Wisdom Beyond Your Years

This past Sunday at church, I had the privilege of hearing Howard Pittman give his testimony about physically dying and meeting God (and the devil) face to face.  Obviously, Mr. Pittman came back into his mortal body to tell the story after the ordeal, but his testimony is nothing short of astounding.  I was sitting there listening to him give a detailed account of Hell and Heaven and somewhere deep inside, I know it’s true without ever being there myself.  It’s funny how we are designed as human beings, to recognize truth when we hear it.  Yesterday, I even had the honor of taking this man out to a dinner to talk one-on-one.  He spoke at another service that evening and once again, I was dumbfounded by what he had to say.  But what is really interesting here is what impressed me about this man was not his testimony or his experience with unearthly powers.  What impressed me so greatly about this man, was his wisdom.

As we talked over dinner last night (and by talked I mean he talked and I listened) I was blown away at his personal experiences in just everyday life.  He was sharing stories about when he had been to this place and that place and how it was to raise children and be in ministry.  The whole time I was just soaking it up.  Here I am sitting across a dinner table from a man who has so much life experience that my own life seems like it hasn't even ever started!  He even taught me that the interstate was engineered in the USA as a copy of the famed Audubon in Germany and was designed to move military equipment without stopping from one side of the country to the next.  Maybe you knew that already, but to me, that was the icing on the cake!  This man was a living history book and I had the chance to ask anything I wanted to know. 

Google is great, but it can’t tell you what it was like to live during World War II.  Sure, it can give you a detailed description and can give you all of the factual information about it, but it cannot provide the emotions that accompanied living through such a tumultuous era.  As I was listening to this man talk about ministry and all of the places he had been, sharing the Gospel of Jesus, I suddenly felt very humbled.  I thought to myself, this is how Timothy must have felt in the presence of the Apostle, Paul.  Now I make no claim to be a disciple of Mr. Pittman, but I could feel a connection with Timothy, being a young person in the Faith, gleaning everything you can from a war hero in the army of the Lord.  When Mr. Pittman got up from the table, I felt like I had learned so much in such a small amount of time.  His perspective on the way the modern church is headed down to how to read your Bible was nothing short of sensory overload.  I didn't want to leave! 

I’ll not soon forget that time I spent with Howard Pittman and his son.  The Lord used the time to remind me how He has designed his Kingdom.  Consider Proverbs 1:8-9.

      My son, hear the instruction of your father; reject not nor forsake the teaching of your mother.  For they are a [victor’s] chaplet (garland) of grace upon your head and chains and pendants [of gold worn by kings] for your neck.

As a young person, this verse of course applies to me in the natural realm of wisdom, but as the church of the latter days, it has a greater application.  We have the awesome advantage of having fore-runners in the Faith, otherwise known as ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers.’  So what does that mean for us?  It means that someone else paid with their blood, sweat, and tears what we can accept freely.  Someone’s ceiling of potential can be our floor.  The Kingdom of God is organized just as any kingdom would be.  There is a king who conquers and rules as best he can to leave his heir a better life than what he had.  His heir then conquers more and rules better than his father so that one day his heir has the same opportunity.  It would be rather a waste of life if a king’s heir decided to give up everything his father gave him and go start his own kingdom, leaving the previous kingdom with no one to take it over.  What will happen to all of that conquered land?  What will happen to all of those people depending on a king to rule them?  Most likely, those things will become spoils and anarchy will divide and conquer, leaving the king and his great kingdom a glorious memory and nothing but. 

Unfortunately, we do this a lot in the Kingdom of God.  Blame it on culture or independence, but either way, we abdicate the throne that was handed to us by our forerunners.  We disregard the sacrifice of the people who have gone before in the name of ‘making something for ourselves.’  But that’s not the way it was originally designed and so we will only grow to the potential of one that way.  God designed it so that the church would grow to the potential and the synergy of many.  The problem is, when ‘many’ do a great thing, ‘one’ is lost.  We have all heard the age-old adage, ‘there is no I in TEAM’ but imagine this:

A relay race team, made up of 4 of the world’s fastest runners is set to compete at the Olympics.  Each member on the team has a special niche for the part of the race they are supposed to run.  For example, Runner 1 is an excellent starter and knows how to get off of the running blocks better than anyone in the world.  The race is about to begin so the starters get to their marks.  The beginning shot fires and the runners begin racing.  Our team, let’s call them Team A, is off to a great start!  The first runner has a 3 meter lead to the next runner behind him and has set up the race beautifully for Runner 2 to continue the huge lead.  But while Runner 2 is setting up on the blocks, he decides that if he takes off where Runner 1 started, he will never be remembered as the 1^st in the race.  So when Runner 1 makes it to Runner 2 and hands the baton to him, Runner 2 lets the baton fall to the floor, takes out his own baton that he has in his coat and decides he is going to run the 1^st lap over again in addition to the 2^nd lap he was originally supposed to run.  Of course this fails miserably and Runner 2 runs out of breath just after he has completed the 1^st lap giving the other contestants in the race a 1-lap lead over Team A.  Runner 3 then decides he will take up the baton and try to run what Runner 2 failed to complete, starting again at the 1^st lap.  Again he fails miserably, putting Team A behind 2 laps and almost ensuring defeat for Team A.  The final runner approaches the track and tries to do what the others could not, again starting from the 1^st lap.  By the time he finishes the first lap, he is crossing the line with all of the other contestants who are finishing their race.  Team A never even got to the 2^nd lap.  How sad that a team who was designed to work together and claim victory couldn't even get to the 2^nd lap of the race because they would not work together.

Team A is the church in this allegory.  We have people who have gone before us as 1^st lap runners who are trying desperately to hand off the baton so we can continue the race, but instead we decide that we want to run the 1^st lap.  Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things who ran 1^st?  Of course not, but we let things that are this insignificant stop us from completing the race.  There are men of God, much like Howard Pittman, out there who have blazed a trail for us and are getting ready to hand off the baton.  It is irresponsible for us to ignore what they have done and try to do our own thing.  It is in our best interest, and in the best interest of those people that we are trying to reach with the Gospel, to take the baton from these forerunners.

What does that look like?  It looks like spending time with the man or woman of God that He has assigned to you.  It looks like taking the older generation out to dinner and just listening to what they have to say.  It looks like getting around the people who know more than you (and I guarantee you, there are plenty) and asking questions, serving them, and building relationships with them.  Take time to learn from their successes and their failures so you don’t have to repeat their mistakes.  One of my favorite quotes from George Santayana is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and it is so true. 

We have a job to do here and it’s to get passed that finish line into Heaven with as many people as possible.  We don’t have time to allow Satan to distract us with visions of grandeur that don’t amount to anything in the long run anyway.  Our goal is not to gain the world and lose our soul (Mat 16:26), it’s to serve Jesus out of love and to the best of our ability, consistently becoming made perfect in Him.  We don’t have time for pettiness, it’s a detour, a distraction and the consequences are unimaginable.  We have been created for the lap of the race we are in right now.  Whether you’re a 2^nd lap racer or a 4th lap finisher, you have been given the tools to finish the part of the race that is set before you.  Turn your head, get prepared and allow the people who have gone before you to hand off the baton and give you a lead in the race.  It’s the way the race is designed to be run, but more importantly, it is the only way the race can be won.

