Resurrected Man walked the planet for the first time. Jesus had overcome death and now lived beyond it so that we too might see and know and feel and hear him as he comes to live in everyone who invites him to do so. That’s the heart of the Resurrection, not just that he overcame death, but that he lives inside each of us today and wants to share an even deeper relationship with each of us than he was able to by living in the flesh alongside Peter and John, and Mary and Martha.

Today millions of people will gather all over the world to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. They will sing songs and hear sermons on the Resurrection. Then too many of them will wake up tomorrow morning and live like he isn’t in the room. They won’t look for him, listen to him, or follow him. Has religion reduced the fact of the Resurrection to an icon we can celebrate once a year and still miss its very reality each day?

Religion always takes something that is real and makes an icon of it to empty it of its power. Instead of worship being the way we live under Father’s care, it’s a song service we attend. Instead of communion being a meal of rich fellowship and remembrance of him, it becomes a shot class and a dried wafer tacked onto a formal service. And instead of church being the living community of people who are encouraging each other to follow him, it is merely a weekly gathering in a building in which we are more spectator than participant.

Celebrating the icon is not at all the same as embracing the reality. The Resurrection of Jesus is not best celebrated in fancy-dress religious gatherings, but in waking up each morning with an eye and an ear turned toward the Living Jesus who wants to make himself known in you today and lead you into the ever-increasing freedom and joy of knowing him.

When truth gives way to icon, it’s best to reclaim the Truth again even if that means abandoning the icon. He is risen indeed and because of that I am not alone today to fend for myself in my sins, doubts, trials, or fears. He is with me and I with him today, and he is making all things new!

As I look out my window in every vista I see winter giving way to spring—-the daffodil and forsythia are in bloom, the tender shoots on my vines are just starting to swell. Rarely does my own spiritual season match the one outside. This year it may. I have been through a long winter season spiritually, drawing into a quiet place to let the Father cut back the myriad of opportunities that confronted me to the few, simple things he has asked me to do well. I am more settled on what that is and excited to let go of those things that will be no longer be fruitful for me.

I’m not ready to talk about all of that yet. There’s still some clarity yet to come. But it seems like the perfect time to share with you the next chapter from my latest book, In Season: Embracing the Father’s Process of Fruitfulness. If you haven’t read them earlier, you can read earlier parts of the book here:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2.

Chapter 3: The Seasons of the Vineyard

There is a time for everything, and a season
for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot.
Ecclesiastes 3:1

Who led you to believe that every day should bring a harvest, or that fruitfulness is borne out of days of great joy and ease?

Those who do not understand the life cycle of a vineyard seek to live in the illusion that all days should be the same, that life should be one continuous harvest, or that a life of blessing is a life free of challenge and pain. They grow easily frustrated when their circumstances don’t fit their carefully laid plans, as if God and heaven have conspired against the journey.

But there is no way to comprehend life in a vineyard without an appreciation for the seasons that govern its life and the process God uses to bring a vine to fruitfulness. It takes all four seasons to bring a harvest. One is not more important than the other; each has a purpose in the glorious process. Without the bitter cold of winter, the branch cannot be pruned. Without the hot days of summer, the fruit will not ripen.

My computer works the same whether it’s a January morning or a July afternoon. If I type, it responds. But that’s not true of the grapevines growing on the hillside beyond my window. For them the seasons make all the difference. Winter gives way to an explosion of spring, spring to the overbearing summer, summer to the gentle autumn, autumn to winter’s chill. It has been so since that first dawn and it will continue until the last. Our globe circles the sun with a spectacular tilt that lets the sun be shared in the course of a year over the widest possible area of the globe. This carefully chosen orbit produces in each hemisphere an unending cycle of seasons. As the sun spreads its beams over the Northern Hemisphere we experience the hot days of summer, while the southern part of our globe endures winter. Our days are longer, theirs shorter. But in June the sun begins its southern retreat. Our days diminish in length as theirs grow. As much as people love the days of summer, winter is no less important to the fruitfulness of the vine.

At every moment, what the farmer does in the vineyard is dependent upon these seasons. If he tries to gather grapes in spring he will find only the smallest beginnings of a harvest yet to come. No one will eat these grapes. If he tries to prune in summer he will only destroy the vine he cares for. The seasons control everything the farmer does in his vineyard. Anyone who has walked with God for any length of time recognizes that God works with us at different times in different ways. At some moments our lives seem to bubble over with joy and ease. At every turn we see God’s hand moving, and when we open the Scriptures the words seem to leap off the page with insight and meaning.

At other times the joy we experience is far deeper as we endure painful or distressing circumstances. During such times recognizing God’s voice is not easy. Needs press us from all sides. We may find ourselves repenting far more often than rejoicing. If we don’t understand God’s working in seasons, we’ll make the mistake of assuming that the moments of euphoria are what Christianity is meant to be, and anything less is proof of his displeasure.

Look at the life of Jesus. His life was marked by seasons when he was overjoyed and by those when he was deeply troubled, only able to offer up “prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears.” We see him in crowded moments with great numbers of people clamoring for his attention, and at others alone on the hillside taking time to be alone with his Father. We see him making wine for a young couple’s wedding, and later driving out moneychangers from the temple.

Jesus was not afraid to embrace the changing spiritual seasons of his life and those around him. He didn’t follow a rigid code that could direct him through every circumstance he faced. Rather, he flowed with whatever he saw his Father doing, responsive in each moment to his purpose in ever-changing situations. We would do well to follow his lead. Our spiritual growth demands an ever-changing climate where God’s work is tailor-made to our present circumstances. The sun does not control these seasons. They are controlled by the Father as he spurs us toward fruitfulness. These seasons will bring us a healthy balance of both joyful and challenging moments, of diligent effort and renewing rest.

Each season offers something that the vine needs for its continued growth. Spring brings the needed rain and softened days to help stimulate growth without crushing it in the searing heat. Summer offers enough sun to bring the grapes to maturity. Autumn offers the opportunity for harvest undaunted by rain and a chance for the vine to restore itself before winter. Finally, winter brings a much-needed rest and the opportunity to restage the vine for a new season of fruitfulness. Without these changing seasons there would be no fruit.

The same is true for our spiritual journeys. Fruitfulness emerges out of God’s process to shape our lives for his purpose through our daily struggles. We aren’t always meant to live in the joy of harvest. Fruit matures in the difficult days of challenge and perseverance. If we don’t understand these shifting seasons we’ll find ourselves fighting God’s work instead of embracing it.

Faulty religion teaches people that their efforts can induce God to fill their lives with comfort and favor. If we do good, pray the right way, or work the disciplines hard enough we can get God to do what we want. Without saying it overtly, religion seeks to teach people that they can manipulate God to do their will. Those who believe this lie end up in despair when their circumstances don’t change the way they want. They think either God is failing them or that they just can’t do what it takes to please him.

To engage God’s process of fruitfulness we should spend far less effort trying to change our circumstances; and thus we will find far more freedom in learning to respond to God as we go through them. What he shapes in us becomes far more important than our own comfort. Each season we will receive something needed for continued growth. If we could remain in any one season continually fruit would never grow. By responding to God in whatever season we’re in, we can embrace his work and we can let go of even those things we love when the seasons shift. All of it is part of making us fruitful.

We can enjoy the benefits each season brings and also endure in the challenges for the greater work in our lives. And each has its challenges. The dangers brought on by weeds and invading insects can be overcome, but they cannot be resisted. Without the pruning of winter and the discipline of spring, nothing will grow. The same is true of the long, hot days of summer that ripen the fruit.

Jesus’ example on the cross teaches us that life can be celebrated in the midst of pain. Not all suffering is harmful. It can produce the very fruit that brings great pleasure to the Father. Though he never delights in those things that hurt us, he does realize how necessary some of them are to bring us into the fullness of his glory.

We will begin our journey in spring and continue to walk through the vineyard in its various seasons. As we see what the vine is going through, we’ll look for parallels in our spiritual lives. Seeing God’s hand through these moments will leave us more equipped to recognize his working in us and less anxious trying to get God to change our circumstances to make us more comfortable.

As we begin however, let me highlight one important distinction between seasons in the vineyard and seasons in our lives. In the vineyard, all vines endure the same climatic realities together. They are all pruned in the winter, cultivated in the spring and summer, and harvested in the fall. You will soon discover that this is not true of our spiritual lives. God deals with each branch on the vine individually, giving special care to its own unique growth. And since our seasons are not controlled by external elements of our environment, they may not line up with anyone else around us. I may be enduring the restaging of winter while someone near me is enjoying the fun of harvest.

That is why Scripture warns us repeatedly not to compare ourselves to others, and why when we do, we end up confused (2 Corinthians 10:12). Often when we compare ourselves with someone else, we compare the best thing going on in his life with the worst going on in ours. Instead of looking at the rest and refreshment that God brings through my spiritual winter, I instead focus on the circumstances that surround it: diminished activity and fresh wounds from the recent pruning. When looking at the person who is in the middle of a fruitful harvest, I highlight their joy and acclaim, and forget the risk and cutting that go on in those days as well. What is even more ironic in this scenario is that while a wintering branch may covet the harvest, the branches in the busyness of harvest will long for the peace and serenity of winter!

All of God’s branches would be far better served if they stopped looking around for something better and instead embraced the present work of God.

God is always working. Jesus assured us of that (John 5:17). It may not seem like it sometimes, since we may have missed his hand in the distractions or challenges we’re facing, or because he isn’t doing what we think he should be doing. Instead of comparing or complaining, I am better off looking for the way God is working in my life at that moment. That’s the key to walking with God. He determines the seasons of our lives, such as when to prune, when to feed, or when to harvest our fruit. We are his followers, and he wants to teach you how to follow him.

