(listen to "Sons of Thunder" by Sleeping Giant)

open grasp
empty clasp
much to be admitted
(but much has been omitted)

closed door
wood floor
much to be admitted
(but much has been omitted)


-end-



I don't know where my head's at. I'm in a state where I'm not quite sad, not quite happy, but not quite numb. Maybe I'm just...open. Open to anything. Open to a picture to move me, open to a phrase to anger me, open to a song to make me cry or go run ten miles. I don't know! I have this urge to write. But about what? Naturally, God.

Oh, God. What a God! What a lover! What a husband! What a Savior!

In my lifetime I have literally sold my soul to other gods. Things. Drugs. People. Blades. Boys. Lust.

Literally sold. I was totally content with living enslaved to these things. Just things. Dumb things. Petty things.

Praise God for His sacrifice! I'm reminded of a journal entry I wrote back in September.

"How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"

I'm not for sale. I will no longer bow to the culture god. Only the living God, Yahweh, breathes.

He sees, He hears, understands, loves, and speaks to us.

I've been bought with the precious blood of Christ!

I've been ransomed. I've been kidnapped by God. I've been born again through the womb of the Holy Spirit.

I've traded with God, my life for His. I've sold myself to Him, never to be re-bought.

When I entered the market as a slave, God waited. No bid was too high.

Upwards to a million dollars, God still bid. He was determined to make me His.

Finally He cried, "My life for hers!"

Bruised, bloody, broken -He hung with open eyes, gazed upon me as if breathtakingly beautiful and worthy of love.

He came back to prove He had died, but also for me to see I could have Him at all times. No religion. No building. No curtain. No animal sacrifice. Nothing standing between me and my Love.

So how dare I turn my Father's house into a market!

I've been bought. When I re-enter the market, I re-enter a slave hood which I've been paid in full from. I am not a dog returning to it's vomit.

I have been set free from weighty chains, whips, and fire.

My slavery is to Christ. My chains are to Christ. I follow Him and Him alone.

Apart from my Master the very breath in my lungs is nothing.

How dare I re-enter the market when my Husband waits for me.

He has been waiting. I've finally returned.

Some may find it a tad blasphemous or uncomfortable to think of the Cross in a thankful light. Yes, I wish it were me hanging for my sins. Yes, I wish I was whipped to pay for my preaching. But no, I didn't pay. I didn't go through any of it because He did. I am so undeserving to have had Him pay for them. It's unimaginable that He, being sinless, looked at me, the worst sinner of them all, and said "Yeah, she's worthy of my love." WHAT?!

That's crazy talk, Jesus. I mean...have you seen what I've done in my lifetime? Have you heard what I've said and what I've thought?

Yes?

Well..bu...bu...but

No. I love you.

But what about the time when I-

No. I love you.

-Hold the phone- I mean Jesus. Right hand man to God the Father. This dude is God. The. Freaking. Son.

He created sunrise and sunset and grass and sea and animals and me and you and words and trees and C minor7 (first, second AND third inversion!) and love.

If anyone should show hate to the world it should be the Great Inventor. He should hate us for how liberally we've flung love around like it's a pile of poo. Now, that's not to say showing love to everyone is a bad thing...it's just our definition is off.

If I remember correctly (which I do) 1John4 clearly defines love.

"God IS love."

Boom roasted. Bread toasted. Whatever. Schmerrr.

So God, loving everything, living within us, moving around us, is love and loves the whole world. (translation, He GODs the whole world, which I think is kinda humorous. [oh! And did I tell you how hilarious Jesus is?!])

Quick retrace, I realize I went on a rabbit trail....God should hate us because of the liberally spreading love...which by that I mean in terms of "Oh, let's make love" sense. Make love, not war? Yeah...then war is waged against the human in the womb because of that love that just needed to be made. But this isn't about abortion. That's for a WHOLE other post.

If God waited for you to be 'good enough' to earn His love, He'd be waiting a long time and so would you.

If God could use pigs to deliver the power of His message (Mark5.13) what more will He do with you!

That was actually probably a terrible reference, but I'm making an analogy here! He's not going to send an evil spirit in you and have you plunge over a cliff. But that showed His power! And that's where I'm getting at, what more will He do with you! He'll use a message of redemption, not destruction like He did with the pigs, to show His power.

You want to part the Red Sea? If God calls you, don't delay. Go and do it in the powerful name of Jesus Christ!

