The Place Where Joy Hangs Out

I’ve been thinking about thankfulness today and as I was looking up thanks in the Word I found this place in 1 Chronicles 16 where David gives a song of thanks to the Lord at the establishment of the Tabernacle.  This passage appears to be the first Psalm in a sense, that David told Asaph and his brothers to sing.  They are describing the Lord, how incredible and majestic he is, the mighty things that he has done on behalf of his people, and exhorting the people to thank and praise the Lord because of these things. I love what they said in verse twenty-seven, (KJV)

“Glory and honor are in His presence, strength and gladness are in His place.”

Sometimes when I read things like that I imagine that all of those characteristics, Glory, Honor, Strength, and Gladness, are people, or spirits, and that they are just hanging out with him. Glory and Honor are with Him in the kitchen and Strength and Gladness are chilling out on His couch. 

Can you imagine what someone would look like who was the embodiment of honor, or strength or gladness?  I think of strength as someone who is the epitome of a Greek god, bronzed, muscles bulging everywhere, short cropped blond hair, strong jaw line.  Whereas gladness might be more lithe and lean but with a great sense of humor, always laughing and full of fun with curly dark hair and bright eyes.

Just for fun I decided to look up those words, because they are different in various translations, and see if I could get to a root meaning. It was hard to find specifics but the best that I could find was basically this,

The freshness and beauty, the lively color, and the ornaments and garments representing deserved honor and majesty are right in front of his face. His material, social, and political strength is joined by gladness and joy in the place where he lives and stands.

That’s a lot of words that are pretty but it was hard for me to get my head around it so I rephrased it a bit and this is where I landed,

His full and living beauty joined by all that represents His majestic character are what you see immediately when you meet Him. The evidence of his ability to powerfully move on your behalf and to bring the utmost joy and gladness into your life fill the atmosphere around Him.

The thing that always gets me when I read things like his about the Lord is remembering where He lives, where is His place? “Abide in me, and I in you.” (John 15:4)  All of that living beauty and majestic character, his power and joy and gladness are living inside of me right now.  That is something to be thankful for.

A Spiritual Coffee Buzz

Here’s another revelation from my old journals, this one is from an entry on June 20th, 2008, with a little editing and added revelation as I wrote it out. Cultivating the presence of the Lord is similar to our constant search for energy. We can drink an energy drink or caffeinated beverage, such as coffee, that gives us a little buzz in the moment but wears off after a short time leaving you more tired than before.  Or we can cultivate more energy by sleeping, exercising, being in the sun, and eating healthy foods.  Being disciplined with our bodies produces a more constant supply of energy that lasts longer and is more natural.  There’s also a cost factor, both of time and money which are the two other things that we are constantly searching for more of.  A quick coffee will cost less in time and money than eating organic salads for lunch every day.   Both types of energy can be used together to produce even more powerful results, however, being in the practice of the second option makes the first one more effective. Spiritually the coffee option is what it looks like to experience a “conference high” or go to a meeting and get pumped up about the Lord, but when you try to take it home often times the experience wears off within days or even hours.  If we are willing to cultivate the presence of the Lord, the cost largely being our time, waiting on Him, worshiping, praying, being in the word…then we will step into the reality that we carry that level of Presence with us everywhere we go and we won’t have to look to anyone to “take us there” because we will already know the way.  With that in mind attending a conference or event will give us an increase of something we already have and allow us to use those things to propel us even further on the journey we are already engaged in rather than looking to a conference/event/speaker/worship leader to engage us into the journey. There has been an idea that we are dependent on the church for our relationship with the Lord.   The church is not a vending machine where we come and get our spiritual Red Bull once a week to keep going.  We are all supposed to be coming with pslams, hymns, spiritual songs, teachings, lessons, and revelations that we have gleaned from the Lord during our week.  The church is the place where we can join our hearts, that are already connected to the Lord, with each other in worship and see the heavens opened.  I confess that all too often I come empty looking to be filled, and there is an element of filling that will occur, but I must live in the reality that I have direct access to the Fountainhead Himself and come ready to overflow.  We are coming to the place where when we gather together we will all bring the “energy” that we have been cultivating in our intimacy with the Lord and together we will take leaps and bounds forward that send all of us into deeper and higher places in the journey we’re on with Him both corporately and individually.  Further up and further in! Thoughts?

