The Spindle

I am contending for breakthrough. I am praying for nearly every sick or injured person I see; and praying for more meek boldness (talk about an oxymoron. Welcome to the Kingdom :) ) and wisdom as the Holy Spirit teaches me to minister in this way. Let me start with a verse that has been prophesied over me twice in the past year:

1 John 2:27 NIV

As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit--just as it has taught you, remain in Him.

And here's the NLT ( I love the NLT. Thank you Laura :) )

But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what He teaches is true--it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.

My first Sunday at church in Beijing nearly a year ago, my spiritual mom (I need to write a blog about the beauty of family in Christ :) ), gave me this verse along with other prophecy regarding doors that the Lord was going to open in my life. I was perplexed, though excited, at the time. However, as is often the case, just enough error entered my interpretation of what the verse meant (meant period) and what it would mean to me personally that it became a subconscious justification to fly solo for several months. It gave me an excuse to avoid family and real relationship ( a concept completely foreign to me until four weeks ago and everything leading up to my recent breakthrough). Family and relationship are also the only real places to grow in godliness and Christ-likeness.

I was an orphan, as we all are, before being adopted in to God's family. However, even once we are, we are still maladjusted children who lash out at love, even more violently so at love as perfect as the Father's, because we have been betrayed or neglected in the past and just don't get His love, even when Papa God keeps showering us with gifts and Grace, which He does incessantly.

I was like an orphan, say in his teens, who has just been adopted and really needs some money. Instead of asking my new Dad for it, I grab His wallet when He is "not looking" (so to speak) and take out a twenty. Where as, if I trusted my position and privilege of being His son, I would simply tell Him what I need or want and he would give me even more and help me with the entire process of whatever I was involved in. Up until four weeks ago or so now, this had been my relationship with the Father. He had continuously been pouring out to me His Grace and the desires of my heart and I kept running away from home, breaking windows, stealing money, etc. I was a newly adopted orphan who didn't know how to be in family; even worse, didn't believe that a family would want him, and all the gifts in the world wouldn't be able to change that.

--I saw this orphan attitude today in many of those that came to our Yale Students for Christ BBQ today, holding back on the feast even though we exhorted them to get all they could eat.--

Not fully understanding Grace and the Cross upon becoming a Christian, though constantly walking in it (Grace) and watching Him provide my every need, give me the desires of my heart, etc, at first I was doing my best to prove that I really deserved to be in this family and for a few months, things were pretty good. However, I was setting myself up for a mental breakdown that would last from the end of March of this year through the day where the Cross became real to me 08-23-09 where I wrote quite simply in my journal:

You love me and you are good ( I could say the words but I didn't believe it until that day; no matter how much anyone else or He himself told me, I couldn't get it through my obfuscated little orphan mind into my heart)

I don't need to manipulate people or situations to be happy or get what I need. (This is what I mean by taking His wallet and pulling out a bill when He's "not looking")

Today is the beginning of something new and NOTHING IS LOST (actually everything is gained [he who loses his life will save it, and he who tries to save it will lose it]). No more performing (especially in front of God in prayer for example, and not saying what sounded nice or what I thought He wanted to hear even in terms of repentance (please google The Naked Gospel, free book, and download it :) ). Just human BEING (not doing, or trying, or wishing, but BEING, abiding in Him)

AT THE HEIGHTS, or, perhaps, one could say depths (though with the manic-depressive nature of it; it was both) of my mental break down in June, I encountered a man named Jey-C. Someday I hope to write a book about my five months in hell, because , truly, no matter how bad you think you might have messed up or potentially missed the will of God (first off that's impossible and not true, and that's what really messed up the Puritans), and even when you make mistakes God is still God and continues to take care of you and answer prayer. One day, at the nadir of despair, I cried out on my knees for God to show me JC (that's how I said it). I don't know how He does it; but He does, always. He is faithful everyday of our lives. Later that day, as I am walking around in a stupor in an underground mall, a man comes up to me and asks me for money. I give him 10,000 won (roughly ten US dollars depending on the exchange rate). I start walking away, and then realize I want my 10,000 won back. So I follow the man.

Little break here--please realize how God wastes nothing! NOTHING! not even my miserly heart during that time of despair, to accomplish His will, which is to make us more like Him and to prepare us for Himself.

I follow him long enough and then realize I don't have the heart, and probably more so the guts, to ask for the money back so I join him for dinner.

We begin to speak, and we start talking about how he ended up homeless and it turns out he is schizophrenic and has also gone to seminary. Go figure; more like "God figure". At first I am not taking him seriously, similar to how when I entered the healing room at Bethel church in July I was so cynical going in there and then God knocked me off my feet and delivered me from major oppression I had dealt with my whole life! God is much bigger than my capriciousness! and thank goodness for that!

After the man Jey-C is finished eating, he tells me that God has a verse for me, so attentively, though smugly, I listen, "1 John 2:27," and he recites it from memory. Jey-C gave me other wisdom as well that day. When he recited that John to me though, I began to lose it ( in a good way, for once, during that time of despair). God wasn't done with me yet, and He never will be! God once again, as He was, in visible ways (because I can't begin to imagine all that He is doing for all of us that we can't see and he still sends us what I like to call "love notes") was showing me He loved me, but I still felt like an orphan. Not everything Jey-C told me was from God. Ironically enough that was also part of learning what the verse really meant ("so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true."). With the help of the Holy Spirit we can, as one of my beloved fathers in the faith has taught me, "chew the meat and spit out the bones." Some day I will write in more detail the occurrences of my first year as a Christian and especially during the five months of hell, but not now. During those five months, God constantly sent people to tell me that I was in a season to eat as much as I wanted from the spiritual banquet of lessons and truths and now I am having a restful time digesting and finally applying everything I have learned; not just being a hearer of the Word but a doer of the Word also (James).

