the Happy Gospel by Benjamin Dunn

Some of my favorite theology on the finished works of the cross!
Here is where you order the the Happy Gospel.

birnging in the new year

Thankfulness is the key to every New Years resolution!

CNN 2010 highlights Remember!

Book I am working on.

A few years ago I read The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a devotional made from a compilation of letters and conversations from a seventeenth-century French monk. He had learned to practice the presence of God at all times, in every daily task and duty.  His simple letters encourage readers to practice God’s presence and see His glory in every facet of your life. “He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for His sake. “ (first conversation)

He purposed to engage in the Lords presence during every hour of the day. He began to find an effortless, uninterrupted state of awareness and constant union with his creator at every moment, unrestricted by whatever task was at hand. He also acknowledged that it is solely by Gods grace that we can engage in this uninterrupted union with our creator, giving no credit to works or deeds.

He wrote:

The time of work does not with me differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great a tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Supper. ( fourth conversation)

This was the concept he devoted himself to throughout his life, that wherever you are and whatever task is at hand, God’s presence was to be known and practiced intentionally through his grace.

I enjoyed the notion of this idea but I was skeptical. Monastic living seemed a much more conducive lifestyle to engage in this type of uninterrupted awareness.

How did these experiences translate to my world? To my sleep deprived, nursing, potty training, house cleaning, laundry folding, can’t even remember when I had my last uninterrupted moment of quietness, phase of life.

I wanted the awareness of his presence and grace to transcend the noise and clutter in my life.  The peace and grace brother Lawrence spoke of to be consistent in my every day duties of motherhood.  I knew the Lord desired for me to find full pleasure in every moment, as unglamorous as it may have seemed.  I began to take the practice of His presence into my world, finding pleasure in the awareness of His grace and the joy of his company, even while changing a dirty diaper.  I remember thinking “ one day I would like to write a devotional like “The Practice of the Presence of God”, for mothers.”

This book is meant to be just that, an encouragement for mothers to engage in a constant awareness (practice) of His presence in the every-day, mundane tasks of mothering.  A call to all mothers to feast on his grace, grace that wants to invade every aspect of your home, your family and you!

Chistmas favorites

What a sweet Christmas!

Heart warming moment:

• My five year old wrapped up his framed baby photo from his room and gave it to me as a gift.  He was so proud as he handed it to me, wrapped in paper towel and labeled MOM.  After I opened it he carried it into my bedroom and placed it on my night stand, closest to my pillow.  "So you can always look at me as a baby" he said.

Johns new books are out!

Experiencing the Reality of the Sevenfold Spirit of God

by John Crowder
Sons of Thunder Publications

And out of the throne go forth lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and seven lamps of fire, burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God - Rev. 4:5

John's long-awaited Seven Spirits Burning is an extensive, Biblical plunge into the nature and operation of the sevenfold Spirit of God. This book unpackages a deep theological and Christocentric understanding of the seven Spirits. John has taught for years on the seven Spirits, but not until now has he released this detailed compilation of his study and experience. This book could possibly be the magnum opus of anything written to date on the Spirit's sevenfold nature. It is a must read for anyone interested in walking in the anointing.

 Enjoying John's new books!

Stuff they never told you about the finished work of the cross

 

by John Crowder
Sons of Thunder Publications

The gospel is a mystical message, based on an instant and effortless union with God achieved at Christ's cross.

When you think of the cross, do you think of fun?

If the answer is "no" then you have not been taught the cross aright.

There is a delicious feast prepared for the believer. Nothing is more satisfying than the revelation of what Christ has conclusively accomplished for you. This book threatens to turn your Christianity upside down. No longer a struggle to please God -- the Truth will plunge you into a celebration of what He has done for you.

With clear revelatory truths on the New Creation and the scandalous joys of the cross, Mystical Union  promises to be one of John’s most revolutionary, lifechanging works. The happy gospel of grace is about uninterrupted union with the Divine. This book lays out our most core beliefs. It promises to wreck your theology and cheer you up with undeniable Biblical truths on the free gift of perfection.

