i got to shout it from the rooftops,
from the top of the blog mountain,
my god is god of all
all the shouts go out to him,
there is no one like him,
no mind, no eye, no word, no story
like his
oh god, i am shouting, here as crazy in front of the ark on a blog as i can be, and i want everyone in this crazy parade to know you down deep in their aches of their aches that only you can fill, the filler of voids, the one who is crazy about us!!!!!!
more posts from us on generations... he is really speaking on this, and we are thankful for all the responses to this stuff. He must be hitting a nerve! I for one am excited by what he is saying, because it means he is really thinking about us... and there is a fresh beginning to two entire generations. it also means that he is giving us a reality check before something is about to shift in the church. praise god. you know he never called us any of the names the media did. we are praying, and i am believing that our generation will stand. the most ridiculously liberating and lavish parts of the feast haven't even begun. many of us are being given a new commissioning. if you are still doing something you hate, you better watch out. He's got it in for you. The lover of our souls! oh god, you are so good. i wish i had the words to describe.
fyi god is having me call gen x a new name, generational threshold, just so there is no confusionŠ
Look at generations as generations of My purposes, not just people. ŠIf you look at it as generations of God¹s purposes, He can take just one person to fulfill his plan, although he¹d rather use the whole lot. This is what happened with Joshua, who was one of few left from the wilderness generation to get to see the promised land, although it was His intention that the entire generation get to see what they had broken free from Egypt to see.
One of the reasons God is linking the generations back together is to break off a spirit of relevancy from the church.
There has been a general feeling of disconnection between those of my generation and those before us (Baby Boomers)‹and this is not just because our values are different. It is not only very natural that they be different, it is super-natural, for generations are God¹s purposes‹each one designed to carry out the further revelation of Himself on earth. (Each generation like each new baby that is yet to be born, which tells us that God isn¹t done expressing unique parts of His image through humans yet.) In our lifetime, there are two places of vulnerability within generational relationships in the church.
One is a susceptibility to worry about whether or not we are ³making sense² to the younger generation. The church has sometimes been guilty of fostering‹as much as the business world has‹a subtly manipulative marketing attitude toward the younger, starting programs and churches based on perceived needs of that generation. The second place of vulnerability is the sin of reaction. Here rebellion and and an attitude of exclusivity fill the space where God is trying to glue the two generations together. Frankly, it¹s time for the Gen Threshold to repent of some unforgiveness‹a whole stinking bunch of us have been rejected. I meet new believers every day in their 30s who are still pissed off at the church, or at some leader from the past. Yes, we needed the validation and fathering of our elders, but now that we are parents ourselves, we must break off this unforgiving yoke of resentment. Or else we will continue to make things out of reaction, forming clusters around our cultural identity of the moment, instead of our eternal identities.
The church always needs to change, expand, open her doors to each fresh expression of God, and God likes it when she is sincerely trying to understand and love others, but when she does it without the understanding of the Holy Spirit, she will inevitably build her own programs. Her own programs, unfortunately, became driven by a need to be relevant, instead of a genuine love and affinity for the new generation.
Relevancy as an cause in itself took on a life of its own during my twenties. There were many well-meaning and life-giving ministries trying to send water out to the artists, out to the 20-somethings. Although it was based on a desire to water, to evangelise, to help the hurting, to bring the artists Œback in the building,¹ it became a system of its own right and we as a church gave it power. Now ministers are being celebrated for how relevant they are! Let¹s think about this. My gen started serving under its banner, too, and now it¹s time we take this yoke off of us and give it back to him.
He showed me that Relevancy as a system was choking both those in and out of the building. I was one of those who were out. So many of my generation ran away from the church. Frankly, it stunk for me; I didn¹t find it¹s soul-life very interesting, so I went elsewhere where the poetry sung and the music was more dynamic, and where people wanted to stay my friend after the 8:00 service. But my spirit starved, and as my believer friends dwindled and I fell into depression, what I needed most was SPIRIT food. It didn¹t matter what package it came in‹how relevant, how soul-soaring it was‹it needed to be just food. Actually at first I needed an IV. Gimme an injection of the Holy Ghost! Gimme Jesus sitting next to me with his warm hand, I don¹t care how cool the cover looks. The symbol is never as powerful as the reality it represents, and as Derek often says, God can use a donkey to accomplish His will!
But He does use symbols, and our generation is probably the most powerfully symbolic generation yet. Of course for our generation it would be disingenuous and cheating others if we didn¹t make the cover ³cool.² We just do subtle, beautiful and complex work by nature of who we are, because we were given a special self-awareness at an axial moment in history. But WE NEED TO KNOW when we are making an idol of out of our symbols‹which come in any form, whether our art, or our computer programs, or our work, or our guitars, and worse, our ministries. All of our big ideas‹and there have been many‹must come through the delivery of Jesus¹ spirit. Otherwise, and this is what happened to many of those Gen Thresholds who stayed in the church, we make something that kowtows to the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. So some got angry for the church being irrelevant, while others tried to solve the problem by making something relevant. Both sides of our generation let this icky stronghold thrive. Guys, it¹s time to be. Jesus is saying to us, GO BE. Really‹to go be who we were made to be. What is your wildest dream and what is keeping you from it? If it is God having you on hold, that is one thing, but if you are not doing what you were made to be, you are being someone else.
