In High Demand

I am in one of those seasons of “high demand”. I am right now in the Prayer Room (not praying) but using my blog to sort through several of the voices I hear in my mind. These are not “God speaking to me” voices, but “me speaking to me” voices. If you don’t have these don’t worry, you’re not missing much.
But I have been stressed by all the things that I “could do”, “should do”, “must do”, “ought to do” and “might possible do”. It feels a lot like driving in Chicago traffic, talking on the cell, eating a subway sandwich, listening to Reed’s DVD, praying in the spirit and daydreaming all at the same time. Don’t ask me how I know it feels like that. But it does.
I want to please the Lord in all regards. I want to make my life count, not for something, but for God. I want to stand before the eternal one and have Him smile and give me the redeeming hug of brotherhood. To hear Him say, “Well done, you mystic redneck, you did just want I wanted”! I don’t want others to look at my life and say it was a success, I want my Dad in heaven to approve. So how do I/we do that.
I spent a lot of time trying to sort through the truths of the Scripture and find a list to help me manage my life. Then in the prayer room (while I was praying) I felt the Lord toll me “not to manage my life”. I felt the Lord saying to me that He would manage my life. That my part was to love others and listen to Him closely as to what I was to do or not do. I know that “God wants me to….” Has been misused in the past. But just because it has been abused doesn’t mean it is not the way of life.
We don’t need God to tell us to get out of bed or stop eating ice cream after the second bowl. We have a responsibility to manage life on some level. But the level is always, always subject to the will of God who is in heaven. It is a delightful burden to live in such a way as to bring about on earth as it is in heaven. So the next time you find yourself life me… Trying to help 3 National Prayer Movements and 4 local church prayer events, 4 city wide prayer efforts, help the neighbors roof, 5 lawns to mow, a church to remodel, a home to build for a “dropped” Katarina victim, a son who wants to go fishing and play catch, friends who need help moving, a bathroom that need to be cleaned and a book that calls out to be read; just listen.
My Dad in heaven deals with much more than this on a daily basis and His “never in a panic” way of doing things enables me to do my part – love others. I think I’m gonna pray the prayer of THANKSGIVING FOR AWAILE.

My Hard to Love List

I thought I would make a “hard to love” list of people who are hard for me to love. I would choose the kind of person that is all messed up, so much so that it poses some difficulty for me to love them.
Does God ever mess with you?
So I went to make this list, right. My goal is improvement and Godliness through the observation of faults and weakness in others. Can you see where this is going?
No matter how novel, I can’t seem to get to God through picking apart other people. My Father in heaven simply wants to work in me until His love flows freely through me – no goodness of others required.
I guess true Christlikeness is loving “hard to love” people easily. “Easy” being with restraint, not as “easy” being without effort. Picking up the cross is a labor intensive ordeal, especially if you are large. The measure of the natural man determines the size of the cross.
So I got my list now! The “hard to love” people are me. It’s hard to know what is in your heart and still love or like yourself. I guess I will need to trust God that He too is Christlike, loving those who have issues.
Dear God, I and a few others close to me, were wondering when you would be done transforming me into the image of Christ. We all hope that it would happen any time now.

I don’t want a know

There are a lot of things that I do not want to know. Over the last 3 weeks I have been stressed and pushed in ways that I would never choose. I have faced pain, conditions, emotions and situations in which I would never choose, if there were not chosen for me. Yet God in His goodness chooses to prepare me for life yet to come. I would choose to live a life and not know what it is like to see your Dad suffer, your friends confused or be pressured to perform beyond human possibility. I would choose to live a life where I do not fail to meet the desire of others and thus escape all the negative emotions that failure brings.
But God, that big God of endless wisdom and love, has other plans. He acts upon my life so that in things yet to come I am prepared. My preparation is not just so that I have an easy life, but rather so that I have a glorious life. To achieve “glory” I must transcend the natural and enter into “Kingdom living”. Supernatural living requires a little more pressure and endurance than life in the “easy button” mode.
Let me rant and little more on what I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know that I can be tired, weary, even at the point to exhaustion and still apologize, still be kind and still ask for forgiveness. I tend to like having reasons for misbehavior or ungodly living. I don’t want to know that I can pray when I don’t fell like praying and help others when I have no energy to help myself. I don’t want to know that I can love when I am hated and give to others when I have nothing to give. I don’t want to know these things but God has been doing the “I am your Father” thing and in His love disciplining me into a greater maturity than I desire. He is acting for my good. I don’t feel it is good. I am taking this on faith. I am in a “trust God” mode and trust not yourself mode.
I found myself in a rage today. It was like a fit of anger on “RED BULL”. But then I heard the calm spirit of God in me asking, “why are you mad”. At first this challenge made me madder! “Just look” at …… Then it hit me. I had stuff I could get mad about but it was not worse today than any other day. The stuff was just like “other day stuff”. I was more tired, stressed, perplexed; but the issues were all the same. So I took about 15 min. and cooled off. Then I apologized for being angry. Once I asked for forgiveness, I felt better. In fact obedience with the Lord felt better then the joy of being mad because I was tired. Maybe light is better than darkness, but we men tend to love the dark more.
So.. when filled with life and ready for a fit
Don’t give in
Don’t try to quit
Turn to God who you really what to avoid
And allow His grace to fill your
VOID

