Seeking First The Kingdom of God: Matt 6:33

Tonight as I read through the Sermon on the Mount, notice a trend, I realize that the way that I go about praying is all wrong. Too often I approach the throne of God either grumbling and complaining, or asking for something that I think I need. Fact of the matter is when Jesus talks to his disciples and teaches them to pray he makes a massive statement in chapter 6, “Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you.” So many times I catch myself humming over that verse, there was a song that my Mother taught me a long time ago that goes along with that verse, instead of really thinking about what that would do to revolutionize my prayer life. Instead of asking for the little, insignificant things that I think I need in my life, asking for the Kingdom of God to come is the only thing I need to ask for. When Jesus comes back to this earth to establish His kingdom rule all of the little needs that I think about in this life will be nothing but a fleeting idea, if an idea at all. I imagine myself a little bit more captivated by the Man Himself than the little things that I pray for on a daily basis.

2010
12/01
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The idea of simply letting your ‘Yes’ be a ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’

I know it has been a while since I have posted but I think it is time for me to pick this blahgging thing back up. This thought struck me today while reading through Matthew, hope you enjoy.

The Sermon on the Mount, is in my opinion, the best sermon ever recorded in scripture. Jesus lays out basic Christianity so plainly throughout the entirety of three chapters in Matthew. I have read these three chapters time and time again and for some reason today as I am reading through chapter five, right in the middle of it a phrase stops me in my tracks. “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” (Matt 5:37), I know that in context Jesus is talking about making oaths but I think there is more to this statement than the idea of making an oath or promise with someone. I think this statement needs to reside in all of our speech as Christians. Often times I find myself “joking” around too much as I speak throughout the day. I have let sarcasm rule my speech for too long. I need a change in my speech pattern. The simplicity of the previous statement from Jesus caused me, as with most of His words, to be immediately convicted of the small areas of compromise in my life. The area of sarcasm is an area that is always “grey”, people are never quite sure if you are joking or being serious. How can anyone be taken seriously as a forerunner if as a speaker of Christ you are constantly being second guessed when you open up your mouth to speak. The message is plain and simple, but still very challenging to say the least. In the words of my three year old “Daddy it’s hard to do, please help!” I think this is the only solution for me to break the bonds of sarcasm off of my being.

2010
11/30
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A Hearts Long Awaited Return:

After being out of the atmosphere of the Prayer Room for almost a full two week due to sickness and then family vacation. The only thing that was keeping me awake on the 16 hour drive back home was the anticipation to get back into the Prayer Room. Sitting down in these gray stiff-backed cushioned chairs has never felt so good. I now know what was meant when Dorothy said “there is no place like home”. Mind you I did not have click my heals three times wearing ruby shoes to get back. All I had to do was rely on my trusty driving skills and here I am. While being back home it was nice to be at my folks house for a time of rest and relaxation, while there though I realized that the heart likes to be in a familiar place. While some would say that NY is my home and it is time to come back I would have to say that the Prayer Room feels like that place to my heart in this season of time. Don’t get me wrong, the web stream is a lifesaver when you are on vacation, or not in KC, but there is nothing like sitting in the prayer room and letting the love of Christ wash over you. Being away from this place only stirs my heart for more of it. Now off to prepare for teaching, only about a week before classes start, I think I still don’t know what day it is.

2010
08/02
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Making A Switch aka Tic-Tok-Flip-Flop

Just this past week I made the transition off of 6am’s at the house of prayer and made the move to evenings. I had been on the mornings way back in the day, four years ago when I first came back to IHOP-KC, then made the switch to evenings and now everything has come full circle and here I am back on the evenings. Oh how life moves in circles, Soul Coughing had it right when Mike Doughty spoke/sang “walk around in circles, walk around in circles”.

Even though I have made the transition, my daughter still runs in at 7am with zerberts in tow and screaming “Happy day to you father!”. She is so darn cute, I just love her to bits. I know Sarah tries with all of her might to keep her out of the room as long as possible but when a 2 and a half year old has something on her mind to do you would be hard pressed to try to change it.

So now it is on to the adventures of playing with an old time friend and colleague in the prayer movement Mr. Matt Gilman. I look forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for this time in my families life as well as what is in store for the team.

2010
06/22
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The Faith That It Takes To Be Healed

I am currently reading through the book of John, one of the main things that has been striking my heart is my lack of faith for healing vs. the vast amount of faith those being healed had to have. In almost all of the accounts of people being healed it was an act of faith.

Take for instance the centurion, Jesus spoke the words and the made believed that it would be done. Jesus did not go to the mans house and lay hands on the boy for a long period of time crying out for God to raise the boy up. he had no contact with the boy at all. All he had to do was speak it and the centurion just had to act and believe in faith that his son was going to be well by the time he made it back home. That was a huge step of faith for him.

