by Dr. Joanne M. Bush | Dec 20, 2024 | Ministry
It is time that the body of Christ face the fact the current ministry/church is not going to survive in the condition it is in. Our regions are highly affected by the weaknesses we are finding in today’s culture. Current leaders have attempted to bring about a different culture using the old system. They are as frustrated as the people in our regions are.
When David was moving the cart with the Ark of the Covenant on it, the lack of knowing how to do so cost a man his life. The smart thing that David did was to go back to the law to discover what he missed. This is what the leaders of the our current culture must do. Somewhere something has been overlooked and we must find out what happened and how to begin turning a big boat in a tiny inlet so that we can keep pace with the directions of Holy Spirit. I personally do not believe everything was done evil as much as out of habit and ignorance. God is more than the God of a second chance. He is God with a purpose…and is always prepared to lead His people into that purpose.
Sometimes we do not see a need to change anything if what we are doing is either working or not causing undo harm. We are now at a place where we can see much harm if we do not make a change of direction.
Holy Spirit will help us. I believe He has spoken to me about what some of those changes are to be…and I believe He has spoken to some of you about changes and the process necessary to being productive.
Join me and other leaders as we have a time of fellowship, getting to know those with whom we must labor and discovering the blueprint intended for our regions…and earn how to find the blueprint for your region.
I am not building a church. My goal is to see people who have a heart for God and to do what they believe is already in their hearts, but do not know how to do so. I am not building an organization. I want to build support for so many of you who have already labored by yourselves and do not know how to continue. I have no desire to pull you away from what you have already been involved in. My desire is to see become a success in learning how to follow Holy Spirit, how to pray, how to train and prepare those already working with you.
When we have workshops in person, we charge a small amount to cover the cost of breakfast and lunch for each person.
You will never leave a meeting or gathering without a plan to move forward.
We have all gone to conferences and was hyped on ideas we did not know how to do. Motivation without a plan is useless. When you come with a question of “how” we will dialogue on what is best for you. Ultimately you will learn to be confident in hearing Holy Spirit for yourself. I want to see you empowered to do what is in your heart so that our families and regions are walking in the power of God’s Love.
If you are interested in participating in these activities, please send an email to successinministry@gmail.com and I will make sure you are on our list. These activities will include training sessions – some in person and some online.
It is time to build and invest in people.
Dr. Joanne M. Bush
Life Transformer
by Dr. Joanne M. Bush | Nov 28, 2024 | God's Love, Walking With God
We must be very careful when we confess our distaste or dislike for someone and there is no love in our HEARTS in harmony with God’s love for them. Words are cheap. We have said we love people when we really did not. God does not put His stamp of approval on us when we claim to love, yet we really do not. We must be ruthlessly honest with ourselves, for it is easy to lie to ourselves…
I focus on this topic more, now, than ever. I am still learning and intentionally attempting to come into line with Father on this subject. We are faced with the issue of God’s love versus the love of man on a daily basis. Our feelings are hurt. Sometimes our families are hurt…and in our self-justification, we do not always understand why God doesn’t do something about our pain. Well, He does. He will heal you from the pain, the scars and all around you, yet He will not relinquish His love from anyone.
He does not condone what people have done to hurt any of us. It still does not remove His love for them. I asked Him, one day, why this was the case. His answer, for me, was like trying to explain the godhead. I understood it enough to believe Him, but not enough to make the process any easier.
As a result of this effort (and He must help me daily), my relationship with Him began to change. One day I found myself without reaction to some situations that, in the past, were crushing. It was not a numbness…it was a knowing. I spent less time licking my wounds and trying to understand people and began focusing my time on understanding Father’s purpose, for that is where the crux of the matter is. As we mature in Him, we discover that He says He is not like a man, who lies…The words, I Love You, have been used manipulatively for a long time, and in our own desire to be loved, we believe it. I do not believe everyone who tells me they love me anymore. I do believe God. I believe that there are people who want to love me unconditionally; and then a condition shows up that severs that connection. I am not as bothered by that as I was years ago.
My discovery has been that the longer I walk with God, my understanding our desires concerning love have grown with that walk. I do not have a need to hear those words all of the time from people..and if I never hear it again, I am solid in knowing that I love God and He loves me. When Paul made the statement that “he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him” was referring to the fact that if the disciples had not brought to him the financial need he needed, his reliance was upon Father…not just for the needs being met, but the attitude displayed by Christ because He was quite able to meet Paul’s needs. (Php 4:13)
Throughout scripture God worked with and through ungodly people and those who had no covenant with Him to bring about His tremendous purpose for all of us.
For God’s purposes, He loves everyone, even those we may wonder about. He does not accept any behavior that is not in harmony with Him or His purposes. He, however, never stops loving them (us) and doing everything possible and necessary to woo us back into His ways. To understand and embrace this, we must allow Him to reveal to each of us what this means and what it looks like.
You can forgive people and never lose God’s love for them, and patiently wait out the transformation God will do in you and in them.
We must be very careful that we do not indict people without God’s permission. This is why praying for someone without counsel with God can cause more problems for that person and yourself. With counsel, He will give you His direction of prayer…but never assume that praying according to an individual’s behavior is always the correct way. I have had to learn this the hard way.
by Dr. Joanne M. Bush | Nov 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
Well, it is broke…and most do not know it. You know why? The word “broke” like “w.o.k.e” has been redefined.
All of my websites broke a few weeks ago…they went out on the same day. This is the second time I have had to redo one of them. Amazingly, it is the one with all of my blogs…things I have written for over thirty years. It is more frustrating than anything. I know it is technology…however, I am listening to see if Holy Spirit is telling me something.
