Message #985

[ecuworrier]

i feel a little blessed that i have ended up starting again with this!



the day kindov started with what sounded like an invasion of bees it was one large dark with pletny of pollensacks trying to get out that is until i helped then what with all the windows open it wanted to get back in! now you know you are full of hte Holy spirit when.. you tell bee to go out in the Name of Jesus and it flies in the opposite direction ie towards me... hey was i the good guy the bee wanted to make friends with?...  eventually it went and still tried to sneak back in... by thyen i was well and trooly feelin shaky and unspiritual...

the music... well the video actually!...

we were honestly list4ening to Jesus Culture and then i had an inspiration i watned to share a piece of jazz... that somehow spoke of GOD speaking a direct and loving gift of love... so then they wanted to share something and i was at the controls so my knowledge of madonna is very small (the dj looked exasperated mnay years ago as i made a request for 'some madonna' apprently he'd been playing it all night... oops!)... and i saw 'like a prayer' and clicked and we both watched i grinned to see the woman lift Madonna my companion said nothing but somehow objected to the black jesus....    and off we were on a freedom frenzy of our respective nostalgias... i learned some new madonna Confessions on a dancefloor me i wallow in this early stuff... someone else came in and they told how (and this as good as happened to me) as a New Born Again Christian they heard 'like a virgin' and burst into tears .... the words of that song 'touched for the very first time' ... a curious moment of the day was listening to 'justify my love'.... i was listening to this with  like me a long unattached but a hettie man who 'you listen to this where!?' the day was full of surprises... having previously pretty much exclusively listened to  this via the environment of the disco so loud background noise and poor sound systems i was in for a surprise ... there is lots goijng on in low level noise on the track!///.. it was indeed an odd sharing of experience... listening again later on my own i became trooly intrigued... there was that word 'burning' to justify my love... it is a real get under your skin from a very deep place  piece.... there was something about the burnin though it made me think of the blaze of GOD.... fire and GOD and some will connotate the place of hell and that whole burnin theme goes missin straight to a place of pass me by....  the Fire in the Baptism of Fire that John the Baptist alludes to Matthew 3 intrigues me....   and charismatics are i believe split as to whether they want or feel about the notions of fire on the lips of christians too much fire and brimstone stuff from rumblin men of persistent thunder.... perhaps?  but i love that word burnin.... what is it about madonna the icon that makes iconoclasts of us all... but particularly she does us christians in for the mixing of metaphores so do we are we allowed to like madonna or not!.... listening alone i catch the depth of the phrases .... i heard a church leader not long ago talk about their experience of the Holy Spirit falling when madonna was played (some tracks i suspect!)  i smiled the Touch of GOD truely marks out the momentsof lyrics embedded in well actually whatever but playing run away games with religious experience but the ever presentness of those ..... runaway from.... wikipedia tells of an A student who was always getting into trouble for precocious and wild child attitudes... at home too given the birth responsibility of raising siblings after the early death of mother and all of them rebelling against the replacement of the woman's role with housekeepers....  etc...  a necessarily spiritual name which she keeps it's her mother's name madonna.... beauty and innocence  but what's in a name something to hang onto.....   ok here goes i am gonna hang out a notion.....  it's the notion of intimacy.....   the intimacy of GOD an intimacy with GOD.... that she somehow does better than many cos there is something tasteful in the dispatchment of art that is singular an aesthetic that she has played much with over her career shocked and beheld .... something that where she even has borrowed deferred there is a detachment of beauty.... and in that a clarity that references a deeper escapade with GOD the potential for that....  i was reflecting earlier how as christians we hate the exhibitionism (but watch it?) the adventure of those who say hey there must be more than this... this sitting on pews silencing your confession ... now i have no idea what has actually gone into her song writing and it's not that i'm going on but the interfacing with Faith effect... as a disco person i found at times her lyrics a bit to in yer face that if you actually listened to them you felt got at  in a place you weren't expecting right then and there....   her music at times flimsy.....  her image just too well something but here i am today thinking GOD has got some mileage out of that.... and who actually are we to judge?...... in fact what is it that distances us .... i was wondering if it wasn't that actually that we are so preposessed with being non entities that what upsets us most is actually something deep about Christ... you see Christ is nothing of boring Cjhrist is getting out there being deeply intimate with folks getting deep under the skin deep to the soul ...  and that get s to us Christians things that do change us and seeking to be changed surely is what our deepest soul is needing and instead what we get is a contentment with filling in forms and dong the right thing and staying at home .... where is that sense of adventure beyond a sense of voyeurism.... that being changed cos we has given everything we has got to be where we is.... and i mean everything...... justify my love.....  the burnin the Fire that is on heat for more Fire do you think GOD is dry and stay away and loves to pat his meek and mild children ... meek and mild by good christian standards that's generally balloney... this is about the Fire of the heart the Refining of gold and silver the gold of alchemy no not as a philosophy a secret society or schemes of man but that deep intimacy that transforms for ever .... yes the foreverness of transformation the burning off of the chaff on the floor of the barns......   a GOD of LOVE that burning intimacy.... justify my Love... we want Jesus to justify our love whilst Jesus wants us to justify His without the ramifications of ... will He won't He no He Does He cannot help himself   ....the lust of our souls the groaning of Creation heard on High

