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This was posted on an Internet list that I frequent, and reading it today touched me deeply. It is supposedly a well-known story that has circulated among the believers in China during persecution. I do not know who wrote it, but would be happy to give credit where credit is due if we can find a source for this story. Until then, enjoy an incredible story…

Sara and I have enjoyed watching the first two seasons of CBS’ Joan of Arcadia. It is the story of a young high school girl whose life is continually interrupted by God as he appears to her in various forms and asks her to do things that make little sense to her. It airs at 8:00 on Friday nights on CBS. I like keeping an eye on how our culture perceives God and his nature. It doesn’t all match our views, but it is always interesting to know what others are thinking.

There are multicultural aspects to the characters that represent God in the show that can be offensive, but there is also some real depth in the story lines as well. At least one of the writers on this show really understands a bit of God’s nature and how he works in the world. Here are some moments from last week’s show (February 11) that gives viewers a peak at God’s reality:

The theme of the show was sorting out the reality in romantic love. At one point Joan fears she is losing her boyfriend and asks God about it. He responded,

The theme of the show is drawn together as God talks to Joan about the death and resurrection our experience implicit in the process of romantic love maturing into real love:

That is true of so many things. One of my favorite characters in the show is a drop-out nun who quit during her training deciding it wasn’t right for her. She’s rejected ‘religious’ answers for life’s issues, but offers up Godly perspectives on life and pain. When someone suggests that she of all people should understand guilt, she answered:

In another scene she is talking to Joan’s mom whose husband is being manipulated and harassed by his female boss. She senses something is wrong with this woman but can’t seem to find the word for it.

If a better definition of evil has been written by our culture, I don’t know what it would be.

I noticed some of you were a bit concerned by the John Fischer quote, of a couple of blogs ago. This may tweak some of you even further. That’s not my desire, most people recognize how irrelevant the message of the gospel has become in our world, and I think Fischer’s article strikes at the heart of why that’s true. We have tried to fix the world, not demonstrate the Father’s love into their lostness.

First let me say that my view of loving a lost world never involves accepting their sinful behavior. How could it? Love always speaks the truth, but it does so in an environment where truth has the best opportunity to be heard. Jesus was gentle with sinners. His harshest words were directed at those captive to religious arrogance. He had the amazing ability to love people without confusing them that he was condoning their behavior. As we learn to love like him we will to.

Second, my comment about those thinking of November elections as a Christian victory was not a shot at Bush, but a response to the recent Time article identifying the 25 ‘evangelical leaders’ lining up at the trough of quid pro quo politics to reap the rewards they feel the Bush White House owes them for their political support. My point was that we can get every law passed that we want and still not engage this world with the reality of Father’s kingdom. It doesn’t come by law or by politics but by the demonstration of his reality through lives who have been transformed by his nature. I am not against people working for better laws, but I have great concern about those who wrap their political agendas in the name of Jesus who do not demonstrate the least bit of his nature in their own lives.

I’ll offer you two more quotes by Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz that bear on this discussion. While I’m not any more nuts about the term ‘Christian spirituality’ than I am ‘Christianity’, I share his aversion to identify with a term that has become so politically charged its meaning has been robbed. We’re not being called ‘Christians’ today because we look like Christ in the world, but because we’ve joined a group that uses that term to describe our religion. Anyway, here they are:

I know this last quote is not true of all believers looking to influence public policy, but it certainly looks this way for most of them that make the talk-show rounds or pontificate from their own TV pulpit.

Our Tuesday night group has just finished a study through Galatians. I love that book because it helps me break further out of a religious mindset toward the things of God and see the way he actually works with greater clarity. Case in point:

Paul warns us here that many things God does don’t come to fruition over night. God is never in a hurry, always choosing the deeper more complete work over the quick fix. Our culture has made us servants of the quick fix. We want everything right now, and when we don’t see our acts of obedience producing the kind of outcome we want, it is easy to give up. We conclude either that our relationship with God isn’t deep enough or our efforts are not good enough to secure his working. We even begin to wonder if our Father even cares about the circumstances we are in and find ourselves separated from him in frustration at the time we most need to lean into him with confidence.

We become like the young farmer who rips out his young grape vines after the first year because they had no grapes on them. He thought grapes were like wheat and come to fruition in the first year. Vines don’t work like that. It takes five years to bring a vineyard into production and if you don’t know that you won’t see it through until the harvest.

