Beyond All We Can Imagine

Exploring the expanding edge of revelation is accomplished through imagination and faithful obedience, not by our preferred theology, the most advanced forms of scholarship, or a developed intellect. As valuable as those three things can be, it is faith and faith alone that places us on the leading edge of God’s ever-expanding revelation. It is there we get a glimpse of the substance of things only visible by faith.

Those who formally examine these acts of faith will create a theology for the experience, expand the resource base of scholarship and come to realize, once again, the earthbound limitations of human intellect. All of these studies happen after an event of faith takes place. 

C.S. Lewis defined this journey of discovery as the result of a “baptized imagination.” Albert Einstein noted, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand." The Apostle Paul shared about the journey beyond his knowledge-based reality, “I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell” (II Corinthians 12:4).

All Kingdom advancement takes place beyond what we currently know and define as reality. That is the nature of something that expands. It is always moving and cannot be nailed down and controlled. 

God is preparing to invite some of you to travel with Him to the expanding edge of His revelation. There you will see and hear things that will become needed course-correcting revelations for the Church as we enter this new decade. Your act faith will be studied and researched, and in that study, a new level of refreshing hope will be released to those of us who follow your path of faith.

God is Writing the Story of Your Life

When I write a book or an article, it is rarely done in a linear fashion. I am not a traditional author who works from an outline. Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, once said of his writing style, “If you want to see where my next book will come from, read my blog.” I am not a novelist who develops character profiles and plotlines. I write like a prophet who is creating a dish of revelation from a variety of ingredients with a dash of apostolic insight tossed in here and there to provide structure to my writing.

The way I write can resemble how we live our lives. Not much of life is lived in a straight line forming a predictable route of travel. Our journey is filled with detours, collisions, and misdirection.  Our lives are a collection of what can appear to be isolated events. These events feel separate and disconnected until God steps in and threads His needle with the scarlet thread of His loving interaction in our life and pulls together each isolated event to create the timeline of our unique story. 

If you are feeling a bit fragmented, I want to encourage you that each stand-alone and seemingly disconnected experience of your life will someday be brought together to reveal a script you could not have imagined nor written. God is the only one capable of writing an accurate account of your life.

Perhaps I am sharing all of this with you because it was just this morning that a writing project finally began to fall into place as God tugged on the scarlet thread, and all the pieces seemed to come together. If we give God the time and space required to knit together the narrative of our story, we will live without the frustration and angst that comes when we try to write our story without the help of His merciful editorial wisdom. Only God can bring together the fragmented seasons of our life and create a bestseller.

Breaking Camp

Jan reminded me of something we don’t often consider when we enter a time of change and transition. Using the Israelites as an example, they had to break camp before they could move. Transition is not always immediate. It is a process that involves breaking camp with our current way of thinking and allowing God to reset a new course for our life. A reset helps us leave behind the old encampment and begin moving in a different direction. If you are feeling a bit unsettled, it may be God getting you ready for something new.

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.

A Gentle Change

The coming change will be different than what has taken place in the past. Those were abrupt, painful, and stark transitions. This time you will step through the border between two seasons without obstruction. It will be like someone passing through chiffon-like drapes moving gently and slowly across their face. There will be no clinging only a gentle passage into a new place.

Perfection

You can always do a transition better. No transition will ever be perfect. “Perfect” is not the goal. 

We have an unrealistic tendency to want our life transitions to be perfect. We need to revisit our definition of reality. In retrospect, each one of my transitions could have been done better, but people were involved. The human element changes everything. 

If a “perfect” response to the plan is your goal, you will actually miss the heart of God in the plan. Whenever God relates to human beings, he builds into his plan recourse for human error. He understands your weaknesses. God can actually do more through your weakness than through your strength. His love doesn’t operate through our inflated ego. God has chosen to work through the place of human weakness where the only thing we can bring to him is our humility. 

“Perfect” is a strict, non-human attribute. Only God is perfect. If we require perfection as the goal of our transition, we will lose friends in the process because people will be people and end up failing us at some point. Because perfection is the person of God, not a goal, we can call upon him, the perfect one, to help us when we stumble. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

Letting Go

Letting go will be harder than you think. Start letting go today, no matter how far in the future your transition may be. 

In our grasping at life, we are trying to find a sense of security. Our grasping says: “As long as I can hold onto this present situation or relationship, I will be secure.” This kind of security is an illusion. Nothing in this life is secure. The only secure things are what we place in the hands of God. 

Letting go is not just a physical act—it is an emotional and spiritual one. This release must begin long before the date of your transition is a reality. Walk through all the phases of your coming transition with an open hand, grasping at nothing. 

