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Don’t Give Up In the Middle of the Story!

What a difference a few weeks can make. Here’s a bit of an exchange I had with a brother from back east. God had been doing a work in his heart that was drawing him closer to his Father, but at the same time he found himself increasingly isolated from the friends he used to share congregational life with. He was feeling lonely and desperate for fellowship.

In April he wrote me sharing how lonely he felt:

Your response to my statements regarding loneliness and intensity are no surprise. I admit that I have always struggled with insecurity. I probably over compensate resulting in the intensity thing. I was an only child and adopted and have always battled feelings of rejection. A lot of all of this is probably just plain old self pity. I always have to come back to the promises of my Father. I must admit a certain amount of envy of those who seem to have close relationships.

I hope that I can come to a place of balance in this security thing. On the one hand I am so afraid of developing relationships because I don’t want to get hurt and on the other hand I often push way too hard trying to achieve them. I seem to go from one extreme to the other. I have many weaknesses and behave very foolishly at times. I glad He doesn’t reject weak and foolish people.

At the time I wrote him back:

God wants to be your first relationship, the one that meets all other needs for it. You may be focusing so much on a godly man in your area that you are missing the other points of relationship he is giving you just now. I love what he is doing in your family and would encourage you just to enjoy that for now. When you least expect it (and I also think when we stop looking for it on our terms), you’ll find the relationships you’re looking for. We really can work too hard and unintentionally subvert the thing we desire. God knows what you need and more importantly how he is going to provide for it. But first, I think he wants to be enough for you. If you never met another believer with your hunger for as long as you lived, his presence would be enough for you.

I’m praying that God will sort this out in you. You’ve not been outside that long, Bro, though I’m sure you’ve felt like an ‘outsider’ for a long time. But God will bring about the relationship he desires when he is ready. Don’t think connecting to someone thousands of miles away, or getting linked to a ‘network’ is going to resolve all of that. I meet scores of lonely people in ‘networks’, because man’s kind of networking doesn’t work either.

It’s amazing what has happened sense. Over the last few days I’ve watched with joy as more of the story has unfolded. God has connected him with some wonderful people in his region of the country and is now bringing those connections closer:

Remember how I said a few weeks ago that Father might connect me with someone right across the street. We’ll, the connections are getting closer. Today, by e-mail, I met another dear brother. He lives ten miles away in the city where my old (traditional fellowship) is.

It only demonstrates how great Father is at taking care of His own. His faithfulness is so awesome and so much greater than ours. I am seeing that it is His faithfulness that is the basis of the new covenant, not ours. We wouldn’t have even a mustard seed of faith if not for His marvelous gift. So why struggle to try to work up faith or anything for that matter…. I am somewhat overwhelmed by His goodness to me of late. I can’t think of anything or anyone that I would rather be overwhelmed by. His presence is slowly consuming me, a Fire that burns but does not destroy. I just sit in awe at His feet and see how awesome He really is. Who could not love, with all of their being, a God like Him. I struggle trying to find Him for so many years and He was there all the time. It is so awesome that He permits us to be part of the process of revealing Himself to others, to use us as His loving arms and as His feet to go into all the world. As they see our devoted love to Him and to one another more and more will come and eat at His table.

Four months later and so much has changed. From the despair of loneliness to overwhelming gratefulness at that which God has provided. Sometimes it can really help for us to remember that on any given day we’re in the middle of a story. The last chapter has yet been written. The story will still unfold and God will have incredible things ahead that we can’t quite see today. In this process you’ll find yourself dying to your own agenda so that you can embrace God’s way of doing things. That’s where the life and joy of this kingdom reside, not in getting our wants fulfilled our way.

So, keep leaning into Jesus. Let him be enough for you and watch what he will unfold in his time.

In unrelated developments, we were able to bring my dad, home from the hospital today. He is continuing to heal in textbook fashion and for that we are grateful to God and those who have held him in your prayers. His story is still unfolding as well.

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Look for Someone to Encourage Today

I received this email the other day, which the writer wanted me to pass along to you as an encouragement. It’s amazing what God does in lives as they turn toward him:

I’m not really sure why I’m emailing you, but I suppose it’s because I’m so grateful for this website. I’ve been going through quite an amazing time with the Lord for the past six weeks. I can see how my life has changed, how I have changed. Some great things have happened (a job promotion- answered prayers with hours and rate of pay at least) and my beliefs have been challenged by a new housemate, but I’m also sure God has a purpose in that.

