When I work on the dive boat, I have the chance to spend a day with strangers on their vacation. They come with all sorts of attitudes. You learn which newlyweds are still in love 48 hrs after the vows and which ones are sitting there zoned at the realization that not only will life never be the same but they'll be paying this trip off for the next 30 years. It's not uncommon for people to come to Maui and in going "all out" drop 20 thousand on a couple weeks of paradise. Truly an unforgettable experience for reasons both good and bad. But it's not the good nor the bad that makes an impression here. It's the ugly.

I had a group of people on the boat recently, we'll call group number one. They showed up forty minutes late, making the rest of the passengers wait and without a word of apology to the rest of the crew, boarded as though they owned the boat. Loud, obnoxious, and without regard for the rules of the watercraft. The captain wasn't amused. As they prepared to hit the ocean, the silicone and botox was on display. Modesty in swim attire was nowhere to be found. The captain was amused. When the bar opened, they indulged freely, increasing the volume with every mai tai. When the day was over, I packed my gear and walked away frustrated. See, this group was a group of Christian people who were part of a church. They had called and lightly demanded a group discount on that basis and when 15% was offered they asked if they could make it 20%. After all, they're Christians in church leadership and the world is entitled to offer them a little somethin.

Fast forward to the following Saturday with group 2. A bus unloads a group of people who have chartered the boat, crew, and video guy for the day. A dozen couples arrive, on time, well mannered, very polite. They kindly listened to instructions and shocked the crew by following them. These early to middle aged husbands and wives were extremely pleasant and the swimwear was about as modest as you'll ever see in Maui. When the bar opened, many abstained and went for the local juice, pog. (Passion, Orange, Guava) At the end of the day they tipped heavily and I was sorry to see them go. This group was made up of web pornographers. They were the CEO's of companies that distribute pornographic content on the internet and collectively, controlled more than 50 million sites between them. When I learned this, I was shocked. (Kind of like you are right now.) One of the men on the trip, I found later, was responsible for much of the porn spam. The kind that plagues the PC of those who navigate off the narrow road only to find their computer filled with spyware. Had I known that while we were diving, I may have turned off his air or put a jellyfish in his wetsuit. I came home and showed the pictures of each group to my wife and then told her what they did for a living and she was stunned.

This begs the question, what in the world makes us different? I've written this before but it's the power and nature of God within us that makes us different. The nature or character that we display in the way we do life opens the door for that power to be released. We are equally obligated to demonstrate both. The Holy Spirit may be in every believer, but He rests upon very few. There are two rails that keep us from going off the edge when it comes to the Holy Spirit. One is "grieve not" the other is "quench not". Grieve not is to keep us from doing, thinking, and harboring things in our heart that are inconsistent with God's heart. If I'm selfish, bitter, filled with hatred, I'm grieving Him, because I have embraced something in myself that is not found in His heart. Quench not is to keep us from embracing an invalid agenda by stopping the flow of His Spirit who is likened unto a river. You put a kink in a garden hose, you stop the flow. If your Sunday worship service is timed out to the minute for the comfort of the people under the guise of decent order you have put a kink in the hose. Why? Because in order for the Spirit to flow, time and attention must be given to that and when your agenda doesn't allow for it, His manifest presence would need to violate what you have created. Ask yourself this. Does the Holy Spirit flow freely in our gatherings? If not, that needs to bother you. You cannot be comfortable with lack when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Pastor, are you nervous about this? That's why He's called the comforter. When the river flows, people get nervous and that needs to be ok with you. Jesus' life is the picture of what flows from the heart of the Father, from the throne of God, down to humanity and He left the world so flood damaged with His presence that we have yet to recover. Picture this. Peter's shadow heals because whatever overshadows you will be released in your shadow. Ps 91.

