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Orphans at the Gate I read this story this week about a honeymoon disaster. A young couple arrived at the hotel to begin their honeymoon. They were given the keys and escorted up to their room. When they entered, they were quite surprised. Instead of what they expected, they found a rather small room with very little furnishing. No flowers, No windows. A tiny little bathroom, not even big enough to swing a cat. Instead of the King-size double bed, there was a sleeper couch with a very uncomfortable mattress. What a disappointment it was. Well. the next morning the sore-necked groom stormed down to the reception desk to ventilate his anger. After listening patiently for a few minutes, the clerk interrupted him and asked, \”Did you open the door? What door?  The door in your room? Admitting he hadn\’t, the groom returned and opened the door that he had mistaken as a closet, and there before his eyes was the most magnificent room he had ever seen. Fruit baskets, chocolates, flowers, you name it. Can you imagine them standing in the doorway of the room they had overlooked? How nice it would have been. A comfortable bed instead of a sofa. A curtain framed window rather than a blank wall. A fresh breeze in place of stuffy air. An elaborate rest room instead of a tight toilet. But they missed it. Why didn\’t you try? we may ask. And that would be a good question. not just for the couple but for everyone that stands before a door of opportunity but misses the blessing of what is behind. ISAIAH6.DOC  7/12/95 Have you ever had the experience where you have missed a great opportunity and regreted it? There is much talk of revival. But no matter how much we talk about it and dream about it, revival will not come to America apart from God’s people crossing the threshold of mediocre Christianity and entering into the throneroom of God our Father who has invited us to be there with Him as his adopted heirs. Richard Owen Roberts on Revival suggest there are several congregational obstacles to revival. Read pp. 137-143 I believe for the church in America to become the powerforce that it needs to be we will have to be done with our own agenda and get in touch with the power and the purpose of God. God has a very specific purpose for His church, and if I was to ask the question, most would respond that the purpose for which we have been saved is to serve God. To reach the lost. And that would be a noble purpose, but my brothers and sisters, this is not the primary purpose for which we have been saved, and it is because of this fundamental error that I believe we have become anemic as an army of God in these days. When Jesus was asked in Matthew 22:36-38 \”Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?\” 37Jesus replied: \” \’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.\’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. He had a reason for saying so. It was the first purpose of God for His church throughout the ages. It is out of obedience to this commandment that all other concerns would follow. Once again we look to one of the most striking examples of this principle found in the OT in Isaiah 6. The reference speaks specifically in it\’s context of the making of a true prophet.  However, the principle is the same. Isaiah 6:1-9 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.  2Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  3And they were calling to one another: \”Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.\” 4At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.  5\”Woe to me!\” I cried. \”I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.\” 6Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7With it he touched my mouth and said, \”See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.\”  8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, \”Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?\”And I said, \”Here am I. Send me!\”  9He said, \”Go and tell this people: Isaiah was not commissioned to preach until he had had a dynamic worship encounter with the living God. The church in America today will not receive an annointing from God for evangelism or a Holy Ghost revival until we have had a fresh encounter with the living God. There are four principles that Isaiah shows us about having a fresh encounter with God. I We see God Powerfull. We see ourselves Pitifull, We see our sins Pardoned, and we see our world Passionately. Firstly, I. We See God Powerful – when We Move Beyond the Symbolism of Worship into His Presence. vs. 1-4 An encounter with the living God is more than entering into the sanctuary. It is more than arriving Sunday after Sunday in order to practice the traditions of our faith. It is something which has the potential to be alive and vital, provided we are prepared to stretch beyond the mundane. There were many present in that sanctuary with Isaiah, who were there for the sake of the tradition. Expl. This was a familiar celebration. Dr. G.D. Kilpatrick writes in his commentary on Isaiah, \”The

