Rearview

I recall my grandmother saying to me that hindsight was 20/20. Most of my life I fealt guilty because I looked back with regret rather than thankfulness because of what I can learn from Rearview. As I look back I can see God all over my life, I seeHim in things that actually surprise me. I see God in the good things, hard things, evil things, Godly things, and stupid things. He is all over everything involving my life.

It is so strange to be able to see more clearly by looking back rather than looking forward. We always want to see the bigger picture of what God is doing yet it would seem strange to see more clearly by looking back not forward.

Many times I have been reminded not to look back, don't put your hand to the plow then look back, don't look back or you will be like a pillar salt. We have heard this said in a very negative way but there is more to looking back than we ever knew about.

Experiences vs Encounters

When will we grow tired of choosing experiences over encounters? We love experiences because they are exciting, they work for us, they are all about us, they make us feel better, look better plus it gives us something to talk about that further which validates our own worth and identity.

Experience

When we look at the word experience we see that it overflows into a personal occurrence which can alter the way you live, it deposits something in you that becomes livable that is now yours, it brings you to a high point of something and causes you to see things you have not seen before and feel things that you previously had not.

Encounter

Now as we look at the word encounter we see a totally different meaning. Almost all meanings draw negative situational settings like skirmish, face off, showdown, confrontation, and bump into or run across. This also unfolds itself into meet with, coming up on, clash into or to find by chance.

From my limited understanding of these two words I can see more clearly as to why we want the first with God and others but not the later. The problem with experience is that is grows you and changes you but does not confront the real issues of the heart, it simple changes or makes the outer realms of you look and feel better, heck it may even change the way you act to some degree.

It is important for us to remember that the Kingdom of God is not as concerned with what we do but who we are, so that makes it a heart issue not an obedience issue. Our world system focuses all its time and energy into looking good, acting good so that you are in agreement with the rest of the world system. The world system functions by self medicating itself with new experiences, new toys, new degrees, new lovers, new houses, new cars and so on and so on.

Please don’t hear me say that there is anything wrong with these because there is not but there is something wrong with the fact that you would rather have all of these outward temporal things but not connect in your heart with anything. Heaven tries to deal with the heart of man so that man can truly enjoy creation for the purpose of why it was created. All this stuff around us was created for us and it is fun but it was suppose to be the overflow enjoyment from the heart. We have turned it into the main event thus millions of us are left feeling more and more empty because we acquire more and more stuff.

Simply put, less leads to more in the Kingdom of God and more leads to less in the Kingdom of Man.

How to Grow

Kingdom Growth

As a child I remember playing with an hourglass filled with sand. It was so cool to watch the sand flow from one chamber to another. This is how the Kingdom of God works, the exact opposite of our known world system. In our system we are so afraid of loss, it leaves a bad taste in our mouth, it does even feel right but in the Kingdom of Heaven loss is victory.

Loss always produces gain, this is a spiritual law. The non reality of this is that we try to gain something it in order to lose something. For example: One might say that if I gain salvation in order to be changed, gain faith so that you can move mountains. When you try to gain something in order to get something you end up with nothing bc you bypass the heart. The kingdom of God beats for the heart of man and mans heart beats for it.

Phl 1:21 for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. ( loss leads to gain ) to die is a heart issue and this requires us to be all us, when we gain through loss we step into transformation not change.

Phl 3:7 but what things were gain to me those I now count as a loss for Christ - or spiritual matters. This reveals to us that the supernatural world is not satisfied through the earthly.

1Tim 6:5 disputings of men with corrupt minds and destitue of the truth, supposing hat gain is godliness from such remove yourself. We have been raised to think that our gain makes us more godly, our teaching, our education, our gifting but this is not true, gain does not equal godliness!

1Tim 6:6 but godliness with contentment is great gain. When we through loss connect with godliness we come to the awareness that we have all that we need and this produces in us great gain.

Lk 9:24-25 what gain is it to gain the whole world but lose your life, gain in the world equals loss but loss in the kingdom equals gain of eeverything!

