lusi-blogs

Ode to the Psalmists

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:25:56 +0100

It's a dangerous thing to live in oblivion, it's even more hilarious to think that we are exempt from crisis because as a democratic nation "we would never let that happen again". It's hilarious because it would seem them key assumption is that the ability to start and sustain a graced economy is merely an out-working of our positive determination. History, however, is a tactless teacher.

It's even more dangerous to bury our heads in ecumenical sand, hoping the blind eyes we turn will turn off the call to an epic adventure we are called to as a Church. We are in a time where the rallying trumpet of heaven is blaring in the atmosphere, and as nations rage, threatening to push their leaders off cliffs, we need to courageously stare the challenge in the face and brace ourselves like soldiers and stand our ground. This is the time where our lives of worship can plug into the heart of God and beat simultaneously, not dodging the intensity, or medicating the discomfort with frivolous church activity. This is the time to embrace intensity with a heroic heart, the very heart of Jesus. He didn't fear intensity like we do. He didn't try to crack a joke so people can relax ad warm-up the crowd. Though He had compassion, grace and mercy, He lived like a man on fire, fully knowing what was at stake - His rule on Earth.

As I watch the local and international news, I can't help but sense the intensity of the times we are living in. Israel is being judged by the global community for defending herself, while the media reports from a biased position scorning her. Alliances are forming among nation. Markets are crashing in many countries, and everyone is running out of saviors. Revolutions are occurring in rapid rates in many countries and often Islamic groups are the Moses' to deliver people from bondage, as well as exerting itself militantly and in subliminal ideological methods across Africa. My question is how did the people of old live in the middle of such hectic times, but write a book of psalms. How were they able to delight themselves in God as well as host the intense realities according to the story God is weaving? How do you prepare for whatever comes with a heart of gladness and strength? How do you face up to the things that are happening in our times and at the same time allow God to use our lives to pray, to release His will, to be agents of His love, to raise laments and speak decrees over atmospheres in confident joy? The psalmists are our tutors.

The psalmists were not escapists. They did not drug themselves with songs to make them not see the state of the land. They were also people immersed int he dire circumstances of their age, they pursued God for the big picture, while praying for the smaller picture. Psalms were intense, prayers were made for the nation of Israel because their worship and mandate to build their nation were not separate. They taught people how to love, encounter, and seek God, giving them a language to engage God on all manner of life happenings. His Name, was central, His glory superior, His story; the ultimate reality. We could learn from the people of Israel's history.

UNSILENCED: It's not so black and white

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:03:35 +0100

Earlier this week I read an article where the SACP General Secretary, Blade Nzimande, is said to be crying out for a criminalization of insulting President Jacob Zuma. The short report reads:

"Nzimande backed the call made by the SA Communist Party in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday, for a law protecting the presidency from attacks that were "unfair, and lacking in fact and truth". He warned that Zuma supporters would soon reach boiling point. "People can differ with me and you can insult me as you like, but disrespect, that is not acceptable," Nzimande, the higher education and training minister, was quoted as saying by the paper. "We are being undermined by whites."

At first glance you would attain the view that this is just another African man tired of seeing the status and dignity of another, more prominent, African man being torn to pieces. Especially if the man in question is the head of State. A man who is a husband to wives, a father to children and figure who should command our highest regard. The honorable minister also sees "White South Africans" as the culprits of the public degradation of this man's reputation and esteem. It also seems that this mockery towards the presidency is also a reflection of the "disrespect towards blacks and their culture". However, most of us do not rely on the first glance at assertions like these nowadays, the times are too volatile and the stakes are too high.

I fear that the racial card is to soon be made obsolete when it's made clear that this disgruntlement at how our country is handled is not as black and white, excuse the pun. The minister makes some startling generalizations, of grouping "Whites" as those who undermine "Blacks". Perhaps we can borrow this generalizing theme for a short while and further state that "Whites" may have a cultural tutoring that teaches them to speak their minds, while we "Blacks" are taught to respect our elders and make sure we don't complain out loud. "Whites" also tend to be the ones who argue with the guy at Home Affairs who shuffles them from cue to cue, while we "Blacks" stand where that guy tells us we should and never question the system. "Whites" do things like blogging their thoughts, while we "Blacks" circulate degrading photos on Facebook, about leaders and mock them because nobody can outlaw Facebook activity really. The only problem is that if you look a little closer, you will find that as we move further and further from 1994, the color lines are beginning to blur, because South Africans are no longer allowing themselves to some political colour blocking scheme; they just want to be people. They want to be heard and they want to see real justice and service delivery from hearts that are not spangled in sentamentalism that maimes that nation of its forward motion.