Or take the man who had been blind from birth. Jesus spit in the dirt and then put it his eyes and told him to go and wash it out and he would be healed. Talk about an act of faith, you just got spit mud put in your eyes and that is supposed to make you see. Still that man had a choice either walk away and rub the mud out and think of Jesus as just a crazy dude that just spit in mud or to take a step of faith and go and wash as directed and he would be healed.

While there is an element of intercession that takes place when praying for the healing of someone, sometimes I think that because of the culture that we live in we forget what faith really is. Or even what preparing our own selves as vessels of faith based healing looks like. The bottom line is the only way to increase your faith is to encounter Jesus. That is the one thing that all of these stories have in common. While not all of them were physically touched by the God-man on earth they all encountered Him in some way.

So the only way for us to increase faith is to encounter the Man Christ Jesus.

God, give me an encounter today.

2010
06/07
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Remembering the Buffalo

This morning I woke up to find an email from my father in my inbox. On most accounts his emails bring me Great amounts of joy in the morning. In this case it was something completely different. This mornings email was filled with sadness. A good friend/member of the family had died in the night. Unfortunately his heart was unable to keep up with his body.

His name, Pastor Philip Pababathini. His life’s work was to plant churches and raise up shepherds to lead those churches in India. A nation where to become a Christian is costly. Philip was an amazing man of God with an even more amazing testimony.

I first met Philip when I was around 12 years old. He gave me the nickname of “Buffalo”, for many reasons I am sure, I was quite pudgy back then. But it wasn’t that I was the only “Buffalo” he was a “Buffalo” with me. We were buds, I remember on one occasion I had a multicolored ‘Cat in the Hat’ style hat, this was in the 90′s when those hats were thought of as cool, and he loved it an wore it with pride around our house. He thought it was the most fun hat in the world. We continued being “Buffalo’s” for 14 years. It was not until the last time that I saw him that the title of “Buffalo” was removed. I was married now and had a child of my own therefore I was now a man and no longer running aimlessly around like a “Buffalo”.

Even though the title of “Buffalo” was stripped from me by THE “Buffalo” himself, I say ‘Once a “Buffalo” always a “Buffalo”‘!

Philip you will be missed but I can’t wait for the day when I see you again. We will be “Buffalo’s” again.

2010
05/25
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Fall In Love With The Storyline

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet Leeland and Matt Mahar. They are currently on tour together with Phil Wickham, they had a stop in Lenexa Kansas and decided to swing by the House of Prayer in the morning. Matt Mahar ended up coming into our briefing before the Noon set. He was a super nice guy and has a genuine heart for worshiping the King. Leeland stayed out in the prayer room and wept before the feet of Jesus. Matt was interested in the model and how it all worked, so I had a chance to explain it a little bit to him. He was super jazzed about how the whole thing worked and blown away that we gave it all away free of charge.

Matt Candler had some tickets to the show and asked if I wanted to go. Of course I said yes. Over all it was a great time of worship but there was one thing that troubled me. It wasn’t the lights or the sound or the performance aspect of what they were doing. It was the disconnect with more eschatological songs during Phil’s set.

If you have not heard Phil Wickham’s new album ‘Heaven and Earth’ you should pick it up. It is awesome. It takes you on a journey from Eden to the return of Jesus. Anyway back to the main issue…

While the 500 or so people that were there could easily enter into the songs that I will call the ‘Happy Jesus, Everything Will Be OK!’ songs there was an immediate disconnect that happened when Phil started his song about eagerly awaiting the return of Jesus to the earth. I looked around and Matt C., myself and the various other IHOPer’s that were there were the only ones singing and proclaiming ‘We are waiting, anticipating, Your arrival, Your arrival’. It was the strangest thing in the world. My initial reaction was that of ‘If you can sing about the happy Jesus with so much fervor, how much more should you people be singing about the return of Him?!’

Then it hit me, we need to reacquaint the Body of Christ to the timeline, we need to be messengers of the story. Not just messengers of the ideas, but the actual storyline. The disconnect comes from not hearing the storyline only hearing ideas of heaven and 30 second ‘it’s gonna be so goods’. The Church, for the most part, as a whole does not realize their place in the storyline because it is not getting preached from the pulpits. So many messages in this day and age are about tolerance, or our economy and the ‘what is in it for you’ messages. A watered down gospel of false grace and peace is being proclaimed and therefore the church is looking for those ‘everything is gonna be alright’ songs and connecting to those.

So what does that mean for those who are called to proclaim the message of the forerunner? It means we need to be in love with the storyline and let it gush out of us. If we ourselves don’t have the storyline down how can we share it with those who never hear it? We need to know it all! The covenants, the promises, the prophesies, the history and the restoration! Heaven on earth, oh the glorious day! (Revelation 21) The Church needs to start to hear the storyline. They need to hear about the return of the King to the Earth to take His rightful place. You can only get so far on ‘everything is gonna be alright’, if you base all that you are on that mentality it is inevitable that you will lose sight of the end goal, or lose sight of Love.

