Today's Journal

Date: 02/07/08
Title: "Prayer for a God Invasion"


Scripture: Isa 64:1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!

Observation:
Hear the cry of the prophet's heart here. I hear a groaning cry. A cry that is tired of religion and form. Here is a prayer that invokes an invasion of God upon the earth.

Whoever heard of mountains trembling? Perhaps during a volcanic eruption - but mountains usually represent grandeur, strength, even pride and arrogance. The scripture speaks of mountains being made low before the coming of the Lord.

Only God can make the mountains tremble! That is why the cry of this prayer is not for anything except the mighty power of God's own presence.

Application: This is the cry that I feel welling within me. In fact I feel and believe that this is the kind of prayer that God is causing to well up within His church worldwide.

We must give ourselves to this prayer. A prayer that firstly groans then cries out... Oh that heaven would invade us!

This prayer came from looking upon the desolation of the temple...
Isa 64:10 Your sacred cities have become a desert; even Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a desolation. 11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our fathers praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.

Surely this depicts the state of the church in our day.

Prayer: Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!

Tribute to NZ's most famous person...

Sir Edmund Hillary was never able to say exactly how he came to be the first man to conquer Mt Everest.

Because it was there, was the best he could offer by way of explanation.

"I can't give you any fresh answers to why a man climbs mountains. The majority still go just to climb them," he once said.

Indeed, Sir Edmund never set out to be the first man to set foot on the top of the world.

As he explained one day, it just sort of happened.

"I never had a vision to climb Mt Everest. As with everything else it just more or less grew," he told the US Academy of Achievement in 1991 in an expansive interview about his life.

Imbued with an irrepressible sense of adventure – and an unshakable restlessness – he was drawn to mountaineering from a young age, regularly escaping into New Zealand's rugged terrain from the time he was 16.

"I was extremely restless, and being restless can be an unhappy sort of existence, even though it often stimulated me into getting involved in energetic activities," he said.

"I certainly never was a happy teenager. I was not lonely, but I didn't really have many friends, and I used to go on long walks.

"I was a very keen walker and, as I walked along the roads and tracks around this countryside area, I'd be dreaming. My mind would be miles away and I would be slashing villains with swords and capturing beautiful maidens and doing all sorts of heroic things, just purely in my dreams.

"I really have no idea why I wanted to keep dashing on in these ways. I realised that it wasn't the normal attitude of the majority of young people. They were more interested in going to the movies or the beach or something or other. I really wasn't all that great on that sort of stuff. I just wanted to get out in the hills."

As Hillary matured, his climbing pursuits became more serious.

"I got more competent and I climbed harder mountains (in New Zealand), and I made a number of first ascents and I had a year in the European Alps and I climbed there," he said.

"Then we decided we'd like to go off to the Himalayas. Not Everest – we went off to the Indian Gahwal Himalayas and we were pretty successful.

"We climbed a half-a-dozen new peaks of well over 20,000 feet, and it really wasn't until then that we read in the paper that the British had got permission to do a reconnaissance to the south side of Mt Everest through Nepal which, up until those days, had been completely closed to foreigners.

"The idea that 'Gee it would be fun to go along on that reconnaissance,' certainly entered my mind, and we contacted the organisers in London and two of us were invited from the expedition to join up with the party and go into the south side of Mt Everest.

"You know, it's almost like a football team. If you're pretty competent and if you don't make any grave errors, once you're in, you're in. You're sort of appointed next time."

The Everest reconnaissance was a success and the group went back the next year for more successful climbs.

"Then in '53 we were invited to join the summit attempt. It was a growing process and a learning process.

"Never, in my early days, did I ever think of attempting to reach the summit of Mt Everest."

But that was to be his fate on May 29, 1953 when Hillary and his mountain guide Tenzing Norgay stunned the world with their feat.

He wrote of the pair's final ascent to the top of the world: "Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.

"Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation – these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed," Hillary noted.

"But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it."

The pair spent just 15 minutes on the summit, as they were running short of oxygen but took the time to take a series of photos as proof that they had, indeed, stood at the top of the world.

Sir Edmund later recalled his surprise at the huge international interest in their feat of "just climbing a mountain".

