This week was really hard. There were several days in a row where I came home just feeling worthless and exhausted. God continues to use the avenue of my job to push lies in my mind to the surface and to reveal truth as well. I'm not even going to give voice to the list of lies at this point, but here are some key truths that I have always professed to be theologically correct, but I must now admit that I have never really believed as shown by my practices and habits.
He will never leave me or forsake me. (Heb 13:5)
He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. (Heb 11:6)
He will give me wisdom as I ask without finding fault. (James 1:5)
He will forgive me of my sins AND cleanse me of all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)
He will tell me when I go to the left or the right and come behind me and say, "Hey, over here! This is the way, walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21)
I now know and admit that I don't yet fully believe these things because when God challenges me with a thought of doing something crazy, you know like praying for the sick to be healed, fear is my first response. I recognize this fear as a work of the enemy. Just like the Israelites, I become like a grasshopper in my own eyes, but no longer. I don't care how scared I feel, I will choose the path of courage. I will be afraid and do it anyway.
My experiences this week feel like walking around those intimidating walls to the jeers of the residents of Jericho. It hurts just to hear those lies about me and about Him. It makes me feel so powerless, but I know that I am walking in obedience to the Lord and following his right now plan for my life. I also know that those walls are getting ready to implode.
The very same walls that served as that source of intimidation became a part of what crushed the enemy. That's about to happen in my life.
That is going to be so great when the reward comes. When I enter into the revelation that these truths are actually reality. Jericho is like my unbelief, and it is only the beginning.
Jericho is not even where I am meant to dwell. It's just a place to kill giants while praising God. A place to serve as a reminder of the glory of the Lord and how He fights for and delivers His children. The real blessings are far beyond, much deeper into the promise. I'm ready for that.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
I Dare You to Listen to This All the Way Through
This album has been a soundtrack for prayer these past couple days. It leaves me in a place of peace and rest. It is a spoken word album by the lead vocalist from one of my favorite bands with some background music behind the words. It's all scripture, testimony, and exhortation.
And, IT'S FREE!
You can download it at comeandlive.com. Mattie is one of several artists that all have allowed their music to be downloaded for free for the encouragement of the body of Christ. There are several other good albums at C&L as well, but this one is my favorite so far.
These eight tracks total around thirty-three minutes. Like the title of this post, I dare you to listen to it straight through. What have you got to lose? It's free.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
I'm in a Band!
Look at the guy in this pic with his hands in his coat pockets. Totally looks like me with long hair. These guys are called Great Awakening and are not hardcore. I saw this pic while reading an article called "Worship Through Experience." Just had to post this. So funny.
Why I LOVE Sleeping Giant
I recently ran across a website called HOPECORE. I noticed that they had interviews with several of my favorite bands that seemed deeper than usual, so I have spent a bit of time recently checking into them. I want to share one of the questions and answers from one of the interviews with JR Bermuda, the bass player from Sleeping Giant. You can check out the entire interview here.
This is the last Q and A from that interview entitled, "Worship is not Music."
By the way, this is one of the two guys that I had the privilege to see praying for people and healing them after one of their Q and A sessions at Cornerstone. The passion that he walked in rocked my world. If you ever get the chance to see these guys live or talk to them after a show, Do It! Seriously, even if you don't like hardcore, if you love Jesus, you will love these guys.
This is the last Q and A from that interview entitled, "Worship is not Music."
This is Sleeping Giant’s third album. Personally, I’ve seen you guys put on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, I’ve seen you pray with kids for hours after shows, I’ve seen God use you to heal the sick and I’ve seen people baptized and saved at your shows. What has God been doing in your heart over the lifespan of Sleeping Giant that you just can’t not share with people?
JB: A few profound revelations I have received while playing and touring with the band have changed my life forever. 1. The Holy Spirit IS God. For too long we have seen churches and people groups who make the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit an unacceptable thing within their culture. You cannot have God or Jesus without the Third. They are inseparable. 2. Worship is not music. Worship can be anything from painting to feeding the poor. Worship is the natural response to the love of Jesus. Some people create. Some people sing, others will love other people as a result. Whatever it is, it will cost you something. Worship is sacrifice. 3. Let your faith embrace the idea that God will back you up. Pray for the sick, raise the dead. Heal internal wounds. God has given you the power and ability through the Holy Spirit, and he will do it through you. Go for it! Finally, and most importantly- Waste your life on Jesus. Go in the room, and lock the door. Get alone and spend hours loving him. There is no greater activity in the world. I promise you.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before! Part Three
This one is going to be a bit different.
