we, the underestimated

Commission to Arms:

We, the agreed undersigned, are burdened by the disillusionment of youth and the way meaning is given to their lives in our society. We are survivors of a fatherless generation crying out for the ruins to be rebuilt. We will not be bystandars as another generation is given to the genocide.

We have lost faith in what we see, hear, and read; sex sells everything but paid the price for nothing, magazines tell girls who to be, and sports-populated beer commercials define the essence of a modern man. Everyday our youth are bombarded with an informaton system that distorts their view of the world and their identity within that world.

We have lost faith in our fathers. Our mothers have been silenced by prescription. At a time when nations worldwide face hunger, economic disruption, eological collapse, civil and international war; we are taught to medicate the smallest of mood swings in an attempt to pacify what is naturally stirring in our hearts–a passion that is burning in contempt for our own captivity. We groan in silent inward disdain, knowing we must have been created for more than this.

 

Awaken the watchmen

We envision a different life under a different government–a sovereign leonine. We see the promise of eternal redemption. We see the neccessity of walking in the words in red as we continue on as pilgrims destined for another home. We see a solution in the freedom of every institution; in the workforce, our schools, our homes, our media and especially our churches. We are embarking on a mobilization of faith that has at its foundation a tangible and passionate relationship of intimacy with Christ; void of religious jargon, traditional strongholds, and mediocre levels of participation. To this end, we demand the timely recovery of our hearts back to the Father.

As we begin, we implore the right to reclaim our youth–born and unborn. We recover from the salvage the right to allow Christ to define our self image; void of media influence, advertisement, propaganda, commercial interest, and the corporate voice. We must raise a voice of dissent in the face of adversity. We must begin to speak again…

We are not interested in “anti” movements, spiritual revivals, or political trends. We are in desperate need for the God who dwells within inapproachable light to set Himself as a seal upon the hearts of a generation who will stop at nothing until they have created a place for His spirit to live without contention with humanity.

We must cast the crowns that draw us praise to see His name lifted as a banner.

We must answer the rumbling whisperings of our fettered hearts, “Is not the Lamb worthy of His sufferings?”

Even so…Lord come.

And I looked for a man to stand in the gap

There is no collective “We” in the Title. This question can only be answered within individual response. I cannot speak on behalf of the answer I hope arises in others.

The resounding question that hums like a soft vibrato in my soul is this…

Who can stand during the day of His coming?

Who can keep standing when He appears?

For He is like a refiner’s fire…

An urgency swells in the deepest caves of my spirit; the dark corners reserved for my own arrogance and self-sufficiency, the places that resist the leadership of the true and rightful King. Like a slumbering watchman, my soul jerks awake at the sounds of thundering hooves in the distance and my resting heart races to the rhythm of the ground that shudders the tower in which I sleep during my post. My eyes pierce the shifting horizon, that seems to taunt my vision with a dancing skyline that I cannot prove is an advancing enemy. But the testimony of my drumfire pulse proves that what I lack in sight, I sense in spirit. What I cannot see with definitive clarity, I feel all too well.

…And it approaches…

“Arrogant people cannot stand in your presence,” and I fear we have become an arrogant people (Ps. 5:5). We are puffed up and our bellies are gourged from feasting on such extravagant comfort at the expense of the weaker, poorer, and least of those among us. Our wealth has grown into a lion that lays in wait to devour us. Our riches are now our predator. We no longer have control and we sit around tables in our best suits and ties, fumbling for a solution to our own pride. Where is the man who will clothe himself in righteousness instead of rightness?

“I, the Lord, do not change…” and because He does not change, I read Ezekiel 22 with a certain amount of trembling. Although if I had true understanding, I’m sure I would truly shake with sobriety and fall on my face in prayer. And this is my fear, that we as a people will not respond to the tremblings of our hearts until the definitive silhouette of the enemy upon the horizon is distinguished. We will beg our enemies for mercy when we should have beseached our King. We will cry out for them to withold their slaughtering hand, when we could have cried out for the Lord to send forth His mighty arm. Yet, somewhere amidst the confidence in technology, the security of our own ingenious, and the blind faith in colored paper…the noise of our dependence has drowned out the voice of Heaven crying, “My arm is not too short to save you, nor is my ear dull that it cannot hear your cries; but your sin has caused a separation between you and me (Is. 59:1).”

