What Are You Tapping

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Christianity, faith, Family, Feelings, Image, Party, relationships, Society, Thoughts, Truth

Before I became a Christian, I used to go to parties at people’s houses. At those parties, you would pay for a cup, and then with that cup you could drink whatever beverage they had bought. But, to do this it required you going to the tap, which produces the beverage you were seeking to consume. Depending on the number of “tappers” the host had, would depend on the number of kegs that were tapped at a time. So, you would see kegs without a tap and know either that keg was empty or it was yet to be tapped. No matter how many kegs the host purchased, eventually, the beverage would run out, for those kegs, even though they were tapped, were temporary, there was an end to what was inside of them.

I share that experience because I was listening to a podcast on the way home from the gym today and the preacher, who is well known, very passionate and has a large church, was speaking on being planted in somewhere bigger than you are, so you can grow the greatness inside of you. He said, that small places grow small people, that is why many, despite their titles in small churches, left the small church, to come and sit in his church, because they knew they needed to be planted in something bigger in order to grow. His passion, makes you want to shout AMEN, but the spirit of God spoke to me and revealed that anything we tap other than God Himself is temporary and will eventually run out.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

God has planted eternity in our hearts, so anything you tap that is not God Himself is an idol and it will eventually run dry. Remember when you bought that new car, you were satisfied temporarily; remember when you got that new job with that big salary, then over time you began to want something more; do you recall when you got married, why over time did you long for a deeper love, more passion, something more in that relationship, that the other person was not capable of providing for you? The reason is because God has set eternity in our hearts, He has created us with an insatiable desire for more. Some may call it greed, but I call it eternity and I have learned that no matter the size of the church, no matter the amount of money you make, no matter how big the house is, or how amazing the marriage may be, there is something in our hearts that is eternal and only God can meet that need.

We tap so many temporary things and then wonder why we struggle, fight and compete with each other. James 4:1-3 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” You are tapping the temporal and it’s not satisfying!

God has created you to be an eternal being, but to tap into your identity, your design, your image, you must tap into the God of heaven and earth, the Lord of all creation, the Master of everything. Your battle is not with other people, it is with yourself and God. The Israelites rejected the invitation to tap into God Himself and instead chose someone temporal, Moses to tap into, which eventually led them into tapping into another temporal thing, the golden calf. We do the exact same thing, we tap into people, thinking they have what we are looking for, we tap into stuff, thinking it will satisfy our longing, we tap into a company or church, thinking that is the answer to my eternal itch. But the truth is, the only One who satisfies, the only Person who is lacking nothing, the only thing that can quench the insatiable need inside of you for more is God, Yahweh, Yeshua, because He alone is eternal. Until you tap into God, you will always be tapping something temporal and you will live a life of want, lack, or deficit.

The question I want to ask you, honestly, what are you tapping? If it’s something temporal, it will run out, but if you tap into God, He is eternal and to Him and His kingdom, there is no end, that is where I am tapping into and I am still hungry for more, but there is no end, so I can stay hungry, because I tapped Who I was made in the image of and so can you. When you tap into the temporary, it is like sugar, it will give you a spike of satisfaction, but it won’t be long until you are seeking something new to tap, but if you tap into the Lord, it is like tapping into the eternal in which there is no end.

The Transgender Truth

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Children of God, church, fruit, Identity Issues, Image, Prodigals, Roots, Transgender

Hot button subjects are not waters I like to wade into, but they are crossing over into mainstream life which will begin to alter the way we think if we do not hit it head on. Deception has a way of subtly sneaking into our thoughts, through music, movies, books, newspapers, and television shows. Whenever you add a message to music or a movie it solidifies that message in our thoughts in a way that just reading does not do. So, with this issue going public, I decided it was time to address the truth about the transgender issue.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.” (The Message)

I like the way the Message bible translates this verse, because most Christians are really good at recognizing whether they believe fruit is good or bad and if it is bad they want to pluck it, throw it away and think by doing so it is gone. But the reality of a tree is that bad fruit is the product of a rotten root, the issue is not the fruit, it is the root. That is why in this translation it says, God goes to the root of things, for it you go to the root, you can change the fruit. So, as this pertains to the transgender issue what we are seeing is the fruit of a deeper unseen root.

The root of the transgender issue is one of identity. Transgender people are manifesting because people have an identity crisis. They don’t know who they are. But the root goes even deeper, the reason they are having an identity crisis is because people have grown up fatherless. Fathers instill identity, so when fatherlessness is rampant, identity issues will take root and the fruits they produce are countless, but the root is an identity issue that came from fatherlessness. Now this is not a slam on men, for most men are products of fatherlessness themselves and they too have their own identity issue, that is why they don’t themselves know how to be fathers.

I believe the reason God is releasing the revelation of the Father, that songs are rising about Him being a good good Father is because, we are so in need of a Father, who will instill identity into us as sons and daughters. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 we see the 5-fold restoration of God, the first thing a Father restores is relationship, no shame, no condemnation, no questions, no scolding, just an embrace, a restoration of the relationship. Next we see the restoration of identity, by the placing of the robe on the son, I Peter 2:9 says, we are a royal priesthood, the robe is a symbol of identity. Once the relationships is restored, the Father restores our identity. The only way this happens is by spending time with the Father. When we are fatherless, we fear getting close to the Father, so we talk about Him, sing about Him, but do not let our hearts get close to Him.

