Oh, My Heart Longs for Him Alone

At first glance, this whole scene is absurd. A bunch of college students running through the proverbial meat grinder. Choosing to go without food. Asking God to “bring on the sanctification,” if you will. Ha. The lot of us in love the almighty, falling out really hard in the place of the skin, but surely what is sown in tears will be reaped in joy.

I have been reeling for two days. I have never felt so raw, so exposed. I don’t have a gauge for the last few days nor will I for the days to come. There are few things that I feel like I know to any degree right now. I do know that I am desperate, but am I desperate enough? I do know that I’m lovesick, but am I lovesick enough to walk the way of the cross, or will I remain satisfied with my current experience? Will I but enjoy a taste of the banqueting table He has put before me? 

It may seem graphic, but I feel like I’m being forced out of the birth canal a trimester too early. I’m being born prematurely. In this temporal plane, I’ve not experienced this deep weight of the eternal, the glorious.

 

Beautiful, by Phil Whickham

I see Your face in every sunrise
The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes
The world awakens in the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say 
You’re beautiful

I see Your power in the moonlit night
Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright
We are amazed in the light of the stars
It’s all proclaiming who you are
You’re beautiful

I see you there hanging on a tree
You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me
Now you are sitting on Your heavenly throne
Soon we will be coming home
You’re beautiful

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring 
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful 

I see Your face, I see Your face, I see Your face
You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful

A Rushing, Flaming River

I feel as though I am being surged into a rushing, flaming river. Indeed, I am being baptized into fire, and no one dares to resist the jealous fury.

Rush over me, river of God. Sanctify this vessel for your use. Don’t relent. Do whatever it takes. This is my prayer. Within and without. Without and within. Wrap me tightly from the inside out. Inflict me with your wild, furious love.

I have been at International House of Prayer for a matter of hours and His reality is hitting me like arrows. He is jealous for all of my heart and He’s taking it.  I feel Him wanting me. The desire of my heart is to be stripped of myself completely, this is the hope of my glory, Christ in me. 

Open up, open up my soul.

 

 

I Will Speak Before Kings

I am convinced that if I speak the truth I will offend many people. The very nature of truth is offensive to the natural mind. It has been said, “The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree,” but I tell you that we’ve fallen very far from the tree—and not just any tree, the very tree of life!

I got accused of picking controversial topics as my trademark issues for the fun of it the other day—but I decry that assumption! It just so happens that the issues I am most passionate about happen to affect large portions of the population (that is, everyone) because of my passion for a thing called truth. The reader may ask what exactly I like to talk about. Well, let me tell you! I like to talk about homosexuality (but it’s only because God has freed me from it’s demonic stranglehold and has given me freedom). And now you’re probably assuming that I am asking for a place in the annals of medieval closed-minded bigotry, but again, that is incorrect because I am going into politics.

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day, albeit a curt one, and she said, “You know that a lot of people hate you, right?” “I could care less what people think of me,” I replied immediately. Afterward I went back to my room (yes, I have a have nasty habit of talking to myself, more than likely because I’m the only one who will listen), and I said in jest, “What would it be like to care what people thought about me?” That’s when I laughed. I laughed pretty hard.

I used to care about what people thought of me. I really did. In fact it used to consume a large portion of my thoughts and time, and I try to tell people that I haven’t been like this my whole life and for some reason they don’t believe me. I also tell people in all honesty that I am one of the happiest people I have ever met, because for heavens sake, it’s true. And most people that are reading this will now start to turn off everything I say because I’m just trying to hard too set trends or something. I was also posed with another interesting question just yesterday, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re weird?” Yes, my friends, it’s true. It only takes so many questions like this before I realize that I might be a little bit different, peculiar, or even, (gasp) freakish. I do understand why she stated this so bluntly. I happened to be singing and whistling and dancing in circles with a golf putter (I was singing to Jesus and I had a golf club because I we were at a mini-golf course and the way I described it is weirder that it actually was…I was just full of joy). In any case I’ve realized that I have fallen off the edge of sanity. God has called be to start declaring the Scriptures in open places as well. I would have died to do such a thing, but His love compels me to declare the glories of Christ!

