When was the last time you cried?

Like really cried. Wept uncontrollably, felt the weight of the world and reflected on the grief that we have experienced. Sometimes it feels like our world is collapsing under the weight of failure, of death, and oppression. In light of listening to Kanye's album, I am extremely grateful that it is a thing. He addresses issues like the fact that the Church as the Bride of Christ rejects what Jesus would have accepted with open arms. Saying things like "what are all the 'Christians' saying?" Well it's a good question, looking up "Kanye West conversion" some of the most popular articles are of people naysaying that Kanye is genuine about his faith, and have called his album uncreative and "Kanye just being Kanye with more bible verses." 

I stopped reading after that.

Because what I'm hearing out of "JESUS IS KING" is a heart cry that has experienced the weight of the world, and given it to the only person who can handle it. What I'm hearing is someone who rejoices in their salvation, their Yeshua. What I'm hearing is someone who really cries. 

Throughout the world there are cries. There is a woman whom I love dearly that has decided to devote her life to Christ, even though her husband is disapproving and denying of Jesus as Lord. I hear her cries, and they are powerful. There is a man whom I love dearly who experiences the weight of the world and grief at how the church is so focused on not expressing Jesus, and I hear his cries. O how they cause grief to fall in a room. In inner-city apartments, there are cries as loved ones are shot dead. Just. Like. That. 

It's easy to respond to a song that makes you want to dance. It's hard to see someone weeping on the floor, get down next to them, and cry with them. Albeit half of the church is so scared shitless of showing any emotion due to oppression that the endeavor to play songs that make them want to dance is essentially listless. 

IT'S NOT ABOUT "WHAT IS APPROPRIATE." It is about "what is meaningful?" It is about "what is loving?", it is about the power of looking outside of yourself and realizing that you have what it takes to be compassionate. When you feel the heart of Jesus and how it breaks for the homeless, the people who don't belong on the streets, but are there for whatever reason, it's hard to not have tears flowing. 

Then, later on, you find joy in that suffering, but that's another campsite entirely. What is of utmost importance is that we as a church experience the heart of God, and that we allow Him to move in ours.

Life on the Line

First off let's define "the line". 

The line can mean multiple things, I can put my machine on the assembly line. I can put my foot on the boundary line. I can even get in line to checkout once I've finished shopping for groceries. These things are maybe nominal at best with what I'm going to try to describe to you. While maybe the boundary line is the closest, a performance-related boundary is just about the farthest from the image I can attempt to describe for a few reasons. In most sports there's just grass on the other side and the only consequence is that you would have a whistle blown at you to warn you from going over the line again. In other boundary lines there are clear cut rules on how to navigate them, such as in a car where you may drive over the line that divides lanes to get off on the next exit. Let's go a little more extreme though. 

Imagine yourself standing in Arizona, having just driven for 8 hours to see one of the world's many wonders, The Grand Canyon. You came by yourself since you like to venture alone, and you're now making the home stretch from your car to the viewpoint that you have not yet chosen. Looking around you immediately realize how hot it is in comparison to the inside of your car. Already uncomfortable. You can see the red sands stretching for what seems like decades, the cacti and sagebrush echoing in the wind. Joshua trees are planted in an attempt to stop the sand from getting into the parking lot but with a wind like this, you can't help but get your shoes a little bit dirty. You begin to walk toward the building which all tourists must go through, a ridge slowly coming into view with what looks like a sheer drop off. You pay your money and walk toward where everyone else is chattering and oohing, taking their tourist photos, and enjoying their tourist friends who have tourist clothes and tourist hats. They all have an advantage, they see the boundary. They see the railing you see, but see it as it is purposed for. You see it as a challenge, as a goal. In dreams and meditations, you've been told to "jump." This is the boundary line that was in your mind at first. You get to the edge of the railing and look down, marveling at the amazing drop you ask God one more time "you sure about this?"

