Drawn toward the Light

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darkness, encouragement, experience, following Jesus, forgiveness, God's love, inspiration, Jesus Christ, light, Light and Darkness, sin, thought life, Walking in the Light

After many gray days lately, last week the sun came out for a short time again. Swimming under an almost clear blue sky in my favorite outdoor pool, I suddenly got aware of the fact that all human beings, even most animals and plants are drawn toward the visible light. These few sunrays made the water sparkle and glitter both on the surface and underneath. Due to the warm temperature inside (30 °C, i.e., 86 °F) the pool soon turned into a vapor bath. As the cold Eastern winds blew stronger, playing a funny game with these continually shaping clouds of steam, my heart was rejoicing over the ingenuity of our Creator. It was really an amazing spectacle!  🙂

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How to water dry land spiritually

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, fellowship, Fellowship with God, following Jesus, God's voice, knowing God, prayer, Satan, Seeking God, sheep, T.A. Sparks, wilderness

Spiritual wildernesses do exist. Dry spells where you are tempted to believe you pray to a wall as nobody seems to hear your requests, they are real to the one who gets closer and closer to God. As illogical as it might seem, people who do not really seek more from God have less problems with prayer as they do not really expect God to answer them, either, when they keep clinging to pre-formulated prayers and hymns. However, can our relationship with our Creator ever be business as usual…?  🙄 In fact, if we truly want to feed on the living God, we must quit our comfort zone and cherished traditions because seeking God is always an adventure! An adventure that can be both exhausting and rewarding, unnerving and intriguing. Or as T. Austin Sparks put it so well,

Under A Foreign Yoke

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darkness, deception, discerning the spirits, dying to self, experience, God's goodness, heart, light, mind, prayer, Satan, sin, spiritual attacks, temptations, the, the cross, thoughts

Have you ever felt an increasing uneasiness as you pondered on the possibility to cave in to somebody’s pleading because you knew in your heart it would be the wrong thing to do? I do not know whether this is only a people pleaser problem, but I assume I am not the only one who is struggling with these thoughts and temptations.

Two Kinds of Rest

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bondage, burden, discerning the spirits, duties, encouragement, entering his rest, freedom, relief, rest, the new self, the old self

To be honest with you, sometimes I would rather write theoretically about any topic I have only heard of than always sharing what I have just experienced with God. If I could talk about another great revelation of sorts, okay, everybody would like to share or read such stories. But another lesson learned through worries, doubts, fears, stress and suffering? Therefore, what I ask myself often is this, ‘Who really wants to read my testimonies about the latter anyway?’… Only those who can relate, I guess.

The Secret Fundament of Being Useful for God

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desert, discerning the spirits, dying in the wilderness, dying to self, eternal fire, experience, fellowship, fire, flesh, following Jesus, God's love, honesty, living water, Moses, natural life, revelation, Roger T. Forster, T.A. Sparks, true ministry

Roger T. Forster, whose article “Making History with God” I found in T. Austin Sparks’ library online, would write,

“God is writing history, but He is drawing men into fellowship with Himself as He does so, making them the occasion for a chapter in His book of the story of humanity. There is a chapter for Noah, a chapter for Abraham, a chapter for Moses and many others, and a chapter for you and me. He calls us to share in His great declaration, ‘I am bringing to pass what I am bringing to pass’, encouraging us to be like Moses, a hole in the ground filled with His living water, or a common bush, aflame with the unquenchable fire of His love, so that He can use us in His great movement of liberation.”

https://www.austin-sparks.net/mags/ttm01-5.html

“Hath God really said…? “

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accusations, adultery, condemnation, deception, discerning the spirits, divorce, doubts, exhortation, experience, faith, false guilt, following Jesus, God's voice, peace, prayer, Satan, sin, the new self, the old self, thought life, Zarah Leander

Maybe, you are familiar with what has been going on in me lately. Imagine, after careful consideration aka prayer, you finally do something of which you are convinced that it must be God’s will for your life. I am not thinking of big things here, only of some small obedience of ours. As long as you are indecisive, you might feel weak, even confused. But as soon as you decide to give in to God’s tender ‘nudgings’, you sense some supernatural strength coming back to you. As you follow His leading and do what was needed, eventually, His peace surrounds you to show you His pleasure. How wonderful an experience! 😊 But then…

