Time to Grow Up

A wise man once said “faithful are the wounds of a friend.” I need to tell you something that may hurt a little, because I care about you as a friend.

I think it's wise to seek prayer from friends for our problems, whether they're health-related, relational or whether they fall into some other category. Prayer is a powerful thing. But there are problems that cannot be resolved by the prayers of our friends alone.

I have many friends who suffer from chronic aches, pains and illnesses and I have other friends whose relationships have been blown to pieces. When everything seems to be falling apart, there's a temptation to cry out to friends to pray for our problems to be fixed once and for all. Let me reiterate that I am not against prayer, because what I'm about to say next could be misinterpreted as that.

Many of us have not yet learned how to stand against the enemy in our battle against recurring sickness and most of us are responsible for our own recurring relationship problems. Let's take a look at sickness first.

The battle against recurring sickness is something like how we might deal with a criminal who repeatedly breaks into our home. Jesus used this illustration when teaching about how and why demons return to a person after being cast out of them in Luke chapter eleven.(See Luke 11:21-26)

When a burglar breaks into our home, we have a couple of ways in which we can respond. One option is to stand by helplessly and let them take our property and beat us senseless while waiting for the police to show up. An untrained and ill-equipped believer who relies on friends or the anointed "man of God" to pray for them is like a defenseless homeowner at the mercy of a burglar.

Evil spirits are opportunistic, just like burglars. They size up their potential victims and evaluate their defenses. A burglar looks for signs of vulnerability. They look for alarm systems, ease of access, unlocked doors and windows, the absence of a dog, and the likelihood that the homeowner will be armed. They look for homeowners that are the least likely to fight back. Demons do the same thing.

People who refuse to be trained in spiritual warfare or who never learned how to exercise their authority over the enemy are like homeowners who refuse to secure their homes or fight back against an intruder. They make themselves easy targets for evil spirits and once word gets out in the demonic community that they're an easy target - they can expect to be harassed by even more evil spirits. That's the message Jesus illustrated in His teaching in Luke chapter eleven.

When it comes to healing - many of us are content to let someone else deal with the bad guys. It's easier to find the anointed man of God to pray for us than it is to learn how to withstand the attacks of enemy ourselves. The problem is that Jesus gave every believer the power and authority they need to defeat the enemy, without going to someone else for help. Recurring problems with sickness and disease are the result of us refusing to take our responsibilities seriously.

You can plead with your friends to pray for your healing all you want - but if you never learn to exercise the authority God has given you over sickness, you're never going to remain healed. The spirits that bring  sickness will continue to assault you until you learn to take authority over them yourself.

I have a friend who once asked the Holy Spirit "How do you see cancer?"

The Holy Spirit replied, "I can't see cancer because it's under my feet. I want it to be under your feet."

The enemy is going to continue to beat us up until we learn to put him under our feet once and for all. I'm preaching to myself here as my wife and I don't always do this ourselves, but we're learning.

My wife was recently healed of back pain when she finally understood that the things she thought about herself , about her symptoms, and about God's desire to heal her were allowing the enemy to continue to attack her and keep her in pain.

The first problem was that she couldn't bring herself to believe she was healed as long as she still felt pain. This is a bit of a murky problem because sometimes people feel pain in response to a physical problem, while other times the sensation of pain is due only to the presence of a spirit.  To further complicate things - she had an MRI that showed two herniated discs. You might think that as long as she has herniated discs, she must resign herself to living with the pain. We know of people who have an MRIs showing herniated discs but they had no symptoms of the injury. She began to ask, "If some people have herniated discs and don't have pain, why can't I be one of them?"

She also wasn't completely sure at that point that God wanted to heal her. One day she decided to believe that God really did want to heal her and she entertained the idea that perhaps she was already healed. She accepted the fact that it was her beliefs and not God's reluctance to heal her that was the problem. So she chose to believe that she was healed. She also chose to see the pain she was experiencing as a lie from the enemy. Once she got her thinking straightened out, it removed the power the enemy had over her and the pain immediately left.

One of the major lessons we've learned is that the enemy only has the power over us that we allow him to have. Being healed and keeping the symptoms from returning is a battle. Most of the warfare is done on the six inch battlefield between our ears. Now let's take a look at problems with relationships.

Many of us cry out to our friends or to God to have our relationship problems fixed, rather than take an honest look at ourselves and admit that we're the ones responsible for our problems. God is not going to take away the consequences of our bad decisions. As we sow, we shall also reap. Many of us are reaping the consequences of manipulation, co-dependency, selfishness, immaturity and a failure to walk in our God-given identity.

Relationship problems are cyclical. The habits we've developed over our lifetime create the same dynamics (for good or bad) in all our relationships. When the same problems arise repeatedly, instead of  blaming others or crying out to God to fix the other person, we need to look at why we are bearing bad fruit. The fruit of our relationships is determined by the condition of our heart. It is only by changing the way in which we relate to others that the cycle of relationship problems will end. It's a sign of spiritual immaturity to blame others for our problems or to expect someone else to fix them. We must be the one who makes the change.

