Belief in Something Bigger than Understanding

On September 10, 2014December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

I read and hear things being written or being preached but there seems to be vast areas of my life that have become normal to me that I just don’t hear articulated very much. Keep in mind I’m not sharing a comprehensive Christian outlook or in any way am I teaching something that is absolute, but I find myself speaking about fringe things that are sometimes common in riding the life of faith. I just share them to encourage anyone out there to keep being different, keep being abnormal, and keep being courageous enough to be how God created you to be.

This idea came up a couple days in a row and I have/had zero energy to defend or explain it. Let me introduce you to the idea through my paintings first then life later. So I paint. I paint at events, I paint at home, I like to do creative things and appreciate creativity. Often, understandably, people come up and ask me what a painting means. I have seen videos where people do art interpretation three different ways through three different observers and they pull worlds relating to their life experience and personal history from paintings. Even scripture; a sentence may say one thing, but it speaks differently to different people in different seasons. It’s alive; living through inspiration.

Life is more controllable and more comfortable when we interpret things, our reality, to mean one specific thing. It’s logical, it makes sense, and we have right answers. For some reason, years ago, God decided to slide me off the dance floor of right answers and ever since I have been swimming in a vague reality of the truth of love, three dimensionally swirling around every sort of reality and frankly, sometimes I don’t even remember which way is up. In this water I am still dancing but my dance partner doesn’t move just back and forth but now my dance partner–which is inspiration–moves in ways I didn’t know I could follow.

And so in regards to my art for instance. I paint what I see. That’s what I do. I don’t “do” art apart from inspiration. I’m not religious about that or anything, I just lack desire to create things I understand. So I buy a canvas as the home for something I’ve already seen in my head. And in order for productivity to be had, some would say I now have to interpret it and clarify it in order for it to speak. But inspiration speaks regardless of explanations. And so I will go through a whole creative process, of seeing, creating, and passing along, without ever understanding what I’m doing the whole time. It is to my benefit and the benefit of other humans beings around me if I trust inspiration and follow. He knows every heart and every circumstance and is logically far more effective.

Am I against understanding? Of course not, it is the spirit of God. Do I think there is power when we move outside of the borders of our understanding in response to Holy Spirit? Definitely. In my life this applies to more than just art. What about relationships, what about our jobs, what about responding to how God’s created you or something he’s called you to?

There are seasons of my life I don’t understand. I heard a call, responded, I was myself, and left not knowing what God was doing through that and still don’t. At times He’s even reiterated it through other people. “I’m doing more here than you know at the moment.” Okay… I guess I won’t reason away my “productivity” and move on to something else. I’ll just continue being me…here.

Success in this life is so vastly different from anything the world paints as success or even the Christian church sometimes. Success is a relationship. A relationship where you care for the other person’s opinions and feelings, you listen and get to know them, you walk the same direction together, you believe them, trust them, and grow through your relationship with that person, who is the messiah of your life.

I see people sometimes debating decisions between following what they feel like God is saying or what seems to make sense from their perspective. Whenever I hear someone say they chose what they felt like God was saying to them I want to leap and cheer and give hugs and high fives. It comes down to: do you trust him?

I was challenged by God once to worship him, probably more than once, but specifically this one time. I really carried that word. Yes it means sing songs with your spirit, yes that means spend time in adoration, that is worship, but for me it meant something more at the time. How did Christ worship? Did he lead masses of people in songs and singing to the father? Did he try to gather everyone together to petition the father concerning the Roman government and social injustices?

His worship in my eyes was his laid down life; his obedience, his surrender, his yes to the father, regardless of its appearance of success or failure. He lived life in liberty and spoke the truth in order for others to participate with the freedom of life like he was. Christ, through obedience, in his vast freedom, dared to respond and fail according to the eyes of the world. God understands what he’s doing when he calls you into something.

He doesn’t misunderstand social security. He doesn’t misunderstand your expensive education. He doesn’t forget your history in that area of your life. He doesn’t not see your inadequacies or your frustrations…or your lack of understanding. But he didn’t wait for any of those things before going ahead and communicating with your heart anyway. He knows all those things and understands them completely and still believes in you, and his ways that often offend others senses of normalcy and propriety.

