Category Archives: 4 Stream Blog

The Offer Is Life and Life to the Full

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The glory of God is man fully alive.  I’ve shared this quote from Irenaeus.  We hear and read often the idea of coming alive.  Being fully alive.  I’ve talked about this on many occasions in my writings.  Even when I didn’t realize this fully, there is a reason that this is on my heart and on the hearts of many others.  It’s because that’s what God is offering each and everyone of us.  Life.  That’s what we celebrate on Easter through Christ’s resurrection.  We celebrate His life, He is alive, and we celebrate the fact that through Jesus Christ we are now offered life and life to the full.  I wrote on Monday about Jesus restoring what was lost.  The simple fact is, that what was lost when man fell, was life.  We fell to sin and death reigned.

What I am writing about today has been on my heart quite a bit lately.  The idea of the life that is offered to each of us, should be choose to accept God’s offer.  I think it’s purely amazing to know that even through all of jacked up things we go through and do in our lives, God loves us enough to still offer life and has been out to restore it from the beginning.  Jesus was and is that answer to our restoration and to life.  If we surrender fully to Him, we can have life.  It’s quite an amazing feeling to fully surrender.  To feel God working in your life when you allow Him to lead.  He truly leads you to being alive.  I’ve felt it.

John 10:10, Jesus tells us that “The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  Jesus came to bring life.  Life to the fullest.  We were lost to sin and death and to the enemy who gained dominion over this world.  Jesus came to bring life.  John 11:25, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.” Jesus came to restore life.  In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul referred to Jesus as the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.  

We all celebrate Easter every year and mark the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In the modern church today, the focus tends to be more on His death and the Cross.  A very pivotal thing, also because the Cross was needed in order to give us forgiveness and free us from the grips of sin.  In an audio recording I was listening to on the works of Jesus, John Eldredge points out a very significant fact.  To the first apostles, the resurrection was the big symbol of the works of Jesus.  Acts 4:33, “And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.”  They were out to give testimony to Jesus who was put to death to forgive our sins, but raised to life again so that we can be made new and have life in Him.

It’s rather amazing stuff to think about.  The fact that we are made new, we are given new life in Jesus.  That we are dead to sin and alive to God because of the finished works of Jesus Christ.  We need to make sure we don’t lose site of the power of the resurrection.  Not just that Jesus was raised to life, but that in defeating death, we have defeated death as well through faith in Him.  Life was taken away when we fell, but God has always been out to restore us to life.  Romans 6:4, “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ as raised form the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.”  Romans 8:2, “And because you to belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you.”

As I mentioned, earlier in this post surrendering to God and allowing Jesus to reign in your life, brings abundant life to us.  In this fallen world, however, we have to work at it each day. We are going to be constantly under attack.  The closer we draw to the life God offers, the more the enemy will attack. “Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  We can take great joy in the life of Jesus, though.  It’s through Him that the adversary has been defeated.

Because of this great hope and joy, we can come alive.  Imagine a life where you no longer worry about what the world tells you.  You no longer worry about the every battles.  You just walk with God and follow His lead through every part of life.  It’s the life that Jesus lived here on earth and now lives today.  It’s the life he has made available to us who choose to live in Him.  Come Alive in Christ!

“Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.” – Watchman Nee

An Eternal Love Beyond Anything We Can Imagine

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I pray that all of you had a great day on this Resurrection Sunday!  I got to enjoy a great time of worship with my family and my church family.  It was a great day and God gave us a beautiful day to remind us of the beauty of His love for us and what this day means to us as believers and followers of Jesus Christ.  Throughout this day, and the days leading up to it, I found myself reflecting on Easter.  Reflecting on the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the full finished works of Christ.  In worship this morning, we dove into Luke 15 and the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coins, and the prodigal son.  It illustrates for us an unending pursuit for us that God orchestrated and Jesus explained how the Father will go to whatever lengths to pursue those He loves.  That being us.  Everyone of us.  Jesus came to restore what was lost at the fall.

I found my way back to Galatians 4 today where Paul provides the illustrations of Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael.  When Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, this was mans attempt to fulfill God’s promises.  verse 23 says, “The son of the slave wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife (Sarah) was born as God’s own fulfillment of His promise.”  All through the Old Testament we see where man continued to find their own way and live outside of God.  God, however, had another plan.  He was, from the outset out to pursue us.  Abraham was just one of the many examples God used to show where He fulfilled His promises and was out to free mankind of the slavery, sin, and death.

Let me back up a little.  Go to Eden, before the fall.  God had given man full domain of the earth.  The only commandment given was not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  With Satan’s intervention, man decided to not choose God first, ate the fruit and thus the fall happened.  We were cast out of the garden lost in sin and a world where we no longer had dominion as was intended.  We all know this.  So from that point God set out His plan to restore that which was lost.  To find the lost sheep, to bring back the lost son.

Isaiah 61, the Lord came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.  We are all broken and have been enslaved by our own sinful nature and wounds.  God had another plan for us.  We were never meant to be this way.  To be lost to our own sins.

