They have no one. They’ve had no one. The spirit of nothingness resides in the hearts of lost souls; easily overcome by competing doctrines. The winds blow them in every direction. Unstable, unplugged, unpredictable are their ways and thoughts. Misunderstood are the hurts that fester in their tortured minds. Offended by the invisible, embarrassed by the imaginary, disappointed by the non-existent, their lives are a scattered mixture of vicarious insults the world has dealt them through an open window of continuous real-time pains, borne by proxy. Taking on burdens never meant to be carried, the weight is multiplied exponentially by their years and no one knows their breaking point.
No one comes to stop the pain because no one told anyone to do it and they have always had no one. Salvation sweeps by them every Sunday on its way to church to read the word of truth to those who know it well. Goodness glides past them on the way to work in the morning, happily content with keeping quiet. Joy hurries by them each evening, closes its door and goes to sleep.

The fault of the faithful is the absence of truth told to those who have no one. And no one has to care if no one knows.

“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” Romans 10: 14

In a warm comfortable setting I’m down on my knees because I’m in need. Padded prayer rug, moderate temperature, low light and the mood is perfect for me to request minutia from the most high. My minor struggles easy for Him, I lay out the path by which He should resolve my issues without using up much of His time. With a list of memorized gimmes and an undertone of hopeful bonus expectations, I’m anticipating His omniscient allocation of the blessings I truly need; all requested in words I’m carefully parsing to disguise the various things I want and have no right to ask for. Looking for bonuses in my bounty, I profess a level of good I can never attain and I’m faithfully expectant of the extra blessings as a reflection of His ability to do more than I can ask or think. Fooling myself about my fool-hearted insincerity; hoping to capture the crumbs of the overflow and dishonestly denying that the crumbs were always the goal; I call out to my savior knowing that Lord doesn’t define our relationship. I want His way, my way but the still small voice won’t be still and was never really small in my ear; only in my priorities. It was still enough to allow me the freedom to entangle myself in unsanctioned movement toward the things I desired. Small enough to ignore for as long as I could fill my head with enough surrounding noise to temporarily drown out the sound of the call I feared would cause me to lose something I would be better off without.

Gimme patience, God, but please don’t make me suffer through the drudgery of enduring pain and the burdens of obnoxious people. Gimme comfort God, to ease my discomfort with the uncomfortable ensnarements I’ve created for myself. Gimme, gimme and give to me until I’m overflowing with gratitude for your gracious giving. I stop short out of respect and anticipate favor based on the brevity and simplicity of my request.

Not sure how I will find the patience to wait, I’m deciding what His answer will be as I formulate my plan to loiter in the bounty of my blessings. Eerily aware that He may not be in agreement, I begin to dismiss all things negative as a flaw in my upbringing. But credit me for having the faith to endure through this sacrificial exercise. Can’t help but think of how bad this kneeling and bending is for my posture though.

“God is not blind to our inner motives. He tells us to cleanse ourselves from all filth, not just of the flesh but even the heart and spirit.”

“He makes known to us His disdain for a gold-digger relationship.” “Good Or God” written by John Bevere

Look at it! You can’t turn away. Your future dancing uncontrollably like a paper bag on the interstate, at the whim of charlatans and fabricators. The ground below you readjusting to a rapid shift from comfort zone to twilight zone. Scary-fast, the speed of change quickens with each discovery and hastens the speed of our distraction. We don’t think about it, we simply synchronize the speed of our ambition to the blur of irrational transitions taking place before our eyes. Like grabbing hold of liquid lightening we blindly accommodate discomforting trends in fear of being left behind in an echo chamber of decreasing valuation, all-the-while giving increased opportunity to the sweeping vortex of crucial, irreversible decisions we must make instantaneously. It’s the once-in-a-lifetime event that no one noticed as it became a daily occurrence that has somehow blinded both our sensibility and visibility. The obnoxious alarm that continues to blare has worn through our irritability and snuggled comfortably into our perception of normal. We have grown accustomed to the sound, the screams, the horror and we shrug our shoulders in abdication; choosing not to choose but passively choosing without acknowledgement, as if in innocence. Not having a reason to reason, we’ve slipped between sensitivity and mimicry; pretending that our incessant selfish motives represent a mass movement toward a greater good. The angry have mobilized, the fearful cower, the skeptical scoff, the cynical detach and in the end suffrage becomes the common ground but the disagreement persists on the grounds of profound disagreement. Like a paper bag on the interstate we’re forced to dance to tunes of deception and seduction, awaiting the inevitable speeding behemoth to crush us; to jolt us helplessly into the next sequence of unscripted changes.

