OUT OF THE BOX

  SUBSTANCE VS STYLE Leadership should actually feed the sheep, equip the saints, and strengthen the church, and see actual growth and progress in the Lord's people. My cry is that the real church, the true church would emerge, rather than the typical routine, fluff, and imitation. Too often the church is like "processed Christianity," Nothing like the original, designed for buyer appeal, and lacking the nutrition it is meant to have. Religious people often substitute ritual and ceremony for real relationship with the Lord Himself. People who are short on intimacy with Jesus seem to find security in the outward forms. An organization can do the same thing. It is interesting that God gave Israel a portable tabernacle long before He gave them a stone temple. In Israel’s journey across the wilderness, they had to follow the cloud of God’s presence that rested above the tabernacle. When the cloud moved, they moved; when the cloud rested, they remained still. The cloud did ...

Samaritans Purse set up a tent hospital in Central Park in New York City to help with the overflow of patients from the hospitals there during the corona virus pandemic. I read an article at that time stating that New York’s mayor De Blasio expressed concern that Samaritan’s purse is operated by Franklin Graham who is accused of having a “virulent hatred of homosexuals and is Islamophobic” and that Samaritan’s Purse will discriminate against  homosexuals and anyone who “disagrees with their fundamentalist beliefs.” Some had even expressed concern that the Christian organization would deliberately refuse to aid those who disagree with the organization’s beliefs, or that they would intentionally spread the disease. How foolish and erroneous are such charges! You and I know the sincerity and love that motivates this organization. But we are living in a culture where this type of false accusation and unwarranted hate and prejudice will be directed at those who have the testimony of Jes...

No matter what your religion or spiritual belief system is, it logically must bring you to the intellectual and philosophical conclusion that there has to be a creator and a Sovereign manager over it all. For instance, reincarnation is a complicated process, if it were true. If you believe in reincarnation, I would have to ask you, “Who manages and directs it? Where did the spirits come from that keep reincarnating upward or downward? Who does the evaluating regarding good and bad and which ones move upward and which ones move downward?” You always come back to the necessity of a creator and manager. Even the dynamics of pantheism that pervades eastern religions and the New Age movement require the existence of an all-powerful, higher power to create and manage the processes.   Therefore, all religions bring you back to the need for a personal God who created and manages His creation. However, all  “roads” and philosophies do not lead to God, but all “roads” point to the fact ...

What blessing, strength, encouragement, and life we receive from those who serve the Lord faithfully and without complaint! How our hearts are touched by those whose lives demonstrate such surrender to God’s will, and whose love for the Lord is revealed in their willingness to lay down self, take up their cross, and follow Him. OUR LOAD MIGHT REPRESENT GOD'S CONFIDENCE IN US. In our limited knowledge we often misunderstand the deeper mysteries of God in the way He works in our lives? God disciplines those He loves and He requires more from those He favors. He asks more from those upon whom He has placed a high calling and from those who have been given more. It is an honor for God to ask of you more than He asks of others. The early Christians did not complain and say, “Why me?” when they were persecuted and beaten for Christ’s sake, but rather they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for His sake. They knew they were being honored as “worthy to drink the cup” (Mark 10...

   Roy Rogers   Billy Long   1967.   It was September 1967, my freshman year at ORU. There was a prayer chapel on the ground floor of the men’s dorm. It was a small room with an altar and a few short benches. I would often enter it at night to pray. The only light I needed was coming from the lobby and shining through the stain glass windows of the door. The first time I went in there to pray, I discovered there was another student, Roy Rogers, lying on the floor at the altar. He was wrestling with God much like Jacob in Genesis 32 and was in deep intercession and literally groaning before the Lord. I don’t think he realized I was there. He was passionate but not emotional. His spirit was in travail and crying out to the Lord regarding some serious issue. His intensity reminded me of the agony Jesus went through in the Garden of Gethsemane. His prayers were deeper than simple intellect or the shallowness of typical prayers we often hear. We became good friends. ...

  Dear Friends I don't normally write articles that are mainly political, but because of current issues being discussed in our country  today , I decided to post an article I wrote on Free Enterprise vs Socialism.  Our universities are teaching Marxism and socialism, and are producing a generation of young people who are being "taken in" by it. I think you'll find this article informative. Pass it on to your college friends. Billy Long WHY I BELIEVE IN FREE ENTERPRISE RATHER THAN SOCIALISM Jimmy Carter made this statement: “If you don’t want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying that you want a country based on Christian values, because you don’t.” Let me begin by saying I know that there are people with genuine needs and there is a place for government action and help. But Jimmy Carter’s statement is not true because it is too simplistic and does not accurately reflect conservative philosophy. It fails to acknowledge the various aspects of the issue.  ...

