Lights, Camera...

This word is on my heart today: ACTION: an act of will, a thing done, the bringing about of an alteration by force or through natural agency.

Have you ever felt called to action?

Have you ever felt called to stillness?

Both real, and very different callings.

I fear that too many of us are called to action but instead we sit sedentary, idle, luke warm, mistaking the Psalms "Be still and know I Am God" for a way of life. God calls us to action. He calls us to look fear and sin and injustice directly in the eyes, to stand up against it, shamelessly, and FIGHT... to bring about an alteration by force!

But too many of us sit still. waiting. anticipating. Yet, we hear nothing. And we do nothing.

Of course, sometimes God does call us to stillness. To patience. To wait upon the Lord. To be still and know that He is God and He is in control.

What is God calling you to today? Please don't mistake your own idleness for stillness that the Lord is calling you to.

"So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong" 1 Kings 3:9

Oh Lord! Give your people wise and discerning hearts, to know the difference between right and wrong, action and stillness. Lord, guide your children! Fill our hearts with love and passion that drive us to action, to initiative, to pursue your people and your church the way you desire us to!

My Lord

Lord over the empty - you FILL.

Lord over the brokenhearted - you MEND.

Lord over the enslaved - you FREE.

Lord over the lost - you FIND.

Lord over all doubt- you HOPE

Lord over the weak - you are STRONG

Lord over the lonely- you BEFRIEND

Lord over all sin - you are GRACE

Lord over chaos - you are PEACE

Lord over dark - you are LIGHT

Lord over everything - you are LOVE

Lord You HAVE. You ARE. You WILL.

What's Growing in Your Garden?

I'm on a fruits of the Spirit diet lately. Metaphorically, of course.

In my few years of gardening, I've learned some life changing things about the garden of our own hearts.

I woke up one morning, overwhelmed with worry and fear. I'd been living in a place in life where I allowed my shortcomings, my weaknesses, my fears and doubts about my future to define me. I thought about my garden. For some reason, weeds grow at a much more rapid rate than the crops that you actually desire to grow. And isn't that true in our lives as well? Doesn't the tiniest thought insecurity and fear spread like wildfire throughout your body when you allow it? (Galatians 5:9 A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough)

"Weeds" in the garden of your heart can be overwhelming. Sometimes I live in this place where I'm so focused on all the weeds that I need to purge from my life, that I forget to focus on the fruits. I forget to tend to the crops that actually yield good fruit, and I allow the weeds to choke out the good. God calls us to live in the light of His Glory. Look to His face, and His glory and goodness will shine on the weeds in your heart and in His light, they will shrivel and die. We are called to tend to the fruits. Ask the Holy Spirit to pour into you so that His fruits may flourish.

It's good to identify things in your life that need to be purged or weeded out, BUT don't live there, don't stay there. Jesus will change you if you allow Him! It's a process, a sanctifying, purification process and it takes time. Tend to and focus the crops you want to yield in your life instead of focusing on the weeds that you want out.

"Today, Lord, I have complete belief in the process of growth. I don't expect a gold metal after the first lap" - Bill Speight.


Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things (Philippians 4:8)

The Root and Intimacy

I was talking the other night with a brother in Christ about intimacy - a topic that God has been laying on my heart lately as He's teaching me more and more about it.

Intimacy is to be fully known, to fully barre yourself to another. Intimacy with Christ is truly what we are created for - it's the ultimate freedom. There is no greater freedom than to be fully known and fully loved.

Adam and Eve in the garden were naked, fully seen, completely bare. What separates us from having true intimacy with our God is our sin and our own choice to hide ourselves from Him, just as Adam and Eve did when they hid behind the fig leaves. Throughout life we learn to withhold parts of ourselves from others, fearing rejection and judgement. In turn, we learn to do the same thing with God. Even though He already knows every part of our heart, He sees everything we do, but we still withhold pieces from God believing that we can control those things without him. This is a lie and the very wedge that drives us from our Savior, away from intimacy instead of closer to Him. We were created for intimacy with our God, to show him and tell him all the parts of our hearts, the good, the bad, the ugly, the dirty. Bringing those parts to Him, and bringing them into the light is how He then can begin purifying and sanctifying you.  It is in complete intimacy with God, when he has your entire heart that he will transform you into his likeness. It is when you, a human being, decide to hold nothing back.

