Best New Years Ever!

why not be utterly changed into fire?

For some reason I have a desire to be open about my weakness.  I guess I believe that by being open it will free me from the things that I would be tempted to hide. In a way I hope it gives others the courage to do the same.  I am a man.  I am a human.  I am very adamant about this.  It is so important for us to be honest about what we are if we are going to speak God's word.

My whole life I have had an impression that I have been set apart for God.  I have spent most of my time trying to avoid this notion.   The last ten years of my life, the most formative adult years I have resisted this idea that I should be responsible for a calling on my life that I did not choose.  I have not wanted to be a leader.  I have been intimidated to follow Christ.  There have been moments of complete surrender in my heart and then moments of running the other way. There are many reasons for this.  

1.  As much as I love communicating ideas,  I hate the idea of influencing others.  

2.  Jesus calls us to walk away from everything and requires total trust in Him.

3.  God is persistent in purifying our hearts and minds and will not relent. 

4.  We cannot move forward unless we actively participate in God's present challenge in our lives.

5.  My opinion and ability to choose my own way is usually in direct opposition to His way.  

6.  There is no room for hanging on to the old ways of the flesh.  We must let go.

There are other reasons.  The fundamental point is that to follow Jesus we must continue following Him.  We must go wherever He goes.  If we stop following Him then we are subject to the consequences of making our own decisions. Our way naturally aligns with powers aimed to destroy our life, our joy, our hope, our destiny.  

 I want to accept the calling on my life.  I am a broken man.  I am familiar with sin.  I am familiar with hope.  I am familiar with having a heart fraught with fear and disappointment.  I have had things in my life that entangle me and distract me from pursuing God with a whole heart.  The last ten years of my life there has been an undercurrent of searching.  Just to be very honest and clear about that there have been two things that I have been looking for: one being direct, one being more hidden.  I have been looking for a bride.  I have been looking for a woman who had a heart of courage and a desire to pursue God with me.  A woman who can see me as a broken man, like all of us are, yet with the wisdom to agree with the calling God has on my life.  This calling, this thing that God is forming me into can only be revealed by God.  Without eyes to see and ears to hear this calling cannot be discerned.  I have been looking for this woman with great hope.  I have yet to sail this ship into harbor, to pick up my brid and take her with me on the quest to see the glory of God revealed in this earth.  This has been one of the greatest desires and hopes that I have had and still is.  I may be sailing alone, but I am sailing.  I am confident that no human decision can hold me from the destiny that God has for me.  He wants me to have the desire in my heart because He has put it in me.  My desire is pure.  I may not be a perfect man, but God is creating a heart of gold in me.

The other desire is probably really a desire that in a manner of speaking precedes the one above.  I grew up without a dad or father figure in my life. It's not a shocking statement.  Most of us have not. This does not make the tragedy any less tragic.  The basic quality of God is that He is a father.  Since I did not have a father I have never really resolved that missingness.  Since I do not know what it means to have a dad in my life I really only know so much about what life really is and how to relate to others with integrity.  -- i know that having man people in our lives does not guarantee that we will get what we should from them -- We all need men in our lives with wisdom, integrity and insight...the same quality of wisdom and revelation from God is necessary as  above. We need them to take responsibility for encouraging us in the things that God has for us.  We need them to show us what it is to be men.  Showing us what it means to love a woman.  A couple of years ago I  realized that God was calling me to be this man.  I did not have a father and I will never have one.  This does not mean that God is less than what He is because of it.  God still wants me to be that man.  He wants me to be a father to the fatherless.  The thing that I have desired so much is the thing that He wants me to be.  I get to be something the I have never had.  I get to learn to love a woman by loving a woman.  I get to learn to be a dad by being a dad.  This role is paramount to having a balanced life. 

Relating this to the church becomes a metaphor that seems suitable.  I am not an anomaly.  I see the church as being a pretty unsafe place to be, though slightly more safe than other places.  We are all abandoned children.  Our leaders have been completely negligent and self-serving.  We have not been encouraged to be like Christ, but rather to be like them.  There are wolves among us.  These people are stealing the hearts of the children of the Kingdom, the Bride of Christ.  We are in a very volatile time.  This is very obvious.  We are in a more precarious time in the spirit than what is seen in this world.  I have seen too many "good people/good christians" make terrible decisions and judgements and try to stand behind them with total confidence.  There is no integrity or commitment in the church as a whole.  We like confessing with our mouths but we are completely unable to believe in our hearts.  Our hearts are tied up by sin and the pride of life (evidenced by how we adamantly protect our ability to chose and discard).  I do these things.  Seeing this and experiencing it on a personal level breaks my heart.  All I can do is think, "where are our leaders?"  and I have to see that God has been calling me for 10 years or more to be a leader.  I have been seeking to find confidence in the leadership of others yet God has been wanting me to follow Him.  If we follow God we are leading.  Just the act of following Him is what the whole thing is about.  I challenge you to ask God what it is in your life that you are desperately holding on to that is holding you back from following Him.  This thing, which will be directly tied to you being able to chose it, or at least feel like you can, and therefore will require you to chose to let it go in order to surrender and follow Him.  

Please be honest with yourself.  Our lives suck.  I hate to say it, but it is true.  Without having God at the center of our lives and decisions we are living shitty lives, no matter what you tell yourself.  Speak truth to your heart.  There is a desire to be wholly God's and there is a internal conflict that can only be resolved by submitting to one or the other.  Submit to God.  Love yourself.  Love others.  Be a source of forgiveness.  Humble yourself before God and men.  Find the person that you have hurt and seek forgiveness and reconciliation.   The whole Bible is about about this.  It is not ok to judge those who were created in the image of God and imagine that He will not judge us with the same measure.  God has a heart for us to be full.  We can refuse this by our actions and decisions.  It hurts to let God muck around in the painful stuff in our lives.  Let Him do it.  The only way to freedom is through the fire.  

