Tonight I went to an all night prayer/worship/prophetic art gathering at the First EV Free prayer chapel. I start with a blank canvas and no idea of what will end up on it. After an hour and a half, this is what emerged this time. It certainly means something specific to me but rather than render my own thoughts on the piece, I would prefer to hear yours so consider this your invitation to dig into the painting. I welcome any interpretations you have.

When I started blogging, there was me, some guy named Sven in Denmark, one girl with her webcam in Seattle, and an 11 year old Harvard student from Idaho who posted pictures of legos. Ah, those were the days. Little has changed in the past years, if you don't count the 2 billion bloggers added in the past five years. (Most of those being rabid Barak Obama supporters) I still have the same four readers, I'm still converting multitudes to mac, and my dog runs a bit slower than she used to. Today is a milestone though. I've finally added comments. Basically, when I started doing this, that wasn't an option, and until today, I just haven't gotten around to it. But some of the interaction I've had in email as a result of some of these posts has been really wonderful and worth sharing. So those of you who have read and wanted to comment, link to your own blogs, or use this site as a shameless plug for that Knight Rider lunchbox you're selling on ebay, have at it.

Ever notice that the first ones around Jesus who knew who He was had demons and darkness? The demoniac in the tombs, the harlot. The fortune teller knew who Paul was. Who missed it? The students of Scripture didn't have a clue. History hasn't changed much. If I'm insulated against any school of thought, it's the school that has eliminated the questions and cursed the mystery embraced by the teachable heart of the novice.
I love mystery. It's a foundational part of the faith to be able to pursue the more. Most of what we claim to know about this life in Christ is not unknown, just unfamiliar. To step into the unfamiliar, to pursue the proof of life, to lay claim to terrain you own but have never explored, this is the abundant life. Don't look to eliminate questions for in doing so you eliminate mystery. The ability to embrace mystery is what qualifies you to receive greater revelation. I no longer come to church to have my questions answered because most answers we construct fall well beneath the standard of on earth as it is in heaven. Let God be true and every man a liar, and call into question any revelation you have of God that has been constructed merely as a coping mechanism. A good church service is not one where you leave with all of your questions answered, but where you leave with some of your answers questioned.

There's this scene in an old episode of the Cosby Show where Bill Cosby's character (who is a doctor on the show) gets a call from one of his daughters friends who asks Bill if she can speak to the daughter. Bill says no. Then she asks if he can give the daughter a message. Bill says in this befuddled low and slow tone, "I graduated...(pause)...from medical school. I...(pause)...am a doctor." It's just a man who finds himself in a situation where, after blinking a couple of times, he mentally steps out of it to have a personal moment of conversation to see whether or not he ought to expect more out of life, or just resign to his fate that what is at hand is the lot in which he may as well pitch a tent and start a campfire cause, buddy, you're gonna be here awhile. I was working with my son the other day dumping garbage at a landfill. The hot afternoon wind whipped up a cloud of Texas limestone dust which combined with your already present sweat can turn you into what amounts to a statue bearing a strong resemblance to Michael Jackson. A garbage truck backed up a mere 20 feet from where we were standing and proceeded to dump a full load on the ground, creating all of the sudden a rather effervescent windbreak. Surrounded by diapers, unimaginable liquids, rotting food, and fighting the gag reflex Britain and I looked at each other and I said, "I was an underwater videographer in Maui." We laughed and laughed. Unhooking my parent's trailer the other day, we had a mishap with the sewage line. I'll spare the details but one look at Britain and we both started laughing again. Inside jokes can be a treasure that can take your mind off the fact that whatever just happened, I'll probably need a tetanus shot. We've had some nice things happen being back in Austin, but every day I find a half dozen times where I find it necessary to blink a couple of times, mentally step out of the moment, and have a personal conversation. "I was an underwater videographer in Maui." That was a good year. A really good year.

Here's the testimony of what happened to my Dad, Henry Vanderbush, this week.

