a little Bosworth if you please

"The nine disciples had failed to deliver the epileptic boy mentioned in the gospels. Some theologian of that day, if he were like may of the theologians of these days, might have seized upon that failure. He might say, 'There, now we have the proof that it is not always God's will to heal.' But the father wanted the boy to be healed. The boy himself wanted to be healed. The disciples, divinely commissioned to cast out devils and heal the sick, wanted him to be healed. Under similar circumstances today someone would say because of such a failure, 'It is not God's will that such a one should be healed.' They would make a theology out of the failure. But Jesus came down from the mountain and delivered the boy. This proves it to be God's will to heal, even when His accredited representatives had failed to heal. Why not make theology out of this?"

After witnessing the miraculous healing of thousands, I am convinced that the proofs of healing are as bright and convincing as are the proofs of regeneration. Yet I do not base any doctrine on these answers to prayer. I, for one, will preach all the Gospel if I never see another man saved or healed as long as I live. I am determined to base my doctrines on the immutable Word of God, not on phenomena or human experince."

-an excerpt from Christ the Healer, by F.F. Bosworth.

http://product.half.ebay.com/Christ-the-Healer-by-F-F-Bosworth-Fred-Francis-Bosworth-2000-Paperback/1719721&tg=info

buy the book for $0.75. please. please please please. We need a revelation of "the Lord our healer" in the church.

and then He spoke

I saw a beach laid out before me, only sand as far as my eyes could see. Lying on the beach in a line in front of me were children, young people dressed as though from every nation of the earth. The line also went on as far as my eyes could see. Looking at them, I thought they were dead. They were unmoving, crumpled in awkward positions. Then, as I kept looking at them, the first one in front of me suddenly got up, smiling a huge smile with his mouth open. Throughout the line, all the children began to get up, all smiling with their mouths gaping open. I felt like the Lord said “They were dead, but I brought them back to life.”

Then I was on the beach inside the vision.

I felt warmth all around me and I felt like I was lying on sand. I stood up and I felt crowds and crowds of people all around me. There were so many people that they were pressing in on me. I felt like I heard them, and they were all praising God. They kept adoring Him, using all kinds of different praises. “Glorious, worthy, perfect, all-mighty, wonderful is the Lamb! We love Him. We love Him. He saved us and we love Him! He is ours forever! We will always love him. He is always kind! Always good! We will ever praise Him! Forever He is right.”

One pushed me in the back, saying, “Come. Come. All the upright give Him praise.” They spun me around and I started laughing and dancing and jumping as they shouted praises to the Lamb. I began shouting with them, “Wonderful! Perfect! You will always reign! No one will defeat You because You gave yourself up.” I started crying. “You’re worthy. The only One worthy. You are Worthy.” I fell to the ground. “We love you Jesus. We love your sacrifice. There is no one else that we will adore. You’re the only One worthy.” I laid facedown. “I cannot bring You the praise that You’re due, but all the honor, all the love, all the worship in my heart belongs to You. I will lavish myself on You, the righteous King. No one will usurp my love. I will guard it with all I have and give it only to You. Always to You. You are my only love.”

I felt His breath over me as I lay on the sand; it was hot, perfect, terrifying, and sweeter than I have ever known. Everything in me lined up with one reality, He was near me. He was close. His presence was altogether shocking, and all at once familiar. It was completely at home, and more distant than the farthest stars. Wilder than the most unsearched mountains, safer than the garden you have grown up next to, a burning fire that knows no hesitation, and a crashing wave that plummets you to the depths of the sea. I knew I was completely saved, yet I was sure I was utterly lost. How can one possibly recover from such a touch? How can there be any return? All faith is answered. All hope is gone. At the end of my understanding, He kept bringing me into His presence. His voice shook my dreams and questions, and it answered all my longings.

“Beloved. I am. You will be all that I have planned. You will love me with your whole heart, whole strength, whole mind. I will purify your heart, and you will give it all to Me. You will pour out your life for Me. As I have loved you, you will love Me. You will give Me all that you have. I will create in you a clean heart. I will fix your eyes on my face. You will see Me and be satisfied. You will see me and rejoice. All your longing will be answered. All your waiting will end. I am just and right. I will not leave you alone. I will come to you. I have not lied. I am only pure, always pure. You will know my righteousness. You will know my justice. You will see my indignation poured out on the earth and you will say ‘Perfect is the Lamb. Right are all His ways.’ I will teach you my love, beloved. I will teach you my ways. You don’t yet understand, but I will teach you. I will not leave you confused. You will know me. You will know me well. You’re caught in a whirlwind, beloved. I will not let you go. You will never be alone.”

perspective

There is a fire in my heart for you, my love. There is a fire in my heart for you. The lie that I don’t care about your sin is the same lie that says that I don’t want all of you. It’s the same lie that says that I don’t love you well or I don’t love all of you. But I do.
I love all of you there is to possibly love. I love you.

