Chuck and I are dipping our toes into church life here in the sunny land of Pensacola. I know, I know. It’s been over a year. Perhaps like you, church is hard for us. We are looking for real. Real Jesus. Real Holy Spirit. Real community. Which in turn means there will be real gifts and power. Oh yeah. And real worship. And the right view of women. It doesn’t seem like such a tall order when I read the New Testament. But in today’s churchianity, real is nearly impossible to find. That said, we walked into a church a couple of weeks ago and I started crying as the worship team was only warming up. 

I thought, ‘Okay, now we are getting someplace.’ We’ve been several times since and it is close enough for now.

All this is to set up what happened yesterday. In this particular denomination, they celebrate what they call Transformation Sunday, and then they begin Lent on Ash Wednesday. I have lots of thoughts about these man-made traditions. But let’s focus on Transformation Sunday which is based on the transfiguration of Jesus found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In our current world, trans is a loaded word and most commonly meant to cross over, from one to another. Think transatlantic, transfer, and of course recently, transgender.

But in scripture, trans is connected to the word transform which means beyond or above… Remember Romans 12:2 says do not be conformed, think cookie cutter, but be transformed, altogether different, by the renewing of your mind.  

I notice we say transformation a lot in Greater Things. I mean. A. Lot. As I sat in church on Sunday I began to piece together why that is. Jesus took three disciples up on a mountain. Why only three? Why those three? But once there, Jesus transformed beyond His natural man to reveal His heavenly one. The three-dollar word transfiguration means to shape or fashion, above. If you look up the definition it speaks of Christ being seen in his glory.

Peter, James and John had a BLOW YOUR MIND encounter with Jesus. Jesus trusted them and planted in them a vision of Who He truly was. Seeing Jesus unveiled in this dramatic way changed those three men forever. They could not un-see this beautiful Jesus.

All through the bible, we see transformation. People changed over time. People healed in a moment. Murders becoming kings. Persecutors becoming apostles. Demon possessed becoming worshippers. And then Jesus ups the ante and says there is even more transformation possible. Beyond. Above. 

I was so immersed in the scripture yesterday and then they showed the classic art masterpiece by Raphael. My mind was recalling different visions I have had personally, and other’s stories of great manifestations. My spirit was soaring…until the pastor dialed it-all-back-down.

He summarized, and I paraphrase, if you have visions, great.  If you don’t, great. It doesn’t really matter as long as you love Jesus.  Wait, what?

Jesus has revealed His glorious nature to mere mortals and they didn’t die. Then Jesus went on to say He has shared this same glory with us. Then Holy Spirit shows up and shows us how to live a life that is beyond or above the common human experience in the middle of the common human experience.

And the pastor is telling me the supernatural doesn’t matter? Is that true?

I tell you it is not.

We have a supernatural, glorious, all-together-other God who is living within us, breathing His life into us, pouring heaven out on us and through us. We dare not settle for the human answers and responses and diagnoses. We dare not settle for comfortable or quitting or resignation. We dare not settle for dead, dreamless lives that have no hope of change.

I have been through too much pain, too much brokenness, too much devastation to dial down the goodness of God, the wonder of His interventions, and the power of His transformation in my life. If it wasn’t for His supernatural presence I wouldn’t be here. Hard Stop.

I have seen too many miracles and experienced His glories too many times to dial it down. I will ALWAYS expect God to move miraculously in every area of my life.

So here is what I would have said yesterday in that sermon.

1. You have a powerful, beautiful God who longs to reveal himself to his people. Are you looking, asking and receiving from Him?
2. Once you have encountered Him, what are you doing with the divine revelation? He shows you things for a reason. Carry it well.
3. Your hunger for the heavenly encounters brings about change in your own life and thus the change in others. We don’t need more therapy as much as we need to connect with this glorious God.

Listen. I am all about counseling. Heck, GT is built on helping others get healthy.  But at its core, counseling and therapy and deliverance is removing obstacles so people can truly see God and see themselves as God does.

