Wayne Jacobsen

I have to be a bit vague on some of the details here, because the writer of these emails, Jamal (not his real name), lives in an area of Ethiopia dominated by Muslims who persecute those known to be Christians in that region. He was in the States on an education visa, and at the end of his studies he had an encounter at a service station that started an amazing journey.

After a rainy night at the state fair and missing his daughter’s performance in the musical he want there to see because his daughter had given him the wrong time, a frustrated Doug stopped at a gas station on the way home. He was thirsty so he went inside instead of paying at the pump. It was during the Olympics so he asked the Ethiopian gas attendant, Jamal, what athletes he was watching and what sports were big in his country. Jamal asked Doug why so many American athletes say that God helps them. Doug told him about Jesus and answered his questions for about 20 minutes. Jamal said he wanted to learn more and Doug gave him his phone number as they walked out of the gas station in the rain, at the end of Jamal’s shift. They talked a couple short times after that, over a gas purchase. Now Jamal was a graduate student in a doctoral program at a local university. He called Doug several weeks later and wanted to meet for lunch before he left to go back to Ethiopia.

They met at a deli for lunch. Doug would often have to write words down and let Jamal look them up in his dictionary. He drew the 4 spiritual laws cross diagram and showed him verses in the Bible. Jamal asked about prayer and then, without another word, he dropped to his knees right there, bowed 3 times and prayed out loud for forgiveness in his broken English.

He wrote Doug the following email that evening:

11/1/2004

Since my tongue will not say correctly so many of the words I can write I wish to tell you in this way my deepest gratitude. I wish there only was more time to learn from you more what is beginning in my heart this day. When I come first to America I am thinking that my heart is full of many dreams. But really it is only my head that is filled with these. My heart was still beneath the smiles filled with many pains and wounds, many because of my own hands. This I am trying all the time I am here to hide from all around me yet mostly from myself. I am looking for the “special magic” of America that so many peoples from over the world are longing for to find some success only to know that it can not fill up the emptiness leftover from past hurts.

But today I am praising this Jesus who sends you into my store in the rain to tell me that his love is the gift that heals what no man can see or touch. As your words come to me I can feel him touching this pain that I am hiding for so long. Can it be this easy that he would bring to my heart the joy of his forgiveness as a present like your Christmas every day? I am wondering how I must pay for such a freedom treasured. In my country if you wish to be free from prison you must bring money to the police and guards from your family. How then can Jesus way be so free? I am wishing I had some of the money left I am paying to the University and knowing that it would not be enough. This I am thinking as your words from Jesus talking are flowing through me like water poured over the cracks in dry stone. Then I see that it was never easy because of what Jesus has paid for me the blood poured from his heart. And I am seeing him with scars and brokenness because of the things I do. Yet knowing that he says to me, this is for you so you may be free.

Now I cannot wait any longer. So I am asking how I can open this gift? When you are telling me prayer is not remembering words from writing down somewhere else but turning away from the road of myself and toward Jesus and telling him all that is in my heart. So I am kneeling on the floor in the restaurant to ask Jesus for this forgiveness and he is with me making the wounds of my heart like new flesh.
Now I am thinking when I am coming to America my wallet is full and my heart is empty and now I am going home and my wallet is empty but my heart is full. I am dancing inside myself. Now the story I am telling as I go to home is not about America but about God’s son and the gift of his peace and freedom.
I am also asking you to thank your church for the Bible. I will be reading and writing to ask you many more things I need to learn. Thank the church also for the prayers they have been giving to Jesus for me.

Your friend,

Jamal

Doug got another email from him the next day that said he was struggling to pray in English when Jesus spoke to him in his language of Swahili. Jamal wrote, “Now I know your Jesus is not just the God of Americans but of the forgotten peoples as well.”

With a minimum of what most people call discipleship, Jamal returned to his native country with the simple encouragement to read the Bible, talk to God and follow him as he makes himself known to you. Here is what has happened since, in Jamal’s own words in emails he has sent to Doug:

11/8/2005

I am writing once again to you for sharing with your friends. Tell them again that I am not having a translator like at University and so I am very sorry for this bad mistakes in writing. If there heart is like yours in love they will understand and be glad.

