Revolt Towards

24-7 Prayer

I wanted to take this blog to highlight 24-7 Prayer. I've talked about them before. The heart of 24-7 Prayer movement is near and dear to my heart. The have Boiler Rooms around the world that live from these six rhythms of prayer, creativity, hospitality, learning, mission, and justice. Stay tuned for more to come from me in regards to this group in the weeks and months to come.

Starting the New Year with Jesus

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

So call me late, tardy, belated. I just happened to finish Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz for the first time yesterday and it was a great way finish the first of January and start the next 365 days. The last five chapters of the book happened to be appropriately and respectively on money, worship, love of others, love of self and concluding with Jesus. 

A few years ago, I began listening to Bill Johnson out of the Bethel Church in Redding, California. I would follow the podcasts and have even seen him speak a few times. But one thing that has always stuck with me about Bill is when he speaks of Jesus. It's not the kind of thing where he just reads stories about Jesus in the Bible, but when Bill speaks of Jesus, tears come to his eyes, he chokes up and he reaches the point where he pauses and can't speak like his Adam's apple has gotten stuck in his throat. All because of Jesus. 

I remember thinking to myself, I want that. It has happened every now and then. But in the last few months, I have been secretly on this journey with Jesus to reach that place. Because He is that loving, that good, and that in love with me and all of us.

Don Miller writes in Blue Like Jazz, "I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus". He goes on to say that Christian spirituality is like jazz music—it's about feeling and loving Jesus is something you feel, "difficult to get on paper...but no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful". Good for me because I love jazz and to watch and hear the spontaneity of the melodies, rhythms and musicians all coming together to create something different every time.

The thing is, Jesus is alive, not dead. God even chided me recently for reflecting too much of this image I had in my head of him on a cross. In that moment, He wanted me to realize He was alive and engaging my life, right now. And He's doing the same with all of us. It's a present-tense journey we have with Him. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the Bible is a history book of our faith, full of past-tense stories of our faith, but we aren't to rest there and leave it there because Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit are meeting us today in the hear and now.

I hope I can encourage us all to fall in love with Jesus. Maybe we have to fall in love again or maybe we are about to do it for the first time. Just remember, while I want what I see in Bill Johnson, this kind of love is not about shedding tears, tearing our clothes and doing whatever it is we do to feel religious. Real love of Jesus come from the realization that He loves you, me and the annoying neighbor, the rude co-worker, the lesbian couple that can't keep their hands off each other, the meth addicts who always asks for money outside the post office and the modern-day pharisees ready to crucify Him all over again. 

I want us all to know Jesus this year. If you haven't done it in awhile, pray and talk to Jesus. Ask Him to become real to you. Ask Him to forgive you of self-addiction. Ask Him to put a song in your heart. Much love and blessing to us all on this journey into 2010.

"All great characters in stories are the ones who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. And in all of the stories I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus. He gave His life for me, in obedience to His Father. I truly love Him for it. I feel that, and so does Laura and Penny and Rick and Tony the Beat Poet. I think the difference in my life came when I realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn't just love me out principle; He didn't just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that cause Him to love me."
(Blue Like Jazz)

Thanksgiving and Prayer

   

To all my friends and family, I want to let you know I'm thankful for you guys. I'm thankful that your friendships and relationships add value to my life. I'm thankful that for many of you, your words and stories push me to become a better lover of love and Love Himself.

These words from Paul are my prayer for you all on this Thanksgiving Day...

Ephesians 1:15-23
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Closing the Door On the Notion We Need Something More Than Him

   

So last week, I was praying for a job I had bid on. The job estimate was for a decent amount of money and my prayer was this: "God, I pray that this contract comes through because you know I need it because I need the money." 

Immediately I stopped myself and stopped my prayer.

"What?!" I asked myself. What was I praying? Did I even realize the words I was saying? Well, actually, I did. It hit me very quickly that I was praying for the wrong thing and from the wrong place. The reality is this:
All I need is Jesus.

And immediately, I got this revelation:
Only when we close the door to the notion that we need something more than Him, will we position ourselves to receive all He knows we DO need.

This goes for anything we place ahead of him, be it money, love, relationships, family, career, position, titles or as hard as it may be to hear, even justice on the earth.

So I challenge each of us, like I challenged myself, to reorient my life to remember that all I need is Him. Once I have Him, all I need will come. And sometimes, we will get to some of the things we desire, but that can't be our focus. We must fix our eyes on Him, seeking His kingdom, and all we need will be given to us. 

Matthew 6:33
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.

Hebrews 12:1-2
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith...

...Except You Ravish Me.

Ever since meeting John Donne in high school, I have always been in love with his poetry and particular, his poetic reflections on God. Below is his Holy Sonnet XIV:

HOLY SONNETS. by John Donne XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

I was sharing with my friend Maggie on Saturday how sometimes, we get so in love with Jesus because we know he is right there, interacting me us and it's easy! But other times, those feelings need to be chased after, sought after and fought for. Like any relationship, there are ebbs and flows. Sometimes you feel close; intimate. Other times, disconnected and far away.

The Song of Songs gives us a glimpse of this. The beloved waits for the Lover to come, only to find that He was gone...But a pursuit ensues.

I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock.

I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer.

O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you— if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.

What we see here is that it is the beloved that must also take action and go after the Lover. I looked but did not find him. If you find my lover...Tell him I am faint with love. We have to be active in our pursuit because He wants to be chased too. Maybe some of you are like myself, where you know you love God and will never stop that belief, but you also know that isn't enough. You need something more. You need more than biblical theologies. You need more than a good who lives in a book. You need more than philosophies and fairy tales. You need Someone real.

So invite Him in. If He feels absent from your life and you feel absent from Him, invite Him into whatever you have going on in your life. I have invited Him into my times of song writing and simply said, "God, I don't know how all this works, but I want you here with me as I try to write these lyrics." Maybe your a mother or father—invite Him into your parenting. Maybe you are at work and have a problem to solve—invite Him in. Tell Him He's welcome into your circumstances! Just like anyone boy or girl being wooed, He too gets excited and giddy when we include Him into our lives.

Thing is—He will never force Himself on us. That is not love. Just invite Him in. Just say today "Would you come?" Because as Donne wrote so long ago with the same cry:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.