He came home with a wife

     I was reading a book the other day (I read a lot.) and one of the lines when a certain character was being described was that "He left a long time ago. One day he came home... with a wife!" After a little over two years of traveling and learning, and it being well over a year since I've been home, I'm in a unique position where I've had a culmination of experiences surrounded by other cultures, being met by the Lord in different ways, and plenty serving opportunities gone and passed. While Europe isn't that strange in comparison to the U.S, it is so historically rich that sometimes I laugh at how pitiful ours is. That's not to say a lot hasn't happened, but things started to happen on this side of the continent long before the 1600s. I've been growing my view, reading, and experiencing a lot, and yet I know that my view is still very small. Lately, this is an internal resource I've been investing a lot into, and investing a lot into it has reminded me how much I value objectivity. 

    These days I'm living a much different life than I was a few years ago. A few years ago I had no idea how married I would be and had no plans of being as married as I am. I didn't know or have any frame for what commitment really was, I slept around with people I thought I liked, partied a lot, enjoyed music, and just kinda floundered through life. People ask me how many jobs I've worked, and normally I have to count, but that is always a struggle. I was thrown this way and that by the wind and waves, never fully able to get myself up. Today I believe that I'm supposed to affect the outside world more than it affects me, that I'm supposed to walk in the highest form of authority, and in royalty. I believe that authority starts with commitment, righteousness, and submission. Then, I would've flinched at these words. Now I celebrate them. One paradigm I'm still working to adopt is that there's usefulness in every part of our lives. I know this and have seen it with my wife, even with extremely painful things that have happened to her. Looking at my life, I'm not so sure that I know it for myself. I still see my actions and habits and ask "but was there a usefulness to that?" I simply see them as big mistakes. Sure they could instruct me on what 'not' to do. However, I desire to see them in the light of "what else could be useful here?". 

    We all went to school with him, even in those days he was a bright kid, severely undermotivated, but still enjoyable. The librarian and English teacher always had compassion for him because he devoured books and literature, but his mind always seemed elsewhere when the class just got to be a little boring. For what he lacked in skill at concentration, he didn't seem interested in making up for it anywhere else. When we all graduated, I would wonder what he'd get himself up to. Where his life took him next though was a shock - I think even to him. He came home one day with a wife on his hip and a light in his eyes. He seemed to know that someone was proud of him. I nodded, and that was good enough.

a.w hughes

Uncompromising pt. 2 - Holy Spirit

    I've recently started to read a book on contemplative prayer by the early English church that speaks about the incomprehensible nature of God. A God that cannot be understood by mere language, though God gave us languages in order to weave together pictures of His being, I think they have a good point. The way that our language works today, especially with what's considered colloquial, we don't have enough theological language to describe God. We may never, but with God all things are possible, so who am I to say?

    Then I come to my point. I think many of us can agree when I say "I hate acknowledging my shortcomings." I want to do well, I desire to walk in absolute devotion to Jesus. I don't do that all the time, and I know further than that I quench the Holy Spirit because of my own inhibitions, fears as to what is new or could change my way of looking at things, and discomfort over what is convicting and challenging. Most of you who know me would probably look at that and say "does he really have discomfort about those things?" but it's true. I choose to lean into challenges and discomfort because of my desire to be uncompromising about my faith, and uncompromising about allowing the flow of the Holy Spirit in my life, and through my life. 

    What would happen in the church if we were all uncompromising about allowing the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Well, I think first off we would all feel peace in the land that churches are on. I landed here in Latvia, and we're staying at a church for a few days, and I was GRIEVED at how little anointing I felt here. We had just come from a place where a man and his wife are rebuilding the property in order to be a center for retreat, counseling, reconciliation, among other things. It was TWO people, and I could tell there was more prayer on that land than has been on this land IN A CHURCH. It grieves me to know how ineffective the body of Christ IS. 

    I get that Jesus meets people at church, believe me. He met me at the church I would call mine many a time. He continues to meet me in sermons and continues to challenge me to visit churches when the opportunity arises. Now I know that it has changed from a place of going to receive to a place of going in order to intercede and give. 

    But what if God's intentions were bigger than that? What if in the next coming years the mass exodus from the church became a church that was known for its intimacy with the small groups of people that they had? What if in the coming years our church attendance wouldn't just be stopped due to covid, but also in part because of God? How would it look if no longer did we have a Sunday service of worship, but Sunday was turned back into a working day, and the Sabbath of the week was regulated on Saturdays? Would there be enough people wholly devoted to the spirit that the church would still thrive, or would it fall flat on its face in all its agony? What if God's intention was to awaken people in their living rooms, and their workplaces? What if God's intention was to tear down the walls, as we so often ask Him to do? What would happen to our people if He came through on that ask? Would you be ready?