Many days have past and I have not written you. Your heart must be filled with wonderings about me. Sorry I am for this beyond words for I cannot count how many times I wished to write to you or am thinking of you or needing from you answers but I am not in a place where e-mail works until I return to a larger city. This I am planning to do many times but the journey is so long and always something happen to keep in a greater working.

For my days in America I am trying to fill my head with knowing and remembering of things taught so that I can come back to Africa and use this learning for my family and the peoples here. But God has always planned another way that my heart would be so full of Jesus that this is all I am able to share.
So now in every village I am first planning of helping people in living ways to find some success in the world, now God is building the “living stones” that you were telling me the reading of in Peter’s letter. This is best for in many places now there could be no building of my hands big enough to hold them all. All this God is doing as we share the Jesus of our hearts and his great love.

In my city I am beside myself because it seems there is a mountain too high for any climbing between the people and the words of Jesus. They are saying that these words are for the white man only and there is no place in the heart of Africa for them. When hearing this I am in sadness deep within my heart too much for words of any kind to tell. I am melting on the inside and afraid I will run into the sand and be soaked up. I am wishing to speak to you and not able to eat for many days. Then I am remembering some of your words sent to me from Jesus’ brother James to ask God for knowing what to do. So I am talking to Jesus many days and then my mind is remembering the story you told me of the man from Ethiopia, how that in the great success time of Philip, God is saying by his Spirit that what is more important is to go to the desert and tell one man from Ethiopia about Jesus story. So I am reading from this Acts in my bible to the peoples. This I am saying there everyday and it is as though the mountain is falling into the sea of God’s mercy for this people and their dry spirits are drinking of water that is ever living.

But also a door is opening inside of me and I am walking now the path of some of your teaching to me and more. Before this too much of this is only words spoken about a far off place made of dreaming. But now I am not dreaming because this I see when I am awake in the day. This people with me and myself are learning to ask of Jesus from their hearts and the answers are too many for the telling. And so wonderful to see that even then they are hard to believe. And the greatest thing of all is that in the asking by this peoples to God they now know this is not the power of Jamal but the power of our Jesus.
It heals the sick when there is no doctor or medicine, it brings a doctor who is lost to the home of people who are made well by his care, it brings food to the hungry paid for by other Christians who know us not. They tell the driver, take this food west until someone asks you for it, we do not know where only that this is what Jesus is telling us to do. And they are driving no more because they are running out of gas in front of the house where we are praying to ask Jesus for this food. And then we are praying to Jesus our thanks for them and this people we know not and that he will provide them gas for driving back and no one is coming all night to the village but in the morning David is walking by the truck and smelling gas and we are finding the tank so filled it has spilled out onto the ground. And the boss is saying who fills this truck up with gas and the men sleeping in it all night are saying no one has ever done this. SO we are knowing this is Jesus doing. In another place we are praying for the rain water to come for the people are dying because there is not rain for many days. Then the rivers are flowing with water and the drums are celebrating and the drums from the mountains close by are coming back from up the streams of water and saying how can there be celebrating when here is no rain and how can there be water in the valley when there is no rain in the valley or the mountain.

But all this and more God is doing to say to this people that his love for them is great but the gift of Jesus for them is greater. And the people are kneeling in the road and the dust and the desert and the cities and the stores and the homes and like me in the restaurants to ask Jesus to fill their hearts and this he is always doing.
I will write to tell you more and ask you many things. But tell those people who have been asking God for us that he is hearing and now we are asking for them to live in this love that is shared opened to us by our Jesus. That he will bring healing to the hearts of your people also. That he will fill them with the wonder of our hearts because his hand reaches out beyond the seeing of man to do more with you than even bravest hearts can dream.

