Erling Thu

Month: March 2006

  • Quality and quantity

    Values and content must always come first if we want to have lasting quantity. Methods and plans come second to values and content, and growth and numbers come last. We need to learn to think organically and think Quality-Structure-Quantity.

    Throughout the world we see that the Lord is bringing back the foundational apostolic-prophetic quality to the Body of Christ. This new apostolic-prophetic organic quality forms its own new structures. These structures emerge from within and not through efforts from the outside. These organic Kingdom structures will, in turn, prove worthy and capable of fast growth and multiplication – Kingdom quantity.This may very well mean many more expressions of the Covenant community in much smaller fellowships than we are used to. Dynamic change is on the way in the Kingdom community! Apostolic-prophetic quality leads to flexible and organic structures that makes room for multiplication and exponential growth.

  • New features

    Today I have added several new features to my blog! Now you can even subscribe to my blog by email! Just look at the right column, scroll until you find place to write your email and a button to click to get email updates!

    I have also added some interesting search tools. Try them out. Give me feedback!

  • From weakness to strength

    The Word and the Spirit take me from weakness to strength

    Through the mystery of the strong faith;

    When I am weak, then I am strong!

    Because the power of God comes to prominence and works best

    When I see how helpless I am on my own.

    Separated from Christ I can do nothing!

    Separated from Christ I am lost!

    But, Hallelujah; Christ came to me,

    Christ found me and called me to himself.

    Now nothing can separate me from God’s love.

    2 Corinthians 12:9-12; John 15:4-5; Romans 8:35-39

  • Bite the bullet!

    I am getting better and better! I want to say thousands thanks "Tusen takk!" to all my friends for  encouraging comments, good wishes, prayers and emails. Some express their heartfelt care in this way: "I am glad that you are at last listening to your wife. All great men of Faith sometimes have to listen to their wives. Even if they have to be pushed to it like Abraham!!"

    Others are translating the Norwegian idiom on biting the sour apple into proper English. Paul left four alternatives and Matthew decided which one was the best. Well done!

    I find it very interesting that when the English people speak of biting the bullet, the Norwegian choose a more peaceful, organic and softer approach to explain the bitter experience of swallowing one’s pride or giving up resistance to advice. The reason must be that most of us have never ever touched a bullet, far from biting it! But sour apples used to be around everywhere, especially when I was a child. The sour apples grow on wild apple trees and are quite small. But my father also used to grow sour apples in our garden. They were certainly not small but rather huge and hard! If you tried to eat them in the authum they were so sour that you never tried again! But my father harvested them when the frost came and then he stored them under the veranda safe from the winter frost. We forgot all about them, but in March he brought them forth. A miracle had happened. They were no longer hard, nor bitterly sour, but rather freshly sweet, or perhaps sweet and sour. At Easter the sour apples become sweet! When one take one’s medicine and swallow the bitter pill, healing is normally the outcome!

    I can’t see that to bite the bullet can have any such effects as biting the sour apple have on people. But perhaps some of my English friends could tell me how many teeth they broke when they tried to bite the bullet!

  • Pneumonia

    The fever I have been fighting has been rising steadily until Saturday when I had to "bite in the sour apple," as we say in Norway, and take my wife’s advice to see a doctor. The doctor told me that I had pneumonia and gave me some medicine to take for one week. Sunday evening Per Kristing, one of the elders in the church, came to anoint me and pray for me. Today, I feel so much better that I had to post the good news.

  • Fighting a flu

    The last two day I have been fighting a flu or a cold. I have been feverish and not feeling well. On top of that I have had to finish some decoration work at home. I hope to be back with some good news very soon!

  • Laughing at my English

    I had a good laugh today when I discovered that my post yesterday turned out quite different from my intention. I planned to write some thought a changing operative system, but ended up writing about operation system!

    The good thing is that we can update a post on a blog, We can delete our past mistakes. We can have a new beginning. We can make things right! That is what we call grace! Then we are able to laugh at our mistakes and even learn from them!

  • A new operative system

    Being a Christian is to live a new life fueled by a new motivational power in a total new operative system of the Holy Spirit. Living by faith is to constantly abandon yourself to the grace of God and the guidance of the Spirit, who is not only installing a new operative system, a new value system, – but he is also reprogramming our mind. If we allow the Spirit to take control of our life and our churches we will become bold and radical in the way we deal with ourselves and the traditional ways we run our churches.

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  • Giving up control

    When Wolfgang Simson visited Bergen he told us how he as a young student of theology opened his home and started a church. Together with his friends lots of evangelism were being done. After some time with a lot of labour and little fruit they discovered that praying five minutes before distributing 500 tracts was less effective than praying five hours before distributing five tracts to the right people. In this process they were asking God to do.

    One day a new believer read Acts 4:28-32 and suggested, "Let us ask God to do what only he can do. Then people will ask questions that only have one answer, Jesus!"

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  • Praise the Lord!

    Today I have been meditating on the Word of God in Psalm 68 and I want to continue to praise God, even in my blog! His name is the LORD, I will rejoice in his presence! He is Father to the fatherless. He is Defender of widows. He is the Holy One. He gives the lonely a home and places the lonely in family. He sets prisoners free and gives them joy!

    The Lord announces victory, and multitudes of women shout the good news. He is our Saviour! He is our protection! He helps us every day. Each day he carries us in his arms.

    Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth, sing praises to the Lord! Announce that God is powerful! His majesty shines down on his people. His strenght is mighty in the heavens. God is awesome among his people. He gives his people strenght and power!