The God Cube
Everyone should remember the Rubik’s cube. I woke up this morning thinking about how, when I was a kid, I would try to figure out its secret. I would watch people on TV that could do it effortlessly in a matter of seconds. They even had races to see who could do it the quickest.
As for me, I could do one side, as most people could, and could even get two sides if I tried really hard. Then I would hold it up, showing my friends, and say look I’ve got it, of course covering the other sides in hopes that no one would ask about the sides I didn’t have figured out. I even set it on my desk with only the two completed sides showing because I liked order and preferred to hide my sides that didn’t “line up”.
This morning however, I was thinking about all of our perspectives of God. It’s a lot like that cube. So many denominations, the reds, the blues, the greens, the yellows, you get the idea. Everyone holds tight to their idea of who God is. We ignore the sides that don’t seem to “line up” and focus on the things that we’ve “figured out”, to the point that we hold pride in what little our denominations have accomplished and ignore our great shortcomings. But God knows our hearts and He wants us to know His, intimately.
I eventually found a shortcut and realized that I was able to take the Rubik’s cube apart. By breaking it completely apart I had a table full of pieces to the puzzle and was finally able to reveal the heart, the very piece that held them all together. Now with my clean slate I could easily put everything back where it goes. I know by doing this I probably broke the rules of Rubik. But it finally got everything back to the way it was meant to be and I was glad to have order once again on my study desk.
The same goes for us and our relationship with God. When we surrender our lives to Him, when we humble ourselves completely and become “broken” before Him and submit to the fact that He is God then we realize, with all of our pieces exposed, that the heart of the matter and the very foundation that all these ideas and doctrines are held together by is love. God is love! Through His love we can have unity in the body of Christ, His children.
Unlike the cube however, it’s truly impossible for us to “figure it out” on our own, men have tried for centuries and failed, the only fix is the shortcut that comes by grace through Jesus. And it’s not cheating 🙂
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:10
The Time is Now! (Ice Cream Dream Continued)
A couple of years ago my family and I started ministering in the streets and learning to listen to God for direction. Every Tuesday we would gather together with others that had a hunger to set people free, we all grew together learning to walk as Jesus walked, it was an awesome time with many amazing testimonies which I may share later. Reading the Bible and learning is good but when we start doing His word and walking with Him is when we really get to know who God is. During this time we started thinking about going mobile, living out of a camper showing His love and teaching others to do the same. Starting love fires and then moving on to the next place to start another.
At that point that’s when God revealed to us that the mobile ministry was His plan from the beginning. After all it was an ice cream truck not an ice cream store (see the dream here).
Fifteen years have past since I had my Ice Cream Dream. I often wondered if I had missed it, was there somewhere along the way that I had messed up my calling and gotten off track? I had tried several times to make it happen on my own and everytime was good but nothing like the dream I had. Over the past year I would ask God many times if I had missed it, if somehow I had made a wrong choice and missed my call. I write this to encourage you, God does have a destiny for you, you have a calling and you know it in your heart. Maybe He’s already revealed it and you are in waiting or maybe you just feel it in your gut. The good news is you haven’t missed it, rest in Him.
You haven’t missed it. You can’t!
A
s I began to seek God on this subject He lead me to two stories in the Bible. The first is the story where Jesus tells the disciples to get in the boat (Mark 4 and Luke 8) because “we’re going to the other side”. Mid way across the lake a great storm comes upon the boat and their boat started taking on water, the disciples came to Jesus and said “do you not care that we’re going to die?” the disciples didn’t realize that they had a destiny, God, who can not lie, had spoken over them that they were going to the other side. Nothing could stop it from happening, they could have gotten out of the boat and swam in the midst of that mess. If they knew who had spoken this destiny over them they would have been just as rested as Jesus was.
The next story He lead me to was the story of Jonah, where God had told him that he was going to the city of Nineveh. Jonah had a calling on his life and though he didn’t want to fulfill it, it was inevitable, he had a destiny. However, Jonah’s rebelion lead him in the opposite direction onto a boat that was thrown and tossed by the storms to the point that the rest of the passengers decided to throw him overboard expecting him to drown. Jonah had a destiny that had to be fulfilled and so God sent the fish to carry him to his destination where Jonah would finally yeild to his calling.
