Loading a pistol with paint and firing at the canvas....................

“Loading a pistol with paint and firing at the canvas....” That was a critique of men with the names of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Dega. It was not complimentary. Impressionism wasn't what the Salon of Paris was looking for... Malcom Gladwell writes brilliantly concerning what these men did in reaction to their rejection.

I laughed as I looked at the titles upon my bed and thought about the audio book I had been playing. Yet the ideas from all these writers and thinkers swirled within my head...

Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants, right alongside Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God with diary pages from the works of Frank Laubach, and The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser.

Couple all of that with two weeks of laying in bed in pain alongside many a season of change, turbulence and transition.

The words I have been able to write upon paper:

Rest

Wait

Trust

Presence

Provision

Solitude

Restoration

(I've written other words as well these are the most appropriate to share.. insert smiley face.)

People I have thought about:

Adam and Eve

Enoch

Obed Edom

Moses

Elijah

Noah

The men and women of Acts

Questions I have asked:

What does it look like to live a life embedded in His presence?

What does that look like? And what does it mean to trust in God's presence?

How seriously do we take the need of the presence of God?

Realities I have thought about:

He uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise

There was nothing in Him that we would be drawn to Him

He was a man of sorrows, rejected and we did not esteem Him...

I have pitted the thoughts of Gladwell with the mystics of old and my own heart's hungers.

I have thought about how God whittled down Gideon's army until it was only 300 hundred men.

What would we say to a pastor who had a congregation of 22,000 who then lost more than half and was down to 10,000 and then down to 300?

Most likely the celebrity pastors of the day would be fired by their boards. Assumed to have lost the “annointing” upon their lives. Or whatever say you.

Is the man with 22,000 more successful... Read from Judges and you decide...

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.’ Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead.’” So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained.
Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, “I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.” So the 300 men took the people’s provisions and their trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.

It is read time and time again in scriptures.. Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord...

In his preface, Ronald Rolheiser writes in The Holy Longing, “And many good, sincere persons struggle today with their faith and with their churches. Lots of things contribute to this: the pluralism of an age which is rich in everything, except clarity; the individualism of a culture which makes family and community life difficult at every level; an anti-church sentiment within both popular culture and the intellectual world; an ever growing antagonism between those who see religion in terms of private prayer and piety and those who see it as the quest for justice; and a SEEMING TIREDNESS RIGHT WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES THEMSELVES.”

This hodge podge of writing today is a swirling of thoughts...

"Tiredness," there is down right exhaustion.  A flurry of activity as I have likened more unto the prophets of baal then the works of God.. All to be bigger.. better... more powerful... and yet lacking real power....  10,000 teachers not many mothers and fathers...  Who will the people say today of that they are not like our scribes/our teachers.. Where is the one who speaks with authority born forth from Heaven? Who is willing to wait upon Him to have strength renewed? Or just simply wait upon Him and experience Him and then not blast it upon Facebook but cherish it as the intimate moments it was?

But the thought and the reality of the need to be a people of His presence and that only by waiting upon Him and separating ourselves out (as God separated out Gideon's army) from the methodologies of modern mechanics of ministry will we find a people rested within the arms of the Lord willing for the victories to all be His. When we will lean on Him instead of the wisdom of men and this age, we will see as we were made to see.....