heaven's tree book club

September 26, 2012
Passing the Baton
Last night was my first night back on the couch because I could not make it up the stairs. There was both pain and inflamation in the evening time that would not go down no matter what I put in my mouth or on my joints. I felt rather discouraged and went on to Youtube and played healing hand of God and wept for the first time in months. My situation feels so impossible and God seems so indifferent. It was either late May or early June when I first felt the condition I have now when I wept, and the past couple of days have been really hard with very little support anywhere. Sleeping on the couch is difficult as I wake up many times and do not get restful sleep, this influences my energy which influences my mood. This morning was bad too because now there was a pinch in my knee every time I placed weight on it. I was not even sure if I could make it to the career fair on campus. Thank God that I did and I visited my campus for the first time in about four months. Many companies were there which happened to be either tech, business, or some startups that had nothing to do with my background. I felt discouraged about the career fair but glad to be outside in the sun and around other young adults. I miss the public university environment. What is more, I had a grace moment. This would be the highlight of the week or maybe even the month. As we pulled into the parking lot, and went to purchase parking, a young man gave us his daily pass as he was about to leave. This was a six dollar value but the cost is not the important part but that he willingly gave it. It was kind of like God telling me that He is still here and He cares about my career search and that He is still able to give a grace moment even when life kind of isn't going right. Also for lunch dad and I hav Vietnamese noodles on campus. After lunch my knees began to feel much better and there would be no pain for the rest of the day. Also, during the night on the couch, I dreamt that I finally was able to be with my girlfriend. We were in some shopping mall and walking together holding hands for the first time. Then in a later scene I was with old friends I had not seen in a while. Then, I woke up. Recently, I don't trust my dreams anymore, because thinking about it discourages me, I had two dreams both in July where I was able to abandon my walker and walk on my own. The dream of me walking in a mall holding my girlfriend's hand is about as impossible as snow in San Francisco.

"ROYAL families take a great deal of effort to preserve and pass on . their family history. Each individual in a generation of royalty only understands his identity by locating himself at the end of a line of ancestors who have all achieved various accomplishments during their reign. It is only in the context of this history that kings and qvteens will be able to plan and make decisions during their own lifetimes which will continue the royal legacy.
As believers we have been grafted into the rich history of God's royal priesthood, and understanding that history from God's perspective is an essential ingredient in defining what our royal responsibilities are.The Bible is God's history book. It reveals not only His acts and interventions in human history, but what they mean. When stvtdied hy those who have truly come to know Him, it reveals a clear plan from beginning to end to establish God's Kingdom. In Genesis, God commissioned Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth. In other words, they were to extend the borders of the garden, which expressed the nature of God's Kingdom through fruitfulness and multiplication generation after generation.
The nature of the Kingdom of God is that it is always increasing. Isaiah 9:"' says."There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peacc'The Kingdom is always meant to advance in us individually and corporatcly as the Lord takes us "precept upon precept; line upon line" (Isa. 28:13 KJW'from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18), and "from faith to faith" (Rom. 1:17).
Given the nature of the Kingdom and God's original commission to Adam and Eve, it is clear that God intended His Kingdom to advance with each succeeding generation. Because each generation would increase in number as they "multiplied," there would be more people to enforce the rule and reign of God on the earth.The Kingdom increases as His people increase, because "in a multitude of people is a king's glory" (Prov. 14:28)."
It is interesting that I notice the different culture of California versus New York. The young people of my generation both in college and my my mom's friends's children, either move in together or get married without having children. I am not here to theorize the motives for doing this, but just to observe, not many young adults have children. I see many even getting divorces within a couple of years getting married. This is sad. Conversely, in New York, I was in a young adult group where children almost outnumbered the adults. This town supported the idea of being fruitful and multiplying. It also had many family friendly events and museums. There were many places to take children. This church had a thriving children's ministry and nearly 300 children came to VBS, that alone is bigger than many churches total population. I am convinced that the heart of a church is found in its young people for they are the future. A dying church is one that has no young people and no new Christians. We are to be fruitful and multiple not just in the physical sense, but spiritually as well. The kingdom is meant to grow.