If living for Jesus was easy everyone would be doing it.

What to do

Over the last few weeks I have found my life running myself. The things on the “to do” list have become animated and have taken over the “what I should do.” The purpose driven life is more like the “what you need to do next” life. I feel like many, many people know what I am talking about.
When this happens our/my identity can get lost. We can start to feel, even come to believe emotionally that we have no control over our life. We can start to feel like our life is “worthless”, we feel less and less like we are worth anything.
The real answer to this situation is to hang on to the Lord. The word “Lord” means “Master” and when everyone and everything else desires to rule your life, you can turn to the foundation of all life. But just turning to God is not enough. I know that many will tell you that it is, but it is not. You must turn to God and then cling to Him. The clinging is a spiritual, emotional and even physical bound. Clinging to the Master does not mean you get the life you desire back, but you get the one you desire more than life back. Once you have and keep in touch (clinging) with the Lord, everyone and everything else is reduced to everything else. Hanging on to God is a great focus, endeavor and purpose.
Right now in my life I have a Promise Keepers conference to recruit people of prayer for. I think I have 4-5 of the 80 needed. I have the Peoria Prayer Center data base to rebuild, office work to do and newsletters to write. I also have my Dad to look after, two trips to make this week, lawns to mow, a new church remolding space to work on and preparations for the Global Bridegroom Fast and The Call. Added to this is my desire to write and produce prayer helps and others discipleship tools. I have a cartoon prayer manual setting on the shelf as well as 12 children’s lessons to write.
All this stuff, great stuff cannot become my identity or tools of evaluation. Many people, who do not selfishly hide themselves away, find themselves with endless places of help, service and labor. If we truly love our neighbor as our selves we are going to go through times of great labor and exhaustion. If you love others you will encounter some very long, if not unending days. This is a part of “normal Christianity.” Please, please do not surrender to the “take care of yourself”, “protect you time and family”, “you deserve time to yourself” mentality. If you cling to keep this life, you will have no hands to cling to Him, who is all of life. It is true that you must lose your life not to find life eternal. Many who are teaching on this subject have not yet come to know what it truly means. It is not something that you are willing to do. It is in fact something that you must actually do.
What to do? Cling!

The Love of NEW

I love new stuff. Not material stuff. Well maybe some material stuff if it is outdoors related. But I love new (of a different kind) of stuff. I love to see a side of God that I have never seen, to learn something that I have not known before, to think a thought for the first time.

You need to be a little careful when you try to analyze thinking about a thought for the first time. You don’t want to get trapped into thinking wither you “thought of this though” when you were trying to “think that this though” was an original thought or if you thought of this thought prior to thinking about thinking about this thought. You know what I mean.

Things that are new (as in the same kind but just new) are great. I love a new bow, a new dish of ice cream, a new journal. But I love, really love something new.


I was reading John through trying to hear the Lord in the scripture for my children. I wanted to read this old book and hear new things. I wanted to think thought from the heat of God for my family. I was on an adventure. Just about every verse led me to write pages in my journal. Have you ever noticed that God speaks one or two words into our heart and we need a thousand to translate the emotion, spirit, revelation and wonder of what He is saying? No wonder God can talk to us all at the same time, He can express in one word a decade of discovery. Was that a new thought to you?

