[i]"The great falling-away from faith could be worst here in [America] because people are absolutely not prepared to face suffering or persecution -- because we cannot imagine a gospel with the cross and the suffering in it," says Yohannan. "Yet the Bible teaches very strong about it. So as the Word of God says: He who has ears, let him hear."[/i]
[i]The ministry leader is convinced that prosperity has caused many Christians in America to focus on material possessions instead of surrendering all to Christ. The result, he says, is that American Christians have become "very naïve" in thinking that real persecution will never come their way.
"These are warning signs," he exclaims. "God is telling us [that] we need to prepare our lives. And preachers going around saying that revival is coming, and everything is okay, and all these things? I think that people are [being] set up for huge disaster and denying their faith when they face problems."[/i]
Am finding a great deal of ... symmetry around many of the posts spanning some time now. To take out from what KP is stating and coming from him, well there is a great deal to be said right there ...
[i]we cannot imagine a gospel with the cross and the suffering in it[/i]
[i]is convinced that prosperity has caused many Christians in America to focus on material possessions instead of surrendering all to Christ.[/i]
[i]revival is coming, and everything is okay[/i]
If there was some sort of catch all phrase to all of this it seems to be just taking things for granted. I find a tension in most all things, a healthy fear verses a paranoia. Gratitude and thankfulness in the realm of omissions, I mean by that [i]all the things that did not come to pass[/i], yesterday, this morning. Simple things, the 'staples', food ... shelter ... clothing. Hot water, electricity, the computer works again today and am able to both absorb and share, grapple with things and learn from all the Brethren. Indeed we are already blessed beyond belief. Rather than taking large stock and notice of this, the penchant as KP points out in so many areas is for [i]more[/i], more ... things?
The cross and suffering. Hmm, yes, what then? What now? Am just truly thinking out loud here. Divorce for instance amongst 'Christians', the sound of it alone so oxymoronic, due primarily to little to no suffering, suffering of opinion at the expense of overcoming love, patience ... understanding and an understanding that finds humility in not exerting one's 'rights'. The cross...
Suffering the imagination to the test of God's word. Suffering opinion to it. Suffering the challenge of knowledge that is even derived from it and reassessing, reconsidering, have I got this wrong? Suffering the emotions and the compulsions, the defenses, the penchant to 'win' over the desire of coming to the knowledge of the truth, to be 'of the same mind' that the Lord has high up on [i]His[/i] desire for us? The cross there ...
It just goes on to so many things and if anything have been out to the woodshed of late and taught a few things. It is and if I am not too presumptuous was a very painful and ... excruciating spiritual discipline. It is not the first nor the last, just recent enough to have something to share I guess. It is a very good thing, the cross, suffering, it is God's way, [i]those He loves He ...[/i]. It is what was needed and dare I say even welcomed, so much so that I feared even asking prayer and to be honest it was more a fear that the prayers would be for a deliverance rather than what despite the pain of it all was a plea for the furnace to be turned up seven times hotter. I knew it was needed. Lest that get taken all apart into extremes am no fan of pain or needless suffering of anyone or anything, myself included. But I do not want to get all this too mixed up, am speaking of inward things that defy too much explanation, that ... far surpass emotion, it is just a deeper more penetrating work, doubt that many here have not experienced it, it has much of the elements that Carter Collin spoke of the message about "Show me my wretchedness" or "not" if you catch his meaning there.
So there is all that and yet ... I find we have to jump from this realm to another and look at what someone of the stature of KP Yohannan is speaking of, who [i]knows[/i] of these things experientially, of those countries so dislike our own with the little opposition we truly have. Sure it's building, would suspect and go right alongside a great deal of what might be supposed, less 'prophetic' I think than so well expressed in all that Clint has just written here. The weather is obvious enough. I do fear a launching off into intellectual and might as well just call it the arm-chair quarter backing style of pontificating about things we just do not understand nor can we but with our ... imaginations. We are forced to use them in lieu of present pain and circumstance, true persecution. I find it very humbling indeed to just look upon it all and wonder, try and feel just the slightest prick of conscience, what must this truly be like to be standing in their shoes? Then I also must take my personal, interior suffering and shove it up alongside all this and say ... "what of it?" Certainly it pales even if the suffering aspect is no less painful from my perspective. The facts seem to suggest that they do indeed need to be understood in a lesser quality and quantity.
