The Strength of a Woman

Last week, Jan and I were taking communion and praying together like we do each day. After we received the bread and wine, we prayed over our children, our marriage and some of you who are reading these words. It was still early in the day, and the morning sunlight was filtering through our living room window, casting a delicate shadow of Jan in prayer. I quietly raised my phone, and discreetly captured her image. 

I have a wife who still turns my head and makes my heart leap each time I see her. We are not short on romance. In many ways, we started dating 50 years ago and haven’t stopped. What I love most about Jan is not her beauty, the sound of her voice or how she walks, though those things do grab my attention. It is the strength she carries in the Spirit I admire most. She is a spiritual mother to hundreds of men and women around the globe. She has a quiet confidence that comes from a woman who does not have to prove herself. She walks in intimacy with God. In all our conversations about people, she never violates their trust. She carries honor, not sharing with me, or anyone the most intimate details about another person's life. I feel like I am living with a spiritual giant that daily slays hell with the weapons of truth, love, honor, and mercy.

If you are a woman your most significant strengths will be discovered in the Spirit, not in the shallow offerings of a broken image of womanhood that continually lives in fear of the beautiful process of aging, or self-doubt, or allowing someone other than God to form you into their image. The most appealing things to a man who is worthy to share life with you will not be found inside the garish pages of a glossy women's magazine but within the truth of Scripture. 

If you are a man and happen to be reading these words, your desire to be the protector and lover of your wife will be seen most clearly when you are strong enough to partner with her as your spiritual equal stepping forward together arm-and-arm in prayer and worship and a shared life in the Spirit. When a man and a woman live like this, their life will become a living advertisement of the power of oneness. That is the measure of true strength for both a man and a woman.

The Crowd

When the crowds came to Jesus, he did not try to hold them. He fed them and walked away. Compromise comes when we try to hold the crowd. 

If you have experienced a certain degree of success, you may have attached some of your ego and identity to that success. This is a challenge because it makes it harder to let go of what is known, familiar, and affirming. 

Jesus was always walking away from “success.” He healed people and walked away. He fed the crowds and walked away. He did this because he knew his success was not to be enshrined and become a stationary monument. Even his disciples wanted to build memorials to his ministry. 

In this transition, you will need to walk away from the crowds if you are to remain healthy spiritually. 

Compromise rears its ugly head when the applause and evidence of your success tell you to create systems to hold onto the blessing. You may find yourself trying to recapture what happened in the past or building a memorial to your successes. Let the crowds follow Jesus. The only safe place for them to assemble is around him. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place.)

A New Day

The sun is about to set marking the end of a natural day. This is not what is taking place in the Spirit with the promises God has given to you regarding your future, your family and your calling. As the natural sunset takes place, let it be a reminder that sunrise will begin marking the start of a new day for those things held dear and close to your heart. 

The Thieves of Our Rest

Many people think of Sabbath as a day to not do any labor. While that can be true and needed, the essence of Sabbath in this Covenant is much more. It is actually the person of Jesus Christ - the One we carry with us throughout the week. He is our Sabbath rest.

Those who live in that reality have come to understand Sabbath is not just the absence of doing. It is choosing to do less of what is not important. It is allowing God's Spirit to reveal those rest-less feelings we all have that surface in a place of rest.

These feelings reveal the unchallenged addictions we have that demand we always live in motion and productivity to prove our worth. These are the things God is after when we make room for a day or an hour of rest. They are thieves assigned to steal our joy of living and will always float to the surface and become visible when we choose to rest. 

Gothcas and Ridicule

Gotchas in public discourse are not prophetic. They are a form of ridicule. Pointing out the failures of others in an attempt to win an argument or prove a point is not a work of God’s Spirit. Participating in a cruel-hearted exposure is evidence that the person speaking is not working in concert with God. A truly prophetic voice will reveal the heart and will of the Father. Ridicule and mockery are not the delivery system of a message from God.   

Quiet Confidence

Somewhere in the journey 

we come to realize

we were being led 

to a place called

Quiet Confidence. 

Arriving there removes

our need to grasp, 

to be anxious, 

to suffer worry,

about our future,

about our present,

about eternity,

about anything.

The Test of Credibility

In the coming days, events will transpire on the national and international scene that will test the credibility of those who profess to follow Jesus Christ. God will offer each of us an opportunity to reposition our credibility solely in the life and witness of the Lord. 

It will be very tempting to become a parrot repeating the same lines of defense and excuse offered on all sides of these emerging cultural confrontations. The other option is to become a prophetic voice expressing the heart and will of God no matter what the cost. This choice will require courage and may dismantle some of our current relationships and alliances that were built upon the assumption that everyone would continue to move forward in lockstep parroting the same message. 

Protect your voice. Allow God alone to craft your message. Your credibility is being tested.

Generous Living

Yesterday, Jan and I went out on a celebration date. We have been blessed by God in this season of our lives and simply wanted to celebrate His goodness. I planned a lunch for us at a favorite restaurant followed by a movie.

