Seeking the Face of God

How Do Writing and Mission Mix?

2012-02-01T16:39:00.003-06:00

I have another blog started (yes, now a blog here, a blog on Goodreads, and a blog on Wordpress, oh my!). This one will be focused on my ministry as a missionary and a writer, specifically for my time at City Mission. I have no idea what to fathom for the future, except that I'm thankful and content to serve here with these wonderful people, even when I tempted to pull up stakes and run for cover...an imaginary escape I'm coming to discover.

Here is my latest post on my new site called "Mission Writer," as I'm seeking to weave the beautiful combination of mission and writing together for the glory of God, who has been gracious to move and mold me into a man who loves, learns, and leads with his words and (more convincingly) with his actions. I love how He completes me.

Take the time to ask yourself, "How Do Writing and Mission Mix?" I'm sure there are plenty of you out there wondering how do they coincide, and do they coincide more than just writing books and articles about mission? Ministry, serving others, needs to overflow beyond the space of Christian fiction, literature, and history. Let me know what you come up with!

Chastened

2012-01-25T16:34:00.002-06:00

Sigh...I'm thoroughly chastened. God is bringing to light my "first love." My first calling. And how far I have fallen. The beautiful imagery of service and grace to others strikes again. Jesus' love and humble servanthood crushes any significance a "rights" or "privileged" view of relationships brings to ministry and the future. It crucifies my foolishness and pride, calling me to prefer and exalt the ladies around me. "Seeking the Face of God." Seeking beautiful Jesus. Loving Jesus. And that requires me to honor those whom He honors, whom He loves, whom He cherishes.

I find myself a failure at honoring others over myself, and am thankful to Jesus for the overruling call of Christ to return.

Thanks, Jesus, for visions and messages like these, who bring me again to the threshold of who I am in You and who You call out to me to be. I am to be truly apostolic by not honoring me, but my forgetting me and all that falls behind, take up the self-sacrificing cross, and count it victory to be defeated for His name to be great.

Increase, Lord! Diminish me in the expansion of Your Kingdom! Amen!

Bird Song in Winter

2012-01-18T03:53:00.003-06:00

Give me birdsong in winter

A chipper song of spring,

Give me roses in the valley,

Another reminder of the king.

Send down a stream on a hill,

Where I can taste clarity,

A babbling brooke by the sea,

Refreshment is such a rarity.

Let the highways be wide and flat

Ever winding along greenway.

Bring joyful children singing

The brightness o' summer's day.

Over mountain and over sea,

Over hill and through dale,

Bring me closer to your tunes,

Closer to your e'erlasting tale.

I want to ride, face in a lion's mane,

Wrapped in fleece as white as snow.

Take me beyond the shadow by the sea

Into fields of wheat all aglow.

Take me to your home, that's where I want to go.

Responsibility

2012-01-16T16:48:00.010-06:00

A tale of two men. That's what tonight brings. A responsible man, an irresponsible man. Both came to Christ as arrogant men and became humbler men. Both remained as they were: Responsible and Irresponsible. Because of this, when both went to college, one disciplined his emotions. The other did not. One stayed away from false, empty relationships. The other played the edge of relationships. One gained a wife; the other did not.

Today the Responsible man has a family; the Irresponsible man has a rebuke.

I am not the responsible man. If there is any word I would describe my brother Joel as being, responsible, disciplined, is the word. He is like a discipline Rambo, taking his life by the teeth and living by the means available until he achieves his goals. Sure, there are flaws in the extremism, but Joel grows in grace because he is willing to pull himself together at the Source of life. I am more prone to wing-it and end up in disaster; I have been the receiver of exceptional grace for a long time, and even my stellar GPA proves it on transcript. I am the one who pulled classes from thin air by the grace of God, while Joel plowed through a well-planned Biblical/Theological studies degree. I love this man, what he embodies, and I plan to tell the tale of two men named Responsible.

It'll take several miracles, but it will happen. It is happening.

Today has been a demonstration as to why I need and why I am challenged to become responsible. I woke up late to the buzz of men working downstairs. It took my 12-year-old emotions an hour to recognize the call to serve, to work. Jesus met those emotions with the truth that my accomplishments are nothing compared to what He has accomplished for me. But responsibility beckons me to train at the door of interruption. The race is not won in an open field, but in the thicket of unexpected demands.

Tonight I sat through an iron-fisted, soft-hearted appeal to man up by Mark Driscoll. His sermon Christians Gone Wild: Single Like Jesus pummeled my heart with a vital and necessary reality check. For a man who wants to be married, who wants to train men to be married, this is a beautiful sermon. Like a howitzer, or a fighter jet, is beautiful. Fatal attraction, one could say. I got leveled at the gut when he said, "Men need to have confidence, courage, clarity."Confidence, Courage and Clarity. It's like he's named a black hole in the middle of my soul, from which spews cowardice, timidity, and confusion. Which explains my general incompetence. I didn't realize one girl's approach to me was asking for my plan, who I was. I bumbled a lot, throwing a lot of words with little meaning, and she sized up the fruit of my labor. Which is little. I wondered why the girls I liked never had any interest in me: It was swallowed somewhere in that swirling vortex of missing courage, confidence, and clarity.

Instead of killing me, this challenges me. I am at the point where I'm realizing how God instilled courage in me. Usually, it was at the points where I was about to die or kill myself, that "slow working courage" Tolkien talks about kicking in like a long fuse. I'd man up enough to face a task or challenge, before sniveling in self-pity. It is time to break that loop of pride, and train.

Train hard.

I'm going to need help.

That this comes at the onset of time dedicated to the Father is a good sign. He's checking my pulse so I can see how limpid, how unmanly, it is. Emasculated. Going home was a good thing. I got to love my mom, respect her, and confess and confront some sins. Buried in there, I had an emasculating home, a challenge I left unmet and into which I sinfully resigned myself. I thank Jesus for my mom. I could have learned discipline, responsibility, and family-mindedness from her; she is a miracle of blasting a statistic to the Pit. She single-handedly worked to care for two children and made them feel loved, cared for, and respected in different ways. I am learning to take up that legacy and learn. But, like unused muscles, it burns the mind and sears the heart. I discover sacrificial love is sacrificing petty emotional imagery into the machine of the mundane--To feed a family, to serve the church, requires a whole lot more than a sermon on Sunday and a martyr's death on Monday. "Six days He gave us to work." Dear God, Holy Father, re-engineer my life to work! And work well for Your glory!

Take up and listen to Mark's sermon above when you get the chance. He is a wise counselor speaking to unwise people. Hopefully, the story changes before this year's out. Hopefully, a new man rises in Christ Jesus. He's likely to be speaking Deutsch, cooking meals for friends, and boldly declaring the truth in love. By the grace of God, let it be so! I can't keep hiding.

I wasn't named Timotheos by the Spirit of God for nothing. Let me "fear the Lord"* before myself or others. Amen.

*That's what Timotheos means, "honored of God" or "fears God." I consider the distinction and honor of being given that name to mean both.

Come, Fill This Heart of Stone

2012-01-16T12:41:00.002-06:00

He who lashed Himself to wood

To break our hearts of stone

Come fill my soul with love

And put fire in my bones...

Chocolate, Anyone?

2012-01-16T03:08:00.002-06:00

A friend posted this to their Facebook page, and I discovered they had suggested a list of chocolate tips and recipes. You learn things like melt chocolate in a double boiler (basically, one pot slid into a pot of boiling water) so it doesn't burn. And plenty of tasty looking recipes. Somebody remind me I have suggested this list when February comes along and I am once again eating sugary, chocolatey goodness! For now, try them out and see what you like most, and let me know. :)

Ilona's Favorite Chocolate Deserts

War and Peace, Saints and Soldiers

2012-01-14T18:43:00.008-06:00

Tonight I am sobered...I feel the Lord is imprinting on me an eternal attribute I cannot fathom or escape. I cannot find any other words for it besides: Love, Compassion, Sympathy. Love's relationship in a torn worn is compassion, sharing another's suffering, sympathy, sharing another's feelings. I'm drawn by an unseen Hand to bring to light my heart on pain, on violence, and on peace.

It might surprise you I am no fan of war.

I once revelled in it, seeking violence after being a victim from my childhood. I found violence and battle my escape from suffering. Those who wield the weapons cannot suffer. But then I thought of family and friends, so I knew I would have to go it alone. Only a solitary soldier feels no pain, has no one to lose. And I could endure. So I thought. In the process, I lost everything valuable to me, isolated in my heart's bunker, an impenetrable blast shield against the nuclear rays of love and loss. Until I found the Master of creation could always pierce what clay hands and stone hearts had made.

It wasn't the sermons of preachers, the counsel of pastors, nor the advice of family that won me to Jesus. It was silence, beautiful, painful silence, into which God interjected His voice. It was the prayers of saints, especially of a praying grandfather who intimately knew my torment, that marked me with the precision of guided bombs. The bunker-busters of grace fell upon my soul every time I retreated into the confidence and secrecy of my own room. In my isolation chamber, where I played imaginary war games and read military history, biography, and mechanics, the God of peace came. Bearing a sword. He took what I knew and painted a tapestry of combat, immortal combat, on my mind, and I could not shrug off the effects of His images and words.

Strewn across the carnage of frenzied battle, a one-sided slaughter it seemed, all my people were routed before the Lord and His heavenly Hosts. Chariots, vehicles and horses overturned, blood everywhere. Mud and blood churned into a macabre clay. I realized a terrible truth under smoky skies and bitter loss. I was on the wrong side. My resentment and rebellion had landed me against the One who had made the world and created life. In the war of the universe, I fought as an infinitesimal speck against the very Source of existence. I was a mere grain of sand assailing the colossal wave of eternity. And so I cowered. Borne down by defeat, I conceded I would lose, on the wrong team, but I would go down on my own terms. I said I would remain where I was, lurking under wreckage, and cutting the Lord's enemies legs out from under them as they ran away. God would accept no traitors, only prisoner's of war, in this battle. I could not simply produce rogue sneak attacks that lacked repentance.

His ultimatum had been simple. Surrender or perish.

I was doomed to get myself killed if I continued to fight against God.

What does my collapse into Christianity have to do with war and peace, besides the ready imagery lodged in a child's fantasy, used to clarify the state of my soul before surrender? Because tonight I had an endearing, provoking conversation with a Mennonite friend. Mennos are peace-lovers, not quite Hippie-ish, though I could see them blending in some areas. They value the call of Christ to be peace-makers. Forgoing any route that would lead them to violence, they pursue peace with all men, personal, communal, national, global. I am blessed to know these people of the peace church. And tonight I got to interview a sister about her arrival into their fold, one of the few I know to be a convert to their form of Christianity.

And for some inspired reason I chose to watch Saints and Soldiers tonight after our talk. My favorite war movie. It is perhaps the most humanizing war movie I've ever seen. You cannot walk away feeling entirely one-sided about the second World War. They paint the tragedy of war and death in personal tones, but portray both sides as people fighting people--saints, sinners, all soldiers. I wept as my childhood favorite replayed with new depths of understanding as a man. I began to understand the torment a husband and father would have in killing others, the anguish a Christian would have in seeing men, women and children die brutal deaths. I wept, knowing I once had relished the call to battle, to fight, to kill. I was anti-Christ in my lust for the power to kill...and now I tremble at its use in the world.

I didn't feel the thirst for vengeance when the main heroes died. I felt pity, the sorrow of death. There is no revenge for the dead. A man kills millions, and those who judge him cannot inflict a million deaths upon him. Even in an age of micro-technology, you cannot kill him more gruesomely than torturing his very membranes, shredding him gene by gene. Yet, that's not justice. The torment of hell escapes our imagination, but not God's mercy. He looks on the tormentor and tormented and cries, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." He dies the death of dictators, mass murderers, pedophiles, and rapists--those who lay siege to bodies with sex, murder, and hate.

And because of this consuming compassion, I cannot hate, I am learning not to retaliate. It is humbling, humiliating, and pain-filled. Peace heals, but first feels the rawness of the wound. Not everyone hated like I did, nor sought violence in the same degree. Many soldiers are honest men, Cornelius' waiting to be awakened to the good news of grace. I do not equate them to twisted, little anti-Christs running around with weapons. Saints and Soldiers proves that. But I find a discomfort to give myself to war. It is a question I cannot answer well, and so I relent to say this: I changed sides in the eternal combat, I know what place I was in, and I am called to bring others like me to heaven's stronghold. I must save sinners, soldiers and saints. And if I must throw myself into the thick of combat, into the middle of a battlefield or battalion to do so, then it is my solemn duty to die in the midst of men groping in darkness for God. Cornelius, the nameless centurion, and the Thundering Legion did not break their swords in this life to enter the next. My hope is to reach more like them, so they can, at the climactic moment, profess before the Caesars of this age, "Our God, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the Christians, can bring rain, O Caesar. We will pray to Him and He will answer." Let justice roll like a river, overturning the axes of power, the dogma of might makes right, and recover lost sons and daughters to the Kingdom. Amen.

I do not love war, but I will win warriors by the grace of God to serve lovingly those they once destroyed.

Bachelor Baking

2012-01-14T13:46:00.003-06:00

In truth, there wasn't any baking, but the alliteration seemed good. I, however, did do some cooking. I decided and definitively declared on a walk with my dear brother on a crisp Georgian winter day, "I have to cook." And from that declaration, I have made several meals, and am coming to discover God has given me grace to do so with a good amount of taste. Thank You, Jesus!

While I have put together Orzo and goat cheese with Hannah and Joel's help, followed by a chili with Madre slipping in a couple extra spices ("You're the one getting fancy with the spices!"), this one was truly a bachelor's meal of choice: Grilled cheese and spruced up pinto beans. Yet, I think a tasty one. I discovered celery salt and Dash seasoning go a long way to turning bland beans with 2% packaged spice into a tasty side.

I'm going to be adding cooking to the list of blog topics. I know the religious might not see the connection: How does cooking aid the pursuit of God? Isn't it fasting, not feasting, that brings you near to His face? I only need to point to Jesus' strong reminder: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A drunkard and glutton, a friend of tax collectors [traitors] and sinners." I think my dietary adventures might actually bring me closer to the heart of the King, as I learn to feed and sustain fellowship around me with His beloved children. In truth, I have seen some of the most humble and serving actions done by a friend who thawed a block of frozen soup over the stove for two homeless people in the dead of night last week.

Here is the simple recipe for the pinto beans:

Can of Pinto Beans

Pinch of Celery Salt

Pinch of Pepper

Pinch of Dash Extra Spicy seasoning

Try it out and let me know what you think. I made it alongside grilled cheese, but it could go well with many other combinations. Let me know what you discover, and enjoy!

Gritgut: Why all the grit and gore?

2012-01-14T01:54:00.006-06:00

Something I've always felt needed explanation for the particularly sensitive Christian readers who would ever stumble upon Skein of Shadows and connect that I was the author of Gritgut's story was the distinctly large amount of carnage. Why did I put so many words into the details of damage, and why so much violence? I'm not certain, but I would wager I have perhaps the most destructive of the stories in that mosaic novel.

As to why, fantasy readers can easily point out that I wrote a classic barbarian's story. To them, it'd be like asking why vodka burns more than beer and has less flavor. But I know that won't satisfy the conscientious, especially pacifist, Christians who may have questions. I appreciate the need to explore more than the surface interest in my own writing, and answer a question I know will surface about this overly-aggressive character.

Gritgut's story involves a creature who lives on the basest of desires. He is a demonstration of our wills without the defense of reason. As such, his voice of "conscience" comes from another source, another character feeding him wisdom and directions. I believe Gritgut and his race demonstrate an area in us we prefer to minimize or reject: How impressionable we are. We think we can control and motivate ourselves, but little realize all the influences that mold and press us along distinct paths and into distinct patterns. Gritgut's race allows me, and other writers, to make just about any character bent around a master's will. I chose to give him an unseen oracle as his guide, because it fit the story and made the choices for Gritgut a matter of desire or mission: Would Gritgut follow his heart's desire for violence, freedom, and food, or Shiny's will? Would he surrender what he loved most to do what needed to be done most?

I think Gritgut shows us the surprising transition that comes through making tough choices on a deeply moral nature. He can't get around Shiny's goodness, nor the obvious badness of his enemies. The normally neutral, animal-like being gets pulled upward into the reality of the good, of the pure; his instinctive innocence makes him malleable in the hands of a patient and kind leader, and like a sheep, he learns to trust and follow his shepherd. You will find that Gritgut's story moves from completely random violence to an element of self-control: He begins to see beyond his stomach and desire for freedom to a greater need in a larger world around him. And ultimately, he must face the heart of evil by confronting a similar creature who had been bent by a wicked master.

Gritgut's story should sadden us to the reality of ignorance and influence, giving compassion for those enslaved to wickedness, and bring hope for redemption--and bring into question what influences us, what motivates our hearts most. I hope the violence doesn't distract from the changes he struggles through, nor from the ultimate transition he goes through: This instrument of chaos comes to recognize life is more than the impulses that so often enslave us. And, as James points out, the violence Gritgut wages with his hands often comes out of our mouths as we grasp for our desires.

Let me know what you think. You can read Skein of Shadows via Amazon, Kindle, or other sites, and if you've already read it, please comment your thoughts on Gritgut, violence in stories, or anything in general. If you think I'm full of crap or missing something, let me know. ;)

So Sweet a Savior

2012-01-10T09:47:00.002-06:00

So sweet a Savior, who died for me,
Not because of my works did He set me free...
O the bitter taste of liberty,

that the good God came and died for me!
And yet, that's honey to the heart,
Eternal life to dead sinner He did impart.
So sweet a Savior, who died for me...

When the goodness & loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. - Titus 3:4-5

"No sweeter name than the name of Jesus

No sweeter name have I ever known...

No sweeter name than the name of Jesus

No sweeter name have I ever known!"

Why am I a Writer?

2012-01-10T07:46:00.005-06:00

This is based on a question my friend, Brannon Hollingsworth, author of H2O and a co-author with me on a book called Skein of Shadows during high school, asked his readers. I wanted to reply, but found my response a bit long. So, I post it here, because it helps represent who I am as a writer and author.

Thanks for wearing your heart and history on your sleeve, Brannon. I appreciate stories like these.

I was a similar kid, heaping up piles of books to read and playing games of imagination. As I didn't have many friends on my street until high school, I had lots of free time to spend reading or day dreaming. Traveling often around the US with family also forged a great love for nature and adventure, especially living near the awesomeness of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.

Still, I didn't fully give myself to writing until middle school, because I was good at both science and literature. I remember sitting in a science lab and feeling I had to make a choice that would follow me the rest of my life. And at that moment, I chose writing because I valued people over stats, and to my young mind the best way to connect was through stories. I felt a mental POP in my head, like a train switching tracks, and from then on my love for literature and writing only increased, and I didn't turn back even with all the advanced sciences I took in high school. I would be a writer, not a scientist.

Surrendering to Jesus around that time also impacted why I chose writing; I wanted to offer His life, true life, to others. It was then or a little later I made another choice that had the air of fateful-eternal change: I decided to buy a copy of C.S. Lewis' books. Already a lover of British lit. when I knee-high, his works profoundly altered my perspective: Every word counts, and every detail has significance. You just have to know how to connect the two, and that takes work. Thankfully, I would gain several teachers similar to Lewis' "Great Knock," who beat the value of meaning into my mind. You don't come away from a teacher who says, "I'm going to come at your paper like a weed-eater on bare legs" unscathed. ;)

I came to not appreciate writing as a gift until that gift was taken away in college. I had just finished writing Skein of Shadows with the Wandering Men, when I felt God press on me I had to step away from roleplaying. That would be a battle I would toss back-and-forth over, because storytelling was in my blood by then, an irresistible itch. I was currently battling many other heart issues on surrender as well, so this tug-o-war wasn't just because He hated my writing. So, He took my idol and obsession and broke it. The sensation I felt was that His Spirit popped something out of place in my brain, breaking the metaphorical fingers of my mind. The imagery of a broken quill entered my head, and I sensed my utter frailty and inability to write. I had no more will to write. My journals turned to childish script, and the only writing of depth and thought were my school papers (Soooo thankful He didn't pull a full Nebachanezer on me!). It would be a couple years before I realized the psychological/spiritual wounds had healed, and that mostly done in writing on spiritual life and growth.

That experience fundamentally changed why I do writing. I don't do it to impress people (I hope. Still a battle). I don't write in smug intellectual pride, or out of romantic obsession (I had especially been broken in writing poetry, which had been my outlet for emotion and means of coping for so long). I am writing because I loved Jesus, the living Word of God, and wanted to share that love with others. I am constantly learning to articulate the good news of His love in living, creative words, and the works of my hands now have to reflect the work of my heart. The work in my heart that God has done. As such, the meaning of me as an author and writer has changed, and I am relearning the trade as a reflection of my brokenness and transformation.

So, while short stories may exist from time to time, my focus for the time being is to finish works on healing, reconciliation, and pastoring in the hope to, like C.S. Lewis, bridge the gap between unbeliever and unbelieving saints with the awe-inspiring, astounding God who bore our unbelief and its destructive fruit for our good. And I enjoy the transition like a cripple made whole! Because, in the shattering of my passion I learned a beautiful truth: "I am my Beloved's and He is mine--and His desire is for me!" Not because of my skill, my youth, or my experience, but because He loves me. Just as He loves you.

I hope and pray that knowledge fills you with joy and peace in trusting that He indeed died as the living Word and came to life again, so that you can fellowship in the love-song of eternity where God is love and radiates love into everything He has made. And that includes you.

Prayer

2012-01-09T22:06:00.002-06:00

Master, they say that when I seem

To be in speech with you,

Since you make no replies, it's all a dream

---One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they

Imagine; rather, I

Seek in myself the things I meant to say,

And lo! the wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake

The Listener's role, and through

My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake

The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply

Nor can; thus, while we seem

Two talking, thou art One forever, and I

No dreamer, but thy dream.

-C.S. Lewis, "Prayer"

Committed Shepherd

2012-01-06T21:55:00.003-06:00

"Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:13 ESV

I cannot leave my sheep. This devoted shepherd will lay down his life for his friend, the Good Shepherd, and his sheep. So glad to seek pasture that never ends in Your love.

