One of those days—On spontaneous heaviness of heart

Do you ever have one of those days where your heart is heavy and you have no clue why?

For one, it's a great day in a great week. You are being actively challenged in life, and rising to the occasion. Your relationships are good, or, at least, to be expected. Your old habits may present themselves now and then, but you are resisting, or receiving God's grace and pushing forward.

In the zone. Not bored, not depressed, not hurting, not anxious. Joyful, even. Peaceful, even. In a way. And yet, a heavy heart.

So you take it to God. Spend some extra time praying and meditating on his word. Opening the lines of communication and talking to God, asking questions, even as you go about your day. Share your heart with a few trusted friends, the usual wise counselors, ask some questions and answer many in return.

And yet still nothing. A few possible candidates identified. Maybe you're processing something in the past, mulling over something yet approaching. Maybe you're empathizing with some friend or distant family member. Yet nothing really hits the epiphany, so you commit that stuff to the Lord in faith and move on. Heavy still.

Ever have one of those days?

I'm having one today. I just can't put my finger on it. God's not telling me, or I'm just not hearing him, so I guess all I can really do is persist. Take another tactic and write it out. And just wait, share, listen.

Friends, if you have anything burdening your heart, please feel free to share with me. I'd love to lift you up in prayer while I'm in this place.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:22-28

Staying Sane

If I could sum up the last three weeks in a single mantra, it would be "one day at a time." It's been a challenge staying sane these three weeks.

Three weeks happens to be the amount of time since I returned from the Great Northwest to the Sunny Southwest. This is something that I could attribute to any number of reasons, which all had a more or less immediate impact on me upon my return.

For one, I've experienced a separation from a number of excellent friendships that I had been building over the course of the previous six weeks (and some over the course of the preceding three months or more). Some of these friendships were even the sort that I started to develop a keen interest in continuing to invest. Add to this a scattering of some of my San Diego friends and roommates, and a lingering reluctance to dive back into my usual communities and commitments. And on top of all this, a gargantuan workload that is stretching me to my professional limits and slowly eating up all of my time.

Disconnection.

I don't share any of this for the sake of complaining. In some ways, I revel in the tension and the challenge. I know that God does not present me with anything that he doesn't intend to pull me through, and, indeed, "he gives life as we overcome," as Oswald says. But the point remains that I have found myself stretched quite considerably.

The other half of this story, the one that is a bit less easy to gloss with spiritualistic optimism, is that I have been confronted with some things that I'd rather not be dealing with. Old habits and old temptations that I would love to have left behind years ago. Bits and pieces of tiny things in my everyday life that try my patience. Friendships and relationships — personal and professional — that test my commitment or leave me wanting more.

Dissatisfaction.

I started reading a new book tonight. Sex God, by Rob Bell. It's about a lot more than just sex, which is part of the point of the book. It's about the all-encompassing spirituality of life, about the bigger picture of what sexuality is all about. About what it means to be, at our core, sexual beings, and how that all goes wrong. So far I've got nothing but good things to say; it's been a refreshing set of reminders and realignments.

Finishing the fourth chapter is what made me really set the book down and reflect. There, right in front of me, was an explanation for these last three weeks. The topic was lust, and not simply of the pornographic variety that we all connote with the word. It was a look at sinful craving that goes back to the roots.

When Adam and Eve took and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was more than a simple gastronomical event. It was an act of rebellion. They first had to notice and desire the fruit. What's more, they desired the promise—the lie—of what the fruit would give them. Their desire was rooted in dissatisfaction with what they had already been blessed with from the beginning: paradise.

Their dissatisfaction drove a desire, which led to a fixation, which led to a choice. Such choices often lead to desensitization, to depression or anger, to further disconnectedness. All of which serve to drive continued dissatisfaction. This is starting to sound like a familiar cycle, no? Lust.

Which brings me back to my bedroom floor, setting down a book, reflecting. Reflecting on the ways in which I am finding myself increasingly disconnected, on the dissatisfactions these disconnections are driving. Reflecting on the fixations cropping up in my head and the deeper needs which they are purporting to fill. Identifying the lies that need to be resisted and the points that need to be taken in faith.

If I am to stay sane in seasons like this, I need to be enlightened in my understanding of lust. A few steps are required to combat it.

1. Start with some gratitude. Why am I dissatisfied when God has already blessed me with so much in the first place? God tells his people all throughout his word to remember his goodness and his deeds, and I would be well advised to do the same. Psalm 77 is a perennial favorite and a great place to start a pen-on-paper list of my own.
   