Been there, won that.

Tidbit from my journal from Feb/Mar 2008 “Been there, won that. When the enemy tries to cast up your past to you the Lord is saying, ‘We’ve been there & I’ve won that already.’” So no worries, literally.

Clanging Cymbals

I was flipping through one of my journals today and noticed a page that I had written on August 26, 2009 and thought that I would share it.  I must have been sitting outside my home in Colorado writing about the songs that I was in the process of crafting when I wrote the following entry.

There is a bird loudly calling nearby, its grating cry makes me cringe, I wish it would stop.  Over and over it persists in sounding its alarm, where is the snooze button on this creature?

(Enter revelation from the Lord in the midst of my irritation…don’t ya love His timing?!) This is what we sound like trying to prophesy without love.  Grating and harsh, like a clanging cymbal or an alarm clock whose obnoxiously loud sound we want to turn off as quickly as possible.  Rather than awakening it provokes the hearer to desire sleep even more.  We must have love!  No one wants to hear an old bird cry.  We must have love!  If we want to awaken His Bride we must have love.  Kiss us to life with Your love!

People will know when we are ministering to them out of love or a preconceived idea of their value and worth based on what we see/feel/know/discern about them.  I want to truly love and be able to minister out of a place of pure hearted love.  It says that the pure in heart will see God, and that to truly love God we must love each other.  What if part of that promise is the ability to see God in one another and to celebrate the unique elements of Himself that He has placed in each one of us?

The music of true love awakens the heart and stirs the receiver to action, it allows for openness of hearing and vision, and it is not often snoozed.

Time to Change the Guard

I went back to Colorado to visit my family last week and was flying on Southwest.  On my flight back to from Nashville to Raleigh I was looking for a seat and was standing right next to a row that had two men who were both around their mid-fifties who had a middle seat available between them.

The men were having a lively discussion and I hesitated to plunk myself down in between them and interrupt their dialogue. 

Suddenly the flight attendant came on and said, “This flight is entirely full, if you’re standing next to a seat take it, if you pass an open one it was probably yours.”  Well okay then, I asked if the seat was taken and with great alacrity the man sitting on the aisle sprang up out of his seat, helped me put my camera bag in the overhead and ushered me into the seat beside him.

After I had seated myself the men resumed their conversation but instead of talking over me, which is what I had suspected would happen, they included me in on their discussion of the merits of traveling by private jet verses public airline.  As I discovered, through the course of the flight, both men traveled frequently in the course of their work and had experience with both types of air travel.  Needless to say I did not have much to add to the conversation haha!

As the flight went on I chatted with one or both of them about a variety of things; with both of them being senior businessmen I was honored by and appreciated the way that they carried on a conversation with me in a way that was very respectful and not in any way condescending.  We talked about technology, how scary it is that people can see exactly where your phone is at any given time, schools (they both had masters degrees, one from MIT and the other from Columbia), their kids and/or grandkids, and finally health care and politics.

One of the men was a regional manager of government relations for a large pharmaceutical company so he had quite a bit of information and opinions about the proposed national health care plan.  Although I don’t keep myself way up to date on politics my dad has always been good about keeping us educated and having worked in health care I definitely have an opinion about that topic.  The thing that was the most interesting to me, was that their conclusion for how to fix things in our nation was for the young people to rise up.

Changing of the Guard at Arlington National Cemetary - photocredit: vpickering

They literally told me that the only way things are going to change is if the young people get educated and get out to vote and if we start to take a stand to make our government keep it’s word. 

They told me “you need to kick the old coots like us out of office and get some fresh young blood in there.”

  One man said that he could see crowds of young people tracking down their senators and representatives and asking them questions, demanding more accountability, actively advocating for the right thing.  They basically said that it is our turn now and that we need to step up and take it.  Woo!  One other interesting thing is that they said also is that our economy is only getting worse and that “something is coming,” something big.  Pretty amazing to sit on an airplane with two very secular men who are saying the same things that Rick has been saying from the pulpit.

