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“Over” the word for 2011

Linticular cloud over New Zealand

The word I received for the year 2011:

“This year I am overtaking you. I am overpowering you and overwhelming you.

“This year the operative word is ‘over.’

“You will be over your afflictions as I overshadow you.

“You will overturn your world as my affections for you over come you.

“You asked not just for more of Me, but all of Me.

“You cannot contain all of Me but I will enfold all of you.

“It would be impossible to over emphasize my love for you.

“I will oversee your depth in My love to take you places you have never been in My Spirit.

“My Summer harvest will overshadow any traces of Winter in your spirit.

“Over abundance of fruit will be yours.

“Overpowering provision will come to you.

“Over and over I will allow you to plumb the depths of Me without measure. There you will receive gifts to use and impart.

“You will overcome and overturn the camp of the enemy in your family.

“Their captivity is over under your hand – ‘what you decide will be done. At your word I will lift up the downcast. You will deliver even those not innocent by the cleanness of your own hands (Job 22 [end]).

“Overcome My Bride, My Sons, My Beloved.”

“OVERs” of the Word:

The Lord rejoiced over you to do you good.

The cloud stood over the door of the tabernacle

Pass over into the land

Dominion over all the earth

God made a wind to pass over the earth

Let people serve you and nations bow down to you; be lord over your brethren

As he passed over Peniel the sun rose upon him

Shall you indeed reign over us?

He made him overseer over all he had

You shall be over my house

I have set you over all the land of Egypt

Stretch out your hand over the streams, over the rivers, over the ponds

I will pass over you

Place such over them to be rulers over, 1,000; 100s, 50s, 10s

Before the golden covering which is over the Ark of Testimony where I will meet you

Wings over the mercy seat

You shall not rule over with rigor, but in the fear of God

You shall blow the trumpet over your offerings

Over peace offerings

Your cloud stands over them

Let the Lord, the God of all flesh set a man over the congregation

You shall rule over many nations but they shall not rule over you

He that rules over men must be just in the fear of God

Solomon, a wise son over this great people

Cherubim wings over the Ark

Faithful over a few things; ruler over many

The Lord made me have dominion over the mighty

Rule over us

The people made him head captain over them

Spread you robe over your handmaiden

My mouth is enlarged over my enemies

David prevailed over the Philistine

Saul set him over the men of war

By you I have leaped over a wall

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The Upside-Down World

 

Van Gogh painted several empty chairs. Were they statements about a distant God?

For Christmas I received the coffee table edition of the complete works of Vincent Van Gogh. He is my all-time favorite artist.

 

The introduction had an assessment of the underlying influence of the 19th and 20th Centuries on artists. I fairly consistently mistrust art critics and authors who imagine they ‘know’ what an artist was thinking when he or she painted. However, this introduction arrested my attention and set me on several hours of reflecting on the big picture. Let me just share his views and what that means to the sparks of creativity that are flooding the present new move of God’s Holy Spirit.

I must first say that Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo Van Gogh are worth reading if you are interested in the inner workings of the artists mind. The name of the book is “Dear Theo.”

Van Gogh’s empty chairs, according to the book, were a subliminal outworking of the influence of the times; an absent God.

Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings
Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger

“The Austrian art historian Hans Sedlmayr gives the title, ‘The Vacant Throne’ to the final chapter of an essay he wrote in cultural criticism called The Loss of the Centre.’ Sedlmayr writes: “It must be added that the artists have been among those who suffered the most in the 19th and 20th centuries, the very people whose task it has been to render the Fall of Man and of his world in their terrible visions. In the 19th century there was an altogether new type of suffering artist: the lonely, lost, despairing artist on the brink of insanity. It was a type that previously only occurred in isolated instances, if that.

“The 19th century aritsts, great and profound minds, often have the character of victims who sacrifice themselves. From Holderlin, Goya, Friedrich, Runge and Kleist through Daumier, Stifter, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky to van Gogh, Strindberg and Trakl there was a line of solidarity in suffering at the hands of the times. All of them suffered from the fact that God was remote, and ‘dead’, and Man debased.”

(Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that God was dead ushered in those ‘times’. “God is dead” does not mean that Nietzsche believed in an actual God who first existed and then died in a literal sense. It may be more appropriate to consider the statement as Nietzsche’s way of saying that the conventional Christian God is no longer a viable source of any absolute moral principles. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.” This is why in “The Madman”, a passage which primarily addresses non-theists (especially atheists), the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order.

The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is that for which Nietzsche worked to find a solution by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values.”

Nietzsche believed that the majority of people did not recognize this death out of the deepest-seated fear or angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to become widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would become rampant. This is partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic. He may have seen himself as a historical figure like Socrates or Jesus, giving a new philosophical orientation to future generations to overcome the impending nihilism).”

Present day prophets and seers have seen that God’s hammer on the anvil of creativity has sent sparks flying in all directions. Those sparks are setting fires in the arts like unto the Church’s Renaissance mandate to declare in paint and music the glory of God and His intervention into the history of mankind.

Therefore, it is our age of creativity – our reception of the spark – that should “render the reconciliation of mankind”, not the “Fall of Man”. Our rise to a heavenly perspective has unleashed a creativity that affirms that God is not only ‘not dead’ but that He is pouring Himself out on man on a thousand levels; elevating, honoring, saving, empowering, and allowing us to partner with Him.

We are ushering in the upside down world where you die to live, you give to receive. We are flipping the world’s philosophies to view them in absolute reverse context that will open the gates of heaven to mankind in a holy rush of heaven wind. We are taking back all our stolen goods. The New Age cannot keep what it has perverted. One needs only to search “Google Images” and type in ‘angels’ to see that this host of God’s messengers whose mandate is to help mankind, have been hijacked into deep perversion. That day is over as the upside down world portrays them as they are.

