November 4, 2017
Ken's Re-Wording of 1 Corinthians 2
When I showed up I didn’t come with a fancy speech and a ton of amazing ideas, but I was telling everyone my testimony of what God is doing. Pretty much the only thing I wanted to share with you was that Jesus, who is God, saved us by being crucified....that is, Yahweh, who is salvation, saved you by being crucified.
When I came to be with you I felt as weak and scared as you did! And my message was not an impressive sermon, but instead showed how God’s Spirit had the ability to change lives and save people from a horrible future. This way what you are believing isn’t based on clever arguments and human ideas but on God’s ability to be a force in your life.
And yet, we do have some pretty cool and amazing ideas to talk about, to those who can handle it! These ideas aren’t from the best universities or scientists, who are only on earth for a little while; these ideas come from a hidden place in heaven, from God, and therefore they are wonderfully mysterious! But God decided a long time ago that we should know them now, so we could be energized by the life of them! If the mob had known these things they would never have crucified Jesus! But it says in the Old Testament in Isaiah,
“My wonderful secret things, which you have not seen or heard or even imagined - I’m getting these ready to give to those who love Me.”
These wonderful things, God is showing us now, come through His Spirit because the Spirit knows the secret things of God! I mean, what person can know what someone else is thinking? Only you know your own thoughts! So only the Spirit knows the thoughts of God...what Yahweh is thinking!
And what we have as believers is not the fancy ideas of the professors, scientists, philosophers, and political analyzers - we have the Spirit, which knows what God is thinking, so he can tell us how things really are!
So we learn to talk about what the Spirit is saying, not in the words of a brilliant expert, but in ideas impressed on us by this Spirit who knows what God is thinking! So we combine these impressions from the Spirit with the words that go with them!
But a normal person doesn’t accept God’s ideas because they seem very foolish and stupid. So he doesn’t understand any of this. The reason being is because the way you believe in these things comes from the Spirit, which a worldly man doesn’t have anyway.
But someone who is accustomed to sharing his life with God’s Spirit can tell that this is legit, and doesn’t need anyone else to confirm what he already knows. As it says in the Old Testament, “Who can tell what God’s reasons are when he does something. Can a man tell God a better way to think?” – but this very same God has been put inside of us to do the thinking!!
Ken's Example of Two-Way Journaling (Entry from Oct. 31, 2017)
- Usually God speaks informally and even jokes with me, often very practical messages
- This time was different
- I’ve been praying that God’s creative plans will come true
- God is referring to shaking off sins; he is referring to fruitless time or unkindness or lack of diligence or passiveness, or the open door I leave open to be introspective to the point I feel condemned.
- God talks about how to pray for the Adkins
- God reveals what my attitude needs to be like right now
- Two-way journaling is not infallible and has to be tested and compared to Scripture
- Interpreting takes time like an old fashion photograph being developed
Every moment is so precious...I want to hear your voice today and I don’t know if I should pray, read, journal? Where do you want to take Tribe, what do you want to talk about on Saturday? Can you help me find what Ava dreamed the spring of 2016 right before I became a pastor? There was a scripture too and then I read that prophetic message at the end of Gazing into Glory. I want to talk about hearing your voice...and show people to journal. This has been in my heart for quite a while. I want to connect with you today. What are your thoughts?
I am going to do something new; you stumbled upon it almost in praying that my creative plans would be done on the earth...you became part of something. You want to know what that something is but of course it is bigger than you and not for any one man to know, but to SEE, to EXPERIENCE! My wonders upon the earth will dazzle and frighten all who see them. Their flesh will tingle. These days, people feed on fear to produce a cheap counterfeit of the real thing...standing in my presence before earthshattering glory and awe, as Moses and the Israelites did at the foot of the mountain is to truly tingle. I know these things were not what you were asking for; they do not help you for the time being to become successful in the small things you are working on, but lo, I am rising from my throne to do spectacular and awesome things, I am getting ready to do what is in my heart and the earth will swell with it. There will be silence before it; there will be awe. Even those with many arrogant and blind words will be quiet for a time. Even you son, will look on in the fear of the Lord. There are moments of whisper and there are moments to shout, moments to blast air into the trumpet. Moments to roar. Should you become low in spirit, and not confident? Or should you rise up in strength and do what is in your heart! What is in your heart? And who put it there? Wasn’t it I? Do not look to place your mantle on another or to turn to the right or the left. No more second guessing. BELIEVE, TRUST, ACT, DO, WALK, READ, FLY, FIGHT, RISE UP, SET YOUR MIND, AND RUN IN ONE DIRECTION. I am getting ready to run. Who can keep up with me? Who will catch me? Is there any who can overtake me, as Elijah overtook the chariot of Ahab. No. No one can catch me. No one can buffer me or hold me at bay. The fickle evil of earth cannot last a single moment in my presence – the arrogant musings of man will fall on their face in the mud, too weak to lift themselves out of it. I am looking for warriors of faith who will place both feet on me and not save a foot by bracing against the world ‘just in case.’ You can see the choices at hand for people. – believe in circumstances... or believe in me - It’s a clear and scary choice. Simple and scary as you would say...I AM simple and scary. When I rise from my throne I do not rise in vain. When I rise all heaven is silent, and the earth unawares, carries on in foolish commotion. So it’s my servants who have sunk deep in silence and listening who are aware of what I am doing. They look with careful eyes and take note. Sometimes they raise an alarm, other times they squint in disbelief. But I am sure of myself, of what I want to do, and I invite co-laborers to rise with me, to shake off the ashes of sin and shine boldly and brazenly with the glory of heaven – my glory, which radiates everything with life and brilliance. What should you do? What is in your heart to do? And what is holding you back? Is it health, is it your choices, is it your lack of vision? You are my son and I have given much into your hand. Be bold with it! Do not play it safe as these are not safe times. These are not the times to be conservative but the times of wearing heaven on your sleeve and marching into the room declaring it. There is grace for the journey...I’m only telling you because you asked! Rise up with me son, rise up and shake off the ashes of sin – of stupid choices that bear no good fruit. We don’t have time for that! Does everything matter or nothing matter, you have asked. What do you think? Do you think I’ll waste a single choice man has made on a non-event? No, but I am master of it all. Rewarder of it all, creator of it all, redeemer of it all, and nothing escapes me. Those who have chosen destruction will be perfectly destroyed and those who have chosen life will be perfectly preserved to the perfection of my essence. Am I talking too much? Have somewhere to go? Yes, to the airport. Tell the Adkins, I have this trip in the palm of my hand, I have their lives in my sights and will shoot the perfect shot. They don’t know anymore than the rest of you where the trajectory passes through, the air it glides through, but I do. I know all. I see all, and I care for it all. I hold it all together; even the atoms that fill the universe, each I intimately know. How can a man say, ‘God is unaware of what I am doing?’ Does man know anything? No. To trust in me is to finally say and truly acknowledge this....that I am who I say I am, that I am God, that I am the Great I AM. So choose this day whom you will serve and trust, whom you will declare. For I am rising up into my destiny and into my glory, and I am calling up a nation of priests who will minister the same rising. So rise my son, rise to all I’ve placed before you and put in your heart. And we will laugh as we go on our way, ruling in all the authority Jesus gained at the cross.