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While I am finishing up my time in Russia, the latest Living Loved Newsletter has just been posted at the Lifestream website. You can find it by clicking on the link here:

https://www.lifestream.org/current-issue.php

(If this URLs does not show up in your email as a link to our site, just copy and paste it into the window of your browser and hit ‘return’.)

The title of this issue is, Betrayal, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation, and talks about how we respond when relationships go bad. Living loved in a broken world, means others won’t share that same love for you. If we don’t learn how to deal with others who regard relationships expendable, and whose brokenness sometimes spill over into our our own lives, we won’t know how to have healthy relationships with those who are not healthy themselves. What is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, and what is our part in that process when others hurt us. Does reconciliation mean we have to trust again? Drawn from the lessons of Scripture as they’ve been hammered out in Wayne’s experience, you’ll find this article an encouragement to your relational blow-ups and knowing how to navigate those moments when love between brothers and sisters does not win the day.

Also you’ll find a book recommendation that Wayne is excited about and that many people have thanked him for recommending, letters from other readers that will encourage your own journey, and the latest information about what we’re doing here at Lifestream.

You can read it online, or print your own downloadable version. We hope it inspires your own journey in drawing closer to Jesus and reveling in his life.

I arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia on Thursday afternoon and had a chance to do a bit of touring yesterday while getting to spend time with the couple who invited me here. What a great day! Saw lots of incredible palaces, cathedrals, parks, and monuments. I’m always amazed by such sights, what man can build and construct even 300+ years ago, but almost always by authoritarians indulging their own fantasies at the expense of the people. There’s a set of mixed emotions for you…

For the next three days we are going out to the countryside to meet with believers from this area and beyond who are in various places of learning to live loved and know who the Father is. I thought you’d enjoy reading something they have written about themselves. This is the group I’ll be spending time with here in Russia:

I thought the below might give you a beautiful glimpse into the heart of our gang. It’s a little hand out meant as a reminder to love and respect one another as we gather together….

We are very different!

Among us are those who worship in evangelical churches, and there are those who are more charismatic. Some meet Sunday morning in the walls of an Orthodox cathedral, and others in the Lutheran or Catholic sanctuaries. Some identify themselves as a church community, and others are together in home groups. We sing different songs, say different prayers…

We are so different!

But we have one Father, and we are brothers and sisters, so at our gathering, we will rejoice together in what unites us, and we will respect our differences.

We will appreciate (hey, let’s even celebrate!) the uniqueness of each person and their special relationship with our Father.

We respect the manner in which faith is expressed in one another, even if the form is different from that to which we are accustomed to.

We are indeed very different!

BUT…we have ONE Father who wants His children to love one another (Jn.13: 34.35) and be in unity with one another (John 17: 21).

God loves harmony not sameness. All of us in different places and sometimes by different means are learning what it is to know the Father through the work of Jesus and be transformed by it. If we could all embrace this reality the body of Christ would be a healthier family. We are all different, and we don’t have to be threatened by those differences, nor stake out a claim that our way of doing it is better than someone else’s.

Paul’s words in Romans 14 are powerful indeed. These are from THE MESSAGE translation:

Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is. I’m convinced—Jesus convinced me!—that everything as it is in itself is holy. We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it, can contaminate it. (v 13-14)

So let’s agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. Help others with encouraging words; don’t drag them down by finding fault. You’re certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served or not served at supper to wreck God’s work among you, are you? I said it before and I’ll say it again: All food is good, but it can turn bad if you use it badly, if you use it to trip others up and send them sprawling. When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus. So be sensitive and courteous to the others who are eating. Don’t eat or say or do things that might interfere with the free exchange of love.

Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don’t impose it on others. (v 19-22)

Religion is about conformity and provides an unattainable standard we are supposed to meet each day, and if we fail we are to grovel before God at how far short we fell, ask God to forgive us and try harder the next. It is a system that cannot work.

