No shortcuts or quick-fixes, but still: JOY in the journey

Who of us in today’s society doesn't hope for that quick-fix—the seminar, the experience, the program—to instantly solve problems, relieve stress and strain?

God’s ways, as usual, prove different and well, more stable. As obsessed as we are with speed, God knows that deep-rootedness, strength and stability can only happen gradually and with care. Real maturity can never result from a single experience, no matter how powerful or moving. By tests and trials we grow and learn.

Jesus took 30 years to reach the maturity required to enter ministry and ultimately fulfill his reason for being born. Even his overt ministry of several years of teaching and healing, while full of joy and strength, also entailed battles and struggles on a cosmic scale.

Accepting his life into ours, believing the truth of his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, understanding that he now “is at the right hand of God ... interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34)—that forms our initial and often instantaneous catapulting into Kingdom life.

From then on, though, each of us is on an individually-tailored growth program to best enable us to fulfill our own purposes for being born ... which will involve not only our own development, but, as we learn how best to fit into His plans, betterment in our entire spheres of influence.

To quote from Rick Warren’s best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life:

"The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by His purpose and for His purpose.” 

So while seminars and seminal experiences of God’s sovereignty often do help promote our moving closer to God’s purposes for our lives, the journey brightens and strengthens best when we keep our focus on Him and His purposes alone. This section from Hebrews in Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it so well:

"God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn't punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.” Heb. 12:9-11)

While Christlikeness is our eventual destination, the journey lasts a lifetime. “And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.” (2 Cor. 3:18, The Message)

Further, deeper and perhaps most wondrous, we're to find JOY in the journey!

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4)

Painting courtesy of Ineke Hopgood,  a prophetic artist based in Bryon Bay, Australia;   inspired by message "The God of Comfort" by Phil Mason

Being changed to be community and world changers

By Louise Sisson

The Highlands were blessed to have Dr. Steve McEvoy visit area churches and teach on fulfilling the Great Commission. He was brought to Haliburton by Sandy Stevens of Put the Word into Action Ministries , a local charity aiming to strengthen and encourage the Body of Christ.

Steve pastored Shepherd’s Heart Prayer Centre in Truro, Nova Scotia for 13 years and now heads up Steve McEvoy Ministries. He also teaches leadership skills to both government agencies and the business community. His seminars are totally scripture-based, even though he cannot use the Bible as a reference in business settings. If you ever get a chance to attend one of his workshops/seminars, I would encourage you to do so.

St. George’s, Lighthouse Pentecostal and Lakeside Baptist churches partnered with Put the Word into Action for various of the seminars, and members of all local churches were invited and encouraged to attend. Although I had been a Christian for many years, Steve took passage after passage of scripture and opened them up to a whole new dimension. For me, it was a life-changing revelation.

The first seminar held at St. George’s (Standing Close to God) emphasized that Jesus did everything required so we can enjoy a relationship with God. He always stands between us and God so that God does not see us as sinful. When I sin, which I will do, it is my responsibility to stand back up, turn to God and receive the forgiveness He offers. This is a new day in my walk with God. We are worthy!

In the next seminar (Walking by Faith), Steve emphasized the fact that faith was given to us by God and only grows as we grow as Christians. How do we grow in faith? By hearing! How do we hear? Through reading the Word! The development of faith is like a newly-developed muscle; at times it will be uncomfortable. God will sometimes lead us into situations beyond our present place of faith, causing us to turn more intensely into the face of God and forcing our faith to grow. Will we stay where we are or will we allow God to lead us forward? The choice is ours!

The third seminar (Running by God’s Strength) spoke to me in two different ways. Firstly, when God created the earth and all that was in it, He gave immense responsibility to humans—similar to when you give someone a gift, you hand over the accountability for the gift to the recipient. Humanity, through choice, relinquished responsibility to the prince of darkness, and so opened the door and allowed evil to come in. So while we sit waiting on God to do something about the state of the world, God waits for US to take our part and do something about it.

Secondly, as we read in John 17:4, Jesus prayed on the mountain before he went to the cross, saying, “Father, I have finished the work that you sent me to do." FINISHED! COMPLETED! There was a work that was finished before he went to the cross. That work was ‘making disciples’ so that what he started here on earth could continue after he opened the other door allowing redemption for humanity.

Each one of us has been equipped and empowered to work as the Lord’s disciples. I asked myself and the congregation, “Before we walk through that door, have we finished the work that He sent us to do?” I challenged the congregation to help raise up the warriors to fight this battle, starting with our children and young people. Although many of us are seniors, we can put new meaning to the word ‘Gray Power’ if we step out of our comfort zone—in faith!