Your friend,

Jamal

Isn’t that amazing? Look what God simply does with people who will follow him! We think this life in Christ is rocket science. It is not! It is simply people learning how to trust him in the face of their unfolding circumstances. I’ll follow-up tomorrow with two more emails from Jamal tomorrow that takes the story even further…

I got this email yesterday from a brother in Missouri and got quite laugh out of it. It reminds me how easy it is to see through the bondage of religious obligation when the smallest bit of light gets in. The only ones who can’t see it are those who either make their living selling some piece of religion, or enjoy controlling others even as they feel superior. That’s why common folks found Jesus so engaging and why the Pharisees found him so enfuriating

Now, I’m not sharing this so all you parents will give Transitions to your sons and daughters, nor for you sons and daughters to give it to your parents to try to ‘win them over.’ Obviously this young lady was just in the right place spiritually to see what Father wanted her to see. But I think this is awesome:

I must share with you something that you may find amusing. I had given my grown daughter your Transition messages several weeks ago. Now this young lady loves Jesus with all her heart and has been in Churchianity all her life, and currently attends the local so called mega church.

The first evening after she listned on the way to work, she came home and as we were discussing what she had listened to, she started to cry. The Lord had touched her heart with this truth, and she could see some of the religious yokes that she had been carrying.(She is seeing more all the time) Anyway, she is listenening to the Podcasts and really enjoying those as well.

Yesterday (Saturday) she had a Sunday School class meeting. When she came home, I just casually asked how everything went. She first shook her head, then glared at me and said “This is your fault!”. I started chuckeling and asked her what she was talking about. She said the meeting was full of all kinds of “you should do this, and you should do thats”. As I laughed harder she said, not only that, but the church had sent spies into their Sunday School class to check them out to see if they were being friendly enough! That is when I completly lost it and laughed almost until I was in tears. Of course she laughed too, but not as much.

I remember having a similar conversation with my daughter when she came home from college one semester. “You ruined me,” she said with a smile. She told Sara and me that everywhere she went to find fellowship, she could see through the guilt-inducing, manipulative tactics so many so-called leaders us to control God’s people and burden them down with obligations God has not asked of them. Yes, it does ‘ruin’ you a bit, but in a wonderful way.

I love how simple life in Jesus really is. We don’t miss it because it is too complicated for us to figure out. We miss it because we see it more complicated than it really is, and those who control our religious structures want it that way. That’s why God made it so simple. No one can own it, use it to control others, or even set themselves up as the expert in it. This is for everyone—from the least to the greatest. All get to know him first-hand and live in the glory of his unfolding grace!

I’m going to continue this theme over the next couple of days. On a recent trip, I heard the most amazing story of someone coming to know Jesus in the U.S. just a few days before having to return to their native North African country that is controlled by Muslims who persecute anyone known to be Christian. For those who wonder how God can work outside the big-box missionary organizations to make himself known in the most dire circumstances, you won’t want to miss this.

Here’s another over-the-shoulder read. I got a wonderful email today and know many others with similar questions who might appreciate a bit of our dialog:

Since I have been a Christian I have followed the leadership of my pastorfriend. He has served as my mentor for over a decade, but int the last couple years our relationship has become strained. I have four kids and feel that I need to direct more of my time at home and he sees this as a segmentation of my life. Here’s what I mean… At the start of this year I served as a board member, youth leader, went to men’s group, setup for sunday mornings, sound manav coordinator guy, had to attend Learning to Lead (LTL) meetings every month as well as board meetings, youth meetings etc and at the same time we were planning a mission trip which required more meetings. And that was just church life… I also have a full time job along with continuing education courses. Things came to a head over the last Super Bowl. He wanted to have an LTL that night and I wanted to watch the game. He wanted to change the date and I said go for it, just leave Saturday’s alone. It was the only day that didn’t require me going to work or church…it was GOLD. He accused me of segregating my life and went on this big spiel that we don’t really understand what it means to follow Christ.

Now, I do disagree with him and I let him know. Things didn’t get any better at all and I ended up resigning from the board and leadership as a whole.. now I’m only doing Youth, Mens group and setup. I love this, I love how it feels, I feel free… my relationship with God is better, I have very little stress now except with my pastor still. I want to rid my self of religion, I want a close personal relationship with God – I want to draw closer to him – but I seem to have been programmed by my pastor friend here, he trained me, mentored me and now I want to change but I am still at his church and still fall under his leadership. How does a person move forward?

