The Royal Parade of Destiny

Just had an intense dream, one of those dreams you slowly wake from as the details fall into your mind:

In my dream there was this incredible Parade of all Gods kids dressed in Royal robes and lined up, it was simply Glorious...all kinds of Gods kids, young and old marching and dancing in gowns and armor, covered in Jewels and Crowns and carrying banners...(The banners were always the names or shapes of nations and cultures)

Some were playing "instruments of righteousness" which were on some of them their own hands and body parts that had been transformed to musical devices that were making the most amazing and captivating sounds...those who listened to these instruments were immediately transformed and some were actually caught up to heaven to have an experiences at the Throne.

Every person in the Parade was singing their own song, but it was the "Song of the Lamb"...made specific by their voice.

Everyone in the Parade was a Royal Son, or Daughter...regardless of their age they had a sense of regal bearing about them and each one of them walked like Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" in the Ascot Gavotte scene but instead of big hats with feathers and decorations each person was walking with the Dove of the Holy Spirit on their head...walking in such an awareness as to not disturb His Presence...some were literally bent back as His Presence was so weighty,,,,

The Parade led through a poverty stricken portion of the earth...it was on the outskirts of the city of God, but the road went straight to the Palace from poverty...and that was a big part of the purpose of the Parade, it was to draw the poor, the lame, the rejected and broken into it's ranks and as it did, the children became Kings and Queens simply by imitating the behavior of the Regal ones...it was incredible to watch as poverty stricken and hungry people dropped their trash and empty cups to join the Parade, as soon as they did their feet became clean and from there they became outfitted in Royal garments...and it all happened as they simply pretended to be what they were on the inside...but this was not pretense...it was "pre-tense" meaning they were walking out the reality in spite of the tension...because this was a destiny given them before they joined in the Parade...

But this is where the dream shifted...some of the children (everyone was a child from the greatest to the least) began to throw rocks at others in the Parade...and some began to spew what looked like paint basically vomiting it on the backs of others in the Parade...but the saddest part was when they threw rocks at the poor kids to drive them away from the Parade.

Many of the rocks had names written on them and there was a LOT of rocks with the word "Doctrine" on them these rocks came from the side of the road, these were very "hard stones", some of the rocks even had the name "jesus" on them these were the rocks thrown at the other poor kids to drive them away (what was sad was everyone at one time was a poor slave child).

Some rocks had the names of sin on them, like "homosexual" and "wine-bibber"...some of the rocks had "rejection" on them and those rocks came from inside the person throwing them...the vomit/paint was always behind the backs...spewed over coffee or tea or pillows...some pillows like in a living room, but most were sleeping pillows that were made not of feathers but a bag of rocks and I knew these had been keeping them from sleeping they were so uncomfortable...

Some of the rocks had more than one word, and most of those rocks had gold paint on them that said "my truth"...and these rocks were always aimed at certain people in the Parade...the other rocks were thrown quite random, and it was because someone had stepped out of line or in front the person so they reacted...

As soon as the people began to affect others in the Parade, either by the vomit/paint (which was like whitewash but wasn't white it was more like "grey-out") or by the intensity of the rocks thrown...God would reach down and pull that child/person out of the Parade and put them in a fence in school yard...where their garments and demeanor would begin to get smaller...the problem was the person still felt just as regal but it was obvious this was a "time-out" recess kind of place with a chain link fence...

From there they could still see the Parade...and the Parade continued without them...they stopped growing immediately when they were placed in time-out...although many of them had books, and were worshiping and even having church services every week...lots and lots of church services were going on in the recess yard...and God would come and sit in on the "service" and when they were done He always said "There's more would you like to see?" and always the kid would agree and say "I know but its not time"...and the Father would get up and say "Ok" and walk away...

The time-out had lots of wood chips on the ground to make it safe, like you often see in school yards and parks but the chips also made it uncomfortable because they gave off splinters, what was odd is I could tell the wood chips had once been bread.

As each child would get a splinter they would cry out to God who would sit down with them and remove the splinter and He always asked them "Are you ready to get out of time-out?"...almost none of them did even though I could see they were getting healed at times...some were even healed of cancer and when I asked Him about it (because my brother died of cancer it made me upset) He said "I rain on the just and the unjust, your brother was just and did not die of cancer, only his body did".

There were some kids in the time-out that decided to have their own Parade...and while they were children inside on the outside they looked like old women...(a few were old men)...it was incredibly heart-breaking to see because from outside the fence when you looked in you could see a beautiful and stunning Royal Bride...but inside the fence it was an old and frumpy, run down woman who was so caught up in her own Parade that she had shut out the real one...and each one of these Brides was alone and did not care because she kept saying "Well at least I have my children with me" and she pretended to have dolls in her arms even though she was alone in her place, the dolls in her imagination were always people who had joined the Parade for real because of her, but she only had a a sad little doll of a poor person and no longer could even see the Regal and Royal person in the real Parade.

Some of the time-out kids simply curled up and went to sleep...these children made the Father weep....and the phrase "Weeping and gnashing of teeth in outer darkness" came to mind when I saw Him cry...

On the outside of the fence were these demonic "bullies"...who would pester and create fear in some of the kids in time-out...they would say things like "If God loved me why did He let this happen to me?" or "If you love me then I know it will all work out in the end"...but all of the bullies had one thing in common and that was they blamed God and made the child doubt His goodness...some said things like "There is no Parade, that is for another time"...even though the children could clearly see the Parade through the fence...

Some of the kids in this time-out area were intently praying in tongues...some were fasting and these kids seemed to go back to being poor again...thinking that if they humbled themselves they could get out of time out...and that's when I noticed each one of the kids was wearing a sash around their waist...I had not noticed it before...but each child as they were placed into time-out was given an Angel who tied a sash around their waist that had a key on it....it was the key to get out of time out and it was always a small replica of the person they had thrown the rocks at or vomited on...

Some kids had many keys, but each key was a different person...and the people in there the longest had the most keys of anyone...

It was obvious...I did not even have to ask...each person was in time-out because of unforgiveness...and each person had the key (attached to a very powerful Angel) that would immediately get them back into the Parade of their Destiny...and when they did the keys were then placed on their shoulders, it was an authority to help others get out. They would see rocks being thrown or vomit being spewn and would run over to help the kids in the Parade by showing them the keys on their shoulders, many fights were stopped this way.

I saw several children watch through the fence as windows would pass before them these were "Opportunities of a Lifetime" and each window was a different path to the same destiny the Bride had been born for...as the windows passed from right to left...they slowly closed and locked...many refused to look at the windows...but the windows were inside them...what they saw pass on the outside were simply moments in time that were opportunities...some turned away crying...but they could not ignore the windows because they came from inside the person and it was their Destiny...

