Revelations on the Church

Here are just some random things the LORD has been speaking to me about.  A lot of them deal with the church.  Here in Rochester I have been spending a lot of time in the American church for the first time since being in YWAM.  While I love the church we definitely are not perfect and there are so many things we can do better. It is not my intent in any way to be critical rather this is meant to point out where we can improve and get better.  I hope the things below help encourage you to become better and build up the church.

Word #1

Worship leaders (generally, not all) in the church are experiencing the bondages of anxiety, pressure and fear of man.  Most of this is actually caused by the church.  We (we because I do it too) place pressure on the worship leaders to lead us into the presence of God.  If we can’t enter in on a certain day, they are the first to be blamed.  “O I just didn’t like how they lead worship, or “I didn’t like the songs they chose.”  What really should be happening is as all people enter into the presence of the LORD together the worship leaders are released from anxiety and fear and from the pressure of making sure everyone can enter the presence of the LORD and their job is actually to determine what the spirit is doing and lead us by telling us what the LORD is saying.  This is what “church” is supposed to be like and the key to prophetic worship (worship where the LORD speaks back).

Word #2

We as a church (generally again, not everybody) when we (again I say we because I catch myself doing this a lot) study scripture tend to focus on people’s mistakes and failures and we study scripture in a critical way.  We do this because we see our faults and it makes us “feel good” to know other people failed too.  However it turns our focus onto the failure of men instead of having our focus on the victory of God amidst this failure.  What we should focus more on is what God is doing in scripture rather than what man is doing.  Just as we should focus on the victory we have today and not our weakness/failures because “His power is made perfect in our weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)  It’s not a bad thing to see people’s mistakes and our mistakes (it’s actually good) as long as we look at them seeing how the power of God shown through these mistakes and that our focus is not what we fail at but what God succeeds at.

Studies in the Book of James: Chapter 1

After reading the book of James almost everyday for a month I thought I would share some of the things I learned. This is a look at the 1st chapter of the New Testament book.

Introduction to the book of James

Please read chapter 1 before viewing the video. James Chapter 1

For Those Without Homes

This is part 1 of a documentary I made about a year and a half ago. I've never linked to it or referenced to it on my blog so I thought I would. I know a lot of you have seen it already but for those of you who haven't let me know how you like it. Parts 2-5 can be found on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OVVP?feature=mhum#p/u
or on my Video Archive page