Old Calling New Commissioning - Amazing times as Heaven and Earth Meet

Kelley and I were at Glacier National Park celebrating our 25^th anniversary this past summer.   Looking out over a breathtaking St. Mary’s lake, the Lord spoke to us.   In a mystery, over the course of a week, through a painting, Jesus revealed heaven and earth touching each other.  

It was sunny, a warm and cool wind was blowing.   A wonder filled day.   We were enjoying a short hike and came out upon this view.

Places like these tie the earth, heaven and the soul and spirit together and reverberate with the glory of God.  I was feeling my spirit strings singing as the Lord’s bow rolled over me.

Up from the bottom of the lake, magnificent peaks of granite climbed to touch the firmament.   The tops of the peaks tore holes in the bluest sky.    As I stood looking out at the peaks, Kelley climbed up the rock we were on and looked at a kiosk declaring the names of the Mountains before us.   Surrounding the Lake to the right were four Mountains.     Directly in front and center of the lake was one of the most well known peaks in Glacier.  It looks like the Matterhorn in Switzerland.   Amazing.   Kelley called out to me and said, “The center peak is called Reynolds Mountain”.   

Heaven invaded my soul and spirit and my mind trailed after in a stupor.   The wind stood still.   The sky broke open.  The rocks started singing out from their deep red and green granite power.  Time disappeared.  All I could see was my Lord Jesus, everywhere.  Rocks and water and skyscraper peaks were bowing to Him.   His voice moved like a silk scarf in and through me and out and through the rocks and up to the tops of the peaks and back down into my spirit.  In a flash, the blink of an eye,  the prophetic sound.   Heaven on earth as it is in Heaven. 

 I said, “what?  No way?”.   She answered in her special voice for me when I am “seeing the prophetic in everything”.    “Yesss”, she said.   I was curious and asked what the names of the other mountains were.    Next to the right was “Running Hard”.   And then a large sweeping beautiful valley, which curved the earth and rose up to the sky in “Going to the Sun”.   Finally to the right of this mountain was “Goat Mtn”.   

As the names unfolded I got more committed to the voice of the Lord and His amazing encouragement.   

This earth and heaven prophetic encouragement is actually Part B.   This trip to Glacier was planned log before another trip we took only days earlier.  We spent 3 days at Bethel Church in Redding.    You may be saying, “nice story, but what is the big deal?”.   
I would agree without Part A. 

Part A.   
About 5 days earlier, Kelly and I were with the Merrill’s at Bethel Church in Redding CA.   We spent 3 eventful days in the Spirit drinking in armloads of inheritance blessing and encouragement.  So many things occurred there that I would love to tell you about, but I need to finish this piece first.   

On Saturday The Merrill’s, our treasured friends of the King and amazing hosts for the weekend, took us to the encounter room and healing room at Bethel.  Upon arriving we met Sonya Day, a prophetic painter who was painting in the encounter room.   She said the Lord told her Don and Shari were coming and she started a painting with them in mind.  She also brought along her LION painting.   While we were standing there talking, Shari blurts out to me, “You are a Lion”.   I was taken back because two weeks earlier in Sisters Oregon a young man gave me a drawing of a lion as a prophetic word for me.  Sonya then says,  “The Lord told me to bring the Lion painting today.  See it is right in front up there with the worship team.”  

Heaven invaded my soul and spirit and my mind trailed after in

a stupor.  Ha!

I didn’t really comment.  I drifted away to the front seats by the worship team and entered into an hour plus of tears, revelation, joy, laughter, and the Lord’s voice giving me direction and calling.    I meditated on the Lion painting and heard wonderful things from the Lord about our relationship and how I should walk with Him.  

The worship team played sounds that the voice of the Lord seemed to float on.   Like a river of sound His voice penetrated to the depths of my soul and spirit.    The key task the Lord imparted was that I should go back and get on the Mountains around central Oregon and call forth rivers, streams, lakes and ponds among all the rainbow colors of his church.   

Breaking forth renewal and revival, the heart of the Lord had already decreed this.  I was to do it with all those who were willing to proclaim a “new day in the Lord”.   This settled in my spirit like all the recent directives for the church plant and Spirit ministry I had received.  Tears of joy flowed. 

