Marvelous Light and Marvelous sound

This is a song that is currently being rocked at my church…which you can read all about at www.Remnantloves.me

Charlie Hall everybody!

You will not

I am always leaving…

But You God

are not.

You do not.

You will not.

I am always leaving

something,

somewhere,

Someone..

But You, God of the Angel-Armies, You do not leave us!

You will not leave us.

 

It is ever my delight

to wander toward You,

You the Promise.

I remember how first You first wooed and lulled me in deep.

And it is ever my joy to learn how to live in light of such a gift as You.

My heart struts and sings where I would break my body endlessly to follow.

To the place where I want nothing but You.

Not blessing,

Not guidance,

Not anything

But You.

 

My heart twists in its old flames.

It writhes in yesterday´s affections

But in you Lord,

my heart is made capable.

´Tis made calm.

The miracle between Italy and Egypt

I´ll try and keep this short, because that´s exactly how it happened in real time, just a few days ago. I was sitting in the hospital having come to visit my Tata who, yet again, was resigned to her unfortunately incessant treck from the emergency room to a hospital bed for a good few days to re-coop from her latest medical mishap. An Italian doctor, doctor Benninni, (very fun to say), was my Tata´s first doctor upon her arrival to the E.R. here in Napa Valley. 

Just to catch you up…My Tata is 88 years young and recently underwent the infamous whipple surgery to treat her diagnosed pancreatic cancer. After that surgery, which was a success, she developed softball- sized pockets of fluid collection that normally would pass right on through her body. The pockets are the bodies way of trapping and at least containing an infection ifthe body is not doing its normal day-to-day  job of getting rid of such fluids. It´s pretty neat when you think about…the body is so ingeniously designed…it acts in our best interest often times without us even being aware there was even a threat to address. Anyway, this fluid led to isolated infection in and around the still healing mid-section of my Tata.

Long description short, these pockets were all but taken care of weeks ago when doctors in San Francisco surgically transfixed a constant drain on my Tata´s side in order to drain these crazy softball pockets. Sounds good, seemed to work, in fact she was thought to not have had any more fluid collection at all. But, fast forward to the last three days…my Tata complained of stomach pain, and upon having to be taken to the Italian E.R., she was shown her own brand new, that-evening x-ray…showing a huge remnant of the third, thought-to-be-dead-and-drained, pocket. It had become an “extra big softball” in Benninni´s own words…which I think was code for pumpkin, or mandolin-sized ball of bad. It was rather sweet how he tried to not freak my Tata out.

more Washer

the King of boys

I came across something in read-through today that is probably nothing too important to most of you and more than likely nothing new.

As I was reading in 1 Samuel I came across the passage in 16:12 where David, the youngest of seven sons (or 8 kids depending on what commentary you read)  is summoned by Samuel to appear before him. After standing, as a group, for who knows how long, and after having already seen the cream of the crop, so to speak, of Jesse´s offspring in the six boys he just paraded in front of the ever eager and discerning prophet, Samuel, at last, sees the prodigal runt. And he conveyed the following…

“He was ruddy, had beautiful eyes and was handsome.”  

God was speaking through his son, the prophet, Samuel and calling out his other son, the boy-King, David. How absolutely pleasing it must´ve been for God in that moment!

And talk about the crazy dynamics in the air…were these not every bit the same kind of foreshadowing seeds that unleashed Joseph´s crazy adventures from slave to King.  Joseph certainly had a story and a half  when all was said and done and he drew his last, but as Gen. 50:20 lends the understanding…  ´Circumstances that some intend for evil upon others, God can and often does comandeer those circumstances and blesses the afflicted through them, making what was intended intially for evil, now and forever for Good.´ 

Anyway, despite the for-illustrative-sake cross reference, this passage is beautiful to me.

You know David was tiny…and not just because he is often most notoriously remembered for standing across a freakin´huge giant that would dwark Shaq by two whole feet and weigh as much as a brown bear, but because he is simply small.

1Corinthians 7 voting

(vv. 29-31)

In a pit with a Lion on a snowy day

I just finished reading Mark Batterson´s book, In a pit with a Lion on a snowy day. In the last chapter he confesses that God gave him two lions that were to be chased in his life, planting a church and writing a book. And while the writing venture didn´t happen with ease and was replete with over 10 years of rejections, set-backs and discouraging circumstances, he never stopped chasing. And write that book he did! This book is chalked full of wise, biblical, one-liners, that would make as good of prayer material as they would board room topics. He talks about so much good stuff and how we´re not just missing it, but we´re settling for far less in many aspects of our so-called fearless, ever-chasing-after-God faith. Which means, as one could surmise, we´re not just missing out on God, we don´t even know we are. 

