Dusting Off Faith

How many sermons have we heard extolling the importance of faith? We groan, roll our eyes and hope we don’t fall asleep. What more could we honestly hear that would be different? The Bible has a lot to say about it and we never seem to really understand exactly what faith is, how to recognize it and how to measure it. Newer Christians, with zeal, pray for faith and may even look at Faith as the proverbial brass ring for Christians. They want it dearly. Many older Christians have patted these newbies on the back while politely smiling and nodding. Then, more mature Christians, bored, shrug off questions of their faith. Guess they figure “task accomplished”, they have enough.

Somewhere in our mind we have an intangible understanding of what faith is. Most simply, Faith is absence of doubt in the Lord. That translates into every area. We can have faith. We can show faith. We can be faithful. Be it noun or verb, the basic premise we all have is that faith is on a sliding scale. Measurable. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. In response, Jesus said “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” [Luke 17] Jesus made a metaphorical reference to a very small seed in comparison to our faith and how such a small amount of faith could do amazing things. Jesus also similarly said “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.” [Mark 11:23] Why does Jesus keep saying we can do tremendous things with our faith, even if it is small? [Read more...]

ZionFire Video Announcement

Just a short post, with a couple of announcements. Number one, ZionFire is about to begin putting up videos (from us, not just links…cool), and a lot more articles. Number two, some of these articles will be mind blowing especially to the crowd who has been a part of, or involved in the ‘revival or prophetic’ movements. I don’t want you to think that we at ZionFire have any problem with revival itself or the prophetic gift, however we do realize there has been a lot of perversion concerning these issues creating a lot of confusion and frustration in the Church regarding their function.

For the next few weeks, ZionFire will be posting material that will focus on, and highlight, much of the error in the revival and prophetic movements. Not to create more animosity, but rather, to try and end some of the confusion and frustration that I was mentioning. Many people realize the extreme error in these movements, but haven’t been able to put their finger on what it is they are seeing, and why it is so ‘off’. So we are going to spend some time in that arena.

This is a season when many are realizing that, to move forward with Jesus, they are going to be leaving some things behind (whats new). But this will be one of the most extreme seasons that the Church has ever seen. The other day, I was having a phone conversation with a friend who was prophetically speaking to me about the day we are in as a Church.

She said that she saw the people of God walking over bridges, and as they walked over the bridges, the fire of the Holy Spirit was on them. She saw that the bridges were catching on fire from the fire that was on the lives of the believers crossing the bridges, and that the bridges were burning up in destruction behind the believers as they were crossing over to the other side.

It’s funny, but you know I’ve seen a lot of ‘revival’ in the church over the last ten years and I’ve never seen one revival last. But there is always a remnant that comes out of each of these revivals that hangs tightly to the Word of God and His promises, regardless of how bad the fallout was from their ‘revival’. Many of these revivals began from the fire of the very people who ended up coming out the other side, realizing the Church couldn’t handle what they had been asking God for, so the fire meant for good became destruction to that which was not ‘ready’ for God. Does any of this sound familiar? It sure does to me … I mean, when the steeple fell off the Church in Christ Church New Zealand, I think many Christians, even those who don’t pay much attention to ‘prophetic occurrences’ were paying attention to that event. Because it so embodies what seems to be happening in the physical in the church world today, the World is shaking and the Church (the religious system we call the church) is falling apart from the top down. The head is sick and the body is reeling … boy what Jeremiah could have told us about this.

Anyway, we will be spending some time on this topic for the next few weeks on ZionFire, so be ready for new info and please invite anyone you know who might be encouraged or challenged by this stuff.