Disrupted for Jesus #10
The love of Christ is abounding. Deep. Coursed at your direction. Can you see it? Feel it? Know it? Let’s see…??
Coursed at your direction.
Blanket tied in a knot. Stopped.
Can you see it?
Are you willing to be disrupted for Jesus?
Or are you on a fast track to meet your goals and nothing will ever stand in your unbelieving way? Yes, I meant unbelieving. Because if you were truly believing in God, you wouldn’t be held tight to a rope that swings about in the hurricanes of life. You would be instead sturdy when the hurricane winds blow near you, in you.
Revived is the child of God whose rope is instead attached to great belief.
The harder path is to believe Lazarus will die and yet also be raised! The easy path is to doubt it all together.
When following the Lord, one must always choose the “harder” path, if that harder path is in fact the way to being remade into the image of Christ.
There is a hardship path that leaves you destitute and unforgiven, not reborn into the Kingdom of God. I am not talking about a path refusing to believe in Christ himself. A path rather that speaks of God, but you are unwilling to channel it because of your strong unbelief in the ways of God. That he might in fact leave you or forsake you, even though his promise is to hold you and never let you fall.
He will ask of you mighty warrior type adventures. You will brace yourself for impact, but rest assured he will never ask you to climb up a valley or to the heights of a mountain top alone. He rescues the lost and he rescues us who fight on behalf of the Kingdom of God.
In doing the Lord’s work for the Kingdom I have come to believe not only does Christ leave the 99 to get the 1, but he also braves the storms inside the one so he or she can be made whole once more. Remember you aren’t alone in this fight to make whole your heart. God himself stands on the rocky terrain with you, for you. So that you will see heaven rise inside of your heart! So, you will become more like the one God created you to be. But first, you must be willing to be disrupted for Jesus.
Photograph by Kara Nicole, 2024. Location Memorial Park Funeral Home, Memphis, Tennessee.
Impending doom. An article I wrote in an earlier issue of the Salt Journal. Let’s take a piece of cake from that party and apply it also here for a minute. Thoughts of death are impending doom. They are not life giving; therefore, their source is not from heaven but hell. Simple truth to extract flavor for our soup to be made in this article. Hang with me as I deliver a message from the Lord. One he gave to me as I walked with him in and out of challenges set through obedience to him alone.
I gave the Lord my yes, and when I do this I never quite know where he’ll take me. When I wrote this issue’s first article, I was near the beginning of a stay in someone’s home. Not mine and not my parent’s home. I was given a rescue by God from my parent’s home but what I didn’t quite see was the ‘cave’ God placed me into. I couldn’t leave unless I was driven somewhere. It was made very clear to me I was rescued but, in that rescue, there was a demand on my heart, being taken in obedience to God.
Where to now? What is this physical circumstance you chose for me setting a stage on my heart to see?
Lazarus died. When I was on my way back from Florida to Memphis, Tennessee after four and a half months there in the later part of 2023, I was given a word of revelation from the Lord. As I meditated on the story of Lazarus, I knew there was meat to chew on in my heart. In God’s Sovereignty he let down the curtain and I got to glance into his wisdom of the true story of why Lazarus had to be buried and why Mary and Martha had to go through the hassle of letting him die, wrapping him up, and placing him in the tomb to be buried, there were many complications.
It wasn’t because God wanted to punish them. It was instead because God wanted to reward them. To their faithfulness in him. Their belief was active and so strong in the Lord that it made it easy for God to separate them in his Sovereignty. He knew they could handle the “loss”. He also knew that they could handle the raising!...and all the steps in between.
What is in between death, faith and courage?
Simple, a body raising!
Faith and courage. Are they the same? Does it take faith to have courage and courage to have faith? Willingness is faith that leads you into next, the courage to smother fear and the fulfillment of your sinful nature belonging to Satan. To smother fear by believing in what God has said to you, instead of making an excuse as to why God can’t deliver on his promise.
So, you tell me while some of you can shout, but I don’t hear from God! How can I obey him if I don’t hear him like you do? Good question. And I have an answer for you. You can hear him like I do. I am no one extraordinary. I am someone who casted their crown at the feet of Jesus and continue to do that laying down of life every and each following day after. The hard part isn’t the hearing the hard part is the laying down of one’s life.
There is a hearing for prophets, yes and I happen to be a prophetess for the Lord, but this doesn’t exclude you from hearing in relationship with our God. Maybe you too have been called to be a prophet for the Lord. It is true there will be many a testing of your faith. Your ability to hear him will increase as you determine your steps in the Lord. He will find you. You are not lost simply because you don’t understand, or you can’t see the same step as your discipling friends beside you. Undergoing your call and relationship with Jesus are the most important attributes of self you can undergo. Meaning there is much more to life than to seek a reward for your discipleship. It means instead you are willing to be rewarded by the shaping and finetuning of your heart instead of material rewards from the so-called jobs.
