The IT. The thing that is next, is out there. Have you experienced IT. The next level of Jesus incarnate. Have you looked in His eyes? Have you seen the next frontier--inside of you, in the world, in your relationships? The mysterious, wonderful IT. "It" is always in front of us.
Lest you think I am being a bit too mystical, what I mean by "it" is the thing you experience when you look at someone or feel something that seems like the next level of spiritual transformation, something you want. We all go around with this thirst. Why are we not searching for it with all our might? That is what is meant by the man who sold everything to search for the priceless pearl.
The priceless pearl is the IT.
I remember all the times I saw the IT. I said to myself, this is something new, this is something that is going to change my life, and I want it, no matter what kind of weird radical decisions I have to make in my life. No matter what it challenges inside of me. No matter how many safe things it risks.
So many of us just want more tools to learn how to cope with life, with our already existing reality. The IT is not something that helps us cope. The IT is going to rock your world, turn it upside down, rip open the cages, send us to bigger levels of Jesus in us.
Jesus wants to INCARNATE inside of us. He wants to be fully expressed, limbs, heart, mind and all. This is not a religious thing.
We all need more deliverance.
We all need more Holy Spirit.
We all need more healing.
We all need more understanding and discernment.
We all need more community.
We all need more Jesus.
We all need more freedom.
We all need more love.
We all need more vision.
We all need more repentance.
We all need more Jesus.
The package that it comes in may surprise you. It always surprises me. It is never a justification for where you are at. It may be some grace, some mercy and some kind eyes, but the IT will stir you, will bring you thirst for more.
Maybe it's been so long for some of you; maybe it's been so long to have experienced something that feels, tastes, smells like something you don't know but you just have to have. Maybe you are just coping with life, coping with circumstances. It is not a method of coping. The IT is not a set of friends or jobs or circumstances that make you feel ok for being where you are at. Although at times those things are nice, they can soothe the balms of frustration at religion. They can help you live with your pain to an extent.
I am not talking about religion, something you go out and join. I am talking about a thirst for transformation. So many of us have gotten frustrated with church experiences, walked away and then found ourselves coping alone. If you are afraid of what people will think of you, if you are afraid of Christians and their judgments or others who will judge you for being more spiritual, the IT will drive you out of this fear. The IT will drive you into the arms of others who know HIM, to search for his living presence. The IT will challenge every thought, attitude, orientation. IT always comes as love.
The IT is the tree of life. One tree has a kind of knowledge, which often seems wise, which sometimes looks spiritual and you can live with it because it satisfies your thoughts about being right or even being Christian. The other tree, the tree of life, is the presence of Jesus. When you step towards it, it is filled with His presence. You all know what it means to breathe the air around this tree, even if it has been a long time since you breathed it.
The IT sometimes comes when you are least expecting it. It sometimes comes when things come crashing around and you are desperate. The IT sometimes comes when you are running backwards. But the IT always is there, whether you are actively looking for it or not. The IT can most certainly be chased, however. We can always choose between the two trees.
The IT is an experience I like to call looking in the eyes of Jesus. Have they penetrated you lately? They will shake you to your core. None of us are there, but are we chasing it? Really. Until we get to the place where we want to resurrect people from the dead, where the thoughts, ways, hopes, dreams, inspirations from the atmosphere of Jesus are pervading every area of our life, we need more.
The IT is itchy feet, an itchy heart.
If you catch the IT, just the mere whiff of it, pursue it at all costs. You will not be disappointed. It will bring joy, freedom, vision, and cast off scales from places you didn't even know scales existed.
I think I must be time-impaired. No matter how many times I figure out what nation/city/etc. is in what time zone, I still mix it up. We do call abroad just about every week now, but I still can't imagine who is in what part of their day. So I made this handy clock; maybe we can all use it. It's actually real time. I don't know why I didn't figure this out before, having a little page with lots of clocks, kind of like the stock market does with the new york/los angeles/tokyo/london thing, only a virtual version.
Call it the tribal reminder. (The image takes you to my clock page.)
What is Justice?
Justice is My Truth made manifest. It is My Kingship made manifest.
All around us, we see things of injustice. We see people who have their lives stolen, we see people who have their belongings, their dignity, their hope, stolen. Our reaction to injustice is often: how unfair! How unfair that a life was stolen, how our friends were deported.
And indeed, the enemy is unfair, and it is right that we be angry. But in the midst of this, the Lord keeps reminding me that our ideas of justice in these situations always come down to how to right the wrongs. In human definitions, justice is: paying reparations (paying back), balancing the scales, bring the wrongdoer to account and punishing him. In its worst cases justice is vengeance. And most of all, justice is being fair.
But while God’s justice can encompasses all these things, justice is much bigger and far more loving than simply “bringing fairness”. His justice may not even appear fair, at first. He is not merely trying to right the wrongs and drop the gavel on the oppressor. He wants to manifest His Kingship. His true justice brings glory to His Name, so that all bow and see the King.
The Lord took me to Isaiah 59, which is a massive confession of our own sins. As I read this I was overwhelmed by my own sinfulness, by the areas where I have judged others. How deeply I do not deserve justice.
