¿Dónde Está Miguel?

Hey guys, sorry its been so long since I've last posted!  To make up for it, I'll make sure this one's a doozy.  Anyway, if you have been in any sort of contact with me within the past two years, you've probably heard of Evoke Ministries and the awesome work that they do.  If not, check my links page!    (I know... Who has a links page anymore?)

Now to the meat and potatoes:

Evoke is heading back to Colombia; the city of Armenia to be exact!  This will be their third trip over there and needless to say the past two trips have seen amazing results.  For instance:  Trip One saw over 800 people come to Christ in just four days, six churches were planted and 90 discipleship groups were formed.  While Trip Two involved vision casting for Festival Vida, a 3 day outreach event aimed at empowering the creative community among Christians in the area.  The Spirit of God is at work in Colombia!! 

On this coming trip, Festival Vida will come to fruition!  An entire week will be devoted to pouring into the city of Armenia.  Our team will be sharing Jesus in both word and deed as well as empowering the city itself with suicide prevention, addiction recovery and sex trafficking awareness programs.  All of this, in hopes of sewing the seeds of a sustained walk with the Lord.  The week's events will then culminate with the city-wide Festival Vida in the town square.

With all that's being done in and through this environment, and with where I feel God has been leading me as of late, I find it almost a given that I should be going this time.  This will be my first experience with missional work abroad and I cannot wait to see what God has in store.  I'm ready to see lives changed, sickness recoil and streets once known for addiction, violence and perversion transformed to a wellspring of revival.  God willing, I will be an active participant in this revival and in turn experience a renewed sense of God's heart for His people.

Here is where I humbly ask of your participation.  The cost of this trip will be roughly 2500 US dollars per person.  Any donations are HUGELY appreciated and regardless of whether or not you donate anything, I do ask that you be praying for myself, the team and all of those we come in contact with during the trip.  This will be a refining experience, but far from an isolated one.  Investment over there will see returns all over the globe; for God's work will be carried in the hearts of all of those affected.  I thank you guys in advance.  Your generosity means more than either you and I will likely ever know!

If you'd would like to donate financially, you have two options: 

1.   Use the PayPal link on this peculiarly familiar looking page! (Pay no mind the less than enthused profile pic.)

2.   Write a personal check to Evoke Ministries and include my name in the memo and mail it to me the ol' fashion way!  (I can provide my address via email or Facebook [figure it unwise to post it on a public site]).


For those of you who would like to emotionally invest as well, don't worry.  I will be providing ample documentation of the entire trip via my camera and social media!

DREAM #5

Context:
I had this dream while I was visiting my best friend Kyle in Nashville.  Kyle has an amazing grasp on the joy and delight found in knowing the Lord, and the excitement that we believers have in anticipation of our Heavenly home; something I had a hard time grasping back then.  The night before I had this dream, I found myself sitting at a table in an international market enjoying Mangosteen juice and and a plate of unrecollected Asian cuisine (I think mung bean was involved.)  Around me was Kyle, and his eclectic group of friends he knew from school, none of which I really had met before that night.  As the night progressed, they would often talk of Heaven with this wild, childlike exuberance, a concept I found so foreign.  In fact, it kinda made me depressed.  So I successfully clammed up for the rest of the night, avoiding any real interaction with them, and just observed from what might as well have been 10,000ft.

That night, I expressed to Kyle how disconnected I felt from talks of Heavenly things.  We had an amazingly constructive conversation as we sat in his Jeep Wrangler in his parents driveway. 

The Dream:
This dream places me in some sort of ethereal location that is rather hard to describe.  It was a peaceful, natural environment; bright, sunny and heaven-like.  It had a self contained feeling, sort of like an island, and appeared to be surrounded by a dense whiteness.  Wherever it was, it felt like I belonged.  There was a good number of people there with me and all seemed to be celebrating and simply delighting in the Lord, this included myself; and in some way, it felt like the celebration was for me as well.    Though I didn't confidently recognize the faces of the people in the group, I knew that they were friends.  I do remember feeling some sort of presence from the Evoke Ministries group I had and have been involved with for quite some time. 

Anyway, running across the back of the undefined area was a chain-link fence with what looked like an African savanna sprawled out behind it.  Immediately on the savanna side of the fence was a large crowd of African men and women all carrying on with drums and singing in celebration as well. 

Soon, the group of people on my side of the fence began to join hands in a circle.  I think they were going to pray or something.  However, I was still off by myself still delighting in the Lord and worshiping him.  It was a very rich feeling of comfort and satisfaction that is hard to explain but easy to recognize when experienced.   The group tried to get me to come join in the prayer circle, but I felt like I just wanted to continue to sit in God's presence in the way I was.