I watched as one girl looked intently at a window...in it she was performing miracles and restoring poor children in Haiti...she turned to the Father and said "I want to go, I want to go"...He said "You are the only one with a key, I cannot help you"

So looking at her sash she held up the key and said "But I love this person"...hesitating to give Father the key...I realized she did love it but it was a warped kind of love...it was a love of addiction, not a love from the Father...He said "You cannot love them from you its the wrong kind of love"...finally she reluctantly turned it over to the Father and He signaled the Angel, who became excited to get her back into the Parade of her destiny...both she and the Angel began to laugh as little pieces began to fall into place that made a bridge right over into another world but back into the Parade and she was on a beach in Haiti dancing with children leading them to the Parade.

This is where the dream got uncomfortable...the Parade of Destiny continued with many being added to it...it was always a "New Day" for the Parade...however for the kids in the time-out playground....it began to turn to dusk...and I knew evening was coming...it would be dark soon...and they would be left in the dark in time-out...the windows would stop coming by...Father could not get them out if they chose the darkness...and the Angels were also affected but eventually reassigned...

When I woke up I felt the Lord say to me "Unforgiveness is the only thing that can kill your destiny once you join in the Parade".

That's when I remembered seeing only one person throw away the crown and chase away the dove...and I knew he had "blasphemed" the Holy Spirit...(which was truly kind of confusing after hearing what He said)...the Dove flew out into a field of white...

That's when I realized a part of the dream I had not remembered...these fields of white...they were millions and millions of poor people all around the Parade of Destiny...and what was making them white was the Dove of the Holy Spirit settling upon their heads and making them look up...literally millions of souls were being affected by this "Hovering" it was a white light that the Holy Spirit as a Dove would come and "light" upon these poor slave children...as soon as He did they would lift up their heads (He was actually pulling their heads up as He touched them...the fluttering was to draw their gaze up)...it was the Dove that was making them white...

When the Dove caused them to look up, they could hear the sound of the instruments of righteousness and the song of the lamb being sung and many were responding...and as they responded, they saw the King in the Parade and were transformed...

I knew that this was the next revival, the next great awakening...many of the "white fields" were in the shape of Muslim countries...

"The fields are already white"...said a voice...and they were...

The dream was very sobering...and made me realize the power of unforgiveness...but as I think abut all the metaphors in the dream there is a lot of hope there as well...

I got up and asked Him to search my heart...and show me any keys where I said I loved people but it was not His love but something warped instead...

There are some parts of this dream that do not make sense to me yet...especially the part about throwing stones in judgment to keep the poor kids away as being unforgiveness...that seems like it is more of a system than a posture but I might need to redefine what unforgiveness really is...maybe ts the sign of Jonah with the sin of Jonah attached...

Selah...seriously Selah...

The dream reminds me of this song I recently heard:

I think Jesus wants His Bride back...

For a thousand years

I had a dream almost 30 years ago, and my oldest daughter had one as well that drastically reshaped my approach to parenting and teaching my kids...

One Sunday as I was preparing for church Leahbeth had gotten up quite early and was sitting on the couch as I passed through...she said "Daddy did you know Jesus has a white horse?"

I said "Yes, I did know that" and walked into the kitchen...as I poured a cup of coffee it dawned on me that I did know, but how did she know?

So I went back into the living room and asked her "Baby, how did you know Jesus has a white horse?"...

She said "I saw it last night when I slept...He was riding it up in the sky and fire came out of His mouth and burned up all the evil people"...

I was quite stunned, she was three and we had never mentioned anything like this to her and pretty much knew she had never heard it before...

A year or so later I had a dream...in my dream I was very old...so old I was kind of confused and mentally not as sharp, but Leahbeth and her family were taking me to church...we went to this small little church and she said "Dad we are going to worship the Lord, so come down to the front like you always do..."

I went down to the front and as we all began to worship the Lord, the level of our intimacy drew heaven until Jesus could not be held back any longer and came to His bride because of the intimacy of life and worship...

I haven't really modified much of my eschatology because of the dreams, that is always a work in progress and I had pretty much abandoned any dogmatic posture when I met Barney Combs in 1978 and he dismantled my doctrine...

But what challenged me most was that in both dreams there was a very clear and unmistakable connection to the future and she was only 3 at the time...

I realized then that if I wanted to insure my walk with the Lord until the end, (whatever that might mean) then I needed to pour into my kids a model of following Jesus that would guarantee my own development once I crossed that thresh hold of being the guy in charge...it meant developing a model of relationship that would work when my own ability to relate might be impaired...

I think every parent wants their kids to be successful, but its a little harder to trust your own success to a generation that follows you...that is a completely different metric...but it is the Biblical model.

I'm not talking about the "survival success", you know the easy sort of excuse we can make when we say "Well we didn't lose any, they are all serving the Lord, etc..."

That's not success...that's surviving...success is "Greater works than these..."

Its the difference between a 2nd generation CEO and his fathers company...most businesses where the son takes over never really do much more than what the son inherited...the exceptions are few and far between...

I discovered almost 30 years ago that my future success would depend upon my current ability to teach and model an intimacy that would transcend the generations...so I stopped hiding my failures...I stopped hiding my insecurities...I let them in on the world of my doubts, and I gave them the authority to correct me without fear...

As I have engaged a certain "dismantling" of my models lately...rediscovering the desert and a need for intimacy that goes beyond my need for legitimacy...my kids have all kind of told me...

"We told you so..." 

And sure enough most of what I am encountering now was prophesied, encrypted and painted in conversations I have had with them over the last few years...they were mostly here already...wondering why it took me so long...

It scares the heck out of me, but gives me peace as well...its a little like accidentally winning the gold medal in archery...you know you missed it...but somehow grace moved the target to be right where your arrow would land...

TIME-OUT

I spent a few days at Courtney and Josh's while he was in Germany and of course was enriched by hanging with Rebekkah and Cyrus...(Grandkids #6 & #8)


One morning I got up and turned on the coffee pot and sat down, RockyJo (Rebekkahs nickname) said in a delightful perky voice :


"Grammu I maypor choiz"...I looked over at Courtney who is fluent in the RockyJo dialect and she said:


"She said -'Grampy I made a poor choice'"...and then she told me how Bekka had started out breakfast on the  new kids table in the game room, but part way through the meal had decided to stand on top of the table and was promptly informed of the bad choice consequence which confined the rest of the meal to the high security high chair in the dining room...


