I made a deal with God I'd get up at five o'clock every morning and pray for an hour - as if God's more impressed with somebody who prays at 5am, versus somebody who prays at 9am; as if God is impressed with anything really. God is impressed with Jesus - that's about it.
So I made this deal with God. I would strive and strive and strive, and it was all because I was hallowing something in secret, so I was manifesting it in public.
I had to learn to change my imaginations around God. I had to learn to change my thoughts around God. I had to learn to start thinking about truth in a different way, because it wasn't working. My life wasn't working.
I was becoming a minister, and I had all the talent in the world - but I wasn't ministering in the Disposition of Messiah, because I was putting things on people that were really my issue.
I was putting my guilt on people when I preached. It's very dangerous when you have a talent because, with the gift and calling of God, without repentance - you can mess it up like nobody's business - and God's gift is still on your life.
You can really mess some folks up. I got myself into a situation where I could minister powerfully, yet walk away, and I knew that I had missed God, because there was something missing.
What it was missing was: the compassion, the grace, the slow-to-anger, the abounding-in-love God. I was ministering in the same way that the old school Pentecostals used to minister to me. I'd walk away feeling guilty and bad, and it was the only think I knew; I hallowed it in secret and manifested it in public.
One of the things that really helped me change my imagination around that was this: starting to see the Bible through the filter of a wedding. The idea that: God actually wants to marry me.
He calls us the ‘Bride of Christ’ and that's just a concept; but actually the whole Bible is like a wedding manual. It's a wedding proposal - God desperately, desperately wants to connect with me!
I'd never really had that thought. How many of you know if we make a theological bullet point out of something, it's far different than making a heartfelt belief.
Do you realise that Hebrew people ‘feel’ thoughts; Greek people ‘think’ thoughts?
We're all ‘Greek’, because we all come from Europe - and we have an ability to make bullet-point doctrines out of anything.
When I was in Bible College, I wrote my final paper on the attributes of God. I was sitting there writing a paper about the power of God; but all I could think of was: I was hungry - because it was just a bullet point to me.
If we're all ‘saved’, how many of us believe that we've been forgiven of all of our sins? Ok, so all of us believe that - but how many of us have felt guilty in the last two weeks? So we believe something - guilt about something in our past; and we believe that God's forgiven us. We believe it's been wiped off our record; but instead of feeling innocent, we still feel guilty. That's because Greek people think thoughts, Hebrew people feel thoughts.
When a Hebrew person read a scripture like: “you've been recreated in righteousness and true holiness”; they would stop and say: God, what would I feel like, if I could feel innocent in Your sight?
This started changing my imaginations with God. To this day (today, this morning) when I woke up, I didn't get out of bed until I asked God this question: God, what would I feel like today if I could feel innocent before You?
If I hallow innocence in secret, then I'll manifest innocence in public.