Dad was taken by ambulance to St Davids on Wed morning around 11am. When he arrived, he was immediately admitted to a room in the ER. As near as we could tell, the ER was pretty full at the time and Traci and the kids were in the waiting room where there were around 30 people waiting to get in to be seen. We were told by the nurse that they would have admitted dad to a regular room except that the hospital was at capacity and there were no beds available. Dad was unable to speak in conversation but was able to pray and while he didn't know what year it was, and didn't know who the president was, he could perfectly say, "Thank You Jesus, Praise the Lord, Amen, Hallelujah, yes Lord", so for most of the day, that's what he said over and over again. By 3pm a nurse came in and said that beds were opening up and it would be 20 minutes or so and he would be moved to a regular room. Dad had looked concerned every time one of us left so we hadn't ventured out of the room much after 12. After more than an hour passed, we began to wonder what happened to the room they were going to take him to. I went out to ask a nurse about it and there was no nurse at the desk. The entire ER was strangely empty where at noon it had been a buzz of activity. I walked out to the waiting room (Traci had left with the kids around an hour after we arrived so I hadn't been out there for awhile) and on my way to the waiting room I saw that every room I passed was now empty. I opened the door to the waiting room and the waiting room was empty except for the lady behind the computer. I wandered back into emergency looking for a nurse or doctor or somebody and found one nurse walking down the hall towards me. I asked her about dad's room and she said something about everything at the hospital taking longer than you expect. I said, "It sure is empty around here." She said, "Shhhh, don't jinx us sir. This never happens."

I then realized the contrast from the time we arrived to a busy ER and full waiting room to four hours later when the place was literally empty except for my dad and wondered if perhaps just the presence of a man of faith was enough to have that kind of effect. Of course, the offense to the mind is that the man of faith is the only one left and is suffering with a stroke here and for all of the praying we're doing, the results seem to be poured out on everything around him while he, the focus of our prayers, remains unaffected.

There was one patient who came in around 5:30 and was put in the room across the hall so dad could see him. It was a man, probably close to dad's age, (they called him Mr McMahon) who had also had a stroke. Dad looked across the hall and attempted to ask us about him but all he could do was motion with his hands. I said, "It looks like he's had a stroke." Dad began to pray saying his usual praise the Lord, thank you Jesus, etc... Later that night after dad was admitted to a room, the neurologist came to see him again and I asked about mr McMahon and was told that he was released. Interestingly enough, when we got dad in a room, we noticed that the rooms on either side of him were also empty. I was somewhat irritated by this because I had been told the hospital was full and thought we had been lied to. I mentioned to the nurse that we were told they were full and she said, "We were, until this afternoon when a bunch of people got discharged all at once." Through all of this Dad prayed his way through the whole experience, praising God with his "Thank You Jesus, Praise the Lord, Amen, Hallelujah, yes Lord." (It's interesting to note that as of this writing, he's back to normal and remembers nothing of his hospital experience whatsoever).

On dad's condition, they did a CT scan when he arrived and could see that he did have a stroke and knew where in the brain it was. Thursday morning they would do an MRI to see more detail and get a look at any damage that had been caused by it and then we would have some idea as to what options we would have. Perhaps a stint and then some speech therapy. We prayed that there would be no damage at all. Thursday afternoon they returned with the results of the MRI which showed that he had no damage at all and he was released to go home. I want to thank you in advance for your continued prayers for my Dad.

Born in Fire

Living in the Kingdom is the state of living from Heaven towards earth. Jesus gave access into that place and perspective in Acts 1 when He said, speaking of the Holy Spirit, wait, get it, go. He didn't give further instruction in the politics of governing the movement once the Holy Spirit and fire was poured out upon us.  Fire doesn't need to have structure to have substance.  Never be consumed with defining the structure of that which can only be birthed and sustained by fire. Fire requires wind to burn and spread and those born of the Spirit will move like that wind. Our God is a consuming fire and the dead works of man are as dry stubble on the ground in this day. Yet its from the dry structures of religious form that a fire will spread, igniting the earth with the revelation of His Glory. The spirit of dead religion has seen its day of influence come and go as anointed declaration by the people of God releases the very life of Heaven. A Greater Awakening is upon us.

"And the Spirit and the bride say, come..." Rev 22. Consider what happens when the Holy Spirit and the bride of Christ begin to declare the same word.

