This weekend was one that will forever change the world! Many men came to one spot right here in Kansas and most every one of them came with the heart to go “ALL IN" for the Lord Jesus! It was an amazing time and I felt the spirit of the Lord all around us the whole time! I love the quiet time I have with the Holy Spirit and several times I was able to just escape the crowd of men and go to a thin place! The Thin places are a reference that the Celtic Saints in Ireland would use to get away from all the noise, and find a beautiful spot where they knew that their prayers could be heard. They also knew that they could feel the presence of the Father there so heavy that even people who were not followers of the Christ could feel the difference there. My heart loves such places as this. My truck is one, but this weekend it was at the river bank, and then on a bench that over looked the beauty of trees!
Saturday morning I watched the Sun rise up over the trees on the river. I had left fishing lines out overnight in the attempt to catch a couple catfish but nothing was caught. I can tell you what did happen though! After getting the lines in, I just stopped on the bank line, soaking up the beauty of my Father’s creation. I began speaking with Him and then hit my knees. I spent about twenty minutes there and inside of this time I heard Him say “It wasn’t my Son who did the water Baptisms”. I asked what this meant as later He led me to things in His word. It is easy for us to allow the people we come in contact with to help highlight many things in the word of God and how to approach it, but then totally miss the things that can be right in front of our faces.
John 4:1-2
1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were),
This is kind of amazing in my eyes but if we were to truly get serious the word of God does not tell us when each specific of the twelve disciples of Christ were actually baptized. We know that John told us Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit! We also know when Paul, Simon, and Philip were baptized as it gives us the specific timing in Acts. Here above in the text in John is really the only place I have found that says where disciples themselves were being baptized. John the Baptist baptized men and women that were prior to Jesus starting His ministry. I wonder, how many of the original twelve disciples were baptized by John? What is the point I am getting at you might wonder?
Acts 19:4
4 Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
Jesus was only to be baptized in the water from John and then go into the world around Him spreading the power of His Father. The men who followed Jesus would do the work of the physical repentance and then pave the way for the work Jesus was to do spiritually.
Here we are almost 2,000 years later and men of God are doing the same thing for the Kingdom of Heaven! We are followers of the Christ and His teachings guided by the Holy Spirit that was and is promised to come to those who believe in the name of Jesus!
John 14:26
26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
John 20:29
29 Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”
Blessed are those who did not see! Wow! The power of God displayed through His Son Jesus has spread through all the earth and here we are in Kansas being blessed because we do believe, and we did not personally see Jesus with our own eyes! I see the power of this truth in the eyes of men who were broken, but now healed through tears of joy. I see this power displayed through one of my best brothers in Christ that I know very personally and how we embraced in tears of joy as his oldest son came to the retreat and made the choice to be baptized. His son was baptized by Him as a disciple of Christ and in turn the truth is being passed on in a power we can’t deny. Another brother who has been hitting the streets of Wichita hard since 2009 was the disciple of Christ that baptized nine other men that Saturday morning! I saw the tears in so many men’s eyes as the power of the Holy Spirit griped us! I embraced another brother Friday night that is a new believer in Christ but yet is on fire with the love of God in his heart. This brother I have had the privilege to meet the past 4 months or so as we have embraced in the truth of being brothers in Christ! Then there is a brother that shared his testimony Saturday morning that I know touched the hearts of so many men that day! ! There is another brother that God just brought into my life a month ago and he also made the choice to confess Jesus as Lord and be baptized! There were about 41 men in all that came out and we were from all different walks of life. We are all one in Christ though! We are all at different levels of our spiritual growth and no matter how deep the revelation one might receive, or not receive this one things rings true, we are children of the most High God thanks to the finished work of Jesus the Christ! The work that God will do through these men is yet to be seen fully but I can tell you all who are reading this one thing is for sure, demons will flee in the name of our Lord Jesus! Chains are being broke and will continue to be broke in the name of Jesus! Wichita, Kansas will be transformed by the gospel in a way that will forever change the tempo of this fight! The world is in a spiritual war and we men who are here in this area know this truth as we live it daily! The one thing that sets people a part for the truth of Christ is the heart! Many people do the church thing out of religious tradition! The soldiers I know for Christ, we do this because this is our lives! We know that we are nothing without our Lord Jesus! We know that all time as we know it hinges at that cross on Calvary 2,000 years ago! We know that even through the differences of each one of us and even the differences in revelation, that we are only where we are now because of the sacrifice, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus! Without this we would still be captive to our sin! We would be hopeless and wondering aimlessly through this life with no end to the pain that comes! I see the power of God in the hearts of these men and I know that soon the level of power will be like nothing ever seen before! We know that division is from the enemy and we will smash this in Jesus name! We now that the God we serve will start with a few hearts and multiply it in to a number that will shock the world! We are a group of men that most of us have been labeled as outcast, menace to society, and flat out outlaws! We wear this all with a badge of honor because it just proves even more the redemptive proof of what our Lord Jesus did for not just us, but for the whole world who has ever lived!
