Practicing Solitude (Alone-ness with God)

Richard Lineberry

Many, if not most, Christians are ruled by the tyranny of the urgent and become activity ruled. We are often asked, “What are we DOING for God?” We neglect quiet times where activity ceases and our attention becomes centered on BEING rather than DOING. It was a big shock in my life when I realized God didn’t need me, He wanted me and wanted me to spend time with Him.

All of us want to grow in our relationship with God. But growth in any relationship takes time. A friendship starts out with trivial conversation like, “Hi, how are you?” The next phase is characterized by sharing more information with our new friend like where we work, family status, etc. Gradually we feel free enough to talk about personal opinions and even sharing about our problems and weaknesses. But peak communication in a friendship takes place when in the presence of a trusted friend, little oral communication may take place at all. We are served by just being in the presence of the other person.

Most people live out their relationship with God at a “low level.” But wouldn’t it be great to experience such intimacy with God that prolonged periods in His presence would energize you for all that is happening in your life?

Jesus withdrew from people frequently to spend time with His Father. Moses was called away from the people to spend time with God. God told Ezekiel to “Get up, go out to the plain and there I will speak to you,” (Ez 3:22b). Practicing the presence of God requires discipline. It’s a matter of giving Him quiet time where we let the “daily humdrum” take a back seat to our attention while letting the Holy Spirit take charge and set the agenda of what He wants to say or do. Daily solitude may be for a few minutes or be practiced in a withdrawal for a while from everything just to hear the Lord.

Getting alone with God may seem like something radical and new for you. Although human companionship is needful, and a part of God’s plan is our fellowship with others, there must be a time to renew and “stoke the coals” of our divine connection. If we are too busy for God, then we’re just too busy!

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
Psalm 37:7a

Seven Men who took their own counsel

instead of God’s and though dead
are still influencing America.

“have no other God’s before Me.” Ex 20:3 (hundreds of x). “
The mind justifies what the heart has chosen” D. Peacocke
A nation can not rise above it’s gods, or it’s mental constructs.

How can a man though dead still “rule” men’s minds? By the veneration we give them whether their ideas are Godly counsel or not. The thoughts we allow to strongly influence our thinking become like gods exerting control our lives and whole nations. They are unassailable by reason, truth and revelation. The Humanistic worldview makes us all gods: “Everyone is entitled to their own ideas, especially if they work for them.”

38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life. John 5:38-40 NIV

QUIZ: Can you name the seven men “ruling from their graves?”

1. This anthropologist believed that there is no Creator-Designer-Ruler-God but only an impersonal force and chance therefore man can become and produce a better world? Man descended from animals so is little better than one.
2. What German theologian undermined the belief that Scripture is God’s inspired and true Word and rule for our lives?
3. Who provided the basis for atheistic socialism and communism?
4. He professed Christianity with the idea that “this moment is the thing that matters.” Without covenant relationship as a member in spiritual family and self-denying vision to serve the purpose of Christ as part of his Body, his “Existentialism” produced a melancholic individualistic life.
5. He believed Jesus a myth and used bad science to promote his repeatedly faulty experiments in how to treat mental and social disorders using hypnosis and psychoanalysis based on an entirely skewed view of man.
6. Whose ideas influenced President Nixon to take us off the gold standard and cause increasingly mounting US debt?
7. Another of the intellectually gifted who had elitist mentality was the father of modern public education and promoted humanism and false optimism of man’s own power (like tower of Babel all over again).

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t match these men to the blanks below, but I want to help us discern roots of vain philosophies and how resistant our minds are to Godly counsel.

____A. John Maynard Keynes (Keynesian Economics-government can control inflation and debt will not hurt us.
____ B. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) theory of evolution.
____ C. Karl Marx in 1847 wrote the famous Communist Manifesto with Fredrich Engels. They were heavily influenced by Rousseau and the “Enlightenment.” Their works like Das Kapital overwhelmed other thinking with it's assault on personal ownership, capitalism and free market economies. Their plan was to take control of minds and people through education and college campuses. Communism is responsible for over 100 million sadistic and violent deaths.
____ D. Søren Kierkegaard was full of contradictions prefiguring post-modern feeling dominated irrationalism. His focus on “my subjective experience” sounds like just so much more humanistic and agnostic religion. Though professing faith in God he clearly sought his own mind and counsel and experience above revelation from God. It dominates college campuses and inspired youth rebellion, sexual immorality and anarchy.
____ E. Julius Wellhausen, religious liberal and rationalistic scholar, held that human reason was more dependable than the Bible.
____ F. John Dewey’s atheistic idealism was a dominant factor in the early years of the 20th century. Ironically many of his ideas were always changing—showing the “pop-wisdom” of relativistic thinking whereby every man becomes his own god with his own mind. His focus was on situationally determined values and their consequences, and what our thought processes produced experientially rather than beginning with the seeking of absolute truth and the service of God. This continues to undermine the basis of education and has pushed the deterioration of learning in science, history, and ethics.
____ G. Sigmund Freud’s twisted view of man (Id, ego, super-ego, life and death instinct, and being ruled by libido-sexual fixations) contradicts Biblical body, soul, spirit of man, created in God’s image, fallen but being restored in Christ.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

-PD

Recent updates on our
mission and leadership

Abigail White (interning in Manhattan) says she misses her church family and thanks us for our prayers and support and feels them everyday! Manhattan is incredible!!

