Let's build Christ's church!

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, fogiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."  Ephesians 4:29-32

   Won't it be a glorious day when the church obeys this word?  How often do you read slanderous comments online about a video or an article a Christian has posted about God and another Christian rips them apart and says that they're wrong?  Even if the first guy was wrong the second guy is now wrong becuase he has allowed bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice in.

    It saddens me that there is such a war between denominations.  There is even hate between brothers and sisters in Christ.  How is the world going to know us by our love when we can't even love our blood-bought family?  We grieve the Holy Spirit when we tear down someone we may not agree with.  We open a door to let Satan in.  I believe a lot of sickness is due to unforgiveness.  When we hold on to bitterness we are not allowing the Sprit of God to inhabit every area of us, therefore, we aren't living in freedom, in joy and peace and health. "Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil, this will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones" (Proverbs 3:7-8).

 The devourer has infiltrated.  He's seperated the church and he's trying to turn us against each other.  He can try all he wants, we know that the unity will be restored before Christ comes back, He's not going to come back to a broken and divided to church, He's going to return for his beautiful bride! So next time you don't agree with someone check yourself, address issues in love and peace, follow the steps on how to confront problems that are listed in Matthew 18:15-20.

   I know I've been guilty of slandering other churches and I am resolving that I will no longer take part in it.  I am no longer "like a Gentile walking in the futility of my mind" as Paul talks about earlier in the verse but I am a new creature! Only edifying words will flow out of me, words that build up the world-wide church instead of tear it down.

Faith

Yes oh yes my blog followers, I am copying one of my favorite teacher's articles on my blog for you to read!! Andrew gets a lot of crap but his teachings have changed my life! Here is a great article to help us understand faith. It looks long but it doesn't take much time to read and I pray it encourages you! The only way to see into the spiritual is to know God and His word, you can't just imagine whatever you want to imagine and pretend it's there, you must know what God has already established; you must understand His kingdom.


The Reality Of Faith
By Andrew Wommack

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Many people think faith is acting like something is so when it really isn't so, and if we do that long enough, then it will become so. But that's not it at all. Faith is real.

Hebrews 11:1 says,

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Faith is substance. This is saying that faith is real. It is the evidence of things not seen. Notice it didn't say "things that don't exist." They do exist. They just aren't seen.

Even in the natural world, we've come to realize that there are things that do exist that we can't see. We can't see television signals, but they do exist. In fact, wherever you are right now, there are television signals right there with you. If you say "No there aren't" just because you can't see or hear them, that doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means you aren't very smart. They do exist, they are just unseen. They are unseen realities.

A television set can make unseen signals visible. When we see the images is not when they became real. They were already there. A television set doesn't generate images. The set just receives the signal and converts it into sights and sounds that we can perceive. But the television signals were already there, before we tuned them in.

Probably every person reading this letter has watched television when suddenly the picture went blank. What did you do? I bet you didn't call the television station and complain about them stopping their broadcast. The first thing you did was check and see if everything was working on your television set. Was the electricity on? Was it plugged in? Did a tube go out or did some circuit melt? You checked your receiver to see what was wrong with it. You trust that the station broadcasts 24/7. You don't question that until you eliminate all the possible problems with your set.

Likewise, God is real and does exist. He just can't be seen. He is broadcasting all His power and blessings 24/7. It's never God's transmitter that is broken. It's always our receiver that is the problem. If we ask God for something and we don't see it manifest instantly, most people question why God hasn't answered that prayer yet. They assume that because they haven't seen or heard anything, nothing has happened. That's all wrong. We need to have more faith in God than we have in a television station.

There is a very good illustration of this truth in 2 Kings 6. Elisha, the prophet of God, was revealing the Syrian's battle plans to the king of Israel. Every time the king of Syria tried to ambush the king of Israel, Elisha would warn the king of Israel, and he would ambush the Syrian's ambush. This happened so often that the king of Syria finally asked his servants to reveal who the traitor was. He knew that the king of Israel could not be maneuvering like he was without inside information.

When one of the king of Syria's servants said that Elisha, the prophet of God, was revealing the words that the king of Syria said in his bed chamber to the king of Israel, the king of Syria sent his armies to capture Elisha.

Second Kings 6:15 says,

"And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?"

When Elisha's servant saw the Syrian troops, he panicked. He knew why they were there. They had discovered Elisha was the one telling the king of Syria's battle plans to the king of Israel. They were in big trouble. Look at the response of Elisha to this situation in 2 Kings 6:16: "And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.".

