Repurposing a Place of Offense

What appears to have been suspended in time in a place of offense is about to change. A new future with a fresh start is being released. Something you thought was closed forever will be reopened, healed and restored.

In the 1920’s, an exquisite home was built atop Carpenter Hill overlooking our valley. The owners were a wealthy young couple from the east coast.  The home was the social hub of southern Oregon. To be invited to one of these exquisite parties was seen as the pinnacle of social status.

At one of these famous parties, a guest made a comment that upset the wife of the host. In her offense, the party was abruptly ended, and everyone asked to leave. Within days, the couple locked up the home and returned to the east coast. The home remained boarded up and suspended in time for 80 years until a long process of probate was finished and the home and property finally went on the market and sold.  

There have been events in some of your lives that resemble the party on Carpenter Hill. You were told to leave a relationship without any hope of reconciliation. You have wondered what happened that day to have caused such an offense. God is initiating a plan to bring you back to repurpose that abandoned place. You will walk into a musty experience that remains trapped in time. You will discover a suspended history, but no life. God is bringing you back to speak life, hope and to release a new future.

Today, the Carpenter Hill area is home to several beautiful wineries. The original home is now filled with life and laughter under new ownership. A place of offense has been transformed into a place of unusual beauty. 

This is what God wants to do for you when you return to your place of offense and rejection. You will find remnants of the past still there. The lingering sounds of that last painful party will hang in the air of your memory. Don’t let these relics of your past define your future. Clean out the old and invite the new to come. The spiritual wine of restoration and redemption is waiting to be produced and served at the future gatherings in this repurposed place. The parties God has planned in that repurposed place will overshadow the sorrow of the past. 

The Prophetic Content of Your Voice

If you want your voice to make a difference, let it become a consistent sound of hope. Many people misunderstand the nature of prophecy. The highest form of prophetic ministry is not revealing undiscovered facts about someone or making a dramatic proclamation about a coming event. These words do get our attention, but the real impact of prophecy takes place in another context.

The most significant impact we can have takes place when we release words of hope that begin to influence the way people think. From time-to-time, God will share with me a hidden truth known only to the hearer or something that is about to happen, but these are rare. Don’t pursue those kinds of words as the single proof of your prophetic validity. Some have held this assumption and in doing so have tried to make the next word more dramatic than the last one. That pursuit can put you in a place of potential compromise.

Perhaps, the most precise definition of prophecy in the New Testament was shared by Paul, “But one who prophesies strengthens others, encourages them, and comforts them” (I Corinthians 14:3).

If your words strengthen people when they feel week; encourages them when they are discouraged and comforts them when they feel discomfort, you are moving in the prophetic flow of God’s Spirit. If the dramatic words given by any of us do not accomplish those three things, we need rethink what we are doing in the name of prophecy.

God did not call us to be dramatic. He called us to be a faithful – a faithful sound of hope to those in need. That is a life-long investment. In that long view of prophetic ministry, don’t be surprised that occasionally God might give you something dramatic and amazing to share. Whenever that happens, immediately get back on track with hope. That choice will keep the content and delivery of your voice pure and usable by God.

Six Hours Until Impact

Recently, an asteroid passed so close to Earth that it flew within the orbiting ring of existing satellites. According to NASA, the asteroid was only detected six hours before it arrived. While the asteroid was small, only ten feet across, it still raised concern that it was not be discovered until it was just a short distance away.

Life can change in a blink of an eye. Some will interpret that reality as a reason to always live in fear of the unknown. God wants something better for us. He wants us to interpret these events as a reminder that we should live in trust, not fear when undetected circumstances come our way at the last moment. Death, divorce, and disaster don’t always announce their arrival.

The only real preparation we can do for the undetected catastrophic events in life is the preparation of our heart. If the asteroid NASA failed to see was a huge one and it was able to slip past our best ability to detect its presence, we would have no time to prepare or escape. What would our lives look and sound like in the six hours until impact?

There will always be fear mongers both in the Church and without that want to sell you a message of fear as the primary motivator for how you should respond to the unforeseen events of life. To these dispensers of doom, everything of life is filtered through fear and distrust. If you don’t turn it off now when a real disaster comes, you will respond to the coming event with the dark elements of their sorrowful message.

If it were announced that an Earth-ending asteroid was inbound and we had no hope of escape, I would take Jan in my arms and tell her I loved her again for the 10 millionth time. Together we would spend our remaining hours thanking God for all the goodness He let us taste in this life as we waited to enter eternity together. The peace we would share at that moment be overwhelming. For some, the possibility of that kind of peace sounds incredibly naive and in some cases, insane. Such is a life of faith.

Never waste a catastrophic life-event on fear. Fear is a thief who wants to steal, rob and destroy your hope. Hope births peace and peace give us the ability to confront our greatest fear with a supernatural trust. Against these things, no catastrophic event of life can prosper.

God is Un-Muting Your Voice

You are speaking, but you are not being heard. It is like someone has pressed the mute button in a vital conversation. Don’t worry. God is about to unmute your voice. 

Yesterday, I released a Facebook Live broadcast. I am early in the learning curve of this platform. I prepare as best as I can, and after each broadcast, I try to remedy the mistakes made in the previous ones. I am doing a series of videos about leaving behind a legacy that will honor God. I have looked forward to sharing these videos because I love to help people discover what it takes to finish well in their life calling.

