Wait and Listen

Sometimes you have to just share the whole chapter :-). Aren't you glad that the God we serve is a great leader that desires great things for us and has a plan that is bigger than us but His desire is for us to be a partner in that plan.

Isaiah 55: WAIT and listen, everyone who is thirsty! Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Yes, come,buy [priceless, spiritual] wine and milk without money and without price [simply for the self-surrender that accepts the blessing]. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for what does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness [the profuseness of spiritual joy]. Incline your ear [submit and consent to the divine will] and come to Me; hear, and your soul will revive; and I will make an everlasting covenant or league with you, even the sure mercy (kindness, goodwill, and compassion) promised to David. Behold, I have appointed him (Him) [David, as a representative of the Messiah, or the Messiah Himself] to be a witness [one (One) who shall testify of salvation] to the nations, a prince (Prince) and commander (Commander) to the peoples. Behold, you [Israel] shall call nations that you know not, and nations that do not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Seek, inquire for, and require the Lord while He may be found [claiming Him by necessity and by right]; call upon Him while
He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have love, pity, and mercy for him, and to our God, for He will multiply to him His abundant pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from the heavens, and return not there again, but water the earth and make it bring forth and sprout, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth out of My mouth: it shall
not return to Me void [without producing any effect, useless], but it shall accomplish that which I please and purpose, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out [from the spiritual exile caused by sin and evil into the homeland] with joy and be led forth [by your Leader, the Lord Himself, and His word] with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name of renown, for an everlasting sign [of jubilant exaltation] and memorial [to His praise], which shall not be cut off.

Guard my mouth

This should be a regular prayer for those that follow Jesus: Psalm 141:3, 4 Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, To practice wicked works With men who work iniquity; And do not let me eat of their delicacies.

Promises for a new season

I'm totally taking this Scripture as we go into this new season: Isaiah 41:9, 10 You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, And called from its farthest regions, And said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’

Living differently

Ever wonder what the will of God is for you? He wants you to live differently than the world does, because we have been freed from the entrapments of the world. We need to change our thinking so that for us it is "on earth as it is in heaven" we don't have to be like them to build relationship with them it is up to is to live out an alternative that is attractive to them, not the opposite.
Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

swords and manhood

I know this is pretty crazy two blog post in the same evening.  But I just had to share this too.

In much world mythology the sword first has a positive meaning: a person’s ability to be discriminating and decisive. The sword helps a man separate his feelings from the issues at hand. It helps him name and maintain appropriate boundaries. A man with a sword knows who he is and who he isn’t, and what is worth protecting.

The sword has also borne a negative meaning, killing and death. Spiritually speaking however, it’s necessary to kill or at least distinguish the dark side, the small egocentric self.  Also for a man to be born, boyhood and “keeping all my options open” must die, and this is painful especially in a culture that encourages perpetual adolescence. So even in its negative sense the sword can become a symbol of the healthy warrior and an expression of his spiritual side. ~Fr. Richard Rohr

“It is a good day to do great things.”...again

This is partially a repost from last year, but it just seems fitting for today being fathers day. First of all I want to thank my dad, there are many things that I learned from you but two things that really stand out are how to fight and work hard despite how you felt or what your circumstances were. I also want to thank the other fathers that I have been blessed with through the years the ones that spoke to the treasure that Abba placed in me and called out the warrior I was meant to be. Thanks and blessings to you all, wouldn't be what and who I am today without you. And I especially want to thank Abba for creating me to be a man of purpose and for revealing His incredible heart to me so that I can share it with others.

A few years back I was recommended a book written by a Fransican Monk named Richard Rohr. He has an incredible grasp of the spirituality of man and how it works in the supernatural realm we are supposed to live in.  Here is a quote from one his books:

According to legend, the Great Plains warriors would say to their sons first thing in the morning, “It is a good day to do great things.”  If we can’t say something like this, we will not experience the quest.  We need this kind of desire and expectation…  We to allow our souls to be stirred by a magnificent ambition – something that makes us jump out of bed in the morning that calls us to be some kind of hero in our own kind of story, even if we know we have more than one tragic flaw. ~Fr. Richard Rohr

It's time to have our inner hero awakened and set free to do what he was destined to do.

Forgiveness

Clothe yourselves therefore, as God’s own chosen ones (His own picked representatives), [who are] purified and holy and well-beloved [by God Himself, by putting on behavior marked by] tenderhearted pity and mercy, kind feeling, a lowly opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, [and] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper]. Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive].  ~Paul in his letter to the church in Colossae

The other morning God and I were talking about forgiveness and the dangers of unforgiveness.  There were a couple of people in my life that were brought to mind that have a tendency to hang on to unforgiveness. Many times you can see the tendrils of the root of bitterness that grows out of dormant unforgiveness, offenses are picked up without even realizing they are there and these feed that root. 

