The Swimming Axehead

I’ve shared this testimony many times, but not here.  Last night I felt led to share it again, so here it is.

In the mid-1990s we worked in a church in Atchison KS. On a visit back home to Louisiana my old Pastor gave me two Lee Oskar harmonicas. One in the key of C and I can’t remember exactly what key the other was, I think B flat or F.  Either way it soon failed, having a dead note and I was left with C.  I had a box full of other brands, but this one was by far the smoothest and easiest to play.  It had somehow gotten a little dent in the cover like it was dropped in rocks, so I’d recognize it anywhere.  Amazingly it kept on going well past its expected lifespan.
I really like the Lee Oskar Harmonicas, better than any other brand that I’ve tried. Personal opinion, I’m in no way affiliated with them, I’m not being paid to say that, but now I exclusively play Lee Oskar Harmonicas.
I’m not really that good either, but I enjoy making a joyful noise, heavy on the noise, unto the Lord.

In 2004 I went to Baghdad Iraq to work as a contractor during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I took my harmonica with me and would carry it in my back pocket so it would be convenient. It was a comfort to me during some pretty scary times, but one day I noticed it was gone. I tore my things apart looking for it, but it wasn’t to be found. I was broken-hearted but decided to order a new one and move on.
That one was special even though it was damaged and scratched up. It had a sentimental value that couldn’t just be replaced.

Weeks later, while working night-shift, I was in bed in the early morning trying to sleep when I heard a familiar sound. It was someone blowing and drawing air through a harmonica. I quickly got dressed and went to the door to have a look.  A Filipina lady was sitting on my doorstep playing my harmonica.  I asked if I could see it and she handed it over. The dent, the scratches, it was, in fact, my lost harp.  I asked where she found it and as I’d suspected, it had fallen from my pocket while I was walking around the site. To my great relief, she insisted that I take it back.

The camp I was in was huge. All totaled there were about 25,000 people living and working there. Thousands upon thousands of doorsteps, row after row of rooms just like mine. That she decided to sit on my porch to play it was nothing short of miraculous.

In all its flawed perfection my harmonica was back where it belonged.

God began to deal with me about this. About how I was special to Him, but I kept separating myself from His care. I kept getting lost in dark and foreign lands and how it breaks His heart when I’m away from where he wants me.  How He searches for me while I’m outside His Will.  That He loves to hear my voice praising and worshiping Him and desires my adoration more than anything else I can give Him. But ultimately I have to realize that I’m separated and have to call out to Him if I am to be found.  Like the prodigal son, I must realize that I am lost and come home.  He is waiting.  I don’t have to fix me, just find my way home and call out to my Father.  He’ll tell me what to do next.

God Bless You Richly
Greg

While David was in exile, he had agreed to assist the Philistines in battle against Israel. He had taken his band of men and was following the Philistines toward the battle, but the Philistine princes thought that was a bad idea and requested they be sent away.

David and his men then returned to their homes in Ziklag only to find them burned to the ground and everything gone.  Wives, children, stock, and every possession taken.  The Bible tells us that David and his men wept until there was no more strength to weep.

1 Samuel 30:6 And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
It doesn’t say that God encouraged him. He encouraged himself.

David was in exile, his first wife, Sauls daughter was taken from him and given to another.  His status was stripped away, and he was a fugitive. His wives, children and all his worldly possessions were gone with no evidence or hope that he’d get them back. And now his own men were threatening to stone him.  All God’s promises and annointing seemed to have vanished away.  He had every reason to give up and just walk away.
But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

What does that mean? I believe that he took his eyes off his problems and looked upon the Problem Solver.  He remembered the lion and the bear and Goliath and other victories that God had delivered into his hands. He began to sing psalms unto the Lord, of the greatness of God, he magnified the Lord. I don’t believe he was asking God for anything, only praising and worshiping and testifying to himself of the Greatness of God.

Psalms 22:3  But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

By praising God, he began to build a dwelling place for God, not of sticks and stones but of praise.  He wanted God to be near him, so he built a habitation.

If you want God to be near you, stop begging and start praising, build him a dwelling place. If God inhabits the praises of Israel and we are spiritual Israel then build him a habitation, build him a house of Praise.

I love when I can get into focused praise, my mind is not on my surroundings, not on lunch or work it’s just on Jesus and His Goodness, His Greatness. Then the presence of the Lord moves in to meet with me, and I feel the embrace of the Holy Ghost.  I can’t explain it any other way, I feel the sweet and comfortable enveloping of his presence, like being Hugged by God. Everything seems to fade away, and I am encouraged in Jesus.

