Time for a Check Up!

Isn’t it great how God places people, situations, and events in your life to test your love walk? Do you ever find yourself asking God to let you have just one test that doesn’t involve someone else? I know I sure have! That’s not the way He works, though. He uses our reaction to negative people and events as a measuring stick to see where we are. If we’re not measuring up to the love line, then perhaps it is time for a check-up from the chest up!

Notice that I did not say, “from the neck up.” No, we walk in love from our heart, not our head. Your head will get in the way of your love walk because you can always rationalize why someone else doesn’t really deserve to be treated well. A wise man recently reminded me that it is easy to find the faults in others when we spend so much time thinking about ourselves. Instead, we need to realize that our love walk with others flows out of our heart-relationship with our Father. When our heart is right with Him, it will be right with others as well.

~ by Ronda Sullivan

The Blank Line

In illustrating the importance of the spirit-world, we wanted each youth in our teen class to create their timelines. We created a blank birth certificate and blank tombstones for the occasion. After the activity was finished, I found myself flabbergasted. There were more tombstones than birth certificates.  Upon a closer examination, I saw that many of the youth did not fill in the blank for “father’s name” on their birth certificates. Others simply put “I Don’t Care” in the blank space or did not create a birth certificate at all.

It saddened me and I found myself starring at one birth certificate with tears in my eyes. That blank line was a reminder that they once were abandoned and unwanted.  The truth was, in fact, that I was that kid roughly fifteen years ago and those were the thoughts circulating through my head and soul. I seriously do not know where I would be without the word and knowledge of God. I’m not saying I’ve arrived, but I’m not where I was.

The more I contemplated what I witnessed, the more I realized the affects that the blank line has had on my own life.

————–

I watched as my young ones glared at you, loathed you with gnashing teeth

Detesting with every ounce they possessed

See, their caress was limited by your existence

Abandonment confirmed by your act of omission

What was it that proved to them that empty-space pained? I know . . .

It’s that blank line that should have carried your name

 

 

Even from the day I was born, you plagued me with your emptiness

And that lover’s caress you bestowed only a few months earlier was gone

And it was her name that was alone-My mother’s

As she lay in a pool of her own sin, tears and red water

Cradling in her arms, with burdensome joy, a ghost’s daughter

What was that which gave her no choice as she looked down to where I lay? I know . . .

It’s the blank line that should have carried your name.

 

What were You teaching me? What was it a part of Your plan

To let stand at a distance a love I could not touch, an aromatic hope I could not smell

Worthiness I could not behold lest I lust for it?

There was no hand to hold there in the separation of that vacant streak

Though my fragile heartbeat, I feared, would not survive should we convene

What was that which created this vast, bottomless void of sheer darkness and rain?

I know…

 

It’s the blank line that should have carried your name.

 

Yet, here I am, Jehovah Elohim. Here am I, shouting across the aloofness

Because the truth is that I cannot live as a child without a face, detached from Agape

A child inundated by a blank space

Therefore, My Creator, take this clay I call my flesh

Hurl it onto your Potter’s wheel and mend the ego fractured by shame

Knead with Your thumbs the solidified rubbish of malice, guilt, anguish and hate

Shave off dead weights that hold me hostage from sublime,

Imprisoning me to be a victim of that void line

 

Render null and void time, Elohim

Refold that flat span with Your vast hands that laid mountains and oceans

Go back past the children of my youth, a child at every age

Pass that babe at her mother’s bosom, before the ailing through which I was born

Spin until the world is without form and without nights and days

And there, I see, You knew me and gave me Your name

I am you and You are me, My Love

There, I heard His voice echo and let the sound waves invigorate the depths of my being

Completing in me the song I thought was lost until I arose with my feet dancing

My hands waving, my heart singing as I became one who was entire, lacking no thing

 

You see, only then could I love you

Only then could I embrace you and your good intentions

Taking no care to mention the acts of the past

Only then could I understand, discover and find

That your heart, too, was afflicted by the presence of that vacant line

 

When they ask what gives me the right to edify youth though my womb’s seen no heir

If they dare inquire how my young age will help turn the hearts of children to the heart of our Father

Without bother, I will tell you what I will proclaim and know . . .

It’s the blank line that should have carried your name . . . That now carries His.

~by Vickie Bowman

Editor’s Note: It is with deep humility and gratitude that we post this heart wrenching poem by Vickie. It took great courage for her to write it, and we share it here with hope that it will inspire others to allow God to step in and fill that void for them as He did so faithfully for Vickie.

