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| Sign up for Graham's E-Newsletter |
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| (Sign up for Graham's E-Newsletter) |
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| Living In Wonder |
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| (December 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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Developing a sense of wonder is a prerequisite to spiritual maturity. Through a child-like spirit, we are able to see God and know Him with a faith-filled simplicity. Jesus described this truth in Matthew 18:1–6:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who then is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?’ Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’
The world we live in makes everything complex. But Jesus flies in the face of our culture, telling us that unless we are converted to the ways of being child-like, we can’t enter the Kingdom. Unless we humble ourselves to think, speak and act this way, greatness will elude us. During His ministry, He made everything simple – as evidenced by Matthew 22:35–39:
Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.’
God wants us to think simply. Love Him, love the person next to us. This simplicity plants us in the truth of who God is and who God wants us to be. The goal in our lives is to love God with everything we have, and to love everyone around us in exactly the same way we would like to be loved.
Love is an action. Words are not enough by themselves, they must be accompanied by an act of love. It is essential that we understand that our main contribution to the people around us is to love them in a practical way. Christmas is meaningless if all we do is speak the language of joy and generosity—we must act on that spirit to truly spread the Good News of Jesus’ birth and life.
Redemption is about recovering who we were created to be in this earth. We are called to a way of thinking, being, speaking, and acting that reflects Heaven. We have to retrace our steps of maturity, becoming child-like again, to find a new beginning in the spiritual world. It is very important to God that He be trusted–He loves, when the odds are stacked against us, to be believed in. Children believe in things no matter what happens. Adults, however, spend their time tearing down anything that’s too good to believe.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field,” Jesus explained in Matthew 13:44.
Christians haven’t bought the farm and died; we’ve bought the field and found God’s unimaginable treasure! God has deposited treasure in each of our lives, treasure that can be joyfully recovered. Through the Holy Spirit, we can find that treasure and release it as part of God’s redemptive plan.
From God, then back to God: the circle of spiritual life continues as we share our treasure with everyone we come in contact with. It doesn’t matter how much we give away: there will always be more than enough. The source – God Himself – gives us far more than we could ever give.
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| The Church: Building and Body |
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| (November 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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The paradox of the church as a building and a body is an intriguing one. The Apostle Paul compares the church to a building in Ephesians 2:19-22—
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
This is the absolute, ideal, intentional will of God. In our friendships and fellowship, we are to be a habitation for Him. This doesn’t mean more meetings! Jesus didn’t come and say, “I’m here that you might have meetings and might have them more abundantly.” No, He came to bring us a life, a life which is formed in the pool of relationships. God is seen most clearly in who we are together, how we share with one another, how we see each other, how we love each other, and how we support one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jesus said in John 13:35.
The western church has settled for trying to have brilliant meetings. Personally, I don’t think God cares too much about having meetings. In the New Testament, He only talks about meeting twice, and one of those times, He only says, “Don’t forget to meet.” That’s half the revelation right there. The other half talks about creativity: “When you meet, you could do this or this or this.” He doesn’t nail anything down or tell us when, where, and how to meet. The form of our meetings ought to be led by the ultimate creative force, the Holy Spirit.
Peter added to the building theme in 1 Peter 2:4-5—
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
The spiritual sacrifice we are called to make is to put our friends ahead of ourselves. Honoring someone else more than we want to be honored is the best way to increase the meaning of our own lives. A true apostle, or father or mother, doesn’t care about themselves as much as they care about you. They want you to have the blessing. They produce thousands of sons and daughters and equip them to become fathers and mothers themselves. Their work is selfless and generous. They are consistent and intentional.
Spiritual sacrifice calls us to lay down our lives for each other. We help one another achieve great things. Their success is more important than our own. We don’t protect what we have but think of ways to give it to someone else.
The church has a precious Cornerstone, and when we believe in Him, we cannot be disappointed. We live in relationship with others the same way we live with God. How we treat them reflects how we treat Him. If we see our lives as a contribution, we cannot be disappointed. If we live as a giver, we can’t help but receive. But when we hoard, we lose everything.
