Whose Got Your Back?

"The are only two kinds of people in the world.  The pushers and the pushed.  Which are you?"

My experience of living on the East Coast bore this out between people who got walked on and walked over and those who were doing the walking.  We feel like we have to push back.  We feel like if we don't shove our way through life, someone else will get in front of us.  We think if everybody else is going through life at a hundred and twenty miles per hour then so must I.  But this is the grand illusion and lies we tell ourselves.  This is not the life God has created us for or has called us to live.

Maybe between all the isolation and loneliness in life, people feel like nobody has their backs.  We have lost our way and feel empty and lost ourselves.  What is the deeper life God is calling us to beyond and above the hustle and bustle of life?  What does the hidden life in Christ mean in a world that cares little for uniqueness and risky vulnerable intimacy?

I am in a season of meditating and contemplating the deeper and hidden meanings from God's Word.  Skimming the surface of Scripture or doing Bible Study simply does not satisfy my soul's deep hunger and thirst after God anymore.  I must dig deeper into the hidden treasures of God's Word if I am to take hold of the life that God has created every one of us to live but so few of us actually experience.

I love the beauty and mystery of Psalm 139.  There is knowledge here that few posses.  God is waiting there to meet us in the darkness to light our path for those daring adventurers who are willing to make the journey.  We discover treasures both old and new and light that shows we are wonderfully and fearfully made.  Are we willing to search the scriptures to know the heart of God?  Will we let God test us and try our anxious thoughts?  Will we change once God has shown us our deepest secrets and sins of our hearts?

What has captivated my holy curiosity are verses four through six: 

"For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it"
(Psalm 139:4-6)

God knows me better than myself.  God is beside me, with me, in me, goes before me and has my back.  I can't tell you how many times I would be dead by now if it were not for the love and protection of God who always knows us and the things around us more than we could ever know or imagine. 

The Psalmist loves God and thinks he knows God but he is like Job or Isaiah who has such a vision of God that he realizes he really does not understand or know God like he thought.  As humans, we can know things without loving things.  We separate knowing from loving but not with God.  God's knowing and loving are indistinguishable.  There are great hidden secrets and depth of these scriptures and there is never a moment when God knows but doesn't love, or loves and doesn't know.   In God through Christ I am discovering that knowledge and love are united or reunited in God.  This is a fore taste of seeing like heaven sees and living like a citizen of heaven on earth.

How Can I Sing Psalm 137?

"By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and we wept . . . How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? . . . Happy is the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock"
(Psalm 137:1, 4, 9)

I love the Psalms.  They have shaped my life in Christ more than any other scriptures.  I meditate on them every day.  They are written in my heart.  God continually shows me new things every time I read them.  I have to confess, Psalm 137 is one of the most difficult texts in the Bible.  I often breeze by this Psalm losing both the emotion and the context of what God may be trying to show me.

Nobody wants too much light shed on their life at one time.  Nobody wants to expose all the wounds and pain that is deep inside one's hearts and soul.  But God is teaching me to quit avoiding, hiding, and trying to go around the hard places in life.  I must embrace my pain and the deep places that hurt the most.  I must allow God access to the inner deepest corners of my heart and soul if I am ever going to experience complete healing.  If I am ever going to quit waking up screaming in the night and find peace and rest in my dreams.  I am going to have to revisit and go to places within me that my body and emotions try to fight every step of the way.  But go I must!

What I see in Psalm 137 is Jesus praying this Psalm.  All I see anymore is Christ in the Psalms.  Jesus who left the comforts of heaven and came to this foreign land earth.  Jesus who takes all the pain and agony and sins of the whole world onto his shoulders.  Jesus who shows a higher way towards evil and forgives and loves human enemies but we will still find untold inner enemies within our own souls.  We should not wish ill on anyone although we certainly can pray for justice.  But the unseen enemies of the spirit world are harder to see and resist.  They torment us and tempt us and try to destroy us at every turn.