Just Add Water

Busy, busy, busy!  That is my motto.  I am someone who is bored easily and so the more I have in my hands to do, the better I feel.  Psychologically speaking, I am a ‘chaos-surfer.’  I feel more comfortable organizing chaos than I do once it’s actually organized.  Go figure. So, busy is my norm.  But lately, I have felt even more busy than usual, and that is saying something, because looking from the outside, my schedule is the least demanding that it has ever been….well, sort of.

During this particular time in my life I feel like I am the embodiment of irony.  In the season where I have the least amount of natural-realm activities going on, I feel the busiest I have ever been.  How does that work?  I have a part-time job, I go to school online, and I volunteer during the day for my church, but spiritually, I feel like a balloon being blown up into full size.  I am sure I will burst at each wave of incoming helium, but I never do, I just keep getting more stretched.

In this state, it’s easy to complain.  Honestly, when it’s something I’m so well versed in, it’s hard not to do.  Everything seems like a big deal…everything!  Every issue is bigger than the last and it’s the ‘end of the world’ every time.  (Side thought: what a coincidence that I should be going through this season in 2012, the year of Mayan doom...Anyway) I was practicing my complaining skills to the Lord.  He let me go on and on until I ran out of things to complain about.  But before I unload the revelation He laid on me, let me give you a little background info:

The Lord has been adding to me in a big way over the past few months, which is partially why I feel stretched.  Of course, that is the sort of season I am in: going to a Christian school, volunteering more at church, and taking part in two Bible studies.  I feel so full of the Word, I could burst!  But recently I had a particular school assignment that hit me right between the eyes and left me challenged in a whole new way.  The subject matter? Faith.

I have (probably just like you) been schooled on the subject of faith relentlessly since the time of my salvation.  With good cause, as faith is a very important part of the Bible and the backbone of this country’s most recent revival.  But all of that to say, I was less than hopeful that there was very much more I could be taught on this topic.  Boy, was I wrong!  As I was turning through the pages of this extensive book I was assigned, I was getting gut-checked left and right by phrases like “you will act on what you truly believe,” and “you can only resist Satan as much as you’re in the Word.”  My heart started getting convicted in these areas.  I really started to (and still am) take a look at what my actions say that I believe.  I know a lot of things, but do I agree with them on a soulical level as head knowledge, or are they revelatory truths that are part of who I am on a spiritual level?  And I am sad to report, that a lot of what I ‘believe’ is fortified in my head only.  That’s scary because, you see, when you reason something out in your thought life, you are bringing God into your ‘box.’  God doesn’t fit in your box.  He’s so much bigger than that, and caging Him, only keeps you from knowing who God really is.

As I began to see that this is the state of my current life, I realized something else.  All of this stretching and busyness is nothing more than simple preparation.  The Lord is trying to get through to me to make things better for me.  I feel like the current word over my life is ‘get into the Word of God.’ It seems to come out in everything I write, every time I sit down with the Lord, it’s everywhere!

So, back to present day.  After I had exhausted myself, giving all of the reasons why I shouldn’t have to put up with this or that, the Lord spoke to me very gently.  He told me, ‘just add water.’  You might be thinking, ‘huh?!’, but I knew exactly what the Lord was saying.  Water is a symbol, commonly used in the Bible, for the Word of God.  I knew the Lord was telling me to add more of the Word.  I also knew what the implication of ‘just adding water’ is growth.  We’ve all seen the ChiaPet ® commercials on TV, where they give you a clay figurine with everything inside of it that you need to grow a ridiculous looking, completely cheesy, but oddly healthy plant.  All you have to do is add water.

The Lord was showing me that in this season where I feel stretched, it’s because I’m growing.  Sometimes our reaction to growing pains are to stop what we are doing or take a rest, when really God is trying to ‘grow’ us into something healthy.  You see, He has put all of the things inside of us that we need for what we are called to do, because we have the Spirit inside of us.  We are all-inclusive that way and when we add the Word, we automatically get growth.  Growth isn’t easy, by any stretch of the imagination.  I makes you do things you’ve never done before, and believe for things you don’t know that you have inside of you.  It takes faith to do this.  It takes tons and tons of faith, but the more we learn to trust the Lord with what He has for us, the more we will grow into what we were created for.  The hardest parts of our lives are the greatest chances for growth we can have, and by saturating your situation with the Word of God and His ultimate truth, you will begin to see your circumstances as opportunities, I promise.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a ‘green thumb.’  There is no way to ‘over water’ with the Word of God.  In fact, the more you pour on, the better.  If you’re in a similar situation, let the Lord take you and stretch you beyond what you thought you could handle because He can see your end from your beginning.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  He is the one that put all of that ‘stuff’ inside you when He formed you in your mother’s womb. So keep your head up, keep your faith in the Lord, and keep soaking up the Word, and watch to see what you ‘grow into,’ and who knows, you may sprout into something you never even imagined you could be!

Jesus the Hairdresser

My very good friend, Olivia, had this epiphany the other day and I think it's absolutely brilliant!  It's a good read and good revelation.  Enjoy:


"One of my favorite things about my relationship with God is how He speaks so profoundly to me through the ordinary, every day occurrences of life.  Today one such ordinary thing took place  - I paid a visit to my hairdresser Brian.  Brian is an all around great person and I love him for many reasons, not least of which is the fact he saved my hair.  At the recommendation of a friend, Brian came into my life a little over a year ago after a hair SNAFU.  I had, over the course of about a year, made several, poor, back-to-back color choices and I desperately needed a fix.  I remember sitting nervously in his chair, slightly embarrassed, as he stood silently over me, looking at and feeling my shoulder length locks, making an assessment of the damages from a variety of angles.  He finally stopped and frankly acknowledged mistakes had been made, but very graciously went on to tell me how it could be fixed.  I chose to trust him, and after several steps over several weeks, my hair was back to my original color and in better shape than it had been in a while.
 
Fast-forward fifteen months to today’s visit.  I’ve been sporting a rockin’ pixie cut for about 6 months and it was time for my monthly trim and color.  By now I trust Brian to the point I simply walk in, sit down, and let him do what he does best.  I can’t remember the last time I told him what I wanted.  After 15 months he knows me as a person and he knows hair, so I just sit back and let the creativity flow.  Not once have I been disappointed.  The two hours I spend in his chair every 4-6 weeks are something I very much look forward to.  Sometimes we talk, sometimes we don’t, often we laugh, once or twice I’ve cried, and every single time I walk out with the best haircut and color I’ve ever had, somehow without diminishing the brilliance of how it turned out the time before, and the time before that, and the time before – I think you get the idea.
 
