As Is: Unearthing Common Place Glory is a new book by a first-time author, Krista Finch. I actually saw this book a year and a half ago while it was still in production. I was taken at the time with Krista’s refreshing insights about embracing life simply as it unfolds and seeing God’s fingerprints and his grace in the most common arenas of life.

I wrote this little blurb for her book back then: “As Is: Unearthing Commonplace Glory offers the marvelous freedom to stop trying to control the events we cannot control and instead respond to God’s magnificent grace as it unfolds in our daily circumstances. With her humorous wit and fresh insights Krista Finch opens a door to the practicality of living by grace that will inspire your own journey and leave you hungering for more of God.” After seeing the final product, I’ll stand by that.

A few days ago my copy of the book arrived. I spent some time with it last night and was wonderfully refreshed and reminded to look for God in the common moments of life. This book is not deep theology trying to challenge your failed paradigms, nor is it filled with laugh-out-loud stories. I couldn’t applaud everything she’s concluded, but I love the journey she is on and a lot of what she’s learned.

This is a book of insightful observations and thoughts much as you’d experience in a relaxed walk with your best friend where your heart is re-focused on the things that truly matter. It is a wonderfully refreshing read, like a cool breeze that suddenly washes over you on an otherwise hot and stale day. Here is a woman who knows what it is not to have life fulfilled on her terms, and has learned how to embrace the reality of life in the deep love and presence of a loving Father.

To whet your appetite, here’s a sample of the journey she invites you to share with her:

We miss something remarkable when happiness is our pursuit. because happiness is a brief vapor at her very best. What’s more, there is something beautiful about getting what you get, something lovely in teh mess, something divine in the ordinary. And the something is grace.

Grace to smile in sickness, to dance in death, to carwheel in chaos, to trike a pose, thou all around us and inside us crumbles. Grace to understand that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be, at least not forever. But it’s the way things are now and here. Grace to believe there is plenty of grace for all of it. All we have to do is receive it; live, that is. Life, as is.

And if we’ll take what life gives, grace will find us—in all her fierceness and splendor, dressed in chain mail and armor, ready to pin a sprig of lilac on our collars. But she only comes to those of us who find ourselves in the places where brokenness and rejoicing coexist. Places where bitter death tolls harmonize with strains of celebration. Places where broken bones dance to the trumpet’s blast…”

“Steven, do you want to know why you are clueless about you? …Do you?” She stops again and stares. “Honey, I really need a verbal nod of some sort here.”

“Yes,” I say, “Yes, tell me why.”

“It’s because,” she says slowly and dramatically, “you don’t yet know who you really are. And Steven, you don’t know who you are because you haven’t yet learned grace.”

I stop her before she can continue. “Oh, boy. See, there you go. That’s all gibberish to me. I don’t want to be mean, but you and Carlos, you sound like cult members. Grace. Do you have any idea what that sounds like? It’s right up there with fluffy bunnies and unicorns. You’re aware there’s not a lot of grace talk in my board meetings, right? Look, I know you may not understand this, but in places where things get done, there’s accountability, and quotas, and deadlines. You know what I think God wants? He wants all of us to take responsibility for what we’re doing. Sorry, Cynthia. I was tracking with you. But if you wanna make sense to me, throw away the religious buzz words.”

Andy slaps his knee. “Whoo-eee! Yep, you got her there Steven.” He picks up his glass, swirling his ice. “Yep, first you start talking about grace. Next thing you know you’re skipping Sunday school and sleeping in ‘til noon. Then, a couple days later you’re down at the dog track, drinking whiskey out of a paper bag and dating a showgirl named Tiffany!”

“Why do you enjoy making everything I say sound stupid?” I ask.

“I don’t,” he says. “I only enjoy making the stupid things you say sound stupid.”

Cynthia takes over. “Steven, my friend, would you be offended if I told you that you sound to me like the one with the religious platitudes?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” she continues, “You sound like a carnival huckster, promoting to others something he knows doesn’t and hasn’t worked for himself.”

“Meaning?” I repeat.

“Meaning, grace is the gift waiting for the non-religious. They’re the only ones who can get it. They’re the only ones who can use it. Religious folk see grace as soft. So they keep trying to manage their junk with their own will power and tenacity. Nothing defines religion quite as well. People trying to do impossible tasks with weak and limited power, bluffing all the while like it’s working for them.” ” She leans even closer. “I just took in a lot of churches and religious institutions with that last statement.”

“Did you hear that?” Andy laughs. So, who’s the religious one now, my friend? “
Cynthia smiles. “It takes something a whole lot more than will power and tenacity to get anything done in the human heart. You gotta allow yourself to receive something you can’t find on your own, not keep bluffing at being strong enough.”

