This is Our Issachar Moment in History

A great deal of social and political maneuvering is taking place in the shadows outside the spotlight of this global crisis. What you see playing out is not the real focus. Ancient political spirits are positioning assets and making plans that are not visible to those who only see the surface implications. History must be studied and understood, or our naivety in these matters will catch us unprepared.

As I considered these things, I saw the hand of God clasping a leather-bound book of history. From Heaven, the Lord extended his hand and passed the book through the veil of space and time. He then placed the book in the hands of those in the Church who carry the spirit of Issachar. 

The destiny of the cultures of the world is being placed in the hands of the Church. The transforming and reforming power of God’s preferred history for our world is greater in power and authority than the collective plans of darkness.  

Wake up from the slumber of death and begin to prophesy a future of life and hope to a world that only sees death, not the possibility of resurrection life. This future of hope, not despair, is being announced by God’s prophets. Listen for its sound. It is the sound of reformation of the cultures of the world. That sound has been released from the throne of God and will define our history before we actually live it. It will become the sound of a faith that sees the substance of things not seen.

“The sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do” (I Chronicles 12:32).

The Hope of Resurrection

One thing I hate about this life is death - the death of a family member, a faithful friend or pet. Death in any form is the enemy of life. This is why the hope of resurrection is so critical to living a life of joy amidst sorrow and loss. Without the hope of resurrection life can offer us no joy only the fearful dread of ending.  

"Moreover, if the dead are not raised, that would mean that we are false witnesses who are misrepresenting God. And that would mean that we have preached a lie, stating that God raised him from the dead if, in reality, he didn’t. If the dead aren’t raised up, that would mean that Christ has not been raised up either. And if Christ is not alive, you are still lost in your sins and your faith is a fantasy" (I Corinthians 15:15-17).

Why It's Important to Pray for Our Enemies

Reading Acts 8 and 9 made me think of a scary scenario. Imagine you heard that a band of religious zealots was going door-to-door in your neighborhood, dragging people out of their homes and killing them because they were Christians.  You were also told they were taking large stones and crushing the skulls of entire families against the hard pavement of the street and leaving piles of dead bodies behind as a grotesque warning.

What would you do? Before you too quickly assume a hyper-spiritual stance, creating a response to the threat void of reality, stop and think about it for a moment. I have been in situations where acts of terror were taking place all around me in real-time, and it’s not a pleasant experience. Your spiritual mettle is tested in those experiences. If I knew a band of crazies was working their way down my street and I had no way to escape, I would greet the intruders at the door with my 12 gauge and print clusters of 00 buck in the center of mass when the threat crossed the threshold of our home.

As I prepared to protect my family, I would also be doing something else. I would be praying.  “Lord, encounter these people and reveal yourself to them before they get to our home” would be one of my prayers as I waited, prepared for their arrival. I would pray for a Damascus Road experience or a diversion so they would not encounter the fury of my response. Anyone who loves their family will protect them at all costs. Protection is part of love, and it is not always a pleasant thing to watch. It is our responsibility to pray for our enemies before the consequence of their foolish and threatening manner catches up with them.

The decisions we make have consequences. Saul, who later became the apostle Paul, did things before he met Jesus that were painful reminders of what his life was like before he had an encounter with the Lord. We need to pray for our enemies so they can meet Jesus before they experience the consequence of their actions. While we live prepared in a crazy and unstable world, preparation is not all we do. We are called to pray for people who want to harm us, hoping that before they arrive and experience the reality of our preparation, they will see the error of their ways. The principle of praying for our enemies applies not only to our families. It also applies to cities or nations who are being threatened by evil. 

The Fog is Lifting

At our best, we only see and understand the events of life in part. The experience of personal and cultural change has deposited people in new places without their full knowledge of how they arrived or what had actually taken place in the transition. Most of life comes as a surprise after a significant change has transpired. In other words, we didn’t see it coming. 