With all the healing and growing that has been happening as of late I am beginning to understand this verse more and what Papa has been trying to tell me all along. It is so much easier now that I am simply being rocked in His arms or sitting in His lap, instead of running out the door yelling, locking myself in my room, or indeed washing the dishes or shining his shoes to earn His approval(remember Mary and Martha?), to hear what He is telling me.

I am in three different Bible studies now at Yale and completely engulfed by God's family and I love it! In China, I was in one, and I hardly went because I felt too important with all my other engagements and I was also a flake. I could be going to an evangelism conference tomorrow to "do more" for Him at Brown University, but I have made a promise to be committed to my singing group, so I am sticking around tomorrow to be around for call backs for our new taps. That's covenant, honor and respect (and indeed, love). My God is a God of covenant, who keeps His promises. I am learning that, by fixating my eyes on Him and watching my heart become like His. I have focused on who He is (the perfect Husband of my soul, my most dependable Friend, My GOOD Daddy who is always in a good mood) and I watch the Lord mold me into a godly man day by day. It's not about should, or must, or meant to, or God what's your will for my life!? it's about becoming like Him, plain and simple. Jesus said," Be perfect as my Father in Heaven is perfect." Only by beholding Him. Right now is the right time and where you are right now is the right place. We need to stop thinking we, or our mistakes, are bigger than our God who does not lie.

I am learning to be in family and I really feel like a prince. No longer do I feel like an orphan and now I really see this verse 1 John 2:27 coming alive. Many cool God-things and teachings have been brought to my attention recently that I have actually been learning directly from the Father, by spending tons of quality time with Him. It is such a beautiful confirmation to hear of others receiving the same exact revelations by the ONE and ONLY Spirit of God in whom there is FREEDOM! I now spend hours with Him because I am no longer an orphan who doesn't believe he should even be in the this new amazing family and house with an awesome backyard so shies away from Daddy, but now I can play catch with Him until the sun goes down and then watch the stars together like Simba and Mustafa in the Lion King. During that scene, Mustafa is telling Simba that someday He will be king and will inherit the kingdom and is showing him the past kings in the stars. Just as God told Abraham, our father in the faith, that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars, we are those descendants and we are royalty (check out ibethel.org for more on this kind of teaching, especially their books).

The Lord is also bringing healing to my back, deep and complete healing and healing to others. There is a breakthrough of physical healing on the horizon, which brings me to the closing point of this blog post.

I have realized that the reason that the healing of my back is coming so gradually and with so many steps is for Him to be most glorified and for the largest amount of members of the body possible to be built up and edified. Last Saturday I called Bethel Healing Rooms on Skype to get healing for my back (If you have any, ANY, physical ailment please call them! you have nothing to lose; go to ibethel.org for more :) ) A powerful healing work began, and as my good friend here at Yale, Joshua Williams said yesterday, "we need to chase out the pain." Indeed, each time I pray for it or someone else does the pain goes somewhere new in my back. Though painful, it's kind of funny. It is also teaching me how to pray with authority. In the past week I have seen God heal a hamstring and arthritic pain in others. Thank you Jesus.

Yesterday, I had two of my beautiful brothers pray for my back and one of them got a vision:

It was a cobalt-blue colored spindle, resplendent and gleaming. From the top down thread was being wrapped around it, but it only went so far and then from the bottom came another line of thread and it kept wrapping around until finally it connected and merged. Our God is interactive and He will always meet us more than halfway. Even when we are not seeking Him diligently, His mercies are new every morning, but He is waiting for us to take our thread and wrap it around the spindle diligently even if we don't feel like we have enough thread because He will complete it and make it unbreakable! and that resplendent, cobalt (in this case...I wonder what the blue means...I love mystery :) ), shining spindle with our thread entwined with His will be the thread that mends our lives, our relationships ,our bodies, our communities and even our nations.

So let's not just reap and sow, but also take the thread (our gifts and inheritance) He has so graciously given us and trust in Him to always come through with more thread than we can imagine to sew (pun obviously intended :) ) all the torn places of our lives; all of them, bodies or relationships, cities or nations; everything and everywhere, in the visible and the invisible.

I will leave you with a verse that came to mind...

Luke 5:36

"No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old."

This shows up in two of the four Gospels in slightly different forms, and I have never really understood it. I finally understood the wineskin analogy a few months back though, but this one is still mysterious to me, and has been ever since I first read the Gospels last year. It just came to mind. Send me an email if you have ideas or you just know :). adam.christian.yv@gmail.com

Leave you with a quote by the joy that is Joy Dawson,"God is looking for diligent seekers, not casual inquirers"

Ask and you will receive

Seek and you will find

Knock and it will be opened to you

Don't just come to Dad and ask Him for your allowance, sit in His lap and ask Him to tell you a story .

His son,
Christian