A New Day

Last Thursday I surgery to help me breathe through  my nose.  It has been somewhat miserable in a lot of ways.  At first I had determined that I would work from home during this week of recovery.  For various reasons I have been unable to do that but it has been very, very good for me.  There has been a growing frustration in my heart that I am not exactly where I should be with God.  I can’t explain it better than that.  I haven’t been living in sin but there is an intimacy that is missing in my relationship with Him and I miss it.  Unfortunately, I haven’t missed it enough to do anything about it.  As the days have progressed I’ve realized that a part of what is wrong in my heart is that I just don’t know what it is I should be doing.  I’m always doing something and it drives me crazy to feel like I’m in limbo.  I’ve felt like I’ve been somewhat in limbo since I moved back from Florida even though I don’t feel like that was the wrong thing to do.

I am reminded time and again that I don’t always have to be doing something, that I can just have a season of loving God and growing in relationship with Him.  If that is what I have been supposed to be doing then I haven’t done a very good job of it and so I’ve been feeling a lot of self pity.  What should I do?  Where should I be?  Where do I fit?  What is my purpose?  What is my calling?  Why do I feel this way? and on and on and on.  It’s been quite the pity party.

Still, the past few days I’ve been trying to really listen and pay attention to the Lord.  Not just asking others to pray but talking to Him and being quiet, waiting.  One of the things I felt Him speaking to my heart yesterday was this – “You don’t have to go back and fix anything or go back and try to finish anything.  This is a new day and it is not about what could have or should have been done before now, it’s all about now and what you do today.  There is nothing I am waiting for you to go back and make right or complete.  It’s time to just live.”  Those were not the exact words but it was a very strong impression and a huge relief.  I’ve done crazy things like made lists of all the things I’ve started and never finished and then vowed to go through and finish them all.  I’ve spent time regretting what I could have done or should have done at other times.  I’ve wasted so much time wishing I had done things differently and looking for ways to alter a past that can’t be changed and suddenly I felt like God was giving me a brand new lease on life.  It was as if He was saying “Today is a new day and yesterday is done and gone.  Live for today.  Give Me your gifts and your life today.  Let’s move forward with passion and purpose.”  And somehow I’ve felt free to do that.  It was a huge relief, like a weight off my shoulders to know that God was not waiting for me to go back and somehow fix all I had done wrong or make up for lost time.  That would be a lot of work that would not bare fruit.  Instead He was asking me simply to acknowledge today and do my best with what I have now.

I’m seriously considering taking some writing courses with the Christian Writers Guild.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  I’m going to wait to make the commitment until I’m off pain meds but this is something I really want to do.  I am a writer.  I love to write.  I’ve been told by other ministers that God has called me to minister with the words He’s given me and I’ve seen that work itself out the times I have been obedient to take the time to write.  I believe God is giving me a fresh focus and a way to start each day new and I am so thankful that with Him every day really is a new day, a chance to draw a line in the sand and say “I start now.”

I’m thankful to have a God like that.

New Day

God has an interesting way of working in my life – probably in most people’s, but I can only speak for my own.  When I returned to Oregon from 2 years in Florida finishing Bible School, I expected to live with my parents for a month at the most.  I expected to have a job quickly, and an apartment quickly, to find the right church and to be settled and moving forward without a break in the stride I thought He would want of me.  Instead, I’ve been with my parents nearly a year.  I didn’t even get my first temp job until February and then my first permanent position in June.  Then I found out that because I have been working as a temp for so long and because of some things on my credit record that are disputed but ugly none the less, that I cannot get into an apartment even though I make plenty of money to do so.  It has been frustrating in some ways but God is giving me rest.

Then I found a church that i thought was where God wanted me but something in my heart kept holding me back.  I thought it was fear of getting involved but that didn’t make sense since I so desperately wanted to be involved somewhere.  That’s when it happened.  I get a prophetic newsletter and one day it came and spoke of letting go of the pain and bitterness of the past and moving forward in the wisdom of what I learned rather than being held back by the pain of a past I couldn’t change.  That struck me very hard.  I realized that I had avoided Vancouver like a plague.  That when I crossed the bridge the fear was almost numbing.  I was afraid of bumping into some people that had really hurt me.  What I didn’t realize was that it was not just fear but anger at them and bitterness.  By admitting that I was able to forgive them, again (contrary to popular belief forgiveness is not just a one time incident but is often an on-going process) and asking God to forgive me for holding on to this bitterness and anger.  When I was willing to admit my own feelings and let go of the past – I found that I had truly learned a lot from the painful experience and that it was wisdom I could certainly use going forward.