I love how the New Testament presents the life of Jesus as a process. God’s work unfolds in us as we learn to respond to him each day. You cannot follow him by meeting a list of expectations and obligations. You can only only follow him by… (wait for it!), following him! He wants to show all of us how to know him, listen to him, follow his nudges and watch the process of his glory unfold in us. Yesterday, I read Paul celebrating that process in the Thessalonian people.

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4

Notice he doesn’t point out where they fall short, but where trust in God and love for others is growing in them. That’s a very different view that measuring their failures, or telling them what they need to do better. He saw their faith increasing even the midst of persecution and suffering. He also saw their love for others growing. Was it perfect? Probably not, but that is precisely not the point. God is not looking for perfection today. He is simply looking for hearts willing to know him. As you grow to know him you’ll find your trust in him growing and your capacity to love people around you as well. That’s how you gauge whether or not you’re in his process, or simply trying to perform on your own.

I love living in the process of his working, rather than the rigid expectations of religion. And I’d rather live my life in his unfolding purpose, rather than the strategies I can figure out on my own. I seem to be in one of those unfolding processes as I write this. I will soon be on my way to Russia to spend a week in St. Petersburg and then make a stop in Holland on the way home. At the top you can see a copy of the Russian version of HE LOVES ME, which is due to be released in a print version about the time when I arrive. The cover design is a detail from Rembrandt’s painting, “The Return of the Prodigal”, the original of which is in a museum in St. Petersburg. I’ll get to see the original soon, as well as take in some of the other sights of the city. And more importantly, I’ll get to know some Russian people who are learning to live in the reality of his love.

This is the second of my books that have been printed for the Russian people. At right you can see the other, SO YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE, which was done some years ago. These are both in Russian because some Russians who knew English wanted them available to their people. Voluntarily they painstakingly translated the books out of love. One was a housewife who had not translated anything before. She gave countless hours to make a version available that we have had on as a PDF download on our International Page for years. Others have added to it, tweaked the translations and have now gotten two of them into print. Amazing.

But there’s more. While I am excited about this trip for a number of reasons, one that is critically important to me is the place this country held in my older brother’s heart for decades. In the late 60s my brother went to the university to double-majored in Russian and Biblical Studies. His hope was that one day the iron curtain would fall and he would have the opportunity to share God’s love with the Russian people. He prayed for that opportunity for over thirty years. However, by the time the iron curtain fell, my brother was battling multiple sclerosis, complications of which eventually took his life just a few days shy of his 49th birthday. I don’t know how God sorts out all of that, but I’ve no doubt my brother’s passion will have some fulfillment in eternity. And we have no idea how much his prayers shaped God’s work in that country. So in part, I am going for him as a celebration of his life and passion, and some day I hope to tell him all about it.

At the time my brother talked about going to Russia, I never imagined that I’d visit countries around the world, helping people sort out what it means to live loved and free in the life of Jesus. I grew up on a vineyard in Central California and never thought of leaving the state, much less the country. And I would never have conceived of having the kinds of conversations I get to have with people that help them begin to see how God is making himself known to them. My whole life has been a process and I’ve long ago given up any need to know what’s ahead. It is more than enough for me to simply follow the Lamb wherever he wants me to go.

Tomorrow it is Russia!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been with a number of people who have told me that they were taught by members of “the clergy” that they had no right to listen to God for themselves. Some said that God no longer speaks to the believer, since we now have the Scriptures. Others were told that God gave pastors to the church because they are trained to attend to our spiritual needs in the same way doctors care for our physical needs. Others have even taught that God only passes his will down through pastors and elders.

I’ve even heard people teach that elders and pastors will know your heart better than you know it, and even when you disagree with them, you should do what they say.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Any man or woman who tells you they know God’s will for you better than you do yourself, proves by doing so that they are a false teacher. Flee from him or her!

At the heart of the New Covenant lies this reality: All of us get to know him and listen to him. He didn’t invite us to follow his book, follow his rules, or follow one of his designated representatives. He invited us to, “Come, follow me.” Anyone who gets in the way of that relationship hasn’t a clue who Jesus is or how he works in the world.

