Wayne Jacobsen

As I wrote earlier Sara and I are reading through The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones while she gets ready to leave for work in the morning. This book is a classic study through the beatitudes. Writing about the first two beatitudes he wrote:

The end of human life will be either the finished egotist or the perfect lover. The first beatitude is the end of the egotist, the second is the beginning of the lover. It is the nature of love to insinuate itself into the sorrows and sins of others.

Wow! That feels like a slap of a two by four upside the head. I’m not sure we get to perfection on either of those two extremes, but I like his point nonetheless. Living in the love of the Father, will continually call you outside of yourself to love others in the same way you’ve been loved. If we don’t learn to live in the Father’s love, then or lives grow increasingly ego-centered and narcissistic. We may try to make it look loving, but all we do is manipulate people and situations around us to get what we want.

Certainly living to ourselves will produce the egotist, but interestingly enough so will our service of religion. Religion still puts the focus on our selves, even when we’re trying to produce for God. In the end we still become an egotist instead of a lover. I want to learn that lover part more every day and embrace Jesus purpose for my life each day, rather than trying to fulfill my own agenda, no matter how convinced I may be that it comes from him.

Travel the next few weeks will take me to Sacramento this weekend, and then over Memorial Day weekend to the Detroit area in Windsor, Ontario. From there I’m going to make a quick stop in Iowa to help a school district sort through an anti-harassment policy near Des Moines. I’ll be there May 30 and 31. After that it’s Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and then Sara and I hope to take a vacation into the Pacific Northwest… But only, if the Lord wills…

I’m a bit behind on email, so please don’t give up hope if you’re waiting for a reply. I’ll get to you. I’m editing a book now and that has got me busy, but I had the most incredible weekend. For the first time in a long time, I just hung out with Sara. We did do some yard work in her growing garden in the back (not my favorite thing) and spent some time with my son who came home unexpectedly. It was great and needed. Without periodic times away from everything lifejust bogs us down. We weren’t made to keep rushing from one thing to the next. Sometimes it is so good to just sit back and do nothing! It was that kind of weekend for me.

Don’t miss the latest God Journey podcast. I interviewed some wonderful brothers from Ireland and they tell their story of how God called them to dismantle the growing institution they had 25years ago and taught them to live as his community in and around Dublin. It’s a fabulous story. It is similar to the Fairlee story I told some years ago…

I also got a call from NPR (National Public Radio) that did an interview on the recent goings on at BridgeBuilders and are supposed to play some bits of that on their Wednesday morning show, ‘Morning Edition’ but don’t hold me to that. If they put it on the web, I’ll try to enclose a link later. [Update 4/26 – Link to NPR story. Click on the ‘listen’ button at the top of the page.]

I thought returning home from Ireland wouild give me time to post some thoughts on this blog, but it has been a whirlwind since I got home from Ireland. I had tons of work to catch up on at home as well as keeping up with email, podcasts and other wild things in my life. I’m also helping a friend rewrite a book that we’re hoping to publish soon and tunr into a movie. More on that in an upcoming blog.

But today I had to drive down to Orange County to do a BridgeBuilders presentation for a group of California educators. Now I am at the Orange County ariport waiting for a late night flight to Seattle, where I present a workshop tomorrow for the Washington Conference of School Attorneys on BridgeBuilders mediation strategies for cultural and religious conflicts. I have to be there first thing in the morning, and I have yet to recover from Ireland. After the conference I’m meeting a friend for lunch before catching a 5:00 flight back to Orange County to get my car and then tackle the (hopefully!) 90 minute drive home.

I actually plan to pass out this weekend. The last couple of months have been exhausting and I am far behind on so many things. I hope that doesn’t sound like complaining; it’s just the reality. Though I’m at the end of a pretty concentrated stretch, I love leaving it all on the field at the end of the day. I really enjoy each of the things God has put in front of me and enjoy waking up every morning to see what each day will hold. For now, I only hope for enough strength to be coherent tomorrow and responsive to their questions with helpful answers.

Then I’ll look forward to a recuperating weekend at home. After all that, I might get back to some intelligible postings here!

I’m not too loaded up in May. I’ll continue working on the book and have a trip planned early in the month to Sacramento, CA and later in the month to Canada, across the border from Detroit. Oh, yeah! Sara and I also have our 31st Anniversary in the middle of the month. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. She is such a treasure.

I often think Christianity Today misses the important realities of what God does in the world, so when they hit one out of the park I’m not only surprised, I want to share it. In the March 2006 issue of Christianity Today, they printed an article on the influence of believers on culture entitled, Loving the Storm-Drenched by Frederica Mathews-Green. It is the most incredible article I’ve ever read on the subject and I wanted to shout AMEN virtually with every paragraph. I’ll quote some excerpts here, but I’d really encourage you to follow the link above and read the entire article.

What’s more, (the culture) is already changing – constantly, ceaselessly, seamlessly – changing whether we want it to or not, in ways we can’t predict, much less control. If you take the cultural temperature at any given moment, you will find that some of the bad things are starting to fad, and improvement is beginning to appear; simultaneously, some good things are starting to fall out of place, and a new bad thing is emerging.