When I sat down in his chair this morning, the very first thing he did was take all of my hair and spray it with product until it all stood straight up.  I’ve worn my pixie in a fashionable faux-hawk many times before, but this was not one of those times.  After lightening a number of the spiked up strands, he did an all over color which left me looking like I’d had my head dipped in crude oil, with no rhyme or reason to the way my hair was slicked down and plastered to my scalp.  I was not a pretty sight.  Thirty or so minutes later, as my head was in the bowl and Brian was washing the color product out, I had the following epiphany:  Jesus and Brian are a lot alike.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s only one Jesus.  And while I don’t know what beliefs Brian holds, that’s not my point either – what I’m saying is characteristics of Jesus can be displayed through any one of us and today that display was Brian.  Let me explain.
 
If you had taken snapshots at most any point during my appointment today and made a judgment about “good hair day/bad hair day” based on any single snapshot, "bad hair day" would most likely be your conclusion.  One minute my hair was standing on end, the next it was slicked down most unattractively to my skull.  But what makes Jesus such a great Savior and Brian such a great hairdresser is this: they can simultaneously participate in the most bizarre and even messy of processes without ever losing the vision of the end result.  And the end result is always an enhancement of the person and who they are, not an alternation from the original.  At this point, head in the rinsing bowl, I start asking myself questions: Do I trust Jesus with my life like I trust Brian with my hair?  When life is standing on end or weighed down with something I don’t understand, do I trust He knows what He’s doing?  Do I make judgments about or quickly write off people during the messy and bizarre processes of their life when, like Jesus I should be seeing the end product?  I know what I want those answers to be, but have to be honest and admit God has some work to do in my heart.
 
Now that I think about it, the similarities were there from the very beginning.  We all come to Jesus the same way I came to Brian: in self-inflicted trouble to which there is no self-executable solution.  We come in need.  And we sit sheepishly while the damages are assessed.  Like Brian was about my hair, Jesus is honest about the problem, but it’s soon overshadowed by the solution.  Never once did Brian say to me, “How could you do this?” or, “What were you thinking?” or, “Sorry this is just too messed up” or, “You got yourself into this, you’re going to have to get yourself out”.  The Jesus I’ve come to know operates the same; when I come to Him in a mess, He’s acknowledges my mistake, but in kindness and mercy and grace, completely free of shame and condemnation, He quickly goes to work on the solution.  He and I both know why I’m there and He knows there’s no help in rubbing my face in my blunders.  So once again today I asked myself the questions:  As a Christian, shouldn’t my response to people be that of Jesus?  When people manifest their mistakes and messes to me, how gracious and merciful is my response?  Do I spend more time making sure the person knows they’ve made a mistake, or do I put my arm around them and help them with a solution?  Am I unnecessarily shocked or disappointed when people fail, having forgotten that to God, breaking one part of the law equals breaking the whole thing, so no matter how different another person's mistakes look on the outside compared to mine, the reality before God’s standard is I’ve been guilty of the same thing and have no grounds to condemn?
 
Side note soapbox:  I know some of you might be thinking, “Well, Jesus wasn’t just Mr. Nice guy, He was tough, too!  You can’t forget about that!”  Are you sure?  Take a closer look at your Bible:  While on the earth, the only people Jesus was hard on were people who were hard on others or who charged people money in a place that should have been free, and in the end He died for and forgave even them.   It is unwise to change Jesus into the person we are to feel better about being so unlike Him.
 
To bring my original point full circle - Something I’ve heard a lot lately and that I truly believe for myself is this:  Jesus and religion aren’t the same thing and we ought not confuse them.  Jesus is a necessity but religion is worthless.  Those are true statements, but no matter how many pastors heroically proclaim it from the pulpit, or how many bumper stickers we put it on, the reality is, what does that really mean?  In the context of today it means this:  Jesus is a hairdresser and religion is a panel of judges at a hair pageant.  They both appear to care about or be involved in the same thing but the difference is this:  Anyone can come to a hairdresser whereas pageant judges select only a few.  The hairdresser spends intimate one-on-one time with individual people whereas pageant judges care only about a narrow standard by which the masses are judged from afar.  The hairdresser is there in the process, no matter what it looks like or how messy it is and sees it through to the end whereas pageant judges care only about the perfection of the end product and are quick to disqualify at the smallest imperfection.  People leave the hairdresser feeling like even in the multitude of people who go to their hairdresser, they’re the most important and beautiful person in the world without even trying whereas pageant contestants never feel good enough even after all the effort.
 
And so once again, a profound revelation borne from an ordinary occurrence comes down to this:  I don’t want to be in a hair contest, I just want to keep seeing Brian for my hair and I certainly don’t want religion, I just want my Jesus and to be more like Him to the people around me."
-Olivia Wolf

Direction Derived from Desperation

“When Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over him and said, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” And he put his hand on it, then Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands. He said, “Open the window toward the east,” and he opened it.  Then Elisha said, “Shoot!” And he shot. And he said, “The LORD’S arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram; for you will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed them.”  Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground,” and he struck it three times and stopped. So the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times.”

2 Kings 13:14-19

I want to set up the scene a little.  Israel was being ruled by Jehu who had killed Jezebel and wiped it clean of any remnants of Baal.  He was a righteous king, but his son Jehoahaz was anything but.  He did what he wanted, even after the Lord saved Him in spite of his transgressions.  Then, his son, Joash (clearly this family had a thing for the letter J) continued in his father’s footsteps and as the Bible (2 Kings 13:11) says, “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  Both Jehoahaz and Joash had neglected what their heritage was: righteousness.  Imagine, they are leading a nation dedicated to God while they themselves are conducting idol worship.  It’s hypocrisy at its finest.  Joash obviously knew who God was and about Him but he didn’t know God on a deeply intimate level.  In the end, Joash lost out on the victory because he didn’t know the who of God and therefore could not understand the what of God, even when it could have eradicated his enemy for good.

Arrow: “A missile having a straight thin shaft with a pointed head at one end and often flight-stabilizing vanes at the other, meant to be shot from a bow.”
(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/arrow)
Photo: (http://genericgrasslands.com/2011/08/25/the-many-arrows-of-zelda/)

That’s how the dictionary describes an arrow anyway, but any word under the lamp of the Bible can take on a whole different meaning.  An arrow, for example, can mean a direction, or an attack, but when the Lord highlights it to me, I know I need to dig deeper.  In the above mentioned story, the arrow was very symbolic and very important for King Joash, but the problem is, he didn’t know it.  He had very little regard for what was in his hand because he saw it as a thin shaft, a pointed head and flight vanes.

