Monday, October 10, 2011














'This profound

contradiction'




There’s a reason why there has been an absence of righteous acts. Because we have been incapacitated, incapable and self-immunized to compassion or even concern. We talk about our burdens for a ‘lost’ world – but it’s a vocabulary. It’s not accompanied by ringing conviction or something inward, because it is inward that something is wanting, namely the righteousness of God: In the place of righteousness there is wickedness.



I know that is certainly true for me. Outwardly, I have been capable of serving God, and even on occasion impressively. But, it is amazing the contradiction between the outward and the inward. That in places that are not visible to others, known only to yourself, to God, and to the victim of the inward unrighteousess, as for example, one’s own wife and children, there is this profound contradiction. And, until it is resolved, reconciled, healed and made right, we can forget about outward righteousness as deeds in the world. Because anything that flows out of us, being marred, being contradicted, is just some kind of empty act, a self-righteousness rather than the righteousness of God.



Within and without, we have got to be one whole thing.
- Dallas, Texas (1993)




Sunday, July 24, 2011





'I'll be in the cloud, looking down on you
and watching to see...'

I
think our tendency is to be superficial with the word of God. And to read it. And make one or two comments, and then pass on.

You can always tell an immature or ill-prepared preacher by his invoking too many texts for one message. As if to say, ‘I don’t have any real insight, but I’m giving you the scripture.’ And then, he’ll go on to another scripture, and another and another. So, in the end, the people don’t receive anything of value. He would be better off – and you would be better off! – to choose fewer texts, maybe even one! And really burrow into that, and extract and bring out its meaning and its life-giving quality than jump from text to text to text just to fill the hour.
So, just superficially, just to give you an idea – and I haven’t prepared myself – it begins with a reference to ‘so great a cloud of witnesses.’
Who in the world, in the church today, so much as has a consciousness that we are encircled by a cloud of invisible witnesses? Who?!
For most christians, and even most pastors, such a reference would be dismissed as fable or myth or just poetic use of language and is not intended to convey any literal and actual meaning! Well, the church is finished before it begins – if that’s the attitude of its ministers!
Would you believe that as humble as this building is and as ordinary as we ourselves are, that this morning we have above us a cloud of invisible witnesses? That, in God’s sight, this occasion is that important that the Captain of the host orders his spiritual troops, so to speak, and marshals them for the magnitude of the event that is at hand. And, he would not consider it extravagant to gather up select saints who have gone before us. They’ve passed on, they’ve died in faith, they’ve died in service, they’ve died violently or of old age – it doesn’t matter. He knows them. They’re with him. And they have an investment; they have a vested interest in what is taking place here. They probably have a history in Africa, probably a history in Uganda, maybe even the bishop that we saw when we visited the Archbishop of Kampala yesterday on the way here. He showed us the portraits of the bishops that have preceded him. And, he said ‘this one died violently at the hands of Idi Amin.’ He might be in the cloud this morning.
Because we’re told they are not complete without us. ‘God, having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect.’
Listen, dear saints, we are in an unbroken continuum with every saint of the past with the great work of God from its inception in time and history to this present moment! There is an unbroken continuum of what has gone before us and what is yet future about which we need to be conscious. Or else, we are sticks in the mud, fixed in our little location and in our little moment of time, and we lose the entire breadth of the magnitude and the glory of that to which we have been called and have part…
We cannot lack this compass of times and eternity future, of which we are a present factor adding to those who have gone before who are not out of the picture. They’re looking on! Why? Because they’re not complete without us. That for which they strived for and died was not accomplished. But it was a contribution, and they’re waiting for the completion and consummation that will justify their sacrifice and their labors and prayer by what happens to us. And the day is not distant when we’ll be in the cloud if the Lord does not yet come.
I’ll be in the cloud, looking down on you and watching to see if you have hearkened to what was spoken when I was with you and that you’re going on in it.
It’s remarkable how little we are told about this! But, the little that we are told should be registered upon our consciousness – deeply!



-Zimbabwe, 2005

Wednesday, June 15, 2011




Woods outside of Kaiserslautern, Germany


Poignant remembrances

'Therefore Seeing We Have This Ministry'

Light more light.The haunting death gasp of the great German writer, Goethe, has somehow been brought up out of long-buried forgetfulness and will not let me go. 'God is light and in Him is no darkness at all'

My spirit is preoccupied with light. I know that I cannot speak on anything else this night, though I have not spoken from that text before; it is vague, tenuous, unformed. It will be one of those awkward, peculiar, chokey nights, trusting the Lord to assemble and shape His own utterance in the moment of the speaking. It is clear that the test of walking in the light is not any subjective estimation we may have of our own spirituality, but the concrete condition of our actual relationship with each other. 'But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.'