The most obvious thing to point out during this journey is that you would very quickly make your arrival in heaven if you were to succeed the jump. Everything you ever thought you could achieve, ever wanted to spend time doing, any person you thought you could love, any family you figured you would have had the opportunity to create. Gone. Just. Like. That. However, if we're being honest, this is what the Bible has called us to. This is how God has chosen to interact with those who say they want to give their lives to Him. It's shown over and over, Abraham, David, Joshua, Moses, Jesus, Paul, Timothy, Andrew. All of these Historical characters drive a piece home. God is not interested in giving us the life we think we want, He's interested in giving us the life He wants us to experience. Sometimes we will perceive that He is much more interested in killing us than He is at giving us life, and this is quite the opposite of what He's accomplishing and doing inside of us. For "whoever loses his life for my sake will gain it." You are told to "jump." If you feel like you're barely hanging on to the cliff edge your challenge is to let go, and let yourself free fall into His arms.

After all, without Him life is meaningless, or as Ecclesiastes likes to say "Vanity. Vanity. Everything is vanity!" 

Building Blocks

AS OF LATE I've been discovering what "balance" really means, and how in many ways looking for balance is more harmful than helpful. While I greatly value balance and figuring things out along with harmonization and whatnot, it's very hard to justify some of the things we do in light of who God is. 

What I mean is this: If we are so busy trying to find a balance that we forget to find God, we are doing ourselves, our church, and our God a great disservice. If we spend so much time avoiding heresy, we'll quickly become heretics ourselves of what the Most High God is going after, and what His goals are. We'll become despondent, apostate, and worst of all... forgotten. It's like God has made it clear to those whom He dearly loves that He's moving His body, and His bride further into perfection, creatively and artistically in only the way He can do, and if you're not on board, well, you're sadly going to miss the train. It's not like He doesn't want us to be involved. Personally, I believe that is one of God's deepest desires, to have his creation involved with what He's up to. You know, I find it telling that two of the greatest Apostles in acts (Peter and John) astonished those who were educated in the Law and the Way of the Law, while themselves being completely uneducated. They didn't care what the standards were for pursuing Jesus, they just wanted Jesus.

The thing that hurts is coming to the realization that we as a church have lost that, nearly completely. We value preachers and pastors who have a doctorate in systematic theology over someone who simply shares the gospel. We pursue answers to arguments and proofs of what we think over simply allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to be on full display. We seem to put blame on the enemy, on the other factions and sects of OUR BODY, and forget that putting blame doesn't get anybody anywhere, and taking responsibility is the key to opening ourselves up to innocence and purity. We value "Godly men and women" yet have no clue what self-righteousness versus living in the LORD our righteousness really means. Our leaders have failed us, and we have failed our Leader. We have called others Rabbi when there was only ever meant to be One Rabbi. The more I hear teaching on systematic theology, and open my study bible to theological essays that attempt to explain a complicated issue, the more I want to throw up all over and burn the thing.

Perhaps the reason why is because there is something I've tasted that's worth so much more than that and getting stuck in theology is what I know kept me from it. Getting myself wrapped in the web of apologetics, epistemology, soteriology, hermeneutics, contextualization, only ever taught me that I can very easily get stuck in my head, and forget what God wants to do in my heart. Getting myself stuck in these seemingly good things gave me a righteousness and automatic lesson of how to practice smiling when I don't even want to smile. It gave me a practice of putting on a mask of love and hope when all I felt inside was death and disingenuine lies that told me "these people are nuts, why am I even here."

One of the most powerful sermons I've ever heard is one where a lady got up on the stage, got ready to speak, and started weeping for a solid forty minutes. Uncontrollably wailing, crying at how we've succeeded in translating our sin into justifiable measures of making sure we keep everything under control. Where we've translated our bad experiences and blamed God for the suffering we've received. Where our only real success has been successfully misrepresenting our King and His Good News. 

