Painting in Blood

Beneath my bare feet, the sidewalk cools my skin contrasted by the sun warm on my left cheek. Before me, at arms length is a man, dark hair in loose curls, ears obscured, bearded jaw moving in conversation that I can't understand, for he's not talking to me. The rolled sleeves of the untucked shirt, cover hairy arms that have known labor. He stands looking at a canvas preparing to create, he lowers his brush into.....his left hand, from which an occasional drop of blood falls to the pavement below. There's no wound, at least none that seems to diminish his pleasure enough to cause the grin in his eyes to disappear. He dips the brush into his palm, running the bristles of the brush up his wrist and with a fluid motion, draws a vivid red liquid to the canvas. He's painting in blood. His own. A line here, a stroke there, the polished wet color shimmers beautiful on the white canvas. I join the others now, growing in number, who have stopped their hurried lives to watch a creator. This wasn't scheduled and these people have things to do, yet they stand. Stand and stare at this man painting with the blood of his own hand. The picture takes form and with each new stroke now, the newly created form of a tree on the canvas does something quite unexpected. It grows leaves. Leaves on each branch. Small leaves that, once grown, fall away from the painting to the sidewalk below. He picks one up and hands it to a man not yet fifty but teetering on a cane clearly frail and weak. Words of instruction are exchanged and the man places the leaf to his tongue and once he does he's weak and frail no longer. The group becomes a crowd, many now waiting their turn, breathless reaching, gently clamoring for the leaves that fall to the ground with each brushstroke of crimson life. He turns to his left and looks directly at me and says, "My creative power is all about life, and my creativity released through you with both gather life (nods his head to reference the crowd) and release life (nods his head in reference to the healing happening all around us)." As he turns back to the canvas he playfully says, "Are you ready?" I am now far more interested in the future I have been drawn to dream into, than I am in the present moment for I am conscious of a creative force within me that screams to be free. I awaken, barely aware that I have slept.

A friend asked me recently for thoughts on four subjects. Since it feeds the ego to be asked ones opinion of anything, I took the bait. Not because my ego is starving, but because I wondered if I even still have opinions on these things, all of which I've wrestled with, against, or for. I'll leave it to you to figure out which.

Religion: Is flawed, but people embrace religion because they realize they're flawed too. So there's something beautiful about the people who embrace this flawed cancer of religion. It's when religion embraces them that things get ugly. Isn't it interesting that the only people that ticked Jesus off were the religious? If being religious was the way to get close to God, the Pharisees would have been Jesus best friends. God loves people but doesn't seem to have much good to say about the systems we create that confine Him or keep people from Him. God's wrath is aimed at whatever interferes with His love.

Emotion: Can ruin your life, but if you have none then life is already ruined. Jesus healed people when He was "moved with compassion." It's how you respond to emotion and the actions that you take in that response that reveal so many things about the deepest places in you. Watching a normally stable person struggle to take a note as their dead pen gouges the paper is a great way to see that under the right conditions, (even one so simple) everyone can feel....again.

Addiction: It's jumping out of an airplane with a knitted parachute, helpless against the thrust of descent. It's a butterfly battling against a hurricane. Paper wings in the storm you never imagined could be so strong. It's embracing a habit that is growing tired of you. When you can love and hate just a few breaths apart. It's the final scene in Oz, where the tin man is still an idiot, the lion is still afraid, you've given up on the wizard, and all you want to do is to go home. It's staring at an army of zombies. Too many monsters, so little ammunition. All of these charming paradoxes...

that keep us from knowing...

when it's ok...

to breathe.

Addictions remind us of how helpless we are without the relentless affection of a Saviour.

Our World: God loves it and died to redeem it, and only He knows why. I'm so glad He is.... I'm so glad that He just "is".

Scoring Life

I don't know if your mind does this or not but mine scores life. Not like a football game, but like a movie. The score or soundtrack is the meat of most great moments in film. It's a rare movie that doesn't heavily lean on the soundtrack to underscore what the writer/director wants to convey in terms of bringing the audience into the moment emotionally. It's giving a collective connection to the crowd so that sad moments are sure to make your eyes burn with tears, scary moments make your bladder control mechanism temporarily unreliable, and tense moments make your brow furrow and sweat. I guess then the definition of a good score would be one that makes you leak in different ways.

