HamSanCity

Three Trees

There were supposed to be three trees in my front yard. Dad laid the pipes for the septic tank to overflow into the rocks through pipes that have holes in them. The trees were supposed to be fertilized from the overflow. Two of the trees died. They were meant to be a covering for privacy and a hedge of protection against the noise of the traffic he knew was coming. My street started as a dirt road. Now it is populated by many cars, emergency vehicles, and foot and bicycle traffic. The one tree that remains is huge and tall and strong. The feeble wall built years later to accomplish the same goals as the trees has been built with used materials and not up to instructions, agreement, or code. What blankets this house more than trees or walls ever could is peace. The protection and safety of God’s peace is a shield and a stronghold of grace. One day, a car drove by and the passenger cursed me. The intention was to scare me, but the result was that I rose up in strength and defeated the enemy. No weapon formed against us will prosper. Our battles make us stronger, and the protection of our souls and spirits that Jesus planted within us thrive and grow, fertilized by the peace that is rooted and grounded in love. Fed by the overflow of all the things God is using for our good!

Caregiving 

When caregiving for another, who needs a little help or a lot, we have to be mindful of leaving them better than we found them. Etiquette for caring for the disabled looks like not using us as a dumping ground for your problems. The load bearing capacity of having to navigate the problems you are addressing and trying to solve the problems of the caregiver is an off balance way of treating the patient. We all have problems and connecting points of shared pain and trauma. We all have incidents in our lives that intersect. But when you are caring for someone who cannot care for themselves, don’t add to their burdens by complaining about yours. Encouragement is the order of the day. When you find things that encourage your patient, you yourself will be encouraged!

When someone is on their death bed, they are the ones confessing their hardship and regrets. They need freedom and comfort, not added stress. 

And proper physical care is so important. To be gentle and honoring of the body you were entrusted to care for is essential and paramount to maintaining the dignity of the person. When you are in a position to care for another where the power dynamic is not balanced, the one with the most responsibility must take the lead and encourage and bless. The patient is just as powerful and has the agency to make choices. 

Often when the caregiver realizes how difficult the job is, they scale back their efforts and shirk responsibility to give the bare minimum of care. This is egregious and wrong. When a high water mark for care is established, it must be maintained and fought for so that integrity for both parties can remain. Shortcuts in care lead to neglect, needs that are frustrated, and a type of gaslighting that makes the patient feel invisible and unloved. We must be critically aware of the needs and the cares of those we serve, to maintain their quality of life and increase it when we have the power to do so. 

Each patient has different needs and when we become a student of hope, those needs are met with enthusiasm and joy to make their lives as comfortable as possible. 

Especially when a patient cannot tell you what they need. We must rely on the Holy Spirit to wash their feet and look into their heart and see what we can do to make them comfortable. Not everyone can communicate their needs, and often frustration and discontent will cause irritation to arise. The patient does not need discipline but compassion. Some might be over dramatic and complain when there’s not a problem just to get attention. There’s grace for that. Showing honor when the patient is not being honoring is a task that we must gently push into and appease with gentle correction. It is a sacred assignment to care for someone who cannot care for themselves. 

Being a powerful person in an environment that has powerless cycles built in looks like something. The caregiver must practice self control and maintain the selfless heart of a mother, while maintaining a level of respect for both parties. 

Chik Fil A

When I was in the hospital with Covid, I ordered delivery of Chik Fil A. My favorite is the Mac and cheese. The bits of the five cheeses are my favorite. My arms were so tired and weak, I couldn’t lift my arms to feed myself. The CNA was helping me, and each bite started to take longer and longer. I finally looked to see why, and I noticed her separating the best cheesy bits and throwing them away. I was completely irritated. At first I thought she just separated them into a pile on the side, but no. In the trash. Sometimes we can’t see that we are hoarding the best bits of our lives from others. As I was writing this, a friend came over to visit. I stopped what I was writing and gave him my full attention. Writing is something I love to do to slow down and hear my own thoughts. When there are friends around, I love to fellowship and get to know people. I am comfortable in a crowd or by myself. I am content in any circumstance. I just fear if we don’t leave the best bits of ourselves for others to feast on and enjoy when a crisis arises, that we will throw away that which was meant to be enjoyed. I am having Chik Fil A for dinner, and I am mindful of the need to leave behind a legacy for generations we will see from heaven enjoying our best bits, and learning from the ones we would rather throw away. 