Lord how you long for your church! Lord O how you long for your church! "come back to me" He says. "Can you imagine the world we can be apart of together?" "Darling, I still desire to bring you into my courts, into my wedding feast. I still desire to have a partnership with you. I still want you. I am with you. Come back to me my love, and I will give you a new heart, and the amazing gift of intimacy with my love. Come and float with me down the river of Truth and Light. Let us forget your worries and hesitations. Let us walk together and enjoy each other's company. I love you, and I always will."

Walking in the Prophetic

To me, everyone has a prophetic gifting. To me, the Holy Spirit can move through anyone and everyone, and maybe it'd be even more accurate to say 'everything' than simply 'everyone'. However, in much the same way, we like to have guided and tangible lines that others have prepared to help with definitions. Why? Why is it that we so value and enjoy restricting a good thing, by defining it? We restrict friendships by defining what kind of friends we are, we restrict sports, board-games, grammar, and... God. When we restrict and try to define God, we get tied up theologically, we forget the bigness, and try to downplay how important it is that we allow God to define Himself.  When we define who God is, we can very easily run into situations where God is absolutely not moving, pride has taken over, and people are trying to build a tower to the heavens.

What we should be looking for are guidelines, and nothing less. Something that explains how something is how it can be used, and how it affects our lives. What guidelines are is a foundation, while definitions are boundaries of which restrict, rather than allow growth. Because of this, it's important that we are careful to accept and run with any single teaching or doctrine, but instead become careful to read and apply what we're taught. For instance, I've recently been introduced to a ministry who has a lot of different insights in many different areas, especially in regard to how humans interact with the Kingdom of Heaven, and God the Father. They have a specific topic expositing the gifts detailed in Romans 12:6-8, and how everyone in the Body of Christ embodies a different personality type detailed by one of these gifts. This isn't necessarily a gift you are given once you are saved but is how God originally designed you from your mother's womb. For instance, if someone has the "redemptive gift" of Prophet, they are going to see things very black and white, have a deep sense of intuition, and be built with a very vibrant emotional design, and have very intense emotions. This is what the ministry calls "the structure of the person." While I've been gaining insights about the way God sees people, I have also been quick to ensure that I'm not taking this topic into my heart as doctrine, it is simply a guideline that we can use to get to know people better.

Another example of what I've been learning in my own life is how we interact with God. What we know about God, and can know about God is regarded in what we consider His Book, i.e the Holy Bible. Yet there are countless debates, theologians, books, exposition, exegesis, interpretation, and 'proper' ways of thinking and coming to the Bible, and we haven't stopped to consider that all of them could be right. We haven't stopped to consider that the bias we're coming at the Bible toward is a bias that has been handed to us by generations of right and wrong beliefs about who the Bible represents. Yet this is a key that is being handed down by certain circles within the Body of Christ who has influenced the world in a big way. The key is this: that each of us have no idea what God is doing, what He's going to do next, and how He's going to do it unless we ask Him, and know Him. Many of us feel betrayed when something happens in our church that isn't necessarily in our scope of reference. When something is preached upon that has not been clearly talked about Biblically speaking. What if that something happened to us though? How would we react?

How would we react if we came into a room where God's presence was so strong that it knocked you over, or if someone came to you and told you everything about your life? Would you lean toward being offended and hardened, or would you gasp and feel known by the Almighty One who leads the person in front of you to prophecy? Furthermore, if you were shown all of the fruits you have borne, whether it be by ministry or other means, would you be pleased with the seeds that you've sown? Would you stop and consider that even the ground must be rotten if nothing good ever happens to you? At what point do you reflect upon your rotten fruits and stop blaming your neighbor for having cursed your ground? At what point do you throw your hands up, look up to the Throne and beg for mercy for cultivating a product which can only breed distaste, hate, and disgust? Would you stop selling your awful fruits, or would you learn to market the rottenness and take it as an opportunity to sell it as compost to the innocent and blameless, who will take the cursed fruit and turn it into a blessing for those around them? Who will not only multiply the fruits by one-hundred fold, but be able to satisfy the needs of their entire family, by finding a way to grow wheat, meat, and rich wine simply because they consider your rotten compost a blessing to their fields.

