JimHennesy.com
More than just a weekly e-mail
Enter In!
July 1st, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”
Usually this verse is quoted as an invitation to salvation, appropriately so. But the door remains available in every circumstance. This is a picture of the life we are to live as God’s children - entering in every day, for everything. Trouble in your body, enter in. Trouble in your mind, enter. Trouble involving circumstance, enter. Some see salvation as a water-tight compartment, an aquarium. Once you enter, personal liberty is destroyed. Not true! Life with Jesus is in and out. There is always movement bringing us to pasture. Last week, my daughter Katee faced a difficult issue. I watched her take the issue through the Door. She pushed her way into the peace she expected to find from Jesus. When I grow up, I want to be like her. « Read the rest of this entry »
Would You Turn Back?
June 25th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
What do you want? God is intrigued with our desires. Sifting out the disciples from the crowd is never pleasant. Some followers had not gone so far with Christ that turning back remained possible. “They went back.” But Peter had gone too far, too long. There is a stage in spiritual experience where we do not see the hand of God as we “want,” we do not feel the joy of the Lord like the early walk. We live without exhilaration, yet too far to go back. It involves a kind of funeral, where we die again to our self will and desire to control, in order to find (not just “believe,” but “know”) our heart committed. In the first part of spiritual walking, we enthusiastically make the list of bad things we avoid for Jesus. The harder part is putting all things with His stamp, image, and ownership. The funeral often involves death to many good things in order to turn natural life into the anointed life of the Spirit. Would you “turn back” in marketplace, marriage, giving, forgiving… Does your schedule turn back? Or do the daily aspects of your life “know” He is the Christ? What do you most desire? « Read the rest of this entry »
An Undisturbed Heart
June 13th, 2008 by Jim
Hello Everyone,
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing. I will sing to you among the nations. For your mercy reaches unto the heavens and Your truth unto the clouds.
My cloudy, stormy days are invaded by His truth.
When Jesus asks us to believe in Him, He makes an enormous demand. To believe, trust, is to bank confidence in Him, to stake our lives, attitudes, plans, upon His honor. I know whom I have believed. We pray for the Lord to increase our faith and we try to pump up current levels of faith, but seldom with any other results than frustration and sometimes condemnation. Often the missing “ingredient” is a new level of surrender. Will I deliberately stake the confidence of my soul on what He says? It feels like a moral decision to honor God by believing Him in the midst of storms and clouds. In other words, sometimes believing God is the hardest thing we do. Not because we don’t want to, just because it’s hard to imagine the complications of life connected to the revelation of God by which we live. We so easily use religious jargon, we talk about believing in God, but our actual life proves that we do not believe 10% of what we claim. Let not your heart be troubled…believe also in Me.
What would an undisturbed heart look like to this present place? How would life feel if we trusted in the love of God toward us? « Read the rest of this entry »
Be Confident…
June 4th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
But the prayer of the upright is His delight.
Interesting to me that we have the ability to influence the mood of God’s heart. I guess if you think about it, nothing challenges my joy and provokes my anger like the behavior of my children. One more reason to pray, God’s delight. Tell me about your time with God. Do you relish it? Is it labor? Do you pray at a certain time each day? What is the benefit?
I think for me, prayer becomes climate for trust. When I am afraid, I do my best praying (most earnest). But Jesus has the right to expect of me an “understanding confidence” in Him throughout the routines and surprises. Seems to me, God expects us to be so confident in Him that we are the reliable ones in any crisis. Sometimes, our trust goes to a certain point and then unravels. We return to elementary panic prayers like people who don’t know God’s character. We live at wits’ end, showing the true colors of our heart, failing to trust His orchestration of our lives and His government of the world. We find Him asleep during the storms that threaten us so we accuse Jesus of not caring. “O ye of little faith!” How frustrating to realize we could have brought great joy to the heart of God, remaining absolutely confident in Him during the crisis. If we had been learning to worship God and trust Him, the storm (giant) would reveal our willingness to go to a place of deep trust rather than admit our lost confidence in Him. Pray…to His delight. It is breath and blood. « Read the rest of this entry »
We MUST Live in the Presence!
