Lunatic's Sojourn

 I realize my title is kind of cryptic, but I couldn't help myself. It's much more upbeat than it would appear, so bear with me.

Something unheard of has taken place! Many said it couldn't happen, others wished it wouldn't happen, and some are just ignorant, but to just about everyone (including myself) it's a surprise. No, I'm not getting married (badum dum). I have changed my eschatological stance. And in English, I've changed my stance on the End Times..... (dramatic pause for the gasps)....

In the past, I have been a staunch pre-milenial, post-tribulation, progressive dispensationalist. In short that means that I believed that Jesus was coming back at the end of the great tribulation (a time of great persecution, darkness, but also victory for the church), He would then establish His Kingdom on Earth for 1,000 years when Satan would be released from his chains to decieve the nations once more, and then the final judgement would come (that covers, the pre-mil, and post-trib terms). Progressive dispensationalism is the belief that the book of Revelation is describing both the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, as well as the times leading up to the final end. Basically that there would be a dual fullfilment to the prophecy. (If any more explanation is needed, ask, but if these are completely foreign concepts to you, I could recomend a few books.)

So, as I said, this is what I believed. I had answers to almost all the questions and oppositions and could pretty much teach a course on the end-times from this position (I was asked to at one point, actually). In short, I was not a novice to the position or held the position because everyone else did. I did the research and found the answers I needed to believe. As a side note, this is the general belief that the International House of Prayer KC, holds concerning the end-times. They have plenty of resources on the topic. And that is where the problems began.

Last New Years I went to the OneThing conference, and the focus of the entire conference was on the end times and raising up faithful witnesses for the end times. At the end of the conference there was a call made to anyone that felt God had placed a forerunner call on to be a faithful witness. While I have recieved countless words about being a forerunner, when it came down to the call I could not get a release in my spirit to go forward. For some reason I couldn't settle in my heart to move forward to join myself to this movement. I was somewhat confused that this had taken place, but I didn't let it bother me too much.

Now, flash forward 7 months. A respected friend of mine started reading a book called Paradise Restored by David Chilton. I recognized immediately that this book was not of the same eschatalogical school of thought. My friend held the same position that I had, but he mentioned that the book had brought up some interesting points that were making him waver. At this I began digging into every book on the end-times that I had, while digging into all the end time scriptures that I knew so that they would be fresh in my mind. I began with books speaking directly about the book of Revelation, but I quickly realized that all of the views of Revelation are directly influenced by the persons view of the Millenium (see Revelation 20). So at this point I switched over to reading a book on the different views of the Millenium. Each position was represented by a different theologian, and then counter arguments were made by each of the theologians holding to the other views. 

When I began reading the pre-millenial view I felt an unction in my spirit to read in 2 Peter where Peter is talking about "hastening the day of God". I expected to find evidence in favor of pre-millenialism, but instead I found that Peter was fairly specifically post-millenial. This through me into a bit of mental turmoil, and a ferver for finding the truth in the Scriptures. As I dug, I found that both Peter and Paul drew no distinction between the appearing of Christ, and the final judgement (they were post-millenial in other words). 

At this I found myself frantically trying to explain each scripture, that was opposing my view. Meanwhile my respected friend had actually changed his view on the end-times! Now I was really freaking out. I began bringing out every scripture I had in favor of pre-millenialism to him, and each one would be answered with a very resonable and biblical response. After a few times of being shot down in such a way, I began viewing Scripture in the same way. By interpreting Scripture, through Scripture. It would be very lengthy to explain this all in full, but for me, I found myself finding more Scripture in favor of post-millenialism than against it. In fact, I couldn't find anything against it. 

I'll spare going into the length of the argument, but basically, now I am what they call a historical post-millenialist. This means that I believe that Jesus established his Kingdom at His first coming, that He equiped His church to progressively take dominion over all nations with the gospel, by the empowerment of his Spirit. I believe that the book of Revelation is speaking of the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and that time only. 

Before I came to this conclusion I had to confront a larger issue than my Scriptural arguements. I found myself actually resisting post-millenialism as if it were a personal assault. This was birthed in a place of wounding, of fear of abandonment and rejection. The mentality was that if Jesus wasn't coming soon, then I'm all alone. It's a ridiculous thought when said out, but this was the mentality that fueled my resistance to post-millenialism. 

Now that I'm embracing post-millenialism, I am finding myself so much more optimistic concerning the work that God is doing in the Earth right now and in the future. I feel so much more motivated to go take on the world for the gospel, and feel much more peace when I pray concerning the current state of our nation and world. I pray bolder, with more faith, and greater expectation of God to be good and faithful than every before. While, I am not saying that pre-millenialists cannot pray in such a way, and have the same hope, my experience is that pre-millenialism hindered me from truely embracing this, although it did not keep me from professing it. 

I have so much more I could say on the subject, but I'm going to end here. Our views of the end-times effects our expression now, so it is worth mentioning that my view has changed now so that future posts may make more sense.

...all for now.

 At this point I'm not even going to make any excuses for not posting more often. I'm going to attempt to post more often, but I can't promise anything. (of course, it would really be a promise to myself...so if I don't pull through, I think I'd understand.)

I've noticed a trend in my life lately that I think is worth writing out. It's not something new, or problematic, just something I realize that I've been well acquainted with in my saved life. Death. Not physical death or a spirit of death, mind you, but death just the same. I've noticed that from the time that I first truly came into a relationship with Jesus that I've had to put so many things to death. 

To the regular church goer this may sound like a "duh" statement, but I'm not talking about merely dying to your flesh. We've all heard the sermons on putting to death our flesh and it's sinful ways, and I'm not disagreeing with that in any way, but the reality is that your flesh is already dead in sin, so what is left is to be raised in Christ. To put off the old man, and to be resurrected in the new man (and I'm not talking about after Jesus returns). This is an inescapable fact of the Christian life. If our old selves are not being put to death, then how in the world do we expect to be raised again. The living don't need raising. But this is not the point I want to get into...

What I have noticed throughout my Christian life is what seems to be an unusual amount of sacrificial deaths. I say it seems unusual because I don't hear many people talking about going through the same experiences very often, and some people have actually asked me how it's done (apparently the very few people who I've talked to about these processes have talked to others). But the irony of it all is that to me it seems like such a simple process. Difficult, yes, but simple. It's not something to brag about, so please don't misunderstand me to be boasting in my ability to die. That's a ridiculous thought. But do understand that I will boast in what God has done through these deaths.

To set a context, and the way I first understood the concept, is in Genesis 22:2. God told Abraham, "Take your son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering." Isaac was the son of promise, and yet the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice him. In Hebrews 11:19 we see that Abraham obeyed because he trusted that God could raise his son from the dead, and that because the ram was given in his son's place he had essentially received his son back from the dead. This is the heart of sacrificial death. That God can be trusted. 

