Matthew 24:14 "And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."
5 years until California... Probably more like 4 years and a couple of months now... I'm not sure how I arrived at that sort of number, but it just ... seemed right in my spirit when it stuck with me half a year or so ago. So, the entire plan seems to follow this track.. Since it is all about sending to the nations.. the first part would be getting out there.
The house is secondary at first.. I'm almost certain it will, in finality, be either near the Santa Barbara or the Ojai area... for the meantime, we may end up staying somewhere closer to the city.
The inner city gym/after-school program would be the first to take shape (from an organization standpoint)... then as it became popular, there would be two... three... four.. or however many there needed to be to meet need and start a multiplicating effect across the city (nation?)... Some students would graduate and leave, some would come back as teachers... but more importantly, some would be saved to Jesus at an early age and want to spend themselves among the peoples of the world. This is where the next part comes into focus.
The missions training school, something that could take place part-time in the gym/outreach/after-school program area, would be built next. The website is already these days taking shape.. albeit a very anonymolous shape at the moment... But at this point, there would be an actual facility. It would be primarily a secondary education sort of place with it's own teaching areas, publishing departments and auditoriums and command centers.. but it would also have a primary education facility. We plan on making very quick use of programs such as Rosetta Stone language learning software... Why?
Well... let's say a 7 year old.. street kid.. gets saved... I don't know the ins and outs of paperwork and red tape at the moment, but let's say he decides, he wants to be a missionary.. and wants to go to Djibouti, Africa to reach the unreached tribal groups living in that nation (we're going to be focusing on unreached people groups). We would, after slicing through the red tape with some sort of fashion, bring him out to the secondary facility and renew his primary education with an added bonus. He would begin learning all he can about the tribal people (as specifically as possible) that he can, their language (as early as possible), their customs, their history.. as if it were his own. His twelfth grade project would be to finish the translated Bible (that he'd started in 9th grade) into that tribes language and have it ready for print as he and his team prepare to leave for that nation to be planted among those people as witnesses for Christ.
(this is all ... just theorizing right now, but I promise you, it is very real theorizing.. and something exactly like this will happen.)
As we begin sending missionaries throughout the world, our house will come into shape. It won't be a house specifically designed for my wife, our children and myself to "get away from it all" but as a place where missionaries, tired and worn from their hard labor, may come and rest and be taken care of while they recuperate... we'll have as many as 3 different groups of missionaries staying on our property every week, and these groups will have nothing required of them except that they allow themselves to be served and refreshed. Well, one thing will be required.. they will each teach an hour long class for a week at the university (a class set aside simply for these missionaries to come and bring teaching and news about the world the students themselves are about to embark on) ... there are other things, but this is starting to get long.
So.. the school is going along swimmingly, people are being sent to the nations and the unreached are becoming reached.. so.... here's where the vision about unreached peoples ties in.. The Joshua Project lists the total unreached people groups at around 6,918... in the vision the witnessing body of Christ was down to 3 total remaining in the world!! and Matthew 24:14 plainly states that when the Gospel of the Kingdom is preached to all these nations.. the end will come.. not that we're predicting dates.. because....
At this point, ... at the point the last of those 3 groups is reached.. our entire mission organization pulls roots and drops itself into the middle of Israel. Because in Matthew 10:23... Jesus, speaking to his disciples said, "When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes." I also think it is remarkable that the last, smallest thing God said to me out of all these visions, (the one I misunderstood) also comes to fruit here.. In ministry to the lost beloved of Israel... I am with her in the end.. as a brother.
At this moment, we will begin preaching the Gospel in every town in Israel where we can go... leaving when persecuted or when a church is planted... until the Son of Man appears... and we rise to meet Him!
I think Jesus could not tell his disciples when He would return because it depended on us. If Jesus had known and had told us when he was going to return, we'd look around and say, "Oh.. he's not going to be here for 3 or 4 more years, let's sleep a bit." But what if we look at it from this perspective.... His returning... (from Christ's own words...) His returning depends on US. Depends on us getting the Gospel message to every nation, tribe and tongue.
We truly have a remarkable and wonderful responsibility... Praise You Jesus for giving us Your Holy Spirit so we could have the fortitude to work alongside You... We have the opportunity to speed the end! (which is the name of the website by the way..) It was the last thing God gave me when I was in the car on the way to Tulsa... and it broke me.. "Speed The End"........ we have an enormous responsibility. God wants us to be co-laborers with Him. Let's do it.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
End Game (or if you just want to understand craziness... (me) )
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.
...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.
Monday, January 17, 2011
It's been a while
Well, that's understating it. School is about to start, and I'll try to make sure this is not the post I read seven months from now thinking "I was really going to start keeping up with this thing back then.... oh well."
So, here's to that thought. ... I.. have apple juice. Good. :) Though, does that mean no doctors will read my blog? Food for thought... drink for thought?
I've been through a hectic, although very rewarding, winter-Christmas-time. I'm a third of the way through The Count of Monte Cristo and possibly a tenth of the way through War and Peace.. and I must say I do like them both. I do not like them both so much that I will completely neglect my life to finish them (which is probably why I haven't finished either of them so far) but they are captivating in the time I have to pick them up.
I've come up with another couple of inventions.. one for hanging pictures, one for hanging (or for mounting) fairly large canvases (most likely to be used during the painting process) and a couple of others that are still bouncing around in my head. I'm certain that were I to get this book published and ever had enough capital to do anything with, I'd be able to create cash flow to push forward with any sort of organization needed.
If you haven't already realized what my "End Game" is.... then perhaps it is because I've never really stated it. I guess that's something I will have to do.. but since that will be another focus altogether, I want to put that into it's own little (probably quite large) post. For now, it is 1:38am... and it is time to sleep.
My last off day before school begins again. I...am...excited! :)
So, here's to that thought. ... I.. have apple juice. Good. :) Though, does that mean no doctors will read my blog? Food for thought... drink for thought?
I've been through a hectic, although very rewarding, winter-Christmas-time. I'm a third of the way through The Count of Monte Cristo and possibly a tenth of the way through War and Peace.. and I must say I do like them both. I do not like them both so much that I will completely neglect my life to finish them (which is probably why I haven't finished either of them so far) but they are captivating in the time I have to pick them up.
I've come up with another couple of inventions.. one for hanging pictures, one for hanging (or for mounting) fairly large canvases (most likely to be used during the painting process) and a couple of others that are still bouncing around in my head. I'm certain that were I to get this book published and ever had enough capital to do anything with, I'd be able to create cash flow to push forward with any sort of organization needed.
If you haven't already realized what my "End Game" is.... then perhaps it is because I've never really stated it. I guess that's something I will have to do.. but since that will be another focus altogether, I want to put that into it's own little (probably quite large) post. For now, it is 1:38am... and it is time to sleep.
My last off day before school begins again. I...am...excited! :)
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