Coming back...in a big way!

Dressed head to toe in princess garb, my sister took the liberty of introducing me one fine evening to the funky and yet “hip” rhymes of an up-and-coming Christian Rap group to which she had been introduced through a childhood friend named Roni. It was a strange sort of performance...Terah with a tiara on her head and in her mother's high heels, a dress far too big for her dragging on the floor. A prepubescent, fairylike attempt at beat boxing could be heard between lyrics as she rapped what she could remember from what she had heard on the cassette tape Roni had played over and over and over. 

Despite her ill attempt to reproduce DC Talk, it seems a few of those lyrics (which I am confident were severely butchered) have recently been stuck in my head. It's one of those annoying little jingles that lingers in your mind and finds itself being hummed randomly throughout the day until you finally realize it and ask yourself, “why on earth am I voluntarily singing/rapping a song I don't know that I learned from my princess sister in the late 80's?”

After unsuccessfully attempting to google the song, I will do my best to relay to you what I remember of it. Perhaps it will help if you, like myself, envision Terah dressed to the hilt, hiking her dress up to her knees with one hand while spitting into the other.

-Part of Verse 1...maybe?

“Little joey was out in the field with his brothers.

Born to fly, he got a coat of many colors.

And that coat given to him by his dad,

sure enough made the other brothers mad.”

-Chorus-

“He's coming back

In a big way.

Coming back

In a big way.”

I hesitate to share this song with you and to discuss the meaning of it to me. I fear it may come across as slightly arrogant. And yet when have I ever been known to actually observe those gentle nudges which most would identify as an indication that the consequences will hardly be worth the experience? Still, please take into account that I am only communicating MY process and point of view as God is changing, dealing, and healing my heart.

After receiving the revelation that I mentioned in my last blog, I began a journey – the beginning stages of which I feel I am still embarking. Sometimes I fear these moments of hope and revelation are so fragile that if I even think about giving them words, they may dissolve and vanish altogether. At the same time, I process verbally and feel the next step in my growth is simply to say what I am hearing. So give me grace as I process with you...even if you disagree.

I recently entered this as my status on facebook - “Vision – give me some new so I don't have to get excited about the old.” While it may scare a certain percentage of those who are reading this, what is really on my heart is what was always on my heart. After several painful and yet liberating conversations over the last two weeks, I realized why I have not been able to get any real vision for the future. It's quite simple really. I have not been willing to receive it. In my heart, I have put parameters and limitations upon the vision for which the Lord is allowed to give me passion. In short, I have said in my heart, “speak to me about anything...just not THAT.” He has accommodated my request and said nothing, which has brought me to the point where I currently find myself...wanting to die.

No, I do not want to kill myself. I have felt for the last few years that I have been aimlessly wandering around...lost to myself and to the Lord – no real direction or sense of self. This has made me miserable – miserable to the point where I have finally begun to die to the desire to control what I want or do not what it to look like. What I mean is that what I really want is to discover something so worth living for that I would die for it. And I do not care if it's something for which I have already died. I want to give my life for something that I know will impact the world in a significant way. Something that will change things and break strongholds and usher in a new era of kingdom reality. I had found that purpose once before and it cost me everything. I hate it for what I I have lost. And yet I have become numb, powerless, and void of all vitality while hating the thing for which I was created.

So I will hate it no more. 

Read a quote the other day... “Never quit anything you can't go a day without thinking about.”

Well, I tried to quit. I really did. But it wouldn't quit me and now as I find myself slowly finding the courage to begin speaking the things that were once buried deep within my heart, a new life and energy is filling me and the hopelessness and depression are beginning to dissolve. Momentum is building and I can feel the movement of grinding wheels within my heart that had begun to rust. It's time.

But what is it time for? I have been asking myself the same thing. This is what I have come to:

• It's time for me to be me. I have been challenged many times in the last month to stop fearing my own shadow and to walk as the son, father, and leader that I am called to be. I have resisted leading in various capacities – partly because I have lacked vision (which was my own fault as I discussed earlier) and also because I did not trust God to protect me from myself and others.
  