The peaceful, still waters of Jesus Christ provide secure footing where the anchor rests in firm soil. Have we exchanged the still waters of peace for the risk of self interests, masked by mindless busyness, which shields the unknown dangers of high-speed, congested highways? Those waters remain calm and the anchor firm, regardless of how we choose.

“Behold I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed – in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 (NKJV)

Your hobbled, well-aged vehicle sits at home in mechanical silence awaiting a string of extra payday deposits to cure its illness, which has left you constantly thinking about money and transportation with a level of seriousness that could be considered worry. You’ve begun to formulate plans for alternative ways to get to work until you can accumulate the funds to finance the repair.

Maybe you’ll have to start out a little earlier and figure out the public transportation system; piecing together a walk-ride strategy. This will most likely be time consuming and it will require you to come in close contact with the bag ladies and winos you normally pass by on a daily basis.

Or maybe one of your friends who lives nearby would be willing to pick you up, but who do you know that would understand your need for complete silence in the morning and the scheduled stop by Starbucks for that triple, venti, half sweet, non-fat, caramel macchiato, that you must have or the day will be ruined? What friend can you trust with that kind of personal information about your mandatory morning rituals?

Walking, or riding your bike, although possible, would require lots of advance prep and you’d have to find a place to shower before clocking in, not to mention that you’d have to bring extra clothes each day.

A daily Uber ride may become a competing expense and slow down your ability to save the money you’ll need to save for the car repair.

The inconvenience of all the scenarios makes your head spin but you gotta do what you gotta do, and you gotta work. Imagine there was an opportunity to be blessed with every one of the alternatives. Imagine that God was waiting to improve your life and the only way He could get your attention was to sideline one of the things in your life that took your attention away from Him: in this case, your car. Many of our inconveniences are only temporarily inconvenient before we discover the blessing that was wrapped inside them.
What if God wanted you to learn the public transportation system so that you could observe and appreciate the machinations of a living, breathing city? Or maybe He wanted to expose you to the plight of the bag ladies and winos and other unsavory characters so that you could see the fine line between their insecurities and your selfish moods swings; the similarities in their hopelessness and your self-pity; the sliver of hope that separates your will to fight from their total surrender.
What if He wanted you to share time with a friend on the way to work so that they could pray with you about some of the things in your life that are not working out the way you thought they should? Or maybe the friend is the one in need and your listening ear is their way out of a deep depression. Maybe your Starbucks habit is a way to open them up to talk about some of their habits without shame.
What if God’s point was to make use of some of the items you already possessed but had lost interest in? Like that bicycle that accumulates spider webs in the back corner of your storage. What if God was so concerned about your fitness that He got you out of your car and onto your bike so that you could discover the benefits of fresh air and sunshine and in the process you’d discover bike shortcuts that negate the time you normally spend pounding your fist in traffic?
What if the Uber rides exposed you to a whole new approach to morning traffic and opened many alternative paths to travel to work? What if the contact you truly needed to start your own business or get into grad school turned out to be someone you shared an Uber ride with? What if it turned out to be your future husband or wife?
Maybe your broken down car is an opportunity to make human contact beyond the prearranged, scheduled events of your normal day. What if that was the way God let people know that He was real and that He wanted to be involved in our lives? What if God placed obstacles and detours in our paths in order to lead us to what we could never find for ourselves? What if He showed us how minor our struggles really are by blessing us with alternatives? What if He operated that way? He does!