Pursuit of God

My book report on The Pursuit of God, by AW Tozer

Tozer is saying that churches don’t prioritize the manifest presence of God, nor worship the way it’s meant to be. 

He talks of prevenient grace, which is God pursuing us first. As we pursue Him, we are already in His hands. Man must pursue God. We find him and pursue Him at once. Some just accept Christ but don’t pursue Him. 

The self life isn’t the way to go, but complete surrender to God. God made us for himself. We are to glorify God, and worship Him forever. 

Tozer goes after people who have an agenda, and get caught up in the glory of God to make a name for themselves. He warns against it, and would probably cringe at the current state of social media and the personal branding of ministries that takes place. I don’t say like, share, or subscribe on my YouTube preaching videos. I don’t want to promote myself, but let God promote me. He is king. He is the hero of my story. Without Him, I am nowhere near as radiant. 

Faith is a continuous gaze at the Triune heart. When me gaze upon Him, kind eyes look back. Heaven begins in that gaze. 

God will be our dwelling place if we keep our gaze on Him. 

A new power will come on us when we honor God above all. He wants us to exalt Him over all. Jesus words are truth. He spoke out of the fullness of His godhead. He spoke purely, and is wisdom. 

Divine eminence is an important part of understanding God. God is transcendent at the same time as being eminent. 

We need to learn to heed the voice of wisdom. God tells us to be still, and know that He is God. We can draw near to Him. First a sound, then a voice, then the meaning of God’s word. A way to truly embrace Jesus. As God encourages us to trust Him and believe His promises, if we obey we’ll be rewarded. We must believe to be saved. Unbelief has put self where God should be.

When we step out of the world’s parade, we step into His presence.  Blessings pour out on us when we prioritize God’s presence. The proof is in the choices we make every day. Seeking is the most important thing we can do. When we exercise our will to be God’s will, life works in our favor. We don’t degrade ourselves, but gain honor by honoring God over all. We should be servants to God, not sin. The man who surrenders to Christ changes from a cruel slave driver to a kind master. God has a right to preeminence. The Bible proclaims that whoever serves Christ, will receive honor from God. When we’re completely honoring to God, He in turns and honors us. 

I think Tozer is saying this to emphasize what it means to follow Jesus. He wants us to know how important it is to prioritize the manifest presence of God. 

When we don’t understand what it means to surrender and obey, we’re missing out. We can’t let the fear of man stop us from loving God and putting Him first. If we put ourselves first, we are cheapening our relationship with Him. He is pointing out our selfishness and misunderstanding of God’s sacrifice for us. He’s saying our hearts should not be divided because we can’t experience His fullness if that’s the case. Tozer is trying to bring us into communion with the Trinity. 

What I’m learning is to be completely sold out to Jesus, and not to build my brand, but build Jesus’ brand. 

God told me in January to give up sugar. It’s been a struggle, and each time I disobeyed, I repented and felt forgiven. This book showed me in the chapter about rejecting our self and putting God first, is what He was teaching me. I had put sugar, sweets, pastries, etc in my God spot. He was jealous, and wanted my full attention. I get it now! I’m grateful I learned this lesson! 

I am totally free! 

I took a month break from my phone and WiFi. I was looking for the peace of God outside of technology, outside of all worldly systems that can have input into my thoughts. I didn’t want an algorithm dictating and determining the thoughts and feelings I was having. I wanted to wash this world off of me and intercede for people to know their identity in Christ Jesus, specifically the LGBTQ+ community.