My time in the healing room came up…   That is a story in and of itself, but again the main point needs to get finished.  

I eventually came back into the encounter room and was making sure to write down my experience there.  Sitting with my back to the painting area, I was full of tears as intimacy and the love of the Lord overwhelming me.   I was seeing the vast riches of HIS love and HIS Kingdom and the inheritance of the Saints.  The Lord’s dominion is full of wealth and beauty.   During my time of revelation I was calling down my inheritance in the Lord.  Calling forth the special signs of Kingdom wealth and beauty the Lord had blessed me with over the years.  One of the things He spoke to me was, “the place of rest/worship is my inheritance.  The Lion roars from a place of knowing the ONE.” 

As I sat there writing what amounted to a page in my journal, I thought I should look over my shoulder and see how Sonya’s painting turned out.   I glanced over……

Heaven invaded my soul and spirit and my mind trailed after in a stupor.   Ha Ha!

My eyes fell on a completely different painting than the one she started.   It was a painting of mountains, blue-sky, purple, white clouds, majesty.    It was my vision on canvas.    I broke wide open pouring out new tears.   
A sword of His love crashed down on my collarbone and split me in two.   

My mind trailed along unable to see.  My spirit was in the heavenlies seated with Christ.    Heaven on earth as it is in Heaven.

The wind stood still.   The sky broke open.  The rocks started singing out from their deep red and green granite power.  Time disappeared.  All I could see was my Lord Jesus, everywhere.  Rocks and water and skyscraper peaks were bowing to Him.   His voice moved like a silk scarf in and through me and out and through the rocks and up to the tops of the peaks and back down into my spirit.  In a flash, the blink of an eye, the prophetic sound.   Heaven on earth as it is in Heaven. 

I went and found Don Merrill and told him what had happened.  He smiled that great smile of satisfaction that flows out of love for all that Jesus does.  

I was a mess.  As we walked out of the encounter room and down the hall a little ways, Sonya came hobbling after us. (She had a brace on her leg).   She said, “Are you going to make me chase you.”   I see now that this was the literal voice of the Lord to me.   In HIS love he has chased me all my life.   Then she said, “The Lord wants me to give you that painting”.   I nearly fell over and burst into uncontrollable tears as my Father expressed love that spoke over years of knowing HIM.   Inheritance.  My Daddy.   Inheritance witness.  Soul touch.   Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus. 

The painting was still wet.  Sonya signed it and wrote the name on it.   Love as the Canvas.    (The mountain painting was painted over the original started painting.  Sonya told us she felt the atmosphere change and in response she painted over what she started earlier.)   

Majestic calling finds its foundation in the love of God.  It is unity of heart with the Son in His love for the world.  Over the course of a few hours the re-commissioning and revelation of HIS love, rest and calling flooded my mind, body, soul and spirit.   
I stumbled out of the house of the Lord delirious with wonder. 

Who could not love you, Oh Lord among gods?

I have 3 rocks from the mountain lake, red fire granite shavings, on my desk.    I have the reality of Jesus’ love flooding my soul months in and months since.  Needless to say, my mind has been trailing after all these things in a stupor.   

HA!  Heaven laughs at the wisdom of men and rejoices in the revelation of the SON and HIS Son’s and Daughters.

 Part A and part B join together to reveal the Kingdom of God as Kel and I celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary.   In all the earth, full of wonder and majestic beauty the Son of God is the diamond.  
His Kingdom is spirit and truth.   With the power of His voice he formed the granite peaks and the human spirit.   
His voice plays the bow that resonates the sound that sings through both heaven and earth.  This is His Kingdom.  Part A.  Part B.    Reach with the confidence of a son or daughter for the inheritance only you and he knows resonates in your soul.  Let it sing out.

Thank you's to Don, Shari, Sonya, and Kelley.    What an awesome role you played in the King’s love.  See more of Sonya's work here:  http://www.redding.com/news/2011/may/05/artist-spotlight-sonya-day/

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 25 yrs.   August 23, 1986

Themes for 2012 

- Wedding Feast of the Lamb - Salvation and Honoring the Son of God

- Mirrored Intimacy with Jesus - Marriage

What Glory is waiting to get out of you? Have fears, failure or weakness limited you?

