K>I>N>G>D>O>M>O>G>O>D in olympia
24May10
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recorded live at reality in olympia WA 5-15-10 by leon goodenough. glen & jude joined by tyler zoe anavah ephraim havilah & asaph & maybe leon >>
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sweet n sour
…just the way i like it
Man… Listening to this and looking at the campfire picture will put a desire in any sane man to learn how to chop wood, build a home, clear a field, raise some kids, play some music, and eat some food. Ya know, a dwelling place of the Living God
I want to live that now. Is that idea for here or there? We all have such an insatiable thirst for Gods dwelling place. Bring it! Let your kingdom COME!
Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of their children and their own households.
[1 Timothy 3:12]
… I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.
[1 Timothy 3:15]
I hope it isn’t wrong of me to hope for this within my own household. A dwelling place of the Living God. If you enter a Man’s home, is the Living God present? Is it His dwelling place?
absolutely. God desires that each man come to Him and personally accept His complete authority. our bodies are God’s temples, God’s sanctuaries, God’s dwelling place. john 17 is so pure and powerful speaking to that. this is the mystery of the fellowship, the expectation of glory: Christ in you.
when we really live in that, God promises to make our homes and our families and our churches true sanctuaries – God’s dwelling places. leon & i were talking about that while driving. somehow the enemy of our souls was able to swoop in about 40-45 years ago, and within a very short space of time create an almost uncrossable divide: where kids rebelled & parents abandoned or disowned. the life-sustaining authority God placed in families and is His church was suddenly rejected and constantly mocked. and what you end up with is a fatherless generation, who then grows up all but destined to repeat the cycle.
what we have to come to terms with is that what was so easily and swiftly torn down is not so easily rebuilt. what we really need is a miracle in this generation: in which Father turns the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers. it begins individually – we’ve all got to voluntarily stop doing our own thing, stop speaking our own opinion, give up playing captain of our own destiny; and seek out the authority of God and of his church. this is what it means practically to lay down your life, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.
in matthew 8 we see a crucial principle in action: the centurion tells Jesus he is “a man under authority.” and out of that authority he is able to operate with authority. and even better, he is able to recognize and access the faith realm of the life-from-the-dead kingdom of God authority of Jesus. and it is key that we see him doing this for his family (specifically his daughter). Jesus singled him out as a perfect example of “great faith.”
i have to admit i stumbled pretty cluelessly into being a parent. i had no vision for it, no idea what i was in for, and no real humility to beg God an anointing to be jude’s dad – until the day i brought him home from the hospital. i remember holding him praying over him feel overwhelmed for the first time that God had put his life in my trust. but even then for almost the first 4 years of his life, i undermined the sanctuary God wanted our family to be – because i personally was bucking authority everywhere it got in my way. God had mercy on us to hold us together thru it; but i wouldn’t want anyone to have to go thru what we went thru.
right around ’98 or ’99 i bottomed out on being “rebellious for Jesus.” God put me in a place where i was so desperate to see the moving of his Spirit that was willing (for the first time in a long time) to seek out real authority. i recognized that i’d been trying to come out against the powers of darkness without any real authority, and i was taking a serious beating for it – along with my family. so when i saw people with real spiritual authority (i.e. they spoke exactly like Jesus spoke, and the powers of sin and sickness and oppression were really broken)…i got very humble and started begging God to teach me. i called my parents up and asked their forgiveness for resenting them and turning on them. God even had me call up professors and old bosses and apologize for resisting and antagonizing them.
all of a sudden something amazing happened. God started establishing me as a husband and a father – He started making my house a sanctuary. cathleen and i went from being on the verge of divorce to having our marriage totally healed and restored. jude went from telling us (at the ripe old age of 5 or 6) that he didn’t think he wanted Jesus in his heart – to coming up to us in church saying this was the sunday he wanted to accept the Lord…and everything about him changed radically within a matter of months. Jesus rescued our family and did the impossible for us: we saw chronic depression healed, and God gave us a little girl when we thought there was no way to have more kids. i know from personal experience that there is no situation beyond God’s love, no dysfunction or brokenness beyond the miracle power of God’s restoration.
