Blog – Page 5

Love Trumps All

Posted: March 27, 2017

Mark 12:28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Whenever I think about what pleases God these two scriptures come to mind, to love God and then to love our neighbor, but what does it look like to love our neighbor? Jesus gave us a radical perspective with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), but oftentimes we forget about the ones who come in through the doors of the church on Sunday.

Read James 2:1-13

Several years ago I attended church with a young woman who had serious social anxiety, low self esteem, minimal social skills and desperately wanted to be included in the church young adult youth group. She was overtly awkward and tended to overshare and did not have a car. I thought she was different, but she had a huge heart and a love for God and the word of God. She became one of my close friends for a few years, and eventually a roommate, and I found her at times exasperating, but I was determined to help disciple her in her walk with Jesus. One evening, when she was living in the next town over, she wasn’t able to attend and the group was hanging out afterwards, as it did many times. One of the leaders of this group expressed that she felt a relief that this particular friend of mine did not attend that night and that she hated giving her rides to events. This leader’s comments made me angry and I looked right at her and asked, “if Jesus needed a ride would you exclude Him?” Shortly after that, everyone went home. While the group allowed her to participate in church sanctioned events, she was excluded from interpersonal activities outside of that. When someone would have a tea party, she was not invited. When someone would throw birthday parties for others in the group, hers was forgotten over the course of the year. She would on occasion be invited to others birthday parties, but I do not recall the group celebrating her birthday in particular.

I often think, if Jesus were in her place, how would He feel? Would we treat Him the same way?

There is a certain gentleman, Hank* (*not his real name), who attends the church I attend regularly. He is on the autism spectrum, has a love of airplanes and machines that fly. He loves these things, he also has a love for Jesus, because he attends our church on a fairly regular basis. I know these things because I have taken the time to slowly get to know him better. He wears the same kind of clothes, which are comfortable for him but not overly fashionable. Talking with this man takes a bit of time to understand because he’s translating the pictures in his head into speech and motions with his hands. Several times I have seen people end up in conversation with Hank, only to be desperately looking to get out of chatting with him.

It should not be this way.

The entire church should be looking out for his spiritual development in Christ, someone should be inviting him into their homes for small groups. Several people should be taking the time to listen to his week as he recounts it. What a witness it would be for him to be greeted with excitement and then tell other people how people love him and how he learns about God at the church he attends.

I believe God places the oddballs in growing and thriving churches as a test.

Are we really loving God and His word? If we love God we will do as he asks and all He asks is for us to love Him and love our neighbor as ourself.

This is a recurring theme in churches across the USA. How can we assume that Jesus is pleased with us if we ignore the lowly, the poor, the unwashed, the simple minded, the socially challenged, etc?

There are two commandments, one love God with your entire being and then love your neighbor as yourself.

If we truly believe God loves us, warts and all, we have to include and love others as they are. If God loves us as we are in spite of our sin and imperfections, sending his son for us, should we not in turn love those around us as greatly as God loves us?

This is my challenge to you, make a change as we move forward in this season of lent, meditate on how God so loved us and the world. Then meditate and act on intently loving the people around you, not just the people who look, think, and act like you, but beyond that. Love the person who is rough around the edges, who is socially inept, who is an oddball.

Let’s make America love again.

Love trumps all.

Chasing the Glory of God

by RAC

Updated: March 10, 2017

This post is intended for Christians. If you are not born again, this post will appear as nonsense to you.

Have you ever had a glorious worship experience? Exodus defines when the physical presence of the Holy Spirit descended on the tabernacle and filled it completely after it was built. (Exodus 40:34) The upper room at Pentecost also describes the Glory of God descending upon the apostles and people gathered, waiting for the infilling of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:1-4) Where you could literally feel the tangible presence of God on your skin, where you could feel God in the room as people worshiped Him. In that moment, that hour, the days of that conference, worship concert, retreat, etc, were so blessed, so phenomenal, that you found yourself wishing that every day could be like that?

I have.

Maybe you have too.

When that time was over, the presence lifted and the grind and the day to day crept in. The memories of fellowship and worship linger, and you find yourself without that energy, that spark, and you feel like grass withering without water.

This is where we are at a choice, to either accept that perhaps the conference, the concert, the crazy morning of worship in Church that went a few hours long because it was ‘anointed,’ was just a special blessing, or we begin to crave and desire what is dubbed the ‘Glory of God,’ and we begin to chase the glory.