Just a Dad

2012-01-06T21:21:00.004-06:00

Walking in the thick, dormant grass of my mother's lawn, chasing my dogs under a starry, moonlit sky, I began to crave simplicity. In a depth of my heart, I would just love to be a son, doing his chores and caring for his mother. I would love to take care of her needs, trim the grass in season, garden plants, and feed the pets. It is the strangest longing, one that puts ambition aside and says, "Daddy, I could live without impacting nations. I could go without ministering to millions. Just give me my mom, my family, then one day a wife, children, and a home."

Let me farm and raise a family.

I recall the Psalmists words, "My soul has been weaned: I do not lift myself up to things too great for me." The salvation of the world is too great for me. Theology of the soul is too great for me. Leadership is too great for me. Yet, I feel called, compelled into places too great for me. A friend recently prayed in the Spirit to me, "God is lifting you...you are not lifting yourself." And the hand that elevates me startles my wavering emotions.

I have hobbit syndrome. Give me a garden and I will find myself taxed over my patience with its endless needs and desires. Give me a wife and I will soon discover how richly tender, blessedly mysterious she is, a lifetime endeavor to honor and enjoy. Give me children and I will be quickly surprised at their uniqueness, each one a new jewel to uncover and delight in. Just a son, just a husband, just a father. Just a dad. Let that be my joy and the delight of my salvation, knowing You in simplicity...

But the earth is at war, the atmosphere crackles with the spirits at war in secret, heavenly places. I do not think I can find a backwater place that will be unaffected by the tremblings in the earth. He is coming! Who cannot hear it? And many have not heard of the hope inside me and His sons....Lord, hear my frailty and heal my infidelity. The call to responsibilities far greater than I humble and threaten my unseasoned soul.

"Be strong and very courageous! I am with you just as I was with Moses." "Guard him with confidence and peace. Yes, guard all around him with confidence and peace."

Thank you, Jesus, for joining me in obscurity to enjoy just becoming a dad.

Across a Bitter Sea

2011-12-30T21:22:00.006-06:00

I am home, hallelujah, I am home! I enjoy being with family, friends, familiar countrysides, and new sights with their familiar voices, smiles, laughter, and stories. I love it, because I love them and I am full of the Father's love.

I have come home meditating on love, its meaning, its intention and focus. God has directed me to set my eyes on His love, and life has tested my heart in many ways to uncover the truth of real love. I love this, even the painful parts, because I am beginning to grow in love. Jesus purifies me to think less of myself and dwell on the deep places in His heart, where I am hidden with God and lack nothing. He supplies all my needs with the riches of His glory. I want to experience that in a deep, intimate, knowing, experiential way.

Let it be so in me and my life, Lord Jesus.

Today, I felt a few drips of bitter moments as I saw the joy of family and marriage walking around me in a beautiful display along the national harbor. I reflected a moment over the space between desire and fulfillment, as God's Spirit spoke to me of the "here-and-now" and the "not-yet" of God's promises. I am coming to realize the grace of the not-yets, recognizing the beauty in the blessing of waiting. Time is in His hands, so are the hearts of kings--how much more His children! How tender and special He cares for us as the Father of our bodies, personalities, and spirits. "He restores my soul." Hallelu. I am special in His eyes. Amen.

Today, the vision became clear. Immediately, when I thought of bitter experiences as the sea, I thought of Reepicheep, the mouse who crossed over edge of the sea into Aslan's eternal kingdom. I thought how Christianity is like this, we row toward the edge of life-now and life-eternal across life's suffering. The only hope we have is keeping Christ and His homeland's shoreline in sight, in mind, and row with all the power His Spirit gives us. Jesus is the raft of righteousness, bearing us along the broken waves, and sharing His suffering gives us comfort in our own. He makes the bitter waves taste sweet.

I encourage you, reader, to rest in His rescue, rejoicing even as you pray for mercy and healing in your life. The enemy's storms and death's bitter waters flung at you are in His control and felt by His compassion. Jeremiah, who taught the children to weep over their sins and brokenness, also told them prophetically, "Weep no more, for your work will be rewarded...Give thanks and praise Him for His faithfulness and love never end. Cry out, "Save us, o LORD our God, save the remnant of Israel." Our songs don't have to ignore our sorrow, but praise will swallow lamentation as the shore soaks up the briny waves of the sea.

Jesus loves you. He loves me. My longing gets compressed into contentment to savor the present. He burns beyond my emotions, and I claim a new understanding and new love growing because of His disciplining discipleship. Thank you, Jesus, for dashing my dreams on the rocks of Your promises, rebuilding my worldview on the ground of eternal, gracious, redeeming love.

Fix our vision on You, Jesus. Fill our sails with Your love, Spirit. And bring us home to Jesus, Father. I long to be with You, Jesus. Amen.

‎1 Peter 1:3,6-7 Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope. Be glad about this, even though it may now be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine. (GNT)

Throwing Away Replay

2011-11-12T19:47:00.002-06:00

The game is over. Don't put in the quarter. Don't refill the coke cup. Walk away from arcade lights and sweet delights.They are figments of yesterday wasted away. Take hold of time, as precious as it is, and discover the golden opportunities along the way.

I am in need to re-orient my life. These last few weeks I have been bombarded with my past bleeding into my future. I have re-exposed myself to too much video gaming, a recent habit kicked for a heavenly and human purpose. In the last couple of weeks, I've suffered the tragedy of circling my days around this bandwagon for too long and too much. It is time to out-process from this boot camp for the perpetual boy.

I was drafted into heaven's army too long ago to keep acting like I can play soldier.

I am thankful God's Spirit breaks against the banks of my soul during this hard point in the year for me. November seems to be when Satan strikes deeply at the roots, trying to win over all the territory gained as a son and growing father-in-training. I am poised on the greatest discovery of my life--truly living--and the enemy sweetens the pot: Get good at games and enjoy life among friends.

There is no reward big enough on the stat blocks to replace the birthright given by God in His Son Jesus. So, here is my resignation from the material pursuits that dog me, and I pray conviction leads to consistency and commitment. May God take my leisure under His wings and bring my love-life for idolatry into His living love.

I step into the light to adjust my eyes to His living colors, knowing it is better to sleep sweetly in His arms than race across an imaginary battlefield full of digital lies. God have mercy on this son of Your Spirit. Amen.

Seeking His Face

2011-10-18T03:41:00.002-06:00

The Call and Response of my life:

‎"You have said, "Seek my face."My heart says to you,
"Your face, LORD, do I seek." -Psalm 27:8

Psalm 27 is getting to be a real heart song of mine.

A Torrent of Words

2011-10-11T03:10:00.003-06:00

I find in the first moments and last moments of my day, thoughts come to me. Inspirations, sentiments, teachings, revelations. I believe the Psalmists and Prophets wrote of this when they said, "My servants rise early each day..." "His song came to me in the night..." "As I lay on my bed, I meditate upon Your word." As such, I find writing and communicating an addiction outlet for these overflow of messages. Todays forms around my passions: Worship, Legacy, Prophecy, Perfection.

Every worship leader in the Bible is a prophet. Moses, Miriam, Samuel, David, Asaph, Jeduthun, Heman...they all lead people into the presence of God in the power of the Spirit. Don't minimize the power of praise!

When you are poised on a great offensive against the enemy, don't be surprised at how he seeks to offend you. Thanks be to God for reconciling us to Himself through Jesus, so we can reconcile the world to Him! We are ambassadors.

So much history today as Frank Alcorn and his wife Sue showed up from Salzburg. His tour turned into my tour, as he showed me around the place. Gotta love legacies.

It is my ambition to be in total submission to the Father who loves me. Let that be my new normal.

I am a Missionary...

2011-10-09T14:44:00.002-06:00

I often forget that I am a missionary, that I have given up my home in the States and gone to another country to live out a new life. I forget this, in part, because I live among Americans, and very special ones at that. Secondly, being a missionary is who I am, so it is not something I think about as often. I take it for granted. And third, I just truly get caught up in the weariness and wonder of living to the point that I do not pay attention to the obvious and simple blessings given me. I am graced by God to serve Him in another nation, among a peculiar people, and become an ambassador through His will.

But today I remember this, rather have this recalled to me. God drew me into the sanctuary to worship Him awhile and bare my heart before His throne. I needed it, because I am borne down by the frustrations of my youth--fleeing youthful passions is sometimes as tricky as trying to dodge the wind; foolishness is tightly bound up in the childish heart. But that is not where I am at, the Spirit corrects me. I am not merely childish, but He is removing childishness from my life. I am a missionary, and have had many rude wake-up calls along the way this first year to become a new man of God. A true man of God. Emphasis on the man. And on the "of God." It is by God alone I will be a man or a messenger, a missionary.

I am thankful today that His loving-kindness and tender loyalty showed in my conscious life. Too many prophetic words and encouragement came my way to be mistaken that I am called and loved by God. Too many of those rang with the unnervingly on-time and out-of-place moments that often mark God's interruptions in my life. They weren't merely words spoken by friends who knew me; these were family members in God's house, to whom the Father shared a glimpse into me and His desires for me. I am thankful. So thankful. It made the bitterness of my in-between moments today bearable, and allowed me to surrender to the Spirit who cares for me.

If anyone prays for me because they read this, pray with me that God's love would push me beyond the past that so easily entangles and into the future too easily dismissed. I long for the connection, the tipping point, where heaven meets earth "like a sloppy wet kiss"--or as a thunderous shaft of lightning. Let the visions of my manhood and supernaturally ordinary life come to life. I await a divine visitation that leads to permanent transformation.

Blessings and peace to you as you rest and trust in Jesus, Amen!

Maranatha.

Humble Grace

2011-09-19T01:56:00.002-06:00

Here is the Facebook quotes I used to keep together as a condensed gospel, from belief to living to the end. May God remind and refresh others with them. Amen.

‎"To believe in Jesus is not such a great thing.To become like Him is truly great. But to me that is what it means to be a Christian,to be Christlike ." Richard Wurmbrand-In God’s underground

‎"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." -1 Cor. 16:13-14

"We behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you." 2 Cor. 1:12

“Humility is power under control. Nothing is more dangerous than power in the service of arrogance. Power under the discipline of humility is teachable. Apollos was a powerful teacher but he was also willing to learn from others (Acts 18:24-26). In the course of his powerful ministry, Peter made some serious mistakes but when confronted with his error, he had the power to change” ( Acts 10:1-35) - Richard Foster

"Humility is not a lack of strength, it's admitting that your strength doesn't come from you." - Zack Hensley

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.-Rom. 13:8

Prov3:3 "Let not mercy and truth forsake you: bind them about your neck; write them upon the table of your heart."

The deepest desire of the human heart is to see another and to be seen. - St. Augustine

"The men who are so greatly needed in this age of the Church are those who have learned the business of praying,-learned it upon their knees, learned it in the need and agony of their own hearts." -E.M. Bounds

"'In all your ways you will know Him.' Prayer should be part of all our ways. It does not have to be always on our lips; it must be on our minds, in our hearts." Heschel

I have never seen God use someone greatly that He didn't break greatly -Toser

“We do not suffer symbolically,” he said, “we suffer literally, truly, deeply. Symbolic remedies are quackery. The will of God is either real or it is a delusion.” --AJH

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." -Saint Augustine

“We have to love in order to know.” -Abraham Heschel

"Marriage is an adventure, like going to war." -G.K. Chesterton

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." - G.K. Chesterton

"[God] is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him." -CSL

'The counselor asked him after he expounded on why he was frustrated with his wife - "Well H...., would you rather be right or be married?"' ('Idolatry of right' reply)

He knocks at the door, he is close to us and thus true joy is close, which is stronger than all the sorrows in the world, and in our life. -Pope Benedict XVI

Peace, our heavenly wings

2011-09-17T14:37:00.002-06:00

Peace is to the Spirit what the philosopher's stone was to alchemy, turning lead hearts to gold.

"Whereas a passionate man turns even good to evil and is quick to believe evil, the peaceful man, being good himself, turns all things to good." -Thomas á Kempis

"Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness—without it no one will see the Lord." -Hebrews 12:14

Last night the Lord accentuated the beauty of simplicity He has been instilling. Writing this makes Thomas' words make sense: "Simplicity and humility are the two wings that bear the human soul aloft, bringing it near to God." Simply being near means you have to live clear of evil and strife. Wickedness has no place, there is no cover of strength outside His own to help us get closer to Him.

I want this peace to permeate and concentrate in myself, an overwhelming spring to water others whom I cross paths with. I realize my passions, my desires, become my frustrations and my anxieties. I am a timid boy on my own; my God desires to build a man after His image, filled with His Spirit--His living breath of life. It is to Him, like Thomas, I cling, in hope of the new kingdom and new kingship of the soul.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Grass Huts

2011-09-12T10:33:00.002-06:00

The hand that lays me in the ground is the one that raises me to the sky, the one that promises eternal life, bids me, "Come and die." (Thanks, Bonhoeffer, for those final words).

"If we tried, however, to stand as brave men in battle, the help of the Lord from heaven would surely sustain us. For He Who gives us the opportunity of fighting for victory, is ready to help those who carry on and trust in His grace." -Thomas á Kempis

"So long as we live in this world we cannot escape suffering and temptation. Whence it is written in Job: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.” Everyone, therefore, must guard against temptation and must watch in prayer lest the devil, who never sleeps but goes about seeking whom he may devour, find occasion to deceive him. No one is so perfect or so holy but he is sometimes tempted; man cannot be altogether free from temptation.

Yet temptations, though troublesome and severe, are often useful to a man, for in them he is humbled, purified, and instructed." -Thomas á Kempis

Many people try to escape temptations, only to fall more deeply. We cannot conquer simply by fleeing, but by patience and true humility we become stronger than all our enemies...Little by little, in patience and long-suffering you will overcome them, by the help of God rather than by severity and your own rash ways." -Thomas á Kempis.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." -Jesus.

Today, God leads me to the grass hut where the soul dies, lies buried with its pride and lust, to become still and resurrected in Christ. These sober words guide me to the burial mound. But I have been long overdue to let go of trifling with God and the world, releasing personal obsessions, to embrace the triumphant Christ. Peace overtake pride, forgiveness beat folly, so that love reigns. Hallelu.

"Let us enter Your house and play on the ten-string harps." Amen!

Above All Houses

2011-09-07T16:29:00.001-06:00

I feel an impact in this statement I want to explore, embrace and empower across the world:

"God is raising up His house of prayer in the earth to contend against every house that exalts itself above the lordship/supremacy of Christ." -IHOP (via facebook today)

Day and Night

2011-09-03T15:19:00.005-06:00

"When the song was raised..."For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever"...the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that hte preists could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house..." -2 Chron. 6:13-14

God, You desire day and night worship for Yourself. Not of video games whose merits do not count in real life; not bandstands that please themselves and the crowds. Not superficially intimate relationships that focus on bodies connecting instead of hearts. Lord, You desire Your worshippers to remain unstained from the world and walk in the beauty of blessedness to the poor, the weak, the weary. And yet, I fail to live morning and evening before the Lord in faithfulness and love.

Lord, You call me to the office that proclaims the steadfast Name of the LORD and His unfailing righteousness, His enduring love. You call me to praise and worship before Your throne in the Spirit of the LORD, praying and professing Your beauty and grandeur to the world. Still, I am easily offended and resist Your summons to repent and live, preferring to decay in the undertow of self-existence--a lie, a false myth, that kills without mercy.

Jesus, save me from myself! Deliver me from the hands of my enemies who encourage my slavery and discourage my salvation. Operate in Your tender mercies, working righteousness and discipline into the child of Your compassion. Let Your Beloved live in the palm of Your hands, in the shadow of Your wings, so I might share the path of life with those near me. Whether I gain the world or lose it, I count life a gift of God, given by You, Jesus, to hand over to the Father...Lord, do not let my forsaking lead to Your turning away, but break me free from the foolish lusts chaining me and transform this wicked heart into one that seeks Yours. May I love you wholeheartedly, convenanting to lead a life worthy of Your remembernce in You, Son of God.

Spirit, spare me from the world and its wicked ways, leading me on the level road of righteousness, into Glory for His Sake. I thank You for awakening me to my misery, to my indefensible position, to claim me as a prize for the Lord's glory. Amen.

"Day and night we worship You, God of our salvation!"

Marriage: Divine Discovery

2011-08-25T01:42:00.007-06:00

"A man who finds a wife finds a good thing
and obtains favor from the LORD." -Proverbs 18:22

A classic line in the pursuit of happiness for most singles. And how we pursue! Dating consumes a great amount of time, but not near as much as the fantasy world of imagining a relationship with the "good [gift]" of God, the person betrothed from His holy mansion to be yours for life. This quest occupies so much of the emotions, mind, and heart one shouldn't wonder if the will is truly weak, because all the imagining does not produce our spouse's existence.

Indeed, in our culture, the words could be worded, "he who convinces a [woman to be] a wife finds a good thing." Discovering a wonderful woman does little to curb the reality that most Christian females in their 20s are likely to have been so battered, bruised, broken and misused, that their general fearfulness is intensified. Instead of pledging a lifelong commitment, they flee from it. Fear defines them, and defies this verse. He who finds a wife will have to do so against the spirit of dread that fills the woman's heart; he will have to come bearing a strength of rest that awakens the primordial longing for a relationship that extinguishes timidity, exchanging it for trust. "Awaken love" is more like a resurrection than a friendly nudge.

So, the pathway of fear has caused many of us to nab and grab at every eye and heart, or be repulsed by any hint of desire in others or ourselves. The word "find" becomes our obsession, and begins to look a lot more like "strive" than discovery. We run breakneck into a broken relationship(s) founded on fear, not on faithfulness. But, in a faithless generation, "who can find a faithful man (or woman)?"

Our understanding of "find" is the problem. The whole word from God is that we "gain favor" when we "find a wife," a "good thing" from the Father. We forget, in an emotional/longing sense, that these are daughters of God, desirable to Him and devoted to Him. They are His Bride, discovered first and fully by Him in His Son, and obtained by His sacrifice and obedience to the Father. He pursued His Bride through following the Father and doing His business. His wife was His righteous reward.

He discovered her in abandoning Himself to God.

In truth, the word find means discovery in Scripture. And security. You "find favor" with God through His acts of compassion toward you. You find a wife when He overthrows the fears of our age, our insecurities, and remember faithfulness and love. In finding Him, we find recovery from the addictions and abuses of sin, so we can rest and wait for Him to reveal the discovery many of us are waiting for: That good thing from the Father, purchased and prepared by His Son. A wife. Or husband.

And regarding wait, one only has to look at how wisdom parallels the good wife in Proverbs to see the secret in obtaining this gift from the Lord. The book says, "if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom..." (2:3-6) You don't pursue hidden treasures on the surface, but in the deep, unsearchable places. Only in the depths of God's heart will you encounter the wisdom and wealth of God. A bride comes from being captured by His presence.

It is only the suffering of loneliness that makes the discipline of waiting and trusting painful, but it is this suffering that makes us powerful. In trusting God, ladies learn to trust where terror held their hearts. In submitting to God, we as men learn to accept our pride and lack of understanding must be replaced with compassion (and trust as well).

As Christian singles, we get to discover first to be full men and women, children of God, before we discover the beauty and blessing of a bride.

Pentecost(al)

2011-06-11T15:42:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow, my favorite day appears. Right along with Easter and Thanksgiving, these are some of the most special hours of my year. I am reminded Whose I am and Who is in me, bearing the reality of the hope of glory. For, the Spirit of glory comes in the event highlighted tomorrow, in the fulness of community, in the promise of family He was always intended to share.

My prayer is tomorrow becomes another expression of that glorious reality. That the words of the Welsh revivalist who "held the nation in his hands" cried out with all of the communities he entered, would become the anthem of our hearts. "Come, Holy Spirit, for Jesus' Christ sake!"

And, if that won't do, let us begin again and cry, "Come even more, Holy Spirit, for Jesus Christ's sake!"

So, that when we arise on the Lord's Day, in the Spirit, crying out, "The Spirit and Bride, same, 'Come!'"

Come, Lord Jesus,quickly, on the wings of your Wind. Maranatha. Amen!

Holding Hands

2011-06-05T07:07:00.004-06:00

Today, I am thankful for the praise and repentance brought on by the Holy Spirit. He is working a second week, a second wave in City Mission. Supporting and counseling us to praise and be thankful for what the Lord is doing, what He has done, and who He is--especially to us as individuals blessed by grace, wedded to a spiritual family of love.

Today, in worship, I did what I always tend to do. I held hands with those to come. I held the hands of children, my children, and in theirs, held generations after. They are gifts, promises, blessings of great joy and untold compassion. I look forward to serving and suffering with these sweet ones, tender reminders that we are all lost sons and daughters until the King comes and calls us to Him as "Daddy." Abba. Father. I look forward to being some little one's papa, but today I get to be their spiritual protector covenanting with our faithful King that one day when they are here in person, they will be here in His presence.

In this way, in prayerful worship, I confront and meet many who I'll never see. People I long for, people I weep over, people who are sure to be traitors and menaces--but hopefully won by the wedded prayers of my Beloved and me, His beloved. When we say, "I am his and he is mine...and his desire is for me," we remember the extent to Jesus' desire, burying himself in the grave through a wooden stake on which he was impaled. His love is so much. In that moment He held hands with sinners, walking them down the crimson trail to the beloved kingdom where His Father was waiting to accept them as sons. Children of the Most High. Hallelu.

I am thankful to be one of them. If I, like David, "recount all your deeds," they would be unending, but also eternally endearing. My indebtedness, as Papa Phil said today, would spur me onto service. I would be obliged to surrender and revere the one who turned over His only true extension of Himself, His only Son, to purchase a family without number. I am thankful to be remembered in His history as a child of the favorite Boy, my Elder Brother who willingly sacrificed Himself to win a Bride. Noble words for an ignoble deed. He suffered greatly to care for us. How richly deep are those memories written in a single line, "I am his and he is mine." Amen.

The Spirit-Filled Missional Ministry of Jesus

2011-05-31T18:40:00.003-06:00

The title and challenge of Mark Driscoll's message. I think this is one message I'll be sharing in classes on preaching, ministry, and the Holy Spirit. Be blessed all by the poignant grace of God flowing from his message.

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/the_spirit-filled_missional_ministry_of_jesus

Fatherly Affection: Communication

2011-05-29T17:28:00.005-06:00

If you had a father who loved you, fed you, clothed you, sheltered you, protected you, wrote you letters while away, would you be afraid to hear him speak to you? To step into your day and share an audible, "I love you"? Wouldn't you sneak up and surprise your kids in this way?