To create this law from the assumption that "Whites" are to blame is to assume that most black people are content with the moral and economic fracturing brought onto the nation by leaders who are fast becoming moral compasses of their own. To assume that "Blacks" are all willy nilly about the dealings of our government is to condescend our insight and our right to discern right from wrong, with objective eyes. I refuse to be grouped with those who might be keeping quiet for fear that they will lose everything. I will not be generalized under a murky haze of those who would rather lie still than disturb the hornet's nest. We need to come to grips that perhaps "Whites" seem to be an easy target because they were never made to "pay" for their sins really, that if, in uBuntu, we communally, see them as the enemy, our solidarity will silence and isolate "them". Pause again, it is not a BLACK or WHITE issue.

My hope is that our leaders would look again, it's not the "Whites" that they need to worry about. There is a generation arising that has no sentimental ties with anything before 1994, this generation has no concern for the cadre here or there, they see mishandled municipal funds and corruption they want to avoid. They are the "Born-frees" that want to see progress and service delivery, who know the difference between politics and public administration. These are the ones who will not be pacified by a beer dumpy and a braai pack at a govenrment sponsored bash. These ones will not be distracted by the nostalgic songs of the struggle, they hear the gong of false hope from a mile away. These are the ones out leaders should be leaning in and hearing.

Now, anyone who knows me, will know that I believe in praying for and honoring those in authority. However, there is a finite capacity within me that limits me from stomping out every flame of dishonor. And the demographic of the disgruntled within my sphere of influence is not just "the Whites". Both "Blacks" and "Whites" can recognize injustice and corruption, and as long as they are South African, they cannot be silenced. They day they become silenced is the day we must mourn for the freedom we won and lost again.

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Nzimande-wants-to-outlaw-Zuma-insults-20121115

Life under His Commission

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:45:56 +0100

The political arena needs the presence of people with a godly influence. We cannot retreat for fear of defilement. For too long Christians have been intimidated by the darkness and the stench that fills the political arena, and why would it not putrefy when those who know God withdraw. This is the era of the kingdom minded believer who will not wait for spiritual handouts, but labor in prayer and in charity to build a nation through serving every sphere of society with God-breathed integrity and passion. In my opinion, this is just my opinion, politics and public administration are not the same thing (thanks Nwabisa Tutu for this thought, so actually it's a borrowed opinion). A desire to serve the country and lobbying for personal promotion and titles for personal gain, these are not the same thing.

Though political activity is the available tool to get to a place of authority to administer resources to a nation, it is not the end, it is only a means. The end is to have leaders that will create an environment for people to thrive. So then our faith in God is to equip us to be selfless servants WHEREVER we are, WHICHEVER party we are in. It's the hope of glory, Christ in PEOPLE, who will make sure that the policemen won't use their power to assist syndicates that fester the streets. It's the hope of glory Christ in PEOPLE, who will cause the municipality leaders to use the money allocated to them to deliver services and resources to their communities instead of buy flashier cars and take luxuries with the tax-payer's money. Why? Because He is the only one whose desire is to take base in the human soul, change it, so that it can live for a more noble cause. So God wants to change people so they can be His hands and feet to administer justice and healing to the broken places. He is not a mascott or token presence in our gatherings. When He rules in men and women, we will see His economy here. Not just through political parties, but through people who live to love and to serve. This is your act of worship.

Isaiah 32:1-2

1 See, a king will reign in righteousness

and rulers will rule with justice.

2 Each one will be like a shelter from the wind

and a refuge from the storm,

like streams of water in the desert

and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.

A Questionable Allegiance

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 05:41:51 +0100

Joshua5:13>>13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell face-down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord[e] have for his servant?”15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

I've grown fascinated at seeing South Africans jostle for a side in the build up to Mangaung. What's even more fascinating is seeing believers look and sound much like the world in the words they say. It's especially fascinating seeing the behavior on Facebook. It would seem that people feel that they can be slanderous on the social network. Opinions can incite heated debate, debate create atmospheres of more pending verbal wars justified by our innate desire to self-validate. It becomes quite a vicious circle, actually more like quick-sand, out of which one needs rescuing by an agenda transcending earth, really.