After lunch, I visited the restroom. While in the restroom, I realized I had yielded to the convenience of not wanting to hassle with breaking a larger bill for a larger tip. I left a tip that was adequate even by a hard-working waitress standard, but it missed the mark of how God wants me to live. The Lord said, “Remember, I have not called you to leave just an adequate tip. I have called you to generous tipping.” 

When I left the restroom, Jan was standing by the register. Our waitress was also there preparing another customer's order. I looked over and noticed she had not yet processed our bill. I could still see my two $20’s and the bill on the table.  I walked over to the register and handed the waitress a larger bill and asked for some change. Just as I turned to go back to the table to leave the extra tip money, my cell phone rang. I wasn’t in my pocket. It was on the table! I forgot about my phone. Had I not obeyed the nudge of the Lord, I would have walked out and left my phone behind. 

The incident in the restaurant affirmed a few things for me. God has not called His people to leave behind a meager testimony. That testimony includes tipping. The difference between just an OK tip and a blessing is not much, but it matters. Also, had I not gone back to the register to up the tip amount, I would not have been in a place to hear my cell phone ringing on the table. Obedience is a form of protection. It allows God to position us in places where He can care for us and make sure we reconnect with things like forgotten cell phones. When we obey God, we allow Him to reveal just how much He cares about the little things in our life. It was also a reminder that Jan and I were in the restaurant for something not on the menu, but on God's heart.

By the way, the phone call was from a telemarketer. God can use anyone and anything to bless His kids, even an annoying telemarketer. 

Standing Before the Mercy of God

If someday all of us will stand before the God of mercy, should we not extend mercy to each other on this side of eternity? We are told in God’s word that mercy triumphs over judgment, even the judgments we have that make us feel like we are the one in the right.

Transported by Love

Yesterday, I was stopped at a traffic light. I began to hear the bleating of a lamb. I thought it was something on my radio. Then I heard it again. I realized a lamb was inside a custom made transport crate depicted in the photograph. The crate was securely held in the bed of a pickup truck. I could tell the person driving the truck cared about the lamb the way they had prepared to transport the animal. The bleating of the lamb was happening because the lamb had no idea what was taking place and did not know this was being done to make sure the lamb would arrive safely at its new destination. The unfamiliarity caused it to bleat out its concern.

The lamb looked and sounded like someone God is moving to a new place through unfamiliar experiences. There are times when God will put us in the crate of an unusual expression of His love to keep us safe in the journey. When the journey begins, these crates make no sense. We want to go back to the familiar pasture we have known where things made sense, and life was predictable. The lamb I saw would not survive the traffic I was driving through. Traveling alone and unprotected would have caused the lamb to experience a level of danger not present in the peaceful pasture of its past. 

There are some situations in life where we can feel trapped and taken to places we did not request. Before we label any transport as something negative, we need to ask the Lord if this is something He is doing for our own welfare. Once we know it’s the Lord, we will begin to experience a deep appreciation for the love and care of God, and our bleating will stop. At that moment, when surrounded by so many unfamiliar things, we will understand He is trying to get us through the dangerous traffic of life to arrive safely at a new pasture. We can always trust God in the journey, no matter how strange and unfamiliar it might appear.

A Changing Season in the Spirit

Tomorrow is the first day of fall. This is a reoccurring change of seasons in the natural world. While natural seasons come and go year after year, changes of seasons in the spiritual realm are not so predictable. 

This week, apart from a change in the natural order, a significant change of seasons has taken place spiritually. Mark these days of September on your calendar for future reference. There will be a time coming when the by-product of this change in spiritual seasons will visit our lives with astounding testimonies. The wise ones among us will be able to walk those changes back to their point of origin to discover their birth took place at this time in our history. 

Lord, give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear these changes from your perspective as they unfold so that we will not be found wanting in our discernment.

The Deposit

Your life has made a deposit and left an impact. In this life, you will not be able to fully define your influence. Eternity will reveal the significance of what you left behind. 

Every human being makes a deposit in life, both good and bad—and sometimes ugly. Some of these deposits appear large, and some go unnoticed. 

We all desire to exit our life with a banner over our heads that says, “Significance.” We have been created to live a life of significance and leave behind an honorable legacy. 

My understanding of legacy has changed dramatically over the years. There are still some lingering elements of self-focus that will surface from time to time—more often than I would like to admit. But I want my understanding of life and legacy to resemble what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi: “For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Our legacy will be written from those things we were willing to discard for the sake of Christ.

 (An excerpt from my book, A Good Place)

Reaching Across Impossibility

There are times when the Lord will give me an image or an impression that, to be honest, I question whether it’s Him or just my imagination. When these things come, I pause and ask for confirmation. One of those images just appeared as I sat in my writing chair.

I saw someone who did all that God had asked of them. They were now standing at the limit of human ability. This person was on the edge of a cliff looking across an expansive canyon similar to the Grand Canyon.  The object of their prayer and passion sat atop the distant canyon wall out of reach.

