TORNADO CATEGORY 5

June 25, 2015

Tornado Category F5. I am always so impacted by families searching through the debris after such a disastrous storm, trying to find something recognizable and salvaged in the splinters that were once their homes and lives; their normal. I always think of daunting the task would be. Where do they even start? Will it ever be cleaned up? Will this place they once called home be home again, with backyard picnics, Christmas mornings and family dinners. As they rummage through piles they might find a family heirloom, maybe just a picture they had, a stuffed animal, but its something. They hold it dearly as a treasure.

This week I have been praying and I feel the Lord gave me this picture. In seasons of our lives we have storms, crazy storms that we all learn to weather. But every once in awhile we are caught off guard by the category F5. It can tear through our lives and devastate in such a way that there are causalities and hopelessness. In the midst of the storm the focus and thoughts are only basic survival. But when the storm subsides the focus turns to the aftermath; the cleanup and rebuilding. Where do you begin to pick up the pieces and rebuild?

My heart was heavy as I thought about this and I imagine so many F5s that have wreaked complete havoc on marriages, relationships, business ventures that seem to have ended in broken dreams and complete loss. But as I saw this image in my mind playing out while praying, I saw the beauty in searching and finding the treasure amongst all the broken debris. Maybe the little treasure is a memory of why you fell in love with the person you now seem to not be able to stand. Maybe the treasure is a promise of God you have for a child you have no earthly reason to believe will turn around, maybe its the treasure of a dream and talent you had, a passion. Maybe it's the strength for yourself to still breath, still smile after a loss of a loved one
, or your child's smile if they have lost. Even if all has seemingly been lost, find and search out the treasures in the wreckage. Allow God the time to heal. Yes the cleanup requires work and is exhausting and costly; its timely and requires a different perseverance than what was happening in the midst of the storm. It has to move from basic survival mentality to restoration mentality.

If you have been with a F5 that has devastated, look for the treasures in the mess, remember "why", and roll your sleeves up to be ready to rebuild, putting God in the center to guide, bring peace and comfort. He will often times bring those "clean-up volunteers" alongside of us to shoulder the pain, the work, the mess. I thank God for those helpers who have shouldered with me; in prayer, service, laughs and tears.

JAGGED LITTLE ROCK

December 18, 2011
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep. Over the years I have learned that there is something special to this as it is a time to be quiet before the Lord. I have purposed my sleepless nights won’t be in vain, so instead I pray, read my Bible, worship until I can fall back asleep. When I am awake at night by myself I always remember Psalm 134:

 1Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord
who minister by night in the house of the Lord.
2Lift up your hands in the sanctuary
and praise the Lord.
3May the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion

I am reminded that I can serve as a minister even in the night, unto the Lord. I have found myself very often woken and praying in the Spirit or in intercession for another. I will lift my hands in the middle of the night and praise my Lord. It’s in these times I hear more clearly from the Lord.

My prayer times often goes like this: Praise and wonderment about His good works, pleading with Him to allow me to hear Him, confessing my sins and even the things I am not sure of, praising Him.  I ask Him to make in me a clean heart and to expose my own motives to me, to show me my errors. I pray for others as they are laid upon my heart. I ask for correction for myself, I ask for discipline. For over the years I haven’t just learned to KNOW His truths but to LOVE them…even the hard ones. I realize it does me no good to pretend to myself or become stiff-necked. It’s far easier to just accept correction.

So last night I am asking, “Lord what are you doing w/me?” I then see a jagged rock, a little jagged rock. It has sharp edges. I ask the Lord, kind of sad with what I am seeing…”Is this me Lord?” Then I see that same rock in a river with flowing waters. As I watch I see this jagged rock flowing with the river, bumping and knocking into other jagged rocks. As time goes on and this rock keeps flowing with the river, the rock begins to take on a different form. Its sharp edges get knocked off, it becomes smoother and round.

I was impressed with the understanding that this rock needed two things for it to change. One, it had to have the flow of the water, and two it had to have the other rocks crashing into it, bumping it around for the rock to change.

