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E-Newsletter Archive
August 9, 2006
in this issue
-- Need a
Spiritual Tune-Up? Are you all clogged up?
-- Would you
wear THIS in public?! Wanna get thrown out of church?
-- Wanna help?
Dear Brethren,
The last few weeks
have been very busy! We sent out one of our own as a missionary to
Washington state, we watched God reshuffle a whole bunch of things
and close a bunch of doors and open new ones. Overall, it's been the
beginning of a new season, that's for sure.
I heard the Lord
very clearly say that after the 1st of August, and particularly
August 3rd which was the 9th of Av, a new season would begin and a
lot of the obstacles would begin to move out of the way. Specifically
He gave me Isaiah 40 on the Sabbath following August 3rd. This is
known as the Sabbath of Consolation and ends a period in the Hebrew
calendar of three weeks of repenting and mourning. It is the low
point of the year. I've certainly been in a similar period the last
few weeks! I know a lot of you have been in a similar place and I'd
encourage you to cling to Isaiah 40 as well. I believe it's for this time.
Since August
began, there has been a decided shift in something. I've been all
over town praying with different congregations and been very well
received. Maybe it's because I'm more humble now. Maybe it's because
I'm talking less and praying more. Could be. :-)
I'm convinced more
than ever that God wants to bust loose on Kansas City in a big way.
He's rotated me out of Liberty so as to reach to the larger
metropolitan area, but I'm still contained to Kansas City. I wish
sometimes that I could just hit the road and go, but this is my
mission field for now.
I've been writing
more than ever. Some really good stuff is pouring out of me right
now. Pages and pages a day. I'm really excited about some of it and
would love to hear your feedback. In particular, the Spiritual
Tune-up article quoted in part below.
Thanks for your
patience in sticking it out with this crazy businessman turned
intercessor - or whatever I am now! I know this is a strange change
of direction from where we've been, but I'm confident that the Lord
has it all under control. Love you all!
Doug Perry
Servant of God
Need a
Spiritual Tune-Up? Are you all clogged up?
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This is probably
the thing that I'm designed for more than any other. From my job
experience as a coach, counselor, trainer and consultant, I've always
had a way of seeing the problems in a person or a system at first
glance. But what used to take weeks in a counseling session, I've
learned can get done in a few minutes with the gift of discernment
and knowledge! If you just get out of the way, the Holy Spirit has a
way of getting RIGHT to the core issues!
Below is a chunk
of the full Spiritual Tune-up article. This is doesn't even scratch
the surface, but lays out the need and hopefully motivates you to
understand this better. Even if you don't think YOU need it, it's the
best diagnosis teaching tool I've ever seen. I'd urge you to see if
it's something that will help in your ministry to other people that
have needs - or that think they're just fine. It has a way of
flushing the fakers out of hiding!
So, what is a
Spiritual Tune-Up?
First it's aimed
at people that already have Jesus, but the process is the same
regardless. A person who is lost could turn their life over and push
through lots of the steps right away and be that much more effective
sooner. It's just a matter of hunger level and God's sense of your
preparedness. The goal is immediate radical transformation, not
gradual incremental change culminating in perfection after death. We
believe that it's possible that God can heal and deliver and restore
and sanctify instantly and we're going to aim for that. If He chooses
to take longer, that's fine, but we're going to ASK for maximum
change in minimum time - even if it hurts. Which it will.
Typically, we
would take a hard look at each of the three factors; Body, Soul and
Spirit. Asking the Holy Spirit to help us discern any areas where
there is resistance to the will of Christ, we would "scan"
through each layer looking for whatever the Lord would choose to
reveal. It might be a physical illness that has a spiritual cause, it
might be a soulish anger or bitterness or unforgiveness that is
blocking Him and bringing down physical curses, or it might be a
spiritual problem of diminished capacity for Him because of
limitations or "filters" that have been placed on God. It
might be a demonic oppression that has really old roots in abuse or
addiction or some unresolved, past sin that opened a doorway and
allowed legal ground for the enemy. All of these are resolveable
within the scope of the power granted to us through Christ. Some can
be settled nearly instantly and done away with once and for all. Many
people have experienced through this process an immediate lightness
at the removal of some old yokes of oppression. Some experience
immediate physical changes as healing to their illnesses or removal
of addictions comes at the same time. We want to allow God room to
act in ANY way He sees fit. We don't want to put Him in a box
anymore! We want to believe that He is big enough to conquer anything
and that He wants us free. He is big enough, right? And He does want
us fully free, right? All the way free? Of everything?
When you do a
tune-up on a vehicle, you want to find anything that is keeping it
from running at peak efficiency. A misalignment, a missing part, low
fluids, bad filters, even burnt out bulbs - anything that needs to be
changed or adjusted so that it can be renewed back to the way it was
designed. It's all in Romans 12. In thanks for His mercy we offer our
bodies as living sacrifices - holy, pleasing and acceptable - that is
our spiritual act of worship.
So first, we have
to be willing to offer our Body - the vehicle, and all that it holds
- as a sacrifice. We need to be willing and we need to commit to hold
NOTHING back anything. That verse does NOT say we offer half of our
body as a living sacrifice – or even 90%. The whole thing needs
to go on the altar. ALL means ALL.
Before we can do
anything else, we need it to be a holy, pleasing and acceptable
sacrifice. And since our sinfulness screams against our holiness, and
our own nature confirms it, it's clear that only by the atoning Blood
of Jesus is there any chance that we can be a pleasing and acceptable
sacrifice. So before any tune-up is going to do any good, we need to
scrub the whole thing down with the Blood of Jesus. You have to have
acknowledged your needfulness for the Blood and asked Him to wash you
clean of every sin.
