The Tabernacle

I was on the phone to my very good friend Roger in Munich and I was telling him about our experiences in Redding, California (see previous Blog). Roger has long known about this church and has been deeply influenced by their teachings. He had actually just gotten back from a trip to England where he heard Bill Johnson, the senior pastor of the church and his team at a conference. Roger shared how he has a 20min bike ride to and from the hospital where he works, and that every day he is getting at least 40mins of input from Bethel via his iPod. Something clicked for me. This is how Roger in Munich is maintaining this atmosphere of Faith in his life and in his home. I can testify that it is having a HUGE impact on him and his family. It is also part of how Helen & I have been working to maintain an atmosphere of Faith. We need to be putting our eyes and our ears constantly in front of things that will grow our faith, that will build us and our faith up, and to NOT be exposing ourselves to things that are constantly pulling us and our faith down.
 
I want to share with you just two resources that we use and find excellent:
1/ The free Sermon of the Week download from Bethel Church that I have been raving on about here.
2/ Occasional teaching from Succat Hallel (Tabernacle of Praise) in Jerusalem, again a free download of the message from the Internet.

Both wonderful ways to be feeding your own personal and family atmosphere of Faith.

We are just back from spending 10 days in Redding, California at the Bethel Church. Wow! what a fantastic experience that was. There is such an atmosphere of Faith there. They are currently consistently seeing 400-500 supernatural healings a week, including verified healings of cancer. Naturally people are coming from all over the globe to experience healing and witness this.

I must admit that I found some of the stories a bit hard to believe at first. But I vividly remember a guy coming to our Bible college in 1993 while Helen & I were studying at BCV. He said that he had had the honor of being present at three different places when revival came on different Pacific Islands. Although he hadn’t bought it personally, he was there. He said there was just one thing that was consistent and the same at all three places. This sadly was that the established churches missing the moves of God. They said that what they saw was outside of their preconceptions of God. Right then I remember vowing to myself that I would never NOT allow God to be more than I was comfortable with or could understand & even conceive. He had to stay much much bigger than me and my ideas of Him. This vow opened a crack for faith. As I got to know these people in Redding, I can now say without a doubt that I totally believe the reports.

Here are just three of my personal experiences that stood out.
Prayer on a sheet: At one of the Leaders Advance meetings little pieces of material were handed out that had been prayed over by Tod Bentley at the Lakeland Florida Revival, where 8 people got out of wheelchairs in one night!, yeah that revival currently on www.God.tv. Well I was just thinking about the theology of little pieces of cloth as I was watching grown men climb over each other to get one. When again I was told a story of how Bethel had been grown and stretched by God in this very area. They had been praying over pieces of cloth, prayer cloths and then people were being healed as they touched these cloths. This progressed to hearing stories of people needing healing in Africa, where these needs were specifically prayed for and imparted onto a cloth and then posted to the people, who then were healed when they received and touched this cloth. Then one day they heard of a guy who was about to die, again in Africa but this time there was no time to post anything. Someone had the idea to fax an image of the cloth to him, and Yes he also was healed after touching the fax of the cloth. Cool yay God!

You cannot exactly proof text this stuff in the Bible but I so love it when God takes us through personal experiences way out there and they stretch our faith and most importantly they make Him bigger and us smaller. Go for it God and continue to stretch my little brain I pray. Give me more Faith.

Heaven: I was at an Israel prayer small group and a guy had come to share. He wasn’t the main speaker but he certainly was the main highlight for me. At the end of the meeting he was praying for people and prophesying over them. Now what he spoke over me was very encouraging with no prior knowledge he started to speak of special intimacy with God, like laying out on a carpet, or even on a rug in front of a fire, very warm and cosy with God. I knew he was talking about Tabernacle and everything else he said was also very encouraging and spot on exactly matching previous words. But as I was in the line to be prayed for by this guy I was talking to a friend asking who this guy was. I was told that he had actually died a few times, and that he had been in heaven. OK!? Then I was told that one of his favourite things to do while in Heaven was to lie in the grass and listen to the grass sing worship to God and the grass would also talk to him. The person telling me this, shared how he initially thought “Yeah right! This guy has been on to many pain killers!” Yet as he thought throught this the Lord bought to his mind Jesus own words, “If they stop worshipping Me creation itself will call out to Me.” Luke 19:40
Wow! I have pondered on this & it sits well with my spirit. Standing around the throne singing praises to God does sound great but eternity is a long time, so some time lying in the grass having it talk and sing sounds pretty good to me too… Heavenly even

