Crossover Culture at Eagles Point

Many of us have heard of 'tough love', 'speaking the truth in love', and the like. Perhaps often misunderstood or not mirroring its biblical roots. It was never meant to be a license to put jagged edges on the truth as we speak it. The context of love where truth is expressed infers the laborious building of charity and grace in healthy relationship, one with mercy and boundaries in tandem balance, resulting in what would even be a stable home wherein the relationship abides. And then, from this very place, loving truth may be clearly spoken with gentle tone, such that the strength of expression and the arm of action doing the work is the truth itself, not the intensity of the person expressing it. And all that said...there is yet a tougher love. What is the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Greater love has no man than thi...

Faith as of a child. Years of work, hurt, life, love, loss...causing the garden of the heart to be barren, dried up, hardened. Situations and responsibilities keeping us from getting back to deep cultivation, weeding, caretaking. But there may come a moment, a divine intersection, that affords the opportunity to revisit neglected fields, unearth lost treasures, and once again till the crusted soils within. Places that were long abandoned, avoided, disregarded, from recent situations all the way back to childhood. It will take months to come to deeper places of intentional surrender in these areas...surrender to God's desire and ability to heal, love, embrace, empathize personally...and restore. But and so though, let us do the intentional, daily due diligence of seeking, surrendering, re-processing as the Wonderful Counselor leads, and allowing the soil of the heart to be loved again, nourished again, cared for again, softened and made alive again! How wonderful it is to re-tender ...

First of all, I do not like that I am writing. I do not want to have to be writing. I am not a scripteure of choice. Yes, the artist does need the channel of expression, but writing is confining, narrowing to this one...a tedious test of verbal painting with substant diction a picture so vivid and textured, that the reader can run his or her hands across the page and feel it. A tediousness that this artist has become wearied by in the advent of discovering broader avenues of pouring out from deep, overflowing caverns within. Nonetheless, here we are, wherein this composition postures as expedient and therapeutic to current due processing of that which lies within. So, we thusly embrace the point of the journey at which we find ourselves, and soak every bit of intimacy with God He has for us in these moments. And especially when our heart longs to be somewhere else. We cannot healthily live non-present in our present. Whether the external circumstances, or where we are within, if there ...

And there it was. A call made, a discussion had, and it was good and it was well. In the past, it would have gone a lot differently. Rooted in fear, inordinate worry over people's feelings, and decision-making based in poor personal boundary maintenance. All centered in ever-subtle, unwillingly-denoted codependency. While exhibiting itself in a variety of ways from person to person, my own experience reveals that it masquerades as compassion, care, thoughtfulness, sensitivity to people's feelings and needs, and willingness to sacrifice. For years, decades, growing and living in an internal culture of self-absorption and genuine care for God and people, inconveniently woven together with desires of home, career and ministry coupled with an almost-inability to facilitate any of them. Why? And how? A very particular area, in my case, of lacking surrender and trust. And the vice grip I maintained on this coveted dream vice-gripped my life from its full potential and expression. An...