Mirror of Me

I think backwards in my life about how mirrors are a part of our everyday lives. We are introduced to them as a baby when we play with a mirrored toy then as a toddler who hits the mirror telling the reflected child no. We then us the mirror to watch our self sing or talk as a young child and then we get into the teenage years. At this time of life the mirror can be one of our best friends or our worst enemy, we let the mirror be the final judge as to how we look, what color looks good on us, did the zit on my forehead the size of Mt. Rushmore go away. Then we move into the adult side of life and the mirror seems to tell a different story, it seems to reveal our imperfections.

I felt good and looked good until a few years ago the mirror began to show me a thicker stomach that could be seen even in my shirts. What? This could not be true. I did not listen when my waist size went up in my jeans, I did not listen when I bent over one day to tie my shoe then noticed a difference in my stomach. I had been lying to myself and had even believed my lie until the mirror set me straight.

One day while in the bathroom I was getting ready to take a bath after a long day at work. I spent some time with the mirror and allowed it to speak with me. I did not like what it said to me through my reflection, but it was true. I had gained weight, this weight had not shown up on the scale but it had in the size of my waist line. Because of the reality that the mirror revealed to me it has caused me to shift the way I eat and I have started juicing again.

God uses the mirror of me to reveal me to me. For example: James says, that people who think they know God but do not do what God says is a lair, they deceive themselves. Why? Because they look in the mirror and say that they have not gained weight even when their waist line goes from a 28 to a 34. We need to accept reality as reality, if we claim to know something about God but do not produce any fruit in that area of our lives then the mirror would reflect that for what it is. The person who lives like this does not know what they look like, they look in the mirror but forget what they look like when they leave.

My personal life testifies to this. I have spent most of my spiritual life knowing about God. Knowing what His Word says, knowing how to teach others how to live, knowing how to counsel people going through crisis, knowing the right answer at the right time and so on and so on. The reality of the mirror of me has revealed to me is that I do not know or believe half of what I think that I do. I would teach and train others about love yet lived in chaos with my family, I counseled people on how to be free yet I lived in bondage, and I have even consoled people who are suffering from loss and would tell them how good God is and that He is the God of comfort yet I did in my heart not believe it, it produced no fruit in me.

There is no condemnation or guilt for those of you reading this. I am just talking to you about a passion that the Lord has placed on my heart. He told me to not ever teach something that I myself was not living. Over the past years I have developed a strong desire to know God for myself, I want to experience Him for me, I want to taste and see that He is good, and I want to know what it is like to be free inside my heart. I want to connect with God in such a way as to be one with Him and not because the bible says it but because I have lived it. In this process God has used the mirror of me to show me to me because until I can see me outside the revelation of guilt, judgement and condemnation nothing else can be established in my life.

As I begin to be aware of who I am because of what I see in the mirror of me I am then able to release this true me to the true God who has come to set me free.

Being Present

Never thought about this until 7 months ago. This strange yet painful revelation begin to surface on my radar as God was causing the eyes of my heart to see this truth. I begin to randomly think about it , it begin to come up in my inner circle conversations then my pastor preached on it and now a man I get counsel from recommended a book to me. God has this thought circling me on all sides.

All of my life I thought I was present because I simply showed up, I was there so I must be there!

I am learning to live in the present moment because this moment is all that I have. I have spent most of my life not living in the reality of the present. Most of my living hours were spent planning for the future, cleaning up the past and doing everything I could in order to not face the present in its reality. Reality is just that REAL.

The hardest part of this new revelation is learning to feel. Giving myself the freedom to feel what I am feeling is difficult but not near as hard as allowing me to be seen before others for who I really am on the inside. I do not have a really good idea of who I am because for all these years I have lived in a false reality, disconnected from truth, depending on my ability to preform so that I could look good and feel good about my own dysfunction. I am a 7 year old boy living in the body of a year old man.

I am discovering a greater since of freedom, awareness of myself and my environment. I am more in awe and overflowing with gratefulness because of me being aware of the present. How I feel, what I think, what I smell, what I hear, what this person just said to me, what I just said to them. I have been on autopilot most of my life, yet now I am beginning to take charge of my life because I am learning to live in the present, be aware of now.