The move is on. It is rare that the world recognizes when it is in monumental change. Plato’s words (misquoted by the way), “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake” are applicable. The music is changing and the walls are shaking. The night the Beatles sang on the Ed Sullivan Show, many knew a major change was in the wind. The following years were historically revolutionary. The next mode change was “Love Song” and the world flipped upside down again. The repairers of the breach were loosed upon the earth and millions were swept into the Kingdom of Light.

Listen closely. Bridal intimacy is the mode change now and it is sweeping the earth. It will use paint, guitar strings, glue, light, sound, voices, pen and ink, Photoshop, Garage Band, cyberspace, keyboards, prayer positions, intercession… the world is convulsing-not yet like it will-but the world is convulsing.

Welcome the Upside-Down World!

Acts 17:6

“But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, ‘These who have turned the world upside down have come here too'” (emphasis added).

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Those Most Unworthy Shepherds

Ruth Bell Graham published a Christmas card with an amazing message about to whom God chooses to appear and why. Ruth wrote:

“Those were no ordinary sheep, no common flocks, huddled in sleep among the fields, the layered rocks, near Bethlehem that night, but those selected for the Temple sacrifice, theirs to atone for sins they had not done.

“How right the angels should appear to them That Night!

“Those were no usual shepherds there, but outcast shepherds whose unusual care of special sheep made it impossible to keep Rabbinic law, which therefore banned them.

“How right the angels should appear to them That Night!” – Ruth Bell Graham

Alfred Edersheim, an amazing scholar who lived between 1825 and 1889 first wrote about those shepherds and sheep in his book, The Temple. (Available at Amazon.com). Few others have made mention of this beautiful story in Christmas sermons, however, the info below is from Vinings Church in Atlanta Georgia. This is the essence of the Christmas story. This is God’s character in every age – He who changes not. Thanks to you all at Vinings!

………………..

Open your Bibles to Luke 2 and get ready to have some church with me. Read Luke 2:1-20.

This is the story of the events that took place before the birth of the Messiah who had been prophesied since the beginning of the Story of God in Genesis 3:15. The shepherds were watching these sheep at night and the sky opened with light. Suddenly there is a host of angels proclaiming “The Savior has been born in Bethlehem!”

These shepherds were special. A scholar named Alfred Edersheim first shed light on this last century, and other commentators since, but it is rarely shared in Christmas sermons today. Many of you know believers of God brought animal sacrifices to the temple before the time of Jesus. So at the time of Luke 2 (Jesus’ birth) this practice was still going on. They brought sheep, doves, goats, cows…to the temple to pay for sins committed the previous week. But you couldn’t bring just any sheep, goat or animal. They had to be your best. Unspotted. Unblemished. The sacrifices made were a substitute, a reminder, that one day the prophesied Messiah would be beaten and killed for their sins, once and for all.

Three things you need to know.

First, since some came from far away, they couldn’t bring their animals. Merchants were waiting at the temple to sell animals to these distant travelers.

Second, you didnt watch sheep at night. Shepherds would graze their sheep during the day so they could see wolves and other predators coming to pick off their sheep. They brought them into pens at night for protection. But here these shepherds are watching their flock at night! Why? These sheep were the sheep for temple sacrifice. They were not only unblemished, but they had to stay out at all hours exposed to predators to be worthy of sacrifice. The sheep these men were watching were the sheep prepared for temple sacrifice.

Third, shepherds were already looked down upon. It was a lowly job. You smelled. People didnt want to be around you. But these men were asked to keep the sheep full time and in shifts. Somebody had to do it. It was likely a group of 8 who would sleep on rotation in the watch towers (like “tree stands” for hunters today). The religious leaders (not God) put a restriction on these men because they kept the sheep prepared for temple sacrifice, they were not allowed to bring any kind of sacrifice at all to the temple. They had never made a sacrifice for their sins at the temple because they were “the most unworthy of Shepherds.”

This means these shepherds did not know their status with God. Others could bring their animal sacrifice in, and even buy the sheep these men had watched, but they themselves were not allowed to sacrifice because of a rule the religious leaders had instituted. Surely this all loving God would not condemn these men, but after all, God did require animal sacrifice for the atonement of sins. “So what is our status with God?”

It was to these very men God made the first announcement the Messiah had been born, saying “….peace to men on Earth, on whom his favor rests.” God’s answer? “You are worried about where you sit with me? I want you to be the first to know my favor is upon you shepherds, and to all men. Peace can come to your hearts.”

This wasn’t coincidence that God allowed the announcement of the Saviors birth to come first to them.
Now the favor of God is with men. Emmanuel, “God with us.” He came and dwelt among us to be the final and full sacrifice, so that every person who believes in Him for the penalty of their sins will not have to worry about their status with God (peace).

As you enjoy your church’s Christmas eve service, as you listen to the radio’s Christmas music, as you read the Christmas story with your family Christmas eve night, relax. Your status with God is known. Jesus’ sacrifice means your sins are paid for (past, present, future). God looks at you and sees the perfection of his Son and his eyes are filled with Love for you. Romans 8:1, There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. All worry and stress is over, You can have peace.

Jesus is the central character in the Story of God. All salvation to Old Testament believers was given by faith in his future sacrifice, all salvation to believers since his coming is given by faith in his past sacrifice. Christmas is the season that celebrates the birth of the Savior of the Story of God, which you are very much a part of.

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