Crossing Frontiers

In your transition, you will cross a spiritual frontier. All spiritual frontiers have demons guarding them. Don’t ignore this reality. Stepping through the gates of transition will cause them to react. 

Every physical crossing recorded in scripture was a spiritual crossing. These crossings were guarded by dark spirits whose primary assignment was to detour and delay God’s people through fear and discouragement. 

This is not just a simple life adjustment you are making. You are crossing into destiny. In this crossing, you will come face to face with demonic powers whose primary assignment is to prevent you from crossing over into your destiny. They have been placed there purposefully to try to foil the plans of God. 

You may have forgotten that your battle is not against flesh and blood. You may even think the problem is just you and your personal issues. The battle is larger; it is a spiritual battle in which you are contending against dark forces. This is your reality check. 

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

The Rise of Cultural Prophets

In each cultural revolution in human history, it was the poets, musicians, painters, writers, and cultural prophets who first publicly portrayed the enslaving injustice of their time – an injustice ultimately against the heart of God. These expressions of prophetic revelation took place across all spheres of cultural influence. They were the first to be silenced by those in power because they had the ability to move around the limitations imposed by media and governmental control. Their expressions created jeopardy for the status quo. 

God is raising and releasing prophetic people who will create the imagery, sounds, and script of a reformation that will express both the angst of our culture and the heart of God. The ability to connect our anxiety with the resolutions provided by God will help us know if what we are spending our time, energy, and resources on is part of the solution or something that only fuels the flame of further social discontent and offers us another trip around the same mountain of despair.

Angry Scissors

Anger rising, creating

edges, sharp edges of opinion 

always cutting, flashing out 

against opposing thought.

Our voices becoming

angry scissors cutting

each other.

Why so angry? 

Violent words, a bloody 

dialogue falling, dripping 

red ink upon

blank pages describing

a future no one wants.

If It Bleeds, It Leads

The title comes from the world of journalism. Blood and gore catch the attention of an audience. It’s not just the blood and gore of murder, catastrophe, or natural disaster that gains our attention; it is the blood and gore of broken lives, broken political systems, and the potential of a future filled with the never-ending promise of disaster.

A fear-based message wrapped in a morbid sense of curiosity is not from God. Proverbs tells us our future will be like the light of dawn that grows brighter and brighter until the full day. Jeremiah quoted God saying our future is filled with hope and a plan to prosper us. Under the ever-expanding revelation of God upon the Earth, things are actually getting better, not worse. The statistics reveal that reality. A message of hope and redemption is contrary to the pitchmen and women in the news and, unfortunately, some in the Church whose product sales depend on you and me perpetually living in need of our next fix of death and disaster to feed our fear-based habit about the future.

If you turned off your television or put down your smartphone for a year and did not listen to any reports from the “If It Bleeds, It Leads” crowd when you reengaged your device, you would hear the same dark prophecies. The only things that would have changed were the names and places. 

We have been called to live in hope, not fear. Fear, and the resulting doubt, and despair that comes with that message are not on Heaven’s menu. God is not the purveyor of these things, and we should not consume them or promote them without discernment. If we do, we will exchange a message of hope for a message of fear and become spokespersons for another kingdom.

The Safety of Deacceleration

Some of the imbalance you are feeling could be God applying the brakes on your self-effort and worry. It's like sitting in a car when someone uses the brakes to avoid a crash, and you are thrown forward under the force of deacceleration. Not everything in God’s Kingdom is about acceleration. There are times when God will slow us down to protect us, so we don’t collide with things in our lane of travel that are not God's best for our life.

We Need Each Other

This morning, I am making pancakes for breakfast. After I got the coffee going, I melted some butter in a pan, then added a cup of fresh blueberries, some maple syrup and set the pan on the stove at a slow simmer. I went about a few more morning tasks then turned off the stove and let the butter, blueberries and maple syrup get to know each other. Later, I will turn the heat back on when the pancakes are ready and pour the beautiful salty butter, sweet maple syrup and tart blueberry goodness over a plate of pancakes and Jan and I will have our breakfast.

I learn a lot about life from cooking. The information I just shared about preparing the syrup for our pancakes is something a lot of us need to learn when we interact with each other. We all have ingredients to add to the conversations and cultural interactions we think are so important.  Unfortunately, many times, we think our take on life is the most essential ingredient. Our standalone ingredient has value, but only when added to the input and considerations of others. When we allow a merging and blending of thoughts and ideas, the end product will become something truly delicious intellectually and spiritually. It will invite others to the table of conversation.

To create this inviting syrup of life, we need to do more of what I did when I brought together the butter, blueberries, and maple syrup. Before we prematurely serve our opinion, we need to bring it all together and gently warm the contents under the influence of the Spirit. This allows all the ingredients of the conversation to merge into something that reflects the expansive heart of God instead of a separate and many times ill-informed ingredient of a singular opinion.

“We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete” (I Corinthians 13:9 MSG).

Drawing a Line

G. K. Chesterton, the British writer, philosopher and lay theologian of the last century once wrote, “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.” Faith without the presence of lines is not faith. It is an emotion.

In the public square, drawing a line has become increasingly unpopular. By nature, a line can create offense and separation.  Lines will define where we walk and how we live, and in some cases whom we choose to walk through life with. 

The most important line to draw is the one that marks the difference between what pleases God and what grieves Him. This is the line we must first consider before we start drawing lines that mark something as either holy or unholy, right or wrong. Without first knowing God’s heart, our faith will appear like a scribbled mess of cruel and dysfunctional lines that do nothing to further God’s Kingdom or express His love.

Be careful and wise where you choose to draw a line. Jesus drew lines in the most unexpected places - places the religious establishment of His day vehemently opposed. Even the disciples who walked with Jesus for three years were not sure where some of His lines would be drawn.