Cultivating the Extraordinary

I'm experiencing a strange collision of what I dream of, and that which I experience and see. As I taste and hear of miracles, supernatural breakthroughs and stories of heaven breaking into the natural circumstances of this planet, I am completely turned off by the present state of this gray street I live on. Why do we swim in ordinary water and eat ordinary bread when God says he's cooked us an amazing 5 star meal? God says miracles will take place on the planet in a greater measure than in the days of Jesus. I don't want to be swallowed up in the couch of dull comforts and sleepy satisfactions the toys around me offer. I don't want that offer to be dead to me. I want a sober fire to burn the darkness around me wherever the soles of my feet tread. I want to be blown away by God in such a way that I'm permanently put off by my own methods & shallow expectations. Simply put, we're too frail, too called, too important to inject the darkness of our own shaped ideas into our spirits and expect to release real power into our spheres of influence. We can't quite accomplish the dreams God put in us if we bite on compromise on the road to the summit. Without appearing righteous or striving for perfection, I think we have permission to indulge in the excess of God. To drink the whole glass of what He's placed before us. To indulge in purity. To desirously love things set apart from what we see in the natural. I think we have permission to be ravenously addicted to the unending pleasures of heaven. To be addicted to heaven's wooing voice is what increases the cultivation of all that is right on the inside of us. Trying to plant wisdom and answers to our burnings might look more like a dance with our Lover than a rigorous etching of the Word into our minds. Cultivating heaven in our lives might start with irrational songs from the heart instead of a course on how to walk through the gate.

The smallest stab at faith opens things in God's heart like an atomic explosion in the heavens. Our queries, hopes, and stirrings evoke something HUGE in God, that he is emotionally affected by us. He wants to infuse us and everything around us with his creative touch, his creative miracles, and he wants to make what seems supernatural very very natural to us. He wants to change our nature. Making the old man a thing of the permanent past and raising our new man into something supernaturally natural. There is an illusion over us that there is only so much to know, only so much to understand about God by what people say, by what our own human spirit says even. But when God says we are his, we've cultivated the unending One, the shoreless ocean of the Uncreated weaving us into his dreams, evergrowing, uncontainable, can't help but explode miracles across our path kind of Father. He wants us to see how BIG he really is. He wants us to see life with a DEEP lens. He wants us to walk the shoreless ocean and know how much more there really is to ask for, to expect, to live by, to swim in, to drink of, be filled with, exude of, to see smell and swallow. We've been seated on a flight to the most amazing place imaginable, filled with epic sights and unpolluted wonder, but we don't get off the plane because we don't believe what is out the window is real sometimes. I want to put my shoes on and explore the more. I don't want to write fluffy blogs about the unattainable, I'm just aiming my heart at something promised. This is what I want, this is what I'm thinking, this is what God hears and has an answer for.

Deep breath......

3-Dimensional Destinies

My students began studying the photo-realist art of Chuck Close this semester.

Chuck Close is an artist famous for "building" his paintings piece by piece using an overlay of grids and photographs. Normally I design my curriculum according to what imagery and design concepts interest me in that season, and this time I uncharacteristically opted toward a mathematics-based technique involving intricate grids and a painstakingly slow process toward completion. I tried the initial demo drawing, so that I would have some foresight to aid the kids as they began their process of "picture-building". I was a little intimidated by a project so unusually new and challenging, for myself first and foremost. I was forced to teach myself through an ordered, focused approach to lose myself in the visual analysis of one square of the painting at a time, letting go of the urge to understand and see the piece as a whole. Instead, I was required to treat each block as its own piece of artwork, so that by the end, the puzzle pieces would link realistically and beautifully as one comprehensive piece of art.

I came to find immediately that my students started drawing all over their neat orderly grids instead of building their blocks slowly in accordanace with their photograph they so carefully laid out. I would rush to their tables shouting "Nooo! You took such care with the precision of your graphs! Don't devalue the foundation by spilling a sloppy design over such an orderly beginning!" Um no, I did not say it like that. But, thats the tendency of our hearts. When God prescribes us our destinies with such weightiness and care, our controlling half-hoping nature wants to get it finished in one class period so we can see it and take it home. Except the only problem is, that technique produces crap art. Our dreams are supposed to mirror God's 3 dimensional photograph of our dreams. There is such value to building slowly and obeying the season of the small square. Because we don't see the masterpiece God is building through us when we feel we are merely getting by with the faith to work the small task. Yet epic creations are constructed by the smallest of elements. Snowflakes, oak trees, people. You know. that kind of stuff. Do the small pieces struggle with what tarries to complete its growth process?

God works with small things. Small ideas, small faith, small dna, small building blocks. His vision puts compassionate pressure on our abilities to execute beauty and brilliance through his enablement in our lives, in our humility and desire to see him follow through. It's healthy to delight in the place of small obedience. Because God honors small underlying faith in our seemingly senseless quiet circumstances.

