A friend (more like a mentor) of mine, Steve Youngblood, of http://www.churchfoundations.com, has just started a blog.  He recently posted on something that has struck a chord with me ever since I heard him talk about it in a "Timothy Project" he did, here is a snippet from the post http://youngbloodaudio.com/blog/commitment-or-surrender:

This is probably the most significant revelation I’ve ever received from the Lord.  It’s actually the foundation and core to who I’ve become and what I’m doing.  I’ve been leary of writing about it because it’s been a continuing revelation and I’ve always felt that there was more to it.  But I’ve finally decided to put everything I’ve learned about it down in writing instead of letting these thoughts roam around in my head.  Hopefully it will benefit others in the process.

The Background:

It all started in August 19, 2004 when the Lord first spoke to me about developing in me an “attitude of purchasing”.  It was when I just started to practice and on purpose listen for Him speaking to me.  Since hearing God speak was new to me I thought it was a really weird phrase to bring up because I’ve never heard of it before, and even more, I didn’t know what it meant and unfortunately He didn’t choose to explain it all to me then.  It’s been a long, drawn out process.

Then, on September 9, 2004 He brought it up again, this time He called it a “spirit of purchasing”.

This phrase just sat in me for quite some time because He still didn’t explain what it meant.  I didn’t have any way to study it out because I didn’t know where to start, so I just kept it in my heart and trusted the Lord to teach me whenever He wanted to.

He FINALLY decided to let me peak into the revelation in June 2005 when I stumbled across Isaiah 55:1-3 on accident:

"Come, all you who are thirsty,  come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.  I will make an everlasting covenant with you,  my faithful love promised to David."
Isaiah 55:1-3

I finally realized I wasn’t crazy and just making things up!! Here the Lord is telling us to buy something from Him. He said “…you who have no money, come, buy eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost”.  This brought up the followup question that would be answered later…how do you buy something without money?

A few months later I saw the “spirit of purchasing” again, this time in the New Testament, in Revelation 3:18:

"I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."
Rev 3:18

Here, Jesus is telling us to buy from Him true gold and clean garments.  I finally saw something that speaks of a “spirit of purchasing” in the bible, but I still had no clue as to what it meant and what I should do with it.  So these 2 verses took up residence in my heart for quite some time until the next piece of the puzzle came.

The revelation finally became clear in February of 2006.  I had been reading these 4 books on repentance from Barry Hall (http://www.tasteheavennow.net , one of the most important things I’ve read to date.)  and one day while in the shower (I get a lot of revelations in the shower and when I would mow my grass ) all of the sudden the Lord spoke to me the answer, He said, “Repentance is the spirit of purchasing.  Repentance is the altar of trade, where you trade your ways for my ways.”….and then it all came together, it all made sense to me.  Then came the difficult part, articulating it.

So, how do you purchase something without money?  Well, if you ordered food at a restraunt and couldn’t pay the bill, you’d become the newest dishwasher!  You would have to “pay” for it with your own time and energy.

How does this fit in with the Kingdom of God?  As I’ve mentioned in a previous article “God doesn’t need your money", God cannot be bought with our manmade financial system.  A dollar bill is simply a little piece of paper, it has no value.  Gold and silver is of no value to God because it’s all His anyway.  We buy things from God with our own time and energy.  Time and energy that is already being used up and tied up in other things of the world.  We simply have to transfer that time and energy and turn it towards the Kingdom of God.  We’re already giving ourselves to things during a 24 hour timespan, we just have to redirect it towards the Kingdom.  We are repenting (trading our ways for God’s ways) because the Kingdom is here among us right now (God’s way of doing things is here and available right now)

“Repentance is the altar of trade.”  Is what the Lord told me.  Which means it’s the place of transaction.  Yes, repentance means turning around, it means changing your mind, but as it has been made known to me now,  it’s an actual transaction that takes place with God.  We meet God at the altar and make a purchase.

Here is the best example I’ve come up with so far to explain this concept:

If I’ve had a really rough, and stressful day at work I would usually come home, sit on the couch, and turn on the TV and relax for the night.  Well, God tells me in His word that He offers true peace, rest and joy in His presence.  However, my actions prove that I don’t believe that fully.  Instead of trusting in God that spending time with Him will be more rewarding, satisfying, peaceful and relaxing, I choose to turn to a worldly substitute, in this example it’s TV.  Leonard Ravenhill once said “Entertainment is the devil’s substitute for God’s joy”.  And that concept extends out to many other things.  The Lord want’s to be our source for everything we need, provision, peace,  joy, rest, hope, health, etc.  But since the world is seperated from God, it developed substitutes (weaker, broken copies) for the true and genuine things He offers.  We’ve created false gods.  

Another example that hits hard with me is when a problem arises, instead of seeking council from God we’ll often call all our friends and family first (if we ever actually consult God in the matter).  When financial distress hits, we’ll immediately go in overdrive trying to figure out how we can get more money to meet the need.

I know this has been true in my life.  I will often turn to the lesser, worldly substitute instead of the genuine gift of God.  But the real truth is that God has our every need and our only hope.  Honestly, why do we settle for anything less than the true, perfect, and eternal Kingdom of God that is available to us??

So the Lord has peace available for me…how do I purchase it?  I trade (repent) the way I normally receive peace from the world and take up the way God offers peace.  If I identify that I am receiving relaxation from a worldly substitute such as TV, I acknowledge it, and literally offer it up to God and trade the way I do things for His ways.  Anytime I would normally sit in front of TV to relax, I instead trade it for sitting in the presence of God.  If I identify that I often seek the council of friends about a problem before I seek the council of God, I’ll trade it.  Instead of talking to that friend I would enter the presence of the Lord and receive His council on the matter.

