heaven's tree book club

August 31, 2012
(The Anointing and the Antichrist spirit
I read a devotional today from Harvest that spoke directly to my faith situation. It spoke of the enemy's small but powerful influences to neutralize and weaken our faith. I have a growing emptiness inside for God. I feel really empty at church. The sermon, worship, and gathering doesn't effect me. I often wonder if it is me or my environment and certainly both contribute to the condition. I feeul spiritually dull and really need something to bring me back. Right now, I spend almost my entire week at home and certainly the isolation has a lot to do with how I'm doing both emotionally and spiritually. It is August 31, the last day of August. No breakthrough came today and none this month. God seems to have forgotten me. I am slowly dying spiritually.

"The word anointing means "to smear." The Holy Spirit is the oil of God that was smeared all over Jesus at His water baptism.1 The name Jesus Christ implies that Jesus is the One smeared with the Holy Spirit.
But there is another spirit that works to ambush the church in every age. This power was identified by the apostle John when he said, "Even now many antichrists have come."2 The nature of the antichrist spirit is found in its name: anti, "against"; Christ, "Anointed One."
Jesus lived His earthly life with human limitations. He laid his divinity aside3 as He sought to fulfill the assignment given to Him by the Father: to live life as a man without sin, and then die in the place of mankind for sm.This would be essential in His plan to redeem mankind. The sacrifice that could atone for sin had to be a lamb, (powerless), and had to be spotless, (without sin).
The anointing Jesus received was the equipment necessary, given by the Father to make it possible tor Him to live beyond human limitations. For He was not only to redeem man, He was to reveal the Father. In doing so, He was to unveil the Father's realm called heaven.That would include doing supernatural things. The anointing is what linked Jesus, the man. to the divine, enabling Him to destroy the works of the devil. These miraculous ways helped to set something in motion that mankind could inherit once we were redeemed. Heaven-   that supernatural realm—was to become mankind's daily bread."
Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and by doing so revealing the Father to the world. Jesus lived a supernatural life while existing in a fully human body. It is possible by the Spirit of God to live a supernatural life. As I have reflected on previous chapters, I do not see a manifestation of the Spirit's power in the lives of Christians today, at least not in the denominations that I have been a part of.
"God is our Father, and we inherit His genetic code. Every believer has written into his or her spiritual DNA the desire for the supernatural. It is our predetermined sense of destiny. This God-born passion dissipates when it has been taught and reasoned away, when it's not been exercised, or when it's been buried under disappointment.
The spirit of the antichrist is at work today, attempting to influence believers to reject everything that has to do with the Holy Spirit's anointing. This rejection takes on many- religious forms, but basically it boils down to this: we reject what we can't control. That spirit has worked to reduce the gospel to a mere intellectual message, rather than a supernatural God encounter. It tolerates the mention of power if it's in the past. Occasionally it considers that power is appropriate for people in far away places. But, never does this spirit expect the anointing of God's power to be available in the here and now. The spirit of control works against one of God's favorite elements in man: faith. Trust is misplaced as it becomes anchored in man's ability to reason.
It is the antichrist spirit that has given rise to religious spirits. A religious spirit is a demonic presence that works to get us to substitute being led by our intellect instead of the Spirit of God. Being led by the Holy Spirit is an ongoing God encounter. Religion idolizes concepts and avoids personal experience. It works to get us to worship past accomplishments at the expense of any present activity of God in our life. That spirit often feeds on the residue of past revivals. Its favorite tactic is to cast in stone an ideology learned from previous moves of the Holy Spirit. For example: it values tears and despises laughter. Sounds like idolatry, doesn't it? Anything that will take the place of dependence upon the Holy Spirit and His empowering work can be traced back to this spirit of opposition."
Wow! This passage entirely describes my spiritual state. The spirit of the anti-Christ has powerfully influenced me. I am overwhelmed by disappointments of God, empty and tired of religion and worthless sermons. I desire an encounter with God and not empty religion. It is not about being doctrinally correct as much as being in relationship. So many theologically conservative churches are spiritually empty. I seriouslly need to find a way back to God and turn away from empty religion.

"After all. now they had the tablets of stone. Then, as today, the real issue is the priority we place upon His presence. When that's intact, the supernatural abounds, but without it we have to make up new doctrines for why we're OK as we are.
In New Testament terms, being a people focused on His presence means that we are willing to live beyond reason. Not impulsively or foolishly, for these are poor imitations for real faith. The realm beyond reason is the w7orld of obedience to God. Obedience is the expression of faith, and faith is our claim ticket to the God realm. Strangely, this focus on His presence causes us to become like wind, which is also the nature of the Holy Spirit/ His nature is powerful and righteous, but His ways cannot be controlled. He is unpredictable.
As church leaders, this hits us at our weakest point. For most churches, very- little of what we do is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. If He were not to show up, most churches would never miss Him. Billy Graham is credited with saying, "Ninety-five percent of today's church activities would continue if the Holy Spirit were removed from us. In the early Church, ninety-five percent of all her activities would have stopped if the Holy Spirit were removed." I agree. We plan our services, and call it diligence. We plan our year, and call it vision. I'll never forget the Sunday that the Lord informed me that it wasn't my service, and I couldn't do as I pleased. (Planning is biblical. But our diligence and vision must never include usurping the authority of the Holy Spirit. The Lordship of Jesus is seen m our willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's leading. He wants His Church back!) But how can we follow Him if we don't recognize His presence?
The more pronounced His presence, the more unique the manifestations of our God encounters become. Although the manifestations we experience while encountering I lim are important, it's God I limself we long for."
As I read this, I think of the book by aPastor Chan called the Forgotten God. Very little is talked about in conservative circles about the Holy Spirit. We talk about God the Father and Jesus, but missing is the Holy Spirit,. We need to attend the charismatic churches for that. It seems to be that we conservatives lack the priority and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We can attend the same church for ten years and nothing ever changes and it is all man-driven, from the amount of songs we sing to the order of the service and even the length of the sermon. It is totally man driven. There is no reliance of the Holy Spirit. If there was, it would be unpredictable. People would have an encounter with God as they did in the Bible. We lack the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the conservative church.

"The antichrist spirit has a goal for the Church—embrace Jesus apart from the anointing. Without the anointing. He becomes a safe religious figure who
sure not to challenge or offend us. Paul described this deceptive possibility s "having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!"12
plow can people who love God be offended by the anointing of the Holy Spirit?
 1. He moves like wind—apart from our control.13
 2. His thoughts are very different from ours. The scripture states that our logic and His are not just different, they are opposed to each other.14 Let's be honest...they are worlds apart!
 3. He refuses to be restricted by our understanding of His Word.
Every time we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, we fly in the face of the antichrist spirit. While the foolishness of some who claim to be Spirit-led have made this adventure more difficult, we nevertheless are assured of succeeding if it is truly our passionate desire. He'll not give a stone to anyone who asks for bread."

Prayer:
Father, there is the Spirit of the anti-Christ in the church, that empties the church of the Holy Spirit's power and presence. It is empty religion without the power of God. I hunger for Your presence and power. I desire this supernatural life and experience. I feel so tired of empty religion and grow more and more agnostic by the day. It is now the end of the month and there was no breakthrough that I had prayed for and desired this month. I am really discouraged and disappointed that You appear to have forgotten me this month. It is soon September, and Father, please renew my faith and help me to see Your love and grace.