Later that same day I received a message on Facebook from someone from the church I went to before I moved back to Florida.  In the e-mail it mentioned something about “City Harvest people” and my heart was filled with longing.  I realized that my heart and mine were with City Harvest.  That I believed in what they believed in and that my heart was joined to the vision of that church but because of my fear of going to Vancouver and the fear that people would ask me about this couple that had hurt me I just decided God didn’t want me to go there.  I was wrong and I knew it immediately. 

Again, I prayed and thanked God for what He was doing.  For finally helping me to see where He wanted me.  He is so patient and I appreciate His lovingkindness beyond words.

The very next morning I was standing at the bus stop and I heard very clearly “Step out in faith, in the face of fear.”  I thought it was odd because now that it was settled in my heart that God wanted me at City Harvest I felt peace but I held on to the word because I knew it was not for nothing that He had spoken it to me.  A few days later He spoke it to me again during a prayer meeting, as a word for the church.  But it was that next weekend when I discovered that an old friend was going to City Harvest that I understood why God had spoken the word to me.  She had also had a relationship with this couple, though she and I had been friends first.  Many things happened to breach our relationship and our trust of one another.  Still I had this knowing and trust that God knew she was there before He told me to go back and if that was the case then everything was in His perfect control and I could trust Him to do in my life whatever it was He was after regardless of who was or was not attending the same church.

I’ve only been back three weeks and this morning I found myself struggling with whether or not to go to church.  It was a hard thing to struggle with but He gave me two very clear words – “step out in faith, in the face of fear” and a scripture where He was talking about not doing your own will and pleasing your own flesh on the Sabbath but honoring the Sabbath as He said and I realized that God wanted me to go to church despite my feelings, despite being tired in order to honor Him and in doing so I would prove myself faithful in the little things.  It was a great service and I needed the worship time and the Word that was given.  How great is our God to even remind us what He wants from us when we are so forgetful and fast to do what is most comfortable to us.

He is great and amazing and I am thankful for His leading and guiding, for His faithfulness and the way He never lets me go.

What is in Your Hands?

Do you know that feeling that you’re not doing what you should be and that the Lord is going to move you into a more active role if you will just trust and obey?  I’ve had that feeling for a while now, knowing that I haven’t been doing all that I could be doing or should be doing and that God really would like me to do more, to engage in life more willingly.  It’s not that I don’t love life and don’t want to be engaged, but I tend to prefer being alone, just doing whatever comes along that sounds the most fun and the least committed.  Just writing it sounds bad and probably gives the wrong impression.  My worship school teacher said it this way – “There are people who are architects, they like to lay things out and put things into the hands of people who can make it happen.  Then there are the builders, they take what the architects drew and bring it to life.  Then there are the people who take what the builders built and make it into something great – they use it on a daily basis, they are the ones that turn it into all that the architect envisioned.”  That’s not exactly right but he went on to talk about people who are project driven, they see something that needs to be done, get excited about it, do all the work it takes to get it going and that’s where their motivation stops.  They want to go on to the next new thing and turn the day to day operations of their creation over to someone else, someone who likes the monotony of doing the same thing over and over.  I’m that kind of person.  I am primarily project driven and really thrive in an environment where I have a deadline and big goals that seem impossible and I have to just put myself out there.  I don’t function that way for myself but for others it is where I am at my best.  Give me the biggest administrative mess and a deadline for getting it straightened out and a free hand at doing it and I’ll give you one of the smoothest running administrative offices around.  Ask me to stick around and make it run and I’ll do it for a while, but if there isn’t something new coming down the pike to challenge me and engage me then I get bored and dissatisfied.

God has showed me very clearly that He wants me to use my writing for His glory.  I have written songs, stories, childrens books, poems and articles but once I write them I set them aside and don’t pursue anything further.  I know that is not His plan but finding out the details of how to do the next step has been something I’ve been avoiding.  A little while ago, just today, I felt Him saying “I want you to write something everyday.”  He is faithful to give me ideas and I love to write.  It’s one of my passions.  So why don’t I approach the rest of it the way I should?  Am I lazy?  Maybe.  Not really though.  I get up at 4 in the morning and go until 8 or 9 every night.  I’m not lazy.  I love being active and doing but there is inside of me a fear of success, a fear of not being in control of what happens next, a fear of the little details that I would have to track to pursue publication and all that goes with it and yet, deeper down is the dream to get the words that God has given me out there.  To let the songs be heard and sung.  To let the poems and stories bring a new generation to a deeper devotion to Christ.

God gives us all so many gifts but I realize that a lot of people look at their lives and don’t think God has given them much of anything.  I’ve heard mothers say, “what can I do for God all I know is being a good wife and mother?”  And I tell them, “Being a good wife and mother is a gift.”  They don’t see it that way.  They look at their lives as simple and mundane and not changing the world – but one child raised by a good mother, who loves them and shares God with them is a gift to the world, the gift of an artist who saw fit to follow the Lord in how she raised her child.  It takes great faith to be a mother!  The same is true of being a good wife.  A good wife is a sanctuary to her husband, a minister to him and by being a minister to her husband, she is ministering to God and God does not take that lightly. 

