Hello World!!

I’m back!!! Lately I have dearly missed blogging. I realized a subconscious pressure has been pressing upon me to only capture the spiritual aspect of my life through Fly Away. This pushed me away from writing as an outlet because I imagined only profound revelation or inspiring truth should be posted. But really my life is more organic and unpretentious then that. I love Jesus and He is incredibly special to me, but I also live in a cute house in the middle of the Midwest enjoying a simple life. I am blessed and so thankful for this part of the journey. Never in a million years would I have believed someone, had they told me I would live in Kansas City, work for a ministry and spend my mornings in a prayer room. It was a supernatural shift in my path and today I am so thankful for the chance I had to escape the frivolous city life I led to hide away and wait for God.

So now I will begin again to capture my life on a page….  

Sanctification

My swollen eyes are the only visible evidence of my broken heart. Apparently tears are the best portal in which the pain of the past can escape and find release. I was not sure my pain went so deep, but if the never ending streams pouring down my face point to my faint heart, then my emotions are rising to the surface from somewhere hidden inside.

Sanctification is such a big word and so easily misdirected. I am a huge fan of Paul the Apostle and his writings speak to this often. I understand the goal of sanctification; I must be dead to self and alive in Christ. Death. Total and complete crucified self. While at the same time total and complete newness in Christ alone. Sanctification without transformation, through the Holy Spirit, is morbid. It must be supernatural and based on the gift of the cross for us to succeed. Many an unbeliever has tried to walk out the Sermon on the Mount, only to fail miserably or to tire of keeping to rules and right deeds. But real sanctification is lead by God and done only through the power of the cross. But how is the big question. How does one go about dieing to self and giving up old patterns of thinking and behavior? How do I stop doing what I hate to do and begin doing only what my spirit desires? This is where I was lost. This is where I entered into striving and working to be godly. I was trying to change me and was failing miserably.

What I am coming to realize is that the way we enter through the gate of sanctification is separate from works. Let me break it down as I see it. All people are broken. Humans are entirely good at hurting each other and reacting to pain through bitterness. We encounter subliminal expectations and unspoken patterns of living in our childhood. We learn how to feel or how not to feel. We understand what love is and what it is not. But all these lessons are being learned through the fallen, selfish lens of a child. And all these prescriptions for life are be taught by parents and family members who are themselves broken and far from perfect. So we grow up and at some point decide to let God love us and choose to enter into the narrow way, where we walk this journey with Christ. But there is a huge issue. We are still broken. We subconsciously have assigned the Trinity to be just like our mother, father, siblings or friends. We keep Him from transforming our hearts because He is held at arms length because we don’t really trust Him, we don’t really believe He is for us and we don’t really believe He is a good God. So we wrestle to perform, to run the race with endurance and to become more like Jesus. Yet all the while we are broken and in need of fixing. Or are we?

God is not interested in fixing me. Or making me really healthy. Or teaching me how to be the best me I can be. I am not a broken lawnmower, needing a fix so I can work properly, as to be of use in the Kingdom. Nope, I am not a worker or a servant. I am a daughter. But a broken daughter is not very easy to love or love through. So she must die. All the roots of selfishness and bitterness must be uprooted and thrown into the fire. Her bad fruit reflects her bad roots and these must be taken to the Cross. Now, she does have some good fruit: sparkles of the love and kindness of Jesus alive insider her soul. Those roots are healthy and planted in the knowledge of God. They must stay and be nourished through the Word of God. But goal is to be totally alive in this and complete dead to the self rooted in pain. When I can up root the lies I believe and the judgments I have made against God, myself and others I am actually crucifying the old man. The truth sets me free and gives way for more intimacy with God. As I repent of my wrong understandings, bring them to the cross and say yes to forgiving, I in turn am sanctifying my soul.