• It's time for me to speak. I have resisted articulating up until this point the things that are really on my heart because I have been afraid that I will get excited about them and that others will too. I have also been concerned about the negative response of people who are still too wounded or bitter to hear vision that is really no different that what was always on my heart.
  
• It's time for me to be passionate. I have been totally lifeless in my pursuits over the last few years and if I am totally honest, it has been on purpose. I know that I will give myself fully to the things which bring me passion and that my passion will be infectious, causing others to give themselves to the vision as well. This has scared me and caused me to intentionally limit my commitment to the things that have been on my heart.
  
• It's time to put all my eggs in one basket and reorient my life. This is the hardest and most scary part of the process. I need to begin to make decisions for my future and the future of my family/community that serve the purpose of accomplishing the vision that the Lord has placed upon my heart. Divine order must come to my life in a way that draws all my efforts away from self-preservation – fleshly attempts at establishing a financially stable future and godless plans for the size and timing of the growth of my family. I understand that when directed by God, these things are not wrong. And yet I confess that very little of what I have done in these areas has been for any purpose other than to remove me from the discomfort of having to trust him with my everything.
  
• It's time to die. If I am really to discover something worth living for, I must also be willing to die for it. It's time to give myself so fully to a cause that I am willing to lay my life down for it daily. And I believe I have rediscovered that cause.
  

So what is the cause? As I have already mentioned, it is no different for me than it always was. The stripped down version is this: I desire to raise up a discipleship based community whose primary purpose is two fold: to usher in the kingdom of heaven in Lancaster City and to facilitate the forming of longterm teams who will possess the nations for the kingdom of God.

Discipleship? Yes! Community? Completely! Transparency, vulnerability, confrontation? You bet! What about fathers and sons? Essential! House of Prayer ministry? I don't know how it looks, but yes! Prophetic Ministry? It's who we are! But isn't that what I always talked about and pursued in the past? Yeah, it is.

I don't understand everything that has happened in the past 5 years but as I have quoted a million times from John 12:24 “Unless a grain of seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit.” The reason I have been hesitant to pursue these things up until now is because they are familiar, and familiar things are also scary. Especially when my attempts at them have seemed to fail. I have also hesitated because I have lacked a revelation that I am once again laying hold of for the first time...in a LONG time.

-Cue the rap-

“Little joey was out in the field with his brothers” – that's me. I'm joey. “He was born to fly, he got a coat of many colors” That's my destiny. “That coat which was given to him by his dad” -

-Pause-

There it is. Did you hear that? That coat – the mantle of authority, destiny, the purpose of my life – was given to me by my Dad...not by my parents, my friends, or my enemies. No ministry companion or regional/church leader gave me that coat. My coat came from my heavenly Father and therefore no one can or has been able to take it from me! It's mine! Dad gave it to me and it's mine!

“And that coat given to him by his dad, sure enough made the other brothers mad.”

-Pause again-

Oh man. Joey had a destiny and a purpose that provoked his brothers and made them angry. They didn't want him to achieve the revelatory dreams given him. I think his reckless and unbridled zeal not only irritated them. I believe it convicted them. They wanted him to fail and did their best to ensure that he would. Granted, Joseph was young and immature and wreaked of pride, but the process of God in Joseph's life was carried to completion and through many opportunities to suffer, Joseph was raised up to be the leader of a nation and the salvation of his family. My point is not so much to identify who the angry brothers are in my life, but simply to stress that though he could be stripped of earthly popularity and significance for a time, no one could possess the blessing given by his father. Destiny and divine purpose could not be stolen. And no stupidity on Joseph's part, nor jealousy from his brothers, nor external circumstances could keep Joseph from enduring a horrible process that to most would have looked like a roller coaster ride of potential successes followed by absolute failures. Now, you tell me...whose life does that remind you of?

But tell me something. Did the process destroy Joseph's destiny? Were the dreams forfeited or wasted by the circumstances Joseph endured? Or were they meant to purify the heart of the man who was meant to fulfill them? Whether in a pit in the ground or a jail cell, I have certainly felt at times over the last few years that I had somehow gone from a blessed son to a slave and fugitive. I have felt forsaken and lost, bound up and forgotten. But then the chorus...

