The month of Adar

We have been on a journey with our spiritual family here in Kansas City for nearly 2 years now.  What I can liken the journey up to this point to is having been on a wonderful adventure through hills, valleys, up and down mountains, fording streams, climbing trees, digging ditches, growing weary, being rejuvenated, growing weary again, questioning lots of things and experiencing God's grace along the way.

Where we are now I can liken to having "finished" the previous adventure as we came to a cross-roads and had to choose between continuing on the same path, or embarking on a "new" path, which really turns out to be the Ancient Paths...the paths God has been leading us to all along in His perfect timing.  

We chose the Ancient Path...we chose to follow Him into His calendar, which is the lunar calendar, and we chose to align ourselves with His days, weeks, months, seasons and years.  I've known God is an orderly God, but our journey into all of this has uncovered an orderliness to God and a syncronicity that has brought about a peace, a settledness, a joy and challenges like nothing ever experienced before.  

We are smack dab in the middle of Adar I in the year 5774, and I could not be more excited about what God is doing and how He is transforming my thinking, my life, my heart, my soul, and our marriage.  The word Adar means "strength", and this is a month to get into the celebration mode of ending certain seasons of our lives.  It's also a month to overturn worry and root out depression and despair so faith can break through into our thought processes. (From A Time to Advance by Chuck Pierce).

Of course there is much more to this month, but these are the things that God has highlighted to me and is speaking to me about through His Word, the Bible, and in our prayerful conversations together.  This is a key month because what is broken off as well as what is set in place in our lives in this month will set the stage for the rest of the year.  

I've found that in my life and sometimes in my interactions with my fellow believers that we are "excited about this next conference" or "can't wait to hear this speaker come to our church"; we go, we listen, and then what?  We talk about it for a while, maybe apply some of the principles, and then we are looking forward to the "next thing".  I'm not saying those are bad things, but when I read Scripture, I don't see that being the primary mode of operating in the early church.  

The early church, and the pattern set up there was first about loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Also, as we look at the whole of Scripture, the first "church", so to say, was God, Adam and Eve in the garden.  Throughout the Scriptures, home is and was the center of spiritual life.  Our western culture has moved it outside of the home an into a building where we "go" to get fed.  Meanwhile, the enemy has wreaked havoc in the home, destroying families and the home structure so we look to "St. Elsewhere" to be our "spiritual home".  

Can you imagine the transformations that would begin if home became the center of spiritual life again, and every time someone walked in your home, the first thing they said was, "Wow, there is such peace and joy here!  There is such a sense of rest!"  

Just this weekend, an old friend came to our home for an appointment with another friend of ours, a naturpath, and this old friend stayed after her appointment just to hang out and talk.  The Lord was so present in our time together as we shared, laughed, cried, encouraged one another; she made mention of the peace in our home.  That is God's presence, and nearly everyone who walks through our door makes a comment about how peaceful and restful our home is.  

I am not poo-pooing "going to church"...no way.  We still gather on Sunday mornings with other believers, but that is not the "mainstay" of our spiritual walk, nor are we "dependent" upon it.  I think of the plethora of nations where the only place believers in Yeshua can meet is in homes because it's illegal to meet publically.  Stories of exponential growth in the Body of Christ are pouring forth from those nations.  

I'm just excited to share that as we walk out God's calendar, His ancient paths, celebrating what He has deemed important to celebrate, we find Him.  What more do we need?