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I don’t often publish the sensational on my site because it tends to encourage people to seek manifestations instead of seeking Jesus, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in genuine expressions of the supernatural becoming normal parts of our lives. A few years ago, one of my new-found friends from New Zealand, John Beaumont, was caught up in a vision of God’s throne. While there he heard a song being sung out of God’s glory. He felt like it was something God wanted to share specifically with Ireland, but I think its application goes far beyond that. One of my friends in Ireland sent me a CD of the song and John’s sharing about how it came to be.

I first heard this song in Ireland a couple of years ago and I am taken by its content and by the path of simple humility God outlines for us to live in him. It’s content reflects much of the content of Philippians 2:5-11. The song is from God’s heart to his people. It his he who wants to ‘settle down at home in you,’ which is as awesome a commentary of John 14:2 as I’ve ever heard. Can you imagine that the God of the universe has made a way so that he can settle down and be at home in you and you in him. What amazing grace!

The last two lines is our response to God’s incredible work of grace. In response to him being at home in us, we have the opportunity to choose to take our place and reign in him. The song goes like this:

I have attached a link so you can hear the chorus. It is sung by a group of believers Ireland who were just learning the song, so the quality isn’t great, but I think you will enjoy it just the same.

Whether you hear it or not, let the reality sink in. This Father wants to settle down at home in you, and for you to be at home in him. What could say it any better?

I got the following email today and it really blessed my heart. I don’t know how God does these things through stuff I’ve written, but I’m always blessed to see people find freedom in the way God thinks, rather than clinging to religious views that only lead to false security and actions:

I had no idea what you all are dealing with in this situation as a Mom, but I love what God has settled in your heart. It is my contention that religion cannot figure out how to love what it does not condone. In fact religion uses ‘love’ as a weapon so that we can manipulate people after our own desires. Jesus, on the other hand had the amazing freedom to love what he did not condone. His love for people and condoning their destructive choices never got confused. That’s why the world would come to him and discover the fountain of life. He could both love them where they were while he freed them from the bondages that tormented their souls.

May we be like he was in the world…

Kevin posed this question to my recent posting regarding Where Transformation Ensues:, Where Transformation Ensues:

I think we’re having a bit of a semantic problem here, Kevin. By institutional priorities I was referring to what an institution needs to survive: buildings, budgets, planning programs, security, making people confirm and leaders who must stay in control. It is always amazing to me how even the best of our so-called ‘church’ environments reward people who fit in the program unquestioningly and not those who are living closely to Jesus and seeking to follow him. Thus it champions those things it can measure: attendance, giving, and working on its programs. One can do well at all of those without cultivating a deep and personal relationship with God.

I would consider the example you give is a family priority. How do we each yield our own preferences to cooperate with others as we follow Jesus together? When believers do that together in freedom and joy, they are living relationally and reflect the life Jesus called us to share together. I don’t think of that as an institutional priority at all.

You have to keep in mind that I don’t consider something institutional because it has a name, or a building or a structure, and I don’t consider something a family just because it meets in a home. What we always have to look for is what priorities that guide they way they live together:

• Institutions demand commitment. Healthy families enjoy being together.

• Institutions compel people to conform even if they have to pretend. Healthy families prefer people be genuine, even in their struggles and doubts.

• Institutions push programs. Healthy families help people connect in safe and growing relationships.

• Institutions demand that people be accountable. Healthy families encourage each other to live more fully in God.

• Institutions guarantee their stability by making people dependent on them. Healthy families find their security in the Father and look to help people live free in him.

• Institutions create power-centers where leaders get to make decisions for others. Healthy families help equip each person to make healthy decisions.

• Institutions always end up putting their own survival above the individual. Healthy families will lay down their lives for the needs of one person.

As I’ve said many times before. I see lots of home meetings reflect more institutional priorities than family ones. And I know folks who meet in buildings who keep their life in God at the center and don’t give into the institutional demands that always seek to control them. That’s why I say in time institutional priorities always seem to win out. We have 2000 years of church history that show an alive group of people moving away from the status quo to live free, then in time creating their own institutions that the next generation has to move away from. It has been going on through the whole of church history.

I just got back from a weekend in the Quad Cities of Iowa as the fall foliage was just beginning to burst out. Since we don’t have fall here in southern California I especially enjoyed the show and the cool, crisp air. Even more amazing was what God allowed us to share in those few days together. A group of believers there have been sharing life together in their homes for a couple of years and invited me to spend the weekend with them. Though I’d never met any of them before I felt like family instantly.

Father had led us on similar paths and it was great to share the lessons of the journey together as we got to know each other. And then God sent some other folks to join us. It started out with a neighbor from a home nearby who came to check out what was going on. Though his family had been deeply involved in a local congregation, they had been having second thoughts about that. God had been opening their hearts with a greater hunger to find a more enduring life in him. He was full of questions. The next day he came back and brought eight other friends with him. They had all been struggling with the same issues. The next day they brought even more.

