Stone Speak A symposium on worship, arts and the prophetic,
here and across the pond...

Consider the following verses.

So Bezalel, Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the LORD has given skill and ability to know how to carry out all the work of constructing the sanctuary are to do the work just as the LORD has commanded." – Exodus 36:1

Kenaniah the head Levite was in charge of the singing; that was his responsibility because he was skillful at it. – 1 Chronicles 15:22

Sing to him a new song;
       play skillfully, and shout for joy. – Psalm 33:3

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
       with skillful hands he led them. – Psalm 78:72

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. – 1 Corinthians 3:10

 I’d also like for you to consider the following statements.

1.    Skill is a Gift from God, for His Glory

None of us can claim credit for our abilities.

For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? – 1 Corinthians 4:7

With this idea, consider that whatever abilities we have, they are not ours but rather God’s.  We are essentially the tools used by God to advance his kingdom.  There are many people in this world who have amazing gifts and abilities that twist them and use them for earthly gain, but for those who are aware of their relationship with Christ, so comes with the realization that all that we can do comes from the Father.

2.    Skill Must be Developed

Along with their relatives—all of them trained and skilled in music for the LORD -they numbered 288. – 1 Chronicles 25:7

These were the gifted individuals who were ministering in the tabernacle.  This verse tells us that while there is a basic, anointed gift from God Almighty, that does not excuse someone from training and practice.  Look to any successful artist of any medium, and while there was an original seed of passion and talent that was planted within them, the gift had to be developed and nurtured.

3.    Skill Doesn’t Make Worship More Acceptable before God

God values skill, but he is not solely pleased by excellence.  No matter how good I am at the my means of worship, I still will always need the workings of the Savior to perfect my offerings of worship.

you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 2:5

God is not looking for something perfect, He’s looking for something broken.  We must recognize our weakness and put our faith in the work of Christ which has already finished.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
       a broken and contrite heart,
       O God, you will not despise.  – Psalm 51:17

4.    Skill which is Publicly Displayed Should Be Evaluated by Others

Imagine someone who is completely blind and deaf to the feedback of a the body they are leading or ministering to.  This individual would become insensitive to what speaks to those who they are leading.  It would be as if rather than a conduit through which God ministers, this individual is a pipe with the potential to carry water to the thirsty, but has a cap at the end, not really attuned with the need to those they are ministering to.  This applies to anyone who publicly displays artwork, publishes literature or performs music.  Sensitivity is essential.

Take a few moments and consider these points and these verses.  Share your thoughts on these principals.

Being on the ministry team I get the privilege of praying for many people with many types of issues. As many of you know, Christy Wimber spoke at our church last weekend. During the ministry time on Saturday night, one of the words she called out was for someone with rheumatoid arthritis to come forward for healing. As I made my way through the crowd of people who came up for prayer, I started praying for a genteman who had come up for rheumatoid arthritis. His hands were curled in fists and he was not able to move his fingers. As I was praying for him, the presence of God became very evident. He started trembling and I asked him what was going on. He wasn't sure how to respond at first, so I asked him if he could do something now that he couldn't do before. He looked at his hands and was able to move them freely. His wife was there to testify that he previously could not move his hands at all! God is awesome!

Humans are social animals. Deep inside each of us, there is a longing and desire to be around other people. It is the way God created us. Of course, there are times when we all need some time alone, but in general, humans need interaction with other humans. It is the reason we get married. It’s the reason we have best friends. It’s even the reason we read each other’s blogs. There’s no mystery in the fact that social networking sites seem like they are taking over the Internet.

However, there are some side effects to this human interaction with each other. A wise principle that my parents so often repeated to me as I was growing up was “choose your friends wisely”. Why is that so important? The answer is in the experience. Who I choose to hang around with is eventually who I will become like. There’s no question that the more we, as humans, spend time together, the more we rub off on each other. It’s a proven fact that the longer two people are married, the more they think alike, act alike and sometimes even look alike. This isn’t a design flaw. In Philippians 2, Paul actually encourages us to be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose”. It is the very thing that unites us and allows us to love each other.