I'm struck by just how cynical folks are about this current generation. We see it in berlin, prague, london and all over america. Why would this be? Surely, God has a name, a unique identity over this spiritual generation! We have gotten so many strongly toned e-mails in response to our generational writtings that we can tell the enemy has crept into this area, and God is busy taking it back! We need desperately to undestand generations from above rather than borrow the labeling from social theorist here below. It is a time when God would release a generational understanding from heaven for all those with ears to hear! We are just learning as He reveals, but it is powerful-for in it is the unfolding of God's Ways in making generations of His Purposes. it has to do with who God IS! Not about us at all! But how He chooses to reveal Himself in space and time! Release it Lord of the generations! See the lines ane lines of people revealing Him over time! See those of jeremiah and david's generation streaming from heaven, see now those coming into our own timr on earth-enter the stream of His Purposes-let us dialogue from this space in His Spirit, so these wounds can receive the clarity of His Light!
God is showing me a helpful way to look at generations. He calls generations: ³generations of My Purposes². Looked at this way, we focus less on simply natural generations in terms of age, and start to look at seccessive and linked purposes of God.
The enemy of life, tries to place wedges between natural generations, for He knows that God has them in order for a progressive revelation of His Purposes. But God always fulfills that generation of His puposes. You see this in Joshua.
Joshua¹s natural generation for the most part did not fulfil the generation of God¹s purpose of them, but through Joshua, God did.
Generations of God¹s purposes fit together each supplying what is needed in succession. it is not a question of whether God can fulfill his Own purposes in order, it is a question of whether we will join Him!
Joshua¹s generation was to carry the vision of Sinai and the rememberance of slavery into the promised land. So that through the meditation on the law and words of God, the people would stay connected to God, as they battled for the land. Here is another parallel-this next generation is one of possesing the land, we are to through vision to help keep them anchored in the word and equip them with His Plans. Also like Joshua, to call them forth, as we ³muster² the general Body. You see joshua going in between the levites or front runner artisans and judahites; and the general body of the tribes of Israel. He reveals God¹s will and Vision to both-telling the general Body what is going to happen and when to move, while going to the front lines and instructing and naming the levites and those getting their backs, the Judahites.
The levites and the judahites have always had these identities and been in relation to one another. Levites are to be the place of meeting and carry the ark; Judah to war from worship. This is who God sent in first then, and it is now!
But God was also concerned with gettng the whole of Israel across the jordan! So you see Joshua like water running back and forth getting everyone informed-and you see the general Body¹s respect for him.
it is hard for our generation to imagine receiving this level of respect-as we feel mislabeled and cynical towards the preceeding two generations in the natural. But God is healing us and them! And these geneartions of His Purposes will work together in a harmonious and powerful pattern to prepare the way for The Lord!
Many in Joshua¹s gen. did not get to fulfill God¹s purposes on them collectively. Joshua did, however, for the purposes of God do not die with man, but get fulfilled. In this sense it is less about us and more about generations of God¹s Purposes.
I think our generation-what is called gen X-must be looked at in terms of God¹s purposes. What is God¹s purpose for this gen.? I think it is very similar to that of Joshua¹s. It is to come through the in-between experience of the church¹s wilderness, and carry the revelation of Sinai into the land. It is also, as you see, in the life of Joshua to name others-to be a people of revelation.
At the crossing of the Jordan, you see also that Joshua is the one who is given the instructions from heavenly vision as to who goes where, and when to move. It is a military vision, but also a priestly one. He tells both the priest and the leaders of the tribes what is to happen, and when to move. So there is a naming from vision here. You see that Joshua¹s gen. suffered from grumbling. They had seen so much and were to carry it into the land, but began to complain about, what seemed to be the slow fulfillment of the promises.
How similar is that to this genereation. And yet, Joshua made it to carry that generation of God¹s Purposes. And so will we. It is not a matter of whether, but who will join and partner with God. The purposes of God will be fulfilled, but will we repent of all cynical complaining and give him our anger at our elders for misjudging us, and move on with the purposes of God?
More soon on this spiritual generations of God¹s Purposes on earth!
Dry leaf touching window glass-fall is here in Austin. Thoughts of seasons and the growth cycles of things-how each seed yields, how the fruits will be made apparent..the spiritual laws of sowing and reaping; but also the stages themselves of maturity. It feels like this wild golden bloom, the church, doesn¹t know where she is at in her own maturation process.
Austin Sparks, one of my favorite writers on spiritual things,believed that part of the responsiblity lies with us. We have to want to go on to the higher levels! To come into the enlightened heart phase where our eyes see heaven and know our glorious inheritance-this was Paul¹s desire, and it is our time to come into this level of sonship with Him.
In order to become spiritual parents as a whole, we must be willing to leave infancy and the elementary teachings, and go on to solid food.
The sonship phase of development includes coming into our inheritance and occupying the lands He is giving us. It also includes greater difficulties.
I believe God is calling my own generation to stand as spiritual adults in this hour, and I also see that He is asking the church to go to her next level of develpment spiritually.
For many, this will mean just coming to know the Holy Spirit, for others a new level of seeing into and down from the heavens. But this newer level of being in Him has been released from heaven and it is our response to say yes. Yes, I want to grow into this next stage of spiritual life. To leave behind the elementary teachings and move on to the solid spiritual food.
As a generation, mine has been late blooming. In general, we were not fathered, so we were not told that we were men and women. Nor were our parents fully capable of seeing in the spirit who we were in His overarching purposes. But as He has risen up and released a more prophetic people, many are now seeing with their spiritual eyes, and beginning to recognize the true callings over each generation-and how they fit together in His Plan.
