|City on a Hill - Writings for Refuge

Man was made to need God. God literally fashioned man for a specific purpose: to partner with God in tending what God has created. This has very serious, sobering, and glorious implications. We were made to want things to happen. We were made towant to be beautiful, impactful, creative, enjoyed, helpful, necessary... All the things we want are good, IF, and only IF, our desire is filtered through God's will, laid at His feet to only be acted upon in His way and timing. Suppressing the desire inside of myself is one of the most harmful things I can do to my own life and the creation around me. Suppressing desire is a prideful act, not a humble one. Truly embracing my desire as good but my ways of achieving it as evil without God is humble. The desires in me, and my weak inability to fulfill them on my own and in my own leadership, are the very connection points created in me BY God, for God to join to my life. Suppressing desire = denying God His rightful place in my life...

There isn't anyone that doesn't need God to keep them alive. There isn't anyone that doesn't need God for justice. There isn't anyone ever that didn't need God for purpose or meaning. There isn't anyone ever that didn't need God for everything. God is patient and kind. He causes the sun and rain to fall on both the wicked and the righteous.  He waits that we would individually come to the conclusion that we, and everyone else, needs God more than anything else.  This takes the pressure off of the people and puts the weight of salvation on God. If we truly believed this, we would be concerned about something entirely different than the world. When a believer in Jesus has the same concerns as the world, they are worldly and not truly after the Lord's heart. Matthew 6:23-34 NKJV — “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! “No one can serve two masters...

The One Thing that changes everything is sitting before the Lord, inquiring of Him, and gazing at Him, and being transformed together with others that want His leadership. Because of the separation of heaven and earth, brought on creation by man's impatience and doubt, we do this in faith. Human heart change is impossible apart from seeing a different way of living. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NKJV — Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. I've found the most effective "seeing" and thus, transforming, happens in a prayer room. Because God is infinite, and we are finite, we see more of God together. Samantha and I don't go to prophetic prayer and worship meetings daily because we are good at it. We aren't. We go because we aren't, but looking a...

Trying to be a good person is very different than being willing to be led by God. God leads in ways man would not lead himself. The reason the world is so broken is man's leadership, not God's. The more of my life I give to God, the more I can see how much I was responsible for the brokenness around me. The brokenness I introduced to the world mostly came by trying to be good, look good, be loved, or to make my life, or the lives of those closest to me "good" in my limited understanding. There is truly none good but God. To be led by Him is to lose your own leadership. A person cannot have two masters. I am either wanting to be a child or a ruler. Luke 18:17-34 NKJV — “Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. “You ...

The earth has a spiritual problem. A spiritual problem is never addressed with physical effort, only YIELDING what we could do to what God WILL do if we give Him our part of the world. Overwhelming need is overtaking the world.  That need prompts self-righteousness. It's automatic. It's where flesh that wants good goes if it is unchecked by the restrainer. Resist giving in to self righteousness, self saving, rallying, gathering together the like-minded, etc.  if you truly want to be helpful to the earth. Man believes he is more concerned about war, pain, injustice, and lack than God is.  That is literally crazy. God hears the cries of the broken.  He tells us to give ourselves to Him, not be God to the broken. If I give myself to God, He is SURE to see to the needs all around me.  He may or may not use me, but His help is sure.   There is no disconnect in seeing need and not turning into the need, but turning into God. That is the way heaven comes, not...

God is more pleased with my trust than my uncertainty. This has to start with righteousness.... Do I trust in the God of my righteousness, or am I uncertain how He feels because I know where my weaknesses lie? Satan works very hard to keep a person uncertain of God's love for them. When I feel good because I do good, and feel bad where I am weak, I am trusting in myself, and not God. This leaves me always uncertain about how God truly feels about me, and is the exact place the fall of man left us. We have to get out of self leadership, which always judges things self-righteously. I am supposed to humble myself and start seeing God's righteousness in me.  When I am confident in God's love for me, then I stop letting my performance determine my confidence in my relationship with God. My fickle experience of confidence in my performance never ACTUALLY changes my ability to perform! That is the irony. Relying on myself and my ability to perform righteousness leaves me exactly i...

The most important principle in truly giving myself to God is to see His ways are the way out of trouble, hurt and pain, and my ways are why I'm in trouble, hurt, and pain. Romans 12:19-21 NKJV — Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The world has a Spiritual problem that manifests in physical brokeness. Trying to fix spiritual problems with worldly (what the Bible calls carnal) solutions INCREASES brokeness, it never decreases it. More brokeness = more pain, loss, and fear I want to let God lead me out of acting like those who resist me. Satan is prowling, looking for those he can covertly and craftily devour with his ways of thinking and acting. He does this by attaching good/God reason...