Illegal Immigration

I literally just woke up from this dream as I'm typing it, normally I would first put it in my dream journal and ponder over it for a while before it ever made it onto this blog, but I feel that the Lord wants to address this issue since it is extremely relevant to us right now...

In this dream, my family had hired a bunch of Mexican day laborers, and we had about 8 of them with us to set our tables and chairs for us. As I watched them, I saw the detail they took in setting the chairs and tables, I saw the way they felt as there were obviously too many of them for such a simple job, but they simply needed the work...

I saw how they perceived themselves when they were around us; second class, worthless, dirty, illegal... They knew that we viewed them as lower class sub-humans, who have invaded our country out of the evil of their hearts...

This revelation crushed me. It convicts me! Oh the wrongs I have done in the name of being "right"!

So I went out of my way to affirm them with the way that they set the tables so well, and the care they took in doing such a humiliating job... Then I awakened...

The Church, me, us, we all have allowed something illegal to immigrate into our hearts... We have closed our hearts to the illegal immigrants in this nation and refused to view them as equal human beings until they go through a legal process of red tape and become full citizens. I'm not saying that them being here in this nation is legal, it isn't, but I'm also saying that a human being cannot be illegal, they are human. Perhaps they are here illegally because money is so lacking down in Mexico that in their desperation they have gone against their better judgement and come to America to work without getting the approval, but this doesn't make their humanity illegal. We can't view PEOPLE as illegal! Perhaps some of their actions aren't perfect (whose are?) but to label them as less than human and classify them as "aliens" is not the heart of Christ!

I know it sounds cliche', but what would Jesus do? In a day where Jews wouldn't speak to Samaritans because they were viewed as "half-breeds" He not only chose to associate with them, but he also chose to associate with what was viewed as worse at the time; a Samaritan woman!

This makes me ask myself: Does the fact that illegal immigrants have broken the law justify the hardness of my heart towards them? Does it justify the fact that we no longer see a human being when we look at them, but instead we only see a crime? I seem to recall Jesus asking a pharisee who was judging a prostitute, "Do you see this woman?"

And so the Lord is challenging you as well as myself...

Do you see the valuable human beings that they are, or do you only see a sin?

As for me, I am ashamed of myself...

Purity

"My child,

purity is meant to be a gateway for you to enter into new realms in the spirit. It is meant to take you into a deeper phase of encounter with Me, a deeper intimacy with My Spirit.

It is much more than a way to receive blessings from Me so that your life will go smoothly and so that no harm will come to you... "

"Purity is more than a bridge to cross in order to get where you're going, it is a gateway that leads to encounters with Me. I will establish it in you to take you into new heights in the Spirit..."

"Who may ascend My hill? He who has clean hands and a pure heart..."

"I am equipping you with a new level of purity that will work as a life vest that keeps you afloat as you swim through the oceans of chaos in this life..."

"I release a new grace in you that makes you pure, it will only come as you pursue My Presence, and it will be the substance of the salvation that I have given you; the fruit by which My children are known..."

"I have called you to inner simplicity, My refining fire will burn away the elements in your life that hinder your simplicity, and so you will be simply pure... Complications lead to impurity because the more complicated you are, the more fragmented your soul will become. When you are fragmented, you become detached from your spirit, which is where My Spirit dwells within you, and this will hinder your ability to discern My presence...

When you are fragmented you are broken. Fragmentation makes your spiritual eye a broken window, hindering your ability to see clearly..."

"Simplicity keeps you centered and whole. It will keep your eyes clear... I am bringing you into a season of clarity, My will is going to become obvious to you. Your spiritual eyes will see much more as you allow your eye to focus on Me alone. Visions will increase..."

"My heart for you is that you would have a carefree life, one without worry or anxiety. Peace and joy I release to you as the first-fruits of this purity that is coming. It will only come as you spend time in My Presence, it is impossible for you to produce it for yourself. As you seek Me in the hidden place of your heart, My Spirit will build up and grow within you and your spirit shall conform to Mine. My purity I give freely beloved..."

"As you seek My face with a pure heart, your spirit will grow teeth to chew the revelation that I feed you, thus allowing the food of Heaven to go deep into your spirit and assimilate into you..."

