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Sara’s recovery is still going well, and she looks to be pretty functional in another couple of weeks. I’ve been holding off confirming a trip to Europe this fall until we knew that she was recovered. For those in France and Belgium interested in hanging out with others on this journey, I want to let you know that it looks like things have come together for me to be there in late October.

The plan now is to arrive in the south of France around October 23 and then make my way north through Angers and up into Belgium November 2-4. We will post details on my Travel Page as soon as we confirm everything, but wanted to give you a heads up in case you want to take advantage of this trip into Europe.

As always if you’d like to be notified when I’m coming to your area you can sign up on our email list and include your address . That goes for everyone, not just those in Belgium or France.

My friend Jim sent me this comic the other day asking if I’d seen it. I’ve enjoyed a number of comics by “the naked pastor”, but had not seen this one. I think he’s right of course.  He Loves Me is a great place to begin. Not sure he meant the book exactly, but why else would he put it in quotes!  If God’s recommending the book, you might want to take a look.

If I had only written one book it my lifetime, I would have wanted it to have been He Loves Me! Of course most people think they already know God loves them, but few people actually live like it. This is about learning to live in the reality of his affection. If we do that it will change everything.   There is nothing more important for us to understand about God and us than that we are deeply loved children of a gracious Father.  It is in knowing that love and living in it that all the life of God unfolds in us. When we’re trying to earn that love by whatever religious gymnastics we’ve been taught, our life in Christ becomes a fruitless drudgery.

And if you want to see one of my favorite emails about He Loves Me, click here. It was from a bookstore owner in July of 2006.

In the last few weeks I’ve also received some wonderful email from people that have been touched by that book.

Ed: The most powerful, life changing book I have ever read. It sticks with you and forces you to chew on it for days until you have go back and read it again. Several times it literally dropped me to my knees in tears because of the sheer beauty of God’s love for us so masterfully described by Wayne.

Harvey : This is my favorite book yet to date by anyone—not because of the elegance of words, but because of the simplicity in which it lays out the foundations of a love based relationship with God. That is already at work in each and every one of our lives, whether we are aware of Him or not, even and maybe especially to the most broken of us.

Dennis: This book was the beginning of a total transformation for me. No longer do I feel bound by rules, having to conform to please God because I failed over and over.

Jan: I have picked up your book He Loves Me and read it again and finding myself truly grateful and freshly overwhelmed by the gracious amazing love of God. I love your surrender and thank you for sharing it. I came from a family where it was taught “love was a useless emotion,” so you can imagine the outcome. I am the only one out of a family of eight that has stepped into the “gap” and broke a lot of family abuse for my four children and now twelve grandchildren. Miraculous as this has been I find myself still wanting the caress of the Fathers love and feeling the daunting of laying down effort and striving and bathing in Papa’s rest. I am thinking of doing a gathering around your book He Loves Me because it hits the need in all of us for significance and the deep need to be connected and most assuredly loved. I cannot think of any other book that hits the “need” for humanity so exactly. The true mind and heart of God is so clearly revealed.

Anonymous:  I read He Loves Me in the very beginning of all this but I don’t think I received a whole lot of it since my mind was so locked up in crazy teachings. I just finished it for the second time and am now going through it again for the third time. I am continually blown away by what’s in there. I am understanding it so much better.

You can order He Loves Me at Lifestream.org.

Our book discussion on Finding Church has reached Chapter 17: Unity Without Conformity. This is one of my favorite chapters, because most people cannot imagine a unity of the church that does not come from manipulating political and institutional structures to get people to do what is right. But conformity will never produce the wholehearted unity that Jesus prayed for his Father to give us. That kind of unity only comes out of transformed hearts and lives where the glory of God has come to in habits a human vessel, and that vessel connects with others so that the temple rises across the whole planet showing the principalities and powers that God is able to take selfish humans and knit them into a powerful demonstration of his splendor.

Excerpt from Chapter 17:

The power of the church lies in the unity they find together—men and women loving and working together wholeheartedly because they have found their life and joy in him instead of their own preferences and ideas. How could any conformity-based system produce this unity when people are following the expectations of others rather than living out of an ever-expanding heart?   Without that, real unity cannot exist. (p. 154)

Jesus didn’t pray for conformity, but a unity that can only arise out of lives transformed by his glory. The answer to this prayer fulfills God’s passion in the earth and by it the world will know that the Father loves us as much as he loves his Jesus. When people out of diverse backgrounds come to complete unity of heart, purpose, and focus, God is unveiled in a way nothing else can accomplish. (p. 155)

You can find the discussion board here and see the list of topics we’ve covered. You can start at Chapter 1 and work your way through, or just join us in Chapter 17.