2. Identify the fixations and the lies behind them. My usual, almost comfortable, struggles and obsessions are more likely to be driving me into despair and further disconnection. Are isolating myself into time-wasters like web browsing and watching television shows online really doing anything about loneliness and boredom? Is this something good that is being hijacked?
   
3. Channel my energy into positive, worthwhile pursuits that really do meet those unmet needs. Disconnected from God? How about we go for a walk and have a chat. Disconnected from my own body? How about exercise and some physical therapy on that knee. Stifled and bored? Rediscover art and creativity in drawing exercises, researching video production, or writing articles on this blog. Disconnected from friends? Keep work limited to sane hours, make the most of passing conversations or opportunities to serve, get people together for dinner more often, and challenge Travis and the Smalls to a Halo 3 tournament this weekend :)
   

I find it interesting that the word "lust" which we take for simple desire or pleasure is apparently the Greek word epithumia, whose etymology basically means "in the mind." How much of that cycle of sinful desire and bad decisions and despair is driven in our mind? So much of that is fueled by moments of distraction and fantasy, when we're living somewhere in our head other than right here, right now.

Curious that the way to stay sane under stress and break out of negative cycles is to "live for today," and to channel our energies into the excellent opportunities and passions we have all around us every day.

On freedom and health

I saw a link to an article with a questionable claim. Pornography is vital to freedom? It's a "standard-bearer for civilisation?"

Then so is rampant obesity.

I hold the position that the existence of pornography is more accurately an indicator of our unhealthy and overstimulated appetite for sex. Like eating, sex is natural, necessary, and enjoyable. However, pornography is like junk food, and a diet of junk will certainly increase your capacity for it while serving to dull your appetite for the good stuff.

The relative luxuries of modern life, the moral relativism of postmodern secular humanism, and, yes, the technological wonders of contraception release sex from its merely physical constraints. Sex no longer has much of an opportunity cost in terms of time spent surviving. Nor does sex carry an explicit cost of another child to raise, another mouth to feed. Sex is indeed free to be celebrated.

But are we going to celebrate it like the college freshman who binges on Kool-Aid and Cocoa Pebbles because mother never let him eat any? Say hello to stomach aches, Pepto Bismol, and the freshman fifteen. Our bodies were designed for a healthy diet and physical activity, not lethargy and junk.

At least we can be thankful that our diets only impact our own health, and that our bodies have some capacity for junk. To that end, I can also be thankful that my capacity for food is at least limited by the size of my stomach. And, really, that's the live and let live way to look at it, right? If only the consequences of pornography were so well contained.

I read (and bookmarked) a great article on the New York Magazine: The Porn Myth, by Naomi Wolf. It's worth a read, and I think she does a brilliant job laying out the societal, purely secular and extremely dangerous consequences of pornography in our society.

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as "porn-worthy." Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

Is pornography really freedom? Or is it indulgence in a morally immature attitude of total selfishness and instant gratification? Is it celebration of sexuality? Or is it societal- and self-destruction?

I submit that pornography is enslavement.

Pornography distorts a man's appetite until he is no longer interested in the real thing. He is cheated out of the best kind of sexual relationship there is: a real one, with a real person, with real commitment and real demands. I'm willing to bet that philosophical arguments, moral relativism and psychological rationalization don't hold a candle to this kind of relationship. And yet we trade the good for the cheap easy and in doing so sabotage ourselves from ever enjoying the good.

Conversely, pornography holds women to impossible standards, as Ms Wolf explains so well. Who can compete with super-idealized imagery that is always available and perfectly compliant? Who wants to compete with that? Where's the freedom to be yourself and express your own needs and desires? How about when those needs and desires transcend intercourse to things like romance, love, commitment, and security? Animated pixels make no such demands.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not advocating moderation here. Pornography is not merely useless like junk food, it is poisonous. Toxic in any quantity. There is a reason for that which I ground very thoroughly in Christianity, but but this post is overlong already.

In the end, I may concede that the toleration of pornography is some indication of freedom in a society. But is the existence existence and "celebration" of pornography an indication of a healthy society? No. Society aside, think of your own health: is it really worth cheating yourself out of what's best? Certainly not.

Quite a rant here, and probably still a bit rough around the edges. I welcome comments of any kind. Or just offer up rants of your own.

Fruit of the Light

Here are two helpful questions when you find yourself in a murky and ambiguous situation.