David was encouraged, but his problems were still there, only now he was in a place to ask God the right questions the right way.  He was no longer focusing on the problems. The peace that passeth understanding brought calm and clarity and God directed his path.
God delivered all back to David and to his men.

I still believe that God has a special Thing waiting for us. A move like the Church today has never seen.
Encourage yourselves and one another in the Lord our God and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

God Bless You Richly,
Greg

 

 

When Moses sent the spies into the land of Canaan, they saw wonderful things. After forty days they brought back a cluster of grapes so large it took two men to carry it, they also brought pomegranates and figs. They reported that is was a land that flowed with milk and honey.  They also saw Giants. All twelve of the spies agreed on what the land had to offer.  Immediately upon reporting this to Moses, Caleb stepped forward and said: “let us go up a once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”

But the other spies disagreed with Caleb and said we cannot possess it.

Numbers 13:33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Their view of themselves was as a grasshopper. They didn’t see themselves as leaders of Israel, they saw themselves as bugs before the giants. and the Bible says “so we were in their sight.”
They saw themselves as bugs compared to the inhabitants and because of their own view so did the people of the land.  They could have taken the land right then if they had seen themselves as warriors and leaders of the Children Of Israel and had seen the God of Israel as able to defend and bring victory.
If you see yourself as a Grasshopper, you are defeated already.

The spies spent forty days surveying the Land of Canaan before deciding they were not strong enough to take it and the Children of Israel were forced to spend forty years separated from their inheritance because of their lack of faith.
They had seen the plagues on Eygpt, The Passover, the Red Sea rolled back and standing upright, they saw the cloud by day and the fire by night all at the direct hand of Gods power. But could not see that God was able and couldn’t see themselves able to win a battle that God was ready to give them.

I have to remind myself sometimes of who I am.  I’m not just little ol’ me, I am also the Child of the Most-High God, a King’s kid and a blood heir to His Righteousness and Power.  If I lean upon the arm of the flesh, I WILL FAIL.  But if I can fully trust in the Lord and know that He can deliver by many or by few or by none if he so chooses, victory is already mine.  I only have to trust that He is in control.  Trusting in the Lord means trusting and accepting that He is all Knowing and though the outcome may not always be to my liking He is still Perfect, and his ways are above mine.

 

Psalms 34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

Have you ever ate too much, just Pigged-Out on something that was so good you couldn’t stop eating. I think we all have at on time or another.  But once you started filling up, it gets less and less appetizing until you can barely swallow anymore.

One of my dear friends would always say “I don’t even like food” after a big meal.

Living for God is the opposite, the more you taste, the sweeter it gets, and the more you want!

God is Good, and I’m amazed at his mercy, but I’m afraid that sometimes I’m like an heir to a vast fortune. There’s a banquet table spread daily at my Fathers house, but so many times I choose to live under a bridge and eat out of a trash can.  I don’t believe that I’m alone under my bridge either.  I have to shake myself and remind myself that I am a child of THE KING!
And like the prodigal, scratch my way back to the Fathers house.  The good thing is the Father is watching and waiting for me to remember His Mercy and Goodness and realize where I could be. Where you could be.

Through valleys, my own failures and God’s amazing Grace I have learned that the closer I get to Jesus the more, I crave His presence. The more I tell of his mercies, the more I want to tell of them. The more I taste that He is Good, the more my appetite grows for Him. The more I dig into His Word, the deeper His Word takes root in me, and the more I want It, Need It.

The Devil’s tool is to convince us that we are not worthy. That’s probably the only true thing he’s ever said.  We are absolutely not worthy, but the beauty of This Salvation is that it’s not bound to our worth. It abounds in The Love of Jesus Christ. His Blood makes Worthy out of Unworthy, Makes Hope out of Hopeless and Found out of Lost.

God is reaching for the lost, the broken, the backslidden, the lukewarm, and the simply comfortable.  I truly believe that there is a Moving in the Spiritual Realm that is just beyond the fingertips of where we are now. One push toward the King and we’ll see things we’ve never seen before, revival like we’ve only heard about in the “good ol’ days.” I need More of God. We all need more of God.

Oh, Taste and See that the Lord is Good. And You will find a Deliciousness, a sweetness that you literally cannot Live without.