As someone with a disability, I am relegated to my physical limitations, so I have a tendency to push spiritual boundaries to explore the heavens for what God is saying.

Yesterday, my new cell phone arrived, and both the new one and the old one were not working. I had the opportunity to go offline once again and exist away from the world.

In my month of solitude, I didn’t have access to check my bank account. I didn’t let myself worry, because I was developing the core value that God provides for all of my needs according to His riches in glory. (Phillipians 4:19)

In those thirty plus days, I felt freedom to take a walk, read the books piling up, and explore the freedom that Christ died to give me.

The realization occurred to me that I had friends waiting to see me. I have a community that I am a part of where people love and champion me and pour goodness and mercy into my life. Going offline meant voiding myself of connection to what others think and feel. It’s important for me to know those things for myself, but none of us are meant to be alone.

It took about an hour to get my phone working. I spent the time chatting with the Verizon guy, Max, from India. He knew Jesus, and I got to share scripture and fellowship with him.

After feeling a warm and fuzzy Holy Spirit connection with him, he offered to lower my monthly bill. It occurred to me that that’s his job. On my end, I was trying to reconnect with the life Christ died to give me through friendships that are storing my treasure in heaven. Friends are my priceless treasures. (Matthew 6:19-21)

I realized that Max was friendly, and good at his job. He didn’t have to offer to lower my bill, but he did. In the exchange, we made an eternal connection. We are family in Christ. I might not talk to him in this life again, but that’s the thing. A moment of sharing Jesus deposits for eternity a connection of hearts that is timeless.

We all need community. We all need a place to steward heart connections we make for a moment or a lifetime. We have a choice to hide ourselves and and have no connection to the Vine that is Jesus. He’s the soul that unites us and the heart that cares for us. He is the Spirit who protects us.

When we prioritize our connection to Him in the secret place, He sets the algorithm of our hearts to His. We get the privilege of discovering Him in each other, and serving His vision that none should perish.

This world is big and vast, and we are part of the family of God. When we embrace the humility of our calling, and realize that Christ in us is the hope of glory, we can access that seamless connection with His heart.

I asked God what He wanted to do every day during that month. He often responded, “To love and be loved.”

Reader, I bless your day to know that you are not alone. You are loved more than you can ever know, and Jesus is your best friend! I love you.

I am hosting holy communion to bring forth the Great Communion Revival. Join me for community every day at 5:00AM PST

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4823537816?pwd=031dtH2kO4D3nupUaojl1TyBLZXvKA.1&omn=88110205403

