A Love Stronger than Our Greatest Fear

4 Comments / Encouragement /

Today, Sara and I leave for a bit of a working vacation out to Hawaii. We’ll be sharing with a fellowship in Honolulu next Sunday (April 30), but we’ll mostly be on Maui, savoring God’s work in this last season of our lives and preparing our hearts for what lies ahead.

Before we go, I wanted to leave you with this amazing dream, which can be of great encouragement when you find yourself facing one of your greatest fears. It was sent to me by a good friend, Harvey Mast, who lives in Ohio. He had this dream nearly four years ago while volunteering with a ministry helping women who had been sexually trafficked. He sent it to me recently, and it deeply touched me. It can be interpreted at so many levels and can redirect our focus to the only thing that matters in times of fear. With his permission, I’m publishing an edited version to see what Father might want to reveal to you.

(And my dear sisters, please don’t be put off by this male-as-rescuer story. I know that is a struggle for some since it can be a tiresome cliché. However, Harvey is a man, and this is his dream. I hope you can put yourself in the same place of fighting through your worst fears to help others trapped in theirs, male or female.)

I stood with a group of friends in front of a castle. This was a magical castle, but dark magic ruled inside. There, your worst fears become your reality. Two young girls had wandered into that castle decades ago, and now fear held them captive at the top of the tallest tower where it was so dark no light could penetrate except the warmth of real love.

Many well-meaning, brave young men had tried to rescue the princesses over the years, but all had failed. Entering two at a time, they went to the winding staircase with their romantic ideas of love. Eventually, their fears would overwhelm them, and their screams would echo through the castle as they made a hasty retreat.

With each failed attempt, the lowest section of the staircase would crumble to ruin. Only time would repair the stairs enough to try again, which could often take up to ten years.

As we stood at the castle entrance, time was mending the last step after another failed attempt. “Who will go now?” The question reverberated off the walls. A great silence fell on the crowd. Would anyone risk their greatest fears and another ten years in hopes of rescuing the two lost princesses? It would take two, for each girl needed a separate escort out.

I looked around for someone else to step forward and face his worst fears for the love of another. To my dismay, no one did. Tears began to form in my eyes as I thought about those two young girls trapped inside, and I couldn’t stop myself from stepping forward. “I will go,” I said and waited for another to join me on this quest. Would the love of my Father burning inside me be greater than my greatest fears? I believed it was true, but this would test that for sure.

Soon, a good friend stepped forward to go with me. We entered the castle and started climbing the staircase like many others had. The first fear that came was the fear of failure. “What if we fail and these precious little girls are lost in this hell for another ten years?” I halted at this thought, and this gripping fear weighed heavy on me. I could feel myself shrinking in size.

I continued climbing, now a bit slower. “Who am I to think I could rescue one of them?” was my next fear. I had all but stopped now, and the castle walls seemed to close in on me. “I don’t even know them; what if they are afraid of me?”

Soon I was standing still, paralyzed by these gripping fears. I could no longer see anything in the pitch-black air, not even my friend I knew was beside me. I could physically feel the darkness.

“Father, help me,” my heart whispered as fear roiled inside.

Why did I even come? Oh yes, it was his love inside my heart for those girls. I could feel that warmth again, still burning in my chest. As I paused, I looked down at my feet, hoping to see the next step. I could see it. A warm glow about my feet illuminated the step before me, and I knew this was the way forward. As I took that step, another appeared and another, and before long, we were moving upward again.

Every fear I had ever faced, and even new ones, seem came at us with a vengeance the further we progressed. My focus had shifted to the warmth of His love inside of me, and it was more significant than all the dangers surrounding us. Eventually, we could hear the girls’ voices as we approached the tower’s upper levels. We called out to them, explaining that we were coming and encouraging them to hold on to hope. As we did, this hope grew in us as well. Our pace quickened.

Soon, we reached the top of the staircase and found the room that imprisoned them. We could hear them but not see them until we ran into them in the darkness. We exchanged names, and the glow brightened slightly. I could see one was of Asian descent. She looked up into my eyes and spoke her greatest fear. “How do I know I can trust you?”

An answer came out of my mouth before I had time to filter it. “Why, it’s simple; this is where love led me. Right here.”

“To me?”

“You needed help, didn’t you?” Her fear receded slightly as she hugged me around my waist with her tiny arms.

But they were both still afraid to leave. Their fears had captured them and did not want to face them again in this horrible place. We tried to reason with them, assuring them we would be with them the entire way, but they were reluctant. We could only invite them, realizing we may very well be going back down alone. I don’t know how I would have been able to leave them alone in this place.

We explained that this warm light around our feet was the Father’s true love’s light coming from within us. He is the Father of Light, and he loved all of us so extravagantly. It had shown us the way step by step as we made our ascent and was always greater than our greatest fears.