Much has changed, and is changing-turning. God Himself has come and fathered us, and is now making us spiritual parents. This requires us to leave cynicism, and heal from the anger towards our elders for not being there. We have to now fulfill the calling He has placed on our generation, so that the way will be prepared for those to come. As prophetic namers and inventors this generation is uniquely prepared to travel from the church¹s wilderness phase into its inheritance stage-in other words, from spiritual childhood into adulthood-from child to sons and daughters and co-heirs.
But also this generation will see its spiritual elders receive the blessing of seeing some of the fruits of their labour in the sixties and seventies and eighties. This specifically applies to those who who spiritually were born in the Jesus People generation. They are needed now to stand and taste the fruit they helped plant.
Many are not yet standing, or are lost under the world system-even those within various church house movements. i believe that God wants many to step out and return to some of the same fields they were birthed within-to come out from the security of their homes and church communities and be flowering ones again.
Others from my fathers generation are being called to loosen up financial resources and provide for this coming and already present move of God.
The church at large is being unified through refinement. We see this at every level, but simultaneously, many are being called to move out even before the general Body becomes unified. These are being asked to go into new lands and both build and be living tabernacles for His Presence. There is mighty Power being laid down on artist and thinkers globally to go out into previously occupied territories and spread the fragrance of His World.
What God is birthing now is not able to be controlled by our own understanding, or our programs. This is mercy for us, for we will once again be forced to let God do it! As the knowledge of God increases on the earth, and He makes His Plans known, we are receiving new perspective on such things as the church¹s relationship with the Jews-our spiritual brothers. This is very exciting, for it is a signal.
We see many books now written from this space between Christianity and Judaism.(a friend from my high school days has written a memoir of his life which is now a New York times best seller called, ³Turbulent Souls², which is about his journey from catholicism to judaism; another woman here in texas has written a great book called ³A Baptist among the Jews²; another remarkable book from this in between space is ³Girl Meets God² written by a Jewish/ Christian girl) Not all of these books are clear yet, but it is clear that a dialogue is opening which was begun in heaven.
As dry leaves start to rustle our windows, signaling the arrival of fall, so many things are falling away and dying and many new things born. As the spiritual seasons in heaven are shifting, many things He has birthed in heaven are starting to bloom here on earth. Turn us Lord of the harvest, turn us with Your heavenly seasons. Cause us to grow into resplendant trees on the shore of Your great River! Let the generations come forth into their true names, and birth and help parent what You Alone are growing.
The father balances so much. Joshua would never IN HIMSELF have been able to guide that many different people-with that many different roles in the drama-over the jordan. God did that! Nor would he have been able to win any of the battles. All of that was letting God father. The church will have to allow God to father in this coming season, for the movements of God are that complex and multifarious.
I had a dream the other night.
In one room, There was a board (also bored) meeting. This meeting was taking place at a dinner table, but no one was eating. It was solemn and serious both, and concerned. What it was concerned with was having a serious meeting about church budgeting. This was a church growth meeting.
I was in the living room which adjoined this meeting room. I was opening a glitter-filled manilla folder which had some money and some disorganized papers. I was playing with the folder and sprinkling the glitter onto the well vacuumed floor. The envelope was filled with schedules and money.
This dream symbolized the Church. In this dream, I was dealing with finances and budgeting in a playful way. It was imperfect and not overly concerned with perfectionism.
The meeting had great people in it. I saw that in the spirit some were giraffes and birds-ie some people in that meeting were not so serious in reality, but had come under a certain form of perfectionism which equated seriousness with responsibility.
I felt God saying, I need an imperfect people who are willing, more than I need a perfect people who are not willing.
We recently attended a prophetic conference. At it, the leaders spoke of overcoming a spirit of perfectionism in the church. Many are not stepping out into what He has because they feel they have to be in a perfected state before He will use them. At this gathering, God was releasing imperfect people into new levels of their callings.
I think that this is a time when God is saying it is ok to be messy, or not ready, but it is not ok not to step out.
We are unable to parent the amount of things which He is revealing and doing in our midst. We cannot be perfectionistic about this stuff. We cannot grab one area of what He is doing and make it an idol of our own ability to harness it. He is moving on too large a scale, and that is part of the point. We must turn over parenting to God, and pray for His Wisdom and a revelation of His Ways of managing so much.
Double mindedness comes when we are holding or gripping one thing which he has given us, and cannot quickly yield to the next. The church enters double mindedness when it tries to control one element it has been given to the excusion of fresh others. In fact, this element can become an idol-you see this in the house church movement when leaders are asked to move on to fresh works but tarry in order to be ³faithful² to the work they started.As spiritual parents the church must be flexible and open-ready!
There is no way to parent and stay in control of all the elements involved. The church will not be able to parent by gripping in control in this coming season. We must let God do it-in the area of finances, planning, missions-we must let Him move as He wishes, and partner with that. Very few churches are fully open to this. But I think in this hour He is humbling many in order that she might release control. This is his parenting intervention, for churches will not be able to handle the level of movement that is fixing to happen on the earth. So there is this necessary loosening.
There is this Psalm 91 call back up into the shelter of the bosom of God-to abide in that secret place from which He parents the nations and those being saved. If we leave that place and start parenting in our power, we will once again build our idols out of the things we have ³mastered². The old models of accountability won¹t hold in this new season; neither will our programs for discipleship. This is a larger move than that, and though they may have been born for other seasons, they will be unable to hold what is on the horizon! To parent is to bestow what He is bestowing when He is bestowing it. Let us pray for the release and wisdom to let Him do it!
