The Housetop

The book of Ephesians is filled with the word walk.  Our walk is our manner of life. It is the way we live.      We are to walk worthy of the calling. There should be a lifestyle change that aligns to what God has called us to. It is not that we walk in a rigidity of commandment or a lifestyle cleanup, but we are to walk in the love of God.    The gospel should affect the way we live our lives. Th...

Every one of us in Christ has been given a measure of Christ’s gifts. Jesus Christ Himself gifted men to be gifts to men.  These ministry gifts are to equip the ministry; however, they are the biggest things tradition stole from everyone.  This demonic thief of tradition steals the priesthood of every believer.  It is a grief that we have taken these gifts and squeezed them down to one thing: Past...

There’s been a huge paradigm shift where God no longer dwells in temples made by men. He now dwells in men.   He's building Himself a house, and it’s those He has brought into the new birth and are being intertwined relationally in love. When we come together in that assembled love by the Spirit of God, we become a dwelling place for God. It is there God promises to manifest His presence.   Go...

All throughout the history of the church, every revival has resulted from the Holy Spirit blasting through existing orthodoxy and disrupting the standards and norms that were in control.   We are in this sort of paradigm shift now.    The Holy Spirit is not looking to occupy a physical building.  He is wanting to live in the hearts of men.  God wants to live inside redeemed vessels.  Immanuel in t...

The building of God is not an organization of brick and mortar. It is a living organism, filled with people who are filled with God’s praises, with Jesus Christ as the Chief Cornerstone. However, the builders have rejected God’s design and the Chief Cornerstone.   God wanted the New Testament church to be structured relationally, not bureaucratically. Instead of the relational church God intended,...

Grace is the divine influence upon the heart reflected in the life. It is powerful when God’s grace comes, and there’s a manifestion of it in the life.  Many argue that it is either grace or works, but it is actually grace and works.  We are not saved by good works, but we are kept by them.   Don’t pervert grace by saying you can live however you want to now and still be saved.  It’s a false doctr...

Christ didn’t die so we would keep sinning; He died so we could die with Him.  But instead of being dead to sin, we sit in church dead in our sins.     There are many religious seekers of Christ who are still dying in their sins.  We have all but eradicated the holiness of God, twisting His glory and truth. Misrepresenting God, we have exalted a humanistic view of His love and seared our conscienc...

There are so many people who have had real encounters with God who have never known the fullness of Jesus Christ in their life.  God wants to change you with His fullness inside of you.  We are His Church, His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all things.  Jesus Christ was filled with grace and truth, and He wants you as full as He is.    We need the fullness today.  Why aren’t we pressing in to...

When the eyes of the understanding become enlightened, it means we are able to look at things with our spiritual eyes wide opened.  As the knowledge of God revolves in the head, it drops down into the spirit and becomes understanding. The heart sees something that is way deeper than the mind is able to.   In Ephesians, Paul prays for the spirit of understanding in three areas:  The hope of His cal...

Paul prayed for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus.  The spirit of wisdom implies a continual unfolding of abiding, residing, and living wisdom.  This is something we are missing in the church today.    We have overemphasized the knowledge of the cross without connecting with the brokenness that comes from the cross.  We have heads full of cognitive transfer, but th...

In this last age, there’s a revealing of the mystery that has been hidden throughout all the ages.  The mystery is that Jews and Gentiles would worship Jesus at the same alter of the cross.  God is gathering everything together into one through Christ Jesus and reconciling the world to Himself by the blood of Jesus Christ and making peace as the two become one, with no division in the heart or hea...

Redemption means to liberate someone and set them free at a purchase price.   We were captive and bound to demonic forces that held us to sin. But Christ paid the ransom fully; and through His blood, we have redemption.    To understand what it cost God to forgive you, we must first understand the righteous requirements of the law and power of the blood.    There’s redemption through the blood of...

