pull the curtains,
dim the lights,
deafen the ears,
shut the eyes.
heaven is loud, so i must be louder,
if i want to ignore it.
maybe a lot of the things i think matter don’t matter as much as i once thought they did.
maybe a lot of the reasons i thought were valid reasons aren’t as valid as i once thought they were.
maybe i am seeing the light.
maybe my mind has been screaming for years, my heart yearning for ages to escape from the prison of fear i’ve built around it.
maybe i am someone i’ve never met before.
maybe there’s more.
maybe the God of the universe, the infinite Spirit of grace and opportunity who loves me endlessly wants more for me than what i want for myself.
and that doesn’t always mean the harder thing, that doesn’t always mean the darker thing, the confusing thing.
sometimes his ways are higher than mine because they’re better, they’re brighter, and he brings me to that place of rejuvenation with his love that so transforms my mind and heart are brought to a place where i walk in his highways of better days and brighter mornings.
maybe suffering isn’t the highest calling, but simply a necessary one.
maybe necessity isn’t equivalent to duty.
what if contentment is easier than i think it is?
contentment isn’t gained through expectation manifesting into reality but rather realizing that reality, although sometimes much different than expectation, might just possibly be better.
after all, if expectation was always the best, our prediction and perception of both ourselves, the world around us, and the future context in which we live would have to be near perfect.
and i know that i, among many, am not that perfect.
ever since i was young i would dream of life, constantly, incessantly.
it was like a drug to my immature mind.
and my mind, weak and untrained, was unable to bear under the weight of the surpassing glory i dreamt of and thought about.
every note in a song was a reason to hope.
every shaft of light escaping through the cover of trees above me to grace my forlorn cheeks was enough rationale for heaven.
heaven was always on my mind.
and not in the baby angels and wispy clouds sort of way.
but in the way that i knew that everything i saw was not everything that there was and in the way that i knew there was a greater adventure ahead than the one in this life and there was a greater love than the one i longed for in this life.
i didn’t wish for death.
in fact, it was the very opposite.
heaven is completely and utterly filled with life.
i know that when i was young i had hope that everything would work out just the way it was supposed to, and i wouldn’t say that this hope was in vain or even ill-placed, but rather quite the opposite.
it’s just unfortunate that it ran out before it could prove itself.
i believe that all hope is rightly-placed.
the only purpose for hope is to continue to hope.
hope is hope sustained.
as soon as the promised land is reached, the hope is no longer needed.
i don’t believe that we understand much about the life after this one.
it seems that creation has some sort of an inkling.
i yearn so much for the church to stretch their imaginations beyond denominational doctrines and evangelical cliches.
read the word with hunger to see more than you’ve ever seen before.
plead with the Spirit to open your eyes, unlock your ears, awaken your mind.
don’t settle for who your pastor says Jesus is.
find him for yourself.
find the fountains of life he promised were yours.
drink deeply and continue to drink.
drown in them if you dare.
plead with God for the souls in your city, in your region, in your country.
we all need to be on our knees more.
and i mean our actual knees.
we cannot ignore our triune nature anymore.
if your spirit is yearning, your soul must express that yearning, and your body too.
i’m convinced that you cannot get to where you need to be with the Lord on 30 minutes a day.
we need to be sacrificing whatever it takes to spend more time with him.
you just cannot reach some places in God without crossing a threshold one, two, three hours into spending time in his presence.
we always say that quality is better than quantity but with God i’m not so sure.
let me put it this way.
i think that quantity is the way to quality.
i will never experience great times with a friend if i don’t experience boring ones.
boring hangout times signify more than level of quality, they can signify quantity spent with that person.
sometimes we need to spend some time breaking the ice with the Lord before we can dive deep in.
he’s always ready for the deep, but we’re often not, and he will protect us from what he knows we’re not ready for if we aren’t willing to move past the mundane, ordinary, boring times spent with him before leading us into the more curious, extraordinary, wild places of his heart.
what do we have to lose for it?
a netflix show that we’ll forget about in three months from now?
we need to be more serious about how fun being immersed in the mighty Spirit of God can be.
if we aren’t, it’s likely because we’re disillusioned, disappointed, bitter, apathetic, or fearful.
we need to awaken that sense of wonder and excitement we had when we were children.
why do you think that Jesus said in order to fully enter and experience the Kingdom we have to become like children?
you will never experience something extraordinary unless you can imagine something extraordinary.
we must continue to wonder, to gape and stare, to stir our minds into a greater reckoning with our present and our future; not in a way that awakens fear and worry, but in a way that welcomes the curiosity of a child deep within us that we’ve long forgotten about to say once again to ourselves “what if?”
what if there’s more?
what if brighter days are ahead?
what if i find it?
what if my dream is attainable?
what if i can be truly free?
what if the Lord is really, truly fighting for me?
what if heaven is really coming to earth?
what if it’s already here?
what if?
open your eyes.
begin to wonder.
pull back the curtains,
turn on the lights,
unlock the ears,
open the eyes.
heaven is loud, so i must be louder,
if i want to enter it.
the unworthy wanderer 