God is Preparing YOU!!

PAST PAIN AND PROBLEMS ARE A PLATFORM TO YOUR POTENTIAL – PR TODD BISHOP

PROMOTE PEOPLE ON THE BASIS OF THEIR POTENTIAL NOT ON THEIR PERFORMANCE – GEN COLLIN POWELL

GOD IS A GREAT BAKER... INGREDIENTS ALONE ARE A MESS... MIXED TOGETHER YOU GET SOMETHING DELICIOUS.

- Let me tell you what I know about baking: The main ingredient is flour. Flour is taken from the field and crushed so that it will blend with the other ingredients... milk, eggs, sugar which are also part of the bounty of our Holy Shamba. Ah yes, and flavouring... which make each cake different!

But all of the baking, the preparation happens IN the home. From Kitchen to Table the household feeds and fellowships everyday. But what of those who choose to leave the household to feed and fellowship in foreign places?

Luke 15:9-15 - The Lost Son.

In this familiar story the younger son left his house, carried his inheritance and lost his identity as a son of that house. Let us look closer at some cultural lessons we can learn in this story. Middle Eastern Dads would only release inheritance as they were dying. It was a ritual and a custom. In the African cultures that I have come to understand the process of inheritance is similar.

In our interaction with God we often treat Him as tho He were dying; or at least we want to abandon the intimacy of a relationship and live a happy Christian life. With God we say: “I want what you have.... but I don't want a relationship with you.”

God is preparing his sons, even as they reject the values they grew with, even as they 'go to a far country'. Here is a lesson that I have learned as I interact with the lost son in each of us. When God is shaping us... He must let us go so we can make our own mistakes. But the Father is Waiting for us to “come to himself” or “his senses” or “his right mind”.

Luk 15:17 And when he came to himself...

The Pigpen mixed with Prayers can often do more to turn a lost son than anything else.

How many of us have felt that our lives are a mess? We are doing something that is so far from our destiny.... when will we “come to our right mind? We have used up all the 'stuff' we once had and we yearn for any kind of connection with God. The Happy Clappy songs don't do it for us. Performance is hollow; formula prayers and excited rituals are empty. We long to return to our Father's embrace.

There is only one thing that makes sense to our wounded soul. In biblical terms we need to 'repent' Repentance which means to Change Your Mind¹!

But once you change your mind... how can we change our circumstances? There are several ways but it is well said that our foolish mistakes direct us to our destiny. Our Blunders can be our Blessings. Mistakes and Mentors can shape us... but with Mentors it is so much easier... best of all is the Shaping that comes from our Good Father. It is only when the 'lost sons' discover this that we can then proceed to our journey... which lead us all the way home!

In our parable the younger son “came to himself” when his mind turned to his True Identity. Don't rebuke negative thoughts... they can teach us how to come to ourselves. We don't believe God can throw a thought into our head that can PULL US TO OUR DESTINY. In our own confused mind we say, “Oh but the devil is the dictator of my imagination”. No, no let us arrest this 'stinking thinking' Our imagination is a like a TV screen... we choose what to put on it. If you don't like the pictures your mind produces... CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Let us 'imagine' what was going on in the sons' mind:

• “How many of my father's servants have more than enough to eat?” In his imagination he was looking at pig slop and his desperation he IMAGINED that a servant would have a better life.

• “I will arise and go to Father's House”.... the thoughts return us to our destiny. Even doubts can stop us... but the Father WELCOMES us. And a FRESH START!
• “Father I am not worthy to be called your son”. He has convinced himself of his own worth and NOT how the Father would respond to his return.

Now let us examine this thought process, and how the father's response changed his sons mind. How does the Father respond when a 'lost son' comes back the The Father's House?

• BUT WHO IS YOUR FATHER? We pray to Our Father in Heaven' and our prayer is that His WILL be done 'on earth as in heaven'. So how should the earthly fathers activate the will of the Heavenly Father such that he may send his sons into this world?
• YOUR APOSTOLIC FATHER CAN AND MUST RECOGNIZE THE HEAVENLY FATHERS WILL FOR THEIR SONS.
• RAISE THEM IN THEIR KINGDOM DESTINY!
• AND RELEASE THEM AS KINGDOM AMBASSADORS!
• BUT..WE STOP SHORT... WE TAKE ON A SERVANT MENTALITY.
• WE REHEARSE OUR SPEECHES BUT WE DO THEM IN PRIVATE TO SPEAK TO GOD. We prepare these speeches because God does not love us, as we understand Love [conditional]
• We THINK like Servants... “As a man thinks in his heart so IS he” [Prov 23:7]

Thinks - The Hebrew verb is found here only, and probably means, “as he is all along in his heart, so is he (at last) in act.”

God brings us back home by extending grace to him.... the Father RAN to His son... something Mid East Dads did not do. You might think this is abnormal behaviour... but this is the extravagant Love and Grace of God.

Grace is not something you earn tho the son had a Penitence Plan ['make me as one of your servants']

One of the greatest teachers in the Celtic world, John Scotus Eriugena in ninth-century Ireland, also taught that Christ is our memory. We suffer from the “soul’s forgetfulness,” he says. Christ comes to reawaken us to our true nature. He is our epiphany. He comes to show us the face of God. He comes to show us also our face, the true face of the human soul.

We must rediscover our identity as SONS of the KINGDOM! WE ARE HERE on earth to Reveal the Father's Will.

This leads the Celtic tradition to celebrate the relationship between nature and grace. Instead of grace being viewed as opposed to our essential nature or as somehow saving us from ourselves, nature and grace are viewed as flowing together from God. They are both sacred gifts. The gift of nature, says Eriugena, is the gift of “being”; the gift of grace, on the other hand, is the gift of “well-being.” Grace is given to reconnect us to our true nature. At the heart of our being is the image of God, and thus the wisdom of God, the creativity of God, the passions of God, the longings of God. Grace is opposed not to what is deepest in us but to what is false in us. It is given to restore us to the core of our being and to free us from the unnaturalness of what we are doing to one another and to the earth.

-from Christ of the Celts

There is a very visible and vast difference between living one’s live from your God identity, or from a fallen mindset; the diabolos-fruit has nothing in common with righteousness; neither does it know anything about brotherly love. (The children of the devil; here translated the diabolos-fruit; the typical fruit that the fallen mindset bears. Righteousness, diakaiosune, from dike, two parties finding likeness in each other.) Our love for one another was the topic of conversation from the start! God had nothing less in mind than a loving family!

[CEV]1Jn 3:10 You can tell God's children from the devil's children, because those who belong to the devil refuse to do right or to love each other.

1Jn 3:11 From the beginning you were told that we must love each other.

We need to go from “Walking in Sin” to “Walking as a Son”... and don't just be a “Sunday Son”

>>As sons we are in Right Standing with our Father. Oh what JOY when we are fully reunited with our Father in Heaven.

>>Reminds one of Psa 22:27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him!

Eph 3:15 All beings in heaven and on earth receive their life from him.

Rev 5:13 Then I heard all beings in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea offer praise. Together, all of them were saying, "Praise, honor, glory, and strength forever and ever to the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!"

1μετανοέω -metanoeō Thayer

1) to change one’s mind, i.e. to repent

2) to change one’s mind for better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins