I've held the view for a long time that we should take initiatives in faith, that we shouldn't just wait until God tells us to step out in faith, but we should look for opportunities. Jesus didn't tell Peter to step out of the boat, Peter asked if he could. I especially love the story of Jonathan in 1 Sam 14 where Jonathan decides he will climb up the cliff and attack the Philistines despite ridiculous odds against him. He says “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.” 

I've been thinking recently that maybe I'm better at taking faith initiative that suit my own agenda, the "I'm trusting for a new house, new job, pay rise etc etc" sort of faith initiatives and not so good at the faith initiatives that don't suit my agenda "Lets give that money away, lets move to that country, lets hang out with those people".

People like Rolland & Heidi Baker blow me away. They looked at Mozambique, then the poorest country in the world and said "Lets go there". Jesus didn't tell them to, they took a faith initiative to go. Another man I've met, Rob Forbes, moved his family to Ultan Bataar in Mongolia to plant a church because he heard at a conference that no one wanted to go to Mongolia. Jesus didn't tell him to go. It was his own initiative.

It seems to me that these people have been so captured by God's heart that He doesn't always have to tell them what to do, they see things from His perspective and just do them. Their attitude is "lets go over here and perhaps the Lord will act on out behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few".

In John 9, when Jesus spits in the mud and heals the man who was born blind, it forces me to ask "Did Father directly tell Jesus to heal the man and to do it in this way or did Jesus so know his Father's heart that he didn't require telling?" I've got a feeling he just did it because he knew his Fathers business and he understood that he could do anything by faith.

I'm feeling some faith initiatives rising up that may not really suit my agenda, but if I've caught Father's heart, He'll get the glory He's due. Sick people are fair game, poor people are fair game, damaged and broken people are fair game in the Kingdom.

Paul

Hey KingsGators,

A few weeks ago Pam brought a word on Sunday morning in which she heard God say that this is going to be an Extraordinary year. As I have thought about this since, I have realised that this is an incredible promise, and also an invitation from God to partner with Him like never before. Many of us will look back to this year and be amazed by what God has done. 

Towards the end of last year, Mark Elliott approached me with a prophetic word for the church and summed up perfectly what God has been doing with us the last few years:

“In 2009 Ryan prophesied that it was a year of Position. That year God taught us about being sons & daughters and used the garden as the example of our positioning in Him. This season brought amazing revelation to us as a people / community. We found incredible freedom and were in awe of God and thought this was "the best."

BUT God did not leave us there even though we were very happy in this new found place.

In 2010 God said the season was Possession and we not only "possessed" our new building but took ground in church prayer and unity. This was even more amazing than the season of Position and we were so blessed.

BUT again God did not leave us with "just this".

In 2011 God "announced" that a season of Prosperity was coming. We were so excited and full of anticipation for this coming season.  2011 had not been an easy year for many and the excitement and anticipation had dwindled under the pressure of life. Many have wondered (not doubted) when the prosperity will begin.”

I believe that in 2012, we are in the year of Proclamation (Isa 61).

Mark’s word continues: “As soon as I heard this, (year of proclamation) I felt God say that this was the key to unlock the season of Prosperity.  As soon as we begin to Proclaim, Prosperity will follow.

I felt this is also a call to Proclaim or Contend for other churches and for London, as we as KingsGate begin to stand in the gap for the church in Kingston / London then the Fire of God which has been prophesied will fall. This is a word to KingsGate but not just for KingsGate - yes KingsGate will see prosperity and blessings but this word was to the "Watchmen" to begin proclaiming the year of the Lord, not only His blessings but also the coming of His Kingdoms Domination in London. Dominate means to - Influence, Rise above, Control or to get the attention.”

There have been a few key themes that have come up through many prophetic words over the past few months and there is an opportunity for us to respond to God’s word. I’ll list a few of them.