Andy folds his arms and raises his eyebrows at me.

“You’ll hear this next statement a lot around here Steven,” Cynthia says. ‘What if there was a place safe enough where I could tell the worst about me and discover that I would be loved not less but more in the telling of it?’ Do you know what happens?”

“Carlos says your stuff starts to get fixed.”

What Stephen doesn’t know yet, is that engaging real grace will transform you far faster and far more completely than accountability and human effort ever will. He will soon come to discover that God’s reality is far greater than he knew before.

If you haven’t read the rest of the story, you might pick yourself up a copy!

What

Her new book has just been released. I had the joy of reading some of it in manuscript form quite a while ago when she was considering publishing it with Windblown Media. Unfortunately for us, a publisher she had previously approached decided to pick it up before we had a chance to review it. But in reading her self-effacing humor, her brutal honesty, and her insights about the Father I love, I grew to appreciate this young woman I’ve never met and the courage with which she follows her Lord.

Love Has a Face: Mascara, a Machete and One Woman’s Miraculous Journey with Jesus in Sudan is now available and I just finished reading it. If you want some encouragement in your own journey, you might consider picking this one up.

This is not the usual mission books, meant to solicit guilt that you’re not doing enough for Jesus, or to evoke pity for the author. This is a real life adventure about following God in a very dark place and watching him work his purpose in spite of our humanity and lack of resources. I came away encouraged in my own journey to follow Jesus where he has asked me to go, and filled with an infusion of trust for a Father that is so much bigger than my limited knowledge and resources. I’ve already bought some copies for others.

That said, however, I’ll warn you that Michele uses some of the revivalistic language that regretfully may limit the audience for this book. I know it turns off many people who see through some of the excesses of that movement and how it unwittingly trivializes all the ways in which Father works. If you’re used to that slice of the body you won’t even notice it and most people who are don’t realize how off-putting some of their expressions of God sound to others. If you don’t understand or appreciate some of that language, you can easily read around it, just don’t let it discourage you from reading.

But do read it. Your faith will be encouraged, your love for the downtrodden will grow, and your passion for Jesus will be freshly fanned into flames. Here are some excerpts to show you what’s in store:

This love does not start wiht a good program. It cannot. It starts with being in love, being intimately connected to Jesus. It starts with knowing first that I am loved. I cannot give what I do not have. It is supernatural. It cannot be apart from Him. All living fruit in my life has come only from a living relationship with Him.

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(When she felt God asking her to let go of the need to be responsible in the face of overwhelming need and a dwindling bank account.) I knew the world looked at our ministry in the Sudan and said, ‘Look at all those children! Wow, you are responsible for so much.’ The Church saw the promises Jesus gave us and said, ‘Wow, what a lot of responsibility Jesus has given you!’ I had begun to believe the myth called responsibility, and it turned what had been spontaneity into suffocation in my soul. It made even breathing hard work. The storm around me stopped being an opportunity to dance with Jesus and started to loo like a sentence of drowning.

All the while, Jesus was saying. No!

Slowly I began to realize that Jesus did not give me his promises for Sudan as a responsibility to carry. He gave me His promises as a playground to embrace with him. All he desired was my ability to respond to Him. The lie of false responsibility actually stole the joy and even the ability to respond to the spontaneous moving of His Spirit.

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“What would a people look like who are fully embraced by love? What would a people become if they were totally set free to live out their own identity and sound? What would an army of love be, released from the darkest corners of the nations to carry the light of His face, seen through their own, as they see who they are in Love’s eyes?

“The wave dancers and light carriers are being released. The unpaved road is an invitation to the depths of Loves’ heartbeat. Watch out. Here they come: the unstoppable lovers of God whom nothing can deter. They bring with them life in abundance, light so bright that the darkness flees before its coming and night becomes as day at the rise of His glory in an through their lives.”

But he is! That’s what Darin Hufford discovers in his new book, The Misunderstood God that has just been released by the publishing company I helped get started, WindblownMedia book. This is a complete re-crafting of an earlier book Darin had written called The God’s Honest Truth. Though I enjoyed the content of the original book, I didn’t think it was put together in the best way to reach all the people that would be touched by reading it.

Over the last year we helped Darin take that book a part and rebuild it in a way that more people could benefit from its powerful message. In humorous and compelling stories, Darin shows how religion has disfigured the God of the Bible, giving him a personality that has more in common with the devil, than it does the Father of all love. He holds God to his own definition of love in I Corinthians 13 to show us that he is the very definition of love itself and as we come to appreciate that, we’ll find greater grace and freedom to live in his life.

