The Essence of Christianity

By David Hobbs

Some time ago I went around town to various lodges such as the Elks and Moose to see what it would take to join their group. In every case it was ridiculously easy: fill out an application, pay dues, go through initiation… you’re in!
“Well what do I have to affirm or believe to become a member?”
“Here’s a brochure about who we are, and the benefits of becoming a Moose/Elk/Lion.” The Moose especially had a very attractive plan—a big retirement place in Florida you could go to: golf, fishing, cut rate medical benefits, wow it sounded great!
There were no special beliefs you had to ascribe to. You should attend meetings and be part of the group, give alms to “Mooseheart” (a facility for orphaned children back east). But it was pretty simple.
How does that compare with becoming a Christian? Well as a Christian there is more you are required to believe—the Nicene Creed spells it out nicely: all the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. And there is more change of lifestyle “demanded” of you—don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t cuss, don’t run around with floozy women, etc. That's more requirements than becoming a Moose. But the benefits are comparatively greater as well: eternity in heaven, provision on earth, a smooth transition to the other side…. If you stop and consider it, not too much to ask.

Just like the Moose you are expected to attend meetings and financially support the group, and try and get others to join.
And that’s the way many look at Christianity: you join a local church, ascribe to their beliefs, attend meetings, give financial support, and someday reap the benefits. That’s the americanized version. The biblical one is quite different.
The biblical pattern is to encounter God at some (crisis) point in your life, like the jailer in Acts 16:27+ who rushed into the jail where Paul was imprisoned, fell trembling at Paul’s feet and implored of him and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Or Paul himself, many years earlier on the road to Damascus, who was knocked to the ground and blinded by the encounter and could only ask, “Who are you Lord?” (Acts 9:5).
It was not a question of joining a group, it was having a life-altering encounter with Jesus that left you forever changed. As for benefits, God promise to Paul was: “I will show him how much he must suffer for my Name.” (Acts 9:16).

Luke’s Gospel tells the story of a group of ten lepers who were miraculously healed on their way to be examined by the priests (Luke 17:11). One came back and threw himself at Jesus’ feet in gratefulness while the others vanished. Where did they go? Probably to get the rest of their lives back together. “I wonder if my wife is still waiting for me? I wonder if can get my job back? I wonder what happened to the apartment I was living in? Leprosy had taken away their lives and now they suddenly had them back and it was a rush to re-enter life as usual and get back what had been lost in the interim.
It can be exactly the same when we get saved. We’re in a heck of a bind, about to be destroyed…. But that terrible situation drives us to Jesus and we end up getting saved and He rights the ship of our life. If we’re not careful, we can go back to the things we were pursuing before we got into the trouble that drove us to Jesus.
We can think, “Great! I’ve finally got that area of my life nailed down; I’ve gotten eternity taken care of, I’ve got somebody I know I can call on if I get into trouble again. Now I can go back to the other things I was pursuing; now I can go back to getting a wife, getting a job, securing my place on the corporate ladder, finishing my education…. All those worldly goals I was pursuing before I met Christ and became a Christian."
But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. When we meet Christ and are “born again,” our old life is dead. It’s over; it didn’t work; it was taking me down; but thank God He saved me out of it. We were saved off the deck of the Titanic just before it went under. Now why would we want to go back to it, to perhaps find a safer place to hang out there? The whole ship is going down, with everyone on board. The same can be said for this world—the whole thing is doomed to destruction, so why would we want to go back and try a different tack to making it in this life?
But that’s not even my point.
When we get saved, and our eyes are opened to see the truth, we realize we were in deception all along. We thought we were all right, but we were really on our way to hell without realizing it. And even if we had realized it, there was nothing we could have done about it—no person can save himself! It was in this helpless condition we were saved, but oh what a price had to be paid! God Himself had to become one of us, live His life among us being despised and rejected, and suffer terribly including the most cruel death imaginable, to win our release from our death sentence. He saved us from death, saved us from eternity in hell, and gave us an eternity of ecstasy in “heaven” with Him, but only by taking upon Himself the most cruel, unimaginable suffering, even unto death. And not for any good thing we had done, but only because of His love for us.
In view of all that, what should our response be? “Wow, I’m glad I have eternity taken care of. Now let’s see what I can do for myself in this life?” That’s the very selfish, sinful attitude that drove Him to the cross to save us. Now, saved and delivered, we’re going to take it up again?
The only reasonable response is total surrender of our lives to the will of God; surrender to that great love that suffered so much to rescue us from ourselves. When we were in charge of our own lives we made a mess of them—what else can we say? Our lives were total disasters when we were at the helm! The only way they could be saved was for God Himself to die on the cross for us. Now we want to try again and hope we can do better? No! A million times no! Self-life is dead. It’s over; it failed; it’s gone; end of story. The only reason we are still alive is because of Him. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I but Christ liveth in me.”
We all know the importance of faith in Christianity. We are saved by faith, made righteous by faith, etc. But do we really believe that Christ died for us to save us? “Sure we believe.” But is it real faith or just a mental assent to a religious doctrine? “Here’s what you have to believe to be a Christian: Christ died for our sins,” check; “Jesus was the Son of God,” check; “Father, Spirit, Son,” check.”
If we really believed Christ shed His blood, was crucified and killed because it was the only way we could be spared an eternity in hell, we would be so blown away we would sit in prayer for hours at a time: incredulous, blown away, overwhelmed. We would experience crushing bouts of guilt, agonizing despair at our total depravity, but also overwhelming joy, ecstasy, giddiness, awestruck wonder at what He’s done and why He’s done it…. We would want to shout it from the rooftops, “I’m saved! I’m saved!” We would be praying, “Lord you’ve done so much for me, what would you like me to do for you? How can I please you? How can I repay you for your sacrifice?” Everything would be focused on him, on what He’s done.
The fact that most of these things don’t happen and aren’t happening means what? It means we don’t really believe! It’s become a religious doctrine instead of a living reality--a platitude we repeat over and over with no real meaning while we, like the other nine lepers, go on about our lives trying to put the rest of the pieces together.

Commentary on "Out of the Fire"--The Glory of One Soul Saved!

By David Hobbs

Psalm 49:8—The ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough

I always knew it was great to be saved, and salvation showed that God had personal care over my soul. But I never realized how much was involved until years later writing it down in my book Out of the Fire. Delving back into it has opened up the whole, wonderful world of all that happened that I never realized. One thing that really stands out is the chapter “Song in a Thunderstorm” (page 262). It was the watershed moment on my spiritual journey.
What is a watershed?
In the mountains, everything is sloped up or down. Other than that, it can all look pretty much the same. But there is this thing called a “watershed.” A watershed is an area, and it can be quite large (probably 1/3 of the United States lies within the watershed of the Mississippi River!). Within this area--though there are hills and valleys, ridges and ravines-- everything flows down to the river that drains the watershed. No matter where you start within the watershed, if you flow downhill you will end up at the mouth of the river. There is an inexorable pull that takes everything to the same place.
Yet while up in the highlands it is possible to cross over into a different watershed that will take you to a totally different destination. Sometimes in the highlands, just crossing a slight ridge is enough to rewrite the story of your destination!