1.  Expect

We need to trust God for a lot more. God is stirring a hunger and desire in us to trust Him and expect Him to do more than we can even ask or imagine (Eph 3:20-21)

 2. Contend

It is so easy to throw our hands in the air and give up and accept whatever comes our way but that is not biblical and doesn’t give God any glory. This is a time for us to contend (fight, battle, wrestle) for the greater measures of God for ourselves and for others in the face of opposition and negative report.

Contending is not taking NO as the final answer.

3. Proclaim

This is a now word from God to us this year.  

Definition “a formal announcement, made under the great seal (usually royalty) of some matter which the King or Queen desires to make known to his or her subjects”

That is very cool. We are God’s mouthpieces here on earth and He has put His word in us so when we declare the intent of God into any situation great power that is released which changes situations and even atmospheres.

“Isa 61 This is a year: 

“…to proclaim freedom for the captives
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour
to proclaim good news to the poor…”

This is not a time to shrink back but it is a time where God is raising up His army. Let us lay hold of all that God has for us and trust Him for the extraordinary and greater measures of God.

Matthew 11:12 “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.”

Lots of love

Bryn

Over the last few weeks a some events have happened that have shaken me. I (and many others) prayed for healing in situations in some friends families, but these healings did not happen, leaving the families to live with consequences. In all these instances I felt Father's presence as I prayed and fully expected to hear good news as a result of the prayer. When the news is not good, it forces us to ask "What are we really doing?"

While I have seen Jesus do some amazing healings (allergies gone, broken bones mended, legs grown, back pain disappeared, babies conceived when not medically possible, etc etc) my conclusion is that I cannot go on building up peoples hopes and then just patting them on the back when their hopes are dashed. It is impossible to have any human feeling and not feel broken when the healings your friends really needed do not happen.

When I've tried to discuss this "crisis" with people, their automatic assumption is that this is a crisis of faith, that circumstances are causing me to doubt God, to change my theology and to back off from what God has called me to. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called this a crisis of mediocrity because I'm convinced it's me that has to change.

I remain convinced that if Jesus had prayed for my friends they would have been healed.

I remain convinced that when Jesus died on the cross he fully, completely and irrevocably paid the price for sin and the consequences of sin (Is 53:4&5) (Griefs & Sorrows - mental/emotional brokenness, transgressions & iniquities - spiritual brokenness aka sin, wounds we are healed - physical brokenness) Matt 8:17, 1 Pet 2:24.

I remain convinced that it's not a case of does God want to heal a particular person, but rather that it was finished 2000 years ago. 

I remain convinced that Father God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing(Eph 1:3) and physical healing is one of our blessings, but we need to appropriate that blessing in the physical realm.

I remain convinced that while faith is necessary for healing (Lk 7:9, 8:48, 8:50, 9:41, 17:19, 18:42) it is not necessarily the recipient of the healing who must have faith (Lk 6:10, 7:13, 13:12) The flip side of this being that in his home town Jesus could do no miracles except heal a few sick people because of their lack of faith (Mk 6:5&6) I look forward to having that "bad day at the office"! Wigglesworth is quoted as saying "I've got enough faith for them all to be healed, trouble is they don't have the faith to receive it" and of his daughter who was deaf "There is nowt wrong with her hearing, just her faith". Given that Jesus healed people who had no faith out of compassion I'm going to disagree with Wigglesworth, and when I'm seeing as many people healed as he did, I'll write a full theological rebuttal of his comments!

I remain convinced that healing the sick is a command from Jesus for all who believe, and not a nice crowd pleaser or an add-on for your Ph.D. in Christ. (Matt 10:8, Lk 10:9, Mk 16:17), that this was normal christian life for the early church (Acts 5:15, 6:8, 8:7, 9:34 & 40, 19:12) and not all these examples were apostles. Stephen & Philip were ordinary Christians.

I also remain convinced that there remains mystery in our faith (1 Tim 3:9), that we can't box God into our formulas as this removes the need for relationship and that ultimately our bodies will only be glorified when we get to heaven..