Though they, too, would be facing their greatest fears as we descended the staircase, they could also have the warmth of his light. They both agreed to come with us if they could walk alongside one of us and learn to focus on love.

“Of course,” we answered.

One step at a time, we made our way downward. Fear assailed each of us unrelentingly, but we simply followed the glowing warmth until we found our way out of the castle.

The girls, whom we thought to be around ten years old when we met them, transformed to their rightful ages as they crossed the threshold into the sunlight.

Instead of being overwhelmed by the voices that scream at you from the uncertain darkness, focus on the warmth of Jesus’s love already inside you and see what next step illuminates for you. Then you, too, will discover that Father’s affection is stronger than our greatest fear. It’s a journey that will not only set you free inside from anything this life can throw at you, but it will also show you how to be a part of God’s redemptive work for others.

We all know the power of fear and how impossible it is to ignore it or manufacture more trust through our own strength. And we all need someone to go with us, not just telling us to “trust more”, but willing to sit alongside us as we learn to let love rule our hearts.

And when you need help, follow this advice from a young woman whose book I am reading at the moment, Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh:

Find those who tell you, “Do not be afraid,” yet stay close enough to tremble with you. This is a love.

It truly is…

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Pretense Is No Refuge

3 Comments / Church Life /

This is what I struggle with most for those who claim to follow Christ and yet have no compassion for those who have wandered through difficult places. In an email last week, a former pastor who has battled alcohol addiction for decades added this comment at the end of the email:

You also have no idea how much your acceptance and compassion for my addiction was received. I have only shared with two nonaddicts outside of family in 30 plus years of recovery as I learned most do not take it well.  Thank you for helping me in my listening journey.

Here’s what I wrote him back:

It saddens me that those who claim to follow Jesus can’t hold each other’s pain and weakness with love and compassion. That means they are either unaware of their own or they don’t know how to be compassionate to themselves. Pretense is their refuge, and that’s a pretty sad place to live.

I understand his reluctance to share that story with people who aren’t ready to hold it. That’s just wise. But I’m glad he shared it with me, and I could appreciate the courage it took to face his addiction and let God walk him into freedom. It wasn’t an easy road; it rarely is.

His struggle with addiction does not diminish him in the least as a follower of Jesus; it just makes his story all the more extraordinary. I’m sorry that he had to go through such deep waters, but who wouldn’t want to celebrate the fruit of that journey with him?

Compassion is what God pours into our brokenness. When you struggle, drink fully of his compassion, and then you’ll be able to naturally share that same compassion with others without having to manufacture it.

________________

If you want to join us for the next Jake Colsen Book Club gathering, it will be held this Saturday, April 22, at 1:30 pm PDT. We will stream it live on my Facebook Author Page, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.

And the following day, we’ll have another conversation about Wrestling with Trauma on Sunday, April 23, at 10:30 am PDT. Among other things, we will explore what it means to let go of the hurtful things that have happened to us and the process God uses to help us find out how. Sara shared that in a recent podcast if you haven’t heard it. To join us, please email me for the Zoom link. We’ll limit it to the first twelve who request a link.

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His Children Revealed

1 Comment / Culture Watch, Kenya / / , , , , , , ,

This weekend I spoke at a conference in Kenya.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to travel there to be with them personally, but they asked if I would send a video of any word I might to encourage the hundreds of pastors gathering in Kitale last weekend.

If you want to see the video, you can view it here.

Though I don’t refer to it in this video, the seeds for what I shared with the pastors in Kenya began two years ago as I stood in the burn scar of a wildfire that consumed more than 400,000 acres of alpine forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Scanning the hillsides for miles in the distance, I could not see one speck of greenery in the burgeoning light of spring. Overwhelmed by the devastation, something rose in my heart over the next few days. It was a drumbeat I could not ignore: “It’s time!”

As I pondered that thought over the next few days, I was drawn to the passage in Romans 8 about the Creation groaning in frustration for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed on the earth. I shared that in a short video I recorded from the burn scar a few days later.

How has that weathered the last two years? It has only grown in me with all the calamities in the world and what God has been shifting in my heart, even through the shock of last year. My prayers still reverberate with the desire for the sons and daughters to grow to know Father to be revealed in the world. I see that happening as many find healing and transformation inside his love. Unfortunately, I also see the love of many Christians growing cold as they react to those in the world they think victimize them. Growing increasingly angry and judgmental, they are unable to extend compassion to those who seem lost in the illusions of darkness.

It is time for the children of God to be revealed on the earth, letting God draw a clear distinction between those who only practice their religion for personal gain and those who are being drawn into a life of love shaped by God’s life. He is equipping a people for these days who are learning how to recognize God’s love and helping others to do the same. They are learning to recognize his leading and helping others do the same. And are also learning to love whomever God brings to them and help others to do the same. That’s what my heart was for those Kenyan men and women this weekend, and it’s where my heart beats these days in so many other areas.

