"Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ." 1 Cor 11:1

Last night, I realized that whether or not I like it, God has given me spiritual authority in the lives of others. Thus, this has to be my mantra.  Follow me only inasmuch as I follow Christ. I need to remain in Him; not for my sake, but for the sake of those in my sphere of influence. Time in the presence of God is crucial not only because I need it, but because I am nothing without it and I defame His name by claiming Christ and not being rooted in Christ. If people see me as their spiritual mentor and I am sketchy, then the example I am setting for them is a sketchy one.

Generally I run from spiritual authority scenarios because I don't want to speak into the lives of others. I withdraw in fear of getting  prophetic words  or insight, and I had the revelation last night that I need those tools to follow Christ and set that example. I need to not only welcome them, but to seek them.

My paradigm is slowly shifting... and everyday, every moment... I need to re-declare "I have decided to follow Jesus"... bring on whatever comes with it. =]

It's interesting how the furthest thing from your mind suddenly becomes the only thing you can think about... and the last thing that you want to think about. As I have been wrestling through my thoughts this weekend, I spent a lot of time in prayer asking God to cleanse my thoughts and guard my heart and mind.

 I am incredibly grateful for my amazing friends. I love them, and they love God... so I often seek guidance and prayer support. Shani's wise advice totally made my day, so I am bookmarking it here:

"Don't drive yourself crazy in trying to figure out when is right and how and what and all that, just rest in where you are and the rest will follow if it is right....God hasn't said no so you don't have to let go... just don't jump into anything, and don't feel guilty or bad, because if it was wrong He would say no. God doesn't tease like that He is not cruel. If you decide to pursue something now you will miss an important step ... you will be settling for less than God's best. So,.....that is that thought. Just enjoy where you are and guard your heart above all else. Pursue God..."

Here is the reader's digest version of my car story: God tells me in a dream to buy a specific car. I buy that car, and the car breaks. The warranty doesn't cover it, but with the help of friends/family we give Mighty Mouse her new transmission and gas tank. Two months after buying the car, I finally drive it home and learn to drive it on the way. A week later, the clutch breaks- new master and slave cylinder.  The car is returned to me with an engine that's mostly newer than its body and more value added to it than when I purchased it.

Object lesson in humility and patience and discernment and prophesy and prayer and spiritual warfare... and I think I should really thank God for my car and how much Mighty Mouse has taught me already.

If she would break again tomorrow, it would still be worth it... =]

says to just close my eyes and dream. In disbelief, I shut them, tears rolling down my checks. "What do you see?" I see lights. Tiny lights, millions of them. Illuminating the blackened sky. A rushing sound fills my ears, like a stream bustling down a mountain or a bus barreling down the highway... I don't know where I am. It feels like the wilderness, but I cannot say whether I am in the middle of nowhere or the center of everywhere. The atmosphere is cold, and dark, and beautifully hopeless. This is what I want, to be there, wherever there may be... but, I, I don't want it for myself, I want it for you...

"Keep dreaming", he says, "don't open your eyes. What do you see?" I see the million little lights being dimmed by one overwhelming glow... the rushing noise becomes a feeble purr and then a silent roar. I feel suspended above the chaos. There is such peace, an overwhelming joy..  but also, my heart hurts, it burns, I feel like I'm being torn apart. I see nothing, yet everything. I see the impossible come to life... I see a radiance that transcends the darkness. This is what I want, to share that, that light for all to see... but, I don't want to shine for me, I want, I want you to shine through me.. for you.

"Now is the time... open your eyes", he says."Just follow me." 

...dreaming of a graffitied van... headed westward with just the necessities, a guitar that I can't play, and a kayak or two strapped to the roof. Spending mornings on the water in awe of our surroundings, days with dirty hands and busy feet following the Spirit wherever He leads, and nights marveling at the stars and our strange existence...

hmm, where are you and when can we leave?

After the city lights fade away and the District sleeps with peace again...


I'll see you, you'll find me, and off we'll go.

A.W. Tozer was truly a prophet of his time. While I do not agree with everything he said or wrote, I truly believe that he was a man seeking God with all his heart. I can only hope and pray that I live a life that devoted to the cause of Christ. While I find his life inspiring, I also find it challenging. Tozer was also a rather lonely man and his writings express how Christianity can be a lonely road to travel. He reminds me of the reality that faith- while designed to be expressed within community- is still a journey in which one must ultimately walk with God and God alone.  Here is an excerpt that I have been pondering for a while:

"The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all, he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.

Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.
The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the broken-hearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer as it were caught up to the third heavens and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints."

I don't think that Tozer is saying that every Christian is destined to be utterly lonely, as he also championed life within community.  What I do think he is saying is that it is almost impossible to feel accepted by the world and live a Christian life. Christianity that is fully understood, socially tolerated and without opposition isn't truly Christianity. John 17, and elsewhere, expresses that we should live in the world, but not be of the world. Living within something without being a part of it is difficult and is sure to be trying. In fact Jesus says that the world will hate us as it hated Him if we are truly following His teachings and His will.  "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." (John 15:18-19) And, when much of the church has embraced the world, it becomes a lonelier route for those committed to Christ.

In the midst of a lonely world, Christ promises us that He did not abandon us to be orphans (John 14:18); He left the gift of His Spirit to comfort and to guide.  As the psalmist writes, The Spirit never leaves us alone. 

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me,  your right hand will hold me fast." Psalm 139: 7-10

Though life may seem lonely at times, I am never alone as a Christian because His Spirit is always with me.

When I was in middle school, I loved the movie Reign of Fire and thought that dragons were awesome because of their mythological merit. Every year from then until I came to college, anytime anyone in my famly saw a dragon, they purchased the item and stored it away until a gift-giving occasion.

My family loves to do a little gift-giving typecasting. For my mom, it's angels. My one cousin, elephants; another, pigs; yet another, monkeys. My uncle, firetrucks or Elvis. My aunt, snowmen. I could go on, but you get the picture.  According to handy-dandy Wiki, typecasting is "the process by which an actor is strongly identified with a specific character, role, or trait".  Most actors fear being typecast because it pidgeon-holes them into a box from which they can never escape. For the most part, my family embraces their recieving roles; as they are typecast because they generally respond favorably to their gifts.

I, on the other hand, was never a huge fan of the process. When I was little, I was typecast according to my favorite color. By the time I was in fifth grade, I vowed to never wear purple again because I was so sick of seeing it. Over the years, I have lost my affinity for skulls, dragons, Harry Potter, skateboarding and basketball.  You see the trend?  Like most actors, I have never been fond of being labeled and pidgeon-holed.

 Typecast as the Christian. Hmm, can't think of anything better to be labeled. After all, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal: 2:20)

Though, I must also say that I do not feel worthy of such a label. My desire is that people see the reflection of Jesus in me, but I am not quite there yet. Since I have already been typecast the role and chosen as more than an actor but a co-heir with my King... I need to continue to grow and develop into that character, the character of Christ. Only the real clincher is: this isn't at all an act or a fad that will fade away- It's who I am, who I was meant to be. 

This time I don't mind being pidgeon-holed. Let them "label me a Jesus freak. There ain't no disguising the truth"  The truth is that "You are the only thing that’s beautiful in me". And, I am so grateful that others see that You, Jesus, are the most important thing in my life and the only thing that is sure to bring a smile to my face.  =]