Maybe it's not literally parting the Red Sea (analogy, hellllllo!) maybe your 'Red Sea' is what you're called to do.

And seriously guys, I can't stress this enough...if you have a dream to do something so astronomically bigger than the sun of some distant galaxy far far away and no one seems to believe in you, I get it. And much more than I, Jesus gets it. One gift God has given me is to believe in the unbelievable, specifically for times such as these. A time so desperate for dreamers. So if you can't find a footstool to stand on to preach in the middle of the Strip in Vegas, you can use my back to step on.

Whatever the "Strip in Vegas" looks like in your personal life...I want to believe in you. Please, please don't let your dreams die. My email is bethanyervin@hotmail.com so send me your gargantuan dreams.

Last night I wrote this prayer, and I hope it's your prayer as well...

"LORD, help me to realize how brief

my time on earth will be."

Lord, that is my plea, my cry, my outburst. I need to realize how mortal I am, how fleeting my life is. Open my eyes to see I have the right to walk in Your will, and the right to chose not to. Those are my only options! Walk in Your will or walk in my own (or Heaven forbid -satan's). I think once I grasp how short my life is, I'll realize how imperative every moment is. What (or whom) will I invest my time and my life on? What will I spend my emotions on? Who will have my affection?

Lord, if it be Your will...I will go to great lengths to see You proud of me. I cannot walk without You beside me. I cannot stand without You propping me up. I cannot breathe without Your breath in me. I cannot see without Your help removing the veil. What is Your will for my life? Where can I best use the gifts You've given me in order that I may 'fight the good fight', 'run the long race'. I'm open to Your will, thought my flesh is weak, my spirit is receptive. I don't want to continue living someone else's story. I want OUR own, Jesus!

Are all our goals aligned to fame? our days aligned to corporate slavery? our weeks aligned to dissipating sanity?

We're the kings and queens of convenience and I can only imagine it should become worse. Have you ever seen Wall-E?

We are disintegrating into robots with flesh on, and I am the greatest of them all.

I must repent for my actions, my laziness, and my inaction towards my passions.

I have dreams. I mean, they're so vivid I could call them day terrors, but they aren't filled with demonic forces. Rather, they are dreams and visions of my life to come...and life quickly slipping from my grasp.

I haven't prayed for them enough in days previous. I don't pray with the authority of Jesus Christ that these things WILL come to pass.

What's your dream? Do you want to cure cancer? GO DO IT! Do you want to paint in Italy and witness to your subjects? GO DO IT! Do you want to make a difference? GO DO IT!

Now, I know proper precautions must be taken, otherwise your dream will be a fart in the wind, but what if all our precautions have become the crutch that keeps us from stepping out in faith?

I know it has for me.

"Oh, I need more money." "Oh, I need connections" "Oh, I need more talent." "Oh, I just can't really do it."

Puke.

You can do it.

Become that professional juggling street preacher you've wanted to be! Become that rug-making machine! Become that skateboarder that wins...uhm....brain fart, what's the competition called?

Whatever it is, go for it.

This phrase has been like a plague on all my conversations this week, so I guess I must put it on here:

"Our generation is more free to do what we want, but we're more scared than ever to do it."

I don't want to be apart of the Tribe of Chains. I want to walk free in my freedom. My American freedom. My generational freedom. My CHRIST freedom!

I can only imagine that what holds me back looks similar to what holds you back.

Comfort. Safety. Security. Doubt.

I once heard of a group of Monks that intentionally ate horrible food and slept on the worst beds they could find all to be more religious.

No offense, but that's a little ridiculous. Ridiculous may be a harsh word, but I can't seem to find one to suffice.

God never said you must be the most intentional person when it comes to your discomfort. Now, that's not to say in every "career" God will call you to is going to feel like silk sheets, but unless He says to you "I'm taking you somewhere and it's not going to be very comfortable..." you don't have to automatically assume God's going to make you sleep on a bed of nails and eat rat poop.

I think we, as Christians, too often know something we could absolutely NEVER see ourselves doing. Let's say the sight of blood makes you faint, does that mean that God is calling you to be a doctor? I don't think so.

I think He's asking us to use our passions, and yes sometimes the things that scare us, to advance His Kingdom.

Many times during Jesus' life you'll find in Scripture Him saying (obviously the words changing a little) "Your faith has healed you. Get up and go."

My faith in God is just starting to heal me of some serious word-wounds.