What glory is waiting to get out of you?  What fears of failure, weakness and falling short has limited you from throwing yourself on the King of Glory?    

Open the Gates.  Let the King of Glory come in.   Let grace have its way in you.  Shed the past in the fires of HIS unending love.   He will meet you at the point of your desire.  

OK so I am coming clean.  

I have always wanted to be the champion of those saints who were willing to throw it all on the line.  Stepping out in faith and going for that crazy thing the Lord had spoken to them.   My understanding of the Kingdom is that it calls out reckless abandon in the Saints as the King of Glory enthralls them.    

Why do we draw back?   What inside us turns us away from open heavens?

I think I as I reflect on this, that I have sought to encourage myself.   I have believed from the first that Jesus was the only  “most valuable” thing I’ve had in life.  And in so doing I have encouraged others to live for the highest ideals of the kingdom of God.  To run after Jesus as the end and sum total of what living is about.   To adore him and worship him with no constraints and follow him literally in this world, in this life, is the true meaning of life and living.  

As much as I have set my life to encourage that kind of devotion in the heart of those I love and walk with, I believe I’ve only seen the curtain drawn back partially in over 33 years.   Nothing has made me happier than the smile of a Saint that has been captured new and fresh with the love and presence of Jesus.  When the revelation lands on them with joy and a smile, and the revelation knowledge that they belonging to Him and He to them settles on them, I rejoice deeply.    Heaven seems to resound in those moments.

Never before have I had the opportunity to walk into “what I have always felt my life in His Kingdom to be about”.    Today, I am standing on the threshold.  And in seeing that doorway before me, I am completely humbled and emptied.   It is not a way that I can affect.  It is heaven coming to earth not earth reaching to heaven.   As I stand before all this and “see into the heavens” the earth in me, which is such a disappointment, rises.   As the wine press of HIS love tightens and constricts my flesh, I inevitably see the biter and earth minded rise to the top of my life.    Again, my King scrapes away the dross and new life appropriate for the time leaps up and envelops my soul.   The Father is completely good. 

There is sweet wine on the way!

When that dross expresses itself among the people of the King I am undone.   I am talking about the sin of not walking in the calling I’ve received for fear, the wine press that comes with it, and sheer weakness.   I’ve not experienced weakness like I have over the past 4 months.   The magnitude of revelation has dwarfed me.   I have to admit that I have failed more than succeeded in walking in the revelation and in the new.     His strength is perfected in weakness.   This I know all to well. 

Even perceiving heaven, I constantly want to move out of that place of weakness and into my strength.  It is here at the foot of Jacobs ladder that I have been wrestling with the Spirit of the Lord.   My flesh rising and screaming for prominence and my Spirit reveling in the true Son of God; day to day, I have fallen short.   Thus my confession.

When I am really outside my anointing and the life giving love of Christ’s gaze, I see my actions and weep.   Anyone close to me in ministry has seen my blemishes and I repent to the Lord for those distortions of his glory.   Standing juxtaposed against the amazing revelation of the Lord and the desire to be one of HIS mighty men, dross is painful and disappointing to the core.    Over the years I have delivered my share of dross to the table of the Saints.   My heart breaks over this.  

The revelation.  I’ve tasted it.  Here for a moment.  Here for a day.   Here for a weekend.  Here for weeks on end.  Revelating with the Spirit and lost in worship,  I want to walk in it every moment.   I’ve seen the vision and I want to walk in it.   It presented itself as a door before me.   I ran in.  I determined to run with no hesitation; to throw off every hindrance and abandon myself to the Love of the Son. 

Trying to explain the deeper things is like trying to order food in a different language.   A phrase and a line but never the ability to lay out the whole order. 

 

And then my own limitations and fears rise up.   The wine press has kicked in and I have failed on occasion to deliver the revelation as delivered to me for my dross and fears.  Trying to explain the deeper things is like trying to order food in a different language.   A phrase and a line but never the ability to lay out the whole order.    Kingdom calling is at times very lonely.     Mercy and love triumph over judgment.    

The culture of honor is the environment that releases the beauty of the King.   Everyone benefits in an environment where failing is allowed and our goal is Christ glorified and his servants honored in their station.  

