Seasons & Timing

    As this year slowly comes to a close, and as I learn more about myself, about my cycle of years, my time, and how God designed me to interact with time I'm met with a lot of discovery and awe. Some people get "end of year" words, I ask for them when I hear this preaching start to come up, but it never really felt like the right 'time' to be getting a word for the year. Personally, the new year has always felt to be around March or April and seeing the pattern and cyclic lifecycle of each year as it has happened, I can point to many big things that took place in April and March in my life. 

    I can look back to April of 2016. I had graduated high school the year before and was about to turn 19 in July. Yet my life was in a disarray, I didn't like many parts of it, and I found that fewer and fewer of my interactions with people were truly meaningful or deep. Neither did I feel like I was living in a meaningful way as this was really the year I had partied, and illicitly exploited myself and others to immorality. I was beginning to learn what the power of persuasion was, but I didn't know what I was meant for or what I was put on this planet in the first place. In fact, I had a hard time believing Jesus as a true historical figure and really only had thoughts of God as being a master craftsman and intelligent designer, but never someone who was present and caring. That April lots of things took place to shift my life, and an opportunity came up where when I said "universe, is this what I'm supposed to be doing?" I felt a "yes" impression. This "yes" took me to Nashville, and I began to establish a life there as a salesperson for a pest control company, and eventually was found by Jesus through one of my customers. 

    Unfortunately, the illicit sin didn't stop there. The next April was the next big shift in my life, though I had been hired to do contracting work at Dell in November, I had to go through a 4-month internship/training program to see if I could land a real job at Dell. I landed a job at a position making more money than I had ever made in my life by almost quadruple. The Lord blessed me with this job as I was still looking for what I wanted to do, and had asked him "what if I did something like sales and computers combined?". That year was the year I truly started praying and submitting my life to God and decided that I wanted to live for the work that He would have me do, and not just the work that I would have me do. Though it was still a long process I eventually applied to do a DTS that started near the end of March of 2019. I felt the call to sacrifice, and to live a life wholly unto the Lord, consecrated to Him alone. 

    The next April that came around was special as the shift happened a couple months earlier as I was lead to make roots here at Ywam-Cevennes in the south of France. Though I don't know about timing and the sovereignty of God where this lines up, I do know that the shift in mood, in how God interacted with me, and what He started addressing within me changed a lot from submission and ideas of submission to living it out. So I did, and my life cleaned up significantly especially as I worked with a pastoral figure in my life to confess, repent, and renounce old ways. I think I was brought a little earlier because the Lord knew confinement was going to happen, and that He wanted me here for it. 

    As I look forward I don't know where this next April will take me. I do know that I want to continue to be wholly submitted to the Lord, and I know what I'd like to invest in. I pray that the investment and intensity of relationships in my life jumps a level as that is something that I know I was like to develop. I pray that I will be given new revelation about my design, and walk further into the way that God created me to be, and that I would fully claim my office. Yet these are multi-year projects, and I'm excited to see what God decides to say about this coming year, I'll just be getting my word in April where everyone else is getting theirs in January. However, I do hope that you pray about timeline patterns in your own life and that you take the time with the Lord to see where your new year is. I believe each person has their own unique new year, and it's probably accurate down to the hour. Yet you'll never know it if you don't ask. 

Vanity

    Falling backward, sand pulsing against your skin, surrounding you with a rhythm like that of a breathing giant. Your head lulls as blood rushes to your skull, gravity acting against you, against your wasted life. Water rushes behind your neck, tapping your shoulder, beckoning you closer... deeper. You've begun sliding, the sand that was holding you up seems to be the gravity pulling you deeper into reality with yourself. You are falling deeper as an impression is created in the depths of your soul. The impression that has always been there, weighing you down. 

    Looking up you see color beginning to fade, the waves brushing your arm, ever so slightly inviting you deeper, cold upon your neck, her icy breath whispering for you to allow your body to come into her bosom. You feel your body lift by the next wave that comes in on the full moon tide. You close your eyes, understanding that what you've always wanted is found in the denial of everything you cared about. You knew you were going to be hurt. You knew you'd get betrayed, that people might never be trustworthy, that the beauty of letting go would finally arrest your worries and anxiety. You feel yourself being pulled backward, the backstabbing seeming to fall away as the weightlessness of the water numbs you. The black waters assuaging your wounds, carrying them away as the weightlessness of your life dissolves like the sand washing away from your skin. The waters enter your mouth, forcing you to swallow bitterness and regrets. You can feel your lungs on fire yet you don't struggle. This torture was just as meaningless as the loveless world you were apart of. The acrid water continues melting your brain, as your body begs and convulses, waiting for oxygen to return to you. Yet everything you decided had led up to this. You deny your deep need for connection One. More. Time.

Black.

.

.

    "The pain was real you know." you hear someone say. "We're going to have to go back though."

Gray.

    A star, a flash of lightning. Red, blue, sirens wailing. Voices scream someone is yelling. CRASH! Why are they yelling so loud? You wonder. SLAP! Another thunderclap, making your ears ring, realization dawns, you awaken, the burning in your lungs forces itself up your throat and you're leaning over a railing, retching mucus and bile you'd been carrying, over someone's feet. Someone pats your back, rubbing away the deep-seated scars those you loved had left there. Anger wells up "why am I back?!" You yell out. "I thought I was done!"

    "Vanity" you hear "Doesn't mean your life was meaningless to me."

    "Who said that?" You ask looking at the honest eyes of the nice people in blue suits, who had drawn you from the water.

    "Vanity" you hear again "Doesn't mean I don't suffer with you." You shake your head.

    Scrunching your eyebrows you ask "what does that mean?" The eyes stared back at you as you questioned them. The one whose feet were covered in your bile combs your hair out of your eyes. "You're beautiful you know." You're taken aback. Had you EVER heard that before? Would you even have believed it except from a guy whose feet were covered by what almost got you killed?

    Maybe... "Who are you? Why did you save me tonight? You ask.

    "I'm a follower, and Jesus is trying to tell you about His plan for your life. Since you don't want it, He gave it back and died so that you may live. So go, and live your life for He who saved it, for He will live within you, and be with you all of your days."

    

    You stumble out of the white room, back to your old house, stumbling down your old driveway, walking into your old bedroom, with your old posters and books covering the walls, an old plate that had your old dinner half-eaten. Yet you walked in as a new person, someone who knew they were loved, who had a life that was new.

(Disclaimer: if you or a loved one you know struggle with the desire to commit suicide, or need help in this specific area call the hotline 1-800-273-8255 or chat with them online. https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ there is people to help you in your time of need. Don't be afraid to get help.)

When wounds surface

    Depending on your childhood, or your early adulthood, you may have many wounds. If you're much like me, these wounds may have hampered your emotional growth via acceleration of what you felt like you must grow into. Often times I forget that I'm only 23, and that I have a lot of time to figure things out and be a young adult. I especially feel the call for maturity because I've felt that very same call since I was young, since I felt the call to protect myself from my siblings or family members. Since I felt the call to provide for myself, and to be thinking about consequences by my actions. It has only been recently that I've been realizing that this call was never one God intended for us, because it created a sick wound where I would try to take the consequences on for the actions of others. I would try to absorb the consequences of my siblings, or of my parents so that they didn't have to fight, or lie. Maybe it was a righteous effort, maybe it was something that was just inside of me, in any case it was born out of woundedness and iniquity. One of the most important things we learn about ourselves and our identities is what makes us us, and what makes them them. Doesn't matter who the "them" is, we all have a "them". Jesus made us to have a community, and if you don't feel like you have a "them" then I would suggest that you find one. My them right now is a community founded on prayer. These are people who have been in the area a long time, who have been spiritual for an even longer time, and who have been doing the work of the Lord for as long as they can remember. I still have much to discover about the depths of this "them" just as I am still discovering the depths of myself. 

    

    Some people believe that they can read other's thoughts or hearts. Other's believe that they have a power or control over other people's thoughts. I think these people are quite the opposite of empathetic, and are believing in lies. I used to be one of these people though, and the more I read, the more I was convinced. There is connection, and pedantically speaking there's a lot more to interpersonal interaction than we can tell or measure at this point in time, but nobody truly has control over the perception of others, nor do we have control over the actions of others, or their desires. I know for me that this caused a lot of grief in my life, and continues to do so, and that is because I was trying to take too much responsibility. The more I realize that I wanted to take all the responsibility for everything because of my desire for control, my need to express control over something in my life, the more I realize that I really had no control, nor will I truly ever have control over the external circumstances in my life. Rather, I will only be able to monitor what goes on internally and ask myself questions. This isn't the same as just accepting our external circumstances and not reacting, or acting out authority and dominion over our time and space, it is realizing the limits of how far your authority and dominion go. In other words, authority and dominion don't often mean control, but influence. YHWH spoke the world into existence, and speaks into it today in such a way that He influences it. Just as He spoke into my life, challenged me to submit EVERYTHING, and lead me, has been an exertion of influence, not of control. So do we have the power to influence the world around us, and it is responsibility to know how to influence and persuade. But we can never control. We can only control HOW we go about influencing and persuading. Some may read that as a permission to manipulate, however that is certainly not what I'm expressing. Respect the "no" and the "yes" of others, learn what makes those decisions, but learn more about how to empower a person to make those decisions for themselves. Rarely are we taught how to say "no" or "yes", and I know for me that this is a big wound, and something I'm learning now. I am reminded of the sovereignty of God, and may spend a blog post or two expressing the sovereignty of the Lord in my life as of late, as it is relevant and awesome what He's been up to. 