Ministry of Reconciliation - deposit

    One of the more special pieces of wisdom that have been attempted to be heralded by the world of counseling is that of the inherent wisdom each person has within them. I agree with Arthur Burke when he says "every person, in their spirit, has been prepackaged with the wisdom required for every day, and every problem they will encounter." However, this post is not about that package that all of us have, it is about how to reconcile that back to the Father. For each person, there is a special way of reconciling this package back to the Father, but it is always by Jesus and His blood. The thing that changes is the journey that each person takes to realize their inner wisdom, gain confidence and trust in the resources God has placed within them to walk every day of life. Not just walk for the sake of walking, but with elegance, majesty, and godliness.

    Some of the potentials I never knew I had was working with people who have had dissociation in their early life because of a traumatic abuse that took place. What happens with these people is a part of their original self that gets divided, sometimes into a sentient being, that can "put" itself to the front depending on day or hour. Other cases of dissociation simply lock up memories and emotional wounds that are simply too painful for a child to process at the time the abuse takes place. One method I learned from Arthur Burke's ministry was to address the part as a separate being - in Jesus's - name and interact with them as I might a small child.  

    Now that I have seen how I interact with the "little ones" I know that I have a piece of my deposit that reflects both the fathering and mothering of the Most High God, and the potential to bring lasting change and healing to people who are suffering from dissociative memories. This has been reconciled first by the blood of Jesus, and secondly by the good work of interacting with people who have such memories and representing a good figure to them in order to build trust and respect. 

    I was, however, first presented a problem that I didn't know anything about, and was able to find the tools and skills to solve based on personality, life experience, and knowledge input from a few sources concerning DID. So even if I JUST had the blood of Jesus, I still wouldn't have had the fullness of the ability that I was meant to have in working with people like this, because I would have never been thrown the problem. So the second, and maybe arguably the most important step to becoming who God made me to be, was being confronted with a problem that I needed to apply wisdom and the deposit -that God placed within my spirit- to the situation in order to find the solution and learn about myself. The Father is very strategic in giving us the problems that He desire's to see us go through, but so then is the enemy, and so part of unpacking the fullness of this wisdom is discerning which problems are ours to own, and which are not. We can always just ask also.

Ministry of Reconciliation - Spirit

    Lately, I've been processing a bit of the concept of reconciliation on a deeper level than I've sat in before, and the layers that have been sort of 'uncovered' have a lot to do with how deeply the Father actually wants to participate in reconciling all things to Jesus. Usually, the way that reconciliation starts is from the top down. For me, the process started with the intentionality of Jesus moving me to France, laying me down in the vineyards here, and making me rest. The things I've experienced in rest and taking rest seriously have been rewarding to the uttermost. He introduced me to a ministry that focuses very heavily on ministry to the human spirit, and I spent much of the time I was resting listening to the teachings that this ministry has shared based on what they've experienced and seen. It had a profound effect on me and to get into the specifics of what I've experienced you'll have to bear with me because I'm not providing apologetics or scripture references.

    My spirit started being ministered to in the presence of God, during worship and while we were ministering to His presence. I didn't know it yet but my spirit was very much responding to His Spirit and was coming to a place of deeper communion. As I began to discover the framework with which to communicate with my spirit, I also began to realize that what I was seeing in the spirit reflected closely what the person who was teaching about it had realized. One of the first pictures I received while in this process was a female portion of my spirit who was supposed to be leading the whole spirit who had leprosy and was crouched in a corner. Her hair was sickly, and her body frail, and she had been stuck in a stone room of a sort. As I realized that she was very much a part of me I also began to realize how important it was to see her and to know her. Then I asked Jesus to retrieve her from her place, and with a little help from some people that were around me, we cleaned her up after asking her to forgive those who had rejected her and brought her to the lead of the spirit. After this image, I realized that the other 6 portions of my spirit were in similar rooms right next to her, and while I don't think this place is where they were supposed to be, there were two rooms that were completely empty, and out of the four portions that were there, only two were truly functioning at a strong level. My teacher portion, though he was functioning well, hadn't been nourished well except for my knowledge and heady things. He hadn't truly experienced the love of God, and this was a similar case for my spirit in its entirety.