1. What is Right?
2. What pleases the Lord?

For example, I have two work projects that are to the point of costing me time and detracting from my other commitments. For whatever reason, they simply have gone wrong and the sooner I can be done with them the better. Unfortunately there is no easy out.

I asked myself this morning: what is the right thing to do?

For one project, what's right is easy: fulfill my end of the commitment, tie things off and hope for the best. Easy. For the other that's not so clear: there is no contract, no payment or compensation, and a history of considerable delays that have brought me to a radically different work situation than when I first agreed to the project. In this case, it seems right to simply end the ambiguity by donating my current code and suggesting the client take some time to regroup.

Well, hang on a second, let's take this a step further. Ephesians 5:8-10 tells me to live as a child of the light and "find out what pleases the Lord." So what would please the Lord here?

I am forced to re-evaluate the first project. Simply fulfilling my end of the contract here is not quite enough. I should still be giving my best effort and most graceful management of the project—that means no cut-and-run allowed. Accelerate things a bit, sure. Focus more tightly on the agreed-upon scope, and actively try to wrap things up, but don't just deliver and disappear. Okay, be graceful, duly noted.

My latter project becomes more clear as well: just finish it. Yes, it is impacting my other commitments, and I may have a legitimate out, but commit the project to the Lord and trust in him to take care of the details. At the very least give them something usable before you donate the code and suggest re-negotiation on extra functionality.

So I learn, again, that sometimes asking what is "right" or "justifiable" is not always what is "best." It is an excellent place to start—a good prop, if you will, to pull ourselves to our feet. But in order to truly walk we ought to be focusing our decisions not inward, not outward, but upward.

Proverbs 14:12, 16:25 both tell us, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." Too often when I look for what is right I am caught looking for my rights. Perhaps a useful prop, a crutch, a good place to start. But ultimately what is right is simply a subset of love, and is certainly not its substitute in and of itself.

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord." Ephesians 5:8-10

The Golden Rule is useless by itself

I found my way to an article a little with "practical tips" for living your life according to the Golden Rule: Love your neighbor as yourself. A secular article, mind you, but nice enough.

There are some objections in the comments that might make one pause. If you have bad desires, and don’t mind being treated in ways that others would very much mind, then it’s not so good! Or even, the golden rule allows others to impose their rules and morals on you without consulting you at all.

Perhaps. But, then, one ought not forget that the Golden Rule is second to another: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. When you take God out of the equation, or put him anywhere but first, your understanding and execution of love will always be fundamentally flawed.

Only insomuch as you love God will you be able to love anyone else. (And only when we realize and accept God's unconditional love and mercy toward us will we be able to love him in the first place.)

Rough Thoughts on Embracing Online Media in the Church

Media is so important to communication, and it is one area the body of Christ could stand to take better advantage of. Let's start by thinking of three ways you learn something: watching, listening, reading, doing.

Watching is great when you don't know much about a subject. There is tons of information is conveyed per second. Listening, with less visual cues, works well if you're already pretty familiar, but still takes a fair amount of time and attention. I, personally, never really got in to podcasts for this reason.

Reading distills ideas down to their core concepts and is potentially the most dense way to convey information. It requires a certain level of existing ability to understand and abstract concepts that are being built on, but can just as easily introduce someone to brand new ideas. Of course, text is just as easy to scan as it is to pore over, and this is one reason the web is so successful.

Writing has been with us for ages, quite literally. The Bible is text-based. And yet it records an aural tradition of preaching messages and teaching interactively that is quite as old as itself. With the internet's ability to transmit text, audio and video, obviously I'm not the first person to think that the church should get in on this action.

I do think the church can be doing a better job here. For one, we're only really seeing Sunday messages uploaded to YouTube or some church website. The savvy ones have even set up an RSS feed so that you can use iTunes or some other media player to subscribe to their sermons as a video podcast. Okay. That's a start.

But if we're really serious about the message, let's strategically embrace the media available to us. I can think of a couple key advantages of using the internet to distribute.

Publishing media on the web is cheap. Free services like YouTube are becoming near-ubiquitous. All you need is a laptop, video camera, audio interface, a couple mics, some software, a few friends and the skills to make it happen or at least the passion to try.

Speaking of friends, kids are saturated in technology and media know-how and more and more are graduating every year with degrees in Media and Technology. Let's encourage each other to make amateur music videos and little musicals and spy movies in our spare time.