Do you know what jealousy is, beloved?
Jealousy means that nothing takes place over desire.
Every physical obstacle, every emotional barrier, every distraction, every earthly lust, every demonic torment is lesser than and subject to the higher reality of my jealousy.

Nothing gets past me.

And we know that all things work together for good
to those who love God
to those who are the called according to His purpose
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good
I have made the Lord God my refuge
that I may tell of all your works

I make it all work out for your good because I can’t bear anything pulling you away from my love. I’m not incompetent. I have contended for you and I never lost the fight.

My love, beloved, it came into your life and it won you.
I fought for you with all my heart and I won.

story time

recent events:

Tuesday night, after an amazing all-staff intercession at IHOP-atlanta (what is usually a brief healing prayer turned into a 30 min prophetic song about a healing revival, complete with words of knowledge regarding conditions in the room), Hazen and I went with Laure and two of her friends, Carlton and Destiny, to pray for a friend of theirs who was in the hospital for multiple medical conditions. We went to her room, and prayed for her healing, with no immediate results. On the way out of the hospital, we saw a man in a wheel chair headed for the escaltors. Promptly, Carlton began chasing him down, which in turn caused the rest of us to follow suit. We caught up to him and Carlton asked him what had happened and if it would be okay for us to pray for him to be healed. This man explained to us that seven years ago a wall had fallen on him, which had bent both of his ankles backwards, broken his tibia and fibia in both legs and caused lots of damage in his left ankle. Since then, he has had constant excruciating pain in his left ankle from when he wakes up in the morning till he sleeps. He told us that walking a simple hallway, would leave him feeling as if he had tryed to run a marathon. He was currently using a wheel chair because he had walked down to the cafeteria, and his ankle was now in so much pain that he didn't want to walk any more and had gotten a wheel chair to take his food back.

So we prayed for him. Carlton led it off, and then after prayer asked him if he could stand up and test out his ankle to see if it was still in pain. At first, the man seemed confused by the request. He told us that he would walk if it would make us happy, and that he definitely could, it would just hurt. We briefly explained that we believed that all the pain in his ankle might now be gone due to our prayer. He agreed to stand up and see how it felt. He stood up, turned to face us, and looked at us with wide eyes. "Are you serious?" was his first statement. Tears started welling up. What's going on? we asked. How does it feel? "I don't feel anything. It feels the same as my right ankle. There's no pain" Tears started running down his face, which he wiped up on his t-shirt.


Amazing. I love, I love, I love the healing power of the cross.

I would be doing you an injustice though if I didn't tell you the rest of this story. Following this amazing healing, we presented the Gospel to this man, telling him that the same power of God that healed his foot was present and available to heal his heart and give him a new life. After laying out this good news, this man refused to accept Jesus. He told us that he was thankful for the gift he had gotten of his healing, but that he wasn't going to ask for anything else. So the wonderful miracle was followed by a nightmare. We stood next to this man listening to his reasonings for not worrying about eternity, and I kept wanting to grab his shoulders, shake him hard, and tell him that he was wrong, and he was going to go to hell and would be forever in torment. I pray his life soon changes. He needs Jesus.

So we must pray. More. We must pray more.

We need power and clarity on the Gospel for the turning of hearts. James 5:16

seventy three, twenty eight.

"Everything in me lined up with one reality, He was near me. He was close. His presence was altogether shocking, and all at once familiar. It was completely at home, and more distant than the farthest stars. Wilder than the most unsearched mountains, safer than the garden you have grown up next to, a burning fire that knows no hesitation, and a crashing wave that plummets you to the depths of the sea. I knew I was completely saved, yet I was sure I was utterly lost. How can one possibly recover from such a touch? How can there be any return? All faith is answered. All hope is gone. At the end of my understanding, He kept bringing me into His presence. His voice shook my dreams and questions, and it answered all my longings."

thoughts, sights, and experiences

The Trial of Accusations:

I saw a platform type area, all covered in black fabric. As I kept looking, I could see that the platform went all the way around a small room and formed a sort of circular amphitheatre. It was full of seats, and each seat had a microphone at it and like a placemat in front of it. The seats were mostly full. As I saw this, I knew the seats were full of singers and that this was a court and the singers were trying or judging someone or something. The room had rows all the way up towards the ceiling and the thing on trial was at the bottom of the room on a small stage. I asked to go inside the vision and then I was sitting at one of the seats. There was like a desk cubby underneath the placemat in front of me and in it was a Bible, a pen, and a legal pad. Of all the singers, some were sitting on their chairs and some were passed out/curled up on the floor behind their chairs, and I knew they were encountering the Lord.