Relationships were made to mirror God's relationship with us. Inviting another human into complete intimacy with you (and  your relationship with God) mirrors the holy trinity, allowing you to see deeper and fuller into the complexity of that relationship. But just as we withhold intimacy from God, we withhold it from others as well, because we fear that if somebody knows those parts of us, we will not be loved and accepted anymore. When we believe that not even God will accept our brokenness, there's no way we'll ever believe another human will. So we withhold our hearts from God and from others, which is perhaps one of the greatest heartbreaks of this world we live in - that we are conditional beings and we hold back in fear. Living this way, not only do we miss out on the true meaning of relationships (the way they were intended to be) with others, we miss out on a true relationship with our Creator. We unintentionally control and withhold our hearts, forbidding joy in a lot of ways.

This brings me to that conversation with my friend the other day on intimacy. He was asking me if I really believed it was a good idea to share parts of your past with a hypothetical future wife. He stated that it was so hard to imagine doing that because growing up in church men and woman are taught (and even cornered) into avoiding certain behaviors because of the threat of one day having to explain that to your future wife or husband. If you're reading this, I'm sure you've been told the same thing at some point in your life. You're scared into behaving a certain way because of the threat of having to tell somebody some day what you have done.

Sure, it will be really hard to tell a significant other about mistakes you've made in your past. I won't minimize that. But avoiding any behavior out of fear is the root of a bad fruit in which some of us feast on throughout our entire lives. Teaching us that intimacy is better when you have all good things to bare about yourself and using fear and shame as the motivator is a lie. And one that we need to reject.. QUICK. 

What's laid heavy on my heart today about what we're being taught is: 1) there's no room for grace in that approach and 2) The motivating factor is a DANGEROUS one, let me explain:

We as Christians should operate out of an overflow of our hearts. If what is instilled in us at a young age is FEAR and we avoid negative behavior out of an overflow of fear, right there, we are set up to fail. If fear (worry, doubt, anxiety, anything) is overflowing from your heart and that is your motivation to behave better or differently, please hear me, it will spill out into every other area of your life. Being motivated by anything that is not of God is a dangerous web we weave, but a tactic that many people preach.

Fear used a motivator is poison. It is a medicine that yields a result, but it's not lasting. It's not sustainable. Someone I know once said "Fear is an inhibitor of what God wants to get done".. it holds you back...it immobilizes you. Perhaps it "medicates" behavior and the result is some what desirable.. but it will not last. Medicating your motives leads to failure. On the other hand, Fruits of the Spirit are sustainable. But where there is fear... fruit cannot grow.

God calls us to live by the fruits of the Spirit. He desires our hearts to overflow with His fruits, for these fruits to spill out of everything we do. Therefore, in this specific situation,  the overflow of our hearts should be SELF CONTROL ... not fear. We act differently as Christians and avoid certain behaviors, not because we have to and not because we fear the consequences, we act differently because self control is a virtue and we desire good spiritual fruit, we desire to be led by the Spirit in TRUTH.

I think it's time to examine WHY we do the things we do because we've been lied to and misinformed for so long. We have a lot of very unhealthy approaches and narratives that lead us to self sabotage.  It's time to show the world that we Christians overflow with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control. We do this because we love Jesus and His fruits are LIFE GIVING. The Holy Spirit pours these things into our hearts, and in turn, we pour these fruits right back out everywhere we go.

If our hearts are not overflowing with the fruits, then we need to ask God to replace our current narratives with His truths. And remember too, this isn't necessarily your fault. We've been taught and trained a lot of self destructive things in our lives. 

Another important thing to remember, no matter your motives, is that when we mess up... There is grace that covers all. The sad part is when we mess up we cower away in shame and sometimes don't even accept grace that God freely gives. And you cannot give to anybody else what you yourself cannot accept. We live in shame, we plea for forgiveness and freedom and live in fear of messing up again instead of living from the fruits the Jesus so freely gives when you seek them.

In the end...no matter what... grace coves all and love wins....EVERY TIME!!!!

This is my confession: I've lived way too long wanting to be like Jesus because I fear being unlike Him and I fear the consequences of a life without Him...but from now on, I'm going to start living like Jesus but because I so passionately want to be like him. Period.

What is pouring out of your heart is a direct arrow to what's inside of your heart, to what's at the very root of your heart. If your heart is full of worry, then you leave a wake of worry everywhere you go, if your heart is full of  joy, you leave a wake of joy.

Oh Lord! To be a generation of men and women that overflow with your Fruits of the Spirit! To be a generation that leaves traces of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control every where we go! May your fruits flourish in our hearts and lives so that the world may see you through us and find you.

Amen.