We're coming up on one year in Maui. It's been incredible, life changing, and filled with wonder. I've never asked God for fame or wealth, occasionally I've put in a request for wisdom, but not as often as I should. My most consistent prayer has been for wonder, and that He has granted. Yet the source of the 'wonderful' hasn't been only in the mountains, waterfalls, rainbows, reefs, waves, and waters of these islands. It's been in the eternal friendships of which I am most passionate. It's been said that a friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months. This is true if one doesn't lead to the other. It is the friendships I am most passionate about that have brought me the greatest wonder. That is to say, it's the friendships that have a healthy passion at their core that last. And it's the passions that lead to a healthy friendship that endure. When applied to our walk with the Maker of all things, the reality of this principle erupts into the wonder of His presence. In that place of presence there is both passion and friendship. Whatever you start with, make certain to include the other, for it is impossible for them to stand alone for very long. For me, every passion for God has led to a deeper friendship with God. The passion is the seeking first the Kingdom, the friendship is the relationship with the King. Jesus made it clear that this is where we are to be when He said, I no longer call you servants, but friends. It is not what we call Him that makes this so profound, but what He calls us. Your invitation to relationship enriches the heart of God and in that place of friendship with you, His passion for you is revealed. Kim Walker wrote of this place of touching the heart of God, "He is jealous for me. Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of the sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me. And oh, how He loves us so..." Well said.

One of the things people in Christendom freak out about is the human response to the presence of God. It's as varied as the individual expressing it. The laughter thing hit the church and many people declared it not of God. But the Bible declares that in the presence of the Lord is fullness of joy, meaning that there's nothing in regards to joy that is left out. Laughter and joy are pretty close cousins. One is often the result of the other. Other manifestations seem downright scary to those of us who have been accustomed to a relationship with God that is more form than power, more principle than presence. We want everything to be decent and in order according to Corinthians, yet who are we to redefine what God considers to be order? Consider this.

The most beautiful vomit I've ever seen was after my then pregnant wife ate a whole bag of gummi bears by herself. It was a moment to cherish, preparing me for the event to come, the birth of my son. In that room, there was strange sounds, odd fluids, offensive facial contortions, and general chaos, at least from where I was sitting. Yet, those in the room to whom this was normal seemed unfazed and unoffended. See, my definition of decent and order stemming from ignorance, was violated by those with experience who considered everything that happened to be pretty well normal for a birth experience.

In the past year I have watched people answer the invitation of the Scriptures to experience and encounter the manifest presence of God that touches them from the inside out. What used to be offensive now brings me joy. What used to be disorderly now seems normal. Experience has renewed my mind to be able to expand the manner by which I can hear the voice of God. If you're open to the presence of God, I'd erase that list of acceptable manifestations and be ready for just about anything.

Some of you have emailed me asking for more testimonies. Here are a few cool things that have happened in the last few weeks at Grace Church to people I know personally and was there when it happened.

Merri Lee had constant pain in her feet, and had two surgeries to remedy it without success. She received prayer, felt a heat in her feet and the pain was gone. She walked with her husband on the beach that day with no pain.

After prayer Lu went to get her platelet count checked. Her normal count for years has been 40- 50,000 while the healthy count is 170,000. Her count came out at 170,000 with no change in diet or medication. The doctor was amazed.

Judy had prayed for her son to come to Christ. For two years he did not come to church. On a Thursday, she took a prayer cloth and slipped it into his wallet without a word. On Sunday, he came uninvited to church and dedicated his life to the Lord.

Kip received prayer for his knees. After prayer he went outside and heard God say, "Run". So he ran down the street and back with no pain.

Keal came into a worship gathering and at the end of the service came up to the microphone and declared that after being out of church since the age of six, God was calling him back to a relationship. He was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit spending the next hour or so on the floor unable to move or speak.

Susanna brought her friend, Solei, who had no experience with church, into a gathering. She sat on the front row and was both saved and filled with the Holy Spirit right at her chair. She reported (while trembling) that she literally "felt" the manifest presence of God on her and with no prior experience of the phenomenon, she spoke in other tongues.

Terri, who suffered with asthma testified of her healing. Her lungs were clear and she doesn't have to use her inhaler anymore.

A visitor from Egypt had a degenerative condition in her shoulders and couldn't lift her arms above her head. After prayer she was able to lift her arms straight up without pain.

Earl Thurner prayed for a man whose business was in the red and he was about to file bankruptcy. More than $50,000 showed up within 48 hours from various sources as well as some contracts that would bring continued income for the next six months.

John had suffered for six weeks with intestinal problems and couldn't eat a meal without stomach pain afterward. Some believers whose hands were literally tingling prayed for him and afterward he's been able to eat without pain or discomfort.

God is alive.