And the father explained, "You've been somewhat deceived
You've all called me your dad, but your true Dad's not me
I lay next to your mom and your forms were conceived
Your Father's the light within all that you see

He fills up the ponds as He empties the clouds
Holds without hands and He speaks without sounds
He provides us with the cow's waste and coconuts to eat
Giving one that nice salt taste, and the other its sweet

Sends the black carriage the day death shows its face
Thinning our numbers with kindness and grace
And just as a flower and its fragrance are one
So must each of you and your Father become

Now distribute my scepter, my crown, and my throne
And all we've known as wealth to the poor and alone"
Without further hesitation, without looking back home
The king flew headlong into the blazing unknown

And as the smoke ring hurled higher and higher
The troops flying loops around the telephone wires
They said, "Our beloved's not dead, but his highness instead
Has been utterly changed into fire"

Why not be utterly changed into fire?
Why not be utterly changed into fire?
Why not be utterly changed into fire?
Why not be utterly changed into fire?

-- mewithoutyou --

There is good news!  It is gr!

God's Love

This may be a bit rough.  I have done things and said some things at times under the notion, that nothing is too big for God to straighten out in due time.  I can be a bit blunt.  I know most people are not used to this approach, but to be honest I am not mostly worried about the silly human pride thing. I realize that a blog really is not an avenue for communication.  For me it is just a place to hold thoughts for a moment.  All of these thoughts need development.

I want to share a bit of the impression that I am getting.  My gut feeling is that we are heading into a time of great trial.  It is my impression that we will be being sifted as wheat.  This may have already started in some of our lives.  God is making something according to His design.  It is His work.  He will only be using that which is sifted and found to be of worth for His purposes.  Our hearts are what He is sifting.  He sifts us not to discover who we are, but so that we can discover who we are and how we can allow Him to make us in His image. Can He use our hearts?  Will we allow Him to change us into the design He has in mind?  Will we being the created thing take our own hands off of our own lives?  No doubt that He can use us in any state we are in but to be used with a resistant heart will mean we will not receive a reward for it.  In 1 Corinthians it states that all of the works of God in our lives are useless to us if we do not have love.  It does not say that these works are useless to others.  God will accomplish His purposes. We will not slow Him down by our foolish living.

I must say that I am personally very nervous about the proposition about being sifted like wheat.  I don't feel particularly righteous.  When God breaks me I always come running.  I run to Him when He breaks me because it hurts.  I know He is the only one who can bring peace.  I don't always hold strong when I am not broken.  I guess like David, God has an appreciation for those who incline their ear to Him in times of hardship.  I would love to be one who is always in God's face seeking my fulfillment in His presence.   I have my own deep fears and I have been inclined to submit to them just like anyone else.  I hate the thought of being alone and feeling alone.  I don't mind being alone, I just hate the feeling of being alone.  If i see a glimmer of what I desire in a woman's eyes I tend to jump in head first.  This is not wisdom.  I am firmly aware that God never intended being a man's all.  In fact, I feel this is part of the message that I am here for, but I know for sure that God in all cases at all times is far superior to the gifts that He gives us.  For us to put His gifts to us before Him is idolatry.  I have been an idolater.  I have given my power to a created thing.  This has caused much pain in my life.  The good news, I am alive!  I have survived the foolishness of my own ways because when God breaks me He gets me in His face looking for consolation.  I want my life to be full in Him.  I get no joy by the fickle heart of man's acceptance.  I do get a bit, but when it is gone all I have is loss.  I know that He wants us to be in community and to trust each other and many times we treat each other unfairly and it hurts.

Back to the sifting.  Here is the idea.  God is!  What He is must be recognized!  He has made Himself perfectly clear and there is no excuse for not acknowledging Him.  We feign ourselves to have some particular relevance in our free will just because we exist.  Not so.  God is a Lover.  He loves a humble heart.  He will resist everything else.  Do not be fooled.  He will resist you. He is completely able to keep us from enjoying the things that we put before Him.  In fact, our prayers should be that all things that are not of Him will produce a bitter taste in our mouths, that our hearts would not be captured by the deception of sin.  All things that are not of Him would dry up.  If our decisions and thoughts do not humble us and cause us to walk softly before men it is not God.  Our enemy wants us to inflate the image of our own righteousness, then he wants to help us fall from our conceptions of our own righteousness, and then he wants to condemn us so that we feel guilty.  Guilt is a function of a conception of self righteousness.  

Last Friday I had an experience.  I walked towards the time clock and swiped my card at 5:00 pm and I had this feeling rise up.  It was the feeling of being single.  I did not feel alone at all.  I felt single.  The feeling was one that said, "Its Friday, I can do whatever I want!"  I imagined my freedom and it made me feel strong.  I can go out and entertain whoever I want to entertain.  I can sleep next to whomever I want...Utter foolishness!!!  God will judge that attitude with great judgement.  He resists the proud!  That feeling is called the pride of life.  God has a destiny for us.  This destiny is that we would love Him and that we would follow Him.  His destiny for us is that we would walk in the ways of His heart.  In no case is God's desire for me to feel like I can sleep next to the person of my choice on any given Friday night.  This is complete foolishness.  God expects us to live by what He has made very clear.  We will be judged by our actions if we do not.

God has never changed!  God has changed His covenants with man.  In all cases He has replaced one covenant with one that is superior.  All of these covenants have been covenants of faith.  In fact, the Law (Torah) was a law of love.  God so loved his people that He put in place a law to protect the integrity of the individual within community.   For instance:

Exodus 21

And if a man hits the eye of his servant or the eye of his maid so that it is destroyed, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.  And if he knocks out his manservant’s tooth or his maidservant’s tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake. 

God cares about His people.  He cares about people.

(1)If a man leaves a pit open or digs a pit and does not cover it and an ox or a donkey falls into it, The owner of the pit shall make it good; he shall give money to the animal’s owner, but the dead beast shall be his. 

(2)If fire breaks out and catches so that the stacked grain or standing grain or the field be consumed, he who kindled the fire shall make full restitution. 