There is that strange sense of detachment while being driven to the meeting tonight: the weather is dreadful, heavy rain and penetrating chill. Perhaps the turnout (hopefully) will be small. It's an impromptu, hastily arranged final night's meeting in Germany before departure home tomorrow after six weeks overseas. Upon arrival, one finds the opposite is true; a large crowd is gathered at the Air Force chapel and there is a definite spirit of expectancy in the air. Various fellowships have canceled their individual prayer meetings to come and several distinguished ministries in Germany are represented by their directors. To add to it all, German friends have come from a distance at some expense and inconvenience, having learned of the meeting. In the hallway one meets with utter surprise, the daughter of a devoted friend of the ministry. Her husband, we had heard, is alienated and indifferent to spiritual things. In a moment it clicks. This is his base. He has come to the meeting willing to hear. Oh no!

All is calculated for humiliation. An untested message in its first expression and the stakes are high. Still, this utter calm and strange aloofness as if I myself am not involved. It has not to do with my desires, my abilities, and my condition.

'But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of His power may be of God, and not of us.'

Have we trusted the Lord through all these past weeks, proclaiming (and demonstrating) the realities of His Resurrection Life in every place- worn saints in Yugoslavian hamlets, critical German audiences, a Danish meeting (arranged despite us) on a final night in that country (Theme: 'Why do you walk as mere men?') In places scheduled and unscheduled, in major addresses and spontaneous sharings, before few or many, in vital energy or drained, in overflowing inspiration or dispirited (drab) emptiness…have we trusted God?

Trusting God for His Life to be the light of men, trusting God to watch over the family and all the dear ones at home, trusting for needs met, for the long-delayed newsletter to get out, for the responses of God's people, for the rightness of the March tour to Israel, for decisions, for commitments, for the future, for…TRUSTING GOD.

How rich and profuse has been the outpouring of His Life through these weeks; pulsating themes of God - Acts 13: 'The Church that was at Antioch'; Ezekiel 44: 'The True Priesthood of God'; Matthew 27: 'Ultimate Suffering as Ultimate Redemption,' personal ministry, encouragement, counsel, admonitions, times of fellowship, deepening of ties, new contacts and friends, the fasts, the feasts, the sudden sickness at Stuttgart (totally dissipated on the third day!), the calumny and reproach (reports of being described as a false teacher to the saints at Yugoslavia), the lavish reception and honor heaped upon us by Mother Basilea and the Sisters at Darmstadt…TRUSTING GOD.

'Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.'

The song service, special music, announcements and preliminaries are over. I am hearing myself being introduced…moments of silence looking out on God's people…the lighting is murky…strange expressions on faces as the words begin to form…feeling and looking peculiar…speaking mystically…groping…felt…random…a radical word…stronger…a cry…reality…Truth…a call to the LIGHT…silence…they come…they break…it was a word that changes EVERYTHING…GOD!

So do we trust that it will be God in Israel with 130 who are going with us from all over (about 30 from Germany), the meetings with the saints there, the visit to the kibbutz that has recently opened, the Yeshiva (Orthodox Rabbinical Academy) whose doors were also miraculously opened to us. We trust that it will be God at the Army Charismatic Retreat at Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, sharing the burden of ministry with Derek Prince; that it will be God for all 12 days in Denmark that follow (especially the day-long seminar with Pentecostal pastors in Jutland that is being planned), and the concluding five days throughout Holland (through the arrangements of dear friend, Jan van der Hoeven) till our return home again.

Will you pray us through these days? Pray that cities be shaken, the Cross uplifted, His kingdom advanced, the sleeping churches shaken? Pray that our foundation at home be made sure, our families knit, our writing responsibilities pursued, our obligations met. You have blessed us through your faithfulness. May the Spirit of God impart to your souls beyond these meager words and descriptions that which is being wrought for eternity in these days, in the little place where we labor, because you trust us in Him.


- Kaiserslautern, Germany (Spring 1978)


Wednesday, May 4, 2011


'Unless we are groaning presently...'