___________________

This is Chapter 2 of my new book, In Season: Embracing the Father’s Process for Fruitfulness. Copyright 2011 by Wayne Jacobsen and used by permission. Available from Lifestream.org

What’s more, he was at the Sundance Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and happened to sit next to a screenwriter he didn’t know who happened to be reading that book. What are the odds of that? So, we are discussing having her take first pass at the screen play and she wants to work collaboratively with me in making sure we get the story right. Pretty cool. We are moving slowly here, so don’t expect a constant stream of updates. He’s already involved in a movie now and is thinking this might be “what’s next” for him.

As part of our dialog, however, he shared an illustration with me that I loved. He shared that one of the greatest challenges that people face on this journey is that they gt caught up in trying to sort out college level and beyond concepts and ideas, when we haven’t even begun to focus on or even master 3rd and 4th grade material:

“For instance”, he said, “one of the biggest lessons that Christ gave, I believe, is to ‘First take the plank (or log) out of your (own) eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from you brother’s eye.” If we were all to focus on just this one lesson, I believe the world would be a much different place. A lot of our fights seem to occur at the college level material and beyond. While it’s fun and even worth while to question whether Heaven is ‘this’ or ‘that’ or whether the afterlife is like ‘this’ or like ‘that,’ it’s like trying to fully understand calculus without any knowledge of algebra. Once you learn algebra your relationship and understanding of the words that describe calculus change, evolve and take on different meaning. So trying to understand the spiritual with only the religious or the heart with only the intellect or the experiential with only the concrete can be provide quite the difficulties.”

I’ve thought about it a lot sense. I used to have a profound curiosity about the great theological questions of eternity, eschatology, and God’s sovereignty. I have found over the last few years that my growing engagement with Father has lessened my hunger to sort out those things, or even to engage in the ongoing debates about them. Spiritually I’m still in the third grade trying to understand how to love the people around me each day in the same way I am loved by Father. And I am loving that. There’s a reason Jesus passed over the disciples’ incessant questioning on such matters. “No one knows the date but the Father himself.”

If that’s spiritual calculus, and I’m still years away from spiritual algebra, then I don’t have to waste my time figuring out those things that are best left to him. That’s why in The Jesus Lens, I talked about being certain where Scripture is certain, and being ambiguous where Scripture is ambiguous. I know that isn’t easy, especially when someone in spiritual first grade is expounding on their theological convictions and you find it a turn-off. You might feel embarrassed that they seem to know something you don’t know until you realize that they don’t know it either. And their need to convince you how right they are is all the proof you need to know they aren’t really sure themselves.

Let’s learn to live loved-—by him, and then out of that love with others. If we learn to do that well, who knows we might someday get into a bit of algebra!

He invited us to follow him, not follow a set of rules or rituals. We can only do that where a growing relationship with him is helping us begin to sense his whispers in our hearts and his nudges toward the people or things he wants us to engage, and those we can pass by without obligation. The longer I walk this journey the more clearly I see that daily following him defies any set of guidelines we try to force on any particular situation.

I know some will take that too far and toss out any principles of righteous behavior that will help us see and test what he is saying to us. I wouldn’t go that far. Principles of love, kindness, justice, and grace give us a moral compass in which we can recognize his impulses in our lives. Having a righteous heart will mean we won’t cheat on someone we love, we won’t gossip to tear down another person, we won’t lie just to get something we want, and we won’t betray close friends in our own self-interest. We are willing to do the difficult thing, rather than the easy thing. We’d rather give up our lives that manipulate someone away from there. Morality matters. Those who live without a moral compass easily justify the most obscene behaviors for their own personal gain and leave in their wake a host of broken hearts. What’s more, they won’t even care about those people so sold are they on their own personal happiness or survival.

But those principles alone will not tell us what to do today. The problem with trying to live a life by Godly principles alone is that you arbitrarily try to implement something that is true into a situation where it does not fit.

Many does not live by bread alone, but by every word that God breathes. Don’t look for another program to tell you how to live. Stop trying to find the principle to apply in your situation today that will turn the tide on your relationship with your spouse or kids, or bring you the life you hope to have. Instead, find those things that stir your heart to know him and in knowing him to recognize the smallest breath of a whisper he puts in your heart. Follow him today, as best you sense him and that will be enough.

I love what he wrote and as I looked at the picture I, too was captured by it and reminded that God’s purposes in the world are so much bigger than any of us. Who of us can cap the great force of his love or direct its flow. We certainly don’t control it and dare not presume to claim ownership of anything God does in or through our lives. All that’s good in the world is simply God’s life and love spilling over onto kids, in whom he delights. Is it not enough that we simply revel with him in the moment, and not be tempted into thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think?

This may be what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) Participating with God in our world has less to do with personal achievement, but simply being willing to watch for the flow of his love, and play in that reality as circumstances unfold around us. There’s great hope and peace in that.

To all those who read these pages, to our friends and fellow-travelers around the world, we are so grateful for the lives God has linked us to around the world. May you spend treasured days with loved ones, and laughter and joy enough to fill your heart. May you know the riches of his love and the joy of friendship from others on this journey as you celebrate the most awesome act of God in his Creation—sending his Son among us to redeem the world from its enslavement to darkness.

A light came into the world, and we have beheld his glory! And one day his kingdom will triumph over all.

May you and yours have a joyful and peaceful Christmas and a blessed new year.

This has not been an easy journey and it didn’t end up where either of us thought it would, but it has ended up in real freedom and life. This is part of an email he sent to me the other day:

Dear Wayne,

Father is so good as I can sense that through His love and patience he taught me about just relaxing in to His love. I really can’t explain it, but through this long and sometimes seemingly brutal process, I have experienced His faithfulness and love. I’m okay each day, and enjoy each day.

Over these last 10 years I’ve been kinda expecting Father to bring restoration. A restoration of a new wife and family, a home, my finances, job, etc. Well, He hasn’t done that, but I believe He has brought a spiritual restoration. Now this is what I can’t really explain. In the simplicity of my life—-one day at a time, one moment at a time–it is filled with laughter and the security of His love and faithfulness.

I have been working part time at Home Depot now for almost a year now. Father has provided this job and I know it is what He has for me now. I am renting a room fairly close to work, and have been blessed with some amazing friends who are “church” to me. It makes me laugh, because I see many things differently than they do as we are quite diverse. I understand that Father is pulling me into being with those who passionately love Him and seek Him, even as they are at different places in their journey. I mean really, Father? I know I’m supposed to be with them right now and it just makes me laugh. They are passionately studying the “Torah”, and doing the Messianic Jewish thing. Really??? Yes… really.

Right now my life consists of going to work and coming back to my room and getting to spend time with Father. Very restful. A reclusive hermit (smile). I’m getting the sense that a lot of things are happening around us, and some amazing things are about to happen. In fact the sense is very strong. And a lot of what I’m seeing and experiencing seem to support this. However I reserve the right to be totally wrong. I’m comfortable to wait and watch what unfolds.

There are a lot of things I would like to do other than being a part-time flooring assistant at Home Depot, but Father will reveal what His agenda for my life is in time. I’m thinking all that I’ve gone through is getting me preparing me for the next step in His plans. In the meantime, I’m just enjoying each day that He gives me, rejoicing in the simple things. this has been very humbling, but freeing. I find I don’t have to prove anything anymore. So I’m a “failure” in life. Yes, and so what? I’m poor, yes, and your point is? I no longer have to compete. I can just be me. Beloved son of my Abba. No one fights to be least and last. It’s freedom. Really gaining my identity as the adopted beloved child of God. I used to talk about this but it becomes more of a reality when all the other things that I could base my identity were gone. Status, career, reputation, education, intellectualism, and being a “spiritual kind of guy”. When I come to the end of myself, I’m free to be just “His Beloved Child”.

Not sure what tomorrow brings, other than I go to work, allow the Holy Spirit to live in me, love those around me, and do what He has put in front of me–one day at a time. He is faithful. Deep down I used to wonder what I was doing wrong that my life has been the way it has. Maybe when I get “it”, then I’ll get all the stuff that will make me satisfied and happy. I think I’m finally beginning to get that when you know His love, it can be enough. One day at a time. I can trust His leading, because He is faithful. I sure enjoyed the interview with Mike Steele. Really related to it.

Anyway…. I’m looking forward to where He leads next, and who I get to see next. Looking forward to when Abba crosses our paths. It’s always fun.

No, you don’t have to lose everything to learn to live loved, but when you do lose everything, isn’t it nice to know a love deeper than our circumstances. I’m so blessed at where this friend has landed through a very rocky journey.

I heard from another old friend a few days ago. He told a very painful story of the last few years of their journey, which involved some legal hassles and starting a new business and then losing it. He went back to school in his late 50s to learn a new vocation and now works at a hospital. As I commiserated with him about all he had lost and could not even imagine how he was coping with his new job, he said, “You know, with all we’ve been through and how unfair it was, I know today that I am exactly where God wants me and I couldn’t be happier.”

Wow! Love that! Joy rarely resides in getting what we want, but in finding his purposes unfolding in the reality of our lives. If we look for him in our unfolding lives rather than withdrawing into the cocoon of our own frustration or bitterness, God has some extraordinary things under his sleeve.

I got to the airport early and have free-wifi at Wichita. (Thank you, Wichita. No one should charge $8.00 for a one-hour connection. Highway robbery!) Anyway, I’ve been reflecting on Steve Jobs recently. The founder of Apple and its high-profile CEO died on Wednesday. I have been a dedicated user of Apple products through my entire computing life. I have savored how his innovations made my writing so much easier. And I have watched him give speeches of new products to see if they were going to be of further help to me. I felt a sadness in my own heart when I heard of his passing.

If you haven’t already heard his 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford University, you might enjoy giving it a listen. I have no idea what kind of faith journey he was on, but so much of what he said that day resonates deeply with me. Even on that date he knew he had pancreatic cancer and it was probably going to shorten his lifespan significantly. He died this week at 56.

During his Standford commencement speech he talked about dropping out of college, of being cheated out of Apple by some of his best friends and how it came back to him later. He had some marvelous things to say about overcoming even the unfaithfulness of others to flourish in that which your heart draws you toward. When I read this, I don’t so much think of my heart and what I want, but I did think of the dreams God has planted there and how easily we let ourselves be talked out of his purpose in us by those who think in the box of human intellect.

