"...The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes..."

This beats in synchrony with my heart. This is taken from "New Song (Worshipping Warriors)" by Jake Hamilton. You can listen to the original here. It is originally a piece called "The Vision" by Pete Grieg, one of the primary founders of the 24-7 Prayer Movement. I love this. 

"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 to 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 barrow 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 mold 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 heroes of the faith, from Christ himself. 

And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed."

Amen & amen.

Enjoy the moment!

I had carefully checked the weather forecast before I headed out the door this morning to hop on my bike to go to a staff meeting that morning. It was overcast with a 30% chance of precipitation. It was perfect going there — cool enough so that I didn't even work up much of a sweat riding up the couple of hills I have to go through on my regular route. After we had wrapped things up at the meeting I went outside and could smell the freshness of rain mingled with concrete and could see raindrops bouncing off my saddle. "Well, this is just great!" I thought rather sarcastically to myself, "I'm gonna get wet!" To make it worse, I had forgotten my wallet that morning so I wasn't even able to grab lunch or shop around and wait around for the rain to stop. I decided to brave the weather as I just wanted to get home. Thankfully, it was not pouring, and I had definitely been caught in worse before! I tried not to grimace too much as I squinted my eyes, deflecting the drops that were flying into my face. The thought, "Enjoy the moment!" flitted across my mind as I was getting wetter by the second. I tried to look at it in a positive light: it was (somewhat) fun, it was refreshing and it was unexpected.
Bear with me as I digress a bit. After growing up in an arid, desert climate my entire life, I used to welcome the thought of rain; it was always something special, worthy of celebration when it came. And now? I've become rather indifferent to it and it's even become a bit of a nuisance, especially when it entails getting wet! These are changes, among others, that I've noticed after having moved here eight months ago or so. A huge difference between the "desert child me" and the "Canadian me" was accentuated as I was skyping with my parents (who are still currently living in the Middle East) the other day and we were talking about the weather. I was saying that it was getting warmer and more humid as the temperature has been climbing into the mid-20s (Celcius) and I've even got central AC. They just laughed - current temperatures where they are are well into the 40s!!! I think it's safe to say that I have adapted to Canadian climate because that sounds unbearable right now!
While there is a part of me that dislikes 'letting go' of certain aspects of the life I knew before and clinging to a new one, a part of me knows that it's good and that it's all part of the process of accepting change and adjusting. I know that, at heart, I will always be a "desert child" and that the Middle East will always be a part of me. I know I will probably go back and live there one day. I know that hearing snatches of Arabic in grocery stores or having interactions with Arabs will always warm my heart and bring a big smile to my face. I also know that I can't live in the past or the future - I can't live in the memories of home and I can't live just waiting to go back. I want to live in the present, engaged with my current surroundings and the people around me. That's where "Enjoy the moment" comes in. You will just live waiting for life to happen or be continually stuck in a weird time warp of the past if you're constantly wrapped up in the future or past. I don't want to miss the things, whether little or big, that God has for me in each day. Believing that He is constantly pursuing and romancing my heart opens my eyes to the little gifts He sends every single day that are just for me that make my heart dance: a spectacular sunset, seeing a deer in the woods, a free meal, a kind word from a stranger. . . I bet we don't see half the things He sends our way because we're too caught up in something else.

So friends, I challenge you to enjoy each moment and live with eyes wide open to catch what He is doing in the here and now. Sometimes the rain comes and we're unprepared, but it's up to you whether you choose to dance in it or grumble about it.

Home is...