"..by reason of use have their (spiritual) senses excercised" Part of the maturation process is growing in our spiritual "senses". There are stages of growth, which are a prgression of coming into different parts of Christ. We are to be growing up into His fulness. One of the later stages is sonship-in it, we gain our inheritance. Of course the fullest expression of this includes the whole Body's full maturity, but there are also phases of maturation on the individual level.
Many this season are feeling called into a newer level of Him. I say, of Him-in that each level is about getting to know more and more of God (increasing in knowledge of Him).
Some groups are entering a new level of relationship with The Holy Spirit. Two years ago, God showed me that He wanted to preach the availablility of the Holy Spirit to the baptist, for though there has been ostensibly the belief that The Spirit is active, there has been little practical ongoing experience of His Power.
God is sharing parts of His Body with one another in this season, to begin this work of maturation. He wants our spiritual senses to get excercised, and grow into fulness. We are to make as much of Him present as He wants to manifest. Our work is to yield to what He is trying to reveal of Himself in our midst.
I think this is more than signs and wonders, but it is at least this much. We travel through many parts of His Body. Different parts have received understandings of different aspects of His Life, and tend to emphasize that part. We need all the parts working together (with what every joint supplies). And for us to let Him Unify Himself (which only He is capable of dong), we need to be willing to let Him excercise our spiritual senses.
To just come together and let Jesus be present shakes neighborhoods. To lay aside our differences for His Sake and let Him hang with us, shifts cities. He is just looking for some people willing to let Him hang out with them-that's all He needs to change the world.
How the enemy wants to keep us from allowing His Kingdom to manifest! Anything to keep us embittered and divided. But when we let Jesus, He will mend and manifest, and all is washed clean; and we are with Him again uninterrupted over and over, and many are added to His numbers.
When we manifest His Kingdom, people are moved-some move away, some towards, but always this movement. When we get together, and let Him BE, we become a sermon. Noone goes away unaffected. Some friends in Him getting together and hanging out can change a city. Not because of anything anyone does, it is because the kingdom has come into the midst.
The kingdom-the spiritual Kingdom wherein Jesus is King-is good news. We are sent to manifest that kingdom. The harvest is overflow of being with Him.
Jesus is still being lashed. We see it between His People. He is also still healing us by His being lashed (for by His stripes we are being healed). To step into that space where He is getting lashed is a way of knowing Him in His noble suffering. How He goes on loving through all accusations and beatings. How He will not stop loving over time no matter what, because God is Love.
i am so impressed with Christ in this area, that I believe that if anyone came near Him as He takes the blows and keep loving they would give up everything and follow this noble One. Jesus is THE Man!
Lots of people in missions have not gone through the earlier stages of development, and have latched onto this idea of suffering for Jesus. Many unneccesary causalties occur in this, just as they do from anything built from our own understanding rather than His. We must find out where we are on our journey and let Him parent us there, so we can progressively come into the fulness of knowing Him.
God is a great parent and knows what we need at each stage! But we do not always know where we are at. We need to get with Him and find out. He will tell us, so we grow into a solid tree by His River!
Consider this: to suffer for Jesus verses to fellowship with Jesus in HIS suffering. I think that this has gotten very confused for a lot of people. To fellowship with Jesus in HIS suffering comes at a stage of one's spiritual development. And is a choice after seeing that He is in fact suffering, to join Him-to be with Him while He is suffering. It is a later stage in spiritual development.
Loosely, there are stages to our maturation. Each stage is a way to get to know a different part of Christ. We first know Him as deliverer/redeemer; then as couselor/teacher; then, as brother-this is when we move into His Sonship and gain our inheritance;then, we have the privelege of fellowshiping with His Suffering..and onto knowing His Kingdship and glorification.
I think if we jump ahead to the later stages without the others, we can be doing the wrong kind of suffering.
Amy's birthday is today!! She is the age of Jesus at the end of His ministry on earth, but we feel is it just a beginning for her-this year feels full of royal loving! May everyone be blessed by her life today!-her man, derek
God is able to whisper the name He has for you into your heart, and to cause it to bloom into fruition. At the proper season-the phase of sonship where we become identified with that part of Christ-He will tell us who we are with Him in heaven, and we will learn to live down from that place with Him, out onto the earth.
We will begin to move less from the naming of men, and more from His naming. We will find that path prepared beforehand to be our way of life!
Jessica you are missed, and we are ready to shop, eat, drink coffee, and search for shoes with you when you arrive-d and a
We had a remarkably smooth and electrically alive trip to England. Got to enter His motion of taking some spaces, and got to drink french champagne with Jen and her family. Saw Andrew and Bruce, Drew and abigail, jen and fran,emma and dan and all the other rhyming friends we have there. We felt ourselves the whole time and stayed in that glorious castle of a house-the Lovells, who have remained loose handed with all He has given them (which is a lot). Good to spend qt with Drew and to get overloaded in the Holy ghost together-like an english mountain cascade of sweet glory power...also ate an inrdinate amount of english breakfast! (Which is my second favorite form of communion). Thanks God for water and the river of YOur Being to float on wherever we go! Amen.