I posted part of this speech previously in a blog a long, long time ago. I wanted to post some of it again today. Here’s how that speech ended:

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.”

“It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.“

You can read or hear the entire speech here. Good stuff!

The first is from a former pastor and his wife that went through a very difficult season that is not as uncommon as some might think:

My husband and I experienced the proverbial “boot” from the church he pastored three years ago. The issue interestingly, was that he taught everything from a foundation of grace. A handful of “reformed types” who saw that as dangerous, found a way to accuse him of something …. etc, etc … you know the story. Overnight, our whole family’s reputation was destroyed, and we were excommunicated.

A week after our lives were suddenly turned upside down, a friend brought over your book, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore and we also discovered your podcast and listen to it regularly.

I know you’ve heard these stories a thousand times. The point I want to make is that you and Brad have “accompanied” us on this amazing journey. You clearly articulate so many things that we believe and teach and live … yet haven’t always had a clear way to express. A few weeks back you spoke about your experience with your former church. You called it a dying. We looked at each other and smiled. That is exactly what we have called our experience. A painful but wonderful death to having a good reputation, a “fruitful” ministry, being liked by many, the ability to provide for our family, being understood and believed in, and so on. We have remained in our little town, where we are seen as unrepentant people who have done something horrible (but nobody really understands what it is), so we are to be excluded from “fellowship.”

Jesus has abundantly provided for us materially. But best of all, He is never satisfied with death. He has brought so much new life in the place of those things that have died… and that needed to die. These past three years have been one of the most significant gifts that Jesus has given us. As deeply painful as it has been, His nearness, tender care, and love have been deeper still. We are so very grateful.

The second is from someone who had been an active volunteer in a larger congregation and found God inviting them to a bit of a different journey:

e have been in a good place for a long time. We experience Father’s love and freedom and we are delightfully learning how to love the people he puts in front of us each day. That expands out to the neighbors we never knew because we were too busy running off to our big church where we were grossly overworked.

That freedom to love has also expanded out to the people we work with. People we used to see only as people that happen to work for the same company we see now as walking the same journey, just at different places in the journey. We enjoy meeting new people and discovering the treasure that is hidden of who they are and the unique way Father has gifted them, it is fun to dig in and get to know them and understand how they perceive their life’s journey so far and where they think it is going. We are just quietly living in freedom and loving it.

In the confines of religious obligation, freedom looks incredibly scary. But from those who walk away from its bondage and lies, I continue to hear of a full and free life ahead in spacious places. We were never meant to find our security in the structures or expectations of men, but in the gracious love of an incredible Father.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15).

Of all the discoveries in my life over the past 15 years, none has meant more and none has been more powerful in reshaping my life. I am blessed to find God as a tender Father through the twist and turns of my journey in this age. Instead of being frustrated at him when he doesn’t give me what I want or trying to find the right prayer or bargain for God to give me what I think is best, I am finding the joy of simply learning to trust him as a tender Father.

I resonate with John’s words:

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” I John 4:13

I can imagine John in his twilight years reflecting on his entire spiritual journey in that simple phrase. I hope when I am older I am able to say with the same sense of resolve. As for now, I am simply learning this reality each day. There are some places in my life where I live truly loved, and their are other spaces in my heart that struggle to believe it’s true. At the end of my days, I’d want to say them with such finality as he did here. To trust God as my Abba, puts him in every situation with me and even in the difficult ones he doesn’t fix the way I want, I know he is never against me. Even when in sternness he disciplines me to live more freely in him, or asks of me more than I think I have to give, it is my Abba behind it all and that makes it easier to submit to his ways.

A big part of God’s instruction to me in this arena has been in my emotions and love for my own children, and now for my growing brood of grandchildren. i can’t believe how much I loved them, right from birth. I love the relationship I have with each of them and how much they enjoy being with their grandpa. I know the tenderness I want them to feel in me, and the fierceness that would protect them at all costs. A year or so ago, my daughter took the above picture of me when I was so deep in a conversation with Aimee that I wasn’t even aware that her mom was taking pictures. When I saw it the first time, my heart leapt. It has become the picture that illustrates “Abba” for me–a child quietly at rest in the arms of someone she completely trusts.

Last week as Sara and I were returning home from a vacation in the nearby Sierras, we stopped to have lunch with some long-time friends. As we walked into their dining room she directed my attention to the wall on which hung her watercolor adaptation of that picture. It took my breath way. They said it was a gift and we returned home to hang it on our wall.

Here it is:

Every time I look at not only do I get to celebrate that special bond that Aimee and I share, but even more special is the reminder that the God who made heaven and earth delights in being my Abba. There is no safer place to be, even at my worst, than on his lap, wrapped in his incredible love. There every difficult thing in my life fades in the absolute wonder of who he is and the relationship he wants to keep carving out with me.

And that is as true for every one of you reading these words.

“You don’t remember,” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

” As you hugged her you whispered, ‘I love the mess you’re in.’”

Now I remembered. It was only a passing comment, but somehow it had found a receptive heart. I really enjoyed this couple and their courage to follow Jesus even though some of their friends couldn’t understand the journey they were on. Many wanted the husband to quit his vocation and be their pastor, but he had refused, preferring them to follow Jesus and love each other rather than be managed by him. So their decision wasn’t popular and had caused some to begin to look down on them.

I love those kinds of messes. No, they are not fun, but messes created by our following Jesus are good messes to be in. He does wonderful things in our hearts even through the faulty judgments of others. Other messes, created by our own selfishness, failings, or arrogance aren’t such good messes. Oh, Jesus redeems us in the midst of them too, but I don’t love them so much.

That’s why some messes are better than others. Some storms you sail into because you’re lost, trying to save yourself and that takes a lot of rescue and rebuilding. I’m blessed Jesus does that. Other storms come up as we are following him, and while we don’t necessarily enjoy the mess, we can rest knowing it isn’t one of our own choosing.

Saying goodbye has not been easy and the hole her passing left in our home is a huge one even though this has been a long time coming. Her health has been fading for some time and before every trip I took this last year, I’ve told her goodbye, not expecting to have her here when I returned. But she somehow kept hanging on. Finally on Sunday she literally could not take another step. Tears well up in my eyes whenever I think of her, which I do a lot. I used to try to run from grief by ignoring its cause. Now days I embraced it as a counterpoint to times of joy. The grief I have at Sierra’s passing is only because she was such a treasured part of our lives for so long. I’ve concluded that grief is good. It is part of saying goodbye and it is incredibly healing. And the love of many of our dear friends who appreciate our loss has been helpful as well.

Yesterday I received an email from a dear friend whose family is going through some grief of their own. He was on staff at a fellowship that over the last four years, at the Lord’s direction, has been dismantling all the structures that defined their life. Recently they sold the building and held their last gathering there over the weekend. He mentioned how sad how children and wife were, that there were so many great memories attached to that location. I get that! It’s wonderful to have so many memories of good times with God’s people. Saying goodbye doesn’t always mean something is wrong, but that it’s time has come to an end, and new possibilities await.

I know it is rough to let go of something or someone we deeply loved or enjoyed, whether it was our choice to lay it down or death ripped it from our hands. We can be sad leaving wonderful things behind, but that doesn’t have to deter us from pressing on to what Father has next for us. People who live to avoid future sorrow miss out on so much of life. Our joys today may well turn into the losses of tomorrow, but those same losses open up space for new things and new relationships to come into our lives.

I remember when our first dog died 21 years go. I swore I’d never get another dog, that the pain of losing her wasn’t worth it. I’ve been through this enough times to know that the joys far outweigh the pain. Not only will we embrace the pain of losing Sierra, but we went to see a litter of golden retrievers last night and picked out a new puppy to grace the Jacobsen home. She’s only four weeks old, so we won’t get her for a couple of weeks, but we’re already preparing to add her to our family.

Life goes on. A new chapter opens, a new pup becomes part of our heritage, and the empty space Sierra left will be filled. The new one won’t replace Sierra, we will still have her memories in our heart, but we are ready to make some new ones, too. If our first dog hadn’t died, we’d never have had Sierra, and I wouldn’t have missed her for the world.

Perhaps the greatest danger to our journey is not the difficult times but the good ones. They invite us to pitch our tent where God only invited us to pass through. Some try so hard to hold on to their past, or are so hurt when things change, that they resist change as a bad thing. Grief is a great thing. It’s part of celebrating a treasure and letting go of it. Then we are able to walk on into the future knowing all not lost and that God still has some wonderful things to share with us as the journey continues.

And for you dog-lovers, someone sent me this clip. It’s a great reminder that God put dogs on the planet to reflect a bit of himself to us!

I thought about this book the other day as people are still trying to find that small, special Christmas gift for a good friend that will warm their heart into the new year. Rainbows In My Eyes just might fight the bill for some of you, too. By clicking on that link above you can read my thoughts on her book and even some examples of her poetry.

Now, I know some of you are scared of poetry, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed here. But through the Christmas holidays we are offering this book at a special discount price. Normally $10.50, we are offering it for $8.00 plus postage. Unless you’re planning to order priority mail, however, you might want to order yours this week if you want to use it as a Christmas gift. You will find this book either an inspiring and wonderful read for yourself, or a wonderful gift to give to a friend. not just this season, but any time you have a loved one sorting out their walk with God in a dark season.

Yesterday morning I was a pretty sick puppy. My daughter, Julie, had come to bring our granddaughter over for Sara to watch while she volunteers a few hours at her older child’s kindergarten. When she got to school she told Aimee that Grandpa was pretty sick. Aimee felt bad for me. Later, Julie noticed Aimee feverishly working at the craft table during some of her free time. My daughter wondered could she be doing with such intensity. When she went over to look, Aimee told her that she was making a card for Grandpa because she wanted him to feel better. Did I ever!