    It was an exciting time to see my spirit, and though things have not been super easy, I know that one of the things that have helped me reconcile most with my spirit is learning how to hear when my spirit is speaking, and the difference between my heart, my spirit, my soul, and various other parts of my being that have different kinds of voices. I have also worked to hear the texture of other people's spirits, and while there often seems to be a sort of disparage for some between their soul and spirit, I know that a very important step that I'm walking on now is the pain of reconciling to my soul. This process is more painful and heart-aching than any other process I've ever been through, and being honest with you I kind of hate it, but it's necessary. Part of the importance of this process is letting go of past pains but also learning to trust myself. No amount of forgiveness can teach me to trust me. My soul doesn't trust me still. Yet my spirit does, and it's the part of me that I trust the most. As I learn more about reconciling with myself, so do I learn about reconciling with other parts of creation. Please pray that I would continue to grow in my soul toward the Holy Spirit and the Father.

Fruits

     Today there was a ministry session I was listening to that involved deliverance of a person from many types of entities that were nested in different parts of their body. There were fruits that were part of the diagnosis of the problem, and fruits that the counsel had to ask specific questions about. Fruits are one of those subjects that are super interesting to me because Jesus tells us "you will judge the prophets by their fruits" (Mt 7:15-20). There are quite a few fruits that are pointed out biblically, but going back to the example of the counselor asking questions, one fruit that there had been demonic activity in this person's life was that her directional orientation was off. He then prayed for her corpus callosum, and for the top of the brain, since physically speaking, and spiritually speaking, that's where the compass interfaces with the rest of our being.  However, due to the orientation of this compass to the north, it has allowed lots of onslaughts demonically to attack that specific spot in many people. The fruit of this problem was not having great direction in a new city, and generalized disorientation in new places. 

    Otherwise, there are lots of fruits that we can look to of many different illnesses, a specific fruit of asthma can be chest pain, whilst the most apparent fruit would be trouble breathing. The thing about it is that things are misdiagnosed all the time, and very rarely do things consider a whole picture of the human since there are many different takes on what the "person" is fully made up of. There is wisdom to be had, however, and God gives wisdom to the medical field just as much as he gives to this deliverance minister. These are fruits of a macro and a micro-scale and even a molecular scale. There are fruits of a generation, a person, and then specific things within a person. There are many things that we can look at that produce fruits, but the principle I normally go by is "what is the effect?"

    Every action has a fruit, and though this post has a specific grid for how the demonic interacts with humans, I haven't talked a lot about how humans affect themselves. We can praise and adore the Lord and love Him with all of our might, strength, and heart. He asks us to do this because it's a specific action that will bring the fruits of His Kingdom. As we love Him with all that we are we become in tune with the way He wants to interact with the world, and how that manifests itself are by fruits. 

    The really cool thing about it is that the Lord is so passionate about our heritage, and our birthright that by Loving Him with all that we are we will not only fulfill His purpose for His Kingdom, but we will fulfill our purpose. The fruits that we ought to look for are people living their lives to fulfillment, not sitting in a church and going every Sunday like a faithful Christian should. 

    The next post I'll talk about the fruits of fulfillment and what that looks like. 

There are no character flaws

    If we consider God's reality on character, and design, He designed us flawlessly. Now, obviously, from a worldly standpoint, it's hard to point to "flawless" people, and we can be quick to make judgments about what specifically makes people "flawed" and character "deficits" some people "struggle" with. Yet, I will make the claim and take the position that "Because God designed us flawlessly, humans are inherently flawless." This is the claim that I'm sticking with because how do you argue against it? 

    Well, there is one counterargument. People aren't perfect, are they? I mean consider the person who was resented for being alive by his dad. Was his dad perfect? Well, let me frame it this way. Was what his dad did, or the feelings he had felt about his son perfect? I would not be able to argue that they were healthy, and many might consider it borderline emotionally abusive. Nor were his dads' attitudes perfect. This is what transgression is by nature though, that even though the flawless and perfect character God designed is somewhere within the mountain of junk that led the dad to think this way, and therefore the man himself is flawless because the junk is not him. This is why design is so important, and more than likely is the rubric of which God will judge us, especially as Christians. "How well did you walk in your design?"

    For as we consider this, let us take the Fear of the LORD to heart, and hope in the salvation that he has provided for us by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which has perfected us, and given us the ability to receive the grace that we need to walk in the flawlessness of our design. So, therefore, be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.

How much worse punishment?

     Heb 10:29 “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of Grace?” 

