Didn't Believe

I didn't believe you knew me
I didn't believe you could see right through me
to the depths
to the pitfalls
and endless wayward wanderings,
to the darkness
the shadows
and the irredeemable ugliness of all I held close.

But you gently lifted my chin
and through tear-filled eyes said
no, son,
I do know you,
I know where you've been and it matters nothing.
I made you light so light up those dark places,
turn from those paths that brought you so low and find
new heights in me.

"Throw away your fake peace, dive into the endless world."

Freedom Song

he's hyumming, mumbling the words or tune to the song he only kind of knows, the one eveyrone knows.  We love the sound of our own voice: it's comforting, we trust us. The vibration in the ear and jaw, the skyull, the chest and trhoat.

There's God.
His energy moving, becuase I wouldn't speak but for inspiration. So what will I create?
oh!
a clean palate (!)
for my life's work to be born, to
take flight, to start walking and running..
I realize me now in clarity.

I can speak simply.
Even in darkness stating the truth and walking in light to the light.

a certain kind of faith

Come again...?

My view of the second coming is different.
Jesus returns every day. If God dwells outside of time, why do we wait and look forward to heaven and peace someday? We’re told to be prepared for his return, and it says he comes like a thief in the night. To what degree do you prepare? Are you vigilant? Are you watching? If our walk is an inward thing that  manifests itself in our actions and we find that ‘Woah! He has been watering the seed!’ why do we wait for this event…this someday…when God is a present God? And if God’s present now, and we experience the holy spirit, where do you think Jesus is? His actual body? His meaty flesh? Above the clouds? As we grow into God, via Christ (the measuring of the effective depth and degree of our redemption), we become more like Him – Him who believes and acts in time and season, Him who is spirit, and we put off this flesh as we identify with it less and less. We stop operating as first man, then in-God, but we are in God perpetually, and the change here is a spiritual matter that affects the physical world.
We grow into God; we grow into Heaven.
We become the bride as we see and receive Christ. Do we wait until 2025 for him to show up and say ‘Honey, I’m home!’? To put ‘the end’ out there at some indefinite time, to wait for the King, is to be the same as the Jews who still don’t believe he’s already done / doing / does his work.          
Boom.
We say Jesus lives in us, but we don’t understand it and don’t recognize that means he’s close – that we dwell with him, that Emmanuel. This messes with our fundamentals, I understand. I’ve been there.That's kind of the point.

You love Revelation: “The power and glory of God that is displayed is awe-strikingly inspiring. It’s such a beautiful thing.” It’s called the Revelation of Jesus Christ … and again, if God’s at getting our hearts, how is Jesus revealed? When we walk into a new spiritual space and understanding it’s called a revelation. Try seeing the ENTIRE BIBLE in spiritual terms, directly applied to you, your heart and motive, and then find out why it’s the perfect book. Don’t accept that's so because you were told it is – that’s real faith, but we don't act that way yet - grow in understanding. If you can witness the bible's effectual work and that the call for Abraham to offer Isaac is the thing we are called to every day, then the book opens up to you because it’s not just stories with morals, it’s not ‘yes tongues, no prophets; not today’,  it’s  your heart on paper.  People don’t understand that to get into it you have to stop interpreting and just receive like a child. To be with those who have God and hear under them in submission; questioning, yes, for clarity, but unquestioning the way a child receives. When kids ask questions it’s not usually from a ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ perspective, but that’s what we do, and God doesn’t honour that because a heart that isn't humbled cannot receive. (It's impossible.) So we get what we want::: we can’t hear them because we’re not listening for the response, and we walk away thinking we have more than they do, even though we’re the one who’s not changing.

My heart just cried out for the weight on your shoulders, that you carry your life and everything it entails on yourself. It’s a lie. The voice that makes us second-guess and fear and worry is untrue. When God saw Adam was covered and said ‘what’s up?’ and Adam said ‘I’m nekkid!’, God’s response was ‘Who told you?’

Who told you?

