Revelation for the Coming Year

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.
--Isaiah 43:19

I haven't watched Pastor Rod Parsley for a long time, but I woke up especially early this morning. He gave this word: Isaiah 43:19. I went to my page in the Bible right away, because the scripture was just what I wanted to hear. After all, I have been consistently praying for His wisdom and strength. When I turned to the page in my Bible, there it was: underlined is the exact scripture, none preceding and none after it.

This brings me back to God's love and faithfulness. He reveals to us what our hearts desire, if we listen carefully and if we trust Him completely. He wants only the best for us!

I must have shut my ears for a long time until this morning when I got His answer to my prayers through Rod Parsley. I keep forgetting that my timing and His timing aren't usually on the same page. I keep forgetting that His ways, though mysterious, are higher than mine. In other words, all I keep thinking is how reliable my own strength and my own wisdom. It's really twisted thinking on my part: To actually ask and pray for wisdom and then rely upon my own strength and smarts to arrive at the answer. It's so unadulteratedly human, if anything.

So there, I hang onto this truth. He is certainly doing a new thing these days! As for me, I'm holding onto His promises which had already been revealed in His Word. Like He said, "It is written."

Choose to choose

Everyday we are bombarded with temptations that look like enhancements or some better way or someone better. It seems that, as we grow in faith, we become more in tune with detecting the difference between a disquised temptation and a real blessing.

I know this much: I am learning, everyday, how to say no to small, confusing temptations.

It is still a bit startling whenever I realize that I can actually turn down a good, old confusing, irritatingly delicious temptation. It sometimes comes as a seemingly minor or trivial desire to buy something that is not even a need, but more like an unnecessary want; or to invite and ignite the lurking horns of office gossip and the luring ways of ignorant tolerance or its ally - the calculating, purposeful, know-it-all arrogance.

Really, His Wisdom embraces even in the littlest of details. The Holy Spirit nudges: It's not for you, my dear! Because you are His and not of this world...

Always, at the peak of it, one temptation, I ask: Who do I choose to be now, to become what I choose to be tomorrow and the next day after and the next day after? Who am I in Him, when all is said and done?

The fullness of His blessing

It might sound like an echoing of one favorite preacher's most recent quote but, like Jerry Savelle, I do want to have the fullness of God's blessing. My small mind doesn't naturally dwell on what "fullness" means. I assume I already know what full is, as opposed to what is not full. But this is probably where the actual smallness comes into play: we assume that we know what God has in store for us; we believe that we, in our boxed concept of human intelligence, know the boundaries that fullness satisfies.

The amazing revelation is that, apart from supernatural understanding, we can have the whole thing, the beyond-every-imagination kind of God's fullness. When we come to know and believe that He is who He says He is and that His Word is alive and real and as faithful as He is, then we will know that the fullness of His blessing is already here even before our mind can conjure its depth and meaning.

When I experience His light in the same arena as that of some of our own time's honorable men and women of God, I thank Him for such a wonderful blessing and for the chance to know more about Him. Even a brief glimpse of His blessing stirs up faith in my heart. It is a spiritual privilege to know Him in the same light as our precious leaders, to see the magnitude of His love for us, to believe that His purpose is to abundantly bless us beyond any measure.

I sometimes think: Why is it that He leaves it up to us to lean on faith so strong, to not even doubt that everyday brings immeasurable, limitless, surpassing blessings? It is up to us to receive, and not doubt. When His Handiwork in our faithful hearts becomes the wide-open door to His blessings' full manifestation, His Glory shines...

Turning another digit towards a long life

We all have birthdays every year, unless you're a leap year celebrant; which means that another year older takes a lot longer than the usual. My turning another digit happened just recently. I distinctly heard the drop of another number, much like New York's countdown annual ball drop; another move of the hour hand to declare the end of another history or another beginning; another statement: I am not my old age anymore. As a matter of fact, I represent another digit, a new and higher number.

And in fact, I refuse to use the word "old" anymore. What is "old" anyway? Your pair of old sneakers might be old to you, but looking good to me - well-cared for, had a lot of miles to it, developed some character, a vintage. So when I wake up from now on, I decide not to be old, but to move healthy, blood-pumping digits toward a long life: to be well-cared for, gain more mileage, insurrect character into anything lackluster, be all the vintage I can be!

Irreplaceable

It's funny how we all have those little quirks and ways about us that become like our own seal or brand; this same brand that sets us apart from anyone else. I wonder sometimes if, from the time I was in my mom's belly, these same quirks had already started to grow to become a permanent part of my dna.