    We, according to this verse, are sanctified. Not "being sanctified" as is being taught by most churches nowadays just to provide a clear definition of "sanctification vs. forgiveness". Yet, there still remains growth, steadfastness, fruits to bear, light to live within, presence and service to work out, and salvation to be convinced of. There is a disparaging difference between the two things, and it's not so clear-cut what the word "sanctification" means besides having some similarities with the words 'holy', 'set-apart', and 'perfect'. We are being taught continually that the 'perfectionizing' is a process, and so we just have to come to the conclusion that the author of Hebrews has gone crazy and is talking nonsense, or they were right. I would personally vouch for that latter, but I have reasons for that besides just saying "because the Bible is the inspired word of the Living God, and every verse therein can be used for correction and discipline." 

    Consider this: The blood of Jesus Christ, Son of the Highest, Living God. Fully God, sheds His throne, His authority, and His omnipotence to come down to earth and live among us, falling from the highest heights and taking His place in the lowest lows. Consider the value of blood today. ~$237 for a liter to restore about a fifth of your livelihood should you lose a liter of blood, and or need a transfusion of about a liter. It's hard to measure value until you take into consideration how much you could be restored to, let's say you die if you lose anything more than a liter of blood, think about the loss of connection that you suffer from your family, and the loss of connection that your family suffers from you dying. Think about the hours spent in front of a TV, reading, enjoying your spouse or friends that are suddenly lost. Pretty deep.

    Some of the things that we take for granted are often the most valuable things that we have available to us. How much more valuable do you think blood is than $237/L now? Well, I haven't finished if you suddenly see that that, in retrospect, is pretty cheap for a liter of blood. 

    How valuable do you think it is to be sanctified before the righteous Judge of the universe? To be whole, complete, and perfect? Considering how much holiness He demands of His creation, I would say very high, the Most High really. But I'm only talking about that on an individual level, and the only power that HAS sanctified completely is the blood of Jesus. How much more valuable do you think it would make it considering that Jesus has sanctified ALL who are in His fold, by ONE sacrifice of His blood? A bit more valuable than the blood of a normal lamb, don't you think? 

    So then, seeing the value of which Jesus has given to us, to be freely sanctified totally before His Father, how much more grave do you think it is that we look at that in complete fear when He says "How much worse punishment"?  Often the sentence for stealing from hospitals would be close to two-ten years depending on the value of the thing being stolen. It's easily measurable when things are stolen to measure a punishment, it's not so easily measurable when we consider what else is considered sin and defilement, or even a trampling in God's eyes. 

    And so we conclude by talking about communion, and the wine that Jesus shared in accordance with the Law, with community, and with His beloved. The thing that He invites us into by His blood, and the one act that we do without Him to remember His sacrifice until the day of his return, and at the same time using His blood as a seal of the better covenant that He Himself mediates. What happens when we take this holy meal in spite? With sin in our hearts, or our spirits, or our flesh? How much worse do you think the discipline will be when we do this? How badly do we trample the blood? How much worse the punishment when we've accepted His offering and not realized how sanctified we really are, whilst still allowing us to practice iniquity or defilement? How could you?

Covered in gratitude

    Have you ever been thanked by the Lord? If so, what was the context? Do you know why? I remember the first time that I felt God say "thank you" for a small thing, just for hanging out with Him during an afternoon. When I first heard it I thought I heard wrong. When I asked, "Did you really just thank me?" He responded by saying, "Did you expect to be the only thankful person in this relationship?". That was an afternoon of laughter for me, and I still remember the joy I felt at being thanked by the Father. Like how does a God that big, that capable, resourceful, infinite then turn around and thank me for something so small? What a humbling experience. 

    Then I had an experience earlier last year where I purposefully said "thank you Abba" in my heart, over and over, as often as I could. I had the desire to make my "prayer without ceasing" to be so covered in gratitude that the portions and requests would be far overshadowed by the thankfulness that Abba deserves. Not only that, but I wanted to be as grateful as possible. Today I still notice and see that my prayers are always marked with gratitude. The content of what I am grateful for, though still based in God and Him just being Him, has changed over the past year. I know that I was grateful for my spirit then, and the ministry He was doing to me personally to strengthen and nurture the part of me that comes directly from His essence. Today I am grateful that He is ministering to my emotions and my heart. One thing that I have remarked on is the generosity of the Lord. 

    To say that my God has been generous beyond all expectations this season is far understating what He has accomplished and given out of His careful hands, which have planned every work from the beginning of the foundation of the world. Earlier this past September we had the opportunity to have a school to teach people about the prophetic. From the first week, there was a student who had caught my eye, and though then she showed up in my blog posts just because of the interactions we had together, I had no foreknowledge of what generosity God had stored up. Several weeks into the school she shared a testimony of being completely healed of endometriosis, an illness that would leave her bedridden and would only be able to be treated through hormone treatments, and through pain medicines. 