Why do you fear the heavenly Father and His affection to talk with you today?

Teachable Moments

2011-05-29T17:28:00.004-06:00

Ministry is really about what people do outside the pulpit. In reality, we should be the Lord's pulpit, all, showing signs of His notes compiled in the hidden clefts of our heart and His voice ushering out from behind us, through us. Teachers are there to help model and strengthen the community of Christ's "living podiums."

Sharing our lives in conversation, reading, writing, teaching, praying, allows us to learn from each other. Spending ourselves together bleeds our identities as individuals into a corporate image. And this should only bolster and unify the depiction of Jesus among us to the world and each other.

Teachable moments multiplied serve to share God's image in its clearest sense, communally, intimately. And, when we come often together, we may be surprised at who else joins us, interrupts our directions and reflections with a personal visit. He may come unannounced to a people eager to see Him in each other and include Himself in the activities.

And that's where the fun of such ministry training begins: Seeing God show up in the minute moments of living together and working together for His kingdom and for Him.

The task of testifying

2011-05-27T17:55:00.002-06:00

"I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace." Acts 20:24

These are Paul's words, a missionary, a compeller, an encourager of the people of God. He threw his life into the mission of bringing Jesus to life in the eyes of deadened souls. He evoked vitality in exhausted imaginations, stirred thinking in dulled minds, and inspired emotions in apathetic hearts. How? By witnessing to the One, True God's compassionate mercy poured out in His Son Jesus.

Where philosophers end in abstraction, and preachers in passionate homilies, Jesus inscribed His messages into engraved actions: Punctuating every instruction with a nail-pierced limb, a whip-rent back, a spear-torn side. He cracked His heart open wide to prove His love knew no mortal boundaries. And this Carpenter shook the earth with His divine act of selfless sacrifice, His miraculous obedience to the inhumane compassion of God. Love went wild on Calvary and let loose a cleansing outburst of compassion and empathy that rocks the world's system of order, sequence, and entropy beyond today.

Paul joined this mission as an adversary fooled by his passion for theology into thinking that Yeshua could not be the war-king come to deliver Israel. So, he took up his whip and sword to enslave and slay any followers of Jesus. Along his mission of order-enforcing, the spectacle of Christ alive slammed him off his feet and onto the dirt. The voice of the Heavenly-Empowered pierced his theological and pedagogical framework with a challenge, "Why do you persecute Me? You are kicking against the pricks"--You are destroying yourself to save yourself!

This terrorist on a tirade become a messenger of mercy both relentless and undaunted in the end. His passion for punishment became a compassion for people. He could care for the weak instead of brutalize them. I consider him great for becoming weak, gentle toward other-nationals where he scorned their existence. He became fixated by mercy to talk about what he had seen and heard, what he had felt and experienced that day on the streets of Judea.

This "task of testifying" increasingly becomes clearer as the sole intention of my life. I must not share anything other than the certainty that grace makes life worth living. Philosophy, theology, science, mathematics, the arts--all impressive stuff that produces fine things--cannot compare to the compassion of Christ and its consequences. His grace makes reality worthy of being. Anything else is an adjustment and accessory to His fine craftsmanship, which either highlight or distract from His compassion.

If I cannot persistently follow a life that reflects His devotion to love, His patient suffering, His joyful serving, and strengthening teaching, then I fail to be more than what I already was: An demented intellectual en route to disaster. I studied apologetics and practiced apostasy. I conjured satanic hatred and coddled worldly lies of glory and glamor. These things were dressed to impress the hierarchy of culture and kingdoms, but could not produce the spark of life meaningful enough to sustain me. I needed something richer, sweeter, truer to rid me of my disgrace and venom.

Only after Christ's Spirit appeared showing grace could I claim to understand the fundamental meaning of love, life, and honor.

It came not in cinematic moments of fervent preaching, but in the still reels of His relaying animations of my life dramatized in the secret places of my mind. He pulled the vault of my heart open and portrayed His Son in front of my cowering soul. I clutched a knife in figment and in life: One blade held to Jesus' heart begging for Him to die, another placed over mine threatening to follow if He would not desist from compelling me to hear His offers of love. I understood nothing of an endearing Father pleading for the life of His son. Fatherless, I preferred an automated life.

"I consider my life nothing." I valued it more than anything--compassion, consideration, divine Presence, reconciliation, healing, hope--and discarded it in fantasies and empty dreams. They whisked down the drains of my forgetfulness and came to nothing but despair. Death looked like the only stage exit available outside the stooped clutches of a Christian King, compelled by compassion to call me home.

The cinematic "But," the dramatic resolution, is a halted series of memories that provide a mosaic of me crumbling into internal ashes before an eternal truth: I would truly, fully die if I did not succumb to mercy. Jesus' ambassadors on earth, His invisible agents and His physical friends, all chipped at the iron curtain between my soul and His Spirit, with prayers and unrequited kindness. I cussed, and hated, and mentally/emotionally murdered and raped and plundered each messenger for bringing the hospitality and gentle correction of their heavenly leader. And then, tragically to all my previous ways of thinking, all my treasonous actions and poisonous words met a fatal end on a June evening. I could not sustain the war of attrition and subterfuge against the Father's words of love and His actions came to a final word: "Surrender of Perish."

The intonation could not have been kinder or more direct. The truth more real. I would come under His protection and enter the emergency room/neo-natal ward, or face the firing squad of my own actions. I was pulling the trigger and pressing the lethal injection, filling my life with combustibles and tanks for gas, providing for one big fireworks show that would light a trail straight down to hades. Not because God was cruel and exacting, but because I could not afford the energy and stamina to continue my life as it was. Loveless, I loathed living. Lonely, I lamented being the slave of darkness. Instead of "into marvelous light I run," into marvelous light I wept, and marvelous light ran into me.

Jesus showed up on the doorstep of my heart and became my first love for life.

My goal now is to share about Him and Who He really is for the rest of my life, encouraging and helping others who have heard and seen Him and His love do the same. I am only sorry at how treacherous and multiplied the opposition is, mainly in the callous and bruised hearts who have been scorched by control freaks and con artists intent on material exchange and image enhancement, instead of love. I hope the "good news of God's grace" compels you to see that life is worth living in the Father's love. I pray the power of His good news shows you the compassion He has for the weary, desolate, and needy. Evil is an absence of the Almighty, Broken King. Powerful to save us from our self-inflicted punishment, He made Himself powerless to serve us in our pain.

He sits with us, soaking in our shame, so we can share in His glory. We will get to this honor and joy at His majestic reversal of death's unintended tyranny over our lives. Let's not stifle the gift of grace and miss out on seeing the good news brighten people's lives with Jesus' compassion.

A Heart Wreathed in Flames

2011-05-22T07:41:00.003-06:00

God promised to His people long before He sent His Son that He would create a capital for His Kingdom in which no borders existed. It would be a place demarcated by the presence and fire of God. A heavenly messenger races to meet another going about his own mission, hurrying to tell him, "Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within.’" (Zech. 2:3-4)

In the face of denominational division, this is a comforting Word. He will burn the boundaries from us, defending us with the same purging grace. Compassion will overflow into a consolidating fire. It could be this flame of divine presence that purges us as we enter His gates with thanksgiving. Indeed, another prophet declared in a moment of joy and hope, "In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts." We will come into His Kingdom through the walls of deliverance, which is His own Son Jesus. So, then, our gate and glory are one, our security and boundaries are one: The Lord, a consuming, precious fire.

How is this comforting? Jesus prays that His people might be one as He and the Father are one. As He is the gate to this heavenly city, allowing us to pass through the boundaries of God's holy fire, He ensures nothing foul and petty passes into His treasured family. He says there will be no other divisions besides Himself, because "because of the great number of people and animals in it." He will not allow anything to hem in His masses except His loving, watching, protecting presence. All other distinctions fade, falling to ashes at His feet. Hallelujah!

For us on earth, we have to remember our place in the Kingdom, coming to the holy mountain where all saints are dressed in jubilee together, in fellowship around the throne of Christ. Catholic, Orthodox, Syriac, Protestant, Pentecostal, African, Asian, American...burnished and emblazoned with a single name: Holy to Jesus our Lord. When we find ourselves restricted behind barricades and walls of opinions, cut apart by schisms and distinctions, Christ mounts the hill of capital punishment across from the holy city and says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He bleeds outside of our camps and factions, calling us to become members of a single Body, broken for enemies and outsiders, scoundrels, hypocrites, and satanists alike. A Body bleeding to cleanse away distinctions, calling "many peoples and animals" into His home. Even the base among us can come to rest in the welcoming fires of His Person.

Let us relay this message of unifying love to others and become valid members of this Kingdom of God, where Jacob the con artist dwells with Saul the terrorist and John the beloved disciple. "They will know you by your love"--the world will see the passport of heaven in our openness to show compassion, kindness, gentleness, peace, patience, and acceptance for the kids of the kingdom, who are our fellow members in His blessed family. Truly, "in this sign--victory." Let them know us by our love, a single heart and mind wreathed in flames. Amen.

Golden Nails: Gifts that Wound

2011-04-20T16:30:00.003-06:00

This day proves to be multifaceted--bearing the many beautiful faces and sharp edges of a diamond. I look into it with light and see the beauty of my situation: I am a counselor and mentor to youth, loved by my kids who are hungry for attention, fatherly love. I am a brother among brothers, enjoying the benefits of standing among men who hunger and look to live lives that throw off foolishness to fight, and laugh, and love God and His people in this world to death. I am the blessed son to sit under so many fountains of wisdom, such as the Marriage Life Group ran by Guy and Ria. They led us into many trails and trials that face two people who say they love each other for life; we simply cannot produce the cleansing, pure love that heals and blossoms our beloved outside the beautiful flow of Jesus' sweet holy love.

I am truly blessed!

However, I catch sight of the price for holding this glistening jewel. Cuts line my hands and heart as I feel the weight of bearing up children who are lonely and wounded by fear, by sin. They look for the love of the Father, latching onto anyone--a girl clung to my legs and gleefully cried, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" I could only hear the Father's longing to take her up and say, "Darling, I am your Father." How many women grab onto men in the thirst for their First, True Love? I hear the wonderful stories of husbands marrying brides and wives gaining their godly groom, and can taste the sweetness in their tales. Yet, the tug on my heart draws crimson from my spring of life--marriage is a gift of gold that drives a stake into the heart, killing self to bring to life real wealth. The riches of loving someone wholeheartedly, of seeing joy fill her life, and the blessing of Jesus making her more and more beautiful in the image of His Bride to come. These riches only come at the foot of the cross, and the man must wear the thorny crown to truly wipe his wife's tears.

These are the bittersweet cups I drink.

I love the Lord. Everything centers around Him. I cannot give up this goal, this race, set before me. I live to die, and die to live. The world finds this repulsive. I cannot describe in words they would understand how beautiful this sentiment is to me. Nor can I fully share the experiences behind them. But I want to. You cannot see before you believe, but when you believe, you will see. This is not trickery. Closed eyes never notice the beauty of the sky and air and sea. You don't know how lovely you are. The Lord loves you, and I, in my feeble way, do too. May the heavenly treasure appear in your life in such a way that you can gaze on its beauty and count the cost as more than worth the Son's tender, eternal love for you.

The golden nails are only the beginning to real life: We just don't know what we are missing when we hold onto fear or selflessness. Too many smiles, laughter, lovers, blessings, joys, have been missed because people feared the veil of tears. Walk through and see who has created these blessings.

You will be surprised to see a murder victim sitting alive and joyful as king.

Blessings

Wisdom by the Water

2011-04-15T04:17:00.003-06:00

Life is sustained by water. We drink the liquid and feel refreshed, enlivened, sustained. Here a few words of insight drawn from this life-giving drink.

"Underground springs water roots, secret prayer satisfies the heart."

"Guard your heart, it is your life. Guard your eyes, it is your life's lamp. Guard your mouth, it is your heart's spring. A stopped river turns away wrath, shielded flames burn clearest, and a protected soul grows in justice, life, honor, and love."

"Water refreshes a desert, causing flowers to grow, forgiveness refreshes the soul, causing friendships to bloom."

"Drought brings death to a land, the absence of faithful love brings disaster to everyone."

"Water that runs from the mountains is pure and undefiled, sweet to the lips, but a stagnant pond is sour and sickens the belly. Wisdom gained from the Father of all continually enters an open heart, but one closed correction remains stuck in his own mind, sickening everyone with his words."

"A cup of cool water given in respect and kindness brings life and a sure reward."

Drink, friends, and be refreshed in the living waters of the Lord's love, His Spirit.

Rabbi, What are you reading today?...

2011-03-18T13:35:00.006-06:00

Well, my child, it would be the confusing annals of the heart. "It is desperately wicked, deceitful above all things..." But we are like the house the paschal lamb's blood is sprinkled over, once full of leaven and now swept clean. Our hearts are covered in Yeshua's blood, swept clean of the slovenness and self-inflating things of sin by the Spirit. We possess a heart purified by faith-what a mystery! And it is to this mystery I have looked, reading closely at the seams and bindings for the Master Scribe's expert notes.

"Rabbi, what do you see?" I see the everyday Wisdom calling in the stations of life, our busy roads and winding back-alleys that we so populate our time. It is her I am after, being too late to return before the Shabbat to enjoy the kisses of the Bridegroom. But He is faithful, sent His messengers to call and remind me who I am. "Rabbi, son of the torah, son of righteousness." Yes, yes, by Him and in Him, to Him and through Him, the true Rabbi haTorah, it is so.

"Raboni [lovely Grecian students], what do we do?" We listen, my son, and pray. Praying like this is a looking, a thought full of open silence to the voice from above and lurking within. He is this present anointing and the soon-coming Anointed. So, we both ask and receive, give and retain. We ask for insight and mercy, receiving His gifts and counsel. We give Him room to voice His heart and life to others, retaining the spoken words and blessings to give as heavenly bread to the beggars around us.

"Rabbi, what are you reading today?" The heart of hearts, the One Living God, and to Him I entrust my all, to die and live. May the Lord, blessed be He, come transform His simple servant to understand and obey all He speaks to the vessel of clay. Do likewise, dear children, do likewise, that I might come one day and say, "Rabbi, what are you reading today?"

Wandern in Der Wild

2011-02-07T15:20:00.008-06:00

Today has ended majestically and nostalgically. I entered into what I might say is a sacred atmosphere, clinging around the golden tongues of a moldering fire and listening to the birdsong of a family's, my family's, hearts and hopeful futures. The magic of the moments spent under the heavenly lights of constellations and alit dome of copper fire works on me. My gaze grows outward and looks intently inward, to the hopes and concerns--even fears--inside of me. I tremble at the real notion of being encountered on the basis of my heart's desires, but long for their consummation. Yet, like a prophetic utterance in a mortal soul, they are contradictory and conflicting in their results. I wish to remain alive to embrace the bounty of beauty, but know to walk the passage way of painful (painted) grace leads to a life of suffering and its plausible end. Jerusalem awaits the awakened heart.

Today, I hear the secret summons to see and hear, listen to the cry beneath the veil of tranquility. The earth wrestles in the heavenly places for a situation among the gods, but fails to recognize the realness of the Divine God and His infinite wisdom set against their rebellious ways. And so any opposition to oppressive power-plays is a potent call, in the caliber of extremity and isolation--only so in relationship to the powers-that-be. These towering colossuses, true sons of the Anakim, cannot comprehend a miniscule messenger on the voice of the margins. The fringes having anything to offer is absurd, and obscene in the setting of their opulence. What could a goat herder, a shepherd from the hills of yore, have to say of value to the mighty principalities who are acting-presidents over the kingdoms of the world? It could hardly be of any consequence that these passionate zealots hold anything of value beyond the conviction of an eternal (pre-ordained) kingdom on the rise in their midst as a pebble turned into a mountain of unceasing size. This is madness in the making.

My ramble trail is a deer path on the ascents of the ancient roads I have been reading. I cannot ignore these wandering messages, these calls to another day when people stood and looked at the sky with wonder, huddled around campfires with a sense of security only in their communal remembrance of each other and who they were, how they got there and how they came together. The power that binds them is a unity of timeliness and timelessness, eternal and momentary: One night alone together under the open sky by a pool of fire, set among the many starry years of repetition their ancestors had lived on the land. We meet at the crossroads of now and infinity, and wonder who will be when we are gone, and how they are different from us and those who have gone before.

My brother and sister shared their dreams of a future, a loving memory of things they desire to see when they come of age. How they will call their parents and who their children will see. They looked to the land and how they would form it, to the history they would make with their own and other homes. I could be a part of it, I'm sure, but I am afraid they will not see me in those times of refreshing, in the story of retelling. I live as a man on a mission, a walk in the wilderness, and know the hours are close to the summons that calls all men to die. My Master bids me to count the cost and take up His cross, and the weight and feel of this burden bears upon my soft hands and heart. I feel the necessary cuts that carry this world into His kingdom, and wonder what will be left of me when I am done, gone through the gates into Paradise...but that is a vision that marries joy with sorrow, and I hope to share the significance with at least one soul before I am finished on this world.

I love all of you, I do. This is not the end, but the beginning of it. I feel in the flames and charcoal a rumor of coming seasons. I sense the taste of new ground and fresh soil, the buds yet to be. I want to share them, unveil the quality and goodness of each moment. The fruit will be sweet if the growing is good. I will be glad to hear the sound of voices gathered around the campfires when they return, another batch of star-studded eyes and story-filled ears ready for the ageless song to settle again on their lives. The elders engage in tellings, rememberance, and the children speak of things yet to be, but I sense in this moment of fire walks and smoke stories all become one: An enchanted space in time when all the ages blend together, mending a broken sphere, and we see the beginning from the end and end from the start. We come together to notice each other in heaven's muted illumination, and love the soft glow of warmth and love that comes from a communal, central, seemingly eternal, fire. It is a gift from heaven upon the earth, a solid moment of reflective anticipation of things to come. Speak and listen, the whisper of life moves on again, and we share it together, forever.

I will pass and hear the song of redemption fulfilled, my laden soul lightened of its sighs, and then I will sing without restraint as in those moments of jubilation: My trials are over, the trails of tears are ended, in the becoming of a son of the Father in His heavenly lights. Until that season of All-Summers-Days, I will have to travel under the banner of the King that says both love and loss together: The Anointed Guide declares, "Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."

Where You go, I go...What You gave, I give away. Blessed be Your Name.

Arm(or)ed

2011-02-06T18:58:00.002-06:00

Lord, You amaze me with your comfort--your uplifting, strengthening support. But I also tremble in the face of frailty and frustration. The concrete is thick, our sorrows many, and the world a massive slideshow of shame and blame. Guilt. We have lots of it if we do not live in You.

Jesus, today I am confronted with two images. Your glory and the shocking images of filth that adhere to our hearts like barnacles to a pristine ship. Let God's love refresh the precious image of You into my heart, Your beautiful sister's heart, my family's heart and Yours as well. These houses blunder greatly, but Your glory still dwells among us as the testimony of grace to Your home. Silence the Accuser, the shamer of your people, and rescue us to dwell in heavenly places where Christ Jesus, our Sweet Messiah, hides us away from the fires of hell and their fury. We are in love with You. Amen.

Spirit, indwell and enwrap Your people with merciful understanding, loving-kindness and tender mercy. Let go of our unwholesome ways, forgive our past wanderings and cleave our hearts from the Devil's snares. Free us to be your people completely. I bless you over the nature of the secret heart, I bless You over the history of tragedy and sorrow, I bless You over the anguish of regret and isolation. I bless you in the jeopardy of souls, in the marrow of sin, where only Your life can revive the dead and wounded. Love, burn brightly in the course of the tragedy of sinners' lives. We are in need of You. I return, Holy Spirit, to hear Your powerful voice speak to me and the nations again. Translate Your Son's vision into our innermost beings, the soul of souls, and protect us from forgeries and fraud. We love Your wisdom and mercy. Amen.

I bless you and praise you, King of Kings. Come over us in thanksgiving and joy. Bless Your name, Yeshua. You are honored and praised forever. Halleujah. Amen.

Visions Beyond the Veil

2011-01-27T16:33:00.002-06:00

Among the myriad things that awaken in the whirl of my mind, I feel myself stilling in an area of my soul. I realize that visionary may mean I am willing to overlook a momentary (which may mean seconds or scores of years) blessing to allow the reality of Christ's eternal love to wash into a person. But this could be the illusory resignation of a fleeting joy to the hands of irretrievable past. Here is the rub: You must discern whether human fancy is flowing from heavenly fascination, and then whether the earthly counterpart to the Father's offer reciprocates His affection. A tricky affair, but thousands and millions accomplish this, entering the mystery, from gaining the smiles of little children to holding a wonderful woman's hand.

To this, I have relented my heart to the Father and know I am unknowing and unwise in the passage ahead, but enjoy His teaching along the way. It is simpler to entrust myself completely into His embrace than question the future so full of my ignorance and His knowledge. Learn to love surprises, and you may begin to enjoy all His plans unveil, for in all things and in all ways, beyond all our reasons and attempts,

"Yahweh is good, His faithful, unending love endures forever." Amen.

Man with a Mission

2011-01-19T09:28:00.002-06:00

A prayer to the God of my life, set to the tune of the Master's Commission, to be read in light of Matthew 10:

Lord Jesus, my Sender, I surrender to Your call.
Be all in my all.
You took me by the tender way, but warn,
I would not escape the blade or the thorn.
For, where You give wisdom and compassion,
You also arm to face the furies of the passion...
Aye, but the Truth, forsooth, is that I have You,
Sweet God of my youth.
I walk upon a misty mountain trail,
To the shores of Your heavenly cloud veil,
Where You speak forth from darkness,
And reveal Your fiery word,
Changing me into my Master's likeness,
Crying out secrets louder than a mockingbird.
So, come, Christ, and dwell with me,
Sending forth Your children in a saintly jubilee.

Rosary of Thorns (Or, as I Stand Among the Rose Petals)

2010-08-13T21:15:00.008-06:00

Both would make a wonderful song, poem or lyrical writing. And that may be true to the tune, though I am writing only words from the heart.

