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 lose that 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 barrel 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.

 
-- 24-7prayer.com

My "Spiritual Birthday"

I was going through old journals in my closet just now, sifting through things to throw out and keep. I began reading an old journal that I was required to keep for English class in eighth grade. The run-on sentences are embarrassing, I gotta be honest, and it was clear that I wasn't even trying.

That journal took me back to a different time and a different person, one who had little passion for school and yet a desire to prove her intelligence. One who was angry, sad, or confused all the time and yet didn't want to be. One who was angry at the state of the world and dreamed of changing it, yet only had the strength to spend hours playing computer games to escape it. These things had especially defined my life in sixth grade (oh early female adolescence, I do not miss you). I wasn't doing very well emotionally, spiritually, or academically, so I was supposed to live in Gail for only one year so I could get "straightened out." However, when that year was up and I went back to Jacksonville to continue my life, it just didn't feel right. I made a pro's and con's list of Jacksonville vs. Gail, talked to friends and family constantly, prayed...and finally asked Mom and Dad if I could return. They let me (which I realize now could have only been motivated by the truest kind of love in existence - when parents love their kids enough to let them go if that's what's best for them).

But when I got back to Gail, some things had changed. At the age of 13, I had just made a decision that would define the next 5 years (and, as it turned out, 9 years because I went to a Texas university) of my life, and I was afraid I'd gotten everything wrong. Those were some of the most painful months I have ever experienced to this day, that fall semester of 8th grade. And today I read a journal that honestly embarrassed me, and not just because of grammatical issues, until I got to this entry in which we were asked to share the best part of our life right now:

9/26/2002

The best part of my life right now is my newfound trust in Jesus, that he will help me through some rough things that are going on in my life right now. It just makes me feel so happy to wake up everyday and know that he will take care of me and that no matter how bad things are, there's a reason that they're happening, a reason so great I could never even imagine what it is. That helps me stay happy through the good and the bad.


Even though just a month earlier I'd made a decision that I thought was life-changing, this moment was the one that was truly life-changing. I didn't understand much at that point (even though I'd known all the Bible stories from a young age), I still had very little fruit of the Spirit in my life, and a lot of what I thought the Bible taught was misguided...but I understood the most important things, that Jesus loved me enough to have a perfect plan for my life if I would only trust him. That he was my savior, king, confidante, and guide...that he was the only way to Truth. This day wasn't the only turning point; each day is a turning point. Each day I am being saved from my sins and my flesh that wages war on my soul; each day I am being protected from a very real enemy and a very cruel world by nothing less than the one true God. But I'm glad to be reminded of when it really began, this beautiful passionate journey of living for Jesus and receiving the abundant life.

Wake Up.

"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:14

I have been meditating on this verse for a long time. Thankfully, it is not just a command to us; it is also a promise for others:

"Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!" Isaiah 26:19

Jesus has awakened me, and I am thankful. But I want the other dead to live as well, to wake up and embrace the lives they have been given rather than live in fear. Why do we have so many dead people walking around?

How many people I know who have resigned themselves to occupations they don't like, to hating work and then drinking alcohol to forget work and then drinking coffee in the morning to stay alive for work. Students hate school and yet let it master them, being anxious and jealous, never feeling smart enough or good enough, and putting down fellow students to make themselves feel better. Americans eat well, drink well, and work hard, and yet are starving.

What is wrong with us? Have we no hope? We only have 80-something years to live if we're lucky, and we're spending it like this? And all too often, if we do quit school and go off to "find ourselves" or "truly live," we only end up in poverty, drinking all the time to forget our actual lives. Why are we so dead, and how do we resurrect ourselves?

I thought about how to best sum this up. Of course, Jesus is the one who conquered death, who raises us from the dead, and who will grant us eternal and abundant life. But what is it about Jesus that makes his promises so eternal and steadfast? Faith, Hope, and Love. It's no coincidence that "faith, hope, and love abide (1 Corinthians 13:13)." What does "abide" mean? It can also be translated as "remain" or "will last forever." Haha! I think we have found our definition of LIFE! We need to put ourselves in situations where faith is necessary, hope is possible, and love is a choice. Life must be so uncertain that we have to live by faith. We must be working so much for change that we allow ourselves to hope again. And we must surround ourselves with people we choose to love, not people we are genetically predisposed to love or people who are exactly like us. This is how to come alive.

