Christ All In All

Christ, All In All

Colossians 3:11

11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

I am learning, watching, observing, waiting, listening, meditating, seeing, hearing, praying, worshipping. Through it all, I come back to ONE THING and ONE WAY - Jesus Christ.

We are off center. So off-center as Christians that we preach ideas, things, doctrines, thoughts, tradition, and so on and so on. Yet we don't actually preach the living reality of Christ Jesus. Him I want to preach. Him I will preach. He is reality. Over the past year I have made a turn-around to see how much of what I said was often focused on the peripherals, rather than Christ. Be it a conference revelation, a search for an angelic visitation, a new found glory or some such thing - they seemed to take the focus off of the simplicity of Christ and put it on someone or something else. I got lost but now I found Him and will continue to seek Him and Him alone. In Him is found everything I need.

He is the center of the wheel, so to speak and all else are the spokes coming off of the wheel. Rivers of Eden is bent on preaching Jesus Christ and His magnificence, His awesomeness (is that a word?), His majesty, His glory. As I think of it I am lost in the revelation of who He is and what He will reveal about Himself. He is all in all and He is in me.

On our recent visit to Italy, I kept thinking of the reality of Jesus Christ. Walking in the reality of Him, speaking of Him as reality. He is enough. So desperately people need Him.  2012 - He will be our focus in all we say and all we do. He is all in all. Is He all in all for you?

The simplicity of Christ Jesus being all in all and all in you settles you DOWN into Him. Do you get what I am saying?  You are standing on the simplicity of the foundation of Christ Jesus and all He is and all He is in you. I am pondering all that it means. For in Him is the reality of my life. As I move in the world but not of the world I move in Him. As I listen to the cacophony of noise around me, I listen to only Him. He speaks through the chaos and He is clear and sure and real. He is reality. He is reality. That is the surety of the revelation I am seeking with every fiber of my being, for I have nothing else. Nothing else satisfies but Him and I see that in Him is everything.

While in one church service, sitting in the back, I watched and observed. I saw that in the preaching there was a lot of talk about Jesus, around Jesus, above Jesus but the reality of who He was seemed somewhat evasive. It seemed to me that they could preach about Jesus BUT they did not know Him deeply or intimately because what was reflected in their words were just words and not LIFE IN CHRIST. Our revelation is a mixture of stuff without the reality of the person. You can preach like this your entire life and never quite hit the mark. They seemed to miss the mark as many sermons do when the message is centered on the peripheral and not Him. I am not saying I know it all, but my eyes are being opened to see Him and know Him NOW and all flows from that NOW and in the FUTURE.

Once again, He is the wheel and the spokes come forth from the wheel. Paul says it best:

Colossians 1:15-18

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

We seek solutions to problems when we should seek Him. We seek a new experience when we should seek Him. We get bored and want something greater when He is enough and we should seek Him.

These are my thoughts for the day and more are coming, much more. 

Entitlement: Stirs Up A Lot Of Contention

Entitlement = belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges; the state or condition of being entitled; a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.

This word started running through my spirit when I started seeing the contention that often ran through threads on Facebook. Someone starts to write something and then 92 comments later, there are developing arguments, various opinions, defensive postures, and so much more. Here's the deal.

YOU CAN'T SAY EVERYTHING THAT COMES TO YOUR MIND JUST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE ENTITLED TO SPEAK. YOU ARE NOT GIFTED WITH A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT TO SPEAK BECAUSE YOU CAN OR BECAUSE YOU FEEL YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK.

I am an expert on this topic. Wow, did I say that? You bet I did. What makes me an expert? I, Debra Westbrook, in seasons past, have been the perpetrator of strife and contention due to a loose tongue. Why? Because I simply felt that I could. Selah.

Well, I can't and neither can you. Sometimes we just have to shut up and submit to a designated word that comes forth without any opinion on our part to debate it, argue over it because we want to prove our point. I am so tired of that and this is simply to perhaps call us into check to walk in wisdom when we speak and speak with wisdom and grace.

There is true designated spiritual authority rising up in the Body of Christ. I know that word 'authority' has been abused and misused but God still moves through designated authority that brings order into a chaotic spiritual house. We are not entitled to speak everything we see or hear. None of us are. Yet, the Internet has raised up many people to perpetrate arguments and disagreements based upon a self-imposed authority to rule, lead and reign with their words. Yet they walk in a misplaced sense of virtue because God has not sent them.