She had made a bad choice and at two years of age was ok with the consequences and frankly didn't seem to be to bothered by it.


I watched as all day long she made choices neither her mom or I could understand...she was confined to time out for not picking up her toys, after and very distinct decision was offered and agreed upon between herself and her mom...


"I go time out"...


"A spanking..."


Courtney was very clear in letting Bekka know these were her decisions, and bringing her to a specific point of ownership for each one of them...and then not hesitating in bringing the consequence...


The Bible says somewhere that because punishment is delayed iniquity increases...but in this case it was just a day of bad decisions...all day...


I was impressed with both the consistency of Courtney who was unmoved by the incredible cuteness of a tiny little girl smart as a whip, and then also the determined and unfazed ownership that the two-year old exhibited in each consequence...


It was clear she knew exactly what she was doing and was fine with it, while her mother and I seemed to be more concerned about her limited options than she was...


Sometimes...apparently...you just have to reach out and take the fruit of the tree knowing full well that bad consequences are coming down like a monsoon flash flood...


We have all been there to some degree...there is always a residue of the MOM voice of God inside us asking "Do you want to obey or do you want time out?"...and then we sit in time out watching our freedom evaporate...


I think the biggest casualty in the equation is our time...


The days we have spent in some sort of divine time out (prisons of our own design) are not normally days we  get back...


Time records it and moves on...


So there is this ongoing record of sin and bad choices...


But the good news is it is limited to time...


It IS a record...that someday God will roll up like a scroll and the record of sin will no longer be available for any to read, see or remember...


Sometimes...I think that is one of the primary purposes of time...to put a boundary and a limit on this disease we call sin...


So one day...God will take all of our "time-outs" and remove the record and the time out itself...


Seems like a good plan and should give us hope...especially on days we spend making poor choices right from breakfast til bedtime...


Selah.

Get in the boat...with Todd...

It was probably 20 years ago...not exactly sure about the date but the word was unmistakable...


"Get in the boat with Todd"...it was a clarion call from heaven and I had no way to do it really...


Since that time I have had to process a lot of really interesting twist and turns connected with that initial script from heaven...


First off...me...I ended up being divorced and rather preoccupied with raising my four daughters and one son as a single parent...little hard to "get in the boat" in that context, heck it was hard just raising them without anyone getting lost or damaged too much along the way...


So I was distracted...yet resolved to be obedient when I could lay aside other more pressing agendas...


I have no regrets about that decision...


Second there was the whole derailment thing of Todd...see as far as I could tell Todd kinda went off the reservation so to speak...and it was completely understandable...losing his son...divorcing...life can create train wrecks that stop traffic in both directions and ruin the land for a long time...


I have recently visited a blog that is a tribute to Todd and Deann... their influence was primary in shaping who I have become as a believer...they were the first "Apostolic" pastors I encountered and it was  the very first church I chose as an independent adult of 18...


I met Ern Baxter in their home, I was introduced to Sophal Ung and he stayed with me in my little house in Tucson the impact is still part of my being.


Todd was the first Pastor I had who was not my dad...


I had moved away from home to OKC and found this amazing church called New Covenant Community, "Tippy (Earl) Stewart and Mike Torbett and Todd and Deann...who had been missionaries to Cambodia and India and now were helping plant missionaries all over the globe in Bern, in Bogota, Hawaii etc...I knew if I stayed I would go...I would have ended up in Thailand or Columbia or Europe somewhere...its what he did...he sent out missionaries, many of them never returning...


The Lord sent me on another path though...and I ended up reconnecting a few years later as a Pastor on my own...


Still the influence of passionate lovers of God resounded in my soul and shaped my future...


Then life happened...or in some fashion...death...death of a marriage, a ministry, a dream...death of a status and an icon...ministries that once were lighthouses of hope seemed extinguished and there were plenty of rocks around them that you could go ship-wreck upon...


And this is where the grace showed up...when God doesn't heal, when things don't work out, when hopes are dashed and the light goes out and there is no anchor strong enough to hold you in the storm...


Grace is that wonderful small voice that refuses to shout above the wind that says God is always good, He is always love, and He is deeply connected to you in spite of the lonely dark and cold vise around your heart...




Grace says, trust Him in the mystery...


Trust Him when it makes absolutely no sense...


Trust Him when it is impossible...


Trust Him even if He does not deliver you...


Trust Him if you never see the healing...


Trust Him when you see a loved one take the last breathe this side of heaven...


Trust Him when she walks out of your life for good...


Trust Him when the dreams are so shattered you cut yourself just picking up the pieces...


Trust Him when the best friend you ever had hates your guts...


Trust Him...in the mystery...


Trust Him when the plans don't work out, the road dead-ends, the check does not show up, the car breaks down, the promise gets forgotten, the door remains shut, the bill stays unpaid, the pain remains...


Trust Him in the mystery of no answers when you desperately need an answer even if its "no"...


This capacity, born of grace, to trust Him in the mystery and to hold onto faith in spite of all odds against it is what defines us as Abraham's offspring...and it is this capacity born in the furnace of adversity that will make us heirs of the world...


So...I now get to fulfill the Macedonian call...even if Todd has gone on to his reward...I get to "get in the boat with Todd"...


Its about Missions...its about thinking outside the box...its about dynamic revival and miracles and covenant models and since Todd is not here, its my version now...the boat...it always belonged to Jesus...


Who's ready for an adventure?

On the Margins...

Sting, whose music I have always been a fan of, discusses the use of silence in music as being one of the more critical elements... actually he basically suggest that the song is really just a frame around the silence, and that is the most important part, and for us in the west it is an uncomfortable part.


It is important in life to take a moment on occasion and stare hard into the margins...stand back and look intently at the edges of life, the undefined and foggy perimeters that we normally discard in order to pursue our goals...and sometimes when you do that you become aware that the margins are really the actual thing and not the focus that you have been following.


As  believer I have had to do this recently and the picture that emerged was startling to say the least...it disrupted my mode of life and the model it was riding in.


I have been driven my entire life to build up, create, sustain, encourage and maintain the body of Christ, I started when I was 2 and my Dad became a Pentecostal Pastor, and I graduated into that world without even thinking about it, it has always been "what you do"...no questions asked.


The particular model of life that emerged from this penumbra of circumstance was basically joined without much thought or question, as is normal for most of us.


I had a room mate in college who told me I was only a Christian because I grew up in the USA and my parents were Pastors, my response was "No I am a believer because God appeared to me when I was six years old"...which was my conversion experience...no sinners prayer, no one else in the room, just me and the Son of God standing above the doorway demanding my allegiance...my Mom wrote it in my baby book after I went in and told her what had happened.


