Prayer Strategies
The Starting Right conferences feel to me like an intersection with history. The church has been pregnant with the concept of social entrepreneurs for about 30 years now. The Exhorters have signaled that labor has begun. I feel extraordinary excitement about the birthings that will take place in June. I wonder what it will look like when we look back in ten years at what came out of those events.
I anticipate having this conference on a yearly basis as we equip you social entrepreneurs to carry out the vision God has placed in you but there will only be one first time event!
Because this is such an exhilarating possibility, with immense implications, we are going to structure a higher level of prayer preparation for these events than we have ever done before. It is exciting that the Plumbline family is now well over a hundred thousand worldwide so we can bring a richly textured, internationally flavored strategy to the table.
For the next two months, we will be using the home page of the website as our communication platform for those of you who would like to join us. I will post a new teaching/focus point there every few days. We invite you to track with us and invest in this Kingdom venture, whether you are a social entrepreneur or not.
Just for those of you who need the big picture, I am going to use the four sectors of holiness, in their proper sequence, as our grid for the first four weeks, then we will shift over to some of the facets of Leviathan.
So for now, check the home page daily. We are putting the short articles front and center on the home page so you don’t have to click to any other pages. And if you miss a strategy, you can find all of them under “Prayer Strategies” in the Starting Right box at the left of the home page.
Thanks for warring with us.
Do You Know a Social Entrepreneur?
The term social entrepreneur is new to many people. It is so new, that most of the social entrepreneurs I have talked to do not recognize themselves at all as belonging in that group.
Let me illustrate it in a simple way. Where do you think God wants to use you – in the church or out of the church?
Forty years ago, it was a no brainer. God worked through the church. If you felt the call of God on your life, there was no question. You belonged in “full time Christian ministry.”
God still calls many people to the overtly religious side of the spectrum. There are pastors, worship leaders, Bible study leaders, conference speakers and a host of other familiar, valid, essential callings in the religious sector.
Today however, there is a second choice. God is also calling many people to the myriad other sectors of society.
I talked to someone recently who has a brilliantly clear vision for ministry to athletes. He wants to help them bring their spiritual skills to the same level of finely honed excellence as their physical skills.
I know someone who opened a bank to bring the presence of the King into the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary financial transactions.
Someone else envisions day care done with a focus on spiritual nurture, not just the physical care of the children.
Each of these people is a social entrepreneur.
“Social” means they are active in some area of society outside religion. They want to take their message to the people, instead of bringing the people to the message.
“Entrepreneur” means you want to start something new. You are not just copying a successful model someone else used somewhere else. You want to use a different process to get to a different product.
So think back through the people you know who are marked by a floating discontent. They are doing good things, but are not fulfilled. Then replay the tapes of your conversations with them, listening for that dream that was shared one time.
Maybe you need to go to that person and ask him or her, “Is God reminding you about that dream you shared with me awhile back?” They may need you to give them a nudge to recognize that their discomfort right now is not the devil messing with them but it is the beginning of labor pains.
Seminar in Tampa Bay, Florida
I see three kinds of people in the world.
First there are the city dwellers. These are people who value safety and security and they draw heavily from the deposit that previous generations have made in building the infrastructure of their city.
From where the city dwellers live, there is a distant horizon and beyond that horizon there is another tribe: the pioneers.
The pioneers are unacquainted with safety and security. They are, in fact, laying down their lives in difficult conditions to leave a working infrastructure for those who come after them. Where there was once just bare land, we eventually see streets, highways, homes, businesses, schools, churches, utilities, farms and families all coming together to produce the joy of a vibrant community.
From where the pioneers sit, there is another horizon, and beyond that ragged purple line you find the occasional trail blazer who goes where people have not gone yet, just to see what is there.
Periodically they will circle back around and let the pioneers know that there is a lovely valley that would be well suited for a new community, and some pioneers go build infrastructure there.
The Relationship
This illustrates the relationship between me and Nina. I am a trail blazer. Nina is one of those blessed pioneers who takes my skimpy ideas and builds them out to make them user friendly.
She has spent ten years working on the redemptive gifts teaching, providing you with so much stuff that I have been unwilling to provide since I am off to explore what is on the other side of yet another mountain range.
I chatted with her yesterday about her “handout” for the event in Brandon, near Tampa Bay, Florida. She calmly informed me that her “handout” will be around 100 pages.
The Product
And that, my friends, is the beauty of a pioneer. Nina has structure. She has verses to back up the ideas. She has illustrations. She has sequences. She has insights and application and correlations and implications. She has lists and groups and categories and building blocks.
She has all the things that you have been pestering me for during the last ten years. You have just been knocking on the wrong door. Pioneers provide structure. Nina is a pioneer.
So even though you may have enjoyed my trail blazer’s glowing description of the interesting new valley, you owe it to yourself to go to Florida to say ooo and ahhh over all the fascinating truths that a dynamic pioneer can bring to the teaching.
And no, you can’t buy her “handout” separate from the seminar.
Click here for extra information on the event.
Click here to register. April 23rd and 24th in Brandon, Florida.
Hosting a Seminar
Back Then
Even though you have not met Nina Lemnah, you owe her a debt of gratitude.
She and I met in January of 2000 and I shared the redemptive gift teaching with her in a casual conversation. She immediately said, “You have to record that.” I told her I had recorded it four times already and the opposition was so great, none of the recordings came out well.