We can pray against the spiritual forces of evil and the darkness of the enemy which should be annihilated and destroyed.  Praying against the enemies of our souls of despair, darkness, depression, and fear should be utterly vanquished by the One Jesus who battled every one of these demons of darkness on the cross.  Maybe by avoiding the cross and what Jesus has done is why too many of these enemies persist and plaque us to this day?  Until the cross of Christ pierces every dark corner of our inner being, we will never experience the freedom God wants for us if we keep avoiding the cross.  The cross is our surest spiritual weapon and pathway to find victory over the dark places of our soul.  The cross is our pathway to freedom!

When we remember our past, our deepest wounds, Christ knows our suffering and pain.    God knows the cries of our hearts.  Let us be ever mindful as we read this Psalm of another description of Christ in the book of Isaiah,

"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
He was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement for our peace upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
(53:4-6)

Season of Prayer - January 2015

(I have been physically and emotionally sick for four months.  This week I was miraculously healed and delivered and I am no longer overwhelmed by my problems but I am overwhelmed by God's grace!)


O Sovereign God,
Conquer my will, subdue my stubborn heart.
Annihilate any wicked way in me.  Consume me O God.
Draw Me close and conform me into the image of Christ.
Inhabit my praise and touch me with Your Holy Spirit.

I am Yours Lord, do with me whatever You Will.
Open the gates of heaven and flood my Soul with Your
Beautiful all consuming Presence.

Take me down the pathway of the Cross and teach me humility.
Help me both to fast and pray and seek your face daily.
Forgive me all my sins and above all, I ask for your righteousness.
Surprise me God with your utter goodness.
Where I am weak, be My Strength.

Thank you O God for healing all my afflictions. 
You turned my mourning into joy and my sorrow into laughter.
Let others see less of me and more of Christ in me.
Teach me the way of simplicity and create in me a pure heart.

Help me to know continually that you are with me constantly.
When I get up, be my first thoughts.
When I fall asleep, be in my dreams.
When I walk through the day, let me run into your arms.

Lord, your beautiful and may You be all I see.
Keep me from sloth and vanity.
Lead me into your precious presence and wonderful peace.
Nothing satisfies me unless I am satisfied in You.

Don't Let Anything Bother You

"People are not interruptions, they are our ministry.  Interruptions are holy moments to minster to someone in need"

What bothers you?  One of the things that the Holy Spirit is teaching me to be let nothing come between my peace with God and others around me.  When my children act up, do I come to them as a loving Dad or a scolding Father?  When people say and do things we don not like, do we let it get to us or do we let the Spirit of God inside of us get to them? 

One of the marks of walking in the Holy Spirit every day is to die daily and let nothing bother you.  If the pounding of the Holy Spirit on the door of your heart is bothering you then that is a good thing.  But too often I am bothered by other people.  I let other people rob me of my joy and peace.  There are even books and articles written about joy thieves and joy stealers.  How to avoid people who wear us out and wear us down.  But if we are walking in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, nothing and I mean nothing can rob or steal our joy.  Nothing can take away our peace.  If others take our joy.  If others rob us of our peace then you gave it to them.

To walk every day in the Spirit and presence of God is to live above our circumstances.  To live above the clamor and commotion of the world.  If things bother you, give them to the Lord in prayer.  If things bother you, take a deep breath, slow down and surrender yourself anew to God.  If something bothers you, stop and listen to what God may be trying to teach you in the things that bother you the most. 

If there is another spiritual discipline we need in our lives it is the spiritual discipline of self examination.  When we see faults in others, examine yourself, take a good look in the mirror and ask how this fault may be hiding within your own life.  When we come to God in prayer, stop, look within, and listen to what the Holy Spirit may be trying to tell us about something in our heart that needs correction or needs removed.  Unless we give our own souls the kind of care and concern we give to others, we may find ourselves running on empty with nothing else to give because we can not even help ourselves at the moment.

