February 17, 2007

• Background before studying 2 Kings 2 by Pastor Don

  I have to tell you that I absolutely love how God works. How He takes a theme that is running in my studies and shows me about it from many different angles and through different teachers. Pastor Don’s lesson today is so incredible I am hoping that instead of skimming, that you take time to read. All of his studies are good, some are stellar, and this is one of those stellar studies.

  Pastor Don gave some background by pointing out that everything in our lives is being tested. We are being tested by the world system, the financial system, and in the physical. We need to know that testing is part of the process, and to not panic when a test occurs. He said that even funny things are being tested like our patience and our understanding of things.

  Pastor Jerry spoke about testing last Sunday and pointed out that how we perform when suffering or difficulty comes in our lives shows us how strong our Christian walk is. Tests and pressures help us to see what we are made up of. One thing to keep in mind is that we learn more about how to pray for the sick after we have been sick, how to pray for forgiveness for others after we have forgiven. We might not be able to perceive where weaknesses is in our lives until pressure is applied.

  Pastor Don pointed out that we can’t leave ministry to the minsters anymore, we are all priests, kings and ministers in God’s kingdom. Are we the church we say we are? Do we have love for one another? There is a different kind of love we have for the Church than we have for the world. We need to really care about each other. The failing of the church is appointing ministers as Levites and thinking that we just need to be the congregation. The truth is we are all Levites and ministers. This will be increasingly needed when the world systems begin to fail.

  Then Pastor Don pointed out that capitalism will beak down. He said that expansion and growth drive capitalism. When there is no room to expand it will implode, and it will be a bigger catastrophe than before. China and India are now becoming more capitalistic and that will further draw on natural resources, and again, there will cease to be room for expansion, and capitalism will fail.

  God’s plan was to grow to a certain size and maintain. But we are not willing to do this. We want more and more and more profits.

  We took a side excursion to talk about companies like Monsanto who manufactures chemicals. In order to expand they have to create more and more need for their chemicals.  Pfeizer who creates drugs wants us to purchase and use more drugs. Their advertising campaigns are creating an imagined need for their drugs in people.

  Now there is genetic manipulation of plants and animals and powerful lobbies in place to cause the government to create laws to prevent us from knowing which plants and animals are chemically enhanced. In fact, farmers who do not comply with the system are being squeezed out of business by those who play the game. One farmer wanted to put on his products that he did not use bovine hormones, and the companies that manufactured the hormones wanted to sue him, because such labeling implies that these hormones are not safe, and the farmer had to take that label off of his products.

  The capitalistic machine wants to expand and will defend itself against those who fight against it, and they seek to sell us what we don’t need.

  We live in an immoral and unethical environment. But the Bible prophesied about this. We are now in a world that is unfriendly to us. We have bugs, bacteria, and critters that look so demonic when we magnify them.

  Penicillin was used as an antibiotic, and given so freely and at times unnecessarily, so that the germs have mutated. We now have a strain of TB that has no weapon to combat it.

  We need to know about what God warns us about so we do not get panicked when the events occur. We need to come to a point where we are exercising prayer before the problems occur, not as a reaction to the problem.

  Pastor Don said that he was looking a microscopic pictures of germs, mites, bedbugs, so I thought I would pull up a few pictures.

  bacteria

   

          lice

   bedbug

  Someone commented that some of these creatures look demonic. Truly those things which cause sickness in our culture are demonic in origin, for satan is the cause of sickness, disease, and death.

  Pastor Don pointed out that the very thing that happens in our bodies when we get physically sick also happens with spiritual sickness. What happens in the natural mirrors what happens in the spiritual realms.

  When we are sick the white blood cells come to the site and either create a chemical that destroys the diseased cell or it surrounds and devours the diseased cell. Cancer is rebellious cells loose in the body that multiply at a fast rate. With our spiritual diseased areas of our lives the Bible gives us the Word to destroy the diseased area, and the Word can surround that diseased area and help to devour it. Or we can have a spiritual cancer that grows as we leave room for other unspiritual thoughts and ideas to enter.

  For us to stay sanctified, to keep God’s command, we cannot take up our mind space with diseased thoughts and ideas such as pornography, bad thinking, bad ideas, emotional baggage, moral degeneration, this causes us to have a breakdown in our spiritual immune system. Just like we want to stay healthy physically, we need to stay healthy spiritually. We need to maintain a balance.

  Pastor Don pointed out that people who are subject to traumatic stress syndrome are used to operating under a high level of stress and they are ok during that. When the level of stress drops, then the body allows all the things that the stress prevented to attack the person. The living under a constant state of adrenalin production causes the body to go out of balance.

  We have to prepare ourselves to realize that when troubles come, our coping mechanism has to be based on a certain level of truth. Like the Bereans we have to study the Word of God, know what is happening, and realize that much that we face has roots in the spiritual realm.

  When we are in a battle, what roles do we play? How much are we to let it affect our mind and head? Which battles do we fight? When Jesus walked through the pool of Siloam he found one person who was ready to be healed. There were many, many others there that Jesus did not pick out – he was selective of the battle that he picked.

  A pastor of a church must be able to say “No,” as much as he says “Yes.” We can pray for every situation, but not all situations that come our way are destined for us to deal with them. Pastor Don pointed out that he gets many emails and letters soliciting causes. The causes are good, but our church has to pick the ones that we are asked by God to support. The others belong to other churches.

  To be effective we have to stay physically well and spiritually sound.

  Pastor Don says that when he counsels people he is hoping to get them to a point where they are no longer saying, “I am needy and I need your help.” But rather that they say, “I am healthy, how can I help others.” To be productive rather than always asking what someone else can do for me. (Heather’s note – this is part of what Beth Moore is teaching in her Daniel series). It isn’t all about me, me, me.

  Mature believers get help by helping others. There is a blessing that happens when you do something for someone else. God blesses us when we choose to obey God by doing His will.

  One pastor said, when God gets our hearts, he has our pocketbook. For then we realize it is all His anyway.

  In the last days money will be a test. How we use money to advance the kingdom or God or do we use it to bring the pleasures of Babylon into our lives? The world’s message is that money is God. And today there are many preaching a prosperity message that is ungodly. Yes, God wants us to prosper, but what do we do with that prosperity? If it is only to spend on ourselves (and God doesn’t mind us having pleasure) or is it a tool used to advance God’s kingdom? Do you have money or does money have you? Prosperity is not to just accumulate wealth.

  Some churches do not like to speak about money, and their pastors do the congregation a disservice. Some churches like to put a basket in the back and if people give, ok, if not, ok. That is not helping people to realize that God blesses those who give. Most times those churches and their congregants are suffering from lack of giving. God will bless giving for His kingdom.

  A believer must mature and understand his mission and realize that his mission is not all about me. It isn’t about what I can get out of the supernatural environment and the natural environment.

  There is a warfare going on in the supernatural, and it affects our circumstances. We can’t let our emotions and perceptions affect our productivity, difficulties and functions in God’s Kingdom. But God will let the natural test us, so that we can see where we stand spiritually.

  The periods of testing as we mature may come closer and closer together, and we will learn how to react as God would have us react, not as our natural man might want to react. God will permit testing of our patience, our ability to see others as God sees them, how well we resist temptation, etc. How are we going to act in the midst of our difficulties.

  Then Pastor Don did an incredible study on 2 Kings Chapter 2. I will give you those notes tomorrow. We only got a few verses done, but it opened my eyes to a whole new view of this chapter.

  Thanks for reading. Praying you have a blessed weekend.

  Heather

   

  • 7:28 pm
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