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.

We know that the Kingdom of Heaven is a kind of “now and not yet”. We live in a reality where the Kingdom of our God has not entirely invaded the kingdom of this world. It is His intention, and He wants it to happen, but it has not fully happened, yet...

This means that there could well be times in our lives when we suffer unexpected and seemingly unnecessary loss. But we do not live with such an expectation. We live with the reality, but not the expectation. By living with such an expectation we are blocking the channels through which God's Kingdom can invade.

This means that when I lay hands on the sick, each and every one, every dead person I lay my hands on, I must expect the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven to invade Earth at that given moment for that given situation. Just because I may be living in a seemingly alternative reality to what I may have seen before does not change the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven wants to and can fully invade that circumstance.

If I have any doubt just because of what I have or haven't seen before means that I do not entirely believe the promises Jesus made. My circumstances do not determine the Truth of what Jesus bought for me, and what He promised me. How can they? Those past circumstances are merely reminders that this kingdom of Earth needs the Kingdom of Heaven to invade it more than ever before!

What we must learn is that this Earth has been under immense bondage and slavery since the “fall”, and it does not quite know how to handle the invasion of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a completely different reality to what is known here on Earth.

This Earth is in a great darkness. People say God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. And while that is theoretically true, I have difficulty believing He is in the cells of cancer that are ravaging a beautiful young lady of only 25 years old giving her only weeks to live and leaving her family shattered. Or that He would be in the cells of an HIV virus weakening a young boy to the slivers of his skin and bone, leaving him but months away from his deathbed. Is God in that? Tell me!!! Is God in that? HOW CAN HE BE????

NO!!!! I am sorry, but God is NOT in that!! He is not in that cell and He is not in that virus!!!

He walked with Adam and Eve in reality. Not theoretically. When He moved them out of that garden, He placed them in a world where He was not. It was a world He had indeed created. But legally according to what they had done, He justly cursed the land and from that moment that land has been crying out and groaning ever since.

My friend, the time has come for us to stop dancing around pathetic theological ideas that pander to our Earthly circumstances and that we rise up and see that there is an alternative reality waiting to BURST into this reality. It is the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom that was before. The Kingdom of our God. My friend, the kingdoms of this world SHALL BECOME the Kingdoms of our Most High God. Through us. Because of what Jesus the Christ has done for us. Paid for us. Bought for us.

His Price was far too high to expect anything less. I for one will not allow circumstances to alter what I see promised to me by my Father in His Holy-Spirit inspired Word. For His Glory always. That the world may know.

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!

Firstly, I would like to make it emphatically clear that my wife and I count ourselves immensely privileged to be able to travel the way we have done. We place a high value on time together as a family, and hence memory-creating vacations are important to us. Therefore when we set ourselves goals of traveling we begin saving significant portions of our income well in advance. And for this particular trip, that saving started a very long time ago. On top of that, God our Father has been incredibly gracious in providing us all we need in making this trip possible, and for that we are so thankful.

With that in mind… herewith the story of the "trip-of-a-lifetime"...

It all started a good 5 years ago or so. My wife Corinne and myself were edging closer to sweet marital bliss. And each time "honeymoon" came to mind, I pictured snowy, adrenalin-filled days in the Swiss Alps. That was until we set our wedding date, when we realized skiing wasn't good for that time of year.

But the dream of skiing with my wife on beautiful snow covered slopes never died. I had the privilege of going skiing with my family in 2005 in Canada. My first taste of true panoramic mountainside skiing since I was 6 years. Oh I had waited a long time. And the skill hadn't left me either!

Upon return from that 2005 trip I pleaded with Corinne that we go on on a skiing honeymoon, but as mentioned it didn't work out. But the dream remained.

Once mission "tropical-island" had been completed… we embarked on a new adventure. And it was to come.

My family has always been the adventurous type, and quite a traveling bunch. Especially my dad's side. And I had to get some further traveling under my belt before we "settled down" and have kids (or something like that). So we started putting the bucks aside each month and figured 2 or 3 years into our marriage and we should have enough.

We eventually settled on January 2010. We didn't have enough. How can 3 years of saving not work out? You know how it goes. But again, Dad in Heaven supplied ALL our needs. And He blessed us through people and opportunities that had Heaven's signature all over them. And it looked like we would be ok. We were.

One of my favorite testimonies is that of the flight agent. Corinne and I planned our trip, and headed to Flight Centre. The quoted price was one of those that induce heart failure. You know, the reason they're installing heart defibrillators in shopping malls. Yep, one of those.

So, choking back home, we figured it would be back to the drawing board. All until a divine coffee appointment at a local shopping mall.

Corinne, having coffee at a less-visited mall with a friend, spotted a flight agency where she knew the manager. Upon enquiring, the quoted price was close to half the price what Flight Centre quoted! Just little things like that showing God's hand in blessing His kids. We are so thankful.

We finalized our destinations: London, Bognor Regis, New York City, Seattle, Crystal Mountain ski resort (yes!), San Francisco, Redding California, Disneyland LA. Wow. Trip of a life time indeed!

Here ends part 1.

--------

So that's just a little insight into how the trip came into being. In the next edition I'll give a summary with some photos of the England leg of the trip.

I would love to hear your comments if you've visited and follow this travel journal.

Until then!

Adios

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.