In our first major life transition, my wife, Jan, and I made plans to sell our dream home. Jan loved our home. During this time of transition, she would walk by the special kitchen sink and custom fireplace and release these items. She did this with our personal possessions and with our close friends we would soon leave. She did this for two years. In the end, when it came time to sell our home, Jan was free to move forward and not look back in regret. She never felt a sense of loss. 

Try to disassemble this transition into its various parts and let go of one part at a time until there is nothing left for you to grasp. You want to approach the day of your transition empty-handed. 

What part of your plan can you begin to let go of today? 

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

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. 

Stepping Out of the Box

In a dream, I saw Jesus running across a stream. He looked like all of us who have run across a narrow mountain stream landing on each available stone with the ball of our foot. It’s a delicate dance of passage. 

In the dream, Jesus wasn’t landing on stones. His feet were landing inside the little boxes of religious opinion and narrow worldviews we create in an attempt to define who we think God is and how His Kingdom should be manifested through our bias.

The Lord did not look angry as He made the crossing. The look on His face was one of joy. He was moving to the other side of the stream not allowing any small box way of thinking to inhibit His forward progress.

When we create a box of opinion, worldview or alliance and demand that God fits into what we created, we have actually created an idol of sorts. The idol reflects an image of us, rarely of God. These are foolish and limiting creations. God is always moving forward beyond the most expansive edge of our current level of understanding. He steps in and over the little boxes we create where we live with other like-minded people who share that same limited understanding.  

God’s love and plan for humanity can never be restrained or held back by the boxes we create to contain and define our opinions and conclusions. We are the only ones held back from something better when we choose to live inside a small box of preferential thinking that restrains and contains the fullness of God and His Kingdom expansion. 

Spiritual Elevators

Recently, I watched a video about a new elevator system. Traditional elevators move people up and down between floors. This new elevator adds another function. It can also move passengers side to side, laterally between floors. This up and down, side to side movement cuts down the wait time for passengers because the elevator’s computer can assess the demand between floors during peak use time.

For the last few months, the Lord has been speaking to me about becoming spiritually agile, able to move laterally. People of faith can become trapped in ways of thinking that are up and down – always linear - without considering that a lateral move might be what God desires. 

There are times when we need to move sideways to align our life with a new direction before we move forward in a straight line. I think the elevator designers were somewhat prophetic. Linear movement and straight ahead thinking can make sense to a mind trapped in tradition or logic. Jesus was a master at lateral movement. When people expected Him to move in one direction, He moved in a way not previously considered.

Listen carefully to the Spirit. He may ask you to take an elevator of faith that at first seems like it is moving in the opposite direction from the expectations of your tradition or the mindset of a particular group. Trust His leading. If you are willing to do this, you will find yourself arriving at new and unimagined destinations of Kingdom enterprise before the waiting crowd who took the elevator of assumption and missed God’s timing and ultimately, His intended destination.

  

Night Voices

Nighttime can be the worst time. This is when hell often speaks the loudest and tries to turn your rest into restlessness. 

Fatigue in life and ministry does not come from a packed schedule. We can be busy but live in rest. In times of transition, our fatigue comes when our minds are filled with unresolved conflict and fear about the future. We lay in bed and cannot turn off the voices of fear that occupy our mind. 

Fatigue takes fear to a dark place. That dark place is where our hope is robbed, and our joy is extinguished. To combat this kind of fatigue, we must resolve to not worry about the future. This is easy to say but challenging to do. We make this resolution in the assurance that God is in our future waiting for us with his love and goodness. His presence in our future is what brings peace to this present moment. 

Take your thoughts prisoner. March them to the feet of Jesus and leave them there. This is your place of rest. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

God's Pause Button

God is about to push the pause button on the circumstance of your life. The pause will cause all the confusion and surrounding spiritual noise to settle down and fall in place under submission to God's will. 

Right now it doesn’t feel like a pause button could possibly be pushed because the unsettling things in your life are making so much noise and drawing more attention than ever before. This upheaval needs to be reinterpreted. These sounds are the last dying gasps of the diversion tactics of hell just before they submit to God's pause and come into order. 

After the pause has served its purpose, the Lord will hit the spiritual play button and you will be amazed at what the Lord did for you in the pause. A tremendous peace will enter your mind and that peace will begin to direct your steps into a reordered future. 

You serve the God of the possible in all things. He wants you to know and experience that possibility especially when the desires of your heart look and sound like an utter impossibility.

Announcing Something Better

When John the Baptist was crying out in the wilderness the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding region ventured out to hear his message. In that advancing crowd were people from all spheres of cultural influence. It would not be the innovators of a new product or the producers of a new media project or a promise made by the government that would get a culture moving toward change. It was the voice of a prophet who offered people an opportunity to change the way they think that sparked an entire culture to consider something new before any resulting creative process would begin. 

John said to the approaching crowds, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2). The word used for repent in the original language throughout the New Testament has been defined as, “to change one’s mind.” More specifically in its usage in Matthew 3:2 three more words are added to the definition to read “to change one’s mind for the better.” 

