Transference: (n) the act or process of transferring

I went on my first ministry trip with Bill Johnson to Austin a couple of weekends ago. And I have to say this school is genius. Sending students out with the pastors is of so much benefit, they get a good team of people willing to pay to go with them, and we get to see that we are capable of doing the things we’ve been learning about, which in turn, is enough to change our lives from there on out. Genius.

Bill spoke at two different venues and we got practice giving out words of knowledge and praying for the sick. The second church was packed out every meeting, and I feel like I know something got deposited in Texas that’s going to keep growing. It might not be something you can feel or see or even sense, but I do think it is an actual substance that was added to what was already there. And I think God can release more wherever he wants, but I also think there is something important about recognizing that as the Body of Christ, we carry something that we can deposit as we go, and that sometimes that could be the only way the thing is given.

We can imagine God’s given us satchel or a backpack, and then, off we go. If a person never looked inside, they wouldn’t know they what they had to offer as they encountered people along the way. Lets say you meet someone along the road who is hungry, if you didn’t know there was food in your pack, you wouldn’t open it up and give it away. Or if someone was wandering lost along the road, if you knew you had a map, you could give directions. Or a woman catches your eye and you know you have something she needs, you can reach into that bag, pull out the diamond necklace and place it around her neck. If the backpack is yours, then of course, you also have access to its contents. If you were hungry, lost, or in need, you and those around you have the resources available to take action for your benefit. It’s all yours even if you never opened the bag to look inside, and you’re carrying it with you regardless of whether or not you ever use it. In the same way that you’d be physically depositing something with each person if you knew you had it to offer, I think we can spiritually deposit something as we go and give of what we’ve been given. After you leave the necklace with the woman, she posses something she could not have had unless it was given to her. After you pray for someone, it is possible that they can posses something of hope, joy, love, God, that they did not have before you gave it to them. It’s easy to see a physical transference, but sometimes more difficult to imagine this happening as we pray for people and action is taking place in an arena we can’t see; but I think it’s the same principle.

We had to do a report on a historical revival last month, and one of the characteristics of the revival we chose had to be that it displayed God’s power through, forgive the churchy language, “miracles, signs, and wonders.” I did my report about the Great Awakening, crediting people feeling the weighty presence of God as the signs and wonders portion. (There was evidence of a few healings in the Methodist movement under John Wesley, so, it counts!) While I was researching I noticed something about the spread of revival in this time that was really interesting to me. Though revival was busting out all over the western world, there was a pattern of connection that reminded me of what happened when revival broke out in Toronto. From what I understand about the process of renewal (the term used to describe the transformation that came when revival broke out) that happened at Bethel, we can trace it to the outpouring (again, a very cultural word) at the Vineyard Airport Church in Toronto.

Basically, John Wesley, leading the Methodist movement in England, had his major God experience in Moravian prayer meeting. The Moravians had been praying for what they called a baptism of love, and when God showed up for them, it started a prayer meeting, where people were praying 24/7 for 100 years. Wesley was there with another guy named John Whitfield, who later traveled to the colonies and ministered with Jonathan Edwards, who was the main guy in the American Great Awakening. Now, this was not a healing revival, it was a lot about conviction, repentance, and realizing God was still around. I don’t feel like I know this strongly enough to argue it, but it does seem like there is a connection to the physical moves of people and what they can carry from one place to another in the spirit. As I read about Wesley and Whitfield’s experience at the Moravian chapel, I was reminded of the spread of the Toronto Blessing. The Moravian cry tied into God igniting a fire in Wesley’s heart and was a catalyst for Wesley and Whitfield’s movement. Whitfield tied them all together when he made his way to the colonies to preach with Edwards.

When God showed up in Toronto, the people who came brought something of him with them back to their homes all over the world. A person’s physical presence in that place equipped them with something of God they did not have before. You can trace the God moving as people went to this church and came back to their homes with something they didn’t have before. To say that revival spreads really lends to this idea that a certain something is moving from place to place to place. Bill and Beni Johnson had visited Toronto before the renewal came to Bethel and when I was in fifth grade my dad visited Toronto. I can’t look back and see an immediate impact of that trip, but many times I have wondered how much his physical presence at that place and what could have come back with him has to do with my openness to a supernatural spirit filled lifestyle, something I was never really exposed to and is easy to be offended by. It is interesting to think about how that ‘impartable something of God’ doesn’t just spread randomly. It works in accordance to the movement of the members of the body of Christ. As exciting and empowering as that is it increases our responsibility to look inside our backpacks, to know what we have to offer and to use it. Because even though God can do it however he wants, what he wants just might be for us to use what we’ve been given. And if that’s the case, we hold the responsibility of his kingdom.

Jesus Christ Cosmic Superstar

Hey everybody. This January 15th posting is dedicated to any of you who told me you check my blog over the Christmas break. My quasi-resolution of the year is to post at least once a month, by the fifteenth, thanks to Mrs. Robin Balhman. So, Robin, here's to you!

What I've posted here is a slightly adjusted version of my preaching assignment for second year. I preached in class today and I think my content was a little too much for the 9-11 minutes I was given. I knew that going in to the preparation, but it was something that was interesting to me so I just did it anyway.

I'll start with the disclaimer that this might seem a little crazy to some, and I think that it's not so important that everyone has to care, I just happen to be really fascinated by it.
comments welcome!

Anchor Text:

Colossians 1:15-17 He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or powers, or rulers, or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together.

• Questions I want to answer
• What the heck does this mean, with emphasis on vs. 17?
• Questions about the Poetic Language, what do we do with it?
• These verses are one of the most debated passages of scripture, because of the poetic language, understanding the proper interpretation is difficult. Whats the theological significance.
• Looking at the other instances when scripture is talking about the word, word of truth, worship in spirit and truth, hope that springs from love, by grace, etc. We believe this, because it’s in the bible, but can we grab hold of it and know what it looks like? And how does that affect our lives?
• Two options: (both can be true)
  
• this is beautiful speech about a beautiful God to be taken as a symbolic message to be written upon our hearts and understood by our spirit
• or it is possible to understand these terms in a literal sense:
• Our tools are Science (quantum physics, metaphysics, etc.) paired with knowledge of the kingdom that we get from scripture. So our understanding of the physical world paired with our understanding of God’s kingdom reality.
• These verses support this kind of thinking—Paul references the Heaven and Earth as well as the visible and invisible creation.
• These concepts might be thought of first as opposites but here Paul is bringing them together, as a whole united under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not as a dichotomy of opposing significance but as a unified pair.
• Dual characteristics of a singular reality that is under Jesus
• We are not to divide our worlds lives into separate spheres. Spiritual/material, religious/secular, etc. integrated life with the spirit.
• Example 2: A physical substance creating a spiritual reality or state of being. Vs. 20 “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross”
• Peace is created through the blood, which was shed- not through the act of the shedding of the blood, but the physical blood itself is said to create peace, which is an idea or concept that exists in the Spirit
• Supported by science as well: What the Bleep do We Know, a film about quantum physics, spirituality, etc. a scientist days, “the most solid thing you can say about all this insubstantial matter (nucleus of an atom) is that it’s more like a thought—it’s like a concentrated bit of information. What makes up things are not things, but what makes up things are ideas, concepts, and information.”
• God spoke the world into existence
• It has to be this way: We believe in transportation, the power of the life and death in the tongue (proverbs 18:21) Why does this work?
• Double science of the spirit and physical interacting.
• We believe in transportation, so,
• The visible and invisible are not separate; God has to have created a way for this to happen in the physical world.
• We believe the tongue has the power of life and death, so
• Words, ideas, concepts declared, like Bill answered me in class, become spirit, when they are in the heart of God.
• Spirit has force to act on the world, visible and invisible.
• Mr. Emoto’s experiment –water, thought, word, musical, vibration energy. http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm
• John G Lake talks about the spirit as a substance, that when we pray for people a spirit substance is transferred from person to person—there are still laws in the spirit