In the next frame, I saw the person continue to reach again and again toward the promise as an act of faith. They looked ridiculous to the bystanders. Then something unusual began to take place. Their arm began to grow like it was spooling out from a place of an unlimited reserve. It grew longer and longer, spanning the vast canyon. Finally, their hand reached the other side, and they were able to touch the desire of their heart. Immediately the two canyon walls began to move toward each closing the distance between the person and the promise. The canyon had disappeared, and the promise was in hand.

If you are standing on the edge of an impossibility and see in the distance a promise not yet realized and out of reach, God will be faithful to make a way for you to possess what He promised. Do all you can and never stop reaching out in faith. God can extend your faith across any dividing barrier, no matter how large or how distant. 

The Prison of Disgust and Disdain

God is coming after our disgust and disdain. All of us have placed people and their ministries within the prison walls of our judgment dismissing their significance. We did this because we determined they did not fit within our narrow understanding of how God’s Kingdom functions. Our disgust and disdain were given life when our pride and self-importance displaced God’s love and mercy. 

The Lord is not coming to slap our wrist like He was correcting some pouty and disobedient child. He is coming to unlock the prison doors of our self-imposed delusion to lead us out into a place of freedom. We are the imprisoned ones, not the ones who carry the burden of our judgment.

In that unlocking, God will reveal the allies He has called us to walk with into a new season under a fresh anointing. These are the very ones we had previously dismissed and distanced ourselves from thinking we could never work together because we were so different. 

Blessing of Watching & Waiting

Isaiah 21:6-10 & Daniel 7:2, 13 & John 8:28 & Ephesians 1:18

Isaiah’s response to the vision of Babylon’s destruction is followed by a strong sense of divine revelation. Like him, we are called to be a watchman; to post a look-out; to stand on the “word of the Lord” rather than to lightly and thoughtlessly identify with the world system (which Babylon represents).

Garris wrote about a “high-definition” version of prophetic insight that God is releasing to accelerate the rate of the world’s transformation and reformation. “Just like high-definition photography and television provide cleaner lines of the image being portrayed, so it will be with you. Vaguely defined and blurry prophetic imagery will give way to profound clarity.”

In the name of Jesus Christ,

      I bless your spirit with high

      definition clarity.

Listen for what He says to you—

      look for what He shows you:

      

      Go! Be a watchman

      to declare what you see.

I pray that the eyes of your heart

      are enlightened.

Be a watchman and post a lookout:

      Stand on your guard post

      extremely alert; be still and wait

      patiently for God.

      Keep watch in order to see;

      keep looking—keep looking.

Without bending to intimidation,

      may you respond with resolute

      strength—persevering daily

      and all the nights.

Wait for God’s word to be given

      and speak it reliably without

      fabrication or falsity.

Tell only what you see and hear

      in order to get the right message

      and to get the message right.

May you speak with certainty,

      without skirting around the truth;

      no longer vague about the truth,

      delaying to give the truth,

      over-stretching the truth,

      or avoiding telling the whole truth.

I bless you with trustworthiness, reliable

      character and passion to speak

      His truth in love.

In the end, His sign will be fulfilled:

      watch for the signs, record

      and report what you see.

The Most Important Thing

The way forward in God's Kingdom is paved and empowered by our understanding of the Father’s heart. Without that understanding, our efforts will lead to a stale religious experience framed by a cold and distant image of God.

Ten years ago, when I began writing, the Lord directed my first efforts to the subject of prayer. As a result of that leading, the book, Prayers from the Throne of God was created. Leading up to the writing of that first book, I had been seeing and reading about thrones literally everywhere. The Lord was trying to get my attention. In the process of that season of revelation, I discovered the reality of praying from our position in heaven seated with Jesus at the right hand of the Father. This was not as some positional theological point, but our current reality. Paul said we are seated with Christ, not that we will someday be seated with Him. We are dual citizens carrying rights and authority from two realms.

The Lord began to instruct me how this Heaven to Earth kind of prayer works in the form of declarations, decrees, and prophecy.  We DECLARE the Father’s heart for a preferred future that our circumstance might contradict as a possibility. We DECREE the victory of Jesus Christ in His death, resurrection, and enthronement above all powers. And finally, we wait and allow the Spirit to download prophetically the unique insight and wisdom of God. We then PROPHESY those prophetic instructions into our world working with God to make His heart for the object of our prayer a reality.

In this three-part process of prayer, the most critical element is to know the Father’s heart. Nothing moves forward without this understanding. We cannot declare His will if we do not know His heart. Knowing the Father’s heart is not a guarantee at the moment of salvation. A lot of believers have stepped over the threshold of a salvation experience, but sadly spend the rest of their lives living like slaves, not as a beloved child of God. As it is with prayer, everything of value and significance in God’s Kingdom is sourced from a healthy and accurate understanding of the Father’s heart. 