The Lord has been wooing me lately, superimposing a single concept over many others to entrap my broken heart. And I've fought, been hiding, seeking to just remain a simple child in world of steam and ashes (veil and covering that hide the beauty of His creation). But I cannot. He will make a revelation of the things spoken in secret, whether I like it or not. And I should like what I see coming, a blessing unknown for years...and I still groan. Even after the vision and warning, I beckon to my side bitterness (mara) and uprising. He, in spite of this, calls out His blessed love by name.

Here I am, counting complaints on my rosary of thorns, each stinging reminder of my sins and shame. Each barbed notch a recalling of wounds deeply stored. "Out of the things stored in a man's heart he speaks," Yeshua said. And agony is my word choice, my heart's vocabulary. And fear, shame, blame. Denial, I refuse to suffer for His sake and proclaim--to claim--faithful love. My fingers are bleeding in rhythm with my battered heart, causing me to strum a selfishly sad song with numb fingers. And these orations aren't getting any further from the place He moves me forward to on the unflinching legs of time. I am His, and He is mine.

While I press my case into the callous rood of thistle and thorn, Yeshua bathes me in love, even His own laughter. I see the marvelous love He has for children, for family, and my heart is moved. I see the romance He plays upon my heart and my spiritual siblings, and my knees uncoil from their frozen restraint. And, if I thaw, it is because the First Love scorches me from within and without--"You have seduced me, and I am seduced. You have ravished me, and I am ravished": Wooed and forced, caressed and coerced, He calls me to His place of loving-kindness. And I am a blade brother bleeding out himself in hope that a self-destruction will preempt the fulfilling of His plans! I just don't want to be half in the place of a whole...

Into this fray He plays a downpour of sympathy and compassion, flooding my arms with an assortment of confirming messages. I have seen my share of Messianic literature surge to a surprising height, my identity firming into one who loves the Jewish people under a prophetic and apostolic faith. I have seen my desire for prayer and genuineness revive, restored in opposition to my doubt and fear. And He shimmers in the gloaming of a faint echo of His Word, a message He sung in the silent moment many furrows ago. And if He truly hums the tune, I will follow and likely fall, faltering here most intimately. But my identity is His, and I content to wallow until He reveals the glory of His majesty in this hour. I join you, psalmists, in crying out for the rescue that brings resurrection. "I cried out to Yahweh and He healed me," "I will list His benefits: Yahweh overlooks my sins, and heals all my diseases. I eat the richest of fare..." I am in the midst of roses as the Father tugs at the strings of my cruel rosary.

A Miracle

2010-08-01T22:37:00.004-06:00

I am here, sitting in my hallway, writing on my mother's desktop. This is new for me, a long time ago in my mind's eye since I last graced these pages from this swivel chair. Yet, I am enamored with mercy. I should not be here, really I know I shouldn't, because of the treachery in my own soul. I have born treachery to my King, but He has blessed me with forgiveness to be convening with Him in my mother's home at a computer armvoir. And amid this simple, painful, mercy, I get to consider His goodness with gladness and peace: I am set free to forgive as I am forgiven. Hallelujah.

But I am not quite free from my undisciplined living, being perfected from the stains of poor decision-making along the way. I am cantankerous and proud, covering my sins from myself. "We fight like hell to hide our sins," writes a wise student of Christ. Shuv, to turn, as we are told by the same man who studies the prophets and that dear concept, is most important, as is the process of admitting we need to return: To face first our refusal to face God, and begin the re-turn toward facing forward into forgiveness to live again. All by mercy, all by grace, by faith, believing in what God has said--Whom He has sent. Beloved, lean on His faithfulness, trust in Him. Amen.

I am learning lessons that will develop beyond myself, a reminder I faced when I looked at my dashboard. There are pastors on my links, preaching and teaching to fellow-servants, crying out to God in need of revelation how to lead men to become fishers of men. Soon I will be doing the same, a raboni among my fellow raboni. I knew this last spring, called to it as the Lord lovingly showed me the place I would tread and others followed, bleeding tears before the throne. But my thorn grows deeper, and I weaker in decrying its existence. And into the fray, God says David's Psalm to me, "Lord, You are my portion and my cup [of blessing]; You hold [are!] my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." (Psalm 16:5-6 CSB) I could easily insert exclamations after each sentence with joy! God is with me, Emmanuel, the Bringer and Giver of mercy. Amen! "You hold my future...I have a beautiful inheritance." So much of this reminds me of a vision and His words to me. "The words of King David and Asaph the seer" remind me that His words are sure and we are to wait in hope, as hope rests upon us [in the Spirit]. I consider it all joy then to discover the meaning of "Those who wait upon the Lord [Yahweh] renew their strength." Amen.

I am in line to take up a sacred yoke, the Teacher's finest hour, when He gave everything away. I look forward to receiving and believing in the loss of self for the eternal wealth of knowing Him. I want to discover His mercy anew, afresh in the miracle of believing like a child. Let mercy reign in my inner man with a Spirit of strength and power overcoming fear. Let faithfulness receive its place over the throne of my heart as the King with faithful love takes His proper role as Master and First Love. Make me a song to You, my King, and play the tune of sacred joy upon my heart. I welcome You, to court You, King of Heaven. Amen.

Loves the Lord

2010-05-01T12:40:00.003-06:00

Of all the characteristics of my heart this has become the central aspect: Love Mercy, especially the Giver of Mercy. Mercy encapsulates Jesus' polemic (attack) against the Pharisees, a branch of Judaism that sought to make a mountain of systematic regulations the essence of the First Covenant and its Teachings, Torah. Yet, Jesus challenged them, saying "Go and discover what it means, 'I desire mercy.'" God loves mercy, and so loves those who are merciful. "Great love has the one who has been forgiven much." The revelation of forgiveness is the enrichment of love. Selah.

Jesus was a teacher and mentor to His people, a guide and visionary of all that was to come and their task while they worked toward the Father's goals. He spoke of things few understood and few cared to hear, but His love persisted and His power amazed so several followed past their personal confusion and fear. Jesus was near and present, so was the Presence of the Spirit Who bore the Father's love. His inaugural message encloses this truth of the Spirit's saturation on His life, and His parting blessing was for them to await the same Spirit of Power from on high. We are called to carry our mentor's Spirit and be borne aloft on the Father's present love. Amen.

I am preparing to leave for a semester-long adventure in the urban sprawl of Siem Reap, Cambodia, with the giant lake and enormous temple-city nearby as well. These will be blessed times, trying moments that speak to the Father's perpetual love. I look forward to hearing from Him and seeing His hand and face shining through the experiences of the trip. God is glorified in the love and mercy of His sons and daughters. I am thankful for the opportunity to share in this expedition of encounter between God, His nationals and His foreign wanderers.

In closing, I would like to give a taste of a brewing concentration in my studies and prayers, deep searchings for the Spirit and the encounter of His Word in life. T.S. Elliot voices our sad fear and confusion when the echo of the Father's voice is missing, His presence diminished to ink and quill:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
-TS Elliot, The Rock

In its stead, I offer this hope, consolation and challenge. God's voice is not silenced, His tongue is not destroyed, nor His presence barred from earth. "[God's word] is no mere transmission of information, insofar as God's word, His davar, is no mere datum of information. It is more like a quantum of transformation, an event that happens, indeed occurs to the prophet." (Rickie Moore)

And also to us.

Wild Man in the Wilderland

2010-03-15T21:22:00.003-06:00

Father, You have carved a place into the rutless road, using mist for a chisel to imprint Your plan. How could I guess the trail You would tread, or the countless wounds we bled would run a river of righteousness to a broken world? How could I see the torment of the night leads to a touchable, teachable spirit in the morning's light? Yes, who could I have been if You did not enter my world and liberate me in the midst of my sin? Amen.

Still, the traveler looks upon the passage and waits for the high wall to break, crumbling in dissolution under Your promise's wake. Let starlight shimmer over ruins scaled, over battlements long-past prevailed. Come, glimmer-stellar lights, and signal victory in tranquil night. All waits upon the Waker's call to stir the cauldron bright, full of Jesus' precious might and the tears of heaven's acolytes. Dispense Your Morning for mourners, mercy flowing to fill soiled sons of soil with the fullness of gracious glory, our God. Amen.

On the wild man would roam to tend the fertile field in a hostile world, save that he waits for the Son to blaze an opening in the wilderland. Tend to the desert stand, where waiting melds into baiting, and bowing to sowing for another day. Come, King, and collect Your sire, ready for the hire, a workman who seeks to be approved on the trail Your mysterious mist has grooved. We walk and look ahead to the God who reigns in heaven, apart from the dead, where the everlasting souls make their bed. Yes, to where the celestial hearts make their bed under the shining radiance of the Beloved Head. We wait for the vital fruit to bloom in the name of the Groom. Come, Lord, and make Your pastors knit together in the pasture of Your perfume. Amen.

Pilgrim's Process

2010-02-27T23:17:00.002-06:00

I am perpetually coming to terms with my paralysis, more like resignation, in terms of competition in matters of the soul and heart. Much like a pilgrim, I live in transit, constantly moving and perceive the world through the lens of a wanderer, a ranger in search of his home. And, while I feel at company with the Vagabond Jew, my Precious Jesus, as He has no place to rest and call His own on earth, I am most unlike Him. He is Greatheart in Bunyan's tales, fighting to protect sweet Christiana and her companions on the road to Home. I have in the most personal aspects of life traveled onward, prepared to surrender my desires for the sake of survival--a dedicated loss is better than a false hope of gain, but this too is evil in God's eyes. Selah.t

If anything, I have come to realize I've lived much like Abraham, who, for all of his faith, was eager to surrender others over so long as he was spared in some way. He even gives up his prized son, his promise, to the Lord without wavering...though I must wonder if in possessing the promise I would willingly release it to death. Could a ranger give up his rare earthly blessing for his heartwood home?

These miss the mark of my intent. I am speaking of my excessive ability to yield the field on things no one can see or know, but all recognize if given the time. I am more apt to let an apparently better suited or beloved soul take the place I enjoy or desire. Dusting off my stitched overcoat, rolling up my bedroll, I take to the mud ruts and leave the personal contests with a melodramatic wave and nod of my hat. The illusion is simple: I am serving the Lord, so any area of personal relationships can be given up to pursue His glory. This sleight of hand ignores the deeper truth that Jesus instructs us to live by, "Go and learn, 'I desire mercy, instead of sacrifice.'" And, "Obedience is better than sacrifice." The ritualistic carving of my scarred heart separates me from the living God whom I deceitfully think I'm serving. Selah.

Thankfully, God has sent pantomime foretastes of His beauty to teach my soul to rest and recall His grace and mercy, training my soul to war. I must learn to string my bow and flex my frame behind the hardwood shaft of persevering prayer and endure the contentions rising against my sight and soul. Thankfully, I am not alone, for my Lord Greatheart is with me. Hallelujah.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”- 2 Timothy 1:7

I Dedicate This One For You

2010-02-21T19:48:00.002-06:00

Holy Father, Sweetest Love, Purest Dove, this one is for You. I must fight the cultic summons of a soul so used to fire far from Your flames, to smoke that smells nothing like Your Name. Holy Spirit, come in me and carry out this love that beckons a soul to die, to live. Spirit, speak Your Son's Name into my tender cast, and transform the humble mold into a form that lasts. I breathe only to receive You, Father. I inhale only to pull more of Your scent inside, and I come under the crimson flow to expiate my pride. Oh Kinder-King, God-Son, and Father-Brother--Friend--plunge me into You so my soul will be at an end. Only in so far I give of myself do I receive the Spirit's oil to anoint my foil and bring a pleasant eve. Jesus, my compassion, bear me on into Your heart's core, so that I can freely love and adore. Hallelujah, Lord, You're all I am asking for!

Tenous and Strong

2010-02-16T22:19:00.014-06:00

The promises of God have come to us in tension, under fire and in great need of trust. When God speaks, the heavens clear and the world trembles, but the echoes of His words must be captured in our hearts by reliance on His Spirit. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart" musters faith to the battle line and challenges us to remain (or abide) in His presence and promise. Yet, a dire contest to destroy our assurance and acceptance of God's divine plan follows each and every of His messages.

The field of contended promises grows clearer the more I spend time in Scripture and in classes speaking on the Word. Especially in regards to the Patriarchs and Moses. Each book of the core of the Old Testament as the Hebrews would see it, the Pentateuch, ends with the people still outside their promise, each one eluded by the consummation of their hope. The men lauded in the Jewish Christian's account of these men and those who follow them in Israel's history do not discover the reality they hoped for--these men suffered, died, without seeing the fulfillment of God's Word, His promises. But they maintained the truthfulness of the Speaker despite these enormous losses. Remember this.

Chaos and competition, conflict and hardship, all these abound in the world today. We cannot escape them, even as children of the King. When Jesus compares the wise man and the fool to capable and ignorant builders, both experience the waves and wind upon their houses; the only difference was the foundation of all their endeavors and hope (trust). Both suffered, but only one lasted the night. We are going to suffer, lose and find ourselves floating in a riptide of heartache, filled with the debris of our cares and dreams. God's Word remains, like the rock under the man's house. No matter how many of his fine things were ruined in the storm, or the loved ones lost in the ensuing chaos of the tsunami and hurricane of life, the land he rested upon and placed his trust endured. Often God strips us of the coverings to reveal the foundation underneath has been Him all along, abiding in both the silence and storm. Remember this.

However, greater than the realization that confusion and hostility will pounce upon you the moment you hear from the Lord, pounding you until you would rather quit the fight to hold on, to receive God's promise (for, if He had spoken such things, you wouldn't have suffered at all, right? That person, place or thing would be here, right now, showing His love/their love and filling you will all joy as He said, yes?), greater than all these is Jesus' abiding promise of His presence. As the Word, He encloses all other promises, all other people involved in our promises, and all circumstances we will find ourselves involved. He holds reality, relationships and revelation in Himself. And He holds you firmly as you focus your concerns and desires into His hands. We don't have to flex our muscles to attain the plans of God; He's already talentedly working to unveil His plans under His own stopwatch, for His own critique and satisfaction. For us, we can only watch in conversation to our King, seeking to intently see all that He constructs of the words He shares. Remember this, and so let His words continue to grow in you. (Amen)

Freedom in Mercy

2010-01-15T20:38:00.004-06:00

“[The Children of Abraham] To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”- John 8:31-32

These words mean so much to me. Liberty in the Love of the Lord. Hallelu! Something in the words strikes out in me. Holding onto His teaching proves discipleship, and that reality breeds freedom. It is the if, then aspect of His love blooming inside us. That the children of Abraham is the subject of this passage also denotes the joy I have in His promise to make us His people, and the promises made to His children Israel. I was dearly reminded to recover and peruse my Wurmbrand books, retellings of his life in Christ in hardship and sorrow as a son of Abraham reborn. What was the teaching Christ gave, according to Wurmbrand? To follow the way of love above all else. After all his years of searching for the right path to Jesus in His churches, Wurmbrand wrote, "My confession is love." I agree. Kindness is a kingly attribute, mercy the passage of saints. I long to learn mercy and forgiveness that extinguishes hatred and envy wherever these baleful weapons are found. So, I hear James speak that blessing births in hardship and the patient (enduring) discover purity and perfection in the Lord's love. Thank You, Father, for this abounding mercy, these resplendent days, and the joys of surprise encounters with the Beloved. I pray You continue to persuade Your child to offer himself as a living sacrifice, Abba, for I desire to be a true son of Zion, a sacred son and loyal brother. Amen.

Crossroads

2010-01-14T19:32:00.004-06:00

The Celts believed in the power of crossroads, a place of connection between the world seen and unseen as well as the lands around you. Today has been such a day, where the routes are twisting upon each other, celestial and earthly bending in unseen revelation and relevance. As keynote strokes these three elements pull them together:

"If you would endeavor, like men of courage, to stand in the battle,surely we would feel the favorable assistance of God from heaven. Forwho He giveth us occasion to fight, to the end we may get the victory,is ready succor those that fight manfully, and do trust in Hisgrace."—Thomas à Kempis
http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-resurgence/spiritual-warfare-prayer/284260007845

"Finally, every man longs for a Beauty to rescue. He really does. Where would Robin Hood be without Marian, or King Arthur without Guinevere? Lonely men fighting lonely battles. You see, it's not just man needs a battle to fight. He needs someone to fight for." -Captivating

I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete
Oh simple thing where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
-Keane "Somewhere Only We Know"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX83X4vtZCs

These threads ran through the course of the day, among others that weave a fabric which illustrates poignantly the mystery and delight the Lord immerses me in, pressing me toward some unseen point of arrival where the pang of longing meets the passion of belonging. The King of kings orchestrates a beautiful tune, with His son slowly learning to hum along. Selah.

Turning My Thoughts Toward Heaven

2010-01-13T18:18:00.004-06:00

"Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given...But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them." Mark 4:24-25

Listening, hearing the Lord in all times and seasons, has come to be the biggest desire of my heart this semester. He has burdened me to listen for His words and revelations and obey what He has to say, accept what He has to offer. Something keen spreads through my soul, infecting me with a longing to meditate and worship in silence and solitude the King of Kings. I want to be in His tabernacle as the men of old, just pondering what He says and shows. Selah.

Yes, selah, a word of meditation and contemplation, holds me in rapture. The promise of meeting and entertaining the King of Heaven is so awesome and wonderful. His presence resides on the inside, all around me and beyond my scope and vision--He is eternal and approachable. Hallelujah! He has also sparked a hope that only His sacred romance can solve, His wonderful wisdom can answer. The riddle on the walls moves into position and the geas breaks in cinder blocks of confidence and peace. All I have to do is patiently wait and watch for the opportunity to open, His doors unfurled to accept me into His home and company. Who am I to receive such graces and beautiful treasures? Only His love is worthy of such praise, and so I raise my heart's cup to Him in adoration and thanksgiving. Amen.

So, in the curious times approaching, I covet the opportunities to spend moments alone with God, learning what His touch and voice feel like. To know His company and so know His love, learning how to be a companion and how to love, as the saying above goes, is remarkably astounding. The blind can see in heaven's courts, the deaf can turn their ears to music unheard on earth, and the lame can walk humbly in the halls of our celestial Father. My wanderings turn toward this blessed resurrection. May God's Spirit unveil His rapturous majesty and beautiful pleasure. I am my Beloved's, and (Hallelujah!) He is mine."

Preparing Splendors Eternal, Love Sublime

2010-01-08T01:29:00.002-06:00

I'm enraptured in the miracles God is doing unseen, reminded through the truly moving orchestrations of Misty Edward's new songs on her Fling Wide album. My soul pictures a room of darkness being lit by a series of luminous streamers suspended in midair along some unseen path. Into this void sprouts bulbs of luscious light, livng incandescence full of purity and promise. God is preparing a place for me in His vast halls, an endless parade of His devotion and desire; I am longed for in eternity, making all earthly attachments unnecessary. All human desires fade in the blazing grandeur of His all-consuming love. Love. Untainted, unpretending, unchanging. Hallelu-Yeshua! Blessed be You, Beloved. Thank You...for loving me, for redeeming me, for esteeming me, for cleansing me to be crowned a brother, beloved, friend in the counsel and presence of Daddy-King and my Christ/Comforter/Companion/King. Thank You, Spirit, for descending to inhabit my cell, the center of my being, and the chamber of my deepest considerations, dreams and fears, where faith and love grow. Triune King, have all of me, and in all of me overflow! Cascade into decadence, the decadence of unabashed love. No crime except where the world presides, but we are strangers here looking for an everlasting garden where the Lord's throne resides. "I am my Beloved's, and He is mine." Amen.

The Serpent and the Cage

2010-01-02T00:39:00.003-06:00

I finished a book on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, which to my chagrin had too much swearing and some chapter devoted to sexual content I did not enjoy...But, in the midst of these turbulent pages, I found myself facing old enemies and long time friends. The book was written with little linguistic skill, but had several plot points to read after and reflect over. The tension of espionage and personal life drives home issues concerning faithfulness, loyalty, love and the strength of God to overcome sin and evil. The Devil has ensnared me ofter over relationships and personal choices/well-being due to the shadows of timeless sins. How often we are crippled or killed by things out of our control, but only if we allow ourselves to submit to them. I once believed I had no opportunity to free myself from the clutches of unalterable acts. Christ instead proves how unutterably infinite His grace and mercy provide freedom and healing. Hope. His hope does not fail because it relies on love. "His love endures forever." Amen!

The Serpent had a notched and bent cage, whose song bird sings for the highest of heavens. The little one's hope is that his heavenly Father will snatch him into the wild blue expanse of His all-endearing love. Dawn breaks with infinite promise as mercy renews. Hallelu.

A Great Man's Passing Marked by His King

2009-12-26T22:53:00.003-06:00

Last night and today shares the two verses that explain my grandfather's death so well; from these I will be weaving a memorial, if only to share who my friend and father was and who he will be always to me. For now, here the words of my beloved Master who shares His mercy with us all:

“Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”- Luke 2:28-32

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:4

Selah.

Be like Christ in the Crucifixion

2009-12-11T09:57:00.002-06:00

One aspect of my Lord's life drives my heart: His agonizing death for us. I want to pour my life out as a love-offering to cleanse the hearts of fellow men. More than becoming their savior, as He alone truly is, the quest is to become their real servant, their true friend, and their faithful brother. Death's serenade as an object of obedient subjection for the sin's of others strikes closest in my heart. Tis why I could reconcile losing everything if I could offer my frail, faulty body as a token of gratitude to the King. Millions march ahead of me on this blood-soiled turf, leaving a holier trail than I know how to tread. Yet, Jesus lives in me, dwells inside me, and supports my fragile mind to become like Him in His death. My life then turns toward Calvary with the grace to bear and understand its significance and hope for all, eternal life. I long to love my Lord as Jesus loved the earth: By shedding my blood for Him and His people, to wed the world to the Almighty-Christ. Amen.

(This post is inspired by a reminder of my favorite part of Christ's person--along with His prayers--from this post of the Resurgence: http://theresurgence.com/series/how-jesus-made-disciples )

A Most Subtle Note, Suspended in Space

2009-11-27T22:49:00.003-06:00

...the suspender of time.