Different people were singing phrases from their encounters, and the things they were saying were the evidence trying what was on trial, which I felt like the Lord said was sin, disease, and death, but I also felt like what was on trial was “accusations” and looking at what was being tried, it was a dark creepy looking blob thing that was projecting outward. At first I thought it was accusations against the singers in the room and against each of their own hearts, but later I understood that it was also representing accusations against the Lord, and that it had first been called sin, disease, and death because those are all things in the world that accuse us of not really having a heavenly identity and accuse the Lord of not being who He says He is.

As the singers were all having encounters with the Lord, they would come out of their experiences and sing the things they had seen or experienced. They were all singing about the beauty of Jesus, and light was being produced in the room and fighting back the blob of accusations. As they were singing phrases about who the Lord really is, some of them were standing up declaring the truth emphatically.

Seeing this made me realize that declaring the reality of who the Lord is in worship is the only way to combat any accusation against Him or against yourself, because we have been born again in the Spirit of God(John 3:5-6) and accusations from the enemy can only really stand against our old nature, but when lies are being told to us about our new man, we have to answer from the reality of who Jesus is because that is the righteousness that we have now put on(Romans 3:21-22). I also realized that the only way to be able to declare this reality against the enemy is to encounter the Lord and allow Him to speak into your life, declaring who He is. Then you can take the knowledge of God that you have come face to face with and speak it out against the enemy.

At some point, I turned around and there was a bin inset into the wall behind each singer. In the bin there was a blanket and a pair of headphones. I asked the Lord and I felt like He said the headphones were for hearing the sounds of heaven, and I was confused because I didn’t understand why anyone would ever want to take them off, but I felt like He was saying it was too much to always hear. And I felt like the blanket was for either sleeping or for covering up with during the encounters.

At some point, I went outside and there was a table with clipboards on it, like what someone would have for sign-ups. I felt like the sign-up table was there to indicate that this reality of prophetic worship was available for anyone who is willing to say yes, or “sign up”.

graveside wedding

when I was still your enemy
You came for me
You've loved me so completely
and now my heart is set on You

You've never let me go
You've never let me down
You chased me before time
and You turned my life around

when I was still your enemy
You came for me
You've loved me so completely
and now my heart is set on You

internship: happiness

Started my internship at ihop.
AMEN.

and I have some thoughts about the nature of happiness. I have always heard that there is a difference between joy and happiness. That happiness is dependent on your circumstances and therefore fleeting and capricious. Well, being in the prayer room so far, the one over-riding emotion or expression in my heart has been happiness, pure, absurdly excited happiness. Now I'm not claiming to have a deep biblical understanding of either words, joy or happiness (although i need one) but i'm just saying that if what we have been told about happiness is true, there is no reason for us as the people of God to ever cease being happy.
Truly, have we heard the promises of God? Do we know what it means to be grafted into His family? There is an deep and abiding reality in the kingdom of God that nothing could ever give us a reason to stop being happy that is stronger than the reasons that we have to be happy.

the LORD takes pleasure in us. Really, really, really. He likes us, He loves us, He is pleased with us. So we make God happy, we have forever won Him simply by the "yes" in our hearts, and NOTHING in heaven or earth can separate us from His love.

What can man do to me?

facts. truth. reality.

there is one who is a lover of my soul.
only one who wont ever let me go.

he bled for me.
wept for me.
gave his life.
he bought my destiny.

there is one who chose to want me as i am.
one who's not limited by the blindness of man.

he sees me.
knows me.
speaks over my heart.
he calls me into reality.

love song for the church

I'm coming face to face with the very Bride of Christ
and though I'm one of them, I am saddened at the sight
When I think of all the pain, my anger starts to rise
They don't know how they've hurt me but the story's in my eyes

They stabbed me in the heart so now I'm fighting back
and Christ is in the middle, and He's bearing our attack
He's so patient and He's gentle while every blow falls on His back
He never leaves His children; He keeps bearing our attack


He says come lay down your swords.
Children, this is not your war

I hear Him but I'm frightened by this offer of peace
If I give up my weapon they could come devour me
In my fear I'm crying out "Jesus can't you see?
I can't give up the battle cause My hurt goes down to deep."