Yes, there are lots of examples of crazy people who claim God told them to do the most destructive and bizzare things. But some of those have even been members of the clergy. But even if others fraudulently and maliciously claim that God told them to do what he has clearly not told them to do, does not negate his desire to speak to you and lead you by his Spirit.

I was with a man last month in New Zealand who listens to God as well as any man I know. He has pastored churches and traveled the world for decades encouraging others to live deeply in Jesus. He told me, “I have never believed, even for a moment, that I can hear God for someone else more clearly than they can hear themselves.” He never presumed to tell someone what God wanted them to do.

That’s the kind of person I recognize as a true elder among the body of Christ. They don’t hear God for you; they help you learn how to listen to for yourself because they wouldn’t think of robbing you of the most precious gift God has to give–an intimate friendship with him!

During my weekend conversation in Clovis a couple of weeks ago someone shared a thought they had recently read on a blog, though they couldn’t recall where it had come from. I have searched the web to see if I can find anything like it and have not been able to do so. If anyone knows where this came from, please let me know. I always enjoy giving credit where credit is due, but this is too good not to share now. It painted an all-too-accurate picture of the process of institutionalizing and the cost of doing so.

What he said was, people create institutions in an attempt to pass on their contributions to future generations. Therefore at the outset they are an attempt to grasp an illusion of immortality by creating a system designed to perpetuate itself. For it to do that it has to offer an air of infallibility, so that its aims and methods go unquestioned by subsequent generations. In essence, our religious institutions by projecting immortality and infallibility actually become false gods that people are asked to serve instead of teaching them how to follow the Living God.

And like any false god, the institution will occasionally needs a human sacrifice to keep up the illusion. Challenge its priorities or methods and you must be ejected immediately and discredited so everyone else will be afraid to do so. If you dare to question those who feel called by God to manage such institution, you will be considered a threat and forced from the group. How many of reading this have been that sacrifice? Even formerly close friends will ostracize you and gossip about your “rebellion” or “bitterness” to make sure you are marginalized as an example to others.

It reminded of Israel’s desire for a king and God’s warning that putting power in the hands of a king would mean that he would take the best of everything that they had for his own benefit. God knew how power corrupts the human heart and anyone with absolute power would think he should have all the best for himself. He’d said their sons to war, steal their daughters for himself, and take the best of their crops and herds. Even a man with a heart like David’s thought himself special enough to rape Urriah’s wife and then have him killed in battle when he refused to come home and sleep with her so that he would think David’s baby was his own.

Notice how this entire process can begin with the purest of motives but still end up exploiting and manipulating people in a way that is incredibly destructive. I’ve seen it happen over and over again to people and those who think they lead the institutions have no idea how much it has disfigured them. While being otherwise generous and gracious people, they become hurtful and destructive in the name of protecting what they mistakenly to be God’s gift.

Do all institutions have to end up like that? Can people find ways to cooperate together without falling victim to an institution’s need to perpetuate itself? I believe it can, but in honesty the examples of that are thin indeed. Almost all begin by a group of loving people who want to share a vibrant life in Jesus, but over time become those more concerned with protecting their turf rather than continuing to love the way Jesus loves them.

And I’ve been with so many incredible people in the last two decades who became the human sacrifices the institution needed when they recognized it had look forsaken God’s priorities for its own. Maybe that’s why Jesus told us to love each other, not to create systems we think will outlive us.

How easily Truth gives way to icon! Nearly 2000 years ago outside Jerusalem, at the first crack of dawn the crucified body of Jesus suddenly stirred to life. The Spirit of God not only reanimated his body, but resurrected that body in a completely new form. Jesus became the firstborn of a whole new creation of men and women–transformed from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal.

Resurrected Man walked the planet for the first time. Jesus had overcome death and now lived beyond it so that we too might see and know and feel and hear him as he comes to live in everyone who invites him to do so. That’s the heart of the Resurrection, not just that he overcame death, but that he lives inside each of us today and wants to share an even deeper relationship with each of us than he was able to by living in the flesh alongside Peter and John, and Mary and Martha.

