but I want a miracle to feed the hungry

There’s this billboard on the side of the road that just irks me every time I see it.  It says:

“You won’t need a miracle to feed the hungry”

The billboard is for the Iliff School of Theology, which upholds a “United Methodist identity and its liberal Christian heritage, grounded in scriptures and traditions, critical thinking, and openness to emerging truths, including those derived from science, experience, and other faith traditions. In a world fragmented by religious and ideological conflicts, Iliff promotes theological scholarship and dialogue to foster transformative possibilities for humanity and nature” (iliff.edu) & (question2learn.com).

To me this billboard says, cling to your religious traditions because they are your traditions, but be open to other religious traditions because they might be true too, because you have the right to study religion do it here because we will teach you that everything supernatural about your religion is questionable at best and the ‘revolutionary’ things that Jesus did are really socialist and you can actually do them on your own as long as you are well educated about conflict resolution, community organizing,  race & gender relations, other religions, and socialist economic theory.

To me this absolutely typifies the humanist viewpoint that has invaded not only the mindset of the world, but also many of our churches as well.  Humanism says that we can do it without God, that its all about self-accomplishment-about bringing glory to self.  Humanism educates us to the point where we don’t need God because man is the highest authority and we have reached the pinnacle of self-actualization where we are actually able to solve all the world problems.

I don’t want to feed the hungry, solve issues of systemic poverty in the underdeveloped world, bring good government, teach good business skills, mediate conflict revolution, end human trafficking & abortion, and theorize ways to bring justice to those needing it, without Jesus.

I do want to do all those things but I want to do them because I want to live a supernatural life where I heal the brokenhearted by pointing them to the only One that can heal all their wounds, set the slaves free by freeing them from their chains of brokenness, self abuse, addition and self-hatred, feed the hungry by inventing new aids for agriculture-new business plans for poor farmer-but teaching them how to feast on the bread of life , and bring peace to nations that have been at war for thousand of year purely because I am friends with the Man called Peace.

lean

I feel a bit at my wits end.  I feel like I don’t have anything to give anymore.  I feel like I am having to relearn a lot of things.  I feel like I am going to go insane.  I feel slightly out of control.  I feel discombobulated.  Out of focus.

I’m pretty sure this is good.  I’m pretty sure that this puts me in the place where I have to lean in.  I lean in and He leans in.  And I am close to His heart and He is close to mine.

and so I say that I am dark but lovely.

the difference

O.K.  I think that I have officially met my end.  I just remembered right now that I haven’t written yet today.  It’s 10pm so I guess that I could have remembered at 11.30pm!  I’m sitting here trying to think of something productive to say.  Something that new, something thats not been said before, something that will inspire and motivate and make people wanna go higher.

Hm…maybe I am setting the standard too high for myself….well…whatever…..this is what I have for today…..

I’m in a battle.  My flesh will lose.  My Spirit will win.

Its my choice.  Those who walk in the Spirit do not carry out the deeds of the flesh.  The deeds of the flesh are anything that hinder me from walking in the fullness of my relationship with God. I must choose to walk with the Holy Spirit as my full time guide, my ever constant love partner.

So hear’s the question then that people are always bound to ask.  ”Well, what about not getting caught up in legalism and being ‘holier then thou’.  And here is my simple response.

The only difference between holiness & legalism is love.

no effort in love

“Real prayer comes not from gritting out teeth but from falling in love”

(Richard Foster, Prayer, pg 3)

It takes no effort to pray.  It takes not effort to lift up my eyes to heaven and ask my daddy for what He already wants.  I don’t have to grit my teeth because I know that my father will not give me a stone when I ask for bread, that he loves to give good gifts to his children (Mat. 7:11).

Prayer is just intimacy between two lovers.  Prayer is the communication of relationship.                                                                                           Prayer is the highest satisfaction that I have because it was the reason that I was created.

I don’t pray because I am commanded to pray.

I pray because I love the one that I am speaking to.

more simple truth

I don’t always understand the Bible.  But I believe it.

Life sometimes appears to contradict the Bible but I choose not to create a theology that  allows my brokenness to thrive while denying God’s power and love.

He is good, but He is also a judge.  This would appear to be one of those contradictions but it’s not.  He can only be a judge because He is good.

His pruning us is an act of love.  You are bearing fruit so you must be pruned in order to bear more fruit.  This is usually painful but very good.

to ask without measure

I have rediscovered the ‘Prayer of Jabez’.

You can stop laughing now….or at least stop looking at me funny.   I know that this book as gotten a lot of flack.  In fact  I remember when it came out 10 years ago that I was a healthy skeptic at best.  Maybe it was my age, maybe it was a bit of spiritual pride but I thought that the fuss over the book was a bit to prosperity gospel centered.  A bit too much of the ‘give me everything I want’ mentality.  And maybe to some it was, and maybe to others it changed the way that they related with God and the world.

I rediscovered the book about a month ago when I was in DC.  And now I understand that this little book contains most of the things that I’ve been contending for and going towards for the last two years.

This book is about big prayers, prayers that change the way you live life so that you can bring glory to God.  This book is about having an expectant spirit, about asking God to give you what He want to give you.  This book is about asking for more.

It’s not selfish.  It’s living in our identity.  It’s learning to live as princes, not paupers. It’s living without measure, without limits because thats who our Father does and we are made in His image.

The Prayer:

“ Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your and would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil’  (1 Chron.  4:9-10)

“The spirit of poverty is not about money, its about living with meager possibilities”-Graham Cook

If our nation

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”

–G.K Chesterton, What I Saw In America, Chapter 19, 1922.

