June was a wild month full of pressure, favor, and opportunities to reconvene with longstanding friends. As the pressure increased, God provided moments of decompression and joy in a landscape that has been rapidly changing. I made several big steps forward in ministry this month as my research proposal passed and I was able to get a sense of how God is using my church context to contribute to the direction of my research. I was also able to plot a course to finish my degree, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in joy and sober-minded judgment. This monthly summary comes a little late but determined, due to the pressure of this current season.
Separation of the Transformational and Transactional Church: A Church that is Ready for Co-Partnership with God
Across the board, June 2023 was been a month when God made his work of separation in the Church very tangible. God is separating the Transformational and Transactional Church. He has tested hearts, he has taken stock, and he is opening up new expressions of ministry.
In June, I spent a lot of time with God talking about embodiment. I would define embodiment as the process and degree that God calls us to live not just our own story, but his story in our lives. As individuals and in the lives of prophets, God gives us invitations to lay down our lives so that we can enter into his story. As he teaches us how to live in him and let him live in us, we experience an even closer union with Jesus and a more tangible expression of God’s flourishing on the earth. As embodiment grows, God turns it into partnership and increasingly works with us not just as impersonal vehicles of the Holy Spirit, but as collaborators and stakeholders.
My journey toward understanding embodiment started in December 2021, a few days before Christmas when God told me I had a month to quit my job in a dream. As I chose to leave, he revealed himself to me through a dream as my friendly book publisher, saying, “Well done for stepping into the story.” Around the same time, God began a series of dreams that ultimately related to a calling towards shepherding through inner healing ministry. Currently, God has me developing a series of teaching within a closed group setting aimed at helping prophets and other leaders receive that invitation towards embodiment by understanding their identity and taking proportionate next steps into ministry. As God continues to relationally connect individuals whose hearts are called to the same purpose, he is preparing the Church to not just receive but for leadership.
As God invites the Church to go deeper, we each can tell Jesus, “No. I don’t want to share in your sufferings. I don’t want to share your story.” The amount of pain Jesus experienced is something that if we choose embodiment, we each will partially experience. God is presenting us with a series of decisions. He is using extreme pressure in this season to transfigure who are individually and collectively, forcing us to make hard choices that we may not have chosen otherwise. He knows the heart and will equip us to steward different degrees of glory based on the processes that we allow now.
In choosing to live Jesus’ life and not just our own, God is calling the Church towards Engagement (as in, engagement-based learning). Jesus wants the Church as an equal partner! He affirms our agency, he lifts us up and opens doors, he supports our hearts, he wants to hear our voice and will use us to change the world.
When I was younger, I was more afraid to lay down my life. I was unsure if the risk was worth it, and I wasn’t sure if God would honor me if I honored him. I had heard stories of people feeling forgotten by God even after they had sacrificed everything. I was not sure of his goodness, and still needed deeper experiences of encounter so that I could trust the one I was serving.
As I’ve kept journeying with God, something miraculous has happened. I have experienced him as “God who Knows the Heart.” God has watched my life and taken note of every unvoiced prayer, every simple longing, and every deep-seated dream. As I faced extreme challenges and some loneliness, he provided me with all the right people I needed to heal, grow, and lead. He taught me how to meet him in his story through the bible, asking, “Where am I at in your story, today? What part of the bible is similar to the emotional texture of what I’m experiencing?” He gave me a stronger filter and specific instructions so that I could focus on only my piece of the puzzle as the Church experiences a massive transition. He has given me a clear sense of timings and confirmed them over and over again, streamlining my growth by allowing me to collaborate well with others so that various targets can be met in time. He has embedded rewards and treasures along the path to encourage me, making delight a constant theme. He has invited me to continue losing my life, teaching me that if I freely lay it down, he will make it worth my while.
This month, my heart was longing to step foot again in Kansas, where I was raised. I longed to see the land and to be in a place that corresponded to my history. As I flew from DC back to Seattle this month, I was surprised when God didn’t answer my prayers for better weather. I have been experiencing a high degree of favor for weather conditions lately, where God knows my heart and often sends the conditions I need because he loves me. Yet he allowed a storm to come and rerouted our plane to stop in Kansas. Though it was brief, I got to see and rest on my homeland.
Earlier this month, I had a deep craving for fresh rhubarb. It corresponded to many dreams I’ve gotten related to imagery of fresh fruit and creating new resources for the Church. As I rested in the Lord, I saw that he had caused a rhubarb plant to grow in our yard, and I was able to bring the strawberry rhubarb syrup to work as a treat and a testimony to share with coworkers.
This past week, a friend suggested that we go to the beach, to distract from the stress I’m under to find new housing. As we walked along that stretch of waterfront, the Lord reminded me of times when I felt rushed in the exploration, delighting process with family, and how great I had longed for unstructured time to enjoy being outside. And traipsing around in the sun, I did not have to leave until we both were ready to go organically.
What I have learned about God is that as we freely lay down our lives, he *always* makes it worth our while. When we choose his ways and his story, he adds disproportionate favor and even the grace for miracles, because it is the inheritance that belongs to Jesus.
God wants more for the Church than a lack of emotional engagement, transactional relationships, fear, or limited agency. He wants a Bride that is fully well, and he will sacrificially show up so that we as people can be ready to host greater glory. He understands how hard the path is because he’s walked it.
Have you received his invitation to enter into the story? Will you say yes?
The Path is Wide Open and Less Narrow!
This month at seminary, I went in on a mission. I had exactly one week on campus to find an advisor, get my research proposal passed, and return polished to Seattle. how I dressed, how I spoke, and the degree of the grind, I treated it like a business trip. On top of this, I needed to be aware of my own safety due to sexual harassment from another student last summer. I had a formal plan through the university in place, people aware and watching, various praying intercessors, and pepper spray.
After receiving feedback, my classmates and I had 48 hours to apply peer and professor feedback to create a polished draft. On Friday, we would meet 1:1 with professors and find out whether we had been cleared for research or whether it still needed further edits. Though I had been looking for an advisor since March, I also had yet to succeed in finding one due to others’ limited experience with my research area + charismatic Christians, skepticism, and fear of pioneering.
I also needed to have a deep chat with a former DC mentor and take some time to celebrate with a DC ministry friend. Based on my class schedule and the amount of work I needed to accomplish, this would be challenging to say the least.
I went into the experience eyes open. I asked for God to assign angels related to craftsmanship and creativity to help me as I focused on my work. I made sure to celebrate and mark the time with my classmates, as it may be the last time we all are together in person. That week, God caused external circumstances four different times that had the effect of shifting my calendar so that I could meet all my appointments.
He caused me to observe and vet various potential advisors before finding one who would have the grit, communication skills, innocence, experience as a parent, courage, and positive outlook to act as an advocate for this project.
He caused my research proposal to pass with the highest degree of approval possible, and without edits. He allowed me to fly out safely Friday afternoon and kept me holistically safe the entire time.
Beyond just simple things, he allowed me to identify with the Christian mystics in my History of Christian Spirituality course. He allowed me to learn from their lives and share openly about my current experiences in a boundaried way with my peers. I realized that this may be the first epoch in history where a young woman (29) like me can pursue the highest level of education through a doctoral degree, be respected as a leader, and be allowed to own her experiences as a mystic all at the same time. It made me cry to think about how this is an inheritance that I will be able to leave to my children and to the nations. It made me wonder how many women had waited for such things. When I think about all that God is preparing to do on the earth for the generations that are coming, I could cry.
June 2023 was a month full of evidence of answered prayer, in recompense that I get to receive right now. At this rate, I will see the answer to today’s prayers before I know it. All over again, I’m laying down my life so God can have his way with it.
As of today, I’m hoping to submit all the portions of my research by August 1st, 2024, to defend by September 2024 (Next year). God has made it clear that he will line up the next steps and send more instructions around that time.
Ministry Update
Since about October 2023, I have been gradually supporting a growing group of prophets called Youth and Young Prophets Network. The focus of this group is prophetic consulting for churches and schools that are interested in partnering with what the Holy Spirit wants to do in their context. We are currently meeting once to twice per month, prophesying with leaders in nations that God is highlighting through revelation. Later on, we will develop curricula and resources to support young people’s development in the prophetic. The topic of my doctoral research is to lay a foundation for that work by working with a focus group of teens in my local church. I also meet with others frequently on Zoom for mentorship in scribe prophecy, to build relationships, and collaborate with people who have the same heart for this movement of devotional spirituality God is raising up in 0-18 year-olds.
At times, ministry development has felt like full-time parenting. I have a sense of responsibility that never fully leaves, but I am learning to manage it. It definitely feels like my life is no longer fully my own, but it’s so rewarding. My ministry baby took some steps forward this month as our team added several new members (growing to 9), God showed me how to use my introspective nature to create curricula that will draw others into agency and a ministry partner offered to host us so that I can facilitate a spiritual retreat for my team in France next year. I’m currently in the process of collecting words from trusted friends about the present and future roles of our intercessors, board members, core team, and network. It’s not the time to file for nonprofit status or fundraise, but it’s so exciting!
There are a lot of loud voices. I am learning how to filter feedback I hear from others, which has included things like demonic dreams they’ve had about me getting hurt or the fear of pioneering (in favor of comfort or simplicity). I’m leaving a gap from distractions and holding the standard for the degree of health and wholeness this ministry must embody. I am learning how to remain in a place of leadership and agency regardless of chaotic circumstances. I am asking questions about people like, “Whose sincerity makes them the most trustworthy?” and “How can I provide opportunities for everyone to do their internal work with the Lord?”
God’s commitment to me is that he will streamline it and use cross-pollination with other ministries so that this ministry will emerge on the right timeline, having accomplished double or triple what would have seemed to be possible externally. I’m choosing the best quality process and working with the most sincere people to produce the best quality fruit. God has promised to make me a leader who is calm, dependent on him, confident during shaking, and full of life. He still wants this season of my life to be about quality of life and balance, community, developing resources, expanding skill sets, and developing maturity. I’m contending for compassion for people who are still struggling with discernment and unaware of the effects that their choices have on others.
Receiving the Right Nourishment: “Get that out of your Mouth!”
This month, a person from a ministry I have been developing asked me entirely seriously, “But not everyone in this group is a leader, right? I don’t think we’re all cut out to lead.”
After about 18 months of intense dreams about God rescuing the weak of the sheep and 30 months of dreams about God restoring the Church, I had to be very careful to respond not in proportion to my passion, but to her question. I simply affirmed that while everyone in that group was indeed different, God has called us all to lead in our own way. I wanted to shout, “Get that out of your mouth!” in response to the toxic beliefs about leadership layered on top of her simple words. As an emerging apostle who sometimes sees people’s callings that others aren’t able to detect, I had to remember to have compassion because she was sincere in asking. She really hadn’t seen them clearly! Still, the pride and lack of discernment embedded in the question made me aware of how God is calling the Church to stop consuming toxic beliefs about leadership that poison themselves and others.
The experience reminded me of what God has been doing to save my family. I’m retelling this story thinking of that friend and the Church as my sister. I also am aware that God has called me to leave toxic things on the table, and I can see myself in the role of “my sister” in terms of responsibility to steward “the body” God has given me (thus, the Church).
Since we were in the womb, my sister ate things that threatened our lives. We were born ahead of schedule not just because we are twins, but because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. This method that God intended to be used for nourishment was threatening to choke out her life. It was also threatening to destroy mine, as my connection to the source was weaker. I was born a very underweight baby, over a pound less than my sister because there was something inherently wrong about how we were being nourished. Lately, I’ve wondered how much my experience of being born prematurely increased my reactions when I feel that my timeline is being manipulated to suit the selfish desires of others.
When I came to Seattle last July, my mom, sister, and I went out to eat at a nice seafood restaurant. As we began our meal, she started to choke on a piece of steak that was too large to pass through her windpipe. I watched as my mom was paralyzed, as the waiters were afraid to lay hands on her overlarge body. As I performed the Heimlich maneuver and she began to breathe clearly, I noticed not just her subsequent need to cover up her embarrassment, but by the fact that everyone was unaware how to navigate danger in their midst. I was angry at the people who had judged my sister because of her weight and were unable or unwilling to help her.
In the last year, I have experienced God so tangibly as the one who wants us all to flourish. He is not offended by our physical, spiritual, or emotional condition. He saves us from every toxic thing we have consumed or copied. He calls us to drink from pure streams where there will be compassion instead of offense, gracious speech instead of slander, identification with others’ sins instead of accusation, blessing instead of bitterness, empowerment instead of self-abuse, curiosity and relational leadership instead of offense.
Church, we must get these things out of our mouths and drink from healthier sources so that we can live.
The Day of Dignity is Coming
There is a Day of Dignity coming for everyone who has been slandered, scorned, or mocked in their process. There are leaders rising who prioritize dignity as unconditional respect, who God is calling to dignify and lift up others. In THIS era, we will see social reformation that has the effect of prioritizing human worth.
Though this era is just starting, those of us who have been born early will pave a way for the younger generation who is coming after. We will have the infrastructure to receive them as God pours out his Spirit on all flesh. They will take the foundation we have built and renovate it, carrying it through the middle of the period, bridging the epoch and raising those who will come towards the end. We must build in a way that can leave them the best possible foundation. May our spiritual descendants thrive and stand robustly until the Day of Christ.
I may not have chosen when I was born, but I can choose to receive Jesus’ invitation to embodiment. Like Anna and Phineas, the people who have been most ready to receive this movement for Youth and Young Prophets have been waiting the longest. I am so grateful for the treasure of their lives, their life experience, and what they see in me. I believe that God is blessing us into proportionate provision for the assignments we have been willing to receive. There is nothing like experiencing God backing you to do the thing you were called to do.
Worship
Questions (Which Became Wackier at Seminary)
Why does the story of Ruth usually focus on Boaz as a Redeemer? From beginning to end, Ruth was the one redeeming Naomi, redeeming the memory of her lost husband, redeeming her own ethnos by marrying into Israel, despite others’ condemnation. The book of Ruth is about the Church being the main character of her own story, in ways that redeem the story of nations.
Is the story of Jacob stripping the branches to breed the strong sheep (Genesis 30) about not looking at external appearances (spotted or speckled imperfections), but setting purity as a standard? How does purity as a standard internally strengthen the sheep who would otherwise be rejected?
Jesus is the pure branch that makes the weak strong
How do you weave a hairshirt?
How does a middle class in a society form, historically?
Names of God
God who Steadily Reveals Himself to us as we go Exodus 33:14-18
Jesus of the Cross
God, The Hope, The Transfiguration
God who Redeems and Restores
God Who Invites Watchmen to Have Compassion and Identify with the People’s Sins
Verses
Psalm 146
Zephaniah 3, 3:17-20, 1:53
Provision, Famine, and Abundance
Noah in Genesis 8, as he waits for the dry land to appear (Reformation)
Secular Music
“Someone Like Me” – Joy Oladokun
Ran into this gem by Joy Oladokun from her new “Proof of Life” album. I actually heard it on the secular radio station at my work, just as I was having a conversation about spirituality with a coworker who is spiritually sensitive but has mostly explored pagan mysticism in the past. This song came on as evidence to her that God understands her history.
In this song, Joy manages to create conversation about struggle and prayer, with a vibe of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Cars”, so relatable. It’s fabulous to see artists who can crossover categories and remain themselves even as they relate to a range of people. There is a gentleness and generosity of spirit in her work that is worth celebrating.
This month, I felt led to try a different procedure for writing my monthly summaries, for the sake of focus, clarity of communication, and to save time. As I took notes and journaled this month, I starred important sections rather than transcribing them that day. Then at the end of the month, I went through and transcribed the majority of what I still believed to be consistent with the themes God highlighted to me this month. Though I still ended up transcribing some things directly and had about 30 pages of notes from this month once all was said and done, I feel that it’s a better monthly procedure. I hope that in this post and in future posts, God will increase the clarity of my writing because I was willing to make this change.
Refreshing through Cooking Projects
This month, I’ve been spending a lot of energy getting the first and second draft of my doctoral thesis research proposal together. In order to have the stamina to continue making headway on assignments, I took breaks to do what I love: cooking projects. In a season where God is using lots of cooking imagery to invite me to create resources and curriculum that the Church can use in the future, meeting God in the kitchen was a way to celebrate change.
To be honest, living in the less intense pace of life I’ve fought to establish feels a lot like the culture of Italy. It made me wonder this month if the reason that Italians have such impressive longevity is because they value and celebrate life consistently. I’m convinced that cultures that savor life teach their citizens to enjoy living and people develop more healthy lifestyles as a result. God has gradually been forming a near-Italian love for life in me through dreams about Italy, encountering Italian culture in media, studying Italian over the last 6 months, and inexplicable cravings for Italian food (completely the opposite of my typical preference). I’m grateful for opportunities to develop ministry out of the overflow of Christ’s abundant life, and the way it adds joy and life to whatever I’m pioneering.