I am thouroghly enjoying my husbands book, loving the writing style and the nugets of wisdom.

Today I am reading from "Mystical Union" and I have to share an exerpt from ch.2:

SANCTIFICATION IS NOT A PROCESS.

 The most scholarly minds all agree that a mystical death with Christ purchased union with Him.  But then a theological dishonesty creeps in.  We are next taught that- although the old man is dead - we still have a daily process of putting that old self to death.  I die daily is a common motto!   

They call it a paradox.  Two opposites that are held in tension.  They say your fleshly nature is dead, yet it is till in need of crucifixion.  Paradox indeed!  I call this a lack of revelation at best.  Lazy exegesis at worst.  The scriptures never contradict themselves.  The word "paradox" sounds fun, but there are far fewer of them in scripture than you would imagine.  Lobotomy is fun word as well, but I don't want one.  People think, "We haven't figured it out, so it must be an unsolvable puzzle!  A paradox!"  There are no unsolvable puzzles>  Every mystery has been plainly published on the tree.

The word people use for this supposed process of killing the old self is "sanctification."  It is widely believed that sanctification is a lifelong, extended journey of becoming holy.  A process of removing sin - progressively having one's soul purged over an entire lifetime.

The Greek verb "to sanctify" does not mean to "purge and purify over a period of time."  The word hagiazo simply means to "set apart" or to "make separate for God."  The moment you were saved, you were set apart for God.  Sanctification is not a process.  It is a Person.  The Bible tells me so!

And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor.  1:30, ESV)

   
Robert Farrar Capon
"The Pharisee and the Tax Collector" 
Program #3705
First broadcast October 31, 1993"The Pharisee and the Tax Collector"
Let me lay out for you the story, Jesus' parable, of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus says, "Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee. The other was a tax collector."
You must remember that a tax collector was a crook. He was a person who was a Jew but he worked for the Roman government. He had a franchise, an area in which he was entitled to collect taxes. He was told by the Romans what he owed them. Anything else he made over and above that was his to pocket. The tax collectors were despised as turncoats and so on. So Jesus has set you up. He has sent in the Pharisee who was one of the most respectable people in Judaism of his time and He has sent into the temple with him this tax collector who is a mafia-style enforcer, who is a bad apple.
The Pharisee stands by himself and he prays and he says, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people. I am not a thief. I am not a rogue. I am not an adulterer. I am certainly not like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week. I give away a tenth of my income."
That is his speech. He goes on interminably like that. Then the tax collector says (he won't look up to the heaven; he looks at his shoe tips), "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Then Jesus says, "I tell you this man (the tax collector) went to his house justified rather than the other for all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted."
That is the story. Like all of Jesus' parables, it should carry a warning which is "this will be hazardous to all your previous opinions about how religion works and how God works." Jesus' parables are designed to outrage the hearers and to shock and to show how God has stood almost all of our values on their heads.
What this parable is about is not, as it seems to say at the end, the virtue of humility. The Pharisee's problem is not that he is showing off. It is that he really believes that his stack of good deeds is enough to save the world. And he believes it is enough if only everyone else would do what he does -- that is enough to save the whole world.
What God really says in Christ is that human goodness isn't good enough to do this trick. Human goodness cannot reconcile the world. Basically if the world could have been reconciled by good advice from God, to which human goodness would respond, the world's problems would have been solved ten minutes after Moses got down to the bottom of the mountain with the commandments. Everyone would have read the commandments and said, "Oh, yes, of course," and the problem would have been over. The trouble with the commandments is the commandments are fine, but no one has ever paid much attention to them.
The law, the commandments, are efforts at morality, humility, spirituality and, above all, are efforts at religion, are efforts at trying to do something that will get us right with God. All don't work. Therefore God, as Jesus speaks of Him, doesn't risk trying to save the world by human good behavior. The Pharisee's mistake, therefore, is not that he is saying something that it is just proud or a little bit arrogant, but that what he is saying is dead wrong. His goodness is irrelevant to the problem that he is talking about. Therefore, God says that the tax collector who simply looks at his shoe tips and says, "I'm no good," is justified. Now, why?
The point is that this parable is about death and resurrection. It is not about morality, spirituality or anything else. It is about the fact that both the Pharisee and the Publican (the tax collector), are dead ducks. The Pharisee is a very high class kind of dead duck, but they are both dead as far as being able to reconcile with God is concerned. The point about all of this is that the reconciliation God has in mind for them is totally dependent on their death.
Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works. Jesus taught His disciples for three years. They never caught on to very much at all. God has been teaching the world for a millennia. The world hasn't done anything much about it. The tragedies go on. The lies go on. The nonsense goes on. The twaddle goes on. All the things that are wrong with the world go on. They are not amenable to talk. They are only amenable to action and, therefore, Jesus came to raise the dead -- meaning by deadness, you in your deadness, the Pharisee in his deadness and the tax collector in his deadness.

