Jan 15, 2012

we’ve never been this way before

By ·

I walk the old cobbles and the narrow, winding lanes wandering through the maze of history that is this city in the south of Spain.

Amidst the ruins of bygone eras, on the well worn ancient paths I hear a whisper echo.  A dare to embrace a different journey on a trail leading reverently, boldly, even absurdly into the wild unknown places of grace.  Truly we have not been this way before (not in this generation at least.)

Where are the brave pioneers that will look at the so-called “edge of the world” as an invitation to explore uncharted depths?  Dangerous, fearless love drawing us farther out beyond the safe confines of buildings and programs and systems and circuits.

What if the next 3 years brought a shift so dramatic it could only be described as tectonic in nature?  And what if that shift started in us?  What if this revolution was silent in its fury and Jesus comes once more riding on a borrowed donkey to wash fishermen’s feet and the empires of men cannot comprehend this kind of royalty and miss the One they seek all over again?

Beloved, we have not been this way before.  True success is being redefined and the choices before us are not first decided in ballot boxes.  What if we are looking for a king who rules and shapes world political systems while Jesus is offering us a King who comes to serve and defy any system that would try to contain… or commodify Him?  What if Jesus is coming as a King with an upside-down, inside-out, high-is-low-and-low-is-high reality that cannot come through politics or policy?  What if His platform is still a cross and ours an altar?

A company saturated in the supernatural, living loved and loving without expectation’s tangled strings, drawn again to the untamed spaces where reformers are shaped; a people who could care less for fame or popularity or success or stages or spotlights.  Content with waste places and seeing heaven come to those desperate enough to put their need on display, instead of their accomplishments.  What if the measures are changing and all we thought we knew with them?  Will we be willing to let it all go?  Will I be willing to let go of the known ways to choose a road less traveled and embrace His invitation to explore the edge of the earth?

Faith lies beyond what we can see with our eyes.  So which path will you choose, my sweet friend?  No choice is indeed a choice in days such as these.  May you embrace the wild untamed reaches of His heart moment by moment every day.

You are loved, so very loved.  May His love define your world as never before and lead you far out beyond the edges of its safe, known horizons.

Loving Him and you-Michele

Filed Under: daily journal, everyday epiphanies, prophetic encounters & insight, upside down kingdom ·
Jul 26, 2011

love looks like something

By · 11 Comments

Love looks like…

safe boundaries.

not being left to cry alone.

bandaging open wounds until they heal.

someone to color with.

seeing beyond what is visible to what is true.

being willing to be chalk covered and so tired you mix three languages and speak nonsense.

making time and space for each others special needs (we ALL have them).

grace for those who fear what they do not understand.

rainbows on paper and cement and us.

patience in the waiting.

taking time to guard a gate to a world that might bring harm.

hugs and smiles when you feel more like a good cry.

like laying aside the necessary and the pressing for the eternal that outweighs them all.

trusting Jesus really does have a plan for getting done that which needs getting done. He really, really does.

those who have been forgiven much, rescued from life’s deepest pits coming tenderly to the rescue of this one still struggling to find the light.

sitting on a mat on a hot July afternoon with some of heaven’s greatest treasures.

Love looks like lessons in Mercy.

–

The comments are open on this post.  I have given up on linking parties for the moment due to poor internet connections here.  Simply slip the link to your post, if you have one, into your comment and we will all enjoy each other that way.  Remember we are talking about the practical raw real down-in-the dirt supernatural love of God in this season and all comments are moderated.

Filed Under: everyday epiphanies, upside down kingdom ·
Jul 25, 2011

when it’s not your fault

By ·

There are days.

This is one of them.

Mercy is improving one minute, regressing the next rather like an ocean of storm-tossed waves.  There is a battle over her.  She is heaven’s treasure and heaven will not stop until she is free to fly.  Neither will we.  And she isn’t the only stormy one in need of her naming today.