Clearing the Briar Patch, part 2

Yesterday, I shared my testimony of how God delivered me from the hate I had carried concerning my mother’s death. The reason for sharing my testimony was to provide you with a context for what God is doing during this time of seeking. For you see, God has proclaimed that He is healing and restoring the land of our hearts, removing the briars and the weeds (much like He did in the vision of my testimony). So I began wondering, what is the purpose of briars, what do they do?

When I was a kid, my sisters and I use to love going out into the woods to play. However, there were some areas of the woods to which we were denied access. Why? There was a hedge of briars that had grown up. And quite frankly, the pain of trying to get through that hedge simply wasn’t worth it. We just accepted that there were some parts of the woods in which we just couldn’t play.

Sometimes we allow the spiritual briars in the gardens of our hearts to grow out of control until it’s no longer just a briar bush but a briar hedge. An impenetrable wall of pain that keeps us from going deeper into the forest of God’s love. But God has begun a new thing in this time of seeking! He has released His fire on the lands of His people and consumed the briar hedges of pain and sin that have been denying us access to the deeper things of God.

I know that for me, I have already been set free from a hedge of rejection in my life during this seeking time! However, now the hard part comes. God has supernaturally provided us with complete access to all He is by obliterating the briar hedges of our hearts. Now we must be bold and courageous as we allow the Master Gardener access to the roots of those hedges. For you see, now we have to allow the Healer to heal the land of our heart with His love.

Consider what Ephesians 3:16-19 says. “…That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, BEING ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

God doesn’t just want to clear the briar patches of your life, He wants to restore the precious ground of your heart! So be strong and of good courage. Allow God access to the roots of the briars. As you do, you too will experience the miracle of love, healing, and restoration that can only come from the pierced hands of the Master Gardner.

Apocalypse Now

For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.  – Romans 8:19

Apocalypse.

What images come to your mind when you hear that word? Helicopters flying low over the jungle canopy or giant meteors crashing into the Earth? Images from Mel Gibson’s movie, Apocalypto? Or maybe your mind goes to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or blood, fire, and smoke. Perhaps the Antichrist and all his armies gathered in the Valley of Megiddo?

Legend, lore, and religion have conditioned us to think, “death and destruction” when we hear the word, apocalypse. In the Greek, the word apokalupsis means: a disclosure of truth concerning divine things before unknown; used of events by which things or states or persons hitherto withdrawn from view are made visible to all; manifestation; appearance; revelation of future things relating to the consummation of the divine kingdom.

We have been duped by the enemy into thinking that apocalypse is something to fear: something to escape. But the Bible says that all of creation is groaning in expectation of the apocalypse – the manifestation of – the sons of God. Only true sons of God can establish the Kingdom. Only sons of God understand that authority has been given to them to bear fruit, multiply, increase, replenish the earth, and subdue it by taking dominion over it.

In truth, apocalypse brings Kingdom truth and restoration. Apocalypse brings life, light, abundance, and increase. The apocalypse of the sons of God is what all of creation has been waiting for; it’s what God has been waiting for. His desire to establish a Kingdom of sons has not waned since the Garden. That desire is waiting for the manifestation of – the revealing of, the apocalypse of – the sons of God who will cause it to come to pass.

It’s time for the sons of God to get the revelation of who we are and what God’s purpose for us is. It’s time for the Kingdom of God to be established in the earth. It’s time for apocalypse…NOW!

A World for Vincent

I’m off to the art museum this morning to enjoy some of mankind’s finest artistic interpretations of many things in God’s creation. Some paintings will be illuminated with precisely placed yellow spotlights. While others are set amongst a collage of similar colors, designs, or subjects. I anticipate anxious art lovers with craned necks surrounding the most honored artist’s works.

Early into the visit, a freckled-faced boy is a joy to watch, with his wide open eyes, and purple bubble gum bouncing about his mouth on the verge of escape to the carpet below if he drops his chin a mere fraction of an inch. He wonders if the sneaky crocodile on the canvas will snatch the sunbathing flamingo and send pink feathers flying into the air from the snap of its strong jaws. The boy finds respite and escape from a humdrum day in the oily figures that were smeared and blended a hundred years before by the painter. An old man stands alongside him gazing at the same picture, reminiscing about his naval port visit to New Zealand during World War II when he watched a crocodile do precisely that which the boy imagines.

