Loving Like God

It’s not easy surfing the channels on Sunday morning without being painfully aware of how victimized the saints have become where discerning the difference between anointing and theatrics is concerned.

That said, this Sunday I am reminded once again of something else, but very much related, even from the beginning – Diotrephes comes to mind.

It has to do with entitlement. Our whole nation, and increasingly the world as taught by the U.S. is drowning in a sea of entitlement. Entitlement is sort of the opposite, of “he that doesn’t work, neither shall he eat.”

It was intended that, “…from before the foundation of the world that through the church, the world might be taught the manifold wisdom of God.” It seems that this too became an occasion of stumbling, as what’s been calling itself “church” seems to have taught the world something else altogether – entitlement. What has been passing for “Christian leadership” has been operating out of entitlement for millennia by now, and we see this reflected in government, just about any government, but for now, the U.S. Government serves well enough as an example.

The U.S. Congress in particular, is the very embodiment of entitlement as it continues to abide in and pass laws that do not apply to itself. It is above it’s own legislation, much like what has been passing for leadership in what’s been calling itself “church.” Ezekiel 34 has much to say about this.

Perhaps enough said for one Sunday morning.

Love!

• By Jay Ferris, originally posted December, 2011

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” – Jeremiah 8:22

Without going into how the Lord revealed it to me, some years ago now, the Lord prompted me to look up the word “balm” in my Strong’s concordance. I was led to the root word, which meant “crack and cause to leak.” I thought what kind of medicine is that? When I realized that was the way a poultice works, I looked that up in Strong’s also, and found two references, both to the same event.

“Prepare a poultice of figs, put it on the boil and you will be healed,” or words to that effect – advice from the Lord through Isaiah to Hezekiah.

Anyway, he did this, and Hezekiah was healed. I immediately realized that this was a picture of Jesus. Jesus is the poultice who takes away the sins of the world. When He hung on the cross, prepared by his stripes to be a poultice, all of the sins of the world in time and space came to a head, and were drawn into him who knew no sin that we might be the righteousness of God in Him. To prepare a poultice of figs first requires that the fig be peeled, and that is what the stripes accomplished. And then there was an earthquake – a crack in connection with His death. In the ministry of Paul we see the continuation of this ministry of stripes.

And so, it is clear that we are an extension of this same poultice ministry, a part of His redemptive purpose in the earth.

• By Jay Ferris, Originally posted on October 2011

For a short audio expounding this subject, Click Here

I spent many years looking for the fulfillment of Malachi 4:5 & 6:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” KJV

I used to think this meant, at some point there would be a turning of flesh and blood fathers toward flesh and blood children that this would be a flesh and blood redemption outside of or in addition to the blood of Christ.

One day I finally came to realize that this promise/threat, is fulfilled in Christ: “And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.'” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” Hebrews 2:13.  Here The writer of Hebrews is quoting Isaiah 8:18: “Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the LORD Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.”

This not only speaks of Christ, and the children God has given Him, but also to us, who have seen and believe in the relational Lordship of Christ in His Body.

The Apostle Paul had children too – spiritual children. A careful rereading of the New Testament letters reveals that this spiritual parenthood was, and ought to be normal for the Church!  The Church is a new creation. Like the old creation, families are normal to creation, and parents and children are normal to families, no matter which creation we are talking about.

There ain’t no plan “B”!

Love!

Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.~   Mark 10:29-30 & Matthew 19:29

• By Jay Ferris, originally posted May 2011