So where does all that leave me? It leaves me contending (a word that has come up a lot recently) for more of God in my life so that increasingly I see His love, compassion and power flowing through me. I'm not chasing the gifts at the expense of the giver, I just know as I get closer to Him, more of Him will work it's way out through me.

Looking at the lives of Wigglesworth & Howells (and Lake soon) they got close with Father, they contended with Him for things and then they walked in genuine authority that changes situations. What was Jesus doing on those nights when he withdrew to lonely mountainside to pray? Was He just having "Daddy-time" or was he contending for the Kingdom to break in on earth? The Bible doesn't tell us, but I wonder.

The great men and women of faith who have gone before us were also radical about removing anything from their lives that competed with God for their affections (Consecration - another word that's been coming up a lot) Wiggelsworth said of Matt 5:6 "To hunger and thirst after righteousness is when nothing in this world can fascinate me like being close to God"

The Word of God prevents me from turning back, seeing the pain of friends (and the world around me) prevents me from staying still. The only way is forward but that looks like death. I think it was Tozer who said profound dissatisfaction with how things are is the precursor to genuine pursuit of Christ.

Adam Spags brought a great testimony on Sunday morning about how God had blessed him with a new job. He felt God tell him 3 things to do as he trusted God to provide this job for him.

1. Contend for your blessing
2. Be patient
3. Remain faith-filled

I've been trusting God for some things for a while now but towards the end of last year felt a bit stuck, not really knowing what to do next. God declared 2011 a year of prosperity, and while some have walked into that, for others like me, we haven't seen what we hoped for yet.

Over the last few weeks God has been nudging gently through various sources. Contend for your blessing, wrestle for it in prayer, lay hold of it, don't waver in your belief, don't listen to the 'did God really say?" voice, remain patient. Suddenly I feel encouraged, like I know what to do now, how to continue believing for the prosperity that was promised. Just because 2011 has finished doesn't mean that God's word has fallen to the ground.

When God promises something we have two options: continue to believe for it until we see it, faith being certainty about something we haven't yet seen or to doubt when it doesn't happen in the timeframe we expected.

I have to admit I'm not fully sure what contending looks like, but the lessons we learned when contending for the KingsGate building were that the best way to fight for something is to worship and declare God greatness and victory over a situation. While doing that God may show us particular things to pray into/against or He may highlight things in us that He wants to change, but unless He initiates something we just keep worshipping Him.

A thought struck my out of Galatians on Sunday. When the Jewish people were exiled from their country and temple by the Babylonians, the only thing they could cling to, to preserve their identity as a distinct race of people was the law. That's what seperated and distinguished them from everyone else on the face of the earth and gave them a sense of being special. That's why the Judiasers were so determined that converts to Christianity should have to follow the law of Moses as well as believe in Jesus. If they could just believe in Jesus and not follow the law, the Judiasers feared the Jewish nation would disappear, with nothing to define it by.

If my identity is not solely defined by Jesus and my sense of worth is not solely because the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me, and now I am an adopted son of the King of kings, then those other things which define me become additional saviours and I will begin to force them on others too, so that they too can be fully saved.

How many of us Christians live lives where our behaviours and practises are at least an important part in defining our Christianity rather than just that we believe in Jesus? Do the things I do, or don't do, the places I go, or don't go, the things I eat and drink, or don't eat and drink play a part in defining my Christianity and by extension who I am?

If so, what do I do when another believer with different practises and habits comes along? Can they really be a believer and think/speak/act like that?  I must either correct them so they become like me (religious) or push them away to preserve my identity (political).

The alternative offered by Jesus in the gospel is that our identity is solely defined by Him and therefore I can be comfortable around those who do things differently.

"The purpose of discipleship is not to change peoples behaviour, it is to see them living free." - Danny Silk.

