Pastor Denny

Pastor, Musician, Martial Artist, and Alliance Church Planter/Pastor of "The Orchard" House Church Community in the Wichita, Kansas area.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

The Revolution Speaks

Here’s a blast from the past written in 1979 when I was still a heathen, pro-marxist, dope smoking, hippie revolutionary. Here we are 30 years later and it couldn’t be more true with what we see in our country today. The powers that be are leading us into a class war just like it has happened every other time in history be it Russia, China or Cuba. They will fuel the fires of unrest within the working and lower classes, use their numbers to overthrow the elitists and then exercise their authority and power to subdue the very ones they manipulated to get what they wanted. It’s happened before, it will happen again and most American don’t even see it coming. I hope you enjoy this little poem and think about it in terms of what you see in the news daily.

THE REVOLUTION SPEAKS

The Revolution speaks to you;

of Poverty and Hunger
of bankruptcy and scandal
in a country gone asunder.

The Revolution speaks to you;

of money spent for war
when families and small children starve
and death knocks at the door.

The Revolution speaks to you;

of foreign and military aid
as the unemployed line the streets
in search of jobs each day.

The Revolution speaks to you;

and asks what democracy means?
Is it to elect a man to lead us
while corporations pull the strings?

The Revolution speaks to you;

of a change thats coming soon
where we the people means everyone
and not a selected few.

The Revolution speaks to you;

of the Hero’s of our day
the prisoners of our government
who are convicted for what they say.

Finally, the Revolution speaks to you;

of an end to the racism that we see
for we must all stand and fight together
for the things that we believe.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

We act as though we have all the time in the world.

What happened to the urgency in our mission work to reach the lost with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and fulfill the Great Commission? As I read testimonies and watch the stories of modern day missionaries and their clandestine work in many of the countries of the world that have been or are closed to the gospel message, I have to wonder where would we be today if the Apostle’s had just set up coffee shops and neutral community centers and gathered to chit-chat and play games until the opportunity presented itself to get to the message of Jesus. People, we don’t have time to waste and we have a message everyone needs to hear, whether they accept it or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m finding myself guilty of the same thing. As pastor and church planter of an organic church I find myself being more concerned with building relationships with people to hopefully open the door of opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with them when in reality I need to be knocking on those doors a little more diligently to deliver a most important offer that may expire at any moment. We think we have all the time in the world but in actuality we don’t know how much time the world has and we need to return to the urgency we once had and get our message out. It may turn some away, it may get us persecuted or even cost us our lives, but this we should know and already take into account when we answer the call of God into His service. The time to act is now, tomorrow may be to late, quit waiting for the opportunity, grab it and make the most of it for the sake of those who are perishing.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Do we need a National Holiday to celebrate Christmas?

With the push in recent years to secularize the National Holiday we all know as Christmas and disassociate it in the public mind with the birth of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith, I for one am in favor of having it struck from the National Calendar and we Christian’s will celebrate it on our own way just like the Jews in this country celebrate Hanukkah each year.

What is my reasoning for this you ask?, well my position is if we can’t recognize the day for what it has been for decades in this country I don’t need any Happy Holidays just so the retailers can make a killing selling items for a holiday they don’t want to recognize. As for all the Happy Holiday signs that have taken the place of Merry Christmas, I think I’ll contact the ACLU and complain that I don’t like the use of the word Holiday since it is actually telling me to have a Happy Holy Day which is a violation of the nonexistent Church and State clause.

Do I sound like a nut? well I’m not, at least I don’t think I am. I just think if they want to take away our Holiday, lets take away theirs and see who cries the loudest. I’ll bet all that money disappearing from the coffers of the manufacturers and retailers would cause a massive outcry to our national leaders much more than the Christian voice seems to be accomplishing. I do not need a National Holiday to Celebrate the birth of my Savior we should be doing that each time we gather together for worship just as we celebrate and remember his death, burial and resurrection. Lets take back Christmas for ourselves and leave the world to figure out what to do about their nonexistent holiday. I know we will still rejoice.


Pastor Dennis Miller
The Orchard

Saturday, November 29, 2008

The inspired American Constitution

I was speaking to one of my neighbors recently who is also a fellow believer and we were discussing the election and things to come when he asked me if I believed God was involved in the framing of our Constitution. I told him “NO” I did not believe that but that it was solely the work of men who were merely wanting freedom from tyranny and the right to govern themselves. Did faith play a part? For many personal faith played into their actions, for others it was purely political and like many of our politicians today they just threw God into the mix to sway the masses and make it sound like a divine calling.

There is only one divinely inspired text and that is the Bible. To try and claim that for any other text of man is to place that document on the same level as the Bible. America is not God’s other promised land nor are Americans God’s new nation of chosen people. We are proving that everyday in our churches where men and women called out to serve and live for him do everything but as they strive to enjoy all that this world has to offer and bring shame to the name of Jesus Christ.

We worry more about homosexuals being allowed to marry than we do about Christian couples vowing to remain married. We speak out against abortion as we take our own daughters in secret or force marriages that should never be just to save face. We throw money at problems in our society instead of giving ourselves. And most of us today don’t even know the people living in the same neighborhood who need Christ and someone to care when their lives are turning upside down and the pain is more than they can bear. Most Christians today can do nothing to solve these problems because their living right in the middle of it also with the same lack of faith and loss of hope because they don’t really know the Lord that saved them.

We need to quit worrying about being American citizens and start living like Heaven's citizens being more concerned with living under God’s grace and guidance in our nation and quit trying to make this nation heaven on earth by thinking we can legislate righteousness to a corrupt world. It’s not going to happen, change only comes as God is invited into a life and given opportunity to initiate that change and make it permanent. We change the world ‘One life at a time“ not ”One law at a time“.


