A Rock-Bottom Job?

This is from the blog Deep and Wide:

By Rachel Jankovic

A few years ago, when I just had four children and when the oldest was still three, I loaded them all up to go on a walk. After the final sippy cup had found a place and we were ready to go, my two-year-old turned to me and said, “Wow! You have your hands full!”

She could have just as well said, “Don’t you know what causes that?” or “Are they all yours?!”

Everywhere you go, people want to talk about your children. Why you shouldn’t have had them, how you could have prevented them, and why they would never do what you have done. They want to make sure you know that you won’t be smiling anymore when they are teenagers. All this at the grocery store, in line, while your children listen.

The truth is that, years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.

Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time on.

“Strangely, the fear of death drives the abortion industry — fear that your dreams and freedom will die.”

If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?

Not a Hobby

Motherhood is not a hobby; it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.

Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another — and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.

Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die — and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.

Run to the Cross

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to the cross. To death. So, lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

“We are to imitate God and take pleasure in our children.”

Death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, ought to know what follows death. The Christian life is resurrection life, life that cannot be contained by death, the kind of life that is only possible when you have been to the cross and back.

The Bible is clear about the value of children. Jesus loved them, and we are commanded to love them, to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. We are to imitate God and take pleasure in our children.

The Question Is How

The question here is not whether you are representing the gospel; it is howyou are representing it. Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally everything you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us: freely?

It isn’t enough to pretend. You might fool a few people. That person in line at the store might believe you when you plaster on a fake smile, but your children won’t. They know exactly where they stand with you. They know the things that you rate above them. They know everything you resent and hold against them. They know that you faked a cheerful answer to that lady, only to whisper threats or bark at them in the car.

Children know the difference between a mother who is saving face to a stranger and a mother who defends their life and their worth with her smile, her love, and her absolute loyalty.

Hands Full of Good Things

When my little girl told me, “Your hands are full!” I was so thankful that she already knew what my answer would be. It was the same one that I always gave: “Yes they are — full of good things!”

“Live the gospel by sacrificing for your children in places that only they will know about.”

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.

Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.

Why My Wife’s Job Is Harder Than Mine
Sarah Pierrepont (1723)
Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings

This is from the blog Words from the Crucible:

I charge you before God, He making all things alive, and Christ Jesus, He witnessing the good confession to Pontius Pilate…
1 Timothy 6:13 (LITV)

With these words Paul exposes the folly of our trust in the understanding of the mere creeds and so-called “confessions” by which we have so often defined our faith. For what theological oration did Christ Jesus give before Pilate? Yet it says, “He witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate.” A witness is one who has lived that of which they speak; and the life of which they speak is their confession. Christ witnessed the good confession to Pilate; Christ’s confession was the very Life of God by which He was obedient to His Father in all things.

The good confession of which He witnessed was that He was the Son of God in the flesh. Ours is likewise to be that that same Life of the Son of God is being manifested in the life of our own flesh. Just as God and man were fully present in Christ before Pilate, so also our witness to Him shall be no witness at all until the substance of our real lives is being transfigured by the substance of God’s real Life working in us through the obedience of faith.

The witness which John makes of the apostles’ confession is, “That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you…” In God’s appointed order, there is no discrepancy, though there be a distinction, between His Word and Christ Himself. Christ is the Word of God. If then we be Christ’s, and His word dwells in us, how can we not be constrained by that Word? “Why do you call Me “Lord, Lord,” and not do the things I say?” We have taken the distinction between command and Commander as justification for the glaring discrepancy between them in our own lives. But God does not abide such hypocrisy.

The incarnation of Christ Jesus is in itself the ultimate rebuke for our rending of the Word spoken from the Word lived. For in Him the Word was born a man, true Divinity elevating true humanity in Christ to its proper place in absolute harmony with God; so that those likewise born again of His Spirit from above might become partakers in the same resurrection life TODAY.

For how does John describe those who abide not in that Life?