This is the generation where change can begin. It is time to turn the corner! We are working for the Church of Jesus Christ—not the Anglican Church, the Pentecostal Church, the United Church, the Baptist Church, the Community Church or the Catholic Church—although they may be the buildings we meet in. We have to finish the work Jesus sent us to do!

Simply yielding yields the best Kingdom results

I don’t know about you, but the seeming nonsensical simplicity of the Gospel message kept me from believing it for years. And for those of us ‘in the Kingdom’, the simplicity of capital-L Life can be difficult to grasp as well. God makes no promises it will be easy; we still share the planet with an enemy kingdom, after all.

We were designed to work, and work hard, in our own spheres of influence. Yet the work is not ours, it’s God’s, and only as we yield to Him can we effectively be and do what we were created to be and do. The Apostle Paul’s difficult but joyful adventures, misadventures and Kingdom assignments certainly underline that truth.

Kathie Walters, an international speaker who brings freedom to those who feel they have to ‘qualify’, excels at reminding us of simple Kingdom truths.

Simply Believe 
by Kathie Walters  [excerpted from The Story of The Ring: Simply Believe]

I am not at all into "working for Jesus." He doesn't want us to work for him. He wants us to yield to him, and he will work through us. It's much easier that way, and much more effective.

It's all him. 100%. We get to do the yielding – not the trying. Trying can be very trying. His right hand and His Holy arm have gotten the victory. Religious spirits always make us try and do what only God can do.

He (Jesus) is the one who is going to "present [us] faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). He (Jesus) is going to do that. It's his prerogative. Not your prayer partner, not your mom, not your pastor, not your husband or wife. You are his trophy. He is going to present you faultless. He is going to get all the glory because he did all the work.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7). 

Chill Out – Take a Break 

There is no striving and trying and working at it in the Spirit realm. Remember, your first calling is to enjoy God, and then out of that you can serve Him as you are led by the Spirit. It's funny, sometimes we will do anything except simply believe. We fast, pray, and so forth. But when it all comes down to it, it's simply trusting Him to do what He said He would do, "casting ALL your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7).

“For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

The Sword of the Lord and the Rest of the Lord

Biblical accounts of the moment of Christ’s death on the cross tell of a tearing, from top to bottom, of the curtain in the temple isolating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the synagogue. None but the High Priest could enter that most sacred space, and only once a year on Yom Kippur (or the Day of Atonement, the holiest on the Jewish calendar) to make amends for the people’s sins. This tremendous curtain-cleaving event signalled an end to the separation of God from humanity. People now had and have access to God Himself.

So we can now, if we choose, freely access the Kingdom of heaven. The caveat of course is that entry is possible only through the door Christ has flung open, the door he himself is (John 4:16; 10:7). As we do, we can find the proverbial ‘rest for our souls’.

Yet even Christians have trouble with the concept, let alone reality, of rest. What, really, does rest mean? How can we rest when so much needs to be done? When the world around us seems to be falling apart?

A recent book and CD set by Kevin Basconi rends all of this wider open to understanding. In The Sword of the Lord and the Rest of the Lord, Kevin recounts what he calls a parabolic vision he had a few years ago. His dramatic encounter, on the Day of Atonement in 2011, resembles Paul’s being transported to the third heaven in its intensity and revelation.

Kevin describes precisely what he saw, felt, heard and sensed, and then proceeds to provide the interpretation the Lord gave him of the experience. He witnesses, with all his senses, encroaching and terrifying darkness beginning to engulf humanity.

He then sees the Lord flashing his sword, with the words “Rest of the Lord” ornately engraved on it. Kevin discovers the levels of meaning behind, within and beyond those words. He hears the Lord admonish: “Be diligent to enter in to my rest,” as he points the sword to the Heavenly Hosts behind him. “When you learn to enter into my rest, you can enter into the REST of the Lord.”

What he learns about ‘end times’ and ‘the rest of the Lord’ from this experience differ considerably from how the Church has traditionally boxed up those concepts. His matter-of-fact presentation, combined with scriptural support, makes what would otherwise seem a flakey outta-this-world incident completely solid and credible.

Kevin learns and shares with us how yes, ‘rest’ can imply just that: resting from works, as in a Sabbath rest. It can also mean the meditative resting prayer we enter into after praying all the necessary prayers. But he also discovers another interesting aspect: ‘the rest of the Lord’s Body’—those saints who have preceded us to heaven. And so much more!

Here is the acronym for REST the Lord gave Kevin after his experience:

R:   Return to me and cease from your works
E:  Expect me to move and work on your behalf
S:  Stop doing things I did not initiate
T:  Trust me to enable you and empower you to fulfill your destiny and your calling"