This week began the Maui School of Supernatural Ministry. Eighty one hungry, relentless, radical, revivalists came together in one room to be a part of something bigger than they themselves. Ok, it sounds like a movie trailer I know. But I can't stress the importance of this enough. I've seen what can happen when people with a healthy appetite for more of the presence of God get together. It doesn't look quite like church as usual. On a small or large scale, it's amazing. It's what every church should look like at every gathering. I'm telling you something here. If hungry people would stay hungry their appetite would be contagious or revolting to everyone but at least it would be provocative, that is provoking to...something! The night these pictures were taken, people were healed and prophetic words flowed like a river. Tonight, (Wed) a few young people came into the service and got so radically touched by God that they ended the evening on the floor overcome by the manifest presence of God. We speak of the Kingdom, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the radical obedience of Jesus, the revelation of the Father's embrace, and the standard of on earth as it is in heaven, and things just happen. The Holy Spirit will honor the message in the hearts of the hearers every single time. C'MON GOD!!!

Kingdom thought for the day:
God could wipe out satan with a breath but He has instead chosen that the devil should be defeated daily by those who live by faith. The ultimate triumph of Christ is not that you gain victory over the enemy, but that you express victory already obtained.

Sozo Class Notes for October 21

- You were designed and created to live in the glory of God. Pa 84:2

- For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory. What does this verse tell us about God’s original target for man? Rom 3:23

- Your salvation has restored you to God’s original intent. Christ in you the hope of glory. Col 1:27

- Our ministry is actually to release the glory of the Lord. Learning how to host His Presence means that I have learned how to not grieve and not quench.

- We are to be trained by the presence. 1 Jn 2:27 says it's the anointing that teaches you. We try to learn in our head but it's the presence that retrains us on how to see and how to think and how to flow with the heart of God.

- Don't wait until you need a miracle or you'll develop a servant relationship because servants are task oriented. When He said I no longer call you servants but friends He was drawing them into a deeper relationship. The difference between the two is this. A servant is concerned about disobeying. A friend is concerned about disappointing. If my engagement with God is only for miracles then I have shown myself to be interested in service and not relationship.

- Ps 16:8. I have set the Lord always before me. I take God and put Him right in front of me all day long. Since I can't imagine a place where He isn't I might as well imagine Him with me.

- A goal for us in this day is to learn to carry the glory into public places to where your value of Him outweighs the grief of the sin of those who reject Him. Where your value of the Presence of the Lord is stronger than the weight of the sin of all the people in that room. If your value for Him outweighs the sin that grieves Him you change the atmosphere in that place.

Well it's finally happened. Shannon and I are back in ministry together. When I picked them up from the airport yesterday, it was to stay. He and Michelle and the girls are coming over to serve as Ministers of Youth and Family here at Grace Church and I can't begin to relay how thrilled I am. If you've ever had a surprise party and you're just elated with it all and then they add a surprise on top of the surprise that you just got, like an encore of a grand finale, you know how you just emotionally shut down because you simply have lost the ability to react with the appropriate amount of awe? If that's never happened to you, I pray it does someday soon. That's how I feel here with the Carriers coming.


We get a call to Maui. Amazing. We stumble into this conference at Church of the Hills in Austin that leaves me eternally transformed. Incredible. We begin to see miracles, signs, and wonders when we arrive in Maui and it grows. Wow! Shannon and Michelle move here. I'm running out of words... His plans are truly above all we could ask or think and I now know what it means when He said, "See if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that you will not have room to contain." I really need a bigger container.


Here's why I write this openly today, for I could praise God privately for His blessings. I want every one of you who read this to experience the absolute wonder of God's promise to you of a hope and future that is blessed by Him. I declare that every person who reads this post will, today, experience the overwhelming goodness that flows from the heart of the Father, and that your household would be blessed, that your health would be blessed, that your labor would be blessed, and that you would find a greater revelation of love in your Heavenly Father's embrace today. May God grant to you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. Eph 1:17. I pray that God would assign to you an angelic presence whose sole purpose is to unveil in greater measure, Jesus Christ. That this angel, who has continual access to the mind of the Father would always draw you to the wonder and awe of what He's like and that the innumerable thoughts that God has toward you that outnumber the sand would be made known to you. That you would reflect in your life the price that was paid to redeem you and grant you access to His Kingdom that is within reach. I pray that in your declaration and through the laying on of hands that you would lay hold of that Kingdom and pursue those things once considered impossible for with God all things are possible! Amen.

