The Plaque of Your History

Jan and I live in the historic mining town of Jacksonville, Oregon. We enjoy living in Jacksonville and southern Oregon. After so many years of travel and various ministry assignments we finally found our place. Shortly after moving to Jacksonville in 2002, I discovered some of my relatives were on the first Applegate Wagon Train that passed through our valley in the fall of 1846. I have discovered relatives buried in the historic cemetery above our town.

As you can imagine, we have some building codes in place to protect our history. Many of the historic homes in Jacksonville have placards placed on them noting the date they were constructed and the names of the families who first owned them. As you walk through town you can see these placards and relive their history in your imagination.

As a joke, I found a bronze plaque that reads, “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.” I bought it and attached it to the outside wall near our front door as a spoof. Our house is not historic. It was moved here in 1948 from the original Camp White military base that was active in the Medford area during World War II.

The plaque has become a challenge to me. Each time I step up on our front porch to enter our home, I look at the plaque. It carries a humorous reminder of a deeper issue. I ask myself, what have I allowed God to do on the site of my life today? Did I trust Him for something? Did I speak in love when I wasn’t feeling very loving? Did I contend for a miracle when a miracle seemed impossible? It would be a tragedy if the words on the plaque of my life and yours had nothing to say.

The most important thing you and I will do today is to have an encounter with God. These encounters can come by simply recognizing His presence. Forgiving someone. Choosing to believe in the midst of fear, despair and overwhelming odds. When these encounters come they will rewrite the plaque of our history that will someday be posted on each of our lives. I want our historic plaques to tell the story of lives lived to the fullest because they had a daily encounter with the Living God.

The End of Your Unstable Season

Some of you have been climbing upward with great toil for so long you thought this was the only way forward. You faithfully climbed the stairs of suffering and you know nothing else. But God has put you in a new place without your knowledge or permission. This new place remains unacknowledged by you because you cannot believe your season of struggle has actually come to an end.

God has placed you on a smooth, flat place where He is about to accelerate your forward progress. You have misinterpreted what has taken place. You still see the journey as a climb and you are trying to walk on flat ground like someone still climbing up a flight of stairs. You look and feel awkward like a newborn colt trying to find its balance for the first time. You think you are stumbling, but you are not. You are adjusting to a flat place.

In the climbing season you developed spiritual muscles designed only to climb. These muscles are now being adjusted to learn how to walk on a flat place of blessing. Your spiritual muscles are submitting to new and unfamiliar terrain. Give this adjustment the time needed to fully develop. When it is over, you will look like a young colt that finally found his legs and scampered across a green pasture with great joy.

Hard Places

During my first year of ministry, I told my pastor, Roy Hicks, Jr. the spiritual ground where I was attempting to plant our new church was hard.  I was hoping for sympathy.  Instead, I received truth. Roy said, “Don’t focus on the ground.”  I have never forgotten those words.  

When Roy spoke, I knew the Lord was lovingly correcting me.  I had become obsessed with the challenges of planting a new church.  In the challenge, I had forgotten it was the Lord who was responsible to bring the breakthrough, not me no matter how hard I swung my spiritual hoe.

Some of you have been called to hard places.  Marriages, ministries, business and individual lives will each have hard and challenging seasons where it seems that no spiritual tool you bring to the hardness is making a dent. The nature of these hard places and their accompanying seasons can fill your thinking to such a degree that you begin to focus primarily on the hardness of your circumstance instead of the goodness and power of God. God wants to change how we see our challenges.

Hard places are like a stage – they are the setting for a miraculous display of God’s power.  Everyone who is currently watching your life can see that you will not be able to break through the restricting crust of your situation in your own strength.  When God comes in His perfect timing and with His amazing power, He will crack the hardness of the opposition and reveal the beauty hidden just under the surface that awaits your discovery.  Stay faithful.  God is never late.

A Revealing Wind of the Spirit is Beginning to Blow

This morning, as I was reading scripture, I came to Proverbs 20:27 where the text says, “The Lord’s light penetrates the human spirit, exposing every hidden motive.”