I lost my love post which is maybey the most important one I've written in a while-it delineated the nuances of my love for every person I've personally touched. So all I can say is that if you recently felt a huge burst or gushing-even an unctioning of true love wash into your heart, it was from me and I meant it! dc
Struck by this heavenly notion of spiritual generations. And the responsibility of each to carry its mantels, to play its part in His Drama. The father wants to pour into His House and fill it. He does so as each joint activates in its uniqueness. Our friends from the Jesus People movement are also being called out to be elders now, and we to help name them and those to come-together we will see many areas inhabited by Christ. A new level is open to us in this season, an open access. Many are being brought back to that simple place with Him to remember the name He gave them-to recall or learn for the first time who they are with Him, and then to allow Him to equip them with what they need in this season.
So many of us are just being asked to live out our lives from who we are with Him. He just wants to be with us in all we do. We went to a gathering a few weeks back, the prophets kept saying, eveyone is a full time minister. i get this. It is helping to guide us into that place of true identity-living from who we are above with Him. A generation reflects a certain aspect of Him-a seasonal aspect-one He is choosing to manifest on earth in His Order to build the full house. My father's generation were reflecting that pastoral and teaching aspect of Him, then the jesus people came and that evangelistic aspect shone, then the apostolic and prophetic emerged...all together we are being built up as a spiritual house.
The church is being shaken at the foundations-that much is clear. What is great about the insecurity which that creates is we are opened to just coming to Him again and have Him tell us what it is all about!
Simultaneously, the levites are crossing into the land-learning much warfare as they inhabit world spaces before untouched by the general body. So as in the book of joshua, you see the general body being unitied, as the levites go in...
I see now He is moving us further out into the fields of just being-not our roles or positions-just making friends and family as we go. A bit more jewish! (don't get me started!)
In England, got to hang with Drew and move together in God's power-how cool to see those parts of jesus coming together-His Arm and His Eyes.And to hang with an old friend! God so seeks people to just let Him be Himself. It never was about ministry, but His Pleasure in being with us. As we let Him be Himself, and just tell us who we are, we find we are free to be ourselves.
Our names before the worlds. Our names before we got labelled by ourselves. These intimate friends of Jesus. Coming into who we truly are in heaven and living down from there.
Many are being shown who they are now, and that's a journey. For me it has been asking Him to tell me the story of my life. And listening...
"Up, up! Over this generation a word, ARISE to take your mantel, to wear the multicolored robes of your heavenly attire. You are not the grunge ones, but my special namers, awake to succinct distintions in meaning and levels. Oh my true poets and originals-the entrepreneurs of the spirit. Don't bash away from your becoming. This is the hour to break from under cynicism, and take up your leadership positions. The ones coming next are those on fire in Him, but you must name them and call them out, instruct and father them in your slanty wonderful way. You who were not fathered are called fathers of my movements on earth. I allow you to name the movements of My Hands on earth. You who rightfully cared not for position or recognition, have come out from religion to find me in the fields and cafes, in the galleries and on sofas you have stayed alive to My conversing with those I am drawing. Oh I love you and my zeal grows. You will not miss this chance to take up your call and be sung out as poems into the worlds I am now taking possession of-the art world waits for My Fragrance and direction and interpretation-to have its ceilings shattered. Already the grapes begin to fall onto the dry earth-your tongues will name their ripe mid-air becoming...
"For surely I will shake My hand..."
As the foundations of His church are being relaid on Him alone and His mad love, we call forth those elders who have waited patiently for this hour of His deeper incarnation in His People. We see the unity to come, as our own joints are beginning to touch and function in Power. And these being prepared, the ones just behind us-already shock us with the levels of heaven they download. Oh elders, oh church leaders-don't miss this moment. Oh old friends who were birthed in the Jesus Movement, don't miss this one. Here we are the intimate ones-a sign to you, an olive branch, being held out to help you come forth from the systems of the world, the systems of religion into the wide open fields of Christ!
It's that old new story of IDENTITY PRECEEDS CALLLING-it also outlast our particular assignmetns on earth. Go wants to be our dad!! He may give us some jobs-big ones in these days!-but we are still those kids up there with Him, and we are still the ones who we are when we alone with Him in heaven. We gotta keep gettin up there and letting him whisper our names to us-over and over. Otherwise we get lost in these temporary things. Our identities are more complex than missionaries-that may be a chapter as may healers, pastors etc...but we are not our roles on earth. We are His Poems that He takes joy in just hangin with!
"Both priest and prophet are godless.." Jeremiah was warning the minsiters of his day against moving in their own power or positions-getting their identity caught up in their roles. Here is the entryway for very much evil in the church today. We are first to seek Him and found our identity in that place above with Him-the earthly work will pass, but our identities with Him will be eternal.
I'm left-handed. I was one of those rare children of the 70s who wasn't forced to write with my right hand. In kindergarten, my kind teacher Mrs. Beall, a sort of flower-child herself, kept left-handed scissors in the art bin. I felt privileged every time she dug them out for me, since I was the only left-hander in class. I've noticed that left-handedness is not very popular in Europe. I've never seen a fellow lefthander in Prague, and a few Czechs have noticed my oddity.
In softball, I first learned how to bat on my right side--my dad a baseball coach was always trying to get me to switch to my left side, because he was convinced that I would have more strength. I think he was right, because I ended up hitting a few line-drives with my left side. I became a real switch-hitter.
