Coming Home Together

There's going to come a day where there no longer exists pain, suffering, starvation, mission trips will be replaced by vacations, and all will be good. Everyone will be fully alive in Jesus and we will, as George MacDonald wrote, "be good merry children in the great house of our Father. I think then we shall be able to pass into and through each other's very souls as we please, knowing each other's thought and being, along with our own, and so being like God." (The Heart of George MacDonald). How wonderful! Lately, I've been looking at Impressionistic art. That's a Degas above, "Ballet Rehearsal." It captivated me when I saw it; not just because I have a daughter who might be one of those girls above, practicing for the big show, but also because of what it images. It images a soft, beautiful time. A time where nothing is wrong. All is well. So well, there is even a violinist off to the side playing music for the girls to rehearse to. Do we not long for this type of moment in our lives? Yet it is so hard to be found. Moments like these will abound in heaven with Jesus though.

In this world, the timid, non gifted girl in high school is shoved to the library even though in her heart she would like to be at the ballet practice. Same thing on the opposite side of the world for the Thai prostitute who caught a glimpse of a ballet when she was a teenager, just before she fell into the darkness. In our Father's house, we will all be alive. The most untalented "nerdy" girl, as the world labels, will be the star of the show who receives roses from her Daddy. So will the starving girl in Sudan and the 40 year old prostitute in Asia. They will all be there, fully alive and restored, body, soul, mind, and heart. And so will you!

You will be there if you are saved by Jesus' blood and you will be fully alive in your heart with God, our Spouse, right there enjoying your heart's desires with you. If you want to do ballet, why not have Jesus teach you? He's the best at it :)

We put ourselves into saving people, preaching the gospel, "going to the nations," but what is our end goal through this? What does a world saved for God look like? Some kind of earth transformed into an ontological light that shines toward God? No, not really. God has put eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). All of our hearts. And he wants us to share what we have with each other, here and in heaven. He wants us to not just share the news of Jesus' salvation, but also how Jesus will restore their hearts in intimacy with himself. And that gives everyone hope, because they can finally delight in Jesus, and know that they will get their heart's desires through delighting in him (Psalm 37:4). And this is the rub of sharing Jesus with others, we have to find out their hearts. What do they desire in their hearts? Whatever it is, through the process of sharing Jesus being The Way, we need to know their heart's desires so they too can know God will give them to them in this romance with Jesus.

When it's all done and we are in our Daddy's house, we will all be one, imaging our Lover Jesus to one another all the time. In those who do ballet, we will see Jesus' gracefulness on the stage reflected a thousand times over in a nightly performance at the theatre (had to do the "British" spelling of theater there. Lol). Those who do music, it will be like listening to God play the violin when we go to the concert in Heaven. We will be taught by God (Isaiah 54:13), and do everything with God our Beloved Spouse. And we will enjoy each other's imaging of God through it all. Not only that, but we will know each other fully. There are no secrets in Heaven, no one "out of the in-crowd;" we will all be best friends in our Fathers house. We will all know each other and be known by each other fully (1 Corinthians 13:12). Like MacDonald said, we shall be able to pass through each other's souls and know one another. It will be a festival of love in Heaven, never ending, forever multiplying our oneness and intimacy with our Beloved Jesus and our Father together with one another in everything we do. Even ballet performances and nights at the theatre :)

Please Help!

God brought me to tears as I watched a video a couple weeks ago on Sudan and how children there badly need food. My wife and I have decided we are going to start giving some of our tithe towards feeding severely malnourished children in impoverished countries. It took me years before I really got judged on how I was selfish with my money and being responsible for what I earn. We could talk and talk on personal responsibility with money, but really the important thing as brothers and sisters in Christ is that we help feed these poor children and families. $10, $20, $30, or more is plenty to keep these children alive for another day. I sincerely ask you to consider in your heart giving a portion of what you earn towards this cause. There are people across the world starving to death that need our help as Americans (and therefore, for the most part, inherently better off than the rest of the world). Right now, there are an estimated 4.3 million people in Sudan who need help because of the drought that is occuring there. I really like Rod Parsley's ministry for giving to Sudan and other places that are in need of assistance for food (they are monetarily ethical from what I have read in their church statement). You can give to help feed Sudanese people in need of food here (http://orders.rodparsley.com/Order_First.aspx?ostr=y949kUtrP8c%3d). Also you can help support the fight against sex trafficking here as well (https://orders.rodparsley.com/Order_FirstB.aspx?ostr=zsYxAcyP6Q0%3D) [warning: if you are sensitive to content concerning the fight against sex trafficking, I believe on this site they have an audio testimonial from a woman who used to be in the trade come on automatically when the site comes up]. And you can also get more information on the fight against sex trafficking here (http://www.allthingsnewcampaign.org/) [again, the content can be intense at this site as well as stories of ex-sex slaves are told on here] and if you would like to buy jewelry from women that used to be in the sex slave trade in Thailand, you can at this amazing site (http://www.nightlightinternational.com/) We bought some jewelry for our moms for Christmas from this site, it was very pretty and very special. Definitely check it out as the profits support women leaving the prostitution lifestyle to support them and get them back on their feet.