What does all of this say to me?  Despite everything we have been through in our lives.  I don’t care where you are or what you have been through, God has a love for all of us like we could never fathom or comprehend.  We chose to turn away from God, but God never turned away from us.  He has always been out to pursue us and the works of Jesus Christ has been the fulfillment of that pursuit.  It is so wonderful to think about.  Yes, God care about each of us.  He loves each of us.  That means you too, no matter where you are.  We can take joy in Christ’s resurrection that through Him we are now dead to sin and alive to God.

Just think about how great this is.  Jesus IS Risen.  He IS Alive.  “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14).  He Rescued us from darkness.  Only real love would do such a thing.  Hell was never going to be the final solution and this is not what God wants for any of us.  He has been out to restore us from day one because of His great love for us.  We have to choose, however, whether we accept this and choose God once more, or take the final act of self-contentedness and refuse to follow.  Do we love God as He loves us and choose to live in the freedom of His love in Christ or do we choose what God does not want for us, which is death?  Me, I choose live and I choose God.

Seeking Real Holiness with Jesus

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I just finished another John Eldredge book this past weekend, ‘Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness.’  I took my time with this book as I really wanted to let it sink in as I read through it, reading and meditating on little bits at at a time.  It’s been another big part of my study and growth as I grow in my walk with God.  I look forward to the next book I’ll be starting by Dallas Willard ‘Hearing God’.  I’ll get into that later as I read through it.

In reading through Free to Live, God really opened my heart to something new, that I never really thought about.  The idea of living Holy and the joy that comes with being able to live a life filled with the Holiness.  Now what do you think about with the word Holy?  Do you think of a state of being that is out of our reach here in this life?  We often think of the greatness of God and how good he is and being in his presence in the Kingdom.  Put it this way, John Eldredge changed the name of this book from just “The Utter Relief of Holiness,” and added ‘Free to Live.’  A big reason would be that the original title, alone seemed a bit of turn off to some.  Holiness is looked at as he states, as “hard, perhaps; boring….a level of spirituality we might attain one day. But a relief?”

There is a relief I’ve come to learn through holiness and what walking with God and seeking Jesus each day can bring.  Henry Emerson Fosdick stated, “The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.”  Jesus is Holy and choosing to receive the renewed and restored life that He offers leads to holiness in ourselves and being more like Him.  I’ve mention this verse before, but Paul states in Ephesians 4:24, “Put on your new nature, created to like God – truly righteous and holy.” Putting off the old man and being reborn in Christ and seeking Christ each day leads to holiness.  That’s pretty serious and very profound.  It’s something that we can choose to live in each day.  Will we always get it right?  No, of course not, but through Christ, we can choose to seek it out each day.

This leads to thinking of what the nature of holiness is for us.  What does it mean to seek holiness, shedding our old and sinful nature each day and choosing to walk with God.  First, because of our sinful nature that we are born into, we can’t do it on our own.  With the fall of man, everything that was given to us when created as taken away.  This world no longer belonged to us.  But because of the finished work of Jesus Christ, because of his death on the cross, which we remember today, Good Friday, because of his resurrection, which we remember and celebrate on Sunday, and because of his ascension, which put all authority in heaven and earth under him.  Because of that, we now have God’s undeserved and unmerited grace.  Augustine tells us, “Nothing whatever pertaining to godliness and real holiness can be accomplished without grace.”

So now what? We live under God’s grace, what is that we can do in order to live a life filled with holiness.  For this, we have to look at the life of Jesus.  In Free to Live, John points to Jesus’s baptism and then His trials during his 40 day sin the wilderness when Satan tested and tempted Him.  What happens after this, Jesus, whose life is completely surrendered to the will of the Father begins to change the world in ways never seen before and never seen since, from His healings and miracles during His ministry, His direct confrontation of the religious establishment that was out for its own glory, not God’s, and then his full works through the cross and his death, his resurrection, and ascension.  His life was in full surrender to God’s will.  He walked with God every single day and followed where He was led.

For us to live in holiness, requires the same kind of living.  Living a life of surrender to God and walking in close intimacy with Him every single day, just as Christ did.  Now I know what many of you are thinking, this is just so hard to do.  For many of us this is true.  We are so locked into this world, into our sinful nature, into our wounds, that many just can’t find a way to do do this.  Dallas Willard points out, “I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a device for obtaining their own safety, comfort, and sense of being righteous.” He then quoted Frederick B. Meyer who wrote, “So long as there is some thought of personal advantage, some idea of acquiring praise and commendation of men, some aim of self-aggrandizement, it will simply be impossible to find out God’s purpose concerning us.” We have to shed our own worldly selfishness and self-reliance.  Shed the old man, our old and sinful nature, and we have to do this every single day.  As John points out, this is not easy thing and it will often lead to a higher degree of loneliness as people shy away from this kind of living or want it.  You’ll experience the loneliness that Jesus lived with.  But He felt is was worth it. 

