My Birthday Post :-) 29 is Divine.

Indeed.  The world needs more nerds like you.  Not the hipster kind who just dress like nerds but don't have the brains or perseverance to back it up.  The type of nerds that are whole-souled about what they do.  The ones that never give up because they have some looney concept that what they believe about themselves and the the future are true.  Those that refuse to accept their perceived lot in life and venture to believe that there is more.

I used to be like this.  I used to be the nerd that the world needed.  Somewhere in the past 3 years, I was slowed down.  Perhaps for very good reason.  Afterall, I became an engaged man on the verge of getting married to my best friend.  I quit a full-time job that would've been paying alot of money by now.  I tore an ACL with no health insurance.  I learned more things about myself in the last 3 years than the 26 years before that.  I battled with my Creator in ways that I never thought was "holy."  I learned about a faith that could be purified in the dark.  A faith that could only become righteous without visible evidence of success.  A faith that would require me to give it all up, get some back, lose it all again, and then pick up the pieces that are eternal.  To say the last 3 years have been a Sabbath is an understatement.  It all started in January of 2010, when I took a leave of absence from my work for 2 months, because I knew God was taking me into a deeper Calling - a deeper Destiny.  On the verge of being promoted, I gave up my good standing at Kaiser to seek a God that felt so distant in America.

I wouldn't trade the last 3 years for anything in the world.  It has made me joyful.  It has made me sharp.  It has made me closer to the man my mother had always been praying for.  It made me useful, and not useless.  It has humbled me.  It has brought me to desperation for a 100% God - not a partial one.  Yet there is a by-product of being dealt with in the darkness.  There seems to be a limp that you come out of the wilderness with that reminds you of the excruciating pain and victory that you go through when you are serious about being used by God.  My by-product was being less sure of myself in the not-so-good way.  I have grown so weary of fighting the good fight that I'm not as "up for it" as I used to be.  I faintly remember being more audacious - more bold - more fiery.  You can call it maturity, but in my truth, I have "lost a step" in the last 3 years.

But my loss is gain.

Whether this by-product was for my best or not, I know this by-product so intimately.  It's a tough thing to second guess everything you thought was meant for you.  It is hard when you have so many eyes watching and waiting.  In the entire process, you have to be reminded that trust is not as elusive as you make it out to be.  We are all meant to trust.  We were created to trust.  You have to believe that when you bring the knife to your Isaac, God will either resurrect it or prevent you from killing him.  If you don't know this analogy in the Bible, feel free to google it (Genesis 22).   On my 29th year, I vow one thing.  To persist in the darkness.  To persist in every invisible area that my heart is not fully hopeful in.  There are things that I am believing God for, that have not come to pass.  But in this next season, I will not lose a step.  The sabbath is over.  The waiting is finished.  I have risen from January 2010.  I now realize 3 years after my sabbath, why I was in this place.  There are places in my heart and soul that are not fully formed yet.  In order for me to be useful, I needed to be adjusted and fixed.  I needed to be better.  And most of us are not willing to accept it because we are lazy.  We think God will use us in whatever shape we are in - and though this is true to some extent, God deals with His people differently.  I now realize that God won't use me "just as I am" as most of us Westerners love to quote.  He will actually use me on His terms.  He won't make excuses for me, and what's even more radical, is that my tiny self will never have to make excuses for Him.

On my 29th birthday, may I boldly suggest that I got my swag back.  I officially have graduated to the next place.  I have reclaimed what was mine, and I now walk fully into the man I need to be.  I declare that my Sabbath is over.  I declare that the Supernatural will now take place in the Visible realm.  I am saying it before it happens, so that you know.  So that I know.  So that the world knows, that Jeevo is back....

What happens when the Invisible meets the Visible?  Let's find out together. 

God loves us infinitely more than the specific and special love we feel on our birthdays.  Peace, and ever so much love to you - Jeevo.