My daughter brought the heart-shaped, orange card to me after school when she came to pick up Lindsay. She told me the story of Aimee thinking up the idea and making the card on her own. Amazing. I stood in awe that my granddaughter in the midst of her school day would even think to try to make me a card. The drawings on it and the plea to “Grandpa, feel better,” touched a deep place in my soul. Tears of absolute wonder and joy began to pool in my eyes. Of course, I would get better. Aimee wants me to.

You can see the front and back of her card here. You couldn’t sell this card in any store in America, but Hallmark has never printed the card of more exquisite beauty or more touching a message. You see, it is not the quality of the card that defines the one who gives it. It’s the quality of the one giving it that brings beauty and meaning to the card.

I think the same is true of our lives, especially in relationship with God. Religious obligation led us to believe that our worthiness to God derived from the quality of work we can do, the gifts we can give, or the heights we can achieve. Jesus taught us something different. Because we are already special to God, even our most immature and faltering attempts bring great joy to his heart. The gift doesn’t qualify the giver; the giver qualifies the gift.

That’s why Aimee’s card is a treasure to me. It represents the best gift she could give at this stage of her life and growth. I’m sure a card she’ll give me when she’s 15 or 24 will look quite different indeed. They will be special in their own way as well, but how could they be more special than this one even if the artwork is better, the cut lines cleaner, or the handwriting more fanciful?

By the same token I’ve known husbands to give extravagant gifts to their wise as a substitute for not loving them over the course of the day. Because the life it comes from is empty, so is the gift even if it is costly. It’s how we live and love that matters most, to God and others. It’s not the size or cost of the gift we bring; it’s what it expresses about the life behind it.

I will treasure this card for a long time! It has six-year-old Aimee pouring out of ever cut, letter, and sketch. It connects me to the one I love so deeply and with whom I share a wonderful grandpa-granddaughter relationship. When I see her card it warms my heart with her love, and it reminds me that God’s not evaluating today how good my efforts compare to anyone else’s. He’s just thrilled that they celebrate the growing bond between us, and they are what I can offer him today taking into account where I am on this journey.

Where’s the Christmas thought in all of this? Don’t get caught up in gift-giving as if your gift has to be good enough to earn their love. If they don’t already, no gift will change their mind longer than for a few moments. And if they already love you it won’t matter what the gift is because they will care about the friendship most of all.

By no means do I attain all of this in every situation, but these statements describe how I’m learning to live inside his love for me. Please don’t think of these as a set of obligations to follow, but as the space that defines the freedom Jesus invites you to live in. Obligation will not produce this. Only by learning to live loved will we be free enough to sense his heart in our unfolding circumstances and be able to treat people with honor and grace.

• Be yourself, no more and no less. Pretense is not your friend and deceit darkens your own soul.
• Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Follow through on your word, even if you regret giving it.
• Put relationships above things. Be kind and gracious to everyone, especially those you don’t think deserve it.
• Live at the intersection of authenticity and compassion. You don’t owe everyone all you know, but make sure that what you do share is honest while it also gives grace to the hearer. Remember character is measured by how you treat people with kindness when you’re absolutely sure they are in the wrong.
• Unless people are harassing or abusing you, you are better off hearing them out and working through their pain rather than cutting them off to protect yourself. Only those who want to hide in the darkness, cast aside relationships just because they become difficult. The best relationships are won through difficulties and misunderstandings.

It makes life so much easier when you treat people kindly, honor your own words, and trust that God is bigger than any mistake you can make. That’s a list of the things I’ve been thinking about. Feel free to add to it if you have other simple statements of what it’s like to live in God’s love toward others.

Whatever you are facing today, no matter how difficult or tragic, it is so much smaller than the One who loves you and who is at work even in the pain to dislodge you from a false confidence in your own capabilities and invite you to a deeper place inside his grace and power.

I love this reminder from I Peter 3:22 in the language of THE MESSAGE:

Jesus has the last word on everything and everyone, from angles to armies. He’s standing right alongside God and what he says goes!

Jesus may not have the last word on it today, but he will! Our lives are not at the mercy of the flesh of others, or even the capricious events of a fallen world. We live at times in the middle of a chapter, before his work is revealed and life rises out of the darkness. But it is a gift to live there too, not by well-worked biblical strategies for dealing with crises, but by taking each moment as it comes and following whatever light he puts to your path.

Sometimes it is simply enduring in the unfolding circumstance, until his glory comes!

This is the child who grows up genuinely loved by her father. He takes great delight in her and treats her with great affection. But as she grows she begins to ask things of him that he knows will only hurt her. When he expresses his concerns and his regret over not being able to give in to her, she grows increasingly frustrated. Soon she is even questioning whether he even loves her anymore, or ever did.

As that plays on her mind she begins to see his every act of affection through her jaded eyes and concludes he only acts like he loves her to get what he wants. Now his acts of affection are dismissed as tools of manipulation. Her disappointment grows and eventually gives way to anger. Now she no longer asks, she demands. And when she doesn’t get her way, she pouts.

What she wants has now become more important than the relationship and she begins to unravel it by blaming him for the problem. She’s fine. In her mind, her desires have become “needs” and his refusal to help her only proves what an uncaring person he has become. She ends up saying horrendous things to him and about him to her friends, all to justify her own bitterness and anger.

The father knows better. Her words sting, but he knows they aren’t true. Even in the face of her anger and manipulation he responds with sorrow not anger. He knows she is sliding into the dark space of her own selfishness where lies will rule the day and he is now powerless against her false accusations. No mater what he does, she will only belittle him and dismiss his attempts to affirm is love to her. There is no greater bondage than believing your own lies to be the truth. Even Jesus warned us that when our “light” is really darkness, there is no greater darkness!

Eventually another comes along who promises to meet all her “needs”, and do for her what her father has refused to do. Of course he only does it to get what he wants from her, but she thinks she has found true love. At the beginning she gets what she wants and turns her back on the dad who loves her to follow the boyfriend who only wants to use her.

Of course, over time his motives become evident as he becomes more demanding of her. He pampers her less and abuses her more. He was just exploiting her needs to fulfill his wants and as that reality sinks in she slides into despair. The freedom she thought he offered, only turns out to be a prison of her own making.

What can she do now? She’s too scared to leave him and in her mind has no where else to go. She knows now that she’s made the poorest of choices, but has she burned so many bridges that she has no choice now but to keep on her course no matter how painful? In her honest moments, however, her heart longs for home. She’s too embarrassed and scared to face the father she rejected so brutally.

She’s sure her father hates her now, but she doesn’t know she’s only projecting her emotion on him. This is actually the moment, if she takes the risk, that she can discover how amazing true love really is,

What she doesn’t know yet is that her father still longingly looks out of his window every day hoping against hope that this will be the day she comes home. His heart was broken by her choices, but they made him neither angry with her nor ashamed of her. He only wants her to come home. The moment he sees her coming down the road, he’ll burst through the front door with great joy and rush to her side, welcoming her back inside the affection he had only grown in her absence.

Here’s the truth: You can always go back to the place where you were truly loved and find yourself smack dab in the middle of the affection you may have spurned before. True love always prevails over failure.

I read Psalm 78 this morning, and that is its theme. Regardless of how faithless Israel was, God was ready to draw them into his love whenever they made the slightest turn toward him—and even at times when they didn’t!

I feel like I’m meeting my Dad for the first time!

My wife’s best friend is a real-life Jerry Springer show. She hadn’t been talking to her dad for a few years, bad situation. He’s a pretty terrible guy. Anyway, she found out a month ago that he isn’t her actual dad, and that her real dad has been trying to find her for 22 years, ever since the one-night stand that produced her. He has prayed for her non-stop since coming to know Jesus along the way.

Once he found her, he and his family immediately came to from a long distance to meet his daughter. She has a new dad! Just like that, everything she thought to be true about her father was completely WRONG and she had a dad! And her newborn, their first, now has a grandfather! Beautiful.

What a story, and I love his take-away from it!. Many of us have been taught that the God of the Bible is a mean, demanding, angry taskmaster and that if we don’t please him horrible things will happen to us. Try as we might to please him, we were never good enough and we end up feeling rejected and all alone. But that isn’t your Father. That’s someone masquerading as him to abuse your love, devour your joy, and destroy your life.

The Father who is really your Father has been searching for you all your life long. He has been closer than your breath, only you may have missed him with all the pretenders. Stop long enough to behold the Father who has always had great affection for you. That’s beautiful too!

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.”

Ralph W. Sockman

I saw that go by by eyes a few days ago and was really touched by it. Ralph W. Sockman was a Methodist minister in New York City and had an NBC radio program. He died in 1970.

Blessings all! Live gently in the world! There’s enough pain as it is without our adding to it.

John Lynch is one of the author’s of Bo’s Cafe, one of the best books I’ve read about sorting through brokenness in a marriage through a real engagement with grace. Last Friday as he was going out the door to do a wedding, he posted this on his Facebook status, even though it was up only briefly.

“I perform another wedding tonight. I always wish I could show a DVD of what is coming up. How they’ll deeply hurt each other, selfishly try to win, blaming the other for how their life is not working, how they’ll want to run… until devastated, they each call out to God and learn to trust this new life He’s given them. Then they’ll begin to protect, love and enjoy each other. He adores them. He’ll make it happen.”

I think I understood why he pulled it off. That’s not the kind of picture you want for a wedding night, but it is nonetheless true! Sara and I feel something similar every time we see a young young couple installed as the new associate/youth/singles pastor on staff at a large church. They are so excited to be offered the opportunity; they have no idea how brutally they will get hurt in that process.

But the greatest hurts of all are marriage hurts, I’m sure, and finding a way for both to put the other first is a process often laced with pain. Perhaps marriage is the first relationship where our selfishness really comes into play because you can’t hide yourself 24 hours a day. It’s probably a good thing none of us knew how much pain would be involved or else we probably wouldn’t go down that track and learn what we needed to know to find real freedom. Only when we finally come to the end of our ways and realize that even if we can manipulate people into giving us what we want or think we deserve, it will still not bring happiness.

