Julian Adams Weekend

Next weekend we have the privilege of receiving the ministry of Julian Adams into the life of Life Changers. A friend, a worshiper and strong prophetic voice, Julian manifests a theology and lifestyle of what a true son looks like. A ministry marked by prophetic accuracy and signs and wonders, this promises to be an inspiring, equipping and life-giving time as we prioritize the presence of God, His voice and in celebrating His faithfulness in giving us gifts. We are expectant and we recognize Julian as an Ephesians 4 type Prophet, but how can you best prepare your heart preceding the weekend and as well as during his visit in order to fully receive "a prophet's reward"?

1. Come with a faith-filled open heart, recognizing the office of a prophet which is more than a gift of prophecy we can all operate in.

2. Celebrate the corporate prophetic word for the church and do your part to see it fulfilled.

3. Rejoice with those who may receive personal words. If your heart leaps and witnesses with that word by faith, receive it for yourself.

4. Open your heart and mind to an impartation of the mantel Julian the prophet has so you can begin to walk in more of your prophetic gift, that is within each believer.

 

 

Matthew 10:41: “He who receives a prophet in {the} name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.”

 

 

IMMERSED part two

 

Last weekend saw us preach our second installment in our new series "IMMERSED", where we are exploring the fundamental doctrines of baptism that we find in scripture. Week one saw us inviting our church to wade deeper into the depths of real community life as we unpacked what it meant to be immersed into the body of Christ. In week two we painted a compelling and strong case why baptism by full immersion in water is so vitally important for us individually, corporately and for the world, so much so that we abandon the previously held religious connotations and mindsets that come with it and rather embrace the life changing power of obedience that leaps from faith.

The response to the Word of God being preached uncompromisingly was staggering. Multiple first time commitments to Christ in both meetings, mothers who attended the morning going home and bringing the rest of her family in the evening (and the family responding to the Gospel) and a queue of people signing up to publicly declare their fully immersed faith by being baptized this coming Sunday.

 It was a humdinger of a day!

And so tomorrow our journey continues as we seek to dive in deeper into the wild adventure of faith that we have been called to. Our church floor will be soaked no doubt, but our prayer is that that won't be the only thing completely drenched. The thing our city needs most is not more dry religion. It needs wet, wild and alive Sons and Daughters who have fully leapt into the ocean of adventure, forsaking the safety of the shallow-end, and pushed out into being immersed in the pursuit of Christ, community and the mission.

A "tear the roof off" kind of faith

 

Yesterday was a good day.

Waking up several times through the early hours of Sunday to give attention to the very loud manifestations of my illness, I eventually decided to give up on any last vestiges of sleep and begin preparing myself for a day of preaching.
 
Smart shirt- check. Hair combed- check. Bible and notes in hand- check.  

Those were the easy things. The hard part was battling bouts of extreme nausea (which necessitated in several “pitstops” along Sunningdale Drive on the way to church), a cough that could wake the dead, as well as the creeping sense of fear and unbelief that I was in no way in the right frame of mind (or health) to be preaching on “A tear the roof off kind of faith” that morning. But the longer I get to walk with God, the more I’m realising the less and less it has anything to do with me. Elementary I know, but God sometimes has to get us to our end so that we can begin to allow him to do only what he can do. Faith is learning how to live by his faithfulness.

 

Someone we can take a few pointers from is Abraham, the father of faith. Way past the age of having children, Abraham and his wife Sarah are given a promise from God that they will have a son. But just like us, the enemies of faith often are given a louder voice of prominence in our lives than the call of abandoning our own resources (or lack of resources) and fully trusting what he has said. Here are the top 3 robbers of faith that we can pick out from Abraham’s journey and take heed of in ours:

 

-Circumstances (either too good or too bad...relying on our 5 senses alone)

*Faith is not a denial of the facts, it’s the acknowledgement of THE fact! In God’s economy, faith trumps reason everytime!

Abraham was told by God to go claim the land of Canaan, but he finds it drought stricken and in famine so he runs to Egypt where to save his own skin he lies about his wife to the Pharaoh there

-Compromise

*the root of all compromise is found in an underlying disbelief that God is good

Abraham promised many children, but at age 85 Abraham stops trusting God and takes matters into his own hands and sleeps with his female servant Hagar

-Critical Spirit

*whether at God or at others, very dangerous as it’s a sin of idolatory. It’s putting my reasoning above God’s by saying, “I will be God unto myself.”

At age 99 Abraham laughs in God’s face when God confirms the original promise (Sarah pregnant at 90?)

a moment's ease at the expense of a miserable eternity!

After spending a weekend coughing and spluttering, running a high fever and becoming very familiar with how many steps it is from my bed to the bathroom (eight, if anyone else is counting), it was very tempting to become very sorry for myself, close the curtains tight and refuse to emerge till God took me home in the rapture.