In Ephesians 1:22-23, Paul compared the church to a body—“And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Sadly, I don’t know of many churches moving in the fullness of Christ. But this must be our goal. It is an amazing challenge to think about. What would the fullness of God look like in a church, a city, a region, and a country? What would happen if churches all around the world returned to their sacred purposes?
In renewal, we rediscover a passion for Jesus. In revival, we rediscover a compassion for the lost. Reformation occurs when the church, full of both that passion and compassion, breaks out into the world and starts making goodness fashionable. It becomes like Pentecost, where walls cannot contain us and we spill into the community. The walls of the church are knocked flat as the world sees a people who know how to live as a habitation for God.
I’ve watched as churches have prayed non-stop for God to move and wondered why little has happened. What is it about us that makes God hold off on answering our prayers? I suspect that He would love to birth thousands of spiritual babies but that He can’t trust us to properly care for them yet. What if He doesn’t want new Christians to be born into churches with a religious mindset? What if He doesn’t want to pour new people into a system that will gobble them up? As prophetic voices and church leaders, we need to wrestle with these questions.
Paul loved the metaphor of body life so much that he mentioned it again in both Colossians 1:15-18 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. But how can a church be both a building and a body at the same time? How can it be rigid yet fluid, immovable yet constantly moving? The church, as a building, is about being something. But the church, as a body, is about doing something. The building metaphor gets us thinking about the things we should be, the aspect of fellowship, and how it relates to our character. The body metaphor is about love for each other, and understanding that we each have unique gifts and uses.
Today’s church is built on a paradigm—a one-dimensional view of church as a functional, purpose-driven, task oriented people whose lives are grouped around meetings.
But all spirituality is paradoxical where we experience the "both/and" elements of complete opposites... such as building and body; servants and sons; relational and functional partnerships. The issue in a paradox is "what takes precedence when we are under pressure?" That must be friendships, character, intimacy and oneness of heart.
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| Rejoicing Always |
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| (October 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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Living in Christ makes us vulnerable to laughter. Laughter is more than a choice; it’s a requirement for us that we be happy. God’s highest plan for our lives includes a desire for us to find, live in, and love the joy that is in Christ. God is good news! His love and presence is an absolute tonic for us.
“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full,” Jesus said in John 15:11. Every time God speaks to us, or reveals more of His nature to us, joy is part of that equation. Beholding Him and becoming like Him is an invitation to party and celebrate with Him. Everything God says to us is designed to bring us into joy. Everything in the Kingdom of Heaven is about gladness, joy, happiness, and laughter. God wants to bring a smile to our faces.
God is joyful because He knows what’s coming next. He knows the final score. When you know the end from the beginning, you can’t help but laugh at all of evil’s schemes and tricks. They become irrelevant when you know that you win. There is a continuous joy in Christ that runs so deep that no one else can even touch it. But to access it, we need to learn how to rejoice in all things.
For me, joy is a safeguard. It’s a shield against the enemy. When the enemy comes, we can laugh in his face—because God laughs at him first.
I once had a dream where I was on a battlefield. We had just fought off the enemy, but we had lost a lot of good people. There weren’t many of us left; we were small and pitiful, to be honest. Every one of us was wounded. I myself had at least a dozen sword gashes on my arms. I was bleeding badly, and was absolutely exhausted.
Suddenly, a trumpet blew, and I saw another enemy army take the field in front of us. I looked around but saw no reinforcements for our battered side. The enemy was powering up. Their ranks were swelling with every passing moment. It was a hopeless fight, but our ragtag band of survivors gathered close together and got ready.
As I set my feet and gritted my teeth in preparation for the enemy’s charge, I noticed a man next to me was dressed as a restaurant waiter. Perfectly-pressed black trousers, a bowtie, a crisp, white shirt, and a white towel slung over his arm.