Today millions of people will gather all over the world to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. They will sing songs and hear sermons on the Resurrection. Then too many of them will wake up tomorrow morning and live like he isn’t in the room. They won’t look for him, listen to him, or follow him. Has religion reduced the fact of the Resurrection to an icon we can celebrate once a year and still miss its very reality each day?

Religion always takes something that is real and makes an icon of it to empty it of its power. Instead of worship being the way we live under Father’s care, it’s a song service we attend. Instead of communion being a meal of rich fellowship and remembrance of him, it becomes a shot class and a dried wafer tacked onto a formal service. And instead of church being the living community of people who are encouraging each other to follow him, it is merely a weekly gathering in a building in which we are more spectator than participant.

Celebrating the icon is not at all the same as embracing the reality. The Resurrection of Jesus is not best celebrated in fancy-dress religious gatherings, but in waking up each morning with an eye and an ear turned toward the Living Jesus who wants to make himself known in you today and lead you into the ever-increasing freedom and joy of knowing him.

When truth gives way to icon, it’s best to reclaim the Truth again even if that means abandoning the icon. He is risen indeed and because of that I am not alone today to fend for myself in my sins, doubts, trials, or fears. He is with me and I with him today, and he is making all things new!

What a weekend! I gathered with some folks near my old stomping grounds, not far from where I grew up and where I served on a church staff for five years in the earliest days of my post-university and just-married life. People came from all over this part of California, including people that were in that fellowship a long time ago, a second cousin I’d not seen since I was 15, people who’ve been through painful betrayals by brothers and sisters they thought were their friends, and those facing some huge challenges with religious voices clouding their freedom to follow what God has already put on their heart.

One of the undercurrents to our time was reconnecting with old friends and reconciliation between people who’d been caught up in some painful conflicts. One of the couples that had been part of our painful departure from a fellowship in Visalia, which I’d co-pastored for fifteen years and from which I was “resigned” by what I thought was one of my best friends, while I was speaking at another fellowship elsewhere. This couple had connected with Sara and I before the weekend even began in hopes that their coming wouldn’t be awkward for us. We were able to work through misunderstandings and unresolved issues from over 17 years ago and were able to renew a friendship that had been lost. What incredible joy to find myself once again in the midst of a friendship that had been lost in those confusing days.

One of my favorite conversations of the weekend was on Sunday morning as we talked about betrayal by close friends, and the process by which forgiveness and reconciliation can truly happen.

Betrayal happens when a close friend decides to lay your life down to achieve something they want for themselves. They don’t mind hurting you to get what they want. It happens often in this broken age. When Jesus told us that there was no greater love than one laying down his life for another, he meant our own! Walking all over someone to get even what you think God wants for you is the darkest of deceptions. It is exactly the opposite of how he asks us to live.

Forgiveness is a unilateral process where we can truly take our foot off the throat of those we consider to have wronged us. Forgiveness does not exonerate the betrayer; it frees the victim from the ongoing pain of the other’s actions and opens the opportunity for us to find healing inside and the freedom to move on with what God has for us. But forgiveness is not just a choice of the will; it is a process where we bring out hurt and pain to Jesus and he works us through them to a place of true release and forgiveness. It may take a few months or even years, but don’t stop short of it being complete. Just keep it discussing it with Jesus as he untangles your hurt and leads you into a real forgiveness of others.

Reconciliation, however, is a bi-lateral process that can only happen when both parties are ready to sit down and honestly explore each other’s story with a spirit of compassion and humility. It cannot be forced and can only happen when all parties truly value the relationship over anything else. It recognizes that the most important thing Jesus asked of us is to love each other as we are loved by him.

Reconciliation, too, is a work of the Spirit to prepare each heart to truly listen to each other’s story, laying aside our own assumptions and judgments, admitting our mistakes, caring about each other’s pain, and resolving any outstanding issues by God’s grace and mercy. Reconciliation heals the relationship and allows a friendship to grow onward.