This is a call to introspect yourself and put your heart under a microscope made for even the hardest of hearts. Ask the Holy Spirit to judge you and your intentions with everything, O Lord you have searched me and known me, all of my ways are before you! Before I was formed you had written in your book my days, every one of them. Psalm 139 is a good psalm to read in lieu of this topic. If you have not felt known by the Lord, ask Him what's in your book. If you haven't felt known by the Lord for a long time, ask Him to judge your heart and mind. It's a good thing, to ask to be made pure before the Almighty. He will honor your request, and in fact, desires deeply to clean you up.  So be made clean before Him, beloved. Keep walking, and persevere.

The way I walk

Something that's quite fascinating to me is how there's many many preachers, teachers, and pastors who are putting out sermons that seem to be actively explaining how wrong other churches are, and when you ask them what the other church is doing right they usually respond with something like "Well God can use them, but..." or "Well they're going after God but..." then they rattle off reasons like how much they've corrupted the word of God, how silly it is that they go and post the same thing over and over. Paul saw these disputes and many divisions such as these in his own church, but it's talked about the most in the first letter to the church residing within Corinth. His concerns were that "This division is basically pointless, who are you following, Paul, Apollos or Yeshua?" The next thing he says is "put down your divisiveness and walk in love for one another." Stop worrying about your worthless disagreements, and contradicting what Yeshua told his disciples the world would know HIM by! Do we want people to know the Anointed King, and His Kingdom or not? 

This is a troubling concept for me. This is a concept that has frequently brought me to my knees, has brought me to tears actively arguing with God about the state of His church. As Yeshua says "if they are not for me, they are against me." He is the one who is going to be doing the winnowing, the harvest is coming, and you should really know by now whether you're a weed, or a wheat plant. Such things are of an eternal nature. This is why it is so important to know who you are. Who Yeshua is, and what the Gospel really means. Obviously the first step to answering this question would be to go back to the Bible, as people who may not even be Christian one of the most widely used verses is taken immediately out of context of John 3, where Yeshua is explaining to Nicodemus, a pharisee who served on the Sanhedrin who was severely confused about this heavenly, and earthly stuff that he had almost never heard, and certainly never heard about in his tradition built from mans ideas, that he didn't necessarily have a frame of reference for it. Yeshua didn't talk about the subject of "that God gave His only begotten son to save the sins of many, that whosoever should believe in him should be saved" but that this act was called "new birth" into the world of the Spirit. The primary pronouncement was actually that God was ushering in a new king, and this kingdom would be taking place both in the spiritual and in the natural, so those who were "born again" would actually be born again into the Spirit. Some have called it simply "dimension", and while this may be a somewhat accurate phrase, Paul talks about us walking as citizens in heaven. Now if it were Yeshua explaining this He would probably say something like "Do you not know that you are literally seated with me?" It would be quite the realization for us as a church to suddenly know that we are literally living in Heaven, while we are here on earth. While the government of Heaven is completely perfect, it's near impossible to imagine. It's a good thing we have a God of the impossible though. To answer tough questions like "how do we even follow Matthew 5-7?" It's super important that we realize what kind of bias we've been bred with. Thus far this is how I'm ordering my interests, from most important to least important. While philosophically it's important to me, I will make no claim that I am currently living this way, but hope to be there soon.

1. God

2. The people around me

3. The church (maybe I should count this as 2.)

4. Killing my bias 

So God, what doctrine am I believing that is completely contrary to what you say in your word? What part of the spirit am I actively quenching? How have I not completely understood that I am actively walking the streets of Heaven now, and am still actively working as a representative of your Kingdom and Glory? How have I grieved you and your Holy Spirit? - This is my prayer, for me and for the church. At least right now. 

Thank you for reading!!