A few weeks ago a woman from Australia wrote me this note:

I would just like to tell you about your book He Loves Me.  The  truth is that book blew me off the planet!!!!

These are the reasons: When I was a child my parents and all other family were nonreligious and nonChristians. I am not against them, but I knew nothing of God. As I was walking down the road to primary school about the age of nine, I looked behind my shoulder and saw something. In my mind I went, “What? Why would the God of the universe be with ME?” But I was very shy and quiet and never spoke of it to anyone. Then when I turned ten  I started to think “I am going to Sunday school at the local church” So I did for a couple of years but would often go out the back door and go home as often the speaker would say, “Come on children , give your heart to God.”  I was so shy I kept leaving! One Sunday morning I woke up and thought “I’m not going again.” Then a voice jumped into my brain,” Off you go.”  So I accepted that from God.  At that point I was twelve and the main thing I loved was music. So I went to church and one song totally affected me, ” I am so glad that our Father in Heaven tells of his love in the book he has given”  then the chorus came up, “Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me  JESUS LOVES EVEN ME!!!!!!!!! Those 4 words changed my life and has affected me forever (I am getting old).

When I went to a different church some years later I felt too dominated. Though I never left Jesus I was very unhappy.   Then my husband bought two books, and I looked at your book He loves Me I thought, “Oh I don’t need to read this as I know he loves me..  But then out of the blue a voice jumped into my brain again, “Keep reading!” So I did and it blew me off the planet!!!!    Your book took me back to the past when Jesus loved even ME!!

My husband is a minister and has spread your book around and preached your words from it.   Your book is so fabulous and I have shared it with many people  and many of them have changed from church to Jesus. We’ve now read it 8 times.  I hope you don’t mind me doing this.

Of course I don’t mind. I can’t tell you how many people have seen the title of the book and thought, “Well of course, everyone knows that.” It is some years later before they actually read it and discover that this isn’t just about the fact that God loves you, but actually how we can live each day in the love of a gracious Father. The content of that book changed my life over 22 years ago and I’m still learning how to live in that reality every day. The conversations that feed my heart the most center around how others are learning to live there as well.

So I tell you want I’m going to do, for those on this list who don’t have a copy of this book or want one to pass along.  For a limited time we’re going to make it available for $9.00 per copy.  I think it and Finding Church make the perfect combination to help you find your way into living in his affection and sharing it with others, regardless of the circumstances you may encounter. Shipping is extra, and yes we know that shipping to International destinations is prohibitively expensive. If you want to order up to four of our books, however, we can ship all four for the same price we can ship one.

He Loves Me is also available in Spanish for $8.00 and in audio as read by me, either in CDs, or by digital downloads from iTunes or Audibles.

I just got this email this morning from a friend:

Hey, my 5 year old has been asking, “Why did Jesus have to die for us?” It may just be too early for her to wrap her mind around this, but do you know of any resources or a way I might explain this to a kindergartner? In fact, why don’t you just come over and lay it all out for her:) Is there anything on Lifestream that I can read/watch that might make it easier for me to parse it out to her. She seems to really want to understand this. Which I think is very cool

I think it’s pretty cool too.  It’s like Missy asking why the princess had to die in the Multnomah Falls story.  Great question for a young lady.

So I wrote him back that though I couldn’t come over today, the best thing I know is how Brad and I wrote about it in A Man Like No Other: The Illustrated Life of Jesus, a book where we put words to the art of our friend Murry Whiteman capturing the life of Jesus.  I sent him a few pages that I extracted from the book.

And then I thought maybe others would appreciate those pages as well.  So, here is a brief excerpt of the book A Man Like No Other.  There’s five pages here, so either download it or scroll through it to get the whole story.

Unfortunately many don’t know about this book, because it has never made it into a distribution channel for a wider market. But it is a full-color coffee table sized book that is one of the most compelling examinations of the life of Jesus after stripping away all the religious falderal we have given to the Gospels over the past 2ooo years.  It is not a children’s book, though we find children are drawn into the paintings and are then able to grasp the heart of the story we tell. We’ve heard of stories of professionals putting it in waiting rooms and it being the most read book in the place, and a great conversation starter.

This is a book that will change how you read the Gospels and will help get you acquainted not only with the Jesus of Scripture, but the Living Jesus as he wants to reveal himself to you.  If you’d like a copy, you can find out more and order it through our store.