God is a God of moments.  The Bible is peppered with stories about people reaching out to God and God reaching out to people and in that moment, Heaven touches earth.  The same is true in this story.  Had Joash recognized his moment, had he been desperate to find it, reaching for God, he would have understood why Elisha was asking him to strike the arrows on the ground.  Elisha even reprimands him and gets angry at him for not recognizing the moment.  Why?  Because Joash didn’t do some stupid motion with some meaningless arrows?  No.  It was because he couldn’t follow through with the Lord’s command because he didn’t know God, and at that moment, his victory depended on it.  “You should have struck five or six times…”  God knew the number of times Israel would come up against Syria in battle and how many times it would take Joash to defeat their army before being rid of them forever, but Joash didn’t.  The act was emblematical, but without a download of supernatural knowledge that only comes by personal relationship, Joash was literally shooting in the dark.

I don’t believe that God does anything by accident.  It’s not an accident that the Lord chose arrows for Joash to strike the ground with.  They may seem like an arbitrary part of the account but if you look past the black and white of the story, you can see what God is saying here.  The other definition for arrow talks about direction.  Arrows are a symbol of direction and purpose.  It is not often that an archer releases an arrow without calculated precision.  God was showing Joash that these arrows were the “Lord’s arrow of victory,” or the Lord’s direction for victory.  He was showing Joash that His plans for Israel were for them to thrive, for them to return and have victory over their enemies.  Anyone in a position of desperation for their answer, knowing the meaning of the gesture, would have beat the arrows into the ground until Elisha would physically have to stop them.  A desperate person needs an answer, they need their victory from God.  A person at their end and therefore at the beginning of God would stop at nothing to get their answer, and so this exposed Joash’s heart.  He was not desperate for the answer, he was not fraught with concern for the nation of God…the heart of God.  He wanted to take care of himself.  He wanted to continue doing what he wanted and not be interrupted by Syria.  His heart was not for the people of God and therefore his heart was not for God.

This story is all well and good, but unless we let it hit home, it’s just another nice story, an entertaining anecdote.  What is your Syria?  Are you facing an enemy that is attacking what God has entrusted you with?  Have you grown so desperate for an answer that you will throw out your idols and take your arrows and beat them into the ground until God must give you an answer?  Or are you comfortable with the way things have always been and only run to God when your way of life is threatened?  It’s time to get desperate.  It’s time to clean house.  It’s time to go through and take inventory of what is taking the place of God in your life: hobbies, distractions, relationships.  It’s time to rid yourself of the things that exhalt themselves above God and get back to His heart, His people.  Open your eyes friends, Syria is on its way to attack the people which God has called you to protect.  Don’t take it lightly.  Be bold and strong and grip those arrows with all your might and let God know that you are desperate for His answer, you are desperate for His victory, you are desperate for His direction, but most of all you are desperate for Him.

    

The Irrelevant Bible

Pop Quiz: What is really long, super old, and almost every house in America has one but never uses it?  You guessed it…The Bible.  It seems like people are losing the use for their Bible a little more each day.  Maybe that’s why we have more confusion about who God is in today’s church than ever before?

Here’s a little hypothetical situation.  A guy walks into a clothing store one evening.  He’s donning his brand new, top-of-the-line, designer shoes, that look a-w-e-s-o-m-e.  His head is held high and he is on cloud 9, noticing everyone staring at him as he walks in.  In his mind, his kicks are the ‘talk of the town.’  As he makes his way over to a rack of brightly colored shirts, he steps passed a full length mirror.  Stopping to admire his new footwear, he pauses and stands facing the mirror.  A look of horror sweeps over his face as he realizes he spilled his morning coffee down his white shirt.  No wonder everyone was staring!

In James, the Bible likens the Word of God to a mirror because it does a similar thing for you.  When you look into a mirror, you see your own image staring back at you.  In that moment, you cannot hide from your flaws or your assets, they are glaringly obvious.  You may even see things that weren’t there the last time you looked, like the spilled coffee on your shirt.  The point is, you see it all.  In the reflection, it’s all real and pretending it’s not there isn’t going to make it less obvious to you or others around you.

Just like a real mirror, the Word of God is a tool for you to look into also, and just like a real mirror, the reflection will change based on the way you look at it.  The Word of God presents the truth, unadulterated and in brutal honesty.  It provides something for us to look into to see the state of our lives.  You’re doing well here, you need work there.  That’s why the Bible says when we read the Word and don’t follow what it says with action, it’s like we’ve looked at our coffee stained shirt in the mirror and walked away, forgetting what we saw.  You’ll continue to walk around with that shirt, stained and dysfunctional until you change it.

The Bible is a living, moving thing.  It is the inspired Word of God.  In it, there is ultimate truth about who we are.  The Bible says that we are healed, that we are provided for, and that we walk in the fullness of Christ.  So when we come to examine our reflection in the Bible with something like a sickness, it becomes obvious that we need adjustment in that area.  So we work on it.  God’s truth says that we are healed and that Jesus has been beaten brutally so that we could accept and walk in that truth.  You see, when we allow Christ to makeover our image, our reflection in the mirror should be similar to His.  Now, that’s not to say we don’t ever sin or miss the mark, because we will definitely do, but when we do, that is the perfect time to step in front of the mirror, see where we are and allow the Lord to work on us.

Too many Christians don’t read their Bible.  In fact, it is the minority who actually do.  I know I have been undisciplined at times to read on a consistent basis, but I also know that when I make that time for the mirror of God’s Word, my life is better off.  I seem to be more confident in the things of the Lord, because I know where I stand before Him.  My dad, Rocky Veach said this on Wednesday, “Your relationship with God is only as good as your relationship with your Bible.”  I love that, because it’s so true.  God does speak into your life using the still, small, voice, or other believers, or in rare cases He even speaks audibly, but the majority of the time, He speaks through His Word.  He reveals things to us as we spend time peering into the reflection.  He meets our action with His action.  When we take time to read the Bible and ask God to show us our reflection, He will be faithful and just to meet us there and help us where we fall short.

The Bible is relevant today, because it has always been relevant.  How’s that for irony?  It will never lose its power to show you the truth about who you are in Christ Jesus.  Your life, subject to the Bible will always be pertinent.  I challenge you today, if you haven’t already, to put yourself on some sort of reading schedule, not to be religious, but to give God something to work with.  Even if you don’t read a ton, commit something to God and see what He does with it.  I promise, you’ll be blown away by what God can do for you through the looking glass. 

People Watching

The smell is intolerable, the streets are crowded, and the energy is booming; once again I find myself in New York City.  I don't know what it is about this city that is so alluring, when any ounce of logic I have tells me I am nothing but repulsed.  There are so many germs, in the air, in the restaurants, on the streets.  Howie Mandel's worst nightmare.  None of that seems to matter to me when I'm here, though.  Rather than sit and meditate on that, I've just come to accept the fact that I am a city rat, utterly and hopelessly.  *Shrug*

Anyway, staying in the city has afforded me some great opportunities, one of which is the ability to people watch on an unparalleled level, at least in my experience. I find it extremely fascinating, parked here at Starbucks on 43rd and 9th, to watch the different lives that come in and out of these doors.  I can't help but wonder all about these people.  I wonder who cuts their hair, how their morning has gone, where they found the items they are wearing.  If you let yourself think about it long enough, you can really delve into another person's life...even if it is completely imaginary.