As humans living here on the earth, we are born into a watershed that will take us eventually and inevitably to the river of death and then on into the netherworld of destruction and eternal damnation. No matter how well we do in life—the riches we amass, the honor we receive, the power we exercise—there is no escaping the pull of the earthly watershed we are in. It will take us--along with everyone else who may not do so well in life, even to the beggar in the river bottoms--to that same river of death and the same eternal destiny. “[I]t is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…" (Heb. 9:27 NKJV). "For in Your sight no one living is righteous " (Psalm 143:2 NKJV).” That’s the teaching of the Bible.
But in Christ there is another watershed! That’s the Good News! And it’s possible to cross over to it, that which will take us to a totally different destination—eternal life with Christ!
On that fateful trip on I-5 from Redding to Yreka that spring afternoon in 1974, I was traveling up the Sacramento River watershed that eventually drains the whole northern part of California’s Central Valley into San Francisco Bay. But as I traveled up the river valley to Dunsmuir, up the mountain to the town of Mt. Shasta, and then over to Weed, I crossed over to the Klamath River drainage that bisects 100 miles of mountains before flowing into the Pacific Ocean just south of Oregon.
But that was only a picture of the real “crossing over” that was going on. In that fateful crash of lightning in the heart of the storm that illuminated my whole life and its total failure, a song burst forth spontaneously from my lips, a gospel song I had never sung before. As I belted it out with inexplicable fervor, I crossed over spiritually into another watershed, a watershed that would take me only a week later to meeting born-again Mike Harris and into his orb: first bunking alongside him, then hearing his testimony, listening to his tapes, getting a Bible, praying, seeing the miracles… a whole cycle that led to my salvation by the end of the summer and a new life in Christ.
Though I wouldn’t get saved for another couple of months, that trip was the watershed moment of my life. As I came down out of the mountains to the high desert around Gazelle, the clouds of the storm broke, the sun came out, and I’m sure the angels were blowing the trumpets of God, ushering me into the new, heavenly watershed that would leave death and destruction far behind. Now in this new watershed, I would shortly “come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” I would “come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.” I would “come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel" [back in the earthly watershed] (Heb. 12:22-24).
What a wonderful process God used to save me! That’s why I had to write this book. But I’m convinced God uses similarly wonderful processes to save everyone He has saved. If you are saved, meditate on the process of your own salvation. Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate it for you. It will give you a whole new appreciation for God’s love for you and all He was willing to do to effect your salvation. It starts at the cross, where God abandoned His own beloved Son Jesus so He would never have to abandon us; where He let Jesus “by the grace of God … taste death for everyone" (Heb.2:9), so we would never have to die. But then it culminates in the wonderful process He used to draw you to Himself, which is utterly unique for every person.
If you are not yet saved, ask God to effect your salvation in the way He has chosen for you. Commit yourself to Him through the process by
2 turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding—
3 indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God (Prov. 2:2-5).




Me at "The Log Pile of Salvation"

Walking in the Spirit Part 2--Why Is It Critical to Walk in the Spirit?

By David Hobbs
Gal. 5:16 [NKJV]--Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Part 1 dealt with one of the key reasons we need to learn to walk in the Spirit: because “that’s the only way we’re going to defeat the devil and turn the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.” It won’t be “by our own good ideas! Not by human effort! Not by organizational skills and charismatic giftings. It will only be by the power of God working through millions of Christians as they walk ‘in the Spirit!’” (Pardon me for quoting myself, but I was on a roll!)
The second reason we need to learn to walk in the Spirit is in the Scripture above—walking in the Spirit is the only way to effectively deal with our sin nature. When I am in the Spirit, sin has no attraction to me, hence no hold over me. As long as I can stay in the Spirit, I am free from sin. When we are walking in the Spirit, it is as if we were transported to the heavenly realms out of the earthly ones. Therefore things of the earth lose their glamour and appeal. Just like the song lyrics say, “And the things on earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
Sin is a lie anyway. You never really get what it promises. It’s always some sort of “bait and switch” routine orchestrated by the devil’s helpers to get us to fall. But when we’re in the Spirit, we can see through the schemes and sin looks incredibly tawdry and cheap.
Therefore, since the Bible says it and my own experience has confirmed it, why do pastors spend so much time preaching Christian morality? Shouldn’t we rather be teaching our people how to walk in the Spirit? That will deal with the sin problem better than multitudinous sermons on morality. Yet I’ve never heard that preached in all the churches I have visited coast-to-coast. But I have heard sermon after sermon on morality: "you should be a better person;" "you should be more thankful," "you should not get angry," "you should not steal from your employer or cheat on your spouse." It’s like the Old Testament all over again where the Law of Moses was preached in every Synagogue service for a thousand and a half years [Acts 15:21—“For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath”]. To what effect? All the law did was show us our sin, every week show us what we couldn’t do [Rom. 3:20—“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin”].
Here's some more of what the Bible has to say about the law and the Spirit.

Heb. 7:19--for the law made nothing perfect…
Rom. 8:3-4-- For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Gal. 5:18--But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

So I ask again, Why is Christian morality preached over and over, while living in the Spirit, being led of the Spirit, and walking in the Spirit are rarely mentioned from our pulpits; let alone is instruction given on how to do it?

God Encounter Retreat

By David Hobbs

I know this is supposed to be part 2 of “Walking in the Spirit,” but I’ve got to tell about a God Encounter Retreat I went on this weekend. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. My spiritual life has been dry, with a lot of warfare going on. In fact, I’ve been feeling banged up, like my armor had a lot of painful dents in it.
At the retreat, the first day was slow, as you’d expect. To encounter God and come into His presence, you’ve got to first deal with all the things that keep you apart from Him in the first place: sin, accusations of the enemy, lies we’ve been believing about ourselves or God, hurts and sorrows we're nurturing—all the junk that builds up from living in this world.
Even so, at the end of the first day, I didn’t know if I was ever going to meet with God. I remember being alone the first night after the meetings and ministry times and thinking to myself “I hope this works.” Something had come up at the last minute that threatened to keep my wife from coming. I recognized it as being a clever maneuver by the enemy and practically forced her to come in spite of it—I pulled rank on her. Now if it didn’t work out, if God didn’t meet with her... I would be in trouble!
I needn’t have worried. God met me before breakfast the second day, then again in ministry time later in the morning. I was praying, kneeling at my seat. Somebody threw a prayer shawl over my head (I can’t go into the details of what happened lest it ruin the experience for others still to come), and I found myself in heaven. Well, it was like this: from the waist up I was in heaven, from the waist down my legs and feet were still hanging out of the clouds in the earthly realm. I say I was in heaven. Yet I didn’t have any visions of heaven. I didn’t see God. I didn’t hear the melodious voices on angels. But I knew I was in heaven nonetheless. I was in heaven with Him. (If you have trouble with this, what do you do with Col. 3:1-3 that says we are seated with Christ in heavenly places at the right hand of God? I was only experiencing the reality of what the Bible teaches.)
For years I and my whole church have been looking forward to revival. In fact all my Christian life I have been looking forward to revival, having been born into the Kingdom at the tail end of the Jesus’ People Revival, seeing a lot and yet hearing stories of even greater things that happened before I’d gotten saved. In addition, we know our area has been chosen for powerful revival, and for years God has sent prophet after prophet to confirm that and add details, each of which seems more fantastic than the last: people getting healed as they walk onto the property, fire trucks circling the sanctuary looking for the source of the flames leaping from the top of the building, an "impact zone” within a radius of 100 miles around the church, a cancer-free zone, and on and on. Yet revival tarries. We pray, “How long O Lord? How long?”
I have found for myself, when I start getting into the “how long?” mode in my prayers, that it’s time to get back into the presence of Jesus, because nothing is greater than that. Now all of a sudden I was in His presence: I was in heaven with Him and nothing could draw me away! I feel sorry for those who would choose even the most powerful manifestation of revival over being in the presence of Jesus, because they still don’t get it. “In His presence,” the Bible says, “is fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forever more.” And the song says, “In Your presence Lord is all I truly need.”
The devil beats me up a lot with accusations of what I like more than being in the presence of God. “You’d rather sit and write on your computer than pray,” he thunders, “you’d rather make love to your wife, eat a big steak dinner, take a nice nap—all kinds of things you prefer instead of being with the one you call your Savior!” Yet now, under this prayer shawl, locked in with Jesus in heaven, I realized there really was nothing back on earth I wanted: not the greatest revival, not a million people clamoring for my latest book, not the imploring faces of family and friends begging me to return. “If anybody wants me back, they’ll have to grab my dangling legs and pull me out of here,” I thought, “because there is no way I am ever voluntarily leaving this place!” All the filthy accusations of the devil were revealed to be the lies they were. I was not Lot’s wife. I wasn’t attracted to anything back on the earth: not my precious wife; not all my friends; not my 401K; not the work I love to do. When you’re with Jesus, nothing else matters!
Then why am I even back writing this? How do you know I am? Maybe I’m sending it from heaven via angelic messenger, huh? No but seriously I am back. Because even Jesus had to leave heaven and come to earth to do the Father’s will, though I’m sure He felt the same way about coming to this dark, cruel, morally polluted planet. But there were souls that needed to be saved, work that needed to be done. In fact, the earth itself needed to be reclaimed for the Kingdom of heaven: cleansed, refurbished, and restored to its original brilliance!
I visited a different church recently. The pastor was teaching on the end times. At one point he actually said to the congregation, “Your hope is in the rapture.” That set my mind spinning! But actually I find this is common among Christians. They’re hoping for the rapture to whisk them out of this world of woe and translate them to heaven forever. But if our hope is in anything other than Jesus, we are sadly deceived and out of sync with heaven. Friends, our hope is not in the rapture; it is not in a revival that’s going to come and fulfill all our unsatisfied longings. We are waiting for Jesus, and trying to grab whatever few moments with Him we can as we go through life’s journey. Seek His presence! Ask Him to let you come in and be with Him for awhile. Whatever it takes, get into the presence of Jesus. Then write and tell me if I’m wrong.