I’m excited to see this book take fresh wing. If you have a heart to understand God’s essential nature, you might check out this book. It could transform how you view God and how you recognize his fingerprints in your life. And if you want to hear Darin talk about his own book, give a listen to the two recent podcasts we did with Darin at The God Journey:

• The Misunderstood God
• Living Freely in God’s Love

Honestly, I’m confident the reason why so many people have a difficult time embracing God’s grace is that it feels too permissive to them. We know that grace is the polar opposite to the performance-based conformity models of child-rearing that we’ve learned in our homes, schools, and religious structures. I’ve been asked countless times, “So God just loves us while we do whatever we want?”

People who think such things, don’t yet understand God or grace. Fear and intimidation only work so long, but never transform the human heart. That only comes through choice. Grace is not a permission slip to go destroy yourself. Grace opens the door to know God. And you can’t know God without wanting to be like him. There is no permissiveness in grace—just freedom. That freedom opens the door to an amazing work of transformation God does as we follow him. And if you don’t get that, he will still love you. But like the prodigal son, eventually the destructive consequences of living with you at the center will eventually overwhelm you. Grace opens a door to relationship, it doesn’t negate our destructive choices. If you want to understand this process better, go out and get a copy of Loving Our Kids on Purpose. You won’t regret it. And if you have young children you want to parent with God’s heart, so much the better.

A young mother with two children from South Carolina first put the book on my radar screen. She wrote:

At first I was hesitant because Christian parenting books and I have never gotten along very well, and it’s been so nice to not be living under shame, rules and condemnation — and they tend to heap those on me in spades (rather, I heap it on). But this book has been very different. It illustrates how we can relate to our children in the way that the Father relates to us — out of a heart of love and patience and freedom without spirits of fear and control, yet not being permissive parents — still being our kids’ guides and teachers. It’s not a book of strict how-to’s or magic formulas. They’re just very simple, fundamental principles that jive with the glimpses of the Father’s heart that we’ve seen the last few years.

It’s not a silver bullet by any means because it’s not going to be an overnight change and things will never be perfect because there are four very human beings in the house who make selfish choices every five minutes. But I do believe the overall tone of our home can change and that the girls will then see Jesus modeled in us and come to understand the true nature of the Father’s heart. The first step in walking this out will be self-control on our parts — not reacting out of selfish anger, taking time to think through situations before we act, and intentionally choosing to allow love and respect to dictate our attitudes. That won’t exactly be easy because we’ve nurtured some bad habits, but hopefully as we make the right choice more often, the right seeds will grow in our hearts. The next step will be extending to them the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them without shame and condemnation, being there for them as they experience the consequences of their decisions. In the end, it’s really about treating them the way we want others to treat us and the way God does treat us.

She’s dead on! I talked my daughter into buying the book and then read her copy two nights ago. I laughed. I wanted to shout AMEN on just about every page. I could easily have slipped the best moments of our parenting into his illustrations, even though I didn’t know why those moments felt so right at the time. And I lamented those things that I’d done that only sought to win their conformity to my rules with fear and intimidation. This is parenting that puts the heart to heart connection with your child above anything else and out of that instills in them a culture of respect, good decision-making and consequences for their own choices. This is parenting with a sense of humor, not anger. It offers the ability to motivate kids without alienating them, and loving them without giving-in to their baser instincts.

Let me share with you some excerpts from the book:

This book will show you that the goal of obedience and compliance is an inferior goal. It can actually be detrimental to both your children’s development of personal responsibility and their perception of God as Father. Although obedience is an important part of our relationship with our children, it is not the most important quality. If we fail to take care of the most important matters first, what we build on top of our foundation will not support what we are hoping to accomplish as parents….

There is a huge difference between a culture where obedience and compliance are the bottom line and a culture where relationship is the bottom line.

In order to train our children in love, our behavior as parents must reduce fear, not increase fiear. When happens when you go toe-to-toe with one of your kids? What happens when one of your kids does not want to obey? What do you do when your child lies in your face? What is your response when your child gives you something ugly like disrespect? …As much as love casts out the fear, fear will cast out love. Love and fear are enemies. They are completely different sources. Love is from God , and His enemy produces fear. We need some methods, tools and skills to respond to ur child’s sin in such a way that we create love, not fear.