And he never placed himself among top mountaineers.

"I don't regard myself as a cracking good climber. I'm just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm and I'm good on ice," he once said.

While those 15 minutes defined his life and made him a hero and inspired climbers all over the world, humility was Sir Edmund's constant companion.

"I still regard adventure pretty much as a hobby to tell you the honest truth, and I think this approach to it keeps one refreshed almost," he said in 1991.

". . . I've always regarded myself in a sense as a competent amateur."

Humble as he was, there were hints too at the pride he kept so well hidden.

"I really like to enjoy my adventures. I get frightened to death on many, many occasions but, of course, fear can be, also, a stimulating factor.

"When (it) is a stimulating factor, then I think you can often extend yourself far more than you ever believed possible. And instead of being just a mediocre person, for a moment anyway, you become someone of considerable competence."

2008 - The Year Ahead

Christians everywhere need to consecrate the year ahead to the Lord. A re-consecration of lives is important.

I believe that this year will see some big progressions in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is a time to be vigilant and dedicated. It is time for the church to move into a new level of walking in the Spirit and living in the Spirit.

The time for " doing church" is over - it's time to seek the Lord in earnest and when we do, he will come and reign righteousness on us.

Isaiah 52:11 Go now, leave your bonds and slavery. Put Babylon behind you, with everything it represents, for it is unclean to you. You are the LORD’S holy people. Purify yourselves, you who carry home the vessels of the LORD. 12You will not leave in a hurry, running for your lives. For the LORD will go ahead of you, and the God of Israel will protect you from behind.

Security from Yesterday. “… God requires an account of what is past” Ecclesiastes 3:14And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose in this is that people should fear him. 15Whatever exists today and whatever will exist in the future has already existed in the past. For God calls each event back in its turn.
At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

“Leave your bonds of slavery. Put Babylon behind you, with everything it represents, for it is unclean to you.” This then, is the determination to turn from sin, bondage – as you turn God’s grace becomes “amazing.”

Security for Today. “You will not leave in a hurry … .” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness. But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.

Security for Tomorrow. “… the LORD will go ahead of you … .” This is a gracious revelation—that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our “rear guard.” And God’s hand reaches back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience.

So, let us come to the altar of consecration. For two reasons:-

1) to Consecrate ourselves here – consecrate = to dedicate, to set apart.
2) To receive His blessing, His Holy Spirit anointing for service.

Like a volunteer soldier – first he steps forward and signs up. Next he is equipped.

Tribute to John Howard

Geoffrey Blainey

November 27, 2007 12:00am

JOHN Howard convinced the people he called his battlers to sweep him to power in 1996, but in 2007 these same battlers deserted him.

The defeat of John Howard at the polls will long be remembered. He could not have been defeated without valid fears, widely felt, and silently expressed in the ballot box.

At the same time his reign, second only to that of Sir Robert Menzies in number of years, will eventually be honoured.

While his enemies lick their lips, and while Kevin Rudd deservedly rejoices in his win, John Howard has much to feel proud of.

In more than 11 years in office he never failed to promote the virtues of democracy. Knowing that it takes at least two major parties to run a democracy, he was more willing to give praise to his opponents, at the right time, than were nearly all other major politicians.

Even when he was a very young federal treasurer, serving under Malcolm Fraser, he gave the most generous praise to his Labor predecessor, Frank Crean.

A believer in debate he appeared endlessly on radio, television and wherever there was a listener.

It is slightly ironic that he was defeated by an able and highly articulate candidate who went to some lengths to avoid awkward interviews.

Mr Howard's government had a success in creating jobs, useful jobs, which every prime minister before them would have applauded or envied.

Mr Keating, in his stirring speech on election night of 1993 to his true believers at the Bankstown Sports Club, promised to care especially for the unemployed: we want to get them back to work.

Instead, it was Mr Howard who got them back to work.

While rising inflation and rising interest rates helped to alienate many voters on Saturday, Howard's earlier success in combating inflation, year by year, was impressive.

His predecessors, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, made several notable economic reforms. but their failure to check inflation, by world standards, was even more notable.