If our nation denies God.  If our nation says that religion and politics don’t mix.  If our nation believes that morality has no place in law.  Then our nation has failed.

a generation of inheritance

I am well aware that I live an extraordinary life.

I just got done skyping with my lovely friend Kate Markey.  She just happens to be in Bangladesh right now, bringing Heaven to Earth.   We talked about the usual things that friends talk about….boys, learning foreign languages, funny stories about interesting situations, books we’re reading, theology, what God is doing in our hearts, and a range of others.  Thank God for technology; its made missionaries lives so much easier. I’m chatting with an amazing friend who lives literally on the other side of the world and it’s just normal.

I love that I have friends all over the world.  I love that I could go to almost every region of the earth right now and be with people that I love, or at least be with people that know people that I love.  I love that I get to hear first-hand accounts of the incredible things that are happening in the farthest reaches of the earth.  Today on my Facebook an update came from my friend Greg, who is leading a Fire & Fragrance DTS outreach team all over Europe.  Today they were in Amsterdam worshipping in the Red Light District and a guy comes to know Jesus.  They were’t evangelizing, they were worshipping!!  This is the power of the Presence of God.

I love that I have the amazing privilege to be a part of a movement that is contending for an outpouring of the Spirit that the world has never seen, an outpouring that will disciple nations, an outpouring that will bring lasting Revival, an outpouring that will see abortion and human trafficking meet their ends.   This movement is only a small portion of the pie, but I am honored to be even just a small portion.

I’m a part of the generation that will see the hearts of the Fathers turned to the sons, and the hearts of the sons returned to the Fathers.

I’m a part of a generation that is seeing incurable diseases, depression, suicide, and every infirmity know to man healed in an instant when the name of Jesus is spoken.

I’m a part of the generation that will be alive when every people group will have heard the amazing news of a God who became man and died and rose again for love.

It’s not because we earned it.

It’s because our fathers fought for it.

It’s because its our inheritance.

an open door

The only productive thing I did today was pluck my eyebrows.

Seriously.  It was just one of those days where anytime I tried to something I would get terribly distracted, out of focus and just generally bleh feeling.  I don’t really have many days like this so when they come they really seem to get me.  Maybe adding to the grossness of having an off day  I’ve not been sleeping very well lately.  I just can’t fall asleep, and when I try to take some Tylenol PM it so completely knocks me out there I am nearly incapacitated the next day.  No good.

I feel a bit vulnerable in my spirit.  Kinda like the weird and very amazing moments when someone just has to say the name Jesus and I burst into tears—but when I actually try to spend time with Him I feel completely out of it.

I think that God is wooing me.

He put this song in my heart today (Its sung a lot during Jon Thurlow, one of my fav worship leaders at IHOP, sets and it always gets me)….

No reservations, no walls, just an open door in my heart for you.  I wanna give all thats inside of my heart to you.

I was singing this all day to Jesus; my heart would ache, tears well up and I would know that even if If have a crappy day and I try and try to connect with Him, all He wants is my love.

It just occured me this second though that maybe today He was singing this song over me.  Revelation is something that I’ve asking God for for a while.  I want to know Him, every bit of Him and scripture says that we are supposed to ask to know that which is unknowable, so I with all boldness, faithfulness, and perseverance ask.

Its so important to be able to understand the movings of the Spirit.  God doesn’t hide His face because He in a bad mood, or because I do something wrong and He wants to punish me or  just because He feels like it.  God hides his face because He wants to be found.   He wants me to find him.

It’s like I am 5 and playing hide and seek with my daddy.  I count to 100, missing half of the numbers, and then start squealing whilst running around looking in all the obvious places.  And when I find my daddy He opens his arms wide and cries with such affection in his voice “you found me!  you found me!”.

He wants me to find Him!!!  He ripped the veil while hanging on that cross of love and doesn’t want there to be  a wall between us!  No reservations, no walls….just an open door in His heart for me to find out things that the ancients longed to know, the things that He has hidden in His heart, just waiting for an eager heart of love to ask.  An open door in His heart to reveal to me everything I ask.

That’s my daddy.  A day that seems a loss to me is really a gain to God.  Because its a day that makes me long for Him a bit more, makes me want to search out for Him a bit more.   He hides His face only to open the door to His heart.

—–

“ Its the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter” (Prov 25.2).

“ The will of God is be here, manifest and near….The prophets do not speak of  the hidden God, but of the hiding God.  His hiding is a function not His essence. …There are many doors through which we have to pass in order to enter..and none of them are locked”              (Man is not alone, Abraham Joshua Heshel, pg 153)

the american dream

Its Tuesday so that means its ‘American Idol’ day.  Yup.  I love it, seriously.  I love that I can watch a show where people who actually have talent can try to actually make money at what they love to do. Its also the same reason why I love ‘Project Runway’.   I know many a starving artists and so I just love seeing that it is possible to actually have all of your dreams fulfilled.

I will admit that I have an interesting tension with the American Dream.  I hate that it generally makes people think they have to have the 5 bedroom house, 2 dogs, 3.5 children, and a 401k, while I really love that it lends to us a spirit of overcoming the impossible.

The term “American Dream” was coined by James Truslow Adams in his book, The Epic of America.

“It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

So at least originally it wasn’t about getting a house, it was about being who you were created to be and others recognizing you as that.  So the American Dream is really about honor; honoring others in allowing them to be all that they are ‘innately capable’ of, as well as honoring yourself and allowing yourself to dream that you are capable to do what you’ve always dreamed of doing.

Interesting…..I need to chew on this a bit more.