Not only can we not control this process, we can’t even perceive it until changes are so far developed as to be entrenched. Chasing the cultures is a way to guarantee that you will always be a step behind the times.

God has not called us to change the weather. Our primary task as believers, and our best hope for lasting success, is to care for individuals caught up in the pounding storm. They re trying to make sense of their lives with inadequate resources, confused and misled by the Evil One and unable to tell their left hand from their right.

This focus on an external, public sign is contrary to the mission of the church. Christ planned to attract people to himself through the transformed lives of his people.

But if someone should actually see our billboard, and be intrigued, and walk in the door of a church, he would find that he had joined a community that was just creating another billboard.

Culture is not a monolithic power we must defeat. It is the battering weather conditions that people, harassed and helpless, endure. We are sent out into the storm like a St. Bernard with a keg around our neck, to comfort, reach, and rescue those who are thirsting, most of all, for Jesus Christ.

One more day here and then we will get on a plane Easter Sunday morning to head on home… and sometime on Easter afternoon I will get another hug from Aimee, my 16 month-0ld-granddaughter who is just learning to ‘hug back’. She gave me one on the day before I left and it was so amazing. I told her she has the amazing power to make so many people so happy just by giving them a hug.

And then I realized that we all have that power every day with people God might bring in our paths who need someone to love them.

I’m so sorry I’ve had such little time for updates this trip. I’m exhausted with all the running around we’re doing and the people we’ve met. But it has been FABULOUS! The people here are amazing and have taken to Sara and me as if we were long, lost friends having returned home. What an absolute joy. And amazingly enough the weather here has been superb. I’ve gotten a chance to play two rounds of golf during my stay and we’re headed out this morning to a men’s tournament with a bunch of the brothers around here. (Sorry, gals, none of the wives here seem to play golf!)

Anyway, a couple of days ago I recorded an interview with two of the brothers here who were involved in this group of folks dismantling their institution 25 years ago to learn to live as a community of God’s people in the Dublin area. We’ll use it on a future edition fo The God Journey. It’s fabulous. When we were talking about some of those things later in the day, one of the wives said how blessed she has been that all the relationships from those days have grown on over the years with such beauty, depth and grace. She wondered if they hadn’t laid it all down when Father asked them to if they would have the same relationships today. Wouldn’t it have been easier for them to end up in conflict over how things should be run, who should be in charge, and what they should be doing.

That got me thinking. Maybe that’s what happened back at the congregation I was with 15 years ago. I see now how God may have been asking us all to lay it down and walk away and if we had all those relationships wouldn’t have gotten shattered by the agendas of men. Hmmmm…. Some of us did walk away rather than fight those who wanted to take possession of God’s working, but if we all had, I think what she said would have been true. If our participation in the resurrection life of Jesus is found in our own willingness to lay our lives down when he asks, why wouldn’t there be a corporate expression of that? There are times when God does wonderful things among us and if we could just enjoy them for what they are instead of turning them into institutions, maybe our relationships wouldn’t get broken, maybe the kingdom would grow freely in the world, and maybe we would really see the living expression of his family in the world.

I’m sure you can’t ‘lay it down’ too often in this world. What we grasp for, we lose. What we give up we seem to be able to enjoy without being owned by it.

I’ll be honest, the audio isn’t very good on this one because of a mistake I made in recording it. But the quality of the content makes it worth it to listen anyway. What One Prayer Can Do is the story of how a prayer and a willingness to follow Father’s leadings can have astounding impact on an entire continent.

I don’t often recommend our podcasts here anymore, but if you’re not yet listening in there, this is one who won’t want to miss. People who think God can only use large institutions often argue that we must all be involved in them if we are going to impact the world. Here’s the counterpoint. Behind the scenes in Africa God is relationally connecting people in a way that is disarming tribal conflicts and opening the door to more effective governance, all in response to a simple prayer played out over 35 years. Imagine if there were hundreds of thousands of believers every day who would just follow the lamb wherever he leads them, not trying to impact the culture, but just being real one relationship at a time and see what God produces in that simplicity. This is what he wants for each of us.

Listen Here

It has been a while since I’ve written because I have just been swamped since I left for the UK and Ireland. I’ve only managed to keep up with my email while spending so much time with some incredible people. In the UK we had people come from a wide area to share over the weekend. Many of the folks were recent immigrants to the UK from Zimbabwe and South Africa. Many of these have been through so much in moving their lives and watching their children scatter across the globe. But what incredible people and their passion to live in the life of Jesus without rituals and obligations was amazing. We ate and laughed and hiked in the woods and talked through the life of Jesus together. What great days. I left with many new friendships.

On Tuesday I arrived in Ireland to visit a wonderful network of people who live south of Dublin. I’m staying in Killiney and the picture above is the view from a Killiney Hill, looking south. Sara jumps on a big United bird to join me here tomorrow night for my remaining 10 days in Ireland. It will be great to have her here and there are so many people who want to meet her.