Bright blue sky and glistening green fields.  Thanks flows effortlessly.  But what about when the houses flood with the rain, a much needed building is poorly made (that is a kind estimate) and then the contractor’s workers come threatening to kill you, your kids, tear the poorly constructed house down and kill your staff in the process because HE didn’t pay them.  Money already that has been given.  Again demanded by force.  Stolen.  Extorted by violence.

Inside I rage.  I do.  I wish I could say I am all calm and peaceful, all love and grace.  No I am raw, barely-bridled fury.  The hardest tempests to weather are the ones that rage within.  I am angry at all that steals life and provision.  I am angry at the men waving fists in my face.  I am just plain mad.  Give to those who ask.  Uh-huh.  I would really rather call fire on their heads.  Some days the corruption, the lying, the stealing– it cuts {{{SO}}} deep.

I tell them we can sit and discuss this calmly or I will bring the police to help us sort out the problem.  They say people will die if I {or anyone else} leaves to get the police and then they will have something to be arrested for.

I have to pay the price for someone ELSE’S sin.  Someone else’s  greed.  Someone else’s dishonesty.  Someone else’s poor planning.  Someone else’s treachery.  I have to pay what has already been paid again.  So either pay them their wages or they will destroy.

It’s only money.  Blood is not worth it.  So I fork over the hundreds of dollars they demand.  I do not do it gently and I fight hard to keep the daggers from coming from my gaze.  Soft eyes.  Don’t glare.  Be compassionate.  They need to eat too.  Bless those that threaten to kill you and all you hold dearest for something that is someone else’s mistake.  But inside I fume and boil and churn.  This stealing money from children.  What kind of ingrates do THAT?

Maybe the kind who don’t know the One Who owed them nothing but paid everything anyway.  {Didn’t this Someone pay for my treachery too when I least deserved it?}  I soften just a little, a very little.  The storm still batters against my heart.

I tell the contractor succinctly (whose fault all of this is) we will not be needing any more of his services.  Contractor #5.  Every single one to date has ended badly.  Cheated, lied, stolen.  I fight against the pull to generalize about his profession.  My voice is cold.  I will it to warm up.  Gentle.  Don’t let the storm inside out.

I bite back the gale tearing at my eyelids.  I give what is asked.  Begrudgingly.

I don’t do so well on extending grace today, but I sure am in need of a lot of it.  I manage to smile at them and offer a half-hearted God bless you as they leave still murmuring threats.  I will myself to mean it.  I do.  I choose to bless those that curse so violently.  I will my heart to at least try and agree.

The hardest storms to calm are the ones that rage inside.  BUT it is SOMEONE else’s fault screams within.  I don’t like paying for someone else’s sin.  I don’t.  And that is only evidence to how much I need a Savior to pay for my own.

In my dark house, pounding out keys, the storm subsides just a little and hot rivers stream hard and fast.  My children’s voices rise in worship, drift through my window.  Oh the blood of Jesus, oh the blood of Jesus.  The blood I did not in any way deserve, the grace that cost HIM everything washes me again. 

I sure am glad for grace in my storms and One Who is far more gracious than I am to hold me through them.  He collects all the day has piled on in its heaviness and lifts off the weight, pulls me close and whispers peace.

I pray to be more like Him tomorrow than I was today.  Not just in my actions.  I did the right thing… biting my tongue all the way.  Check.  Gold star.  But deep in my heart where the words flow from.  I wouldn’t have to bite my tongue if my heart did not blow and bluster and storm.

I am thankful for grace.  Thankful for protection.  Thankful even for storms that churn things up and let me see what lies within my own heart.  And thankful for His mercy that covers it all.

Filed Under: daily journal, inside-out transformation, living beyond the edge, stories from south sudan, upside down kingdom ·
Jul 22, 2011

finding mercy

By ·

I come walking out of the markets to be introduced  to a little girl with burnt orange rags tied on by a plastic bag.  Her hair matted and eyes wild, she stares and rocks. One of our missionaries tries to make conversation.

