A Happy 5th Rebirthday!

 Today is a special day: my 5th rebirth day! 5 years ago today, I stepped into a healing experience that forever rewired my belief system about God’s availability. Since then my spiritual life has gone from a rollercoaster of mountains and valleys to a steady upward climb into His heart. Man, Jesus is way better than I ever thought. I haven’t missed a day in the last 5 years of physically sensing His presence. Just now, I closed my eyes, and felt warmth go down my head and legs as though love were a liquid substance. The voice behind me says to my mind, “I never left you. You just didn’t know that I was here.” Sometimes the words are wild and uncomfortable. But usually he just says, “I love you. Don’t be afraid.” Sometimes he just sits there, knowing me. But always, always He is there.

Now I’ve done some thinking and listening about this strange experience and I’ve realized it is not all that strange if you talk to right people. Many people have tapped into a tangible interactive friendship with a God. Once they taste it they never want to go back. But many people DO go back to the dry trudging of spiritual aloneness. They do this for a million reasons. But the reasons all boil down to an attack on our willingness to be known in this way. It honestly gets uncomfortable, life gets stressful, we believe so many lies about ourselves and God. We drift away. In the process of drifting, we assign meaning to our deserts: Maybe God is teaching us something by pulling back our ability to experience Him. I don’t think so.

Here is my 5-year assessment of what this experience is, what it means, and what it doesn’t mean...

In my layman’s definition, we experience God’s presence when through a combination of environmental factors, true knowledge, and the practice of our will, our bodies and minds experience the resonance of alignment with our spirts which are connected to Jesus. This alignment might be called surrender. I like the less militant term, “willingness”. When I become sufficiently willing for God to be there (which usually involves the significant removal of false belief systems through emotional healing), I automatically experience him. Worship, which is just the practice of intentionally appreciating God through beauty, often creates a perfect environment for God’s Presence to be felt. The assertion of true facts about God does the job too. Brother Lawrence, the 17th century Carmelite monk who first coined the term “The Practice of the Presence of God” had the simplest practice of thinking about God as often as possible. This constant meditation on the person of God brought him (and countless others) into profound and consistent ecstasies. Maybe you’ve felt it before: someone says something so true it literally gives you chills. You can feel the resonance on the word. God loves that stuff and He wants to give you a life full of it. When I speak warmly about him, I’m sometimes so moved by Him that I physically shake.

I’ve known I can have this experience for a long time. What I didn’t know is that I could intentionally apply my will through specific habits that cause me to experience God pretty any time I want. Well I guess I did know that. What I DIDN’T know is just how simple and rewarding these habits could be. Let me give you a couple examples of easiest exercises that take almost no time but now consistently yield results.

*Taking a deep breath and imagining I am breathing in God.

*Picturing Jesus sitting across from me and sometimes seeing something in His hands for me or just watching how He interacts with me.

*Saying true things like, “I know I can’t get to you in my power, but I bet you would love to be here with me right now. You love me. Your power is perfect in my weakness, etc…”

*Looking, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting beautiful things and and then mentally appreciating God for them.

*Picturing my mind as a chasm into which God’s thoughts fall gently

*Reading and thinking about the Bible.

*Walking slowly down a hallway or down my street.

*Imaging God’s thoughts towards a person while they are talking.

Of course I do the harder stuff too and I love it. But my bread and butter is the moment-by-moment experience of God’s loving Presence. This, I firmly believe, is not a gift to certain individuals, but a birthright to every person who trusts Jesus with their lives.

What this DOESN’T mean is that the circumstances of life become easy. Some do: for instance, I’ve probably been sick a total of 5 days in the last year. My mental clarity is better. My diet has improved. I don’t entertain grudges or pity parties. So naturally I’m not as susceptible to the things that plague many people. But in the last 5 years I have experienced death, loss of relationship, betrayal, money stress, busy schedules, boredom, distraction, and the pain of raising 3 kids. Some of these things have stretched my capacity, but I’ve never missed a day of experiencing God at least once and sometimes for hours at a time. And in the hardest parts of the dry and painful season, I would describe my life as deeply happy.