It was the Howard government, which, through Peter Costello as treasurer, implemented in July 2000 the first strong reform of the tax system seen since World War II.

The goods and services tax, understandably, was opposed by the Labor Party and a wide section of the public.

And yet, by a strange turn of the wheel, it was the resultant stream of GST revenue, flowing straight to the states, that enabled Labor governments from the year 2000 to avoid financial crises and so win many elections.

Mr Howard did not sell his economic policies as effectively as in the beginning of his reign. Thus it became the received wisdom that it was China, and its booming economy, that was handing us on a plate our present high level of prosperity.

This is a one-sided myth. China is booming not only because of its own vigour but because Australia had one of the most efficient mining industries in the history of the world, ready to supply China with cheap coal, iron ore and other minerals even before Beijing was wealthy enough to afford them.

The strength of the mineral industry here owed infinitely more to federal and state Liberal ministers, especially to Sir Charles Court in Western Australia, than to Labor governments, some of which obstructed the opening of new mines and ports.

This is one of the reasons why the big swing to Mr Rudd did not eventuate in WA.

It was Mr Howard's triumph at his first election victory in 1996 to sell to these blue-collar and white-collar battlers his economic and cultural message. He knew they were not naturally Liberal voters. This new constituency does not represent a permanent realignment in Australian politics, he wrote in 1996.

And on Saturday they largely deserted him.

His ability to persuade was a secret of his long success. He was one of the outstanding debaters in the nation's history. On any topic, almost without notice, he could speak energetically and persuasively. On the republican issue he was the skilled persuader, after giving the whole nation the chance to make up its mind.

In answering questions he usually was forthright. Not that he was forthright on every occasion.

Who is?

Democratic politics, at times, is the art of camouflage coupled with the art of skywriting.

He was not one of the great formal orators like Menzies or Whitlam, or like Paul Keating when Don Watson wrote speeches for him.

He shunned the set speech handed to him by a writer. But day after day he held his audiences, who listened to every word.

You really have to marvel that John Howard stayed in power for so long.

Except in the two world wars, no other prime minister in our history has had to face such a procession of jolts and setbacks arriving from the outside world.

He faced the dangerous Asian meltdown, which was expected to give our economy a black eye.

He faced the upheavals in Indonesia when President Suharto fell, the chaos in East Timor.

The effects of the terrorist attack on New York in 2001 and the rise of terrorist threats within Australia, the assassinations in Bali, and the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He did not dither.

His government acted.

More and more critics now argue that Australia should not have joined the American alliance in the invasion of Iraq.

But it is too early to judge whether Saddam Hussein should have been allowed to continue to preside, unfettered, over his own torture house.

The American alliance, under Labor and Liberal, has been the backbone of Australia's defences. No previous pair of leaders in Canberra and Washington have enjoyed the kind of personal rapport that united Howard and George W. Bush.

Mr Rudd in his first year in office will probably have a running start, because of that unusual empathy, which Howard established.

Wide criticisms are directed at the Howard government. They extend from its policies on global warming to its policies on Aborigines, both of which are moral mountains on which many of his critics like to stand and do nothing.

Despite the fervent talk, there is no sign that even 5 per cent of Australian voters are seriously prepared to sacrifice part of their standard of living, and even cut down on overseas travel, in order to reduce pollution.

There is now an attempt to dethrone Mr Howard as a major political figure.

Critics say that in losing his own seat of Bennelong, he has suffered a unique humiliation.

Only one other prime minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, suffered the same punishment.

That was on the eve of the world depression when, like Mr Howard, he vexed swinging voters by trying to reform the workplace.

Bruce's Liberal seat was Flinders, which in 1929 was a farming as much as a bayside suburban electorate.

What is now forgotten is that Bruce won it back two years later, with ease.

Other political leaders, federal and state, have avoided humiliation by finding a safer seat. Billy Hughes was prime minister in 1917, during World War I, and seemed likely to lose his Sydney seat.

He took the drastic step of moving to the Victorian electorate of Bendigo where he was an easy winner.

In recent years Mr Howard could easily have transferred to a safer Liberal seat in Sydney as the demographics moved against him. Liberal supporters would probably argue it is to his credit that he did not move.