So those of you that want to go into politics, GO!  They want you there!  We need you there!  Do.it.

What if reality is just a perception?

Here’s a thought I’m toying with today…

Our perception of reality is shaped by what we believe.

What are we allowing to influence our reality?  Is it truth?  Is it lies?  Is it a mixture of both?

Perceived reality influences our actions, reactions, and inaction.

What if the “reality” of limitations on our lives are really just perceptions and not truth?

Edit: here’s another way to phrase the question, “What if reality is different than what we perceive?” What if it’s better!?

One of my all time favorite C.S. Lewis quotes by Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in the Silver Chair illustrates this grandly:

Illustration Credit: Chris Newsome

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours isthe only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

Cutting out the Leeches

Can I just start by saying that the word leeches alone is gross?  Bleh!  It was even more gross when the Lord showed them to me, all over my heart.  It was at OneThing (the International House of Prayer youth conference) last year and I was getting delivered while everyone else was having a Holy Spirit joyfest.  Needless to say I was not very happy.  I could feel every wall I had up and exactly how they were hindering me from receiving from the Lord.  I had realized that I was living in a constant cycle of watching the people around me and comparing myself to them and then, typically, putting myself down while feeling jealous of them.  Self-hatred anyone?  (Could also read: inability-to-receive-the-Lord’s-love anyone?)  I remember sitting the Prayer Room at the conference and comparing myself to a friend who was across the room and that was it.  At long last I had reached the end of myself, I was sick of this cycle but couldn’t break it on my own so I asked the Lord for help.

His immediate response was disconcerting, He said, “Ok, pick a knife.”  Woah, not what I was expecting.

I saw a table in the spirit, and it was covered in an assortment of knives and cleavers neatly laid out in rows on a red tablecloth.  I picked up a medium sized knife that seemed fairly versatile and the next thing I saw was an anatomical heart with a huge leech on it.  The Lord told me that was I was looking at was my heart and that it had a leech of comparison on it and that we were going to cut it out.  No big deal right?  Yeah. Right.  The Lord showed me exactly what part of my heart that nasty blood sucker was on and what the lie was that it was using to drain the life out of me.  I had to acknowledge the lie in order to cut it out and as soon I had cut it out and tossed it away He turned my heart and I saw another leech and we had to repeat the process.  To this day I don’t know how many there were, I want to say 20-30 but it may have been more or less.  It felt like we were cutting forever but I didn’t care, I was determined to get rid of these things.  One of the things that surprised me was to learn how deep and wide comparison went in my heart, I had some big leeches on places that I didn’t even know I had operated in comparison before.  I was sitting in the prayer room with my eyes closed making circular cutting and tossing motions with my hand clenched around my knife.  Finally it was done.

I was exhausted and my heart was left full of holes and bleeding but free of the blood sucking monsters.  Jesus turned to me and said, “Now we’re going to rub the balm of truth in.”  He gave me some kind of heavenly salve and I scooped some onto my fingers and began to rub it into my heart, mind you I’m literally doing a rubbing motion with my hand in the air but I did not care how it looked, I wanted freedom.  The Lord is so intentional, He had me rub, which meant saying and receiving, specifically targeted truth into every single place that we had cut out a leech until my heart was whole and full again.  Isn’t it amazing how receiving the truth is so often harder than believing the lies?  But it is far and away beyond better and more satisfying when truth becomes our reality.

It gets better.  Our Daddy is so determined to lavish His truth on us that when we ask Him to remove the things that hinder love He will do it.  Right after this experience happened a friend was praying for me and I felt this sharp stabbing pain in my back on the left side as if someone were stabbing me through my ribs.  I asked them to pray for it and the girl got a word of knowledge that it was lies that I was believing.  From that moment on every time I had a thought that was a lie that I believed or agreed with – most of them were about myself, or the way that others or the Lord viewed me – I would get that sharp stabbing pain.  This hurt for real, and I had so many unchecked lies flying through my mind that I was in constant pain.  The only way to make the pain stop was to pause and go back and find the lie, grab it, and break agreement with it and then ask the Lord what the truth was about that and receive it into my heart.  The cycle of lie/pain/break/receive went on for about 4 days.  Thankfully it decreased as time went on but I think it was because I had confronted so many of the lies that I had been believing so there wasn’t as much to battle.  It got to the point where I would see a lie fly across my mind and I would try to stop it before it slipped through so that I didn’t have to feel the pain.  I was surprised at how much of what I was believing (especially about the way I viewed myself or others or God viewed me) was complete lies.