Emotions pt. 6 (Anger)

     I carry a core belief that I'm slowly working on getting rid of that is about anger. We feel it most often when there's an overstepping of our boundaries, said or unsaid. It can often be a violent emotion and is a powerful catalyst for battle. My core belief is that it is mostly useless nowadays, and if we were only just better at communicating interpersonally then we wouldn't have to be angry with one another. Yet, I have only ever seen a righteous expression of anger from a few select people, and the first person I think of is Jesus. Sure we can point to what he did at the temple and the turning over of tables, but my mind first goes to chapters like Ezekiel 17-18, 22, 23, Exodus 34. These are times when God was angry, and when He expressed His anger who had not listened to His precepts, nor followed their own word to walk in accordance with His law. Yet, He worked out His anger through the precepts and law that He had given them. He warned them of EVERY consequence that they might receive should they betray Him and overstep His boundaries. 

    This wasn't a principle or a universal law that at some level every human must take accountability for, these were the codes and guides that the LORD had given to His people because He wanted to make them a nation of priests, and to be a glory in all the earth. At this very same level each consequence HAD  to be communicated by God Himself so that when the more harsh consequences came about, His people would recognize that they were being reprimanded and disciplined with an iron rod. Those that believed God was unjust were also normally the ones that received the worst treatment. Not only was the iron rod slashed on their back, but it was also heated up before, meant to leave blisters and wounds that may bleed profusely for days at a time. There is ALWAYS healing for that, and that's not really what I'm getting at. I'm getting at the fact that God showed anger in many different ways, but mostly as His people Israel. There are cases all throughout the History of God showing His anger through other nations and empires, and of course, we can find where God's hand was in every story; if we look. 

    I have been experiencing a form of frustration as of late mostly because I have desires that aren't being met. I have a desire to communicate and to be communicated with. To walk in unity with my base leaders, and their vision and the reason for the frustration is that what they want from me, and for me, and what my heart wants, feel like totally diametric oppositions. This is a challenge I'm dealing with right now, and having grown from a place where I would default to; that is: go into a form of hopelessness and isolation because I believed nobody will hear my complaint or my frustration. Now my challenge is actually addressing these thoughts and emotions rooted in anger, whether it be angry at the unjust way I was raised or perceptibly bad boundaries that have been laid out. I need to be able to handle the confrontation and communicate from my heart where I'm at with everything. 

    The fears that are associated with this expression of emotions is that I will be rejected for showing them, that I will be misunderstood, and that it will be too much for the people around me to handle. 'Course these are not realities, and can easily be combated. The true task is being lucid and congruent enough with myself that I say what's on my heart concise and accurately, and for that I look to the most congruent man on Earth, Jesus. 

Fire of Worship

     This past week we've had a teacher on base who was teaching on worship. She's a French native and so the first big hurdle was to get over the "into English" translation as most of the teachers here have been translated into French. It brought a different dynamic into play, but so did her experience and wisdom in the realm of worship. She has worked at prayer houses in the French-speaking world, given advice all over the world, and helped teams grow into something that she calls "the house of David."

    Now, I had originally started this blog post back in July, but I didn't write anything besides the title, more so it was a placeholder and I was waiting for the revelation to come on what to write about. In general, worship is a huge topic and should be studied -by all who consider themselves believers- deeply. I'm not talking about the music, though that is one format of worship, I'm talking about the way God expresses Himself to the world, and how the world expresses herself to Him.  This week specifically I've experienced another dimension of worship especially in the music realm, but we were talking about David's Tent. You can go read the story in 1 Chronicles 20-28 or so. As far as stories go there is a LOT of text dedicated to this tabernacle. In retrospect, it's still very little compared to the texts Jeremiah and Baruch wrote, but that's not the point. 

    One of the details we see about David bringing the ark into the tabernacle was that the Kingdoms most skilled musicians, 288 of them, all made their way to be standing in the temple day and night. This is on a whole other level of priesthood, and there were not just sacrifices being made, there was music, there was dancing. I believe that correlating with the vision of Ezekiel, and in parts of Revelation, that this is what the main throne room of YHWH looks like, sounds like, smells like, and feels like. Suddenly Aaron's command to burn incense in the morning and at twilight (Exo 30:8) was fulfilled throughout the day, and not just twice a day. 

    It was a very special experience to be with her this week, and I'm excited about what we can do as a team and base to continue to grow in this style of Worship and Prayer. This burning desire to see Abba honored and adored is growing ever hotter in me, and the Joy with which it comes is beginning to really take roots into my being. There are a few cardinal truths that I am beginning to realize fit deep within me. As I continue to grow in congruence with my spirit, soul, body in subordination to the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, I begin to see how deep these truths really are. To be a worshiper of the Lord is to lift Him up. To see Him take precedence in your life, and in the lives of those around you. To become His servant, and to be made low. This is what the Kingdom of the Lord is about. I am privileged that I get to be a part of it.

Emotions pt. 5 (Roots of Rejection)

     Currently, I'm reading a book by Henry Cloud called Changes that Heal. One of the societal and psychological issues addressed within the book is about bonding emotionally, and what healthy bonding looks like. My friend put it nicely when I mentioned how much his book was helping me. "Well if you only look at the bad stuff, you'll only see bad in the world." This is exactly why it's so important to have a grid of what proper and God-given bonding looks like. Personally, I haven't had a lot of great bonding experiences, especially with my father. While I'm reading this book I'm beginning to identify what was missing even with my mother, and how much intimacy and emotional bonding even with friends has been nothing less than a nightmare in my life. He speaks about something psychologists call "object constancy". This describes our ability to have a placeholder and memorization of emotions we felt regarding our mothers, friends, fathers, and God. The question he poses is "how good are you at remembering how much others love you when you're in the midst of challenges?" I don't have an answer... If I did have an answer I probably wouldn't have battled with depression as hard as I did this weekend or last week. Throughout my life for that matter. 

    But why is it so hard? Why is it so impossible for me to look at this question and say "Yes, I definitely know that my loved ones love me, and they are what motivate me to keep moving forward."? Then I must ask the question "Do I love them?". Even to the point of allowing the littlest things to bother me about a person. I don't much like being disturbed while I'm sleeping, mostly because I'm a light sleeper, and for that reason, I am really not a fan of having a roommate. But I must ask myself "how could I come to the point of tolerating, or even enjoying the sounds that my roommate makes?". That would be a little closer to enjoying, or loving them more fully. 

    Yet, I still have the problem of not trusting that I am loved, which is why I called this post "roots of rejection". Lately, there have been many events where I have legitimately felt rejected by the people around me in a completely illegitimate way. There was no real reason for me to think that my friends were thinking ill of me, but I realized that as a kid I would get ditched often by my own friend group. I didn't know how to handle it, and I remember that there were a couple years in elementary school where I felt extremely alienated from my group. From that point on I don't remember developing healthy relationships in group settings within my internal structure. Sure, I was friendly with people, and there were friends that I had, but I never felt that I belonged. I never truly felt like people loved me and accepted me into their friend group, even though they had verbally affirmed this to be so. What I didn't have was the ability to trust and develop intimacy in that trust. I didn't trust that they had accepted me, that they wouldn't betray me, nor that I would ever legitimately be accepted into the group. Even though I was. 

    What the enemy stole from me was acceptance. To that degree, I refused to be the person who rejected someone from hanging out with my group and always tried to be inclusive because I KNEW how much it damaged me to be left out, and how much it still hurts to be left out. Yet this is the error and the over-correction on my part because of the reaction of my own fears. The course correction is knowing I belong to a family, and that Jesus has brought me into His sheep. He will never forsake me, even though my friends did, and may do so again. He didn't forsake me even then, and that is the righteousness that I'm trying to stare at, even though sometimes I've forsaken Him. In Him I belong. In Him I am a part of something. In Him I can be me.

