Intimacy Without Shame

In my opinion, intimacy with the Lord is a bit hard to grasp.

I remember my Junior year in high school I was talking to a freshman girl. 

My school was so small the entire high school was in the same room doing most of the same work at different levels. (Gotta love private school)

Me, growing up hearing IHOP-KC's Mike Bickel and many other great speakers teachings, was pretty knowledgable with the picture of the Bride and Bridegroom relationship between Jesus and the church.

As I was saying, this freshman girl and I were having a discussion about Jesus and I referred back to what I had remembered about the Bride and the Bridegroom.

Immediately she looked at me with a terrified face.

In my younger years, I was a know it all Jesus freak who thought she had it all together. (I couldn't have been more wrong.) So my responses were harsh and unloving, always.

I looked at her and said "well I don't mean we have sex with Him of course."

She looked terrified, still, (probably because I used the word sex and God in the same sentence) but a little less freaked out, she sighed in relief and we continued our heated discussion that probably ended up nowhere.

How many of us can say that that was our immediate reaction when we first heard that Jesus was our Bridegroom?

Wouldn't that make the men gay? Or wouldn't that just be really inappropriate, we can't think about God like that.

Really it's silly, but you know it's true.

Lately I've kind of been going back to that.

What exactly does being intimate with God look like?

There's always that hidden paranoia of not wanting to disrespect who He is and all that, but why do we feel such a reserve with Him?

I know I feel perfectly at rest cuddling up next to my mom, holding her hand, kissing her cheek, being intimate with her.

Is that in any way abnormal or inappropriate? 

Absolutely not.

I love her and she loves me.

She gave birth to me and she's the one person that's stuck by my side through every thing.

Kinda like God, huh?

Except He was the one who designed you in the womb, mom just carried you.

Why should intimacy with God be any different then snuggling up to your mom or dad being vulnerable and trusting?

When you can comfortably hug and embrace someone or hold their hand and tell them you love them, there's a huge element of trust that plays a part in that.

I realize that some people wouldn't consider physical touch a favored love language of theirs, but if you're a human being with any kind of emotions, you love a good hug from someone special to you.

The Song of Solomon is one of the most intimate books in scripture.

How man people have you heard say they don't really read Song of Solomon?

It's too weird. It's not valuable. I'd rather read other stuff about Jesus.

Well I'm just gonna say, if Song of Solomon made it into the Bible after so many other books got rejected from it, then why on earth would we assume it's unimportant?

Song of Solomon also isn't just thrown in there to tell us a cool love story between cool people.

It's there as a beautifully painted word picture of what pure undefiled intimacy between a bride and groom is.

Maybe a good way to explain godly intimacy is to explain what it's for sure NOT.

Intimacy is not lust.

It's not shameful.

It's not sketchy or impure.

It's not abnormal or forbidden.

Intimacy is what God has created you for.

He wanted people that would choose to love Him.

He wanted people that would desire intimacy with Him.

If you've grown up in the prayer movement like I have, this whole intimacy thing has probably been over talked about or worn out.

It's become a normal thing to say.

"Yeah, God loves intimacy, cool, now what?"

Now what?

Now what, what?

What else is there really?

I know there's things we've gotta do, but doesn't that all come from a place of intimacy?

And aren't a lot of us still kind of paranoid about what intimacy is?

Isn't there a natural reserve when it comes to thinking about intimacy with God?

Let's just say that if there wasn't a natural reserve from intimacy, this whole world would look a whole lot different.

If we actually grasped intimacy, there wouldn't be a struggle in knowing who you are or why you're here.

You know the saying "love is blind?"

Well what if that's a good thing?

What if being in love with God blinded you from the things that hold you back from being you?

What if this blinding intimacy actually sets you free?

What if innocent, pure, childlike, lovesick lover, intimacy was the one thing that pushes the veil away from you and heaven?

Be free to be intimate without feeling shame or questioning it's legitimacy.

Come to Him like a child ignorant from the worlds darkness and fall completely in love!

How to be a World Changer 101

How does one person really make a difference?

I'm sure if you're anything like me... (meaning if you're a human being) you've thought this before.

We all have a longing within us to change the world somehow.

Some people want to change it for the better and some people just want to change it so people know who they are or for selfish gain

.

I can think of quite a few well-known people that wanted to change things in the world, but it definitely wasn't for the better. In fact, it included a whole lot of killing. Actually it included genocide of an entire people group.

