I had a vision during Easter Service. An overwhelming sense of awe fell on me that I was part of the whole world singing Heaven’s song, people from every tongue, tribe, and nation praising the Risen Son. I saw the Lord’s hand sweeping around the globe as we sang in different time zones. He was fanning the flame of our worship and devotion. 

Then as we continued in worship, I saw three openings in three distinct places. God is still unpacking this vision for me, but I want to release what I have so far. 

I saw in detail:

the opening of the flesh of Jesus. 

the opening of the veil to the Holy of Holies.

the opening of the tomb.

In my first attempt to put human words around the revelation, I strained to find the right word, was it ripping? Tearing? The ripping of his body and the blood that poured out, the tearing of the dense fabric of separation, the angels ripping the stone away…But the vision was not violent. 

Finally, the right word came. The Lord was opening new levels to us. 

Because we know God to be so precise, so intimately involved in the details, there is no accident that these three openings took place at this time and location in history.

These openings represent places of bondage and oppression. Places where we experience separation, fear, and hiding.  Jesus enveloped these places with His love and they became doorways of new life with Him.

Freed from Self

I have been crucified with Christ goes the verse and the hymn. In the vision, the Lord showed me with the opening of His flesh, the blood that poured out, He opened the pathway for our healing and wholeness. The curse of mankind, the obsession with self, and curse we experience in our body, has been overcome and opened up for us. He poured through our humanity to reveal a different reality.

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’ Luke 22:20

Freed From The Law

Which leads to the second opening. The veil was opened from top to bottom. After freeing us from the bondage of our humanity, God removed the dividing line between us and His Presence. He invited us into His holiness, forever. Our connection to Him is opened, forever. 

No performance. No pretending. No hiding. No bartering. 

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:14-16 NLT

Freed From the Earth

The empty tomb opens up all the possibilities of Heaven. If ever there were a doorway, this is it! The empty tomb is where Heaven’s ways overcome not only the unseen demonic realm but the seen earthly realm. Jesus opened for us the way of the Holy Spirit and the power of heaven released through us. On earth as is in Heaven becomes our reality through the cross, the veil, and the empty tomb. 

These openings we celebrated on Easter are not just for holiday ritual purposes. They are the roadmap we follow, the engine of our lives, and the very breath in our lungs. The days after Resurrection Sunday call us to even greater things through this beautiful God. 

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. 

For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying,
“This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup,saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.[a]

Luke 22:18-20 NIV 

Here is a beautiful story worth sharing. Chuck and I are in a season of “calling things that are not as though they were.” We learned this verse in Romans 4 from John Dee beginning in 2000. Fast forward all these years and encounters later, we are still going after all that it means to ask, seek, and knock; and to declare a thing in faith. Here’s the catch. While we master speaking blessings, God is constantly reminding us of the same powerful effect of negative speaking. He definitely got our attention through a vision Chuck had and a devotional the next day. 

Chuck had been counseling a friend to stop beating himself with a shame stick as if his constantly speaking shame over himself would bring freedom. Later during meditation, the Lord brought this image back to Chuck’s mind. But the scenario had shifted. 

Chuck saw a man he didn’t recognize and he had a stick in his hand. He took the stick and fed it through a wood chipper. The machine whirred and growled as it chewed up the stick and spit it out as mulch. Then the scene changed. Chuck said he saw Sarayu, the character representing the Holy Spirit in the book, The Shack.  Sarayu took the mulch and spread it around different plants in a garden.  

Chuck said the Lord showed him the man was Jesus destroying the stick of complaining, fearful, negative thoughts. Jesus took the enemy’s weapon used to torment Chuck and made it something the Spirit uses to fertilize and beautify the garden of Chuck’s heart. 

I mean. Wow. But the Lord didn’t stop there. 

It is not just destroying the negative. It is replacing it with the truth of God. This is a portion of the random devotional I received the morning after. 

I Hear His Whisper…By Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez

I work in the silent moments of rest.

Your life is my garden, and I am the One who is responsible to bring forth my fruit from your life. Watch me work in your silent moments of rest. You are a branch growing from me, meant to remain close and connected to my heart. Your life will flow with milk and honey as you remain in living fellowship with me.

When I created man and woman on the sixth day, I created them for more than labor; I created them for rest. Even I, the Creator of all things, rested on the seventh day. When you rest, I can restore and reset the exhaustion in your body and soul. All your fulfillment will be found in the satisfying Sabbath of my life in you. Your first love will be restored as you lay your head upon my shoulder. Come, child of delight, child of my heart. Come to me. I know all there is to know about you, and I love you more than you can perceive. I am gracious and tenderhearted. As you eat from the garden of my presence and rest in me, you will bear the fruit of my Spirit in your life.

His left hand cradles my head while his right hand holds me close.
I am at rest in this love.

Song of Songs 2:6 TPT

Side note. This is one of Chuck’s favorite verses. I love how God is constantly revealing His love and presence to us. 

I love how He is the defender of our faith, our hearts. There is no place safer than His love. 

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. Murderers 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 are ways to remove 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.

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 the 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. Help us Spirit. I asked Him, “how do we carry Heavenly Provision well?”

The Lord 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. Amen..