Being a "foreign missionary" in my own hometown feels extra lonely this morning. But I accept it!  Since posting this Pulse, I've received many questions about it and seen many footprints of visitors to it from all over the world.  Here then is the story behind it:

I grew up in Parke County Indiana and in Rockville, the county seat and center of Parke County.  I was educated in Parke County Schools and graduated from Rockville High School in 1964.  My earliest knowledge of Christ was planted in me by my mother and her mother, my grandmother, and by the teachers and ministers of the E.U.B., Methodist and Southern Baptist churches we attended as I was growing up.  I remember vividly the morning I began to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Creator and Master of the Universe, watching the sunrise from my bedroom window at the age of ten in 1956.  Then and there I prayed IF indeed He was Lord and had a plan for my life that He would not let me miss it.  And from that time I began to clearly hear His voice in my spirit, guiding my search for truth and right living.

In 1993 I was living and working in Lawton Oklahoma, having only recently returned to the US from Bad Kreuznach Germany where I had lived and worked for four years, and where the Lord had called me into deeper studies in the New Testament and into some new ways of thinking called The Word of Faith.  (Best example of this was a pamphlet written by Kenneth Hagin entitled The Authority of the Believer. And in Lawton I had begun correspondence courses from Moody Bible Institute.)  Prior to that I had lived, studied and worked in many places far away from my hometown of Rockville Indiana since leaving to join the Navy in 1965.  (I had studied the Bible, books about the various Christian denominations and other world religions, and The Kingdom of the Cults by Dr. Walter Martin.  In other words, at this time I had a firm grasp upon orthodox Christianity.)

There in Lawton in the Spring of 1993 I read an article in the Parke County Sentinel newspaper from my hometown up in Rockville.  And the article described how the community of churches in Parke County were scheduling Baccalaureate services for all the graduating high school seniors, since the high schools had announced the termination of such long-standing traditional services in the high schools due to threats of lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union representing those non-believing citizens wishing to enforce the separation of church and state within the public schools.

While I felt good about what the churches of Parke County were doing, I couldn’t understand why I was feeling great sadness in my spirit about whatever was really going on there.  That’s when the Lord spoke to me: “I’m sending you home to Parke County and you shall be my foreign missionary there.” 

Now it is the beginning of 2012, eighteen years after He sent me home to Parke County,  eighteen years during which much unexpected has happened, most of which I’ve chronicled in my earlier posts here.   And yet I am still learning more of what He meant saying I would be His “foreign missionary” here.

For now may I just say that soon after I heard Him commission me, one passage of scripture played itself over and over in my mind, in particular the phrase I have highlighted, the beginnings of His explanation to me:  2^nd Timothy 3 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: ² For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ³ unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, ⁴ traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

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Let's clear up any confusion about true pentecostals and false, misguided and/or merely ignorant cultists who call themselves pentecostals. Any group which teaches legalistic practices, such as wearing your hair, skirts or dresses to your ankles, no makeup, etc. as necessary for salvation is a cult, not a truly-Christian church! Any group which insists a person must speak in tongues or must exhibit any other particular behavior in order to be saved is a cult, not a truly-Christian church! Any group which insists there is only one correct formula by which one may be baptized and thereby saved is a cult, not a truly-Christian church!

I could give other examples; but my point is that a true Christian knows, is taught and teaches that his new life in Christ is the result of grace, God's unmerited favor, the work of God toward man, accomplished through the preaching of the Good News about Christ Jesus and the hearing and accepting of that Good News in the heart of the believer, who welcomes and receives Christ as Personal Savior. This is faith, which Jesus called a new birth experience. It is knowing that Jesus Christ -- God Himself Who Dwelt Among Us As A Man -- died to pay our sin debt and rose again to conquer death for us! Our natural response to receiving faith in Him as our Savior is to choose Christ as our Lord and to obey His teaching. But we do not add to our salvation by obeying Christ; we only demonstrate by obeying Him that we have already received His gift of salvation and are leaving our old, unsaved nature behind and are growing-up our new, spiritual nature toward maturity in Him, apparently becoming more and more like Him. Our Perfection comes surely when we depart our physical bodies as we die and see Jesus face to face in heaven.