Have a Blessed and Wonderful Sunday in Jesus!
Greg
borrowedaxe@gmail.com

I hope you are blessed by these posts. If you are, please Follow, leave a comment and share with everyone.

 

Back before the earth was fully explored, mapmakers had a habit of drawing sea monsters, dragons, and other terrifying creatures in the unexplored portions of the maps.  In a few instances, they even wrote the words “Here Be Dragons” along the divide of the known and unknown.  A few places on the earth did, in fact, have some scary creatures about, but none so fierce as the ones depicted around the edges of the unknown on the map. But regardless of the warnings, there were men willing to explore those regions and beyond. Along with the treasures of God’s creation, they also discovered that the only dragons were the ones in their heads and drawn on the map.

Like the apprehensiveness of the Mapmakers about uncharted territory, it is Human Nature to worry about the unknown, about change.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 says ….time and chance happeneth to them all.  I’d like to go a little further and say Change happens to us all as well.
A quote that I’ve used for a long time, “There are only two constants in the universe, God Almighty, and Change.”  You can count on God, period. And in this life, you can count on things changing.
Change makes us nervous as it is often associated with negative experiences. We are also prone to get the “Here Be Dragons” mentality about new stuff.  Fear of the unknown is common.  If I don’t know about it, it must be bad, right?

Have you ever thought that God will not take you backward, you may go through the valley but that’s necessary for forward movement?  But his beckoning is always drawing us forward and closer to Him.
When God has a plan for you that threatens your comfort you do have choices. You can either refuse to move or you can answer the call. If you refuse God may turn up the heat to make your comfort zone uncomfortable to coax you to move. Or He may find a more willing vessel and leave you to your failure.
You should also know that living for and following Jesus can be compared to flying an airplane. Airplanes can’t stop until they get where they are going, they can turn around, but can’t go backward.  There’s nowhere to stop for a break, so basically, if you Stop you Drop.
Refusing to answer God’s call will eventually remove you from your comfort zone anyway, only not in the right direction.

We should all endeavor to hear the voice of God and answer when He calls and be willing to follow him into the unknown. He will not leave you nor forsake you.
We trust Him with our eternity, why do we have so much trouble trusting Him in our day to day lives. If He is calling you to a new, deeper walk, he will also provide you with the tools to walk it and hold your hand the whole way through.
The word never said it’ll always be easy.  It’s gonna rain, storm, there’ll be floods, there are accidents, mess-ups, sicknesses, deaths, heartache, loneliness, weariness, slights, and wrongs along the way
But God promised to send the Comforter, to hold your hand, to never put more on you than you can bear. No, He never said it would be easy, just that it will be worth it.

The real dragons are fear, doubt, and unbelief. They cause us to miss opportunities and prevents us from going where God wants us to go.
And the only way they get you is if you stay where you are.

God Bless You
Greg

Please hit the follow button, leave a comment and share this with, well basically everybody. Thanks

 

 

Recently while in prayer The Butterfly Effect theory came to mind and I started to think about that process.  It is a metaphorical example of the beginnings of a storm.
A butterfly flaps it’s wings next to a leaf. The wind of its wings causes the leaf to shake. The shaking leaf startles a bird which causes the flock to take flight and so on and on it goes. One cause leading to an effect, leading to a bigger cause and an even bigger effect. Eventually, maybe weeks from now there’s a tornado that all started with the flutter of a Butterflies wings. There is no proof in nature that this has or can happen, but the principle can be applied to the spiritual world.

Simple things happen all the time that seemly have no significance, but are orchestrated by The Master. He knows exactly the gentle nudge it will take to move a soul. A move that may seem so small, but over the course of time and many God orchestrated chain reactions later be the start of a great revival.  The Bible teaches us in 2 Timothy 4:2 to be instant in season and out of season. Some of the most powerful sermons I’ve ever preached and that I’ve had preached to me were not in a church house. Places like standing in line at a restaurant or in the produce aisle of the old Price Low store in Deridder. God puts us in front of people that need a word from him. As his children, we are supposed to be sensitive to him and answer his bidding.
God knows each of our limits and will not ask more of you than you are capable, but everyone should be able to smile and say hello and sometimes that’s enough.

Something as simple as blessing your meal in a restaurant can open doors. We have to have a boldness about serving God. About listening to and heeding his call, about sharing what he has done for us. Be ready, through prayer and fasting to share God’s Love with this world.

A minister recently told me that everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for right here, right now. If God is in control, which he is we must trust that he has a place and a plan for us in the right here and right now.  If you wait for life to get out of the way, you may end up like Felix, and may never find a convenient season.