I have never once seriously doubted the existence of God from that moment on...but it has not stopped doubt from creeping into how I relate.


Recently...I have been forced to the margins and have had some rather intense conversations with many who are sharing the same journey in various stages of map-less anxiety as you cross over boundaries you never thought you would encounter.


One such boundary is how we are currently expressing body-life and the authority structure that sustains it...I  have had to revisit margins of how we do church and as I stand back and look at it I realize this is the seedy part of the shape...control, submission, money, worship, even actual physical architecture are pointing to some rather ugly realities, realities I would not have visited if I had not decided to launch out into the "land that I will show you"...


As long as we continue to sustain a top down hierarchy instead of an "among" position of empowerment, until we release resource and value instead of collect it, when we stop imposing submission to one particular vision and instead become enraptured with the journey and story of our fellow combatants, the amount of life we draw from the body of Christ will be a small cup of juice sucked through a stirring stick as my friend Ryan would say.


There's an old adage "If its not broken don't fix it" that seems to be the main focus of the church in the west...but we should not ignore the margins of "if its not working, its broken"...


The margins are really what you see when you back away from the intrinsic and captivating...its the forest not the trees that will stand out in our history.


My point is probably this: God is pushing many of the Levites out into the margins, and it would be good for us to remember that God very rarely showed up where we expect Him...it was Moses and a bush out in the desert, Gideon hiding in a wine-press, David out in the sheep fold, a feed trough in a manger and religious Zealot persecuting the Way...if we ignore the margins and the truth they blatantly declare we just might find our wicks burned out and we have run out of oil at just the wrong time because the focus and redundant rhythm of life lulled us to sleep when we least expected it.


Maybe you aren't there yet...if not that's ok...but you should at least check out the reality of what is on the edge of the city you live in...you just might hear the cry of the fatherless and the weeping of the widow and I know these are the things God is concerned about, don't let the din of the traffic dull your ears to what is coming from the desert.

Chapter available

I am posting a chapter from my book on divorce online for a while so anyone can read it.


It is completely unedited at this point, but I do have Cindy Hansen and Marlene Cole as well as my daughter Leahbeth Payne to thank for ideas and input on structure, flow and content.


It is completely raw, but I believe the concepts are critical for any divorced person to grasp and there is very little along this line of thinking available.


I will eventually make the file private again so the editing can be done by people armed with words and word-processors.


It is a rather long chapter...actually REALLY long...which may be adjusted by smarter people than I.


There will be three versions available, a pdf, a word, and a pages document.


here's the link:


pdf

Word

Pages

Feel free to comment, understanding that all comments require approval and I don't always see them when they are posted, but I will read all of them.


Thanks!

Girls, Women and culture

One of the incredible vignettes of life I have gotten to watch was the development of my four daughters and each womans core culture from being a teenager until they became women on their own.


I took notes because it was a fabulous journey and celebration to behold.


The bedrooms they had were the laboratories of discovery they experimented in and it is a fascinating study to evaluate a girls bedroom as she becomes her "true" self and explores that, to watch and see what she chooses as her own unique culture in way of reading, music, entertainment and self decoration...


The trick is to understand that you only get to watch by invitation and if you fail to value the process, you will be left out of it, so I kind of let them do their own thing with no rules, no strings and no snarky comments.


Leahbeth decorated with trophies, awards and stuffed exotic tigers and pillows, she wore business suits and competed in National Business and education events, she listened to a lot of music but that was never the biggest part of her world, she watched the Real World but rarely spent time in front of the T.V. since she preferred actual real time social connection.


 Rena covered the walls with Victorian porcelain dolls and flowers, read books like crazy, loved true crime stories and unsolved mysteries, listened to just about everything and was really my first child to have both old music and new, from the Monkees to Metal, she dressed very casual and almost never spent time doing makeup or hair and loved old movies, Audrey Hepburn and I love Lucy...


Courtney cut out bible verses and poems and taped them everywhere, she read almost as much as Rena, but oddly enough she really enjoyed my "Get Fuzzy" books, and watched the Simpsons and Home Movies, really laid back cartoon stuff, she always dressed very conservative and modestly and was the second of my girls to be Homecoming Queen, but it was not a trophy event for her as much as it was a game to play and joke about...


 Ariel wrote in the boldest colors  and biggest letters her own name and "Faith, hope, love" (which took several coats of primer and lots of work to cover), dressed in shorts and cowboy boots, loved to dance, and was my most athletic daughter, so there was a lot of "team" and sports decorations and clothing style, she loved Dallas Football and U of A basketball, listened to lots of stuff, but most of it was high energy music that had a competitive edge, spent less time in her room than on the couch and needed contact more than content...she just liked to hang out...


What is fascinating is to extract the core culture of each woman now and see how it relates to her teenage journey...


Leahbeth is a Lawyer, her drive is to change our culture through the political and legal process, so if you look at what she collected as a teenager, you can clearly see a drive for unique influence, power, and justice, she is a tough negotiator but has an incredibly high value for relationships which makes her very successful in her chosen direction.


Rena's core identity is somewhat more difficult to extract but the elements of classical values, individual beauty and a love of the natural beauty and simple joy is there...she is on her way to become a teacher which is very ironic since she gave all of her teachers fits, her family style is very relaxed, and has an emphasis on individuality, but requires reality so she does not allow drama, but allows the dramatic, its a unique and distinct culture and to this day she listens to much the same kinds of bands that I do, we are both very progressive in our taste.


Courtneys core culture is peace, and of all my kids she is the most prophetic, so the Word of the Lord and the stability of His word and the culture that values that is clear, there are no extremes allowed in her world, she just does not get extreme behavior, she requires stability and consistency but also has a very high standard of truth and personal integrity that defines her world, you don't get to be messy or stressful in her culture, Courtney still loves to laugh and her primary drive is to be a mom and raise beautiful children.


Ariel simply shouts "I am Me" and the most basic values of life, Faith, Hope and Love are truly her main culture, if you can't simply be real and stay connected to the most basic identity and simplicity of the Kingdom then you won't get her...family, love and life are her main decorations...she still is a huge sports nut and very competitive, her current energy arena is pinball, and she engages people not so much in a space as in an activity...her culture is still in process as is all of the girls, but its fun to watch and really impressive to see her do it on her own after having 3 very powerful sisters go before her.


Its been fun to watch how each of them projects the kingdom through her own unique personality...


