This is for my Christian audience. I would love to be able to afford a different blog for my medical information and then for the rest of my teachings and posts, but for now they’re all in one place. Maybe eventually….
The Jesus Revolution has been all the talk in Christiandom lately because of the Movie that came out about it this past year. I lived through that time as a child, even being “saved” in Greg Laurie’s Riverside, Ca Church. This has given me a unique perspective of what that truly felt like and where I’ve seen the Church go from then until now.
I have prayed for decades that the World would get to experience another truly authentic move of the Holy Spirit again, before the End Times, because I knew that these younger generations have never witnessed that kind of LOVE from many of the institutions since.
I’m not saying every Church has been bad. What I’m saying is that that Revolution never came from inside a church. It was a move of God that was organic and not forced, and it wasn’t something that any man or institution could recreate. The attempts to do so have fallen spectacularly short, even with the greatest of intentions!
Over the past decade or more, God has been giving me revelations and teachings about the times we are living in, and that is one reason why I started my blog. One thing He’s also been impressing upon me though, is that there WILL BE one more authentic revival before the End. It won’t be a Jesus Revolution but it will be the next and last step higher.
It’s The Father Revolution! He sent His Son Jesus, in order to create His everlasting Family. As a parent who has had a child die, I received the revelation of my Father’s gift 28 years ago. It would be much easier for me to lay down my own life for others than to say, “Here, kill my son.”
Yes, through Jesus we are admitted into the Family and Yes, we give thanks, but then what? The whole point is what? It’s not to turn us from sin and save us from hell, although those things are certainly great bonuses! lol
No, the whole point is about our relationships with our Father (My mom calls Him Daddy) and love for our family and all those He brings into our lives!
During the late 1960’s and 1970’s The Jesus Revolution came about at a time when the country, and our world, faced turmoil with regards to race, wars, drugs and hopelessness in our youth.
The “hippies” tried to “find themselves” in every sort of avenue, such as drugs, sex, music, and protests against “the system” of injustice that they were surrounded by. Does this sound familiar to our world today? Not only has it not improved, in many aspects it’s worse.
Finally, many of them found their answers through the new revival of the Holy Spirit in the “Jesus Movement” that started in Southern California, and spread across the globe.
I was a child, raised in that movement, and was given a foundation to understand what authentic love looked like, that I haven’t seen inside the Church as a whole since. Maybe because I WAS a child at the time, I felt it more authentically and deeply, and was even more disillusioned when Church stopped feeling that way any longer. I certainly was bold enough, even as a teen, to call out the leadership who I believed were hypocrites.
There was one occasion, as a teen, when a pastor called me out for smoking. Unfortunately for him, I was very observant and my mother happened to be working with the church, so I said “I’ll quit smoking when you can come back to me after you stop backbiting, judging and causing strife throughout the church! When you show some genuine love, maybe I’ll think you actually care and aren’t on a power trip!”
About 25 years later, when I was in ministry myself, I ran into that old pastor and life had humbled him tremendously. I loved on him and forgave him and we stayed friends until he died.
Now, I probably shouldn’t have spoken that way, but I give myself grace because I was about 16 and I was being completely honest with the person who was supposed to be “leading” but he wasn’t showing authentic love in his leadership position.
My parents continued going to that Church but I left and started attending a different youth group, that was filled with LOVE! That was where God wanted me to be for the next chapter of my Spiritual Journey.
I’m going to give a shout out to Bethesda Temple Youth Group, and the leaders Mickey and Linda Ross! That ministry doesn’t exist anymore but they are still loving on the surf community in our area! They were a big step in my journey.
When we “Go unto Him as a little child”, the things that you are taught are TRUTH. They are not questioned!
Instead, in most Churches, I saw “religion” and people trying to recreate something that wasn’t able to be forced. Most ministers had good intentions and truly wanted to see that move of God again, but for decades the Holy Spirit was quiet.
He was still moving in pockets, like my youth group, and certainly in individuals, but the institutions became business and other motivations took hold. Many tried to profit off aspects of it and became major corporations. As congregants focused attention on individual personalities, those individuals would fall, as ALL humans will fall at times.
As time went on, many Christians turned to the political battle fields and felt they were “doing the Lord’s work” by trying to legislate morality, while losing the truth of Jesus’s main commandments, to love our Father and love Others.
They became “resounding gongs and clanging cymbals” because even if they were speaking some sort of truth, because it wasn’t truly spoken in love, it was just deafening noise to the world, and a form of deception by the devil, to turn our world, and the Church, into Us vs Them.
