I’m making a point of collecting and sharing quotes on the uniqueness and glory of Jesus.  This is from Dorothy Sayers, in her book Are Women Human?, which I found quotes in Leanne Payne’s Crisis in Masculinity:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man — there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.

There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about woman’s nature.

But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day.

- Are Women Human?, pg 68-69 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005)

Lord, give grace to Your Church to treat our sisters as You did!

On a sidenote, Payne’s point in quoting the passage was actually quite a good one – she wites that anytime an intellectual system builds itself on the contrast of one class with another (women vs. men, poor vs. rich, etc.), that intellectual system creates a conflict between the two.  One class will always come out on the downside of the comparison: women have indeed been oppressed by men, the poor have indeed been oppressed by the rich.  But to focus on that contrast is to perpetuate conflict – women’s rights at men’s expense – and whoever buys into that system becomes a warrior for the oppressed class. They end up being oppressors themselves, albeit in a different way (e.g. the feminist professor who verbally abuses the comparatively helpless young men in her classes).

The answer is not to “balance the scales” by exalting the downtrodden at the expense of their oppressors.  The answer is reconciliation, which happens at the cross, when both sides lay down their rights, repent of their wrongs, forgive those who wronged them, and find a new identity in the One who had nothing to repent of, but nonetheless laid down everything for them:

Galatians 3:28 (ESV)
²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Two years ago, when I was an intern at IHOP-KC, I put up a post called Is IHOP a Cult? Rather disappointingly, until recently, that post was always the most popular post on this site. In fact, it still gets an average of 2 hits a day. Judging by the time spent on the page, it looks like people have found my "intern's perspective" on whether or not IHOP-KC is a cult helpful.

In that post, however, I also said that I would do a series of posts analyzing different issues that people have against IHOP-KC. If you have looked at the archive for this site, it's quite clear that I never did any of those posts. There are several reasons why:

1. At the time I wrote that post, IHOP-KC was still "them" for me and I felt like I could have an outsider's perspective. However, very shortly afterwards, I felt freedom from the Lord to return to IHOP-KC long-term, and IHOP became "us." It's a very different thing to write a post that analyzes "them" and a post that defends "us."
   
2. A large part of the reason I wrote that post was because I was in conflict with a friend over IHOP's theology. I quickly realized that I could not continue to write about the subject without trying to refute my friend in a passive-aggressive way.
   
3. Most importantly, I became familiar with the prophetic history of IHOP-KC (which is available on the IHOP website¹). I realized that the issue of opposition and responding to it with meekness has been a central command from the Lord in Mike Bickle's ministry from the beginning.

One of my favorite things about IHOP-KC is the emphasis on meditating on the glory of Jesus - His deity, His humanity, His personality, His work, His words, and His plan to come back to the earth.  When this teaching is combined with a 24 hour prayer room and a bunch of talented worship leaders and song writers, some glorious songs get created.

My favorite song at the moment is a meditation on the glory of Jesus called "Sons of Men" by Jon Thurlow.  You can download the song for free from the Forerunner Music website, and I've typed out the lyrics below.

Verse 1:
My heart is overflowing
I speak concerning my beloved King whose name is light
This One is white and ruddy
This One stands out among ten thousand, His head glows like gold so bright

Chorus:
Brighter than the sun You shine
Flames of fire are in Your eyes
Jesus, You are fairer than the sons of men
Your Father's words, they dwell inside
No other man is more alive
Jesus, You are fairer than the sons of men

Verse 2:
No one has ever seen God
But Jesus, Your person radiates the glory of His frame
You are the faithful witness
You are the One who speaks the name of the Father of all light

Chorus

Bridge:
I can hear the angels singing
Glory, glory to God in the highest
There's never been a Man who's more alive (x3)
More alive than You, Jesus