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If He is the God of Ezekiel, I do not want to respond as the people of Israel. I will consent to admit that the following interpretation is of my own opinion, but the application nonetheless warrents a focused attention at the parallels. I have left the scripture in tact and added my thoughts in italics. I’m not in the business of misinterpreting the word to fit it into my own agenda, I’m merely making an application of the principles that exist in this text.

“See how each of the princes of Israel living within you has used his authority to shed blood.”  

See how the legislature of America has used its authority to advocate abortion.

“They have treated father and mother with contempt  within you…”            

The have treated the traditional structure of family and marriage with contempt. 

“…they have oppressed the foreigner among you…”      

Unfair labor wages, discrimination, racial/hate crimes, police brutality perpetrated against minority ethnics, sweatshop industrialization (Yes…there are sweatshops in the U.S.). Over 60% of legally, American born children of Mexican immigrants live below the poverty level in our country. In 2004, 24.7 percent of blacks and 21.9 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 8.6 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 9.8 percent of Asians.  http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/#2

 “…they have wronged the orphan and the widow  within you.” 

In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent, were poor, and both black and Hispanic female-headed households had poverty rates just under 40 percent.

“Slanderous men shed blood within you.”   

Again…over 40 million babies have been legislated as “justifyable” murder through abortion.

“They have sex with their father’s wife;  they violate women… One commits an abominable act with his neighbor’s wife; another obscenely defiles his daughter-in-law; another violates  his sister…”

 In 2006, there were 272,350 victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. (These figures do not include victims 12 years old or younger). 15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age twelve. 17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape. 2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape. 60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.  http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

“They take bribes within you to shed blood.”

The list of major U.S. corporations that directly fund abortion clinics is staggering; to name a few familiars… Basics Office Products, Whole Foods Market, JPMorgan Chase (including Chase Bank, & Bank One), Bank of America, Lost Arrow (Patagonia), Wells Fargo, Chevron (including Caltex, Xpress Lube, & Texaco), eBay (including PayPal), Carlson Companies (including Country Inns & Suites, Park Inn, Radisson Hotels, Regent Hotels, TGI Friday’s restaurants), Kenneth Cole, Nike, Midas, Marriott (including Courtyard Hotels, Fairfield Inn, Renaissance Hotels & Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, etc.), Johnson & Johnson, Valero (Beacon, Ultramar, etc.), Wachovia, and Sonic (drive-in restaurants). In April of 2007 Planned Parenthood posted a list of financial contributors on their own website. You can view the list of these contributors at the link below. 

               http://www.cogforlife.org/ppsupporters.htm                                                                                                   If you want to look up local supporters of Planned Parenthood in your state check out the site below. http://www.fightpp.org/show.cfm?page=regional_intro

“You engage in usury and charge interest;  you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me,  declares the sovereign Lord.  Her princes (government) within her are like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they have devoured lives (abortion). They take away riches and valuable things (they horde money); they have made many women widows within it (they horde money to the point of causing others a life of poverty).  Her priests (members of the Church, those who represent the Body of Christ) abuse my law (use it to advantage themselves) and have desecrated my holy things. “

“They do not distinguish between the holy (translated consecrated, pure, or set apart of God) and the profane (translated common, ordinary, or unholy), or recognize any distinction between the unclean (translated morally or ethically defiled, impure, polluted) and the clean (translated morally or ethically pure).”       

  http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Eze&chapter=22&verse=26

There are few things that differentiate the American westernized Church from the world it is supposed to live within, but not of. Especially when from our pulpits we preach prosperity theology and have joined the same corporate American rat-race for a better church buildings, faster cars, bigger houses, designer clothing, and all the latest technological toys; all in the name of God’s hand of blessing. I doubt He would bless our extravagance when He previously instructed the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions. The rich young man had obeyed every law all his life, but couldn’t manage to part with his money. Obedience isn’t the same as wholehearted love. Our prosperity does not equal God’s approval of our lifestyles. His blessings are often in less tangible things like new HD Tv’s that we can’t even take with us to Heaven, and more eternal like inheriting the earth, righteousness, mercy, seeing God, and being called children of God – these are the things He has promised to bless us with (Matt 5).