• So, if maybe it is possible to dissect a concept like truth or peace in the physical world-- let’s go back to the scripture, thinking about the possibilities of understanding the visible and invisible working together when it’s talking about Jesus—vs. 17
• I think this passage opens up a door to understanding Jesus in a deeper way, in two contexts

• (1) JESUS THE MAN, who we already know from scripture
• (2) Jesus the Logos Word of God—as the CONCEPT of truth revealed within creation.
• Examples of Jesus the man being identified in spiritual terms:
• He does not only say, I am Jesus, born of Mary and of God. He says…
• John 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the father except through me.
• John 8:58 “Before Abraham was born, I am”
• John 1: 1-3, 14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• Logos---the spoken word of God, Jesus Christ
• We can see that Jesus identity is established with him as a physical man and also as a spiritual something—to better understand one or the other, we have to have knowledge of both.
• Paul and John presented Jesus this way on purpose: Comparing Colossians and John
• Colossians and the book of John written in relatively close proximity to each other—maybe 20-30 year difference.
• Written to the province of Asia. So we can assume that the same threads of thought were existing among the people who would be reading these scriptures—
• In response to Early Gnosticism: saying Jesus can’t be man and Spirit as one, because all material is evil, among others
  
• To a gentile population, with a background of pagan religions, and experience with a spirituality separate from the God of Israel
• These authors were appealing to a spiritual experience that their readers could relate to and from there, they go on to declare that this spiritual reality of truth that they perceive is in fact Lord Jesus.
• A person could be experiencing the truth of Jesus and not perceive it as such. In fact, with the levels of truth contained in the physical world, it is very easy to come to messed up conclusions about the truth if you don’t know God or have an understanding of the Kingdom.
• EX: We are all Gods, The universe is God, Truth is subjective to each person
• So why should we care?
• Understanding Jesus in these dual contexts can be a tool for evangelism: In understanding how this is possible—Jesus as a man and a revelation of truth in creation, we can help clarify for unbelievers his identity and their salvation and redemption.
• This is the “how” of the kingdom, it’s a faith builder for me personally. It shows us why the gospel works and that God functions within the systems he’s created, visible and invisible. It helps cement in my heart the identity of Jesus and the purposes of God.
• Something doesn’t have to be explainable to be true, but finding an explanation can be a different way of ‘seeing’ in the spirit.
• After you’ve seen something yourself, it is confirmed in your heart and your faith grows.
• In class, Judy Franklin referenced point zero energy that is within the smallest known part of an atom—very powerful and concentrated energy. What would it mean to think about that energy Jesus Christ himself? Is this heresy? Ah!
• So, when we find ourselves asking, ‘yeah but what does it mean?” lets remember that it is possible to delve into the answers taking into account both the physical and the spiritual worlds and sciences. That understanding both together lends to a better understanding of each in itself and that this is of benefit to our personal faith and also to our ability to communicate the gospel to those who are unaware of it.

2nd Year beginnings

This is a story I started writing last year after my mission trip. I have to say, I don't have the best habit of both starting things, and also finishing them. So even though it's long, it's incomplete. I thought maybe posting some of it would be a good motivation to finish. And I hope to start posting more regularly. If you make it through the whole thing go ahead and know that I'd give you a big smile and a pat on the back.

Modesta

The story I can tell you about Modesta is incomplete. I know how it ended when I walked out of the picture, but it wasn’t finished yet—so I won’t be the one who can tell you how it ended. Even so, it is true. Honestly that’s how so many of these kind of stories are—the ones we don’t see come to an end. Sometimes they become the stories we don’t tell. But we mustn’t sell them short, these kinds of stories. It’s still Jesus and it’s still real, even if every encounter doesn’t end in dancing in the streets, revival in the grocery stores, a singular moment that changes the course of someone’s life, and a testimony that will have a large congregation hanging on every word. This is a story about me too; a singlar moment that changed my life, even though I don’t know how it ended for Modesta. That’s why I want to tell it.

Our trip was comprised of almost constant activity. Loading and unloading, setting up, praying, tearing down, eating, sleeping and then starting all over again. This story takes place on day two of our stay in Tepic, Mexico. We were working primarily with a local church, but also having healing outreaches where we brought in medicine and doctors. The medicine was kind of an advertising ploy to get people to come out so we could pray for them. If they still needed it afterwards, they could see a doctor. In all there were about 50 of us—first and second year students, our leaders and our translators. After breakfast, we all crammed into 4 church vans and bumped down a dusty road, passing green fields and mountains in the distance until we arrived at our destination for the morning—a migrant neighborhood our local group leader called Los Galleros #3. I don’t know what the people who live there call it. The people who live in this place are believers and I’m sure we weren’t the first group of gringos to pile out of beat up vans with our bins of supplies, sunscreen, and plastic bottles filled with filtered water. There was a cement slab with a few shade trees and a line of small square one room brick homes to the right. Further off there was a washing area and a soccer field, we were just at the outermost edge of the neighborhood. The men were off working in the sugar cane fields for the day and several women along with their children hugging at their skirts took a break from their daily chores of cooking and washing to greet us.

Those of us who spoke a bit of Spanish began to explain that we were so pleased to be welcomed into the neighborhood. We told them our plan for the morning: a kids program, we have medicine, and that we want to pray for God to heal those who were sick in the neighborhood—did they know anyone who needed prayer? Anyone who was sick? I told them about some of the miracles we had seen in Tepic already, the man with cataracts, other people with aches and pains who had been healed.

The woman on the end of the line of greeters pointed to a woman sitting in the shade about 10 yards away. “Well, she’s blind. That woman can’t see.”

“She can’t see?”

“No, she can’t see.”

A short pause. Un ratito.

“Hmm. Ok.”

It went something like that.

I think I probably just stood there for a minute, wondering if I should go get someone, wondering if I should wait until we set up our plastic chairs on the slab to start the official event. Mostly just shocked that this was to be my initiation to praying for the sick. Seemed to me like a big first step.

A lot was going on during that short pause. Running through my thoughts in those few seconds was the base of many hours of teaching I’ve been soaking in for the past 6 months, (more like the past year or so if you count the sermons on CD I listened to before moving to Redding), and a story from the night before. A team of a few students had stopped to pray for a man who was missing a leg out on the street. Yes, praying for this man’s leg to be regenerated, restored, to be created. Crazy I know, but things like this have happened. During the course of events they discovered that he had cataracts and could only see about 4 feet in front of him. This equaled another opportunity to pray. After they prayed for his eyes his sight improved dramatically and he was able to discern the number of fingers they were holding up from about 30-35 feet away.

But, picking up where we left off at the pause: I reasoned that God wasn’t waiting around for the plastic chairs and loose structure of our plan for the day to get started with what he wanted to do; it was as good a time as any to have a go at it, as my Australian friend Gavin would have put it. I reassured myself with the thought that it really doesn’t have so much to do with me anyway. And I figured, if Jesus will do it once, he’ll do it again—and, he’s done it a lot more than once.

I think I mumbled something like, “I’d like to meet this woman. Can I meet her?” I must have messed it up a bit in my Spanish because I seemed to confuse the woman I was talking with; but she eventually got my meaning and walked me over to the place where a woman sat with her back slouched in a red plastic lawn chair, hands in her lap, expressionless. As I remember it she looked more empty than anything else. She wore old jeans and a plaid button up sleeveless shirt that showed the hair under her arms. Her long black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and her skin was brown and weathered. I knelt down in front of her and took her hand in my hands. The four women who had come to greet us at the slab also followed behind and created a backdrop of colorful dresses and curious faces.