So, the time is up.  It is time to come clean and spill my guts.   I’ve hidden in the respectable place for far to long.   I said to the Lord, “I am willing to be your fool” and I have to commit myself to doing and saying and speaking what he has revealed.  Foolish as it may be.  Tough as it may be.  I need to let out the reality of what God is doing and not hold back.   I’ve been too interested in pastoral acceptance and the praise that comes with following the norm and the acceptable paths of the day.  Frankly, those paths are dead wood.  The tree has but a few green branches and we are living in the past.   New revelation has come and the prophetic word of Malachi 3:1-4 is alive and happening now in the Body of Christ.   There is a way that leads to glory and flows out of the knowledge of the Lord and is from faith to faith to faith.    Time to move in and let it out.   Time to end the hiding place.  Time to give up the hiding place.  I am going to continue to press into all that the Lord opens up.    Run with abandon.   He said he would meet us at our point of desire?   All my requests are being answered as they relate to heaven and desire to see.   

What requests are stored up in your heart?  What heaven do you long to see?

For me, coming clean means really letting everyone who knows me know that I realize I am weak, poor, naked and blind.   I’ve made more mistakes in ministry than in any other sphere of life, or so it seems.  My failings here are so much to bear against the Love of Jesus and his sacrifice.   Maybe they stick out more clearly because of the equal love I have for the Saints and the Bride.  I realize that nothing good has drifted off my lips or out of my heart that had life outside of the Spirit and the ministry of Jesus.   

It amazes me that the Spirit would use me at all.   Do you ever feel that way?  I know what he knows, all of it.   And he is able to take that broken tattered vessel and in matchless grace sow seeds of grace, freedom and love into the Saints.   Life is rising out of the ashes of the zombie.   I’ve been short sighted and bumbled on God’s precious people.   I’ve been short sighted and or answered out of my limitations and have misdirected the people of the King.    I walk with a limp.  

Coming clean – sounding like a fool…. yes and amen.  I need to commit to the crazy and wonderful full disclosure of what the Lord is doing in me and through me to his glory.    I kept things quiet.  I need to step up and let some of it out.   Here we go.

What about you?   Can you come clean?   Are you ready to live in the glory and let some of that glory out? 

The Bride is transformed as each part does it’s work. 

What glory is waiting to get out of you?  What fears of failure, weakness and falling short has limited you from throwing yourself on the King of Glory?    

Open the Gates.  Let the King of Glory come in.   He will meet you at the point of your desire.  

Running free in the palace of HIS presence - Come away with me

I've tapped into something lately that has exploded my freedom.    I am a son in the Father's palace.  Yea. Sounds simple, and truly it is.  Until that revelation lands in your heart without logic and expands the story of a relationship with Christ that fills all things in every way.    things like this sit in our minds and spirits for years and then with one vision key unlock and release a torrent of revelation of the Son of God.   The catalyst?   A love encounter with the Lord Jesus that breaks open what laid dormant and quiet.  A love encounter?    An encounter with the fire of HIS love.   An encounter with Jesus Christ. 

For years I've understood that the Father's presence was the very living reality of every good thing in HIS Kingdom.   That HIS presence was the place to be in life.   In HIS presence.... My heart is longing to be with HIM.  Truly deep calls to deeper more compelling desire.  I want to be lost in a love that cannot be satisfied except by more of HIS presence.   Heaven is open and the beauty of the redemptive power of Christ is the very air we breathe.    HIS presence is intoxicating.  Christ is the most beautiful vision life can offer.   He presence both manifest and hidden fills the highest heaven and the depths of earths darkest places.   The opportunity of the Father is everywhere.   The Kingdom of our Lord and Christ is everywhere.  

I've lived in the place of longing and searching for my King while life's disappointments and bruising lingered in my heart, on my body, in my day to day.   The enemy of my freedom seeks to oppress my passion with the seeming contradictions of HIS love in my life.   The church has lost sight of an important truth.  The love relationship with Christ is our inheritance and our place of rest.   It is always ours in any and every circumstance.   This love is not hindered by the brokenness of the world.  In fact it laughs as the worlds empty offerings and attempts to quiet the BEAUTY.   It is ours in weakness and strength.  We can always run to the place of rest in our Savior, our Rock eternal.  The hope of glory is Christ in us, living, informing, inviting us to deeper love and wider vision of a Kingdom that fills the universe with redemptive power and love.  As nothing is impossible with God, so nothing is outside his authority, power and freedom.    Matter itself along with trees, rocks, dirt, sing the praise of the ONE whose love cannot be quenched.  