We've seen some amazing miracles continue as the Spirit of God is poured out in Maui. A man who had a pain in the left side of his head and had been unable to work and sleep because of it, said that he was going to a specialist on Oahu, meaning that it was suspected that something was seriously wrong. He was prayed for and completely healed. A lady with constant pain in her feet, who had two surgeries to remedy it without success, felt a heat in her feet and the pain was gone. She walked with her husband on the beach with no pain. Supernatural manifestations have become a common cool occurrence. A lady with a spa type clinic in Kahului prayed for an unsaved client who accepted Jesus and asked God to fill her with His Spirit. Then, with no prompting, coaching, or previous experience, she began to speak in tongues. The whole office staff was literally intoxicated with the presence of God. The same lady reported that she prayed for another client who was an atheist and though professing not to believe in God, asked for prayer for her daughter who was on drugs and away from home. Soon after that prayer, that lady went to the front door of her house in the morning and her daughter was on her doorstep. The daughter accepted Jesus and was delivered from drug addiction. A lady in church had been praying for her son for two years to come to the Lord. Even after many invitations he wouldn't come to church. She took a small cloth and prayed over it and then tucked it in his wallet. On the Sunday after she did that, he showed up at church and was radically touched. Another lady in the church who suffered with asthma testified of her healing. Her lungs were clear and she didn't have to use her inhaler anymore. I could go on and on and on...

But last night was the apex of the movement toward revival that we've contended for since arriving in January. It was the unveiling of the Maui School of Supernatural Ministry which is a pilot branch out of Bethel Church in Redding, CA. The sanctuary was full of people from all over Maui who had one thing in common. A hunger for God. Even then, there were people who were drawn in by the Spirit of God. A young man walking by was drawn in and got his world rocked as the power of God overtook him in his seat. He gave his life to the Lord last night, simply compelled to come in. A young lady driving by, clouded by oppression, felt drawn into the parking lot and sat surrounded by a crowd of radical believers for the entire gathering. At the end she accepted the Lord for the first time in her life. It's interesting that we tone down services in a carnal attempt to insulate people from offense by limiting their exposure to the supernatural power of God. What gives us the right to hold people back from all God wants to release? I'll write more about this another time but I'm learning some things here.

Then the testimonies of healings began. Here's how it seems to go. As worship happens, and the message of the Kingdom is declared, a wave of anointing sweeps across the room. We asked anyone who felt a heat or unusual sensation in their hands to raise them. Hands go up all over the room. They begin to lay hands on people around them. A man in the center of the sanctuary with a heart condition falls to the floor in the center aisle under the power of the Spirit of God. A lady from Egypt who couldn't raise her arms above her head because of joint problems with her shoulders was totally healed and raising her arms high in praise to God. So many things happen as people begin to give words of knowledge and prophecy over one another. All over the room the Spirit of God is moving. It's hard to keep up with it all. And then, in the middle of all of this, an older Hawaiian man, very nicely dressed in local clothing with a very native decoration around his neck, stands and wants to testify. The room gets quiet, really quiet. He simply turns to the sanctuary and testified that he came with pain in his knees and as those around him were praying, his knees began to pop and the pain was gone, healed by the "power of Jesus". The room erupts! I figure, this is a nice testimony but the reaction of the people seemed more intense. I found out later who this was. I'll refrain from publishing his name here because I don't have permission to do so. But he is known as the father of the local Hawaiian people. His influence in the preservation of the culture and the heritage of the Hawaiian nation, is enormous. To the highest seat in state government, he has affected policy on a variety of issues, speaking out on behalf of the Hawaiian people. It was told to me following the service (because I didn't know any better) "Every local Hawaiian will soon hear that this man was healed by Jesus Christ." The word I get over and over again from people calling about this is that you have no idea how huge that is. Perhaps not, but we serve a huge God who has all authority and is in a really good mood and huge things are on His heart so they should also be on ours. Raise your expectations to the place where the discipling of a city, a state, and a nation is totally within reach. Because it is.

The normal Christian life is to invade impossibilities. When Jesus described the Kingdom He said nothing is impossible with God. Everything else is made with restrictions and restraints. Everything else is finite but Him. Then it's as if Jesus says I want mankind to know what it's like in my world where there are no impossibilities so He adds this phrase saying, "nothing is impossible for those who believe." This is amazing revelation since we all recognize that human nature is so contradictory to God's divine nature yet we're invited to a place of access to His world.