People who don't believe anything exists beyond their five senses would say Elisha was lying. He was confessing something was so when it really wasn't so, hoping that it would become so. But that's not the way it was at all. Elisha spoke the truth. There were more with him than was with the Syrian army. It's just that Elisha's forces were in the unseen reality.

The key to understanding this is to recognize there is another realm of reality beyond this physical world. Those who are limited to only their five senses will always struggle with this. They think Elisha was lying, and indeed, he would have been lying if all that exists is this physical world. You could count the Syrian troops by the thousands, and there was only Elisha and his servant. But Elisha wasn't lying because there was another world of reality. If you looked at the whole picture, the physical and spiritual world, then Elisha was right on. In the spiritual realm, there were many more horses and chariots of fire around Elisha than there were Syrian troops.

According to 2 Kings 6:17,

"Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And he LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

Gehazi's physical eyes were already wide open. God was opening his spiritual eyes. He was able to see with his heart into the spiritual world. And when the spiritual world was taken into consideration, then Elisha's statement was perfectly true.

Those who see faith as an attempt to make something real which isn't real will always struggle with those who see faith as simply making what is spiritually true a physical truth. Those who limit truth to only the physical realm would have called Elisha one of those "name it, claim it," "blab it, grab it" cultists. But in saying such things, they condemn themselves. They show they only consider what they can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel to be reality. They are what the Bible calls "carnal."

When Gehazi's eyes were opened, the Syrians didn't disappear. They were still there. The physical truth was still true, but there was a greater spiritual truth that emerged. True faith doesn't deny physical truth; it just refuses to let physical truth dominate spiritual truth. True faith subdues physical truth to the reality of spiritual truth.

Because Elisha believed in the realities of the spiritual world, he raised his hand and smote all the Syrians with blindness. Then he led the whole Syrian army captive to the king of Israel. Praise the Lord! That's not bad for an old prophet whom carnal people would say was all by himself.

Elisha was not just speaking some wishful statement, hoping that it would become a reality. He knew what was real in the spiritual world, and he controlled his emotions and actions accordingly. There is no indication that Elisha saw the horses and chariots of fire around him. He didn't need to. He believed it. Those who operate in true faith don't need to see with their physical eyes. Their faith is evidence enough.

There was a woman at a campmeeting who had a huge goiter on her neck. She went forward for prayer and knew that she knew she was healed. So, she got up in front of the audience and gave a testimony of her goiter being healed. However, the goiter was still visible. But the people praised God, thinking that the healing would manifest itself shortly.

The next year at the same campmeeting, the woman got up again and praised the Lord for her healing, but there still wasn't any visible proof. This concerned a lot of people, but they didn't say anything. Then the next year, the same thing happened. This was too much for most of the people, and it caused the leaders of the meeting to approach this woman and tell her she couldn't testify of this healing again until the goiter was gone.

The woman told the Lord that she knew He had healed her, and she didn't have to see visible results to believe it. But for the sake of the unbelievers, she asked the Lord to physically remove the growth. It disappeared and the woman showed them what she already knew was true. You can get that strong in faith. Your faith is substance and all the evidence you need. Faith is real.

I've experienced this in my own life. When my youngest son, Peter, died on March 4, 2001, my wife and I spoke our faith and said, "The first report is not the last report." We spoke resurrection life back into Peter's body, and then we headed into town. It was one hour and fifteen minutes from the time we got the call until we got to where Peter was. During that time, I was operating in faith. I remembered prophecies that had not yet come to pass in Peter's life, and therefore, I knew it wasn't time for Peter to die. I rejoiced by faith, seeing Peter alive and well.

My oldest son, Joshua, met me at the door and said, "Dad, five or ten minutes after I called you, Peter just sat up." Thank You, Jesus! This is the point: I didn't rejoice more once I saw Peter raised from the dead than I did while I was still driving. During the drive, I knew Peter was alive, and I was rejoicing with all my might. It was actually anticlimactic when I saw in the physical what I had already seen in the spiritual. Don't get me wrong; I was blessed and I rejoiced to see my son raised up after being dead for five hours. But the physical reality wasn't more real to me than the spiritual reality of faith.

This is the way I live. I know it's not "normal," but I'm not getting "normal" results either. I've been believing big, and there have been big results from that believing. When we moved into our new offices, and when we see the warehouse finished, that was, and will be, anticlimactic. I'm seeing all these things in the spirit now. When they manifest physically, others will be impressed, but I'm impressed now.

I'm not believing for something that isn't real to become real. I've seen into the spiritual realm by faith, and I'm simply making what I've seen in the spiritual world manifest in the physical world. All of the things

I'm seeing with my physical eyes now, I have already seen in my heart. I saw it on the inside before I saw it on the outside. This is a wonderful way to live. This is the normal Christian life. This is walking by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).

 www.awmi.net

Hillsong - Go - with subtitles/lyrics

Who says church is boring?!!

