I’m finishing up today in Lancaster, PA before heading home tomorrow morning and here’s what appeared in my inbox yesterday. My daughter takes the most amazing photos of her children. This is Austin, our newest. He is just over three weeks old and he is really at this stage a pretty laid back baby. Julie is enjoying that.

When I first saw this two words sprang to mind. Rest and trust. Is there anything more adorable than a baby at rest? Last night we talked about the rest God has invited us into, ceasing from our own labors and living in his working (Hebrews 3-4). How do we find that rest, by a growing trust in his love.

Austin has no idea yet of the uncertainties and circumstances that will confront him as life unfolds. Perhaps that’s why it is easier for him to be at ease. But we who do know those uncertainties can also know a Father who is bigger than anything that challenges us. All the uncertainties and all the pain can be swallowed up in him.

This is how I want my spirit to be at rest in the Father’s love today. I can rest in him because I trust his love for me and that nothing in my life is greater than he. As he draws us into that confidence we no longer have to struggle in our own efforts to control our lives, but simply watch and respond to God’s hand as he works in us and around us.

No wonder Paul lost confidence in the capabilities of his own flesh and sought to be found in him with a growing trust in the Father’s nature. That’s were real life, and Father’s rest, are found.

What a crazy few weeks it has been since my last trip to Canada. We were blessed to add another grandchild to our quiver and get to know him as well as continuing to train Abby, our new Golden retriever puppy. I’m also doing a ton of writing these days to represent the books I’ve done on the Father’s Vineyard from John 15. I can’t believe how much has changed in my heart since I wrote the first version of that book. Sheesh! While I love the heart of that book, much of it reeked with the old performance-based discipleship I was caught up in the time. I’m enjoying having the opportunity to reframe that material inside the Father’s affection, but it turned out to be far more work than I thought it would be. Thank God for growth!

But tomorrow it’s jet time again. It’s been awhile since I was last in Pennsylvania so I am looking forward to hanging out with folks in the Harrisburg/Lancaster area this weekend. If you haven’t heard about it yet and want to join us, you can get the details here.

That blank is usually filled in with “husband” or “wife”, but it is sometimes used with “congregation” or “house church.”

I understand their concern. They are excited about the fresh relational journey they are on, discovering how to live loved and are finding the institutional approach they are involved in to be counterproductive to the community they desire. Our first thought is how do we get others to embrace our journey and help us accomplish what we want. As noble as it may be, this approach never ends well. The moment we are trying to get someone else to see what we see, we become a manipulator of their journey, rather than a friend alongside them.

Trying to convince others that they should want what you want will destroy your relationships, not build them as this recent email exchange demonstrates. The writer was concerned about getting his wife, his neighbors and his faith community to embrace the journey he was on. Concerned that their own approaches would fail them he wanted to know what secrets I had to getting other people to see these things.

Here’s how I responded: Not knowing you or the others involved in this circumstance make it nearly impossible for me to know how to advise you here. It does seem like you’re a bit more anti-institutional that God needs you to be. Why wouldn’t you rejoice that your neighbor and his wife are opening the door to Jesus again? Don’t you think he is bigger than whatever weaknesses are part of the religious club they are now going to?

It is an impossible task to get someone else to come on this journey. That isn’t your job and others will only resent you when you try. All you need to do is go on this journey and in the going let God make you a better lover of your wife right where she’s at. This podcast may help you. Read Romans 14 and the first part of 15 in the Message about enjoying your journey but not imposing it on others. If she sees the journey you’re on as an added pressure for her to conform, it won’t be helpful. Even asking for her opinion on Transitions, she might well be recognizing as a pressure to listen to something she really isn’t ready to listen to yet. These are some things that have helped Sara and me on this journey. I hope they help you too.

He wrote back:

Thanks for your straight answer. Though I am not ‘militantly anti-institutional’, I am into life with Jesus being more than the 1/7 of the week in which we participate in dysfunction. Interestingly enough, our ‘church’ is having an intervention and we were given two suggestions to turn things around and I am willing to work as God requires of me to drive our community into more loving relationships with each other.

I read Romans 14-15 in NIV, and I believe I got it. It is not about getting others to believe what I believe we are free to do. I am currently listening to your unequally yoked podcast. I’ll have to listen to it a couple times. It is good. Thanks for sharing your journey via podcasts! I was approaching this situation with the wrong heart. Thanks for shooting straight.

To which I responded: But just so you know, you cannot “work as God requires of me to drive our community into more loving relationships with each other.” You can’t drive people into love, you can only invite them. And you can live with Jesus all seven days of the week whether they desire to or not. Changing them is not the goal. Living free will have far more impact on you and them!