We got to talk in some depth about this amazing life in Christ and how our institutions can so easily distract our eyes from the simplicity and freedom of knowing him and burden us down with activities, obligations and guilt. In just a few days it was amazing to see how much freedom Jesus worked in them and how visible it was in the countenance, voices and the way they related to each other. I have no idea what they’ll end up doing, but I think they see the way a bit more clearly and will be freer to sense Jesus’ voice and follow him however he will lead them.

On the last night one of the brothers from the initial group who had invited me told me he had been focused on the wrong thing. “I have been trying to sell house church, but not any more.” Somehow the weekend had freshly ignited his heart for Jesus and the desire to help others follow him, not get caught up in another system to add to all the other systems people have created. When I got home, I found this note from another brother who is part of that community:

It’s easy for people on at times like this to get mixed up between what I am doing there and what Father is doing while I’m there, but what greater fruit could we ever expect from our life together as his children? If it draws our hearts to him, encourages us to walk in greater freedom and joy, and opens our lives to help others on this incredible journey, then it is body life indeed!

A theme seems to be developing in my life over the past few days. First Alex posed a question on one of my previous blogs, Meeting Together. It is a significant question for anyone struggling through how we live out the life of the church today.

Then I got an email from Australia this morning after reading my blog on That Lot in Fairlee:

Finally I spent some time on the phone today with a staff pastor at an outwardly successful congregation who is beginning to recognize a greater reality in Christ than he has experienced. Concerned about where his passion might take him, he wanted to ask me some questions about how this journey might affect his future and whether God can use the pastor/congregational model so prevalent today.

While I was talking to this brother we hit upon something that I think addresses the other two as well. First, let me say that nothing on this website refers to the abomination of denominations, or that those in pastoral roles are bad. That’s not language I use or encourage. We are caught in an interesting time. I’m convinced that the pastor/congregational/denominational structures we’ve inherited after 2000 years of Christian history are simply at odds with the priorities of the kingdom as Jesus lived it. Many people are starting to see that and hunger for a greater reality than these environments can offer no matter how hard they try.

Our structures seem to propagate religion more easily than the equip people for relationship and in time institutional priorities seem to trump relational ones. Does that mean they are valueless? Should we all leave them or close them all down? Is everyone in them working against the purpose of God in the earth? No! No! And no! It is one thing to recognize the weaknesses of a system and another to judge those involved in them as evil, or not recognize how God still works through our flawed attempts. He’s a pretty gracious God. I got much of my knowledge of Scripture and hunger to know God through those kinds of structures. They just couldn’t fill the hunger they gave me. We can be active in those structures and miss what true life in Christ and in his family is all about because maintaining the machinery exhausts our resources and distracts our passions.

What I hear in all of these contacts this week is an underlying concern: Do we have to figure out congregational life and do it the right way to live deeply in Jesus today? No! No! And no! In fact our preoccupation with the structures, whether we’re embracing them or reacting to them still keeps our eye on the wrong place. The transitions God wants to make in us are not primarily institutional. They are in the heart. As we embrace what he is doing in us how we need to respond on the outside will be clearer.

In the phone call earlier today I sensed that this staff pastor, like so many of us, was trying to sort out so many things that he couldn’t even see yet. Somehow he had become convinced that his life in Jesus would suffer until he got the structural issues figured out. It became obvious to us both how backwards that way of thinking is. Jesus is not waiting for us to get all the structures right.

Every bit of his life is available to you today in your relationship with him. Right now! Right where you are he wants you to know his reality and his work in you. If your mind is constantly trying to answer all the questions about your unknown future you will miss his work in you today. He does not live in your illusions, dreams or fears of the future. He lives in you. Embrace him today. Yield to him. Listen to him. Follow him without ‘taking any thought about tomorrow’ and he’ll be able to do some amazing things in you. Don’t think it awaits the perfect environment. Your submitted heart to him is all the environment he needs and whatever transition he wants to take you through in your activities or structures will rise out of the reality of that relationship. We get the cart before the horse when we’re more focused on our structures than we are on our King and Priest and Friend.

A good friend sent me this quote today. Probably everyone in the world has seen it but me, but I’ve really feasted on it today. I’m going to resist the temptation to comment on what it means to me and perhaps others of you who find it touching will comment on what it means to you first…

At this moment I’m traveling through the Northwest and having an incredible time with a wide variety of folks. The theme of this trip seems to be the value of relationships, in God’s heart for us and hopefully in our hearts for others. Shortly before I left we spent a weekend with some of our oldest and dearest friends. When they left Sunday afternoon, Sara and I reflected on what a treasure that relationship has been over the years. On Thursday morning I got up at 3:30 a.m. to get to Portland 8 hours before I needed to arrive. Why? There’s a brother and sister in Portland that I’ve dearly come to love over the years. We have been together perhaps 4 days total in the six years we’ve known about each other. We just wanted to spend some time together and I came away so encouraged and my view of God broadened by what God is doing in them.