They are not drawing attention to themselves or their beliefs on social media or trying to build a brand about love. They are living out his compassion, one person, one conversation, one engagement at a time, without having to work at it. Empathy is becoming so infused with their person; it’s just how they live.

That’s the revelation the world waits for—men and women, young and old, of all races and ethnicities, who embrace God’s compassion for their own hearts and reflect it with ease into the world.

_______________

On another note, Sara and I will be in Honolulu, HI, on Sunday, April 30, at the Bluewater Mission Church, 1114 Mona St., Honolulu, HI, 96821. We’ll begin at 2:20 pm, and if you’re in the area, you are welcome to join us. For most of our time in Hawaii, we will be on the island of Maui if anyone wants to connect with us there.

Also, the next gathering of the Jake Colsen Book Club is this Saturday, April 22, at 1:30 pm PDT. We will stream it live on my Facebook Author Page, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.

And our next Wrestling with Trauma conversation will meet next Sunday, April 23, at 10:30 am PDT.  Among other things, we’re going to explore what it means to let go of the hurtful things that have happened to us and the process God uses to help us find out how. Sara shared that in a recent podcast if you haven’t heard it. If you’d like to join us, please email me for the Zoom link. We’ll be limiting it to the first twelve who request a link.

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Want to Get Together?

1 Comment / Behind the Scenes / / , , ,

Here are a few opportunities to hang out with me if you’d like. Two happen next week, one is just a podcast, and the other is in February 2024 in Israel:

The Jake Colsen Book Club

Learning to follow Jesus as he reveals himself in each of us is the adventure of spiritual life.  Institutions are afraid to encourage that pursuit since it may not fit in easily to their preplanned activities.  One of the strangest things about Christianity is that we have invested all of our chips for helping people follow Jesus in religious institutions that can transfer information while rarely transforming lives.

That comes up in the penultimate chapter of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore as the conversation explores how best do we help people to learn how they can follow Jesus.

Highly orchestrated experiences cannot show people how to live each day in him through the real struggles of life. That’s one of the strangest things about Christianity locking itself into an institutional box. Who would choose to be raised in an orphanage? Our hearts hunger for family. That’s where children learn who they are and how they fit into the world.

This congregation is like an orphanage revolving around the convenience of the whole. You survive best in it by following its rules, but that’s not how Jesus connects you with his Father. For that, you need a family—brothers and sisters who can respond to you in the moment, not wait for a meeting or to schedule a seminar.

That’s a key topic in our next gathering of the Jake Colsen Book Club, which will be held next Saturday, April 22, at 1:30 pm PDT. Anyone is welcome to join us, even if it’s your first time. We will also stream it live on my Facebook Author Page, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.

You can view our last discussion on chapter 11 here.

Trauma Conversation – Good Riddance

Our next Wrestling with Trauma conversation will meet next Sunday, April 23, at 10:30 am PDT.  Among other things, we’re going to explore what it means to let go of the hurtful things that have happened to us and the process God uses to help us find out how. Sara shared that in a recent podcast if you haven’t heard it.

If you’d like to join us, please email me for the Zoom link. We’ll be limiting it to the first twelve who request a link. These are not teaching sessions but a conversation to serve those who join us and help encourage them to the Way Jesus wants to lead them through the pain of trauma into his increasing freedom. These conversations are not streamed live or recorded. They are for the personal benefit of those who can join us. You can even join in anonymously if you prefer.

Israel

We’re about 60% full for our upcoming trip to Israel, so please get signed up as soon as you can if you want to join us. The last day to register is May 31, but that’s only if we still have space left. We’ll be going February 1-11, 2024, with an optional visit to Jordan on the way in for those who would like to extend the tour and spend a day at Petra.

MiDentity Podcast

And if you can’t do any of that and haven’t heard my conversation with Daron Maughan over at the MiDentity Podcast, you can listen here.  It aired this week and is a good summary of our story over the last year if you haven’t listened to the podcasts Sara and I recorded last year.

 

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One Year Ago Today

14 Comments / Behind the Scenes / / , , , , , , , ,

On April 11, one year ago, I spent most of the day flying home from a ten-day trip around the Carolinas, looking forward to being in Sara’s arms again. I hadn’t the foggiest notion that I was about to drive off a cliff at 180 miles per hour.

My first indication that all was not well was a cryptic text I received when I landed at LAX that Sara would be unable to pick me up. She had arranged for a driver to bring me home, something she had never done before. I tried to call or text to find out what was wrong and got no reply. That’s when the knot first formed in the pit of my stomach. After an hour’s ride home, I had concluded that she must have left me, but I had no idea why. Our marriage seemed to be going well as we approached our 47th wedding anniversary.

