Go Deeper

He is like a cape over me. Planet Earth, oh, how you lead me to wonder and confusion

Teach me your way Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart (Psalm 86)

*italicized = journal entries from my time in the Utah desert

*italicized = journal entries going deeper on the Race

“Waters of Grace”

I stood in boundless refreshing waters of grace 

They go through every land and may they ever go deeper in me

May I know your heart deeper each passing moment, day, year

When I swim, when I float, when I sink into your bountiful Grace. A badge of truth, a breastplate of honor and righteousness

When I look at myself in the waters of Grace, endless for me to draw from and more vast than I could ever know, my skin takes on a new radiance and glow. The water of Grace and life cover my reality and make me glow anew

When I am submerged completely, where I cannot breathe the air I know, where memories of thousands of times I have been in the waters of Grace (and the waters of Powell with my family) are coming back to me, it is the only time when I don’t feel weight centering me

It is the only time where heavy burdens aren’t my gravity

His waters of Grace make me weightless and legitimately take my weight to lightness and wonder

Remember when I would see through the waters of Grace at G&G’s pool in childhood? I would look at the bubbles forming. Compact and disperse them as I touch the wall with my finger. I would spin and swirl, and still do in the waters of Grace

The rays shine clearly through in a way you can witness

Sometimes at the floors of the waters of Grace are more beautiful and wonderous beings and colors thriving to live

The waters of Grace are my life-line

Alone on some unusual adventure I cannot help but think in metaphor

Did you know God wondrously made Glen Canyon and, with it, history of the Natives and my Great Grandfather – vast canyon walls with discovery. Yet, man disturbed how it was made with their own structure

Their own structure redirected the waters of Grace to look different and flood the canyons of God’s intent

Even when sinful man disrupts God’s intent, the waters of Grace make something new and restored. God works with our mistake and evil and floods His waters of Grace anyway

Makes good out of evil. Grace upon Grace

You cannot out sin it, like Shawn said, He is relentless, you are never too far gone and messed up

From Indonesia to Thailand to Utah

One morning in Theon, Thailand our dreams and plans were shattered by a single email. Leaving this humble church, the day after arriving, in the middle of the service we were supposed to lead, I mustered up the courage and peace from God to pray out loud over them as they just did for us.

God is more determined, more faithful than you could ever know

You are actually, legitimately, completely free in Christ

Arriving back in Chiang Mai waiting for our flight plans, a beautiful, joyous, prophetic woman of God took us in again at her YYAM house.

I seriously do not know how I would have gotten through it all without her.

One instance of My presence can change everything. You have the capacity to give that. Don’t forget it

She led our sadness to praise and freedom. She had us take a physical step of faith together that we would not shrink back but arise as sons and daughters and grow in authority through the challenge of Corona interrupting everything.

You stand out and you belong, know that every day, for Christ chose you and interrupted that life for something so much better

She had us bring our true feelings to the Lord and ask Him what he wants to do about it. As I prayed, a deep blue washed over my eyes, and I knew what it meant.

God gave me the phrase one day in Indonesia…

            His Word and Go Deeper

I’ve been meaning to write a blog about this since, but after going deeper than I could have ever imagined through work, solitude, and 40 days in the desert of Utah (much of the time spent cleaning houseboats), I am glad I waited so I could share much more.

What a better place than the stripped glorious desert pruning, refining. I AM HERE HE SAYS. Day by day going deeper has to be enough. I’m honestly scared as I sit outside alone, with my loving, godly parents inside, that it is going to just be me out here

His divine hand large is on me and over this room. My parents sweetly cover this room with prayer

Stamped with memories of pure family togetherness, He stamps me with blessing

It’s like hearing the sound of silence for the first time. It’s like I’m doing some kind of growing up here

“The Pearl”

There is a pearl sitting at the bottom of the surface beneath the water

You swim down to pick it up

You bring it to the world and out of it explodes a forcefield of colored light

Go deeper through bringing yourself honestly to the Lord, asking hard questions, and learning perseverance through trials (James 1).

“Snorkeling”

I take in where I’m at but not in fullness. I snorkel in fullness tho, seeking every cavern floating upside down, I forgot how easy it is to float, bubbles rising to the top, my feet facing the sky

Snorkeling became a symbol for going deeper with God in Indonesia. You are submerging yourself in His waters. Everything on the shallow end is quicker and easier to see. Any of God is beautiful to know, but everything as you go deeper is more fascinating, vibrant, and streaming with life. It is much harder to swim deeper, even scarier as you hold your breathe for longer and do not know what you will discover. But if you are bold enough, you will go deeper, and you will not regret it.

