Repainting the Portrait of Your Life

Last night, I had two separate dreams that were somehow connected. Both dreams looked like oil paintings. One image was of a bow, as in a bow and arrow. At first, I expected to see the image of an arrow shot into the air and stuck in the ground but instead of the arrow sticking into the ground it was the end of the bow. The image told me the bow, not the arrow was launched. The second painting was a deflated football. It was lying on the ground between the painted yardage markers of a football field.

I have carried those two images for the last few hours not knowing what to make of them. Then the Lord began to speak. He said the bow represents a way of doing life and ministry that has reversed its order. Original and creative ways of living were given to each of us based on who we are and where we are assigned. Some of you have exchanged your unique model for a copy belonging to someone else. Instead of launching arrows of faith from your calling and anointing you are launching someone else’s model. Their bow, not your arrows, are sticking in the ground. God is calling you back to your original design to become an original once again.

The deflated football represents what fills our lives. Some well-meaning people are trying to move down the field of life with a ball that needs a fresh infilling of God’s Spirit. The ball they have been carrying has slowly been deflating. It is now without air. The ball can no longer be grasped in a way that allows the game to be played with a fullness that comes from the supernatural breath of God. Call a time out. Seek the Lord and ask Him to fill you so you can begin to move forward in strength and authority. Deflated lives are stationary and powerless lives. 

Invite God to come and paint new portraits.  In those new images, you will see arrows of faith launched and striking new territory. You will see your life fully inflated moving with God's Spirit toward the end zone of your calling. 

Binocular Faith

At this time in our national history, many are only seeing a noisy and rapidly moving mass of humanity running in different directions following a multitude of agendas. They feel distance from the events taking place. A cacophony of sound and a blurred cultural mural is moving at warp speed in front of their eyes. This has brought about confusion and in some cases has caused people to stop believing that hope is possible. In the middle of all of this, God has a plan. He is releasing supernatural spiritual sight similar to handing someone a set of binoculars in an attempt to view what is taking place across a distant canyon. 

 I have a set of binoculars. They allow me to see images at long distances not visible to my unaided natural sight. Binoculars have what is called a field of vision. A field of vision is the size of the area being magnified at the desired distance. It is the available area the lens can capture and report back to the viewer. God is creating a new field of vision for His people. A magnification and clarity of what is taking place are being provided.

Viewing culture with only your natural sight and the accompanying limited interpretation is not enough to produce Kingdom solutions. God wants to give you the ability to pull up a distant and confusing image and magnify with clarification what is actually taking place.  When this happens you will see things previously unnoticed that are being played out on the national and international scene.

This new clarity is being given to you to provide you with the elements of informed prayer and a laser-like focused obedience. This strategic input would pass by a casual observer who only relies on self-sight, not the magnified sight of the Spirit. Get ready to see things not yet imagined hidden in a place that would have remained unseen had not God given you this new level of magnified sight.

The Burning Ones

You have been surrounded by the glory of God. That glory burns like fire. It is not always visible in the natural realm. You will never walk into an unknown future vulnerable and exposed. God is surrounding you and your loved ones. His glory is your protection as you walk into dark and unexplored places.

Recently, I read about early nomadic tribes in Eurasia. These people groups were many times the prey of wild animals that saw humans as easy targets. Anthropologists have discovered the tribes that survived carried fire. The presence of fire kept the wild animals at bay during the night. The tribes that carried fire survived. The ones that walked in the night without fire fell victim to attack. One anthropologist said, “The presence of fire gave our ancestors a chance at a future.”

Today, adjust your thinking. You are not alone. You are not vulnerable if you walk conscience of the burning presence of the fire of God that not only surrounds you but also fills you. Every Spirit-baptized believer carries this supernatural fire. To the spirits of darkness, you appear aflame and burning with God’s presence. That fire is what keeps the enemy at bay just like natural fire protected our ancestors from bands of wild animals. Their future was found in the presence of the fire. So it is with you. Trust in the presence of the glorious fire you carry that burns bright and hot in the unseen realm of the spiritual world. This is your place of protection and the place of your anointing.

“For I, declares the LORD, will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the glory in her midst." Zechariah 2:5

Step Out and Try Out

Some of you will be asked by God to try something new, something you have never done before. You have no experience in this new place of faith. You will bring to the challenge more than you realize.

Apart from flag and touch football games during recess at school, I never played organized football. I had friends who were football All-Americans in high school. My sport was swimming.

I went to Whitworth College (now Whitworth University) in Spokane, Washington and swam on their swim team. I was housed in what was called a “jock dorm” with guys who played a variety of sports for the college. One day, I looked at my friends on the football team and thought, “That looks like fun. I could do that.” I was as big as most of the guys and in good shape, so I decided to become a walk-on at football camp. After a few days, the coach extended an invitation to me to become part of the team. I accepted and entered the wonderful and strange new world of college football. I found out I had a hidden talent for the sport.

Some of you are like me when I first entertained playing college football. You are drawn to a new adventure, but you lack experience. I want to say to you, try out. Take that first step of faith and you may find you have hidden talent and ability that has remained concealed behind your lack of experience. Those talents and abilities have been waiting to emerge. They are waiting for your obedience to set things in motion. 

A new team of faith is waiting for you to arrive to help them round out their roster. It is time for you to try out for your heart’s desire. God has a whole set of plays He wants to run through your life. Step out and try out and you will be amazed at what takes place.

My Spiritual Road Trip

Reading the book of Acts with eyes of faith is a dangerous exercise. It is dangerous because it reveals how the Church was assigned to function in culture as a transforming presence.