Emotions pt. 4

     Timing is everything. God's timing is the ultimate, and other than His timing there is no perfect timing. His principle for Time is holiness, our need for His time is nearly unbearable. His presence in time is all of it. There is a flow to His time, a flow that makes sense to our spirits, and to our minds and souls if we let it take us. There are also obstacles to His time. Today I'm going to be talking about some of the obstacles I've had in my emotions following more fully His time.

    During the staff meeting today the guest speaker who was with us explained the way that pruning happens in a vineyard, and how pruning half of the fruit-bearing vines will generally generate product 5x more valuable than if they hadn't pruned anything. So I asked Jesus "Hey, is there anything that you'd like to prune in my life?". He immediately responded with "your music." I know that's what He said, but I haven't even processed how unconsciously my habits with music are, whether I practice singing scales, make a rhythm up with my hands, or start humming a melody. Now that I'm trying to allow Him to prune music from my life, I am beginning to realize the gravity of how much it hurts to let go of music. Something I LOVE dearly. Something I even believe I've been gifted in and is part of my design. 

    Pruning is a violent process, and if you ever get the opportunity to watch someone prune their grapevines or their canopy, I would suggest paying attention to how much force they use to pull the vines apart while cutting and ripping life-bearing branches and stems apart. It's confusing, it doesn't make any sense, and it certainly feels like the vinedresser is purposefully hurting the plant. Yet in my study of inner-healing, I've been learning the difference between "hurting" and "harming." Harming the plant would be neglecting to feed it, or water it. Harming the plant would be allowing pests and foreign insects to eat its roots and trunk. Hurting it would be pruning it, refining, and only allowing the best fruit-bearing vines and stems to live. Why? Because it's an investment in bearing life and life abundantly.

    So, while pruning the branch of my life that is producing music certainly hurts, it is helpful and conducive to having more excellent fruits in the life that Jesus has given me. I believe that, though in my emotions there is seated a sense of betrayal, confusion, and questioning, and distrust. Each of these has to be felt and dealt with in its own way, and I'm going to be working through them with God. In my spirit and in my head, however, I know that I can trust the vinedresser as I stay connected with the vine.

Joseph's Temptation

     One of the things that fascinates me most about Joseph is his emotional makeup, and discipline within that structure that he learned how to utilize and maximize without falling too deeply. He wasn't raised in a supportive family AT ALL and Jacob is probably the core reason for that. Not only do we get Joseph's acknowledgment that Jacob had been following the plans of the enemy for his life more thoroughly than The Lord's plans for his life, but we also find that none of Jacob's children were REALLY raised to follow the Lord, but just to have a sort of religious affair with Him. It is a miracle in and of itself that Joseph had an open enough heart for the Lord that he even received the dreams and images that he did. 

    Yet there is a pretty big catch, not only did Joseph suffer from having brothers that refused to accept him, but he also had only one true source from which to find comfort and healing. There were no ministers of the Lord waiting for him in prison, down in the pit, or in the office of Pharoah. There were no people that Joseph had to touch his skin and let him know he was seen, and that he had indeed heard from the Lord. There were NO signs that Joseph was even on the right track except by the faith that Joseph himself had carried, and the legitimacy and comfort he found from God. Joseph was the benefactor of a jealous love from his father, which in turn caused a jealous hatred in his brothers toward Joseph. So though Joseph knew he was favorited, but it was a curse rather than a blessing. Moreover, he suffered rejection of the harshest degree at the hands of his own flesh and blood, being given over and sold into slavery. Joseph had every reason to want comfort and, having been someone who has been working through the emotional roots of rejection, and knowing how I comforted myself through immorality, I can only respect the integrity with which Joseph treated his interactions with Potiphar's wife. He had ample opportunity to accept the attention he was being given by Potiphar's wife and play along with her obvious desire for him, and yet he didn't. He knew that in God's eyes it would be evil. For that Joseph gets huge respect from me. 

    In the perspective of the chapter just before this scene with Jacob and his family, it's pretty remarkable to see how ridiculously contrasted the two situations and attitudes are. From the surface, Joseph's life seems like someone handed him a bag of dog crap and lit it on fire, where Judah's life would probably more closely resemble what we see in the average American's life, negligent parents, awful kids with no discipline, squandered birthrights, and no care really for God. To me, the life that was far more wasted was Judah's. He had TWO sons die to God's wrath because he didn't parent them, and teach them righteousness! Then he went into the wife of his dead son who he believed to be a prostitute! Judah! Come on bro, what are you even doing?!  Judah didn't even have the strength to keep on walking on the path when he saw who he believed to be a prostitute. Pitiful really, and it all goes back to Jacob. 

Given

     "He was given over to his lustful passions and worldly pleasures." "If he had given over his life then it would have been saved." "He gave up His life and all authority in heaven and earth has been given over to Him." "I have already given him over to Satan so that the Lord may discipline him through fire." "He is given over to your hand, but do not harm his body, or take his life." These are just a few ways we can use the two words "given over", and yet in biblical terms tends to imply a level of submission and sacrifice. In the book I'm reading titled: Right Relationships - Tom Marshall; he dedicates the book to I'd assume his wife "who gave me 41 years of her life." This caught my eye and I thought to myself "my, I want someone to give me their life like that!" Of course in the context of the phrase I thought of a wife, but the next thought that came reminded me that I have been given a life. In fact, I haven't just been given 'a life' but THE life, and life everlasting at that by the one and only Son of God.  Jesus Christ has given me his life, and in turn, I am lead to give my life back to him and to be given over to his truth and his sacrifice. 

    The fulfillment of being given over to Jesus is as Paul might say "of far surpassing value than anything else in this world."  Yet to be given over to something also requires a submission rooted in trust. Recently I've been rediscovering the definition of the word "trust." I've been discovering how God leads in trust by placing the responsibility to the subjects who have been brought into His kingdom, and how even though He knows most of His subjects will more than likely not live up to the potential of each situation, He is heavily invested in allowing His subjects to grow to become the person that would not make the same mistakes over and over. In my own life I've been conditioned to where I know I don't allow my leaders, or really even myself, to make mistakes for the purpose of growing in character. This is because I had decided that no leader was worthy of my trust, nor could I ever trust myself.

    To say that this has created dissension within me would sort of capture how much pain this has caused me over the last couple of weeks. One of the key principles of trust is being able to fulfill command whilst also not breaching boundaries. Fulfilling command is the easy part for me, but because of the mindset that boundaries are needless and made with a faulty bias that I carried, I test boundaries, running over them with a recklessness that may not have any purpose at all especially in the face of wisdom. I have run over boundaries and rather than respect them in the interest of earning trust I have blatantly said "you're not worth my trust and neither I am worth yours, therefore I will not follow your rules." This weekend I have been filled with shame and grief over this mindset and maybe have just begun realizing the gravity of the hurt I have caused both my friend and in my leadership team.

    Yet, I have been given grace and an opportunity to step up my game. I have been given over to growth in Jesus and the flawlessness of His character, and the integrity of His word. This is my prayer and my meditation. That I would be given over to Him and that I would be dead and He alone who lives through me.

Urgency

    In my personal life, I've grown up in, adapted to, and functioned within a culture that's centered around urgency. Getting hired to do sales was one of the best ways to learn urgency because if I wasn't on time I wouldn't get the sale, and if I wasn't early I would be too late. Yet, this has caused quite a bit of tension in my life especially in relationship with God and with others, because it has caused me to think of the next best step, and instead of waiting on it, taking it out of step which causes me to be out of sync and out of time, and instead of being ruled by God's timing I am instead ruled by the timing of the market or the timing I think is best.

    I used to joke that life with God is more about unlearning things than it is about learning new things. While I don't really believe that this is the case anymore, I think it's a funny thing to point out in this context. I've got to unlearn urgency, and I'm really writing this blog post because I want to discuss with myself how I might do that. 

    So let's say with our friend, I have a certain conviction that I'm supposed to work with them in ministry, or be in a relationship with them, or do something in the future that is not yet the reality. For whatever reason I feel I often am made aware of these things far before the other person is, and it is a huge tension to let it roll in the timing that God desires to roll it out in. My problem is that as soon as I've realized that it is a thing that God wants to do I figure it's on His heart to do the thing right now, and so I'll take appropriate steps to make the vision a reality. The problem is is that if He had a vision with a time stamp on it I wouldn't have heard the time stamp because I didn't ask or I didn't bother to look.

    To be honest this is something that I've been learning for the past few months. My sense of urgency and restlessness to do a thing or get a matter over with so I can move on to the next thing rarely honors the timing God has in mind, and only speaks to how insensitive I can be to timing. What He's trying to teach me is rest, and staying in patience. Even this matter I'd love to take with the urgency mindset and say "OKAY GOD I'VE LEARNED PATIENCE NOW WHAT." But that would be missing the point, and would again speak to the fact that I haven't actually learned anything. 