"You'll never make it." "What can you give them?" "Do you think you'll make a difference?...because you won't"

We start to believe these things and identify with them and our faith starts to shift. Once we were on fire and pumped...I don't know why I keep saying "we", from now on it's personal. Once, I was on fire and pumped to go out and subtly preach during basement shows and loving on the "rejects" of certain church buildings. I wanted to travel and I wanted to love. I wanted to sing and I wanted to worship.

Then I got a job.

Yeah, yeah. You think I might be saying a job is a bad thing...but that is not at all. However, I made my job my priority.

Over God. Over friends. Over family. Over my passion.

Pfft. Over my dead body will I allow that again!

I miss that passion. I miss that fervor for lost souls.

God finally gave it back and I'm not going to continue to "fart in the wind" as I would so elegantly put it.

I don't know what the future looks like, but regardless what it is...God's got the whole world in His hands.


So go change your city. Go change your life. Go invest in what God's doing in your friends lives. Go hard and fast after God.






Don't let your city crumble.

I lost communication with the purple sunset, green sunrise.
I lost communication with the mother ship, serene blunder.
I lost communication with the broken mirror, cut diamond.
I lost communication with the moldy almond, beam me up horsey!

The map in my brain isn't welcoming to the occasional passerby. However, it's totally accepting of strangers and close friends.

If the letter R defined your life how refined would you be, D?

-end randomness-



Today is the first day of the third year of my real life. Happy anniversary, Jesus!

But today started out in a ridiculous fashion. My morning looked like this:

I dreamt I was late to Women's Connect because I was stuck on a dirt road, next to a high pond, in a buggie, driving (as fast as possible) away from a pink dinosaur. So I called one of my leaders to tell her I had a sniffle and a headache like a ping pong ball so I couldn't make it.

And I promise you, I believed the dream was real.

So after waking up an hour before my alarm was set to go off, I get up, get ready, and leave in enough time to run in right when service starts...minus calculating in the possibility I might hit every red light along the way.

Hrmph.

I had about as much luck finding a parking spot as italics being called bold.

Maybe God is telling me one key thing:

SLOW THE CRAP DOWN.

Too often I would try to make things happen on my own; force relationships (dating and friendly), force careers, force love, and force God.

Maybe not just forcing God down other people's throats, but forcing God into my own heart.

Have you ever faked that your relationship with God was delicious and juicy and bright like an orange when it was really about as tasty as a railroad tie? Yup. Been there.

I want to believe that God is really all around us. Not like, "Oh hey! That tree is GOD!" because that's really stupid...but to realize God MADE that tree. God made you. God made me. I know, I know...what a freakin' revelation, right?

But do you really believe it? I'm just starting to allow God to show me when He's present. Which is always, if you didn't know already.

Side note...I get angry when people say "God showed up" like He went somewhere else? He's always there...it's when He's like, "Hey Holy Spirit...let's obliterate them with Our presence...since they're asking for it!" is when you feel that "God showed up" feeling.

I had a vision as I was falling asleep. I was in the same place with the same people saying the same prayers as one night last week and I said "Jesus come down" and I saw Him physically step through the ceiling tiles.

"What would you do?" kept running through my brain when I woke up the next day.

I mean, what would I freaking do? Like, "Oh hey, Jesus...don't mind the spiritual guns" Or would I invite Him to pray...to Himself? would I ask to wash His feet? would I die from seeing Him? would I cry? would I worship? would I be in shock?

But what's funny is this vision showed me the physical demonstration to a spiritual reality (not to steal from "Baptism's" tagline)

When you ask Jesus to come down, what do you think He does? "Awh...well...maybe tomorrow? I'm kinda tired right now..."

NO! He's like "HECK YESSSSSS! Step aside, satan, these are my kids! Oh wait...what are you doing taunting them? *sound effects of bug being squished*"

I want to be obliterated. I don't know about you, but I want to be completely obliterated by Jesus.

I know I am the target of satan's hate, but moreso of Jesus' love.

I'm overrun by love. I'm overrun by God.

I want to believe God is bigger than the galaxies. (because He is) I want to believe God is more real than all the human race. (because He is) I want to believe God is more real than fire and buildings and pencils and water and flowers. (because He is!)

I want to hear God louder than music and rushing rivers and tap dancing and twenty alarm clocks (because He knows I don't wake up for any of them) and wind on a windy day.

I want to feel God more than heat and skin and a cool breeze and a door handle.

I want Him to be a constant tickle-itch inbetween the right and left side of my brain.





Today I realized I'm a muddy boot in a sea of glass slippers.