So often we limit God’s ability in and through us.  We see great potential in others, which is great, but when we look at ourselves we shake our heads and wonder what God could ever see in us.  Throughout the Bible God asked people to use just what they had in their hands.  He asked Moses to use his staff.  He used a shepherds sling and stone to bring down a giant.  He used the same shepherd’s pen to comfort His nation and teach them to worship and praise the Lord.  He asked the widow of Zeraphath to feed Elijah.  He used a little boys lunch to feed thousands.  He used the hands of Jesus to heal the sick, open blind eyes, raise the dead and show His great love to a lost and dying world.  He used Peter’s fishing pole to pay taxes.  Ordinary people, with ordinary things in their hands who were willing to trust Him and obey.  God turned the ordinary into the extraordinary and changed lives, built nations, saved the world.

For me, I know God is say:  “Anysia, what is in your hands?”  And I know what is there.  I believe He is asking the same thing of all His people, not – go out and find something you don’t already have but, “Child, what is in your hands?”

Amazing God

God is so amazing to me.  I’ve been in a spiritual slump…I guess that’s what you call it.  It’s more like I’ve been very lazy spiritually.  God used Facebook and I made a connection with a local pastor.  I visited the church and suddenly I felt like He was showing me where I belonged, church wise.  The more often I went, the more certain I was that this was the place I belonged.  Even though I desperately wanted a place to belong, I also knew that finding that place was just one step in really find the place God wanted me – that place of serving Him and His body with the particular gifts He has given to me.  I believe with all my heart that God doesn’t want anyone to just come to church and sit on the pews, He wants us all to be active participants.  Ephesians 4:16 is a scripture He often brings up when I get to whining about wanting to just go to church and “do my own thing” -  ”from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. “  I just read those words and my heart aches.  I know God is telling me that I am part of something bigger than myself and that He created me to work properly. When I do what He created me to do, then I am taking part in the body, helping it function, helping other parts do what He has called them to do and everyone is growing.  But when I am selfish and choose to isolate myself or not participate because it’s uncomfortable then I am actually withholding God’s provision for the body, because He is providing for other through me and vice versa.  The scripture that talks about not forsaking the gathering together of the saints, doesn’t mean “oh you’re a sinner if you don’t go to church and warm that pew” it means that other saints have something that you need and you have something they need.

This really hit home with me a few years ago.  I was a member of a house church and I went for a long period of time not attending.  I went to Sunday services but not the weekly house meeting.  Mostly it was laziness but partly it was because I felt like God was going to ask something of me there and I didn’t want to take responsibility if I messed it up, because I was so sure I would mess up anything He gave me to do.  (The devil is a liar and so are a lot of people who don’t want to see you go further in the Lord than they go.)  When I finally got up the nerve to come back, I told them that after missing a few meetings it just kept getting harder and harder to come back so I didn’t.  Which was also true.  I wasn’t at a place I could admit to myself or anyone else that I was terrified of failing God or succeeding and having to take responsibility for something.  The house church pastor, Randy, said something I will never forget – “Anysia, when you stay away, you are withholding a gift that we need.  You don’t only miss out, so does everyone else.”  I had never thought of it that way before and it didn’t do a lot to make me feel better but it did make me feel sufficiently guilty not to miss very many more meetings!

So, I was back in that place again where I just knew that God was about to break me through into something new and that I was finally going to be used for something for His glory…and I got scared and stopped going to church.  Sure I had other things I was doing.  One Sunday I was sick, another I was out of town, a variety of things came up but I could have gone had I just made the commitment to go.  I didn’t talk to God about it.  I just didn’t “feel” like going.  As I withdrew from church, I started to withdraw from other things – particularly friends that I keep in contact with via e-mail.  I had no motivation to write them.  I was pulling away and going into my little shell and doing a pretty good job at justifying it.  Then I realized what was happening. 

God is sneaky sometimes.  Of course, with me He often has to be.  LOL.  I was doing my daily bible reading, so proud that I have read every single day this year and am on target for finishing the whole bible this year for the first time ever.  Even in the midst of my pride I was feeling pretty tiny and miserable – I knew that I was not doing what God wanted me to do and that is a horrible place to be if you really love God and want to please Him.  There is nothing more miserable to the God-lover than to be hiding from His will!  My reading for that day had me in Hebrews 12.  I was reading kind of half heartedly, mostly just wanting to finish so I could check it off my list and get to sleep.  That’s when He got me!!!