And this is when the facetious tone ends.

I suppose that one of the things that has troubled me recently is the stark difference between the early Christians and everything that I have come to know as Christianity. I was reading in Acts the other day and when Paul wasn’t being beaten, stoned, or raising people from the dead, he got accused of being an Egyptian terrorist (21:38), of throwing a whole city into uproar (16:20), and even of causing trouble “all over the world” (17:6)—and that’s when he wasn’t casting out demons and saying things like, “God will strike you, you white washed wall!” to the leader of the Sanhedrin. I would say, unequivocally, that Paul was a prophetic voice in his generation.

I used to care. I used to care what people thought, but I don’t care any more. To be Christian is to be countercultural. I believe that following God isn’t mainstream. I do not advocate being a jerk in the name of Jesus. Christians are exhorted in Hebrews 12:14 to “Make every effort to live in peace with all men…” because we’re not meant to be those who stir up trouble, but the end of that verse says, “…be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” We are to be a people living at peace, but one that is living in visible distinction. Responses to our faith shouldn’t be, “Oh you’re normal, you just believe in Jesus.” It should be, “You aren’t normal!” But not because we dress like we’re culturally sheltered or because we make unreal efforts to remain in technological ignorance. People should be able to see the countenance of the Almighty shining. They should hear the voice of the Ageless in our songs of hope. They should feel our one great Love as we compel them into His house.

Oh, that God would give me a prophetic voice like that of John the Immerser! A heart that knows His imminent coming! “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.’”

Blessed are those who are not offended at His coming! “Behold, I am coming soon bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done.” Revelation 22:12

 

The Wisdom of this Age is Passing Away

There is something that’s been tearing me apart lately, and it’s that which tears the Church apart. As I was reading the following from 1 Corinthians 1, I was filled desire, unquenchable desire. 

“I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought…one says, ‘I follow Paul”; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another ‘I follow Christ.’ 

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” 

When he names off people, I can just hear him saying, ‘I follow Calvin,’ or ‘I follow Augustine,” or “I follow Lewis,” or, heaven forbid, “I follow Marx.”

Woe to me if I am first associated with a man, and not with Christ!

Paul goes on to say that he didn’t come with worldly wisdom, ‘lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.’ The problem is that people assume that because a teacher is Christian, they do not teach the wisdom of the world. I think the reality is something else entirely. It may seem ridiculous for me to quote anything but the Bible here, but I just read something by Kierkegaard that hits this point directly on the head. 

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

Our minds have tamed us. We want to control what is going on and we don’t want to be led by the Spirit. It is easier that way. We cling to the wisdom of this age.

I recently spoke at a forum at my school, Seattle Pacific University, on homosexuality. There was an openly gay lawyer there that got pretty incensed when I said that before God delivered me “homosexuality was destroying me” and that it was a demonic stronghold in my life. He was livid at my statements and said things like, “The American Psychological Association says that it is harmful to try to change,” and some such nonsense. A friend also spoke to me recently about his journey through sexual addiction. He went to Sexaholics Anonymous and psychiatrists that said he needed pills and psychologists that said that he was, not sinful, but “ill.” Not until he rejected these avenues and embraced the Scriptures and Christ as his only way out, and acknowledged his sin, did he find freedom.

We are like unto the builders of Babel. We mock God with our wisdom and claim the ability to ascend to the heights without His aid. Paul goes on to ask, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? …He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” 

There are men that I listen to that fear God and teach the Scriptures that learned what they know at seminary, and then there are men that I am certain have stood in the counsel of the Lord. I want to stand in the counsel of the Lord. I have seen a man speak that prayed for a matter of seconds that caused all in his presence to fall upon the floor weeping. I have seen men speak that have such authority that the whole room groans under the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to stand in his counsel.

Damn the wisdom of men, I want the power of God.

I want to be able to say, as Paul said, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that you faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

 

 

Lost, Never to Return

I have a horrible habit of not wanting to write after taking a break for a season. It used to be like that with God too. I took a break from Him and felt awkward walking back. I haven’t felt that way about Him for months and months, too long to remember really.

