…Or are all sermons, admonitions and rebukes against those who have been offended or are taking offense? With nary a word to the offender?
Seems like if you’re going to sin anyway, being the offender would be more fun.
tongue-in-cheek…sort of
Category Archives: Stuff I Actually Think
Giving all the ticket money away
When you throw a million dollar event but give away A L L the ticket money
for the poor, the hungry and thirsty
for the exploited (sex-traded) children of the world
for the orphan (and fatherless), for the widow (and the single-parents in our area),
and
when the Family of God gathers to worship and pray
to sing along, to cheer and worship
and
when you rent out hundreds of acres so Father can call His children together for a little reunion
when you have a day where almost a third of those gathering are people who don’t know Jesus yet, but some one in the fam brought them, prayed over them, is beliving God for their salvation and they got a free admission just so we could introduce them to Jesus…
when 2000 volunteers sweat and work for the glory
and Jesus is the headliner and you see all the races and all the denominations and every age represented and they just forget their dividing lines and join in one song for one God, and one reason
and when 40,000 people encounter the father heart of God and through the gift they GIVE when they walk through the front gate, nations are impacted and
wells are dug and the hungry are fed and
children are adopted
and the suicidal find hope and life and
lives are transformed
and the Name of Jesus is made glorious
Then the money spent was well worth it. Every dollar, multiplied in its’ impact. On real people. Real lives. Changed.
It is not about the concert. It is not about the bands. It is about the love of a Father, expressed to those He loves. On earth as it is in heaven.
400 people giving $3000 over then next 10 months can make this happen.
I am just thinking out loud. About giving away every dollar of admission/ticket money and how we can still do all this more, as family, anyway.
The Highest Praise
Overheard from an “official” intercessor:
“Then some one explained to me that the highest form of worship [to God], higher than music or anything else, really, is intercession. And it was like – of course!” Followed by a hand gesture that said I-am-called-to-THE-most-important-thing + a way huge smile.
{Well, isn’t she just the greatest in the Kingdom} Ping.
I hate that. I hate that I cannot just hear stuff like that and be ok with it and go on my merry Christian way. Or just think “She is where she is,” and not want to tell her how arrogant that seems. But dang, I find our Western Christian culture of so wanting, just like the conniving-striving-jealousy-position-guarding disciples, to be in the most powerful, important “ministry” irritating. And I know-I know, that is probably because of my own pride and sin and it-takes-one-to-know-one realization. That really IS what aggravates me: it is my own crap glaring harshly in some one else that causes me to want to strangle…them!!! Haha.
So, btw, don’t worry if you have ever aggravated me to your knowledge. I am really just seeing my own unholy reflection. It’s not you – it’s me.
I digress.
So, I knew when I heard Miss-intercessor triumphing in her role as highest-ever-worshiper and I felt ticked, that I shouldn’t leave it there, my attitude, I mean. I shouldn’t categorically now dismiss all intercessors, even though I have known some doozies. Because there are people called and they literally stand in the gap between God and man. I have a couple of amazing (and very humble) intercessor friends who haul my junk out and make a case for me, plead for God’s mercy over my life. When they are standing in the fray – they absolutely are giving God the highest praise, living their most glorious moment – because they are being all He created them to be. And that pleasure, that glory that God receives when my friends pray, it is complete and it is full and it is true.
But that is not the whole of the glory.
For a rose, it is when it has opened fully, released every drop of its’ perfume and is reaching far and wide in total splendor that it reveals the very glory of God.
For the singer, it is a note {the one} or a run echoing to heaven and back again.
For a woman giving birth, that moment when bebe passes, bloody and gasping, from the hiding place (where God has been knitting the child together) into air and bright light – is not that moment one of great triumph, the very glory of God revealed, somehow perhaps even symbolizing death passing to life? Glorious!
For a father in these days, to deliver his daughter to her intended at the wedding altar, pure, whole and holy – it is a moment of glory to our God.
When I am with my grandbebes and I am hearing them and seeing them beyond what the physical senses can pick up, when I am present in their lives and making inroads into their hearts where I deposit a seed of the sweet song of salvation into their tiny hearts and minds because I know I will reap what I sow, oh believe me, it is glory. It is why I was born. When I am long gone, that kind of glory remains.
We still try to get points
It is amusing, though, isn’t it? That even with our 7.4 Bibles per American person, though we have heard of those disciples jostling for position, though Paul writes extensively about the many parts of the one body and how each part must do its’ work so that then we’ll be healthy and growing and truly grow more and more to be like Christ – we are still trying to determine what role we have and how important we can make it seem.
The intercessors think they have the inside track, but if they’d talk to the prophets, they’d know better. The youth pastor is cooler than the children’s pastor and the evangelist can’t figure out why everyone is wasting time at church and won’t get out into the highways and byways this minute!? Pastors pretty much dread the charismatic “revivalist” who can come in and stir the pot but leaves before the mess is cleaned up. There are performance-driven “worship leaders,” who haven’t been in the secret place since they got to be the “leader,” and exhorts who are mad that no one receives their gift.
Please don’t ask me how I know.