I guess we had started.

“Hola Senora, me llamo Amy. Soy de los Estados Unidos, y estoy aqui con un grupo. Queremos ohrar para las enfermas para que Dios puede les hace sana. Creamos que Dios es muy feliz y que él no quiere que nadie sufre nunca jamas. Una mujer me dijo que no puedes ver, pero creo que hoy dia, vas a ver…” I said it pretty much just like that, mistakes and all. Basically: Hi. I’m Amy, (Beth doesn’t really have a decent Spanish translation—so I just leave it off.) from the U.S., with a group. We want to pray for God to heal the sick people because we think He’s happy and that He doesn’t want any one to suffer.

Then I told her about the man from the night before and that God wants to heal her. “Como te llamas Senora?

“Modesta.”

Ok Amy Beth, one thing at a time. Remember what you’ve learned. Find out what happened.

I got all this with me acting as my own translator, so some of the details were lost: Fifteen years ago (I think she was almost 30 years old) she was working, somewhere, didn’t quite get that part. She felt a pain in the back of her head, her eyes were red, for a week her eyes were red and she cried and cried and cried, and cried out to God, “Dios perdoname, perdoname, forgive me God.” A week after the pain in the back of her head, or neck her vision just faded away. She never married, and she has no children.

All the while I’m holding her hand, squatted on the ground at her feet. And though she couldn’t see the others, and she couldn’t see my face, she seemed quite comfortable with the idea that a stranger from 2000 miles away would walk up to her, take her hand, and ask God to give her sight back.

It didn’t feel like a performance, but it also didn’t feel quite real to me. In a way, a tragic way, it felt like an experiment. Kind of a, well, let’s just go for it and see what happens kind of a way. Something about being able to get in a van in 3.5 hours and never return inspires a faith for risk taking that is beneficial if something good happens, but might also come from shallow motives and an understanding that you won’t have to own up to it day after day if God does not heal when you ask him to. If the person is healed you have a story to put in your back pocket and if they’re not, you tried your best and you can comfort yourself with the thought that you don’t know what happened after you left. I know that’s cynical, and it’s probably not the right attitude to have at all, but it’s also honest. You go from there, leaving that place behind and working through your understanding of why some people are healed, some people aren’t, and what that means about your God.

Another student and a translator wandered over and we began to pray. We invited the other Mexican women to pray with us, but somewhere in the first 20 minutes or so they lost interest and returned to their square brick apartments to finish cooking lunch, leaving us crowded in a little three person heap around Modesta.

An older woman, maybe it was Modesta’s mother, sat in the cement porch kitchen area outside the apartment room where we were praying. “Estámos pobres. We’re poor,” she said to us. The tears in her eyes looked like they had been there for years, like her eyes were so used to tears that she didn’t have the strength to cry them out anymore—like there was no point to getting rid of them because others would take their place anyway. She said it again, “We’re so poor.”

I had no words for her. I felt helpless.

I was concentrating on Modesta. If she could see, if her sight would return…maybe…That would be something I could bring to help. That would be something we could actually bring to help these people. Hope. Jesus.

We invited the Holy Spirit to come. Our translator spoke to Modesta in Spanish as we prayed in English. We spoke to her eyes and commanded the blindness to go, and released the presence of Jesus. “Come Lord Jesus, be here with us, be here.” We put our hands over her eyes. We did all the things that we’ve seen other people do and prayed the prayers we’ve heard them pray. We took our hands away and asked her, “does it seem better, can you feel anything in your body?”

She could see shadows. But that was the same as before. I looked at her eyes. Occasionally in the right eye a bright yellow splotch would float by over the pool of her cloudy black pupil. The other eye was more gray with the same inconsistent clouds.

There was only one other student there with me at that time. We gave each other looks saying, “Are you getting anything?” “No, are you?” “What now?” We prayed in tongues. Not ready to give up. Continuing to encourage Modesta, “You will see. Vas a ver, vas a ver.” Somewhere in the hours of sermons and stories and teachings I’ve heard, I recalled someone saying there is power in declaring things like that, so I just kept saying it, for her faith and for mine too. It still seemed like an experiment. I don’t quite know how to express my faith for the miracle in those moments, and I wonder if my attitude in treating the situation like a detective might had any bearing on the length of time it seemed to take and our lack of progress. When we got home I heard a story of a fellow student who was praying for men in a hospital in Mozambique on his mission trip, he was having trouble communicating with one man to find out why he was in the hospital so he could know what to pray for him. He kept asking questions and getting totally unrelated answers in return. Eventually the man pointed to his ears. There was the problem; he couldn’t hear the questions, because he couldn’t hear at all. This guy puts his hands over the sick man’s ears and says, “Open in Jesus’ name.” (He’s from New Zealand and when he was telling the story, that line with his accent sounded really powerful.) Just really simple like that, and yes, the ears opened. The man could hear. Just like that, two hands and four words. Not only that but all the other men in that ward, 8 of them, were healed from whatever it was ailing them—all in one afternoon. When I heard that story I thought maybe we should have tried doing it more like that, maybe that would have worked better than trying to sift through years of memories and trauma with so much of what was being said getting lost in translation.

Nevertheless, I was doing my best to try and tap into the Spirit of God. To try and go where he was going, and do what he wanted to do. I don’t feel like my emotions were engaged. But in my heart I released the responsibility to uphold Jesus’ reputation as a healer to him alone, and that takes a lot of pressure off. It takes out pride and leaves room for compassion for the person who needs a miracle. I decided to pray as much as I could with as much love as I could, but beyond that, I had to let it go.

Another pause.

I turned my head again to look back at Glenn—a second year student from the West Coast who was there with us in the beginning. I saw it in his eyes, he had an idea. He asked the translator to have Modesta put her own hands over her eyes and he moved closer to Modesta, touching hands, which now formed delicate brown cups over her eyes, with his. We waited a short moment.

“Ask her what she sees.”

“Que puedes ver?”

We saw her mouth, smiling in front of us, teeth even.

“Jesu Christo.”

My eyes widened and our looks back and forth to each other were now full of surprise, happy surprise, excitement, hope even. Amazement really, like coming upon a treasure, a precious secret uncovered for the first time. I looked at Glenn, prompting him to continue and his face was expressing a lot of the same sentiments. I guess he didn’t know that was what her blind eyes were going to see either.

Ask her what he’s doing.

“Que esta haciendo?”

“Esta tocandome, he’s touching me, he’s touching my eyes.”

I was floored, sitting there at her feet. In our church culture here it’s pretty common to have someone imagine Jesus in front of them, to picture him and in the minds eye, in the spirit’s eyes, and interact with him. It usually causes a lot of internal conflict for me because I never know if I’m just making up stories or what. But there’s always something to say because if God is the God of your heart and mind, there’s no reason he couldn’t use your very imagination to speak to you. But, we hadn’t told Modesta to imagine anything. No prompting, no straining. This was really happening. It surprised me probably more than it should that he showed up to love her in that way. After all he is so good, so faithful.

We prayed again after that, awfully expectant that when she took her hands away from her eyes we were going to see some improvement. I mean Jesus was right there! Touching her eyes for crying out loud! But she moved them to her lap and I saw those same shadowy clouds, that same yellow splotch. She said she could see figures, shadows of people, but again that was the same as before. One thing did seem to change though; she believed she was going to see. She was laughing, smiling. She said she felt so peaceful.