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4 (NKJV)

Direct contact is the nature of personal sharing; the hands-on prodding where physical touch happens symbolically and defines the reality. The place where spiritual capability depends upon a heart’s true intentions and silent obedience precludes the need for further discussion. A place of clear and heart-felt definition where dialogue obscures conviction and hesitance terminates fulfillment. A mysterious encounter of living-Word animation, beyond interpretation, intrinsically understood; indelibly real. Truth defines itself through the uniqueness of our individuality; the pre-destiny of our calling; the depth of the surrender. Assurance uninhibited by opinion, the heart understands what heads deny. Never duplicated, the formula for the transformation is yours alone, yet the stimulus unchanged. What is the explanation? Knowing?
The interpretation of intimate truth defies vicarious translation. Egocentric translations of imperfect intermediaries demand responsible verification. Unharvested fruit nourished by the mindless rituals of man-organized perceptions alone, will whither from inadvertent dissuasion in a cloud of happy over confidence.

Who’s interpreting the messages of life for you? Who can you trust to interpret a message only you can hear?

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God:Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.” 1 John 4:1-3

There’s really nothing I can do for you. Really, my best move is the matador’s sidestep that moves me graciously to the side and unveils the Source of your own miraculous power and fulfillment. My shallow spring of temporary satisfaction is covered in the limitations of my own experiences and stunted by narrow visions; shaped by internal fears. My words are full of disappointment and judgment even as I bend my pettiness toward understanding. I cannot ignore the conclusions I’ve drawn long enough to allow the facts to paint the full picture. I’m incapable of ignoring my jaded view of things I don’t understand; my abilities tainted by opinion; my usefulness drenched in doubt and unless I have yielded authority to God, I am a dangerous obstacle to good decision-making.
I will tell you differently. “I know, I’ve been there, I’ve done it and survived.” “I was lost and now I’m found” but I was never where you are.
Real talk: after drinking water from my shallow well you will still be thirsty. I can pray for you but to rely on me is a gamble. I am absorbed with the minutia of my everyday world. I’m hopelessly inattentive and often forgetful. My interest in others is selfishly conditional but I mean well. Well, you know what I mean.
My very best move is the matador’s sidestep; lifting my muleta to reveal a relationship with the healing Word of an Almighty God; introducing you to the richness of true love, loyalty and real friendship. In one loving move I can take you to Him and disappear. He is the One who hears your cries. He can do all things. He can settle it: permanently. He will give you the strength to continue the fight and the wisdom to avoid taking the rest of us so seriously.

“Jesus answered and said to her, “ Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:12 (NKJV)

Comfort is key. We live for comfort, avoid discomfort and identify heat quickly and accurately. When the back burner becomes the raging fire and the temperature in the kitchen brings us uneasiness, we don’t have to be told to get out and no one could convince us that we should stay. Peace out, ghost, Audi 5Gs, we’re dipping with no further explanation. By the time the clock reaches “time to go” time to go has already reached overtime and we pivot like a politician to position ourselves for a dash to a more peaceful and comfortable respite. The tea leaves are easy to read when pressure builds and panic increases stress levels to the point of physical annoyance. Or so it seems!
Tea leaves hold no secrets but reading is fundamental. Directions line the path for those who seek the answer; not just the relief. When peace is the comfort we pursue, discomfort leads us on an eye-popping expose′ of revelation and self reflection. Running stops the bleeding but not the cancer. The symptomatic signs of off-balance living demand attention to extinguish those back burner fires before the troublesome kitchen fire takes down the house. Blistering flames and blanketing smoke demand a reflex response for self preservation but sparks alone have a simple remedy. The easy answer is a spontaneous exit at the first sign of trouble; after the first spark, but, wisdom is always wrapped in the choices we make after Holy consultation.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Psalms 119:105 (NKJV)

