A Bath of His Presence

For the last several weeks, I have felt that we, as the Church, need to take a bath. After a long and brutal election cycle, emotion and opinion ran wild. We watched as words were tossed around like verbal dirt clods striking anyone who was standing in the way.  We have taken in drama never intended for our ears to hear or our hearts to carry. Some of this dirt has been self-applied when the fruit of self-control was not present to direct our words and actions.

As I pondered this today, I saw the image of a beautiful claw-foot tub drawn with the warm water of God’s presence. The Lord approached His bride asking her to disrobe. He took her by the hand and helped her step into the waiting bath water slipping down into its warm and inviting presence. He began to wash her with words of love. As He spoke, He gently scrubbed away the soil that came from disputes of unbridled emotion and assumption. He washed away the pain of unkind words from her face. He scrubbed away the wounds of dishonor from her back.

When the bath was finished the bride stood before the Lord fresh and clean. As she stood in His presence, the Lord said, “Remember this feeling. I did this washing at the moment of your salvation and I will continue to do this each time you come to me. I will be faithful to wash you in every season of your life when you step away and become soiled. When you return, I will always be waiting for you to wash you and restore you with words of tender love. My passion is to present you holy and without spot before the Father. I never tire of this washing. Always be willing to come to Me knowing that a bath of My love is always drawn and awaiting your arrival.”

“Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” 5:25-27

The Things of Life

I was driving home earlier this week and realized I had been taking inventory of the vehicles coming at me from the other direction. A muscle car went by that reminded me of a 57 Chevy I once owned. Then a sports car zoomed by that stirred memories of a Triumph TR3 and an MG. These were followed by a nice cruiser motorcycle that reminded me of one of the many motorcycles that filled my garage over the years. Each one passed without raising my pulse. None of them now occupy space in my garage or driveway. It was the same thing with flying. Twenty-two years ago I pulled a Cessna 206 into a hangar, closed the door and never went back.  It was not always like that. At one point in my life, each of these things promised a needed escape, but no longer.

When I got home, I said to Jan, “I think I feel like a dud! All these great rigs passed me today and none of them excite me anymore.” Then Jan spoke some wise and insightful words that spiritual wives speak to their confused husbands, “That’s because you had all those things and now they no longer fill you.”  Her words hung in the air longer than normal. She was right. That place in my life had now been filled with something more abiding and satisfying.

Gaining experience and possessing things in life is OK as long the experiences and things don’t gain us. Over the years, I enjoyed all that God allowed me to experience for a season and then its time was done. A chapter was closed. Things have expiration dates, real life doesn’t.

The next day, when I pulled my car into the garage, I looked up on the wall and there were a couple of my old fishing rods. A layer of dust rested atop each one. They have waited there while other things took their place. I am going to take them down this week, dust them off and put some new line on their reels. When trout season starts, I will be found standing on the bank of a cold mountain stream bouncing salmon eggs in front of a rainbow trout no longer feeling like a dud.

Protecting Passion

The greatest theft is the theft of our passion for God. Passion is the ignition system God has placed within us that ignites our destiny. It is the flame we use to touch the woodpile of purpose that will cause us to burn for God.                              

If we are not careful, we can allow our passion to be put up for sale on a spiritual auction block and made available to the highest emotional bidder. These bidders will provide a reasoned excuse for the sale and redefinition of your passion for the purpose of lighting a fire of lesser purpose. Once passion is diverted it can only ignite temporary fires that become lost in the cultural forest fires of history leaving behind only charred remains in their path.                                       

Inventory your passion. What ignites you at the deepest level? That spark only belongs to God, not a cause, a group or a calling. It is the flame of passion between you and the Lord. Guard it like it was the last precious flame sparked from the last match struck while trying to stay alive in the depths of a cold, dark, and dangerous winter. Without its flame, your love will grow cold and your purpose in life will be extinguished.