How many times have you wondered what God is up to? You may have been praying for something and it seems that your prayers are not answered. Something that we must understand is that God does not always operate according to our time table. Even as we pray, \”Thy Kingdom come,\” we realize that the phrase immediately following that is, \”Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. In other words, we know what ought to be best for us, and what we earnestly desire of God, but we also know that it is according to His perfect will. This has to do with the timetable of the Father. There is a basic, yet profound principle revealed in the passages we read, and that is that everything in this world order is moving along a time line which was established by God before the foundation of the world. Gal 4:4. He came when the time was perfect. When you look into the prophesies of the Old Testament at all that had to take place before Jesus could come as the Messiah you will see how meticulously concerned God is about time And then, when Jesus became a man He continued to be totally surrendered to the timetable of the Father. We tend to think that Jesus in His deity was operating on earth according to His own will and His own pleasure, but a careful examination of scripture will reveal otherwise. Jesus said in John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.” This is the key to peace with God and power in our faith. To be surrendered to the perfect timing of the Father. As children of God, as a part of this Kingdom on earth we are able to have this tremendous sense of peace that our lives are being guided according to this divine timetable of God, and that we by the Holy Spirit can discover that timetable and move with perfect harmony according to God\’s purpose. We can discover the joy of resting in Him. You don\’t have to strive to make things happen, you don\’t have to push and connive, you don\’t have to be caught up with the tyranny of the urgent. In order to get to a starting point in this principle in the life of Jesus, lets turn to Mark 1:14 \”After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  [15] \”The time has come,\” he said. \”The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!\” What was the time that Jesus was speaking of? It was time for the beginning of His ministry on earth. John had been put in prison. His entire ministry had been preparatory to the ministry of Jesus. The time was now ready for the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. Everything that happened in the life of Jesus was in perfect timing with the Fathers will. Throughout the Gospel of John we see examples of this. In John 7:30, they tried to lay hands on Him. They wanted to kill Him, but the Bible says, No one laid hands on Him because His time had not come. Even the enemies of Jesus were powerless against Him because His time had not yet come. Even ungodly, hateful, rebellious man is governed by God\’s timetable. There is nothing that He is not in control of. I is so important is it for us to understand this concept of waiting on God, yet many of us have our greatest struggle in this area. We want everything to happen in a hurry and we don\’t like to wait. My dad has a plaque hanging on the wall in his living room. \”Lord, grant me patience, I want it right now!\” This is typical of the human temperament. Instant everything. We are “I Want it now” kind of people. But God doesn’t make us wait simply because He gets a kick out of our frustrations. There is a very definite purpose in what we perceive to be delays on God’s part. Once we come to know what that purpose is, we will be more inclined to trust Him in all of His ways. I want to read the story of a well known event in the life of Jesus. It is found in John 11:1-45. Several things we can learn in regard to the purpose of God’s timing from this experience. The first is: I. In God\’s Timing His Purpose is Established John 11:1-45 In reading this story there are many questions raised. Why did Jesus delay. Why did He appear to be so uncaring. But for Jesus, there was a specific purpose. He had an established agenda that is far beyond our understanding at the time. But when we look back we can see that His ways are perfect. We see here upon looking back into this event that Jesus operated according to His own time schedule in order that His first purpose might be: 1. To Establish His Authority. The Father establishes a time line according to His own authority. It is not always for us to know what His timing is. One of the reasons that Jesus did not respond immediately was that it was imperative for those followers to be reminded that Jesus only did what He did in response to the Fathers prompting. In John 5:19 \”Jesus gave them this answer: \”I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. Those disciples, the sisters of Lazarus did not fully understand the sovereignty of God, yet it was a lesson that they would have to learn if they were to survive the trials that were yet to come. So Jesus purposefully delays his response to

Most of us are acutely aware that we are created for a purpose.  When there is no purpose being fulfilled in our lives, we become desperately unhappy, always seeking, never finding, always attempting to gain approval yet at very best we gain a temporary satisfaction. There is nothing worse than coming to the end of days and in looking back over our lives find that we have nothing to show for having lived. Many of us trudge along, most days barely making it, hoping tomorrow will bring some great and wonderful adventure into our lives, yet waking up to find that today is just as dull and uneventful as yesterday.  I am alive, yet still can’t quite figure out the reason why. Every now and again there is just a flicker of hope. A flicker of enthusiasm, a little daydream about greatness, but even that is quickly dampened when you wake up to the realization of just how small, insignificant and hopeless your really are. When I come to that realization, when the connection breaks down between my present existence, and a great and glorious destiny, and all I can see is the great chasm between, I am left with one of three options: I can kill myself; or I can numb myself (with alcohol or drugs or television or pornography or romance novels or computers or frantic work or frantic play); or I can seek to reestablish the connection by finding what my true destiny really is This is our attempt – our QUEST in this journey of faith through the book of Ephesians.  