Acts 3:24, 25

24 “And likewise, ^aall the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days.

25 “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God ¹made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed^c

 New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ac 3:24–25). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Let’s take a moment to be honest shall we?   It might be refreshing in these days of electioneering that we find ourselves in, whether in recent days of USA or in the coming times of South Africa and at least in the UK, the immediate political landscape is one of spin.  Being British, I can say, I’m not sure if any of us are any clearer today than when we first heard the election machine or Brexit busses cranking their motors.    All the noise indicates that the UK is quite well divided hearing different thoughts in different parts of the country, voices saying, “I can never vote for that, but I don’t like the thought of that other, Party leaders divided which can be quite normal but a little worse presently.    I hear well the current PM will not be there for long after 29 March as a Prime Minister,??? or “I like the policies but I don’t like the personalities”, “I believe in empowering the have-nots but I don’t trust him or her”.

Honesty, honest to oneself it must begin here, this means we have to deal with common statements that so easily roll off our tongues and be honest to discover what we really mean.  Here is one example of common statements  made, to be honest I can not recall when we first heard a message on a “time of transition”, it seems to be a popular theme constantly. Covering individual and corporate experiences.

It seems as if there has hardly been a year, since I don’t know when, when a message or repeated theme has not been about Transition, changing seasons, overlapping eras, paradigms shifts, Reformation etc.   Why is it, every year we feel as if we have entered into a time of transition, without playing semantics I think a better summation of what has been taking place, would be to say, we are caught up in a purpose that is constantly changing, constantly advancing through this change and therefore we feel we are constantly in transition.

Firstly I guess we need to settle what we mean by transition.   Let me put a peg in the ground suggesting transition to mean moving from one fixed state of existence to another.    However I hope, I trust, I believe we will experience something better.     You and I are involved in the progressive emergence of God’s kingdom in life and empowerment, progressing towards maturity, to the maturity of God’s people, this is our transition.

Our world is full of one-line clichés, one-line statements, wisdom abounding everywhere, one of these clichés you often see on posters  says ‘if you only do things the way you’ve always done, then you only get what you’ve always got“.  I would put to you that maturity, progressing to the fullness of Christ, is only possible if we escape fossilisation of the religious status quo.   Only if we cease doing the things in the usual way, doing it different or at least contemplating different ways of doing it again.    It really is a time to behold and step aside of the influence of society, of structures, of systems telling us verbally or emotionally the way we MUST do this, it is the way its always been done and will always be.

The transition to maturity is calling out once again for a prophetic wind, prophets, people declaring and prophesying with inspiring words discovering again passionate, purposeful prophets individually and corporately.   It is time once again to see women and men who in everything in their lives are passionate, lives lived with passion. People who, in what they hate, they hate absolutely and in what they love, they love totally being totally abandoned.    Moving from individuals to a corporate people, a corporate prophet who clearly are the characteristic of a prophet people, making know the mind, will and aim of God in our hour to creation.    A church that knows no half measure, a sharp cutting edge in their lives and conviction in their voice, men and women deeply moved by the Spirit of God…. Passion 

Let us take time to train a people to expose their life in God, a life  that is aflame with the Holy Spirit , the Holy Spirit who recognises passionate people. A life aflame with the will of YHWH, people passionately given to the higher agenda of YHWH rather than our immediate structures.   When we hear each other talk we hear the heart burning as the mouth speaks, women and men believing what they are saying as people carried along by the word of God. 

Before you challenge me, I do agree that passion by itself is no guarantee of truth, but truth without passion!  Lord help us, ‘the letter kills, it is the spirit that gives life’.

Samuel and his successors were at the forefront of God’s purpose in his time and brought the people, the nation, the burning message of God. They spoke to kings and rulers, who in turn put pressure on to change the tone and change the message to change their declaration prophesying. These were first and foremost servants of God and despite all the religious and political correctness of the day remained such.     

We live in a day when political electioneering has lost its anchor, as politicians seek to discover through opinion polls, what the people want them to say, we have lost faith in opinion polls following the Brexit vote. Politicians on occasions, are willing to change their emphasis according to the lead of the opinion polls. The church should be different not making advance on popularity but coming to know its purpose, should find the heart of God and speak Gods word loudly and clearly, we should stop being politicians but be prophets.   Purées i mean the unchanging purpose of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Let us never be people who measure ourselves by people’s response to a word.  Women and men will know they have been the voice and heart of God in their moment their time. The passionate, the prophets, the church to deliver what we know is the word of God.   In a declining spiritual and moral value base there was a small beginning. A child, one of little influence, a child in the world of men how frequently this has been God’s way.