So, if we agree that the world is hopelessly evil, and that God’s righteous people are afflicted by the ‘ruler of this world’ and that the ‘whole world lies in the wicked one’ who afflicts the righteous by his demonic and human agents, then we agree that they are soon to be overcome and that evil rule ended by the direct intervention of God who will create an entirely new, perfect and eternal age under his immediate control, ‘a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.’
And, one thing that will save you from being a merely phraseological Christian, that subscribes to the correctness of this view, is if you are now already presently groaning over the evil that is in the world, that your soul, like righteous Lot, is already presently vexed, that you cannot stand to flick on the television or to walk into a home that happens to have it on and to see an advertisement or commercial, as I did, for these contests with these monstrous cars with the giant wheels where the announcer promised there would be devastating collisions like you’ve never seen before, and that the impact will be astonishing and more crashing and crunching than ever before!
And, you don’t gag when you hear that? That you don’t bend over? You don’t feel the puke rising?

I want you to, and God wants you to hate what he hates and love what he loves. He wants you to hate iniquity and to love righteousness that will make you a marked man. Unless we are groaning presently for the vile things that are already spreading over the earth, how shall we have the blessed hope of the church that expects the alleviation of these evils and the establishment of the righteousness with his coming? God forbid that this should become for us only ‘doctrine’ because that is exactly what will characterize the apostate church! They will give verbal expression for exactly the same things, but they will not hold them dearly. They will not believe them. It will just be a mere phraseological Christianity, and they will be strangely irritated by those who do. The words ‘fanatic,’ ‘heretic,’ or worse, will begin to describe the strange enmity that will come forth from that religious body against the smaller.
But, that has ever and always been the case. How much more so at the end and consummation of the age will be the persecution of the one by the other? And if you but knew that this is not something that happens when God’s back is turned, and that he is fully cognizant of the entire process, and that he himself is the one that set it in motion by giving us a foolish gospel to believe and a hope to expect but that the suffering that is inflicted on the saints for their unwillingness to enter ecumenical, global world order – and to suffer! For that releases the very thing for which God is waiting that consummates the age, that there is something in the suffering of the saints that is something more than is doleful and mournful and needs patiently to be borne. It’s a release, a demonstration of something that breaks the last vestiges of the power of hell and the usurping principalities and powers of the air and releases captive mankind!...
We’re coming to an hour when we will have no alternatives. Even though we’re nice and believe in balance and moderation and neutrality and we have no stomach for radical extremes, I want to say that I don’t believe that we’re going to have any other alternative than to be either radically and apostolically committed – or find ourselves radically apostate. There will not be any neutral ground.
This is a cosmic conflict and always has been, and we are privileged to be the agents of God at its conclusion.
And the world has done everything to dupe us and to domesticate us and to rob us of the apostolic content of our life and our calling by giving us a format of Sunday services and mid-week bible studies and privatistic lifestyles and homes and detachment and all kinds of other things that are terribly incompatible with the kind of people that God calls us to be in the community of the saints.
If buying and selling is the privilege only of those who take upon themselves the mark of the Beast – and taking that mark upon you means to violate any relationship with the Lord and to destroy your integrity and to make you a candidate for His eternal judgment – how then shall we live?
I tell you, folks, it makes good sense to begin to contemplate those questions now. And, especially if you live in an area where there is some possibility for the attainment of land of a rural kind where we can learn again how to raise food, how to sustain life, how to provide shelter, how to keep ourselves alive – if the ‘system’ becomes such that we are cut off from access to it by virtue of our unwillingness to take upon ourselves its mark. Or, that the ‘system’ itself will collapse with such debilitatingly global consequence that if we’re so tied into it that we’ll have no alternative but to perish – or cry ‘uncle’!
I’m presently living in Minnesota and was brought there for the purpose of establishing an agriculturally-based community. And people have looked askance at me and think that’s the delight of men who have that kind of peculiar interest. I want to say I don’t have that delight, naturally speaking. I’m a very private man. I’m the kind of man who would be happy with an attic somewhere in which just to enjoy a book. But to be in the thrust of a band of life in daily intensity and intimacy and demand which community is – well, that is not my natural propensity. But, I tell you, it will be a life-saving provision from God, not only for our bodies but for our souls. It has a wonderful sanctifying effect to be ‘found out’ in the immediate intentions of the daily life lived together. You can’t sweep the unhappy things under the carpet. They are there for all to see.
And, of necessity, we have to go through painful periods of disillusionment and shock with the conditions of the saints – and our own.