Hebrews 12:2 hit me like a brick – “Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble,”…  He was reminding me of my call, taking me back to the scripture He gave me shortly after I became a Christian that resounded in my heart as His promise and His purpose for my life: Isaiah 35:3-7 “    3Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
    4Say to those with anxious heart,
         ”Take courage, fear not
         Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
         The recompense of God will come,
         But He will save you.”
    5Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
         And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
    6Then the lame will leap like a deer,
         And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy
         For waters will break forth in the wilderness
         And streams in the Arabah.
    7The scorched land will become a pool
         And the thirsty ground springs of water;
         In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
         Grass becomes reeds and rushes. “

He didn’t have to say anything.  I read the words and I knew that I was standing at a crossroad, that God was giving me the chance to choose the path He set before me, the path I’ve often strayed from or tried to avoid but always longed to be on.  As I told a friend – “my greatest fear and my greatest desire”.  That night I told Him I would do whatever He wanted me to do and I surrendered to His will.  I asked Him to lead me and guide me again and to give me the strength and courage, the confidence in Him to do whatever it was He wanted.

The next day He had me send e-mails to several people with words of encouragement, and one e-mail to the pastor of the church and his wife admitting my wrong attitudes and sharing some of what was going on and why I hadn’t been in church.  It was a hard e-mail to write but I knew I had to be accountable to someone and to take a chance on trusting someone again.  The real reason it was hard was because I had determined in my heart to never be reliant upon a man or woman, or couple again but to rely solely on the Lord.  I had gone that path before but I hadn’t realized is that I had built up a wall against spiritual authority in my life by distancing myself and holding back in many areas. 

Their words of encouragement and hope and life helped me embrace what God is doing and I was able to go back to church today, with only a little fear and no serious or noticable trembling. 

Since writing those e-mails and being obedient to what the Lord asked of me, God has been talking to me about how He wants to use my writing and my love for teaching to help others come to know Him in a real way and He has reminded me that the dreams He has given me and the promises He spoke to me are not there for me to do alone – they are so BIG because they require Him to be a very active participant every step of the way and that is what God wants.  He doesn’t want to just be someone added into our lives, squished in where we think we can fit Him.  His desire is to be our lives and have everything else fit in around Him.  He wants to be our everything and that is pretty amazing in itself.

The past few days (yes, it’s only been the past few days) I have been remembering what it is that makes me come alive.  It is loving Him – in word and in deed.  It is showing forth His glory in everything I do.  It is ministering His life giving word to those who are in desperate need of a spiritual drink of the truth of the Living God.  It is lifting people up in prayer and introducing them to the One I love.  It is passionately pursuing my Beloved and telling everyone I can Who He is and how great He is. 

All of God wants from any of us is our willingness to love Him and follow Him with hearts filled with trust that He will never leave us or forsake us and that with Him nothing is impossible, no matter how impossible it might seem to us.  Isn’t God amazing?

A Conversation

“What do I have to offer?”

“You have much to offer.”

“Much?  Me?  I don’t know what it is, what You think I have to give.”

A quick flash of my work life went through my mind.  I heard the praise of many people on how I just stepped in and did so much in such a short period of time. 

“True enough, I feel like I’ve stepped into my element at work but what does that have to do with this?”

“They need the same things you’re giving at work.  Creativity.  Insight.  Administration.  A willingness to take a project and run with it and see it succeed.  They need the same go-getter attitude you are getting praised for at work.”

“How can I give that much?  I’m giving all I have every day at work and now I’m supposed to somehow find the strength to do it at church too?  How?  I’m exhausted now.”

“Why do you find it so much easier to give your all at work than you find giving your all to Me?”

“I don’t know.”  I say but thoughts of praise and tangibility come to mind pretty quickly on the heels of my words.

“I have a purpose for you and it encompasses all that you have to give.  Yes, I am using you at work and I am pleased with your efforts there but there is more.  You have a work to do in My Kingdom as well.  Your success at work is just a way to show you what is possible in other areas of your life where you are not so daring, not so bold, not so confident.  You could be as confident working in My kingdom as you are working in a job if you would just trust me and step out of your comfort zone.”

The pastors message from Sunday – authority equals responsibility – comes back suddenly with great clarity and I know why I work so hard at work.  There is praise.  Immediate gratification in a lot of ways – a paycheck, things that I can see and touch and feel and benefit from.  That wouldn’t be the case just giving to a church so freely.  The benefits would be there but many of them would be eternal. 

Where your heart is….

What do I treasure?  Hard question.  To look at my life it would appear I treasure work and the opinion of man but my lips say I treasure God and His eternal purpose.  So, now that I’m faced with Him asking me directly if I will give Him as much of myself and my talent and gifts as I am giving at work I have to decide if I am really who and what I claim to be.  Am I someone so sold out to God that I will willingly give Him my all, be broken and poured out for Him?  Or am I someone who seeks to praise Him with my lips but has my heart far from Him, resting in the things of the world that will surely pass away and offer no reward in the end?