The prophetic message of repentance uttered by John told people something better was coming and they needed to change the way they think in order to receive a new life-assignment. He was asking them to change the way they think so that the corresponding decisions about their lives and their assignments within the various spheres of cultural influence would manifest a repentant life – a life that entertains a better reality. A repentant mind would be required to align people with the message of Jesus and His Kingdom. That alignment would change how people crafted their mission statement and it would change how they used their unique skills in the marketplace of culture.

Every reformation has a prophetic voice calling out from the unexplored wilderness of a fresh revelation extending an invitation to people to consider something better. In times of cultural transition, a prophetic voice will be heard as an invitation to consider something better rather than a condemning voice of the status quo. The later is something anyone can do. It takes no real prophetic insight. To be a prophet of reformation requires that we wait to hear the better thing God wants to accomplish before we raise our voice and assume we are speaking in the name of God.

Affirmation - It's a Powerful Thing

Last night, I was invited along with a group of other men to honor a young man on his 12^th birthday. It was a rite of passage. After a dinner of the young man’s choice – BBQ hamburgers – we went outside and sat around an open fire pit. Each of us was asked to write out answers to the following two questions; “To me, to be a man means…” and, “To be a man after God’s heart looks like…” We each took turns reading our answers out loud and speaking words of personal affirmation over the young man. After we were finished, the father handed his son several gifts. One gift was a new Bible. The evening ended with smores.

Everything that took place last night was very special from the gourmet BBQ hamburgers to the final goodbye. What I enjoyed the most was watching the face of the young man while words of affirmation were showered over him. I saw his soul filled with love and his spirit receiving marching orders as he moves from boyhood into young manhood.

Most cultures have rites of passage. We seem to have forgotten the importance of these moments and let them come and go without the formal recognition that should be attached to their significance. Perhaps we should expand our understanding of these rites of passage and create a ceremony when they appear on our calendars. What would happen if we did this once a child was born and then again at age 12 or when our kids go off to college or the day a couple gets married, or someone assumes a new career and then finally enters retirement? Every new stage of life requires affirmation for the ones we love offering words of promise and hope as they step into the unfamiliar and unexplored territory of a new season of life.

Before the fireside evening took place we were asked to write a longer more detailed personal affirmation and life-instruction for the young man. His father is creating a bound book containing all our words that will become an affirming compass to help guide the young man into his future. I wish you could have seen his face throughout the evening. As the fire crackled and words of affirmation were spoken, I saw the emerging strength of manly character begin to rise to the surface.  The look in the young man’s eyes changed. He saw something. He got a glimpse of the kind of man God wanted him to become. He could see that image because words of affirmation were spoken over him. Affirmation is a powerful thing to behold.

Your Life Will Become a Sign and a Wonder

I took the attached photo of an empty signpost while on a walk through the small town where Jan and I live. It looks like city workers planted the signpost in the ground with plans to attach a sign in the near future. After I walked past the bare signpost, I sensed a nudge from the Spirit to go back and capture its image knowing the Lord had something to say at a later date. Today is that later date.

Some of you have been planted in places, relationships and seasons of life you did not expect or see coming. At this time in your life, you look and feel like the solitary signpost in the photograph. You have a place, but not a message. A sign detailing why you have been put in this position is coming. The Lord is about to attach an explanatory sign to your life. Like the base of a signpost that needs time to become secure enough to support the weight of a sign, so has it been with you. God has been firming and seasoning your life in this place getting you ready to support the weight of your sign’s message once the Lord attaches the sign to your life.

When the Lord finally places His sign on your life it will all make sense – the reason for your placement, the why of this season of waiting, and the content of the message you will carry into the future. Your life will become a sign to others that God has been at work in your life all along even as people passed by and thought it odd that your life resembled a signpost without a sign. The sign upon your life will cause the doubters to wonder how it all happened. For the ones who believed in you and never gave up, your life will become yet another sign to celebrate the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

Retrieving the Promises

Every season in your life will have a promise assigned to it. The children of Israel entered the Promised Land with a promise. The Early Church did not leave Jerusalem until the promised Spirit came. You will not move successfully through life without a promise. Everything given to us is the result of a promise God has made.                                                      

Promises are powerful because, when spoken, they become a gathering point to assemble the supernatural resources of God that make the promise become a reality. It is important for you to actually speak out the promises of God. Spoken promises interrupt the environment of the status quo and call forth something new. A spoken promise can become the turning point in a life-transition.                                                                                                     

If you feel like you have no promise, you have not been listening close enough to what God is saying. Ask God to share again with you the promises he has made over your life. As you wait, you will hear things that may sound presumptive or border on the absurd. You can trust God that He is good and has wonderful promises ready to release into your life.                                 