Just being in the Father's presence opens such an expansive view of the Kingdom and of the Father's heart; my wounds heal,  my disappointments fade in light of the hope that cascades into your soul.  Under the waterfall of hope we can laugh, celebrate, dance and drink overwhelmed by HIM.

I loved worshipping with the Church from the first days of knowing the Lord.   I sensed and have seen so much of the incredible reality of all that the Kingdom is about - In HIS presence.  But I did not see myself as a son.  Adopted yes.   Part of this Palace, yes.   I did not see that this is my inheritance.  That the Kingdom growing inside me and connecting with the reality of the heavenlies was finding a more tangible expressions in my life, heart, mind, will and emotions.   His presence was spilling out into my every day.  His love is the current of the wind I ride upon.   I am seeing that the inheritance needs to be called down into my life.   Captured in faith and understood with the key of Christ, I need to call into my heart and soul the truth of who I am in Jesus.    

Now I can see farther, deeper into the inheritance of the Saints in Christ Jesus.   The Prince of Peace, seated in opens heavens pours out His inheritance to us.  The Palace of my Father is rich beyond compare.  More than a wonder of the world, it is a wonder of the heavens and angels; filled with the majesty of the King who reigns over all.  

It is time for the saints to let go of the worthless trappings of the world and gain the riches of the Kingdom of our God and King.   To walk in the inheritance of the King.  To ramble, run, dance, shout, celebrate in the vast palace of the presence of Christ Jesus. 

Come away with me

He Imagined our Freedom Flowing in a River of Love and Grace.

Is it possible to imagine our lives from a place of love and not condemnation; to construct a vision of ourselves on a canvas of love?  Brush strokes, paint, color, growing each day into an image of love and intimacy with the Father that cannot be quenched?  

Imagine!  Try and imagine.  It can be difficult for us. 

HE imagined it first.  And He imagines you in love. 

Love is envisioning and imagining power.  It flows as an enveloping current, like a river crystal clear.  In the eye of the ONE we are jasper and rubies translucent.  The waters of love tumbling over us shape us into beauty, calling us ever deeper into HIS love; into knowing HIM.   HE dresses us in a grace that quenches fear and makes it an outcast.  

Love, surges out from the heart of the Father, swirls and foams with creative energies beyond our imaginations.   More compelling than earth's mighty powers, Love shaped the earth’s every molecule.   And so it groans for the Saints to be revealed, for the day when earth, stars, space, heaven and humanity will be ONE.  We are surrounded by HIS love in every moment as all of creation was fashioned to spark desire, longing and witness to HIS pounding heart of love.  

The Imaginative ONE has imagined you in love and grace.    

 

Heavenly beings are graced with love.  Flowing like blood it courses through their bodies out to their touch where their lives meet the substance of the world of Heaven.   They know nothing of the ONE but love, awe, joy.   A love so deep it defies their understanding.  The mystery is played out before their eyes.   Our destiny flows in the same river.  

The ONE who imagines us in love sparked the power to make HIS creation live in love.   

You will live.  Condemnation, the imagining power of hell, does not have the creative power to hold one touched by a drop of HIS love.    The power of blood and perfect sacrifice, the power of a life laid down for friends, the power of grace envelopes the willing soul with the garment of freedom.   Yes, the blood of Jesus is enough.  It is the power that turns away the rot and decay.   HE imagined you as HE hung above the earth, our freedom born in a river of love.   Nothing has the power or authority in all creation to separate you from HIS love.  

Your BELOVED calls out, "Come into the Rivers of MY LOVE"   

Float on the currents.    "Come away with ME"  "Come away with ME"

Imagine yourself from the HEART of LOVE that formed you.   The heart that calls out to you.  