    So what must I do to learn? To take these thoughts and actions, and desires and submit them to the desires and timing of the Lord is a good start. It always starts with submission. The second thing would echo the command to "not worry about anything. Instead, seek the kingdom and its righteousness first." That's not to say there isn't a time and a place for urgency, but the thing that I'm learning is not urgency, the thing that I'm learning is the time and the place. To be on this land in France, to be in the time and the age that God decided He wanted me to be in. I'm learning how to rest. Today has not been restful, but even still I must learn how to rest in my emotions.

Emotions pt. 3

     Sentimentally speaking, emotions are beautiful and a grand experience to be having as a human being. There are certain things about being able to express emotions that make for a lovely conversation, but realizing the value of having an emotion that only I get to feel with God is many layers more beautiful. As someone who has a fairly creative brain, I often think about the best way to express the emotions I'm feeling through music, but having a strong logic-brain leaves me attending to my own facilities in allowing myself to simply experience an emotion rather than cut it down and devalue it. I have certainly gotten in my own way regarding this, and that is because I feel I need to have a proper label to fully "experience" the emotion, but the problem with that is: linguistically there will always be a shortage of words and expressions to be able to adequately language an emotion well. 

    My friend and I have used sounds to express emotions to each other, and to say that it has been entertaining would be an understatement, because it's also very beneficial to not have to put a label on an emotion or language it in some intricate way to be able to seem mature. I love it. There is something both incredibly satisfying in returning to a child-like format of expressing anger, frustration, or sadness by only using the sounds of what the emotion feels like. It could be as a musician that I like the audial experience of having something to listen to besides just words, but it might also be more than that. It helps that my friend gets it when I can only verbalize the way I'm feeling with sounds. 

    Yet there is the uncomfortableness within me that says "did I really get the wholeness of the emotion that I'm now feeling inside all of the way out?" Normally, the answer is 'no' unemphatically and without hesitation. Why? To me, this taps into the previously suggested idea that there are just too many facets, too many untouchable parts to an emotion or a sentiment that it must be experienced as simply that. I know that previously I would've considered myself fairly lucid in the way I was feeling my emotions, but now that I've been on this journey for a better part of the year, I know that there is certainly progress I've made in the direction of allowing myself to feel entirely an emotion, no matter where it lands on the "good-bad" spectrum. People have been attempting for millennium to adequately get an idea of what the emotion feels, looks, tastes, acts, smells, sounds, and is like. I think that's part of the God-given design within humans, an inner desire to express ourselves. Yet I think that thanks to the fallibility of our nature, we've failed to realise that emotions are not just things, but instead resemble a sort of sentient mass. Trying to capture it in something that is either non-living or no longer alive fails to bring the life that an emotion inherently carries unless the authority of the deliverance process is granted by the God of the Ages. 

    To circle around the idea that these emotions are a pseudo-living creature that must be delivered through a birthing process might take some time, yet it could be a worthy topic to see emotions in that light for some time, and I hope that it gives you something to chew on for the next couple weeks. I know that for me and my process I typically take a matter or topic, and watch for the way the conversations around me sort of circle around that topic even without meaning to. To me, that's a big way God teaches me about the topics, and one of the main ways I receive confirmation within my spirit that I'm onto something.

What legitimizes a relationship pt. 2

     Moses and Joshua, a legendary duo to say the least. These were two men that shared many miracles and had many different miracles separate from one another, one where they had a relationship based on quite a few things, but as we see in Exodus chapter 17, we realize that this relationship was built on the trust of each other's abilities. This is why the only other person who went up the mountain to visit with the Lord was Joshua, Moses' assistant. (Exodus 24:13) While these two men didn't grow up together as Moses and Aaron had, Joshua and Moses, I think, grew the most together. These two men had shared a common interest, fought the same battle, and served the same Lord with a very similar fervor, and zeal.

    I am very much intrigued by the parallels of their ministries, and I think it's worth a study for a later time. Yet it's fairly easy to see echoes of Moses' life and his victories in the life of Joshua, his closest follower and "assistant", which interestingly has a facet of the word 'ministering' that may be worth another blog post to uncover. I don't necessarily believe that Joshua's ministry unto Moses was what legitimized their relationship, but that they had a common goal, and a very similar birthright. They were designed to liberate the Hebrew people, to bring them to a closer place of worshipping the Lord, and to take the land that the Lord had in mind when He created them. They were to perform miracles and outstanding deeds by faith and by the power in the Lord. 

    Yet I think the marking factor of the legitimacy was that they went into the presence of the Lord together. Joshua went up with Moses, and suddenly, I think, everything he was doing up until that point and everything after that point had made sense to Joshua. There was an imprint, kind of like when you close your eyes and flash a flashlight in your face, you see an imprint of the "glory of the flashlight". This was when Joshua's ministry changed from ministering to Moses to ministering to the LORD GOD. This was their common goal, and them coming into the presence of the Lord was the one mark that they both had in common which began the journey of their mutual respect and love for one another. 

    Sure you can boil it down to just the fact that they did ministry together, and a similar type of ministry. You can even language it in such a way that they found intimacy with one another in their work, but when you go and stand in the presence and gaze of the Almighty God it's difficult to boil it down to just that. They ministered unto the LORD, they had experienced this profound holiness that had marked their lives and their relationship for the rest of both of their lives. I think the legitimacy was found in how much they welcome the presence of God into both of their lives and had found a common love for their God.

The secret place of the bride is the womb of the queen

    In Revelation chapter 21 we're given this image of the Bride and the Groom coming together, which echoes a similar image in Matthew and other chapters in the new testament that depicts the Bride being brought up and joined with her Husband in heaven. The King of Kings uses this image in such a way that He is painting a picture of a heavenly marriage and directly explaining how important marriage is to Him. Yet, indirectly, we can see that Him being the King has the true Queen of Heaven in His heart when He is being married to her. So in this season of preparing for our Lord to return to us, we must be looking to the identity of Bride in the same fashion as Queen. 

    To me, a preparation implies a location where someone or something is allowed to grow and depending on the thing, go through the bacterial, physiological, and chemical processes that science has learned and gleaned information about by observation of things such as wombs and uteri. There is something deeply spiritual about a womb of a mother, and in several scriptures, Jesus is painting a heavenly picture of Him giving birth to the sanctification of the bride by seeing her in the womb. Just as Adam was prepared in the womb of the earth, and in effect, all of us were before the frame of the earth, conceived in the mind of God, so does Jesus place us in the womb of the queen to prepare us to be the queen of heaven. 

    However, unlike childbirth and conception, we must willingly come to the place of preparation, just as we might come willingly to any prayer closet. We must willingly be stripped of our dirty rags and take on the clean white linen fit for the bride of Christ. It goes to say that to be in the secret place it is a place of silence and of humility before the majesty of the Christ. 

    This is where I've been lead to as of late, and continue to search out space for. In my daily life, there is a time of worship through the medium of music almost every day, and during this time I am reminded to "come into the womb, the secret place." It is not a dark place, but a place of being hidden in the Lord, and as most wombs are, a place of preparation and receiving. Unlike most wombs, my food comes in the form of revelation and, to be honest, lack of food. I find often that I am more fed when I'm not necessarily eating food on a set schedule. This is my womb. This is the process I'm being taken through. 

    In that same sense though, there are many wombs that we have access to, and are given over to. Yet the idea is that we give birth to something. This is my womb, and I pray that you would soon find yours.

Emotions pt. 2

     Often times in the world we're told to trust our hearts. You hear it in movies fairly often, especially in kids' movies when the child is curious as to what they should do. For me, I know that I have a hard time even trusting myself. I don't often know what I'm doing, and it often causes a pain in me that is hard to overcome without Jesus. It doesn't help that I often wonder if I'm truly capable of anything magnificent or extraordinary and whether I was truly designed for these great works in bringing a generation to God. I may be able to do my part, and I may be able to speak the truth, but I can not imagine myself having a grand impact on the hearts of others in any great multitude.

    The thing about these thoughts, and as painful as it is to admit, I would only be deceiving myself if I were to do these great big works without the glory of God in my heart and mind. The other thing is that if I were truly interested in the Kingdom of God first, I may never get to these works, and may just live a pretty normal life. Yet this is the tension that I feel, that because I have these desires to be winning souls to the Lord, He must've been the one who put them there. That is probably true, but even if I have the desire it will go unfulfilled unless I allow Him to fulfill it in the way He wants to, and for that these desires, even the ones He's given me, must be given back to Him. 