As strangely as this will sound, I long to see and hear the all-ending harmonic pulse that sends the dormant helium atoms (as small and spent as they are) floating adrift in the universe into the final crescendo of breath-taking illumination and apotheosis: The worlds will flame brilliantly in the light of the Lord's love-song-requiem. The Apocalypse means Unveiling, the Father's intent for the ages' end: To uncover His Son as King before the Universe, and His anthem will shatter and reshape reality into the image of His vision and love. His visage will ignite a tremor that consumes the cosmos--in the midst of a quartet's lovely rendition of "Fix You" and Francis Chan's Forgotten God, I saw a feeble reflection of this coming Awakening that ushers a warped universe into surpassing grandeur. I long for this sublime melody to play across such minuscule keys to inflame God's holy passion into the visible strata of space: Come, Holy Spirit, and kindle a fire in the hearth, so this heart sings forth such everlasting praise.

I want to set the world ablaze with His love-song-requiem. Amen.

Broken Twists

2009-11-22T16:55:00.003-06:00

Oh, how the Lord speaks in intimacy and shares in quiet! He has affirmed He appears when we offer to Him the reasonable service-sacrifice of ourselves. My time with Him lately has been affirming, while today has had a moment of humbling. I discovered anew (was reminded, rather) how crippled I am: Half of me is blind and more like a clubbed nubs than full-fledged limbs in fluid concert with the rest of my body. This impotence of expression infuriates me, steals away the joy and pleasure of fellowship simply because I want to be equal to the ranks of my friends. Thankfully, I discovered this raw wound of selfishness and folly while alone and playing an anonymous instrument of God one-on-one. I have to find the foundation for my identity away from the usual runs of male appreciation...A frustrating state when guys relate through physical achievements, but I'll manage if mercy and wisdom graft into my wither of a soul.

However, I know this is not the end, but a beginning. The genesis appears in the lack of total dissolution: I am cracked, but not crushed. My Lord has been delivering me from my enemies, decimating fear and pride. I can stand in confidence, with faith and assurance that He is with me. My hope relies on the Lord, and my future lives in faith--righteousness will restore in my soul, and songs will be sung in praise to the Maker of my frame. The brokenness and lack brings me to lean on Yeshua's counsel and hear His words to obey, if I will lay down my soul and its wounds on His altar. Death in the crippling cross, the slaying rood, shames and defames us, but lets us live on the glory of the Resurrected One. Hallelujah!

So, the broken twists of my soul mend in the mercy He nurtures inside me through prayer and supplication, communion and companionship. Tonight I go from the height of prayer and the trough of humiliation onward to the crest of friendship and community with God and men in worship. I am pleased to be taken to the render of my sin and the righter of my way, for He is with me. Amen.

Bran y Hud (y Bran ap Gwd)

2009-11-03T20:02:00.004-06:00

Upon the eve, I have thrashed my way through the ancient homestead and wilderland of my kinfolk, the Britons, in all their sordid past. I have been a'chasing the beleagured ragtag ground of Rhi Brain, King Raven, of whom my name has a possible patronymical resemblance (relating the Gaelic tongues to the blacked rooks who flit by the treetops of the isle's woodland ;). And, while I have hunted laughter and sorrow with the poor lad and his Grellon (flock), I have come to a rather touching and anguishing tale of William Scatlocke--known as Will Scarlet to his friends--and how his luckless soul faced the wiles of the world to find a blessed solace among Bran's merry men. With him, I paused in my own heart's quest, much similar in his simple desires for a haven and a home.

Yet, instead of telling you how that witty rogue sent me laughing and sighing all through his telling of his life under the shadow of the gallows, I will relate how I would like to enjoy a conclusion like ol' Scarlet's--not the long imprisonment and unseemly treatment of my draw fingers, mind you--but, as says he, "A man can go a'wishing his whole life away and it'd count naught but a flick of a rain drop into the sea and be just as useful." I pray grace and wisdom supercede for a knavish man as I, lest half rogue, half root, my life end only in vacancy and soot. God have mercy on Your Son. Remember how easily we're undone...How curiously crows the raven, and God's minstrels in haeven.

Mon amis, Deus vobiscum, amen.

In Rememberance of Me...

2009-10-13T21:39:00.003-06:00

"“And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.”" Isaiah 54:13

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”- Jeremiah 29:11

I will either believe You on these, Father, or will die in the process. You are too kind to me, My Daddy. Hallelujah.

Grace, the Goodness of God That Astounds

2009-09-09T20:25:00.010-06:00

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so men are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

-Solomon (Ecclesiastes 9:11,12)

Solomon was in the throes of self-destruction when he wrote this book, despairing of a life wasted upon himself in the vain pursuit of meaning by his own hands. Unlike his father, David, who had stayed the course of pursuing God with the wholeness of his heart, Solomon instead used his wisdom and self-reliance to build himself an empire of nothing--truly, this is the insight and experience of a humanist and his plight before God.

However, Solomon makes an interesting point that will later return to see the light of Scripture. Paul will later pen through his helper, "So then it depends not on him who wills or runs, but on God, Who has mercy." (Romans 9:16) The idea is that man's prowess and endurance cannot attain even the most basic things you'd expect them to, for the multitudes of life's mysteries and misfortunes happens to us all; likewise, even in the spiritual, the wisdom, power and compassion of God overrules the might and determination of men. We are called not to trust our grit and glamor, but the grace of God. Otherwise, we will discover how God catches the wise in their own schemes and the foolish in their snares. Thankfully, God gives grace to the humble who acknowledge their life and blessings come from the Father above, Who will increase their lives according to His unfailing love.

Right now, I'm not the swift, nor the strong, nor the wise, nor the rich. I definitely can relate that to be even these would mean nothing concerning the promises of God. I can no more attain the pleasure of my King through these measures than I can lift the world on my shoulder and hurl it into the deeps of space. However, faith can do both things. Trust and confidence uphold a man, and one who loves God's word and truth will not be moved (Ps. 119). Praise God! I have a way to enter the most holy without fear, because I am made in His image through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Since death and life are in His hands, we are to take no thought of them. We cannot worry ourselves into a better position or into the fulfillment of God's promises. Nor does He call us to placid complacency, merely sitting around humming, "C'est la vie" ("Such is life") and claiming all things are God's will, whether good or ill. Instead, we are to pursue the Lord in faith and seek His righteousness (Matt. 6:33). Solomon even says in the verse before the selection above to find something to do and work with everything you have, because neither "working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom" dwell in death. However, for us, we have the high aim of following Christ in life, and His success over death in the promise of eternal life to come--where we will have the richness of His wisdom, mercy, power and glory displayed openly (1 Cor. 13:8-13).

God's Word conveys that we are not allowed the two extremes of determinism (which says to God, "I am this because You made me this, and I shall not change!") or self-determination (which says, "Who are You, God, to challenge my will?"). We are made in His likeness by His hands and heart, but we are also capable of resulting in chaos and self-destruction (Jer. 18 shares this vividly with the pot and potter). I am my Father's creation, and He bids me "Come," "Seek, "Ask," and "Knock." For by persistent prayer we uncover the complete and wonderful will of God, which is not disclosed where we can find it on our own. Yet, He bids us come, and thus makes it a choice, a gracious gift of Divine opportunity. Let us follow after Him, knowing He offers the answer to life, both here and forever. Amen.

"Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy." -1 Cor. 14:1

The Simplicity of His Will--and Its Eternal Depth

2009-09-08T21:27:00.004-06:00

“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”- Psalm 143:10

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Yahweh and His Son Yeshua do a curious thing: They state in simple terms exactly what They want from us, and it all has an immeasurable richness behind those easy words. When the psalmist seeks to know the Lord's will, He goes to the source, and actually fulfills what the Apostle Paul would later write--for he had both praised and prayed incessantly to God.

Interestingly, the singer realizes his need for the Spirit to work in an abundantly visible way; the Lord is clear. His will is to seek Him, to worship Him, and to trust Him so much we thank our Father in all circumstances. This is His will. And in doing this, in delighting in Him, we are engrossed in His Spirit, abiding in His word, and coming into His presence. In having fulfilled His will for our lives, we entertain the Lord with hospitality and humility, and gain His attention and company. This results in a second mystery: We come into contact with the living God Who begins unveil Himself to His children!

This is the duality of Romans 12, having renewed our minds after consecrating ourselves as living sacrifices, God reveals His "good, acceptable, perfect will." He is defying the deistic worldview by promising the revelation of His intentions as we come in surrender to His authority in our lives. We have an intimate Father willing to manifest Himself to His children, as He promised in Jesus on the road to the garden of Gethsemane (John 15-17). All we have hindering us from discovering the mystery of His companionship is the lack of these things in our lives: Prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. Gladly, we can gain them by simple submission to the Father, instead of fearing the gulf in between us. "For we have an advocate with the Father" and He will gladly receive us.

"Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." Go ahead, He's waiting.

Such is He

2009-09-03T21:20:00.002-06:00

“This is what Yahweh says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: "I am Yahweh your God, Who teaches you what is best for you, Who directs you in the way you should go.”- Isaiah 48:17

I have heard within the last week a series of messages from God concerning the life that will be led by His son; He has especially imparted the knowledge that I am indeed more than a sinner saved by grace; I am His son in this salvation, empowered to embrace His life. In this life, He is my Master and my Lord as well. "My God" as the prophet says. As I move closer to Him, He will continue to impress greater, subtler control over my life, releasing greater freedom from the impulse of the enemy and the rush into folly. "For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." We are to wallow in this unbridled liberty continually. Hallelujah!

Today, the speaker at school uttered an interesting sermon, one in which the Lord confirmed that this is indeed a time to seek His face, for it is the challenge to accept His sovereign will. Paul declares that we are to "offer yourselves as living sacrifices" and "be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will." He is saying that by reducing ourselves on His altar through abandonment and by focusing our meditation (concentration) and prayer upon Him, we can discover and enter into His perfect will. God's absolutely perfect and awesome will!

However, as the speaker noted, the will of God will be awe-ful, painful and even terrifying. God writes in the Book of the Persecuted One that He answers to no man, for no man stands equal in stature or sight (Job:38-41). He neither vindicates Job's purity, nor demeans Satan for trying to break His servant. Instead, God focuses on His awesome wisdom and power over His creation. Likewise, the stories throughout the Word reveal times just as this where God's promised ones and blessed ones are challenged to abide suffering as an encounter with God's rule. Can fainthearted man withstand the onslaught of evil, even in the face of seeming defeat? Yeshua answers well, "Abba! Father! Everything is possible for You. Take this cup [of judgment and suffering] from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will." Selah.

I wonder at what He means to do with me and to me, but I am beginning to trust in the audacious promises that I can cry out and be heard by my Abba, my Daddy, to Whom all answer--even those who will be my enemies, both spiritual and otherwise. I pray for the strength to endure what He desires as my testing, praying the refinement of silver makes a heart of gold. Amen.

A Prayer to the Lord of My Life

2009-09-02T21:52:00.002-06:00

The earth is filled with your love, O LORD; teach me your decrees. -Psalm 119:64

Asa's Assurance

2009-08-26T12:54:00.004-06:00

So, I told my Father I would stop deflecting into the shadows from public events and attempt to offer something of His Person through me...My poor mind placed its focus on an Irish farmer and the name McGregor came to mind, along with the various earthy images of such a one who lived in the times prior to the Potato Famine. Yet, this attempt to associate myself with the basest of men (whom I respect for their humility and ready wisdom and wit) does not solace me, because I am not so diligent or orthodox in simplicity and wisdom, being an educated and rather lazy soul. But I went anyway to pray and offer my thanks and supplication to the Lord Who lives and reigns over us all.

Right at the beginning of the intercession, the Lord pierced my heart with a passage; though it speaks to a group, I did not raise my voice into the din of the crowded room, nor would I even when it was silent. Yet, the verses still apply and, if I don't close them away, still burn at me to hear what they mean today. The following passage flows in the time of Asa, a once noble king who for a season served the Lord:

'The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Asa and all Judah and Benjamin, hear me. Yahweh is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you abandon Him, He will abandon you. For many years Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law, but when they turned to Yahweh haElohim of Israel in their distress and sought Him, He was found by them. In those times there was no peace for those who went about their daily activities because the residents of the lands had many conflicts. Nation was crushed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every possible distress. But as for you, be strong; don't be discouraged [lit. don't let your hands fail], for your work has a reward."' -2 Chron. 15:1-7

Yahweh spoke to me through these words, each piece having emphasis in its own way. And when, later on in prayer, I asked again what He wanted of me, He clearly and boldly spoke the word, "Asa" in my mind. For Asa follows the advice of the prophet Azariah ben-Oded by taking courage and removed all the "detestable idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he captured in [Ephraim]..." (v. 8). He goes on to gather the people together and cleanse the Temple, convenanting with Yahweh to seek Him with "all their mind and all their heart" (v. 12), vowing to even remove the spot of unbelief from their midst, and they considered the vow a joy (v.12-14). For this whole-hearted (and minded) search for the Lord prevailed in its effort: Yahweh was found by them, and He gave them rest (v. 16).

God desires this Asa-like determination, the boldness to proclaim a quest for the Lord, especially for His Son, Yeshua haMashiach, the righteous heir of heaven. In this search, He will be found, and He promises an eternal rest that He leaves with us, gives to us--meaning it is of His accord, and is not to be taken. I am not so bold as Asa, nor so kind to my King. In these days, I have lived not as a "teaching priest" or tutoring prophet, but a wayward son, fearful of His judgment, bearing condemnation in my soul instead of within my flesh (for the flesh has endured judgment in the Cross--Romans 8). My mind knows I must seek this assurance as Asa, as the people of God are pursuing Him now. I know many of those within the group were similarly clueless to perfect Truth--that many had staunch errors in their theology and lives--but the disciples in the upper room did, too. God has not forsaken His people, just as He did not forsake the confused and fearful residents of His first Infilling. Today we seek to discover how closely it means for God to dwell among His people, and to hear the voice of Righteousness proclaim the knowledge of God to our hearts and souls.

"I wait upon Yahweh, more than the watchmen wait for the morning, more than the watchmen wait for the morning..." Knowing that if I search, He may be found. Selah.

Praise to the Rock of Everyday

2009-08-24T21:17:00.002-06:00

Jesus Christ has more than exonerated (removed the burden of proof and doubt) Himself in my life, but has done so in the last two days especially. An action and a word He dropped into my life, olive branches from the dove of the Spirit to say that the eternal Ark (Yeshua) would hold me through. I've been under some severe oppression for the last week, old spirits trying their tenor and baritone wails to upset my soul. Satan has wanted me to be something I am not, or do something I am not supposed to, but as to what exactly his end game is (sans my permanent death and fruitlessness) I am not entirely sure. However, the time spent under the weight has made me open before the Lord, eager to hear Him--and how He has answered!

My first relief came a few days after prayer with my spiritual friends; I had had a bad time driving to meet my family at my sister's college, quailing under a burden of spiteful indignation not entirely my own (if at all my possession). JC gave me time with myself and then with my mother, who took me to an enjoyable meal that went somewhat quietly. Yet, afterward, arriving at Lee, I just sat on a bench and waited...for the Lord, for direction, for a glimpse into something other than the sorrow, silent guilt and gloom to brighten my way. Into this sequestered shade, Jesus sprouted the green leaf of assurance that surpassed my situation of oppression (for, again, it had nothing to do with my immediate concerns, but used them as outlets): He told me my part in the coming scheme was secure, He had me settled on the Rock of His Word. I would be ok, and my life would flow into the channel He had told me to go, no matter what else it cost me or others to get there. I simply had (have) to trust that I can follow Him into these blessings by His gentle assurance.

Secondly, to reinforce His promise, Jesus assured me I would enter the Latin language once more, in a Grad class, to study what He had previously instructed me in. He moved the hearts of people I thought would be against me in the matter to eagerly embrace the path. I am once more, as He said I would be, walking the trail of ancients. Yet, I am timid about the choice, because that means I will once again be in the rigors of translation--but this is my flesh speaking of work, which it has so long thrust off. I know what to do about that matter. Jesus has shown me how to die to the flesh.

Oh, and thirdly, He has given me a powerful testimony to read that breathes confidence into my heart and soul, because it reminded me of the grace God gives to conquer the flesh and sin. He shows through the minister's words how Jesus freed people with His blood from the taskmasters who destroyed their lives, and how the Spirit brings us that renewal everyday and for all of time. For "if one Man died, we all died, that we might raise up with Him from the dead." His death frees us from the tectnicalities of sin and death, heals us of our wounds, and turns us back to see the world in light of God--all these are causes for worship! So, I am thankful to God for carrying me out of the constrictions of sin and self, to see a better way, the path of righteousness and patient love. Love, strongly, softly and sure, for He forever shall endure. Selah.

Prayer and Promise

2009-08-21T07:59:00.001-06:00

“By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life.”- Psalm 42:8

Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. -Romans 5:3-5

Selah.

Taking Up the Ancient Paths

2009-08-19T20:18:00.004-06:00

"When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it." -Ecclesiastes 5:4-5

Today has seen the challenges of youth with the calling of Christ striking truly at the soreness of my soul; will I let my countenance fall before the LORD when a little trifling or two sails through my soul? I am reminded I am dedicated to Yahweh of All Armies, and my calling is to be a disciple of Yeshua and teacher of Israel. I've been praying to realistically encounter the King along the way, embracing His covenant promises at the cost of taking my daily roles serious. So, the daily reminder of Solomon's wisdom with John's admonishment come well.

“He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” -1 John 5:12

My life should dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. For it is in Yahweh's house that I find every blessing--indeed, I then becoming a blessing. I desire to fulfill the vow of seven years together with Christ and His declared Word. I want to be the embodiment of haTorah (The Word), haElohim (The God), haYeshua (The Savior), and hamashiach (The Messiah). He is my Shepherd, my Shelter, my Sword...the storms today taught to remember I am the son of the Thunderer, and I am able to hear Him and tremble with awe. May my God receive my songs and prayers of thanks, welcoming in the whirlwind Master Who tears from heaven in the storm. I await to hear clearly the Voice of Heaven. My Dad. Selah.

These days I must take Him seriously or I will lose everything I esteem and value--my hope rests upon being faithful to Him! And my promises precipitate on His endearing love flowing from me to Him, to others and into the presence of His sanctuary. I await the workings of our skillful Maker, shaping and changing His sons and daughters to reflect His glory and worth. May His majesty issue forth from heaven, enveloping His people in the cloud of His magnificent presence. Come, Yahweh, to the earth! Come, Yesu, we adore Your eternal worth! Shatter and shelter us in Your shekinnah glory, my King, my friend. Amen.

The Ancient Paths I Seek

2009-08-14T22:04:00.002-06:00

Today was a day filled with blessings and goodbyes. I met my family in four generations, saw my cousin's house on a hill, and spent time with family roaming the old roads along the mountains and dales that I grew up traveling. I did not realize how much I missed my second home, its scents and scenery...and memories. I did not realize how much my family meant to me until I stood looking into the aged faces of uncles, aunts, cousins, and second cousins. We spend the evening at Grande's Pizza Italian Restaurant, easily the noisiest lot in the room (I know, cause we got silent to pray ;). The time holding one of my littlest second cousins and being with the family reminded me that joy still can fill our house. I'm sad to see it takes our family head's waning moments to bring us near, and pray to see the family gather together again.

I saw my grandpa alone today, and spent most of that reconnecting with our heavenly Father. My journal and copy of Scripture opened to familiar and then unfamiliar passages, leafing through to see what I could hear from my Dad. I am still lost on the depth I miss, contained in the sixty-six books, knowing that even this is a glaze of His finest people among the great company unspoken of in the holy Word. I am burdened at the scope of history contained and the things overlooked by contemporary and historical churches. The beauty of simply hearing what He has to say and then allowing that to sink deeper, to instill nobility into a shattered soul. Interestingly, as I spoke with Papa and read His letters, my grandpa said something interesting amid the gurgle of his slurred speech, "Corey, Corey, there you are...I've missed you." I don't know if he was referring to me leaving for the nurses to come in or to the simple statement of reading by his bed and praying near him. Or if Another took the time to speak with him. I just know that my grandpa missed me, loved me, noticed me. And I know our Father notices and loves me, too, mending His son even when leaving for school feels like I am leaving a major part of me behind. What is the price of loyalty and faithful love? I may never know its depths...but I know Him Who does, Who makes me able to follow the way He goes.

My path takes a turn toward His way, the ancient path of righteousness and justice, of love and mercy, of honesty and truth. My name is not my own, but the gift of my God to me. I will follow His way, and turn to the Truth where He may be found. I am tired of ignoring the answers so plainly given, to return and remember. "The righteous are as bold as lions." To hell, with fear; give me my King's valor to lead into the eldest roads, the place where my Brother dwelt and was crucified. I may lose a mentor, but he gains a promise: I will follow the intercessory call into the life that breeds disciples. Amen.

Back in the Arena

2009-08-14T06:07:00.002-06:00

These last few days, despite my lack of deep spiritual prayer and Bible reading, despite my open-faced lack of luster and desire to be anything but a devolved mess, and despite my intense feelings of fear and dread, Yeshua has stood in the gaps of my soul fighting for me. So, underneath the veneer of trembling and doubting, He looks resolute through my eyes, hears news beyond the scope of the mockery and wails I hear, and trusts where I only quail with despair. Satan has taken advantage of my prayerlessness, stealing joys and dealing pains to people I knew would go certain routes without resolute prayerfulness. I failed in that, but I realize I can't carry all the blame. In fact, Yeshua has made it unreliable to follow my two extremes that plagued me before, but this is going to be a bigger, longer battle than one moment's hurrah--though I look forward to that time when I can see the prayer warriors simply praising and waiting on Him to unveil the coming destruction by the hands of the King against His enemies. I am beginning to revel in the truth that He means war when delivering His loved ones.

The time back "home" and with family has awakened many memories and upseated several problems in my life, recognizing I need to get back in the fight or die. And I can't just die, because Yeshua won't let me go that way easily. I'm sad to see some problems that lie in the future, revolving around an ancient set of issues in my life--and in sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Emotions will be disasterous and logic fatal; faith, hope and love are the antidotes to keep my soul aflame with peace and purity, if only I can suck enough into my weak frame. And spill it out! A certain person has arisen as a thorn in my side far from home, just as I saw this soul rising out of the opportunities I've fled and missed. But one who strikes in the shadows with a spear has to hope the Father of lights does not expose such a one in His marvelous light, which judges all things. To this, I pray for the revelation of God's mercy and justice, to lay the blade to the root and remove the bondages. I am tired of slaves in the court of the King. Let us be freedmen who love their Lord Yeshua, forgiving all sins and destroying all evil. Even when it falls within the gates of the sanctuary. Selah and Amen.