The “Chase” can take on many different forms. For some, it’s spending a great deal of time and money going from conference to conference, following around certain preachers or musicians that are anointed, just to experience the Glory of God. For some, they move to places like Bethel, or Jerusalem, or start attending a large church where there’s a lot of flashing lights, some expressive preaching, and people appear to be under the influence of God. For others, they follow traveling evangelists, going from tent meeting to tent meeting in hopes that the Spirit of God will fall on them. They’ll sit in services where the worship is over an hour, and the preaching is over an hour, all hoping that they will experience the physical presence of God. Some will attend retreat after retreat after retreat, hoping for an encounter with tingles, the willies, and awesome power.

I went through a time in my life where I was swept up in the “Chase”.

I was determined to live in a constant haze of God’s Glory. I was unable to afford going to several conferences, move across the country to attend a bible college, or visit exotic places. I was able to attend a few retreats in college that set up the foundation for what I did do. Since I couldn’t afford running around, or get the time off of work to attend multiple conferences, I set aside hours for bible study, hours of personal worship, and hours of prayer. I made it a job to get the physical presence of God to dwell in my apartment. I also attended church every time the doors were open, arrived early, stayed late, sacrificed all of my personal time to serving at the church. Choir rehearsals, cleaning crew, Wednesday night services, 8am to 1pm every single Sunday morning, children’s church, if they needed help, I offered whether I was a good fit for it or not.

I started my personal time with an hour of worship. I had about ten worship cds from Hillsongs, Ron Kenoly, Carman, Keith Green, Passion, among others. I rotated through them until I had an hour or more of personal worship done. I then prayed for at least an hour, whatever came to mind, I prayed for it. I laid myself before the Lord and said that anything He wanted me to pray for I did. I prayed for people I knew, I prayed for people I didn’t know, I prayed for countries, for the church I was attending, anything and everything that came through my mind. I also spent a lot of time requesting that God fill the apartment with His presence. Then I would spend time reading the Bible. I read the entire Bible. I had read so much, the entire New testament so many times, that I began reading the Bible straight through. Beginning to end. I read the NIV, the KJV, the RSV, the Message, etc. I found a Strong’s concordance at the used book store and began using that extensively. I read books by Brother Lawrence, Stephen J Foster, Kenneth Hagin, Watchman Nee, CS Lewis, etc. I listened to tapes by K Copeland and a few other preachers, but most of my time was actually spent in reading and studying the Bible.

I argued theology with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I challenged them to pursue the Glory of God. I wanted them to taste the Lord and see how good He is. I also struggled greatly in my flesh. I had deep rooted sins that I would fight with constantly. I was insecure, broken, and a complete mess. I was saved, but I had been given some incorrect teaching.

See, I was taught that being saved meant that I could overcome all these things that plagued me. If I received the blessing of being in the Glory of God, that I was good enough of a Christian, that I had overcome and was worthy of the physical presence of the Glory of God. So I ran after that with all my being, because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do, and I got wore out.

I became exhausted.

I was running to be filled with the Glory of God, chasing that thing.

Maybe you are in that spot right now, getting ready to run, or running after the Glory of God.

Stop.

I’m pleading with you, please stop chasing the ‘Glory.’

I ran so much and so hard, that I fell hard. I was empty and did not realize it. I was broken and not allowing God to heal me. I was hurting and denying it, because to admit that I was hurting was to admit that I wasn’t a good Christian, and the church I was attending at the time, if you weren’t putting on a face of being an ‘overcomer’ and being in the ‘glory’ you were backsliding and unfit for service. I needed the ‘glory,’ and we would spend hours at church prayer time, or in the prayer group praying for the purpose of revival, the purpose of experiencing the ‘glory.’

I’m pleading with you again, stop this madness, STOP THE CHASE!

If you are saved, (John 3:16, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthinas 5:17), you already have the Glory of God inside you. You have that precious gift of salvation. You are literally walking around with the Glory inside of you. You are born again, you have that shiny goodness inside. You can converse with God at any given point in time and He will talk with you, you have relationship with the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ. (Hebrews 1:3)

You have the Holy Spirit in you, if you are saved. (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19, 2 Corinthians 6:16, Ezekiel 36:27, 2 Timothy 1:14, Ephesians 5:18, Romans 8:9, 11, 15, Galatians 4:6, 5:22, 1 John 2:27)

To find the ‘Glory’ turn within. God resides within you if have accepted Him as your Lord and savior.

