Fire On Your Head

This week I combined a few of my favorite things, and on this episode of the podcast we talk about blogging and writing with Chris Wilson, one of the authors of the ChurchMag blog. After getting to know more about the Brit and how he got into political blogging before moving to Ukraine, then eventually Poland, we discuss:

• Blogger versus WordPress
• Niche versus worldview blogging
• Sharing your story and establishing yourself as an authority in your field
• Clickbait tactics and how NOT to come up with good titles for your articles or blog posts
• Spamming your social media followers — an innocent (but annoying!) newbie mistake
• How long should a blog post be?
• How to get your first thousand site visitors
• What I have noticed has been working in the last few months to see a huge boost in traffic to my blog
• Our writing workflow and what tools we use

To subscribe to our podcast, visit this link for options: http://stevebremner.com/subscribe-to-podcast/ Enjoy!

In today's episode of the show, I continue sharing some thoughts, reflections and revelations on the fire of God and getting closer to the purging purifying fire of His presence.

What type of fire are you?

• Is your fire invisible, yet giving off an odor?
• Are you properly adding fuel to your fire, and spending time alone in intimate fellowship with the Father?
• Are you fueling your life with the Word of God and the oil of His presence?
• Are you allowing fresh winds of the Holy Spirit to fan those flames?
• Or are you dabbling with sin in your life so as to remove the oxygen His fire needs?

Let me encourage you to stir up the flames in yourself and one another that we may burn fully aflame for the Lord Jesus Christ! In order to do that, you need to preserve your own fire and keep it burning at all times.

This episode is not for ear tickling, so if you don't want to be challenged, you might as well just delete this episode from your smartphone or podcast app!

The first time the Lord revealed Himself to Moses was in a burning bush. He could have done His appearing in any form He wanted to, but chose this method -- a fire.

Likewise, when the Lord chose to come down and meet the people of Israel for the first time after departing from Egypt, he showed up as thunder, lightning and a thick cloud with a very loud trumpet blast. All of the few million men and women who heard it trembled (see Exodus 19:16-24).

The mountain itself did not speak, but the voice in the midst of the fire did.

It is interesting that at significant times when God showed Himself to people, He showed up in the appearance of fire. To Moses in the bush, to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai as a mountain of fire, and the believers in the upper room in Acts 2 tongues of fire on their heads.

Our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29, Deut 4:24). It's one of His many characteristics. We continue reflecting on the consuming fire of God's presence in this week's episode.

Don't forget to check out Benjamin Nelson's book I mentioned in the show, Encounters With Jesus.

This week I recorded a spontaneous time of sharing my heart with you guys. Since the internet is all abuzz with the fact Creflo Dollar asked the body of Christ to help him buy a $65 million private jet for his ministry, I have mixed reaction. Since this was the type of thing that would take me way too long to sit down and write, and I don't have the time, I figured a podcast would be the best way to do that.

So why does this missionary in a third world country think people need to leave Creflo alone? Or at least examine ourselves as to why we're irked about his request? Listen and find out.

This week we had Jeremy Mangerchine back on the podcast, and we discussed his newest book, The Quitter's Manual: Finding Rest in a World Gone Busy. The last time we had Jeremy on the podcast we discussed hearing the voice of God and tapping into the member of the Trinity who lives within us.

This week we go further and talk about "tapping into rest", and having the peace that surpasses understanding and tapping into the source of divine power (Jesus Christ).

It's all about discovering rest and abidine in the vine.

Visit our guest's website at JeremyMangerchine.com.

Get his books on Amazon:

The Quitter's Manual: Finding Rest in a World Gone Busy

The Longest Bridge Across Water

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lili and I have a campaign on GoFundMe.com to help raise money for our travel expenses later this year. Please visit this link if you'd like to partner with us to help us visit our family and be a blessing to other ministries and churches in North America later this year.

This week I took advantage of an opening when a scheduled interview had to cancel at the last minute, but I think it's a God thing because I've been wanting to share on the podcast these thoughts on the fire of God and spreading a revival all over the earth.