May 30th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him and said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.
I’m impressed with what happens when people come in contact with Jesus. What we learn from Zach, what we must know, is that everyone and anyone can be saved. It is utterly important that our faith attach to this reality, that Jesus saves…anyone. Think of someone you know who is frozen in sin, boiling in bitterness…they live with no conviction of sin, taking pleasure in dishonor and thievery. They aren’t troubled by their condition and no amount of nagging can persuade them to change. They remain totally indifferent to you or your persuasions. But what if we learn to bring Jesus to their place? What if we learned how to introduce the atmosphere of the Lord Jesus around those hard hearts? As soon as Jesus comes to the place, something happens. In the case of Zach, he stood and gave half his goods to the poor; some victims of his crimes received restoration fourfold. Notably, no one told him he should. No one was talking to him about his wrongs. Zach simply awakened to the presence of Jesus and he knew more about his condition than all the previous lectures. We must live in the Presence. We must find a way to bring tax collectors to the place of Jesus. « Read the rest of this entry »
Faith & Common Sense
May 20th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey and be planted in the sea. It would obey you.
Common sense and faith hardly ever work together. One, of course, is furnished by ideas based on experiences and how we relate to the natural world while the other rests in “revelation sense,” a spiritual domain. Yet, the goal of faith is for the ideal to be made real, to prove in practical expressions and experience what (who) God is. Faith is always active to put the revelation of Jesus and His accomplishments in context of daily circumstances. It works like this, “Jesus, you have said ‘this’ (seek first the kingdom of God and all these things are added)…” and it looks ridiculous to my common sense. But I am going to venture on Your Word. Thus begins the fight to live by faith. It is always a fight to bring faith into its real expressions. Until this happens…until faith is seen in mulberry trees and diseases and marriages and businesses, Jesus remains abstract; just inspiration, not King of everything. « Read the rest of this entry »
The Promises of God
May 16th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Do we really believe the promises of God? Does your mind battle between a natural, normal course of fear or a redeemed course of confidence in the promises and provisions of God? The key is not saying what God says, but teaching myself to respond to what God says with sayings of my own. For instance, when He says “I will never leave you nor forsake you”…we then boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear.” There is always a “therefore” associated with spirit of revelation. Like this: “O Lord, I will praise you though you were angry with me…Behold, God is my salvation…THEREFORE, with joy draw water from wells of salvation.” It’s point, counterpoint. The revelation of God requires from us our own declarations and determinations. If God says something to you about Himself, listen. Then respond. « Read the rest of this entry »
If You Believe…I Can Help
May 9th, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.
The bedrock of Jesus’ kingdom is not sincerity or resolve, but utter recognition that what we ought to do we cannot. Jesus does wonderful things for the person who enters the kingdom through recognition of need, poverty. I love the moment when the father of the demon-possessed son asked for help and Jesus said, “If you believe, I can help.” In transparent honesty, the man replied, “I need help believing.” Jesus said I can work with that, and healed his son. « Read the rest of this entry »
Pursuing His Presence
February 29th, 2008 by Jim
Dear Friends,
Hebrews 10:25 “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
This is Pastor Tim, pinch-hitting for Pastor’s weekly ‘Message from Pastor’ e-mail.
Pastor and Becky are in Mexico this week meeting with a group of spiritual leaders around the world. They will return this weekend in time for Pastor Hennesy to deliver a powerful message this Sunday entitled, “Riddance of Religion.”
« Read the rest of this entry »
Changing the World
February 21st, 2008 by Jim
Hello, Everyone!
For you have armed me with strength for the battle. You have subdued under me those who rose up against me. You have delivered me from striving.
The unifying principle of God’s kingdom is “use.” “For everyone who has, more will be given.” but the increase comes to those who use what is given.
If I were a parent with children participating in Kids in Action, even preschool, and I realized an incredible move of God seemed to be occurring in the “adult” services I would occasionally bring my son or daughter into the place where I encountered God. « Read the rest of this entry »