You’re in a very common situation, even though it can be quite disorienting. What do you do when God is leading you differently than the one who has helped ‘mentor’ you wants you to go? Isn’t it sad how easily personal friendships and even mentoring relationships are put at risk just by our desire to simplify our lives and follow Jesus? That’s what religion does to our free life in him. I would hope your friend/pastor would be excited by that and free you to do as you think God is asking you to do, but I also know that is very rare.

Pastoral types, (and remember I was one once) have a hard time seeing past their vision for the institution and thinking everyone should ‘give their lives’ to it as much as they do. He obviously sees value in you and what you do and may even feel he’s made an investment out of which he has the right to expect a return. I’ve been there with people, too, and you end up hurting the people you care most about. He seems threatened by losing your gifts in the congregation and instead of being honest about that, he turns it into an accusation against you.

Personally, I like the sounds of what Father is doing in you. It sounds like he is bringing added grace into your life and with it added space. I think one of the things that religion does is that it makes us so busy we don’t have time for him, or those closest to us. Now you have a choice: to live to him or the expectations of your friend. That’s the most difficult choice in this kingdom, especially when he can’t understand what God is doing in you and we care about them so much.

So, don’t be too hard on your friend. Maybe you could have a conversation with him some day like, “Listen, I know you’re having a hard time with some decisions I’m making right now. I can appreciate that since I’m not as available as I used to be. Even I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m right either, but as a dear friend of mine I would hope you would encourage me to follow what I sincerely believe God is asking me to do. I hope you can give me the space to do that because your continued accusations and disappointments will tear apart this relationship. I want you to be free to do what God asks of you, and I hope you can extend me the same freedom.â€

Of course that could turn into a huge conversation, but you can still love him, be gentle with him and follow-through on the things God has put on your heart. If he can free you to that the friendship will survive. If he can’t love you without controlling you, you might be wise to take some distance for a time. This is a good reminder for everyone who helps others grow in Christ. That is not a life-time assignment. Help others learn to follow him and then let them go and do it, even if they make some mistakes in the process. We all do, after all!

I’m only feeding back to you off of what you said, and obviously don’t have his side of it. But I know how threatening freedom can be to those who have a system to run and need a never-ending supply of warm bodies to fill the holes…

Got this from a friend in an email last week:

I’m leading a devotion today in our all church staff meeting titled “commitment and discipline is what we do when we are no longer in love.†I think you would like it.

I think I would to. The title’s awesome and so profound. When love begins to wane, I think our first choice might be to rekindle the love, not knuckle down on the commitment or discipline. While that may be a short cut to better behavior for a season, it will not of itself lead to lasting change or fruitfulness in his kingdom.

I got this email a few months ago from someone I met in England during my last trip there in late March. I have wanted to share his letter here for some time, because it is so full of life and freedom. I hope other people’s stories like this are as encouraging to some of you as they are to me. I know it isn’t easy to re-think this life away from all the religious rituals and rules many of us are schooled in, but Jesus is up to the challenge…

Here’s a bit of Eddie’s story:

I have been wanting to drop you and Brad a line and now at the backend of a busy and blessed week I have snatched some time in the office to get this out to you. Let me start by saying that the podcast CD I picked up when you were here with us is blessing us so much. I also thank God for the fact that this little island has such busy roads, it means that each day, as I commute between clients, I am able to have at least an hour listening to “the on going conversation”. Some may think that an hour a day alone with the two of you in a car in traffic is more than the human mind can take, it may be, but the spirit is thriving in the revelation and the joy of hearing so many real stories and testimonies and clear articulation.

Over the last few weeks the inside of my car has seen tears, laughter and heard many an “AMEN TO THAT”. It has also heard many an “OUCH” as the truth and openness of the discussions have touched heart and spirit, Oh! and the flesh has taken a beating as well. I have had to stop on the road to throw out the bodies of all the sacred cows that have been slaughtered. It has been very intense listening to all the material in such a short space of time. Submitting one’s self to microwave ministry of this type in a confined space is guaranteed to destroy religious tumors real fast. Let me just add that Father has used you and Brad, and the others on this journey and in the podcasts. Father has used this as an instrument to engineer some major changes in me, my family and other we have contact with. Many thanks for the openness and honesty (can’t emphasis that enough), which the podcasts have as their fabric, it’s so refreshing and transforming and dare I say entertaining. The mind is being renewed and the transformation is taking place.