After these significant events have taken place, we become aware that something different is now surrounding our life even though we cannot yet see the fullness of the change. It is like a person standing in a field surrounded by a dense fog. Insight and vision of the encircling environment only come when the morning sun appears, and the sun and begins to burn away the fog to reveal a previously hidden landscape. This is why Scripture advises us to be slow to speak. Premature announcements are many times wrong. No one knows what the current fog of life will reveal once it lifts.

Until the fog lifts, we are to plant and cultivate God’s peace. Peace is not dependent on what we can see or not see. It has the ability to reinterpret the environment within the fog. Peace will adjust our spiritual eyes to see through the mist to comprehend something greater God is doing outside the realm of natural sight. Peace prepares us to see and properly interpret our surroundings without fear and distress becoming our only interpretive tools. 

The greatest work taking place in the foggy places of life is not the work of the enemy, but the work of God. Choosing to live in God’s peace will help us navigate wisely through a foggy experience. Once the fog finally lifts, we will be able to see the greater work God had been doing all along, not the work of fear the enemy offered as our only blinding option. 

I just heard someone begin to laugh in the fog.

God is Increasing Your Spiritual Range of Motion

You feel like you are being stretched to the breaking point. That is not what’s taking place, nor is it the purpose of what you are experiencing. 

God is not causing your pain. That is your response to the rigidity and inflexibility He wants to remove. He is using what is taking place to loosen you up in preparation for a future that will require you to move in new directions. This current season of stretching is designed to increase your spiritual range of motion. 

This new range of motion will allow you to view life with fresh insight enabling you to see from Heaven's perspective. These stretching moments will be repeated again and again in your future as you grow and mature. In the future, they will not appear as daunting as what is taking place at this moment. Your fear will give way to expectation. 

When future challenges arrive, you will be able to reach farther and adapt more easily to the twists and turns they present without breaking and succumbing to fear when they begin to exert their initial pressure and resistance. God is making you ready to fully engage what He has planned for you to encounter in the future. Let Him have His way and you will arrive ready to engage the goodness He has prepared.

Spiritual Eruptions

Church history is formed over time and can appear like a glacier moving at a speed imperceptible to the natural eye. In these glacial-like seasons, some have given up hope and allowed human opinion to form a worldview in conflict with truth.  At other moments in our developing history, unexpected eruptions will take in the culture and within the Church. These eruptions can appear like a volcano exploding violently and unexpectedly, radically changing the spiritual and cultural landscape. 

We are coming out of a glacial season. Eruptions are about to take place that will release a spiritual pressure that has been building up over time. When this spiritual volcano erupts emotional debris will be thrown into the air, and the molten lava of God’s presence will move down the slopes of our theology clearing away any misunderstanding of His heart and purpose for the world. 

The only way to prepare for this coming eruption is to wisely monitor the condition of our hearts. Unrighteous judgments, a misunderstanding of God’s love or any human attempt to form God into an idol of our own making will be burned away in the explosion of God’s presence. 

We can become like an old mountain lying dormant encrusted with spiritual cynicism and disbelief. God wants to change the landscape of our faith. That change is nothing to fear. His eruptions are eruptions of love. They have a mission to alter our acceptance of the status quo as our forever reality. God's eruptions will clear away the old and make way for something new.

Retreat Into Your Future

There will be times when people invite you to advance with them – to move forward into something new. Advance, accelerate, and breakthrough are some of the words typically used to craft this kind of appeal. 

In some instances, when you receive these invitations, in your spiritual gut, you will know your assignment is not to move forward but to retreat into a place of isolated intimacy with God. When faced with that decision, always choose the retreat. 

The anxious crowd who issue these advancing invitations believe the best is always ahead of them, never in the present moment.  It will take courage to say no and let them move on without you. When you make the decision to retreat, you will discover a place of rested revelation not available to those who equate constant motion with a healthy and vibrant faith. As the prophet Isaiah said, “In quietness and trust is your strength.” 

Retreat to that quiet place, and you will be refreshed and empowered for a journey only the rested ones can make. A soul that has rested in a place of retreat with God has gained the strength and endurance required to move forward into a future not seen by weary eyes.