In modern life this is worked out in different ways for different people. Personally, it's not always the "son of promise" that is being put to death, but the heart of the matter is the same. I'm of the school of thought that when God speaks something to me, I'm to be obedient until He says otherwise. So, of course, there have been plenty of times in my immaturity when I believed God had spoken a direction or word into my life and I was obedient to it, but it turned out not to be Him (nothing unscriptural or rebellious of course...just gray). What I have discovered through my mistakes in those area's, however, is that God is faithful to His true word. This is why almost every major word or vision the Lord gives me eventually gets put right up on the alter. Move over Isaac.

I'm not going to say sacrifice is my first reaction (although it used to be), because that would be more like divination than truly trusting God. Rather, I receive everything that prudence allows, and once I've embraced it and even become comfortable with it, as Abraham loved his son, more often than not God asks me to give it up to Him. I've been through this about a half dozen times over the past 6 years that I've been saved. Its been a consistent but not frequent event, so understand that this is not something done lightly or hastily. It's not fun. It's not pleasant. It's not easy. But it is good and fruitful and I don't regret a single death. 

Mt. Moriah, the site that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac, is the same site that Solomon built the Temple. I could go off on all the symbolism and parallels between the Temple, Abraham's ram, and Jesus, but I will spare it for times sake. But it is good to keep in mind.

To sacrifice to the Lord is to say that you trust Him fully. In the Church we often "sacrifice" things that are sinful or distracting, but in reality we are just judging our lives as we should. A true sacrifice for the redeemed is to trust the Lord wholly with our whole lives, which includes the words the Lord has spoken to us. When the Lord asks me to give something up that I believe He had given, there's the temptation to fall into doubts and condemnation that I was in rebellion by mishearing Him, but the reality is that as long as we are openly seeking His heart and His desires there can be no rebellion. Whether He asks for the sacrifice because you are mistakenly out of His will, or because He's calling us deeper, the only acceptable response is to give it to Him with a heart of trust.

I've seen false words die where they should, and I've seen dead promises raised again, and each one declares His faithfulness. So I guess the point of all this is to say, trust the Lord by life or by death. If we insist on only trusting Him by life, we hinder ourselves from being able to experience the true faithfulness of God, and are more prone to be lead astray by false words that may have the appearance of godliness.....if any of this make sense. haha

...all for now.

 I'm going to start with saying, I'm completely ridiculous. Although, this isn't a revelation to myself, or likely a surprise to anyone who knows me, it's worth stating this fact. As I was about to write here I decided it would be worth while to look over a few past posts to see if I'm being completely random in my topics. Even though the are spaced out over several months there is a common theme to them all. I need to relinquish control.

The other day I was driving, being pretty frustrated with life in general, when I came to a breaking point. I was really hung up on how inadequate I am in every area of my life when I remembered that this was nothing new. I have been really struggling with having vision for my life because I really don't know what God has planned for me. I know plenty of "missions" (things that He has for me to accomplish), but I haven't been able to find my baseline, the expression that I move out of. The break really came when I realized that my inadequacy and my lack of vision were the same problem. 

The fact is that I am inadequate, always have been inadequate, and always will be inadequate in my own strength. My lack of vision for my expression lies in my inability to see God moving through me. If I'm relying on myself, I can accomplish certain things, but nothing of worth and that leaves me discouraged. When I change my perspective, however, and think of what God can accomplish through inadequate vessels, the weight of my calling shifts to His shoulders. So, when I reached my breaking point I gave up. I gave up my inadequacy for His grace.

2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work." Without His grace we are entirely insufficient to accomplish His good works. He has planned it that way because He created us to be His partner (His Bride), not His servants. He has myriads of angels to serve Him, but He created man to be weak so that He could have someone to work with Him. It's amazing really.

This in mind, now I need to conform to this revelation. Grace is available if I'll receive it. I can only receive it if I 1) recognize my need for it,  2) recognize God is eager to give it, and 3) recognize that it was Jesus' work on the Cross that made a way for it. The Cross is not just about salvation, but it is our entry into the family of the Godhead as sons. As a son of God I am not subject to the inadequacy of man inasmuch as I am operating in the grace of God. His grace began its work by conquering the inadequacy of death in my life, so how much more will it conquer my inadequacy in every other work God has planned. 

This is why I'm so ridiculous. With such a grace available to me, why would I want to ignore it by retaining control. So, I'm trying to give up control in every area of my life, but I trust His grace to actually accomplish it (if that makes sense). I'm so glad God is much bigger than we can imagine. 

...all for now.

 I've been putting off updating for a while now. I'm finding it difficult to say anything because there is so much to say. God's been digging up some really deep old wounds and I'm having a hard time responding correctly because I really don't know how to respond. The big difficulty is that it's pretty much entirely emotional, but not very mental. If it was mental I would just search out my questions from God and rest in His understanding, but emotions are messy. They don't care about reason, and the don't listen to logic. They pretty much do what they want and I'm left with the choice of listening to them or ignoring them. I usually choose the latter, but apparently that's the problem.

I've heard people talk about choosing to feel differently, but I don't know what they're talking about. I can choose to respond differently, sure, but I've never known how to actually change my feelings. Either I'm ignorant, the people talking about choice are not being clear, or they are wrong. I'm essentially of the belief that by choosing to respond differently to your emotions, and by continually walking in the opposite spirit, eventually your emotions will come into alignment. I guess it's been more of a hypothesis on my part, though. I've yet to see it work.

I may just be going about things the wrong way. I'm not entirely ignorant to the way my mind and emotions work, but that doesn't mean I've really corrected things. I think that when I "choose" to respond differently than my emotions, I'm not really acting by the Spirit above my emotions, but rather shutting my emotions down so that my logical brain can make the decisions. On the surface it may appear the same, but religious actions often do. 

I realize that I'm being very general, but that's only because it is a general problem. It's not one emotion that I have problems with, it's almost all of them. My whole life I've dealt with my emotions by taking them behind the woodshed and putting them down like Old Yeller. As anyone can tell you, that doesn't really work. Trying to kill an emotion only wounds it deeper. This is why people turn to drugs and alcohol so often. I know it's why I did. Instead of fighting with emotions, I would just put my body and mind into such a state that it couldn't distinguish emotion any longer. I believe that emotions follow the highest bidder of your heart. If your heart is ruled by the flesh, then your emotions are fleshly, but if your heart is ruled by the Spirit, your emotions become spiritual. In the world, people are crushed by their emotions because the flesh cannot contain emotions because the flesh is empowering them. Drugs, medications, alcohol, entertainment, etc, are the biggest businesses because so many people are looking for an escape from their own emotions. As Christians, we are confronted with the same emotional conflicts, but now we have a choice whether to respond in the flesh or in the Spirit. To respond in the flesh is to do as the world does, but to respond in the Spirit is to allow God to confront your emotion and take authority over it. 

This is why my "choosing to respond" is a religious action in my case. It has the appearance of God taking authority over my emotions, but really it's just another way of escaping my emotions in my flesh (my own strength). This is why my emotions have yet to come into alignment, and this is why God is digging deep to uproot all this. 