When the broadcast began, I felt good. About 1:40 into the broadcast it was brought to my attention that there was no sound. The problem was simple. The mute button on my microphone had been activated. I was embarrassed at such an apparent oversight. I also felt terrible for those who were giving me their valuable time and only watching a talking head with no sound. I pushed the mute button and viola the sound came on. I retraced my steps and began once again.

This morning, I began to sense there was a purpose behind my broadcast error with the mute button. My Facebook Live experience might be similar to certain relationships in your life. You have prepared the setting for a meaningful conversation. You have prayed. You announced what you wanted to share. You did everything you could think of to make the conversation a success. When the conversation finally began you looked like me on the Facebook video, you were talking, but no one could hear you. That is about to change. God is getting ready to unmute your voice. Those who were not able to hear you in the past will now listen to you and understand what it was you were trying to communicate.

We don’t always know why our voice was muted. This is why we need God to intervene on our behalf and give our voice the sound of Heaven. If you discover your conversation was muted don’t lose heart. Like I had to do on the Facebook video, once you realize you were muted, start over again when the sound comes on. God has something important for you to say and He will make sure your voice is heard no matter what human failure hit the mute button and created the silence.

Taking Inventory of Our Lives

Your life may look full and in synch with God, but only when you put all of it on the table and take a closer look can you see what is missing. Taking inventory from time-to-time is a good thing. It can also be very revealing and at times, painful. Taking inventory will keep us free from assumption and help us make sure our emotional and spiritual stock is up to date.

Yesterday, I was in our garage taking an inventory of our available books in preparation for a busy season ahead. I placed the books in individual stacks on a long folding table. We needed to make sure we had enough inventory to cover each location and to see if we might need to order more books.

As I packed and labeled boxes for the various locations on our calendar, I realized I needed to order more of certain books or we would be short. When the packing was finally done, and new books were ordered, I did not realize later that night, Jan and I would need to inventory our life and marriage.

After 44 years of marriage, like any relationship, you can assume certain things. I had made an assumption about something and the Lord needed to correct my attitude in that area of our marriage. We had a long, and at times, painful conversation. The longer we talked, the more I came to realize there was an area in our relationship where I could do a much better job as a husband and friend. At the start of our relational inventory, I thought I had enough “books” on the table of our relationship. As I began to stack things on the table during our conversation, I realized I was short in one area.

We talked it out. I asked for forgiveness from Jan, and the Lord and put in an order for more of God and less of me. Our table was then filled with the inventory of hope and love that any relationship needs to remain healthy over the long run.                                                               

I write all of this to invite you to do an inventory check in your most intimate relationships. It would have been easy for me to assume I had enough books in all the boxes visible in our garage, but until they were unpacked and counted, I was not aware of any lack. The same is true in each of our relationships. Put all your relational inventory on the table and take an honest look. God may show you an area where your spiritual inventory is low. If you find an area of lack, ask God for help. He can express ship the solution to you in a moment of time if you are willing to receive its contents. Life always works better when our relational inventory is on the table and up to date.

Threats and More Threats

This morning, I read a news article citing Russian President Vladimir Putin who declared Russia had developed an array of strategic nuclear missiles that could not be intercepted by any existing defense system. This new generation of missiles includes a nuclear cruise missile, an underwater nuclear-powered drone, and a hypersonic missile. Putin went on to say these missiles have no equivalent anywhere else in the world. No one knows yet if this is true or a bluff. Whatever the reason, this kind of an announcement is intended to create fear and ultimate submission to its threat.                          

As the world ramps up its game of threat and counter-threat never forget that as a follower of Jesus Christ you carry a supernatural weapons defense system called prayer. There will never be an earthly system that can override its heavenly technology. Prayer is able to intercept and destroy any work of darkness no matter how daunting it may appear. While the world trembles in fear we are called to release missiles of hope targeting the fear resident in the human heart and within the institutions of culture. As Paul said, we have at our disposal weapons not available in the arsenal of human combat. Our weaponry can pull down the greatest of threats before they reach their intended target.

Silent Seasons

For some of you, this has been a silent season. The silence does not mean God has not been at work on your behalf. Some of the most profound works of God are done in seasons of silence. This experience can leave you feeling disconnected. If you can remain patient and trusting, you will soon discover the purpose of God hidden in the silence.

After several years of drought in the Pacific Northwest, we have been hoping and praying for a deep snowpack. A deep snowpack helps fill our rivers and lakes and moistens our dry and brittle forests. Without a significant snowpack, the lives and lifestyles of many people and our natural resources are put in jeopardy.

This week, I was lying in bed just before rising listening to the rain. A few days earlier I was again awake in bed when it was snowing outside. I heard nothing when it was snowing. I finally got up that morning to see a blanket of fresh snow on the ground.  The rain would eventually run off, but the snow would add to our snowpack. The very thing we needed was provided in the silent darkness of night while I slept. I could only imagine how deep the snow levels were higher up in the mountains. 

If this has been a time in your life when it seems as if Heaven has been silent, the silence does not mean God is not listening and working on your behalf. God is always at work. This is when you need to trust His heart and His love for you. The silence has been given to you as an opportunity to check the condition of your heart and identify the fear that wants to keep you unsettled in times of silence. You are being prepared for provision.

God wants to create a spiritual snowpack while you rest. He is laying down layer upon layer of blessing and breakthrough you will need in the coming hot seasons of life. Trust Him in the silence. Soon, you will rise to a new day and see a fresh blanket of His goodness surrounding your life. You can trust God. He does some of His best work in silence.