This is not my favorite kind of conversation.  I much prefer to hear God say, “Keep up the good work” or some other comforting thing to show me I’m going the right way.  Course corrections are vital but still not my favorite.  Even as I write that I know that course corrections are really the only way to become like Christ and the only way to fulfill all that God created me to be.  I am His workmanship, His handiwork, born anew in Christ to do HIS work…and today I am reminded again of Whose I am.

Where is Your Faith?

One of the things I have frequently struggled with in the 10 years I’ve been a Christian is faith.  In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says to the disciples,  ”And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”  That is a comforting scripture to me because a mustard seed is pretty small, I bought one once just to see how tiny it was and to add to my comfort that I was not completely without faith. 

Still there are places through out the New Testament where Jesus calls the disciples men of ”little faith” and that made my brain tilt.  What difference does it make if they have “little faith” if nothing is impossible to the one who has mustard seed faith?  Add to that the fact that I have heard tons of teaching on faith: 

Know the promises in the Bible that apply to your situation and repeat them over and over until you believe and it will happen.

Fight for the promises of God to come to pass and to keep them in your life.  If you’re not fighting, you don’t have faith.

If you suffer anything and don’t find the victory you don’t have enough faith.

Put faith in this healing message, put faith in this preacher, put faith in these words, put faith in this formula, put faith in this cloth, put faith in these pills.

At one point I recall telling God that I didn’t get the whole “faith” thing and I apologized to Him for being such a terrible let down.  I mean, seriously, what kind of Christian doesn’t get “faith”?  It was disappointing and frustrating to me and so I kind of steered clear of those who were always talking about faith because what they were saying never felt right in my heart.  But in the last few weeks God has been showing me things that have really helped me a lot and suddenly I am feeling good about the whole faith thing.

I am doing this daily Bible reading program and right now I’m reading 2nd Samuel and 1st Chronicles (among other things).  As I was reading about the life of David I was surprised at how he never did anything to make the word of God come to pass.  He didn’t “war” with the promise.  He didn’t run around repeating “I will be king, I will be king, I will be king.”  He didn’t act like he was already the king even though, technically he was because he had been anointed king of Israel by Samuel.  David just trusted God.  He talked about God.  His focus was always on God.

David was called a man after God’s own heart…and, to be honest, I’d really like to be known as a woman after God’s own heart.  I love Him so much.  Well, after seeing this and suddenly feeling free from the need to learn how to talk just right and from the need to do battle with promises and fight to keep what God says He’s given me – He walked right in and showed me the thing that blew me away the most.

It was a comment in my Bible on one of the passages where Jesus makes the “ye of little faith” comment and it said that Jesus was not commenting on the size of their faith but where their faith was.  It went on to say that when Jesus had sent them out to minister, their faith was in God and Him alone, they knew they could do nothing of themselves that if they were going to see miracles it could only be by the power of God.  They may have been nervous.  Their faith may have been the size of a mustard seed BUT it was IN the right place. 

Then, in this particular passage of scripture the disciples are asking Jesus why THEY couldn’t cast out a demon – not long before they were rejoicing because the demons were subject to them and there was a change in their focus – suddenly their faith was in themselves.  God had used them mightily and done great things through them and their SELF-confidence grew rather than their God-confidence and it was then that Jesus said they had little faith.

The picture that came to my mind was a person taking a light bulb and sitting it in the glass dome of an oil lamp and trying to get the bulb to come on.  The bulb is new and nothing is wrong with it, but it is connected to the wrong source of power so it can produce no light.  If you take the same bulb and twist it into a lamp – you get light!  It’s the same with faith – if you put faith in yourself and your abilities – your faith is little because your power source is very limited.  If you take the same faith and put it in God suddenly the impossible is possible because the power source is unlimited.

Back to David – before he went out to meet Goliath, he told Saul that God had given him the victory over the bear and the lion and the same God would give him the victory over the giant.  David knew God.  He was not arrogant.  He knew he did not overcome the bear and the lion in his own strength but that only by God’s hand did he have the victory.  Because he knew God and because he had faith in God, nothing was impossible for him.   His faith was in the right place.

My heart longs to know God like this, to know Him so well that my faith “naturally” rests in Him with this kind of confidence.  How often am I prompted in my spirit to do something and draw back because of fear, because I don’t think I can do it.  This is not only arrogance because I think it’s me who is going to do it, but it is also showing how much of a hindrance having faith in me and my abilities can be.  Time and again, had I obeyed, lives could have been changed but because my faith was in the wrong place I was disobedient.  Oh me of little faith.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  I know it doesn’t.  And my daily pursuit is to know God in such a way that my faith would always rest in Him – not just in some areas but in every area.  He is the God of my faith and the place my faith belongs.

Restoration

I think many of us do silly things when we first come to Christ.  We come believing that we know what He wants and, not knowing Him, we end up putting ourself in bondage to expectations that do not come from God but from our misconceptions about Him.