“I am profaned in their midst. Her officials are like wolves in her midst rending their prey – shedding blood and destroying lives – so they can get dishonest profit (see the list of corporations that are lending funds to Planned Parenthood above). Her prophets coat their messages with whitewash (people that represent God’s heart sugar coat things for fear of public opinion, offense, and ridicule). They see false visions and announce lying omens for them, saying, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ when the Lord has not spoken (How many times must I watch a TV evangelist proselytize his congregation for money in the name of the Lord). The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have wronged the poor and needy; they have oppressed the foreigner who lives among them and denied them justice.

I can’t help seeing the overwhelming consistencies in the behavior of my nation that parallel this passage so thinly you can barely distinguish the two as separate lines. Yet my greatest fear is not the condition of my nation, although it is alarming and warrants our earnest repentance and pleas for mercy. But it is this final statement. That God –who is rightfully King, sovereign, powerful, omnipotent, and perfectly just in the execution of his leadership–would consider taking time to look for someone who would consider Him. God transcendent would search the earth for ONE MAN, ONE PERSON, truly in love with Him and His ways. And that if He found him, that ONE MAN would be enough to withold what the people deserved and cause God to act in mercy despite their guiltiness.  These five words are my greatest fear…

…. BUT I FOUND NO ONE…

“I looked for a man from among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one.”

I realize that the following words carry weight in heaven’s court. Their declaration alone is an invitation into an even greater fellowship of suffering. I cannot simply type them and expect the King not to honor them. So I am soberly aware of their implications. And yet, it’s not enough to deter the statement.

If it means loosing all I have…I want to be one that he finds when He looks for a man to stand in the gap.

We, on behalf of the silenced ones

Today marks a journey my weak heart faints to begin. The gap between humanity’s powerlessness and God’s design for partnership is a blank stare that peers deep into the core of my barrenness. As accusations of God’s inactivity pierce the rooftops of our prideful hearts and bombard the skies of our vieled sentiments, we misunderstand the priviledge and glory of the authority God has given us. We creep timidly as He pleads with us to come boldly, honoring the finished work of His Son’s shed blood so we no longer need step into the King’s court with our dirty rags that prove our poverty. But He is not distant, nor uninvolved, nor unaware; He is searching the Earth for a man who will stand in the gap and allow the testings of a perfect Judge to count him worthy.

Today marks the beginning of a 40 day fast coupled with a 40 day prayer vigil in cooperation with “40 Days For Life” for the ending of abortion.  But today, I am branded by a sense of my own inability. This is not a self-loathing, however. Rather this is a gentle exposing of my own poverty of spirit; my complete inability to enact change outside of the rightful government of Heaven and Earth. The Lord required of His own Son that He would ask for the nations that they would be made His. But despite this, we simply demand of the Lord that He bend upon our singular cry. And when He does not, our fists fly with raging accusation of a compassionless God. Oh that we were Job…Oh that we would brace ourselves for the revealing of an Almighty God whose glory we know of not.

We do not understand the design of intercession. It is eternal relationship, not prolonged begging. It is the Christ who wandered into the Garden with His three closest friends in the hopes that they would only wait with Him.

“My soul is grieved, even to the point of death. Remain here, and stay awake with me.”

There were to be no swords drawn. Their participation was to be in the ministry of suffering and the poverty of asking. And here He stands at the door again, destined for the Garden of my heart and asks, “Are you still sleeping? Look, my hour is approaching…” (Matthew 26:45).