Self-examination takes spiritual inventory of what is in our hearts.  Self examination examines our lifestyle choices and priorities and always tries to keep us in tune and in step with the Holy Spirit.  Self-examination may lead us to a place we really don't won't to go but we must go there if we are to be made holy for the Lord.  Self examination always reminds me that I belong to God and I must fight for the heart of the King if I am to have His heart in my heart.  God is wanting to ignite a fire in His people and this will only happen when we allow the magnifying power of the Holy Spirit to shed light on our reckless ways so that we can live in reckless devotion to Almighty God holding nothing back from Him.

The Ministry of Presence

"My basic problem has been my understanding of discipleship did not match His" (Jesus)

My over riding concern for years is how to be a disciple of Jesus and show others the goodness of God.  I thought I knew how to do that but what I am finding out about myself and by God's help is I have to go back to the school of the Holy Spirit and be taught what I thought I knew but really did not truly understand.  What does it mean to be a copy or imitation of Jesus?  As I am re-reading God's Word and particularly the gospels, I am learning anew what does it mean for my flesh to incarnate the story of God?

The story never ends nor does God calling on our lives.  The call is not given once but is given over and over again.  God is always calling us.  Do we have the spiritual ears to hear and the hearts to receive those calls?  All I know is God is like a mad man storming my gates and is calling me to fall madly in love with Him.  God is calling us all to radical obedience set ablaze by God's love.  This obedience means total surrender, complete abandonment, joyous celebration of our One King and Master.  For me, there is no going back.

God is calling me to be fully present to Him and to be fully present to others.  God is teaching me what it means to enter more deeply into a ministry of presence.  I know I speak as a fool but let me continue.  God is telling me to go lower with Him so I will be raised higher with Christ.  God is telling me my intentions must come from Him or I will miss divine opportunities in the moment.  The only thing that really matters is the life that Jesus taught us to live. I thought I knew but sometimes unknowing leads to knowing.  I realize I really don't know anything anymore. 

I used to think spiritual moments or seasons of God's presence and power and leading were just for short periods of time.  Now I am finding out that God's presence is always available to those who make themselves available to God.  Each time I thought God was ending a time of walking in His Spirit were actually times I simply went back into the world to enjoy my own comforts and to satisfy my own fleshly needs.  We deceive ourselves into thinking that God withdrew from us whereas it was really us that withdrew from God.  

The whole person is to be transformed by the Gospel of Jesus.  Jesus is leading us into a poverty of spirit and humility but do we really want to do that?  Jesus is taking us by the hand and we may like Peter be taking us a place that we really don't want to go to (John 21:18).  All of our intentions and actions must be determined by the gospel.  Jesus embodied the life of God and the gospel on earth and we are to imitate him.  Jesus lived his message before he spoke it.  People today no longer want to hear sermons.  They want to see the gospel of Jesus in action!

God is beginning to take me to long periods with Him in prayer, solitude, fasting, spiritual warfare, contemplation, and a deeper journey on meditating on God' Word.  My life is now hidden in Christ.  I am learning to be more courageous in trial, more faithful in prayer, and more zealous in love.  I know I am speaking as a child saying these things but God is making me more and more into His child.  God is writing His Word on my heart.  God is removing the veil so that I can see Christ in all his majesty and beauty.  I am no longer afraid of the fire for like Daniel, Christ is in the fire that burns with me.

Does God want me happy?

"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased" (Matthew 3:17)

Some people think God does not want them happy so they avoid God's demands at all cost.  Other people are so consumed with happiness that it seems like they can never find it for true lasting happiness is only found in Christ!.  The Psalmist knew this truth when he says, "Bless is the man" or happy is the man who runs after God and not after the world (Psalm 1). 

What I am discovering is the more I give myself to God, the more God gives Himself to me.  The more I divest myself of the things of this world, the greater my joy, peace, and happiness I posses.  What God is teaching me in the school of suffering is I am to love God in all things equally.  I am to love God in poverty and riches, temptation or without temptation, suffering or no suffering.  One of the things God is teaching me is the spiritual discipline of detachment.