- New York, 1989

Sunday, April 3, 2011


'We Americans are already seeing signs.
Our economy is on the way out. We will become a Third World country'

But how about present Kenya? How about righteousness and justice now in this land by what God raises up through resurrection power?

This is not for our academic interest of what will be in the Millennium. God’s heart is for now, as for then, for exactly the same thing. What will make the Millennium ‘the Millennium’? Righteousness and justice by the power of God in the land… But how shall it come now in Kenya? Or Uganda? Or Africa? The climate, the political climate, the culture is opposite to this. It doesn’t celebrate justice and righteousness. It seeks political advantage through corruption. That’s the way of the world.

But, God is wanting something to spring up in the land. He loves righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation.

In a world that does not seek justice, does not desire righteousness – but merely does what will get by… Africa is notorious for this, rigged elections, force and intimidation to keep the same political tyrant in power. In Zimbabwe, the recent election, totally rigged so the present dictator wins by an overwhelming majority. People are afraid to go to the polls where these goons might beat you up up, or you’ll be denied a measure of corn or maize [for your vote]. People have been reduced to near starvation by casting out the white farmers from the land and destroying the entire economy so that a man can remain in power who is almost eighty and cannot be dislodged! This is Africa. Typical Africa. Zaire. The Congo. Poverty. The needs. Starvation. The conscription of children to be in the army, required to kill their parents or their own brothers and sisters, or be shot to death themselves. Girls are raped – wholesale! This is Africa. Unjust. Unrighteous.

Can you imagine what it would mean at just one place, one African nation, one portion of that nation [if] righteousness would spring up – and justice?! What is the word for the church in Africa? Poverty and disease, and tyrants who cannot be ousted, violence, children who are ruined before they begin... Lord, what’s the answer? What’s your answer? What program? What can we do? What can we offer? What can we say?

And then, it came at one-thirty in the morning in Sidney, Australia – the gospel is the answer. Faith is the answer. Hope is the answer. The reality of God is the answer. God has made every provision for godliness in life – but have we availed ourselves? Have we appropriated the great gift of Christ? Not just for a succession of Sunday services, but for a branch of righteousness to be raised up in this land, in this Kenya, in this Africa. Can it be that Africa is reserved for this? A testimony to the world? That, where the world expects it least, there God will demonstrate most that his kingdom, that his scepter is a scepter of righteousness, and that it will affect the daily life? The hidden manna will be an extra energy? Because God says righteousness exalts a nation? And will even be a key to an end to poverty? Not because of economic reasons. But because of godly reasons. Because God says righteousness exalts a people, a nation, a ministry, a congregation.

He loves righteousness. And whoever walks in it – God will prosper!

What an answer for Africa! What an answer for poverty in the continent! Instead of requiring the loans of billions of dollars in economic programs! What happens to those billions? They go into the pockets of the dictators. So that when I was in Switzerland and we were driving by a gorgeous estate, so expansive. I said, ‘When does this come to an end? All for one man. All this massed wealth.’ I said, ‘Who owns that?’ I was told the president of Zaire. Our programs have not helped poverty in Africa. We have enriched tyrants while people continue to suffer poverty and disease. It’s not going to come through money and men. God says, righteousness exalts a nation… So-called ‘dark’ Africa will be the greatest light to nations now prosperous through corruption…

We Americans are already seeing signs. Our economy is on the way out. We will become a Third World country ourselves, and we’re not prepared for this. Who will teach us how to live?... You’ll save us in that day by your example. Africa will be a key to the nations when He raises up a righteous branch. So, I want to pray. For Kenya, for Uganda, for the nations that I’ve mentioned in Africa. Now, they are a world scandal, infested with corruption, bribery, rigged elections, men who use force to remain in power, disease, lies. They don’t even acknowledge the rate of AIDS in Zimbabwe! Even in South Africa they call it ‘tuberculosis.’ They hide, they disguise. Unwilling to acknowledge the truth. Lies. While the people are PERISHING!'

- Nairobi (2005)

Friday, March 4, 2011




'I saw something
equally clear
and fearful.
I saw myself'





This, from a Brooklyn Jew who came to Minnesota not knowing which end of a shovel to dig with! Stretching barbed wire?! A profound mystery!
The simple caring for animals, if different from maintaining a rooftop pigeon coop or a cat in a Brooklyn apartment, was a foreign concept...