Awakening pure worship looks like risk, and cutting through the jungle of self promotion to find the clear path of service. The castles we build must house the purity and the boldness to do and say and sing the heart of God to an audience of One. We must worship Him in Spirit and in truth and prophetically call and release the grace within us back to Him. The scratch of the acoustic guitar string can ascend my spirit to rejoice in the heavenlies in His throne room. A voice that resonates in purity and power with no regard to polished perfection but a surrendered excellence to release the heart of the Father to a people is the goal of the purity we carry. He is jealous for us and to soar with us and see our inner freedom in Him expressed through the gift of voice that He has given us. We must remember that worship is for Him. In His kindness and gentleness, He sings back to us to further deepen His love for us. The building of an altar to see His manifest presence enter a room is the ultimate goal. We must build altars to Him in the secret place so when He reveals Himself through us in public, there is no spot or wrinkle in our souls to proclaim our own agenda or blueprint for personal glory. It’s all His. We give it back to Him through surrendered hearts after His heart and His alone. We are loved, we are seen, we are known by Him more intimately than we can know. Exploring the depths of His love and heart for us connects us like a magnet to His heart when we worship. We cannot despise the day of small beginnings and blaze a new path without first understanding that we are on His path. We pioneer our way into His heart by absorbing the nutrients of His word and letting it consume us. Letting Him consume us. keeping our head on His chest and His song in our hearts is paramount and fundamental to understanding His ways. Follow me as I follow Christ looks like ministering to the One we were sent to love. It is His created world that we get to pattern ourselves after to create with Him. To look at the chaos before us, and look upon His face to dream with Him for solutions. We are banks of information and experiences that all reflect that He is with us. He comprehends us so that we can comprehend Him. He asks and invites us into a dance of joy unspeakable. To be undignified before Him, and give Him back everything He gave us only to be given more. He loves. He is love. Nothing can separate us from His presence. It is through our obedience and continual surrender where we find joy at the bottom our well of sorrow. Our profappiness comes from knowing that no matter how oofta people get against us in rejection, pride, or any other way of trying to lay foundations of offense and judgement and punishment, He endured it all for us first. In His perfection and flawless plan for us to flourish and succeed in knowing His goodness, we get the benefit of knowing Him more deeply. We earn our limp through surrender, but only by His invitation and beckoning to the call to live as dead men. To live the invitation of entering into His death and suffering with the expected outcome of His reward. It’s like He built us a resting place in Him, a castle of His thoughts and His ways and if we follow. If we give up what we think is best and seek His, we gain Him. This world in us and through us manifests only because of Him. When we try to rub the lamp of control and heartless transactions because we figured out a formula, we must stop dead in our tracks and ponder that glory in our hearts and move on to the next glory. Glory is His weighty love for us manifested by Him. We don’t control His presence, we host Him. We get to give up our offenses to Him and realize that they are treasures in disguise. The hidden glory of creation is that from chaos comes new life. When we are faced with the evils of this world, it’s an opportunity to overcome them with His power and Spirit to guide us into the truth that it has already happened. We must be surrendered enough to see that we are walking a path that has been laid before the foundation of time. He designed us to carry His glory and His love and to release it back into the chaos. When we stand to forgive, and then give Him the gift of our pain, He says, “Oh yeah! I paid for this already! Here’s the receipt and here’s a bonus of my greater love and trust for you to not join the enemies camp of punishment and delay of forgiveness.” Learning His heart and His ways and being sensitive to His Spirit in each other helps us to steward His heart inside of us and through us to another. We learn to love by getting over ourselves and putting Him first. Period. We worship Him when we choose to believe Him and know He is good. He is our great high priest who gets His full reward when we know Him better than we know ourselves. And when that happens, we discover the prize of Him inside of us. We must steward this access to His heart with reverence and a consecration to continue to seek Him over all. To know Him, to truly know Him, we must be willing to walk away from sin and shame, and have the victorious mindset that He is Lord. We buy oil with our worship and put it in storage so that when the chaos comes, we have a reservoir of hope and joy to draw from. He anoints my head with the oil of gladness to trust Him with all my heart and to know He will never fail me. I will often fail Him, but He redeems me and makes me whole in Him because His great love for us is so vast that we cannot be silenced over His goodness and mercy. We get the benefit of our own doubt when we discover that He never doubted us for even a moment. The greater thing is His trust in us first. His love for us first. John the Beloved got to the tomb first and wanted us to know it because His intimacy with Him felt His absence and separation. Are we running to the last spot we knew Him to be to encounter His resurrection power to set us free from our own tombs of sacrifice and death to self for another? I ask you, because I ask myself the same thing. Are we running to the empty tomb of doubt and unbelief and holding on and stewarding our faith to see Him resurrected in our lives? Do we have the yes from the ephod of our priestly garments to let Him have His way in us even when we don’t and can’t understand because we can’t wrap our hearts and minds around what He is actually doing. Can we lay it all down again to hear Him call us friend? Can we surrender the fortune of self protection and control of our own future let Him lead us. What we create and build in this life is nothing if it doesn’t house Him. We become His living stones that cry out for Him in the deepest recesses of our hearts. And when we say yes, and let Him break our hearts of stone and self righteousness, only then can we see that it was His righteousness all along. It’s He who lives and breathes in us and we are a reflection and a one of a kind demonstration of His love and surrender to us. He doesn’t owe us anything. We are not entitled to any of it. He didn’t pour Himself out as a drink offering for us to reject His cup of salvation, but for us to drink from His well of bliss and believe Him at His word. We are His, and He is ours. We get to gaze upon His face and know to the depths of our soul that we are loved. We are seen. We are known by our Creator and nothing can ever separate us from His heart. Selah. 

