Emancipation Proclamation and the Leaning tower of Pisa

Concerning the message "Emancipation Proclamation" give by Pastor John Hatcher on Friday Sept 9, 2005 @ CFNI


It was the day of confirmation, I just knew in my spirit would be coming. There is still no "specific reason" that I know of as to why God made such life changing paradigm shifts in our family to get me to CFNI...but maybe this message holds part of the key. Brad has told me for years "you have a message to teach and I have a song to sing...we should really work this out sometime!" and part of me always hid behind him and said "NO WAY! Do you have any idea what my friends would say??"

I wish Brad could have been at school with me yesterday for Pastor John's message. Somwhow I know a look of affirmation and a smile that said "I told you so" would have gently crossed his face.

Pastor John asked for us to turn to Genesis 1:27...male and female He created them...Imagio Deo....in the image of God. After reading the scripture he asked all the women in the sanctuary to stand up. Pastor John asked the men "In whose image are these women created?" To which the men responded "in the image of God". He asked the ladies to sit down.

We then were directed to turn to the passage in Matthew 22 where the pharisees were trying to trap Jesus by asking if they should pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus asked whose inscription was on the coin. The pharisees replied Caesar. Then render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's. Pastor John then asked again, "Men, in whose image are these women created?" The men responded in unison "in the image of God". Pastor John continued, "then render unto God what is God's". I felt a tear sting the corner of my eyes as the men in the congregation offered up a thunderous applause.

The atmosphere in this place is like none other that I have experienced in an educational setting before. When I attended a denominational Christian college, I had been the only female at that time to have ever taken the Biblical Greek class...it was simply men's territory. I was newly saved and naive enough to just do what God was leading me to do and that was prepare for ministry. So after I got saved I immediately went off to Bible College. I was too new in the faith (only 9 months old) to realize that there was a raging storm surrounding women in ministry--but I became educated real quick! I remember my Greek teacher razzing the men in class after our first Greek exam when I made the highest grade in the class. He said," you men are not going to let a woman show you up in Biblical languages are you?" There were lots of chuckles and giggles through the classroom and I sat there intimidated beyone belief. I felt like a scared mouse that had been tossed to a group of cats as a play thing. And that feeling has never left me. I have argued with God for over 10 years that He must have made a mistake where I was concerned. Surely I heard Him wrong...but God was relentless in pursuing me. All those feelings came rushing back as I looked around this sanctuary filled with men of God recognizing their female counterparts as co-laborers, called of God for the sake of the Gospel. I suddenly felt like I was in a safe place and God had encamped about me the presence of the Balm of Gilead. Suddenly those intimidating feelings I once knew was replaced with numerous memories of my husband encouraging me to be a part and minister with him, to share the message God has placed on my heart. I remembered numerous times that my own Pastor David had told me "I believe in the call of God on your life". I remembered Pastor Rob telling me that I had been extremely useful in his ministry teaching the youth to be campus missionaries. And the tear that had stung my eye gave way to a torrential flood that had been dammed up for over 10 years. It was a cleansing cry. It was a healing cry. And I swear I could feel the shackles fall off of me.

Pastor John also took us to the old and familiar passage of Mary and Martha. He said when you look at a dictionary, the primary definition is always #1 and then the secondary definitions always follow in behind. He said that he had never heard a sermon taught over Mary and Martha that was not a secondary definition interpretation of the passage. This of course peaqued my curiosity. He went on to explain that it is important to know and understand the culture in which a passage is written so you know what it meant to the people it was written to. He explained that in the culture of Mary and Martha it was not "proper" for a woman to be in a learning situation...but here comes Jesus turning traditions of man on its ear and relaying a proper foundation of truth for his followers. In this story we see Mary "sitting at the feet of of Jesus". This was a specific term used in the tuteledge of a student by rabinnical order. It is the same concept we see as Saul/Paul was studying "at the feet" of Gamaliel. So in this passage Jesus has made Mary on the same level as his disciples in terms of teaching/learning opportunities. I found it to be of very specific interest when Pastor John pointed out the fact that it was not the men in the room, nor the disciples, nor Jesus himself that was upset that Mary was found "at the feet of Jesus"...it was Martha!

Now many sermons have have been taught that Martha was upset because she was left to do all the chores and "women's work" by herself. Pastor John asked us to look deeper than that into this passage. He shared that culturally it was the responsibility of the woman to make sure the decorum and propriety of her home were in order especially when guests were over. And here was Mary "sitting at the feet of Jesus" learning (which was highly immodest and improper of women at that time.) So Martha asks Jesus in a sense to help her move Mary along into more appropriate behavior in doing the "women's work"...and Jesus' words are a healing balm to my heart! Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only a few things are necessary, really only ONE, for Mary has chosen the good part WHICH SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY FROM HER."