For our offenses are many in your sight,
and our sins testify against us.
Our offenses are ever with us,
and we acknowledge our iniquities:
Lord, I acknowledge the sinfulness in my own heart. I know that my sins grieve you.
So justice is driven back—
and righteousness stands at a distance.
As I continued to read the passage, I saw how justice--true justice--is not something we know about. When justice reveals itself, it reveals one of the foundations of His throne! It reveals the nature of who God is, His Lordship, His authority over all creation and men. True justice reveals that men are not in charge. It reveals far more than rightness, but truth, love, compassion for all involved, dignity, power, transformation and wisdom. It reveals that Christ alone is the one who works justice, that He is king.
The Lord looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene
so his OWN ARM worked salvation for him.
He put righteousness on as a breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
Jesus, we know that you are working tirelessly on our behalf; we know that we have tried and failed and bringing about justice. You saw and see that no one can intervene, so you alone are bringing salvation. You yourself will get the credit, will get the glory. Our own fairness, rightness, stance before you, our cleanliness are totally dependent on your blood, that you have done this for us, that you are the worker of justice. We are nothing without it.
From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord,
and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory.
For he will come like a pent-up flood
that the breath of the Lord drives along.
Justice is the revealing of the Lord’s own name, Savior, Redeemer. Today He kept asking me to expand my definition of justice. Justice is how He wants to reveal His name and His lordship through every situation. We have to learn this, that it may not look fair on the surface, but that justice itself is an act of revealing. It will always reveal Him, and Him alone as the true redeemer. And it will certainly come. He will ALWAYS bring justice for his chosen ones (Luke 18:7).
When Solomon was forced to judge between the two women and the baby, he asked for his assistants to “bring me a sword”. He was not going to use it to divide babies or kill people. He was going to reveal the nature of God’s truth and justice. With one simple act, the woman confessed. No one had to guess who was wrong. No one had to be manipulated or threatened. And in the end, there was fairness but most of all there was an awe that fell over the entire kingdom over this simple judgment--an awe of the Lordship and wisdom and love that Solomon had.
Jesus, we pray for your complete and total revelation of yourself in areas where we have been mistreated or have been stolen from. We confess that we have nothing to offer to justice; our hearts are only clean through you. We cannot demand reparations or vengeance or even fairness. Have mercy on us. We pray that in these situations, you would manifest your kingship, the greatest revelation of yourself that we may worship and marvel at your majesty. Even now, as we have friends who have been rejected, persecuted and even recently, killed, we want your truth revealed in the greatest possible way so that people are saved, people are thrown aback by who you are, people are drawn into your kingdom in greater ways… that we will experience you coming like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along!
Last year we went on a road trip with a bunch of friends to California, and we felt like there were specific things that needed to happen, connections to be made--and especially on a road trip, especially when you have about 15 people to consider, there are always blunders, mishaps, bad timings, etc. Derek is all about timing too--knowing the right time for the right thing, but not everyone has this same sense of timing and choreography.
We got really frustrated at one point with the direction things were taking, and were trying to figure out 'how to get back on track' with what we thought was supposed to happen, when God gave us a funny word: "commit your way and keep moving forward, even if it seems like it's not the way it was supposed to be.... get to know me in redemption".
We sat in the car and thought of all the friends we were on the way to visit, the stories they had--most of them are real leaders in their communities but all of them have really hard stories, stories of imperfection and weakness... and all of them limping in one way or another. But all of them have a kind of humility I admire, where there is a willingness to accept suffering and walk through it with dignity.
And the redemptive story he is telling through them is really sweet and beautiful. That trip taught us so much about redemption... obviously it was not the perfect plan that we kicked ourselves out of the garden, but even in that moment, there was a backup, a plan B, so to speak, that would end up becoming and still is becoming, the entire story of his creation. The remaking of all things new.
I started to learn that trip about the place of suffering is really the place from which we reach the most amazing heights... I think about the 2nd temple... its glory was greater not because it looked better but because it had been built with 'burnt stones'.... and so the rejoicing and gratefulness was far more spectacular than had ever been seen in the bajillion-dollar temple that Solomon built.
Obviously when we're in it, when we're in the suffering parts, it's so hard to see the other side of things. How to be grateful at all is beyond me, let alone how not to get bitter. But I am seeing it, even now, in some of my friends--the fight not to get depressed or lonely or anxious. And that fight is so worth it, because when they get to the other side of things, or even from the midst, they have so much to teach us about beauty and hope.
This past weekend I visited the Ground Zero site in New York. I have never felt the presence of God so strongly as I did at that place. It was almost as if the Holy Spirit was hovering or brooding over it, almost like he did at the beginning of creation. There is a not-yet in that space, where cranes, drill and concrete trucks are beginning to complete the foundation of what will be there. There was something in there that had hope but also an intense suffering, and Jesus loves to dwell in those places. His presence is actually thick in suffering places. It reminded me of what David wrote-- 'even if I make my bed in hell, you are there'
He is so present in your suffering... there is no place he hasn't been. You may not feel his presence but he fills those places with himself, and He will resurrect from your devastation. He will come up out of his own grave, and so will you.