“She is deaf,” the growing crowd says.  Everyone is curious why the three white women are stopping to inquire about a little beggar girl who can’t hear.  “Her mom and dad are dead.  No family.  She lives and sleeps on the streets.”  They say it nonchalantly like one recounts the latest weather.

This little one of eight, with special needs, severely abused by men, desperately hungry and tormented by the evil around her.  OF course we take her home.  SHE is the reason why I came here five years ago.

No one including her knows her name.  She is nameless.  To the world around her, she doesn’t even exist.  Not really.  But to the One Who created her, she is a treasure.  All heaven is waiting for this moment, its breath held as we first meet.  She takes one look at me and calls out Mama in muffled monotone tones.  And I take her in my arms and reply, “Yes, my daughter.  Ay, benia tai.”

She smiles faintly.  We name her Mercy and all pile into the car to take her for lunch on the way home.  In an instant she is found.  Her world changes.  No longer eating rotting trash, she sits with us at a table.  Honored.  Loved.  The waitress helps me wash her hands.  Mercy tries to give me her coke.  No sweetheart.  This is yours.  All yours.

Our hungry little girl eats down two helpings of meat and cassava.  Her language garbled, wild gestures, clawing at my arms… I look into her eyes deep across the table and see far more than her looking back at me.

We get home and our staff gives me the “we can’t let you out of our sight” look.  How many times have I left home for bread or fabric or errands and come back with a child!  And this one a very special treasure with very special needs.  Our resources already stretched beyond reason, I silently storm heaven for grace on their behalves.

Mercy digs her nails into my arm like a scared animal.  She is only acting out that which she has been treated as.  What will happen when she is loved and treated as the royalty she truly is?

Eudita (our head mama, one of my dear friends and ever my hero) somehow corrals her to come inside so she can bathe.  We wash her clean and her hair lightens to the orange brown of malnourishment.  Her rags removed, beautiful pink satin fit for the princess she is replaces them.

But still.  Her eyes are haunted, her reactions violent.  I tell our mamas.  It is not her.  Pain and abuse have opened doors to a torment that thinks it owns her.  No more.  Not any longer.  Not in our family.  The Jesus I know and love came to set the captives free and heal hurting hearts.  And freedom has come for this Mercy found.

One of my daughters also rescued from a life lived in back alleys comes up to me, her eyes all shiny.  She tells me in our local arabic, “Mama, thank you for bringing her home.  All the bad spirits that are tormenting her will go because we will pray and Jesus will make them go.  Then she will be healed.”  I smile deep and hug this gift from heaven.  A child leads again.

All cleaned on the outside, but walking untamed and aimless we take Mercy up to my porch.  Our leaders and I, gather round and we love and we pray and we sing and we bless.  We hold and dodge blows and whisper peace.  We command darkness to bow, break the curses and lies and invite life to come.  I marvel as I see the real love of Jesus come again to set this His beautiful one free.  For several hours the battle rages until finally fear and torment run in the face of His love.  This treasure found rests in our arms and wakes to freedom.

Her transformation is nothing short of supernatural.  This one we were told was deaf and unable to communicate, who had only death and fear in her gaze and anger in her grip is like a new child.  She eats her dinner giggling up at the sky and says over and over again her first bold words, “Shukran Jesua.”  Thank you Jesus.

We tuck her in the first bed she has slept in in at least two years all snuggled warm with her very own blanket and she laughs and says, “Shukran Jesua.”  Over and over again she thanks Him.  I sit here a bit bruised and sore from her early blows, tuckered out from restraining her attacks and teary-eyed grateful for her new freedom.  Shukran Jesua.

Thank You for Mercy and grace in times of need.

Please pray with us for her continued healing.  We do still have a journey ahead of us.   I am so thankful for all of you who journey with us through your prayers.   One little girl’s life will never be the same.

Filed Under: inside-out transformation, stories from south sudan, upside down kingdom ·
Jul 9, 2011

how to plant a harvest

By ·

We drive non existent roads through the back country of Dinka land.  The largest round mud house always reserved to guard their wealth in cattle.  I watch little boys and their papas, weathered mamas and young girls all bend low to the grainy land, loam and sand mixed well through.  The grass does not grow tall and fierce like where I live in Yei.  Wide open lands stretches long to meet the sky.