By this we know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ IScome in the flesh is from God. And every spirit which does not confess that Jesus Christ IS come in the flesh is not from God; this is the antichrist which you heard is coming, and now is already in the world.
1 John 4:2-3

Notice how John says that it is a spirit which either confesses or denies the good confession. For he who confesses is he in whom righteousness is seen in the flesh, and he is from God; but he who denies is he in whom righteousness is not found in the flesh, and that one is not from God. In the case of the first spirit, it witnesses truly of that which it has seen and heard: which is the Word of Life; and in them the Life is manifest. But in the case of the second spirit, they bear witness of no such Life in the flesh; and their words are empty, because the Life, which is the good confession, is not manifest in them. Such is the spirit of antichrist: it is contrary to His Life working in us, though we speak His Name.

And again, regarding this second spirit which confesses not: it could be a demon, or it could be the spirit of a man, and there would be no difference. For the true confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is a life being evidently lived in the flesh “by the faith OF the Son of God.” (Gal 2:20). Does the faith of Jesus Christ Himself ever fail? That is the faith by which we are to be living. Religion stops at faith in Christ; but the righteousness of God is “through the faith OF Jesus Christ toward all and upon all those believing…” (Rom 3:22)

John, as he does throughout his first letter, is saying that those who have the Life of Christ ought to walk even as Christ walked: who, though being God, became a man, so that we, being men, might become “the righteousness of God in Him.”

Such is the good confession. To truly confess His name is to have His Life at work even in our life in the flesh, just as He was always about His Father in His own flesh.

If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; because this is the witness of God which He has witnessed about His Son:
The one believing in the Son of God has the witness in himself.
The one not believing God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness which God has witnessed concerning His Son.
And this is the witness: that God gave us everlasting life, and this life is in His Son.
1 John 5:9-11 (LITV)

Indeed, I tell you truly: he that believes in Me, the works which I do, that one shall do also, and greater than these he will do, because I go to My Father.
John 14:12 (LITV)

This is an email I received from a friend earlier today:

“Jeanne’s youngest is a born heavy equipment operator. He takes some of his heavy equipment toys to school and has recruited a crew of fourteen boy classmates during recess to push dirt around. He is the boss. One of the little boys asked him who his boss was, he stated ‘it is President Trump’. Then the little boy asked who is President Trump’s boss to which he replied ‘God’.

“Beau and Jeanne were amazed at where he came up with this response. It did not come from him. Amazingly he has gone to church a few times with us, can pray the Lord’s prayer but that is about it.

“Thought you might enjoy hearing about this.”

Best Wishes,
John and Susie

Psalm 8: 2:  “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

Matthew 21: 15-16:  “And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased,  And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?”

A Dream about Donald Trump
Kim Clement and the 2020 Election
Conspiring Against President Trump

This is from the blog Homeward Bound:

During a conversation I had with my little brother some time ago, he pointed something out that I hadn’t thought of, at least not in the way he framed it. We were discussing the lack of discernment when it comes to spiritual gifting in the Western church, as well as the lack of knowledge and understanding regarding the manifest power of God.

“You have to understand, we grew up with these things,” my little brother said, “we see them as something ordinary, something that naturally occurs during one’s spiritual journey, and we take them for granted, but many people in America have never experienced what we have.”

It is precisely this sentiment that keeps gnawing at me vis-à-vis something that occurred toward the tail end of the Hear the Watchmen conference, and since enough people asked me about it the next morning, I thought it a perfect opportunity to talk about deliverance for a bit.

To clarify, I have not been called to deliverance ministry, but I have prayed for people to be delivered. My grandfather [Dimitru Duduman] before me likewise had not been called to deliverance ministry, but the devil knew his name, and every time a minion of darkness crossed paths with him, he had enough authority in Christ Jesus to cast them out.

That said, after the service on Saturday evening, there was a call to the altars, and an offer to pray for anyone who needed prayer. Unfortunately, since I’d gotten maybe two hours of sleep total the night before, I had already left by this point. From what I’ve been able to piece together from the various people who approached me, a gentleman came up for prayer, and though the brother praying over him had both knowledge of the supernatural and of deliverance in particular, as well as authority to cast out the demon, it would not go. There was no deliverance, there was no breakthrough, and most of the folks who approached me the next morning wondered how this could be.

