Ok, I shouldn’t have used the exclamation mark in the headline. It wasn’t a “!” event.

I thought someone was standing behind me shaking my chair; my monitor was jostling back and forth, visibly; my table was mildly bouncing. It was an earthquake, not an EARTHQUAKE!

Everybody in the office was saying the same thing: “Did you feel that?”

The shaking went on up north, around Richmond; we just received some of the transmitted force. I was in a 6.2 in Memphis back in the 70′s and that one really got my attention when it threw me out of the bed.

This one?

Merely interesting.

Add it to the tornadoes yesterday, the hurricane this weekend and the heart a few weeks ago… now you’ve got something; at least something you can talk about.

I ate at a place that I’d forgotten all about the other night while in Chattanooga. “TheYellow Deli” group fled the city back in 1979 amidst much controversy and charges of cult activity. Officially called the “Twelve Tribes” at this point, they made a forced evacuation from Chattanooga to Vermont and only recently returned and reopened The Yellow Deli.

An interesting place, the food was good. The atmosphere was different and it was packed out with college kids. The Urban Spoon has nothing but impressive accolades and rates it 4 Spoons (out of 5). To quote one reviewer: “Upon entering you know you are in for a different dining experience. The hand cut wood tables and architectural features create the feeling of entering a kid’s treehouse. The seating is intimate and cozy while still providing a comfortable feel.”

Reading several articles that had appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, I discovered that they are still surrounded by much controversy and concern.

So who cares and why write about it?

Good or bad, right or wrong, they have distinguished themselves. The establishment is leery of them, the anti-establishment is impressed by both their food AND their commitment and they are making an impact.

Most of us don’t want to be “marked;” we prefer to blend in. Could it be that “blending in” is the antithesis of what it means to be a follower of the Carpenter? We may not need to have long hair, dress funny and open a restaurant with strange hours, but perhaps we need to be a bit more intentional about our desire to have what the Nazarene offers.

I have a GPS on my iPhone and have the Tom-Tom application on it that allows it to function just like the standalone version. I will confess that I thoroughly enjoy having it in my car, even when I know where I’m going.

“Samantha,” my GPS “companion” who tells me what to do, is a hoot. My wife claims I’ve lost my mind because I talk to her. Getting off the interstate to get gas, Samantha tells me to do a u-turn in 100 yards to get back on the freeway. I explain to her that I’m getting off the highway to get gas. She recalculates the turn I should have taken to return to the interstate and tells me to “turn left, then turn right for 200 yards before turning right again on the entry ramp.”

“I will, I promise, but first I need to get gas and I’d like to get a cup of coffee, if that is alright with you.”

My wife gives me “that” look.

Samantha is rather insistent, repeating her instructions but now adding the greater distance I need to travel.

“Would you like coffee, too?” I politely ask my iPhone.

Now I get the “eye roll” from my wife and Samantha tells me she needs to “recaulculate.” After pumping gas and getting back in, she tells me I’ve added 15 minutes to my trip and that I now need to make a left turn at the light.

Just for fun, I circle the parking lot and force her to “recalculate” 5-6 times, changing her instructions machinegun style: “turn left, turn left, turn right, turn left…”

My wife doesn’t share my enjoyment of my GPS.

Riding down the highway yesterday I saw a bumper sticker:

“Obamanos”

Yeah. That’s what has happened. And they said it wasn’t going to hurt.

I think I’m going to do my own bumper sticker:

“Obamaectomy: the removal of a malignant Obama”

I find it interesting how something that is so out of the normal in your average day to day affairs, that when it is introduced, even fleetingly, can carry such power to transform the way you see things.

We did church normally yesterday, only it wasn’t normal at all. A sword used in a symbolic manner, changed the perspectives of almost everyone present. Perhaps things aren’t as we think. Perhaps we are more than we believe. Perhaps this sterile “love” we reference coming from Abba isn’t so mundane after all.

It might be real…

I have been absent. On purpose.

I suppose you could say I’ve been ruminating.

I’ve had quite a bit I’ve wanted to say; I’ve allowed myself the luxury of not saying it. I think I’m arriving at the point where I’m ready to share again… I think.