As much as I liked being different, I've started to notice that the left hand of God is not nearly as mentioned as His right. His right arm is his strong arm, his right hand is his protective hand, his right side is where you want to be. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. So what does this mean for left-handers? Well, to say that God's left side is His sinister side ("sinister" being the Latin word for left) would be suggesting that God can be sinister. To say that His left side is gauche ("gauche" is the French word for left) would be suggesting that God is clumsy. And in spite of all the medieval superstitions of lefthandedness being a sign of demonization or bastardness, I think that God's left side has gotten a bad rap.
He likes it when I start chasing down answers to things like this, so let's just say I feel like I'm at the beginning of the puzzle... There is no part of God that is lesser than another. His two sides are not opposites--they are two sides with different manifestations of his character. "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me!" says the beloved in Song of Songs, and this represents the two hands' essential differences. The Father's right hand is a powerful symbol throughout all of scripture. We are covered, protected, even judged by his right side. It is also his blessing arm, which extends out to touch our heads, to say, "You are mine; you belong to me." It represents his utter masculinity. But as his right hand embraces--which symbolizes initiative--His left hand is under us. The left hand is the intuitive feminine part of God--it is the part that actually nurtures us, holds us still.
He is speaking to us about generations. Never thought about it much before, but Scripture is loaded with Jewish understanding of generations. They are singing in the temple songs of generations, naming those who came before, and and those who are coming after (Psalm 78). There are spiritual generations--God is a God of seasons, and every one of us was born "for such a time as this" (Esther)! We are not accidents individually or collectively. He chooses each generation carefully to carry out His highest plans. We can choose whether or not to be the trumpets through which he blows. Like the wilderness generation--they grumbled ya know, they couldn't stop that complaining--they ended up dying in the wilderness. They could have had God as their government; they could of seen the land of purple. So he passed on the blessing to another generation. My question to the generation x: are we willing to stand now? Are we going to crumble in from cynicism or fear?
D and I just saw this new movie School of Rock by the (Austin, Texas!) Gen X director Richard Linklater. Americans know him for his infamous tales of our generation through the movie Slacker and Dazed and Confused. The titles say it all! But this new one--it is about a dude from our generation who suddenly finds himself a substitute teacher in a private school full of incredibly gifted students. It is like watching our generation trying to grow up, and finally seeing ourselves as leaders. He teaches the kids the stylistics and politics of rock n roll, and turns them into a first rate rock band. It sounds funny, but we are funny. We get irony. Here's this gifted guy who never quite grew up, never became the famous rock star, but now he is teaching kids through rock music. Which is what he have to give--teaching others through art, through inventive metaphors. Those of us who tried to fit in with our father's generation always felt a little bit one-dimensional; those of us who went crazy ended up with a philosophy not too far akin to the film's central lecture about being angry at "the man." We all know about the man. OUr generation is obsessed with getting inside things and knowing the truth; we are afraid of systems, of things becoming so abstract and institutional that we can't tell who's in control anymore. The reality is that anything that smells like authority or control becomes "the man." One of the primary wounds we carry--the 30 and 40 somethings--is fear of control. So we see the fruit of this curse in all the protests over anything that doesn't feel like a mom-and-pop venture, or anything that has lost authenticity. We are protesting "systems"! We don't even know what that is. We just know that we're angry. We weren't affirmed by our father's generation. But now it's time we let the heavenly Father name us. Like Benjamin, who was the only one directly named by the his father Jacob, and who was the one who stayed near his father to the end, we can receive our names directly from the God of Jacob. He intended it this way--that we would be a fearless generation that would stay near Him to the end.
Here's the funny thing--there's a reality to spiritual systems. Any time a truth becomes divorced from its Maker it becomes a dead system. God teaches us some things that help draw His church closer to the living fountain, closer to the life of the body-as-one; but sometimes we humans take those things and create a whole seminary around them. It is right that the Paragon Generation is concerned with systems and how to live under God himself and not an abstract doctrine; but it's not right that we are suspicious, or paranoid, or cynical. This is the shadow of our gift--and the enemy's work.
So the reality is--the young gifted ones need us. And so do our elders. We must speak what we see, in the brilliant way the father made us to see. Everyone looks up to us. We built houses at 21, invented yahoo.com and amazon.com and trekked the world, climbed mountains, bungee-jumped, celebrated all-night dance parties, took coffeehouses to the world, made sport-utility vehicles and military boots formal, changed art, fashion, film, how to raise children, literature, business--we made church fun again, even--and we are far from over. This is the beginning for us, says the Father. The best moments in this film were when the teacher--this struggling-to-be-an-adult teacher--tells each one of his geeky kids: "you're cool" and tells the older school principal "You're cool!" Both want and need his affirmation, and his utter coolness. They don't need us to change who we are. God calls us the Paragon Generation. We were and are a spiritual idea--a model for the ones to come, a model of creative freedom and entrepreneurial spirit. A model of passion and zeal for authenticity. Otherwise, those coming after us won't understand all the things they carry.
So here's the thing--this generation that got slackered and dazed and x-ed and confused and grunged and duded--even though we're grown up now and many with families, I think deep down inside most of us still believe those lies over us--it's time we let God rename us. His promise over our generation still stands. He calls us a prophetic generation. We weren't just supposed to be the Mac generation, or the Christian rock generation. We were actually supposed to carry a pretty heavy mantle of creative power and prophecy, as well as a gift from God to name our elders and the power generation coming after us.