Our Response

There are times when I scroll through Facebook posts that I see someone depicted in a less than noble booking photo or view the image of a person who has committed a horrible act. Lately, I find myself reaching out to my computer screen and touching their image. When I touch them, I pray for God to reveal His love in their brokenness. The other options are to become one of the condemning, and demeaning comments logged in the comment section or dismiss the person with an "I'm sure glad I am not like that person" thought. If we are to represent the Lord in the arena of culture, our response to human brokenness must be radically different than an unredeemed culture or the Pharisaical expressions of God-less religion.

Free-Falling Into God's Peace

A couple of months ago, I took one of those at home tests called Cologuard that people use in place of a colonoscopy. I had a colonoscopy 17 years ago and got a clean bill of health at that time, so I thought instead of going through the process of a colonoscopy, I would do the easy thing.

When the results of the Cologuard test came back, it was positive. I wasn’t expecting that result. I was shocked. At that moment, a whole host of fears lined up telling me horrible tales about my future, my eventual death and Jan having to live her remaining years alone. I took the test results seriously because I have good friends and relatives who have battled the c-word. Some are in the middle of that battle as I write. 

From past experience, I knew I needed to do something before I told Jan what happened. I invited Jesus into the scary Cologuard positive test result and asked Him to show me how to respond. What happened next was amazing. The Lord said, “Stand on the ledge of your fear. Now step off. Step off into My peace.”

I could actually feel the trembling fear under my feet. It was a shaky and weak sensation. In the next moment, I made the choice to step off the ledge trusting in the word the Lord had spoken. After I took the step, I began to literally free-fall into what I can best describe as a syrupy slow-motion sensation where the atmosphere was thicker than usual. I was free-falling into the peace of God. There were no bumps or borders. It was an infinite sensation of peace without depth or ending. I was falling into God.

After several moments of that beautiful experience, I found Jan and told her about the Cologuard positive result. We prayed. We also worshipped. We were not worshipping from a place of fear, but of peace. Stepping off the ledge held something dark back from our thinking of how we would process the next few weeks until a colonoscopy provided an accurate reading on what was happening inside my body. I continued to free-fall for the next month until my colonoscopy took place. The free-fall continued after the procedure for the next week while I waited for the lab results.

A few days ago, the gastroenterologist sent me a letter regarding the lab test results for the small polyp he removed during the procedure. The report stated, “benign polyp - no cancer potential.” He recommended that I have another colonoscopy in ten years, which is a normal cycle for these kinds of procedures.

When I read the doctor’s report, and before sharing the good news with Jan, I got down on my knees and thanked the Lord. I spent a few moments in worship. I got up from my knees and walked into our living and shared the results with Jan. We worshipped together and thanked God for His goodness.

Life will present each of us with a ledge of fear somewhere along the way. Fear is no place for any of us to stand because lies and hopelessness speak loudly in that place. Stepping off the ledge of fear into the peace of God is our only spiritually healthy option. The peace of God that surrounds us at that moment of free-falling is able to guard our hearts no matter what life brings our way. 

A New Day - A New Image

Today, a large maple tree will be removed from our property. The tree finally died after several years of progressive disease, so we hired an arborist to come and cut it down. The tree fills the view from the window just outside where my writing chair sits. It has been there for the last 17 years. About midday today, the image outside my window will radically change forever. 

At the start of each day, I stand by the window, look out, and pray into the dark predawn hours. This morning, as it has been each day before, I saw the image of the tree silhouetted against the faint light coming from the town in the valley below. In the darkness, one would almost think a living tree was standing there until the light of dawn revealed the image of its death.

The image of the dead tree could be a metaphor of sorts for what is taking place in your life. Something has filled your view of life for many years. It was once alive, vibrant and beautiful, but over time became diseased and died. It could be a relationship, a job or way of seeing the world around you. The time has come to remove the dead image. God has something new He wants to show you.