The only way to walk in true sanctification is to be healed. The only way to healing is through forgiveness and freedom from the past. Instead of walking along the journey just trying to forget the past, we actually must go back to those places and allow God to heal our heart through confession, repentance, and renouncing of sin. If you can tell, I am right in the beginnings of this process. I have decided to say “yes” to sanctification apart from just trying to stare at God and hope that He fixes me. In other words, in order for me to see God rightly, which allows my to receive His love fully, I have to change the way I see the past. Then I can start to see Christ like He really is, a Man fighting for me fully. So I cry a ton and feel the pain of my past and let God walk me through healing. Everyone has their stories, their personal wounds from childhood, and most of us walk around with them stuffed deep down inside. But healing must be had and restoration can come. I don’t have to keep trying to strive for freedom because the cross made the way in totality. We can die to our flesh through healing. Wow. And here all this time I thought dieing involved struggle and perfection. But it is only when He is made perfect in us that we can really become born again.

An Unpopular Perspective (edited version)

I tend to be pretty uninterested in political opinion and the such. I think most people having itching ears and are longing for someone to appease their appetites of selfish gain by telling them what they want to hear. The promises, commitments and vows politicians make pre-election are mostly empty and usually motivated out of a desire to be liked. Very few men and women involved in politics have pure motivation and that is because most politicians are wicked. Granted, we are all full of deceit and only Christ in us can be looked at as pure and righteous, so humanity is pretty broken in general. Which leaves me disillusioned by my country’s political system. Serving the people with selfish motivation is still considered living for yourself and Jesus was pretty clear about what that does to the human heart.

I think we as Christians can get so caught up in judging those we vote for, come November, that we forget to judge ourselves. Why do we so passionately stand for certain economic or social issues? Why do we get angry about those who fight for the opposite of what we believe to be “right”? I think it comes down to our cultural influences of living for today. When we are living for our betterment in this age, we will indeed be swept up into the politics of the day. It will consume us because we are in it for how it affects our lives and our futures.

Jesus did not live for his own future. He was not concerned with financial stability or gas prices. He was looking towards another age and consumed with being about His Father’s business. He was busy laying up treasures in heaven by keeping His heart in constant communion with the Spirit. He asks us to do the same. The Bible says we are pilgrims and strangers in this land, whose home and maker is God. Our true homeland is the place where God’s Kingdom has full reign and where we will live under the Theocracy of Jesus.

I  challenge you to reexamine your motivation behind your political views. Is it about you and your betterment? Or righteousness?

The only thing I have really come to stand for when it comes to politics is life. I will always be concerned with the unborn because it’s personal. We should all be given the chance to life, even if is it under really hard circumstances. I know we are called to stand for righteousness and voting is a mode that allows us to this. Some of the other aspects to my political views are about me and motivated out of my own interests. But I will continue to wrestle with how I can cast a vote that does not come out of my own desire to lay up treasures on earth. Here is a quote from a book that is challenging me to live from the inside out. Motive matters most; not behavior.

“When, at the time of a General or local Election, we are called on to make a choice of candidates, do we find ourselves believing that one political point of view is altogether right and the other altogether wrong? If we do, I suggest we are somehow or another laying up for ourselves treasures on earth. If we say that the truth is altogether on one side or the other, then if we analyze our motives we shall discover it is because we are either protecting something or anxious to have something. Another good way of testing ourselves is to ask ourselves quite simply and honestly why we hold our particular views. What is our real interest? What is our motive? What, when we are quite honest and truthful with ourselves, is really at the back of these particular political views that we hold? It is a most illuminating question if we really honest. I suggest that most people will find if they face that question quite honestly, that there are some treasures upon earth about which they are concerned, and in which they are interested.” – Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Vulnerability

I feel trapped in the swirls of life. Sometimes it is so nice to have parameters, boundaries and structure. But right now it seems that I am to be like a door blown open by a strong, spring breeze. It gets like that in Missouri right around spring time. As though the remnants of winter are battling it out against the beginnings of spring. They fight for time, and yet we know who eventually wins. But the evidence of such a brawl is only felt by the invisible forces of the wind. It feels powerful enough to carry you away, but comes and goes so quickly. The wind has a might behind it; the seasons reaching out to touch the earth once more. There is a language behind the wind that time of year. You can feel it speaking: calling out for an open ear. When exposed to this force you become the student and it the teacher. Awkward are the moments when you refuse to learn. And difficult is the path when it blows against your brow. Anyways, that is how I feel inside. Disarmed by a gust of wind I was not prepared to meet. The latches rattle as wind has its way and the door is left all but helpless in its path. I feel helpless in this path.