Who told you you had to have it all together, that everything you desire or do has to be good for you? Certainly not God. He made you and knows exactly what He made you for. He demands NOTHING of you; He's just love. He offers a way when we can see no way, but he doesn’t shove it on us – we have to be children coming to a father to receive his ease and eyesight, his freedom.  He hopes we choose what’s profitable for us – the easier road, the narrower road, the one that puts the soul under the spirit and back in order. It’s not harder, we’re just unpracticed. Satan’s the one who says ‘Perform! If the good fruit isn’t in your life you’re not doing it right or well enough!’
It’s a question of which father we receive.
It only takes a perception to change from one side to the other: freedom to bondage. A single sentence will send one person into euphoria and another into fiery condemnation. What’s the difference? The voice the person relates to/is hearing. If your father demands of you, he will strike and yell and manipulate and convince. If your father loves you he will teach you, show you how – but you must draw close to him. Sometimes just that act of drawing close feels impossible, but it’s because we, again, are trying to perform something and get hindered by the past, sin,  and how we always fail. (1. God's present and doesn't dwell on the past, 2. our sins? those times we forgot who He is and that we're loved? Forgotten, 3. He knows our identity and rests [GOD RESTS!] in faith that his faith begets faith in His children.) We're justified whatever we do (thanks, Jesus), but mucking about in pity and self-loathing and accusation is a major waste of the day.

Satan’s a pass/ fail do-better-next-time kind of father.  But God's easy. He laments for us when we cannot let go of this something-low identity but still holds us, stills calls every morning to check in.

An Irishman told me yesterday ‘Man makes plans and God laughs.’

Pre-destination is one of those things that has arisen out of a need for clarity and been twisted into a carnal minded concept. God doesn’t think like that. He dwells outside of time. You make a choice, there are consequences. You make a choice in faith, there are consequences. The seed begets the end. We are free, and we will remain free.

I find that my behaviour better reflects Jesus the less I think of myself and the more I think of Him. When I see Him I will be like Him. If you invest in watching for him, considering how God serves man, has served me, how can you not be humbled? How can you justify sadness or self-pity? How can you think you are worthless or how can you blame anybody for any single thing? We are not our actions, we are the state of our hearts – people just don’t know it. Oy. We try to take on Jesus and in the same breath say it can’t be done. People want to be justified in trying and falling because they cannot comprehend that a life lived IN Jesus is clean and clear and bountiful, full of order, peace, prosperity, real love…and freedom. But, as you and I both know, we like putting our hands to things to feel successful, to feel like we’re DOING something, like we’re MOVING toward an end of our own choice and so getting there under our own power. Saying we try to be like Jesus but are 'only human’ lets us do the work, slogging like a good Christian through the fiery darts of the enemy, without ever expecting the end. If we were in business I would fire an employee like that. Your works are your reward, Christianity! How about a life of faith? Yes, please.

Saying you get what you deserve is Justice (aka God). If you identify with the low things, you get the low things because that’s what you have faith for. I began to move in faith for bigger things, beginning to take on Jesus and the role of a Son, and so I began deserving higher things. How do you see yourself? What do you deserve? We choose our happiness and satisfaction: if you’re unhappy, find out why. Find faith to become happy where you're at, and the moment you find the light God'll move you into something your truly desire.
All things have a time and season - an order.

The idea of living in community is for protection. Having elders around so you don’t make rash decisions - they provide a perspective that helps keep you free, and God fiercely guards your freedom.  The choice is yours, but when everything you do and fear and love and think and feel is submitted unto the throne, before men, in God, then everything is blessed because the chaff is separated from the wheat, and the harvest is good for everyone.  You go free in your heart, your next step is laid out before you, you’ve found the faith to move in it, and your circumstances grow … less circumstantial and debilitating.

“Holding onto sins is something so human.”