Today, if you are trying to discover your next step forward seek first to know the Father’s heart. That is your way forward. If a relationship is stalled, try to find out how God sees the two of you and work together to make that image your shared reality. If you are experiencing financial difficulty, somewhere along the way you missed the Father’s heart for your wellbeing. A healthy and balanced understanding of prosperity is discovered when we know God's love for us. It is never too late to experience something new when we know the Father’s heart and allow that understanding to lead the way.

https://www.amazon.com/Prayers-Throne-God-Garris-Elkins/dp/0615455778/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=garris+elkins&qid=1568894245&sr=8-2

Language Like a Fine Wine

It’s time to change the language we use to describe our experience with God. It would be like a sommelier using the same rutted language to describe a fine wine to an experienced consumer with phrases found written on every other wine bottle label. An uncreative and overly familiar description can actually dull the tasting experience. 

I saw this first hand when my daughter, Anna, was invited as a poet to write descriptive labels for the wines of Plaisance Ranch Winery in Williams, Oregon. The labels became works of literary art that opened up the imagination of the inquirer. 

As it is with a fine wine or a gourmet meal, so it can be when we talk about God and His creation. Unless we are able to move beyond the tired, familiar and repetitive spiritual vocabulary we use to describe the beauty of God, we can actually become a hindrance to those people who genuinely want to taste and see if the Lord is as good at the labels we have placed upon Him.

Whether or not you appreciate a fine wine, take a moment to click the link below and read some of Anna's labels. She is describing a familiar experience from a new and refreshing viewpoint, just as it should be when we talk about God. 

https://www.plaisanceranch.com/buy-wine 

On Vulnerability

Jan and I try to have an open and honest relationship. We are free to share anything with each other. That freedom did not come overnight. It was the result of years of hard relational work. When we first began this shared journey, our openness about confession and repentance was raw, brutal, and at times embarrassingly vulnerable.

We decided years ago to have no secrets between each other. Since that initial decision, we have worked together to maintain that clarity because we realize the enemy of our soul knows how to drive a wedge of compromise between us if we give him any space. Those wedges appear when we allow exceptions to come between us for anything but full transparency.

Last night, one of those compromises made an appearance. It wasn’t some sexual issue, thievery or tabloid-worthy infraction. It would be something a lot of people might not even recognize. But I did, and so did God. He patiently waited for me to bring it up to Jan as the evening progressed. I forgot about it by the time we went to bed. As a result, I didn’t sleep well last night. This morning I remembered the issue as I was dressing, I asked the Lord to confirm if He wanted me to share it with Jan. He answered me like He does many times. He spoke through my surroundings.  In the very next moment after asking the Lord, I looked down and atop the dirty clothes bin sat our local newspaper. It was opened to a page where the title of an article read “On Vulnerability.”

A few minutes later, Jan walked into the kitchen. I told her about the issue I was carrying and the newspaper article. She smiled and laughed with joy at God’s faithfulness. Then she thanked me. One reason why I can share anything with Jan is that when I do confess something, I know I won't be rejected. The purest kind of love, the God kind, never rejects a person in a moment of confession. That kind of love celebrates vulnerability.

Jan and I are far from being perfect in a lot of areas of life, but one thing we do have is a shared vulnerability. It’s not fear-based. It is sourced in a spiritual and emotional hunger to be intimate with each other and most importantly, with God. We know how easy it is for love to be high jacked by subtle and progressive compromise. It would be the saddest thing to wake up someday and realize the relationship God had entrusted us with was compromised because we allowed something other than love to rule our lives at the expense of living in the freedom of shared vulnerability.  

Engaging Multiple Targets in Prayer

I’ve had an aggressive and warlike kind of prayer on my mind for the last few days. This is the kind of prayer that that brings down spiritual strongholds and dark power structures like those described by Paul in Ephesians 6.

Forty years ago, SWAT teams were still a new idea. Large metropolitan police departments had teams, but the smaller departments were just considering the concept. At the time, I had left a large urban sheriff’s department in California, where I had trained for several years on a SWAT team. Each month, along with our in-house training, we also trained with FBI special operations teams. When I arrived in Oregon, I was done with that season in my life but offered to help my new smaller department set up what would become the foundation of their own SWAT team.

Part of that development process was getting to meet with arms dealers representing some of the most exotic weapon systems in the world. Many of the weapons were out of our budget and outside of the parameters of our concept. One system was a multi-rifle sniper weapon. The triggers on each of the sniper rifles were electronically linked together. The rifles were designed to fire at the same time when all targets were engaged and all triggers pressed. This enabled a SWAT team to take out multiple terrorists at the same instant.  A sniper might press his personal trigger many times throughout a hostage incident before his weapon finally fired in unison with the other snipers connected to the same weapon system. When the moment to fire finally came, all the targets would be eliminated at the same time.  It took patience, but the results were dramatic and devastating.

Some of you who are part of prayer networks are functioning in prayer like the weapon system I just described. You have been praying and “pressing the trigger” in prayer for a long time wondering why certain cultural scenarios have not changed or why some strongholds still remain in place. What you don’t realize is that you are part of a global strategy of prayer. There are other networks of prayer around the world praying with you working in concert to bring down evil forces that are the equivalent of a group cultural hostage-takers. 