This month, I explored joy in the kitchen by experimenting with:
Shapes of Watermelon
Apricot Rose Syrup (With apricots, pears, and fresh untreated yellow rose petals)
Grape Juice (Clean, add water and lemon juice, blend, and strain)
The right amount of salt to use when frying a ribeye
In May, God continued to use cooking imagery to speak to me about nurture, specifically as it relates to Korea. It makes me wonder what Korean ministries I will eventually encounter, because it feels like I’m being prepared in advance.
Out Adventuring
I spent a lot of time exploring this month, through Adventure Days! Back in April, I started a practice of celebration called Adventure Days on my Mondays off, which is made up but based on Sabbath. Essentially, there are 3 rules for Adventure Day.
No housework
No homework
You absolutely must get outside (weather irrelevant)
God provided some outstanding weather this month and opportunities for adventuring to places like:
The Seattle Japanese Garden (for my birthday)
Ballard Locks
Magnuson Park
Gasworks Park
The Wing Luke Museum
One of my favorite parts of this month was getting to act my age and go to the beach! One of the hardest parts of developing an independent ministry and growing into maturity so quickly in the Lord is that the challenges that arise are so intense that I sometimes find it hard to relate to people my own age who have gone through fewer significant challenges. God has provided mentors, mature friends, and other support along the way, but the road is still remarkably narrow, and I have limited life experience to draw from. In order to not miss out on the joy of being young, I have to be intentional to act my age, which means carving out time for spontaneity and being less composed. Turning 29 this month felt like the juxtaposition of two truths: 1) I’m still relatively young and in formation 2) The high calling on my life requires a lot, and has already shaped me tremendously. As I pass through an important transition year, I’m excited not just about what lies on the other side, but about every good thing God is doing right now.
Family and Friends
This Memorial Day, I was able to celebrate with family and family friends from out of state! It was lovely, refreshing, and odd to have a piece of the Midwest come visit us in Seattle. Playing intense Uno with roommates at Freemont Brewery and grilling together was another great highlight.
Passing Through the Tunnel: Walking Towards Maturity
This month, I had a dream that I believe describes both what God is doing in me and in the Church more broadly.
In the dream, God was in the process of transforming me through a series of close visitations. I was traveling with Jesus a Mature Man, crossing over from one metro platform to another. We got food that symbolized speaking from a place of hiddenness, and went onto work together in peace and cooperation with Jesus being fully patient. In the transformation process, God’s goal was to bring me to full maturity. Even though part of me wanted more intensity or speed, God was so deliberate in getting me to a place of complete freedom that he was more careful with me than I knew how to be for myself. I came out of the other side of the process with Jesus fully restored, and encountered a redeemed pair of people who God had stripped of their wrong way of relating to one another. Jesus and I went to join them and celebrated that the obstacle course of the season had not ultimately derailed us.
When I woke up, I remember being so grateful that God had given me his word that he would continue and fulfill the restoration process, not just for me personally, but for the Church. I believe this dream reflects the Crossover Process God is facilitating in the Church as he redeems national inheritances, restores broken relationships, introduces healthier, purer patterns of ministry, and prepares his Church for War (in every sense).
As individuals, we must ask God for the courage to leave personal history, national history, and generational history behind as we press in through what feels like a tunnel in the Spirit. This tunnel is a squeezy place that leads towards the Mature Person of Christ, causing us to change as we take progressive steps of maturity. Walking through the tunnel requires discipline and a continuous narrowing of who we are and what we are about. Take steps by choice, the Holy Spirit will guide individual self-reflection as he uses both external circumstances and internally prompts our hearts. As more and more people pass through the tunnel, you will see signs of maturity in their lives because their ministries will feel like a Tree of Life. Jesus is restoring his garden and people who have crossed through this maturity process will continue to find one another and build God a new house.
As a leader, I will allow the Holy Spirit to show me who has gone through the maturity process. I’m hoping to build and rebuild with people who have allowed God to form them, who aren’t in a hurry but value good fruit.
Values I’m Trying to Instill Through My Ministry
In this season and in the future, these are specific fruit that I hope my ministry will reproduce. I hope that as others encounter the people I’ve invested in, those people will feel like very sweet strawberries that have grown undisturbed for a long time, absorbing the sun (Jesus). I pray that we have the right-sized, smallish, accessible seeds, bursting with opportunity. And that our words have a melty, impactful texture like just ripe strawberry skin.
Among my Team, I hope that we embody:
Courage in Doing the Internal Work
Worship
Purity of Heart and Togetherness (Seeing Ministry as a Team Sport)
Leadership and Service
Playfulness, Embracing Cultures, and Adventure
A New Day is Dawning
This month, Jesus continued to speak to me about how everything that is illuminated becomes a light (Ephesians 5:13). It reminded me of times when I was a child when I learned from others’ mis-examples, choosing to do the opposite of unhealthy things I saw. Intentionally going in the opposite direction lead me towards a journey of wholeness and eventually, I encountered Jesus. It reminds me of times when in prophetic ministry, I’ve chosen to simply embody the aspect of God’s spirit from an unclean spirit I sense in a place or person, to bring life and light into a situation. Instead of exposing something unhealthy in a person or place through human effort (direct confrontation), the Holy Spirit’s purity in comparison to what was broken exposed what was true about God and others.
Awareness of sin is and always will be an invitation to the Church. Right now, God is causing the light of his ways, his character, and his love to illuminate what the Church has called good and challenge what it’s labeled as weakness. The work that individuals have done over the last 18 months is being revealed as true or false, as decay or life, and unhealthy ways of life and ministry are dying. As the Sun rises and exposes the truth, God is growing a garden that will displace old patterns of ministry so that broken leaders and broken individuals will be healed. He is coming in power to heal and rescue us all.
God will give us new expressions and new ways. He is writing new stories on our lives and wants to redeem our nations.
God will redeem the Church’s understanding of weakness so that again, we will see limitations and awareness of them as a strength (2 Corinthians 12).
Process Avoidance
As I think about signs of decay in the Church, I notice that many have been left unchecked because people have been afraid of change. Process avoidance and small thinking have replaced the Church’s sense of courage and excitement over new growth. Instead of receiving God’s invitation to go on an adventure, some people have buried their talents in exchange for comfort or settled in smallness for false satisfaction.
In fearing the loss of relationships, Loss is here and upon us.
Yet even still, God’s grace is available to people who are unsure how to make the pivot into the new season. It may require losing everything or losing a significant amount, being willing to give up what we’ve built wrongly so that our God can restore.
Trusting Each Other with Our Weakness
There is true life that comes from letting go. This month I was talking with a Nabi leader and friend, and needed to address something sensitive about our friendship. I didn’t start in confrontation but asked her to tell me about her current life and ministry, asking questions and generally just listening. I let her verbally process and similar to spiritual direction style listening, asked probing questions when I sensed she was near something weighty. Instead of telling her directly what I was sensing, I steered the conversation so it would come up on its own.
Ultimately, we left secure in our friendship She thanked me for knowing her heart, believing that the sin was unintentional, and not condemning her. We committed to a direction that would be life-giving for us both and would still honor my (most important) value for communication. This conversation made me recognize that when people are used to providing for others, they must be fierce in preserving time for self-reflection. I also realized that I can use my discernment to overshadow others in reflective conversations so that their processing is sharpened. As someone who is primarily a Watchman, I’m learning to ask questions like, “Can I tell you about some things that I sense may strategically derail what God is doing in your life in this season?” and be thoughtful even as I’m clear.
I ended the conversation by challenging her to be more transparent with me about what she needs and to trust me with her weakness. Since this conversation, we’ve been able to collaborate more effectively and it’s been a joy to see God renovate that dynamic.
This conversation reminds me of another time this month when I was coaching a prophet on my Youth and Young Prophets team.: I knew that she needed to take a more active role in the group and was experiencing fear that had led her into hiding. Through conversation, I probed some of the emotions that were surrounding her hiddenness. Organically as she talked it through, she noticed their own patterns, changed her social media pictures, and took a more active role in the group. God inspired her to change and my role was to simply highlight the grace available for it. I had to be direct, but only in small doses and towards the end of the conversation once the person had done most of the processing/internal work. The outworking of the solution happened entirely without me.
In general, God is calling his leaders to trust one another with their weaknesses. This will require the Church to be more honest about its flaws but also, more gracious. We can only truly support one another when we know each other more fully. Instead of hiding our sins and presenting only a polished external appearance, we will need greater heart transparency in private, in public, in social media, and in storytelling.
Days of increased persecution are coming. God is forcing the Church to focus on deep, healthy relationships because we as a Body are going to face trying times, and we each need to have friends in our corner who instead of judging or condemning will actually pray. As individuals, we must receive health and wholeness in our relationships and communities so that God can give the church strength and endurance for the days to come.
Ministry Developments: Victories
May was a creative, exciting, confident, and nerve-wracking time! The pressure of external circumstances allowed God to form me and my teammates in the right ways.
Currently, am I facilitating various ministry spaces. Some of those spaces include:
A bimonthly video chat/prayer chain group of about 12 prophets, for the sake of social support
A peer-to-peer mentoring group of about 13 scribe prophets, focused on sharpening through writing
Youth and Young Prophets Network (YYPN): A core team of 6 Prophets called to prophesy over youth and young prophets God is raising up in the nations.
Additionally, I participate in:
A 10-person prophetic community led by a prophet/Apostle in Capetown, South Africa. God often does a work of cross-pollination between the leaders in this group, my ministry, and vice versa. My influence in the group has to do with elements related to writing national words, curriculum and facilitation, administration, and a heart for apostolic strategy.
The adult volunteer team of a 40-person middle and high school youth group at my church in Seattle
In May, God separated the mission and vision of each of these spaces even further, tailoring the curriculum, norms, members, and pacing for each space. Just as I was chafing to have more opportunities to teach, he provided opportunities for me to teach about identity, share activities I’ve already created, and shared ideas for even more.
Youth and Young Prophets Network
The majority of my victories this month come from working with my core team for Youth and Young Prophets Network (YYPN). This month, our team:
Received our first dedicated Intercessor who is committed to praying for me as a leader and getting covering our ministry. I am so in awe that she has visited and loves my city (Seattle) like I do. Seattle can be hard to love, but the land/territory here carries a grace for inner healing ministry and hunger for encounter that God is redeeming from decades of witchcraft.
Noticed a trend of God healing any personal or family history of broken romantic relationships. He has literally visited every member of my team and is coming in force to rewrite their stories. Given that our mission and vision is all about healing God’s family and focused on generational restoration, God wants us to receive so that the grace for healing will overflow out of everything else we do. The Truth is, God will never build a movement without healing and restoring the people who are associated with it. It’s wild to see God bundle us together to receive healing and his reward, and to be blessed together as a ministry family.
Prophesied over Denmark with leaders from that nation, collecting prophesies related to youth to send with a team member who will be ministering there soon.
Developed routines for Intercession to support our teammate while she is on the ground in Denmark. Saw my teammates respond with genuine heart engagement, without jealousy or competition but with excitement, joy, and singlemindedness, committing to supporting our friend in prayer.
(I) started receiving dreams about God’s heart for the Church and longing for Scandinavia. I was really grateful that as we’ve chosen to engage, God has given us all the revelation we need.
Received strategy from God surrounding conversational intake appointments for people who are interested in learning more about our ministry.
Received strategy from God about self-reflection inducing, encounter-focused quarterly Core Team Training and Refreshing Sessions
Volunteered (2 members) to take the lead in synthesizing prophetic words over previous nations. Met and received 1:1 coaching on writing twice, with bite-sized assignments and lots of modeling.
Received strategy for our summer break and seeing in the Spirit assignment
We believe that God has called this ministry to be a catalyst for a movement of young people who devotionally experience encounter as a life-giving, daily part of their pursuit of the Lord. As of today, we will continue to meet monthly with leaders to prophesy over the youth of specific nations. And simply wait for strategy on the Lord.
As I spoke with my mentor this month about the joy of seeing this ministry take its first real steps, she encouraged me to enjoy this season of my ministry being a baby. Just like parenting, she reminded me of the grace and joy available in each season, and the importance of laying the right foundations while it’s young.
I recognize that later on, I will need more help to raise this ministry, apart from the people already gathered or covering us. When that day comes, I want to come under leaders who will act as healthy grandparents, carrying the same heart as I carry for the ministry but from a different perspective. I do not want to come under mentors who are absent, expecting me to do ministry independently but lease out a plot in their community garden. I want support from leaders who are protective and want to build the garden with me.
The question I am asking people who demonstrate interest is, “Do you really have a heart for this?” And ‘Are you willing to share the cost of the process?” God can expand people’s hearts for the work, but they must ask.
Ministry Developments: Challenges
Early in the month, frustration and feeling trapped in not knowing what to do with my Prophetic Teaching gift. As I pressed in to strengthen my existing partnerships, God opened new doors of opportunity and revelation (for activity design). But it was a squeezy, irritable set of weeks where I just wanted room to run.
Not knowing what to do with Sensory Overload in Watchman Gifting, especially when it comes to timelines. Moments when I get sensing words of knowledge about individual’s insecurities, how patterns in their lives formed, how they feel about it, and what’s standing in the way of them dealing with it.
Times where having this much info has made me overly accepting of others’ poor treatment of me. Having to learn to make choices to advocate for myself, remain appropriately distant, and even detach from what I’m sensing for my own peace.
Love is contributing to the conditions that will allow people to make a healthy choice. It is not taking on too much responsibility for others’ choices or lowering the standard in ways that ultimately harms their development.
Times where I sense in detail where people will be at in their development in multiple years (reading their timeline). Managing my own frustration about others’ timings being delayed or lengthy challenges me to learn a whole new level of grace.
Learning to read timelines horizontally and vertically. “I see that you’re on the right track to be aligned to this greater aspect of what God is doing in this movement, will take x amount of time, will likely overlap with what is happening in this sphere or nation…”
Figuring out how to say less, despite wanting to communicate the big picture of how it squares with what God is doing with the Global Church, within nations, within organizations, teams, or individuals. Learning how to manage what I say despite seeing what feels like too much. And sometimes wishing that I didn’t know things, especially when it’s overwhelming or disturbing.
Forgiveness and Healing Earlier this month, I had started to want to exclude 2 nations from this movement/ministry, because of the wounds I received there. It’s not glamorous, but I was internally running like Jonah from the prospect of their participation for several weeks. God continued to speak to me about 2 nations that earlier in the month, I had started to want to exclude from this movement/ministry (not glamorous, but true). I have told God many times that he has permission to build this movement as he wants. But because I was hurt, he had to reach me in other ways.
God’s response was to send 2 members of my team dreams about the nation having a redeemed role since I didn’t want to hear it. In his gentleness, it was almost as if to say, “Don’t be afraid to allow them to participate. Watch what I will do.”
This internal wrestle is happening at the same time as God is redeeming the side of my family most closely related to these two nations, specifically from famine, poverty, and the effect of being refugees/rejected from these places. It’s all linked.
Within the same 48 hours, as I repented for internally running, he sent itinerant leaders to my Church from this region to co-minister with an American couple, modeling healthy relations. I confessed the situation to the woman minister, and she prayed over the place in my abdomen where I was still holding tension due to the effects of all this. She had me look into her eyes until the softness of her eyes reminded me of a friend from that region who I love. She repented on behalf of her nation, reminded me of the best of what her nation is known for (its redeemed identity), acknowledged in humility that her nation is small and in need of other nations’ help, and asked for my forgiveness. When I woke up the following morning, it was clear that I still had some deeper layers to sort out, but because of her prayers, there were no longer any open wounds.
The next week, I was on a ministry call with another leader from this nation and for the first time, we were able to receive from one another with less miscommunication and greater ease. He had come out of the harshness associated with this nation’s fallen identity, provided more freedom for God to lead the call’s participants, and seemed to legitimately be able to help.
Through this ministry call, I saw very clearly why this nation must be involved, because of the intensely fruitful effect it has on my mind. I am wildly sharp and creative in partnership with leaders from this place. I’m going to believe that if God causes healthy alignments, it will be with individuals who have come through the maturity process and are embodying their nations’ redeemed identities. And it will no longer be dangerous to go back.
Personal Process: Victories
In a nutshell, in May I started to feel the grace returning to go at a greater speed. God has said that by narrowing my focus/assignment in each ministry, utilizing cross-pollination, and making room for others to shor in April is here today!are the burden, I will be able to endure well as the speed picks up.
Realistically, the goals for this season (a la December 2022) are still:
The gradual release I prayed for (Prayer Requests) in April is here today!
Other great fruit this month came in the form of:
Having Prophet Community Support when I was in need (vs. insufficient help)
Thicker skin and less sensitivity to rejection
Faster and Better at pivoting to reset my rhythms, letting ideas for ministry and writing result from rest, creativity, and joy
Courage and stamina to continue holding the standard
Greater balance with chores, work, writing, and mealtimes. I have the tendency to hyperfocus on things I love (like writing), to the point of getting so lost in the process that I forget to eat. This month, I had the discipline to prioritize the essentials in spite of what I love more.
Personal Process: Challenges
Limits to Study: Narrowing My Focus
This month, I had to reduce the scope of my research proposal to about 25% of my original goal so that I can limit it to just 110 pages. God provided grace for me to receive truthful feedback from my professors, and they were very helpful.
