Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by

Embrace. Passion. Awakening.

    Embrace Him. Embrace Passion. Embrace His passion. Embrace my passion. My passion is His passion. His passion is His people, the world. Embrace passion. Passion. Passion of Him. Passion of Christ. Passion. Passion. His passion awakening. Awakening His Spirit. Embrace Spirit. Awakening His passion in me. Awakening. Passion. Embrace.

    So, if you remember my last blog-post, then well, this was my mind as it tried to wrap itself around the three words God gave me at Target. Very intense I might add. I came home and immediately went to the computer to look up embrace and passion: Embrace ~ noun: a close affectionate and protective acceptance; verb: take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one’s own. Passion ~ strong feeling or emotion.

    I, then, went to Biblegateway.com to search up embrace in the Scriptures and what stood out the most was Luke 15:20 (the prodigal son) where the father runs to his son, now come home, and ’embraces’ him. I was intrigued to say the least and so I delved deeper. I began a google quest and one of the top stories about passion (the article I’ll be adding at the bottom) spoke of ‘cleaving to God.’ I had never heard of this term before and Holy Spirit in me fired up in my veins, saying ‘look deeper, keep going, you’re about to be amazed!’

    Needless to say, I definitely begin to read the article and was blown away by what I read. So, I went to the definition of Cleave ~ verb: come or be in close contact with, stick or hold together and resist separation. My mind at this point was just being overwhelmed, but totally in a good way. The term cleave shows up in so many places in Scripture (KJV that I’ve found so far)… Romans 12:9, Isaiah 14:1 Jeremiah 13:11, Acts 11:23, Joshua 23:8, Joshua 22:5b, plus countless times in Deuteronomy, like 13:4 or 10:20. The passages in Deuteronomy all are close to 10:20, “You shall revere the Lord your God. You shall serve Him and cleave to Him.”

    The article goes in-depth on this very term and has other terms to refer to passion/cleave, such as ‘leap into the unkonwn’, ‘being staked to the ground’…or ones I’ve seen in other translations where cleave would be in KJV are ‘held fast’, ‘remain true’, ‘cling to’, ‘stick to’, ‘adhere’, among others. The author states that ‘to cleave is to love, yet this very love contains a sacred violence, a fight, a separating’….whoa, this is crazy! He even points out that the Hebrew cleave is more strong in both its passive acceptance of what cannot be changed, and its weirdly and inexplicably active way of meeting that, of staying with that, of wrestling that, and coming through that. This is where the sense of violence comes into cleaving (just look towards the relentless nature of warriors or husbands fighting for their wives) –as in the Biblical statement (Matthew 11:12) that ‘the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it be force.’ (Paul Bell that one’s for you). It punches through. Are you getting all this?? Wow!!
    
   Last night, however, as I lay in bed with Jonathan David Helser playing and just trying to sleep, God gave me these words to write, “God is a God of violence, a jealous God, but a God of love, of power, of Truth. It is these facts that He fights for us. The shepherd left the 99 sheep for the one lost sheep and you can be sure that as David (a shepherd) fought lion, bear, and any other beast who vied for his flock, that Christ, our Shepherd, fights every demon and every ploy and attack from satan on our behalf. He fights with the fierceness of a lion, the cunning of a wolf, the shrewdness of a tiger; indeed He cannot and will not stop until we are cleaved to Him and cleaved away from the enemy!! He longs for us soo much!”

 
    Basically, ‘our passion is cleaving to God and without cleaving, we cannot face and come through the wound of existence. It is an action, and it implies a sticking to it and sticking with it that is key to passion.’ I seriously was reading this article and God was just like, “Son, this is TOTALLY you and TOTALLY who I created you to be.”  

   ‘To cleave is to fight for something, and to fight for something is to be separated from it, yet refuse to allow that separation to become final.’ The author writes, ‘On this hunt to dig out God from where God is hidden in the depth of existence, we pass through water and we pass through fire; we enter the dark; we plunge down; we go in over our head; we are stretched to breaking point and beyond. We go into hell, losing all hope. We curse God and die: but we do not. We continue, even though we have lost anything and everything that could comfort us, secularly or religiously. We even let go guilt, blame, condemnation of self or world or God. “Cleave to God” encompasses all this. God loves our violence of quest, and makes it more so, makes it necessary if we are to continue without cashing in the chips. To stay in the game is impossible, as the stakes go up and our losses spiral out of control, but to cleave means being in the game to the end.’ ~I can keep reading this stuff and it still hits me square in the chest…

    ‘To cleave to God also means to trust God, as an unkown and hidden reality and truth, as a sought-for but not yet found mystery; to cleave to God means to have faith in, to rely on, and to depend on, this Great Mystery.’ Yes please! The Jewish cleave means, ‘go through this, be in it, weep, curse, cry out, let deep call to deep’: this is FAITH!