We'll just take a hypothetical person. She graduated in the top 10% and now studies at UT, where she feels mediocre because she is no longer "the smart girl" in class. She's only average here. So she joins a sorority trying to find belonging and meaning, but instead only feels more insecure as she tries to fit the mold of a beautiful, successful, intelligent, "all-around" kind of girl. She is enslaved to comparing herself to others. Then she graduates to work in a PR firm, where she still fails to find meaning because she spends her day helping a corrupt client gloss over its human rights violations. At the end of the day she goes out for drinks with her girlfriends, laughing unnaturally, telling herself she is living the good life but wishing she could meet just one decent guy at these bars she frequents who won't just abandon her. She's too scared to leave the country or to even talk to people who are different from her (not to mention her friends would think she is weird). And she wonders...is this the American Dream?

Let's take that same girl and instill her with faith, hope, and love. Going to UT is still really hard, and she fights the urge to feel that she's worth nothing compared to the many successful friends she's made. But rather than giving into the temptation of self-hatred, she decides to have faith that she has a purpose here and hope that she will fulfill it. She realizes that she can study her hardest and there will still always be people who seem more intelligent than her...but then, when she looks at Jesus and at what He values instead of what the world values, she begins to look at her hands rather than her body or even brain. She puts these hands to use loving people, using her communications skills to teach English to refugee families and hanging out with unloved people on the streets. She finds peace with who she is, and therefore continues to have peace when she graduates and looks toward her uncertain future in a struggling job market. Although she ends up waiting a while to find a job and endures many moments of feeling she has failed her parents, God, and herself, she eventually begins doing PR work for a local nonprofit that helps the homeless. She still hasn't found the love of her life or, for that matter, her dream job, but is resting in God's promises and learning that his love is more than enough. She is now studying a foreign language and dreams of ending poverty in that area of the world.

Is her life any easier? Not by a long shot. But is it more abundant? Does it have eternal significance? You bet. The first version of this girl was deadened and saddened, while the second version was awakened to her true calling and purpose.

What's sad is, some of you will read this and then go away thinking it doesn't apply to you. "Well, I AM one of the few who is called to be rich and comfortable" or "That sounds nice, but being idealistic gets you nowhere." When Jesus says he has come that we may have LIFE and have it to the full, what does he say before that? "The enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy" (John 10:10). The lives of Americans are being stolen and destroyed, and quite successfully. We're perpetuating the enemy's deceit and theft through the paths we encourage our children to take and the lies we continue to tell ourselves - namely, that comfort and security will bring us the abundant life. They never have and never will.

I have to add one more thing here, along the lines of comfort and security. If God has told you to do something and you haven't obeyed because you "love your family too much," you are flat-out sinning...not to mention missing the abundant life God has for you. Whether you are close to your mother and father and don't want to leave them, or whether you want to "protect" your children by raising them in the United States rather than, say, Uganda, it is still sin if God has tugged your heart elsewhere. We are commanded to love others above ourselves, and we are to honor our father and mother and care for our children - these things are true. But Jesus says very straightforwardly, "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). And he means it. Probably when you have said these excuses to fellow Christians in our culture, you have been met with understanding smiles and nods: of course you should feel that way and it is only natural and of course God can't expect you to put your kids in danger. But disobeying God is far worse than taking your kids to Africa.

That said, God certainly does not want you to abandon your family in their time of need. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, "But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." If you have a child, it is your top priority to provide for him or her, and if you have elderly parents whose health is failing, likewise. Although there are many who have been called to go and yet stay, there are also some who are itching to change the world but in the process neglect the responsibilities God has already given them. Remember what Jesus says in Luke 16:10: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." Be a faithful steward of what you have now, and trust that if God has given you dreams he will fulfill them in his timing and as your faith grows.

If you do not yet have a family and are waiting to obey God until he provides you with a husband or wife to comfort you, this too is a sin that betrays a lack of faith in the sufficiency and providence of Christ. Luke 16:10 also applies to you. And there is a second part to those two verse at the top that I want you to notice: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." "...You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!" When God wakes us up from our safe and comfortable lives and sends us on uneasy journeys that require faith, hope and love that can only come from him, He also shines on us and gives us joy. He provides everything. When I think of the phrase "shine on you," I think of the sun with its warmth, happiness, and comfort. If Christ shines on us, it is as if he turns his face to us in approval, and his blessings come down just like rays from the sun. And when we awake, we then sing for joy because Jesus fills us with such abundant life that we are about to burst with blessing.

So believe his promises, and ask him right now what waking from your sleep and rising from the dead mean for you. You may need to simply notice someone you ignore on the street each day, you may need to change jobs, or you may even need to move your entire family overseas. Are you living the abundant life?