When I got home, she was gone, all her stuff was gone, and I was left with the most painful of all letters telling me she was divorcing me. The next three weeks were filled with heart-wrenching pain, not only for my loss but also for whatever Sara was going through. I re-examined everything I thought I knew about myself and our relationship. If Sara’s letter had been true, our 46 years together would have been a lie. I know I haven’t been a perfect human or husband, so there’s always stuff to probe inside.

Slowly, however, we began to find our way back to each other, and the truth unfolded. Sara had been experiencing PTSD, and a therapist she saw assumed I was the cause without ever consulting with me and even though Sara’s symptoms were present in her childhood. She coached Sara into moving out when I was completely unaware of her plans, as one does to escape an abusive husband. My wife was in trouble, but it wasn’t from me. I knew there was something darker in her life and prayed earnestly for her during the days of our separation. As much as I hated the pain of those days, I love what Father did in my heart through them. Unmerited rejection by someone you love is fertile ground for his Spirit to rearrange things in your own heart if you let him. He prepared me to be an active part of the healing Jesus wanted to bring to her as he brought her back.

Sara began to question and regret her decision since I was not acting the way her therapist said I would. That proved pivotal. After all she had done to leave me, she was willing to look back and consider that she might have gotten bad counsel. I’ll forever be grateful that she was willing to open her heart again to me and let me inside her struggle. We began to spend some time together and began processing the PTSD she had been hiding from me. Finding a new, wiser therapist, Sara began to discover that she had been assaulted by her grandfather from the ages of 4-9. She had complete amnesia about it until those memories started to surface. It explained so much about things my wife has struggled with for decades.

For the past year, we have shared a healing journey into the dark recesses of Sara’s past with an exceptional amount of grace that has drawn us closer together than ever as it has renewed her heart and healed her mind. I have been with her in every recovered memory, and each one expands so much insight into Sara and helps her find freedom for how this trauma affected her for so many years though she never knew the cause. She lives with more joy now than she ever has. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D could be a history of her journey. One in three women in her generation was sexually assaulted by age 18. Sara never thought she was one until it all bubbled to the surface like a volcano in the last few years. She kept it hidden from me because it made no sense why she felt so horrible about herself. Now she has discovered that she was not a horrible person but that someone had done something horrible to her.

She knows the truth and has processed it into her story. I have not shared much about this on my blog here though Sara and I have on my podcast at The God Journey. We still meet friends who have no idea what our journey has looked like over the last year. If you haven’t heard Sara and I tell this story as it unfolded, you can listen to these podcasts:

07/08/2022 – Redeeming Love: Unforeseen Circumstances (#854)
07/22/2022 – Redeeming Love: Horse Whisperer (#856)
07/15/2022 – Redeeming Love: What Sara Faced (#855)
07/29/2022 – Redeeming Love: Finding Our Way Back (#857)
08/05/2022 – Redeeming Love: The Trauma Appears (#858)
08/12/2022 – Redeeming Love: Relational Repair (#859)
08/19/2022 –  Redeeming Love: The Journey Continues (#860)

08/26/2022 – Redeeming Love: The Aftermath (#861)

10/21/2022 – Wayne’s Happiest Day Ever! (#869)

02/17/2023 – A Safe Place for Broken Hearts (#882)
04/07/2023 – Redeeming Love: Good Riddance (#888)

This past weekend we were able to celebrate not only the Resurrection of Jesus but also our resurrected life together. As Sara continues to understand her past better, she’s becoming increasingly free to live in the present with a lighter heart and a clearer eye. Our mourning has definitely turned into laughter, and joy now earmarks our life together. What have we learned from this past year?

  1. You can never truly know what’s just around the corner.
  2. Without Jesus to guide us through this shocking time, we would not be together today.
  3. Tenderness and honesty mark the trailhead where healing happens. Being willing to admit our failures and doubts while affirming our love helped us recapture our relationship and move it forward into a more glorious space.
  4. Admitting when you’re wrong and expressing your sorrow about it repairs damaged relationships.
  5. Being willing to stop and shift everything, and I mean everything, allowed us to find new pathways together that we treasure today.
  6. Having people honestly and caringly speak into your heart is invaluable. We were blessed to have many people hold our hearts during this season, and we are grateful to each of them.
  7. Holding someone while they heal from trauma is one of the most amazing things any human can do.

Given that last one, our hearts ache for those of you who have been impacted by trauma in your own life, whether it be something you suffered at the hands of someone else or you’ve been affected by the traumatic struggle of someone you love deeply, perhaps even your spouse. That’s why Sara has wanted to share this story so publicly, not to seek sympathy for our pain but to offer hope and help to those wrestling with similar darkness in their own journey. We know how alone you can feel and how hopeless the future might look. But God is a healer. He came to bind up the brokenhearted and set the oppressed free. We pray that you will let him draw you into your own healing as we look for ways to encourage and help those impacted by trauma.