He used our conversations to force me to think about what it is I really want to study, stripping away any elements of obligation, inviting me to lay pieces supported by false responsibility down so that I can just do what I love.
God forced me to consider how to continue exploring the remaining 3 categories (75%) in cheaper, less scholastic, but ultimately more life-giving ways. Grief and truth over not being able to be a student forever.
Still, I cried some clarity/truth tears because I realized in great detail that I will never have enough time on the earth to satisfy my hunger to learn everything. I consoled myself in remembering that I will have eternity in Heaven’s Library and that I may return to academia (on Earth) later on as an adjunct professor. Again, he’s having me leave the good for the sacrificial great, and specific assignments.
I know that life moves fast and I have other things to do, but it was scary to feel like I don’t know what to do with my mind. God is probably having me let go in order to receive better things, and I hope he gives my brain something good to chew on so I’m not hopelessly bored.
Giving Up Languages: Letting go of Italian and Portuguese
This is another one that kind of killed me. This month, God told me to abruptly stop learning Portuguese (which I’ve been learning for one year), and Italian (which I’ve been learning for 6 months). He told me to let go because he wants to leave room for other people to help, and because his goal was to have me absorb the grace on the languages.
Part of me really wanted to keep going and be challenged more, but I feel that it’s right to release it. And I’m wondering if there will be a right time for me to pick them back up again.
I have experienced times when he tells me “no” or “stop” only to bring back a subject (or region) later. And there are plenty of things I have to restrain myself to not learn yet because I am one limited person, and it will take a lot of people’s help and learning, not just mine. For example, Seattle is full of people who care about native plants and foraging. Part of that worldview/skill set would help what God is doing in France. Am I allowed to learn it right now, though I’m curious? No. I have to keep a moderate workload if all these things will emerge out of joy and rest, which must happen for them to grow up healthy. So am I free to learn every fascinating thing that crosses my path? Regrettably not. Maybe in the future, most certainly in Heaven.
Worship
Names for God
Where I spent most of my Time
These are the most impactful, overarching names this month. These are the names that filled the majority of our conversations, have been most transformative to me personally, and have influenced the tangible texture of May.
Jesus, Tree of Life
As I met Jesus as a Tree of Life this month, I felt that he was increasing my capacity to be a Tree of Life too. He is much more adept at meeting people where they’re at, both by increasing the level of grace and giving me time for extended practice.
He’s helping me discern just the right amount people can handle, breaking it into small pieces they can handle
He teaches me how to recognize health and wholeness so that we do not export brokenness abroad.
He teaches me how to guard the health of this movement and is unwilling to let anything bad happen to it.
He teaches me how to recognize people who he is leading into the new thing and what support they will need to refine them.
He shows me how to develop the right activities, conversations, and trust so that this movement will take its first steps and grow into maturity
God, My Storehouse
This month, God showed me that from now on, I will need to leave the majority of my skill sets in storage and just pull out what I need to complete each assignment. I’m encouraged that the Church is called to store up her capacity for right timings (Song of Songs 7:13). I feel that God is both expanding and reorganizing my insides, making me into a storehouse. It feels a little like what I imagine to be Jean PIaget’s process of accommodation in developmental psychology: I feel like God is reshuffling me. The question of “What do I do with myself?” is “Leave your many facets in mostly good condition, but in storage”.
I’m grateful that God has added many things and given me time to explore. Regardless of the context of learning, there is nothing that can replace time in the secret place with the Lord.
Day by Day
These are names that I gave God in discrete moments during the month, but ultimately related to the overarching names.
God who Comes to Test Hearts
God who watches to see who is willing
God, My Victim
You can’t fully be a grown-up unless you recognize your role in the cosmic drama, your sins that held him there
God of the Finished Work
Not just God of the Long Process, but God who finishes. Longing for process completion so much I could moan.
Step beyond “God of the Long Process”. You actually have to believe that God finishes what he starts.
God personally committed to overseeing the entire process of my maturity, and so protective. “My Fearsome God.”
Jesus keeps it so upbeat and playful. He is so gentle with reassuring me that he cares about my concerns, but that he knows what he’s doing and it’s going to be great. Gleeful, childlike joy. Exuberant. God is pretty proud of himself in advance for whatever the plans are. Even if I know in part, going still wait until does it. It’s only fun when he’s the one to unveil things with a flourish. He loves being the one to present his handiwork, and unveil things with a sense of pride. Why should I take that joy away from him? A little longer in the dark, so long as he steers me.
God who is Full of Integrity
God whose actions are consistent with who he is. God who is full of favor and kindness.
Questions and Verses
On Hiddenness How much did Jesus have to be prepared in private before he could handle the weight of the cross? What did that process look like?
Jesus manages to calmly tell the disciples three times that he must be killed and raised from the dead (Luke 24:7, Luke 13:33; Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:22; Mark 8:31). What was it like to develop the kind of faith and loving trust in God that would allow for such an epic trust fall? He would have really needed to trust that God would raise him up, something we all must do time and time again before we do it for the last time.
One day on my deathbed, I want to be able to thank God for such an adventure of a life that we got to live together. And then, I want to have such peace as I make the last trust fall and find my way back to him. Lord, help me live well so that I can die well too.
On Navigating JealousyIs Jesus telling Peter in John 21:22, “If I want him to remain alive [immortal] til I come, what is that to you?” an example of Jesus calling out Peter’s jealousy of the intimate relationship he and John have? John was with Jesus at least part of the time at the crucifixion, and Jesus entrusts his mother to him. Even though Peter, James, and John all saw Jesus transfigured, was there still anxiety in Peter about not being loved enough? John received various visions that became the Book of Revelation. They seem to be competing with one another for intimacy with Jesus, both racing, trying to beat one another to his tomb (John 19:26, Luke 24:12). How may the tension between these two men have allowed room for other dysfunctional patterns to form in the church? What does it mean to allow one another to be individuals and have individual relationships with God, even as we all long for intimacy?
On Reconciliation with Ourselves How did Jonah willingly give himself up to the crew on the boat? How much of Jonah’s rebellion was tied to self-hatred?
Jonah never seems to get noticeably upset. When he’s angry, he just seems to be quietly angry. But God still calls him out either way, because he knows his heart. I love how this book is short and relatable, and invites the reader to have God search their heart, ending with a question.
God called out the self-hatred, internalizing anger by the end of the story, “angry enough to die”
Jonah can’t manage to love or have any kind of solidarity with the Ninevites not because they were his known enemy, but because he was full of self-hatred
On Avoidance and Fear of the Internal Work Tarshish means “nowhere” according to some scholars. Was Jonah running from himself? Could the story be considered an allegory about facing the parts of himself that he does not feel like facing?
On Isolation and God Providing People Over Years How isolated was David in the beginning?
Which elements of David’s identity/story did God form through:
Experience (ex: Shepherding sheep)
Family background (Solidarity with the Vulnerable, illegimate birth, adoption by God), and
Choice (repentance or fear)?
On the Safety of Hiddenness How did God use compassion, pity, and hiddenness to form Joseph as a Redeemer?
I can so relate to Joseph this month not just in choosing to forgive, but in being grateful for hiddenness. I do not have to deal with the curses of other prophets or jealous people and can thrive in the shadow of God’s wings. During this season, hiddenness is a very safe place to be, and much easier to maintain the quality standard of what God wants to do in my ministry. I actually am more productive now that I’ve been able to be in the past because facing so much opposition was exhausting. The invitation to remain strategically hidden reminds me of what it feels like to glide under waves instead of stand against them. There will be a right time for greater visibility, but for right now all I care about is seeing these things grow, in purity.
Favorite Worship Music
Miracle of the Mind -Amanda Cook
When I sing along to this song, part of it is drama and karaoke and part of it is just gratitude for how far God has brought me in the restoration process.
I normally start the song like I’m singing along to the Little Mermaid’s Part of Your World, like I’m singing a conversation with myself. And then I normally yell-sing the next line, “Overriding everything!” because the lyric calls for it and giggle for a bit before rejoining the singer.
Joy (Reprise/Live) – Vashawn Mitchell
This song is another unexpected treasure I ran into this month. It’s a reprise of Vashawn’s Joy that I remember singing in gospel choir. Having the song recorded in South Africa where I have so many friends and with the addition of a female vocalist who embodies the eagerness of the Church for greater wholeness is perfect for this season.
Yet – The King Will Come
I love the honesty and vulnerability in this song/video from The King Will Come. It reminds me of moments where other people haven’t given up on me in my process and have remained patient and committed. When I think of the love that it takes to respond to trauma and remain consistent in the long process, this song reminds me of God Who is Committed. It challenges me both to receive for myself and receive greater capacity to love people (and leaders) who are still pretty broken. I’m pretty sure God just wants to create conditions for people to be willing to receive healing, and I can relate to how intense he is in seeing better for us, but also for the next generation. I hope that as God continues healing the Church and healing leaders, he will teach us all that it’s okay to want more of what’s healthy and better than what’s currently available. I hope he will use this season to position Apostles, Prophets, and everyone who remains engaged with the Holy Spirit to help heal the world.
As I rested in cooking before I gear up to a write a second version of my research proposal, I also devoured this book. To be honest, I found it just as compelling as the Screwtape Letters, because the people who are invited into transformation have such realistic, true-to-today reasons for resisting it. While I dont necessarily agree with Lewis’ abstract rendering of purgatory, I agree with his main idea that the people who want healing will find it, and those who want to remain deranged will continue to destroy their souls despite increasingly bad external circumstances.
As someone who is so prone towards the internal work that I am often tempted to take on too much of others’ responsibility only to discover I can’t do the work for them, the main character’s role as spectator to other people’s conversations with Angels sent to save them reminds me of times where I’ve had to let go and let people make their own [bad] choices or experience the consequences of their actions. As I get older, I’m realizing just how much my love of mercy and redemption has to come under submission to Jesus’ right application of it. Especially in situations where I have words of knowledge, clear sensing about what people are struggling with, I sometimes wish I could swoop in and rescue. But I have to wait on God and ensure that he uses this love of mercy in the right timing, for the right reasons.
In reflecting on this book, Jesus showed me more about his love for people who are absolutely depraved. In a deeper way, I understood God who was willing to come to earth entirely for our sake, having no need of it in himself. God saw the extent of human mess and was moved by pure compassion, because we were such a mess. Completely unselfish love.
If Jesus was the ultimate Redeemer, what can we learn in moments where he invites us into a partial emobodiment of that role? What does it looks like to lovingly choose not to rescue when it’s not in that person’s best interests? What does it look like to love just for the sake of those who are broken, with God’s love instead of human ability?
“Listen!” said the White Spirit. “Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again; even now.”
pg 40
“Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious soliciation from our desires, we reach a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.”
pg 38
“That is what mortals misunderstand: They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences,” little freaking how damnation will spread back and back into their past contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.”
pg 69
“Hell is a state of mind-ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind, is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”
“No one that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
This month, I read Arthur Holder’s Christian Spirituality… for a class on Historical Expressions of [Western] Christian Spirituality, and man was it powerful! I love books that give strong, contextualized summaries of different ideas. Holder’s summaries of these theologians beliefs about God and human beings are beyond useful to prophets or contemporary Christians trying to make sense of their own mysticism. As a Seer prophet and apostle, I’m hoping to find time to read this book slowly.
“Fervor must accompany reading; devotion supplements speculation; admiration completes investigation; exultation overflows from observation; piety fuels industry; love infused knowledge; humility serves understanding; divine grace illuminates study.”
Reading about Clark Moustakas’ model of Transcendental Phenomenology this month was empowering! I loved his framing of phenomenological research focused on affirming the dignity of previously marginalized research participants through deep listening, and how he sees research as an avenue of life and transformation to the researcher.
Next month, it will be a year since I was last on seminary campus, reflecting mightily on time. Since Isaachar timings and sequential elements of prophetic words/blueprints are something I spend the majority of my conversations on with the Lord, I so deeply related to Moustaka’s poetic description of his relationship to time. As someone who measures people, relationships, and most things in time, I’m longing for Eternity so greatly because God will provide us with time unlimited. I can’t imagine what it feels like to have that much freedom, but I can’t wait to find out.
This past year, I have found that there is a speed to price and a speed to humility, but pride can be slow, humility can be fast, just as they can be the opposite. Father, give us the grace to desire you so greatly above everything else that we can keep perfect, fluid time with your Holy Spirit.
Time has forever followed me, held onto me, experiential time, public time, internal time, external time, duration, continuity, intensity, presence. Past times I want to forget, or remember, a present moment that is stuck or frozen or moves too slowly or too fast; a future that holds so many uncertainties, warnings, forebodings, or one that offers opportunities or entrancements.
It was always time that entered each moment and brought me to my senses, splashed coldly onto the realities, or warmly touched and healed what mattered, time that brought the shadow and the light. Time is in my consciousness now, a constant companion, never letting me just be, without time, but standing by forever and ever.
Summers of contentment that ended with the turning of the leaves and the returning to the fall school life, before an internal readiness, before my internal time could speak. andmake itself fully known.
And fall seasons too that opened new worlds and enabled slow and gradual meanderings, that brought bolors and shapes that awakened radiant energy and rich experience.
Springs that opened my heart to new discoveries, to the excitement of adventure, to embracings of wind and rain and love. All at once these too were gone, much before I could recognize and cherish the miracles that had awakened in me.
Winters touched my heart and moved me fully into new rhythms of being and relating, into the meaning of chill, into the challenge of danger and adversity, and yet something inside lingered longingly after the sings of spring.
Time, oh time, you come so suddenly, entering my world, shaking and humbling me, teaching me the mysteries and agonies of living.
Time, slow and gradual, swift. andsure, too much of you when not needed, too little in hours of desire.
Time, you linger and endure, you create a sense of now, of yesterday, of tomorrow, forever. You take with you all that is and has been and ever will be.
I want to hold you back and rush through you, to live again, to feel the joy of silence, to answer the unfinished and unsettled within me.
82
Videos
This month as God condenses and narrows my focus, I’ve been watching short (30 minutes or less) videos, documentaries, or movies from Cinema Therapy or Omeletto (Youtube). I love the depth of friendship and analysis that the Cinema Therapy hosts bring to contemporary media and the compressed, full-story arches that the producers of the short films achieve. These videos have been just the right size for me to digest and continue to reflect upon during my waking hours.
Cinema Therapy: Harry Potter vs. Bullies
I loved this synthesis of Harry’s journey to overcome his avoidance or aggressive tendencies in dealing with bullies in the Harry Potter series. This video made me reflect on how God has grown my capacity to navigate controlling or intimidating people through a mixture of compassion and pity, and the many little decisions we all must make about how to steward our hearts in the midst of change. The right use of compassion to drive us towards solidarity with Jesus and towards relating to those who hurt us reminds me of John Swinton’s Raging with Compassion, which I hope to read next.
Lately as I continue to reflect on this video, my reaction time in moving towards compassion or pity is getting faster. It’s allowed me to remain present and embody grace’s ability to break off shame. I don’t receive the negative, punitive, fearful, or jealous ways they want to treat me, but I also remain present to the hurting person that feels necessary to use toxic methods to relate to others, or only knows how to relate using control. Remaining separate (rightly distant) but compassionate is helping me both take care of myself and know what to do with my love of mercy and redemption.
I am so ready for the standard among apostolic and prophetic people to change towards an engagement-based, empowerment model of ministry where no one is too weak to be included in the family of God.
I recently warned one of my team members that if she chooses me as a leader and my style of leadership, she should choose it because she feels loved and rightly supported, and because it’s life-giving. Do not choose me because of my anointing, the occasional amount of polish, or because I sound confident. All of those things can be easily faked. Instead, Lord would you give us eyes to judge fruit and not be obsessed by ministers’ external appearance. I so long for God to save all of us (leaders included) from this unhealthy “might makes right”, Harsh Father style of leadership. I believe that God is moving in this season to do just that thing.
Last Birthday
As I turned 29 this month and contemplated the time poverty and scarcity of freedom that so many people live with, encountering this video made me cry. It tells the story of the last birthday of a Father whose terminal renal cancer makes him miss out on watching his daughter grow up within a Southeast Asian context. I so related to his heart for his daughter and his frustration and grief about the limits of his body and the reality of evil/sickness. The horrible way that illness robs us of opportunities to encounter the fullness of Christ’s flourishing here on earth is a true tragedy. Lord, help us to receive your invitations towards life in the little and large moments, knowing that we cannot choose tomorrow.
I randomly encountered this song on social media, and it is the perfect explanation of the time-poverty, production-focused thinking I’m turning away from in Western culture. Just like striving, the song itself is catchy. It uses humor to describe a pattern of hurry-based, directionless toil. Previously, I probably would have taken myself too seriously to enjoy this song while being annoyed at the striving it exposes, but hey, it’s funny. The upbeat chords and Southern culture of the artists allow the song to expose nonsensical hurry through humor. To be honest, this song feels like an invitation to most people to laugh at themselves and laugh at the need to control timing. It also feels like an invitation to receive the courage to let go.