In the last five years, I’ve also been dealing with significant areas where I am not yet fully submitted to Jesus. Some of these areas have been profoundly healed. Others he is still chipping away at. At the forefront: I still hate looking stupid and I still hate talking to strangers. Chip, chip. I also struggle with the idea that God’s acceptance of me is truly unconditional. Chip, chip. Could God really love all of me? Is he really as good as I’ve seen Him to be? Am I deceiving myself? Chip, chip. He uses friends and family to bring me along. This week, one of my friends has been hammering away at me, exposing lies, and helping me find new layers of profound growth and healing. But I no longer feel I’m a broken mess waiting to be made whole one day. I AM whole, and there will always be new and increasingly beautiful layers of wholeness when I partner with Him. This doesn’t preclude humility. In fact it takes humility to embrace the reality of what He thinks of us, because none of us did a darn thing to deserve it. The picture I get is of me stepping into the front door of Father’s house. I’d be happy to sit in the security and beauty of His front entryway for the rest of my life. But there are so many hidden little rooms and interesting things to do here if I want to explore.

These last few weeks, God has been tearing down pride and old mindsets in my life. Like shedding scales from my eyes, I find myself thinking in a way I never thought I could think. I’ve cried a lot, felt the deep value for other people (especially the women in my life), loved more than I thought I could… I’m embracing tenderness but can also feel intense power flowing through me when I interact with people. The work is more intense (I almost want to say savage) than usual, as though someone is tossing up my brain like a tossed salad. God is giving me step-by-step instructions throughout my day. He is giving me intense prophetic words through people I’ve never met. People are having dreams about me and waking up in the night to pray. It all points to a really good future in which the healing I’ve experienced these last 5 years will be powerfully used for the healing of many many people. I’m excited! But I’ve learned the strength of a ministry is largely determined by how deep the person in ministry is willing to go in their own personal formation. I’m submitted to the process, because it is far more joyful than painful and I’m so curious about where this is all going.

I think the next five years will be as much outward as the last five were inward. I’m grateful for a lot of space to do my own work, but now I think I’ll find more opportunity to share this gift with others. God will keep doing his thing, challenging my definition of a “normal” life. But every step of the journey will be good because I am certain that I will sense Him right next to me, loving me, carrying me.

Prophets, Presidents, and the Post-Election Reckoning

In November I cast my vote in the Presidential election. My vote was based on a mashup of values and opinions about what is wrong with the world and who was better equipped to address the greatest number of problems while doing the least harm in other areas. But throughout the election season right up to moment I put my finger on the touchscreen to cast my vote, I had nagging thought that bothered me. I wonder what God thinks about all this. I wasn’t asking myself this because nobody had an answer to that question but because everybody seemed to have an answer to that question. On the conservative side, countless high-profile prophets came out of the woodwork to declare the inevitable reelection of Donald Trump. For them, God’s choice was clear and they were willing to stake their reputations on the outcome of this election. It turns out it was a bad gamble.

Over the last month, some of these prophets have dug in or pivoted. Others have apologized. Perhaps the best-known of these prophets was Kris Vallotton of Bethel Church, who publicly apologized on social media saying, “I was completely wrong… there’s no excuse for it. I think it doesn’t make me a false prophet but I think it does create a credibility gap.” Likewise prophetess Kim Mass apologized after prophesying Trump’s reelection in a public letter saying, “When all the prophets began to prophesy a Trump re-election, I allowed their voices to be my confirmation. Not God. That is what I truly and humbly repent for.”

So on January 25, Dr. Randy Clark hosted a public conversation with Vallotton and Maas along with others to discuss not only the failure of so many prophets to accurately predict the election but the future and credibility of all prophetic ministry in the light of such a high-profile failure. I tuned in and found it valuable for many reasons. If you’ve scratched your head with me about the operation of Christian prophesy in this election, I highly recommend you check it out. It is relatively unfiltered and very educational.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhs0Fol-oX8&feature=youtu.be

Here are a couple things I took away from the conversation...