As a campus missionary, my job is to raise up godly leaders who will go into these spheres of influence and be a voice of justice and truth. My sole vision when I disciple students is to raise a generation of those who live under the mandate of heaven. Yet it would seem that the mandate coming from whatever political allegiances they make becomes louder because its empirical. How then do we live under the mandate of Heaven while still on Earth? How can we get rescued from taking sides with man's agendas? This question is especially for believers because you will have to engage the world and not retreat to some pacifist bubble of church-life. You are not insulated just because you are surrounded by clean things. The world needs a prophetic breed if Jesus-carriers who will be a shelter from the turbulence.

We need to not forsake our post. Our greatest and most effective post is near God, on our knees. We need Him to impress His emotions, movements, agendas, insights, purposes, motivations into our hearts. Without that impartation we will find ourselves nourished by the bitterness and venomous talk that comes out of the mouths of the world. Align with heaven, because heaven will never be ousted, the only time heaven will make an exit is when the Son of Man comes to Judge, thus making Him the center of existence and non-existence. As we are nearing a significant moment in our history, let your heart lean into the movements of God's heart and hands, by getting caught up in the war of words here on earth on our cyber war fields, we only defile the lamp-stand that His light would shine. Put your words where they count the most, then invest the rest in wisdom and deliberate life under heaven's mandate.

**Acknowledgements
Title image link http://mg.co.za/multimedia/2012-09-18-road-to-mangaung-the-anc-hits-back

Prophets, emerge!

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:03:38 +0100

You know that feeling; you're standing in a cue at the supermarket cashier. On your right are shelves stocked with sweets and chocolates, your better judgement tells you that these sweets will do your health no good, some of them have ingredients you can’t even pronounce purely because they are extra-terrestrial. Then after that victorious moment, you are met with yet another moment of testing, the tabloid magazine with the latest on Kim Kardashian’s romance scandals. And then out of a pure godly desire to know and understand these great times of peril we live under you peer closer so you can see what the furore is all about. Then out of you inner intercessory prophetic instinct you decide you want to read the contents page to see where this story is so that perhaps you can get an idea about what to pray into. Then while you are paging as inconspicuously as you can without the man behind you noticing, you run into the story about Justin Bieber and his rising empire. You shudder at the thought that a five year old is on stage. Then while you are there, you see how so and so is going through divorce number three, and as your turn to pay draws near something deep within you tells you to tear your eyes away from the evils of these people of Tinsel-town, and in the superior air of exonerated gratitude that you are not as immoral, you close the magazine, quietly thank God you are better than they, after you pray for them all of course (including the miraculous additions of those fashion accessories in page 38 into your wardrobe). And while we think we are worlds apart, heaven laughs because it knows better. Their sins are no worse than ours; just because they are publicized (I know you’re thinking of Dolly Parton’s song. Go ahead sing.)

Two weeks ago when I preached on Elijah, the prophet who emerged in a nation that had become apostate, He lived in a nation that was like ours, apostate and idolatrous. The only difference is that our evils are sophisticated, living in shiny skyscrapers and consulting diviners who wear Versace.

We are no different to the apostate nation of Israel and Judah we read about in the book of Kings, just like our sins are no different to the sins and shortfalls of celebrities. We are in an apostate nation ourselves, and apostate nations always have to brace themselves for a shaking. The challenge for the Church in a time and national history like ours is to stay close to God so that we can be conquering lovers and partners with God, with hearts that are unoffended. This will come from remaining in Him, in a season where there is a great falling away. A Carpenter King spoke of such times as these; He said we should be watchful and vigilant and take care to pray.

In the time of Elijah there were 7000 prophets, but because of the stately rejection and purposeful annihilation of all that was godly. Elijah thought he was the only prophet of God alive. These prophets were afraid of losing their lives so they hid in caves. It’s just that they took the answer with them. When they hid they took the light with them, so God had to shine intensely through one man. Elijah. Imagine if they did not hide; imagine if they stood for Yahweh, if they all moved in the power and authority of the God of Eternity. Imagine if the vessels of God’s eternal burning word, spoke with a strength and vocal momentum of a thousand seas, and overcame the deluge of darkness. Imagine if they emerged. Imagine if they stood together, a gathering of million lights that pierced the darkness like an unstoppable laser beam intent on breaking through. Imagine.

