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It’s fascinating to watch God open someone’s eyes to the Truth of the gospel when they have been schooled in religious performance all their lives. They want to believe in the reality of grace, but have so many questions about what they’ve been taught in the past. It’s as if they can’t move on in grace until they get all the questions answered to their intellect’s satisfaction.

Now I’m not one to despise the intellect. God gave us a brain for a reason. I love people who ask questions and try to sort out things in ways that make sense. But if we’re going to wait for all our questions to be answered before we move on down the road with him, I’m afraid some of us will never move.

Easter morning Sara and I stole a few, quiet moments on our patio in the cool of the day. We read the resurrection story from Luke. What a day. Women reported an empty tomb, but Peter hadn’t found anything there. Two brothers have a conversation with a man on the road, they later recognized was Jesus. Finally Jesus appears to them all at the end of the day. He came through the wall into their room and they behold him. And some of the first words out of his mouth were something I think we all need to hear in our own context:

“Don’t be upset and don’t let all those doubting questions take over.” (Luke 24:38, THE MESSAGE)

In the presence of the Resurrected Christ, they had a choice. Embrace him and let him resolve your questions and concerns in the going, or settle back in those doubting questions and never take the journey to begin with. If we’re really looking to follow Jesus, would he allow us to be deceived by a false grace? If we ask the Father for bread, will he let us pick up a stone instead?

So many brothers and sisters I know get paralyzed when they haven’t figured out answers to every question, about something they sense him leading them to do, or even just believing that the Gospel of grace, is simply that. What if we trusted Jesus to sort out our questions in the going, rather than having them all answered before we head out? We talked on a podcast a few weeks ago about the gap many people talk about between their head and their heart. I have been asked countless times, “How do I get what I know in my head, into my heart?”

Robert, a friend of mine from Virginia, suggested that perhaps God’s love is won in our heart (Romans 5:5), not our heads. Instead of trying to get our heads to convince our hearts of a reality, perhaps the greater freedom is to let our hearts when over our heads. Our hearts already know how loved we are by him. Our hearts already bear witness to his reality. It’s our heads that have a hard time catching up.

Questions can be important, but we must not let them rule the day. Instead, embrace the One your heart already knows. Live out of that reality and you’ll find your questions will get sorted out in the going. Try to answer all your questions first, and you’ll never get anywhere on this journey.

An article I wrote on the crucifixion for Easter week appeared today on the Crosswalk website. While I don’t like the title they put to it, I do think Christianity needs to re-think the cross. I think we’ve got the story wrong—viewing it from our shame-induced stupor from the fall wanting to appease an angry God—rather than looking back from our redemption as God’s children and seeing the Loving Father resolving our sin in himself. Jesus didn’t die for God. He died for us.

Easter and My Struggle with the Brutality of God’s Plan
Wayne Jacobsen

Something about the story made me cringe every time I heard it, and since I grew up a Baptist, I heard it a lot: To satisfy His need for justice and His demand for holiness, God sentenced His own Son to death in the brutal agony of a crucifixion as punishment for the failures and excesses of humanity.

Don’t get me wrong. I want as much mercy as I can get. If someone else wants to take a punishment I deserve and I get off scot free, I’m fine with that. But what does this narrative force us to conclude about the nature of God?

As we approach Easter, the crucifixion story most often told paints God as an angry, blood-thirsty deity whose appetite for vengeance can only be satisfied by the death of an innocent—the most compassionate and gracious human that ever lived. Am I the only one who struggles with that? The case could be made that it makes God not much different from Molech, Baal or any of the other false deities that required human sacrifice to sate their uncontrollable rage.

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Someone sent me another Tozer quote, that is probably much truer today than it was when he wrote it. This one is from the preface of The Pursuit of God .

To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the ‘program.’ This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.