ERG (elders resource council): Kevin, Robert, Jason, Rick, Joseph continue to give input to Richard and Dwight and do important legwork, e.g. our commercial oven, care of the property, giving leadership in small groups and communicating with the congregation. Thank you for rising up to lead by serving.

Men: young men meet every other Friday eve, “not young” men meet with Dwight or Richard each Wed eve, and Kevin cooked incredible breakfast on new oven and grill at our men’s meeting Saturday AM. Richard prayed for each man and clear prophetic word for us. Dwight led discussion out of Nehemiah 4: rise up and fight for your families and homes; every man with sword in one hand while building with the other. We listed practical tools we were using or could each use in building and how to personally train—all of which were outside the context of just coming to a meeting at church (i.e. accountability and discipleship, study, prayer, small groups, family, learning faithfulness in small things… We also listed how to engage in the war around us daily: acts of service, giving, witness and personal testimony, intercessory and imprecatory prayer, using spiritual gifts, faith, hope and love… Then we identified tools to use relating to our identity and intentionality: media, worldview public conversations, CLC brochures and cards, internet, things as simple as a phone call or visit to someone, or becoming involved in politics.

In brief Richard prophesied that if we would seek and ask God as our source; and prepare ourselves to use tools God gives us including wisdom and Holy Spirit power; and strengthen ourselves and be willing to stand in the breaches; THEN God would show us how to build and how to fight, how to discern and how to persuade, and we would see strongholds crash down.
Assignment for next men’s breakfast (probably July 30): ask God for revelation to see our dangerous enemies, like apathy, wrong beliefs, division, and ignorance of mission, of enemy and Holy Spirit. Secondly ask how God wants to use us to build and to war against enemies.
Servant leaders: recently met and had strategic discussion for things like prayer teams, training our children in worship and parental blessing, changes in the hangings in our sanctuary and a book for fall small groups.

Servant leaders: recently met and had strategic discussion for things like prayer teams, training our children in worship and parental blessing, changes in the hangings in our sanctuary and a book for fall small groups.

Dwight discussed quantifying (identifying cost and resourcing) for CLC vision and personal repositioning in light of changes in relationships with SOS and MCOKC churches from the past: e.g. vision and provision for what God is calling us to do and are we not to do (focus, faithfulness and fruitfulness coming out of this year of tending our gardens).

-PD

COVENANT LIFE EXISTS TO BE PART OF GOD’S
NET TO RESTORE INDIVIDUALS, NATIONS,
GENERATIONS AND THE EARTH ITSELF TO
THE IMAGE AND GOODNESS OF GOD

HAPPY FATHERS’ DAY
TO GOD OUR FATHER

from whom every family on earth derives it’s name and image
(EPH 3:15)

• Thank You, God: You are compassionate and pity us and do not treat us as our sins deserve but you remember our weaknesses (Psalm 103).
• Thank You for creating us and all the cosmos, and loving all you made so much you sent your own and only Son to save us back to you so we would not be condemned (John 3:17-17).
• Thank you for life each morning, daily bread, for protection during the day and rest at night (Psalm 90 and 91).
• Thank You for the church, for friends, for the grace mediated from one member to another, for authority and gifts and spiritual community and family.
• Thank you for grace and for mercy and for peace.
• Thank you for your word.
• Thank you for Holy Spirit.

Happy Father’s Day to the best Dad-the perfect heavenly Father who gives good gifts to his children (Luke 11).

For updates from the MCs in Costa Rica visit http://www.facebook.com/mcokc or www.MCOKCtour.blogspot.com.

This Sunday AM the team is doing two services in Moses’ father’s church which makes 26 ministry times in nine days—that’s more than the US tour.

The response was amazing—people wanted prayer and came right away. They opened so deeply and quickly that all the team has grown in ministry experience and faith.

We wish that the hunger here would be seen in us at home. Of course the culture here is decaying visibly—I can see it is worse in just three years since last here (but it is in US as well). Lesbianism and sexual sin by teenagers is progressing rapidly. Humanism is rotting the will and character and moral fiber of family and government and economy. America exported much of this decay to countries like Costa Rica. We have a responsibility to turn to God, repent, humble ourselves and bring our own families and nation under God’s rule instead of our own wills. And we owe the nations the kingdom gospel.

The team has worked harder by God’s grace than I have ever seen a group do. I wish I could bring us all into this kind of experience, or like Abigail, or youth mission etc… Why NOT?

-PD

The End Is Near (or is it)

"Famous preacher claims Jesus was to have returned May 20." "Mayan calendar ends in 2012." "Weather extremes, earthquakes and other disasters, wars and rumors of war: signs of the End Times?"

