Thanksgiving Holds the Channel Open

I am not very worried today. God has given me peace about the election, so I’m not glued to a TV or computer, looking for clues. I don’t think the election will affect me as much as it will other people, even if it goes the wrong way. God has told me the recession is not for me. I don’t have anything to worry about, although I do hope Obama loses.

I continue to see all sorts of supernatural manifestations around me and also around people I know. The Bible condemns people who require signs, but it also says signs and wonders follow God’s servants, so any Christian who scoffs at the supernatural is probably ignorant.

I’ve learned a lot about our intended function as servants of the kingdom. If you watch TBN, you will eventually start to think God’s purpose is to give us money and big houses, and that we can force him to do whatever we want by using the name of Jesus and sending cash to men in gaudy suits. Jesus made it clear that we are expected to put God’s kingdom and righteousness first.

That’s an important distinction. Historically, Christians have ignored the kingdom and put way too much emphasis on salvation. I guess the weighed the evil of spending eternity in hell against every other bad thing imaginable and decided that there was no price too high to pay for salvation. As a result, we ended up with idiotic policies such as conversion by torture or threat of death. In reality, salvation is not the most important thing in God’s plan. If it were, people would get it automatically. The most important thing is to advance God’s kingdom, and if you push salvation at the expense of God’s sovereignty, you end up with problems.

My former church was all about numbers. They craved money, and they also thought salvation was the main purpose for a church’s existence, so they watered down their teaching and produced hordes of so-called Christians who were nothing but hypocrites. These people went to church and danced around and claimed God was all over them, and then they went home and fornicated and did whatever else non-Christians do. Some went home, I should say. Some stayed at church and fornicated there. The Armorbearers used to catch them.

The pastor’s son said he would actually have paid people to go to church, had he been able to. That shows how little he knew about his job. He felt that as long as he got people to say the sinner’s prayer, he had done a wonderful thing for God. He did not understand that the church is supposed to be separate from the secular world. When we work too hard to bring the lost into the church, we end up with churches that imitate the lost instead of leading them, and eventually, the lost take over and end up leading us.

God is supposed to rule inside us. That means we belong to him 24/7, not just during services. It means we have to want to change and serve him. It means we have to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and grow through prayer in tongues and fasting. When God is in charge, we get power and help. When he’s not, we get the divine equivalent of trips to the woodshed. The people who run my former church don’t get that. They think God exists to make us rich and to approve of absolutely everything we do. That’s probably why the church has an eight-figure mortgage it will never be able to pay off. The church itself is poor. It’s a financial failure. They claim they can teach people how to succeed, but they can’t do it, themselves.

A church should not abandon God in order to get spiritually immature people to attend. People are like fruit. They should join the community of Christians when they get ripe. If they show up too soon, they cause all sorts of problems.

Since I’ve begun learning my real function as a servant, I’ve seen more power in my life. Prayers get answered with shocking speed. Revelation comes abundantly. God guides my steps. I wake up with no plan and then find my days filled with jobs God puts in my path.

I feel God’s confirmation coming through me when I pray for things, and when it happens, the prayers are granted. One example of many: a friend of mine has a lot of problems with his mother, who is an extremely difficult and irrational person. His brother is in the hospital with serious injuries, and he hasn’t been able to get any information from his mother. The other night he called me to complain. He had to put me on hold to talk to his mother for a minute, and while he did, I prayed for him to get the answers he wanted. I felt a gushing surge of faith push through me, and I sent him a text to let him know. He got back on the phone and told me his mother had just told him everything he wanted to know.

Jesus told us that if, while we prayed, we believed we would receive, our prayers would be granted. We teach that this means that if you believe really hard, God will give you what you want. Do we have it backward? In my experience, it works the other way around. If I find myself filled with faith, it means God has agreed to give me what I ask for. The faith, which comes from God (not my effort), is evidence of his consent. That agrees with the Bible, which tells us faith is the “evidence” of things not seen.

Traditional teaching says, “If faith, then prayer granted.” The Bible seems to say, “If prayer granted, then faith.” I think belief does have creative power, because the Bible does tell us to believe, but most people can’t expect to have belief without the help of the Holy Spirit.

Things also seem to go better when I ask God IF he will do a thing, instead of begging him to do it.

Every time I’ve asked God if he was going to put Romney in the White House in this election, I’ve felt overwhelming faith. I don’t promise you anything. I’m just telling you what has happened.

I hope it’s true. We deserve Obama, but we need Romney.

I keep asking God to let his chastisement fall on ungodly people and their areas, instead of hitting people and communities in areas where he is respected. I’ve been doing that for a long time. We know that God tends to whack the US when our leaders persecute Israel. If it has to happen, I’d rather see the punishment fall on Barack Obama’s career and the areas that voted for him than on Red State people who are trying to do the right thing.

My advice to any Christian reading this would be to pray for Obama to lose, and to spend a good, long time thanking God for making it happen. Go half an hour if you can. It seems that God moves most while you thank and glorify him. If you just ask him for stuff and then move on with your life, you may be writing a bad check.