Do you feel it would be difficult to live a life fully surrendered to God.  For us, is our fallen state, it certainly is.  However, Jesus walked among us.  He endured trials and struggles to a degree we can’t fathom, yet, He was fully locked on God.  He was was after His heart and lived this way.  He did not compromise His faith in anyway.  While this can be challenging, just think of life that can come from seeking holiness everyday.  Seeking God’s heart and will and letting Him fill our hearts each day.  Giving ourselves entirely over to God.  As John states, “One life totally given over to God is far more powerful than a hundred with gifting and expertise. Look at whom Jesus choose to change the world: fisherman, tax collectors, prostitutes.” Many areas of the church is about expertise, training, principles, etc.  Living a life totally given over to God sets in us freedom like we’ve never seen.  Freedom to live for God and walk with Him the way we were meant to.  Freedom to love God every part of our being and the freedom to love others (the greatest commandments).

This is not an overnight fix, but it is something that we can choose within ourselves to begin to more toward.  God knows our hearts and he wants to use each of us for his Glory, but we first have to choose to let Him into our hearts and begin that transformation.  Transformation takes a great deal of prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and healing.  It takes being awake to the the fact the spiritual warfare and facing it just as Jesus did, when God calls us to.  Seeking God.  Surrendering to His will and choosing to live in His grace.  Holiness is within our reach.  It is something I am learning more each day and seeking to live in and seek everyday of my life from hear on.  We won’t always get it right, but it’s an offer God has for us and freely available through God’s grace given through Jesus Christ.

What Happened to the Adventure?

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Life is a busy cycle that has so many turns, peaks, and valleys.  When we are kids, it is all an adventure.  I remember when I was growing up in Lilburn, GA, life was an adventure.  My brothers, buddies, and I spent lots of time exploring and finding ways to discover new things, try new things, and even get ourselves into trouble from time to time.  We loved to jump on our bikes and ride around town or down old trails through the woods.  We had creeks flowing through our neighborhoods and we would venture through there looking for craw-fish or just seeing how far we could follow a creek to see where it went.  It was always an adventure for us.

Fast forward to today.  We’re grown men in our 30s.  Most of us are married now with families of our own.  We’ve all been taken on all of our own adventures through life as we’ve grown.  Many struggles and many good times.  Something happens to many people however as we “grow-up” though.  We lose that sense of adventure and lose that connection with who we are and getting out and exploring the world.  We get bogged down into lives and careers that often times we are not happy with.  Our lives become almost routine from day-to-day and in the midst of it all, we often lost something in ourselves.  We think to ourselves, how did this happen?  How did I get here?  For some this sense of missing adventure causes to hit a point where we start looking for new avenues.  We hit what some call, the mid-life crisis.  We are out there looking for something, not realizing it was always there to begin with, but never stopped to pay attention because of the noise and chaos of everyday life.  When we’re kids, there’s not a care in the world.  Now there is our families, bills, careers, and so much more we deal with.

So what happens?  All too often, we’re told we need to take a certain path in life.  College, career, then family, and so on. For me, it came family, then college and career simultaneously as my wife and I married right out of high school.  Lot’s of challenges for certain, but we endured and now going on 18 years strong.  Many of you can relate to this, but over time, it started to feel like something was missing.  Had I made the right career choices or did I go through years of schooling for the right areas of study?  What is that I am missing?  I didn’t know the answer to those questions.  Then as I watched my kids grow I began to see there sense of adventure in them and wanting to get out an explore the world.  It’s dawned on me that this is a great part of it.  That sense of exploring the world around us and drawing into the beauty of God’s creation.  As kids that’s what we do, but many of us lose that when we grow-up into our adult lives surrounded by the world.  Our hearts get jumbled in all the chaos and business that we don’t take time to take care of it.  Spiritual Battles ensue and we get lost in our small stories and forget the larger story that we are all a part of.

Our hearts need a sense of adventure.  A great part of this adventure is our growing closeness with God. We also need that time out in the wilderness to draw in closer to God.  Where did Jesus go often to pray?  Into the wilderness and away from people.  Moses encountered God in the wilderness.  Out there, we can escape the chaos, take in all that is around us and just listen.  Why do so you think so many of are drawn to the beach or mountains when we take vacation?  There is something that restores us in those locations.

When I was in Colorado for Wild At Heart, I had an experience like I could have never imagined with God.  I didn’t touch my Bible, but rather had my journal with me and just listened to God.  Listened to all He wanted to reveal to me and show.  I prayed often that He would open my heart to everything and as I’ve shared many times, He opened my heart like never before.  I came to realize that what I was missing was the Larger Story.  I was focused on the wrong things.  On what I thought I was supposed to do, according to the world and not on what God was leading me to.  He gave me as Solomon prayed for, a hearing heart.  I was able to finally realize that it was not about my small story.  The adventure lies in the God’s larger story; The Story.  As John Eldredge states in his book, Epic, “There is a Story that we just can’t seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart.”

This accounts so much to why we get to points in our life where something may be missing.  We feel this, but then we don’t know what to do with it.  This is where an essential part of walking with God can really help.  People that don’t do so, often search themselves for the adventure, and the enemy begins to lead them. They get led to affairs, addiction and idolizing things that don’t matter, they get to that mid-life crisis.