Job is quite an interesting character

There are many theological, and deep verses not very hidden within Job, but my feeling is people typically only read the beginning of Job, and the end of Job to see what happens. Everyone knows he's a man that suffered greatly, but I'm beginning to see this man as someone who suffered a lot, and gained deep and profound revelation through his suffering. The reason I say this is because Job is regularly, scholastically, and traditionally recognized as one of the oldest characters in the Bible, namely he was one of the original Patriarchs (just after the flood of Noah.) His existence and life is further corroborated through mention by the prophet Ezekiel (14:14), that he was a living breathing human.

Yet there are many things we as westerners question about his life, like how, after his family died, did he get that back so suddenly? How did he not die after the sudden onslaught of illness, stress, depression, hopelessness, and downright hellish? How was he STILL considered an upright, righteous, and blameless man in the eyes of the LORD, even after nearly accusing God of being unjust? How was any part of his situation just? Well these are all questions that are important to ask. If I wanted to feed you revelation, I would tell you to stop reading here, but this is my blog, and I like to share what conclusions I've come to. To be clear, this mystery is magnificent to me, and I am not interested in preaching to you, or teaching you new theological truths, but I am more so interested in challenging your own beliefs about yourself, God, the world, and Justice. As I've been reading Job, I am thoroughly challenged and brought new commentary because of the sheer fact that it is a very well written book. The literary genius in nearly unparalleled, and upon reading the NET version, and looking at the comments of the translators, this fact has become quite the more clear. I would definitely recommend at least reading the comments in the first chapter before you continue, but however you read this is entirely up to you. I would at least admonish you to read Job, else you may risk receiving nothing out of this post, as I am assuming you have at least some context to pull what I am framing here into.

So Job was given profound and deep revelation, even through his suffering. Job had a deep relationship with the LORD, you can see how this played out in the beginnings of the story, which not only covered how Job was upright and blameless, but how he would attempt to cover for the potential sins of his questionable descendants. He would even make sacrifices for himself, and one of the first things he does upon the onset of his affliction is praise the LORD. That alone is enough to give him props, but later on he even expands and corrects his friends, who are accusing him of not caring for the orphans, and seeing him abuse the widows of his community, who Job claims to have helped from the womb, and to take the orphans into his own family, giving them jobs, pay, and stay. He even admits that if he hadn't given rights to his servants, and listened to their heed, he wouldn't be able to answer any accusations the LORD had against him. (Job 3113-15. There's your anti-slavery text, the servants came from the same God he did, treating them wrong is absolutely wrong, and they have rights just as we do.) Even after the friends of Job continuously attempted to accuse him of doing some sort of wrong, he would straightaway provide evidence, and surety that they hadn't actually witnessed him doing these things, but that he acted in quite the opposite spirit. The sins even Job is aware of that would make him unholy and irreverent toward God are basically the exact set of sins Jesus remarks upon in Matthew 5-7. That's right, the Sermon on the Mount was there before Moses even got the Law. Upon Job's own awareness, he is sure that he has followed this law perfectly, up to the point of saying if he's opened the door in his heart to sin, he would be found guilty before the lord.

Furthermore, the priesthood was active presumably before Abraham ever even met Melchizedek, not only is Job prophetic, but he is also authoritative. While of course he is not joyful, or even spirit-filled as us believers have the amazing blessing of being today, he was more righteous than most Christians, of course by his own rite, and God is his witness, but still the point remains. God says through Ezekiel "I will cause you to walk in my commands" (36:27), so we don't have a lot of excuse in regard to sin, and acting on fleshly desire.  Yet this is a series of epiphanies that have been flowing as of late. In the first chapters of Job, the scene described as a room designed to allow a counsel to make decisions and sovereign judgments on the creation of the LORD, He actively invites Hist host i.e angels to suggest and make decisions. One of these angels pointed out is the satan, who is subsequently asked where he came from. The satan coyly replies "oh I was walking to and fro upon the surface" prowling, and seeking(1 Pet 5:8). The LORD replies with "have you considered my faithful servant Job? He is a righteous and blameless man, and serves me always", the satan then replies "have you not protected him with a hedge, and for this reason he serves you? Otherwise [I bet] he would curse you to your face."