Jesus basically told Martha that she needed to have a paradigm shift in her own heart. He gently told her "no" to her request to move Mary on to more appropriate behavior and even further protected Mary's choice by saying that He would not allow that to be taken away from her.

My heart just aches for all the years I felt the condemnation of a few friends (mostly women, which I find interesting!). I heard a line in a song yesterday that so beautifully expressed my sorrow over those lost years of ministry time where I wanted to please those few friends more than I wanted to obey God. The song said "I wish I could get back all those years, not for myself, but so that I cold give them back to You, Lord". OUCH!! Talk talk about conviction!!

Thoughts were still lingering in my mind this morning about our dinner conversation last night when I was sharing with Christopher the story of the Moravians. We had dinner at CiCi's pizza. On the wall was a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Suddenly I was fixated on the picture. I have seen pictures of the tower my whole life but I could not recall the story as to WHY the tower was leaning. So I asked my family..."What is the story behind the leaning tower of Pisa?" Chris piped up without missing a beat and said the builders had not realized that the soil they built upon was a sand based soil. I almost laughed and asked him to repeat what he had just said. The only respone I could muster was "WOW! That will preach!!"

So this morning before sitting down to write this blog, I went and researched the Leaning Tower of Pisa and sure enough...Chris was right! Here is what one of the websites had to say concerning the tower:

"...They decided to continue building it, but they knew they could not repair the foundation. The foundation was fine. It was the land they built upon. Interestingly, the name Pisa means marshlands. The soil was a mixture of sand and clay and was not solid enough to hold that foundation, no matter how solid or level."

Simply Amazing!!

Lately I have been a humbled mass of clay on my Abba Father's potter's wheel asking nothing more than HE reshape me into the person He needs me to be to carry out His purposes for my life and that of my family. I am starting to wonder if my being sent to CFNI has been a critical mission to get some foundation repair work done so that my testimony of being "a city on a hill" does not topple over with the defective foundation that was previously laid.

Father God, destroy the building and rebuild me if necessary, but at all cost make sure that Jesus is my firm foundation and the faithful cornerstone of my life!!!!

Dawn

Discovering a Lost Heritage

This week I have been reading a book that has been completely eye opening and life changing. The title is Red Moon Rising by Pete Greig and Dave Roberts. I looked it up at Amazon.com and 19 out of 19 reviewers gave it a 5 star rating...and I would have to concur! If my budget would allow I would buy a copy for everyone I know, but since I am college student with no extra funds, I am just going to BEG my friends and family to get this book into their hands ASAP!!

One thing in particular that just had me mesmerized was the story of the Moravians. I will just go ahead and admit my complete ignorance of the story of the Moravian people prior to reading this book. I asked my husband this evening how was it possible that I have been a Christian for almost 18 years and I have NEVER ONCE --ever-- heard about the Moravians before? It is not as though I am unlearned --I am an avid student and learner, in particular over issues concerning my faith and spiritual heritage. How did this story and the testimony of these people escape my 18 years of Christian experience, education and training?

It reminded me of the passage in Exodus that said there arose a King that new nothing of Joseph. How did there ever get to be a time when the nation of Israel had a king that knew nothing of JOSEPH?? Someone, somewhere had stopped talking about him. Or they failed to see that his testimony was worth repeating. I was having one of those kinds of moments when I discovered the story of the Moravians this week! WHO stopped talking about these people? How did I get 18 years into my faith never having heard of this rich spiritual heritage??

So as I was sitting with my family at dinner tonight I was telling them how I had never heard of these people before. My oldest son Chris asked me who they were and what was so important. With my very limited knowledge about them (only from what I had read in this book) I shared the story of the Moravian people's call to prayer. What started out as a burden to pray turned into a prayer meeting that lasted 24 hours a day for over 100 years...non stop continual prayer by a community of believers that took seriously the call to continual prayer. My son sat there wide-eyed and amazed...just as I had when reading the story! Chris has recently had a very powerful encounter with God on a personal level and you could almost see the pride he had about the story and his GOD who would move so powerfully for his people who prayed!!