I already knew that God created my inmost being and that He knitted me together in my mother's womb. What fascinated me was that He made me so different from my own family, from my own friends, even from strangers that there is not one person in this world that could be identified as my own self. Just me. And then this singular person developed quirks and nuances that added more layers and fabric to my being, to say the least.

I am enamored and awed and completely out of words.

beyond anything imaginable

Last Sunday at church, the preacher spoke and brought a tug of joy right at my heart. He said his remarkable success in everything that he has done and is doing can only be because of God's grace. Through his recital of all his accomplishments, he never hinted at anything but gratitude towards a God that created him and breathed such an adventurous life in him that everyone noticed. There was not a chord of pride in his speech and litany of his life's events. It was like God just led him to the podium and dictated all that He had gifted him: "My boy, get up and say all those things..."

The preacher spoke with burning steel and passion that clearly set him apart for His purposes:

Ephesians 3:20 (New King James Version)

20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us...


A living proof that God is able to do above and beyond anything that we can ever ask or think or imagine, Barry C. Black shared about the power that works in him, a faithful instrument of Almighty God. Barry C. Black is the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate. He was elected to this position on June 27, 2003, becoming the first African-American, the first Seventh-day Adventist, and the first military chaplain to hold the office of chaplain to the United States Senate. He previously served for over 27 years as a chaplain in the United States Navy, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral and ending his career as the Chief of Navy Chaplains. He officially retired from the Navy on August 15, 2003.

There is a power that works in us, according to the preacher. He stated simply, that the secret to the power is unlocked by staying humble and letting God be who God is in us. He also went on to say that we should take our problems to Jesus. It's the kind of faith that says Jesus can handle this. Lastly, he said that we ought to have a robust faith; the kind of faith that overflows from our love for God. We ought to know Him, read His love letter which is the Bible and trust in Him completely.

As I listened intently and took to heart what the preacher said, I asked myself: When have I completely and totally trusted Him? When did I honestly believe that He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think?

Admittedly, I am still a babe; not in worldly terms, but in spiritual matters.

I just went down the road back and reminisced my outdated jaunts and other dead, old days when I was not even born again. Too often I lived days and nights when I thought like the world thought, acted like the world acted, spoke like the world spoke and, obviously, carried a heart like the world did.

I did not have any gumption to give to Jesus what, ultimately, is His: My life. I did not believe enough in His being able, in His exceedingly abundantly all, in His love for me.

I repent. I give to Him what is His. I believe.

I thank You now for everything and anything that is beyond my imagination!

Note: On another event: Featured guest in the tv show, The Evidence, the host asked Barry C. Black when he first gave his life to Jesus. He said that he now daily give his life to Jesus. What a revelation to me that I could actually do the same thing!

The Birth of King's Rose

There was this day when I just thought: What will I do when I don't do what I do now? Will I write to get paid? Or will I do portraits and legal stuff with my hands?

Then I discovered the joy of making personalized greeting cards. And I labeled it at the back of the card, just like Hallmark cards do them, "King's Rose" and then drew a mini-rose just for effect.

With my bare hands I started cropping old cards, photos, even used an old nail polish over the photo of my diva dog, a.k.a. Bootchick, and then assembled them in a way that betrayed mental gravity. I even thought that my old, missing sequined, pieces of cheap, costume jewelry now serve some sort of purpose: they could spend some unknown duration glued to cardstock paper, prettied up and perfectly in place, or not, and yet learn to live with newfound meaning. Oh, and my dusty-old, silly elementary exercises I called "poetry traffic whilst rush hour" will have an exit ramp, finally. Nevertheless, some kind of purpose incarnates.

But then who's to know? So unless I give them a reason to be, then nothing is as nothing does.

Ergo, the avenue of artistic possibilities could be limitless, in a pseudo-simplistic sort of way. Prolific, possibly or accidentally, but just ordinarily extraordinary in nature. No pressure. Just being collaged or pasted or taped or stapled in a way that makes a remarkably unique presence to a particular heart. May I say it could very well be very organic in a sense and deeply orgasmic in another esoteric level of some kind?

But then again, who's to know unless we do what needs to be done? And give what must be given, in order for another to receive the pleasure of having one's own personalized card.

It's free anyway. But it's best given, best received, best done!


Special Note: Incoherence displayed here has nothing to do with the joy of birthing King's Rose. It's a process. Deal with it. So did I. Still do.