Now I'm waiting for the anger to start rising on His face
But the longer that I see Him, His smile is still unchanged
I've heard so many stories of His mercy and His grace
But how could I imagine that His love always remains
yet his love will never change.

He gave me His attention while I listed all my fears
now I'm the one who's listening while His voice is in my ear
He says, Daughter, cease your worry. Come dry up all your tears.
I will never leave you. I am always here.

I will never leave you. I am always here.

until the day breaks.

if i don't have time to listen
will You still feed me with Your wisdom
i'm dying for your truth
and i'm starving without you

every day in an assault
they're all screaming out my name
i try to get away
but all my obligations stay

if i call You, will You come
what if all i have is love
because this world demands so much
and leaves me aching for your touch

when i don't have time to listen
will you still feed me with your wisdom
i'm dying for your truth
and i'm starving without You

expressionism.

You fill me with your love
so I can give myself away
I'm walking down the aisle towards You
and You won't move

You set your face like flint
your eyes, a burning gaze
i'm standing as You ravish me
i'm dressed in your purity


i want to come in low
i want to come in low
You are the only One i know
and i need a greater vision of your throne
i want to come in low


You were naked when i killed you
now i wear your robes of white
i covered You in blood
yet You surround me with your love


i want to come in low
i want to come in low
You are the only One i know
and i need a greater vision of your throne
i want to come in low


i know who i am
i don't take it lightly
i know what You paid for me
You bought my authority
so let me come in low

i want to come in low
You are the only One i know
i want to come in low

"Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy"

Tonight I went downtown with my friend austin. Our sole purpose for being there was to deliver prophetic words to people because thats the Lord's desire.

example a:
"But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort."

we're claiming that the Lord speaks to us and we know His voice

example b:
"When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice."

Prophecy is such an oddly avoided word in the church and it seems to sketch so many people out. The truth is, however, prophecy should be desired and pursued. That's my biblical understanding at least. If Paul's saying he wants all his crew to prophesy I don't see any reason we shouldn't all go after it.
Is it a gift for some people more than others? yes.
Are some people called to be prophets and some not? yes.
Do we all have the ability to hear the Lord's voice and speak it into the lives of others (aka prophecy)? yes.

Back to the beginning, I went downtown tonight with my friend austin and we sat on a bench and waited for the Lord to give us specific words for people so that we could go tell them.

And He did.

i don't have any whack stories. There weren't any people freaking out. It was simple, sweet, and full of peace. The model is --get a word for someone, walk up to them and just tell them, hey. i feel like this is true about you. Or ask, hey do you know anything about this, or is this going on in your life. or whatever.
it's just all about speaking the heart of the Lord over people and testifying to them that He is aware of everything going on in their lives and that He cares.

I do have one favorite moment:
so austin goes and delivers a word to this random girl, just something that the Lord told him. While he's sharing with her she's all like "that totally makes sense. well-said." he walks away and she turns to her friends and says "I think Jesus just spoke to me through that guy over there."

and there you have it.
for that moment, I will take all the crazy labels anyone wants to give me. The love of God poured out today is worth any loss of dignity, embarrasment, or rejection. It's just so true that I have nothing to lose. The affections of God are permanent in my life and i want for nothing else. I have said it before but i just want to believe it and grow stronger in belief exponentially every moment of the day. Boldness is so much better than fear, confidence is so much better than unrest, and identity will always trump insecurity.

identity:
i am a son of the living, loving most high God.
i have every good and perfect gift given to me from the Father of lights.
He gave me prophecy because it is the testimony of His Son.
I am His. prophecy (just one of His gifts) is mine.

bam-shaw.

my song

I have power in me
deeper than the eye can see
all authority
I hide in the shadow of His wing
you can't touch me

He sent me out with the honor of His name
so everything around me is forced to change
the dead, the sick, the demon possesed
they gain their freedom at the love in my hands

It's a spiritual battle this war that's waged
and I have authority to trample on the snakes
they try to accuse me with vicious lies
but I cut them off and I fix my eyes

I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ
He is returning and He's looking for His wife
I will rise up and be standing by His side
He's coming for His warrior bride

the union of love

Last week, I went to Ecuador.
It was a mission trip.
aka: i was there for ministry, to minister.