"A lack of purity will not give you the ability to properly chew the food that I want to give to you, and thus I will have to keep feeding you the food of babes..."

"The purity I place inside of you will attract an increase in revelation."

"My child, I am not calling you to legalism, no law can do this awesome work that I will do within you; but you shall walk in harmony with My Spirit. Your spirit shall reach the same harmonic frequency as the love song that I sing over creation, and you shall become the very vibrations of My voice on the Earth.."

"I shall save you from spiritual anemia with the purity that I give to you..."

"With this new work I do shall also come the ability to navigate the realm of the spirit successfully. Your passion will open you up to the spirit realm, but My purity is what will keep you safe when you are there... My purity shall work as a repellent to the demonic and it shall ensure you no mixture in your spiritual encounters..."

"All of these things I shall do within you, My work will be housed within your earthen vessel..."

"My purity shall qualify you for ministry, for I have no desire to pour waters from an unclean tea pot and serve it to others. My purity shall empower your longevity..."

"Purity is a gateway..."

The Spirit of Accusation

I was lying in bed sleeping when suddenly I was caught up into a vision trance.

Looking above me towards the ceiling of the room I was in, I could see a brown looking stain, as if some gross liquid had been spilled there, which I knew to be representative of my struggles with accusation.

Suddenly, the power of the Holy Spirit came upon me so strongly that it felt like every single fiber of my being was saturated in Him; it started at the lower part of my body and went all the way up to my head and was everywhere except for... Except for my heart...

Then my attention was drawn to my friend whose bed was across the room from mine. An argument began to commence between the two of us. It got extremely heated and the vision ended with him using profanity and yelling at me.

The interpretation of this vision is simple. God is saying to me and to all of His church that the stain of gossip has blocked the heaven's for too long. He's saying that when slander and accusation remain in our lives, we cannot experience His presence in the fullness that He desires for us. All faultfinders end up with hardened hearts. The Lord is identifying the spirit of accusation as being the reason there is so much division in the Body of Christ. Unity commands the blessing, so what does disunity do?

Reflecting upon this and looking back over the course of my life I can see clearly now what I could not see when I was immersed in this spirit of accusation...

The entire Summer of 2008 I had been speaking out against a particular set of ministers. I called them "false prophets" and the like, which are very common titles to throw around when you have the same disease that I did... To me, most churches were "off" (except, predictably, my own) and the majority of present day ministers were full of compromise for not preaching my flavor of Jesus... I was an expert at seeing specks in other people's eyes...

My insecurity caused me to marginalize genuine prophets who disagreed with my past opinions with titles like "False Prophet", and if somebody didn't agree with my points of doctrine I actually thought they were preaching a false gospel!

What's funny is that I was actually creating a false gospel by adding criteria other than faith in Jesus' death, burial and resurrection in order to be a "real Christian"...

I wonder how many churches could be built by collecting the logs from all our eyes...

We've got some uprooting to do.

"For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another..." (Galatians 5:14-15).

"If Only My people would believe..."

It was evening time and I was waiting in silence before the Lord, which is one of my favorite things to do...

Suddenly, the presence of God came strongly upon me in such a way that it felt as though I was spinning forward in my spirit.

Next thing I know, my spirit is caught up into the throne room of God. I first found myself standing between two giant pillars... As I looked out from between them, I could see what seemed to be elders standing around.

Then I heard a booming voice, "Who is this that enters the council of God?"

I looked up to see that He who sat on the throne was huge and looked as though He were made of stone, yet He moved! I felt rather small before Him, I was only as tall as His ankle!

This wasn't exactly a calming moment, and I was quite intimidated as I walked into the center of the room, towards the throne of God Himself, and said, "It is I, Jason, Your servant, and I come to you in mercy... I mean humility..."

The right words were a bit hard to find...

While I was still taking in the fact that I had just destroyed all hope of sounding eloquent, He drew in His breath and let out a heavy sigh, and said, "If only My people would believe..."

The rapture ended and I was back in my room...

This powerful experience really challenged me on how I viewed the things that are most important to God.

