What are we thankful for? We should be thankful that we have our freedoms and troubles, loves and heartaches, friends and enemies, that we have the air to breathe and the water to swim in. We should be thankful that we have these emotions both good and ill. Because these emotions, thoughts and wills are gifts from our Creator. He created us in His image, that means reasoning and free will, and it was good. He freely gave us control over our own fates and actions because He loves us! “Well why would a loving God allow all of this evil?” He allows it because He gave us free will. Let me put it this way; Your father tells you to not touch the oven because it is hot, you do and it burns your hand, your father comes over and puts burn cream on your wound, why would you get mad at your father? He told you not to do it because it would burn, you did it anyway and he freely gave you help when you needed it. The oven was not at fault because it was made to get hot. You should be upset at yourself for going against the fathers will and misusing the oven. And we should be thankful for this free will, it shows real relationship and love.

I had a revelation the other night as I was walking down the road, I was asking God “why do you allow me to kill my body with cigarettes?” and very plainly He responded, what would the lesson be if I just zapped you free of the habit? It then occurred to me that if I wanted to really quit, it would be a long sometimes painful process, but that would teach me the value of putting my heart and mind into a task. Rather we keep sticking our fingers in the fan, and God is ready and able to fix the pain that comes with that, but if we keep sticking our hands in the fan, eventually He stop helping and will let us keep doing it until we learn that it is not a fun thing. This is repentance. When we do something our way for so long and it starts to hurt, mentally and physically, until it gets so overbearing that we run back to God in our brokenness and admit that we were wrong.

That is where relationship (the thing God obviously wanted from the start) comes into play, plainly it takes two to tango. It takes our brokenness and God’s abundance of love. He gave us free will so we could choose Him! The base of a relationship is choice, we choose to be with her or choose to be with him, and then we choose to love them. Yes my friends love is a choice! One God made towards us long ago. God shows us how much power (through love) he gave us in Genesis, by letting us name the animals, He loved man so much that He made a woman for man so we wouldn’t be “lonely” you know what I mean. How cool is that though, that the Creator of the universe and everything in it was not happy until He made man.

So God does allow these things because of our gift of choice, even though it breaks His heart to see how we have become. But I assure you that every person that is wronged in this world has been accounted for, I know this because our God loves us. All he wants us to do is turn to Him and say “We need you, even though we do not deserve You, we are broken, and we need You.” It should make you happy that everlasting life is so easily given and relationship with the Creator is so wonderfully easy to have, because He is waiting for you He chose you, and He will wait until your last breath.

Thank you Father for Your relationship, Your perfect Love, Jesus Christ to cleanse us of our sins. All is forgotten in the shadow of the cross, and through Him relationship is achieved. Father bless us this Thanksgiving with an overabundance of Your Love and Life, so we may spread that Joy to the needy, sick and broken. In You- Amen

So with the end of prophecy school upon us, I found that I am more in tune with the Holy Spirit than I originally thought. I found that the little stream of uplifting phrases that go through my conscience are not myself but the Spirit. Sometimes they come out on here, other times they stay in my head and give me words of wisdom. Today I prophesied over a man that I hardly knew. God gave me the words to nail the guy to a t, uplift him, definitely gave him strength and encouraged him on his walk with God. Praise the Lord!

It happened almost instantaneously, I saw three verses that pertained to his daughter, his son and him. I also saw three objects, a palm tree, fire engine and slip and slide…These (like the verses) I had no idea what they meant and felt kinda silly with writing them down…I asked God what he was trying to say and He gave me detailed descriptions that made the man get a wide smile and start to laugh in joy of what God was saying! AGAIN PRAISE GOD!!!!!

This is something I am going to work on, being a person that is intuitive by nature, I like that God made me to enrich peoples lives, to maybe become a medium between them and Papa. We shall see, I will keep you posted when I do more prophecy and how they turned out.

The school of prophecy led by Dennis Cramer was this week, wonderful man, great attitude and just so happens to know stuff…like stuff you haven’t told anyone. Prophecy is something I believe in whole heartily. I am not the best at describing it, although after this week I am able to discern false prophecy from the Truth of Gods Words. First off false prophets are few and far between. They give words or advice that have an undermining message that helps the prophet not the person. Usually to gain power over the person or break spirits. It is pretty easy to spot a false prophet if you have any knowledge of Gods Word.

A prophet of God, on the other hand uplifts, encourages, warms, empowers, and strengthens the person and their faith in God. Also a true prophet welcomes testing and judgment of the prophecy *not judgment on Gods word, but judgment on how the prophet heard the Word.

We are all called to prophecy, but not all called to be prophets. I had a strange time with this one….It just means the gift is there, but some of us are not going to make a career out of prophecy. Like some of us console our friends, but we might not be called to be a pastor.

