New Lenses

Looking at life through new lenses is affecting more areas of life than I anticipated.  In the past, I felt a little guilty when people would comment about the glory of God reflected in nature.  I would wonder what was wrong with me that I did not feel this connection.  After all, didn’t God say His invisible attributes were shown forth through the things He has made? 

It wasn’t as if I couldn’t appreciate a beautiful sunset or enjoy the foliage or love being at the beach.  It was that others seemed to have more of a meaningful relationship with God through what they were experiencing.  I never felt that way.  And of course, when I measured myself against their interpretation, I always wondered why I didn’t “get it”.  I contented myself by joking that I was not a “nature” girl.  Most of the time, I don’t even like to be outside all that much.  For a while, I refused to buy boots, even though I live in New England, so I would have an excuse to stay inside in winter.  Going for a ride in the car, finding a nice place to park and rolling down the window felt like being outside to me. 

However, I like to take God at His word, so over the years, I have asked to have a new appreciation of nature since it is His handiwork.  It hasn’t been a primary prayer or anything.  It was just an asking off and on; here and there.  Once in a while, something caught my eye in a new way.  I noticed a detail I would have passed over before.  I decided that when that happened, I would take another look.  I would take a little bit more time and stay in the moment.   I wanted to capture some of the beauty, so I began to take pictures of sunsets or cloud formations, but the pictures never seemed to do justice to what I saw with my eyes.  There were no bells, no whistles…just a new place of consciousness opening up. 

Then, I had the idea of challenging myself to describe what I saw in creative language.  I like to write, but creative writing isn’t what I do most of the time.   So, I took on my own challenge and using personification and new ways of describing what I saw, I began to appreciate in a greater way, the wonders opening up to me.  If truth be told, I once spent half an hour on a description I wanted to post on Facebook, getting just the right wording for the feeling I had.  But that’s time well spent when I am training myself in a discipline I am called to.

This is a relatively new place for me; this appreciation of nature.  It’s like a whole new room has opened up.  It’s really like I received new lenses for seeing things that were hidden or veiled before.  I am so glad it is happening in the natural because it has been happening in the spiritual for a long time.   Scriptures that I have looked at from one perspective, are taking on a whole new meaning with my new spiritual lenses.  Some passages are almost entirely opposite to the way I have always viewed them.

Which brings me to what I realized yesterday; it is this.  In New England, we get to enjoy two separate seasons of fall.  There is the flashy colorful foliage which draws the crowds and is a tourist attraction.  That’s when the hills and highways are ablaze with reds and yellows and oranges.  There is hardly a place that is not boldly in your face with color.  All of it is beautiful, sometimes breathtakingly so.  It is the barter of New England.  She hosts a party, puts on her finest dress and people come to see and taste and partake. 

But when the party is over, and the guests go home, there is the “other autumn”; the subtler, genteel autumn.  It’s the autumn only the family gets to enjoy.  To me, it is even more lovely with its varied shades of green and brown and red.  I think I like it better because of the lighting this time of year.  It’s

thinner somehow, more clear and white. There is a period of time in late afternoon when the shadows make every object crazy long.  The silhouettes of the bare trees with the sun setting behind them are my absolute favorite.  I love the black trunks with their branches lifted skyward in naked surrender as the sun goes down behind the horizon in a prouder display of color than you see in summer.  Even the hues of the sunset are richer at this time of year with eggplant purples, hot pink and persimmon oranges.

In this second autumn, there are no leaves left on the trees; they are covering the forest floor, making it look like someone installed a tan woolen carpet with sculpted pile around every tree.  The fields are brown, the hedges are brown, the bushes are brown, but every brown is different, and every shadow and patch of light alters the color to be golden or chocolate or caramel.  Interspersed with the brown are large patches of green from the pine and evergreen trees.  They wear their winter colors, which are the deeper, richer, serious hunkering down greens, and not the yellow greens of spring.  I suppose, if I was an artist, I would take that background as my initial inspiration and add touches of color here and there to enhance the differences.  That’s just what the sumac and the bittersweet and the burning bush shrubs do. 