We as humans really just want to leave our mark somehow.

We want people to know that we existed on this earth.

We had a part to play in our country, city, family.

This longing is absolutely a God thing!

He created you to want to make your mark somehow.

He created you to want to build solutions for problems, big and small.

He created you to want to create things.

After all, we do reflect His image and make-up.

God, creator of the universe, created you to want to create, because He made you like Him.

We all could definitely do a little better at being like Him, but our roots are His roots none the less.

So back to the original question.

How do we make a difference?

A good difference.

I had a little glimpse of that this morning.

It looked different than what I expected it would.

It looks a lot like a family.

A team.

A people who come together, link arms with each other.

They love each other with love that cannot be mustered up without the help of Jesus.

Let's face it, we all have those "personality types" that we just can't get along with.

These people cover their brother when he is struggling.

They fight for each other when their brother is feeling too weak to fight on his own.

They build one another up and call out the good things that they see.

They look at one another through eyes of mercy and love.

They don't use a filter of condemnation and pride.

They do not back stab each other.

They take no time to talk poorly about one another.

Hitler for example (an example of a bad difference).

Was Hitler actually able to kill every single one of those Jewish people on his own?

Could he really get that many Jews in one place by himself?

Absolutely not.

It's physically impossible for one man to be able to do all that on his own.

He had a vision.

He had a bright idea to make Germany a better place.

He convinced a bunch of other people that he really knew what he was talking about.

They could make a difference in the world if they joined up with him.

They could do something to make Germany a "better place".

Kill everyone who looks weird or different.

Also, if there are people who don't agree with what he was doing, kill them too.

In other words, even the biggest most well known world changing things couldn't be accomplished by just one person.

One person can't change the world all by themselves.

The only thing that could have stopped the Holocaust or the Rwanda genocide is for no one to agree with the lead guys' initial plan.

Everyone could have said, no, I'm sorry, I don't agree with that, not gonna kill those people. 

Then those awful things would have never taken place.

Instead everyone said, yeah you're right that would make this place much better if they were gone.

I wanna make a change and be a part of this, leave my mark on it somehow.

Because of their desire to make a change, together, they accomplished (most of) what they set out to do.

What would happen if the church said yes to each other like that?

What if we linked arms together and said "yes" to what Jesus asked us to do?

Imagine how much we could accomplish if we would just join together with one purpose and paved the way for the Lord's return?

Really, the main thing stopping the move of the Lord is the church itself. 

We decide to reject how other churches do their thing and call it bad instead of shoving our ridiculous religious ideas out of the way and listening to what Jesus actually says.

A world changer looks like someone who rejects their own flesh and their own ideas and clings to the Lord alone.

A world changer looks like someone who builds a platform under everyone but himself.

A world changer looks like someone who covers his brothers sins instead of exposing them to make himself look better.

A world changer is someone who sees through the eyes of the Lord instead of eyes of judgement.

A world changer isn't just set on being a world changer.

It comes naturally.

It comes with knowing who Jesus is and loving your brothers and sisters well.

It's not all about you

"For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever i speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak."

John 12:49-50

I remember one of the first staff meetings we had when I got back to HOPE from Texas. 

It was such a glorious relief to be back home and I was just so happy to be with my people again.

People that love and care for each other and long to know the Lord's heart in an intimate way.

Anyway, right around the time I was getting back, a small glimpse of some pretty awesome revival was breaking out. It was short lived, but amazing and refreshing, not to mention, only the beginning.

That Tuesday morning, we were sitting there talking about how to handle this move of God and how we should steward it well as leaders.

I remember one of my friends spoke up and I'll use his name because I know he won't care.

He said something like, "I just feel like this is gonna be different... It won't be like 'wow look what Jacob Crochet did in 2014' it will be 'wow, look what Jesus did in 2014.'"

Now that really isn't word-for-word because it was too long ago for me to remember it exactly, but that's definitely the part that stuck with me.

How often it goes through my mind, man it'll be cool when people look back and see what I did in that whole movement.

Really it has nothing to do with me.

We're going into a movement that requires a nameless and faceless people group.

A generation that doesn't look for man's praises (not that any of the other great revivalists were after that, this is just a completely different time in the earth.)

We can't be after big labels or after making our name great.

It literally has to be completely about Jesus. The glory is His in everything that happens.