To be honest, cultivating a mindset of faith wasn't at the top of my to-do list, and I really thought that if God would be tolerant of anything, it would be a lack of faith. Boy was I wrong!

In this experience, I did the same thing that I think many Christians do when we approach God, we have our eyes looking to the floor and we walk very carefully, because we think that having a lack of confidence before God is somehow pleasing to Him and is a sign of our humility...

Beloved, this behavior that manifests when we come into the presence of God has its roots in a powerful deception that says that we are somehow unworthy to come before Him... It is actually a spirit of condemnation who speaks accusations about us to our own consciences, planting a root of unbelief that causes us to mistrust the finished work of the Cross...

In this experience the Father gave me a glimpse into the burden in His heart, and His deep desire for His children to come before His throne with boldness! (Hebrews 4:16)

The Father desires those who would come before Him without any self doubt at all... His Spirit cries out for a generation to arise that is so confident in His heart for them and the fact that He has paid the whole price for their sins, that they simply won't see any logic in acting small and unsure of themselves before Him.

This generation won't need to be afraid of abusing the grace of God as though it were a license to sin, because such a thought would come contrary to their burning and passionate desire to go to greater depths with Him.

Don't let the enemy rob you of your confidence, don't let him tread upon the cleansing power of the blood of Christ!

Beloved, how sad it would be if we strive to fulfill all of the Christian virtues, and we end up missing the main point of everything that Jesus taught...

Faith.

The Battle of the Voices

Here I stand.

On a hill in a dreamland of grassy hills with scattered forests.

Standing about 20 feet away from me is Apollyon (Greek) or Abaddon (Hebrew). Different names, same fallen angel. You might have heard of him as the angel of death. Anyways, he was following me around for a while when I was younger...

Oh, and he's talking to me. Well... More like yelling at me. I couldn't pick up so much on the words he was speaking as much as the tone of voice he was speaking them in. Violent. There is no other way to describe it. I imagine if he could create your spiritual atmosphere you would end up thinking thoughts full of self hatred and condemnation. In fact, condemnation is the exact word I'd use to describe his tone.

Then from the left of me comes a man walking, he is about to walk between Apollyon and me. I am drawn to him, mainly because he exudes gentleness, meekness and kindness.

As he got closer and closer to me, I could hear him speaking as well. His tone was very different though; he was speaking softly and gently and his words were very tender and reassuring.

I decided to walk alongside him, and as I did, Apollyon began to yell with his violent words louder and louder, trying to get me to pay attention to his voice instead of the soft and gentle voice of the Master. It didn't work.

Those gentle words ministered deeply to me. They healed and restored my soul...

This prophetic dream that the Lord gave me emphasizes a struggle that I had in the past, a struggle that perhaps many of you have had as well...

The battle of the voices is something that I think all of us have to fight at one time or another. We are trying to follow God with all of our heart, but we notice how short of perfect we really are. This isn't a bad place to be, but what comes next often times, is a sort of frustration with ourselves. A self hatred that eats to the core of us. Pretty soon all "God" is ever talking about is our own sins or the sins of others.

Beloved, know for certain that this is not the voice of the Lord. And when you hear this voice, gently ignore it and keep pressing into God your Savior. Yes, He will convict us of sin, but it is always gentle and restorative in nature. God isn't in harmony with the Accuser of the brethren, they will never sing a duet together...

This is the same spirit that got a hold of the Pharisees and made them take on the ministry of the accuser as well...

But the voice of our good Shepherd is gentle and healing. He brings life and new horizons! He isn't in the habit of trying to make people dislike themselves any more than they already do, because He doesn't want to spend the next 10 years of your life working on your self esteem...

He is gentle. He is calm. He is life!

The voices contend, and it is very important that you learn which one to follow...

The Pit

So here I am, outside of my body and floating in the air... That's right, and yes it's Biblical (2 Corinthians 12_1-4)

I then saw an angel in the form of a man to my right, but because I'm so aware of the demonic realm I rebuked the angel, thinking it was a demon, and commanded it to leave! Ha! It didn't seem to leave, it simply faded from my view... Many in church history believed that at times angels would bring revelations from God to us in the forms of dreams and visions... But that is a discussion for another day...