Was it not a little slave girl who brought a word of cleansing to Namaan, that could have so easily been missed? A child in the world of adults?  The vehicle of deliverance could easily have been dismissed and missed as it did not fit the royal courts of the day!

Humanity likes to launch itself when everything is full-blown, when every finishing touch has been put on all things before we cut the tape and declare it open. It seems to be not so in God’s plan, God plants seeds.     God will take a woman, a teenager and impregnate her with a seed that then brings God’s voice to a world that is needed. God never fears the pressures of time because purpose is always on task.

Samuel stood in the overlapping timeframe of a corrupt priesthood and its growth along with the developing of a young hearted righteousness. Samuel was to bring his life and voice to make his mark and play out Gods part.   The fulfilling of a mother asking for a son and a God needing a prophet – Heaven and Earth meet with purpose.   You see purpose a Divine purpose makes one creation and Creator. 

Here we are again with something small coming to purpose, we have arrived in an era when the small is threatened by death, mocked at, laughed at criticised, prophesied against, pushed into a corner according to the success of our day. Today a Godly people in whom a vision of relationship and understanding of relationship and its cost, in whom a commitment to the order of God – Kingdom is vigorously captured in pursuing becoming the spoken word of the day. Stay believing holding on to the prophets promises of a restored world, the earth shall be filled with the glory of God.

The story of Samuel is interesting as it does not begin with the call of the young child while lying near the altar, but the voice, the change in the situation is as a result of a woman in anguish of soul, asking for a child.

I wonder if you put the two things together a woman who desperately wants a child and a nation, a world that needs a living expression, needs corporate prophet.

One of the jewels in this story that will marry the heart of the woman and the heart of God together is one that will say it ‘if I get what I’m crying for I’ll give it wholeheartedly to the Lord’. My need I will give wholeheartedly to God when It arrives all that I received is for God’s higher interest. I won’t run away with my little baby son, my child but he will be yours lord.

Can we become a passionate people who are calling on God for their nation, and this world along with creation?   if so we must become a people who will not tolerate anything less than that we are calling for in our homes and in our lives as in the nation. 

The story of Samuel speaks so loudly of God’s commitment to the covenants of history, we become those with an understanding to the continuity that is in Gods heart.

We conclude in saying this: firstly, God will never allow the spiritual state of God’s people to deteriorate to the point where everything former, testimony and commitment to God’s purpose is lost. God has heard the cry of all those that have gone before us and God’s purpose as their passionate high purpose.

Secondly we must remind ourselves of the covenants of old and the continuity of the line of God’s will, that this purpose of God moves successively through generation and ages to accomplish itself there is a continuity.

Lastly every generation must serve God in the freshness of its own word and vision, this is what makes us authentic, it is not that we are different from everything that is being or everything that is around us, but we are continuing the purpose of God, the purpose that others formally embraced, that which they along with us are building on and not turning against.    As I read the scriptures it seems to suggest that it is pride itself that makes us  build on our independent foundation, we are to build the foundation has already been laid.

Let us be a passionate people…

The modern church organisation?   I wonder if you, like I, over the years found unanswered fundamental questions relating to the things of God.    I am sure if you’r honest you have unanswered questions, on one hand we are meant to, as there is the Mystery of God, this really needs to be grasped in the people of God.   Rather than trying and giving explanation and reason of everything, when we are not meant to,  the community of Christ the ecclesia is meant to live at home in mystery as well as understanding.

Anyway to my point, and my question.   When we hear of God moving in a place or though an individual, it poses a question, is God that specific really.   I can see some already defining their so called ‘anointing’ yet anointing is a person, the Christ, is it not?   Christ is the anointed one then we remain in the anointing of Christ rather than ‘My Anointing?”.    We do move with the dynamic of the Holy Spirit and anointing flows but is it really ‘mine’?     Better its the Christ manifesting through the body rather than mine, as that sounds like ownership to be honest.   When Christ moves anointing radically transforms, heals, creates.

Question: does God only move in one place, one ‘church’, one ministry, one building when many people, ministries, places declare the love of God?    Or could there be something else at work here?   Of course we say God moves but we live and see church growth through conferencing initiatives only in one place, outpourings in one place and no one in the vicinity even knows this so called outpouring is happening or no other community of Christ sees any growth or adding or miracle.   Often we see decline in attendance in settings that support such ‘moves’, if we are honest.   I cannot fathom this.    it is as if God is partial?   I know God is not.