Walking in the Spirit

Part 1--Walking in the Spirit or in the Natural?

By David Hobbs

1 Cor. 3:19—“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Most Christians understand that the Bible teaches that we can either live in the “flesh” [i.e. sinful nature] or in the Spirit (Romans 8:5-9). Those living in the flesh cannot possibly please God because the whole fleshly nature of man is contrary to God (v.8).
But then the Bible seems to take born-again Christians off the hook. In verse 9 it says that we are not controlled by the flesh but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in us. And He does live in us if we belong to Christ. Therefore Christians shouldn’t have to worry about “walking in the flesh,” right?
Well, not so fast. I believe there is a whole different kind of walking seldom discussed in Christian circles, but practiced by most Christians every day. In fact, it’s how most Christians spend the vast majority of every day. It’s walking in the natural man. Granted, we may not be driven by the passions and appetites of the fleshly nature, but neither are we walking in the Spirit of God. We have no sense of His Presence, His touch or His anointing; we are just walking according to our natural thinking and reasoning.
Does the Bible support this? Consider this passage from Isaiah 55:

8”For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

What’s God saying? He’s saying He doesn’t think like us and we don’t think like Him. Now if we were in the Spirit, we would be thinking like God and this wouldn’t apply, but most of the time it’s all too true: our thoughts are very earth-bound and controlled by our natural reasonings. We get sick, we go to the doctor. We don’t think, “Wait a minute, I’m a child of God. Healing was provided in the atonement,” and call upon Him to fulfill His promise. Only if the doctors fail us completely do we turn to God.

We worry about our retirement. We call in our financial adviser, start an IRA, project interest rates into the future, cost of living adjustments, etc. The last thing we do is consult the wisdom of the Bible:

James 4:13--Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

And 1 Tim. 6:8—“And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”

My point is that Christians can easily walk according to their natural thinking. Here’s another passage, from 1 Cor. 3:3:

You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?

Just because we have the Holy Spirit; it doesn’t at all mean that we are always walking in the Spirit. The Spirit is resident within the Christian, but most of the time He lies dormant in the background while the Christian lives and thinks and speaks from the natural realm. He thinks and speaks human thoughts based on his own reasoning and experience. That’s why we miss God so much. We pray for God to heal those He’s ready to take home; we pray for deliverance for those He’s handed over to satan for the destruction of their sinful natures (1 Cor. 5:5); we coddle those He’s trying to bring to the end of themselves to save them, and on and on.
The Proverb says there is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death. That’s it in a nutshell. A man walking in the natural thinks everything he is doing is right, only to find later that he missed God by a mile. The book of 1st Corinthians is full of such people, whom Paul is continually rebuking, because, though they presumably have the Spirit, they are obviously not walking in the Spirit. (Also consider Heb. 5:11-14)
I say this because it is an absolutely critical concept for Christians to understand. It is not enough to be born again and have the Spirit of God in us. Yes that’s enough to make heaven. But we’ll never reach our destinies, never fulfill our high callings in Christ, and never contribute to the work of building the Kingdom, preaching the gospel or preparing the Bride, unless we learn to walk in the Spirit as opposed to the natural.
God’s will is not just to save us. That was accomplished on Calvary 2000 years ago, but for what end? So that we could make heaven? Yes but much more than that. He saved, sanctified and is purifying us so that He can live His life through us. That’s the only way we’re going to defeat the devil and turn the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ. Not by our own good ideas! Not by human effort! Not by organizational skills and charismatic giftings! It will only be by the power of God working through millions of Christians as they walk “in the Spirit!” Therefore we must learn what it is and what it is not to Walk in the Spirit!

The Goal of the Christian Life

By David Hobbs

-----When Jesus came to Earth and purchased a people for Himself with His own blood, what was His plan for those people? Likewise, when Christian parents send their children off to Christian schools to be prepared for life, what is their plan for their children? Shouldn’t the goal of Jesus for His people and the goal of Christian parents for their children be the same?

-----Here are the goals of two Christian schools as taken from their websites:

The mission of ____ Christian School is to help students mature spiritually and excel academically by offering a Biblically-integrated, college preparatory program that will enable them to impact the kingdom of God by living productive Christian lives.

-----Notice that the way we “impact the kingdom of God” is by “living productive Christian lives.” (I thought we were supposed to impact the world for Christ. And if we do it best by living productive Christian [i.e. moral] lives, we should all become Mormons. They lead some of the most productive lives I know of). Here’s another:

_____ Christian Academy is an independent, co-educational, PreK - 12, college preparatory school with an educational culture built on the classical Trivium and historic Biblical Christianity. _____ provides an academic curriculum that trains students in the grammatical, dialectical, and rhetorical arts with an equal emphasis on the acquisition of the empirical and mathematical sciences preparatory to, or at the level of, College Board Advanced Placement standards. The program aims not only to equip students with knowledge of the different disciplines, but also to aid their understanding of learning as the pursuit and application of truth. The program's distinctives include Latin instruction that begins in third grade, a full year of informal and formal logic, a full year of rhetoric, the writing and defense of a senior thesis, and the age-appropriateteaching methodologies required of each subject.

Now that’s a mouthful!

-----The goal of many Christian parents, as reflected through their schools’ programs, seemingly is to out-produce the world in the field of education. Armed with our Christian principles and worldview, taking things seriously and applying ourselves, we can produce better educated and more successful (i.e. “productive”) kids than the unbelievers down the street whose kids party away their lives at Worldly U.

-----There is truth to this. I wasted my college years with drinking, drugs, bad attitudes, and general cluelessness. How I wish I could relive those college years now as a head-screwed-on-straight Christian when I could take full advantage of the opportunity offered!

-----But is that the goal of Christ? He died on the cross so we might be better educated and more together than the world? Many parents’ goals for their children are for them to be well educated, have a good career, a godly spouse, nice children, a comfortable retirement, and to be esteemed in their communities. We want them to be “good Christians,” meaning we want them to be respectable. That’s how we measure success. If we parents can accomplish that, with the help of our Christian schools and our church, then we can die happy, sure that we have succeeded in life.