When I first came to Christ I believed that nothing that I loved could be okay.  That everything I did and everything I had could only be 100% about God or it was bad and wrong.  I threw out most of the books I loved because they were not about God.  I burned close to 1,000 poems because they weren’t about Him.  I got rid of many of my CD’s (some of that WAS good but not all).  I thought it was what God wanted of me.  I had this image of Him that was so staunch, so strict.  I imagined that He didn’t want me to have anything that I enjoyed because how could I enjoy something that wasn’t entirely about Him.  It was a rough time.  But as I grew closer to Him and got to know Him as He really is, I began to understand that He gave me the gifts I had stopped using.  Sure there was a purification process in a lot of things but it had not been God who asked me to throw away everything and to stop writing and to stop enjoying life.  It was not God who told me to stop playing the flute, to stop writing songs, to stop writing stories.  He delighted in my delight in those things, it just took some time for me to see it.

When I began to see how much God wanted me to enjoy life and to see things through His eyes I began to feel regret at all the things I threw away in my zeal to prove myself a true follower of Christ who would give it all for Him.  Time and time again my heart would be sad over my ignorance but God kept promising restoration.

In the past several months God has been doing a lot of restoration and just last weekend He gave me back many of the books that I had given away, and in the box with the books, He gave me back many of the poems that I burned.  I am still amazed at all He has given to me and His faithfulness to restore according to His promise.  He is so amazing!!!!

God’s Mysterious Ways

In 1998 God sent Joseph and Briana Branchflower to the River Bible Institute in Tampa, FL.  In 1999 He called them back to Portland.  Rather than start a church immediately, Joseph and Briana went to City Bible Church and pastored there, faithfully obeying the leading of the Lord.

In 1999 God sent me to the River Bible Institute in Tampa, FL.  In 2001 I moved back to Washington in, pretty much complete disobedience to what God was telling me to do.  While in Washington I attended City Harvest Church, a sister church to City Bible Church in Portland.  In 2005, while I was at a series of revival meetings in Juneau Alaska, God told me to return to Tampa immediately and finish Bible School – which I did.  I came back to the Portland area to visit family in August of 2007 and while I was here God told me it was time to move back.  I flew back to Tampa on Thursday, loaded up my car on Friday and drove the 3,000+ miles from Tampa to West Linn, OR.  I arrived back in Oregon the second week of September of 2007.

Towards the end of September 2007 Joseph and Briana Branchflower, along with a group of others, started a church in SE Portland with a heart to bring revival to Portland and see God move in the Northwest.

When I arrived I began going from church to church, looking for the place I belonged, a place I could come and give freely of the gifts God had given me, a place hungry for the reality of God’s presence and completely sold out to His purposes with no misconceptions that living in His presence and His purpose comes at a cost.  After many months of going from church to church I just stopped.  I didn’t feel like I’d found “the place” I was looking for, I was just done looking.  I needed to settle somewhere.  I was tired of being the new person every single Sunday.  So I stayed at this particular church.  There are a lot of good things about they church – the people are warm and are real, they believe that it’s vital to find people’s gifts and place them in the body according to their call and not just to fill a need, they have a very methodical approach to the Word.  Still, I struggled with the questions – Why is there no growth?  If this is a pentecostal church, where is the fire of the Spirit?  Why does praying in tongues feel like something that must be done in secret rather than freely?  Where is the freedom of the Spirit?  Where is the life of God?

About two weeks ago I was praying because I was really struggling with why I had no desire to go to church.  That’s not normal for me.  I love being in God’s presence with His people.  I love worshipping Him with other believers and hearing the Word and being changed more and more into His image by what I learn.  I love giving of whatever God is giving me.  And it seems, even with going to church, I wasn’t really doing those things.  It’s hard to put into words.  So as I prayed it finally came out – “God, where is the life of Your Spirit?  Where is the life of Your Presence?  Isn’t there a place in Portland where You are free to move and have Your way?  Isn’t there a place where the people are genuinely seeking You and revival and are not content to just pray about it but are pressing in to You to open the doors for You to come and move freely?” 

Church should be a place of life and refreshing.  It should be a place where we come and truly meet with God.  It should be a place where the focus is set on Him and His will and His ways; worshipping Him, loving Him, giving Him our all and being open to receive from Him whatever we need to move forward in His plan and purpose.  It is not another thing to do, like reporting to work, it is supposed to be the place we come to get energized to go out into all the world and preach the gospel.  A place of genuinely experiencing His presence.  A place where He comes alive to us more and we get to know Him better.

So, I was feeling discouraged and feeling a bit like I was being judgemental.  Perhaps God had brought me to this church to bring His life and to remind them what they were missing but in prayer I was getting no answer.  So I was biding my time knowing God would be faithful to show me what He wanted in due season.