However, neither forgiveness or reconciliation requires us to trust the one who betrayed us. It allows us to love them again, but trust, once violated, can only be won back by the demonstration over time that the person values the relationship above his or her own self-interest. We are never told to trust someone beyond our conviction that they will lay down their lives for us in moments of conflict.

What a weekend this proved to be! When people have asked me if I am reconciled to those who were part of our painful departure from a church we help plant, my answer has been with all but four of the couples who were part of excluding Sara and me. Today, I can say all but three, and Sara and I now have the joy of another friendship, restored even more closely than it had been before those painful days.

Reconciliation is just the best! In the past four months I’ve had the blessing of being part of two reconciliations of important friendships that were cut off in days of pain and betrayal. Both lasted over 15 years and have now come to healing again. I wish it hadn’t taken so long, but this isn’t a process we control. I think broken relationships break our Father’s heart more than anything else that goes on in our world. It is the result of sin and competing for things the Father has not given us. What absolute delight it is to work through the pain, misunderstandings, and confusion that caused the disconnect, and celebrate the grace of God that triumphs in all of us, even in our failures and mistakes.

That’s what God has sought since the fall in Eden with each of us. It’s what he celebrates when his children find a way out of their pain and selfishness to reconnect in a renewed friendship.

Here are some pictures that capture a bit of our weekend in Clovis, California:

More than 50 people gathered with us over the weekend

Conversations that matter with people who care

As always, some of the best stuff happens in more personal conversation–the twos and threes.

I’m still reflecting with gratefulness on my time in New Zealand. the joy of this trip was found in many of the one-on-one, and one-on-two conversations that I had with so many people as I journeyed around the two islands.

Two college students drove me back to Christchurch from Fairlee to catch my flight north. I love it when young people have such a hunger for God’s things. The questions they were asking and the discussion we had warmed my heart. Toward the end, the twenty-one year old medical student leaned forward from the back seat and said, “You know, what I’m beginning to wonder is if living loved seems difficult because it is far simpler than we dare to believe!” Wow! Go down that road. That’s a great one.

In another conversation a world-known documentary film director was telling me about the discipleship program he grew up in. After five years in jail he was walking the streets of a city one night looking for a bridge he could sleep under. Me met a man just walking the street at God’s leading to help rescue someone. That man invited the former prisoner home and told him a bit about Jesus. The next day as he left for work, he said he’d be back later and this man could ask him any question he wanted to. That’s how he came to Christ and learn to follow him, not by anyone’s curriculum, but simply being able to ask questions with someone who cared enough to try to answer them. Loved it! Best discipleship program ever!

One group in a city I overnighted in was trying to form a fellowship around a nonprofit coffee shop they had designed to help the poor in their community and to bless a leper colony overseas. They mentioned that once a year they cancel their weekly meeting for six weeks and always find the things that happen without the meeting to be far more fun and fruitful than anything they do in their meeting. Loved it! Then they started talking about the fact that they had just started up the meetings again. “Whoa!” I said. “Let’s go back a bit to that other road you were talking about. Go down that one and see where it leads.”

Why do we think meetings will bring the kingdom of God. As John Beaumont told me in Rotorua, “If meetings could bring the kingdom we’d have brought it by now. If organizational structures could bring the kingdom we’d have it by now. If seminaries and pastors’ seminars could bring the kingdom, we’d have it by now!” Our generation has seen more of that than any other, and yet many people in those things are some of the most spiritually impoverished people you’d want to meet.

Love it! And if you want to hear some of our larger conversations in Auckland, the group that hosted me there has posted them on line. You can find them here.

This weekend I’ll be in the Central Valley of California meeting with people from all over my spiritual past, including folks I used to “pastor.” Can’t wait to see what kind of journeys they are on today and why they want to meet with me. Then later in April I’ll be off to Russia, for the first time, and a re-visit to Holland.

If I could only figure out how Phillip got around in desert the book of Acts, I wouldn’t have to spend so much time in tiny airline seats.

I’m back from New Zealand and taking a couple of days off to catch my breath and to catch up with the family. I’ll probably write more later, or talk some about it on the podcast this week. But until then you can read about our Saturday gathering in Auckland.