How do we obey Him?  Well, His commandment is that we love Him with all our being, and that we love other people just as we love our own selves.  He said every other law and truth simply tells us a way to help us accomplish the main thing.  (The other things which seem to be commandments in the New Testament are actually disciplines which may help us accomplish His commandment about love.  But without love, these can also become stumbling blocks.  See 1st Corinthians 13.)  It's impossible even for a saved person to perfectly keep the love commandment. But by repeatedly determining in our hearts to obey Christ's commandment to love others with His love for us, we receive power from God the Spirit Who now lives in our hearts and in our midst here on the earth, and we are able, progressively and gradually, to actually love God and others as ourselves, better and better, more and more each day. By this process in us -- called the process of Sanctification -- Christ reveals to the world around us that He is alive and living in us. This is how we "bear much fruit" -- "the fruit of the Spirit:" by allowing Christ's love for sinners to be revealed in and through us toward them. Every believer is set apart for this purpose. And EVERY believer senses the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in his heart, see Romans 8:16. We do not have to exhibit anything other than the love of Christ residing in us for the unsaved to recognize that we are different; they observe that we have become children of God Himself because we do try our best to imitate Him and His Love because we love Him.

Now about true pentecostals: Jesus said "many are called but few are chosen." What did He mean? Well, first of all, that salvation through faith in Christ is offered to all but chosen by few.  But also, I believe that sooner-or-later the Bible-believing Christian is confronted with the biblical record of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the early church. And when a believer begins to study and meditate upon this biblical record, he becomes part of a group on another level which Jesus said "are called." It is a calling to supernatural service in the body of Christ, a calling to enter the arena of miracles, signs and wonders with Christ Jesus.  Not all Christians are called in this way, but many are.  And not all Christians who are called in this way actually find their way all the way in.  

Jesus said to His disciples: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." Do you think this came as a surprise to these men who thought they had decided to follow Jesus? But Peter was the first to begin to understand when He said to Jesus out on the lake: "Bid me to come to You;" and when He did, Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. Peter was walking on the water by the supernatural power of God!

And, in the body of Christ TODAY, some of us have been called and CHOSEN to accept this Word from Jesus. We speak prayers in a language we do not understand in our minds. Sometimes we know we are verbalizing -- speaking out into the world -- the prayers which God wants to be spoken by the body of Christ on the earth, even though we don't know the substance of the prayers. Other times we receive a word of knowledge and know what we have been praying about and can then add our own will to the will of God in praying, saying "Amen, so be it!" Still other times we may speak out in our own native language that which we have already prayed in a unknown tongue; and we know what we prayed about because we hear it spoken in our native tongue. This is called tongues and interpretation. And you can read all about this in 1st Corinthians 14. Unknown tongues is just one example of supernatural manifestations or "gifts" of the Spirit which are the experience of the true pentecostal believers, called and chosen.

Many Christians today have become uncomfortable about the supernatural "gifts" because of the misinformation and static generated under the direction of satan. Satan does not want a bunch of believers taking their faith to the Peter level, walking on water so-to-speak, praying with all the power of God's own Spirit, healing the sick and casting out evil spirits in Jesus' name, etc. So satan is fighting against the church of God trying to keep believers in ignorance and superstition and phoniness. But the answer to this is to read, study and meditate upon God's Word, asking the Holy Spirit to do exactly what Jesus said He would do: reveal all the truth.  Faith to believe God's Word about the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit comes in exactly the same way that Salvation faith comes -- by hearing and receiving the Word of God! 

My personal experience?  It is a genuine and humbling privilege to serve Christ with the "gifts" of the Spirit and it feels good.  But 2nd Timothy 3:12 is also true.  "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."  And that does not feel good, but it confirms God's Word is true.

I am "Jerusalem" Hill.

On Super Bowl Sunday my loving son loaned me the entire DVD set of Harry Potter films.  I somehow had been left out of seeing the last five films and had told him so.  And he couldn't wait to bring Ol' Dad up to speed.

Well, last week I watched the ones I had seen before just to whet my appetite.  Then, starting last Wednesday night after Bible study, I began to watch the ones I had not seen before, one after the other, stopping only when I fell asleep, and then picking up the thread at the the scene I remembered.

I feel refreshed now being able to converse intelligently with the young people I watched grow up to young adults as they grew up watching Harry Potter and his friends grow up.  Funny how knowing all the other stuff which happened in the world during that time did not prepare me in quite this same way! 

Since my re posting this piece and the comments which followed last week, I have been praying for the words God would have me use to carry the truths He has revealed to me over into my next post.  This morning I met frustrations having to clean up and re configure my PC.  This afternoon I remembered to "thank Him in all things."  Then I Googled the phrase "The Word of God" and the search led me to the post I'm linking you to below, in which I met for the first time a brother in New Zealand who is like me in that he hears and honors the Lord's voice, and the Lord in turn gives him clarity about scriptural and spiritual things.  We are nothing more than God's messengers; but we are God's messengers nonetheless!

  http://www.all4god.net/word_of_god.htm 

I pray many will hear from the Lord through this post and comment on it, recommend it, help get The Word out there among His people.

