New Blog Location!

We are very happy to announce our blog has a new central location within our new website. If you haven't found it already, here is the link. We're posting new blogs every week! From here forward, we will be posting all new blogs there exclusively. If you would like to know when a new blog has been posted, just join our email newsletter; we announce it! Here is the link to sign up.

Blessings!
The Lionheart Team

Tearing Down Our Idols, Part 2 By Mike McClung

Save me, O God, by Your name, and vindicate me by Your strength. Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers have risen up against me, and oppressors have sought after my life; they have not set God before them. Selah. (Psalm 54:1-3)

What does it mean to be “vindicated” by the Lord? I have found myself praying the prayer of the Psalmist for vindication for several years now. There have been literally years of misunderstanding, slander, offense, etc, that I and Lionheart Ministries have been on the receiving end of. Some of what has been said is deserved, as many mistakes and weaknesses have been exposed over the years. But most has been accusation that is beyond plausibility for rational thought. This type of regressive warfare and stress (friendly fire) begins to take its toll on the spiritual, mental, emotional, financial and physical health of both individuals and a corporate covenant community. In light of these “momentary light afflictions,” one begins to cry out to the Lord, as the Psalmist did, for “vindication.” Is it righteous, Christlike vindication that one seeks? It is now my experience that what I thought it was to be vindicated by the Lord is actually the seeking of human retribution, at least at some motivational level. Such is the insidiousness and subtlety of the deception of the “idol” of self-preservation.

Tearing Down Our Idols, Part 1 By Mike McClung

Jonah 2:8: Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. (NKJV)

1 John 5:21: Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

On June 7, 2011, right at the beginning of the festival of Shavaot (Pentecost), I began to have serious heart arrhythmias combined with classic symptoms of heart malfunction – shortness of breath, chest pain, etc. I believe we are entering a new season where, if we will position ourselves biblically, we will have a great refreshing, infilling release of the Holy Spirit. This is to prepare us for a new season described in scripture as the “season of the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:19-21). I was expecting a great release of deep repentance and power to come. I still have those expectations, but with the state of my heart problems at that time, the Lord radically altered my conception of what is required.

Some Hindrances to Entering the New Season of Restoration By Mike McClung

Oftentimes, it is ungodly soul-ties with something or someone that prevent us from advancing. The Israelites were so “tied” to Egypt, they would not enter into God’s full promises. Ungodly relationships form one of the worst hindrances to fully entering God’s purpose for our lives. If we want to fully serve the Lord, we need to stay single. Why? 1 Corinthians 7 encourages the single life, unless we find that one person who is totally devoted to what God has called us to be and to do. We will be judged for what God has purposed and planned for us at the judgment seat of Christ. By marrying out of loneliness, sexual frustration, etc, we have chosen to disobey the Bible. Once we are married, God says that marriage covenant takes precedence over all others. If we are married to someone who is not called to our purpose, we will probably end up never fulfilling it! (We will still have to give an account before God for the gifting, calling and graces.)

Impartation of Generational Mantles and Inheritance By Mike McClung

Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse (Mal. 4:4-6).

Curses crumble when generations are joined together.  Curses impact generations in a specific bloodline through a family, and they also impact cultures or nations, through a tribe or people group. The cause and cure remain the same.  The generations must join together, through the redemptive power of the cross and blood of Christ, or the bondage, habits and mindsets of peoples and nations will change little.  But…this is changing.  When God begins to answer the cries of His people for deliverance from bondage, he first moves on the “fathers,” or leaders, to make the initial step for change.

Turning the Hearts of the Children

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… (Heb. 1:1-3).

I grew up without a father.  My father abandoned my mother when she was three months pregnant with me.  He left and never looked back.  Any child growing up without the blessing of a father knows the emptiness, rejection, and anger that can accompany fatherlessness.  We are now living in a period where the majority of young people have grown up fatherless, either by abandonment or neglect.  Since the higher courts of this nation escorted God out of public life in the early sixties, several generations grew up without a true knowledge of their Father in heaven.  The toll has been tragic, but hope lives, because the most unprecedented move of God the world has ever seen is at hand.

The Compassionate Father

In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God (John 16:26-27).

Turning the hearts of the children to the Father begins with the revelation and experience of the Father’s burning passion for messed-up human beings.  The average Christian sees a perverted image of the Father.  They base their relationship with Him on a perception of Him being an arbitrary, untrustworthy, aloof despot, demanding perfection before He can or will interact with us.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Being male and female, both sexes reflect aspects of the glory of the Father.  There is a tender, compassionate heart at the center of the Father’s existence that Paul describes as the kind of love and care a mother would show for her children.

Has Anyone Seen Jonathan? Part 2 By Mike McClung

Jonathan, A Type of Dissatisfied Remnant

Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, “Lest the Hebrews make swords or spears.” But all the Israelites would go down to the Philistines to sharpen each man's plowshare, his mattock, his ax, and his sickle; and the charge for a sharpening was a pim for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to set the points of the goads. So it came about, on the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan. But they were found with Saul and Jonathan his son. And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash. Now it happened one day that Jonathan the son of Saul said to the young man who bore his armor, “Come, let us go over to the Philistines' garrison that is on the other side.” But he did not tell his father. And Saul was sitting in the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree which is in Migron. The people who were with him were about six hundred men. Ahijah the son of Ahitub, Ichabod's brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORD'S priest in Shiloh, was wearing an ephod. But the people did not know that Jonathan had gone (1 Sam. 13:19-14:3).

In the very land of their inheritance, the nation of Israel sat in bondage, due to the poor leadership of the self-centered, fleshly King Saul. 

Has Anyone Seen Jonathan? Part 1 By Mike McClung

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet. 3-5).

Hopefully, through the years I have mellowed…at least somewhat.  Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t bend when it comes to the truth, but, by the grace of God, I have learned to temper truth and mercy better over time.  Years ago, I was much less “pastorly” than I am now.

Back in the late 80s, I planted the first church I ever pastored, and it lasted all of 5 months!  During that time, I was invited to a dinner-reception by a local home fellowship in East Tennessee welcoming the man and his family they had just asked to pastor their growing house church.  I had several friends that were a part of this group and I was glad that I could be there to rejoice with them.