Everyone can hear the Voice of God

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dreams, encouragement, experience, God's love, Heaven and Hell, Jesus Christ, joy, light of life, ransom, redemption, righteousness by faith, salvation, sin, suffering, visions

As my closer walk with God through Jesus in 1995 had just begun, one of the first books He nudged me to read was the Book of Job, again and again. It was not ‘fun’ to read but important for me to know beforehand about these years of suffering and pain that were still ahead of me back then. I decided to copy and paste a longer Scripture that deals with the WHY and HOW God speaks to ALL people in this world through dreams, visions, and more often than not through adverse circumstances. To Job who would think he was a righteous man Elihu said,

Disclosing Deeds of Darkness

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being born again, Christianity, church, darkness, deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, eyes of the heart, false spirits, God's voice, Jesus Christ, light, poems, prayer, preaching, prophecy, separation from religious spirits, separation from the world, worldly spirits

Photo by Sarah Schuberth

To be honest with you, although I was hell-bent on going to bed, quite some time after midnight I felt the strong ‘nudge’ from God to re-publish an older poem of mine, maybe, even two. I do know that this is not my poetry blog and most of my readers prefer reading blog articles instead. Nonetheless, I want to emphasize here, once again, the danger of cherishing any kind of fellowship or friendship, not only with worldly people (which should be clear), but also with those people who are used to meeting on a regular basis where one ought to hear from God. As I have often made clear before, a spirit being who has been birthed from above will, like God, not be predictable in their speaking, writing and doing. We are like the wind if we listen to God’s leading only. So, if we really want to have spiritual relationships first with God and then with one another, too, we do not only need to go away from the world and its pleasures, we should also say ‘Bye bye’ to any regular and obligatory gathering, whatever form it might take (attending church, home church meeting, connecting via internet etc.). The reason for doing so is that we cannot submit to God’s unpredictable leading and to predictable tradition (like preaching or listening to a sermon every Sunday and singing hymns in determined order) at the same time! Either we obey God and cannot be figured by anyone who does not yet have His Spirit, or we submit to another spirit that can be put in a box, a spirit that can be controlled by us. It might be easier and feel better to go on attending meetings with other Christians, but if God does not show up in such a gathering because His Spirit is quenched there, who are we really looking for? 🙄

When time stands still

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distractions, Endurance, experience, following Jesus, hecticness, joy, pain, peace, prayer, rest, separation from the world, suffering, the cross

The other day I found a German saying on my Catholic kitchen calendar I did not throw away immediately because it prompted me several times to stop and read it again. Indeed, whenever I reread these words, I feel the confirmation of its truth at once.

“Sit back and do nothing. There is a time when silence heals.” (Gerhard Engelsberger)

Since I do not want to write another entry about the importance of (accepted) suffering for our transformation into the image of Christ, I want to simply tell you something about the prerequisites and the effects of withdrawing from this world’s hectic fussing and ramblings. Actually, it is not only necessary to find a quiet place (which is more difficult in a big city), we need to also nun ourselves from being occupied with everything that does NOT point us to God. Easier said than done, dear brothers and sisters! Whoever tried that before might know how difficult it is.  🙄

“Self, Stop Striving and Enter His Rest!”

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Creativity, Creator, discerning the spirits, entering his rest, experience, following Jesus, James A. Fowler, peace, prayer, quietness of heart, restlessness, stress

Star Trails August 2017 (Photo by Paul Schuberth)

This title seems to be a short formula which somehow sprang out on me as I had just re-read part of the excerpt of James A. Fowler’s writing “Spirit-union Allows for Soul-rest” (see link below). Thanks to Kenneth Dawson who would point to this website which was new to me until yesterday. I found a helpful description there of how we as modern Christian people today more and more fail to enter His rest due to our busy, hurried, and burdened lives.

The world of fallen humanity runs to and fro at a hectic pace, seeking “rest” on the weekends, in church services, and on vacations and holidays. The humanistic work ethic that drives men to succeed and be significant leaves little time for “rest” and quietude. When identity is determined by performance – who we are based on what we do – then contemporary society thinks those who take time to “rest” will be left on the side of the road as excess baggage or “nobodies.” “Rest” is regarded as but a utopian goal at the end of the rainbow of success. Thinking they can generate their own future of “rest” by their self-sufficient performance, fallen man runs on the treadmill that goes nowhere.