I spent a decent amount of time pondering within myself and asking God what it takes to have a heart full of good soil and thus end up being fruitful for Him. I must admit that I don't know much about being fruitful because of all the time in my life that I've spent full of rocks and weeds. I'm just now getting to some of those particularly nasty weeds and tearing down the strongholds in my mind where they live. I'm also getting to the point where I realize that I can learn as a I go from my loving Father. So as I asked Him about this he directed me to Psalm One.
Psalm One holds special significance to me. One of the greatest privileges of being a part of the church that I attended as a teen was being exposed to Brother Bill Bradbury. Old triple B always sat in the front row. He had eyes that let everyone know that he would talk to anyone that was willing to listen. He even sat on the edge of the stage after service and waited just so he could be available if any of the teens wanted to chat or pick his brain about God and scripture. Psalm One was his favorite. He started reading it everyday at the start of the day years ago. He called it his breakfast. He started making tally marks inside the cover of his bible every time he would read it. They spilled to the back cover after the front filled up and elsewhere. He claimed that there was enough life in that chapter to keep you going for a lifetime.
So I did what any seeking teen would do upon hearing this, I read Psalm One. Amazingly, I didn't feel any different. I don't know what I expected, growing wings maybe. Anyway, over time I dug in a little more and actually started to study it and search through the theme of those six verses. I believe what God showed me then about that chapter is the answer to how we cultivate good soil in our hearts and keep out the rocks and weeds.
Here goes:
1. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
That's right! It ends with an exclamation point. This verse points out three things that a righteous man does not do. He does not believe like, behave like, or belong to the realm of the ungodly.
2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
Truth becomes the focus. God's presence and His word become our lifeline and constant desire. I believe this happens little by little as we choose to believe God's word as truth, especially in the face of feelings and instincts that oppose that truth. Will we stand on the truth of God's word or just give it lip service?
3. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.
Being planted next to the stream represents placing the Holy Spirit in His rightful place and thus walking in the Spirit. The fruit, the strength of life, and the victory come from the ability to continually draw from that source of life. Remember verse three is contingent upon verses one and two. The holiness, being set apart from the common ways, of verse one is what precedes the receptiveness to His Word of verse two! If we desire to be the good soil which is able to receive His words and bear fruit because of them we must make sure that we are not thinking like the world (believing lies), doing what the world does (actively walking in sinful lifestyles), or belong to their circles (being rooted next to those full of weeds will definitely lead to contamination of the soil of our hearts). Please note the use of the word rooted!
In short, God demands holiness and promises life! I love it!
I spent a decent amount of time pondering within myself and asking God what it takes to have a heart full of good soil and thus end up being fruitful for Him. I must admit that I don't know much about being fruitful because of all the time in my life that I've spent full of rocks and weeds. I'm just now getting to some of those particularly nasty weeds and tearing down the strongholds in my mind where they live. I'm also getting to the point where I realize that I can learn as a I go from my loving Father. So as I asked Him about this he directed me to Psalm One.
Psalm One holds special significance to me. One of the greatest privileges of being a part of the church that I attended as a teen was being exposed to Brother Bill Bradbury. Old triple B always sat in the front row. He had eyes that let everyone know that he would talk to anyone that was willing to listen. He even sat on the edge of the stage after service and waited just so he could be available if any of the teens wanted to chat or pick his brain about God and scripture. Psalm One was his favorite. He started reading it everyday at the start of the day years ago. He called it his breakfast. He started making tally marks inside the cover of his bible every time he would read it. They spilled to the back cover after the front filled up and elsewhere. He claimed that there was enough life in that chapter to keep you going for a lifetime.
So I did what any seeking teen would do upon hearing this, I read Psalm One. Amazingly, I didn't feel any different. I don't know what I expected, growing wings maybe. Anyway, over time I dug in a little more and actually started to study it and search through the theme of those six verses. I believe what God showed me then about that chapter is the answer to how we cultivate good soil in our hearts and keep out the rocks and weeds.