Prayer Requests
Wisdom, Clarity, and Grace around my timeline for Provision
Purity of Revelation for my team this summer as we press in for words about what Youth and Young Prophets Network will eventually become
Right People For God to bring the right people to Youth and Young Prophets, who have the same heart for the work and are motivated to partner with God. For him to give clarity on who should join the Network, Core Team, Intercessors’ Teams, and eventually, Trustees/Board.
Favor To continue growing in maturity, to experience all the right opportunities as the puzzle pieces come together in me and circumstantially all around me.
April felt like going through a full circuit obstacle course, ending at the beginning much better than I started. Despite being a reward season, this month was kind of a grind. People often think of reward seasons of rest and recompense as this blissful time when you are periphereally involved and there is no real labor. While this season IS a delight, the churning, birthing, emerging transition that is happening in the Global Church is affecting me personally and I feel a little all over the place.
Since God is heightening my internal ability to synthesize and sift (discernment), I can afford to shorten this post and posts in the future. I am hoping that as I write less, it will be good practice honing my voice to explain what I need to others.
Simple Pleasures
Weaving myself the first flower crown of the season! Figuring out how to incorporate daffodils for the first time. My fingers are remembering how to weave and it’s getting progressively less awkward. Frolicking.
Open-ended dreaming about the future, stretching myself to list out unexpressed dreams with a pre-2019 degree of freedom
Recent increases in angelic help (because I need it), the tangible sense of being prayed for
Having unstructured time again to get lightly lost in an internet rabbit trail or read books for hours. Haven’t had this kind of free time since December.
Early morning walks in the open land near me. As I meet with the Lord in the Garden in the Spirit, on the earth walking around in a cultivated park and field with him, the joy that comes from that “on Earth as it is in Heaven” synchrony. God knew I would need open land to walk on as part of inner healing, and he set me across the street from the perfect place. Every morning, I can literally take my mug of tea with me, walk across the street, and I’m free.
Flowing with the Lord in such a way that being on time to places is effortless. And where God’s using the characteristics of plants and animals to prophesy to me about what he wants to do in situations.
Getting further and further in physical shape, surpassing pre-COVID levels of fitness
My professor thanking me for having “germinated” a conversation among peers, her echoing imagery of seed beds. My spirit sighed with relief when she recognized and honored me for sowing seeds. I felt seen since sowing and distributing relates to my calling and name meaning and the specific reason God has me alive in this time period.
My last core course before research is with my favorite professor, using books I long to keep reading, with videos, short essays, and a very manageable final project 🙌 🥲
Directness as a love language. Delighting in people who also have a deep love for truth, which is communicated through extremes here in Seattle.
Freedom in hiddenness, being under the radar, joy in not being noticed because it means I have room to settle into a rhythm and let God determine the pace and course. Absorbing all I need.
Work! Not having to be better than I presently am at work. Room for my faults, such as being notoriously forgetful. Coworkers allowing me to come back to collect my things, bringing me lost objects. Being celebrated for my assets while not being judged for my faults.
For the sake of clarity, I’m currently working 30-32 hours a week at a retail location in Seattle so I can focus on my doctorate. I have never worked for such an ethical company or had this much fun at work! On this site, I will likely not disclose where I’m working except to close friends because past experiences with Christians levying word curses and witchcraft has made me hesitant to share more. However, I love my job so much.
Mastering how to make a warm and fuzzy connection with customers in 60 seconds or less
God bringing me new friends through work. Another Seer Prophet, 80-year neighbor with multiple theology degrees, a prospective student at my seminary, even more
Deliverance training with customers manifesting in front of me, staring deep into their eyes and speaking to the person on the inside that is being oppressed
Mastering how to tell a right-sized, 90-second funny short story, joy and warmth that draws people to my line, giving specific pastoral advice to people who need it, receiving “thank yous”
Seattle. Starting to really fall in love with this city. Loving how unapologetically weird the people are. Receiving impartation and being healed by the gifts in the people and in the land. As a friend, asking Jesus to bless the city with a move of God just because of how well they’ve treated me, their abundance of kindness.
Grateful for how fast God grows me, and the deep resilience he’s formed over years. Even in an extreme process/season, he makes the soil in me good for accelerated healing, for asking questions and learning, for absorbing lots. Even with ups and downs, grace for fast transformation.
God fixing roomate house dynamics through Blessing
Me exiting the nearby garden, returning home just in time to help my roommate move in new furniture, she had need of my help
Blessing us with an entire extra Instacart grocery order as a sign of his corporate provision increasing
A roommate who is humble, able to trade me ingredients, and receive the food I would prepare for her.
Finding my Voice
On a personal level and in ministry, my greatest challenge in April was finding my voice. After years of over-functioning, God is giving me greater confidence to articulate what I will and will not receive using imagery of pickiness with food. At the same time, Jesus is challenging me to receive things that I normally wouldn’t choose (still using food imagery), and I keep being pleasantly surprised.
In this season, I’m more aware of little interactions where I need to speak, but just starting to gain stamina in articulation. It helps to practice with tested friends who are humble and quick to listen. I’m grateful that though I’m in a transitional place, because of the tested ministry friendships I’ve built, I have the freedom to lead openly and apostolically. My team members see the grace on my life for strategy and leadership, and aren’t offended that I’m so young or that I’m still in formation.
This transition process has led me into hiddenness on purpose so that I don’t have to speak too soon. I so aspire to be the kind of leader that speaks and leads from the heart, but am so used to people noticing my gifts but not my heart. It takes a lot of courage to speak from that place, as is only fully possible with people who already know me. Despite the stretching of the season, Jesus keeps using my synchrony with his emotions to heal people at work, home, school, and church. At work, a coworker remarked, “You’re so good at that!” related to helping people open up so they can be comforted. Two of my favorite conversations from this month related to comforting a woman who had lost her sister 30+ years ago, and supporting a mom who was trying to figure out how to help her toddler know that she’s still loved as she becomes an older sister. In these early days, I run into a lot of people who are anxious, emotionally numb, or legitimately in darkness, and half of the process is learning how to meet them where they are at too, without doing too much. The grace is organically rising for courageous love (inner healing anointing, mass deliverance/inner healing), so I’m simply moving at the speed of grace.
In this season, there is a lot of imagery of building a garden with God My Mother. God keeps showing up to me as a Nurturer because I need it. He’s challenging me to simply make sure the rows of the harvest field are made straight for sowing, and that there is no crooked way that will distort the planting process.
I’m learning how to hide things from people when necessary so that they will see my heart before my gifts. Part of that decision is so that I feel respected as a person, but a greater part of it is because of my deep convictions about what is healthy and right in ministry. I’m making relational ministry a requirement in each of the spaces I’m leading, teaching members of my team how to love each other and pull well together, and be led by genuine love and concern without fear or smallness. Lord, let fearsome love define our ministry.
Highlights of the (Personal) Process:
Being trusted by God to determine the immigration timings, set criteria for transition for someone he dearly loves
Dreams, partnership with God about specific ways God wants to restore 2+ country’s national identities
God using my genetic link to a nation to restore that nation’s connection with its American-born descendants, relationship to America, heal it from famine
Synchronized timings, parallels between my family’s healing process, and specifics on how God wants to heal territory and groups
Getting prayer from another closed group of Prophet Friends through our monthly Zoom meet-ups. So grateful I put that group together and collected these specific people, so grateful we can do war.
God bringing me specific desserts in real life that I wanted, perfect weather, strategic help when I pray because he wants me to know that I’m still seen, that this inner healing season isn’t a punishment but a reward
For example, I had forgotten my metro card in my winter coat pocket, since we received better weather. I asked a coworker for a ride home, but he was unable. Then, I asked God to provide someone to either drive me home or help cover my bus fare. After I was already waiting at the bus stop, the same co-worker walks up, says that he’s taking the same route, asks the bus driver if he can double tap the card to cover mine, the driver says it’s fine and doesn’t charge us, and we delightfully catch up as I ride for free. These small episodes of favor are becoming an everyday occurrence because Heaven knows that I need it.
God opening up new doors of opportunity that are exciting but not yet shareable
Learning how to stack and collapse timings better for long-term words God has given me about personal life, ministry formation, etc. Multiple threads that I can layer and collapse when zooming in or out of the timeframe. Increased strength to spend 80% of my energy focusing on the present season, adding to or adapting the timeline based on present revelation.
Uncomfortable Moments:
As part of God healing the dynamic between a nation and America, waking up out of Watchman dreams where I am as hungry as a famine victim. Gasping for air because of the intensity of that hunger, needing to eat desperately as I come downstairs.
Visceral, full-body nausea for weeks whenever I tried to return to synthesizing a word for a nation whose purity is being fiercely attacked at the moment. The nausea didn’t shift until the Lord told me how to release the consecrated fire of God to consume impurity over that territory. Once that fire got released, everything flowed normally again.
Feeling the holy presence of God so close to heal, but him sitting directly on top of wounded places in ways that make me want to either run or punch him instinctively. Allowing myself to abide in position as God ministers to what feels like burn wounds.
Legitimate terror that I won’t be able to condense all the elements of my vision down into a coherent thesis project proposal for others. As I keep working on the document, things have become clearer but there was a several-week span where I would continue to write and write, and it would get longer and more detailed rather than shorter each time. Was freaking out. However, I’ve since realized that the editing and synthesizing process will be proportionate to the volume of what I have to say, and that a few extra weeks is probably reasonable given how long these convictions have been percolating inside me.
Extremely bored, listless, squeezy place of irritation once I felt completely emptied of previous season. So aware that I cant afford to go quickly, but lightly feeling trapped in the current timeline. Should be grateful for the process, but the temptation to see the season as a jail instead of a luxury hospital stay. And wanting to punch anyone who says I should be grateful. They can just eat it.
As soon as I had a few more nights of sleep and recognized that I was in the flesh, I asked God to fill me with whatever I needed for this season. And so the Lord started sending things I didn’t ask for that were surprisingly good, with the promise that the closer we get to the end of this season, the more he’d send things I most want.
Realizing that God is using my current housing situation as a parable about Church Reformation, and just not wanting to be a Prophet for 5 minutes. Wanting to zip myself into my hammock and pretend that I’m part of the furniture.
Reading excerpts of Augustine’s Confessions and wondering how I’ll ever have the courage to write autobiographical stories that are as self-revealing. Wanting to vomit all over again at the thought of that much exposure. When I think about the authentic leadership style of several Prophets I know (ex: Sarah Wren, D.), I am able to calm down.
Ministry Developments
After months of deliberate consideration alongside my mentors, this month I took steps to begin forming my team’s Prophetic Intercession for Youth and Young Prophets into its own ministry. As of today, we are hoping to continue meeting in the same once-a-month, one nation-a-month pace we’ve been developing. This decision meant that I had to formally remove my team out of the administrative structure of the organization that brought us together, and trust God with the unknown. Ultimately, leaving felt like an act of worship, entrusting the outworking of this ministry more fully to Jesus who alone knows fully where we’re going.
Highlights of Ministry Development
At Church: Starting to volunteer with the Youth Group at my church, being accepted as is by other Youth leaders and teens. They are eager to learn from me, and really listen when I speak because even though I seem a little weird, it’s obvious that I know what I’m talking about. Such a gracious group.
Youth + Young Prophets Group:
In response to my decision to fully surrender the outworking of the process to the Lord, God confirming in dreams that he will certainly establish the work I’m trying to launch related to Prophetic Ministry for Youth and Young Prophets. There have been moments where I wanted God to reconfirm his promise, like he reconfirmed the promise to Abraham multiple times. Fun fact: God only does that once we’ve given away everything, however, he loves to provide clarity once we are willing.
Ironically, more grace for apostolic building in ministry when I feel I’m at half capacity than if I were at full strength, grace to delegate, go at the pace of grace and focus on relational connection. This is the foundation that needs to be laid in order to be able to sustainably go faster later on.
Praying for God to increase and refine team member’s burden for the work
God releasing strategy for the next 5 months of ministry building, co-leading meetings with prophets in other nations to mutually prophesy into what the Lord will do in that territory among the generations. Being led by dreams about what specific nations to focus on, fruit and confirmation through other prophets.
Co-leading with a Prophet in France and her team, her receiving a dream our participation turning on the water from on high for the House Reformation God is doing in France. So touched by the way her daughter and daughter’s friend were prophets participating in the meeting, and that work of Intergenerational leadership.
Delighting in deepening new partnerships, excited for the day that I need to have translators help
Holy Spirit doing joy backflips in my chest during our meetings! Joy in Leadership:
Backing a team member to synthesize the word we’re developing for France, excited to be her extra set of eyes and give her the chance to synthesize the word with zeal. Trusting her with the assignment because of her heart, committing to simply help as she needs it.
Backing a team member to lead our May meeting with a leader from Denmark, we will be sending her with declarations to release when she travels there in person in June. Seeing her emerge from hiddenness, become a force.
Seeing the gifts of my team the more we prophesy together! Asking them things like, “Did you know you have a Breaker Anointing?” and getting to help them take early steps towards putting the pieces together. So grateful for this anointed group. Praying for them, seeing them more clearly, challenging them, learning their limits and filters, giving feedback to individuals in a group meeting, and specific bite-sized action points. God, do I love teaching.
They let me reel them in and release them! It’s a joy to lead.
Starting to figure out how to release purified water for inner healing, holy fire for deliverance when making declarations over territory/groups
Community Support:
One team member paying for us to have access to a Zoom subscription
God brought me our first dedicated intercessor for this group! We both mutually felt confirmation, and man is she a firehouse. So grateful to have the support.
This intercessor joins the 2 Prophets in this group who have been with me the longest and have become pillars, embodying Heaven’s quality standards for the group.
One prophet embodies God’s justice (my left hand), another prophet symbolizes his mercy (my right hand). I need them both to keep being themselves. With their help, we are steering properly.
My budding “Scribe’s Corner” group of 10-12+ Prophets who are called to write prophetic books, poetry, council-style national prophetic words. This month, setting up the online space, encouraging introductions, and using my constructivist Teacher-Ed background to have us collaboratively develop group norms. Seeing such sincerity and eagerness in the people that I could cry.
Low Moments
Discouragement. Strong temptation to quit, just coast for another 18+ months. However, I can’t manage to quit because the burden is too strong and I love my team/the future of these kids too much.
Isolation. Feeling alone and like a single parent trying to juggle multiple jobs. Staring at my team when I feel extravagantly stupid, nonverbally quoting Jesus in John 6:68, “Do you want to leave too?”
Yet, they are still here. Shared passion and the strong friendships we’ve built keep us together.
Furthermore, another closed group of 10-12 prophets has been sowing into us, exchanging strategies as cross-pollination, blessing us to launch, and participating in meetings. It feels good to have community agreement and help.
Growing Pains. Not knowing what to do with all of myself, feeling uncoordinated or needing an outlet for gifts that are latent. Feeling like an anointed mess, irritated with the parts of me that still are under formation and wanting to run fast despite having broken legs.
God has been showing me the on-ramp into the next season in response, as I have allowed him to tend to pre-existing wounds. Staying in one place and letting God heal me is what revealed the invisible “Jacob’s Ladder” of how to move forward.
Humor is my daily bread. As I felt as mismatched, delirious, and irritable as these lowlights suggest, I stumbled upon this meme and spent several days laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
Family Reformation
God is noticeably reforming my family. One of my favorite stories from this month involves my dad.
In March, my dad and aunt were on a Carribean Island. My estranged but rich brother had bought a property on the island to turn into a guest house on Air-bnb, and my dad and aunt had flown down to help restore the property in exchange for a vacation.
Before traveling, my dad and aunt started wrestling with whether to sell the family home in middle-of-nowhere Iowa so they could permanently live in paradise. God had brought my dad home to Iowa because he wanted to do a work in his heart, but after a long and harsh winter, they both felt restless. My dad was longing for more.
In calculating my brothers’ capacity, their responsibility to their families (who likely wouldn’t be able to fly to visit), the health insurance costs, and the way their children still needed them to show up and be parents, my dad and aunt chose Iowa. My dad reflected on what he felt was still lacking in his life, and repented of times where he’d been a terrible husband and father. He apologized to me and to my siblings. And for the first time in 4+ years, he made sure that fear and shame would not stop him from calling my twin sister and I on our birthday. Well done.
Watching my dad choose not to run away from home made me think about how much I long to see people redeemed. Redemption is such a big part of my story, and part of the heart of God. I think about the parable of the Prodigal son, and how much was restored in my relationship with my dad over the last decade because takes accountability. I admire his willingness to change and admit that he didn’t do the right thing at first. I’m quietly praying that God would use my life to rescue even more broken people, because of knowing that degree of redemption firsthand. God has been so gracious to me when I didn’t deserve it, he has gradually cleaned me up. I just want to see other people know that there is no mess he can’t redeem.
Worship
Names for God
These are the ways I’ve been perceiving the Lord this month:
Jesus, the Warrior
Jesus, the Most Beautiful
John 14:8-9 God who knows the Heart
God of External Circumstances
Asking God to send external circumstances to prompt healing without determining what those should be
God who Heals (external)
God who Chastens
Grateful that I don’t have to decide, but can ask him to respond externally as he sees fit. Remembering a time where he explicitly asked me for my input in determining the redemption process with a former boss, where I got to choose mercy. Grateful for how that season prepared me to intercede.