“He's coming back in a big way. Coming back...in a big way.”

The son turned slave and jailbird becomes the leader of a nation. His destiny and birthright have not been stripped from his life. People and circumstances could not deny Joseph what had been given to him by his Father. He came back – in a big way.

So here I am. It's as if I am standing in front of a mirror and picking the coat my Dad gave me from off the ground and trying it on again. It's been there all along. I thought someone had taken it or that I had lost it. Perhaps I had done something to deserve it being stolen. But what I had forgotten is that my destiny came from my Dad. He doesn't regret giving it to me and has been guarding it for me. He made it to fit me, and me alone. And there it is. Will I put it back on?

I'm coming back...

OPERATION UNDO – makes “myundone” UNTRUE

A couple years ago, four badly bruised and yet determined sons went on a week long journey up and down the coast of California. Following the leading of the Holy Spirit, we knew only that our flight was set to land in San Francisco and that our time frame was about a week. Everything else was open for the Lord's direction.

Now, each of us had our own idea of what we would do, where we would go, and how it would look: My priority was to make it to LA in time for the Azusa Street Revival Reunion, Matt wanted to visit his aunt and tour a vineyard, Mark was excited about heading north to the Redwood forests, and Jed had Berkley on his heart. Yet with all our differences, I think we would agree that though we didn't know exactly where the Lord would lead us or what we were looking for, we were each hoping to find some piece of ourselves which had died in the war we had just endured.

I feel it important to mention that there are still those who would debate over the cause of our war. They search for a person or group to whom blame can be attributed and long to present their peers with a satisfying answer. I have found that those who are still trying to figure out the “why's” and “wherefores” are generally still confused as to who was fighting who and in most cases lack the details and insight that may or may not help cure their desire for closure. All would agree it was messy. We who were directly involved in the battle, however, will attest that the external expressions of war were and are far easier to understand than the wrestling that began on the battlefield of our hearts and spirits – no less bloody, no less messy...and in many ways, far more devastating.

Carrying this devastation in our hearts, the four sons to varying degrees found their agendas for this trip to California being realized. A trip to Beringer Vineyard in Napa Valley was beautiful, though to Matt's disappointment, we unfortunately arrived just moments after tours were no longer being given. Our trip to Berkley, our intercession at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and on the coast of northern California's Redwood forests, and our stay in San Francisco's infamous, ridiculously expensive, and absolutely gorgeous Fairmont Hotel stand out to me as highlights of the trip.

One night, after hours of driving, we found ourselves at a seafood restaurant near Modesto in Monterey. We were tired, irritable, and especially frustrated this evening because we could not agree on where we were to go next. Funds were limited and we needed to hear from the Lord as to what his agenda was for the remainder of the trip. Should we drive south overnight and make it just in time for the Azusa Street Revival Reunion? Or were we just being overly spiritual and wasting our time on a long trip that would no doubt exhaust all of us? One of us ordered a drink while another went to the bathroom.

Eventually, we decided to scratch the trip to LA and stay the night in Monterey. It was no easy decision and to my estimation at the time, took entirely way too long to agree upon. Still, just as we decided we would not be driving to LA, Matt got a text on his cell phone from Verizon that gave expression to the fears and emotions we were all feeling and scared to death to admit. As I look back on this evening, I realize that we each were being given an opportunity to face our greatest fear in regards to not only the trip, but the war we had been fighting as well as any sense of destiny we had embraced for our lives. It cut to the core of each of us – though all but one of us laughed it off as a freak occurrence. The truth is, the text would not have hurt, nor would it have struck fear in our hearts had it not been the very word which we were already using to some degree as the definition for our identities. The text read: “Operation FAILED.”

Failure. We are taught as children that failing is an essential part of learning and thus succeeding. Yet there is not a single word that can devastate a heart more than when “fail” is declared over one's destiny or heart passions. We were too scared to admit that we really believed we were failures. But the truth is, I think we all felt we had failed to successfully complete our mission on some level or another – whatever that mission was...For me – every mission, and entirely. Then this text to confirm it all – Operation FAILED!