All across the landscape there are patches of the deep red velvet of sumac and the lacy orange of bittersweet.  I especially enjoy the bittersweet because there is really no orange in the plant…it’s just that from a distance, the yellow husk and the red of the berries make it appear orange to the eye.  It looks delicate and cheerful as it climbs over bushes and even up telephone poles.  Then, dotted here and there to draw the eye into the picture, are the most brilliantly red bushes we call the burning bush.  Their leaves eventually fall off, but in this other autumn, they do not have any competition for brilliancy.  There is not another red anywhere that can compete as they flaunt their fire like boastful eye candy in their assigned places across the landscape.

You miss all that when you just think everything is brown and dreary this time of year.  It’s not dreary, it has just been transformed into something totally different, but beautiful just the same.  The flashy riot of color in the early autumn certainly gets your attention; but the second autumn has a quiet strength that is going to take us right through winter.  It makes a foundation for the blanket of snow and still allows its personality to shine through, as it refuses to tuck everything neatly under the covers.  We can still see some of those saucy berries poking out here and there giving hints that all is not cold and white.

Little did I know that receiving new lenses changes EVERYTHING.  Now I am looking forward to using these new lenses for seeing people differently and situations and conversation and political issues and family members and work environments.  They are probably worth that second look and new interpretation.  I want to make the same commitment with those things that I did with writing.  When I notice something that gives me pause, I will actually pause and consider and look again because people are worth it, conversations are worth it, family members are worth it and I am worth it.

Moses and the Goodness of God

Exodus 33 has always been a landmark chapter in understanding how God wants to relate to us.  It gives a picture of two sides of God’s nature. It describes the relationship Moses had with God as his friend, but it also describes the people Moses was leading as stiff-necked.  God tells Moses to go ahead and lead them by himself because He is through traveling with them.  He even promises to send an Angel before them to drive out their enemies. I think this was a kind of test for Moses to see how he would handle the situation and the leadership position God had given him.  How would he respond to this news, understanding that God was threatening to destroy His people?  In the meantime, God told the people to take off their ornaments as a sign of penitence until He decided what to do with them.

Moses, as a friend of God who spoke with Him face to face, enters into a dialog with God where he progressively asks for more and more clarity.  He puts a demand on the favor he knows he has with God.  He has already been told that God knows his name and has given him favor, but he desires to know Him more and more deeply.  Maybe he wants the experience of the favor.  Maybe he wants to allow that favor to flow through him, thereby understanding it in an experiential way.  It is interesting that even more favor comes with that request.  Moses then puts the flock that he is responsible for in the same relationship he has with God, by asking God to consider “this nation is your people.”  He wants the nation to experience the same favor he has with God.

God promises His presence will go with them.  That is the same as saying the favor of God will go with them.  It is the favor of God that will distinguish this people.  It is not because of anything they have done; it is just the decision of God.  God honors Moses’ desire to have the nation come under the umbrella of the favor he has with God.  Because of that unselfish request, God states that He knows Moses personally and by name.  He affirms Moses in his request because Moses is showing forth the same attributes that God has.  These qualities of mercy and favor and loving-kindness are the very qualities that make up the nature of God.  God always recognizes Himself. 

As Moses comes more fully into the revelation of just how much favor he has with God and how intimately God knows Him, I think Moses was awed.  As he realizes how he can let the attributes of God flow through him to affect the people around him, and experiences what that can mean, He asks the seminal (game changing) question of Chapter 33.  Moses asks to see God’s Glory.  He was asking to know God in the same way he was known by God.  I think God was especially touched by that request and consequently, He drew Moses into the cleft in the rock and let him know that from that time on, Moses would know God in his goodness.  It was goodness that would be the lens change through which Moses was to see God.  In that exchange, God’s heart was softened toward Moses and He drew him into a place that was designed to change his paradigm for relationship.  Everything from here on in would be processed through goodness. 