That glorious gift, the peace, the joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, all of it is there. All you need to do to find it, is turn to God within you. (Hebrews 13:5)

You don’t need to exhaust your resources looking for God, you already found Him. All you are doing is looking for an external thing, you are looking to satisfy your flesh masqueraded as spirituality.

Had someone said to me, “Rebekah, you don’t need to exert the external so much to find God and to experience Him. He’s already within you, you can find that peace and comfort within the Holy Spirit that resides within you,” when I was younger or handed me a book that exemplified it such as this one:

I don’t think I would have become so exhausted.

I didn’t need to beg God to dwell in my apartment, He already was, through my salvation. Where ever I go, God is with me, the Glory of God is within me and I carry that into dark places.

I know I wouldn’t have struggled so much in my flesh. Because once I began to turn completely to Christ for everything and not relying on my strength, my power to get so much done, things became simple. Mind you, not easier in the sense that life is easy, because it is hard. As a Christian, life gets worse, but the comforter, the Holy Spirit makes it so much simpler to deal with.

I don’t need to struggle with pride so much, because in the end, God gets all the glory. It’s not me that gets it, so I don’t have to worry about being perfect or appearing to be perfect, because it’s not about me, it’s about God. I just need to focus on loving Him and the people around me.

I don’t need to struggle with sins, because if they come up in my flesh, I turn inwards to God, and my focus on Him releases me from the struggle. For it’s not by my works or how good I’ve been that I can come to God, it’s by the grace and mercy and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

I don’t need to overcome, Jesus has already done that for me, I just need to turn within to Him, to rely on Him to get through or how to get through whatever it is I am going through.

If things do(yes, I meant to type do, not don’t) go as I think they should, or if plans should fall apart, I turn inwards to Christ and release it to Him, because it’s not my will, but His be done. If what I think should happen doesn’t, I release it and thank God for the experience, and trust that whatever happens is for His good and His glory, and since it’s not about me, I don’t have to worry about how I will look, it’s all on God.

If I turn inwards and experience the Glory, then I thank God for that experience and that He allowed me to witness a physical manifestation of His goodness, if I do not experience the Glory, I thank Him for teaching me patience, for I know that He will never leave me or forsake me.

I stopped the ‘chase,’ because I had no need to chase God. God is within me. His glory, His power, His presence is manifested in my faith in the belief of salvation through Jesus on the cross. Everything else pales in comparison. The hair standing on end on my arms is nothing. There is nothing that even comes close to the faith I have and the power of the resurrection. I am a new creature in Christ, that is all the Glory I need.

I hope you stop chasing and find Him within.

–

I still read my Bible from beginning to end. I still have morning devotions. I do spend time worshiping God, probably less than I should, but it’s without struggle to seek the Glory. For I know the Glory of God, the gift of His Son resides within me. I have that assurance. I don’t argue as much with other Christians, I find myself praying that God will reveal Himself through the scriptures, that the Holy Spirit will either appoint me to say something or keep my mouth shut and just pray that they are swayed according to His purpose. I don’t need to convince people that the scriptures are true, that’s between them and God. I just need to follow two commandments, to love the Lord with all my heart soul and strength and then to love my neighbor as myself. If I have trouble loving my neighbor, I turn within and find God’s love for them, because His love resides within me, and He loves them. That’s it. Everything else is up to Jesus.

–

This does not mean I am not releasing any music in the future, on contrary, I have been busy writing many worship songs that I hope will enhance your relationship with God.

When I release music, it’s out of my love for Christ that I do so!

A Recipe for Lemonade

by RAC

Updated: February 1, 2017

A Recipe for Lemonade

How to Survive Post Traumatic Church Syndrome

I love a good glass of lemonade. The sourness of the lemon married with the syrupy sweetness of a ton of sugar and a sprig of fresh mint or lavender or a bit of strawberries for an extra layer of interest. Fill up a tall glass with ice and pour the faintly cloudy yellow liquid over it, and slurp it up through a straw. There’s something so satisfying about turning a fruit that was almost bitter and too sour to eat on its own into a delicious drink on a hot day. Try doing the same recipe with strawberries or apples in place of the lemons and you end up with a drink that is so overly sweet, there’s no relief from anything and it leaves you thirsty for water after a few sips.

A good church with a bunch of people who love Jesus and work together at being closer to God and doing good for their community, can be like a bowlful of grapes, apples and strawberries. It’s appetizing, doesn’t need anything more than a bit of washing, is refreshing and ready to serve.

