Wake Up!

This weekend, at my mom's suggestion, I listened to a message by Paul Daugherty of Victory Christian Center in Tulsa, OK. It shook me.

It was not the content of his message, his engaging speaking style, or some sense of anointing or mandate I saw on him. It was not eloquence, practicality, gifting, or even spiritual substance. No, there was something in his preaching that was more impacting, more powerful than any other ingredient in existence. In a word, it was HEART.

You know, I am a pretty big sports fan. In sports, I like to see winners win. I like to see players like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods enjoy reigns of dominance in a sport. It's the same reason I will be going for the Pats in the Super Bowl this year. I like to see winners win because it proves that their victories were not flukes. There is greatness in their talent, and it is being fully exploited by the effort and heart that they put into their game. Today I saw the highlight from Novak Djokovich's win over Nadal for the Aussie Open. You couldn't help but feel something well inside you as he raised his hands and shouted at the top of his lungs in victory!

In contrast, I'm reminded of the start of the Vikings' season this year with Donovan McNabb in at QB. Hopes were high for the season, but things didn't go well the first few games and we Vikings fans were quite surprised. Week after week, Coach Frazier would come out for the postgame press conferences and cite some new area we're going to work on or measures we're taking to become victorious. Still, as the season progressed, the team did not come together, issues were not fixed, and we ended up 3-13.

The most influential people in this world are not those who have ingeniously planned out every aspect of their lives and executed some master plan that propels them into destiny. They are people who dream, who are driven beyond the extremities of their ability and will stop at nothing to achieve victory. Thinking along these lines in recent month, I once wrote this note down in my phone: "People do not follow complex conclusions, but simple passion."

I have simply decided that in my one-shot life on this earth, if I am going to be an expert at anything, I am going to be an expert at having a simple passion for the life that Jesus had in mind for me to live as he hung on the cross for my redemption. This is my debt, my purpose, my worship, my joy, and my passion.

But it is this very thing that is most elusive. I have spent many moments of prayer asking, pleading, and begging the Lord with tears to keep my heart His own. I'm reminded of the scripture: "Guard your heart above all else; for it determines the course of your life" (Prov. 4:23, NLT). First priority is not DOING things for God; it's remaining UNDONE by Him. If I can remain pliable in the Potter's hands, he is faithful to shape the life of His intent in me.

It was that elusive simplicity and sincerity of Pr. Paul's heart that GRIPPED me in his preaching. It reminded me of those many nights of tears and pleadings. I heard in Pr. Paul's words and shouts and claps God's passion for my heart to be fully His. It was the Lord calling me out of the callousness of heart that comes with busyness and preoccupation and entertainment and social and family drama.

All that is not life!! The scripture states it so clearly: "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God's Son does not have life" (1 John 5:12). The quality of life I lived in God's eyes is determined by this one sole factor.

He's calling. His blood cries out from the ground for us to hear. "Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts" (Hebrews 4:7). O Jesus, whatever the cost to me and my interests, whatever expense to my agenda, whatever it means for my plans and my comfort, may the sound of Your call always reach my ears, and may my heart be forever softened, my will be forever broken to listen, to turn back to You and to obey. May you have all my heart, all my focus, and all my fight, forever. May the last breath of my body, tear from my eye, beat of my heart, fiber in my being, and drop of my blood be spent for You.

Some Thoughts

1 Cor. 15:1-2 (NLT) - "Let me remind you of the Good News that I preached to you before...it is this Good News that saves you, if you continue to believe."

“let me remind you” - often we need to go back. Not back in progress, but back to progress. It was never knowledge, never power, never strategy, never influence, never esteem, never skill, never gifts. We must always bear this in mind. May we never ascend so high in our understanding, in our giftings, that we lose touch with the simple gospel that sets us free.

“of the Good News” - when all is said and done -- when we are finished scrambling about, attempting to address problems we don’t understand with a capacity we don’t possess -- when we have learned to quiet ourselves, when our best efforts have proven inadequate, when our deepest insights have proven shallow, when our highest pursuits have proven empty, when our passion wanes, when our hands tire, when our hearts grow faint, when our bodies collapse -- we will be left with nothing but this. The Good News. And it is, and has always been, enough.