people have all sorts of ideas about loneliness and attraction and romance and marriage; but God simply takes two and makes them perfect in one. and why? because he passionately desires a sanctuary where His love can really rule: in which He can raise up children in his own image and character. these are the fundamentals of the community of the church, where we live knitted together in love rather than terminally splintered and factioned out. God speaks peace to those far off, and peace to those near. God takes the brokenhearted and heals them, God takes the lonely and puts them in families, and God removes every possible division and separation away and brings divine connection. this is the culture of the kingdom of God >>
glen. this is exactly what God has brought to my attention… every word of this story.
there is a deceiving tactic that can be used effectively against men and women that really want the Lord. it is effective if they do not CONTINUE setting their eyes on Christ and continually yielding to the Holy Spirit. it can be humbling (or will be humbling), but we must be in tune with Christ and His interest in the front.
brothers and sisters, if the Lord reveals something to you, this is very good! it is amazing to see more! but (!) do not forget that you were a former sinner yourself and Jesus died for you while you were dead! don’t let that kind of love discontinue its growing in you. that love MUST continue to abide while/if Christ reveals things to you. it can be easy to lash out against something after being exposed or to abandon your loved ones in the name of “well i am now beyond that and i must continue to grow and work for the Lord”.
Really appreciate the godly resolve and transparent testimony. What really encourages me, and hammers unbelief in God, is for me, a complete stranger in one sense, thousands of miles away, to observe the way God is doing the same kind of work in so many otherwise unconnected lives. So many of your observations on this website–and in the comments posted–I just want to open my journal, point to a days- or weeks-old entry, and say, “See? These aren’t just isolated thoughts and ruminations; they are the fruits of his loving guidance, spread abroad, and sprouting up.” Myself, in the last year, I tore down and renounced many things I’d built up and attained–mostly the achievements and fruits of selfish ambition, a six-figure job and membership in certain “inner circles,” but also a place of standing and leadership in my church. (To be clear, I am not anti-church.)
THE driving insight behind this repentance were those 1 Tim. passages on the family (and similar in Titus, plus Rom. 12:3 “think not of yourself more highly than you ought, but with sober judgment”). In a gentle way, I believe he told me I was full of it–publicly preaching to others, privately afflicting my wife and kids with irritation, outbursts of anger, and coldness. And he helped me understand he desires apprentices, not pretenders. And so he has been helping me unwind my facades and build up something real and pure.
Praise God for his grace and mercy and work all over the world! What a blessing to the children, and the world they will shine in! I am so glad to hear this resolve in you and others.
great to hear that andy. yeah we have to press in to God so that our lives are really able to be transparent, & so that he truth is clearly written all over our hearts and our lives. if we can’t minister to those closest to us, who can we really touch? it’s time to come to grips with our total dependence on the Holy Spirit for this.
i want to add something to what i wrote above. i actually went to change the part about resenting my parents, but God wouldn’t let me do it. the resentment was real – as long as i held on to being rebellious – but i want to say loud & clear that God completely took that away. i tell my parents constantly how much i thank God for them raising us in his Word and in his instruction and in his love. the first ingredient in the recipe for holding generations captive is resenting your parents. it’s no coincidence that God tied honoring your parents to living long and blessed.
whatever opinions we may have let ourselves develop about the generation before, we are to bless them. PERIOD. thank them. take care of them. love on them. honor them. unless we as children allow our hearts to be turned to our fathers, how can we expect to have God turn our children’s hearts to us? the power of Jesus blood is so great that it absolutely obliterates any generational animosity or baggage >>
Jhn 13:16
Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.
Luk 17:7
“Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come immediately and sit down to eat’?
Luk 17:8
“But will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink’?
Luk 17:9
“He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he?
Luk 17:10
“So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”
Jhn 15:15
No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
Andy I thank God for you. I cannot express the encouragement and Godly sorrow I feel when I read your comment (just now). Grace and peace be multiplied in you – thru the hope of God received – thru the love of Christ to the love received in you (supplying its increasing). All done in OUR Lord and His Cross. Blessings bro.
1Cr 9:24
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
Hbr 12:1
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
1Pe 2:9
…You are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;