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Place-Walking-Transitions-Ministry/dp/0615947573/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1545056288&sr=8-6&keywords=garris+elkins)




Over-Controlled Lives

When we over-control our lives, we lose a sense of wonder and mystery. Some people have so over-planned and controlled every aspect of their lives they have taken on the sole responsibility for the realization of all aspects of their future. To the natural mind, this makes sense. In the spirit, it becomes tragic. 

God is creative. His creativity did not end when he created the world and said, “It is good.” He is still creating. He is creating new futures. As he creates a new future for you, he is also inviting you into the creative process where new and unexpected things take place. Some of these creative moments can be quite surprising—full of wonder and mystery. These are the surprises that take place when we are in a relationship with the Living God. 

The longer we live, the more we realize the importance of holding this life loosely—and the plans we make even more loosely. When we tightly grip our spiritual steering wheel and try to force a turn to the left or right, we can end up over-controlling our life-transitions and actually cause the process to lose traction and spin out. 

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Place-Walking-Transitions-Ministry/dp/0615947573/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1545056288&sr=8-6&keywords=garris+elkins)

The Season Has Changed – It’s Time To Reposition

I have a group of friends who have invested months of detailed planning and strategized for a project of immense potential. The scale of this Kingdom enterprise is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Non-Disclosure Agreements have been created and honored in the process. My friends have done everything they can do. Now comes the waiting. A time of waiting is always filled with emotions of every sort.

In a recent conversation, I said to my friends in their time of waiting, faith is the only substance they can trust. They have planted all the seeds God commissioned them to plant. They have done everything with excellence throughout the process. In order to navigate into the next season of the project, they will need to change roles from that of a seed planter to a midwife in preparation for the healthy delivery of their project. In natural births, midwives are present to calm fears in the delivery, give timely encouragement, and provide wise instruction in the process of birthing. The same is true for anyone involved in the delivery of any Spirit-birthed and Spirit-empowered high stakes Kingdom adventure whether it is the investment of finances or human resources.

Our dreams and visions have seasons. Each season will have a new role for us to assume. Make sure you know the current season of your dream. For every dream, there is a time to till the soil, a time to plant the seed, and a time to harvest the fruit. Different seasons will reveal different roles. Ask God for the wisdom to define your current season, your assigned role in that season, and where you will need to stand at the time of harvest. When the time of fulfillment comes, you will be standing in the right season and in the right place. 

Because you have properly discerned the season and faithfully transitioned your various roles along the way, you will have the honor and privilege of seeing the purpose of God being birthed before your very eyes. Someday you will hold a fulfilled dream in your arms. At that moment you will worship the One who first commissioned that dream as just a small seed of faith that, against all odds, became a reality.

A Personal Change

For the last few weeks, I had been sensing a change was coming. I’ve written daily for several years. This daily routine was primarily for me to learn the discipline of writing. Over the years, this routine has become the seedbed for several books and opened the door for new relationships. For that, I am grateful.

I am sensing a personal reset is taking place. To partner with that reset, I will not be publishing on social media for the remainder of the year. I will ask the Lord in January of 2019 if He wants me to re-engage at that time. 

Perhaps it was the passing of Eugene Peterson that finally prompted me to take this step. I need to enter a reflective space. Because a reset is coming, I do not want to miss the adjustments that reset will require. I believe the Lord is bringing a reset not just for Jan and me, but for others as well. 

I want to reread Eugene’s Peterson’s writings and others like him and tap the depths of their wisdom and the history of their obedience. I want to meditate on the Word seeking a deeper revelation than my history or current assumptions can provide. I want to read good poetry to see this life from a creative perspective. I want to step aside from the things that can muddle the prophetic nature of our message. I am purposefully repositioning myself to listen intently for the still small voice of God in the midst of all the clamor and noise that currently surrounds our faith.

Thanks and be well. May God richly and abundantly bless each of you!

Navigating a Life-Transition with Hope and Trust

As Jan and I were walking into town, I noticed a line of trees still carrying the fullness of color in their fall foliage. Most of the leaves on the other trees in town had already fallen, but this line of trees was still in the fullness of its colorful display. 

As I walked by the trees, the Lord impressed on me that some of you fear the end of this season and the approach of something new. Don’t fear the new and the unknown. It's all in God's hands. In this transition, the Lord will allow the goodness of what was to linger longer than expected to get you through this change before the promise of something new appears. 

You will always have a representation of God's goodness in each season of your life. Look for the color and beauty in the middle of your doubt and concern. You are not alone. We all have to deal with these things at some level. Learn to interpret each transitional season with an outlook of hope in the goodness of God. Hope will give the promises of God a place to assemble and manifest the future you are about to enter. Hope will also open up a new level of trust for you to see with the eyes of faith what God has planned for your future.