There is no mid-life crisis, however, if you seek God’s intimate counsel and walk with Him. If you follow His lead, and really open your heart to hear Him, you’ll be amazed at what He will reveal to you.  Ask Jesus to come in.  Invite Him into your heart and to search you, as I was taught to do and just listen.  Be still and listen.  He will show you who you are and will show you the adventure that you are meant to go on.  He will lead you to adventure and risk that will often times take you out of what you know, out of your comfort zone.  Let me tell you, God is taking me on an adventure I never thought I would take.  It’s so different from anything I knew, but you know what, He has been prompting my heart on this for years, but I never listened to Him and was never willing to make any risky moves that might take me out of the security this world has me in.

God created everything, including adventure.  The adventure of our story lies in His Story.  It depends on our willingness to follow and be risky.  Remember those times as a kid, where you just didn’t care and you were all about getting out and explore all you could.  You can get all of that back again, shedding the old man, and our self-reliant, compromising, and capitulating.  Seek God.  Walk with Him and hear all He wants to reveal to you.  You’ll be so amazed.  It’s not without risk and often times, it won’t be without pain and it will force you to seek healing from your wounds and sin to walk closer to God, but Jesus overcame all, so that we could be free and be made new to seek all God has for us from this life and then into eternity.  There is still an adventure to live.

Rest and Renewal

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“By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Genesis 2:2-3.  These versus are the foundation of what has been known through history as the Sabbath.  Exodus 20:8 says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” which is one of the Ten Commandments God gave through Moses.  There is a lot of misunderstanding of what the Sabbath truly is and what it was meant for.  Many treat the Sabbath as a day for going to church and keeping holy by going to worship.

Jesus reminds us of an important fact, however, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  There is a misunderstanding that points to what it means to really keep the Sabbath Holy.  As Jesus says, it was made for man.  How do you truly keep it Holy?  That is by resting.  By taking time to just step away from the busyness of everyday life and to do lists.  Letting your soul rest, letting your spirit rest, letting your body rest, and letting God come in and restore and renew you.  Something we all need.

I’m not advocating staying away from worship and your church families.  I believe this is still an important part of our life and having connections with others in the faith, but we still need to set time for ourselves to unplug from the matrix and as John Eldredge reminded me at his latest Men at the Outpost event, to just think about nothing and let the soul do nothing but rest.

Be honest with yourself, when is the last time you truly experienced a Sabbath in this sense?  Experienced a day where you could just completely rest from the norms of everyday life.  The problem is that in the society we live in today, we are constantly bombarded.  Bombarded with information, with to do lists, and demands.  Think about how many WiFi, radio, and cellular signals that are just filling the airwaves.  Information is everywhere and our society is all about getting things done now, done faster, winning and winning faster (whatever that means).  It is an unrelenting barrage and quite frankly, most of us never take the time get away from it.  Think about it, how much anxiety would you feel if you were told you could not touch your cell phone or any other technology for a day or weekend.  I’ve felt it.  It’s difficult.

This is one big reason why I have just grown to despise the big city.  I literally cannot stand the city any longer.  It is too much chaos.  Too much busyness.  I go when I need to, but the more I can avoid it, all the better.  I know many of you won’t see eye-to-eye with me on this, but it’s just the way I’ve grown to see things.  My wife and I decided nearly 10 years ago to move away from the city and did so, and now prayerfully, eventually will settle into our own land in the country to just give us space and peace.

In “The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God,” Mark Buchanan stated, “Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest.”  Our lives need rest.  God gave us the Sabbath so that we could have rest.  Again, it was made for man.  And as Buchanan said, you cannot fully come alive in busyness.  If anything I find that continued busyness pulls you away from life.  It pulls you away from keeping guard over your spirit, soul, and body, and your heart, mind, and will.  You can’t actively engage and walk with God if you are constantly caught up in busyness.  You can’t be fully prepared for spiritual warfare.  You can’t gain the counsel your heart needs.  You can’t have restoration and healing of your heart.  Again, you can’t come fully alive.  The glory of God is man fully alive.”

I think this is such an important aspect of our lives.  Stepping away from the chaos and the constant coming and going.  As John Eldredge likes to say, unplug from the Matrix.  I was talking to one of my brothers at church a couple of weeks back and he shared with me that someone counselled him to take a weekend to just get away.  Even leave his Bible, maybe bring a journal and just get away alone.  The restoration and power of that is so rich and amazing.  It’s something God intended for everyone of us.  Real rest from everyday life.  Real restoration of the soul.

Take some time to think about this.  If you are thinking to yourself, “I just can’t drop everything and get away,” that right there is an indication of just how connected we are to the Matrix.  Trust me, I’ve felt it too,  but God is also stirring in me the need to change this way of thinking.  I need to make it more of a habit to unplug and rest.  Yes, there are responsibilities and things that need our attention, but we cannot neglect our hearts either.  If we get so lost in everything, we can’t watch over our hearts.

“Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).  I quoted this verse last week, and it’s very relevant.  It can be so easy to lose heart and shrink to complacency.  To just let life run you down, but as this Proverb states, the springs of life flow from our heart.  We have to care for it.  We cannot neglect it.  Part of caring for it, comes from rest and seeking God for restoration, for healing.  This is an offer to every single one of us, but we have to choose whether to accept it.

