With eyes to see.

Enter my childhood.

I was raised in conservation. Preserved within the confinement of four walls who's life began as a body with joyous laughter & family picnics & conformed to a building with echoing narrow halls & cold dark-brown painted concrete floors. The noise was contributed by the pews & wooden floor boards, both proclaiming their misery through aging stripped nails, coming undone in the same fashion as it's people.



I loved the building & people alike, though all was cold with a dash of gloom, that as omnipresent as the Lord himself. We were close, begging our parents every Sunday to go anywhere but home, our families partially knitted together in pleasure because of our whiney, forceful pleas. We were family, tracing the lingering memories of my gram and papa's early deaths that led to the church hoarding the kitchen, burying us with homemade meals to feed our grief.

 
We knew love, but abandoned it's power.
 

Black & white.

I still have the notes from the sermons, passed between us two girls, guessing crushes names & planning how what parent said caved most to our play-date wishes, all the while digging through her aunt's candy supply. We whispered words lacking understanding & talked about the church her great aunt went to that spoke ‘in tongues’, whatever that meant.


& one day we grew up & became adults who make decisions to go & to stay

& the friends we plan our weddings with change like the fall leaves

& the things our ignorance built walls against open to the beat of our softening heart and moldable mind.

 
I feel like I have crossed over. Every year, every season of late night care ride conversations with friends of what I believe & what I am willing to except & how God is permitted to move, dissolving as love has me coming undone.


Because before the church could touch me, Jesus had to. & so he moved, teaching me of his light air & hope of glory (his presence within me). & little by little I believed He is capable of greater.
 

Taking it back.

Though I do not regret my upbringing, I will tell you how challenging it has been, having been preserved for a boxed in Jesus, unopened to His various displays of power. Honestly, up until a week ago I still would hear people’s stories of God working through them & revealing Himself through visions & I would still be duking it out, Lord, I want to believe you, but enforced rules of ‘how God works’ were glued in my brain. Even having some supernatural experiences myself did little other than not knowing whether or not to believe myself.
 

I tell you all of this to get to a very fine point that is worth hearing.


This, my friend, was God stepping in the way only he can, because all at once, he set the stage & I can see what in 23 years I couldn’t even convince myself of.
 

Lean into me.

Perk up those baby ears. God is here, & this is what He is saying.


You say you believe in his power, but when the headache is dissipated you call it a mind game.  
Someone says they have a vision, & you call it a wild imagination.
You wake up with someone standing over you, & it’s merely a dream.
You believe in demon possession, witchcraft, & fortune-tellers,
You believe that the demonic can work in this way.
So what about the power of the God that created Lucifer & the third of angels that followed him?


Is our God not so much greater?
 

It isn’t even a fair match, because Satan is no match for God; this isn’t a matter of dualism, where evil & good are equal powers, duking it out. Satan isn’t omnipotent, omnipresent, & omniscient.


But our God is. He is all-powerful. He is all-knowing. & He is everywhere.

 
So if the devil can be so hands on in the world, as his demons take over peoples bodies & fight for our souls,
Why can’t our God do the supernatural?
 

Why can’t our God reveal things through visions & dreams?
Why can’t he show up in supernatural power?
Why can’t he fight evil with more good than evils got?
Is our God not hands on, that He would tell His people
‘Thanks for being my child, now you are about to battle it out with Satan
& he is very good at his games, having equipped his followers with so much power.
Now go blindly. Pray & hope for the best. At most, expect a bible verse.’

 

“Which of you Fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?”

(Luke 11:11)

 

“If you have a friend who is in need of food & clothing, & you say to him, “Well goodbye & God bless you; stay warm & eat hearty,” & then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?

 (James 2:15-16)

 

We do because Jesus did. Jesus did what He saw the Father doing. So the Father looks at you, seeing your needs & the battle your fighting, & He equips.
 

I cannot convince you of the power.

I cannot change your heart, making you see things eye to eye. But Jesus can, & what I ask is for you to be moldable.

Allow him to make impressions. Allow him to introduce himself however he desires & tell him that you believe.
 
Opening the door for him to move & standing back in full expectation, He will not hide himself nor his power from you. He will use an open heart.

 

Believe he can. Know he will.