Sunday, November 08, 2009
Trust Me
Saturday, November 07, 2009
My Precious Treasure
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tatami Gallery - 50
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Gallery notes:
October 2009
After the joy of the last gallery, I see in this gallery so far (it's only five pictures in as I write this) that the prophetic ache of His heart is returning in the pictures. I am rocked because He is my joy, my life, and I love worshiping Him, yet He is calling us to follow Him and receive the burden of His heart, and that makes me burst out in tears in the Spirit. I don't know where this will go from here, but there is no better way than following Him, no matter what the cost now.
Gallery notes:
October 2009
After the joy of the last gallery, I see in this gallery so far (it's only five pictures in as I write this) that the prophetic ache of His heart is returning in the pictures. I am rocked because He is my joy, my life, and I love worshiping Him, yet He is calling us to follow Him and receive the burden of His heart, and that makes me burst out in tears in the Spirit. I don't know where this will go from here, but there is no better way than following Him, no matter what the cost now.
The Great Commission
By Ramone - October 24, 2009
This picture came as the church worshiped with a song called 全てが生きる, which talks about how wherever God's river flows, everything will live ... like Ezekiel 47. What broke me down in tears in the Spirit is seeing where that river comes from in us...
On the back of the picture, I wrote:
Wherever Your river flows, there will be life... Now what I see (and I am melted in Your Spirit & tears) is that the river comes from our brokenness before You, and before the world.The Spirit gave me these words from Revelation 22 to go with the picture:
How do I draw this, Lord? The same clay pot as in "Perfection"? Yes, and below is the city (all cities of the earth & the nations) receiving the water of life...
But the broken pieces that flew off the pot in that picture... here they are long gone underwater! This means that we find and have found wholeness in brokenness! We've let our fragments go, and they are long out of sight... the things that You broke from out of our lives. I feel like the first picture was me, and this second picture is the Church, with Your Spirit now flowing out to the nations.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. The angel said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His servants the things that must soon take place."I am broken and in tears, barely understanding, and barely scraping the surface of describing this, but somehow floored in the Spirit by the impact of this...
When we--the Church--accept and admit our brokenness before God and before the world, recognizing our imperfection and hailing His perfection alone, when we share our brokenness, His Spirit will flow out through our very "cracks" to the thirsty, to people in the world who are also broken but are dying of thirst. His river of life will flow down the streets of our cities, not failing to bear fruit, bringing healing wherever it flows. With our attempts to look perfect utterly gone, His Spirit in our midst will become "clear as crystal", unpolluted by our flesh, by our laws, by our "putting on faces" and attempts to sound righteous and win people with our moralities. Curses will be reversed. Where wounds and curses had been sown, grace will flow, and the throne of God and the Lamb will rest in our midst, and in the midst of people who had not known Him at all, but whose brokennesses had been spoken to and ministered to by the Spirit pouring out through the brokennesses we admitted before them. By sharing ours, the Spirit was allowed to flow into theirs!
His face will be seen, and His name will be on our foreheads. We will be broken vessels, but His face will be seen in ours! We are constantly afraid that if we are broken and imperfect before unbelievers, that they will not see Jesus. So we want to "be Christlike", usually meaning being perfect and winning them with our perfection. But when we are naked and not ashamed before the world about our imperfections and brokennesses, against all logic somehow His face will be seen! Because then we will have "no face", and His face will be the only one visible! We were afraid that without saving face, that without being perfect, that all would be darkness and the commission God gave us would fail. But letting go of our artifical "light" (our lamps) to make things artificially brighter, and letting go even of the natural gifts and things we think are attractive, His presence alone will be sufficient light -- not only for us, but for all the nations to walk in the light of!
And these things must soon take place! (Or the stones will cry out!) That is why the sky is a sunset: the sun is setting on this world. It is time to be broken before God, and to be clothed in Him alone, naked and open about our imperfection, hailing His perfection alone, in Jesus' name even among the nations! Amen!
Foreknown
By Ramone - October 22, 2009
All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book
before one of them came to be.
- Psalm 139:16
My Prayer
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Narrow Way
By Ramone - October 18, 2009
I was praying about what pictures to display at the Jesus Family Center 2009 culture festival, and I felt the Lord stop me at one picture called The Relief of God's Kingdom of Love. He wanted to show me another picture close to that, a picture of the sheer relief of His agape love in contrast with the un-grace of the world, its systems, its values, its tit-for-tats, and how His unconditional love & forgiveness is just such relief from all that!
But I had no idea what I would show in the picture. I prayed what He put in my spirit was the relief of His words "Go now and sin no more." I asked Him and felt Him telling me I should paint the John 8 scene. But how, I asked? "Lord, should I paint You standing between me and the crowd?" He answered, "No, the other way around." He wanted me to paint Him stopping me from stoning and judgment, because what He did in that scene was just as much for them as it was for her!