But there is hope. Did you see it at the end of John’s lament? Through all the selfishness, pain, lies, and manipulation God can still win us into the space where true love flourishes and true life begins. If you’re in the middle of the pain, call out to him. Embrace his love for you and ask him to teach you not how to get others to love you, but how you can truly love others. It’s too bad most people only hear it when they are finally broken and desperate, but even there is a great place to start.

If you missed my blog on that and some samples from her book, you can read it here. The line between tragedy and triumph is not a wide one in the heart of God. I love how he continues to work in our lives no matter what this world throws at us. And Sara and I have found this book makes a great gift to someone going through difficult moments. We gave a copy the other night to some dear friends who are going through a painful season, and have heard back from many of you how much you have been inspired by her words.

If you want to order the book you can do so at Lifestream if you have a U.S. or Canadian address, or if you’re from elsewhere in the world you can order direct from Jenny’s website: JKRowbory.co.uk.

We were really touched by the one we read a few days ago. In the chapter called, “Garage Sale Giving”, Krista tells the story of an eight-year-old boy who came up to her at her garage sale and wanted to buy a set of dishes. He gave her $10.00 and lifted the heavy stoneware plates. After she got his change he carried them down the street. Moments later a lady burst from a car shouting, “Can you believe it! He just gave these (dishes) to me for Mother’s Day,” shaking her head in awe. “With his own money he saved up. Can you believe that?”

Here’s how Krista ends that story:

Can you believe it? I asked myself again after the masses made their exodus from my makeshift shop of trinkets. As I packed up the unsold items, I smiled. Openhandedness is an unlikely find, I thought. Especially in a world where acquisition and ambition, self and comfort are the goals. Cheerful and unlimited giving is an unlikely find, except in the heart of a child.

And those who dare to be like them.

I’ve known moments living alongside people who function with great generosity for each other, and I’ve known seasons where the people I’m around are grabbing for themselves whatever the can grab. I much prefer the openhanded crowd and want to live there myself.

I met Jenny through a book she sent to me when I was near her home in Suffolk England. In it she had written a personal note: “You don’t know me but I just wanted to say thank you to you. I’ve read So you Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, listened to the Transition series and sometimes manage to listen to The God Journey podcast. They are great and have set me off on a journey and anew way of thinking. It’s like discovering the truth that was actually already there in your heart, but hadn’t quite realized it yet. Anyway, this is just a small token of my gratitude.”

The book was titled Rainbows In My Eyes and you’ll have to read the poem called “The Rainbow Bird” to understand why, but that one alone is worth getting this anthology for what it says about the Incarnation and death of Jesus. And you can find out more about the book and Jenny on her website, JKRowbory.co.uk

The story behind the poems is as tragic as the poems are triumphant. On the flyleaf of her book I found the following story:

Jenny Rowbory was born in 1986 in Ashford, Middlesex, and currently lives in Suffolk. During her first year at university in 2004, she became ill with a virus that caused severe M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: inflammation of the brain and spinal cord). M.E. affects all bodily systems, causing Jenny to be bed-bound and unable to sit up because of strain on her cardiovascular system. This book of poetry was produced as a result of a Pearson project to support a young, chronically ill poet. The proceeds from the sale of this book will go towards her medical costs.

Though deeply touched by her story, I was not prepared for the poetry within. Most books I receive with a tragic back story like this one usually do not contain writing of this caliber or with this depth of insight. I am recommending the book to you, not out of compassion for Jenny’s condition, though I’m deeply touched by her need and now pray for her regularly, but because in her poetry she captures the God I know and the honest place of dealing with suffering in the face of a loving and all-powerful God. She is both playful with God and gut-wrenchingly honest. You’ll find in her words language to help deal with your own challenges and desire to engage the Abba Father.

I am clearly not an authority on poetry. I don’t write it and rarely read it, but this book touched me deeply and has encouraged my own journey. We wanted to make it available in the States and had copies sent here to help save you the postage charge for overseas transport.

If you live in England or outside the U.S., please order directly from Jenny’s website, so that she benefits the most from the sale of her book.

If you live in the United States, you can use the link below to order through Lifestream. The money from sales here will also go to Jenny’s medical treatment.

To give you a taste of some of her poetry, I’ve included three of her shorter ones here

Can’t You Be A Magician, God?
© Copyright 2009 by Jennifer Karen Rowbory – Used by Permission

Can’t you be a magician, God,
if only for one day?
Forget about being wise and good
and do exactly what I say.

Can’t our prayers be spells, God,
if only for one day?
The right words in the right order
and bingo! We’ll have our way.

Make me better now, Lord
please no more delay.
I want to force your hand, Lord,
to make my illness go away.

Held
© Copyright 2009 by Jennifer Karen Rowbory – Used by Permission

Pinned here
I kick and scream
try to punch my way out.
But your arms are too strong.

Pinned here
I sulk and ignore you,
try to freeze you out.
But you are too patient.

Pinned here
I spit and abuse you,
try to provoke you.
But your love is too great.

Pinned here I cry,
break your heart with my pain.
But you will not let me go.

Pinned here,
too exhausted to wrestle any more.
In the stillness I see
I’m in an embrace not a headlock.

Christmas
© Copyright 2009 by Jennifer Karen Rowbory – Used by Permission

You are my treasure,
my pearl beyond price.
I forsake all my riches,
my wealth in heaven,
to come and seek you out.

July 4, 2010 was a monumental day in our lives. On that day, we both found out: THAT GOD LOVES US! How about that!? It was during our normal devotional time that “we got it” at almost 71 and 72 years old. We got it!

How about all those years in the professional clergy? Oh, yes, we could all ways quote John 3:16, and other related verses, but when God comes in, you can not fail “to get it” and say, “Oh my goodness” it has been there all the time!”

Oh, one other thing, I forwarded the article on Friends and Friends of Friends to a brother whom we have know for years, who is about 80 years old, and was also a Baptist pastor, and he exclaimed: “I have read few articles that blessed and touched me as that one did”, He went on to say, he felt you were really “on to something”.

Is that sound I hear the echo of angel songs in the heavens? Nothing brings greater joy to my heart than hearing news that someone else has discovered just how loved they are by the Creator of all!

Wayne, I just read “How Do I?” for about the fifth time, and it still keeps kicking me in the heart. You know, I started a blog in January and recently, the audience began to expand. The feelings that came with that expansion left me feeling sort of yucky. I’m sure you know the feeling.

You can’t get to sleep because of that one, negative comment about your last article. Every time you read a scripture or have a meaningful experience, you wonder if that would make a good article. All the while, the Spirit is saying, “This is not My plan; this is not My purpose. Don’t follow your desire for recognition and influence. It is poisoning your ability to freely live life.”

Finally, while sort of aimlessly praying about this in the shower this morning, I told the Lord (and later, my wife) that I’m going to take a break from even looking at (my) blog for the week. I need a normal life again. I don’t want to be a quasi-celebrity in my own little, creative fiefdom that’s built around my insatiable desire for affirmation.

Thank you so much for writing that article. It has been like oxygen to me so many times. Seriously man, it’s been a big help. This experience has helped me realize that your life might not be so enviable after all – and I don’t mean that as a dig. Dealing with perpetual affirmation and lofty expectations from others can be an enormous distraction for the writer and his audience. God help us all.

Fortunately, I haven’t dealt with the need for affirmation for some time. But I know its power and how it can distort even the gifts God has put inside of us. Following him has to remain at the core of our choices each day and any other substitute to guide our actions is a trap. That doesn’t mean writing a blog or publishing a book is inherently wrong. It simply means that we have eyes open enough to recognize when we’re giving up our freedom in him for any other agenda.

Thirty-five years ago to today I stood at the end of an aisle and awaited my lover’s approach in her long, white gown. We had dated over three years, graduated from college together six days before, and now stood on the dock of the greatest adventure of our young lives.

What is so amazing to me is that our love as only grown deeper over the years even as we have changed so much. I am not the same young man she fell in love with and she is not the young woman I fell for. We have both changed greatly over the years and not in ways either of us expected. Our continued joy has not been trying to stay compatible, but in fighting hard to find the “us” at every stage of our journey.

I’ve learned this over the past 35 years. Joy does not come from getting all that I want, nor is it giving Sara everything that she wants. The fullest joy has come in finding those things we can say yes to together. Wherever we could find that place where we could both participate wholeheartedly we found great joy.

That doesn’t mean we both don’t have things the other does not enjoy. Sara thinks golf is a stupid game, and I don’t enjoy the gardening that brings such peace and refreshing to Sara. So we have our times of doing things the other doesn’t have to participate in. But the bulk of our friendship is found where we share wholeheartedly our life together—the decisions that fit us both, the moments that express what is inside each of us, the friendships we enjoy together, and the spiritual journey that has drawn us closer to the Father’s heart.

Through awesome joy and bitter pain we’ve somehow found a way to get on the same page together. That hasn’t always been true in our journey. At many points we couldn’t see eye-to-eye and struggled with what was happening in the other. That’s been quite a process since we both are flawed humans, making our share of mistakes, at times taking the other for granted, and sometimes just wanting things our way.

But we’ve never settled for a disjointed friendship kept looking ways for our hearts to be joined together anew and find those things that would express both of us. That has not been easy, but we always put our growing friendship above any thing else we might have wanted for ourselves and the fruits of that has been its own reward. And our trust for each other has grown through it all because neither of us ever betrayed the other’s trust.

Right now we not only seem to be on the same page, but even in the same sentence. I don’t think we’ve arrived, and I’ve no doubt that time and circumstance will yet challenge us, but we are wholeheartedly committed to sharing this journey together, no matter what.

