Ron McGatlin
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Joined: 08/23/2004
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Posted: 07/28/2010 at 7:39pm
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Worldwide Kingdom Awakening News and Views
Published by Ron & Barbara McGatlin - Basileia Publishing
 In This Issue
1. The Shocking Jolt
2. What Gives Substance to Relationships?
3. Top News Headlines
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1. The Shocking Jolt
By Ron McGatlin
The thunder rolls out from the distance rumbling across the land. An eerie calm stills the trees. The brightness of daylight fades as skies begin to darken. Everyone knows that a storm is approaching. Even the animals seem to know. It is time to leave the gardening and begin to close the windows in preparation. But I really want to finish this project that is almost done. This is something that has some importance to me and my family in the scope of our lives. Our lives are filled with activities of home, school, business, and many pleasurable and productive responsibilities. I don’t have much time to do the gardening things and need to get finished. Besides, maybe the storm will go around and not come here, and it may not be severe.
As we busy ourselves with the gardening of our lives we don’t really notice the darkening greenish gray sky that is beginning to move over us. Suddenly we have this strange feeling and all the hair on our body stands up. Instantly we are knocked to the ground as an unbelievably powerful surge of energy explodes from the sky. In an instant everything changes. We realize we are still alive and mostly unharmed and lift ourselves up to see the big oak tree only a few yards away ripped apart and still smoldering from the massive lightning strike.
The garden project is no longer a priority. We leave our tools and run for the house. Inside we check on others and rush about securing doors and windows. However, even before we are finished the howling winds begin smashing against the house. The electrical power goes off, and we hear things hitting against the house. We gather the family and run to get into the basement. Nestled in a secure corner and wrapped in quilts, we hear the roaring wind and crashing and smashing above us. Suddenly, our number one focus is God. Prayer is urgent and with great emotion. We desperately need to feel close to God and know He is close to us.
After only minutes that seem like hours, the storm passes, and we emerge to find our house and all that was in it is now scattered piles of debris drenched with water. All of our hard work and all of our possessions are destroyed. Not even a change of cloths is left. We have nothing. Our priorities are now completely shifted. Some things that seemed very important to us only minutes ago mean almost nothing now.
We are all here and unharmed. We hold tightly to one another our hearts are filled with love and praise to God. Giving thanks to God is the number one thing in our hearts. Our spontaneous prayer is: “Thank you, God, that we are all alive.” The peace and joy of the Lord begin to fill our hearts. Tears fill our eyes as we realize that we have been too busy to commune with our loving God who is our only solid rock in this temporal life. We have missed living in this place of real peace and joy in intimate oneness with our Lord. Soon the family begins to repent to one another for our shortness and contempt with each other while we were so busy with the “good things” of this life. Soon neighbors and others come to help us and we are so thankful that they are alright. We also become very thankful for the basic things of life that they share with us. We thank God for the things we took for granted until a few hours ago.
Again we repent for always wanting more or better than we had in the past and not being thankful to God for what we had. We feel God’s love flowing through our neighbors as we give thanks to God for His provision. Truly we are gushing with love for God and for our neighbors as well as each other in our little family.
How could we have missed this wonderful life? How could we have drifted away from the really important things and embraced emptiness?
Our lives had been very busy with many things that seemed so important that we had missed life. When we thought we were rich, we had been truly impoverished.
Hours later we learned that the factory where we were employed with good pay for many years was severely damaged. The factory had been struggling in the poor economy and the strong competition from manufacturers who had moved their factories to other countries where there was less labor cost and fewer taxes. It is probably not going to be possible for the factory to rebuild and reopen.
Our prayer becomes, “Thank you, God, that we have you and that we are all alive and well.” We wonder if the Lord allowed the sudden storm of destruction to jolt us from our foolish life and turn us back to Him.
As I asked the Lord what He wanted to say to His people, I received the above in a vision like a dream while awake. I believe it speaks clearly of the current situation of many of His people, families, tribes, and nations.
For many a shocking jolt of destructive power will in one day change life as it was known before causing many to turn back to God. A series of destructive events are already occurring as signs or a foretaste of what is to come to shake all things that can be shaken.
At the same time that the thickening dark clouds are releasing their destructive power, a mighty surge of supernatural empowerment will come upon the sons of God to preach and demonstrate with great boldness the pure gospel of the kingdom of God to the entire world.
The fire of God will roll across the land dissolving all that is not of God.
A child shall speak to a nation.
A whisper shall become a mighty shout as thunder from God.
Natural will be swallowed up in supernatural and restored as a garden of life.
Nothing shall stand before the Son of God manifesting Himself into the world. Every person yet alive on earth will worship the Lord God Almighty. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Christ Jesus is Lord. The whole earth will be filled with His glory.
This kingdom of God is now, always was and forever shall be.
It shall be fully manifested in the earth as it is in heaven.
