Waupaca Stirring,  Feb 16, 2007

Fear ~ None in this season, in this hour.

Listen beautiful Bride,

I couldn’t sleep last night.  I was so excited.  I was excited about seeing YOU. 
To hear YOU!   To touch YOU!  BECAUSE YOU ARE THE BRIDE OF CHRIST!  
You are HIS LOVE to a hurting world!
It was like 18 Christmas time’s rolled into one!
Sleep was impossible ~ I kept imagining the beauty of the Worshipping Bride!
 You are Love vessels from the King of Love!  

 Ho!

Valentine season ~ makes us think of love between people. 
Mooshie, gooshie, wonderful feeling.  Love does that.

Watch a romantic movie, hear a love song, read a romance novel,
(make it historical fiction from a Christian bookstore and you can get away with it!)
~ Love ~ it overwhelms you with a desire to experience more.

That is because He designed us to be lovers. 

 He is King of the mooshie, gooshie, wonderful feeling, Love Department! 
 He calls it ~ His Kingdom.

~ so this season has me thinking of love as in His Kingdom
and I know it should be mooshie, gooshie, and wonderful feeling.
But ~ I don’t always find it.  Do you?  Do you really?

Like it’s a missing ingredient in most Christian circles.

I wonder why I, being a Christ-like, light-bearer, don’t slosh in the goosh.
Why don’t I waddle with the moosh? ~ all the time?
~ pretty much, because my love department is experiencing  “empty shelves syndrome”

Are you with me so far?

Explore 3 reasons why Kingdom people might experience empty love shelves.

1) We gave it all away. 
I’ve never met anyone, besides Jesus, who has done that,
 so I don’t think giving love away is an earthly issue.
2) Our shelves were never stocked.
Regrettably there are some Kingdom people who live in a “never-stocked” condition.
The salvation experience does not always fill the love-starved.
So those who are born again, but deny the power, are often running on empty.
Empty begets empty begets empty.
You must position yourself for filling.  No riding in on someone else’s coat tail.
No piggy back!
You must position yourself for continuous filling.  This is a thing you must do.  To allow Father access to your love chamber is a must.
I’m not talking about attending a powerful conference, or attending a wonder-filled church.  It’s not about some situation or some person filling you. It’s about Him.
This continuous filling is like Zech 4:12 where the 2 living olive branches pour out golden oil continuously, so that if you are sitting in a spirit-filled service or in a prison ~ in solitary confinement ~ you are still being continuously filled.
 Empty begets empty.  If you don’t put yourself in the “pour” position, you will have nothing
  to give to others except your own natural talents and abilities.
  And that is not Kingdom.  That is frustration and gross misrepresentation.

3) Our shelves were stocked but love was forfeit or stolen.
Matthew 13:12  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance.  Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.
Reference is to: The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom.
 
How do we position ourselves for love to be stolen, to be forfeit?
    
When I think on this, I’m look for answers on the other side of love.
The opposite of love.  Hate?

***************************************
I’ve done some airport time lately.  It used to be a pleasant experience.
3oz limit in ziplock bags (why ziplock?  Do airports own ziplock stock?)
Continual announcements of the Homeland Security Advisory System
Always on Orange Alert ~ high risk of terrorist attack.  And I’m thinking, Appleton?
What a fear-filled atmosphere.
***************************************

Here is a key.  If not love-filled, we are fear-filled.  Only 2 kingdoms to choose from.

FEAR is the true opposite of love.    Hate is only a passionate bi-product of fear.

As love is the manner of God to His people, so fear is the manner of satan,
As love is the fruit of God’s Kingdom, so fear is the fruit of satan’s.

Fear is satan’s best and most supreme tool
because people fear anything they don’t understand or  haven’t experienced. 

*  Every dark era in history has been inspired by fear.   Selah.  Pause and think on that…..

Fear manifests itself in as many ways as there are people.
 Anger.  Whinning.  Manipulation.  Stress.  Over-protection.  Paranoia.   Revulsion.
 Unreasonable limits.  Over-reaction.   Intolerance.  Rigidity.  Panic.  Intimidation.
 Fear is putting the value of being right, over the value of being.
 Fear’s goal is to block you from being who God created you to be,
 defeating your personal destiny and destroying your personal inheritance.
 
Empty love shelves ~ where we are forced to rely on our own merits.
  This is where we again give Jesus a bad name.

It’s robbery, this lack of love.  These empty shelves.
 Satan came to kill, steal and destroy ~ us and our love King.

The list of things to be afraid of is endless and mindless.

We fear terrorists, global warming, computer viruses, any water not in a bottle,
(would someone explain how putting it in a bottle makes it safer?) 
We fear various foods… mad cow, foul deer, foul fowl, and spinach. 
(The mid-west in not a good place to live if you want to fear foods.
You need to live on either coast to really keep up to date on it.)
We fear false doctrine, no doctrine, extreme doctrine.
We fear our President is wrong.  Or that he is right.  Or that Hillary will be next. (?)
We fear post-trib, pre-trib, trib, trib… here a trib, there a trib, everywhere a trib trib..
We fear Harry Potter mania and witchcraft cartoons.
We fear that the young people will be bald and stupid from excessive hair coloring.
We have fears of getting old (hello…anybody beat this one yet?)
getting fat, having dandruff, homosexuals, heterosexuals, anything sexual…  :^)

Are you feeling hostility toward me yet? 
Check it out…  you got a disturbed little religious fearing spirit there.  I know, me too!  Example:       As I typed this I refused to capitalize the word satan, truth.
This gave my computer hissy-fits. 
So do I reprogram spell-check to fear capitalizing his name? 
Is this even a reasonable mind game?