For a three-night period here we are sharing together about the cross of Christ and how his work reorders everything about the way we think and live. It’s a house packed with people, youth and adults together. You should see the place. The energy and fellowship between all of these folks is a joy to share in. Many of them were part of a congregation 30 years ago, that God led them to disband institutionally and invited them to live together relationally over the years. They have great hearts for God’s life. We’ve even had some folks come over from England to join us this week.

And we had the most amazing encounters yesterday. I went out to buy my mom a birthday card and one of my hosts offered to take me on a bit of a sightseeing drive along the shore. I don’t usually do much sightseeing when Sara is about to join me because she wants me to wait for her. But we went anyway. Con, my host, was showing me a unique home built into the edge of a cliff overlooking Dalkey Island. The view was amazing, but we could barely see the home because it was below the wall and we could only see the roof. As we got out of the car just for a moment, the owner drove up. As we told him we were admiring his home he invited us in and introduced himself. He is Jim Sheridan a film director of some renown. He was so gracious showing us through this very unique home with all the latest electronics and panoramic views of the ocean and island. It was breathtaking!

During our conversation my writing came up as well as the fact that I’ve begun work with a group of people to bring an incredible unpublished story to print and ultimately to the screen. Can you imagine? What are the odds? He seemed intrigued and asked about the movie as well as my other books. I didn’t have any with me, but we’re going to drop a Jake book off later. Who knows what God might do with this brief encounter?

What movie, you ask? It is a book and a movie called The Shack and is the most incredible story I’ve ever read about God making himself known in the brutal tyranny of someone’s tragedy and restoring them in the intimacy of his love. It was written by a friend of mine in Oregon. I can’t wait for everyone to read it, but we are still polishing it up a bit and beginning to put some things in play to make a movie of it. It has been an absolute shock how God is seemingly lining up the people and the circumstances to pull this off. The connections I and the others on the creative team have had back in the States the last two weeks has really affirmed God’s hand in this. We are going to need about $15 million in investment money to make this, and we already have a number of people who have expressed interest about investing in this film as a way to help reveal God to the world. We even have one production company suggesting they take it all over, but we don’t just want this story told, but the heart of the Father in it as well. I sit here today in awe of what God seems to be doing at this point to bring this whole thing together. I will let you know more as it unfolds.

One last item, as I went for a walk yesterday with a couple that wanted to spend some time with me we stumbled upon a film production going on in the park for a new film called A Tiger’s Tale and watched them film part of a scene. Again, what are the odds? I don’t know that anything will come of these brief snippets yesterday around Dublin, but the combination of them both seemed to be God pointing the way forward with a smile on his face, affirming that he was in this and he would make whatever arrangements and connections we need to see it through.

Absolutely awesome! Then last night we got back to the cross, which is one of my favorite things to talk about. What a day in Dublin! Now I can’t wait for Sara to get here.

In a few hours I catcha big bird for England to spend the weekend, then I’ll be off to Ireland for a couple of weeks… I’m really looking forward to catching up with some of the believers there…

Also, we’ve also just combined our first year of podcasting into one CD of mp3 files that will lead you through our entire season. In these 42 podcasts Wayne and his co-host, Brad Cummings, discuss our relationship with God, rethinking the life of the church and how we live in our culture. They also interview others from around the world who are sharing in this journey. All of these podcasts are available at The God Journey, but many people haven’t figured out the whole podcasting technology, so we’ve put all of our first season podcasts on one CD and are making it available for $12.00 for those who want to listen on their computers or mp3 players. Even most DVD players today will play this disc. You can order it from our audio page.

In our morning moments while Sara gets ready to leave for her high school we are reading together a little book that has touched me in the past. It is The Christ of the Mount By E. Stanley Jones. It is a study ofn the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5. This quote sums up his approach which makes the whole discourse so incredibly powerful:

The essential difference between Phariseism and the teaching of Jesus is just here: “One was devotion to an idea – the Law; the other was devotion to a Person – the Gospel.†In the first, one could feel that he had attained and could stand in the temple and thank God that he was not as other men; but the other could never feel that he had attained, for love was always opening new doors. The one produced the perfect Pharisee and the other the perfect lover.

“If religion is concerned with love to a person there can be no limit to duty and there can be no question of merit,†says Findlay, and he laid his finger upon an essential truth. There is a beyondness in the Sermon on the Mount that startles and appalls the legalistic mind. It sees no limit to duty – the first mile does not suffice, he will go two; the coat is not enough, he will love enemies as well. Come to that with the legalistic mind and it is impossible and absurd; come to it with the mind of the lover and nothing else is possible. The lover’s attitude is not one of duty, but one of privilege.

Here is the key to the Sermon on the Mount. We mistake it entirely if we look on it as the chart of the Christian’s duty, rather it is the charter of the Christian’s liberty – his liberty to go beyond, to do the thing that love impels and not merely the thing that duty compels.

AMEN! This life is a person we love who transforms us, not set of principles or rituals to observe. Get that and your as close the kingdom as anyone on the planet!