(3)If a man delivers to his neighbor a donkey or an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep and it dies or is hurt or driven away, no man seeing it, Then an oath before the Lord shall be required between the two that the man has not taken his neighbor’s property; and the owner of it shall accept his word and not require him to make good the loss.  But if it is stolen when in his care, he shall make restitution to its owner

(4)And if a man borrows anything of his neighbor and it gets hurt or dies without its owner being with it, the borrower shall make full restitution. 

(5)If a man seduces a virgin not betrothed and lies with her, he shall surely pay a dowry for her to become his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equivalent to the dowry of virgins. 

God loves people.  

(6)if you ever take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, you shall give it back to him before the sun goes down;  For that is his only covering, his clothing for his body. In what shall he sleep? When he cries to Me, I will hear, for I am gracious and merciful. 

In the 1st example, for the sake of an eye taken in anger God grants freedom for the eye.  God so carefully protects His people that He put forth significant value on a man or woman's eye. 

In the 2nd example, God is suggesting that a man's irresponsibility to be aware of his own actions be accounted for.  If he is being lax and starts a fire, then He must pay for his lack of awareness of the consequence of His actions.  He is responsible for his lack of regard for his affect on others. 

The 3rd example is a matter of happenstance when no one is guilty of action but possibly inaction.  In this case to preserve peace they are required to be honest before God and trust the word of the oath.  If the man had accepted responsibility for the object, by an acknowledgement of words, then he must pay even though it may not have been a direct result of his action, but is bound by his own words to accept responsibility in the exchange of words between neighbors.

The 4th example is like the third except that the request was made by the neighbor to allow him to be responsible for the protection of the object for the benefit of his own while in his use.  In this case a conscientious individual asks another for an extension of grace and that grace is given to help the one who asked.  When it dies, if the owner is not with it, the borrower must pay.  

The 5th example is like the 4th in that a conscientious individual has a desire for something that he desires and by conscious decision uses his faculties to seduce a virgin that he is not betrothed to and she obliges.  In this case, it then becomes his responsibility to perform the duty that is required from those who seduce, to accept the one whom he chose and to provide and protect them.  Of course to protect the one seduced, he allows for input of the father.  If her father says no on all cases, presuming that the man is unfit for the task of loving and protecting his beloved daughter, then he must still pay.  This is a bit like the irresponsibility of starting a fire and allowing the things of value to burn due to one's lack of awareness in example 2.  

In example 6 it seems to really tie it all together.  If someone comes to you in need, asking for something of value to borrow and one agrees to extend grace but requires something of value in return because of the risk involved for the gracious one, that he realize that he is also a man a man in need and that he return the collateral as a symbol of God's provision for them both.  In this scenario, the thing of value that was lent was of great value to both individuals.  Both of these men were in need.  The one who was in the position to lend was then responsible to let go of the fear of loss and trust God so as to protect the integrity and honor of the man in need.  

This last example is so powerful.  God cares about all men and in all cases is fair.  He expects us to look after each other and the things that are valuable to humanity.  An eye is an eye. We all value our eyes.  We all value the things we work for.  We all value our  pride.  We value the things that we have held as treasures.  When are lazy and live our lives as if none of these things matter God holds us responsible.  If I feel, the pride of life, that I can sleep with someone because I need something of value (acceptance, love, physical validation) then God requires that I pay.  If I start a fire and it burn's another, then I must pay.  If my neighbor leaves something of value to them in my protection, then I am responsible for honoring the agreement, even if there were not a real contract made.  It is the social contract....the contract of the heart that God protects.  None of these transactions above were contracts of pen and paper.  God cares about the heart.  He cares about the integrity and honor of individuals. We cannot expect to come before God and be accepted by Him if we do not honor His heart.  We must celebrate His love.  We must have courage and trust Him that following Him that He will bless us. 

We cannot rewrite God's heart.  We cannot spin things to fit our lax notion of what Grace is.  Yes, we are all failed in our attempt to love God and to love others, but this is not an excuse to keep trying to make a blank slate.  He will wash away our sins.  He already has.  It is because He has that He expects us to live by a higher standard.  We are to love one another now because He has loved us and forgiven us.  This life is not set up where we can treat each other with disrespect and then expect to be welcomed into the Kingdom with open arms.  If we are stealing from others to get what we need because we are aware of our debt then all of the gain we bring to pay our debt will be refused.  God is not mocked.  He is very aware of our lives and actions.  He will not be made a fool.  We must in all cases come before Him with nothing and be willing to listen to His words to us.  "The wounds of a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses"

These are examples within the 1st chapter of Exodus after Moses presented the 10 commandments. Theses scriptures are commentaries on the 10.  What does it mean to Love?  What it means to love is that if you make a pledge that you will honor it.  In all of the above cases there is an offender and an offended.  God's aim is to bring peace between the two.  This is not a Kingdom of personal choice.  We get to chose whom we will serve.  If we serve ourselves we will not be accepted or acknowledged other than with a "depart from me I never knew you!"  I can only imagine what that would be like to have a desire to connect with the one you love and be rejected for eternity because of something that could be prevented by a humble heart.  God will forgive us all if we will humble ourselves before Him and accept His demand for more humility.  No act of love has any value to those without humility.  It does not matter if we give up our lives to be burned, without Love it values us nothing.  

The sins that we do not want to repent of are the ones we will pass down to our children.

Our children will take on the realities of how we make decisions and live our lives.

This life is not about you. Your life and decisions are not in a vacuum. What you do and think is apparent.

We need to humble ourselves in the sight of The Lord and He will lift us up .

Only through acknowledgement, and repentance through the grace of God can we break the generational curses on our lives. We need to put the feet of our children on a firm foundation.

Peace Be Still

I may speak in the tongues of men, even angels; but if I lack love, I have become merely blaring brass or a cymbal clanging.  I may have the gift of prophecy, I may fathom all mysteries, know all things, have all faith-enough to move mountains; but If I lack love, I am nothing.  Corinthians 13:1-2

So the road is narrow that leads to Righteousness.  