Detachment is where we let go of the things of the world and stop trying to be in control.  Detachment is where we learn that the more we give up, the more free we become.  The more we suffer, the more we can bear under pressure.  When our only concern is God, we have little concern for the things of the world.  There is a new way of living in God's simplicity, purity, and higher calling where we don't just survive or exist but enter into the fruitful abundant life that God in Christ Jesus offers to each and everyone of us.  When I am following Jesus and only Jesus, I find that nothing bothers me because I am engulfed in God's peace and presence.

God is speaking and saying, "I don't want your acts and deeds, I want you and your love."  Are you ready to be enrolled into the school of God's Holy Fire?  I want to become totally empty so that Jesus can fill me with only Himself.  There is such freedom, joy, simplicity, and happiness of the Spirit led life.  God is stripping me bare naked and many of us don't like to be so exposed and vulnerable but unless this happens, happiness will be more an idea to pursue than a lifestyle which is lived.

God is taking me back to be a spiritual child again.  God is leading me into the deep waters of His Holy Spirit.  This used to be a place I feared but now it's the river of life I want to exist and live in.  God is giving me such a carefree freedom, such a happy contentment that I can not really even fully describe it.  I'm happy like a young child who makes his first best friend.  I am happy like a school boy on his way to his first day at school.  I am happy like a star-struck teen on his first date.  I am happy like a father who first sees his newborn child.

What is the secret of happiness?  A heart full of Jesus.  What is the secret to everything?  To love everything with God's love in you.  Where do we find the love of God?  The only place is the cross of Christ.  If there is anything worthwhile in life, anything worth sacrificing everything for, anything that comes with great difficulty and wonderful blessings it is the pathway of the cross of Christ.  This is the pathway to happiness! 

Prophetic Words from the Prophets

The Words of Jeremiah:
*Write down God's words (36:2). 
*Proclaim a fast to the Lord (36:9).
*Do not disobey (37:2)
*Do not be deceived (37:9)

The words of Ezekiel:
*Yield fruit, multiply, rebuild, increase (36:8-11)
*I will make you inhabited as in the former times,
and do better for you than at your beginnings. 
Then you shall know that I Am the Lord (v.11)
*God will cleanse us and remove our idols and
filthiness (36:25)
*God will give us a new heart and a new spirit (36:.26)
*God will cause us to walk in His ways (36:27)

The words of Isaiah:
*To preach good news, heal the brokenhearted,
proclaim freedom to the captives (61:1)
*The Year of the Lord's Favor (61:2) Know it,
proclaim it, pray for it, receive it.
*To give us joy, fill us with praise, make us
righteous, and plant us deep so that God can
be glorified in everything ((61:3)
*Sow, plant, reap, harvest, repair, heavenly riches,
double blessings and joy everlasting (61:4-7)
*Righteous and Praise shall spring forth before all
nations (61:11)  God is leading us back to His
garden decking us out like a beautiful bride because
the bridegroom is coming!

It's Time for the Church To Wake Up

"We are sleeping through life in a dream which we can not escape.  God wants to wake us up" (inspired by N.F. song "Wake Up")

"When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those in a dream" (Psalm 126:1)

"What will it profit you to know all the Scriptures if you do not know yourself?" -  Anthony De Mello

"The World is sleeping in the dark that the church just can't fight because it's asleep in the light"
-  lyrics written by Keith Green

The alarm bells are going off every where for the American Church.  "Stuffy, irrelevant, hypocritical, judgmental and dying."  What is worse than the younger generation does not want anything to do with the church is that many members of churches across America want to participate as little as possible.  The American church is taking a beating from the outside as well as from those on the inside.  Many Christians who love the church know and feel in their gut that something is terribly wrong.

I remember a Christian article I read in the early eighties when Evangelical churches were growing where someone questioned what kind of Christianity were we bringing people into?  This writer prophetically said if we bring them into a water-down version of the gospel where churches are more concerned about fitting into society than being a counter-cultural church, it may be the church's undoing in the end.  Thirty years later, it looks like this concerned Christian's prediction is actually coming true.