-----I was not raised as a Christian. In fact I despised Christianity because I thought its message was: 1) be nice to everybody; 2) if it’s fun, it’s forbidden, 3) do unto others as you would have them do unto you (at least I got one right!).

-----When I got saved, the glorious story as told in Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed, The thing that amazed me most was that I could meet God for myself through Christ and have a ongoing, personal, supernatural relationship with Him. “How come they never told me about this?” I marveled. In fact I came to call it the “best-kept secret of Christianity.” In studying the Bible, I saw that that was in fact why Christ came and why He died. He wanted the same thing-- an ongoing relationship with us. Sure He wants us to be good students; He wants us to do good works and not mess up. But more than anything He wants to know us and love us and have us know and love Him.

-----Which of these two people would you most approve of? A well respected person with a good job and family who goes to church every Sunday and considers himself a “good Christian man.” Or a homeless person who lives in rags in the river bottoms, who cries out to God about the mess he’s made of his life, who has nothing and has to pray every day for food to eat and shelter from the elements. Which person has our approval? Which person has Christ’s approval? Before you answer, read Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14.

-----If the humble sinner is Jesus’ great prize, why do we make respectability and success by this world’s standards our great prize? Having met Christ for myself, I would rather live in the river bottoms and walk every day with Him than be Warren Buffet and only know about Christ and all the doctrines and theology of the Christian church.

-----If we’re saved “out of the world,” why do we go back and try to beat the world at its own game?

The Present War

By David Hobbs

9/19/2010

The war rages all around us. But how many Christians have eyes to see and understand the battles we find ourselves in? The closer I get to Jesus, the more intense the warfare becomes. I am reminded of Scriptures like Psalm 50:3—“Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before him, and around him a tempest rages.” Being close to Jesus (or desiring to be close as in my case) is not easy. Consider Mt. 8:23—“Then [Jesus] got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat…. ‘Lord, save us! We’re going to drown.’”

Our church had been planning a prophetic worship conference for a year. We had been praying into it, and anticipating in faith that it would take us to a higher spiritual level. We didn’t have the money readily at hand to bring in the 5 prophetic worshippers/singers/musicians we wanted. Along with others, I participated in a dinner theatre and many other ways to raise money. We prayed, went on 3 day fasts, and invited people to come.

Now at last the week was here. It was a tough week, as it always is approaching a high spiritual time. I was doing a painting job with many difficult aspects to it. The temperatures were around 100 degrees. I had a deadline. It was hard getting the help I needed. It was very stressful time. I dropped off my former foster son “Jake” Thursday morning to work on the job while I took the hour drive to Sacramento to pray in the Capital as usual. The prayer time was totally dry. I had nothing to contribute, couldn’t focus, and kept falling asleep.

Upon my return to the job site I found Jake sprawled out on the front porch. He said he’d fallen off the top on an 8 ft. stepladder and hurt his back. Jake was always taking chances, and many times had come sliding off of roofs or had other spectacular experiences, always seeming to escape serious consequences.

Everywhere I looked there were brushes, rollers, and buckets of paint drying out in the sweltering sun. My other son Dan had been supposed to drop off an airless at the job which I needed to paint a deck and some doors. But it wasn’t there. I called Dan. He was across town ½ hour away but agreed to bring the airless to me. But as he was on his way, Jake suddenly informed me that in his fall he had spilled the paint and there was none left. The paint store was in Dan’s direction but now it was too late to get him to pick up more on his way over. I would have to not only take Jake home, but now make the trip across town myself to get more paint, and then try to finish the job without Jake’s help.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I lost it completely and started yelling at Jake, who started yelling back at me. I truly “cracked.” I was in a rage so intense that it lasted the rest of the day (Thurs).

Friday came and I was still unsettled. Though I had blown it, God was still faithful. Out of nowhere, He sent two people, including Dan (who was working on his own job), to help me finish my job. But it was as if my spiritual being was turned inside out. The rage and angst had left me exhausted, the heat had left me dehydrated, and the conference started that evening.

I went, but I was so out of sorts I could hardly enter in. I did the best I could by faith, but my innards were still a jumbled mass.

The next session was Sat. morning. I had gotten as much sleep as I could, but I was still exhausted and still dehydrated. I was also being attacked in my mind, both for my own failings and the conference itself was being disparaged. I couldn’t seem to get my spiritual legs under me. I was off balance and unable to function, like a fighter reeling against the ropes. There were workshops that afternoon, but I stayed home and slept, hoping to regain my strength.

Saturday night was another battle. I went through the motions but just couldn’t “get into gear.”

Sunday morning I was still exhausted, both physically but increasingly spiritually. My wife went off to the Sunday morning session while I stayed home to sleep, thereby missing what people agreed later was the best meeting of the conference. Sunday afternoon I napped some more--there seemed to be no way to catch up on my sleep deficit. Now there was only one meeting left; it was all going by me like a train going by the station. I was used to experiencing spiritual warfare leading up to an event. But it had been my experience that once the event started, the warfare ceased and the Lord took over. Now for the first time the warfare was lasting right through the whole conference.

When the last meeting started Sunday night, I was so overwhelmed I was unable to speak or sing and too tired to stand. There were only two things I could do—I could tap my feet along to the music and raise my hands. So the meeting chugged along with me lost in the crowd, tapping my feet and raising my hands in mute appeal to heaven. But that was enough!
As the worship progressed I began to be able to make some sounds; then I could sing along; finally I could stand. By the end of the meeting I was totally restored to normal, like the whole thing had never happened!

So where did that leave me? I had missed virtually the entire conference, but come out on top at the end. It seemed to be kind of a spiritual draw, though the Bible does put importance on the end of a matter more than the beginning or middle (“he that endures to the end shall be saved.”)

All I know for sure is that the warfare is intense, which means we’re getting close to Jesus! It’s no time to back down or give up. He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. Praise the Lord!

Worship Orders from Heaven

By David Hobbs

I arrived at the church for my early morning prayer. I had gotten extra sleep the night before thinking it might rejuvenate me and give me greater energy, but it didn’t help. I was tired and even a little weary, not feeling any particular leading in prayer. So I sat in a chair on the front row of the old sanctuary, stilled myself and asked for and waited for the Holy Spirit.

Nothing much happened, but after awhile I began to think of a song we used to sing in church a number of years ago. What words I could remember seemed to express where I was at spiritually, but the problem was I couldn’t remember all the words. It was tantalizing, because I could remember enough to whet my appetite, but not enough to sing out.
I kept rehearsing the parts I could remember in my mind, thinking it might jar loose the rest of it, as often happens, but no go this time. I just couldn’t quite get a handle on it.

A thought came to me to go over to the piano on the platform and look there. I did not in any way think this was the Lord. Sure, people sometimes left song sheets on the piano, but the odds that this old song might be lying around there were about nil. But to silence the thought I walked over anyway. There was nothing on the piano: no music, no song sheets, nothing. “Well it’s not like I expected there would be. Just a crazy thought!”
I was about to turn away when I spied something white at the far end of the piano, beyond the music holder, lying flat at the very edge. It was a piece of paper. “Hmm, wonder what that could be? Guess I won't be satisfied 'till I check it out.” I climbed the platform and approached the piano. As I got closer I noticed there were two sheets of paper lying one on top of the other. All of a sudden there was a lot riding on what were on those 2 sheets of paper! I rounded the piano bench, bringing them into full view, and my eyes lit on the top sheet.
It was the song. IT WAS THE SONG! Titled “More of You” from Psalm 63 with no author listed. Every verse, every word was where I was at in my walk with the Lord:

Earnestly I seek You
With all my heart I long for You
Like dry desert sands I thirst for You

I’ve seen You in Your power
I’ve seen You in Your majesty
Your wondrous love has changed me
Now You are all I want
You’re more than life to me…

Awake my soul awake!
Put on the song of praise
O God will You please hear my cry
And draw me close to You?