God has blessed this time away and hopefully will continue to bless my time approaching home. He's re-arranging my internal surfaces to show something (Someone) else...we shall see what comes. Today I go to say farewell to my beloved Grandpa and pray to see him again this side of the eternal dawn; he has a lot to share and pray over (as is seen these days!), and has done just that by Yeshua stealing his grandson up to him to see two hospital roommates battle for healing as prayer warriors (and, in Christ's humor, the roomie was a surprising image of my wonderful friend Arkileus in fifty years). The timing of awakening and learning burns. I step into the arena to wage war and work. Arise, Yahweh, and let Your enemies be scattered! Arise, my King, and possess the fruits of Your labor. We are Your people, my God. We are Your children, my Father. Hallelu, Jah! Amen.

Jack Sparrow

2009-08-10T20:09:00.003-06:00

It seems when I throw the gauntlet of my future before the throne of God, He takes me serious--so serious, in fact, that to discover what I must do will be done in front of my ailing surrogate father, whose prayers presented God's presence to me, preserved my life, and saved me; in front of family who I am responsible before the Lord for; and away from the friendships that I relied on to strengthen me, and perhaps hinder me...

I go to possibly say farewell to my closest mentor on earth, the guy who in many ways I hope to one day emulate. And surpass, because if there is anything the humble father taught me was that he desired I grew up as much as possible before the Lord. Gramps would be angry if I wasted time trying to look like him instead of Jesus. Yet, I will always remember a few things for the rest of life, whether he ascends to home this week or another few years. I love this man. How can I shame him with my fears and failure?

So, stricken by my Father's grip over the very foundation of our extended family, I have succumbed to seek the braver, bolder path...To live is scarier than to die, it seems. Amid my tremors, the Lord places the curious animal I love among the Biblical creatures/symbols: The sparrow. They act as signs of simplicity, the menial, the base. Forgotten by men as paupers fare, they become Jesus' examples to share the wealth of humility and God's awareness of our lives. He considers us far more than the little birds who fall or are sold as gifts/meals for the peasants. I close with these verses He has shared on the valiant, blessed birds. My life is like theirs: Noticed by the King, whatever its meat and end will bring.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

"I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God." --Luke 12:6-8

Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest. --Prov. 26:2

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father...So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. --Matt. 10:29,31

My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.

Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young—
a place near your altar,
O LORD Almighty, my King and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
Selah.

--Psalm 84:2-4

Go West, Young Man...

2009-08-10T02:00:00.000-06:00

Today has seen the ash man rust in the wind. I've come to look squarely into the haunted hollows of my old self, and the spooks remain at my shoulder whispering of dark tides to come. Some people say that the wounds struck by history fade with time, but the yawing gate of the past only seems to widen its jaws over my life to consume my future. This is the plight when a soul seeks to understand instead of trust--it rusts.

Today has had a series of strange affairs. My Sabbaths have fled from me, disappearing around the corner of my inability to make the passage from home to House of God. Truthfully, I have buried myself from the turrets of civilized Christianity, fearing the shock collar of tempered religion. Still, I forget the King loves those people, too. So much....but I fear I do not love them enough--if at all. Yet, the King hammers into my soul, nailing to my heart the pang of remorse, the call to repent and love. To live, and so give. Surrender feels terrible, since I know the cost involved--what happens when you become a medicated medic reaching out to lost, ravenous souls? You get eaten, beaten and broken. History proves fatal for those who desire to be anything other than a quiet numeral of birth and death (and those aren't insured with a safe existence and ending...).

So, I've spent the day failing and falling into the void of those empty sockets of my past, wondering how many wounds I would sustain to follow the Lord's way. Instead, I would rather walk another bush trail into the thicket of disaster than tread the road that probably leads to loss and sorrow once more. A certain self-destruction over a history of repeat problems? My locker of secrets rises to the surface, revealing how much I would rather desiccate my soul than have the last shred of my sanctity desecrated by the patient suffering of my King. He has a tendency to prove that we do not need loved ones by bringing them and removing them from our lives, or at least letting His enemies heap up destruction upon themselves by injuring His people. I don't want to risk that kind of pain again. Too much blood still pools in the back of my mind and heart; no, throwing in the towel seems better than placing a trowel in my hands to plow a field I don't have the sight or strength to fill.

With a friend marching to a new tune this very night (he won't get any sleep until tomorrow evening, if he's lucky), the thought of taking to the path of shell shock and hardening sounds appealing over the soft-hearted buoy that I surround myself with on the road I limp over. I honestly don't have a spiritual dignity to come clean before the cross and community I know so well. Who can salute when the slavery of my helplessness impedes judgment and honesty? So, I seek to come to terms by seven days from now. I will either come to bear a real Sabbath in my heart and soul, or I'll be treading the last pirouette past a shimmering Belle with a nod and wink on my way to some distant shores. Galilee, or beyond, here I come...Yesu, forgive me.

Answering the Word: Theology as man's appeals to heaven

2009-08-08T22:36:00.013-06:00

Within the last two years--indeed almost all of my Christian life--I have been stewing on how to answer the arguments of men. I can say without question I am inept at bringing anyone to see the light or hear me out. They either already agree, don't care, or solidly assail. I begin to wonder if wisdom and reality (revelation) are two viable gifts given, but then I remember: How little I pray, believe and forgive (love); these are in essence the keys to discovering the answer to all men, great or small, hellish or holy. Indeed, James' wisdom and John's love (in truth, both are Christ's) tackles better than Paul's theology--people simply dismiss in this day the "opinions" and proposals given.

That said, I find that my problem isn't always the evidence evoked by the Word. In fact, people have a hard time answering what it says...We fall back to, "I don't believe that," whether by saying this 'end-all' phrase or by showing we don't believe by answering with our alternative thoughts. Intellectuals may even jump to another verse or quote a theologian/philosopher...but, in truth, we rarely allow the Word to convince us solidly we have no clue of His truth and are probably dead wrong.

If anything, the curiosity is not in how much of the Word we meditate and bring to the forefront, but how little its full worth is measured in light of our discussions. At best, three chapters come to the forefront and they are hammered in circles, forgetting that no two chapters answer the whole of Scripture. Evidently, Peter, Stephen, Paul and the other apostles felt strongly with Jesus that the whole of the Word would reveal the truth, declaring their sole purpose was to merge the power of God (prayer) with the Word of God. Perhaps they had learned what many theologians and good-intentioned zealots forget, a warning Jesus rebuked the biblically astute men of His day, "You have neither know the Scriptures, nor the power of God." (Interesting how He highlights experience, but that is a blog for another day...)

Our presuppositions act as the base elements, our submerged building blocks for all beliefs, for our thoughts and feelings. They react long before we respond, reply long before we speak. If a person has been trained or come to believe the world is round, he or she will swivel their head in surprise to hear someone honestly believe it is flat--similarly, when we hear someone say something against the grain of our theological thought we either render it absurd or recondition the words to match our meaning. It is the plague within humanity that blinds us to reality, but (as all things) once redeemed binds us to the Truth. For, without the founding of faith, we can have no life and no real love--for our relationship with God is attained through faith, implicit trust, just as we rely on the hidden feelings and commitment of a beloved to remain with us all our lives.

Theology as such, the reasons built off our instinctual beliefs, then must be always tenuously held before the fire--ready to be hardened by the Lord and destroyed by the same. No man's works remain unless they have the Spirit's seal. This is why Paul says of mental knowledge that it only bloats our souls with pride, while love strengthens us toward each other. He knew the difference between the knowledge of reason and the work of experience in the Spirit, for the Word of God is spirit and life--He has to breathe into us (an event) or we will never express the Person of God, His love, to each other.

For now, I am hesitant to answer directly those who have persistently reviled what I believe, because I feel this steady tread of unbelief rises not so much from their personal souls (it's not self-induced) but from a history of bad teaching, of which I have suffered until the King destroyed my faith in those things. So, instead, I must learn the real defense I know that works best, patient love, which I am horrible at showing to those who act as enemies or opposition. Prayer, faith and love are mighty tools, but rely on hope for a better future (based on the reality of God's power and desire) and trust that He will pull through.

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe" --Paul (Ephesians 1:17-19)

“For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation.”- Psalm 149:4
Make me humble, Father; I am apt to rebel until Your will shapes mine to look like You.

Swappin' Seats with the Stone

2009-07-26T00:00:00.002-06:00

"Ye Rock" is feeling more like "Ye Blockhead" at the moment. I'm sooo glad JC works in the reconstruction business, but I wish He would become my preventative planner...

Courting Christ

2009-07-18T11:34:00.003-06:00

Today awoke with the splendor of Christ pressing on the peripheri of my thoughts, a contrast to my over-busy mind. He took up last night's sudden shift in the mental/spiritual winds, a tug toward the open seas of my fascination with Yesu. It has been too long since I took to the broad depths of the everlasting King without tow lines dragging me to the broken shoreline of empty imagination. Thankfully, Jesus steps onto the seas and strikes at the wet lines that tie me up within myself. He has pointed out my obligation is to my First Love, my true relationship that exists in this world and into the next. Eternity wed to the temporary soul.

So, I have also found a wonderful song from Brook Fraser that sums up a bit of my struggle to press past the den of the psychologically obsessed (soulishness plagues much of the inquiries within the Church, not to say the truly spiritual don't permeate our circles, too...), called "Lifeline." Last night I could not get it to play, but now that I hear what it says, the lyrics poignantly tap upon the condition of my soul. I have allowed the current to carry me, heaping me up with old driftwood and algae. However, Yeshua still laces my soul with light, keeping areas open for Him to sail into my heart.

I must take to the trail once more, recognizing my Father's creation of an adventurer, an intercessor and a guide, whether or not the fruit has grown into fullness or edible bites for others to find His presence inside. Yet, the training of my soul necessary to walk by the Spirit and deliver life to the external world in authority and wisdom comes from slow, arduous trials. Paul encouraged the Church, saying "Through great tribulation we enter the kingdom of God." Amen! We go through the choppy straits, the broken seas, and the maelstroms without pause to come ot the eldritch isles of Heaven, the Homeland we are all longing for. Battery and conflict test the seal on our souls, whether it was us or our Master who tied the knots between relationships and life, for in the great waves we either break or sail steadfast by the power and endurance within our souls. Let us discover the storage and strength given in the Father's only intrepid vessel that saves us from wrecking, Jesus Christ. For, if He "broke the ships of the Seas with an East wind," as the Psalmist says, He will not hesitate to break our defiant means of transportation in this world with the gale of His Spirit. Praise God, Amen.

Processing Perfection (Or Perfecting Process) Part Two

2009-07-13T16:37:00.001-06:00

However, to get to this place where forgiveness leads to faithfulness is a process, a trail of tears and repentance. No man makes himself holy, but becomes so by the grace of God. One man stroked the note, "Holiness is not sinlessness." This is true, to a degree. All the pharisees and sadducees were ceremonially clean to enter the Temple, to receive the Atonement sacrifices, and to once a year walk before the Throneroom of the Holiest One in the form of a high priest. Yet, none of these tasted of salvation or its fruit. They were clean outside, washed in ceremonial waters, but rancid within. I find it hard to fill the substitutionary shoes that state outward washing without an effective inward washing. To many, this is salvation without sanctifying--or better put, seeing the sanctification as noticing sin without nuking it.

"How could you say such a thing exists?" for "'He who says he has no sin is a liar and without the truth.'" True, but this follows a difference in terms, because John does the absurd and adds, "I write so you do not sin" three verses later (the beginning of the second chapter of 1 John in chapter Bibles). The fallacy lies in lacking continuity, where we read a part as a summary of the whole, and base emphasis on one without relying on the other. How could John preach "You cannot have no sin" and to "Sin not." Was the Beloved Apostle a Sadist? No, more likely, he notice a difference between the two, as his fellow Paul did, too. For, to have sin, as an entity inside you, and to sin, as an action upon that infection, are two different things. Supposedly, a person who once broke out with measles always has measles lurking inside their spine. However, only under certain circumstances and situations will those measles express themselves. Sin is a more subtle and violent creature, acting itself out if given the barest of conditions. Some of us have taken it for granted as an everyday existence that it freely plays with our emotions, will and daily lives. The apostles struck this down by saying "If when sin abounds, grace abounds, then we can continue sinning? God forbid!" And He does. He declares to be holy as He, relating a series of reasonable acts to do this just before in the opening Peter's first letter--Peter is using an Old Testament (First Covenant) command as the basis for living righteously and pure, delving into the realm of sin and salvation.

Where Paul sees love as the firstfruits of the Spirit, Peter examines love as the pinnacle end of additions to a gradual growth. In love, according to Paul, Sin's basis for self-sustenance in our lives (or "food," if you will) is uprooted and removed. Paul's view of love and sin give rise to his advice to beat and kill the body and its desires through discipline, forgiveness, and correction in the presence of God and others. Peter felt compelled to write love as a grace that crowned all other pursuits and the end to which we grow, understanding that the high aims for selfless love (agape) must be reached humbly and from one gift of grace to the next (You can read their accounts on formation in love in 1 Cor. 13; Col. 3:12-17 and 2 Peter 1:3-13). Perhaps in this we could better see that in Paul and John, Love came crashing and kept swelling into their lives, while Peter collapsed and couldn't bring himself to say he possessed selfless love for Jesus for a long time (the original wording in Peter and Jesus' final private earthly conversation has Jesus asking to the effect, "Do you completely love me?" and Peter saying, "Lord, You know I am endeared as a brother to You!" [Sadly, we don't have an easy translation of these words in English...]). However, in both we see the wedding of the high grace offered to the low walk through repentence, of shaking off old coils, embracing how much we have learned we can do while hoping for more of His better way. In effect, His coming to earth was God's attempt to show us living with Him like Him can be done if we willing to let Christ do it in us--and He will, the first Christians show by trial of blood and brokenness. "You have not yet striven against sin unto shedding your own blood." May God give us mercy and grace to receive of Him the power to compel our lives to reflect Jesus, in both forgiving sins and forsaking them. Selah.

Processing Perfection (Or Perfecting Process) Part One

2009-07-13T15:54:00.003-06:00

"The parish of the cross lies upon the threshold of every heart's door"

This is a summary of what I am feeling/seeking to convey and understand. I have before me a very investing journal that deals with the issue before me, before you, and all others. The issue of sin. I don't have much of a clue who these authors are or who they are influenced by, though I have a few guesses. However, I am thankful for the thoughtful criticism of one in particular (though, honestly, I have not read all the articles inside the paper). He addresses the issue in a way I find particularly useful, because he doesn't get dogged into the usual rants and rambles of people walking through the conflicts that come from our most dreaded foe (for in this world, we face Sin long before its incarnation, Satan). For anyone who'd like to read his take on our need for grace and for focus, you'll find it in the Spring 2009 Leadership magazine, titled "Sin Tamer"--something I'd recommend, and if you find it online, let me know! I'm wanting to save this article and timely journal for re-reading.

One highlight from his take on sin comes in combining the life of ascending with the life of descending. We cannot reach the heights of heaven without first following the Son of Man into the depths of hell. This is not to be taken as masochism or blasphemy; it is more the trail of tears and bloodshed to Gethsemane and the Cross. We must become most like Him who weeped in intercession to discover God's will and accept it when we find ourselves staring into the grave. The apostles always bore the "death of Jesus Christ in their bodies" to present Him alive and powerful to the church and world. They died daily, losing themselves, so that they might live like Him and save some. This is to forsake the blood covenant of self-preservation for the hope and prayer of sanctification. As the writer states, "It asking, [instead of how much sin can I keep] Am I moving toward the darkness or toward the light?..growing toward God, or away from Him? Am I becoming more sensitive and responsive to Jesus?" This concludes so much of how I've grown to love Christ, because I do not want people to fixate on living the rest of their lives in fear, in sin, in defeat, but in the grace of God that embraces salvation at a cost. Addictions break in the throneroom, on the Cross, because of Him.

Embracing the Fullness of the Lord

2009-07-12T12:14:00.003-06:00

"I have come to give you life and life more abundantly..."

Many passages from Jesus speak of this, and His apostles grab the idea of fulness in every letter they wrote, offering many upon many blessings and prayers for graces and gifts for their people. They dealt with sin as though as means to return to this section, constantly saying, "We wanted to give you wisdom, but you preferred more earthly things..." And as a reversal, they each wrote in their own way, "I pen this so that you will not sin..." We have a great grace offered to us, a "high calling in Jesus Christ" which abounds to make us new, fresh, clean, and above all (in the words of Paul) perfect.

That word gets beaten down on both sides, especially from the Reformed and Charismatic circles, but I would like to offer something else: The idea that perfection is a gift. The attainment of gifts is not like the gaining of rewards; perfection doesn't come from strife or obsession; completion comes from Christ, much like salvation simply because His atonement is the basis for perfection. However, this gift is always like the others, since they all require work--they are all tools and weapons before the Lord. Peace is given so we can minister peace, forgiveness is given so we can forgive others, and perfection is given so we can perfect others. We are called to edify, to build up, and not to break down. If the Church is considered a Bride and a Mother, She can hear the words of Solomon with great force, "A wise woman builds up her house, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands." We are called quite simply to, out of perfection, perfect what God has given to us: Ourselves and each other.

This is not something to gloat over, since all glory goes to the Great and Glorious One. We are, however, to be thankful for the gifts of God. So, instead of fearing pride (which, in a word, is to fear sin) or abuse, recognize the grandeur God offers. "There is a humility that comes with perceiving sublimity" wrote a Jewish theologian. I cannot agree more. In accessing what God has given, we are not puffed up, for we are warned in the same mouth to "guard against vain imaginations" to soberly assess who we are in Christ. We are both "complete in Christ Jesus" and walking in whatsoever we have already gained in daily life. This is why each day abounds to newer, greater and deeper glory before the Lord (2 Cor. 3).

May we all rejoice before the blessings of Christ, washing ourselves in His renewing Word and refreshing ourselves in His life-giving Spirit. We are all given great gifts from God. I pray we openly receive from Jesus what has been offered to share with a shattered earth. Selah.

An Ultimatum

2009-07-09T13:39:00.006-06:00

I will briefly talk on something I formerly harped constantly in a foolhardy effort for reform (soap boxes in cyberspace have either the effect of shouting into an unpopulated woods or being in the center of an overcrowded street full of attentive eyes). This is so much more than dealing with women, because I am dealing with me. So, here comes my silent appeal to myself, a refresher for my eyes alone which may include a vast or void audience for my solo call to arms.

The best way to describe my conclusion in this matter to date is, "If they won't cover themselves, I will cover my eyes..." Interestingly, I simply find beauty attractive, especially in faces and forms. However, I know where my thoughts return and the darkness that wraps around such thoughts, soaking them with pitch black focus. So, instead of incinerating myself with foolishness that so easily grabs my attention, I plan to attempt an about face that isn't my former seclusion. That makes me isolated, not innoculated to my dis-ease. Thankfully, Christ shows Himself true: If the thoughts appear from a lust (desire) within, then He has crucified the sinister emotion/idea. If from without, He has drenched me in His blood, covering my wounded eyes and heart to see as He does, reflecting on His beauty beyond the stains of sin. I prefer this way over self-mutilation (I'd rather discover a truly 'manly' approach as the Second Man shows)or total decay. Satan's earthly ultimatums destroy valuable things: Either crushing precious feelings and reflection, pushing them into the darkness of destruction, or embracing the evil desires that produce only pain and suffering for all. Yeshua offers neither impassion or over-passion--He gives true passion, pure zeal for the delight of His eyes and dearest love. For this, I am willing to stand and watch the old man wither, waking to see majesty in the eternal and external, the light of knowing Jesus glowing in women's lives.

To protect my eyes and my heart, I return to the most basic passages of all: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matt. 11:27-29). The messages that flow around me declare this simple refrain, 'Return and taste the refreshing gift I offer you.' I must remember what I have felt and seen and heard from the beginning, from the day He wooed me into His home. I want this cleansing presence to overflow, so I can see again by spiritual eyes what my heart desires to see: My Father's face full of love and joy. My images have all been of me, either looking into His face, reflecting glory, or kneeling at His throne, burnt across my armor for the wars I fought in. Rather than seeing myself see Him, I seek to be in my own shoes, seeking to drink in every line in His lovely features. I hear people die after looking into those lovely eyes, His fierce and passionate face, but I prefer this truth to my world and imagination. Death is a treasure gained on those grounds. Thankfully, many men who wrenched their hearts to seek God saw Him and lived, so we can hope that exceptions to the rule offers a chance for us to escape into His arms...

I will visor my spirit and shield my soul until the ladies uncover the blessing of Jesus' veil, thanking God for grace in weakness and mercy in blessing His daughters. I have the opportunity to become a shepherd who cloaks his Master's sheep in prayer, glad for the people I encounter. Here's to hope that I might one day rejoice in infinite love that covers all sin and creates men and women of righteousness. Amen.

Prayer and Perfection

2009-07-08T19:01:00.004-06:00

Been out of the loop of late, and that is due to eight hours of school to six hours of sleep. However, God has not, speaking and teaching His son despite the lack of diligence--some of which I'm at fault. Thankfully, He has been faithful and reached deep inside me and proved something very dear to me: He is with us, even unto the end. I cannot escape my Father's voice or His presence, because He resides inside and enters into each moment with me. For this, I am eternally grateful! Thankfully, He has shared of His Spirit and grown me past several snares in the pursuit of the better way of love.

Currently, I've been seeking to rekindle the affection and devotion as I limp my way through a brutal endurance test, learning to search for praise-worthy events in a long day (friends with vitamins are a sweet gift from the King, too ;). Below are some energizing posts about my broken gender and a very famous song writer I greatly enjoy, Sir Isaac Watts. I think the coming school session after this grilling supersession will be quite a season for changes, and I pray good ones. Some people will be stretched beyond their wits' end, but I know Who dwells just past that and infinitely beyond; He will carry us through to see Him, rejoicing as we gaze in His face as we hear the relieving words, "It is finished." Tetelestae! Amen.

http://theresurgence.com/Virgo_Men-Bucking-the-Trend-Part-3
http://theresurgence.com/rebels-guide-to-joy-isaac-watts

Expressing Intercession

2009-06-24T14:32:00.006-06:00

So, the Lord has placed me into a gyre of explicit needs and remembered promises, drawing me deeper into His presence through prayer. Today adds to the upload of information, the processing of things hoped for and sought after--for one, my friends are receiving revelations! I'm so excited to hear what they have to say and show, because the Lord is shaping us to walk in the way He reveals. A saying came to mind today and as I refreshed the image Christ increased my faith, and fervor, for what He has told me, "Prayer lifts the chains off our lives." Jesus has been demonstrating loyalty and liberty to me, allowing my heart to travail and trust for the exhibition of the hidden things of God, simply because He loves us! Below are some verses to meditate and rejoice through, because they hold potent truths to redeem our lives from Satan's traps and trials. We are all tested, but we have faith to remain truthful, loyal and loving as the Lord dwells inside our hearts and lives. Selah.