I almost don’t know where to go from here. How to tell you the rest of the story. We kept praying for hours, with almost everyone else on the team rotating through to pray for a while. We moved places, into the light, into the shade, standing, sitting, talking, not talking. And then we left.

The hours passed quickly and our leaders were starting to look at their watches. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it back down that bumpy dirt road to the church if I didn’t use the restroom before we left. So that was how I had to leave her, hugging her, leaving her in a dark little room, telling her, “Jesus’ truth is even more true than what we are experiencing, and if he says she’s going to see, then she’s going to see, Todavia, Vas a ver,” then running off to prop myself against a cement wall and pee in a hole in the floor. Not the most beautiful closing scene I’ve ever heard of that’s for sure.

So I don’t know what happened from there on out with Modesta. When we left her, she wasn’t seeing. I don’t know what she must have been feeling. I hope not abandoned.

But I do know, Jesus came. He was there. At one point we even told her to go with him, that he could take her to the place in heaven where God keeps all the spare body parts—the body parts room, you might call it, is part of a teaching we’re all familiar with in ways that creative miracles happen—that God has all these spare parts laying around in a room in heaven and we can just reach up there and grab them as needed. After seeing the look on her face when we told her she could ask Jesus to take her to heaven I piped up to make sure she knew it was just for vacation. She laughed and when she went, she picked out two blue eyes, azulitos she said, blue like the sea.

CA

Just wanting to drop a line saying I'm still out here.
There has been too much I could possibly write, and I've had a hard time thinking about what to try and approach. So I've been milling over most of it in my mind.
I had a great great great Christmas in Texas and got to see many, though not all I wish I could have seen, friends and family.
It was really good to get to laugh hard with old friends.
Things have been a bit different for me since I got back--I think I'm in the midst of a shift in my thinking, and it may be a few weeks before I can fully articulate what's going on.

Some fun news though, that cat that I wanted to be mine, is mine now! the neighbors were wanting to get rid of it and i stepped right in.
here's a picture: It's the cat, smokey, renamed Halva, after our Norwegian friend Halvor who lives down the street. Heidi and I were sitting behind him in class one day and his hair was sticking out everywhere, one kindof dreadlock type thing in back, some antenna looking things shooting off the left side, and we just thought, that looks a little like my cat. So we feminized the name and that was that. He came over the other night and they bonded, probably will be the best of friends.



A more substantial update soon to come!

Claiming God, freedom, etc.

This is a bit rough for me, I'm still thinking about it and I'll probably wish I said it differently later on, but I havn't posted anything in a while and here's what I've been thinking about.

No one’s freedom to choose God or not to choose him is affected by my holding to him as absolute truth. Regardless of what I think or say, people are free to do whatever they want. I’m not going to oppress anyone by thinking that they are wrong. Disagreeing with someone isn’t rubbing their face in arguments or condescending clicks of the tongue. I can totally disagree with someone and still love them. I can disagree with someone, acknowledge that to them, and still live in peace with them. Compromising who God is by the way I talk about him tangles me up inside—plus, that’s rude to him! Why act like someone who is your friend isn’t your friend when certain people are around unless you’re ashamed of him.

No longer will I refer to God as spirituality itself, just some idea of goodness, or some lesser person just to help him fit into the worldview of those around me without offending anyone. I’ve compromised God for the sake of making him fit into my world because of a fear of offending the ideas of others.

But like I’ve said earlier—this is his world, his land, his people, his ideas. I’ve been reflecting especially on the academic world in relation to this idea. It’s a bit silly to tell the God of the universe that he can only make an appearance on the campus that’s his, in the buildings that are his, and in the ideas that come from minds he created, if he comes packaged in a sweet non-threatening box, gift wrapped with generality and tagged with tolerance and politically correct terminology.

I struggled through college classes discussing oppression, poverty, and injustice—only occasionally working up the nerve to bring up something about “love” or some other code word for Jesus. Stifled. I was continually frustrated, stifled, and afraid. Afraid of misrepresenting Jesus by offending them with Christianity.

I’ve been thinking these past few weeks—and praying to God saying, “Hey! I just want to know how real you are, I want to understand your reality.”

Because, if God is so real, if I really understand the world in his spiritual terms, with spiritual causes and effects—why in the world would I continue allowing my brain to function on two separate plains when it comes to approaching people and their problems:

One side: Seeing the world, it’s people, and problems with My God and his love and power included in my reason and understanding of those issues.

Other side: Trying to code that understanding into terms that appease a secular audience. In the process, the fullness of the meaning I understand is almost always lost, and always depreciates.

This is big business. God is God of everything, infinitely everything. When I think about that, religious and secular categories just melt in comparison to his person. I’ve been so limited by them in my understanding and ability to take action in my secular settings for so long.

It’s time to make a difference. Not just as idealistic chasing after the dream kind-of a difference—figuring God into the equation raises the bar on possibility, and not just by a little bit either.
If I am going to make a difference that I believe in, those two sides of my understanding are going to have to converge. In everything: environmental stuff, social stuff, medical stuff, even just tapping into an infinite creative resource for ideas. Why act as though it were two different worlds I am living in.

Someone said one Sunday a few months ago, “God is not against reason, he just doesn’t like reason that doesn’t include him.” Abraham had the faith to walk up that mountain with Isaac, because for him, it was within reason that God could raise him from the dead, even though that had never ever been done before. Sure, think it through, but don’t forget who loves you and who can do more than anything you could ever ask or imagine.

I came back home from Bolivia a few years ago with the realization that me, my ideas, and my plans were not enough to make a significant difference for the poor people I met and for their communities. A disheartening conclusion to reach after planning to move abroad and save the world some day. I feel so encouraged now to take hold of something that I feel can make a more impacting, fruitful difference for individuals, communities, even nations. And not just a smiley-face, we’re probably making a difference for the better, grin and bear it, kind of difference—I want to carry the presence of my God with me with such strength that everyone I come to know will have a very real encounter with his love for them. For all you activist out there, check it out, God loves justice. God defends the poor, God is abundant. And God is real. Why count him out of our plans? Why expel him from our proposals and interpretations?
If I ever go back to school, which I still mostly think no way in the world, unless it was just too perfect to pass up, I’m a little excited to see how different my experience would be. Last week in the shower I kind of felt like I wish I would go back, but I couldn’t do it if I had to keep my thinking separate like I felt in college. It would probably be pretty hard, but as each day passes I’m more willing to be misunderstood for the sake of my God, more willing to be the weird girl, and the fanatic. I’d be so excited to see a non-watered down way of talking about God of the Bible be readable and acceptable to a secular audience, yet still resonate with his very truth. God is real, he’s at home in the entirety of the universe, not only on the airwaves of Christian radio stations and the four walls of the church. He holds this world together, and acknowledging that is freedom for me.

Stand out thought from class today

After hearing this today, I just thought to myself, you know--this is the kind of thing that I may not have thought of for a long time, so it's a good thing someone said it. Because sometimes, it just feels like, if no one tells you, how in the world are you supposed to know?

"He told me, that's how I found out."
--Bill Murray, in The Man Who Knew Too Little (I threw that one in for my dad and my brother)

Quote from my notes:
"Scripture says earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. How do we get them? Asking for them.
Just because someone has spiritual gifts doesn't mean they have a great relationship with God. It means they're good at asking for things.
So what does this mean?
a. It means, don't just follow someone because you see them doing powerful things.
b. You can't be sure of your relationship with God just because you're praying for people and they're being healed."

I actually even think I felt some kind of a sense of relief as we recieved this teaching today.

