Last night at the house of prayer, I saw a vision that impacted me in a powerful way. The intercessory team had felt that God wanted to impart joy. As worship leader for the evening, I had also chosen songs that dealt with our identity in Christ as the Bride. This vision took place before the worship set started, as we were “soaking”, and the prayer leader, Ali, was prophesying about our sonship, over very soft music. He was seeing images of us as God’s children getting messy in a happy feast.
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A very awkward drawing of this vision. :)

I had a vision at the house of prayer on Monday, May 10. It went a little something like this.

I was looking over the room, and people were worshiping rather quietly, heavily, when in through the back windows came a thick mist or cloud, that hovered close to the ceiling. To the people who were in a place in their hearts to receive what the Lord was saying to them, these funnels came down from the cloud, like little tornadoes. There were lightning and thunder all through the cloud above. The tornadoes did several things. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, that’s audacious. But it’s true. Here is a simple truth for your day: that God receives our love.

This is one of the most profound truths that has been revealed to me over the past two years. I mean, think of it. God commands us to love Him. We know that. But in my years of walking as a Christian, my concept of loving God was something I did badly all the time, and so to be safe, I’d better not ever say “I love you” to God. I could say “Thank You”, “I worship You”, “You are good”, etc. But to actually say “I love You” seemed like the highest hypocrisy. Read the rest of this entry »

We were meeting again at the Eagle Rock church building (a small, country church kind of place that we had met in about 5 years ago). As we (me and not sure who) were approaching the building, I saw three symbols:

• First, a huge white hand coming out of the sky, with a black sheep resting on one of the fingers. I immediately was so thankful because it reminded me of my own salvation. There was a sense of salvation and belonging in that sheep’s countenance and the way he rested on the hand.

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I’m reading a book called “The Fire Within”, which is about St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and their prayer lives. It fits with what God is doing in my heart right now. I feel God’s reality, love and presence like I may never have felt before. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt this clear and open confidence in the Lord. In reading about Teresa, I feel I recognize her as such a kindred spirit–feisty but so keenly aware of God’s mercy and great love; intolerant of B.S. but knowing she has been forgiven much. I hope these quotes bless you and kindle within you more and more love of God.

“It seemed my soul wanted to leave my body because it didn’t fit there nor could it wait for so great a good. The impulse was so extreme I couldn’t help myself, and it was, in my opinion, different from precious impulses; nor did my soul know what had happened, nor what it wanted, so stirred up was it. Although I was seated, I tried to lean against the wall because my natural power was completely gone…The glory of this rapture was extraordinary. I remained for the rest of Pentecost so stupefied and stunned I didn’t know what to do with myself, or how I had the capacity for so great a favor and gift. I neither heard nor saw, so to speak, but experienced wonderful interior joy. I noted from that day the greatest improvement in myself brought about by a more sublime love of God and much stronger virtues.”

“…This time the Lord desired that I see the vision in the following way: the angel was not large but small; he was very beautiful, and his face was so aflame that he seemed to be one of those very sublime angels that appear to be all afire. They must belong to those they call the cherubim, for they didn’t tell me their names. But I see clearly that in heaven there is so much difference between some angels and others and between these latter and still others that i wouldn’t know how to explain it. I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God.”

Christian Leaders Unite on Political Issues

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

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The other night I had a dream that I went to a library which was in a small train depot. The library was sadly neglected and seldom visited; it had very few books, and instead was cluttered with side-show displays from a carnival, where the side-show “specimen” would actually sit on display. I knew my friend Ali worked there (in my dream), so I went to him and told him that I’d like to rent the space for something, and that I thought the side-show displays would benefit the library if they were moved along the edges of the walls, like a museum would display them, as artwork instead of  the cluttered storage situation they were currently in. Ali told me that there was currently a country club that wanted to rent the space, and they wanted to get rid of them entirely, but I thought I could help to make the displays a point of cultural interest instead, since they had value in that regard.

I decided to try and see what the library had to offer in the way of books, and to my surprise, it turned out that this tiny train depot actually had many, many floors that weren’t visible at first glance outside. I went around to the elevator, but in front of it lay a little boy, about 8-10 years old, completely asleep–almost in a coma–and curled up in a fetal position but facing the floor, not on his side. I noticed that there was a little bit of vomit near his mouth. I was really alarmed, and Ali came over and picked up a song book or hymnal. He started to sing. It wasn’t a song anyone would know, but it had a chorus that was easy to learn, and because people were starting to get alarmed at this little boy and didn’t know what to do, they started singing along. All of a sudden, the boy sprang to his feet, completely healed, as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t even groggy.

Then the amazing part happened. Many of the people that were joining in the singing got together in a circle and held hands, and kept singing. And I knew, as if I could see the activity of their hearts, that they were giving their hearts to Jesus–in an instant, without anyone preaching to them or asking them to make a decision to receive Christ. It was as if they instinctively knew to do that. And it was partly in response to this boy’s healing, but partly in response to the song they had learned to sing.

I submit this to anyone who prayerfully feels they have an interpretation.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113802982&ps=cprs

Now that I have your attention…

First of all, because this is such a hot-button topic, I will lay out several items. 1) I have a close family member who is gay, and who has been in several monogamous relationships, including at least one that she considered to be “marriage” before this was even a dream in the heart of legislators. I love her dearly; she is important to me, and I have no intention of causing her heartache. This is ultimately an issue between her and the Lord. 2) Having attended eight years of art school and being in the art-making business for over ten years, I have had friendships, some very close, with several peers that self-identify as gay or lesbian. Some are still following that lifestyle; some are not. Not all that have left it have done so because of spiritual conviction. I believe firmly in taking people at face value, protecting their dignity and loving them unconditionally. I have never, and will never, shun or attack someone because of their sexual orientation. 3) I am intentionally not posting this on my facebook or twitter because I don’t believe that a one-liner world is the place to have an intelligent discussion about this. Because a blog from a teeny church in New Jersey is. Ha ha. 4) Be it ever so unpopular, I know Whom I have believed, and believe that His Word is unchanging, true for all time, and I am always seeking to become more literate in the Biblical narrative and underlying meaning as a whole. I am committed to Jesus Christ, and I believe His is the way of Truth and Love.

Now. I’ve been very troubled by the growing wave of believers in Christ that are willing to go along with the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. Somehow we have believed the age old half-truth about God being a God of love and acceptance. “Isn’t God a God of love?” we hear the pundits say (most recently, Brian Lehrer from WNYC in his completely irresponsible and sensational coverage of the NY situation). And then a well-meaning person on the other side will say, “Well, that’s the way marriage has always been.” Then Brian will invoke the example of slavery in the Bible. And the whole argument goes down the tubes. Read the rest of this entry »