After this time with the Lord I began to realize how pervasive jealousy, comparison, and self-hatred are not only in our culture but in the church.

What we’re really saying when we believe those things is, “Lord, I know that before you created anything, when you were still outside of time, you dreamed up exactly how I would be and wrote the book about my life and picked out the part of your spirit that would be me, but I just feel like what you did wasn’t good enough and what you gave that person is really better than what you gave me.”  What an accusation!  That’s not to say that we can’t be inspired by people or that we don’t have room to grow.  I’m talking about sinful jealousy and comparison, the kind that steals your joy when other people are blessed, that keeps you from supporting others when they are walking in the things you want to do, or experiencing favor.  The kind of life sucking mindsets that make you feel justified in hating yourself.  I’m always surprised when I see how much jealousy is blatantly a part of our language, where someone will have something great happening and our natural response is, “Oh I’m so jealous!”  There’s a dissatisfaction with what we have and who we are that provokes that kind of reaction.

I am no where near perfect in this area, in fact it is a place that I still struggle with at times, but I know that victory is the place that I’m fighting from.  More and more often I’m living out of the reality of who I am and who my God is in me.  I am learning to make rejoicing with others and blessing them in who they are my naturally instinctive response, especially if they’re walking in things that I dream of doing.  We have to shift into this reality, we cannot receive people in who are hurting if we hate ourselves.  Ask Jesus to give you some of that balm of truth to rub into your heart and see how it changes the way you think and live.  I promise He will have some handy, He’s just good like that.

A Word About Worry

Stepping into the shower this morning I said something to Jesus about coming to wash me with the water of the Word.  During the ensuing conversation about the book of John my train of thought led me to a worry that I had carried about a young friend who had seemed to be neglected by their parents a few months ago.  I said a quick anxiety tinged prayer to my Papa about taking care of this friend as I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair.  The ever so gentle response of the Lord was a needed reminder about who He really is. 

“It’s not your job to worry,” He reminded me.  “It’s your job to trust me.”  “It’s also not your job to be responsible for taking care of everyone around you.  It is your job to obey me.” What a sweetly freeing thought!  I’ve been thinking about abiding a lot and I realized that knowing what my responsibility, my assignment, is in a given season, obeying in the things that He has specifically placed in front of me, and leaving the everything else to Him is a key to resting and abiding in His LOVE.

That seemingly innocent little worry for my young friend was something that I had actually hung onto and carried around with me for months and I was amazed at the amount of anxiety I felt just turning my thoughts in that direction.

Worrying isn’t caring. It is sin.

It’s partnering with the enemy and agreeing with a spirit of doubt about the Lord’s ability to handle a situation.  It’s as if there’s certain areas of our lives where we give ourselves permission to doubt His ability.  I would venture a guess that it’s probably in areas where we’ve been wounded or feel like we’ve seen Him not come through, places where we think we need to take matters into our own hands in order to make sure things get done “right.”

When I realize the intentionality of God, the creator of the furthest galaxies and the tiniest bug, who knows every hair on my head (including the ones I lost in the shower), I am compelled to acknowledge that He is big enough and powerful enough to care more than I do about the things that concern me.
As soon as He becomes my reality peace becomes my normal place of living and worry becomes a scrawny old bull to grab by the horns and toss to Jesus every time it tries to rear it’s ugly head.
Philippians 4:4-9 expands on what Jesus told me in the shower and outlines our job pretty clearly.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things…and the God of peace will be with you.

My job description:

• Rejoice (be happy x 2)
• Be gentle
• Remember that Jesus is with me
• Say no to worrying about anything
• Pray, ask for things, say thanks.
• Think good and beautiful thoughts, forget all anxious ones.
• Hang out with Jesus, Peace Himself, in His love.

