Returning Home

This evening I visited the fish ladders near my home.  It is so amazing watching those magnificent fish traveling for thousands of miles with so many obstacles, upstream to reach home.  Our spiritual journey is so much like this.  Just that intense desire to return home to our true Father, spurs my spiritual journey.  There are so many obstacles and it requires so much effort due to all our tremendous programming and the amount entropy within our dimension.  Evil has built a huge impenetrable dam and changed the normal course.  The rescue attempts involved are also similar to the fish ladders.  They are designed to rescue us but they still require our constant effort. You must either move forward or you are regressing, there is no standing still.  There are many predators along the way also.  The salmon doesn't count the odds or get discouraged, he just keeps swimming.  Most of all it takes persistence.  Never give up.

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Clay in the Potter's Hand

Have many of Christians become hardened and are no longer pliable and surrendered in God's hands?   They have everything figured out according to the Bible, end time events, doctrines, Jesus...  We should forget everything we think we know or what we have figured out from the Bible and let God show us what is truth, what is happening and what we should do.  Perhaps some of us need to make little preparation for what's ahead.  Maybe God will take a pre-trib holy group to Him.  Maybe He will pour out His glory on His true followers that have given Him their whole hearts, to perform amazing things for Him. 

Can we give up control and allow God to transform, shape and mold, all of us?   He reveals to us more and more truth through the Holy Spirit as we are moldable to Him.  When we refuse to give up our cherished beliefs and doctrines he must put us aside unfinished.   Very few of us have not hardened in some way that we hold onto so that He cannot work out the flaws and imperfections in us.  He is then unable to create a true and beautiful vessel that holds Jesus, the living water.  He is unable to complete His masterpiece of you.

Barley Overcomers

The overcomers will inherit the first resurrection. But first, they are the barley bread in Jesus’ hands that must be broken to feed the multitude. The overcomers often wonder why they experience troubles, rather than the “victorious life.” They wonder why they are disfellowshipped by their church and friends. They wonder why God brings all their faults to the surface for others to see. They wonder why God promises so much, yet seems to deliver the opposite. They wonder why God disciplines them so much, never letting them get away with anything.

There is a simple explanation. Jesus is breaking them to feed the multitude. Is not the time to be victorious yet. It is the time to die. It is not yet time to enjoy a good reputation among the brethren, but to be made “of no reputation” (Phil. 2:7), following the path Jesus trod. He breaks the pride of His overcoming remnant by exposing their faults so that wheat company may feed upon them. This is why the wheat company (Church) seldom recognized the overcomers among them. They are usually the most unlikely ones by their standard of measure.

While the promises are tremendous, the way to those promises is through the valley of the shadow of death. Joseph, too, had mighty promises, but God led him first into slavery and the dungeon.

The barley company is not righteous; they simply know the deceitfulness of their own hearts better than most, because this has been a major part of their revelation from God. They know they are unworthy, and the Church is happy to remind them that they are, after all, just publicans and harlots.

The barley call is not a call to righteousness, but to brokenness. It is not a call to the victorious life, but to the despair of death. It is not a call to the throne, but to the dungeon and the wilderness. And when all self-righteousness is gone, when all impatience has run its course, then is death conquered by Life.

From "The Barley Harvest" by Dr. Stephen Jones

(The feeding of the 5,000 happened close to passover.  See John 6.  Jesus talked of being the bread of life on passover or directly after during the feast of unleavened bread.  Note in John 6 that amazingly many disciples left Him regarding this at this time.)

Unity

In these end times God will unite His bride, the church, in order to strengthen us against the forces of Satan that will be against us in full power.  We are one body, cell to cell, and there is no division in the body that is in the Spirit.  And there is only one truth.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth that teaches us truth and unites the church under the headship of Jesus.  We have the full truth when Jesus Christ is formed in us.  Until that time, new revelation of Jesus is given to those who follow Jesus as the Holy Spirits illuminates, in order to fully form Christ in us.  Our fleshly nature has a great fear of fresh anointing.  Flesh causes us to close our hearts and eyes to revelation.  "The Jews rejected Christ through their fixed position, prejudice, pride, and bondage to the system."  Our fear of deception, our rationalism and perfectionism, are robbing us of the anointing.  The Holy Spirit cannot be neatly contained.  He is God and He does as He pleases.  Following the Spirit it usually not respectable Christianity.

"Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth;  comparing spiritual things with spiritual."  I Corinthians 2:13

However we cannot unite with error.  False unity brings in another gospel, where Islam is embraced and homosexuality is condoned.  As you put away your fleshly nature and become more Spirit governed, you become more discerning and sensitive to the differences of flesh and Spirit which are in deadly conflict.  When the Holy Spirit is guiding you, you can put away your fear of being deceived by false spirits that run rampant in the church.  We see such a mixture of spirits counterfeiting the true.  How do we know the true?  The Holy Spirit first message is always repent.  If we as Christians are not being lead to put to death our sinful natures there will be no room for the Holy Spirit.  He will not accept encroachment and will leave.

When we finally have a core of believers that have been crucified with Christ, then the Holy Spirit is present in the church to bring judgment and "determine things, people and destinies."  He brings His fire that brings crisis and a verdict of either a more hardened heart or a more softened heart for Christ.  He sets apart the two realms by His fire.   Life in the Holy Spirit is dividing in that it sets apart light and darkness since Genesis and creation.  "There can be no fellowship when the Holy Spirit divides."  You cannot avoid the division, get over it, or bridge it. The Holy Spirit was the birth of the early church and for the birth of the bride church we need the Holy Spirit dividing to bring about unity.  Only the Spirit can rightly divide, we just need to give up our fleshly natures and stay in the Spirit.  Then the double fulfillment of Pentecost will fall.  We need the power of anointing to face the devil himself full of power and glory.  "God uses the church to draw out evil forces to their own destruction."  "Fellowship of the people of God spell the undoing of evil."  Then the Spirit and the bride can say come, come Lord Jesus.

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."  Romans 8:14

"Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:"  Hebrews 12:14

"Holy Spirit Rain On Us" by Shekinah Glory Ministries.

References to T. Austin-Sparks writing and specifie