Another one of the charities that provide for people in bad need is Action by Churches Together (http://www.act-intl.org). There are conflict and displacement in the Congo, earthquakes in China, flooding and cholera outbreak in Zambia (these are wonderful people; we had the Zambian vocal group come to our church to sing acapella worship, Zambian style, which was so beautiful!), Haiti is in need from the earthquake, floods and landslides in El Salvador, and much more. Many people need our financial help and if you make a note to ACT, they will donate 100% of your money straight to the cause (not to overhead). There are many more organizations out there too if you have a preference to support someone else. The important thing is that we do help with something. Prayer is always the strongest thing, much stronger than money, but if you feel in your heart you should give, please do so. (And if you have a family, adoption is always an option too! Either from America, or elsewhere! My wife and I want to adopt a boy from Africa and a girl from Latin America. After I went to Honduras and saw the little girls there in the ghetto and heard they will be pregnant by the time they are 14 and now I have a beautiful daughter, I badly want to adopt and save a girl from that)

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit tonight, tomorrow, and this week! (Philemon 1:25)

Love! Passion, Freedom, Joy in Jesus' Embrace. Living as Jesus' Beloved

God is love. 1 John 4:8

The greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)

There is nothing greater in life than being in love with God. Nothing more intimate, nothing more joyful, nothing more pleasurable than being in Jesus' embrace. It is really something you must experience for yourself. To know God intimately, more so than how Adam knew Eve when they had their first children. This is the spiritual intimacy Jesus desires with us. A closeness and joy in his embrace that John Eldredge and Brent Curtis said is "an intimacy much more sensuous, much more exotic than sex itself." (The Sacred Romance. p. 161) A lot of people might have reservations about this kind of intimacy with Jesus. Words like intimate, naked, romance, passion, ecstasy are rarely used today to relate our communion with Jesus and if they are it is only in some vague spiritual sense of transcendent, ontological "highness." Definitely not in the torrid-love-affair-at-the-Four-Seasons-in-Turks-and-Cacos-sense. But it's completely Biblical. God calls himself our Bridegroom many times in the Bible (Song of Songs, Isaiah 54:5, 62:5, Jeremiah 3:14, Ezekiel 16, 23, Hosea 2, Matthew 9:15, Matthew 22:1-14, Matthew 25:1-10, John 3:29. 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:29-32, Revelation 19:7-10). He wants to serenade you and woo your heart (Zephaniah 3:17) He wants you!

If you haven't let Jesus into your heart and your life as your Lover, it is the most incredible, wonderful, joyful experience in the world. And don't let the thoughts of, "Is this ok?" or "I don't think God loves me like that" or even "I could never be God's beloved spouse" get in your way. Instead, get away for a short time with God. Go alone to your room, like he told us to pray (Matthew 5), don't take your phone or anything else except your Bible and maybe a journal too (if you like to journal), and ask him, "Jesus, I want to be your lover and for you to be my Lover." And let the Holy Spirit take over you. Tell him, "I surrender to you Jesus." Worship him and invite him into you as your Lover God. Enjoy the most intimate love relationship you will ever have for eternity. And if there are times when he seems distant, please don't give up! Jesus desires you, pursue him and he will have you. Knock at his door and he will let you in (Revelation 3:20). Fall into his love and feel how much he loves you, how much he enjoys you. "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." Isaiah 62:5 NIV.

Why Would It Be Any Other Way? Why We All Have Had Stockholm Syndrome and How to Get Rid of It

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33 NIV

How true is this definition from one of my bookmarked fav sites J Wikipedia concerning Stockholm syndrome:

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological shift that occurs in captives when they are threatened gravely but are shown acts of kindness by their captors. Captives who exhibit the syndrome tend to sympathize with and think highly of their captors. When subjected to prolonged captivity, these captives can develop a strong bond with their captors, in some cases including a sexual interest.

