The Rip and Tear

I've heard some powerful prayers in my life.

There have been times when in church an individual would come up to the altar and talk with the pastor, and he would have the church pray as a unit for the person.
Prayers for healing can be hard to get through with dry eyes.
I have gone through buckets of tears when praying for a lost friend or family member.

Although all of these can and have a major impact on my life, I believe the most powerful prayer is truly that of the Rip and Tear.

This kind of prayer is not often prayed, but is applicable to all people, because the question it gives to God is that He will take from your life anything that He deems unacceptable or unnecessary from your life.
If you pray this prayer, you should be forewarned that if you truly want this to happen, and ask God to "rip and tear" these harmful things from your life, He will do it. He created you to be ALL His, and if you surrender to what His desire is for your life, He will use you for His ends.

His ends and means are both justified, so there is no need to worry about either. If you are ready to surrender, pray for God to literally take away both the sinful nature you were born with and the sins that you commit on a regular basis, and He will rescue from these, and you will never be the same.

Just as William Cowper stated, "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint on his knees."

Everything Falls

Thank God that He has everything together!
Even when I've fallen down on my face, He lifts us up.

Cause when everything falls apart, Your Arms hold me together.
When everything falls apart, You're the only Hope for this heart
When everyhting falls apart and my strenght is gone,
I find you Mighty and Strong.
You keep holding on!

<3 Fee

Radical Follower

Here are some of my thoughts on Liberty's convo from this morning by Dr. David Platte.

Our world is full of people who are in deep, but quenchable need. The majority of people in the world die of easily curable diseases or a lack of clean water. As Americans, it's a pity that we don't really understand this.

Nearly a third of people across the globe claim to be Christians.
Now, with this in mind contemplate with me some of the DEMANDS that Jesus Christ, the leader of the Christian faith has made:

Matthew 16:24
"If any man may come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

Luke 9:57-62
As they were traveling on the road someone said to Him,
"I will follow You wherever You go!"
Jesus told him, "Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head."
Then He said to another, "Follow Me."
"Lord," he said, "first let me go bury my father."
But He told him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God."
Another also said, "I will follow You, Lord, but first let me go and say good-bye to those at my house."
But Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Luke 12:22-34

Then He said to His disciples:

"Therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat; or about the body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.

"Consider the ravens: they don't sow or reap; they don't have a storeroom or a barn; yet God feeds them. Aren't you worth much more than the birds?

"Can any of you add a cubit to his height by worrying? If then you're not able to do even a little thing, why worry about the rest?

"Consider how the wildflowers grow: they don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon^" in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that's how God clothes the grass, which is in the field today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will He do for you—you of little faith?

"Don't keep striving for what you should eat and what you should drink, and don't be anxious. For the Gentile world eagerly seeks all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.

"But seek His kingdom, and these things will be provided for you. Don't be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Make money-bags for yourselves that won't grow old, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.^"

Matthew 28:19-20

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

I know that some of this stuff is often seen as metaphors, but when taken literally, these commands are very demanding.

Quite different from the fluff Salvation we have created for ourselves, using Jesus Christ's death as a ticket out of Hell, as an escape from an evil past, as a safety net to use for our own desires and plans. This is so varying from the true Gospel message.

As we have seen from the info posted a few days ago from John MacArthur, throughout the entire Bible we are called to be the Slaves of God, not simply servants.

Who of us is actually willing to obey the Creator of the Universe and do as He commands?

1. The command from Matthew 16:24 says that we are to pick up our cross, which was the main instrument of torture back then (our contemporary equivalent to the electric chair or water boarding) and Jesus tells us to carry it around on our shoulders. He also commands us to deny our own wants and say "no" to ourselves and "yes" to Him.

2. Luke 9:57-62 holds three comments from Jesus on what our Christian life will hold for those who decide that they will follow Him. In the first, Jesus tells us that we are not guaranteed a roof over our heads as believers. Jesus also says that we cannot look back onto our old lives once we become a follower of His. The two latter statements deal with giving proper good-byes to our family members, which He says cannot have precedent over King Jesus. Difficult though this may be, He deserves no less than our full devotion.