That old adage about an opinion being at the mercy of experience, certainly is true. Have remarked that I am finding more and more that the scriptures express things that [u]are[/u] by way of finding them out in experience over the realm of just 'living up to them', which we are certainly admonished ... I guess I just want to say, we find them to be so, when we do find them to be so ... :-?
Isn't that 'prophetic' in itself? That these things are so and really it is a matter of just ... being subject to them, experiencing them and being able or really having nothing other than to say, 'It is so, I have myself gone through this?".
Expectations. That word looms large over all these things. What to expect, what fuels our expectations our future considerations. To be prepared by way of 'ready for anything' or ready for the latest theory of how things will play out? There might be truth in them, but are they so? I find there is much fear in so much of speculation, much anxiety, worry, a displaced concern, it's out in front, just alluding our grasp ... it sounds like "What if? What if? What if?". And yet we have all the admonishens against these things throughout scripture, to [i]not do them[/i] and yet we have ... 'prophets' telling us otherwise, "No, this is coming and that is coming ..." The inference and underlying is either one of 'expect great ... blessings' or prepare for devastation.
But now I must find myself returning back to even KP's experiential thought as it applies to 'us' or USa if you will. Is he correct? Should I be overtly concerned? Is it indeed 'coming'?
Clint was right here, drawing out some of the very scriptures to our understanding. Can't recall now if it was suggested or not but [i]watch and pray[/i] came to mind yesterday. Something very succinct in that. Maybe, rather than attempting to try and draw all this to some conclusive end it is better to just leave it out there unfinished, just food for thought, am still thinking on it much in every way, this is just kind of a allowing of reading my mind here I guess.
But the notice mentioned about seeing so many things over the past few weeks and months ... I have expectations, I hope we all do. I just want them to be real and realistic, honesty and forthright, becoming of what we are, in spirit and in truth. There is almost a setting aside of all this just long enough to look at another aspect... Will we be ready? Maybe that hasn't really been stressed enough. Come what may and to leap over to the speculative for a moment, who will stand in the evil day? Who will be relied on when all around us does\\if it goes to pieces. Shouldn't it be us, of all people? Calm, cool and collected in the face of .. chaos? Look at the Lord, that is one of the most striking things I have ever grappled with and Oswald Chamber I believe was masterful at drawing great attention to this. How He was never 'moved' out of position from His disposition. I am becoming very convinced this is our great need, to have our disposition altered to His, in [i]all[/i] things. That is the greatness of SermoinIndex and I am finally through apologizing for it. This place is a wonder beyond wonders if it is just looked at in itself. So much thought [i]and experience[/i]. These men, these brothers that have gone before have so much to teach us, to speak to us, to draw us back to foundational spiritual truths. Think of it, what draws us, what draws any one of you here? There are things that have happened experientially on a continuing basis all due to this truly 'small thing' that the Lord I am convinced has developed in and out of it. The world does not understand, many Christians do not I understand, shoot even I do not understand it all. But I have seen it and have partaken in it, watched it develop and grow within it's confines, watched the saints change before my very eyes and even recently was blessed beyond measure to go and 'meet' with those who I have 'known' from eternity past, there is no other succinct way of putting it. It boggles the mind, but none of it was surprising, there are things that just defy proper explanation, it is a truly spiritual understanding. There are things that just cut straight through words and opinion and conjecture.