“that I preached to you before” - O that cherished “before”! Those who have seen, those whose hearts have been opened, all have a “before.” Before life was this busy. Before I had these questions. Before I faced this opposition. Before I was hurt. Before I messed up. Before I was confused. Before I lost faith. Before I gave up. Before, when I dreamed. Before, when I burned. Before, when it was real. Before, when it was alive. Before, when it was pure. Before, when it was everything. Where have we gone? How have we come here? Does hope yet remain?

“it is the Good News that saves you” - Present tense. Those who are perishing are perishing; those who are being saved are being saved. Like everything else in the Christian life, salvation is not a box we check so we can move forward. It is the experience of a life redeemed. It is the state of right standing with God, of open and intimate relationship with Him; it is a place of safety, a place of trust, a place of fulfillment, a place of reliance, of satisfaction, of peace, of joy. It is -- not because of effort, but by grace through faith.

“if you continue to believe” -- When we find ourselves lacking, what is the solution? If we have already gone wrong, if we have been distracted or discouraged or defeated -- what is left? Simply put, Jesus has no plans to die again. Nothing has changed from His end. He is equally victorious, he is equally good, he is equally loving, he is equally mighty to save, equally able to deliver, equally ready to forgive, equally powerful to restore, equally intent on leading unto destiny, and equally calling for you to come. There is nothing but the Word, nothing but the Good News. Will we receive it, humbled as we may have become by our own inadequacies?

I am reminded of a dazzled Peter, peering through the darkness to see the Son of God walking toward his boat on the water. What was it that inclined him to say, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come”? When it seems that Jesus stands on the other side of my inadequacy, may I never be found among those still in the boat! May I always find in the sight of His face all the courage I need to answer his call to “come.”

The Time Has Come

A familiar path lies ahead

Known to my heart, not to my head

I have seen it without seeing

Been there without being

Here without, but away within

Gone in spirit where time’s not been

What lies ahead not presently known

Yet certainly soon to be shown

I cannot stop, cannot stray

From this path that you have laid

Before my feet, so on I walk

Compelled and called to “come and talk”

Onward drawn, a great heart Beat

Signals to my drudging feet

“The time has come, you’ve counted the cost -

pick up now, lest your time’s lost!”

Left with nothing lest I obey

I’ll stop at nothing but to remain

Wholly yours, having taken hold

Of Your intent - faith pure as gold

Not cheaply wrought of only talk

But through the flames bravely walked

Head in the clouds, but feet on earth

Living a life of eternal worth

Heaven beckons

And my heart’s reckoned

Dead completely to this life

Quelled completely my inner strife

To none but you I’ll myself give

For by your words is my life lived

The cost I’ve counted, and it is great

But your worth surpasses, your love outweighs

Compelled by love, consumed by truth

I’m beyond persuaded there’s none but you

So to the end, I set my face

Like flint toward sufficient grace

To attain the prize that lies before -

Jesus Christ - my great reward!

The Jump

I am so fired up I can't put it into words. There are some things that you cannot articulate because no selection of vernacular could possibly do it justice. So I find myself, unable to sleep, unable even to think, but compelled to do something. I must let something out.

I feel as though the reality of Life -- the divine life of God's intent, my life's singular passion and pursuit -- dangles over my head, inches away. Its weight is so immense that although I am separated from it by space, I can feel it as one can feel the heat from a fire standing many feet away. Just the feeling of its immensity, of its significance, of its worth so close to me is beyond my ability to bear.

I find myself in a familiar predicament. On my spirit man's tongue I sense a sour flavor as one might imagine how a food item tastes seconds before it is in his mouth. It is the place where one stands on the precipice of surrender. His feet remain on familiar spiritual ground - the ground that though once was a steep, seemingly insurmountable mountain has become nothing more than an infinite plateau.

There is only one way off the plateau. It is not rolling up one's sleeves and attempting to climb higher; there is nothing to climb. Only a precipice. All that is to be seen below is mist; he does not know where or whether he will land.

But what will he do? In the very fiber of his being is this force that has inexplicably driven him onward through years and tears, through evils within and evils without, through joys and pains, through trials and flames. It was this burning force that corralled him through the deserts, drug him through the valleys, and pushed up the cliffs until finally he was driven to this place.

