He Will Repay

Proverbs 19:17//He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and He will pay back what he has given.

I'm not a penny-pincher by nature. I like to buy things for my friends; I like going out for lunch. Being newly married and learning how to make two incomes equal rent and car payments, etc will turn a shoe fetish into a tight budget really quickly, however. You hear about how the little things add up, and it's true, so I daily resist the temptation to veer off for coffee when I get to work early. The constant self-denial for the greater good was starting to get depressing so I decided to take $20 out of my next paycheck just for me. That's when "Bob" called.

(Read "Ministry is Not 9 to 5" for the first half of the story.)

Yesterday, Timothy and I were at some friends' house eating salads and carving mohawks. As we got ready to leave, they gave me $20. He said he had it and wanted to give it to someone, so he prayed. The Lord told him to give it to me, and that I'm just supposed to spend on me - not groceries, not stuff for the apartment, not our little family ... just me.

I know Proverbs 19:17 pretty well because I run into it a lot. This was different, though. This was more than being repaid - this was knowing that the God of heaven and earth hears the silent cry of my heart ... that He really is a Father who wants to give good gifts to his children.

Happy Fasting!

It's upon us. Every time I consider this fast or this media issue in general I'm more impressed with how urgent it is, and how it weighs on the Lord's heart. This is not a light matter thrown together at the whim of a zealous preacher-man; this is a major offensive move on behalf of Christ's kingdom. Even at my home church the issue recently arose (before we found out about the 21 Day Turn Off) as a burden on the hearts of some of our leaders. All over this nation the Holy Spirit is revealing this wing of Satan's scheme to "steal, kill and destroy" (John 10:10), and the saints are responding rightly.

So if you've never not looked at some sort of screen before, here are 10 ideas for the next 21 days:

1. Pray. It's hard, at first, to pray for more than two minutes, so if you've never done it before this probably doesn't look like a good idea. Prayer is kind of the point of the fast, though, so it should be your first alternative activity. You just have to force yourself to sit and do it the first few times, and then it gets easier. Pre-determine a time frame before you start (say 15 minutes if this is totally new to you) and increase it every day. If you run out of things to say, pray in the Spirit, thank Him for what you have, tell Him how much you like Him, and pray for specific good things for specific people you don't like. Get together with some friends and pray (Leviticus 26:8).

2. Read your Bible. And don't jump around or skim over things, really get into it. Get a devotional or Bible study book on a topic you're interested in.

3. Worship. You don't have to be at church to do this. Put on a worship CD in your bedroom and focus your heart on everything Jesus has done, is doing and will do.

4. Write a letter to grandparents who live out of town.

5. Get some people together and play four square.

6. Help clean up around the house (if you live with your parents still).

7. Go tell people in the mall your testimony.

8. Take someone out for coffee.

9. Go to the library/book store and get biographies on some of the following people: Smith Wigglesworth, Charles Finney, Maria Woodworth-Etter, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, Amie Semple McPherson, and/or Watchman Nee.

10. Keep a journal of what these three weeks are like. What you do each day and how you feel about it. It may become the first study on MySpace withdrawal symptoms. It may be interesteing to see, three weeks from now, how your mood, energy levels, etc. change.

21 Day Turn Off

"From the gutters to the pulpits the 'spirit of prostitution' has breached our land. She has mocked the Armies of the Lord and has been killing the church with her seductive grasp. The church has been powerless against pornography because statistics show there is just as much pornography in the church as there is in the world and at times even more. Every arena of society has prostitued itslef for the American Dream and sometimes even in the name of the Lord or for religion. Where is our indignation? Where is the Church? Where is the moral outcry? We must charge at this giant with the voice of triumph. "You uncircumsized Philistine how dare you taunt the Armies of the Lord!" Giants fall when the righteous become indignant."

That's taken from a flier you can download here. Pure Life Revolution and The Cause USA are calling for a 21 Day Turn Off and Daniel fast starting this Saturday, May 27.

"We are calling for a nation wide 21 Day Turn Off, a 21 day vision fast (media - tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, video games, and surfing the web), and a Daniel fast, no meats and no sweets, targeting the 'spirit of prostitution,' the pornographic plague, the tolerance of immorality, for reformation, revolution and the 'greatest awakening' for America. This is a time of prayer and repentance on behalf of ourselves, the Church and our nation."

JUMP ON BOARD! Is there not a cause? I dare you to remove yourself from the kingdom of Media for three weeks and really press into God. I mean really. Consider that up to now, nothing you've ever done has really impressed heaven; nothing you (or I) have ever prayed, sung, or written has caused a collective gasp to go up around the throne as the angels whisper about how radical we are for Christ. For three weeks I dare you to keep the TV off, avoid glossy print, and not log onto MySpace!

I'm debating about whether or not to post for these three weeks. On the one hand I certainly wouldn't want to lead you into temptation, but on the other, if you bookmark me and Shut Down when you're done you won't expose yourself to any media. I'll pray about it and let you know tomorrow.