It was like God was saying, “You have had a taste of what I am really like.  Because you spent time getting to know Me, and because we are friends, you instinctively know how I operate and what I am like.  You just took the place I would take with these people.  Therefore, I am underlining this experience in a way that you will never forget.  I am giving you an experience that will be a game changer from this time forward.  Now you understand your role.  You are to stand in my place with these people and extend the same qualities of favor to them; that you have with me.  You will be the visual aide and the one through whom I release my nature in a way that is felt and known by them”.  Then, God drew Moses to a place in the cleft of the rock where they could stand side by side in a new and fresh partnership.

There is a parallel with the Song of Solomon 2:14.  The shepherd calls the maiden “my Dove”.  The shepherd is speaking to her persona as the representative of the Holy Spirit in the earth.  She is to be the visual aide to all of creation and to mankind, of one through whom He can express His life.  He is calling up her true identity.  While they are in the secret place in the clefts of the rock, He says, “Let me see your face.  Let me hear your voice.”  In effect, the shepherd is asking the same thing Moses asked of God.  Let me see the real you.  There is nothing God likes better than seeing our truest identity come forth in the likeness of His son.  We become sharers in the Divine Nature, and goodness becomes our defining attribute.

All of a sudden, the maiden’s eyes are opened to the fruit of the love that is developing between them.  Her one desire is to catch the little foxes that could compromise that love and what it is producing.

Goodness is the best soil for fruit to develop.  As we allow goodness to be the lens through which we process life, we can experience a paradigm shift for interpreting whatever comes our way.  Like Moses, He knows our name and his favor is upon us.

Entering a New Era---Being the Sound

This weekend I spoke at the N.H. Aglow Retreat.  Part of what I shared had to do with a Breakthrough Sound.  We talked about restoring the sound of joy and victory in our tent and releasing that so we will be a people He can come and agree with.  We will then be the agents on earth to make manifest the Kingdom of God. 

Here is what I think is the most significant “sign” that has happened in recent days.  Do any of you remember Felix Baumgartner jumping from a hot air balloon at the edge of space last fall?  I believe, with the Felix Baumgartner jump on October 14, 2012, we entered a new era.  He was the first man who broke the sound barrier with his own body and it has gone virtually unnoticed by the prophetic community.  Until now, the only way the sound barrier could be broken was with, or in, a vehicle.  In other words, Felix Baumgartner was the first man to reach supersonic speed in his own body, as he fell from 24 miles above the earth.

Here is the condensed version of my research turned into a short synopsis of what I see:

Firstly, October 13^th (the day before the jump) was the first day that the yearly Torah readings in the Jewish calendar returned to Genesis 1:1.  As we know, the first chapters in Genesis are all about the Garden of Eden.  These Genesis readings, if we are going by the Jewish calendar, began the day before the jump. Felix, in Hebrew, means “happy, fortunate” and Baumgartner means “nurseryman”-- one who owned or worked in an orchard.  His mother’s name is Ava, a derivative of Eve. 

I believe we as the church, are returning to the revelation of God’s intentional design to happily care for the original garden (Israel) and in a larger context, the earth and take dominion so that God can reign.  It is time for these scriptures to be fulfilled:

For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. Is. 51:3.

Jer. 31:12, Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.

Ez. 36:35, And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities [are become] fenced, [and] are inhabited.

Isaiah 51:11, Therefore, the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy [shall be] upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; [and] sorrow and mourning shall flee away.  

The song of victory is powerful enough to bring restoration of God’s original intention.

Baumgartner jumped from an altitude 24 miles above the earth.  The number twenty-four, being a multiple of twelve, is the number associated with the heavenly government and worship, of which the earthly form in Israel (David’s Tabernacle) was only a copy.  So, this restoration is about the kingdom of God being firmly established on earth as it is in heaven.

24= two Hebrew letters kaph-deleth which was signified by an open palm in the act of opening the door of priesthood and the sanctuary of God. 