There’s a whole unseen spiritual reality that you are already fully blessed in. There’s a liberty in everyone’s life that’s been paid for. There’s belief in something bigger than understanding. And there’s risk to be had, and fear to laugh in the face of, regardless of having anything to show for our sowing, our response, our journey of love, or our choices.

And…I’m not waiting for understanding to come. I get to continue to enjoy the ride, I get to continue to go, to listen, to speak, to create, to express, to pray, to rest, to enjoy and he is perfectly able to lead me, shepherd me, teach me, and guide me. He’s always with me whether or not I understand. Like a kid in the backseat not aware of a lot of the dynamics that go on the world of adults, I will enjoy the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and leave the driving to someone who created the car, knows the way, and has invited me to come along for the ride.

Our Next Step

On August 23, 2014May 23, 2015 By happyreignIn Heather

Hey everybody! Joel and I have been given an open door to the Middle East. We have been listening and waiting on God and are excited about the opportunity of unconditionally loving on the people God puts in front of us in Jordan! There is a church on the ground whose activities include serving and ministering to Syrian refugees. We’ve had a growing heart for the Muslim world since our arrival on Malta earlier this spring. Jordan has a long standing reputation of peace and stability that provides a golden opportunity to communicate and participate God’s love there.

Due to Joel’s visa situation here on Malta, we will be departing for this new region mid September. We have been so grateful for our time on Malta and the gift we’ve been given here. We have learned and grown, and have met so many amazing people along the way. The adventure continues and both of us are looking forward to discovering life and God together every day however He has planned.

Thank you for having come with us to Malta. So many of you have communicated support, prayers, and encouragement. The invitation is extended again. Come with us to Jordan. Come along in prayer, partnership, encouragement, and discovery. The love we feel from our long-distant community is real and important. Thank you for sharing your lives with us as well. You are loved!

Any support you feel inspired to partner with us through can be received at this link here. God Bless!

With Gladness,

Joel and Heather Quinones

The Freedom of Disappointment

On August 18, 2014December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings

In case you are in an emotional experience of being hard on yourself or not seeing a way out of your own lack of excellent performance in your current circumstances, this blog is for you. Unfortunately perfectionism and performance based identity pervade the church. It’s unfortunateness is that it keeps individuals from experiencing heaven in just their living breathing daily life. It’s common enough, or a safe enough problem to have because it’s not against the law, it can get you ahead in approval seeking ambition or the inner disappointment you carry inside of yourself doesn’t interrupt daily living too much.

In Christ we are no longer under the law; he fulfilled the spirit of the law, and therefore it’s requirements completely. The law works itself out in some sneaky ways. Responsibility and expectations are some common forms of control in relationships, even in the relationship we hold with ourselves. You view yourself as the way you should be, or how you should act, or what you should be getting done. Even when achieving small goals or completing tasks or being helpful, we can still carry the feeling of failure if any of those things were less than, later than, or not quite up to our own expectations. Cue disappointment.

This is a wonderful way to miss the joy of existence. Without knowing it, we may embark on a journey, a project, or a relationship with preconceived expectations in our mind of how that experience or interaction should or would play out. Things may even start off smashing and go according to plan at first. It shouldn’t surprise us anymore but then bumps come in the road, at least bumps according to our expectations. And then what do we do?

How do you crawl out of a pit of the feeling of other people’s disappointment with you? How do you escape from the feeling of your own disappointment with yourself? Couldn’t I have handled situations differently? Couldn’t I have made different choices and avoided the circumstances I see around me? Can’t I manipulate and control things now and get things back to the way I had wanted them, the way I always saw them? Can’t I fix things and get them unbroken? Then I wouldn’t have to feel this way. Then I wouldn’t have to be this way.

Expectations over our own lives, and expectations other carry over us–whether intentionally or not–only carry with them the power to accuse. When expectations are the foundations of relationship they are the fuel for guilt, shame, and condemnation. Cue performance and perfectionism. If you continue to hold onto those images of unmet expectation over your own life as a source of fuel for your own judgment of your value now, you will never experience the heaven that was purchased for you by Christ, that is meant to be a free gift for your fullness of being alive right now.

Even in subtle forms or not so subtle forms we tell ourselves that those expectations came from God; they are what God originally designed or gave us vision for in the past, or these expectations come by what I obviously should be doing by looking around at others (not recommended). All of these leave a nice big hole in our heart not filled by Christ, but by our own accusations of performance-based failure.