    So, in short, this is what I've been feeling as of late. These are the emotions I'm dealing with, and I'm trying to be brutally honest with myself because that's the only way to process these emotions without walking further into self-deception. Many websites, when you research "how to process emotions" simply say something like "feel them!". As helpful as that can be, at least for me, it leaves quite a bit to be desired as far as helpfulness and practicality. What's been most helpful for me is to find an adequate label for these emotions, and if necessary find a root or problem that could be causing them. For instance, nowadays I have to look inside and remark whether I find jealousy when someone else gets assigned to a task or given an opportunity to minister a certain way. This is easily combated with a C.S Lewis quote "If you are no longer needed would you be able to stand it?" - The Four Loves. Yet, how much it hurts to look myself in the mirror and know that I am not necessary for this context is a lot. It's easy for me to be needed, but it is very hard to not be needed. 

    If I were to put it in a metaphor of sorts I might say this: I feel that to be legitimate I must do, I must put in work, and I must be producing. Yet the pain is that there is nothing for me to do, there is no work that I am being assigned, and there are not fruits that I am producing. But, I must be able to say "that is enough." I don't need to be needed. To be is enough.

What legitimizes a relationship?

Personally, I think we have a lot of wrong ideas about what legitimizes a relationship. Of course, there's the tendency for outright sin in saying only sexual relationships are legitimate or "healthy". Then there's the gray area that says "Only relationships that have physical touch are legitimate." But that's a judgment from the flesh. 

Otherwise, what does God say righteous legitimacy is in relationships? Well for starters, I want to look at the relationships within the Bible. Let's consider Abraham and Lot, the little nephew of Abraham. Lot was a pretty dastardly character, not only was he lazy, but he had some serious issues regarding territorialness, and comfort. His relationship with his uncle was one I might consider to be a codependent/enabler type of relationship certainly because of the fact that Abraham never truly challenged him to live above the standard by which he was living. And yet the relationship stuck, and when Lot was needing help and Abraham was involved he was sovereignly saved by the Lord where he easily could've been turned to salt like his wife. 

But we must consider the fact that because he knew Abraham, and Abraham knew him, he was saved. In God's eyes I can't help but feel that he considered the relationship legitimate because of Abrahams love for his little cousin. 

How about the relationship between Jesus and Judas? Jesus himself was so good at processing his emotions that even though he KNEW Judas was going to betray him he still wanted to have him around. What legitimized that relationship? Well I might point to the exact thing that I said just before, Jesus liked and desired to spend time with Judas. Even in the midst of his very toxic heart, Jesus enjoyed his company. Judas didn't know it or receive it, but had he known I'm sure the world would be much different, and the story we know very changed. 

There's plenty of examples to look at as far as relationships, Moses and Aaron, Moses and Joshua, David and Nathaniel, Jeremiah and Baruch. As this thought develops I might like to deep dive into each of these individually. Otherwise, here is where we're at for now. 

Emotions

     This week I've started research on emotions. While I've had a long history with emotions, I'm embarking on the journey of both reconciliation with my own emotions, and moving from the maladaptive practices I've developed with feeling and processing emotions. Sometimes I ponder things about my childhood and I can't help but think "how have you screwed up so badly?". This question is an easy one to ask but a hard one to answer. Yet here I am, working through the reparation process and all the things that have lead up to me feeling the way I do about things that I really wouldn't need to be uncomfortable with, or even anxious over, had I had a framework of how to process and learn from emotions in a healthy way.

    I'm not the worst off as far as processing goes, and I know that for sure. One of the first things I asked God to do in my journey was to open up my emotional floodgates again and teach me how to feel. Floods are not necessarily the way we ought to look at our emotions, and of course there are times when emotions will be very intense in such a way that they feel like floods against us, but I think, like a valve, the flow can be tampered with, and like any plumbing job, will need repairs done on something as simple as the gasket, or as complex as the innerworkings of the pump.

    Then the easiest conclusion is that when things are working well, there's an obvious flow and ebb, a controllable function, and an interaction that you can have with the plumbing in the form of the water coming out. And when things are wrong... well it can be anything from a catastrophic -flood the whole house- kind of accident, or as simple as a 10ml/day kind of drip that, though incessant, is not the worst thing in the world. However, I believe where the difference in the design of how we're supposed to feel emotions, and plumbing, is that the design is for emotions to be in a constant flow and have a stream of water always available to us in the form of something we can easily interact with.

    A situation I've been struggling with emotionally is this: I desire a person close to me, and to be with them in such a way that it wouldn't comfortably be called friendship. The problem is I cannot flow with these desires as the situation simply wouldn't allow it without me rebelling against God and leadership, and mentors in my life, and so I can choose to block the flow, which may cause a sort of rupture in my emotional plumbing later on down the line, or I can choose to channel that flow, and allow it into another lake or pond. Or pour it out as a drink offering unto the Lord, and allow Him to burn those desires up. But being the person I am, and having the mind for efficiency that I have, I would simply not allow the amount of water flowing out of that spigot of desire to go to an offering my God wouldn't take a lot of pleasure in, but instead will ask for the tool of redirection so that I can cause a part of our empire to be flooded with His desire. 

    That and channel this relationship into a more profound love than the emotionally intense desire, and into a friendly self-sacrificing love that can learn to unpack the birthright of the other more than it's worried about unpacking the birthright of self. That can see themselves as servants and lower than the other. "This is love, that a friend would die for the sake of the other to live."

What revelation are you ready for?

     Jesus famously asks Nicodemus this question in the format of "if you can't understand things that I tell you which are of this earth, how do you expect to understand the things of Heaven, which have nothing like there is on earth?" Now Nicodemus was a teacher of teachers. It's likely that if he had an office given by Jesus then it would have been teacher as his main job was to educate others. Yet here he was, without understanding or even a thought close to being heavenly. Later what he did may be considered heavenly by others, by gifting the body of Jesus a great wreath, I have a hard time believing that what he did was anything but for the sake covering his own salvation in the only way he knew how, but he did it in such a way that he didn't bother asking the God whom he claimed to serve for advice on how to do that. Even though it was to THIS MAN that John 3:16 was delivered to, he still couldn't come to grips with the fact that all he would have to do is believe on Jesus.

    Whether the sacrifice is a statement of faith, lest Nicodemus actually learned something from Jesus, I don't have an answer with any sort of permanence. The problem that I'm trying to pose is this: we don't even know half of the things about Heaven that Jesus wants to tell us about because we don't have any sort of intimacy with the God we claim to worship. What if God told you that you are the queen of heaven? Would you be able to point to scripture and confirm that not only does God speak, but actually told you of a being mentioned in Jeremiah with a negative context, in a positive context? Not only did he tell you about her, but He told that you ARE her? How likely would you be to receive such a word? What if God said that you are designed to think with your feet? "What does that even mean?" You might ask, well if you were intimate with God you would probably already have something to refer to with that. 

    We must be intimate with God IN spirit. We often think of intimacy in a fleshly manner, but all three are available, and we've hardly touched the soul level of intimacy, let alone the spirit level. God is capable of all three, but He is asking us to come up to His level of intimacy. One of the posts I made a while ago talks about meeting God where He's at. 

    I feel strongly that this is still the call, and what the season is about for the church. But I'm afraid that hardly anyone is willing to accept such a teaching, and such a big responsibility. 

What your heart knows

Everybody would probably know the verse David likes to say in at least three Psalms "The Lord fulfills the desires of the hearts of those who do His will and adore Him." This is of course and "If" statement, with the prerequisite that we must adore the Lord. 

But what if I told you that we often lie to ourselves about what our heart desires? I know I've heard in pop movies "the heart wants what the heart wants! Why shouldn't I love him/her?!" To put it bluntly, I don't believe that these people are telling the truth. What the heart wants is to be fulfilled by the adoration of the Lord. 

The only unfulfilled desires we would have in our hearts is this: the desires that we think our heart wants. What's more, because our God is outside of time it's not "He will fulfill our desires" it is "He has fulfilled our desires." It is something we can thank Him for. The only disappointments in life are really what we've allowed ourselves to be disappointed over. The bottom line, and the beginning principle is this: we long to adore our Lord. Whether we know Him or not we have and ALWAYS will desire to adore our Lord. 

I'm a musician, and it's very easy for me to notice discordance, bad musicianship, and in general it's easy for me to be discontent with the music that we play. But it's not good music I want... It's the Lord. I want Him to be adored, to be worshipped. During worship it is not my job to go out and to express a sound, it is my job to go in to the secret place, and to find my heart connected to the Lord. Realizing this recently has lifted a lot of burden that I've had in my heart due to the fact that my desire is to have layers, expressions, and creative outlets fit to "be worthy of the Lord." What I didn't realize is that the Lord may enjoy the worship, but is as clear as glass when He says through David the WORSHIPER "I desire a contrite heart and a broken spirit as a sacrifice." Not the offerings of incense in worship, or money for sin offerings. He desires to see us turn to Him. 