It's different this time. It's different because there are no more steps to be taken. Even if he decided to drudge on, there is no ground upon which to tread -- there are no footholds, no dunes, no steep rock faces. There is nothing.

What does one whose basest inclination, whose life's essence is movement -- what does he do when he reaches the end of road? He would go anywhere, scale any wall, climb any mountain, cross any bridge, drudge through the deepest swamp, walk through an ocean of desert -- but there is nothing. Only a cliff.

He knows the answer before the thought is even articulate in his mind. There are but two options: stop, or jump. He cannot stop. Stopping is a joke of an action. To stop is to contradict all that he has come to be. He could not stop if he tried. No, he must jump.

Still, he cannot help but take a moment to process the implications of this decision before he takes the plunge. To jump is to leave familiarity completely. It is a paradigm shift on his journey. He has come to the place where steps no longer suffice. He has been brought to the place where he will no longer be able to control his pace, his trajectory, or his routine. There is nothing to be known about the new journey before he jumps. There is no preparation for it, no insight. To leave this cliff is to leave any inkling of control, any semblance of logical certainty, forever.

But he must jump. As he inches toward the cliff, he begins to feel as though this jump will somehow take him higher. He dreams that it will take him where he has heretofore been unable to go. He dares to imagine that he will somehow be carried even farther than he had ever hoped, blissfully plummeting into a destiny yet unknown, into territory yet unoccupied, into lands yet uncharted.

He thinks of his heroes in the journey. Could this be the place they jumped? Or had he finally made it to a place even they had not yet been? Something tells him, "Not yet." But on he goes, unable to do anything but yield to the fire inside that will not allow him even to slow down. O that he would reach the end, having given all he had and more, having blazed a trail for many to follow!

He leaps. His figure fades into the mist. Time will tell the world where his leap has taken him; but as he falls, he smiles, feeling as though he may as well have already arrived.

An "Update"

I try to avoid clichés as much as possible, but sometimes clichés enjoy their presence in our vernacular and pools of thought for a good reason.

The nearness, importance, and desperate need of the harvest is something that ought never leave our minds and hearts. I started tweeting about it but I didn't want to go Rodney Howard-Browne on you guys, so let me just say that this has really been striking thus far into the trip. My perspective is always opened to a new level when I leave the country; that is, my perspective of the harvest.

Everywhere I look here, there is just need. Need for vessels, need for laborers. If the harvest were any nearer, we would be doing the work by accident. The world is so big, and it is also so lost. There are so few who are found, and even of those but a mere handful swing the sickle.

And all the while, God is calling. The blood of Jesus calls out from the ground, even as the blood of Abel cried out to God. The cry is a cry of injustice. Jesus did not wait for a petition from men aware of their eternal plight before coming. He just came, spoke the truth, subjected himself to the cross, rose again, and sat in heaven. He has more than done his part.

I am tired of hearing preachers say we need to go to the lost, I am tired of their congregations nodding their heads and shouting, and I am tired of the lost of whom they speak remaining in darkness.

Whether from inaction or ineffective action on the church's part, the harvest all to often goes untouched. This is because the bridge between the results of active compassion and the spiritual poverty of inactive complacency is suffering. The will of God is accomplished through no other means than the painful crucifixion of the flesh and its subsequent resurrection by the power of God. Indeed, the cross is our model, not our shrine.

When we say we are in need of laborers, we are in need of sufferers. The suffering is that which distinguishes God's laborers. God must first win the battle for your heart if it is from the abundance of your heart that the lost will hear of Him. A heart that is not his will do no good. The degree to which I am purely God's is the degree to which I will be effective in the harvest. It costs the pleasure of the carnal and the ease of the natural to find true satisfaction in God. It costs.

So the need of the harvest cries out to us in their need of the delivering power of the blood, and His spilled blood calls to us for the sake of His cause, which is the harvest.

Now the call of the cross is the call to pay the price. The motivation for the call is the cross itself. "For Christ's love compels us." The cross reveals the love, the nature of God; it is a call to be His. Let's answer his call.

There is much more I have brewing in me, but this will have to do for now. I know perhaps an "update blog" is typically less spiritual, but this is what's really going on with the trip. I can tell you about conferences and outreaches and churches and services and you still have no idea what is happening with me. I'm sure I will write more about that later.