Throughout the book of Acts, the culture was made aware of the presence of the Church by a wide variety of supernatural encounters. Most of these encounters were strange and alien events and were condemned by the controlling religious spirit. The same is true today. Planned religion makes very little room for anything outside of “The Plan.”

The encounters in Acts drew the eyes of the people away from the faithless norm of the day toward something that violated their assumptions about reality. I am hungry for my assumptions about my reality to be violated. While some in the Church are committed to a non-stop argument about the election or the theological implications of the book/movie, The Shack, I have another plan. I will share the details of that plan in the last paragraph.

Perhaps we need to put aside all we are doing as the Church and reevaluate why we are doing what we are doing.  We have the crazy and ill-informed notion that we need to perpetuate the status quo at all costs. We don’t need another advertised “revival”, another well-planned church service, another well-crafted vision statement, another election to go “our way” or labor for another degree to add to our theological pedigree. We need a fresh encounter with God – a personal Day of Pentecost.

I believe this is so important that this summer after I finish the next few months of ministry commitments, I am going to disengage from all forms of ministry to allow God to rework my life. In fact, yesterday I ordered a camper shell for the back of my pickup truck. I am hitting the road.  One of my favorite authors is John Steinbeck. His book, Travels with Charley, will become my summer model for ministry. Steinbeck hit the road in his pick-up truck and camper in search of America. I am hitting the road in my truck and camper in search of a Day of Pentecost outside the walls of a church building. I plan to drive along some unexplored roadways, stop in for breakfast at iconic roadside coffee shops, stop along a remote trout stream and drop a line. I plan to visit a variety of places that are apart from any planned church event but in the presence of my favorite traveling Partner.

If we all simply took the time to disengage from our current reality we might actually find our way forward into a future we never imagined possible. For some of us that will be as miraculous as anything recorded in the book of Acts.

The Bookends of Life

Last weekend, I had a rare and wonderful privilege. I was invited to attend the retirement party for one of the finest rookie cops I had the privilege of training. Thirty-nine years ago I was a Field Training Officer (FTO) at the Springfield, Oregon Police Department. I was handed a young recruit by the name of Rich. It was my job to train him and show him how to stay alive on the streets. We spent months together. I took him from an eager young recruit to a trained officer able to ride solo and protect the citizens of our city. That is the assignment of an FTO.

During the retirement party, I was able to meet old friends from many years ago. Most are retired now. We told old war stories. At the end of the evening, a number of us took the microphone to share our memories. I shared some of my training stories about this rookie turned veteran Sergeant and respected by his peers. Then Rich took the microphone and told some stories about me. We laughed a lot. It was a great night. On the drive home I had a feeling of deep satisfaction seeing how life played out for this wonderful man.

When we returned home, I sent a text to my retired recruit and thanked him for the invitation and honor of being present at his retirement dinner. He sent a reply, “It was a perfect ending for my career.” His words struck a cord in my heart.

Every season of life has a beginning and an ending - bookends.  In the middle is where we make choices that create the quality of the ending. Rich’s start was a wonderful day, but his ending was far better. I remember one of the words of advice I gave him. I said, “Find a good woman. Buy a house. Have some kids. Be a good dad and faithful husband. Keep your nose clean and someday you will retire with honor.” He did all those things and the overflow crowds at Rich’s retirement affirmed his choices in life.

If this has been a tough season for you, start over – today. Declare an end and make this is a new day and a new beginning. Begin now to make the choices that will rewrite your future. God is in the business of resurrecting what is dead and giving new life to tired experiences. None of what you are going through is outside the reach of God's resurrection power. Nothing is ever too late or past due with God. He can take a day and make it into a thousand years or take a thousand years and reduce it to a single day. He is God. He can make all things new if you give Him a chance. That chance is empowered by your willingness to believe, obey and choose well. Start living today with a joyful retirement party in mind. It will change how you live and it will create the spiritual war stories that will be told someday in your future.

The Sound of a New Song is Coming

Your place of restriction and enslavement is about to become the birthplace of a new song that will create a new sound. What has been formed against you will now be turned into an instrument of freedom. God has a new song for you to sing and its score will be written from your heart, not from your circumstance.

Before the nineteenth century, enslaved people in New Orleans could only meet publicly in groups in designated areas. One of those designated areas was called Congo Square. Congo Square was similar to other parts of the city where slaves could freely gather on Sunday afternoons to socialize, dance, sing and play music. After the Louisiana Purchase, in a move to further restrict the slave population, the mayor of New Orleans declared the only acceptable place slaves could gather publicly would be limited to Congo Square. The other locations were closed. Congo Square was filled with people from Africa, France, Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean. Each of these influences melded together to create a new music genre. Historians believe Congo Square was the birthplace of American Jazz.

As I read this part of our American history, I immediately thought of some of you who feel enslaved to circumstances and situations beyond your control. You are free in your heart but enslaved to your surroundings. God is gathering you together with others who live in similar conditions where people and institutions have placed restrictions on your life and tried to limit your visibility and freedom. A new gathering place in the Spirit is being formed where a new song of freedom will be created. The more you are restricted the deeper and sweeter will be the sound of your music.

The prohibitions you currently live under cannot hold back your new sound. Just as the slaves of old New Orleans were finally restricted to Congo Square, your restriction will be used by God to launch the sound of your voice across the nation as an invitation for others to come and hear a new song of freedom being played in your place of restriction. The sound of freedom has no barriers.

The sound of something new is coming. It will turn your place of enslavement into a place of creativity where others will want to come and listen, just like it is today when people from all over the world come to New Orleans to hear jazz played in the streets that once defined enslavement, but now declare freedom.