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I often hear from people who read my blog, that have no idea that I post a regular podcast each week. That’s probably because it is on another website, TheGodJourney.com. As I take off for a week’s vacation with Sara and my daughter’s family, I thought I’d highlight the one we did yesterday, because we stumbled on to an essential freedom in this journey that I wouldn’t want many of you to miss it, or the wonderful conversation going on in the “comments” section.

It’s called “Living Beyond Our Transformation” and talks about the frustration people often feel at the freedoms they don’t have yet in their lives, as they struggle with temptation, fear, or anxiety. One of the great realities of knowing we’re loved and engaged in a process with Jesus, is that we get to relax in that process. He’s the one changing us and making us holy so when we come across those “unchanged-as-of-yet places” in our lives, we don’t have to try and outperform our relationship. Attempting to do so will only lead to certain failure and frustration as he has not yet made the inward changes in us necessary to sustain the freedom.

Whether you listen or not, I thought this encouragement is one that’s greatly needed and points the futility of living to a set of standards, that may express God’s holiness, but not the process we must be engaged in with him so he can make us holy. This is his work remember. He told us that apart from him, we could do nothing! I think the greatest failure of religion is to hold up a set of standards and demanding people meet it, without showing them how to engage a relation with Jesus that is essential for us to live in his holiness.

Transformation results from an ongoing engagement with Jesus. When you’re in that process you don’t have to panic when you find yourself unable to be perfect today. Instead you will be drawn back to him so that as your relationship with him grows, so will your freedom.

Today we celebrate American Independence. Do you want to know what I’m thinking today? I don’t often use this page for my political points of view, but I will today and many of you who are not interested are free to ignore it. I have never been more concerned for the present and future of our country. The noble ideal of a country founded on equal rights and equal justice under the law has seriously eroded in recent decades. Just because I don’t often write about that, doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s being done with the American Promise. I care deeply and as a responsible citizen I speak up in whatever venues I think will be helpful for our country’s future. At the same time, however, my hope is not in humanity or politics. While essential for the public order, governments over time always tend toward rewarding a powerful elite, corruptly so, in hopes that the masses will feel powerless to stop it and quietly go along. We stand at such a crossroads today.

As much as I celebrate the ideal of freedom, I also mourn it’s passing. In 1776 our country threw off the restraints of a distant king who saw fit to tax the populace whenever he saw fit to increase his personal wealth. Our forefathers found the rule of royalty so onerous and unfair that at great personal risk to their lives and fortune, they announced their independence and risked their lives on the battlefield to win it. They established a country based on the idea that all of us are created equal and that government should seek a greater common good with justice for all and not create a ruling class of powerful or wealthy citizens with special benefits.

The last eight years has made it clear that a new royalty has emerged in America. No, it isn’t a royal family, but an incestuous relationship between Wall Street bankers and Washington politicians who consider themselves above the rest of us and thus entitled to great wealth and privilege. In the past two administrations we saw that both Democrat and Republican officials were willing to give billions of dollars to reward those who fraudulently caused the financial crisis, while ignoring those who were victims of it. How many politicians go to Washington hoping to make a difference and instead become part of the problem, while their personal wealth grows exponentially? Even those who go of modest means, soon become multimillionaires and then trade their government contacts for careers as lobbyists when their time is up. Public service has lost its meaning. Washington and New York have become an extravagant culture to themselves with little concern for the problems of middle America. Instead of seeking a common good for all, our politicians continue to manipulate the process for their own power, prestige and fortune. State governments are not exempt from this as well, and perhaps California is the worst of all in bankrupting our state to push for their own gain.

People decry the entitlement culture where people are made more dependent on the state, rather than accepting responsibility for their own lives. But our mushrooming entitlement culture certainly doesn’t begin with the poor, but the wealthy ruling class, who consider themselves entitled to special government protection and perks while their fellow-citizens suffer. They continue to vote benefits for themselves and their cronies while they defraud the American public.

We are no longer a nation of laws that seeks to treat all citizens fairly, but a nation of lawyers, some of whom have helped to rig a political and legal system that rewards the rich and well-connected. The new enemies of the state in my view are those politicians, authors, news pundits, and “news analysts” who trade on polarizing the public by lying about the opposition as well as their own ambitions. Until the American people demand better of their politicians and turn off their 24-hour news channels it will be impossible to rebuild a civil political discourse that actually tackles the large and significant problems that confront our country. It may well take a new third party that ignores those on the far left and far right and works to construct a fair and just society for us all. I have more confidence that most conscientious citizens understand common sense and fair play better than anyone in the upper echelons of our political process.

