The Urgency Paradox

I really do feel such an urgency!  After a temporary “taking away” this past year - my body, brain & speech have been returned to me!  Now, I want to do all I can to proclaim Jesus’ name in action & words.  I want to appreciate what I’ve been given and do my best to use my body to serve, my brain to soak up God’s Word and time with Him so I can understand Him and His plan more, and my mouth to tell others what He has shown me and done for me.  I have been more outspoken the past few weeks than I have in a long time.  I do feel an urgency.  We don't know how long we are given, we have to seize the day.    I believe the time for the Church to rise up is NOW.  

But the urgency creates a tension.  When I ask the Lord about this tension, I sense confirmation that yes there *is* an urgency….but then the paradox enters and it feels like the familiar gift that God notoriously gives.   The radical paradox.   It’s like He is saying, “yes my child yes, there’s an urgency.   An urgency to follow me.  To obey completely what I’ve called you to do today”.     

“Ok Father” I cry out with tears in my eyes… “I hear you clearly.   There’s an urgency yes.  There’s an urgency…. to slow down”.  The paradox. 

Success is obedience.  Obedience is following.  Following is trusting.  Trusting is waiting. 

With my tendency to rush ahead & be impulsive, I am shocked that He has shown me all He has in His Word about the Church, about His plan about His kingdom.  He really thinks I can hold all this in and transform it into quiet service in my home!?    Well, He does enjoy doing the impossible.  

God help me have an urgency… to slow down and serve.   God help me have an urgency to give you my minutes.    Help me have an urgency to WAIT on you Lord and have faith for what I believe you can do from these quiet corners of my home and heart.

I am still very aware at how little I know…. I feel often that I know nothing at all……

but yet I KNOW…

I know that…
More of our babies are being killed every day while the people stand by having only “choice” to say. 

I know that…
Millions without clean water are dying while millions burdened with “stuff” simply keep dining.   

I know that… 
Lights camera action on goes the show while the poor and orphans it’s to the government they must go.

Jesus’ plan to provide relief hope and answers to the world is to work through His Body.  Please Lord let the Church shine again!  I love the Church so much God.  Please God free her!  Let it start with me.  I can’t be the Body Lord but I can be the hands.  Lord help me be your hands.

OH to truly BE the hands of Jesus.  It’s incredible to think of Jesus’ physical literal hands that He had on earth and that He still has now!  

Let me be His hands on earth just like His hands in heaven. 

Hands are amazingly strong and yet one of the weakest and most vulnerable parts of the Body.  His hands are wounded forever, yet healed.  Power-full yet gentle.  Hands accomplish much earthly good – but are always part of the Body that is focused on heavenly purposes.  They were created to benefit others and glorify the Lord.   The most impact-full work of the hands is probably not when they are lifted in praise but when they are reaching out to others – although both can be beautiful to the Lord.  Much of the hands work is mundane and tedious.  His hands touched and washed the unclean, dirty and lowest parts of His people literally and figuratively.  

Oh if only more were willing to be your hands Lord Jesus!   Let it start with me Lord. When I feel the urgency to preach Lord…. Help me preach to myself to be urgent to be your hands. God help me have an urgency to BE with you as your hands go wherever you are.

I long to be with you so much King Jesus.  I long to see you getting the honor & praise you deserve.  I long to see suffering end.  I long to see your True Church arise and turn from all that has enslaved her.  Help me take this spiritual focus and spiritual mindset you have given me and use it for fuel to do my earthly work.  I know this isn't my home. I am home sick - yet I have work to do. 

The Church's Pre-Occupation with Marriage

I often hold back on my views about Christ's Bride and what He has shown the Rooks Family because I never want to discourage others and I want to be absolutely sure that my motive is pure.     However, the Lord has put in me an urgency to not hold back due to fear or procrastination.   Last year through my Lyme and other physical ailments, He allowed my ability to think, read and even speak clearly to be "taken away".   Now that I'm getting my brain and passion back - I feel an urgency (I pray it's never an impulsiveness) to use my brain and ability to share for His glory!  An urgency to tell others about King Jesus, God Himself,  that is the center of all history and is coming back!

For the past 8 years, Jesus and His Church have been constants in my thoughts and discussions.  I love Jesus so I love His Church!  The Church is His dwelling place. His family. His temple. His people.  His Bride.   I see what God is doing - what He is always doing - wooing the true Church to turn back to Him and get back to the basics of worshiping Him alone.

The Church is meant to be under the reign of the King.  Not under the reign of money, buildings, power, culture,  popularity, entertainment or cultural definitions of "success" (numbers).   We are a free people who willingly choose to be slaves to Righteousness Himself and only Him.  We can not let any yoke of slavery be put back on us!   We can not let anything else drive us but Him!

When I think about the modern church's pre-occupation with marriage, it really convicts me.    We really are pre-occupied.  Pre-occupied with defining it (both groups on both sides of the "definition debate" are pre occupied) and we are pre-occupied with being astonished at the impurity in it.  We are also pre-occupied with trying to "fix" in our own strength all that is wrong in marriage today (fixing it with endless amounts of self help books, retreats seminars, groups, and conventions).     I believe it is true that we do only hate in others what we see in ourselves.   Our hatred toward the state of marriage today is a perfect example of this truth.

Wake up, Church!  We have been an example of adultery & impurity in our "marriage" long before anything we see in our surrounding culture today.

If we want to change the state of marriage, we must change the state of our own first!   I am not referring to our own personal marriages.  I am referring to our part in the marriage between Christ & His Bride.

