Freaks in a Jesus way.

It's a beautiful thing seeing so many freaks in the prayer room. You have your shakers, your jumpers and your screamers. Or the one that gives me most joy: this old man who wears the same jean shorts, white crew socks and bleached spotted slippers (Est. Before my birth). This man defies all culture popularities, but he knows it doesnt matter, he just raises his hands to the Lord, hours on end. These people become a reminder to my soul about the reason of our existence...to give God glory in everything we do, to love Him with all our mind, soul, heart, and strength, to speak the unpopular message, to rejoice in worship over the beloved in anyway that looks. Jesus calls us to be freaks in the eyes of our nation because to him it's normality. We are in love with a God who's entire being is set apart from that of the majority of this world. We are called to live a lifestyle that looks normal to a supernatural God.

I can't help to think of the thoughts that were going through peoples' head when Noah was building an ark. Noah was building a foreign object for a nonexistent rain flood for an invisible God for 120 years. Oh how (if they had them in his day) he must have looked like a perfect candidate for an insane asylum. Or how about the time Joshua was instructed by God to lead his people around the city of Jericho for six days then on the seventh day walk around it seven times, blow trumpets, shout and only then will the walls of Jericho come down. What!! What freaks they must looked like, men of war walking around the walls for seven day so they can shout and in that instant destroy the city. Then Jesus, the man that walked on water, fed five thousand off of two fish and five barely loaves, the man that says, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me..." And also says "whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." What kind of message is that? Okay follow me, give up your family, your job and die to this world, then you will find the meaning of life. They must have thought he was nuts because everything he believed in contradicted everything they lived in.

The truth is the guy with the bleached shoes, Noah with his ark, Joshua with his shouts, they are all doing something right-they're worshipping, and acting in obedience, giving up everything and leaving all dignity outside the spiritual realm of loving Jesus. When we do this, when we act in full obedience and devote ourselves to worshipping an invisible God, thus giving Him all the glory, it will look different to the darkeness that surrounds this world. I want to be that freak that people say is not okay. Not for self-glory, but because if I look like a freak in this world, my heart is set completely on the things of an eternal one, living a normal life in Jesus' eyes. I cry out for God to destroy those last parts of my dignity. I want to live fully in His world, the world He created us for, the world He desires us for to rest in.