I have done things all my life, so much to the point that I should have been renamed a human doing rather than a human being. I have never felt good enough to just be me. I always thought that I had to do do things and this constant doing has robbed me from living in the present awareness of now. I have missed so many divine appointments of creativity in the now because I was so busy living in the false reality of then while missing right now!

There is greatness on the inside of me, I have beauty on the inside of me and I am learning to give myself the freedom to be me! One of the doorways to this area of my heart is to allow me to feel me then to take this revelation into meaningful relationships around me. I have been so hard on Brian for so many years and never gave him slack or freedom. He was constantly pushed, driven towards excellence, never allowed to rest and let's not even talk about making mistakes.
I am releasing the child in me to be who I truly am knowing that I will begin to overflow in being who I was created to be since the beginning of time.

You do not know what you do not know. It is ok for me not to know things. I have always thought that I had to know things because if I did not know it then it made me less than worthy or good. I am beginning to see that I will never be able to tap into my true creativity as long as I can not embrace that fact that I do not know nor do I need to know everything. I have removed me from the headlock of life and allowing myself to breath and be free.

Learning to be me is the best thing that I can give to humanity. I have tried to give me to others but did not even know who or what I was giving away. You can not reproduce what you say, you only reproduce who you are in your heart. I want to allow me to see who I was created to be. As I begin to see and embrace me then over time I will begin to reproduce who I am. I am worthy of love, being loved as well as loving myself. This sounds so simply and silly but it has been the most difficult thing I have ever ventured out into. Learning to love me because I am worth it as a person, I was created to be loved and to love.

False Reality

The two words in this title do not seem to go together because one is not true or real while the other is real and true. What hits home to me is that I am one of the millions who have tried to live their life in both dominions. I will peel back the curtains so that you can see behind the stage that I perform on.
I have spent and still spend much time living, entertaining and planning in the false reality state of mind. I think that things will be different in the future, things will not always be the way they are now, my past does not really contribute to me being the way I am today or worse yet thinking that this is just a phase of life and it will pass. I do not not know what to do but look around me and everyone else seems to be fine so I do what they are doing so that I will fit in and look normal. I smile and tell everyone that everything is good in my life, while I am really screaming for help.
How about working not working more hours because it makes me feel more valuable. Or lets purchase this new piece of technology so that I will feel the false reality of change and newness all the while knowing this feeling will leave me in a few weeks. How about this one. It is the lesson of cheer and giving so I will set aside me brokenness and pain so that I can make someone's life better, really I are saying that I have given up on me so I will go work on someone else so that I can avoid me dealing with me. I have spent most of my life in ministry doing this, this is the reason I have removed myself from ministry as I know it.
I am painfully learning to accept me for where I am today, I am learning to feel the pain of reality for who I have become. I am about 6 years old in my heart and this is where I am. I refuse to pretend to live in a reality that is not real. I refuse to play like everything is ok when it is not. I refuse to work harder to look better so that I feel better about being false. I am not pitching a tent to live in this place but unless I learn to face the reality at hand then I will never get any older than a 6 year old heart.
I am not doing this journey alone. I have a large group of people that know me inside and out. I am learning to be me in-front of others and this is the source of my healing. I am no longer hiding in shame and regret but allowing me to be seen for who I have been all my life.

Life is Busy

I have just came out of the hardest time of my whole year which is Holiday Lighting. This year we experienced god grow our business as well as grow our hearts in new things. For me it is learning to let go and trust people. At heart I am a control freak and a micro manager. God is teaching me to love others through trusting them, learning to empower them, deligate to them, allow them to make mistakes and know that it will be ok.
This has and is a very painful work that God is doing in my life and it seems to be manifesting itself through our business. Normaly this time of year is filled with guilt because of all the things I do not do or do not have time to do but this year is different. I am resting in the fact that I am not superman, I am not the savior of the world, it is not my job to help everyone! I am here to love others, love myself and care for my family. As I go about life daily He always makes room for peoples lives to be touched and changed through the work that He is doing inside of me.