In case you didn't know, the Gospel was meant to offend!

Romans 9:33
"Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
    and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."


It is such ridiculously Good, intoxicatingly Happy News that, when presented in its fullness and purity, should invoke an offense that says "it is not as easy as that!  It cannot be as good and as easy as that!"

Well, it is!  The whole point of this Gospel is that Jesus accomplished everything you and I couldn't and purchased for us everything we need to bring His Kingdom of Love to this planet.  This is what Peter meant when he wrote in his 2nd letter "we have been given everything we need pertaining to life and Godliness."  He goes on to write in that same passage that Jesus gave us everything we need to partake in His Divine nature and through what Jesus did on the Cross we have already been separated from this sinful world!

You have been given everything you need!  Done!  Once and for all!  You don't need to fast, pray, read your Bible or worship more to get more!  It has already been given in its fullness!

If you fast, fast to get rid of the unbelieving religion that plagues our human, unrenewed minds!  If you pray, pray for God to reveal His Goodness and what was accomplished on the Cross, and how much you have been given!  If you read the Bible, read it to realise how Good He is and what He has given you and how much He loves you!  If you worship, worship because you have seen how Good He is and you can't hold your praise back!

It is a ludicrous scandal.  A scandal that is spreading like wildfire across this planet!

Romans 8:19
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

Around the world people are rising up in response to this scandalous truth!  Their spirits bearing witness to this Glorious Truth of the Gospel, and they are being set free from religion, bondage and fear and rising up to be the sons and daughters of God He already created them to be!  A people who know that God loves them passionately, and that His Love is the most powerful force in the entire Universe.  It is happening all over the world.

Religion is telling some that this Message is too good to be true.  Religion, like satan in the wilderness, is using Scripture to deceive others into believing that it cannot be this easy.  That to be a Christian one needs to please God, live a holy life, and keep a check on one's own life.  What these people who are buying into these lies don't realise is that this is the most selfish, introspective viewpoint in the world!  That lie says that it is more about what you do than what Jesus already did on the Cross, and thereby takes away the glory from God and gives it to you.

But the body of the Truth in Scripture is too heavy and too weighty to be ignored.

Jesus has set us free once and for all!  And what remains is that we enter into this marriage free from the old marriage of religion and receive His undying, unconditional Love for us!  All that remains is for us to receive His Love.

One sip of this Pure, undiluted Gospel will intoxicate you for the rest of your life.

2 Corinthians 5:14
For the love of Christ controls us...

One drink of this Pure Gospel and Paul was done for.  Transformed forever!  The Love of Christ was such a powerful force to Him that He couldn't stop.  It literally controlled every move he made, and everything He did.  If the Love of Christ isn't controlling you, then you might need another drink of the New Covenant.

In the same way alcohol controls the mind and body, the Love of Christ will control you.  You will look crazy.  You will look stupid.  You will be mocked and criticized.  But you can't help it, and you can't go back.  For like Paul, just one taste of this Pure Good News, and you cannot go back.

Stop questioning!  Stop believing the lies!  The Truth is being revealed!  The Gospel is this good!

It is nothing of what you can do.  It is everything of what Jesus has already done!  There is nothing left for Him to do!  He sat down at the right hand of the Father because His work was complete!

I raise my glass in toast and drink to that!  Thank You Jesus!

Psalm 116:13
  I'll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God!

The Scandalous Offense of the Gospel

James Preston Reply 12:04 PM

In case you didn't know, the Gospel was meant to offend! Romans 9:33 "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a r...

Does Rob Rufus go too far?

James Preston 14 11:55 AM

Just before this post.... I have been nominated for an SA Blog Award 2014! I would really appreciate your support, just by taking litera...

This is a summary of "Teaching Into An Encounter", the 8th Chapter of Bill Johnson's remarkable book "When Heaven Invades Earth." I thought the material here may well provide you with some stirring Food for thought. Enjoy.

-------------------------------------------
Any revelation from God's Word that does not lead us to an encounter with God only serves to make us more religious. The Church cannot afford “form without power”, for it creates Christians without purpose. (Opening statement)

God's revealed Word, declared through the lips of an anointed teacher, ought to lead to demonstrations of power.

Jesus sent out His disciples saying “freely you have received, freely give. Preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.”

From John 14:10 – It is apparent that we speak the Word, and the Father does the works – miracles!

Bible teachers are to instruct in order to explain what they just did, or are about to do. When we restrict ourselves to mere words, we limit our gift, and may unintentionally lead believers to pride by increasing knowledge without an increased awareness of God's Presence and power! It's in the trenches of Christ-like ministry that we learn to become totally dependent upon God.

Personal Experience

There comes a time when simply knowing truth will no longer satisfy. There must be a “risk factor”. John Wimber calls this faith! Teaching must be followed with action that makes room for God to move.