Here goes:
1. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
That's right! It ends with an exclamation point. This verse points out three things that a righteous man does not do. He does not believe like, behave like, or belong to the realm of the ungodly.
2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
Truth becomes the focus. God's presence and His word become our lifeline and constant desire. I believe this happens little by little as we choose to believe God's word as truth, especially in the face of feelings and instincts that oppose that truth. Will we stand on the truth of God's word or just give it lip service?
3. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.
Being planted next to the stream represents placing the Holy Spirit in His rightful place and thus walking in the Spirit. The fruit, the strength of life, and the victory come from the ability to continually draw from that source of life. Remember verse three is contingent upon verses one and two. The holiness, being set apart from the common ways, of verse one is what precedes the receptiveness to His Word of verse two! If we desire to be the good soil which is able to receive His words and bear fruit because of them we must make sure that we are not thinking like the world (believing lies), doing what the world does (actively walking in sinful lifestyles), or belong to their circles (being rooted next to those full of weeds will definitely lead to contamination of the soil of our hearts). Please note the use of the word rooted!
In short, God demands holiness and promises life! I love it!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before! Part Two
Okay, so I left off with the soil full of weeds. Some translations use the word thorns instead of weeds.
This soil symbolized the seed that grew but was choked by worry and "the deceitfulness of wealth." I define "the deceitfulness of wealth" as security. As in, because I have money and lots of it everything will be alright and I will be happy and fulfilled. The converse is also true of that mindset--If I don't have lots of money, all kinds of bad things will happen to me and I will be sad and empty. That sounds like fear to me.
I once heard it said that fear is faith for what you don't want.
Fear is basically what worry is anyway, right? We don't worry about things that don't matter if they happen or not. We worry about bad things happening to us because we are afraid of them. At the heart of worry is distrust in God. We think that if situation X happens to us that it will be so devastating that we could never recover. Or even in milder terms, if situation X doesn't happen, then I will not be able to be happy.
Worry at it's core is to believe that God is not in control of our lives and to doubt His protection.
What's crazy about the soil with the thorns/weeds is that the seed actually grows and survives long term, but it doesn't bear fruit. The thorns are already in the soil when the seed is sown, much like the strongholds of fear in our minds before we begin to walk a life of trusting in Him, but there is enough good soil there for the seed to grow. This soil is people who really do love God and never want to turn away from Him. These people are paralyzed by fear and though they don't die off, they never walk in victory over the flesh and the enemy.
The remedy: obedience (do it anyway).
The only way to kill a weed forever is get it at the root, we all know that by now. When you go after the weeds of fear, the only way to kill that root is to do it anyway. God tells us over and over in scripture to not fear and to be courageous. This is most notably spoken to Joshua, right before going in to take the promised land. Without courage, being afraid but doing it anyway, we will not possess the promises of God. Sounds a little bit like picking up a cross, huh?
As far as the good soil goes, how do we keep the weeds from coming back? How do we avoid the temptations to fill ourselves with that which is not God? How do we stay soft and humble despite the constant blows of this world and attacks from our enemy?
I hope to answer these questions tomorrow in the unforeseen part three of Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before. For right now, I'm tired.
This soil symbolized the seed that grew but was choked by worry and "the deceitfulness of wealth." I define "the deceitfulness of wealth" as security. As in, because I have money and lots of it everything will be alright and I will be happy and fulfilled. The converse is also true of that mindset--If I don't have lots of money, all kinds of bad things will happen to me and I will be sad and empty. That sounds like fear to me.
I once heard it said that fear is faith for what you don't want.
Fear is basically what worry is anyway, right? We don't worry about things that don't matter if they happen or not. We worry about bad things happening to us because we are afraid of them. At the heart of worry is distrust in God. We think that if situation X happens to us that it will be so devastating that we could never recover. Or even in milder terms, if situation X doesn't happen, then I will not be able to be happy.
Worry at it's core is to believe that God is not in control of our lives and to doubt His protection.
What's crazy about the soil with the thorns/weeds is that the seed actually grows and survives long term, but it doesn't bear fruit. The thorns are already in the soil when the seed is sown, much like the strongholds of fear in our minds before we begin to walk a life of trusting in Him, but there is enough good soil there for the seed to grow. This soil is people who really do love God and never want to turn away from Him. These people are paralyzed by fear and though they don't die off, they never walk in victory over the flesh and the enemy.
