Easter Sunrise on the Natchez Trace, Tupelo, Mississippi
10 years ago, over New Years Of 2007, I had a vision of our Lord Jesus while attending the One Thing conference in Kansas City. I felt a clear call to attend this event and so drove through a blizzard 15 hrs from Denver to get there. When we arrived at the convention center in KC, worship had already started and as we made the way up the escalator into the main hall, the Presence and Glory of God was thick, tangible and weighty, even standing at the very back of the huge convention room of 20,000 people. We found our seats and began to worship...as I closed my eyes and lifted my hands, a vision opened up before me.
I was walking through a massive crowd of people-So many people crowding in all around me so that I could not even see where I was going or what I was looking for. I began to put my arms out to better clear a way through-almost like swimming through the sea of people on the right and left in order to move forward and press through. I didn’t know what I was moving towards, I just knew I needed to get there this way. And then all at once everything stopped and there he was, looking at me before I ever even saw him. I was rocketed back to a halt by his eyes that were looking at me. HIS EYES. They were like fire, deep chocolate, and the deepest waters. How to describe them??? There is no way. It was like you could jump into them and never come back and that would be just fine. Endless oceans of love and life itself, and those eyes were looking at me in the most intense way. It was like the burning bush: you want to look and behold, but you have to look away or be consumed.
My heart and breath stopped and everything froze in that moment. STILL. And he spoke 5 words: 🔥”I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE”🔥 and because I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, he reached out and pulled me in. But it wasn’t a hug, because you see, I didn’t stop. There was no longer a boundary of skin and bones and matter. When he pulled me in, I just kept going and I disappeared into him and into his heart and into the all consuming fire.
And that was it. I never wanted to return. I could never forget his eyes, his voice, his face and his love. I was in him and he in me and you don’t just come back from that without a mark. To put it bluntly and at the risk of being borderline scandalous, it is not sex, but it is what sex represents. Communion, oneness, unity, unconditional love and desire.
This is what I refer to as the unlocking. So many things have been unlocked these past 10 years since that encounter with Christ. Things in my heart, and things in my natural world. Things that defy description, but I try anyways (thus, why I am always telling “God stories” 😊) They’re real because HE is real and HE is ALIVE. HE IS RISEN and he promised to live inside of us!!! Such a mystery, but when mystery becomes your reality, it defies anything you’ve ever known up to that point in time. At best, our human relationships will be a beautiful mirror to this reality.
This past year, 2017, has been a year like no other. So many burning bush miracle moments that I fear losing track and I sometimes feel like if I’m not careful, I could just get lost forever in his endless ocean. I have many shortcomings, and I’m still (and will always be) being stretched in many areas. But his love is ever-reaching and his kingdom, ever-expanding. That’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand. They view God, Church, as rigid and stifling...and truth be told, this is how it can appear from the outside looking in. Unfortunately, much of our human attempts boil it down to this...But once you make it into the kingdom walls, once LOVE pulls you in, you’re taken to a different dimension where things look and feel totally different. The walls of the Kingdom of God are ever and ever-expanding. They breathe, they live and move with you and you with them. It’s like re-entering The Garden you were always designed to live in. You’ll never find the end once you’re inside.
Out of a desire to commemorate all that I just described, I found myself very unexpectedly and miraculously back in Kansas City at the OneThing Conference 3 months ago in December. It was like that same LOVE had a tractor beam on me before I even knew it, but looking back, I had been feeling the pull for months.
It was at this event that I received the commission/invitation to walk and pray and commune with the Lord in a way I’ve never done before.
Over the past 6 weekends, I have walked 222 miles down the historic Natchez Trace Parkway and I will finish by walking the last 8 miles at Easter sunrise. This has been a journey like none other. There have been hilarious moments, painful moments, angelic moments, divine appointments and many, many quiet and still moments where all I could hear was the sound of one foot moving in front of the other, and those were just as much prayers as anything I prayed aloud. These are things that run so deep that I don’t know how to translate it, but the channels of my heart have been carved deeper and it feels like more living water is rushing through my veins.
While I’ve been saying that I’ve been praying for Unity and Revival and I named the walk “A Walk for New Wineskins “ based on Mark 2:22, if I could put it in a nutshell, my prayers have really been that YOU, all of us, The WORLD for goodness sake, would begin to exist from the same reality I just described. This is not my unique experience, this is a viable reality and is how humans were designed-to live full of LIFE itself. Living inside the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom living inside of us and being deposited like seeds out into the world.
So, this has been my attempt to somehow put a few words to this Jesus, this Love that I know. He changes everything. If you haven’t experienced this life changing love and power, don’t stop! Ask, seek, knock and then just start swimming through the sea of unknowing until he catches you by surprise and absorbs you into his heart. You will still have those very real moments of life, like I did this weekend, of being hangry, having a dead battery out in the middle of nowhere land, running late, forgetting to pay a bill, wondering about what’s next or how to make it, etc...
But this one thing I know. I have found LOVE and love is a person and love is God. He is so much more than we could imagine and all we truly need. I could go on, but now it’s time for me to rise and shine...and WALK! Let me end with this prayer by Pedro Arrupe, lest you think I’m swimming in the clouds of impracticability...😍
Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
HAPPY EASTER.
HE IS RISEN!
HE IS RISEN INDEED!
Say Yes and step into his resurrection life.