So we wake up to our 35th anniversary this morning ever more in love. And by love I don’t mean the starry-eyed romance of fiction, but the deep-seated friendship that does the hard work of caring, serving, changing, working together, being true, and all the while cherishing the other. I stand amazed at all we have shared together, and grateful that we have each stayed faithful to the promises we made to each while standing on that metaphorical dock a long time ago. We do see all of this as an act of God’s grace working in our hearts and lives and find great contentment in the settled love we share together.

Sara, thank you for 35 awesome years. Thanks for going on this journey with me and being a partner on it, helping shape the realities that have formed our life together. I love you, Sweetheart, only and always!

The fullest fruit of it I enjoy now is in the unbridled joy of my wife. She has always been fun to be around, but through our early years she was quite reserved. But as God has shaped her, she embraces life with a greater joy and it spills out at times in spontaneous laughter that rings with freedom and joy. Hearing that laugh is among my favorite sounds today.

We’d wish the same for every couple we know. A life of love and true friendship is a great reward! And if you’re not enjoying it now, there’s no time like the present to start on a different journey together, where you fight for your friendship more than anything else.

And I love how much God is sharing that with the world today. There are many voices talking about the love and grace of our Father and how the coming of Jesus changed everything about how we get to live in him. I love that no singular human is leading this parade and that many brothers and sisters are coming to discover it together.

What does frustrate me most, however, is knowing that some who can write or speak in eloquent terms about Father’s love, even moving crowds to tears, do not reflect that love in how they treat others. Living in the freedom of Father’s love shows up in your relationships—and not just those who benefit you, but those you consider the least or the last, or even those you presume to be your enemies. I am convinced that the depth of our character is most demonstrated by how we treat those who disagree with us when we’re most sure that we are right. Do we treat them gently, give them the opportunity to engage, and offer them the same grace we talk about with others? As Jesus said, it is wholly inconsistent for those who have received great love and forgiveness to grab anyone else by the throat and demand their satisfaction.

What I love about living loved as opposed to just talking about it, is that it is transformational. Those who are well-loved, love others well in good times and bad always valuing the relationship above their own perspective. This is not something you can learn by principle, but by embracing God’s affection at the deepest place in your soul. Until you know you are loved you will be sucked into every religious activity and performance treadmill that exists, hoping against hope that you can do the right thing to merit that deep affection from the heart of the Father.

But you already have his affection! The great lie of the universe is that you are not loved by the Creator of all. The question is only do you realize how loved you are? If not, that’s where the journey begins. He wants to teach you that and in the process untwist in you what has distorted his love or has blinded you to it.

I’m off this week to upstate NY to spend a weekend with some dear friends and to share about living loved. But this week we’re going to add something that has been growing in my heart over the last year and that is not just to spend time helping people learn to live loved, but also to spend some time equipping people who are already learning to live loved, to help others learn as well.

I am meeting more people on this journey who are living loved who also have a heart to help others. But if they are not writers or speakers, how do that do that? Since many have thrown out all the conventions often associated with organized religion, they are unsure how their passion to equip others applies outside the box. We’re going to spend part of Friday talking with some people who want to have that conversation. I’m excited about what may come of that. There is a need for far more workers in the fields helping people embrace the reality of living loved.

Surely the best way to equip people around you is by the example we live when we’re not trying and the conversations we have with people who are struggling to discover what it is to live loved. But there is also the need to help equip others with the instruction that sustains that walk and the encouragement to dive in and sample its wonders, without reducing it to principles and boring lectures.

If you’d like to join us in Lowville this weekend, come ahead! I know it’s late notice, but I’ve been heavily distracted by the unfolding circumstances of life. If not, let’s look for more opportunities to have that kind of conversation as I travel about and deal with others.

I find it difficult to understand why God wouldn’t graciously extend his hand to give Buck more years beyond what he had. Tragedy is something that I struggle with much in the faith. So while most would look at the scenario and say that God is good for giving Buck another 15 years of life, I look at it and say why doesn’t the good God give more? I am reading your book HE LOVES ME right now and the illustrations are helping to grow my faith. But, so often, I look at what is tragic in peoples lives, and have difficulty praising in the midst of circumstance. My propensity is to run the other direction when hard times hit and say that its proof that God’s love isn’t real.

My response: I think God may not have given more because he knows the better portion isn’t in this life. It is in the life beyond.

Would you have enjoyed 15 more years as a 15 year old? It would have seemed crazy right? God has prepared us for something so much better than what we know here. We think of a 69 year old dying as tragic, and it is for those of us who miss him, but from God’s side of things I’m sure it doesn’t look tragic at all. He’s finally brought my friend into the life he created him to live in without the distortions of the flesh or the stain of our sin. So from God and my friend’s side of this it is all glorious and our hope is that we will be joining them soon ourselves.

The tragedy is for us here now. And in the midst of that tragedy I don’t think God wants us to praise him for the tragedy, but to learn to lean into him because he’s bigger than any tragedy and can work amazing good even out of a the most horrendous things. His work still goes on. His purpose in our lives is not thwarted by the deaths of others. He still embraces us here as he continues to prepare us for the greater life he has for us all.

Our limited perspective is the problem here. We only see what’s here. Scripture says there is much wisdom in realizing that our time in this age is like the morning dew on the grass. It is brief in the grand scheme of things. It is not the whole thing, only a bit. We don’t have a clue what lies beyond the veil and how much life in this world with flesh, human ambition, limited sight suffocates that which God has really made us to be.

All of his aspirations for us, and all the healthy ones for ourselves, will never be fulfilled in this life.

I have no idea who is behind this, or what their intended meaning was. I can’t imagine that it wasn’t a redemptive portrayal. At least that’s how it resonated with me. This touched me far more than Avatar, for which I paid far more.

ADDED NOTE: I guess I do know these people. Just found out from Brad, my partner over at The God Journey that he is involved with the folks who made this movie and they are dear brothers and sisters with a passion to tell powerful stories of God’s work in the world. So, for those of you who think Brad and I share everything with each other, it’s pretty clear we don’t. I had never heard of this before today and am so blessed to find out that I’m only one degree of separation away from those involved… How cool is that?

Once I began to understand what it means to live loved, I started seeing the gospel afresh in many places. I’m seeing how essential it is to keep the gospel in the foreground, to stay near the Cross and not slide into a soft legalism of “practical Christian living” that makes what I do the main thing rather than what Christ has done (and continues to do) for me.

That’s a mouthful!

So don’t get frustrated when you don’t see the results you want coming to pass quickly. They were never meant to. God is not about a quick fix, but real transformation over time. I meet lots of people who are frustrated in the middle of the process, not realizing that something real is going on at a level they can’t see yet. So it is always a great encouragement to me when I see someone move from painfully disillusioned, to gratefully disillusioned because of the fruit they see in their lives. I got this email a few days ago. I hope it is an encouragement to many others who are still in the middle of a transformation and can’t yet see the end of it. It’s coming!

I wanted to thank you all again for your great podcasts and books and all that you have done to bless my life!!! I’ve been wanting to write this letter for several months.

I have been listening to your podcasts for about 3+ years after someone recommended the So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore book to me. That book we cried through; it was so close to our own personal experience. Wayne, you came to my house in Michigan (the one with all the mosquitoes) and shared with us – thank you!

The first few years we didn’t know if the pain would ever subside and my husband suffered from frequent migraines as each family we had loved from the organization stepped away from us as we “deprogrammed” from religion and stepped down from our place in leadership at a church we helped start.

You guys always said that it will get better and that it will come, and it has. I didn’t know if it ever would at the time. We are now totally “gratefully disillusioned” and the freedom and joy we experience are worth it all. We can now thank God for the “baseball bat to the face” (as my husband calls it) of our organized group’s catastrophe (a situation very similar to the “Jake” book). You even spoke of how eventually even some reconciliations came over time, Wayne, in your own experience after you went through various betrayals. We also have been through layers of betrayals and would never have believed that there are finally some cracks in the walls of ice that came between us and our friends after the “shunning” we experienced.

We felt like the Spirit was clearly leading us elsewhere other than supporting that organization we helped start, but the emotional pain and agony were immense as for a time we even lost relationship with my parents while they were still at the organization that we were at and commiserating with our old friends on how “concerned” they were for us. That has now all been worked through and healed, my parents have left, the relationship restored, and my husbands migraines have subsided. New friendships have been made that are much richer and more meaningful to us.

Anyway! I am glad to testify that you were right and that you all have been such a help our own journeys. The freedom you have talked about has become our freedom, too, and we rejoice. God is good. Now we enjoy the daily adventure of walking with Father and how He leads us and who He leads us to love each day.

One of our most amazing experiences recently was to stand with a woman who was being “evangelized” by Christians in a co-op group we are in. Some kids from the religious families in our group were telling her kids on the playground that they are going to hell. We had this couple over and got to know their story and found out that this wife had been sexually abused by her pastor as a teenager. When she brought this to the light the deacons swept it under the carpet and her mother abandoned her. Needless to say this woman does not want much to do with organized “Christianity” anymore. Well we were able to stand with her and love her and be at least one Christian family in her life who didn’t mistreat her (the religious people in our co-op were pretty toxic to her). She really seems to have a real yearning for Jesus and even hears from Him, but doesn’t quite know His name after what she’s been through (just as The Shack talks about). It has been really neat how we have just been able to love her and not have any agenda and she has been so drawn to us and some other friends of ours that are “out of the box”.

It has been a beautiful and amazing experience to bring healing to others out of our wounds. We could really connect with her and her husband about the misguided ways of organized religion and how they go against Jesus’ ways. After her and her husband left our house one night they said, “I will never forget this night”. Thank you for helping us deprogram from “evangelism” and religion and be able to love people freely and help rebuild what has been broken down.

I praise the Lord for the reconciliations that have started to flow for us with a couple people from our old organized group. And also the rich fellowship we now have with others on the journey. At first we had lost our whole community and it felt like being in the desert for a long time, but in three years time our community has rebuilt now is so much more rich, diverse, deep and amazing then it ever was. It was worth the pain and change. It is like before we were eating fast food before (organized religion) and now we sit down to homemade feasts with candles and ambiance—that’s the fellowship we now enjoy. Especially one family who left the organization with us has been such an amazing experience of building relationships built of honesty, transparency and love instead of duplicity and “fronts”.