The feeling of sand going through your toes
Intense summer heat akin to what it must feel like to be in an oven
Bright, blue skies 98% of the year
Rejoicing and running out to play when rain, a rare and special gift, comes
Where everything is "inshallah" (if God wills it - hopefully it will get done, but not likely)
Where weddings are big, gaudy, segregated parties that go late into the night and when the Bride only makes her appearance at midnight
Where everything runs on "Arab time" - fashionably late is the norm, sometimes even a few hours after the time earlier agreed upon!
Having to use a few matches before the gas stove finally lights
Hearing the bell ringing through the streets of the neighborhood, signaling the arrival of the gas truck - you have to go out and flag him down if you need "buta gas"
Hearing the call to prayer go off at least a couple of times of the five a day
Where taxi is the standard mode of "public transportation"
The smell of dust in the air and finding sand EVERYWHERE in the house after a sand storm
Hot manaeesh (bread dough topped with cheese folded over) or grilled chicken, tabouleh, hummus and baba ghanoush as the standard, after-church lunch on Friday
Everyone out and about come eight o'clock at night
Crowded malls and overflowing parking lots late at night
The smell of fruity shisha (hookah) wafting from cafes
The rolling red dunes of the desert, our "backyard," literally minutes from our house!
Hearing arabic, urdu/hindi and tagalog all in the same place
Watching a "new" American Idol season on MBC 4 that is actually a few seasons behind the North-American current one
Being excited to go on an airplane, eat the kids' food pack that usually had a little chocolate bar in it, and watch as many movies as we could
Making sure shoulders and legs were covered
Small finjans (cups) of milky tea with at least four spoons of sugar in it
Shabab (young local guys) racing by you in their deeply tinted or mirrored Land Cruisers
Flocks of young boys playing football (soccer) in empty parking lots or streets using their shib-shibs (sandals) or bricks for goal markers
Streets lined with little shops full of cheap candy, grocery and other miscellaneous items
Always sticking out in a crowd! Being a tall, white girl in a sea of light brown always attracted (unwanted) attention
Where Fine (like our Kleenex - what they call tissues) is in every room of the house
Shawarmas and falafels from the shop at the side of the road
The abundance of mangy street cats congregating around the garbage bins
Beautiful in its own, strange way.

Today, I miss it.

Stirrings

Do you know those times where you can feel the pulling in your Spirit, just beckoning you to come away and be with Jesus? I feel it physically. I like to picture that there's something like a rope in my Spirit connected to His Spirit, and sometimes He tugs it - my deep responds by crying out to His. I felt the tug last night. I couldn't wait to just get away so that it could just be me and Him. I started playing some worship songs on my keyboard and singing out my own words out of the overflow of my heart. Music is something that almost immediately draws me into the presence of God and connects me to His heart very quickly. Some of the sweetest, most powerful times of worship I've had have been in the secret place: when I'm shut up in my room with my keyboard and I get to sing my own love songs straight to Jesus and hear Him sing over me. Last night was one of those times. The presence of God came so thick and Holy Spirit started stirring me to intercede. Here are some of the things I furiously scribbled afterwards; this is my heart:

Make us ready for Your coming. Make us holy, righteous, pure, and set apart. Make us ready. Raise up a generation who will be set apart and who will walk in purity and singleness of heart and mind! May there be no areas of compromise in our hearts! Burn away everything that is not of you. Refiner's Fire, come and purify the hearts of this generation. 

NO COMPROMISE, Father! 

Let us be a people of no compromise! May we only desire that which is righteous, pure, lovely and true. We need to be ready. Oh, would You make us ready. There's no time for slumber, there's no time for drunkenness, there's no time for half-hearted devotion. Oh church, get ready. 

WAKE UP! WAKE UP YOU SLEEPING GIANT! 

Sound the alarm, sound the alarm, sound the alarm for He is coming. Do you not know that He is coming soon? Do you not see? Do you not see Him coming down from heaven, coming for a Bride that's pure, spotless and white?Do you not hear? Do you not hear the sound of the trumpets, announcing the return of the Bridegroom? 

GET READY, CHURCH! GET READY! 