Said less
religiously, you have to tell Jesus you're sorry for all the bad
stuff you let in and you have to really mean it - and you have to
believe that His sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to wipe you
clean. This IS NOT an acknowledgement that Jesus existed or that He
was the Son of God - even the demons believe that. This is not a
statement you repeat after someone else so that you can join a
church. This is a full-on commitment to humble yourself before Him
and to give yourself over to Him so that He can be in charge from now
on. That you would like to bow down and let Him be who He is -
Master, King, Commander, Ruler, Lord - in your life from now on. Fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Way too many churches are
making it way too easy - and the result is sick, powerless, shackled,
unwise people in the pews.
Ok, NOW you're an
acceptable sacrifice. So what's next? Get up on the altar and shut
up. You don't need to figure out your personal purpose. You don't
need 40 days to figure out what YOU can do for God. You're the
sacrifice! Get cleaned off, climb up on the altar and lay there
naked. By doing this, by really doing this, really laying there naked
– fully exposed and willing to accept anything that comes –
you are most definitely NOT conforming to the "world". When
He's good and ready, He'll move on to the next step. Which is that He
will take a big sword and begin to hack chunks of your head off and
put His head on. It's painful at times and folks around you may not
understand what's happening during that strange in- between time
while you're trying to figure it all out and get the pieces of your
head and His head to get on the same frequency. But eventually,
unless you panic and jump off the altar, He will hack off all the
bits that stand in His way and then you'll have the mind of Christ.
He will have transformed you by the renewing of your mind. RE-newed,
that is, back the way it was supposed to be when it was new. Back the
way He designed it. Back in His image. Rebooted and set back to the
defaults the way it was before you mangled it up and the
"world's" viruses corrupted it. Read Matthew 18:1-4, Mark
10:15. He wants faith like a child.
Then and ONLY then
will you know what is the pleasing, perfect will of God. And then you
can go do it. It's not just so you can bask in the knowledge of what
He wants, it's so you can OBEY. GO - reach, heal, save, deliver, free
the captives. Do the stuff that's on HIS heart - and now that your
mind is renewed and you know what is His will, it should be a lot
easier. You probably won't need a committee or demographic studies or
anything. If you didn't hold anything back, by this point, you're
probably hearing Him really well and you don't really need any Man
(or group of them) to tell you what God wants for you. And I can tell
you this, it's going to cost you everything. But you won't miss any
of it. Besides, none of it was yours anyway. But you better count the
cost, because this is a hard walk. Job, family, money, comforts,
control - all could be taken away or destroyed. If you pray to be
like Jesus and He answers it, you'll be hated and ridiculed by the
world. Guaranteed.
(Just the
beginning! Click the link and read the whole thing. Pictures, too!)
Click
to read full Spiritual Tune-Up article...
Would you wear
THIS in public?! Wanna get thrown out of church?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I know I've
complained about the merchandising in the churches, but you need to
understand that I'm not a church. I'm a business. FOTM is not a
charity. The Lord has been sending us people with books and music and
poems and t-shirt designs and even annointed RECIPES and telling me
that God told them that I was supposed to get them out to the world!
I understand how
you can use commerce to generate money for the Kingdom, we were doing
it with my furniture store for several years. So my goal is to
provide a unique product at a fair price and use all the money for
the Kingdom. Right now I want to urge you to go look at the T-shirts!
More designs are coming all the time, but I don't think you'll see
ANYTHING like them ANYWHERE!!
My goal is to
produce T-shirts that are so convicting, so radical, so on the edge
that practically NOBODY will wear them! Certainly nobody that's not
seriously in love with Jesus and willing to do anything. Go take a
look, see if you don't agree that some of these should not be worn
without fear and trembling!
Right now, we're
using CafePress to produce all of this stuff on demand with no
minimums or set up charges. We don't make hardly anything, but we
also don't have any overhead. Eventually I'd like to find a way to
produce these ourselves. Check back sometimes, there's more stuff
coming all the time!
If you'd like to
help, we also have some banners and buttons that you can add to your
websites to send traffic to the store. Eventually we'll have an
affiliate program so you can make a little something on the traffic
you send! Stay tuned.
Go
visit the online store ....
Wanna help?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We have books and
music and t-shirts and all kinds of stuff that God is telling us to
produce or publish and get out to the world. We have been told to
print the Apology to the World in the local "alternative"
newspaper (The Pitch), which may cost as much as $1000 I don't like
the idea of giving them any money, but that is the exact right
audience that the Apology needs to go to! I've gone down alone into
the heart of the alternative part of town passing the Apology out and
praying for folks a couple of times now. We have other projects, like
going to the Rock The Light concert and spreading the word or selling
stuff or praying or whatever God has in mind.
Please pray and
see if the Lord says you're to help in some way. With these projects
we need venture capital. I'm not looking for charity, we need
investors just to get them off the ground and into distribution.
Projects could range from $300 to $5,000 and I believe God wants to
bless these in a big way. Don't do it for any kind of profit motive,
do it because God said to help.
It's possible that
God will tell people to just give us money to get the Apology out to
a wider audience (wonder what would happen if we ran it in the Wall
Street Journal or US NEWS?!). We set up a "Donate Here"
PayPal link from the main page if you want to just give something.
I'm not asking you
for any money. I'm asking you to pray and see what the Lord wants you
to do. You can be sure that we're going to guard every dollar
jealously. I don't spend a single dollar anymore without praying
about it! Anway, if you want to talk more about any of this, let me
know. Email me at the link here.
Email Doug - fotm@fellowshipofthemartyrs.com
Fellowship Of The Martyrs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: fotm@fellowshipofthemartyrs.com
web: http://www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
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