  Have you ever had to deal with relational conflict? Here are some Biblical principles that will help you come through the fire without becoming spiritually derailed and disabled. The principles discussed are basic to our success in all areas of our spiritual walk. I am re-posting this for my newer readers who may have missed it the first time.   -Billy Long DON'T ARGUE WITH THE DONKEY! ENGAGE THE LORD FIRST We encounter various trials in our Christian walk. Some we can't explain and some are indicative of the “roaring lion” seeking to devour the righteous. But there are also times when adversities are the result of our own foolishness, disobedience, or sin, times when our adversaries are instruments of God designed to get our attention, teach a lesson, interrupt our wrong path, or to discipline us. God raised up adversaries against Solomon because of his idolatry (1 Kings 11). Balaam’s donkey balked and fell underneath him because his way was co...

If I made a list of the miracles I have witnessed and the ones I have been a part of, you would be pressed to believe in God and His desire to work intimately in the lives of people. But then if I were to make a list of my failures and struggles, you might say, “Where is your God?” I could write a book listing miraculous provision and answers to prayer in which the reality of the Lord’s presence was palpable. But then I could write another book telling of the times I was in “the deep” about to be swallowed up and close to losing everything. I could tell you of friends being healed through prayer and also of others dying in spite of it. I have friends who have experienced miraculous healings and friends who have been raised from the dead. Some have received an immediate response to prayer, and others have suffered what seems an interminable wait as they call on the Lord daily for healing, help, or an “open door.” I have experienced the people of God, their love for one another, and the ...

  “You are to them as a lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice.”   ---Ezekiel 33:32 In our visit to Poland in 1988 Pastor Jim Sink and I traveled in a circle from Warsaw to Ludz, to the Soviet border, to Krakow, to Katowice, and back to Warsaw. We were accompanied by Adam Kuczma who was head of the Methodist Church in Poland at the time. He was a great man of God and desired to share the power of the Holy Spirit with his people. We spoke in churches and shared many testimonies of miracles and the supernatural presence of Jesus as we traveled through the country. The people would listen with interest, and then tell us how much they enjoyed the messages. But they never asked, “What must I do?” They did not engage the message deeply enough to ask how they could experience the Presence of the Lord in the same way.  After the meetings they simply proceeded with the food and fellowship as if what they heard from us was commonplace…and then went on their way. ...

This article describes why the typical church does not see more of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. There are many personal reasons why individuals do not move in spiritual gifts, and we can list some of them in later posts. But this is written to describe the general church atmosphere that quenches the Holy Spirit and hinders the hungry and willing individual.  ----Billy Long   HOW SPIRIT-FILLED CHURCHES HINDER THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT   Our expectation of the Lord’s active presence working among us is often disappointed because we tend to create an artificial context that does not allow people to “come forth” in their gifts reaching out to one another. We would see the Lord moving among us and through us if we would give Him opportunities in a more natural, living room setting rather than the artificial and rigid setting of the typical Sunday morning. The absence of relational interaction quenches the real moving of the Holy Spirit...

  Walk with purity of heart and motive, sincerely seeking God’s will and God’s interests. This will produce a clarity in your ability to hear God, and will produce peace. When you desire God’s will, you can rest knowing He stands behind it. This also removes the need to manipulate people or struggle to artificially enforce and reinforce your own plans that might not be in tuned with God’s will, way, or timing. A pure heart will lend itself to producing good relationships. An impure heart becomes affected by selfishness, pride, and wrong motives that hinder relationships through jealousy, insecurity, competition, and ambition.  When your motives are pure, people will trust you and they will entrust things to you. John 5: 30, Philip 2: 3-4,19-21, 4:17,  Psalm 139: 23-24. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Mt 5:8.

  "Hannah answered and said...'I am a woman of sorrowful spirit...I have poured out my soul before the Lord.'"  1 Samuel 1:15 There was a prayer chapel on the first floor of the men’s dorm at the college I attended. It was a small, carpeted room with an altar up front. I would often go there at night to pray. The fellows who went in there to pray usually left the lights off and sat in the soft light that passed through the stained glass in the door. I would sit on the wooden pews or kneel, but often I would lie on the floor. It was there, during my freshman year of college, that I discovered a deeper level of intercessory prayer. I would begin to weep before the Lord, sometimes vehemently, as I cried to Him in behalf of various family members and other areas of concern. During these intense times of prayer, I was not able to speak much or say anything but could only cry before the Lord. I ...