For instance, there is a girl here in line (or 'on line' in city speak) who has hair that is beautifully brown and extends about to her mid back.  Let's call her Ms. Coconut Frap.  From the back, she looks like your average 23-26 year old girl.  Muted maroon tee, cargo-tan shorts, and flip flops.  But when she turns to the left, she reveals that the top portion of her beautiful hair, starting at around the brow bone all the way to the nape of her neck, is completely buzzed.  I'm guessing she doesn't 'love' it, because it looks like a fairly fresh cut and she can't stop rubbing it.  This, of course, is indicative of someone who has never had their hair that short, or is nervous about how it looks.  I can't help but wonder: did she sit down at the hair dresser with that haircut in mind?  No.  I imagine she came in with the intention of doing something 'drastic' and her hair dresser wanted to try his/her hand at the latest fad.  Either way, Ms. Coconut Frap is stuck with it now.  

Or how about the guy sitting next to me?  Obviously he doesn't do the NYC Starbucks thing often because he has no headphones.  He was however, smart enough to shark out a table this close to Times Square, so he can't be completely incompetent.  Slow learner maybe.  He's been punished for his ignorance though, as he's been asked about 5 times if someone can sit at his table with him.  Me and Mr. Bose Noise Cancelers behind me on the other hand, haven't been asked once.

Then there are always the Starbucks regulars who aren't exactly patrons.  The guy who is selling some sort of art in front of the door.  He's having a rather unsuccessful day by the look of it, trying to stop all the passerbys who will even throw a glance his way.  Then there is the garbage picker.  A huge bag of used cans and bottles slung over his right shoulder, left hand neck deep in the garbage receptacle right outside my window. I've never gotten that form of lifestyle.  Even with all of those bottles, you can redeem them for like $10 at the most.  Worth repeatedly sticking your bare hand into a public trash can full of possible life threatening terrors?  I can't see the worthwhile. Although, who knows?  Maybe that's enough to sustain him at this point in his life.  $10/day must be a difficult lifestyle to maintain.

Lastly I will scrutinize the 'space invaders.'  I have developed this name for them over the years because that's exactly what they are.  They are completely unaware of anyone else's personal space.  There is currently a lady extending her right arm over my computer, exposing her arm pit and practically allowing it to come into contact with my now completely unappetizing coffee. 'No, please, I love deodorant flavored coffee.'  And then there's the other sort of invader who has no idea how loud they are.  There's one right next to me.  Lucky me.  Even over my ear buds blasting Brian McKnight, I can hear her conversation with her mother, in another language.  If you're going to noise pollute the air space, at least give us something to listen to, honey. 

Since 'Honey' is effectively clearing out the Starbucks of anything resembling human life, I think I will go now too.  And wouldn't you know it, I just got asked to share my table.  Welcome to the city, Jordy girl.

In God We Trust

I have taken a sort of break from the blogging world over the past month or so, not that I've run out of things to say (that’ll be the day), but because I've been a little preoccupied.  Recently, the Lord has been dealing with me on the issue of trust.  It’s not an area I am particularly good at or fond of.  In fact, if I had to gauge my ability to trust others from 1-10, I’d rank right around 2.  Perhaps I have been jaded by life, or maybe it’s just part of growing up, however you slice it, it’s the state of my heart: mistrusting.

In January, the Lord started to pull on my heart strings about trusting others. Those of you who follow my blogs could probably tell, as it came seeping out of just about everything I wrote.  As the Lord revealed more and more of the condition of my own heart to me, I began to feel burdened to change.  He started revealing areas where I had shut people out who could have helped me or vice versa, and as a result, my heart was getting hardened.  Slowly but surely, I was taking my eye from Jesus and moving it to people and their actions.  Because let’s face it, if I had really been trusting God, what people said or did to me would not matter, but it has mattered…in such a big way.

Everybody has their vice, their Achilles’ heel, and I’m not condemning that or them, but what is the point of keeping it?  If you know about a chink in the armor, wouldn’t you want to fix it?  Especially before going into battle?  Here’s the thing: it’s not an easy fix.  It’s not something that you can sit at home, on your couch doing while you watch the news.  No, instead it is an uncomfortable moving and shifting and changing and disconnecting.  It’s awful, really.  You have to go and unhook yourself from every area where you have made room for your malfunction, every lie you have agreed with, every excuse you’ve come up with for not dealing with it.  You have to look failure in the face and admit that you aren’t perfect.  Maybe I’m only talking to myself here, but that last part really gets me, admitting that I am not perfect.

One of my greatest fears in life is/was to end up alone.  Not in a romantic way, but in an isolated way.  I could never think of anything worse than dying alone, so I surrounded myself with people, lots of people.  Yet it never fails, at some point, people step on a landmine that exposes both of your imperfections and one or the both of you gets hurt.  For me, that’s when a wall goes straight up.  ‘That won’t happen to me again.’  Now, that person can’t come any further and I am effectively safe from them…but my safety comes at the price of being completely alone.  Satan has done his homework.  He knows what lies to sell us to get us to buy into his plan.  Here I am thinking I can protect myself by walling myself in and I end up facing the biggest fear of them all, with no one to help.  I am borrowing from Paul to pay Peter, and in the end, I lose, and that’s what Jesus wants to save me from.  Losing.

Once I saw this ridiculous Ponzi scheme I had been a part of, I vowed to begin bringing down walls I had built.  So the Lord obliged and together we started working on one of my biggest walls.  At first I was restless, unrelenting, unwilling to budge or touch certain areas, but as I let Him work on me, I realized that He was pushing me to be more open, trusting, and vulnerable. He was not prodding me so that He could make it hard on me to teach me a lesson, He was undoing damage that had been inflicted long ago.  He was softening a hardened heart so that it could be used again.  That’s the worst thing about a hard heart, you know.  A heart is meant to be soft and pliable.  It’s function as a muscle demands that it pulsates, ebbs and flows.  The harder it gets, the less movement it can actually make.  Eventually, it will stop your blood flow.  The Lord was massaging my heart to revive it.  He was breaking me free from my own prison.  He was giving me freedom, in a way I haven’t experienced before.

I’d love to say that I am finished learning my lesson and I stand here before you, a totally loving, trusting woman of God, but that’s just not true.  I do stand here before you open and honest, and in that way I am taking a huge leap of faith, making myself completely susceptible to the opinions of others, but I’m also making myself completely open to God. I’m restoring my heart to a soft and pliable position, and I’m doing it as much for me as I am for you.  Don’t be alone.  Don’t let Satan offer you counterfeit protection at the cost of something much bigger.  Open your heart to others and trust God with it.  He has promised to never leave you nor forsake you, and that you can take all the way to the bank.  Others will affect you, yes, but when your trust is in God, your heart is protected in the ultimate way.

I hope this helped you as much as it helped me.  Until next time!