The real problem then roars it’s ugly head…our flesh.  Our flesh is completely, and utterly opposed to this, especially if it’s become a habit.  Your flesh wants results, and it wants it now.  It doesn’t have time to sit and wait in the presence of God.  Your flesh will always war with your spirit, get used to it and subdue it.  That’s what being born again is all about.  Our spirit man is no longer dead, it’s alive and it can overcome the flesh, it just needs to be worked up to become stronger, like a muscle.

I often refrain from discussing this with people because sometimes it looks like I’m talking about a works mentality.  But I’m not, this is the Kingdom of God.  It’s full of the spirit of purchasing.  Look at Jesus for example.  He traded His Kingship to be a servant, He traded His riches to become poor, He traded His righteousness for our sin, He traded His purity for our iniquities, He traded the form of God for the form of man, He traded His life for death….it’s all there, and there’s so much more.  I mean come on, think about it, we’ve been redeemed!!  We were bought with a price!  We are His purchase!  He PAID with His blood!  Jesus is the perfect example of a spirit of purchasing.

Don’t forget, we are to “follow after Jesus”.  He is our example remember, so we have to purchase (trade) just as He did…not for men’s souls, but for the propigation of the gospel (the gospel being that the Kingdom of God is here now and we can enter into it if we trade our ways for His - repentance).    Remember the foundation verse of this website?  Luke 14:25-35.  Within those verses  Jesus speaks of a man that didn’t “count the cost” and then later says that if you are not willing to give up (pay with) everything you have, you cannot be His disciple.  Then there’s the parable of the treasure in the field, and the pearl of great price, where Jesus speaks of selling everything in order to purchase the Kingdom of God.

Other examples:
The price for gaining your life is losing it. 
The price for becoming rich is to become poor.
The price for being first is to become last.

I now finally understand what He meant when He told me 2 ½ years ago about having a “spirit of purchasing”.  One thing I didn’t mention in the beginning was the reason He gave me for wanting to build this in me, He said, “because I want you to respect the gifts that I give you”.  Nobody respects a hand-out, a child born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth often grows up to be selfish and self-serving.  And I personally believe that some of the church has become this way as well with the gospel.  Many in the church have made the gospel to be self-serving.  Hoping that it will simply make our lives better, or make us rich, better our business, help us with our relationships, make us good, etc.  It’s all been focused around us…not Him. 

Jesus said, “follow after me”.  He didn’t say “sit and watch what I did from a distance”, He showed us the way, which implies at some point in our walk we have to choose to take the steps.  We have to trade our walk, our path, for His.

Heaven is free but the Kingdom is expensive.

It all comes down to belief.  Jesus said that the only work of God is to believe in Him.  Do we believe Him enough to give our entire life to Him, really?  Actually, to make it more real to me the Lord told me “I don’t want your life, I want your today.”  Ryan Lawson said in one of his messages, you’re only as good as a christian as you were today.  Did you give your energy and time to the Lord today?  What did you spend most of your time on?  Where your treasure is, your heart will be.  Our time is our real treasure.  Pretty tough stuff to swallow.

Take some time and analyze the substitutes you may have set up in your life.  In what ways are you turning to the weaker, worldly substitute of the genuine gifts of God?  It’s not just TV, there’s food (fasting is a great example of purchasing from God (repenting) ), books, knowledge, pornography, addictions, relationships, gossip, ego, the list goes on and on.  This sounds really harsh but the Lord spoke to me a couple of months ago about this, He said "anything you are doing, you’re choosing over me", and it’s the truth.  We need to learn to be in the presence of God and allow Him to direct our paths, our energy and our time.

If you want to really get into this I would strongly suggest you go to http://www.tasteheavennow.net and read the content online as well as buy the 4 books if you can.  The 3rd book is called Heart Training and it goes into intense detail of things to repent from that you probably haven’t even thought of.  The Lord really used Barry’s teachings to help build on this idea of “spirit of purchasing”, it fits right in with what the Lord taught me and Barry goes into great detail a gets real practical with the revelation he received about repentance.

Just wanted to pass this on to you.  Ryan Wyatt is offering his 12 CD teaching "School of the Supernatural"  FREE this month (April 07) for download.

I’ve been listening to it and it’s been pretty good.  I’d recommend it, especially for those that are new to the miracle, and revelatory realm of God.  Excellent foundational teachings.

http://www.abidingglory.com/store/school.aspx

Since we’ve made the decision to "go" we’ve had to make some tough decisions.  One of them has come down to our dog.  She’s too large for where we’re living now and since we’ll be travelling we won’t be able to take care of her properly.

Her name is P.D.  We found her in my parent’s neighborhood about 3 years ago.  She was a stray and we brought her to our home.  She’s got to be one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever known.  We think she’s a mix between a border collie and lab.

She’s the best of both worlds…she’s an excellent guard dog and she’s the sweetest at the same time.

The best home for her would be a single woman,  man, or married couple (young or old).  She’s "tolerant" of small children.  Our son was about 6 months here in the picture.  But, the best home for her would be one with no, or big, kids.

Please email me @ paulferree@gmail.com

We live in Oklahoma City and would be willing to travel or meet (not too far though).

Her shots were updated last fall.

Danny Steyne

HE’S BACK!