Most likely he concluded it would damage the prospects of his own party if he abandoned his own marginal seat and stood for a safer Sydney seat held by a colleague who had made no mark in Parliament.

The emphatic lesson of Saturday's election is that a successful political regime is bound to be in grave trouble once it approaches its 12th birthday.

Having carried out its main tasks, it loses its sense of purpose and mission.

The crushing defeat of the Hughes and Bruce period of government in 1929, the near-defeat of Menzies in 1961, the resounding end of the Hawke-Keating reign in 1996, and the emphatic defeat of Mr Howard on Saturday are part of the same decisive federal pattern.

In the week after such defeats, the deposed national leader looks for all the world like a headless chook.

But in the end, John Howard will be seen by vast numbers of Australians as one of the great prime ministers.

Professor GEOFFREY BLAINEY is Australia's pre-eminent historian and has served on federal government committees since 1967, when Harold Holt was prime minister

Don't intellectualise God ... demonstrate His power

1Cor 2:1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

We are living in a critical time in terms of the integrity of the Gospel and the restorative plan of God for the church, as He prepares His bride for the return of Christ. In this passage, Paul plainly spells out the manner in which the Gospel is to be presented and also the manner in which we are to enter into revelation living as Spirit-filled and Spirit-led Christians.

Do you know what God wants of you? He wants your availability to His Holy Spirit and your radical obedience in faith. He doesn’t want your good looks, your wise learning, your cunning abilities or even your beautiful singing voice. He certainly doesn’t want your intelligent and cute ways of presenting Christ to the unsaved.

The gospel needs to be presented in a demonstration of God’s power. That’s why we need to be filled deeper and deeper in the Holy Spirit and be operating more and more in the power of God. Stepping out of our comfort. Moving in the gifts of the Spirit – word of knowledge, prophecy, word of wisdom, healing, miracles.

v5so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power – people who get converted to Christ through a light-weight gospel presentation, get a light-weight conversion. An intellectual acceptance of Jesus will produce an intellectual believer. When a person is presented with the gospel, there needs to be a conviction of sin and deep sorrow leading to repentance. The fear of the Lord needs to be present.

The fear of the Lord is clean – endures forever. I love it when people come to Christ with weeping, deep conviction. Why? Because it’s evidence of a heart being opened, touched, cleansed and healed.

Parents – do all you can to get your child a great education, but teach them to walk in the Spirit. When the scripture says, “get wisdom, get knowledge… it’s talking about revelation. Be the prophetic generation not the pathetic one.

Inheriting the Nations

My dad didn’t do the right thing by his children and allowed his considerable wealth to be inherited by somebody else.

What about an inheritance from my heavenly Father? Now there’s a thought that interests me. What’s more, I don’t have to wait until I die to inherit from Father God.
Ps 2:7I will proclaim the LORD’s decree:
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.

I want to focus upon two words in this scripture… 8Ask me

On Thursday night I went to the first anniversary of our International service. I looked at the team ministering and performing… Jessica from Korea twirling in her Korean traditional dress; Sonny in his Tongan flax; others in their national costumes – I thought, “Lord, we have the nations as an inheritance.”

At last count, we have 46 nationalities represented in our congregation. Probably more now.

What a richness this brings to us. What a rehearsal for heaven.

Do you know that when I go to heaven – there will be people there who will be my inheritance and my reward – Indian, Chileno, Ugandan, Sri Lankan, Tongan…. And they will be one with me and together we will sing and worship before the throne of our Father. I want to tell you… what I missed from my earthly dad fades and pales into insignificance.

Asking… You have not because you ask not – ask that you might receive. Begin to build up your own portfolio of nations. I began to ask God for Sudanese in our community, when I saw them.

Start with the realization that God wants you have nations and to ask Him for them.

I’ve passed on my inheritance to my kids. They now ask for the nations. They are already building a portfolio.

Have you asked for Australia? Now is the time to ask.
Ask for Australia to be a nation under God.
Ask for Australia to be saved
Ask for Australia to have a government that honours God’s laws and fears God
Ask for Australia to have a leader who is God-fearing and bible-believing
Ask for a Senate that has men and women who fear God.

Starts Today at Taigum....