Sorry I have not been updating for a while, but in reality, it's only been around 2 weeks since my last post, meaning I've only missed a week. I don't know where to begin writing, because either (1) I have too many options to choose from, or (2) it is really late at night and my brain is not functioning at tolerable capacities.
I do want to hopefully finish the Isaac series rather quickly up till the present moment. Then, I feel like I can share more ministry materials and conferences + trainings or special events. But I do think I will have to recap this past winter break because it was just AWESOME.
Winter break in itself started out really nicely because I got to go home a few days early. My winter break was super busy - I might have assigned myself too much work to begin with. I really wanted to get into some truth materials, so i spent some quality times on the ITERO messages from this last year (2011). Those messages were truly diamonds. I guess since I said that, I'm going to have to share a little bit, right?
The Lord's recovery stands on four pillars - truth, life, the church and the gospel. Many groups stand for just one of these, and a handful stand for two, but I really do appreciate that in His recovery, our focus is on these four pillars. By definition, pillars denote something steadfast, something unshakeable, something people can rely that structure will hold. This shows the qualifying importance of these 4 items. Just by missing one of these items, a huge loss can be afflicted to the building happening in His recovery. On one hand, these 4 pillars may be objective realities as seen in the Word, but take a look at Rev. 3:12: "He who overcomes, him I will make a pillar in the temple of My God..." On one hand, truth, life, the church and the gospel may be objective items found in the bible, but on other hand, these items are people. They are people whose fabric, essence, and constitution, is truth, life, the church, and the gospel.
It all begins with truth. Truth is the container of life, and brings life to others. And life issues in building, the church. The gospel cannot run without truth, because the word of the truth is the gospel of your salvation (Eph. 1:13). So, we see, truth is very crucial. And it is very crucial that truth must always come first.
For this, I really enjoyed something Brother Ron shared regarding truth. In order for truth to become a part of our being, fabric, and constitution, to the point that we ourselves become pillars of truth, there needs to be the shining of light. The apostle John, whose writings are in the nature of recovery, writes in the second chapter (vv. 7-8) of His first epistle - "Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you..." This is in the sense of innovation. In the Lord's recovery, we are recovering all the truths of the past. There is no such thing an a brand new invention to God. It may be a new discovery to us, but God has already given us all His truths. It continues "...but an old commandment, which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you heard." Here we see that the words given to us by John are old commandments. These are the Old and New Testaments, the words which we have had since the beginning. But in the next verse, John mentions something contradictory: "Yet again a new commandment I am writing to you," I thought he just said that he is giving us an old commandment, what does he mean? This second new commandment is new, not in the sense of innovation, but in the sense of recovery. It is new, because, listen to this commentary by brother Witness Lee: "new, because in their Christian walk it dawns with new light and shines with new enlightenment and fresh power again and again." WOW. Isn't this really our experience? We may have known a verse for all of our Christian walk, but there is always that point in time, when it is struck with fresh light and the verse becomes something new to us. The verse continues: "...and the true light is already shining." The shining is the reaching out of the light, which is God Himself, meaning that shining, God reaching out to us, is the Spirit. The Spirit shines over our being and His word, then this old commandment suddenly becomes something new and it is constituted within our being.
This is why it is truly important that when we come to the Word, we also come with the following prayer the apostle Paul prayed in Ephesians 1: "Lord Jesus, grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and shine on the eyes of our heart!"
Anyhow, yep. Sorry, that went rather longer than I thought.. because, that's what usually happens when I overflow. Here are some other things I did other than being a Bible nerd, which I'm not ashamed of being, over the break:
My sister visited from Spain! It's been a year and half since our family got together. It has been an overdue visit from her, and I'm really glad the four of us got to spend quality time together. We went to Avila Beach, which is about a 3-4 hour drive from Downtown, Los Angeles. Enjoy some pictures and I will continue to post regarding the Winter Training -
Monarch Butterfly Grove - Pismo Beach, CA
Pier @ Avila Beach, CA
Cal State San Luis Obispo (that's my true height)
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