The World is Mine

Taking, stealing, grabbing,
everything in the world is mine.
It's not for somebody else,
it is there for me for the taking.

The more I took, the more I grabbed,
the more I lost.
Everything slipped through my fingers.
The tighter I hold, the quicker it fled.
I thought I could posses the world
but the world possessed me.

Then I opened my hand,
I gave away, surrendered all
and freely released the world
for it has lost its power over me.

I joyfully blessed the poor,
cared for the wounded,
and loved the broken-hearted.

In the midst of my poverty,
I discovered that all is God
and His is mine
so now I'm free
for the world is mine.


(inspired by Psalm 50:12)

When God Shows Up

"When shall I come and appear before God?" (Psalm 42:2)

1.  I appear before God every time I come to Him in prayer.
2.  I appear before God ever time I submit myself to God's Word.
3.  I appear before God every time I enter into a season of fasting and seek God's face.
4.  I appear before God every time I lift my hands up to worship God.
5.  I appear before God every time I get still to hear God's voice.
6.  I appear before God every time I tell the good news of Jesus to others.
7.  I appear before God every time two or three are gathered together in Jesus name.
8.  I appear before God every time I partake of Holy Communion.
9.  I appear before God every time I really look at creation and everything around me for I see God's hand every where.
10.  I appear before God every time I am broken and contrite in spirit because it is not I that comes before God but God who comes and appears before me.

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)

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!

Prayer After God's Heart

O GOD, YOU ARE MY GOD; EARLY WILL I SEEK YOU . . . TO SEE YOUR POWER AND YOUR GLORY (Psalm 63:1)

Vindicate me by your strength or Lord,
for I am powerless without you.

We pray for change because if we do not
change, then it shows we do not fear God.

Lord, be our deliverer and help from trouble.
Why? Because the help of man is useless.

You are my rock and fortress Oh Lord,
In you do I trust.

(my reflections from the Psalms)