So I thought this was a really great statement to bring to light, especially for people who come from a similar background as I do where seeing miracles and healings isn't really all that normal and sometimes it's hard to really figure out what you think about them in themselves--not to mention the complication of bringing leadership and humanity into the equation.

I mean, my underlying assumption was/would have continued being that if someone is able to bring God's presence and pray for heaing and see it, then they must be in a really great place with God. (I probably wouldn't have ever known that this was my assumption, but now, I can see that it was.) So, then, if later, some inconsistancies in this great miracle ministry leader's regular life come to light, or they just seem to be quite immature in thier Christian walk--that really throws trying to understand the miracles they are claiming in a big giant loop. For me, seeing someone who claims to walk in the power of God fail in thier walk with God in thier personal life would have discredited the miracles and healings they had been a part of and also thrown a shadow over the whole idea of God moving in these ways.
The lack of maturity, integrity, reliable leadership, and what would seem to me to be authenticity in a person's claim to know and love God, would have tainted the ways my mind could process the idea of God preforming miraclous signs right here, right now.
It would have been a mistake to connect those two currents.

In understanding that these two aspects of christian life aren't one and the same--that one isn't a measure of the other--that changes how seeing that kind of inconsistancy would look to me, and what it would mean to me too. It makes it understandable--we have to remember, that we're all just people. And, also, that if we aren't seeing great miraculous things all the time, it doesn't mean that we don't know God. There's nothing to fear, we do know him.

Our judgement against those who may be in a more immature place but who pray for miracles, should be the same as it is against those who are weak in the faith and don't try praying for them--and that is no judgement at all, but rather, acceptance as a brother or sister in Christ.

Our expectations for leaders who contend for the supernatural should be the same as for leaders who don't--they earn our trust by how authentic they are, we can trust what they say when we see how they live when they are with thier families, in thier cars, in thier private lives.

Seeing inconsistancies in any pastor's life doesn't mean that the whole Bible, or all christian faith has to have a shadow cast over it or has to be discredited in some way. Most probably wouldn't react by rejecting the entirity of thier faith after such and occurance, some would, but not most people. Most people would be able to draw a line between what they know to be true of thier faith, and how thier leader's life got messed up and maybe wasn't the most top notch representation of that faith for a time. We throw in a little grace, some forgivness, some understanding and life goes on with a lesson learned.
But it seems that when it comes to the miraclous, something that isn't easy to understand if you've never seen it before, it's very easy to discredit the whole concept of it after an experience with one flaky crazy healing evangelist who makes the most out of every story he's got, on TV, with a big cheezy smile and a loud voice and a telephone crew ready to take your pledges.
(I really am just making up some stereotyped person--so no personal references are intended, but, haha, this person really might exist and if he does, we should love him.)

so, to end it all: I wanted to post this because hearing the articulatulation of what I quoted from my notes set well with me somewhere--it helped to settle some things down somewhere inside me and i thought it might ring a chord with people back home.

paraphrase:

• seeing healings and miracles and other spiritual giftings in someones life is not a sign of spiritual maturity.
• To mistake it as a measure of maturity will cause problems for everyone.
• You can tell how much you are growing in God by how much fof his spiritual fruit you see in your life (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control), not by your sucess rate in praying for miracles.

this, that, and some pictures too

We are now reading The Supernatural Ways of Royalty by Kris Vallotton, which many people at CCSA have already been reading. I actually haven't started it yet, but it's the last book of the semester. http://www.amazon.com/Supernatural-Ways-Royalty-Discovering-Privileges/dp/0768423236/sr=8-1/qid=1164698852/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9937458-6880130?ie=UTF8&s=books

A book I recommend to anyone who wants to know why the heck in the world I came out here in the first place is the one we just finished by Bill Johnson: When Heaven Invades Earth.
Before I came I was able to articulate the thought, "If Jesus really is who he says he is, and he's here with us, then there must be more--there must be more to this life with him."
and then after I got here, I could put words to the feeling that I've tasted something now, and I can't go back to living with the understandings I had before.
But, there is so much that I am not able to articulate about what I'm experiencing here. I think this book does a really good job of doing that for me. Bill Johnson writes clearly and the book is broken up into a lot of short chapters and is easy to follow. It just puts to words a lot of what I wish I could share with people but can't because I wouldn't know how to say it all. So, Christmas is coming, give yourself a present!
http://www.amazon.com/When-Heaven-Invades-Earth-Johnson/dp/0768429528/sr=1-1/qid=1164699138/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9937458-6880130?ie=UTF8&s=books

We had an assignment a few weeks ago to make a list of our core values. Core Values being defined as the deep truths of your life, your motivation for a way of living, and what is ingrained in you to help you bounce back to truth when life is out of control or you've hit bottom. I kindof rushed through my list, we had to have at least six--so I may be editing it soon. But I thought I'd post it anyway, just for kicks.
1. God's love is the most powerful force in the universe for creating change.
2. There are things that carry eternal value and things that carry temporal value. That which holds eternal value is always of greater importance.
3. It is possible to search out and find the truth of God in every situation.
4. Healthy relationships within a family are SO important and full of blessings.
5. Complete satisfaction and fulfillment exists only within the context of a relationship with God.
6. God is always good. I can't do anything that would make him love me more or less. He is not limited or defined by my understanding of who he is and what he can do.



Here's me and a cat that I wish could be mine. About a month ago I was pretty set on getting a collar for it and adopting it, but then I found out that he belongs to the neighbors.

We got library cards for the public library the other day. So far we've checked out dated VHS movies for free and today I got a book about clouds that claims to be able to teach me how to predict the weather. This is a pretty sunset from our upstairs, facing the southwest--maybe next time I'll be able to tell you what those clouds are called.

Annd lastly, our apartment downstairs in the preliminary stages of being decorated for Christmas. You can't tell by the picture, but there is, of course, an Amy Grant christmas album playing in the background.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
Psalm 42:7