He desires to see repentance. One thing that I've been working on living in is a lifestyle of repentance in all areas of my life. While I've dealt with sexual strongholds as a big thing, I really feel like there are deep things happening in the area of my emotions following along with the style of repentance to the Lord. I don't mean "repentance to the Lord" as in I'm confessing and praying repentance, I mean it that I'm turning toward the Lord with my emotions. This is the secret place. The place of repentance. 

What You Know

    Ignorance is a funny thing, and has been pondered on by quite a few philosophers, scholars, and plenty of arrogant and prideful people like myself. The problem with each one is this: none of us know what we don't know. It has been said that you don't TRULY understand a topic until you can teach it at the most basic of levels, while I don't necessarily agree with this quote, I think it points to the fact that humility is about serving those you are teaching, and teaching is about serving those who are learning. There's a few more layers to it as well.

    One of my new friends here at the base has said this "I like to really only talk about what I know and have experienced." In many ways her humble behavior is the embodiment of the proverb "Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise, when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent." This is a principle I have a lot of struggle with, at least in this season. I never really considered myself someone who was outspoken, but have learned that I can be someone who's very outspoken and always has something to say. I am glad that this is something that has been revealed to me, and feel humbled by the fact that not everybody wants to listen to every word I say. After all, there's hardly times when I listen to every word anyone else says. Yet this is where I'm at, while I know that there is a potential for me to be a better listener, I thank God that the process right now is bearing fruits in listening and staying focused. 

    Generally speaking I'm a person who is often far forward, and highly idealistic. While I'm beginning to realize just how opposite this is to the friend whom I've aforementioned, I've pondered greatly the concept of dynamic opposites not being opposite, but truly complimentary. The reason is this: If I can communicate all the words in every language, but am not rooted in reality about myself or my identity in Christ, i.e Love, I have and am nothing. All my words are just clanging cymbals and noisy gongs. I must be grounded, and be able to talk from a place of experience and position of my heart. 

    So often, however, my heart is full of doubt, worry, anxiety and fear on whether the right thing is this or that. These are things that are often difficult for me to talk about because of wanting to stay independent and not knowing whether I can trust people to give me worthwhile advice and counsel. Yet this couldn't be further from the truth that God speaks, and how I am supposed to be able to make the heart connection is unbeknownst to me, I must admit. I'm sure that this is such a process for a time as this, and feel certain that it's coming soon. 

God - the God of should's

     "Hey, you just 'should' on me." is a quote I was given once. My good friend and discipler once said this to me while I was trying to administer some wisdom and advice on how he should handle his situation he was going through. I thought it was funny, but he did not think it was funny, and it really opened my eyes to the way I commanded and sort of pushed people into the gospel and into wisdom. "You should really believe on Jesus", or "you should really think about repenting." are two commands we often most get in a (healthy) church. Yet the way we use the word "should" is really quite different than the bible uses it, mostly because the Hebrew language doesn't seem to have the feature of "should". Any verb would just be conjugated in the sense that it's a future hypothetical, but never a command. "It is not good that man should be alone." 

    Last night a friend on base here and I were talking, and she mentioned that it's really not good at all to say "should" because of the response that happens fairly automatically of guilt when that "should" is not fulfilled. That guilt response can look differently in many people, but as someone who really like to be honest, and pursues it strongly, I could understand what she was saying. The thing is when I don't fulfill something as fully as I "could've" or "should've", so often the problem comes from within where I know I could've done better, or feel strongly that the product I made was lack luster, or will never measure up to how I envisioned it. I've really just now been thinking about this concept, and am now realizing just how often I think in "shoulds." 

    My mom often said something like "shoulda, coulda, woulda." While I'm unsure as to the effects of this emotionally in myself, I do know that often I felt guilty because of this phrase, or somehow knew what was produced could've been much better. Frankly, now, it will be best to start deleting each of these words from my vocabulary. Now I must look at the fruits I am bearing currently, and rejoice with God in that. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm reaching new avenues of repentance and purity in the Lord, and am really starting to see the fruits of the Spirit in my personal life and relationships. Where before I don't know how patient or gentle I'd be, I know that those are things that are newly available to me, and the tool of forgiveness and praise are two that are most valuable for those wanting to reach closer to the Lord. 

    Reader I bless you in the mighty name of Jesus. I bless you with the reality in Heaven written about you, of how proud your Father in Heaven is of you, and how He smiles and His heart glows when He thinks of you. I bless you in acknowledging his presence in your daily life, and with the ability and revelation to continue to see his work throughout your day. I bless you with every spiritual blessing that Christ, through His sacrifice has afforded to us. I bless you in your walk with your brothers and sisters in unity, that you might see and find new depths of love for your brothers and sisters, but also for your love in Jesus. I bless you with the faith of the Son, and the repentance of His Priesthood. Amen.

Intimacy

    I have tended to think that nearly every person I've ever met has a problem with intimacy. But I know that I have had a huge problem with intimacy and it always falls back to how I've comforted myself in the past. It's not always easy to admit that I was a slave to sexual immorality, pornography and masturbation, but I was and it was how I received and made intimacy for myself for a very long time. Recently I've been walking with a beloved brother who has walked me through deep and effective repentance in that, and I owe it to God and him that I'm now feeling so much more comfortable even talking about what I've struggled with, and where I've come from. Of course I still struggle, and still get temptation. But now it's easy to identify where the temptation is attacking, and I'm much more able to see the designs God has made me with and how He'd like me to receive intimacy. 

    Some of the ways that have seemed popular between God and I to receive intimacy has been through music, sound, and frequencies. I wouldn't have even known there was a layer of intimacy I could have with God in this area specifically if I hadn't started listening to His voice. So with that I've begun to learn the significance of words of affirmation for me, especially when I can receive them. I used to have a block for a while specifically regarding whether I felt worthy to receive a word of encouragement, and I fought with inferiority quite a bit. Throughout my journey that is certainly one of the things that God has addressed with me, and has helped me to continue to overcome. Where most of us know about love languages, I think they're very simply the most basic of principles, and there's a lot more to discover there besides the five bases most often discussed.

    One of the ways I love receiving intimacy with God is especially during worship and communal music. Many times I hear extra voices/instruments being played while the music or worship is happening, often either something I feel guided toward, or will try to harmonize with. While it's acquiescing toward my design and love of music, I also believe that even non-musicians can hear/discern when heavenly angels or witnesses in the cloud are singing with us. Or even when God sings along or directly toward us, which wherewith I've mentioned, is by far the most powerful intimacy and satisfying thing to hear, and something I often am most fascinated and awed by. 

    This, I think, is the root and principle of intimacy that we should all look for in the character of God. What are we awed by? What part of the character of God do we get the most "Fear of the Lord" from? 

    I long for the day I can hear the seven thunders thunder, and would love to put what it sounds like in a worship song. I desire to hear the Son of Man and as He speaks with His multitude of voices to hear what it'd sound like. Yet this is the desire that I can enjoy. For one, it is my desires placed in Jesus, and if I continue to keep in mind all of the things in 2 Peter 1:3-7 my goal of intimacy with my Lord may just be fulfilled. We all desire something, and frankly I used to desire fulfillment through means of satisfying the flesh. Now I desire to know more intimately my Lord and Savior, and this is a desire I will keep. 

Seeking the Will of the Father - pt.3 (Indivdual)

 There are lots of ways that Authority and Dominion are expressed, and as I shared last post I believe that the principles of the will of the Father are rooted in gratitude and authority. This is nearly the single most important thing that we have to look to, and how we can tell we are walking according to our Fathers will. But to ensure we have victory in gaining authority and dominion for Jesus' kingdom and royal line we must first make sure that we allow ourselves to be dominated by the groom. For some of us that might be a hard word to hear. We might even share the disciples concern for such a word when they told Jesus "this is a hard teaching to hear" when he said "my flesh is the food, and my blood is the drink that you must partake to abide in me." With the revelation that this is the communion wine and bread as it was on the final supper this isn't such a hard teaching to hear. However, I think we must still carry John 6:60 in mind when we do take communion as this was Jesus' intention when he lead the disciples through the last supper. When I say we must allow Jesus to dominate us, I mean allow him total control in our lives. It's meant to be a hard word to receive at first.