Before I begin I want to be very clear about who I am.  I am a man.  I was made in the image of God. This man in the image of God has done things, thought things, said things, that are completely at odds with God's ways.  I have at times, and sometimes with frequency, been standing in direct opposition to God's will in my life and the lives of those around me.  These things ought not be so.  They have been so.  I am a lover of God.  I am a broken self-concerned Lover of God.  I can only rejoice in the Love that God has for me!  I am not very good at loving Him.  I am not very good at loving others.  I really want to be, but I am not very good at it.  This reality humbles me.  1 Corinthians 14:1 says, "Pursue Love!"  This is the greatest desire in my spirit.  At times my flesh just wants to, "pursue boredom and dissatisfaction" by doing my own thing.  

This week I had the opportunity to tell someone,  "I am a man of integrity a man who wants to pursue love."  This is true, God is doing a great work in me but, "Any man who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor 10:12).  Lets not think too highly of ourselves.  

I want to be a friend of the Bridegroom.   I want to be a man who encourages the Bride of Christ to be a passionate lover of God.  I want Jesus to come back to get a bride who is so in love with Him.  That she would have a longing heart!  When God comes back to get us we want to be found having longing hearts.  We want to be found seeking him in the secret places of our hearts. We want to be found pursuing love.  If God came tonight how would He find us?  Would He find a selfish bride?  Would He find a bride who was mostly concerned with the desires of  the brides of men?  Would He find a foolish woman seeking other lovers?  What would He find?

The way is narrow.  

The road to being God's Bride is narrow.  It is not a wide road.  If anyone has eyes to see, what one would see is a Church that is on a wide road.  We are a church that is full of syncretism.  We are a church who likes blending within our culture so that we can be a relevant church.  God has zero interest in providing a relevant bride for His Son.  I want to beware of being too negative, but it is very important that we realize that we are in constant danger of missing God if we blend in with what is around us.  

This notion of following God is so important.  I will step out here on a bit of a limb:  If you have been in the presence of God any time recently and you are not getting a warning of what is coming you may want to rethink what you are experiencing.  Popular Christianity has no value in the Kingdom of God.  Tweets and all the little Christian ways of standing up are of zero consequence.  Please keep tweeting.  Please keep sharing God's word!  Please keep being aware of our Creator.

Above all these things, "Pursue Love!"  Love is something that is deep.  Love is something that is beyond the nature of man to stumble upon.  Love will bring great anguish to your heart because as soon as you see it you will see a world that is so deprived. One that is deceived by the power of sin.  We are to be like Jesus and have joy more than our companions, yet we will have a sorrow that moves us to prayer and moves us to walk in humility before God and men.  

This year I fell in love.  I met a woman who spoke to a part of my heart that I had not been able to get at for quite some time.  It was a part of me that was put there by God Himself.  My experience with this woman quickly led me to a bit of understanding of death and the vapor that our lives are.  I would look into her eyes and see before me all the great things that we would get to experience with each other and how we would become one.  I kept thinking, "we are going to die one day."  This thought gave me such great courage.  I didn't want to die, but I knew I would.  I knew we would eventually fade from this world as well as the memories of who we were.

The thought that I would only have a relatively short time to experience this beautiful woman really encouraged me to try to be present in every moment.  I wanted to experience all that God had for me in that relationship.  I wanted to experience the love, the pain, the children, the excitement of pursuing God together, the humanness of hospital visits, and the joy of traveling to peaceful places where we could just experience peace of God in each other's presence.  This is what the notion of death did for me.  We must be aware that this life is not what we were created for.  We were created for an eternal life.  The reality that this is just a moment in time will make this moment so much more rewarding, and it will help us make decisions in this moment that are eternal.  The fleeting pleasures of the pride of life will steal everything that God has ever desired to give to us.  Don't let it happen.  

Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.  Love never ends.  

Advice.  Be careful who you listen to.  The road is narrow.  Only the things that resonate with the heart of God should we entertain.  God is very different than we are.  We should not spend the majority of our lives consulting Christian rules of thumb.  We should spend the majority of our lives communing with God.  God will always lead us to having great love and compassion for those who cause frustration in our lives.   I don't really have a firm grasp on this yet I know this is where God is leading His bride.  God leads His Bride with peace that passes all understanding.  

There is not a thing in this world that cannot be forgiven.  There is not a thing in this world that God does not expect us to forgive.  We are to continually extend grace to those who have offended us.  I am not fully aware of how this will challenge me in my life, but there is not one thing that God does not expect me forgive.  I will love you.  God has called me to love you.  I can do nothing less.  

Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not gloat over other people's sins but takes delight in the truth.  Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.  Love never ends.  

Corinthians 13: 4-8

This reminds me of two of my favorite people.  The message is one that we need to keep at the front of our minds and hearts as we move back and forth before of the sons of men. 

This moment is brought to you by,

If

If we do not let God reveal to us the pain in our lives so he can bring us freedom, we will avoid it and it will rule our behaviors and destroy our hearts. Pain will cause us to tear down our own houses with our own hands, it will turn our hearts into snares. The process of avoiding the work of God in the deep parts of our hearts will bring deception into our lives and establish demonic strongholds that bind us. It is for freedom that Christ came to set us free. There is always great love to experience when we confess the truth. We must confess that we are broken and in need of love and forgiveness. The is greatest joy that we can have is to have the heart of God.  This heart is only conveyed to those who seek it with thier whole hearts and are willing to humble themselves in pursuit of it.  It is the greatest joy.  All other fleeting pleasures are momentary and ultimately diminish our experience and capture our hearts. The worst thing that a human can experience is to be in slavery, like the Hebrews in Egypt, and to be offered freedom but desire the old way because it was familiar.  We will miss God entirely if we are not aware of His complete jealousy over our hearts.

We need to be willing to fight for each other's hearts like Christ fought for the heart of his bride.  Only love is accepted currency in His kingdom.  We can not pick and chose if we will love or not and expect to have good results.  Please honor your friends with love and the willingness to support the work of God in thier lives, even if it comes as a cost to you.

The only thing that fails is not-love.


