This is Chad & Matt from Fresno. I encourage you to watch this, because I’m telling leaders and pastors about what I’m seeing, but sometimes it’s best to see where it’s happening, how it’s happening, & who it’s happening with. This is not an anomaly.

Video is just over 10 mins total so I had to split:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4NJbgNbBN8

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ao4FeeFWA0

• Chad & Matt are both 18.
• Their gatherings started after a year of off and on fasting.
• In their opinion, church = revival. And if revival isn’t a reality then it should be the normal reality.
• In the beginning stages as Chad was pressing in, he met with pastors who he assumed wanted revival & were pressing in (because I guess that’s what pastor’s do? I don’t know) and they blew him off.
• He reached out for a relational covering with friends of ours in our larger community in SoCal.
• Healings are a regular occurrence.
• They study the Bible (they call them Glory Time) where the point is the encounter with God.
• They are out on the streets regularly feeding & clothing the poor and praying for the sick.
• Even though there is a larger impact of people (I personally know that they have a larger influence of 50 attenders) they seem to only be able to count fruit – what Chad calls “fully submitted.” And he’s almost embarrassed to talk or take credit for the 50 or so that they regularly are in contact with, much less the 100’s that they impact monthly in service.
• The organized church doesn’t know they exist and they are probably “not organized enough” to do anything with them.
• They are already fathering the next generation.

My takeaway:

Tell me what gathering to encounter God – as Chad put it: “When we hang out, what else is there?”; tell me what praying for the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, evangelism, discipleship, equipping, living in submission, etc is?

I dare to say it is Church.

The call is for a new wineskin. Some pastors might think they’d like to have these guys in their church because it would light up the rest. Truth is, these guys would blow up their churches. They would either ruin the old wineskin or they would be tamed or they would willingly leave their churches.

We’d have to admit that in the typical church there are very few that are truly hungry for Holy Spirit to move. We’re getting excited right now in some institutional churches where the Holy Spirit is making some appearances, but without a new wineskin, this can’t happen on a larger fuller scale.

It’s obvious that it’s God’s good pleasure to give these kids the Kingdom. If you want #’s, I can tell you of literally 100’s (dare I say 1000’s) of people in the San Diego area who have either gotten healed, delivered, saved or all of the above this year alone by people with no name, no face, and no budget. It’s so subversive that they organized church doesn’t even know it’s happening.

And the call for us now is to be spiritual fathers & mothers for this generation of the Church who are teaching us to be relentless, to be fearless, to accept nothing short of the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God. I’m fortunate enough to have my feet in both places – institutional & organic – and I have a hope & vision to reconcile the two (Malachi 4:6).

I’m also going to ask for a favor:

Don’t ask your churches to pray for revival. It’s already here. God can’t give you what He’s already answered. Instead, pray for hunger. Pray for alignment with what He’s already doing.

About a year or so ago, I told a 20 something that we were seeing the first fruits of revival. And he said, “What are you talking about, we’ve been living in revival for like 2 years.” I was thinking, “Yeah, but I haven’t heard about this.” But instead of doubting and questioning how a bunch of disorganized Holy Spirit seekers can call upon and live in revival without a single big name person attached to it, I said, “I’m all in.”

I hope you’re all in! You probably have a lot more seemingly to lose than I do. I still hope you’re all in.

I’m giving a relational covering to alot of these guys these days. This has become a large part of our community and I’d love to talk to you more about it if you’re curious.

Blessings. Fire fall on you & not just your churches, but on your community, on your cities.

The story – as it always has been – is one of God’s people being unfaithful in relationship.  And God being brutally, stubbornly faithful & steadfast in His love.

In Chapter 6, He says to His people: “Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.”

I think whenever I’ve looked at Israel, I’ve always thought of myself much better than them.  I never created a God out of gold and worshipped it.  I never had multiple deities that I was giving my worship to.  None of that.  And as a result, I’ve thought of myself as much more faithful and loyal to God.  I’ve seen my own stuff as less offensive to God.

And granted, people in churches have talked for years about, “Ooooh, what are the gods in your life?  You may not be worshipping physical idols, but you idol might be a relationship, or your work.”  I get that.