The removal of what has died will change how you see a significant part of your life. You have been looking at the progressive death of something that once was alive just like the tree outside my window. And like me, you are finally ready for your dead tree to be gone. You no longer want to look outside your window and see death.

I am looking forward to a change of scenery when I look out my window. In the future, I will see an image of a clear blue sky where pealing bark, dripping black sap, and dry, crispy leaves once stood.

The anticipation of something new came to visit my thinking this morning. Tomorrow morning, when I rise and stand in front of the window to pray, I will see new stars in the night sky not visible before the tree was removed and later in the day when the sun rises, I will see an expanse of clear blue sky. 

God's Plural Plans for Our Lives

When a life plan falls apart it and a feeling of discouragement arrives, it is too easy to believe a lie that says God has only one plan for our life. In those painful experiences, we can give up because we don't see a new way forward, thinking we serve a one-shot God. God has more than one plan for each life and He can make each one of them work no matter what kind of derailment has taken place.

During a lunch conversation with my daughter, Anna, she mentioned the plural usage of the word “plans” in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” I looked up the verse just to read it again with fresh eyes and contemplate what the Lord was saying. As I read the verse, I realized the beauty of God’s creative ability when it comes to the failed plans in our lives. He is the infinite God of all things, including the revelation of a new way forward when we think our failed plan was the end of our road.

If a plan for your life did not work out, come to God in prayer and worship and ask Him to reveal another plan. These other plans are not second rate or lesser in value or quality than the original plan. God’s plans are all created in love and filled with excellence. He is waiting to hear from people whose plan was painfully dismantled. 

The Lord wants us to believe He has more goodness in store for our lives beyond the pain of what fell apart. God's goodness is always ready to reveal a new way forward with a new plan that will lead us into a future filled with hope.

Flying High in the Wings of God's Presence

You know how it is when you wake up a bit too early in the morning and look at the illuminated clock on your nightstand. You hope you can go back to sleep.  This morning, the clock read 3:12 AM here in Oregon. In that waking moment, I saw an interesting image.

I saw a huge eagle flying at a very high altitude. It was scanning side to side gliding among thermals its wings strong and stationary. In the next moment, the eagle’s wing turned from feathers to clear glass. I saw inside the wing a person. They were lying down. Their head was positioned at the leading edge of the wing and their feet at the trailing edge. I got the impression the person was in this position because the eagle wanted them to see what the eagle was seeing. In the next moment, the feathered wing became clear like glass. The person was now able to see the terrain below just like the eagle. The look on the person's face was wonderment.

Some of you are experiencing significant times of transition. You know you are being “flown” somewhere, but you cannot yet see the destination. For you, it is like the Scripture says, “they will mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). Soon, you will be able to see where the Lord has been taking you. Some of this journey required that you simply trust the Lord and not know all the details. He did not let you see everything you had to fly over. He has brought you over huge obstacles impossible to transit without God's help. You were protected from those daunting images like the person flying inside a feathered wing just before it became glass. 

The feathers surrounding you are about to morph and become like clear glass. At that moment, you will be able to see how far God has brought you. Imagine what it will be like when that clarity comes! It will be like you are flying blind and in the next moment, you will realize you are literally flying thousands of feet above the surrounding terrain in a place of great clarity. When this happens, you will experience tremendous joy and awe. Your awe will come from the panoramic view you will have because everything will make sense when seen from a heavenly perspective. Your joy will come because early in the journey you did all you could and then you chose to rest in the wings of God's presence even though you did not understand all that was taking place. Resting in His presence and trusting in God’s goodness became the vehicle of passage for your journey of faith. 

The Magnified Effect of Our Obedience

When the average citizen of Jerusalem walked by Jesus and the two criminals hanging beside Him on crosses it was nothing unusual. Crucifixions were a normal occurrence at that time in history. No one seeing the crucifixion could ever imagine the salvation of all humanity was hanging on display before their eyes. 

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany someone passing by would simply think another priest had something to say about some obscure point of theology. 

When Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus and sit in the "colored section” during the Montgomery Bus Boycott those on the bus who occupied places of social privilege thought she was rude. They were unaware that her act of defiance would provide momentum to the civil rights movement in America. 

When the unidentified young man who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during the protests of 1989 he displayed courage in a nation where courage could become a death sentence. The image of his act of resistance was smuggled out of China and went worldwide becoming one of the most iconic images of our time. 

While Jesus on the Cross was, far and away, the most significant of these examples, the others speak to us about the impact of courageous lives and the corresponding acts of obedience they committed to something better and higher. These acts set in motion repercussions that would impact the global community.

Each life will have similar moments. While none of us are the Savior of the world, each of us has the potential to be the next Martin Luther, Rosa Parks, or the unidentified young man in Tiananmen Square who would become known in history as the Tank Man. These individual acts of obedience would release ripple effects that were unknown at the time. When we act in response to our violated conscious or an ethic of God’s Kingdom we never know where that ripple of obedience will travel.

Today, you have something significant waiting to happen as a result of your obedience. It may not be as dramatic as the examples I cited, but it might have the potential to change a single life or reveal the God-ordained destiny of a family. You and I are only responsible to drop the rock of our obedience into the pond. Where that ripple goes only God knows. You are a person of Kingdom significance. Walk in that significance and God will magnify the effect of your obedience to reach out and touch people and places you cannot yet see or imagine.

Transformed Under the Weight of Suffering

Yesterday, I received an early Father’s Day gift from my daughter, Anna. It was a mortar and pestle from Bali. Since I enjoy cooking this gift really blessed me. In the bowl of the mortar shown in the photograph are the herbs, garlic cloves and olive oil that I would soon crush to make a marinade for the baked cod fillets we were having for lunch. Crushing the herbs took the flavor profile of the meal to the next level. The fragrance of the crushed herbs filled our kitchen and sparked our appetites.

As I looked at the ingredients sitting in the mortar bowl waiting to be crushed, I thought of our lives and how in certain seasons it feels like we have spent time on the receiving end of an emotional stone pestle. We want to keep things in our lives tidy, separate and unchanged, but there are times when parts of our life will get crushed without our permission under the weight of suffering. In some instances, our lives are changed beyond recognition in comparison to what was previously known.  There are hidden blessings waiting to be discovered in these crushing times if we choose to see them.

God can turn our crushing seasons into something beautiful that will result in a deeper union with His heart. Crushing has the potential to transform the fragrance and flavor of our lives into something wonderfully unexpected, just like the herbs and oil formed a marinade that transformed an otherwise normal meal into something extraordinary. In these experiences, the witness of our life will become like the fragrance of the crushed herbs that filled our kitchen with expectancy. That witness will announce to others that an exquisite meal of a shared fellowship with the sufferings of Christ is always available to us on the other side of a crushing season if we choose to look to Him and not the suffering to find our answers. 

The Gallery of God's Goodness

Wait for the shattered pieces of this broken moment to fall and settle around you. There is nothing you can do while your reality is breaking up and falling apart. Only when the breaking is finished will you know what pieces God wants you to pick up and use to create the collage of your healing. There is an image He wants to bring forth from all these broken pieces. That image will display a future of hope. It will be an unimaginable masterpiece of God completed within the frame of your life and it will hang in the gallery of God’s goodness.

Chain Reaction Resurrection Life

The day after celebrating the resurrection of Jesus it is important to realize His death and resurrection were not single, isolated events.  The life and death of Jesus are so powerful they created a spiritual chain reaction that continues to confront death and despair throughout all the realms of human existence. Consider the relationships and situations in your life you now see as dead and gone forever. The graves holding these things have the potential to open and release their contents to the voice of the Risen One. 

This morning, I read Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death that took place three days before His resurrection. Imagine the power released when Jesus rose from the grave and defeated death! 

Matthew wrote,  “Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit. At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. They left the cemetery after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people” (Matthew 27:50-53).