As I wander through my day, music is always going on in my head. Every moment has a soundtrack. I don't do it consciously, it just happens. Maybe this is why my tastes in music are so stinking eclectic and I find an artistic appreciation for everything but bad opera and tone deaf mariachis. Accordions are of the devil, those plastic recorders from third grade sound the same no matter which orifice you use to blow them, and the definition of perfect pitch to me is a banjo in a dumpster. So I do have some instruments on my list of those that should never be practiced by anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a musician. Probably none are so offensive though, as the bagpipes. I mean, can you name one professional bagpipe player off the top of your head? Anybody have a cd of bagpipe music that you jam to in the car? Ever been in the heat of a romantic moment with your true love and click on the bagpipe tunes to accentuate the mood? Didn't think so.

Nevertheless, I have been moved by some songs lately that have become staples in the soundtrack of my life. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" is a good one when you're walking down the street in frustration. That's for those moments when you realize that you being wrong has either ruined someone else's day or made someone else's day. There's this great little song by Norah Jones called "The Long Day is Over" that works well at the close of (drum roll) a long day. It can't be played at 10 am unless you work third shift. Diana Krall has this weepy rendition of "Soldier in the Rain" that's sure to put you into a semi comatose state of depression by the end of its five minute run. When misery loves company, that's the tune that works. That one along with John Mayer's "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" and anything by Chase Coy.

Nothing quite works a road trip like Tom Petty. Doesn't matter which song either. I think they were all written in a moving vehicle because that's how they sound. "You Wreck Me", "Free Falling", "Higher Place", and "Crawling Back to You" are asphalt highlights, but the one that moves me to tears (and I may be the only one) is "Time to Move On". It's absolutely the only song to play when you're leaving somewhere with no promise that you'll ever return. Be careful though. Play it on your way home from work one day and you may get inspired and never go back.

When we were in Maui, there were a few artists/groups that got a lot of airplay in our car and that was the obvious Bob Marley, the not so obvious Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Bob Schneider. Bob Schneider's got this song called "Gold in the Sunset" that is pretty catchy unless you're actually driving along the beach with the sunset actually happening off to your left and then it's absolutely magic. There's this part at the end of the song where this harmonic blend of voices just sings out in a moment when words just won't do the orange sky justice. Brilliant. Marley's classics work almost anywhere there's an ocean. Way better than Jimmy Buffet in my opinion, but Marley can take you from tense to chill in seconds with "Stir It Up", "Three Little Birds" or my absolute favorite sing along song ever, "Is This Love". CSNY's "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" is still a masterpiece but the track that gets me in the car is "Wasted on the Way". Walking through an airport, Owl City and Coldplay work well. Walking through a cemetery, slow bluegrass is soothing in a creepy sort of way. Sitting on the dock of the bay? Otis Redding knew one day we all would be. Driving through Arizona? "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi is still sweet cranked to 11. In the city with the windows down? Some old TLC girl rap still has class..."hangin out the passenger's side of his best friend's ride..." Downtown Austin? Stevie Ray. Lifting weights? "Enter Sandman". Sitting in a beach chair? Colbie Callat. Lamenting loss? Dido. Working on a computer? Elvis Costello. Riding with your wife? Journey. In Vegas at night? Ol Blue Eyes, baby. Riding in a bus or thinking back on the 80's? "Sweet Child of Mine" Got a whiny teenager in the car? Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold". With your uncle who reads no book other than the King James Version of the Bible? Keith Green's "Asleep in the Light". Just want to be cool nomatter your age? Matisyahu. Sitting with Grandma drinking sweet tea? Patsy Cline's "Walkin After Midnight". Hanging with college buddies? REM. The list goes on longer than your life.

