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Robbing God Series on Youtube

Several years ago the Father prompted me to refresh this blog and co-publish it as a podcast. It was the tithe series that required the most labor to organize and re-publish in 10 minute episodes. The original 7 tithe articles were written in response to letters I received from readers between 2001 and 2005 and published through several Christian email based newsletters popular at the time. They worked well in a ‘letter and reply’ format but not so well as concise stand-alone articles. I’m still amazed at the way God caused them to be forwarded and cross posted all over the world. In fact, so many people cross-posted the tithe articles, my own website didn’t come up in a Google search until the 3rd or 4th page of results and that effectively buried my music ministry which was on the same site where the articles were hosted. Very few people knew I was a songwriter with CDs offered for free. It was greatly upsetting at first where in time I was forced to learn the same attitude as Paul when he encountered similar “which ever way, I rejoice that Christ Jesus is preached!” (Philippians 1:18)

Admittedly the tithe issue is difficult to parse into simple short lessons – Biblical precepts if you will. While Youtube shorts seemed like an influential medium, brevity is not my strong suit and personal issues discouraged me. Even so, I’ve been inspired here and there to write scripts for short videos. Father made me creative and in my minds eye I could envision some humorous sight gags to help get the point across. When recently I offered the scripts, 16 so far, to a friend who was building up his own Youtube channel, the Father impressed me that the tithe message has been given to me to deliver. I was also reminded what happened when Jonah ran from delivering the message God gave him for Nineveh. I guess I forgot that I can do ALL THINGS through Jesus who strengthens me.

Here is the new Youtube channel dedicated to Tithe shorts:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheTitheIsFood

What follows is the most recent episode of the Robbing God Series. I hope my goofy mug doesn’t give you a fright. (Grin!)

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A Beautiful Reminder

Yesterday Karen and I picked up groceries from Walmart and QFC (Kroger). Moments after arriving home, the associate at QFC called to apologize for missing 2 bags. While continuing to unpack, we noticed items missing from the Walmart order as well and Karen called customer service. Walmart had missed a tote with 3 bags full!

Going out this morning to pick them up was a joyful experience as we met and laughed with the young associates at the pickup lot. Nothing like that has ever happened to us as long as we’ve been ordering groceries online for pickup. Home within the hour I pulled into the driveway and on a lark asked Karen if she wanted to see her blueberries in the back yard. “Yes” she exclaimed so I turned onto the grass to drive around the house. “The neighbors will think we’re crazy!” “We are” said I. We have lots of blueberries ready to harvest!

Turning back up toward the driveway on the opposite side of the house Karen looked at the hedge row of aborvitae and spotted a large mostly yellow butterfly caught in a spider’s web, flapping furiously to free itself. I stopped, Karen got out and used her cane to break the web where the butterfly took flight once again from the end of Karen’s cane. After parking in the garage, Karen remarked “I wonder if all the trouble we’ve gone through with our grocery orders was just to see and rescue that butterfly?”

How humbling! For as many times as I’ve thought God didn’t see or hear me in distress, or I’ve considered something beneath my regard, His attention to detail and love for the least of us, is truly amazing.

Are not five sparrows sold for two coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God. But even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Therefore, do not be afraid; you are of greater value than many sparrows. (Luke 12:6-7 AFV)

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Worshiping in Spirit: A New Old Understanding

Mr. and Mrs. SonsAreFree

Consider what Jesus said to the woman at the well in John 4:21-24: “an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father”. Most believers read that as either and or, but it’s neither and nor. In fact, the Greek word can just as well be translated not. If there were a Dr. Seuss version of that scripture it would read “you will not worship here, you will not worship there, you will not worship anywhere”.

