Good morning Everyone!
I'm sure like me, many of you have misplaced or lost your keys... To say the least, it's a very frustrating feeling, searching and searching, only to come up empty handed!
Oh what a wondrous feeling it is when you finally find them!
Can I get a witness?
Satan’s game plan has been to keep us so full of junk that we’re not hungry for the Word of God.
And his plan has worked magnificently for centuries.
The enemy's strategy has made us so accustomed to surviving on an earthly prosperity but a beggar’s subsistence in the spirit realm, that merely a crumb of God’s Word satisfies us!
There are those, however, who are just not content with crumbs anymore. They want God, His Word and nothing else will do.
They want the full loaf of the Bread of Life!
Most of the world, however, keep our lives so filled up with junk food for the soul and amusements for the flesh, that we don’t know what it is to be really hungry!
And even more, thoroughly nourished!
Our bodies, minds, hearts and spirits are craving for something..
And no matter, how we attempt to fill with "junk food", we have that empty feeling, we're still left wanting something more!
Because we are filling our lives with empty calories..
Those of you who work out, are in the health field, or work with nutrition, know exactly what I'm talking about, right?
Scripture says of the Kingdom of Heaven, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."
Matthew 11:12
I don't know about any of you, but that just doesn’t sound like Christianity to me, does it you?
We’ve become so “churchified” that we have our own form of "political correctness and etiquette." And since we don’t want to be too radical, we line all the chairs up in nice rows and expect our services to conform to equally straight and regimented lines as well.
Church, we need to get so desperately hungry for, His Word, that we literally forget our manners!
The most apparent difference between liturgical worship and “charismatic” worship is that one has a printed program and the other is memorized. Often the one will even know when “God” will speak prophetically!
You want to know something?
Every one that I can think of in the New Testament record who “forgot their manners” received something from Him. And please understand me here, I’m not talking about rudeness for the sake of rudeness; I’m talking about rudeness born out of desperation!
What about the desperate woman with an incurable hemorrhaging problem who elbowed and shoved her way through the crowd until she touched the hem of the Lord’s garment? What about the impertinent Canaanite woman who just kept begging Jesus to deliver her daughter from demonization in Matthew 15:22-28?
Even though Jesus insulted her when He said, "It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
Matthew 15:26, she persisted. And she was so rude, so abrupt, and so pushy (or was she simply so desperately hungry for bread) that she replied, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”
Matthew 15:27
Most of us, on the other hand, come to our ministers and say,
“Pastor, I have something I need to ask you...
Would you, could you, please pray for me and bless me?”
If nothing really happens, we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, I’ll go home, get something to eat or maybe I’ll just go home and relax,” or “I’m going to go home and placate the inner man, fill my body and mind fleshly food and entertainment.”
To be honest, I’m hoping that God grips men and women in His Church and causes them to become so obsessed with the bread of His presence that they will not stop.
Once that happens, they don’t want just a “bless me” touch.
They will want Almighty God to show up in the place no matter how much it costs or how uncomfortable it may feel.
In an act of desperation, they may sound and appear to act rude, but at that point, they won’t really care about a man’s opinion, only about God’s opinion.
After all, isn't that the only opinion that matters?
It is pretty safe to say, that the Church, by and large doesn’t really have a place for people like that.
I'm sure like me, many of you have misplaced or lost your keys... To say the least, it's a very frustrating feeling, searching and searching, only to come up empty handed!
Oh what a wondrous feeling it is when you finally find them!
Can I get a witness?
Satan’s game plan has been to keep us so full of junk that we’re not hungry for the Word of God.
And his plan has worked magnificently for centuries.
The enemy's strategy has made us so accustomed to surviving on an earthly prosperity but a beggar’s subsistence in the spirit realm, that merely a crumb of God’s Word satisfies us!
There are those, however, who are just not content with crumbs anymore. They want God, His Word and nothing else will do.
They want the full loaf of the Bread of Life!
Most of the world, however, keep our lives so filled up with junk food for the soul and amusements for the flesh, that we don’t know what it is to be really hungry!
And even more, thoroughly nourished!
Our bodies, minds, hearts and spirits are craving for something..
And no matter, how we attempt to fill with "junk food", we have that empty feeling, we're still left wanting something more!
Because we are filling our lives with empty calories..
Those of you who work out, are in the health field, or work with nutrition, know exactly what I'm talking about, right?
Scripture says of the Kingdom of Heaven, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."
Matthew 11:12
I don't know about any of you, but that just doesn’t sound like Christianity to me, does it you?
We’ve become so “churchified” that we have our own form of "political correctness and etiquette." And since we don’t want to be too radical, we line all the chairs up in nice rows and expect our services to conform to equally straight and regimented lines as well.
Church, we need to get so desperately hungry for, His Word, that we literally forget our manners!
The most apparent difference between liturgical worship and “charismatic” worship is that one has a printed program and the other is memorized. Often the one will even know when “God” will speak prophetically!
You want to know something?
Every one that I can think of in the New Testament record who “forgot their manners” received something from Him. And please understand me here, I’m not talking about rudeness for the sake of rudeness; I’m talking about rudeness born out of desperation!
What about the desperate woman with an incurable hemorrhaging problem who elbowed and shoved her way through the crowd until she touched the hem of the Lord’s garment? What about the impertinent Canaanite woman who just kept begging Jesus to deliver her daughter from demonization in Matthew 15:22-28?
Even though Jesus insulted her when He said, "It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
Matthew 15:26, she persisted. And she was so rude, so abrupt, and so pushy (or was she simply so desperately hungry for bread) that she replied, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”
Matthew 15:27
Most of us, on the other hand, come to our ministers and say,
“Pastor, I have something I need to ask you...
Would you, could you, please pray for me and bless me?”
If nothing really happens, we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, I’ll go home, get something to eat or maybe I’ll just go home and relax,” or “I’m going to go home and placate the inner man, fill my body and mind fleshly food and entertainment.”
To be honest, I’m hoping that God grips men and women in His Church and causes them to become so obsessed with the bread of His presence that they will not stop.
Once that happens, they don’t want just a “bless me” touch.
They will want Almighty God to show up in the place no matter how much it costs or how uncomfortable it may feel.
In an act of desperation, they may sound and appear to act rude, but at that point, they won’t really care about a man’s opinion, only about God’s opinion.
After all, isn't that the only opinion that matters?
It is pretty safe to say, that the Church, by and large doesn’t really have a place for people like that.
Brian Monzon Ministries