Now here's a thought that should shake up whatever religious spirits you've been shacking up with in your Christian life because any use of the word 'contradiction' makes people nervous. God gives revelation to us and then prunes it by giving a contradictory revelation. To Abraham He says, sacrifice your son, don't sacrifice your son. You have been predestined, yet you are a people of choice. It's appointed to man once to die but He raises the dead. Sacrifice sheep, don't sacrifice sheep. Eat My flesh and drink My blood or have no part of Me. He challenges you to come to a place where your Spirit says amen to that which offends your mind. To a place where your heart can wrap itself around what your mind cannot.

Human nature is that we are prone to rally in groups based upon points of doctrinal agreement. That's how denominations come to be. Denominations form when people come into a revelation of truth and agree on it, but what happens when He unveils more revelation? Theologians will stand and say that God doesn't do that not realizing that the denomination that they adhere to was likely formed based upon a revelation that contradicted the revelation of the group that they were previously a part of. Since doctrinal agreement is the rallying point, when disagreement arises they can no longer belong to the group. To make it simple, when your point of unity is doctrinal agreement, disagreement means you can't belong. What's happening now is that God is gathering people together, not around points of doctrinal agreement, but around Fathers in the Faith. The structure of the Kingdom is patterned after family. In a family brothers and sisters can disagree all the time but it doesn't mean you're kicked out of the family. Why? Because the rallying point is not that they agree about every subject but that they have the same Mother and Father. There is a new day of unity coming where we rally around the presence and not merely the principles.


This is not to suggest that we embrace opposing doctrines. It's to reveal that our determination of who a brother or sister in Christ is must be based upon our recognition of the Spirit of God within them. When Jesus was resurrected He appeared to the women who told the disciples who didn't believe them. Then the Bible says He appeared "in another form" to two others whose testimony was also rejected by the disciples and when Jesus showed up to the disciples, they were rebuked because they didn't believe another person's experience. The Holy Spirit in John 16 is said to function in the role of guiding us into all truth therefore if you have the Holy Spirit resident within you one of the evidences must be that you recognize truth when you hear it. The disciples could not recognize truth because their experience was clouded with factual events that contradicted the testimony of their friends. Jesus was tortured and died and they saw it. These people were questionable as sources. The first, Mary, had been washing Jesus feet with her hair, a strange expression of worship at best. Hygienically questionable and wasteful at worst. It was not normal and neither was her past so her testimony counted for little. The others had a conversation with Jesus that lasted for quite some time and then when they finally recognized Him, He disappeared. All kinds of problems arise logically with these testimonies making them easy to reject. Yet they were one hundred percent true and accurate as they were told and when Jesus showed up He told them so Himself. When a revelation comes to you regarding what He's like, and your hearts says Amen, but your mind cannot understand, don't reject it. That may be the moment you are most in tune with the Spirit of God, for He (while not opposed to the mind) will not gratify the ego of the intellect when the Spirit is supposed to be in charge. This is how the mind gets renewed for the mind is a brilliant student but a poor leader.

When I work on the dive boat, I have the chance to spend a day with strangers on their vacation. They come with all sorts of attitudes. You learn which newlyweds are still in love 48 hrs after the vows and which ones are sitting there zoned at the realization that not only will life never be the same but they'll be paying this trip off for the next 30 years. It's not uncommon for people to come to Maui and in going "all out" drop 20 thousand on a couple weeks of paradise. Truly an unforgettable experience for reasons both good and bad. But it's not the good nor the bad that makes an impression here. It's the ugly.

I had a group of people on the boat recently, we'll call group number one. They showed up forty minutes late, making the rest of the passengers wait and without a word of apology to the rest of the crew, boarded as though they owned the boat. Loud, obnoxious, and without regard for the rules of the watercraft. The captain wasn't amused. As they prepared to hit the ocean, the silicone and botox was on display. Modesty in swim attire was nowhere to be found. The captain was amused. When the bar opened, they indulged freely, increasing the volume with every mai tai. When the day was over, I packed my gear and walked away frustrated. See, this group was a group of Christian people who were part of a church. They had called and lightly demanded a group discount on that basis and when 15% was offered they asked if they could make it 20%. After all, they're Christians in church leadership and the world is entitled to offer them a little somethin.