Considering all these things what manner of person ought we to be?
Father God we bow before Your Majesty. Jesus, you are Lord of all and King over all the earth. Fill us, oh Lord, with Your strength, Your courage, Your boldness, Your love, and Your wisdom. Explode Your life in us that exceeds all that is in the world. Let the lightning of Your loving presence be a shocking jolt to blast us out of our mundane life of self concerns and into Your heavenly supernatural life in the Spirit. Open our mouths, oh Lord, to speak Your heavenly words and proclaim Your magnificent glory into the world. Fill us, oh Lord, with Your boldness that flows from purity of holiness and Your strength that flows from pure love. Let Your supernatural life rise up in Your people. We open our hearts and empty ourselves; fill us Lord. Let us lose our life to find it. You are worthy oh Lord. Amen
Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net
2. What Gives Substance to Relationships?
By Don Atkin
To begin with, let us presume that Jesus is building His church relationally by building living stones together in each locality for practical and functional purposes. He is also globally networking servant-leaders as He did Paul and Peter in the early years.
It is those practical and functional purposes that provide the relational glue necessary for the body of Christ in each jurisdiction to manifest the love and glory of God. People who are involved with others in co-laboring matters requiring mutual interdependence are much more apt to stay together than those who just hang around the edges and never enter into a commitment in body life. It is what we give, not what we receive, that keeps us connected to one another.
Speaking the truth in love, (we) may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.[1]
We are joined and knit together by what we supply, not by what is supplied to us! This is true in great measure even in the natural world. It should be all the more true among kingdom-minded, new creation people. But, we must accelerate well beyond mundane housekeeping chores to truly meaningful and incarnational missions that are Spirit-driven.
True kingdom activities are normally the fruit of at least two or three people in agreement with Jesus, and therefore adding (at the prompting of Jesus within) the element of intentional incarnational intervention to intercession.
Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, My Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of Me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.[2]
There is a quality of absoluteness involved among the people of God who are joined together in His purpose and pray together under the anointing of His Spirit! You’ve heard the expression, joined at the hip. The reality is much more significant. We are one—totally one—in Christ![3]
However true this is, both theologically and spiritually, so many fall away from one another because they are not involved in the substance of that reality which is found in purpose. Few people ever venture beyond the shallows on into the deep in their relationships.
There is a process that we must share together with others if we ever hope to experience the substance of biblical community. We will use the term liminality to identify the process, and then the term communitas to take us beyond what we normally understand as community.
Liminality is a term used to describe the transition process involving a fundamental change of state or social position—for example, in various rites of passage wherein people are significantly transferred from one stage of life to the next.
We were privileged some years ago to attend such a ceremony for a teen girl. The entire evening was choreographed to honor this person by the participation of several of her closest friends and family members. A variety of ingredients clearly spelled out the leaving behind of her childhood years and stepping into young womanhood. Her right of passage was accomplished in just a few hours.
While wonderfully powerful, and authentically prophetic, this experience was warm, cuddly, and totally non-threatening, especially when compared to a boy in an African tribe as he comes to the point in life to experience his rite of passage.
In some tribes younger boys are kept under the care of their mothers until initiation age—around thirteen. At the appropriate time the men sneak into the female compound of the village at night and “kidnap” the lads. The boys are blindfolded, then roughed up, and herded out of the village and taken into the bush. They are then circumcised and left to fend for themselves in the wild African bush for a period lasting up to six months. Once a month the elders of the tribe go to meet them to help debrief and mentor them. But on the whole they have to find both inner and outer resources to cope with the ordeal pretty much by themselves. During this shared ordeal, the initiates move from being disoriented and individualistic to developing a bond of comradeship and communality forged in the testing conditions of liminality.[4]
Our first example of a right of passage was ceremonial, while the second example was experiential. Much of the church has never passed beyond the ceremonial and entered into the experiential. Our first example (the young lady) focused upon an individual; the second example (the African boys) was focused upon community. Much of the church has never passed beyond being individualistic and forged bonds of comradeship and communality.
The related ideas of liminality and communitas describe the dynamics of the Christian community inspired to overcome their instincts to “huddle and cuddle” and to instead form themselves around a common mission that calls them onto a dangerous journey to unknown places—a mission that calls the church to shake off its collective securities and to plunge into the world of action, where its members will experience disorientation and marginalization but also where they encounter God and one another in a new way.[6]
Special Forces military units and sports teams experience higher levels of communitas than most Christians. Such units and teams share common visions and missions. It is common mission, tested by opposition that fuels the participants to much deeper levels of relationship.
The church was birthed in the midst of a hostile culture, and the believers’ lives were on the line.
They agreed they were in this for good, completely together in prayer, the women included.[7]
I don’t even know how to translate this into the modern religious vernacular. The similarities between then and now pretty much end with ceremonies, seldom or never touching the actual substance of incarnational mission.