Romans 1:15-17
15 So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
I live to proclaim the name of my Lord Jesus! Many of the brothers will struggle with their faith at first but through the strength of fellowship and connection other brother’s faith will step in to strengthen them! The test was not created for us, we were all created for the test. Our Father who art in Heaven is not worried about what be become, He is focused on who we become! In all things the fruits of the spirit shall be seen in the men we are blessed to know. It is not our timing it is God’s and inside of this we men who at deeper levels of faith will know that we have to love them like Jesus loves us! It can seem hard at times but it is not in our strength that we do this, it is in the power of the Holy Spirit that we can do this.
Romans 8:33-39
33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies;
34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written,
“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
See the real disciples of Christ know that we never have to justify what the Father in heaven does, we just testify to everything that He and His Son Jesus does for us and through us as the power of God grows stronger in us! We don’t cling to empty religious traditions, we cling to the real tears that we see in the men that we witness transformed by this truth. We cling to the fact that addictions are broken, lives are restored, and people are made whole right in front of very eyes! So many people are longing for the love that is so misunderstood in this life, but all the while those who never hear of the truth of what our Lord Jesus did, they are being deceived on where this source of love comes from. We do not seek the love from some random resource, we seek the true love provided by THE SOURCE! The love of God that was displayed through Jesus the Christ (anointed one) of the Father in Heaven. As this battle seems to be out of control to many people in this world, we know that everything is all under control. Many think that things are falling apart but in reality things are falling right into place! The words of our Lord Jesus are passing at a rate that will make most people’s head spin if they knew the truth, but for the soldiers I know, we have our eyes fixed on Him! I feel a love so deep and a bond so strong that satan and his goons will not and cannot ever break. We are rooted in the truth that will never die and that will never fade away.
2 Corinthians 4:1-3
1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart,
2 but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
The ministry Jesus did was all about teaching us how to glorify the Father in Heaven! This was rooted in His disciples and the ones who followed after them. The ministry of God never belongs to mankind, it is always the work of God done through mankind. Jesus is the head of any ministry in this world as He sits at the right hand of the Father! Head means “Authority over” and displays the order of the Father!
Hebrews 12:1-3
1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
No matter what this evil world does or says, we will stand tall on the real truth! We will love when it seems impossible! We will speak truth to the broken hearted! We will stand when others fall and if they want a hand to help them up we will be there with ours extended! Many set out to change the world but they never even begin with the world that surrounds them. It is impossible to reach every single person alive for this group of men, but we can reach every single person that God has brought to us in some way shape or form! We will give it everything we have so that through this God can use us! We know that it isn’t us dong the work, it is the power of God in us and through us! This weekend was just one more example of this. We followed the leading of the Holy Spirit and each one of us did what the Spirit was leading us to do! In turn it fit what it was our Father and His Son was needing to do through us! We have all been given talents and gifts from God and when we truly seek Him through His Son our talents smash the lies of evil every single time. The enemy will not succeed at all because we know satan and his goons are already defeated. We will never be in agreement with evil again and we will always stand firm in the truth of what our Lord Jesus has done, is doing, and what He is coming back to do! I believe that we are a part of the bible that has not been printed yet as we help pave the way for the return of our Lord Jesus! My prayer that goes out with this blog is that those who read this decide to reach out and come join the movement that has never died and that will never die because through Christ Jesus we have already won! May Yahweh Bless you all and His Christ guide your steps in the days ahead!