Again, I ask you the question. Do you like that? Once again the answer is no you don't like that because here is this terrible tax collector who is really a monstrous character and probably rubs salt in everybody's wounds. He drives around in a stretch limo with a case of Chivas Regal in the back of the trunk and several very expensive call girls with him at all times. He has just been skimming the cream off his neighbor's milk money. The point is that the Pharisee is no less dead than that dreadful character.
So I want you to turn the parable around a little bit. Just imagine what it is like to see how the Pharisee is so wrong. Imagine God sitting in the temple at a golden card table in a golden chair and in come these two characters. The Pharisee comes across the temple and God is very busy. He is creating the universe out of nothing. He is holding the stars in their courses. He is reconciling all the generals in the Pentagon and the street walkers in Times Square and the drug addicts asleep in doorways. He is making the hair on my head grow, slowly at this point. He is doing all these things and He is very busy.
Up comes this character, this Pharisee, and he whips out a pack of cards and he does a couple of one-handed cuts and an accordion shuffle and bridges them and fans them out for God and says, "Pick a card. I want to play cards with you."
God folds the deck back up and He says, "Don't play me."
So the Pharisee says, "No, no. I've been very lucky lately. Let's play Black Jack."
He deals God a king and an ace and God pushes the card away and says, "Look, I don't want to take your money. You can't play with me. The odds are always on the house here and besides, no matter how full you think your deck is, you haven't got a full deck and you can never win playing this game of cards with me. So why don't you just be like that fellow over there who is looking at his shoes and the two of you go over and have a free drink and enjoy yourselves because you can be home free here if you will only stop this nonsense of trying to sell me, trying to win over me, trying to get an arm up on me, to do something to me to prove that you are okay. I don't care that you are not okay. I will raise you from the death of your lack of okayness. I will raise you up. Just trust me. That fellow over there, all he said was he was no good. He threw himself in trust on me. He's home free because all the dead are home free in my working of the universe, in my reconciliation of the world. All you have to do is recognize that death is the key to your salvation."
Now you ask yourself the question, do you like that version of the parable? Again, you still don't like it. I'll prove you don't like it. Suppose the tax collector goes home justified. All right. You want me to bring him back a week later. So, I'll bring him back. The first trip back, the first week after this original experience, will bring him back with no changes in his life. Same stretch limo, same girls in the back, same expensive scotch and he comes in and he goes through the same routine. He looks at his feet and says, "God, be merciful to me. I am no good."
What will God say to him? Well, in the way Jesus told the parable, God will say the same thing this week He said the week before. He will say, "This man goes home justified because he admits he is dead."
He didn't tell him the first week, "You are justified but don't do it again." He said, "I have raised you from your death. You trust that. All right. Go in peace."
The second week with no changes, the same thing. Do you like that version of the story? No. You don't like that. The rat is getting away with murder. So I will do something else. I'll give you a second version. Bring him back yet the third week for another trip to the temple, but this week bring him back with some change in his life. That is what you are itching for me to say, I think, that you want me to say something that he really needs or change his way, mend his ways at least a little. All right.
So we bring him back the third week. We'll bring him back. He is not driving a stretch limo. He is driving a Hyundai. He only has one girl in the car with him and he is drinking cheaper scotch and giving the difference to the Heart Fund.
Why would God listen to that list of two-bit improvements when He wouldn't listen to the Pharisee's list of really respectable virtues, a really solid citizen? The thing you have to ask yourself is, "Why are you itching to send the Publican, the tax collector, back with the Pharisee's speech in his pocket?"
The answer is we fear salvation that is so cheap that it saves everyone in his or her death. Death. Death of sin, death of disaster, dead of grief. That is where God works. God works in the losers of the world. He works in all of us. What it means, the reason we fear it so much, is that it means in the long run that death is catholic. Death is universal. Death gets us all, and if death is the only ticket anyone needs into the reconciliation in Jesus and if everybody has that ticket, then God has no taste. God is vulgar. God is indiscriminate. God is immoral. He lets in Hitler because He forgives Hitler's sins. He does, in Jesus. He lets in my brother-in-law. He lets in me. He lets in you. All we have to do is believe it, not earn it.
We have a God, in Jesus' proclamation, a God who couldn't get a union card in the God union, who couldn't make it because we have set up the rules for God. A God has to be a punisher; a God has to be a judge; a God has to be a respectable God. He has to do all the things that enforce morality, and God doesn't. On the cross, in Jesus, He drops dead to the whole subject of sin and shuts up about the whole subject of condemnation. It is over. As St. Paul says in the beginning of the 8th Chapter of Romans: "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
Therefore, this parable is about death and it is about the resurrection from the dead. The point is that death is all of the resurrection that we can know now. The most important thing is that we believe in Jesus. The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and they will live.
I don't believe in resurrection. I don't believe in eternal life. I don't believe in life after death. I don't believe in the hereafter. Those are all opinions. I simply trust Jesus that He will deliver to me as He rose from the dead, He will raise me. Whatever that means, however it works, I trust Him because in His death is my reconciliation and in my reconciliation is my joy in Him.

