Sometimes God plants a delusion in your heart so outrageous that you need to keep it to yourself for a while.

Understanding and passing the delusion down from the top may be one of the best things we do.

Maybe the reason a lot of staffs and churches don’t “get the delusion” or “support the delusion” of their leader is because it’s not worth getting or supporting.

Get alone with God often. Get a delusion. A terrifying delusion. An impossible delusion. A ludicrous delusion. A “have you lost your freaking mind ” delusion.

Then clarify the delusion. Quantify the delusion.

Then OWN THE DELUSION.

Sometimes our spiritual delusion gets scrambled because we try to hack someone else’s delusion.

If you want a clear delusion, you’ve got to get your own satellite dish.

You cannot impart a delusion that you do not own.

Delusion. Everyone has to know it, say it, eat it, breathe it, sleep it, live it day in and day out. Everything is done because of delusion. (From an Elevation pastor)

If [a leader is] boldly speaking delusions, I guarantee you he pays a price for it.

All of a sudden, Furtick makes sense.

Nowadays, you’re just as likely to find preachers who confess to their embarrassing physical ailments or sinful urges.

A helpful reader sent me this article about one church that found such preaching a little bit too much:

Brentwood Community Church’s congregation has asked its pastor to stop using the pulpit as his public confessional and to set boundaries on what he’s willing to share.

“Every week he confesses another personal weakness,” says one member. “You get twitchy wondering what’s next.”

The personal confession streak started after Pastor Greg Ott attended a pastors conference in Chicago. He returned and told the church he was embracing a “new vulnerability” with them. ”That sounded great until we realized it meant he would dump his dirty laundry on us every Sunday,” says one church member…

On a recent Sunday morning the congregation seemed to collectively cringe as he stepped around the pulpit and said, “Let me be real transparent with you …”

…One week Ott admitted … he “struggled with angry outbursts,” and occasionally “barked” at fast food drive-thru employees.

It sounds quite familiar, but it’s just satire.

(You can tell it’s not real because he was asked to stop.)

I was horrible at math in middle school.  But I was pretty good at similes.  Remember those?             

Yellow is to sun as ____ is to moon
Guns n Roses is to best band ever as Tiger Woods is to ____
God is to Satan as dogs are to ____ (the answer, clearly, is cats)

Here’s a ministry simile for all of you who are currently facing a resource challenge.

Resources are to the vision of a ministry what wake is to a boat in the water.

Furtick may or may not have been good at similes, but he was clearly no good at all at analogies.

Ok, now that the nit has been picked, let’s get on to the beef of this post, which is pretty much “name it claim it” Word Faith bunk:

Wake follows the movement of a vessel in direct proportion to the velocity.  And it always trails behind the motor.

Resource follows the movement of a vision in direct proportion to the velocity of the vision.  And it always follows behind the vision.  Behind the risk.  Behind the initiative.

Don’t wait for the wake to magically appear.  Produce it by moving forward.
Stop waiting for resources to fall out of the sky.  Go forward as hard as you can as fast as you can with all that you’ve got.

Soon you’ll be skiing on the wake.

So, all you got a do is step out in Faith and follow your vision, and God will provide the material resources that you need. As always, a little scripture to back that up would be nice, but I suppose it is not necessary when spoken from the mouth of a visionary.

Of course, the fact that this didn’t work for the Apostles in the New Testament, or Jesus himself, should probably make us stop and think.

Ed Stetzer says:

If you aren’t questioning multi-site, you aren’t thinking.

Hmmm. I guess we know who played on a basketball team that didn’t keep score.

credit for video to Out of Ur.

I think I want a jeep…or either a really fast sports car…can’t decide!

Paper or plastic. Fries or rings. Credit or debit. Jeep or sports car. Oh, the torturous choices some of us face.

That message on giving must have gone really, really well.

Just decided Kanye, Taylor, & Beyoncé will make a guest appearance in my sermon this weekend.

That’s interesting. My Pastor preached about 3 famous people this weekend, too. Mordecai, Esther, and Haman.

He tweets:

We become what we BEHOLD. Period.

So what has he been beholding lately? From Cooper’s Twitpic:

Oh dear.

Pay attention Seth, JT, MW, Anthony…and the rest of you.  This is where you are headed.

Take a good, long look.

NEVER underestimate the importance of chemistry in regards 2 who you work with…doing WHAT u r called 2 do w/people u love is AWESOME!

Lamb thought so too.

Perhaps professionalism should be more important than chemistry, but who am I to argue with success?