There are great hearts here, great as a deceitful heart can be, that is the great catch in all this prophetic utterance I believe, we just do not know our own deceptions well enough and will never know the capable depths, but at least enough to say to ourselves, 'perhaps I should hold my peace here' I may well still have not considered ______. That is what goes on here by and large, putting things, putting ourselves to the test, to the test of scripture, to the test of each other. Forget the cliché's enough to just take all these things in and I think you will find that there is a desire to understand underneath all the other unfortunate compulsions and misunderstandings, the camp mind divisions that we are so preprogrammed into, everything being 'either\\or', this or that, the baby with the bath water, so much for clichés' ...
More to the point. The post on reading your bibles. Is this not very much important? Right now. However and in whatever way we decide to go about it, I am intrigued and challenged and must admit that I have sacrificed it and gone off to a great more ... doodling around in it than I should. Whole books of the scriptures stand out large and have been something I recognized as very important, reading them through, all the way through. I don't want to go off on that here too much but it does seem that maybe we have neglected this and have become somewhat bound up in all the ancillary aspects of what is going on around us circumstantially, drawing off our attention ... and maybe much of the preoccupation with the future is part and parcel? Am just asking the question here, it is a note to self to borrow from MC.
But how else and what better way to get about doing something towards our readiness, come what may, come what may not. What an answer to the suggestion of a 'motto' for the year or even a trumping of a verse for the year? I must be truly honest, I don't like these ideas really and forgive me for saying so, but having a catch phrase for the year leaves me squirming a bit, the tendency is to forget all about it come say June. What then? Besides, there seems to be enough of titling things, having great banners of a handful of words, a verse, a subset of eye grabbing things for yet another program or construct out in the realm of Christendom itself. I am sorry, it just leaves something wanting, something almost throw away-ish to coin a term, another formulaic approach, kind of a piece of Christian junk mail that either stacks up or gets thrown into the recycle bin, which I assume all are doing due to 'global warming'. ;-)
Pardon the digression not trying to be didactic, different things work for different souls I am sure. Guess it is just will we still be holding to it come September? "This is the year of ____"
Maybe or may it be said this is the year we could look back on and say, for us, this is the year we got downright serious and really read our bibles, over and over again. A different sort of resolution, a real one, one that we held each other accountable to all year long. It will have to be a disciple but if we are able and quite capable it seems of holding each others feet to the fire in regards to prophecy and rightly so ... we were able to both remember and recall all that was said and bring an accounting to it as we have been doing. How much more might we do likewise come Jan. 2009 if the Lord tarries in reading the scriptures over the course of this year? And if we absolutely must use our projections and preoccupations with the future, maybe we can project something that we all might suspect as true ... Could you imagine just what this might all do to us and to those around us just by sheer adjustment in our character and disposition, never uttering a single solitary word, just in that 'body language' of ours by having our hearts and minds our intellect, everything altered by this Book. And then when we do open our mouths, what might spring forth? Can you imagine this? To know our God better, our Lord better ... would we be better prepared, better ready? My goodness, it seems like the answers are so completely obvious that it is foolishness that we haven't really stopped to think about it ... as I write this and realize it.
I am generally finding and expecting surprises from the Lord and that is largely since divorcing the mind from what I used to expect, you know, all these preprogrammed things we set up in these melons and then attempt to fulfill by way of ... goodness, what is it? Effort? Scurrying around the book for the "Aha's", I [i]knew[/i]this was going to happen kinds of things? But it is everyday stuff, I still do it to my chagrin. Fantasy type things, those little subsets of 'This thing will play out just like this' while we tell ourselves 'See, I knew it, I knew this would happen'. So much rubbish in this contour of our make up, we less cast down evil imaginations as we do entertain them, feed them little choice nuggets of new bites and clippings from our travels. Where is [i]your[/i] God in all this, the self indicting question I find. What of His disruptions and surprises? No room for them? Still trusting on our own understanding ...? Hmmm, that prophetic business keeps coming into play doesn't it?
Well, I guess it's been a good while since I presented a ramble here, think I will quit while I am ahead, if I am ... Time to change the signature, at least it will be my own accuser.
