You know right now I am having the opportunity to do what I have always dreamed of doing.  And I have always known that I would be doing it.  That is to play in a band and travel… we are about to go to Ohio and Maine, and who knows where else in the future?  We have been playing all over New York State and I am loving it!  We played in Canada a bit, and have played some in PA.  It’s really exciting and I love it…  you can check out more of our touring adventures here, http://www.blog.juliamarieband.com  And by the way, I did the drawings at the top!  And check out the real site while you’re at it… we just redesigned it about a week ago, http://www.juliamarieband.com

   You know what’s strange though?  Doing what you’ve always wanted to do makes you feel strange.  It’s a combination of good and bad for me… I find that it sets in as soon as I get home.  I was sitting in my room today, after I got home(I’m home for a couple of days right now) and I started to remember just how many things have happened in this room.  Weird things remind me of stuff…  Christmas is coming up, and that one is really strange.  Like, looking at a catalogue reminds me of when our house used to be covered in lights and we would go and get a tree and drag it through the snow and I would be full of anticipation about what was under the tree.  It seems it was always video games of some sort… or video game related.  I remember getting the original NES, I remember the Super Nintendo, the second Super Nintendo, the second NES, the Playstation, the PS2 etc…  by the time we got the Xbox360 my excitement for video games had faded… I no longer got excited around Christmas time. 

   I keep remembering this time when my three cousins Djere, Steve and Tom came and stayed for a week or so… it felt like forever.  We did nothing but listen to ska and play medal of honor on the playstation…  it was so fun having them here, and when they left I would go to play medal of honor and it just wasn’t fun anymore.  People make things more fun I guess… or this time I went with all of my friends to the sci-tech center, and then I went by myself later and it was actually very sad to be there.  I was in the “shadow room” where this light would flash and your shadows would be frozen on the wall.  And when all of my friends were there with me it was so cool, we made the strangest shadow images… but by my self… it was not just boring, but it made me sad.

   Christmas has lost the crazy excitement that it used to have.  When we used to go get the tree… we used to put lights all over the house and everything looked and smelled Christmasy.  I took that all for granted and actually was quite annoyed by some of it… now I actually kind of feel a longing for it.  What do they call that… nostalgic?  I remember a party at dry hill with some of my best friends, one of my last days at Carthage… I went to dry hill later, alone… and it was lame.  Some times even with the same people, in the same place you just can’t emulate a moment.  I’m glad Christmas is still super exciting for Adam and my sisters… at least the younger ones, but the problem is more with what I would want.  Everything I want is like 2,000 dollars and up!  But, my parents still manage to make every Christmas special for me… I really wonder how they do it.  I know kids with rich parents who spoil them to death and they spend all the money in the world on them for Christmas… and still, Christmas is not special for them.

   In case you’re wondering, yes… I know this is a fragmented entry.  I really just felt like writing as it comes out, and there are a lot of topics where that is dangerous… but this is not one of them… I hope not at least src="http://www.jamesharmer.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"> .  I also remember hanging out with Sam Gardner and Katie Gardner at the retreat… riding back in forth in the back of a truck… I am pretty sure that was illegal yeah… and I also remember staying at their house and talking for hours with Sam about the most random things.  I also remember Katie putting braids in my hair so it would look like dread locks… wow, was I ever that lame?  I still have pictures.  I also remember the Coffee house, and playing music really loud while everyone hung out.  I won’t ever be able to get those times back either…  I feel weird everytime I walk by that place.

   I also remember hanging with my best friend Tom Durham… me and him and Jarrett having a jam session on a little plastic guitar, a Cort bass… and J-Ratt playing drums on some cardboard boxes and gladware containers with TKO sticks.  And man… we made those gladware containers sound great!  I remember also… having a sheep named Fuzzy… who tried to jump up on the bus one day with me.  And dragged me down my driveway… and being laughed at.  Hmmm… it’s just strange how life changes, time really does get away.  If I take anything for granted, I am missing out.