So what does God want from us? Stop prostituting and prostrating ourselves, get out of the pig pens of our servitude and make haste our coming home to God, where He will greet us as sons, stand us upright and introduce us to His household. He’ll clothe us with a robe (all who are baptized in Christ are clothed with Christ), place sandals on our feet and the family ring our finger! God wants SONS who will stand up and be counted – who will embrace their complete inheritance in Christ – not worshipers of the prostrating / physical in the flesh type common in ‘houses of worship’ today.

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Elders and Youth: Rebuilding Biblical Community

The Lord has shown me something in Timothy the Musical I hadn’t considered before about the evolution of church services over 70 years and the tendency of them to change in response to culture and revolving door membership. Remembering my boyhood church and traditional liturgical services, they were not called worship services then but church services. There we gathered with an invocation, sang hymns accompanied by an organist, recited the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles Creed, read responsive readings, listened to a choir anthem, sang the Doxology and Gloria Patri, listened to the message, made prayers of intercession, and departed with a hymn and benediction. The tithe wasn’t preached instead charity and stewardship. Services were conducted by a black robed pastor with liturgical stole, robed choir director, deacons and elders dressed in their Sunday best, with the youth sitting in pews with their parents or together in the back. Every hymn was a statement of faith, which when sung along with the readings, creeds, and Lord’s prayer, was a common confession drawing us together in mutual encouragement.

Brother Mike Bogart

Fast forward to today, youth have displaced the elders and their ways, staking an unyielding claim to the stage with electronic keyboards, amps, monitors, guitars, basses and drums – often so loud and overpowering that they have to be enclosed in a plexiglass booth. There the 30-something band leader Bogarts the microphone for an hour or more, singing not a single hymn of the faith as a gesture of honor and respect for their elders, but droning repetitious songs of self indulgence masquerading as worship.

How often when watching a contemporary “worship” service have I wondered whether any of the young and unseasoned leaders ever read 1 Corinthians 14:

What is our conclusion, brothers? Whenever you come together, let everyone be ready with a psalm or a teaching or a revelation, or ready to use his gift of tongues or give an interpretation; but let everything be for edification. If the gift of tongues is exercised, let it be by two or at most three, and each in turn; and let someone interpret. And if there is no one present who can interpret, let the people who speak in tongues keep silent when the congregation meets—they can speak to themselves and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, while the others weigh what is said. And if something is revealed to a prophet who is sitting down, let the first one be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, with the result that all will learn something and all will be encouraged. Also, the prophets’ spirits are under the prophets’ control; for God is not a God of unruliness but of shalom. (1 Corinthians 14:26-33a CJB)

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Update on Timothy the Musical

Timothy the musical is making progress, albeit more slowly than I’d like. As if to confirm this is the season for music production, God prompted a friend to donate a pair of professional studio reference monitors. It’s been a real joy using them to replicate what I learned from the young man who remixed Resurrection Power, to apply what he taught me to the remaining songs in the musical.

The Spitfire Trio

One of the most important practices when mixing a new song is frequent breaks to recalibrate your ears by listening to a well-mixed reference track. If all an audio engineer listens to is the track he’s mixing, ear fatigue can set in which leads to poor mixing decisions. It’s not unlike making a regular habit of reading the Bible and holding to it as the standard for living. Without such standard, our approach to living, like mixing music, becomes situationally relative and that leads to compromise.

Relearning the art of mixing in the DAW age (Digital Audio Workstation) with my hearing issues addressed, I’m having great fun with my shortest song – 95 seconds of pure fire and brimstone insanity. It’s a nod to the Spitfire Trio first introduced in the post In Memory of Betsy (link). I’ve met believers like them before, always pushing others to reevaluate their salvation and draw nearer to God above and escape the fiery flames below. Ever on the lookout for the devil to give him a good thrashing, I could always count on them for a unique perspective in faith. Written in 1976, Fire Insurance was inspired by my mom who came up with the chorus. The original recording is from 2001. The new recording replaces the synthesized drums, banjo, and fiddle with the real McCoy. Links below to the original and new Mp3 files are for your comparison and entertainment. Hearing the difference convinces me it’s worth the effort to remix them all. No doubt I’ll tweak it some more as I continue to learn and get feedback.

