Through out the Bible there are many sequences and patterns, either in word or thematically. A sequence is an ordered list, and a pattern is like an underlying rule, or a repeatable structure that regulates. A sequence is actual data, and a pattern is the idea of rule behind it. A sequence may or may not have a pattern, whereas a pattern generates one or more sequences.

Bear with me a little bit here, i’m laying  out an idea for us to consider as we study scripture and come to know God.  This all may seem a little technical but i hope no one gets tangled in the technicalities and sees the Hear ot the Lord. More than anything that we would see the heart of the Lord, above everything.

A sequence with a pattern would be like the powerful triplet from the Love Chapter, “faith, hope, love”, as taken from 1 Corinthians 13:13, which is three that belong together, though not a pure pattern but definitely a sequence with a pattern. Meaning they form a natural progression in our Christian life: We believe (faith) → We look forward to God’s promises (hope) → We live in self-giving love (the greatest). The triplet is both an ordered list, a sequence, with love being the ultimate, and also the underlying rule of who we are in Christ, the pattern. Like “faith, hope, and love”, think of the three as travelling companions — if you find faith, rest assured hope and love are probably somewhere nearby — they go together.

You could take a look at this triplet from Romans 14:17, righteousness, peace, and joy … in case you wanted to study for yourself.

Here’s another: thematically Israel’s exodus and wilderness wandering is clearly a sequence — plagues of Egypt, then crossing the Red Sea, and the giving of the 10 commandments. Those are a sequence or the actual ordered events as they happened. But also notice, there is a redemption pattern to the sequences of Israel’s story there: redemption from slavery, redemption through judgment and sacrifice, and redemption to freedom and covenant relationship. Be sure and take note that Israel’s sequence does indeed become a repeating pattern, a foundational redemption pattern for the rest of scripture even to the end.

i love the sequences found in the Bible and knowing the Lord intentionally put them together. God didn’t put them together for nothing. In fact, many people say, “If God would simply tell me what to do, plainly, i would do it.” Well, there are a multitude of patterns and sequences God has given us to fashion ourselves after, and even pointed out some we should NOT reflect, like Ahab or Absalom. These righteous patterns were/are created from the mind of God Himself and hold an overarching importance to which we really need to give our attention.

Consider this pattern, or sequence from Ephesians 4:11, apostles, prophets, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. Those are servant or deacon gifts to serve and support the body of Christ. How about Revelation 5:9, tribe, language, people, and nation? i see a summary view of that sequence as God’s universal, multi-ethnic scope of Christ’s redemption and reveals the magnitude of the everlasting, non-fading love of God. Gosh that sounds smart to say out loud, doesn’t it?. How about the sequence in Matthew 13:1-23, hard ground, rocky ground, thorns, and good soil? i hear God saying it’s the same seed (God’s word) and is sown everywhere, but the results differ based on the soil (the human heart’s response). i believe the issue is not with the seed or the sower, but with how the message is received and encourages self-examination, “what kind of soil am i?” Say! Take that seriously.

2 Corinthians 12:10, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, with insults, with hardships, with persecutions, and with calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Do you see the sequence? What’s it about? Why would God put that sequence on Paul’s heart to write in a book that will last forever for everyone to see? i see it as a sequence which covers an all-inclusive range of trials — from inward struggles to outward hostility. Paul experienced all of these repeatedly, and one reason is God wants us to see His power that is perfected in weakness, stripped of self-reliance, and that we learn to be content, “for the sake of Jesus”.

Let’s do one more. Ephesians 3:18. “Breadth, Length, Height, and Depth”. Think about that. It’s a deliberate sequence that paints a rich pattern — with the pattern being: the infinite, all-encompassing nature of the love of Christ that “surpasses knowledge”. The pattern is tied to our knowing the fullness of God. Just incredible!

It’s more than just a descriptive list, and many scholars, one of which i am not, call it “dimensionally symbolic” of a love which cannot be measured or contained. It’s about the four dimensions of the cross — left, right, top, bottom, His love is infinitely beyond the breadth, length, height, and depth, and His love grows from “more to more” until we “know even as we are known.”

So today I have a wonderful sequence to which i hope you can relate. It’s an example of how we were “far” and then God brought us “near”, going from exclusion to intimate belonging. Sort of like, thematically speaking, the parable of the prodigal son who was “far” and came “near”.