Love never fails. Love bears all, believes all, hopes all, and endures all. 

I will trust in You

I have been trying my hardest to be a man of integrity and openness.  I believe in hope though I see great resistance to it in this world.  I have really tried.  I know that I fail, but when I fail I get up and ask for forgiveness from those I hurt.  I am not innocent by any stretch, but sometimes I feel like I am a bit naive.  In all my relationships I have tried to bring hope.   I see beauty and am committed to it.   I know that I will get what I desire.  Living with hope can be such a challenge due to constant confrontation with things against the object of hope.  When I look around most of what I see is broken relationships and living that is so much lower than what we were designed for.  I see this in the lives of my friends, in my life.  I want God to break in and deliver us. The hardest part for me as a man is realizing that my desire to see God manifest in the lives of those that I love does not mean that I will see this in a time that  suits my desire.  Some of us will give our hearts to God 30 years from now.  This is a success.  It is a success that is hard for me to accept.  The person that I love and wish I could give my heart to may not embrace the love that God is allowing to be extended to them.  Love is frequently rejected.  Jesus was rejected.  He was the most loving man to walk in the earth and very few accepted His love.  He never hurt anyone and only had love.  How much worse for us that actually hurt people and still try to extend love.  The scripture says, "they will know us by our love for each other."  I am hurting.  

Ecclesiastes 7:3  Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made good.

My countenance is sad.  My countenance is sad but my heart is being made good.  I asked God to conform me into His image and He is letting me learn obedience through suffering.  I said that I wanted to be a man of love.  Being a man of love means that we get to love with open hands and when our love is not accepted we still maintain love.  We do not act in anger.  If I give my heart to a woman and she is not ready for it I must maintain love.  I must know that my life is in God's hands.  It is terribly painful to be human.  The only hope is that we can experience the pain with a heart of love.  When it hurts we just say that it hurts.  Yes, I am hurting.  Please God give me a heart of love!  Our lives are a vapor.  We are only here for a moment.  I want to live my moment with hope and joy.  I want to enjoy my lot.  I want to love the wife of my youth.  I want to give good gifts to my children.  I want to be a father.  I want to be a source of life.  I want to give.  I want to find treasure in the heart of God and bring it back to give to those who are worthy of the honor of being given the good gifts of God.  This is the deepest desire of my heart.  To be a man of love. 

Ecclesiastes also says that "two is better than one."  I want to be two.  I want a friend who wants to go on the great journey of life with me.  I want a friend that sees my heart and who God is making in me.  I want to encourage her in who God is making her.  Our lives are a vapor.  Live with a heart of integrity.  Don't run from a sadness of countenance.  Let your heart be made good.  It has been because of my sadness of countenance that I am able to see you for who you are.  I love you.  Please take this to heart.  I want to see your eyes.  

                  My dove, hiding in holes in the rock, 

in the secret recesses of the cliff, 

let me see your face and hear your voice; 

for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely

                  How beautiful you are, my love!

                  How beautiful you are! 

                        Everything about you is beautiful, my love; 

                        you are without a flaw. 

Not my will be done, but Yours God.  My heart will trust in You.  Though You slay me I will trust in You.  

your story

Every once and a while I look at my life and wonder where I have come from and where I am going.  Sometimes I see the horizon and great joy wells up within my heart, yet I know that this too shall pass.  I see beauty that transforms the heart and enriches my life with hope.  I see it and am humbled by the great splendor that this earth is wrapped in leading me to truth. There is nothing to fear.  These things are barely tangential reflections of what is to come.  We will be loved.  We will be like the sparrow hopping in the grass, moved by the spirit.  He is clothed in glory.  It is a certain type of glory.  All things have their own honor and glory that can be revealed to us if we have open hearts and minds to see it.  The nature of glory is that it needs a receptor.  A deaf man cannot hear.  A blind man cannot see.  A hardened heart cannot glory.

As I get older and learn a little bit more from my experience, much of which is painful, I am graced with the desire to not judge men.  I will call things out and will stand for honesty and integrity, but I will not judge a man. I am a man.  I am like all men.  I am like you.  Broken just as you are.  With this in mind I will tell you that we have the same story.

I have always been very aware of myself and what I imagined for my life to become.  I had a story that I wanted to write.  I took my creative genius into real life and to my dismay found that the characters in my story were real people with their own ways and choices.  My characters had free will!  I was not prepared for this.  I had been very keen to situate myself to avoid things that I didn't want to be part of my story.  I tried to include things that I did want to be in my story.  I discovered that my story was a romantic story.  It was a story that was sensationalized, idealized, and decidedly not real.  I wanted to present my readers with something that was beautiful, intentional, courageous, and yet humble.  Not exactly sure where the idea came from that I was a different specimen of humanity or that I was someone that should be a presentation for others.  It was not until the last few years that I began to discern that "my" life (the pride of life) had no value to God.  It was my death that He wanted.  My celebrity was of no value to God.  He did not want "people like me" to show others what a good story was.  God did not need me.  In fact my lack of integrity did not hinder God's work in this world.  I was of no relevance to the status of the Kingdom of Heaven.  I know this may seem contrary to what may seem right or normal as far as conversations go,  but what God wanted from people like me was to give up trying to be or do anything.  He wanted me to realize that as far as righteousness and integrity I was a complete failure and would never be a success.  His purposes  for men is that we die and fall to the ground.  His desire is that after death He would raise men that have a heart for Him and that will allow God to be their lives.  His purpose is that He confirm His story within us.  (I do not mean that God does not value us, we are His greatest treasures. I mean that we are of no consequence without bowing our knee to His love.  We must surrender to Love.)

If we are aware of ourselves we will make decisions that reflect this.  We will strive to present an image.  God has already written our story.  We all have differences that will give us little nuances, beautiful nuances (I love your nuances), but our story has already been written.  The story is very simple.  It is a beautiful story.