So as my students begin to dig in and progress toward row #4 of the design process, confidence begins to rise up and give them some assurance that what they are creating has substance, the outline is accurate, their methods are fruitful. As the image slowly begins to manifest piece by piece, line by line, color by color, the paintstaking actions of watching and recreating the vision from the photograph begins to feel rewarding. It begins to make sense. But we had to trust before we saw the graph come alive. It took some trusting for a solid 3 class periods before anything remotely legible even came into view.

Those seasons of trusting and studying the vision are blueprints to a solid life. Vision is a foundation. It is a container that believes for the intangible to fill its purposes and spill itself over into reality, and into the reality of other unbelieving dreamers. Vision fulfilled multiplies and showers dry ground with possibility. As we watch God align and seal his purposed destiny through our squinting, one dimensional perspectives, it is sufficient to say that God is working simultaneously in multi-dimensions. Our view of the mural is just a small side of the Rubik's cube design He is shifting and aligning through us and in us, fathering our willingess to stretch and expand us past our control and into a 3D adventure experience in Him. It seems like when we let go of the paper, he writes something foreign on our hearts and hands us a dictionary. Like we spend months studying the Rubik's cube, and with one humble shift into sacrifice the puzzle has an earthquake and moves itself into perfect alignment.

Silly, senseless faith shifts the world. Persistence, through summer drolls and ugly winter hail carries within itself the seed to its completion.

And so as my persistent ones polish off the last blocks of their materpieces, I am excited by the radical growth from elementary to advanced these students have jumped! The same ones who began their designs erroneously by making up their own squares were asked to erase and start again more than once! I preferred they get it right and reposition the entire grid foundation rather than pretending to see what wasn't really there and drawing blindly.

This was followed by exasperated groans and threats of quitting.

To which I responded, trust me, I know its frustrating, but its so worth it.

http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/

I am coming to some certain and sobering conclusions.

I'm watching people and forces around me move and speak and make decisions that are really intense. And its propelling me to see a vast panorama of the picture we're building and the voices we're listening to. I can relay some adopted theologies of my half-believing heart with some hopeful conviction as I make immature sense of the political and spiritual realities I see and hear everyday of my 27 year old life. What I mean to say is, I know what ship I’m riding on, what books to carry, whose voice to heed. But parts of me are waking up and merging to a degree I am not yet familiar with. At some level, I’m uncomfortable with the climate of the heights of God. It’s terrifying and ultimately shatters my dull, veiled perspective of God. But each wrung of the ladder I climb, the closer to God’s face I get. It’s like a child scaling the body of Jesus, excited to be lifted onto his shoulders and breathe in the high calling. Like an athlete afraid of the tearing, when stronger muscles are being ripped and forged for the fight.

Before I ramble off, here is what is on my mind today:

These are not ordinary times.

I am convinced we are in deeper than we think. Programmed by delusion, decorating our walls of pride with Christmas garland, building cities on the fences of empty reasoning. We are busy bodies making time for truth. This hour is serious. The areas of my patty-cake life are surfacing from the hot tub of seductive comforts and marred family fences. Half hearted compromise is masking the deepest lie of darkness on a common level.

I am reminded of that scene in the Star Wars trilogy when Anakin Skywalker, destined for glory and a life of truth, takes on a fabricated identity by allowing another form of sustenance to keep him alive. Its like we are half awake and breathing, and we wear these pseudo-life structures to control us and operate our senses and spirit. All the while a doctrine of demons clouds our ability to make logical God-choices because we are not convinced compromise has hurt us. We are so intoxicated by the smog of false safety. I am slowly coming to realize the vast amount of grace that is literally tying this planet together is rapidly unbuckling at the hateful noise of our land. I mean I believe the physical earth is literally still held together right now because of the grace and mercy of our creator, just hanging on, just waiting another moment for his kids to turn back to him, loosening his grip on the judgment of our enemy soul ties. We’ve got to get the enemy out of our souls. Jesus is coming to pierce ALL darkness, to create an entirely safe place, abounding and unending, where evil has no government or hold. But we can’t let demons ride on our backs into heaven’s camp. We will die with whatever spirit we feed.
Just as God destined physical bodies to clash and merge through intimacy and an intercourse of body and spirit, so are we growing and living with either truth or demonic soul ties in our spirits on a daily basis. What are we spreading? A braided strand of darkness and light cannot hold. We’ve got cities of grey chords and paper homes, but they are a big bad wolf’s sneeze away from collapse. Only in our minds does salvation without Jesus take form and stand. Only for a minute. Think how long a house of cards really stands. We are living for the season, thinking the day is our destiny. It’s like depending on my Christmas tree to last through summer. We need to take down our lights and check our foundations.
God is extending ladders and step stools from heaven right now. He knows the degree of poison in the air. He knows the limitations of our weapons to pierce it. We can step into a higher atmosphere of heaven’s oxygen and see without blind spot the eyes of our Father, the war strategies and treasure maps of heaven. The HEIGHTof Jesus’ kingship over the earth. The masses of angel-giants lining the halls of the throne room, breathtaking in their perfect stature and confidence in our spoken destiny. What a change of heart and vision this sight would be for every person on the planet. I think I would be born again with every glimpse of this glory.
It’s time to start digging up, not digging down. We’ve got some cloudy mud below our feet, but mines of riches at just an arm’s reach. I can prophesy surface realities with frustrated superstitious hoping, but this is not my destiny. Praying with hard disappointment scraping my heart and the confusing political climate pressing my hopes into a weak angry sandwich of a spirit, is NOT my destiny. Our practical peace solutions are not a bag of blog arguments and wishful thinking. Nor is it passivity in a black swirling storm. Our weapons are not outsourced here in America , nor are they forged at a church conference. They are dropping out of God’s heart like manna from the sky, searching the planet for willing hands to grasp the swords.