But I never really considered the fact that I’m honestly no better than they were.  Just because I haven’t crafted a statue doesn’t make me any better.

That’s why Jesus brings this whole subject up again in Revelation: “You’ve left your first love.”  It’s a recurring problem in us that we want something more physical, more tangible, more in our grasp to worship.

Self-worship is a huge problem in and of itself.

And in church, I think we are worshippers of many of the wrong things.  Success in the form of butts, buildings, & budgets – well that’s one thing.  What a church talks about the most is probably what they are worshipping.  Social justice – if that’s all you talk about – is worshipping serving.  You could go on and fill in the blank.

It is an amazing thing these days to see so many prolific leaders, pastors, and writers that the church goes nuts over.  And we like their stories of big churches or new kinds of ways to describe Christianity.  We love their insights.  We listen to all of their podcasts.

But  pick any one of those prolific people that you follow on Twitter, and ask yourself: “Where’s the revival?  Where’s the move of God?  Where’s God’s Kingdom manifested in the earth?  Where are the people who look just like Jesus?”

The fact is, you won’t find that move.   You won’t find those people of revival.  Because we are those people.  We’re the people who “follow” them.   It hasn’t really even occurred to us most of the time that we’re worshippers of another.  We haven’t even noticed that we’re still flapping our jaws about things either of less importance or stuff that really is a false sense of revival.

Let me just ask you then: “Is this as good as it gets?  Is this how God fully manifested in you looks?”

It’s true that in this relationship with God it really is all about grace.  And our relationship with God is held together not by our works, but by the fact that God is so steadfast in His love that He won’t let go of us.  He’ll make up the difference in relationship in all of our inadequacies, in spite of all our unfaithfulness and lack of love.

He’s committed to us no matter what.  And He’s chosen the path of unrequited love.

A question is: “Has this grace changed us?  Has His stubborn steadfast love drawn me more to love Him and worship Him?”  It’s true that everything comes through the door of grace, but does that mean that He’s not deserving of the same steadfast love?  That He’s not deserving of total faithfulness?

But His innermost desire is:

Hosea 6:6

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,  and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

It’s a poor translation to translate this as the word “mercy.”  The word really meant “loyalty, faithfulness, a steadfast love as in marriage.”  He desires people who’d be truly committed in their hearts in the same way that He’s committed to them.  Isn’t that what anyone would desire in a marriage – to be loved and desired in equal measure?

He’ll love you no matter what you choose.

But let me say this: without this kind of love and reckless abandonment in our hearts, without this utter devotion, He can’t give us what He truly desires to.

I Corinthians 2:9

“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

You can’t even imagine what God wants to bring into your life.  That’s like saying, Imagine the most awesome manifestation of God on this planet.  Imagine what could happen if Jesus was walking down your street.  You got that picture?  Well, it’s too small.  You can’t even conceive of what that would be.

And it is not only what God desires to bring.  It’s what He already has prepared for those who love Him.

I’ll be honest: I’ve almost entirely settled for less in my relationship with God.  I’ve been successful by the perception of the Church.  Some of them have even followed me.

We’ve all seen what man can do.  He can evangelize.  He can build big buildings.  He can run a slick service with slick marketing campaigns.  He can lead a team of people toward greatness.  He can feed people in a forgotten part of town.  He can build a house for a family that couldn’t have dreamed of having a warm bed.

Funny thing is that you don’t even have to be a Christian to do those things.  Our bar is too low.  Our sights are ridiculously off.

Because what God desires to give us can’t even be imagined.

And the access to those things is to truly love Him, because His desires are in His heart – not in our minds.

Father, I want to know what You having everything in me truly looks like.  I want to know what loving You fully is like.  I’ve seen what man has done.  But only You deserve my worship.  I don’t even know how great You really are, and I’m sorry for that.  Will You show me Your greatness?  I just want to see You known for Your glory in this world.  It’s wrong than any place on the planet is worshipping any one other than You.  I just can’t settle anymore.

Let Your Kingdom come, Father.

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”

Last night I was reading this passage, praying, and then fell asleep.

One of the dreams I had was of me writing down a list of the things that describe as God’s son.  And I sensed God saying, “Speak these things until they are true about you in your heart.”

