Your word came in confirmation of what we had decided to
do and that was go for the works. We danced Tuesday night in an Assemblies
of God Church, in Duluth, Minnesota, the Glad Tidings Church. It was
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The FIRE fell and a whole lot of people had
things lifted off of them that they did not know was there. People with
just a little of Indian Blood in them were coming forth and openly claiming it
where they had been ashamed to admit it before. People with mental
diseases that were lifted off them were coming forth to get the Fire of the Lord
and for more boldness to do street witness. It was a GOD
MOMENT!!!!!
I wanted to respond briefly to
Albert's comments on the use or lack of use of regalia from a white believer's
point of view, and one that has been called to serve the FN body. Even the
fact that I am a white man should not matter because Jesus said that we are one
in Him without difference to culture, and even sex. Yet because we live in
this sinful world, sometimes on issues of discussion it helps to know some
of these facts, though when we get to heaven assuredly it won't matter.
Albert you are absolutely right! It is our heart, and our obedience, and
our commitment to Jesus that is above all. The use regalia that is pertinent to
any nation, whomever they are, is second in importance.
Let my share my heart though on this
issue.
In our last 17 or 18 years in
Miami, Florida as the Lord secretly and quietly prepared us to serve the FN
people ( without us even knowing about it), the Lord allowed us to be last in
most things that not only pertained to our personal lives, but in most issues
that pertained to the church. What I am trying to say is that we were last to
get married, last to be raised up in ministry, never seen by the church as
Christian leadership material; we were subtly and mysteriously rejected by most
pastors and even by fellow brethren. Here we were trying to obey God and
had no idea why all this came upon us. We even thought that we must have
had had a spirit of rejection on us.
As I look back I still look at
this rejection of almost twenty years as a puzzling mystery. We have
been embraced from the very beginning by Native American Christian leaders great
and small. Our fellow Anglo Christian leaders have for the most part
rejected us. My best explanation was that God allowed it to happen to
prepare us and to give us a heart and a semblance of understanding for the
people that He had called us to serve and to become one
with.
Being last
all my of my life, and now being in constant fellowship with people that until
now have been last too, the First Nations people, has given us a special
passion in seeing
First Nations people to arise and become all they can be. I think that it
takes someone that was always last and has been raised up by the Lord to have
that kind of passion and heart.
To my wife and I , First
Nations people are people of tremendous dignity, wisdom, soberness ,and
humility. In my Anglo culture , and I speak totally first for
myself ! we are allot more frivolous, we speak allot less from our
hearts, we are more arrogant, and we are poorer listeners.
Yet the First Nations people
were stripped of so much of the dignity and beauty that God made them to glorify
Him through. I think that the Devil tried to center upon getting
rid of the Native culture all together. ( I am not sure why the forces of evil
put so much emphasis on trying to destroy the FN culture. That's a good
thing to pray about.) Anyway, if the spiritual attack was on attempting to
obliterate and distort the FN culture and what God could do through it, our
spiritual warfare must be on restoring it and using it for God's glory. If
the devil has tried so hard on these terms then it must be that God has great
plans for the use of the regalia and so forth.
Albert I agree with you.
A Native preacher in full regalia, a white preacher in a three piece suit, a
black minister with a splendidly built multi million dollar church, or a
Hispanic pastor with a host of well laid out church programs will be of
less use to the Lord than that of a spirit filled man who is absolutely
yielded to the spirit of God and who is clothed in ragged jeans, if their
commitment is not the same as his. The use of regalia on a human
vessel that is not broken before God and willing to do whatever God would have
him or her do do, will be at best only of partial use to the Master or as the
Lord is called here in the southwest, The Chief of Chiefs.
However I don't think the world
has yet seen what God can do through a FN man or woman who is totally yielded to
the Lord and glorifies Him through the full and holy use of the very culture
that God gave him or her in the first place.
To finalize, the use of regalia
in my opinion through a fully yielded FN man or woman of God serves as spiritual
warfare in the heavenlies because it helps in restoring the very statement of
identity the devil tried to wipe out. The greatest act of spiritual
warfare is always to have an opposite spirit to what the forces of evil are
trying to do, and to what the idols of the land are. If there is hatred, the
greatest spiritual warfare is love, and so forth. If the identity of the
First Nations was almost destroyed, then the greatest act of spiritual warfare
is to restore it. Lastly, for the the totally committed First
Nations man or woman of God, in my opinion, the use of full regalia is part
of the spiritual armor in Ephesians 6. It was because the devil tried to destroy
it that it is now become spiritual armor. Many times our physical acts in
full obedience to God destroy demonic strongholds and high places in the
heavenlies. Blessings, Jose Alvarez
The First
Nations Network Site (The First Nations Information
Super Highway)