We live in rather close quarters now. Yeshua said that He had made us known to the Father that the love He has may be in us. He brings us to complete unity with Himself that the world may know love. 

I think I’ve gotten lost in Him and I don’t think I’m ever coming back.

A poet once said something like this:

It was the first day of my life. His was the first face that I saw. I was blind before I met Him. I know where I want to go. These things take forever, I especially am slow. 

Homosexuality: A Confession

I have written the following article for my student newsaper, Seattle Pacific University’s The Falcon. It is my first public confession of my past struggle with homosexuality. It is primarily aimed at the Christian student community, but I believe that there are truths therein that are universal.

I have written this because the pain and confusion in our community can be healed. I’m becoming vulnerable with my life-struggle because I desire to see lives brought closer to Jesus. If at all possible, I would like to give face to this struggle. I hope it will be apparent, over the course of this article, that my intents are sincere. It’s not my desire to offend, but I didn’t emasculate this story because I believe that there is truth that must be spoken. If you think that this will offend you, I would ask you to keep an open mind and to listen to the story of a fellow traveler, failure, and redeemed one.  

 

While growing up in a Christian home I attended youth group, emotion-conjuring events, and mission trips. I truly wanted Jesus, but behind the façade, I was struggling with sin that lasted from adolescence until just about a year ago and a half ago. At the time, few knew of this struggle, that is, my struggle with homosexuality.

I can’t recall a time when these feelings weren’t present. I was confused and hungry for love and affection, and I didn’t have any close friends. Somewhere along the way, these hungers morphed into homosexual desire.

As a high school student, after years of painstaking struggle, I had heard lies from Satan for so long that I could hardly recognize truth. I heard the words, “You’ll never change. You’ll never be able to get married, and if you try you’ll fail. This is the only place that you’re happy.”  I was drowned in deceit and isolated by shame. The Accuser stopped at nothing because he knew my destiny as a child of God. I was at war—but I was losing.

I decided to take a gap year so as to straighten out my life and find God as I had always heard He could be found—I had heard that he could be found so deeply that one would get lost and entranced in Him. I desired to be free from my sin; but I desired God more still and I knew that my circumstances demanded change.

Senior year, my struggles reached their pinnacle, heightened by depression. By the time I flew to a Texas discipleship school in 2006, I was utterly desperate. The community was so radically loving; I confessed my sin to a guy that I hardly knew within days. The first months proved beautiful, dynamic, and painful. Contrary to the world outside, this community radically accepted the sinners—but a desire for change was expected. From August to November of 2006, along with much Christian scripture, fasting, and prayer I took advantage of godly counseling and a sexual addictions class (which most of the men attended).

However, late in 2006, I started to stagnate spiritually, a dangerous choice in the midst of a spiritual war. In the middle of the battle, it was hard to see how persistent this demonic stronghold was. I remember singing the song “Deliver Me” by David Crowder in chapel as I cried out for God to move me from my paralysis.

A past mentor visited me that very weekend by “strange coincidence.” As we were talking he began to see into my situation by the power of the Holy Spirit. “Nate,” he said, “you have grown so over these past months. Your hunger for God has expanded, your desperation has intensified—but I can see the turmoil inside of your heart. I can see that there are things coming back from high school. Let me pray for you.”

He prayed for me to be baptized with the Holy Spirit that night, and the battle I had been fighting with such tenacity was won with a mere glance of my Lord’s eyes. He brought hope while I was despairing and in that moment of outpoured grace, as He’s done with His people throughout the ages, He set before me life and death, blessings and curses, and said “Now choose life, so that you may live.”

I happened over some of my old journals last week—the words often rang of hopelessness. If there is one thing that the evangelical church in America has succeeded at, it’s informing homosexuals that they’re sinners. I agree that there should be no doubt that homosexuality is sinful, but the SPU community needs to be one that is filled with compassion for those who struggle while remaining uncompromising on what Scripture clearly teaches.