And what’s more this grace-based parenting works with children of all ages—from our youngest toddlers to our adult children. It offers hope to restore that heart connection where it has gotten lost to our power-based conformity tactics with older kids. And what I like most is that while this book is incredibly practical, Danny doesn’t give how-to formulas for every situation. Instead he gives us a very simple framework in which to consider our possible actions and the opportunity to look to the Holy Spirit for direction as we work through the daily realities with our own children.

If you want to understand how God’s discipline functions in your own life and how that can change the way you parent, go get a copy of this book! Devour it. You won’t regret it!

It may be impossible to watch that video and not be deeply moved. There are lots of factors to that. If you want to read her back story, you can do so here. It’s great TV—the context, the diminished expectations, the surprise or an incredible voice and the passion behind her song. But I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something more. If you haven’t listened to the lyrics, listen carefully. This is the story of a young dream that life destroyed and the attempt to still find God in the disappointment. Here’s just a few lines:

And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed The dream I dreamed.

Part of the reason this is so powerful is not just her voice, but that her life seems a very parable of the song she sings. She had a dream to be a famous singer that had not be realized before last week, at 47 years of age. She’s not alone. A lot of very creative people live with similar disappointed dreams, and most won’t get this kind of break, even at 47.

Every child grows up with dreams, and the twists and turns of life often crush them. Sometimes that’s because they’ve been so abused and diminished that their spirit is crushed. Sometimes it’s simply that they don’t have the right look, or lived in the right place or had the right opportunity. But I suspect for many it’s because our dreams weren’t so much about the gift that was in us, but how rich, influential or famous we wanted that gift to make us. For every person that becomes a pro athlete, hundreds of thousands more get left in the dust. For every one who wins a gold medal, writes a best-seller, or cuts a platinum album, hundreds of thousands of others live like failures because they didn’t.

If our dreams hinge on the response of others, opportunities in this world are slim. By definition only a narrow few will end up playing professional sports, becoming a singing sensation or a best-selling author. If success only comes by being in the brightest spotlights, most of our dreams will be dashed as well. As I watched it for the fifth or sixth time last night, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re not so deeply moved by the performance of this incredible woman because through her we are getting a glimpse into eternity. It’s not the crowd or the lights that make her performance noteworthy, but the fact that she is simply doing in the thrill of the moment what God created her to do.

In our twisted perceptions of the 21st Century, it is easy to think this talent wasted since she never got this chance until she was 47. But does the stage validate the gift? Was she, or her music, any less moving or less valuable when she sang to herself in the kitchen or in local gatherings in her village? Was it less moving to the kind of God who splashes wildflowers across mountainsides no human will ever see? Most of the best gifts I know in this life will never gather the spotlight, or wow the masses. I’m not sure God ever intended them to. Perhaps even the unrelenting attempt to find a mass audience or a bright enough spotlight so easily distorts the dream, or the gift, or the person as well. We all know how the realities of competition and glare of celebrity does more to ruin people than it does make them more whole or well-grounded.

When we finally arrive in eternity, no longer tethered by our false expectations, no longer competing against others with similar gifts, no longer measuring our worth by the false demands of a broken culture, we will all get to celebrate the full beauty of exactly what the Creator sowed in our lives. And I suspect we’ll celebrate it in each other, perhaps like we see it in Susan Boyle, and in doing so it will touch the deepest joys and ecstasies of our heart. And the Father will thrill right along with us.

I know the reality of disappointed dreams, as I coveted a mass influence through my writing from a very young age. It tortured me. The desire was a tyranny all its own, and God won it from my hands almost 15 years ago. For the first time I found myself for the first time content to write for the love of God and let him do with it what he will with the result. I found absolute joy in simply writing what was on my heart and making it available on a website. And I was blessed by each life it touched in the gentle obscurity of God taking it to those he wanted.

And now I know what it is to be involved with a best-seller over the last year and I’d be less than honest if I told you it was all the joy I dreamed it would be when I coveted it so long ago. Notoriety brings a different set of pressures and a different kind of audience, and it is now harder to do what God has asked me to do in the shadow of what the world calls success than it was before. I find more joy in helping one life find freedom than I have in perusing a best-seller lists. And now, I hardly write since my days are full of obligations and responsibilities far afield from that which God originally asked of me. Over the next few months I’ll be moving away from this space back to where Jesus has asked me to walk.

So here’s what I’m thinking as I watch that video: Isn’t it enough that all of us ply our creativity, gifts and dreams for an audience of One. It is enough that God hears us sing, that God reads what we write and that the truest joys are not doing it professionally, if we lack the opportunity, but doing it as hobby, sport and passion. Saying someone is an amateur has become a put-down today. But the root of that French word is people who do what they do for the love of it, not for money or the light of the stage.