And let my spirit soar into Your presence Lord
For only You can satisfy this longing that is deep inside
I hunger and thirst for more of You
I hunger and thirst for more of You.

I searched the whole platform: the keyboard, all the music stands, the drums…. There was not another song or sheet of paper anywhere except those two songs stacked neatly on the far side of the piano. “More of You” which the Holy Spirit had already laid on my heart, and the second one, “Open the Eyes of my Heart Lord.” (“Open the eyes of my Heart Lord, open the eyes of my Heart, I want to see You; I want to see You.”)
The Lord had given me my morning’s marching orders via a miracle and I sang those two songs with all my heart for the rest of my 2 hour time slot. And two days later I’m still singing them. They are what He wants me to cry out for and proclaim, and by extension, what He wants to give me. (“To see You high and lifted up, shining in the light of Your glory. Pour out Your power and love, as we cry ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’”).

The Greatest Gift

By David Hobbs

The word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. (Gen. 15:1)

The Lord has blessed me with a ministry in prayer. I came to that under-standing after a process of elimination. I realized I would never make a good pastor; I was a washout as an evangelist; I could prophesy but was not a prophet. I was a stumbling speaker, uninspiring as a teacher, a loner bereft of social graces, a “leader” everybody liked but nobody wanted to follow…. But as a pray-er, one-on-one with God—I found Someone who would overlook my awkwardness and see deeper into my heart where a passion smoldered for Him. And He in turn found in me someone who would pay the price--in loneliness, invisibility, and obscurity--to draw close to Him: someone who was not in a hurry; someone who had nowhere else to go.
It was a calling made in heaven.
I remember how exciting it was to discover that I could literally call heaven down to earth. As God says so poetically in Job 38:34, I could “raise [my] voice to the clouds and cover [myself] with a flood of water [the refreshing Presence of the Holy Spirit].” I didn’t have to wait for the next church service, I could touch God in prayer almost at will. So I gave myself to prayer.

It was also exciting to realize that I was now meeting the qualifications of Hebrews 11:6—“anyone who comes to [God] must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I was now earnestly seeking God, what might my reward be?
I used to ponder that question and fantasize on the possible answer. Would it be some great spiritual gift, such that I could enter a hospital and empty the sickbeds? Maybe it would be a financial blessing whereby I could fully fund the missionaries. Maybe it would be my book on the bestseller list with multitudes being saved because of my testimony. Maybe maybe maybe. Thus did my mind wander.
All the while I was having great experiences in God: walking around the church in the middle of the night pouring out my heart to Him in song, being overcome with weeping so I couldn’t sing anymore, weeping at the revelation of His love for me though the cross, at His passion in seeking me out from the depths of my sin, His stubborn refusal to give me over to the depravity I chose for myself--the many times He refused to give up on me. Other times He let me declare His word at the top of my voice under a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit, which I could feel breaking down the kingdom of darkness all around me. Still other times He let me pour out my heart to Him in song in what I knew were command performances for the angels (“The angels have requested that you sing ‘How Great Thou Art’ one more time, and be sure to hit that real high note at the end!”). And all the while I was wondering, “This is so great, what could my reward possibly be in addition to all this?” Ha!
Then one day it dawned on me…. How could I have been so blind? I didn’t have some grand reward waiting out there that He was going to drop in my lap someday. He was my great reward, and I’d been getting it all along! Like He said to Abram, “I am thy exceeding great reward!” He was that treasure hidden in a field that when a man found he went and sold all he had so he could buy that field. There was no possible reward on earth anywhere greater than Himself, not the 76 virgins awaiting the Muslims, not Nirvana awaiting the Buddhists, not the streets of gold nor heavenly mansions nor eternal life nor anything else that could be named.
I’m amazed at the theology revealed in some of our Christian songs. Just the titles say it all: “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again,” and “Heaven Won’t Be Heaven (Without You).”
Or how about these lyrics:

Let's meet by the river over on that beautiful shore,
Let's meet by the river where loved ones dwell who've gone on before;

If you leave me standing here on this earth just wait by the river,
It's such a good place for us to meet over there;
And after I find you let's go see Jesus,

Our deepest longings, even in the afterlife, are for family and friends. But “after I find you,” then “let’s go see Jesus!”
Friends friends friends! He is our exceeding great reward. Anyone who hasn’t realized that yet hasn’t had a sufficient revelation of Jesus. That revelation in itself is a great reward, because it will keep us from pursuing lesser things all our lives and being greatly disappointed in that day when all our earthly sandcastles wash away in the waves of eternity. He is our exceeding great reward. Seek Him diligently and then ask for the reward of that most precious revelation!

Taking Prayer "To the Mat"

By David Hobbs

Prayer is not prayer until the Holy Spirit shows up with His anointing. That’s why so many Christians hate to pray: they don’t understand “pressing through to the anointing.” Without the anointing, prayer is a dry and powerless drudgery.
When I’m asked to pray in a crowd--you might call it “prayer on demand”--I do the best I can with what anointing I can muster on the spot. But when I get alone to seek the Lord, that’s when I set the terms. And the first thing I do always is search for the anointing. Another way to say it is I try to get into the Presence of the Lord. I need Him to supply the direction, unction, and power. Otherwise I’m just spinning my wheels.
How do I get into the felt Presence of the Lord? There are many different ways. Even before I do anything I try to sense some direction—What is the Spirit saying? What is my own spirit wanting to do? It will be different from my last prayer time, I can count on that. One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately is sitting in stillness and waiting: let my mind clear and my thoughts cease. At other times I might try to prime the pump with the sacrifice of praise, read aloud from the Psalms, sing a song or two, meditate on who God is, what He’s done, and His "great and precious promises," and give thanks accordingly…. All the while I’m looking for the response of the Spirit. It’s usually not hard to get or long in coming. Then the prayer time takes off in glory.
That’s when conditions are right. But what if they’re not? What if the enemy has been messing with me, beating me down with accusations, discouraging me with running commentary on how pathetic I am, flooding my mind with distracting thoughts and then accusing me of being unfocused! Sometimes the pressure and bondages are so great I can’t enter in; I can’t break through to that “sweet spot” in the Spirit. What then?
Last week I had just such a time. I was at a hotel in Sacramento to work with the State Contractor’s License Board on updating the painting exam. I was fasting because we were having a big spiritual push leading up to the woman’s retreat last weekend. My intent was to lock myself in my room all evening and seek the Lord. But my soul was crying out for food, my body was crying out for sleep, the pressure on my spirit was crying out for release, and nothing worked—God was nowhere to be found. There were also other issues going on in my head that the enemy was working with: e.g. I was needing to update my blog but was having “writer’s block.”
The situation was not conducive to prayer: the beds were too high to kneel at, I couldn’t be loud, there was little room to pace; but mostly it was the pressure. I was bound up tighter than a drum, like being squeezed by a demonic anaconda. Other times in similar circumstance I have simply given up, gone to bed, turned on the TV or otherwise vegged out. But even that wasn’t a viable option here—how can you satisfactorily "veg out" when you’re fasting!? This time the circumstances pushed me into a corner until I had no choice but to push back. I couldn’t take it anymore.
Filled with what turned into fierce determination, I lay down on the bed, drew my knees up and turned my face to the Lord, resolved I was not going to quit till I got an answer from Him. The intensity was too great to speak so I just lay there in silence. The enemy said, “Go ahead and lie there, because I’m going to make you fall asleep! Try as you will you can’t keep yourself awake!” (He was correct. Ever try and keep yourself awake with sheer willpower?)
Just like he said, worn out from the battle, I dozed off. But when I awoke I was still there lying before the Lord. I dozed off and awoke again, but I was still there; unwilling to get up; unwilling to end my vigil. Then I realized something. Falling asleep didn’t negate my prayer as long as I kept my resolve and kept my face toward God. “Go ahead and put me to sleep,” I said in my mind to the devil. “I won’t sleep forever, and when I awake I’ll still be here praying. You can put me off for awhile, but you can’t stop me!”
A couple of hours went by and darkness came over the room. I dozed and waked, dozed and waked, but always with my face to the Lord, in mute appeal for His help. “Lord I can do nothing but cry out in silence. Lord I’m here; I’m waiting on You!”
About 8 o’clock I felt like the intensity had abated, though I hadn’t heard or sensed any word from the Lord. But the pressure had eased, and I no longer felt tired. I got up and went to my computer and typed out my last blog entry. The writer’s block was broken; God’s Presence returned. I had taken the enemy to the mat in prayer and won!