Ephesians 2:19, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Do you see it? We were once strangers and aliens, and have become, by the blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, citizens and saints. Stranger, Alien, Citizen, Saint. Do you see the progression from death to life in it? Ephesians 2:15, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” When we were strangers we had very limited rights, acting as complete outsiders or temporary visitors. No legal protection, no real standing in the community, and were often viewed with suspicion. As aliens, things got a little better in that we had some ability to do business and settle down, but still lacked full rights, lacked full protection under the law, and were not full members of the community. As aliens we often paid some form of fees for the right to live there, but had no political voice.

Ahhh, but now, now you’ve met Jesus, purchased with His blood, and BOOM! just like that, suddenly we find ourselves in a new, never lived in place of family reality. Suddenly we are standing, not as outsiders, but now have the status of “Citizen” and all the broad landscape of God-possibilities open before us in a great sweep of the Fathers hand called “salvation”. Now, as citizens we are also saints. Being a citizen is represented as a vertical relationship with God, and being a saint is a horizontal relationship with the family, the household of God. Citizens and saints get full rights, protection, privileges, and can fully participate in the community (including responsibilities like taxes). It’s a strong legal and social status. As citizens and saints, we belong to the entire Body of Christ. These wonderful titles point to our shared fellowship and reminds us that we are intimately connected to every believer in God’s house as blood relatives, joined together by the blood, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus and are given the privileged status of firstborn in His family.

Take note of the entire idea which starts in Ephesians 2:11 and continues through to vs. 22. Paul is purposely painting a dramatic before-and-after picture. Before: No rights, no protection, no real belonging. We were outsiders. After: Full citizenship in God’s kingdom plus intimate family membership in God’s household. Paul is making all efforts for us, the believers, to see the social reality behind the words. Paul probably stacks the sequence in Ephesians 2:19 for emotional impact so we can comprehend the incomprehensible.

Do you see it in the sequence and/or pattern? Through Christ, we are transformed: From strangers and aliens to citizens and saints as the family members in God’s household, living stones being built together into a holy temple supported by the seven pillars of heavenly wisdom. Proverbs 9:1. What are those seven pillars? Maybe James 3:17 spells it out specifically. You should go see! Herein is the support structure of the temple, who is us: Wisdom builds her house with seven pillars (Proverbs 9:1), God builds His temple (us) with the seven qualities of heavenly wisdom. When you combine Proverbs 9:1 with James 3:17 we get a pattern, an underlying rule of character: pure, peace loving, gentle/considerate, reasonable or willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere. See it: not just what we are, but how we are: it’s not rules to keep but someone to be.

Friends, this is not just about individual improvement. It is about God creating a beautiful, stable, unified dwelling place for Himself — where His presence lives by the Spirit. The seven pillars are the internal character structure that holds this temple strong and allows us to grow.

In short: We are becoming the house that Wisdom builds — a people who reflect the character of Christ so that God can dwell among us in fullness. Again, our greatest strength against darkness is to come into the likeness of the Son.

It’s not rules to keep, but someone to be. Be the people.

i’m Social Porter for Living In His Name Ministries

Here, of late i’ve enjoyed a great invention by God called “quiet”. Honestly, i should have been learning to enjoy God’s creation of “quiet” long ago, but i think my internal self was far too noisy to even think about it. No, i don’t just think i was noisy, i KNOW i was noisy. There was nothing quiet about me, and when i thought i was being quiet, internally i was very noisy.

The idea of “quiet” is part of God’s sound design for the universe. In His design there are so many “rooms”, so to speak. Here’s a little context maybe: In sound design (audio production, game audio, film post, or virtual acoustics, etc), “defining a room” means specifying the acoustic properties of a space to realistically simulate or process how sound behaves within it. Some rooms are very “alive” like a music hall, and some rooms are very quiet like your bedroom at 3 a.m.. i realize that’s probably more information than most would want, but let us think about that. The goal of sound design is to assist the listener to be in the space which they are occupying. The visual and audible make for an almost complete immersive experience. If we are seeing the forest yet there is no sound of wind, birds, or any of the other sounds which accompany being in the forest, we feel disconnected somehow. So, God went to work to not only give us a visual but also the sounds of what we see in order that we would more fully engage with the world around us and other people.

In light of all that, I’ve come to greatly appreciate the idea of quiet. Quiet in my head, quiet in my heart which tends to make God easier to hear. Afterall, our goal above all things is hearing the Lord, with both ears. And let me point out quiet is not the same as silence.

We are absolutely slammed with noise these days, but our world is radically noisier than we think — street noise, the chaos of internet noise, music noise, the constant roar of all things entertainment, and just the ambient noise of all the people breathing in a large department store can be very intense. The volume is maddening and i haven’t even gotten to the noise in our heads. Even in the quietest part of where we live, there’s ambient noise like air exchange running, and the sound of the fans on the computer, etc. Most people almost never sit in quiet, and even when they do it is still not actually quiet.