Well, on April 10th not long after praying the prayer about “where is there life in this city” I received a message on Facebook from someone I didn’t know.  The subject was “Portland!”  The message simply said -

Hi,

It’s great to see someone with a connection with revival here in Portland!

Joseph

I was blown away.  I didn’t really know how to respond.  The only people I knew of with a connection to revival in Portland were ones that had gone off the deep end doctrinally.  I didn’t recognize the name and wasn’t sure how they found me, unless they knew some of the friends I had listed.  I was just perplexed and curious.  What if this was God answering my prayer?  Could God answer my prayer through Facebook?

The communication started off a bit tentative, I think but as I found out where his background was and the amazing parallels in timing and churches I was blown away.  I began asking myself if this could really be what I was looking for.  Could this be why God brought me back to the Northwest?  Even if it wasn’t, something was stirring in my heart.   A fresh hunger for revival.  A fresh desire to be used of God.  And a longing to find someone who “spoke my language.”  The language of someone who has encountered God and has a real, living, experiential relationship with Him.

I won’t get into the whole conversation that took place over the next few days but it was so encouraging.  I knew that in the very least I had to visit this church and see if this was the place I’d been seeking all this time.  Services are on SE 49th and Division (I grew up in SE Portland) and they are held on Friday nights at 7pm. 

Friday morning I had my time with the Lord and as I was walking out of my room to make breakfast, I heard the Lord say to me – “I am bringing you out of the shadows.  From now on you will go and you will go in power.  It is time for  you to step up and be who I made you to be.”  It kind of shook me because He’s been speaking to me about doing a new thing and telling me to be ready to be a part of it.  Talking to me about being part of the body and supplying what He has given me to supply.  About boldly stepping out and not holding back any more, not hiding because of fear or rejection but boldly speaking His word, boldly declaring my love for Him, boldly sharing the words He puts in my mouth and trusting that I do hear His voice. 

He also made it very clear that He wanted me to go check out this church – The Current (they have a blog here on wordpress currentword.wordpress.com).  Their website is www.portlandcurrent.com

I have to admit it was hard to get going, there was such resistance in my flesh.  It had been a long day at work.  I wanted to sleep.  I wanted to read.  I wanted… but that morning the Lord had spoken clearly to me and told me to go.  I was really struggling with being obedient even though it had been so clear.  Finally I just had to make the decision to go and obey or to disobey and not go.  I went!

I’m so glad I did.  I walked through the door and there was such an expectancy – the life of God was tangible in that place and so was His love.  I was welcomed with genuine sincerity.  I could feel the presence of God moving in the sanctuary.  Children running everywhere, happy and content.  Two words came to my heart immediately – “Life” and “Destiny”.  I knew I had stepped through the door into the new thing that God had for me.  I knew that life was suddenly going to be very different.  That I would be poured out like never before, stretched beyond what I thought I could do.  I knew that this was not a place where God was calling me to come and soak and just enjoy His presence but that He was calling me alongside to help, to pour out everything that He has put in me, for me to step into my calling and be willing to use the gifts that He has given me as He calls on me to use them.  A new day of boldness.  A day to burn the bridges of the past that connect using the gifts He has given me to fear and shame and embarrassment and uncertainty and to go forward, knowing I will make mistakes but trusting all the more that His strength is made perfect in weakness and that in the mistakes He will still be glorified.

I am excited for what the future holds.  I don’t even know what that will be yet, but the sense of anticipation that God is about to do something great is really stirring in my heart and I can hardly contain the excitement at seeing Him move.

Forwarded E-Mail

I received a forwarded e-mail today that was called “The Last Day. Sobering.”  It was a series of amazing pictures and 10 questions God won’t ask you on the Last Day.  It made me want to cry.  It said things like “God won’t ask  you what kind of car you drive, He’ll ask  you how many people you drove who didn’t have transportation”  “God won’t ask you how many square feet were in your house, He’ll ask you how many people you welcomed into your home” and on and on.  They were all good things to do but no where in there did it mention Jesus.  The entire e-mail made it sound like you could find salvation just by doing good things and focusing on the “right” things.  That’s what hurt my heart.  I was not encouraged.  I wanted to “reply all” and tell everyone who received the e-mail:

In fact, God will ask you nothing on the Last Day as you stand before His throne.  He will open the Lamb’s Book of Life and look for  your name.  If it is there, you will enter in to Heaven.  If it is not there, you will go to Hell.  Even if your numbers on all 10 of the questions that God would ask were astronomical – better than anyone in all of history – if you do not know Jesus, you will not enter Heaven.

In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus said “21“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  22“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  23“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ “

All their good works, even their good works done in the name of Jesus, amount to nothing in the last day without a personal relationship with Him; without accepting His sacrifice; without making Him Lord in deed and not merely in word. 