What you hear from God and what you believe become your everything. But here’s a new understanding:  you are not your own and there is no middle ground. Either you are in God or you are in Satan. If every moment's thought is on God, or increasingly on Him, then you find yourself with Him. But even in that increasing, those moments without him are moments under Satan. We think we can stand between them on any issue or for life, but we are made by one and duped by another; we try not to take sides on a thing and are in satan’s court, because to be in God is to find out what HE thinks and become that, every moment moving toward the light. It’s nothing to perform, but if I have faith that I'm not worthless, then I won't be.

You can see that living a life of intent with others who are intent brings heaven down because we take back stolen land hand over fist. Everything here is edible, food for growth, and nothing is left out.

My placement at the moment is kind of a wreck. What I want is usually pretty clear to me: spiritual growth. Knowing that, I should get to Alaska in a flash. (*note the should -  God doesn’t should. He says things like ‘it’d be a good idea if…’ and then I can either do it (because GOD SAID IT WAS A GOOD IDEA) or be condemned by not wanting to do it, and so not do it, and so not reap the reward that’s there for me. Doing the hard thing (what I don’t want to do) is always liberating because it puts the soul (the mannish, fleshy, emotionally-ruled side of things) back into its proper place: under the spirit. I’ve been led by a spirit, not the spirit, into my lusty desires and into the independence of young manhood: a dangerous place. But it’s not a problem.  My heart is still for the Father, and my soul is just being proven as a wild animal to me: insatiable and fickle. I still grow, it’s just slower, and it feels like it costs a lot more because it takes longer: the surgery is with a rusty blade because I resist the clean and neat, painless efficiency of the father’s heart-circumcision surgery.  But the power is in your hands to book yourself for surgery.But all things in season, and nothing happens before its time.

Bahahaha. You said ‘look how sorted he is with God.’ I’ve just spent more time with Him than most and know that I’m better for it.

What are you looking for? All your plans have been your focus, but this new eyesight has struck a note in your spirit that will change your priorities. If God is number One, the plans come out of that.  Be intentional. Find the things that MAKE you grow, and then seek them out, dig in deeper, until you only vaguely recognize who you used to be. BUT DON’T JUDGE YOURSELF. God’s the judge, and he’s judged you Righteous, so success or failure, loss, increase, salvation, fame, love, a following, all arel evidence of the seeds growing in you. Neither good nor bad, but some preferable. ALL THINGS WORK FOR THE GOOD OF THOSE WHO LOVE HIM because it’s all meat for consumption.  Christians would say ‘you had an affair?! Go be penitent, do some community service, and flog yourself before your husband for the rest of your life’. But God doesn't need you to do anything to let go of guilt and come back to him - if it's in your heart to receive again, you're already with him. At that point he just says ‘Why'd you do that? That’s not you at all!’ and then you recognize that it really isn’t you (because we are not what we do, but in God, so spirit, and so different than we have thought.) When we believe we are something outside of him He cocks his head to the side and says ‘Huh? Who told you that?’    

I can’t go into the male/female thing right now, but age cannot be questioned. If you were a minute older than me you’d be my elder. For me to recognize and maintain this is to keep things holy in my life. I could equalize us, but that just raises me up. Whatever knowledge I have you can absolutely glean from, but if I think for a second I have more than you I am becoming like God because somebody needs me wants me and I’m suddenly justified by the goods on earth…identifying with all the stuff that I got from other people.

I only have any real idea of who I am when I am looking into God. Everything else is just distraction. I am less me, less human, when I am moving in God because I don’t have to do good or bad or right by anyone – I’m  not impressive because God’s impressed with me and I don’t need love because I’m filthy with it. I’m lighter and brighter because the earth has less hold on me: I’m not a victim of circumstance, but served by it. This is how miracles happen – my ideas of earthly limits begin falling away and I see God for who He is: consistent, pure love and rectification. That’s me. That’s you.