How is it possible that the same God who called me also called all of those…weird, prideful, title-seeking people? What on earth? {you know I’m kidding, right?}
Maybe this, like Paul said:
Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning.
GOD’S PURPOSE IN ALL THIS WAS TO USE THE CHURCH TO DISPLAY HIS WISDOM in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 3
It is all for His glory. Your gift. Mine. The weird, prideful people. He knows. He knows that when those people and you and me become all He created us to be, when we are doing the things He planned for us before we were even one day old, when we are being who we are, an evangelist, a pastor or teacher or bread baker or car detailer – in the moment we are who he says we are – we are at our most glorious and we are, in fact {and in richest variety}, giving Him the highest praise.
Humphrey
“Most women in this world pray and cry in their sleep for just one small part of what you’ve got, so that they can find what all women need – what you need, Maria. A man you can look at in the daytime, a man you can love like a woman, and have children by, grow old with, share joys and sorrows, sex and failures. You’ve got to make up your mind.” Humphrey Bogart as Harry Dawes in “The Barefoot Contessa (1954) to Ava Gardner as Spanish sex symbol Maria Vargas
Happy Birthday #2, Amelie Belle!
You’re my little Belle-Baby.
2 cute!
2 Sweet.
You can’t be beat.
2 kisses will do
2 say I LOVE you!
You are a super-tiny little booger, o-yes-you-are! The weight of a feather, but fast as a train, smart as whip and o-so- funny, my little comedienne! You love your mommy and copy your daddy and the singing is sweet. The singing is loud. The singing is intense. I love to hear you sing.
Hey, remember when you were one?? LOOK!
And…
Here are some birthday Bible words for Y-O-U!
From Psalm 8: Oh, Amelie Belle – the Lord, our LORD – how majestic is His name in all the earth! He has even taught you, tiny little girl, to sing-sing-sing of His great strength and your song reaches the heavens and even silences God’s enemies and anyone who opposes His ways. He has made you just a little lower than the angels and crowned you with glory and honor. He has given you charge over everything He has made.
From Psalm 100. So shout with joy to the Lord, Amelie Belle! Worship Him with gladness and come before Him singing with joy. Tell everybody you know that the Lord is God! He made you, you belong to Him. You are His little lamb! So you can walk right into His gated meadowlands with a great big thankful heart! And you can go into His palace rooms with songs of praise! Thank Him everyday, sweet Amelie, and give Him praise because He is so good to you. He will love you beyond the end of time as we know it. That love will never fail. Not ever. and He will still be doing all this good stuff even for your children and theirs. Sing, little girl, sing!
SURE do love you, Amelie Belle! xxoo {nonna}
Why Sandy-the-Dog loves springtime in Colorado
Because you can fling the doors open wide and she can move in and out at will. No bugs. Just the sound of birdsong, rays of unfiltered sunlight and dog-freedom. She feels empowered on this beautiful sunny Saturday.
And I love it, too.
(google image below…because my camera batteries are shot)
Happy Birthday to my David Allen Rhoades
Dang, babe. You’re just hitting your stride. At work on your third (?? losing count) novel, in the upcoming stage production of “Into the Woods,” being chosen to play Jean Valjean in the upcoming “Les Mis” production, running a massive Christian music festival, grandpa, dad, friend, lover, artist, intercessor, gun-toter…ETC! You are the best thing I did for my children, you are the most longsuffering husband ever. On your birthday, you are my gift.
This is the life you give me:
Jean Valjean to Fantine (Les Mis)
“And you’re [God’s] creation. In His eyes, you have never been anything but an innocent and…beautiful woman.”
:)
Being Right.
Tested and tried.
For various companies, I have had to endure those tests for personality type or right brain/left brain analysis, so that whichever supervisor at the time could try to figure out how to get more work out of me or whatever (or perhaps why I was so dang amazing). And basically, I have always, whether on a sliding scale or a grid, tested out on the brain thing almost dead-center. One time slightly more in to the right and others just over the left line.
Today I tried again, online. One test scored me this way:
Left Brain Dominance: (11)
Right Brain Dominance: (10)
Another scored me like this:
Left Brain 53%
Right Brain 47%
So see? Close.
But here is the deal. I think truly, I am supposed to be right-brained. And that I am actually right-brained, but that some invisible lid has been placed to squelch it. In fact, I can remember being a little ashamed when the numbers went more right – like I was going to let down the company because of it or something.
I started to do a quick Google search about right-brained people and this is the very negative menu that began to pop up. What the…
When I experience art…
I love zeal and passion and creativity and creative people’s gifts and abilities amaze me. When I hear an amazing lyric to just the most intoxicating melody, or read a poem which strings words together I’d never thought of, or experience a painting with colors that actually make me salivate – first, I go utterly speechless. Just…nothing. Then I start trying to explain it in thousands of words…but can’t really.
And I wish to create like that too. I want to be a poet and a painter, a singer and a writer. I am happiest during inspiration, those times heaven just passes through you and you get all things divine and can suddenly reveal them through whatever your art.