Sometimes, we wander into a church full of lemons. Like a bowl of lemons, it looks really appetizing on first approach. It’s beautiful and shiny, gorgeous with bright yellow streaming from the bowl. They smell good and bright! They look good enough to grab one and bit into it. Typically, the uninitiated will grab a lemon, smell it, peel it, and then begin to eat it. If you’ve ever peeled a lemon, they are hard to get any good out of it. The pith is really thick, and extremely bitter. After digging around in the pith and peeling as much of it off of the segments buried in it, segmenting the lemon is equally difficult. The lemon is football shaped and does not separate easily. Eating a segment is not delightful. The acid content is high, the skin is bitter, and it’s harsh to say the least.

I spent a bit of time in a lemon of a church. I believe that God allowed me to participate and worship Him in such an acidic and bitter environment, because ultimately I grew a lot. Just this past week, I had a brief conversation with a former member, and it went well. I didn’t go into too much detail, I didn’t overly moan about how much I had been hurt. I identified that I spent some time being bitter after having left that lemon bowl, and it took me a while to forgive.

Maybe you’ve spent time in a church that was unforgiving and bitter, perhaps on the surface it seemed like a good place to be, but when you started peeling back the layers and getting involved, there didn’t seem to be as much good. Maybe you’re an optimist or as stubborn as I am, insisting that if you keep squeezing that lemon, you’ll find goodness, or you convince yourself that what you’re getting is really really good, when it needs a bit of sweetening up.

Here’s the first step of this recipe. The sweetness in this recipe isn’t sugar, it’s forgiveness, and you’re going to need a lot of it. Where do you find forgiveness? On the cross.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This can be one of the hardest things to do, it’s simple, but it isn’t easy. We must look to God, in our relationship, in our prayer time, and converse with Him about it. Tell Him it isn’t fair, that you got hurt by His people, allow yourself to be angry, and then allow Him to work on your heart. If you need the why, ask Him to reveal the why, but don’t go digging it up yourself. Allow God to heal the hurt. One of the things He’s going to ask you to do is to forgive.

Matthew 6:9-13 Amplified Bible

9 “Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

 10  Your kingdom come, Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.

11  ‘Give us this day our daily bread. 

12  ‘And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors [letting go of both the wrong and the resentment].

13  ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’

The people in the lemon church may think they were in the right, perhaps they feel to be so now, and may not listen to anything you have said or want to say to them. It is not our place to convict them of wrong doing, that’s like blaming a lemon for being a lemon. The lemon sees nothing wrong with being a lemon, and you can’t convince a lemon to be a strawberry. The only way a lemon can become something else is by transformation, and unless you have magical powers, that ain’t going to happen, but you can pray for them to be transformed to be more like Christ.

On with our recipe.

When you think you’ve poured enough forgiveness (sweetness) into the mixture, you’ll discover you’re going to need even more. Whatever pain you’ve experienced, there’s a dose of forgiveness that exceeds your pain. The beautiful thing is this, the same forgiveness that Christ has given us, is also extended to your enemies. If you don’t feel you have enough, go to the source of forgiveness.

Sometimes, we think that the source of forgiveness wanted us to go through with all that bitterness, to drink that acidic juice as it is, bitter, sour, and unpleasant. Our source allows us to go through some tough things, not so that we can become lemons, but so that we can be transformed through the bitter, that even the bitter things in life can become sweet.

See, God desires for none to perish.

2Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

We may want retribution for the wrongs done to us, and we may desire them swiftly, but if God dealt with us the way we want punishment dealt on others, we would never see salvation, we would only experience death and bitterness. If you want to experience life, you have to let go of all the bitterness and hurt.

As I told my acquaintance, I try not to think too much about that time or those years spent in that lemon bowl. I came away with a lot of lemon juice and pith, and there’s a lot of forgiveness I’ve had to pour into that juice.

There’s one more addition to lemonade, and that’s water. You have to spread out the juice with a lot of water. The only place you can get living water is in relationship with Christ. The more lemon juice you have, the more water you need. Spend time with God. Reignite the passion and fuel in relationship and communing with God.

Just picking up and reading the Bible can be painful when you have so much lemon juice, but you have to water it out by spending time in His presence. Some of the best teachers of practicing the presence of God are Brother Lawrence and Jeanne Guyon.

Both of these books, along with the Bible, are essential to reforming your walk with God, especially after being in a lemon bowl.

Slowly, and surely, through faith, hope, and love, being patient with yourself and God, and through the process of forgiveness and repentance and spending time in the presence of God, when you do find the strawberries for your lemonade, you will discover that even the most bitter of fruit can be turned into something sweet through God.

