Brass Heavens? Consider Some Options.

The phrase “brass heavens” comes from the King James translation of Deuteronomy 28:23. “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.” It was part of the consequences that God warned Israel would experience if they wandered off and rejected God in their new Promised Land.

We use the term “brass heavens” to describe an environment where it’s tough to connect with the heavenly realms, it’s difficult to hear from God, rare to experience his presence. Fundamentally, it’s about our experience of interacting with heaven.

Have you ever felt like no matter what you did or prayed, God didn't hear, didn't show up? That’s what we’re talking about.

There are a number of reasons for us to experience brass heavens. Deuteronomy says it’s a natural consequence of abandoning God. Indeed, it’s hard to connect well with God when we’re avoiding him. It is also commonly inferred that if the population of a region rejects God, then the heavens in that area may become brazen to them, and also to anyone else who comes into the region. Hmm. Maybe.

Personally, I believe that sometimes the “brass heavens” are a lie. There are times that the enemy simply accuses God before us: “He didn’t respond to us quickly or personally enough. You must be on the outs with God!” No, the devil just talks louder and faster than Father does.

There are times (Daniel 10:13 is an illustration) where the “brass heavens” are the result of events in the heavenly realms which we cannot see. Job also experienced this. It’s real, and it happens. In fact, in the Bible, it appears to only happen to good people.

There are undoubtedly other causes for that sense that we have which we describe as a brass heaven. Hold that thought; we’ll be back in a minute. Right now, let’s take a detour through the woods.

Some time ago, I was walking in the woods, and my attention was captured by something I saw there. I saw the same conflict acted out in two different ways, in two different parts of the forest.

I saw a giant fir tree, a grandfather, perhaps eight feet in diameter. The only tree of its size in the area, it was accompanied by its adult children: thousands of mature fir trees two to three feet in diameter surrounded it.

But the detail that caught my attention was the third generation of trees. There were not many saplings in the shadow of the larger trees. There were only a few young ones there, but they were thin, weak and yellowed from never having seen the direct light of the sun, their source of life. There were many that had died.

As I walked further, I came to a part of the forest that was dominated by great maple trees. A few giants spread their canopies, well separated from each other, the light through their leaves coloring the undergrowth a bright green.

Unlike the fir trees, the grandfather maple trees were not closely surrounded by their children. Between the great trees was a bright meadow, thickly populated by shrubs and berry bushes, but not a single young tree was growing in the meadow, though the meadow was surrounded by younger maple trees competing with younger fir trees for the light.

I’ve studied botany a little, enough to know that both behaviors are defense mechanisms for the mature trees. The fir trees grow tightly together so that there is no light left for any competitors, even their own offspring. The grandfather fir trees, the old growth giants, have no need to hinder the growth of any competitors: they tower above all others, secure in their own capacity to reach the sunlight, though the less mature trees still scratch and claw for their provision, even at the expense of the next generation of fir trees.

The great maple trees do it differently. The great giant trees give off a chemical that poisons the soil near them so that no tree can grow there, thus eliminating any competitors for the precious sunlight. Grandfather maple trees are broader, not taller, than their younger competitors. They cannot tower securely above the younger trees as the old growth firs can, so they must eliminate the competition.

Here’s a radical thought: what if the “brass heavens” over some people is the “forest canopy” of others?

I have lived among a metaphorical stand of fir trees. The community of saints were largely mature (both in age, and in their walk of faith), and they were so closely connected with others their age that there was no room for someone young in their faith to break in and discover the life that they needed to thrive.

Do you know how many churches have fights about the worship music? Just the question of “organ music or pop-rock music” has destroyed thousands of American churches. Other communities continually preach the same salvation message for sixty years, or, on the other extreme, the same marriage-and-family messages, ignoring the needs of the younger members, forcing them into the darkness, stunting their growth. The “brass heaven” there comes, at least in part, from the unwillingness of the adults to become parents, the inability to make room for the young ones.

I’ve also served the metaphorical mature maple trees, where the ministry is all about the one leader, and where no real growth is permitted among any other leaders who might challenge the position of the senior leader.

