Saturday, April 2, 2022

WARNING: IT'S ALL HANDS ON DECK

 


     What is wrong with American so-called Christianity? It's become weak and feckless. It loves its 501c3 status and will do whatever it takes to avoid being taxed. It claims to trust God but has a form of godliness only without POWER! It's powerless!
     Ask yourself, where are the "greater works"? Where is the "sell your cloak and buy a sword" mentality? We are in the world but not of it, but if I didn't know better I'd swear the world is far more a part of the church than the church even wants to admit. We are not to love the world or the things of this world. If we do, we will eventually be compromised and rendered useless and ineffective! Paul asked, "What business does the Messiah have with Lucifer? Or believers with those who don't? None! Yet that's what we see here in America and throughout Western Christianity. A sleeping with the enemy as it were.
     Is it any wonder people don't find anything good or desirable in modern Christianity? Is it any wonder there is no power to deliver or demonstrations of the Spirit of God that compel people to repent? Is it any wonder people aren't pouring into churches, or for that matter, on street corners or restaurants or parks or malls, even night clubs and bars and experiencing the deliverance of Jesus? Christianity looks too much like the world it's supposed to be separate from.
     I say this with great confidence, the end is here and the time has come! It's time for new wineskins and new wine. The old dry, cracked and brittle Christianity of the past hundred years can no longer hold the ever expanding new wine God is pouring out. As the new expands and the old skins cannot contain it. It's time to lay down the old ways and say like Mary, "May it be done unto me as You will!" 
     Even now we're watching the shaking of God in His house. Will we recognize it and stop church as usual? Will we repent and fall on our knees and cry out for mercy? Some will, many won't. The signs are all around us. The WARNINGS are pressing in from all sides. The coming of Jesus is nearer than you want to believe!
     My friends, it's time for radical expressions of faith in God and His Son! Ones that aren't about performance or fame, money and notoriety. Bigger is not better. Going lower is ascension! Only from a position of humility can we discern the difference between a demon and a self exalted human spirit. We need to function in a radical new faith where the real power of God is not just being talked about, but demonstrated and experienced. Where God is taken at His word and His word is acted out in real time! 
     Paul's greatest message was that it is "no long I who lives, but Messiah in me." Jesus wants to live not just in you but through you and the only way that happens is a revelation in your understanding that recognizes the difference, and submits to the Holy living within you. It's real and it's serious. Less of you and MORE OF HIM! No ethereally or metaphorically, but Him in actuality living Himself out through you. This takes a consciousness and determination to act on what you know. Have you ever heard words come out of your mouth as you spoke to someone about something pertaining to God or a spiritual encouragement to them that just falls from your lips and you think, "where did that come from? I wasn't thinking that at all." Awareness Him becomes engagement with Him and, through our surrender to Him becomes the power of God living out through you.
     These are the days of Elijah and Elijah's voice reaches out through time and pierces our hearts with these words "How long will you waver between two opinions? You can't serve YAHWEH and Baal at the same time. Choose today whom you will serve... do it NOW!" 
     The business of churchianity is now coming to its tragic end and the whole world sees it. I'm telling you, God will not be mocked. His judgments always begin in His house first! Commercialism, performance, pride and arrogance and all the world's ways have permeated the church and are anti-Kingdom. They are in direct opposition to Him and only diminish the holy. This is no game. Open your eyes and look around you. It won't be long and all you've known will disappear. If that scares you, it should.
     "AWAKE O SLEEPER!" There is work to be done. It's all hands on deck. Repent and return. Don't be afraid of God's goodness and mercy. We/you are His army. We are the misfits and the broken who He is assembling like, the worst of the worst who David gathered to himself and became as the Mighty men of Israel, to wage war against the forces of hell. GET UP and dust yourselves off! Anoint your heads with oil and put on the armor of God you were designed to wear.
     What's coming comes and can't be stopped, but greater is He who is in you... it's time!

Steven Bliss
© 4/2/2022