3. Jesus shows that even though His commands seem more demanding than we could ever bear, He tells us in Luke 12:22-34 that He will take care of us fully. He reminds us of all the other beings He cares for such as the ravens in the sky and the wildflowers on the fields, who are cared for with a watch eye by their Creator in heaven.

4. Lastly, the great commission given in Matthew 28:19-20 commands the Christian to go out, despite the fiery arrows the devil will hurl, and show people what Christ was truly all about. The message is not all fluff, as the popular vision of today's church says, for He is worthy of every breath to be used in the glorification of Himself. Our lives are to become dedicated to Him, the One who is worthy.

This is what my faith has the power to do: take an evil, self-loving sinner, and turn this person into a being who seeks only to give glory to the Creator, who is humbled in the presence of an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent God.

Eternal Beauty

I'm loving Elisabeth Elliot's book Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot.

Here is a quote from one of Jim's letters to his brother Bert,
"Eve's daughters are as flowers and none can ever say they are through unfolding. And what man can predict the consummate end of such a life when its ultimate center is Sharon's Rose?"

How beautiful an idea is this!
Thank God that He is never through with us; He is constantly waiting for us to surrender all to Him, so that He can use us in miraculous ways that we would never have been able to imagine.

He has such more for me than I can comprehend.

I remember a song I heard once, by a local band near where I lived, Desert Reign. The chorus had a line that said, "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the trampled flower casts upon the foot that crushed it into the ground."
While yes, it is quite a mouthful, the idea behind it is so precious.

It is never-ending, the love of God.
This has been true in my own life, as I have experienced the infinite forgiveness and love of God. He doesn't care what I have done in life, He wants to use me for His ends, for His purposes.
Regardless of what we encounter in life, God is always there to pick us up off the ground. He scrapes us up from the dirt that we have been ground into, breathes His life into our noses, and brings us back to life, over and over again.

He sees us as beautiful, and has freed us from our pasts with His love. The daughters of Eve will forever be blessed and used and loved of God, His mercy endures forever.
Thank God for His view of us, the mirror that never sees us as anything but what we really are: made in His image. He is Beauty, and we were created to look just like Him, from our beautiful conception to the surrendering of our last breath.
-Amen.

Slavery

John MacArthur is an amazing, intelligent man of God.
Today in Convocation, he spoke to the students of Liberty, and he had a message for us that will impact my life perspective forever if I can only put it into full out motion.

He is a Koine Greek language scholar, and has discovered a severe discrepancy in the translation of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into English.
I myself am a second semester Greek student myself, and was thus able to keep up with him in general, and will try to explain to you the fallacy that is being sold to Americans and the English speaking population.
The word 'δοῦλος' (doulos) is used in the Greek New Testament 141 times. This word has a very specific meaning, that fortunately for our contemporaries has a very specific, particular meaning.
The word doulos literally and plainly means 'slave.'

Now, I'm not sure how many of you have read your entire Bible, or even just the New Testament- I myself have only read through the New Testament- but I digress from the point.
In the King James Version of the Bible, the word doulos is almost always translated as 'servant' rather than 'slave.' Actually, in every translation (with the exception of MacArthur's Holeman Christian Standard Bible) the word is translated as servant, especially when concerning the Christians.

I'm rather upset that this concept has been hidden from contemporary Christians.
I've been taught my whole life that I am to be a servant of Christ, but that is not at all what the entire idea of the New Testament holds for us.

God does not call me to serve Him. He requires me to be His slave.
He chose me.
He has bought me with the blood of Christ.
My life's purpose is to be His completely, do whatever He asks me to do.

This in reality makes the idea of salvation hundreds of times better.
God has bought me, and made me a slave, yes, but I have become His friend.
He has made me a Citizen of His country, but all of this was not enough.

I, through Christ, have become a Joint-Heir, a Daughter of the the Creator of the Universe.

Even though I was once a speck of dirt, nothing but dust.
Unworthy, yet allowed to one day stand in the presence of God.

Now THAT is True Love.