Lol. Sounds like a bad relationship. Right? This is the blog I’ve wanted to write for awhile. Not for any other reasons than, 1) we’ve all struggled with things that terribly hurt our hearts and 2) there are a lot of people who struggle with this right now. And it needs to be talked about.

So let’s do it.

Many people have been terribly hurt in this world. Jesus was right when he said we will have trouble in this world. A lot of people take horrific heart wounds at the hands of ex’s, many of all ages have been hurt by their parents who should have provided in one way but failed to, friends stab their friends in the back, brother goes against brother, sister against sister. In the middle of this, if the hurt is coming from a loved one like a significant other or a parent, many can develop almost Stockholm syndrome-like symptoms. Case and point: people in relationships who throw away their purity just to keep their boyfriend or girlfriend from breaking up with them. And they rationalize it by saying, they are in love. I’m a married man with a daughter and I can say securely, that is not love. I waited on my wife, I never had a girlfriend before her, she was the first girl I ever kissed, and she was worth every second 10x over of the wait (as hard as it was at times). If you are girl or a guy in a relationship like that and the person you are with you know you are not destined by God to be with as your husband or wife, run like heck!! Get out of there and save yourself. Save your heart, save your body, save your mind. Leave and run as fast as you can. Jesus lived as one of us and was tempted in every possible way. And he said for us to run away from things that want us to sin, especially sexual sins against our own body and others bodies, and hurt our relationship with God (Genesis 39:12) Our bodies are suppose to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and we are to be intertwined with God in spirit and body all day in worship. And that is how we are to get enjoyment and joy in God and worshiping him. Let Jesus’ words woo you, not some guy or some girl or just want to use you for their own pleasure. They honestly don’t care about your heart, regardless of what they say. Leave, run, go! The Holy Spirit will help you pack your bags. And he will help repair your heart (he won’t leave you alone in pain by following him. He’s our God). Jesus said,

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." Luke 9:57-62 (NIV)

If you are in a relationship like this, leave. You are worth more than you can imagine, or anyone can. God sees you as a beautiful princess or a strong prince fit for hiskingdom as his spouse, not someone else’s. Which is why he says that we will not be married in his Kingdom in heaven (Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 20) We are all Jesus’ and only his to do with as he pleases. And what he pleases usually is what pleases us and gives us joy and pleasure. But if you’re stuck in the mud with someone like this, run away. I say this as a brother in our family from the Father.

Maybe you have already done that part. Now, long after the dust has settled, the war has been fought and is over, the ache, the pain, the memories, the thoughts, the complete and utter brokenness is still there and our lives become like one living in a lean-to composed of the wreckage of what used to be. Here are some thoughts about how to burn it all and get healed:

1. Remove everything that reminds you of what happened. Delete the music, burn your notes/papers/pictures, stay away from places, times, and things that bring back memories. Get rid of it all now, if not sooner. And make it a important to God by saying it is a sacrifice to Jesus. We are to sacrifice all of us, including our pain, to God. So burn it as a sacrifice and it will be pleasing to our Beloved Jesus.

2. Replace the void with a romance with Jesus. When, not if, you think about the past (or Satan tries to make you think about it) replace it with passionate, bare worship of Jesus in your spirit and heart. Give yourself fully to him. Romance him and let him romance and woo you. Replace the pain with pleasure of being completely naked in Jesus’ arms and being free finallyin a romance with your Lover. Read Song of Songs and put you and God in the story and daydream about how crazy he is about you! Get rid of the old and put on the new. Get lost in a passionate love affair with the Son of God.

3. Surround yourself with new things. If your friends or family keep bringing it up, tell them to not to talk about it with you. If that’s a problem, take a hiatus from them. Surround yourself with Godly people who will help with the restoration of the heart. And pour out yourself to someone you love. Let yourself have a good cry. “It is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2. NIV) And then let go. And begin anew. With your Lover Jesus by your side you can take on the world. Replace those old, painful songs and movies and places with new, beautiful songs and movies and things and places. Begin new associations. Begin new life.