What is a Christian to do?  What is a church to do?  Many churches continue to go on like business as usual either ignoring all the warning signs or simply throwing up their hands and thinking that there is nothing anybody can do about it so let's keep bailing water as long as the boat is still afloat.  I remember several years ago I heard the Lord speak these words in the core of my being "Emergency! Emergency!"  If the church does not wake up to the new world we all live in and take a hard deep look at itself, the church may miss it's greatest moment. 

God is going to raise up a new generation of leaders that is quite different than the way we have always done it before.  Crazy Christians with crazy ideas from God.  The older generation will critically ask, "Who told you that you could do that" and they will respond and answer, "God told me!"  In the last days God will pour out visions and dreams on young and old alike and the days may seem terrible but to those without spiritual eyes will have a peace and strength that only comes from above.  Our worldly attachments, prejudices, inner divided hearts, and tendency to take control of our own lives will all have to die!

Here is one of things God wants us to know to prepare us for what is coming next if we are going to be battle ready for the Lord.

Understand the Spiritual Discipline of Awareness.  We think we know God but we have so much baggage we are carrying that we are like drug addicts who really love God but don't know how to kick the habit of all the weight of the world and the inner struggles that consciously and unconsciously drive us.  We can't see God clearly because we can not see ourselves clearly.  We need a deeper revelation of our self if we are going to have a deeper revelation of God.  God is going to have to strip us totally and we may think this process is going to kill us but we will actually be stronger in the end for it after going through the fire of God's purging love.

We think we are strong and confident but we are weak and wounded and many of us don't see it much less acknowledge it.  Like the Laodicean Church that thought is was rich and did not need anything, only to find themselves wretched, poor, blind and naked (Revelation 3:17).  We need God's disciplining fire to renew and restore us.  We need God's righteousness to walk in the Spirit every day.  We need God's eyes to see ourselves, the world, and God from a view from above and not a view from below.

So where does it begin?  We must acknowledge our pride, our false humility, and become aware of our false self and the many ways it deceives us.  We are all highly skilled in self-deception without knowing it and we are not very skilled in the art of spiritual awareness.  We have to stop the many ways of avoiding, managing, and hiding our sin problems.  For anything done without faith is sin (Romans 14:23).  Why do we let things bother us?  Because our concerns are on other things beside God.  Why do we let other people bother us?  Because we see clearly their problems but we can not see our own problems which is usually a mirror of ourselves.

The false self is a creation of our own making and God simply wants us to rediscover our own true self which we have lost since we have been children.  The journey back is to become like a child again in the gracious loving arms of Daddy God.  Our identity and mission comes from our identity as a Beloved Child of God.  Our desires are not bad but they are often focused on the wrong thing or object.  Christ must become our everything so that nothing gets in the way of God in our lives.  Self must die every day so that self can become born anew every day.  You already your true self but do you see it?  You are already in the presence of God but are you aware of it?

Why are we amusing and doing ourselves to death?  We isolate and grab every form of pleasure and entertainment we can get our hands onto to fill the gapping holes in our lives.  But all this does is lead to more unhappiness, guilt, shame and confusion.  God is primarily concerned with who you are and not with what you do.  We think doing leads to being but we have it backwards.  Being leads to doing.  Doing simply leads to exhaustion, burnout, discouragement and despair.  God wants to transform our hearts which will change our perspective on everything.  God wants us to change our pace of life and so that we may enter into the rhythms of the Holy Spirit.  God wants to change the place we are in and this has more to do with our inner being than outward location.

We are entering a new season where we just want to praise the Lord for so much and thank the Lord for so much but God is going to be having us sow much into our own lives and the lives of those around us that everything around us will seem like its ablaze by the fire of the Living God.  Are you awake?