the Santa Cruz Church

http://www.thesantacruzchurch.com/

"The Greatest Ecstasy..."

"We speak recklessly about the forgiveness of sins, but few pause to consider the indulgent pleasure awarded to those who are in right standing before God. The greatest ecstasy, the greatest state of awe and wonder that has been extended to us is the offer to be fully cleansed and return to the sweet nectar in the bosom of all that God is.
Oh the bliss of him whose guilt is pardoned, and his sin forgiven! Oh the bliss of him whom the Eternal has absolved, whose spirit has made full confession.
—Psalm 32:1-2, Moffatt"

From The Ecstasy of Loving God by John Crowder

 

"Limitless Possibilities of The New Creation..."

"At the first sip of the Good News we come face to face with the realities and limitless possibilities of the New Creation.
A Christian is altogether new and enjoys a joy-filled life in a new world. Christians are set free not only from sin and its effects, but are also set free from themselves!
This is how the Distilled Bible describes our new existence:
I consider myself as having died and now I am enjoying a second existence which is simply Jesus using my body.
—Galations 2:20, Distilled Bible"

From The Happy Gospel by Ben Dunn

End of the school year

This was such a great school year for me.  Last year, when we were living in GA, I was so isolated and homeschooling just added to that.  I asked God for a good net-work for my next year and that is just what he gave me.  After we moved to California, I asked some of my old friends with children if there were any home-school groups around the area, one friend recommended one that met once a week, provided all the curriculum except math and science and corrected all the papers!  It sounded perfect so I checked it out and found out that they met across the street from our house!  God is so good! 