Thankfully, there is precedent in the Bible, as well as the means by which to excise one of the stubborn ones.

There was a man who had brought his son to Christ’s disciples, to cast out a demon, and though they had done it before, and they had used their authority in Christ, this one particular one refused to go. After the man brought the boy to Jesus and he cast out the evil spirit, His disciples asked why it was that they could not cast it out, and Jesus answered them saying, “this kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

The reasons why some evil spirits are more difficult to cast out than others can vary. The most common cause is that the individual in question opened themselves up to the evil spirit, and actively courted it, inviting it in.

A squatter will defend the home he is squatting in far less vigorously than a homeowner will. The same principle applies when it comes to evil spirits. If the evil spirit thinks of the person as their habitation, their domicile, their home, they are reluctant to leave, and will often put up a fight.

Another reason why an evil spirit will not leave even though it is commanded is because there is still unconfessed sin in the life of the individual. As long as the sin is unconfessed, the spirit has a license to be there.

To be perfectly honest, there is so much to unpack it could probably be turned into a book, but the point I wanted to get to is what prayer and fasting do to an evil spirit, and why this kind, the stubborn kind, can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.

Think of prayer and fasting as chemo, and the evil spirit as cancer. With each prayer lifted up for the individual in question, with each day of fasting fasted on their behalf, it’s like the spirit gets hit with another round of radiation. Each round weakens it incrementally, until, in its weakened state, when commanded to leave it has no choice but to do so.

I hope some of you who came up to me during the conference and asked about this will find your way to this writing and understand why what happened, happened, and why it is not out of the ordinary. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr. 

A Deeper Deliverance

John the Baptist

 

The Spirit of a True Prophet by Leonard Ravenhill

Wearing a Rough Garment
Outside the Camp
Locusts and Wild Honey

This is from the blog A Word in Season:

“To be forged upon the anvil of God’s purpose, to be at once His hammer, His tongs, and His molten iron; to hear words that rend the heart, see visions that pierce the chest; to be emptied like an urn, again and again and again until one desires only rest, only an end to the refilling — and to know one cannnot live without the refilling. To be given words that one dare not speak, and to feel those words churning and boiling in the belly until one must speak them aloud, or die. To be despised, soon or late, by everyone except Adonai — and to desire it so, while hating it. This is to be a prophet.”

–Thom Lemmons

This is from the blog Dover Beach:

“The person who cannot endure for Christ’s sake a physical death? should at least be willing to endure death spiritually. Then he will be a martyr in that he does not submit to the demons that assail him, or to their purposes, but conquers them, as did the holy martyrs and the holy fathers. The first were bodily martyrs, the latter spiritual martyrs. By forcing oneself slightly, one defeats the enemy; through slight negligence one is filled with darkness and destroyed.”

–Saint Peter of Damaskos

Messengers and Negotiators
The Gospel of Martyrdom vs the Gospel of Success

F.B. Meyer, 1847-1929

This is from the blog A Word in Season:

“The perfect are those who are full grown and matured in Christian experience. They need strong meat. For them there are blessed unveilings of the secret things of God, such as the profoundest thinkers of this world have never reached. The words in 1 Cor 2:9 must not be applied to heaven alone; in their first intention they belong to us in this mortal life. The human eye that has seen the fairest of earth’s things, and the ear that has heard the sweetest strains of human melody, have never experienced the depths of enjoyment of those who have found the love of God in Christ. They who know Christ should not be content with the mere rudiments of the gospel, but should follow on to know those deeper things which evade men who are merely clever, but are revealed to those who are really good.

There are two types of men. There is the spiritual man, whose spirit is the temple and dwelling-place of the Spirit of God. He knows the thoughts of God, because he has a living union with the eternal Mind. And there is the natural man, possessing merely the intellect and conscience of ordinary humanity.”

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– F.B. Meyer

The Spiritual Man
Man Reasons, but God Reveals
Physical Sight and Spiritual Sight