12.27.08

The day Philip and Becky Rice began their lives together.

Gah, that's just messed up.

Here's the wedding through my eyes:

Matt (drummer from the neighborhood and stardeath), Eric (bass player from the neighborhood), and I were perched up in the balcony. Cables, computers, iPods, drums, a sampler, hand percussion, a synthesizer, delay pedals, bags and cases littered the space around the Yamaha m7CL (a digital mixing console). And right out over the rail, everyone dressed up, each ribbon and fabric placed carefully, every relative positioned in the right chair, the church was full of excited hearts and anticipating loved ones.

Weddings usually piss me off. Things are generally so pretentious. Trust me, I believe decorating and atmosphere are totally valid and always essential. I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about the stench that exists too often at weddings where the relatives are uptight, the creeper uncle is checking out the bridesmaids (sorry, I don't know where that came from), the bride is worried about the unnoticeable flaw in her hair and dress, the groom is in need of a pep talk, and no one is actually happy because they drove and flew too far to just make their socially required appearance.

This wedding, however, couldn't have been more opposite of that. From the balcony, one of the musicians and I were noticing how only a small pocket of people weren't in the most lively conversation people could have in such a situation. The level of community and love existing in that one room was truly remarkable.

Then, before I could take it in, I was cued to start playing the keys that would set the mood for the whole service. You see, Phil, being a musician, and I, being his wing man in just about every musical endeavor he makes, sat together for hours writing out a score for the wedding. Yeah, like in a movie. This wedding was created to be a song. In the key of D. We tracked his vocals overlapping and swirling in falsetto notes, reverbed out to put it eerily in the distance. We spent time dialing in the synth sound I would be droning out perfectly. We discussed each movement of the music corresponding with the service. 

And it worked.

I played little soft droning synth chords for a while and abruptly stopped. It was time for Becky to come walking down the aisle to Phil. Making anxious eye contact with Matt, his finger hit the sampler trigger simultaneously with his big crash, opening up a naked space where Phil's pre-recorded vocals swept the sanctuary. Two bars in, Matt, Eric and I came in big, ushering the bride in with huge, epic notes.

Things would die down, flow, anxiously wait, slow down, and immediately hasten with the corresponding event happening in the wedding. And I must say, not due to our musical talent, but rather to an atmosphere of love and the presence of the Lord, the wedding was intense. No homily (speech or sermon), no dude on acoustic guitar, no 'butterfly kisses.' Just a series of emphases being placed on the epic moments of life: the triumphal entry, the vows, the intimate communion, the prophetic and savored prayer and laying on of hands (of over 60 or so people), and the big kiss. Dang. That's pretty rich.

Heritage

Philip Rice, my spiritual/prophetic father, is going to marry Becky Freeman tomorrow night. After just two and a half months of constant planning and preparing and arranging and writing and on and on... It's really going to happen. And that is just a crazy thing to begin wrapping my mind around.

Tonight we held a bachelor party for Phil at my house. Mitch Freeman (Becky's father), his sons, Sid Rice (Philip's Dad), his sons, Willis Rice (Philip's uncle), the guys of the Neighborhood (Matt, Eric, and myself), Shane Mock (Philip's spiritual father), Brett (my spiritual brother) were all in one room for a couple hours. The weight was intense.

We sat in a circle, with Phil in a nice leather chair, and each man told Philip what we thought about him and how he had changed our lives. 

The part that really messed with me wasn't the cute stories. It wasn't even the prayer, although it was one of the most important prayers I've ever witnessed. It was when Philip's father talked about the heritage of the Rice family.

Phil's dad had told Phil that he reminded him of his father, Phil's grandfather a few months ago while Phil was preparing to propose to Becky. I remember when that was said, because Phil and I talked a long time about the significance of that statement. But seeing his dad actually in front of me tell Phil the same thing I had only heard second hand was powerful. Then, when Shane followed up with a picture of the spiritual heritage of his relationship to Phil, I was definitely blown away. Parts of my heart started resonating that I didn't know existed. 

It clicked that Brett and I are spiritual brothers in a lineage of incredible men. The fact that Phil started calling the two of us his prophetic sons a few years ago set a part of my heart into place, and I could almost physically feel the connection being made. 