But I will still vote in the upcoming election and make my voice heard, however small. The only way it will matter is if others also reject the current players in our system and move demand that future elected officials change the climate in Washington and the realities of political service. If America is going to change it will happen because voters are less gullible to the manipulations of our political process and seek out statesmen and stateswomen to send to Washington and our state houses to clean up the mess of our current generation of corrupt politicians. Here’s what I’m looking for:

Will any of these things happen in my lifetime? That is up to the voter, of course, and it will take many election cycles, not just this one. Will we just continue to fall in line with the pandering of both political parties, or will we demand that they change or create a new part with better ideals? Time will tell. If we just keep sending the same kind of people to Washington that we’ve been sending for the past 30 years, we cannot expect anything to change.

But as I said when I started this, my hope in life or in America’s future is not in politics. God’s work is going to continue to go forward in the world even if our society spends itself into bankruptcy and bondage. God does some of his best work in people in times of scarcity and crisis, than he is able to do in times of prosperity and bliss. So while I lament the corruption of our political process and the distortion of our founding ideals, I nonetheless am overjoyed that I am part of a kingdom that is not founded on human greed, but on the love and power of God. That kingdom cannot be shaken no matter what happens in our world.

For your summer reading pleasure, I’m adding a second recommendation to the one I made yesterday. This one is only available as an e-book and at 92 pages almost qualifies as a short story. What I hate about short stories is that if you get attached to the characters, they end too soon. This ends way too soon for me. There is so much more that could have been done with this set-up and there was so much more I wanted to know about the characters in it. But that aside, this is a worthy tale of life in the 21st Century and how technology can so easily distract us from the reality of life itself.

Written by Dr. Stephanie Bennett, Within the Walls on the surface is a story of technology and our humanity. It pits the power of once well-meaning institutions against what is best for the individual. This story confronts us with the possibility that our digital lives doesn’t necessarily enhance our human experience, but can in the end dehumanize us by luring us away from the substance of life itself. What happens when someone begins to see through the illusion, and why do others feel it important to hide the truth at all costs and thus preserve the illusion?

The story is set in 2071 sometime after a nuclear event has destroyed much of the world. Twenty-nine year-old Emilya loves here work as a creator of virtual vacations, until an inner uneasiness begins to plague her. Something is wrong, but what is it? Soon she finds herself ostracized at work and the questions only grow. Then she finds a strange letter from her deceased mother that had never been sent to her. Questions continue to pile up that launch Emilya on a quest for truth that upends her world. Clues that others who’ve gone before her and left behind become the bread crumbs she must read correctly. As an added delight the writings of Jacques Ellul, the French philosopher and Christian anarchist, help bring depth to her pursuit.

Ms. Bennett is a gifted communicator, who quickly grabs our attention and enmeshes us in Emilya’s story. I was rooting for her to find the truth and hopeful that in doing so we’d get some valuable ideas about making space away from the media’s ever-present demands, to find some measure of engagement with what is more transcendent.

Here’s an excerpt:

We were looking for a spacious place where the mind could wander free—-where we weren’t tethered to walls and the constant flow of information. We wanted to use technologies, but started to see that we were inadvertently creating a society that was unfit for human beings. We were creating this new world. It was horrifying to see that we developed these new tools, instead of using them to our best advantage, we were letting them use us!

On the surface this fast-paced novella challenges our view of media and how it seeks to dominate our our attention. However our media rarely lives up to its promise and few question what it crowds out that may be far more meaningful. That, alone, makes this story worth reading. But for those who dare, there’s a more subtle story here of how our mechanized, religious approaches to God have distorted our view of life and robbed us of more relevant engagements with God and his creation.

Thought-provoking, engaging, and satisfying, this story does not disappoint, except in its brevity. And for me to say so, tells you how much I enjoyed this story.

You can order it from Amazon Kindle here. (Within the Walls by Stephanie Bennett • 92 pages • $5.00 • e-book)

There are a couple of new fiction books out I think many of you will enjoy, and because they are self-published, you may not hear about them if you don’t hear about them here. I’ll post up another one tomorrow, but the first has a controversial title (to say the least), but you’ll find out why it’s entirely appropriate when you read the story. It’s about a man living in the painful reality of his own illusions, who is offered a different way to process his struggle.

Written by MC Lang, a friend of mine from Canada. (Yes, I did try to get him to change the title, and no, being a friend doesn’t necessarily get your book reviewed here. I only mention books here I think this audience would be genuinely interested in.) There are many books that I enjoy personally, that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to others for various reasons. This is the story of a man who is caught in the painful perceptions of his own illusion and has the opportunity to see through them and grasp reality. But which way does it lie? Who can he trust, and what will that reality cost him?