One of the greatest needs we have is acceptance.  We all have experienced the pain of rejection; and if anyone understands the ramifications of rejection, it is Jesus.   Even when the whole world has rejected us, we have the ability to be accepted by God. This divine acceptance is the power of God working inside the life of a person, bringing joy unspeakable that is full of glory.    It is by grac...

To be adopted as a child of God means our earthly life is dead with Christ on the cross. Now it is alive with God in Him.   I am in Him, and He is in me.  Like marriage, the two have become one. A oneness has been established. Everything of mine belongs to God, and everything that God has belongs to me. That’s how covenant works.    To be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the...

When a seed is sown into good ground, the ground receives the seed, and it will bear fruit.  God commands fruit from those He redeems.  We are to bear fruit unto God worthy of repentance.   Can you imagine the revival that would happen overnight if every believer were bearing fruit 30, 60, or 90-fold?   We must ask ourselves: Do I have a fruitful life, bearing fruit for God?  Is there anything my...

Seeds sown among the thorns represent the one who becomes unfruitful because the Word is choked out by the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts or desires for other things.   The entire Western Church is littered with thorns. We are so overburdened and focused on the temporal that we have lost thought of the Kingdom of God. Asleep to the Kingdom but awake to the things of...

In the Parable of the Sower, everyone was receiving the Word, but only one bore fruit. There are all types of relationships to the Word of God, but not all will bear fruit or have eternal life with Jesus. The seed that fell along the wayside represents those who lack anointing. Their relationship is so loose with God the devil has free reign and access to their hearts, even while the Word is being...

The first steps to understanding the mysteries of the Kingdom of God is to get alone with Jesus. We need revelation. God wants to reveal Himself to us.  When we begin to pursue Jesus on our own, and really see to understand, the eyes of our understanding will opened. This is the key to the new birth.  The ministry of the sower is to sow the Word of God. This duty requires a preparing of the soil b...

James is a fitting end to this teaching on Wisdom’s Seven Pillars.  Many principles of the paradoxes of Jesus are repeated, and there's a common thread running throughout the book that fits perfectly to this study.   The world thinks differently than the Kingdom of God. We need so much wisdom from the cross to navigate through all the trials that are hitting us because the adulterous woman is...

The final paradoxical teaching of Jesus is that it's better to give than to receive. The heart of the world's value system has its roots in money. There's an insatiable desire to go after riches. Because of this, money typically is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word blessing. But grace tells us to withdrawal from such thinking and deny worldly gain. We have to correct our thi...

Jesus said, "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." The exaltation of man is a contagious spirit. Exalt means to elevate yourself, rise up, and lift yourself up. We either fall on Christ and become humbled, broken vessels, or we rise up in pride, live our lives full of arrogance, and we end up humiliated for eternity.

Everyone is striving to be number one.  Many want to be first - first in rank, influence, honor, and succession of anything or person.  People crave this position and prosperity.  But Jesus said the first will be last and the last first.  We need to sell out and learn more about this paradoxical teaching of Jesus.

The flesh desires greatness. But Jesus says unless we humble ourselves, be converted by God’s Word, and become like a little child, we cannot see the kingdom of God. We must come through the new birth, being born again by the Word of God, and continue in this dependency. Do you have the testimony of going back to childhood?  Learning how to walk, talk, think, act, and conduct yourself like Jesus....

The third pillar of wisdom is:  To be great, be a waiter, a minister.  To be first, become a slave.  The will of God is that every person who names the name of Christ will enter the fellowship of His suffering. It is a test in the Christian walk and the point so many turn away or build an alternative theology because there is no doctrine of suffering in the Christian community any longer.  Our sou...

As a disciple of Christ, you are called to forsake everything in this world and follow Christ without compromise.  The more you say to God, in a humble and contrite spirit, “God, I’m a pilgrim passing through, and I don’t belong here,” the Lord will draw near, and His life will attach to your life.  You will find eternal life in that separation from this world.    The cross of Jesus Christ is a se...