   So right now… in late 2008 how does this apply?  Well… I guess, I should just not miss out on any opportunities during this tour.  I am getting the chance of a lifetime.  How long will it last?  I don’t know, but I am not going to take this tour for granted, I am thrilled to be doing this and will treat it as something valuable, which it is!  I don’t want to look back in 10 years and go… “Man… I really didn’t appreciate that enough.”  I want to look back with thankfullness, and I am really happy to be in this band and have this privilage of working with awesome people!  Hope to see you ALL while on tour, and Ziggy… we’ll try to make it down to Panama some time!

   For those of you who read it all… wow, that’s impressive.  I wrote this one different then usual… it’s quite fragmented and hard to follow probably.  Kinda like having a conversation with me I guess.  I could list several other memories I’ve been visiting, but there is no need to…  it would just make this longer.

With love,

-James’ 

What’s next?

Nothing profound(or long) today for you’s all!  Just one thing… that is actually infact quite profound…

GOD IS IN CONTROL, SO TRUST HIM!

That is all for spiritual things…

But, I had a weird dream last night!!  So I’ll write about that I guess…  I was in a Hi-Definition TV smuggling ring with Jamie, my sisters, Julia, Aaron and Tejla Gilles dad!  What the heck??!?  I hardly even know him, why was he there?  I don’t know!!  But he was giving us lessons in a classroom on how to do it well and not get caught, and Julia and Aaron kept on asking about the “PO PO” cause they “Can’t do another nickel!”  And Mr. Gilles assured them that we would not get caught and not to worry… this all confused me, we were in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a large City.  And this overweight old man was looking for us, and then he found us in the end!  And he was a cop, but then Jamie persuaded him to just let us keep doing it!  And he even gave us all Hi Definition TV’s!!  And said something about Ron Paul making the world a better place… yeah, I have strange dreams don’t I?!

If you chose to remember one part of this entry over the other, remember the part at the beginning… not the dream!

The moral of the story is… TRUST GOD!

-James’

Somebody else wrote this in regards to the Lakeland Revival going on right now.  I found it very interesting and post-worthy.  I have been watching the Lakeland Revival almost since the first night and find it to be amazing and honestly hard to believe… but I really do believe that it is a genuine move of God.  And I’ve also done a lot of research on Todd Bentley and find most of the criticisms to be rediculous… besides, he’s not making it about himself and that’s one thing I really like about him.

But this person makes some good points, not really criticizing the Revival at all, but giving some words of caution…  I don’t put it nearly as good as he does, it really has more to do with Revival in general rather than Lakeland.  I also don’t know if I agree with the way he words everything, but hey… when you preach something you usually preach it to the extreme end…  I believe it was Derek who I first heard say that, anyway I encourage you to give this a read.

-James’  

Wed, 28 May 2008 11:58:27 -0400

Revival Realities
by Greg Austin
 
There’s so much noise and activity coming out of Lakeland, Florida this Spring, that it would be hard to find a part of the earth that has not heard about what is being called the “outpouring.” There’s much excitement about the prospect of revival breaking out that will flood the United States and the earth with God’s glory. I pray that’s what will happen. But for a moment, please suffer me a brief stroll backwards in time.
 
I promise not to ramble, and there may actually be “gold” somewhere in the journey.
 
Fifteen years ago I was the Senior Pastor of a thriving church of 600 or 700 people. We had all the trademark evidences of success as a church; a growing membership, semi-professional sounding worship program, an increasingly well-funded missions program, nice facilities, a professional staff. I had been in “professional” ministry for twenty-two years, and felt I had a good handle on the “how tos” of pastoral ministry. You get the picture, so I’ll move along.
 
We were the picture perfect evangelical church: Except for one, glaring deficiency: We seldom, if ever witnessed what I would call a true, biblical-quality miracle of God.
 
Oh, we had our answers to prayer, our testimonies of God’s faithfulness and the occasional soul that would receive Jesus as Savior in our services.
 
But I kept noticing broken people walking into our services, hoping, praying, needing desperately for God to heal their crushed and wounded hearts. And I watched those same people file out of our meetings every Sunday without the miracles and with far less hope than they had entered with.
 