Jesus, the Tree of Life
The God of Water and Fire
Considering Gregory of Nyssa’s Contemplation on the Life of Moses, how a heart on fire for God is like a burning bush
Considering water as a sign of cleansing, purity (James 3:11), healing words
People can’t get clean with dirty water
People can’t see themselves reflected rightly in the Kingdom unless the water is clean, pure
Times where I feel God beginning to call me to release his consecrated fire, his cleansing water through embodiment
Sense of burning (fire) or antiseptic (water) in the center of my chest
Asking God to open the eyes of my heart so that I can discern how to impart different things
Entering into Seeing in the Spirit by sensing Jesus’ emotions, internal sense of what he wants to release, the fruit that comes after
Verses
Psalm 81, especially verses 6:10, as someone who is experiencing how God redeems nations after famine.
Habakkuk 2:20, The Severity of the Moment
“The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him. “
Luke 1-3, thinking about the Intergenerational Response to Christ on my team for Youth + Young Prophets, grateful for elders who stand in the gap sacrificially
Thinking of Mary (Luke 1:52), and how a high degree of favor will always come with a proportionate high degree of cost. At least she perceived the cost. Even so, she still welcomed the Lord.
Hanging out a lot in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son
Believing that not the Samaritan, by the distant neighbors on the sidelines were the most wounded in the story
Likewise, the sons in the house who hadn’t achieved repentance were most in need of the Father
Wondering about the hidden parts of our stories, the hidden characters who represent least engagement with the. divine
Hiddenness for the sake of connection with God (leaving some aspects undisclosed) vs. Hiddenness as demonic hiding
What is hidden will come into the light, not in fear but because what God reveals, he heals
Grace for the immature, the fearful, the territorial, the excluded to receive healing
As I trust God with the unknown this month, I keep remembering what it was like when I first chose Jesus nearly a decade ago. There is such a deep sense of being drawn back to similar music; a renewal of commitment to this long-term process of transformation. As I’m aware of God healing what feel like burn wounds in the spirit, I’m grateful for God of the Long Process, for the deliberateness of the decisions that he’s led me to, for the way that he makes it possible to keep comprehensively choosing him. The love is deeper than it was in the beginning, but I still like to look back on that time.
Resonating with God’s heart for redemption. Relating to what it is to reject Jesus, remembering times in my life where I was the one to reject him. Recogizing that in this season, I’m receiving Jesus’ reward that I could never have earned. This season of simply tilling the ground, letting the rows be in straight lines so that the right things can be sown, so that I can find the ingredients I need to birth the right thing and not give birth to a disaster. Such a desire to do well and see life be the outcome. Abiding in the Lord who brings all good things to life.
I was in a cafe working on my (doctoral) research proposal when I was caught off guard by the vulnerability of this song. To be honest, I hadn’t really heard it before, but was really touched.
I was listening to the lyrics, thinking about how I’d re-write them to worship Jesus. Jesus is the one who teaches us how to be strong when we’re scared. Man or woman, he is the one who is strong enough to handle the entirety of the mess. Any measure of strength we have, any amount of courage to speak truthfully to each other has to come from him. True strength is knowing you need his help, and relying on it.
My Seattle mentor let me borrow this book, and man is it an excellent tool for discernment and repentance. I love that Rick Joyner allowed himself to risk rejection in writing a series of prophetic visions into a book. I read this book in a Seattle hot chocolate shop while sitting near Dungeons and Dragons players, and loved how the similar imagery would resonate with their hearts.
“Spiritual maturity is always determined by our willingness to sacrifice our own desires for the interests of the kingdom or for the sake of others. The door that requires the most sacrifice will always take us to the highest level.”
page 82
“We have witnessed many wonders since the creation. But the voluntary suffering of men for the Lord and for their fellow man is the greatest wonder of all. We, too, must fight and even suffer at times, but we dwell where there is such light and glory that it is very easy to do this.
When we see men and women choose to suffer for a hope that they can only dimly see in their hearts, it causes even the greatest of angels to bow their knee and gladly serve those heirs of salvation. We marvel at the dedication of you who dwell with so little encouragement in a place of such darkness and evil.”
page 100
“I was motivated more by hatred for the enemy than by the desire to set my brothers free. Since coming to the mountain and fighting in the great battle, I now think that most of the right things I did, I did for the wrong reasons, and many of the wrong things I did, I had good motives for. The more I learn, the more unsure of myself I feel.”
I had a strong impulse to revisit the Sound of Music this month even before Spring frolicking weather hit me. Man does that movie hit differently as an adult!
I can so relate to Julie Andrews’ sense of being not quite sure what to do with yourself (in terms of context), ministry of joy, overseriousness in trying to put puzzle pieces together, eagerness to serve God, love for children and music. God bamboozled me in watching the film, because I had forgotten all the plotlines related to relationships and relational dynamics. Nevertheless, watching the movie as an adult gave me a much deeper appreciation for how the film portrays them.
Prayer Requests
Greater perceptivity. The grace to listen with my eyes, ears, senses all at once and be comprehensively more tuned into God’s emotions in the moment (specifically on the cash register). My baseline reactions to be deeply tactful and quick.
Gradual release into leadership. The right gradual progress of increasing leadership and capacity; not too much too soon. Continuing to lean into the process of God helping me discover tools for ministry in hidden places.
Right refilling. Now that I’ve fully poured out what I had, grace to continue to absorb what I need, to discover new favorite things, to continue in the progression that leads towards growth.
An abundance of love. Love grants us endurance to find our way through the eye of the needle, which feels like this season. Love to be able to overcome and to build rightly.
After a turbulent February, in March, God removed nearly every source of toxic stress from my work, home, and ministry. For probably the first time in my life, I am free just to enjoy the season. I’m quietly in awe, wondering what all God will produce in my life now that I don’t have to live under as much pressure. He is further boundarying this season as a time of joy, safe pasture, favor with people, filling in necessary skill sets without pressure, and holistic recompense. With significant amounts of joy at work and deep but manageably-paced ministry, I’m guarding my time so that I can continue to receive. Based on dreams, the choice to wait on the Lord and receive will have the effect of adding a layer of quality, luxury, and abundance to whatever I produce later on.
The first change is that I’ve chosen to remove my “goals” section from the beginning of monthly summary posts, which I included in November, December, January, and February because it was part of a greater process of internal stabilization and acclimation to Seattle as a city. While I am still focusing on Quality of Life, Community, Expanding Skill Sets, Holding Salt, and Developing Resources as seasonal goals, I feel that God is organically outworking them in various areas of my life. Essentially, I can afford to put less focus on it.
Photos in March: Adventure Days in Seattle
I often start my monthly summaries with pictures, and I will do the same going forward. However, this month, I felt the need to further separate the pictures by theme. I will take of the tag “Photos in [Month]” for April’s monthly summary, but felt it was necessary to illustrate the change right now.
Photos in March: Lots of Cooking and Eating
The majority of the meaningful photos I took this month were related to food, since being nourished by God is such a theme of the season. This month, I spent so much time in the kitchen, preparing things with God. In March, I learned how to make Spanish squid ink paella, Italian mushroom risotto, fried and braised Filipino chicken adobo, roasted vegetable broth for soups, and many Brazilian-style fresh pressed juices. In peace, I learned both how to elevate simple things and simplify elaborate things.
Food has been a big part of my recent adventures with God and family. An archetype moment from this month was getting dramatically lost on the bus on the way to Church, deciding to ask for help, waiting, getting rescued by my mom in her car, and then going for tamales after. Getting into a tentative rhythm of doing approximately biweekly Sunday afternoon meals at my mom’s house has been a similar part of that process.
Simple Pleasures
Since I’m no longer in a season of traveling and transition, I’m bringing back my “Simple Pleasures” monthly summary section in order to celebrate my favorite things God has done.
Daily
Staring at the stars and drinking tea on the porch after coming home, wave upon wave of fresh hyacinth fragrance
Getting free bubble tea, chocolate mousse eggs, and fancy fruit from various places. Having extras to share with my friends and housemates!
Seeing how much gold God has put in young but anointed people in my church. Watching Christ’s light emerge from how they lead without needing them to be perfect.
Having time for slow mornings, processing, and solitude. Going to evening church service instead of the morning options because it’s so peaceful, simple, and pure.
Sunbathing in the park with a book
The relatable dynamic between the hummingbird family that lives within our weeping cherry tree
Sharing wine with housemates, reluctantly but eventually analyzing reality TV as a series of case studies on human nature
Continuing to learn Italian, becoming more kin to the rhythm of the language
Playing and making up rules for nonsense games with coworkers, using things like mops, brooms, and baskets, with the hope of spinning a giant wheel for prizes. My boss has designed a full-scale Easter Egg Hunt for our staff this coming week, and I’m so excited that I’ve been eagerly hunting Easter eggs in my dreams. 😜
Getting a full body workout through lifting boxes, walking, living up multiple flights of stairs, and carrying groceries
Finishing building IKEA furniture, and unpacking the little green suitcase of my life’s trinkets and collections. Nesting and grouping objects by nation.
“Aha” Moments
I’m adding this section of “Aha Moments” to document significant realizations from this month. Independently, these are the ideas that I tend to spend the most time nurturing and have the capacity to grow from seeds into stories.
Co-partnership with God through My Thesis Realizing that God has designed my thesis as a net that will gather testimonies of what God is going in the United States and the globe in the next 18 months. Earlier, I received the blueprint for how to form my thesis, and at least some of God’s desire for how it would help provide an onramp for Contemplatives and Charismatics to receive from each other and the Holy Spirit in the next 200 years. However, I am only seeing now how God is going to back my thesis and externally facilitate events. The entire thing will be a curation of testimonies of Jesus, including testimonies from encounters that have yet to happen yet but will soon.
Opportunities to Receive Turning the process of receiving what I need from God into a game. Every morning as I leave the house, telling God, “Today I’m giving you an opportunity to help me receive”. Coming back home (more often than not) with gifts far beyond just the things I needed. Recently, I’ve been getting so used to having an abundance of resources that I’ve stopped asking for things, but people. While I have plenty of people in my life through friendships, church, work, and housemates, so long as I can determine the amount of time I spend on others according to my own terms, I never get tired of collecting more.
When I asked God to send me more people, he arranged for a friend I met through my Church’s Youth ministry to encounter me at work. She gave me a schedule update that I wouldn’t have otherwise. On the same day, he sent me a young woman who happens to be discerning whether to apply to my current seminary, and made plans to connect. That day I continued to come home with free things, but the people element was especially wonderful. Since I’m starting to internalize abundance, I will just keep delighting in receiving more people.
Freedom from Mischaracterization: Who Gets to Write the Story? This month, I spent a lot of time considering how seeing our lives as living stories can be a source of freedom from the fear of mischaracterization. When a person becomes a character in a story, their narrative becomes open for public debate. As an audience, readers cast all their insecurities, aspirations, and desires onto the characters’ lives, relating to them in some ways, and rejecting them in others. Personally, I love my privacy. I’d be content leading a mostly private life. But as God drags me further into leadership and the potential of greater exposure, I have to understand that it is inevitable that my story will be misappropriated. The desire to speak with my own voice and use my own words drove me into journaling at 9 years old, and will continue to motivate my writing. But I can’t change the fact that people will stand at the margins, judging from a convenient distance, assuming that they know my story or widely share their opinions. The people who know the truest version of events and people are not usually the ones who stand far off, but the ones who are very close, which is why historians love to interview eye-witnesses. It’s not up to me to broadcast a story that is free of limitations or challenges, a version that everyone can get on board with. It’s up to me to remain as innocent as I know how to be before God and give Heaven something to be proud of, through the story I embody and what stays alive in ink. Getting free from the fear of mischaracterization isn’t achieved by more grit, it’s achieved by greater freedom (surrender). Let people think what they want to think. Furthermore, God’s recompense for frequent mischaracterization isn’t in public vindication, but in being more fully known by him and the people who really love you.
Figuring out My Function
As I had more time to rest, God reframed how I should relate to specific gifts he’s given me. He provided clarity about how each gift is meant to be used and shook off word curses that others’ had released over these gifts.
I Definitely am Dramatic
While former friends may laugh to know that I am only just now figuring this out, I finally can see what my mother meant during all the years she called me “dramatic”.
In my defense, knowing how to be dramatic in the best way has only really grown through the freedom that God has given me over the past few months at work. The atmosphere is so healthy, low-pressure, and free that I’m able to utilize the same silly nonsense that I have used to connect with young students to relate to grown-ups. It’s the same silly goofiness that outside of the classroom, I only used to share with friends who had invested in my life for many years. This tends to look like using charm or carefully composed, dramatic pauses when delivering a message to turn most things into a joke. It looks like telling absurd or benignly-irreverent stories to customers, and childlikeness with staff. Now that I’m under less pressure, absurdity often rises to the surface, and who am I to stop it?
This process of learning how to lean into being silly has taken a long time. I’m remembering times in early elementary school when I used the same drama and charm to avoid learning how to tie my shoes, but would flatly refuse to dance to certain music because it felt humiliating. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that during that stage of my life, not-tying my shoes was more about receiving nurture, mixed with irritation at the complexity of the process and reluctance about the necessity of learning a new skill. As an adult, I was happy to dance to similar humiliating music in the classroom because it gave joy to my students, but for my own sake, I still feel like a drowned cat when I’m forced into singing karaoke or similar things.
It’s taken a while to recognize that humor which has been part of my family for years is actually one of the most powerful tools I have to connect with people. Though I’ve watched my dad’s self-deprecatory humor and clowning for years, his use of humor always felt forced or transactional. I prefer only authentic silly nonsense, not performance. When it’s done right, humor should be less dark, more childlike, and purer: just nonsense for the sake of nonsense without even a glimmer of manipulation. When I lived in D.C., I was aware that I needed to learn how to be more myself with a greater amount of people. As it turns out, the only way for that capacity to have been restored is by removing every source of pressure and having a more peaceful life. Figuring out how to use that same charm and humor to connect with other people in a way that feels emotionally safe has been a tremendous source of joy.
Receiving Blueprints and Prophetic Teaching comes from Sensing Emotions
In this season, due to being aligned to the grace that is on Seattle as a city, the majority of the prophetic words I give others fall into two categories: words releasing the emotions of God for a situation and words related to strategic blueprints and building.
Yet, it’s taken me a little longer to understand how my gift of sensing is really at work behind both of these. Within Western culture, we often tend to assume that logic and emotions are separate. For me, that cultural barrier has prevented me from explaining most accurately how I function in prophecy.
When I get a blueprint, it normally always starts by sensing an emotion based on a need I notice or a common trend. I press into the feeling first, then clear pictures or specific words generally follow. I end up with detailed notes and plans, but then often do not know who they are for (ie, which group is meant to take them on) until I do some exploration. For example, in January, I sensed a strategy to develop national prophetic words, polled a group of friends for interest, and then only found the right setting after speaking to a leader who was recently given a desire by God for a similar national prophecy in her group. The partnership has borne fruit so far because we both brought our portion to the table, in capacity, interest, and gifting.
I know that the teaching is prophetic and from God because it is spontaneous, very rarely related to topics that I naturally know much about, and easily forgotten. Some of it is stuff that I have yet to learn, and depending on the topic, I write it down as I release it when it relates to areas that I need to pursue further. It reminds me of times when I’ve given prophetic words about people’s seasons, callings, or functions and promptly forgotten the word when I’ve walked away, but remembered the person’s heart or reaction. I know that the gift of prophetic teaching is limited when I feel a sense of obligation instead of that stirring, or when people are clinging to me instead of seeking clarity from God. Similar to the grace that is on other 1 Corinthians 12 “gifts of the spirit” (like healing), it usually only comes in proportion to people’s earnestness.
Prophetic Teaching
In the same way, when someone asks a really savory question about God or the prophetic, when I wait on the Lord, I often get a sense of internal stirring. The more I press into the emotional tenor, the specific flavor/color/texture of the person’s curosity, the more the description flows out of my mouth or out of my fingers (written or spoken Nabi flow) as I try to distill the emotion into words. It nearly always sounds highly strategic and often does turn out to be accurate. But! The clarity and the polish is always a result of the process of distilling emotions. Since God I has used so many cultures that value emotional integration to form me, it isn’t surprising that my function as a prophet is based in emotions and sensing.
Memory
To be fair, God’s design for me has probably always been based in emotions. One way I see evidence of this is through my memory. Similar to how I remember landmarks and not street names, my memory isn’t memorized by events, but by people and strong emotions. I create systems of spreadsheets and documenting dreams and events to compensate for the fact that on my own, I would hardly remember anything. Generally speaking, after I have answered a question with prophetic teaching or given a word of blueprints/strategy, I nearly always forget. I will usually remember the texture of someone’s personality, preferences, and family details because I enjoy people. Because I have such an affinity for words, I have learned that I generally remember names only after I have been able to visualize the spelling or write it out multiple times.
