There are several scriptures describing how God sets the authorities in place. These verses instruct us to pray for our leaders and those in power in other countries as well.

We are called to intercede. Not because we like them, but because we’re asking God to move through them despite their weaknesses— just like we’re asking God to move through us despite our weaknesses.

You’ve seen this already. Haters gonna hate. It doesn’t matter who is in office.

Regardless of the victorious person or party, there is always a camp that doesn’t like the elected official and finds him/her offensive, divisive, and not the right person.

Here is a thought I gave to a friend who greatly dislikes our sitting president.

Historically speaking, people are remembered for what they did or didn’t do, instead of who they are specifically as people.

JFK was quite a scoundrel. He was boldly immoral, a proud, silver-spoon elitist. Yet people talk about what he accomplished while in office more than any personal failings.

In contrast, Jimmy Carter was an amazing man in every way. He loved Jesus, was a humble, beautiful soul, and faithful to the end. However, he is remembered as a lackluster president and his inactions damaged the country at that time.

So while we are celebrating our freedoms from tyranny, please pray for all leaders in power at this time. Pray that God would show his mercy to the nations. Also, pray for His wisdom to be released and for humans to receive His wisdom.

God is always telling a story bigger than what we can see. Remember the confusion among the disciples, each one having a plan for Jesus and their remedy for Roman tyranny. But Jesus only had one purpose in mind—the plan of His Father.

Then and now, a much bigger story is unfolding.

At the very end of this whole earth experiment, there are a couple of questions we will have to answer:

Have we learned how to love the way Jesus loves us?

Have we given our all in loving God?
Loving ourselves?
Loving others?
Loving our enemies?

There’s a line from an Amanda Cook song that moves me every time.  “Your love is a fury all its own.”

This kind of power changes our world. Let’s release this kind of love in our prayers.

First of all, then, I urge that
supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings
be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions,
that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life,
godly and dignified in every way.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all people to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1–4

Our families with school-aged children are really in the thick of grade changes, shifting between old and new friends. The summer break promises to lead to new schools and circles, new adventures and adversities. 

It creates a LOT of emotions for parents and children alike. Change does that. 

Greater Things is also going through a lot of change. And it is creating LOTS of emotions. 

Many of us have made our way through the beautiful book “The Voice of the Heart” by Chip Dodd. It’s given us permission and language and a deeper understanding of how all of our emotions, yes, all of them, are beautiful in the Lord’s hands and can lead us to connections with Him and other people. If we let them.

It’s from this tender place of feeling deep sadness that I give you a small but vital word that the Lord gave me last week. I had to get real quiet with Him and be reminded about His truth. 

When change happens, all the foundations get shaken. Relationships rattle around. Hopes and dreams get shifted and sometimes crushed. But as these things happen, God makes room and space to reveal new dreams, better pathways, and more of Him.

As I lamented about the change, Holy Spirit was so kind. 

“You have loved people well. Not perfectly but well.
And you have been loved well.
The love you have shared is eternal.”

The Spirit went on to reveal how seasons change, relationships drift into different levels of connection. Our daily rhythms fade as our tasks no longer overlap. The relationships may change or even end for now. But the shared moments of love are eternal. Wow. 

The love we share is eternal.

We have often talked about root systems in Greater Things and the Lord brought it back once more. You and I are part of an eternal root system formed by the love of Jesus Christ. It is our great delight to grow into Him and share the journey. Together we experience the growth of living, even the pain and the sorrow.

But the love shared can never be taken away. Like a tree’s growth rings reveal draughts and growth and even fires, our love remains because we are rooted in Jesus. 

And He is love. Eternally.

Recently, we talked about the burning that comes before the ashes. True repentance always precedes a divine exchange. Today, I want to talk about a different kind of burning. Let’s consider some examples from scripture.

The sign of God’s presence to Moses.
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3 NIV)  A burning bush that was not consumed.

A sign of God’s protection to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
They were thrown in a fiery furnace for their refusal to bow to an idol. “He [Nebuchadnezzar] said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3 NIV)  But they were not consumed.

A sign of God’s power at Pentecost. 
The men and women gathered and waited as Jesus instructed. ‘Then all at once a pillar of fire appeared before their eyes. It separated into tongues of fire that engulfed each one of them.’ (Acts 2 TPT) And yet, they were not consumed.