Jesus said, You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from Me (Matthew 15:18). The invitation from heaven is to come near, come to your senses, you are a son, you are a daughter of God, every human being was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), if you would turn toward Him He will run to you. Prodigals are not in the streets only, they are in the church and if we would return, we could show those in the streets who our Father is and then He would restore their identity as a son or daughter designed in His image. The transgender truth is not about malicious sexual, deviant or heinous sin, it is a cry for identity, it is a call for someone to show them the Father!

Made for Glory

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glory, Image, shame, worship

Psalm 8:3-5 “When I consider the heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have made, what is man, that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than angels and have covered him with glory and honor.”

During worship last night, I was invited to come into the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. It is a place where the only thing that matters is God Himself and as I came into that place, I heard the Lord say to me, “You were made for glory!” As I listened to the Lord speak these words over me, I knew it was not just about me, it was about humanity, people. God made us as people for glory. But almost instantly during this time in worship, I also heard Romans 1:23 “And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like man, and to birds and four footed beasts, and creeping things.”

It was as though everything stopped in my head other than these two phrases, we were made for glory, but we have exchanged that glory for an image.

It is no secret that Christianity does not carry the influence it has in the past; it is known to most that we have fallen short of who we were created to be; so the problem is not the issue we need to discuss, rather what we need to know is what is the solution. I believe part of the answer is that we need to recognize that we were made for glory. For too many years in church we have been taught that God does not share His glory with anyone, but He says in Psalm 8 and Genesis 1 that we were made for glory. So, we can no longer use this as an excuse as to why we are not living in glory.

The truth is, we are not clear what glory is. Glory means high renown or honor; magnificence, great beauty; take great pride or pleasure in. This sounds like we give our kids glory and so why can’t God give us His children glory. We are reminded constantly that God loves us, He is for us, nothing can separate us from Him, so why are we so afraid to live in glory? God Himself is so big that if you live in the glory He made you for, you will not detract from His glory, but actually add to it.

We were made for glory, it is time we stop exchanging our glory for shame. The only way to live out who you were made to be is to take off your animal skins that you have made to hide yourself; stop making excuses as to why you can’t; and start believing that God is not a man that He should lie, but rather He is truth, He does not say things He does not mean. We were made for glory and the world needs to see us living out our glory. The only way to know what that looks like for you, is to spend time alone with Him. He made you for glory, so you can come near Him in glory. You are made of the same material as He is.

The way for us as Christians to begin influencing societal transformation is to live like we were made, made for glory!

Who’s In Charge, Really?

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Christianity, Created, Image, In Charge, kingdom of God, maturity

Genesis 1:27-28 “So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”

When God created humanity, male and female, every human being, He commanded us to be in charge, but in charge of what? In charge of the earth. As human beings we are given the command to be in charge of the earth. When Jesus died on the cross and went to hell, He came back with the keys of the kingdom, what are these keys? They are for human beings to be restored back to the original plan of God, which is for us to be in charge of the earth. Now the earth is under our control, at least it is supposed to be. So, why are the vast majority of Christians not in charge, if this is a command from God?

I believe we are not in charge, because we don’t know how to be in charge. We think we know how to do something’s, but for many that is even iffy. Most people second guess themselves, because they do not see the evidence of what they think they have faith for (Hebrews 11:1) or what they are called to do. If the lack of confidence was not enough to deal with, we have to add the self-deception (Galatians 6:1) that we have bought into which will not allow us to face the reality of how much we are really a slave to. So, how do we restore, or get back to God’s original command to us, which is to be in charge?

We need to start with repentance! We need to repent of a powerless mindset, one that says, we can’t, we shouldn’t, we won’t. If you listen to Christians speak, you realize how powerless they feel over their situation, but we are not powerless, we are the most powerful people on the face of the earth. However, to be powerful, we must repent, we must change the way we think, Jesus said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here. Well, the same words He is saying today, the kingdom of heaven is here, right now on earth, and unless we repent, we are going to miss it. So, to start you have to repent, to do that you must read the Bible and believe it. Many people listen to the word of God, but very few learn from it, that is why we are powerless.

So, here is the entry point for being in charge, we must learn to be in charge of ourselves, before we are going to be in charge of a family, a city, a nation, a company or a church. You and I have to realize we are not a slave to our choices, we are in charge of our choices. We are not slaves to our emotions, we are in charge of our emotions, we are not slaves to our money, we are in charge of our money, we are not slaves to our appetites, we are in charge of our appetites, at least we are supposed to be.

John 8:32 says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!” In the movie A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise says, “you can’t handle the truth.” You have a choice, are you going to face the truth that someone other than you is in charge, that is why you are driven by _______________ or a slave to ____________________, and repent so you can start being in charge. Or are you going to live in the perpetual self-deception, believing something that is not in the Bible, because you can’t handle the truth?

The question remains….who’s in charge, really?