Prophets are human, they mess up details from time to time…Its OK, no body said they were perfect just because they hear Gods Words. Like Denny was telling us a story; He was at a church somewhere doing the school. He prophesied over 75-80 people getting details right every time, then one of the last ones he did was over a guy and went something like this “Jesus would say: I see you on a passenger jet, you are taking clothing and food in boxes to a people with olive skin, they are overjoyed and so am I in you says the Lord.” The guy walks away and comes back after everything is over questioning Denny’s prophetic gift. Denny asks what he said to make the guy question his gift. The guy then says that he had taken food and clothing to some folks with olive skin and he saved many lives, but he went on a cargo plane not a passenger plane…..Seriously.

OK, we must use our God given brains here with prophecy. Take the meat from the words, throw the gristle out (it didn’t matter what kind of plane got the man there). God’s children are not perfect, nobody is, we can misinterpret the visions or whatever. If something encourages you to be a stronger, better, glorious child of God….don’t you think that something might be from God? Think it over.

When we see that we are forgiven as much as we forgive, only then will we be free. We should accept this grace with the mind of a child who accepts a candy bar, freely and openly. Only then will we see. Christians now days are forced into the “nothing is free, and if it is, then it’s too good to be true” mind. I was raised that we worked for our salvation, but that is ludicrous. To even start to think that we can be a perfect creature is to have a false sense of self. We lie to ourselves and say we are Christians when we hardly acknowledge the gospels, we are reluctant to forgive our enemies, we do not give as we should. Believe that I am not making hasty generalizations, or speaking harshly. Just truthfully. When I say these things, I mean when was the last time we looked at the Gospel and thought, maybe Jesus does mean what he says about selling everything and following him. When I say that we don’t give enough, if money came to mind right off hand then I would recommend you think of what God you are serving. But I assure you there are a plethora of ways to give that are not monetary, when the church asks for tides and offerings, we shouldn’t feel bad if we don’t have the money, but we could help set up for service or watch the nursery, or participate in church activities and so on. And can we say that we pray for the rapist the same as we pray for the victim, that is the catch 22 of Christianity, we are all sons and daughters of God and he loves all of us equally.

These are the things that followers of the Lord Jesus need to wrestle through. I am under these same judgments. I only share revelations as they come to me from God, and really they are not revelations in themselves, rather secrets hidden in plain sight. If I have offended, please take my advice and get over it, if you are prepared to call yourself a Christian then back it up. Bottom line, the Gospel is alive, God is among us, Jesus knew what he was talking about, we cannot buy our way to heaven through bake sales and smiles, we are a broken people that need the grace of our Father. The sooner we realize this the happier we will be and the more complicated our lives will get. No one said it was easy, but that is the beauty of it all. I challenge you to read the Gospels, meditate on Gods Word, ask questions, get answers and then ask more questions. If a verse or parable doesn’t make sense, don’t write it off, read it over and over get a word study going, talk it over with someone you know, THINK ABOUT IT…Step away from the instant gratification that this world has planted in our skulls, it is better that way.

Another LONG post (sorry Aussie Sarah)…..

Matthew 12:22-28 niv

22.A Canaanite woman from the region came to Jesus crying out to him “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.”

23.Jesus didn’t answer a word, so his disciples came to him and urged him,  “send this woman away, for she keeps crying after us.”

24.He answered “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25.The woman came and knelt at his feet “Lord, help me!” she said.

26.He replied “It is not right to take the children’s bread and feed it to their dogs.”

27.”Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table.”

28.Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

So, with reading this story in the past, it came off to me that Jesus was just being (excuse the phrase, but I will explain why he is not)a big butt hole to this lady who is in peril, calling her a dog and whatnot.

But with further review and diligent study, I have found that He is quite the opposite.

The woman cries out “Lord, Son of David…” which she had learned from the ways of the Israelites. She herself was Canaanite, a Gentile, so this is not the way that she would have normally asked for help. The woman keeps perusing them and the disciples are getting really annoyed at her persistence.

Jesus gives a hint when he answers his disciples “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman in her helplessness then throws herself down and plainly says “Lord, help me!”

Only then does Jesus respond (again without research, sounding pompous) “It is not right to take the childrens bread and toss it to their dogs.” Jesus is speaking in a way that the woman at that time would understand, the word used for “dog” was known then as being a pet, often referred to the Gentiles. The children were obviously Israel.

“but even dogs eat the crumbs….” plain speak would be “Yeah I understand, but look, You are God, I know You are here for Israel, but I need You too.”

Then Jesus answers her request. Having great admiration for the woman and using a more respectful word common for close female family members, the same thing he called his momma.