The Bible says the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, "and remained". Get this picture. How do you walk in such a way as not to cause a dove to fly from your shoulder? Ever step you would take would have to be made aware of what you carry. This is not to build a sense of insecurity. The Spirit is in you for your sake but is upon you for the sake of others, and a person who does not position themselves as a contributor to the overall work of God on earth is not going to be a person upon whom the richness of the Holy Spirit is manifest. The treasure is not the power He brings, rather the treasure is the presence itself. God is looking for people upon whom the Holy Spirit can rest and that will be upon you who desire Him and invite Him and walk with the awareness of what you carry.

By request, here are the notes for this week's SOZO class. The focus this week is on the renewed mind (Romans 12).

- The Bible doesn’t say, with the mind man believes. It says, “With the heart man believes." The Spirit gets restored to God and after that the soul. As the mind, will, and emotions are renewed the body comes into alignment for it is God’s ambition that we experience divine health and in that, release divine healing. Your internal reality leaks out to become your external reality.

- The body is a servant of the mind. If the mind will be a servant of the Spirit, the body will be healed.

- 3 John 1:2 says, “I pray above all things that you would proper and be in health even as your soul prospers.” If the Spirit in you is in continuous overflow of the presence of God it will have an affect on how you think, the way you think, and the way you deal with emotional situations and as that order takes place on the inside of you the overflow manifests in your physical body. This is why Romans 8:12 says that if the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you He will quicken your mortal body.

- 1 Corinthians 8:1 says that knowledge (mental ascent) puffs up. Revelation knowledge is meant to lead us to life but is dangerous without a divine encounter. It will only equip you to debate with other believers but divine encounter makes that knowledge an expression of life. All of God’s judgment is aimed at whatever interferes with His love.

- Mark 6:48 Hunger and desperation will bring you into that greater measure of presence. On the sea, Jesus was walking and intended to pass them by. Their cry of desperation brought His presence. There is a measure of His presence that can only be had by desperation. Hunger beyond reason conditions you to contain the answer once you receive it. Most of what we have the intelligence to ask for, God has willed that we possess in greater measure. God wants to release to us beyond all that we could ask (that’s the reach of your prayers) or think (that’s the reach of your imagination.) Ephesians 3:20

- The mind is a brilliant student but a horrible leader. The mind is a mirror of a heart that is pure before God. It’s like a canvas that God paints on as we pick up the perceptions and thoughts of the Lord. But when the mind is in charge of the Christian life it’s called carnal Christianity. Apart from the Spirit, the mind creates form without power, but submitted to the Spirit, the mind is capable of creativity that the world has not yet seen.

- Matt 28:18-20, Haggai 2:7, Only a nation can disciple a nation, and to make that impossible assignment possible He took the one who is called the Desire of all Nations and caused Him to take up residence in us. So then as the nations cry out we become the very answer to their heart’s cry. Not that we are the redeemer but with Christ in us we are able to manifest the reality that God has answers for every dilemma in society. God is very interested in restoration and you and I are agents of that change.

- Never confuse your destiny with your assignment. Your destiny is heaven. Your assignment is to bring heaven. My destiny is that I’m going to see Him when I die. My assignment is to bring Him to be seen here and now.

- Mark 8:13 After experiencing the power of Jesus, if I cannot see the unseen, my heart is still hardened and I need that greater desperation. My thinking is not to be anchored into the restriction of this world but of the resources of His world. To access the moving of the Spirit and the anointing to release the Kingdom, learn to see, hear, and remember. Remembering activates your hearing which activates your seeing. Rev 19:10. Whenever you have a spoken or written record of what God has done it carries a prophetic anointing that is released to duplicate the miracle spoken of.

- The word remember means to put together that which has been dismembered. It also is related to the word “male. The man carries the seed of reproduction and when we remember, we take the seed of a past event into a present situation. This goes both ways, in the positive and the negative, depending on what you choose to remember. This is why the renewing of the mind is so necessary for transformation. We choose to remember what God has done and not what He hasn’t done.