What if someone prayed for you? What if a glimpse of light broke through your dark world and warmed your face? The embrace of loving arms held you like your mother’s protective grasp. A familiar voice cried out to God in your behalf and rescued you from the battle for your soul. What if a strong hand reached out and pulled you from the wreckage of a self-inflicted collision with life; guiltless, shameless and completely unharmed? What if the uncontrollable voices in your head became the guiding voices in your heart and the frequent return visits to the torment of your mistake-riddled past turned into forward projections of loving assurances and concern for others? What would happen if your personal needs and desires were met with the contentment of an overwhelming triumph, already accomplished, at someone else’s expense; no charge to you?
What if someone who knew God as their Father, presented your life to Him, and despite all of your failings, pleaded with Him to save you? Would that be the best thing that ever happened to you?

Someone will.
Someone did.
Someone always does!

“But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:23 (NKJV)

A holy turn of events has turned the tide of odds that were oddly slanted in different directions. The cry that was heard and healed has activated the fury of unseen forces and twisted fortune to favor you! You are the subject of gracious advantage at a time when weak hearts account for chattering teeth and shifting feet prepare for retreat; to acknowledge the possibility of a hypothesis strongly supported by the jittery reasoning of the indecisive. The battleground was set, the prayers were prayed and God had gone ahead to fit the pieces into place and yet, you wait for reassurance of the sure thing He promised He already gave you. Looking for signals and signs and reading the hunches and history and nothing appears to be trending your way; you tend to surrender to the trend and thereby do its bidding to defeat yourself. Giving in and admitting that you rarely win, you abandon the hope that even God could salvage the delusion of failure you’ve already accepted. Armed with everything you needed from the outset and in a moment of defeat, apropos of nothing, laid your weapons down to the ghost of a powerless enemy. The new man, searching for the comfort of old insecurities, jumped back into the old man’s aging body and halfheartedly waved a withering fist in protest as he contemplated his finishing before ever reaching the finish line.
You have forgotten who you are! The slingshot you’ve wielded, the trumpet you’ve played, the armies you’ve crippled under a righteous banner. The endless reservoir of holy thunder at your disposal for the cost of your belief. Pick up your stones, your pen, your feather, your unlikely weapons of war and march boldly into the confidence of the promise, void of the fear of frightening things; knowing that the power of God you’re shrouded in, will move all things.

“So Jesus said to them, “ Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20 (NKJV)

It’s time for huffing and puffing again. Time to shed the extra blankets, to bare muscle-tightened skin to the morning breeze. It’s that time when the mirror reveals what winter clothing discreetly hid in stylish confidence.
While the drabness of winter skies diverted minds into the blandness of faded colors, loose potato chips lodged themselves between softened sofa crevices and soda stains painted decorative patterns that identify comfortable gathering spots. Warm fires attracted chilled legs and arms like moths and they fluttered in the enjoyment of comforting goulashes and lavished in the richness of heavy cream sauce paradise. Layers of insulated enlargement thickened girth and relaxation rose in priority from the end-of-day ritual to the all-day routine. Lethargy reined as good intensions wrestled inactivity for the rights to hold the remote; and todos became nobody-dids and sleepiness guided the order of the day.
But now’s the time for huffing and puffing and gasping for air through pollen-filled dormant lungs. It’s the time for deep breaths and water bottles and the bobbing heads of runners whose unstrained faces intimidate the winter recluse, fresh out of hibernation. It’s the stretching of atrophied pectorals and the cramping of sedentary quads. It’s long lines for treadmills and bloated bodies in bulging spandex and it’s largely embarrassing and painfully necessary. But now’s the time for weaning off winter comforts. It’s the ideal time for huffing and puffing while the warmth of the sun beckons the re-energized body and its bright light shields the eyes from exposing the laughing children being entertained.