Hope is Here

Right now there is nowhere else I want to be than in His presence. I am consumed by this thought, this hope of something greater than meetings and songs. I want to sit in dissonance and hear the harmony of His truth. I want to utterly be consumed by His loving kindness. “Hope is here”, that is what He just wrote to me. Hope is here. I will run around screaming that along with all the other crazy things He has told me. “Lift up your feet,” He told me that gem two years ago. Six months ago He told me to “put on your remembering hat.” Compared to that one hope is here is for sure doable.

You have no idea what two hours in the prayer room at IHOP KC can do to you. There are just these transcendent moments that people will never believe when I tell them. Not everyone is convinced that there is something special here. Those people have never been here. There is something pure in endless worship 24/7 forever. Try to replicate that. Try to imagine that? Try for one minute to picture Revelation 4 playing out for real over and over. Those who don’t believe in mountain top experiences have never been to the top of the mountain. It has become clear that we have lost vision of this truth. In our jaded nature we chide those with a mountain top moment. We dismiss an emotional response as if God did not create it. We seek to eliminate it from our experience because somehow real Christ followers are steady and need not go to the mountain to hear from God. In Exodus God specifically instructs Moses to go to the mountaintop to meet with Him and see His glory. “Be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.” (Exodus 34:2) Moses experiences the fullness of the presence of God and “quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped.” (8) Moses is forever changed in that instant. When he comes down from the mountain we are told that his face shone. He literally had a different countenance. The people knew he had encountered the Holy God and they were in fear from the reality of the depth of this change. 

In Matthew Jesus takes Peter, James and John where? To the mountain where He literally transfigures and reveals His holiness. We are told "His face shone like the sun." And then God speaks and tells them that this is His Son. Then they all head back down and Jesus tells them, "tell no one of the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead." And so we see that they go to the mountaintop to meet with God and this moment is set to propel them into ministry after Jesus has been resurrected. You don’t leave real moments to return to a pretend life steeped in sin and hopelessness. These for real moments stay with you, they change you. They set your course. They are necessary. There is no turning back.

We don’t need to shy away from these things. We need to be lost in his presence. Ours is not the call to test the truth of an encounter by ensuring that there are no more mountaintop encounters. We must climb again. We must leave the safety of steadiness and we must head to the mountaintop. We need to risk it all for this experience that we may look like something of the Holiness of God. There will be those who are faking. It is not for us to decide. It is for us to lead them there time and time again so that one day they will drop to their knees and worship the mighty God of Israel and in that moment be forever changed and forever secure in His presence. Once there we will never leave.  We will bring that change down from the mountain with us. This has to be our call. We must have more of Him. We must hunger for more of Him. We have to stop running about and we need to have a fresh anointing of His infinite power. We have no idea. I have no idea. I do know that His presence is our only hope. Hope is here. This is truth.

yes

There is a movement afoot. There is a disquieting in the church and God is moving on the earth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like He’s been hanging out doing a whole lot of nothing and His slumber has been stirred. He has always been moving, He is God after all and He has been working out His perfect plan since He made the universe. But this is a tiny release of His tangible presence.

The Father is calling us back to Him as individuals. He is reminding us that He called Peter, that He called Matthew, that He called John. The list goes on but each of them in the moment said yes and then went. Each of them was required to give a yes to the sovereign God. There was no group effort or mob mentality. It is critical that we begin to separate the community activity from the heart of the Father and the call to give him a yes or a no.

For too long we have created the perfect fishing environment. We keep stressing the fishing with nets and it is good except for that they all fished with nets before they knew Jesus. Fishing with nets was not something that Jesus specifically taught them. What Jesus taught them was where to put their nets and what to do when the nets came back full and what to do when they came back empty.

We spend so much time teaching the things of man. We spend so much time teaching how to cast out nets. Our intentions are good but our intentions always diminish the power of the Christ and embellish our own strength. Modern Christianity looks like the world looks. We gather on a Sunday for a big meeting where we sing old songs written by men to explain Jesus to us. We give out a bunch of relevant information about other gatherings and goings on where we can gather in groups and talk about how hard it is to follow Jesus and then someone stands up and teaches more about Jesus. When it is all over we have people who will pray for our lack. Wash rinse repeat.What we end up with is small group counseling with a Messiah added on for good measure.