- You know the mind is renewed when what was formerly seen as impossible is now suddenly possible for “with God all things are possible.”

We had such a great time with Audrey. I'm tellin you, if you ever are just in need of a houseguest, (like you crave company) whether it's a person you know or not, Audrey is your deal. She is absolutely the easiest person to hang out with I've ever known. Say you're some family in the rolling Irish hills and you've just inherited some five hundred year old homestead with walls four feet thick and you've decorated it like some magazine cover and all of your friends and relatives are jealous and frankly you wouldn't want them to come over anyway but you're just itching to expose your hospitality to some appreciative human being who just exudes delight. Gimme a call, I know a nurse in Baltimore who would be right up your alley. We love and miss you Audrey. Thank you so much for coming to Maui.

I've hit this topic of offense towards God in recent posts, but I feel the need to go after it again for the sake of reminding myself that blaming God will never enable me to carry what I cry out for. Why? Because there are these hurdles of offense that we must overcome to come into a greater anointing. You must be able to bear up under the weight of the pressure that comes with the anointing you're asking for. To be able to bear up under the call that God releases upon you is huge because He will not bless you with something that will crush you. In Matthew 15 there's this amazing story of a Greek woman who comes to ask Jesus to do a miracle for her demon posessed daughter. Jesus answers her twice with what sounds like a cruel rejection. I'm not giving the children's bread to dogs, He says. What does she do? She goes right over the hurdle of offense and says, but even the crumbs from the table are given to the dogs. And Jesus goes WOW. He's so impressed that He makes sure that her story is told forever as a high water mark of how to do life. Understand that when Jesus said what He said to this woman that He did not intend to heal her daughter. He wasn't being deceptive and doing reverse psychology.

It was her ability to deal with issues of the heart where she refused to live with personal offense that qualified her for an expression of the Kingdom BEFORE HER TIME. (Please read that again until it soaks in.)

She wasn't a Jew and Jesus was supposed to pour Himself out for the Jews, be rejected by them, so that the Gentiles may be brought in. In refusing to be offended, she brought into her day a New Testament reality. The age to come is available for those who will overcome this hurdle of offense and refuse to live angry at what they don't understand.

"Well I don't know why this happened." And you probably won't. It will be explained later and that needs to be ok with you. God is releasing this to us in this day because He's trying to condition us to come into the stewardship of something really significant. We are forced to live with questions that we do not have answers for. Are you willing to live without answers? Can you live with mystery and not cancel out the revelation? It doesn't mean there are no answers? It means that things don't get solved by what you understand.

This was taken by my brother in law, Steve, from our porch a week ago.

For those who are going through the SOZO class, here's the notes you requested. For everyone else, each Sunday morning, I'll post the basic notes from the class I teach. That way, if you're interested in going through it with us, have at it.

- Today the topic is faith. We are always looking for an increase in faith, but faith doesn’t come out of striving. It comes from surrender.

- If you’ve ever embraced someone with too much cologne on, you walk away smelling like they do. He’s perfectly faithful and when you stay close to Him you walk away with faith. It’s the impression of His presence that remains upon you.

- Never be concerned with having too little faith. Be faithful with the faith you have. The loaves didn’t become much until Jesus gave thanks for the little. Anything you immerse in thankfulness expands.

- We must be a generation of people willing to step into the unknown. Faith will take us to places that require boldness. If you’re not nervous you don’t need the Comforter The reason many of us haven’t gotten to know the Holy Spirit better than we have is that we live so comfortably that we have no need of the Comforter.

- Eph 4:11-13. Perfection of what God designed us to be here on earth is determined by our revelation of Jesus Christ.

- There are those who would say that we shouldn’t pursue an experience but when you get married you don’t get the theology of marriage, you enter into an experience. We are called the Bride of Christ. Some would say that in pursuit of experience you’re vulnerable to deception but if you’re content to live without experience you’re already deceived.