Now I know what my kids are thinking here. Where's the Jesus music, dad? That's where this article has somewhat of a point. You never know the power of music until you realize how much your moments are affected by it. The songs I've mentioned can accentuate the location, scenery, or mental state you're already in at the moment. But good worship music transcends that and creates a moment in itself. The "Jesus Culture" cd "Consumed" has a version of "Dance With Me" that's volcanic. Misty Edwards unreleased masterpiece called "Beauty Arise" wrecks me deeply. Kim Walker's "How He Loves" still stirs my soul into a tornado of awe at it's description of heart of the Father. Good worship music (and good is defined differently by different ears) is that which has the ability not simply to score your day, but move you away from the moments you feel locked into and lift you to a place where heaven meets you, redefines you, and draws the eyes of your heart from the wasted efforts of fruitless toil and onto the face in which the eyes of Love are deeply set and intensely focused on you. You whom He loves with relentless abandon. And at some point every day, that's good to know.

Britain is going through this phase that I pray will never end. He reads more than he watches tv, movies, computer, whatever... So I thought I would capture this beautiful season in a sketch that exists in my mind.

So I had this dream that I was having this conversation with my daughter, except we were both about five years older than we are now and we were talking about the past that hasn't happened yet. (yeah, I know it's trippy) Anyway, this is how she looked in the dream. it'll be interesting to see if, when she's seventeen, she looks exactly like this drawing and can say that it was drawn five years earlier.

The following was written by my 15 year old son, Britain.

-------------------

I have been getting so much revelation and God had been telling me so many amazing things lately. It's just incredible! It seems like He refuses to let me have one sided conversations anymore.
Anyways, I was sitting in the prayer room last night before Revo, talking to God and just hanging out with Him and as I was standing there, I just kept saying, "God, I want more of You. I need You. I am nothing without You. I want to learn how to love with Your heart. Teach me to speak Your words. I need more of You. I know You have bigger and better things prepared for me, God. Come use me!"

When I said that, I heard God say, "Moses knew that I had a place prepared for him and his people. They just had to have the faith to cross the waters before they could get there."

God had prepared the promised land for them but they first had to trust God and have faith to see the impossible done before they could get to what had been prepared for them.
If they did not have faith, they never would have seen the thing that God had prepared for them.

Same with you. God has promised you things but if you don't trust Him and believe that He will see you through, if you don't have faith, how do you expect to reach the things that God has prepared for you

If Moses didn't have the faith at that moment to raise his staff into the air and command the waters to part, they never would have reached the thing that had been promised to them. They could have stood there and been captured by pharaohs army.

When you're walking with God, every obstacle, no matter how big or how small, will be forced to get out of your way because NOTHING can stand against you, or the power of your God who walks with you!

What will YOU do to get to the thing that you know is waiting on the other side of those waters?

...look into the face of God and lose yourself in the object of your wonder...

There are a lot of websites out there that "cautiously question" all the way to "hatefully deride" manifestations of the Holy Spirit and experiences in the presence of God as we gather to worship Jesus Christ. I get a fair about of links to them from people asking me to check this and that out. Basically there is just a lot of dishonor out there. So I received an email asking about specific manifestations and these websites that dedicate themselves to pointing out the error of such a thing. Love it or hate it, my response is below.

------------------

Back in the days when intellect was the means by which I judged a move of God, I would have viewed reading these sites as due diligence and studying to show myself approved. Now, all they amount to is spiritual pornography, or to put it another way, whenever I read stuff like this, that which was life in me begins to die. It's like poison to your Spirit. To even give place to that which diminishes the life of heaven in you is just flat dangerous.

So why do we read this stuff? Is it a Godly desire to guard ourselves from deception or is it that we still can't come to accept what we don't fully understand? I don't understand the manifestations, but I do know the presence of God. I do know what happens to me when He shows up, when He rests upon a room of believers, when the wind of the Spirit blows into you and you feel the wineskin of your Spirit expand to contain more. The external things that happen, the varied human responses to His presence, they don't remotely distract or dictate what happens because with God all things are possible.