Word of Knowledge for Inner Healing comes from Sensing
This past month, I had an experience that God used to show me how this capacity for sensing is meant to help in ministering to people’s emotions. I was at an event related to international missions, and as I sat down to the person next to me, I sensed overwhelming fear that did not belong to me. As I pressed into the texture of that emotion, the fear was about being sent abroad to the missions field, lack of provision, and fear over surrendering control over career more comprehensively. Later in the day God provided a cozy setting for me to speak to that person, and as it turned out, it was their fear. I was able to look them in the eye and speak strengthening to their heart, and impartation of being able to trust God, and releasing grace to experience the peace of God in the unknown. There were a few points I needed to challenge them on, but it was framed mostly from the perspective of experientially knowing who God is as Provider. The feedback from this person was generally positive, and helped me understand how to use my senses in the future. For this individual, anxiety was a barrier that was keeping them from experiencing the fullness of God’s love for them. Only by returning to the love of God can we find the clarity that is waiting there.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18
And yet, God did even greater things in my sensing this past month. He redeemed and reframed early experiences of trauma in my life as a strength for ministry! The methods may not have been my favorite, but I was impressed by God’s decision to use it. Essentially, there was a moment earlier this month where God was calling me to sense demonic strongholds over a group. He sent the beginnings of what felt like a panic attack as emotions that felt much more intense than my own. The emotion felt like a need to escape, hide, and lack of being able to breathe. The experience allowed me to identify several principalities that I probably wouldn’t have been able to sense on my own. It reminds me of times where God gives ministers phantom pains so that they will be able to call in physical healing, but as related to releasing (or standing in the gap for) Mass Inner Healing to a group of people. Later on in my ministry, I get the sense that God will use this gift to help me discern and respond to the emotions of children or vulnerable people who are not able to articulate for themselves the help that they need. While I’m not thrilled about having to bear the emotional discomfort of these experiences, if these experiences are the “canary in the coal mine” that helps get vulnerable people get to freedom, so be it.
Identity
God has been providing conditions to have deep conversations with coworkers about the gospel without me really changing anything. For example, one of my coworkers loves to talk about the ethics of Jesus. I indulge him as a way to remind him of his early life experiences in the Church before he began to rely on his own understanding.
This coworker asked me very nonchalantly, “What is your favorite bible verse?” And as Jeremiah 29:13 came spilling out of my mouth, I realized that God’s design for me was always probably more focused on emotions and sensing than I consciously realized.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13
As I kept exploring the heart this month, I needed to rewrite my Identity statement. I became irritated at how cerebral the earlier version was, and there was fresh grace to write a clearer version. In this draft, I simplified some language, added structural elements to make visible the themes God has been working out in my life, added more context and missing pieces of my timeline, more family information, and reframed experiences in order to connect more thoroughly with people. Since it’s a living document that I’ve already revised many times, I’m sure this rewrite won’t be the last.
Two Kinds: Symbolic Dreams and Word of Knowledge Dreams
In another conversation this month, I finally found the words to describe a kind of dream that I often get through another Prophet who gets similar revelation. In the conversation, she described dreams that carry a very pure quality, where God reveals specific words of knowledge that she needs to know for ministry. This could have to do with the connections between people, specific timings of events, and other information. As I listened to her, I realized that I’m not alone in getting this kind of revelation.
As it stands, I generally get multiple dreams per night when I am fit and physically well-rested. I wake up multiple times in the night to jot down dreams semi-lucid, and return to sleep to wake up fully rested. I then transcribe, catalog, and interpret my dreams accordingly.
Depending on the needs of the season, at least 40% of my dreams are word of knowledge, while another 60% are abstract symbolic dreams that require more time and interpretation for me to receive the message. The word of knowledge dreams are so purified, to-the-point, and immediately useful to help me parse what God wants me to do that I’ve started calling the Lord, “God my Contractor” because of the updates he gives me in dreams related to building my ministry or other interpersonal things.
When I get word of knowledge dreams, I’m usually excited to write them down quickly because I tend to need them in the very near future. When I get abstract dreams, I have to go on a longer process that includes a rest period, a pressing period, and multiple “clearly locking into place” moments when God solidifies and complexifies my understanding. I tend to let the abstract dreams rest for about 1-2 weeks minimum before transcribing them. When I transcribe symbolic dreams too quickly, I fail to digest them, forgetting important details in ways that leave me liable to miss the point.
I also tend to revisit my dreams as necessary (based on God’s timings, how he weaves things together in the natural) and when I cross into a new season in the Spirit. I usually know it’s a new season because it comes with a different emotional texture, different grace and new skill sets, clarity that was there before, and freedom. Since God sends you the grace and seed-sized gifts that you need to overcome at the beginning of every new season, I review my dreams from 1-2 seasons back (minimum) because I have fresh lenses from which to understand them. Generally speaking, whenever you step into a new season, you can reap a fresh harvest on your dreams, gleaning more insight from dreams you’ve already process or parsing dreams that were sealed before.
Investing in my Team
This month, I spent more time investing in the team of Prophets I’m supporting to prophecy over Youth and Young Prophets. As we started prophesying over the Youth of England in February and experimented with Prophetic Consulting for a German city in March, I spent additional time covering them in prayer so that they would be rooted in love, raised in family, and released into purpose. We are getting to the point in our meetings where we regularly share the most recent words that we are carrying for youth, openly talking about what makes us passionate. I’m focusing on helping them steward the burden well, find right positional placement and function for their gifts, and praying through barriers related to work, family, and life that need to be sorted for them to emerge into further ministry.
As we experience breakthrough, I’m recognizing the authority I have as a leader to call in good things over them, break off demonic assignments over their families, and hold the standard the cultivate a relational refuge ministry. As people catch godly passion, they are discovering how to utilize their bit to contribute to the shared vision, which produces momentum and excitement are building to partner with God. In April, I’m planning to spend more time studying how Paul prays for the Churches in the greetings and closing sections of his letters in order to understand how to better support them.
Praying for My Leaders
In healthy churches, leaders pray both for those who they are feeding as well as for their own spiritual mothers and fathers. Even as I invest in my team, I’m taking time to pray for the leaders who I’ve given an oversight role in my life, who embody Jesus’ Deuteronomy 6:5 holistic wellness.
One leader is emerging as an Apostle, but with many years more experience than me. I’m praying that God will increase her metron, giving her physical strength and stamina, ease and favor in ministry, and the capacity to bear greater weight. The Psalm 36:7 imagery is God stretching her to become an even more robust canopy for others.
Another mentor is a Shepherd who God has used for multiple decades to safeguard the holistic health and well-being of individuals called to the Office of a Prophet. This month, I’m praying that she would experience an equal measure of blessing to the grace she pours out over other people.
In both of these people, God has given me the specific help that I needed. I’m really grateful for their generous investment in my life and believe that whatever fruit I produce in ministry will also be credited to their account (Galatians 6:6).
Celebrating My Mentors
Benefiting from these women has caused me to reflect on the many people in my life who since childhood, have adopted me for a season. It is wild to consider the amount of grace and gifting God has added to my life through the Spirit of Adoption. Proportionate to the degree of closeness, I have seen gifts that their families embody transfer to me and enrich my family through the same spirit. I’m amazed by how God cross-pollinates people groups and ministries so that each individual, family, and ministry would receive grace that they wouldn’t have on their own.
In this March dream, I was in a game-like scenario where an assortment of people had to humble themselves to get the food that they needed. It was different than the food that they normally would have eaten in a previous season. For example, I saw Los Angeles Californians humbling themselves to collect bulky carby potatoes. [Receiving from traditional sources] And I saw Old World Anabaptist men humbling themselves to collect newer, hip, niche varieties of heirloom tomatoes [Recieving new things from old sources that have been transformed]. God was creating the new thing by changing the sources that nourished us. Through cross-pollination in nourishment, he created cohesion.
Favorite Moments of Being Led
In reflecting on what has caused me to love and trust my leaders and bosses, God reminded me of specific moments when it was a joy to be led in the last few months.
Specific moments where mentors have explicitly communicated ways I can contribute, their limitations, and given me clear feedback for what to expect. The way they both embodied and honored my core value for clarity and honesty.
Specific moments of patience where leaders demonstrated a lack of partnership with offense. As someone who perceives conflict as low-stakes problem-solving at least 40% of the time, I appreciate other leaders who mirror back the capacity to patiently gather information, explore solutions, embody Christlikeness, and communicate a vision for restoration. These leaders also hate preventable loss and exude maturity that removes the potential for festering long-term issues.
Moments where leaders have praised the quality of my work, the way I connect with people, the strategy behind how I lead or implement a vision. Since strategy delights me, having leaders that honor the great effort I make to be strategic is life-giving.
Moments where leaders saw my natural inclinations (like attention to detail) and promoted me so that I could effectively use them. Moments where my gifts weren’t a threat but an asset.
Moments when leaders have provided specific information and words of wisdom for how I should approach other leaders because they love to see the Church relate to one another as it should. Moments when leaders have celebrated effective bridges I have built and encouraged me to continue developing grace with people.
Moments when leaders model generosity in their approachability, time, patience, and wisdom. Seeing them not harvest the gold in people for their own benefit, but co-invest in the people and reap a mutual harvest. Feeling affirmed in my value for generosity by seeing it echoed in them.
Moments when leaders have encouraged me to cast vision or hear from the Lord without being afraid of risk. Moments where they didn’t idolize risk either, but released me into the proportionate authority that I could bear at the right time. This has meant neither overloading me with responsibility before I’m ready for it nor denying me the appropriate amount of freedom to rule.
Moments where leaders have acknowledged and praised the amount of cost I have paid to see new expressions of ministry established. Instead of ignoring or disregarding the cost because it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge, leaders have recognized and valued ways I have denied comfort, because they have also lived it.
Any time that a leader mirrors the way that God is speaking to me, revealing himself to me in that season.
In general, when leaders have invested in me, I invest in them. I am so protective over who I let speak into my life, because I know that as I develop youth ministry, the way that people treat me is the way they will treat my kids. I have to seek out healthy leadership for myself if I want my team of adult leaders and the ministries we develop to embody the same characteristics.
The decision to prefer healthy leadership and seek it out exclusively reminds me of a moment this month when my boss embodied the values of Father God. While she is not a Christian, she mirrored Jesus’ emotions in this moment so effectively. The night before work, I had gotten lost in the process of making major decisions for life and ministry, and had failed to check the online schedule. I assumed that I was meant to be at work several hours later, and my shift was earlier than I thought. When I failed to arrive on time, my boss left me a message without condemnation. When I showed up to work as quickly as I was able, an hour after I was supposed to arrive, my boss’ recognized that it was likely not intentional and was primarily concerned for my safety. In that moment, she helped dismantle the remnants of perfectionism still in me, that say that my value is equal to my performance. Foundational moments like these are what ultimately create families out of people.
Ten thousand people may teach you about Christ, but I am your only father. You became my children when I told you about Christ Jesus.
1 Colossians 4:15
Reminding myself that God chose me for this work is easier when I see myself the way that my healthy mentors see me.
Sacrificial Love vs. Spiritual Warfare
This month, I spent most of my time interceding for people as a woman and friend rather than as Prophet. This has looked more like believing God’s best for them while I actively entrust them over to God than Strategic Spiritual Warfare (SSW). I’m convinced that knowing how to switch out of declarations and into Jesus’ sacrificial love is actually more aligned with God’s heart for restoration in this season.
Drawing upon Jesus’ sacrificial love for healing reminds me of when I was about 10 years old, and drew from some experiences of God’s unconditional love to reform my family. One day, I saw that my dad was struggling very tangibly with even his own poor choices. I wanted more for him. In the middle of a grocery store entryway, I very sincerely told him “I love you”, and he started to cry. We remained frozen like that for a few minutes, and a little startled, I tried to pull him out of incoming foot traffic. But it had touched something at his core, and he needed to just cry. You see, at that point in my family’s history, no one on either side of my family said those words to each other. However, the impact of the sincerity behind those words ultimately changed the trajectory of my family. Over the next several years, people began to say those words to each other on either side of my family, and the tradition has lasted to this day.
In knowing more about adults’ failures and walking in more clarity than was proportionate to my age, God redeemed these early experiences to form my deep value for redemption, forgiveness, and restoration. Every time I have contended on behalf of someone’s well-being in prayer from the same sacrificial approach, healing comes, whether sooner or later. The purity that is on children’s lives, the simplicity of wanting better for people you love makes this approach at least as effective as Strategic Spiritual Warfare to see individuals, groups, and nations set free.
Encounters in Worship: Sacrificial Love
This month, I partnered with God to release healing through Jesus’ sacrificial love when I encountered him in worship. This month, encounters would often start with me washing Jesus’ feet or something similar. In these encounters, his face would eventually change to resemble specific people from my past, largely people who hurt me. I got the sense that God would pour out grace for community healing as I ministered to them in the vision.
It reminded me of a dream I had at the end of December 2022:
I was an older leader whose only way of moving forward was worship. I saw God use it to form something wonderful, but it was at the altar of worship. And then I positioned myself to be sought out, once we had made the necessary adjustments. When it ended, I saw myself in a ministry team. Like, there was no separation. “Take it all, Jesus”. It was seriously dangerous to let God come so close because he wasn’t going to harm you, but he could change everything. Everything you thought you knew about yourself, and your ministry in a previous season. All changed, all adjusted. We chose Jesus either way.
God’s power to heal and redeem people is so much greater than what human beings can effect in the natural through conversations, counseling, ministry sessions, etc. God’s standard for his Church is more grieved not when we’ve failed to bring the right word, but failed to love and contend over people. He cares more about how well we love than accuracy, and he uses every hidden sacrifice.
Ultimately, God doesn’t just redeem people, he redeems entire communities. The story of Job was the story not just of one man’s life, but one man who God used to redeem his entire community. When Jesus promises to make “every wrong thing right”, he promises it not just to individuals, but their entire family lines, their children, the generations and generations of their nations and to the land itself. In this season, God really is making every wrong thing right in communities. He is restoring families of people and weaving new families out of his wholeness.
We don’t just speak in tongues to “recharge” in the Holy Spirit or declare truth in power. We speak in tongues to commune with God’s emotions, get his perspective on what he says about people, and commune with his love for communities. The mantle for mass healing and deliverance is always linked to this sacrificial place.
As my Pastor recently said, Jesus is both the Healthy Father and the one with the Eyes of Fire. He is aware of all of our cost, yet he is unwilling to leave us where we’re at. He sends clarity, refinement, purity, and calls for change because he wants more for us.
When has God called you to take a Strategic Spiritual Warfare (SSW) approach? When is he just calling you to intercede as a friend or family member? God always shows us revelation so that we can partner with him in redemption. Even when partnership looks like actively entrusting situations, people, and groups over to God, trust is action.
Jesus chose to die for his friends. His strategy was to be motivated by love.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Operating out of the Office of a Prophet or Apostle
Intercession out of Love and Friendship
Looks Like: Discerning a specific strategy based on revelation to bring redemption or wholeness to people, nations, or land
Releasing Declarations that have that effect
Looks Like: Remaining in prayer past the point it serves you as a person and seeking others’ wholeness (2 Corinthians 11)
Mechanisms: -Spiritual Authority matters (Fatherhood or Motherhood) -Love for a nation matters (love them like a person). Similar to the way God loves nations is like loving people (Jeremiah 31:20) -Active involvement in the Resolution matters
Mechanisms: -Purity of Heart matters (James 5:16) -Spirit of Adoption matters (Book of Ruth) -Sacrifice matters (Luke 5:17-39, Genesis 22, 1 Samuel 1-2) -Active involvement by faith matters
Why does it work? God aligns people’s senses with his urgency for repentance, releasing conviction (not condemnation), and articulating a specific path towards wholeness
Why does it work? God aligns people’s hearts with his so that they can partner with him to release purity and truth. Alignment with God’s heart creates effective warfare.
How does God Reward Sacrifice in the Life of Jesus?
In Jesus’ life, God rewards him for not just coming in authority, but choosing a posture of sacrificial love. Isaiah 49:5-7 demonstrates the way God chooses to honor Jesus.
And now the Lord says— he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am[a] honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength— 6 he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
7 This is what the Lord says— the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel— to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: “Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
Isaiah 49:5-7
In this passage, God:
Worships Jesus for all his work
Vindicates Christ in the eyes of the nations
Extends the covenant not just to Israel, but to the nations. Honors Jesus by giving him not just Israel, but the nations. A greater amount of inheritance in land in people.
Promises to use Jesus to save people “to the ends of the Earth”
Like a grain of sand in the desert, Jesus was truly exceptional, truly unique. He is the most important person who ever has or will be born. A man who chose smallness on Earth, God will give him eternal grandeur and Rulership in Heaven. Through his sacrifices, Jesus shows us that love always makes a better way.
Names for God
Since December, I have been describing way that God reveals himself to me each month by giving him different names. This month, I’ve organized it into a separate “Names of God” section to further explore thematically-timely ways that God has been revealing himself through the text of the Bible.