I realize I've been all over in this post because I've come to my conclusions as I wrote them. I hope it makes sense.

...all for now.

This might be a long one because this has been an interesting season so far. To catch up a little bit, it started with depression. Not an “all is lost” or “there’s no hope” depression, but more of a non-motivated depression. It’s not that I didn’t do things, but what I did I didn’t take much joy in.

As some know I’m in the process of writing a book, and while I truly want to finish it, and spend many hours a week (the days get split up by other responsibilities often, which is why I don’t say “daily”) writing, I had lost the joy I had when I first started. Other things that I had been doing just because they had to get done, like finding a school, and planning for the future, were drudgery. 

Finally, a few weeks ago I was praying and it finally occurred to me that I wasn’t motivated.  I know I was motivated before. I had vision, and dreams, and excitement, but somewhere along the line it died out. I began to search through old journal entries and found so many energetic and exciting revelations day after day.  I couldn’t figure it out, so I went for a drive just to get away and be alone with God for some time to get back on track.  About an hour into the drive I began asking God why I wasn’t motivated. Surprisingly He answered (I say surprisingly not as a remark on God’s character or nature, but in regards to the season I’ve been in). He revealed to me that I wasn’t motivated because I felt alone. There was a deep down feeling that as I moved forward in my life, as I pursued these visions and dreams, that I would be doing it alone. Now, I’m not talking about a wife here, although the feeling was present at times, it was not the thrust of the problem. I felt like God was not going to be there every step of the way walking with me.

Of course, when you say it out like this it’s a ridiculous thought, but it was a hidden thought in my subconscious that robbed me of motivation. Having it revealed there was a level of healing, but the feeling didn’t come out of nowhere, it had a source. I began to search for the source by looking through old entries to find when I began to slip away into drudgery. After finding an approximate date that things started to change it quickly became apparent to me what the cause was…my car accident.

            It wasn’t the car accident itself that caused the wound (kind of ironically), but more so it was the recovery. The day of the accident, the peace of God was so heavy I couldn’t and wouldn’t complain about a thing. The days and weeks that followed, although there was a lot of healing grace from God, were very painful. Two days after the accident was one of the most painful nights of my life. I was still in the hospital and the pain meds they were giving me stopped working in a way. I was in agony for hours and hours before they were able to get it under control again. It’s not something I talk about a lot because I don’t want people being distracted from the miraculous work God had done, but just the same, it hurt….a lot. Although nothing was as bad as that night, throughout the recovery I had many painful days. Even after I was going out and driving again, I would have days that I couldn’t get the pain to stop. Even now I have “bad neck days” that hinder me, and it’s been over 14 months since the accident. For the first 11 months I hadn’t gone a single day without feeling pain. Thankfully I do have good days now when I don’t feel it at all.

            The reason I say all this is that as I’ve been praying about it, it has occurred to me that pain causes loneliness. Whether you are in chronic pain or you have just stubbed your toe, there is a dissociation that occurs. When you’re in pain there is a divide between you and the rest of the world. No one else feels the pain you are feeling because it is happening to your body and no one else knows your body. While with emotional pain, compassion and sympathy can be demonstrated because another person can be feeling the same heartache as you; the same connection cannot be made with the physical body. This is not to say that emotional compassion for pain is ineffective, but the “loneliness” of pain cannot be removed; only soothed. When the pain subsides most times the loneliness does as well (this is why chronic pain is so emotionally draining). Like a child who has bumped their head and goes crying to a parent. The parent may “kiss it better”, and while it may sooth the crying child, the physical pain will only go away in its own time.

            Personally, I believe that physical pain reminds us (humans) of the fall of man. Before the Fall I believe there was no pain because God was with us physically and kept us from harm. When man fell, death entered the world and as a result pain. Pain is essentially a presupposition to death. Things hurt because they will harm you. The greater the pain, the more likely it is to kill you (most of the time). So when we experience pain, we are reminded of our mortality and our mortality is directly related to our separation from God.  Even for Christians, I believe there is a subconscious loneliness that springs from pain. Especially in instances of chronic pain.

I say all this because it has been my experience, and while theologically and even relationally I know I’m no longer separated from God, physically, pain screamed that I was. Now that I recognize the problem I can take action against it in prayer and even in my mindsets, but the key is recognizing the problem. 

I hope that makes sense.

 

 

…all for now.

 

 For starters, I shaved my head. I guess that's not a very good starting point, but that's where I'm going to start anyways.

The back story is that over the past few months I've been plagued in my mind. God has been digging up (as usual) so many memories, and unresolved issues and I could seem to get out from under them all. What started it was a nice little chat with a friend who basically pointed out how much pride I had. It wasn't a complete shock to me, but it wasn't something that I had recognized at that point to work on. Of course, pride is caused by insecurity so in dealing with the pride the insecurities had to be brought to the surface. 

There are so many area's of my life that this effected that I had no idea. Most of it had to do with my interactions with people. As most people around me know, I can be pretty blunt. Now, I'm not saying all of my bluntness is a problem, because some of it is very intentional, but there are times when I'm blunt by reflex and the reflex is caused by pride. (This of course is a simplified explanation. In reality there's much more to it.) So now recognizing this shortcoming, I could start doing something about it. The problem is, by watching my words and actions (not that I do it perfectly, by any means) the insecurities manage to just sit there rather than being covered over by pride as they were before. This has made me realize that things I didn't think bothered me anymore, really do. Things that I have "moved past" really I just covered over. For months I found myself in a constant state of self examination and re-examination of past hurts/conflicts/issues. Of course this isn't the right course to take, but it's the only one I knew (which is probably a result of pride...but lets not get too side tracked). 

In my own mind, there is no closure to my past. That's all I wanted really. Just closure. I can deal with the hurt, I can deal with the discouragement, I can deal with every negative side effect, but I can't deal with the uncertainty. I needed to know "why?". Now, when I said "I can deal with", I don't mean that I've found a way to get through these things. I mean that I've learned to trust Jesus with these things in the past and I know He can deal with these things now. So needing to know "why" is a new area of trust He's teaching me. Trusting that He is in control and always has been in control even when we don't know why things happen or what's going on.

This is why I shaved my head. I was all ready to just give myself a trim, but when I started it hit me that I've been walking for too long in past understanding. Hair is often symbolic of understanding and wisdom, so I needed to get rid of all my past understanding. I need to give it up to Him trusting that He is faithful and good, and that He is presently with me and nothing in the past can change that. I went to see Bob Jones a few weeks ago (he's a very experienced prophetic voice in the nation). He said that "your past is only good for ministry. Don't try to use it for anything else." If you are ministering to someone and your past experience can help them get through what they are dealing with, great. Otherwise, we arn't going to learn anything new from about ourselves, from ourselves, without the Holy Spirit. So rather than becoming introspective and trying to reconcile your own past, become Spirit-spectrive and allow Him to reconcile your whole life.

So in short. I shaved my head because I don't know anything. I have no wisdom. I have no understanding. I have no idea....Now I can get somewhere.

