Covenant Breaking, Covering Doctrines and Hearing the Voices Again

Grace, at Kingdom Grace today, posted a bit about Covering and what people say when you have a string of bad things that happen to you. It was great fun in the comments as we poked fun at the doctrine and I chimed in with my few cents.

But this is a serious matter people. I still am reeling from this doctrine. I think it has been the hardest one to extract myself from.

See the other day I decided to do a piece on the practice we had in my old ‘church’ of making covenants. In leaving our group we were to have “broken covenant’ with all the people there. So I was going to write about what covenants are and aren’t and how this doctrine was used to keep people from questioning and leaving our group. I wanted to remember all that was preached so I went onto our old church website (now under a new name) and found the latest sermon on Covenants.

Sure enough there had been one preached in June of this year. As I listened I grew more and more disheartened. Covenant breakers were the evil that the Church needed to purge. They were the reason the harvest of souls were blocked. Those who broke covenant had marriages that had failed, children doing drugs and rebellion, insanity promised and the onslaught of homosexuality and other sins that attached themselves to you.

I knew what was being preached was garbage but then my weekend unfurled. I battled with a daughter over a decision that was going to hurt her – a decision that would have been harder to make had she surrounded herself with Christian friends. Then on Monday, TWO TRUCKS in my business broke down. One had the axle (or something connected to the wheels) actually fall out of the truck. Then an irate customer who was threatening to sue my company for something she perceived we had done. By the end of the day I was exhausted.

But more than that….I was hearing the voices again. “All this has happened because you are a covenant breaker.” “If you were in the ‘church’ you would be protected.” “God knows what you have been writing and thinking and talking with people about. You have talked ill of the brothers and therefore all these things are being allowed to happen.”

I was so mad at myself. I was ashamed to admit that I still heard these things in my head. I was flabbergasted that this man’s voice could silence the truth that I knew to be true.

So….no big ending here. I am more sane today. Best Friend spoke truth to me, Husband reminded me of times that were even worse – while still in the system, an adopted daughter laughed with me at myself, Grace’s post made me laugh too and another friend made me question what is still in my heart that I don’t really believe about God that shows itself when things like this happen.

I guess I just write to let you know that the journey takes a couple of steps backwards every now and then. I think that I’m not the only one who struggles so don’t despair when you find yourself having to deal with it again.

The Scent of a Profit

For your early Christmas shopping I want to alert you to the wonders in the catalogue of the NAR. (New Apostolic Reformation) Fresh from the latest Letter to his Intercessors, Chuck Pierce has these for your purchase at the bottom of the page.

The text beside the pictures ARE NOT MADE UP!!!






"The Joy of Covenant" Candle & Anointing Oil


With God forming a new covenant we have made this new anointing oil. Filled with the fragrance of roses and lilies, this oil can be used as you pray for restored covenant or form new covenant. Then we also have a beautiful candle for $12 that goes with this oil. Or you can purchase BOTH for $20.


My Note: I was thinking of what scent would represent those of us accused of 'breaking covenant." Any thoughts out there?

And for those of you who actually believe that covenant was nailed down at the cross, maybe the Joy of Covenant candle and roll on oil is not your cup of tea. But wait....we have more:

Harvest Anointing Oil and Candle (Set)

The Harvest Candle and Anointing Oil represent the mindset that God is developing at this time in His people. We must move into a mindset of multiplication and harvest. Anoint your home, business, church, and friends with this anointing. Trim your wick and get ready for a visitation and increase!


I giggled every time I read that we are to anoint your home, business, church and friends with the Harvest oil. I can just imagine the drive by anointings that will happen to friends. Way too funny.

Do you have any oils or candles that you would like to add to the list? Like the roll on Control Oil...You smell it and never question again. Or the Chair O Authority Candle....the scent hits you like a brick. Or the Shunning Oil....you can roll it on or just spit it at people.

Seriously though, "Trim your wick and get ready for a visitation and increase?" You have got to be kidding me. We have actually begun to sell God here folks. Or what is this about "God forming a new covenant." I thought the old one was the last one. What new covenant are they talking about.

PEOPLE!!......Please stop this. You may be able to make a case that you are hearing God, although the "word" in the letter seems to me to be the same rehash of worn out phrases and empty, vague promises. But this. This is witchcraft...pure and simple. With a scent that cannot be pleasing to the Father.