Perhaps the story might be different for us. Perhaps our tale won’t end in exile, like it did for them. But may the Bride of Christ become struck with love and longing for the Groom, Jesus to the point that she is driven to what is dear to Him, the nations. May the people of God emerge and engage the present hour of need. Mangaung is coming, the skies are churning. Pray, be vigilant, emerge, don’t retreat. Now more than ever, the nation needs a prophetic (to hear and speak God’s message) community that will hear and speak and release the decrees of heaven on earth. Now more than ever, may the real prophets emerge.

When grace happens

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 04:54:31 +0100

I have often wondered if winter considers itself miserable, or if rain considers herself malicious when she floods the earth. Often because I don't enjoy being inconvenienced, I automatically assume that whatever does not suit my timing, comfort or circumstance comes to act of vile intent. So convinced that modern psychology and popular philosophy can make us wimps who cannot handle a change of plan, or things not going the way we plane, so we self-medicate with high-tech diaries and gadets, and hold fast to philosophies that make us give way to fear of the unknown, then we call it being real. When in fact all we have dome is given way to self-pity rather than believing the best and asking God "What are You doing?" You see I am made with an innate selfishness that left unchecked could make me to deify my personal preferences, building temples of my own self-indulgence. Yes, I my my own nemesis actually, all of us are. In fact even the thinking that another can be one's own nemesis seems to be a myth because all personal wars show me that my real nemesis is my own insecurity, not the success of my contemporaries. So what we all do is pursue theologies and religious mantras that help us to build supporting structures to the monuments we have built of our selves. We buy books, attend conferences and meditate on laws and sayings that further the cause of the great god of mankind - self. How ever I know a man whose sole purpose was to deal with this pawn of evil living within my inner members.

God respects God, He is confident in nothing else but Himself because He anchors all of reality within Himself. He finds joy and ultimate satisfaction from no other and therefore needs no affirmation from us and validation from our undeserving nods of congratulation. He knows that what He plans, provides, releases, imparts, ordains and implements will without a doubt never be shaken, fail or be quenched. For this reason He knows that the only thing needed for my self-deifying dangerous games, is Himself in me. Yes, He knows that what will fix me forever is the simple act of surrender, the irreplaceable embrace of a cross where we willingly crucify that self, just as He exemplified with His own death. He came, lived a life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died [1], the perfect show and tell, the perfect Simon said round of all time. So when He leads the way in how we need to first die in order that we truly live, what do we have to lose.

I am in the eve of experiencing an interesting season in my life, difficult but part of a long awaited dream and ministry assignment for my family. I see the power and the beauty in giving in to surrender. I see that the one who does exchange this living for themselves, for living for His will, is rewarded with something far more beautiful than the seeming sacrifice. Grace. This grace is not only grace that saves us from hell in eternity, it saves us from the immediate hell of being ruled by speculation, emotional upheaval, blindness to His eternal plan and spiritual cowardice while trying to go at it on our own strength. The door to this grace is always and only surrender. Without giving up, we will only be giving ourselves over to hell on earth. His grace can find us smiling happily because His voice and companionship whispers to a place deeper than ten thousand Facebook friends can counsel. His grace can find us happy to comply with the changing seasons of the stripping autumn seasons of our lives.When we surrender to His overwhelming presence and friendship He makes joyful what would otherwise be hard to go through. When we are diligent lovers of Jesus, He creates in us an inexplicable ability to embrace circumstances that feel like the piercing texture of a cross on a wounded body. We overcome as we keep proximity with Him, the Overcoming Bridegroom.

I thank God for that grace, It's the power that enables me to hear a song and dance to the whistle of a hurricane wind, blowing away all that is familiar, because as long as He is with us the remaining rubble has the beauty of a cathedral of hope waiting to happen.

Worship: the courage to die

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 05:34:31 +0100

Yesterday we began another awesome series titled Kings and Kingdoms. It was one of those family moments that had us corporately on our knees, asking for courage to die and live a yielded life. We studied the prophet Samuel, who was this man, and what circumstances was he born into, and what did he bring into sacred history.I learnt that he was the first of the prophetic order of Israel, but the last of the judges. He was an answer to the prayer of a desperate woman and God also raised him up to end the existential chaos that the Israelites were hurled into by idolatry. Wayne, my pastor, asked a most profound question and answered with an ev more profound answer: "How does God solve problems? He sends a baby.". Now the thing is there are times when it gets really hard, and I begin to make it felt that I have had it with laying down my life. You know, those times when you have a list of disappointed dreams that leave you feeling like God owes you a "break" considering all you have had to lose and suffer. Those times when you count the times you have been hurt in the line of duty and dare to entertain the thoughts of terminating your "employment contract" if your demands are not met. Those moments when you think everyone will live out their dream, except for you, and you just need "your big break", because you feel that somehow God owes it to you. Well thank God; Jesus does not have to deal with Prima Donnas.

