Finance

Changing Your View

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Changing your view: “We must pray the promise not the problem”.     We increase in faith as we boast in our hope, as we are a testimony of things to come. Heb 3:6

Faith must find it’s true measure; it has to be unlocked, unhitched from the wagon of healing, goodies & money and  given a wider and deeper application to our time & our lives, faith is bigger than the few issues mentioned above.   Unfortunately any one looking in on the church will think there are only a few things that are impacted by what we call faith, don’t get me wrong these issues, money, healing and provision will be reorder by our faith but there is so much more to unlock in our understanding when we consider faith.    So many themes, life factors are hijack to a narrow view of our understanding when there is much more to take hold of in Gods promises.   For example healing, when your sick it’s a blessing but when the promise of God to us is full health then healing  for the world around us let’s believe for health as a covenant people, prosperity finance only when prosperity is a fullness of life in peace, even blessing for me when we are to be blessed to be a blessing.    Rediscovering the truth of “living by faith” is a call for our hour, it is a call to live beyond the immediate, beyond my need, it is a way of life, living by faith is not when I look for income its a way of live continuity not just to get my need we are to live by faith not by events of faith only.

Faith must enrich us in every way and not simply adjust the material realm.     Indeed to be in the worst kind of poverty is to have all the material wealth you could ever wish for and yet be empty, unfulfilled, frustrated, and miserable, then, you are really poor.     Poverty is not a lack of resource but a people who are dependent on others for basic resources, our dependency should be on God not on resources.

In the same way that faith has to be unhinged so too Prophecy.   Prophecy must be seen bigger that just used in the realm of signs and authenticating a man or woman and their ministry, its time to find it’s true message to our time.    Prophecy does have a predictive aspect to it but much more we are to be a people who interoperate God to our world in our daily life, this is prophecy.     Prophecy gives the people of God a voice to interpret God’s onward creative acts in society and our world telling and interpreting.       Prophecy is to confront us with a plumb line of truth, enabling us, asking us, to build in the light of it, the prophecy that is, building according to a divine pattern and foundation, this requires our faith to be applied in our daily living.

Prophecy must be elevated in the ministry, to deliver us into our world, and the Kingdom of God into us.    Prophecy takes the taste of the age to come and increases the taste, allowing the breaking in of the Kingdom of God to enfold further in this world.

Faith and Prophecy are twinned, for many prophecy is shouting out things that come to mind, but our faith is tied to that which we utter and live.   Prophecy must be a life style as well as an utterance, the people of God, the church, will become the direct manifestation of prophecy just as the prophets of old, their lives, the way in which they lived was a gift, you could see the life’s message in their life style choice and the way they lived.

Faith and prophecy twinned, Romans 12:6 says “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith” as we are told to prophecy to the measure of our faith it becomes necessary to re-asses our place, that is, what we are involved with or  what we are doing, checking that it is in line, not only with the prophecy but also with my faith, living by faith every moment of every day.

Two basic questions:

Do we feel content to continue as we are?

Do we desperately want to break through into different realms?

These twins are necessary in order that the twins of mercy and goodness can follow us all the days of our lives…There is no release from the lower sphere of this material realm, of content existence, unless we have experienced the liberating prospect of the Spirit freeing us to rise as an eagle, to climb the air to the high altitudes of living.

Faith and Prophecy unlocks us to soar free, to live out our potential in the Grace of the Father.

Mission – Missional – Missionary

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Face our Mission

Mission? What’s it got to do with me?

How, and where do you start when you are asked to write something on mission,  my thoughts go to the challenges of a coming Kingdom and the changing of the  world around us, causing me to conclude  that mission has to have a focus towards  the Ultimate Goal of God,  i.e. “all things summed up in Christ”, “Christ filling all things”.

I was once asked by a well know teacher  “are you doing anything today that will continue when time is finished and Jesus returns?”,  “yes” I replied, he continued with a further question, “are you doing anything that you will not be doing after his return?”  My answer was “yes” his reply  “why?”   In others words keep your eye on the ultimate, in all you put our hand to.

I cannot read any scripture without realising that the Father and the  Holy Spirit have a preoccupation with the Christ.    Our work and involvement must therefore, have this same preoccupation, we must be fully occupied with Christ, other wise the task ahead will overwhelm us and we will lose our way.   As a matter of fact the entire occupation of the heavens is Christ.    It is so easy for us to focus and emphasise one particular spiritual truth, value, virtue, gift, or good work and yet miss Christ, Christ who is the embodiment and incarnation of all these things.

All mission and commission looses its way and purpose without holding on to the ultimate of goal of God.

I was recently provoked by the following question “why was I born in the West, with all  the privileges of the culture  I find myself in?”   As I pondered on this question my first thoughts were ones of a great gratitude for all I have been given and entrusted with.  Then, I compared my lot with the 2/3rd of the world around me and began to ask why, why God was I born here?   As I considered the privileges we are surrounded by I was amazed at what God has made available to us.  The privilege of freedom, the privilege of finance, even in a world that is in the middle of recession we have so much compared to those that live on less than a $1 a day.

I cannot depart far from the scripture story that started with the debate for position amongst the young men and women that followed the Christ,  debating who would get the best seat in the house.     While this debate went on Jesus told them of a landowner who distributed money to each of his servants, for them  to invest /steward the entrustment in-order that on his return a profit would be seen.   This profit in turn would open up  further entrustment opportunities, not of finance but of city rulership – those who are faithful with little becoming  rulers of much.

This narrative deals with a number of thought patterns, for example the disciples idea of Kingdom coming NOW.  The immediate and sudden NOW, putting Jesus on the throne NOW.  The story is however a story of PROCESS, this being working with and stewarding our entrustment to bring about Gods’ full intent.   We are living in days when regardless how much or how little we have been given, we have to see this PROCESS OF STEWARDSHIP.  We must deal correctly with what we have been given in order to see the influence of God, and Christ filling all in all taking place, as we do, so we will be entrusted further.

So why were you and I born in the nation you were?  which ever nation that may be ,  we must  steward correctly that with which we have been entrusted, so that we might bring an end to poverty,  never mind how tight things are in the midst of recession, we still have a charge to steward the little and the much.

We have been positioned and entrusted with ability to

1          Redistribute – wealth, justice, liberty

2          To bring Christ into every sphere of life and society

3          To break poverty – and dependence for all

Poverty is not fundamentally the  lack of money, but it is the imprisonment into a dependence on others for liberty, finance and personal freedom.   I would like to eradicate ‘dead aid’, where money has simple been poured in time and time again with no sense of building creating only  future dependence.   I would like to  invest in people, and take away the cause of  dependency on some one else for resources. Through our kindness and giving of money  in some cases, often unknowingly, we have added to the poverty mindset and sustained  imprisonment.    We have given much, equipment, tractors, seeds, houses, computers, etc., when our hearts and emotions moved us.  What we failed to realise was that  when what ever we gave  broke down, needed  new tyres, parts or repairs the people once again became dependant on  another hand out – lets break poverty and take away dependency.   It is  not about ceasing giving, far from it, but it is about wisely entrusting to men and women, training in self sustainability and providing them with the mind-set of continuing long after the initial help.  This is long-term empowerment, this is our mission.   Giving people the ability to advance handing them the stewardship of their own advancement.

 After all the advancement of each person in a way that is Kingdom of God thinking will bring about heavens occupation “Christ filling all in all”