Due to nature, we hated God.  We being animals, yet ones undoubtedly different than the others, would rather live like the others and live by the law of nature.  In this state God made Himself known.  His ways stirred in our hearts.  In community He gave us the ability to know Him.  In community and the conflicts that it presented us He allowed us to be tested.  For fear of being alone we followed the crowd.  The crowd sold us into slavery.  Together, the people of God, in our slavery and collective consciousness were bound to hopelessness.  It was in this moment that God decided to provide deliverance.  He not only wanted to deliver us from slavery, but more importantly deliver us into the promised land.  He performed great works in our lives and led us forth into the desert because He wanted to speak to our hearts.  It was in this desert for only a few days that we turned our hearts toward our old natures. We desired to be back where things were normal and we accused God of not caring for us.  We became bitter because we did not think that He had fresh water for us to drink.  We were more comfortable trusting in our own cisterns.  It was three days into our deliverance that we began to get our own ideas about what was right for our lives.  Due to this unwillingness to trust we began to wander around in the desert for 40 years.  We were following God yet going nowhere.  It was due to God's heart that He decided to let us take the promise that He had spoken to us 40 years prior.  When we saw all the land and what it had to offer, our hearts rejoiced.  Life and love was finally just around the corner.  Within moments as our hearts were celebrating hope we learned that there were Giants in the land.  Our hearts grew faint because all that God had put us through in the desert.  We were finally ready to lie down by the still waters and there were Giants! We were small in our own eyes.  We would have written an entirely different story.  This story kind of sucks.  We didn't deserve this. We said, "When will God quit being a chump and just leave us alone?!"  Here we are disheartened and we just wanted to relax and quit trying, and God says to take the land.  We were done with the games.  This was a joke.  We said in our hearts, "Why don't you take the land.  You are the one with this whole plan and have yet once cared to ask if we really wanted to be part any of this.  To be honest I think it is a bit childish.  As for me, I will write my own story.  I will at least write one that is fair and just."  

Because God cares about us and doesn't want all of our physical moments to be moments of misery He led us into the land.  It was all that could be desired. We built houses for ourselves.  We built treasuries for our gold.  We built silos for our grain.  The word of God, the Bread of Life, started to lose its appeal and need. In fact the Giants had ways of life that were enticing.  They loved the law of nature.  They lived like the other animals.  There seemed to be a very strong feeling in our flesh to their approach to life.  Maybe they had it better?  Who was to say that we should be constricted by these Laws of God?  Does He really need to be so arrogant and want us to worship Him and only Him?  Why was a good God so intolerant?  That didn't seem right.  We set out and made our own way.  God only left us lonely and hurting.  This new sense of pride and value and self responsibility seemed so much better.  We didn't realize that it was God who gave us all of these things.  He was also giving us over to debased minds because we did not want to retain Him in our knowledge.  We had begun to lose our receptors for beauty.  Our hearts began to become hardened. We learned how to move on.  We learned how to betray our hearts.  We went after our lovers and pursued them.  They turned their backs on us and we found ourselves empty.Our hearts became hard and we could not feel one way or the other.  Our lovers were no longer interesting.  God was standing by the whole time.  He in all of His Glory did not override our free will.  He let our hearts fail us.  If in these moments we were able to muster a heart of sorrow to seek to humble ourselves before Him, to honor Him with our acknowledgement, He gave us grace.  

He stooped down and picked up this mess of a human and breathed life back into this dead body.  He said, "I want you, you are Mine."  He was so excited to have you back.  He wanted you to be His bride.  He wanted to have your heart.  He wanted to spend all His time with you.  He clothed you in Glory.  He poured our His best for you.  He wanted to party with you for eternity. There was nothing that you had done nor would do that would ever separate you from His love.  He loved your smile.  He loved your gait.  He loved your heart.  He saw the tears of gratefulness at the corner of your eye when He looked at you and asked you to feed His sheep.  He wanted to raise you up in Honor to sit at His right side and let all of creation know that you were His.  Not once ever did your former ways cause His heart to sink.  You were made beautiful by His love.  

This is your story.  I know it is a paraphrase and that there will be different sub-plots and idiosyncrasies.  Your story will be beautiful because the King cares for you.  We, the Bride of Christ, all have the same story.  We were purchased by a price. This price was more than we will ever know in this life.  We need to be aware of the story so that we can interact with it properly.  The story is that God will take us into the desert to speak to our hearts.  It is in this desert where He desires to reveal Himself to us. If we let Him, He will honor us with Glory.  We will be children of the King. We will be the Bride of Christ.  We will walk in a stature and confidence that comes from the things that He spoke to our hearts in the desert.  God only takes those into the desert that He desires to speak to.  We chose how we will respond to Him.  

I am inclined to romantic thinking and it is sometimes good to be grounded.  God will transform your life if you will let Him.  Let Him.  I will try to do the same.  

My blog is a presentation of some of my thoughts as incomplete as they might be.  To be fair, I have a friend who has given me some of the ideas that I have been sharing over the last months, I am very grateful to her.  I will not give her name because I would rather let her know in a secret way that she is valued and appreciated.  I have great friends and whatever is good in my life is a result of God giving them to me and challenging me by their lives and ideas.  I want God to continue to encourage me to stand up and be the man He has created me to be.  I have had the honor of being able to step up to that a bit at the encouragement of those God put in my life.  I am nothing without Christ and I am alone without you.  I love you and appreciate you.  

to be vulnerable

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
- C.S. Lewis

I share some ideas about this soon.  it is great to be vulnerable. 

...

Actually, who am I kidding.  Being vulnerable is terrifying. The only thing worse than feeling vulnerable is being vulnerable and the person that you were vulnerable to discarding you.  The good news is that we must try to be open or we will shrivel up being alone forever.

