"... at various points in my life and ministry in the last 50 years I have had believers speak in negative ways about the Law - seemingly saying not only are we no longer under it but also no longer in need of it."

Money, riches and wealth come in handy in the caring for our families and the expansion of God’s kingdom on earth. But there are some powerful and sinister forces behind it, and many have underestimated these forces at great detriment to their own souls and the intended destiny of their families.

You cannot separate the power and person of the Holy Spirit with revival and awakening. One of the greatest fruits or results of revival is that men finally learn to give up any reliance upon the flesh – seeking only to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to see God’s kingdom come and His will be done.

These warnings should be soberly heeded by all of us. But Jesus never avoided rich people. Rather he often engaged them and one of the first examples is His choosing to heal the slave, (who was sick and near death), of the Roman Centurion as recorded in Luke 7:1-10. In fact Jesus highly commended the Centurion’s faith as greater than anyone’s in Israel (vs. 9).

While God is pleased when His people gather to pray and while God is pleased to work in response to people praying together, we do have an enemy and he certainly does not sit idle. Any of you who have sought to be faithful in corporate prayer surely know that in the hours or minutes leading up to a time of prayer all hell sometimes breaks loose in an effort to distract or dissuade us from praying.

My intention with this post, which I intend to add to as time goes on, is to show you the impact subsequent experiences with/fillings of the Holy Spirit had on some of the more well known non charismatic/non Pentecostal ministers that have impacted my life and probably yours - - so that you and I will never get complacent or self sufficient in our pursuit of and need of more fullness of the Holy Spirit

One reason they were able to be of one mind is because Jesus had specifically told them what they were to wait on. He had promised them what would be theirs if they would wait. And that "what" is much needed power and an experience with the Holy Spirit that would infuse them with that power called being “baptized with the Holy Spirit” (see Luke 3:16, Acts 1:5).

Peter would have been history were I in Jesus’s sandals. What an utter failure Peter proved to be when Jesus (in human terms) most needed Peter to be the leader he was called to be. Did we not have the rest of the New Testament we would have to deduct that Jesus’s investment in Peter was not one of His better ones.

But what sobers me is - how we will steward this rapid growth? What will our focus and response be to standing room only in our buildings? Perhaps one of the sad aspects of the history of the great revivals and awakenings is – they eventually dissipate. Some quicker than others. One of the reasons for that is the lack of effective and focused discipleship.

One of the great snares in church life is being content to just have a “successful” and active, busy, seemingly happy church, and not being focused on making every man, woman, young person and child an ever more devoted disciple of Jesus.

John experienced an intimacy and closeness with the Lord Jesus that all of my readers probably long for. And one of the reasons he did is because when he blew it, he received Jesus’s correction, he learned from his mistakes, and he embraced everything Jesus ever taught him. In a nutshell he valued every morsel of truth that came from Jesus’s lips even if it crossed the way he had seen and felt about things previously.

So I want to spend some time in this article exploring the “goodness” of man and I want to begin our discussion by establishing first the goodness of God. Only when we see what true goodness is can we then determine if it is inherently in man. Thankfully it is inherently in God.

My last personal update was in early January, so since that was fairly thorough and some of those things have not changed, I’ll try to cover some other things in this one.

Walking in faith and childlike trust in our wonderful God and Father – especially for those of us who have known Him for a while - is the normal and expected path for every child of God. Walking in faith and childlike trust in our heavenly Father brings Him glory and makes His fragrance in us stronger and more compelling to those watching us.

Whether it be faith for the healing of loved ones, or people God leads us to pray for, or faith for our own healing, this required and necessary faith for Christ's ongoing healing ministry can be fragile and sorely tested at times.

What is this word of righteousness and what is it about it that only mature disciples can grasp? I would like to venture that the word of righteousness is the message of righteousness from Genesis ch. 1 to Rev. ch. 22. And what separates the mature from the immature is the ability by the Spirit of God to see it and embrace it in its entirety.

"Loving God more than anyone or anything else is the very foundation of being a disciple. If you want to live your Christian life to its fullest, then love Jesus more than anyone or anything else." Greg Laurie Two things at least are driving me to put this post together – Jesus’s relationship with Father and Holy Spirit via the book of Deuteronomy (while on earth), and your relationship with the living God via the book of Deuteronomy while you are on earth. It is fairly eas

But God……is after a people…. and not just any people. He is after a people who have died with Christ to their entitlements, space, independence, secret lives, etc.; a people who increasingly “….walk in the light as He Himself is in the Light,…” so that we can have fellowship with Him and with each other,

"...there is no role in Christ’s church more important than that of the elder or overseer. This is why when Paul reached Miletus he called for the elders of the church in Ephesus to come to him (Acts 20:17). These are the men who would decide more than any other whether the church in Ephesus would grow and thrive and accomplish its God given purpose and mission….or not."

"... when God pours out His Spirit and thousands are swept into the church before Christ returns, who will shepherd them, who will disciple them, who will labor to present each of them complete in Christ with the character and motives that we see in Acts 20?"