On a side note, most people truly cannot stand complete and utter quiet — the noise within our own ears is suddenly too loud. it’s almost as if even the smallest things inside our mind is unnerving, so in a way, we seem to need some sort of environmental feedback which maybe lets us know we even exist and where we are. We get most of our balance from seeing the horizon and hearing our surroundings. The quietest place on Earth is the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The room absorbs 99.99% of sound and is so silent that visitors can hear their own internal organs functioning. And, because there are no echoing sound waves to provide the brain with spatial orientation, most people inside this chamber quickly become disoriented. When all external sounds are stripped away, the silence itself feels deafening, allowing you to hear sounds you would never normally notice. In fact, with the lights off, the record for sitting in the ultimate quiet room is around 45 minutes, but most people are slowly driven insane for lack of ambient room noise or spacial orientation.

But more than just external quiet, in the Bible, God’s idea of “quiet” centers on stillness, silence, restful trust, and attentive waiting in His presence — and i believe practicing His idea of quietness is a pathway to knowing Him, finding strength, peace, and salvation amid chaos or turmoil.

Quiet is not mere inactivity or empty silence, but a deliberate ceasing of striving, anxiety, and self-reliance so that we can recognize God’s sovereignty, hear Him, and rest in His control. God’s idea of quietness pairs with trust, hope, and praise. “Be still” in Psalm 46:10 more accurately means, stop what you’re doing, let go in quiet trust, release control which leads to deeper knowledge of who Jesus is. One author wrote that when we are quiet before the Lord, “Panic and self-effort give way to expectant stillness.” Isaiah 30:15, “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength…’”

I think we can conclude that quietness (quiet or calm) combined with trust brings salvation and strength, contrasting, what i call frantic human plans.

Karl Barth wrote that, “God’s vision of quiet is relational and empowering: it counters fear and self-reliance, fosters trust, allows Him to fight/work on our behalf, and opens us to His peace and voice.” i believe God’s idea of quiet counters the noise of anxiety, busyness, mindless chatter that seems to surround us, and striving.

In a noisy world, the Bible repeatedly calls believers to cultivate this stillness—not as escape, but as the posture for knowing and experiencing God more deeply. Many find it through prayer, contemplating Scripture, solitude, or simply pausing to remember His presence.

So here … sit down. Be still a moment or two. Stop your worry for a few minutes. You know, you need rest. Aren’t you tired of church noise, entitled people noise, the roar of church conflict, complaining noise, accusing noise? Sit with Jesus, just be still and let it go, it’ll all be right where you left everything, all your worries and grieving concerns. Just stop the Lord says. He says to come sit with Him a while and He’ll share and you share, like two friends walking together.

In Psalm 46:10, the primary term for being still or being quiet, is the Hebrew word, “Raphah” and means to slacken, relax, let go, sink down, and cease. It implies, this is good so pay attention, dropping one’s grip on efforts, anxieties, or self-reliance — going limp or withdrawing from frantic activity, grow mute and stand motionless. That’s quite a vision isn’t it? Please note, this is not passive laziness but active trust: stop opposing or striving. It connects to ideas of respite and waiting. There are a few other important words used elsewhere, one in particular means quietness, or cessation of noise and motion as in the calm after a storm. Psalm 4:4 literally is a picture of the Lord saying to stop your agitation and shaking, again, stop your agitated worrying unchecked obsession with your circumstances, and literally speak to your circumstances to “be still”, or be quiet and quiet the inner storm, trust God and rest in the Lord. Friend, find your quiet place and live there.

i think we should also see what God’s vision of quiet looks like, see thematically to understand the Lord takes quiet as a necessity for us. Consider the theme of Psalm 23. It’s a picture of quietness as God sees it. “The Lord is my shepherd”, not task master but shepherd. “i shall not want”, as in, in His presence i don’t need the endorsement of men, nor titles, nor being known. Jesus is enough for me. “He makes me lie down”, to cease from my labors and trust God has got me. “He leads me besides THE still waters”, not just any still place in the river, but THE still water. “He restores my soul”, when i was overcome with the cares of this life Jesus sets me upright and heals all my wounds and afflictions that He would be known as God who heals me, Exodus 15.26. And it continues in the words of God’s kind heart for His people. Go read it. Do you see it?

i love to walk in the light of a full moon after midnight on a warm summer evening. God’s quiet is phenomenal. i want that. i need that. Come let’s go quietly together and learn to create space to hear and encounter the Lord, whom we so desperately need. We will easily find God in the still places, the quiet places, the places we cease from our striving. Stand still and listen. He is there. Don’t you know being quiet creates space for trusting God. Live full of grace, softly and quietly. It’s beyond the beyond of the noise of this world.

i’m Social Porter for Living In His Name Ministries.