And then he wrote back:

Oh man, so much to learn! It sounds like a simple thing, ‘living loved’. I guess, I can drive them if I invite them into my car :). I’ve definitely started the journey. I don’t know if there is a lot to learn so much as ‘unlearn’. Man, isn’t it amazing how much has to unlearn over the course of time? I was saved 11 years ago, and things were so fresh and new and then I went to Bible College, and only a couple years ago have shed the bulk of Phariseeism, only to find, I still am a creature of habits that need letting go. Not saying that one has a final revelation of God’s love when they first come into that relationship, but it is so much more pure than what happens over the course of time when you get stuck in playing the religious games.

Those who have been working on the site, pose to celebrate the completion of the refurbished building.


The bed frames are ready to be moved in.


The first 25 children move into the refurbished facility with their new bedding, which was provided by the Kenyans. It was a day of great joy for all involved in this project.


The walls are topped out on the new construction and the roofing has begun. The puppy on the bottom left of the picture will be one of the guard dogs for the compound.

They are making great progress and your generous donations keep flowing in to make this all possible. I am wonderfully blessed to watch this all unfold, connecting some of God’s resource to an incredible need. For those of you not up to speed on this, we are helping a group of 72 orphans growing up in a slum in Eldoret to move into a safer and more sanitary facility. The Kenyans we are working with have been sharing the load with us and it is such a joy to see the faces of these children moving into their new home. Construction costs and state demands have increased the costs of this orphanage from the original estimates. Surprise! Surprise! But I am confident that the people we are working with there are being incredibly cost conscious and doing whatever they can themselves to help this project along.

Here is the most recent report from Michael:

The team are praying over here for the completion of the center. This is very big and huge building beyond our expectations. It means that our budget was almost shallow but we thank God that His presences is with us. As I told you earlier that the first team of twenty five kids as been arrived in the centre as you may see the pictures our members has donated the mattresses and the blankets. We have also seen the possibility of this kids to have the school in the center to avoid raising the amount for the surrounding schools. So we may be examining those who are qualified and trained teachers to start working immediately. I thank God that the representatives from the local government are closely with us over here since we completed refurbishing of the building. They are trying to help so that we may follow the procedures. We also need to start working out how we shall buying the facilities in the centre to help the children as well as the utensils before we move out. We need this before we move out since we are advised that the children need to start learning. We are concerned about the uniform and shoes for the education and we are believing in prayers that God is so faithful for every step. I thank God for joining us together for such time as this where we could needs love and care. Your message it has transformed thousands of souls through this ministry and I believe that this will continue so that we may remain as a light to the world.

Thanks to all of you who continue to participate here. For more information on our project here, you can read this earlier blog. If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the Gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

As you can imagine I get the Hebrews 10:25 question a lot. This email exchange might interest others of you who are wrestling with this same issue. My recent newsletter also talks more The Church Jesus is Building in our world today and how we can participate in it.

I wonder if you could give me some input as I struggle with the whole “church” issue? I’m no Bible scholar by any means, but I do get curious enough to look into this or that word. When I looked up the word from Heb. 10:25, “…not forsaking our own assembling together…” I discovered that it’s from a Greek word, “episunagoge” and means, “a complete collection; gathering together. It’s from “episunago” which means, “to collect upon the same place.” From your comments I wonder, do you feel then that this this kind of “collecting upon the same place” gathering is not necessary?

I actually have many really good, deep, Christian relationships, which I maintain with gratefulness to the Lord. But I also desire the kind of gathering that Paul described when he said, “When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” Can you give me any input here? What is your thinking on this? We left the institutional church last October, and have been getting into the (Scriptures) and fellowship around the Lord together. It’s not that we desire to make or create a house church just to have a house church, as if that’s our goal. I see Jesus and the disciples spending time together in serving God, and I think that this is the real model for us to live by. So they collected upon the same place while Jesus was with them in His flesh. Also I was thinking that after Jesus’ ascension God gave gifts for the building up of each other, and that seems to present the “episunagoge” gathering concept.

My response: I love getting together with believers as well and sharing our journeys together as well as the gifts and insights God gives each one. It’s HOW we do that that’s important. House church can be a great tool, if people come to really engage God and each other. It can be a really sick substitute if people are committed to house church not other brothers and sisters.

So I understand your hunger and your concerns about Hebrews 10. But Hebrews 10 is not primarily talking about a meeting, it is talking about connecting in relationships and walking alongside each other in that way. And this was to a group of people who WANTED to do so, but were so afraid of the persecution that being together put them at risk. The writer is telling them that being together anyway is worth the risk for the encouragement it offers. That’s a far cry from being an obligation for Christians to get together.