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   I truly rejoice in the manner God chose to educate me, almost entirely by self- study as I was led Personally  by His Spirit!  And much of this education happened with greatest intensity while I was incarcerated in jail and prison although I had truly committed no offense.  This, amazingly, was God’s response to my fervent prayer to be sent to His “best Bible college.”  I truly feel like a fraternity brother to the Apostles Simon Peter, John and Paul!  I believe I can understand these men of God better than many of my fellow servants in Christ Jesus.

  However, there is one question I've had of God:  “Why, Lord, did I not receive instruction in biblical Greek?”

  Many, many times the voice of the Holy Spirit has enlightened me about errors in the English texts of the Holy Bibles which I study and in the teachings of my teachers!  For example, consider this verse: “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”  This is how it appears in the Authorized King James Version at 1^st Thessalonians 5: 22.  But what God is really saying to us here is better translated in, for example, the New King James Version:  “Abstain from every form of evil.”

  What a great difference the modern and more accurate translation of the original Greek makes!  And in this case, the Holy Spirit merely confirmed and expanded upon what I discovered comparing the two texts.  But sometimes He actually proclaims His Truth to me, just Spirit to spirit, leaving me absolutely no human authority to stand upon!

  While Jesus walked the earth, it was said of Him: “He teaches as One Who Has Authority.”  When I teach about things the Lord has revealed to me only by His Spirit, I’m called autocratic and worse by most!  And it's understandable.  (Since so few Christians know their Shepard's voice with confidence any more.) 

  My own beliefs regarding the inerrancy of scripture more nearly but not exactly conform with the beliefs of the Assemblies of God denomination than with any other.  Consider this: RE:  inerrancy of Scripture, adopted by the Assemblies of God, May 1970  “We believe the Bible is the Word of God written; it is the revelation of the truths of God conveyed by inspiration through His servants to us. As such, it is infallible and without error.  We refer to original autographs. While the science of textual criticism assures us of a trustworthy text, inerrancy can be claimed only for the original writings (Jeremiah 36:2).”   And most other servants of the Lord Jesus Christ are just as ignorant of the original languages of scripture as I am!

  What are your own beliefs concerning the Word of God, written or otherwise?

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In December, 2011 this blogger was on a roll, hot on the trail of completing a series of blog posts; but then came January, 2012, sidetracks and rabbit trails.

First was my new Kindle Fire, a gift from my generous brother for Christmas and a new exercise to test the adage about teaching old dogs new tricks.  Internet blogging is already a new trick in progress for this old dog; still pecking away at my old PC just wondering about laptops, I pads and the like.  Suddenly this amazing new portable portal is dropped into my lap; and off on the sidetrack and down the rabbit trail I went!  And I’ll likely continue my wandering about trying to find my bearings there for awhile.

Then suddenly colder weather aggravated my arthritis and neuropathy, rendering me nearly immobile at times, and making keyboarding only occasionally possible after much aspirin.

When I could actually punch keys, I worked on attracting some new friends and also personal-service helpers from among my West Central Indiana neighbors using OurTime.com and other people search tools.  I did meet a few very nice people but, so far, no one close enough to get together very often.

Even as I looked for helpers for myself, I needed to help my mother maintain her independence more often this month.  Those of you with elderly parents living nearby will understand what I mean.  And this is a privilege for me and not, as it may sound, a complaint.

As I wrote these, I began to realize that sidetracks and rabbit trails have been merely a coping mechanism this month.  Really I’ve been trying to cope with a disappointment and the writer’s block it caused.

My whole reason for blogging is to encourage people to know Our Creator as intimately as I do, to discover for themselves the intimate fellowship they can have with Our Living God right now, which is far beyond the printed page of history.  How can I finish my series What Is Ours In Christ Jesus when apparently no one is even slightly interested in the very foundation of it!

So, I’ll dabble here with less important subjects for awhile until the Lord gives me clearer direction about if and when to major in the Major again.

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Hindsight is twenty/twenty vision.  Post is deleted!  And no one should feel badly that it's gone!

What Is Ours In Christ Jesus?, Part Two, Edited and Re posted As A Farewell to 2011:

Jesus said to His Father in Heaven: “Just as You have granted Me power and authority over all humankind, now glorify Me even as We have planned it, so that I may give eternal life to all whom You have given Me.  And eternal life means they shall  know (perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, Father, the only true and real God, and likewise know Me, Jesus the Christ (the Messiah), Whom You have sent.”