Perception: A Whole New Depth

Step, step, step, trip.   It happens to me all of the time: I’ll be walking up the stairs on total autopilot, and BAM!  I fall, scraping my knee, my hand, and my pride.   Walking is something I’ve been doing since I was a foot and a half tall, so why is it that something I’ve had so much practice in can trip me up so often?   It’s a misjudgment of where I stand in relation to my visible surroundings. 

Recently, a friend of mine told me that the reason we have 2 eyes is to provide depth perception to our brains.  Being the trusting friend that I am, I quickly looked it up on the know-all, be-all: Wikipedia.  He was correct!  It is in fact the very thing that allows us to perceive three dimensions instead of just two, which is how we (as humans) judge depth.  Most people have probably learned this in high school biology, and who knows, maybe I did also, but the concept of it is very profound.  Two is better than one.

It never ceases to amaze me how creation sings the Lord’s praises from the perfect order of the smallest atom to the delicate orbit of the planets in space.  His creation can’t help but point to its creator.  When I find something like this out, that has His markings all over it, it’s like His signature gets written on my heart all over again.  Deep inside, you find some sort of connection with all of the other created things in Heaven and on earth, worshipping God.  Ahhh-but I have digressed. 

It is possible to perceive depth with just one eye.  You can see 2-dimensional objects and gauge how far they are using things like motion and calculation.  Just like we as humans can get through this life alone.  It is possible.  We can measure things by human logic and calculation and reason away all of the signs that point us to God.  But if you could see with two eyes, why wouldn’t you?  It’s so like God to come in and renew your vision; to make it easier for you.  He knows you need to be able to tell what’s coming and how to judge it and so he steps in and makes everything 3-dimensional, taking the guesswork out of it for you. 

He draws you close to Him to begin to show you the world in a way you never knew, you never knew.  With Him, things come alive, they take shape.   Reason, logic, calculation-they all fade when you see things as they really are.  If we aren’t careful, we will be one-eyed creatures, walking around using reason to explain why the world is flat.  We can see that it’s flat, it seems flat, nothing has ever told us that it can be anything other than flat.  But God.  He has a way of dumbfounding you with the smallest detail, rendering all of your theories absolutely mindless.  The world is clearly round.

This seems like a very solemn season in life for some reason.  The world has never been more sure of its 'flatness' in its entire history.  The Lord is requiring His people to step out of what we think we know and see things as they really are.  We need to stop walking around with a self-imposed handicap, like a hand over our eye.   No matter how scary what we see is, we are called to be the Body of Christ and be ahead of the world.  Things like hope and faith, things that the world can’t see, have to come from Him through us.  It’s our responsibility not to turn a blind eye….for their sakes.

I know that I will be seeking the Lord for areas that I have willingly overlooked, and I would encourage you to do the same.  Let the scales fall and ask the Lord to give you a 3-dimensional look at the 2-dimensional issues in your life and watch out, your perception may take on a whole new depth.

Hearing From God

“Step right up! Step right up! The person who can tell me what’s behind door #4 will win the chance to go into their own ministry and be awarded the title ‘Hearer of God’.”  This example may be a little ridiculous, but how many times does this sound like what people are looking for when they start ‘hearing from God’?  It’s sort of the unwritten rule when you first get saved, that you must hear from God on every, single, issue.  But who really does?

            Honestly, I think most people aren’t sure of the right decision before they make it, but that is unacceptable in our religious society, so we slap a ‘thus saith the Lord’ on our decision.  If for nothing else, it quiets the critics and eases our own mind. Except, the problem with that is, that not everything is actually spoken and ordained by the Lord.  So, if it isn’t, aren’t we setting ourselves up for failure?

There is a saying in our household that is referenced when one of us believes the other is exaggerating a story: “Check your RAS.”  Your Reticular Activating System (commonly known as RAS) is the part of your brain that you can ‘program’.  It is the functional part of the axiom, ‘mind over matter.’  If you say something long enough, eventually you’ll believe it, and if you believe something long enough, eventually you can’t help but act upon your beliefs.  The thing that makes your RAS so powerful is that it cannot distinguish between real events (the present) and fake ones (the memory).  When we tell a story and embellish certain areas, our RAS relives the entire situation and then stores the embellishment as memory, so that the next time we tell the story, the embellished version is our reality.  If you embellish a second time, that memory will be saved and the more you fib, the more and more the story goes askew.  I could go on and on about this, but the point I am trying to make is this: when you say that something is from God enough times but it really isn’t, pretty soon your RAS or more importantly your heart, will believe it. 

Life can get tricky when you start believing and acting on things that aren’t true.  It’s just a hop, skip, and step from disappointment, discouragement, and rejection.  We set ourselves up believing God has breathed life into our circumstances, only to be disappointed by the less-than-fabulous outcome.  Now, I’m not saying God can’t meet you where you’re at and turn situations around for you, but what I am saying is that it’s a longer road.  When we detour from what He has for us, we put distance between ourselves and the ‘prize.’

Maybe, just maybe, if we were more honest with ourselves from the beginning, we wouldn’t need to detour.  If we got a little more comfortable with the whole idea that we don’t have all of the answers and we don’t necessarily see the right decisions every time, we would have less confused, hurting people in the world.  An attitude of humility could really do wonders for us – go figure. 

It’s funny to me, well interesting rather, when people tell me God told them to do a certain thing and coincidentally that thing lines up perfectly with their own ambitions and goals.  I want to say, ‘well, your god seems to give you what you want when you want it – where do I sign up?’  You see, when the God that I serve speaks, He usually is telling me to do something uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and in spite of me, not because He’s cruel, but because He is trying to get me to grow and take steps out of my own mess. As humans, we are creatures of habit, even if our habits are causing us pain, misery, and heartache, we will stick with them because the fear of the unknown is too daunting.  God loves us too much to watch us sit in our own filth.  He wants to show us things and have us experience freedom on a level we hadn’t been able to before. That’s the God I serve…a good God.

No one has all of the answers. At best, we all see our own little glimpse of the picture.  That’s why we need each other, to fill in the blanks.  Here’s the good news: He will never leave us nor forsake us.  Trust that God will bring you direction that is clear and concise at the time you need it most.  Trust in Him that the right path will be made known and He will be there to walk it with you the entire time.

How To Start A Revolution

In the modern day, convenience has surfaced to the top of what we strive for in terms of what we (especially in the western world) see as valuable.  We’ve all heard the term ‘microwave generation’, and that my friend, is what we are.  Take a look around your own home for a quick second.   What do you see?  A DVR so you can watch your favorite shows without the ‘hassle’ of commercials; an alarm clock where the largest button reads “Snooze”; a cell phone, ready to carry out your bidding to the ends of the earth and back in 2 seconds flat.  We have surrounded ourselves with all of these things in order to make our lives more convenient.  With or without our noticing, we have given convenience an increasingly prominent position in our society.