Tozer was definitely a man after God’s heart, with a passion and unbridled honesty that still resonates today. We have absolutely destroyed any meaning to worship in our day when we think that it is anything we do on a Sunday morning involving songs, vocalists, instruments and light shows. Worship is how we live our lives in Father. How we love our husbands, children, the obnoxious person at work and strangers on the street is closer to real worship than anything having to do with songs.

Don’t get me wrong. Singing and making melody in our hearts to God together is a special thing to. We can call it adoration if we want. But calling it worship, destroys the real term that belongs in every-day life, not something we do once or twice a week.

Orlando, Fl April 1, 2009 — They arrived by first class or flew in on their private jets for this first-ever gathering of mega-church pastors from all over the United States. They had gathered to trade secrets of their success and form a new denomination called Church of the Champions.

But in their first session as Bob Johnson, a renowned media analyst who was going to brief them on new strategies to exert pressure on the media and to take back the culture for God, started to speak a bright light suddenly appeared over the lectern and many reported later that a voice spoke out of rafters: “Pastors, pastors, why are you persecuting me?”

Observers say everyone sat spell-bound in their seats for a moment. Nothing in the room moved. Soon many of them began to weep and fall to the ground confessing the error of their ways. Some confessed to dividing the body of Christ by competing to be the biggest and best church in their area. Some admitted that they had supplanted Jesus in the lives of their followers by teaching the people to follow them instead of following him. Others said they had lived lavish lifestyles on the backs of those who lived in need. Still others confessed to manipulating people’s need for approval instead of freeing them to live as loved children of God, to providing a public persona different from the reality of their own doubts and struggles, to being in love with power and influence instead of the simple reality of the kingdom.

After nearly two hours of soul-purging confession they read together Matthew 23, admitting that they had created the same realities that Jesus had warned the Pharisees about. By unanimous acclimation they agreed to abandon their plans to form a new denomination, and instead go home and tell the people the truth, apologize for their short-sited ambitions, dismantle the institutions that blinded people to God’s reality and start living in the honesty of their own spiritual journey.

In what might be a related story, scientists that have been observing the fires of hell from the Haney Terrascope buried deep within the earth outside Lubbock, Texas have observed strange white matter appearing on the surface of hell’s lake of fire. “It looks like ice,” one scientist said, “though I know that doesn’t make any sense. We’ll have to run more tests to be certain.”

I saw this A. W. Tozer quote at the bottom of someone’s email over the last couple of days. It is certainly even truer in our day than it was in his:

We are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found amoung us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. -A.W. TOZER-

I couldn’t resist sharing part of an email I received last week, but only caught up enough with my email to read it today. It brought many a smile to my heart for lots of reasons. I love how broadly this book resonates with people and how this family travels:

Our family was making a relatively short trip (5.5 hours driving) to visit my parents during spring break and we have come to enjoy listening to books and radio plays during the drive. For this visit my wife and I decide that we would look for a suitable Christian book to listen to, something the whole family would enjoy. I should state that we are a family of faith, with some of us being more “religious” than others, so purchasing a Christian book was not a method to investigate Christianity, but way to deepen our faith, and broaden our minds.

As we spent a couple of hours doing one of my and my boys favorite things, perusing the bookstore, we looked at numerous audio books to purchase. All of which said “buy me, buy me”. We had settled on a book to purchase, “The Ragamuffin Gospels”, or at least thought we had, when a book apparently jumped off the shelves and right into our hands. You guessed it, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. It screamed, buy me My wife, Rose, and I have long believed and taught our two boys that Jesus and the Father guide our lives, and this was one more example of it for us. We knew this was the book and we immediately put it into our purchase this pile. Little did we know how much our minds would be broadened.

We passed the time during the trip by being captivated by Jake’s journey with John. We would turn the CD player off between chapters to discuss what each of us had learned and discuss the different ways each of us approached what we had heard. It was one of the best drives to my parents house that we have ever had as a family. The insights into our lives revealed to us on that Tuesday morning and afternoon were simply incredible.