When we receive comfort, it isn’t that a person provides the solution to our painful situation. Comfort comes in their willingness to simply endure with us; to be present to us. Who will comfort the heart of inapproachable light. Who will be present to Him?

I’m less of the opinion that intercession is a means by which we change the heart of God and bend Him to fulfill our cries. It is more a means by which He changes our heart and bends us toward His cry to fulfill us.

I want to be able to say with blessed assurance, “It is no longer I who live but Christ in me…”

We, the Leper colony…

There is a silent culprit amidst our souls, laying in wait to begin the quiet yet ruthless amputation.

Leprosy: a slowly progressive, chronic, and infectious disease that is characterized by ulcers, desensitization, deformation, paralysis, and subsequent amputation of the anesthetized part (American Psychological Association: leprosy. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged, v 1.1).

The ancient plague of the Israelites is stive thriving among our much younger, more seemingly civilized culture. Yet despite all the wealth of modernism, advanced technology, and intellectualism, it remains a basic bacteria successfully ravaging the modern empire of our souls.

Dr. Paul Brand, whose most groundbreaking work occured in the fifties, discovered breakthrough analysis regarding the effects of Leprosy. Physicians had thought that the deformed limbs, blindness, gangrene, etc. of Lepers were all directly caused by the disease. Dr. Brand discovered, however, that the disease attacks only the millions of pain receptors in our body, while leaving the rest of our tissue undamaged. Because they do not feel any pain, the leper will regularly place their hands on hot stoves, or allow a paper cut to become infected until gangrene sets in and the foot or hand must be amputated.

This subsequent life-without-pain effect is painfully highlighted in Brand’s recounts while living among lepers in India:

“An eager young patient caught my eye as he struggled across the edge of the courtyard on crutches, holding his bandaged left leg clear of the ground. Although he did his awkward best to hurry, the nimbler patients soon overtook him. As I watched, this man tucked his crutches under his arm and began to run on both feet with a very lopsided gait, waving wildly to get our attention. He ended up near the head of the line, where he stood panting, leaning on his crutches, wearing a smile of triumph. I could tell from the man’s gait, though, that something was badly wrong. Walking toward him, I saw that the bandages were wet with blood and his left foot flopped freely from side to side. By running on an already dislocated ankle, he had put far too much force on the end of his leg bone, and the skin had broken under the stress. He was walking on the end of his tibia, and with every step that naked bone dug into the ground. Nurses had scolded him sharply, but he seemed quite proud of himself for having run so fast. I knelt beside him and found that small stones and twigs had jammed through the end of the bone into the marrow cavity. I had no choice but to amputate the leg below the knee. (Brand p. 7)”

Lepers live without the gift of a warning system of pain receptors, that naturally causes the rest of humanity to divert its entire attention to a rising problem due to the alarming sensation of pain. Therefore, in the case of leprosy the ability to identify pain is removed, infection is silenced, and dehibilitation is callously spread. Their eyes may witness the bloodflow, see the catastrophe of raw and hanging limbs, even view the amputation…but they do not feel this tragedy.

We are a society of lepers; unaffected by the pain that serves to warn us and unaware of the desperation of our condition. We live amongst the greatest wealth of any nation, aquire the highest degree of comfort and luxury on the market, and prescribe the fastest anesthetics at the slightest twinge of distress.  We use the convenience of our wealth, the isolation of our philosophies, the medication of our drugs, and the propaganda of our  media to insulate us from truly feeling the pain of the oppressed. But the greatest tragedy of all is the numbness it produces towards the awareness our own oppression and need for healing; leaving us with the perception that we have successfully raced to the front of the line at the loss of our own legs…never to walk again.

“So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich , and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire.”

(Rev. 3:16-18).