My Greatest Goal

By David Hobbs

I have a very deep, emotional goal in my life. “What’s an emotional goal?” you might ask. One that’s deeper than intellectual; one that impacts and draws from the emotions as well as the mind. A mind goal might be to have three children, or graduate from Harvard. An emotional goal, for someone who had a poor and turbulent upbringing, might be to own a house with a white picket fence around the front yard. That would symbolize the peace, tranquility, and stability that was absent from the childhood, and achieving it would bring a satisfaction deeper than words could express.
Since knowing the Lord and getting glimpses of His great love and all he has done to draw me to Himself, my deepest emotional goal has been to be totally poured out for Him--for one moment in time when I could totally fulfill the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mk. 12:30).” It’s funny, but that’s the first and greatest commandment and I haven’t done it yet, and I don’t know anyone else who has either. We can handle the heart and soul and mind and strength part, but it’s that pesky word “all” that throws us!
What would it look like to love the Lord with all of your strength? It would be like a great runner running the marathon and giving his last gasp as he collapses over the finish line. “With all of the heart” would be someone who lavishes all their affection and devotion and attention on the Lord so that the way they feel about their spouse and children and parents and siblings and even themselves is hate by comparison (Luke 14:26). Any takers on that one?
You get the picture. Yet there have been times when I have gotten close: times when I was so moved in my spirit that I was overwhelmed, awash on my inside with the Love of God—when I couldn’t sing sweetly enough, couldn’t shout loudly enough, couldn’t preach strongly enough. I couldn’t quite plumb the depths of my soul and get it all out on the altar! There is a deep, inexpressible joy that comes from being poured out in worship. But there was always a little more left somewhere inside.
That’s where this goal sprang from: someday, somehow, somewhere I am going to find an opportunity and a way to do it--to get it all out. And at that point I am going to hear the Holy Spirit say, “There! That’s it! Every last drop is on the altar!” And my spirit is going to say the biggest “Yes!” that has ever been uttered by mankind. “Yes! Now I can die in peace.”
Sound crazy? It shouldn’t. I come from a family of fanatics. My Father once said of Himself: "For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant (Isaiah 42:14).” And it was said of Him, “When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back (Job 327:4).” He certainly held nothing back when He sent the best He had, the Crown Jewel of heaven, His only Son, to suffer and die for me. Why shouldn’t I have the same frame of mind to want to give everything I have back to Him? Like Father, like son.
My Brother was the same way, you know, my brother Jesus. He had the same love of the Father for mankind. He wept over Jerusalem when it wouldn’t come to Him. He upbraided the cities where His miracles were done when they wouldn’t repent—upbraided them in anger, but an anger fueled by sorrowing, unrequited love.
Jesus had a problem with His disciples. He was having to rebuke and correct them so much that it was hard to show them how much, through it all He still loved them. They knew He must care for them because He didn’t cast them off, but just how much He loved them… He knew they didn’t have a clue.
But He was determined to show them how much He loved them, because He knew it would be the most important revelation they would ever receive. And sure enough, it all fit perfectly into the Father’s plan. “Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love (John 13:1).” There it is. Jesus poured Himself out for us on the cross, showing us for all time the full extent of His love. Right before He died, when He said, “It is finished,” part of what He meant was that the greatest demonstration of love throughout eternity was now completed. Every last drop was on the altar. That’s my Brother!

Spiritual Warfare at the Garden House

By David Hobbs

The Garden House is a shed out back of my folk’s house in Ohio. Half used for tools and storage, and half fixed into a little apartment with bed, table and wood stove, it is my place of prayer when home visiting. Exciting things have happened there, the chief being meeting Jesus once in prayer in the dead of night (see blog post “Friday Night at the Garden House” posted 2-17-08). That’s the only time Jesus has visited me personally and even then I was kept from seeing Him or hearing Him audibly. Still that has forever made the garden house holy ground.

That had been in July 2007. Now it was 2 years later in July 2009 and I was back because of my book tour. I went out to pray the first night and it was very difficult. But prayer is sometimes like that, and I was tired from driving for several days straight…. But when the next night was just as hard, I took stock. Hmm. Different young people from the family had used the place in my absence. They went back there to smoke and drink and hang out at family reunions. I realized the demons had been let back in.
Many people, when they experience a difficult time in prayer, agree with thoughts the enemy puts in their minds like, “I’m just not good at prayer. Prayer is so dry, how do people do it? Prayer just isn’t my thing, etc.” Little do they know that those aren’t even their own thoughts, that they’re agreeing with the lies of the enemy, and that he has also bound them spiritually and put roadblocks in their way to keep them from breaking through in prayer. Our spirits do want to pray, because prayer is life-giving contact with God. Meeting with Him in prayer is like getting our spiritual extension cords plugged into His power outlet—we get quickened, rejuvenated, and re-energized in our Christian walk (see "The Nourishing Sap of the Holy Spirit, 7-6-08). The enemy is clever at hiding from us what he is doing to separate us from God. The enemy loves to hide in the darkness, but the Holy Spirit loves to come and overturn the rocks he is hiding under and see the demons flee .
I realized now it was not me, but that I was encountering spiritual resistance from an entrenched foe. Understanding is half the victory, because God has already given us the tools we need. I began to praise the Lord out loud, contrary to my feelings and the feelings of dry hardness in the garden house. “Glory to God! Praise the Lord! Jesus I proclaim Your victory on the cross!” I could feel the shackles on me letting go and the anointing arise from within me. I got louder and louder. Suddenly there arose a fierce spiritual battle as the demons, exposed and confronted by the Word of the Lord under the unction of the Holy Spirit, responded with ferocious hatred. They were all around the outside of the building in the dark while I was inside in the bright, spiritual light, walking back and forth in that little space, praising the Lord and declaring His victory at the top of my voice.
How did I know they were there? I could sense them in my spirit: their agitation and their hatred. Also, there were 4 windows in the room. Two went to the outside, the third was in a door that went to the outside, and the fourth was in the door that went to the storage side of the building. Often as I passed a window I would get a split-second glimpse in my spirit of an angry, ugly demonic face glaring at me.
As I’ve learned before, the Holy Spirit within me is not in the least bit intimidated by the demonic. In fact, it energizes Him. So now the Holy Spirit within me was fired up for action and we kept up a loud barrage of praising the Lord and declaring His victory and the devil’s defeat.
Now here’s the key. The demons were swirling outside like a swarm of bees whose nest had just been broken up. They had me surrounded inside the garden house off in the woods away from the house in the dark of the night. I couldn’t go outside, I couldn’t run, and I couldn’t escape. I had to remain there, stay on task, stay focused, and wait for the Lord to come and deliver me and defeat them. And so the battle raged. I had no fear, but it was also hairy because I knew they were stronger than I, and my victory depended on not yielding but remaining on attack. And there was no guarantee how long it might take!
After about half an hour of intense praise and declarations, suddenly it was over. They were gone, driven off by the heavenly hosts. Now I could go outside in the dark to relieve myself without fear.
There were no more hindrances to prayer the rest of my time there. In fact, praying in the garden house after that was so tame it became boring, so I began going out and walking around the property to pray.

