Voicing Heaven in Earth's Language

I've been having the time of my life, constantly down here. It never ends but I'm a fan of fully immersing myself right where I am and so that's what I seek to do. I do not like to get distracted with a lot of outside stuff. As you know, I've been working at this furniture gallery called Oak Factory for almost two years now. God has really blessed me at this job through the difficult and also financially. I have enjoyed mostly delivering furniture and also working in the store on furniture assembly, repair (which I'm quite bad at), and other warehouse work. It's neat too because I knew the owners of Oak Factory before I knew of the store itself from my church. They're a wonderful family (pretty well-known throughout central KY for their commercials which feature their two kids) who have had this store and grown it for almost 20 years now. They've "adopted" me as well and so I spend a fair amount of time with them outside of work on occas

God have mercy, I barely practice this truth. I have experienced it just a little bit though. God, have mercy and grant that we, the Church could walk as those who KNOW what You've done for us and so we respond by laying hold of the Kingdom by force, violently standing on Your promises which You've given. There is a place of spiritual violence. It is NOT violence against people or Your creation, but it is violence in the spiritual realm against principalities and powers that seek to seize away the seed of God's Word, His promises to His people. This is the place of spiritual warfare: the spiritual realm. It demands a spiritual tenacity that certainly does not come naturally to me. God, we must receive Your grace to walk in such a way. I have experienced this most in the resistance of sin where I have had to be violent in my prayer life and violent in my leaning on God and His ability when everything in me wants to try hard by my own might and power. "Not by m

God, what will it take to reinforce the truth to me?  I keep trying to be a doer instead of getting the foundations correct.  The foundation is love.  The foundation is rest and believing Jesus.  The foundation is faith which is received.  If I could just KNOW that and stop succumbing to the temptation to DO because “it’s expected of me” or something.  I don’t live out of obligation.  On the contrary, I want to have sweet expectation of what YOU will do, and not me.  In the moment that I do something, I’ll know and it will flow freely as a consequence and result of  my faith.  I want to get this right Jesus, and not waste my life.  You go above and beyond towards me, and I can best go above and beyond towards you by RECEIVING Your good gifts.  You’ve told me over and over.  I feel spiritually right now like I did yesterday with the furniture I scratched up when I delivered it.  I’m told not to be too hard on myself, but I think, “How else will I learn?”  It was a stupid mistake that I

The song I'm about to post the lyrics to explains the whole concept of thorns as figurative terminology (taken from Scripture) for those weaknesses we have which plague us. Nobody is without them. We usually seek to play on our strengths, and hide our weakness. I have many myself. My whole life, my first reaction toward my moments of weakness has been discouragement and giving up. At one point in my life, I thought it pleased God for me to be so hard on myself, and now I know different, although I have still been tempted to slip into that. It brings God no glory for us to rip ourselves apart. I asked the Lord for the zillionth time yesterday about how to steward myself when I go through a season of consciousness regarding my weaknesses because I have come to realize that it will never go away forever on this side of Heaven. God told me for about the zillionth time since I've asked Him, "Nathan, do not beat yourself down and do not try to conjure up some great feelin

Covenant is a word that we are not often accustomed to these days, but it's a word which we must recover for the good of all. Covenant lies central to reality and true living. We do not conceive of this very much. Most of us conduct our lives in such a way that though we do not perceive this, because it lies at the fundamental level of our being and as such is in the subconscious since most of us are not sensitive to the level out of which we "be" in life. But, at this fundamental level for most of us is selfishness and really for all of us this is true, though a few find the way out of this destructive mode of living which is based on a fundamental lie. We live for our happiness and we arrogantly think that we are good and therefore somebody owes us something in life. Most of us go through our lives trying to get what we are "owed" whether we pursue it from God or from other people. Some of us pursue it by doing lots of good things for the world to bette