Precious Truth

Psalm 141:6

"When their leaders are thrown from a cliff, the wicked will listen to my words and find them true.”

There will come a day when all will be revealed for what it is. Who you are is set; it is a condition of your heart that has already been determined by how much you are God’s. In this life, we can never expect to act or desire or receive reward for anything beyond the measure already determined by the condition of our hearts. One day, none of this crap is going to matter. All the testing and all the trials, all the challenges and all the distractions, all the temporal things and their pleasures will fade into nothingness and we will be left before God with nothing but who we are. In that day we will either be met with bitter tears and solemn regret or the joy of knowing that we did not shrink back – that we did not love our lives so much as to shrink from death. May it be that I live with such a perspective. Life daily is a fight to keep one’s head above the water of this world so that another breath of the truth might sustain him through the torrent of unrelenting waves into which we are dropped merely by having been born. But O, how precious that breath is! It is life itself, and it is worth every tear, every drop of sweat, every painful stroke and crashing blow to which we are subject. Despite what Satan, all those around us, and even our own instincts and inclinations tell us, it is enough to keep us until that day.

The High Life

Psalm 128:1

“How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow His ways!”

Having experienced little joy and much stress this semester, I was thinking earlier today of the qualifications for joy. That is to ask, why do I have, or perhaps why don’t I have joy, if I know God?

Read the verse again. The fearful, the followers are faithful. They just are.

The joy that comes from God is. That’s it. It simply is. Joy is present. It is, because we are Godly. We are His, we are redeemed, all is finished, there’s nothing to be done or worked for. Joy is. There is no prerequisite to joy.

In looking to receive joy, don’t wait for things to get perfect or even ideal. Don’t wait for a small victory to savor. Don’t wait for a reason to have joy. If your joy comes as a result of positive circumstance, of comprehension, or of anticipation of good, it will go just as quickly as a result of circumstance, confusion, or anticipation of bad. But joy is for the Godly, as much as righteousness is, as healing is, as peace is.

What brings it into reality? Faith. Faith is just receiving the higher truth. Receive the joy that is for the godly. It is. Already.

There is no more victory to be won than that already accomplished by Jesus on the cross. “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” He has done it. Death has no hold, sin is condemned in sinful man, the wrath has been borne, the old is gone, the new has come, the power is present.

In my short experience of Life (capital L), I continually forget and am subsequently continually reminded that everything I’ve ever received from God has been received by faith. I don’t mean I asked God to heal granny and she got better after some rest. I mean when I wanted to receive the Holy Spirit, He didn’t come because I tried or prayed hard. When I’ve wanted His presence, He hasn’t come just because I set time aside for Him to do such. It’s been when I have just stopped worrying, stopped trying, and received. "Faith comes by hearing..." It comes. You don't go to faith, faith comes to you. You must simply hear, and receive.

Mark 11:24:

I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.

If I am lacking in joy, in health, in wealth, in prosperity, in peace, in righteousness, in victory, in satisfaction – all I must do is receive that which has been made mine, by faith. It already is mine. What freedom there is indeed in the truth!

As a final note, many preach the message of "just receive" whatever you want from God, but their motives are to get you to like them and to appease your itching ears to hear how you might receive the things that you want from God. But God was not made for man; man was made for God, and as such I wish to distance myself from any stigma of this "God, your genie" theology.

Conversely, when I receive from God, it is a result of my enjoyment of, relishing in, and "glorying" in Him. It is not to satisfy what I as a man desire; it is to experience a life that is altogether different (divinely different - ergo by definition, holy) from that which is available to unregenerate man. From such a life God gets glory. That is the kind of prosperity I want. That is the kind of joy I want. Life in the spirit is governed by faith, which constitutes a plane of existence that is altogether different from natural life. And this Life is wrought "from start to finish by faith" (Rom. 1:17).

In summary, it is to the glory of God that I receive Life from Him; and that is why Jesus came. He is the Light that brought Life. Earthly life will never transcend earthly fact; divine Life will always defy earthly truth. It is on us as Christians to live our lives differently, walking in the Light. What a tragedy it is for the untold millions of Christians whose lives -- whose joy, satisfaction, plans, pleasures, peace - never transcend the joys and pleasures and patterns of this world. Be different, for He is different.