Fast forward to the following Saturday with group 2. A bus unloads a group of people who have chartered the boat, crew, and video guy for the day. A dozen couples arrive, on time, well mannered, very polite. They kindly listened to instructions and shocked the crew by following them. These early to middle aged husbands and wives were extremely pleasant and the swimwear was about as modest as you'll ever see in Maui. When the bar opened, many abstained and went for the local juice, pog. (Passion, Orange, Guava) At the end of the day they tipped heavily and I was sorry to see them go. This group was made up of web pornographers. They were the CEO's of companies that distribute pornographic content on the internet and collectively, controlled more than 50 million sites between them. When I learned this, I was shocked. (Kind of like you are right now.) One of the men on the trip, I found later, was responsible for much of the porn spam. The kind that plagues the PC of those who navigate off the narrow road only to find their computer filled with spyware. Had I known that while we were diving, I may have turned off his air or put a jellyfish in his wetsuit. I came home and showed the pictures of each group to my wife and then told her what they did for a living and she was stunned.

This begs the question, what in the world makes us different? I've written this before but it's the power and nature of God within us that makes us different. The nature or character that we display in the way we do life opens the door for that power to be released. We are equally obligated to demonstrate both. The Holy Spirit may be in every believer, but He rests upon very few. There are two rails that keep us from going off the edge when it comes to the Holy Spirit. One is "grieve not" the other is "quench not". Grieve not is to keep us from doing, thinking, and harboring things in our heart that are inconsistent with God's heart. If I'm selfish, bitter, filled with hatred, I'm grieving Him, because I have embraced something in myself that is not found in His heart. Quench not is to keep us from embracing an invalid agenda by stopping the flow of His Spirit who is likened unto a river. You put a kink in a garden hose, you stop the flow. If your Sunday worship service is timed out to the minute for the comfort of the people under the guise of decent order you have put a kink in the hose. Why? Because in order for the Spirit to flow, time and attention must be given to that and when your agenda doesn't allow for it, His manifest presence would need to violate what you have created. Ask yourself this. Does the Holy Spirit flow freely in our gatherings? If not, that needs to bother you. You cannot be comfortable with lack when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Pastor, are you nervous about this? That's why He's called the comforter. When the river flows, people get nervous and that needs to be ok with you. Jesus' life is the picture of what flows from the heart of the Father, from the throne of God, down to humanity and He left the world so flood damaged with His presence that we have yet to recover. Picture this. Peter's shadow heals because whatever overshadows you will be released in your shadow. Ps 91.

The Bible says the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, "and remained". Get this picture. How do you walk in such a way as not to cause a dove to fly from your shoulder? Ever step you would take would have to be made aware of what you carry. This is not to build a sense of insecurity. The Spirit is in you for your sake but is upon you for the sake of others, and a person who does not position themselves as a contributor to the overall work of God on earth is not going to be a person upon whom the richness of the Holy Spirit is manifest. The treasure is not the power He brings, rather the treasure is the presence itself. God is looking for people upon whom the Holy Spirit can rest and that will be upon you who desire Him and invite Him and walk with the awareness of what you carry.

By request, here are the notes for this week's SOZO class. The focus this week is on the renewed mind (Romans 12).

- The Bible doesn’t say, with the mind man believes. It says, “With the heart man believes." The Spirit gets restored to God and after that the soul. As the mind, will, and emotions are renewed the body comes into alignment for it is God’s ambition that we experience divine health and in that, release divine healing. Your internal reality leaks out to become your external reality.

- The body is a servant of the mind. If the mind will be a servant of the Spirit, the body will be healed.

- 3 John 1:2 says, “I pray above all things that you would proper and be in health even as your soul prospers.” If the Spirit in you is in continuous overflow of the presence of God it will have an affect on how you think, the way you think, and the way you deal with emotional situations and as that order takes place on the inside of you the overflow manifests in your physical body. This is why Romans 8:12 says that if the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you He will quicken your mortal body.

- 1 Corinthians 8:1 says that knowledge (mental ascent) puffs up. Revelation knowledge is meant to lead us to life but is dangerous without a divine encounter. It will only equip you to debate with other believers but divine encounter makes that knowledge an expression of life. All of God’s judgment is aimed at whatever interferes with His love.