I told Rena last about a prayer that I have prayed for each of them from the time they reached their teenage years, and I in fact pray for everyone I love...


"Lord, break their heart"...and at a first glance it seems like a really sadistic prayer to pray, but as I have prayed it I have seen God do it and the beauty is that once it has happened I have never worried about if they would stay in His will...see once your heart is broken and God comes and dwells with you, then your internal culture is forever spoiled, you will be ruined for anything else and I know that faith and a walk with Him becomes inevitable.


So the added element changes everything...and makes the teenager who became a woman even more powerful...


Marky...not so much...but his heart has been broken as well and it changed him from a boy into a man.


I love getting to be a scientist of the soul and just watch the petri dish of life grown incredible things...even when it means I have to clean up brightly colored paints and dried flowers all over the place.

The Myth of "Mr/Ms Right"

One of the things I have had to process as a divorced and now "single-again" person is the questions of my choices in the past...did I choose correctly?


My core as a covenant person says that no matter who you choose to marry or be in covenant with, that person becomes the "right" person for you...but I think there are a couple of underlying issues that stay below the surface that we should unpack in this concept of "the right person".


First we have to face the Sovereignty of God issue...is God sovereign even in human choices?


Well I have to say yes...and this leads us into some very deep theology and concepts that great Saints have wrestled with in the past...it loads up our assumptions with the concept of "predestination", and "free-will", and those issues drag us into the whirlpools of "limited atonement" and the nature of God.


If God is Sovereign then the entire issue of evil takes on a very different framework...but rather than swim in those deep waters I'll just throw you a life jacket of what I believe and not tell you how I got there, it is a distraction for what I want to say right now.


I believe God is sovereign, but I do not believe He is in control...those are two different things, and I believe this so much I also believe that God will NOT control us, or anyone else, He is so committed to the concept of love that He demands freedom of choice and never lets it get completely stripped away, so not even He will violate it.


In other words God values our choices much higher than we know, and I believe because of that He does not make EXACTLY one person for each and every other person to marry...He is a huge fan of diversity, just look around, so the idea that He wants life limited to a few choices and only certain people is contrary to His desire for freedom and uniqueness, and inconsistent with the way He does things.


Think about it like this: I like coffee...I like it a lot, I prefer a strong French Roast to a Colombian blend, these are choices that I have made...did God make me to prefer French over Colombian? No I am not a puppet, He put the elements of taste and the biological capacity within me, but the rest of it is a matter of my own reactions to my history and a developed taste from my experience.


If you want to argue with that, then you might give John Calvin a run for his money on the whole predestination thing and frankly I don't want to argue with you about it the outcome is predicted.


So on a core level I no longer believe there is only one person for you to choose from to live happily ever after with...at least until you have made a choice...once you have chosen, covenant kicks in and that's where the real fun begins, life is always a product of covenant protecting and empowering intimacy.."into-me-you-see"...this is where we really get to experience life as God has designed it.


What that means is if you are divorced, you did not miss it...regardless of how badly it turned out, it wasn't the choice to love a particular person that created your catastrophe, it was something much other than that.


But lets dig a little deeper and look at why we would even go here at all...its a cultural, and frankly fairy-tale world that suggest this idea of "the right person" in the first place.


(Disclaimer: I am most definitely NOT talking about throwing caution to the wind and just hooking up with blatantly bad people, that is dumb behavior and scripture is clear we should not yoke up with people of different value systems, if you don't know what your core values are, you should not even be reading this in the first place, go find out who you are first and then come back)


Its a subtle trap to drift into the mindset that a certain person, or even a certain "type" of person will be responsible for your happiness...Mr/Ms Right regardless of how perfect we may make them in our minds will never be able to create the perfect world for you.


Sometimes we let Hollywood destroy our happiness before we ever get there...especially when we look at the basic idea that many of us have grown up with...


In almost ALL of the fairy tales we read, or movies we watch there is conflict, there are difficulties but we know that if we can just get Prince Charming and the Sleeping Beauty together, everything will work out...think about it...in all of those stories we believe that if the couple can just connect everything will work out...and they will live "happily ever after"...and who doesn't want that?


But the problem is, there is no Mr Right, there is no Knight in shining armor, there is no sleeping beauty, there is no princess who needs rescuing...there's just us...you and me...the way we are...warts and all.


Its very important especially for the divorced to get rid of the idea that Mr/Ms Right exist at all...you are never going to find the "perfect" person...and the harder you look the more disappointed you will be, and many times it is our past experience that drives us to drive away (because of fear) the very thing God may be sending us.


The idea that if you wait long enough, or get in just the right moment, then Mr/Ms Right will suddenly sweep you off your feet and you will live happily ever after...this idea is often used by the enemy to beat us up since we never find the right person...there must be something more we can do, or worse, there must be some hidden sin that God is mad about and thus keeping us from true happiness until we clean up our act.


There is a core lie here we don't always notice and the lie is "If I just connect with the right person, bells will go off, love will blossom and I will live happily ever after"...


This idea is false...life does not work like that, simply connecting with the "right" person is not how God has made the world, especially when He likes diversity, it is not the right person that makes those things happen, it is something else.


So we may be waiting for something based on a myth...much like deciding "I will never leave my house until I see a unicorn for real"...it would be a limit placed on your own heart, sort of a vow that would keep you trapped because something mythical and awesome...but it just wouldn't ever happen no matter how much faith, confession and standing you did...


Any decision based on a falsehood regardless of how sincere is not faith, no matter how much you prop it up and pretend...in other words if you are holding out for the perfect spouse...you are simply setting yourself up for loneliness and defeat...because it is a mythical person you are believing for.


The perfect spouse does not exist...we know this, but fail to adjust our expectations, and because of undefined expectations we often frustrate our own growth waiting for a myth to make our lives perfect.


I think at its core, the most powerful expression of love, is simply "I choose you"...and if you have determined to never choose until Mr/Ms Right shows up, then regardless of the feelings love will never come because you will never be able to choose...and you may end up settling for feelings over love in the long run...which can be a disaster. 


And if you are divorced, you need to remember that the "feelings" that were once so powerful...well those are gone now aren't they? So how important are they now?


Wouldn't you rather build your life on something more permanent, more stable, less "sand" more "rock"?


I am not against feelings, heaven knows I am a hopeless romantic and very emotional, I feel, and express my feelings way more than the average male, but I know in my core that they are a limited liability, they can  infuse energy, but they can also drain it...we walk by faith not sight, even in the corridors of love and romance.


