Tithing

       Perhaps the most firmly entrenched tradition of man besides having a pastor is tithing. The Holy Spirit slowly opened my eyes to the truth about tithing over many years - indeed I could not fully see and accept the truth till I left the heart of Babylon - the USA and moved to Ireland. It's interesting that tithing is perhaps the only doctrine that is universally agreed upon by all denominations.
       The USA is the land that has spawned the majority of denominations and America's god is self - manifested by a love of and pursuit of money. Most churches teach that Malachi 3:8-12 along with a few other Old Testament scriptures are commandments for today's Church. Oh how these modern day church leaders love to dissect the Old Testament, picking and choosing which scriptures suit them and casting aside the ones that don't.
       When God spoke through Malachi he was challenging his people Israel who, at the time were under the law given by Moses. If a Christian of today wants to claim these scriptures they must accept them in their entirety. Take Dt. 28 as an example. How often have I heard Christians claim the blessings of that chapter while ignoring the curses. The point of the chapter was to give Israel a sobering look at how seriously God takes his Covenants and how carefully they were supposed to follow his law, with blessings for obedience to the Law and curses for disobedience. If you as a Christian, a New Testament believer, a keeper of the New Covenant, want to submit to the Old Covenant, you cannot choose just one part of it, you must follow all of it. You cannot pick and choose parts of the Law of Moses to obey, the Law of Sin and Death, while ignoring the rest. You must choose either the Law of Moses or the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom:8:2).
       Yes, tithing preceded the Law of Moses but when Abram (not Abraham - the old man tithed, the new man did not) tithed to Melchizedek, God was not making a law for us to follow but rather he wanted to establish Melchizedek as a type of Christ, a foreshadow, a mysterious character who is mentioned this one time in Genesis - someone the Father of our faith received a blessing from - a spiritual blessing, who Abram then blessed in return with a natural blessing. The only other mention of Melchizedek in the Old Testament is in Psalm 110:4 where God establishes his Christ as being a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Order, course and lot were established under the Law of Moses as the means by which a priest would determine his job. So we see that the primary purpose of mentioning Melchizedek in the Old Testament is to establish Christ as the "High Priest" of our faith - higher even than the father of our faith, Abraham.
       God does include tithing in the Law of Moses but Christian - we the redeemed, the "called out ones" , the Ecclesia of God are not under the Law of Moses but we are under the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25). The Holy Spirit put it to me this way - we don not follow the law, we follow Christ, the giver of the law. By his Spirit living in us and us abiding in him, he reveals his will to us - not just in a general sense but in great detail. Long ago God taught me to do what he says, not what I think is good. I wanted to help a homeless man once and God told me to leave him alone because it had taken God many years to get him to a place of brokenness and humility.

Part two soon..

The religious spirit is actually Satan's disguised as a Christian. Remember 2 Cor: 11:14 - "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light". In other words, he purports to be a representative of God, so that he may lead God's precious people astray. He wants to teach us how to be a Christian. He first of all wants us to avoid the Holy Spirit at all costs. He actually wants to teach us that the Holy Spirit is demonic while he, Satan, is holy. He never wants us baptized in the Holy Spirit - He never wants the Holy Spirit inside us so that we come to know him and develop a relationship with him, he doesn't want us to obey the Holy Spirit and follow him as we walk out our short life on this earth. Never speak in tongues. Never prophecy. Never heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons. This type of Christian has a "form of godliness denying the power thereof - from such turn away" (2 Tim:3:5).
This is all a result of following the religious spirit and not the Holy Spirit. Satan doesn't mind evangelism as long as we are fixated on leading them to our church and not to the kingdom of God. As long as our church maintains a façade - a dead, lifeless form of Christianity, Satan delights in as many people as possible joining this kind of church, where Satan is present (disguised as a Christian) and not God.
Then, of course, when lots of people flock to this type of church - the leaders and people become convinced it is a sign of God's approval, his way of showing them he is pleased. These kinds of churches always pay attention to numbers, though God taught us not to count the people, a lesson king David learned well. Satan cheers, God grieves and everyone in denominationalism merrily continues to "have church"- meanwhile missing God by a million miles.

You've been lied to...
Your heart's been deceived...
until Satan's lies you've come to believe...
You're convinced God's love is something to be earned,
with conditions and rules
so that you'll never be able to fulfill God's will for you.
His love becomes something to be earned,
by not being a fool...
Satan whispers in one ear
"You have to be perfect and holy
to earn God's love - you have to always be cool"
While in the other ear he whispers -
You're a failure, you've sinned far too much
for God to ever accept you"
"Just go to church and pretend all is well,
but pal, you're going to hell"

Don't buy the lie -
God loved you before you ever loved him
No matter how much you've sinned.
He loves you still
for loving you is his will....