Most of us have a lot of growing up to do. It's time to take the training wheels off and learn how to live as mature children of God.

KINGDOM AGE SHIFT

The Spirit of God showed me that a great travesty in the Body of Christ is that many of his children have given their fealty and allegiance to institutions that have themselves become enemies of other people and institutions. In so doing His children have made themselves enemies of people that God is not enemies with. 

Most confuse sentimentality and patriotism with godliness, but these in fact are an abomination to God when they cause Christ representatives on the earth to be at war with those God is not at war with.

Political parties and world governments are world systems that no believer has any business pledging fealty to or allegiance to if they truly want to preach the gospel of the kingdom. God does not condemn anyone who does so, He doesn't condemn anyone. But you limit yourself to the powerless Christianity that the western world now enjoys when you do so. This powerless way of life for most of the church has become the rule not the exception.

There is a great difference between loving loyalty to a people (men) and loyalty to an institution or system built by men. I will also add, another great travesty is when God's children make these institutions their enemy; they are God's enemies or His children's enemies, even if they choose to make God's children their enemies.

THE PURPOSE FOR MAN'S GOVERNMENTS
Man's government is given authority by God as a mandate from God to restrain evil by punishing wrongdoing. This is not the body of Christ's mandate nor is not compatible with the Mandate the children of God have been given.  

God gives us the Men's government and leaders for another purpose as well, That as his children we might turn our hearts from hope and trust in the rule of law and( in the case of the USA) the written constitution to Him. The rule of law and written laws and rights are not the path of righteousness. They are boundaries for fallen men to protect them from fallen men. But you are of a holy and unfallen, and unshakable kingdom.

We are told to honor and not speak evil of our leaders. The leaders we have are showing forth by bringing to logical conclusion what government of men is and has the potential to be. These nations are not the kingdom, which is a state of being within the heart consisting of righteousness, Joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. 

Righteous behavior is based upon the Spirit's power and not upon obeying laws. We have made a nation in the USA where the logical conclusion of rule of law of representative government is that people if they so choose have a right to evil. The rule of law is that the majority makes the rules and the whole is affected. As a Christian, your hope is not in a constitution or rule of Law, but in Christ, who makes you holy by his power. This is a battle you will not win because you were never called to fight a battle to establish the rule of law, but to build Christ within people. That is why you have leaders appointed by God to show you that the rule of nations and fighting and frothing over them is a fruitless endeavor.

YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT
The culture of heaven is a culture of changed hearts, not changed temporal government. Changed hearts will change the way they govern. You want to change the culture you preach Jesus Christ, the only change that lasts. 

Many are missing their full inheritance not because God is taking it from them, but because they choose a portion that is less then God's best. God honors His image in you enough to let you have what you want.

In His Love
Kriston Couchey

MANIFESTING HIM

I have become convinced that even though angelic and spiritual beings stand in the presence of God continually there are aspects of who He is that are only being revealed through Christ upon the earth, and in particular His sons who have become one with the very presence and essence of Christ; manifesting the manifold wisdom and character of God to the universe.

I know from experience that being in His presence and experiencing and moving in His power does not mean that I understand or comprehend the heart of God in the midst of it. Men and women can move in great power and miracles and still have a wrong perception and portray inaccurately the nature and heart of God. We along with all of creation both animal and heavenly beings are in for a display of who God is as He is revealing the nature and character of Father Himself in Christ Jesus through you and I His sons.

My experience with angelic beings is mostly receiving rebuke and correction. One spoke to me in the night with a message from Father saying "stand with and before Me with confidence", while i understood the message was to have me put aside the feeling of guilt and shame, It took me years to understand the heart of God and WHY He said it to me.

It took me time to understand that God was not demanding of me to get rid of my baggage to stand in His presence, He was inviting me to become one with His so that He could remove my baggage. I am convinced there are saints and angels in heaven that are coming to the same understanding of God's tremendous grace as we have revealed to us the true nature of God and come to more fully comprehend things as He does.

I don't believe the angel delivering the message to me fully understood WHY Father wanted me in all of my guilt shame to stand before Him confidently. But i think he does now, because i have had revealed to me the grace of God that is not holding sin against me, nor has He ever. It takes the people of God having the revealing the Love God has in Christ toward us in all of it's height, breath, and depth in order that all of creation in both heaven and earth may comprehend it fully as well.

Not only now has He given me the WHY behind this correction, But He has taken away ALL fear and doubt to stand before him and IN him and Him IN Me. The true revelation is the perfect Love God has for all creation. THAT is what He is revealing to us and through us to the universe and all of it's inhabitants. It is Perfect Love that has cast out all fear to proclaim that I am one Spirit with God, joined to Him, not by my choice, but by His choice. We are called to live fearless and free at ONE with Him; in confidence.

Kriston Couchey