Real love, true love is a decision based on character and not emotions, it is how we behave towards another, not how we feel towards them...we can actually feel in love and behave differently and it will not be love...but if you behave in love, regardless of how you feel...it is love.


If we follow Gods example...we choose to love, and that choice empowers freedom, and freedom allows love to be returned...that is the ONLY way it works...there is no magic, no unicorn and no fairy tale ending based on a child's concept of life...we tell these stories to children, yet somehow expect them to work in real life.


So how do you avoid the jerks, the evil men, the bad girls, the tricksters and fakes?


Well I think its rather simple...


You become Mr/Ms Right...not for you, but for who you think the right person would deserve.


You will attract what you are.


If you want Mr/Ms Right you need to become them...


So how do you do that?


Simple...


1 Cor. 13...


Its the Love chapter...it the "How to" guide for becoming like God, it is the manual on how to be Mr/Ms Right...


Love is patient...that means love does not pressure...it does not get irritated when others need time...isn't that what you would expect in the perfect person?


Love is kind...how does that break down? Well, it means love is considerate...you "consider" the other person...what are they going through, what have they been through? You consider and empathize with their journey and you open your heart to what they have been through and behave in a way that makes them feel safe.


You get the idea...


You want to become a mythical lover?


Become 1 Cor. 13...its the very best way to prepare for a relationship...and if you do you won't be so selfish and expecting someone else to be perfect...you will learn to love and might even discover it was closer than you knew.


And once you have determined to become Mr/Ms Right yourself based on the value system of God, it will be easy to match up with someone who has the same value system, actually it will will be perfectly natural instead of "magical"...it may have a feeling of magic at times but will make incredible sense and should not be hard. 


To be clear, waiting is not wrong, or bad, IF you are growing in love as you wait...but if you are not growing in love, if you are waiting for a Mr/Ms Right to sweep you off your feet and into the perfect marriage and relationship...good luck with that...


...be sure to stock up on rainbows to feed the unicorn they will be riding.




POST SCRIPT:


After a few email discussions with some very smart people (sorry men it was mostly women) I feel I need to add one more disclaimer:


While I am communicating that I no longer lean into the idea of a "right" person, let me be perfectly clear, the anti-thesis is not supported...


It is true there may not be ONE right person, there may be many and you get to choose out of the many a ONE...but the opposite is not true, there are definitely people I would classify as Mr/Ms WRONG.


Just because there isn't one perfect person does not imply there are not a whole lot of wrong people you can marry or get into covenant with...you can most surely mess up your life and destiny by marrying the "wrong" person even if covenant tries to make them the "right" person.


There are some marriages that cannot be blessed and if you doubt that then read the last chapter of Ezra which is a somber mass divorce so the fierce wrath of God would be turned away...


I am all about grace, I am all about love winning, but I am also about reality...faith does not deny the existence of problems, it simply denies them the right to dominate.


The Bible does not teach that faith cannot fail, it teaches that LOVE cannot fail, and Jesus said love was best demonstrated by doing His commandments...you can confess and believe all you want for things to work out, but if people do not obey the Lord...well the outcome will show the truth, I don't need to say it.

A beautiful war

There is this amazing verse in 1 Timothy 1:18...where the aged and seasoned Apostle gives the younger apprentice some incredible insight and perhaps if I can stretch your thinking...a "technique" that the enemy would have no defense against.


Recently some of my favorite movies have been the "Kung Fu Panda" movies, I loved both of them for the rich story lines and the humor, they were amazing animations as well...


If you recall the Panda loved Kung Fu, but was ill equipped compared to the other masters and tried to emulate thier styles or "techniques" but eventually had to develop his own style...


Paul tells Timothy : 


This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight"


The King James will say "mightest war a good warfare"...


This is where I get the title for this blog...one way to read what Paul says to Timmy, is "take those prophecies and use them to fight a beautiful war"...


Most of the time when we encounter opposition, whether to our dreams or to our total health, we tend to react, start asking questions, look for an escape, complain, or hide...but what God desires is that when we meet the enemy face to face, we put on a show for heaven...we fight a beautiful war...


The tool He has given us to do that is the prophetic quotient that He has deposited beforehand into our lives.


I wonder how many of us will get to Heaven and when God shows us our lives and ask us..."Why didn't you use Psalm 91 technique when this event happened?" Or "Hey remember when things went south in this relationship? Why didn't you remember your training and use the "God of Peace" technique there to defeat your opponent?"


What if the prophetic words, verses and dreams God has deposited into your life are actually your own special custom made "fighting technique" that was meant to be witnessed by heaven in a beautiful combat situation?


Let me suggest a few things about the prophetic in your life and see if it helps you re-align your battle stance a bit:


1. Every prophetic statement in your world is a preface of peace..

Think about those words...it is a "Pre-Face" of Peace...God has stepped ahead of you onto the battlefield, looked at your opponent and the terrain and said, 

"You know what he/she will need right here, is "prosperity technique"or "Jujitsu-Joy technique"...maybe they could use some "Grace in the Face" etc ...lets go ahead and load that up...and just like in the Matrix  where "Tank" loads up "Neo" with the fighting disc, the Holy Spirit finds the perfect prophetic word you need and loads you up...(or downloads it into your soul, depending on your point of reference).


What that means is you go into battle already prepared, you have all the training needed to insure your victory, and peace is not only the outcome, it is the stance of victory...you have been "prefaced" with His Peace.


2. Every prophetic word in your life is the promise of a different outcome that what you see now...

To God there is no difference between speaking the word and performing it...it requires no more energy or effort on His part to do either...therefore when He speaks it to you, He is giving you the promise that He has already determined a different outcome than the current situation...if He has promised it, then in eternity it is a reality, you just need to bring that outcome into this realm and you do that by believing and standing.


3. Every prophetic event in your life is a guarantee that your personal trainer will be with you in the midst of the conflict teaching you the technique of victory.


Imagine being right in the middle of hand to hand combat with a vicious and ruthless opponent, and right in the heat of the battle a Master Samurai steps next to you and says, "Ok when he does this and such, counter with this move, when he changes his stance here, move into this technique, when he tries to attack you this way, then turn to this style...etc..."


Can you imagine how unfair that would be to hell? But it is exactly how the Kingdom operates, He is right beside you even helping you to pray, because...well we don't even know how to do that according to Romans 8...but HE DOES!!!