The Fear of God

UPDATE: Please Read what Abmo has posted today on this topic. Go to this link: Fear

The fear of God has always been an uncomfortable place for me. I do get that God is so totally amazing and to be feared or reverenced. How can we not when we see the sky above us or the earth at our feet and understand the magnitude of our Creator?

But my background always painted God as a God to be feared for his judgement and wrath.

So it was with Joy that I read this verse in Psalms 130 this week. Joy and puzzlement. What do you think David meant when he said, "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope."

btw: The word here for feared is not the word used for simply reverence. It goes beyond that word to mean to frighten, (make) afraid, see, terrible (act, -ness, thing)

Any thoughts?

Words

Words
Words
Words

They are written,
They are spoken,

We listen,
We question,
We discern,
We pray
We weep
We long.

Which are yours, Oh God
How do we tell?

I only know this.

There is a place in you where I don’t need to have words.
There is a place in you where I don’t need to hear words.
There is a place in you where I don't need to speak words.

That place is deep.
That place is quiet.
That place is dark.
That place is safe and full of peace.

I can feel only you.
I may not know much
But in you I hide.
Protect me there.
Please.

Words
Words
Words

They are written,
They are spoken.

I long for the day that I hear you.

Pastor Abandons His Church

Read here today.

ht: Backyard Missionary

Unveiling the New Apostolic Reformation

I keep a "Google ear" to the ground for anything dealing with the New Apostolic Reformation. The other day I ran across the above video by Bruce Wilson. I don't know who he is but from his site I see he was trying to discredit Sarah Palin by her ties to the NAR. That is not my reason for posting it today. I refuse to believe that she was a subversive attack of the NAR to take over the White House. (Honestly, I'm convinced that they would ultimately use a wealthy man instead.) I do think that once she had been named they probably gleefully decided that God was for them.

But I want you to listen to this video. Here is - in a nutshell - what they teach and preach. Even if I disagree with the intent of the video (to discredit Palin) I think it is a brilliant piece to expose what is being taught in these churches. Yes, it useses a large portion of a man's sermon who then layed hands on Sarah and prayed for her, but I have heard these very words and prayers in my own Church Left Behind. Exactly. Word for Word. If it was what I was taught in my group of 70 people in central Pennsylvania, you can be sure it is being taught from the top down.

Mr. Wilson is not pulling out of context anything that I could see. They actually say these things.

I cried while I watched it. Especially when Cindy Jacobs stated that the world will look at the wealth of the Church and be convinced. Oh My God!

To those of the NAR or thinking of belonging:

Watch this video and then BY YOURSELF pick up the Bible and read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and tell me if what you have seen in ANY WAY reflects what Jesus taught. Don't just look at individual verses that your leaders are giving you to back up their false claims. Read the whole book......in context.....as the book was meant to be read.

Husband Replacement

Something strange happened to me the other day. It made me stop in my tracks and say, “Whoa….what was that?”

I was in another ‘church’ two weeks ago. It was a United Methodist Church in the center of our little town. I was attending a funeral of a friend’s husband. The pastors were all dressed in their robes and long collars with rope belts. The windows were beautiful stained glass and the organ was gigantic and melodically soothing. As the service started to close the younger pastor stood over the casket and prayed to usher this man’s soul into heaven.

Now normally I would have expected me to cringe at the formality and religious overtones of the service. But on that day, I liked it. It was safe. The scriptural readings and written prayers were solid and comforting as well as theologically deep and sound. None of it bothered me. In fact I found myself relaxing and enjoying the service.

But something significant happened when the pastor stood over the casket and prayed. I felt myself wanting to lean on his spiritual leadership. I found myself drawn to this man. He seemed strong spiritually. Almost as if you had a twisted ankle and you had to lean on someone for support, I suddenly felt like I could lean on this man.

This was the thing that made me stop myself and ask myself what was going on.

I did not know this man. I didn’t know if he was a good person or a selfish one. I knew NOTHING about him and so I stopped and wondered what was it that was in me that felt like I wanted/needed to lean on someone, unknown to me, for spiritual guidance and support.

In chewing on this in the subsequent days I marveled at this need that was evident in me. I did not even know this existed in me and why did it exist at all?

Here is my theory. I think I have often wanted someone to take the place of the Holy Spirit and/or my husband in this spiritual partnership of the journey through life.

The easy answer that we all know from Sunday School is that the Holy Spirit is supposed to be the one we trust and lean on. He is our comforter, guide, and teacher. We all know that.