Our oppression is our separation from Christ and the knowledge of his nature towards us; the fiery affection of a Holy God that lay at the edge of the breech pleading for expression. Materialism and capitalism is a security blanket that has coddled us in a false fabric that is soft to the touch. But the only way to participate in its warmth and security is to never leave the bed. Yet “His hand is on the door…” inviting us into a world that He wasn’t afraid to touch nor did He fea might touch him.

This invitation draws us into the depths of poverty, slavery, violence, cultural ostracism. It will rub shoulders with you and devour your personal body space. It will unapologetically tear at the seams of your heart without the reassurance of suture. It will cry out to you, demanding more than just your voyerism and plead for your intervention. It will expose you and display your vulnerabilities as if they were its own laundry. As we lay witness to suffering, it identifies the mute offender – our impoverished need and dependency upon God. The western race for independence and individuality will not naturally concede to such confessions.

Yet instead of identifying with the suffering Body of Christ we use the Body as if it were merely a tool, like the young leprosy patient who used his broken leg to get to the front of the dinner line. Because we are only told about the pain in Sudan, but do not ourselves feel it, we are perfectly content to allow Pepsi and Coca-Cola to buy gum arabic from the oppressive regime that has murdered 2 million people (most of whom are Christians) since 1989. Because we do not directly suffer from the severe poverty and oppression that occurs every day in the sweatshops of Thailand, we calmy hand our credit cards across the counter and pay a major corporation for a name stitched on our jeans by swollen six year old hands that will see less than $ .44/hour in earned wages. It does not cause us to flinch when immigrants are mistreated in the workplace; paid unfair wages, denied benefits, equal opportunities, or disadvantaged in promotion because afterall, they shouldn’t be here anyway.

“So be kind to the man from a strange country who is living among you, for you yourselves were living in a strange country in the land of Egypt.” (Duet. 10:19)

We do not bleed when we find out that thousands of Ugandand children are displaced every day, escaping from their villages in order to sleep in the “safety” of sewage gutters and abandoned foundations. No one turns their head at the slaughter of over 40 million babies in our own nation. We all sleep soundly.

Only when OUR highschools are riddled with gunfire or OUR towers toppled in “our own backyard” do we as a culture and generation even care to reflect on the disease that is enslaving us. We watch the news and see the faces of those we knew, places we have visited, towns we have lived in before.  Perhaps they went to our church, played with our children at school, took our daughter to prom, bagged our groceries.  We identify with the pain and the loss that has struck so close to home. We step into the reality of their shoes and feel their grief as if it were a part of us. From that pain, we recognize the need for change, we crave a resolution to the injustice, and we admit our human powerlessness apart from God.

Without the sensation of pain there is no shared identification. If we are not willing to hurt alongside our brothers, we will not see them as our brothers. When we do not see our neighbor as our brother we more readily view him as a tool we can use to build our own empire. We disregard him as a member of the Body of Christ. We no longer have need of him personally, though we will use him for what we need.

 And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” (1 Corinthians 12:21)

Jesus however, saw His Father’s leperous children and saw them as one Body. He didn’t fear his own infection. He was never too clean for their company. He lived among them, ate in fellowship with them, healed them, rebuked them, forgave them…and then hung for the punishment they deserved.

His methods were unprescribed, non-synthetic, and no respector of persons. He sought to heal the sick and rich alike by making them uncomfortable. Jesus challenged their beliefs, invited them to give up living for themselves and instead live to serve others with His love overflowing from our hearts. He taught us to identify with the oppressed—just as He did. Jesus calls us to this form of repentance not only for the sake of the poor among us; but so that we could learn from the poor how to feel, and struggle, and be healed of our leprosy with the gift of pain. 

All creation testifies of the existence of God, He can be found in everything. But to feel Him, we must sojourn to the places where He felt; to the weddings at which He laughed, among the prostitutes whom He forgave, to the disciples’ table whose feet He washed, to the sick upon whom He had compassion, and into the garden of suffering…where He wept for us all.

Join us in the fight against the lepresy of our souls. May the kingdom of Heaven suffer violence at the hands we refuse to amputate, even if it means being last in the dinner line.