Here’s what I know. Believers who love each other will get together. That’s what friends and family do. My kids and grandkids get together every week or two. We don’t do it because we have to, because we’re trying to form a family, or any other reason other than we love each other and enjoy being together. Community is like that too. When we have people we care about we will be together. What so many groups miss is that the relationship must take precedence over the meetings. Meetings are a byproduct, not the method or the goal. If we’ll engage caring relationships first and begin to find a common heart together over dinner and evenings together as friends, we will find time to gather together as that network expands. I think it’s backwards to start a meeting first and hope friendships grow out of that. They can, but rarely do. I’ve been to many home groups where people meet together regularly but it is obvious they don’t really care about each other, spend time with each other beyond the meeting, or are truly friends in Christ. Believe me, that’s pretty empty.

I don’t know how God will accomplish this in you and your area, but I know as you follow him, he’ll begin to connect you to people when he is ready and those connections can become a link into real community. We’ve got a group of folks that are just beginning to link up here. We’re not, however, starting a weekly meeting, just encouraging people to build friendships and then see how God might want us to gather. It may be sporadically and spontaneously, or something more set. It’s really up to him. We’re more focused on just sharing the journey…

Wow! Thank you very much!! I feel that what you are saying is so profound in our day and time, and I could sense the Holy Spirit in me bearing witness to your words. I’m so grateful as I’ve been wrestling with the “church issue” to read your wisdom, that I almost feel like crying. You have put a clear light on it for me, and I appreciate your kindness so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I did an interview yesterday with an Aussie, Mick Mooney, living in Hamburg, Germany covering in broad strokes the passion of my heart and life. Some of you may find it interesting, as you will his website, Searching for Grace which includes provocative comics of people trying to think through things a bit differently.

Also, we did lose a lot of incoming email on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. If you sent us something during that time and don’t hear back in the next few days, please send it to us again. We’re sorry the complication and inconvenience caused by the server farm where Lifestream and The God Journey are housed!

If you have tried to email me over the last 24 hours, I have not received it. The server farm where our websites are located (and which we’ll soon be leaving) were conducting some maintenance and have messed our email. Hopefully none of it is being lost and we’ll eventually get it. If you don’t hear from us in a few days, however, you might want to resend. We are sorry for this inconvenience. Believe me, it is incredibly frustrating on this end of things!

The refurbished building’s exterior nears completion.


The walls continue to rise on new construction.

Progress continues both on the refurbished structure and the new building. It’s great to see them making such headway. They hope to complete the building before the rainy season makes work difficult.

We appreciate really for your prayers as well as support so that we may complete this wonderful work as you may see it is very big build enough to accommodate the children with some space for caretakers and social workers. This includes a medical clinic. you will get the whole pictures in few days, This work as gone very quick beyond our expectation, our volunteers are so committed to rush the work along. May the Lord bless you we shall be in touch with the updates.

Thanks to all of you who continue to participate here. We’ve been amazed at how early and graciously people have wanted to be included in this endeavor. For more information on our project here, you can read this earlier blog. If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the Gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

I appreciated much of the feedback from people who read my last blog. And my heart hurts for those who do not yet know that there are people around them, probably closer than they think, who are on a very similar journey and hungering for the same kind of contact. I find them everywhere, so I know they are out there.

But as I wander about the planet I notice there are people who are quite relational, willing to engage people around them in conversation, to travel to meet new people on this journey, and are intentional about opening the door to new friendships by taking the initiative in arranging times to get together. Then there are those who wait in hopes that friendships will come to them. The former have lots of people in their lives, the latter have very few. Until we become the friend we want to have, we will stay rather isolated.

I know this is scary for some people, but honestly, relationships won’t come to you; you have to go to them. All our coping mechanisms of the flesh isolate us by making us defensive around people we don’t know and don’t trust. If grace does anything in us, it makes us more relational people, willing to take the risk to engage others in conversation, even if the relationship goes no where. Spiritual growth makes us willing to risk an evening just to get to know someone, and even rejection if in the end they don’t want to know us better.

If you want the conversations of community you have to go looking, sampling scores of relationships to find those half a dozen that become the most meaningful to you. When I travel around I meet lots of people on this journey, and often the room is filled with people the others don’t know. During the day, I meet lots of people in that room I’d love to know better if I only lived in that area. But what amazes me is how little contact between those people goes beyond my time there. Obviously they were there only to meet or hear me, when there were so many other treasures of God in the room that they could be walking with now if someone would have taken the risk to provide an opportunity to grow the relationship.