Well, at one of our convocations, we wanted to experience something of what it was like to slaughter a lamb, Passover-style, and a pig – supposedly in the way the Temple was desecrated in the Second Century by Antiochus Epiphanes, who ordered the same kind of sacrifice in every village and city in Israel.
And then, we were going to skewer them on a spit and roast them – primarily because we had to feed three-hundred people who were attending the convocation that summer.
What a ghoulish, horrific experience that turned out to be for someone who only saw raw meat in the display cases with assorted cuts that were always cleanly packaged in the supermarket. But, isn’t this our condition today? Our life is nicely pre-packaged and wrapped in cellophane, a life of excess and ease. Well, God is bringing us into ruthlessly honest kinds of experience as part of the process in producing Joseph’s and Paul’s and Elijah’s. And, it’s authentically messy, as we learned that day up in Minnesota.
I’ll never forget how that lamb, meek and submissive, never resisted right up until the fatal moment, and was hung by its legs from a tree limb with the blood pouring out of it. And, a Jewish girl among the shocked bystanders blurted out: ‘It’s not fair!’

Everyone else was thinking it, but the Lord had her in his sights as she was confronted with a new kind of intimacy with him. She and everybody else were brought to a deep acknowledgement of the reality of the Lamb of God’s own sacrifice that was long avoided by her. When she blurted out that it wasn’t ‘fair,’ it was an admission that she and everyone else have distanced themselves from the whole notion of sacrifice, the shedding of innocent blood, and death. Without those components, there can be no ‘life’ because the life is in the blood.
But, we weren’t through yet. The killing of the pig was next – and it was MY turn!
There are no pigs in Brooklyn, and when we got to Minnesota I finally understood what disgusting creatures they are when it’s feeding time. What an object lesson in appreciating what it is to be kosher. Pigs stink! They’re repulsive with their shrill squealing and filthy grunts – and such a clear picture of greediness. At feeding time, when you bring them their food, you can’t even get close to the trough. They practically knock you over, and if you slip and fall into the mud and excrement, you’re in more danger of being killed yourself. They stand in the trough with their filthy feet, jostling and knocking each other around. What a picture that never gets across as you peer into the butcher’s meat case with everything packaged perfectly.
And, I used to think to myself that the pig was the perfect container for the maximum amount of protein wrapped up and having the minimum of brains and muscle. But, an Iowa farmer took me aside one time and showed me different. They can be very intelligent animals, making their behavior at feeding-time the more repugnant.
I often stand before congregations that show these very same unseemly, barnyard characteristics.
There are many lessons I learned from that pig. The first one was so primal, so desperate in its all-out tenacity for survival. There were four men wrestling that animal to the ground, each one of them finally gripping a leg as it fought and squealed in terror.
How different from the lamb in that the pig refused to lay down its life. Even with a foot on its neck, it writhed and struggled. Then, one of the men gave me the knife, and showed me where to plunge it in.
But I couldn’t. Suddenly, I could see something else as it fought those men. Such desperation. Every ounce of strength focused on surviving, kicking ferociously with its legs, trying to get its neck out from under that boot.

I saw something equally clear and fearful. I saw myself. I saw Art Katz. As plain and as recognizable as could be.
When they finished butchering and took out the heart and all its intestines, I saw where that knife was perfectly inserted into the heart. But still, I remember how that pig took a long time to die, fighting until it seemed all its blood had drained out, squealing in panic right up until the end.
And, I saw myself – and the rest of us – smug, complacent Christians, sitting in our pews with self-confident smiles on our faces, tithing, giving token offerings to support our missionaries, diligently taking our tape-recorders to Bible studies, racking up perfect church attendance.

But, how much like that pig we all are, dedicated to our own lives, our own survival, feeding and fighting greedily to sustain our flesh, and God with his foot on our necks. And even then – we will not cease to struggle!
Are you ready to stand by the spirit in front of your mirrors? Are you ready to see what is looking back at you? Will it be the pig? Or the lamb?


- Palm Springs, California (1976)



Friday, February 25, 2011



'I'm a man sent of God with a sent word...'






