The Minister Who Says He is Jesus Christ
For some reason, I think we need to pray for this guy. Or us.
What leads people to think this kind of thing? Thoughts?
January 28, 2007
January 23, 2007
January 20, 2007
...prayer
I've been thinking a lot about prayer lately. About what it really is and what it really isn't. Unfortunately, it only gets worse. I can't figure out either.
Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of prayer really is, such as, why do I even need to bother praying when God already knows what I'm going to say, what I already need, blah blah blah. I've heard that argument too many times for me to even believe it though. That's an excuse. A lame excuse. That's not why someone doesn't pray. I think I don't pray because I'm scared.
I'm scared of something happening. I'm scared that one of these times, God's going to actually audibly speak to me. I'm scared that what I don't know will be told to me, that what I don't see will be revealed. I'm afraid that I might feel closer to God, that I'll become intimate with him. I'm scared that God might actually want to use me to leave a mark on the world. I'm afraid, most of all, that I might actually find myself.
Those are some reasons that I hate praying. Those are reasons that I'm terrified of the One who holds the universe in the palm of his hand. But really though, why do I pray?
I think without prayer I would collapse. I would self-implode. Prayer sustains me. It's 99% of my day. Somehow, prayer isn't always talking towards God's general direction. Prayer is also about listening. It's about thinking. It's about creating, as I said earlier, an intimacy between you and the Author of Life. It's pretty sweet.
January 9, 2007
I'm trippin'. That's right, I'm trippin'. Everytime that I run recklessly towards Christ, I end up falling flat on my face. I trip over the littlest things. It gets really frustrating not being able to follow Him like I want to. But maybe that's just it: I want to follow him MY way.
Apparently, when I try to do things my way, I fail. Or maybe it's not failure, just not success. I've never really prayed and asked God to show me how I'm supposed to follow him. I don't think we're all supposed to follow Christ in the exact same way anyway. It's shallow. It's dry. It's completely empty when we conform to one another. Perhaps Christians aren't supposed to conform the world to their patterns or the world's to theirs. And in the same way, as Christians, we're not to conform to one another. Maybe we're made to love each other as unfinished living people. To encourage each other as ones being sanctified in Christ.
There's more to that, but I'll put a sock in it.
Apparently, when I try to do things my way, I fail. Or maybe it's not failure, just not success. I've never really prayed and asked God to show me how I'm supposed to follow him. I don't think we're all supposed to follow Christ in the exact same way anyway. It's shallow. It's dry. It's completely empty when we conform to one another. Perhaps Christians aren't supposed to conform the world to their patterns or the world's to theirs. And in the same way, as Christians, we're not to conform to one another. Maybe we're made to love each other as unfinished living people. To encourage each other as ones being sanctified in Christ.
There's more to that, but I'll put a sock in it.
January 7, 2007
THE VISION
So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport..
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers
choose to loosethat they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?
And the generation prays
like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive
inside.
On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the
frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees
applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of
another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and
invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will
come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning
of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant
hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a
thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless
angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the
original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
visit www.24-7prayer.com for more
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