Mike Adams lives a solitary and unassuming life, until a near-death experience shatters it. Awaking as if from a dream, Mike finds himself lost in a bizarre reality where nothing makes sense and two mysterious strangers seem determined to pull him in opposite directions. Arrested at the crossroads of this uncertain new path, the tug-of-war for Mike’s soul hangs in the balance as he struggles with what is real and what is true. As the race for an answer climaxes, Mike is thrust into a world where physical and spiritual realities collide, and the stage is set for an encounter he will never forget.

I wrote this paragraph as an endorsement for his book:

This is a first-rate parable where the line between our material and spiritual worlds blur. MC Lang invites us along for an extraordinary tale of a very common man whose comfort is shattered by the words of a stranger. But that only opens his eyes to a reality greater than he’d ever dreamed. For anyone on a spiritual journey The Bastard Tree will enlighten, inspire, and encourage you to follow the only voice that makes sense in a broken world.

I meant every word of it. I think you’ll enjoy thinking through this book and the themes it wrestles with.

You can find out more about it here: http://www.mclang.net/the-bastard-tree/. You can also order it from Amazon here. (The Bastard Tree by M.C. Lang • 290 pages • $14.99 • paperback)

Tomorrow I’ll going to offer you another…

It has been a while since I have given you an update on Kenya and I continue to be amazed at how many hold this in their heart. I get asked about it wherever I travel and contributions continue to come in to help, even though I rarely mention it. I am honored to be standing alongside my brothers and sisters in Kenya in their care for those who have nothing, not even a family. They also care for seventeen other orphanages in the immediate area, and many have taken other children into their own families, to help care for them. Perhaps as many as 15,000 mothers and fathers were killed in the violence that followed their disputed elections six years ago.

And beyond that the people at IGEM (International Gospel Equipping Ministries) work with over nine million believers throughout Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and other neighboring countries, helping spread the gospel and equipping people and congregations to live in the love of the Father. The needs they face every day are overwhelming, and yet they continue to demonstrate such joyful and teachable hearts. Who would have thought God would give us such a connection in the continent of Africa. Please keep them in your prayers, as Father leads you.

We not only built the orphanage over a year ago, but also committed to provide for food, staff, and education for more than seventy children. There isn’t a lot of new information each month to capture people’s imagination. This is just the steady task of following through as these children live and grow. It started out around $2500.00 per month, but because of the declining Kenyan schilling, we now need to send $3,000.00 per month to provide the same help we sent a year ago. We have continued to do that each month, whether or not the contributions have come in from others. We would greatly appreciate some others helping us as Jesus might lead you.

If you feel called to help us support these children either with a one-time contribution, or a monthly donation, we (and they) would be grateful. If you want to know more about this project or the AIDs recovery home we also support in South Africa, you can see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Jehovah Tdsnikki! No, you won’t find it in the Scriptures, but you can’t walk with God long and not know that he often sneaks up on you. This season of our lives had totally taken Sara and me by surprise, first in the confusion and pain it brought, and then in the greater joy and freedom it has since produced. The work continues to unfold and getting a bit clearer, but I’m still giving it plenty of space at this time in my life and kicking other projects down the road.

I appreciate those who have written words of encouragement, prayed for us, and even those who didn’t write so my email load would not be so great. The two weeks we spent together in France and Ireland (pictured at left) were incredibly healing and refreshing, especially the three days we had all to ourselves in Paris. We’ve never had more fun together, never talked more deeply and casually together, and never loved each other quite this way before. It has surprised us in ways we can’t fully express. We thought our marriage had been such a joy all along, but the last few weeks has exceeded anything we could have dreamed of. It’s as if we went through a cave and discovered a whole new country we never knew existed. And it is a wild and wonderful place!

I’m sure we’ll talk more some day about the details. This hasn’t been so much a lesson in marriage, but God peeling back another layer of Sara’s life and through it challenging me to love her differently. I’m pretty sure that whenever one spouse goes through a season of change at God’s hand, the other has to change as well to make room for it. If not you’ll find yourselves growing apart instead of traveling together. Fortunately Jesus is showing us how to traverse this new land together, which has allowed me to be inside Sara’s heart in a way I’ve not been before, and in a way she never knew she wanted or needed. There is a lot of hard work going on here, especially in my beloved, but the early fruits of that has already delighted us both.

