I Am Healed!

So, I read “Love Wins” by Rob Bell tonight (yes, the whole book, cover to cover – I speed read). Here’s what I posted to facebook real quick when I got home – I may have more thoughts about it after I’ve slept on it.

Speed-reading does have its advantages but disadvantages too… it’s not a book meant to be digested in two hours; rather it’s meant to be eaten in small bites, carefully considered, questioned, poked at, digested. But I was able to form a fairly considered opinion.

“Much ado about… well… a little.” I can’t say much ado about nothing, because some of Bell’s proposals are well beyond the pale of orthodoxy. I think I can agree with the core of what he’s saying – which amounts to, “For God SO loved the world…” but I’m not so sure I can agree with his conclusions.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” John 15:7 ESV

As I said in yesterday’s post, I am absolutely captivated by this verse right now. The implications are staggering, and yet I believe we misunderstand and misapply what Jesus said. We “ask amiss”, and do not realize the fullness of abiding. Jesus phrased this as an “If…then” statement: IF you abide in me and IF my words abide in you, THEN ask, and it will be done.

“Abide in Me”, Jesus said. Over and over again, in fact:

2 Every branch in me 4Abide in me, and I in you. …unless it abides in the vine… you abide in me. 5 Whoever abides in me and I in him6 If anyone does not abide in me7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you8Abide in my love. 10 you will abide in my love… abide in his love.

This move has taught me a lot about myself that I didn’t know… mostly in the areas of “how I’ve changed since receiving sozo ministry“.

My life has been marked by chaos. Some has been of my own making, and some has simply been thrust upon me. As an adult I’ve lived in over 25 different places – houses, apartments, homeless shelters. That means that I’ve moved – a lot.

You’d think I would have it down to a science by now… but this move is different.

It took me a while to figure out why. It’s because I’m different – as different as night and day, and as Kathi and Kay. It’s also because I have a very changed view of what “home” is.

It used to be that “home” was the place we lived, raised our kids, hung our hat, slept in at night. “Home” was the street address written in the upper left-hand corner of envelopes. “Home” was the place to go when everything “not-home” was done.

Back at the beginning of the year – maybe even before that – we had someone come to our church who taught about how to go into the third heaven. Most people had spectacular visions, but my husband’s was particularly notable and special. He not only had a vision and interaction with the Lord, he received several prophetic promises. One of these promises had to do with our new home. The door he accessed heaven through was a rounded-top door with windows in it.

At the time, he didn’t realize what he was looking at, it was just a neat door. Some time later, as we were looking at houses online and dreaming (thinking, “we could never really do this”), he found a house with the very same door. We went and looked at the house, and fell in love with it. We knew right from the start that this was the house God had for us, and we pursued it with tenacity and finally closed on it at the end of May (it wasn’t easy, either! I’ll write about the process another time.) We’re now fully moved in.

We both simultaneously got the revelation that “home” isn’t just a place to hang your hat – it’s meant to be a physical representation of heaven on earth. Yes, there’s plenty of other ways that “heaven on earth” is expressed (including within ourselves) – home is just one – but home is the place where we can invite anyone into, even strangers. What will they sense there? Is the presence of God and the expression of heaven so powerful and evident that simply being in your home leads them closer to Jesus?

Our new home is being designed as a place of power and a place of rest – a place of peace and a place of fire – a habitation of the Lord as well as a habitation for us. We want people to walk in and feel His presence, His peace, and His power in such dimension that lives are changed.

And so the reason I’ve been so out of sorts is because Heaven is an orderly place. Not in the way that we try to understand “order” (which tends to be all things carefully controlled so that nothing unexpected or unusual can happen)… Godly order tends to make it so that the unexpected and unusual have room to happen. Godly order opens the door for the supernatural, for heaven to truly invade earth.Without consciously realizing it, I’ve been responding to the lack of order in my life.

It’s hard to live in a godly order, home a physical expression of heaven, supernatural lifestyle when everything is in chaos around you and you can’t find your hairbrush, or the fish food, or you trip over a pile of stuff that you set aside “to deal with later”. Ken is really marveling at the change in me, because I’ve never cared before if dirty socks were tossed on the bedroom floor overnight, or stuff just set down anywhere and everywhere. Suddenly I do care – very much. I want godly order in our home. It’s hard to allow the supernatural in when you are internally in disorder, too. There is an element of control within creating or living in chaos, whether it’s internal or external. Although it’s the opposite of “human order”, it has the same effect. Order promotes the ability to flow with Holy Spirit – disorder leaves things (physically or spiritually) lying around for people to trip over. It inhibits the flow.

And so, slowly, all things are coming into order in my home just as they have, and continue to, come in my heart.

Is this making sense to anyone else out there? Anyone feeling the same heart-shift?