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.

Attacking the Vision

For the past few weeks God has really put on my heart a vision for the future and He has begun to reveal to me the purpose he has for me on this earth.

So it seems only appropriate that the enemy would attack my physical sight as well.

A few weeks ago I went to the eye doc to get my eyes checked so I could get some new contacts. After a few lengthy tests the doc told me that based on the results he’s concerned that I might have glaucoma and I’d have to come back for additional tests. Which is currently scheduled for Tuesday (5/26/09). Glaucoma as I understand it is the death of optic nerves that can slowly and will unnoticeably reduce your vision. There’s no cure but with meds the effect of the disease can be slowed.

If this disease is not God’s will then it is an attack of the enemy. The pills seem like an easy solution. But really they are man’s solution to a spiritual problem. The devil would use them like chains around my neck.

Now I haven’t gotten a final diagnosis from the doc and I’ll probably get a second opinion anyway but I’ve begun praying against the spirit of infirmity, against the plans of the enemy, and that the Lord’s will be done.

And I’m asking you all to join with me. So that when I go back in on Tuesday I’ll have an amazing witness to the glory of God to share with the doc and to encourage my fellow believer’s.

With or without physical sight I will see the glorious face of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Because He has already won the victory.

Update 5/27/09

The Eye Doc confirmed yesterday that I do not have glaucoma, that my optic nerve is just larger than normal. Thank you for all your prayers. 🙂

Vision: Reach Out and Touch Someone

We live in an increasingly virtual world. We talk to each other through email, IM, and Facebook. I work all day on computers and programs that someday someone might use and hopefully it will make their lives easier, but more than likely I will never meet them. I don’t know my neighbors, I barely know my co-workers, and I struggle to connect to close friends and family through everyday conversation.

At times I feel like I don’t live in the real world.

I live a very comfortable life. I’m blessed with a good job, a loving family, and a wonderful wife. Sure I have my fair share of problems and difficulties, but if I’m hungry it’s cause there’s 30 minutes till lunch, if I’m in pain it’s cause I did too much at the gym, and if I’m worried it’s cause I’m not sure if my favorite TV series will be back next season. Now I’m simplifying here for the sake of making a point.

I feel at times like a live in my ivory tower of more-holier-than-though-christianity or I’m hiding behind my computer monitor thinking I’m making a difference because I write down my thoughts on blog for the world to see, when just outside my door is world full of real need.

I really feel this tug on my heart to reach out and touch the real world.

I don’t know what God has planned for my life, but I do know the things he’s pu on my heart. To see the nation of Israel, my family, and my country on fire for God the likes of which this world has never seen before. To see men living more like real men and not the neutered versions we see now. To take a stand against abortion. I don’t know my role in these things, and I don’t know how to accomplish them. But I do know that these things are on God’s heart as well.

While I may not know the full path ahead of me, but I do know the starting point.

Prayer – This is one area I really need to grow in. I’m not sure why it’s a weak point for me, but it really is. Prayer will draw me closer to God and his will. And that’s where I want to be. In the comming moths and years prayer will be a very important part of my family life and raising my children. I’ve started with learning to pray for my wife using a book that she gave me :-).

Mentor/Disciplship – Another thing God has really put on my heart to find a mentor or someone who will disciple me. To keep me accountable, to encourage me, or just give some wise counsel. This is especially important since my Dad passed away, I’ve grown to recognize God as my true father and Pastor Joe as a spiritual father, but I need someone in my daily life to stand in the gap.

Start Here and Now – I don’t think God’s call on my life is one that starts years in the future, but rather something that I should start working on now. By being a better witness at work, at the gym, or anywhere else I might go. The wrong thing here is to present my self as some perfect being, and the extreme of sinning along with the other person is just as wrong. But rather minister as Jesus did loving the sinner and not the sin.

This is a lot. A lot to explain and a lot to take in. And as I’ve said I’m not sure where all this is taking me, but what I do know is that God is slowly (in God’s perfect timing of course) answering one of my oldest prayers. And that is “what is my place in life”.