These tall, regal, warrior people bend low and till the ground on their knees.  Somehow I am in awe of that. One generation teaches another the way to plant a harvest is low on their knees.

They plant seed with a spear tip and dig deep kneeling on the ground.  And their land yields its harvest.  Isn’t the battle in us always over His seed?  Maybe we should plant with spear tips too?

I can learn humility from this…  How else is a harvest sown but low and deep one seed at a time?  I must learn a path lower still.  How else to plant a harvest but by bending low?  How else to see heaven touch earth but by my placing dusty knees to the ground and planting whispered prayers hidden in the unseen depths of sand and loam and clay?  

And at home my little ones bow low on our soil, faces to the grey brown dirt every evening planting their seeds for harvests to come.  I stand in awe of Him and them all that finds strength and grace in the bending, in the bowing, in the breaking.

We stand the tallest when we bend the lowest.

-

sharing with Ann Voskamp at Walk with Him Wedn. over at aholyexperience.com
Filed Under: upside down kingdom ·
Jun 9, 2011

the gift of hunger

By ·

Hungering for the fresh bread of heaven...

Hunger is not evidence of experiencing a diminished reality in the spirit but rather an increased capacity longing for more ♥ ~ me

I am convinced.

Hunger is a gift.  And it is a gift to be guarded.

One thing I notice on my travels west is how much everything fights against this reality.  We are encouraged to numb it, tame it, ignore it, run from it, deny it, rebuke it… do everything but embrace it and cherish it for the incredible gift that it is.  The one thing I have to fight the hardest to keep alive and growing inside of me when I am back in the West is this gift of hunger.  And make no mistake: it is a love gift, a pure grace from Jesus.

There are some voices encouraging us to embrace grace at the expense of spiritual hunger.  Perhaps it is just their vernacular.  Please, allow me to clarify.   I am not talking about striving, make it happen works- that is performance not hunger.  I am talking about the lovesick longing for MORE of the one Who is infinite and eternal yet manifest and present in my now.

If I say I have ALL of God, well folks He must be pretty small.  I have yet to walk through walls, fly, walk on water or do some of even the basics Jesus did when He walked the earth.  But then again I DO have ALL of Him, it will simply take an eternity in Him to discover the ALL I have now!  It is not either-or: it is both-and-more!

Hunger is not evidence of a diminished reality of God’s Presence in my life.  I.e I do not ascribe to the theory I have to “leak” unless I do so intentionally.  It is rather evidence of an increased capacity where Papa has reached down and enlarged my heart to contain more of His.  The differential between what I have and what I now have room for is experienced as hunger for Him.

Hunger is what propels us onward in God.  So here I am fully satisfied in what I have but ever yet voraciously longing for more.  It is my goal to be the hungriest person on the planet.  Because I know hunger compels a response from heaven.

So what about you dear reader, what fights against YOUR hunger for more?  What do you do to guard this gift from heaven?

Filed Under: inside-out transformation, upside down kingdom ·
Mar 21, 2011

the dangers of living in nazareth

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I greet the day this morning with a burning heart.  This weekend’s outreach was like pushing against a mountain.  I am not sure it moved, but I know I got stronger for the effort.  And sometimes that is the point.

Light reluctantly trickles in my window in the cool of the wee hours as I fall on my face before Him.

“Papa, what was going on there?  Teach me about the mountain I faced off with.  A few were healed, but no one really wanted You Jesus!  What was that!!?!”

Well, Beloved, you were visiting Nazareth.

The answer comes in the Scripture.

Mark 6:4-6 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.” And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He wondered at their unbelief.

I peer deep into this story found in Matthew 13, Mark 6 and Luke 4.  Each gospel shares a slightly different account. Each reveals similar dangers of a life lived in Nazareth.  As I cry out for revival in my adopted home, it becomes a caution to guard my own heart, lest I inadvertently settle too close to Nazareth’s borders.

