Canyons & Fireworks

Lately, I have been delving into the scriptures about King David. 1 Samuel is a riveting storyline with fairly easy to understand foreshadowing of Jesus. 1 Samuel 23 has David inquiring of the Lord for himself but is given one of the most clear prophetic utterances of the Messiah. In verse 11 God answered, "He will come down" and verse 12 continued, "They will surrender you." (AMP) This prophetic direction saved David and his men from Saul via the men of Keilah, but clearly speaks of the life of Jesus. This along with most of the early prognosticate scriptures, distinctly illustrate Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb before the foundation of the earth. 2 Samuel with all the military maneuvers is a bit harder to follow or deduct parallels to our Savior. I plan to do more work to extrapolate the hidden gems of this book. Until then, I was struck by the wise women of 2 Samuel.  Both are nameless and in today's culture would probably be described as dramatic.  The first ...

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, on the Hebrew calendar. It is the first of the High Holy Days and the beginning of the ten Days of Awe. In short it is all about repentance and celebrating the goodness of God. Unike, most modern Christian traditions, this time of repentance is marked not by fasting but eating symbolic foods such as yeasty challah, matzo ball soup, pomegranates, fish head, and apples dipped in honey. Bill Johnson says something like, “I don’t have visions of God when I fast, I have visions of chicken.” I can relate. Little encouragement to feast exists in our culture rampant with diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity. I have jokingly referenced Psalm 34:8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” while blessing a decadent meal at a foodie’s paradise type of restaurant. All joking aside, God does invite us to find pleasure in His blessings and to celebrate His goodness. Luke 5 depicts God’s invitation through the words of Jesus. The tax collector decided to f...

Community is on the heart of God. I have recently been corrected because God showed me I was not engaging in every facet of multi-level community.   One fundamental truth is that community is not possible without forgiveness.  Again, the Lord showed me that while I am quick to forgive; forgiveness is a multi-level phenomenon. Deep community demands deep forgiveness.  Quick forgiveness is an act of obedience that keeps us spiritually clean. The kind of forgiveness that allows profound soul healing fellowship must be extensive.  My Gramma was my main teacher in the faith. She was a radical believer and patient with me. Unfortunately, she did not do the complete work of forgiveness.  She was taught that once you forgave the work was finished, regardless of your feelings. In general, her generation did not respect emotions. Gramma would remember an offense and say through grinding teeth, "But I forgave them years ago." The unforgiveness that remained in her hum...

In the past, women's ministries usually did not fill my cup. I got married later in life, and most of the women’s events I have attended spend a lot of time ministering to the underappreciated wives and mothers struggling to feel a sense of value. While I understood the need for this type of ministry, nothing is worse than being a single thirty-five year old, and hearing wives complain about their marriages. Needless to say, I developed the habit of finding wells of community outside of the normal women’s meetings. Fast forward, and I am now happily married and a step-mom to an amazing teen. I still feel like I am in the honeymoon phase of marriage, as I have only been married three and a half years and our teen is not perfect but unusually grateful. My habit of shying away from normal women’s gatherings has not changed. If you have been following my posts, you know God has been highlighting community. I am doing my best to be a doer of the word, not just a hearer. My church’s wome...

I had a dream that my husband, daughter, and I were in a nice house. We got word that some danger was coming like robbers in the night. The house we were staying in was very secure. We knew that all we had to do was go around and make sure all the windows and doors were shut and locked. We went around to make sure everything was sealed when we ended at the back doors. To our shock the french doors were not only unlocked but in bad shape and incapable of being fixed in time. And then I woke up. I had the feeling earlier in the week that God was going to speak to me on Friday, September 8th. It was the early hours of the 8th when I woke up from this dream. I received two polarizing messages. First, this is a season of correction.  We must make sure we do not have any open doors to the enemy. With 5784 being the year of the open door, we need to remember the enemy loves to mimic what the Lord is doing. Know your doors.  Second, chances are God's open door might be scary to us. We...

Two pastors I highly respect, each shared sermons on Moses this past Sunday. As they were preaching I noticed a new perspective on origins and correction.  Moses' name means to pull out or draw out of water. Fitting for a baby that was saved by floating down the Nile to the Pharaoh's daughter.  The watermark on Moses' life did not end there.  The first plague Moses declared on Egypt was turning the water of the Nile into blood, his most famous miracle was parting the Red Sea, and he provided water in the desert. Even his sin of striking the rock for water as opposed to talking to the boulder was a defining moment. The last gush effectively pulled Moses out of earth, or drew him up to heaven as the Lord willed.  The other origin moment was the infamous burning bush. I could not help but notice the symbolism in this great mystery of the Bible. Moses burned for the Lord but was not consumed. Before Jesus tore the veil, to commune with God in such a personal way was dead...

A couple of months ago a movie line from a 2004 science fiction disaster film jumped out at me. In the motion picture, the earth is experiencing extreme storms and natural disasters because of damaging climate change. At first the happenings are dismissed as less crucial than the birth pains of a new ice age. The protagonist tries to warn political figures of hazards against the environment but is ignored. He explained, "Storms continue until the imbalance that created them is corrected." I'm not a meteorologist but the statement resonated with me personally.  Lately a storm has been brewing in my heart that I could not name. For all intensive purposes everything was good, even great; but something was missing. After a period of attempting to ignore the problem, and then trying to explain it away; I remembered the movie and decided to face the storm.  God's answer left little to the imagination, "You need to be in a group." I find this truth annoying as I en...