Tonight we are having over a family who feel they have never fit into any church. They were not shiny enough to ever take the notice of those in leadership (looking like they might be of service to the organization and inner circle). And their children’s worst verbal abuse has happened at church from the other kids – so much so that their oldest daughter really wants to be a boy since she had so many terrible comments from the girls at church. We see though that they have genuine hearts for Jesus and we want to love their children and help heal the wounds.

Let us stand together in being God’s people and loving those He brings into our lives! Thanks for being true brothers in Christ – a little ahead of us on the journey – and gently showing us a better way!

Don’t give up the good work even if some people are being stinkers!

First of all, I want to thank you. Yours and Mr Coleman’s book So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore has touched me deep down inside and it has helped me get a little glimpse of who Jesus really is.

In the past couple of days, I have started to realize what it really means to live with God as my Father. Born into a Christian family, I’ve always seen myself as a child of His, but I never quite understood the meaning of it. I felt restless and suspicious whenever I went to church, and with the years I felt myself getting pulled down more and more by feelings of guilt. Whatever I did, I always had the impression it was not enough. I met people in church who talked me into doing certain things, and every time I hoped it would make me feel better in front of God, but it never did. In the summer of 2009 I decided to be baptized. I was so hungry for this overwhelming peace and joy I admired in other Christians and I set all my hopes on the day of my baptism. It was a good day. But my expectations were disappointed. I still felt an emptiness in me that could not seem to be filled.

Before these feelings could break me, I got your book. And with every page I read, I could feel this heavy load on my chest be lifted away. This might sounds cheesy, but it’s exactly how it felt. I realized that I don’t have to earn God’s love. It’s right here. And I learned that God doesn’t bless us for doing things this way or that way. He blesses EVERYTHING we do together with Him, in Him and through Him. And He’s not a fortune teller who gives us predictions like “This is your job/man/house for life”. He puts things into our hearts and gives us what we need every day. I don’t have to ask myself “Is this right or wrong?”. I’d much rather ask the Lord “What is it that you want to put into my heart?”

It’s no miracle the God so many Christians have talked to me about couldn’t touch my heart the way I always wished He would. It was a God of rules and signs that never made sense to me. A God that blesses the ones who deserve it.

Reading your book felt like finding the God I’ve been looking for all my life. The God of love. The God of relationship. The God of trust. Only now I have started to understand what that means. And here I can finally feel it: a heart so full of gratefulness for what He has done for me! A heart of joy for this great promise of His never-ending love! A heart that can rest in peace, knowing that He will give me what I need, every day. This is the Lord I want to follow, this is the God I want to praise.

I’m only 23 years old and there’s so much more I have to learn. And this short time in which I have started to discover the wonders of being God’s child has already showed me that it can be a “lonely” way sometimes. Many people around me, who I always thought were devoted Christians, don’t seem to understand when I talk about this God I’m getting to know now. They’d rather hold on to rules they think God has created for them to be safe and they don’t see that these rules only keep them from experiencing God’s original and amazing ways of blessing them!! It makes me sad sometimes. And it makes me feel lonely, too, sometimes.

But I know that the Lord is watching over me. He knows what I need, and He knows what every single one of his children needs. He has ways that seem impossible for me now. But I do trust in Him.

Mr Jacobsen, I want to thank you and Mr Coleman for being “God’s tools” in the process of opening my eyes and heart to a new kind of life.

I wish you and your families all the best and God’s rich blessings and gifts.

And to do that, instead of pressuring yourself with all that you want to do to make your life better this year, perhaps you’d consider asking God what he is doing to make his life more real in you. Transformation begins with his will and desire, not ours.

And then you’ll realize what God knows. Transformation is not his goal, it is merely the fruit of living loved by him. His goal is not to change you, it is to invite you into his love, Change will happen as the fruit of that, not the goal!

What I love about God is that he doesn’t mark time on calendars and offer a fresh start once a year. His mercies are new every morning, so that each day is a fresh start in his life and grace.

(And if you want to see the many faces of Wayne and Brad while recording The God Journey, you might check out our new photos over there!)

A few months ago we had a young couple who was visiting Los Angeles stay with us for a couple of days and really enjoyed their fellowship. One afternoon we went outside for a walk after it had been raining. When we got back to the house we found the young lady’s shoes were coated with mud on the bottom. As she took them off at the back door, I scooped them up so I could wash off the mud, knowing they were packing later in the day for an early flight out in the morning. Little did I know what God was doing in her through such a simple act. Here’s what she wrote me later:

It really was such a blessing to be with you guys for a couple of days and hang out. I think I shared once with you that I didn’t have a great dad growing up. He was very harsh, unloving and absent. One of my most frequent conversations with God is that he would just help me understand the love of a father. Since I didn’t get to experience the earthly kind, I sometimes have a hard time accepting/understanding the spiritual kind. God is pretty cool, because since I started talking to him about it, he’s placed some of the neatest people and visual examples of it in my life.

I know you weren’t even aware of it, but seeing what an awesome dad you are touched my heart deeply. The way you interacted with your daughter was especially impactingl to watch. I love how you’re kinda sassy with each other (I can really relate to that), yet it was so obvious how much you adore her. Julie was joking about you washing my shoes… but it actually meant a lot to me. I can only imagine what it meant to the disciples when Jesus washed their feet. It was honestly humbling to watch you wash my shoes, yet it was also a very powerful act of love. What a beautiful visual picture of how much father loves me.

And what’s so cool about you, is that you are just so genuine. I think that when we genuinely love the people in our life, others around us can not help but see God in that. It’s so freakin cool! So, thank you for just being you. Because of it, I now have a great understanding of father’s love.

I love her statement that genuineness resonates with people where pretense doesn’t. I think that’s pretty cool as well. It also points to one of the things I love most about this journey. God seems to work best when we’re least aware of trying to do something for him or have a specific impact on someone’s life. Maybe that’s what makes it genuine.

I wasn’t even aware that she was being touched so deeply. For me, I just saw some muddy shoes that needed to be cleaned so they would have enough time to dry before she needed to pack them. It was the simplest of actions and yet it profoundly touched someone. And what I like best, is that I was completely unaware of it at the time. For one who used to be a performer, who couldn’t do hardly anything without the conscious thought of what other people would think of me, this is a great joy and glorious freedom. What’s more, for all that performing, no one ever seemed to get touched like this.

Could it be that simply living alongside others and loving them will accomplish everything God wants to do through us? We don’t have to have the conscious agenda of doing something so others will be touched. In fact, maybe it is best that we don’t.

Reality wins! It always wins! Performances, are just that. It’s who you are when the lights are off and the crowd has gone home that makes all the difference.

Sara and I have been home three days now and this has been my fastest recovery from an international trip. I have slept well through the nights and seem to be back on Pacific Standard Time.

Many have asked how our time went there and I’m going to post some of my reflections from this trip. Sara and I wandered across the breadth of South Africa meeting brothers and sisters from all over the spiritual map. Many of them I had met on a previous trip four years earlier, but we also met so many new ones to meet as well. What I loved throughout all the places we visited was the fresh and unbridled hunger to know the Father, Son, and Spirit and the passion to learn how to follow them in the simplicity of their daily lives.

What encouraged me most on this trip was seeing the progress that people had made in their own spiritual journeys since I was in South Africa four years ago. Nothing brings greater joy to my heart than seeing in practical ways the transformation God works in hearts who follow him. What frustrated me most about the old religion I used to observe is that no one seemed to change. Come back two years later and people were still in the same place, faithfully performing their religious rituals, but without a transforming relationship with Jesus. I loved seeing how he had moved people further down the journey since I was last in South Africa.

I also saw great progress in the culture as a whole. South Africa is in the midst of an unfathomable transition. Those who held power over the last 150 years of the region’s history have paid a huge price to expand opportunity and share power with all the people’s of South Africa. It has not been easy, but I constantly marveled at the hopeful and gracious attitude of those who have given up so much to find a fairer way forward for those who have so little. It is still a work in progress, and great tensions still exist in working all that out, but overall I find people working hard to get it right.

And I loved the hunger we saw in new people we met. We met some wonderful brothers and sisters, some just starting out on this journey and others who’ve been on it for years, not knowing there were others with similar hungers. Many been reading some of my books and listening to The God Journey podcasts and we’re finding increasing freedom from the rigidity of religion to embrace a real and enduring relationship with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We had some incredible discussions and conversations, some of which we were able to record and will make available at a future date when I can work through all of that.

From Pretoria we journeyed down to a three-day retreat in the Drakensberg, a majestic mountain range. Here over 100 believers gathered for the weekend. Then we went to Pietermaritzburg for an evening where we met in former prison now being converted to a community care center. The next morning we left for Durban, stopping at the Tala Game Reserve where we took the picture above and those below. Such amazing wildlife in Africa!

Three zebras out for lunch, and a rhino getting his share as well.

Then it was on to Durban to see the AIDs outreach that our friend Penny Dugan of New Jerusalem Ministries is facilitating in that region. We have been long-time supporters of this work and I have done lots of training for them in helping people to live loved. It has a wonderful place in our hearts and is shining the light of Jesus in a very dark corner of the world where the need is overwhelming. Their primary mission is to reach out to those infected with AIDs and provide care for the, but they also reach out to all kinds of needs to the people in that township and critical needs for food and medical care among so many of them. They also care for widows and orphans who have no where else to turn.

The Ukukhanya Life Care Centre that Sara and I have been involved with in the township of Ntzuma opened while we were there. The team there has converted an abandoned building into a care center to help with those living with AIDs and meet other needs in the township.


The township of Ntzuma, 500,000 people, 47% HIV positive. Numerous children here have no parents because they have already died from AIDs.


One of the staff puts the finishing touches on one of the newly refurbished rooms.