...all for now.

I'm going to update at some point. I've moved into a new apartment  and I don't have regular internet access yet, so that's thrown my "posting schedule" (i.e. every 3 months) off. A ton have things have happened, changed, gone wrong, gone right...but I don't have time to write any of it now. So, soon....I think....maybe.

 Something that God is trying to teach me in this season is about gentleness. It may seem odd at first glance, and when He first pointed it out to me I thought the same thing. My second reaction was "who me?" Personally I don't see myself as a gentle person. I walk heavily, I speak loudly, I have strong opinions and blunt candor at times, and I punch my friends for fun (the guys at least). As I prayed about it God began to reveal to me that gentleness is not a personality trait, and it's not walking around as though your frail and weak. Gentleness is strength reserved. 

There's good news and bad news that went along with this revelation. The good news is that I don't have to worry about changing my personality to be gentle. There are "rough" area's in my personality that God put in me for specific reasons, so my focus doesn't have to be on swimming upstream. The bad news is that if gentleness is strength reserved then I am very rarely gentle. I'm not talking about being physically gentle either (anyone with a fully functional brain knows how to be physically gentle).  I'm referring to  spiritual and intellectual gentleness. (I say intellectual not as in a power of whit's type statement, but more along the lines of making a conscious decision to be gentle.) Here's where things get tricky. It is completely against my nature to be gentle. When someone is making an erroneous statement and I know the facts, my words fly out like flaming arrows. Even if I say it in a nice way, it's rare that the thought of being truly gentle occurs to me. Sometimes it's not harmful if someone says something incorrect, and it may be more loving to allow them to find out at a better time than in the middle of a conversation. 

Having recognized my own severe lack of gentleness I also realized another aspect of this that challenged me. God wants me to be gentle, because He is gentle. I've got to say, my immediate thought of God is not always as "gentle". This is not because of anything done on God's part, but just because of my own twisted view of things it's hard for me to accept that He is gentle, even though intellectually I know He is. I've had people prophecy over me how God deals gently with me and I always think to myself "uhhh...what?" And again, it's not because God doesn't treat me gently...I just have a hard time receiving His gentleness. So the second part of this process is learning the gentleness of God. In fact, it's really the first part. I can't be gentle to others if I don't view God as gentle with me first. Not that I don't want to be gentle, but most of our interactions with others are reflections of how we feel the most important person in our life interacts with us. So I need to get first things first.


...all for now.

    So as promised I'm updating. Part of the reason I haven't been updating much lately is that I haven't had a lot of clarity in my head in order to articulate something worthwhile here. I have been in such a strange season lately I'm not sure what to make of it. It's not strange in a bad way, just strange as in different than what I'm used to. While God has been showing me a lot of different things lately there is an underlying theme of marriage. I'm not saying that I'm getting married soon or anything, but for some reason God has been bombarding me with things related to marriage. As a side note, I can recognize some real growth in myself because the thought used to terrify me. Just the word would send a shiver up my spine.
   Over the past year and a half I've received many prophetic words concerning getting married, so as a base line I can at least assume that I will be getting married at some point. Most of the words say "soon", but that doesn't mean a whole lot to me, just that I'm being prepared now. I'm not one that likes to kick against the goads so I'm taking a "relationship development" course, which is actually a marriage class, through the Crossing. (The class is designed for married couples, but 3/4 of the class are single people, so it's not as strange as it might sound.) It's pretty insightful. 
   What's interesting about all this is that I'm not in a relationship right now. I don't know for sure who I'm going to marry. I have my theories, but that's all they are. I've resolved to keep the wagon behind the horse by keeping my emotions in check until an actual relationship forms (see, I have grown.) So all this preparation is general, but at the same time its very specific. God's been working heavily on area's of my heart that I didn't know existed. He's shown me so much about how my heart works and how He's designed me to interact with Him intimately. Obviously these are things that would be very important in a marriage, but that of course is secondary to knowing Him better. It's things like that which help me understand why He has me in this season. Although I will get married eventually, it comes secondary to being married to Christ. One is temporal, and the other eternal. I'm glad He's showing me this now because learning it in the other order, and then trying to reverse the order again would be pretty difficult, I'd imagine. 

There's so much else I could write about. I had a massive revelation at the OneThing conference this year that has lead to dozens of pages of notes, which I will probably teach on at some point. I won't attempt to writing it all down here, because I would be sitting here for too long typing it out. I'm going to try to update more often. I have to find my writing groove again.

...all for now.

 I'll be updating soon. Not sure what I'll update about, but I'll write something. I'm trying to get back in the swing of recording things again, because I've been slacking a lot, so hopefully this post will remind me to make another post.

...more to come.

 I'm not going to apologize for posting infrequently anymore. I've come to terms with the fact that I don't post as much as I used to, so now you should to (as I talk to the wind here). 

To cut to the chase...I'm still in pretty much the same season I've been in over the last couple posts. So the good news is that I don't have to attempt to get up to speed. The bad news is that it is a tough season. It's not the kind of tough where it's really bad until you break and it gets better. It's the kind of tough where things are difficult...and they stay that way...for a long time. So that's basically where I'm at. I have had some recent breakthroughs though, and while some are deeper than I'm willing to go here, I can share at least one.

A week ago I was at Prayer Furnace and the theme of the night was essentially praying for God to break in with love in deeper ways. I'm all for that so I was praying and connecting with God asking Him to go deeper in my heart when He brought a specific memory to mind. He then began to speak into the memory bringing revelation of where things went wrong and how it has hindered me over the years. 

He brought me back 14 years to the day actually. I was 12 years old at the time. It was in the middle of the night I remember being woken up by the phone ringing. Shortly after I could here both my parents weeping loudly. My uncle had died. He was one of my closest uncles, although he lived in Vermont so we didn't see him as often as we would have liked. He had 5 sons, 4 of them essentially the same ages as my 3 brothers and myself, so obviously we were all very close. Somewhere in my 12 year old mind I came to the conclusion that night that I needed to be the strong one because both of my parents were so broken up about it. So by morning when they came to break the news I didn't allow myself to grieve fully. I'm sure I cried some, but I pushed that down as soon as I was able. 

Seeing that we were so close to those cousins we packed up immediately to go to Vermont to be with the family. I remember my mother saying to my brothers and I that we should be there for our cousins. I took that as "be the strong one" yet again, so the whole time up there I didn't allow myself to grieve. At the wake I wouldn't go to the casket because I saw my uncles crying and I "needed to be strong". Of course, it all spiraled from there.

There's a lot of other related things with it, but the short of the revelation is that I took on a spirit of death during that time. I had put to death a part of my heart in order to keep from grieving and there was no way of undoing this in my own strength. I had never even acknowledged it. I had noticed some of the results though. For one, for as long as I can remember whenever I would get tired, I would get depressed. It took me years to figure out the connection. I figured that I was tired because I was depressed, but it was more accurate that i was depressed because I was tired. Before I was saved my solution usually was resorting to alcohol. I would just drink until I was not awake any longer. After getting saved and being freed from problem drinking I pretty much just bore the fact that I was depressed when I get tired. I figured it was just a fact of life, or something.