Ok let me add another thought before we return to the above.   In our modern western world we live with marketing as if it is a necessary part of life, it is so much part of our daily hours existence.   The McDonalds’ the NIKE’s of our world dominate our views and way of life, we make life style choices through marketing.   it has even been suggested that the Roman Catholic church was the McDonalds of its day.   In the mid 16 century although the ‘spiritual’ capital the Vatican had already become branded, there was a property on ever street corner in Europe and every one baptised in the faith, a one brand market.   Indulgences had grown out of scale, by buying one you could get to heaven.   Then came change with Martin Luther, the Gutenberg print press and the bible.   My point is marketing had already invaded its in the church of the day and employed for advance, but doe sit carry authentic imparted life?

why do i outline this, well back to my question if God is not partial when God makes God known do we really think that God will grow a place, a venue and not effect the people and places around, God is not that specific, even when the disciples were in the upper room they spilled out to the street and the courts not so specific that only the upper room affected but hit the people all around.  

When God comes every community, ever denomination will be impacted around, God is not using a 22 to hit a fine target but more takes a buck shot and scatters all around.

If we only see a fine hit perhaps it is the age only story of good marketing, using media and the like to tap into peoples hunger.   Admittedly some people meet God and there is always benefit for some but when God truly comes all around feels the impact not just a person, or a ministry, God does it all.   The nature of the Kingdom is expansive, outward flow God will not retain the move in a gold fish bowl but truly with God it is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and utter most parts.

God fills, overflows, splashes never gives to the brim but overflows, causes RIVERS out of your belly, overflow, God is not such a narrow target aim but a blessing to all, freely gives?

H

We are in a day when we are overwhelmed with so many purposes, every church and organisation must have their vision, its’ goal, yet I see little purpose upheld.    This purpose is an eternal one, one that YHWH poured out self to bring to pass, creation was Father, Son and Holy Spirit pouring is a self-self-emptying to bring about, its the nature of God to self-empty continues, of course self-self-emptying but never depleted. The purpose that calls, the initial cry of ‘light be and light was’.     YHWH had a purpose that you and I are invited to participate with, to be hands-on involved.

Purpose invites our passion, calls on us to pour ourselves out unreservedly which means it has its challenges. We can get distracted, disappointed and ever so busy, yet there is a purpose of the divine that you and I are invited to.  Howard Snyder wrote a book, the title was ‘Salvation means creation healed’, which puts some perspective on God’s great grand purpose that you and I have been invited to be fully engaged and fully involved with.

I want to assist you in maintaining your energy, your seeing, the freshness of your revelation and the sharpness of your passion towards the purpose of God.     

As we journey on the roadways of our countries today, you and I are blessed in not only having navigation units built into our cars but thank God for the old signposts that keep on coming up that encourages us to keep going in the right direction.   We can trust the navigation direction but the encouragement is as we see ourselves advancing towards our destination. Signs assist this as well, but will only encourage action, they are assistance in the conditions, the terrain we meet as we Go forward on our roadway. When was the last time you saw or more likely heard  a navigational device  saying “beware ducks crossing”, or “warning lambing season’.    I’ve never heard that. Small signs with major implications of the local terrain and local conditions  are so important. They can avoid distractions and time consuming challenges.

All of us need warning signs flashing ‘BEWARE’.    Here are some to consider to keep purpose moving in our lives.

Beware of weariness – Scripture says don’t get weary, time and time again we read the narrative of men and women who got tired, Elijah running from Jezebel or the time the servants of God hid in caves for respite, beware of weariness.

Weariness is much deeper than physical, it’s that which creeps into the soul,  tiredness does not want to get up all over again, when hassle comes you don’t want to get up and start again.   So much reaction, God I’m just going to leave it here.

Beware of Flattery – a pat on the back, those that flatter you when you deliver your content, powerful word and yet don’t change by it. Let me pose this thought, flattery comes from a person that is committed to no change. It just wants you to feel good about accepting people in their unchanged state, beware of flattery.

Beware of compromise – when you have the purpose of God, when you have what God is sees, then you consider perhaps I’m asking too much too soon, people around you warn you not to indulge too much, perhaps you should tone it down a little, by the time they have finished the sensible advise you end up with just your vision is so small that you might need a microscope to find it, don’t compromise

Beware of riding your gift – all the challenge of being articulate, being under the unction of the Holy Spirit, a powerful move, careful it can be very easy to lose your dependence on God when you’re riding your gift

Beware of hypocrisy – Jesus said to his own beware the leaven of not walking and trying to live as you’r seeing.