Starting to talk more about the Holy Spirit

A concept that probably most people are familiar with is the concept of revelation, a deeper understanding that seems to come not from a logical thought process, but from the spirit itself. That seems to be a part of encountering the Holy Spirit that most Christians are familiar and comfortable with. We are not just flesh and bone, we are spiritual beings-to ignore that fact or lessen it's significance would be cutting a lot out of the life it is possible to live.
I'm learning these past weeks about the presence of the spirit of God. Soon I hope to write more about his voice, but first--his presence. "the counselor" that Jesus sent when he returned to the Father, what we have that "will lead us into all truth", the spirit which "helps us in our prayers, with utterances which words cannot express." The Holy Spirit that is ever present along side believers, comforting, leading, and speaking to us.
For much of my life, I did not understand the role of the Holy Spirit. I did not understand that I have God's Spirit along side my spirit and how much he speaks to people. The Spirit searches all things, even the deeper things of God. Followers of Jesus have that spirit dwelling inside, and alongside them.
I've been learning that when he shows up, if you want him to stick around, the terms are set by his agenda, not yours. What the encounter looks like is not going to be dependent on what you are comfortable with or maybe even not what you believe about what it might look like. Honestly, it seems to me, that you have to throw caution to the wind and be willing to be embarrassed at first.
People jerking around, feeling so heavy like you can't get up from the floor, grown ups rolling around laughing hysterically, people stumbling around literally drunk from encounter with the Holy Spirit.
Walk into the back of the room at the end of a Sunday night service and if you aren't someone who's ready to go run and join in, most likely you'll be feeling uneasy and ready to head home and go to bed, trying not to think too hard about either what's wrong with you, or what's wrong with all these crazy people.
A couple biblical examples float around in my head as I ponder this subject. One that I just thought of tonight, and the other which I read a few days ago.
The first--which I know is very obvious, but I myself had never thought about it in this way before. The Pharisees, they knew Jesus, they saw what he did, they were right there! They were right there next to him, in a breath's distance, but they couldn't get it, even within such close range. His power and his identity were lost to them. Probably everyone else in the world has thought of that, but it hit me tonight, I guess you could say I got a deeper revelation of it, the spirit speaking it to me (which is basically what I'm writing about right now). I subconsciously always imagined the Pharisees as some shriveled, nasty dudes just looking for a way to come out on top and I just stopped there. So maybe that could have been true in some cases, but the part I hadn't thought about before is that in many cases, these guys were right there in the midst of the very presence of God, and they missed him, they rejected him. They judged it by what they thought must be right, and they completely missed out on the complete and perfect manifestation of God. So what that meant to me tonight, was that, that is still possible for that to happen in the church today. It is still possible to be in the very presence of God, and judge it by our religion and what we think is right, and it is possible for us to miss an encounter with the true and manifest presence of God.
The other is in the story of King David. I forgot what had just happened, I think that the ark of the covenant was returned to Israel and David was so happy about it, he was dancing before the Lord with all his might, wearing only a linen ephod instead of his royal robes. His wife saw him out the window, was displeased, and my version says, "She despised him in her heart." She wasn't seeing the praise and rejoicing that was pleasing to the Lord, but was instead placing upon David her standards of how a respectable person, let alone king, should act. And because of her judgment, she was made barren.
I totally understood the wording of that phrase, despised him in her heart, because at times, I still feel like I'm fighting feeling that way when it seems like things aren't going the way I subconciously/naturally/automatically ( I can't really think of the right word) think they ought to go in a church service or school session. Basically, when I place structure, order, religious code above honoring the presence of the Spirit of God I'm placing whatever religious laws I still have left in me, on those around me, which brings annoyance and irritation directed towards the person, and ultimately the Holy Spirit who is manifesting himself to them at the moment. And it sure does feel like that annoyance and irritation is in my heart. I think the same application can be made for all kinds of situations. My main example is that when people get up to give announcements, or talk on the microphone, sometimes they begin to manifest the Spirit of God, maybe jerking, or saying whoa a lot, or moving around in a weird way, or getting really emotional. And my first thoughts are, "come on now, control yourself, save that for your private time not when you're speaking to everyone, please." And I just have to confess, how I was convicted and that to me, is exactly the sin David's wife committed when she judged him and despised him in her heart for his praise of dance to the Lord.
Being confronted with these encounters of the Holy Spirit for the first time can really throw someone for a loop. Really make you turn over and over in your mind all the possible explanations, all the possible good outcomes of this being true, all the possible bad outcomes if it's not. Initally, it made me really cry out and ask God, " What the heck is going on with all these people? What is all this? and Am I less to you? Am I less a lover of you that I don't know you this way, and that I'm not even sure I want to?" Let me tell you, that was a really painful and confusing few weeks.
Even a while after I was thoroughly convinced that these experiences are God moving, I still wasn't sure that I wanted to be a part of all that myself. And just for the sake of being a part of the culture (and there is a culture of it: a set of words people understand, sets of ideas that out of the context would not be easy to understand. The culture is a product of a lot of people in one place all having the same kinds of experiences and needing ways to talk about it.) but for the reason of being a part of the culture, I don't want to choose it. Honestly, the culture of it all still kind of annoys me at times--I think I have some things to work through. But to move closer to my God, and experience him in a more intimate way, I'll choose anything for that.
But where in scripture does it say that people will act in all these ways and that it is in fact a move of God in the lives of his people? A legitimate question, an honest question, but what is the motive to the question. the motive is more important than the questions themselves I think.

What finally made it seem not so weird and beyond understanding for me, was when a guest speaker came named Gorgian Banoff. There was a huge amount of hype and talk going around before his visit about how constantly"drunk" he was is in the spirit. And how people always were offened at his mannerisms while speaking speaking. So, i was a little nervous about it, because i mean, who wants to be uncomfortable right? Anyway, i loved it! Because, what he was talking about was just being in love. I remember he said, "Love makes you nuts!" and haha, that just clicked everything to me. It wasn't about some particular kind of church, or people, or ideas, but instead just about being IN LOVE with God, being so in love, that nothing else matters, not even dignity. Being so in love, that you just can't get enough of God. That was the first night that I personally experienced something supernatural in my body in relation to the manifestation of the Spirit of God.
I had heard it all, prayed and thought, thought and prayed, but until my own experience, the explanations either way were not enough to carry the weight of a decision and peace of understanding.
I am seeking my God in these matters, my same Father God I've known my whole life and I'm coming to know him in a completely new and incredible way. The best point I can debate or argue or support for anyone with questions is that you should do the same, seek your God--after all what we're after is his truth. That's the goal of our Christian lives is it not? His very truth?
However he leads you, it's up to him, not up to me and what I think or what anyone can say. He's big enough to take care of himself. You know yourselves, so if you trust that you are seeking your God in understanding this, and trust that I am seeking my God in understanding this, then we don't have much to worry about. I appologize if that sounds a little defensive, but, honestly, that's how I feel--a little defensive, a little afraid of the sting of criticism and weary of people i love being worried about the direction i'm headed. So, that's where that edge comes from. hopefully soon, I will be able to write without it because I will be without it.
blessings to everyone! the mountians here are getting snowy in the distance and it's supposed to rain all this week.

the next big step

This is God’s world.
It’s not society’s, it doesn’t belong to any culture of any people group. It’s all God’s. It’s his dirt, his nature, his air that we breathe, and his reality that we function in. It’s in his world that we work, drive around, go to school, learn, have families—everything—we do all that in his world. It's His reality, and I'd like to learn to see it from his perspective.

“Jesus did everything as a human. It is our job to be like him, without sin, and with power and authority. We shouldn’t have so much awe in what he did that we attribute it all to his divinity. Everything Jesus did was in complete yieldedness to divinity.”
Bill Johnson said that I guess a long time ago, but I just heard him say it last week and thought it was pretty profound. I think there are two important concepts—yieldedness and expectation.

John 5:19 Said in answer to accusations that he was breaking the Sabbath by healing a man. “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.”

John 14:8-12 Philip says to Jesus, “Show us the Father and it will be good enough for us.” Jesus said, “Don’t you know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

On being yielded to God: How huge is it that Jesus identifies as his source the fact that he did not do anything without the Father, that he only did what the Father told him to do! We can expect a live of power and closeness with God, just as Jesus had, if we are willing to submit ourselves to him completely. If we are willing to admit that this is God’s world that we're living in, and the best way to invest in it is to let him have my actions and dreams and hopes and use me and what I can add to the world for the ways he sees best.

To me, what that looks like is saying, “Alright God, I will do anything you tell me to do, the moment you tell me to do it, anything and everything.”
Scary!
At least it is until you can see the fruit of such a life or until you feel completely safe following your God.

Without trusting God’s goodness and his willingness and desire for us to have the very best, total submission is going to be an impossible thing to do. Unless you’re just really spiritually disciplined or a masochist or something, you’re not going to be able to give yourself over to someone who you don’t think is going to take good care of you.

So, if thinking about being submitted to God makes you want to turn and run the other way or change the subject or think the level you’re on is good enough and settle there, I’d say, don't give up! don't think it's too much for you(and i'm saying this to myself too)--just keep asking him to teach you about who he is, because the more we learn about him, the easier it is to trust him. It's all a process.
I’ll take that one to the bank in regard to any life thing that seems impossible to give up. Learn about him, and we’ll find out, that He is better. Life with him will begin seeming so much more attractive, and pretty soon, that thing we’ve been holding to so tightly will be easy to let go of. The process can go on as long as we let it and we can make it as far along as we set ourselves to.