I’m excited!

I’ve just spent an incredible two weeks doing the impossible in northeastern Brazil. The flame that has been lit is attempting to consume me. The possibilities that are bubbling up have me pacing the floor with anticipation.

And, to add further fuel to this fire, Nathanael de Poix will be speaking at The Message this Sunday! How can you not want to be there to hear someone with such an exotic name?! But it goes much deeper than just a name; Nathanael is on a fast track to the mysteries of the heavenly realms. Anointed, gifted and does he ever have a story to tell!

I am so impressed with this fellow – he truly has something that will impact you in a way that you cannot contrive nor conceive. You will not want to miss this.

On more than one occasion on this trip to Brazil I’ve stated that words were failing me in trying to describe what was occurring. In so many ways, this was but a way to escape having to grapple with a plethora of emotions that have assaulted me during these two weeks. In the heat of the moment, I took the path of least resistance and put off the task of trying to sort through what felt like being in a dingy in the middle of the ocean in a raging storm.

Sitting here in an air-conditioned, pleasant room in Fortaleza, overlooking a postcard-ish view of the ocean, the events of the last two weeks now in the past, my mind is racing. I know I’m tired – perhaps a bit closer to exhausted, physically, mentally and spiritually – and everything has a surreal sense to it. Did everything I experience really happen? Did I actually see what I saw? Was my sense of the “anointing” of Holy Spirit so tangible that it felt like hyper-sensitively straddling two different worlds or realities at the same time?

In so many ways I’m grateful that I have witnesses to practically every event that occurred, witnesses from two different cultures and two different perspectives, who, at the very least, confirm that unbelievable-but-for-the-fact-of-seeing-it did indeed occur. It is hard to ignore the blind lady standing in front of you who is now weeping because she can now see or to be nonchalant while the young lady born with severe, pain-racking scoliosis is now completely upright and dancing the most incredible Jane-Fonda-inspired-callisthenic type dance you’ve ever seen while simultaneously whooping and weeping at the same time. The blind, the deaf, the mute, the lame, the pain-wracked, the malignant and benign tumors visibly apparent, all swept away by the simple application of the name of Jesus.

But, though difficult, my mind and heritage screams… really? Seriously?

The encountering of a lack of faith in traditional churches in the interior inspired by amazingly strong religiosity that caused Holy Spirit to literally remove himself from the environment and force the team to rely totally on their faith to wrangle open heaven so that the supernatural could still touch the incredulous unbelief was so shocking that my mind and my spirit reeled as though I’d been sucker-punched. A year ago I would have been ecstatic to see the miraculous that we saw in that environment; now, I am awed at how we who claim to be believers in the all-powerful Jesus, so readily deliver our authority into the hands of an enemy who joyfully takes it and immediately uses it against us.

Yes, I’ve preached on that topic continuously over the last year; but seeing it in such a horrendously magnificent demonstration of manipulation, I have a much greater appreciation of the situation that engulfs us in America. Though depressing, I am so grateful to have been presented with such a powerful, raw manifestation of what is occurring all around us; I understand in a much more personal way what Jesus must have felt when the same lack of faith in his hometown caused him to shake his head in unbelief at their religiosity.

What do I do with all of this? How do I take what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned, what I’ve been given and turn it into a currency that can be used to purchase territory in the heavenly realms? Something in me has changed; perhaps better, has been transformed. I’ve opened a spiritual Pandora’s box and seen its contents; I cannot shut it and pretend that I never opened it.

I have more work to do in processing the events of this trip. You bothered to read this, and I’m grateful; my desire is that my new discomfort in Kingdom matters will inspire you to be more intentional about who you are in Christ – you aren’t who you think you are… and you need to begin the process of discovering who you really are.

There is far too much at stake.

More to come… perhaps.

Just a reminder…

Most posts on the GFB trip will come via Facebook and/or Twitter, especially when we head for the interior. If you want to get the updates, please follow me (Twitter) or “become my friend” (Facebook) at either or both of these links:

Twitter — twitter.com/joecarr

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