The Word

I believe that the church is at a pivotal moment in history that could possibly be one of the greatest catalysts to world harvest that we have ever experienced. With all of the different discussions that are going on, I feel compelled to pause and remember one thing. Nothing of spiritual value has ever been accomplished outside of the understanding of the authority of the Word of God! New methods and ideas are wonderful, but let us not forget that methods come and go, ideas are here today and gone tomorrow, but the Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

Every historically radical spiritual movement has begun with the Word! In Acts 6 the scripture says that the leadership of the church were getting strangled by the intense amount of service that was being done and they realized the necessity to appoint others to those positions so that they could dedicate there time to the ministry of prayer and the Word! These individuals understood that what created the environment for revival had it's birthplace in prayer and the Word! If we think that in the 21st Century we could ever do it any other way, we are selling ourselves short. In the book of Acts 8 we find the when persecution arose in the church, the disciples went everywhere preaching not their philosophy, but rather the Word, and when they did this it created a combustible environment that heated the embers of revival.

In Acts chapter 2 we find that on the day of pentecost Peter preached the word, and the scripture says that they that gladly received the word were baptized. There was a correlation between the reception of the word and the reaction to the word! In John 1:1 the Bible tells us that the Word was God, but when you continue on to John 1:11 the scriptures says that He came unto His own and his own received him not! If Jesus is the Word, then I believe it must be possible for us to call ourselves Christians, yet not be willing to receive Him! In John 1:12 we find that he continues and says, but as many as received Him, or the word, to them gave he power to become the sons of God! Therefore, it is our reception to the Word which determines our inheritance in Christ!

I am encouraged by the wave of people that are so hungry to see God move that we are beginning to think outside of the box and try new methodologies to reach the world. If we do not change our mindset and remove the barriers then we will never affect our world, but we must never become careless to let our passion for the lost remove our passion for the Word! The Word and our Passion for the lost must coexist! If we try it any other way we are presenting a Christless Theology!

God Created

The word genesis means, beginning. At the inception of scripture we find that God is busy doing what He does best, creating. A matter of fact, we call the first several chapters of the Bible the Creation Story. Creativity was so important that you discover that the fifth word that is found in the Bible is the word created, In the beginning God created! So, while thinking about all of this it makes me wonder, How come so much of what we do is mundane and not creative. Why do we enjoin ourselves so willingly to old patterns of thinking and question new creative techniques? I believe that Christians ought to be the most creative people that you can find, for the word Christian itself means Christ Like and everything that God does is a creative and a redemptive work. One avenue of thinking that we convince ourselves of unfortunately is that God is creative, but as a follower of Christ we are not to be creative, we leave that up to God, yet when we look at the scriptures we discover that God wanted to engrain creativity into mankind. The way that God would introduce Adam to valuing creativity was in the command for Adam to name all of the Animal Kingdom. Can you imagine what intense creativity it must have taken for Adam to come up with fitting names for all of the species that God had created? So, in thinking about this year let me begin where God began, Creating! What routines have I fallen into that I have lacked the energy to evaluate to see if there is a creative and new method that can be achieved with better results. Have I pushed my paradigm to think of a different angle to the same problem that I am dealing with, or could it even be possible that I have neglected creativity, and so therefore my thinking is the problem itself! Let this be a year creating and not tearing down! Let me stretch my thinking out of old routine things and allow this to be the year where all things become new.