Just around the corner, an ornately dressed social butterfly tries as conspicuously as she can to interpret the abstract puddles of blue, yellow, and red that were thrown upon a stark white canvas before her affluent and influential mother-in-law pounces upon her with the know-it-all inquisitiveness of an aristocratic art critic. The lady peeks and ponders and tastes the tiny beads of sweat pop out above her lip. She settles on the notion of a panoramic cityscape as seen from the artist’s own studio flat high above. Fanning the flush from her cheeks with a curved museum map, she eagerly waits to prove her sufficient breeding for Cybil Pettigrew’s only son.

The museum walls are filled with experiences: smudges of reality, strokes of fantasy, blotches, swatches, and the moist clay of imagination. The boundaries of creativity are outlined by the artist’s mental constraints and physical limitations of skill. The artist intends to illicit an emotional response from the art lover. A negative response might be as satisfying to him as a positive one, if it’s filled with the passion and the fire he had when he created it.

The patrons move the edges of understanding further from the artist’s own limitations. Interpretations of art add intangible value to the images and objects. What she sees there certainly differs from what he does. Whose viewpoint is correct? Just as God confounds the wise by blessing the fool, so does the truth in the brushstrokes elude the artist and his most ardent fans. They, too, are children of the most-high God, no less specifically loved by Him than Rembrandt, Da Vinci, or Picasso. God intends the patrons in the museum to realize their own ability to create. They may never pick up a paintbrush or grip the mallet and chisel of a sculptor, but He has provided a way for them to tap into their creativity and express what they were designed for.

Recognize the beauty in the song you sing or the chords you play. He delights when another worshipper connects to Him because your part, like no other, escorted them there by His side, into His presence. Stretch your ear to hear the voices outside the familiar. Musical and lyrical creativity is as potentially varied and limitless as the languages and letters of the natural and supernatural world. Just as God’s human creation is marvelously dissimilar in every respect, listen to other musical genres. Take some time to listen to Latin music. Have you ever heard music from India or Romania? Try instrumentally forward music from classical to jazz to electronic. The human voice is one vehicle for His anointing, but, as we know, instruments can say things we cannot. Maybe you could take a journey through music that starts from early recordings in the 1900’s?

Honor the Sculptor of the Grand Canyon in the Arizona redness. Esteem the Stoker of volcanic fires within the bowels of our crusty world. Worship the King that folds precious and sparkling diamonds in the African hills. Marvel at the birds of the air. They are His elaborate gifts with wind-lifted wings on an orange and violet sunset canvas.

You and I are curious wonderers. We are vessels to be poured out. We are expectant, anticipators chomping at the bit of change and restoration of Kingdom things. Bow before the Artist whose spectacular palette boggles our understanding and blows the tapestry of our minds. Find a small tributary of your own and travel downstream in this river that takes us all to the deepest discoveries and wonders, in God’s ocean of color, texture, and sound.

RESToration

Do you ever need God to speak to you? I mean REALLY speak to you? It never ceases to amaze me how God speaks. Last year, the Lord spoke this word of encouragement to our church. It was a timely message, filled with the hope of restoration. The most awesome thing about a true Word from God is that is is ALWAYS fresh…it continues to speak. Well, this piece is speaking to me today…allow it to bring you a renewed hope in God’s plan for your life, as it has mine. With that hope, enter into the REST that comes when God restores peace to your heart.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” says the Spirit of the Lord. “All of the building blocks that have been put in place up until this point have had a purpose. Even in those times when you tried things, and you did things, and you said, ‘it looks like it didn’t work.’ Know this,” saith the Lord, “be careful not to say that anymore.”

“For don’t you know that you were in training all this time? Don’t you know that I was working a plan all this time? Don’t you know that you have things in you right now that you have been preparing for, and that [they] are not just for this house and not just for this territory, but are for the nations? So understand and know that this is a place of training, it is a place of growth, and it is a place of maturity and preparation. For your schooling is taking place and your training is taking place and you will fulfill that which you were trained for,” saith the Lord.

“And for some of you,” I hear the spirit of God saying, “even those things that I showed you years ago that you had laid aside and thought, ‘Well it was foolish thinking; it was just something that was in my mind.’ No, no, no,” saith the Lord, “that was what I was giving you and it was for such a time as this.” And I also hear the spirit of God saying, “Don’t worry about the time that’s lost, because I can make sure that all is restored!” saith the Lord.

-A prophetic word given to Gateway Believers Fellowship by Apostle David Coker, July 27, 2008.