Stepping On Storms

When Peter stepped over the side of his boat and began to walk on water the side of the boat represented the line of separation between human logic and reasoning and Spirit-led wisdom and revelation. Jesus invited Peter to experience a miracle in the middle of the storm when He said to Peter, “Come”. Peter then wisely responded to the revelation of Jesus.

Navigating a storm with human logic and reasoning will only produce an interesting story of survival.  Crossing a stormy sea while walking on the waves will produce a testimony of something miraculous.

There are times when responding to the voice of Jesus will require that you defy religious logic and reasoning.  In these moments of radical obedience is where miracles are experienced. Today, climb over the side of your boat and respond to the voice of Jesus no matter how illogical or unreasonable His request may sound.  This is where your miracle is waiting.

A Father's Duty

This morning I am performing a duty required by all fathers. I am helping one of my kids.  My daughter, Anna,  is out of country in Chile.  She called last night from Santiago asking me to start her car since and let it run since it will have sat idle for several weeks prior to her return home. When I went out to start her car the battery was dead.  On the outside the car looked great, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I jump-started the car and drove it down to our local tire dealer who sells batteries and had them install a new one. The old battery had no life left. When I parked the car in front of the business the battery was so completely dead it would not even restart for the technician who was trying to drive it into the service bay.

As I sit here in the lobby of the tire business waiting for a new battery to be installed, I realize my life, and maybe the lives of some of you who are reading these words, looks a lot like my daughter’s car. On the outside we appear functional, but inside we lack the spark needed to get our lives moving forward. Throughout the various seasons of our lives each of us will find ourselves in those moments of time where we need the Father to come and jump-start a dead place in our life and install a new spiritual battery. This is not something we can provide for ourselves.  God our Father does this because He loves us. Our contribution to the process is asking Him to come and check us out.

Our spiritual batteries run out of juice when we rely on the anointing from a previous season to somehow carry us into a new season.  The discovery of a dead spiritual battery is an invitation to begin believing for something more - a new start that requires a new anointing.

I used to get depressed when I discovered my spiritual battery had run out of power.  Anymore, I am learning to get excited because I have come to realize our loving Father delights in fulfilling His duty of love to jump start our lives when they have become parked and immobilized. When God comes He will install a fresh anointing that will carry us into a new season of life and ministry. This is what a Father does. Like my daughter did with me, call your Father to come and check out the status of your spiritual battery.  If you discover it no longer has enough power to get you going, trust God to install a fresh measure of His presence in your life for the next leg of your journey. Our Father loves to do this for His Children because it is His duty of love.

Wait For The Sweet Fruit

As I bit into the beautiful apricot, I was expecting the sweet familiarity of a fruit I have known all my life, but instead, I received an explosion of sour. I knew it was still early in the year for the best apricots when I purchased a bag full at my local market. I made the premature purchase because I wanted the first taste of an apricot to come and usher in the beginning of my summer. I had rushed something that needed more time to become the sweet fruit I was expecting. I was disappointed, but not surprised. You cannot rush the maturity of fruit.

As a young boy, I picked apricots during the summer. I spent many hours atop a ladder in the orchards surrounding Los Gatos, California. My first ritual during those early mornings was to climb to the top of my ladder and pick a perfectly ripe apricot still covered with morning dew. It would be hard to describe the taste to you if the only apricot you have known came from a store. Only an apricot eaten in the fullness of its perfection and picked straight from a tree, can provide such an experience.

While the sour taste of the unripened apricot filled my mouth the Lord said, “Tell them to wait for the sweet fruit.” Upon hearing those words, I sensed something prophetic being given to me for people whose lives are beginning to bear new fruit in a new season. You have waited a long time to finally see the fruit that is beginning to appear on the vine of your labor, but it is still too early. Your fruit is still maturing. It looks like mature fruit, but it does not carry the sweet impact God intends. God is using this time to bring your fruit to a fullness of flavor. He is asking you to wait just a little longer. Once you taste what God has done in these final days of maturing you will understand why He asked you to wait before you begin your harvest.

No More False Starts

There have been a series of false starts in your life. You have wanted to see your life move forward and you thought it was your job to deliver yourself into a place of blessing.  This has always been God’s task - not yours, but you seemed to have picked up the illusion of this responsibility somewhere along the way.  In doing so you have linked your understanding of God’s favor to what you can produce by your efforts. A false start is the result of trying to do in your power what can only be done in God’s power. 

Trying to move forward under human power is an indicator of a misunderstanding of God’s favor. This is your time to live in a place of restful productivity that only comes to those who know they already possess the favor of God. God’s favor is a gift.  It can never be earned through human activity. 

The new start you are seeking exists within the understanding that you already possess the favor of God apart from what you do. Once you know you are a favored one you will not have to prove your worth by attempting another false start motivated and empowered by an orphan spirit.

This is a Season of Realignment

We have entered a season where some of you will have your lives and ministries realigned for greater impact.  You are about to enter a new and unexplored future.  A realigning must first take place before that future is experienced. This realignment will require a change of direction because the previous course would not bring you to the destination God has planned for your life. To experience the blessing and benefit of this realignment you will need to focus your efforts on a new and previously unseen horizon.  This new horizon is where you will see the approaching manifestation of a fresh work of God's Spirit.

Some of the elements of this realignment will take place without your permission. You will simply be forced through circumstances beyond your control to align with a season of life you had never considered. This is where you will have the opportunity to live out Paul's words to the Romans that tell us God can work out everything for our good - even in the middle of the whirlwind of a life-transition.

Because so much is happening that is unfamiliar you will want to control what is taking place. In His great love, God will not allow you to control this outcome. He is inviting you to a place of trust.  This need to control is one reason why you are being realigned.  God wants you to let go of your need to control every aspect of your life and return to the raw faith you once displayed when you relied on Him in a pure and childlike faith.  You don't need to have any of this figured out.  Once this realignment is over it will make sense.  Right now you simply need to know that God's hand is on your life and He is leading you forward. You have nothing to fear.

Why This Sunday Is So Important

This is Pentecost Sunday - a day the Church celebrates the events of Acts 2 and the ministry of the Spirit. Today we are reminded that the Church began it's journey with a display of the Spirit's power.  We are also reminded that if we are to do all that God has destined the only way we can accomplish that task will be to continue in that same model of a Spirit-empowered life and ministry.  We will not discover a more successful model or method to transform lives, plant churches or impact cities.

So much of what is done in the Western Church today is good, but can be accomplished by a local civic club. We should continue to do the good things, but there is more.  In scripture the most significant events took place when God showed up and did something miraculous beyond the natural ability of human beings. I am no longer surprised when people decide to spend their limited time off outside the activities that take place within the walls of many local churches. We owe our world an encounter with a miraculous God and we also owe those who have professed His name that same encounter.

My hope and prayer for this Pentecost Sunday is that as we gather today we would make room for God to show up in such a profound and powerful way that we will no longer need to set aside a single day of the year to remind us of His supernatural ways that only took place somewhere in the pages of our history.

When Life Closes In Around You

In the last season you felt the pressures of life close in around you.  You felt crushed under the weight of what you experienced. You ran away and thought you had finally distanced yourself from the pain, but those uncomfortable feelings are coming to visit once again and you are concerned. You want to run away again in an attempt to free yourself from the coming pressure, but God in His great love has asked you to remain.

The reason why this time will be different is because God has put a new strength within you that He wants you to discover.  This inner strength is like the walls of a fortress being tested in battle for the first time.  Your walls will hold.

As these unwelcome pressures come stand still and trust what God has put in place.  He has you right where He wants you.  Don’t run. You will not be be crushed.