Pro-vision holds hands with vision in the same way a thesis serves as an early discovery process for purpose. The word finds its roots in the Greek “pro-thesis”—meaning purpose—where “pro” speaks of looking ahead or, more poetically, “breathing forward”. Thus, pro-vision is the forward sight that provides everything necessary to advance and fulfill the vision. It is how God brings something into being with the certainty of its existence—His pro-vision is the guarantee that establishes His vision.

Hear this: In God’s mouth, His Word carries holy weight: He speaks a thing into being with divine certainty. His pro-vision is the unbreakable guarantee that His vision will stand.

This is why, when we see God’s preparation (“He prepares a table before me”), we can know there is revealed the sacred order: vision — provision — preparation. There was first a vision and then a pro-vision. God holds a vision for our well-being, releases His pro-vision (providing all that is needed for the accomplishment of that vision), and then brings forth preparation as the visible manifestation of both His vision and His pro-vision. Preparation, the visible beauty of both vision and pro-vision, laid out in glory for all to see.

i do believe though, we often mistake God’s vision as an idea of how it’s going to prosper ourselves, and we take His pro-vision as the things He’s giving us to make us wealthy, comfortable, and living a life of convenience. That’s NOT what He means. He does love that we would do well, of course, but His idea of prosperous and our of prosperous are pretty different. The Lord’s vision for us is to be reconciled to Him, to be healthy and whole, mature, and be filled with the Spirit, bearing out all the fruits and gifts of the Spirit, that’s the vision. His pro-vision is about what He provides us in order that we would prosper His vision. Our error is that we take the wealth of God’s provision and tell ourselves, “it is all for me”, building ourselves large homes, buying huge amounts of property, fancy cars, flashy clothes, when in truth, all along, sometimes, if not often, it all amounts to a misappropriation of His provision, and i consider a misappropriation of Kingdom gifts and benefits to be traitorous. The Lord makes us prosperous not to prosper ourselves but to advance the Body of Christ, yet i do believe many of us have gotten lost in our own self-centered ways, with self-centered meaning, to be centered and focused on ourselves (as if you didn’t know that) … excluding God. Our weight is far more shifted toward ourselves then toward Kingdom purposes. Shift your weight friends.

The eyes see and the soul encourages the little eyes to see again. The mind wants, and the more it sees the more it wants until the heart follows suit and then … gradually, almost unnoticeably, we have lost our relish for righteous things and our relationships with other people have been set adrift, little by little by little, because of the destructive trajectory by which all began in a very subtle place. Many of our errors begin in subtleties, such “small little seemingly nothing things” that don’t appear to make a difference in the now, at the zero point, but out at a distance and over time, the error is staggering. It’s like the teenager who finally decides to take a hit of meth to just try it out for the first time. The first experience is so amazing they decide they’re going to have to try it again. Then again. Shortly, they’re hooked, always trying to relive the original high that will never happen again, ever. Almost all addicts spend all their time chasing that first high. It all began in the turn of a thought in their head that THEY wouldn’t be like THOSE others, that THEY would be able to just try once and stop, that certainly t-h-e-i-r lives would never turn out horribly like the infamous THEY.

In light of all that, it’s a provision all right, but the question is … who made the provision? It wasn’t the Lord. In light of that, we can safely say the vision behind the provision was one of hatred towards God with a full heart of destruction for mankind.

Arthur Bert used to say “Where God’s appointment is, therein is the provision”. Before the Lord made an appointment for you, He already possessed a vision of what He wanted to happen. With His vision of your destiny, in His “looking ahead sight”, He prepared, in advance what you would need to accomplish His purposes. We can completely walk in confidence knowing this: my creative metaphor here, that while you are on your journey, God is already waiting for you just beyond the bend, standing on the path ahead with open arms and a knowing smile. This is why it’s easy to say “the Lord has prepared a table before us”, because in the Hebrew word for “provision”, it comes to us with the idea of “prepare”, as in “from His provision we prepare a meal”. From His provision, the armies of the called prepare for intercession and action. From His provision, we prepare a timely word to the body of Christ. From His provision, we prepare to feed the multitudes of starving and excluded people. He extends us the vision of bringing medical aid to remote places, He makes the pro-vision of supplies, doctors, nurses, vehicles, fuel, food, plane tickets, border passes, and necessary facilities in order to advance the vision, so when we finally get to our destination, we use His provision and prepare to serve with all our heart. David meant something far, far larger than just getting to eat a great meal when He said, “You prepare a table before me.” With vision and  pro-vision comes preparing. Isaiah 45:2: “I will go before you and make the crooked places straight…”

