I've been looking around lately and noticing and really starting to think about how much of a transition my life has undergone….I find my heart internally asking the question…..how in the world did I get here…Ive been starting to notice the people I've chosen to surround myself with (recently mostly orphan kids)….the discomfort I've so blindly embraced….And with my own sense of permanence in "the mission field" becoming more and more apparent, I find myself wrestling on the inside. Wondering where I belong, and what is around the corner (for I have the distinct feeling that "something" is around the proverbial corner)

The other day I had a conversation with my dad over the phone, and he made the very loving and concerned suggestion "that I start being a little more selfish with my life…start doing things that benefit me…taking care of Davy". After I got off of the phone with him I started realizing with greater clarity how absolutely impossible his suggestions were. I am realizing how utterly and completely ruined I am. I've heard this term thrown around in many different circles and have never fully considered its weight. AIM likes to use the term "wrecked". WRECKED.UNDONE.CHANGED.RUINED for all forms of normality …..but with no explanations….I choose the term ruined….it's a perfect word….I AM RUINED

Not that I am against finishing my college education. Just like I am in no way opposed to a marketplace position, marriage, children, etc. But the motivations are different. I feel I have passed some sort of "point of no return." I can never have the motivations others maintain again: I've let them go, and they are gone for good…

there's really no where to go but deeper in the Lord, and without tenacity in regards to furthering and deepening the interior life, I don't have a chance. I can't go to college and convince myself that a career, a diploma, a lot of money, etc. will validate me as a person. I can't enter into a relationship with the idea that the deepest places in my emotions and heart are going to be fully met by a mere man…I'd be foolish to even consider filling His places with mere shadows. I cant convince myself that "pursuing my dreams" ( or what were my dreams) is going to increase the measure of happiness in my life….its as if I'm jaded…divinely jaded……and man does it feel good…

To be liberated from the worlds imitations of validity. And to be released to dream with God……to actually run with Him in His pursuit of every heart……He has stolen my heart……and like a convicted prisoner….I cant turn back….I've made this decision to partner with Christ until the day I see His face (which I'm starting to believe is sooner than we're ready for/ but that's another blog haha)……AND THIS IS MY GLORY! …..I really am stoked about it…..

But He never said it would be easy. This is the common misconception of the western Church, "God wants to prosper me, make me happy, make me successful, make me feel good, etc." Not true. God wants to wreck me, mold me, change me, transform me... God wants to make me look like His Son, and is willing to go to great lengths that I become so transformed……

Like literally this place that I've called home actually isn't home….and the only allegiance I'm called to in this life is an allegiance to Jesus and His Kingdom……and I'm continually going to be in a place of dying and rebirth, dying to my own details and being reborn to life truly IN Him……and it'll be the most difficult thing in the world some days…..to just die…but there's so much beauty in the death of self……

I wake up everyday and I say YES …again..and again and again…..I let Him ruin me with ideas greater than my own…and I just say yes. So this season its Africa but I'm starting to be less and less concerned about where, but how and what

Shane Claiborne said it so poignantly in The Irresistible Revolution , "I've become less concerned with what I am doing and more concerned with who I am becoming…which is a lover of Jesus"

I'm writing this blog because I know that there are so many of us that are feeling this pull of the Lord saying……YOU WERE MADE FOR MORE THAN THIS…….and I just wanted to blog in light of it…..and encourage anybody currently wrestling with pressures to be and do and give your heart over to something that…well…you simply weren't made for…………..trust the Voice within who is calling you to greater ( even if its low and in the dirt and in the depths)…your best bet is to set your eyes on Him….and adhere to His desires………….

      I recently have felt overwhelmed recently with hype. Both my own, and that which surrounds me. In reading the memoirs of the early church, there was such an authenticity, a genuineness about their faith. Christianized propoganda becomes so disillusioning, and it separates us from the meat, from the substance that is the genuineness of our faith. I'm not wanting to get on a soap box or anything but Im in a place of intensely contending for authenticity in my own life and heart...therefore Ive happened to notice that everyone around me is actually struggling with the same thing.........Its getting to the point where I dont even recognize it anymore..I've ceased to be able to discern between the jaded and the pure...but my heart is burning for the latter.

at first I was like okay maybe this is the type of thing that we just wont ever overcome......I had settled in my heart that this is okay....this is a part of the fall.....we will always to an extent......be lacking in our understanding of what truth is..and we'll somehow always chase something less than the fullness of authenticity....I said in my heart...this is okay

but recently here in the last 2 weeks the Lord has been speaking something completely different to my heart.....there is such a greater level of revival that's going to be released on the planet and its coming in a real authentic, unjaded way..and its coming at the hand of the living God...and NO ONE will be assisting Him........He's wanting to transform the earth and cause the earth to learn righteousness....its coming and its coming at the hand of the victorious Bridegroom King

The other day I was sitting with a little girl named PHUMLA at an orphanage in J'berg...and I asked her if they taught her about Jesus here..and she said "when the american comes they teach us" .....thne she proceeded to say " but I think about Jesus at night when Im sleeping" and I said yeah what do you think and she said "I think that He is friend and best Father"

When Phumla said this to me my heart was provoked in such a way that it awakened a question that has been looming in my heart that I havent been able to articulate which is......how come it doesnt seem this simple?....Christianity...the faith...the WAY....the walk with Jesus........how has it become so perplexed and complicated.........

we have somehow become inoculated by the termonology, models and methods that we have idolized and we totally miss it...we totally miss the purity that children like Phumla experiance.....I need more of this is my life......more of experiances of Him that arent aided ....

Ive specifically been thinking about the prophetic...and purity in the prophetic..and how for the past 3 years Ive been "eagerly desiring" its reality in my own life...and how in some seasons Ive walked in it more than others...and also what Ive dilluted it to.....even in the prophetic song.....how Ive changed so many things that the Lord has spoken to me for the sake of not offending people.........and the fear of man.....but heres the deal ...if its from the Lord....truly...He doesnt need my assistance...He just needs my mouth and this is how its pure.....and it becomes complicated and questionable once I decide I want to help God......Im sure He's flattered but completely uninterested..haha........He doesnt need us filling the silences with our own ideas and methods..and "little ditties"............

Ive decided to blog on this topic because I feel like this thing that's plaguing me is also plaguing the the church as a whole and its starting to find its place in the "world of missions". ....and Im not okay with that...Im not okay with being unaware of the lesser things that compete with purity in my own heart and the heart of the family Ive become a part of..the Bride.......Im willing to go down praying for a type of Christianity that is its name....that is of CHRIST......

I only wanna be an instrument not the musician.....

So this is the complete overflow of my heart right now.....Im somewhere between the dying and the rebirth.....currently in refiners fire.......hearing and learning things from His heart that are tough my heart to get....but I love the journey......

every part of it is beautiful.........

Help us Father...make us like your Son..in all of our weak ways....