We can keep our messages short, or make it long and in-depth. But going with short and sweet is probably going to be the best for video, with more in-depth concepts being fleshed out in long articles or small books. Although keeping it short does help us to really focus our thinking and squeeze every second for what it's worth. It's important to respect your audience's time.

De-centralize and flatten the church. Chances are there is more than one person out there with more than one good idea. Let's put the amateurs on the air and let the good stuff trickle to the top. Really help people feed each other, sharpen each other, keep each other accountable, deliver God's word to each other. Encourage, strengthen and exhort each other.

Paul write in 1 Corinthians, "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church."

Church is for church. The New Testament church met in each others homes not just to hear the disciples teach (though they did do that), but also to eat, to pray, to worship God and celebrate together. As we encourage and teach each other how to feed ourselves in our everyday lives, let's see more corporate activity at our corporate meetings.

So what's to stop you and your Jesus-geek friends from putting together a fifteen minute mini-sermon once a week? Don't worry about the quality, just get started and improve one bit at a time once you start getting the hang of it.

(Alternate title for this entry: Note to self #183.)

Tumblr

So I'm trying out a tumblelog-format blog at http://nick.zadrozny.com. I've been attracted to the idea since before it was popular, but am only just now deciding to dip my toe into starting my own.

Blogging here has been some motivation for that, now that I see I'm capable of writing. Furthermore that I am tending to prefer that short and pithy style that tumblelogs emphasize. We'll see how well my little commentary posts fare in that format. If I like it, I may move things over there entirely.

Lamentations 3:22-23: Accept compassion

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Some days you read a verse like this and just have to say, "Thank you."

I'm in Seattle right now, and have been for about two weeks. I've been very excited about this trip, because it's been a fantastic opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and into that moment-by-moment lifestyle of dependency. God has been showing me rather a lot lately, and it's really exciting, but that doesn't mean that the junk of my own nature and the world around me don't get on me still.

I was in need of God's great love and compassion just this morning, and, well, he provides. I say that without an exclamation point: this is not exclaiming, this is peace and quiet acceptance. God is not interested in our faking exuberance, so don't feel bad if it's not what you feel. God is interested in our putting one step in front of the next, guided by his word and glorifying to him.

Sometimes we need to just accept his truth: do not be consumed with false guilt and self-condemnation! God is compassionate, loves you greatly, and does not desire you to be consumed. Every single day is a brand new day in Him. The slate is wiped totally clean by the blood of Jesus Christ! We—Christian and non-Christian alike—just need to learn to accept that and live it.

Isaiah 41:10: Do not fear

I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, 'You are my servant';
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 41:9-10

So what am I afraid of? What am I apprehensive of? Why do I rush, or why do I hesitate? This is God, the Lord of Heavenly Armies, the most powerful, glorious and righteous person in all creation. He pursued me, chose me, and wants to strengthen and help me. He is pursuing you, wants to help you and strengthen you.

This is not a point to analyze and over-think. This is one to meditate on and let sink in.

Titus 3:5: Because of his mercy

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

Titus 3:5

My common theme is that it is good and necessary to glorify God through obedience, to worship him with our very lives, to live constantly in his presence. But it's important to remember one thing: all that is impossible until we can ask for and receive his unconditional love and mercy.

Sometimes it's not as easy as one might think to simply receive unconditional love. I've found myself struggling with just that the last few days. I often try to tweak and optimize my life into righteousness—worthiness—usually more to frustration than success. Often the result of my own efforts is failure, which only serves to drive me deeper into self-condemnation and away from God himself. Paradoxically, it is only when I stop tying to earn God's grace and instead just ask for and receive it with no strings attached am I capable of responding with a lifestyle of worship.

Obedience is not the price of love. Love and thankfulness is the fuel for obedience. We love God because he first loved us and died for us while we were yet sinners. Everything else follows pretty naturally from that.

Romans 6:23: Life, the gift of God

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

Pretty clear, isn't it? And yet I've heard people—Christians!—rationalize that statement to shreds, believe it or not.

The really interesting point here is that the eternal life here is not something that begins only when our earthly life ends. It's an eternal life that begins now. And likewise, that death is not just some kind of eternal separation from God that begins after our life on earth. It's a separation that exists now.

So don't be so quick to rationalize sinful and selfish behavior! The wages of sin is death, separation from God, now. Note this also: life is not the wages of righteousness. Thank God for that. Life is God's gift, found in Christ Jesus, received in humility. It starts now and prompts us to live a life of thankfulness and praise.

