Father's House Ministries

A Year of Prayer

fathershouseministries — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:38:05 +0000

I recently had a conversation with the founder of the organization that FH is a part of, Faith Covenant Ministries, and was surprised to hear that one of the areas of focus for FCM in 2012 is prayer. The reason for the surprise is that prayer is also an area or better yet, THE area of focus for FH this year.

We are incorporating more prayer into our gatherings as well as encouraging family and communal prayer outside of our times together at FH.

Candles were passed out the first Sunday of this year and all those in attendance were asked to light the candle as a reminder to pray as well as a sign of solidarity within the ministry.

I encourage those of you who have not been able to attend any of our services this year to join us by lighting your own candle and praying together as families.

Pray for each other, the ministry at FH and the communities which surround Carteret and Craven County. Pray that God would give you a heart like Nehemiah who when he heard about the depraved condition of the city which he loved responded with genuine brokenness. Ask God to give you this kind of heart for your city.

I believe that God will do great things in our communities this year.

We are asking for great things and expecting great things from God.

Note: The leadership of FH is planning a prayer retreat for the month of February. We will have more details soon.

A Message to the Covenant Community of Father’s House

fathershouseministries — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:08:54 +0000

I’m sending this out because I believe very strongly in what will be taking place on Wed. nights over the course of the next few weeks.

I feel directed of God to go back to the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. This is an interruption in the course of study on apologetic but I plan to return to that at a later time.

There are seasons in which God wants to speak something directly into the heart of a community. I believe that between Sunday morning’s study on Ephesians and revisiting the Sermon on the Mount with fresh eyes and new insights on Wed, nights, God will lead us into opportunities for spiritual formation and transformation.

My intention is not to create hype and boost up attendance. I believe that we are in a season where God is causing us to confront ourselves and give us a vision for what we can become in Him. Not just as individuals, but as a community.

I hope that you will take the time to pray about this and respond as the Spirit of God directs you. I know that for most of you this means sacrifice. But this is what we are called to. We are to be a living sacrifice. One that is pleasing and acceptable to God. This is the essence of pilgrimage – a journey into a spiritual trans-formative encounter that will only occur when we move away from the comfortable and familiar.

I’m also asking that you would enter into a season of concentrated prayer and fasting. Asking God to do a deep work in our lives and community. Yes my friends, its come to that!

I will discuss communal aspects of prayer and fasting and encourage participation during each of the services.

May you find yourself desperately needy and from that place encounter the bountifulness of the God who fills all things with His loving kindness and goodness.

In Christ,

Juan J Pulido

No Time for a Break Now!

fathershouseministries — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:07:04 +0000

When God says “It’s time!” you just better hold on because things will start moving at a much faster pace. Everything up to this point was preparation. You trained for this event so run it as if you were going for a PR. Now you get to see how well you trained and how much resolve you have to finish – especially when you hit the wall.
“Run the race to win the prize” – Paul (the Apostle not the Beetle)

Anybody feel like going for a run?

You have purpose and destiny

fathershouseministries — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:36:26 +0000

It doesn’t take long in the New Testament to run into a scandalous event – Judah had Perez (the first Hispanic in the Bible…haha) and Zerah (the mother of Tamar – first scandal). Lineage reminds us that God works through the flaws of humanity to fulfill His purpose and give hope. Salmon had Boaz (his mother was Rahab – second scandal). From a harlot comes a redeemer[foreshadow of Christ] David had Solomon (with Uriah’s wife – third scandal). The final scandal in Matthew’s genealogy is a pregnant virgin! God has an affinity for “disposable people”

Temptation

fathershouseministries — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:04:21 +0000

This week we concentrate on the temptation of Jesus, observing how he responds to the temptation and what we might be able to learn from these responses.

The following is taken from Robert Webber’s book, “Ancient Future Time; Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year”

The church fathers saw the temptation as a turning point in the process of reversing the human situation. For here, the fathers tell us, is the exact counterpart to Adam. Adam yielded to the temptation. Christ overcame the temptation.

Christ not only overcame the temptation for himself, he overcame it for us. Like Adam we face temptation and yield to it. But because Christ became one of us and was fully human in every respect, we can share in his conquering of the evil one.

We express our service to the tempter through our selfishness, ambition, pride, lack of integrity, anger, lack of compassion, willingness to put other people down and in many other ways.

Lent is a time to intentionally confront all the ways the first Adam continues to control our lives, to carry these ways to the cross, to let them be crucified with Jesus, and to bury them in the tomb, never to rise again.

Scripture Readings for the week:
Monday
Temptation of Jesus: Matthew 4:1-11

Tuesday
Made Like Us: Hebrews 2:5-18

Wednesday
Tempted on the Cross: Luke 23:35-43

Thursday
The Great High Priest: Hebrews 4:14-5:10

Friday
“Not my will…”: Matthew 26:36-45

Saturday
Draw near to God: Hebrews 10:19-25

Lent 2011

fathershouseministries — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:51:26 +0000

The season of Lent begins this Wednesday. I’ve put together some information to help you walk through this season with us this year. Every week I’ll be posting a new set of Scripture readings for meditation. Please take the time to read through this and I hope that you will walk through this season with us.

As part of our observance of the Lenten season, Father’s House is offering a Thursday evening Communion Service. These services will begin the Thursday after Ash Wednesday and will start at 7:00 pm.