but the touch of GOD shifts the understanding of words...  GOD's Language and the Power of GOD brings shifts and gear sticks and cogs and wheels in that do something to one's understanding, to  one's response ...  and something that is intrinsically murky becomes a message of truth... GOd does not need the complete sanitisation of speaker or writer to achieve this just your personal attachment to the Holy Spirit... 
another investigation happened ... all this talk of the Spirit Falling and me i investigated another piece of music....  where the Spirit fell in reference to :

i'm crucified crucified .... the song is called 'crucified' and it was me gojgn glbleaugh!! involuntarily splatt all over the bar as i ordered the next round ...  it was a gay bar i was meeting friends had decixded i was not going to talk about church or anything for a change.. and the evening was really weird and restless we'd moved tables three times for one reason or another when there is was at the bar and the dj played 'crucified'.... and i remembered the dance floor and something of well .... i danced the crucifixion i guess for want of a better description at a time where i was gettying bored with the same old music and the new ones didn't do it for me well this one did somehow.... something of the spirit yearning for a Spiritual past a specific kind of sense of detachment at a time of some sense of despair and restlessness.....  and here i was now sitting with friends and splatt on the bar ... it was the Ho.ly Spirit it was totally involuntary no words as such just jbleaugh... so i ventured to ask the dj about the song ..... and the whole atmosphere of the evening for the venue as well as my night out changed...

i'm crucified crucified by my saviour....

the band is called the army of lovers... and wikipedia suggests there are way too many descrepancies to give toio much away and i have chosen not to post a link cos the video is well hmm.... but they seem to have a nuymber of kindov eurocharts numbers and some of the videowork is a bit well... i am intrigued they clearly have some biblical referencing.....

but there is ... something truthful about those words..... is this a straightforward rebellion that a number of pop musicians whos lifestyles are apparently far from the squeaky bums on seats brigade there is a stretch of imagination that has to somehow sit search talk about religious or the bible.........

there is clearly some gay themism going on there with the image of that group  .... and a definite exploration into themes and exposition of decadence and is perversity the correct description  who knows.....  the whole idea of being crucified by the saviour though is stark ... i hadn't quite picked up this entente on the dance floor........  there is something quite helpless in the song for all the sense of the upper classes who course are agenda setting!......  but i tell you as time runs out here for now.... ther is something about the religious attitude that gives with one hand and takes away with the other... ~Jesus does not do that Jesus Gives with both Hands....

but the crucifixion it was engineered by the people  of the church..... GOD said... i will take out my shepherd..... Zechariah and GOD showed his Hands upon the by right jewish and the non jewish....  GOD's own people all the people GOD owns... complete disaster?  how can one have this role of crucifixion? how can it be? how can my saviour do this? why are we doing this time and time again..... now if William J Seymour had been gay and out about it would we have a black pentecostal movement he wasn't known for it so what?.... if the first slaves to be reared up in a church  had been out gay would there have been a black church movement?.... we'll teach you but you have to stay out of our chuirches you hear!.... i can ask this question with the surfacing of gay folks and many grown up in church environments why is it there is no enormous church movement happening.... why is it gays say thank you very much but no thanks we'll manage ok for now with the exceptions being the mottly sundries that pile up on sundays cos they aint got a better gig to go to... loved by GOD but not on those terms the terms of religiosity and lovelessness..... it's nice to sit in the quiet....  why do we want to sit in religion.... an important distinction probs is ... recent themes of why they didn't come out earlier apparently cos they didn't want to upset mother ,,,,   the gay community is largely a community of peers a community of children in effect many of them orphans a bit like street children they make theri own rules they gotta play by some sort of strategy some sort of survival some sort of ideas of giveandtake...  whereas the afrocarribean community of the west was a community of children and children's children and there was ownership issues of all sorts of generations and the like so there was the groundwork the buildingwork of church communities something to build and pass on with your hands.... should gay folks approach all this with well what where does it have relevance something to leave to your partner or your children.... the needs of gays as christians is perhaps different though the need for someone to save and rescue is as pertinent for gays as anyone else....  i am in some ways ignoring the gays who are in the churches anyway at all levels of service in some environmnets with histories of closetting in some ... i recall a conversation i once jhad with a vicar who was not out to congregation but had live in 'lodger' i was quite shocked when one of the facets of that person's life was that actually they did not actually have any family members live to call family so where would they look to ? i mean in normal life in chuirch this person had a whole family called the church..... so gays have been smuggled into the church and they have gone there anyway and they have had ups and downs so no need for a separate church?  or does the dancefloor suffice still the confessional?

anyhow what a day for crucifixions and complexities and yet JEsus has been ... i listened earlier to a prophetic word i was given which was recorded about two years ago.... how i have changed you have changed says mog that's GOD ! but some of the affirmations over the last few weeks have been pretty amazing cos they are reminding stuff....  of that word.. a kindov sigh though cos i feel i has not changed a bit!

.... me i is just getting used to this ongoing theme of the adventure of GOD a BIG TIME ADVENTURE


ah yes what happens when you add a tiny bit of Faitjh with a VERY BIG GOD? ...... a very GREAT RESULT!

GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,