So, this anniversary today is not a painful day! It’s a joy-filled one. We remember well the feelings of a year ago, but now they are markers for a turn in the road that drew us into more freedom than we knew we needed.

_________________

One more note:  Yesterday, a podcast dropped that I taped a couple of weeks ago. I was with Daron Maughon on his MiDentity Podcast if you want to give it a listen.  

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The Day God Died

11 Comments / Encouragement / / , , , , , , ,

Twenty-eight years ago, my relationship with God shifted on this one discovery—Jesus did not die to appease the wrath of an offended God. Instead, he died holding our sin and shame in the all-encompassing presence of the Father until it was consumed in his love, and our redemption was won.

As we approach this Easter season and commemorate his death and resurrection, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I was able to hear a more complete story of the atonement than the one I was raised to believe. I cringe to think how the crucifixion story will be told in so many places over the next couple of days and the double-talk many preachers will have to employ to make their vengeful deity appear loving. What Jesus did was not to ward off an angry Father but to open the way into a love so rich and deep it will transform everything about the way we live and think.

I wrote an article in 2010 to summarize what I share about the cross in He Loves Me, Transitions, podcasts, and in countless conversations around the world. Until we get the Atonement story right, we will never be able to see our Father for who he is and come to him with confidence. I am reprinting it here to remind us all that salvation was a work of redemption by a gracious Father.

Something about the story made me cringe every time I heard it, and since I grew up a Baptist, I heard it a lot: To satisfy His need for justice and His demand for holiness, God sentenced His own Son to death in the brutal agony of crucifixion as punishment for the failures and excesses of humanity.

Don’t get me wrong. I want as much mercy as I can get. If someone else wants to take a punishment I deserve and I get off scot-free, I’m fine with that. But what does this narrative force us to conclude about the nature of God?

As we approach Easter, the crucifixion story most often told paints God as an angry, blood-thirsty deity whose appetite for vengeance can only be satisfied by the death of an innocent—the most compassionate and gracious human that ever lived. Am I the only one who struggles with that? The case could be made that it makes God not much different from Molech, Baal or any of the other false deities that required human sacrifice to sate their uncontrollable rage.

We wouldn’t think this story an act of love from anyone else. If you offend me, and the only way I can forgive you is to satisfy my need for justice by directing the full force of my anger for you onto my own son by beating him to death, you probably wouldn’t think me worth knowing. You certainly wouldn’t think of me as loving. And this solution ostensibly comes from the God who asks us as mere humans to forgive others without seeking vengeance. Is He demanding that we be more gracious than He is?

Many of the Old Testament writers did look forward to the cross as a sacrifice that would satisfy God, and they used the language of punishment to explain it. But the New Testament writers looking back through the redemption of the cross saw it very differently. They didn’t see it as the act of an angry God seeking restitution, but the self-giving of a loving God to rescue broken humanity.

Their picture of the cross does not present God as a brutalizing tyrant expending His anger on an innocent victim, but as a loving Father whose Son took the devastation of our failures and held it in the consuming power of His love until sin was destroyed and a portal opened for us to re-engage a trusting relationship with the God of the universe. The New Testament writers saw the cross not as a sacrifice God needed in order to love us, but one we needed to be reconciled to Him.

One of my best friends died of melanoma almost two years ago. Doctors tried to destroy the cancer with the most aggressive chemotherapy they could pour into his body. In the end, it wasn’t enough. The dose needed to kill his melanoma would have killed him first. That was God’s dilemma in wanting to rescue us. The passion He had to cure our sin would overwhelm us before the work was done. Only God Himself could endure the regimen of healing our brokenness demanded.

So He took our place. He embraced our disease by becoming sin itself, and then drank the antidote that would consume sin in His own body. This is substitutionary atonement. He took our place because He was the only one that could endure the cure for our sin. God’s purpose in the cross was not to defend His holiness by punishing Jesus instead of us, but to destroy sin in the only vessel that could hold it until—in God’s passion—sin was destroyed.

Perhaps we need to rethink the crucifixion in line with those early believers. God was not there brutalizing His Son as retribution for our failures; He was loving us through the Son in a way that would set us free to know Him and transform us to be like Him.

Now that’s a God worth knowing.

All that God did in his Son was because he wanted to invite you out of the bondage of sin and shame to a tender place he prepared in his heart for you. Don’t see a terrifying God behind the death of Jesus, but a Father weeping in his love for all his lost children.

What incredible lengths they went to so that we could enjoy life inside their love!