The other half of the equation is expectation. And here is where things could get really sticky and complicated with people coming from all different theologies and doctrines. But Jesus said, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
Now, I haven’t done a Greek word study or anything like that, so any of you scholars out there, feel free to go back and see if this is the wrong idea of what he’s saying. But, Jesus raised the dead, he walked on water, he healed the blind and the deaf, he ascended into heaven, he loved everyone, he outsmarted the Pharisees and Sadducees, he never sinned, he was all this really incredible guy, who did all kinds of crazy, impossible things. He said he’s leaving, and because he’s going to be with the Father, we’re going to be doing what he’s been doing and even greater things.

If thinking in those terms is foreign to you, or too strange and difficult to think rationally about, even apply it to the fact that Jesus loved EVERYONE. If you can’t think about it in terms of miracles a good starting place would be to think about it in terms of how he treated other people.

And I know there are a lot of things can could be argued about, but I just really don’t ever want to have to convince anyone of anything. And another thing that Bill said (he’s really full of profound one liners) was that Jesus Christ is perfect theology. That sounded good to me, so I’m going to stick with that. It's also said here that we create theology around the disapointments of Christian life. For example, you pray for someone who has cancer, you pray with great faith, you do everything the best you know how, and that person still dies. It hurts so much, deep pain to be caught in the tension of knowing and believing what God says he does, and seeing the reality of our expereince that does not add up. It hurts, unbelief hurts, so we find ways to explain it away, to compartmentalize our experiences into rules and ideas that make us feel better about that tension. Believing God and contiuning to hold to his word when our experience does not seem to back it up takes great courage and will probably hurt a little or a lot, but God is faithful and he will fulfill his promises to us and how great is the reward for continuing to trust his reality more than the reality we experience on earth.

Everything flows from intimacy with God, fulfillment, coming into your full potential, miracles. I’ve come to a place where unless I submit my life, my loves, my plans, my ideas of my future, my everyday moment to moment actions to the Lord, I can’t get to know him any better. It’s the key for me to take the next step in closeness with him. I don’t know if that will end up being the case for every person, but that’s what it’s been for me. It’s a cliff I’ve come up to the edge of, and what feels to me like a big scary leap to take, but I know I must take it and for my good, the sooner the better. If He tells me to pray for 200 people and I don’t ever see any of them get healed, what’s important is that I continue on in obedience and trusting him. There is a lot we can do on our own and a lot we can do successfully, even in regard to ministry. But God’s idea of success is not our idea of success. God is looking at our hearts. Suppose he tells you to go and do something, and so you muster up your courage and you go and do it and you fail. You are not a failure to him, and he did not send you out without cause. What he cares about is your heart and the fact that you were willing to go do it.
I can’t look at what it seems that I am giving up—my plans, my ideas, my reputation as a sane and rational person :o) , but rather at what I receive in the transaction. He is always working the greater good—my roommate Heidi says that a lot. Though I want to see miracles and see people come to know the love of their God, what’s most important is my heart being united to his heart, that’s the highest goal I can set and run towards in my whole entire life. I think a life of power will flow out of that, but that’s not the goal it’s just a side effect.

Jesus set an example for us.

We are to expect a life of power meant for the glory of God and for his kingdom, our source is to be a heart yielded to our God. It’s a really great adventure—deep, mysterious, very alive.

I'm really changing so much. Honestly, I could not go back to the kind of christian life I was living before, it wouldn't be enough for me.

A somewhat silly example: I make my bed now, which is something I ususally only do if my mom is coming for a visit. I make an effort to keep a clean room. ha, maybe that doesn't really mean a whole lot, it's not like clean rooms are all spiritual or anything. but for anyone who knows me, or has lived with me, that's an indicator of some kind of change in me. It just happened too, just changed me, someone said something about practicing the principle of stewardship and taking good care of what we've been given and boom, my lifelong habits of laziness just start changing. haha, I don't know what's going on. But stuff is changing, the way I see things is changing. Heidi also keeps saying that God's shifting reality on us. I don't really know what she means most of the time when she says that, but I do know that a lot of stuff seems really different than it did two months ago.

for just a regular update: went to a costume party the other night, started making an effort to make friends (for the first little while i was too overwhelmed to talk to anyone), got a flat tire on my bike while on a long ride, hiked around a waterfall today, put leaves in my hair and watched the sunset over the lake and mountains, drank hot chai, ate wild blackberries, had a really great time. still doing ceramics stuff and learning a lot of new techniques, etc.
I'd be excited to have some visitors too, so if you have extra time and money come see me!

Experiencing Father’s Embrace

We’ve been reading the book Experiencing Father’s Embrace by Jack Frost, a minister who does a lot of family type stuff in one of the Carolinas. The message of the book has basically been the importance of understanding how our perceptions and experiences of our relationships with our earthly fathers affect the ways we perceive our Heavenly Father God. And, that our perception of God directly affects how well we can enter into intimate relationships with our families, friends, everyone basically. So if God seems to be so far away or so hard that an intimate relationship with him doesn’t seem attainable, that will in effect come to show in how much we are able to trust and invest in our relationships with those around us. It goes into a lot of situations depicting how various relationship issues that are common with children and their fathers find their ways into our imagined idea of who Father God is. (Interestingly enough, in another class the idea was presented that our relationships with our siblings influence our interaction and understanding of Jesus, and our experience with our mother’s influence our acceptance and understanding of the Holy Spirit.)

So it’s not just saying, if you had a bad father, you won’t think God is good. The levels are so much deeper. If your dad made a lot of promises with good faith to keep them, but wasn’t able to keep them all, it may be hard to trust God to meet all your needs. If your dad seemed to only be able to show love for you when you did something that pleased him, you may feel like God is only truly happy with you when you are doing things to serve him. And, even if you did have the best dad every who did everything right, no dad is as good or as loving as Father God, and it’s just good to recognize the importance of taking a look at how we perceive God, because maybe there are some things that we put on him that aren’t a part of who he is. And I think if we ask him, he tells us what those things are. He’s in a good mood, and he loves us just the same all the time, so much. He is a good God, with good intentions and good gifts. He’s not angry. He’s so full of love.

So, the book was pretty good, a little repetitive, but better than the other books we’ve read so far (if anyone wants to read it, send me and email and I can mail it to you, well, to one person at least. So you have to read it if you’re the one who gets it!)
The parts I liked best were actually the moments he talked about the healing that came to his marriage. In the last pages he talked about how he saw his lack of intimacy (constantly felt like he had to prove himself to God, work, work, work, build walls to keep from getting hurt because of previous rejection and pain, common life problems I think.) was ultimately affecting his marriage, and how thing so drastically changed after he came to experience and accept the love of God in his life—that everything changed. That was only like, a tiny tangent of the book, but, it just says to me that there are so many big huge life problems that just don’t have to be problems if you know how to deal with them.

Here’s a paragraph I liked a lot, haha, but the book is more about other stuff and not marriage, but I liked this part anyway.
“Your spouse cannot ultimately meet your need for intimacy. If you are expecting him or her to give you all the love you need, when they are unable to do so, you will become vulnerable to defilement by someone else with an unmet love need. (that sentence is a jargoned, I know, I know, sorry) The kind of sacrificial love that a marriage requires can flow only out of the love that comes from Father’s embrace, from a relationship first established with God, from abundantly receiving His love, and then giving it away to your spouse. Until you value intimacy and love more than what God can do for you, you will continue to have a void in your heart. And, as in the laws of nature, wherever there is a void, something will try to fill it. Some people try to fill this void with alcohol, with drugs, or even with religion. But the longing and emptiness in your heart cannot be filled by anyone or anything except a relationship with the Father built upon love and intimacy, not duty and works. Until you have experienced this, it may be difficult to experience a truly intimate relationship with another person.”