The remedy: obedience (do it anyway).
The only way to kill a weed forever is get it at the root, we all know that by now. When you go after the weeds of fear, the only way to kill that root is to do it anyway. God tells us over and over in scripture to not fear and to be courageous. This is most notably spoken to Joshua, right before going in to take the promised land. Without courage, being afraid but doing it anyway, we will not possess the promises of God. Sounds a little bit like picking up a cross, huh?
As far as the good soil goes, how do we keep the weeds from coming back? How do we avoid the temptations to fill ourselves with that which is not God? How do we stay soft and humble despite the constant blows of this world and attacks from our enemy?
I hope to answer these questions tomorrow in the unforeseen part three of Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before. For right now, I'm tired.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before!
I feel like I have spent most of my life being blind and deaf. Multiple times in His ministry Jesus talks about people who see without seeing and hear without hearing. At that phrase there is one of two responses going on in every person who reads it: Huh? or complete understanding of something that cannot be truly explained, only experienced. If you have the first response then the description of the second just sounds like a cop out, but there really isn't any way to make someone see or hear something that they just can't see or hear yet.
Out of nowhere I just started pondering the parable of the sower tonight. (I think I know what that means.) You can find it in Matthew 13, Mark 4 or Luke 8. If you've spent any time in a church at all, I'm sure you're already very familiar with it and wondering why I'm so excited about it. Pretty basic stuff, right?
It's just that it only seemed partially practical to me before now. I always got that the soil with the weeds represented when we choose to focus on that which worries us instead of trusting God and therefore makes us unfruitful in ministry and life. The text makes that pretty plain when Jesus pulls his disciples aside and gives them the inside scoop. Even with his explanation, I've still been in the dark on how the other two bad soils apply to us, and, most importantly, how to remedy them. Tonight I feel like I've been given a glimpse.
The soil symbolized by the road that has the seed stolen away by the enemy represents the hard of heart. It is packed down, trodden on repeatedly and has a layer of defense built against penetration. The seed might as well just bounce off and never of been there in the first place as far as effectiveness goes. This is the biggest way that people can see without seeing and hear without hearing. It's not that they aren't given the same chance to bear fruit in the kingdom as everyone else, they are just unable to receive it.
The remedy: brokenness.
The only way to penetrate packed hard soil is with a plow. Plowing is no fun. It is a lot of hard work, requires direct attention and intention, and it hurts. None of us likes to be broken open and that's why most of the time the breaking comes with someone else's hand at the plow--God's. It is His mercy when He breaks open our hard defenses so that His life can get in. Think about it, the hard dirt of a packed road can't even receive the softening of the water that falls on it. It repels that rain. (Water represents the Holy Spirit, by the way.) We should always pray for God to break up the clods in our hearts and to bring whatever breaking is necessary to get past the defensiveness of those in our lives who just can't see what God is trying to show them.
I've always identified most with the rocky soil. I want so desperately to be close to God, to be full of the Spirit and to have the staying power to not give up or be deceived when things get tough. I have absolutely no problem getting hyped up about what God is doing or wants from me. I've just always found myself dying out as soon as it gets hard and the emotions fade.
The rocky soil, Jesus says, has no depth of soil and therefore cannot produce lasting growth. This represents the heart that has other stuff taking up the space in it that belongs to God. The rocks are our idols my friends. They are all the things that we let into our life that serve no purpose other than to fill us in some way that we should be filling with God (the seed and the water) and the things that help us receive Him (good soil).
The remedy: repentance.
We can dig up these rocks by confessing our sins, taking an honest inventory of our hearts and letting God take anything that He wants--no matter how comfortable it makes us, removing those idols, and (here's the kicker) not returning to our sin once we have turned it over to Him. Whenever we choose to turn to anything other than God to be what fills us, we are putting rocks in the soil of our hearts and sapping our own ability to grow and keep growing once the heat comes. When we do this, We Are Defeating Ourselves!
I hit a little on worry earlier and need some more time to process it further so maybe I'll blog some on that along with a few thoughts on the good soil.
Tune in tomorrow for the epic conclusion of, "Things I can't believe I never saw before!"
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