You know, even Jesus could only enter the outer court of the Temple when He was on the earth.  He was the High Priest in the spiritual sense, but He never stepped beyond the veil.  We are given the opportunity to understand the greater things that are now available to us; full privilege as priests to live in that dimension.

To give Baumgartner’s jump more significance; it came into an alignment with two other events on the same day, both having to do with breaking the sound barrier.  Because of inclement weather delays, Felix’s first attempt had to be aborted and consequently rescheduled.  This caused his jump to align with the exact date on which Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier in an airplane in 1947.

Also, the space shuttle Endeavor breaks the sound barrier multiple times as it descends in a controlled fall.  It came to its final resting place in Los Angeles on that same date, also due to unforeseen delays.  The alignment of these three events has caused me to be curious about what God might be saying. 

I have also noted that the day after this jump, was the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles on the Jewish calendar.  This has so many implications for us today.  I wish I could concentrate more on it, but, in a nutshell, the Feast of Tabernacles, in Jewish circles is considered THE feast.  It symbolizes God coming and dwelling in the midst.  It symbolizes God being married to His people.  It symbolizes the ingathering of the nations in response to Israel being a teacher nation who lives out the commandments of God to be a light to the nations.  There is no other festival or feast that has as its commandment a sound of JOY being released.  It is the culmination feast, celebrating all God is and has intended for His people. 

My take on Felix’s jump is, we are being given an opportunity to understand that the time of human “endeavor” to bring a sound of heaven into the earth realm has come to its final resting place.  We no longer have to have a vehicle through which to bring the sound of heaven to earth.  We have now entered a new era where it is possible to BE the sound; not just BRING the sound.  The door is open for us in a new way to operate in the high priestly calling.  We are being given the ability to become one with the eternal sound as we access the sanctuary of God inside us, and release the sound from the place where God tabernacles within us.  We instinctively know and can recognize the sound, because it is part of our DNA. One of the sounds that we need to understand and incorporate into our own unique calling for today, is that Israel and the Jewish people have been given the commission to be a light to the nations.  What do you think it means when God says that salvation is from the Jews?  Is there maybe a piece that is missing in their understanding before they can fulfill that commission more fully?  How are they going to get that piece back?  How can we release a sound that will restore that revelation?

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Felix’s goal was to reach the edge of space and break the speed of sound.  He had a dream. He had a goal bigger than life that drove him, and one for which he was willing to die trying to achieve.  Do you have a goal like that?  When I received the understanding of Israel in the plan of God, one of the thoughts I had was, “This is something worth living for and something worth dying for.” 

As citizens of heaven, one of our goals is to be that breaker company, with the adventuring and pioneering spirit, which will release a sound to awaken and restore the prophetic purpose Israel has been given.  This will cause them to once again, BE the sound to the Nations that God originally intended. It will pave the way for Him to come back and tabernacle with us here.  While that is the ultimate goal, we also have the additional commission to BE the sound in whatever sphere of influence we have been given.  Our personal call; our personal sound, and God’s ultimate intention are intricately woven together.

Some people, after hearing the story of Felix have asked, “Why would he do such a dangerous thing?  He would have to be crazy?”  It seems foolish to those people.  We are going to be asked step out in the understanding we have, and put ourselves in situations that will fail miserably if God does not show up.  We are going to have to make the decision to be “all in.”  Esther...if I perish, I perish.  Ruth...I don’t know what the future holds, but where you go, I will go…Peter…where would I go…You have the words of eternal life…

I like to say that today’s crazy is tomorrow’s cutting edge, and next week’s normal.  I want to hang with the pioneers and the “birthers” who are willing to look crazy so that something new can happen: something God has had on His heart for a very long time.  I believe the next thing we need to turn our attention to, is helping creation (which encompasses Israel, the nations, individual people as well as the nature) get her sound back; get their identity back.  When we ARE the sound of joy and gladness, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody, Creation can take its rightful place and we can all return to the Eden of the heart of God. 

Heartbeat of Heaven

How long, O Lord ‘til you come to Jerusalem?  This is the heartbeat of heaven! This is the cry of the nations! We hear the Spirit and we are the Bride saying, "Come, Lord Jesus!