Jesus said we won't know the exact date but will see signs of the last days. Most notable is The preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom in all the world (Matthew 24:14)

Pentecostal power ushered in the “end times” (Joel 2 with Acts 2:17). We tend to focus on prophecies that In the “last days” there would be many troubles and disasters. But on the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, Peter proclaimed the Promise of All Ages was fulfilled and in this new age God was pouring out his Spirit on all his sons and daughters. Why??? For the purpose of the church fulfilling Christ’s Kingdom mission and glorifying God. Is 61; Mt 16:18; Lk 4:18

The quoted sections come from a simple 40 day devotional I would like us to use later this summer called Igniting Faith.

What do you believe about the end times? Will there be revival or will the world “go to hell in a handbasket” before Jesus returns? Will the church limp into heaven or will she have “made herself ready” and become the bride “without spot or wrinkle”? Our answers are crucial."

"Matthew 24:24 says that the “gospel of the kingdom will be preached in every nation” before the end. Scripturally, the kingdom gospel demonstrates power with signs and wonders following. That does not sound like a weak church in the last hour. One obstacle to having a victorious end time mind-set is that theologians seem to place most of the Bible’s positive last days’ promises in the millennium. End times books reinforce this mind-set; thus, our responsibility and expectation for kingdom advancement is diminished. Consider this question: If a prophecy of judgment is given against a certain place, should Christians run to or from that place? It would seem that biblical promises and commands would say, “Go and be salt. Preserve this place. Your presence will withhold devastation, save the people and make the difference. Why don’t we think this way more? Could it be that we are believing incorrectly about the end times?"

The classic example for me is Mother Theresa, who heard and felt Jesus' "thirst" and changed her focus and began her ministry to the most thirsty of all people. How may God change my focus and what revelation may I receive that will put a "secret fire" and "tongues of fire" in and on me?

Declare: "The church is triumphant. The end time church will be a “revival church” full of power and Christ likeness."

Ask God for the special grace of Pentecost anew and afresh to overflow in and through you.

Pray for the 5,000 unreached people groups and pray by name for unbelievers and the disillusioned.

Touch others with God's love and love them enough to be Christ's kingdom witness to them.

-PD

“NET” WORKING”

By Richard Lineberry

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:47

When the Lord cast out the fishing net shortly after the Acts 2 Pentecost, the early church took off and soared in numbers and influence. There is much literature written from the first few centuries that give accounts of their activities and explain why Christianity was able to reach every part of the Roman Empire in less than 300 years.

Many of their strengths as they “worked the net” can be noted, but here are a few that we can think about and see how we compare today. Their style is worth copying.

1. The most important characteristic of the first century church was their burning passion for spreading the Good News. That could only have come from having drunk the living water of the Holy Spirit themselves.
2. Staying faithful to the Apostle’s teaching. That means they stayed Biblical. Their witnessing was about Christ’s resurrection power which was demonstrated through signs, wonders and healings of all kinds.
3. They demonstrated lives of purity. Their own changed lives were the best examples of the validity of the Good News.
4. Their charitable service to all. Feeding the hungry and offering safe havens for those in need along with faithfulness to their own families was an attraction not offered by the pagan religions of the day.
5. Their mutual loyalty to one another was so unusual in their culture. Their meetings were open to all and without favoritism to social classes, rich/ poor and gender. Their cohesiveness under persecution and martyrdom emphasized the reality of the eternal life they preached.

Interestingly, in the book of Acts and early church history, their driving force was never just wanting increased numbers but continuing the ministry of Jesus. When they did that, God added the increase.

Jesus sends his Spirit to form us into one body.

Pentecost Sunday is June 12. These Scriptures help us prepare for Pentecost (giving the Holy Spirit and the “birthday” of the church Jesus is building).

We ask for the grace of a deepening awareness of the power of Jesus’ Spirit in us and a growing desire to serve Jesus in his member.

Prayer texts:

Luke 24:36-53 Be present at the Ascension and hear Jesus saying, “You are my witnesses.”
Acts 2:1-34 Be present at the event and experience of Pentecost.
Acts 2:42-47 Be present at the early Christian community and listen to the witness of the apostles. Take part in their shared prayer and shared decision making.

Reflective prayer on the following: Through the power of his Spirit we are a people claiming Jesus as his own (I Peter 2:9); built together as parts of a new building (Eph 2:19-22); as members of his body (Rom 12:4-5); knit together in unity with a diversity of gifts (I Cor 12:4-7). Hence when we pray together as a community, as one body, Jesus is in our midst (Mt 18:19-20); and the communal decisions that we make out of Jesus’ Spirit (Jn 14:26); so that with this power we can bear much fruit (Jn 15:5).

Additional readings for reflection at other times:

Acts 1:1-11 Jesus ascends into heaven and says, “You are my witnesses.”
Acts 4:5-22 Peter and John speak in the power of Jesus before the Sanhedrin
2 Cor 5:14-21 The love of Jesus impels us: we are ambassadors and ministers of his
reconciliation.
Col 1:24-29 In our own flesh we make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
Phil 4:4-13 Hence we rejoice because in him who is the source of our strength we have
strength for everything.

-PD