ORIGINAL Fire Insurance

NEW Fire Insurance (demo)

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One step forward, Two steps back

Several weeks ago I mentioned my life’s work Timothy – a musical according to revelations. No, not the book of ‘Revelation’, but the many revelations from the Lord about Himself that have greatly influenced my walk with Him. It’s been a solitary work with occasional help from unlikely sources. For example, several songs feature instrumental parts played by friends who are not believers. When asked why help me, they simply said “because we love you, Jack”. I was stunned. It was Matthew 25:31-46 in action – unbelievers showing themselves to be sheep by helping a son of God.

The bigger obstacle in recording and mixing music has always been hearing impairment. Where my chief complaint is tinnitus, hearing tests were dismissed with the recommendation “learn to live with it”. Thus my hearing has never been tested. Recently I hired a professional studio engineer to teach me through mixing and mastering the song Resurrection Power, which is the finale of Timothy.

Listening to my young friend’s remix of Resurrection Power, I was unable to hear the subtle changes he would make to affect the sound, nor the cymbals he recorded on the new drum track. In the end, I simply had to trust that he’d delivered a better sounding mix than I can do myself. After our session, I remembered an earlier conversation where he recommended an app that would test a listener’s hearing and plot an equalization curve to correct for any hearing deficiencies. Once installed, I ran the calibration routine, applied the correction curve and replayed the song. The difference was astounding.

Listen to the new mix of Resurrection Power below or click the 3 vertical dots to download the Mp3:

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Whitewashing Babylon

At the time of the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, I belonged to an online discussion group frequented by believers who had followed the Holy Spirit’s call to come out of man’s religious system unto Jesus who is outside the camp of men (Hebrews 13:12-14, Revelation 3:20, et al). Several members were a great encouragement to me as I sought to untangle from tradition and rule-bound religion to embrace my freedom in the Spirit. Sadly, following the attack on the WTC the faith of many became a prideful amalgam of politics and religion, often expressed with lust for vengeance. My spirit was sickened by the abrupt and toxic turn from fellowship of the Spirit to fellowship rooted in the bastard child Christian Nationalism that emerged in virulent form immediately after that tragic event.

The experience caused me to reflect on my political views, some of which were shaped through my former employer: Boeing. My support of several Department of Defense projects was brief and peripheral since I worked mostly in the space and computing divisions. Nevertheless, my income was subsidized by the military industrial complex whose influence was inescapable in the work place. That is, until the day the Lord called me to resign and devote myself to the work He had for me. In the years that followed, the Lord gave me an eyeful of the world by holding it up to His Word which proved life changing for me. Where once I would say with confidence “I’m a Presbyterian and a Conservative”, there is no apt description of what Jesus has made me, unless it’s to say “I’m a follower of The Way” (Acts 9:2, et al).

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Debunking Word of Faith Doctrine

With this post, I want to briefly address the Word of Faith doctrine that came up in the 2 part post “When prayers for healing seem to fail” and why I believe it is a false teaching.

Since my 20s when I first heard preachers espouse Word of Faith doctrine (aka: name-it-and-claim-it) with an emphasis on physical healing and prosperity through tithing, I sometimes tried to apply the principles to my own life, but never with any success. I did once overcome a headcold when the Spirit showed me the enemy’s plan to make me sick before an important engagement. Jesus had me rebuke the enemy, who fled from me and I was spared from a week long snot fest.

In my early 40s, The Spirit dealt with the prosperity message by having me study and write about The TITHE Lie. But He never dealt with me concerning Word of Faith belief as it relates to physical healing in this life. So when Karen’s suffering greatly increased last year I took her to a healing ministry where word of faith doctrine is taught and practiced. Thereafter we tried to pray and confess our way to healing for Karen. Though painful and at times desperate, the experience was necessary to teach us God’s Truth and deliver us from the false doctrine of Word of Faith, and to show us the genuine character of God who heals us for no other reason than He loves us. In the end, we learned that a person can do no better than to abandon themselves to God, whose love and mercy is without end (Lamentations 3:22-23).

