Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The Bride of Christ

This is something I wrote awhile ago on The Bride of Christ.

Men are the brides of Christ just as women are. The bride describes a position of privilege and of nearness to the heart of God. We must have a revelation of this bridal Paradigm to understand it fully. Beloved, the truth is that the Lord God, Jesus Christ, The God-Man, Loves use, He is ravished by our weak glances, even in our weakness He goes crazy for us! His enjoyment for us is not based on our achievements but on His own heart and your sincere response to Him. This isn’t something that you need to strive to achieve, but it is an awesome key that can unlock power in your life.

The Song of Solomon is a great book to show this Bridal Paradigm. I think it can be understood three main ways. First, it can be understood as married love between King Solomon and his Shulamite. Second, it could be a spiritual love song between the glorious relationship between Christ and the church. Third, it could be again a spiritual love song, but between Christ and the individual. The third way just makes me go crazy as I am reading through the book. Just thinking about it being a love song between me and Christ exhilarates me.

God is often viewed as a strict coach, that isn’t emotional until we sin then he gets angry with us. Also He is viewed as a God who is just trying to discipline us by calling us to things and then letting bad things happen to us. We never realize that his heart burns for desire for us.

It takes God to love him. We love him with the supernatural power of his own imparted love. We are used as a vessel, when we get a revelation of his love we are automatically filled with love towards him, and we hunger for him, then we get another revelation of how he loves us as our weakness, and our love for him at that moment just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the cycle also keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The power to love is its own reward. Imagine a couple with a 2 million dollars and a 2 million dollar house. They have a daughter who gets sick and the doctor tells them it will cost them everything to help her the 2 million dollars and the house. They do it. Then one day someone comes up to them and says, “It was amazing what you did for your daughter,” and they say, “No what we did for our daughter was love.” They were despised for doing this. This example also applies to scripture if your were to give up everything for God do you think people would say something like, “Yeah I did that last week,” no they would give the reaction of you being crazy. Paul says his sacrifice for God is nothing compared to the excellency of experiencing the beauty of Jesus, Philippians 3:8. The reward for someone who is truly in love is the power to love, and by now no self recognition is sought or wanted.

Jesus desires us! Nothing is better than the revelation of the God filled with pleasure, the God who has intense desire for human beings and the God who woos us through spiritual pleasures. Paul preaches on the revelation of the Bridegroom in 2 Corinthians 11:2

“For I am jealous for you with a Godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

In this ministry indentity as friends of the bridegroom we operate differently than those Christians without this revelation. We are fearless. A Bridegroom God is a God who has indescrible desire and delight for us as human beings. Something profound happens to us in our weakness, we feel wanted, and longed. The Bridegroom God actually enjoys us and takes pleasure in us even here on earth.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Article for School Newspaper

This is an Article I wrote for my High School's newspaper in a response to an ongoing debate between 2 people about worship.

Dear Editor,

I am writing this as a response to the ongoing discussion between Lindsey Parker and Mrs. Salsberry. I am not writing to debate the issue, but just to give my input. What the two have been somewhat debating is the issue of whether worship should be Hymns or songs with “snazzy” beats like that of the popular secular music. I somewhat disagree with Lindsey when she states that if an unbeliever came they would probably connect more with Inside Out than Come Long Expected Jesus. I do think there is some truth to that statement, but I dare say that they will connect more with the song that the Spirit of God brings conviction threw. An example I would like to look at is John the Baptist. He lived most of his life in the desert and is known as a voice who was crying out in the wilderness. I must say that I doubt John had “snazzy” beats or even music. God does not need music playing to move in hearts. To this one might say, ‘That was a long time ago during bible times, things have changed since then and are different today.’ Yes, this is true, but God has not changed. God has been the same through all eternity past. The same God that poured out His Spirit in the Bible is the one we worship today. This is the same God that sends conviction to the unbeliever’s heart, who makes the wrong things write.

When it comes to believers worshiping I would say that the issue at hand is that of sin. We are sinful people and this sin brings a hindrance to our worship. The definition of worship in Webster’s dictionary is, “a reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.” The worship is not about us. Sure, worshiping God with a song that has a cool beat or a nice tune is awesome, but it is the same as when we worship Him with a Hymn, or much less no music at all. Worship is about the Man who we are worshiping and the reasons we worship Him, it is not about us. When we look at the revivals of history, I bet we can safely say that they were not singing Inside Out during worship. They were more than likely singing Hymns with a keyboard, or no music at all. Guess what, during these times of worship God moved His Spirit and thousands were saved. The fact is, our God moves, it does not matter where or how, He is alive and moving as long as the heart is willing. Let me throw this out there. In the book of Revelation, mainly chapters 4 and 5, the Throne Room in Heaven is described. In this description, the four living Creatures and the 24 elders are mentioned giving praise, glory, and honor to Him who sits on the Throne and lives forever and ever. “Day and night they never stop saying:

Holy, Holy, Holy
Is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was, and is, and is to come.”

Whenever the 4 living creatures did this we see that the 24 elder would fall down and say,

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, a
and by tour will they were created and have their being.”

Beloved, we are bored, that is all there is to is. The four living creature just mentioned said the same thing day and night. Whenever they said it, the 24 elder fell down and said their words. They have been in heaven all eternity saying this same thing everyday and every night and falling down before the Lord. They do not have any other songs this is the only one. My friend, we get tired of singing a song after five times. We must begin to understand this truth. We are a boring people who need God.

Kurt Miller

Monday, January 15, 2007

The Necessity of Prayer

I have just recently been reading books on prayer and intercession, and this is something that the Lord had broken me over. This is the greatest call of the hour in the church today. The 2 that I am working on right now are E.M Bound's The Weapon of Prayer and Leonard Ravenhill's Why Revival Tarries. I have come to a basic conclusion. Today Christians struggle with all types and kinds of sin, the one answer for this is prayer. No self help group, or home group is going to help us, we must begin to come before God's throne of grace and pray.

E.M Bounds states:
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

The church today lacks power. This is the key reason. Preachers and teachers must begin to lock them self up in the closet and weep over the perverse world. Many of us do not recall the last time we have spent hours on end in the presence of the Almighty. George Whitefield said, "Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer." We know Whitefield as one of the great evangelists during the Great Awakening and here we see his source of power and authority.

When was the last time we have weeped in a spirit of prayer for the 315 million Muslims in the world. Is that fact even phasing the reader? Where has our burden for the lost disappeared to. We must begin to confront these issues alone with God. We must replace our material things which we are so consumed in, with sending intercession up to Gods throne, and wrestling in the secret place.

Ravenhill states, "Someone now will warn us that we are to heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use. The brutal, soul-shaking truth is that we are so earthly minded that we are of no heavenly use." This, beloved, is the truth. We must let the Holy Spirit change our western mindset and focus us in on eternity. This life is truly but a second in comparison to eternity.

Begin to ponder Genesis 1, "In the Beginning God..." God was in the beginning. This must fry our brains. Our maker is an uncreated God. He was always there. "Behold, you are good, and we do not know you!" We have no clue who we are dealing with when it comes to God. A.W Tozer states that if all the problems of heaven and earth were to confront us at once it would be nothing compared to our biggest problem of God. We need to come to a revelation of the knowledge of God. He is so far above is. It says in Revelation 4:10 that, ".. the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne..." When was the last time we fell down before God. They did not bow down, the script says that they fell down. Gods glory was so powerful that they were knocked over.

This my friend is the highest call of the hour, that we would begin to get revelation of God in the context of prayer and intercession.