We are the Godbreed

We are a sound; We are a song.
We are clothed in a fire of unending love.
We are a sacrifice of intercession;
We are the rattling bones of a revolution.
We carry the fragrance of intimacy, the torch of unity
and release the mighty waters of justice and equity.
We are a sign and a wonder; We are the sons of thunder.
We are servants; We are kings.
We are priests; We are heirs.
We are the open hands of healing.
We are relentless warriors.
We are mere shepherds of the field,
slaying giants with our stones.
We are fierce; We are fearless!
We are broken but in our weakness…
We are a sword of truth to set the captives free.
We are dividers of soul and spirit
by the power of God’s unending mercy.
We are like those who dream…

We are THE GOD BREED.

Written by: Sue Salles

Via Jason Lee Jones (@jason_lee_jones)

What Miracle Are You In The Middle Of?

From Mike Paschall’s Blog

I’m fighting like crazy here to keep from expounding on the gospel story of Peter jumping out of the boat. We’ve heard lots and lots about it, it’s all familiar and generally helpful, but from time to time we fall victim to the loss of focus. I read that story and I want to start screaming at the top of my lungs: “FOCUS dude, you are in the middle of a flipp’n miracle!”

When I read that my mind immediatly tries to apply it to my own life. What miracle am I in the middle of? What’s keeping me from focusing on my savior?

What miracle I’m in the midst of?
Us walking into God’s promise of a house, and our family being established.

What’s distracting me?
Lack of sleep, my own tiredness, exhaustion, and fear/doubt (are we really going to get it this time?/are we prepared?).

Isn’t it interesting how are situations are similar? Gotta keep this last paragraph in my head.

Peter later brought lots of solid teaching about focus. He had been to the school of trial and error. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This word is spiritual but it also applies for the everyday grind. Have the courage to make honest assessments, make the adjustments, make the changes and then dive in. It takes discipline to develop the strength to swim against the world’s current and the appetites of our flesh. Any ole dead thing can float down stream.

Read the whole thing here. http://everytribeinternational.org/2010/08/04/focus/

Show me how to die

I like the poetry and the desire represented in this song.

You could plant me like a tree beside a river
You could tangle me in soil and let my roots run wild
And I would blossom like a flower in the desert
But for now just let me cry

You could raise me like a banner in a battle
Put victory like a fire behind my shining eyes
And I would drift like falling snow over the embers
But for now just let me lie

Bind up these broken bones
Mercy bend and breathe me back to life
But not before You show me how to die

Set me like a star before the morning
Like a song that steals the darkness from a world asleep
And I’ll illuminate the path You’ve laid before me
But for now just let me be

Bind up these broken bones
Mercy bend and breathe me back to life
But not before You show me how to die
Oh, not before You show me how to die

So let me go like a leaf upon the water
Let me brave the wild currents flowing to the sea
And I will disappear into a deeper beauty
But for now just stay with me
God, for now just stay with me

(“Show Me” – Audrey Assad)

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed? Luke 9:23-25

via Anne Jackson (@flowerdust)

How things change

It’s funny how things change. Other night I was reminded how much my taste in music have changed in only a few years. Three years ago if you had asked me who my favorite band was, I would have rattled off a rather length list of hard rock (Disturbed, Godsmack, and Avenged Sevenfold). Today if you were to ask me that the results couldn’t be more different (DecembeRadio, Rick Pino, and etc).

That’s quite a change, and it got me thinking about why I liked those former bands to begin with. What came to mind was chaos, the reason I liked those bands was because when I listened to them they drowned out the mess that was in my own mind. For a few mins their music quieted the storm that was inside of me. Inside I was lonely, depressed, and angry, and listening to this kind of music provided me with an outlet to release or assuage those emotions. But it was never enough the music did little to comfort me when it was off and in reality it was a vicious cycle, of feeding those emotions and the chaos inside.

Today things are different, Glory to God! There’s still chaos at times in my life, but what has changed is how I deal, rather than try to drown it out, I let it go and give it to God. I seek him, for answers to my questions, for clarity in the fog of life. And remarkably the He answers not always in my timing or the way I expect, but He is faithfully by my side even when I am stubbornly doing my own thing.