Laying down is the rescue made whole. The timing of a day can challenge even the best, if you want to label one “best”. Which I don’t believe you should label us. We all misunderstand. The gospel is simple. The acting according to the labeled truth will not be as simple.
Again, let God rescue you but holdfast to his truth. There will be impossible steps and when you/we the church scare away from impossible due to unbelief realize you are not simply walking in faith and courage. You are better yet walking in sin. Sinful nature will cause you to be bound instead of set free! Bound is delightful in disillusion.
Bound is ‘freedom’ when you can’t see the truth. Why stay bound when there are cascades of rivers flowing towards you. Streams of living water making their way to your heart.
Bound isn’t clear, it’s murky. Delusion isn’t murky it’s made free only by the impossible setting free of a blood stained cross. By where you are made whole. Drifted into making it possible for the love of Christ to reach your partial self and anoint you with his Holy self. Therefore, making your crown glory filled instead of marked and stained with sinfulness.
Make a choice. Choose sin and live forever unholy. Choose sinful nature and choose not to believe in the God who came and gave you a choice to be saved. Choose to not drown in your stained sorrows.
Stained and set free in freedom.
Photograph by Kara Nicole. Location Johnson Park, Collierville, Tennessee.
Discipleship is courageous. It’s the ongoing battle of your heart made sanctified into Holy. When I stepped into writing this article, I wasn’t sure what direction God would take me into. Humbled into his direction I dove in. Not knowing the placement or even the photography to choose, I let him lead me. Your discipleship is just that, you let him lead, guide you. You are not a cat or animal in the Kingdom. You are a son or daughter of the King if you have chosen Jesus to be your Lord. There isn’t a life after that that chooses for itself. Rather your choice, freedom to choose has been given over to the Lord. He is Lordship over you. Given the, handed over the reins to, him Yeshua, God Almighty.
In this passage I want to be clear. Never am I going to persuade you to be Holy. You with the Lord make, must make that decision upon yourself. I can lead you to the path but only with great eternity in mind and hand can you make that call for yourself and for God. That’s right you make this call for him too. To see his blood stained cross at Calvary and in order to honor him and what he has given to you, you reclaim freedom and devout yourself to loving the Lord your God above all the world and who is even in it. That doesn’t mean we don’t love others. It means we simply love God the most and from that love outpours to those around us. Even our so called enemies. We love them too. Just as God loves us as we fight and portray him to be “evil” and cruel.
Cruel. Was it cruel to let Lazarus die if God was going to raise him? Instead, couldn’t God of saved suffering for Mary and Martha? Even the friends of Lazarus? Could God of showed them he would be raising Lazarus from the dead? Give them a clue a hint? Let them foresee his plans? But if you foresaw every detail, you could not have the chance to be courageous. Your fight would end the second God showed you the end of the story? In the middle of dream/promise to the so called end there is a chance, an opportunity to be born again. To be renewed. To become sanctified and Holy.
But in the middle, there is death. Just like Lazarus had to die in order to be raised. You too must die to the old sinful life, so you too can be raised in truth! Just as Lazarus was raised to life.
[John 14:6] Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Raised to life. I have been on quite the journey these past few years. One many around me do not understand. And even while God has placed some great believers beside me it is still only to disciple and encourage me along The Way. It is always up to my faith in God to deliver me in and through a season of hardship and trials. Deliver me from evil.
I am going to tell you an endless story. Endless because I am still on the road that leads me to the cross daily. There are moments when seasons begin and end. My many roads that lead to refuge of “home” have indeed led me further into despair, but they have miraculously also led me into freedom and hope eternal.
To get you caught up I have to first acknowledge where I sit now. I am sitting back at my parent’s home. When I finished the issue of Salt #05 I was sent to live at a friend’s home here in the same town of Collierville, Tennessee. The roof I was under had blown off so to speak and I was crying out to the Lord for help! I needed a safe place to lay my head. So, with a truck load of belongings I set out on the route laid out for me.
A call on the telephone opened the door to be routed to another mission for God. Only this mission was not the easy refuge I had hoped and longed for. With three children all under the age of 10, and dog, and two adult parents I was now living in a season of desperate hope. I needed the Lord daily. I went without the use of my Father’s vehicle I had been accessed to for some years now, and without the credit card my family had been letting me use for expense. Both provisions given to use under God’s command, so when the Lord told me to give them back, to leave my parent’s without both vehicle and money I did just that. I left the provision behind and trusted the Lord would provide for my needs, again.
When I arrived at the friend’s home, I needed rest, and I found it. Swimming and lounging by their pool that faced the forest trees was a gift sent from heaven’s throne room. Yet it was not the refuge I was seeking. There was something God needed to grow me into. He needed the “Lazarus” in me to die first before I could continue the mission field set out for me by God himself.