What we once considered dead and lost forever has the potential to walk back into our lives more alive than at any time before. What happened on the day of Jesus' death has the same potential in our day. Imagine the scene in Jerusalem when dead and departed loved ones knocked at the front door of their homes where those inside were still mourning their passing.  

The death and resurrection of Jesus are not events lost in history. These are eternal events free from the constraints of time and space - free from the grip of death. The announcement of the death and resurrection of Jesus traveled through the known creation past the farthest border of outer space to the edge of nothingness and declared His victory. 

The evidence of Jesus' death and resurrection will be walking toward you today. Ask the Lord to help you see the evidence of this approaching resurrection life. It is all around us if we choose to see this life with the eyes of faith.

Undone

This morning at Living Waters Church in Medford, Oregon, I was undone emotionally. The worship team took us to the heights of worship with the passion of their hearts and the excellence of their musical skill. As the worship team sang about Jesus taking His first breath after His resurrection, I could not contain my emotions. I actually heard Him taking that first breath. I was undone knowing that someday I will also draw the same breath after my own resurrection. "He is alive" is not a slogan. Jesus is real and tangible to all who seek Him.

While It Was Still Dark

This morning, I walked outside and stood on our front porch while it was still dark. I wanted to experience the predawn environment of the first Easter morning when Mary Magdalene came to visit the Lord’s tomb. Scripture says, “Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.”  Mary’s first thought was to think someone had stolen the body of Jesus. 

We are no different than Mary. When the evidence of the life of Jesus stares us in the face we must first process our disbelief. That is the purpose of evidence. It is presented to help us displace our doubt. Only when Mary Magdalene had a personal encounter with Jesus later in the morning did it all begin to make sense. Jesus became her evidence. The empty tomb did not at first persuade Mary and neither will just the facts about the Lord and His resurrection persuade us. It was an encounter with Jesus that birthed the words of her testimony, “I have seen the Lord!” 

As you walk into your place of worship this morning, ask God to help you encounter the risen Lord, not an Easter program. That encounter will change everything. All the historical facts about Jesus’ resurrection and the gauzy, stylized social media Easter images cannot give us the faith we need to press on when we want to give up. Only an encounter with the Resurrected One can give us that kind of faith.

Our Easter Destination

The cross and the tomb are both empty, but the throne is forever occupied. That is God’s Easter message to the Church – Jesus has risen to His place of honor! He was raised from death to occupy a place of enthronement where all powers and authorities contrary to the love and will of God are in submission under His feet and as a result of His victory, under our feet as well. 

The suffering of the cross and the darkness of the tomb were only temporary stops along the way toward the ultimate fulfillment of Christ’s mission - enthronement.

As you worship the Lord this Easter, take time to contemplate your place in Jesus seated with Him upon His throne. This is not a future event. It is your present reality. That understanding has the potential to change everything.

“For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). 

Have a blessed Easter!

Leaving Roads of Despair

There are some roads we choose to journey upon that will never lead us to the will of God. These roads are not dead ends. They keep going on and on in the wrong direction offering false hope, draining our emotional energy, and never delivering us into a good place.  Leaving these roads of despair only happens when God intervenes. Human will and planning cannot rescue us no matter how wise our plan or resolute we might be in changing our life-direction.

The only way off these roads is to call out to God. When He hears our cry He will come and pick us up from the wrong road and put us on the roadway He originally intended for us to travel upon. This is an act of God’s mercy. It is similar to what Paul wrote about to the Colossian church regarding what happened when we are born again, “For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.” (Colossians 1:13).  God is in the transferring business, not just at the moment of our salvation but through all seasons of life.

If you are on a road leading to nowhere, call out to God. At that moment, the hand of God will begin moving in your direction to take hold of your life and make the transfer onto a new road. The time between your plea and your new placement is where hell will try to rob you of your joy and expectancy. When you first believed the mercy of God was possible a shift in your thinking began to take place.  The thought that a transfer is possible is so powerful it will not allow this temporary road of despair to rob you of your joy in your time of waiting. God is coming for you. He will be faithful to do what He promised.