She immediately mobilized her intercessors and in March, I was in New York City recording the teachings you have listened to. If you have been blessed by those teachings, you owe her one!
Now
Ten years later, we are reversing the order. Now Nina is going to be doing the teaching while Plumbline facilitates the process. I love seeing the second generation coming on strong!
Nina has invested deeply in exploring the redemptive gifts and will be traveling the world over the next year or so to share those truths in a seminar settings wherever there is hunger.
The first event is in Florida in April, but we are currently working on scheduling events in Texas, California, South Africa and Australia.
If you are interested in hosting an in depth teaching on the redemptive gifts of individuals, the redemptive gifts of cities, spiritual mapping, or intercessory strategies for your city based on its redemptive gift, we would be happy to connect you with her.
Write Business@TheSLG.com and tell us which topic interests you and what group you would like to have her minister to and we will work with you on the mechanics of the event.
Shame and Grief
The Riddle
Q. When is a physical problem not a physical problem?
A. When it is a spiritual problem.
It is no secret that our unresolved spiritual issues can, at times, produce very specific health problems. However, in the last month we have seen a pattern that is new to us, so humor me as I build a new model out of old, familiar components.
1) Shame and grief frequently manifest in the lungs or breasts.
2) The Edomite Curse (broken family relationships) usually generates a huge amount of shame and guilt.
3) Not all the shame and grief families feel over brokenness is legitimate.
The devil is a master at coaching us to embrace more grief than we should.
4) Land can carry shame and grief too depending on what has happened there before.
The Scam
In the last month we have had a number of people with chest congestion that has resisted treatment or lumps in the breast that appear suddenly, generate immediate pain radiating back to the shoulder blade, yet are classified as “inconclusive” when medically checked.
Both of these problems have been connected, in some people, to shame and grief rooted in the Edomite curse. What was so mystifying at first is that most of the people involved had already invested a lot of time and effort over the years in addressing the shame and grief related to their broken families.
If the soul and spirit work was done, how could the enemy attack their bodies in such a big way?
Here is what the legal ground seems like at this point in time. (Realize this is a half baked potato – a new idea just in the last two weeks). When there is shame and grief on the land, it seems to be able to activate the body memory that was left over after the spirit and soul work were done.
We think this is a principle. Meaning that even though the playing field at this time is shame and grief, it could be that there are many other body memories that land can activated if it has the same defilement on it.
A Strategy
As we are experimenting with our beloved guinea pigs, (AKA desperate people) this is what seems to be giving good results. Some of the people who have tried this have seen a dramatic turn around in their healing processes.
- Cleanse the land of shame and grief. This would be the land you are on now, as well as any other land where you suffered from the Edomite Curse. Someone who has been battered or molested in the past should include that land in this prayer time.
Ask God to go back to when the first human walked on your land(s), identify every point of shame and grief that occurred on that land, particularly those that related to the Edomite Curse (see the Spiritual Warfare album for a deeper teaching on this). Then ask Him to send that shame and grief to the cross, leaving the land free of that contamination.
- Revisit the soul and spirit work that you have done on the brokenness in your family line. Ask God if there is unfinished business there. If there is, address it in a new, deeper way. If not, then resist the devil’s desire to cause you to relive those emotions. Walk in the present, not in the past.
- Ask God to lift the memory and toxicity from that shame and grief off your body and send it to the cross.
- Spend time focusing on the concept of dignity. Explore how God sees you now, today, in spite of the brokenness of your family line.
Portraits of Dignity
I tend to go to Enoch for this. We celebrate him as the man who walked with God so closely that he didn’t die in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet if you crunch the numbers, you see that his children and grandchildren would have been alive at the time of the flood, and all of them died because they were rebellious sinners.
That means that as a dad, he did not cut it. He was not able to buck the corrupt culture strongly enough to be able to rescue his children and keep them righteous enough to escape the flood.
God knew this. God was fully up to speed on the sinful behavior of all of his family line. God did not overlook it, ignore it, pretend it was not there, or minimize it. Nonetheless, knowing all of that, God still considered him, as a person, to be someone quite special because of his personal pursuit of intimacy with God.
THAT is a picture of stupendous dignity in the face of the Edomite Curse being rampant.
There is no room here for denial. Look the brokenness fully in the face and admit it is there. However, having looked at that once, briefly, you should then turn your focus to how God sees you in spite of that.
Another picture of dignity that never ceases to move me to awe is Christ on the cross. He was betrayed by the treasurer (Edomite). Abandoned by the rest of the apostles (Edomite). Framed by the Jewish leadership (Edomite and Aramean curses). And crucified by the Romans. He had been beaten beyond recognition and was hanging naked on a cross, the symbol of a common criminal.
All of that He knew and acknowledged.
YET, when the thief asked Him for salvation, Jesus walked in exquisite dignity. He said, “Yes, appearances not withstanding, I am still God, and since you asked, I will give you salvation today.”
Now THAT is dignity. No amount of Edomite Curse playing out in His life changed the reality of who He was.
So paint your own picture.
Who are you? What is your basis for dignity? How does God see you, the product of His hands, the object of His heart?
Answer that well, and you will be well on your way to being inoculated from the shame and grief scam.
Arthur Burk
March 30, 2010
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