I’ve seen churches where the founding pastor is still the senior pastor 40 years later, but no youth pastor or worship leader is kept for more than 2 or 3 years, and the only associate pastors are those who’ve learned never to grow beyond a certain limit. The “brass heaven” in those places is, at least partly, the result of the senior leader’s ego.

As I’ve reflected on my lessons from the forest, I’ve been very grateful that I have feet instead of roots. I’ve used those feet to depart those deadly forests. There are thousands of folks like me, unwilling to sacrifice our own growth for the comfort of the fathers and grandfathers that have gone before us. Unfortunately, there are millions more, lost in the shadows, withering, dying without the sun.

Of course, wherever I go, there is always the temptation to gather a tight group of friends who support each other, but really don’t make room for another generation to be part of the community. Or there’s the temptation to create my own forest, where I’m the reigning monarch, and everybody else is reduced in order to serve my own needs.

The old growth fir tree is easily the best model from this particular day in the forest: tall and strong, secure in his own relationship with the sun of life, he broadcasts seed, carried by wind, and he populates entire regions, reshapes the environment within his influence.

The drawback, of course, is that it is incredibly costly to become the old growth fir tree: costly in time. It requires, in the tree’s case, centuries of growth to reach that size, centuries of avoiding the forest fires and logging companies and diseases that are the end of so many of its peers.

But I suspect that we can, ideologically, at least, become the old-growth giant long before we’re either old or giant. Being creatures that (unlike the trees) are created in God’s image with a free will, we can exercise our will.

We can choose to not participate in the closed relationships that keep others at a distance. We can choose to let others grow and thrive around us, encouraging the ones that will eclipse our own growth or gifting, so that they become greater and more successful than we’ve ever been.

We can choose to raise up and release a generation that’s just now encountering the “brass heavens” of the saints. 

Healing & Daniel’s Delay

I was healed recently, for an issue I’d pretty much stopped asking for healing about.

It confused me, so I took it to prayer: Why was I healed now? I had prayed about this a lot back when, but now I’d kind of resigned myself to living with the problem. Why now, when I wasn’t even paying attention?

I have discovered three new pieces of this puzzle so far:  

First, the prayers that I prayed – that many of my friends prayed – over and over some years back are still valid. There is no expiration date, it appears, on prayer. Just because I’d stopped praying doesn’t mean the prayers stopped changing things.

Second, God reminded me of the story of Daniel 10. An angel showed up with Daniel’s answer to prayer, several weeks after he began to pray.

He continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.” - Daniel 10:12-13

Then Father asked, “If the answer to Daniel’s prayer had been delayed, do you think your healing may have suffered the same problem?” Hmm.

I suspect that the same thing happens with healing some times. I suspect that more often, perhaps, than we realize, when we begin to pray for a healing, an angel is dispatched with the requested healing, but he gets held up.

In fact, this is consistent with my experience in this example. I had been prayed for a number of times for healing, and by some people who knew what they were doing in the realm of healing. Several of them had sensed that I was healed, though I experienced no change. If what they were sensing was God’s release of the answer, then my experience could be explained by an angel getting stuck in traffic with my healing in the back seat.

And the third piece of the puzzle of the delayed answer to prayer comes from Revelation 5:8b “Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.” The pattern, in the book of Revelation, is that when bowls were mentioned, they were slowly filled up, and then poured in a manifestation of what they held.

So the thought is that sometimes, when we’re praying for a person or a cause, we’re helping to fill the bowls. And since we don’t know the capacity of the bowls, we don’t know how much it will take to fill them up. The parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18 supports the same conclusion, “that [we] should always pray and not give up.”

These three puzzle pieces lead me to conclude that the best direction for continued prayer on that person’s behalf may or may not be to continue praying for healing; it may be more effective to pray into the spiritual battle that the angelic delivery service may be experiencing.