Last Tuesday God showed me that it was actually a spirit of death and rejection that had been lingering for the past 14 years. After He revealed all this I was finally able to grieve for my long past uncle. It turns out that grieving actually takes several days. It's scary that this is news to me with all the people that have died around me over the years. But I guess that's the nature of what I was. I feel much lighter now, though. I still get a little depressed when I'm tired, but its just because my body got so used to that way of being that it's taking a little time to get out of that mode...but I'm pushing along. 

In other news, I'm in the midst of another exciting game of "What's God Doing?" I just made it to round 5 of "I Don't Know", but hopefully round 6 will bring a "Maybe Its..." or even a "Something Like..." But for now, it's a straight out mystery. There are so many things shifting around in my heart and mind right now it's hard to keep track. So if I stop making sense, that's probably why (that is, of course, assuming that I made sense to begin with). 

...all for now.

 Yet again I'm only posting to get myself back in the mode of posting and being more transparent. I'm finding a real draw to being secluded in the season I'm in, and I know that's not actually what is needed. It's been a tough season not because of any particular stressor around me but because God is continuing that "opened heart surgery" on me. I don't know specifically what He is doing, but I can identify a few "side effects". They stick out to me because they are things that I usually don't feel so I'm pretty sure it's a result of what He's doing in me.

One in particular is loneliness. This one sticks out the most to me because I pretty much haven't felt lonely my whole saved life. It's hard to explain in a lot of ways. It's not that I feel distanced from God in any ways. He's been pretty intentional about drawing me closer in this season. It's not even a rejection issue, which often times it would be...but this is different. I've almost always wanted to get married (there are a few years exception in there), but I've always been content with waiting on God's timing and whatnot. I guess I still am content waiting in one sense. I'm not in a "can't wait" mode or anything. I guess it just comes down to that I'm recognizing my lack. A lot of my friends are married and having kids and when I'm with multiple couples at a time I see a sharp divide. It's not an "us vs. them" thing, but more of a perpetual third wheel feeling to it. Then there's things like going out to eat or going to the movies. When friends get married in a lot of ways they drop off the social grid. Almost none of my married friends come out to eat or go to the movies any more, so as more of them get married the fewer people there are to do things like that. (That's more of a gripe than a real heart issue...but I thought I'd throw it in there.) It seems the only time my married friends go out is when it's with another married couple. I only say this to exemplify that social divide there is for the single among the married....And not to mention I turned 26 a couple weeks ago so I'm on a downward slope to 30!....but that's beside the point. I guess I'm coming to the point where I recognize that there are some things I can't do as a single man. I know there are things I wouldn't be able to do while married, and I've enjoyed single life, but like I said before, this is something that has recently come upon me. It's not a decision I've reached and it's not that I've reached the limits of my patience because I'm still in no rush to get married (ironic isn't it). My point is that there's now a new emotional element to my heart that I need to learn to deal with.

Another side effect is a little bit more familiar to me, so I understand it a bit better. I've been finding that I've been much more "sensitive" to the sufferings of others lately. (I'll admit the only reason I put sensitive in quotations is because manly men aren't suppose to be sensitive, so the quotations give the illusion that I'm actually talking about something else....but forget you read this so it still takes the effect.) Yesterday I heard about the persecution that has been taking place in India over the past week or so. Apparently some terrorists murdered a few people and blamed the Christians, so the Hindu's gathered into mobs and began murdering the Christians. So far, I'm told, 50,000 people have been murdered, children are being shot in front of their parents, nuns are being gang raped and then dragged through the streets naked, and things are only escalating from there. I literally breaks my heart. I felt as if someone in my family had died when I heard about this. I don't know anyone in India, but it hurts like I know them all. I used to feel bad about these kind of things, and they are sad, but never did they have such an effect on my heart. It left me in this place of "what do I do?". Of course I brought that all into prayer and there has been some resolve by the grace of God, but I don't forget the pain.

...all for now.

The only reason I'm writing here right now is to keep my mind busy I guess. In short, I'm a mess. But at the same time I have it more together than I have in a long time. It's also really painful....but it's good. I don't know what's going on, or where I'm going, but I do know why. I guess in the end all I need is to know why. I feel like I have a road rashed heart in a salty world. But I knew this was coming.

A couple days ago I had a dream. In the dream I was laying on the top bunk of a bunk bed. I had just had open heart surgery and I was recovering from it. The doctor came in, his name was Dr. White, and told me that a side affect would be high pressure throughout my body. He left and as I lay there people were walking by the door to my room. They were family members and friends. They would pop their head in and say hi as they noticed I was there, as if they did not know I was having surgery. They were on their way to see someone else apparently.

The meaning of the dream was that God was going to do "open heart surgery" on me. Not hard to discern that one. The doctors name "Dr. White" represents purity, that the Surgeon is pure and has no ill intent. The recovery with the "high pressure" is inner turmoil or something along those lines. Being on the top bunk is being in a higher place of rest in the Lord, and all the people passing by signifies that I'd be relatively isolated through the process.

So like I said...I saw this coming. Really the only "good" symbol in the whole dream was being on the top bunk. Everything else is just plain rough, as far as seasons go. It's interesting too because in general I'll usually have a good season before He brings me through a tough, stretching season, but this time I'm going from a tough season into this. I'm not complaining really, it's just difficult. I don't know what He's doing in my heart. I don't even know where to begin. All I know is it hurts. I feel like I'm mourning, but no one has died. It's like I'm heartbroken, but no one has dropped me....So in other words...crap.

As a result I've re-realized something about my self. (I say "re-realized" because after I recognized it I remembered that I have realized it before, but never changed so basically forgot the original realization...phew) Apparently I do a bit of dissociation when I'm hurt. I'm sure a lot of people do the same thing without realizing it, but I realize it so I might as well identify it and attempt to change it. I noticed today (which is the first day of this pain) that I tease people a lot more and am much more "violent" (I do a lot of light punches in the arm with the guys...something i do normally...just did it a lot today, though) . I don't mean getting angry or malicious, but I joke around with people more incessantly. I noticed at the end of the day today that I was teasing on person in particular a lot. It's always lighthearted and never meant seriously, which is exactly why it's a dissociation. I keep my mind on things that are lighthearted and humorous to keep from dealing with my own heart. My mouth keeps moving so my brain can keep busy which keeps my heart silent. So while I'm all for joking around, as a means of escape it's no good.

The problem is, I don't know what my alternatives are. I refuse to be the type of person that mopes around when he's not feeling good, and I don't really talk to anyone on any sort of deep level (and I don't think I really want to). So my choices are to either grin and bear it (which is what I've always done), or........give in. Like I said before, "open heart surgery". Whenever God gives me a clear dream is because He doesn't want to give me any room to miss the meaning, and when He spells things out clearly...you get the point. He wants me to have an open heart. What that means, I have no idea. He's doing it, not me. So my real choices are to either rest in Him and trust that He has my best interests in mind as He deals with my heart, or I could try to resist and make myself truly miserable. ....I think I'll stick with the former.