- Mark 6:48 Hunger and desperation will bring you into that greater measure of presence. On the sea, Jesus was walking and intended to pass them by. Their cry of desperation brought His presence. There is a measure of His presence that can only be had by desperation. Hunger beyond reason conditions you to contain the answer once you receive it. Most of what we have the intelligence to ask for, God has willed that we possess in greater measure. God wants to release to us beyond all that we could ask (that’s the reach of your prayers) or think (that’s the reach of your imagination.) Ephesians 3:20

- The mind is a brilliant student but a horrible leader. The mind is a mirror of a heart that is pure before God. It’s like a canvas that God paints on as we pick up the perceptions and thoughts of the Lord. But when the mind is in charge of the Christian life it’s called carnal Christianity. Apart from the Spirit, the mind creates form without power, but submitted to the Spirit, the mind is capable of creativity that the world has not yet seen.

- Matt 28:18-20, Haggai 2:7, Only a nation can disciple a nation, and to make that impossible assignment possible He took the one who is called the Desire of all Nations and caused Him to take up residence in us. So then as the nations cry out we become the very answer to their heart’s cry. Not that we are the redeemer but with Christ in us we are able to manifest the reality that God has answers for every dilemma in society. God is very interested in restoration and you and I are agents of that change.

- Never confuse your destiny with your assignment. Your destiny is heaven. Your assignment is to bring heaven. My destiny is that I’m going to see Him when I die. My assignment is to bring Him to be seen here and now.

- Mark 8:13 After experiencing the power of Jesus, if I cannot see the unseen, my heart is still hardened and I need that greater desperation. My thinking is not to be anchored into the restriction of this world but of the resources of His world. To access the moving of the Spirit and the anointing to release the Kingdom, learn to see, hear, and remember. Remembering activates your hearing which activates your seeing. Rev 19:10. Whenever you have a spoken or written record of what God has done it carries a prophetic anointing that is released to duplicate the miracle spoken of.

- The word remember means to put together that which has been dismembered. It also is related to the word “male. The man carries the seed of reproduction and when we remember, we take the seed of a past event into a present situation. This goes both ways, in the positive and the negative, depending on what you choose to remember. This is why the renewing of the mind is so necessary for transformation. We choose to remember what God has done and not what He hasn’t done.

- You know the mind is renewed when what was formerly seen as impossible is now suddenly possible for “with God all things are possible.”

We had such a great time with Audrey. I'm tellin you, if you ever are just in need of a houseguest, (like you crave company) whether it's a person you know or not, Audrey is your deal. She is absolutely the easiest person to hang out with I've ever known. Say you're some family in the rolling Irish hills and you've just inherited some five hundred year old homestead with walls four feet thick and you've decorated it like some magazine cover and all of your friends and relatives are jealous and frankly you wouldn't want them to come over anyway but you're just itching to expose your hospitality to some appreciative human being who just exudes delight. Gimme a call, I know a nurse in Baltimore who would be right up your alley. We love and miss you Audrey. Thank you so much for coming to Maui.

I've hit this topic of offense towards God in recent posts, but I feel the need to go after it again for the sake of reminding myself that blaming God will never enable me to carry what I cry out for. Why? Because there are these hurdles of offense that we must overcome to come into a greater anointing. You must be able to bear up under the weight of the pressure that comes with the anointing you're asking for. To be able to bear up under the call that God releases upon you is huge because He will not bless you with something that will crush you. In Matthew 15 there's this amazing story of a Greek woman who comes to ask Jesus to do a miracle for her demon posessed daughter. Jesus answers her twice with what sounds like a cruel rejection. I'm not giving the children's bread to dogs, He says. What does she do? She goes right over the hurdle of offense and says, but even the crumbs from the table are given to the dogs. And Jesus goes WOW. He's so impressed that He makes sure that her story is told forever as a high water mark of how to do life. Understand that when Jesus said what He said to this woman that He did not intend to heal her daughter. He wasn't being deceptive and doing reverse psychology.

It was her ability to deal with issues of the heart where she refused to live with personal offense that qualified her for an expression of the Kingdom BEFORE HER TIME. (Please read that again until it soaks in.)

She wasn't a Jew and Jesus was supposed to pour Himself out for the Jews, be rejected by them, so that the Gentiles may be brought in. In refusing to be offended, she brought into her day a New Testament reality. The age to come is available for those who will overcome this hurdle of offense and refuse to live angry at what they don't understand.

"Well I don't know why this happened." And you probably won't. It will be explained later and that needs to be ok with you. God is releasing this to us in this day because He's trying to condition us to come into the stewardship of something really significant. We are forced to live with questions that we do not have answers for. Are you willing to live without answers? Can you live with mystery and not cancel out the revelation? It doesn't mean there are no answers? It means that things don't get solved by what you understand.