I read in Romans this morning:

     24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.   1:24-25

The Church in America has committed adultery against our first love - Jesus.   We have exchanged truth for lies and we have worshiped and served things rather than the Creator!    Because of this, God has given the Church over to what it has desired:   human leadership and hierarchies, organization, power systems, money, entertainment and self focused religion.  

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Matthew 5:13

If the salt has lost its saltiness --- why are we shocked at the decay around us!?   Salt stops decay.  Why in the world would we expect people in our culture to understand the purity and divinity in marriage if we ourselves have not stayed committed and pure in our adoration and relationship with our betrothed!?

Marriage on earth is supposed to be a reflection of the marriage between Christ & His Church ---- and in our country that is exactly what it is!   But Jesus won't allow this to continue forever!  He will restore the marriage!

Church, we must turn our eyes and pointing fingers off of others and our culture - and look within. Trust Him to do His work!

I long for His true Church to repent - starting with ME - of all things that we have allowed to come between us and our first love.

I pray for the Church to once again become pre-occupied with Christ!  I long for all in His Church to repent, fall on His grace and trust in HIS ability to transform self, our personal marriages,  the Church & *then* the surrounding culture through the Church.

Through struggle & hard times ahead  even being "trampled under people's feet"  I know Jesus will cleanse His Church.   His people will emerge and their saltiness will be restored!

King Jesus is so worthy of ALL our love & adoration.  He is the one and only King coming back!  I trust the true Bride will be ready for Him!

Depending on God, not My Brain

Since I had the shingles last March, I've been stripped of my brain.  I can't think like I want to.  I can not study like I used to.  I can't remember much of anything.  It's hard to process and think.   As I was sitting here TRYING to reflect over the past year.... I realized that what I've been going through has really been an answer to prayer.

Anybody who knows me (or has read any of my way too long blog posts lol) knows how much I LOVE knowledge and words.  I used to type and write SO much.  I had a pretty elaborate system.  I used to memorize scripture like crazy and really have always just enjoyed learning and studying so much.   So much so that in many seasons it just wasn't healthy.  Looking back, I remember now that I did pray for God to help me get over my obsession with knowledge and my studying.  In my Spirit I knew I needed a better balance.

I believe I will be healed from what I'm suffering from.  I believe the PA is right and it's simply that the virus last March never left and that when I fully get that virus back "under" I will feel like myself again...... but, I also have accepted that whatever happens is okay.  In my heart I can truly say "it is well".  It is okay.    This IS hard.   But I trust God.  I feel really stripped but I know I am God's. I want Him to strip what needs stripping and build up what needs building.  I want Him to define me.  I want Him to tell me who I am and how He wants to use me.

The truth is, this past year, I have been having a really hard time connecting to God apart from the religious activity I had set up in my life.  This past month, I finally feel like I'm beginning to connect and live by His Spirit again but it's been a dry year.   When I left the institutional Sunday church in 2010... I felt like God used that year to strip me of my dependence on "feelings" and emotional connections (and many other things!!!).    This year has felt so similiar and I feel like I'm now being stripped of even more religious activity I had in my life - religious Spirit that I didn't even know I had.   The "religion" I had  set up I guess was pretty much just self focused. I have always depended on my studies my notes my ability to understand (and know everything... ouch)   more than just depending on God Himself.

So I need to speak some TRUTH to myself:
God's love for me is not dependent on knowledge.   God's love for me is based on Him and HIS knowledge of me.
God's love for me is not dependent on my religious activity.
God desires me to forego all man-made and RandiJo-made religions and understand HE came to me.... so I can stop trying to get to Him.
Lie: I am only "okay" and "good enough" when I'm meeting my own "good christian" expectations.
Truth:  I am secure.  I am held.  Redeemed, empowered, cherished - because of what HE did, not what I do, did or will do. 

I am His not because I study about Him.... but because I truly do KNOW Him.  I have experienced Him!  I really have.  I know His love so deeply and no matter what else is taken away.... I know my Spirit is eternal and will be His forever.   This is where FAITH comes in.  and He is the one that will always keep my faith strong.  HE is the author & perfecter of my faith.

Knowledge is always secondary to love and I have His love in my heart, for eternity.

Perhaps the last year has been necessary for me to practice WALKING OUT life and love with Him instead of just KNOWing and writing about it all.   I can love and live because His Spirit is in me and HE really IS all I *need*.  He will lead me and I can count on Him much more than my own brain or anything "strong" about me.   All of "this" body and earth will fail me fully someday.  But God's Spirit will lead me in HIS plan (if not mine).  He will lead me now and then someday usher me into eternity.  He will lead me whether I am sharp and have a good argument and theological explanation for everything I confront.... or if I don't.   He will lead me with His Spirit, through others, through His Word at just the right time.  I may not be able to RETAIN the Word...but if I just keep opening it and taking in as much as is possible!

I have to give up my own plans and agenda and how *I* want to be used and continue daily to just "ride the wave" and surrender my life to Him.  I have to stop wrestling Him and fighting His plan.  I have to TRUST that however He wants to use me.... He will equip me and I can stop trying so hard to equip myself and be used how I want.

Knowledge puffs up... but LOVE builds up.  and if this is what it takes to help me truly LOVE more and understand His UNCONDITIONAL LOVE... I accept what He is doing.  It is so hard to be stripped of what I felt were my strengths but I trust God and I am honored to know that He has chosen me to suffer in this way.  I believe that He will use all things for my good & His glory. Off to ride the wave.