Every truth in Scripture is already a reality.  It’s been spoken and as soon as it was spoken by the mouth of the Father, it was done.

Unfortunately, not every one of those truths are evident in our own lives.  They can be – once they’ve been truly accepted in the heart.

When Jesus tells the disciples this outrageous thing about faith that if you have faith you can say to this deeply rooted tree to be planted in the sea and it will obey you, I wonder what they really thought.

Because what He said seemed on the surface to be impossible on just about every level :

• A physical impossibility – I mean, look at the roots.
• An “it’s never happened before” impossibility – who’s done it.  Who can prove it?  At least if it’s been done it can be reproduced, but it hasn’t.
• A personal impossibility.  Jesus says “it will obey you.”  Okay, who am I that a tree would obey me?

The issue here truly is belief.  Jesus said on another occasion: “What is impossible for man is possible with God.”  He’s always confronting our unbelief, because it reveals what we really believe and rely upon with Him.  To say that any of these things is impossible is to insult the very nature of God.  Because with God there are infinite possibilities.  Do we doubt His ability?

“It’s never happened before.“ That’s something we can’t really say.  Have we known every human experience?  Of course not.  But our lack of experience can never be our theology when Jesus says that all things are possible.  The theology Jesus is stating is: “The very nature of God brings all things into a realm of possibility.”  Our lack of experience all too often misjudges God.

And finally, who am I?  Who am I in this whole thing? Our placement with God is really important, because even if God is fully capable of doing something, then there has to be a belief that He actually desires to do something for me that He hasn’t done for me before nor done for anyone else before.  And I think that’s difficult to stomach.  I know in my own view of myself, I’m not someone deserving of anyone going an extra mile for.  There’s nothing particularly special about me that a person should ever desire to do more.

And so God is confronting the core insecurity in ourselves.  He’s saying, “Not only can I, but I’ll do anything for you.  I’m not holding anything back from you.  The stuff that’s impossible, that’s never been done before for any human being, I’ll do it for you.  Because I’m a good Daddy. And, most importantly, I’m your Daddy.”

The disciples wanted more faith.  They thought that quantity of faith = getting more results.  But I think what Jesus was pointing out is that the measure of faith doesn’t necessarily = results.  In fact, a small amount of faith can produce amazing results.

I think the measure of faith is = to what we believe about God.  Our measure of faith is = to the character of God that we trust in, not necessarily our experience of things that He’s done.

Our faith is totally reliant on our perspective on Him – not the situation.

The more we know Him, the easier it is to believe Him.  The more we know Him, the more impossibility comes into the realm of possibility.

Before we became Christians there was a belief struggle.  We may or may not have even believed in God.  And even once we did, how could it be so easy to be reconciled with Him?  At some point, we believed that He could receive us as we are.

And along the way, we really believed and owned that we were saved. Now when I began this relationship with Him, it took extraordinary faith to believe that He wanted me and would keep me.  Or so it felt.

These days, I know for me, I never think about or question that part of my life.  It just is.  I’m His and He never lets go of me.  His character is solid.  I know He’d never take it away.  And I act out of that accordingly.  It doesn’t take an extraordinary measure of faith every day to believe that aspect of my life.  As a matter of fact, I feel like it doesn’t take any.  But it obviously does.  It’s great faith though it may be small.

At this stage, has my faith waned?  Nope.  I almost don’t consider it faith anymore because I really believe it.  Is my faith smaller?  It feels smaller, but it some ways it’s larger, deeper, more far reaching somehow.

And I think that this is what Jesus was saying in this parable.  That there is a faith that by comparison doesn’t even feel like faith.  It’s so large it’s small.  It doesn’t take much.  Just a thought.  Just a small consideration toward the truth of that reality brings an explosive change in the natural.  It transforms and consumes everything around it.

I think real faith is so incredibly effortless.  It’s not extreme, because your Daddy is endless possibilities.  It’s not outrageous because your Daddy is good and He loves to do these things for you.

There’s no lack on His end of the equation whether with power or desires of good things toward us.