We have found our way into a different kind of loving that has revolutionized our relationship and already brings us great joy. We will talk about it some day when Sara is ready, but for now we are still learning the joy of living it. It has made me even more excited about God’s ability to keep walking us into wholeness and for our life together to continue to be a place of discovery, growth, and change. It reminds me that God is not interested in giving us a placid life to make us comfortable, but to continue to draw us more deeply into the reality of his life and his way of loving. He is far more interested in shaping us than he is making our circumstances peaceful

I’m glad to still be learning. I’m blessed that God had more joy for us yet in this unfolding journey, even if the gateways into that are painful and disorienting.

He rarely does things the way I want, or in the time frames I might enjoy. But he does do all things well!

Et ce matin, nous disons au revoir à la France aime! (And so, this morning, we bid a fond farewell to France.)

I have been here two weeks, and Sara for one. We have had an extraordinary time at every place we stopped along the way. It has seemed so long ago since my first top in Boeil-Bezing, then to Azille, Angers, and finally to Paris, but there were so many delightful conversations and people to meet along the way. I am so blessed to get to meet the people I meet and see how God is stirring people all over the world to live beyond the emptiness of religious obligation and find a true relationship with the Father by the help of Jesus.

Then Sara and I had three of the most amazing days together in Paris. Though big cities are not my thing, being with Sara is. There’s so much we got to explore about Paris that we missed on our first trip here fourteen years ago, and so much more we got to explore about each other at this stage of the journey as we walked the streets of Paris, or the gardens of Versailles. What an awesome “retreat” we got to have, just the two of us. I love so much the person Sara has been, the person she is, and the person God is still making her to be.

And now we are off to County Wicklow, south of Dublin in Ireland. We have dear, dear friends there who have walked alongside us for many years now and have seen us through more than a few highs and lows. Others are coming in from elsewhere in Europe for some discussions together. We’ll also meet some new brothers and sisters here who wanted to connect while we’re passing through. And I love that God continues to invite the two of us more deeply into this adventure together.

So, it’s set up the ol’ marquee in the field, light the barbie (Oh, I guess that’s Australia), and let’s see how this Jesus is revealing himself around the world.

I am finishing up today in the south of France. Tomorrow I’m taking a train from Narbonne to Paris, to meet Sara who will be arriving from the States. We will be catching another train to go out and spend some time in Angers with some brothers and sisters who invited us to come. After four days in Angers, we will return to Paris for some private holiday time before we head over to Ireland and gather with some dear friends there.

Yesterday, Joni posted a comment on my previous blog that posed a question I thought many others would like to hear an answer to. So, Joni, I’ve taken the liberty of reposting our comment here, and adding my response at the end.

Love your transparency as always. Are you guys working on a marriage book together? Thought I heard that somewhere sometime in the past. Must be sweet to be so loved by Papa. This is what pastoring looks like, sharing the struggle of the journey is so helpful. I know in my own marriage as we age I am really seeing with more clarity why the marriage metaphor is the one He chose to reflect our relationship with Him. Between my marriage and parenting He really teaches me well and loves me beyond my wildest imagination. I hope you get hit with a little Cupid in Paris Wayne and find a little romance with Sara in the city. Thank you so much for keeping it real with us.

I don’t know that I believe in this Cupid guy, but we are looking for a whole lot more than a little romance in Paris. It is Sara’s favorite city and this time is God’s gift to her.

To answer your question, however, we’re still working on the MARRIAGE together! Once we get that sorted out, we’ll think about a book. 😉

Seriously, though, we’ve talked about doing a book for some time on this topic, and have begun to collect and organize what God has shown us over the years. But then we go through a yet another season of God peeling off a layer of the onion, and our relationship shifts yet again to a much deeper reality. So, we’re never sure when we’re actually going to be able to write it—that we’re deep enough into this journey, especially when we’re writing on the joys of life-long loving. Ideally, I guess we would finish the book the day before one of us passes away! That would take an immense sense of timing, and by then the end of the age may be upon us and the book would be irrelevant anyway.

So, yes, we are working on a book, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to release it. We wouldn’t have wanted to have finished it last year, with what’s going on now. This is the BEST part of our journey together and we are learning the best lessons that in many ways are the culmination of so many things we have only seen in part before. I am so excited about what he is doing in us at the moment and know it will be an important part of the story for others in time.

So, we will have to see when and if we actually get the book done! As with most things I want to write about these days, the living of the reality in his work is so much more profound, then trying to describe it for others. I trust the Spirit will nudge us on the day he wants us to actually finish writing this book if it is on his heart.

I just found out my book, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, is about to release in Italian. Imagine that! Maybe it will find its way into the Vatican! Wouldn’t that be fun. Maybe it should be called So You Don’t Want to Go to the Cathedral Anymore! That’s the book cover at left.