The mission field changes and with it so do we. We get sent into new job fields, new schools, new pastoring roles, new settings that allow for us to make disciples. The great commission set before us from the Lord [Matthew 28:19-20]. Make disciples are the call but what happens when it hurts to make them? When you are in the line of fire and judgement by others, while discipling? What happens when they don’t hear truth set before them? And instead make you the enemy. What then? What happens to the one making disciples?
There is a lot to be said about the ways in which Jesus does what only he can do. Through my experience of following the Lord one must be ready for nearly anything. To look foolish. To be standing there almost alone (we have Jesus). To be made fun of, mocked. To be thrown out of a place, and many more distasteful happenings. When I left the family God sent me to it wasn’t because I was filled with joy and made to leave with sorrow. It was instead the end of a call. It was tough to be in that home for four plus months. It wasn’t where I preferred to be living. Instead, I stayed because that is where God sent me. He sent me there for both the family and for my refining.
The details are full, but I won’t be able to go into all the details of what God did while I was both at my parent’s and my friend’s home. In another article/book later. What I do believe God wants to share is this. I went. I was, my plan was disrupted by Jesus. I allowed myself to be taken. In mercy, truth, and grace. I followed Jesus to both locations, and I saw his workings both inside of me and inside of those he wanted/wants to reach.
The cave he calls us to at times is small and necessary. If you have distractions all around and every fruit able to gorge yourself with, then how will you be able to first taste of your heart skin?
It takes us calling to him, with the willingness to be called into places we might not want to be. It’s not about you specifically. It will be no doubt about your heart and the hearts around you. It’s about what God wants to do on this earth. Be willing to let God lead you into a cave if that is where he wants you. Be “buried” so you can then be raised.
I gave the Lord availability. Access. Be willing then to accept and receive the way in which he wants to refine your heart and the world’s hearts around you. He will stop at nothing if you’ll let him. You can tie the knot that can lead God to another pasture, so I encourage you to keep your oil fully lit. Carve out for the cross daily. Needed.
What does it profit a man to lose his soul?
[Mark 8:34-36] Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Forfeit their soul?
Let’s talk about how to not forfeit your soul. When I went in my spiritual yet somewhat physical cave, dwelling at my friend’s house, I was relieved to see my friend worshiping the Lord. Her family is not quite on the narrow road, but I was told to love them by God for their willingness to leave the road they are currently walking. They still celebrate Halloween which is not Holy. Out spend their current means and lavish their children with what occurs to be the desire instead of the principal needs. Use the Lord's name in vain among more...
I am not telling you these things to offer up judgement towards them or anyone else less walking the narrow road. I am simply stating there are needs to be met here in the spiritual form. So, while I attended to the Lord’s call for my life here, I sought prayer over and for this family. Obedient in the words I spoke over them and to them. Allowing them to pay for a worthiness of housing a disciple and prophet of the one true God.
It was hard to watch a family lose their peace and rest when God has offered it to all of us who believe in Jesus. Partly because when I see a person reaching towards God to become awake in him there is a joy outstanding the fear placed in them by the fall of mankind. In heaven there is no fear, and God is committed to us becoming alive in all areas of life and heart!
So why did it come to me needing to leave this home? Well partly based on truth being exposed and also a knowing it was time to leave for courageous waters ahead were burning inside of me. To leave wasn’t hard but when I knew God wanted me to return to yet another and same battlefield, I left, and I grew courage I had not yet waved in.
Psalm 13] How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.
Give light to my eyes, oh Lord! Come quick to save me! Or I will perish from evil! We say this prayer and cry out to the Lord for saving but why aren’t we in faith being courageous enough to let the Lord restore us? Make us whole. We go about our days as if the glory waits for us to stop watching tv, to stop doing what we know is sinful. As if the glory will tick through our escaped region and detonate us into who we want to become.
The Lord will come to you. He will knock but we must be willing to open the doors of our hearts for him to work in and through. My time “suffering” was not in vain. It was the making of a new creation that sits before you. I had to die in my “cave” so I could be renewed in heart and song of gladness.
Temporary is this world and the items in it. We chase after such nonsense in order to give ourselves “delight”. Only to find out there is no truth in our selfish delight. Be a victim of this world if you must. Hold yourself back from the challenges of grace abounding to you. But as for me and my house, I will give unto the Lord for he is my refuge and strength.
Challenge accepted. I’ll go where you ask of me. I’ll stand in the fire while hot flaming arrows of sin are tossed at my heart. I’ll move and awkwardly move again. Shuffling from assignment to assignment, at times bruised and beaten from the challenge you sent to save me and them. Lord I am willing to be sent. I am willing to have my life and plans disrupted. For you, by you.
Send me, Lord! I am willing!
Be still and know…wait and he will show you…don’t make haste until he provides the way. Courage is the seeking. Stillness is the faith. Expect both to rattle your cage. Let the roaring lion of Judah out! Abounding in the fullness you seek him to devour your slavery!
…Give light to my eyes…[Psalm 13].