4. Once you have won the war, and you will win because God always gives us the victory in our wars, don’t be bitter towards those who allied against you. Don’t harbor hatred or pain (that’s a tough one to do, btw), but let it go to Jesus. He will take revenge for you. Paul wrote in Romans 12:19: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. The original verse Paul took that is from Deuteronomy 32:25: It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them." (NIV)

Jesus just wants you to move on and completely forget that pain and past. You also are not required by God live peacefully with them. You can completely live apart from them and never be around them again. It says, “If is is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Romans 12:18. (NIV) If not possible, ie if it causes you any pain, let it go. God will take care of them (as far as salvation, health, revenge, and prosperity and life goes). It’s no longer your concern or business. It’s God’s. Sometimes we obey Jesus Christ by notgetting involved any longer.

I sincerely pray as a brother in our family with our Father and Jesus our Beloved that if you are in this kind of situation, you will escape and be healed by our God Jesus Christ. My very best for you and yours and in Jesus find life and love once more and be set free from the sins in this world. Why would it be any other way than living completely freely in Jesus’ arms? Life is perfect there, forever and ever.

Faith

We are having our first rain of the summer right now in Oklahoma (subtracting the few popcorn storms we get during June). I love the rain. I'm sitting out on the porch listening to it drip quickly into the flowerbed. The birds across the street at the school and finding breakfast. The air is comfortably warm and damp. It's just a pretty, rainy morning. I've been having this problem with God lately. For some reason, I just can't get close to him. It's me and it's my fault; I know that much. But that wonderful intimacy that I have with him is just "on pause" it would seem. I go through this frequently in my relationship with Jesus. I'm still not sure why he allows me to go through it or allow me to do it to myself and us. But part of me just echoes David in Psalm 63:1, "In a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." I'm not really concerned about it being a detrimental problem for us; I have faith we will break through it and be close together. Perhaps later this morning.

"I slept but my heart was awake...my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure." Song of Songs 5:1,6 (NIV)

We all have things in life that just get through our heart's armor. And usually that is enough to break our day down with God. Mostly just because of the emotional reaction we get from thinking on the problem. If I was acting frustrated or snippy to my wife because my daughter is upset and I'm trying to do the laundry while also doing my math homework and work at the same time all the while performing a balancing act with the laptop, a stack of folded towels, and a cup of coffee, which I only would take on that much stuff at once because I'm ridiculous and just need to chill out, sit down and take a strong whiff and sip of coffee, breathe, and take one thing at a time, well then it's hard to find God and worship him when I refuse to sit down and chill. The more I take on at once, the harder it can be to surrender to Jesus. I know a lot of other people do not have that kind of problem, but they are dealing with one we all have as humans. And that's being deeply wounded by the heart and being stuck in that pain. How awful that is! And if you are going through that this morning or still have a bad taste of pain like that, I sincerely ask Jesus to completely heal you and take that out of your good heart. Folded towels and spilled coffee is nothing compared to taking shots in our hearts. Maybe from a painful breakup, or a parent who went out for a pack of cigarettes and didn't come back. It's things like these where we need Jesus' healing in our hearts more than ever; we need his presence and his touch and through that we have faith we will be healed. Or be transformed so that we don't care about spilled coffee and towels and what not.

One of the best ways I've uses to come out of the desert on a rainy, summer morning (how ironic, right?) is to talk. If you feel the Holy Spirit inside you slowly coming to you and asking for you to pursue him, then go for it! :) Drop everything and go for him! Because nothing else is really as important as he is. And then talk to him about it. And worship him and surrender to him. Or, if he is still distant, talk to your friends, your brothers, your sisters, your parents in our family of God. "Two are better than one." And if you don't want to have just two friends, have three! "A chord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9,11. NIV)

And always have faith. Our beautiful Lord Jesus is not going to leave anyone. He is our lovely God, our Lover, our future Spouse. Our Heavenly Father will not just go away. When we are in the desert, we just have to have faith that he will be back soon.

And he will.

Never will I leave you,
Never will I forsake you. Hebrews 13:5 (NIV)

Hope

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

I was about to write on faith, until I read that faith is being sure of what we hope in. So I thought it should probably wait. It's a good question though: What do we hope for? I've thought about that of myself and what do I really hope for in this world. I've come to these three things that I've been hoping for:

1. We are lovers of Jesus, so we hope to be one with him in spiritual intimacy as his spouse one day. So often we get bogged down in either the daily grind (if only the daily grind was just when we made our morning pot of coffee, things would be easier), or we get sidetracked by other "bigger" things in life (eg school, work, relationships, duties to ourselves or to others, and everything else). When deep in our hearts, we are continuously longing for that bare intimacy with God, always one with him in our souls and our minds. If only we could have that always. And we hope for a day when we really will have him, all day long. We will be on a perpetual honeymoon with our Lover where we are always one with him in intimacy.

