This is it. Everything I can type up, write out, think through and expel into one continuous-though-separated-into-paragraph-spill about what I feel is the reason I was put here.
...and some of you may understand me just a little bit more when you're finished..
skip to the ***** if you want to get past the in between stuff. Otherwise, read and understand me better.
I've had several "visions" and dreams during my lifetime that I absolutely knew were spiritual in meaning. The visions simply occurred in my mind's eye... nothing that dissolved reality... most of these, I separated into their own little test tubes of "ideas"... never once connecting them all as something I would do together. They were things I could see happening here or there, but not at once. One in particular, a youth center of sorts, I tried to offer up as an idea for a different youth group. It just never occurred to me that I'd do anything like that.
I wanted to do everything.. everywhere.. There were very few times I'd work at a store and be content to "stand behind the cash register"... or "stock shelves." I'd see a person doing this other job and I'd be incredibly interested in learning that job. Not because I necessarily wanted more money, but because I just wanted to learn. I'd learn a job so quickly and then figure out 12 different ways to improve working conditions or expedite the process (most if not all of which were shot down because "we've always done it this way") and get bored out of my mind... usually within a week. But I couldn't get into that other job, or if I did, it was simply rinse and repeat... So I'd talk to customers.. I'm known for incredibly high customer service.. but even though I'd get my work finished before anyone else, I was labeled as lazy or non-working. So, I bounced around from job to job.
*****
I went to Tulsa this past year.. and on the trip, God literally filled the vehicle. It was one of those trips where I spent too much money, money I didn't really have, but have been forever changed to have spent. On the way up, my mind was filled with several dreams and visions I'd had over my life.. some as early as when I was 15 years old, some as recent as the Sunday before, or during World Mandate. Throughout my life, I'd seen the different dreams and visions as pieces to different puzzles... or more realistically, I felt I was a conglomeration of the unneeded pieces of everyone else's puzzles.
I wish people could understand the feeling of purposelessness that conveyed.. for thirty-six lonely years.. feeling virtually alone in my corner.. not even family understanding why I did things the way I did (most of the time not understanding myself)... sometimes blaming themselves.. sometimes not knowing who to blame.. But now I can honestly look back and say, they did it right..
But that day.. on a cold drive to Tulsa, seeing snow piled high in the parking lots of shopping malls, God pulled it all together. It suddenly, instantaneously, snapped into place. A puzzle completed and full, of more than 10 lifetimes full of things to accomplish when a third of my life seemed to be finished. (I'm just now realizing that 2/3rds of Moses' life was finished before he got back to Egypt to lead God's people from captivity)...
so... I guess I'm going to have to talk about the visions..
The first happened when I was really young.. not sure when. I had this picture in my head.. I was looking out of the windows of a room filled with books and rustic furniture. There were aquariums and a large fireplace.. as I looked through the windows I could see that a hill ran gently down to a river running with white water rapids and across the river the land rose steeply toward the peak of another hill/mountain..
that was all I saw for a long time.. until mom told me to draw it out. She said maybe when I drew that room out, God would give me the rest. About five years later, I drew the room out.. and the rest came quickly... we're talking about.. minutes. Not days...
the second was briefly after, or before... it was of a gym.. basketball court with a couple of bowling lanes down one side, a snack bar in back and pool tables and such with a room above filled with computers.. It was for lock-and-key kids... or for kids who's parents didn't care that they existed.. or for the homeless.. to help them get an education or whatever..
the third was a three or four story building.. I barely saw it. But I knew it was a missions training organization. I was standing in waist high grass (it looked like wheat or barley)...
..... hold it.. Wow, just now (rereading for clarity) I remember it was ripe.. and remember Jesus' words, "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few" .. oh wow.. I was standing in a field of ripe wheat outside of a missions training organization!! Jesus, send laborers!...... (back to the story)
...and the wind was blowing through it. I remember seeing some friends (some of whom I know now) walking down the back stairs. They were heading in the direction of a large 18-wheeler hauling cars.. (I still don't understand that part) but I knew they had come to speak and train some of the students there briefly.. I also knew that I was in charge of the place.. in some capacity.. I turned and far below me, in the valley behind was the stretched out city of Los Angeles.. I don't recall ever specifically being to LA, I just knew it was LA..
the fourth was of myself and my wife standing on a small desert hill somewhere in southern California.. She was holding a baby.. I'm guessing 3 months old.. (now that I see how big Ava is at 3 months.. that's how big the baby was my wife was holding.) She said, "Where are we going to live?"
And I replied, "250 miles north of the southern border of California."
This dream took place while I was sleeping in a hotel in Arlington with my parents who had come down to watch a Ranger's game. It was a couple of years ago... I went downstairs and used the hotel computers to find a spot 250 miles north of the southern border of California.. thinking for sure it would be somewhere near Sacramento.... wow.. I was wrong. The road I found ended in a 'T' at 250 miles. When I switched to satellite views... I saw that the land had a river running east to west through it... exactly like my vision from the room from 20 years before. (I got goosebumps)
The next was ... slightly personal and perhaps a bit.. misleading.. basically because I thought it meant something else. When I was at CFNI, I liked this girl... I REALLY liked this girl.. She's one of the most spiritually gifted and spiritually tender people I've met, and I figured we'd be together forever. But it wasn't God's will (though she and I are great friends to this day, which is also God's will)... but one semester, she was leaving.. and I was terrified she was never going to leave and I was never going to have a second chance to tell her how I felt. I was sitting in my little red Pontiac LeMans (which my dad un-affectionately called the Pontiac Lemon because of it's slight solenoid problem... ) and suddenly heard God as clearly as I've ever heard anything in my life, "In the end, you'll be together." There was a peace I could not describe, and I dropped it then and there. At the time, I still took that to mean, married.. but obviously not..
brief segway --- this same storyline suddenly reaches me in the car on the way to Tulsa where the last vision takes place (the one just below this one)... but this wasn't so much a vision as much as I just knew it would happen.. I saw myself in Israel preaching boldly from town to town that Jesus was the Messiah.... but I'll explain what I heard in the next blog...
skip to the end..
sort of the last one was a vision I had while I was in the car on that trip to Tulsa. I saw myself grabbing the phone and calling as many pastors, churches, families and friends that I knew to tell them to save as many lost as they could, save their cities, factories, neighbors, coworkers, etc... I was very excited and adamant on the phone... I was telling them that we only had 3 more unreached people groups before we were finished reaching the nations....
Well, that's that.. that's my End Game. For all that to be completed. But this is too long, and I will post "End Game" part 2, tomorrow.... it will tie it all together. And it will probably be less confusing than this one.
I love all of you.