Hindrances to God's Glory Being Poured Out

By Pastor Joy, as told to David Hobbs


Pastor Joy is one of the most spiritually in-tune people I know. She has pastored throughout the country with her husband, mostly in the Episcopal Church. They currently live in our area where they pastor an Anglican church. The following is her account, as well as I can remember it, as told to our prayer group on 3/24/2010.
Recently I was caught up to a face-to-face encounter with the Lord. He spoke with me and allowed me to ask Him questions. One of the questions I asked was "Lord, why don’t you pour out Your glory as You have promised? How long must we wait?"
The Lord answered, "I long for that even more than you do, but where can I pour it out?"
Not long after this I was driving early in the morning from Yuba City to the Rock of Roseville Church . It was winter, and as often happens here in the Valley in the cold mornings there were dense patches of valley fog. As I was driving, I felt the presence of the Lord fill my car and I noticed that strange things were happening to the fog. I realized Iwas having some kind of vision. The fog seemed to congeal into squares or blocks and they began taking on different colors. "What is this? What am I seeing?" I asked the Lord.
“The fog represents My glory" He responded.
I noticed off toward the horizon a block of gray, dark, dirty looking fog. "Why is that fog gray?" I wondered aloud.
“The gray fog is My glory contaminated with sin," He said. [When she said this I thought of Simon the Sorcerer who offered Peter money for the ability to lay hands on people and confer the gift of the Holy Spirit.]
A little farther I saw in another direction some brown fog. "What’s with the brown fog?" I asked.
“The brown fog is My glory contaminated by the flesh.” [When she said this, I thought of those who used their spiritual giftings and anointings to subtly promote themselves—building up their ministries, raising money, merchandising products, and boasting in their newsletters of their many accomplishments, all in the Name of Christ.]
Then I saw close at hand some pink fog, which looked unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Wow! What’s the pink fog?"
“The pink fog is My glory contaminated by false doctrine.” [When she said this I thought of those who teach that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not for today; that spiritual gifts and manifestations died out with the early church; that speaking in tongues is a manifestation of the devil; who question and criticize every present move of the Spirit….]
Then right before me, towering in the sky to a great height, was a pillar of dazzling white fog, stunning in its beauty and brilliance.
“That is My glory, pure and undefiled."
But even as I was watching in awe while trying to keep my car on the road, I noticed some tendrils of the pink fog beginning to drift toward the pillar of pure fog, as if to wrap themselves around it and intermingle with it.
“Even when I find a safe place to pour out My glory, there is ever-present danger of contamination by those who dwell on the earth," the Lord concluded and the vision ended.

MY COMMENTS: I absolutely believe the vision and bear witness to its message. But we need to be careful not to use the vision as a club to beat those who don’t agree with us doctrinally, or who we think are more corrupt or falsely motivated than we perceive ourselves to be. We all share in each of the contaminations of His glory, which is why it is not being poured out in spite of our longings and His.
I see this vision as a call for all of us in the church to repent. It’s not just “those guys!” It’s all of us. We need to repent, confess our sins and the faults of the church, humble ourselves and ask the Lord to purify us all, so He can pour His glory out.

Another Sign by Rain

By David Hobbs

Last spring I had what I took to be a supernatural sign with rain in the appearance of fire and fiery horses in the clouds over our church. This happened early one morning after a time of prayer. (See blog post “Angels and Fiery Rain” of 6/3/09)

It could all have been explained meteorologically in the natural scientific realm, but then most supernatural manifestations can, just as answered prayer can be explained as coincidence, wishful thinking, mind tricks, etc. If you are waiting for a “pure” supernatural manifestation that can’t possibly be explained any other way… you’ll probably be waiting a long time. That’s not how God does things. He always requires faith. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Faith is what unlocks the door to the supernatural.

That’s what makes it so pathetic to hear “learned” people explaining away miracles like the walls of Jericho falling down as being caused by a fortuitously-timed earthquake, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as being the result of a “swoon” whereby He never really died, but returned to consciousness in the tomb and then… and then... (however they explain how He was able to roll the heavy stone away in His debillitated condition, leave the tomb, roll the stone back, and escape in full view of the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb!). The natural mind can explain away any and everything supernatural, which might be why the Bible says the natural mind can never please God!
So last spring I was in a time of prayer, getting ready to launch the new initiative of my summer book tour which I had been preparing for all winter, and God gave me an encouraging sign of fiery rain and horses over the church. This sign was not only for me, but for the whole church, which has been given many prophesies, dreams, and visions through many different people of what is about to happen here, I being the latest in this long string.
But that was then. This is now.

Last Sunday I and some others went to the town of Live Oak north of the church to a facility we used to call an “Old Folk’s Home” to do a monthly service for the old folks. The fellow who was going to share the Word didn’t show up, so we ended up singing for nearly 2 hours to the appreciative audience. It was lively, from our hearts, and the level of the Holy Spirit’s anointing in the room kept rising. This I believe was the key for what happened next.
Driving home I had to pass our church, which owns the land for a half mile along Live Oak Bl. out in the country north of Yuba City. The sky was partly sunny and partly cloudy. A storm was passing 1000 miles to the north and these were the wispy clouds on its outer boundary.
As I drove south on Hwy. 99 a couple of raindrops appeared on my windshield."Rain? There’s no rain in the forecast for a week!” But nothing else happened until two miles later, when I turned off on Live Oak Bl. past the church. Just as I reached the northern edge of the church property it started to rain in earnest. I had to turn the wipers on; it was a good shower. But as I passed Eager Rd., the church's southern boundary, the rain suddenly quit, and there was no more for the rest of the trip home, nor for the rest of the day, nor anywhere else in the Valley nor up in the mountains where they usually get 3X as much rain as we do. It was only that one shower right as I passed the church after coming out from a strong anointing at the old folk’s home.