This is akin to the display of the gospel. If the person is not soft-headed and soft-hearted it will be a very hard word to receive, although it is designed to be received I believe that it is also designed to challenge the stiff-neckedness that we humans tend to have when it comes to our doctrine, beliefs, philosophy, psychology and all other things. If we aren't first willing to lay down our rights to our life, or our calling, or our desire of not eating human flesh (like the disciples were challenged with) how should we expect God to help us fulfill our birthright? David had the clear revelation in many of his psalms with saying "You desire a sacrifice of a broken spirit and a contrite heart" (Psalm 51:17). But wait, I thought that the human spirit was unbreakable? According to the bible, no it isn't. In fact God says through David His prophet that he PREFERS that you have a broken spirit. That and a contrite heart. If this word isn't hard to receive in today's day and age I don't know what is. We have so much media, so many lies to sort through and filter through that it's nearly impossible to imagine what a broken spirit even looks like. Yet we are called to sacrifice our lives to the Lord, and He makes it very clear that the sacrifice He desires is that of a contrite heart and broken spirit, along with our lives. 

That goes into the other truth of the Father. It's never about something we must do, it's about realizing truth. The truth is, we all have broken spirits we all have contrite hearts, and we all must repent. We all have souls that are downcast. Until we meet Jesus and are filled with His Holy Spirit we do not get back to wholeness. Until we understand that we must abide in Him we won't be able to receive His teaching. Until we realize that we must be dominated by Him we will never truly live. It is this truth that we must live by. It is this experience that we must seek. It is this principle that we must never let go of, and this love that will truly allow us to be fulfilled. There is no plan B, there is no ultimatum, this is just the way it is. We have the choice to believe it, or keep on running. We have a choice to receive or to reject.

On the individual level this is how we seek the will of the Father. By allowing Him to break us then we will know and discern what His will is. 

Seeking the will of the Father - Pt.2

 There are many facets to seeking the will of the Father and we can most definitely look through the narrative of the entire Bible to see what that looked like for each person interacting with the Lord throughout. In the beginning chapters we see that the will of the Father for Adam and his wife Eve was to have dominion and to be fruitful and multiply. This is not entirely specific to Adam and Eve because this was the Birthright that Jesus inherited as the Son of God as shown in Daniel 9, 2nd Samuel 7, and throughout the laws and edicts of Moses. This is the most core will of the Father, and as we see in Psalm 8 I believe that this extends to a dimension far greater than just having dominion over the earth. It is out of this will that all other commands and wills of the Father comes out of and is rooted in.

In contrast one of the most common commands in the Mosaic law is "to not forget the Lord your God, for He is the one who brought you out of Egypt." By extension, and as accentuated in Deuteronomy 8 I believe that this command comes hand-in-hand with expressing gratitude to the Lord, not just for freeing us from slavery but for giving us the riches of housing, food, family, and love. However, it is said specifically that this was so that God could fulfill the covenant He made to our Fathers. This covenant was first made to Adam in the form of God promising that He would redeem the human line through the lineage that was to come from Adam. Secondly the covenant made unto Abraham, and thirdly to Moses especially during this time were what the Israelites were to be thinking of when God commanded this thing. 

We can follow the covenantal promises but more or less they fall along the same lines of being rooted in the principles of Authority and Gratitude. This is what the Holiness of the Kingdom is about and because gratitude and authority are rooted in love when you work with God, you can even apply this to "love your neighbor, and the Lord your God."  Because everything that the Lord does is rooted in these commands and these principles, we must carry with us the mindset that Loving the Lord our God is not separable from being eternally grateful and walking in our utmost authority. 

So when I'm in a town in the south-west of France with the various immoralities that you get with a coastal party vacation town, and I'm looking to win the town for Jesus, I must first be living and loving the command to Love the Lord my God with all my Heart, and not lifting my heart up but being conscious of the things that He's given me, and then out of that flow I know I bring power and authority to the environment around me. Then we see how He presently presents presence (and presents). 

With Love, Andrew

Seeking the will of the Father

 Jesus says: "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." In John 5:30

And

"49For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. 50And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak."

I find these two verses to be connected. 

I would that you would see the connection, but allow the Lord to speak to you what He desires to speak to you through these verses. 

Love you.

Sing a lament, Son of Man

I find it fascinating that in Ezekiel 28 one of the possible representations of the word "lift up" means to "sing" or "make music in regards to". However, the literal translation of the Hebrew word there (נָשָׂא) is to lift something up. The reason that music is implied is because the very next word (קִינָה) only ever translates to a lamentation. In context of the entire passage, t's very interesting that Ezekiel had pronounced an aggressive judgment against the King of Tyre, and immediately after was commanded to mourn for the King. It's definitely an interesting tension and release that Ezekiel was no stranger to. 

In my own experience, when I've been lead to pray judgement over someone or something, immediately after I have found myself lamenting. The way that God sees and has revealed it to me in this way is very interesting. For one thing, He knows exactly what He pronounces over people, and when someone goes against His word He must move against them. He does not lament over the things that people have done, because His reaction to being betrayed can only be anger. He laments over what people could have become, if they had followed Him. I believe that God laments over potential in communion. The best leaders, the ones who change the world for the Kingdom are the ones who are in communion with the Lord. 

It's no secret that Solomon had, in kind terms, the single most negative influence on Israel than any ruler before or after him, and the reason is because of not how unrighteous he was, but how far he fell. I believe that though his intentions for the kingdom God had handed to him were good, he didn't carry communion. He didn't carry the intense legitimization and self-esteem that could only come from being with the Creator. His wisdom carried him not only into the depths of his pitiful self-loathing, but the entire kingdom of Israel as well. 

Yet, the design and the intention of God with Solomon was to permeate from Israel to the entire world. This was God's intention, and His view of the potential of the Kingdom of Israel and of Heaven becoming one which He then lamented. God wants communion with the world, with every heart, soul, spirit, piece of land, word. 

So how do we meet God where He's at with this? Two things: Lament with Him, and allow Him communion into every part of your being. Seek communion and be sought. This post isn't about the judgement pronounced on the king of Tyre, but about the lament mourned over the King of Tyre. Just as Ezekiel was commanded to lament over the state of a foreign king, we are called to lament over the state of foreign countries, over foreign churches, and over foreign cultures. We are called to 'Lift up' a dirge for those cultures that have died, for the people groups that have been destroyed by judgment and pride. Grief is supposed to be an emotion we're intimately familiar with.

Yet there is most definitely joy in that suffering, and what a joy that is.

Taking Things out of Context

I think there's a very important thing that's talked about in the church that is regarded as a highly dangerous activity in regards to the efficacy of the Bible, and why it's so important to refrain from taking things out of context. The thing that seems to have taken the church by storm is that this concept is usually used by "non-believers" to argue the justice of God, or used in a situation where someone is taking Paul's letters out of the context of what they originally meant. Personally, I don't care for the concept and think it's a bunch of bolognas to claim you can avoid taking the Bible out of context especially if you plan on preaching it. Look at how the Pharisees used the Bible, people who the church today often forgets includes Jesus. They took principles, not phrases, usually out of the context of the original verse. However, there were many times that when Jesus quoted scripture He would also be pointing to something in the original passage that should have been known by the people who He was quoting them to. 

I once asked God about how to not take things out of context, perceiving that it was a legitimate issue. He responded, "it's very hard to. Especially if you want to work in a niche ministry that doesn't affect a ton of people." So I asked what He meant by that and He said: "well you either have to put everything into context within the entire Bible and when discussing an issue visit every passage that ever mentions the subject, directly or indirectly, or you allow me to fill you up with my word and refrain from quoting things from scripture as what you say will contain the shadows of my word that I want to express through you." Yesterday I was talking to Him more about this concept, and He simply said "try putting your life INTO the context of the Bible, rather than trying to extrapolate OUT of the Bible." 

I think that when we alienate the text of the Bible to something we cannot at all relate to is far more dangerous than when we take verses or concept out of context. Why not bother putting every situation you encounter into scripture, for the purpose of seeing what God says about it? We need to make a focus of rather than extracting, of inserting. I think we, as a church, should be some of the most influential and effective empaths. We should be able to empathize with Barabbas, Peter, David, Bathsheba, Deborah, Joshua. Often times there is a cultural divide to get over, but if you can't get over the cultural divide then you really got issues to work out. 

I'm talking mostly to you Americans who have never bothered to get to know your Mexican or Black brothers and sisters who live in the same neighborhood as you or bothered to try to understand their culture. There's an infinite amount of contexts that you can choose from, but try to at least have an emotional language to express with them to put their and your situations into an emotion both of you know well. 

This Morning I Woke Up

It started what felt like midway through a dream. A voice with a note of aggressive hatred toward me telling me "you are worthless, never will be. In fact, you're good for absolutely nothing. You suck." In the dream, I heard and felt myself mumbling the words that were trying to express the thought of "get out in Jesus' name!" After I mumbled this and felt myself lurching out of sleep I looked around and opened my eyes. Had I just woken up from a dream? Was what just happened real? I hadn't felt that sort of faithlessness that I felt for the first couple minutes after I woke up for a long time. Almost as if I was left completely bare just to be thrown down against my bed in a panic-inducing sort of feeling that could only tell me "your entire life leading up to this point has been a lie, you're not being protected, and you are completely left open to whatever creatures desire access to you." I stared at the ceiling for a while, asking myself what had just happened truly. 