How Can You Praise a Stranger?

A big reason why Christians aren't living as the light of the world is because they don't know their source of power.
How can a lamp give light if it's not plugged in, or if there's no oil or flame?

How can you praise a God you don't know?


Many "Christians" don't know the God they claim they love, they don't know the Jesus they claim is their savior.
Many "Christians" lives don't reflect that they have an intimate relationship with their heavenly father.

As I was praising God tonight I realized how much deeper my worship is after revelation.
When God shows you another side of Himself you are forever changed.
When the 4 living creatures give honor to Him who is on the throne and cry out night and day,
"Holy..."
The 24 elders look up at God and fall right back down and throw their crowns at His feet and cry, "Worthy are You...".  (Rev. 4:8-11)

They do this eternally.

Why do they fall right back down as soon as they look up?  It's because God just showed them another aspect of Himself; they received yet another revelation of the Creator of the World and they can't help but worship Him!

We should be living a life of worship, a life filled with joy and wonder because we are spending time getting to know our God; looking at our God.
Seek and you will find Him! Don't just throw up some prayers here and there throughout the day, set time aside to be with Him.

Jesus is alive and He is living in those who allow Him to.
Jesus is still changing the world and bringing the will of the Father to pass through those who take the time to listen to what He is saying and are obedient to do what He speaks.

Know the God you serve and your times of worship will transform you.
His praise will be on your lips throughout the day and others will want to know who this God is.

The season of JOY unspeakable!!!

...and there you have it!! The cast of glee just preached the gospel!

  This is my favorite Christmas song because it is all about good news! Christ has saved us all from Satan's power! We can enter into resting with these tidings of comfort and joy!

When I hear this song I want to dance and shout and laugh because I'm free.

All I can do is worship and praise God for sending His son to earth and restoring us into right relationship with Him. How awesome is it to know God! How awesome to hear from Him and not have to worry about a thing! I am filled with JOY!!

If you've always wondered about the hype of Christmas, this is it! It's not Santa and presents, it's about a miracle birth of God's son, Jesus! 

Jesus went on to live a perfect life and died as a sacrifice for the whole world's sin.

God required a perfect sacrifice and He already knew that none of us would ever be perfect so He made the way Himself because He loves us, His creation, SOOO much!  He couldn't stand to not have a relationship with us!  

When we accept what Jesus did on the cross and confess that he is the Lord, God's Son, we enter back into perfect relationship with our Father, God.

Now when God looks at us He doesn't see sin because when Jesus died, our sin was washed off of us.

It's like we're all red but when we accept Jesus' bath we all turn white and God sees us as white!

We still sin of course but God doesn't keep track of it because what Jesus did lasts for eternity.

We don't have to keep asking God to forgive us, He already did! Jesus isn't going to come back and die again!

We are now F R E E!!!!!

How much more can I enjoy life now than when my conscience was bogged down.

I always knew something wasn't right, I always knew there was more, then I found it when I started having a relationship with God!

So if you've never had that relationship and you want to, go for it!

Ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life and see what God begins to show you!

It's unreal.

He starts to add his super to your natural and the world becomes a different place.

If you have questions, email me @ 

Josiah_mckenna@yahoo.com

Why not experience this Christmas in its fullness?  This will be your best Christmas ever!  There will be joy overflowing and a thankfulness that is uncontainable!

Jesus coming to this earth is the best thing that has ever happened to this earth and he's going to come back again to take his brothers and sisters home to be with the Father forever.

If you don't want to know God now, why would you even want to go to heaven and spend eternity with a stranger?

If you don't want to know God at all, there is a place with no presence of God, but that place is described vividly as a horrible place.

He is my best friend, and when I'm crazy about somebody I want everyone to know them so I'm sharing this because He's sooo stinkin good to me!!!:) And I know He'll be good to you!!

¹⁹It was God [personally present] in Christ, reconciling and restoring the world to favor with Himself, not counting up and holding against [men] their trespasses [but cancelling them], and committing to us the message of reconciliation (of the restoration to favor).

    ²⁰So we are Christ's ambassadors, God making His appeal as it were through us. We [as Christ's personal representatives] beg you for His sake to lay hold of the divine favor [now offered you] and be reconciled to God.

    ²¹For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become [^[g]endued with, viewed as being in, and examples of] the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness].