For if I hope to be a part of bringing revival anywhere, it must first become reality in my own life.

How dangerous it is to live in Nazareth!

There is the stark danger of familiarity.  Does the Jesus I think I know keep me from seeing Jesus as He truly is? Do I see only Jesus the carpenter and miss Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, the very Son of God?  Religious constructs so often familiarize and formula-ize the holy, reducing Jesus to a mere carpenter’s son and revival to mathematical equation.

There is the danger of offense.  Blessed am I when I am not offended by any way Jesus chooses to show up or manifest His Presence.  But DO I stumble about when He comes in a way OTHER than my expectation?

In Nazareth, Jesus is dishonored.  But what does that really mean?  I dig into some word meanings and find it is talking about not knowing the value of something.  It would be like using 100 dollar bills to start a fire with because you didn’t know what they were worth.    Do I truly value Jesus for WHO He is, seeing His extreme worth? Or do I value my ideas, dreams, reputation, goals, ministry, success, comfort or anything above Him?  This convicts me.

Jesus was unable to do any works of power in Nazareth.  Why?  Nazareth dwellers actively disbelieved and distrusted Him.  Not out of ignorance but out of refusal.  There is a world of difference between the two. He healed a few sick people but was limited by the overall lack of faith.  They reduced Him to their own understanding and in so doing limited Who He truly was from being released in their midst. Do I do the same?

Ultimately it is in Nazareth that the religious understanding is enraged and seeks to kill Jesus for suggesting God is bigger and other than its understanding of Him.  It seeks to kill revival before it starts.

Yes, I visited Nazareth this weekend.  I did not get taken to a cliff edge to be thrown off or anything that dramatic.  But I did learn more about that which is opposing a move of God here.

One of our revival students asks this morning as I share.  ”So how do we go after the root?”

My only reply is go after it in our own hearts.  The only answer I have is to BECOME the change I am called to bring and walk in such love, humility, grace and power I have something to give away.  To be so filled with Jesus He overflows my very being.

The first person who needs to live in revival looks back at me each morning from my mirror. Only then will Nazareth be challenged with something other than what it thinks it knows.

I wake feeling like this weekend was a bit of a bummer to be honest.  Then I look to Him Who reminds me it is not only what He does through me that matters.  Often it is the lessons on this unpaved road into His heart that are far more important.

So Jesus, please challenge Nazareth.  And please first challenge it in me.

Filed Under: daily journal, living beyond the edge, stories from south sudan, upside down kingdom ·
Mar 20, 2011

burning ones

By ·

Sometimes God whispers.  Other days He shouts.

Last week I was beyond encouraged by a friend sending me a clip from a promise received for my adopted home in South Sudan.  As I press into that promise, some crazy God things seem to be afoot.

The last lines of it read:

God says “Sudan, I hear your prayers. Even those who have been persecuted and killed. I am going to come there and light a fire in the South of Sudan that will cause many to come into the kingdom and great news shall come from Africa. Great news shall come. They shall say, “there’s a fire burning! there’s a fire burning!”

As I shared about the entire promise to our Revival School students, a wall of fire as high as the distant mangoes erupted as I was speaking.  Later in the day I read the word again sharing it with one of our missionaries here.  Within minutes roughly 1/5th of our compound catches fire and a wall of fire rushes right to the path of the church and stops before burning down any structures.  Then another fire breaks out on the other side of the compound afterwards.

Two days later we leave to go on outreach to an area very closed to the gospel.  Closed not because they are unreached per usual missions criteria.  Closed because they have been inoculated by decades of traditional religious Christianity that has a form but denies the power of even simple truths like needing a personal relationship with Jesus.  Those areas are way more difficult than the completely unreached.

When we arrive, I see a little girl limping through the compound.  I preach on healing with the few mamas and grandmamas gathered.  Her mom brings her to me in the dark of the night after dinner.  I had just finished sharing the same promise with this group of church leaders praying maybe it would wake them up to God’s dreams that are so much bigger than ours.  As I began to pray for this precious little one, a wall of fire explodes behind me with raging vehemence.   That is four for four.  This time a friend had a camera handy!