We still have contact with many of the folk and are seeking to help them understand our journey as and when they ask. I have come to understand that I have to let Father open the doors to and for those conversations, only those who have ears for the message will hear and I just never know who they are. I am content to just get on with the business of walking simply, daily with Jesus. I seem to be getting better at it with all the clutter, clamor and obligation out of the way. I am trusting that the peace, joy and clarity, which the transformation is bringing, will be the catalyst for conversations with others.

Let me run and get my chores sorted for the day. Just wanted to stop by and say hi, thanks and keep the conversation “on-going”, it is without doubt a >â€Life Stream”. Why? Because it comes from Fathers heart.

Yesterday was NOT the day to fly. When I arrived at LAX the security line was over half a mile long. No one was allowed to take any liquid or gels through security. Even bottled water purchased inside secure areas of the airport couldn’t be brought on board. My flight was 25 minutes late leaving Los Angeles and I only had a 26-minute layover in Las Vegas before connecting to Minneapolis.

Fortunately my flight from there was delayed as well because the security lines in Vegas were taking people an hour and a half to get through. So I made my connection with about 10 minutes to spare. Amazingly my bags did as well. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t make it, but they came spilling off the baggage conveyor to my absolute surprise. Sometimes the airlines really get it right…

This is my first time in the Minneapolis area, so I’m having a ball meeting a whole new group of folks at various stages of the journey. Many have been on my websites for months and have been reading some of my books, so this should be interesting.

A couple of things are weighing heavy on my heart these days. Recently I’ve heard from a couple of dear people who are abandoning God in their disillusionment over the failures of religion. I guess that’s why I hate the forms of religion so much. Some people will have served the forms for so long believing them to be God, that when religion finally fails them in a critical area (as it always does), they won’t be able to separate the reality of God from the falseness of religion. Tragic!

I’ve also heard from others who have worked religion pretty well on the outside, only to see them crash onto their own brokenness, with hidden addictions that finally ravage their life and devastate their family. While I’m always glad when such things come to light, I am always saddened by how much effort they put into working a system that only betrays them in the end. I hate that too! If we do not introduce people to the life that is in Jesus, they will only weather religion for so long, and then it will collapse on them. Hopefully they will see God beyond it.

That’s my prayer. I hope these moments are just the middle of chapter, where God has yet to complete what he has set out to do in them.

Nadia, a reader in Russia, is translating So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore into Russian and we will be posting chapters on our website as she makes progress. If you know readers who speak Russian, you are welcome to forward the link on to them. The first chapter is up and others will follow as they are completed. For those reading it in Russian, if you have an editing suggestions, please send them to us and we’ll forward them on to the translator. Nadia is doing this as a labor of love.

On a side note, we will also be posting soon a complete French translation. Also a German publisher, Glory World, is translating Jake’s book into German and will be publishing it in book form at a date to be announced.

I love what Jesus does to transform people from the onerous burden of religious obligation, with its requisite demands for performance and overwhelming guilt. I got this email the other day from a mother who was part of a time I had with a group of believers this summer. The ‘bit about the cross’ that she refers to was the teaching of the cross that is very similar to our Transition series. This is the freedom that he wants us all to find in him. I’m so blessed at what this woman took to heart and how God is working it into her.

That bit about the cross, so simple really, but so hidden and so huge. The week before I left for (my time with you) I was talking to my husband about going on Prozac again. I was sick of battling all the shame, bitterness, and hurtful thoughts. I’d prayed prayers of confession and forgiveness. I’d rebuked everything I could rebuke. It seems like in an instant all of that chatter was finally quiet. For the days following my simple life of mothering tasks had new color.

I’ve had some bouts of anxiety too. Not tied to anything specific. I think I’m trying to learn to skate away from the wall and I’m afraid I’ll fall. God asked me to quit my job and to spend a Sabbatical year with Him. My good husband is behind this year completely. It’s the first year of my life as long as I can remember without an agenda. Wayne, I think I’m still afraid I’ll screw it up!! Lord I believe help my unbelief.