I’ve been reading your book The Naked Church, which is probably why I’m emailing, because I’m so glad and incredibly grateful that I’m not alone in wanting more from my life with Jesus than I feel the institutional church can offer. I have close friends in a similar situation, one of whom I believe you met in Victoria (Australia) last year.

I think what I want to say is that through these recent times I’ve become more aware of Jesus in my life and that I love so much that He is my rock. There is so much chaos in the world and even in peoples everyday lives (which I identified in my new house mate) and I’m glad to have the stability of God in my life because I think life would be horrendous without Him. Anyway, maybe you could share this with people through your website, just as an example or an encouragement. I just really wanted to share this.

So, be encouraged. God wants to work in the reality of your daily life. But also, look to encourage others. This is not an advertisement to send me more encouragement. I get lots of it in the course of a week. But perhaps you could think of someone else around your life that could really use some encouragement and give them a call, pay them a visit, or write them a note. Hebrews 13:3 admonishes us to look for ways to encourage each other daily so that we will not be hardened by sin’s deceit! It’s one of the most important things we do as God’s family in sorting out life in this age.

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Following God’s Voice

I’m spending this week in the hospital with my Dad through his open-heart surgery to replace a valve and do a double bypass and his recovery. I appreciate deeply those of you who have held my family in prayer during this time. His recovery is progressing well. As I’ve sat with my father I’ve been reading an out-of-print book by John Beaumont, entitled God in my Dreams. In it he tells a story of God telling him to lead out in singing in the Spirit among a congregation of people of which he was a co-pastor. He didn’t do it, concerned that they had never done it before and that the elders wouldn’t approve.

The next day he told his co-pastor and his wife what he’d been through that night. His co-pastor responded:

“John, you can’t do that. The elders won’t receive it. You’ll split the church.”

(John’s comment:) How we need to learn that if obeying God splits the church, then it is already split even though the cracks may have been masterfully and beautifully papered over. It is already split between those who are willing to obey God unconditionally and unreservedly and those who for their own ends have imposed a limit on the recognition of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

I hesitate to retell the story because we all know people who are so self-focused that they would use such encouragement to be over their pet theologies and agendas, and swear God had told them to do so. But that danger notwithstanding, I am convinced that it is more important to encourage people who do listen to Jesus to follow him, even if the consequences might be painful for them. It also points out that our religious systems have created environments where obeying God is far less important than having the approval of others by fitting into their expectations. How quickly we blame the person whose actions expose our division than deal honestly and compassionately with the division among us. We love the security of fitting in more than we do following the Lamb wherever he goes. I think that’s why our systems continue to harden over time and why people caught in them end up spiritually stagnant even though they are hungry for him.

We experience the life of God, however, by following him wherever he might lead us. John continues his comments in the book:

I was able to tell my co-pastor that I hadn’t thought it was a good idea either! That was obvious since I hadn’t obeyed that clear, strong word from the Holy Spirit to me. But I was also able to indicate that (later) that Sunday night I had made an irrevocable and non-negotiable commitment to live from then on responding to the Holy Spirit no matter what He required of me, whether or not I understood what the consequences would be or even whether I liked the thought of what was being asked of me. Little wonder that we walk a different path today! Little wonder, too, that we feel far more fulfilled and blessed than we ever have in all of our life before.

Amen! Follow him wherever he leads you and don’t talk yourself out of it just because other brothers and sisters won’t understand. A few hours after reading this story, one of the people who came to visit my dad in the hospital surprised me by telling me she had left a congregation three years ago that she had been a part of over 25 years. She loved it and had always been one of the most committed people there. But God told her that her allegiance to the group was becoming a substitute for her life in him. Few folks in that congregation have understood or affirmed her choice, and she hasn’t tried to explain it to them beyond, “This is something God asked me to do.” She also said she has never found such freedom in God’s life and such incredible connections with her family and friends. And she would be just as ready to go back or go anywhere else God would ask her to do.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that we are called to live by “every word that comes from God,” not by pleasing even well-meaning brothers and sisters.

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Help With the Journey

Last weekend Sara and I spent four days with a wonderful group of believers around Youngstown, Ohio. That’s them above at or Saturday night barbeque. They are two years on a journey of discovering relational life together. They gather weekly in various homes to share God’s life and also have a Wednesday night Bible study for those interested. We hung around a retreat center together for the weekend and were joined at various times from some folks further north near Lake Erie and some from the Pittsburgh area. What a weekend!