The convenience movement started long before we had technology making our lives so effortless.  It’s in our nature as humans.  We are all familiar with the idea of habits.  We get ourselves into the habit of something and our brains automatically make the decision to continue the habit without having to constantly consult our conscious mind.  It’s really very awesome to think that our minds and bodies have the power to run without us.  At some point, we no longer are dependent on ourselves to make decisions.  The process is completely self-sustaining.

We are creatures of habit.  We like to do things a certain way and keep doing them until the process no longer proves effective or the results are undesirable (and even sometimes after).  Change is constant and uncomfortable and well, inconvenient.  It requires movement and raising questions that we don’t always want to ask.  So we don’t bother.  We let habits creep up to steer the ship and pretty soon mutiny has taken place.  Your conscious mind is lulled to sleep and you aren’t making the decisions anymore – your habits are.

Passion is not fostered in an environment that doesn’t change.  Sometimes the church is the worst offender of abdicating to habitual cycles that are ineffective and outdated.  In the process we have made ourselves obsolete to the world and done the very relevant Gospel a horrible injustice.  Even though we may think that the modern church is on the edge of what God is doing, I wonder how many have stopped to ask God Himself.  How many of us have really gone after God with reckless persistence, asking Him to take us where no man has gone before and require of us what we ourselves cannot comprehend?  One quick glance at the effectiveness of the church today, and I can tell you, not many have.

The early church had no cycles.  How could they?  They were green in every way imaginable.  Processes, growth plans and evangelism strategies weren’t set out before the apostles by forerunners.  No, they had a very different method of executing what God told them to do.  They were completely dependent on God for all of the answers.  Completely.  Outside of God’s wisdom, there was no recourse for the troubles they had.  The problems they faced and issues they came up against had no case law on how to judge things or deal with them.  They had only Jesus to look to because He’s the only one who knew the plan.

Perhaps this is why they saw so much more fruit than the church of today sees.  Dependence on God demands proximity to Him.  The early church literally let God run the show and sought His wisdom for everything they did, even down to who should wash the tables, and guess what?  He had the answers they needed.  He had the plan and I submit this to you, had the first apostles been privy to the way things were going to take place, we would have a very different Bible today.  The early church worked because they followed His lead.  They didn’t have preconceived notions or opinions even on how Christianity should look.  God said ‘this is the best way’ and they took Him at His word.  And what happened?  They turned the world up-side-down- they had a revolution.

Its time for a revolution today-it’s been time.  One thing I know to be true: if discontent breeds long enough, revolution will occur.  It’s formulaic fact.  The endless, mindless cycles will break down and new, God-centered ideas will take their place.  Christianity calls this a ‘great awakening.’  I call it church.

Convenience can be a great thing, but when it stops us from depending on God, there is nothing more detrimental or digressive.   Vive la Révolution!

The Message of Grace

Over the past few months, I have been literally running into the word ‘grace’ right and left.   It’s like somehow I missed the memo about the new craze.  Here I was, still trying to keep up with the gluten-free fad, and BAM – the grace message blindsided me.  At first, I was uncertain but open to hear what people were saying and as I dug a little further, I found something to be a common denominator.  I couldn’t get away from the fact that sometimes when people would use the word ‘grace’, it felt like a misnomer.  How can that be?  Grace is one of the foundational principles of the Gospel, let alone the Bible.  So, I did some research.  At the risk of sounding cliché, I am going to include the etymology of the word grace.  (Please note that the following is from the Online Etymology Dictionary and is subject to their scruples and not my own.)

Grace (v): c.1200, "to thank," from O.Fr. gracier, from grace (see grace (n.)). Meaning "to show favor" (mid-15c.)

Grace (n): late 12c., "God's favor or help," from O.Fr. grace "pardon, divine grace, mercy; favor, thanks; elegance, virtue" (12c.), from L. gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude" (cf. It. grazia, Sp. gracia), from gratus "pleasing, agreeable," from PIE base *gwere- "to favor"

It seems to me, and I may be generalizing here, that the word ‘grace’ was formed to portray the idea of favor or help.  It is commonly held that grace was instituted in the world at the same time sin was introduced.  It was, in essence, the antidote for the fall of man.  However, the point is this: we as Christians believe that God has looked at us as His children and through the eyes of mercy or compassion, He restored us to our rightful place. Now, we live in a state of grace, whereby we are in right standing with God.  That is the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

However, although I understood grace to be the vehicle, I couldn’t shake that tugging in my heart that I was still missing something.  Isn’t that the way God does it?  He plants a small seed and then let’s you figure out the mystery.  I love that process with God because you learn so much more than if He just came right out and told you the answer.  It’s like you pick up mini-truths on the way, and wouldn’t you know that is exactly what happened?!  As I was spending time with God, I started to think back to a time that He revealed to me what His unconditional love was.  During that specific time, I was experiencing hurt and rejection on a level I hadn’t ever known before.  Through God’s mercy for my situation, He surrounded me with a feeling I could never describe.  It was so overwhelming, I literally had to pull my car over to the side of the road and I just wept uncontrollably.  As I was remembering that time, all of the sudden I realized something.  It was God’s love that was overwhelming and undeniable.  It was His love that was captivating and empowering.  It was love.

You may be sitting here scratching your head thinking ‘did I really just read through all of this for a argument on semantics?’  Don’t worry; it’s only partly semantics.  Love is the root here, not grace.  God’s grace is sufficient for me and absolutely is by all means amazing, but it’s God’s love that is at the core of everything.  Love is the cause and everything else is the effect.  His love is what motivates Him to even possess grace or mercy.  Look at this beautiful passage of scripture:

 “But God—so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us” Eph 2:4 (AMP)

Imagine, His love is so intense, so wonderful, so great, that it must be satisfied.  Picture that.  A love that is so unending, so pure that it won’t let Him turn away from mankind, even in the despair and horrible mess it continually finds itself in.  A love that single-handedly undoes a person while making them feel like they can approach Him completely unashamed.  It’s much greater than any kind of love we experience between ourselves.  It’s multi-dimensional.

You see, as I was coming to this realization, I myself began to become conscious of the fact that grace in and of itself is just one facet of God’s love.  It’s just one expression.  That doesn’t make it any less real; it just makes it one of many forms.  I would submit to you that judgment and discipline are also each a facet of God’ love.  We know the Bible says that God chastens him whom He loves (Prov 3:12) and so in a world where love is at the center of who God is, grace and judgment can coexist.  Isn’t that so like God?  He loves to use foolish things to confound the wise.  His ways are so much higher than ours and His design has taken all factors into account.

The entire reason we can be in right standing with God is firstly because He loves us.  His grace is just an outpouring of that love.  Did Jesus take all of our punishment and calamity at the cross?  Of course.  He took our sin upon Himself and so became the spotless lamb.  Does that mean that we are never going to have consequences to our actions? Absolutely not.  The crucifixion didn’t come to replace God’s love, it came to satisfy the trespass of mankind.  Consequences are a very real part of our actions, and yes, sometimes through grace, we are spared from our own consequences, but not always.  You see God, like a parent, sees the mess we’ve made and then uses the matter to teach us how to avoid that same issue.  Sometimes, the best way to do that is to let us suffer the consequences. 