“What are you doing?” I asked incredulously.
“Would you like the melon or the soup?” he replied.
“What?” I asked.
“Melon or soup?” he said.
“How can you talk about food at a time like this?” I demanded.
The waiter ignored me and went from person to person, asking, “Melon or soup?”
“Are you mad?” I said. “Don’t you see what’s happening? Don’t you see the blood all over the ground? Don’t you see the enemy over there? How can you talk about lunch at a time like this?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he answered. “Melon or soup?”
I lost my temper completely. “Are you stupid or something?” I screamed. “You want to talk about food at a time like this?”
Suddenly, I woke up to find myself shouting, “Talk about food!” in my bedroom. In that instant, I received a powerful revelation, found in Psalm 23:5—“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
When we’re on the battlefield just trying to survive the next wave of the enemy, God is thinking about menus. He looks around and says, “What a great place for a picnic! We can have sausage rolls, meat pies, cheese sandwiches. This will be perfect.” He is so secure in who He is and in His power to defeat any enemy that He can feed us in the middle of the worst battle of our lives. And that confidence should be a source of pure joy in our lives.
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| Bouncing Back |
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| (September 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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God’s uncommon love for us has three facets—He loves who we are now, He loves who we are going to become, and He loves us every step in between. He will love us through the process of change. In Hebrews 12:2, we read that “Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.” Jesus is overjoyed when He sees us become better than we were. God loves it when we step up into a whole new level.
Our understanding of our own identity in Christ is critical to our spiritual development. We face two crucial questions—what do we think about God, and what do we think about ourselves? Part of the spiritual discipline of confession is to speak out who we are to God. “This is who I am,” we can say to the Father, “and I love You for making me this way.”
When the Holy Spirit puts His finger on the parts of our lives that are no longer appropriate, we can exchange that issue for a gift. The Holy Spirit will never convict us without offering a gift of uncommon love in return. In effect, this means that every attack of the enemy can be turned over to God in return for more strength, more favor, and more peace.
We can be healed as we journey with God. My daughter, Sophie, describes it this way: when God puts His finger on something in our lives, it means He has another birthday gift ready for us. Anytime someone does something against us, God does something for us.
In Romans 8:28, we read that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Unfortunately, we think this verse means that thing will work out, down the road, eventually. Why wait? Why store up all of our difficulties when we can respond to God in the moment and be instantly healed?
We can each perfect the art of bouncing back. When someone hits you, bounce back by giving it to God immediately. Don’t carry that baggage around another day. Just drop it and move on to the luggage the Holy Spirit has packed for you—the prophetic words, revelation, and dreams that the Father has for your life.
God’s luggage is the provision necessary for us to settle the territory He has laid out for us. God is the great territorial spirit, and He has a place for each of us. Like pioneers racing in the Oklahoma land rush, we can charge into the great unknown, ready to take the territory God has selected for us.
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| LEARNING TO SAY NO |
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| (August 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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The most difficult part of resting in the Lord is learning to say one simple two-letter word: “No.” I have had to learn how to say no. For every ministry invitation I accept, I turn down ten or eleven. I have to say no, because I know what I am called to be and do. If an event doesn’t fit with God’s vision for my life—no matter how attractive the event is—I have to turn it down. God has told me to work in a number of specific countries right now: if I receive an invitation from a different nation, I have to say no. I just can’t go. I know God’s parameters for me.
Rushing and productivity have no connection. The issue for us is what we lose when we rush, not what we gain. I could go on a mad dash and spend 350 days a year on the road ministering, but it isn’t right. Hurrying exhausts us, decreases our efficiency, and produces a lack of quality in what we do.
By saying no, I have had the opportunity to rest and reflect on what God wants to do next. Revival—contrary to our belief that it is an event that happens where people get saved—is actually about having an extended peace so the work of the Gospel can go on unhindered. When we bring peace to our churches and neighborhoods, the work of the enemy decreases.