As we prayed, Shane had his hand on Philip's heart, and Brett and I were overlapping our hands over his belly area. I will NEVER forget this picture. It's an image of Shane depositing things into Phil, Phil stewarding them, and channelling them into Brett and I. And behind Philip were standing the two biological fathers (his father and his uncle) that passed down a ministry of passion and faithfulness from the very beginning of Philip's life, anointing him in a very special way as the first born among his brothers.

Well, there you go. Hopefully you're getting a picture of intense love and lineage that surpasses any talent, skill, or trade. Hopefully you're being inspired to begin pouring into someone under you and multiplying your life of intimacy with Jesus into them. I know I'm inspired to do just that.

...

Soak

Back in the Summer of 2006, while I was a counselor at New Life Ranch, I met Philip Rice. Due to timely appointments clearly from the Lord, we found ourselves retreating to remote rooms or buildings around the camp, playing music and praying together. At this point, deep intimacy in prayer was a familiar element in Phil's life. Despite my history of leading worship for years at my hometown church and knowing there could be more than I was experiencing back then, I could hardly believe the level of God's presence and love that existed while Phil and I sat in these candle-lit rooms alone with the Lord.

I realized a few things:

- Prayer and worship are learned behaviors.

- One cannot base their knowledge of God's presence on personal experience. 

- No one knows the extent to which someone can experience God's Presence.

- Although the Holy Spirit draws us in, God is a gentleman- He won't force Himself on you. You have a choice in receiving His unconditional love or rejecting it.

- We can always go deeper and know more of His presence- but we better be ready to look more and more ridiculous.

I vividly recall one night when the two of us were walking out of a dark, vacant chapel after sitting and experiencing Heavenly worship. We parted ways to go to our rooms and looking to me with a look of relaxation and rejuvenation, he said, "That was a good soak."

soak : [sohk] - verb

1. to lie in and become saturated or permeated with water or some other liquid.

2. to pass, as a liquid, through pores, holes, or the like : The rain soaked through the tear in the umbrella.

3. to be thoroughly wet.

4. to penetrate or become known to the mind or feelings. : The lesson didn't soak in.

5. to drink immoderately, esp. alcoholic beverages : They were soaking at the bar.

-

God doesn't want you to know about Him. He doesn't want to know about you. He desires (more than you or I ever will) for you to know Him, experience Him. He wants you to feel Him. You're doing him no favors by saying, "It's enough for me to be 'reverent' and distanced from You." Calling it emotionalism is blasphemous, grieving the Lord who is crying out for communion with His beloved- YOU.

Screw sipping on the Living Water. I wanna soak in Him. Forget moderation. I wanna get drunk on the new wine of The Spirit. (I understand that the semantics can get confusing for someone who doesn't know me, but I have no other way of putting it.) I can't keep it in. I've found the purpose of my life. The life source I have always needed and searched in all the wrong places to find.

-

It will look different for you than it does for me. That's the beautiful part. God has a perfect, intimate way of interacting with you. He's designed you to commune with Him in a way that is completely unique and suited for you. But understand the jealousy of Him- He wants the thing you just can't give Him, and if that means vomiting up your religious doctrine that has been encaging Him, you'll have to hang over the toilet for a while before you experience Him fully.

... and trust me- personally, I've never known such a beautiful purging.

I L0V3 0LD 5TYL3 NUMB3R5

It's a designer-nerd thing, probably. Please excuse the nauseating drop shadow, I found the image on Google. 

Stop Looking At The Telephone.

Fascination is dangerous when learning about the prophetic or healing or anything else that is supernatural. If fascination fuels the desire to see more of God, it's incredibly easy to be led astray from the thing God desires for and from us... intimacy.

Intimacy is the central focus of God, always. He doesn't need us. We aren't practical to Him. My friend Brett made the analogy of having kids - they're expensive, needy, and easily misguided. For a good father to have kids makes no sense unless you actually love them. The Father's love for us is so intense. He didn't send His Son to die in order to fix a problem. He died to become more intimate with us.