When the presence of God is your highest priority, you'll never have to worry about deception. His presence keeps you from worshipping signs and wonders while giving you the liberty to enjoy them. Gold? Feathers? Oil of Joy? Fire? Healing? Clouds? Gemstones? Angels? They're not God. But they are a part of His world. They're all mentioned in Heaven as seen by Isaiah and John. As His world breaks into this world more and more, the attributes of Heaven are going to become more common. HOWEVER, none of the prophets ever worshipped the attributes of Heaven. They worshipped God.

But to deny the attributes of His world as elements of deception is pure foolishness. Are these things in Heaven? Yes. Jesus taught us to pray that it would be on earth as it is in heaven. If we have any appetite to come into agreement with His heart expressed here, we will be embracing a spirit of deception if we deny the very attributes of the world He wants to make manifest here.

Grace and Peace to you

This is so brief it can hardly be called a post. I just believe somebody needs this phrase today that came to me while I was enjoying His presence. "Never let a circumstance defile your purpose."

I've been thinking about this phrase lately. You can begin a movement without affecting the culture, but without a culture, the movement is not sustained.
In 1924, GK Chesterton wrote the following: "What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves."
And this is why revival culture is so important.

I received a question on whether or not love and hate can coexist. Here's my response.

Love directs hatred toward anything that interferes with love. It is in the mere existence of love that you develop the passion to defend it. Why would you "take a bullet" for someone you love? Because you "hate" the bullet that threatens to destroy them. You have nothing against the bullet as it is, but rather when it's misused you are passionately willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to counter it's misuse. Hatred (in the context of coexisting with genuine love) is the passion to defend love, not destroy it.

God's wrath is aimed at whatever interferes with His love.

So in light of this, I pose a question back a you. Did Jesus die on the cross because He hated sin or because He loves us?

Look at the words of Jesus in Matt 7:23 and ask yourself this question. What does God not know? He has a higher value for a dynamic relationship with you than in you having a dynamic ministry. Rather than a warning to be feared, recognize the invitation to intimacy. There is a movement here where He’s taking us to from being “the Father” to “Father” to "Abba/Papa/Daddy". Intimacy does not decrease His holiness for holiness is not held captive by formality. Just as a father rewards the honest transparency of his child by giving him more wisdom, it is your articulation of intimacy that positions you for revelation from your heavenly Father. In your speech, you create the communication that invites communion with the abundance of your heart. Here's what I did with this. I thought about what it would be like to pray like Jesus did in John 17 when He expressed His heart to the Father. So I got a cup of coffee, and sat outside one morning on the porch and said outloud, "Good morning, Papa. I'm so glad to wake up in Your presence..." And then it got personal. You can't even begin to imagine what happens when your value for dynamic relationship meets His.

I got this question recently and decided to post my response. "I would treasure your thoughts on this question; I know you must have thought about it—if God is the source of all of our healing, why do we go to doctors for things like chemo treatments? I have a hard time reconciling this. My mom died from her first and only chemo treatment. Any thoughts?"

My response:
Well, Luke is called the beloved Physician (Col 4:14) and we never see that he was led to abandon his vocation to follow Christ. We also see that when He led captivity captive, He gave gifts to men (Eph 4:8). I believe that physicians are supposed to be those with gifts of healing, who prophetically discern the area that needs to be focused upon and would partner with God to see the miracle take place.

When dad had this last TIA on Friday, we went into the hospital and they just looked at him. They drew some blood, got out the stethoscope, had him stick out his tongue... He got no treatment that he couldn't have gotten two generations ago. I was frustrated by the fact that there was literally nothing they felt empowered to do. So I'm praying for a resurrection of the mantle of Luke. That God would raise up doctors who recognize that their giftings and passion to see the broken become whole don't exist apart from the Holy Spirit of God. That with confidence in that calling and their relationship with God, they would move without fear of litigation to seek out new treatments and techniques to walk in that place of co-laboring with God and in the process, receive revelation about the workings of the (human) body and apply it to the Body (of Christ) and we would benefit through their ministry, Spirit, Soul, and Body. Spirit filled doctors are meant to release the Shalom of heaven through healing as an act of worship to a Holy God.

That's what I think anyway.