 

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Next Year in Jerusalem

5 Comments / Behind the Scenes /

Two months ago, to my complete shock, Sara said, “I wonder what it would be like to visit Israel again with the work God has done in my heart.”

“Do you want me to take you there?” I asked. She nodded. “Just us, or do you want to invite some others to go with us?”

“Let’s do another tour,” she said.

I never saw it coming. I had planned another trip for 2021 when COVID intervened, and we had to cancel it. So, this is Sara’s tour of Israel, and you’re invited to join us. We’ll be going February 1-11, 2024, with an optional visit to Jordan on the way in for those who would like to extend the tour and spend a day at Petra.

If you’ve never been to Israel, you have no idea what it means to—

  • To look out across the Sea of Galilee and contemplate all that happened there.
  • To stand on Mt. Carmel, where Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and where you also overlook the Jezreel Valley.
  • To reflect alongside 2000-year-old olive trees in Gethsemane,
  • To wander through the city where God chose to reveal himself to the world and accomplish the redemption of humanity.

Those things profoundly touched my life in the three trips I’ve taken there as it has for others who have gone with me. I felt the earth where Jesus walked. I saw first-hand the sky, hills, valleys, and waters where he lived. This was his earthly home! At key locations, I’ll be sharing the insights from that land that most shaped my journey of growing trust in Jesus to help you process your own journey of growing faith.

In addition, you have no idea the amazing people you will meet from all over the world who cherish some of the same realities about God and his love that you do. Many have come away from past trips with new, life-long friendships that take root over the ten days we will spend together at the table, on the bus, or walking together through the most significant locations in redemptive history.

We are going in February since the weather is cooler in these desert locations. We can also take a smaller group more affordably at that time and not have to battle the crowds at the sights we will visit.

We still have spots available if you want to join Sara and me for this tour. Get all the details here.

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The Jake Colsen Book Club – Chapter 11

1 Comment / Behind the Scenes /

Taking flight is a triumphant chapter in So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. After the long process of poking holes in Jake’s illusions about God and what it means to follow him, Jake is finally finding his footing on a better trailhead as he begins to learn how to live out a life in Jesus free from guilt and personal performance.

Here’s a brief excerpt from that chapter:

Jake speaks, “As I read the life of Jesus now, I see more clearly that’s what he was doing-freeing people from shame so that they could embrace his Father. And I’m seeing that with increasing freedom in my own life too. That’s probably the greatest gift you’ve given me, John. I no longer labor under the oppressive guilt of how short I fall nor under the demanding obligations of self-produced righteousness. And I’m no longer putting that on others.”

“That’s fabulous,” John smiles.

“I never realized how much of what I thought was ministry was only manipulating people’s shame—whether it was to make them feel guilty for falling short or to earn other people’s approval.”

“That’s what religion is, Jake. It’s a shame-management system, often with the best of intentions and always with the worst of results.”

This is a great moment in someone’s journey when the gravity of human effort and guilt loses its hold, and the pull of his love and power takes over. At that moment, everything changes, and we look with new eyes at the trail Jesus has laid out for us. Yes, we still have struggles, but we are changed in the process. I’ve treasured this change in my own life and have watched it happen in so many people. It’s brutal to watch people labor under the burden and arrogance of religious performance, thinking that by doing so they curry God’s favor. His love is all we need to transform us with his glory as he invites us on the adventure of following him.

We’ll be talking about that this weekend for the next gathering of the Jake Colsen Book Club, which will be held this Sunday, April 2, at 1:30 pm PDT. For our international participants, the U.S. has moved our clocks ahead one hour to daylight savings time, so you may need to recalculate what time it is where you live. Lots of websites will help you sort that out. Anyone is welcome to join us, even if it’s your first time. We will also stream it live on my Facebook Author Page, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.

You can view our last discussion on chapter 10 here.

 

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Weep with Those Who Weep

14 Comments / Struggle and Pain /

Can you imagine what it would be like to be at your lowest moment and have someone safe enough to share your deepest hurts, doubts, and fears and have them listen carefully to hear your heart and hold your emotions soothingly and safely without the need to minimize your pain, fix your thinking, or even rush you through the struggle? They are simply fully present with you, sharing your pain, and occasionally offer a question or observation that will help magnify Jesus’s presence with you.

I don’t have to imagine. I’ve been fortunate to have people attuned to God’s heart and available to mine throughout my life. It is the rarest of gifts, to be sure, and a significant component in my life-long passion for knowing Jesus and walking with him. Father wants people like that covering the planet.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about not burying our emotional pain but waiting until Jesus carves a way through it for us and how a friend can be helpful. When you learn to embrace God from inside your pain, you’ll be better equipped to hold others inside of theirs. I’ll admit it’s not easy to do; our pain-detection and avoidance systems kick in with hardly a thought whenever we or someone near us chokes up with tears. “Danger! Danger! Must stop tears!”