So with that said, I love what this story says about prayer. Plainly and passionately are what God is looking for, persistence, longing and brokenness. God is not looking for some crazy wording or phrases that have more than 200 syllables. He is looking for realism. It is a beautiful story, one that shows how cool Jesus was and how awesome he could teach people something in the simplest stories.

I must admit that living in close proximity to people that you don’t quite know will lose it’s luster about two and a half months in. Unless there is a God who just so happens to let us fall back on. Communication is definitely key and grace is a big plus, the grace that God has for us is best. I can’t go into too much detail but I was worn thin. I didn’t hang with the group as much as I should have because of differences which in turn, left me tired and worn. I learned something very very important about myself, rather God showed me this.

I am intuitive. I know when someone is off kilter or something has gone wrong, be it relations or general happenings, even if it isn’t apparent. IE; I meet someone and they are cool, after a couple of weeks I pick up on their mannerisms and know if the relationship is going bad or good. If it is bad, then I will ask if something is up. If they don’t respond, then I start to pull myself away from the person, occasionally asking if they are alright. Now at this point I know something is wrong, because I will see that they interact with people differently than I. So I write them off. I put up with them, but in my heart I am finding all the little things that get under my skin, justifying my dislike for them. When in fact, I had done something to get under their skin, but they didn’t know how to approach me about it, which led to the whole ordeal. This is what I have learned about myself and now I know how to better deal with a situation. Thanks Poppa!

People who really know me know that I am a loving person. I love friendship and want to make everyone happy. I do like to make people uncomfortable sometimes, that is just my humor, but I only do this after I get to know them and how far I can take it without crossing the line. Even then, I still cross the line sometimes. That’s my pawpaw coming out in me. He is the king of the jokers you better believe it.

Today was a strange day indeed. I traveled to New York with some friends to experience an exhibit on child sex trafficking. The exhibit is entitled Journey and its set up right outside of Washington Square Park. A series of cargo containers joined together into a long walk through setting that captures the steps to becoming a child prostitute. I wasn’t moved until I entered the fourth container that was set up like a room in a brothel. The smell was overbearing let alone the sight. Ok, we are adults here, we know what the smell of hormones are like after a romp in the sheets, well mix that with rotten food and dried blood. Now add in a small bloody thong, used condoms hanging to dry, filthy sheets also stained with blood, a tally of men that the girl has slept with carved into the bed and sex toys, that was the room. The sick yellow light hung from the middle of the ceiling exposing secrets that no one should witness.

Now when you lay down tonight on your bed, think of that room and that there is a broken girl getting molested over and over by an even more broken man. That is happening tonight while we sleep comfortably, tomorrow when we have our breakfast and coffee, while we are working our nine to fives, when we pick our children up from school, when we kiss our lovers goodnight. That girl, the one with that distant look in her eye, all hope raped away from her tattered body, is getting fucked by some sick pervert that is just as broken and tattered as that girl.

I want to stop this. I’m sorry I dropped the fuck word. But I don’t think that that is the problem here. If you get offended by that word, you probably can’t take that the world really is this broken. When we can get past the act, out of our insulated world and into the world that needs Christ, we will be shocked to find that the room is there. Kids are being stripped of their innocence are dying every night over and over and over until there is literally nothing left but a hole for a pervert.

Let us now think of the person committing these acts, let us not write him off so quickly. It is easy to call him evil. It is easy to put the blame on him, to say he is not able to be saved. But how is that forgiving and loving our enemy? Now I am not a psychologist but I feel that to do things of this nature is somewhat cultivated into the person, be it mommy/daddy issues, being molested themselves, unhealthy relationships and the list goes on. Understand that I am not trying to make excuses for certain actions, rather explaining why. But to blame the man, would be to blame Adam and Eve and let us get over that story and start doing something about our stupidity. I pray for these men equally. Because like it or not, these are Gods children and they are not cut off to salvation.

I am broken, I am no different from the men that sleep with these girls, no different from the madame putting these girls on the auction block, not any different from the heroine addict that lives up the street, or the mass murderer in Cleveland. I just choose to accept Gods love for me and try and spread that to others.

Tonight, pray for that little girl or boy, also say a prayer for that lonely broken man that thinks he can buy love, we all need Jesus (how cliche sounding).

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Time is winding down, I still need 2,800 dollars for outreach. Please help me if you can. Outreach cost covers food and housing, immunization and plane tickets. I will be spending three months in India helping rescue children from trafficking and repairing the orphanage that Axiom is supporting. Please send anything, it is much appreciated.

I am asking for the churches support, anyone that reads this please spread the word. I am trusting this over to us the Body of Christ! Thank you.

Contact information is to the left, feel free to drop me a line to get more information on what I am doing.