Amazing Box Building

  

     Religious box building is a strange art.  And, a bad thing.  Did you know our early day Pentecostal fathers, upon receiving Holy Ghost baptism felt they were delivered from the box of denominationalism?  They swore they would never be part of another, they did not like being boxed in by man's rules, theology and understandings.  Then, early on, in order to protect themselves against one brother straying a little theology-wise, they met secretly in a back room and organized in order to get rid of that one brother.  Thus, a box was born!  Just as did the denominations they were delivered from, they soon had developed that box so well that nothing else, no other ideas, revelations, etc., was allowed.  Walled out!   In my early days of the charismatic move (60's), the boxes started coming apart.  For a while, it was "wow"!!!  We were ministering in Catholic basements, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational and Pentecostal churches. The box walls crumbled and the message was simple, just as it was in the early days of Pentecost.  "Be filled with the Spirit".   

    And, then!  And, then!  Religious leaders got busy re-enforcing their boxes and roping people back in.  And, worse!  Those charismatics scurried like little beavers building their own boxes.  And, no one has done a better job!  Those who believed in one thing a little stronger than others - no longer talked to the others.  They built the deliverance box, the discipleship box, the confession box, the prosperity box, the healing box, etc., and locked the doors.  They walled in our converts and walled out those with a different idea about anything related to their box. In their simple mindedness, they thought they had to protect their truth, as if truth needed protection.  The only protection truth needs is to be free from those who seek to protect it.

   Box-building is the end of learning and eventually the end of the true Spirit-filled and the Spirit-led life.  Now, in our little box, we are sustained and led by that little box.  No one from outside of our box can make an input to us or us to them.  Are you in a box?  One way you know you are in a box when the box-controllers tell you things like this, "If you leave this box, you are going to die early", or "Your blessing is connected to this box and this box only",  or "God will never use you again if you leave this box", etc.

    Several years ago I tried to tell a fellow who was sitting comfortably in his box about revival going on in other parts of the country.  I tried to encourage him to go and see for himself, that he might get a fresh anointing and bring revival at his box.  He responded "Oh, yeah, I've heard of those meetings...didn't go..don't want to..(and here is where he got real spiritual) "but if God wants me to have revival..he will just send it...I'm waiting for a sovereign move of God".  In other words, he was not going to get out of his box. He was not really thirsty for revival, just something that would bless and enlarge his box.  I have since really come to understand that people use the word "sovereign" as a way of protecting their box and it has nothing to do with wanting the will of God.

    In closing, I can only say "Lord, deliver me from boxes, building boxes and box builders".

Can you really have everything you say?

 
   You know, confessing the Word,  having a positive confession and avoiding bad confession are good messages.  Faith works as the Bible says "I have believed, therefore I speak".  Being good truths as they are, you can expect them to be trashed. Example?  Remember the conversation Jesus had with his disciples about moving mountains and cursing fig trees? Read the whole chapter and you will see the context was about doing what had to be done to make the Father's house a house of prayer.  If we have faith in God, or the same faith, the same convictions about the house of prayer, then whatever  mountains hinder the "house of prayer" we are to command to move.  If we don't doubt our command of authority, then we will have what we say - moved mountains! 

     Notice it does not say "you can have everything you say". No matter how many times you have been told that it says that, it does not. And, in any translation you care to read, it does not say that and you can't make it say that.  It was talking about what it was talking about - not life in general.  It is about your authority not your wish list.   Don't you know God is your Father and what good father would give his child everything that child said?  I tell you no good father would do such a thing.  To try to make this verse say that  means we miss what the verse is actually saying and telling us to do.  The result is harm to a great word and failure to assume responsibility to do our part in making the Father's house a "house of prayer".

   Want to know where you should exercise this principle?   Desire God's house to be a "house of prayer", a place in which He promised to make us joyful (Is. 56). Want that so bad you begin to command hindering mountains to move!  Try it on your way to church next Sunday.  Do it when you drive by a church on the roadside.  Command hindering things to move away.    Result?  If you don't doubt your authority to command, mountains will begin to move and the house of prayer will begin to come alive with the power of the Holy Ghost. God will meet us and make us joyful in the house, but our role to play is to use our authority to make hindrances move.  Then, in that powerful house of prayer, when you pray, what things you desire, you can ask, believe and receive. The condition of the church has an enormous affect on our prayer life, even our desires.