Exposed!

The fraud exposed! The impostor has been discovered. Without space to wiggle free and without cover to hide behind, the lie has come to light for all to see. And even if the rest of the world is unable to recognize it. I see it plainly, for the culprit is me.

You see, while engaging in techniques that focus on bringing this sort of thing to light, I found within myself the very thing I had been afraid of. That sham of religious practices meant to disguise an otherwise sinful old beggar had finally given way under the careful scrutiny of a heart in pursuit of truth.

Love is the acid test. It is the thing that strips away every pretence leaving intent standing naked to the world…to myself.

I had caught myself in an exercise meant to extricate the last traces of this person whom I had thought long dead, long gone, forever nailed to a cross of shame, damned and condemned, never to rise again.

Instead, what I found is that with my new pair of speckles all the vibrancy of my surrounding sprung to life with a pallet of colors ranging from deep emotion to symmetrical logic, and there, there hiding in the corner, attempting desperately not to be obvious was the man, me, my carnal nature, my natural condition.

Coy, cute, clever, ouster, religious, pious, the gambit of justifications ran on as that ol’ chameleon struggled to blend into the background, but it was too late. I had heard his voice. I recognized the twisted logic, the rational, the bent reasoning and those inflections of charm meant to make all seem okay.

Well it isn’t okay.
It’s quite “unokay”.
It was in fact a major fail, a blemish, a smear.
It was all that I had been afraid of, for at a critical juncture when complete transparency, clarity, honesty had been the goal. There he was. That man of selfish ambition and vile operation.

Has anyone else noticed?
Does that matter? Really?

For standing up for Love and declaring a life driven by Love means performing for an audience of one. He is the very source, the context, the Father of Creation, and certainly I can not disguise this or hide it or even explain it away.

Somewhere, somehow, in some way, I’d begun to construct a model on which I could build a deception so thin I could hide it in the light of day.

But God is faithful, for the story is not about how we have been blessed with all that we want, but that we are being blessed to become all that we ought to be.

Had I not taken such measures and made those observations I would still be blind to the operation of that ol’ beggar in my life and would have continued on hoping for a deeper understanding only to fall flat again and again.

There is another man. And he is just as recognizable, but less incline to intrude. He waits for the invitation. He stands at the door and knocks rather than bursting through the door or sneaking in a side window.

And though I have declared Him to be King over my world and my life, He will not fight me for the throne because He doesn’t need to.

To the contrary, I am the one who needs this relationship. It benefits me to let Him rule.

The sooner I relinquish control, the sooner the process begins of becoming who I was always meant to be. And isn’t that really one of the very few ambitions worthy of the doing?

In Christ I have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. They spring from inside me.

But apart from Christ I must rely on exterior forces to line up for me to experience any sort of happiness, and that happiness is only a temporary condition, it's all a matter of waiting for the fail that is coming…not much of a choice really.

I'll surrender the rebel, take up my cross, and wait for what comes next thank you very much. ;)

Handy Andy

Because we are linear beings it's often hard to piece together what God is doing. We become frustrated with answers to prayer or moves of the Spirit that don't happen like an instant microwave meal.

It's only natural really. We live in a time when everything happens NOW! And if it doesn't there's cause for concern. "It must be broken", "You've got a bad connection", "...it's just a little buggy" (Hum, remember the days when buggy was noun? No? Never mind).

Point being, people pray for something God fully intends to do and the wheels start turning. But when the process takes longer than expected they become discouraged and assume the answer to there prayer was "no".

Andy had been coming to the church for years. He received Jesus in this church. He'd first experienced the Holy Ghost while attending this church.

But Andy had heard from God, or at least he thought he had at first, and he had tried to share what he'd heard with others at the church and they didn't get it.

Admittedly, he is not the most articulate, most "polished" presenter. He felt that he hadn't been able to share it the way God had delivered it and that maybe that's why nobody else could see it.

Later he determined was that perhaps he hadn't heard from God at, in fact, maybe he was even at the wrong church...he prayed about joining a different church and subsequently left.

For me, it was just another day following up on what I am quite certain God had told me to do.

For close to a year the Lord had been speaking to me about what had been happening at the church so when someone called about stepping in as worship leader I knew what I was supposed to do.

This is no small thing. I live in San Diego and the church is in L.A.
I'd never been a regular...it was simply the place I go when I was hanging with the band. Committing to worship leader would mean long drives every Sunday at the very least...but what could I do? You go where God calls you.

Once in place it didn't take long before the entire vision began to piece together. God was speaking to my heart and the whole picture was considerably larger than simply filling in until a new worship leader could be found.

I drafted a proposal and submitted it to the board, who joyfully received it, discussed it and eventually approved it (nothing happens quickly in any church). ;)

And this is worlds collided, because now Andy was peering into my window amazed at what he was seeing. THE CHURCH WAS OPEN!!!
"Hey! Are you open!", "Yes we are. Come on in."
"This was my vision! This is what God shared with me! Or at least a part of it..."

See, for some time the church had only been open when Sunday services were conducted or for the mid-week Bible study.
Most of the time the building sat closed up and empty. And for a community church like ours that's just wrong.

Andy came in and had a cup of coffee and we discussed what had happened, his vision for the church, how while he'd been praying about this "burden" that God had laid on his heart, and how I'd been in San Diego receiving that burden from the Lord.

While Andy was shocked and amazed I joyfully took it all in. I'd seen this before. This is exactly the way God works.

Andy had been praying for the church. God placed a burden on his heart and given him a vision for what He wanted to do, and Andy began praying about that.
I had already been concerned about what had been going on at the church and God began to place this burden on my heart.

I had come to one of those junctures in my life where I was available for this sort of thing and the call came...I just answered the call.

The unfortunate part was that Andy had become discouraged and misinterpreted the long pause between the time he'd begun sharing his vision and the time it took for God's plan to begin unfolding.

In fact, we're not finished. We're only just beginning.
And my prayer is that Handy Andy might come back to join us as we live out the vision that he first prayed for.