A New Beginning

On September 7, 2017 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings2 Comments

I usually come here with a message I want to share but today I just really wanted to come here and write without knowing what! There is an exhilaration in living life in the unknown and so a part of adding joy to my day is doing this!

I just want to write that the purpose of life is so much more than what we produce! Did you know you can have a perfectly wonderful day apart from being productive?? That the moment we leave this earth, all of our to do lists cease and everything we were intending to do never gets done and the earth still spins without us?? There are thousands of people around the world with no job or no career that wake up and exist, some with joy even, and are their lives not still full of value?!?

I would speculate that the purpose of our lives is to experience the exchange of love, either between us and people, or us and God, and hopefully both. And money, whether it is elusive or we have plenty, only fits into this equation of purpose when used as a tool to experience this LOVE?

We are even good at turning ministry into a work and can lose joy trying to make as many people possible experience this exchange of love! God’s calling never asked you to set aside your piece of experiencing heaven on earth for the sake of others; we share what we walk in, whether a worker mentality or a son or daughter of God mentality.

Did you know the fastest way to your eternal productivity is to rest in God’s orchestration and providence in your life and be faithful to the people he’s already placed around you in life?!? Did you know we are not supposed to pour out our soul for the sake of trying to make something happen that God can do so easily on his own and in his own timing?!?

There is grace and joy when heaven is behind the work of your hands, even when enduring hard or difficult obstacles, where there is nothing else you would rather be doing with your time and energy. Did you know that rest IS powerful? Did you know that trust IS productive?

No matter how hard Moses tried in the natural he could have NEVER liberated hundreds of thousands of his people from the Egyptian empire, but when God wanted it to happen, Moses participated but God did all the work? When we trust God for him to accomplish his ideas through us, it always is supernatural beyond our own abilities? Deliverance wasn’t even in Moses’ mind!

God’s ideas are the best for us to partner with and sometimes it requires a lack of our own understanding of the how or the why or the timing. This is great! You are not doing anything wrong, you are trusting for something bigger than your ability to orchestrate the outcome.

Trust and rest in God’s impossible! May you truly experience the awe of his manifest glory and presence and orchestration in your life. Peace and blessings!

Praise

On June 7, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

This is heaven’s secret weapon on earth, and it is my secret weapon. Even though I have it tattooed on my arm, I didn’t realize it until later. I’m not talking about a religious stream of words engulfing eternity aimed at a distant enthroned God either. I’m also not talking about dancing in white dresses in the front of a church with prophetically painted flags.

Heaven is whimsical and mysterious, but also entirely practical. What is the good of any of those above forms if when you walk out relationship you are critical of the people you live or work with, if you berate yourself, or are pessimistically ‘real’ when it comes to life.

Whatever you do unto other people, you do unto God; basic heaven 101 stuff right there. Well, have you praised him lately?… in other people? One of the windows of life I entirely love and adore is really seeing an experience or event or circumstance in another person’s life and getting to celebrate it with them, even if they haven’t begun to celebrate it themselves yet. I have concluded that this is praise.

I could dance on top of mountains and high buildings, but I love cheering someone on as they take their first step at the bottom of the mountain; often it’s the hardest one. I love laughing in the face of other people’s self doubt when they surprise themselves about what they’re capable of. I love celebrating who people are, even when they’re forgotten to see their divine shine. It really is there all the time. This is my joy in life and it will not be taken from me.

Praise is the water that freedom and life grows in. And I’m not talking about lying to people either. Or puffing them up. The glorious part about praise is that it’s all true. Love never sets honesty aside, they’re completely compatible. Do you know you will be surrounded by praise in heaven? Not just of God, but all of culture will celebrate and not condemn? No one will remember or bring up the bad stuff, ever, to you again. No one will accuse your heart of evil, but your goodness will be known to yourself and others, just as He is good? Rest in knowing he has no end in celebrating with you, about you, and is excited about what’s to come.

…and I see this. Not even that you would make a perfect piece of pottery one day, but that you have already begun a beautiful journey of process that involved risk of failure and therefore required courage.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

Creativity

On February 28, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom Concepts, PaintingLeave a comment

Oh Creativity. Creativity is powerful. It transcends the mind and enters the soul. It moves the heart and causes us to feel winds of life. Creativity enters our senses, whether through interior design, music, cooking, art, or dance, and so much more. It’s the theater that causes us to cry and the fashion that leads industries. Creativity is the solution to the worlds problems and the builder of bridges that speak across the barriers of language.

Heaven is the origin of ideas. Heaven is the place color comes from. It’s the revealer of the unseen and the origin of society’s progress. The words that form the books that causes revolutions are the fruit of creativity and original ideas. Liberty is expressed through creativity. Life is witnessed through expression. Our participation with creativity reminds us we too are the outlets of divine beauty in addition to our counterparts in nature.

