Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Consecration

To stand firm where you've feared to tread,
To walk straight through what you're running from,
To take that step only to find yourself standing on the sea:
Are you ready?

To close the doors and keep them sealed,
To sever that which was always your pride and joy,
To abandon what you've always wanted only
to find what you never knew you needed:
Are you willing?

To tune out the noise and finally hear truth
in the silence,
To block out the colors and see where
light and darkness collide,
To come to the end of yourself
and find who you were crafted to be,
To place all you think you are down,
and receive what He gives you:
Will you pay that cost?

To give your life
to the sound of His voice,
To live His Life
at the base of the Cross,
To walk through the tear in the veil,
see the Face and Glory of the King,
be touched with the coal and hear
"Whom shall I send?"

Will you wait?
Will you listen?
Will you go?
Will you lay it down,
Give it up,
Die
and truly begin to live?

The answer is yours,
but the question is now.
What is your answer?

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

On VIsion and Passion

At our last training, God hit me with a startling question. "What is your Vision?" Something i never thought of before. I was always content to follow someone else's vision. So when hit with the idea that as a leader i needed something to call someone to. And up till now, i was content to leave ISaiah 61 and the GReat COmmission as my vision. But this ultimately left me stranded in vaguity and without direction. But one thing still seems to call to me from the corners. A vision. The thing that God has specifically made me to do. My mission and what that looks like. What I now see as one of the most intimate relations to God: to have something on His heart specifically branded onto yours. I have been seeking this for the past few days here, and God has given me a peace in the uncertainty of it all. What He has shown me in the definite however, is passion. That burning force that is at the base of all I do in ministry. the passions that shape all my values. I dont really know how to describe it, but this is all i can say, and i hope it makes sense. It all revolves around seeing the Bride walk in the holiness in which she was made to walk.
1.) a desire to see truth claimed, proclaimed and lived by
2.) A desire to walk the members of the body through pain
3.) to carry the burdens of the weak and weary
most of these passions only barely make sense in their wording, but i cant find the words to express what i feel so strongly. But then the question still remains, what do i do with this? How does this all work together? Where will this take me? WHat does this all look like? and at the same time, a desire to just throw the questions into the dust and walk without knowing, just trusting as it comes. So now i find myself being torn between the questions and the actions. do i go forth or do i ask? when i word it like that, the prefereable choice is obivious, but i still find myself torn. questions that i want to answer, but that in truth is the chain that keeps me from walking, isnt it? That an unanswered question, not knowing who, what, when, where, why or which one for how long can hinder and bind, if not completely debilitate. So i stand here, having said, acknowledged, confessed and understood everything that i've just written, and find myself stuck, at "where do i go from here?" how to stop asking the question is really the only answer i want right now.