Now is the time to steal away with your beloved and float on the river of love.

 www.mycapstone.org

Hunger and Longing for God: Encounters that Wrench the Depths of the Soul

In the 32 years I have followed Christ there have been only a handful of overwhelming divine encounters.  Like a branding of my spirit each encounter burned deep in my spirit and left the mark of God.   Years apart, these encounters appear to have come at random moments in my walk.  They slash away the dead wood of entire seasons and leave me with a fresh inner skin. 
I've had many much more regular experiences with the Lord.  Spiritual happenings that are amazing but they do not compare to the wrenching of the depths I have known on a few ocassions. 

Just a few weeks ago I found myself alone at home.  My wife and boys were gone to grandma's house and I had the day to myself.   The night before I spent reveling in the awe of the Lord with two brothers in what has now been dubbed "meat night".  Steak in the natural and steak in the spiritual.   Meat night provided a very powerful level of revelation.    The Lord had been talking with each of us and we unpacked, listened and shared our hearts.   One of the men had a 2011 word he felt was for the fellowship (www.mycapstone.org).   We were talking through the many dreams and words we had received over the past few months and shared our stories in regards to the new fellowship the Lord was forming.    
 
Meat night lead to an encounter the next day.  

I slept in just a little and headed downstairs about 7:30 a.m.  Went into the back room and started praying and seeking the Lord.   I threw on some worship music and as I often do and opened up a prayer and reflection word doc on my computer.   As I began to focus into the Lord I was overcome with His Presence.   So overwhelming was the power of the Lord I found my body convulsing.  My spirit was overwhelved with the reality of the Love of Jesus Christ.   Tears began to flow and I continued to move into greater and greater levels of both revelation and effect on my body.   I was lost in the amazing beauty and love of God in such a way that I could not control my emotions or even the incredible shaking of my spirit.   I would stop, breath, gather myself and as soon as I re-engaged I was overwhelmed again. 

I thought of the salvations I was praying for and brought that to the Lord.  The response was a revelation of his heart for me and all those he loved the same way.   Then I found myself looking at the past years of my life in the Lord.   They looked like dead wood compared to the vision I was receiving.  Repentance filled my heart and I saw my walk with God compared to the beauty of the Lord.   All I could do was cry,  repent and ask for more of HIS love.   Nothing compares with Jesus.  Seeing more of him is the awesome reward of the Saints. 

His love was showing me so many things while at the same time blessing me deeply.   Total freedom swept over me.   I grabbed my guitar and started writing a worship song in the midst of tears.   I had been reading Ezekiel and listening to the song about Skeleton Bones.  "skeleton bones stand at the sound of eternity on the lips of the found."   I called for the skeleton bones in the Central Oregon valley to rise up.   I agreed with the Lord and HIS love poured out to save the world. 

More into the depths I went.  As I responded and moved with the things being spoken in me, I found myself moving into other revelations.    Seeing into heaven,  I could feel the love of Jesus.  Vast.  Powerful.  Full of authority.  Another way of living, relating and being flooded into my heart.   All I wanted to do was please HIM,  be with HIM, know HIM.   My recreation.  My joy.  My life.

I started getting hungry, as I did not eat anything before I started praying and looked at the clock.  12:30 in the afternoon.   I thought about taking a break and getting some food but the song that was flowing out of me kept coming and I didn't want to miss writing it down.   I played the worship song over and over and moved in the words.  One section says, "Get UP you dry bones".   And the chorus cries, We desire YOU, Desire YOU.  Nothing else can satisfy.  You are my hearts cry.  No one else can satisfy our hearts.    

The dry bones of my christian life were melting away for the new fire of God's grace and power.  It felt as if I had never been saved at all.  That 30 some years of walking with Jesus were dead and dry bones in the face of His love and beauty.   I wanted to start out, get going all over again. 

The reality.  New revelation leads the heart, mind and spiritual sight to new and amazing heights.   Nothing compares to knowing Christ Jesus.   Nothing on this earth can fill up the soul like the love of God.   In recounting this I feel the pangs of my shortcomings and weaknesses.   And I remember the penetrating power pouring through my spirit calling me to step ever closer to the LORD of GLORY and to believe for radical and amazing streams of salvation in Central Oregon and beyond.