...all for now.

I really have been meaning to post...for about 2 months now, but I just haven't got around to it. Part of it is that my mind has been too cluttered to squeeze out anything intelligible so it would have been pointless to post. Another part is that so much has happened in the last 2 months that any attempt to thoroughly catch up would take several hours, and I don't have the time or patience to sit down and attempt something of that scale. So I'm going to pull the "It's my journal, I'll do what I want" card and just jump back in without any recaps or prerequisite information and go off with both guns blazing or whatever other applicable cliche you'd like to use.

Over the last couple weeks (so much for no recaps....dang.) I've been really wrestling with what turned out to be some deep rejection wounds. At first I didn't recognize them as such, but after a lot of prayer God identified the roots. While its always good when God identifies things in your heart, there are both positive and negative consequences to this. I'll start with the positive.

The positive actually didn't take place until last Sunday. For a time I was in this place of limbo where I knew in my head what the truth was but my heart wouldn't accept it. I recognized that there was something blocking me from really feeling accepted by God but I couldn't see what it was. On Sunday morning as I was driving into the Crossing I was listening to music when God spoke two words to me. It wasn't the loud booming voice when God has something important that He doesn't want me to ignore. It was the still small voice. He said "You matter." ...I was ruined. Out of all the knowledge I had, all the words I've received, all the scripture I've read, I never understood this before in my heart. That I matter to God. Apparently I've been limping along with this false perspective that God loved me but for the most part I was inconsequential. Of course writing this out it sounds ridiculous. This, however, was what my heart felt though. Apparently for a long time too. When He said those two words I was immediately broken out of a long numb trying season and thrust into the affections of God. I could go on and on about all this entails, but I may just save that for another time.

The negative consequence to this work is perplexing at best but heart wrenching at worst. I'm not going to get into too much detail, but in short God's stirred up some old feelings that I did not expect and now I'm not exactly sure how to deal with them. Personally I would like to just get rid of them. I's costly to have them and is in no way fun. Apparently I can't just "get rid of them" though. Trying to do that is what got me in this pit to begin with (from what God has been telling me). So now I need some other way of dealing with them and I have no idea what that is or even means. Thus, my "perplexing" comment. So trying to find my way out is unclear and staying where I'm at is painful. It's like being lost in a cave without a flashlight. Oh yeah, and the cave is made of acid...with lots of itchy bugs and maggots...and a bear. Yeah, that should do, I think the bear is a nice touch.

So that's about it. Kind of confusing I know. But that's life...mine at least.

...all for now.

It's been a while since I've updated, and I'm really not sure where to start. I've been meaning to write for some time now, but just didn't get around to sitting down and doing it. Since my last post I have gone in and out of a wilderness season. It was a pretty tough season, to be honest. God really exposed a lot of barren areas of my heart and worked heavy on them. Right now I'm just shifting out of that season, but I'm not really sure where to. I could probably go on and on with all the faults I've found in myself in the last few weeks, but I don't think that would be particularly beneficial to really write about.

More recently God has been speaking to me about my identity. Not who I've been identified as, but who He created me to be. He's drawing a line between what He's placed in me and what I've picked up from the world around me. I notice it a lot with the people I interact with. For example, I've noticed that I can be very blunt with people. Part of this is of God in giving me the ability to speak truth to people without fear of man, but part of it is from my upbringing. My upbringing shows itself when I'm blunt to the point of rudeness. I could go over a lot of situations where I've realized that I was really rude to people, but the point is that God is identifying these areas to me and dealing with them.

Another part of identity that He has been speaking to me is using what I've been given. He's been convicting me of all my abilities that I have that I keep to myself because of my own stupid insecurities. For example, I write a lot. I have 4 or 5 notebooks full of things I've written with me almost all the time yet not a single line I've ever shared with anyone. They are usually things that come to me while I'm worshiping so they really have no business being hidden or kept to myself. I have to get over being my own worst critic and let God use what He will. The same thing applies to music. I've played the guitar for about 10 years now, yet must people I know have no idea I play. That's not right. I played the bass at Prayer Furnace a few weeks ago (granted, it was my first time playing the bass ever) and people kept coming up to me saying "I didn't realize you played". If I've been playing for 10 years, and God has given me the ability to play (at least to a measure), then why am I not using it for Him? It's just not right.  I'm not even saying I know what to do with all that I'm able to do, because there are a lot of things that I can do and I don't understand them at all. The point is that I want to be in a place where I am willing and ready to use whatever gifts or abilities I have for whatever God wants me to do with them. Clearly I'm not at that place right now...and that needs to change.

That's all for now...although it's just the tip of the iceberg of what's going on in my life. The top of the tip even.

Soooo....Where to begin?... This has been such a strange season for me. I'm definitely transitioning, but I'm not sure what I'm transitioning to. God still hasn't given me word on what I should be doing next, now that I'm not going back to Salem State. The only thing He has done is reassured me that He doesn't want me going back there, and that He does have a plan. I honestly have no idea what He wants me to do, so I am looking forward to hear what He has to say. I guess I "should be" freaking out right now. I used to get really stressed about not knowing where I'm heading or what I'm doing, but I've really had a peace through this season. Aside from the initial shock of being dismissed from school, I haven't been stressed about it. I would like to know what He has planned though.

In other news...God's been doing a lot of deep work on my heart lately. Over the last few weeks He's been pulling up a lot of past hurts and wounds that were never really dealt with apparently. He's taught me the difference between forgiveness and murder (I'll explain), and also between being washed in the blood of Jesus and pulling the carpet over the dirt. Really they are both the same issue, though. What He has been showing me is that when things hurt me or stress me out, I tend to put them out of my mind and close off my heart to it. If a person hurts me deeply I simply stop thinking about them and stop caring about them. Essentially I murder them in my heart. They become dead to me. From the outside it may look like forgiveness. There's no more bitterness, or noticeable hurt from whatever the person did...but in reality it is murder. Not just murder to the person in my heart, but also murdering the part of my heart that the person had. Of course, this is not the right course of action, and it's not something I've practiced since I've been saved, but it is something that has caught up to me from the many years before I was saved.

This also applies to "things" as well as people. The best way I think I can explain this is by giving an example. I'm not sure if I could put it into words otherwise. When I was young, and up into my teens I had a horrid temper. I was constantly getting into fights, or flipping out breaking things, or punching walls..things like that. As I got older I learned to deal with it better, but the same anger remained. After I got saved I knew I couldn't go around being angry anymore, so instead of giving it to God, I swept it under the carpet (so to speak). I put it out of my mind and ignored it. The problem is, doing this does not change the root of the issue. God wound up exposing it years later and confronted me head on with it. Ignoring a problem does not make a solution, it simply forces the problem to find a new way out.