Turning the Dial

Yesterday, I was driving in my car and turned on a Christian radio station. That was unusual for me. I don’t care for a lot of what is out there in the form of Christian media because years ago many of the platforms of faith-based media no longer seemed to resemble the world in which I lived. The programming and stage settings seemed garish and out of touch with my reality, so I tuned them out and tried to find a home on secular radio and television.

As I drove along in my car, I found myself surfing through my normal fare of AM radio talk shows and found the same depressing information as the day before. I realized I had developed a default listening habit that needed to be broken. After years of this listening routine, I have come to believe a person could unplug from all forms of media for ten years and return ten years later to find the same sounds being uttered, but with different names and locations attached to the drama they report. The same rants and warnings of apocalyptic scenarios would still be present because it sells and supports programming and product. But something is changing. The blaring sounds coming from our neurotic media sources on both sides of any issue are beginning to deafen the ears of their listeners.

When I tuned into our local Christian FM station someone was simply preaching from the Bible. They did not have a pet subject to promote. They did not take a verse out of context to support their idea. They just walked through a section of Scripture and made a reasoned and rational application of truth to everyday life. The word interpreted life - life did not interpret the word.

After listening to the radio preacher, I felt like I had just taken an emotional and spiritual bath while sitting in the front seat of my car. When I finally got out of my car, the world looked and sounded different.

Fake Labels

God is asking you to rip off the fake labels others have sewn onto your life in an act of judgment. He is also asking you, through an act of forgiveness, to remove the fake labels you have prematurely and impatiently placed on people and cultures before God was able to finish His supernatural work of transformation

I was traveling with a friend on a ministry trip. One of our stops took us into South America with a flight to Caracas, Venezuela. As our Venezuelan host gave us a tour of the city, he also took us high into the surrounding mountains to visit a business. The warehouse where the business was located had no sign out front announcing what was inside. Once inside, I had an eye-opening experience.

Before me, all across the room were people sitting at sewing machines.  Beside each person was a large pile of designer labels with names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, and others. These were not small piles. Some were three feet tall. Hundreds of labels were stacked on the floor in no particular order. I watched as expressionless workers reached up in an act of repetitive boredom and took the next garment from the rack while reaching down with the other hand to grab the next available label. The label and the garment were joined together under the piercing needle of the sewing machine. Like robots working in human form, this fake label attaching enterprise was taking place all over the room. There was no thinking involved just the repeated habit of attaching false labels to garments.

That experience in Caracas reminds of what I see taking place in the lives of some people. Maybe you have allowed other people to sew fake labels of judgment onto your life. It is time for you to reach up and tear off those fake labels. The garment of your life is supposed to be labeled with the love of God, not with the judgment of any person or institution. 

A dark seamstress is at work in the Church trying to convince people they are not who God says they are. Those who attach these labels have a pile of false judgments stacked up and ready to attach to other people and segments of culture. They are doing this out of a false sense of religious duty. These judges resemble the people in the garment shop in Caracas who were assigned to perform a single function – a function of judgment that does not contain a word of hope. Hope is powerful. Only hope has the ability to steer a life toward the realization of its original design.

Today, rip off the fake labels from your life placed there without God’s permission. Rip off labels from the lives of others upon whom you have placed a fake label in premature judgment. These labels do not reflect the heart or design of the ultimate Designer. You and every other human being were designed by God to wear garments of righteousness. Labels describing God-inspired destinies are waiting in the pile next to your spiritual sewing machine. Sew with mercy and wisdom.

Called to Protect

I have always been a protector. As a young boy, my daydreams were fueled by TV shows like Roy Rogers, Sky King, and Superman. Vicariously, I became the hero in each show. This spilled over into real life. One of my earliest fights took place in the second grade while defending my Native American friend from a group of kids who were taunting him with racist remarks most likely learned at home and then spewed out on the schoolyard. While I wanted to be one of the popular kids at school, my assignment as a protector always seemed to get in the way.