In the deep resides WONDER

There is resistance to swim deeper in God and in His Word and in His Spirit and in His Way. It is scary, against the grain, not easy, takes time. But trust Him, do it. His waters are eternal life, here and now

My love is sufficient for you

No requirement out of me. I think I was protected in this day after writing down my testimony which defeats the power of the evil one. But I know I cannot really internalize when hard things happen that should make me cry like the others were tonight (after spending hours with a 19 year old prostitute in a karaoke bar). But I will turn to the Lord, intercede, see what He has to say

Be careful how you measure yourself; measure yourself by My Love

I know that’s not God’s voice nor even my own, and it drains you for a minute, but you have to ask Christ to stop the self-deprecating thoughts, and he will. You have to remember truth and then you can step into joy of loving others

Let your sermon be My Voice (supernaturally with love that surpasses earth)

You are the One who gives me strength when I don’t have it of my self. Do the same tomorrow. Amen to the Lord who saves

Did you know that you don’t have to do anything? That though you haven’t spent extended time separated with me like you hoped, you actually have been inviting me into each day and letting me flow out of you? Did you know that? That is why you have peace right now. I am with you and in you 

Like seriously Only God is with me, and He plays every single role in my life

“Sinners and Saints” what a book to read right now as I invite God unto cleaning a bathroom like that one crippled saint

Hannah at the cabin is no longer the same person. She’s been made new, she is also in a stage of life that she cannot understand

Did I come all the way here to discover that what I want and what my soul needs the most is community like on the Race – not independence?

“The Cove Light Show”



        

                                
                                                    
                        
                        

                    
                                        
    

I’m having my Katie Lee cold pool moment. Like God imprints me on and with the landscape wondering

Just here, I just am

Not a soul I know knows where I am right now, but the desert does

I feel as though Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane could just show up right there in that green sagebrush

Resting in Him. I have no partner in crime but him

And when He performed a cove light show, and the fruits of hot difficult labor, swelling aching feet, float and caress the weightless water. I just, I just love Him

I’m not in a rush right now. I’m not striving to fit in this community here; I’m striving for this while I can have it

Someday I’ll work for justice and break down spiritual walls for the lost in Jesus Name.

Today, I do the work, the only work that does not elicit burden, of knowing God

I’ve never felt lighter than I do right now

But Jesus Christ, I pray you would save all these people

His Word

For years, numerous people on independent occasions have spoken over me themes of living water, deep roots, steady faithfulness, trees, wonder, and fruitfulness. During quarantine, one of my squad leaders encouraged me as someone who embodies this verse…

“Blessed is the one…Whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers” – Psalm 1

As a deer pants for water my soul plants for you (and your Word, longest I’ve spent with out you for many years, I need you by my side) -Psalm 42:1

When the sun is like a heartbeat, and the path a whirlwind, the trees reach wherever the heart beat breathes and will not stay to wither in the dark

May I cherish and follow every bit of Your light not withering

I am shaken without Him, I am SO dependent on Him all of Him

“The Waterfall”

Under all the pain and confusion, hard work and intrusion, desolation and improving, is the God who makes me golden, beyond valuable and ready to coat others with love, with His love, that I don’t have of myself

Where I may feel sometimes like a volcano or sometimes like a dry, boring to them, desert land, He says I am a waterfall

He says He is proud of me, though I struggle to believe it. Lord assure me of it. You say those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled

I found a hunger for the Holy Bible that was jumping off the page unlike ever before while I was on the Race. Psalm 1 shows that the Word of God is largely how we grow deeper in the faith and prosper.

I sit on a rooftop sprinkled with rain, the lightning is near, and I know God is my refuge my portion and my cup

He makes a way in the wilderness. I believe in You. I don’t want to miss your Presence

The anthem of my heart Christ Jesus crucified. I feel it: He wants to do something in me not just through me

Susi changed my life when she said it, that’s it, no matter what, go to God. Here, He gives me a heart for everyone and shows me where to act

God gives all the chance for eternal life; may I have hope for all in my heart and hand the burden of it all to Jesus who bore it and overcame the world for me and for us

Thank goodness, the 1 true God breaks through blockages to get to us, when we couldn’t get to Him ourselves

“The Triangle of Light”

I see a triangle of light and color splitting through the darkness. It’s a straight pathway for me to duck through, to be completely protected in the world, and it ends getting to that complete Kingdom space

“The firefly’s path”

The flicker of a being

The uncertain path occasionally lit

The typical or untypical location’s surprise

What my journey is like, finding the Lord

All over all throughout

Little flashes of Him so wonderous and joyous 

They show me He’s with me on what seems the unconventional way

Sometimes I feel in the dark

Sometimes I have to trust

the path

Sometimes I have to guess

the path

But He doesn’t stop reminding me

He’s bringing me home

On the narrow, majestic path through treatrous and garden like waters he shines and reflects down

Leaving me sometimes to be still

Close enough you could gasp

Knowing I can’t go wrong

If only I continue to look 

And to trust 

Even emerging out of the pitch black distance

He’ll never cease to glow

The Bible is alive and breathing, endless in its feeding and transformative and truth-bearing power (The Bible is so uniquely and historically impressive – I’m reading chapters of Josh McDowell on that right now. He refers to these verses on the Bible’s power – Hebrews 4:12, 2 Timothy 3:17, 1 Peter 1:23).

Revealing nature of scripture - Colossians 1, the Gospel like a tree and personified, legitimately growing and reaching further throughout the whole world

It all amounts to something, everything you see in the Kingdom of God

“Shadow of my Father’s Wings”

What I learned the past few days is that God is building my character here – I thought I came just for pleasure and evangelism, but more so for growth. Yesterday on the verge of tears, I wanted to quit again, my feet groaned for relief. But like the sun just went behind a miniscule cloud amid an expansive sky for o