Continue to press your assigned prayer trigger. Be patient and faithful. Keep your assigned target in view and follow its movements making sure it remains in the crosshairs of your prayer effort. God has commissioned you to take part in a moment of history when the world will be amazed at how rapidly righteous change will take place on the world stage. Those who benefit from your expertise and faithfulness in prayer will most likely never see you or even know you were there behind the scene because you were deployed in a secret place known only to those whose calling is intercession.

The Fruitfulness of Your Future

Atop our kitchen counter, I saw fruit marking the end of one season and the beginning of something new. The peaches in the photo were the last in the final harvest from our favorite orchardist. We grew the grapes in our backyard. The peaches were harvested at the end of summer. The grapes mark the beginning of the fall grape harvest when new wine is produced. Each fruit matured in a different season.

When I passed by our kitchen counter and saw the fruit, the Lord spoke to me about the time of transition between seasons. The Lord said, “Eat the fruit in its season.”  It was a short message with a longer interpretation. 

Every season and each assignment from God will bear a unique fruitfulness within an appointed season. We don’t have to be like the Israelites in the wilderness who, out of a fear of lack, gathered too much manna and it spoiled. Their fear revealed their lack of trust in God regarding their future provision. God's fruit appears and matures under His timetable. There is no need to ever hold on to the fruit of a previous season. God will always bear new fruit on faithful branches.

Eat the goodness of this season. It has an expiration date, not because it will spoil like the manna. It expires because more fruitfulness is planned for the new season you are about to enter. God delights in revealing the sweet fruit He has planned for your future. Do not allow a fear of lack to influence what you hold or release. This is a time to believe that the branches of your future will hang heavy under the weight of the fruit God plans to reveal. Eat the fruit of this season with joy and live in expectancy of what is to come. 

Mystery and Wonder

In your transition, leave room for mystery and wonder. This is a spiritual endeavor, not a business plan. 

Religion is mankind’s attempt to codify God and have him all figured out. Man-made religion is devoid of the mystery and wonder that exists when we relate to the eternal God. He is so large that we will need all of eternity to explore his depths. 

Whenever we lack a sense of mystery and wonder, we find ourselves attempting to control every aspect of the process and its outcome. Human control drains wonder and mystery from the process. 

God wants to amaze you. God wants you to worship in wonder and awe when other people think you should live in fear. Your journey is a spiritual journey. See it from that perspective, and you will live in a sense of awe at what God will do in and through your life. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

The Look

Have you ever noticed the image of celebrities when they are arrested for drugs or drunk driving, and their booking photograph is posted online for the world to see? They don’t look the same. In the pre-arrest publicity photos, they are well-coiffed and dressed in the latest styles. Their booking photo captures them raw, rude and undone. Any of us can look rough if caught and undone by our sin. Unredeemed guilt and shame can radically alter our appearance.

The photo I included in this writing is of me at age 26. I was an undercover narcotics cop getting ready to go through the hiring process at a large corporation in Silicon Valley in an attempt to arrest two drug dealers. I had an untraceable driver's license using my undercover identity issued by the State of California.

Just before I got the assignment, my supervisor asked me to cut off my beard and trim my hair. The booking photo of me “cleaned up” was actually a real-life booking photo with a dummied up arrest record so when the bad guys checked me out in the corporate office, my story would hold. I had to clean up to get past the personnel department regulations on personal appearance. Before the photo, I looked like a drugged up biker. Only a single corporate vice president in the corporation knew of my assignment. At the time, I was a very backslidden believer. It was a dark time in my life. You can see it in in the blank and lifeless stare in my eyes.

The blank stare is what I had in common with others caught in a moment of deep brokenness. There was no difference between my eyes and the eyes of a failed celebrity, a local meth addict, or someone caught in gross sin. The eyes tell the story. Ever since that fake booking photo was taken and seeing what my eyes looked like whenever I see a real booking photo of someone caught in a broken moment, the compassion of God rises up in my heart.

It doesn’t have to be a booking photo. It can be someone walking by me on the street and seeing that blank look in their eyes. I see those same eyes sitting alone in the audience of churches and conferences where I speak. The eyes tell a story of hopelessness. Of no way out. The ones who carry that stare feel like they have messed things up so badly they are trapped in their failure with no way out. The eyes reveal the sorrow of their soul. 

The only thing that can change that blank stare is hope – a hope that comes when a lost soul hears the words, “You are forgiven.” When those words are spoken dead hearts start to beat, and blank eyes begin to refocus on the possibility of a new reality. Hope is our mission.

“As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'  If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven” (John 20: 21-23).

Passing Moments

Significant moments float upon

life’s constant breeze wafting

by our faces in silent disguise. 

They are suspended in their passing

 waiting to be recognized, 

to be captured, to be held,

 taken in by discerning hearts.

Turn your face 

into the Spirit’s wind, waiting

for the next moment

to pass by.

In its passing is carried 

destiny, delight, and discovery 

of things unimagined 

until captured by faith, 

and taken to heart.