 

rewston

Light Breach

How, then, do I become conscious? Theories abound and people make it up when they have no idea. I’ve tried meditation, drugs, yoga, new religion, discipline, nature, free-love, aggression, self-mutilation, deja-vu, past regression, hypnosis, séance, information dissemination, skydiving, risking my life, adrenaline, tattoos, alcohol, women, work, money, men, friendship, hardship, war, research, philosophy, action, inaction, food, humanitarian efforts, psychology, psychoses, loss, gain, wealth, stars, planets, crystals, running, swimming, digging, building, cleaning, organizing, meeting people, starting projects. At this point I felt my world narrowing because I was exhausting everything I could think of yet wasn’t waking up – where are answers? Who has them? Someone must. I couldn’t be alone in this ever-shrinking idea of life or satisfaction. I could tell if I kept going on like this the transition to outside the diminishing circle would kill me. I’d have to get the directions to just... find myself out there in free space. Is that cheating? To skip the work? Can you do that? New pursuits, ruination, eastern religions, art, poetry, fashion design, buying things. I couldn’t stop and I was reaching the end of me – where haven’t I looked? The whole world; there’s nowhere left. Vandalism theft, prison, insanity, hurt, children, marriage, assault, divorce, depression, hate, rebound love, fire-walking, fire eating, brick-oven pizza. 

I went to the park and sat on a bench. Head empty, ears ringing with screams of loss, dissatisfaction, the improbable and the impossible. A man sat next to me and the voices died. I awakened to the park, the sound of leaves and birds, the sun on the grass. I swear it was the first breath I had taken in years. I looked to my right at the middle-aged man with a beard in need of shaving. He saw me looking. “Beautiful day, huh?” he said. His voice popped up on the ‘huh,’ indicating I could only agree. It took a second but I croaked out a yes. He smiled small and turned to look at me, his eyes kind and blue. He just saw me for a minute and then he blew my mind.

“Life isn’t hard, we just think it is because we think we can get it wrong. We think by changing others, or our circumstances or habits we can find peace, but that’s like picking the apples and expecting oranges next time. Then we blame the tree for not meeting our expectations – blame ourselves, others for our dissatisfaction. You have to start with good ground and the seed you want – then focus every good thought and action on its growth and cultivation and in no time you’ll have what you desire. Merely setting yourself toward this end will occupy you and make you well because you’re moving, doing consciously the thing you are meant to do, that is: actively choosing the life you live. Then everything , Every Single Thing will feed the seed and the tree will be beautiful and fruitful and it will be yours; will be you. But nothing can happen before its time. Attention is the only thing you have – not resources, funds, time – all that depletes or has human valuation or doesn’t exist – you don’t know how much time you have. All you have is where you fix your eyes. Are you reaching toward the light?”

Who I was Made

I was ________ but God made me whole.

What fits there for you? Anything you thought of yourself - every good, terrible, weak, sincere noun or adjective; every successful, lame, or incredible verb you did; every thoughtcrime against the Father that brought you down or filled you up is Nothing compared to the identity you have in Him.

I was faulty and proud but God made me whole.

See them and put them off, because yesterday is gone. Your successes and failures, accomplishments and torments, your debts and your sins are all forgotten by God. You are just loved, and that's everything.

I was scared and slow to act but God made me whole.

All my works and brownie points are nothing. I might remember them, but that's all they are. I can't say anything for certain about tomorrow or even tonight except 'Lord willing...', so all I hold is right now. I can no longer put off the right time, the right hour or day to do this thing that is in me and at hand. There's a time for everything, and this moment is meant to be at peace in God, finding out His heart. Then my doings aren't my everything, important as the world and gone in a flash.




face me
turn to the light
be uplifted
and come up here.
free heart
you're loved
i've got you
be still.