Are we making the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, with the full manifestations of His gifts, the sole purpose of our existence?

Resisting The Influence Of Our Own Culture

Our culture values concepts and ideas above experience with results. You can go to colleges and get lectured in business by a person who has never owned a business! Such a culture has shaped most of our Bible schools.

Many present day movements have made a virtue out of staying the course without a God experience.

God cannot be known apart from experience.

Anyone who doesn't have an experience with God, doesn't know God.” He is a Person, not a philosophy or concept!

Those that have encountered God must stop watering down their story and use their testimonies to sit up a hunger for such encounters!

Kingdom Realised

God has promised to back up our message with power if our message is the Gospel of His Kingdom!

Power vs Pride

1 Corinthians 4:19b - 20

I’ll find out whether these arrogant people just give pretentious speeches or whether they really have God’s power. 20 For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.

(For the Kingdom of God is not in word but in Power.) NKJV

The teachers mentioned here are different from the kind that Jesus intended the church to have! (Paul concedes these may be believers, but still refers to them as “puffed up” in the NKJV)

Personal charisma is often valued more by the church than either anointing or truth.

Paul chose not to wow the Corinthians with his extensive knowledge, instead he led them to an encounter with the God of all Power who would become the anchor of their faith!

The Kingdom of God is not in logos but in dunamis!

Dunamis is “the power of God displayed and imparted in a Holy Spirit outpouring.” That is the Kingdom!

In 1 Cor 2:5 Paul lays out his ministry priority as bringing people to a place of leaning on God's Power (dunamis) and not man's wisdom!

Any time the people of God become preoccupied with concepts and ideologies instead of a Christ-like expression of life and power, they are set up to fail, no matter how good those ideas are. Christianity is not a philosophy; it is a relationship. It's the God encounter that makes the concepts powerful!

We must require this of ourselves. How? We must seek until we find! (Luke 11:10)

Fathers with Power vs Teachers With Only Words (As in 1 Cor 4)

Father Teachers (not after Jesus' example)

Lifestyle – imitate fathers Lifestyle – gather around ideas (divisive)

Attitude – Humility Attitude – Pride (puffed up)

Ministry – Power Ministry – Many words

Focus – The Kingdom Focus – Teachings


God Is Bigger Than His Book

You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor God's Power.” Matt 22:29 (NLT)

A rebuke aimed at the ignorance infecting every area of their lives.

They didn't allow the Scriptures to lead them to God. “KNOW” - personal experience!

They tried to learn apart from such an experience.

It is a lack of Power of encounters that lead to a misunderstanding of God and His Word. Experience is necessary in building a true knowledge of the Word.

It is illegitimate to allow fear to keep us from pursuing a deeper experience with God!

Embracing such fear causes a failure to the other extreme, which is culturally more acceptable, but significantly worse in eternity.

God is True to His Word, bet He does not avoid acting outside of our understanding of it!

God is so foreign to our natural ways of thinking that we only truly see what He shows us – and we can only understand Him through relationship!

The Bible reveals the greatness of our God, but it does not contain Him.

Don't hide your need to be in control behind a banner of “staying anchored in the Word.”

Road Map or Tour Guide

Anything I can get from the Word without God will not change my life.

The Bible is closed to ensure that I remain dependent on the Holy Spirit.

When we treat the Bible as a roadmap we live as though we can find our way though our own understanding of His book. This kind of perspective of Scriptures is similar to live under the law, and not living under Grace!

Living under law is the tendency to desire a list of preset boundaries, and not a relationship.

Under Grace we don't get a road map, we get a tour guide – the Holy Spirit!

Revelation that doesn't lead to a God encounter only serves to make me more religious.

The pride that comes from mere Bible knowledge is divisive.

The heart that fears God only – that heart is the heart where faith is born.

The mission of heaven is to infiltrate earth with its realities. All teaching is to lead us to that end, for training in the Kingdom is not without purpose.

Teaching Into An Encounter by Bill Johnson

James Preston Reply 9:08 AM

This is a summary of "Teaching Into An Encounter", the 8th Chapter of Bill Johnson's remarkable book "When Heaven Invades...

Gospel Revolution Continues!

James Preston 3 10:05 AM

As is the case with most part-time bloggers, it's been a while since I've penned something on the digital journal. Much has transpi...

Grace is fresh. Every day. Not just any grace, like the grace you may receive from a friend when you've wronged them. Or the grace from the tax man. Those too are great. But the Grace of God revealed in the Person and subsequent death of Christ Jesus is fresh every single day. Every minute of every hour. And I want to live there forever!

I don't know if I am different, and if I'm a little strange, but I can't get enough of understanding the deep truths and realities of God's unbelievable Grace for mankind!