Of course, this won’t work as an assumption: every time the answer to a prayer is delayed, to go deal with the heavenly battle, or every time an answer is delayed to assume that we’re just filling a bowl, and so we must keep praying to keep filling the bowl. Obviously, how we respond will depend heavily on good discernment and competent prophetic insight.

On a related note, I have been observing that God has been opening up more revelation recently on two subjects that could play into this subject quite helpfully:

·         He’s been talking about angels, and our partnering with them, which may apply if he leads us to forcefully intervene in the heavenly battle that our delivery angel may be caught up in.

·         And he’s been revealing quite a lot of information about the courts of heaven, by which we may address the same problem from a legal perspective: we may need to get an injunction against the demons holding my angelic messenger for ransom.

For years, I’ve been feeling the need to listen before I pray: “Father, what’s Jesus praying about this right now? I want to pray that!” I’m thinking that this is more needful than ever before.

Is this the time to pray for healing? Shall I go to war? Go to court? Or shall I just give thanks for the prayers that we’ve already prayed that are taking their time ripening? Or shall I keep on praying, in order to fill the bowl?

Our bottom line, I think, can be found in Jesus’ declaration: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

I think that might be good practice for all of Father’s sons.

Opposing a Spirit of Fear

Some years ago, a few well-known prophets from America’s east coast prophesied hell coming to the west coast, and to my Northwest region in particular.

They didn’t call it hell. They called it “The Big One.”  They called it earthquakes and volcanoes and a tsunami, and millions of people screaming and dying. They went so far as to say, “Move away from the west coast, if you can!”

That pissed me off. I hate it when God’s people use God’s name to prophesy the devil’s agenda for my region! That is not okay with me.

Even the secular news caught on, and there were “news” articles on TV most nights: “It happened to Japan! It can happen here!” with interviews of geologists and politicians and emergency response people and preppers and fear-mongers. It was ugly.

The prophets then added, “We asked God if we can stop this, and he said we can’t.” That one caught my attention.

I asked Father about it. “Of course they can’t stop it. They’re from the east coast.” That was all I needed.

We gathered a handful of prophets together in one of our homes and came before God, to see what He said about it.

It was a fun evening, but too long to detail. To summarize, there were two primary points we needed to pray into:

1) We (on the west coast) live on the Ring of Fire: there are going to be earthquakes and such; it’s how God built the planet: stuff moves. We can try to stop the movement of continents, or we can just change the effect of their movements. So we decreed lots of tiny earthquakes instead of the killer quake that Japangot that year. (And sure enough, we got a lot of small quakes over the next couple of months.) This was the little attack, the flash that was to capture everybody’s attention while the enemy went after his real goal.

2) The greater attack was the spirit of fear that was riding on the reports, the prognostications, the conversations about “The Big One.” The enemy wanted to use these reports, and use any significant quakes, to embed a demonic stronghold of fear into the people of the west coast, and the people of America.

We also opposed that attack, and the public fear-mongering pretty well stopped. The enemy has not given up his goal of embedding a demonic stronghold of fear in the people of the west coast, but he’s going at it more subtly now. (This is one example of the current attack: http://on.fb.me/1geQU6L.)

The goal of embedding a spirit of fear into the people of the USA appears to be a pretty key issue for the enemy. It’s everywhere. Look at the conversations around Facebook that are talking about GMO foods, and you’ll hear fear in a lot of those voices. You’ll hear it in the conversations about the dismantling of the USconstitution, the Second Ammendment conversations, the vaccine controversy, the Obamacare conversations.

And pretty much every conversation that talks about “Jesus is coming soon” or “the antichrist” or “the tribulation” or “the rapture” is tainted with a spirit of fear.

If I may be so bold, I’d like to suggest that we have not actually been given a spirit of fear. The Spirit we’ve been given is about power and love and it’s about a sound mind.

By contrast, the spirit of fear that’s coming against us is merely a temptation: Will the people give in to fear, or will they resist? Will they respond in fear or in power? In fear or in love? In fear or in a sound mind?

It’s NOT the enemy’s choice whether the spirit of fear infests your house, your community: it’s YOUR choice.

What say you?

How Do You Give Up The Thing You Love?