In Romans 13:14, Paul writes to “make no provision” for the flesh. In other words don’t use, not one ounce of your “looking ahead sight for the things which advance the vision of sin” which so easily besets us. The Lord’s provision is always tied to His providence, and to use our gifts to advance the vision of ourselves, again, is a misappropriation of God’s provision, Holy Spirit gifts and benefits. i do not want to be an embezzeler of Kingdom wealth. Let us see His vision, use His pro-vision, as a noun, be guided by His purposes which are set in front of us, and prepare, as an action verb, preparing the way of the Lord, making His paths straight.

What do you think?

i’m Social Porter with Living In His Name Ministries.

Let’s look at salvation from a legal perspective.

Because of the choosing that happened in the Garden of Eden, sin entered in. Because of that choosing, satan held a pseudo-sovereignty over humanity and held mankind for ransom on the principal of “government by consent of the governed”, which is when we live without Christ, we consent to whatever weakens our reason, impairs the tenderness of our conscience, obscures our sense of God, or takes off our relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of our body over our mind, thereby we are governed by sin. The Supreme Judge in the Supreme Court of Heaven is sworn to uphold the demands of the law in every case.

In order for man to be free, by law, an innocent and willing substitute had to be found to take his place who could fully meet the demands of the law and represent both God and man. The only solution was for God to become man, paying the penalty, thereby letting man go free. Because God loved us from the beginning, He saved us from the legal penalty of death due to iniquity,

transgression, and sin.

We need to understand some of the principles of Redemption. Redemption means that one who is capable of redeeming and taking the place of another actually meets the demands of the law and becomes the legal substitute by paying the redemptive price for those who are condemned to death because of breaking the law. God decided that through the atonement and the substitution of an innocent victim to take the place of the guilty kidnapped race, He would free it from satan, thereby legally and forcefully evicting satan, restoring man’s dominion, so as to carry on the eternal purpose, as it was intended from the beginning.

Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Jesus was sent to pay the price for the death penalty man incurred in the garden, thereby breaking the power of the pseudo-sovereignty which satan

had. It was a redemptive work based on the principles of redemption for man, who being under the penalty of death, was unable to pay.

When satan put to death the sinless, innocent Son of God, the High Court of Heaven cancelled all his claims against humanity. The Lamb of God, the Righteous Son of Glory paid the penalty of ransom, thus meeting all the demands of God and the Holy Law, defeating satan and his host with his very blood. Now then, we who believe are “alive to God, in Christ”, as Paul wrote in Romans 6:14 “…sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

For the reasons stated in Romans 6:14, if we confess our sin and consecrate our lives to God, satan loses his case in the High Court of Heaven, and man comes away from court with power of attorney by the blood of Jesus, and we are made representatives and officers of God’s law, and can dispossess and cast out, can heal and strengthen, and do whatsoever the High King of Heaven says for us to do. Because of the work of Jesus Christ, it is our legal, redemptive, blood bought, divine right to be free and resist the enemies of Heaven until the intimidating grip of false authority on mankind is brought down to the ground. The walls of hell WILL fall, all the way to hell!

But for those who refuse to believe and turn from their sin, satan gives to them the sole right and power to suffer.

Christ has once and for all hurled satan from his position of power, so that he is a conquered enemy. We don’t have to bind what Christ has beaten and bound. The might of satan, the prince of all diabolical powers, is already broken. Our greatest strength against the enemies of Heaven, is not to fight against the devil, who is exhausted and defeated, but our greatest strength is to come into the likeness of The Son, Jesus, the Christ of God. Jesus has broken the powers of satan, so that those who look to God in faith are liberated from the influences of darkness.

In the heart posture towards Christ in our hearts and lives, there is no room for sitting on the fence. Every person is either for or against Him, whether we realize and acknowledge it or not.

The privilege and the seriousness of following Christ are of such tremendous magnitude that there is no room for excuse for compromise with the world, or for half-heartedness.

By faith, we live everyday in the splendid opportunity of being citizens of the kingdom of God.