So if He has plans to be more intimate with us, prophecy should end in the fruit of intimacy. Prophecy is a telephone - a supernatural communication with the Lord.

When you're on the phone with someone, do you get distracted that you're on the phone, too excited that a device is connecting you to someone else to focus on the conversation? Are you thinking about how it works? Are you distracted by the batteries, the microphone, the speaker, the soundwaves, and electronic signals? If you are, you're hindering the purpose of the phone.

When I first became aware that God still speaks to people, I was skeptical. When certain prophetic words of wisdom became too accurate for me to deny it anymore, I was fascinated. When I realized who the One is on the other end of the line, I was convicted of having my eyes fixed on the telephone.

May the Lord ruin our boxed-in perception of who He is and what He can do.

Design And Other Things About Me. Honestly.

To my classmates and teachers :

I know it seems like I don't care at all. Reality is, I don't want to allow being a designer to negatively affect me. I don't care to impress and compete with you, allowing pride to become a presence in my life. I believe I have been given a creative mind from the Lord, but it would be disobedient to use that gifting selfishly or pridefully. I don't want to waste my life searching out my life as a designer. I want to waste my life searching out the face of God. I do believe being a good designer is pleasing to the Lord. I believe it pleases the Lord to be great- to do things well. Honestly, I'm living in a constant ebb and flow between designing well and restraining my mind from neglecting the Lord's provision in this area. My deepest desire in school right now is to live in that flowing heart that moves with the Lord and not against him. I know it will offend you (and already has) when I say I'm confident with where my designing has ended on a certain project. I guess what I'm saying in that place is that my heart is confident in the Lord. When He says I'm done, I'm done and I'm not going to stress myself out and so disobey Him. Anxiety is the opposite of prayer. The opposite of faith.

-Blake.

To everyone :

I'm not very supported by most of my family (primarily my extended family) in the realm of what I'm in school for, what my occupational 'ambitions' are, and how I'm looking at life in general. To them, I'm immature, rebellious, reckless, and a bit strange. 

They think my hair is too long. 

my clothes are too abnormal. 

my earring is too offensive. 

my political views are too liberal. 

my spiritual life is too, well, spiritual. 

my mannerisms are too feminine. 

my ambitions are too dangerous.

my job as a musician is too inconsistent.

Basically, I'm not becoming a doctor, dentist, engineer, or electrician...

I might become a musician.

maybe a missionary.

maybe a designer.

maybe a record producer.

Maybe I'll be poor.

Maybe I won't.

I've been tempted (prior to a year and a half ago) to be 'normal' as defined by my critics. It'd be so easy. Wear normal things. Go to a normal, speaker-oriented church on Sunday mornings, get out of the Art School, stop playing so much music, and cut my hair. Sell my recording gear, focus on becoming financially stable, and throw away all the crazy charismatic, prophetic, healing, hearing-from-God books. Shut down the right side of my brain, basically.

Sometimes I can still be tempted to do that. But I believe that me keeping these things as parts of who make me who I am, holding onto the way God made me - keeping the right side of my brain active and alive, basically - is one of the central reasons God took me into the Desert. 

"I'd be foolish to stop being so foolish to the people that tell me I'm foolish."

-Blake

Right Now, I'm A Little Hung Over

... from the wine of the Holy Spirit.

I know, I know. I almost offend myself to say that. But I offend myself in almost being offended. What I'm saying is that the true drunkenness we can receive from the Lord should start getting a better reputation among Christians. 

Q and A time:

-

- 'How do you know when someone is or is not experiencing the Lord in a true, pure way?'

- I don't. At least not always. And neither do you.

- 'Why do I need to look and act weird when I'm supposedly interacting with the Lord?'

- You don't. At least not always. But sometimes you do.

- 'Do you believe the Lord still heals people supernaturally and speaks to people prophetically?'

- Yes. Always.

- 'Then why are some people not healed and some prophetic words not accurate?'

- I don't know. But I won't stop praying for it. And neither should you. Many times, it's probably the intense jealousy of God, seeing if we will persevere and be steadfast lovers of Him.

(If anyone wants to pick my brain with some of these questions, I'd love to go in depth. I just feel like there are some of these things floating around a lot and wanted to make room for answers to be found and conversation to occur- maybe shake some things up.)

