Sing, O Barren

Isaiah54:1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.

 

I am looking into barrenness, unfruitfulness. Ill provide context:

Past:

Fiscal? Yes. Barren.

Spiritual? Yes.

Relational? Again yes.

Happiness? Yes (Joy? Yes.)

Present:

Fiscal? Somewhat.

Spiritual? The day dictates the response. (Now… no.)

Happiness. A resounding no. I have joy.

 

I had never heard this scripture until the other night. I love that God gives basic directions. Very Basic and understandable. Scripture isn’t an Ikea manual, it actually makes sense; good easy to follow and efficient sense.

Looking at my life from between two points, now and birth I can easily identify different forms of barrenness. Fiscal barrenness has been the easy focus… the one I curse at the most. Its the elephant in the room. Spiritual, the one I like to not talk about and rather enjoy for a time until truth rushes the room with light and sparks and changes everything. Joy, the one I mistake for happiness; usually barren along side the empty soul. I can’t think of a time on my line where there was not some type of emptiness. Luckily we have a guide and its pretty exciting when you read it!

First step is to sing.

“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.”

An analogy is used of a woman unable to bear a child.

Sing in the midst of the barrenness. This is a very churchy answer. Praise God in the midst of it. I have heard that time and time again but what do I actually do? Well in all reality I complain like the rest of us but I found myself listening to it this time. I am rejoicing through my barrenness. This has a lot to do with re working habits.

My car broke down this week. If any of you know me you know that my car is a constant source of frustration. I get one piece fixed and another goes and another and another. After hearing this scripture, I decided to rework my habit of swearing at the car. There is still no money to get it fixed and my hands are only capable of doing exactly what they are capable of doing; this time I didn’t swear at it. In all of my frustration, I shot my eyes straight up to a clear blue sky and asked God to present the answer to this problem and allow me the discernment to see the correct answer clearly and I added one sentence to the end that I never had before… “… and thank you for the times that it does run.” I believe that last sentence was as close as I could get to “singing” in that situation.

 

The second step in the process of dealing with the barren times is “Strengthen your tent”

Isaiah 54:2

Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;

I loved this part. Its so logical. Lets say I have a barren piece of land in Napa Valley. A beautiful piece of cool land begging to produce grapes. If God came to me and said “Sing in this barren land and I will give you grapes” I couldn’t sit in a lawn chair by the field and do nothing. If God was to make that ground produce grapes and I hadn’t prepared for it, all of those grapes would go to waste because I would have nothing in place to make the grapes useful. I need pickers, storage containers, fermenters, bottles, labels, raw materials, a warehouse, truck drivers, trucks, an accountant, bank accounts, a logo, a website, and so on and so forth to put the fruit to work. Explosive growth that we aren’t ready for is a waste of fruit. God say very plainly that the time of barrenness is the perfect time to plan for success. He will bring forth the fruit and we will need to use it to glorify him further! Its so simple and reality meltingly OBVIOUS that I am absolutely ashamed of my previous idle time. All the time spent wallowing in my barrenness was available time given to me to plain for Gods fruit. I get it now and by george I am asking God every day how to better utilize my idleness! Wow I am excited! CAN YOU SEE THE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!! GOD IS AWESOME!

Step four is to circumvent the inevitable fear accompanying this growth.  

Isaiah 54:4 

Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.

I think inevitably during this time of barrenness there will be fear. Noah built his arc and probably looked pretty foolish during this time. God told Him exactly what to do and he did his best but I can’t imagine he dealt with the ridicule of the neighbors during that time. He probably felt pretty dumb. If there was a home owners association they probably didn’t like that there was a big boat in his back yard. He had to deal with that. I know that if I was a punk kid before the flood I would have spray painted some mean things on the side of it but Noah prevailed. I bet you he sang the whole time too. My fear can really get to me and render me pretty unproductive. It also says not to be confounded. I feel pretty constantly confused so I am not the best to speculate on this but I do know that the best way to get confused is to over complicate your solutions. What I will take away from this right now is to keep it simple and achievable.

