Gathered Around the Fire

WE ARE THE THIRD AND FINAL TEMPLE OF GOD!  The Church was built on the foundation of the Apostles (of the new New Covenant) and the Prophets (of the Old Covenant) Jesus being the chief corner stone joining together the two covenants.  CREATING out of them (in Himself) the one new man.  "Neither Jew or Greek" Neither a slave (to the law) or free (from the the law).  Christ Our Peace For  He Himself is our peace,   who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation ,   having abolished in His flesh the enmity,  that is,  the law of commandments  contained  in ordinances, so as to create in Himself  one new man  from  the two ,  thus  making peace,  and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.  And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.  For through Him we...

I heard that Starbucks has recently come out saying they are removing all instances of Merry Christ- mas from their products and their stores. This has some church folks wanting to boycott Starbucks... But I say, Wake up and smell the coffee... I do understand that we as a nation have:  Divorced ourselves from a belief in God,  Removed ourselves from honoring His ways.   Denied our origins as a "Christian nation under God" .  Re-writin our history to remove God from its pages distorting our story as a nation, and I find that alarming!  I know, that it appears, ON THE SURFACE that companies like Starbucks seem to be "taking Christ out of Christmas" which we see is an affront to God, however, lets return to this statement in 2 Corinthians...  " For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. " 2 Corinthians 13:8 The truth is: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, was not born on December 25th,...

TIME FOR REFRESHING But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.  Repent therefore and be converted , that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.    ACTS 3:18 ISAIAH 52:1-2  Awake, awake!   Put on your strength , O Zion; Put on your beautiful garments,  O Jerusalem, the holy city!  For the uncircumcised and the unclean  Shall no longer come to you.     Shake yourself from the dust, arise; Sit down, O Jerusalem!   Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck,   O captive daughter of Zion!   Identity! We need to know who we are in Jesus. We can choose to put on our strength, we can choose to put on our beautiful garments. They indicate that we are indeed children of the Great King. The beautifully embroidered garments of SON-ship. These are not the woolen garments of ...

HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD? Once while driving over the mountain pass in Washington state, I saw millions of evergreens all lightly flocked with frost crystals above a certain elevation. Every out cropping, every slope, every bend, for mile after mile every tree was sparkling white above the line and the darkest evergreen below t he line. Every tree that was divided by that line was frosted at the top and evergreen at the bottom. But when looking at a mountain slope across the way it looked like someone masked the entire slope and then sprayed frost on everything above the line.  With millions, maybe even hundreds if millions, of trees perfectly covered with an icing of sparkling frost crystals and no man made decorations. I think it was the most beautiful evergreen trees I have ever seen. If I could have stopped on that pass, I would have taken several pictures, in a way I wish I had.  I cannot find a single photo anywhere near to that expe...

David built a tabernacle with no veil, with unlimited access to the mercy seat, the place where the presence of God was manifest.  It was a preview of the New Covenant where we could all enter into the Holy of Holies in Jesus Christ our High Priest. Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens,  Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast   our   confession.   For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points   tempted as   we are, yet   without sin.   Let us therefore come boldly to the  throne of grace , that we may  obtain   mercy  and  find grace  to help in time of need.     Hebrews 4:14-16   The throne of grace is a very similar term to the Mercy Seat, David had successfully removed the need for the outer court, and the inner court and all their trappings and religious procedures, he even remov...

THE THREE ESSENTIALS OF A KNOWING GOD PRAYER - INTERCOURSE - LISTENING to GOD and  TALKING to GOD BIBLE STUDY - LEARNING GOD's WAYS PROPHETIC - CO-MISSION - HERALDING GOD'S (NOW) WORDS PRAYER - INTERCOURSE  The apostle Paul told Timothy " I desire therefore that the  men  pray   everywhere , lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting;" 1 Timothy 2:8   Prayer is more than asking for our needs, or begging God to do something. Real prayer is much more than what you can get out of a 'fox hole' TRANSACTION with God. Prayer is a conversation with God, borne out of a love relationship with Him.  Max Thomas shared that,  "Prayer in essence is  the connection between two hearts."    it was a powerful statement, I loved that and it has impacted my life over the last several months... but I also came up with my own definition.  Here is my definition  Prayer - is the two-way breathe-in, breathe-out proces...