Fear lives among us.  All of us.    Being a Christian does not make us immune.

Fear is a hellish sword we swing that severs our beautiful body!

God asks for unity and we respond with division. 
He warns us, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” 
We shrug our shoulders and wait for the other Christians to join our camp.
He says, “Fear not!”   But we are rooted to our particular safety zone, barricaded by fear.

Listen, if we unite only with those who share a similar fear tour own, we are already defeated!

Anyone who “fears not” in a similar fashion becomes unwanted, uninvited and insulted.
The fearless are soon discredited with labels like  ~ “arrogant, ignorant, militant and errant”.

Unity through fear is a distortion ~ a mutant!

Fear births a deformed body no matter how much unity is produced because Father commands us to birth our unity in love.

The Old Testament gives glimpses of Kingdom people in unity and disunity.
Jericho’s wall fell down because of intense and absolute unity.
  Do you think maybe some folks wondered about Joshua’s sanity in it?
 The 40 years desert wandering was rift with disunity.
The Book of Acts is filled with examples of the sacrificial unity of love.  Pentacost.
 Yet unity based on fear drove the disciples, His Kingdom, out of town ~
chased them from city to city.

Fear is not a flower in His Bride’s bouquet.  Never!

We are his Bride!  In this season, in this very hour ~ we are the objects of His Love! 
Nothing can tamper with that fact.  Nothing can empty our love shelves ~ unless we bow to fear.

Who does your particular brand of Christianity fear?
Those who speak in tongues or those who don’t?
Those who worship too fast or those who worship too slow?
Do you fear leadership?  Does your leadership fear you?

Does activity concerning the 5 fold ministry freak you out?

This hour and season is a celebration of His unity through the 5 fold.  Just embrace it!
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Trekkie fans ~
The Vulcan greeting ~ pastor, teacher and evangelist vs prophet and apostle. 
It will never work.  It is not unity, it is fear.  It is a false strength and accomplishes nothing.

A game called, who’s the spider?
Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and way.
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffet away.
Fear.

Along came a spider, who sat down beside her, and she taught him the true living way.
The Teacher

Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and he entered a born again day.
The Evangelist

Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and she comforted him just the right way.
The Pastor

Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and God gave all his secrets away.
The Prophet

Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and planted a church in the fray.
The Apostle

Should I be afraid of the spider?
If you are at odds with one of these spiders, I suggest you have a fear issue going on.
Fear is not part of your fabric or identity.  Fear should never control you.

Try this example.  You are on the highway to heaven, and it is replete with parking lots.  So many!
And so many people try to get you to pull into their lot!  And they are parked there over some incident they can’t forgive, some hurt they can’t lay down, some trust issue that was broken, some say only the prophet..  so all prophets pull in there.  Some say only through pastors.. so a pastor parking lot is formed.

For various reasons, all linked to fear, they park and wait.  Rusting to death. 
They entice you to join them, thinking somehow sheer numbers in their lot will validate their fear.  
Ain’t gonna happen. 

We need to develop a killer instinct for fear because fear has a killer instinct for us.

Not casting aside reason ~ if the stove is hot, I’m not touching it.
Not promoting simplistic theory ~ for evil does exist.
  We need to deal with it without fearing it.

To overcome evil with love is the way of the Kingdom. 
Jesus said to fear not and to love one another.

Does this “love unity” rather than “fear unity” mean I am preaching a “one church” theology?   pause…  smile….

Could it be?    One church?  One body?  One head?      Imagine that. 

Does that “unity” mean we all look the same?  Like robots?
Should we not all smell like love?
Many expressions but one love.

This worship team comes from 5 different churches and 3 different towns.
Imagine that. 

We so need each other.  We can’t afford to fear each other anymore. 

Choose you this day who you will serve…  fear?  Or love?

Bride of Christ ~  
You look like love!  You smell like love!  You feel like love!  You sound like love! 
You taste like love!  You are LOVE!

 And you do not have to be afraid.
 Your love defeats and destroys all the enemy has intended.
 Your love releases joy over the 5 fold scary spiders!
 Your love unites His Kingdom.
 Your love restocks love shelves until it spills out all over the world!

Your love casts out all fear.  
You are beautiful.
You are powerful.
You are filled with every good and perfect gift, including love that conquers fear..
         1 John 4:18

Altar ~
Those needing to surrender to Jesus and enter God’s Kingdom ~
Those needing to defeat and destroy the enemy ~
Those needing to rekindle love, to restock barren shelves ~
Those needing to forgive others, even “spiders”, and release them into their destinies ~
Those needing to confront fear and put it under their feet ~
Those wanting prayer of any kind ~