Jesus’s job description:

• Rule the world
• Take care of everyone
• Listen to my requests and questions
• Give me peace (x a gazillion)
• Hang out with me and love on me tons while wearing His peace suit. 

Was it just me or did worry not make it in there anywhere?  I think that ol’ bull is biting the dust.  Hollerlujah.

Dressed with Differentness

I was reading through the Word tonight and I stumbled across this verse that I’ve heard tossed around a lot but never really looked into.

Psalm 110:3 Your people will be volunteers in the day of Your power, in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth. (NKJV)

What  powerfully poetic scripture!  David sure did know how to write.  I started to wonder what the last part meant, about the “beauties of holiness” and the “womb of the morning” and the “dew of youth.”  All such curious and beautiful phrases.

Photocredit: Nic-C on Flickr

I looked up a couple of things about dew first.  I learned that it is water that forms on plants and it requires a moisture in the air and a significant temperature (atmosphere) change.  It usually appears in the night or very early morning.  In Israel because there is no rain from April through October if dew did not appear there would be no late harvest and no fruit.  It symbolizes blessing, refreshing, and stealth. Powerful stuff.

My second step was to do one of my favorite things and study out the individual words as much as I could using my trusty BlueLetterBible site.  Some of the words didn’t have a specific meaning listed in that verse so I just gave the general meaning.  This is my EJLV of it after studying it out.

Your people will step forward freely, fully, and with a willing mind in the day that you wage warfare.  Dressed with differentness, beautiful in their distinctness, from the inner parts of the morning just as the dawn is breaking, Your young ones will bring their refreshing covering.

I love the idea of being “dressed with differentness” – I think I just made up a new word!  The definition there is the beauties (ornament, adorning, decoration – holy ornaments) of holiness (apartness, sacredness, separateness, set-apartness).

Being adorned with being set apart, not by being set apart.

There is a beauty that comes with being sacred, set-apart, separate and these young people wear that beauty like jewelry or fine clothing.  They are adorned with their differentness; to be adorned means to be provided with something intended to increase its beauty or distinction.

Even in the midst of the dark night, as the atmosphere is becoming colder and the air thicker, there are young ones being set apart and beautified and hidden in the light.  Just as the night is drawing to a close, out of the womb of the morning, the very heart of the light, they will bring the covering of refreshing that is needed to bring the fruit and the harvest.  In that day they will step forward freely, with willing minds, and a fullness of readiness to wage war with their King.  Bring it on.

Something More About His Ways

This was the entry in My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers for today, August 1st.   It was definitely convicting to me in my season of moving and changing.  It’s interesting to me that he hits both the movers and waiters…which is almost everyone right now in a very active sense…and as always Ozzy does not pull punches, he says it like it is.

He comes where He commands us to leave.

“When Jesus had made an end of commanding his disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.” Matthew 11:1.

If when God said “Go,” you stayed because you were so concerned about your people at home, you robbed them of the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ Himself. When you obeyed and left all consequences to God, the Lord went into your city to teach; as long as you would not obey, you were in the way. Watch where you begin to debate and to put what you call duty in competition with your Lord’s commands. “I know He told me to go, but then my duty was here;” that means you do not believe that Jesus means what He says.

He teaches where He instructs us not to.

“Master, . . . let us make three tabernacles.”

Are we playing the spiritual amateur providence in other lives? Are we so noisy in our instruction of others that God cannot get anywhere near them? We have to keep our mouths shut and our spirits alert. God wants to instruct us in regard to His Son, He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration, and we will not let Him. When we are certain of the way God is going to work, He will never work in that way any more.

He works where He sends us to wait.

“Tarry ye . . . until . . .” Wait on God and He will work, but don’t wait in spiritual sulks because you cannot see an inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our own spiritual hysterics to wait on God? To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told.

These are phases of His ways we rarely recognize.

Leave it to ol’ Oswald to say it straight.  I’d love to hear any thoughts on this…did it speak to the season or place that you’re in?
PS for those of you that are into prophetic numbers, it’s interesting that the entry for the 1st had a reference to Matt 11:1.  Lots of fun things in this one.