As I walked I inhaled the odors of flowers, grass, leaves, and ocean.  It’s saddening  to think of all the times that I don’t stop and just sniff the air.  It’s a vast array of salty and sweet, strong and faint, perfumey and pungent.  You know, air really never smells as vanilla as I treat it most of the time.

I rubbed my fingers over leaves and flowers – cautiously looking at windows to make sure the neighbors weren’t peeking at me manhandling their foliage.  I felt the scratchy, abrasive trunk of countless palm trees.  It almost hurt at times.  And I could imagine that if I accidentally rubbed my shoulder against one while running that it would leave me pink and raw.

I walked with a cup of coffee in hand and washed the morning taste out of my mouth.  Where would I be without something as simple as taste?

I can actually make a perfect cup of coffee.  My tastebuds are accurate enough to detect the precise amount of sugar if my coffee is too bitter.

I can cook something that others can find appealing – actually bring joy to their faces.  And that same sense of taste can help me prepare people for the disaster their about to experience.  I’ve recommended restaurants.  Praised my wife.  Shared morsels of what I was experiencing.  Brushed my teeth from the internal alerts from my mouth.

Taste and see that the LORD is good; – Psalm 34:8

The Scripture crossed  my mind.  Taste is a metaphor here and there are many deep and fascinating places I could go with it.

But on a much simpler note (and not even a good hermeneutical one for those who are so inclined), I wonder if taste alone, as a sense, is a good enough indicator of the fact that God is good.  I mean, if you never ever got anything else you wanted in life in terms of material possessions or relationships, etc. – if you had only been given the sense of taste would it cause you to conclude that: “Wow, this Creator of mine is a really good to me.  He gave me the sense of taste.”

Think about the sense taste though: it is uniquely yours.  No one can convince you that something tastes good.  No amount of talking or reasoning, no famous named chef can cause you to like or dislike something.  In fact, chances are you like the taste of something that makes other people cringe.

The sense of taste seems to have no other use but to give us enjoyment. Now granted there’s gag reflex that sometimes can save your life and desiring the flavor of something is sometimes the indicator that your body has unmet nutritional needs.  But all in all, the sense of taste in most of its use is only to bring us pleasure.  We typically don’t eat things we don’t like the taste of. We eat things because we like them. And most of the time, eating isn’t a burden.

Taste.

Why would God create such a subjective thing?

Isn’t that a weird thing to come up with?

Who could have thought of such a thing?

If you created life out of nothing, would you be so concerned about its pleasure?  It’s joy?

Personally, I think I’d be more concerned about my own pleasure as a creator.

When I was a little kid, my grandmotther would cook these fabulous artery clogging Southern meals.  And after she’d cook, she’d just sit at the table with a smirk on my face and watch me eat.  I was 6 years old and I still vividly remember how weird (and a little uncomfortable) it was that she’d stare at me.  But she’d always say why: “Nanny just loves watching her baby eatin’ good.”

Even explaining the why she did it, doesn’t make it any less strange I guess.  But I think today she helps me understand God a little more.

What a weird thing it is for God to give us taste buds.  But He loves watching us.

I think God was paying attention to me 2 nights ago when I ate my wife’s meatloaf.  It was an insanely good meatloaf.  And I was really grateful.

But I think God’s much more enthralled with us than we give Him credit for.  In fact, I think we might be pretty uncomfortable with Him if we knew how much.  You’d probably be asking the similar question that I was asking: “Why are You staring at me while I eat?”

And He’d say, “Because I love you.  I love just watching you.  I like just seeing you happy and enjoying something.”

And we’d think that was weird.

And He’d be totally okay with that.

God’s always watching.  And not for the reasons we think.

He’s always trying to catch us….just like a Father.

It’s easier to give God devotion rather than your heart.

Devotion doesn’t have any risks. It can actually be used as a bargaining chip to point out why we deserve something.

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

And that is a Shakespeare quote by the way.

The truth is that most of the people we find in relationship with us are as much like us as we can possibly find. In part, I think we just love ourselves that much. I mean, if you can’t hang out with yourself, you might as well find someone who at least reminds you of yourself.