Anyways, here I am in the air, and I began floating away from where the angel was and towards a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a big hole in the ground, it must have been 50 feet in diameter and it went down for what seemed to be forever. I saw the souls of those who were down there, in what seemed to be Hell or some place like it, and the torment they were in.

Now I know that many of you are expecting to read about flames as tall as evergreens and demons with big whips tormenting the damned for eternity, but this is not what I saw. Perhaps God has made a place like that, I do not know... But the source of agony for those I saw seemed to be not physical at all. Every single person in this pit was plagued by an intense longing, with desires so strong and thick and tangible, like that of a person who has held their breath underwater too long and everything within them is screaming to take a breath. These desires were the source of their suffering, the very fires that burned them from within, and yet even so, they would never have the satisfaction of having these desires fulfilled... And the knowledge of this made it even worse! At least when you drown you get relief eventually, but none was in store for those who were trapped in this pit. They would just continue on forever in this place... It seemed the souls were revolving around it in circles around the edge, and the movement was kicking up what looked like dust up into the air, almost as a memorial to them...

As I hovered above this hole, I began to feel myself get grabbed by this agony, and the weight of it began to pull me down towards the hole below. I was terrified, but then the Lord closed the vision, and I was back in my room.

As I reflected on the vision, I remembered that a woman had prophesied over me years earlier that God would give me a vision of Hell, and I had pretty much given up on that word and thought it was bunk. But I guess we shouldn't judge prophecy too soon, because it did come. This vision really did defy my views on Hell, because it really looked nothing like I would have ever imagined.

Anyways, allow God to conquer the sinful desires and passions within you, or else they will be the very source of your torment for all of eternity...

And don't go become a doomsday "prophet" or something, don't run around preaching Hellfire and Brimstone, but remember, even in Hell God has a certain degree of mercy and fairness, just as Jesus said: "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few." Luke 12:47-48

In Summary; Hell: You don't want to go there.

As you think so you are...

And so I dreamed...

I was in a house and a group of enemies pulled me outdoors. They then surrounded me and began shooting me with guns that were meant to shrink me and make me smaller...

Then the scene changed and I became a spectator watching myself from outside of my body (Although I didn't look like me). I was sitting in a church service, shaking and trembling from fear because I was so convinced I was small... I had a huge newspaper in front of me and I was hiding my face behind it...

I believed I was small and so I acted as though I was small, but the truth is that I wasn't small at all.

The truth is that the enemy has been telling the church that we are small for so long that we have begun to believe it. In fact, he's twisted the truth so badly that we think that believing the lie that we are small is humility! The name "Satan" means "Accuser", and in Revelations we are told that he is the accuser of the brethren...

The accuser of the brethren lost God's ear when Jesus ascended to the throne and so he came to the earth and gained the ear of the church. Now we accuse ourselves before God by believing the lies of the accuser that he tells us, and all the while we think that it's God telling us those things. The law (The testimony against us i.e. the newspaper I hid behind) empowered the accuser of the brethren, but once the law was taken away so was Satan's ministry of condemnation thrown out of Heaven.

So he came to the earth and has made the law his biggest weapon against the church. If he can get a little bit of law into our thinking, then he can derail our whole purpose on earth...

Condemned people don't look God in the eyes but rather keep their heads bowed from shame. Maybe this is why I've been religiously trained to bow my head, because deep down at the heart of who I am, I feel condemned and unworthy of God's affections. Maybe we were never meant to look down when we talk to God. Maybe the Devil has used the law to cut off our blood bought intimacy with the Father. I don't care if you bow your head, I do it too... I'm merely stating that it's a symptom of a much deeper problem that developed over church history...

If we are the ones that God is using for the expansion of His Kingdom on the earth, then wouldn't it make sense for the enemy to belittle us so that we lose our morale?

The truth is that if you feel small on the inside then you will behave small on the outside.

But I have news for you. You're not small. No, you're actually really potent. In fact, none other than God Himself lives within you. Dominion is yours and the Father's. You are right now reigning with Christ in Heavenly places.

Pride is believing anything that goes against what God has said about yourself. So when we view ourselves as small when God has called us His sons and daughters, it's not humility, it's just the opposite.

Church, arise! You have been set free!