The Morning Stirs

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It was incredibly beautiful this morning. Our warm tropical sun shaking off the slow sleepy gray of winter.  The sun strolling across the fields, waking the dew, bursting into prisms...like a million diamonds at her feet.

My seeds are all sprouting in the greenhouses.  If you've never been in a greenhouse in Spring; a rich experience awaits you.  One day it's dead, brown and cold; and then everything changes, seeds start sprouting.  It's like walking through creation happening all over again.  The variety of lush greens are healing to the eyes and soul.  Hope and promise unfold before your eyes as the songs of  new leaves and grass blades rise to praise their creator.

Oh let me not be like those who sleepwalk, half awake while the morning stirs.

Strength, Energy, Fire and Passion

 An Evening Meditation

Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.  Ps 37:4

"You can't dwell with weakness and expect great strength.  Dwell in the fires of my love and passion.  Dig out the embers and put fuel to the fire."   Passion builds from one small ember to another encompassing more and more as its flames increase.  Lesser things are consumed by greater passion.  As passion strengthens from glory to glory, so lust diminishes us from lust to sin to death.  Lust consumes us, while passion purifies and empowers us.  Lust drives us, enslaves us.  But passion draws us up and out of ourselves, embolds us, ennobles us, and frees us.

How To Savor Change

Happy New Year! Tis the time for changes and new beginnings. It's time for all the things you put off because of stupid reasons. You know, the stuff you really want to do, to be who you really want to be. So let's go.


1. The Easy Part: Discipline (Is Formational)


The easy part is Discipline, the Formation of Good Habits. 

The easy part is to read the Scriptures, and go through the prayers, prayer lists, strategies (ie. praying Scripture, the Lord's Prayer, etc.), Fasting, Giving, Going to Church, and the 'to do' list seems to grow as we do.  It can be deeply emotional, or deeply intellectual, but that's the easy part.

2. The Hard Part: Relationship (Is Transformational)

The hard part is Relationship, whereby God Transforms All That We Are; our strengths and our weakness.

The hard part, the real part, is Relationship.  Relationship with God will transform you every time. It's more than mere sitting, walking, & prostrating yourself before God... it is simply Being with God, letting Him speak to your heart, the vulnerability of allowing God to stir your spirit (without the emotional work-up).  It's a sad day when we think that we've got to work ourselves up, to enter God's presence.  God Welcomes us as we are.  And only then, as we are, without our religious 'fig leaves', can God begin to transform us.


3. Transformation Prepares Us For Dwelling

We begin our transformation  as a state experience with God. One that we enter and leave, we come and go. We experience it, are changed, then get on with our life.  But God has more for us than our State Experiences with Him. He wants to lead us into a Stage Experience of  Continually Being with Him.  It's called Dwelling. This is what the Dishwasher, Brother Lawrence lived and wrote about  in the little book, Practicing The Presence of God. No matter where we find ourselves, we can through our deep passion dwell with God and also live our daily life. It is Kairos, time swallowed up and transformed by the timelessness of God. The mark of Dwelling with God is Joy unspeakable and full of glory and grace.

4. Transformation Prepares Us To Work The Works of God

Our transformation prepares us to work the works of God in our lives. Our service becomes works of Grace. Our blows count for eternity, they actually spring from eternity with God. We don't just testify to what God has done, we become the testimony of God in the earth. We become the instrument of God in this closing Age of Grace.

Meditation:  Deep Suffering transforms into Deep Compassion through Forgiveness.

Love One Another.

The Place of Encounter

I love the Raw Expanse of  Spirit empowered  worship music.  The Eternal Reality exploding in the new worship music is Awesome.

As Worship Teams, we prepare The Place of Encounter with our music and our worship.  We bring the Spirit of the Bard, the Spirit of Prophetic Worship.  You can feel good, feel bad, or feel nothing.  Encounter has nothing to do with feelings.  It has to do with Encountering God.


Out Of The Box To Shake The World

I love the term Bard because it takes Worship Teams out of their religious box.  You see, a Bard is one who plays and sings skillfully, creatively, and prophetically, in the Presence and at the Pleasure of their King. A Bard creates in the Atmosphere of God, and David is our standard. You get a team of them together and Heaven Shakes The Earth.

~For a good example, Click the title and it will take you to Misty Edwards Discography. Move the bar of CD's to the far left, then hit FREE.  Then listen to: You Keep Loving Me 19:58, then Selah 10:00. There are approx. 2 hrs. of live music here. Tell me what you think.

Quotes On Fire

Meditations On The Way

Quotes are short verbal explosions, pattern interrupts, infusions of life, opening up new vista's and possibilities; new beginnings and new direction for our lives.  They speak with quiet burning passion.  They are "roots to grow and wings to fly" and fuel for the journey.  Quotes burn the chaff and remake us in little, powerful ways; bit by bit, until the change is obvious to anyone looking.

It's no wonder that quotes were considered magic, mystical, spiritual, and sacred in ancient times. They are a doorway, a path and a view into what eternally is and what can be. It is no accident that Jesus of Nazareth is called the Word of God, the logos. Tolkien saw this as 'splintered light' piercing the darkness, revealing a whole new world view. And to take this light into us is to be transformed.

Some quotes are drawn from time and dwell in karma, sowing and reaping; cause and effect.  Other quotes are drawn from the wells of eternity and dwell in grace.


