It's all in Love.

Ok, so I am back from Louisiana. I had a really good time down there. My team was totally great, so many willing and hard working and totally hilarious people. I don't really know how to articulate what I saw, or to make any big profound God revelations from it. It always feels like a dream.
One thing I realized last night while at dinner with Arley is that it is getting harder and harder to return to this place after I have been on a mission trip. I know it's a common feeling, but my emotions when I get home are all out of wack. I go through this depression phase where I just want to be angry. I go through this "simplistic" phase where I gather all my excess belongings and haul them off to Good will or I have a yard sale. I have this lonely phase where I just want someone to do this work with, and I think alot about love and loss. It's really a good thing for me to go throught these cycles, although to the reader they might sound slightly masochistic, which it is, but it's for a good cause. It's for a God cause. The older I get, the less I despise suffering. It's actually a major part of life, we just forget that in the temporal pleasures of this world. I guess my point is I don't get pleasure much at all from this world anymore. Not much at all. And to me, that's Biblical and that's the Holy Spirit in my life.

Over the past few years, God has said some really specific things to me. Like, "Develop your prayer life." or "Simplify your living." or "Get in shape." or "Don't date anyone." or more recently, "Write down my revelations. Wait for my timing. Something has been lingering for a long time, but now that you are not going to Asia, it's going to come without delay. Look at the nations and observe. Be amazed." So now, now that I've either not done what he said or done what he said not to do, I"m being forced into these things and that's caused some suffering. But the supreme joy that comes from being so unfailingly loved by my maker, by being pursued by him, by being believed in and held to a higher standard by him---it's worth every drop of pain that lands in my self-created bottle of suffering. It didn't have to be this hard, I just always opt for the field trip over the text book.

I get really pissed off these days by nominal christians. People who talk about God, or who pretend to be all close and loyal to him, people who put on that front when it serves their purposes. I get so frustrated and jealous on God's behalf by this excessiveness, this hoarding of things for one's personal gain, this fear of failure and fear of being in want. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, "You have no bleepin' idea what joy you are trading in for happiness, what peace you are trading in for comfort, what life you are trading in for maintenance, what freedom you are trading in for invisible shackels, what beauty you are trading in for lust, what shock and awe you are trading in for control." Do you understand the power of our God? Do you see that he can stop storms but hasn't lately? Do you recognize that he could intercede on your behalf alot more if you'd let him? Everything you own could be gone in a second. A gust of wind after hurricane Katrina knocked down trees and road signs 200 miles from the coast. Entire houses were emptied out into the neighbors yards. Newspapers from 10miles away were flying around the in the trees. HUGE pine trees bigger than our materialistic Christmas celebrations severed houses, families, lives. Death came without delay. And all that stuff means nothing now.

Just think what difference we could make. If we didn't buy that expensive car or that debt-laden house or that shopping spree for clothes we don't need. Did you know that countries in Africa are so deep in debt to America that they are financially enslaved to us until Christ returns? And that there are 40 million kids in the world waiting for adoption? And that 1 in 4 people in South Africa is infected with HIV? And that girls in Asia sell their bodies 10 times a night just to have money to survive? And that small children in India are getting 75 cents a week for rolling an unattainble quota of ciggarettes for our addictions to continue? And that we live and breathe and move freely in a society that on other country in the world experiences?

I'm angry about all this. It's not reality. The way we live is not reality. IF you are still even reading this, you probably think i"m condemning you and excluding myself from the path of these pointed fingers. I'm not. I have always loved stuff...but God's breaking me of that. I've always loved being loved...but God's showing me the failure of human love regardless of how ordained it is for our lives. I have always been insecure about my future...but God's enlarging my territory and dwindling my resources---all just to prove that it's not about me. It's not about how I look or appear to live or think I am. It's about him. It's ALL about him. DO you know what that means? My gosh, it should silence you.

I'll talk about Louisiana in a few days. I'm waiting for my pictures and i want to scan them and upload them so you can see me with a chainsaw! Until then, enjoy my cries for justice and my pleas for awakening! It's all in love.