Just above that last passage, verse 3 says very simply that:

For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

Heck Yeah…

God thank you so much for this word. I am beyond motivated. I am beyond excited and I want You to be the center of all it. Every bit of it. Make your will and your plan my joy. Give me such clear understanding of your plan that I am never confused. Let me never lose you through the growth and fruit you bring into my life. Thank you for the extreme change in me. Thank you for the people that keep my accountable. Thank you for pulling me up and out of the dirt three years ago. This ride has been amazing and gripping and powerful. Im so full of love and able to share it. I can’t believe you did that for me and any day I spend focusing on anything but You and sharing Your joy is a waste. Thank you. Thank you  Thank you!

Analyze, Maximize

I need to get something out today.

I:

Feel something huge around the corner

Feel better than I ever have

Feel like I can do anything

Feel more confident than ever

Feel capable to meet any task

Feel like I have found my path

have a healthy hunger for the best

can’t get enough and need more

don’t want to sit still (read be stagnent)

can do absolutely anything to a high degree

can analyze and make healthy decisions

will bend over backwards to make something the best it can be

won’t give up no matter what

need to be productive

search for my flawed opinions and judgements in order to better something

am willing to be wrong for the greater good

desire a longer 5,000 foot perspective

love people more than I ever have

can see my flaws more quickly than ever

need my mentors and their guidance to keep my current pace

feel connected to my work

can feel my hands and their output

God has given me something I missed out on for a long time. That is my drive.

I have always been a very motivated person but that motivation was hindered for a very long time by a couple of deep seated flaws that made me very ineffective. Those flaws were perfectionism as an unhealthy addiction to failure and the fear that comes from knowing somewhere inside of me that screamed failure is a destination I couldn’t avoid.

Last year I gained some big time healing from those things. A side affect of that was losing a lot of my drive to succeed for a while. I laid on the couch a bunch at the end of last year. I packed on a few pounds and smoked quite a few more cigarettes. I have never had a healthy motivation. A motivation from God and a certainty in His plan for me. This feels like the best drug you could have. I can’t sit still. I am analyzing and maximizing at a much more efficient pace. I am building relationships through it. Thats is something I didn’t even know could exist. I used to micro manage. I used to squeeze efficiency out of people like a juicer on high. My meager results where at the expense of my relationships, but now I am more in love with the people in my life and my staff is everything to me and their personal growth both through their own hard work and their adherence to healthy management that I know God ordains has set a new standard for the efficient machine of our company. I can look people in the eye, love them and see their potential rather than my immediate need. Its like speed. Everything whizzes by and I feel confident. I feel like I am in a constant state of prayer right now that leads my decisions and the quickness of growth is blowing my hair back like a ride in a convertible. God is so good and has restored my confidence and drive in just a way that I just knew would never return. Right now, truly my cup is running over. Its huge and magnified and I am loving it.

As always when you analyze and maximize you find insecurity. Will this end? Is this a mountain top experience? How hard am I going to fall when I inevitably fall over a decision that will disconnect me from a relationship. Will I plateau in such a way that causes a need for new and more innovative thinking for my position? Right now, those concerns are starting to grow and decrease my productivity. Even typing this now I have begun to worry about people perceiving this confidence as arrogance. Im reworking this to look good to people. Im analyzing it to death and seeing a year down the road of negative growth due to misrepresenting my zeal for pride. Its all so complicated. I need everyone to pray for my open communication with God to continue guiding my decisions. Arrogance, money, pride, selfishness, greed, gluttony are the things that could possibly wait on the other side of success. How do you continue to be a good man with success? The only Jacob that has ever truly known Gods character is a very poor desperate Jacob. How does a successful, efficient, smiling, aggressive Jacob maintain a great relationship with Jesus with out hurt and desperation? Will there always be another desperate place to bring me back to Him? I can tell you right now without a shadow of a doubt I am scared to death of money. Im scared of my flesh and its ability to quiet Gods voice in my head. If I were to be forced to make a decision between my exact situation now as an indefinite state of being vs. a life filled with money and efficient productivity, I’d choose now. I can feel God so clearly. I can literally see my path and his planned execution of hurdles. I am unclouded and inspired and it all hangs on a thread that my flesh will learn very quickly to pull, unraveling the fabric of my productivity and relationsips.