We talked through something you’ll be reading more about on this website in coming months. There is a block on my website reserved for The Journey and The Story, . I’ve just begun to post some things there to help people see God’s working in their own life to move them closer to him and prepare them more effective participation in the life of his body and in living out their mission in the earth. In my own life and in others I’ve connected with in recent years I am recognizing a progression of God’s work in growing us up and setting us free. They are not steps but simply things we need to ‘get’ to learn to live relationally with God, other believers and the world.

By growing daily in the reality and depth of Father’s affection for you you will find yourself growing to trust him and his purpose sorting out in the experiences of your life. As you grow to trust him you’ll find yourself embracing true freedom and knowing what it is to live free of guilt and condemnation, free of other people’s expectations, and free of your own agenda for your life. This growing freedom will allow you to discover how the Body of Christ can share God’s life together, freely without trying to make others provide for you what you’re not finding in him. Body life can now be a place for people to grow in Christ and encourage each other without manipulating or judging each other. As we learn to share life among the body we’ll also find our hearts spilling over with God’s love for the word and we’ll find ourselves incarnating that love quite naturally as we live simply in God’s reality in events around us.

This is an amazing process and there is progression here that is quite helpful. In other words people who aren’t growing confident in Father’s affection will never know what real trust or freedom is. People who aren’t growing in God’s freedom will only see the body as a place to manipulate others with their own need, ‘theology’ or agenda. But these are not steps of achievement. I see them more as an ascending spiral. We’ll continue to discover more of each of these areas as we grow up in him and will not complete any one of them before moving on to the next. In that sense, we’ll grow in them together.

For each of these five areas I will be providing some of the lessons God’s taught me in sorting out each of these areas in my own life. I’ll also include resources from Lifestream that will help you work through these specific areas to greater life him.

Also, let me add an unrelated postscript here. If you would like to see the incredible beauty of New Zealand, I’ve posted some of our favorite New Zealand Pictures, . It really is a magnificent country as you will see!

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Keeping Reality Straight

I have been reading Richard John Neuhaus’ Death on a Friday Afternoon about the seven statements Jesus made on the cross. I was so encouraged by his perspective on what is to live in the real world. Here he tells us how easily we mistake the real world where God dwells for the false world that occupies so much of our attention.

As we come out of a movie theater and shake our heads to clear our minds of another world where we lived for a time in suspended disbelief, as we reorient ourselves to reality, so we leave our (spiritual) contemplation… where for a time another world seemed possible, believable, even real.  But we tell ourselves, the real world is a world elsewhere.  It is the world of deadlines to be met, of appointments to be kept, of taxes to be paid, of children to be educated.  From here, from this moment at the cross, it is a distant country.  “Father forgive them, for they have forgotten the way home. They are misplaced in the real world.”  Here, here at the cross is the real world.”  (p. 5-6)

It is so easy to mistake the distractions of this world for reality itself, when it is only an illusion. The real world is in Father’s heart, where we’ve been invited to be at home in him in everything we do and in every circumstance that confronts us. There is no greater reality than our life in him, and his life in us. We do well to keep that in focus every day, or else the distractions and chores of living in this world will define or reality and diminish our awareness of him in all of life.

Toward the end of the book he reminds us again that when we live in God’s reality it permeates all that we do. It is just as spiritual to work on your car or decorate your house as it is to pray, gather with other believers or share his life with someone who is lost. When we live as his, his glory shines through our lives no matter what we might be doing at any given moment.

The Christian life is about living to the glory of God.  It is not a driven, frenetic sweated interminable quest for saving souls.  It is doing for his glory what God has given us to do.  As with the Olympic runner in the film "Chariots of Fire", it is giving God pleasure in what we do well.  Souls are saved by saved souls who live out their salvation by thinking and living differently, with a martyr’s resolve, in a world marked by falsehood, baseness, injustice, impurity, ugliness and mediocrity. (p. 180)

I’m convinced we best demonstrate God’s life when we are least aware of it. When we are trying too hard we are only acting and the world sees it instantly even if we don’t. They are not looking for actors on a stage, but people who live God’s reality in the simplicity of their lives. When we live deeply in him throughout each day he makes himself known in ways that will even surprise us. And it won’t be fake or artificial because it comes from reality not pretense.

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Simplifying the Questions – One More Thing!

This was too good to pass up! Shortly after I posted the latest blog, a friend from New Zealand sent me this quote from one of John’s books:

This reminds me of something from one of John’s books, the guy who said “I used to have a problem – I couldn’t hear God. Now I have a worse problem – I JUST HEARD HIM!”