 "The key ingredient in this process of increase is inheritance. Inheritance is the link between the generations. It is what each generation receives from the previous generation, and then what they pass on to the next. When one generation has been "fruitful and multiplied," the next generation starts out ahead of where they would have had to start in a certain area of life. For example, a financial inheritance will enable a young couple to buy a house or a car much earlier than they could if they had to depend solely on their own incomes.
If, as God's royal priesthood, we understand that it is by inheritance that God wishes to establish each generation to advance His Kingdom, we must recognize what that makes us responsible for. When we receive an inheritance, we are freely getting what someone else paid a price for. Inheritance makes each generation responsible to both receive and honor what has passed on from the previous generation, and then pay their own price to make it grow so that the next generation starts ahead of them. The ceiling of one generation must become the floor of the next. In our lifetime, this requires us to act with an awareness that our actions affect generations ahead of us. This is precisely the effect that righteousness will have on the way we think, because "a righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children's children."
This passage is powerful. It begs the question, what are we passing down to the next generation. I don't mean in terms of finances, but spiritually. I see how many of my cousins were able to buy houses right out of college because their parents provided support for them, but I wonder what we are able to do when we pass down righteousness and how that will impact the world. My dad told me that one time when we were at a Vietnamese restaurant, he saw a teenage girl who served food to her younger siblings first before she served herself. He was amazed that such love was seen in a teenager today. Years and years ago this was normal, but not anymore. The young adults of our generation often care only for themselves and don't know how to love because they had never seen it modeled for them. What we need to pass down both to our biological children and spiritual children is righteousness. This passes down the likeness of God to the generations and is far more important than money.

"The importance of revelation from God's perspective is so great that the Bible says we perish without it (see Hos. 4:6). Revelation does not come to make us smarter or give us better doctrinal statements. Revelation is first intended to launch us into divine encounters, where the nature of God is understood and demonstrated through human experience. If revelation does not lead us to a divine encounter, it only works to make us more religious and arrogant, because the nature of knowledge is that it puffs up (see 1 Cor. 8:1). If we have knowledge without an encounter, our pride can actually prohibit us from encountering God.Those who knew the most about God in Jesus' day failed to recognize His Son as He spoke and worked miracles in front of them. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for this in John 5:39-40 (NKJV):"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life."
 Revelation that does lead us to divine encounter will bring breakthrough that causes a personal transformation. Revelation is the key to spiritual growth because it takes us where we cannot go ourselves. We experience "encounters" because we need "signs" in order to get to where we haven't gone before. I don't need signs when I travel familiar roads, but 1 have to have signs if I'm going to travel where I've never been.
The second thing revelation does is that it enlarges the playing field of our faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Practically, faith is our understanding of the nature of the invisible realm and how we expect it to influence the visible realm. If our understanding of the nature of God includes the belief that one of the "mysterious ways" He works is to make people sick in order to humble them, we will not expect Him to heal them. But when we have a revelation of the nature of God as the "Sun of Righteousness," who arises "with healing in His wings," (Mai. 4:2) and we see that Jesus healed every person who came to Him without exception, our faith will operate in a larger space.A person with the first belief probably doesn't pray for the sick, or if they do, they pray for perseverance. A person with revelation takes authority over the sickness and commands the sick person's body to be healed "on earth as it is in heaven."
Many people have a theology that says that God makes people sick to humble them. This can be supported in some instances in the OT, but these instances were of individuals who opposed God. We find in the Gospels that Jesus healed everyone to came to Him for this is His heart and nature. People who hold on to the former belief will never see the power and love of God while those in the latter catagory experience the fullness of God. As a first semester seminary student, I need to be careful. I am learning about doctrine and the material is very dense. I do not want to merely gain knowledge. Many people had knowledge of God but missed that God was right in their midst healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching good news. I do not ever want to be so educated as to be blind to God. Knowledge about God should lead to an encounter with God. For months now I have been praying for an encounter. I don't want dead an empty religion. I want a vibrant faith and relationship with God.
"If revelation is meant to be the inheritance of the Kingdom, it is clear that God intends for more than information to be passed on to the next generation. The fruit of revelation is personal transformation and supernatural demonstrations of the nature of God.Therefore, the inheritance of revelation is the inheritance of models, heroes who became a revelation of God's nature, and the testimonies of their teaching and exploits."

"The root of the word "testimony" is a word that means, "do again." Every time we repeat the stories of God's invasions into human history, we are calling Him to reveal Himself as the same God today. For this reason, we cannot truly receive our spiritual inheritance if we mean only to applaud the accomplishments of our ancestors. We do not honor the memory of God's heroes by just remembering them. We only honor them if we imitate them by coming to know the God they knew and calling Him to bring His Kingdom in our day.
 If we study the Old Testament we notice that every time the Israelites failed to keep the Book of the Law in their mouths and remember their history in God, they fell away from Him. As a result, the revealed things that were meant to belong to their children's children forever, though not lost, were forgotten. Each succeeding generation was unaware of their inheritance. If we have an inheritance we don't know about, we won't be able use it.
Sadly, the history of Christian revival is so much like the history of Israel. History shows that revivals typically last two to four years. Many have concluded that this pattern indicates that revivals are only meant to last long enough to give the Church a shot in the arm. But as we have seen, the nature of the Kingdom is advancement and increase. God never intended for His people to live for any season without the outpouring of His Spirit. That outpouring was always meant to increase from the Day of Pentecost until the day Jesus returns."