    ‘The person whose life is cleaving will seek and search, hunt and track, fight and wrestle and struggle, to dig up the heart of God from the place where it is hidden in the heart of each person and in the heart of the world. The person whose life is cleaving will find the heart of God, and by this, find their own heart and find the heart in all the world.’ In this same way, ‘God has, to an extent we do not understand, because we have not broken through to its reality, truth, wisdom, in the heart, already cleaved to us. God has pledged God’s troth, vowed and promised Godself, been loyal, faithful, true, to us, no matter what.’ Indeed, ‘We cleave to God, because before we were forged in the furnace of passion, He cleaved to us. Those who cleave will find the heart of God, their own heart, the heart of the world, because in cleaving to us, God is determined to find our heart and the heart of the world.’ You should read that a couple of times and let it sink in….

    ‘Cleaving is passion, because what it relies on, in its courage and vulnerability, is the not yet. This is why, in the end and at the deepest, there is no goal, no point, no justification, for cleaving. It resists all explanation, theological, psycological, and scientific: Cleaving cleaves in order to cleave. This is sufficient.’ Wow, did you just read that? Basically, the whole reason He is sufficient for us is boiled down to His cleaving to us and our cleaving to Him!

    Ok, your freaking out now aren’t you…’where is this cat going with all of this?’ Well, I know it is a lot, but I had to get the point across with what stood out to me the most without quoting the ENTIRE article (definite must read when you recuperate from reading this). Anyway, a couple more quotes I came across separate from the two articles:

  • Thomas Watson: “God takes away the world, that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.”
  • A response to Watson’s words about cleave: “A fierce and emotive word as it speaks volumes of chasing after God with no other goal in sight and in this we find safety and security, the will of God and full acknowledgment of His sovereignty and glory in our lives.”
  • A plaque from Nikki’s friends house she texted me: “Passion ~ a powerful force that cannot be stopped.”

 Wow! Wow. WOW!!!

    I’m not sure I’ve taken all this in, so you may have to come back a couple of times…anyways, the other article added to this blog had different words for ‘cleave’ or ‘cleaving’. Hebrew words transliterated…’Devakut’ means ‘cleaving’ and refers to communion with God; it derives from the Hebrew root ‘davak’ meaning to stick, to cling. And finally, what really struck me since a few nights prior to all this occurring I had asked Daddy for a new, spiritual name….this is what hit me on the second link added: “The Scriptures declare: yesh ohev davek me’ach – ‘there is a friend who sticks (davek) closer than a brother’ (Proverbs 18:24)” This line stood out to me and I re-read it over and over and God whispered, ‘Right there son, ‘Davek’, Cleaver of God, Cleaver to God!!’

    And so, my new spiritual name from God is Davek, Cleaver of God, Cleaver to God! It’s now on the left-part of my chest! In light of this, I declare that I will always cleave to God and will never waver from any fight brought before me, in Christ Jesus, AMEN!!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   *Finally, I come to you, the reader, to ask you to come before the King and cleave to Him…drop everything, all thoughts, all worries, all stress and struggles of everyday life, and bow before Him and ask Him to show you the best way to cling to Him, the best way to hold fast and remain true to Him…don’t use my words though, spend some time before Him, then remain silent for 10 or 15 minutes and LISTEN…after that time, just speak whatever comes to your heart, your mind, your vision, whatever it is He gives you to speak, then speak it to Him with sincerity and truth from the deepest depths of your being. He is NOT far from you! He is NOT turning His back on you and NEVER will. Those thoughts, those feelings are lies perpetuated by the lil’ sucka-mouth satan to keep you from hearing, feeling, CLEAVING to Papa!!!! I speak now into those lies, they are simply that, LIES…turn from them and do not listen to them. Daddy, thinks you are beautiful, special, and all around worth fighting for!!
 
   May the God of all creation, the King, Lord, Savior, our Daddy, bless you this day beyond your wildest dreams! Ask big, dream big! Nothing is too big for God! Let it sink in: HE LOVES YOU AND CLEAVES TO YOU RIGHT NOW!!! 😀
 
      Much love! Please stay tuned for what He shows me next and at some point I know I will have to write about my dragon, but not yet, not yet…..totally leaving a giant cliff-hanger for you! HA!! 😀
 
**Wow….so, I was going to write here that I needed a lot of funds still to be able to go on this journey; however, because I’ve been learning more about ‘Davek’ and such and cleaving ever more closely to Daddy, He totally showed up yesterday (Sept. 15th) and sent in a very LARGE check anonymously for me. It is still ridiculously crazy and swirling in my head that this occurred. I’m not quite there to being fully funded, but God will provide for sure. Plus, He laid it on my heart to raise some money separately to go to my parents so that they were not overwhelmed and burdened with loans and such, while I’m gone. If you have a desire to give towards this, then please e-mail me at [email protected] and we will work something out. Much LOVE!! Embrace HIM!!!