Stockings 

I was going for a certain look when I bought extra large stockings that were cotton, and I was determined to put them on myself. It was a fight, and took me a long time. I would use a back scratcher to help pull them up my legs. I chose the fabric so it wouldn’t tear. Sometimes I would ask my grandma for help, and other times not. I would struggle to get them up, and then put on a cute dress or skirt and likely wear my clogs because that was easy. No tying or bending necessary. 

Today is a day of victory! We can do hard things. We can champion our way to bringing the body of Christ into harmony and unity by remembering the sacrifices we made, and the hard things we have done for beauty’s sake. Cocreating with God to live and breathe His word is paramount to surrender. We only say what He says and do what He does. We have to be willing to submit to each other in love. The God who sees has breakthrough in mind. He prunes us at our most abundant place, so we can then grow and flourish in other places. Being sent feels hard and costly, but it is worth it. If we stay too long at our neighbor’s house, they get weary. But when we are the salt and the light, we can rise like incense on the altar of His heart. He holds us close, and abides in us not as a guest, but as the owner of the house. When He dwells within us, everywhere we go is home. We have to set aside the struggle to be beautiful and just wear pants. Our beauty is on the inside, and we shine where He tells us to and as long as we shine for Him, our geographical location is unimportant. We effect culture by releasing the heaven Jesus died to place inside of us. An open heaven looks like us sharing the best parts of ourselves with others, and encountering the core lessons and the treasure within. Not to pillage and exploit, but to share in the fellowship of the saints, and to give God the glory for what He has done in each of us. He gave His blood so that we can be satisfied and cared for. If we are not finding our contentment and safety in Him, we are missing it. He is protecting us and guarding us from harm and evil. Our job is to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. His beauty is majestic and wondrous. We have the opportunity and privilege to abide. We have the tools to clothe ourselves in His righteousness, peace, and joy, and slip into the sandals of the One whose own we are not fit to tie. But He makes it easy. He is so generous with Himself, that there is always plenty and always an abundance to thrive and grow no matter the season. As we become more aware of His presence in us, through us, and around us, our stride is confident. He won the war for our hearts. As we get to work bringing in the harvest, we can walk circumspectly knowing that He has made a way. Selah

I was in a meeting with two Jewish people the other day. The fear and hatred around their race is appalling. They are hiding in plain sight, identifying with other cultures as a mask to who God created them to be. When I say them, I mean us, as I am Jewish also. My origins were unknown prior to my grandmother’s death. I grew up a Christian. But the persecution and antisemitism must end.

There is no longer a wall of separation between gentile or Jew because of Christ. He died to fulfill the law and prophets, and His Spirit within us speaks to our hearts about who we are. The hope in the Jewish culture and the Christian culture is that we are both waiting for the Messiah. The Jews, His original appearance, and Christians, His return. A spoiler alert for both cultures is that He is alive in us! He is here. He has risen. A friend just won a 4.6 million dollar lawsuit for the murder of her son. The guards at the prison mercilessly beat him and left him for dead. No money can soothe the ache of her loss. 

God sent His son, Jesus, to die on earth to reveal heaven to us, and put heaven inside us. We live in heaven and on earth simultaneously. We who simply believe in Christ will spend eternity with Him. Our level of responsibility to help Him run the universe is determined by how much we seek Him. We find Him when we seek Him with all of our hearts. When we come to the realization that He is in us, on us, and for us, we can stop trying to be relevant and just be available for how He wants to partner with us. I hope that the money from my friend’s lawsuit goes to help to prevent other young men from ending up in prison in the first place, but I most sincerely yearn for all to know Christ in us, the hope of glory! 