Dreams: Five Year Plan

I had this dream this morning:

I was at a restaurant with a large group of friends at a bug round table everyone was eating and laughing having a great time, but I was waiting because I was meeting someone for lunch (I did have a little something to eat while I waited).

Midway through the meal the person I was waiting for showed up. I quickly got up and joined him at a table. It was just he and I at a small table out on the porch, facing the outdoors. The guy I was meeting ended up being on of my old bosses. This was a guy that I greatly respected and admired for his vision and leadership.

We didn’t eat anything instead he looked at me and asked a question. “Do you have a five year plan?”, he asked. My reply was a rather sheepish no. Then he looked at me and said, “If I were you, I would buy this property.” He said that while pointing at a hill with a fence, in the distance.

Vision

What’s your life vision? We need one to get through life with some sense of purpose. Living just to eat, just to survive, is not living. Animals do that. God made us in his image as noble creatures with great creative ability. Take a few minutes to write your vision down. This one comes from 24-7 Prayer.

The Vision
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 9-5 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 mould 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.

via Seth Barnes

What’s your life vision? We need one to get through life with some sense of purpose. Living just to eat, just to survive, is not living. Animals do that. God made us in his image as noble creatures with great creative ability. Take a few minutes to write your vision down. This one comes from 24-7 Prayer.

Bellarive – Love Has Found Us

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9100847&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

On the night of 1/27/10 Orlando based band, Bellarive (http://www.myspace.com/bellarive) led worship for a local student ministry (http://www.thelement.com) from the top of a parking garage overlooking the city of Orlando.

Shot with 1 Canon 7D and a 35mm 1.4 lens

The band was only able to play through the song a couple of times, so I had to really experiment with some B-Roll. But all in all I really like how it turned out.

Edited in FCP, colored in Magic Bullet.

Dreams: Flights

Here’s another interesting dream I had a couple of weeks ago.

From what I can remember I was getting on a plane, but it wasn’t a normal plane it was more like an egg carton that could fly. The seats didn’t really look like seats but like a bench with little troughs as a place to put your feet and either a straight metal back or no back at all. After I found my seat the person in front of me turned around to talk to me, it turned out to be Tori-Da-Great from church. She looked straight at me and said, “This is what the God says:…..” (for the life of me I can’t remember what she said, it had something to do with God being pleased with me or not being pleased with me). I was so shocked that TDG was talking to me like a prophet and then the flight attendant came up and confirmed what she had just said.

Once the flight landed we had to make a connecting flight that wasn’t at the same airport. We had to walk from one airport to the other, I was walking a bit ahead of TDG but came to an intersection and wasn’t sure which way to go. After I started going to the right I realized that Tori had gone to the left, as I walking Tori’s dad pulls up and offers me a lift. As we’re driving to the airport the thought occurred that we should have stopped and picked up Tori, but we never did and when I got there I felt bad that we hadn’t. Going through security was pretty cool, think full body scanners 2.0, once inside I headed up to the lounge where I found Tori waiting. We hung out and ate some food while waiting on our next flight.

Dreams: Digging

This was a dream I had a few weeks ago. It starts off with me walking into a dark room, it looks almost like a bombed out basement. There are a few lights here and there, but overall the room was quite dark.

In the room were groups of people some just standing off to the left or right side, I recognized them as people from my old congregation (which was really interesting) in the middle were some of the leaders from that congregation digging two cylindrical holes in the ground. We didn’t talk about it, I just somehow knew what they were doing. The first hole I came to hadn’t really been started maybe a few inches had been dug just to mark it out in the ground. The second hole was probably a foot or two deeper than I am tall, but inside of it was all these pieces of debris (large pieces of cement). I jumped in and started tossing the pieces out, once that was done I helped finish digging the hole.

And that was it. It was a strange dream in regards to who was in it. Not sure what digging and holes means but I should take a moment and look it up.