The Lord’s Prayer Expanded:

Holy God, You are The One who is near us in mercy and love and at the same time You are high exalted above us, for your Name is the expression of Your Being, the Name who is sanctified in all creation. Let Your divine rule come, Your divine sovereignty which more and more fully attains it’s rightful place in the heart and life of mankind, as in Heaven where your will is obeyed, spontaneously, with perfect joy, in a perfect manner without a shadow of unfaithfulness. Lord we ask for Your supernatural aid and blessing in all the fields of our lives where Your dominion is perfect and all the real needs of man are replenished, not just for us as individuals on our own merit but in reliance on the grace of God. We ourselves ask for forgiveness as we absolve and acquit those who are indebted to us, who act wrongly towards us on the full ground of Your grace, the sweeping love of God. We concede and admit that we are weak, and are conscious of our own weakness that You would direct our path away from circumstances in which we are exposed to evil temptations, but also celebrate and are glad in You who gives us the victory and causes everything to contribute towards the good of those who love You. Help us that our prayers and life habits would not degenerate into mechanical, and ceremonial formality. For You are the Glory and power, the Perfect Friend who reigns forever. Amen.

What do you think?

In Genesis 18 we are privy to a conversation displaying all sorts of heart attitudes which are still applicable today, right where we are, everyday.

As the conversation opens we see Abraham sitting in the door of his tent, which was his dwelling place, his home and covering. It’s probably somewhere around midday, so it’s hot and he’s taken shelter from the sun. As it goes with us, when it’s hot and we’ve gotten out of the sun for a bit, the same was probably for Abraham in that he may have been dozing a little, waiting for the heat to fade. There are some really key points in this story for us to notice.

The Lord drew my attention to a process in vs. 2, where it says, “he lifted up his eyes”, then “he looked”, and “when he saw”. If we look a little deeper than the English “simplization” of the verse, looking at the Hebrew, variations of seeing come to light. To say, “he lifted up his eyes” is an idiom meaning he was casually looking around, not looking at anything specific, like someone who is waking up from dozing, noticing their environment, with no particular focus. The next phrase is “he looked”. For some reason, something or someone has gotten Abraham’s attention, and now he’s not just generally looking around, now he’s focusing, specifically, on someone or something of special note. It would be the difference between my saying to you, “look” as opposed to saying look with a specific purpose, like not just “look”, but, “look at that tree”. Do you get what i’m saying? Three people suddenly being within his scope of vision was completely out of the ordinary of his visual environment, not to mention, i believe God was pointing them out to him, resulting in his sharpening his focus to see specifically. They were people who were not normally at his camp there in the middle of nowhere. The third phrase, “when he saw them” is a phrase used in reference to a type of prophetic seeing, it is used denoting that he was fully engaged, head and heart, like someone seeing, with eyes wide open, looking, specifically, at something amazing, something to be contemplated with intent. Using the word “when”, which is a time word, reveals that he must have rolled it around in his mind for a second as realization and revelation came to light.

i’m not saying all this to establish that i know something. It is easily understood i absolutely do not. God alone is the sole source of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, and if God doesn’t give us wisdom and insight we simply won’t have it. i am saying, though, there is wisdom here to be grasped in a modern society where uncertainty is deliberately advanced by those who’s hearts are darkened to leverage others for their own advantage at the expense of those held in uncertainty. God operates in the opposite. He wants us to be certain, and to be wise and have understanding. As a result the three facets of seeing, we can see how they describe how we come to understand things, they reveal God’s process, and point to His preferences, and standards.

The Lord’s heart is not only for us to wake up and grow up, but also to be interested enough in Him to take notice and understand. Today, too much of the church is simply spending their time being continually cycled through an organized program every Sunday. Typical leadership seems to have the attitude that congregations need to be managed, and as long as people are engaged in “activities”, they feel like they’re being a part of something larger. It is government by consent of the governed.

From the beginning, God almighty desired to be known by the object of His affection, us. He not only offers us deliverance and salvation, but He shares His attributes with us. He desires we be involved with Him, doing more than simply possessing fire insurance, but knowing Him and understanding, certain and confident He is all He says and more. His ways are better than ours, higher and profitable. He will, indeed, if we are willing to do more than just casual looking, God will open our eyes to “see” and comprehend. He wants us to do more than simply go to church, His desire is for us to advance our relationship with Him and the body of Christ. That is the “having life more abundantly” part spoken of in John10:10.