However, I sense a stirring among many brethren to get beyond the present-day norm for church, and to experience that for which we are destined. There are those of us who are ready to embrace liminality, commit to communitas, and get about the privilege of incarnational mission.
[4] Pages 220-221, The Forgotten Ways - Hirsch
[6] Page 221, The Forgotten Ways - Hirsch
3. Top News Headlines
Pakistan Christian government minister is accused of committing blasphemy - Muslim cleric demands removal of Shahbaz Bhatti from the Cabinet - 7/28/2010
Bhatti, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Minorities had spoken out about the murder on Monday, June 19, of two Christian brothers. They had been accused of blasphey. -- A Muslim cleric said, "It is not a cruelty to kill blasphemers, rather blasphemy itself is such an enormous brutality that the one who commits it neither has got a right to live." Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33520&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Benny Hinn and Paula White Deny Tabloid Allegations of Affair - 7/26/2010
"We have independently determined that we will have no further social relationship until such time as my divorce has concluded and only if we feel direction from the Lord to do so." That was part of Benny Hinn's response to a "National Enquirer" article accusing him of an affair with Paula White. The paper published photos of them leaving a Rome hotel, holding hands. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33503&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Evangelist Purchases Modern-Day Slaves - 7/26/2010
Imagine children as young as 4 and 5 years old being forced to work 14- to 16-hour days making bricks, cigarettes, rope and textiles, then being forced to beg strangers for food. This is the picture of slavery in many Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Armed with guns and money, Bruce Ladebu goes into these areas to purchase children and sometimes entire families. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33502&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Survey Says: Faith and Family Dropped in Priority from 2006 to 2010 - 7/26/2010
Family and faith continue to be the most common priorities of Americans, though these have waned in importance since 2006. Meanwhile, other elements such as health, leisure, money and professional success are more likely to be identified as Americans’ top priorities. More than three-quarter of adults identify themselves as Christians. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33501&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
New Jersey Governor Vetoes Millions for Planned Parenthood - 7/25/2010
Governor Chris Christie thinks there's little reason to give Planned Parenthood $7.5 million when the state currently faces an $11 billion deficit. Christie's budget had removed the millions in funding, but Democrats voted in June to restore it by a supplemental funding bill. Pro-life advocates are praising the governor's action. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33482&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Government-Incited Gang in Vietnam Attacks House Church - 7/25/2010
Local youths smashed the walls of the home and wreaked havoc within as they railed against evangelist Mang Vuong for being a Christian. This is not the first time Vuong has been the victim of such an attack. About a week earlier the same youths broke into his home, stole more than $3,000 and destroyed household furnishings, utensils and books. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33481&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Graduate Student Told to Give Up Her Christian Beliefs or Be Expelled - 7/23/2010
Jennifer Keeton would be almost as out of place at a gay pride parade as Holocaust survivors at a Nazi rally. Her professors are telling her to go and change her beliefs. Augusta State feels Keeton won't fit in to the multi-cultural profession of counseling. But the school isn't tolerant enough to accept her Christian orientation. Keeton is suing, and refuses to change. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33455&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Abortion Provider Allegedly Violates Closure Order - 7/23/2010
Abortionist Steven Brigham has repeatedly been in trouble with the law. The Pennsylvania Health Department recently ordered his facilities closed, citing a "reckless and careless attitude" toward patients. Now there's a report that operations continue. It seems ownership may have been transferred to an elderly, out-of-state woman. Will Pennsylvania authorities respond? Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33454&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Pastor Rick Warren's Eyes Burned in Accident - 7/23/2010
Rick Warren is at home recovering from an accident in which his eyes were burned with the sap of a firestick plant. The Saddleback Community Church pastor only stayed in the hospital a day. He's expected to fully recover. Warren, who loves to garden, accidentally wiped the toxic sap into his eyes when he took off his gloves to wipe his forehead. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33453&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Christian College Student Spends Summer Break Living With Homeless - 7/23/2010
Brian Seeley was not new to the downtown scene in Lakeland, Florida. He'd been there many times before — hanging out with friends. This past spring the Southeastern University senior decided to do more than just hang out — he went to live alongside the homeless. That meant sleeping outdoors, taking bucket showers and eating at places that offer free food. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33452&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
Gospel Singer Doug Oldham Dies Awaiting Surgery - 7/22/2010
He partnered with some of the most famous musicians and ministers of his day, from Bill Gaither to Jerry Falwell to Jim Bakker. His earthly ministry ended this week when Doug Oldham passed away at the University of Virginia Medical Center. His powerful baritone voice brought strong emotion to Gaither's "The King is Coming." Doug Oldham was 79. Read On: http://archive.openheaven.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=33442&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1
For More Top News Headlines, Go Here: http://archive.openheaven.com/news/headlines/
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Topic: OpenHeaven.com Digest July 28, 2010