Funny. Very funny. I’ve been there, how about you?:

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Simplifying the Questions

Over the last few days I keep thinking of one more tidbit from our conversation with John and Mary Beaumont in Christchurch, New Zealand. This has really been an encouragement to me as I’m freshly evaluating some of the things I feel like God is doing in my own life right now.

John said that once you’ve said ‘Yes’ to Jesus, it needs to count for the whole of our lives. We need not ever wrestle again with whether or not we’ll do what he wants. Once that is decided the only question that remains in everything we consider is simply this, "Is this what he wants?" And if he does, why would we want anything else?

I clutter my journey in Christ with way too many questions. Does this make sense to me? What would be the ramifcations? What will other people think? Does it make financial sense? What principle should guide me here? Answering all of those questions can be cumbersome indeed and many of them will lead me opposite of the way he would want.

We are loved by a Father whose ways are so much higher than ours and whose thoughts go way beyond anything we could ask or ever imagine. Why would we ever think that we could reason out his ways? All we’re really doing is reasoning out an excuse to do what we think is best.

Now when I find myself caught up in an internal argument, I’m pretty certain that’s because one of Jesus’ thoughts is rolling around in there. How do I know? Because I rarely argue with me. I like my thoughts. It’s his thoughts that are so different from the way I would naturally think.

I am finding great rest in recent days simply asking, "Is this what you’re saying?" Or, "Is this what you want?" If I am certain of that, then the other questions that offer such a wearying wrestling match become moot.

I don’t know about you, but I find one question much easier to deal with than an entire checklist of them!

[As an aside, I’ve just added an article of John’ Beaumont’s that comes from a previous book of his that is now out of print. It is entitled the Jetty and the Raft.]

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Thinking Outside the Box

I attended a local consultation over the last two days regarding community transformation. The promotional material said it was “a roundtable gathering of Christian leaders looking at church outside the walls.” I didn’t really expect them to mean it. But one of the questions we sorted through on the first day was, “What is the problem with church as we know it?”

We were given some interesting statistics to ponder. This from a book By Reggie McNeal titled The Present Future

The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off of the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80% of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty-five and older), or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.”

Or this:

“From 1990-2001 the number of people with no religious preference has doubled.”

Or this:

In research done by Thorn Rainer regarding those who are born again in America, he came up with the following percentages:

Those born before 1946 (Builders) – 65%

Those born between 1946 and 1964 (Boomers) – 35%

Those born between 1965 and 1976 (Busters) = 15%

those born between 1976-1994 (Bridgers) – 4%

Or this:

David Barrett, author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates that there are already 112 million ‘out-of-church Christians’ around the world – 5% of all who call themselves ‘Christians’. He expects this number to double by 2025. “

This kind of information is coming from all over. I received this quote in a letter from an institutional bunch:

New Zealand author Alan Jamieson in his book, A Churchless Faith, has been studying this phenomenon for years. To his surprise, it is not the ‘normal churchgoers’ who are leaving the church: 94% of the Christians he has interviewed who are currently without a church were in positions of leadership or responsibility, such as deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers – and 40% of them were once in full-time ministry. And the vast majority of these did not leave as an act of abandoning their faith, but precisely because they wanted to preserve it and saw the religious system as a detriment to their spiritual growth. Many people who cannot conceive of anything other than the traditional church-oriented Christianity, the movement is unsettling or even frightening. It may well be one of the most exciting developments in recent years.

So what are we to make of all of this? At least a number of people are seeing the irrelevance of institutional Christianity as it as evolved into this century. Of course most of these studies hope to encourage Christian institutions to reform the box so that those who’ve left will come back in.

In the end, that’s where our discussion ended after two days. People trapped in the box just cannot see outside it long enough to know that there are some incredible ways to live out this Christian experience without wasting so much time, energy and resources on the machinery our culture has come to equate with Christianity?

For the most part, I am convinced the box is a deterrent not only to growing in intimacy with Christ but also in engaging the culture with the reality of who Christ is rather than the baggage of Christianity. But I was also reminded that there are a lot of people who really love Jesus and are seeking to follow him who are still in that box. They are trying to make the most of it, not realizing, that it is getting the best of them.

At the same time, I know some who would quote the statistics above as proof of a world-wide movement of people seeing through the frailties of the box and are abandoning it for a greater relationship with God and with other believers. They point to this information as proof that they are right and others caught up in the system are wrong. That would be a mistake. People coming to be part of a movement will only create another box in time and still miss the relationship Jesus wants most with them.