Diary of a Mystic Warrior

"A Mystic Warrior is possessed by the Spirit of God"

God has so ravished my heart and captivated me by His beauty that I am alive in radical amazement and seized with a vision from God.  I am studying the Song of Songs right now and it is such a deep and prophetic book that is ushering me into the very throne room of God.  The world is now so filled with spiritual radiance that I gasp and stand still beholding the beauty of God.  I am becoming so empty so that I will be fully present gazing upon a revelation of the glory of God.

I am unlearning and entering a land of unknowing where the only thing I know is God.  I am learning anew that I have nothing to give and can not give what I do not have unless I am utterly dependent on God for everything!

God is stripping me of my self, my pride, pettiness, illusions, and every kind of worldly attachment.  The only thing I notice, my inner most desires is to only notice Him.  God will not leave me alone or leave me as I have been.   God is changing my mind, my pursuits, my hidden desires to be only for Him.  Light and darkness can not exist together.  The light burns but it is also freeing.

I have been sick and God has been drawing me closer to him in the fire of His love.  I think at times I will die but God is renewing me.  I started to pray for God to heal my sickness only to be met by God asking me if my health is more important than my desire for Him?  God is revealing to me that suffering can at times be our highest calling as He teaches us how to follow him through afflictions.  God is teaching me that whether in health or sickness, poverty or riches, loneliness or in community, He really is enough!

God wants those who are pure in heart and purity only happens when we go through the crucible of God's holy fire.  God does not simply want us to look like His Son, God wants us to be just like His Son Jesus.  God is teaching me to be dead to the world so I can be fully alive in Christ.  If I can be at rest and content in all circumstances, then I can receive God in peace and quiet as well as turmoil and unrest.  We can give God everything we have and all our possessions but we have gained nothing if we have not given God our Self!

So speak forth God's Word.  Speak God's Word out as it still remains in us.  And in the end, God's love will hold you and satisfy you.  As God breaks and destroys the many ways I have attached myself and the way I look and respond to the world around me, God is raising me above the world.  By God's help, I am being perfected by His Holy Spirit.

My identity has become lost in Christ.  Christ is my identity,  He is all I see now!

Revelations from the Spirit of God:

"With one word from God can change everything!"

God's goodness and beauty is so magnificent that I am overwhelmed by God's grace.  Here are some revelations God has been speaking into my life.

1.  It's time to go lower still.  There is more to surrender and to give up.  There is more that must die for us to live in God's all consuming presence.  God wants us to go lower.  My prayer is "O God, consume me!"

2.  This is a time of repositioning and reordering our priorities.   We are to wait on God but God is also waiting on you.  I am always saying "I'm sorry God" but now God is calling us to ask for His righteousness.  "Clothe me completely in your righteousness God!"

3.  This is a time to keep our eyes continually fixed on Jesus.  Quit focusing on other things and focus on Christ!  It we take our eyes off Jesus, we can't follow where he is going!

4.  Everything begins with repentance.  We do not really trust God fully if we don not repent.  We do not really fear God unless we change and repentance means change.

5.  Ready, Set, Go!  God won't leave you where you are at as He prepares you for what is coming.  God loves us too much to leave us where we have been at.  We are to rest in God's presence as He prepares us to go to a deeper place with Him.

6.  Who you become is determined by how you pray!  Prayers are prophecies over your life.  God says, "Pray for my favor, I want to give it to you!"

7.  When you have nothing left is when God asks us for something more.  It's here we find out who we really are.  It is here we find out who God really is.  It is all about becoming more like Jesus.  Unless we have a deeper revelation about who we are in Christ, we will never understand deeply who God is in Christ.