This morning I was paging through some books and just "refuelling", and was reminded and reawakened to the beauties of this Glorious Gospel. Enjoy...

"For most people, it takes more unlearning than learning to understand the fullness of God's Grace and the Glories of the New Covenant!"
DR Andrew Farley

"When one misreads Scripture, it is as dangerous as the captain of a ship misreading a tide chart in shallow waters."
DR Andrew Farley

"You can listen to a whole bunch of Gospel-centred, Grace preaching. But such is the nature of the flesh that all it takes is one works-based sermon to abandon the Glorious Gospel and slip back into a faith based on works."
Joseph Prince

"Many Christians still walk in Old Covenant bondage. Regarding the law as a Divine ordinance for our direction, they consider themselves prepared and fitted by conversion to take up the fulfillment of the law as a natural duty."
Andrew Murray

"There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation."
DR Martin Lloyd-Jones

And I would like to emphatically share with you that I AM ABSOLUTELY, ENTIRELY, COMPLETELY UNASHAMED ABOUT THE TRUE GOSPEL OF CHRIST JESUS! FOR IN THIS GOSPEL, THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD (NOT MAN) IS REVEALED!!!!

I will never settle for anything less! I will never shrink back! This Glorious Gospel is too awesome!

Fresh Grace

Anonymous Reply 6:54 AM

Grace is fresh. Every day. Not just any grace, like the grace you may receive from a friend when you've wronged them. Or the grace fr...

Have you discovered "Pure Grace"? Nothing less, nothing more. Grace is not a doctrine. Neither is it a topic that is visited at the pulpit every few months. Grace is the Person of Jesus Christ.

John 1:14 (ESV)
"...we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth..."
Vs 16 "And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace."

Grace is not sloppy. It is perfectly just. The brutality of the Cross shouts to the world of God's Perfect Justice; and His Perfect, Unconditional Love and Grace.

I put it to you... have you truly experienced the Pure, undiluted Grace of God only found in Christ Jesus?

Martin Luther did in the 16th Century. And the world was changed because of that discovery. Look at what Robert Farrar Capon writes of Luther's discovery:

"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they discovered in the dusty basement of late 'medievalism' a whole cellar full of 1500 year old, 200 proof Grace: of bottle after bottle of the pure distillate of Scripture; one sip of which would convince anyone that God saved us single handedly.
The Word of the Gospel after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into Heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps, suddenly turns out to be the flat announcement that the saved were 'home before they started'.
Grace has to be drunk straight; no water, no ice, certainly no ginger-ale; neither goodness nor badness, nor the flower that bloom in the spring of super-spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case of the Pure Grace of God."

Excerpt of Robert Farrar Capon's "The Parables of the Kingdom". (Special thanks to Martin Berndt for making this available)

And so I put it to you again... Have you experienced the Pure, undiluted Grace of God?

I have. And I can never be the same. And never will be.

Have You Discovered Pure Grace?

Anonymous 4 9:27 AM

Have you discovered "Pure Grace"? Nothing less, nothing more. Grace is not a doctrine. Neither is it a topic that is visited at...

For those that don't know, I have just returned from spending a week in Delhi, India. One of the most densely populated cities in the world. With over 13 million people in the city alone, there are 9294 people per sqaure kilometre. And that fact is certainly experienced.

This picture on the left barely does justice to the situation. Everywhere you go in the city, the sense of being surrounded seldom, if ever, leaves you. And with so many people in such a small area, there is bound to be poverty. But the poverty in India, and in particular Delhi, is different. It impacts you in ways you cannot imagine.

But what is so remarkable is that the people without don't look longingly at those with much. It is a very different mindset.

Of course, here in South Africa poverty is abundant. But those in poverty feel like the world owes them something. Beggars expect to be given to. It is their right. And this is wrong. But let me not digress...

The poor in India accept their circumstances, and the only reason they beg is because they have nothing else left. It is their only hope for survival. Take this woman for instance...

She was one of many that wrenched my heart. She expected nothing. She is the epitomy of pure poverty. Nothing left. Not even her dignity.

Oh Jesus, give me the Grace to outwork your love for people like this in the physical realm. You would have held this woman in your arms. Embraced her. While thousands pass her by each day, your love would have penetrated her heart as you showed it to her in action. Jesus, your Gospel is for everyone, especially the poor. Open our hearts to this Truth. One of the many that transpire from the Message of Love that is the Gospel.

I am back in South Africa now, and I will be posting an entire album of my truly remarkable experience in India on my website www.sonicsubstance.com within the next week.

Pure Poverty

Anonymous 2 12:44 PM

For those that don't know, I have just returned from spending a week in Delhi, India. One of the most densely populated cities in the w...

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