So again, just think about it.  When is the last time you truly had a Sabbath?  Truly had rest and was able to do nothing and unplug.  I realize that even when I go to the beach as relaxing and wonderful as it is to sit in front of the ocean and watch it do it’s thing, I still don’t unplug.  When I have been hunting, phone is still in my pocket.  Wild at Heart was my first time truly unplugging.  It’s what we need, otherwise, why would God have even made that time.  If He rested, I’m pretty sure we need it too.  Think about it.

Army For Prayer

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I tend to learn something new each day I walk with God.  Sometimes they are big revelations for my life, and other times they are smaller things that may seem like more common sense.  One thing that really came through the last few weeks and months is the real power of prayer.  Not just on your own, but especially the power of having people praying for you, with you, or over you.  For me prayer used to be one of those things that just came along when I found it convenient or for things that were often more centered on my small world and story.  It didn’t take it really serious for a long time and I certainly never took the time to really ask others to pray for me or with me.  Never felt it was important or that my own situations didn’t warrant a need for prayer from others.  Certainly had a jacked-up view of things for some time.

I’ve learned quite differently recently though.  In the last year, especially, I really made it an effort to try to bring prayer into my daily life.  I began to grown in that sense, but it was not until the last couple of months that things really changed as did most of my spiritual life.  When I was going through the issues of my own wounds and talking with God in this, two team members from Ransomed Heart came to sit with me and talk.  They then took the time to set their hands on me and pray over me.  What healing power.  Having these men intercede was so powerful and it was the first time I ever really had anyone pray over me in that sense, ever.

In the last couple of weeks, I was struggling through some things where the enemy was really trying to bring me back down from the road that God now has me on.  He was trying to take me out and I sat in prayer to try to ask God strength and armor for it.  He told me that I needed to get others involved in it.  So with that, I stepped out and reached out to my brothers from Boot Camp, gave them a run down of what was going down and asked for their prayers in.  The response was great and the renewal I felt and the added strength God gave me through it was immense.  Again, something I had never done before in reaching out for prayers into something personal in my life.

God revealed something substantial in this and in the spiritual warfare we deal with.  Sometimes, we need more than just our own prayers to deal with the warfare of the enemy.  We need a prayer army.  We need people in our corner who care enough to jump right in and pray for us to help us find breakthrough in the struggles the enemy may have us in.  It will often take an army.  The enemy is relentless in his attacks on us as he looks to destroy our hearts.

Prayer works.  Prayer is needed in our lives every single day.  I wish I had found it before now, but God brought me on a journey so that I would come to a point where I knew I had to be totally dependent on Him alone.  Paul says in Philippians 4:6, “don’t worry about anything, instead pray about everything.”  When Jesus is in the garden he asks the disciples to pray so that they will not give into temptation and Jesus prayed for God’s will to be done.  He prayed always and the Father answered.  In Luke 22:44, “an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him.”

Prayer is needed throughout our lives and we often need that prayer army in our corner. Watchman Nee said, “Our prayers lay the track down which Gods power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails.”  Sometimes where we need the prayer is deep and the tracks need extensions.  This is what your prayer army is for.  Your circles are huge.  Only wish I truly discovered this sooner. I’m grateful for the army I have in my corner now.  I’m grateful for the power of the Holy Spirit and the intercession of Christ for my life with the Father.  All of that combined with the Armies of Heaven and we can be equipped and armed up for anything.

Not Losing Heart

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Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the the springs of life.”  This Proverb is clear clear about a critical thing, to not lose heart.  To not let the trials and troubles of this world pull you away from your faith and cause you to fall away from where God is leading you.  We are in a world at war.  It is a fact that is very clear no matter where we turn today.  I was hanging out with my brothers from Wild at Heart this weekend and while there we watched a Ransomed Heart videocast that they do every month in Colorado.  John Eldredge took time to make this point and then pointed to the news from today to just support the fact that the world is at war.  Turn on your news and what do we see, murders, thefts, Christianity under attack daily all over the world, addictions, families torn apart, and so much more.

With all of the battles we face each day, it can be easy to lose heart.  To shrink back to a life of complacency and just accepting your world as it is.  Not seeking God’s heart and not walking in union with Him.  It can easily happen to any of us at any time.  We can be taken out if we are not careful by the enemy and this world.  We are in constant war with this world, and with ourselves and our sinful nature.

When I came back from Wild At Heart in February, I was riding high.  I was so motivated and pumped and God was really starting to move me as I fully surrendered to him.  My writing has been on fire and He is leading me in a new direction in my life to help others in counseling to find healing and restoration in Christ in their own lives.  Something I am still so excited about and it’s a journey look forward to each day.  With that said, what happens after something like that.  Life happens.  The world you are familiar with is staring back at you and essentially says welcome back!  Now back to business as usual.  Get back to where you were.  I found myself at one point beginning to doubt myself and fighting acceptance of the status quo.  The enemy began to work at my life and at my heart to steal, kill, and destroy what God has been restoring.