Then my eye caught the sight of  other rocks; they weren’t getting crashed into or bumped around or flowing in the river. These rocks had settled into a pool of nonliving water, like a bayou or swamp. A bayou branches off the main river and it is boggy and stagnant, with such little flowing water that it seems to be standing still. The rocks in that bayou were comfortable but coated with mossy slime. The bayou rocks were not in danger of crashing into others, they weren’t being displaced. I asked the Lord about this. I understood that in our Christian walk we are being transformed more and more into the image of Christ. The flow of the Spirit is a never ending flow. But being in that flow is painful, it’s messy, its unsure at times. But that is the way the jagged edges are taken off the rock. It must be in the flow and it must be bumping into other rocks. This is how God chooses to change us.

But the rocks in the swampy waters were nice and settled. They had gone through enough tumbling in river they had once been flowing in. But somewhere along the flow they got off and settled into comfort. They know what they know... what they know…they have settled that. And although once flowing in the fresh waters they no longer seek the ongoing flowing truths of the Lord (I am not talking about initial salvation here, for in that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling…to be sure we know). They won’t budge. Perhaps they believe they know all they need to as if they have arrived at the complete understanding of the Gospel. Or maybe they think since they don’t understand it, it must not be God. These slimy rocks miss out of the fresh word of the Lord. They miss out on the move of the Lord because they don’t recognize the flow of the Spirit. They speak of the moves of the Lord in past tense and wish for the good ole days.

I have heard time and time again, these same rocks speak that God is going to do a “new thing”. Yet they themselves never receive it because they judge that the new thing as an “added” thing because it doesn’t fit into their dusty old teachings, rather than understand the “new” thing is an opening of the eyes of the plan of the Lord, that was established from the beginning of His time, that we were once blind to. For it has its appointed time. It’s not the adding to scripture but the unveiling of it.

There were always forerunners for these moves. They were “out of season”. In hindsight we can look back and note moves of the Lord through Martin Luther, the Pentecostal movement, the charismatic moves. But in their time the bayou rocks spoke against it. The rocks were used still in the place they settled. They spoke the truths of the Lord. God used their gifts and allowed them to stay where they wanted. But the sad thing is for as much as they recite with their mouths the words of Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Their hearts are far from that.

There is a new move of God on the horizon; there is always more to learn, to hear what the Spirit is saying. We have a choice. We can get into the river, knowing full well we are not going to control the flow of the river and also knowing that we are going to be shaped by the smoothing effects of the bumping and crunching of others. God knowing the process is painful yet asking us to trust Him. Or we can settle into our little bayou; feeling confident of not “getting hurt”, preaching the truths of the Lord, He revealed in the time we once were in the flow. His truths are absolute. But in that place of security comes the risk of missing out on the fresh water flow.

I thanked the Lord for putting me in the river, for showing me He is refining me. I thank the Lord He asks me to let Him be in control, knowing that I am in unfamiliar territory and am going to get bumped around. However, as this happens, as long as I don’t decide I have had enough or think I have arrived and don’t get off in the stagnant water of the bayou, I can trust that I will have the eyes to see and the ears to hear what the Spirit is saying. I thank the Lord for carrying me in that river and for showing me that He cares about this little jagged rock.

Brothers and sisters if this speaks to your heart, be encouraged to know the Lord is all about refining you. It’s not a clean cut formation; rather it takes time and the experiences in this life that give room for correct response and most importantly the flow of the river. It’s the laying down of control and the idea of jumping into a comfortable little bayou; out of the raging waters of the river. Sometimes those waters are more calm, but then there are times that they are like flood waters. Or if you feel the Spirit is prompting you and telling you to come back into the flow of the Spirit, don’t delay. That bayou may have been “safe” and with a comfortable certainty but dear friends it’s a settling. The Lord is calling you out today. That is His invitation. Jump in, don’t simply put your feet in, or get in waist high. Get in and submerge yourself fully. I pray this blesses.