The little girl’s eyesight and leg were completely healed.  Off she went stamping away on a leg once lame and seeing through an eye that could not focus before. Papa, all the glory goes to You!

You are God and even still You answer by fire. There are some seeds that only germinate and multiply in the heat of the flame.  We cry out for the release of the burning ones, who are burning with the fire of Your love.

Please pray with us for genuine revival to sweep through this nation and set it ablaze.

Filed Under: daily journal, living beyond the edge, prophetic encounters & insight, upside down kingdom ·
Feb 10, 2011

watch out for falling coconuts

By ·

I lean hard against the sturdy trunk of a stately palm tree around which the current housing of our children’s village circles.   In the relative cool of evening, as the light slants long and golden on the ground, I catch up with mamas and children about their days.

I am oblivious of any threat of impending harm.

From clear across the yard Kaffi, one of our dear young men, launches himself straight towards me, a deeply concerned look furrowing his brow.

His broad intent strides devouring ground; I look quizzically at his coming.

“Mama, it is not good for you to stand there, ” he blurts out earnestly without even a breath or the common culture of greeting.

I look down expecting an army of ants to be marching my way or to be in the path of an oncoming snake.  Seeing nothing but dirt, I look back at him rather confused.

He motions in a direction I would have never looked.  Up.

“This is the season when coconuts fall in the evening, Mama. You really don’t want to stand there right now.”

Very grateful for the warning, I wisely take my conversations to the safe confines of Mama Serena’s front porch, far away from falling coconuts.

Walking back to my house giving the fall-zone wide berth, I realize again the gift Papa has given me.

A family who doesn’t just remind me of my own story when I need to remember it; but one who watches out for the things I cannot yet see and calls my gaze upward into vision.

I shut my persnickety half door as the last light of evening slips over the horizon. Grateful for family found a world away from the familiar, I shake my head, smile and say thank you to Papa for continued protection in a season of projectile coconuts and erratic first steps of a new nation.

Filed Under: daily journal, upside down kingdom ·
Sep 21, 2010

mosaic dreams

By · 9 Comments

This week I have had the privilege to spend time among those whose fragmented lives look like shattered glass on the road side.

Many see rubbish, I see redemption waiting, longing, yearning to happen.

I’ve been in the tin shack brothels built on burning rubbish heaps and sewage laden mud the last few days dodging fights.  I have been in hovels and slums pleading with drunk, volatile family members to release our 3 newest treasures.  Precious little girls ages 3, 7, 12 slept safely in my room last night.  For the first time in their little lives they were tucked in, prayed over and blessed into sweet dreams all night long.

They woke confused why the rain was not coming inside the house this morning, how they were still warm and dry.  Their bright faces signaling the dawn of a new day.  My heart longs for the rest here: 3 are coming home today, we only have a few million to go.

My friend Angela Greenig says, “To the world you may be just one person but to one person you may just be the whole wide world.”   That statement has never been truer than it is here right now.

I know many look on the very places of destruction I love to spend time at and wonder why. What can be done with the broken shards of dreams and futures?  What can be done with shattered hearts and lives stuck in the cesspools of life?  It is all so overwhelming, risky and depressing.  Wouldn’t you rather be sipping Starbucks in a cafe somewhere?

Maybe I have mosaic lenses.  I see brokenness as an invitation for beauty.  I see shattered shards of hopes and dreams as pieces just waiting to be collected, polished and placed into mosaic canvases expectant for expression.  Maybe the glass will never be a mirror again as it once was, but it can be transformed into something more than it could have ever been before it was broken.  It can become a masterpiece of grace.

So if you ask me WHY I like back alley ways, brothels and trash heaps so much, my answer is because Jesus does.  He loves making mosaics in the mud, bringing beauty out of brokenness and so do I.  I believe His love makes mosaic dreams come true.

Filed Under: creativity, daily journal, upside down kingdom ·
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