I am not talking about discussion but about contention in this blog I am writing. Discussion is good, very good. I have seen over and over threads start on Facebook where someone truly speaks a word in due season. Then Christian vultures begin to tear and rip it apart in the name of Christ which is truly sad. They debate theological accuracy. They perpetrate doctrinal safeguards that come across with a self-righteous arrogance. What am I saying? I believe this is teaching me to weigh what I say very carefully AND in doing that, God will perform the words I speak when they are His words. I am not afraid of confrontation. I love confrontation when it is from God for in spiritual confrontation. we are changed and challenged to grow. But I do disagree with contention.

I see this as a deep problem right now. What is it? Well, it is many things but one thing I see is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. So many people talking and talking without listening. They feel that they just can say anything. What kind of parents would allow their children to do that? Not us. Not us. There are too many rebellious children in the house of God and 'Spiritual parenting' is needed in wisdom and grace. I see the need for it and I see that is one of the calls on our life. No we are not taking the place of God for right away someone will try to debate whether parenting is needed and challenge these words. I am saying that much wisdom is needed right now and so true spiritual authority and eldership must arise, whatever age, gender, or culture they come from.

Here is a solution to this problem. We want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. We, Marvin and I, have been called by God to walk in this ministry in wisdom and grace. We are in the position of eldership and we walk in that calling. We will work with rebellious people, confrontive people, contentious people, angry people, etc. I have just described a lot of the Body of Christ and not just the world. They simply need to be taught, and listened to and given boundaries and guidelines in how to live a Christian life, loving Christ and taking personal responsibility to walk in His will and His ways. I am excited about this and just wanted to blog about it today. The Body is crying out with deep groaning for leadership to lead. I will do that and now we are seeking those who will follow. That is why we are in Finland to develop this recording studio and so much more - Italy, Poland, Africa.

These are just some words today of what I feel AND I feel this very deeply. Lead on Jesus! I love to stir it up. Always have and always will BUT now I want to do this in wisdom and watch God fulfill His words His way. Hey guys, be quick to listen and slow to speak. When you speak weigh your words and speak with wisdom and grace. Am I saying this? I can see Marvin laughing when he reads this because this is indeed a miracle in my life AND I LIKE IT. Selah. :)

The Cultural Intrusion of Perfection

Picture this. You are in a closed circular room. All around you are flashing pictures, sounds, voices, and every sort of media message that intrudes upon your life throughout your day. The room is darkened so as to add impact to the consistent bombardment of your mind and your senses with these messages. You stand in this room, representing your life, and are mesmerized at the way these things attempt to form or conform you to their message or method.

What is being said? The subliminal message is simple. YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It is the pervasive statement behind each picture, spoken word, or every sound. The pervasive statement subliminally reaching you speaks to the fact that you will never measure up so you need SOMETHING or SOMEONE or SOMEWHERE for you to reach some state of nirvana where you will be pleased with your life and yourself.

Then suddenly you have had enough. You can’t OPT OUT of life because you are in it – living moving and being.  But there is a more excellent way. In fact the way is a person. The way is Jesus Christ. So, in this room, the roof suddenly lifts off and up. You look up and see the glorious sky, filled with freedom, adventure and possibility. It is glorious, awesome and wonderful. The sky is freedom, a true longing in your heart to rise above that that is constantly bombarding you day by day. Freedom destroys the lie that cries out to you each day to measure up to some nebulous idea of what life should be like or could be like. But know this. You have NO LIFE without Christ Jesus because all life is in Him and through Him and for Him. So folks, the sky is the limit and the possibilities are endless and boundless in Him. So you are a child of the here and now but an eternal being living in two places by the Spirit IN CHRIST. In other words, you are in the world but not of the world.

But let’s get back to the messages that surround you each day through news reporting, social media, TV, and on and on. It is staggering and overwhelming to think about it. At least it is for me or was for me.  I lived life with a deep root of rejection that has been healed in Christ. For years, those subliminal messages impacted me deeply. My sense of who I was or why I was or where I was in the here and now seemed to elude me on a daily basis. Until Jesus. Now the sky is the limit. Eternity is my home. I am just passing through BUT I am living in the here and now. So now I simply reject that which does not align with the Living Word and His way for me. It is a process my friends. There is complete freedom in Christ.