I mean even Jesus didn't keep the glory for Himself when He spoke. Hence, the verse from John I put at the very beginning.

Jesus Himself didn't take the glory, He gave it all back to God which, in reality, was giving it to Himself........Weird, but awesome.

Still, He was humble and wise enough to keep His mouth shut when He knew fleshy words were gonna spill out.

Remember, Jesus was a human and had the exact same temptations that we have today.

I think sometimes people forget that.

Yes, He was perfect and never failed, but He absolutely went through every temptation that we do.

We just give in instead of going to the Father and resisting like Jesus did.

How do we become nameless and faceless like we're supposed to be?

We be like Jesus.

Which really is the answer to every question, but in this situation it is the ONLY answer.

Jesus wasn't about making Himself seem super awesome.
He wasn't like hey guys look how freakishly great I am at raising people from the dead.

Hey isn't it cool that I  know everything about people before they even tell me, cause well you know, I created them.

Isn't it neat that I was born from a virgin?

Yep, Jesus, that's the name, don't forget it!

He really wasn't about that.

He says He ONLY does what the Father does.

Meaning He doesn't do anything on His own.

Nor does He take all the credit for it.

He recognizes He's the Messiah and recognizes Himself as the King of Kings and knows who He is, but He still totally gave it all back to the Father. 

There's that fine like between being confident in who you are and being prideful and working for a title.

Lets just say, Jesus was a complete pro at keeping Himself from wavering on that fine line.

In fact, Jesus even built up other people.

He gave great titles to some pretty not so great people.

Thieves and one's He knew would betray His trust, prostitutes.

He built a platform under them just like He does for us.

He would tell them to take care of the problems sometimes because really He just wanted them to know they could do it.

That's a good servant, not your normal lady hostess running around cooking and cleaning everything. We get that whole "servant" thing really confused with busy-bodies.

Jesus was the perfect servant! Last time I checked, He was falling asleep on a ship in the middle of a storm, not freaking out trying to fix it, clean it, cook it all the time. The Guy knew how to rest!

All this to say...

Let's take our nameless faceless call seriously and glorify the Father.

It's really not about you!

What a relief.

The glory that we get from men is nothing like the rewards we'll receive from Jesus Christ Himself in the end.

Things that nobody sees you do...

People may not even know your name like you think they should.

But, guess what?

Jesus does, and He thinks what you do is completely amazing and will recognize it in front of everyone at the end of this life!

So for now, it's not for our glory at all.

He's the only one who deserves glory.

He is worthy!

Love is Bloody

My eyes were closed, Love Love Love was in the atmosphere.

You could swim in the thickness of His presence. 

I saw a stream first.

There was something different about this stream though.

Instead of water running over the rocks there was thick red blood.

This stream was a stream of Love that lead into an ocean of Love.

I started in the stream.

The Lion told me to lay down in it and let His blood flow over me.

At first I thought, really Lord? Isn't that kinda weird...

I listened anyway.

I laid down in this stream of blood and the warmth of it ran over my skin.

It painted my entire body crimson red.

I asked the Lord, why blood? Why not normal water?

Then I went on, isn't it kind of obvious Morgan?

Blood, the very liquid that saved your soul.

Blood, the liquid used to make the ultimate statement of LOVE.

Blood, the very liquid that gives you life.

(Blood, not a solid that's difficult to mold or a gas that disappears in a short amount of time, but a liquid. Liquid can be put into different shapes when confined in a container, but it can also run wild and free when not confined.)

He says, my Blood cleanses.
It washes off the dust of the world and unwanted baggage.

After laying in this Bloody Love stream for a while He asked me to take a big drink.

He says, consume my Blood and my Blood will run through your veins just like mine.
While this was happening I had a pretty realistic visual of what it would actually be like to drink blood.
I really am not trying to get into the whole creepy vampire thing or whatever, the Lord is just an out of the box Guy who likes to do out of the box things that offend people's religious mindsets.
If you actually think about drinking blood, it seems like it would naturally gag you and be extremely difficult to get through swallowing it.

Sounds a lot like love, huh?
A little hard to swallow.
It doesn't make sense for someone so perfect and Holy to actually love something other than Himself.

In reality He doesn't have to love us.
Really, He can go on existing without taking the time to love each and every human being.
This fact is daunting and makes us nervous sometimes.