I think agreement is good, and there are some great and powerful things that come out of agreement. But there’s negative things as well like assuming you’re right because someone else agrees with you, while condemning others because they don’t. You know, it’s easy to make a bad guy out of someone who disagrees.

The problem is that we’ve sliced so thinly the community that I think we were meant to have.

Community is a huge part of the transformative process. We don’t change on our own. And, you know what? We don’t change just by hanging out with people who agree nearly 100% with us.

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. – Proverbs 27:17

That’s such a sexy verse. It’s pretty much become cliche as well. We’ve dressed it up to sound so friendly, but I really don’t think it’s as nice as everyone would like to think.

Iron cannot actually sharpen iron. It can’t.

Take two steak knives out of a drawer and try sharpening them by rubbing them together or something. It just can’t happen.

And I think that’s one of the points of this scripture is that if two are so much alike, if they are of the same hardness, that is the degree of sharpness that you will get by their collision. What you’ll have is a high degree of no change at all. But the two will be just alike. They’ll be buddies.

The point is that there cannot be change where there is no real conflict.

When iron is being sharpened, it’s messy. There are sparks and slivers of metal everywhere. In any sharpening something gives in and something dominates. Equals do not sharpen they dull.

In these days of political correctness and tolerance, I think we’ve all become a bunch of weenies who get our feelings hurt too easily. We run away from relationships because we say they’re too painful, and we hole up with people who’ll always agree – or – even if they disagree, they won’t tell us because they’re afraid of conflict.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not right all the time. And sometimes, I’m in conflict with people and I’m 100% sure I’m right…for a while…and then some months later I allow myself to be broken and sharpened.

Don’t get me wrong – I hate conflict. I really do. I’ve always wanted everyone – everyone! – to like me. But I hate not changing. I hate that inauthentic dance that we do around in relationships when we don’t disagree. I hate that giving up on a relationship because I find myself on the polar opposite of an issue. I need all these people. I really do.

The first question: “Where does it hurt?”

And it’s amazing that after all this pain and the high degree of communicative ability that I have (at least that I’d like to think I have) that I struggled for several minutes to describe the pain and exactly where it was located in my knee.

Second question: “So it hurts when you walk?”

And I’m like, “not really.”

“When you run?”

“No.”

And at that point I’m thinking the physical therapist thinks I really don’t have a knee problem.   I actually felt a little alarmed internally because I didn’t think she was going to treat me.

I mean, my knee really did hurt, not when I walk…most of the time.  It hurts when I jump.  It hurts when I make a sudden move or climb the stairs…but not every time.  But when it hurts my leg totally goes limp.

“Is it getting worse?”

I don’t think so.  I don’t know.  It could be.

And after a long list of more questions, the physical therapist skeptically began her examination of my knee.  I walked, stepped, and resisted applied pressure and winced as visibly as I could because I actually wanted to get this thing taken care of.

Finally she looked at my quads and said, “How long have you been having this problem?”

Like 2 years.

“So why didn’t you get physical therapy?”

Because I’m a guy and I hate going to the doctor and I figure things will just work their way out.

“Yeah, I can tell you’ve been dealing with this for a while…your right leg is smaller than the other.  In fact, there’s a big difference.”  And she actually measures both of my quads to prove to me how much of a difference really existed.

And it dawned on me stupid it was for me to wait so long.  How I’ve stayed out of pain by walking and using that leg less and refraining from activities that I used to enjoy.  I’ve managed my pain, but I really haven’t gotten better.  I live around the pain.  I nervously walk up and down stairs.

It’s become normal.  I just didn’t realize how normal it’s become.

What happened yesterday sorta mirrors what’s been going on in my conversation with Jesus over the last year or so. I realize now that my times of bad attitude, my defensiveness, my guilt, my shame, my lack of trust, my greedy grasping, etc. – these things are all ways that I’ve compensated for pain and brokenness. I realize those things rear their head so that I don’t have to experience the pain that I’ve never dealt with.

Some of that pain is from religion, from relationship with people, circumstances, and often (and most times) it stems from a wrong belief about God.

Reactly wrongly to people, circumstances, and God feels like something that’s happening in the moment. Someone crosses us or something happens and we react in a way that maybe we wish we didn’t. But we believe ourselves to be fair people who would at least be reacting objectively.