Then a woman from Evoke Ministries, Susan, spoke up for me, telling the rest of the group.  "He's fine where he is, let him be!"

After some undefined amount of time, I came across an older man.  He had a gentleness about him and kind eyes.  His hair was white and he had a soft, warm smile.  He preceded to give me a hug that I can't even begin to describe.  As he enveloped me in his arms, he lifted me up off of the ground to a height that was impossibly higher than he was tall.  (12 feet off of the ground is what comes to mind.)  As he held me suspended there in this supernatural position, he began to whisper to me.  Though I don't remember or couldn't comprehend what he was saying, I knew that it was loving, kind and that it was true.

Suddenly, I saw from my vantage point up above, another old man come walking up.  He had a crotchety demeanor and a rather sour look on his face.  He began to blaspheme the man who held me aloft, telling me that the man didn't mean what he was say and that he was lying, but  I had none of what the second man was saying.  I told off the second man, saying, "No, you are the liar.  This man loves me and speaks the truth!"  (likely paraphrased). Then I woke up.

DREAM #4

Context:
Don't have much as far as context for this one.  I will say, that the viewpoint from which this dream is told is kinda hard to describe.  It begins as more of a first person point of view, from the eyes of a visitor to the town, but shifts towards third person once the little boy is introduced in the dream.

The Dream:
The dream begins with a nondescript narrator giving a preface, of sorts, to a dusty southern town set in what felt like the 1940s;  think houses with whitewashed, wood-panel exteriors, dirt streets and rocking chairs on front porches.  The narrator proceeds to take the audience on a door to door tour of the community.

As the tour progresses, one thing sticks out as consistent with every household.  Upon the mantel of each home's fireplace, displayed for all to see, is a collection of ornate and varied dolls.  Though the size of each array varies from home to home, a common thread ties each display together.  Most of the dolls are missing their legs.  Soon after, through some form of narration, it is revealed that pairs of doll legs are very hard to come by, and thus, are greatly valued by the denizens.  The legs act as a form of currency and the number of sets a person has determines their social status, in a way.  Many people spend their lives scouring for these legs.

We then come upon a house that is inhabited by a young black child of about 8 or 9 years old.  He, as most children, has fierce sense of adventure and play and feral light in his eyes.  The boy has his own band of dolls as well.  However, these dolls were anything but  currency in his eyes.  You see, under the boy's jurisdiction, the dolls were alive.  He could speak to them and they listened.  He played with them, not as objects for his manipulation, but as partners in his games;  contemporaries.  They would run in the streets, chasing a hoop with a stick.  He would lay in the dirt, hands on chin, and teach them things;  about life and about God.

Another peculiar thing about the boy's platoon was that most of his dolls had legs.  Now, there was one doll in particular that was still missing them.  He was a rather crotchety looking old man who seemed to always have a scowl adorning his features.  He would often be found sitting off to the side as the others played, and though no less valued by the boy, there was a noticeable disconnect from the rest of his peers.

Then one day, the boy, alight with joy and face to face with the doll within the walls of their quaint little domicile, unfolds his hand to reveal a freshly acquired set of legs.   Now, these legs are rather unexpected in appearance.   They are large, metal, and look as though they belong to that of a mechanized suit of armor; rather unwieldy for doll modeled after a human.  Regardless, the boy carefully outfits the old man with his brand new legs and he, after some effort, stands.  Though they take some getting used to, the man is soon able to move about with only minor rigidity.  They are now ready to show off the new additions to the rest of the dolls.  However, the reveal is met with stifled laughter, pointing and whispers of how awkward the new legs look on the old man's body.  The boy quickly and sharply rebukes the crowd and they repent.

The scene then jumps to the boy and his gang of dolls again playing in the dusty streets, this time with the old man as a full fledged participant.  The boy then calls the group over to gather around a mud puddle.  He then begins to build a city within the puddle.  Streets and skyscrapers of mud soon appear as the boy lectures the dolls in his typical loving and zealous manner.  The boy then swirls his index finger around in the mud, creating a little vortex that proceeds to spin about the mud city, consuming the newly formed buildings.  As he does this, the boy utters the only words I can make out from his sermon:  "You see, God is a hurricane."