It's hard to swallow such a perfect love when you know for a fact you don't deserve it.
It feels like it should be easy to lose, or it should be easily revoked.
Like at any moment you feel like He should just decide to kick you to the curb and say "if you don't quit messing up, I'm done with you."

Seriously, that makes so much more sense.

But He says that His love is, in fact, unconditional.
There's absolutely nothing you could do to make Him love you any more or less.

His love is so deep He offers you His blood.
He says drink my blood so you can become Me.
Reflect Me and my Father and partake of my inheritance.
Live like Kings and Queens forever.
You don't deserve it, but I do, and I want to share it with you!

I don't want to hold anything back from you.
I'm not gonna pull away from you when you do things wrong or fail Me.
I'm going to walk alongside you and exalt you even in your struggle.
I want to give you the nations as your inheritance.

Love is Bloody.
It's messy.
It's weird.
It's beyond comprehension.
It's the most beautiful thing ever imagined.
It's handed right to you.
It's literally always there, up for grabs at any moment.
Take the step.
Drink the Blood.
Eat His flesh.

Prove me, Refine me like Gold.

If I could count the amount of times I've wished God could give me a check list of things to do for me to be fixed.

Just give me a formula to perform to get better at being... better.

David talks about this in one of his psalms. It's actually one of the more raw and heart-throbbing psalms if you ask me.

"For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering...."

Psalm 51:16

Take anything. Anything dear to me, I don't care. Have my car, house, my MacBook, take it all, whatever makes me better and healed. Whatever will atone my treacherous actions and thoughts!

I desire nothing, but a pure and blameless heart before You, God.

The chapter continues to explain that the only sacrifice that God will accept is a broken spirit.

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart-- These, O, God, you will not despise." Psalm 51:17

I decided I didn't really know what contrite meant and that I shouldn't really quote things without knowing what they mean. If you're like me and had no clue, 

Contrite- feeling or expressing remorse or penitence; affected by guilt. Some of the synonyms are remorseful and repentant.

God never said that healing or the renewal of mind would be an easy process or that it would feel good.

Sometimes it just has to suck really bad and feel like someone is squeezing the squeezers out of your heart.

It's called pruning, refining, renewing.

He's saying your sacrifice is your humility. Your sacrifice is you being able to accept that you're wrong! The world isn't out to get you, but only you can control what you do and how you handle things.

It's a whole heaps and loads easier to blame everyone else for your problems, but more than 99% of the time it's not anybody's fault. 

Bad things happen.

They will! It's truly inevitable while we live on this fallen planet.

Some of the bad things don't have to happen though, a lot of times we end up getting stuck in situations that are unnecessary, but we have a good God and He likes to make our screw ups work out for really good things. 

He's saying, sacrifice the contentment of your heart and emotions. Let me dig in there and pull out all your idols. All your crutches that you use instead of me to help you along.

Give Me your comforters, give Me your secret dark pleasures, give Me whatever is stopping Me from getting deeper. Let Me love you and refine you so you can be My daughter with a whole spirit, mind and soul. 

GO THROUGH MY REFINING FIRE. 

Let His fire of truth free you and burn off the things that are keeping you bound up.

I really like what my Bible says in kinda summing up what that scripture is saying.

"The OT sacrificial system was not rejected. Rather the Law did not prescribe sacrifices for murder or adultery, sins which David had committed. For these presumptuous sins, the sinner could only cast himself on the mercy of God. The Lord accepts and forgives those who are honest with Him, who are humble before Him, and who recognize their dependence on His grace."

For Narnia!

So, I've been reading the Chronicles of Narnia series like it's about to be sold out forever and I'm never  gonna see the books again. I've always been one to super nerd over sci-fi stuff and hear from the Lord so much clearer in sci-fi movies and books than most things normal people hear the Lord in.

There's something about the supernatural/fantasy thing that gets me. All the low-key hidden allegorical messages, all the seriously passionate people or talking beasts.

The way crazy things happen, like hobbits saving Middle Earth or a lion being the creator of an entire world. We watch and go, "wow that's awesome, I wish I could do that." (well at least I do). Those things are extremely unrealistic, but we don't think about that fact when we watch it. We don't get mad about how fake it is or get upset that someone has the audacity to say a wizard in Lord of the Rings looks a lot like God in our world. We appreciate the story for what it is, no matter what kind of creature is used to portray the image. We watch and absorb. (just gotta be careful what you're watching and absorbing though, be smart!)