I felt compelled to write something on this subject because of my experience, by which I feel I can speak more authoritatively. God hates homosexuality because of the devastation that it spreads and the chains it creates that so hardily grip its prisoners. He has shown us a better way in Christ. Only biased interpretation of clear Scripture passages such as Romans 1, 1 Timothy 1:10, and 1 Corinthians 6:9, can reconcile homosexuality to the Christian faith.

In the past months I have spoken to quite a few men who struggle with same-sex attraction. The reason that some of them have not moved toward freedom is because they’re not willing to give up their lives, humble themselves and get biblical counseling. Is the grace of God not powerful enough to free us from our sin? Is homosexuality an irredeemable sin? Surely not! The most loving thing that I can say to someone that is struggling—or perhaps even at the point of acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle—is to repent from wickedness and run to Christ. Is it easy? No, for one must die. Titus 2 says, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all [people]. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”

Knowing the way some people think, they’re now excited to load their intellectual arsenals against “all those gays” –as they masturbate to their heterosexual porn. And consider all those straight Christian fornicators! Furthermore, do any of us remember when Jesus says that those that have lust in their hearts are in danger of hell in Matthew 5? America is saturated in sexual sin, but it is interesting how Christians still have a pecking order. Paul states in Ephesians 5:3 that “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality…because [it is] improper for God’s holy people.”

The most edifying “conversation” that can be had at SPU concerns what it means to be holy. Holiness only comes from falling in love with the God. One can try, and strive, and reach for that lifestyle, but it is impossible outside of Christ. If a sinner hates what he sees in his life, it will not work to try to be an “un-sinner,” likewise, one who is gay that desires to be “un-gay” will fail miserably. But for those who take up their crosses and follow Christ—it is they who will find wholeness and freedom. I took up my cross some time ago. I am madly in love with God and there is no life that compares. Christ calls the gay sinners and the straight sinners alike to true freedom that is found in Him alone. Wholeheartedly following Christ is painful and filled with toil and tears, but it is ultimately abundant in life, beautiful in death, and the only way that I would ever desire to live. Now that I’ve found Him, I’ll never let him go.

 

I am at a loss for words.

I am at a loss for words.

Give me a love song, for surely You are the greatest Lover.

Inspire my tongue to recite Thy beauty.

Enliven my spirit to dance with Yours.

Pour the embers of your love upon the altar of my heart, let me burn for You as hotly as You burn for me.

My eyes grow faint from looking and searching, dear One, and my voice is taken from me at the love songs that I’ve tried to sing for You.

This love, yes, our love is wearisome to my spirit.

But Jesus, whom have I in heaven but You?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.

Where else would I go, what other Lover would entrance so engrossingly?

The Resurrection of the Dead

The world that we are in is unlike anything humans have ever encountered.

The renowned apologist Ravi Zacharias observes that we don’t even observe media anymore because it is something that we actually live in. A question that I would ask is this: “Does it bother any of us that we are part of an arch-experiment with technology?” No one can know, with certainty, the results of this revolution. 

Never has there been such an advancement of knowledge like the leaps of our current era and the proliferation of information in an age defined by information. Things that are now considered normal, things that have become ubiquitous, that have only been present in recent world history. I say that as I am typing on my computer while on the Internet while listening to digitized music (all introduced to the world in the last decades). I am so immersed in the spirit of the age that I honestly have no comprehension of many things that are going on around me. It is difficult for me to be objective. 

The one thing that has impacted my view of the media the most was a year with almost none. I watched almost no television. I spent very limited time online. I watched only two or three movies. In many ways I was snatched from the proverbial “jaws” of the spirit of this age and was placed in a less media-immersed environment.  

One hears studies like, “You watch 3,000 hours watching television more than you spend time in school,” and that would strongly influence me to think that we have missed the mark somewhere along the way. Are we even awake enough to know what is happening? Can we even feel the needle breaking our skin? Are we able to taste the liquid of our strong medicine? I would contend that we aren’t awake. I would contend that we’re being injected violently, but the nervous system quit some time ago. I would contend that our tongue is numb, our throat is numb, our heart is catching an early flight only to crash land. 