I like it when all is known to me and I can see around several turns and bends in the road. Or when the path becomes too winding to see what will come next, I like to know I’m in control. But I have given Him the keys, thrown my set away and told Him to go ahead. Trust only comes through faith. I have to believe that I hear from God and that He really does know best. I have been so caught up in worrying about all the details lately. Trying to get it all straight in my head: this will happen, and then this will happen and then that can happen. But it SO does not work that way. He speaks. One step ahead. And then waits for me to act. I have to trust Him even if I only know what is right in front of me. There are a lot of unsettled pieces in my life and I want them all squared away pronto. So I can sigh a big sigh of relief, knowing I am comfortable. But faith means several pieces of my life will be up high swirling around in the sky, while God give me one step at a time. This is so painful. But I have to find peace in the process. How to rest in the face of so many questions? How to listen in the face of so much noise? How to surrender when I want to grab the wheel and take over?

But I can’t. I have to let Him have His way. Because I know He is good. I believe He knows the best way to get me to my destination. He knows what I want and need more than me. He knows the perfect path to finally arrive to the place of more of Him and less of me. To become like God in perfect love, because it’s all I really want.

Intercession

How does He contain all that must burn?

The perfect man who knows no sin,

Holds the depths in His heart,

Without regret or regard for comfort.

 

Yet I sit in the uncomfortable knot,

Swirls of strife and angst unable to end,

So I look up to Him with my questions;

Because I know that I am barely there.

 

God how do you handle the pain of anger,

Of bitterness and pride,

Of loneliness and resentment,

That your people walk around holding so tight?

 

My identification is pathetic,

And I cannot begin to understand,

The pain my Lord must feel,

When His eyes rest on the unrecognizable lover.

 

Those who warm the chair with a cold heart,

Who love theirs lives and cling to their rights.

Who forsake the fellowship of true Love,

To keep close the robes of riches.

 

Overwhelmed with sadness,

And yet joy perfected.

How do you bare the grief,

Of a bride who rarely speaks your name?

 

She keeps her flashy ring on tight,

But never turns to see Your eyes.

Her assurance of marriage is deception,

With a heart locked up in illusion.  

 

Shut down and broken,

Her goal is to stay ahead.

To forget her past and fight for her future,

But ignoring the reason to live.

 

Jesus make a way for freedom,

Hold the pain inside,

Purge Your body,

With the mystery of regeneration.

Make the dead man rise,

And the adulterous one restored.

 

Mingle my little with Your much,

And create true cries.

That I would stand in the gap,

And not fight to breathe my own relief.

 

Scripted Fury.

There is this place I keep hoping to reach in my journey. It’s called “arriving”. But it appears that my life is cyclical and layered. The issues of trust and faith in God I thought I dealt with last year or even five years ago are still around, but now they are just deeper and more painful. This is an onion-type of operation the Lord is working in me and yet I so much wish to be an avocado, per say. Slice me open, pull out the huge “seed” of issues and let’s just get on with it. But that is so not the journey.

I am still learning to let go. I am still trying to understand how to be in a serious relationship with God. I mean the Uncreated, Power. I am supposed to live like I am from His Kingdom, but yet it is against all my natural tendencies. His ways are for real other than mine. As a person involved in a community that claims to be of this “kingdom” it can get so easy to believe I am walking in the way I should go. But sheesh, saying it and being it are exceptionally different.