It is delusional for us to say we love a supernatural God and then believe we should stay the same.  So we go for transformation. We go for dreams and visions and encounters.

We speak it. We seek it. We live it. We promise it. We promote it.

Is it just me? Or is everyone feeling this crazy pace? It’s like someone stole… I don’t know…maybe a couple of weeks or a month out of my life? With the time change, Spring Break, an early Easter, and just the pace of life, it’s all I can do to keep up. My calendar almost has a life of its own. And now, Palm Sunday is upon us.  Here is my humble ask.

In the same way that Christmas gets crowded, Easter gets crowded with counterfeits. So make a plan to pause and reflect on the highest Holy Day of the year.

My friend Suzanne told me about the rituals they do at their church to prepare hearts for the Savior. It was beautiful how they deliberately created awareness of and hunger for their need for Jesus. Other churches do different things to celebrate and prepare.

The church we are going to has many offerings for reflection. One night is a Seder meal. I am so excited to walk through this traditional Jewish practice again. To remember the first Passover lamb. And the Last Passover Lamb.

But apart from Church activity, let’s talk about you, your home, and your family. This photo is a collection of items my family made over many years, from when the kids were toddlers to teenagers.  Each year we made something together and added it to the Resurrection Scene that we put on display.

Some years we would do a foot-washing time as a family and take the Lord’s supper together. Let me tell you, having your five-year-old daughter wash your feet will wipe you out…But we took a Bible story and made it real to them. Jesus did this and so are we.  We were all changed by it.

Our friends had a game with plastic eggs called Resurrection Eggs. After a big meal, everyone at the table took an egg and shared part of the story represented by the token inside the egg.

One year, our small group took the Lord’s supper together and we “remembered” Jesus. He said when He did the Last Supper, do this is in remembrance of Me. So we literally remembered Jesus. We remembered our favorite story about Jesus and how He revealed Himself to us through it.

The point —the main point —every, single time is to make space for your God.

Carve out some worship, some silence, some scripture so you can remember the Who and Why of this season. I promise you it has nothing to do with a bunny or candy. But it DOES have to do with the VERY BEST news in the whole universe.

He is risen just as He said.

So break through the grumbling of your kids or the family’s awkward fumbling and begin a real conversation about our Beautiful Jesus. He is worthy of our attention.

Yay! I am almost finished with my next book.  It will be released just in time for Valentine’s Day…if you need a gift idea. Wink. (I know, shameless plug)  However, in the writing of it, the Lord and I have been having some weighty conversations about journeying with Him. It has been soul-boosting to revisit the testimonies of how God spoke, how He provided; how He loved me and my family in really hard and scary times, but also in wonderful times. That’s the good stuff.

But here’s the rub. In my note-taking over the years, I have written long, developed ideas and thoughts. I also have one-word entries. There is a partial verse or phrase from a song. A couple of words to describe something I saw: butterfly bush. No explanations. Just the words or phrases.

I’ve written them down to capture the story of what the Lord said or the lesson I learned. I planned to go back to these prompts and write them completely later, fully confident that I would remember the story, based solely on these one or two word phrases.

To my surprise and sorrow,  I can’t remember the revelation they were meant to trigger. It truly broke my heart. I apologized to the Lord when I realized my folly.

As I went to bed that night, I told Him I was so sorry; I felt like I had dropped the ball; I had squandered the revelation somehow. The passage about Samuel not letting “a word of the Lord fall to the ground” swirled around my head. Ohhhhh Lord. Help me carry your words well, I prayed.

I went to sleep and I thanked the Lord for His forgiveness and resolved to do better going forward. When I woke up the next day, my spirit was buzzing. I recalled this whole conversation with the Lord.

He told me my notes were like manna.