With both of these situations, which are really the same heart issue, there is one solution...the blood of Jesus.  When Jesus went to the cross in my place it did not do it just so that I could escape hell. It wasn't an early payment for my judgment after death, although it does accomplish this. He paid for my reconciliation with God. Not with Him after I die, but now. Reconciliation with God means no more sin, brokenness, hurt, pain, all the consequences of the fall of man. The problem is, when we look at the blood of Jesus as just a payment to keep us from hell, we cheapen what His blood was worth and what it has truly accomplished. He shed His blood so that we could be reconciled with God now, and by being reconciled with God we are able to be taught by Him and transformed by Him in holiness. It's reconciliation with God that allows repentance, not the other way around. We are to repent because the Blood has made a way....but this is a bunny trail from what I was getting at.

While I was at Prayer Furnace tonight I laid out before God recognizing my own brokenness. I couldn't make alive the dead areas of my heart again. I wouldn't know where to begin. As I was on my face He began to speak to me His love for me and His affections for me. At this point I was able to get up and really worship Him. As I worshiped Him He grabbed me and put a new heart in my chest. Note, I'm not saying He spoke to me that He's giving me a new heart, or that it was "as if" he was giving me a new heart. It wasn't something in my mind He was doing. I physically felt a new heart beat in my chest. As it began to beat a warm tingling sensation moved up the right side of my head, down my right arm and then down to my right leg. It crossed over to my left leg and then up my left arm and to the left side of my head. It felt as if new blood was being pumped into my body. It actually caught me by surprise because I didn't know He was going to do that. I don't even know what to expect from this, but so far it has lifted a weight off of me and opened up my heart to greater joy. All the death in my heart and issues under the carpet have been flushed away. His blood has completed all the work that needs to be done.

After He did this, He brought me to Psalm 16, so I'll close with a few verses from it...

Where to begin... I guess I'll start with Thursday morning. That morning I had a dream. When I woke from the dream I didn't understand what it meant, although I recognized that it had some pretty significant symbolism in it, so I wrote it down as I normally do. I actually had 2 dreams back to back and I pretty much knew what the second dream meant after praying about it a short while. It was concerning Prayer Furnace in a way so I e-mailed Joe to remind me to tell him the dream later that day (I would be seeing him later on for a class he's teaching). The first dream I was still stumped on, however, so I just kept it in the back of my mind praying about it and went on with my day. I'll be honest I didn't give it much thought while I was at work.

In the dream I was at Salem State (the college I go to). I was on my way to take a final. There was some information that was understood before I was actually in the dream, though. It was understood that the Spirit was preparing the other students for the presence of God. I knew that I was to release a word that would shift the atmosphere and God was going to break out during the test. When I entered the room I could see that the Spirit had prepared the atmosphere. The problem was the students were all talking to each other and I didn't have an opportunity to release the word. I didn't even feel a release from God, in the dream, to say anything. Just then I realized that I had not been in my classes for half the semester. I went up to the professor and asked if I should still take the final. He said "No, don't waist your time." I left the class room and then packed my backpack with a sleeping bag I had with me. I was really upset about not taking the final, although it didn't make sense that I was upset. I walked out of the school and the dream ended.

Now, flash forward to me getting home from work on Thursday. I walk in my room to find a letter sitting on my laptop (the usual place for my mail). It was from Salem State and I figured it was just some random event going on or something insignificant. I open the letter to find out that I have been administratively dismissed from the college. Boom.

This came completely out of the blue. I never even imagined this happening. What had happened was that because of my car accident I had to take a medical leave from the semester. Because it was so late in the semester, however, I still had to pay for it. The problem was that my loan company decided not to pay out because I was not in my classes any longer...and they failed to inform me that they wouldn't be paying. So, instead of knowing about an overdue balance I had on my student account and paying for it cash (which I could have done...and mind you, that's not always the case so there's some added irony), I find out by getting a letter saying I've been kicked out of school.

There is more of a back story to this, though. About 4 years ago I was kicked out of my last school. That time it was my fault. Two semesters previous to being kicked out I went through a bad breakup with my fiancee at the time and so I stopped going to all my classes in my depression. This was also the same time that God began putting me on the right track, so it was a mixed season. The following semester I was on academic probation and needed to bring my GPA up. My grades didn't cut it and I was kicked out. It was devastating. I do look back and recognize that if it had not happened I would not be where I am today, though. I would not have got involved with the youth at FBC, so I wouldn't have known about Youthstorm, meaning no Crossing, no community, no Prayer Furnace...so in short, I wouldn't be where I am today.

So now seeing the same kind of letter, although different circumstances, brought up all sorts of deep hurts all over again. There were things completely unrelated to school being brought up. I was a complete mess. To say the very least I was confused and shaken. Honestly, I'm still pretty shaken about it, but I'm wanting to be in His rest and I trust He'll bring it.

As I was processing all that was going on I checked my e-mail. Joe had sent me a message saying that he would remind me to tell him the dream. That's when I looked at my dream log and saw that I had the dream concerning school, and it immediately became clear what the dream meant.

When I started going to Salem State about 2 years ago I felt God specifically wanted me there. Every day I was on campus I was praying. After my first semester I was praying half the days I was on campus, and by the last semester I was fasting every day that I was on campus. I was doing prayer walks all over campus and really contenting for breakthrough on campus. There were times where I wanted to speak to people, but there was never a release to do so. I got a prophetic word during my time there that God had a muzzle on me until His desired time, so that made sense out of what was going on there to me. This is what the first part of the dream symbolized. The part where I realize I had not been there was a jump forward to now. The professor's words were significant. While I talked and prayed with my parents about it my mother said "Maybe God is keeping you from waisting your time there." She didn't know about the dream, and it was the same words that the professor in the dream spoke. It was also significant that I packed up a sleeping back in the dream. The sleeping bag represents a temporary habitation at Salem State. By packing it up, God is saying that it's no longer my place to war over. It's time to move on.

The circumstances of my dismissal are not overwhelming. I could fight and get back in, although getting my classes back would be very difficult. But the issue here isn't if I can fight to stay in that school. The issue is, where does God want me. The dream made it very clear that Salem State is not the place any longer. If I had the dream a few months ago I may not be as certain, but God specifically gave me the dream the very night before I would get the letter. As I've been praying I feel that God is going to use this to launch me forward as He did the last time I was kicked out of school, even by my own hand. If He can use my screw up to put me in open spaces, how much more when He orchestrates it?

The way I see it, I made the Dean's List every semester I was at Salem State. So my GPA is pretty high, much higher than when I left my last school..MUCH higher. The car accident, although painful, is putting me in a "healthy" financial position because of the settlement, so money is not really an issue. So I could easily go to a much better school and get my bachelors there which would be better on a resume. The other idea I'm toying with is going straight for my Masters. I have to research the options, and pray a ton about it all because He hasn't been clear on what exactly I should do next. I do feel I am to continue going to school, the only question is where.

There's more to write on related issues to this, but I'll save that for another time. I'm exhausted.