Mein Thought

I want to do something with my life, and at times that desire grows so powerful and burns so hot that it becomes something else. Not the steadily burning desire for balance and peace and liberty, but this crazy fire-drive for a spring-break-in-Cancun kind of existence. That's my soul running away with me. I literally had the thought 'I could find a room in some city, work some crap job, and blow all my money every weekend on alcohol and shenanigans." I don't like alcohol or shenanigans, really.
Thoughts that parallel this are the ones where I dive into a creative lifestyle, one where I can express all that it's in me to express.
Revelation.
Mr. Peter said that an artist is always trying to express themselves, that even if the canvas perfectly captures the image the heart of the thing cannot be put down, and this is why art keeps on arting. Even in writing, however well phrased, pithy, or full-bodied it may be, the heart of the thing cannot be tied down. Because we're people, and all of the energy, experience, spirit, and fellowship that goes into living is all the stuff that again, cannot be laid somewhere. The bible contains it all, and is yet imperfect if it's not living in you. I picture this bohemian life of mine and see fulfillment, but there, just as here, I will still yearn to get something out of me that is yet to be realized. Because the word is ever-expanding, the works of our hands, though good for a time, fall short, and that's the way it is. So we accept this and do what is in us to do, finishing a thing and moving on to the next, growing deeper, maturing naturally, lightening with wisdom as each day brings encounters, trials, and truth to bear.

Letters for Edification II

Excerpts from email of Sept. '10

We talked about each man's walk with God turning to 'bad' things, the unprofitable and wasteful. How from their very formation it would take 'this, this, and this' for them to realize that God is True. Like a class, or a process: first we'll study foundation, then walls, then roof. This, then this, then this, and there's the house. Listen the first time (or the second or third) so you don't need to lay again the foundation of Grace.

I spent yesterday in this weird place where I was super tall, with a vision that encompassed all that God has given me, moving in stewardship over the world God created for me. I saw myself walking up to people and saying 'welcome to my world' in love, finding things upset or off-kilter and saying 'Oh, this is righted because I am steward here - be healed. Tree, be reformed. Mountain be cast into the sea.' This isn't far off. It's in that place, that eternity, that we just slip into when we move behind the veil. I see it just to my left, shift aside the curtains and sidestep into...right where I am. PLACEMENT POWER WIND UNDERSTANDING ORDER VISION HEARING COMING ALONGSIDE WHERE THE FLESH DOESN'T RULE AND BEING FORGIVEN IS THE SOLE OF MY FEET BECAUSE MY HEAD IS UPRAISED AND GOD IS THE GLORY FOREVER AND EVER. I say it's not far off because the disparity between my understanding of the location of eternity and my perception of when I'll understand it is but a small thing.
I see more and more all things on something like a fortune cookie fortune:

[    eternity/time    ]

they're so close together and so far apart - but God is the wrinkle in time that translates me from one to the other in a shffp! that I only recognize after it happens though my heart bears witness to its approach.

It was prophesied over me that I'll be so in-tune with God that everything I desire will be given me; which is purely natural, man. So organic. That's just the way it is. Of course hitting a certain frequency will make the birds flock to you; it's a matter of course that finding who I am and what I was made to be will illuminate everyspark in this heart with a clarity for pursuit of God's government; why but yes! to everything my God has proffered.

Clearly, here is a man of faith.

So you, being unremoved and holy, bear witness to the Light of the World, the one who shines and does not disdain but loves in faith, and fear Him by reverence this Most Holy God. With trembling, for we understand his power, we submit all things to the one who has made us and in truth we ride aloft, a scented wind carrying us to the ends of our very being; he brings us to that place where we find our insubstantial edges and there we feel the frayed ends of lies and little-t truths; then we dive beyond, willing, obedient, with Joy and Expectation.

Purging Fire, Burning Pyre

The reason and purpose for this baptism (fire) is to give the power of this pursuit from the zeal and passion of G-d for His house to purge continuously, purify eternally, and be expectant perpetually. It will surely divide rightly with clarity with what fire we are of, for the day will manifest it.  

[[The baptism into fire enables (gives power to) this pursuit (power traded from God’s stock of Zeal and Passion) for us to Purge Continually, Purify Eternally, and Expect Perpetually. It divides rightly and clearly what fire we are of, because the light manifests it]]

We do burn, but with what fire? 