What seems to be true is that people are either content with the friendships they have, or they just don’t want to risk their comfort zone to get to know others better. I even find people when I travel who would like to schedule time with me personally if they can, but don’t want to come to a gathering of people they don’t know. Usually they have some kind of excuse, but deep down it’s just that they are uncomfortable coming to a strange home or finding out the arrangements. I’m afraid our comfort zones will always isolated places to dwell.

If you don’t make yourself available first, you will have little to choose from because most people are not going to initiate it with you. It’s never easy to take the risk, but the rewards are worth it. Just don’t think you’ll connect with everyone. You won’t. But those that do become friends are well-worth the search. It’s like looking for a job. You wouldn’t sit home hoping one comes to you. You have to go look, to interview, to be turned down, maybe forty or fifty times in this economy to find a job. What if that’s true of friends? Are they worth investing some time and intentionality?

If the body of Christ is going to connect in our day, it’s because God transforms people to having a greater relational priority than to simply do their jobs and chores each week. The greatest treasures in this earth are people. That includes our neighbor next door and the person in the cubicle across from us. If we just start loving the people around us, whether or not they are on a similar spiritual journey, we will eventually find ourselves overwhelmed with friends and fellow-travelers and maybe people who don’t know God yet, who might see his love in us.

I refuse to give into the notion that some of us are relational and some of us aren’t. I agree that it may be easier for some and more of a risk for others, but that’s usually because some have been taking the risk for so long they are no longer uncomfortable with it. But I am convinced that finding God’s love will free you to love people more freely.

If you want the conversations of community, realize they are the fruit of living relationally. Not every contact will produce community, but it is certainly true that if I’m not growing any relationships, I’ll never find it.

I had an awesome time last week with a number of brothers and sisters up on Vancouver Island, one of the truly lovely spots on the planet. We got a chance to process lots of various topics that they are thinking through in their transition from living a performance-based Christianity to an affection-based life in Christ. I find conversations around the Fatherhood of God, the work of Christ and how we live that out in our daily lives to be incredibly compelling, even if I am in similar conversations every week of my life.

The language of real community is real and compelling, far better than any kind of contrived entertainment. That’s why I react so when well-meaning people jump on the language of obligation to describe the relationships and gatherings of believers. Obligation is the language of religion. It wallows in the selfishness of “what we need” instead of inviting us into the irresistability of real relationships and passionate dialog. Only in the conversation of community can people really discover what God has already put in their hearts and be real enough to ask whatever question they need to ask and be challenged in their thinking beyond the status quo.

Here are a couple of examples of what the conversation of community triggers in people. The first I received after returning from a recent trip by someone who was part of our conversations:

I want to know you better–to meet your wife, to experience your world, to hear more about your journey. I love the way you challenge me and the way I feel safe wrestling openly in your presence. I want to learn more from you, experience more of Him beside you, ask more of you, and share more of my life with you. I want to celebrate more of what He’s done–and is continuing to do–among & through us. He blows me away every day and I’m drawn like a magnet to others who are passionate about discovering Him and worshiping Him together.

There are people in my life that I feel that way about as well. Being with them is never an obligation; it is an absolute joy and the fruit of it is to go back to life and live with a greater grasp on the Truth and greater freedom to live in grace.

Here’s another letter I published years ago from someone in Texas who was waking up to this reality:

It’s OK to question what I need to question, ask what I need to ask and struggle where I struggle. I’ve learned that I am not rewarded for pretending to be better than I am, but that experiencing the life of God means that I am loved through the ups and downs, hurts and joys, and doubts as well as triumphs. Instead of exploiting people’s shame or need for approval to try and make them better Christians, I encourage people to go to God for healing and restoration from shame so they can experience for themselves the love of God. Instead of loading others up with a list of `shoulds’, I tell people that God is working by “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and his greatest desire is to communicate with them. I talk about learning “how to” listen to God and follow what he puts on their heart even if that means they make a mistake doing so. Instead of trying to change people I urge them to get to know Christ as life because it’s so much fun (and far more effective) watching him change them. Instead of manipulating others to do what I think would benefit me and my definition of God’s will for them, I’m learning how to trust Christ as my resource for what I need.

The conversations of community lead the most awesome engagements on this planet, be it with a mature believer or the newest member of the family, or even someone still lost in the world. Where people aspire to grow in grace and truth, and have the freedom to discuss it without fear or the need to manipulate others, the possibilities are truly limitless. Participating in them is not what I need to do; it’s what I simply refuse to live without.