The Lord keeps talking to me about the transition from burnt offerings to Burning Hearts. The Law with with its blood offerings laid the meat upon the altar and the fire of God utterly consumed it. His Beauty for our ashes is a jubilant, yet scandalous, theme throughout the Bible and our lives.

And now through the cross, the last offering is made. Talk about scandalous…Jesus has sacrificed the last drop of blood for us.
One for all, once for all. Hallelujah.

Incredibly we now have a new, living covenant. A new pathway, a new eternal reality even as we walk the earth. The Living Savior has breathed into us the Holy Spirit who burns within. Even the men on the road to Emmaus were struck by how their hearts burned in their chests as they walked with the Resurrected Jesus. The fire of God. And yet. we are not consumed.

How then shall we live?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1

Never again will blood or remorse for sin be the marker of holiness. We are living sacrifices. Living. Continually being surrendered to His mercy.

So what pleases our beautiful God?

Is it the morose sense of doom and guilt, regret and shame of the Law? I say wildly with flailing arms of praise — Heaven’s No!

Freed from the Law, we each now have the Burning Heart of God within our very being. Holy Spirit fires us to greater and greater purity and burns off the world-soaked dross.

God’s white-hot Love now fuels what fear and sorrow never could. Our lives are forever intermingled with the Divine. We are anointed. The place where heaven and earth meet.

Oh let us worship brightly as we carry the Life that is truly life.

In two recent GT events, the Marriage Retreat and Heart Made Whole, God led us through a season of confession and repentance. Directed by Holy Spirit, we wrote on pieces of paper any sin or stronghold, any person we hadn’t forgiven, any offense, lack of trust or unbelief. We wrote down any burden that kept us from connecting to God in a deeper way.

Then with grateful and humbled hearts the men and women placed their papers on the cross. Chuck and I promised we would burn them all at one time but they could immediately claim God’s beauty for their ashes of repentance.

A few weeks later, Chuck and I took an afternoon to burn these confessions before the Lord. It was more sobering than I expected.

Of course, we did not read them. But as we put the stack of papers on the straw and lit the fire, you could see the ink marks scribbled on white paper turn golden for a moment as the fire consumed and then reduced it to gray ash. It was holy ground.  

As the flames soared, we released blessings and truth to overflow into the hearts of each person who had gotten honest before God. We thanked our Faithful Father for being willing to exchange, in every way, His beauty for the lies and sin they had been willing to confess. A sense of freedom rose like incense.

Holy. Ground.

Now we are receiving testimonies of new jobs, physical healing, and restored marriages and minds. God is not mocked. He will do as He promised. The prayers turned to ash are becoming miracles.

There is more on this coming later as we consider being a living sacrifice. But for today, look at these photos closely. The intensity of the fire licked up every speck of sin weakness and frailty. God is so beautiful.

So we pray with repenting hearts: God empower us to let go of anything, everything, that doesn’t look like You. In the name of Jesus. Amen 

More. More than we ask or imagine. We sing it often. Sunday at our Florida church was no different. “We want more. We want more” I was swaying and singing with all my heart. And the Spirit just interrupted my moving with one startling question. More of What?

I stopped swaying.

More of You? I said, weakly. I have thought and taught for years that we can have as much of God as we will receive. Today, that thought didn’t ring quite clear enough. Again the Spirit prodded.  

Yes, I understand, but what part of More of Jesus do you want?

My mind flipped through answers like flash cards. More mercy? More wisdom? More patience? Oh, I know… More love.  There. That’s the answer, I thought, relieved.

On another day, perhaps. But in this moment, while the congregation was singing about revival and stretching their hearts and hands toward heaven, the cry for more seemed— lacking. Aching. Groaning for truth.

I stood still, listening carefully to the Spirit’s revelation.

In my mind’s eye, I saw a carpenter using a router to create channels in a beautiful piece of wood. With each layer, the tool cut deeper into the grain and formed an intricate design.

As I watched, the sawdust swirled as the tool moved into grooves, cutting away the unnecessary.

The Spirit spoke to my spirit in concepts, not human words.

We say we want more.
God wants us to want less.

We say we want to be like Jesus.
God says we have the mind of Christ.

Already full of the measure of God. We say we give Him everything.
God says surrendering what He gave us first is not sacrifice.

We say we want to be obedient.
God says He wants us to be devoted.

We say we want to live for Him
God says He wants us to live as Him. In Him.