As crazy as it may sound to some people, due to what God was telling us and a few other “signs” we decided it was time to get rid of everything we own and advance to the next stage of our lives in a camper on the road. Nothing in the worldly sense would say go, we had a large chunk of debt and a few other things that would appear to be setbacks. God has shown us that we are not to depend upon money as our provider, He will take care of us. My wife said at one point this would be much easier if we had a camper setting out front, though we didn’t know how, we knew that He would handle it.
A f
ew weeks later I was at a good client/friend of mine, C.J.’s house working on his surveillance system, which was our family business. I was telling C.J. about how I was no longer going to be handling the business but if he had any problems he could always give me a call and I would try to help as much as I could over the phone. He asked why and I began to tell him that my family and I were going into fulltime ministry, we were selling everything and buying a truck and camper. I finished up my work as he was asking me more questions about the ministry. I had to come back a few days later because his system ended up needing some replacement parts, as I was installing he asked a few more questions about the ministry and told me about his heart for the youth then to my suprise he told me that he was giving us his truck and camper to live in!
He took me out to give me the tour and I was in shock. It is beyond anything we ever could have imagined but here’s the most amazing part. C.J. and his wife own a business that builds tour buses for major celebrities and musicians, the camper and truck he gave us was listed on his website as the movie trailer, it was used for actors and workers to rent and is named MOVIE 1.
Just like the dream God gave me fifteen years ago…
Just like the dream had us in a brilliant white ice cream truck with a movie place in the back handing out God’s treat free of charge in a way that people were hungry for it. Now we have a brilliant white truck with a movie place in the back and the next step is to get on the road and start handing it out! Ha! God is amazing!
Currently we are down to the last few steps of emptying the house with a For Sale by Owner sign out front just waiting for Him to lead us to the next step. Through it all He has taught us to rest in Him and enjoy His grace, it is sufficient for every need, ours and yours, the treat that is free of charge.
Now go! Be the funnel!
The Ice Cream Dream
I suppose I should start by telling you my dream I had about fifteen years ago…
I dreamed that my dad gave me an ice cream truck, it was falling apart, old, rusty, and the tires were dry rotted and flat. The truck was parked right outside of a big old barn and I was so excited that it was now mine. I started putting my effort into fixing it up and when I was done it was a brilliant white, and looked like brand new.
I then put on the “back in the day” ice cream man attire, white slacks, white button down, and the white ice cream man hat. I drove it out to the street and immediately people started swarming to get the treats we were offering, and the treats we were offering were completely free. There were people as far as I could see crammed between the houses excited to get the treats that we were offering and I was handing them out effortlessly with a big grin on my face.
After all this I thought maybe the food I had eaten the night before had kicked in because the next thing that happened was a door located on the back of the ice cream truck and I was letting people in, inside was a big movie theater. I had always thought that was me taking over the dream, I recently found out otherwise as I’ll explain in a later post.
When I woke from my sleep, the first person I told was my mother. I said “God’s going to give me an ice cream truck!” then I explained my dream. She said you need to ask God for the interpretation, so I did, and He gave it to me. My dad had a ministry when I was younger, it was a coffee house, and the ministry had been laying dormant for a while. Now it was being given to me and God was going to use it!
The following Sunday I went to my usual church service, a small country church in Georgetown. Every Sunday the pastor would ask if anyone needed prayer and I would always go up front to ask for a closer relationship with God. However, this particular Sunday someone had a vision and spoke over me that they saw me in ministry through which God was going to use me and it was going to be wonderful!
After service I told them about the dream I had had and the pastor said “I don’t know if it’s me or God but they are having a youth rally in Florence Saturday and I feel like you should go” so I told him I would. Saturday finally rolls around and I was not at all wanting to go but due to my commitment, I went. I sat all the way in the back of the church and shortly into the service I felt a strange sensation in my spirit, it was in my stomach and I prayed “Lord, I feel this strange feeling in my stomach, it’s like a turning, like a hunger, like a churning, what is it?” and right after the words left my lips the pastor up front said “There’s someone here that has a strange feeling in there stomach, like a turning, like a hunger, like a churning, come up here God wants to bless you” of course I knew that was me so without hesitation I went to the front and the pastor walked over to me, raised his hand to place it on my head to pray, but then stopped and backed up, he then had the youth crowd around me and had them to all pray. It was very encouraging and another sign of what God had planned for me.
In my spirit I knew it wasn’t time, though I tried to make it happen on my own. I became a youth leader and though it was good, it wasn’t effortless, it lacked the freedom I felt in the dream, it wasn’t time…
Erin
GodsFunnel
Joe
godsfunnel.wordpress.com 