The cultural intrusion of perfection surrounds us each and every day and it is getting worse. It is fueled by greed trying to sell a new concept, a new product, and a new message. But, mark my words; there is greed behind it. Someone is trying to make money and intrude on your life to be better, smarter, more beautiful, skinnier, younger, more active, more vital. The list is endless but it is the product of demonic subterfuge to get you to believe that you need more than Jesus Christ.

Jesus is enough AND it is only as we enter into His perfection that we find ourselves going from glory to glory to glory, from faith to faith to faith. Then, the impact of this world grows strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace NOW.

Perfection is an illusion. The existing religious church is a perpetrator, alongside the world in this crime of deception. The crime is trying to keep you blinded from the reality of the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ and what has already been accomplished FOR YOU so that His life and can flow THROUGH YOU.

Religion wants you to constantly work for what has already been given to you in Christ. There is a subliminal message that says you have to do such and such to gain any standing in Christ AND you are tied to the minister with a message. You go to church each week fervently and religiously working your way to being good so that you can attain a measure of peace which will never come and constantly eludes you. So you leave ‘church’ still feeling unloved or unwanted but putting a smiling face on and perpetrating your lie of self-righteousness on an unsuspecting world that needs Jesus. But, they can’t find Him in you because you are not free.

It is also clear to me that the charismatic prophetic thing going on in past years and even now walks in a measure of distortion because the focus is on something or someone or some place that you need to partake of to be perfected and made whole. Its message is also indeed subliminal because it wants you to buy books, CD’s, conferences, revivals or some such thing to add to Christ and His finished work. It entices you with the thought that He is not enough and you need something more than what is found in Christ.

Look around and you can see it. Books on prayer, how to get healed, how to prophesy, how to pray. Conferences that were focused on gold dust, angels, prophecy and a lot of hype at times. Revivals that were advertised worldwide as the place to BE or BE SEEN were touted as the next big thing, which we all needed. The focus is on the method and a distorted message instead of the simplicity that is found in Christ. The nebulous IT becomes the focus rather than Christ to sell more books or finance more conferences. The prophetic movement wants to entice at times with its new revelation of endless words that seem to constantly be spoken but never materialize in reality. They sell good books and gain star-status for many ministers but in the end, they are void of life because the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. How often in times past did I go to a prophetic conference to find out that I had to seek out angels, discover glory dust, shake, laugh, discover how to get new revelation, buy the book, join the email list etc. etc. Yet all of that was subliminally saying to me that there was something that needed to be added so that I could be perfected in the prophetic or the charismatic but not IN CHRIST. I left feeling elated and euphoric for a measure of time but then, like an addiction, needed a new fix to get me going.

Now I have a LOT to say about this and it is time so this is just the beginning. My desire is to see people set free. I have repented for that which I am responsible in doing in times past that may have caused confusion. This is just the start of a new beginning for me. Truth sets you free. I am seeking TRUTH in the person of Christ and with that comes it all. I am accepting it all IN CHRIST and that which gives Him glory and honor and praise. He alone is preeminent. (I love that word.) He stands at the center of my life and everything I am and all I do and will become is centered on Him. Then I have discovered all else flows. So let the river flow. Not in the proverbial charismatic way but in the real way. Through me as I discover Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Okay, so back to perfection now and in the coming days as revelation is given to me. It will be given to me and I give it to you to go farther and deeper in Him so that you find yourself- not me. I have to find me in Him. You go find yourself in Him. I will just help you on the journey.

Perfection is an illusion. So why try? Find Him and be perfected in what He has already done not what you can do. The greatest self-discovery you will ever make is the one that says you can do nothing without Him. You are nothing without Him. Nothing. Dark. Empty. Void. Does that hurt your ego or significance? I hope so because until you lose yourself and all your preconceived notions of who you ARE you can never find you ARE IN HIM. The journey begins……….

We are in Finland. Time to write. Time to go the nations. Time to record. Time to write books. Time to preach. IN HIM.

The Proverbial "They:

Don’t get thrown off by this title and wonder where this is going – keep reading.