God you took me from poor and desperate to beautiful and complete. You have more for me and Im so scared of losing the security I feel in you to money and success. Continue to lead me in building better and better relationships. Let me analyze and maximize with the desired output of your will being done efficiently. Lead me to simplify and streamline my communication with you. Teach me how to speak to you more simply and elegantly. Fit into me more and more of your traits. Open the minds and hearts of the people looking at me and let them never, ever see me or think of my name. Let them see and think of yours. Crush me and my flesh and keep me from pride and arrogance. I love you. Please keep me on the path.

2012

Its a new year and Im hungry for forward motion. Im desperate for it.

Last year about this time I asked God what 2011 was going to be about and he told me to smile. Smile at people before church, smile when my customers come in, smile when a friend needs me and smile when a brother or sister in Christ falls. I tried to smile in 2011 and I think it worked. Through that very small action, that tiny muscular tension I found a whole new side of God that I was missing. I found relationships and the fruits that are produced by cultivating a friendship that has no boundary set on good or bad, profitable or un-profitable. I found that I looked at the world through pain that I thought I had healed from only to find out that I had found a new and very clever way to bury it. God is good and planted such a tiny seed in my mind that grew into strength through Him. He just smart and shouldn’t be messed with. Smile… how simple and elegant a solution that through God becomes powerful, mountain moving, tsunami creating energy. I was transformed by that.

I woke up this morning with a heavy heart for what some of my friends are going through. What they are going through effects me and that effect on me had let resentment build up and so on and so forth. At the end of all the “so on’s” I found myself pretty frightened of how the whole things would turn out. Where was I going to live? How was I going to get to work and most importantly at the time, how was I going to live comfortably without my current set of safety blankets. God showed me to Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost… blog and it showed me to Hebrews 11. This bit of text is encouraging and used pretty often. It the “faith is the substance of things hoped for” bit… you know the one. Mr. Chambers didn’t focus on the popular part. He focused on vs. 8′s artfully written last phrase “,not knowing whither he went”. The verse goes as such for context:

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should receive after as an inheritance, they obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. Hebrews 11:8.

This chapter is kind of like a compilation of great faith acts recounted in one place. This is seemingly custom designed for my situation much like a Dr Scholl’s shoe insert for my heavy heart. Enoch was in their, Noah, Sara and Abel; a real who’s who of faith TED talkers. I needed it. I want my problems to be intelligent and above the day to day and I try my hardest to make them that way but it always goes down this same tree. I think its someone else causing me pain then I blame my self, then I realize that my relationships aren’t good. As I try to fix my relationships I find a deficiency in faith and a distrust for Gods ineffable plan that I constantly mistake for human plans in my mind. I have to get it out of my head that I am more complicated than other people. We all have the same problems; fear, jealousy, insecurity, anger and all of these stem from questioning a completely incomprensible level of perfection.

Luckily all of this happened in a short period of time. This kind of stuff used to knock me out for a month or two, burning bridges as I went.Ruining relationships and eventually crippling me socially but God helped me catch it early and I thank him so much for it. Hes just too good to me. Its unbelievable. I don’t deserve it at all. Jesus hung on that cross and defeated this and that means so much to me.

Thank you Jesus for defeating this and drawing out your perfection on a map that some how I am following to you. Keep my feet on the line between two points. Make the path wider and my focus more acute to see where to stand and build my faith through whatever will accomplish the task you see fit for me. I want to do these things and become better, more apt for your will and useable in your plan. I just let myself get in the way. I need you to keep me above water. Thank you so much for sweating out my sin and letting it be cleansed when all I did was spit in your face. Your patience and understanding are irrational to me but if not for them I would be condemned. Complete the work you have for me now and begin the new work for 2012 that you see fit. Ignore my plans, infact delete my plans from my mind and insert your own. I want to follow that and that alone. Please keep me focused this year. Let me hear you and feel you. Help my hands to move in yours and bring peace to insatiable mind. Bring me Your security, Your joy and Your timing so that the false versions that I create for myself are not given time to sprout thoughts. Thank you for 2011 God, I can’t wait to see what you do in 2012.