"And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." -Acts 2:21

“But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.”- 2 Thessalonians 3:3

"He who has My commands, and keeps them, loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him." -John 14:21

"However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"
—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God." -1 Corinthians 2:9,10

And finally, "Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you" "...Only believe." Amen.

Purging My Person

2009-06-21T06:50:00.002-06:00

After a half week of sloppy emotional binding, internal twists generated from personal frustration, I feel within the slow progression towards a resolution. The hours of praying against and over my internal state of confusion appear to heap a foundation and structure for living one stone at a time, God's Word and Spirit plying their strength and forgiveness over the ruins of unharmonic throught. I'm in need of Dad's counsel, seeking to discover where His will has turned to and what He desires to accomplish. Otherwise, I will become a spiritual vagabond without the slightest faith in my own cunning and resources to fulfill my needs. For, in Him, we have strength to accomplish all things, which is to say, we lack significantly within ourselves. Thankfully, He has not abandoned me.

Of late, the issue is the price of Benjamin's soul. Will he willingly sell his inheritance (salvation/adoption/grace) for something he desires most? I'm in a place of decision to find how to best please my Father. Basically comes down to trust, but I am also looking for insight and wisdom to walk into what He desires to do. In the mean time, I have been like a plane, knowing its destination, bouncing in turbulence and rough weather--the pilot is having a hard time making out what the shaky radar says. Into this vibrating, dragging ascent through thunderheads toward the clear and open heavens, where the Sun shines radiantly and unveiled, the Lord procurs these words onto the screen of my soul:

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By keeping Your word.
I have sought You with all my heart;

don't let me wander from Your commands.

Psalm 119:9-10

The KJV, which I first saw on a site, says, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" David answers, "With His Word." I like the duality here, where we can wash our lives and them clean by hearing and heeding His Word. It is the theme of the Pentateuch, Moses' writings, and the heart cry of David. "I have saought You with all my heart; don't let me wander from Your commands." I, too, take up this cry and seek to releash the inner tension to the King. I do not need to acquire what my heart desires, but I do want it. However, only one condition remains for a man to gain all he longs for within life, and that is to find His pleasure in the Lord: "Delight yourself in Yahweh, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (37:4). Some would say this is selfish, but the LORD seems to ignore this ethic. Instead, as a loving Father, He delights in those who delight in Him, and blesses those who trust Him. The condition of our souls is always in transit, whether into deeper death or greater life, and the LORD manages all of our ways if we rely on what He declares to us. In this flux, we have the solid promise that He remains, as our Guide and Guardian along His Son's path toward righteous and peace.

I have treasured Your word in my heart

so that I may not sin against You.

This final verse from the poetic line David wrote holds my condition for the time. I have hid Yahweh's Word within me, in my deepest being, where I might discover how to perserve my way from missing Him. His words have fueled an exodus from comfort, a trip far from home, an unpleasant return that led to renewal, and a walk that continues to this day toward real spiritual life and vitality in the Spirit. My personality crystalizes in His love and grows by His grace toward the place where He radiates from His young son. Part of this process leads me to look beyond myself in a variety of manners, but especially towards a key theme within Solomon's book on wisdom. And to this end, I will stretch my eyes toward heaven and pray, "Our Father Who is in heaven...your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Amen.

A Face of Stone To Strike With

2009-06-17T07:12:00.005-06:00

“For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.” Isaiah 50:7

The faceplate of my salvific helm smokes under the flaming blows repeatedly aimed at severing my spirit from my soul in the wrong sort. I think I recall today being day four of an intensive call back to Christ, toward the mark of true intercession and living. My weaknesses are called in procession and Satan seeks to bring new enemies into the fray--and the Lord answers from His word above. I shall not be confounded, because my Lord is my aid and confidant--David would say, "Whom shall I fear?" Yet, the cracks simmer under the intense heat of roiling passions and twisting desires to claim complacency and lostness for the favor of instant pleasure instead of seasoned grace. My faceplate smokes, but thankfully the helm remains. May God's cool Spirit blow as a refreshing wind, drawing the steam from my eyes, the evaporated tears of exertion, to bring my gaze once more heavenward and obey. "Look up toward heaven and see, Who created these." I am blessed to be broken and peeling through searing layers of flames (with a physical firestorm scorching the earth outside my door as I write), praying for sustained dedication to the purpose of real life, tender love. In these incendary reminders of a past self, I can attain one blessing in truth:

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."
Jeremiah 17:7-8

So, Lord, I extend my hand heavenward and hope to renew my trust, for these flames are not enough to wash away thoughts of You, my Beloved and Friend. My blessings and honor rely on You. Thanks for humbling and testing Your son. Amen.

Autumn Aisles

2009-06-11T21:48:00.004-06:00

Following the glance back, I have had the opportunity to look forward. My fall-born soul desires to immerse itself in the natural habitat of golden leaves, cool weather, and beautiful fellowship. I am eager to hear the cackle of fires and the smell of smoke mingling with what I can only call the fragrance of Autumn, the enchanting scent of the limitless and immortal--a siren's call to what is timeless. Perhaps this is one reason I love my native season: I am reminded of Who reigns and that He is an everlasting Father, the Lord of this temporal (and even the eternal) creation. We are drawn together around the communal harvest table and brought into a time of thanksgiving and reflection. And this, the familial and the communal worship, make my spirit sing.

If anything, I would love to mix the fashionable beauty of Italy--its decorated women and tailored men, with their earthy yet ethereal clothes--with the comeliness of my home. I pray for the opportunity for farmland walks and woodland strolls, over chill streams and silent creeks, with the music of songbirds and friends. A new season awaits over the hills of a rather laborious summer, but that is the simple beauty of that quiet transition between summer and winter: The gardener places his trowel away and rests his frame against the firm chair, savoring the laughter of children and his family's tales. Fall is a time of rest and restoration. I pray Papa provides an ample harvest of blessings and thanks in that most pleasant pause. The Lord bless and keep you, especially His harvesters, in perfect peace. Amen.

Summer Smiles

2009-06-11T21:29:00.003-06:00

The walks today have been glorious. A trip to the Student Center leads to a half hour gaze at monsoon rains and the trebble of thunder amid lightning. I am amazed at my Father's strength and power. Another stroll placed me at a friend's house who then walked me through a circumstance to see again the Light of grace and peace in prayer. I am enthralled with Dad's love for me. A final trip around the park opened a familiar home and bygone years with would-have-beens. I am stunned by the providence of my Papa. He has done His miraculous wonders, all because of prayer and compassion. Selah.

I needed to hear the softness of a friend's laugh and remember the grandeur of my past homestead, enclosed in the Rockies and yesteryears. I love how God has moved me and carried me to Him, to see what He has done and is doing. My mother drove by our old house in the mountains and told me of places once familiar and til now forgotten. I'm astounded at the strength of recollection, how seeing a past image or event can bring with it the weight of history and His holiness. He has done so much in transfering my family to His places to seek after Him and know He is God. My most recent study in His word has paused on those verses: Remember what you have seen, and tell it to your children and grandchildren (Deut. 4). I want to remember these times and recall the moments I stood in His visible love, so that my sons and daughters can grow up in faithful expectation (hope) for the revelations of their real Father in heaven. Today, with watching a baby boy, friends, prayer and memories, I have been kissed by my Dad. May I come to rest in His unfailing love, showing forth His peace as the evidence of who I am: I am His beloved son, in whom He is well pleased. Come, Lord, Your children wait for You. Amen.

Blows Up, Grows Up, and Throws Up (His Hands ;)

2009-06-08T16:21:00.002-06:00

Wow...I just had my temperature taken, and I'm hot in the face. My maturity tests turned up 'adolescent' as I ran through my angry words/emotions like a freight train on a full load of steam. Jesus broke in on the action, as He does, inserting the febrile influence of self-control upon my ferrous soul. In other words, I about fumed, and that over being thrown into insecurity and unresponsiveness from mi madre. However, thankfully, God does speak and reach into the tempestuous emotions to bring peace and understanding: I am both chastened and chilled. And I'm waking to a world where the bounds of faith and faithfulness show themselves in their proper form.

A marquis saids, "True faith is faithfulness." I would alter this, as pastor once said, to say, "Mature faith is faithfulness." We can have faith (though in pittance, if at all) and find ourselves storming in areas where that faith does not extend--It is where our faith lapses, and these are the areas key to discipleship. These instances today, which nail all my buttons (I think), turn my gaze more clearly to the task in hand. I have a triad of tools (well, a quartet, counting my Bible) which will become my instructors under the supervision of the Spirit for the remaining summer. My friend's subtle rebuke a few weeks ago has spurred me take up and finish the Spiritual Man, which I couple with E.M. Bounds Complete Works, and an iffier, but hopefully helpful, The Seer (a gaze into the realm of spiritual insight that I hope to incorporate with godly wisdom to discover the richness of Christ). So, the humbling pummel of bad form in me becomes the basis for healing, a stunning reversal to the fatalistic bitterness that usually occurs.

Any readers out there, if you have a solid love of Christ and a passionate belief in prayer, I covet them. Any determinists or divided believers, I recommend a stroll in the Psalms and with James, to hopefully encourage a hearty love of the Divine grace of intercession, which "avails [profits] much" because He wills to change everything by the keel of faith and prayer. And to any atheists, agnostics, or satanists, besides a call to enjoy the joy of Jesus, please refrain from cursing me--you already feel I'm wasting my time, so why waste yours? May the peace of Christ and the joy of the Lord rest on His people, whom He chastens and transforms according to the image of Christ, His beloved Son. Amen!

Shaking Barnacles

2009-06-07T21:20:00.003-06:00

“And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” Matthew 10:38-39

Let it be, Lord. Let me die for Ye. Amen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4KiGN1j1No

Balancing the Bizarre

2009-06-05T15:54:00.004-06:00

So, the Lord has pushed me through three exams and clearing out (most of) my room for the end of session one. I almost hate to see some of it end, especially the loss of a great teacher whose witty remarks and candid stories I'll miss during the less dramatic classes I have to take this next session. Then again, I didn't know he would be interesting, so maybe these next two professors will be equally unique and colorful. I, however, am ready for a retreat into the woods for a long, long, long reclusion in quietude. A solid hammock, decent stream and a shady patch to watch, listen and read/ponder/pray (in whatever order or all at once) before the Lord sounds fabulous (rightly so, being only a fable in my toughts...).

This week has been bizarre in many ways, from the quiet graces God bestows, to the frantic pleas I send to survive the workload, and many strange happenings/discoveries that drift through my sphere of attention...all seems woven with curious threads and I wonder where the knot lies. God has a plan, and He is fulfilling His desires; these preferences seem aptly pointed at teaching me more in one condensed moment than I thought could occur in a day (such as writing a report and studying for two exams, then taking them as I wrote the report, concurrently...). The stretch marks and wear begin to show, and ol' Benjamin tires. Thankfully, when we need rest most, He comes. "I leave you peace, peace be with you. I do not give as the world gives...my peace will remain until I come." We have an abiding peace, a quiet rest, to roll our aching frames into and soak deeply from His tranquil presence. He requires nothing but the faith that says, "Daddy, hold me." And we are held. I think tonight is a night for restful peace while I finish washing down my apartment and preparing for the move to another dorm. Below I enclose some links that are both curious and enlightening--and probably something I will comment on later--but it suffices to say they fit into the bizarre I've experienced. May the Lord shine upon you, giving peace (rest) in these summer days. Shalom.

“Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.”- 1 Chronicles 29:11

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/04/witch-bottle.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/04/quasicrystal-nature.html

Quote of yesterday, "You can't clean something without getting something else dirty."

Cheers,
Ben

Precious (Pressed Into) Service

2009-06-03T21:24:00.004-06:00

Tonight has been a recommissioning--or had a recommissioning moment. The Lord stirred an interest in my newly acquired collection of E.M. Bounds works on Prayer, which I took on a stroll through the Lee woodland (Schimmels). The Journey turned back toward Joel and my familiar haunt around the Lee, my heart burning with the simple potency that rings out in every line of Bounds appeal to pray, to believe, to know, and to grow in the Spirit of God. He spoke softly, earnestly of the things I knew to be true, of the power of prayer, the need for prayer, and the truth of prayer. He wed this with faith, obedience--which my friend Hannah also shared with me--and spiritual life. 'When prayer ceases, faith ceases to live.' Amen! He finished his wonderful first chapter talking on the Lord's Prayer meaning a present-day prayer for present-day affairs. Tomorrow would require its own prayer and provision once the day arrived. Until then, today's evil is sufficient, 'and so is its good.' Thank You, Yah!

A divine spark flourishes again; I've been waning in my prayers beyond reminiscing with the Lord over the day. My contemplation must again move outward into the realm of faith and obedience, prayer and praise, to receive each day's burden, call and restoration. I will leave you with these quotes that surmise a bit of the appeal Bounds makes, but I refer you to His works for a solid spiritual book (I will be reading this one next to Spiritual Man and my Father's Notebook [Bible] the next few weeks and months, possibly years). God go with you, Dear Ones. I pray the King finds you well and welling up in His Spirit's presence and Son's love. Amen.

"Watch and pray..."

"Trust and obey, there is no other way..."

"Faith takes hold of the unseen, reveals the unknown and makes way at the Throne"

'Rejoice, my children, for you are not alone!' -Yesu (Yeshua) emet, amen...

Astrolabs, Nautical Charts, and Butcher Paper

2009-06-01T11:22:00.009-06:00

I shared this imagery with a brother a week or two ago, relating how the Lord had shown the difference between His will and ours, and the wisest way to correlate the two. (A side note: For fascinations beyond my understanding, many illustrations in my head are completely nautical but hopefully understandable :). I had before me a thoroughly illustrated map with land forms and seas, on which were the trade routes and geographic lines associated with the traveler's needs. Blue inked, encircled 'X's marked key places the Lord had revealed, icons that noted "You will go here, and do this." However, no or few clear routes seemed to score how the present place would lead to the promised one. Clearly, some divine acts and serious contemplation/sheer determination would be key to arriving at these divinely-chosen destinations. Yet, for the season, the ink-spots would have to do.

However, as I sat looking at the maps, an idea came to mind: What if I at least pulled out butcher paper, using its translucent wax-hide to see the various paths that could possibly arrive at the Lord's will. So, pencil and paper in hand, I charted the course and scribbled the necessary supplies for such an endeavor. A furoughed brow and taxed mind produced many possible routes, crisscrossed charts, and schemed a deeper understanding of what the Lord required of me. The map remained unchanged and the spots uncovered. My will and poor understanding could easily be removed and altered at His pleasure, as He provided the correction and increased insight. The duality and interaction provided me a basis for communicating my needs, fears and desires to the Lord, while recognizing His impervious hand in my life, keeping my pen from the temptation to circumvent His will and muck over His designs. From the simple harmony ascribed, my heart could rejoice in the findings along the way, the unveiling of mysteries in the Lord's history to be written.

This crude image (which takes longer to describe than display) sets the foundation for my weekend. I've been searching for an elusive graduate major, a focused study that is probably astray in some capacity to what the Lord wills. My fundamental desire to be a spiritual man and a spiritual father, birthing children of faith into the world, draws me to encicle on my mental paper the routes that lead away from my familiar cove in the South East. I have traveled and lived in several places far from home for decent stints of time; this move will probably be years of distance and separation. Something I'm willing to do in my quest for the perfection of Christ in me, the hope of glory--humanity's hope, our hope, my hope. I long too much to be found worthy in His sight and deepened in His will to hear His softer whispers and gentle wishes, too often overlooked by the loud clangs of the theological cymbals and the thundering philosophical or pragmatic discourses bellowed in the cathedral halls of the current Church. I'd like to dress our Lady in Her finer robes of spiritual radiance, but must do so as the Lord enables (which is why I seek the role currently in my heart to do).

So, I'm taking soundings and drawing passages from what I see in the heavens through prayer and in the tumultuous seas of the present, which always changes in its tides and seasons. Thankfully, God is gracious and kind, teaching me how to follow His will to completion. My biggest concern is having to leave a dearer aspect of His revelation as an endearing prospect begotten for another time, something I neither understand nor fear losing because of time...the best graces come slowly. 'Tis why I will pack my things and go where I must; my King knows how to knit His flock and guide His people. Selah.

Nothing but Cerulean Sights and Sighs

2009-05-27T20:47:00.004-06:00

An aquatic spiritual quest falls before me. Years ago, during the more violent shudderings of my soul, I had a vision that occurred in a particularly black time, and I think either influenced or an influence of a later poem I wrote titled "Diver of Lareph." The poem spoke of a man who dove deeply, seeking a sole treasure far beyond the surface, only to mistake another for its place and have that false gleam stolen by its rightful owner. However, in my dream-like trance I found myself descending through the layers of the sea, pressing through various colors and hues of blue. I would come upon people, usually one at a time who would swim off toward another soul. Finally, having passed a series of these exchanges, I came upon a final face that I don't remember, but I do recall the vague expressions of its counterpart. I had sunk to toward the lowest area of the sea (with much to go) and somehow had paused before the pair, particularly the male. He leveled with me, looked into my gaze and smiled, then swam away with the last child of the sea. I floated in a field of cerulean tinged with gold light a bit farther beyond my ken. The vision ended with me drifting (I cannot relate the sense of weight, stolid acceptance and curiosity that overcame me at this time) closer to the guilded bloom while their shadows receeded from my peripheri. I was alone with the mystery and didn't know what came next.

That vision came back to me the other day, as I sat musing over some aspects of life. I have lived this dream/vision and come to its end, though not exactly as I would've interpretted it. I stare into the aurora of God's cloaked presence and wonder where He leads. I feel the tug to enter that depth and be discovered by His searching gaze, to feel my life penetrated by His presence, the consuming flames of His love. And, this comes as I watch the shadowy feet trail into the ether, waiting for their return but in the fulness of the golden glow. I came to see the sun shine today, transforming dark thunderheads as a portal into John's revelation: A strident rainbow in all its majestic colors stood mounted to their dark surface, lightning scattering along the southern base. As the Sun dipped further, a stretch of clouds became reminiscent of an angelic herald, proclaiming the procession of a greater form, the lumined mist of a massive cloud stretching from the crown of the multihued arch to its observer...I felt the glory of God refracted in a million of ways tonight and wondered at His love. To relate them all would be a post in itself, a task best left unsaid for the loss of meaning between image, thought, and pen. Thankfully, I have them etched into my soul, a reminding message of God's grand love for His son. In the wake of that glory and grace I stand, waiting for the presence of God to commence His revelation.

Love is Waiting

2009-05-25T14:50:00.002-06:00

"like I can't force the sun to rise or hasten summer's start,neither should I rush my way into your heart..."

A splendid centerpiece in a fascinating song my brother Joel dropped my way this last semester. Life has taken a different road since my return home from across the sea, and I have enjoyed the extended isolation with the King--He has had many more kinks in the golden spirit to beat out. ;) Thankfully, I have found the patient pulse of God's peace, on which I rest and begin to draw deeper still (or am drawn deeper?). I am at the crux of an ancient vision that I will share soon; however, Ms. Fraser's bridge contains how I feel: I am not here to hammer my affection into anyone, especially not the King's daughter. The whole song is beautiful and well worth anyone's gander, though for the courted and married it's a reminder of the time between times, the twilight hour of waiting for the sun to rise. I pray you enjoy this pleasant song, and moreso, the grace that is given to relax and abide in our Lover's arms. "I am waiting for you," and He is too. Amen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bTjDace9nY

Get Wise (Part 2)

2009-05-24T18:22:00.005-06:00

Solomon answers,

"He stores up success [resourcefulness] for the upright; He is a shield for those who live with integrity so that He may gurard the paths of justice and protect the way of His loyal followers. Then you will understand righteousness, justice, and integrity--every good path. For wisdom will enter your mind, and knowledge will delight your heart. Discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you, rescuing you from the way of evil--from the one who says perverse things, from those who abandon the right paths to walk in ways of darkness, from those who enjoy doing evil and celebrate perversity, whose paths are crooked, and whose ways are devious." -Prov. 2:1-15 (and also, such wisdom will spare us from falling into the seduction from charming men and women, depending on your gender [v.15-22])

A series of benefits emerges. Things start penetrating our ignorance; God's words begin to make sense. Where we had despair, we develop hope. Where we felt powerless, a power emerges to defy the attractions and evil that possessed our lives. We begin to live freely, hear clearly and hear our prayers answered ("I waited patiently upon the LORD, and He turned and helped me"). It seems that once we have dedicated ourselves to the pursuit of God's wisdom and instruction, to listen with all we have for His advice, we will come to find these divine attributes stepping in to save us from people with twisted beliefs/ideas (called elsewhere, heretics), people who have given up on doing good (a.k.a. apostates), and those who simply love to fill their lives with evil.

However, while these qualities become our guardians, giving us the power to perceive evil and trust good, the search and interaction with God's wisdom allows us to really get to know and understand Him. We will be able to relate better with His words and recognize His mindset when He asks us to do what He wants. We will come to have eyes that no longer squint when we look into His presence, mystified as to who He is or what He intends: We will come to know God so closely, one could wonder if we might actually be able to meet Him face-to-face as a friend. The question is not: 'What is Wisdom,' but 'will you ask for it?' She--rather, He--is calling out, knocking at the door, waiting for an invitation (Rev. 3:20).

Thankfully, this is not for the brightest, best and beautiful only, but for us, the ordinary, or the subordinary--the louts, lost, and looking in the world. We have a common Helper, waiting to take us into His view of reality. I follow another intellectual humbled by God, "remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you" (Eph. 3:16,17) Selah and Amen.

