Proclaiming the Jubilee

As we approach the close of 2017, I write you from my last international trip of the year in Poland. This year has seen been busy with travel to 8 nations which included 2 trips to Cuba, 2 to Poland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the birthing of something new in Nigeria!  God has already begun to speak about what he plans to do in the nations in 2018, and I look forward to where the journey will take us!

I have arrived here in Phoenix City aka Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw gained the name Phoenix City because it has been destroyed multiple times and rebuilt from the ashes. Hitler ordered the city to be destroyed during WWII and 85% of the city was leveled. The Warsaw that now stands as the capital city of Poland is a city that has been rebuilt within the last 50 years following the war. Interestingly, the legendary phoenix is said to regenerate in cycles. Combusting into flames upon death, with the new bird regenerating out of the ashes of the old. When God first began to speak to me about Poland, (before I knew it was called Phoenix City) what he spoke the most about was that an old era or cycle was ending, and a new one beginning, and that because of the choices made by Poland 70 years ago for mercy and to fight against the enemy, that Poland would now be a nation at the front of the line to rise in this new era. As I entered the city today, my declaration was for the Phoenix to rise and take her place. I bless Warsaw and all of Poland as she shakes off the ash and emerges stronger than ever and ready to soar!

Freedom will offend every religious bone in your body. Often where you are offended is a good indicator or where you are most tightly bound and desperately in need of being set free.

This morning as I was driving I felt a strong sense that there is a great paradigm shift coming for many in the church. A shift that will bring people into a more relational gospel.

But God reminded me of what a paradigm shift looks like. Some of you have heard parts of this before, but I was reminded of years ago when I was in bible school in Texas. One night God spoke to me and told me to go to this conference in Vancouver, Washington. I was working part-time and paying tuition, housing, and a mortgage back in Georgia so it was only my 100% surety that God had spoken that had me shelling out the money and getting on a plane the next day.

I arrived at a church that had just gone through its own paradigm shift, causing over half the congregation to leave in offense. t know this when I walked through the doors. But what I experienced there that evening offended everything in me. It was raw, messy, uncontrolled, and everything religion has always spoken against. In hindsight I can see that it was authentic, it was real, and God was very much in the center of it. But at the moment all I could focus on was my offense. Who they were saying we were in Christ, what they were saying we were free to do, none of it was the nice ordered and controlled church life I had always experienced.

I went back to my motel room that night angry and determined I was getting back on the plane. But that night as I was packing up my stuff, God interrupted and he asked me why I was offended. And I began to list for him all the things I had heard and seen (as if he had not witnessed it) and I took out my bible to argue with God about the heresy I had just heard. But when I opened my bible to the verses they had talked about and began to read them, suddenly my eyes and my heart were opened, and the words I had read a hundred times and interpreted to mean one thing, suddenly had new meaning. I saw them from a different angle, it was like God was re-arranging the words in my heart right there as I spoke them. It was a huge paradigm shift and the beginning of God turning everything I thought I knew upside down. It was the beginning of a gospel that was not about rules and servanthood or our human concept of order and control, but about love and relationship and freedom.

Much of the church is yet to have this paradigm shift, but I feel it strong in the air and coming fast for many of you. It will offend you, it will turn your life around, it will be messy and human, but it will be real and authentic and full of God.

Liberty in Christ

True freedom cannot exist apart from free will. But the greater lesson I am learning is that true freedom is not acquiescence or submission.  There have been times when God has asked me what I want, and I have quickly replied with a 'whatever you want I will do' type of response.  But then he will say, "I did not ask you what you were willing to do, I asked you what YOU want!"

You see, there are many things we are willing to submit to or accept, and there is a level of freedom in the choice to do that, but it is not the same as being truly free to your own will and what is in your own heart.

I have always been very independent and considered myself to be pretty free.  But it wasn't until God started challenging me to take a look at whether I was just acquiescing or if that was my true heart that I began to discover new levels of freedom.

While He is pleased that we are willing to submit, his goal is true partnership where it is not a matter of us just submitting to his control and his will, but us following our hearts and working alongside him in a way that allows our hearts to be fully engaged and awakened, and where we feel and know that we are fully valued rather than feeling like a pawn in a game of chess or a puppet on a string.  When we simply submit or agree to the will of others, our hearts remain detached while we continue to secretly long for what we really want to do. This leaves us feeling unfulfilled, benefits no one, and is just a higher level of servanthood. But the Father is not looking for servants, he is looking for sons and daughters with hearts fully engaged and alive, and who are free to live their passions and be who they were created to be.