2. We love each other and so we hope our brothers and sisters in our family of our Father made strong and beautiful in Jesus and see everyone come alive in God. How much we want this? We "invest" so much of our time in conversation, time, and prayer to Jesus so we can see others become who they were meant to be in Christ. We want truly live in a world were we see God imaged in the other members of God's family, all the time. For then we are surrounded by God's image and filled with God always. What a wonderful world we hope for!

3. We love others and so we hope to see our city fall for God. We hope to see our country serve God. We hope to see the world come together as one and worship Jesus as His beloved. We go to third world countries and play with children that live in ghettos so they will see our Father's love and how much he wants them to be in his family. We hope in seeing evil die and God's love flourish everywhere. And in this hope we sacrifice ourselves. We are led by the Spirit to be sent out to ghettos of nations where no one goes so they will know God's love.

Jesus said if we had faith as small as a mustard seed, we could move mountains. It's true. We can become fully alive in Jesus, fully restored, by hoping in his love for us. We hope in Jesus' love for us as our Lover. And so we can say, "I am my Lover's and my Lover is mine." (Song of Songs 6:3. NIV) For those just discovering the intimate, burning love Jesus has for us, we hope in him drawing near. And the same for those in the spiritual desert. We hope Jesus will come near and love us, enjoy us, desire us. And he does. We hope in his salvation and we are saved by him. We hope in our God and we find life. And then we truly live as God's beloved. We live imaging him, fully alive as his lover. We hope in our God :)

Faith, Hope, Love

This weekend, my old neighbor who lives next to my parent's house had a friend, a guy who raises "award-winning" irises, give him a TON of his irises. Well, my old neighbor had WAY too many, so he asked my mom if she or I would like some of them. I, having the green thumb that I do, said I'll take as many as I can get. We got 41 award-winning irises. It took me two hours to plant them yesterday. I can't wait till next Spring when they bloom! :) One of my good friends lives two houses down from me and my wife, and he's got the "picture-perfect-suburban-lawn" (ewww) and I always joke around with my wife that his yard and flowers are ugly compared to mine. Well, he might have some clean cut grass, but he doesn't have award-winning irises in his yard. 41 of them at that! Yeah, our yard in front of the house looks like a corn field with all of the iris stalks just chillin...

I always feel like a work-in-progress. I have this thing where I don't usually feel like I've accomplished anything. I feel like I just finished some stuff, and then there is some more stuff still to do. But there is hope that one day I will be finished. Like my garden. Like my relationship with Jesus. Like school and work. Like myself. Etcetera. The most important thing in life is worshiping Jesus. We need him bad. We need his love and intimacy. Paul said, "Faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13) We need, crave, desire God's love. We must have intimacy with our Beloved Jesus. We need our identity to come from our relationship with him. Today, spend some time with Jesus and ask him to show you who you are through his eyes. He thinks you are beautiful, wonderful, incredible. There is no one else he would rather listen to talk over coffee, no one he'd rather share a beautiful sunset, go swimming with in the hot summer sun, cuddle with on a winter's eve, or take out on a date to a midnight picnic under the stars than you. Let this free your heart! You are the beloved of the Son of God. You are the one he wants to marry. The one who has captured his heart. Be free from the darkness of this world. And be free from the darkness that's been put into your own heart as well. I really want to write a blog on this, and maybe I will this week, because we've all gone through hardships and pain in this world. And the romance with Jesus offers perfect healing. If you are going through loss, loneliness, pain, or hardships of the heart, let this romance with Jesus cover it and heal it. Give yourself away to Jesus and give away that pain. I know what that's like because I've been there myself. Most of us have. And bare, close intimacy with Jesus' Spirit, opening our hearts to him in surrender, is what we need for healing.

Faith and hope are the other two qualities we need oh so badly in this world. When we live fully with faith that Jesus will one day sweep us, we are not shaken by little things in the world. Who really cares if we get stuck in traffic and are 2 minutes late to work? It's easy to turn the other cheek when we are caught up in ecstasy with the bare intimacy of his Spirit. And we don't fret and worry over the details of tomorrow when our hope is in our marriage with God's Son. Be free from this world and live life today! Be a lamp on a lampstand for others! They need it and we need to live fully alive in our God Jesus Christ. Love freely, live for God and give of yourself to others! Viva la Vida in Jesus!