There won't be time when He comes for Him to wait while you scurry to get ready. There won't be time for you to get oil while the call to announce His coming has already been sounded. You need to be ready. Oh, make us ready for Your coming! Set us apart! No areas of compromise within our hearts. Holy and set apart. A generation after holiness; a generation after purity. You have to get ready. Sound the alarm! Wake up, Church! 

Camel's Hair, Locusts, and Wild Honey

So I wanted to give you some background to the title of my blog and why I chose to put the verse from Isaiah 40:30 ("A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.' ") as a sort of "theme verse" for my blog!
First off, an introduction must happen! Meet John the Baptist. We find him in the early days of the New Testament, on the scene before Jesus comes in. I think he was a pretty awesome dude. His conception was a miracle - his mom, Elizabeth, had been barren and both of his parents were well along in years (Luke 1:7). Zechariah, his dad, was visited by the angel Gabriel who announced that his son would be "great in the sight of the Lord" and that he would "be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15)! It gets better - the angel said some more, pretty radical stuff for that time: 

"Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous - to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

How cool is that?! It's not everyday that an angel shows up prophesying about your kid's destiny! This guy was destined for greatness! His life was the fulfillment of a prophecy when Isaiah foretold of the "voice of one calling in the desert." 


Everything that John did was to point towards Jesus. I love these verses from Mark 1:7-8: "And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." He got that it wasn't about him. He understood that his life was to be like a trumpet blast, getting people ready for the Greater One who would soon come. He had no interest in hype or in garnering the affections of the people for himself. Jesus talked about John the Baptist and described him as the greatest man in history (Side note and brief rabbit trail: look at Jesus' words in Luke 7:28. Notice that He says, "The one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." That excites me! It seems to echo Jesus' promise in John 14:12...EXCITING truth that we should take hold of!). Jesus asked John to baptize him, which I think rocked John. He answered Jesus, arguing that he should be the one being baptized by Jesus, and not the other way around! John's life was marked by humility. He got it. 


What some people don't know about John's life is that he spent twenty years of his life in the wilderness, wearing clothes made out of camel's hair tied with a leather belt, and living off of locusts and wild honey, getting prepared, inevitably living a life of prayer and fasting, for only two years of public ministry. Two years! 


So how does this all relate to me? I believe that God put a similar "forerunner" spirit in me that He put in John. I have grown up feeling like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and, a lot of the time, feeling like I'm on one page and everyone else is on a different one. A lot of that is because that's just how God made me: I am a trailblazer; a pioneer; a forerunner; an influencer; a trumpet-blaster! I can relate to John and how he must have felt. Often, I feel like one voice crying out in the wilderness. Thankfully, God has surrounded me with a few fellow "forerunners" in this season, because, after all, God never intended for us to do this alone! If you're interested in studying the idea of the forerunner spirit and John the Baptist further, check out these awesome resources on Mike Bickle's site: (http://mikebickle.org/resources/series/forerunners-with-holy-violent-love) 

Sing winter

The snow is silently sprinkling outside my window. It's a Sunday afternoon. Silent, save for the occasional car that passes by on the street below. My soul is rested and satisfied. The beauty of winter surrounds me: millions of perfectly tiny, unique snowflakes are falling and resting on streets, sidewalks, steps, and shrubs. The below-zero air is crisp and nippy, but it's warm in here.

There's something really special about winter. If you're not a winter-sports or snow kind of person, you're probably grumbling about having to shovel your driveway, scrape off your windshield, or driving visually impaired. If it's not any of those, it's the cold itself. You're probably dreaming about being able to wear flip flops and tank tops again, or a perfect sandy beach on a deserted island in the middle of Pacific.
Not me! I am loving every moment of it. Well, okay, I'm not gonna lie - there are times when I can't feel my feet and when the cold goes through my bones that I could really go for some time on the beach in Kona, buuuuut for the most part, I am loving it (especially when I am all warm and bundled up!). For someone that has grown up in a desert her whole life and who has never experienced anything below 10C to her remembrance, winter is kind of a big deal!