Take Heart.

I went to Honduras and I came back.

Ive been home for a few weeks and I haven’t really talked about it yet.

I went through something there that I had to deal with and I think I have.

The first week was great. I visited coffee farms that were producing top notch coffees on the worlds scale. I tasted the cherries right off the tree and they were sweet and sugary. It was elegant. I crave that sweetness now and there is no way to have it. Its there on that mountain and in that climate, with those people in that time locked there and far away from me. I remember it with a smile.

The second week was different and it bent me and twisted me and I am straightening out now. I met the families of Linares and I broke. Linares is in the poorest part of an already very poor country. Its forgotten and neglected by local and national authorities. It was once inhabited by villainy. Its dark without electricity and its bare of good strong working men. The family structure is broken. The girls are pregnant at 14 and the men leave looking for work never to return. If there was a desperate place it was Linares. Worst of all there are children. The village of 70 houses 30 children. That is not a proper ratio for developement. I met 6 men.

The first day in Linares we didn’t stay long. We arrived… shook some hands and left early. I left mad. I left heartbroken. I left with no trust in my God. I saw no good there. I felt pitty for the people and I slept in it. I felt like old wine, sour and unwanted. Discouraged. We woke up the next morning and I jumped in the truck to head back to the village. I put in my headphones and pressed play on Hillsong Uniteds “Take Heart”. God worked.

[Verse 1:]
There is a light
It burns brighter than the sun
He steals the night
And casts no shadow
There is hope
Should oceans rise and mountains fall
He never fails
[Chorus:]
So take heart
Let His love lead us through the night
Hold on to hope
And take courage again
[Verse 2:]
In death by love
The fallen world was overcome
He wears the scars of our freedom
In His Name
All our fears are swept away
He never fails
[Bridge:]
All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome
All our failure
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome
All our heartache
And all our pain
God our healer
He has overcome
All our burdens
And all our shame
God our freedom
He has overcome
All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome
All our failures
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome
God our justice
God our grace
God our freedom
He has overcome
God our refuge
God our strength
God is with us
He has overcome

I didn’t know it but God had already overcome their adversity. He was so much bigger than even their poverty. He was so much bigger than their broke family structure. He was so much stronger than any working man. He overshadowed their mountains and their clouds. He saw inside their eyes and had healed them.

I walked into the village with a new head on my shoulders that day and I found a village full of people trusting God with their nothing. Giving every bit of the desperation over to Him. It wasn’t this village that was in the midst of turmoil, it was me. It was my trust in Gods ability to provide that was shaken not theirs. It was my lack of faith that was stirring up emotion in me not God. He was quietly whispering that I was safe and so were they. Im so thankful for them. Im so thankful for Gods love and his ability to take the burdens, shame, failures, troubles, tears, heartache and pain and turn them into hope. Take heart… his love leads us through the night. Hold onto hope and take courage again.

Faith.

I love you Jesus. Its all I can do to raise my hands. Thank you for taking me all the way to Linares to remind me of how huge you are. Thank you for being so correct and perfect on your promises. Im sorry I don’t see it. Im so small. Thank you for renewing the courage. You are everything and I just can’t remember that, but I want to. Thank you.

Jacob.

I went to a wedding yesterday.

I think everyone that knows me knows that I hate weddings.

There are two sides to me.

When I am with my close friends I love to talk, to give my opinions, to brag about what I have accomplished and to ask for help…

When I am not with my close friends I want to be in a hole at the bottom of a hill where I can still hear whats going on but no one knows I am there. I want to listen, take it in, make assessments of how I will be accepted and make a plan to escape so I can watch some TV.

I hate the spot light. That isn’t always exactly true but when eyes turned to me and I am not ready, I can’t respond. I just stand there running the numbers in my head as fast as I can but its not fast enough.

Weddings scare me though. I feel like any day dedicated to a person or a couple breeds stress and that stress, if not dealt with properly, turns into hurt relationships. I hate hurt relationships.