But after refusing to yield to the soft option, I coughed and spluttered my way through a healthy diet of Puritan theology, large passages of Job and of course a dose of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

To quote Esau, the biblical king of hyperbole, “I was about to die!” and so I turned to the comfort of those who have gone before (in both senses of the phrase) and find solace from the similar hardships that they had to endure.

 Here are just three examples that caught my attention:

1. Peter, a young man, (who lived in AD 249 under the reign of Decius) amiable for the superior qualities of his body and mind, was beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to Venus. He said,

"I am astonished you should sacrifice to an infamous woman, whose debaucheries even your own historians record, and whose life consisted of such actions as your laws would punish. No, I shall offer the true God the acceptable sacrifice of praises and prayers."

Optimus, the proconsul of Asia, on hearing this, ordered the prisoner to be stretched upon a wheel, by which all his bones were broken, and then he was sent to be beheaded.

2. Chrysostom, was seized upon for being a Christian. He was put into a leather bag, together with a number of serpents and scorpions, and in that condition thrown into the sea.

 

3. Denisa, a young woman of only sixteen years of age, who beheld this terrible judgment, suddenly exclaimed,

"O unhappy wretch, why would you buy a moment's ease at the expense of a miserable eternity!"

 Optimus, hearing this, called to her, and Denisa avowing herself to be a Christian, she was beheaded, by his order, soon after.

 

 

After reading these and other accounts of Hebrew 11 type heroes of the faith, even in my sickly state I felt ashamed at how quickly I can lose sight of the joy set before me. Weak and momentary afflictions when not measured against things of eternal value and pleasure can very quickly consume and devour us as we become "martyrs" at our own hand.

 

How often in the majority of christian circles, our "joy" just tracks our circumstances?

 

O God, give me eyes that see past the temporal and to our Man in glory, Jesus! Scarred but not defeated in the slightest. My home is with Him in eternity!

A normal day

Another defining moment during my three year stint at the Durban university was on a normal day when a friend and I felt strangely emboldened and went on a mini healing crusade during one of our seemingly endless free periods. Anyone that looked remotely sick or of a fragile disposition was moved in on at a rapid pace. After a few colds and headaches that were swiftly dealt with, as well as a slightly bemused guy’s broken leg healing in front of our eyes, our courageous faith mission for the day became an unstoppable Gospel agenda in our hearts as we became almost rabid to see the ill healed! What happened next though (as if the preceding miracles weren’t impressive enough) was something that I have held onto as a lifechanging moment ever since.

We had found ourselves by the Student Union buildings when a young gentleman approached us and asked if we were the guys praying for the sick people. We looked at each other excitedly as we realised that the word had spread. After affirming that what he said was true, he beckoned us to follow him up several flights of stairs, down a corridor and into the very heart of that particular building. Without another word spoken, he stopped outside a closed door, took off his shoes and motioned us to do the same. In a similar fashion, we removed our footwear and followed him into the dimly lit room. As our eyes adjusted to the light (or lack there of),  I became aware of several hindu students kneeling in corners, muttering almost silent prayers while desperately clasping beads of some sorts. Amongst them were golden statues, posters adorned with sacred mantras, and smouldering incense sticks. Unwittingly (for us) we had stumbled into the Bhakti Yoga Society’s head quarters! This was the mother load!

Our pied piper who had lead us thus far, spoke up for the first time since our first exchange outside. “This girl is anaemic. It’s bad. Can you pray?” The girl in question looked up nervously. In normal circumstances, a situation like this would be somewhat nerve-wracking for me. This was no Sunday morning church meeting where a Christian had come up to the front for prayer. Here we had walked straight into the enemy’s camp and by any casual observer we looked like fish out of water. But as I said, this day seemed different. It just didn’t feel like a normal day.

Not waiting for my logic or rationale to catch up, I looked at this young girl and asked her two questions. Did she want to be healed and was she alright for me to ask Jesus for that healing? She nodded in agreement to both. We laid our hands on her and prayed very simple prayers that I can’t even remember. I wasn’t even too sure what the full implications of being anaemic meant! But what I did know for sure was that my God was good. Maybe a bit iffy on what the disease was, a tad so-so on what to pray, but I was pretty confident in His willingness and ability to show His kindness!

Nervously, we opened our eyes. She opened hers. And down the tears rolled over her face and onto the floor. To this day I won’t forget her words, “What power is in your hands to make me feel this way?” As we preceded to explain that it was not us but the love of a Father who was desperate for her, I realised that this was not a place to fear. This was very rightly a holy place.

After we left the room, put our shoes back on and walked bemused back into the sunshine outside, my friend casually asked me if I knew what I had been doing while I had been praying with my eyes tightly shut. I answered in the negative. “Bud, you had your whole weight leaning on a statue of a hindu God!”

This was by no means a normal day.

Or maybe, just maybe, this             is                 what             normal            really           looks            like.