"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." (Matthew 11:12)

Obedience is Simple

Ministering to Jr. High kids takes a special kind of patience and a Christ-like love that I don't believe any childless twenty-something-year-old is prepared for. My word. (Not all of them, obviously - there are the occational few...) There should be some sort of special training course, or - rather - the parents should be required to send manuals. "Billy is fine with being teased, but resists doing things he doesn't like because he's still learning to be a slave of all." Things like that.

I'm especially appalled at the idea that they treat their parents similarly. Spirit-filled Christian kids who are about 13 years old and struggling with serious bondages like anger, pride, etc.

But then I'm forced to wonder if I behave similarly toward my Father. When He tells me to be quiet and just listen to His instruction or advice do I pay attention? When He asks me to do something I don't want to do, do I pout because I don't see how it's helping me grow?

A couple months ago Timothy was talking to one of these kids about submitting to his parents. I witnessed the following exchange:
T: "Obedience is easy..."
K: "but ... no it's not!"
T: "Yes it is! Obedience is easy - you make it hard."

That struck me. Am I as submitted and obedient as I expect these Jr. High kids to be? I don't know, but hallelujah that He, at least, has infinate patients and is the very embodiment of Love. At least I know that while I'm growing I don't annoy Him.

Testify!

Several months ago we got a call in the middle of the night from a friend in California, begging Timothy to call his older sister. One of her two very young daughters had been diagnosed with cancer and was under a series of uncomfortable - and sometimes painful - treatments. Her husband had recently returned from Iraq with an almost pornographic spirit of bloodlust attached to him. She was broken and hurt, and feeling so alone she'd decided to file for divorce. Timothy called and they talked for about an hour while I prayed. She got baptized in the Spirit that night, and He - through that perfect prayer language - has restored everything that was taken from her. We got the following email yesterday:

"I wanted to let you know that [my husband] and I continue to do really good and our walk with the Lord is getting more beautiful with every passing day. [Timothy], the night that I talked to you on the phone changed my whole life. Our marriage has done a complete 360 ever since that night. God is soooooo AWESOME!!! I have never known life to be this wonderful and this beautiful. I have so much peace and feel so much content everyday. I have a wonderful husband and I am so happy that I can see the light. God has really blessed me and my family.

"[Our daughter] is doing wonderful. She is healed and we live our life as we did before she got sick except with live it for God, not ourselves, and we live it with so much more happiness than we ever could have dreamt. It's a new life for all of us. We've been given a second chance and we are so incredibly thankful."

Hallalujah! There's no estranged marriage, no sick child, no broken home that Jesus can't heal.

He Came Not to Call the Righteous...

Two of Timothy's old skater friends turned up at church yesterday morning. One's been there a few times - off and on - but J's brand new. I get excited when I greet someone at church who has alchohol on his breath. So often I get used to seeing the same lovely faces every Sunday morning that it's easy to forget about the highways and byways.

It's amazing the way the Holy Spirit works on our hearts when we allow Him too. I looked out at the two of them - sitting in the front row because Timothy told them they had to - a few times during worship and smiled because they looked so bored. Later, though, one of the guys told Timothy that they both thought it was the most powerful time they'd ever experienced. He said he would have cried if J hadn't been standing next to him.

These stories should be pouring out of our churches. Every Monday we should sit around the perverbial water cooler and tell our coworkers about the drug addict who wept before the the Throne of Glory the previous morning. Isn't that why we're here? Isn't that why Jesus spent three years training up 11 guys? Closely-knit church families are a necessity and a blessing but we need to cultivate a spirit of adoption in our congregations, and we need to come to a place of prayer and faith so the Holy Spirit can work through our Sunday morning services! That means you and me, not just the leadership, need to invite the filthies sinners we know and pray that the Lord would have His way with our strict Sunday schedules! Amen?

Ministry is Not 9 to 5

My phone rang last night at 10:30. My husband, thinking it was his phone because the ring tone was the same (despite my rapid-fire string of rebutals), picked it up.

Several months, if not a year, ago a young man, whom we'll call Bob, wandered into our church buidling late one Monday night during a women's prayer meeting. Broken and searching for Truth, he poured his heart out to a half-dozen women who were all at least 20 years his senior. They prayed with him and encouraged him to come to church. He came on the same night as the last evangelist to ever be invited to speak at our church (it was bad), and had a terrible experience via an over-zealous minister who didn't ask if you wanted prayer before he grabbed you by the head. We never saw Bob again.

Last night at 10:30 it was Bob. Still lost and still broken, he appologized to Timothy and asked if he could possibly borrow some gas money. He was in a really tough place. I gave Timothy a $20 and he left to meet Bob at the gas station across town. I headed into the bedroom to pray, and on the way woke up my phone to set it back on vibrate when I noticed it had never been taken off vibrate. When a phone on vibrate rings so you hear it from the other room, you know the Lord is moving.

Timothy came back safe and sound almost an hour later. He'd explained to Bob that what happened at the church meeting so long ago was unfortunate and not condoned by our leadership. He encouraged him to come back, and prayed with him before he left. Bob - among other things - told Timothy that he'd called everyone he knows and no one would help him. Bob even said he didn't expect my phone to ring - those were his words.