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A recurring dream and 2 interpretations

Following God’s wake-up call (LINK) He often gave me dreams. Some were for teaching, others for personal direction. I never felt a leading to share any of them with the body of Christ at large though I did sometimes share with a small group of friends to assist with interpretation. It was in receiving the many interpretations that the Father began to teach me discernment of the Spirit from flesh. Sometimes an interpretation is what I call “formula prophetic”, e.g., a car is symbolic of ministry, a woman represents the church, etc. Often such interpretations left me with a reservation in my spirit. There were also times when the Spirit’s interpretation was a long time in coming that I was tempted to accept the formula view in spite of my reservations. “Perhaps my friends see something in me that I can not see in myself”, I reasoned. Thankfully, whenever I was tempted to surrender to the many formula interpretations God rose up to shout His view of the matter.

There are many examples of competing dream interpretations in the old testament; a consensus view and God’s message through a genuine seer. Joseph and Daniel come to mind. What follows is a recurring dream for which I had no interpretation for many years. It’s been a progressive dream where each time I had it there were more details to advance the story just a little bit more.

Recurring Dream

Lined up to race a single lap around an oval track, with many runners dressed in track attire, I was hopeful of finishing strong, perhaps even winning the race. The gun sounded and everyone leapt from the starting line as did I only to discover I was harnessed to a skid piled high with duffel bags. I had noticed the pile from the corner of my eye before the race started and simply assumed the duffel bags held the street clothes of all the other runners. Looking down at the harness, I saw that I was dressed in work clothes which isn’t surprising since I detest skimpy track suits.

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When prayers for healing seem to fail, part 2

In part 1, I marveled at the wisdom of God to set Spirit and flesh in opposition within us; whereby we yield our flesh life back to Him by surrendering to the cross to live instead the spirit life of His Son. And Jesus who in the garden of Gethsemane showed us the depth and breadth of surrender by yielding to the Father’s will for death by crucifixion, rather than assert His own will to be spared. So many promises of God in the Old Testament for personal health, long life, protection, prosperity – Jesus released them all back to the Father for the fulfillment of God’s will. Truly a promise made is a promise kept; the cross simply defers fulfillment to the next life.

So how is it some of us who in claiming to embrace the cross, fail to surrender our will where it pertains to receiving the promises of God in this life? Can we take time to consider the glaring contradiction of being crucified in the flesh while at the same time demanding God heal our flesh? Or insisting on our will over God’s will where healing is concerned? Surrendered hands that should be nailed to the cross instead grabbing at the hem of Christ or clenching fists to shake at God while demanding “you HAVE to heal me because YOUR word says so”. Whose will is on display in that scenario? Surrender means surrender including your will for the fulfillment of God’s promises in your flesh life. Oh, He may heal your flesh, of course, but it’s out of love for you when He does, not because He promised healing in this life, apart from healing your SPIRIT (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

In taking up my cross to follow Jesus like He asked, it’s been my experience that it’s the unfulfilled promises of God that are the nails in my hands and feet (metaphorically speaking). The simple recognition that while God promises to heal me, His word doesn’t say when. The problem comes when we demand His healing on our time table because with death approaching, we think we’re running out of time. But from God’s timeless viewpoint, our physical death is just the beginning of the fullness of life in the Spirit, whereby here in this life the Spirit may be better served if my infirmity remains. God has simplified my view of His word through the over-arching truth that rules over every other scripture – God owns everything including me (Ps 24:1) and His will prevails over mine (Luke 22:42). Thus this life is designed to provoke our unconditional surrender to Christ, where we, too, can say in the face of the cross “Father, not my will, but thine be done”.

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