I see so many believers start out well and when they don’t see the results they expected to see after a few months or even a couple of years, they begin to doubt themselves or God. They lose their heart and either live in frustration or try to find their fulfillment again back in the things of the world. They keep missing what God wants to do in them because they can’t stick with it long enough to see the fruit that he wants to produce in them.

I guess the upshot is this. If we’re focused on outcomes we’ll lose our heart very easily as God takes time to work deeply in us and in people around us. If we’re focused on him instead, then it won’t matter how long he takes because we’ll be with him in the process. We’ll be able to keep on the path he’s put before us until the harvest is complete. He is working in you, you know, to will and to do of his good pleasure whether you can see it or not. Just because you can’t see the fruit of it yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t developing for a future time. Relax in him. He has not abandoned you. He will complete what he has begun, just don’t expect him to do it in your time frame and you’ll be freer to enjoy him in the process.

A friend of mine from Wales, sent me the following piece written by John Fischer about our engagement with the world. This piece teems with the message and spirit of Jesus. For those that thought the November elections in the US were a major Christian victory, this might give us pause and consider just what message we are sending to the world in the name of our Savior:

When Jesus looked at the world he didn’t see bad people needing to be fixed, but he wept over them with deep compassion as those who are “harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” When you get that, you will simply be his witness in the world, even when you’re not trying to be.

On my recent trip to Kansas, I got to enjoy one of my favorite weeks of the year. Teaching at the HIV/AIDs Intervention School at the YWAM base there, I got to have 15 students for 17 hours of concentrated discussion over four days where we get to eat, fellowship, and live together while each are sorting out what Father is doing in them to invite them deeper into his life.

My course title is God’s Compassion For the Afflicted, but to get there we deal with the entire paradigm shift from thinking religiously about God’s life and helping them think relationally. That means we have to untangle some of the religious wiring and help people embrace a new covenant paradigm as to how God wants to work in us and through us. Some of the things God sorts out in folks during this time are…

• Learning to live in God as the Affectionate Father not the Demanding Taskmaster (Rom 8:15).


• Watching that relationship change our Pharisaical contempt for the world into heart-felt compassion for those lost and lonely in the darkness.


• Losing confidence in our own efforts and agenda to accomplish his work, and freeing us to simply live alongside Jesus each day and watch what he does through us.


• Redefining life in the church not as our participation in services, assent to theology or belonging to an organization, but in growing, free relationships with other fellow-travelers.


• Experience the reality of growing trust in Father’s character and work and seeing how that transforms our self-focused lives to live freely and powerfully in his desires.

Of course all that doesn’t happen in a few days, but it can help people begin on this journey, or encourage those already on it to go much further down the way. This summer the Kansas base is taking this training on the road to Durban, South Africa and I hope to go if the Lord desires. I recently saw a video from there where 48% of the people living in one township of 400,000 people are HIV positive. This disease is literally ravaging Africa and I am so blessed to know those who have it on their hear to go and help. I also heard that as many people are dying with AIDS every 22 days as those who were killed in the recent tsunami. Imagine a tragedy like that that has become so commonplace it no longer makes the news.

As I said at the outset, dealing with these realities is my favorite thing to do with a group of people. The YWAM environment puts this in a classroom environment, but I find it even more effective in a home over a weekend with a group of people who are ready to rethink the life of the new covenant away from the religious packaging we’ve but on it for the past 2000 years. This process is highly interactive and the relationships it spawns are always a great blessing to me. Some start this process deeply embedded in religion and don’t even know it. Usually the first couple of days can be a bit threatening. Others respond like camels to an oasis, finding that the things Jesus brings up answer some of the deepest cries of their heart. As one said to me, “This was the whole purpose God sent us here.”

The great transition the church needs to undergo today is not from meeting in buildings to meeting in homes, but moving from doing Christianity as a religion, to living freely in the life of Jesus. That will change how we think about body life, but it goes far deeper than that. Of course all that doesn’t happen in a few days, but it can help people begin on this journey, or encourage those already on it to go much further down the way.

A friend sent me this excerpt from a diary of a relief pilot working in the tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia. This was probably three weeks into the relief effort and I’d encourage you to take the time to read it. It will give you a heart for the crisis there and those who serve in the midst of it. I find stories like this are a great way to get perspective on my own life. Living in the abundance and decadence of Western culture a
This was written by Andy McCain, a helicopter pilot in Indonesia, and is reprinted here with his permission. If you’d like to write a note of encouragement to he or his wife, Tammy, you can do so at ATMcCain@pobox.com.