Ischus is the wind for the flame, dunamis is the the ignition. I've received this baptism [to whelm, to cover wholly with fluid] unto fire - the purifying flame; strengthening, powerful, inducing.

Losing myself to the fire doesn't make me any less holy or without God - it makes plain where the Lord is winnowing my flesh. The smoking furnace and burning lamp are a testimony of His faithful pursuit. My temple's been a mess, but he erects a pyre and burns up the junk so there won't be any more money changers in this temple.  

Burn up my idols! 

I was convinced today that I couldn't be faithful - that I must put off those I've known as 'faithful' and be off, lose myself or die. Quick, that. Rather than leave it at this, I look at the rationale that led me to this conclusion: What so moved me that this sovereign King, Son of God, would abdicate his throne and take his own life? 

It was all how I saw; how I did the job, how I relate to those I'm with, how I can earn my place in God. I was lied to, quiet while a snake whispered in my ear. Be active, Man! Zakar! Remember who you are! Stand on the Word, Jesus, and be affirmed. It's never a matter of circumstance; it's a matter of position in relation to the light: are you looking to the light or gazing on your shadow?

I

m just 

here

to watch the fireworks.

I watched my shadow today, when, immediately and without my knowledge, I was talking to God about it.  I was crying out to him that I couldn't complete what I was trying to do - it was brought on by the works of my hands, painting, but the issue was tied to my heart. I saw the pain of my association in an entirely different light, and praised God for being faithful. I moved from the outer court to the inner, and back again, smoothly. A first, I think. 

And all of this, the thoughts, emotions, ties, perceptions, reactions, rejections, false images, all the stuff that makes me a man and a sinner are nothing to God in light of Christ. Because I receive him and the measuring of the depth of my redemption, my heart is turned, uprooted, washed, planted and tended, harvested, separated, burned, made clean. The pure was always there, is always here, but it's the fire that destroys the stuff that can't stand up to the Word. There is more to me than there used to be because I bear witness to active display of God's recreation in me. Ha! He's re-created me, and recreates here too. He likes fireworks, so increasingly, I let his fire work. He's always known his work was Love for me, I just couldn't see it. 

A vessel of light

of honor dishonor

of pain patience and practice

of glory and fruition

judgment and fluidity

of friction and purification

an open demonstration of 

power. 

I am measured and 

not found wanting. 

little lies grab my attention

I give it (to) a-way,

a different way,

my choice.

Until I step into 

the Great Fire of the Lord

where everything around me burns

and I cry out to the Strong One

who reminds me he's with me

and that what I've been hoping in

was dead and dry-

perfect fuel for fire.

His water rushes over me

reviving my lips and eyes

and I see him and speak him

and he's everywhere

and everyone

and I move through the garden again

Thank God for pressure and high heat that shows us what burns and what we're made of.

Tattoos and Light

I was subject to a ball of light today. It was a large sphere of pulsing yellow brightness with flares of light jetting out. It was so bright I couldn't tell whether it was heavy or super-light. And in a moment of clarity I realized it was potential energy. I had been put in a situation with eyes to see it, and the light was the energy that would become whatever I chose: negative (heavy) or constructive (liberating). There's no pressure in God, just a growing clarity to choose him faster, more often, and with greater ease. My world is in my hands, but I give it over to God; I can make my life, or I can let him do it. He's a far better creator than I. So I chose the lighter path, prayed into the Father, and any sense of burden I carried regarding the interaction vanished like vapor. The brightness of that light became me and I grew light. I grew lighter (less heavy), lighter (more transparent), and lighter (more glorious), all at once.

The Lord's tattooed me before: Righteous across my arms and chest from wrist to wrist, Faithful around my throat like a necklace, but today I received an intricate design. It is a tree whose roots begin at my groin, whose trunk rises up, narrow, through my navel and solar plexis, and whose thinly leaved branches extend broad across and over my pecs, leaving off at the tops of my shoulders. It is beautiful and becoming, instructive and living as I am living.