Thinking today. It’s a good thing to think and meditate in a world filled with excessive noise and chaos. There is life in that place of thinking on the Lord and it is quite exciting and exhilarating to encounter new ideas and revelation IN CHRIST. When we spend time with Him, we see reality IN HIM and He is IN US and we are IN HIM. Jesus Christ is reality and He is truth. See yourself in Him; despite weakness and perhaps failure, He is enough. Okay so here I go.

The proverbial “they”.

Proverbial = traditional, time honored, legendary, well known so as to be stereotypical. For example a statement like “I am going to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.” 

The proverbial ‘they’ is that thing, those people, that idea, those time honored thoughts, those traditions that influence our life in a myriad of ways, yet ‘they’ is hard to define.

Keep thinking and stretching. I find that Christians often times equate spirituality with a nebulous trust with no wisdom. God gave us a brain so we must use it. Everything does not come in 10-second sound bytes. Think. Think. Think.

Who are they? And why do we listen to they?

Well if you have lived in the States for any length of time, you must know that ‘they’ are…….well let me give you some examples.

They say it will rain.

They say the economy is getting worse.

They say gas prices will go up.

They say that it’s never been done that way.

They say.

They say.

They say you’re too thin.

They say you’re too fat.

They say eggs are not good for you.

They say eggs are good for you.

They say you’re too old.

They say you’re too young.

They say you are under qualified.

They say you are overqualified.

They say you are too dumb, too smart, too emotional, not emotional enough and on and on and on.

Are you getting the picture? I hope so. Have the “theys’ ruled your life from afar. Who are ‘they”? They are thoughts, people, ideas, information that comes to us from a distance or are ‘out there’ that interject their opinions into our lives with negativity, discouragement, disdain and limitations that can paralyze us from walking in our destiny. This is true whether one is a Christian or not. “They” try to form our path from the smallest to the largest areas of our life. “They” try to conform us to a path of conformity where we don’t allow ourselves to be creative and challenge the status quo. No more for me folks. We live our lives by one standard – Jesus Christ and IN HIM everything is possible. He is the Living Word that sustains me and gives me life.

At every stage of my life, as a Christian, I have had to overcome the magnetic pull of ‘They said” or “They think”.  “They” tried to direct my path, form my destiny, forge my future through subtly telling me what can or cannot be done. They hand down traditions of why I can’t do it, or conformity that says I shouldn’t do it and to just fit in. Are you as tired of what “they say” as I am? Are you following me or totally confused at this point? Oh well, I get it and it’s my blog. Just kidding!!!

The call to me as a Christian and for this ministry is one of freedom, creativity, and breakthrough IN CHRIST. “They” have tried to keep me from finding that over the years in many different ways.

Conferences where “They said” – “Come forward everyone under 30 for God is going to shift the mantle and use this young generation for His purpose.”

I said “Hello I am still waiting for that breakthrough and it is NOW upon me and they are telling me that I missed it and God is going for those under 30?”

A well known prophet says “God has told me to anoint those under 40 with a new mantle and to pass this mantle to the next generation.”
I said “Wow now it’s 40. I thought it was 30.”

“They said” to me that I was too loud, too passionate, too expressive and that I must quiet down and fit in.

I said “But God isn’t this how you made me?”

I can give you more examples. In fact I will.

“They said” to me in subtle variations of tone “Can’t she just fit in? Why does she always cause trouble everywhere she goes?”

I said “Oh my why is it I stir things up everywhere and it appears to be wrong. Is there something innately wrong with me? Did you make a mistake God?”

“They said” in more ways than one “You are not spiritual enough if you don’t have encounters with gold dust, angels talking to you, shaking quaking, laughter, getting drunk. That defines those who are truly spiritual from those who are not. Read my books on my latest encounter with angels. Come to my conference and let me lay hands on you to release a new mantle.”

Okay I best stop now because I can write a book on this one.

Experience alone has shown me that I can address this and speak on it more and more and more. I am tired of standards that limit us in Christ. I am weary of unwritten codes of law both religious and Charismatic law that say I somehow don’t measure up. So I am done. I am neither rebellious nor independent but NOW I SEE that it is come full circle and it had to come this way. In fact, there was NO OTHER WAY. I had to SEE that Jesus Christ is enough. In Him, in the finished work of the cross and the power of the blood is the way of life and union with Him. Everything else is not necessarily bad but it is not what THEY SAY but what HE SAYS. I will stop here…….Selah.