In His incomparable love, He cares for us more than any person is even capable of.  That’s why we can read scriptures in the Bible that may seem harsh and understand that God’s love has taken every possible course of action into account.   If there were a better way to deal with the situation, God would use it. 

“you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”1 Cor 5:5 (ESV)

The above referenced scripture is a perfect example of what may seem harsh, but notice the end of the scripture is laced with love: “so that his spirit may be saved…”.  The Lord was using this to show that He not only cared about that man’s spirit, but that He also knew that the consequence of the man’s action would eventually give the man the ability to save himself from his own mess.

To sum it all up, we must take this into consideration:

“… And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Eph 3:17-19 (NIV)

No one can know the depth or width or height of God but the Bible does tell us that we are able to understand the measurements of His love, and thereby be filled to all the fullness of God.  We may never understand why circumstances are the way that they are, but what we do know for sure is that God’s nature is love.  He is to be trusted, revered, approached, and befriended.  He will never leave us nor forsake us, and so trusting, we believe that He knows what is best for us.  We sign that over to Him and allow Him to have His way. 

I invite you to explore God’s love on a level you may not have before.  Challenge your view of God – is it love-centered?  Are you secure in the love He has for you?  Push everything you know aside and just allow God to expose Himself to you.  I guarantee you will find love in a way you’ve never experienced before in your life.

Until next time…grace and love xoxo

My Big Apple Epiphany

Currently, I am sitting in the lobby of a hotel in the middle of Manhattan.  So, since I won’t be blogging from the comfort of my own home, you may need to be warned that this blog is going to have a slightly different flavor than the others.  To be forewarned is to be forearmed.  So yous guys should arm yourselves…hahaha.

This week I have spent a great deal of time alone, walking around the ‘greatest city on earth.’  It is worth mentioning that I have been to the city countless times and spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours here.  But, ‘living’ here is a new experience for me.  In all of that time spent here, I have developed some 'rules' about how to survive in NYC: keep your head down, don’t smile at anyone, and walk fast even if you don’t have a clue where you’re going, etc.  You see, it is the worst possible insult to be thought of as a tourist here.  If the native New Yorkers think you are, you’ll be asked five million times if you want to go to a comedy club, give money to the homeless, or the greatest of all offenses... purchase I ♥ NY paraphernalia.

As someone who lacks affinity for any sort of unannounced touch, Times Square isn’t one of my particularly favorite places to begin with.  However, I am a hopeless sanguine, so the flashing lights and swirling energy naturally attracts me.  But, out of all the times I have been to the city, even though I follow every rule, people can always tell I am not from here.  Over time, because of this, I have grown to absolutely despise Times Square. And wouldn’t you know, that my hotel that was supposed to be near Central Park, ended up being right off of, you guessed it, Times Square. 

So, I have had to adapt.  If I want anything (including Starbucks), I have to walk outside the hotel and into the madness of Times Square.  But, a funny thing as happened to me here.  Like all funny things that happen to me, it has shifted my opinion about several things.  Maybe it was out of rebelliousness or just the spirit of trying something new, but for whatever reason this week, I began to break my rules.

On my way to a Hillsong service last night, for instance, I had to hail a cab.  Now usually, I just tell the cab driver the address and let the little TV in the back of his seat drown out the awkward silence of two strangers sitting in a closely confined, deathly rapid, moving vehicle.  But last night I decided to mute the TV and talk to the cabbie...despite my hard and fast rule. We had a $7.50 ride and guess what?  I learned so much about another human being that I would normally have no way of getting to know, in that short time.  So, on the way back I did the same thing, and much to my surprise, the driver asked which borough I was from.  When I told him I was from Connecticut, he didn't believe me.  In fact, Pascal (his name) still thinks I was joking.

It’s happened to me a few times this week, actually.  I have been mistaken for an NYC native 4 or 5 times in the week that I have been here.  This may seem like a menial thing to anyone else, but for me it’s anything but lackluster.  You see, it’s not about the cab driver, being viewed as a tourist, or even NYC, it’s that my formula didn’t work. 

For those of you that may not know, my father is my pastor.  Not in a weird home-church sort of way, but in the way that he pastors a church that I attend.  From the pulpit this Sunday, dad was talking about how past experiences can build your ideas about how the future is laid out.  And what's really disturbing about that is that our experiences may be totally misconstrued.  Your experiences are subject to this world and what you have seen of it and since when is one view the final word on anything?

As Christians, we are supposed to find our reality in Christ.  Natural experiences are just a tool to practice what we know to be true in the spiritual realm.  You hear people who have died and come back say that the reality after you die is so much more real than anything they have experienced on earth.  That’s because it is.  We are spiritual beings before we are natural beings.  Christ himself embodies this for us (no pun intended).  He was and is and is to come.  So, always having been it was just for a small period of time that he took on a natural form. 

Are we so much different?  I would contend that we aren’t that much different at all (with the exception of the whole ‘God’ thing).  We can’t afford to get lost in what we’ve seen or been a part of in the past, because that’s not our reality.  God has formulas, of course, but they aren’t usually what we think they are.  To be honest, we shouldn’t even be worried about trying to figure them out.  It’d be like explaining astrophysics to a pre-schooler.  Our main job is to find out who He is and believe me, that can take a whole lifetime.

I realized something while I have been here—that I didn’t really know who New Yorkers were and that my past experiences had very much defined my assessment of the city.  And then I realized something that really hit home.  Maybe I have done this with God.  Maybe in some areas, I have let my past experiences dictate to me what kind of God I serve, instead of entering into the reality of what His Word and character actually say.  You see my Bible says that He is my healer, my deliverer, my strong tower, my help in time of need, my savior, my creator, my all-sufficient, the great I Am, the author and finisher of my faith, my friend, my love, my safety, my ruler, my King, my God.  That’s my reality.  He’s my reality.

Everything else is just passing, fleeting.  I think we get so caught up sometimes in what ‘works.’  It’s easy to do.  In the words of my very wise older sister, Rachel Adams, “Reality smacks you in the face and then hands you a trust issue, so who wants to repeat that?”  I love that because it’s so true.  Instead of fighting back or walking away, we just accept the trust issue and thank reality by playing according to it’s rules.  Not anymore for me.  I’m done with that cycle, and the gloves are coming off.   I’m here to bring the reality of the Kingdom of God to my experiential reality and blindside it with a Brooklyn right hook.

You can never ‘unknow’ something once you know it.  I will never go back to being the tourist in NYC, because now I know how not to.  The same is true with God.  I know now, that His reality is higher than mine and honestly much better.  So be encouraged by my Big Apple Epiphany.  Maybe you have some preconceived notions in areas that are based on a distant memory of what you thought you knew.  We all do.  Find it, recognize it, and deal with it like a real New Yorker. :)

^My hotel lobby, aka birthplace of my blog^