The Rainbow Fire of God's Promised Land
I have a passion, to share with the people of Africa the blessings of a vision God showed me when my family and I were flying over the continent to move to Cape Town. The closest I've come to illustrating that so far are in the photos above. Well,that's not exactly true. I spied a painting my friend Janice Van Cronkhite had begun and put away when I was in her basement in April of this year. The way Janice painted the clouds and the firey rainbow that was coming out of them jumped out at me! I could hardly contain myself and told Janice about the vision. She told me about a phenomenon that occurs rarely and that's what she had attempted to paint. At a conference a few days later Janice painted the continent of Africa under those clouds and put her own personal/spiritual touches to the vision I'd shared. She often attends conferences where she paints during the worship time. We at Blood N Fire refer to this as spontaneous combustion, when Blood N Fire worshippers in Atlanta got together to paint, create, write and worship the Lord under Holy Spirit's anointing. To view the results of the way Holy Spirit empowers Janice to paint go to www.jvcartworks.com.
My heart was to hang that painting on the wall in our home that the vision would literally declare what God had spoken to me about Africa. This morning God began to reveal so much about the vision, the painting but more importantly relationship.
Someone recently asked me, "So what have you been up to in ministry?" While I scrambled for the short concise summary another person in the room replied with..."refugees." I remarked to Ned on the way home, "I hope that isn't all they think we do." Ned replied, "That's what you wrote about last in our newsletter." We've had several emails asking us to write out what it is we actually are doing so that our friends, supporters can tell others about us. Sooo I wrote out some specifics, our goals, passions, dreams. Let us know if you're interested, we'll send you a copy. Email us at bnfrsa@sentechsa.com
Ned and I feel somewhat alone, like the odd man out, in ministry. We don't look like the other ministries around Africa, we don't do the large evangelistic outreaches we used to do. God has called us more to one on one relationships and to gather as family in community as they did in Acts 2. But we are very under the radar, so to speak. To get to know us and what we do requires getting together with us. John Wimber coined the phrase, "come and see." Over a cup of coffee and or a meal, we talk, pray, encourage and share to really get the full expression of what God's called us to do. There isn't a formula or manual which you could follow really, other than go to the poor, preach the good news, set the captives free. But God has revealed this to us in a fresh new way. Outreaches are great ways to publicly meet practical needs of a community. But God requires us to take his love a step further, to invite the lonely into family, to invest our very lives in their lives. The mass evangelistic outreaches we used to do in Atlanta provided the introductions and from there we had a warehouse to invite the poor, homeless and rejected to come worship the Lord daily. Eventually we even gave the sanctuary where we met on Sundays as a home for them. We became so busy trying to meet the needs we had less and less time to develop the personal one on one stuff, including our own relationships. God speaks in Revelation to the church saying, "I know your deeds ... but I have this against you, you've forgotten your first love." We read those words afresh when we moved to Cape Town. This morning the dawn came over my marble head when I read the notes in my Discipleship Study Bible regarding Deuteronomy 6:25: "And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness."
In the notes: Righteousness (Hebrew tsedaqah) is the comprehensive term describing proper relationships. Wow! "Living in the social order created by God's commands brings a person in proper relationship with God and the community. Obedience is not legalism carefully maintained in fear, but a relationship properly nurtured in trust, gratitude and love."
Moses to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7:6: "For you are a holy people. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the people on the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." Going on to chapter 8, vs. 6: "Observe the commands of the Lord, walking in his ways and revering him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees... where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing... Be careful you don't forget the Lord,... when you eat, build fine houses... your hearts will become proud and forget the Lord who has brought you out of slavery in Egypt. He led you through the vast and dreadful desert that thirsty, waterless land with venoumous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you.
Vs. 17: "You may say to yourself, 'my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers as it is today."
Wow! What kind of God is He? He remembers, never forgets, never forsakes us, but remembers the promise he made to Abram who was declared righteous by faith! So I went to Genesis 15 to see what being declared righteous by faith meant. To get the gist of what's just happened you need to check out chapter 14 where Abram finds out his relative Lot had been taken captive when the kings came up against Sodom and Gomorrah. Chapter 14:10: Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills. When Abram recieved the word of his relative being taken captive he called out the 318 trained men of his household and pursued as far as Dan. At night he divided the men to attack and they routed them; pursuing as far as Hobah, north of Damascus he recovered all the goods and brought back his relative and his possessions together with the women and the other people. The kings allied with him and came out to meet him in the place called the valley of the kings. Melchizedek, King of Salem brought out bread and wine. He as the priest of the Most High and he blessed Abram: Blessed be Abram by God Most High. Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed by God Most High who delivered your enemies into your hand." Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
The King of Sodom said, "Give me the people and you keep the goods." Abram said no. "I have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you... so that you will never be able to say, 'I made Abram rich.' I will accept nothing but what my men have eatn and the share that belongs to the men wo went with me- to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share."
What a great tithe message! Wow! You know what I like best, though? God alone was glorified. He kept his promise to Abram and Abram trusted in it. He didn't put his hope in anything else. I'll bet he could have put that stuff to good use, too! After this in a vision God said to Abram:
"Do not be afraid, Abram; I am your shield, your very great reward." Abram replied, "O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and without an heir other than my servant?"
The Lord replied, "This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them... so shall your offspring be."
Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. God also said, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." Abram said, 'how can I know that I will gain possession of it?' The illustration of what happened next so sovereignly showed me how we doubt. We get discouraged because we cannot logically explain what God has said or done. The thing is, as God has said, "My ways are higher than your ways." We cannot understand or begin to explain or justify why God does what he does! Who was Abram that God would make such a promise? And who was he that he should ask God, "How can I KNOW this?" We know Abram was called 'friend of God.' We know about this thing between them called relationship! Remember how it was earlier described to us? Living in the social order created by God's commands brings a person in proper relationship with God and the community. Obedience is not legalism carefully maintained in fear, but a relationship properly nurtured in trust, gratitude and love.
So God instructs Abram to get a heifer, goat and a ram along with a dove and a young pegeon. He got them, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds he didn't cut. Birds of prey came down to eat the carcasses but Abram drove them away. As the sun set he fell into a deep sleep and a heavy dreadfulness came upon him. God said to him, "know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own. They will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years. I will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterward they will come out with great possessions." On that day God made a covenant with Abram and said: "to your descendans I give this land, from the river of Egype to the great river Euphrates- the lad of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Ladmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebushites."
We choose when God speaks, commands, and/or declares in our midst. We either believe wholeheartedly, or doubt. Division/doubt ultimately steal our promise as the 'logical' birds of prey come to eat it or we can drive out the doubt in our hearts and believe as Abram believed. Granted, he did ask, 'how can I KNOW this?' I think like us, he wanted with all of his heart to believe so sought from God how to drive out fear and doubt. This is surely the answer for us, to fall on our knees, trusting Him to deliver us, to believe He is our shield and our very great reward.
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