Life went on. Or it tried to. The process of God over the next three years of my life was painful and difficult to endure. But it brought a healing to my emotions that little by little restored my ability to trust God and His people. Slowly, I began to believe that maybe...just maybe I was more than a failure and that my destiny was perhaps not completely lost to me. Even so, there remained within the pit of my stomach the haunting echoes of a word which my spirit would not release – FAIL.

Last week, I was feeling particularly pathetic (for reasons not worth mentioning in this blog), when I got a timely phone call from Matt. It had been a long time since we had connected and there was a lot for us to share with one another. I suppose that deep within my heart I sometimes find myself searching for a means to medicate the ache of past failures when given the opportunity to express myself and to hear the hearts of those brothers who fought by my side when everyone else abandoned us. This conversation was no different. Once again we found ourselves exploring the ups and downs of the last few years. I cannot give words to the deep breaking and healing that must be endured once betrayal on this scale has been experienced. Despite our most valiant efforts to violently address the issues of our hearts, learning to trust again is a slow process and requires a significant amount of time. Many times I have felt that I reached the completion of my healing only to encounter a person or a situation that challenged my notion of healing altogether and caused me to wonder if I had grown at all. It is amazing how quickly the heart can retreat within itself in an attempt to find safety when a perceived threat draws near...almost independently of our emotions at times – my heart was here and now it's gone. Where did it go? Why?

I have never been very sympathetic when ministering to people who claim to have no control over their heart or who are strangely disconnected from their ability to decide when it opens up or closes down. I have extended no patience to individuals who claim “I just shut down, I don't know why.” I am quick to answer, “You don't just accidentally 'shut down', you CHOOSE to shut down. So CHOOSE to stay open!” I realize now, however, that there is a deep wounding which can cause this sort of breakdown between the heart and the soul. It is not healthy and is a sure sign that healing is desperately needed in a place very deep within ourselves.

As Matt and I shared our thoughts, I became very aware of the aforementioned “F” word. My spirit ached for a reason to believe that I was more than a failure. And yet in my hurt, I found no convincing basis for which I could justify extending myself that grace. As Matt and I discussed my brokenness in this area, he shared with me a word that deeply penetrated my heart. It was timely and came in a way that met my deep need to hear God speak something that could break the power of the verdict spoken over me through a text message in California. It had to come in this particular way and it was a word that silenced the questions in my heart, the need to make myself relive the past in an attempt to find another thing for which I could apologize, another person to whom I could repent, another answer for the person who refuses to let go or who insists on judging people they barely know concerning matters that do not include them. So I'm sharing with you now the heart of God for me and also for you if you have found yourself relating thus far to the things I have written. In a text message from AT&T Matt recently received this message...

“NOTHING TO UNDO”

I cried and cried as Matt shared these words with me. It was one of those times when I found myself moved very deeply by words I didn't even know I needed to hear until after I felt tears streaming down my face. I suppose if one is unable to determine precisely how to unlock his disconnected heart, he will neither be able to choose when it will open up and gush as it is finally given room to breathe. And gush it did.

My heart let out a sigh as feelings of relief and peace washed over me. Finally! To hear the words that no man could have ever spoken in a way that was meaningful to me. Nothing has been left undone and therefore there is nothing left to undo. Case closed! I am not a failure and I am free to pursue the passions of my heart, the destiny declared over me by God himself. This chapter is complete and there is nothing left for me to undo. I can feel like a son again.    

Trust is Worship

In the beginning of my previous blog, I was trying to articulate something that Jason Upton managed to do in a few words from his newest CD.  You can apply it however you want:  Walking through the fire, enduring the processes of God, while embracing his dealings, when you gave till you were broke, with blind obedience that threatens to cost you everything, in the midst of great transition, when you can't see what's next and have no idea how the situation will be resolved, when it hurts to breathe and nothing makes sense.  In betrayal, failure, frustration, disappointment, and heartache... 

"Trust is the purest form of worship"  Upton

Nah...I'll just sing Him a song