This blog reads a bit different then most. I am just trying to be honest and to the point. God is someone I act so familiar with, and I talk as though I am His closest friend. But really I am SO far from knowing Him.

He is taking me on a path of total dependency and every layer He seems to peel away in my heart just reveals pain and weakness.

I am a mess. God keeps messing me up. I try and put myself together, but then I am hit with another dose of Him and I end up back here again. Totally clueless about everything, including myself. Maybe it’s time to just STAY here. No more cleaning myself up for nobody.

Ok, I am done ranting now. Please resume as per norm.

I will now get back to my deep and flowery prayers: “Help! help! help!

Lunacy

This is a poem I wrote on the air plane. I am getting back into it.

The speck in your eye,
Speaks of a deep line.
Pulsing with the stamp,
Of a Creator design.

We reflect who He is,
Yet hide from the search.
Run away, run away and play.
Run far away from the day.

Sun beats down on the heart,
It explores all the dark.
So we run away, run away and play.
Run far away from the day.
Yet He continues to call out our name.

Why do I fight to let you in,
To stay aloof from the mercy?
Because I take control.
Time to stop the pull
And see my reflection clearly.

Lakeland in the Dark

I just returned from Lakeland, Florida, where I spent almost a week with my parents and pastors from my home church in California. There were some special moments in this trip, unexpected but really life altering. It seems like the experiences that shape me most are the ones I can not create. I had such an amazing realization that lead to healing, freedom and a great level of trust with the Father. My heart hungers to know and trust Him even more as I journey on.

The last night we spent at the “revival”, as they call it down there, Jim Goll spoke. He was more passionate and zealous then I have ever seen him, but I would be too if God was healing my spouse of stage three cancer. Jim had a dream where he heard the song of heaven and when he woke up he sang it over his wife. Since then the cancer cells in her body are lowering and she is receiving total restoration. So right in the middle of Jim calling all those from England forward so he could pray/prophesy over them the entire building lost power. It was crazy and people just started spontaneously shouting praises. You could feel the energy in the room. Then Jim said he wrote down in his notes earlier that night that either the fire alarm would go off or the lights would shut off because there would be a power shortage due to the glory of God. Needless to say Jim used a flashlight for the rest of his message and we all filed out of the building in the dark.

(The photo was taken in the dark at the Florida Outpouring tent. I am with my amazing pastor’s wife Tammy. She is truly one of the most meek and wonderful people I have ever met.)

Giving as unto Him.

The spirit of giving is poured forth from my heart when I begin to believe in the One who provides for me. The Lord has recently provided me with the most beautiful home. It is more then I could have imagined for myself and sister. It seems like He really is a good leader who pulls us up out of our bareness and sets us in fruitful places.

Since moving into the house we are renting, the Lord has so given me a heart of giving. I find myself wanting to bless everyone I see! And this is causing me to understand that it is out of a grateful heart that freedom comes. I will share our story as to give you context for my state of thankfulness.

For the last year I have lived with me little sister, Shanon and another roommate in an apartment. The place we were living was pretty bad and the neighborhood even worse. I hated it, but after taking the job at IHOP I could not afford, nor commute from my adorable apartment in old town Overland Park. So I moved next door to the house of prayer and spent a year not feeling safe or at home in our place.

The Lord made it clear to my sister and I that it was time to give our notice. So, in faith we gave our 30 days with no clue where we would live. As we prayed we both felt that it was the Lord’s desire to give us a house. (I have been living in apartments for years and the idea of a house was more then I could even imagine) So we started asking the Lord to open the door and started searching aggressively on Craigslist. About two weeks into our search and several disappointing appointments to view houses, Shanon and I were really discouraged. So I thought, maybe we should pray again to confirm that this is really what the Holy Spirit was saying. But once again we both felt that He was saying it was time to move on and a house was where we would land. So we said, “ok Lord, we trust You.”