Micro Sabbath Moments

Last week, I pulled into the parking lot of a local supermarket to do some grocery shopping. When I entered the parking lot, the song “What A Wonderful World” came on the radio. It was a very tasteful jazz rendition of Louis Armstrong’s classic song. I had a to-do list tugging on my time yet felt compelled to sit in my car in the parking to slow down and listen to the song. As I sat there, a deepening peace came over me with each note being played, and with each word the artist sang. In fact, at points in the song, I felt emotions rise into my consciousness traveling past the demands of my to-do list and my daily schedule. I was being emotionally washed in the pause. After the song ended, I let out a long sigh, got out of my car, and entered the store.

As I pushed my shopping cart through the store aisles, I processed the song, the pause, and my reaction with the Lord. He began to share with me another component of a Sabbath lifestyle. Jan and I have come to believe the Sabbath concept is a 24/7 way of thinking and living that is missing in so many lives. Sabbath is not something we calendar. It is something we carry. It is living and ministering out of rest. 

Walking through the supermarket, I realized how important it is for each of us to experience Sabbath moments throughout the day. I call them Micro Sabbaths. These are the moments when we sense the Spirit asking us to stay in our car and linger with Him just a little longer listening to a beautiful song. It’s stopping along a sidewalk and looking up from the cement at a beautiful sunset being painted across the canvas of an evening sky. It is lingering in an embrace with someone you love without hurrying the release.

Today, as you go about your life, become aware of what God is revealing in each moment of the day.  We can miss these moments when we think spirituality is always about moving and doing, not resting and being. The moment you encounter may be a sound, an image, or a feeling you pushed aside as you continued to move forward toward a goal. Follow these impressions. They will lead you to a place where the pause has an assignment to release a refreshing peace in your soul. That moment will become a place of visitation and revelation that would have been missed had you not taken advantage of a Micro Sabbath.

Louisiana - The Fire of God is Coming

Jan and I take communion every day. We pray for our family, friends, and our marriage. During communion, we remember God’s faithfulness in all things. We use a small thimble-sized brass goblet from Israel to serve the wine and matzo crackers for our bread. When we receive communion, we break the matzo crackers and serve each other.

After breaking the cracker today, it came out resembling the shape of Louisiana. I know to some that might be a reach, but the Lord drew my attention to the shape of the cracker to tell me something. As I held the Louisiana-shaped cracker, I noticed the top was burned as were several spots moving from top to bottom. The Lord began to speak to me about the fire of His presence being released in the state of Louisiana moving from the north to the south. 

I pulled up a map of Louisiana and the surrounding states. Looking at the map, I saw this fire of God coming to the northern border of Louisiana as a converging point from fires already burning in adjoining states and cities. These fires were all burning toward the northern border of Louisiana to then turn and begin a journey south.

I saw the fire of God coming from the Dallas/Fort Worth area to the west, from Memphis and a small town in Arkansas that is experiencing the beginning of a visitation of God’s presence. Mississippi to the east will add flames to the fire. Once the fire arrives, it will cross the border and move south inflaming Shreveport, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and finally New Orleans. The surrounding cities of these metropolitan areas will also ignite for the glory of God. 

Louisiana, keep your spiritual tinder dry. The fire of God's presence is coming. Your dry tinder will allow something new to ignite and burn in your state. This will not be like anything in the past.  This is a new fire, so new it might cause some of you to ask God if it really is a work of His Spirit. Expecting something familiar will limit how God will steer this burning. It could actually stall the fire and turn it in another direction. Only expect God, nothing else. God is coming to burn up religious spirits, pride, and fear-based theologies. 

Louisiana, look to the north. The approaching fires of revival and reformation are staging at your northern border. The fire is coming. Prepare your tinder.

Going Tactical

When the first jet struck the Twin Towers 18 years ago today, I stood stunned as I watched the attack unfold. After the second jet hit the second tower, something paid a visit to my life that had been virtually dormant for 24 years. When the attack took place, it had been over two decades since I last donned my SWAT uniform, carried a weapon, and stepped into places of danger. At the moment I realized our nation was under attack, I went tactical once again.

I remember walking into our bedroom and assembling my kit. A kit contains the gear a SWAT cop or a Special Ops person carries into combat. It was as if no time had passed. My training and preparation were silently guiding me as I continued to listen to the unfolding newscast while assembling my gear atop the bed in our master bedroom. Like most Americans, I did not know what was coming next. Whatever was coming, I would be ready. Once my gear was together, I recall the shift that took place that morning in my thinking. I awakened to a new reality most of the world lives in on a daily basis outside the insulated suburban bubble where I was pastoring.

Today, on this sad anniversary of 9/11, I am still tactical both physically and more importantly, spiritually. In our culture, I see a lot of huffing, and puffing bravado tossed around by people who have never stepped into harm’s way. Along with the bravado is the polar opposite. It is a version of spirituality that lives in a dream world of an untested faith fueled by a misunderstanding of what Jesus meant when He said to turn the other cheek. This is the same Jesus who allowed Peter to carry a sword and the same Jesus turned over tables in the temple. Jesus meek and mild never existed. The Jesus of that illusion will get people killed both physically and spiritually.