So I left my college town, traveled down to another world, and walked into an Ecuadorian church on sunday morning surrounded by spanish-speaking lovers of God.Two songs into worship and I felt the peace of God fall on my heart. In His perfect love and wisdom, He released me from the very thing my heart was aching from the weight of carrying.

I don't care how many times I have to relearn His ways, if He keeps needing to correct me, I'll keep coming back.

And this is my constant education:
There really is no striving in the Kingdom of God.
You can't impress Him. You can't win His love or buy His favor.

For me,
I have to let His love wash over my heart even more often than everyday. Moment by moment, He is willing to affirm my identity as a beloved daughter, and I just need to receive.


I am my beloved's,
and His desire is for me.
Come, my beloved,
let us go out into the country,
Let us spend the night
in the villages.
Let us rise early and go to
the vineyards;
Let us see whether the
vine has budded
and it's blossoms have opened,
and whether the pomengranates have bloomed.
There I will give you my love.
The madrakes have given forth fragrance;
and over our doors are all choice fruits,
Both new and old,
which I have saved up for you, my beloved.

innocence again

"Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not recieve the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all."
-Jesus


When you go through a world such as this one, the perversion and confusion of it all changes the way you see things. Your eyes begin to take on a new lens. It doesn't matter what your life has looked like, where you've been, or who've known. Some people have seen more than others, but we have all seen enough.

When I thought briefly about what I have seen in my 21 short years, it broke me.
I have seen injustice as thick as a blanket large enough to cover a nation and silence those who cry for mercy. I have seen the hunger of orphans swallowed up by the greed of rich bureaucracy. I have seen prisons full of mothers who left behind children that had no choice but to grow up in their absence. I have seen dreams put to death in favor of efficiency, and desire sacrificed on the altar of best interest. I watched the stories of lust replacing love, and pity being substituted for compassion.

This is no Eden.

All of these horrors and numerous others find their way in front of my face and slowly into my heart. They assault me night and day until I want to shut my eyes to the world completely and give way to the cynicism waiting to consume me.
Yet how could I listen the voice of a loving Father if I let the things that I have seen teach me about trust?

Bitterness does not remind me of the stories He told of abundant life, though it is an easier course and a wider road. I could certainly swallow the poison of hopelessnesss and lay aside the difficulties of faith and expectation. It would nothing more than a natural response to the state of the world.

Or.....there is another option.

I could get new eyes. Eyes of innocence.

the circle of One who never ends

I must dream.

It is the call of being alive. To live a life without desire is nothing more than mundane, and I refuse to walk through this world as though I am merely another animal.
I must dream, and these fantasies must be bold and beautiful.
And so, I find myself at His feet again. The only thing worth dreaming about is love. It alone is wild enough, vast enough, and rich enough. He is love. No one else is love. Only Him.

So what else can I dream about? What else can I long for?
He starts all my dreams, and they all end up with nothing else left.


I must speak.

I cannot ignore this burning in my heart and soul. This fire would consume me if left alone, so I must find a way to pour it out. But how? What should be done with passion as intense as white-hot flames? The answer must be in the source.
So I look to the maker of my soul, and I see that I burn for the joy of His salvation and the longing of His face.

What else could I do with these flames but pour them out at His feet in worship, and then use them as a testimony to spark the same in others? Fire that is born of the Lord will not be quenched in any other way but in His presence, and even there, it will not go out, but only grow.


Dreams and flames and all such things are the same. They come from Him, are satisfied by Him, and then in His glory they are sparked anew. Our lives are eternity already. And the best part is that we have forever to discover them and waste them at His feet.

i repent

I spoke of things I knew not of.

I professed that the highest calling of this life was simply to love the One we were made for. Amen.
But the truth is I have not known what it is to love Him.

To love the LORD is in part:

to love His judgments
desire His ways
fear His name
cherish humility

I thought that I knew much about my King and His kingdom. I was, and I am wrong. I know little and almost nothing. Yet ignorance is not an excuse. He has made Himself known. In the word and in the Word made flesh, He is known in part. And in my ignorance, there are parts of Him that I have refused to see, and parts of myself that I have likewise been blind to. If the eyes of my heart have been opened now, even though I see as through a slit, the things I see in myself terrify me. This is not patronizing nor self-deprecating. It is truth. I have been, and I am prideful, arrogant, jealous, and whatever is the complete opposite of loving. When I catch a glimpse of the sinful nature of my flesh and how often I choose to live out of it, I want to run and hide forever in my shame. The only thing that prevents me is love. Perfect love casts out fear. The terror of sin is nothing in comparison with the great power of the Father's love. Nothing.