I decided to put an add on Craiglist, in hopes that something may come of it. Well, a day later I received an email from a woman saying she had a house that needed to be subleased through December. The rent was outside of our price range, but I felt like we were to go look at it. (It was really important to me that Shanon feel comfortable in our next place because she had been in a hard season and needed to rest) Well, we walked into the house and as soon as we did I heard a whisper in my heart, “This is it.” But not wanting to jump the gun, we looked at it and I waited to see what Shan thought. She was just as in love as I was. I had been asking the Lord to provide a house like my Overland Park apartment near the prayer room (which was kind of a lot to ask…ha!) But this house so reminds me of my first place since moving to the Midwest. We went through the application process and were given a go! So less than a week before the 30th of June the Lord provided above and beyond what we could have hoped for!!

In the midst of this whole moving situation Shanon was also preparing to head to a house of prayer in Mexico for a month, so we were a bit stressed out. Then the Lord provided by my mom flying out here for a week to help us move and get Shan ready to leave the country. Everything got done and here I am sitting in my beautiful home a week later.

In this place of feeling the abundance of God upon my life I just have such a desire to give money away. Even since getting this place the Lord has provided finances for both Shanon and I where we were not expecting it and we purchased a refrigerator and washer/drier. It’s like I know the Lord is going to continue to provide because this was His plan and will; I was just able to stand back and watch Him provide. From this place of a thankful heart I just want to give and pour out. I think it is because I want to be just like my Dad in Heaven, who loves to give good gifts! When I give to others I am partnering with my Father and I get to become apart of His goodness in someone else’s life. If I start to believe my money is not my own, but just a gift from Abba, I am so much more willing to give it away. I know He will provide and I trust Him to be faithful. So I will give radically in obedience to His voice as a celebration of His loving kindness over me.

ps. Pray for Shanon if you think of it. She is in a town near Mexico City for the month of July ministering both to the house of prayer and the lost. Thanks!!

Thank You.

Tonight I am laying in my bed at an empty house and it took a long time to get here…

This is not going to be a blog full of my ideas or theological impressions, but rather a thankful blog. Sometimes at the house of prayer we do what is called a “thanksgiving rapid fire”. (A rapid fire prayer is when a bunch of people head up to the microphone and pray short 30-second prayers to the Lord.) Usually they are intercessory in nature, but my FAVORITE is when they have people come up and give prayers of thanksgiving just because Jesus is so worthy. I love it so much! So tonight I am going to give my own version of rapid fire thanksgiving prayers!

- I am overwhelmed by the faithfulness of who You are Jesus; thank You for being my Provider and Best Friend. When I am in need You always provide in over abundance. There really is no one as wonderful as You!

- Thank You for making a way for this house. I am so blessed with a safe, beautiful and peace home. I could not have found such a perfect place; You really are the best leader.

- Thank You for Your presence. Without You I would be so empty, alone and lost. I never knew God wanted to be so close to me. I am going to let You love and want me, even though I feel like such things are too good to be true. Your nearness is the most life-giving revelation of my life. Thank You for ever drawing to my side and causing me to belong.

- I continually get to experience Your goodness through my family. Thank You for choosing to place me in my family. Thank You for my amazing parents who are the most giving people I have ever met. They really do know what it means to show love. Thank You for my most precious sister who stirs me to love You more and is my favorite comrade; and thank You for making her so hilarious, what a gift. Thank You for my grandpa, who leads the way. He is my guide for what it means to fellowship with You, Holy Spirit. Thank You for placing such a patriarch of devotion in my life. He points the way to running the race to win the prize.

- Thank You for the prayer room. It has become my space with You. What a gift to my soul. I never thought I would spend so much time praying in public, but how You have met me there! Please keep coming, for without You I am a clanging symbol. I must learn the ways of love from the depths of Your heart.

- Thank You for tears. They are my only tangible offering of love on this side. Have them all and delight in me.

- And Jesus, thank You for the sending the Holy Spirit. I am undone by how kind He is. There is no one else I would rather spend my life searching out. I love Him more than I thought possible. He really is my food and drink. Let Him always be the center of it all.