Those are the people in the Church that the media amplifies and therefore they have caused the World to cringe at the name of Jesus!
Unfortunately, because it’s become Us vs Them, regular Christians who aren’t very mature, feel the need to support the more extreme conservatism in order to be on one side, instead of speaking up and saying that both sides are missing THE POINT of Christ Following!
The one prophecy in the Bible that always confused me the most was that the whole World will turn against Christians. How could that possibly happen when the majority of the World identified as Christians?
Then about 8 years ago I woke up to the thought “The Church and the ‘Spirit of Religion’ in it will cause the World to turn on ALL Christians. Just as Religion killed Jesus in His day, the same Spirit will be inside the Churches and cause the World to hate His Followers.” That will be ALL Christ Followers, not just the ones preaching false doctrines, and lacking our Father’s love!
The Bible talks about this very thing happening before Christ’s return but I hadn’t understood it until now. It was shocking to me and I still couldn’t imagine the truth of it. I only shared it with my family and I did send it to one pastor that I respect. He said “we should have lunch” but that never happened. No fault on anyone but that’s where that stands. I did share it though.
In just the years since I woke up with that word, I’ve watched it happening. The first big incident was Charlottesville, and then the dominoes began to fall, as many “religious“ people began to cling to the extreme far right in this country. The term “compassionate conservative“ doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
I will NEVER stop speaking the name of Jesus, even to those whose skin crawls when they hear it, but now it’s even MORE IMPORTANT that I show a different type of His LOVE and my Father’s LOVE! Now, there is so much assumption of hate and of judgement to overcome, in order for the World to see any light!
I’ve seen many people hurt others in the name of Jesus, and what they claim to be love for others, but it’s used as a weapon, not as Jesus intended.
Over the last decade+, as I have been outside the institution of Church, I’ve actually grown much closer to Jesus and more importantly to my Father. I have always understood that salvation came through the Son but I, and many Christians, had/have missed the whole point.
The whole point of Jesus, as a gift, and the whole purpose of our existence, is in order to experience a love relationship with our Father! Period.
I’ve actually told people that “I can tell you the whole point of your life but I can’t reveal it to you.” It’s a revelation knowledge that only He can reveal.
What I can say is that I believe that the next revival through the Holy Spirit is going to be the Father Revolution. I believe that He is being revealed inside the hearts and spirits of the most unlikely people, all around the world already.
I am not saying that some Churches won’t choose to be a part of that Revolution but I am saying that it will happen even if they choose not to.
Even now I know of a whole move of God going on on Social Media, for people who have found themselves outside the institutions but having never lost faith. It’s actually grown stronger. There’s still fellowship too, just not in the ways the institutions approve of.
Many mainstream leaders in various denominations have attacked these Christians as being deceived and heretics, etc. I’ve seen most of these people admit that they may be deceived on some things but not the Essential Doctrine of Jesus. They also pray daily, as I do, against deception and to keep us humble before our Heavenly Father. Not many of the attackers pray they same things for themselves.
The main thing that I’ve seen in most of these people has been a DEEP desire to know their faith in Jesus better and to pray against their own deception. It can be a scary place when you’ve been surrounded by a Church system your whole life, even being in a leadership position, and then for some reason you find yourself an outsider.
Sometimes it’s by choice and sometimes it’s not. For me it was my health but now I can see how God allowed that to happen, in order to help me see some things more clearly.
I was judged terribly by most in the church I had attended. I didn’t understand my rare diseases at that point so how could I explain it to them? Without a “valid reason“, I was deemed backslidden. Then “out of sight, out of mind.” I only still know a handful now, but I’ve forgiven everyone because now I can see that it was God’s plan. He had me where I needed to be.
I’ve also seen a lot of them have their own judgement of me fall back upon them and it brought me NO JOY! It was heartbreaking actually and I often reached back out to them, if they needed help or wanted it from me. I’ve only had one actually apologize but my forgiveness was not predicated on them asking. It was obedience to God, not based on my emotions.
I was talking with my husband and almost every point that I was making about what Christians SHOULD be doing and acting like, came flowing out like a River. The way the Church (broader institutions) SHOULD be acting has become all twisted up in deception. They have lost the point, and this was all prophesied thousands of years ago. Again, it’s not ALL but it’s the ones that seem to make the headlines as representatives of the Church as a whole.
Many scriptures that Churches use in order to judge the World were never meant for the World, they were meant for Christ’s Followers.