Then I also had to grapple with realizing again that God sends people who are dedicated to Him, just like Samuel was dedicated to Him by his mother. Even more I had to realize that God has an assignment for my life that is a response to a cry in my nation, and that if I am to live out that assignment fully, I need to give up the right to live as one with rights. I need courage to remain a dedicated baby, the courage to joyfully embrace the altar that Jesus laid my life on as an offering dedicated to the Father, the courage to let go of my entitlement to illusions of grandeur that serve to make me deviate from the assignment. I need the courage to die to myself again and again and remember that my life is only livable if it is lived toward Him.

My worship to Him has to be a constant river of saying "Yes" with my life. My worship has to be a life of secretly knowing the superior pleasures of heaven, such that the tastes of the temporal are a stench to my eternity hungry bowels. My worship has to be a life that is rabidly obsessed with the knowledge that what is behind the curtain of the unseen is indeed more filling, more virtuous and more enrapturing than my wildest dreams. My worship has to be a life that delights in the rough textures, the painful contours and breaking weight of the cross, to love that cross and not wear it like a light rosary that I can take off once it conflicts my fashion sense. I need the courage to make pilgrimage up my Golgotha so that I can truly know the higher inward sensation of satisfaction in God and living His story for my life.

Whether we realise it or not, we are babies packaged to bring deliverance somewhere, somehow. It's all weaved into this great story about how He will one day come and wrap up the whole of existence and start a new one into eternity. For all that it's worth, live a life that is yielded, wasted, given over and toward God.

Trust resurface

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:54:50 +0100

Trust is faith that has become absolute, approved, and accomplished. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full bloom. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware.

- E.M. Bounds

I've often noticed that the soliloquies we have with ourselves don't always yield the best results. In fact there seems to be no glory in having yourself as the greatest confidant and councilor. At best dust can further affirm that dust is indeed dusty, and subsequently all that is needed to prove the dustiness of dust is a gust of wind to further dislocate it. That's what I consider every time I am tempted to retreat into myself to solve my own life's complexities.

Yesterday I got asked a question, "What comes into mind when you think of the word faith?". Now being a pastor there is a "professional default" I fall into of presuming upon theory, but thank God for the prodding of the Holy Spirit who faithfully yanks that junk-yard attitude out of me. I searched honestly and found that faith has meant putting my heart out and hoping, in a wishful thinking kind of way, that things go according to my desire. I know that often I wanted that stuff more than I wanted to enjoy the intimacy that comes with trusting God. I have had faith to go to this school, to that conference, to that event, and to be there with those people and so on, and yes, all these disappointments made me doubt God's goodness towards me, I thought His desire was for me to just keep missing out. The question I never asked is "God what are You doing in MY life? What is your allotted share for ME right now? Instead I spent so much time liking what I saw other people were enjoying and a suspicion grew in my heart about what He was doing for me.

I'm at a place in my life where my understanding of faith has not only been exposed but getting corrected. I think God is doing this so that I don't walk with a limp in my soul. I'm learning that faith has to be rooted in the Person of God, that it is how I see, taste, hear, touch and smell the invisible realm. He is the central spectacle of that realm and every thing there hangs on the hinges of His being. To have faith outside of being close to Him is a dance with disaster. No law of attraction can give me that, no positive thinking can give me that, no ascribing to the Secret can give me His Person. Trust that is characterized by obedience, and obedience characterized by Intimacy is what makes faith valid. We cannot hope to loot God's pantry without fellowship with Him. There is a word for that: THEFT. Children get close, they stay in awe and surrender themselves to love. And then they sit back and enjoy whatever comes with that relationship without secret agendas. We cannot just just make Him our cosmic butler, He is God. He makes my thoughts and desires accountable to His will and pleasure. Since He is more interested in forming Jesus in me, He is faithful to search my heart and give me the superior pleasures of knowing Him so that whatever my heart may be after may be shaped by my hunger for more of His pleasures. Now a purer faith arises in my heart, and a dawn of a hope under girded with certainty in the One who holds Ultimate Reality in His being kisses my world anew.

Trust resurfaces.