Sink or Swim

University was an incredible experience for me. Doing only subjects and courses that I wanted to do, "intellectual" conversations with intellectual looking people, skipping lectures to enjoy the new found freedom post school days, the best rhoti's and bunny chows in the varsity gardens, as well as learning the "if you get 51% you're working too hard rule".
But besides all the many happy memories, the thing I loved the most about my 3 year varsity stint was really seeing my faith in Christ fleshed out more and more. Out of all sheltered christian environments, it really was sink or swim time as I came face to face with a tertiary experience that so often separates the proverbial men from the boys in this regards. But swim I did, as a few friends and I decided that we were not merely positioned at university to get a degree that would someday be hung on our various office walls but our presence there for 3 years (others quite a bit longer) was to love on people and to make His name famous.

Over the next few blogs, I'm going to retell some of the best stories of how God pitched up and demonstrated His power and goodness over and over again throughout those years. We were a bunch of wild young people who maybe were foolish enough to believe God when He said that nothing was impossible for Him.

As I take the luxury of walking down memory lane for a few blogs, my prayer is that my heart and yours would both be stirred to trust God more and more for the miraculous where-ever He has positioned us to be.

Acts.17:26-27
"26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us"

FAITH THAT WORKS (part one)

Too often, our Christian lives have been defined exclusively from a perspective of what once was and what currently is in our lives. The life of faith that Christ is calling us to though is one that celebrates the past (What God has done), that steps out in the here and now (recognizing what God is doing) but also believes God for the greater things yet to come! (responding to who God is!)

Faith is less something we have to have and is more a response to the revelation of God’s character! He is faithful! We have been called to have faith in the faithful One who has rescued us from sin and death, who is loving, changing and shaping us but who is also inviting us to partner with Him in establishing what is yet to come!

 Two phrases that I believe are helpful in us coming to grips with this life of faith we are called to are below.

IT IS MORE IMPORTANT WHAT GOD HAS SAVED US INTO THAN WHAT GOD HAS SAVED US OUT OF!

-The incredible account found in Exodus of the miraculous rescue of the Israelite people out of slavery and Egypt (what with plagues, a reluctant Pharoah, the angel of death and an entire sea parting as if mere curtains being drawn back to name just a small portion of it) is only just the beginning of what God had intended for His chosen people. God rescued them OUT OF Egypt and then took them on a journey INTO the Promise Land and the very same is for us!

IT’S LESS A QUESTION OF WHAT GOD HAS SAVED ME FROM AND MORE OF WHAT GOD HAS SAVED ME FOR!

-We are not merely just sinners saved by grace but we have now been called sons and daughters! Slaves can never dream much further than the end of the day, possibly the end of the week. But it is sons and daughters who are given the privilege and provision to dream as widely and as far into the future as possible. And that is what we have been called for! Not merely just to survive the world, but to change it! The life of faith is one concerned with the unseen and not yet realities, and believing God for them.

What is your vision of your future? Is it one where you are still battling with the same old sin, the same sickness, a similar financial situation, a still unresolved relational tension, an unchanged level of influence? Faith is allowing the God of the impossible to take our pasts and our present realities, and letting Him shape them into a glorious future.

Faith is calling out to us today to say boldly and believe without fear that, “I’M JUST GETTING STARTED!”

Grow...Part Two

David Hogan, an edgy, gunslinger-type minister in the jungles of Mexico, has been used to raise more than 20 people from the dead while his apostolic network of ministers has raised upwards of 300 dead bodies! A man who walks in incredible supernatural activity almost daily, Hogan once went to speak at a meeting in a very affluent metropolitan area. Honest and to the point, Hogan called the audience a bunch of spoiled brats and stated that the main reason that people do not see many extreme power encounters, is because they fail to go! "You, in your selfish bubble, avoid the poor, the sick and the lost".

God's power is linked to his heart, and his heart is a going one.

2. TO GROW IS TO GO

In Philemon.6 it says, "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ"

*Going increases our revelation of God

If you feel you have been praying the same prayers in prayer meetings for quite a while, and if you've been sharing the same old story of what God did in your life for the last five years, it's time to step out the box! God is so gracious in that he often works in this way: We see something of him and are wowed...we share what we have seen to someone else...and through it God reveals more to us and the process is started again!

*Going increases our sphere of influence

"Enlarge the place of YOUR tent"

Since the beginning, God has given man authority to take dominion. This has not changed! You determine the place of your tent. You can sit comfortably where you have been for the last however long or you can take a step of faith outside of your current influential circle and see the boundary lines lift and move. Whether it is stopping by the office across from yours, or crossing the street to engage with the beggar there, or signing up for the street clean up initiative, or saving to go on a short term missions trip to another nation, just do something!

*Going increases the activity of God

How often we cry out for God to send his power and to pour out his Spirit, but I believe that God is more than willing to give us everything we need and more, but he first asks, "What do you need it for?" God is not moved by need, he is moved by faith. When we move our small feet even in what may seem a miniscule step of faith, God cannot help but be moved to release the power neccesary for the task.

This year, God is untying our feet and is empowering us to step out in authority and faith. After that, growth is an inevitable byproduct.