When people got cut off from Jerusalem, they forgot who they were. This new movement is extremely organic and relational, but in order to not assimilate or forget our true identity, we need to remember Jerusalem. A great harvest is currently occuring in Austin, and there are few standing to help receive it. Many got hammered and left. Others came under the accusation which runs rampant in the church here. But God wants us to enjoy His Harvesting here, and to be in place by living and being who we are IN THE MIDST.
God Himself is releasing a spirit of reconciliation over the austin church, and it will be healed! But in the meantime, the harvesting is occuring, and it is fun to be with Him in this season of yielding!
Some have kept thier post, but lost sense of connectedness, but we must stay in the water or we will be drowned-if that makes sense.
Finding Him in all we do and remembering Jerusalem is the way.
We need YOu God-no matter how battered we have become by your people, or just being under the spirit of the world. We want you to manifest in our Midst. We want to BE living tabernacles for Your Glory to dwell. To BE harvesting chambers wherever we are. Let Your Hol Spirit move in and on us so that we are empowered to be spaces for Jesus to manifest! We will not forget what yohave done, and we will not forget Jerusalem. Amen
To the ³gen x² generation‹³Friend, move up higher.² This is the Lord¹s cry for us right now. ³Friend, move up higher. I am killing the stronghold of Œrelevancy¹ over you. This is a curse over your generation that has kept many of you from flying in your true selves. Break free in Me. I am ready to give you a new level of sitting at the feast‹you are no longer the cynical generation sitting at the edges of the supper table. I love you and I call you Exquisite Namers; I love your subtlety and cleverness. I made you as one of the mighty generations that would express Me in ways the earth had never heard before. You will be remembered! Now I call you out from under the curse. Ask your elders for forgiveness; you have needed them. They need you to come out from your closets so that they can receive fresh vision and hope‹for you are the hope that they prayed forŠ I am about to pour out on them a greater release of My spirit, which is greater than what they felt during their youth. And you are needed to help father and mother the generation that comes behind you, which admires you and though I have great plans for them, I need you to live out your dreams. Friend, it¹s time to start over. I am giving you a new start‹a new job for me. It is the one I wanted to give you all along.²
RELEVANCY. This is a cultural philosophy that entered the global church during the 80s, and it is crippling an entire generation of leaders: the Gen-X generation. ³To be RELEVANT² has become the battle-cry of our generation and God says this is the season that we bury it as a label. Oh guys, we bought it hook line and sinker. We trudged around in our Œreality bites¹ boots and it took many of us until our 30s to know who we were. But our Father is so merciful; He is replacing the steel-toe boots with princely slippers. He is asking us to reconsider gold. We thought we were the silver-wearing generation but now He is asking, are we willing to trade our dulled costumes for the radiance of the kingdom.
My generation, the original Gen X-ers, are those who came into their 20s and 30s during the early 1990s. Many of us came under this system of thinking ³relevant² about ourselves‹in our spirituality and culture, in our ministries and jobs. Because of our unique identity as seers and namers‹as a prophetic generation‹the enemy prophesied over us in the original Generation X novel in the 1960s that we would be the apathetic and materialistic generation. This was a lie but the Lord is breaking this off us even now. That we came to accept the name of ³X² itself was a horrible curse over us. We are not nothing, but the something that was and is to name others. What we saw was not supposed to jade us, but to cause us to name the powerful currents around us. ³Tales of an accelerated generation² is how Douglas Coupland subtitled his famous Gen X book‹let¹s receive that we came as an acceleration of the kingdom. We were never called to be relevant but to be unique deposits of freedom and expression in the world around us. The Father is asking us to put the idol of relevancy on the altar.
So many of us‹looking for a new expression of church life, trying to find our way in a world that offered what seemed to us a limited palate of options for careers and ministry‹either reacted by running from the church in anger, or by coming under a false ceiling of expression in the name of religious activity. The Father never intended us to become Goth so we could ³reach Goths.² In our fear of homogeneity we actually created homogenized ministry! But much of the Gen-X ministry philosophy was infused with this kind of thinking‹that we had to disguise ourselves in the clothes of the culture we wanted to save. Unfortunately, many Gen-x church leaders lost their own identity in the process. God never asked us to change who we were to reach out to others. By doing this we limited His Spirit, who intended the very expressions of our generation to saturate the world around us with His light. We also didn¹t trust Him that He is the one who draws all to the Father.
In our desire to be relevant, we reveal still our own need for the affirmation of world. The ³hey, look, I¹m cool enough and still a Christian‹dontcha wanna come to church?² kind of lifestyle shows how much we are still both angry with the church for not being ³cool² and at the same time begging the popular kids to tell us we¹re included, to tell us we¹re not the eccentric generation, the entrepreneurial artists and thinkers that we are. The generation that is coming after us doesn¹t suffer from this weakness, but they look up to us and need us. He is so merciful; He is making something new for us in the place that relevancy has thrived. If you don¹t have a heart for the poor, He is not forcing it in you. If you don¹t have a heart for skate punks, He is not asking you to. If you don¹t feel drawn toward coffeehouses, He is not asking you to start a coffeehouse. We do not reach people by trying to be relevant to them. Jesus is always relevant. He is asking us to express the fullness of our generation. Amen? Yay! He will overflow our hearts with love for all people; and the Jesus in us will leap out to them. The cry in them will leap toward us. Can we handle it? Yes!
To be the first postmodern generation‹which we are!‹means that He made us with an incredible sense of self-awareness, a willingness to try on different costumes, an ability to synthesize global cultures, and most importantly the very ability to name generations. It was His intention that we prophesy over the generations before us and help to name the one coming after us.
