The blog is back, the project I was working on is not done, but I have found a routine that will allow it to continue with some blogging on the side, and so without further ado...
The man Moses never forgot where he came from. He was a Hebrew boy, a people of slave people in Egypt. Yet, he was raised in the house of Pharaoh. His mom had spent a good deal of time instilling the Hebrew life in the boy before he was sent to the house of Pharaoh and raised to manhood by a princess. So it was one day the young man riding about in his princely chariot from the house of Pharaoh, saw an abuse happen. An Egyptian was harshly striking one of Moses' people, this could not, would not, stand. So, looking around, and seeing no one who would witness and cause him trouble, the strong young man ended the Egyptian and buried him in the sands. Unfortunately word got out in Egypt and Moses found himself no longer an adopted prince but a man on the run. He ran to Midian. There he found a well, and sat by it. After some time he saw some girls coming to draw water for stock. Other people tried to bully them away from the well but Moses intervened. This made him popular with their father, a religious leader in the area. He eventually took a job working the man's livestock and married one of the girls. He had settled into this new life until one day he was interrupted by a strange fire. The fire was in a bush, and yet the bush was not burning. The voice of God came from the fire and told Moses it was time to go to Egypt again. He resisted vehemently, he pointed out his inadequacies, his inability to speak. The Lord had to deal with him, in conversation and miracles to bring him around. The bold Egyptian killer was gone, and in it's place was a shy farmer. Moses had gone from one extreme of drastic violent action, to another extreme of hiding, and no action. The Lord called him at the appropriate time and gave him the correct approach, a middle strategy, where the Lord did the violent miracles, Aaron did the talking, and Moses listened to God and led the people.
Today, people still tend to flop between 2 extremes of which both tend to be partly good and yet tragically miss the point completely. So let's say you grow up in a very conservative setting. You are taught to dress a certain way, to not drink or smoke or swear. You are taught to work hard and are generally raised to be a good meek fellow, living under the radar and not doing anything wrong. There is a lot of good in such an upbringing, but let's say you have a spiritual awakening, and God reveals himself to you in a fresh way you haven't considered before, so you decide the values you have learned are incomplete. You leave your church and go to another one that has "it together." This church stresses spiritual gifts, like, speaking in tongues. They love to pray aloud in a language (or is it gibberish?) you don't understand, and there seems to be no hope of ever understanding it. They love to talk of 5fold ministry, in fact, they may even have a real apostle right there running the place, your old church wasn't so cool, they had a bishop instead..... ;) Anyway, you have found the "true way", so it is, you settle down and learn a few cool ratatattatblueshebows of your own to pray with. They also believe in people having the gift of healing, and put a lot of emphasis on prayer, and you do to, you also look for that gift of healing in your own hands, that you might lay on people and heal them with. Yet, after some time on the treadmill of new higher ways, you begin to get tired and the lights begin to dim, in fact, you start to have nostalgic memories of your old church, back there people prayed in English, but they did scrutinize your language and clothes a lot, so do you really want to go back though?....hm.
So what was the point of that rant? Well, I am weary of the treadmill, and yes I did make the 2 churches a little ridiculous just to show "texture". I believe the enemy loves to trick us into taking the things and ways of God we learn from reading the Bible and using the things to create a religion. We spend our energies and time trying to do the 5 things or so of God's way that we personally find the most compelling, and as a we do so better, we believe that we have gotten ourselves closer to God somehow, and we feel good. Then we get tired. The answer is to stop the religious charade, be authentic, a friend of God, learn to listen to Him when you pray, start your days asking Him what He is up to. Let his ways stamp themselves on you as a lifestyle; for you are becoming so close to God, you can't keep from acting and smelling like God as a mini me of His. Worship Him, ponder Him, do His things and His ways because they are His, not as a religion you have constructed in your head to get a something or be someone. You focus on God, then you don't have a religion, but God inside. So, if God is enough, stop it with the "religion shopping" already. Oh, and by the way, when someone gets healed, that is God, in His sovereign will and mercy. We do not have anything special in our ways of talking or laying on of hands to heal people. We just do that for it is the natural way to ask God to heal. So don't let another person convince you they have a high gift of healing or anything else that you don't have but could get if you drank of their religious cup or gave money to their ministry.
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