Oh, baby! I could spend a few years here.

I was wandering through a marina some years ago, looking at the sailboats, imagining the wind in the hair, the splash of seafoam, the smell of the sea.

I’d grown up with a small sailboat. I’d learned early on to love the rock of the waves, the sound of the sea, learning to rely on the sea for my home, my transportation, my grocery store, my schooling, my solitude.

I love the sea. I love who I am on the sea, and who Father is with me when we’re on the sea together.

I was thinking, imagining, planning: how can I change my lifestyle so that my sweetheart and I could adopt a lifestyle on the water. I knew she wouldn’t really take much persuading.

Let's see... It would need to be sailboat, because the wind is cheaper than gas, and I expect to be using a lot of one or the other. It would need to be at least 35’ sailboat, as that seemed the smallest size to house two people as a live-aboard, and we couldn’t afford a boat – a real boat – and a house, too. We’d need to change our careers, but that could be done. I’d need to …

Father interrupted me, tenderly, almost hesitantly. It seemed that he enjoyed how much I was loving his creation, but perhaps there was yet a reason to steer me in another direction.

“Son, would you consider an offer from me?” Oh my. God is deferring to my choice? God has something to say about this plan? This ought to be good! “Sure, Father! What are you thinking?”

“Son, would you consider a trade? If you’ll sacrifice a sailboat – a sailing lifestyle – in this life time, then would you like it if I took you on a sailing trip in the next one? We’ll sail around the rings of Saturn first, and then we’ll explore more interesting places. Would you be willing to make that trade?” Though I heard the words only in my mind, they sounded as if he – the God of the Universe – had his hat in his hand as he came to me with this question: it was clear that this was important to him.

He had me. On several levels, he had me. Sure, it would be completely awesome to go sailing around the rings of Saturn with God; that was an easy choice! The Creator as my own personal tour guide! How cool is that! That would be a no-brainer.

But he had me before he ever mentioned the rings of Saturn. It was clear – he wouldn’t have asked it otherwise – that he had other plans for my life that sailing would interfere with. I could imagine what those things might be, but I chose not to. He wasn’t offering other plans to me. He was revealing his heart to me.

The biggest thing that made me shout “Yes! Of course, yes!” was that my Daddy who loves me foolishly, extravagantly, irrevocably, my lover had just bared a big piece of his infinite heart to me. And for some reason, he wanted me to choose differently than I was beginning to choose; it would make him sad if I continued this path. How can you ever do something that would sadden the one who loves you like that? I couldn’t imagine saying no to a love like that!

This has been a powerful lesson in the decades since that interaction. We’ve come back to this conversation over and over again as he teaches me his ways. What a lesson in how to love well! What a lesson in how he values my free will! What a lesson about how that which is good can get in the way of that which is best.

But most of all, what a lesson in how much, how tenderly, he loves me.

Do I still love sailing? Absolutely.

Do I regret making that decision, walking away from something I loved, with nothing in return except his quiet smile? Not for a freaking second!

The Symphony

I enjoy classical music. More than any other kind of music, the composers of great classical music wove melodies and harmonies together, often mixing layer upon layer of different music, weaving it together into a glorious piece. The fact that some, like Beethoven, couldn’t hear what they were composing overwhelms me.

You couldn’t ever play a symphony on a single instrument. Which melody would you play? They’re all woven together, each instrument taking our turn at the forefront, taking a turn in the background. When they’re all playing the symphony together, the result is glorious!

“Symphony” is an interesting word. It’s actually a Greek word that’s so unique that we don’t translate it, we just use English letters to pronounce it with.

The Greek word συμφωνέω (“symphōneō “) means “to agree together,” or “to agree with one in making a bargain, to make an agreement, to bargain.” Our working together – not all doing the same thing, but working, each in our own way, toward the same end – is a symphony.  

Our word συμφωνέω is the heart of Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 18:19: “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.” This is a symphony.

I suppose that there are a few things that stand out to me in this:

§         Our “agreeing together” makes beautiful music in heaven. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it makes Jesus really happy.