It is this love that has enabled me, even to the smallest degree, to look at the weight and depth of my sin. It could only be love to allow someone to see their need for grace. And how great that Love would be if it removed the shame and punishment of sin, and yet let us see the weight of it in order that we would mourn our carnal condition and turn to the Savior of our soul in order to be renewed day by day. Love and sin are not competing.
Where sin abounds, grace (and love) abound all the more.

The continuation of what I have ignored in the past but now greatly desire to see, is that there is more to His love than the end of sin.
His love is justice. Righteousness. Authority. Glory. Weight.
His love is entangled in His complete and right judgements of my heart. I cannot know Him without knowing Him as the perfect Judge. The terror of sin is gone; no fear of evil and no fear of man. Now, I am longing and hopefully learning to replace them with the fear of His Name. How foolish would I be if I looked into the face of the LORD of hosts without trembling? Our God is a consuming fire, and the fear of Him is the beginning of Wisdom. I see now that fear is to be greatly desired. I pray for Him to teach me, and I humble myself before Him that I might begin to learn things as they are. I know very little and almost nothing. All I can do is repent. Repent of my pride, humble myself, and set my heart towards His face. The Holy Spirit, the Counselor, wants to teach me all things. I pray that I will have eyes to see and ears to hear.

like a moth

Leave everything behind.
Fly towards the light.

You might hit a barrier along the way. You might hit more than one. There might even be barriers that you won't see until you collide head-on. That's okay. You will heal from the impact, and you will learn to recognize the blocks in your path.

Maybe you didn't even know that you have wings. You do.
Stretch yourself until you leave the ground of the ordinary, and your wings will catch you by surprise.

Fly with all your strength. The steady rhythm of movement may seem pointless at times. It's not. Your effort is valid, and it changes everything.


You will find that the light does more than look pretty.
It will completely consume you.
It will take over your body like a fire and burn in you forever.
This may seem like death.
It is.


Leave everything behind.
Fly into the Light.

isolation

Cold. Shivering. Uncomfortable.
Can't sleep. Can't get warm. Cold to your bones, not cool.
Tossing and turning. Scrunched shoulder that don't quite fit on a park bench that was built only for sitting. Shifting, turning, arms wrapped around yourself stupidly trying to keep your body warm. No blanket, no bedmate, no pillow.

When you're homeless, you have nothing but yourself, your own body, and whatever you find to lie upon. No mattress beneath you, no person beside you, no roof covering you.

You.

It's you, yourself, floating in the midst of a wide world that is unsure of how to respond to your touch. Some will shrink away. Some will draw near.

Of the ones who come close:
Some will only stare.
Some will promise much.
Some have nothing to give.
A few have grace in abundance.

How will you know the peoples' hearts? How many will you trust before the hurt and fear become too great? What will you give up on first? the government? the church?

How many people will you see with kindness in their words and pity in their eyes? How many times will you be handed treasure that is already fading away?
And when the whispers come of something more, will you let your heart believe or will you shrink away from the fear of being rejected by one more?

I don't have all the answers. I hardly have any of them. I don't know how to love you the way you deserve. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know who you are or where you've been.

I want to know you.

But even without your story, I can tell you we are the same. We are both humanity. We need Christ the same way. Both guilty without Him and both clean if we come under the banner of His name. The ways of the world are nothing but walls and confusion.

Barriers have been put in place, and even now are continually being erected. They exist only to create distance between people. That is the enemy's goal.
We have not yet begun to see what is happening but we feel the effects of the walls between each other. We are at a loss of how to reach each other, and if we stopped trying, the walls would eventually grow until we would become blind all together and forget that we were made for community.
Made for it and cannot function without it-- oh how dangerous these barriers are. In separating us from each other how quickly they have separated us from our Father. We have forgotten what it is to do life with another person. Can we remember what it means to do life with Him?

We must come back to community.
It is what He is doing. It is where He is.

"For He Himself is our peace; who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall." Ephesians 2:15

The walls were broken the day He died, and if we looked with His eyes we would see only freedom. Our blindness has led us astray. Let us look again. Maybe we will finally see for the first time.

Humanity is family.

He loves us all the same.
He cares for us all the same.
He died for us all the same and wants us all the same.

[We have got to learn to love each other]