Part Three

A follower of Christ in mind only and not in heart is a caterpillar -they have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. They honor God with their lips (they sing songs to him or about him, they sit and listen to and speak sermons about him) but their hearts are far from him. Notice the order here - Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Spirit, soul than body. Heart first, always, then mind. Religious, Babylonian, apostate Christianity is of the mind only.
Engage God with your heart, embrace him whole heartedly, and become that butterfly believer He has invited you to be - Live Free! Unwrap, remove those grave clothes that stink of death and your old, sinful life and join Jesus in unending fellowship, supping and drinking together with him and others like you at his table. Never hunger or thirst again! Be fully filled and satisfied. Say with me "He brought me to his banqueting house and his banner over me was love"! He wants to become your source of pleasure forever. Say "I will seek him whom my soul loveth". And you well know - if you seek, you will find (Mt:7:7). His garden is full of his love for you, full of delights, full of delicious fruits. Invite Him now to "let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits". Invite him to be as intimate with you as a lover would be - let him know he is your source of pleasure - not any fleshly desire or lust. Say "my beloved is mine and I am his, I have kept myself for a time such as this. His coming is near as the dawn to my eyes, this longing of mine is soon satisfied. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, says the Spirit, says the Bride, I'll not arise complete till you draw me to your side. My God - in my heart is an all consuming fire, come quickly my beloved for it's you that I desire".

Postscript: Do not remain a caterpillar - Born-again but refusing to grow up, refusing true intimacy with God through the deep infilling of His spirit. Do not be "a little sister who has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
Deep calls unto Deep - yet deeper intimacy with our God cannot come without Maturity. To please and satisfy our Lord we must be able to bear Him fruit - this is, after all, the greatest gift a wife can present to her husband - children. Don't you agree our "Father which art in heaven" deserves "much fruit"? Be rather like S.O.S. 8:10 - "I am a wall and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor".

I lament that far too many are only able to drink milk, not give it. Far too many have become "such as have need of milk and not of strong meat". Far too many remain in a spiritual infancy - their churches cradles in which they are sung lullabyes week after week to keep the babies content, drinking milk and sleeping, "wherefore, let us not sleep as do others" 1 Thes:5:6 - "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light" Eph:5:14. Be strong and of a good courage - arise and be doing your Father's will! Those who labor when the day is far spent will be paid as much as those who began at the break of day. We must all be, like Jesus, "about our Father's business" and his business is saving souls.
                                    Selah.

Part Two

This all sounds so fleshly and carnal because it is. Instead of esteeming others more highly than themselves, most pastors esteem themselves more highly - never realizing it was never God's will to exalt any man over his people but rather that He himself would be their head - using only men who are so filled with His Spirit that there is a complete absence of fleshly ego and desires. You have many teachers but not many fathers, Paul said. This lament is so true today - so many go to "Bible College" to learn to use their minds to lead God's people - to become teachers - who teach by logic and the understanding of men, instead of becoming fathers, who lead from their hearts, whose hearts are broken and fully given in love to his children, who will lay down their very own lives for their children - whose goal in life is to see his children succeed and surpass him, not have them continue to stay in his home but go out and establish homes of their own. Butterfly's are easily controlled by the wind (John 3:8). They are light - more wings than flesh! They come and go as the wind directs them - so are believers who walk (and fly) in the Spirit - when we die to our own will, we become Holy because it is never his will for us to sin - only when we die to our will can we live for the Father's will. In Gethsemane, Jesus crucified his will - then it became easy to allow his body to be crucified. It is easy then to allow our bodies to go and do whatever the Father's will is on any given day - Jesus testified he only did what his Father did (John 5:19). Indeed, he testified in John 10:17 that the Father loved him because he laid down his life (his will).
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents man's will exalted over God's simply because God said not to eat of it and man, at Satan's urging, chose to exalt his will over God's. The Tree of Life represents God's will exalted over man's. His will is life for us, eternal life. He never wanted us to taste death. Choose you this day - life or death? Will you choose a religious Christianity centered on the pursuit and consumption of knowledge Or will you choose a Christianity centered around Christ himself - who we engage and commune with in our hearts? Will you be a doer or a hearer only? Part three soon.