My biggest revelation of the weight of God’s love came not through the book, but in timing with it.
Soon after I arrived here I got a job working at the church nursery for about 6-7 hours a week. I actually still don’t know how much I’m being paid for that job, but I think it’s probably minimum wage. I put together a resume and passed out about 12 of them applying for various positions around town, but a month had passed and nothing had come of any of them, except this really weird smelling, frantic bagel shop, and even that lady never called me back after the interview. And even though my savings were depleting everyday, I was really glad about that. Who wants to work anywhere that people cook eggs in the microwave! It still grosses me out to think about it.

But point being, I was running out of money, not really any prospects for a job, and trying to for the first time in my life support myself financially. So I was praying about it, not a lot, cause I felt like it had already been in a lot of prayer, but in my small group I wanted the girls to pray about it with me.

What I wanted most, more than flexibility, more than work I even enjoyed, was just the ability to pay for my food, my rent, my gas, my cell phone, and my life up here without having to take any more money from my parents, and not because they wouldn’t give it to me, because they would. And they would do it gladly, without giving me a guilt trip, without making me feel like I owed them, and you know, it’s not like they’d be giving to me out of this big pile of excess money, I mean, it would cost them, but they’d do it.Even now it’s making me cry to think about it. But to me, It just seems like: I’ve graduated from college, and I’m trying to be out here, and I just want to be able to bless them by saving them some money because I’m supposed to be some kind of a grown up, I mean, I’m basically 23 years old( 2 months!), not to mention my brother already owns two houses—I should be able to do this. And I felt like God had to be taking care of it because I’d prayed about it so much, and I didn’t feel like it had to do with pride, so I didn’t feel like I was in need of any kind of humbling or anything like that. So I just didn’t understand why I wasn’t finding a way to make enough money.

As the girls were praying with me about being able to make enough money, find a job, whatever it was that needed to happen, one girl got a picture in her mind of the prodigal son, returning home and his father just kissing him on his head over and over. So, for some reason, that meant a lot to me. I just felt like, wow, if I have a dad who wants to just bless me so much, with so much, not because i deserve it or he owes me, but just because he loves me, then wow, I’m so lucky, maybe God’s just telling me I need to accept my father’s blessings.

So—I left thinking that I was just going to have to feel like a spoiled “I live in a bubble, I have no cares in the world” girl and take my parent’s money while I was up here. I know it sounds good, but it’s just almost embarrassing to be so well taken care of, just because you feel bad that it can’t be the same way for everyone. Haha, you have to be careful who you tell you have it so well. That’s what I feel like sometimes.

I talked to my mom about it, and she was so good, and reassured me so much that it was a gift that they were happy to give. I just cried and cried because I don’t want to be spoiled. She said she’d tell me if I got there.

So after that I was just overwhelmed with so much thankfulness for how much I am loved. I can just think about either one of my parents and just get really teary from how much they love me. So, in all that gratefulness, I just decided, ok, if I’m going to take those blessings, then I’m going to do it right. I’m going to balance my checkbook, I’m going to do this and that and blah blah blah $$$, blah blah. That’s how money always seems to me. I never know how much is a good price for a car or a house or a salary. Every time I got a statement from the bank, or an email about a student loan, it just read like blah blah blah $$$. So, dad and I would laugh about it, ha, but I think he mostly laughed because oh no, what else can a person do when thier daughter is so clueless! It’s not the best place to be in if you’re going to take care of yourself. So, I really don’t like to have to pay attention to details, and I just always feel like everything is going to work out. So, even though I’ve received a lot of really good instruction about how to manage finances throughout my life and the principles are in my head for sure, my actions haven’t really developed so strongly. So, I decided, if I’m going to take my dad’s money, then I’m going to do it just like he wants me to. I’m going to honor him by doing my stupid checkbook, and doing this and that, and all this stuff I hate, but I’m going to do it, because he deserves it because of all he’s given me. And I don’t like it, but I want to do it. I want to be able to give him something too, to show how much I appreciate him.

So then, then I got a job, babysitting and house cleaning a couple times a week, and, it seems like it’s going to add up to be enough for me with good hours and I still have a completely free day with nothing on the schedule. So wow! A good thing, really good in fact.

But, my thankfulness still remained and I still wanted to be able to do what my dad wants, but not because he’s making me, and not because I have to, but just because I realize deeply how much he loves me, how much he gives me, and I want to do what he likes, I want to honor him.
I called him few days ago to tell him, because I had talked to my mom about it, but not my dad. And what he said, ha, made me see the depth to this whole big ordeal. He said, that’s how it’s supposed to work amy beth, you realize the father’s love for you, and you want to do what he says. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Jesus says he will know who loves him because that person will keep his commands. But they aren’t doing it because they have to, but because he first loved us, we can love him, we can do what he says because we want to, because we are so overwhelmed with his love for us, how could we not do what makes him glad! That verse isn’t about strict discipline, it’s about a response to love. not repaying love, but simply responding to it out of more love. And boom-there it was, there it is.

just a few miraculous stories

it's good to sprinkle these around every now and then-i'll start out small.

1. a personal story. after the big dance party mentioned below, i started having some pain in my knee. that was pretty normal, because it can hurt after some kind of jumping or playing sports. But this time it didn't go away, and it was really hurting more than usual. i could feel it when i was trying to go to bed, and i couldn't stand for too long in a row. So friday night, i was just about to leave the evening church service, but man, that knee--it hurt. so i went up to the front (every service there is a team of people ready to pray with anyone who needs prayer) so i went up-and a girl prayed for me, and i tried it out--felt a little better, so she prayed again, felt a little better, so she prayed again, and it felt good enough, so i left. but the next morning-no pain. i went on a run, no pain, no swelling--seems to me that it's better than ever! so i'm not sure if i'll never have that knee pain again, but i do know that Jesus sure did soemthing for me that night, and that's good!

2. one of the Norwegian girls who is visiting, who i went to the beach with, has had a hole in hear ear drum since she was born and she couldn't really hear very well out of that ear. Sunday night, God healed her completely.

3. a few weeks ago some school of ministry students began praying for a woman with a cancerous tumor on her neck. it was the size of a chicken egg. one of the students praying with her felt like God told him, "this is an attack on her esophogus, have her yell and scream as loud as she can." But he was pretty new to all this stuff, so he didn't say it because it just seemed too weird to him. and they continued praying for her and nothing was happening, so finally this guy decides to say it. She was an elderly woman, so he asked her if she was able to scream, and she said yes, so he told her what God said, and this woman just started yelling out loud, they continued praying and that tumor started shrinking, to a golf ball, smaller, to a pea, and then completely gone! they found out afterwards that this woman had come all the way across the country for a miracle--and these were just kids that just got here--didn't even know what was going on. wow!

4. Bill Johnson told this story this week at church, some of his contacts around the country emailed it to him, so i don't know where it happened. a little girl came up to a pastor and asked him to pray for her dollie, she had her hand hidden behind her back. he asked her what was wrong with her hand and when she showed it to him, he saw that she had no fingers on that hand. he told her he would pray for her dollie if he could pray for her hand too. so he put her hand in his, and when he was done praying, he took his hand away. That little girl had two hands with fingers! no fingers, and then there were fingers. the healthy hand had painted fingernails with chipped polish, and, the fingers God created also had chipped nail polish to match. That's my favorite story yet. if you can believe that, what can be impossible!?!