"Only challenge someone about their behaviour if it will prevent them becoming the person God destined them to be" - Rory Dyer.

I was very struck by Keath's preach on Sunday morning about Mary. (Listen here) The angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she was highly favoured by God Almighty. That's a good commendation that most of us would be very happy to receive. However, that favour didn't turn out to be a bigger house, a flasher car, a foreign holiday, a job promotion or even a flourishing ministry. It took the form of an illegitimate child, a shotgun wedding, a strenuous journey while heavily pregnant, giving birth in an environment more suited to farm animals, being a refugee and seeing her son executed horribly for crimes he didn't commit. Anyone in the queue for that kind of favour?

It made me think about what God's favour looks like for me. Could God's favour still look like situations that are uncomfortable, things that are difficult to understand, relationships that cause pain, frustration and misunderstanding?

It's very easy to get excited about the verses in the bible that declare that we are conquerors (Rom 8:37) and overcomers (1John 2 & Rev 3:21) but easy to forget that both these statuses involve defeating an opposition that doesn't want to overcome or conquerored and while overcoming big things can sound glamerous, overcoming my own faults and imperfections in a difficult environment doesn't sound fun at all.

Could me being highly favoured and overcoming mean being gracious to, and demonstrating God's unstoppable love for, a boss who is hyper-demanding, demeaning and aggressive, or an unreasonable neighbour, or a back stabbing colleague, or a hypochondriac friend or, or, or.......?The list goes on, the possibilities are endless (and I've used hypothetical examples in case anyone is trying to work out who these people are ;o))

Rev 12:11 says "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony". The blood of Jesus has set us free, and continues to increasingly set us free, from every sin and effect of sin (hurts, insecurities, fears and oppression) so that we can love others unconditionally. Our testimonies encourage each other as we see what Jesus can do if allowed. As we allow Father to outwork the freedom Jesus purchased in our lives and encourage each other with these stories of Fathers masterpiece unfolding, his Glory is revealed and the first in the Kingdom turns out to be the servant of all (Mk 9:35).

The difficulty for our human nature is that this servant of all usually operates in a place unseen and unappreciated by human eyes. The "only" reward we may ever get is the joy of being with Father about His business and one day the words "Well done, good and faithful servant".

Last weekend as we prophesied over our church leaders I was struck by how when God speaks over people it is always affirming, always uplifting, always seeing the best in people. Even on the few occasions where there is correction, it is always redemptive with a positive outcome in mind as Father calls out the person He created and the qualities He put inside them for His glory and pleasure. I know at times when I've been prophesied over I sometimes struggle to reconcile the person being spoken about and the person I know "me" to be.

It also struck me how quick I can be to see faults, question motives and at times even assume the worst about people. This is totally the opposite to Father.

Corinthians 13 defines Father. He is love and every facet of love listed is simply an attribute of Him. What a different place the whole world would be if we always protected others, always trusted them, always hoped for a good outcome, always believed the best about people.

Isn't that just naive and idealistic? Isn't it a complete failure to recognise the reality of human character? Well YES. That's the point. 1 Peter 4:8 tells us that love covers over a multitude of sins. We can try and explain it away but the plain meaning of what Peter is saying is that truly loving someone is to protect them from the consequence of their sin and the exposure of their sin. We may also need to confront them about their sin, but public 'outing' is not God's way, unless in a very limited set of circumstances where a person's sin is damaging to the church and they refuse to acknowledge their error in any way.

I must stop looking at people in the way the world does and start looking at them as God has now set them free to be by the blood of Jesus. The old person is gone. They are now a new creation. (2 Cor 5:16 - 17)

I am so ecstatically happy that mercy triumphs of judgement (Jam 2:13). Without that my only future would be Father's righteous judgement. The difficult bit is that I've now got to become and imitator of God (Eph 5:1) and increasingly think like him, always protecting, always trusting, always hoping for the best outcome.

Can you imagine how glorious our friendships would be if we all treated each other like this?

