Beautiful Dust

All this earth....
Could all that is lost ever be found...
Could a garden come up from this ground at all....
You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust....
You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us.

-Beautiful Things by Gungor


These lyrics created my sound track earlier this evening as I wandered through an ancient cemetery littered with broken-down headstones and the dried-out stumps of once noble trees.

Why was I wandering through a cemetery, you may ask? For one, because I like it. I find a sacred sort of hush settling over my soul in a cemetery. Especially a really old cemetery.

Secondly, I took a side trip into the cemetery in my quest to gain higher ground from which to view the sunset. After a few hours of lingering in the woods, I was on my way home as God's brush strokes began to color the western sky. Incidentally, I have a boss who chases sunsets. I love that! He took a friend and I on a sunset chase the other week. I had never chased a sunset in a car before, but they do have a way of catching my breath and demanding my attention with a holy kind of awe. Anyway, chasing a sunset on foot is a little tough, so when I saw the cemetery on higher ground, I went for it. I believe God put the song Beautiful Things on my heart to play on my phone as I walked onto that little piece of long-forsaken ground.

You see, I'd been praying out in the woods. I had to do some dragon slaying today. In the midst of trying to figure out how best to function in the intensity of Lamplighter Ministries, how to let go to God when I'm in over my head, and trying to face the question of why God brought me here and where I fit in this picture, the enemy has been gnawing at the edges of my soul. He's been whispering suggestive memories into my mind, memories of broken cisterns left behind. Wearing away my resistance, murmuring that I need some outlet, some way to release the pressure building up....reminding me that I can still go back to a comfortable addiction....that my escape hatch is never far away.

Thank God, I am not unaware of the dragon's devices. I know exactly what He's trying to do. When he sees one of God's blood-bought children getting dangerously close to his borders, and he perceives that this one is about to become a real threat to his kingdom, the enemy will do anything to stop it. He knows the hold a particular addiction had on me, and he is trying desperately to lure me back.

I believe my Father has brought me to Lamplighter at this time to do a new work in my life. I believe I'm standing on the brink of falling deeper in love with Jesus and discovering a life of more abundance and more power and yes, more warfare than I've ever imagined. Satan wants to cut me off at the knees. He'd take me back to the point of no return if he could. But when he messes with God's children, he messes with our Daddy! And our Daddy says, "Ain't nobody gonna mess with My child!" And He gives us an arsenal of Truth and Love to throw at the dragon. I let Satan have it today! I think it always comes back to remembering who we are. I am Christ's! Satan cannot have my mind, he cannot have my potential, he cannot have my time, he cannot have my effectiveness, he cannot have my life! I am Christ's, and Christ will not give me up!

After I gave Satan what for, Father and I had a sweet time together. I was praying simply and honestly for all His children, specifically the Church in America. Over the weekend, we had a Lamplighter staff training and retreat, where we fed richly on God's Word and were challenged with a message that made us look honestly at the dire picture of Christianity in today's culture, but also sounded a trumpet blast of hope. We learned that God works in and through individual lives to change the big picture of the world. He can use as many or as few as He chooses to win mighty victories for His kingdom. If we want to be prepared for God's use, we must have a vision, both of what the world could look like, and what we want our own lives to look like as we move in pursuit of the promises of God.

This is only a condensed bit of the Scripture feast we had during our retreat. But the point that God had me focused on in my prayer today was that although this world is a dark place where Christians have largely been driven into holes in the ground, metaphorically speaking, all He is looking for is a Daniel. God is looking for one who will stand out and shine like a star in an ocean of night. He wants to use me. And He wants to use you. And even when we look at our lives and see all this wasted time, wasted opportunities, wasted potential....even when we feel like the dried-up bones of a dead army....even when we realize that we've been drinking from polluted wells and neglecting the Fountain of Life and we're dying of thirst in the desert....even if we question how God could possibly redeem the Church of America today, or how He could redeem our own lives and use us to bring His kingdom on earth....

....our Father is the God who breathes life into dry bones. The great I Am who created everything out of nothing. The God who uses a few faithful men to defeat armies of thousands. The God who has promised to make everything new. The God who never stops doing good to His children, despite our desert wanderings and our adulteries and all the times we cower in holes trying to hide from the enemy and the days when we realize we've become captives in a heathen land and we think it's really all over. Our Father is the Author of life, the Artist who creates beauty out of dust, joy out of hopelessness, life out of death, valiant overcomers out of trembling cowards.

In that light, it seems fitting to walk through a graveyard singing about all that is lost being found and beautiful things coming out of the dust. From the dust we came, and to dust we shall return. But that is not our ending. Because our Father is the Beginning and the End. He is our home. He is our destiny. His immortal breath is in our spirits. And He is endless. We stand on the brink of forever. And when this earth of dust is dissolved, our God will make all things new. The lost will be found. All the sad things will come untrue. Death will be swallowed up in victory! Mortality will give way to immortality. And the King of Kings will have His bride, pure and holy and white as a lily....perfectly one with Him into infinity!

And there will be no more straining for partially veiled glimpses of the sunset from cemeteries. We're going to walk straight into the sunrise, into God's country, where there is no night.

So from one speck of beautiful dust to another.....

Remember Whose you are. Rise up and shine. We will overcome the dragon.....by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!