Almost everyone tries to stop them by apologizing or switching the subject as if tearing up is supposed to be embarrassing. How tragic! Uncontrolled tears are almost always evidence of where God’s Spirit is working in our hearts. It shows us the most sacred space where grief and pain dwell, and Father is working to win us into trust. If we run from our tears, we may well miss him, and avoiding the tears of others will leave them in the dark as well.

Most of us have always been better at “rejoicing with those who rejoice” rather than sincerely “weeping with those who weep.” We’re called to do both,

But once our pain avoidance system kicks in, we say the silliest things to people that deepen their pain rather than hold their hearts—

  • “Just trust Jesus; he will take care of it.”
  • “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.”
  • “But they are in a better place, aren’t they?”
  • “Cheer up! Jesus already has the victory.”
  • “Just forgive, and it won’t bother you anymore.”
  • “Are you still struggling with that? It happened so long ago?”

While some of those things may be true, presented in the context of raw pain, they will make people feel dismissed and more alone than ever. I don’t think our pain-avoidance systems are mean-spirited; they result from some specific weaknesses in our approach to pain. First, most people barely survive their own challenges and do not have the resources to carry someone else’s. Second, those in pain make us uncomfortable because they expose our doubts and questions about God’s love for us. Finally, Christianity today is geared toward procuring victory and blessings more than it is about how the glory of God is revealed in brokenness and sorrow.

Most people comfort someone briefly and tie it off with a quick Scripture or a pat answer, often concluding with the ubiquitous, “I’ll be praying for you.” And then they forget. That’s why people in pain often feel like a burden to their friends and end up isolating themselves as they are drawn more deeply into crisis. At least when Job’s friends heard about all his troubles, they came and wept with him in the dust for seven days before any of them said a word. What an amazing gift of presence! But then, they couldn’t keep silent anymore and piled on their false theology that only added to Job’s crisis.

Becoming a safe place for people in pain is a work of the Spirit through the troubles and hurts of your own life. You learn compassion when you are the victim of other people’s meanness. You learn authenticity by being gaslit and ghosted by people you care about. And you learn how to be present for others by what you wanted most when you suffered. Ninety percent of ministry is simply being there with A Caring Heart and a Listening Ear, as my friend Joni from Edmund termed it in a podcast we did recently.

You don’t have to start a ministry, hang out a shingle, or run an ad on Next Door. Just be aware of the people around you during your day. When you see someone hurting, let Jesus lead you on how to make yourself available. It can be as simple as “You look like you could use a friend.” Or, “If you ever need someone to talk to, please let me know,” You might invite them to lunch or over for coffee. You’re inviting them as you make your heart available, not imposing yourself on them. Be gentle, aware, and gracious, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to share his love in the world.

And don’t worry about having all the answers they might need. You’re better off holding people’s pain when you don’t have the answers and not trying to fix them. You only need to provide space where God can reveal himself and draw them into his light and freedom.

Coming alongside a broken heart or an oppressed spirit is as close to the Gospel as it gets. He came to bind up the brokenhearted and free the oppressed. You’re closest to the kingdom when you’re with people like that.

___________________

I’m sorry we’ve not had another trauma conversation recently or the next meeting of the Jake Colsen Book Club. We are a bit buried in the process of refurbishing and moving into our next home, taking some time to be with friends, and our schedule is not too predictable these days. We will get back to those in a few weeks and let you know here when we start those up again. We appreciate your patience during this season of nesting in a new place where we can share our love with each other and with all of you.

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Completing the Work God Gave Us

4 Comments / Kenya / / , , , , ,

Fifteen years ago, God linked our hearts with a group of believers in Kenya who had been captured by the message of He Loves Me, even as they were caught in the tribal post-election violence that ravaged Kenya in 2008. When I met Michael, he had already taken a dozen parentless children into his home to raise among his family. We helped them care for the widows and orphans who had been displaced and even did small business loans to help them start income-generating activities. We also built a petrol station, so the profits could continue to meet these ongoing needs. Today, only six children remain in that Living Loved Center, and the facility will soon be repurposed for other needs.

Over the next decade, our involvement escalated there as they discovered more than a hundred thousand people in West Pokot, dying of hunger in a drought that had destroyed their nomadic way of life. We sent relief and medicine immediately and eventually drilled wells and started irrigation projects to feed them in an ongoing way. We also helped them start schools to teach their children, and coaches taught them all about hygiene because the lack of it was causing ninety percent of their diseases. The Gospel also took root among these people who had worshipped their ancestors for previous centuries.