Some of the names I assign to God are found in the text of the Bible, and I have referenced them accordingly so that other people will understand his character. Other names are completely new! Similar to the way David creatively gave God new names from a place of intimacy, I assign him different names based on my recent experiences, that correspond to biblical revelations of his character. Finally, some names are even polemic, reattributing praise back to Jesus by using names that are borrowed from other cultures, but more purely exemplified in him. An example of polemic reattribution of praise is found in the Exodus account, when God judged each Egyptian deity by exposing their limitations and reassigning their virtues to himself, as the One True God (1 Corinthians 8:6) and God Most High (Psalm 47:2).
These names tell the story of how I’ve come to relate to the Holy Trinity each month, and how that process has enriched my journey.
2 Corinthians 1:12 “For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.”
God of the Proportionate Response, Who responds to our degree of repentance or stubbornness
God who Gives to each one what they deserve (Romans 2:6)
God who Teaches me to Hold Promises Proportionately Lightly to the Size of the Word
Bringing the word actively before God and entrusting it over to him again and again
As God gives the promise back, he always does so with greater clarity, hope, and detail (Genesis 22). He never leaves a work unfinished.
God, Master of the Human Heart
Psalm 97:5 The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth.
God who from the heart provides wholeness, holiness, right function, organically overflowing life
John 7;38 Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’”
God, My Contractor
God who gives convenient updates on where he’s at in the building process and commits to building the house himself (Psalm 127).
God who Finishes what he Started
God who Calls us each to Take Ownership and Participate in the house he is building
Haggai 1:2-4 2This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’” 3 Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”
1 Peter 2:5 You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
God of Abundant Life
John 3:35-36 The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands. 36Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”i
Not believing in God’s promises, God’s word, in the testimony of Jesus, will always produce death
God of Perfect Justice
God who engineers stories at a meta-level, designs ripple effects that will redeem the long-term stories of nations with various characters involved)
God, the Final Word
God who ends uncertainty by his perfect words
Christ, My Redeemer
Similar to a situation at work where we were playing a silly game similar to hockey. My friend who was on the losing team had felt guilty about letting his teammates down. When one of the players on my side bailed to continue overworking, I asked this friend if he wanted to know what it was like to be part of the winning team. We then won the next round, and he said that having the chance to redeem himself was really cathartic.
How many times does God offer the same opportunity to us, if we are willing to receive it?
Favorite Worship Music
Music reflects not just names of God, but his ways.
Earlier this month, I felt Psalm 116 overflowing praise towards God, in ways that kept surging like water. In this song, the vocalists seem to mimic the same uncontainable praise through the connectedness of their phrases and vocal runs. I love how they’ve taken time to embody heart posture of overflowing praise not just by the lyrics or the composition, but by the way they perform it.
If you have read these summaries for any small amount of time, you will know how obsessed I am with Ada Ehi’s joyful worship. This song has probably gotten the most love out of any I’ve shared on this site. In the song, she touches on mischaracterization, how God is the one to lift up, and how God rewards sacrifice. This song makes me admire how when we completely surrender plans, timings, methods to God, he always does things perfectly.
This month, I worshipped God to this song in the Unknown. It was like I was facing a completely unfamiliar, open space, and my worship floated into that emptiness, forming it. Worship is meant to call forth substance, and it was cool to see Jesus as God over the Unknown. There is such freedom in worshipping him with that degree of extreme flexibility.
Verses and Themes
And I’ve added a “Verses and Themes” section to further explore thematically-timely ways that God has been revealing himself through the text of the Bible.
Receiving what is Earmarked in Heaven
John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. 28You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but am sent ahead of Him.’ 29The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom stands and listens for him, and is overjoyed to hear the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30He must increase; I must decrease.
John 3:27-30
I love that John the Baptist was actually the one to name Jesus, “The Bridegroom” within a New Testament context. I love that John did so as a fruit of humility. I’m fascinated by this line, “A man can only receive what is given him from heaven.” If God hadn’t earmarked Christ for such greater glory (Isaiah 49), he would have never received it. This reminds me of how the Holy Spirit determines to each person what they will receive from God in destiny, gifting, and metron, engineering his story perfectly through surrender (1 Corinthians 12:11).
Overflowing, Uncontainable Praise, Psalm 116-128
What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?
13 I will lift up the cup of salvation [Jesus] and call on the name of the Lord. 14 I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
15 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants. 16 Truly I am your servant, Lord; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains.
Psalm 116:12-16
The Spirit of Adoption in the Story of Hannah and Eli, Joseph and Jacob
Hannah: God used the Spirit of Adoption, Eli’s blessing, and Hannah’s purity of heart to allow the grace on Eli’s family to pass to a more righteous heir than his biological children. In the same way, God has adopted us all into his family (Romans 8) and allows grace to pass from his family to ours.
Joseph: God used the Spirit of Adoption to count Ephraim and Manasseh as Jacob’s own children, removing the bitterness of having them born into a foreign land and people group. In the same way, God removes the stigma of us not belonging to him (Haggai 1:4) and becomes our true Father.
God blesses Ephraim (“Fruitfulness”) more than Manasseh (“Forgetting”). While Joseph needed to forget his trauma for a season in order to thrive, God’s fruitfulness ultimately overtook the memory of his pain. In the same way, the life of Christ works its way in and through believers’ redeemed lives on the earth in ways that are far greater than their previous experiences (Psalm 126). God’s story ends in fruitfulness. Heaven will essentially be an experience of neverending fruitfulness with the one who always writes a better story.
Today, God also pours out the Spirit of Adoption to adopt people groups, individuals, and families to one another. In Hannah’s story, she initiates this exchange through her desire to bear a [godly] child. In Joseph’s story, Jacob buys back (redeems) Joseph’s children from the experiences their father had to live through. For this reason, Manasseh’s son (who is counted as Joseph’s own child) is named is “Makir”, which means “Bartered” or “Bought Back”. Like Jesus, Joseph bought redemption and new life (in the face of famine) for his family.
Godly adoption on Earth will always mirror God’s actions as the one who initiated the adoption of his people. This has implications for leadership in ministry, family, and social structure in general. On Earth, Godly adoption within a family must be initiated by individuals in the leadership role (parents) to mirror the way God seeks his people out. In a godly marriage, adoption must be initiated by an individual in the leadership role (a man) for the same reason (Genesis 2:24,Matthew 19:5,Mark 10:8,Ephesians 5:31).
In ministry, Godly adoption must be initiated by those in leadership towards those they are called to gather, nurture, and raise. Similar to the dynamic between Eli and Samuel, for the apostleship to be healthy, apostles must invest and nurture those they gather long before those sons and daughters are ready to take on the responsibility of leadership. Love always comes before discipline. Investment always comes before direction. Though Apostles generally embody this mothering and fathering, seeking and initiating capacity most tangibly within the Church, it is a responsibility for anyone who wants to lead well in society. I’m seeing this steadfast nurture modeled so well by the lead pastor at my Church and the integrity he displays in private. You can catch a glimpse of it in this sermon.
Media
These videos, movies, and books stood head and shoulders above the rest, this month.
Best of Youtube: Cinema Therapy
As someone who *clearly* loves analysis, it has been a joy to find this Cinema Therapy channel on Youtube. In this channel, a film producer and a family counselor conversationally analyze various modern movies from their separate perspectives, imparting layers of depth to the experience and exploring the quirks of the characters.
In this analysis of the movie Inside Out, the discussion focused not just on child development, but how sadness and joy are essential foils to one another. Towards the end of the video, the family counselor embodies this awareness when he talks about the death of his mom, and how even the happy memories he has of her have a tinge of sadness because he misses her. In general, I’d recommend this channel to anyone who loves complexity delivered in digestible ways.
On how Love is Deepened by Enduring Trials:
“There is a type of love that is only experiened by sadness,
A type of joy that is only experienced by grief.
And in a lot of ways, its the most beautiful of all, because when we give each other comfort, we show compassion. We show empathy. That’s the most beautiful form of love there is.”
This month, I was ill at ease with some of the sins I noticed in my nation. When I watched Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes, it felt like visually visiting a history museum and reminded me what I love about my nation’s past, and what I’m believing for its future. I love America’s honesty, belief in redemption, freedom, pioneering spirit, belief in social class equality, and natural beauty. This documentary is about the legacy of Beatrix Farrand, a woman Pioneer in the field of Horticulture, whose effect on the field of public gardens and landscape design is similar to the effect Florence Nightengale had on Nursing. Her expertise in the exhibition of the beauty of America’s land reminds me both of my family’s history of land stewardship and the way God would have the physical land of every nation flourish.
This month, in order to visually process some of the conversations that I was having with God on the theme of adoption, I knew that I would need to watch a movie addressing that topic. In my human thinking, I imagined I’d find a documentary or some such thing. Yet when that path felt fruitless, I stumbled into this movie, which ultimately ended up finding me.
I love the composition of this War and Peace miniseries, which breaks the great tomb of a novel into more digestible segments and highlights the main idea of the book, which is “People’s lives have many chapters.” The imagery of deconstruction during war and resurrection during peace felt apt for the season, and I appreciated the way it followed the same characters for a period of over a decade. The closing of the book and the imagery of springtime reminded me of the long arch of God’s story toward new creation. The last line of the movie quotes Tolstoy and carries similar, gospel-sized seeds of hope. Here is Tolstoy’s original quote, and the part in bold that the miniseries directly quoted. Compare it with
They say: “Sufferings are misfortunes.” But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God’s sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.
Leo Tolstoy
But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ. 8More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ,a the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.
10I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Phillipians 3:7-11
Best March Quotes from Books
I found several quotes this month as I worked on the proposal (plan) for my doctoral thesis that made me think about the sacrifices I have made in ministry, and how good things always come at a cost. I’m grateful that Jesus models that same love of surrender that makes such freedom and sacrificial risk possible.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
T.S. Elliot, Little Gidding IV in Finding Our Way, Leadership for an Uncertain Time (pg 242) by Margaret Wheatley
Do I experience the demands of love as an intolerable shirt of flame? I know I feel there is no escape from this path, but I dont yet know that this path leads only to fire. I do, more and more, feel as my companions those from all centuries who followed the blinding path of Love, who willingly donned the shirt of flame and wore it to their martyrdom. Recently I’ve been reflecting on how strange we are, my generation, to believe that we can help birth a new world without it affecting our career progress. I’m aware of how little courage our lives have required of us. But Life keeps raising the stakes.
…
But Love is not satisfied by logic. It may be that we’ll accomplish the latest revolution with grace, that we’ll marshall the powers of nonviolence and people will willingly surrender their ideas and their power because they are too tired of the violence and impotence. But maybe not. Maybe the only route to Love is fire, or fire. I don’t know this, but that I have had surrender to this as a great possibility. I have had to confront whether I am willing, if asked, to forego the life that holds me so securely and comfortably. And I don’t know what I have answered, because life hasn’t answered me. I believe. I have recognized the shirt of flame, but will I be asked to wear it?
Finding Our Way, Leadership for an Uncertain Time pg 243 by Margaret Wheatley
Prayer Requests
Greater freedom and peace, greater abundance of Christ’s life
Protection over the boundaries of my time in this season, both in daily events and in the full length of the season. Nothing less than the full measure of time that I need to receive from God.
This month was beautiful and confusing. As I navigated interviewing for different jobs, I joked with a close friend about the sensation of being excited about the possibility of one role one day and feeling like I was disillusioned and excited about something else the next day. “Is this what indecision feels like?“, I asked her. She laughed because indecision is her daily bread. As someone who has always been pretty self-aware and motivated, I knew what it was to become irritated with double-mindedness, to slow down and be patient with people who need more time, but not to legitimately lack this degree of clarity for myself. The process of being completely unsure and being led gradually in the right direction was an eye-opener.
Conserving energy at home and elsewhere, more boundaries training. People grace (to relate to people with a high degree of favor/influence) and boundaries growing at the same time (proportionate pace).
During this Reformation season, more compassion to see people as Jesus’ house, Jesus’ pet projects. More freedom to empathize but stay out of the work, blessing the process but unwilling to get involved.
Focusing on nutrition and the body. Lots of imagery of God nourishing me in dreams, lots of deliberate time in the kitchen and exercise at work.
Community:
Going on a retreat to Whidbey Island with my Church’s Outreach (Homeless Ministry) Team
More time and joy with roommates and friends
Expanding Skill Sets
Starting to learn Italian! Wooed by the movie “Luca”, dreams, the rhythm of the language, and the similarity to Portuguese. We’ll find out if it’s just a language to learn for my personal interest or one of the 12 languages that will be part of my shared ministry. It’s a little daunting to start something new, knowing that there have been times when I start a new skill only to have God telling me that it’s not the season or that I need to stop because I’m overextending myself and he’s content with what skills I already have. Either way, I have a good feeling about this, and the pronunciation feels natural.
In general, learning about resources related to supporting low-income people, myself included. In slowing down and owning my own needs, more grace to relate to average people’s experiences, which has meant a deeper sense of community and greater range.
Being encouraged by my South African Prophet Friends
Scribing, Synthesizing, and Sharing our words and declarations over nations. Helping our leader develop pure guidelines for the national prophecies that come out of our workgroup
Very gradually getting back to a place of extravagant curiosity (my default setting) now that I no longer feel like I’m treading water
Inner Healing:
Increase in Extreme Inner Healing Encounters in Atmospheres of Worship
Feeling liquid pressure inside my chest as a sign that Holy Spirit has internal work to do
Allowing extreme visitation, deeper yielding → Trusting God that it won’t be more than I can handle, and letting nearby friends know so they can help me come out of it well
Example: The physical sensation of God knitting back together pieces of my insides. The sensation of different pieces of my heart being sucked together by a vacuum tube at the center of my chest.
The best part of this inner healing season hasn’t been any ministry appointments, but having healthy leaders at my local church and a longer period of modeling, receiving
Reminding Myself: My portion in this season is joy, safe pasture, ridiculous favor with people, recompense in time + honor + finances + holistic wellbeing (physical + Spiritual, not just mental + emotional), God generously filling in missing pieces in experience/skill sets that I will need
Greater signs following me into work, to the point where my new boss noticed (Mark 16:17-18). Spiritual sensitivity and people grace increasing with intensifying accuracy (“feeler” gift, emotions is growing in layered depth). Church friends increasingly asking me for input to help them parse their extreme encounters.
Involuntary Sleep Training is back (my prophetic “normal” of dreams, semi-conscious encounters, and Watchman middle-of-night wakeups). Specific themes related to being instructed to call in the promise, reassurance, the vibrance of God’s life (Gen 1:20), and more.
Locally:
Out of the acclimation stage and into what feels like a stability period of being in Seattle. The timing of how long this period will last is unclear, but I’m definitely no longer just adjusting. Shifting into strategy mode, figuring out how to use my skill set most effectively. Will be following up on leads related to supporting teen ministry and “Praying for the Nations” prayer group at my local church.
As a Doctoral Student:
Exploring strategies for writing books and theses
A Beautiful New Workspace
This month, I finished getting furniture for my apartment. I finally have a dedicated place I can study, pray, worship, and prophesy. I spend about as much time communing with God and writing in my hammock as standing at my desk. I’m thrilled that it can be disassembled and thrown into a case for outdoor adventures and when guests need a place to sleep.
Who Jesus has Been to me in the Storm
Earlier this month, I was delighting in finally falling into stable rhythms, excited about my new job at a bubble tea shop down the road. And yet, just as I was finishing setting up my workspace upstairs, I was notified that because of a renovation being delayed at the store’s new location, they would not be able to afford to keep me. I would need to start looking all over again.
*Cue exhaustion tidal wave*
After the obstacle course of the last 12 months and needing to bring in rent money, I had no energy left to start over. Around this moment, Jesus and I officially entered into an Ezekiel 47:5 “waters have risen above my head” experience.
5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6 And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?”
Ezekiel 47:5
On the one hand, I knew this day was coming. It felt like a natural step in the progression of growing greater trust in God. It was also timed at the moment when I would need the most help, and was fully out of my own strength (which admittedly, took a while, because “survival mode” has been a default setting in my life). I’d already experienced these overpassing waters in other areas of my life, but due to the amount of change in such a short time period, I was just hoping to catch my breath. God wasn’t unaware of my exhaustion, but he used this opportunity to show off just how well he loves me.
When my strength failed, I was not alone. A friend swept in with overflowing joy, helping drive me around to 3 separate neighborhoods to drop off resumes, visit the library, and have fun exploring. We didn’t just take care of business, we got gelato and told stories and jokes. And as the Lord had reassured me of his intimate concern for my needs, he dismantled my fear of lack to such a degree that I am just not afraid anymore about how he wants to work things out in my future, across the board. Seeing God so fiercely show up to advocate for me is changing me. It’s not immediate, but it goes deep.
He has already provided a new job. I already have a paycheck coming in in the next week, and I only have to work 4 afternoon/evening shifts a week to make enough money so that I can focus on what I love most in the mornings: prophecy, my doctorate, and developing ministry work with youth. Ironically, he’s worked it out so that my living expenses are very low, and I will be able to save more money a month doing less stressful work than I was able to save in my last 18 months of teaching. Bigger than that, my tolerance for disruption is growing. Just like in June, God is still showing me kindness in unexpected places and showering me with desserts.