1. Prophetic involvement in a national election is serious business. The influence of these prophets can not be understated. Because I respect some of these people’s ministries, I was admittedly influenced by their prophesies. Other friends were entirely swayed by them. In some ways I think the fevered pitch of manifest destiny this created contributed to the January 6 capital insurrection. So Vallotton is right when he says this creates a credibility gap. This should not be glossed over.

2. Nevertheless, the willingness of Vallotton, Maas, Shawn Bolz and others to publicly apologize is healing to some degree and is a significant step towards repairing the credibility gap.

3. Wrong prophesies don’t equal false prophets. We should judge prophesies. But when we judge prophets on the merits of one prophesy we are in dangerous waters. Not only do we miss the blessings of legitimate prophetic ministries, we risk the judgment of Matthew 5 associated with quick condemnation. I don’t know these people personally, but I follow their ministries closely enough to appreciate their hearts. I may disagree with their politics but I can still learn from them.

4. Prophets are human. Go figure. Many of them are feelers. And often they run in a pack. We should honor prophetic gifts but we should not put prophets on a pedestal of infallibility.

5. Wrong prophesies don’t equal NO prophesy. Paul commands the church not to despise prophesy (1 Thes 5:20). Prophesy is a legitimate gift. Many people steward this well. It is designed to build up the church. Dealing well with false prophesy is part of the job description of the church. We don’t do this by shutting down prophesy altogether. We do this by weighing each word carefully against scripture, circumstance, and corporate discernment (1 Cor 14:29). This is only difficult if nobody in the church has a robust knowledge of scripture, the character of God, and what His voice sounds like. If this is the case, then you have a much bigger problem.

6. Fear is a killer. Kim Maas observed that she found herself feeling a little scared about the trouble she believed our nation would be in if we did NOT reelect Trump. She allowed this fear to inform what she thought God was saying. This helps me understand how so MANY prophets got it wrong. Fear has been the soup d’jour for a long time. We’ve been dogged with countless conspiracy theories and worst-case scenarios designed to make us afraid. If millions of conservatives sincerely believe that Biden = some version of doomsday, then it makes sense that their prophetic barometer would be thrown off by the fear in the air. In my own conversations with the Lord, I found it very difficult to hear from him accurately about this election for this very reason.

 
7. Operate in your own discernment. This is what Maas regretted most in her experience. She let other people confirm what she thought God was going to do instead of God himself. This is the very reason I didn’t base my vote solely on other people’s prophesies. I considered them but then I had my own conversations with God. While God never told me who was going to win, I DID hear him say, “I will never ask you to go against your own conscience.” He assured me he had a plan. He helped me understand His values (which as it turns out are a bit different than mine) but at the end of the day he was gentle and encouraged me to vote my conscience. So I did. I suppose this is a bigger lesson on discernment for all of us. It’s not bad to ask others to help us listen to God. But God’s goal is to have a personal conversational relationship with every one of His kids and not to constantly have to speak to them through others. When we trust-fall into the prophetic words of other human beings, we shouldn’t be surprised when we hit the ground sometimes.

8. It’s okay to swim in your lane. Maas reflected that she had never given a political word like this before. Her calling was to strengthen the gifting of other believers, not to divine elections. This is also the observation my mentor gave me in 2016 when I began dabbling in political commentary on Facebook. On reflection, I might have been spot on in my observations but it didn’t really matter because I was operating outside of my calling. My calling is to promote Jesus and strengthen believers through discipleship and healing. But at some point I was more interested in being right and speaking truth than I was in doing what God told me to do. I had to course correct. I hope many many prophets are doing the same thing right now.

Kudos to Randy Clark, Kim Maas, Kris Vallotton and others for hosting the conversation. As Randy observed, this a critical moment for reflection, even reformation within the prophet movement. All prophets need accountability. They need best practices. They need to work in community while not just relying on the discernment of others. They need to recognize together that Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world. I am certain that God cares deeply about politics and I do think Christians should participate in government. But we need to guard against the temptation of Christian nationalism and Christian dominionism which make the world the servant of the Church instead of the other way around.