A few years ago, the Lord told me that I should spend a year only doing three kinds of events. These events were ones I had plenty of material for; I didn’t need to study for them. Instead, the Lord had me spend that year meditating, studying, and writing about what He wanted to do next. When invitations came in that didn’t fit the three types of events He wanted me to do, I turned them down. My job that year was to study who God is and who He wants to be for me. Rushing or saying yes to things would have robbed me of that revelation. My relationship with Him was upgraded wonderfully that year—so much so I wish I could have that every year!
Saying no is just one way to increase rest. How many of us take time for ourselves? Silence and stillness must be practiced—we all need times of solitary confinement with God to practice our peace.
Sometimes it’s good to just sit back and reflect on our journey with God. Where have we come from? What have we walked through? Where are we going? To do this, we need to slow down. We have to let other people get in line ahead of us. We need to eat slowly. We need to leave our watch at home. We must think before we speak and learn to listen without formulating a reply. It is vital that we learn how to step back into God and enjoy our Prince of Peace.
Patience is a virtue we need to develop, especially when we are about to birth something new spiritually. It takes time to grow; we have to sort through all of the things that are thrown at us and discover what exactly God is calling us to. We have to wade through everything and wait. My suggestion for people in a season of birth or upgrade is to write out a prayer for patience and pray it every day. In the midst of crisis, it is difficult to pray spontaneously because our requests of God shift with the pressure we feel in the heat of the moment. But if we have written out a prayer that asks God for a specific thing—patience—we can be faithful to what God wants to do.
In my greatest seasons of birth, I have written out a patience prayer, laminated it, and put it in my wallet so I could access it anytime, anywhere. I would pray that prayer fifteen times a day and found myself becoming more patient every time I did it. The Holy Spirit calls patience up in us when we ask for it.
When I am waiting on God, I run through exercises to grow my spiritual life. Choosing three friends I can bless. What country can I pray for? What are six things I love about my life right now? What are my greatest dreams for my children? What can I pray to bless the person who just passed me in the fast lane? I am a person who wants to wait in a positive way.
Waiting is a wonderful gift, if we choose to embrace it.
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| July 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke |
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Our job as Christians is to represent God’s glory to the world. It is our privilege to receive God, in all His fullness, and demonstrate His loving kindness to those around us. “[Jesus] is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature,” Hebrews 1:3 teaches us. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” Jesus Himself added in John 14:9.
As Christ is formed in us, we take on God’s personality. Jesus’ two great statements—“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”—are not just commandments. They are also promises of how God loves us. He intends to love us, for the rest of our lives, with all of His heart, mind, soul, and strength. He has also guaranteed that we will have the capacity to return that type of love to Him. When God loves us with all of His heart, we can love Him with all of ours. When God loves us with all of His mind, we can love Him with all of ours.
This kind of love changes us. I thoroughly enjoy loving God with my mind, sitting down and thinking about Him. I spend four months a year meditating on Him. I have a small room where I go and think. There are days when I won’t leave that room. Meditation is nothing more than thinking deeply about something. When I sit down and think about who God is and what He is like, He cannot resist coming and speaking out what He, in turn, thinks about me. God loves us with all of His mind. His every thought about us is good and pure.
In 1 John 4:16, we read of what this love can do to us—“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” God loved us so much that He gave us His Son to save us, and then gave us the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide us as we learn to abide in Him.
The natural outflow of loving God with everything in us is to love others as well. God’s generosity to us must overflow into love for the rest of the world. We can love others because we are outrageously loved. When we truly love God with all of our body, mind, soul, and strength, a breakthrough occurs in our perception, emotion and thinking.
The bigger the failure we have been, the more dynamic our shift into living in the love of God. The Father looks at us and is filled with love. What weaknesses we have become the catalyst for Him to give us what we need to overcome them. “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,” as 1 Corinthians 1:27 says. God says, “I know what’s missing in you, and I have a gift to make it whole.”
