So what if the phone rings?! Then what happens? you would probably respond like Gideon did and make God do something else like, “ok God that was really weird that you made the phone ring, so if that was REALLY you then make a dog bark right now!” The problem with this method is doesn’t fit God’s designed line of communication now. See, we have been made spirit beings through the attonement of the Cross. John 4:24 tells us that God is spirit, and if want to engage Him we must do so in spirit. Remember the story right before that verse where Jesus talks with the woman at the well found in john 4: 7-26? He said to her, “A day is coming and is even now, when the Father will seek those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.” God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” It means we cannot continue to watch for God to speak through our system of tests but we must learn to engage Him in the Spirit.

     So now you may be asking, “How do I do that?” Well, take a look at psalm 37:4. It tells us that if we will delight (press in, discover, celebrate, and be intimate acquainted) in the Lord, then He will give you (place, write out, make known) the desires (direction, purpose, cause) of your heart (spirit). So, if God is spirit then He is speaking to me in the spirit. Therefore I must press into Him and know Him and delight myself in Him so that I will hear Him in my heart (spirit). When you are delighting yourself in the Lord you can trust your heart. What is your heart telling you? Write it down on paper or a in journal, then go press into Him, sing praises to Him, offer thanksgiving to Him and then come back to what you wrote down. If it surges in your chest as you read it, it is most likely the voice of God you have heard. If it seems to clash with your spirit, it was most likely a rational plan, fleshly desire, or powerless substitute for what God is truly saying. We have so much to be thankful for concerning how God has chosen to speak with us. Think about it for a second, why would we use smoke signals when we could pick up a cell phone. Why would God use burning bushes now, when He has given us such a powerful medium of communication in His Spirit. Try this for a season and I assure you that you will be the one saying “God has been telling me….”