This happens all the time to people and has happened to me before.  Losing heart and losing sight of where God’s leading.  We have to fight.  Christ tells us that we will have trials and trouble in this life, but He overcame this world and its troubles, so we can take heart in that.  Romans 5:3-4 says that “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.  And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment”  

We have to fight everyday.  Let God restore our souls each day and let allow the Holy Spirit to fill us and guide us through our actions.  It used to be very easy for the enemy to take me out and  he tries even harder now as I draw nearer to God, but I recognize that now and seek God to equip me for restoration and renewal each day and to armor myself with His armor.  The enemy is out to take us out everyday.  Trying to destroy our heart.  Trying to get us to lose heart and stop trusting in God.

It can be very difficult at times.  We have to fight to keep our hearts everyday.  Don’t let the world pull you away from your faith.  God has a mission for each of us.  We have to seek counsel and healing each day and he will help to not lose heart.  Don’t deny the war we live in, but arm yourself with God’s armor to stand-up and fight for your heart and your union with God.

“As in all warfare, the two essential elements in victory are knowing your enemy and knowing your resources.”   Sinclair B. Ferguson

Restoration All Around Us

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Spring time is upon us once again, well for those of my readers in the Northern Hemisphere at least :).  This is such a great time of year.  The temperatures begin to rise, baseball begins, and we begin to see things come back to life.  We see trees begin to bloom, we see flowers begin to grow.  Green returns.  Life returns all around us.  Restoration has begun.  I was sitting outside the other day as I watched the dogwood trees begin to bloom across from my house and God reminded me the awesome metaphor that Spring is for Jesus Christ.  It is a constant reminder year after year of the works of Jesus and God’s continual pursuit of our hearts.

As I have shared many times before, Jesus offers healing and restoration by our faith in Him.  Isaiah 61 shows that he came to heal the brokenhearted an set the captives free.  He came to restore us.  We all know very well that we are born with a sin nature that covers every part of us.  We inherited this since the fall.  We are born into a world of sin and because of this nature we are in constant war with the world and with ourselves.  We weren’t designed for this sin nature though.  Man chose the world over God.  Adam chose Eve, this brought the fall of man.  Since then, God has been pursuing us to restore us.  He has been after our hearts to restore them to the good they were meant to be.

So I look at Spring.  I look at life returning.  I look at the new life around us and it just reminds me of the beauty of God’s pursuit of our hearts and the beauty of the restoration of our hearts.  All things made new.  The dictionary defines restoration as “renewal; revival; reestablishment” and also “the return of something to a former, original, normal, and unimpaired condition.”  That’s what happens when Spring rolls around.  Plant life is renewed.  The circle of life continues.  Life is reestablished.

Isn’t that exactly what God is doing with our hearts through the finished works (life, death, resurrection, and ascension) of Jesus?  I think so.  We are given a new nature in Christ.  Because of his finished works we are made new.  Our hearts are restored to the glory they were intended to have.  Ephesians 4 tells us to let the Holy Spirit renew us and to put on our new nature to be like God – truly righteous and holy.  Because of Christ, our sin nature is shed.  We can put off the old man, if we choose to drive a steak in the ground and seek His will above ours.

This restoration happens a little by little, every day that seek God and we have to make th choice to do so.  We can’t just walk around saying, “Yep, I’m saved” and then not seek Him for the healing we need just like I talked about in my deeper dive into the stream of deep restoration. Jesus began the restoration of my heart over the past few years, but it wasn’t until I decided to fully surrender that it just completely changed my heart.  Now today, I have to continue seeking Him.  I have to ask God to restore and renew every single day.  I ask for the full works of Christ over my life everyday.  I ask for the the counsel, comfort, strength, and guidance of the Holy Spirit everyday.  I thank God everyday for creating me and choosing me just as he chose all of you before He made the world.  It’s what I pray for everyday now.  I need restoration every single day.  We all do.

Again, we are all jacked up in some way.  God shows me new things all the time that I need His counsel and healing through.  Because of the wound of our sinful nature, we will always have to battle until we come to our full glory with Christ in Heaven and join him at the Wedding Feast.

Just think about all of this.  Look at everything around us as we see new life sprouting everywhere.  As we see the natural world around us become restored.  It’s an awesome feeling to know that God is working on hearts in the same way.  Restoring us to our original, unimpaired condition.  What we, as His image bearers, as his sons and daughters, were always meant to be. Jesus is making all things new and that includes us.  Our restoration begins with our walk with God.  As  Leanne Payne states, “The soul is restored through union with God.”  Walk with Him and seek an intimate relationship through Jesus Christ and He will bring you to restoration.

Diving Deeper – Deep Restoration

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Jesus stated his purpose on Isaiah 61. To heal the  brokenhearted and to set the captives free.  If you look at his works one of the primary things he offered was healing. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame could walk, and so much more. He offered healing and the works were a parable to what he offered all of the human race. Jesus came to heal, to restore our hearts to what they were meant to be, but fell from. He offers this healing, this deep restoration still. In teaching the stream of healing, John Eldredge described the stream as the supernatural presence or Jesus within our hearts and his willingness to go into our hearts and heal our brokenness.