When I read those words, I saw the image of a book.  As I watched the book a wind began blowing across its pages moving them one-by-one like an invisible hand was turning each page. I immediately knew the wind was the Spirit of God and the book represented the lives of individuals and institutions, both political and religious. 

As the wind continued to turn each page, I understood the purpose of the wind was to go deeper into the contents of the book hidden behind its beautiful cover and binding. The wind was peeling back the pages to reveal the true motives of the heart hidden deep within the chapters of the book.

When this revealing takes place it will be a work of purity, not punishment. The wind of the Spirit is doing a work of preparation for what God is about to accomplish in the earth.  Stay humble and merciful as lives are being exposed because the same wind revealing the motives in other people will also reveal the motives hidden deep within the pages of your life. This attitude of the heart will give your voice a merciful tone as you speak to those who are being exposed by the light of truth.

Going Lower To Rise Higher

-->To live and minister in the supernatural power of God over the long haul will require that you unlock the doors to your greatest weakness.  We hide these areas because of shame and the fear of disqualification they can bring.  By avoiding these areas we miss their hidden potential. What disqualifies a person from man-made religious ministry can actually qualify them for a greater impact in God’s Kingdom.  This understanding will require that we understand a principle of God’s Kingdom.

Paul would come to understand this principle when the Lord said to him, "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” It is in these weak places where we are not only confronted with our brokenness and shame, but where we are able to see and experience the power of God.

If you desire to walk in the long-term release of the supernatural power of God as demonstrated by signs, wonders and miracles, at some point, you will need to embrace these weak places in your life. The lower you go into these areas walled off by shame and brokenness, taking with you the healing power of God’s love and forgiveness, the higher you will rise in your ability to be used by God to do those things your greatest strength could never accomplish.

When Your Life Has Stalled

When it feels like your life has stalled, it is time to revisit your history. In your history you will discover an abandoned step that has caused your life to stall.

When God spoke to you at the start, He began moving you forward toward His preferred future for your life. Everything in your journey has built upon that original revelation. You cannot arrive at the end without acknowledging the beginning.

At some point you stopped doing the things God originally used to define your life and calling. This is why you now feel stalled. A stalled life is only intended as a temporary stop along the way where you reevaluate and reset your navigational instruments. It is not a permanent destination unless you choose to make it one.

The raw faith you exhibited in your past has been waiting for you in this stalled place ready to be released. When that faith is released the next step will be seen and your journey will begin its forward motion once again.

God Is Making A Way Into A Place Blessing

-->This morning, Jan and I walked through our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful morning filled with blue skies, white clouds and crisp air. In our small town, deer walk freely among the homes. One of the homes we passed is known for its very elaborate deer fence.   If you have any plants exposed they must be deer proof plants or your garden will be eaten down to the nubs.  Your other alternative is to construct a deer fence.  These fences must be at least six feet tall and secured at both the top and bottom.  The deer in our town have the uncanny ability to find a way over and under these fences.

The home we passed on our walk is beautiful with an equally beautiful garden and yard filled with clover.  Inside the enclosure was a single deer – a doe. When we passed by she looked up. This was the happiest looking deer I had ever seen. She had won the deer lottery and was eating tasty plants not available to the other deer in town.  I stopped to take her picture. When I saw the deer feeding within the enclosed yard, the Lord spoke a word to me.

Many of you have been fenced off from the promised blessings of God.  You do not know why this has taken place. You have walked by these enclosed blessings resigned to feed only on what was immediate and available to you outside the fence. What was promised to you has always been seen on the other side of a restricting fence.  This fence was erected by a challenging circumstance and designed to keep you out.  That is about to change.

Like the deer I saw this morning, God is going to reveal a way through the restriction and allow you access to a garden of blessing.  You are about to enter a place where you will eat your fill of God’s goodness. This new season will not be the continuation of the past.  You will no longer have to walk by a blessing and look longingly at its beauty as it flourishes out of reach.  God is opening a way through the restricting fence and He is inviting you inside to eat to your heart’s content.