3. The prophetic promise in our life gives us the power to fight a beautiful war...

Pauls use of language in this passage is a direct result of his observing the Roman Army train and stay in shape, Rick Renners book "Dressed to Kill" is an amazing study of the specific language and culture that Paul used to communicate to Timothy the beauty of the battle... but what we cannot fail to see is that his admonition is laid upon us as well, that we HAVE BEEN GIVEN our prophetic quotient so that as we demonstrate faith, steadfastness and peace unto victory we will fight a beautiful war against an ungodly and demonic assault...it isn't just metaphor or rhetoric, it is an assignment that carries great reward and honor for those who take it up...




I just want to encourage you to dust off the prophetic words in your life...team up with the Holy Spirit and see what technique might emerge that is uniquely you...


My next blog I might go into more detail about HOW to do this...

But frankly you don't need my help...you have a built in Samurai Trainer who is more than willing to show you "Descending Dove" technique...which is what Jesus used to defeat the Evil Warlord Satan...its a good stance that the enemy has no defense against.

Walk with me

Some of my music...wrote this and recorded it at my sis's house in Moore Oklahoma...

Walk with me

My version of stumbleupon...

So this post is just primarily about the kind of things that capture my attention and imagination and focus...


These are the links and things I think about on an average day...its a bit eclectic...but that's quite normal in my world...


First off is my favorite video of all time, because I want to dance EXACTLY like this:

I have been a big fan of Snow Patrol ever since I heard "Somewhere a clock is ticking"


The ballroom dance thing is one of my dreams, I could watch this video for hours...it inspires me.


Next up and for something completely different is Thorium...yep I am really wondering why we have not been developing nuclear energy using thorium instead of solid fuel rods, it is cheaper, safer, operates at basic atmospheric pressure as opposed to 300 atmospheres required by standard plutonium...the cool thing about thorium is it uses a frozen liquid fluoride salt as a plug and if you have a power outage the plug melts and all the volatile fuel drains into a containment enclosure...and a thorium based reactor would literally use up all of the warhead material we have floating around, it is truly the idea of beating your swords into plowshares...you can't just throw away nuke materials, this system would use them up and recycle them.


Looking for ways to invest in this for my kids, kids, kids...can you imagine being a bazillionaire because your great-great-granfather invested in a dream?


Next up is the kelp forest:


I like watching th open ocean veiw because it relaxes me and you see really cool things...
 Blog won't let me post a video here but take the link it's cool:

Kelp Forest


For something yet wonderful and offbeat "French Onion Stuffed Mushrooms"


http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/11/french-onion-soup-stuffed-mushrooms/


Next is my review of Kris Vallotons Book "Spirit Wars" which I read in one sitting and highly recommend...


Spirit wars

Anyway, this is a normal day in my world from dancing and dreaming to recipes and reactors my mind is never still, so I require plenty of prayer time to learn how to be still.

Culture and Conquest

So I spent some of the Holidays in Tucson at my daughter Leahbeths house, and of course she was onto me about finishing my book on supernatural divorce, so I holed up in the office a day and wrote an entire chapter I had no intention of writing.


I have an outline...I know what I want to communicate, but sometimes when I start writing something happens and I end up somewhere completely different than I anticipated.


I had decided to write a chapter on how genders approach divorce because believe it or not we are very different in the way we process it...

In order to communicate the "feeling" I had decided to write two little fictional stories describing different events as told from a mans viewpoint and from a woman's viewpoint...one story (for the man) was about a space cruiser with a hole blown in the hull, the story for the woman was about a special tea garden that had been demolished by a pack of wild dogs...


I had fun writing it and frankly felt like in some ways it communicated in an interesting way how we approach divorce from a gender bias...but something unusual began to emerge from the pages as I continued, it was something I had never really articulated but sensed was there all along...


Its the difference in our wiring and how that affects our assignments...and I simplified it to this understated code:


Men are wired to conquer, women are wired to create culture.


When you compare that to the Garden Mandate to have dominion and subdue, to replenish and be fruitful it makes sense in a new way...men are designed to go out and subdue and conquer, while women are designed to replenish, redecorate, to re-pristinate the garden...women carry culture in their core.


So I applied this code to my girls and the guys I knew...


Leahbeth has a drive to be a Judge, so her core culture is about fairness, in almost all of the conflicts I have witnessed or been a part of with her, fairness was the driving culture behind it...she creates this culture by balancing her rooms, by disallowing language of extremes and all of her relationships need an occasional tipping of the balance back to her when she has given out. If you don't care about what is fair and just you don't get to be a part of her culture.


Rena seems to favor freedom...she isn't worried about the pictures all matching or the colors blending, she creates her culture differently by her routines and by breaking the routines, she will let her kids dress in the most unmatched outfits they want while her sisters would never let that happen, but for her, the culture needs to be about personal freedom more than about the towels matching.


Courtney's culture is peace...when she encounters chaos, she simply shuts down and lets other make the decisions until she finds her peace, once she latches onto it, she doesn't care what the demand is, her culture has a higher mandate than your crisis.


What I began to observe is that each one of my girls creates a culture or an environment based on something in her core, she might not have identified it, but how she decorates, how she dresses, the food she eats and the conversations and relationships she keeps all flow out of this core value inside her.


If you are a woman, I bet with a little effort you can clearly see what your core culture is and how you create it...


Men...not so much.


A man will live in a cave, and often does. Culture is not what drives him, but take away conquest, take away the challenge of the next level of Splinter Cell, or let his fantasy football quarterback have a bad week and you've got one depressed puppy.


Most all of a mans drive for significance is connected to conquering something, be it a new sell, a new project, a new toy for his car, or an actual contest of some sort...its the "dominion" mandate in black and white...


So whats my point?


Well, I began to think about our current church culture and how the majority of it is the residue of a 100 year old model of conquest...and how even now with new horizons ahead of us, what with the seven mountain mandate and all, we are still creating a culture in our church's that is primarily conquest and will not change our world because we have not allowed the women to be women, we have made them female versions of male pastors instead of female apostles.


I think this is a major problem and will require a huge paradigm shift in order to make lasting changes, because lets face it, the world is not interested in our current church culture, it does not feel like a home to them, and I think I know why...


So what do we do?


Well honestly I don't know yet, but I do know this much:


You can't fix a problem you won't admit you have.

Selah.

What dreams may come...

Zechariah 2:1-5


Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold there was a man with a measuring line in his hand. So I said, "Where are you going?" And he said to me, "To measure Jerusalem, to see how wide it is, and how long it is." And behold, the angel who was speaking to me was going out, and another angel was coming out to meet him, and said to him, "Run, speak to that young man, saying, 'Jerusalem will be inhabited without walls because of the multitude of men and cattle within it. For I,' declares the Lord,'will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the glory in her midst.'"