§         This isn’t about numbers. He doesn’t say anything about “If you gather all the Christians in the city….” The symphony begins with “two of you.” I think we miss this one sometimes.

§         Our “agreeing together” isn’t about us doing stuff in unison. If every instrument played the same line, the only variation would be when someone missed the note, and it would sound like a junior high school band concert. There is nothing beautiful in the “symphony” produced that way, except that little Johnny is actually playing something; I sure wish he’d practiced his part.

I think we’ve missed this one sometimes as well. I’ve been browbeaten in the name of “unity” to do the thing that the browbeater is doing, in the way the browbeater is doing it, rather than playing my own part on my own instrument. I’m not sure that browbeating someone into submission is the best method of achieving beautiful music. I grieve that we’ve done that.

§         Our “agreeing together” is powerful. That symphony moves Father’s hand to do “any thing” (“each, every, any, all, the whole, everyone, all things, everything”) that we agree about. This is some of the beauty of the symphony, I think: actually seeing “on earth as it is in Heaven” happening, and us getting to take part in it.

The fact that we don’t see as much of Father’s hand being moved by unit may be a good clue: maybe the way we’ve been striving for unit isn’t the most effective way.

I suspect that we’ll accomplish the symphony of unity much better if we’re all playing the music that our great Conductor places before us: following the Conductor will be more symphonic than following another musician, no matter how good they are. The trombonist will never make beautiful music if he’s trying to play the timpani’s part. Or the piccolo’s part. Or the violin’s part.

More to the point, the trombonist will never be judged for how well he played the second violin’s part. His only reward will come from how well the trombone part came out when it was called upon.

My encouragement is for us to look to the Holy Spirit for the part you’re to play in this whole symphony, not to human leaders. We must fellowship together, yes. We can learn from each other, of course. We do well to “encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.”

Don’t follow the leader of the brass section just because he’s loud. Learn to play your own instrument, your own calling, your own gifting. And having begun, follow the Holy Spirit who’s conducting this symphony.

Why the Cheap Stuff?

In recent months, during times of God’s tangible presence, a cloud of what appears to be gold dust has appeared in a church in the region. It’s showed up several times.

A couple of years back, I was in a meeting where an apostle spoke. He spoke from his apostolic office, from his place as a father in the faith; his message was powerful. I watched as gold dust appeared out of thin air all over his black suit. By the end of the message it looked like he was wearing a rhinestone suit.

I ran to the side of the stage, and watched from up close. It was still amazing. Afterwards, I went up to rub my hands in the glittery stuff that was all over the pulpit, all over the stage where he had stood. A friend of mine had a brush and a container, and was gathering the dust up.

One recent weekend, at a friend’s birthday party, as we were sharing testimonies of God’s goodness, I watched cut gems show up on the carpet. Some of them appeared in front of my eyes. I gathered up a small handful. They don’t look to be anything spectacular (though they are pretty) until I remember that I watched them appear from thin air. Whoa.

I watched many of these appear from thin air.

Any time something unusual like this happens, myriads of voices shout “deception” and point to the fact that they’ve never seen this happening in the Bible! But then we’ve never seen flush toilets or computers in the Bible either, and we seem to be OK with those. And then there’s the detail that the Bible itself says that it doesn’t tell nearly all of the story (John 21:25). I don’t pay attention to those nay-sayers. But that doesn’t answer the questions.

Here’s where it takes a left turn I didn’t expect. A friend gathered up some of the gold dust from the cloud that appeared in church, and had it analyzed. It’s not gold. That didn’t surprise me, as it was swirling around in a way that the heavy metal couldn’t, but to have it confirmed: this is some sort of plastic. That’s weird.

My friend that gathered up the gold dust that had showed up around the apostle in the black suit had a unique view. As a videographer, he was watching the gold dust through the lens of his high-quality video camera. Zooming in close to the man’s shoulders, he looked to see where the dust was coming from. He watched it appear over his shoulders, from little disturbances in the light over his shoulders; he called them little portals, pouring glittery dust out, all over the man standing there preaching.