MINISTRY RESET does not mean to redo your ministry so people can see progressive changes in the cosmetics of our ministries. It is a waste of time to start from where we are and repaint the building and buy a new keyboard…and change the service times for the younger ones…and call it reset.
MINISTRY RESET means to first find out what MINISTRY means. David’s lack of attention to this instruction needlessly cost him the life of a man who was trying to help him move a cart.
We are leading precious people who are waiting on instructions, demonstrations and explanations on what to do next. If our instructions are to continue as they are, we are in for a rude awakening. Like David, we will lose valuable people who came to help, but are dying at the expense of our ignorance.
If we are still doing ministry the same way we did a few years ago when we encountered the dreaded disease…we are, then, in the same boat as before. We talked and complained more than we demonstrated the word of God we had taught prior to the devastation of people’s lives. Many just caved in, not able to properly divide the word of truth.
MINISTRY RESET requires our willingness to stop where we are, go back to the instruction manual and listen to what God has said…and is still saying. Actually, it requires more than that.
Andrew Murray equates being spirit-filled as being fully surrendered to Holy Spirit. How can we be fully surrendered to Holy Spirit and fully surrendered to what we want at the same time? Scripture reminds us that we will love one and hate the other as we cannot serve both God and mammon. Who wants to admit which one is hated?
I suggest that many of God’s people are illegally in ministry because they are not in harmony with God. He reconciled Himself to us…Paul then says for us to reconcile ourselves to Him. In other words, we cannot walk as one if He is the only one who entered into reconciliation. Oh, we accepted what He did for us based on the hope and assumed promise we can go to Heaven. That is not why He did what He did.
Until we are in harmony with Him, His word, and His purposes, we can only function with the gifts HE GAVE us because without the Gifts and no harmony, we must rely on our own power.
We can build meetings without Him. We can even establish some form of government without Him. It is what some have already done. That is what social justice is all about…build in our own power, meeting the needs of the people…and not the purposes of God…like Gen 11 as the people attempted to build their own tower to sit in their power.
Did you notice what God did when the folks were trying to build for themselves? He said in Gen 11:7 ampc:
Come, let Us go down and there confound (mix up, confuse) their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
Wonder if He came down and we cannot discern it.
by Dr. Joanne M. Bush | Nov 27, 2024 | God's Love
People have a puny idea of God’s Love. Any time the word “love” appears there seems to be an expectation of soft, tender, fluffy and agreeing emotions that huddles and cuddles one into oblivion. And that is exactly where most are today.
God’s Love is ferocious and interrupting. In the minds of those without understanding, He appears to be brutal and non caring.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
In the book of Genesis God interrupts the chaos…there was no distinguishable form in the earth, it was empty and the dark went to the deepest. THEN the Spirit of God invaded this emptiness which was not empty at all by interrupting the surface of the waters and with His energy His frequency reminded the deep that the seeds in there were eternal…thus He recreated or brought forth what was already in existence.
God starts with nothing and brings forth…yet He never starts with nothing, for He is always in existence.
His voice, heard by Himself first, brought forth from the darkness, commanding the light to come from where it could not be seen to where it could be seen.
Whenever God is ready to make a presentation He is not pretentious…He is direct, and it is up to those who see the results to realize His intentions went beyond anything common.
People often say that they have never heard the audible sound of God’s voice…yet, they are aware He has spoken. How deep was the deep that the sound of His voice was energized by His very movement and presence hovering over it…such as a hen would over her eggs? The sound is irrelevant in comparison to the effect of the energy which is usually experienced prior to the sound.
LIGHT BE! was His proclamation. He did not create the Light. He is light and He is not created. To that which was yet to come forth, He said…SEE ME!
He did not stop to see if anything or anyone felt good, fluffy or warm and cuddly from all of this activity that was experienced before it was seen and heard.
Ecc 3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.
The result, the purpose is the result of a power that we may never fully understand. You cannot hold it in your hands, yet, the eternal seed existing in the empty space was framed by His words as what was once existing now appears again. HaHa…the enemy created chaos…the enemy did not win, for Our Almighty and Powerful One never lost what was spoken before the beginning.
Isaiah 53 says It pleased Him to bruise (crush) His Son. Where is the fluffy, cuddly experience in that picture that appears to be so brutal? And, yet He then speaks of the fruit of the crushing.
Isa 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
The Love of God will pulverize every barrier impeding the progress for His purpose. The splitting of a woman’s womb to bring forth a child too big to come through…the ferocious impact of the deep (where life is experienced openly) the child is born into brings forth compelling sounds that causes the child to be quickly placed on the mother’s breast as a reminder that at one point they were both sharing the same space…and that sound broke through to free the start of another generation.
Take a closer look at what seems to be a display of destruction, anger and pain coming from the one WHO IS LOVE and trace it back to Him, His Heart and His Purpose…and we may begin to cooperate with Him (perhaps shakingly) to witness the Power of a Being who always is, always was and will always remain the same…GOD IS LOVE. Incomprehensible yet enjoyed as we grasp His presence in the most difficult situations. What looks impossible to you and me is because we do not totally understand His Love, though He wants us to have enough of an understanding to say:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that LOVE God, to them who are the called (hear His Sound) according to his purpose. (Rom 8:28)
This can only happen as we intentionally give our being to Him and let Him, at His pace, infuse us with the LOVE that is Him.
When you relinquish your everything (Mark 12:23) there is nothing left for you, leaving the place for you and Him to be in Harmony with each other blessing others.
Most of our lives have been spent trying to get something we have always had…the adamic nature requires us to feed ourselves on our love for ourselves that we overlook the true power of God and His Love. Love for ourselves is as destructive for our purpose, as His Love is destructive for His purpose.
He is God. He wins. All things work together for good to them that LOVE GOD…NOT SELF.
God is Love…and in that knowledge I rest, believe and know.