While advancing age and circumstance may alter our ability to perform at our peak in the natural, our ability to be spiritually tactical never wanes. So I want to ask, have you assembled your spiritual tactical kit? What’s in it? Do you know how to use it? If something dark and disastrous were to spiritually assault your life or the lives of your loved ones, are you ready to do battle in the spiritual realm? Is your faith tactical?

As a culture, we are entering unfamiliar waters where the spiritual conflict will unfold in ways many have not experienced. This is not a place for the huffers and puffers or those who live in a spiritual la-la land. Life can be gritty and dangerous. When the light of truth displaces the darkness of deception and when hope displaces despair hell will come at us to bring its challenge. Being forewarned and forearmed will help us survive and overcome anything hell tries to throw at us - even a surprise attack on a peaceful morning.

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses”(II Corinthians 10:4).

The Night Before Disaster

On this night 18 years ago, we all went to bed unaware of what would take place the next morning in New York. The only ones aware were the terrorists. We never know what tomorrow will bring. Tonight, pick up your phone or go to your keyboard and tell someone you love them. If something in your life is not right, make it right before sleep takes you into the night. Like all disasters in life, they come unannounced and without warning. Keeping our life-slate as clean as possible will keep us free from the cold and sorrowful embrace of regret.

The Ultimate Futility of Social Censorship

The sound of our voice can never be silenced if the sound we are making is truth spoken in love. When attempts to muzzle truth have taken place in human history, the truth those voices carried always seemed to get louder under restriction. The sound of truth has the ability to move through and around the obstacles placed in its path. Truth will always find its audience.

In the last year, I have read of individual accounts being blocked or censored on various social media platforms. Algorithms have been created to steer our Internet inquiry toward specific online resources in an attempt to focus our attention on a narrow slice of reality. I can understand some of this if a person is conducting illegal business or threatening to harm another person. But some of the recent efforts by those who control social media is an attempt to silence opposing voices and limit our access to their content. It has become worldview censorship and a mechanism to steer social awareness.

This is not limited to silencing the voice of the Church. It is an effort to silence truth no matter where it resides across the social spectrum. As these attempts to silence the voice of truth and reason become more prevalent and widespread, we will see the hand of God at work in remarkable ways. There is coming a supernatural increase in both the volume and breadth of righteous voices as they come under prohibition. 

We have come to rely on social media as a primary form of research and communication. It is convenient, immediate, and global.  While social media is all of those things, it is not supernatural. Only God is supernatural. He will reveal the hidden channels of communication He has prepared for this moment in our history. They will appear when He wants to make His voice heard. God will not be mocked, neither will His voice be silenced.

Connecting

Together, we exchange

passing glances, slyly

smiling at the possibilities.

We brush shoulders, 

press our lips upon sweet necks,

hold hands in the spur 

of a moment,

no matter time or place

or who may be watching.

Each of these speaks 

of a love connecting and reconnecting,

again and again
over a lifetime.

Perhaps this is an evidence

of love that endures,

this desire to connect

to stay connected

to keep touching, pressing together

over time,

through all the seasons

no matter what comes 

our way to get in the way

of each other.

Can You See Me?

Everyone goes through seasons of life where their maturity is being developed. In those stumbling seasons, when our immaturity was glaringly obvious, someone made a judgment call on our life. Years could have passed, and they still see us the way we were in days gone by. Their judgment blinded their eyes from seeing the new person we became in the intervening years.

Maybe this has happened to you. In the passing of time, you may have gone through a substantial transformation and in some cases, several transformations. You are now a completely different person with new insight and anointing. You know you have changed, but some people are still unable to see or receive the new you.

When you meet those who judged you in the past, and they still cannot see the fruit of your transformation and continue to talk to you like they are talking to the old you, this is your chance to move forward into new spiritual territory with a new level of spiritual authority and maturity. These moments are integrity checks. To pass these checkpoints, you will need to extend to those who cannot see the real you the same mercy you desired when you experienced the first volley of their judgment and condemnation. Pass these tests, and you will find yourself standing in a place of spiritual authority only available to those who can move past defensiveness and step forward in mercy.

Valuable Lessons

We can learn some of our most valuable lessons from leaders who show us what we do not want to become. Not all wisdom comes from positive examples. 

We can think the most valuable lessons are learned from the most honorable leaders. These faithful leaders do have much to teach us. There are, however, lessons to learn from those who have failed. From their failure, we can learn what not to do. Failure can be a powerful teacher if we allow God to have access to those places in our hearts where the failure was birthed. 

The life of a leader in transition might anger you. Maybe what you see is wrong morally or ethically. Or maybe it is just a personal preference. You feel that if you were the leader, you would have done things differently. 

In the meantime, what are your options? You can be offended and retreat into a place of judgment, or you can be offended and ask God to show you where in your own heart the same sin is possible or even in operation. In that invitation, you will begin to discover humility. Mercy will begin to flow toward those you had previously judged. Mercy and humility help us deal with our lack of love, and they act as a safeguard to protect us from going down the same road.  

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

Spiritual Pendulums

A pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth between opinions as the Church tries to navigate through the extremes of theological interpretation. Don’t try to follow the path of the pendulum. If you do, you will become spiritually dizzy and unfocused. Pendulums will never cease to swing in this life. Follow the Lord with your eyes and heart. That is the only place where equilibrium is promised.

