Sorry!
I seem to just about sit down to start typing and all kinds of things start to happen...... phones ring, people stop by, guests check in, or return from being out and want to chat... just constant. The Lord has blessed this transition from 2007 to 2008 in a way that boggles my mind. I have been trying to get after crunching all the numbers to close out the year, but won't begin to touch it till tomorrow. It seems we have been non-stop with virtually every room filled for two weeks. I crashed at 8:00 last night and slept for 10 hours. This morning our last guests checked out. Ellen and I are alone in the house for the first time since December 19th. Kind of a nice feeling.
I am looking forward to the rest of the night with just the two of us alone for an hour, then sleeping in our very own bed again after 2 weeks on the pull out couch in the office :)
I am also looking forward to seeing how we ended up for the year, knowing that the Lord just blew me away with the activity at the end of the year. I think it's going to be much, much better than what I had written about last week.
Anyway, that will be for tomorrow.
I also have been wanting to get back to my further musings on what it means to be born again. I am convinced it is so much more than what has been presented, and so much more important than most of us realize...... especially those of us who have been born again.
If Satan cannot keep people from being born again then for sure he will be working diligently to reduce it to yet another religious system which will canonize it in some way for us to venerate that aspect of truth and tell us that we now have experienced everything we will ever need to know about God, then package it into a neat little belief system to agree with intellectually and he will have accomplished his purpose once again to keep God's people babies forever who never grow up.
He has done that with every religious system since Constantine made his declarations about Christianity and it's been about power, control and money ever since. Satan always distorts truth, takes the emphasis from a relationship with Jesus and makes it instead a bunch of rules, regulations and doctrines. Every system does this. I will say it one more time (you know, just in case no one heard it) :)
.....every religious system does this.
I did it myself with my "perfect church" ..... 10 years later I saw the horror and I repented.
The fact that I have done it means to me that when I say the kind of radical things that I am about to say that it is not being said self-righteously, arrogantly or looking down my nose at any of the systems...... it is simply my heart cry that some will hear what I am saying and start to move on into the fullness of everything that God has for them and not just stay parked at the altar of some revelation, any revelation....... Father has so much more for us.
I'll keep trying to say things that will provoke each of you that has read this far, to ask God about all this..... maybe just maybe it will help each of us to get there.
:)
I am looking forward to the rest of the night with just the two of us alone for an hour, then sleeping in our very own bed again after 2 weeks on the pull out couch in the office :)
I am also looking forward to seeing how we ended up for the year, knowing that the Lord just blew me away with the activity at the end of the year. I think it's going to be much, much better than what I had written about last week.
Anyway, that will be for tomorrow.
I also have been wanting to get back to my further musings on what it means to be born again. I am convinced it is so much more than what has been presented, and so much more important than most of us realize...... especially those of us who have been born again.
If Satan cannot keep people from being born again then for sure he will be working diligently to reduce it to yet another religious system which will canonize it in some way for us to venerate that aspect of truth and tell us that we now have experienced everything we will ever need to know about God, then package it into a neat little belief system to agree with intellectually and he will have accomplished his purpose once again to keep God's people babies forever who never grow up.
He has done that with every religious system since Constantine made his declarations about Christianity and it's been about power, control and money ever since. Satan always distorts truth, takes the emphasis from a relationship with Jesus and makes it instead a bunch of rules, regulations and doctrines. Every system does this. I will say it one more time (you know, just in case no one heard it) :)
.....every religious system does this.
I did it myself with my "perfect church" ..... 10 years later I saw the horror and I repented.
The fact that I have done it means to me that when I say the kind of radical things that I am about to say that it is not being said self-righteously, arrogantly or looking down my nose at any of the systems...... it is simply my heart cry that some will hear what I am saying and start to move on into the fullness of everything that God has for them and not just stay parked at the altar of some revelation, any revelation....... Father has so much more for us.
I'll keep trying to say things that will provoke each of you that has read this far, to ask God about all this..... maybe just maybe it will help each of us to get there.
:)