With e-mails like the one I just got going around, many people are going to be surprised on that day.  They are going to go through their lives with a misplaced confidence that doing good works is enough; that somehow they will stand before God on their own and escape the judgement that is to come to every individual who refused to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.  Not one of us can stand on our own before God and live; only clothed in Christ – the Righteousness of God Himself – can we come with boldness before the throne of God and find grace and mercy.

The Bible is clear that the wages of sin is death and while it is true that the wages of sin was paid by the death of Christ on the cross – only those who accept His payment for them are free from the debt of sin.  The good news, the best news is that He will never turn anyone away – not ever.  Acts 2:21 says “and it shall be that EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” and 2nd Peter 3:9 reassures us that “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

Those of us who know Jesus and find our lives in Him are anxiously awaiting His return.  What a joy to see the One who died for me and lives for me face to face, to thank Him, to bow before Him, to love Him and worship Him in person.  But it is because of God’s great desire that none should perish that the coming of our Lord is delayed.  God is a loving God.  He sent Jesus because of the depth of His love for us and we are still awaiting Christ’s return for that same reason.  God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son and He so loves the world that He has held back His return until more people can hear the good news that Jesus died to pay our debt and He rose again, leaving sin in the grave, to live and walk with us through life as children of the Most High.

The reality of the last day is sobering, and the Bible says each man will be judged by his works but that is after the separation of the children of God adopted through the shed blood of Christ from the children of the devil who have rejected God and His Christ.  Without Him, all of our good works are meaningless and empty.

1st Corinthians 13:1-3  1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.   2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

1st John 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

 3And if I ^(I)give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I ^(J)surrender my body ^[a]to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

The Bread of the Presence

Yep, more on the Tabernacle.  God is really challenging me in how I think about my role in this life and His expectations.  He never changes, never wavers and what He established in the Old Testament made way for the New Covenant that I, and all who call Jesus Lord and Savior, partake of today.

 Besides dealing with me about being the light of the world and what He showed me about the lamps burning in the Old Testament Tabernacle.  He also showed me the “show bread” or the “bread of the Presence” – it was also called the “bread of faces”.  I didn’t know that, and actually read it in a commentary.  So often I have taken comfort in knowing that Jesus is the Bread of Life, that everything in the Tabernacle was a type and shadow of Him and what He was to do in His coming.  Now, as I said, I am challenged – I see that it was not only about Jesus but about those who believe in Him and choose to follow Him. 

The bread of the Presence was 12 loaves of unleavened bread made with the finest flour.  The bread was set out in two rows of six on a table specifically for that purpose and was to be left out until the Sabbath, when the priests would take the old bread and replace it with fresh bread.  There is more to it but for what I’m writing that’s the main part. 

It was called the bread of faces because it represented the faces of the 12 tribes of Israel continually in God’s presence.  And because it was continually before God’s face.

The bread represents Christ, Who is the bread of life, the bread from Heaven.  It represents His purity, being unleavened and of the finest flour. It represents the sufficiency of God’s provision, the bounty of the table He has prepared for us in His presence.  And it represents the lives we are to lead as those set apart to God.  Pure, undefiled, fresh in our relationship with the Lord, and finding refreshment in the Lord of the Sabbath who continually feeds of this amazing delicacy. 

Jesus, the Bread of Life, was broken for the world to come into relationship with the Father.  Holy, pure, set apart and broken so that all who would come and partake of His sacrifice would know life.  It is the promise and the hope that never grows old.  Just as He broke the bread and passed it out the 5,000 and the 4,000 feeding them all until they were satisfied, His desire is to feed the spiritually hungry and separate from God with His broken body until they come to know Him and find their satisfaction in relationship with Him.  In feeding the multitudes, Jesus broke the bread and handed it to His disciples to distribute to those who were there.  He said the blessing.  He did the breaking.  His disciples distributed the bread.

And it is there that the challenge came to my heart – He is the blessed, broken bread of the Presence and He has freely given Himself to me, as His disciple am I being obedient to take of that unending, never stale bread of Life and give it to the hungry and hurting and searching around me?  Am I faithful in my relationship with Him so that what I have to give is never the stale bread that should have been replaced last Sabbath but is the fresh, wholesome bread of a present, active, living relationship with Jesus?  Am I abiding in the Word?  Am I abiding in my relationship with the Lord?  Am I willing to say what I hear the Father saying and do what I see the Father doing in spite of what people think?  Is my life unleavened – pure before God or is it tainted with passions that I have not submitted to Him?  If I were to give someone to eat of the bread that I have – would it be the pure, satisfying, fresh, life giving bread of heaven or would it be stale and leave them empty and still looking?

With Peter, I want to say “Such as I have, give I thee.”  And know that “such as I have” is the Bread of the Presence.