Who is like You? No one like You, Jesus

Scripture References:
Ps 45:1-2; Song 5:10-11; Rev 1:5,14,16,18; Jn 17:8,26; Jn 1:18; Heb 1:3; Lk 2:14

A quote on the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth, even when He is considered simply as a Man:

Here is a man with an utterly free interior life under the most restricted and oppressive conditions, simply through prayer, as we see from the sovereign self-consciousness he displays in dialogue with his disciples and, even more, with his enemies.  Here is a man whose love is perfect, although he often makes of others the same inflexible demands he makes of himself.  Here is the complete man; not a man who fits in with all and sundry, but a strong and distinctive personality, utterly unforgettable, whose words an deeds are unique and inimitable, whose influence on history is supreme.  The perfect friend, the perfect leader, whose energy, however concentrated, never distorted his character, who always remained fresh and even childlike, with no false sophistication, loving children (a sure sign!) and commending their outlook on life to those who liked to think themselves "adult".  He never reacts in a banal, predictable way; all that he does is original and creative.  Indeed, the gospels and the whole New Testament pulsate with "spirit", in the literary sense as well as the philosophical and religious sense.  How empty and relatively poor in imagination, by contrast, are such writings as the Koran or the Speeches of Buddha - once one has the "feel" of them, one can make them up oneself!

-Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Prayer, pp 171-172

While fully embracing Jesus' fully divine nature, and even emphasizing it (e.g. It was God that went to the wedding and turned water into wine...), Balthasar urges his readers to meditate on Jesus' full humanity as well:

True holiness in the Church, with its influence on history, has always been connected with the straightforward endeavor to take the humanity of Christ seriously, and all the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from the failure to take it seriously. (pg 172)

Here is the third part of David Pawson's series of talks on Romans 9 through 11.  As he said, Calvinists tend to like Romans 9 (though they take it out of context); those who espouse Replacement Theology tend to like Romans 10; and Christian Zionists tend to like Romans 11.  We need to read and understand all three chapters (and the entire book of Romans as their context) to have a proper perspective on God's continuing purpose for Israel.

The content of all of these talks (and much more) is available in David's book Israel in the New Testament.

David Pawson - Israel in the New Testament: Romans 11
David Pawson came to IHOP-KC in March 2009 and spoke on "Israel in the New Testament." This is the third talk in a series of three on the topic of Israel in the book of Romans. In Romans 9, Paul described how God had chosen Israel, and in Romans 10, he described how Israel has resisted God. David's title for the third message was "The 16 Surprises of Romans 11"

Hebrews 3:12-14 (ESV)
¹² Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. ¹³ But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴ For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Mike Bickle has been talking a lot about encouragement in his recent sermons at Forerunner Christian Fellowship.  In one talk, he described the three primary accusations that the devil is constantly bringing against every Christian:

1. Your work doesn't matter.
2. Your spiritual life is a failure; in fact, you're going backwards instead of growing.
3. No one would even notice - let alone care - if you gave up.

Mike commented that he has shared those three accusations in various contexts over the years and people have come up to him afterwards and said, "That was prophetic - those were exactly what I was being attacked with!"  He replied that it doesn't take a prophetic gift to know that people are being attacked with those three accusations - because that's what the devil is telling all of us all the time!

The enemy's goal is simple - he wants us to quit.  He wants us to make a ceasefire with him; to quit trying to strive against sin; to quit praying for the world and for the lost; to quit trying to share our faith in Jesus; to quit expecting God to actually help us and answer our prayers; and maybe even, after a while, to give up on Jesus altogether.

Continuing the series of talks by David Pawson.

David Pawson - Israel in the New Testament: Romans 10
David Pawson came to IHOP-KC in March 2009 and spoke on "Israel in the New Testament." This is the second of three talks he gave on Israel in the book of Romans. In this talk, he focuses on the relationship between God and the Jews in the present. Although God had chosen the Jews for Himself in the past (Romans 9), in the present, many of them are stubborn and have been cut off from Him (Romans 10).