Mercedes-Benz: music
But creativity is only rewarded on Etsy and Pinterest.
I am mostly kidding about that. But you know what I mean. In job interviews, they never ask you what you last created – which would be so insightful, wouldn’t it?
And I think I have unwittingly, at times, succumbed to the right-brain-bashing so prevalent in our logic and reason culture. I actually had a pastor call me forward in church once to speak a “Word of Knowledge”* over me, during which he spent 15 minutes insulting me (and my husband and our two greatest-ever friends) for being creative, saying things like “right-brained people are just ‘differn’t,’ they’re just differn’t.” And believe me when I tell you he didn’t mean that in a o-she-is-such-a-unique-creation-of-God kind of way. I crept back to my seat in shame for being openly creative, passionate and colorful, for daring to live as a multi-faceted, colors-of-the-rainbow, life-filled, green-leafed, curious, and zesty reflection of the Creator. And the lid is tightened.
Mercedes-Benz: paint
Dance like David; Preach like Paul.
There was a contemporary Christian song out in the 70s that I cannot find and I can’t remember the artist or even all the words, but what I do remember of the lyric is this, I wanna dance like David, preach like Paul….
New-Testament-Paul and Old-Testament-David are two of my heroes in the faith. Both strong men, Paul was as good at arguing a case for even the logic in the mysteries of the faith, and quite pragmatic in his understanding the workings of the Holy Spirit – as David was in penning words that that he must surely have heard in heavenly realms. We still sing his passionate prose today, pattern our music after that which so pleased the Lord. One might be able to make a case for Paul being left-brained, and David, right. For Paul being able to make a point by point, logical dissertation on the law and its’ fulfillment through Christ, and for David being able to lead a whole nation in raucous dance and worship before the Lord. In undies.
Left vs right.
So, they say left brained people are more logical, analytical and objective. And they say that right-brained people are more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. And I just think we live in a culture that rewards one and dismisses the other too quickly. Think school budgets: what gets cut first?
This Mercedes-Benz (passion) ad says: “I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.” And I might add: everything God created me to be + a wild-ox as spoken of in Psalm 92.
And I am just saying
Maybe I am just writing a declaration for myself, but I want to create like the Creator. Can you imagine 6 whole days to create anything you want and then a 7th just to enjoy it all? I want to re-learn to value what I instinctively valued as a carefree little girl (soooooooooooo many years ago), that pen-to-paper and color and glue and mess and trying-something-even-if-it-turns-out-disastrously just in case in the process there is that one moment of glory is not only acceptable, but strongly desired! I want to add wild fits of invention and color into the ordered, mundane moments of my day. And I would like for my left-brain, logical sensibilities to quit hampering my right-brain intuition and wide-open thoughts, which are the beautiful meadow-lands of my dreams. Why the heck must logic and objectivity be at war with dreams?
No right-brain bashing. Not even by my own left-brain.
*Word of Knowledge: This is a spiritual gift listed in 1 Corinthians 12. It is a divine revelation of knowledge given by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes these “words” are factual in nature. An intercessor may impart things God has revealed to them about the person being prayed for, sometimes there is a calling out, like when Jesus told the Samaritan woman she’d been married 5 times and the new guy wasn’t even her husband. In my writing above, I put “Word of Knowledge” in quotations because in retrospect, and with grace for this particular pastor, he was not sharing any supernatural revelation nor the heart of God at all, but rather his opinion that creative people are weird. It was delivered as a Word of Knowledge, but was a sad misuse of spiritual authority, I believe. And that is a huge topic for another day.
Remember Me // e.e.cummings
“in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how)
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)
in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me”
e.e. cummings
{Emma Uber, image above}
Other images, google.
Our newest son
Ryan.
Ryan Faaland. I have only known him for a year and 6 days. But all along he was being prepared, God was readying our family and preparing the way for him to be grafted into the Rhoades tribe. He and Tredessa fell for each other quickly and I am pretty sure that his first huge family dinner with us made him like Tredessa even more. Haha.
We asked him 10,872 questions. And it was loud. And we played Charades. He laughed easy and he fit – just right. Prepared. A new son…
Happy 28th Birthday, Ryan!
Your parents raised a good son. I know they are pleased with the man you have turned out to be. You are a man of integrity and character. You are caring and affectionate. You are the tender love God wanted to bless Tredessa with. You were prayed for and highly anticipated. You were long-awaited and appointed to a place of high honor, that of the man of Tredessa’s dreams – a place so unique, so protected in its’ scope and future, 3 massive music festivals turned up dry, man-wise. There was only one who would do…and it was you.
Just words.
Below is your “birthday card.” It has a few of the words that describe you, things I see, things I was impressed by the Holy Spirit to impress upon you. I hope you will know the deep, full meaning of each. I pray your heart will resonate as these things confirm God’s call on your life, His plans for you, and His deep love for you, Ryan.
I wrote “You brought a part we didn’t know we were missing.” And even though we were waiting for you and looking for you, the gift God gave was more than we could have hoped or asked. We didn’t even know what we really needed. But God is good and He knew. And we love Him for the gift. We love you!