I am coming to believe our greatest weapon is our vision of the throne room.
Period.

“Vision, defined by the dreams of God, equips us with an undying courage.”
-Bill Johnson

Vision is an unbroken connection to the assuring reality of heaven’s prevailing protection over our lives. It fills us like a tall pitcher of clean water, with sustenance and might.

Because clearly, we need it.

“Therefore, through God's mercy we do not lose heart. We do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
7But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

13 It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

16 ”Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

2 Corinthians 4

"The Spirit Himself testifies together with our own spirit, assuring us that we are children of God. And if we are His children, then we are His heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ sharing His inheritance with Him; only we must share His suffering if we are to share His glory.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus."

ROMANS 8

Psalm 46

"God is a safe place to hide,

ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,

courageous in seastorm and earthquake,

Before the rush and roar of oceans,

the tremors that shift mountains.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

River fountains splash joy, cooling God's city,

this sacred haunt of the Most High.

God lives here, the streets are safe,

God at your service from crack of dawn.

Godless nations rant and rave,

kings and kingdoms threaten,

but Earth does anything he says.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

Attention, all! See the marvels of God!

He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,

Bans war from pole to pole,

breaks all the weapons across his knee.

Step out of the traffic!

Take a long, loving look at me, your High God,

above politics, above everything.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us."

Focus

"Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." Romans 3:19-23

"I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery."

Colossians 2:1-3

Focus: single-mindedness-endurance-patience-fortitude-strength-vigor-stamina-spirit-bravery

The resolve to focus packs power. A scattered mind loses purpose and function, just as a languid spirit is without creativity and fruit. Vision is a gift which allows us to perceive what God values. And so vision gives worth to the things and people in our lives we otherwise might pass by. Vision raises a standard, gives perspective a name, and arms us with bravery that does not come naturally. I've been asking God lately, what are you showing me these things for? What am I supposed to do with this word/revelation? He's handing me a fishing pole. Something to hang on to, something worth fighting for. Speaking of fishing, you will never catch me dying to go catch a fish. I do not have patience to sit around and wait. But maybe I've never had someone to pinpoint where to cast my line. Maybe a little bit of commitment and persistence is the difference between fulfillment and collapse. A willing heart to focus past what appears to be will penetrate the surface waters that only reflect self.

To endure is to abide. I don't like to be pinned down to anything. A label, title, obligation, or expected role. This can be problematic. I've moved past some immature commitment-phobe mindsets for sure, but there's something to be said about standing by something when nothing is happening. Abiding when I don't feel like it. Sometimes I get bored with the marathon pace and miss the baton through the sprint. There's some key to gain in each stretch of the mile. There are new winds to tap into, new gifts to understand, and new muscles being worked out into perfection. There are some places I'd like to pass through quickly and some I'd like splash around in for the day. The place we call home is often a place we fight for. A place we stand from. The place that supplies us and reminds us of who we are. There is a fine line between faith & focus and conformity to our perception of the situation. One keeps me circling in shallow waters and the other sets me on a promising course into an ocean of faithfulness. One mindset gives me permission to meet my own expcectations, and the other launches me into extravagant love.

Focus grows a staircase of faith in God's fidelity to bring us home. Nothing can separate us from God's fulfillment in our lives but us. He is jealous over his garden. He keeps diligent watch over who comes and goes, over what his colaborers allow to fall into the soil of his good intentions. Should I not honor his planting by standing for what God values? Even if it's a blossoming creation I've yet to own? When we focus on what we own in order to control, we miss the grace because we forget what we really are. Children with a sovereign generous dad, who excitedly writes us into his adventure stories. He's always throwing out lines to us, shouting our names and focusing on the valuables. And as God pours water out of the sky and onto my desert path, I am guided by reflections of heaven to point the way home.

"Vision, defined by the dreams of God, equips us with undying courage."

-Bill Johnson

"The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You'll do well to keep focusing on it. It's the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts." 2 Peter 1:18-20

Permission to Land

Fighting for treasure

Just outside of this pleasure

Road maps set the caps

Knowing a point of return to elapse

My heart set like flint

Through dark smoke signs we glint

Laid before me ropes of flight

Set loose from defeat

Letting wrongs become right

Sails flutter open

Waters sound the release

The bridge gleams with hoping

From shores in the east

A passage unbolting

Wide channels decrease

Parting waves now eroding

A smooth landing forseen