DREAM #3

Context:
If I remember correctly, this one came during my freshman year of college.  A girl I had had feelings for at the time was in a rough place spiritually.  Our relationship hadn't always been the most well defined item in the past, and I sure wasn't taking any steps to do so in the present.  Instead, I liked being around her and felt like I could "fix" her, so I kept quiet and let things progress at their own volition.  Though this was about 5 or so years ago, I still have particularly strong feelings attached to this dream.  Not to the girl, but to the allegory of restoration at the end of the story. 

The Dream:
A girl and I were getting ready to go out for a bike ride amongst the buildings of an ambiguous city when I catch a news flash on the T.V.  The report precedes to tell of a man-like creature that is on the loose, posing a threat to unsuspecting citizens.  I apparently don't see it as too stern of a warning because the girl and I proceed to go on the bike ride.  Now, this bike ride really just involved the girl on the bike and me running alongside.  Not too far into the trip we come across this creature the news was referencing.  It had the basic humanoid shape, however, it stood almost twice as tall and had what appeared to be tree trunks for arms and legs.  This characteristic made it rather slow moving, so we were able to avoid it pretty easily at first.  However, as our journey progressed, we continually would run into situations where we would have to circumvent the creature until it got to a point where we were no longer really on a bike ride, but in hiding.  Eventually, we were cornered.  Seeing that flight was no longer an option, I chose to fight the creature.  I stood up to it and told the girl to get on the bike and flee.  Now, though this creature's creatures movements were slow, they had power behind them.  It wasn't long before one of it's cumbersome, bark-covered limbs sent me hurling across the asphalt.  Seeing this battle ending badly, I decided running would be the best option.  Luckily, the blow had sent me far enough from the creature to make my escape on foot possible again.  I ran for some time and felt I had put enough distance between us to start feeling a little bit more comfortable.  However, as I continued to run, I felt my limbs start to become more and more rigid.  It was if the joints were slowly calcifying and my muscles were tightening to the point of seizing.  In fact, they weren't just loosing functionality, they were changing all together!  Like a process of petrification, patches of my limbs were turning to wood; and the infection was slowly spreading!  As my run began to slow and my movements became less and less fluid, I cam across another T.V. report.  This one explained that investigators have found a cure for the epidemic that the tree-like creature has been causing.  The remedy lied in the person of a being they referred to as "The Eagle Man."  I had my solution.  I had to find this Eagle Man.  After some rather cloudy time span of searching, I saw what I could only identify as the Eagle Man driving by in a beat up old steel bodied, maroon and rust colored car.  Desperate, I followed him in the fasted hobble I could manage.  He pulled into a rather nondescript library; so I followed.  Inside, after some searching, I found a man in line at the checkout.  He was clad in rather ordinary clothing and was pretty unimpressive in build, but he had the mask of a white feathered eagle over his face.  This must be the Eagle Man!  So, I shifted over to him and gave him the deepest hug I could manage.  As we stood in the embrace, I heard myself whisper, "I don't know if you know this, but you are saving my life right now."  Immediately the infection left my body and my mobility was restored.   I then took a step back and looked at the underside of my forearm.  Sticking out from my veins was a small green shoot. I preceded to pull it out from under my skin and it disappeared.  Suddenly, in a cinematic sort of fashion, the camera pans to a row of book shelves where the girl from the beginning of the story and I are reading about this very story in a book from the shelf.

DREAM #2

Okay, this is a really quick one, but I still think it warrants mention.

Context:
This dream came after my initial commitment to start fighting my self-salvation rituals (see previous post for explanation).  Going was extremely tough and wrought with fear.  Most battles still ended with me blurting out a myriad of anxious, reactionary prayers to a God that I apparently, assumed by my actions, didn't think knew what I actually believed in my heart.  This would often find me in a vicious loop of, "that wasn't what I meant"'s  and, "this is what I mean"'s. 

So anyway, I have had many dreams in which my teeth are either loose or falling out.  Every time, my dream-self seems to be very concerned, even obsessed with this detail, to the point where it is usually the only thing I remember clearly about the dream upon waking.  This makes it rather difficult to retell the dreams in a narrative format.  So I'll just give a lil' synopsis:

The Dream:
One instance of a loose tooth dream I had involved myself frequently and constantly pulling my teeth out, only have a new one grow right back in where the previous was just dislodged.   I would be actively engaged in this process while going about doing other, ambiguous tasks in the dream.  I would then precede to place my teeth, one at a time, into cardboard boxes until I the boxes began to overtake the room I was in and, in turn, my space to move about got less and less.

I DREAMED A DREAM(S)...