Somehow I knew that things needed to change; that I needed a fresh touch from heaven, a fresh anointing – call it whatever you will, I was growing personally desperate for God to touch me, renew me, re-energize my spirit with His Holy Spirit.
 
For two years I cried in private and increasingly in public for God’s hand to touch me again. And for two years I watched hungry and desperate people remain hungry and desperate.
 
And then on what I thought would be a typical Sunday morning, a day not unlike all the Sundays before and to come, something radical, dramatic and totally unexpected happened: God got into our midst.
 
Not that He hadn’t been there all along; but on this Sunday, God stepped in and began to take control in a way I had never known, or even known was possible. Our church began to experience a flood of God’s glory and a flood of new people. Soon, we were ministering to more than three thousand people every week. It was an incredible time.
 
I wrote about that day and the days that followed in a book entitled, “The Awakening Anointing.” Those were incredible times among our church and our city, as God began to systematically make Himself known to our region as Savior, Provider, Healer, Deliverer, Restorer and Lord.
 
We were “in revival,” we thought. Having never experienced a full-on visitation from heaven, it only required the faintest hint of a breeze for us to proclaim we were in a hurricane.
 
But God was on the move in our hearts, our families, our church and our city.
 
And then the destruction began. Sins began to appear as cracks in a perfectly laid foundation. Corruption, infidelity, deception, arrogance all began to raise their ugly heads among us, and it wasn’t long before someone proclaimed, “This can’t be God – look at all the sin this revival is producing!”
 
And it appeared that was exactly what the fruit of this “revival” would be – Sin; ugly, bold, death-incurring sin. How could God possibly be involved with something that produced spiritual death?
 
And then, for those who would listen and open their eyes, reality hit like a sledgehammer: This move of God, this touch from heaven didn’t produce sin at all – it merely exposed it!
 
We “religionists” had become adept at cloaking our sin and masking our unrighteousness. We were expert at putting on a holy front while hiding an unholy heart, and when God arrived on the scene, because He is Light, all the darkness was stripped away and we could plainly be seen for what we were – wretched pretenders to the throne of His majesty, glory and holiness.
 
Some of us survived those days (albeit through the gateway called “death”) and some did not. We saw divorces take place, jobs lost, children wounded, and whole ministries brought to destruction. And those who doubted the veracity of this “move of God” gloated, mocked and shook their (un)holy fingers at what they saw as “false revival.”
 
Only it wasn’t false. It was the real deal. Our marker for reality wasn’t the number of souls saved or bodies healed or families put back together again; our signal of authenticity was that a Holy God was dealing with transgression in His body. He was performing spiritual surgery, cutting out the cancer of sin and cleansing us from the infection of rebellion. God was “in the house” and it was house-cleaning time.
 
Today I look at so many precious lives that came through the fires of that time – having their corruption burnt out of them, they now carry with them not the stench of burnt flesh but the aroma of life. In His mercy, God dealt harshly and openly with our sins and then because of His incredible grace, He restored many of us to a better place, much lower than where we once had stood.
 
And that brings me quickly to the present, and to those who are hoping that the current stirrings around the world just may be the “Big One.” Many are using the terms “revival” and “second wave.” Some say this is the big outpouring of heaven that will gather the final harvest of souls for the King.
 
I hope that all these are correct. But please allow a very singed saint to offer one word of encouragement: If you want revival, be prepared for the results. Get to an altar and repent – I mean, honestly, fully and completely repent. The heart is desperately wicked, and none of us can know it. God must do deep heart surgery in the lives of any who will stand in the day of His visitation.
 
Once you have repented, get to anybody and everybody you’ve injured, offended, hurt or dislocated by your religious attitude or your insensitive spirit and ask for their forgiveness.

If you are living in sin – any kind of sin and any degree of sin – forsake it. Turn from your wicked ways and run fully into the heart of God.
 
When God comes into His holy temple, He will first cleanse it before He will inhabit it. His cleansing always involves death; death to self, death to sin, death to our ways, our understandings and our wants.
 
We want to hear Heaven’s call, “Come and dine.” What we hear instead is “come and die.”
 
A final word of encouragement: Death is the pathway to life. “. . . unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”