Jesus is coming back for a Bride that is clothed in His Splendor.  He is coming back for a Bride that is captivated by His gaze.  In Hosea God says concerning His Bride, "But now I am going to woo her.  I will bring her out to the desert and I will speak to her heart."  It is something of a great honor for the Creator of the Universe to speak to our hearts.  This scripture breaks something inside of me.  I, in the same instant have a fear yet a strong desire for my heart to be revealed to me.  God is full of courage.  It is a silly thing to say, yet so true.  God comes to me, a man with free will, and He wants to speak to my heart directly.  In the presence of God is where I find strength.  It is in God's presence that I find God!  There is only one thing that my heart desires and that is to be fully God's.  On the day that He comes to get His bride I want to be honored and joyed to see Him.  I want Him to see a bit of Himself in me.  I am honored and joyed right now...in this very moment.  It is so comforting to know that God's purposes in my life will not be hindered.  He will have my heart.  His one aim, to woo His bride.  I know that I am part of the bride of Christ.  I also feel a very strong desire to be one who encourages and protects His bride.  Yesterday, at work, I was praying and my heart broke and tears came welling into my eyes as I experienced His Presence and what seemed to be a calling for me to share His heart with His bride.  I felt like I was given a message of great love for His bride.  I was having a time trying to keep my voice strong as I would talk to customers because God "spoke to my heart".  He was wooing me.  He was inviting me to trust Him to give Him my life.  I will not share the message now because I want to be patient with it.  I share this just to encourage you.  I am a man like you.  I am an example of the great Love that God has for his children.  He has taken me and put a desire in my heart that will not be satisfied until I see Him standing by His bride and see Him Glorified throughout all the earth.   This desire brings life to me and honors me.  It expands and breaths life in areas that were once dead.  I am a new creation in Christ, as are you.  We can take great joy knowing that He is taking us into the desert.  It is there that He wants to speak to our hearts.  It is there where He plans to set his vineyards in hope.  He calls those things that are not as though they are.  He calls us Loved.

gateway to hope

We are all aware of greatness. We are all aware of what seems to be greatness. We make very little distinction between the two. We see what we see, we see the things that are presented to us and we associate or disassociate with these things. It could be a president, it could be a homeless man, it could be an actor, it could be someone's photo on a website, it could be a familial relationship, it could be anything and in fact is all things. I know that I am prone to the danger of idealizing other times, but I realize that I have never lived in other times...i do not want to idealize. Having said this we are now in a culture, a globalist world culture, that is inundated with seeing. In our national culture we are bombarded with images that encourage us to buy. Most of these images are aimed at causing people to associate with. We are like the couple that just bought the new Subaru going on a trip in our Burberry gear laughing and capturing our lives on instagram. We push the myth of what life is by filtering it through a lens of presentation. We present our lives in the way that life has been presented to us.  Through the manipulation of reality we put forth an image of ourselves that we deem presentable. We are trapped in this cycle. Unfortunately Television, Magazines, and all the new avenues for marketing the idea of fulfillment through being seen is what directs the minds, and consequently hearts, of the people in our nation.

 I quit watching television in 1995. I was at home sick from school and I was watching Cheech Marin on Sesame Street. As funny as it may have been I just quit. I realized that this box was the main thing that put people on the same page. A man may have a hard time understanding what he hears. This same man may have a better chance at understanding what he reads. A man is convinced by what he sees. We know that what we see is real. Put a man in a situation and then ask him what he saw and he will be convinced that he knows what was happening in that situation. Ask the other men in the situation and they will be equally convinced. We are convinced by what we "see".

 The scripture says, "He who has ears to hear let him hear!" All of human life is an expression of what is seen. Even our language is a construction that helps us describe what we see. The things that can not be seen are described in ways that are associated with vision. 2 Corinthians 5 says, "we walk by faith, not by sight." This takes us right back to the biblical account of this issue of vision in the first pages concerning Adam and Eve.

"The serpent said to the woman, “It is not true that you will surely die; 5 because God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it had a pleasing appearance and that the tree was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her; and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths." -- Genesis 3

 This issue of vision and personal judgement, not informed by hearing the word of God, is the source of all pain in the world. We are aware of greatness. We see the pleasing appearance of the photos we let speak to our hearts on social networks and we seek to be wise and choose to identify with what we see. We strive to be seen and validated by our images that we present, we make our decisions based on whatever we think will secure these lives and images. We put on fig leaves to cover the parts that we are ashamed of so that others only see a part of who we are. We all know that those things that we cover, in the right context are some of the more honorable things to share with the one you love.

 In order to walk in love we have to walk by faith. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (rom 10:17) We can not love by what we see. We have to love by what we hear from God. God calls those things that are not as though they are (rom 4:17) This calling is a calling by name. He speaks specifically to individuals by name and encourages us to step up to His offer of life. We have to be attuned to what God is saying. If we are not listening to what God is saying to us about ourselves or about others we will come under a curse. This curse is the condemnation of sin. "It is for lack of knowledge that My people perish." (hosea 4:6)

 It has come to my attention over the last year that mixing systems is surefire way to lose the gifts of God.  A curse can be the thing in itself. For a man who is cheating on his wife, all other things aside, the curse is that he is sleeping with another woman! This is the curse! You are not sleeping with the one that is yours! Of course it gets worse from there. When we mix the system of the law of sin with the law of grace we get mixed results. No one can serve two masters. When we chose sin we get the curse of sin. Sin is the curse! In the new testament Jesus talks about not putting new wine in old wine skins. The co2 created by the yeast in the fermentation process will expand the wine skin. Old wineskins have been stretched and cannot survive new fermentation or they will break. This is concerning the law of grace vs the law of sin.  We cannot mix bags and expect to have good results. We think that we can obey part of God's ways and chose others for ourself in our pursuit of a pleasing appearance and desire for self-righteous wisdom.