The must frustrated Christians I know are those who compare themselves to perfection every day.  Whether it’s the perfect circumstances they seek or the perfect behavior they feel God demands, they constantly fall short of their own expectations and either get angry with themselves for not doing enough, or with God for not making their life the way they think it should be. I lived in that land of futility for many years.

The most contented Christians I know are those that recognize God is good and gracious, that life in a broken world is often filled with failure and pain, and that each day is part of a larger process drawing them ever-closer to the orbit of the Father’s love and glory.  Their goal is not perfection on any day, but to find ways to embrace a loving Father in the midst of their hopes and disappointments, their joys and their challenges, and struggles and their successes.

In short, they are not focused on the product they think they should be, but on the process that draws them ever onward in their desire to know him and bear his glory in the world. These thoughts were triggered by a quote that a friend sent me a couple of days ago from a former priest who lived in Germany over five hundred years ago.

“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming… We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

Martin Luther

I love that.

Relax!

Enjoy the process of God at work in you, to will and to do of his good pleasure, rather than frustrate that you are not yet the product you wish to be. It’s the journey with him, rather than the destination that’s important.  Rest in knowing that God has a way to walk you through what you’re facing today and in the process shape you to be more freely his. Pain doesn’t confirm his absence. Unanswered questions doesn’t mean he is silent. And unresolved circumstances are not proof of his inactivity.

He is at work in you and around you and though you may not see the outward evidence you want so desperately to see today, his glory is being worked in you. You’ll see it more clearly down the road, but it won’t help much to fret about it today.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

First thing first. If you’ve not heard yet, I had a slight problem around here that forced me to postpone the trip I had planned to the East Coast over the next ten days.  I woke up early Wednesday morning with excruciating stomach pains, and thought I’d had food poisoning from dinner out the night before for my birthday. The pain only worsened, however and by 5:30 am Sara and I were headed to the emergency room.  It took two days to diagnose the problem as a gallbladder attack and that it needed to be removed. This morning at 7:30 we did the deed, only four months after my heart surgery. How crazy is that????? Well,it had to be done. All went well and I just got home a few minutes ago, very grateful for God’s provision and his love expressed through many of you during this ordeal. Now, I got two weeks of recovery.

However, I was already scheduled to appear on Moody Radio’s “Up For Debate” show with July Roys tomorrow (Saturday) at 11:00 am Central Daylight Time and according to everyone I’ll be fine to do the show by phone from home. Of course that will depend on how much meds I’m on then.

They are having a panel discussion about “The Shack” and whether or not people should take the theology to heart. The host seems to have enjoyed the movie, though she thought it flawed. You can read her blog about it here.  One other guest loved the movie and the other two did not.  Should be fun.  You can listen in live here at 12:00 n Eastern Time, 9:00 Pacific Time. Those in other time zones can figure it out from there.

I was on this show a couple of years ago about my new Book “Finding Church” on “Is Attendance Is Mandatory?”

For those of you reading this after the fact, you can listen to it here.

I know nothing of this author or his book, but I woke up to this in my inbox this morning.

This is what I wish the Bible-thumpers would understand, and I wish I’d known it before I got into my 50s. If we could understand what he says here we will find ourselves in conversations that matter with people. If we don’t, we’ll forever wonder why people run from us…

Parker J. Palmer in The Courage to Teach:

If we want to support each other’s inner lives, we must remember a simple truth: the human soul does not want to be fixed, it wants simply to be seen and heard. If we want to see and hear a person’s soul, there is another truth we must remember: the soul is like a wild animal – tough, resilient, and yet shy. When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show itself.

Brad Cummings and I will be hosting a special opening-weekend private showing of The Shack in Thousand Oaks, California on March 4, 4:00 p.m at the Muvico Theater in Thousand Oaks, California.  After the movie we will have a brief question and answer session for those who’d like to stay on. Brad and I were co-authors of the original book and Brad was a producer on the movie and was heavily involved in bringing this book to screen.

And, because so many people are coming from out of town, we’re also going to host an After-Party from 7:00 – 9:30 to expand that conversation. Space is limited.  Even if you expressed your desire for to attend via email or by Facebook, you will need to go and order tickets here to have a spot.

For those coming from out of the area and are staying over night we are also considering having an open house at our home on Sunday morning into the afternoon.  We will give out more details about that when people arrive here.

Here are the details:

The God Journey Shack Showing

With Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings – There will be a brief time after the film for question and answer and insights with the co-authors and producer of the film

4:00 pm, Saturday March 4
Music – Thousand Oaks
The Oaks Mall – 166 W. Hillcrest Dr
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360

After- Party