Then I realized that the creature had resorted to yelling because I was beginning to give it pushback to the whispered lies that it tried to tell me throughout the day, and that my submission to it was beginning to slip from its fingers. I pondered writing this down right after it happened but didn't know whether I wanted to document such a happening. It was scary, life-drawing, and I was a bit bitter that something like this had happened at all. This is coming after a couple weeks of what has felt like a real and true breakthrough, with my relationship with God, with the people around me, and with my own personal struggles that I have been walking through. It has come after a couple ecstatic experiences looking and seeing glimpses of the holy true light. Yet I can't help but wonder if it's something on the land rather than on me. 

I haven't had issues with that specific thing since the other night, but I also haven't bothered to clear out spiritually visible iniquity of my little spot in the house. When I get back there, I guess I know the first thing I'm going to do. 

Killing Brothers

Reconciliation is tough and in the wake of happening in the media, our world, and the generalized breakdown of society as a whole it has only become harder. This is due, in part, to the unfortunate dust that has never settled in our relationships with our brothers. We need only look at Genesis 4 to see how God feels about the murdering of the people whom we were supposed to be taking into our homes and dining with. Cain was not only cursed to permanent unreconciliable death work to the ground for plants but was forever doomed to never experience a live-giving community as a stranger and a wanderer forever. To me, that is a curse far more than I can bear, as it was for Cain. 

But this is the curse we are asking for when we fail to inhibit justice, and in fact, only bring death to the relationships with those who are supposed to be eating with us at our table. This is already what's happening with the crops in America's soil, and as such the stuff you hear about crops having gradually de-escalating nutritional value is 100% deserved. This is why I'm against abortion, stem cell research, and in more general terms, violence specific to races. 

Yet there is an even deeper thing happening here, we are failing to take responsibility, systemically, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This has caused more illness, death, and the speed of entropy to take place far more aggressively in our culture than others. You want to know why Italians live forever? Because they take time to eat dinner around a table with their multi-generational homes. Why is it that French people look so much younger than Americans? Or Asians for that matter? Sure they have different facial and bone structures, but I think it's because they are getting the most out of their life-giving relationships and taking responsibility to honor their fathers and mothers. 

Is putting the group of people who are old and disabled into a home where you visit them twice a month truly honoring? Absolutely not. People are talking about "disadvantaged groups" and ensuring we're not staying silent toward the injustices against them, I'm going to stand up for the elders of our generation. It's horrible what we do to them if you were to reverse time and put them in the shoes of a child in a home you would define it as "neglect". It's horrible. This is a problem we only have in America, and people wonder why our average age of death is dropping. 

If you really want to learn about Entropy, learn it from the master Himself. Psalm 90 is a great starting point, but an entire study on how slowly everything eroded for the Israelites during their trek through the Desert would be good too. 

Quit killing brothers and fathers and mothers. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Capeesh?

Jeremiah 24:8-10

But thus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse in all the places where I shall drive them. And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers. 

In the context of this chapter, there is quite a bit to be discussed. First off, there is a relationship between bag figs and the ground. If you don't know one of the reasons that figs, as well as other citric fruits, go bad is because of their relationship with yeasts that find their way into open wounds on the fruit of the figs. Often times these yeasts that cause disease ends up spreading to other fruits on the tree, and can eventually contaminate an entire grove of trees if you don't catch it early. Just as the open wounds on the tree allow for sickness and death to infiltrate the fruit, so it is with humans, which is why God is making the comparison in this passage. The LORD wanted so badly to keep this infected people from the Land that He called blessed and Holy that He drove them away from Jerusalem and only allowed the people who were clear of infection back into the land with an open invitation. I think this also speaks to the ill effect that humans can have in the land, and as such. What I also find interesting is the directions on how to take care of a diseased fruit in your garden, found here. Seemingly the gravest direction to follow is this one: "If you see one fruit beginning to sour, remove it and any adjacent fruit." with the general warning saying "you cannot save a fruit once the rot has begun."

Fascinating, no? The command given by this person who seemingly has experience in gardening is to rid the garden of the fruit that is rotten and drive it to a foreign land. This purging process that the Lord had started with Ahab in 1 Kings 22, and then showed up with loudness in 2 Kings 24:18-20 as Zedekiah is first seen in the court of the King, and then later promoted to the king even though he was the one who slapped the known prophet in the face. This gives you a good picture of the political and corrupt nature of the Israeli government at the time. It was so corrupt that God forbade them from walking again on the land because of the inherent toxicity that would follow them if they walked in Jerusalem again. 

I'm going to take it a step further and say this: the biggest reason there was an exile of the Israeli people is because the Lord needed to cleanse it on His own terms. It's often spoken about the prophetic nature of the fact that there were seven 70's of rest for the land to be had, according to Levitical law. However, it's even more important to consider that the people of Israel needed to be cleansed in a land other than their home so that they could go back and not continue to hurt what God had called Holy. The figs needed to be separated, and then the good figs needed to be recognized and called back to Jerusalem where the Messiah would establish His righteous rule and hegemony. In revelations, it will be considered idolatrous and dishonorable if one does not send their righteous people back to Jerusalem. 

Assess where you are

Assessing things implies that you are able to see, usually. With such a subject as this though it requires you to think conceptually and maybe even theosophically. Here are some steps to hopefully aid in your journey of assessing where you are, and what God is doing in your life.

First, ask the Lord. Each of these takes in the assumption that you have an active relationship with God, and are eager to grow more with Him. If this assumption is not true, this post won't work for you and I'd really suggest moving forward with that first. The first question is this: is there anything in my life that I need to confess, any sin to make me right with you Lord? Anything in my life that you wouldn't call "good", oh Lord? If you do not hear anything, listen again. Wait. If you hear "good to go" or something of the sort, then keep reading. If you hear something else follow that rabbit hole until you hear "good to go". As with each step, these steps are also repeatable. However, most of the steps should open a dialogue between you and the Lord. 

Next, ask how the Lord sees you, and how He sees where you are. There's no wrong answer here, but if you're in a dark place you can either ask the Lord how to get out of that, or if you see yourself in a different location, ask about what you see. How each thing affects you, and why you are there in the first place. 

After that, ask how and what to eat to stay nourished on God, yet famished for His word. 

Then listen, and hear. 

Sacrifices, Gifts, and Souls

What are you willing to give up?
To holistically follow Jesus.

The first stop He usually makes in my experience is our relationships, especially of those that we have over or undervalued. When you've invited the Holy Spirit to judge your heart and to know you. All of you in a way that only He can.

You can study Love forever, but until you've known what it is like to be loved and known, and judged by the humble creator of you, who knows your downfalls and your pick-me-ups, who knows how to encourage you and break you down, and who knows what He's doing when He leaves you in a desert, then I'm afraid that I cannot say you've experienced love. True love is this, that a brother would lay down his life for the sake of others, so that others may receive gain by his loss. By God, how great a love is that. This is what true friendship is, what true relationship is.

The second stop He usually makes is our own works and deeds. Some things are simply harder to get rid of than others, and the steps might be in a different order for you. Yet a big problem of mine was the fact that I thought I could earn my way to God through sacrificing enough time, doing enough things to earn his attention, or Love. Yet as it expresses in Job, Psalms, even minor prophets "who can repay the Lord, and who can He be in debt to?"

You may sacrifice as much as you want, as often as you like, yet it will never ever come close to the sacrifice that God made when His son was lost. Not only that but through a series of covenants and vows the Lord has made, He has sacrificed His own will to a system that is constantly tried by evil forces to be abused and He has chosen to (as far as I can tell) continue to only work through His creation. 

The Third stop He makes is your motivations. The deep desires and drives you have within your heart. Some of them programmed by the world you live in to be within you, and others created by God for you to have. Why are you doing things for Him when your heart is far from Him? He does not require simple acts or sacrifices, He requires your life. You must be willing to give back to the Lord Most High the life that He gave you, else it will never amount to anything in terms of eternity. Most likely, it will be forgotten by all. He requires complete allegiance and loyalty to His kingdom. To His truth. You do not serve governments of the world, you do not serve businesses, and you do not serve yourself until You have done what you do unto the world. 

If we are all warriors, you must consider at some point how willing you are to lose your life to the enemy's tactics. You must realize that our ultimate gift is that of eternal life, the life that we can live in the reality of right now, and know deeply that there is a very great demand on our heads. If you truly want to see the expansion of the kingdom, practice the power of presence, and walk with boldness against all foreheads, proclaiming truth no matter what. You must be willing to die yourself, as this is what the King demands. We are in war.  It is time to start living like it.