I heard these lyrics today as I listened to Jaye Thomas leading worship at IHOP.  They followed this song:

Oh, Come, Oh, Come Emmanuel

Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

I was touched that Jaye Thomas had this as the culmination of progression of songs in a worship set for One Thing.  It struck me that this is the revelation and the call to all of us as believers.  We all need to have an understanding that it all began and it all ends in Jerusalem.  What if, every time we worshipped, we had this in the back of our minds; a larger picture than just connecting with God for an intimate experience for ourselves? Yes, it is important to fall in love with Jesus and have that love ever growing, but for what purpose?  He has something on His heart as the Jewish Prince of Heaven.  He has a part of the story yet to fulfill and we are each intimately connected with it thru our faith in Him.  
 
What is the purpose of faith?  Is it a commodity we have just to use for the things we want and need here and now, or is it made richer and fuller when we connect to the original and eternal purpose and keep it always in the forefront of everything we do?  The fuller things of the Kingdom seem to be accessible only through self sacrifice.  We trade our own interests for those of His heart and we are taken on a journey that is far greater than we could have believed for on our own. 
The God who sits on the throne chose to step down off that place and take on the garments of humility.  People didn’t recognize him then, and they don’t recognize us when we choose a similar path where another’s desire is our first love.  We are invisible because it is the cause that drives us, not the need to be validated.  

There is an accepted but myopic way of worship that is, if I am honest, deceptively mostly about me.  It may feel like it is about Him, but it is about having a close encounter so that I feel connected and God can speak to me.   What if we looked at Jerusalem as the hinge on which the door of eternity swings?  Would we then incorporate an urgency into our worship to see Jerusalem come into all she is destined to be?  When will you return to Jerusalem, Lord?  We want you to come home.

We want Him to come and sit on the throne of His father David and we want Him to make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, so she will cry out, “Come home, Jesus!”  Just as we have made a place for Him in our hearts, and He has come to be at home there, so Jerusalem will be made a place where He will come to rest.  

Is this the cry of the nations?  Is it the cry of Jerusalem?  Does the church hear the cry of His heart and do we catch the heartbeat of Heaven?  How powerful that sound will be when the church takes up the lament and enables Jerusalem and the Jewish people to release the cry that will invite Him to come home.  Are the nations groaning yet?  Are we groaning yet, “When will you return?”  Is there a cry in us saying, “When will you come back and take up the throne of David your father and rule and reign from Jerusalem?”  

We all know what it means to be homesick.  We all know what it means to miss someone we love who is living far away.  Jesus, because He lives within us, is able to share His feelings about Jerusalem with us.  Can we put aside our own selfish need to connect to have an experience with Him, and turn our worship times into times when we actually ask Him what is on His heart?  

I know there are many issues “on the heart of God”.  We are only able to carry them when we are connected with Him in an intimate way so that He shares them with us.  There are so many needs that seem better accepted and understood than the issue of Jerusalem, and yet it is of primary importance in scripture and the final piece to be put in place that will ultimately bring Him back to earth. 

It is time to ask for understanding of how praying for the Peace of Jerusalem, the City of the Living God, is not just a command, but also part of our inheritance.  It is time to ask for revelation of how we are to impact the heart of God, and join the cry of the nations for Jerusalem to be made a praise in the earth.  We are crucial to God’s plan being fulfilled and tremendously privileged to be trusted with the longings of His heart for an End Time fulfillment of His word to Abraham and the Jewish people. 

Can we make a place for Him in our worship where He can tabernacle with us and share His feelings, His longings and the ultimate intentions of His heart?  What if our hearts embraced a house of prayer model similar to Isaiah 56:6, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant-- these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”  

This is a house of prayer inclusive of all selfless peoples who join themselves to the heart of God to love what He loves.  We are the foreigners who are joining with Him and finding the joy of knowing our sacrifices are acknowledged and accepted by Him even as He is bringing us to His holy mountain.