Posts

Manifest Destiny

/in /by

Titus 1:3 And [now] in His own appointed time He has made manifest (made known) His Word and revealed it as His message through the preaching entrusted to me by command of God our Savior;…

When Christianity first began the followers of Jesus were mostly of Jewish descent yet there were those, numbered among them, who were Gentiles. Those Gentiles, or Nations, had no grid of reference for the teachings of Old Testament Scripture; no traditions, or holidays they could fall back on as reference points. When they came together to be taught it wasn’t to gather more information. They came together in order to be instructed in how to practice being a follower of Jesus. The Word of God had multiple meanings to them. The Book was more than just a book. It was a mirror of Jesus – the Living Word of God. It wasn’t simply a gateway to information but was a literal portal into the very worlds the heroes of the faith had experienced. What has happened to Christians that has reduced the Book to a collection of children’s stories?

Revelation 19:10 states: the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of all prophecy…Prophecy was a world of words manifesting into a living, physical reality. The Testimony of Jesus, and of the Word of God, manifesting – being made a physical reality. When you take the time to consider that if you truly embraced the Testimony of Jesus – by faith, or anyone who had embraced His Testimony – you became a manifestation of that Testimony. You were born-again of the Spirit. Your spirit man came to life and you began to have the capacity for spiritual things. On the day you believed, and trusted, you heard God. I would dare say that on that day your spiritual senses were activated. Things that you thought you might have imagined were actual spiritual realities you slowly learned to dismiss.

In 1845 a newspaper editor by the name of John L. O’Sullivan coined the term manifest destiny describing the collective belief of many Americans. According to historian William Earl Weeks, there were three basic tenets behind the concept: The assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States. The assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the “American way of life”. And lastly, faith in the nation’s divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission. This belief led to the westward expansion of the United States into unclaimed territories. O’Sullivan believed that Providence had given the United States a mission to spread republican democracy (“the great experiment of liberty”). No where in the mind of any American was the thought of dedicating schools, teachers, and books to “learn” the meaning of this term. It would have seemed preposterous to any citizen or settler venturing out into the unknown, mysterious, untamed wilderness of anything west of the Appalachians or Alleghenies – to research the etymology of the phrase, or take a course on it in school. Absolutely not! For them it was a term that embodied what they believed and many would give their lives for. It was every individual Americans’ God ordained destiny to push forth into a manifestation of what they believed, and valued.

Followers of Jesus are called, and destined, to push forth into spiritual wildernesses to stake their claim on the land as their inheritance. The Word of God, and the promises of God, become their manifest destiny until it manifests as reality and they are living in and on that land. Once there was a time in the history of Christianity when the belief in Calvinism was so entrenched in the minds of believers that led them to assume some were destined to Heaven and others to Hell. Because of this belief, few if any practiced sharing the Gospel with others, and the taking of that Gospel to other nations was totally unheard of. Yet in the early 1700’s some Moravians became filled with the Spirit and were so moved that they sold themselves into slavery in order to finance their way to the mission field. It took another 100 years for this belief to spread in which Christians began to press forth into their inheritance and manifest destiny. The same could be said of being filled with the Spirit, Worship, the Gifts of the Spirit – tongues, healing, miracles, and discerning of demons. I can remember when raising the dead was unheard of and Bible believing Christians scoffed at the idea. Yet, he we are living in a time where we are encountering those who have not only raised one person from the dead but several. His Living Word pulsates all around you – if you believe that creation came into existence simply through His spoken Word and not a cosmic accident – waiting for someone to access the riches of it’s unimaginable Glory.

New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley once wrote: Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. Some One greater than Horace Greeley, the Living Word, stated: Therefore GO! Are you a classroom Christian theorist or a Manifest Destiny Explorer and Pioneer? Are you growing up with the Word – into the Manifestation of the Word?

Positioned For Presence

/in /by

Two paddleboats left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they traveled side by side, sailors from one vessel made a few remarks about the snail’s pace of the other. Words were exchanged. Challenges made, and a race ensued. Competition became vicious as the two boats roared through the Deep South. One boat began falling behind because of insufficient fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race. As the boat dropped behind, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship’s cargo and tossed it into the ovens. When the sailors saw that the supplies burned as well as the coal, they fueled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport. Lightening their load, and renewing the fuel needed to keep the ovens burning, they won the race. But at what price?

Positioning your self to enter into the Presence of God’s Holy Fire will cost you everything – even your life. Dt. 4:11-12; 33;36 And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick gloom. And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the voice of the words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.…Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you heard, and live?…Out of heaven He made you hear His voice, that He might correct, discipline, and admonish you; and on earth He made you see His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire.

Repeatedly Moses positioned himself to be consumed by God’s Holy, Fiery Presence: Ex. 34:2 Be ready and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain. Although Moses was never physically consumed by God’s Fire, his sinful nature was. Numbers 12:3 states that Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.” And we know from Scripture that as Moses’ sinful nature was consumed his physical countenance began to glow with the Glory of God. Moses positioning himself to meet the Lord was more than an attitude. It also involved his willingness to go the extra mile to meet with the Lord. His efforts in hiking far outside the camp, ascending and descending the mountain on numerous occasions, demonstrate his faith and humility. When we read the Scriptures regarding receiving answers to prayer, healings, or miracles – often times their manifestation was the direct result of their willingness to go the extra mile to position themselves to receive. Personally I can recount numerous times of seeking the Lord for an answer to prayer that eventually led to my going the extra mile to meet with God to hear His response. Often I’ve prayed, and worshipped way beyond the limits I had set upon my worship; far beyond Sunday only Christianity. There is an unusual, and mysterious passage of Scripture that most have turned into a formula for answered prayer that I believe points way beyond our 2 dimensional understanding. It’s found in Mt. 17:21 And He replied to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting. Preceding this verse Jesus states something that sounds preposterous. He states that we could speak to a mountain to be uprooted and cast into the sea. Seeking to draw near to God is more of a mountain than many want to face. The truth and question that this text is asking, even requiring a response to is this: How bad do you want an answer? Are you willing to pray persistently? Are you willing to go to extra lengths in order to see it manifest it’s reality? The praying and fasting Jesus emphasized in this passage wasn’t a “one and done” formula for answered prayers. Not at all. It was a lifestyle of praying, fasting, and tossing into God’s Fire the cargo of our lives in order to win the “race.” Are you positioning yourself to receive the manifestation of Jesus’ Fire; seeking to see Him; to meet Him on His Mountain?