Not too long ago, upon hearing the scripture from John10:10, where Jesus said that He came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly, an inmate said, “i’ve been living a two part life. A life as a rebellious criminal, and another life as a believer. All my days i’ve been in poverty on both sides of that two part life, and now you’re telling me that Jesus wants me to have life abundantly? i’d sure like all that abundantly to show up about now.” The man was looking but not seeing, he may have been focusing in general, but not on the Lord specifically. His head and heart operated independently of each other, and were not in sync. There was always the undercurrent of criminal thinking, and if he got entirely too honest then the thrill of leveraging the outcome at the expense of someone else would be gone, his eyes would be opened, and then he’d have to be responsible. Just going to church didn’t solve any of his problems, but for a while, he sure did look good without actually having to be righteous. Let us do more than just live a life of continually rising from our drowsy state, more than just looking around with unfocused eyes, but be fully engaged with God, head and heart as one.

What do you think?

Now that we believe Jesus is Lord, we don’t fit in the world anymore, so where do we fit?

In the last many months, on and off, i’ve been in a discussion of being indifferent versus having excessive compassion? Many times i was pegging the meter because I was indifferent, and felt guilty about being indifferent, and wondered why I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t feel bad about being indifferent? Other times i was pegging the meter in destructive compassion because I knew God was compassionate and I should be compassionate also, but I couldn’t help but become a real mush brain, getting sucked into the downward vortex of being sympathetic instead of empathetic.

Finding the middle ground on that was completely a work of the Lord. Not being indifferent, while not being angry, and not being excessively compassionate at the same time is all entirely a God thing. When I brought up the initial topic of indifference versus being compassionate to my own deprivation, I think the, metaphorical wheels on my airplane were clipping the tops of the trees, with the wingtips occasionally scraping the ground. If i wasn’t flying too high nearly passing out from lack of oxygen, i was flying too low nearing a crash moment, but thank you Jesus it didn’t happen and the Lord leveled me out soon enough.

I guess the parachute in that whole dilemma was me coming to grips with… Where am I in all of this, not where are other people in all of this, but where am i? …and learning to not be angry or indifferent with the rest of the world because of all the things their relationship with God is Not. The Lord reminded me again, after reminding me again, after reminding me again that there will always be a long line of irritating people with the wrong view of just about everything, but I don’t have to keep standing there agonizing with them over the torment and woe they’ve generated for themselves, or unwittingly bought into.

I am reminded of the story a friend of mine named Wilson told me about when he was in prison many years ago. He said he gave his life to the Lord and suddenly woke up to see the long line of people always wanting to either get him in trouble, getting him into fights, or wanted to sell him drugs. He said he cried out to God and asked over and over, Lord please remove from in front of me the long line of difficult people. He said one especially distressful day, the Lord said to him very plainly, Wilson, there will always be a long line of those kind of people, but you don’t have to keep standing there. Oh.

If we don’t fit with the world, and the Lord has called us out of religion and church-ianity, where do we fit? In the past, i’ve been burdened day and night in weeping prayer asking the Lord where I fit? His reply to me was simple… “You fit with me and I will make you fit where you need to be fitted.”

Consider the time after the Lord came to heal the sick and made salvation available to all who would believe. At the end of things, God will have given plenty of time for the world to prove to itself we will never possess righteousness through evolution and that God is the only One who decides when the end of a season is over and a new one starts. We are right on the tipping point of a big transition as written about in the Bible. Isaiah61 and in Rev19 are two passages which run parallel to each other, both referring to the bride who is making herself ready.

Imagine, right now we are in God´s fitting room trying on our wedding garments, and we’re starting to get the idea, this is no ordinary fitting room.

We don’t get to choose our own wedding apparel, that is the Lord’s doing. Isaiah61:10, “For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness”. The world’s way of fitting the wedding attire is to cut or let out some material to fit the body of the bride. The Lord´s way is to fit the body of the bride to the one and only wedding garment, the righteousness of Jesus as opposed to the self-righteousness of man. Some of us are too fat, so He dresses us down, adding frailty, and some of us are too thin, so He builds us up, adding strength, so that we all come to the right size, personally and collectively, as a body. Righteousness is the size of the wedding apparel, and it only comes in one size.

This refers to one purpose, among many, concerning sanctification as steps to maturity. Look at this from another direction …in Revelation the Lord is both Lion of Judah and the Lamb without stain who is the only one able to open the scroll. Some of us are lions transformed into lambs like Peter, and others, are like Gideon, lambs who God transforms into lions. The Lord knows exactly how to fit us into righteousness, He knows exactly what we need that He might present the church to Himself in majestic brightness, without spot, wrinkle or even a smudge, that we would be holy and without blemish, just as it’s written in Eph5:27. There is how we fit.