I'm not done writing..

Design.2

It's finals week for me, which means I'm living at the art school for a few days. Here's a random design for you to see... I'll be more interesting in the near future.

(click to enlarge)

Design

I don't talk about it much, but I'm in the art school at OU, studying Visual Communications. That's the fancy way of saying graphic design. 99% of the time, I'm too busy trying to keep design projects from killing my emotional and spiritual life. 

Here's a design for a timeline project over the history of communication and language that I'm printing off right now, at 3:45 am.

New Horizons (Part 2 of 2)

A little over a month ago, a friend of mine from high school - I'll call her Jennifer - came to Tulsa, visiting for the weekend. She had briefly communicated (via facebook wall posts) that it would be nice to sit and talk about the Lord with Brett and I, and that for the past couple years she had been running away from the Lord, finding that nothing could satisfy the deeper longings of her heart. I got to see her with some other friends of ours on Saturday night for a little while, but we didn't really get around to talking intensely about the Lord. I was about to head back to Norman with Brett on Sunday, believing the Lord would just keep pressing on her heart and reveal Himself to her more and more. As I hopped in the car with Brett, he told me Jennifer was coming with us to a prayer meeting in Edmond.

My heart leaped. I had a strange assurance that the Lord would completely redeem her that night. She was going to drive her own car to Edmond and back that night, while Brett and I were going to just keep going to Norman. I felt like it would be good to ride with Jennifer on our way to Edmond, hopefully to engage in some good conversation before the meeting. Well, the good conversation I had anticipated turned into great conversation that resonated deeply for both of us. 

You see, I had just gone through a year of the Lord redeeming me and starting a revival in my life, the Lord slaying me in order for me to receive my inheritance of peace, relentless love, hope, power, etc. There is no argument about it. The Holy Spirit was literally sitting with Jennifer and I in that car for an hour and a half, pouring out themes and verses and an atmosphere of Heaven leaving us in awe of who Jesus is. I love that the Holy Spirit always glorifies the Son.

The prayer meeting was intense. A normal small group house bible study thing turned into a Jesus rave with a flip of the light switch and a cue on the sound system. It was loud. And I must admit I wasn't a huge fan of the first couple songs. But I couldn't help but feel the presence of God in that little cleared-out living room. A 50 year old man was choosing songs, pouring out all his energy vocally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. A passion for Jesus was so thick.

This opened up a beautiful time of intercession among the believers, the blessed ones and the mourning ones were receiving love from the Lord all at once. Jennifer got prayed over, and I saw it with my own eyes - she was restored. She was always known in high school for her huge smile, her bright eyes, and her laughter. What the Lord imparted to her was more than that. She simply could not stop belly laughing, enjoying the passionate unity of herself with her first love.

It's funny because just before this meeting I told Jennifer about how the Lord has a true version of every counterfeit and vice the Enemy has ever offered. 

for drunkenness on alcohol : drunkenness on the 'new wine' of the Spirit

for sexual indulgence : an intimacy with the Triune God that surpasses all lust

for highs found in pills and weed : ecstasy of open visions and community with the Most High

But these are only found in the death of ourselves. 

We have a backwards way of inheriting things from God. Every other inheritance depends on the person who has the inheritance dying - then it falls to you. But in this inheritance, it is we, the heirs, who die. As we die, we are filled. As we pass away, (in THIS LIFE, by dying to ourselves) we inherit the Kingdom of God. HERE. NOW. It belongs to us. NOW.

After staying the night in Norman that night, she went to Tulsa before going back to her house over 10 hours away. The Lord didn't hesitate. She, being filled by the Holy Spirit, got to witness her own brother get drunk on the new wine of the Holy Spirit and transformed instantly from a critical analyst into a prophetic lover of the Man Jesus.

Jennifer, over a month later, is still living in the presence of God. She had a deceptive but true comfort before she returned to the Lord that now only exists as she draws in deeply to the Father. The arrows of the Enemy are flying toward her like they never have before. But in her emptiness, in her unity with Jesus, in that place of refuge under the wings of the Triune God... it makes sense. It's right. It's good.