A hunger that costs

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:26:25 +0100

I always feel so under-qualified in the language and infantile in revival understanding, but anyone who is an ardent watcher of the times can see that something big is stirring and building across the earth. Revival is here and God brings it to refresh, recalibrate and refuel His children. I hear these amazing stories of God touching people’s lives and nations and families being turned upside down and right-side-up by His power and presence. There was a time I took offence that all these things were happening around me and that there was something wrong with me, and hence “I missed out” on the move of God. But since the journey of rediscovering His amazing love for me, the suspicions of a Father who held His love from me were displaced by awe.

Then something else began to challenge me as well, that God wants to pour out greater measures of His other-worldly love on humanity, starting with His children, that this love of His would flow through them. I understood that the more His beloved would be more intimate with Him, the more she would be like Him. I understood that the more His beloved looks like Him, the more she would live like He would have lived, as well as be misunderstood by His contemporaries as deceived, crazy and from the devil.

To be church that is flowing in the power and presence of God and living out her prophetic identity through her worship actions in the world is costly though. Just like Jesus paid a high price to bring sinners into His kingdom and glory, we pay a high price to live out that kingdom that’s within us in the world today. The question is are we willing to pay the price of being ridiculed, labelled, rejected and still keep our eyes on the One who is greater than the tyrannical power of lifeless religion that comes to choke the freedom of the Spirit? His love is what makes us keep pressing into Jesus’ realm of mystery even when you get warned that you’re in too deep. His love is a furnace that burns away all fear of man, till all that is left is a life ready to go where He says “Go”. I’ve come to this realization that everything I can have in God is only a breath away, yet fear of being judged by man can make it seem like it’s so distant. But this is a declaration of emancipation, that NOTHING that Jesus died for is locked away in the Christian relic museum of “what our predecessors had”. It is my inheritance and I can have it. We can have it now. But only the hungry are filled.

Blessed are the Branded

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:43:22 +0100

One of the most freeing moments in my life came when it dawned on me that it's okay to be a work in progess. I had spent most of my life trying to work hard at making sure that I never scared anyone away by being unwantable. So I have danced my vigourous tango with Performance, when "he" was done tossing me around in his sardonic arms, I'd go waltzing with "Fear of Man", sublimely pretending to only be "all things to all man so that I could win some over". The more I tried to run from the shame of my incompletion, the more it caught up with increasing ease. I would use my loud personality to drown out the sound of the screaming fearful child locked inside who just longed for her Daddy. I would create diversions for others to distract them from my attempts to repair the chipping paint covering the notion that I didn't know who I WAS. So I was fortunate enough to be consistently confronted with my inconsistencies, and just as I I lived loud, my weaknesses were loud and clear. "Unstable, all over the place, she's not focused, here today, there tomorrow, never rooted, arty type etc" I have been branded as all of the above, because that's just what was always seemingly there. Rightly so.

But today, I have endured and enjoyed a journey so freeing I can't even afford to be bitter towards anyone who labelled me as any of these. Instead all I want to do is run us the highest hill and shout aloud that "BLESSED ARE THE BRANDED, BECAUSE THERE IS A GOD IN HEAVEN WHO LONGS TO GIVE THEM A NEW NAME!!!" It's a song of learning how to be vindicated by the patience of a God who's known all along that you are not your frailty. It's a song of learning how to ease into your own skin and live out the prophetic identity of the kingdom without trying to prove you've changed now. The apostle Paul said that we should regard no one by the flesh, in other words, don't see people for what they seem to be. When we see people the according to their prophetic identity we start to know how to celebrate what is coming FROM God into their lives, as opposed to being limited by the present kinks.

So I know today many are still walking around with the old names and old stories that sketch you out to be that pre-Golgothan villian, but I'm the herald to come and say "It's a new day" If you are in the slightest way feeling condemned by not being quite there yet, be free tioday and know that God is not afraid of the unstable, He knows that HE is their stability. He knows that when He died for you and me, and made Himself the Captain of our salvation, He signed up with Himself to loving you to life.

God is doing great things in this hour, He is awakening an army of lovers who live in the tender balance of holy reverance and passionate friendship. He is raising an army of those who know the deep work of being made new, unlike anything they could have ever attempted in their own capacity. He is drawing these lover-fighters together towards Himself as an army to unleash His love, His identity and truth into the world. The world has no story to share with the perfect, it shares one with those who have seen the depths of their depravity in order to know the heights of His love.

So don't despair branded ones, there's a new name coming for you.