I’ve just come back from Africa. They’ve seen many white men who come
to tell them about church growth …and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that’s what they thought I was.
But the moment that I faced them the first time – hundreds of black men who had come long distances in West Africa, seated, looking matter-of-fact,
waiting to hear some new method and technique for church growth.
And, I took a deep breath, and my first words were:
‘I’m a man sent of God with a sent word from the throne of Heaven!’
BOOM!
It changed everything. They straightened up in their seats.
Their jaws dropped. Their eyes opened.
This was different than any guy who has come before.
Here’s a man with authority, making such a pronouncement.
And everything that preceded from this man after that announcement confirmed that indeed he was sent and that the word
issuing from him was not his own.
It was revolutionary! It was radical! It was requiring.
All these men were careerists, wanting to be promoted, wanting to succeed.
But, the Lord gave them something else – and they knew it.
He gave them something for the continent of Africa,
so-called ‘dark’ Africa.
There is a destiny for that continent…


– Singapore (March 2006)

Saturday, January 15, 2011


'...I study the faces, marked by religious intensity and an atmosphere of reverence and an equally gracious acceptance of clumsily inept strangers in their midst'

There I saw hundreds of tzizis (fringed garment) wearing, black yarmulked men poring over texts in interactive intensity in vast study halls that would move any indolent believer to envy. To be in the crowded midst of 1,000 davven-ing (praying), talis (prayer shawl) covered men facing the ark that bears the Torah on a Friday evening Shabbat gathering at the Lubavitcher center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is to take one’s breath away! I study the faces, marked by religious intensity and an atmosphere of reverence and an equally gracious acceptance of clumsily inept strangers in their midst.
Which raises the question, dare I say it, and it is an important one, is there some measure of God’s validation in what they are about, even in their present blindness, preparing them for the final and ultimate revelation? If so, we cannot afford to categorically dismiss and disconnect ourselves from what is godly and enduring in their synagogue life. What Jewish continuity would there be for a destiny yet to be fulfilled if this grace were not given? While at the same time, that seeming legitimization from God solidifies their resistance to us and to our message, calling for our greater patience!
Please don’t misread this as an endorsement for orthodox, Judaic life coming from some starry-eyed romantic, idealizing His people at the expense of the loss of personal faith. On the contrary, in all this challenge of quite another world, my faith and love of the Lord I serve has never been greater or stronger. He is in all this somehow, in an intersection and confluence of disparate, long-separated worlds whose time has come. I have never felt less qualified to have any part in it, yet at the same time, unspeakably privileged for even this glimpse.


- Ben Israel News/Prayer Letter (Summer 2003)

Saturday, January 8, 2011


'You can have the baptism in the Holy Spirit - and still not be living by it'


I’m a steward of the mysteries of God, and therefore I have to sound a note that is not necessarily sounded by my brothers though I applaud and acknowledge the value of many of the things that they say and that they uphold. But in that I have not made myself, and it has pleased God to fashion me as he has and to give to me the particular burdens that he has, I need to sound them.

I attended a messianic conference a few years back and was a bit irritated by one of the speakers in particular. And some of the brothers came to me and said, ‘Brother Art, we don’t understand why you’re irritated. He’s like you. He has the baptism in the Holy Spirit.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s odd. Why then does he condescend to inject this humor in his presentations, and this little shticklech, and little do-dads and gimmicks to make himself fetching and attractive?’ ‘Well, Art, don’t you know that he’s a little nervous and apprehensive, and he’s afraid that if he doesn’t make himself attractive that people will not receive his word?’
I’ve never forgotten that explanation, because it’s an illustration of a profound truth: You can have the baptism in the Holy Spirit - and still not be living by it. In moments of crisis, in moments of ministry, in moments of demand, in moments of fearfulness, you fall back again on your own life, your own cleverness, your own wit, your own devices. And that has not the ability to bring life. Paul said: ‘In him I move and live and have my being. For me to live is Christ.’ What is messianic life? It’s to be in Christ – moment by moment, cleaving to the Tree of Life for every necessity, a wisdom beyond our own, a knowledge beyond our own, a strength and a boldness beyond our own.
Paul said: ‘In him I move and live and have my being. For me to live is Christ.’ What is messianic life? It’s to be in Christ – moment by moment, cleaving to the Tree of Life for every necessity, a wisdom beyond our own, a knowledge beyond our own, a strength and a boldness beyond our own.

- Conference on Messianic Judaism and the Holy Spirit; Kansas City, Missouri (1977)

Followers