    As I continued to get to know Evelinn I took notice of her humility and devotion to Jesus. There, a desire was born to continue to get to know her, and as the school went on, we had the opportunity to do just that. Soon after the school finished, I decided that I wanted to act on the desire on another level, and asked her if she would like to be my girlfriend. She said "yes". Since then we have continued to cultivate a long-distance relationship, and one of the things that mark this relationship is gratitude. I am continuously in awe of the generosity of God to allow this wonderful human into my life at such a level that we can grow in love, and humility, toward a God whom we can also learn to share. Though Jesus shares himself with everyone, not everyone can share intimacy on that same level. 

    Today I gawk at what God has done in her life, and what He has restored and I find myself in awe more often than not, and I celebrate with Him what He has accomplished in both of our lives with, and through each other. This next weekend I go to visit her and her parents in Luxembourg again, and am excited to get to share time in person again. However, as in all things, being covered in gratitude implies that I am content and grateful for what God has given me, and He has given us all we need. 

    For now, I am covered in gratitude to have her in my life, and am excited to continue to grow with her. 

Uncompromising vs. uncompromising

    Whenever I write about a topic that doesn't seem to make sense, I first go to my theology of God, and one of the most important pieces of theology -to me- is that God leads by example. Jesus lived the life to the tee the life that he would have us live, and studying his life only gives us the perfect example of the Father, what the Father desires, and who the Father is. I am continually fascinated at how well Jesus does balance, how well he understands his own identity, and how he uses the tool of uncompromising. Now, when we see the word we might think of someone who dared not step off your front porch even after you've said "no" three times. I was someone like this. Or you might think of someone who has done apologetics in their specific stream of faith or is unyielding in their line of thought. Yet these are only a couple examples of what 'uncompromising' can accomplish. Or can't, depending on who you ask. 

    But I'd like to define the word a little better than just these couple examples. A salesman once said, "A salesperson is only as good as their word." Should a salesperson NEVER compromise on telling the truth about the products they are selling, I don't think that many people would buy unless they already knew they had a specific need. Yet, here we are, in a world where the media compromises on telling the people who they're supposed to be teaching and pastoring, lies every day, bends research, and has only proven how untrustworthy they are. People are susceptible, to salespeople lying to their faces about how this new pill will cure their cancer, this new vaccine will stop the virus, or this new currency will change banking forever. Yet they are not being given information that is uncompromised. They are being given information filtered to match desires, needs, and wants they may not have even had before. As someone who does research and enjoys doing research, I know that I can turn a blind eye to the research that points to the weaknesses of a specific product, or something that I am researching. This is called research bias. This is also called a compromise. I am compromising my filter of research and what I believe based on the desire to be right. So how do I define 'uncompromising'? I define it as anything that is unwilling to move. As I said before, it is a tool to help us define the boundaries of who we are and what we are willing to do or not willing to do. It is a tool that we can use to help adhere ourselves to justice and truth and can act as an adhesive to who God is. 

    As I have already given examples of how not to use compromise and how to not be uncompromising, I think it'd be cool to point out some ways that Jesus was uncompromising in a Godly way. The first story I think of is when the Pharisees were demanding a sign from Jesus. At this point, they had already seen many signs, they had heard testimony that Jesus was, in fact, working miracles, and they had had every opportunity to believe in him who was sent by the Father. They demanded him for a miracle because they were challenging his character and identity, not because they didn't have ample evidence. Jesus knew it and acted in such a way that still baffles me. He was uncompromising in delivering a miracle and said, "the only sign that will be given to this wicked and faithless generation is the sign of Jonah" (Matt 12:39). He used the tool of uncompromisation as a way of telling this "wicked and faithless generation" to "step off his identity as the son of God and get back to being humbled by the evidence I have already given you." Had he chosen to give the Pharisees a sign, it's hard to say what might happen. I know for one that they probably wouldn't believe in Jesus still, but I also know that the consequences of Jesus compromising on His own identity would have been far more cosmic than had he decided to tell or show these people just the right thing at the right time, or decided to feed their desires for yet another proof.  

    Jesus exemplifies uncompromising in a light that could only be righteous and just. Many times in the world we exemplify uncompromising in a light that is manipulative and self-serving. Hopefully, we can learn to bridge the gap together, in unity with Christ.