I’m an Alien

All you can see is waist-high.  All you can see are the belly’s of tourists who get more than their fill.  All you’re allowed to take in is a skewed reality of what’s above because you only get to see it from your perspective.  It’s all you’ve ever known the last forty years.  It’s your reality and it’s more real than anybody else’s because their worlds haven’t been subjected to such frustration.  And despite your handicap, you always look up, knowing that the only hope you’ve got is the one direction you long to grow.  But you have to settle for what you are, for who you’ve now become because of dementia and hatred, and you drag yourself through life… trying to understand the greater picture while you choose to smile through it all.

His name is Leo and he has no legs. 

We went prayer-walking yesterday with the pure intention of calling extra arms and legs out of those storehouses in heaven and watching the Spirit of God grow them on people.  Call us crazy but it’s really what we did.  We spent the morning listening to a sermon about supernatural courage and then we outrageously claimed it for ourselves (Rev. 19.10) and hit the streets with the expectation of seeing some crazy stuff.  I mean, c’mon, we’re Christians, tried and true disciples of the Most High, and He has called us to live a supernatural life, something far from ordinary.  In fact, God spoke this to me yesterday:

Be strong and courageous;
step out and engage your faith by living the supernatural life I’ve called you to;
you’re far from normal, you’re not of this world and I didn’t put it in you to blend in, but to stand out.
Pull My Kingdom out of the dark places to overwhelm your surroundings with My marvelous Light.
There is no plan B, you’re it… My son, My prince, My child with whom I’m ridiculously proud.
Now go, and don’t think twice about it.
–Papa

After something like that, it’s pretty obvious what one is supposed to do: obey.

And obedience is always the hard part because it always demands so much of us.  It’s even more difficult to be obedient when it makes us look stupid or crazy or not of this world, but I think that’s something that the Church always forgets to teach.  We try our best to stand out and blend into society thinking that it’s the best thing for us.  Yes, I know God blended into humanity by becoming human (incarnation), but did He really blend in? 

Seriously answer that question for a second.

In Jesus’ time was there really ever a person who hadn’t heard of Jesus, who hadn’t heard of the miracles and supernatural signs and wonders that he performed?  No.  And if they didn’t hear about it, it’s because they were deaf and Jesus probably hadn’t gotten to them yet. 

One of the many things I’ve learned this year is that I’m no longer of this world.  When I was baptized into Christ Jesus, I died to the basic principles of this world (Col. 2.20), I died to my flesh (Rm. 6.2), I died to my earthly nature (Gal. 5.19-21; Eph. 4.22, 5.3-4; Col. 3.5-9) and I proclaimed DEATH over every single thing that held me back from becoming more like Him.  When I was raised to new life in Christ Jesus, I was raised into His likeness (Col. 3.10; Gal. 3.26).  Guess what?  That means I no longer look like this world.  And while I probably do because I still have skin on, I know I don’t look like this world in a spiritual sense, and honestly, I shouldn’t in a physical one either.

Jesus wasn’t crazy when He said that we wasn’t of this world.  I’m not of this world either.  Neither were his disciples.  One of my favorite places in Scripture is found in John 17 when Jesus is praying for his disciples.  I like to refer to this portion of Scripture as the disciple’s “graduation” day.  It’s like if after three years they finally “got it” and Jesus commends them in prayer saying, “… for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world… they are not of the world, even as I am not of it” (Jn. 17.14,15).  But it gets better, Jesus says, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (v. 18). 

Uh oh.

I know looking like Jesus and not being of this world (1 Peter 2.11) seems pretty cool and everything, but of course there’s going to be responsibility attached!  God’s not going to make YOU look good… He wants Him to look good!  So you have to get off your duffs and show people who you are, walk in the power of the Spirit (Rm. 8.5-6, 9-11, 14; Gal. 5.16, 25; 2 Tim. 1.7), and do some pretty out-of-this-world things!

Everywhere you go health and life should break out!  Not death and complacency (WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!)!

And yesterday, we embraced our identities as “foreigners” and did something pretty crazy.

We had been walking around for about four hours praying for people that God “lit up” for us and just trying to bring the Kingdom to the streets of Vietnam, but we hadn’t seen anything supernatural or too crazy yet.  We wanted to see arms and legs grow back!  We knew that these people existed in Vietnam because we’ve seen them so many times before, but yesterday it’s almost as if they were all in hiding so we got really adamant with God about “giving us a dude with no legs.”

And so we took off on a mission looking for a guy with no legs.  We walked amongst the sea of tourists looking for the one that Jesus wanted to do something to.  I saw a lot of people with legs but I wasn’t seeing anybody without any.  I mean, my focus was essentially on the ground, plagued with the horrifying thought that waist-level is all this guy ever sees, the world constantly looks down on him, and probably stares at him like he’s some freak.  Next thing we know, a guy goes blowing past us in a wheelchair… with legs… but they were shriveled up.  We tried stopping him but he was on a mission and wasn’t going to have anything to do with us.  I didn’t want to fight it and kept walking.

Then we saw him.

My heart shattered in disbelief that God actually delivered on our begging and gave us a legless man.  Part of me was genuinely stunned that I was then going to actually pray for this guy to grow his legs back.  How awesome?!  I mean, what normal person in their right mind is going to pray invisible legs out of thin air and into the existence that we stare at every day? 

Supernatural Christians do, of course.

And so Tara, Ali, and myself got on the ground with Leo and prayed for him.  It was awesome because this man was beaming the entire time.  Not so surprisingly, he had his legs blown off by an American mine during the Vietnam War.  America made this man legless and here was a trio of Americans who wanted to pray his legs back.  So we prayed.

And prayed.

And prayed.

No legs. 

But I tell you what… there was inexpressible joy.  You might be thinking that it was a loss but we also were able to pray for his friend, Lang, strengthening into her leg and foot, into a deformity she had since birth.  I didn’t think anything of it because Jesus had healed a blind man who had been that way since birth (Jn. 9).  We tried pulling her to her feet afterwards but she just didn’t believe that she could do it.  I swore to her that I would find her again while my squad’s here and we’ll pray for both her and Leo.

And you might be thinking, ha!  I knew his legs wouldn’t grow back.  That stuff doesn’t happen anymore, that’s why we have doctors and technology nowadays because the supernatural doesn’t exist.  And I won’t argue with the fact that I think God does use doctors to heal people…

…but I also think that people who say that stuff are cowards chalked full of all kinds of excuses.

Church – when are we going to really wake up and start trying to live the identities we’ve been given, to really stand out different from the world?  Because I’m sick and tired of complacency and the only way that I know how to abolish it is to start living the way that I’m now living… and with some pretty crazy radical people.  It’s worth looking stupid… I mean, Jesus looked pretty stupid from a worldly perspective… and he ended up saving the very thing that mocked him. 

Just think about being radical for once.

Thanks… bye.