The flutter of a butterflies wing may not really start a storm in the world, but the whisper of Angel’s wings dispatched from the Throne-Room on behalf of your obedience can spark a great move of the Holy Ghost.

 

When asked who their favorite person in the Bible is, besides Jesus, a lot of people go with David. He was King after all and was a man after God’s own heart. And even though King David is very high on my list, it is Peter that I find interesting and would love to know more about.  Although there is a not really a lot of detailed information about him in the scripture, what is written is intriguing.

Peter was a lot more like folks that I might know, than David.  He wasn’t anointed king as a teenager, he never slew a lion or a bear, he never killed the giant.  Peter was a fisherman, quick to get into trouble and spoke often without much thought beforehand. I don’t believe you had to wait long to know what Peter was thinking. It was his disregard for the usual that got him into trouble, and I also feel put him in line to be the Voice of the new Church on the day of Pentecost.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when Peter walked upon the water. The twelve were in the boat, in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves. The Bible says in the fourth watch, so between 3:00 and 6:00 am they saw Jesus walking on the water.  In the Book of Mark chapter 6, it says …he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed them by.
There’s a whole message in that.  They were in the storm, struggling to make forward progress, feeling like they may not make it when the Lord came walking by.  Not just walking by but walking upon the thing they were fighting.  And then there’s the “would have passed them by” part.  He didn’t get that close to toy with them, He got that close so they would see him and remember where their help comes from. Had they not cried out to him I believe he would have walked on by.  He made himself available to them but wasn’t going to interfere without being invited.  That’s the same way he deals with us today.  God is a gentleman, he will not force Himself on you. You’ll have to invite Him.

But Peter, the one who would cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant when they came to take Jesus. The one that would push past John and enter Jesus’ tomb.  The one that held the Keys to the Kingdom.  The one that would stand up and answer the call “Men and Brethren what must we do?” in the second chapter of Acts.
When Peter saw Jesus walking on the storm, he cried out “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.” When Jesus said “come” he climbed down onto the sea. But as he walked on the water toward the Lord, he lost focus, the storm caught his attention, and he began to sink.

For some reason when I play this out in my head, I always see Peter slowly start to sink. But the reality of it is, while he was focused on Jesus he was operating in the supernatural. When Peter took his eyes off the Lord he reverted back to the natural, so did the water beneath him, and Woosh, down he went! He went from standing to swimming in a blink.

Peter is perceived as the failure in this story, but that’s not how I see it.  Remember Micah 7:8 …When I fall, I shall arise…  When you are doing, you will have setbacks.  If you are not moving, you may not stumble, but you’ll never get anywhere either.

Another part of this story, when played out in my head is that Peter looks like me.  I’m the one brave enough, close enough, spiritual enough, bold enough, or whatever enough to step out onto the water.  I want to be that person, but am I, am I really?

Peter no doubt felt like a failure, but to me, the failure was a missed opportunity by the Eleven, the ones that stayed in the boat. Those that were too caught up in the natural, affected by the storm to realize that Jesus was standing on it.  That the answer to, not just this storm, but to all their questions was walking on the storm before their eyes.

Imagine the Faith that could have been built had they all cried out Lord bid Us come to You.  Gotten out of the boat and walked with Jesus, possibly to the other side. What would have happened?  They didn’t, they stayed in the “safety” of the boat, where all of a sudden they felt comfortable, so we’ll never know what might have been.  There were probably at least a couple “I knew he couldn’t walk on water” and What was he thinking, who does he think he is” remarks and sideways looks when Peter was back in the boat.

They had the same fears and doubts then that we have now when God is moving and we see opportunity and feel the tug of the spirit to move.  Where do you see yourself, are you standing on the Storm or cowering in the bottom of the boat as one of the Eleven.  I probably would have played a better Thomas than Peter, had I even been there.

Peter made his share of mistakes, he denied the Lord three times in one night. But he also goes down in history as the Only Man that is known to have walked on the Sea, if only for a few steps. He was the voice of the early Church, he was the voice that God used to bring the Gospel to the Non-Jewish world.

Peter was not a Perfect Vessel, but he was a Willing Vessel.
And there’s the lesson, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths”
Jump when God says Jump, run when He says run. Be Willing!

Lord help me to be a willing vessel, to keep my eyes fixed ever on You.

Lord Bless You Richly,
Greg

Please hit the Follow button, Leave a comment and share.