To those who left the church, He is saying, ³My arms are open. Come fly with me‹I have heard your anger and you need the arms of the body again. It is safe to come; you will not lose your identity.²
To those who stayed, ³It is time for a change, and this is no small revolution. Give me your hands. You have only let wind in your hands, and this has borne fruit, but now I am sending wind into your whole being. Let me the Wind into your heart. I am not just action to do, but the very breath of life. I am about to empower your whole expression to live My Life. You have permission to be yourself!²
Let¹s hear the Father¹s permission to our hearts.
Jesus, Jesus, again, I am so sorry for having run away. I am sorry that I missed out on all your gifts you intended. I was one of the ones who got frustrated; and then I thought I had to change my uniqueness to be halfway spiritual. I am sorry for resisting you‹out of fear. I want nothing but fear of you. Hollow us out, Lord. Give us back as gifts to the Father. We give you the stronghold of relevancy. Break off the cynicism from us, the disbelief. Help us. We bless the Jesus-people generation! They are our friends, but also our elders. We bless them. Thank you Lord for the kinds of places they set up for people to come to know you. Thank you for using them to give us the gifts of your Spirit, which they threw out so abundantly. Thank you Lord for them charismaticsŠ ha ha! Thank you for their adventurousness, for the fire that you put on them. Lord, restore the fire to them! Restore fire to the Jesus-Movement generation. They are not old and out of the game. We need them; we need them to lift out of their homes and come once again to the fields of your harvest.
In the old days, people would pilgrimage to Jeusalem to remember what they were connected with. Then they would return to the nations or places they were from and live from that wellspring or saturation point. They were commanded to never forget Jerusalem in thier daily lives, as it was the Source that gave them power to live as jews among the nations. God wanted them to be leaven in the places they lived, and to remain as leaven they were COMMANDED to go to the holy city-the festivals were times of renewal and fresh impartations that could be carried back to thier places of work and play.
As our pilgrimage begins to be global, we will still need the festivals to stay salty and renewed.
Morningstar is a place of renewal for us, Kansas City is another, but then we are asked to go back and be conductors of His Power into the places we were born to be in...to be ourselves into the places we are drawn to live and work.
He wanted to anoint our wole generation to live authentic expressions of His Life. Many got lost in a false dualism between ministry and life. Others went so far into egyptian life that they forgot thier true identity. But we are called to be a unique generation of authentic being in Him, forming fresh expressions of Him on earth.
Our homes and lives in europe participate in this authentic expression of being His People on earth. This Summer many of us were coming out from under that false dualism between ministry and life. He is asking us to be ourselves and live from who He has made us to be. If we are artist, be artist; if business men and women, then be leaven there. We are His Poems, and He wants to manifest His Church into the unique vessels of our lives. That is THE form. And that looks unique to each person.
We still must remain connected to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the places and people He calls Holy and Precious to Him. It is His Beloved Cities. It is sometimes within an institutional setting and other times not. The gathering we just visited was not-it was a festival on a fiddler's convention site. We must stay open to pilgrimage to Jerusalem in this season, while remaining leaven where we are. This is why He gave commands to go to the festivals. But the festivals are often no longer in church buildings- two years ago, one was in Austin Texas at epicenter. And I was commanded to go. From that pilgrimage came a whole new chapter in my life and journey-a new family which is still forming, and one I am excited about journeying with.
fresh Winds to you all! Just got back from a powerful gathering of new and old prophetic friends-that part of His Body is just so intense, awake and alive-we worshiped so hard, we nearly translated! Came back full and feeling particularly conductive. Throughout America, God s placing these great reservoirs, and it is good to go and fill up-to be saturated! I got o see old friends from days in North Carolina and had so may words of life put in me. It is so good to be connected to such a mighty Stream in Him!
ANyways, we made it back to our desks, and there is much to write an release from here!
Yesterday, as I drove up from San Antonio-that healing city-God began talking to me about Austin. Telling me how original it is. That it really is an entrepreneur in Him, and He wants to bring fresh thinking and forms of design out from her. That when she is herself, she wil give things to Dallas that can o out into the nations and the rest of this country. Austin is not really a sending place, but a birthplace of originality. Artist know this and gather here. So I am excited as the churc begins to enter a spirit of reconciliation here, to watch this great harvesting which is already happening reach fruition.
But what I want to talk about is the meta-story of our journey to North Carolina.
God has asked all of us this season to be leaven in the places He has put us. God is asking us to live from who we are-not just to be relevant, but to be who we are and go into where we would naturally go and be leaven.
This conference we went to was held as a festival or feast. Rather than a traditional conference. So there was less of a division between regular life and gathering. In this way, it had a jewish feel. It was held at a fiddler's convention ground, and as fiddlers played, we realized that God was taking back that land, by having us meet there. There was no division between life and "ministry". God is making the church enter real life in this way,and that was exciting!
Our summer also had this sense of less of a division between our "ministry" selves and our true selves-like God wanted to use us from who we are-like getting jobs we actually enjoy,and anointing us in that.
o be leaven or salt...we still need to remain salty, so we need gatherings and times of saturation, but then He sends us back into where we are naturally drawn to be His People-not to assimilate, but to be who we are in those places.
Some are calling this a lifestyle anointing, but I would say that it is more about your ministry is your life-like He is taking off even that division between life and ministry as His kingdom becomes the kingdoms of this earth.