But I also feel like God gave me my husband as a partner through this life. We lean on each other emotionally and physically but in this area of 'spiritually' I often found that it was easier to trust someone else. Someone who I thought had it more together spiritually.

Why did I look at my husband and want to replace him with a ‘pastor’? Let me tell you what my own heart revealed to me. I wanted to replace him because I KNOW HIM.

Marshall is a wonderful man but early on (like the first month of our marriage) I started to find out that he did not have it all together spiritually. He had strengths, yes, but he had weaknesses too. Yes, he loved people (and that is what initially drew me to him) but he was about as organized as a junk drawer.

For a while I tried to make him into the spiritual leader that I thought he needed to be. I even remember giving him a full page, hand written out, of how I expected him to lead me. He was to keep me accountable to all the spiritual disciplines, pray with me every day, teach me what he was learning in his daily devotions and so on and so on.

Guess what??? He sucked at my list!! So instead of resting in the Father and resting in the strengths of my husband that he DID have, I found it extremely important to find that place in a church structure and specifically in a leader. Now here was a pastor who encouraged me to do all this outward stuff that I thought would change me. Here were leaders who were strong where my husband was weak. I put weight, my spiritual weight, on these men and took it away from my husband. I took away the respect that I should have given him and gave it to another man.

I did not want to rest in him because I KNEW HIM!! These other men were unknown to me. I did not know their weaknesses. I did not live with them so it was easier to trust them. How whacked out was that thinking? In some ways, I almost felt like I had been cheating on Marshall in wanting to put my trust/weight in a pastor that I did not even know!!! Oh my God!

I just wonder if there are women out there who are like me. Do you find that your husband does not ‘measure up’ to your spiritual expectations? Do you miss having a ‘pastor’ carry this weight or journey with you? Would you rather journey spiritually with another man than with your husband?

I’ve had to do some serious repenting to my husband. While none of this was thought out in detail in my mind and I had no idea that this is what I had done, I had still done this my entire life. It even kept us at the ‘church’ we belonged to probably 10 years beyond what we would have stayed. I would not listen to his questioning of our leaders because I did not trust him. (A writer, Darin Hufford, said to me once that he hears so many stories where the husband was the one that had wanted to leave their churches but the wives had balked at it. The wives, thinking that their husbands were wrong, kept the family in bad situations much longer than necessary.)

Here is what is so crazy. I measured Marshall for so many years by a measuring stick that was skewed. On one stick was all the things that I thought made you a good Christian - things like being faithful to daily Bible reading, memorizing, journaling, church attendance and fulfilling all the expectations of the leader of whatever church we were in. On the other stick – (God’s stick, btw) - were things like faithfulness, kindness, loving the unlovely, willingness to help me and others, love for his kids, the ability to laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep. If I were to have used the right stick he was head and shoulders above any one I knew. But in so many ways I took what other men were better at and measured him by them.

So there is my revelation for the week. I’m not too proud of this one. I'm breaking my sticks - all of them.

And today I am committed to walk the rest of my life together with my husband. I commit to (appropriately) “lean” on him in all the areas of my life. I want to make him my partner in ALL aspects of our relationship.

And as a note to all those who read my blog who are in full time ministry:

Please encourage all of those who wish to put you into this position to refrain. Show the women that you are no better than their husbands. Don’t allow women (or men for that fact) put you into this unhealthy position. Make those around you aware of your weaknesses. Stress that you are only journey mates together with them and not this high and mighty spiritual leader. Encourage wives to listen to their husbands and husbands to their wives. Encourage them to make decisions together instead of always running to you. And go home tonight and give your wife a hug. She knows you and you are her ‘pastor’. She has my love and respect.

I'm Not Satisfied

Sometimes you find a comic that just sums up where you are. Pearls did it for me today.

UPDATE: Traveller said this in the comments of this post:

"This reminded me of some words of Henri Nouwen:

"Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the happiest moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations.

In every success, there is the fear of jealousy.

Behind every smile, there is a tear.

In every friendship, distance.

And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. . . .

When you touch the hand of a returning friend, you already know that he will have to leave you again.

When you are moved by the quiet vastness of a sun-coloured ocean, you miss the friend who cannot see the same."

It seems to me this is the condition of our fallen existence for now. But our hope is for the redemption of creation in which this incompleteness will be gone forever as we live with God in his renewed creation. I look forward to his appearing and that day with great anticipation!

