What happens when God is your buddy?

Dreaming with God: Secrets to redesigning your world through God’s creative flow (Bill Johnson)

No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. - John 15:15

Several paradigm shifts take place in our hearts as we embrace this promotion.

First, what we know changes , as we gain access to the heart of the Father. His heart is the greatest resource of information we need to function successfully in all of life. Jesus paid the price of our access to the Father, thereby granting us the freedom that comes from the truth we gain through that unlimited knowledge of His heart. Liberty is found in this phase of the promotion.

Second, our experience changes. Encounters with God as an intimate are quite different from those of a servant. His heartbeat becomes our heartbeat as we celebrate the shift in our own desires. The realm of His presence becomes our greatest inheritance, and divine encounters our greatest memories. Personal transformation is the only possible result from these supernatural experiences.

Third, our function in life radically changes. Instead of working for Him, we work with Him. We work not for His favor but from His favor. In this position H entrusts us with more of His power, and we are naturally changed into His likeness more and more.

Fourth, our identity is radically transformed. Our identity sets the tone for all we do and become. Christians who live out of who they are cannot be crippled by the opinions of others. They don’t work to fit into other people’s expectations, but burn with the realization of who the Father says they are.

The issue of working from favour rather than for favour is critical in the realization that you live in a Father-Son relationship rather than a Master-servant one. When I was young[er] I often helped out in my family’s business. Being the son of the owner immediately gives you a differentperspective on things than even the most loyal of employees. “Ownership” of an estate, an inheritance or a legacy does change you from thinking in terms of performance to thinking in terms of stewardship.

Because you are His friend (And because you are His son), the liberty to fully commune with Gods heart opens for us a realm of experience and encounter with God that transforms how we think and live. No longer do I work to earn my approval, I now work because God’s unrelenting passion has pursued my affections to such a degree that it has transformed me into a burning one that will not rest until I awake in His likeness. This, my friend, is what creation groans to see.

Technorati Tags: Bill Johnson, Dreaming with God, Revival

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Transformational Leadership

Hey, I want to give a “shout-out” to another website of mine atransformedmind.com. Transformational Leadership is a ministry that I am being led to establish that will focus on renewing the minds of leaders for transformation. Check out the progress so far and let me know what you think OK?

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Deconstructing myself.

Pentecostals believe in religious experience the way electricians believe in electricity: without it, we have no reason to show up for work.

Reading through Earl Creps’ “Off-Road Disciplines - Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders“. As a member of the blogging community, I was sent a free copy of the book by the publishers after I promised that I would review it. The first 50 bloggers who signed up qualified for this deal - neat.

An interesting read. Prof. Creps is with the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and writes from a perspective of contextualising the church’s mission in today’s postmodern generation. It kicks-off the first chapter with the following:

1. It begins here…with me. With a good narrative style, the first chapter begins with the broadside that the first and foremost consideration in become more missional is to realise that any transformation of our church must be preceded by a transformation of our own hearts. It is out of a deep work of God IN US that any meaning work THROUGH US is achieved. The answer to becoming more missional does not lie in becoming something, but in dying. Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies it remains alone. New life is therefore always preceded by some form of death. That is a picture of many a church’s mission - mine included. It is often through the crisis of failure in ministry (not moral failings, but failing to be “successful”) that we de-construct ourselves and our mission to bring all things back to the sheer simplicity of the gospel in the midst of a dark culture that needs Jesus.

2. Resurrection life must be preceded by death. Crucifixions are necessary in our journey to fulfill our God-given mission. Our central position relative to the Lord must be crucified; our culture of origin must be crucified, for we often embrace cultural norms and etiquette as being part of the gospel; our leadership must be crucified, for we do not hold the answers; and we must by necessity allow the Lord to occupy the central place.

Order your copy here.