God desires to bless us. It is His one aim, that He would have our hearts and He could give us all the gifts of being His. We can subvert this process by introducing an allegiance to chose sin when we want to and chose God when we want to. I am not wanting to beat up on any of us. Romans makes it very clear that we are caught in the middle of a transient experience and that God will redeem us from this transience. We need to have grace for each other and call out the honor and integrity in each other. I am not saying if we sin it is over, but rather that we need to seek God and let Him  speak to this subversive part of ourselves, where we have the ability to chose based on our own knowledge. If God tells me to love someone and I say, "I don't want to. They are not worthy of my love. They are not to be trusted. I must be wise and walk to the other side of the road, I know You have love for them and will send a Samaritan in due time." then we might as well be like Abel saying, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God is not impressed with us. There is nothing new under the sun. The situation that you or I am in is very well navigated. Our opinions of each other are not new. It has all been done before. God judges justly. He looks at the heart. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. (james 4:6) There is honor in being disarmed by love. There is honor in coming to God in our filthy rags and letting Him put His arms around us. We are to do this for each other. We can be like the wife of Hosea if we allow ourselves to accept the love that God desires to extend towards us in spite of our sin:

Rebuke your mother, rebuke her; 

for she isn’t my wife, and I’m not her husband. 

She must remove her whoring from her face, 

and her adulteries from between her breasts. 

⁵⁽³⁾  Otherwise, I will strip her naked 

and place her as she was the day she was born, 

make her like a desert, place her like a dry land 

and kill her with thirst. 

⁶⁽⁴⁾  I will have no pity on her children, 

for they are children of whoring— 

⁷⁽⁵⁾  their mother prostituted herself, 

she who conceived them behaved shamelessly; 

she said, ‘I will pursue my lovers, 

who give me my food and water, 

wool, flax, olive oil and wine.’ 

⁸⁽⁶⁾  Therefore, I will block her way with thorns 

and put up a hedge so she can’t find her paths. 

⁹⁽⁷⁾  She will pursue her lovers but not catch them. 

She will seek them but won’t find them. 

Then she will say, ‘I will go 

and return to my first husband; 

because things were better for me then 

than they are now.’ 

¹⁰⁽⁸⁾  For she doesn’t know it was I who gave her 

the grain, the wine and the oil; 

I who increased her silver and gold, 

which they used for Ba‘al. 

¹¹⁽⁹⁾  So I will take back my grain at harvest-time 

and my wine in its season; 

I will snatch away my wool and flax, 

given to cover her naked body. 

¹²⁽¹⁰⁾  Now I will uncover her shame, 

while her lovers watch; 

and no one will save her from me. 

¹³⁽¹¹⁾  I will end her happiness, 

her festivals, Rosh-Hodesh, and shabbats, 

and all her designated times. 

¹⁴⁽¹²⁾  I will ravage her vines and fig trees, 

of which she says, ‘These are my wages 

that my lovers have given me.’ 

But I will turn them into a forest, 

and wild animals will eat them. 

¹⁵⁽¹³⁾  I will punish her for offering incense 

on the feast days of the ba‘alim, 

when she decked herself with her earrings and jewels, 

pursuing her lovers and forgetting me,” says Adonai. 

¹⁶⁽¹⁴⁾  “But now I am going to woo her— 

I will bring her out to the desert 

and I will speak to her heart. 

¹⁷⁽¹⁵⁾  I will give her her vineyards from there 

and the Akhor Valley as a gateway to hope. 

She will respond there as she did when young, 

as she did when she came up from Egypt. 

¹⁸⁽¹⁶⁾  “On that day,” says Adonai 

“you will call me Ishi [My Husband]; 

you will no longer call me Ba‘ali [My Master]. 

¹⁹⁽¹⁷⁾  For I will remove the names 

of the ba‘alim from her mouth; 

they will never again be mentioned by name. 

²⁰⁽¹⁸⁾  When that day comes, I will make 

a covenant for them 

with the wild animals, the birds in the air 

and the creeping things of the earth. 

I will break bow and sword, 

sweep battle from the land, 

and make them lie down securely. 

²¹⁽¹⁹⁾  I will betroth you to me forever; 

yes, I will betroth you to me 

in righteousness, in justice, 

in grace and in compassion; 

²²⁽²⁰⁾  I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, 

and you will know Adonai. 

²³⁽²¹⁾  When that day comes, 

I will answer,” says Adonai 

“I will answer the sky, 

and it will answer the earth; 

²⁴⁽²²⁾  the earth will answer the corn, wine and oil, 

and they will answer Yizre‘el [God will sow]. 

²⁵⁽²³⁾  I will sow her for me in the land. 

I will have pity on Lo-Ruchamah [Unpitied]; 

I will say to Lo-‘Ammi [Not-My-People], ‘You are my people’; 

and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ ” 

My favorite part:

But now I am going to woo her.  I will bring her out to the desert and I will speak to her heart.  I will give her vineyards from there and the Achor Valley as a gateway to hope. 

I am a man alone. In a lot of ways we are all alone. There is this inner part of ourselves that speaks to our hearts and minds making decisions throughout the day. It is the part of ourselves that is dedicated to God. It is the part of ourselves that we need the most healing in. Is the part of ourselves that we will offer to people and things that promise to relieve the lonely moments. This place within ourselves is the place that is most important to our well being. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life." I have in the past not been diligent to watch over my heart and have had some painful experiences that could have been avoided If I had let this lonely part of myself come to God with honesty confessing that loneliness. It is so easy to just let this part of ourselves seek temporary resolve in cathexis with friends, events, work, etc...I know the process well. I am a man who wants that part of myself to be less alone. I want a friend. I want a lover. I want an adventurer who can look me in the eyes and give me all of who they are, hopes, dreams, fears, desires, and willingness to keep trying, to fight for love. Hosea 4:6 says, "my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." I share this because I believe it is very important for us to look within ourselves and listen to what we are being told by the lonely part of ourselves. There in silence with our longing, what are we being told? Due to our life experiences we are full of fears and doubts and we have common themes and patterns that are in direct opposition to God's work in our lives. These things are lies. These are lies that tell us what we are, that tell us what we are not. I have little time at the moment, so I leave with this. You are worthy of Honor. This worth comes from God's desire to Honor you. Please seek the Knowledge of God as in Ephesians 1:17-20. We need to know God's heart for us. Life is safe in His arms. Life is worth letting go of the lies that have directed us thus far. I want to be your friend in the journey. There is joy in being loved in community and in being honest and encouraging. We need to be free. Jesus came to set us free. Be free! John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...