I think I am gong to take on August with a fresh zeal to replace the worlds entertainment with a quest for new thoughts from and about God. I think I will focus on “loving others as I love myself” because I am weak on the first part and grant on the second. I have thought about this before.

I wonder if I can think new thoughts, have new ideas on what it is like to love others. I wonder how many new things I could encounter in 30 days, if I could be transformed in some way through the new of a different kind.

In This World We Live

We have just gone through the wedding of my oldest son and within a day following, my Dad had a stroke. We are full of joy and suffering at the same time. Life is like that. The remembrance of the cross is both joy and sorrow. Joy for it's full salvation and sorrow at the cost of such redemption.

Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.
Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Odyssey

Homer expresses the past and future reality of both a "Father God" and the limits of humanity. Even these thousands of years later we find man, still feeble in his ability to control life. We are in desperate need of a Father God.

Over the last hours I have found much in the Father God that I truly love and enjoy. His companionship is real, stable and direct. I love the way that He loves me and trust in His goodness and grace, even with my limited human perception. I have found that His abiding within drives life for me. In the darkest moments of life, there is a way within. This inward way is not "my way" but Christ living in me that brings forth expressions of life and hope that cannot be found in me at those moments. It is very much like a child being cared for my their loving parents. It is like being nursed, held. instructed and lead on some great adventure into the wonder and beauty of what is not yet seen or known.

Not all of life is good. But there we stand with God and the un-good can go no further. We and God in used as limiters of the un-good. We are like the barriers of evil, the guardrails of travel. We and God in us establish limits as to how far un-good can go. We do this in the most simple way, of expressing love.

For in the loving of God, others, our selves and all of creation; the un-good of the un-godly is halted. Love never fails. Love does not stand alone against the tide, but it does stand, often the first. Christ in me and I in Christ will not let the un-good of this life run free. In love we will constrain it and in doing so, live life fully.

We transcend our situation, rise above it, when we live in the perspective of Father God. It is in no way a denial of the suffering of this world, but it is an actual "rising above". All those who have been carried through a death of a loved one, endured chronic pain, or walked through seasons of obsessive fear know about this protective abode of the Lord. It is not a place for a few divinely selected ones who God has chosen to favor with His love. No, it is a place available to all. Yet it cost.

The cost of entrance and abiding is submission. We must enter into Him prior to His entrance into us. God fills what He covers, He protects what is hidden in Him. Now the truth. It is not what you say or even the action that you do that "proclaim" your entrance into the abode of Christ, it is your heart! Even your mind must submit to the leading of the heart if you want to truly dwell in the secret place of the Most High. Yield your heart to God, fully, and you will find a doorway open to you. Follow Him as He leads on this pathway.

The Boiler Room of Prayer

For the past two years I have lived much of my life hidden away in a Boiler Room of Prayer. What’s up with that? Truthfully it is not the most rewarding way to live. That is if you want to be recognized, valued, praised and esteemed. I do not mean by this that people don’t appreciate me living a life of prayer, they do. Many people and religious organizations verbalize value in prayer. I have thanked numerous times for being a person of prayer by people who have never come to any of our prayer events. This is OK. But it is very unrewarding to the flesh / me side of life.
I must admit that when you go to the White House or the Super Dome they do not take you to the maintenance room. In most churches the building is laid out and configured to help people find the podium, not the heating and cooling system. I heard of some world wide denomination which started a prayer room and all they could find for space was a little closet like room back in the dark corridors of the building.
I have lived down the hall from the happening and exciting things for some time now. I love the events, the excitement, the thrill. I love to see people touched and compelled to live for Christ. In fact I like the “outside” stuff so much I ask myself, “What are you doing here is the place of prayer?” Then I remember that this is where my Father has called me. This is not “some place”, this is “my place.
Often I have tried to validate “my place” by telling people how important it is. I try to get their sympathy or praise for what I do by informing them of some great service I am doing for the body of Christ. I’m trying to stop that now. Sometimes I get mad and still “put it on some one.”
I’m in “my place” right now as I write this. No one else is here. No human I mean. I have a choice to make while no one watches. Will I surf the internet, will I try to find something to entertain me in the spirit, will I pretend to pray, will I fall in love again with the Lord? I don’t know - I have two hours to go.