And while I understand those who would love to see their passion find a greater voice and place in the culture, it is not failure for God’s grace in you to touch the people he has put before you, rather than the unknown masses. Your story is not validated because it spawns a book; your song is not more precious because it secures a recording contract. So sing, write, paint, plant, nurture, design, act, and build however it brings joy to your heart. And let God open whatever doors he has for it. Knock where you will, search as you have direction, but don’t despise the audience God has already given you—your children or spouse, friends and family, and local opportunities to touch lives in tens and twenties, rather than frustratingly trying to find a path to the thousands.

And I wonder if some of the dreams we carry in our heart, were never meant to find their fulfillment in this life. Perhaps they, too, are portals to a different age and time. Maybe they are a glimpse into that unrestrained eternity that will allow us all to be fully all that God created us to be. I’m convinced our greatest creativity and ecstasy lies beyond this temporal time zone.

And one day we will all know the absolute thrill of doing in freedom and joy the very thing God made us to do—that gives him and us the fullest of joys.

Love is always about giving up control, and people are trained to think of taking control—even of God. In my experience, most people would sooner be afraid and in control than in love and out of control.

Catholic theolgian Richard Rohr in Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety.

But I guess this begs the question, how much control can you be in if you’re so afraid? Isn’t control for all of us only an illusion that time will eventually unmask? Perhaps it is far better for us to find our peace in learning to live loved rather than in the frantic activities we employ to prop up our illusion of contro.

I’ve also planned trips in the next couple of months to Knoxville, TN and to Atlanta, GA. So I guess I’m back on the road again.

I also recommended this book on a recent podcast of The God Journey and wanted to make sure you’ve heard about it if you’re looking for a children’s Bible for kids in the 3 – 7 age range. A friend recommended it to me and it has become my granddaughter’s favorite book. She loves it, and what’s even better is that all the stories are framed in grace, with a relational God wanting to reconnect with his fallen children. It’s called The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones with art by Jago. It’s tag line is “Every story whispers his name” and then makes the loving God part of every story. This is a great resource to share the Scriptures with your young children… And maybe even your older ones. I loved it and can’t wait to read more of those stories to Aimee.

Finally, I got this email the other day. I love the heart and spirit of it, so I wanted to pass it along to you as well. It captures the simple freedom of just living in grace.

I just wanted to write to you to tell you how much your book So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, the story of Jake Colsen, has meant to me. It was six years ago that we left a church where I had served as the children’s pastor. I thought I was there to help children become followers of Jesus, but the “power” of the church had other ideas. I have lived with the pain of the situation for so long thinking that God didn’t love me or have a plan for me and had no place for me in his kingdom.

In the six years since leaving, I have begun a totally new career and have really started to see how ministry seems much more fruitful and more satisfying not being part of anything organized. All my years of theological training though seem to make me feel that it was not adequate if it was not done through the church. Your book was like it was written specifically to me. Some of the things that Jake said is exactly how I had felt and was feeling. I now am starting to see such a different way of looking at the journey that God has for me.

One phrase that I have continued to recite to myself all the time from the book is, “You need to follow him, even when it creates conflict. Always be gentle and gracious to everyone, but never compromise what is in your heart just to get along.” This quote has given me so much strength to realize that it was okay to create conflict because of what God was doing in my heart and telling me to do. Going forward, I know I need to just keep tender towards God and his word and be strong in what He is telling me to do. God will need to take care of the conflict.

Thank you so much for writing this book and what it has meant to so many people. Someone recommended the book to me, and I have certainly recommended it to many other people since reading it last weekend. I can tell the people who are not ready to read it as they look at me with a blank stare when I give them the name of the book. I can not fully express to you the freedom that I have felt since reading the book.

How do we follow him? Live loved. Live free. Live gently with others and let Jesus take care of the fall-out. If we live only to avoid conflict, we may find ourselves avoiding him. I liked what Martin Luther said: “Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.”

It will take me longer to respond to email on a trip like this, because I neither have control of when i can access email, or when I have time to respond to it. I apologize for any inconvenience that causes.

Here is my schedule for that tour:

June 6-8: weekend with group in Lengerich, Germany
June 9-10: evening(s) with group(s) near Hannover, Germany
June 11-12: meeting(s) in Nuremberg, Germany
June 13: meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany
June 14: meeting near Stuttgart, Germany
June 15: group in Bonn, Germany
June 16-17: group near Kaiserslautern, Germany
June 18-19: near Zurich, Switzerland
June 20-25: Geneva, Switzerland

Keep me in prayer will you? Sara will be joining me part way through the trip as she finishes up here school term here at home.