It's bringing out the inner child in me; wonder and awe are being awakened in my heart. I run over and peek out my window when I wake up to the sound of someone shoveling snow outside. It makes me want to jump up and down and dash outside so I can play in it or catch snowflakes on my tongue. It's deeper than that, though. It's like God is romancing my heart in a new way. He's showing me other aspects of the beauty of His character as He unveils sides of His creativity through winter that I've never seen before.
The desert is one of the most peaceful places I've ever been in, but a silent, snow-covered forest is pretty comparable. There's so much beauty in winter that is often overlooked. I love the sound of packed snow crunching under my feet, the sight of the branches clothed in white, and the peace that accompanies the falling flakes. I love that there's still life and beauty during a season where everything is supposed to be "dead". You see, He makes dead things come alive. That's who my God is.

May your heart be reawakened to the beauty of winter.
May you learn to marvel at the small things in life.
May you experience joy in ways you have never before.

Frozen in time: a perfect snowflake caught in my hair

He knows me and He loves me

So I realize it's been close to a year since I last wrote on here...and I've decided to (hopefully) revive this blog of mine! I decided it needed a makeover so I totally redid the design. It's a lot more "me" now!

Lots of things have changed since a year ago. It's been one big adventure! I apologize for not writing more during DTS! DTS literally took me halfway around the world, from Hawaii back to the Middle East. Yes, I went back! I did not see that coming, but God has His ways, and they are so much higher and better than mine! Outreach was a whole lot of growing, stretching, crying, and laughing. I went with a team of 8 other amazing people. We became like family as we lived, ate, loved, and worked together 24-7. We saw God work miracles in our hearts and others. We saw Him heal people physically and emotionally. We experienced the availability of His presence as we went about our days. We continually encouraged and poured into each other. You should know, though, that IT WAS MESSY! But that's the beauty of it. God took a bunch of broken yet willing people who did not have everything together, and yet still worked through us to make something beautiful.
He uses weak and broken vessels to show His glory through. 
So that was outreach in a very small nutshell.

Two and a half hard, broken, and lonely months post-DTS began to unfold. Being reunited with my family was wonderful, and getting to spend time with extended family was great, buuuuut it was lonely. To be frank, it sucked. I began to wonder and doubt if what God had done in my heart during DTS was legitimate. After being surrounded by hundreds of fiery, Jesus-loving young people, and after spending three months with my outreach family, I went back to nothing. I didn't really have any friends in the areas where we stayed for the summer. It wasn't like I was going "home" either as I really didn't see North America as my home. I felt like I was stuck in limbo a lot of the time, pretty much still living out of a suitcase. I was ready to settle and put down some roots somewhere! I had a huge struggle during DTS over what to do after and whether or not university was for me. I really just wanted God to let me loose in the world, so that I could jump right in and partner with His heart for the nations. I thought I was ready, but, looking back, I don't think I was - a lot of refining needed to happen first! So, I decided to take the plunge and go back to school. I had applied to a small school in a city that I had never heard of before. I don't really know how it all happened, but all I can say to explain it was that it was God!

So here I am, in Brantford, Ontario, sitting in my room in university residence, learning about Plato and Kant, human rights, and leadership, and falling more in love with Jesus. I still marvel at how God brought me here! To think that a year ago, I was in Kona under the palm trees, not having a CLUE of where I'd be later that year, and look where I am now! I have to tell you, it's like God set this all up just for me (funny thing...)! Who knew that there would be a small community of passionate worshipers who want to see God transform their city through kindness? Who knew that relationships could grow deep so fast after only five months? Who knew that I'd have an abundance of lifelong friends and an incredible sisterhood already? Who knew that there would be other people like me in such a random place? Who knew that Brantford would be the best place in the whole world for me to be and grow right now? Who knew, who knew, who knew?!
God knew. He knows. He knows ME and He LOVES me!