Updating the Anointings

In reading the words of those who are praying around the bull on Wall Street I read about all the "anointings" that are available. The "Corporate Joseph Aointing," The "Isaac Anointing," and the "Issachar Anointing."

Question for the day: Why are there no Anointings from the New Covenant/Testament? Why are they all Old Testament anointings?

How about a Pauline anointing where you life seems to be nothing but shipwrecks and floggings. Or the John Anointing for those of us who find ourselves on an island with nothing but the Holy Spirit. Or how about the Berean Anointing for those who want to see if something that someone says is really in the Bible?

I think the Charismatic church needs to come up with some anointings from the New Testament. Can you help them out by thinking of a few?

Same God - New Covenant: Speaking to the Church

This is for all you teachers and preachers out there. Please consider this if you ever speak to a group of 5 or more.

There is a flaw in the thinking of those of us who live in the New Covenant times. (That would be all of you reading this.) The flaw is that we still see God in an Old Covenant relationship with his people – his Church.

In the Old Covenant, (before Jesus came) God related to Israel, for the most part, as a whole – as one nation. They were given the law as a whole, they were told to fast and pray on the same days, they were told to feast and party on the same days and they were all given exactly the same prescription for how they were to conduct themselves. He was the God of Israel. We do see him deal with individual people but even most of the time in dealing with the individual it was for the nation.

Now we spring into the New Covenant times. Jesus comes and starts to deal with people – one on one. How many times in the New Testament do we see him speaking to a single person? He does speak to crowds but sometimes actually makes it confusing for the crowd and then explains it to the smaller groups or individuals. Then he dies and ascends and then we have the Holy Spirit that indwells each individual person.

So now we have the same God as the Old Testament but the playing field is drastically changed. One author likens this to a man who is single, now finding himself married - he is the same man in both instances but now the rules of conduct are vastly changed.

The problem that I see in public speaking, whether it is from a pulpit, a TV screen, a book or a teaching tape is this: The speaker assumes that the message they have to speak is for EVERYONE listening. They view the Church like God treated Israel in the Old Testament.

Here are some of the statements made that I have heard or read recently that show this mindset:
God wants to heal you today. (all of you?)
I relate to my child this way, and you must follow exactly what I do. (but what if they are totally different temperaments?)
God wants you all to be owners of your business instead of working for someone else. (But what if I am not geared to be a business owner – what if I hate to do all the things that that requires – or what if I want to spend time with my family instead?)
If you put out a fleece like Gideon did, you are showing a lack of faith. (Give Gideon a break, he was about to take a very small army against a huge one…wouldn’t you want to make sure you did not mistake what you thought was God for bad pizza the night before? – What about the fact that God understands my level of faith and is not irritated that I ask for confirmation?
You must make a covenant with God over your city. (Really? What if I can barely keep up with my toddlers and new baby right now? Do I have to do that too?)
It is never ok to borrow money. (Never?)
A stay-at-home dad is never right. (and you know this how? What if my family is more important than me working two jobs when my wife can work one and she loves it?)

(Please feel free to add to my list!)


Do you see how the old mindset creeps in? The old mindset says that God intends the same thing for everyone at the same time. How in the world can you stand up in front of 100 people and tell them, in detail, how they are supposed to live, work, treat their children, run their business, or eat? (please don’t misunderstand me – I am not talking of the central truths that say we must show the fruit of the spirit in dealing with people or the central truths of who God is – I’m talking about those who would say that we need to spank a child at every act of willfulness or those who say that you need to only eat the Daniel diet to be truly well or that God ALWAYS does things a certain way)

When you call a fast for your church do you make sure that you address the pregnant moms and the guy going through chemotherapy? When you plan your many meetings do you account for the man who is already working 50 hours a week? And how about the lady in the wheelchair that has had the “God wants to heal you today” spoken over her hundreds of times? Does God want all of us wealthy today? Do each one of us need to step out in radical faith this week? Is everyone called to be at the conference you have planned this week or they will miss God?

Please, I beg of you. When speaking to more people than you can actually know, individually, what is going on in their lives or when speaking to more people in a setting where they cannot ask questions on the spot of how your words impact their lives, please don’t make sweeping proclamations. Please don’t assume that God is saying the same things to all of them at the same time.

He is an individual God. His timing is always right. His words always pierce our heart.

Your words may just be making it much harder for your listeners to live and walk with this amazing, individual God that we have. You may be heaping bundles of bondage on them that they were never meant to carry. Please don’t do this to the people that God has allowed you to speak to.