I got to wondering a thinking a lot while I've been reading Narnia... It says in Romans 12:2 " And do not be conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." 

 Now a lot of people use this verse to bash sinners and say "don't sin because it's worldy." This is true, but have we ever really taken the time to go deeper into what it actually means to be conformed to the world?

When I see a person who's conformed to the world it's not only sinners that I see. 

It's kinda like the Matrix. The Matrix tricks EVERYONE who doesn't have their eyes opened by truth into living in this wordly pattern that accomplishes nothing. Wake up, go to work, eat a few meals, go to bed, do it all over again.

What if I told you the Will of God is that we die to our flesh (daily routine, close minded thinking, no access to the heavens) and literally dwell with God every day for eternity. Some of Jesus' last words were "dwell with me in paradise" and the veil was torn. THE VEIL WAS TORN.

I believe that when Jesus and that one prisoner were hanging on their crosses and Jesus said "dwell with me in paradise", paradise had already begun for that man when he said "yes". He had the privilege of physically dying to his flesh next to Jesus Christ Himself, but coming to complete life in his spirit when he said "yes." I think this is a good picture of what it should be like when we receive salvation. We die to our flesh next to Jesus those 2000 years ago whenever we say "yes."

Flesh is limited to the earth. When you die to your flesh, you also die to those boundaries put on you by sin.

When He tore the veil, He literally tore the veil. It wasn't a joke or just something fancy to do so everyone would see how awesome and powerful He was.. He did it so nothing would hide us or keep us from getting right next to/inside of Him. 

We were created to experience both heaven and earth when we die to flesh.

Not only experience, but to reside in and hold citizenship in.

"Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." -The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13

Often used by people when thy don't really know what else to pray (which is wonderful).

Do you see what the Lord was saying there? He wants HEAVEN to be on EARTH.

We pray that all the time, but are we truly grasping what that looks like?

I'm chewing on all of this right now and asking the Lord to give me eyes to see theTruth and rid my mind of any religious strong-holds that hinder me from seeing truth because trust me, they're there!

Now it's time to seek this out and fall more in love with my creator! After all..."I think I'm quite ready for another adventure!" -Bilbo Baggins

My HOPE

I am currently a full-time missionary at the House of Prayer Evansville (HOPE).

We are just starting up our second year as a Praying Missional Community.

I graduated the first internship last March as a full-time musician.

I had never in my life sang in front of someone when I first started at HOPE. I remember getting on stage the first time for a full team intercession set, I completely froze on stage and couldn't get a word out during the antiphonal/prophetic cycle. 

Eventually after a few times being up there, I mustered up the courage to sing my little heart out. After that first time I fell completely in love with it and have been doing it weekly ever since. 

When I figured out I actually could kinda sing, I decided to pick up more instruments, because why not?

I started out really figuring out my guitar (which I had already owned for probably 5 years) then went on to learn ukulele, cause it's pretty easy to pick up on once you've already played guitar. Then I went onto piano. After a year, I finally got the courage to do a devo. (Devotional (Devo)- one-on-one worshipping Jesus, keeping the fire on the alter with prophetic song.) Now I do at least one devo a week and am on 4 full-team sets as a singer or musician. 

My heart for the house of prayer has grown so much over the past few months. 

I tried a few other things (College, other ministries) in between my time at the house of prayer and absolutely nothing compares.

The house of prayer is no doubt where I belong and always have. 

I have the privilege of spending 40 hours a week at the feet of Jesus worshipping Him and interceding for the city of Evansville and the nations of the world. 

While I've been here the Lord has completely wrecked me with what true identity in Him is. 

We were created to be with Him for eternity. Eternity doesn't have to start when you die! Eternity can start now, right where you are. Technically right when you were born again you became and immortal being. We were given the inheritance of Jesus Christ. What is the inheritance of Jesus Christ?

THE NATIONS.

ETERNITY.

FOREVER.

How amazing is that? He calls us sons and daughters. He calls us royalty. God says that we are worthy of the very inheritance of Jesus Christ, the One atoning sacrifice. The biggest manly man, kingly king, superest super hero.

He actually made us to reflect Himself. Christian-little Christ's. 

That's who you are and that's who I am. 

Walking with that security and knowing that this body is only a temporary house for my spirit to dwell is something I've never experienced before.

He is in us and we are in Him.