A Meditation:

Jesus says to him, "I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life, No One comes to The Father, but Through Me."  John 14:6 

Weaving Our Tapestry of Life

Let me lay this out for you, and tell me what you think.

I'm entering a process of explaining what I know, see and have/are experiencing in hope that it will help you enter into a full and abundant life.  That's my Goal for you.

On my end, I'm looking at about 100 pages of real good stuff  I've written for you this month that I haven't had time to polish and post.

So, here's the scoop.  I spent years trying to find or develop the perfect Theology.  It doesn't and will never exist. Real Theology is alive and in relationship with God.  When we report it, God's out doing something absolutely new, and we're standing there looking stupid like the Pharisees. Now, I love Theology, I eat it for breakfast but it won't work here.

The model I'm going to use is that I'm going to lay it out just as I get it...the good, the bad and the ugly.  Then, we will hold it up to the eternal plumb line and straighten it up (correct or discard) before we put it all together and build.  Is that fair?  I'm just burning to get some gems out to you that you can really use in your life.

"Our Mess Is Our Message" Carrie Wilkerson

It's been said that our failures become our stepping stones to our success. That our mess becomes our message to the world.  The way I see it, is that God takes our imperfections and transforms them revealing His grace and glory.  Our brokenness becomes polished jewels in the streams of our life.

Nothing Works Without Transformation

What begins in brokenness can't end in wholeness unless it is transformed.  That's people, hopes, dreams, marriages, families, cultures, churches, businesses, etc. Nothing works in this broken world without transformation.  So say with me, "Begin It With Me. Change Me O LORD From The Inside Out!!!"

When Stillness Walks

Walking in stillness
  Silence swept
Her flowing robes
  Gliding the path

The eternal rumbles
  Shaking off the sleep of eternal slumbers
To wake and to walk in the light
  So bright and so fair in the morning of the heart
The spirit ever so softly whispers
  Delight of life and wonder

A single word is spoken
  in the stillness a sunder
Life breaks forth like the sun
A star calls out
  And heaven sings
Can you hear the morning stars sing together
  When stillness walks the earth.

Life is a sacred gift and dance with the lover of our souls.

Awakening: Moments of Grace

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Henri Nouwen said it so well, I just wanted to share this with you.
This is from today's Bread For The Journey

  At some moments we experience complete unity within us and around us. This may happen when we stand on a mountaintop and are captivated by the view. It may happen when we witness the birth of a child or the death of a friend. It may happen when we have an intimate conversation or a family meal. It may happen in church during a service or in a quiet room during prayer. But whenever and however it happens we say to ourselves: "This is it ... everything fits ... all I ever hoped for is here."

   This is the experience that Peter, James, and John had on the top of Mount Tabor when they saw the aspect of Jesus' face change and his clothing become sparkling white. They wanted that moment to last forever (see Luke 9:28-36). This is the experience of the fullness of time. These moments are given to us so that we can remember them when God seems far away and everything appears empty and useless. These experiences are true moments of grace.

You can Click on the Title and it will take you to the Henri Nouwen website.

Shakers & Quakers

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And A Warm Welcome to this second  in a series on what appears to be a move of God among college students. Some are calling it The Awakening.

In this post I want to explore a thorny issue right off the bat, at least it is for me. Probably the biggest turn off to me is the emotional shaking or maybe, someone shouting prophecy at me like I was deaf.  Then again, maybe you've been a shaker or quaker in the past and feel this way too.

What really started me off on this post is something maybe you guys can help me out with.  Why were The Shakers and The Quakers given their names?  I have my suspicions.

Now back to the issue at hand. Most of us understand 'learned response' and 'group dynamics.'  So is something deeper going on here?  Is God shaking people free from the grip of their sin nature and the past?  Is He freeing them from what they and others think so they can fully follow Him?  Is this an outward and visible manifestation of a inward and spiritual grace? In other words, is God setting our youth apart as holy?  The confessions would seem to indicate that.  Time and fruit will tell.

During the Brownsville Revival here in Pensacola, I was in the Episcopal Church, mostly helping with music and youth.  We had Episcopal kids, that when God showed up, they would shake in response to God's presence.  We also had adults who would cross themselves over and over again. The majority however, just went through the motions.  I think that's the way it is with every church.  If the 'motions' are shaking in your church, people will follow.  But changed lives, restored relationships, now that's God. Fruit tells what miracles purport.

As for me, this isn't 'snake handling'. I can live with it as long as I don't have to shake, or yell a prophecy at somebody six inches from me.


  Click the title: Shakers & Quakers and it will take you to: IHOPKC

The Awakening

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God is doing something new.  I love new things.

I'm a seed specialist grower, and there's nothing better than seeing the new seeds sprout and grow.  It's a miracle of life, every time.  And it's new every time.  It's always different and unique.

God's doing something new.  But what's happening isn't real clear yet.  It's just sprouting.  I get the image of a child holding the embers of a fire, taking it from place to place, putting it in other hearths, other fireplaces.  I see it repeated over and over again.

I was there when the Jesus Movement rocked America.  And I was there: before, during and after the Brownsville Revival.  Many of us were.  But this is new, and somehow deeper.  As I've said before, everything is built on good relationships, not miracles, not movements.  God seems to be revealing the deep heart, to heal and restore relationships.  He seems to be laying the foundation for a greater work.

Tune In And Stay Tuned for more. I've put the link to the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in the title.