...all for now.

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; lest my enemy say "I have prevailed against him"' Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved......

But I have trusted in your mercy! My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation! I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me!

-Psalm 13


...more to come...but not now. I need to recover.

It has been an interesting week for me. I'm in kind of a tough season in the sense that it's hard to be joyful, but at the same time God is working some things deep in me so I'm not despairing about it. I have all these partial revelations going on but I'm waiting for them to be completed in me. Basically, the problem is identified but the solution is not implanted yet. I have 3 going on right now, and two of them I may write about at a later date when they are fully realized, but theres one I feel may be beneficial to write out. As I've probably mentioned in the past I get a lot of revelation when I'm writing. Usually simply writing out an issue will spark revelation. It's kind of cool because I'll be writing and just laying everything out there and the Holy Spirit will just jump in and take over with revelation from the very words I'm writing.

I was out hanging with some of the guys tonight after the Crossing Fenway tonight and just relaxing. I didn't really have much on my mind so needless to say I was pretty surprised when God busted out a revelation during my 10 minute drive home. He didn't use specific words but He did shine light on a false perception I have that I had not recognized before. He pointed out that I have a tainted perspective of love. To be honest it wasn't a big shocker to me. For one, I've been meditating on the love of God lately. It occurred to me that God is love, but that love was not God, so in order to truly understand love we need to look to who God is, the source, instead of trying to figure out God by looking at what we understand about love. So to find that my perspective of love is distorted by comparison to what I understand of God is not surprise. Additionally, I'm not blind to the fact that I have been hurt in the past and although hurts can be healed, perspectives formed in those times take some rooting out. And that's exactly what He's doing.

I've probably written about this before, but for the sake of clarity and remembrance I'll repeat myself, and hopefully it will stir some revelation out of the Holy Spirit. About 7 years ago I got into a relationship that got serious quickly. I was a "church kid" at the time (meaning, went to church...knew the Christian lingo, but didn't really have a strong relationship with Jesus) and I was set to marry this girl. We had a "strong relationship" even though we had plenty of issues and fights. Not to cast blame, but she was very manipulative. The "strength" of the relationship was that I am a lockjaw. I wasn't willing to let go for anything. It didn't matter how miserable I was, I would not let go. After 2 and a half years we were engaged. A few months later the fights intensified. At the 3 year mark she started seeing someone else and then broke it off. Despite being particularly miserable the last 6 months of the relationship I was not willing to let go. So of course the break was devastating and heart braking and all that fun stuff...but in the end it lead to me hitting rock bottom where God lifted me up and set me on the right path, but that's not the point of what I'm writing about.

Having been unhappy, yet unwilling to let go all those years my perception of love became distorted. That being my first real "romantic" relationship, it held particular weight in forming my understanding of love. The problem is, what it formed was an understanding of love that included a level of suffering as a requirement in love. There is an idea that if you want to experience the heights of love you need to accept the depths of heartache as part of the same whole. I think I've even written about this before in support of it, but the problem is it is NOT God. God is love and in Him is the fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forevermore. Does this sounds like someone who has heartache mingled into Himself? Love is longsuffering, yes. Love is patient, yes. Love is not meant to be painful, though. This mindset has kept me from advancing in both my relationship with the Lord, and in my relationships in the natural. To be honest this is so rooted in me that I'm having a hard time accepting the reality of it. I can feel my flesh waring against the truth that God's love is pure and pleasureful. That I don't have to expect my love to be betrayed and my heart broken as a matter of necessity.

But like I said...this is a partial revelation. So far He has revealed the issue, but not the solution. If I were to guess I would say He is going to walk me through this one. Obviously it's a deep issue that can't be merely explained away. I need to see Him as He is and receive His love as He gives it...without strings. I look forward to the completion of this work more than any of the others in the works, and maybe even more than all the ones past. One of the hardest things for me is to rest and enjoy His love and presence. Although I am able to do it at times, it's not something that comes easy to me, so I look forward to this being broken off my life so that I can be with Him and soak in His pure love.

I realize it has been a while since I've updated here. In a sense I guess I've been avoiding updating here, or journaling in general. (As I think about it, it relates to what I'll be talking about later in this post, so keep that in mind.) Not a lot of things are making sense in my head lately. I try to update when I've had a big revelation or something clear that I can write about, but when things are muddled in my mind it makes journaling rather difficult.

As I've thought about it, what it comes down to is a conflict between heart and brain. In my life experience the two have rarely agreed so this conflict is almost always in action, but of course when the stakes are high things can get pretty stressful. The worst part of it all is that if either one is winning, I'm miserable, but if they are dead locked, I'm stuck in confusion. Just to be clear, these conflicts are not always about relational issues. I've had the conflicts for things like what classes to take in a semester. It can be pretty ridiculous. The best case scenario is when the two are reconciled. One finds the truth of the situation and both are happy. Here, of course, I'm speaking about God stepping in and revealing truth. As flesh I am incapable of finding truth on my own, and certainly incapable of any type of reconciliation. He'll step in and reveal something to my heart, which will pass the info on to my mind and then a decision is made, or vice versa.

All this being said, on Sunday God disarmed my mind in a manner. He gently revealed to me that I assume that people are being manipulative. Not that I assume that people are malicious or twisted, but that I always assume people do things to alter other peoples responses. I could go into a bunch of examples, but thats not the point. What He revealed right after this was that I assume people are being manipulative because for a good part of my life I was manipulative. Not in a malicious way mind you, but for most of my unsaved life (and some of my saved) almost everything I did was for a desired reaction in someone else. This is where my avoidance of journaling comes in. I don't like writing things that I have to take back later. I don't like admitting that I feel a certain way on an issue, and then later (when the feelings have changed) taking it back. In a way I'm even manipulative with myself. But in any case...It was my little way of having control. By subtly picking up on how people react to different things I built up a stockpile of manipulation ammo. The funny part is, I'm sure no one would ever guess this about me. I didn't even recognize it until God pointed it out. It was so subtle I was barely doing anything to be manipulative....but it's a heart issue, and action or non-action are never the point when it comes to the heart.

When God revealed this to me I realized why I despised manipulative people so much. Why I get angry at salesmen, or women who overtly flirt. I saw it in myself. While it can be a good thing to recognize when someone is trying to be manipulative, it is not a good thing to assume people are being manipulative all the time. Before it was revealed that I saw people as manipulative it had never occurred to me that I was seeing through a filter. It was the way I had always seen people and so without a confrontation I would go on seeing this way without ever noticing. Now that there has been a confrontation, however, I need to change.

I've never really had to change my entire outlook on the human race before, so this should be interesting..but I trust that He'll guide me through it. I have to repeat to myself that even if everyone in the world is manipulative in some way, it should not matter to me and should not effect how I view them. I can only be myself and not worry about whether people want to respond in a certain way (and as a result rebelling against said response....but that's a whole other issue..haha). I don't know if any of that make sense, but that's how it is.


....all for now.