Along with other references to God’s party and marriage invitation in the Gospels, the Lord also has something to say to the guests trying to crash the party without the proper attire…. the door is shut to them because of the refusal to submit to His will and values.

What do you think?

To be a teacher is more than just knowing stuff. It is more than simply telling answers. It seems to me that anyone who only wants to walk among other people, never asking questions but only telling answers, doesn’t want to really be involved with the body but only needs subordinates. i figure teaching is a lot like being a pruner. If someone is considered a professional pruner for grapevines and fruit trees, they’ve got to have a deep appreciation for the vine or tree, they’ve got to be patient, gracefully disposed, willing to be involved, possessing a huge understanding of how it works, and an ultimate goal of making the vine bear as much fruit as possible.

In early Greek culture, someone who was a teacher was spoken of as you would speak of someone who was a choral master, someone who blended voices and choral poetry for public performance, and was also responsible for a correct performance. Aren’t pruners and teachers very similar? i think yes. The pruner helps train the vine to go a different way for the reason of keeping the vine healthy and to bear more fruit. The calling requires real wisdom and insight for a plan of action. It may take the pruner several seasons of tying up branches and limbs in a certain direction, trimming some off and letting others grow in order to achieve the goal of the master of the vineyard. Can you see how the pruner, like a teacher, creates a grape vine which functions like choral poetry? Sure you can. It can also be said that anyone who teaches is also characterized with learning, for to teach is to learn, and every time a pruner puts his hand to the vine he learns a little more about the characteristics of what makes it tick.

i’ve heard it said that every vine, to the discerning pruners eye, has unique characteristics, and each variety of grape vine is as an individual. We, as the people of God are individually unique, and every good teacher should carefully become familiar with their subjects, gently being involved with their pupils, shaping them, snipping a little, directing in a better direction, all with the purpose of improving each one to be more fruitful. That is a good teacher, or a good pruner.

Yet here, i want to point out an observation about the teachers/pruners of today. There are indeed some very good teachers/pruners around. But there’s also a multitude who are pruning the vines, not with a set of sharp shears, a well honed knife, and a keen eye, but they’re pruning with a club, beating the branches off the vine. Many who say they are teachers are brutalizing others by only telling answers, being very unsympathetic to the agony of their pupils, and filling their heads with twisted notions and half-answers framed more to control rather than make them fruitful. A good teacher is a poet in the classroom as well as in the field, instructing and explaining specific talents, and even strategy. Don’t professional pruners also teach the vine the best way to go, and strategize with the vineyard owner? The vine is purposely planted north to south so it gets as much sun as possible, with the sun going east to west. As a result, the pruner must prune some leaves to cover parts of the grape cluster from the heat of the sun, as well as remove just enough so as to allow the sun to ripen the yield of the field evenly. It’s a very intuitive business, and one requiring great understanding about how the vine grows.

If, in God’s constant agriculture analogy, from Adam and Eve being tenders of the garden to the call for us all to be fruitful, i see apostles as planters, and teachers as pruners. In the O.T., the word for pruners came with the idea of someone who strikes the strings with their fingers. It was a delicate touch on the strings to make a beautiful sound, not in the sense of pounding the instrument in a effort to beat a melody out of it, which would be like pruning with a club. In fact, the way the Lord gave us the Hebrew word, the first letter is a knife, and the last letter is a picture of constructive or destructive cutting away, and the letter right in the middle is one of wisdom. So, for pruners, between the knife and trimming of the vine is a flowing stream of wisdom. Can you see the picture there … can you see the sequence of a knife, wisdom, and cutting? With a little knife, choice and wise constructive cutting away draws out the greatness of the vine, as in a creative process to prosper all the little knife trims.

If we prune with a club, the vine will be years in recovery before it bears fruit again. Aren’t brutal teachers who choke their students down to “make” them learn, aren’t they trimming the vine with a club, and their brutalized students might well be years recovering to become fruitful again? No wonder in James 3:1, scripture reads, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Why? Because the fruitfulness of the vine is in your hands as a teacher, probably more than anyone else. Pruning 101 says you’ve got to be gentle, prayerfully consider to understand each branch and vine, use wisdom and think carefully before you cut one back or let another stand. Be wise and don’t cut down fruitful trees. C’mon, i know you’re probably irritated with a lot of poor students, but in the mean time, don’t cut down fruitful trees.

What do you think?

i’m Social Porter with Living In His Name Ministries