Let's not advocate legalism, and let's not be misled by cheap grace. Let's stop sinning, and let's receive God's gift of life. Easy, but not trivial.

Isaiah 53:7: Yet he did not open his mouth

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

Isaiah 53:7

How often do you open your mouth when you are oppressed and afflicted? How often do you defend yourself?

I was reading The Kite Runner today and the main character spent some time contemplating the eyes of a lamb about to be slaughtered. It isn't afraid, it isn't resentful. It is calm and accepting. What an odd feeling to possess when you have a knife at your throat. 'It's almost as if the lamb has a sense of the higher purpose,' or somesuch, he wrote.

"God and the devil have one thing in common: they're both trying to kill you." But God has a higher order in mind: infusing the likeness of his Son into you. Preparing you for the inheritance that He has for you.

A challenge today: be silent in your afflictions. Don't complain. Don't defend yourself. Don't run from God, because he's the one with your best intentions in mind.

(This is the rough draft, but I wanted to post something. I'll edit it when I have time.)

John 15:7

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

John 15:7

I'm not even going to pretend to understand this one much less explain it. I know that part of the point here is that remaining in Jesus and allowing (enabling?) his words to remain in me mean my wishes naturally line up with His will. I've seen it, I think I've lived it, and I certainly ask for a lot of things. But, really, I'm still working on the first part there. I want to remain in Him constantly and have His words remain in me constantly. I want to be so identified with God that whatever I wish is whatever He wishes.

Joshua 1:8: Constant Devotion

Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you may be prosperous and successful.

Joshua 1:8

Meditate on the word constantly. Write God's commands on your heart. Pray without ceasing. Practice living in God's presence. Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It's a theme of so many commands and encouraging testimonies: stay completely and constantly focused on God.

And this is not a burden! It's the very promise of success, prosperousness and joy in the life of a Christian. It is the foundation to the experience of an intimate relationship with a God who is present in every little detail. God is real, and he is not not some distant, abstract (fake!) concept. Furthermore he is kind and good and that lifestyle of constant conversation with him, constant meditation on his law, is what gives him a chance to express that to you.

I was reading Richard Foster's classic Celebration of Discipline last night, and he made a particularly good point about the lifestyle of constant focus on God as it relates to corporate worship. "Worship" being more than just a formal expression of devotion and adoration, being the freedom of your spirit to intermingle with God's Spirit, and corporate worship being this plus the union and intermingling of individuals in God's presence.

Living in God's presence, experiencing him move in your everyday circumstances, is an important part of building a holy expectation for corporate worship. When you see God involved in your daily life, of course he'll show up for a gathering of his family! When your best effort at careful and complete obedience reveals God's grace and strength in your weakness, you grow in your understanding of his goodness and desire to express praise. And when you come into corporate worship with a heart stoked and ready, it absolutely serves to add to the fire and bless everyone present!

Of course, we're talking about uncompromisingly life-long and all-encompassing habits here, sometimes it can be difficult to get started. The best anyone can say is just keep at it, because it's worth it!

2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed"

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness..."

2 Timothy 3:16

As a Christian responsible for the sharpening and strengthening of my brothers and sisters, I very much need to be reminded of the truth of this verse. As with many truths about God, it is both humbling and empowering.

Humbling because my ability to positively impact the lives of others is not about me. My intellect, experience, wisdom, and so on are useless in and of themselves. It is the Scripture that is useful, not me.

Empowering for the same reason: it's not about me, but I have the right tools at hand. Scripture is the equipment necessary to check myself, sharpen my brothers and sisters, and spur others on toward love and good deeds. Not my ability to eloquently discourse and reason and debate, not my ability to persuade or convince. Just my ability—and willingness—to understand and employ Scripture.

"All Scripture is God-breathed," all Scripture contains the life-giving breath of God.

"The Vision" by Pete Grieg

So this guy comes up to me and says, "What's the vision? What's the big idea?"
I open my mouth and words come out like this...

The vision?
The vision is JESUS - obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.

They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice.

They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.

They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago - to reach for the stars.

It scorns the good and strains for the best.

It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.

This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.

A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose that they might one day win the great
"Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...

This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.

The tattoo on their back boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ?

Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them. Hollywood cannot hold them.

Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)

Their subconscious sings.

They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdos! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.

How do I know?
Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D.

And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great "Amen!" from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself.

And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.