If you are looking for a place to share some of your abundance in the world with those who have so little, please give this place your consideration. The money is put to great use not only in South Africa but in the development of an AIDs care center near Wichita, KS as well. They have an amazing gift to reach into this area with the grace and light of Jesus.

Then it was on to our final weekend in the Cape Town area, where we met with three different groupings of believers over three days to share the journey and encourage people to follow that which Father had already put in their hearts. Cape Town is a beautiful area with overwhelming views and incredible people.

Wayne sharing the journey with brothers and sisters that packed into a home in West Somerset near Cape Town on our final day.


Sara and I at the end of the trip, windblown at Cape Point where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans converge.

All in all this was an incredible trip. Our hearts were knit with many people in that area who are learning to live loved and to love others. We were graciously received and cared for throughout our stay. We pray that God will continue to shine his light into their hearts and show many more people how to live in the fullness of his life and freedom.

But the way God works these things out, I’d had breakfast earlier in the day with a group of men and one of them said that the truth that began his exploration of a greater journey was when he’d heard someone say that God is the most joyful presence in the universe.

So when I heard he was either sad or mad, I was already alert to a third alternative. Mad or sad still focuses on us and our sin. Isn’t it interesting how we are taught in religion to view God through our sin, not to view God beyond our sin? Instead of celebrating the essential nature of God at work in a broken world to rescue us to himself, we’re left to sulk in the brokenness and failures of this temporal age.

Jesus told his disciples the night before he died that he was telling them all these things so that his joy to be in them and for their joy to be full. This is his passion, to see us find the same joy in the Father that he knew. When Jesus said that he was only hours away from his trial and crucifixion. He said it despite the fact that his countrymen lived under the repression of Roman rule. He said it in the face of a world still being devastated by sin, disease, war and great pain. And in the face of all of that he let’s us see that God is neither mad or sad in his creation. He is the most joyful presence above it and inside of it.

It is that joy that he came to share with us—a joy that consumes any pain, trial, failure, or struggle we might be in at the moment. It is a joy deeply based on the pleasure of God, his desire for us and his unfolding purpse in the world. He invites us to live in that space with him and let it prevail over the temporal pains of the world we live in. Paul called those “momentary, light afflictions” that produce in us an “eternal weight of glory.” This was the apostle who’d been stoned numerous times, shipwrecked three times, robbed on his journeys and lied about by close friends. Obviously he was focused on something far greater and far grander than those circumstances.

The joy Jesus spoke about is not temporal and thus swings with the fickle tides of circumstance. It goes deeply into his own character and purpose unfolding in this broken world.

That’s where I want to live—every day, in every situation. And, boy, do I have a ways to go there.

I hope you have a blessed weekend. Sara and I are getting read for our trip to South Africa for the next two weeks.

My parents gave me your book He Loves Me and I have been listening to your podcasts. My parents are currently finding a lot of freedom from guilt-based living after many years of service in a traditional church.  Its exciting to see their passion for Christ reawakened after the burden of religion has been lifted.

For me, I am in a very wounded place, but I appreciate your message as it seems at its core it is simply the Gospel message. I have spent the last ten years in the organic church movement, thinking I had found somewhere where we were all passionate about the true message of Christ and were free from the religious abuse of programmatic church.  Now I find that its simply religion without a building, another system, only it just doesn’t look like one.

I appreciate that you are advocating for Christ, for love, for simple Gospel message. I really thought that it is what we were about.  I feel more wounded coming out of that setting than I ever felt in a traditional church setting.  In fact, now I find myself back in the traditional church where I grew up, feeling guilty for participating in “religious church,” but realizing that i have a lot of friends there, a lot of relationships.  I feel like I am always looking back and forth, wondering who is God, have I really lost the faith by returning to a traditional church, will I inevitably become a Pharisee by hanging out there, was I really one before? I don’t know.  

I listen to your podcasts and you talk about living by God’s love and grace and I that is how it began with our little group, then it was about the movement, about the sacrifice, about the five fold leadership, and somewhere in there I lost that simple Christ message.  But I see it everywhere; its in individual people, people in a Baptist churches, in Episcopal churches, in Orthodox churches, sometimes I even seem to see a glimmer of it in people who claim to be atheist.  And religious striving… I find it everywhere too.  I wasn’t half the Pharisee I was in a traditional church as I became trying to escape it.  Oh, to return to that simple faith of a child…  washed white as snow.

I loved this statement: I wasn’t half the Pharisee I was in a traditional church as I became trying to escape it.” I’ve seen people struggle with that same reality. Whenever we give ourselves to movements and look down on others who don’t share what we do, we are in danger of even being more captive to our hope for revival, than we were even to our religious obligation systems.

And I pray she finds real peace in him and lets go of the guilt and second-guessing. Then she can find the real joy and contentment wherever God chooses to place her to engage his people and his life with freedom.

There’s a great pass on Saturday evening between 8:05 PM and 8:08 PM (depending on your location, the times might be slightly different).

There’s another pass on Sunday evening, from 8:30 PM to 8:33 PM.

And another on Monday, 7:19 PM to 7:24 PM.

For details you can visit, visit http://www.heavens-above.com/

I hope all is going well for you. I catch your podcast now and again and it sounds like you’re havin’ fun and experiencing God.

I had a funny thing happen the other day I thought you’d get a kick out of hearing. I’m in the middle of a mid-life crisis right now. Yeah, I’m only 33 but that is how it feels. I’m having to make a career decision and am very much torn as to which career path to choose.

I finally got away to talk with God about what He would like me to do (or so I thought). Though I knew both choices were good, one of them must be better. After my long-winded explanation, of which I know He already knew, I sat and silently waited for Him to tell me what to choose. Do you think He told me?

Our conversations always begin with Him telling me how much He loves me, to which I roll my eyes and ask Him to get on with it already. So then He tells me that I will change lives and bring His Kingdom into both situations. Anything I do, even beyond my two scenarios, will be good. He just wants to be right with me, enjoying me, while I live my life. (annoying huh?) So then He turns the question around and asks, “So Connie, what is it that you want to do with your life?”

That’s when my crisis began! What do I want to do? Me? He was supposed to tell me what to do, not hand my free-will over to me! Ha! I’ve never in my life stopped and asked what I want to do with my life. Somehow within all the church-going years I’ve adopted the concept that once I am a Christian I can no longer have any goals or life-dreams. God now owns me and whatever He wants of me I’ll do. I must detach all personal identity, be void of opinions and desires and for sure not use my brain!

I guess for years when I read Paul describes himself as a bond-slave of the Lord, I half-way believe that Paul did not want to do what he was doing, but was somehow forced because…well… you just can’t argue with God. Now I’m realizing, it’s not that Paul’s in chains (not literally obviously), but that he’s so in love with the Father, he can’t help but share in whatever situation he is in. It’s a relationship of love. God could actually care less (so to speak) what I “do” as long as He gets to be with me. ‘Cause when He’s with me and I remain in Him, we can affect change at the grocery store even! What a striking contrast to the Master and Servant role I began with, eh? Funny also how so much of me (that Pharisee is strong in there) would very, very much like Him to tell me the answer. Err, unfortunately for my good-girl, box-thinking nature, God is not about dolling out a list of demands.

So now I have to look in the mirror and figure this out. Gosh I’d much rather the non-relational, controlling method sometimes! That method, however, does not enhance relationship, which is most likely what He’s all about!

Anyway, I’m 30% annoyed and 70% amused. He’s a funny guy, that God!

Yes, there are times God has a specific will for our lives and by embracing it we die a bit to our selfish nature and find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of something we never thought we would have wanted. And some times God just indicates he can go either way here. And as far as a vocational choice, “What do you want to do with your life?” sounds like a great question.

Someone pointed out to me a year or so ago the incredible joy God must have had in letting Adam name the animals. God had created them but he wanted humanity to name them. How cool is that? God would call them whatever Adam called them. He didn’t have some secret name for each animal that Adam had to figure out over hours of prayer and agonizing. He just began to give them names and that’s what they were.

Following Jesus is not meant to be an arduous chore. Sometimes he has a specific thing for us to do and let’s us know that. At other times we get to wander in a pretty wide space with him, because he is all about the relationship and the joy of knowing you and watch you come free in his reality, not trying to squeeze you into some box that makes you miserable. And he knows that when you find freedom in the relationship, you’ll be the best reflection of him in the world no matter where you are or what you’re doing!

Last night we went out to watch it again. Standing in the quiet darkness of our back lawn we scanned the skies until we saw not one bright light streaking across the sky, but two. The space shuttle had already detached from ISS and was flying ahead of it by a few seconds. As they silently traversed the darkness, their orbit took them just beneath the half moon in the southwest sky. It was a moment.

But then the moment got even better. As Sara and I watched the space station and shuttle two brilliant shooting stars came over our heads from behind and joined the dance going on in the sky above us. It was one of those magnificent moments that take your breath away. As the space station and shuttle went out of sight and the shooting stars faded away, we stood looking at the night sky in wonder. There is stuff going on out there in the universe, even beyond our little planet that we hardly ever think about.

It reminded me of Paul’s encouragement,

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Col. 3:1-2

Tension and frustration builds in our lives when we live in our circumstances without the awareness that he is in them with us as well. We are not alone. He is doing things that we may not even see or be aware of, that if we knew it our hearts wouldn’t be so torn apart by the trials of this life and the schemes of dishonest people. We live in fear and make our worst choices when we think we are all alone having to fix what is broken in us or things around us. Instead Paul invites us to behold him, setting our hearts on what’s above—his presence and his working in us.

Let’s not live with your eyes only looking at what’s going in the physical world we see. Ask him to teach you how to focus the eyes of your heart on the fact that you are not alone, that he is with you working out all things in conformity with his will and purpose.

That’s what I learned last night as I stood with Sara in our darkened back yard, watching a dance across the heavens. Of course, Paul wasn’t talking about space shuttles and space stations, but if you want to see the space station tonight, it will be going across the west coast from 8:00 to 8:05 tonight.