I assured her she would screw it up at some point. We all do. The joy comes in knowing we can’t screw it up so badly that he can’t make himself known in it and use it for his glory anyway…

I was with a group of believers not long ago in a time of song and praise, and I noticed something curious during one song. I didn’t know the song but in one of the verses there were two lines about things that need to die. The first said something like “where religion dies.†Every time we sang that line it got great cheers and whooping from the crowd.

The next line was about our pride dying as well. It didn’t get the same cheers. In fact, it didn’t get any. Interesting… It’s easy to want religion to die. It is outside of us and doesn’t cost us anything. Pride is inside of us and we all know what that might cost us when it dies. I get it, but it made me sad nonetheless. In fact I mentioned it to them a bit later when I spoke. Why don’t we bring the same passion to God’s work transforming us from the inside as we do the work he needs to do on the outside?

That may be why so many people who have seen through the bondages of religious systems hve yet to find great freedom and life beyond it. It is easy to cheer for the destruction of things that have hurt us. I get emails like that all the time, cheering on things I’ve written about the ineffectiveness of religion. Some of those I know who call out the loudest for the destruction of organized religion as we know it are sometimes the least transformed personally to reflect the compassion and character of God to people around them—especially to those still captive in the system.

Interestingly, I do not get the same cheers back from people when I talk about letting God rework us from the inside and what needs to die in us if we’re going to experience the fullness of his life. If we could only see that our pride and independence are even more destructive, especially because they live with us every day. Real transformation doesn’t happen out there in structures and systems, but first in those who are willing to let him transform them at the most broken places of their lives.

And if you’re not ready for that, then you’re just really not sure yet how much this awesome God loves you. Keep exploring that until finally your joy at his dealing with your pride is greater than your hope at him blowing up religion. Then we’ll know we are well on the path to his life!

——-

On a personal note, we are on the road this weekend in Central California and our office is closed until Wednesday. Books and CDs ordered this weekend won’t be shipped until then. I apologize for any inconvenience this causes…

I just got back from Kansas and a week with New Jerusalem Mission which is spearheading the conversion of a hospital into a care facility for the homeless and for those afflicted with HIV/AIDs. How this came to be is the an incredible story about a woman loving her ex-husband through his death with AIDs, that I told on the opening segment of a recent podcast. I also told her story in the book He Loves Me. That’s Penny Dugan in the picture leading some people through the hopsital. This work is a special grace by those thinking outside the box of organized religion, but also working alongside all kinds of Christians to provide a compassionate outreach for those who need it so much.

The cost of their operations and refurbishing the hospital are significant. I’m talking in the 100s of thousands of dollars. This is completely a faith venture on their part and you won’t believe what they’ve already accomplished just by doing every day what God puts before them. If any of you have some extra money that you’re looking to give to help extend the gospel in a dark corner of our world, please give this some consideration and prayer. If you know any groups looking for a week or a few days of a ‘missions project’ right here in the heartland of the U.S., consider this. And if you know of friends or foundations looking to give to projects like this, please let them know too.

Every gift is put into the work by people who come from all over the world at their own expense to work in this ministry. I don’t know of a project I could recommend more highly to you than this one. These are people thoroughly dispensing the gospel of grace to people often overlooked and outcast in our culture. So many of them over the years have come to their own personal faith as well.

This isn’t just a hospital for Kansas, but a national center to help care for those with HIV/AIDs with no where else to turn. And it isn’t just a ministry for the U.S. This team travels around the world to help encourage and equip others on the front lines of HIV/AIDs care. I was with them in South Africa last summer and some of them recently returned from China.

If you would like more information about their work, you can contact me and I will put you in touch with them. You can send contributions to Lifestream if you want, made out to “New Jerusalem Missions” and we will send them along. Unfortunately they do not have a website at the moment, but I can vouch for their integrity, passion and mission and they would love to be in touch with you if you want further information about their work or bringing a team to help in the refurbishing. You can find out more at their New Jerusalem Mission website.

We do things like this very rarely. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks for giving this your prayer and consideration.