Crossing a Spiritual No Man's Land

I try to recognize the repetitive things I notice throughout the day to see if God is trying to get my attention. In the last few days, I have seen the word “dichotomy” in print, once on someone’s Facebook post and once on a delivery box. After these notices, I got that familiar nudge from the Spirit, asking me to pursue a deeper meaning.

A quick dictionary search reveals the word dichotomy to mean, “a division or contrast between two things that are opposed or entirely different." Another definition states, “a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups.”

God does His greatest work in places where the most strident dichotomy exists. After all, He is the Redeemer of humanity. He brought together His love and our unredeemed lives, and as a result of that union, He now calls us His beloved. God's act of redemption crossed the widest separation and joined two opposing relationships demonstrating for us what love looks like. God's love has the goal to bring together what was once considered mutually exclusive or contradictory individuals or groups. This coming together of opposing forces becomes a testimony that God's redemptive love is at work in humanity.

We have become expert at holding separated positions we define as sacred at the expense of something greater that God wants to accomplish. These invitations to cross a dichotomy is not about compromise. It is about revealing the love of God in what many think are impossible situations to redeem. It is stepping out into a place where only a redeemed mind can walk.

Today, I saw a quote someone posted from Anne Lamott, "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people (or political persuasions) you do." In essence, the evidence that we have created a god in our image is that he will hate the same people we hate and divide us from the very people we need to reach across the cultural aisle to embrace in love.

The division we see in our culture and within the Church is a lesser way of living defined and empowered by our strident dichotomies. I’m not talking about redefining the unchanging nature of God or replacing Jesus as the Redeemer of humanity or importance of truth. I am referring to our strident political and social dichotomies that have produced a cultural and spiritual no man’s marked by the trenches of our preferred dichotomy. People are afraid to cross these divides for fear they might lose their faith. If our faith is so fragile it cannot cross a dichotomy for a work of redemption and remain intact; it is not the same faith offered by Jesus. He modeled a courageous faith in Scripture where we see Him regularly stepping up and out of religious trenches and crossing the dichotomies of his day to reveal to the world the heart of God and the power of redeeming love.  

Future Predictions

We can too easily believe predictions that align with our predisposition or bias on a particular subject. I saw it just this week where a news commentator was predicting the outcome of the next presidential election. I’ve seen it in the predictions made concerning a child’s future success, whether a marriage would last or the direction of the housing market. Pick something, and there will be a prediction attached. This is how oddsmakers in Las Vegas stay in business.

When we allow a predisposition or bias to create a prediction about the future of a person or circumstance, we can miss hearing the voice of God because we are busy slavishly following our prediction. Once our thinking is aligned in such a way, we will gather people of like mind around us, and together focus all our energy and resources on the future outcome of our shared prediction. 

More than any time in my life, I see the need for independent thinkers – people who are willing to break away from groupthink, especially within the Church. Independent revelatory thinking is formed by revelation from the Spirit of God, not from human logic or fear about the future. Without this prophetic insight, our minds will follow the fearful herd, and together we will move blindly through life led only by natural insight. 

To make a conscious choice to not believe the predictions offered in the public square or within the halls of faith takes courage. It may cost you a relationship or a membership. It may cost you the reputation you currently have that was created within a group where you shared a common prediction. While you process your unsettled feelings about a prediction, you might even utter words to the group that will cause them concern about your loyalty to the cause,  “I don’t know. I am rethinking the issue.” Each one of us will have to make the choice of which predictive voice we will follow. Only one voice is God’s.

Character Above Gifting

Everyone has a gift. To say someone is “really gifted” is a statement of preference.  It simply says we value and might even prefer a particular gift and its function. We like gifts so much we take tests to determine what gifts we might possess. They are popular, fun, and informative. Some have devoted their lives to help us discover our unique gifts. It’s become a ministry of the Church and in some cases, an industry. I haven't seen any character tests. Most of those are conducted in private when no one is looking or listening.

Having served in the Church for the last 40 years, I have noticed something. It’s not the results of a gift-assessment test that guarantees we will leave behind a significant legacy. I have found it was the depth of a person’s character that enabled them to leave behind a legacy of significance. 

The depth of our character developed in a painful maturing process is what gives our particular gift its long term influence and fruitfulness. It is not wise, nor is it healthy to ever promote gifting above character. It is a fatal flaw, and many have succumbed to its lure, both the holder of the gift and the recipients who follow the ministry of a gifted person. 

Our character, not our gift is what needs nurturing. After all, a gift is given to us by the grace of God. It is a grace gift, not one we can work to produce. We can develop the qualities of a gift and the way it is delivered, but it still remains a tool graciously handed to us by God. It is only effective when carried by character and empowered by the Spirit. For a season we can function in a gift with amazing results with a deficient character, but at some point, that charade will no longer work. The development and wholeness of our gift can only thrive atop the stable platform of a healthy and whole character – a character developed while living in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.