Beware of… just a shortlist of keeping wrong companions, of influences that get under your skin, time to come to your senses and be true to what you have been been made to stand for,  stay away from companions that undercut or undermine with nice words, always positive but not helping. Beware of trying to prove your ministry Samuel was one but as you are told in 1 Samuel 3:19-20  he grew and the Lord was with him leaving none of his words fall to the ground. Did you hear that the confirmation of his ministry, of who he was.   Ministry being living life, not title or performance by living life passionately to the full and God confirmed by upholding every word. You have nothing to prove, let God do the proving and take every word you utter. You don’t need anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=401&v=7QpCrL-sBiQ

AWinston Churchill, one of the greatest leaders in British history, is reputed to have said, ‘Success is not final,  failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts’

That one statement changes the way we think and achieve success, I would suggest it is certainly not what we have been lead to believe it to be.     The success we have in our world is a win/lose scenario, to succeed some one has to loose or put it another way some one comes out on top and someone is below them.   Which ever way we look at it success come at the cost of someone else, winning means some one looses.   How can that define our world, if we are  a corporate body as one, we all are affected are we not to laugh together to weep together and carry each other.   What ever part of the body is affected it also affects you, so success is not just down to my world and situation, any way before i get ahead of myself, let me write a little more.

As a child and teenager we used climb the mountains around where I lived.  Our valley was probably only about half a mile across at its base, it had a wide river that flowed down through it that formed a ‘Cwm’,  the valley, the mountains rose high on either side.  We used to climb up on Saturday mornings and attempt to get to the top.   Halfway up on one side was a reservoir where we would take a break and skinny dip. This of course was the last thing I wanted my own children to do, because of its dangers, time moves on. One of the things I always recall was,  we often  thought we had arrived at the pinnacle of the mountain only to rise over the brow to find yet another mountain, hill to scale to get to the top.   The success of arriving at the top as we saw it, was only to realise that it was not the final apex but another mountaintop stood before us to conquer again.

As we grow and mature in our Christian walk it is only then we discover that the failure in our own lives and the lives of others in corporate life of the church is never fatal. But God’s ways and plans are always above them all. God is not looking for successful people but he is looking for humility and willingness to learn, the willingness to continue whatever.    Romans 15:13 says “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”, now all this hope, joy, peace laid out by the writer is there after being proceeded in verse 12 with a promise spoken from Isaiah (11:10) of the coming promise of hope in a person, in other words the God of hope, filling and abounding in staying true to the promise, in holding on, in getting up to the top of the mountain.   Not giving up being confronted with another climb when you though it was all completed.   Another hill, another brow, stay in, stay true keep the promise mountain before you and climb again.   

A willingness to go again to the top, even when you thought it was to difficult to negotiate.  In the same way Paul the apostle would quite often use the analogy of an athlete, trying to fill a picture in for his readers of all that is and was necessary to arrive at the completion, the fullness for us individually as well as corporately, for us all.    

Before I go any further as an aside Paul the apostle said he had run the race, 1 Cor 9: 24-27 “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.

Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.

Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air;

but I ¹discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified”.

You may ask what do you do with the word “run” here having made your statement of “win/lose”?   The word Paul uses for “win” (Greek καταλαμβάνω) is not as we might think, its the word in original form is “from above to below,” hence completely, so that it is a strengthening of the simple act “to seize,” “to grasp”,     In the NT its the simple form the character either of intensity (to grasp with force, Mt. 9:18), used of “to attain definitively,” in R. 9:30.  Is the use in the intellectual sphere “to establish” (Ac. 4:13; 25:25), “to grasp fundamentally,” “to appropriate to oneself inwardly” (Ac. 10:34; Eph. 3:18).   This is not about beating some one but more about completing my race with you, seizing, attaining, together as one.

Its getting up reaching beyond every brow and every mountain top once hidden now revealed, getting over them all.  As the Hebrew writer takes up in Hebrews 1:1, 2 “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Run with endurance, get over the unseen brow when you commenced your climb while holding in our minds sight not “success” but the promises of God in terms of Gods goal for all creation.   This is undoubtedly what the Old Testament writers and prophets did they held on to see what God was engineering, brining about what God had said God would get.   When Simeon (Luke 2) took hold of the baby, the deliverer the Christ, a bundle of wind, giggles, dribbles and snot declared he has received the “consolation of all Israel”.   I wonder how many climbs, mountain tops, brows he had already climbed as a senior man holding on until his fullness came…

In all the saints of old and those we meet daily, are you not struck at the way they have filled their eyes not on success but on Christ, Christ filling all in all.   Making their mountain top the goal of God in Christ.

So ask these as you look down this year

1 What have I seen

2 What promise has God made that I am to participate in 

3 How can I merge my daily walk into Gods aims

4 What mountain top am I working toward, walking up

5 Decide, I will not be satisfied until the completion of Christs’ goal and Gods aim is filled in every walk of life.

To the Mountain, exceed by another brow, over the top we Go, to another view in God.