I spent most of my weekend with a traditional fellowship looking to be more relational in their life together. I think it became clear to us all how low a priority building friendships can often become. Even when we do activities or have meetings together, those things can become more important than the friendships that bring such rich treasure to our lives. They can even become a barrier to real relationships instead of a tool to help build them. People can serve together and miss the incredible joy that comes from sharing the journey of Christlikeness together. Unless relationships are a priority, everything else will swallow up our time and energy.

While I was there, two people I’ve never met before traveled an hours journey to spend a few hours with me. A week earlier they had never heard of me until one of them read an article I’d written. They went to my website and saw I was going to be in Salem. They just wanted to meet me. We had an incredible time talking for three hours. One of them even volunteered to drive me to Washington so we could have some more time together. I know I have met some new friends.

Last night I was with a group in Washington where one lady drives 90 minutes one-way to join with folks who want to share the journey together. This is why I think obligation is such a cheap substitute for building relationships. If people don’t desire to be together enough to voluntarily make sacrifices for it, the relationships won’t grow anyway.

One more thing. I spoke with a friend recently with whom I’d shared home group life until I moved away some years ago. They used to have lots of friends and how they’ve lost touch with everyone. We talked about how much work time he’d invested in friendships in the last few years and he admitted it was little. Work, commuting and home responsibilities crowded out the time they used to devote to building friendships. Having Jesus-centered friendship is an investment. If we don’t take time to build relationships we’ll find ourselves alone. That’s no way to live. We serve a relational God and I am convinced that almost everything Jesus does he does through relationships, not programs, models or works. Who is God putting on your heart today? Whether they be believer or unbeliever, invest some time cultivating a relationship with them and see where it goes. You’ll be amazed at what God will do. I find for every 20 or 30 relationships I give myself to, maybe 2 or 3 of those become great friends over time. If you’re not casting the net out there, the fish aren’t going to jump in it by themselves.

Do you remember on 9/11 all those phone calls from workaholic stock traders that were trapped in the World Trade Center? Their last thoughts and words reached out in gut-wrenching agony to affirm their love for spouses, children and parents. No one dies wishing they had worked more or seen more football games. When all is said and done the closest we’ll touch eternal treasure in this world other than God’s presence are the relationships we share with others. Make time for that however God leads you. They don’t just happen!

When the nurses at the hospital where my dad had his recent open-heart surgery first began to get him out of bed and get him to start walking they told Mom and I not to try and help or to worry about his safety. They said that if my dad stumbled or slipped they were trained to fall underneath him so that he would land on them instead of the hard floor to lesson the risk of injury.

Dad never stumbled so we never saw them do it, but every time I saw them walking him in the hallway, I could see how ready they were to ‘take the fall’ for him. And I can’t imagine a greater description of ministry than the picture of getting beneath someone as they are going down so that you minimize their risk of injury at our own expense.

Could that be why sinners found themselves attracted to Jesus? He was a soft place for people hurting people to fall. And as he is, so are we in the world…

Nancy from Texas posted something in the Lifestream Community the other day that summed up so well what it means to be real in the body of Christ. Nancy said she pulled together various things she had heard from some of my teachings on some of the CD series that she has been listening to. I think she captured it well and wanted to replay it here:

In a combination of her words and mine, this is what it means to Nancy to be real with other people:

Being real doesn’t give permission for people to be rude or obnoxious, to make false accusations or to victimize others with their hurt and pain. But it is the freedom to express themselves as honestly as they can, to ask questions and to follow God’s working in their heart. Anyone who has found an environment where this kind of freedom is encouraged—where they are not judged or rejected for being honest, struggling or making mistakes has found a true piece of the body of Christ. Only in an environment of this kind of freedom do we grow.

And if that’s the kind of relationships we want then it will also be the kind of friendship we extend to others.

One of my favorite people in the world (and I have many of these) is a man who calls himself Clothman. He and a group of folks up in Missoula, Montana have been through an interesting transition from a more traditional congregational life to one that is more relationally based. For Glenn that meant transitioning out of vocational ministry as the pastor to secular employment as a school bus driver among other things.

Under the his penname, Clothman, Glenn writes a weekly newspaper column for local papers which provides a different and witty look at how God works in us and the world. Here’s a clip from his latest column, which offers a great reality-check. If you don’t get what he’s saying here, then you have an amazing discovery still ahead for you.