Either repentance will pave the way for revival, or revival will bring to the surface that sin which may be hidden from others’ sight. One cannot see revival without a pure heart, and in the midst of the fire, the dross will come to the surface.

Are you ready?

This week we have a cross-generational chat with our friend who goes by the name Nor'west or Northwest Prophetic on social media.

On this week's show you'll enjoy learning about a man who's pastored several times in the past and has an interesting calling and perspective on the Northwest region of the United States.

Topics covered today:

• Can we see similarities between the "organic movement" during the 70s and the modern day millennials who are disinterested in "institutional" church?
• Do prophecies have multiple fulfillments, like "repeats"?
• How do we process it when credible well-known prophetic leaders have conflicting prophetic words? Is one person right and the other wrong? Or are both hearing pieces of a puzzle that compliment the other's?
• Does the Bible truly say anywhere that a real prophet must have a 100% track record?

Related reading material:

Was Jonah a False Prophet? Was Isaiah a False Prophet? by Steve Bremner NorthWest's recommended reading:

Understanding the Whole Bible, by Dr. Jonathan Welton

Also don't forget to check out the site NorthWestProphetic.com and Pilgrimgram.com.

This week Dave Edwards joins us again, and we began our conversation with absolutely nothing planned, and it turned out to be a longer discussion than normal. Whether that's a good thing or not, we'll let you be the judge.

We begin with asking Dave about what's new with him, and expectation for 2015. He tells us the key to revival is not "waiting for a surprise", but positioning ourselves to be ready and "going for it".

Steve gave Dave four different topics to discuss, and the first one he picked was the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon. We camped here for the next 30 minutes, using it as a springboard to discuss personal holiness and whether Christians need to be careful of what we watch.

Then we transitioned into discussing the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live for a little bit and the pattern/template this entertainment institution has given us for multiple generations, and then discussed the Middle East conflict surrounding ISIS with relation to what role is the Church meant to play, and are we doing it?

Books mentioned in today's show:

God's Generals: The Revivalists, by Roberts Liardon

Open My Eyes, Lord, by Gary Oates

School of the Prophets, by Kris Vallatton

Growing in Prayer, by Mike Bickle

The Passion Translation, by Brian Simmons

"According to the grace of God, given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — each man’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:10-15

We continue today with some thoughts on building the temple of God and His kingdom in the earth. If you’re new to the podcast, we started talking about this a number of episodes ago in one titled “Come Up Out of Babylon”, where I laid out a challenge and exhortation based on the text in Haggai about how very few people returned from Babylonian captivity to rebuild Jerusalem, specifically the temple. I feel this has a prophetic representation about how so few people want to give up their own lives so as to build what God is building in the earth.

But in today's show we talk specifically about the temple, looking at the things Paul says in the New Testament, using a couple of anchor texts. The first one I went through pretty significantly in a chapter of my book The Imperishable Seed of Christ (which is FREE in all major ebook platforms), in the chapter where we talked about the seed grows to become an imperishable Kingdom due to the materials used to construct it.

Are you building use cheap material or costly ones? Are you afraid of man or do you fear the Lord? Are you building something that will survive the "testing with fire"?

If not, you won't enjoy today's challenge.

I've noticed oftentimes there's two camps of people in the church, at least when it comes to the goal of "getting back to New Testament Christianity". There's the one that focuses on the supernatural aspect of how the early church flowed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, healed the sick, performed miracles, signs and wonders and like in the book of Acts, thousands of people were added to the Kingdom of God.

But often times those who focus on the early part of Acts 2, neglect the end of the chapter, which says,

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47, ESV)Then there's the camp that focuses on having "community", but practically balk at the idea of the supernatural and have little interest in flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit like earlier in that same chapter.Today we're going to start talking about combining the two and how we need a supernatural community amongst believers if we're to see results like the early church did in terms of a disciple-making movement in our day.

Enjoy!