We all have wounds within us. They are the result of circumstances or things that have happened through our lives and often times we let it define our existence.  Even those that believe and many across modern Christianity don’t focus on or even teach that Jesus offers more than forgiveness of sin. He offers healing and restoration from our sin and to free our hearts from the bondage that it can keep us in. His desire is to give us our whole heart back. Many do not recognize this or even seek it. I sure didn’t for a long time. I just looked at it as a part of who I was, but never thought to seek Christ for healing and restoration.  Believing and actually seeking his are two different things. The demons in Scripture show they know and believe who Christ is, but don’t seek his offer, yet they fear him.

Okay, I want to take you on a little journey to look deeper in to the deep healing and restoration that is offered in Christ.  As I mentioned, we all have broken places in our hearts.  Jesus assumes this to be the case, that our hearts our broken.  In Luke 4:18, we see that when Jesus begins his public ministry in Nazareth, he reads from Isaiah 61.  Out of all of the Scriptures he could have quoted, he goes for this, which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”  Jesus is offering freedom and healing.  He is out to restore our hearts to be whole again as they were meant to be.  As they were before the fall of man.  He assumes we are already broken and has been sent to heal all of us.  That’s the core of his mission.  Yes salvation is critical, but it is restoration of the heart of man to what it was always mean to be and this is a critical piece missed by so many in the church today.

As with the other streams (Walking with God, God’s Intimate Counsel, and Spiritual Warfare), the stream of Deep Restoration, Deep Healing, is something that I never even thought about.  Never thought about getting into the core of my brokenness.  Never even acknowledged my brokenness to any degree.  I just figured I was a wreck in many ways and did my best to either hide those places in me or move through life without letting it take hold of me.  This helped lead to the false self, to addictions and fears, worries and anxieties.  Things that I just started to accept as a part of who I was.  I never sought Jesus through any of this.  I was what many of us see today, a surface level christian, if even that.  Never knowing what Christ had to offer me, I never truly sought Him in any of it.

So think about this.  John Eldredge points to some critical things in teaching this stream.  Look at our lives.  We have places where we have silly addictions whether it be food, collecting things, or any of a number of just off the wall things, we have wild fears and anxieties, maybe the dark or heights or small spaces, we may worry a lot about a lot filled with heavy anxieties.  There are so many things in us that we have, but we never try to get to the root of what causes any of that. Often times, those addictions or fears get so big in our lives that they begin to run our lives.  Again turning to food when we are depressed, maybe turning to pornography or other sexual additions.  You name it, something is there in each of us.  It all comes from our brokenness, but we have to take time to try and get to the root of it.  Why do we have those and can we ever heal from them?

First, the enemy knows us.  He knows our brokenness.  He knows those young places in our hearts.  Where things come up, such as being around family or being called to speak as examples and then we are all of sudden 9 years old again.  He uses those to try to set up shop and keep us in bondage in our wounds.  In our brokenness.  He comes to steal our hearts, to kill our hearts, to destroy our hearts.

Many in the christian faith will immediately say, “Oh that’s sin, you need to repent and ask forgiveness.”  It’s more than that though.  Yes, sin can be a big part of it.  But simply asking forgiveness is not going to heal it.  You have to get to the root of what the issue is, you often have to go way back, because a lot of this stems from wounds we received as children.  You have to go there.  You have to go deeper.  “The great weakness in the North American church at large, and certainly in my life, is our refusal to accept our brokenness. We hide it, evade it, gloss over it. We grab for the cosmetic kit and put on our virtuous face to make ourselves admirable to the public. Thus, we present to others a self that is spiritually together, superficially happy, and lacquered with a sense of self-deprecating humor that passes for humility. The irony is that while I do not want anyone to know that I am judgmental, lazy, vulnerable, screwed up, and afraid, for fear of losing face, the face that I fear losing is the mask of the impostor, not my own!”  -Brennan Manning, “Ruthless Trust”

I’ve always remembered the thing we are taught about being saved.  About asking Jesus into our heart as our Lord and Savior.  I made that profession of faith when I was about 13 and was Baptized.  Being saved and asking Jesus to be Lord of our live gives us the opportunity to now be fully healed.  This is only the beginning though.  How can you be fully saved if you have not allowed Christ in to heal you?  You have to invite him in.  I never did that.  Being so, I was never fully saved or healed.  Again, Christ came to free us and restore our hearts.  To restore us to the men and women we were always meant to be.  So, I had a great deal more to go myself.  Still do.  When I began to get into Scripture daily 4 years ago, the wheels began to turn, but I had a great deal more to go.  I had to learn to really walk with God.  I had to learn to seek Him.  I had to allow Christ into the depths of my heart to surface my wounds, agreements, and sin so that I could finally and fully repent for everything hidden and be healed.  I could finally be restored.  I could finally come alive.