That only made me feel worse! “Lord, the manna rotted. Is that what I did?? I let the manna rot? I asked. No, He said. Whew…

The Lord said He fed his children manna in the desert day by day.  In the same way, He fed me manna in the little notes, pictures, phrases, and scriptures. He said I may not be able to remember what they mean now, but He had indeed fed me day by day.

“It was heavenly food to nourish you for that need for that day. ” He said.

Ah, in the same way I don’t remember every dish and every meal, I know I never went hungry. Got it. “So then why did the manna rot?” I asked Him

The Lord said the manna, then and now, was for our daily consumption We were to daily feast on His Heavenly Provision. In the desert, the Israelites couldn’t store it up because when the manna stayed too long on the ground or in their jars it rotted from the corruption of the world.

God explained the same is true today. We can’t store up manna for ourselves for tomorrow and beyond. We have to eat it when it is given to absorb the nutrients of intimacy and revelation. Otherwise, it gets corrupted by the world system of doubt and unbelief.

Heaven is being released in ways that must be received in the moment, day by day.  Trying to put it off or grab extra for later corrupts or contaminates it. This is a heavy thought.

I asked Him, how do we carry Heavenly Provision well?

He said the only way that His manna could be multiplied was through us. We feed on His revelations, kisses, and provision. His heavenly presence comes into us, nourishes us, gives us spiritual energy, and then we turn and release that to others through our love and actions.

In a word, we are what we eat.  So then Jesus, give us this day our daily bread. Selah.

God is always leading us forward into freedom. Past the sin, the stuck places, the disappointment, and the heartache of living.

Forward.

Always forward into hope, into more of Him, into deep change. He does transformative work with this double-edged sword called Spirit and Truth.

With this sword, two things are happening at the same time. On one side, the truth of God sets us free from lesser lovers and worldly appetites. He reveals truth and lies lose their power. We are cut free from bondage.  On the other side, Holy Spirit comforts our spirit as we mourn our weakness and look for the courage to be changed. The Spirit cuts the cords of our complacency and apathy and we receive strength to be truly loved.

But to be clear, it is a deep cut into our current way of thinking. Spirit and Truth do not show up without us being painfully aware that Someone greater is on the scene. We are compelled forward.

It’s a complex thought I know, but so necessary for the days we live in. A friend and I were talking about  Matthew  24: 12 which warns the “love of others will grow cold.”  Look at the CEV version.

“Evil will spread and cause many people to stop loving others.”

Listen. If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks, I don’t know what will. Evil, from the enemy, will increase so much that people will stop acting like they know God.

How can this be? Remember Jesus’s command: Love God, others, and ourselves.  Romans says we OVERCOME evil with good.

We overcome the evil that comes against our own hearts, our families, our tribe, our city, and our nations.  I must press you today. Are you allowing the double-edged sword of spirit and truth to do its work in your life so that we can overcome the evil we all face?

Two verses come to mind that combat growing cold.

“Fan into flame the gift of God” from 2 Timothy 1:6.
“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10: 24

Jesus is calling us to a deeper more vibrant way of life. We are invited to be so alive with His love that it heals us as we go and impact others.  And. It pushes back the evil of our day.

I recall the words of a Jenny Owens song. “I don’t want to be a flame, I want to be a raging fire.”

Push forward. Blaze bright. Overcome darkness.

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Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

If you remember, my word for the year is Unleashing Miracles. Audacious, I know. But isn’t He? Audacious, awe-inspiring, surprising, outrageous. That’s our God.

And today as we head into Roar: Freedom in the Kingdom, as we head into another run around the sun, as we head into more living, I encourage you to not lose hope.

This week alone, I have personally experienced the fruition of prayers that were against all odds. I have personally rejoiced with my friends who kept on believing, and who were surprised by the goodness of God. Together we agreed that our faith was strengthened.

He is always working for good. He is always setting people free. He is always healing. He is always comforting the brokenhearted. So I say again, do lose hope.

Our belief in the miraculous God is a superpower that the world needs.