Songs awake emotion buried deep beneath life’s experiences. Have you drank from the river of creativity. Is the taste fresh in your memory? There lies a thin veil between endless original movement and sound and our present reality. Everything is accessible. Anything is possible. Do not belittle or underestimate your innate ability to create.

My admonishment is to discover how creativity lives through you. It may be in computer coding, wood craftsmanship, the making of the perfect coffee drink, how you express financial spending trends, how you cause your loved ones to experience your love, the painting of your own nails, or even the style of your walk.

Life is made alive, life is made fun, through creativity. Creativity is a muscle that grows stronger the more you use it. Unique and new expression causes the sparkle to return to our eyes and causes childlike wonder in our spirits. Elementary education may unrecognize and underdevelop the power of creativity in young people but that is in part because its hard to quantify and we’re taught it doesn’t make as much money as practical skills like math and science, although both of those fields can be saturated with creativity as well.

In actuality creativity sells like Gold in any culture. Fashion, film, television, writing, singing, performance, advertising, theater, design, art, musical skill, fine dining, and the like, the best in all of these fields are priceless in their hiring and sought out all over the world. Creatives shape the reality everyone experiences every day, including the look of your home, the device your reading this on, the clothes your currently wearing, down to the packing of the food you have in your fridge.

I cannot communicate the importance creativity plays in God’s kingdom and the synergy heaven shares with life expressed through humanity. Our expression, humanity’s expression, is like the flower in bloom of our species. It appears not to have a necessity just as a flower but creativity is the beauty and aroma of our generation.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

Gift Giver

On January 7, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Spreading Kingdom Cheer For All To Hear

I wanted to lighten the mood and communicate some truth through this next piece entitled Santa. There are some really healthy concepts we can take from the fairy tale relationship society has with Santa that would be correctly applied to God. If this offends you, you should probably stop reading this and do something else that makes you happy. 🙂

Here we go. For some reason Santa always is depicted as the nice guy, he’s in a good mood! God, however, he’s the scary guy. He’s the mean, tight-fisted, we gotta perform for him to get us to love him guy. Santa on the other hand loves us all unconditionally. He doesn’t put anyone on the naughty list because he wants to, its just what he’s gotta do and that’s on you. God on the other hand sometimes get depeicted as delighting throwing people in a hell they deserve. That that kind of justice makes him happy inside. Mr. Cruel. 😦

Joy, abundance, generosity, celebration, warmth, comfort, safety, color, wonder, awe, love, and all those other things so many people associate with the idea of Santa and Christmas all come from God, that king born in a manger. He’s the guy that’s not a stubborn, boring, unfriendly stoic savior. He nice. And not only that, he’s funny. He’s understanding and patient. He likes you and enjoys your company. He delights in your creation and is full of wonder of the person you are becoming. He looks forward to time with you and believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

Stickler

When it comes to giving Santa’s reputation far exceeds Gods. When it comes to getting something from God, I picture intercession, fasting, declaration, and sacrifice. When I picture getting something from Santa, all you have do is tell him and sometimes he just knows because he’s that good and nice! And he always wants to know and give us what we desire just because he’s that awesome!

In my dreams I sometimes have Christmas dreams. I know God is revealing himself to me as the generous giver of glorious, wonderful gifts. He’s doesn’t mind the correlation when it raising our expectations of receiving good things from him. He loves giving good gifts to each of us. It brings him delight.

People always depict Santa as being for us! He’s on our side, but God, sometimes he likes us, sometimes he likes us less, or at least that’s what people believe! I’m sorry to say this but Santa didn’t die for you. He didn’t need to because Christ already did. If Santa died for you, he would have died, but you would still have needed an incarnate savior. Santa doesn’t possess within his endless resources the gifts we truly need in this life.

We never question where Santa gets his funding or what his real motives are for all of this generosity. We never wonder if he has enough resources or enough gifts that pertain to our specific desire. Availability is never questioned.

What’s In His Bag?

For some reason we put limits on gifts from God especially when it pertains to ourselves. God can’t possibly have enough joy for each of us, can he? I don’t really deserve that much joy? There obviously isn’t enough peace for my enemies and me, is there? I can’t possibly have peace and health today if I had it yesterday, right, I mean, that’s just not the way God works right? What does God want from me, what is he trying to do, is he just going to take this thing that I like away? We never just reason that God’s good to us because he’s good.

I’m not talking about God giving us plastic junk (not that he can’t communicate love to us through those things). I’m talking about our lives being filled with abundance of his goodness and our hearts overflowing with heaven’s wonders. Goodness no price tag can buy and the stuff rich men long for, sometimes found in abundance among the poor.

I love the Christmas season. It is a tiny prelude to the abundance of heaven’s eternal warmth, goodness, love, forgiveness, togetherness, sparkle-y-ness and generosity. Merry Eternal Christ-season.