But, you may say, God the Father and God the Son are in heaven!  How can we here on the earth know them?  Jesus Himself answered this question in an earlier chapter of John’s gospel:

“However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable (good, expedient, advantageous) for you that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you [into close fellowship with you]; but if I go away, I will send Him to you [to be in close fellowship with you]…

I have still many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them or to take them upon you or to grasp them now. But when He, the Spirit of Truth (the Truth-giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the Truth (the whole, full Truth). For He will not speak His own message [on His own authority]; but He will tell whatever He hears [from the Father; He will give the message that has been given to Him], and He will announce and declare to you the things that are to come [that will happen in the future].  He will honor and glorify Me, because He will take of (receive, draw upon) what is Mine and will reveal (declare, disclose, transmit) it to you.”

The Holy Spirit of God is ours and present here and now with us if we are in Christ Jesus!  Paul, the apostle to the non-Jewish people like me, wrote about our present life in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ physical departure from the earth:

Romans 8:8-10, Amplified Bible (AMP)  “So then those who are living the life of the flesh [catering to the appetites and impulses of their carnal nature] cannot please or satisfy God, or be acceptable to Him.  But you are not living the life of the flesh, you are living the life of the Spirit, if the [Holy] Spirit of God [really] dwells within you [directs and controls you]. But if anyone does not possess the [Holy] Spirit of Christ, he is none of His [he does not belong to Christ, is not truly a child of God].  But if Christ lives in you, [then although] your [natural] body is dead by reason of sin and guilt, the spirit is alive because of [the] righteousness [that He imputes to you].”

This brings us to a few simple questions:

Do you know (perceive, recognize, understand) God the Holy Spirit?  Do you sense His Presence with you?  Are you, in fact, "in" Christ Jesus by virtue of your close, personal fellowship with Him, with His Spirit?

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"I believe love is truly desiring and working for what is best for the object of your love.  That is what Christ did, no matter what it cost Him, and despite the fact that it was not always clear that was His intention."

This morning I was searching my archives thinking to re post about agape, New Testament Greek for love of the God kind.  I found the post I was looking for in March of 2011.  But Lanney's comment was and is so right-on-the-mark, I have posted it here instead.  @lanney.

PS: This is only fair since I regularly grab one of her beautiful photographs use it for my desktop.

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Romans 14: ⁴Who are you to pass judgment on and censure another's household servant? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he shall stand and be upheld, for the Master (the Lord) is mighty to support him and make him stand.

I should have remained joyful as the Spirit of Christ expressed Himself through my friends at the last Wednesday Night Bible Study.  But soon the spirit of religion also began to speak through some of them, judging unacceptable the actions of other professing Christians;  and I left feeling angry and deeply distressed with them!

“I am, by God’s grace, a recovering legalist. I have legalistic scars.  I am as susceptible to religious legalism as a recovering alcoholic is to wine.  Given the ever-present danger of legalism, my goal is to be an irreligious Christian. We who have made the journey from religion to Jesus realize that such a spiritual journey is only possible because “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke1:37.)

Rejecting legalism and accepting Jesus can only be accomplished by God’s grace, as Jesus lives his life in us, empowering us to rest in Christ, in spite of all of the religious instruction, training and brainwashing to which we have been subjected.  And remember – individuals,whether followers or religious leaders, are deceived and victimized by religious culture, tradition and methodology. The real culprit is legalistic, Christ-less religion!

As we carefully examine the Gospels we see that the Pharisees, more than any group of religious professionals of that day, were constantly on Jesus‘ case.  The Gospels reveal that it was the Pharisees at large who monitored him, challenged him, harassed him, condemned him, had him arrested and eventually put to death. Their problems with him were, predictably, over matters of the law.

The Pharisees often objected to Jesus’ lack of obedience to their traditions and regulations.  Jesus and his disciples did not perform the hand-washing ritual, so the Pharisees complained (Matthew15:2).  The Pharisees were upset becausee Jesus  disciples did not fast as they did (Matthew 9:14-15; Mark 2:18; Luke 5:33) and that he ate with sinners (Matthew 9:11; Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30).

But of all their objections to Jesus’ behavior, their most frequent accusation against Jesus was that he was a Sabbath breaker.  Jesus’ disciples plucked heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6; 1-50, which was considered by the Pharisees to be work.  Work was prohibited on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees’ most frequent complaint about Jesus was that he healed on the Sabbath, which was also considered work, and when they combined this affront with Jesus’ blasphemous claim that God was “his own father” they determined to kill him (John 5:18). Religion is not happy when its traditions and authority are questioned!

Mark3:4-5: “Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.  He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts….”

            (Since it perfectly expressed what I wish to say in this blog, most of the above is copied verbatim from Rejecting Religion – Embracing Grace by Greg Albrecht.) Post Script added January 5, 2012: 

For many weeks I have been baffled by the footprints of visitors from the Ukraine and Russian Federation to this particular post.  I welcome questions and further discussion of the issue of religious legalism -- or anything else for that matter -- at my email address:   iamjerusalemhill@yahoo.com.