As we apply this concept to worship, it’s important to know, first of all, that God inhabits our praises. (Psalm 22) When we spend time in worship, we are actually spending time with God. With that in mind, shouldn’t our lives be forever changed by the very act of worship? When considering human nature, shouldn’t God “rub off” a little on us as we hang out with Him? I like the story of Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai in Exodus 34. The Bible says that his face was radiant or shining after he spoke with God. There was an actual physical transformation on Moses that was obvious to other people when he encountered the Lord’s presence. When we experience the Holiness of God’s presence, there should be a change that others can see. It may not be a physical change like Moses, but there should be something different about us.

It is the very Holiness of God that dwells in our spirits and transforms our hearts and minds that cause us to be more like Christ. Becoming more like Christ is just a by-product of hanging out with Him. Every time I lead worship, I pray for those who are going to be attending that service. I pray that they will meet with God and be changed and that they will not walk out as the same person that walked in.

Bobby Hardwick

Acts 2:42 "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."

In this post, I want to address the first part of Acts 2:42 – "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching." What exactly does this mean in context of maintaining a revival? I believe that this phrase is talking about listening to what God is saying as well as doing what He is telling us to do. When we position ourselves to hear what God is talking to us about, it allows Him to move through us. Jesus said that He only did what He saw the Father doing. He also told us that we would be able to do what He did, and that we would do greater things.

It is crucial that we understand the importance of taking time to listen to what God is communicating to us. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." In this reference, the word delight is talking about us aligning our will with His will. In other words, positioning ourselves to listen to what God is saying to us, and doing those things as well. Through this process, we create intimacy with the Father, and His desires become our desires. This is what enables us to move in the signs, wonders, and miracles that we are called to walk in. As we move in these signs, wonders, and miracles, the flame for revival is sparked.

Revival comes from a place of intimacy with God. Intimacy occurs when we pursue a relationship with Him. The awesome thing that happens when we pursue a relationship with Him, is that He in turn pursues us. The relationship that is being formed here becomes the ground that we cultivate in order to grow in intimacy.

Let's look for a minute at the word relationship. First we have the word relation. Relation means two or more people who interact with each other. The second word we have is ship. A ship is a vessel that carries something from one place to another. So when the two words are joined, we see that relationship means: Two or more people joined together to get from one place to another. In this case, it is God and us joined together to get to a place of revival. The wind behind the ship’s sail is intimacy.

When we have intimacy in our relationships, we are able to share the deepest things of our heart with each other. It is God's desire to be in this place of intimacy with us. He desires to share His heart with us. As God shares His heart with us, we experience Him in new ways and our understanding of Him grows deeper. I like the way Kevin Dedmon puts it: "God wants us to have an encounter, so that we become an encounter, so that others can have an encounter. It is only as we encounter His presence in profound ways that we become a habitation of His presence, so that wherever we go, we naturally leak what is inside of us, so that the environment around us is affected by His presence within us."

The ultimate goal in revival is to saturate the environment around us with His presence to the point that not only we change, but the environment around us changes. As we devote ourselves to hearing what God is saying to us, and doing what He tells us to do, we become the catalyst for change, and we help spark the flame of revival. As the flame for revival is sparked, it is essential that we are connected to fellow believers. In my next post, I will be addressing the second part of Acts 2:42 – “They devoted themselves to fellowship."

The Art of Bonnie F. Sliver is on exhibit in the Vineyard gallery during the month of February.  We invite you to stop by and experience her vibrant expression of color.

Bonnie is a graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts.

She is inspired by color, movement, line and texture. Her abstract paintings are just that.  Abstract.

While she enjoys doing portraits and landscapes, she is most inspired when creating abstracts.  Her paintings come from a place deep within. Each is an expression of what she is feeling at the time she is creating that particular painting.    

All of her paintings remain untitled  as she wants each viewer to determine what they see and feel while viewing each piece of work.

Bonnie works primarily with acrylic paint and oil pastels.
(Please don’t ask Bonnie to do a painting to match your couch!)