I just read the story of King Josiah and how he responded to finding the lost books of the law and how he began to tear down the strongholds and high places in Israel. I felt that same awe when I heard the testimony of the Moravian people...like I had just discovered a lost part of my heritage! Recently I have also been reminded, time and time again, that we OVERCOME by two things:
1. The Blood of the Lamb
2. The Word of our TESTIMONY

so when I read the amazing testimony of the Moravian people it lit a fire in me about the awesome power and priviledge we have in prayer! It stirs in me greatly--why are prayer meetings the least attended function at our churches? I remember the devestation of the 9-11 tragedy and there was a special prayer meeting called by our church prayer coordinator...and less than 10 people showed up out of our congregation of about 300 people. This is not to place condemnation on anyone. I know we can pray from our homes just as effectively as we can at church, but my heart ached at the lack of community in prayer.

I pray for a revival of prayer in our midst...and Lord, let it begin with me. I hope and pray that everyone I know will read this book and catch the vision of prayer and the power to touch God's heart that is at our hands, if we would just exercise the coorporate bonding and unity that takes place through prayer.

May God find us all in one accord, seeking his face that we may effect the world around us, reaching the lost.

I asked Brad this evening if he thought the church universal was ready to receive the end time harvest of souls. How would the church (in general) respond to a sudden and massive influx of new believers coming from a variety of sordid backgrounds? Would we only want to clean them up cosmetically? Would we be able to truly disciple and train them in the faith? Would we address external issues before the internal issues? Would we care more about discipleship than the safety pin in their ear and nose? Or their short skirt? Would we care more about their bad influence on our own kids? But don't all Christians begin the journey with some sort of past? Have we forgotten that we are all sinners saved by grace?

This is not to say that issues of modesty and propriety should never be addressed in the context of a mentoring relationship, but I wonder...how many of us would prefer to address those issues first? Can you imagine what it would look like if someone on the evangelistic outreach team went into an alternative youth Friday night hang out and returned to the church with 40-50 new believers who were covered head to toe in tatoos, pink and purple hair and body pierced in places you never knew could be pierced? How many people would suddenly take their children and leave the church because the landscape had changed? We all say that we live to reach the lost for Christ...but what would happen if God so answered the desires of our hearts? Are we prepared to receive that harvest? Would God trust us to nurse his new borns? Or would he have concerns that we might be abuse or wound the new believers? Would we ground them in basic doctrines of the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, salvation, etc before we took on the challenge of addressing modesty and the safety pin through the nose that scares the little children and the senior adults? Would God trust us to prioritize the true needs of the newborns as we acclimate them into the family?

We can really plow the soil of our hearts through prayer and prepare ourselves and our churches to receive the harvest that is ready in our own back yard communities...

so LET US PRAY!!

Dawn

Called Out, Set Apart and Sent

Speaker: Pastor John Hatcher

There were many messages this week that touched the core of my very being. It is so hard to pick the one's that I should write about. Since my computer is down with a virus and I am writing from a remote computer, I may have to write about the messages in installments.

For my thoughts tonight, I will pick the message Pastor John entitled "10 Paradigm Shifts: Positioning the church for transition". For the sake of my readers, I will briefly list his 10 points, but I will only be journaling my thoughts on one point in particular point.

10 Paradigm Shifts: Positioning the Church for Transition

1. We need to switch from building walls to building bridges
2. we need to switch from measuring attendance to measuring impact
3. we need to switch from encouraging Saints to attend the service to equipping the Saints for works of service.
4. congregation needs to switch from "serve us" to service
5. move from duplication of services and ministries to partnering with existing ministries and services
6. move from fellowship to functional unity
7. move from being a pastor to a congregation to being a pastor to a whole community
8. move from condemning your city to blessing and praying for your city
9. move from anecdote and speculation to valid information (minister to real needs not your perception of what they need)
10. move from always being a teacher to becoming a lifetime learner

There was far to much info on each of those topics to go into too great of detail here. So those are now just points to ponder for the reader.

I did want to take time and elaborate on one of the points he made and make some practical application of that to my life.

Pastor John made a point under his "build bridges not walls" point that hit the bulls eye in the core of my being!! He said, "We cannot so shelter ourselves to preserve our "purity" that we no longer GO!" (referring to the Great Commission).

As many of you who are following my journey, you understand the significance of this statement in my personal struggle. We had been homeschooling the kids for the last 8+ years of our lives when God told us to put the children in school. I had also, in that time of homeschooling, had many conflicts with "well meaning friends" about things I felt God had asked me to do in regards to ministry. I was constantly met with "you cant do that, you are a woman!" Or even worse, "the only ministry God has called you to is to your children and your husband...any other type of ministry would just be your own selfishness seeking after your flesh."