While I'm obviously not quoting them word for word, the tone is there. However, in much the same way where is Job in this room? Could they be looking at Job through some sort of crystal ball, or window into the earth? Well, some have suggested that this scene is actually taking place in a court room, and typically the accused is brought into the court room, so perhaps Job is spiritually brought into the court room of the council, and is not cognitively present. Maybe he got revelation later on at this vision happening, if he is the one who wrote the book. If he is not, he seems to be vaguely aware that the accuser has a book that he brings to the Almighty (31:35), with which he uses to accuse Job. That which is being brought to question are Job's motives, since he had begun, and ended totally blessed and covered by the LORD. Every aspect of Job's questioning, accusations, and experiential trials brought him to his knees, begging and pleading that the Lord would hear his argument, as he was rightfully tired of being listened to by people who constantly wanted to argue whether Job was wrong or right. I wouldn't blame him honestly, this if part of the state of the church that makes me sad. The church leaders today look more like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. While yes, 2 Tim 3:16-17 says all scripture is good for reproof, and 1 Tim 5:20 says all who sin must be convicted, it is double-minded thinking to say and judge those outside of your congregation, it is disingenuous, and furthermore only brings condemnation upon yourself. What I'm saying is this: chill out on convicting others, walk in your conviction, and if God convicts you to convict another about their personal sin, or the sin of a nation, do so. For anything done without conviction is sin, and it is your job to walk in the integrity of your conviction.

Job did this perfectly, despite suffering more loss, ache, pain, hurt, judgment, hunger, mistreatment, and abuse than you ever have or will. Furthermore, he was literally recommended by his own wife, the woman who would have supposedly followed Job in his righteousness, to curse his God. Yet Job knew who was both responsible, and didn't. There's this aspect in the story of Job that the version of the cuddly, playful, happy God we really like to see doesn't jive well. God didn't provide Job visions of comfort, in fact quite the opposite (7:14), nor did he find him favor. According to Job, God had caused this to happen to him, and he wasn't entirely wrong. This was confusing to him, honestly it's still confusing to me. There's not a lot I'd rather have than at least a straight answer to the questions I have, and this is Job's entire premise. Not that God made a mistake, not that His judgment was unrighteous, but that Job didn't exactly know why this was being allowed. He didn't have an answer to tell people why this was happening, and his friends decided for him what that answer was: his own sin. Job was fully aware it was definitely not un-repentant sin, he seemed to even acknowledge that
his issue wasn't the fact that God had anything on him, and Job is persistent to this, while still keeping his integrity intact. You can't keep your integrity intact unless you're honest. This is why when sin comes up in my personal life, I plead guilty. Only by pleading guilty can it be washed, by the One who took responsibility for -my- sin.

Beside Moses and Jesus, I would go so far to call Job the third most humble man. He was willing to accept whether he had caused this chaos to befall him. He was willing to be wrong. In our own suffering, we ought to be much more willing to be wrong, else we'll never be made right. So then, take into consideration this: The wise words of a man directed toward me, a young, giddy, bright-looking individual, ready to take on the world, without the slightest clue as to how to do it; "you're wrong." Straight up, point blank, 'you're wrong'. I won't give him credit here, for interest in keeping it anonymous, but I will tell you this, this thought has shaped the way I receive learning, stay open to new lessons, and even how I interact with God, and others who I am discussing God with. I would suggest internalizing this lesson deeply, to the very core of you, because when you stand before the Lord, who can really be right? Well the Lord, that's who.

So be okay with being wrong. Be like Job, suffer, and learn a lot. You'll be well on your way then.

Just as I present this to you, know that I am wrong. While I myself have a high affinity for correctness, and righteousness, I do expect my bias and individual convictions to get in the way of writing. Do be careful with such illnesses of the brain, get in the mind of Christ if you truly want to receive whatever words He may have written here, and more than anything, enjoy the rest of your day!
With Love,
Andrew.