One of the key things that He was showing me was that forgiveness needs to be unconditional, just as He forgives us we need to forgive others.  When we do something and we go to Him and ask for forgiveness, He doesn’t say: “No, I’m not ready yet” or “I need to process it first” or “My feelings are still hurt so you have to wait until I feel better.”  1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And in Romans 5:8 Paul says: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

When you look at how we were forgiven and the lack of conditions that are set upon us to receive forgiveness from Jesus, it sheds a whole new light on what it means to die to self.  We are called to demonstrate and be a reflection of His love and to pour out the same grace and mercy that poured out on us.  He demonstrated His love by dying for us on the cross so that we could enter back into relationship with Him. Sometimes, we need to set ourselves aside, are to live by faith and not be feeling.  Our feelings while valid will lie to us and keep us from doing what we are supposed to be doing.  I’m sure if Jesus let feelings be His compass when it came to forgiving, we would all be in trouble.  But imagine if He let feelings guide His ability to forgive on the day He went to the cross.  He is hanging there nailed to the cross beaten and bloody and the guy hanging next to Him recognizes Him for who He is and asks to be remembered when He gets to His Kingdom.  Jesus didn’t say “you know I have had a really bad day today, they took My clothes, pushed this crown of thorns down into My head, beat Me and nailed Me to this cross.  I really don’t feel like forgiving you for your sins right now, I think I’ve had enough for one day.”  Instead He turns to him and says “Surely this day you will be with Me in paradise.”   Jesus didn’t say: “I need to heal some first, you know you are part of the reason I’m hanging here, or I think you need to suffer in your guilt for a while.” He said, “I forgive you.”

I think that one of the things God was showing me in this is that forgiveness and healing are two separate processes.  Forgiveness is not dependent on healing; however, healing is fully dependent on forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a key to release healing, sometimes miraculous healing, but definitely complete healing.

Some say that “time heals all wounds”, in fact I used to say that too.  But I don’t really think that is true anymore.  I do believe that sometimes healing can take some time to complete and that with time pain subsides making it easier to get through the healing process.

But when we leave wounds unattended or un-dealt with then what we usually end up with is an ugly mass of scar tissue.  This scar tissue gives the appearance of healing that happened, but the underlying wound starts getting infected and festers.  This wounded area becomes tender and sensitive, sometimes when its touched it causes you to lash out because the pain returns and the memory invoked brings you back to the original time of being wounded.  What happens is this underlying gunk will eventually want to find its way out. Sometimes that manifests itself in something ugly like cancer or some other life stealing disease.

I have an example of this; a few years back I was working with wood and got a pretty nasty sliver in my hand.  I dug in and got what I thought was the entire sliver.  After some time the areas healed and I didn’t think about it much, but every once in a while I would hit that area on something and it would hurt a little. Being the tough guy I never really wanted to address what was causing the pain just kept going knowing it would stop soon.  After a few months, I had a growth start on my hand it looked kind of like a wart.  I figured that was the source of the discomfort having forgotten about the sliver.  Again being a guy as this thing kept growing and becoming more obnoxious I started digging at it with my knife to see if I could get rid of it.  Then I noticed at the center there was something that looked different than the skin around it so I started to squeeze and out popped a chunk of wood and a bunch of pus.  I proceeded to properly clean the wound and now you can’t even see a scar where it happened.  I had come to realize that my body knew that chunk of wood didn’t belong in my hand and since I hadn’t dealt with it properly, it rejected it and forced it to the surface.

That’s what happens with us when we allow offenses, hurt feelings and unforgiveness to lay dormant in us.  It starts to fester and our spirit knows it isn’t supposed to be there and will do things to bring it to the surface, but usually don’t want to deal with it so we let more scar tissue build up.  Then it crops up as something else, and many times the source of it is never found, because we spend so much time trying to find physical means to bring healing to spiritual wounds.

There are two main keys to getting healed:

1.       Forgiveness – Remembering that we don’t forgive out of feeling, we do it out of obedience following the example and model that Jesus gave us.

2.       Being open and vulnerable to the Holy Spirit. We need to allow the Great Physician to come in and do His job.  We need to let Him do whatever needs to be done to bring about complete healing.  Sometimes with old wounds that can be painful.  It can involve cutting away the old scar tissue or dead skin, maybe re-breaking a bone to have it set properly and made functional again. Sometimes in this process He will use other people to help, guide and support you.  But the deepest cleaning happens when you let Him go as deep as He needs to go to get at the root, to bring complete and total healing.