arrived…

I and a close companion of mine, have been dreaming the dream that God placed in our hearts over a year ago.  God stirred in us to go out the Pacific Northwest to plant a church in Seattle.  From that moment on, it has been prayer, conversating, worrying, laughing, and speculating what the future holds for us and the team that God had brought together.

I have never been to Seattle.  Today I stepped foot on our future new land.  But, with each and every step that we took, I sensed God whispering to me, “This city, I give you.  Take as much of it as you can.”  Our promised land.  God told us to go, we went. 

My heart all of a sudden feels a great burden for Seattle.  I won’t get into all the particulars yet, but I sense that we are here to bless and to proclaim freedom and to be cocreators with our creator God in order to restore its original beauty.  I do not doubt that.  Nor do I believe that it is not beautiful.  It definitely is.  But it is only a glimpse.  The Kingdom of God, the mustard seed, has been planted.  We pray that the Kingdom of God comes in power (of blessing instead of cursing) and not in word (plain talk).

consume it all

“And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.  He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.  But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to Jesus, “do you hear what these are saying?”  And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” 

We are all products of the consumer driven world.  We like getting and or receiving products.  We like gifts.  We like services that tend to make life convenient or simplistic.  We love our computers.  Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you lost your laptop?  Mine got stolen a few months back and I was shocked at how paralyzed my life felt.  We love people making us food and cleaning up after us.  We love that we can go to a gas staion and pay without going inside.

We love our little media devices.  If we don’t want to be social all we have to do is put in our little ear buds which are plugged into our ipods.  We don’t have go to stores to buy music, we can just download it.  We even don’t have to go home to watch TV or movies, thank you internet.  We don’t have to read books anymore because we just listen to them.  In fact, we don’t have to think anymore either because the tv and media do it for us.  All we have to do is watch tv and phony counselors on the tube can diagnose us with all our ailments and we believe them because they are on tv. When things go ill in our lives, we medicate ourselves with consumer products.  Some like to buy clothing to feel better.  Some eat while others drink.  The best part of it, is that we don’t have to go anywhere to buy them, we can do it at home!