It is urgent that Christians receive and experience a revelation of how much the Lord loves us. That love didn’t crescendo at the point of salvation; that was only a step in a long journey of deep love and affection. His radical love covers a multitude of sins. Everything in our lives that doesn’t work is covered by His love. The Holy Spirit takes these things and reveals them to us. He shows us the areas where we need the love of God to flow next. He loves leading us to truth and expressing Christ in us.
The love of God for each of us is so deep that it absorbs failure, it covers sin, it overcomes weaknesses, and it gives us astonishing acceptance in the ranks of the beloved. We are so powerfully loved that we cannot avoid His joyful acceptance and confidence in us. His personality is so strong that nothing is impossible—we can even love our enemies.
“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven,” says Matthew 5:16. When His nature lives in us, we can enjoy and share the wonder of that experience, and His glory will shine into our personality.
Let me make this as clear as possible: the only evidence that God’s DNA is in us is how we love ourselves and how we love other people.
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| Living The Word |
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| (June 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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God wants prophetic voices which have experienced the things they are speaking. God never drops a word into a life and leaves it at that. Instead, He nurtures the word, putting the Holy Spirit into action to bring unction and experiences. He explains His word time and again.
This is why every Christian needs to journal. I keep several journals that I write in all the time. All of my talks and books start their life in my journal. I set aside time to meditate, to think deeply and be absorbed by thought. I write and think about what God is saying to me. I mine everything I can out of the revelation God gives me. I dig through the word, looking for every ounce of truth.
God loves that type of intentionality. He will keep explaining His word and breathing it over us because He is committed to grounding something in our spirit.
Supporting a prophetic word means giving it more than once. We have to keep speaking it until the Holy Spirit tells us to stop. Our mission as prophets is to find creative ways to give the word, so it is not boring or monotonous. To accomplish this, we need to be passionate and wise about the word. How can we deliver something we do not understand? We have to let God energize us and reveal the depth of His wisdom to us.
I have given the same word as many as a dozen times. The key is to not become exasperated by the word, but be empowered by it. People who have attended more than one of my conferences or schools notice that I say the same thing several times. This isn’t because I’m short of material, it’s because I’m trying to nurture listeners into a new way of thinking about God and about themselves. I know that if someone starts to see themselves as God sees them, nothing on earth can stop them.
The prophetic steers, influences, and inspires people to stand up because they realize how great they are in Christ. When we know the magnitude of what God has for us as an individual, we cannot help but stand tall for Him. Our personality and attitudes are redefined by this revelation. Our outlook and perspectives shift. In short, we mature.
We must mentor and monitor one another until a full change of heart takes place. God will not let any of us go until His word is fulfilled—until we get it, we speak it, we hear it, we see it, we eat it, we drink it, we stand in it, we walk in it, we run with it, we fight with it, we live with it.
In Exodus, Moses had to see what God wanted him to be. His self-esteem was so low that all he could offer God at the burning bush was excuses. “I can’t,” Moses said. “You will,” answered God. Finally, God laid out very plainly His plan for Moses: “See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet,” (Exodus 7:1).
By the time God was finished with transforming Moses, the most powerful king on earth could only describe him as a god. That’s the only word he could find in the terminology of his twisted belief system. Imagine how secure God must be in Himself to let an earthly king think of Moses as a god? The Lord elevated Moses to a place of power so profound that it influenced the entire Middle East. All Moses had to do was believe.
We must hear the word and then see it. What we see and hear, we must speak out. Each of us needs to confess who God has made us to be. All along the way, God will nurture us, one step at a time.
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| Wonderful Wonder |
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| (May 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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Jesus’ own sense of wonder surfaced whenever He saw others who walked in innocence and purity. One of the few times Jesus said “behold”—or, as we would term it, “wow”—was when He first met Nathanael, a man who later became one of His disciples. “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Jesus exclaimed in John 1:47 (King James Version).