Death and Life Situation: Galatians 2:20

fathershouseministries — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:03:13 +0000

You have skin that is dying and flaking off of you all the time. It is estimated that every thirty days you have gone through a cycle of renewing your skin.
- old skin dies and flakes off to make room for the new skin
- every second 2 million blood cells die and 2 million blood cells are reproduced in your blood stream
- Summer gives way to fall, gives way to winter, gives way to spring

Death gives way to life…it is all around us and it is working in our bodies…it is an endless cycle.
Paul understood that we are offered the possibilities of a new life in Christ…but in order to experience this he had to step into this death to life cycle…
So the statement is, “I died so that I can live.”
Jesus statements pertaining to this…
John 12:23-24
23 But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.
The center of the Christian faith is death giving way to life.
So statements like “deny yourself, pick up you cross, and follow me,” “if you lose your life you’ll find it” are statements loaded with possibilities. The death to life cycle is capable of endless possibilities.
The “new me” can do and experience in this new life what the “old me” was incapable of.

Agape and Jeremiah

fathershouseministries — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:07:32 +0000

Agape: Jeremiah 15:19

It takes God to define what love is…what it looks like, how it acts and responds to real life…not the chick flick kind of love, not the romance novella, or song/poetic kind; but love in real life with real people…

In those times and places where it isn’t fairy tale endings, not story book but raw and hard…unfair

But when God takes this word from the common language of the Greeks and redeems it, love then is not only something of the heart; it is also something of the will.

It is not something which we cannot help; it is something which we have to will ourselves into doing.

God gives us this definition of what love is…1 Corinthians 13…

…And it looks like this…

Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons; Brennan Manning tells a story from Slezer’s in Manning’s book, A Ragamuffin Gospel:

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on (to remove the tumor in her cheek the surgeon had to cut the little nerve).

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.

Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, “it will.” “It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.

“I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.”

All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god.

Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

Jeremiah 15:19

19 Therefore thus says the Lord: “If you return, Then I will bring you back; You shall stand before Me; If you take out the precious from the vile, You shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, But you must not return to them.

Sin has deformed humanity…what is it that we see when we look at people?

Can you see the precious? Can you respond to the deformity with love?

I believe that until we can, we will only be mouthing words without sound. Our lips will be moving but not as God’s voice…It’s not that our words are falling on deaf ears, it’s that we are mute and think that we are communicating.

Learning about Advent

fathershouseministries — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:54:00 +0000

My early Christian experience came through the charismatic movement of the early 80′s. It was actually at the height of the word of faith movement that my wife and I both came to Christ. Those were amazing times. We were young and on fire for God. We devoured the Word and were at church every time the doors were opened. We couldn’t get enough. There was a genuine hunger and zeal in our lives to know and experience God.

During the decade of the 80′s and into the 90′s we experienced much of what the charismatic/word of faith aspects of westernized Christianity had to offer. As we look back through those years we agree that there were times when the presence of God was undeniable and the power of the Spirit …but we also agree that not everything was valid. There was a lot of showmanship and manipulation going on as well.

This era slowly died down and there was a void created by the empty promises. We started looking for a faith that was genuine. A faith that was ancient and at the same time new and vibrant. A faith that was life giving and life sustaining. We started moving backwards in order to move forward and discovered the power of God’s Spirit and the beauty of His glory in the ancient practices of the church and the seasons of the Christian calendar.

This has been a slow journey, but never the less, a powerful transformation has taken place. This past year we observed Lent and are observing Advent for the first time in our ministry and personal lives. We have joined the choreography, of this wonderful season and as a community are moving together to the rhythm of the Spirit as we approach the birth of Christ. We have embraced the beauty of liturgy and in it experienced the freedom, peace, hope and joy of the Spirit.

May your season be filled with the hope of glory, a peace that surpasses understanding, and a joy unspeakable and full of glory. May you awaken to the realization of a Savior who has come to set his people free and give them eternal life on Christmas morning.

God Knows

fathershouseministries — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:55:10 +0000

A God who hears, who knows, who acts

Exodus 3:7

The Cry

“It is the irreducible human reality of suffering that must have voice. It is only a cry, an articulation of raw bodily dismay. That is as close we come in the narrative prayer.” Walter Brueggemann

The “cry” is the most primal expression of the human condition. It comes from that place that is deep in our soul so that there is nothing disingenuous about the expression. This “cry” is prayer in a very raw form.

We have forgotten how to do this…we are a people of formulaic confessions…routine…rut…vain repetitions – all of which are epxressions/activities which are frowned upon by Christ in Scripture.

Maybe its time we begin to reconsider our posture and attitude in prayer.

God knows:

The most interesting aspect of the passage for me came to be the idea that God “knows” the pain of humanity in a very real sense.

Know – yada ( Hebrew) – God’s experience of the human situation

- Experiential knowledge

To have sexual relations with…within the context of the marriage relationship which is a metaphor for the God – Israel relationship

- God knows the suffering of Israel

The expression implies personal feeling, tenderness, and compassion

God knows…in a very real way what humanity experiences. What you and I experience. He knows, in an experiential way, the pain that hits us so hard that the only response is primal and raw.

With God, it’s a heart thing!

“The human cry, as the bible reveals, invokes a divine response.” Walter Brueggemann

“The Exodus narrative concerns the passion of holy power in response to human cry.” Walter Brueggemann

There is another place that I’d like to mention where this triad appears.

God’ response:

I see, I hear, I know…

The dedication of the temple in the time of Solomon…

2 Chronicle 7:15-16

My ear, my eyes, my heart…
He knows…in the depth of His heart…He knows!