So any way, the year was great, Jonas and Maile went to the school and I kept Nova back and worked on her reading a bit more.  They learned about medieval time period, so at the end of the year the put on a medieval feast, this is them at their feast.  We also dressed up and John was able to wear his monk robe for another occasion other than a meeting:)

I

I really do enjoy teaching them at home, even on my harder days I am so grateful of all the time I have had to learn with them and get to know them as individuals, I can honestly say that I, a high school drop-out, unorganized, so NOT a type A personality, has some very well educated kids.  It is pretty rewarding.
Covenant Family Tutorial This is the school, awesome teachers and wonderful families.

Road trip across country, west to east and back again

John started the trip out with the two younger ones, Nova and Ezekiel, he equipped them with cowboy gear as they were headed out into the wild, wild west.  I Would join him later in Atlanta with Jonas while we finished school and then Maile would meet us even later so she could be in a ballet performance she was lead role in.  As the kids get older we are learning to adjust to things that are important to them, it seemed to all work out:)  John did great with the two little guys, they would send clips of them driving, or eating bar B-Q, they were so funny together.  He would bring them to meetings and they would "help" preach.  At one point ezekies had spray painted the back steps of a pastors house, this is where I would have come in handy:)





The trip was awesome and our best across country trip yet, no sickness or any major drama (except I did accidentally black out and drive us all into Canada without our passports whilst viewing Niagara Falls, we got back over the border though.)

After hours (sometimes 8 hours a day) in the car, I found creative ways to get out my kids wiggles.  Rock climbing gyms or walls can be found in most cities.  This gym is in Minneapolis.  I would also hit the pool of course at our hotel.

I love scaling the country with my children, we all learn how small this world really is, how possible it is to travel every crevasse finding and discovering all the beauty this sweet world has to offer.  I love how we get to see all the spectrums of life, from coast to coast, seeing how different people live from cities to farm land from east to west.  People are so cool!

Here our kids are dancing in a sweet church in Kansas where the kids outnumber the adults, not something you often find in the west coast.  It feels so vibrant and alive to experience such a common joy in parenting and worshiping God together with our children.  I loved my time in Kansas.

Our favorite of the stops, after weeks of ministering at dozens of churches, countless hours of driving, we ended in Durango, CO.  This would have to be, by far the most beautiful states I have seen, and I have seen all 50!  We were blessed with horseback riding and a private cabin on a natural reserve where we encountered Elk and John even spied a mountain lion!  It was a rejuvenating couple of days.


We ended our trip in the Grand Canyon, for my birthday.  The sense of vastness is so enriching for us all ( I am just glad we didn't loose Ezekiel over the edge.

A

Awe and wonderment is good for the spirit at any age, nothing like Gods creation to send us spinning!

easter on the road

For the last three years we have spent Easter on the road, forgoing the traditional holiday activities ( not that conventional holidays are a huge value for our family) We do like to celebrate every childhood moment that makes life special, especially if it involves games and of course celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.

This year Easter was celebrated at a road stop on our way from IL to KS, complete with egg hunt ( from eggs we died in the hotel room) and a bunny cake (very spiritual I know) I had purchased at a local store.  It was a sweet day, and at least the photos make it look like the kids had a "normal Easter".  I have learned to let go of a lot of "Ideals" as I raise my children on the road.  I think I always knew we would have an unconventional life :)

on the road again

From the time our youngest, Ezekiel, was two months old our family of six has been on a somewhat Nomadic journey.  We left Alaska, our home of seven years, and were literally catapulted into international ministry.  Since our Alaska Exodus in 2005 we have traveled to most of the fifty states, multiple countries and countless cities as a family.  We have so many humorous, crazy memories of being on the road exploring, visiting, and preaching the gospel. 



John Travels mostly on his own, although it is a constant desire of his to never be away from me and the kids.  This month we will join him on our eleventh tour as a family

Destinations: Texas, Atl. GA, Charlotte NC, NY, Tolland CT, Zion IL, twin cities, Kansas City, Durango Co......and more in-between.