Over the last few months, it has become increasingly evident that God is on the move. He is in our midst and it has been so exciting to watch lives being changed as He works a good work in each of us when we yield and allow Him to have His way with us. I, for one, don’t want to be left behind and recently, God has been challenging me on what I fill my mind with and mediate on.  Ephesians 5:11 says “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them” and in our culture today, it’s so easy to be exposed to things and unthinkingly accept them as the latest ‘fad’ without giving further thought to their influence in our lives. In this article, I’d like to use the most recent phenomenon to hit our bookshelves & movie screens; the Twilight Saga, as an example to showcase the importance of testing everything and training ourselves to be diligent in holding fast to the good and discarding anything that is evil. 

I first heard about the Twilight series when girlfriends of mine started asking me if I had read the books. “They are so romantic,” I was told. “It’s about a girl and a vampire who fall in love.” A vampire? Ugh. I was immediately put off. But Twilight would not go away. The books were appearing everywhere – from prominent high street bookstores to the lower racks on Tesco shelves and then adverts for the first film adaptation started appearing all over billboards and the sides of buses.

Twilight fever had struck and out of curiosity, I decided to see what the fuss was all about. I borrowed the set of novels from a friend and raced through the first two books in less than a week, ignoring the vague sense of disquiet that filled me as I entered a strange new world of vampires and werewolves.  The pace was fast and the romance was heady and after all, these vampires were the ‘good guys,’ right? That week, my dreams were filled with bloody images of violence and one night I woke up from a nightmare with my heart racing and clearly heard the Holy Spirit urging, “That is enough! Do not touch those books again!”

But Twilight still had a grip on me and I found myself wanting to read more of the story. The film looked appealing and I was intrigued about what happened next. I was beginning to understand the grip that this franchise had on its ‘Twihard’ fans and why these books had gained such a devoted following. 

I decided to dig a little deeper; to scratch the surface of this phenomenon and see what information I could find. Stephanie Meyer was a thirty something stay-at-home mother who describes on her website how, on the 2^nd June 2003, she woke up from a very vivid dream. Meyer writes, “In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately.” (http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html)

The Mormon mother-of-three had no previous writing experience but this dream so captivated her that she wrote it down and began fleshing out a storyline that eventually became the first Twilight novel. The plot involves a gripping love triangle between Bella, a human teenager, handsome vampire Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, a werewolf who shape-shifts into human/wolf form.  Time Magazine explains, 

“The Cullens are actually a local coven of vampires. Edward has been 17 since 1918. He is superstrong and superfast, he can hear people's thoughts, and he does not breathe or sleep or age. His skin is cold, and when exposed to the sun, he doesn't burn--he glitters. Edward and the Cullens aren't ordinary vampires: they have renounced human blood on moral grounds, feeding instead on wild animals, which they hunt by night. He and Bella are instantly, overwhelmingly attracted to each other, but he is also wildly hungry for her blood.

Resisting that temptation is a constant struggle. .. It's never quite clear whether Edward wants to sleep with Bella or rip her throat out or both, but he wants something, and he wants it bad, and you feel it all the more because he never gets it. That's the power of the Twilight books: they're squeaky, geeky clean on the surface, but right below it, they are absolutely, deliciously filthy.” (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734838,00.html#ixzz1eSdZDzfm)

Now I’m the first to admit that I’m a fantasy fan. I loved the Lord of the Rings and I have a vivid imagination that is intrigued with the supernatural realm. I’ll even admit that I read the occasional Harry Potter (until I was convicted about that too). So why am I picking on Twilight and what are my main concerns?

I’m concerned about the darkness of the books. Beneath the galloping plot line and intensity of the can’t-have-you-but-desperately-want-you romance between Edward & Bella, there is an underworld of darkness and witchcraft that is thinly disguised as fantasy romance and escapist fiction. Yes, Stephenie Meyer is proud of the fact that her books are ‘squeaky clean’ – no sex before marriage, no drugs, no alcohol, but what about the part where Bella is desperate to give up her soul so that she can be with Edward forever? She is suicidally depressed when she can’t be with him and when she eventually does ‘get’ him, her world descends into fresh levels of devilish chaos.