Moments of his Goodness
This last round of insanity reminded me of significant moments in the last year where how Jesus responded to my circumstances through dreams was perfect. I get the sense that this February was a month of heart health for me and a lot of people. For that reason, I wish everyone could know that this is really what God is like.
In May, Jesus stood in the gap in maturity, honoring my sacrifices. He was a mature man who honored me, with the heart posture of someone who would wash my feet.
In August, he told me to keep my chin up and let me feel how proud Heaven was of my courage. He declared that he would repay me for long-term dishonor against myself and the women in my family, with the imagery of various significant people from earlier life lined up to apologize.
In January, he gave me dreams about deep healing, saying that his finished work would be worth it, like chocolate. He healed my eyes and gave me lots of help.
In February, he was excited like a child. He told me to just watch how he will call back in the promises he has for me. He gave my spirit an opportunity to sense his excitement for the finished work, and egged me on, asking me if still wanted the blessing.
Sacrifice, Insisting on the Right Amount of Time to Build Properly, and Holy Passion
As I have been job searching, I have intentionally chosen to pass up other opportunities so that I have the time to heal and build towards ministry with youth properly. Honestly, my decision to sacrifice for the right reasons has baffled my family. They know that at my best, I have a lot of capacity. And they don’t always understand why I would choose an uncertain future in faith rather than just pick a job that would earn me as much money as possible.
But I don’t want to just be paid in money. I want to be repaid in time: time to grow, time to receive, and time to be a human being before these dreams of ministry become a reality. The decision to invest in ministry sacrificially is tied to my greatest dreams and my identity. I’m driven by holy passion to invest in what I love most. As someone who uses time as a love language, I’m spending the best of me, my most productive morning hours, to see these things established. I’m working afternoons and evenings so I can afford to give away the best of me.
At work, at Church, and in other places, Lord has surrounded me with communities of people who invest in me and treat me right. It’s redeeming a standard of ministry in me so that I will only be able to reproduce that same kind of wholeness. Building quickly or under pressure will not have the effect of giving my children the same kind of abundant life as if I let the Lord build it (Psalm 127). Besides, he has promised to come to collect me at the right time, when it’s his expansion timing. Even though other people have tried to rush me prematurely out of the desert, I will wait until he calls me out. I think of what I want for my children and how protective I am of giving them the right time to grow and develop, to emerge into the men and women God would have them become. I must imitate that.
This May, when God gave me a choice between the head and the heart for my birthday. Choosing the heart and internal wellness is what brought me to Seattle. While I couldn’t know that at the time, I’m glad it did. So many leaders and organizations miss this crucial piece, full of the excellence of Jesus, spiritually overflowing with signs and wonders, but out of touch with God’s heart. They are limited in their capacity to reveal his heart to others. I want my [future ministry and bio] children to have the wholeness of Deuteronomy 6:5, and I want them to have such grace with people that people run to them to know God. This sense of holy passion for youth (0-18s) to have greater access to Jesus keeps me sacrificing towards the goal of developing a holistically healthy, spirit-led youth ministry that overflows with the life of Christ.
Lately, I’ve been getting to do what I love most in being a friend to youngish, 20-something believers in my local church. They are learning the gift of prophecy, having intensifying dreams, and learning to love Jesus not for the signs but for intimacy and the depth of his character. I love being with them. I love getting to be the person they ask questions, being the backup person to text when they have extreme encounters and need help because it was scary, or want help with interpretation. I’m teaching them that there is no contradiction in Jesus’ humanity and his divinity. I’m reminding them that the closer they come to God, the God of Perfect Wholeness, the healthier they will be, and the more tangible their humanity will be to others.
I love being an approachable Prophet. I believe that leaders should be the safest people in the room. They should be able to say to the people, “Practice on me, prophesy to me” when they are afraid to take risks and have such relational credit built up that people come out of their comfort zones to meet them. In love, they should be able to cover, support, and encourage. Good leaders can point people back in the direction they should go, calling them back into their right minds. There is no shame in admitting that you need help or are vulnerable. This kind of love also restores people who have been damaged by the Prophetic. It reminds me of times I’ve doubted the Prophetic because of how people have harmed me, but then spend some time with prophetic friends who are also full of the love and life of Jesus. Every time I walk away thinking, “Surely, Jesus must be real” (Rev 19:10).
Whatever God establishes is healthy, safe, and good. It’s full of freedom, love, deep intuitive oneness, resonance, and understanding. We are never too big that he can’t cover us, and we are never too broken that he can’t put us back together again. Out of God’s love, there is an absence of fear, control, and misunderstanding because people press in to see how Jesus sees themselves and others.
Jesus, you have my yes. For whatever crazy things you want for me.
Digging Deep: Strategy of Reflecting on What I Want for My Children
There have been various times this month when I have been at a loss for words. I have not known how to answer complex situations or make sense of external pressure, especially when there are power imbalances. It has reminded me of David facing Goliath: feeling so comparatively small, yet knowing that God is with me.
I have discovered that when I don’t know how to speak, there is a simple way to find clarity and direction, based on how God made me. When I don’t know how to react, I just reflect on the love that I have for the children that God will give me in ministry. I think about what response would be in their best interest. It instantly matures and clarifies me. It instantly gets my eyes off my own feelings and allows my experiences to be transformed into something greater. This love is the place of my greatest wisdom, humility, and favor with God and man. It reminds me of how Jesus set his joy before him before and during the cross, and how in his story, God is making every wrong thing right. It makes me realize that Jesus’ capacity to overcome sin and answer in perfect purity must have been because of the immeasurable depth of his love. He was unwilling to do anything that would have caused his people damage. And he carried out his mission to the end. I am grateful that I have a purpose to wake up for every morning and feel a little sorry for people who aren’t living from that place of purpose. In my life, God will see generations of children in the nations established.
Maturity: Being More Honest about Sin
This month, I felt God prompting me towards greater honesty when it comes to a healthy understanding of leadership, especially when it comes to how we address the faults of those we love.
When we are young, it’s easy to believe that everything we see on someone that isn’t from God is from the enemy. And in a strictly logical sense, that is true: the enemy is the one who provides the material for every wrong and evil thing. But there are also times when what is not good on a person isn’t just the enemy…it’s them. The things they’ve partnered with, the things they have deliberately chosen. When I was younger in my walk with the Lord, I used to think that every Watchman dream I had about what people were struggling with meant that they were being harassed…only to later realize that sometimes those dreams were about what they’d chosen. And I’ve struggled to know how to respond when people aren’t just victims of evil, but active and willing participants. To my great horror, there are moments where I’ve seen God’s best plans for people alongside Satan’s best plans for their lives, almost like two diverging stories.
Once maturity comes, I think there is room to be a bit more honest about the partnership between human beings and the demonic. In Jesus Christ, there is room to admit where we have been corrupted by evil. It takes a degree of taking responsibility for sin that many people fear, because of anxiety about rejection and exposure. Still, God is good and like David, he restores those who repent earnestly and from the heart. When you look at a person’s life and the fruit that comes out of it, you can sense when there has been genuine repentance. This is the reason Jesus died: not just for the people who sin unaware, but also for the times when all of us have sinned on purpose. God can rescue anyone and restore many things, and when there is true maturity, there is accountability, confession, ownership and comprehensive turning from sin, acceptance of consequences, internalized wisdom from failure, and transformation that leads to the fullness of God’s life.
When I think about what it means to learn from failure, I think of my dad. Within our family, he initiated a running joke that he has failed at everything he ever did. If I’m going to be completely honest, it’s not terribly far from the truth. When I was younger, I saw the negative way that he and my other parents lived (parents + step-parents), ran in the opposite direction on purpose, and ended up finding Jesus. But just like the Book of Ecclesiastes, my dad’s many failures have softened him and allowed him to walk away with wisdom. Though our relationship was strained when I was younger, because of the way God has transformed his heart, we can now talk and laugh about just about anything. His willingness to be honest about where he has struggled in his life formed me as a young adult to be unafraid of failure. He’s always encouraged me to never sell myself short, and I think that in addition to what I’ve inherited from him as an adventurer, a writer, and a scholar, his encouragement has been the basis for a lot of my courage. He is sacrificially honest and wants more for me than he has had for himself. In spite of his failures with women, he redeems himself by encouraging me to know my worth and advocate for it.
When I encounter people who are still afraid of making mistakes, I always wish I could send them to talk to my dad for a little while. In wisdom, he’s become a good counselor because he can relate so well to people who are struggling with the weight of sin and condemnation. His life reminds me of times when instead of condemnation, I needed nurture and people who would be patient with me in the long process. It makes me think of how sometimes the Lord gives us glimpses of where we’re going in advance to measure us, so we’ll know what internal work to do and have a vision for the outworking. He allows us to fail, measuring us and letting us know our faults in advance so that we have a chance to do the work. He does that because he loves us and doesn’t want us to fail when the real thing comes. Still, just like my dad has needed to genuinely change in order to grow, we all have to choose to sacrificially lay down our lives to develop the grit and wholeness for leadership.
If I’m being honest, there are still circumstances in my life with seemingly impossible solutions. However, I’m confident that when every person does their part to grow into maturity, God finds ways of showing up.
Holy Passion: Stewarding the Responsibility of God’s Emotions
Just a little earlier in this post, I shared about how having a sense of purpose that is related to my calling and identity has motivated me to continue sacrificing towards the goal of developing a holistically healthy, spirit-led youth ministry that overflows with the life of Christ. However, I don’t think that having that sense of clear identity, calling, and purpose is something that God reserves for specific people. I believe that God wants to use people’s emotions to teach them how to commune with his heart for specific communities he’s called them to invest in.
In the West, the idea of fellowshipping with God’s emotions can strike some people as intimidating, especially when they have come from cultures where numbing emotions or emotional detachment is common. While Western churches are right to focus on the mind of Christ (excellence and strategy), while they do well to focus on God’s power (intensity and reformation), they tend to miss God’s power through emotions. People who are afraid of exposure or seeming unhinged can be skeptical that humans can even fellowship with God’s emotions at all. Western Christians have at times failed to understand how God purifies our emotions, overfocusing on emotions as a negative path to temptation rather than a holistic aspect of Jesus’ life.
Other people fear the cost of engagement, rightly recognizing that sharing Jesus’ burden for different communities will require a deep level of commitment. Instead of viewing fellowship with God’s emotions as a blessing, a gift, and a prophetic responsibility, Christians arrange ministry into a series of disconnected appointments and duties.
Whether we like it or not, Christ’s ministry was emotional. He laid down his life for his friends, not for abstract responsibility (John 15:13). God’s invitation to Israelite captives in Babylon was emotional because their hearts had become disconnected from his purpose.
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13
There is a much greater danger in dismissing your emotions or seeing emotion as primarily negative. Realistically, Satan understands that humans have emotions, just as God does. When we fail to surrender our emotions to God and allow God to purify them, instead of being led by holy passion and godly fire, Satan uses our emotional detachment to corrupt us by other lesser loves. Realistically, it’s holy passion that keeps you from apathy and sin when it would be much easier to compromise. When it comes to our hearts, neutrality is an illusion: holy fire is the only thing that prevents decay.
In training and supporting generations of Prophets and Apostles:
What would it look like to teach people the process of how to receive God’s emotional burdens well? What opportunities exist for communal prayer and investigating holy discontentment? What clues about calling and purpose exist in what grieves, irritates, surprises, or energizes us? In the West, what ministry opportunities could exist for altar calls, laying on hands, abiding in God, and pursuing his heart?
What would it look like to teach people to steward the burden of God’s emotions well? To give them examples not just of biblical prophets but modern leaders who were motivated by holy emotion, and the progression of how they sought God over their lifetimes? How can we support young and emerging leaders to make sense of their life stories, their identities, and their callings? How can we support them to take strategic steps to investigate their purpose well? How can we support them in the embodiment of Jesus, to become the best “living stories” possible (Psalm 139:16)?
Favorite February Movies
This month, one of my favorite movies was El Sueño de Ayer, a movie focused on the history of Mambo music and based on Latin American Magic Realism (my favorite genre, alongside sci-fi). In the movie, Dámaso Pérez Prado, a Cuban Mambo mastermind, comes back to life in the metro of Mexico’s capital city and starts to look for a woman whom he had lost many years before. The movie isn’t exactly PG, but the soundtrack is fabulous and it’s a story of redemption.
Here’s Mambo No 5, one of Pérez Prado’s most popular compositions, in case you’re curious:
Favorite Quotes from February Books
Like January, I’m pulling the best quotes from these books and unpacking them so it’s clear why they were special!
Have you ever read a book and thought to yourself, “This is exactly how I think?” In reading Eviatar Zerubavel’s Clockwork Muse as a student this month, I felt so understood by Zerubavel’s focus on time as a concept and abstract imagery. As someone who is highly wired to think about time and speaks in abstract visual metaphors a lot, he speaks my language. I’m reading this book in preparation for writing my doctoral thesis, and later on, other books. I’ve been writing regularly since I was about 9-11 years old and have plenty of journals from over the years, but I feel like it’s finally the season of life where these ideas about book composition are accessible and not terrifying. I’m going to use this thesis process as a time to figure out my rhythms and explore what strategies will work well for me in the future.
Given how much I’ve been talking to the Lord about reformation lately, I love how Zerubavel compares book composition to house structure. I love how these quotes all have a subtle bent toward redemption and how God redeems mistakes.
On the Importance of Not Rushing the Process
Although you may very well end up producing acceptable, and sometimes even good, manuscripts in only one draft, you may never et to find out how much deeper, more sophisticated, and more polished those pieces might have been had you revised that first draft two or three times. As anyone who has ever painted a room knows, althought we eventually get to see only the last coat that has been applied to a wall, it is actually the extra coat underneath it that usually gives the final product its somewhat richer texture.
pg 47-48
On the Connection between Writing Multiple Drafts and Finding the Gold in People
As Mario Vargas Llosa puts it, “the first version is written in a real state of anxiety. Then once I’ve finished that draft …everything changes. I know then that the story is there, buried in what I call my ‘magma’. It’s absolute chaos but the novel is in there, lost in a mass of dead elements, superfluous scenes that will disappear…It’s very chaotic and makes sense only to me. But the story is born under there.”
Speaking My Language in Sensory Visual Metaphors
By producing several drafts from start to finish, you will also maximize the quality of what you produce. If you distribute your creative “highs” and “lows” across drafts that are written months or even years apart, you can acheive the kind of smooth, high-quality consistency once usually tries to achieve when spreading butter or jelly on a slice of bread.
This month, I read Jackie Pullinger’s Chasing the Dragon. I found that her level of commitment to the people of Hong Kong was effective because it mirrored Jesus’ emotions. I also loved her sense of humor, and willingness to talk about her awkward moments in early life, formation, and ministry. The way that she describes English, Hong Kongese, and Americans in the 1960s/1970s is particularly hilarious to imagine since I know background information about each of those communities and the specific time period. It’s like being told a story about interactions between your mutual friends. I also found that her experiences in helping Hong Kong’s citizens get off heroin is very similar to what my church’s Outreach Team (Homeless Ministry) is experiencing in supporting Seattle to come off fentanyl, which is so inexpensive that it has quickly outpaced the region’s use of meth, heroin, and cocaine.
People probably start reading this book because it’s accessible, but stay because Kleon packages his simple ideas with such remarkable integrity. This book should be read at least once by everyone who considers themselves creative, and at least twice by everyone who is too intimidated to give themselves that label. I imagined Jeremiah having a glass of wine when Kleon encouraged his readers to enjoy captivity.
“All you need is a little space and a little time–a place to work, and some time to do it; a little self-imposed solitude and temporary captivity. If your living situation doesn’t allow for that, sometimes you can find solitude and captivity in the wild.”
Worship this Month
This month, I’m labeling the worship songs that cycled through my spirit and mind during the day and night with the names of God that I attributed to him in each one. I’m sharing these little details because it adds a layer of complexity that invites other people to seek and find him in music.
“God, the Incomparable”
“God who Makes Every Wrong Thing Right”
“God Whose Promises are Better than We Expected”
Finding God in Secular Music
“God, who Alone Knows the Future”
I chose this song with a sense of humor because of the title, but it kept me because of the rhythm and Luis Enrique’s good looks (lol). For those who don’t speak Spanish, the lyrics are all about uncertainty related to the long-term trajectories of our lives. While the context of the song is about romance, the lyrics introduce uncertainty as a much larger theme, with our lives as stories.
“God, who helps me become the Person I’m Supposed to be”
Growing up, I heard a lot of Neil Young, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and other folk music taking short and long rides in the car with my dad. After a long chat with my dad this month, I stumbled upon this song and felt it summarized what God was doing more broadly in his people during February, as a month of heart healing and reformation. It hit me with a wave of nostalgia, one foot in the past and one foot trying to imagine/re-imagine the future. This song reminds me of growing up, learning from our mistakes, and doing the best we can to be the leaders our children need us to be. God, would you give us the grace to be the men and women of your dreams.
Prayer Requests
Grace to be in alignment with God, navigating the burden well
Clarity, sharpness, proportionate action, and proportionate rest
Wisdom, favor, and revelation for thesis preparation
Age of the Unexpected 