- The Lord is inviting you into the journey of discovery Pro 25:2 Believers are those willing to pursue what He has declared is possible. Your royalty becomes manifest in your pursuit of what you have legal right to in the realm of mystery. Eph 1:9, Eph 3:3, Col 1:9,

- John 1:51, Jn 2:11, Jn 3:12, Jn 16:12, Jn 16:15, Jn 17:18, Jn 20:21.

Today people all over the island are out sharing the Gospel. Thirty nine churches have joined in a massive Maui movement to share the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus. This has been going on for three days now and just from the combined groups from upcountry churches alone, there have been more than 200 individuals who have said yes to Jesus. As I write this, there is a class of new believers meeting in the sanctuary of the church getting ready to go out together to pray for the sick, preach the Gospel, do good, and heal the oppressed. Gone are the days of endless discipleship classes before people feel worthy or equipped to let their light shine.

The most amazing testimony this week came from a lady named Robbie who went to the mall in Kahului and walked up to a man in a wheelchair to talk to him about Jesus. She begins by introducing herself and asking him if he had ever heard that God loves him and has a plan for his life. The man looked at her totally surprised and answered back. They had a good conversation which resulted in him praying with her to accept Jesus. The whole time this man looked so startled and shocked and she couldn't figure it out. The man's daughter then came out of the store and asked Robbie what she was doing. She said, "I'm just visiting with your father." The daughter said, "My father's deaf." But he wasn't anymore. When Robbie had started telling him about Jesus, his ears opened.

This is the kind of world we live in today. Where God is alive and active in His people. A powerful point to this testimony is that Robbie was just a regluar middle aged woman who decided to put her faith into action and share it. The Gospel of the Kingdom was never intended to produce superstars. We'll always have leaders, generals if you will, who proclaim follow me as I follow Christ and there's no apology for that. It's just the way the Lord works. But it was never meant that one person have such a unique anointing that they would be the resource for everyone else. It's seems to be that God elevates a person in anointing and power so that as we gather to them they would encourage and equip us (much like Peter did) so that the high point of their experience would become the new norm for the body of Christ. What would happen if every person you prayed for got healed? Within thirty days your name would be household. Every news agency would be knocking at your door and going through your trash looking for a crack in your character because the world is just that way. Those with large sums of money and great need would use every dollar at their disposal to exploit your gift or at least attempt to get you to give them your increasingly valuable time. Let's say you couldn't be bought. You've still got a problem because everytime you say yes to one you say no to a thousand others, after all, you're only one person. The pressure put on one person in that situation would be unbelievable. You would stand out so much that you would become an icon. There's a weighiness to that kind of pressure that would crush the best of us.

Yet Jesus gave us a mandate to go after this as a lifestyle and to cry out for that kind of anointing to be released through us. The pressure doesn't stop me from going after it, because Jesus' desire is that the Kingdom would come. But I pray for it sober minded. it's not a casual prayer. What's the answer? To ignore it? No. It's to have the whole body go after it together. What would it be like for an entire church body to have breakthrough and come into a greater level of anointing than we've known before? It would be the answer to the prayer spoken from the heart of our Savior. Think of it. You are the answer to the prayer of Jesus.

The realm of the Kingdom is often over the hurdle of inconvenience. There's something about this Kingdom that requires us to take posession. Why wasn't that person healed or delivered? Often it's because we've not arrived, and you have to be ok with that. It means that we continue to embrace the lifestyle of risk to pursue what Jesus told us is possible. Why? Because Jesus said it is.

John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater [works] than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

It means that I'm not in this for a weekend to see if it's true. It's being so convinced that this is the normal Christian life that you say yes before God gives the command. What I have seen, while still not to the standard of Jesus, has been sufficient enough to cause me to surrender the remainder of my life to pursuing. There are olympic runners who spend their entire life on a race that lasts seconds. I'm spending my life on three seconds, which I figure is probably how long it will take for Him to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant..." My whole life is for that one moment.