Wouldn’t it be better if we got our eyes off of systems and hope about movements and fix them squarely on Jesus? Do what he tells you to do. Follow where he tells you to go and encourage others to do the same. Then we’ll simply be the church in our day, with a variety of expressions as God shows us how to share his life together and how to make his love known in the world.

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When Organized Religion Gets You Down

Except for the stupid spam proliferating on the Internet like rats, nothing more fun than opening my email every day. Here are two back-to-back emails that I opened this afternoon. I get many emails like the first one. There is great angst out there about how organized religion thwarts people’s attempts to know the living God. I understand it. It used to make me so angry and I wanted to do something to show it up.

I’m still very much bothered by what I see in the assembly of God, and of late, I sometimes feel like Nehemiah beholding Jerusalem – how its walls are in ruins, and its gates are burnt! For a while, I was resting in the revelation that my fellowship is with Abba and Christ Jesus, that this is in Christ Jesus, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it real to me, so none can take it away from me. But slowly, I just can’t help becoming discouraged by the fact that the assemblies today have gone so far away from God’s desire for His people.

But in the end that is God’s job, not ours. In the second email you’ll notice the freedom that comes from getting our eyes off the failures of others and onto the life of Jesus flowing through us. The man who wrote the second, wrote me one much like the first a few weeks before.:

Thank you for the fast shipment of the books I ordered. I have already started reading The Naked Church, , while my wife is excited and looking forward to reading He Loves Me!

Through reading some of the things on your site, I already feel released from the frustration of the current church situation. I now have a better frame of reference as to what and who the church really is. I am sure that as I pray to the Father to continue to open my eyes to Him that I will really begin to see some of the things that He sees. I am also sure that He will continue to put others around me that share my desperation.

I desperately want a intimate relationship with God, but I know I must be willing to pay the price of not allowing myself to get in the way. Even though I feel that I have been shutting myself off from God in certain ways, I have never before seen the fields of opportunities that are awaiting me in my life with Jesus as I am now seeing. I have learned a couple of things this summer that have completely shifted my paradigm.

The first is what I stated before about what and who the church of God really is. It is only able to come into a state of being with Jesus as the focal point. Praise God! The second lesson that I have been showed is that when I am helping or being a blessing to someone, they are being even more of a blessing to me. This allows me to use the gifts that God has imparted to me through His grace and love. I am starting to feel at last that even I can be used by God. How awesome is that? It amazes me to think that He chooses to use me despite myself. He does not need me to do anything for Him, but He chooses to use me for my benefit. Wow, what an awesome, caring, and loving God we serve!

What do we do when organized religion gets us down? Get our eyes back on Jesus and the life he’s asked us to live. There’s nothing better we can do, even for those captured in religion, than to sort out in our own life what it means to live free. Then they might see in us something worth seeking. They are like kangaroos born in the zoo. They think they’re free, because they just don’t know better. They have no idea what life in Jesus is really all about. You can scream at them until you’re blue in the face, but the security of the status quo will win over the uncertainty of the unknown.

But what would happen if a mob of free kangaroos came bounding by in the open fields, chasing up the hill in the glory for which God made kangaroos. Then it just might do what all the words in the world won’t do…

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Response to Lucy – Butterfly Story Revisited

[Stuart and George, I appreciated what you both added to this to clarify my remarks. Thanks!]

Lucy,

Obviously you’ve seen people deeply hurt by the religious sytems of our day. As have most of us who hang out here. I am so sorry for that, and sorry someone wasn’t around to provide the help her or she might have needed. And I agree that is an important part of what God asks us to do.

But I can’t help but thinking you misunderstood what I wrote.

No one said to leave anyone in bondage.

No one said not to help.

No one said to stay sileint.

My goodness, how can you read this blog and think I’d ever encourage people to be silent? The point of the story was to help people learn to live free, not try to push them into it by our own strength. You cannot force someone into freedom, but you can stand alongside them, hold their hand and cheer them on in the struggle. I have also seen people badgered into leaving the religious system and ended up on the outside hurt and bitter. They never seemed able to soar in the life of Jesus, because no one ever let them learn how to trust God for themselves.

That is the part we cannot do for others. We can talk to them about it, help them see the choices clearly and encourage them however we can, but we cannot trust for them. That’s what they will have to find in Jesus if they want to know the joy of his life.

And he has that for everyone!

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