The wood says, I want to be useful and beautiful and needed and admired.

The carpenter says, I want to cut away the excess and engrave my image so deeply into the wood that nothing else matters.

Selah.

As I have pondered this time in worship, as well as our church culture, our Christian conversations, and our frail attempts to be followers of Jesus, I keep asking the same question, “Father, are we even close to real?”

Do we actually love those who curse us and talk bad about us?

Do we actually give up our plenty for someone who has lack?

Do we actually hunger for perfect love instead of feeding our fear?

Do we actually allow the Holy Spirit to overflow with hope and healing instead of talking about sin management and serving?

Let’s keep this simple. God is love.

If we truly want more, then more of the Living God, should make it impossible for us to stay the same.

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

1 John 4:17 NIV

This is a verse that gets inside your soul and pings around like a pinball in a machine. Can you see it? Bouncing off every surface. Lights flashing. Bells ding, ding, dinging.  

This truth offers powerful imagery of being completely surrounded by God’s peace. A holy forcefield. And what is inside this divine dome of supernatural care?  Our imaginations.

Our ability to dream, to create, to envision, to consider, to complete.

Our minds are wondrous things and they are ALWAYS focused on SOMETHING. Sometimes our thoughts are pulled into deep pits of fear and despair by spiritual forces. But here, God is offering us an altogether better way to think and live.

The Holy Spirit is described as God’s wrap-around presence in the Passion Translation. God is promising PERFECT absolute peace for people who allow the roaming, moving, searching flow of their minds to be focused on Him.

We have been taught it is a battle or struggle to believe. But I beg to differ.

In this holy dome, a sacred space of existence inside His wrap-around presence, He and I can think, discuss, debate, dream and decide from a place of His peace. Absolute peace. All it takes is for me to be consumed with Him and His ways more than my own selfish strength.

Why would I do that? Because I trust Him. I am confident of His protection and provision, but more importantly, I am confident of His affection and presence. In fact, His love surrounds me. (Psalm 139)

What if resting in His favor is not as hard as we have been told? What if the best news ever is to hear, “put your hands up, you’re surrounded?”  

I can surrender with my hands in praise because I am surrounded by His love. My mind is tucked safe in His peace.

Whew. Just let this ping around until you get it.  

Running after God. I used this expression at the Volunteer Dinner. I later talked to my friend, Courtnay, who also said God had been inviting her to pursue and run after Him. Add to this the awkward questions at a new small group I visited this week. The blender effect is today my soul is buzzing with intentionality. 

We can spend our entire life talking about Jesus and never spending time with Him. We can spend our entire life in ministry talking about the Bible, talking about what it means to be a Christian and yet never have a deep, profound meaningful relationship with the Holy Spirit. 

Intimacy with God is our inheritance. 

All you have to do is read the great thinkers and believers of times past and they will tell you that when you spend time with the Living God, your life changes. And so I continue to beat the drum that if your life is not changing, perhaps the one thing that’s needed is you’re not spending time with the Living God who makes all things new.

If you want more, ask Him. Do you have questions, ask Him. Are you mad, afraid, offended, tell Him. This whole dang thing is about His Love in you. If you are not experiencing His Perfect Love…run toward it, not away. 

At the small group last night, if you can imagine, I did not want to say anything because I felt so out of place. They were talking about a relationship with Holy Spirit in theoretical terms. Out there, one day, maybe terms. 

The Holy Spirit just rushed up inside of me and then out of me. I couldn’t not speak. I couldn’t not say how beautiful the Spirit of God is on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis. I couldn’t act like I was content with going to church and reading my Bible, I couldn’t be pacified by talking about what was possible and never actually grabbing hold of the Life that is truly life.

While so many are debating thinking vs feeling, faith vs fact, who’s smart and who’s not, who’s allowed and who’s not, God is looking for hearts hungry for Him. It says He searches the whole earth looking for hearts (mind, will, and emotions) that will not be satisfied until they know Him. 

In Old and New Testaments the word “know” is akin to lovemaking. Intimately experienced and enjoyed.

I tell you truthfully that we will spend our entire life going through the motions if we are not actively running after God, if we are not intentionally setting our hearts to encounter Holy Spirit. God is so delicious, so delightful.

Let’s stop playin’ around. There is a whole world needing a real God. Let’s soak up until we overflow with Holy Spirit and show them what perfect love looks like.