What did Jesus see in Nathanael? He saw a man without deceit. The Message version of the Bible translates Jesus as saying, “There's a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.” Jesus saw his innocence and loved it.
Innocence is a quality we are born with and then slowly lose through the experiences of our life. Every time we have one of those bitter experiences, as we call them, a part of our purity erodes away. The way we think and perceive things in the spirit withers as we become guarded, wary, mistrustful, and suspicious. When another bitter experience occurs in our life, another layer of grime is placed on our sense of wonder. Given enough time, we become unsure that we were ever innocent. Meanwhile, we look at everyone around us and see the worst.
Jesus, the same Man who saw and loved Nathanael’s purity, also allowed Judas Iscariot to be close to Him. Jesus’ own sense of wonder about who God was allowed Him to be true to Himself and love the unlovely. He was a friend to sinners without being tainted by them.
Innocence is always under the threat of attack. But purity isn’t about what others can do to us, it’s about who we want to be. We can remain pure in heart and remain watchful for unscrupulous and disrespectful people at the same time.
We are in control of our own sense of wonder. Jesus dealt with this idea when, in Mark 7:6, He defined what He considered hypocrisy to be: “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” When our hearts are bitter, hard, callous, unfeeling, cynical, judgmental, angry, suspicious, closed, wary, distressful, jealous, skeptical, derisive, contemptuous, pessimistic, unbelieving, sarcastic, or scornful, we hurt ourselves—these things are corrosive to innocence. The damage we do to our own purity is far greater than the damage we can inflict on anyone else’s. Giving in to impurity grieves the Spirit of God. Our hardness grows as we protect ourselves from people and situations. We get hurt and we swear an unholy vow: “I’ll never let that happen to me again.” Immediately, we begin to insulate our hearts from taking another chance on someone or something. We close ourselves off relationally.
As we can see from Luke 9:46-48, Jesus always knew what people were feeling in their hearts:
Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest. And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him, and said to them, “Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great.”
Unless we become child-like in innocence and purity, we won’t be able to see the wonders God wants to show us. Jesus wanted us to throw away our pride and self-protectionism and live a truly spiritual life.
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| Ingenuity, Not Inactivity |
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| (April 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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Most people don’t intend to procrastinate. No one wakes up and says, “My, what a beautiful, sunny day. I think I’ll spend it procrastinating.” Instead, procrastination is rooted in passivity. Passivity sneaks up on us; we take little sips of it, not a big swig. But eventually passivity takes control and we end up putting important things off. Inch by inch, passivity creeps up on us. We may have an assignment due for the end of the month, but we know we still have a few days left. Why bother starting? Such thinking doesn’t seem dangerous, but what happens when one of the children get sick and needs attention? Or the car breaks down? Or the computer crashes? Suddenly, it’s an hour before deadline and we find ourselves trying to cram three weeks of work into sixty minutes. The stress is enormous and the family is convinced we’re the angriest people on the planet.
When we put things off, we can dig ourselves a monumentally large hole. The frightening thing is that we sometimes procrastinate in our relationship with God. We put off dealing with the issues that we know He is calling us to resolve.
What are the consequences of procrastination? There is no way to redeem lost time—it’s gone forever. In life, we all have two currencies. One is money, and the other is time. If we waste money, we can make it back. But if we waste time, it’s gone forever. Only a miracle can bring time back.
Procrastination doesn’t just hurt ourselves; it hurts the people around us. Their effectiveness suffers as ours does. If we procrastinate, we affect others negatively. Procrastination increases stress and siphons off our joy. We end up feeling overwhelmed as things pile up and we lose the energy needed to tackle them.
It’s a hopeless battle unless we renew our minds. We can each succeed in what is facing us right now, as long as we commit it to God. Five loaves and two fish can feed 5,000 people if the right Man is present. We cannot procrastinate, waiting for greater resources to come; we have to move out with what we have. Something will happen—and it will happen in our mind first. Waiting until everyone and everything is in place just shows you have more faith in what other people can offer rather than in what God is telling you. Use the resources you have; more will come because God commits to faith that is actually moving. Before we can reap, we must sow action.