Perspective from Far Side of the World: A Day in the Life of Banda Aceh Read More »

I ran across an interesting article today by Alan Jaimieson (a New Zealander) in Reality Magazine titled Ten Myths of Church Leavers,. Of course, I wish he had used another term for the Sunday morning box since the church of Jesus Christ in the world is larger than any box can contain, and you really don’t leave the church by quitting one of those boxes. Be that as it may, I found his observations and conclusions to be compelling.

Here is his opening paragraphs to whet your appetite:

A friend sent me this clip of an article written by a brother in Japan, Kokichi Kurosaki. I like how he deals with this.

The only caveat I would offer, is not to see that life union in Christ as someone who agrees with what we think, or sees church the way we see church. I find people with the marks of the Spirit’s life in them in all kinds of places, even if they haven’t been through the same experiences I’ve been through. God has many ways to work his life into people. As we recognize his presence in each other, we’ll be less likely to seek out only the ‘like-minded’ and find incredible fellowship in lots of places God might lead us.

A friend of mine in Australia talks about recognizing the fragrance of Father in others. I like that. That’s why you come away from some relationships hungry for more, and others wanting a bit less. It doesn’t matter whether they see things the way you do or not, but whether we can see Father is at work in them to make his life known. After all, unity is a gift God gives his children. It is something we can only recognize and celebrate, not something we can produce by our own efforts. That’s why Jesus prayed for his Father to do it instead of asking the disciples to.

For those outside the US, yesterday was our high pagan ritual to professional sports—the Super Bowl! Now I enjoy watching football, but I always feel my jaw clench whenever I hear one of our professional athletes try to invoke God’s in the process. Usually what comes out trivializes the God I love.

That was true yesterday hearing Terrell Owens credit God’s healing powers for his ability to play after breaking his ankle six weeks ago. “A lot of people in the world didn’t believe I could play, but my faith alone—the power of prayer and the power of faith carried me along the way.” I am certainly in no place to make a judgment as to whether God healed him or not, but with so many other dire needs in the world, I doubt having Mr. Owens in that football game was high on his priority list. I will be with someone tomorrow who has a severely handicapped child and who questions every day the reality of God’s love for her and her daughter. I can’t imagine how she feels if she thinks God has the power to fix an ankle for an over-paid and way-too-arrogant athlete while ignoring her cries of normalcy for her daughter.

But then professional athletes are not known for their sense of proportion. And I honestly feel for them. Can you imagine what it would be like to live your whole life measured every moment by your performance? They are adored, only for what they can produce, and when that goes so will their adulation by the crowds. If you want to see how shame distorts our lives, you need look no further than the boasting or blaming by those who have had to live by their performance the most. It’s no wonder they can only see God as a success-deity who will stop at nothing to make them succeed. Except when he doesn’t.

A few months ago another famous football player passed away unexpectedly at 43. Reggie White was a defensive tackle for the Green Bay Packers and well known for his personal faith. Yes, when his team won the Super Bowl, he said something a bit ridiculous like this victory was proof that God had sent him to Green Bay. I always wonder what the losing players feel at times like this. Is their loss proof that they missed God’s will?

After Reggie’s death, however, an interesting story emerged. You didn’t see it in the major press, but a few reporters covered it. It seemed at the end of his life, Reggie was on a bit of a spiritual journey that had taken him outside the whole structure of organized religion. He had stopped attending Sunday services and stopped preaching to congregations around the country. Why? It could have been the fact that after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild an inner city church facility that had been burned to the ground in Knoxville, TN, the pastor he did it for was arrested for spending the money on cocaine. He began to question whether the money he raised would have been more helpful going directly to those who need it instead of paying for ostentatious buildings or salaries of so-called church leaders. Or, it could have been his growing awareness that people who came to hear him speak were more excited about seeing Reggie White than coming face to face with Jesus Christ.

Whatever it was, he quit! He told ESPN/s Andrea Kramer that he hadn’t been in a church building for four years and was on a journey to find out who God really was. He was still a passionate man for the Lord Jesus but had lost confidence in the institutions that had grown up in his wake. When he died, Reggie was on a journey to discover who God really was rather than to trust what he had been told about him. What a story! Isn’t it sad that he had to get away from football to recognize that God wasn’t who he thought he was? That’s what gives me hope for the rest of them.