I’m at LAX headed for France today and a weekend with people in the southern end of the country. As excited as I am about spending some time with some good friends of mine and meeting some new people, it was tougher leaving home today than any other trip has been. Sara and I have just had two of the most glorious two weeks together sorting out this new stage in our journey. Fortunately she joins me in a few days and as part of this trip we’ll be taking some time away just for us. I’m really looking forward to that, as is she.

We may talk in more detail about what’s going on in us up the road. I’m sorry to have frustrated some of you by being so nonspecific and I know more than a few of you have jumped to conclusions that were not accurate. What we are discovering are not the obvious things people worry about from childhood traumas, but it is allowing a new part of Sara to emerge and we are already enjoying the firstfruits of what this means in our love for each other. While we still have some miles to go together in letting Father shape all that he wants to in this season, it would be an understatement to say we are both excited about the Father’s work here. We thought we had an amazing relationship before, and in many ways we did. But now we’re finding some new places in each other’s hearts to explore together and I find myself both overjoyed and shocked that after 37 years of marriage there are still new places to discover. Who would have thought?

I’m so glad our marriage has never been static. We’ve never just settled in to a pattern of living that just allows us to coexist together. We’ve managed to stay on a journey with God that helps us keep expanding as individuals, and which has, in turn, meant we’ve had to keep expanding in our hearts to make room for the other. I’m blessed Sara keeps doing that for me, and I keep wanting to for her.

All told, this has truly been a joy. Yes it was birthed in some pain and confusion, since it caught us both off-guard. But as Sara said the other day, it feels like everything is new. And it does, which is hard to explain after all the time we’ve been together and all the joys we’ve already shared. We’re both glad the journey continues, that God’s grace is limitless, and that love can keep growing with each passing day.

So I’ll count the days until she joins me… Thanks for all the love and prayers so many of you expressed for us. Please know that we are at rest in the Lord’s working and grateful for all that has unfolded in recent weeks.

I have not updated this page recently and may not do so all that frequently for some time ahead. Tomorrow Sara and I will celebrate our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary. I can honestly say that I have never been more in love with this woman, never more appreciative of what her gifts and wisdom have added to our journey, and never more joyful at being in her presence. Though we had no idea where this journey would take us thirty-seven years ago, I am so grateful that God’s work in each of us has brought us closer and closer together.

For the past seventeen years Sara and I have openly shared this stage of our journey in books, articles, podcasts, and teachings. We have answered every email sent to us and have continued to make our lives available to people around the world in personal conversations whether it be here in the States or in far-off lands. We have been blessed to know so many people and for people to have opened their hearts so widely to us. All that travel, however, has meant that Sara and me spend many days apart. She has embraced that with incredible grace and is so generous in helping me share with the world the realities of living loved.

A few weeks ago, our lives took an unforeseen turn. It seems God has chosen this season to bring to light some painful experiences from Sara’s childhood that she didn’t even know were there, and to bring her to a more spacious place of freedom. And in the process our relationship has had to change to make room for his working. It began while I was in Russia and shook our marriage to its core. Sleepless nights, misunderstandings, long emails, and prayers took us through some painful places, but helped us connect at a far deeper level than we ever thought possible. For now, she needs me in a way she has not in the past and I have no greater joy than being exactly what she needs me to be right now and I am giving my heart fully to that.

I doubt that will change substantially what God has asked us to do in the world, but does mean that that work will rightfully take a back seat to what God is doing in her and in us! I am alongside Sara now in a way I never imagined and in the process I’m learning so much about the nature of God’s kind of loving, both in how Sara loves me, and in how I’m finding great joy in loving her.

Victor Hugo was right, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” When we lay down our wants and needs to envelop another person with compassion and honor, we get to see a reflection of God glory that is full of wonder. I’ve been invited to love Sara at a deeper level than I knew she needed, or knew I even wanted. Doing so has drawn us closer together, but also revealed Father’s love to us in some practical ways. Here’s some of what we’ve been learning:

You might be tempted to guess what circumstance lies behind these words, but you’d probably be wrong. I’m protecting her by not saying more than I am sharing here. This will be her story to tell in time and if she wants. Your prayers are welcome during this season, but I wanted you to know that Sara and I will be taking more space together in days to come, which may limit my availability for other things. So if my blog doesn’t get updated regularly, if we skip a podcast or two, or emails get backlogged, please know that there are more important things afoot for both of us right now.

I hope you’ll be patient with us during this time, because without apology I’m going to put her first and the work God is doing in the one I love like no other.