We also began an enterprise to buy and store grain at harvest time and re-sell it later to generate income for ongoing relief work. We also helped a new school Michael’s wife had started in a forgotten community to educate children who were not in school. Later, a flood destroyed the school’s water supply. We helped drill a well so vast and pure they could also give free water to the entire community and bottle it to sell to generate money for the school. Then, one year ago, over 300 children were abandoned on the steps of the school by alcoholic and desperate parents who could no longer care for them. We spent over $400,000 in 2022 to buy land and build a rehabilitation center for their care. We added more to the grain enterprise to pay for their food and education, and have now posted a bond to ensure their health and higher education.

For the past five years, we have felt the season was coming to an end where we could help them with these large projects. We did not want them to become dependent on Lifestream but learn to trust God as their provider. We have left them three income-generating enterprises as tools for God’s provision. Over the last fifteen years, more than three million dollars have flowed from the Lifestream and The God Journey audiences to these needs. Not only had we never envisioned that this would be part of our mission in the world, but we were also continually shocked at how generous you were with their needs. Every dime you gave ended up in Kenyan hands. We took nothing out here for administration, or financial and conversion fees.

Incredibly, this also coincided with Jesus inviting Sara and me into a new season personally to live more simply and more focused on the journey God has for us. While we will stay in touch with our friends in Kenya, we are grateful to lay down this mantle of helping them find the resources they need for their work. The needs are still great there, but we trust that Father will have other ways to care for them. (If any of you reading this feel a nudge in your heart to pick up that mantle, please get in touch with us, and we will link you.)

Even more remarkably, this season-ending came from their hearts as well. Earlier this week, we received the following correspondence from those who have been our partners in Kenya:

On behalf of the Kenyan family, we wish to thank you for the great support of pouring your love, prayers, and resources into every area of our lives for over 15 yrs. We send our sincere gratitude to every individual, couple, and family for their sacrifices that have touched so many lives.

Your help rescued many dying families in Northern parts of Kenya and Turkana , through humanitarian aid, health, relief, and long-term solution – through irrigation and soft loans. Also, you helped orphans starting from Living Loved Orphanage, Forkland school, and now Rehabilitation Centre for expansion of the land, buildings, food, and bedding.

You brought hope to the hopeless and rescued the destitute with tender-loving hearts, and you helped us with long-term solutions – a water bottle company, grain enterprise, and petrol station. You have helped us reach the place where we can now stand on our own and use the resources you provided to continue moving forward. Only one thing we may need from you is prayers for wisdom and understanding that we may continue encouraging others with the same love you have taught us.

God connected us when we could not know how to move in the midst of an institution that was focused on buildings and organization. Your books and materials really changed our lives and the love of many, and we now understand intimacy with God and the Father’s affection for us. We shall be downloading more materials from the Lifestream website. May the Lord bless you so much for guiding, correcting, and pouring your love toward us.

We have now winded the projects in Kenya with great love and joy. All your deeds will remain in the book of remembrance with all of us here forever. As we end today, your support for our projects over here, we continue to love you, pray for you, and continue communicating with you in spiritual matters.

We will not return to ask for funds for any projects; now we are able to stand for ourselves. Thank you for your great support and sacrifice.

Michael and Thomas

We have many mixed emotions about this shift of season, but the pathway seems clear to us. We were part of an amazing miracle of God’s provision and their generosity to bless others in their country in more need than them. Your generosity has changed the lives of many people, and we have been honored that God would ask us to be part of something so extraordinary.

We still have a few thousand dollars left over in our Kenyan Fund and we will be sending that for whatever future needs they might have. If you would like to add any money to that as a parting gift and added resource as they make this transition, please let us know in the next few days so that we can send it all together. Beyond that, we will keep the fund open should people have it in their hearts to share in the ongoing needs there, but Lord willing, we do not plan on raising funds for any large-scale future projects there.

If you want to join us in this donation, please see our Donation Page at Lifestream. You can also Venmo contributions to “@LifestreamMinistries” or mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or, if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

What can I write to end this posting? I know their hearts have been touched by your generosity; I want you to know how much Sara and I have been touched as well. To watch vast sums of money go through Lifestream to meet these needs in Kenya has blessed us beyond words. He did so much more beyond anything we could have asked or even imagined. It has saved so many people and offers Kenya a wealth of young men and women grounded in Father’s love to be his witness in that corner of the world.

When Paul and Barnabas returned from their first missionary journey, they reported to the church at Antioch that they “had completed the work God gave them to do.” We celebrate that now with you and our Kenyan brothers and sisters. We have completed the amazing task he gave us through his incredible mercy and strength. Generosity upon generosity is a great gift to put into the world. Thank you for being part of it with us.

Now, we commend them to the Father’s mercy for whatever purpose he has ahead for them. We pray he will guide them with his love, hold them in his grace, and make a way for his kingdom to be revealed through them. We are grateful to have been part of it and to have left nothing of Lifestream in Kenya except the fingerprints of Father’s love.

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