To heal, requires our full surrender.  Our full surrender to God’s will.  To fully trust him and who he says that we are to him.  A.W. Tozer says, “God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance.”  We have to open our hearts to Christ.  To let him in deep within our hearts and pull out those wounds.  I first felt this at in the weeks leading up to Wild At Heart Bootcamp.  When I was spending each day in prayer and felt like God was pulling me somewhere.  He was pulling me first to unplug from the Matrix.  Once at Wild At Heart, I fully let Christ in.  He came into the depths of my heart.  Pulled out things that I either did not want to acknowledge or even forgot about, but had fully defined my brokenness.  Christ took me there.  Then I had to acknowledge them ask forgiveness for allowing those wounds to define me and living in them and then forgiving those that brought me there as well.  Renouncing the agreements I made and bringing the power and works of Jesus Christ between us.  God opened my heart, gave me the eyes to see, and the ears to hear.

Healing is different for each one of us.  God is still doing a work in me each day to pull out those wounds so that I can renounce them and healing from them and be restored.  For each one of us, healing happens in different ways though.  Look at Christ’s work, especially in healing the blind.  He never heals a blind person the same way.  He may touch them, rub mud in them.  Healing is always different.  This parrables the healing we are offered.  We are all unique in our creation and Christ wants to heal us based on our own uniqueness.  We have to invite Christ in however.  Invite him in and pray for healing and restoration of our whole heart.  This is after all what God has been after since the fall of mankind.  He has been after our hearts.  Restoring our hearts to the glory that they once were.  Christ is the doorway to that restoration. He is the answer to it all.  He was nailed to a tree and shed his blood so that we can be free from our sin, from our brokenness.  He was resurrected to conquer death and give us a doorway to restore us to the glory God created us for, and he ascended to Heaven to show that the enemy has been defeated and all authority in Heaven and on earth is now his.  We can now be made fully alive and restore.  When we are healed and restored, we are fully alive.  As Irenaeus says, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  Come alive and be restored.  Christ is out to set your heart free.  Let him set you free.

Stand Ready to Defend

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The Christian faith has been persecuted and under attack for centuries.  Since the beginning, of the faith, the world has tried to stop what has proven to be an unstoppable force.  The persecution started with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  He disrupted the ways of the religious elite.  They were threatened by him and lied anyway they can to remove what they saw as a threat, not as the Savior.  The first apostles were nearly all martyred for their faith and boldness in defending the Good News and sharing the hope they had in Jesus Christ.  Down through the centuries, this has been the case.  People who have been bold enough to declare their faith in Jesus getting persecuted or even killed.

Today, this is going on many different ways.  The most prevalent we in the news right now is with ISIS.  An Islamic group that is bent on expanding their control and killing without mercy.  We all saw the images of 21 Christian men being marched out onto a beach and then beheaded.  The are a violent and purely evil force that must be dealt with and stopped.  Unfortunately, they’ve been allowed to grow in their control and influence.

Elsewhere we have what’s going on in this post-modern society we live in.  People have trivialized and minimized God’s Word.  Many will try to do anything they can to remove any reference from Scripture, like the Ten Commandments from public locations.  Things like removing “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, the secular side of holidays like Christmas and Easter becoming more powerful.  The post-modern thinking that tells us we have to accept and be tolerant of everything, no matter what God’s Word says, yet the same acceptance is not passed back.  You name it, it’s continuous and it grows.

So what do we do about this.  What can we do to combat the efforts of many to silence our faith.  1 Peter 3:15 tells us to always be “ready to make a defense to everyone who as you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”  We are told to be ready to make a defense for our hope.  To defend our faith whenever we are challenged.  To defend the Word of God.  To defend our hope in Jesus Christ who was born of a virgin, tortured and crucified  to concur sin, rose on the third day defeating death, and ascended into Heaven with all authority in Heaven and on earth now given to him.

This is a pretty serious command.  Peter said in versus 14 that if you suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed so do not fear intimidation and do not be troubled.  What it takes now is for those of us in the faith to able to stand firm in our faith.  Not letting society or evils of the enemy stop us from proclaiming our hope and faith.  This kind of warfare has continually been going on.  We are to be bold in our defense yet.

It can be easy when your in a crowd and people just talk against faith or the Word to just go along for the sake of not being confrontational.  Was Jesus non-confrontational.  Absolutely not.  When Jesus cleansed the temple in John 2, what does he do?  He made “scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple.”  He made a whip.  Think about that.  He did not walk in carrying a lamb asking politely for people to leave, no, he made a whip and drove them out.  His love of the Father was so strong that he was going to defend his faith.  Imagine the chaotic seen this would be.

Jesus said “whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in Heaven” (Matthew 10:33).  So we are not to shrink back and deny him.  Stand bold with the courage and faith that he showed for us.  It’s all of our responsibilities as believers to stand firm in the faith.  No matter what struggles you come through, even when someone comes right at you to challenge your faith, you need to be bold.

If you are unsure of how to defend it, then find your way back into Scripture and pray for the wisdom you need to be able to defend the faith.  2 years ago, I easily would have shrunk back.  Gone along with the crowd and not speak of my faith boldly, not matter where I was.  I refuse to fall into that trap any longer.  It’s all a part the warfare we face.  The enemy is after our hearts every single day.  Armor yourselves with the full armor of God every day so that you can be ready to stand firm in the faith and make a defense for our hope in Jesus.