Jesus, our King, is our hope and our reward is coming with Him when He splits the sky and returns with a shout and the last trumpet sound. (1st Thessalonians 4:16, Matthew 25:31-32, Revelation, 11:15, Zechariah 14:4)

2010
04/13
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What is a Prophetic Musician?

This is more of a poll rather than an actual BLAHG where I lay out my views on what a prophetic musician is. I am wondering what my readers (all 4 of you) think is the definition of a prophetic musician. I am putting something together for my drum students comparing the differences in the way to approach drumming. Prophetic based drumming vs Performance based drumming. So I am looking for your thoughts on the matter, mostly from other musicians. What makes a prophetic guitar player or piano player or bass player a true prophetic musician?

2010
03/29
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A Sensitive Subject

This last month or so I have been looking into the relationship between the Jew and the Muslim. My last post was about a dream that I had regarding this subject, this dream is what got my brain whirling about this issue. Where is the root of this bitterness between the two people groups? Why is there so much animosity between these peoples?

On my travels of searching through many articles online and various other places I stumbled upon a writer by the name of Mark A. Gabriel. His story is incredible, a devout Islamic Egyptian who had a powerful encounter with Jesus one night while reading through a Bible that was given to him by a women who was willing to put her life on the line to give this book to a Muslim man.

The first book that I read from this author was entitled Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities, the whole purpose of this book is to show how Islam is a religion that changed based upon the human tendencies and feelings of a man named Muhammad and how Jesus NEVER changed what Christianity was about. There was never any negating of previous teachings when Jesus spoke, on the other hand Muhammad constantly changed his views and opinions on matters. It was also written to shed light there is no way for Islam and Christianity to ‘Coexist’ in anyway. Allah and God are in no way related or are they close to being the same.

The second book that I read from this author is Islam and The Jews: The Unfinished Battle, here Mark goes into a little bit more detail on the beliefs of the Muslims practicing Islam. This is a book that I think I would read first before the aforementioned. This book sets up the backdrop to the entire conflict between the nations in the Middle East as well as paints a picture for the necessity of reconciliation between the Jew and the Muslim. He makes it very clear that the only way for that to happen though is through prayer and most of all the blood of Jesus Christ.

These two books have been massively helpful to me as I try to wrap my head around this sensitive subject. One thing that has stuck with me big time in reading these two books is that we as Christians need to change the way we think about the Muslim people group. Not all Muslims are terrorists. We pray FOR the Muslims we pray AGAINST Islam.

2010
03/04
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A Dream That Got Me Thinking

Recently I had a dream that brought the Islamic community onto my prayer radar. This is a very personal dream and powerful dream but I thought I would share it with you, I am about to start Blahgging on a new book comparing the similarities and differences between Jesus and Muhammad and thought I should give a little background to why I am focusing on this right now. The dream is as follows:

I was standing in Israel ministering, I was walking around praying for people and I came upon a Islamic guard and two of his friends. The Islamic guard was the leader of the group and was a very tall strong figure. I had a word of knowledge in my dream that one of his friends had been deaf for his whole life, I told this to them and asked if I could pray for them. They said yes and when I started right there they were all taken aback in the dream. I prayed for this mans hearing and his ears popped and he began to hear clearly. I told Him that Jesus Christ had healed his hearing and then asked if he wanted to receive Jesus love in a new way. He said ‘Yes’ as I prayed for him he became filled with the spirit and fell out on the street. The other two men stood in awe. I asked if I could pray for them next. The Islamic guard said yes while his other friend stood there shaking his head. As I began to pray for this man to receive Jesus, he began speaking in tongues, I could not understand a word of what he was saying and continued to pray for him. He then became filled with the spirit and fell out under the power of God, he was still saying the same tongues phrase over and over again and I still could not understand it. When he fell out under the power I caught him, he began to say the phrase louder and louder and began to point up to the sky, as I looked up to the sky the phrase he was saying became clear in my head. I understood what he was saying. He was saying ‘Tell Ishmael that Yeshua is coming! Tell Ishmael Yeshua is coming!’ We were both now staring at the sky as it began to part and clouds began to roll back, flying down from incredible speed was a man in white, his eyes were on fire and his hair was white. He then came and grabbed both of us and took us with Him. It was at this point that I woke up with a Holy fear infilling my being.

That was the dream that got me thinking about the culture of the people. If I am to be a light in the Muslim world the last thing I want to be is ignorant of who they are and what they believe. Therefore I have began to do some research into the ‘Isaac and Ishmael’ dilemma. If anyone has any other books that would help me with my studies I would love to hear them. Thanks.

2010
02/15
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