2 Corinthians 5:19-21

Madly in Love

As a gentleman
you ask me to dance
I am flattered
and take your hand
I won't take for granted
what a privilege this is
you look into my eyes
and my face erupts in light
Your glory
has made Me beautiful
We begin 
casually
I am just learning this song
You lead gently
with each step to each note
no surprise twirls
there's no need for you to show off
this dance floor is yours
and all who are here already know you
I relax in your polite embrace
and you begin to pull me closer
my heart beats faster
as I feel your breath on my cheek
the answers I once sought
are no longer of relevance
you are proving all I need to know
they can't take their eyes off of us
I've never loved like this before
you whisper of my beauty
you quietly express your delight in me
I want to whisper back
but cannot find words
eloquent enough
to tell you how I feel
Pools fill in my eyes
and spill over behind your back
I am so in love.
I know you're smiling,
and I know you feel it too.
Our light shines like diamonds
and my skin like pearls
then the clock strikes
like a knife to my soul
the hour has come and with it
darkness
you hold my face in your scarred hands,
kiss my forehead and whisper,
"I'm coming back."

Who Are We Fooling? - Brooke Fraser & Aqualung (Lyrics)

Marriage.
I had no idea.
I didn't know what to expect and even if someone had told me everyday everything to expect I still wouldn't have understood.
It is something you must experience to understand and I have been experiencing it for 2 and a half years now.
To my complete surprise it didn't taste like chocolate and smell like roses.
It was like taffy, kind of sweet but so chewy you couldn't really enjoy it like you wanted to because it was so exhausting!
That's how the first 2 years were for me.  I knew it was right and what God had in mind but sometimes I wondered....
This past month my Pastor has been talking about marriage and had a key piece of advice that changed my thinking, marriage isn't supposed to just work, it's supposed to shine
Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church.
It is a prophecy for the world to see.
It is a witness for the world to see.
God, in the beginning made man, the species, not just the man.
Adam was male and female within himself until God pulled Eve out of Adam.
God separated them with full anticipation of bringing them back together.
So in marriage you are one with your spouse and the fullness of God is there.
The only way to make marriage work is to not try to fix anything about your spouse.  I repeat, anything.
YOU WILL NOT CHANGE THEM.
God can, but you can't!
The only person you can change is yourself and that's hard enough.  Try loosing 10 lbs.!

Once you forfeit the game of "Change Your Spouse to be Better" you're on your way to success in marriage.
God calls men to love their woman like Christ loves the church and women to respect and honor their man as unto the Lord.
There is freedom when we focus on our roles. I don't respect my husband because he deserves it, there are a lot of times he doesn't, but I do it because the way to joy and peace is through obedience to the Lord.
I don't deserve his love but he loves me because God told him to.
I used to want to try and manipulate situations to get him to love me more but it always backfired or he'd see right through it so I decided to respect him more instead of manipulate and what do you know, in return he loves me more!

There is only one reason for divorce, selfishness.
That's it.
As Christians we must die to our flesh daily! We take up our cross daily so we should never be living for ourselves but that is quite contrary to what the world teaches us.
Sometimes in the morning I just declare that I am dead.  I say it out loud so Satan and I can hear it.
"I, McKenna, am dead to my flesh.  I am living today by the Spirit alone."
It's simple but it transforms your mind early on, sometimes I put a finger gun to my head and pull the trigger just to solidify my statement.
Now it doesn't matter how my husband acts towards me because I am living by my spirit and it obeys the Word of God so I choose to respect him and not talk bad about him or joke in a way that is disrespectful.
When I do my part and he does his, not for each other but for God, we s h i n e.
God's glory gets involved in our marriage and it shows the world what love is.
The problem is that even Christians don't know what their marriage is really about.  Most people think its about them and their desires but its not.
When the world sees Christians divorce at almost the same rate as unbelievers I'm not surprised that a loving God is a far off fantasy to them.
Marriage is hard if you don't die.
I know that sounds funny but it's true.
The reason married people fight is because they think they deserve what they want.
We don't deserve anything.
God deserves everything.
Most importantly he deserves us to be obedient to Him.
In our obedience He works behind the scenes in our partners and in us so that we become what He has planned for us to become.
So next time you find yourself fighting or wishing your spouse was different get out your finger gun and kill that flesh! Spend time in prayer for them!  Spend time in prayer for you!
Respect him!
Love her!
That is what will cause the necessary change in your relationship.
You might be thinking,
"Oh, McKenna that's too simple!"
Well it is simple.  Boil every situation down and see that the key to a successful marriage isn't complicated.
I'm so glad that this knowledge has sunk down deep into my "knower" so early in my marriage because now there is no reason I shouldn't have a God-glorifying marriage.