Skating on Thin Ice

"The person who speaks to this hour's need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks these heresies can gain the truth"  -  Helmut Thielicke

Jesus was a risk taker but when it comes to Christian theology, Christians are to play it safe and are certainly not to be innovative or say something different than what theologians in the past have said.
Much like modern Christian commentaries that plagiarize and copy off each other, so should modern Christians stay within the boundaries of orthodoxy.  Certainly staying within the parameters of ancient wisdom is good but what if some of what modern Christian Bible Colleges and Seminaries are teaching these young intellectuals more concurs with conventional wisdom of Christendom than what God or His Word actually teaches us?  It's not that what Christian schools or churches is saying in necessarily wrong but it is often backwards and that's a big problem.  Here are some things I was taught that I have had to unlearn as I read Scripture or listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

1.  The physical world proves the spiritual world.  Things like water, food, exercise, and changing seasons of the year correlate to things like the Holy Spirit is living water, reading and digesting the Bible is like spiritual food, spiritual disciplines exercises our spiritual muscles and grows the inner person, and there are spiritual seasons to go through just like the different seasons we go through in a year.  But the physical world does not prove the spiritual world as if the spiritual world is a shadowy vapor of the real physical world but the real world is the world of the Spirit and this earthly existence is the shadow of that reality (See Hebrews 8:4-5; 9:23-24).

2.  God is self-sufficient and does not need us or anything else.  It is true that God can do anything God wants to do and God does not depend on the world that God created and lives in perfect community within the beauty of the Trinity.  Often theology tries to protect God but if there is something God does not need, God does not need our theologies and our protection.  God is perfectly capable of protecting oneself without needing our help.  And what does it really say to people that "God doesn't really need you."  Obviously there is something within God that needs to create, needs to love, needs to call into existence because that is what God does.  We need God and God needs us because that is what love does.  We depend on God as if everything depends upon God and God depends on us for fruitful living.

3.  We are human beings seeking spiritual experiences with God.  If there is one thing that Scripture keeps pointing us towards are heavenly realities and spiritual truths.  God's Spirit speaks to our spirit because we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  People have confused their worldly attachments and many illusions of this world onto their identity as if doing things make us become what God wants us to become.  We have twisted, complicated, and turned things around so badly where God simply wants us to be who we truly are and from our being and true self leads to what we should be doing.

4.  God wants to have first place in your life.  Prepare yourself but first place is not enough for the God who made, designed, and created you.  God does not love you with an everlasting love just to be first among many loves in your life.  God wants the only place in your life.  This does not mean you can not have other loves and other interests.  What it does mean is once you have given God the only place in your life, your love becomes multiplied and your creative interests become innumerable.

5.  God wants us to burn out rather than rust out.  This conventional wisdom found often in the church is exactly what leads to much exhaustion, burnout, and instability in the ministry.  We are trying so hard to work for God, others, and the world that we do not take care of our own health much less our souls in the process.  God wants us to love ourselves if we are going to love our neighbor.  God wants us to live sacrificially but it is on God's terms and God's power and not on our own success driven mentality and unrealistic demands of church ministry today.

6.  Adam and Eve fell in the garden because they wanted to be like God.  The early church fathers and even scripture itself infers that we are like God.  The desire to be in God's likeness is not a bad desire.  The reason Adam and Eve fell in the garden is they wanted to be like God without God.  And herein is the same problem that persists today.  People want to be like God on their own terms and without God.  In other words, they want to be their own God without submitting to God who is Sovereign and rules over all.  It is only God who make us truly like God.

7.  God does God's part and we are to do our part.  There is some smuggled form of works righteousness when we think God's part ends and our part begins.  The whole Christian existence is a life of grace.  It starts with grace, is sustained by grace, and ends in grace.  Even when we do good works, the work we do is not from our self but from the gift of God's grace and Spirit working within us. Even when we have done what should be done, all we can do is praise God and give God the glory for God does the good work in us and for us to accomplish God's good purposes.

Prophetic Psalms for 2015

"Consume Me, O God!" (My prayer for this year)

"This is written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.  For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven the Lord viewed the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to release those appointed to death, to declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem, when the people's are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord (Psalm 102:18-22).

"Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, Who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's (Psalm 103:1-5)

2015 is the year of the Lord's divine favor.  This is a year of resting in God.  This is a year to prepare and get ready for the next season that is coming.  This is a year to die to the things of this world and walk in complete dependence of God's Holy Spirit.

Maranatha!