Throughout the process of deciding to pick up the blogging thing again, this series has been the frontrunner of what I wanted to share once I was back.  In my past, I feel God has used a handful of dreams (five to be exact) to either reveal or bolster the reality and nature of His working in my life.  The reason these particular dreams stand out from many of the other wildly vivid dreams I tend to have, is the deep sense of allegory that I immediately felt upon waking and the ease of recollection of the detail involved.  I have found amazing comfort and encouragement through recounting these dreams, and now I feel compelled to share these dreams.  Hopefully they will bless you guys as well!

Basically, this is how I'm gonna lay this out:

• I'll give a little context of my state of mind/affairs leading up to the dream.  
• I'll recount the dream.*
• I'll leave most of the interpretation up to the reader because I feel God could use it to speak a very custom message to said reader, and I wouldn't want to discount it if my interpretation is different. 
• Each week I will post a the next dream in the same format.

* Due to the rather disjointed nature of dreams, some dialog and inconsequential details may be assumed in order to provide a cohesive narrative.

~ Feel free to contact me if you'd like to hear my interpretation of each dream!  I'd love to hear yours!

 That being said, I will go ahead and post the first dream!

---

Context:   
This is the first dream I had of this nature.  It was either the end of my junior year or beginning of my senior year in highschool.  At the time, I had just started to fight what has been labeled by doctors as OCD (specifically Scrupulosity).  You see, basically, whenever an irrational or blasphemous thought went through my mind (which was terribly frequent), my reaction would be to freak out and respond with hollow, ritualistic prayer.  I knew the Truth: that I am forgiven through Christ's death on the cross [John 3:16] and there was absolutely nothing I could do to outrun the love of God [Romans 8 38-39].  However, recognizing the Truth was often difficult in the anxious state that followed each obtrusive thought.  So, I would often succumb to reeling off prayers in order to quell the anxiety and "let God know" what I really meant, rather than trusting in His grace and omniscience.

The Dream:
I'm sitting at a large, rectangular wooden table with about ten or eleven other guests, each person recognizably unique but none particularly familiar.  The entire scene is cased in this black void, with no sense of place or direction. 

The dinner party progresses as expected.  The wait staff appearing and disappearing from the depth of the blackness as they bring various courses concealed by large, silver cloches.  Suddenly, I catch something out of the corner of my eye.  One of the waiters had slipped a vial of something from his jacket pocket and was proceeding to sprinkle it's contents on the dish he was carrying.  I look back to the table to see if anyone else had noticed but everyone else was deep in conversation.  The waiter then places the dish on the table and begins to divvy out portions to the guests.

As the party is readying to dig in, I shout. "Wait!  Don't eat! This food as been poisoned!"

Much to my chagrin, my words don't illicit even a hint of hesitation from the others.  They blissfully partake in the affected dish and continue socializing as normal.  I interrupt again, "Didn't you hear me?! One of the waiters has poisoned the food!"

Again, not even a head turn.  Now distraught, I look for the waiter responsible.  Soon enough, he appears from the void and I confront him.  "Why would you poison us like this?!"

As if expecting such a response, the waiter coolly smiles at me a says, "You all were poisoned to begin with, that vile I had was the antidote."

IT'S ABOUT TIME...

So...  It's been a while  (for real this time [inaugural post reference]).

Anyway, here is what I'm thinking.  Blogging has been an adventure of pride/humility for me; as my about page states, (with more eloquence [hopefully]).  Now, the main reasons I haven't been blogging for 2-ish years are time/motivation and lack there of.  Ironically, it is now in a stage of my life in which I can safely say I am busier than I have ever been that I have decided to start blogging again.  God and I have been talking, and I think this is gonna be a good thing.

The motive behind my resurgence is this:  I want people to share in the experience of the butt kicking revelations that God has been dropping on me and the radical change that they tend to instill.  You see, I feel I am doing a disservice to you all if I have this amazing conversation with God and then keep it to myself for fear of pride infiltrating the process and making it about me.  And though I can't say pride doesn't rear its head in things such as this,  I also can't let it have the final say in them.  So, hear I am, trying make this a remotely readable post while worrying too much about being witty and wondering who will actually read this besides Google crawlers.  

I appreciate any and all of you who read this and the future things I post here.  Please feel free to contact me (found on my personal site) if you'd like to discuss something further or if you feel I might be in the wrong on some of my viewpoints.  Really, I want conversation to happen!

Well, that's what I got for now.  Stay tuned for a series all about the crazy, allegorical dreams God's provided for me throughout my walk with Him!  They are amazingly interesting and vivid and odd if I do say so myself!