My New Friend Larry

By David Hobbs

I was getting on the freeway in Sacramento to drive home to Marysville when I spied a hitchhiker at the onramp. “Where you going?” I asked the older man.
“Marysville.”
“Well you’re in luck, my friend, climb in.”
His name was Larry, Larry Watkins. He’d been waiting at the onramp for 3 hours in the cold. He was actually heading to Oroville, north of Marysville, where he lived.
I’m always looking for the divine connection in everything unusual that happens in my life. “Lord why did you have me pick Larry up? What do you want to say to him? I pray for Your guidance.”
We got to talking. He grew up in Oklahoma, was a veteran from the Viet Nam War, on Social Security disability. Larry mentioned the Lord a few times so I figured he’d opened the subject. “So you’re a Christian then?”
He admitted he was, though he said he wasn’t a church attender, and it was fairly obvious he was not a current practitioner. We talked about my church and my faith. Then he told me about his family, and their strong faith back in Oklahoma. Stirred by the memories, he related how he would study the Bible as a kid and then preach messages to his dad, messages that often brought tears to his father’s eyes. “You gonna be a fine preacher someday Larry,” his father used to tell him.
Warming to his subject, he began preaching to me, telling me of the power, glory and love of God and His total faithfulness. “I believe you’ve still got some preacher left in you,” I told him, to which he preached even more fervently.
Then the Holy Spirit reminded me of something. There was a time in my life I would have been interrupting Larry in order to share with him the importance of getting back into church. I would have been looking for opportunities to lecture him on being faithful to his divine calling, that the Lord must have allowed me to pick him up for that very purpose: to admonish and challenge him to get his act together, and lecture lecture yada yada.
“Wow, that’s exactly what I would have been doing,” I admitted to the Holy Spirit. “that is what I’ve done with people over and over again!”
“Now isn’t this easier?” the Holy Spirit said. “Let him do it, let his own words remind and convict and encourage and strengthen him. You don’t have to do a thing: just relax, listen, and let him convict himself. It’s a lot easier for Me to use his own words to prod him later than your judgmental ones!”
After that I sat back, drove on and listened to Larry relive his glory days, not even tempted to jump in with the charge, “So what happened? Why aren’t you still serving God? Why aren’t you fulfilling the prophecy of your father?” We all get derailed by life from time to time. That’s why the Bible calls us sheep. Have you ever seen a sheep-trail? They wander all over the place.
Larry was hungry so I took him home and cooked him a good breakfast before taking him to the edge of town to catch a ride the rest of the way to Oroville. I gave him my card with my phone number and asked him to call me. No lectures, just love, meeting needs, and letting him paint the picture of his desired future with his own words. There’s the picture Larry; now it’s up to you to go after it and get it! After listening to my dad speak a church preaching engagement into being for me a few months before in Ohio (see previous post, “My Dad the Prophet,” of 11/22/09), I was sufficiently impressed with the power of the spoken word to let him run with it.
I don’t know for certain if Larry will be able to recover his walk with the Lord, but it is a lot more likely to happen than if I’d self-righteously lectured him on what he was doing wrong and how he’d failed God.

Battle for Reality

By David Hobbs

When the people asked Jesus, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” Jesus answered them simply, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” [John 6:28-29]
The Word of God has a remarkable way of zeroing in on the heart of any issue it deals with. The hardest thing we have to do, and something I struggle with every day, is just that: to truly believe Jesus—what he said and what the Bible says about Him. “But how is that hard?” you might ask. “I believe everything I am supposed to believe about Him: He’s the Son of God, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life ….”
Ah but here’s the rub. You’re giving mental assent to a list of historical facts or doctrines. James says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder” [James 2:19]. The dark side knows far more than we do about the facts concerning Jesus and His purpose for coming to earth. Such knowledge doesn’t save them and won’t save us either.
Almost every church has a Statement of Faith, a list of the doctrines they adhere to. But adherence to those doctrines, while it might enable you to join that church, will not ensure your fulfilling of Jesus’ commandment that you “believe on him whom [God] hath sent.”
In Scripture, “believe in” can always be equated to “trust in” and “obey.” We “believe in” Jesus Christ for eternal life if we “trust in” Him. But trust is exclusive. If we “trust in” Jesus for our salvation, we cannot “trust in” anything else such as our own goodness. We can’t trust the fact that our father was a preacher, our mother was a praying woman, we attended church all our lives—that would cancel out trusting in Christ.
Let me get to the crux of the issue. The Bible claims that Jesus Christ died so that I might live. More than that, it says He did this while I was His enemy—while I hated Him, denied Him, and used His Name as a curse word. What would I do if a man saved me at the expense of his own life. Say I was crossing the street when I collapsed from my trick knee. A truck was barreling toward me but a man came to my rescue, rolled me out of the way but couldn’t escape the truck himself and was killed. He gave up his life to save mine. What would/should my response be? Extreme gratefulness to him, and since he was no longer alive, to his family? Would I not want to do all in my power to see that his widow was provided for, that his children would get to go to college, or whatever the man wanted for them? Yes I should. Such sacrifice demands a response. And not to give it would reveal me to be a moral low-life, selfish and self-centered in the extreme.
How about in Jesus’ case? When the Bible says that he willingly gave up His life for me, even when I hated Him and wasn’t living up to His moral requirements, what ought my response to be? If I claim to believe that—give my mental assent to it as being true—and yet still live my life any old way I choose, what does that say about me? Either I am a despicable low-life who wasn’t worth dying for in the first place, or in my heart of hearts, despite what my mouth says, I don’t truly believe it.
The Bible says you can always tell what someone really believes (as opposed to what they say they believe) by their actions. When we don’t live any differently than the rest of the world which denies Christ altogether, do we truly believe?
If we believe that Jesus suffered and died for us, wouldn’t we want to respond the way He asked us to? Certainly! Then how does He want us to respond? 2 Cor. 5:15—“And [Jesus] died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
The proper response to Christ’s death for us, if we truly believe it, is for us to die to ourselves and what we want and live for Him. But too many people are content to give mental assent to the “facts” of His death and keep on living for themselves—by pursuing their own goals, pleasures, agendas, riches, fame, and power; by making a name for themselves, building their own businesses, ministries, families, and their own little empires here on earth. How can such people claim to believe Jesus died for them? Matt.15:8—“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain…. Matt. 7:22—“Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did not we prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then will I tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me you evildoers!’”
That gets us back to our title—“The Battle for Reality.” What is reality to us? Are the things the Bible claims--heaven and hell; eternity in one place or the other; an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God; Jesus and His death on the cross for us—is that the true reality? Or is the true reality what we see and experience every day in this world we live in? Remember, it’s not what we say we believe, but what we show we believe by how we live our lives.
Check out the books 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper and 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese. Is that what we believe: a literal heaven and a literal hell? Then if we believe that Jesus died that we might escape a forever in the place hell for a forever in the place heaven: if we truly believed that, then we should be spending the rest of our lives on earth in slobbering thankfulness to the One who has rescued us: “Thank you thank you thank you Jesus! What can I do for you? Do you want something to drink? How about some praise? Do you want me to witness to that guy? Spend all night in prayer? Be a martyr? Thank thank you thank you thank…!” That should be how we spend our lives if we truly believe. And that is the work of God for us to do: “believe on him whom he hath sent.”

Christ Within--The Hope of Glory: On Earth as it is in Heaven

Christ Within--The Hope of Glory: On Earth as it is in Heaven
www.americantowns.com/ca/marysville

On Earth as it is in Heaven

By David Hobbs

Not every prayer is worthy of being prayed. Some prayers are little more than a projection of our fears and anxieties (“don’t let the boogeyman get me!”). Some are for things He’s already promised over and over (“And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”). Some are almost prayers of boredom, for things we truly care very little about (“And we pray for the pygmies in Africa and all the ships at sea”)--Prayers to make us the pray-ers look/feel good rather than trying to accomplish anything in the Kingdom.
To avoid many of the pitfalls of wrong praying, Jesus gave us a stock prayer; we call it “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.

In the past, when I thought about this prayer's most famous line, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, I thought about things like judicial justice, people praising God openly and nobody ripping anybody off—kind of a civic righteousness and joy. But I saw it in an entirely new light this morning.
We were down at the capital in Sacramento in one of the committee meeting rooms, holding our weekly worship and intercession meeting. As we sang and worshipped, the presence of God kept filling the room until it became so pervasive and strong it seemed to fill every cell of my being. As always, when that happens, I thought, “I never want to leave this place of intimacy with Him.” I started praying, not out loud, but to the Lord in secret, “Lord, I always want to be with You like this! I don’t care if it’s on earth or in heaven. It doesn’t matter. I’m not asking you to take me to heaven so I can be with You. I am asking that wherever I am, whether earth or heaven, I can always be with You like I am right now.”
Then it struck me: that verse from the Lord’s Prayer, on earth as it is in heaven. “Lord,” I prayed, “if I was in heaven right now I would be with You like this, always! So let it be done on earth as it would be in heaven! Let me be with You, here--experiencing You and being filled with You--as much and to the same degree as if I was in heaven: on earth as it is in heaven!”
Now that is a prayer worthy of being prayed!