"The work of the enemy who kills, steals, and destroys is undone as people experience the work of the cross in healing, salvation, and deliverance.The fruit of revival is the Kingdom of God being expressed in every area of society.
Revival always comes through revivalists, men and women of God who become so gripped by a passion for God's Kingdom and so surrendered to the King that He commissions them with authority' and power to bring the Kingdom through prophetic revelation and signs and wonders. They are pioneers and trailblazers, bushwhacking their way into enemy territory and claiming it for the Kingdom.They are given spikes in human experience that can be clearly recognized as the fruit of a supernatural anointing.
For example, John Wesley broke into a realm of anointing in preaching the Word that was so powerful that he could be heard over crowds of thousands. The power of God would fall so strongly as he preached that they would commonly warn people to avoid climbing into trees to hear him speak. Inevitably people would ignore the warning, and the crowd would later hear the thuds of people falling out of trees under the power.
Maria Woodworth-Etter drew the attention of newspapers in the late 1800s as many people in her meetings fell into trances and saw visions of Heaven and hell. She also heard reports of people who would fall under the power of God up to a hundred miles away from her meetings. John G. Lake had so many healings in his ministry in Spokane, Washington, that at one point, it was declared the healthiest city in the United States."
 
"Those who sit back and say, "Well, whatever God wants me to have I'm happy to receive," are living a pauper's lifestyle in a kingly mansion.
God has given us access to secrets for the realms of politics, business, creativity in the arts, and every other arena of human life.There are realms opening up right now to people because they are realizing they get to search out what God has hidden for them.There are solutions and answers to every problem this world is facing. A failure to comprehend that we have access to mysteries has led the Church to consistently yield her right of authority to contend and pray for transformation.
By surrendering to the notion that everything has to end in tragedy, we fulfill our own prophecies by not stepping into who God has called us to be. We are people who are supposed to be the living answer for the cries and dilemmas of society. It's the royalty in you that will cause you to rise up to say to a problem, "There's an answer for this."
Now those who gain access to realms of revelation and anointing, through rising into their royal call and searching out the matters that have gripped their hearts, will experience a spike in human experience, just as the heroes of history did. But what they and the people of God must realize is that that spike is not to equip just one person to operate in that realm, but to empower that person to equip the Body of Christ to walk in that anointing, in order to establish it as the new norm for Kingdom life."
 
"There are so many things I am hungry to see in my day. I've seen so many things I never dreamed I would see. but I've also been impregnated with new dreams, and I cannot be satisfied where I am. I must continually be positioned to occupy and advance. But if I can't see them in my day. I will give all that I have so that my children and my children's children might see them, and so they will have the same heart for the generations.
 We've been given an inheritance of generations. We've been given an inheritance of hundreds of years of mystics, of revivalists, of those who broke into realms of the Spirit to leave something as an inheritance, and it needs to matter to someone. If we take the opportunity we have in this hour to seek out the mysteries hidden for us with a heart to honor those before and beside us. I believe the Church will enter into a day it has never seen.The establishment of the Kingdom of God must increase to such a degree that the normal Christian life truly becomes normal life for everyone in the world."
Prayer:
Father, this chapter has set a flame in my heart for a passion and fire for seeing Your mighty works in all the nations. Works of restoration, hope, healing, and transformation. I want to dream kingdom-God sized dreams. I want the fire and anointing of the revivalists of the past. I am not content with being a Sunday baptist Christian. I am hungry for more of You. We don't see revival and we don't see Your works today here in this city. There is so much indifference and dying churches here. Fill us with Your Spirit and ignight our hearts for an undying love and passion for You. Would we not only keep it to ourselves but pass on our encounter to our children and our children's children. The movement of the kingdom is to occupy and advance and to be fruitful and multiply. I want newer and bigger kingdom dreams. This chapter has placed something inside of my heart for more of You but my experience today is like Gideon. I only hear of Your mighty deeds in the past but do not see it today. Father, I pray for breakthrough in my life and in mychurch. I am not happy with a sub-standard Christian life. Father, I want so much more. I want to walk in Your power and anointing.