So, instead of trying to re-cap the good stuff he touched on throughout his book in my own paraphrasing attempts, I´m just gonna give it to you the way it came to me…in his words.

2 Samuel 23:20-21… There was also Benaiah son of Jehoiada, a valiant warrior from Kabzeel. He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two of Moab´s mightiest warriors. Another time he chased a lion down into a pit. then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it. Another time, armed only witha club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiahwrenched the spear from the Egyptian´s hand and killed him with it.

You are responsible forever for what you have tamed.     – Antoine de Saint Exupery

“A sense of destiny is our birthright as followers of Christ. God is awfully good at getting us where He wants us to go. But here´s the catch: The right place often feels like the wrong place, and the right time often feels like the wrong time.”

How much happier you´d be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash smash your cosmos.      – G.K. Chesterton

“Lion chasers know and believe God is bigger than any problem they face in this world. They thrive in the toughest circumstances because they know that impossible odds make for amazing miracles. This is how God most enjoys revealing His glory (shaming the mighty with wonderful capable weak)…and how He blesses you in ways you could never have imagined.”

“Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Our impossible odds are a way to way to experience a new dimension of God´s glory.”

The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God.   – A.W. Tozer

Dorothy Sayers said

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore – on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him meek and mild, and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.  

Ms. Heidi Baker (part 2)

Notice how willing this woman is to fail. A great reminder that the key to success is failure! And the key to overcoming failure, is, yep, you guessed it, failure. Learning from our mistakes makes us God-strong, because it teaches us to be God-dependent. History is being made by this simple, God loving woman who calls the Holy Spirit her “best friend” and preaches in the darkest and deadliest parts of Africa to groups of hundreds of obviously frustrated Muslims who are more concerned with trying to hit her with rocks than hearing about Jesus Christ.

She does all this, and just giggles as she re-tells of His Love. She weeps and giggles because we just don´t get it…we don´t get how simple it is to just abandon everything and just say “yes” to God in all the ways we can. I´ll admit, I´m ever learning this simplicity and can´t honestly imagine how I could ever look spiritually like a Heidi Baker, but I bet you, at some point, she was saying the same thing to this God we both follow.

Here´s to the God of epic proportions…the God of intimate nooks, crannies and cosmos. 

  

Ms. Heidi Baker

So, as many of you know, this is the woman whom I have recently fallen into the deepest respect for spiritually. I have fallen for her heart with all of mine in only ways God could create.

She is the co-founder of Iris Ministries, an orphan ministry that has sought out and saved over 10,000 orphans in Mozambique alone. Drop in some several thousand other churches Iris is responsible for planting, hear how they are all still loving strong to this day throughout the Africa nation…not to mention an Iris prsence in the thousands in Brazil, Israel, India, etc…and you have God clamoring nice and loud in all His glory in only the way He can. I adore this woman.

She´s kind of kookie. She´s incredibly Lovely. She can´t speak about God without letting escape the constant utterings of the Spirit…shouts of “Rrrreba,” “Rrrraba,” ”Shamba” and the neck jerking “Whoa” sneak out of her like giggles from a little one. People are undoubtedly caught off and put off by her supernatural sense of things, but I am learning to Love it! She lets things fly like, “I wanna smell like Jesus.”

And I ask…why the heck not!? God is a supernatural God, is He not. So, as I´ve had to learn and still am growing into, I am embarking upon learning from this woman about our supernatural God.

She, aIong with a Irish Pastor God put in my life a few months ago, have caused me to ask some new questions. I wonder often about our (my) conservative walls. Where our healthy religion ends and our straight-jacket spirituality begins? I know a main motivation behind the conservative construction of my walls was to keep a watchful eye out for things like heresy, and compromise. But at some point, those high walls kept and keep my supernatural, freaky sounding, radical Savior Jesus outside as well. 

I´ve heard some churches and pastors call religion, “The ride Jesus rolls up in.”

Last I checked, my Jesus rode a donkey, where He probably dragged his feet along the ground atop the might steed of choice…and He rode clouds from Heaven, with legions of Angels at his back while rockin´a tat. That´s what Jesus rode, and that is how Jesus rolls.

Religion, if pursued as an end in and of itself, to me has only ever had the intimacy and promise of masturbation…feels good at the time, but doesn´t actually give life to anything. 

That said, I love this woman, and I pray many many more sons and daughters of our Father get to meet her and serve in her vision, and hopefully meet with God in giggling, freaky ways that forever change us.