Pastor Dennis Miller
The Orchard

Thursday, November 13, 2008

I Support President Elect Barak Obama

Yes, brothers and sisters, I support our next president with my prayers for him that as God’s appointed leader of this nation he will be receptive to God’s voice and the leading of the Holy Spirit and act in a way that brings righteousness, peace and unity to our nation in a time of great turmoil. I encourage you to join me in this support and be obedient to God’s will for us.


Pastor Dennis Miller
The Orchard

Monday, November 10, 2008

What constitutes a marriage in God's eyes?

I had a discussion recently with an individual concerning a couple who considered themselves married but had never obtained a license from the state or performed a ceremony before a civil or religious authority. They had been co-habitating for several years and even had children together. I stated that these individuals were living in sin because they had never been legally married. His response to me was, “Why do I judge them to be in sin just because they haven’t gotten a license from the state or had a wedding ceremony, Where does the Bible say they have to have these to be considered husband and wife or married?”

Well, being from the old school as I am, I just gave him the status quo response that I had always been taught and believed but as I pondered it myself after we parted I realized I didn’t have a good biblical background for my beliefs on the subject either. As I got into a study of marriage in the bible and researched resources on the subject, both biblical in nature and historical, I found my ground was even more shaky. The following is from the text “Ethics for a Brave New World” pg. 301.


BIBLICALLY, WHAT CONSTITUTES A MARRIAGE?

Though Paul teaches about Christian marriage (Ephesians 5), he focuses more on how husbands and wives should relate to one another than on what forms a marriage. Thus, this question seems best answered by appeal to the creation ordinances in Genesis 2. Genesis 2 shows that marriage is God’s idea (2:18). After God created the world and the first man, he decided man should not be alone. God created the animals, and Adam named them, but none was suitable as a helper for Adam (2:19–20). God then created Eve from Adam and brought her to him (2:21–22). Verse 23 records Adam’s words of recognition that she was the one suitable to be his helper. The passage ends (v. 24) by setting forth the elements that go into making a marriage in God’s eye.

Verse 24 states that because ( “for this reason”) a man recognizes a particular woman as suitable to be his mate, he leaves father and mother. The word for leave (’āzab) is a very strong word that means more than simple departure. It means “to forsake, leave destitute, or refuse.” The idea is not that a husband and wife no longer can have any relationship with their parents. Rather, they recognize that their relationship to one another must have priority over all other ties. It is in this sense that they forsake or leave their parents.

Marriage also involves a cleaving to one’s mate. The word for cleave (dābaq) means “to cling to, remain close, adhere, be glued firmly.” In this verse it means that once parents are forsaken, the man will not soon return to them. He will stay with his wife and direct his affection and attention to her. She will do the same to him. When the ideas of forsaking and clinging are taken together, it becomes clear that marriage amounts to each partner committing his/her life to the other. It is a pledge to emphasize one’s mate as paramount beyond all other relations (forsaking) and to remain faithful to (cling to) him/her.

The verse concludes by saying they will become one flesh. This speaks of union. The point is not that now there is only one person. Eve still had her own body and mind, as did Adam. Likewise, the phrase is not merely a reference to the sexual union of the partners. Surely, the phrase refers to the sex act, but the context demands that it mean more. We believe the phrase is a metaphor meant to signify the bonding or uniting of the two as a married couple. The sex act outwardly and physically points to the bond that has been created. Some argue that the phrase also signifies the creation of kinship or blood relation (cf. Gen 29:12–14; 37:27; Judg 9:2; 2 Sam 19:13).7

How is this union brought about? It comes into being as a result of two factors. The first is the commitment of life to one another, signified by the forsaking and cleaving of the partners to one another. The second is an act of God constituting or uniting them together. Jesus’command in Matt 19:6 not to put asunder those whom God has joined emphasizes the divine element in establishing the bond.


In my studies of the historical view of marriage I have also found evidence that before the middle ages most legal marriages were either arranged or of mutual consent whereby two individuals, male and female, agreed to a union of marriage and thus became man and wife. There was no secular or religious authority that had to give approval, and the only thing that might be considered equivalent to our contemporary wedding ceremony was the cultural celebrations that might accompany the joining of a man and woman as husband and wife and would sometimes last for days. It wasn’t until the Catholic church attempted to institute the rite of marriage under their authority that the question of legality and recognition before God and the State came into play. Even after this many of the reformers and protestant churches considered marriage to be a secular decision apart from church doctrine or sanction while others felt the clergy were the only ones who could establish a covenant of marriage before God and the Church.


So, I pose the question to those who are much more learned than myself, what constitutes a biblical marriage in our day and is civil license and/or secular/religious ceremony necessary for two people to consider themselves man and wife in covenant relationship with God?

Friday, November 07, 2008

LOGOS BIBLE SOFTWARE FOR MAC

Got the word today that LOGOS bible software for Mac users is now on sale at pre-pub prices. I have been using the Beta version for the last month and have been very pleased with it. I have used LOGOS for Windows for many years and even have it install with Windows on my macbook and it worked seamlessly in parallels while I ran it in XP and put my notes together in Pages on the OSx side. LOGOS was the main reason I installed XP on my mac so to have it natively in OSx will give me less reasons to have to use windows which is just fine with me. The mac version uses the same library files so there is no reason for owners of the Windows version to re-purchase existing library’s. The product should be shipping in time for Christmas. Click the link below to see a demo of LOGOS for Mac and the pre-pub special pricing.


www.MacBibleSoftware.com