The best leaders always commit to ingenuity, not inactivity. Creative people have a buzz around them that God loves. I love being with people who think everything is possible, not with those who make up a thousand excuses as to why it can’t be done.
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| Optimism or Discouragement? |
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| (March 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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God is not interested in simply helping people to a destination. He is acutely concerned with how we get there, and wants to be with us on that journey. In Luke 24, Jesus wasn’t walking with His disciples in order to get to Emmaus; He was walking with them because He enjoyed their company and wanted to share the Good News of His resurrection. When we ask God to do something quick, He usually says no. Most of us want our problems resolved overnight so that life can go back to normal. God simply does not work that way. He wants to walk the trail with us, giving us wisdom, revelation and His presence.
On this journey, we have a choice: optimism or discouragement. We choose positivity using our will, and negativity through malaise or laziness. Discouragement creeps up on us, and we often fall into it before we even realize what is happening. We must choose to be happy.
Even when things are not going well, we can still be positive. It is better to say, “I’m quietly hopeful,” than it is to say, “I’m really down right now.” This is more than a change in language; it is a change in outlook. I live in quiet hope. My goal is to always live in faith, and what helps me to be good at that is the innate cheerfulness of the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual warriors must be resilient, able to withstand any shock that comes our way. Rest is the best shock absorber on earth. When things go poorly, we need to quickly recover and reposition ourselves in God. Sometimes I think that sin may not be so much about us falling down as it is about us refusing to get up. Resiliency occurs in a heart that has seen God and knows His nature. Our testimony of who Jesus is for us, together with the evidence of what Jesus has done for us, will always overcome (Revelation 12:11) in any circumstances. It is the partnership of both those certainties that fills our heart with fearlessness.
Resiliency is established as we reposition our will so that our mind is influenced by our spirit, and not by our circumstances. When we accomplish this, our mind uses our mouth to praise, confess, and declare God’s greatness.
We each have a choice: will we magnify the Lord, or will we magnify the situation that is currently bothering us? Magnifying God is the antidote to a negative mindset. It turns a setback into a comeback. To live in the spirit, and to reveal our inner being, our whole person must be in agreement. Faith is demonstrated by our entire person—soul, spirit, and body. With mental agreement and emotional submission, the action of our will agrees with the focus of the spirit and come into alignment with who God is and what He wants to do. The instant this happens, breakthrough starts.
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| THE EBB AND FLOW OF LIFE IN THE SPIRIT |
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| (February 2009 Newsletter Article by Graham Cooke) |
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It is one of the paradoxes of God’s nature: He is constant, and yet He works seasonally. Our humanity has trouble dealing with such a concept. Everything the eternal God does is seasonal. In the natural, He created four seasons to guide the earth through times of sowing, reaping, working, and rest; the same holds true in the spiritual realm. But for some reason, most churches strive desperately to find a perfect balance. They want to be consistent and balance teaching and worship, the Word and the Spirit.
God, however, rejects that notion of balance. His Spirit ebbs and flows in our lives. There are times when we flow in the Word of God, and times when we flow in the Spirit. Our job is to see what God is doing and respond to Him in it. If He is revealing mysteries through Scripture, than we need to focus strongly on the Bible. If He is unveiling things through the gifts and work of the Holy Spirit, then we need to run with that.
We cannot live in a continuous flow of the Spirit. It’s unnatural. For every flow, there must be ebb. For every high tide, there is a low tide. When we are ebbing in the Spirit, God brings us to the constancy of His Word. That Word then underpins our next season in the Spirit—God uses the ebb to teach us about our next breakthrough. What we do in the low tide of the Spirit is absolutely vital to the next flow God wants to bring us into. He sees both the ebb and the flow as a way for Him to lead us.