Get Wise

2009-05-24T17:44:00.010-06:00

Among the accoclades people aim to receive, "wise" is an older, now rarer, title. Strangely, the wise are not the ones we seek, for they often discourage popular notions and dispell the delusions of grandeur or the highly esteemed ideas of their day. However, putting that aside, wisdom has entered today's encounter with God in an insightful manner that I would like to share. Thankfully, God makes wisdom simple and presents a blessing to encourage joy, peace and new life in those burnt out by other attempts to understand life and get smart.

"Wisdom calls out in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares. She cries above the commotion; she speaks at the entrance of the city...'How long, foolish ones, will you love ignorance? How long will you mockers enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge? If you turn to my discipline, then I will pour out my spirit on you and teach you my words...whosoever listens to me will live securely and be free from the fear of danger." -Prov. 1:20-23, 33

Wisdom offers a way opposite of the popular norm, pressing her cause among every avenue we walk and run through. Our lives encounter wisdom daily, but we refuse to listen to her. How have we missed her voice?

Solomon continues, "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, listening closely [literally "stretching out your ear"] to wisdom and directing your heart to understanding; furthermore, if you call out to insight and lift up your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding." -Prov. 2:1-5

God is streaming information about Himself and the mystery of wisdom from chapter to chapter in the book of Proverbs. He is saying, "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be open to you." Wisdom is seeking us out in every day's circumstances, but we have to seek it out to receive her benefit. God says we can have all the benefits of wisdom and get to know God all we want by crying out "to understanding," seeking it like the riches we hunt for at work.

The tie between prayer and wisdom seem tenous, though I would expect Solomon's father gave him that example. Despite the broken family he lived in, full of frustrated and guilty personalities, Solomon could watch his father persistently go to the temple of God in prayer. David spent a lot of time before the LORD, begging God for the opportunity to live forever before His presence. Solomon couldn't have missed the importance his dad laid on prayer and the will (desire) of God. The impact of David's psalms echo throughout the books of Wisdom, and seem to meld together in their speeches at times, relating how only the fear of God and the desire to deny evil in our lives leads to a happy life. The education of wisdom keeps a man healthy and holy far better than a philosophical degree (PhD), trade school, or survival training. What happens when we seek the wisdom of God persistently and consistently through prayer and meditation on His Word?

Unpretentious

2009-05-19T21:59:00.012-06:00

Unpretentious-to have no facade/pretense/or agenda other than the one exhibited in words and deeds. In other words, to be honest and full of integrity. "But worship in Spirit and in Truth." I have a friend who would say this means to be filled with the knowledge of the illimitable Other, to know (in a wholly philosophical and abstract way) God the Father. Yet, strangely, Jesus gave this revelation to a promiscuous, desperate woman at a well around noontime. She couldn't possibly have understood this statement in such a way--or would have distinctly realized He had just ostracized her forever from coming to God and receiving forgiveness. No, I reject some supremely exclusive meanings, which neglect the poor, earthy and broken context that Jesus assures the promise of God for all humanity: God will be worshiped in Spirit and in Reality, instead of through religion and pretense. She had her version of Judaism (a false one) and Jesus had His (the authentic), but that would pass away as the simple, real and spiritual worship rose up from a forgiven heart, one washed by His blood, baptized by God's Spirit, and drawn into heaven to behold the Father of creation, the true Maker and Sustainer of life. One Who Is and always Will Be, the One we call Love. He is also named Yahweh, revealed in the humble Truth, His Son Jesus.

For us, and for me, "reality" (as meaning the humble, unpretentious revelation of how things are) seems accessible and more ready to enter my daily life than creating some supreme notion of a First Cause to which all relation is distant and void (for how can a umpteenth zillionth cause ever relate to its proto-Progenitor--or even understand all that hooplah necessary to explain such a idea?). We are more like this woman than Plato or Socrates, and better off for it. God has made it His undying (pun intended) agenda to frustrate the wise, to trap the clever, and fool the proud. They just don't rate high on His list for trying to outwit or comprehend Him. "Who can find God?" ask the oldest book of Wisdom, called Job. The assumed answer is no one, not by the human spectrum of things. Thankfully, according to Paul, God makes the hide-n-seek aspect of this easy, "For He [God] has purposed these things so that man [all o' us, smart and dull alike] would seek after and find Him, for indeed He is not far from us...'In Him we live, move and have our being.'" Yet, how do these things match? We can't find Him, or we can. He says we see Him in His Son, and in believing Christ as the risen Lord of life, we receive the gift of the Spirit of life and become new people, free to live as we were always to and then some. "I have come to give life and life more abundantly," Jesus said. And He has!

I want to be unpretentious, going back to that word. I want this honest reality that Christ spoke of. To be unabashedly, humbly truthful to where I live with my knowledge and ignorance open to others. Where "I don't know" flows as easily as "This is so," and "yes" means only that: I affirm the choice, instead of a plethora of other options and bywords that hide my real purpose and meaning. Let's just say I'm tired of the gimmicks that come with being diplomatic without the real sense of the word: Bringing harmony to conflicting parties without losing your party's interests. I may be an ambassador of Christ, but I cannot sell His rules for living to gain status and support from others. So, I must worship God in the mundane arena of simple honesty that earns its lumps with its applause. Hopefully, I may gain the blessing to hear Lewis' words about a Scottish preacher spoken of me, "He was such a man tourists thought simple because of his honest words and his neighbors considered 'deep' for the same reason." I'd rather get by on this sort of 'crude' integrity than forgo the blessings of gracious life for the fineries of sophisticated duplicity (you'd be surprised to realize the irony of that word, sophisticated, which arises from a rather unwholesome group of people known for twisting language to justify whatever they desired or esteemed...). Overall, I'm a lout in terms of straightforward thinking and responding, but may the grace of God abound to present a completely straightened son in a seasoned soul. Amen.

Ken the Hour

2009-05-17T22:51:00.004-06:00

"Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."” Matthew 26:41

"men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do" - 1 Chron. 12:32

I'm not certain what is coming, but these are burrowing into my soul, stirring my spirit. The times are shifting and the seasons change. I must arrange my days to spend the hours in the Scriptures and prayer, for the time of calling and conviction are near. An hour of evil, where sin is limned in the Satanic, broaches the reality we live like an ethereal seige craft rising from the ether of spiritual truth. A day for the righteous to stand bravely lit in the fires of the Holy Spirit, burning at the coalescing shadows, stirs into a dawn of never-ending light. We are the cusp of something new, tragic and triumphant. We will pay the price for serving the Lord (2 Chron. 24:19-22), but we will see new wonders spring from the well of the Holy Spirit. A time of tribulation of godly exaltation (a sense of grandeur in humility, where dignity shines in the humiliated outcasts of the world) bridges from the past, present into the near future. Where goes this trail of blood and blessing? I cannot tell, but its course leads to the inevitable: the revelation of Jesus Christ to the earth.

I must diligently watch and singularly pray, because I do not know the hour upon us, except as the preamble for the coming season. At the moment, I do not despair of the promises of God, but I fear their fulfillment. I wonder what will come when the Lord unveils His work in us, and what comes when the children of God live in open emnity with the children of Satan. We cannot serve two masters, which will become clear, sadly. The enemy has no pleasure in keeping us in his folds--and I have no desire to leave many in the flocks of the slaughterhouse, waiting for unquestioned destruction. However, one must be able to perceive, to see, the way out of peril as well as the imperiled. Such is wisdom is needed to uproot the kingdom of Satan (Prov. 21:22; Eccl. 7:19)

May God make us singular people with a solid focus to hear the word of the LORD and remember His commands, for the times are coming when few will know the way, but a wise man will follow it (1 Chron. 14:33). Selah.

Luminous

2009-05-15T18:03:00.003-06:00

Today a range of colour, radiance and shade plays across the majesty of creativity. Christ paints a picture with a radiant sun, the flash of lightning and the soft glow of electric light. The sunset has been covered over with a thunder storm, a particularly lightning-studded one. I have had the pleasure of watching all of these enter the scene of the present, hardly kenning the complex structure to create a moment of insight into the granduer of God's blessed creativity. I would love to know these thing, should I retain the wonder and awe of the Lord in these majestic episodes, so long as I could continue to relish in the simple crafts of the uneventful day: Finding beauty in the mundane, as my brother once said.

I'm also, curiously enough, rather contento at this moment, happy. I love God's grace, and find peace despite the not-so-pleasant events that seem to be arising. "The man chasted of the Lord...You keep in rest in times of adversity." I'm living these verses; I'm chastened for my misdeeds and foul habits, turning again slowly to see the Lord is faithful and true, how to walk as the Spirit moves through the world. I'm also at rest, relaxing, basking in the glory and love of God. He creates His splendors and shows them to me, one by one. I live a flow of stunning experiences, whether from the massiveness of God, or His uniqueness, or His wisdom, or the His grace when the shadows loom. All the tales blend to manifest a curiousity: The man You chasten, You give him rest in times of adversity. Chastened (Disciplined) and resting, at one moment, in one soul. God's grace and justice exist not disjoined, but together, drawing the spirit to rejoice for God's love even in the grim moments. I'm happy, and should that happiness cease, I am at peace. If that peace leaves, I am God's and He will be here nonetheless. Selah.

I will be enjoying this luminous paradoxes at work in the world and my own life. Perchance, I will see the deeper meaning, the real necessities of living before the Lord. Right now, the lances leap from bulwark to bulwark, cannonades roaring at each interval inbetween. I must ask myself with the Psalmist, "Look unto the heavens and see, Who created these?"

Cardinal

2009-05-14T13:57:00.005-06:00

Today may be the turning point in an age-long frustration; perhaps, or my reservoir for sin is running low, at least in emotional fervor and patience. What appeals in the siren song fades as I realize I simply want to be left set aside until real joy comes along the road I tred and asks to join me (or rather, accepts my invitation to walk together). I'm swinging along the hinge of continuous grace, prayer and interruption, on the fulcrum of experiential pain, toward the goal unseen, except to exist solely for the Lord. I thought we had fought this battle, waged the war and won the trophy, "This is my son, celebate until we celebrate companionship." The storms went up and the son went down, but the Lord saved him from the torment of the enemy. I am spared of the evil I should have "enjoyed" (deserved), but God did not count my sins against me. I am free by the grace of God, and I believe (have faith) that He is willing toward the perfection of His promises. Yet, the answer doesn't seem so obvious anymore...

If I wanted clarity, perhaps the examples that bubble up with the thought, "maybe this is how God works," reveal a providence not as cheery, but far beyond wise. I see how the English language evolved, as well as the British people, and wonder why they suffered so much insult, betrayal, loss and forced change. Yet, now we have the unique and majestic history of the nation, their sudden rise to global power, and the origins that spawned those of us who live as Celt-Angle descendants in North America. I see how the bubonic plague worked to make menial servants valuable, in turn (with the crusades, renaissance, etc) creating an evironment for a clever/talented/laborious man to rise above the rattoner (rat charmer) to regent official in the market. All curious, but costly, transformations that, according to Paul, work to draw men's attention beyond the momentary fray to the God over all creation. "He sets the bounds and exact location for mankind...so that they might seek and find Him, for He is not far from us." Indeed, it was said by the Greek poets, "in Him we live, move and have our being." [Acts 17:20ish-28]

I live as a social curiosity that perhaps will grow more curious in my history when the present and future become past. Yet, whatever remains of my existence, it serves this grander purpose in the humble means of one man amid the nations: I am here to point (as history points) to the watchful, active Lord in creation as the only means of salvation in the coming Judge, the Resurrected Jesus Christ [Acts 17 again]. Still, the momentary loneliness eats at me, the emotional/relational side of me. I feel I either missed the mark or God mispoke (God forbid!). The timing seems off, so I gather I misunderstood or made an error of the grevious sort and must endure either way. Lord, Your lady walks where she may, and I will again try to follow Your way. The ground grows fallow and the seeds dormant, waiting for some torrential rain or a proper tilling to raise them from their sleep. I must continue the trail and learn where the real trials exist, instead of facing imaginary giants with loaded slings. God has better things to do; may His son likewise return to the simple trust, truth and intercession, making most of the time, for the days are evil, wasting away in a moment. I would rather not be found lamenting for what cannot be changed, unless I knew my tears and psalms will move the heart of God (thankfully, Christ, not Calvin, was my teacher). I will be seeing you. Until we meet again, we walk the solitary tracks to heaven, awaiting transformation. Selah.

Beginnings--A Continuation of Where I've Been

2009-05-12T13:45:00.005-06:00

A professor said in the Spring that if you find yourself at the same scenario more than once, you may not have learned the lesson God intends. I am here, sitting as it were alone and wondering what to do, except wait...and wait...and wait some more. I am here, and I have nothing I can do, trapped by the conflicting natures of my three "selves" (body, soul, and spirit), longing for unity under the Crown of the Almighty, the authority that says, "I will" and it is so. On earth as it is in heaven as our Beloved Rabbi prayed.

I am now (or always been?) a linguist apprentice, the man of languages and learning. For around four hours a day, five days a week, I will be studying the arts of English and language, discovering how utterly appalling my skill/knowledge is and how much more I need to grow past my ignorance. Thankfully, Jesus has decided to teach me about Him and myself in the process in the form of discipline and grace: I cannot do these three sessions without Him, because my will weakens as my soul strengthens. God graciously ignores my complaints and continues to refine me in the fire of conflict to learn patience, earn hope and discover joy that this hope remains (Romans 5:3-5 and all that fun stuff). Hope and faith remain in the demand that fear and despair call out against me: What good is waiting? What is the use of working when you will fail? And who are you, anyway??? The twisted bittersweet assault of sin, the sultry beauty that sickens the spirit and poisons the soul, with the bluntly violent ignominy of condemnation and confusion, eats at the moral resolve to "having done all things,...stand" (Eph. 6). God will not suffer His servants to be moved, or so the Psalmist wrote in faith long ago; worked for him, why not me?

So, linguistics, spirituality and, must add, computer competency, along with language/Bible studies and prayer, create the bread-and-butter of my summer. Again, thankfully, the Holy Spirit appears in wonderful expressions of love, showing that even with the conflict between the flesh's siren song to the old nature and the battle hymns of the new man He is here to stay. May God shine boldly, brightly through me as a brilliant display of His all-endearing/encompassing love. The fight for my life is a fight for my love, and my spirit has an invested interest in remaining pure as possible, a survivor of a painful history, and possessor of a poetic promise. May these eyes behold the Lamb of God on the last day, not shrinking away at the given time, for this is the promise: Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God. Selah and amen.

Additional note, my professors appear amazing and insightful. This should be a time of training/mentoring indirectly and for the years to come. Hallelu.

Four the Birds (Robin, Dove, Raven, Phoenix)

2009-05-11T15:09:00.016-06:00

A poetic narrative commenses

Round robin, a quiet specter upon the sill
Ruddy and rosy, vibrant and still,
Excites the raven to read awhile
Expressing his thoughts many a mile
Except to hear in his soul,
Ever-pressing dole,
"Expect," quoth the raven.

Dove, a dalliance of delight,
Dazzles with purest light,
Always caught in distant gaze
Away by grace amid Will's haze,
Alone the raven musters thought
At what the BirdMaker has wrought
"Aspect," quoth the raven.

Raven roams the misty glen
Reaving whirlwinds with piercing ken
Engrossed with the robin, craven,
Eclipsed, wildy runs the raven,
Exacting the price of penitance,
Exhausted by drear repentance.
"Erect," quoth the raven.

Phoenix coils in inward silo,
Preening wings in wilted willow,
Awaiting time to be reborn,
Asking raven why he is forlorn,
Anointed tears upon the pyre
Anticipating molting fire.
"Aztec," quoth the raven.

Expect, Aspect, Erect, Aztec,
All the words the wilder,
Built a tower for the hour
And called coal birds to cower,
For fear of BirdMaker's power...
"Aspire," quoth the Fire.
The raven coughed and said,
"Let the flames burn higher."
Is said raven a lute, lout, or liar?
The raven quoth, "Ask the choir."

But the choir stood quite still,
Looking on lonesome hill,
Where the duo stared apace
At the robin and dove's place
To note the spectre in the gin
As to where true love begins:
In the dale or in the den,
In the wild or the wind,
In the soul or the sole
Parapet that spirits control?
"Perceive," quoth the raven.

Respect the robin as a grace,
Look the dove in her face,
Receive the raven as a son
Living, the pheonix don,
Four birds circling Maker's helm,
Reaching deeper in His realm,
Exactly as He has said,
Expecting entrance where He led.
"Embrace," quoth the raven.

A Moonlit History

2009-05-09T10:08:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I rode along with my mother on a surprise visit to my sister in Georgia--my mom coming was the surprise, for both Kels and I. I wanted to do some further adventuring past the college, but I am thankful I did not gain that opportunity. Instead, I sat in the passenger seat beside the woman who gave birth to me and raised me these twenty years. I did not appreciate the significance of her coming with me until the ride home.

As we traveled through the wilderness and hills between our respective states, Mom and I walked through the main issues between us: My father, my grandfather, and my 'romantic' history (or the lack therein...). The content of those hours has created a sense of catharsis and joy that still reverberates in my soul. She shared how the Lord keeps her aware of her children's needs, and at the same time, shared stories of grandpa's past along with some new things about my father. The tales re-affirmed how God has been gracious and kind to my sister and I, but especially how God has moved through our lives to intervene for His kids. He has been my Father in a major way for sixteen years, the same amount of time my grandparents have lived with us. I know that my story flows through the pen of the Holy One's desires.

The full moon overlit us the whole ride home, allowing for wonder and beauty to seep through the inky blackness around us. The trees wove past in a wavy stream, the lights of cities and houses flickering through between their trunks. And, the truth settled inside my soul to remind me He is with us and His words are true. I missed the point He gave me to speak, and now endure the fruit of delay; yet, I trust He works now to bring redemption to my failures and joy to the history between then and now. He has always been faithful, and (hopefully) I shall become as He is: Faithful and True. Amen

Do Not Fear, Only Believe

2009-05-08T08:09:00.006-06:00

'While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more?"

Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."' -Mark 5:35,36

Jesus has been doing some extraordinary things in this book recorded by Mark. He has been persistently showing them how to live a life of prayer and faith, which transforms (by chapter five) both gentile and Jewish communities with the knowledge of His power and authority. He has been declaring these things that astound the people, and here comes His biggest challenge so far: The person He intends to heal is dead; is He, the Rabbi/Master/Son of God capable of challenging death and prevail? Interestingly, the translation above says "Ignoring what they said" Jesus seeks to continue onward, already moved to help the Synagogue leader. Just a moment before Jesus showed compassion on a woman who doctors had only destroyed in their attempt to heal, and now He was planning to heal a girl written off as beyond hope. "Do not be afraid, only believe," is Jesus' reply to terrible news.

Death reports flow across the sprectrum this week. The recent being my best friend's grandmother's death. My financial aid is "dead" with zero dollars and a few days to change that status to full. My campus will be 'dead' as all my brothers are either back home or overseas. And, dearest to my heart, a promise seems dead, at least for a season. I feel like I should be choosing the flower arrangements and the proper eulogy, changing once more my convictions to match the desert road I walk. I wait for the official report from the men of the house and I will begin to really wonder if I can follow Jesus' example and advice: Ignore them, 'Don't be afraid; only believe.'

Oh Yeshua, what can I do? I give You my prayers and beg for wisdom, compassion, strength and opportunity. I am in a world of shadows and gloom, clinging to the raft of Your Word. I only know what You've said, but I see the waves and billows, causing me to sink. "Save me, LORD!" I call with Peter. Save this. Save that which inspired me to continue and grow toward You. Save that which shot me across the sea like a sparrow toward the sun, seeking exotic berries to become a pheonix, aflame in the fire of You, Yahweh. But, again, I am a child, learning to grow; so, do as You will, not me. "All to You I surrender--all of my dreams, everything, every part of me." I surrender. Amen, Lord.

Emet-Speak Truly, Father. Let no lie fall between us, nor confusion/deceit dwell in our midst. Let me hear Your council and receive understanding, because I thirst for the words of Your lips, the melodies of Your songs. Sing in me again the tunes of righteous, joyous love, unconquerable and overflowing. Teach my hands to war, and receive the promises of God by diligent service before the throne. Purify my heart with faith, my hands with righteousness. Clean my soul of iniquity, renew the Spirit of salvation and grace. Fill me, dwell and abide, in my center reside. "Three days." Come, the third has risen. Let not Your words fall to the earth, nor Your servants prayers to the dust. Selah.

Hesed-Speak Faithfully, Dad. I am a boy, but I am Your boy. I look for the stones wherewith to remove the giants of the Land, the sword to behead the enemy with, the shield to smash his arrows to dust, and the boots to trod his spirits into the earth. Let Sheol swallow his people, devour his schemes. Let the traps collapse over him, and crush the heads of my adversaries. I am not new to loss, but in this I should not lose! I should not have to fight and let die what You have given to me to rejoice over and attend to. I should be exulting on the highest hill and drinking quietly in the streams of Your delight in Your presence, Father. Oh King, send Your angels to deliver the message of revelation and wisdom, enlightening the hearts of Your beloved. "Do not fear, only believe." Shaking, bleakly I seek to stand and trust. Believe. Fearless, BELIEVE! Help me, Lord, believe. I am Your Timotheos; explain this name in the actions of Your son, Amen...

A Motto and Mantra

2009-05-04T18:36:00.004-06:00

"Exact what you expect. Expect what you exact."
Exigas quis vos spectas. Spectas quis vos exigas.

This struck me as I puzzled through prayer with God, struggling and lagging in my conflicting emotions. I was (and still in some way) about to surrender to the driving impulse to abdicate to circumstance and follow the pounding hooves of the brimstone-shod horses along the wide turf to ease and emptiness. Then, miraculously, strangely, these words appeared. "Exact what you expect. Expect what you exact." The phrase merges perfectly the perfected law (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) and the results (Whatsoever you measure out to others, the same will be measured out to you; and, You reap what you sow). Hallelujah. I have a focus for my prayers for integrity (as if I didn't have one already!) and a hope for my focus: Whatever I do, do as I would expect to see, knowing I receive whatever I do, whether good or evil (Gal. 6:7-9). All this hinges on one word: Hope. Whether or not I have faith in the coming promises of God, whether I can overcome in faith the tempestuous lures in my soul, whether I can see what I have believed, dreamed, prayed and sang. The light shines in the distance, past a bitter river, along the narrow way, the passage of peace into the presence of God and His delight, His dove. Selah.