The more I tried to explain my passion for missions and our family's evangelistic zeal, I was met with the harshest of criticism from the people I had expected the most support. I was told time and time again that for me to keep my children "pure" or to walk in "holiness" I must do x, y and z.

This last 8 months of my life, since God began speaking to Brad and I about this journey, has been a HUGE wake up call! It is as though I am waking up from the longest dream. I am remembering the truths I once understood at the time of my salvation...yet it is almost as though I am hearing them for the first time.

Pastor John, being used of the Holy Spirit, shot an arrow of truth straignt to my heart. It was a LIGHT BULB moment for me...a EUREKA moment, if you will!! We can no longer shelter ourselves to preserve our "purity" to the point of doing violence to the Great Commission. Being pure, holy, and set apart is WHO WE ARE by virtue of the shed blood of Christ. There is nothing we can do to add to what has already been done. The work of making us holy and set apart is a completed work. Yes, we continue to walk in holiness and purity because that is who we are by virtue of being BORN AGAIN. We, as Christians, will FOREVER be the called out and set apart holy ones of Christ. That is a sealed deal by His BLOOD.

It is because of who we are (the holy and set apart ones) that we are also sent out. We cannot be holy and set apart without accomplishing the task of the great commission. Those 2 things cannot be separated. That is something I used to instinctively understand! But somewhere in our years of homeschooling, I ran across some friends, with very strong and influencing ideas, that somehow twisted that basic doctrinal issue.

I was told by one friend that my desire to do mission work was selfish because I had a family to raise and a husband to take care of. (As if I would go to the mission field without my family?? As if my husband had no desire either?) We actually looked into a missions training program and were turned down because we had one too many children. The denial letter told us that the mission organization would only be responsible for two children, not three. We were sad, but sort of had a good chuckle at the thought (and arrogance) that the mission organization thought they would be the "provider" for our family if we went to the mission field! Silly us for thinking it was God who was our Jehova Jireh! This denial only confirmed to our friend that families with children had no business attempting the great commission...after all, that is what missionaries are for!

I questioned her further about witnessing to the neighbors. Do you even see that as a legitimate means of reaching the lost for Christ? Her response was that it was only appropriate for her husband to speak to the neighbors since she was female. This went on for over 10 years to the point I quit sharing major parts of my life with this friend. How could following the basic command of Christ become so mutated and have this dead weight of legalism?

I had another friend from church was stunned when I cut my hair. (I had 17 inches cut off and donated it to locks of love.) She said, "Boy! You made a liar out of me! I just told someone the other day you would NEVER cut your hair because of the holiness thing!" Talk about a wake up call! That was one of the first realizations I had that I was being lumped into a catagory by stereotype! My friend assumed I wore long hair for religious purposes. That never entered my mind! I just preferred longer hair because my husband liked it! But he likes the shorter look too.

It seems that because I homeschooled there were a lot of stereotypes that people made false assumptions about our family. We have always felt like the black sheep in the family in our homeschooling communities because we never did anything like the rest of them...we have always walked to the beat of a different drummer. We kept our TV when friend through theirs out. We listened to contemporary music when our friends thought we were hell bound for not listening to only hymns and "melodious music"...did our contemporary music not have melodies? We did unit studies when other friends said ABeka was the best source for Christian education....hhhmmm...silly us, we just used our Bible. I preferred my jeans when other friends wore dresses only. Other friends covered their heads per 1 Corinthians 11 instructons, when I, in my heathen rebellion, I guess, cut off my hair and donated it to a company who would make wigs for critically ill children. See...we were just black sheep in our communities!

It was just a wake up call to truly understand that people really did look at those THINGS/ISSUES to measure holiness and righteousness by...and I wont even go into the fire storm that was created when we shared that God was leading us to put the kids in public school! You would have thought that we had renouced our faith and rejected our salvation!

So thanks to Pastor John, I am walking a lot more freely tonight and having a huge weight lifted from my spirit. Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, for I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

I am trading the yoke of legalism and human expectations for the yoke of Christ and his burden lifting commands....

I can almost hear Leon Patillo singing the old praise chorus now...
Go ye therefore and reach all nations...Go...Go...Go...
Go ye therefore and reach all nations...Go...Go...Go...
Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost....
GO! GO! GO.....

I am just going to trust in the finished work of Christ to keep me Holy and Set Apart for His glory...and I will do all I can to GO!!

For I know whom I have believed in,
and am persuaded that He is able
to keep that which I have commited
unto him against that day.

Dawn