I could spend much much time ranting of the irredeemable perversity of much of the media, but I would be speaking to ears that aren’t working, eyes without light, and a heart that stopped beating many ages ago. One can hardly reason with a mind seared beyond reason. I must rather pray for a revival of the heart, opening of the ears, healing of the mind, and eyes enlightened with glory. I will overcome this world of death with words of life.

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14

Awaken from your apathy. Shake off the dust of disillusionment. Hear a testament of truth in a world confusion. There is a cause worth living for, a cause so worthy of our dying. Let us not neglect so great a salvation, so great an awakening. 

This is what I live for and strive toward, this Gospel of life. What is alloted for me in this time on earth? What, but to awaken the dead! 

I am Crying for a Nation Broken Down

I don’t cry very often. I think that I count on both hands the times that I remember crying.

I had a normal day today. There wasn’t really anything all that special about it. I had classes and work and the normal Seattle rain (as if I there wasn’t anything else to rely on, right?).

You know, we’re just numb–we’ve just become numb to what we feel. We don’t feel anything. We’re drowning it all in a pool, just the pool of our comfortable American existence.

Oh, but there is pain!

I know it because I feel it. Sometimes it’s like we’re not even real. No, but I was real tonight. I walked into my room, and I checked the news for the twentieth time today, and for some strange reason I have started to expect the blood. It was draining down the webpage. For some reason I don’t think this is what we’re made for.  6 dead in Memphis. Two are children. 2 dead at a Wendy’s in Texas. 

I don’t cry a lot, but I cried and I screamed and I swore and sat in painful anguish.

Every once in a while God just hits me with what He’s feeling and that is how he feels. It really is how he feels. I am just going to be honest. We’re all jacked up really bad. Somewhere we forgot that God is the giver of all good things. God’s death was bound to catch to up to us, and it’s just starting. We haven’t seen anything yet. 

But if we repent and turn from our wickedness He will heal our land. I hear “peace” all the time but there is no peace. I read in “Christianity Today,” in what seemed like some kind of triumphant article, that abortions were down to 1.2 million in 2005. I was about to burn the magazine. “Oh, you mean abortions worldwide?” “No, those are all in the United States, but they are the lowest for quite some time.” 

Oh God, what have done?! I cry out to you because you are the only Healer, you are the only Man of peace! We can’t do it by ourselves, because we’re trying and it ain’t working. Bring us the real thing, God! You are the Father of the fatherless, come down and rescue us. We need you again. We need you again. Before everything falls into hell. Please God, I fear you, and I am asking for You to come. 

He’s gonna come. He hears me and He’s gonna come.  

 

I was listening to some of this Jon Foreman song. It is very descriptive. 

A Cure for the Pain

  

 

 

Clinical Insanity

I think that more than anything else, as of late, I have had the spiritual discipline of silence forced upon me.  I had my iPod stolen weeks ago and just a few hours ago my computer crashed.  It’s not that I have distaste for the quiet because I love silence.  I also love music—and those two devices were my music makers.  I believe these things have been removed by God for his glory.  I think that God wants me to wait for him in the silence.  I also think that God wants me to make my own music.  I find it terribly ironic that right before my computer died I was listening to a sermon by Mike Bickle about being used by God to tenderize the hearts of a generation through music.

I feel like I have a lot of things forced upon me.  For example, the night before last I was going to bed around midnight.  I was looking forward to getting up in the morning and spending time with Jesus. I think that everything about this scene is totally fair—going to sleep, thinking about Jesus.  The problem is that I couldn’t stop thinking about Jesus when I was in bed.  In fact, I definitely recall distinctly God saying something along the lines of, “Get out of bed. You are not going to sleep tonight.”  If I was to look at this situation from a natural point of view I would probably diagnose myself as clinically insane.  “So,” I can imagine someone in the right mind saying, “you didn’t go to sleep last night because you heard a voice in your mind tell you to get up and walk around your campus?  Would you like to come visit one of our friends in the hospital? He’s just ahead in that padded room…”

Perhaps the real problem is that I pray things like, “God, I pray that you will do whatever it takes to make me wholehearted for your glory,” or “God let me hunger for you more than any person has ever hungered for you.”  Maybe it would be more convenient if I decided to not pray things like that anymore.