The alarm bells started ringing loudly the deeper I searched, particularly when I came across the blog of a young Christian girl, who recounts her experiences with Twilight and the effect the books had on her life.  http://meag371.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

(A side note on ‘vampires’: “In the occult, vampires are physical manifestations of diabolically empowered entities…Edward is described at the end (or near it), to be an incubus. This is a perverted occult concept. According to Satanists, an incubus is believed to be a dark supernatural entity that is able to manifest itself and engage in sexual relations with a woman.”)  http://meag371.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

A huge theme of the books is the shedding and partaking of blood. Throughout the books, Edward and his coven (which literally means an assembly of witches) readily drink the blood of animals, yet there are other covens that are not so ‘civilised’. Leviticus 17:14 states that “as for the life of all flesh, the blood of it represents the life of it.” The Life is in the Blood and we see this no better expressed than through Jesus himself and the power that was released through the shedding of his blood as well as the drinking of his blood through the Christian practise of communion.  The obsession with blood in Twilight, in my opinion, is very disturbing.

Later, Meyer confessed that she had been mistaken about her vampires drinking only animal blood; in an interview with MTV Movie Blog in 2008, she admitted that during another dream, after the completion of Twilight, Edward came to visit her and told her "I had gotten it wrong and he did drink blood like every other vampire and you couldn't live on animals the way I'd written it. We had this conversation and he was terrifying." http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/11/06/iron-man-my-chemical-romance-x-men-carto...

I still feel the occasional pull for Twilight. Whenever I see the trailer for the next film, something in me is attracted to it, but I have never forgotten my warning from the Holy Spirit and I know that it’s for my own good that I must stay away.  You will recognise a tree by its fruit and I have come to the conclusion that a personal experience of fear and disturbing dreams as well as a worldwide society with a growing obsession for werewolf hunks and vampire parties is fruit enough for me to no longer sit on the fence over this issue. I believe that there is an ominous power at work behind the franchise that lures people in, pulling them into dangerous, murky waters under the guise of romance and fantasy adventure.

Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” 

I am well aware that if you are a Diehard ‘Twihard’ reading this, it’s going to take more than this article to convince you. I’m simply writing this to tell you my personal story and to share with you some of the information I discovered when I went a little deeper beneath the surface. I know that we all have our own opinions and there will be people who will read the books and watch the films without any conviction whatsoever. 

This, however, concerns me greatly. James 3: 11&12 asks, “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.” I know that this scripture refers to the use of the tongue, but the spiritual principle applies and the same question can be asked of anything that we read or watch:  How is it possible for us as Christians to fill our minds with both good and evil and expect our lives to stay pure and ‘unmuddied’? 

Lisa Oliver

A few days ago, while spending some time with Jesus, I felt Him tell me to go somewhere to give someone a message from Him. I managed to come up with some very good excuses as to why I couldn't do it there and then. However, after a few days or wrestling I went and did what He asked. The opportunity had passed.

As I walked away from the place the thought went throught my mind "If Philip (Acts 8) had wrestled for a few hours or days with God before going to the desert road south from Jerusalem to Gaza the Ethopian eunuch would not have been there anymore." The opportunity would have been missed.

God's timing is important. He tells us to go when He wants us to go, for a reason. I'm learning slowly!

The stories of Philip or the person who used to go to the airport on God's instruction and find flight tickets waiting for them to a destination where God had work for them to do sound amazing, but I'm willing to bet that these "big moments" were not the first time the person responded instantly to the voice of God. When we prove faithful with little we are given much.

No matter what way we cut it, walking in step with Jesus requires my will to die and be replaced with His will.