Christians must begin to embrace the constancy of God’s seasons. If He doesn’t speak initially, He always does eventually. Until that Word comes, we must learn to rest in Him. It is absolutely impossible to be both established and exploring at the same time. God has not given us the capacity to balance such a paradox. Instead, we swing between the two extremes, depending on what God is doing in that season. At times, we will be absolutely established and welded to the Word of God. At other times, we will be on a deep journey, exploring the mysteries of the Spirit. To stay in a continuous stream of the Word will only reduce God to an intelligent thought—we will only love Him with all of our mind. But when we explore, we begin to love Him with all of our strength, becoming reliant on Him. Our lives must go through both wonderful winter seasons of the Word, and sizzling summer seasons of the Spirit.
Imagine a church that understood the ebb and flow of God. When the Spirit was moving, its people would be released to explore and worship using the highest forms of praise. Nights would be spent on simply worshipping God. Power encounters would be daily events.
And that same church would have the maturity to realize when God was calling them back to His Word. Such a church would become a dynamic place of teaching and truth. It would trust that God’s Word, placed in the hearts of His children, would accompany them on a deep exploration into the Spirit. Its people would rally around the teachers and the pastors, knowing that they were being prepared for the next great flow in the Spirit.
The Word and the Spirit enjoy a marvellous relationship. They are never in conflict; they know when to submit to one another. They know when to ebb and when to flow.
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| January 2009 Newsletter Article |
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January 2009 Newsletter Article
Whenever we celebrate the beginning of a new year, we are given a natural opportunity to ponder the timing of God.
While much study and meditation has been done in recent years on interpreting prophecy, it is important to remember that God sometimes uses words to carry a different meaning in the spiritual than they normally do in the natural. For example, in Acts 2:1-4, we see how God defines the word “suddenly” differently than we do—
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
When we hear the word “suddenly,” we naturally think, “now.” On the surface, Acts 2 seems to back that up—it seems like the Holy Spirit has been poured out in a completely spontaneous event. But behind the scenes, as anyone who studies Scripture will know, there was a significant time of preparation beforehand. The Spirit was not a surprise, as Jesus had promised several days earlier in Acts 1:5 that, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Just before His ascension, Jesus told His followers to wait for the promise of the Father, and some of them had done just that.
Of the five hundred people who witnessed the resurrection, one hundred and twenty were in the Upper Room persevering until the Holy Spirit was poured out. God clearly doesn’t need everyone to be on the same page to do something wonderful. He just needs a company of people persevering. Like Gideon’s army being cut back to three hundred, God will use the people who are fully and truly committed to Him.
Prophecy is fulfilled according to God’s timetable and man’s preparation and placement. If we are not prepared by God’s hidden process, or in the right place, we will miss the timing of God. These early Christians were right before God, and their relationships were in order. When God’s timing came, and He found them ready and in one accord, He empowered them from on high. The world changed because of that prayer meeting. The word “suddenly” actually carried a significant, and successful, season of preparation with it.
We see a similar principle in Mark 4:26-29—
And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows--how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."
Jesus spoke of an immediate harvest, but clearly there were a number of things that had to happen before it could occur. When we receive a prophetic word about harvest in a church, we must be prepared to walk through the process of growing that seed. The word very well could mean that we need to break up the hard ground in our own lives first—cracking the hardness of our hearts and learning to rely on both God and one another.
For a time, we may have to throw seeds out. Planting takes work and strategy. We can’t just sit around and expect something to grow if we haven’t planted it. We have to sow the seeds. Churches with prophecies of harvest ought to consider ways of investing themselves into the community. We have to get outside our doors, sharing the promise God has put upon us. When a church asks me what they should do with a prophecy about harvest, I always suggest planting as many seeds over as wide a region as possible. We need a great planting to have a great harvest. We also have to find fertile ground and develop and train enough workers to do both the sowing and the reaping. Jesus’ “immediate” harvest actually took months of preparation behind the scene.
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