In retrospect, it was not surprising that at age 22, I became a cop. It was never a conscious plan to enter law enforcement. It just happened one day while looking for work.   Police work was strangely familiar even on the first day. I belonged there. After 9 years in the job, God came knocking with another assignment to protect. I became a pastor. That was 36 years ago. I have since transitioned from pastoring a local church and now spend my days writing, mentoring and speaking.

I was once interviewed regarding my transition from policing to pastoring. The interviewer must have thought I would exclaim some stark difference. My response took the interviewer off guard when I said, “There are many similarities. I am still protecting people, but this time it is from judgment and loveless responses to life.”

Spiritual protection can be done in many ways. By a prayer that confronts an unseen spiritual bully. By stepping between the guilty and their accusers or by speaking life into a hopeless heart.  It also involves a healthy form of self-protection that guards your heart against hidden sin and pride.

As followers of Jesus, we will do as He did when He stood between a guilty woman and her accusers writing a cryptic message in the dirt or when a man named Peter needed protection from his own sense of worthlessness and was invited to a seashore breakfast of restoration. Protectors are on assignment to get in the way of the works of hell and interfere with dark outcomes. We get between lies and their potential victim and give the victim a chance to catch their spiritual breath to hear words of hope that will displace condemnation and begin the process of restoration. That is the work of a protector. It is an honorable calling.

God to the Rescue

God is about to orchestrate unusual rescue operations. Families, cities, and nations will experience new freedom as the fruit of these operations. To accomplish this, God will release precise instructions and plans for a rescue that could not be known apart from the revelation of the Spirit. 

Late one night, I was working patrol when my supervisor called me to the station along with three other officers. We had received information that a high-risk felon was spending the night with his girlfriend. We had a warrant for his arrest. He was extremely dangerous and known to keep a large machete-like knife close to him at all times. We needed to arrest the man that night or he would be gone at first light.

About 2:00 a.m. we awakened an employee from the city building department and obtained a copy of the house plans from the city records. Through surveillance of the house and its occupants, we discovered the suspect was asleep in the back bedroom. A couple of times through the night, his girlfriend would get up and go to the living room where her baby slept in a crib. She had to walk down the hall to get to the living room. To make the arrest and reduce the risk of any harm to the baby, a plan was devised that required accurate information, precise timing and pinpoint accuracy of execution.

Our arrest-rescue team was made up of five officers. My partner and I were assigned to make the arrest. Once the front door of the house was kicked in our assignment was to sprint past the baby in the crib and the girlfriend who was walking toward the living room. Another officer who followed us secured the baby while the fourth officer detained the girlfriend. Our supervisor was the last officer to enter and would coordinate the operation.

Our go-signal was to watch for the hall light to come on alerting us that the girlfriend was getting up and moving toward the living room. When the light came on we breached the front door. My partner and I were the first two officers through the door. We sprinted past the baby in the crib and the girlfriend who was still walking down the hall. On the run, we kicked open the bedroom door. At this point, the operation was only 3 seconds old.

The suspect had already awakened and was stretched out across the bed reaching for his knife. If you could have watched the event in slow motion, my partner and I would have appeared to launch ourselves airborne flying across the room and over the bed toward the suspect’s outstretched arm. In midair, I grabbed his wrist just as he was about to reach his knife. All three of us then tumbled to the floor where we finally subdued the suspect.

The officers who followed us into the house safely secured the baby and detained the woman without incident. The entire event was over in less than 10 seconds.  It took place without injury or death because we had detailed intelligence that allowed us to execute a safe arrest and rescue.

That arrest scenario is the nature of the prophetic insight God is about to release. This prophetic insight will contain unusual detail and plans for the rescue of families, cities, and nations held in the grip of bondage and deception. The detail contained in these words will be of such depth and insight that some of you may hesitate to release them because it will require that your faith goes out on a limb of unusual risk. Step through your initial hesitation and be faithful to speak what God has revealed. You will see God accomplish supernatural rescues executed with unimagined levels of accuracy and effectiveness.   God is coming to the rescue!