"ELEVATION Comes Through OPPOSITION!"

"For exaltation comes neither from the east, nor from the west nor from the south. But God is the Judge: He puts down one and exalts another."

                                                                             (Pslams 75:6-7)

One thing I love about exercise and physical fitness is manipulating my body to do what it doesn't want to do. Actually, it's not my body at all; it is my mind that doesn't want to do certain things. My body does not have the ability to do things on its own. If I decided (in my mind) to stay in bed instead of going to the gym, then my body would just lay there and enjoy the comfort of my bed. The downside, however, is that I would not benefit from the exercise I missed by being lazy!

So I make the decision to go to the gym and place the weights on the bar, plug in my "Beats" headphones pumpin' Marley, lay back on the bench, take a few deep breaths and go to work! After a few reps, I feel the "burn" in my arms and chest, the weight get heavier and heavier with each rep. This is called "resistance" and, although it hurts like the hell, it is good for you! With each set, I get more and more fatigued, and the thought of quitting starts to trickle into my mind. Should I lessen the weight? Should I move on to another machine? I must remember what I came here for; I came here to live.

The thing I learned a long time ago is that "comparison" will kill you! I'm not talking about competing; I'm talking about comparison. I used to get sucked in to how much the guy next to me was lifting; I used to see people get hurt trying to out do one another. I saw people develop a lot of bad habits and have major breakdowns in form and technique. Ultimately, I saw many people, including myself, begin to cheat and lie about how many reps I did or how much I lifted. These were significant breaches in integrity. I had forgotten why I was coming here. I had come here to live.

Just like exercise and resistance training; when it comes to the things of God you have to know and understand that the mind can manipulate the body to do good or evil. The mind can send you into the abyss through submission to the kingdom of darkness or elevate you through opposition to the workers of iniquity. The Lord God will beckon you to, "Come on up a little higher!" He will place His "kabod" (glory, weightiness) upon you to test you and send you through the fire so that you will come out a pure gold. Can you hear Him by FAITH?

At the end of the day, all Believers who are "fit" for the Kingdom must remember why they accepted the invitation to come to into His Presence; as for me, I came here to live! Selah...

"The Ministry of PERSECUTION!"

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

                                                                                      (1 Peter 5:8)

The Ministry of Persecution [MP] ("personal execution") is exemplified by the dying to oneself and the ruthless pursuit of fleshly desires. It encompasses the anatomy of death rooted and grounded in the person of Christ Jesus.

The MP represents the cutting away of strongholds. The "cutting" is a type and shadow of the the Covenant Believers have with God. Persecution [P] brings the Believer in right relationship with the Father. P is adversity; the thing we have most in common with Jesus that we seldom discuss.

In the midst of P, it is not important to defend yourself; it is more important to defend the God in you by resisting the evil that comes upon you. The goal of the Believer is "spiritual integrity" with regard to sacrificing self as Jesus did for us. The destruction of His flesh allowed us to see His mortality (His ability and willingness to die), void of His works which did not save Him. But what did save Him was His obedience to death. 

Likewise, we are empowered the same as Christ. Every Believer must take the same path. Persecution is a ministry and it is necessary; but most importantly, it is unavoidable! It is not how many times you suffer, or how long you suffer, the details are irrelevant, the character of the perpetrator against you is not a factor and your life and present economic status is a non-issue. 

All that matters is your posture (your vertical relationship with the Lord God and and your horizontal relationship with the Body of Christ) and your "spiritual compass" (the Holy Spirit) that helps navigate you through the deep waters of divine revelation. Selah...

"The VANITY of PHILOSOPHERS!"

           "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power."
                                                                            
                                                                       (Colossians 2:8-10)

The Apostle Paul offers all Believers a stern warning that putting your trust in vain philosophers will cause you to be cheated and deceived.

Socrates, Aristotle and Hippocrates are all considered great philosophers. Much of the Greek culture and their various writings, debates and public demonstrations have influenced, captivated and infiltrated the American institutional church in the form of pagan rituals and traditions that have bastardized the priesthood legacy born out of the life of Christ Jesus.

These men were, in essence, paid entertainers who traveled from house to house, village to village and city square to city square telling stories in attempts to provoke thought, persuade influence and sway public opinion. This term has been defined as rhetoric. The basis of the arguments did not merit truth as much as it invoked passionate exchanges between the participants. At the end of the day, the winner would be rewarded with cash, gifts and, most importantly, an enhanced reputation for being a great rhetorician.

The calamity in this paradigm is that man has wrestled the alpha position away from God for vainglory. Mankind has allowed intellect to overtake wisdom and pride to circumvent reverence and fear of the Lord. It always amazes me that Christians are shocked that Lucifer desired the "place of God" in the spiritual hierarchy of the ethos. Why are we shocked? We are doing exactly the same thing as the devil in the earth realm today.

God gave us the highest ranking position in the earth realm; dominion over ALL CREATION! He gave us free will; the right to choose whether or not we would worship and praise Him (even after He created us from nothing)! The shocking thing to me is that so few Christians really BELIEVE HIM and LOVE HIM and HONOR HIM and WORSHIP HIM and SERVE HIM. The sad reality is that the majority of Christians will ever really get to know Him in true fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

The vanity of philosophers is that they are in essence criminals. They are hijackers, murderers and thieves. They have corrupted the Body of Christ and done irreparable damage to the institutional church; and the truly unforgivable thing is that they have done it all...

In the Name of Jesus! Selah....

"The Anatomy of a PRAYER WARRIOR!"

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for Christ Jesus in you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not depise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil."

                                                                (1 Thessalonians 5:16-22)

Prayer, is perhaps the most talked about subject in Christendom, but surely the most enigmatic. Simply put, prayer is misunderstood. For generations, prayer has been taught as a one dimensional act; but it is anything but that. Prayer is a multi-dimensional, cross pollenation of the physical and spiritual attributes of the Believer. In short, you can pray in the Spirit, then walk out the prayer (or action) in real time by faith in the natural realm by getting up and doing something. You see, faith is a verb; it is an action word!

The authentic Prayer Warrior (PW) confronts the demons face to face in the Spirit calling them out by name and exposing them to their brothers and sisters in the faith who are under attack by every form of evil. When you counsel a group of young people about the dangers of unprotected sex, drugs and pornography, you are engaging in spiritual warfare. These demons are real and they have names (Satan, Lucifer, Leviathan, Asmodeus, Belphegor, Beelzebub and Mammon). These are the names of the demons associated with the Seven Deadly Sins. The true PW knows who these demons are because he/she has been trained by the Holy Spirit who knows all things.

PW's enter into the Presence of God, receive their instructions and then exit the spirit realm and go into the marketplace to carry out their assignments. The days of sitting holed up in the corner of a room moaning and groaning for hours are gone because the demons we are fighting ain't sittin' in their Grandma's closet rubbin' her Bible and asking Jesus to fix it!

So to, these are the blessings of the PW: 

• He knows who the enemy is; it is not a person, it is a spirit;
• He knows how to prepare for war (in the Presence of the Lord God);
• He is always in attack mode; advancing toward the enemy (never retreating) by putting on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20);
• He must protect his mind; He believes God and is fully persuaded;
• He is willing to sacrifice his body for the Body of Christ.

Fellow Believers, we are at war; make no mistake about it. The casualities of this spiritual war are all around us. In every quarter, we see the hearbeat, loss and despair of thousands of God's people. But do not despair, I have good news! We serve a Risen Savior and HIs Name is Jesus. He is the King of Glory and the devil is a defeated foe...he has already lost!

In the end, WE WIN! selah...