Crazy faith: I was sitting in the lounge of our hosts in Redding talking to Jim. I was telling him of our journey to even get there & how God had clearly indicated to us that He wanted us to do this trip to America. How we had come not knowing exactly why we were going but knowing very clearly who had asked us. I shared how we ‘in FAITH’ put the $8000 airfares onto our Credit Card as we knew ‘God who is good’ had asked us to proceed, & that this was still a debt, but God was currently growing us in Faith to still believe His call and Goodness even when we had not yet seen His provision. Jim shifted in his seat and said, “Oh you are ‘crazy Faith’ people. We love hanging around people like you.” I was honoured. It reminded me of a friend in Australia who once said that as she wondered at our faith, she also wondered if we weren’t fruit loops. But how she hankered for God to be that Big and reliable to her. We love you God  and while today that provision is still coming for the airfares, we simply say, “Thank you and you are Good!”

Helen & I have just listened to a podcast (message downloaded from the internet). It was recorded at Succat Hallel (Tabernacle of Praise) in Jerusalem. The message is titled The Tabernacle of David it was so encouraging to us .It really helps in the understanding of what God has been taking us into for these last 6 yrs. We would love for everyone who is following what we are pursuing with God to listen to it. So please let me encourage you to download it then curl up somewhere and listen. It is really encouraging! (If you havn’t already you will need to download Quicktime Player to play it)

Today I was out in the backyard and I received this download. It was about life or the purpose of life. We are just back from our trip to the USA and well, money was on my mind as we are a long way short of covering the costs for the trip at this point. I really have been OK with this. I believe God said to me while we were in the US that this was the posture that He wanted us to have there. Well we are back now so I really am ready for God to get us back in the black.

As I was thinking about this I believe God asked me to consider our neighbours on both sides and what they do with their days that make them and what they do worthwhile. I realised that the main reason by far for both of them is simply based on money. What they do during the day they do so that they get paid, this is what makes them and their efforts worthwhile. All of the efforts of our work trip to the USA had taken us way backwards financially. I realised I was looking at the wrong goal posts. If I left money as the marker of success and my worth, then the trip was an absolute failure. I felt God invite me to think about what we had done on this trip which was make heaps of friends, encourage heaps of people, and be greatly encouraged ourselves, let alone receive impartations and everything else that went on plus of course the multitudes of things that we will never know about. Putting these up as the goal posts, make our trip to the US an awesome success.

The conclusion I have made is that if you are going to live by Kingdom principles and not the rules of the world then you must also make sure that you get your worth from there as well. The enemy was attacking by getting me to look at what the world says is success. I didn’t aim at that goal & it is very OK that I didn’t hit it. Thanks God for reminding me what I have dedicated my life to and what Your markers of success are and what they are not.

Morgan is 11 yrs old. She lives in San Fransisco, USA.

Right now, Morgan is the only one in her family who believes in Jesus. She lives in a very abusive home.

1 ½ yrs ago she decided to accept & receive Jesus. Alicia, a leader in a local church where Morgan lives, had been the one who introduced her to Jesus.

A few weeks ago, Alicia was talking with Morgan about setting aside a space at her home to be with God because of all that she was experiencing in it. Morgan decided that Jesus could have her room. So she told him. She told Jesus that he could come in & rearrange her room in any way he wanted, cause it was HIS room. Then she added, “But please tap me on the shoulder at school so when I come home I know it was you that moved things & not my sister or anyone else so I don’t get mad at them.”

Alicia then explained the story of King David who as a boy was anointed with oil by the prophet Samuel to be set apart for a specific purpose. She shared with Morgan that both people & things were anointed to be set apart for God. So with the child’s wonder Morgan asked Jesus what she should anoint with oil to make it his. She had very specific places. First it was over her door. She run & put oil on the door exclaiming to a watchful Alicia, “then when I walk in the room, I know I am walking into that special space for God.” Next came the windows. And then in this last week, she anointed the mirror. She told Alicia it was because “then every time she saw herself, she would see herself as God’s princess.” She has also put up some special bible verses, cause it reminded her that it was his room.

Morgan also asked Jesus to clean up whatever he wanted in her room. One day a week ago, she walked into the room to find that Jesus had polished the floor. All the scratches, marks & scuffs were gone. She was so excited. Jesus was making her room, his.