These are our ways. We create a program to deliver the content. We really believe that somehow Jesus was culturally relevant. The only problem I have with these ideas is the Word of God. Jesus didn’t really have a community program or a retreat. He found some people and specifically picked them to follow Him around so that they could learn about His Kingdom. He talked to large groups of people and small groups. Sometimes He dealt with people one on one. He continued to teach the disciples secret things He did not tell the masses. He showed them how to pray, He led them into desolate places and then He fed them. He showed them His glory and His power and reminded them that He and God are the same. He gave them a plan and sent them out to teach others what they had been taught. Not one of them started a church, they all came back and continued to follow Him around. He told them that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. And then most of the people stopped following. So what is that all about?

It is about the truth. He called them to a die to yourself and follow me relationship. He called them to a one on one relationship where He becomes everything and everything else becomes pointless. He taught them that He is the way. And because they had revelation of this truth a community was born. Individuals desperately seeking after the Father will produce a mass effect. They will multiply. We need to cry out for this truth. Teach us to pray, teach us to follow Him for real. Teach each one of us to cry out to Him from our place of brokenness. Teach us that there is no good thing apart from Him. It is time to end the programs and it is time to spend hours in front of Him in His throne room. It is time to stop throwing the nets in the wrong location. We want an outpouring of the Spirit and this will only come when each and every individual calls out to the Father. There is no community on that day we see Him face to face. This is not a group test. This is an individual relationship. This following Jesus is not a team sport. Each one of us must eat the flesh and drink the blood on our own. Each one of us independent of all the others must say yes to Christ alone. He will have His way. And when He has His way . . . well the church will look quite a bit different. Don’t you think?

What makes the elders fall down?

In Revelation 4 and 5 we are given the exact goings on of the throne room. This is the seat of glory. This is where all the action is in heaven. Our God and His Son sit on some thrones and this is what they do for what appears to be forever. This scene is only interrupted when Jesus comes back to earth, tosses Satan into a pit, kills His enemies, and recreates our bodies along with the heavens and the earth. So it's pretty safe to say that this whole throne room is pretty important as it seems this scene has been playing out since Jesus jumped on the cloud and disappeared into the sky while the crowd watched in what had to be the craziest thing they had ever seen, and I think we can agree they had seen quite a lot. So i'm pretty sure we are to take something significant from the throne room activity since it is the exclusive current activity of our Lord. We are told in Romans 8:34 "Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us." So the picture: Jesus dies, is raised up, walks the earth for a bit, gets on a cloud, arrives in heaven, sits down in His chair and begins to talk to the Father on our behalf and He does this day and night, 24/7. He is our model right? This is not about day and night prayer but this is about what happens while Jesus talks to God for eternity.

 It seems like there is this large circle gathered about the throne. Front row seems to be these living creatures that God made to have eyes so they can see Him from every angle. Also, in the front seem to be some elders who cry "worthy" over and over.  And then there seems to be a sea behind them. And then there are thousands and thousands of angels singing to Him at all times. This is the picture of Heaven and then in one moment it will stop and Jesus will stand up, grab some scrolls, and head back to earth with some serious changes to be made. But in this forever snap shot He sits there and just tells the Father about us over and over. But here is what I want to know? Why do the elders fall down?

This is not out of fear. That is a ridiculous assumption. If they were deeply afraid in the presence they could just get up and leave or they could just stay down. This is an eternal process. This moment is wash - rinse - repeat. This moment happens over and over again. They stand up, the angels sing, the creatures cry holy, the elders cry worthy and down they go. This is the promise of God. This is the revelation of who He is. He shows His glory and they are filled with such joy, such fullness that they fall down and cry worthy. Their worship, their praise is not a one way activity. In fact they worship from the overflow of the Father. They worship from the outpouring of Him. Their praise and their worship come from Him not from within them. So why is it that we seem to be missing this. Why is it that we stand before the Father and praise Him as if we are giving Him "all our worship?" It's shocking when you weigh it out. We are giving Him what He has put in us. We should experience great joy. This is how He has always worked. His majesty, His very cool creation, His outpouring of Joy is all for us. He does not need the show, we do. He designed it this way. He gives us joy so that we experience His  presence. So while it may be true that we worship and praise Him it is also more true that this whole activity plays out as His gift to us not our gift to Him. This is the heart of worship; this is the truth of who He is. He is worthy and He is holy and we need to remember that our worship comes from Him.It is time that we waited for Him to fill us with His joy and then we will see what really happens. This is the truth. He is a God that  comes first in all things. He does not pour out from the overflow of our praise. He fills us up with the joy of His spirit and we in turn sing a new song. Worship is not supposed to be a challenge. It is a fountain of joy. It is what happens after we have been sitting in His presence not before. We should give it a try sometime.