The goal is not to merely find encouragement along the path of numbness, with the reminder of great promises and blessings that are available along the way, nor is it to try to develop a list of tips or information that we can apply to our otherwise insignificant lives, but rather an empowering through the impartation of inspired words that have the power to bring a transformation of the mundane, hopeless life into something gloriously and wonderfully ordained by God Himself, and hand picked, in other words customized for each one of us since before the foundation of the earth. Now I have just said a whole lot right there, so lets go once again to Ephesians 1: 3-14 to try to unpack exactly what that all means. Remember, this is one long sentence. It is an Oratorio, or a grand doxology of praise broken into three individual thoughts each ending in an exclamation of praise to God. There is something else to notice about these three thoughts: They confirm our understanding of the work of the three persons of the God head, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Given by God. Vs. 3-6 Given Through the Son Vs. 7-12 Guaranteed By the Holy Spirit Vs. 13-14 We saw last week that it all begins with God, and in all things God is deserving of our praise. Most certainly for our spiritual blessings, which is specific here, but not limited to that. This ought to be the pattern of our lives, because it is for His pleasure we are created and therefore our complete and utter satisfaction must rest in him. This is easy to declare when things are going very well for us in our homes, in our business, in our finances, but it is not dependant on our circumstances. It is dependant upon the level of believability we have in the fact that God well and truly has our destiny in His hands. That we may not ever be absolutely certain of what tomorrow holds, and we might find ourselves in the middle of the darkest passage of our lives with not even a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, but the one thing we can be sure of is who holds tomorrow.  So the greater the satisfaction I find in Him, the more He becomes glorified in my life, and so I can then begin to understand in some small way how Paul, in the midst of his incarceration in a Roman prison can say “All Praise to the glory of God the Father of our Lord Jesus who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus! Today I want to start to take a closer look at one of the scariest doctrines for many Christians, which should in fact be one of the most encouraging doctrines. The doctrine of Election. We actually make it scary, because we make it complicated. It is really a lot simpler than what we think. But before we go there, before we get too far away from these three divisions we have just referred to, we have discussed the Sphere of the blessings at some length, and I want to look at the Source of the blessings…In Christ. A) Aquifer – Our source of water supply – many restriction re: building etc. to protect our supply. Water restrictions in dry season. It is an invaluable resource that brings many benefits into our lives. B) Like Christ – Enumerable blessings – flow into to our lives – come thru the source of Christ Difference is that they are unlimited in their abundance. C) All of these Spiritual blessings – that flow to us from the heavenlies are made available in Christ – 1) What exactly does that mean ? Think of it this way  2 Cor 1:20 Paul made this Statement 20For all the promises of God in Him[ JESUS ] are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. A) Now it has been estimated that there are 7,847 Promises that God has made for the believer in Jesus Christ Promises of Health & Happiness / Promises of security / Promises of Strength – But here is the thing we need to understand – All of the Promises that people claim – Follow an OT Principle in Duet 11 Where the Lord says

Welcome to my space! I trust you will do well in your search for truth. Above all, as you seek, my prayer is for you to find the Truth that is above all, the Truth that sets people free. He is way more than an idea, even more than a man…. He is God! He came to us as a man, Jesus, to reveal himself to us and to make a way for us to be reconciled to Him…to be one with Him as it was in the beginning… to fill this empty void that everyone has without Him, and to give us true freedom. He said of Himself, \”Whom the Son (Jesus) sets free is free indeed\”. Universal focus is on the crisis of economy, health and atomic threat, yet the greatest crisis of all is the Freedom Crisis! It greatly overshadows the the rest. Will we turn to the Government for our help, or will we use our own God given intelect, enterprise, tenacity, independance and courage to face the struggle and change the world? Join the Freedom revolution. It\’s more than just an idea – its a war! This Blog is called the Rock Pile for a reason. We all make an impact on those around us in one way or another. I call it throwing stones. It\’s like when you throw a stone into a pond it causes ripples. The bigger the stone, the bigger the ripple, so my heart cry is that for the sake of freedom we would all join the quest of throwing a BIGGER stone. Hopefully this blog will be the source of the rocks we need to throw into the pond of mediocrity that exists in our society today. A good place to find a few good rocks is the page on the right, \”Soulless Money Changers\” Proceed with caution. Just as a side note , be advised that links posted here should be followed with discretion. I do not by any means endorse or agree with every statement, but there are rocks of truth there that are useful to our search. Thanks for coming along on this journey Outside the Safe Zone!