Hearing God in a Real Way

by RAC

Posted: January 27, 2017

I gave my life to Christ as a young child. My family attended a small church of less than 100 people, most of the families were retired couples, but they were excited to have my family a part of their church. There was a regular worship service where we would sing songs from an old hymnal and then listen to the pastor speak. Before the service, we would have Bible school. Like many young and new believers, I was excited about learning more about Jesus and I read my children’s Bible over and over again. Attending Bible Sunday School before the sermon was a highlight for me. In our class, it was just myself and my sister and the occasional child who’s family was on vacation or visiting their grandparents. The room we had our Sunday School class in was no bigger than a walk in closet. I remember there being just enough room for the teacher to walk around the table at one end and for us to sit on either side.

We would listen to stories about Joshua and the battle of Jericho, Jesus and healing the man at the pool, Zacheus the wee little man, and we got to ask all kinds of questions. Our Sunday School teacher encouraged all kinds of questions, and we would ask. If I wasn’t at church asking questions, I’d ask my mother. I would be playing with my toys, or thinking about whatever and then I would march into my mother’s kitchen and ask her and she usually had an answer, or she would tell me to ask my father, who had many answers about the natural world, being that his profession at the time was a science and math teacher.

One day, I think I was about eight years old, and I had a question about the return of Jesus and the rapture. I wanted to know if there was a possibility if anyone could be saved after the return of Christ. This was not the first question and I had been bombarding her with questions all day long. Either my mother didn’t want to answer any more questions, or she didn’t truly have the answer because her reply to me was, “I don’t know, why don’t you go ask God.”

I was astounded by my mother telling me to go ask God for myself. I remember thinking, I can do that? We had been learning about Samuel who was woke up by God in the middle of the night, and went and then woke up Eli, thinking that Eli had called him. I thought, well, ok, I’m going to go talk to God about this, because it’s important.

I went into my bedroom and prayed sincerely and then I waited. I truly expected that I would hear a voice talking to me from out of nowhere. I’m not exactly sure how long I waited, a child’s perception of time is vastly different than reality, but it seemed like a really long time to me. I began to be sad, because I truly expected to audibly hear His voice. In my sadness I reached for the Children’s Bible that sat on the bookshelf in my sister’s and mine bedroom. It had beautiful templates that illustrated the stories. There were pictures of David and Goliath, Noah’s Ark and the animals marching up a ramp, pictures of Jesus healing the lepers, and Daniel in the lion’s den. I loved that Bible. I started reading some of the stories I had read several times before, and read the parable of the 12 virgins and the 12 lamps of oil. I had read this parable several times before, but never understood it.

As I read, I began to understand. Here in this Children’s Bible was the answer I had sincerely asked my mother and then sincerely asked God to speak to me. I began to understand that there is a finality to God’s plan for salvation, that there will be a period of time where what we know and understand will change, and the door will close.

This simple act began a very deep and rich pursuit of hearing God through His word. Each time I read His word I get a deeper understanding of God’s love, and how much He speaks to me personally through each book of the Bible. I eventually graduated to a Kings James Bible and have read through the entire thing straight through more than once. It’s beautiful, it’s book that has the life of God running through it and I am renewed each time I read it. Anytime I have a question or fear, I ask God and then read my Bible and patiently wait as I read, because eventually the answer will be revealed through His word.

I’m Hosting a New Podcast!

by RAC

Updated: August 31, 2020

Some of you know that I’ve hosted an all women’s music program on NWCZradio.com for the past four years, a total of 200 episodes of the Ebb&Flow, which highlighted women in music and women making music. I felt that for me, the interest had waned, and it was time to move on to other projects.

Then God steps in and says, hey, focus on Christian music.

I was like oh, ok, I guess this is what I’ll be doing in terms of the music side.

The opportunity arose out of a webzine SolidGroundReviews.com!

As I entered into this project, it became apparent to me that there is a wonderful treasure trove of music in various genres and from different cultures, all of it proclaiming the beauty and glory of Christ! It’s wonderfully varied! It’s a mess of awesome and I’m blessed and encouraged to know that there is a depth of love for Jesus and a pursuit of excellence while praising His name!

I’m so excited to be a part of this and to share it with you!

Every Sunday night at 5pm (PST), on NWCZradio.com you can hear the music of our brothers and sisters making music for the glory of God!

I hope you join me in this wonderful celebration!