The man who organized my time in Auckland wrote, “Thanks again for the wonderful time that we had with you. You have given us enough to “work on” (probably not the right terminology, but you know what I mean), for the next 10 years. However, I hope that it is not that long before we see you (and Sara?) again.”

As much as I enjoyed the larger conversations on this trip, what really captured me was the more personal conversations with twos or threes that spontaneously emerged as days unfolded. I had gone to New Zealand to meet personally with two men whose journeys I truly admire, but God also put me in the midst of a number of intense situations in people’s lives, many too personal to even disclose, and then revealed himself in marvelous ways to bring hope and healing. It makes me smile with joy today just thinking back over the trip. It was so much fun to be alongside Jesus as he was doing his work.

I’m off to New Zealand and excited about so many of the conversations I’ll have there with some friends from my previous trip and a whole lot of new folks. I love that at this point in my life I get to be in conversations that matter, with people who care. There is nothing more fun and more productive. I’m excited about this trip for another reason. This begins a task that I sense Father has put before me for the next couple of years.

I have felt for some time he has been encouraging me to spend more time equipping those who want to help others live loved, especially those who feel they have a calling to help equip others on this journey. I will still spend time helping people learn to live and connect relationally, but know it is time to equip others to do what I do, consistent with what God is doing in them. I see the tendency such people have to create systems, garner an audience, or push themselves using the conventions of men to hopefully end up helping others. But often, it is more about THEIR ministry, than it is about genuinely helping people. And I think that often happens because they don’t see how else they can truly equip others in this journey.

Before I do that with what I see, I sense God wanting me to facilitate a larger conversation with those who’ve lived such lives over decades. I want to see what they see and learn from what they’ve learned as we sort out the best way to pass on this life to subsequent generations without burdening them with new structures, curricula, or methodologies. Relationship with Jesus runs so much deeper than that and the tools of human effort never reach to the heart. What do we say and do that genuinely encourage people into a meaningful relationship with him, and in doing so connect in meaningful ways with other believers that truly allows the kingdom of God to grow in the world?

One of the great treasures I have received in the past 20 years are the relationships I have with older brothers and sisters around the globe who are on their own relational journeys and many of them far longer than me. I have gained greatly from their wisdom and passion. Over the past few months I’ve sensed that God wants me to have some conversations with these dear people aimed at what they would pass on to a new generation of brothers and sisters on this journey. What do they wish they’d known sooner? What has helped them continually to grow over a life time in their own knowing of God?

Two of those brothers are in New Zealand and I’m going to get some time with both of them. And then there are many others I want to bring into that conversation over the next two years looking to answer a set of questions that will hopefully provide some wisdom as to how we encourage a new generation of pioneers to learn how to live loved and equip others to live loved, too, without being tricked into creating schemes and programs that cannot bear the glory of a real, growing relationship with Jesus.
You can help me in this if you want. If you had the opportunity, what would YOU ask these brothers and sisters about their journeys? What do you think would help others find their way into a meaningful relationship with Jesus and encourage them in discovering how to embrace the church Jesus is building in the world. If you want, you can leave your thoughts in the comments below. I will incorporate those I can. I’m not looking here for the questions about your own desire to live loved, but how we might be able to encourage people who want to help others live loved. It should be an interesting conversation that I will give regular updates on here and at The God Journey, even if we find out there’s nothing we can pass on. Perhaps this is only a work Jesus can do.

Finally, I did a podcast with the Family Room Media guys a few weeks ago, and they just posted it today. It takes a look back at some of my journey in recent months and the inklings I have on my heart about what God has put before me. You can listen to the podcast here. They are involved now in a new project called Jeff’s World, a theatrical movie about a disillusioned evangelical pastor sorting through the difference between following his heart and fulfilling the obligations that have controlled his life. It’s a light-hearted comedy with the subtitle, “Caught between the flock and a heart place.” Cute. Very cute! You can find out more here, and you can be involved if you want.