Not only did He rescue us from the guilt of our sins (like hers) or the delusion of our false righteousness (like theirs), but with His agape love and forgiveness He rescued us from the burden, guilt and unberable weight of judgment, justice, and tit-for-tat unforgiveness.
I was worried the picture was not good enough because of the differing size of the people, the differing planes they seemed to be standing on, and the dark pasty color of some of their faces. While I felt that I should do better planning in future paintings, I also felt Him telling me that He knew it would turn out this way. Their sickly color reflects their stony hearts. Their differing heights and positions has to do with their "stature", as He said in Luke 16:15,
You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.All that said, it is easy to point at "them", isn't it? It's easy to be shocked, shocked, shocked by their judgmentalism. It's easiest for us to identify ourselves with Christ in this scene, and then with a little more honesty we can then identify ourselves with the woman, the "sinner". But here I felt the Lord telling me (and many of us) to look more carefully, because there are so many times when Christians (particularly in America) are standing on the sidelines, waiting to condemn people "in immorality".
Jesus presented another way. A narrow way. A way of grace. And He bids us follow Him in that narrow way. I was surprised when He gave me that as the title for this picture. Why? Because we all think of "the narrow way" as if it means personal holiness, perfection or righteousness. We don't think of the narrow way as being the way of agape love. But the context of Matthew 7 is judging one another, and the narrow way passage follows right after the golden rule.
So He is calling us, calling us out of the ways of our "righteous" condemnation. He is calling us to another way, a narrow way: To love as He has loved us while we were still sinners, while we were His enemies. To encourage the weak. To forgive the unforgiveable. To cleanse the unclean. To touch the outcast. To wipe the dirt away and lovingly help someone up. To identify with the transgressor. To follow Him on the narrow way of grace, the way of agape love.
Reihai no Naka 礼拝の中
My Joy
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Rags
By Ramone - October 8, 2009
The picture came up because at last week's Heart Healing Art class, the question God gave me to pose was "Lord, please show me something I don't want to see." You know, 'cause there's stuff about ourselves (or others) that we don't wanna see sometimes... so the question to Him was basically saying, "Lord, I trust that You are love and whatever You show me is for my redemption, rebuilding, and betterment... so please show me something I'm afraid to see that I need healing for or need to let go of, etc."
And He showed me a picture of my old dog, Rags. Surprised me because I was expecting some dastardly hidden sin or something ... I was half-afraid to ask, already feeling guilty! But He is love, and it was like giving Him permission to shine in on my fears about myself. So He surprised the heck out of me by showing me Rags. I had expected doom (haha), but as usual, He showed me that He just ain't like whatever guilt or fear I was having. That was the *other* guy making me feel that way!
So after I finished the picture, I began to ask God about it. By the way, my picture doesn't do him any justice, but it was the best I could do off of memory and guessing. In fact, just as I merely thought about Rags and pictured him in my memory, there was this pain inside and I found myself nearly crying, but I didn't know why. As I felt that and realized that I had some pain I didn't understand, I asked God about what that was and asked Him to lead me through His healing. I recalled whatever memories I could of Rags (I couldn't recall many), and God guided me to two things.
I think Rags died in 1986 (I was maybe 8 or 9) over at some hospital near my father's place, I think, and my brother and I were usually at my mom's place. She woke us up at night to tell us that Rags had died, but I don't remember much except that I couldn't really process it, and went back to sleep quickly. I just kind of slid through the experience. I don't remember seeing his body or really grieving or saying goodbye to him. Of course I didn't realize there was that unhealed pain inside until God had me draw a picture of the old boy!
The other thing was this sort of guilty feeling I had as if I had done Rags wrong, or abused him or not loved him. The strongest memory I had of him was at my father's place, when I would throw this nasty saliva-soaked tennis ball down the hall and he would go and get it and bring it back for more. And more. And more!! He just never stopped! I remember being tired of it and wanting him to stop or go away, and I felt guilty about that. He was this raggy ball of unconditional love, and I had turned away from him, and then he was gone.
I hadn't consciously realized all of this, but inside there was part of me that felt guilty for not loving him as much as he loved me, and felt helpless to do anything about it because he was suddenly gone.
So I asked God to apply His healing and truth to this. I know Jesus' blood covers my sins, and I needed release. My soul felt guilty, like I had wronged Rags. Was this true? I asked God, and He said No. No, I had not wronged Rags. I had loved him, and he had loved me! That's what God told me, and He told me that that is what Rags was telling Jesus as I was asking Him! I burst out crying. Dogs are amazing. They just give such *unconditional* love. They love you and love you. They teach us about God's unconditional love for us. So I accepted what He said and thanked Him. I thanked Jesus for loving me through Rags, and I know that Rags loved me and still loves me, and received my love and God's love through me, and I'll see him again someday.
God, You are good. Thank You. Thank You for uncovering an old, buried grief and feeling of guilt, and bringing me healing and peace there. Thank You that You leave no stone unturned in bringing us to rest in Your love. Thank You, Jesus.