Technorati Tags: Missional, Earl Creps, Off-Road Disciplines

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How can we tell that God is with us

In the height of the Welsh Revival three signs were seen as evidence that God was in their midst:

1. Enormous congregations

2. The union of the different denominations

3. The baptism of the Holy Spirit

The revival was so profound throughout Wales that even the coal miners found that their horses, that had been trained to respond to different curse words, now had to be retrained because their handlers, now born-again Christians, refused to speak such profanity.

Technorati Tags: Evan Roberts, Welsh Revival, Revival

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The Holy Ghost 4-point plan

There are certain principles and foundational truths that the Holy Spirit seems to restore each and every time that He inhabits a new realm with His people. I am currently reading “A Diary of Revival” which is a centenary edition of the Welsh Revival of 1904 in which young revivalists like Evan Roberts were used mightily by the Lord to totally transform a nation and a culture for Christ.

The Holy Spirit revealed a simple 4-point plan that was instrumental in the spread of that revival throughout the land. The simplicity is amazing, its power awesome:

1. We must confess before God every sin in our past that has not been confessed. Removing the stones that impede the River`s flow.

2. We must remove anything anything that is doubtful. Lay it aside if unsure whether it is right or wrong.

3. Total surrender. We must say and do all that the Holy Spirit tells us. Laid-down radical obedience is the evidence of trust.

4. Make a public confession of Christ. Our testimony is the spirit of prophecy, fertilizing the ground and sowing seed to perpetuate and multiply our grain sown.

The church in the west needs to returns to a simplicity that demonstrates the Gospel in power rather than reducing our faith to words of human wisdom.

Technorati Tags: Evan Roberts, Welsh Revival, Revival

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Transformational Leadership

Today I have registered a new website domain through which the Transformational Leadership ministry will run.  The URL is ATransformedMind.Com so go-ahead and bookmark us and check back now and again..  The initial seed idea for this Continual Learning programme for chuch and ministry leaders was blogged about here.  The online forum will shortly be set-up and hosted on this website.

Tags: Transformational Leadership, Online Learning, eschool, Pastoral development, Renewed mind

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Heads up: Draft Reading List

The Draft Reading List is up. Feel free to download the PDF here, and leave your comments. I welcome any comment onthe selection of books, suggestions for materials, books, format of study - anything! Thankyou for helping me in this.

The Genesis of Transformational Leadership.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind - The believer is to be transformed through the renewing of his/her mind. This series hopes to provide a forum for facilitating that. The idea is for a reading list of anointed books to be published here. The material is to be read through at your own pace, and then discussed via the posts/comments.

This idea was birthed out of an inspiration when I saw a similar program being used in the world of business. The Personal MBA is being used to challenge the effectiveness of traditional university-based studies in the field of business.

The vision is for believers to read through anointed material that will challenge and inspire them. Something similar seems to be going on at the Wagner Leadership Institute - well worth checking out.

So I need people to contribute ideas – How could this work better? What could we do? Is this a crummy idea anyway? Should I shelve it? Should I pursue this thing?

Megashift-MegaBomb (?) MegaCanaWorms (?)

Just finished reading James Rutz’ “Megashift“. Boy does this book open “cans a worms”! Comments flying around in the blogosphere all over the place and everyone seems to be taking flack! Not that this book “open” cans of worms, but rather Jim Rutz does strike a nerve with many - he seems to be speaking into an issue that is in fact crucial but that, I think is camouflaged and diluted by many with too much of a focus on external methods, shapes, formats and “packaging”. To use an analogy that a friend once told me, there seems to be a lot of focus on the franchise, not enough on the product. [Read more]

The Personal MBA

This is a revolutionary idea. According to the founder: “The Personal MBA (PMBA) is an experiment in educational entrepreneurism. This manifesto will show you how to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom. The PMBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn’t involve going into massive debt, and won’t interrupt your income stream for two years. Just set aside some dedicated reading time, pick up a good book, learn as much as you can, and go out and make great things happen.”

This has wide applications in many other fields. [Read more]