God died to deliver you from the prison and cage of living a life of obligation, requirements, musts, duties, and have to’s. His relationship with you has never been based on your performance. Sometimes the reminder feels like a slap in the face but its the glorious good news: you cannot earn your right standing with God. Your own assessment of yourself through your own eyes or the eyes of others will never measure up to any humanistic ruler of behaviors and choices–religious or unreligious–whatever that means.

You are not a disappointment to God. Who you are, right now, is not a disappointment. God knows this but do you? In this cycle of performance we sit upon our own assessments of our lives compared to perceived expectations and continually come out lacking. If god has given us a directive and we didn’t listen or failed, then we can participate in relationship and tell him that and experience forgiveness through Christ. We must remove ourselves from our high seats of self-judgment by LETTING GO (let it gooo, let it gooo) of the expectations we have created, that God is not holding on to, because until we do, we will continue to believe the familiar lie that our value or our worth is according to our own assessments. While often ours is not, his perspective is the perfection of Christ.

Anything less and we wake up in the morning to feelings of disappointment, we experience awesome things all-the-while sitting next our companion of disappointment, and then tomorrow–again, we will not have hope because now our expectation (of God or of ourselves) is to be a disappointment (to others or to ourselves). To the degree that you resort to assessing your value or worth based on your own expectations of performance is the degree to which you haven’t experienced Christ in your identity. In order for love to cast out fear, even in your relationship with yourself in your own mind, it must not be based on your performance.

“God grant me the SERENITY to accept the things that I cannot change”…or don’t need to be and the wisdom to enjoy life.

Or what do we do when we’re really disappointed with God and holding it over him in our relationship with him? Is your relationship with him, your intimacy with him, based your own ideas of who he should be or should have been…to you? He’s okay with disappointing you because its not his obligation to meet your expectations of himself. He knows who he is. He is way better than any of us have given him credit for. It’s the unmet expectation over him you’re being invited to let go of so that you can experience once again the exchange of love with him without conditions on either one of you. This requires trust. Trust can be scary, but is a fruit of love. God disappointed everyone by dying on a cross at the age of 33 rather than delivering his people from the tyranny of Rome. He’s okay with being misunderstood and accused of failure. He’s got a different perspective and its far better than ours I assure you.

Your value, and God’s affections for you, are undiminashable. I want to encourage you today. In your rest, God can bring about all he has gloriously planned for you to experience in this life. Maybe even lay down the process of making expectations over yourself and discover the wonder and beauty of your life as he reveals its glory to you.

Our Next Step

On August 3, 2014August 3, 2014 By happyreignIn Heather, Joel2 Comments

Well Hello again friends. Joel and I have a bit of a new season ahead of us and we’re inviting you along for the adventure. It seems that Joel and I’s time in Malta has divinely drawn to a close as Joel’s visa extension is dated until September 16^thby which time we have to be off the island. Also coincidently, a Canadian couple on the island owns a very nice apartment near the Passmore’s residence that they are gifting for us to stay in while they travel internationally from this Tuesday until the day before our departure date, a window of forty days.

So catching everyone up to date, I have been on the island since February, with Joel following and our marriage taking place in April, and have since have had the privilege of being a part of the divine whirlwind of the Passmore household as they continue to walk out the adventures of their lives. With people arriving and leaving seemingly on a weekly to daily basis, the current visitors are facilitating 24/7 prayer on the island for about two weeks while a partnering organization has teams ministering in each country surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

So what’s next? That’s where we would love to invite your partnership with us! Starting this Tuesday Joel and I will be moving into that nearby apartment with plenty of time for us to continue to get to know one another and listen and hear God’s heart and vision for direction for the next step. Joel and I have had a tugging on our hearts towards involvement in North Africa or surrounding Muslim nations without specifically knowing how that may be walked out. Thank you for your prayers, support, vision and partnership with us during this time of transition for us Quinones’.

We are trusting in God’s diving leading, closing doors and opening ones, perfect timing and each step being led of him. We are so grateful for the time that we’ve had here and are overjoyed in how God’s gifted us with one another. We will always remember this season as the time of our lives in a safe and beautiful place. God bless and enjoy glorious risk!