Some of the gold dust made its way to a jeweler, who analyzed it: this wasn’t gold. It’s not even a metal. “It’s a polymer of some kind.” Wait. What?

And the gems. Some gems have been analyzed by jewelers. Some are perfectly cut, so perfectly that it confused the jewelers. Many were not. A few appeared to be topaz or amethyst or other gems suitable for jewelry.

I’ve had some folks get in my face and declare that because it’s not real, metallic gold, because they’re not real rubies and sapphires, that proves it’s fake. Nonsense.

I suppose some of it could be faked, but not all of it. Seriously, I watched – I watched closely – as gems and glittery stuff appeared from thin air. I saw it happen with my own eyes, while I was on guard for falsehood and pretension. I’m convinced, both in my spirit and in my observations that at least some of what happened is absolutely real.

But then, why plastic instead of real gold? Why cheezy gems? Isn’t God capable of raining down diamonds and doubloons on his children?

As I asked the question, Father pointed me to the statement that often dominates the conversation when these topics come up: “Oooooh! I wish that happened to me! I want gems. I want gold dust!” These kinds of things, even when they’re cheezy plastic gold, poorly cut tiny gems, draw attention to the gifts.

Now I’m convinced that it’s good to appreciate the gifts Father gives, but I suspect that he’s not real fond of it when his gifts bring out the avarice in his children: “I want! I want!” And if there’s that much avarice with the cheap stuff, what will happen when he does pour out rubies and Krugerrands?

Honestly, I don’t think we’re ready for the real thing. If every time we worshipped Father, millions of dollars of worldly wealth (often referred to as “pavement” in the language of heaven; cf Rev. 21:21), would we worship God for his worth, or for the gold and gems? How about the people around us? Would they be paying attention to Him who sits on the throne, or to the stuff clanking on the floor around us?

And I suspect that this is part of the reason why signs and wonders – though they are increasing – are still relatively few and far between. We’re not really ready for the real.

If every person we touched was healed, if hospitals were emptied when we walked past, we’d never have a moment’s peace. We’d be offered millions of dollars just to come to this person’s mansion and heal this corrupt politician, that movie star, kidnapped for drug lords or terrorists.

Nope. Not ready yet.

The Work of Growing

My mind has been taking me on some strange paths, recently.

You who are parents, have you ever given birth to a post-pubescent adult, ready to join society as a productive member. “Skip the diapers, Mom, but could you hand me my shave kit? I gotta go find a job.”

It doesn’t usually happen that way, does it? No, the child that shows up after labor is fully formed in the sense that all the raw material is there, all the parts are functioning, but nothing is mature. They need nourishment, a whole lot of love, and a couple of decades of experience before they get a good handle on life in this new place. The birth is worthy of celebration, but now the real work begins.

I’ve been reflecting about how the same truth applies in The Kingdom: ain’t nobody born again as a mature believer. All the raw material is there, all the parts are functioning, but nothing is mature. They need good nourishment, a whole lot of love, and a couple of decades of experience before they get a good handle on life in this new place. The birth is worthy of celebration, but now the real work begins.

Honestly, helping folks grow in this new realm is a lot of what our job description is about. The Bible phrases that our work is “...for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ...” That's a worthy target!

I hold what is sometimes considered a screwball opinion: I think this is really everyone’s job in the Kingdom.

We say (heck, I have myself said!), “But I have so much to learn myself! I can’t teach anybody! I must learn myself before I can teach!” That doesn’t seem to impress God all that much.

First, there’s the well-documented truth that the best way to learn is to teach others.

Second, the reality is that you (and I) don’t need to be perfect before we start helping others grow. Father once said to me, “You don’t need to have finished the race, son. You just need to have 20 minutes more experience than the one you’re training.” Hmm. OK. I can do that.

Someone really smart once said, “Encourage one another, and all the more, as you see the Day approaching.”  So I guess this is incumbent on all of us, isn’t it? We’re all “One anothers.”

I told you my mind went strange places. Now let's go build up some folks around us.