You may contact Bonnie at BonnieSliver@yahoo.com

It is a word that describes with vivid imagery a place of meeting for intellectual pursuit.
In Ancient Greece, it was an air of debate on the streets between philosophers. In Renaissance England, it was the art of intellectual expression on the stage. But in Vienna, at the onset of World War II, a symposium was established at a coffee house by some of the world’s whose-who of great minds. White linens on quaint tables were used to write out mathematical formulas and new concepts of science. Cigar smoke and empirical arguments swirled around the ceiling tops as men debated logistical constructs of the day. In the clouded room of the coffee house, was the staunchly, held view that physical science – whose ultimate basis is sensory experience, is the sum of all that can be known. Out of the brilliance of the credo of these minds stirred the nuances of two geniuses of the coffee house party. Upsetting the balance of the rational establishment of Wittgenstein, Mach and Boltzmann were Albert Einstein and his good friend, Kurt Gödel. Together they turned the tables of empirical syntax when they presented science from the realm of metaphysics, challenging the Vienna circle and setting a standard for experiencing science outside the realm of the visible. Palle Yourgrau states Einstein’s perspective in his book, A World Without Time:

”The real world was what corresponded to the physical reality. It consisted of entities like atoms and force fields, in themselves undetectable by the senses, but indirectly discernable by their effects on systems that can affect human or artificial receptors.”

Both Einstein and Gödel held to the philosophy of Emanuel Kant that “reason is in need of an internal critique.” Basically, there needed to be a symposium that pursued observing the world from the inside out. Understanding substance from the construct of what is unseen is not easy for many to grasp. For centuries, we have found ourselves in the grips of viewing science in the context of an empirical atmosphere as the only true reality. To create a symposium around a spiritual reality, and its effects on the natural world, becomes complicated within this narrow framework. If we really are “spiritual beings having a temporary human experience,” then the concealed world of the spirit definitely needs, as Emanuel Kant said, an “internal critique”. I find it interesting that the book of Hebrews addresses this metaphysics argument head-on.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Hebrews 11:1-3

This concept of what is “real reality” is seen here as being that which is invisible. In fact, Hebrews states that what is invisible gives substance to our physical reality. Scripture also claims this can be measured and that there are witnesses to the effects of the unseen in the physical realm. Hebrews 11 implies that faith is evidence, meaning this is not a conditioned response but a sensory experience brought about by an unseen world. This passage also suggests there was a cross-study of those who observed, a priori, those who were directly affected by the results of such evidence and its reliability. A priori means that you don’t have to examine the evidence under a microscope to know that it is true; it is simply obvious. The manifestation of the supernatural realm as a type of empirical data is opposite of everything that has been foundational to science. Under such conditions, Hebrews implies that a world not visible to the human eye has a direct correlation to the physical world and produces observable data in human nature. Faith becomes a scientific construct of an unseen phenomenon.

The consequence of the unseen on our lives becomes enormous and the possibilities beyond our imagination as we embrace the endless spiritual ramifications. Just as Einstein spoke of the unseen force fields that govern the physical world, so does the unseen Spirit of God directly govern mankind. As it says in Colossians 1:16-17,

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

The repercussion of the invisible can be illustrated in a game of chess. Before I make a move on a chessboard, I create an unseen concept; I have worked through the moves in my thinking, and play out the possibilities of strategy in my imagination. When I then make a move, it is a direct result of an unseen force – something I already determined. Likewise, every time I move a rook or bishop, I move the energy that surrounds that piece and all the pieces nearby. This becomes a reality that things shift in the spiritual as well as in the physical simultaneously.

We need to understand the power of the invisible. We need to observe and respond with careful posture the moves we make in the physical and the spiritual because of the obvious ramifications they produce. The result of what we stir-up in the physical world directly affects our spiritual lives. What we draw to ourselves in the spirit becomes tomorrow’s physical reality. This is measured data as we experience the difference that positive and negative energy has on our lives in the supernatural as well as in the natural.
Jesus said, “I only do what the Father says to do.” Jesus knew that every move He made and everything He said created alignments and shifted things in the heavens. To ignore the unseen, is to ignore the reality that determines what happens in the natural. It takes an “internal critique”, a view from the inside out, to come to a place where we understand that the things we say and do will having lasting effects in two kingdoms: the natural world in which we live and the one that will manifest the fullness of God’s glory in the near future.
Cheers,
Rebecca

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