There were three of us on a zoom meeting. A fourth person entered the room with their camera off. We welcomed them, but they remained silent and hidden. They left, and then kept trying to come back. We checked the attendance paperwork, and didn’t see their name. We didn’t know if they were guessing at the link, and there to cause trouble, or if they were shy. 

The leader mentioned how the caregivers for his son were hard working and dedicated to him. He mentioned that they always showed up on time for work, and went out of their way to be of assistance. He said that one of the wives of a caregiver was sent back home to her nation while she was pregnant. 

If we need to have a zoom meeting have registration to monitor who participates, and be able to follow up with them, we assuredly need to have the proper paperwork for citizenship and voting. Being in a culture means you are accountable to the people around you to an extent. 

There are neighborhoods where ethnically similar cultures congregate, and that’s fantastic! We need more of that. But we also need diversity in the way we treat each other and honor one another in Christ. While everyone might not recognize Christ in them, He is still there, waiting on the deserted island of their hearts of lack and fear, waiting to be revealed. Christ died so that all will know Him. 

Our citizenship in heaven is guaranteed, where all are free, valued, and loved. Sometimes we think there’s opportunity in other places, but God promises there is opportunity in us through Him. When we are connected with our tribe in the neighborhoods of heaven, we get to eat the rich food of His word as He manifests Himself in particular people and places. 

God set boundaries on the earth for a reason. And while there are opportunities to build a new life in America, America is built on the foundation of Christ. That is why we are so attractive to other nations. 

My dad built our home thirty eight years ago. The walls crack now and then as it settles with time. We have rats that are chewing through the pipes and washing machine tubes, causing leaks and damage. 

People who know Christ, but choose to reject Him, are letting rats into the interior of their soul to cause damage to their blood streams which pumps the very blood of Jesus. Without legal documentation, we are letting criminals through our borders who are trying to destroy our country from the inside out. 

We have to walk fully in our identity in Christ, honor the boundaries and commands He wants us to follow, while respecting and honoring the laws of the land. There are consequences to breaking the rules. Deportations may seem cruel, but they are the outcome of not obeying the laws of the land. 

Jesus says that we will always have the poor among us 

Matthew 26:11

New International Version

11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.

He also says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The poor in spirit are always looking for solutions to their poverty, pain, and lack. The depressed seek healing and comfort, the lonely seek comfort and community. Sometimes without realizing it, we’re seeking Jesus. Those who know Jesus, know they will find the kingdom, because obstacles, trials, and tribulations are the very fertilizer that blooms heaven in our hearts. 

So if you’re feeling down today, ask God what book you should read in the Bible for comfort and finding Jesus, who is the kingdom. Because when you find Him, you find the fullness of joy! 

If you zoom in to the picture, you can see the fire ants that visited me a second time today. I spent the evening outside yesterday, and can only surmise that I brought home the whole farm!

For the second time, my caregiver had to haul me into the shower to rid me of all critters.

The bonus? I got two showers in one day verses one in the week. I get daily baths, but boy do I love my shower!

I am oversharing to make a point- we don’t have control over what happens to us, but we do have control over how we respond.

I can’t just jump up out of my bed and hop in the shower. There’s a sequence of rolling me over on my stomach, putting my harness on my body, then rolling me back over to then be transferred to my shower bed.

I have a choice- do I lay there and punch the air and let discouragement win the day? Or do I put on worship and praise Him because He is worthy? B.

This body is only temporary. The life eternal that Christ died to give us is more valuable and I am focusing on winning that Super Bowl, that Gold Medal that I had no way of earning.

He offered me this victorious mindset and I said yes. Not every day is an ant day, but I worship Him in the in between so when ant day comes, I have a history of remembering the times when He answered before I even asked, and showed up despite my attitude of giving up on Him.

He is faithful when we are not. I had perfect peace when I was invaded. The gift? Zero itching! He works all things together for our good!