I normally like to take the end of year season and seek the Lord to see what the new year might bring, its a discipline that harks back to the days when I apprenticed under a very prophetic pastor who bordered on highly apostolic in his approach...this mentor would actually fast the week between Christmas and New Years and New Years Eve was always a very prophetic event because he would seek the Lord until he had a word for the church.

I've learned to be slightly less intense but remain somewhat focused, my intention during the holiday season is to enjoy family and friends and not to get to spiritually minded...however in the back of my mind there is a residue of prophetic motivation that actually looks forward to this season if nothing more than for the element of declaration and proclamation we gravitate towards.

This year as I approach the heart of the Father towards us and our assignments I am deeply convinced that His intention towards us is to invade our year with more of the "more" of Himself...that what God actually plans on doing this year is just showing up unannounced and full of Glory...

This will be a year of the "Lightning" of God...you know that moment when the fabric separating heaven and earth tears and in that instant we see the brightest flash of light as heaven presses in on earth with its glory!

That is after all what lightning is, its not some earthly electrical phenomena as sciency people will try to describe...in my perspective lightning is when the fabric that separates heaven and earth tears and heaven starts pouring in unannounced until the angels are able to sew it back up and keep heaven on the other side...it happens instantaneous because angels of course move at the speed of thought, but for a brief moment we see into heavens bright light and no matter how dark the night or how intense the storm, heaven shows its intention...it is always poised to invade and only the Father and a host of angels can keep the Son from rushing in and gathering up His Bride for the eternal love affair we were made for!

This is how Jesus himself describes his return...its as "the lightning cometh out of the east and shines to the west"-Matthew 24:27

This next season is going to be problematic for the angels...they are going to be intensely busy, sewing back the fabric of earth as Heavens love and the dreams God has for us just explode into our lives without warning...

Many of us have began to gradually believe...you know the "too-good-to-not be-true" message...we call it the gospel, but its bigger than we have ever imagined...and some are starting to consider that the dreams in our hearts, the longings unfulfilled, the romance of heaven is actually true and better than that...it is coming true for us...individually, specifically...and right before our eyes...

What would the next season look like if God invaded and said to you..."Those dreams...?..." "Yeah I know, it seems impossible and you have not a clue how to get there...hop in I've got just the vehicle you need to get there NOW! Holy Spirit, Lets go!"...

In one of my visions many months ago the Holy Spirit grabbed my inheritance and said "Get in"...and I jumped in a red sports car as He drove recklessly from heaven to earth, faster than I could imagine and laughing all the way...I literally had to hold on with both hands and for the first time in my life I understood that He IS  like a mighty RUSHING wind...the Holy Spirit loves to go extremely fast!

So this is what I am sensing God wants to do for us as we end this year and begin a new season, its a repeat of the "double", its a renewal of the "Year of Jubilee" because these are not simply seasons God wants us to walk in they are life calls...

This next year will be marked by dreams coming true over-night, hope will no longer be deferred and we will see the lightning of God perform it...whats more God will be the glory right in the middle of our lives, we will see abundance and growth unlike anything we've dreamed about...

So whats the condition?

Yep, that right, all true prophetic quotient has an element of condition upon it...whats our part in this adventure?

Well as I look at Zechariah there are three things that stand out to me...

The first thing is like the prophet we need to "lift up our eyes"...in other words we need to get our vision up off the ground and natural, and we need to elevate where we look...what this means in a practical sense is we need to not look upon our own resources and abilities, and better yet we need to lift up our eyes from looking at our sense of failure or history past...

Many times as God calls us into greater and higher callings we get trapped looking at our own ability and our history and we focus not on what heaven offers, but instead on what earth lacks...

Don't do that...learn to always look UP. 

Focus your gaze and hope on things above...this is rather biblical and will require discipline...but its time.

The second condition we need to meet is we must cooperate with heavens measuring process...that means expecting supernatural and angelic visitations, preparing for an accelerated lifestyle (run speak to the young man-vs.4), and understanding that we do not have the measuring line of life, God does...

What this means in a practical sense is that God is the one who determines who and what we are surrounded by...

Many times we think we know what we are capable of, or perhaps more realistically think we know what we are NOT capable of...maybe its loving someone He brings into your life, maybe its accomplishing a dream that you feel you are not prepared for, but what this means in the real world, is that God is in charge and we need to let His measure of us be the one we respond to rather than what history, Doctors, practical common sense, limited resources, and a host of other measuring devices might say...

We need to agree with Gods measure of us, even if we don't feel ready, or think it should take much longer...this is one area I think we might be prone to miss it most, in areas that we feel should take much more time...please remember time is simply a measurement...and it is subject to God, not the other way around...your time is in His hands...if He says you're ready...guess what? You are! Feelings are a terrible way to measure things...you're better off using the "measure of faith"...

The last condition is subtle...but essential...it is found in the statement... "Inhabited without walls..." 

God desires to be the glory in our midst...He wants to partner with us in this grand adventure...but in order for Him to dwell in our midst, we need to learn to live without walls...

What does that look like?


Well its obvious that part of it means we will live depending on the Lord Himself to defend us...He refers to being a "wall of fire around her"...


This condition might be the deal breaker for many...it requires moving into a new level of trust and vulnerability with others...

See living without walls means I learn to live in a place of transparency and becoming vulnerable to people close to me...

I am not going to pretend that this will be easy, nor do I believe it requires we live without boundaries...not even God lives without healthy boundaries, there are defined and clear lines around our character and our core that need protecting...


But this element of living without walls...on some level it will require that you create relationships of trust where you let people into your world, maybe not a lot of people, maybe just one or two, covenant and kingdom connections...but this element of living without walls has to become tangible...or its simply a metaphor and the glory in the midst will be reduced to a metaphor as well.


Do I trust God enough...to trust some of His people into my areas of life where I have been quite adept at defending myself?


Do I want His glory in the middle of my life enough to trust someone else to come near and not harm me?


Many of us have been deeply wounded and we have built walls around areas of our hearts and for good reason...it was not safe...


But now...God wants to invade...


He wants to make those hidden dreams a living reality of love and fulfillment...


And in order to do that...we have to lower the walls and let the Holy Spirit come in and tutor us into the "all things"...that Jesus purchased...


So here's my challenge...are you lifting up your gaze? Are you letting God determine what you can handle and are you cooperating with angelic visitation? And are you ready to let the walls down?


If so...you can expect to become a habitation of God and see a wall of His fiery Presence fulfilling your deepest dreams and hopes...that is His plan for you...this is what HE longs to do...


Who's up for that?