If there is one thing I know about Gods plan for me it is that I am to build the legacy of myself and my future family on relationships. Its such a strong pull on my life to love people that my socialization and demeanor was manipulated at a very young age by “the enemy” to discourage me from being a loving person. I spent the majority of my life running from people and with my newly found knowledge of my role in the Kingdom I have to find some way not to run away.

God has given me a vision for my name after me. Ive never been proud of my family name… Ive never really thought about it but I know that my name will mean God’s love shown through us. Im going to start praying for my children that I haven’t had yet. I can’t wait to dedicate them to the Lord. Most of all I am going to start acting the way I’ll teach them to act. Its going to take God. When those eyes hit me Ill have to stand there and thats hard for me. God has me in a place where I have to have Him to fulfill the role I am called to and that means he wants me there.

All this thinking from a wedding… I know need to learn to not think so much.

Jacob.

Will I be ok forever? Yes.f

the Answer is that I am already ok forever. Taken care of that is. All the happiness I could beg for is on the other side of a door that my flesh keeps convincing me that is a chasm to the pits of dismay. Im getting better at reaching for the handle though.

I sat outside today and had coffee. Believe it or not I want that and can’t have it. Phone, internet, relationship problems, work, invoices, calcified vacuum breakers all make it plain difficult to grab on to a moment. Moments are life currency in my head. A moment with God where it works and all that darkness turns to light. I would do anything for one of those a day. Its like heroine or something. Only problem is after that I find something else to bring me down, but right now I am so happy. In spite of everything I do what I love. Im with a girl I love and she things Im awesome too. I work for people that want to give me as much as I can handle and I can constantly handle more. I drink damn good coffee. I live with my best friends and Sigur Ros and Hillsong have released enough material to keep me from listening to the garbage on the radio.

You see when you take a second. Look at yourself from the top of your head instead of from within it… You can really see God. I can see the place he has put me in and I can see the path that I walked. I look at the pitfalls mainly but if I look at the triumphs, I see greatness. I was noone and nothing and now I get to have the people that are in my life. Elizabeth, David, Mary, Ike, Cayting, Dozier, Katelyn, Elliot, Shane, Lauren, Will, Jennifer, Buren, Barbara, Knox, Sam, Dusty, Chris, Hunt, Amanda, Caleb, Casey, Josh, Mike and everyone else are my reward when I thought I wanted money. My relationships are my currency. Hopefully when I die people dont talk about coffee. Would that be very worth while?

When I die I want people to talk about other people because thats how I want to live my life. I want to be transparent enough to see God through me via my relationships. If that isn’t the case then Ive just screwed everything up. I don’t want to screw everything up.

Its almost too quiet.

Ready for an explosion. I feel like I am tensing up. Just before one car slams into another one. That split second of terror and instinct culminate into a reflex that is absolutely opposite to correct. Its easy to hurt yourself further if you let instinct take over and reflex control actions.

Its very still now… right before the storm of Honduras. Im going at the end of the month you know. A real life third world country with real life poverty.

Its very still now because im holding on to how poor I think I am. I say that typing on my macbook pro ($2,200 value) while listening to my Koss Ear buds ($50.00 value), checking my Iphone for need tweets ($200.00 value) and drinking a stunning cup of Honduras San Viciente ($3.00 value) that was made on a $6,000 coffee brewer.

If I am not poor what am I. If I am not legitimately on the brink of homelessness then I must be something and that something is… self absorbed and I am about to hit that reality head on. Im a little scared of not being poor in my mind anymore. Will that lead me to complacency? I hope not because I sure as hell can’t raise a family this way. There is no marriage or back deck… no mountain vacation. I want a damn boat! Funny though… I don’t want God as bad as I want any of those things, I don’t act like it or dwell on it at least. I kind of know he will always be there. Ready to bring me back. So I am self absorbed and I’ll be feeling very guilty about that come Oct 21st when I meet real need and shake his hand, hug his children and watch his wife smile. Will I cry or break down?… doubtful. Will it hurt? I am sure of it. Im not ready for that at all.