Truth is, we’re broken people. We may feel at times like we’re more whole than we really are – and that’s just because we’ve compensated so long that we can’t even see the limp that we walk with while others may even be able to see it a mile away.

Some of the junk we really thought would just work it’s way out. But that’s not what happens. Not talking to people or not thinking about a situation or a hurt doesn’t mean that we’ve been healed. And that’s where God wants to bring us – to wholeness.

Right now, I’m staring at the beginning of some physical therapy that can strengthen and bring healing to my knee. I’m kinda not looking forward to it. But this problem has been 2 years in the making and it’s not going to resolve from one doctor’s visit.

I’m so reminded of the story of Jesus with the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 15:1-15).  He’d been an invalid for 38 years, and Jesus asked him a really startling question: “Do you want to get well?”

What Jesus asked was a really huge question on a lot of levels for this guy. For brevity I won’t go into the endless number of things that would have changed including the fact that he would have to actually get a job and support himself.

The initial encounter with Jesus was really the easy part. Yeah, Jesus could heal him physically. And that sounds so over the top, who couldn’t be happy and better off with that?

But I think Jesus was seeing ahead. This was going to change everything. This guy was going to have to be reintroduced to life, and honestly I think it was going to be pretty tough. I think he was going to have to go through a healing process of brokenness with himself, with brokenness with family who allowed him to be on the streets, with people who walked past him every day and thought he was trash…he was even going to have to sort through bitterness that he possibly held against God for 38 years of his life.

Jesus was more than willing to touch his physical body and heal it. But Jesus’ desire for his life was much greater than that guy could have ever known. Jesus wanted him to be whole.

And for us that’s His same desire.

It’s not okay to be sick.

It’s not normal.

It’s not acceptable.

We can’t live in a place of compensating for brokenness. We can’t enable environment that accepts people to continually walk around in their woundedness.

I was a little bummed today when I was looking up a new church plant in my community and found a community news item that they have a fundraiser this weekend.

Now I’ll admit that I have a personal opinion regarding a church fundraising from the community. And I’ll reserve that opinion.

But I’m greatly concerned about the message it sends when a new church springs up with zero credibility and relationship with a heavily unchurched community and organizes a fundraiser for missions to another part of the globe. Included in the article was that they’re hoping to sponge $2500 off the community.

A COUPLE OF FACTS ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY:

• 90% of the kids of our elementary school get free or reduce lunches.
• There are a ton of obvious community needs.  Walk down our street one time as a visitor and you can name about 10.
• It’s about 90% unchurched with many people frankly hostile to the Church.

Do I think this church is trying to be a sponge?  Of course not.  I’m sure they haven’t even considered the fact that the perception of the Church in our community is that the Church really doesn’t care about anything and only comes out of the 4 walls during the Christmas parade so that it can leap on an opportunity to convert someone.

What bugs me the most is that – by now – we should start considering these things.

A church plant is mostly likely not going to make $2500 off of themselves at a fundraiser.  Obviously, if they were that wealthy they wouldn’t be doing a fundraiser in the first place.

So the intention, like it or not, is sponging off of a bunch of already broke unchurched people who already think we don’t care.

Last time I checked, we’re supposed to be the people serving our community.  It just kills me when we get it wrong.

Whenever I think of the trips that we’ve taken as missionaries to other countries, there were a few things that were no-brainers:

• We went to that place financially solid enough so that we wouldn’t be a burden on the people there.
• We tried our best to bless the businesses by buying locally and gave to the needs of the community.
• We usually gave a financial gift to our hosts & the local churches as well.

So why don’t we treat out own communities with the same courtesy?

Hey, Fundraise.  But ask people who are following Jesus to make a sacrifice toward what you believe He’s calling you to do.

Go to every place on the planet with the Gospel.   But don’t have your introduction to your primary mission field be with your palm out – not in hospitality – but in asking them to serve your cause.

Here’s a clip from one of our giveaways in this same community.  The most we say is, “It’s just a small way to say Jesus loves you – no strings attached.”

At the end of the video (difficult to hear) a person had a keen insight: “Wow, That’s they way it should be!”