When Jesus talked, in Matthew 7, about the difference between the “wide path and gate that leads to destruction”, He WASN’T talking about sinners in the World! He WAS TALKING ABOUT RELIGION!
How many Churches take out this scripture to point at the World and leave out the context that it’s actually about THEM? He’s not speaking about destruction because of sin in the World. He was talking about deception inside the CHURCHES!
In the same chapter He talks about not judging the speck in someone else’s eye, but removing the log in your own. He talks about people falling before Him and saying “Didn’t I preach in YOUR name? Didn’t I cast out demons in YOUR name?” and He will say to them “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”
Obviously here, he is NOT talking to the World! He is talking about the Religious people in the End of Times. He is speaking directly to the Church today, not the World.
He said that “The gate is narrow” that leads to life. That narrow gate is through doing the two things that Jesus said were the most important commandments.
They were to Love our Heavenly Father with our whole heart, soul and mind, through the gift of “salvation” (becoming a child in His family) in Jesus, and then loving Others. ALL others. I’ve written some of this in my blog on “Brothers and Sisters” and how the Family of God should operate.
One of the last teachings in this chapter of Matthew is also one that He’s been hammering away in my head and heart for the last 10-15 years. “You will know them by their fruit”. I’ve taught on the Gifts of the Spirit vs Fruits of the Spirit and this is the one thing that Jesus does tell us that we ARE to judge.
I’m not talking about judging a particular person’s “sins” or their hearts before God but we ARE to judge the Fruits that are produced by their teachings, their actions, and in their lives.
This is especially true regarding leaders that you decide to follow. Have they become distracted by the politics of today and forgotten that the people are the most important part?
Do they stir anger and divisiveness or are they at Peace knowing that their Heavenly Father isn’t surprised by anything in this World and their mission is to introduce people to His Love, not to be the morality police?
Are they teaching you how to know your Father’s heart and His love for both you and the others that He’s called you to authentically love?
One thing I have witnessed is that a lot of Christians have not been taught to know their value and worth, as a child of the King. How can they authentically love others, as they love themselves, when they don’t know HOW to love themselves?
Are those that you follow gentle and kind, even with (or especially with) those they may disagree with?
Are they teaching about the days that we’re living in, not with fear and wrath, but in the knowledge that, yes, it’s going to be difficult but that through His Prophecy, we know that He knows the End from the beginning and that He wins. Nothing surprises Him, so we should be at peace!
When we stay in His will and in His love for Him and Others, then we win too. That IS the “Narrow Gate”!
Our ministry and purpose in life, as Christ Followers, is to live a life that is pleasing to our Father, working on the logs in our own eyes. Then, when someone else is struggling in their life, they can look to us and see that we have something different. Somehow, we have the Fruits of His Spirit in our lives and they might ask us how.
They also know that we are a SAFE PLACE to open up to. We won’t judge them or force our beliefs on them.
I have DEEP and loving friendships with people of all faiths or no faith at all. I completely respect their intelligence and intentions, and they respect, trust, and love me back! Their journey is between them and God, not them, ME, and God!
I don’t feel any urgency to “save them”! No person has ever “saved“ anyone’s soul but Jesus and I am NOT HIM!
We know what we know and our lives should show it, without ever having to say a word. When I’m asked, I speak, but not before I’m invited and have earned the respect to share. Teaching here, on my blog, is different because people can choose to read what I have to say or not. I’m not forcing anyone.
God doesn’t need salesmen!
He’s not a corporation with a marketing task force or business development department. He’s fully capable of revealing Himself to anyone and everyone, all by Himself!
He simply ALLOWS US the privilege to be a part of His plan, as He’s developing His character in us along the way!
Just like in an earthly family, He gives His children tasks and objectives, depending on their maturity, in order to help them grow up and to help the family function it’s best.
He’s not going to ask a 2 year old to do what an 18 year old should be doing! He doesn’t love either of them any less, but he does require more of the children who should have learned more by now, and He has more grace for the ones that are still little.
That’s why we can’t judge another person’s heart! There may be an 80 year old man who’s been sitting in the pews his whole life but spiritually he’s still a toddler. Then there could be a 20 year old who’s been through tremendous suffering and God has given them maturity beyond their earthly years.
Unfortunately, some immature children get into the “know it all” stage with their siblings and cause strife in the family dynamics sometimes. They forget that the parents know what’s best for ALL of the children, even the “know it alls.“ I’ve written on that topic too!
Just remember, this life is “but a vapor” and then we have eternity. I can endure anything in this life because I know how brief it is.
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