I said earlier that some of us are “more religious” than others in our family, let me explain. We are a Catholic lay-family. We have been married for 20 years this August and we, like any married couple, have had our share of ups and downs. The two things that have remained constant throughout our marriage have been our love and faith in Jesus and each other. My wife is a “cradle-Catholic”, as are my two boys, while I came to the Catholic faith about 12 years ago. There was never any pressure from my wife for me to become a Catholic, let alone go to church.

That is how my search for religion started (little did I know then that what I was really searching for was relationship, not religion). We visited numerous churches, went to numerous masses, services, worship and fellowship meetings before I decide to be baptized in the Catholic faith. Since that time I have been active, active, active in the church. I have been on parish councils, president and vice-president of parish councils, on finance committees, various planning committees, taught Sunday school (or religious formation as we refer to it), been part of the planning and execution of vacation bible schools, and a lector and Eucharistic minister during Mass. I enjoyed it all immensely (probably for the wrong reasons). I learned a lot about myself, other people, the church; but never about what it means to live in Jesus’ love. Despite the joy, I always new there was something missing, something that didn’t set right with me.

During my conversations with my wife after church on Sundays I would inevitably say something along the lines of, “There has to be more. What I see is the priest and the church espousing is a list of man-made rules and regulations. I hear The Church wants you do x,y, and z. I never hear about what God and Jesus wants.” After listening to this week in and week out for a number of years I became disillusioned with “The Church”. But I kept quiet (publicly, amongst other Catholics, never expressing my doubts). I did my duties as a good Catholic and Christian.

After all I was alone, or nearly alone, in my way of thinking. Then along came Tuesday, March 17, 2009. I slid the first CD of “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” into the CD player in our vehicle and things began to change. Your words in this book echo what I have been saying for years. At one point, during one of John’s conversations with Jake, Rose and I broke out laughing. The words John chose were exactly the words I had used just the Sunday before to express my believe in why God sent Jesus to us. I could have written that passage and not had a single word different from yours, and I said as much. Then my 11 year-old, Nicolas, pipes up from the back seat, “Alert the Media, Dad is the Apostle John.” It was one of those family moments you had to be there for.

But that does not tell the whole tale of how engrossed the family became in this book. We finished listening on the way home a couple of days later. The boys fell asleep before we put the last disk in, but Rose and I decided to listen to it anyway. As we neared home, about an hour out, the boys woke up and the first thing they asked for was to listen to the last disk because they had missed it. That is impressive when you capture the hearts and imagination of two little boys and their parents with the same story.

All of this above Wayne, is a long winded way of saying thank you to you and to Dave for writing this book. I know the true thanks goes to Jesus and Father for putting the book in our hands and CD player. However, I firmly believe that had Father not wanted me to come into contact with you, he would not have guided you to write this book, or me to purchase it. I am listening to it again for the second time in a week and I am enjoying it as much this time as I did the first time. I know I have to listen to it many more times to glean the nuggets of truth and information out of it.

Like Jake in the book, I have million questions to ask running around in my mind. I just wish that I had the time to ask you. I hope at sometime in our futures that Father sees fit that we meet one and another. Thank you again for this book. I look forward to reading more of your work.

After my last blog posting I got this response from a woman who now pastors in Illinois It continues the conversation in a wonderful way:

I just read the e-mail you posted on your blog. I also just recently read your book. Wow!! I realized that there are probably countless individuals who can relate to the individual who was raised in a “religious” home where “law” was enforced and mercy and love were absent.

I was also raised in a home where my Pastor father was an amazing and gracious and loving man and my mother was broken and extremely “religious”. I never knew whether she would grab a Bible or a belt. For many years I believed I deserved only punishment and judgment. I believed I could never and would never be good enough to face a Holy and righteous God. What I didn’t realize was that Jesus loved me and was pursuing me passionately. As I was running I encountered HIM.

His love completely overwhelmed me and today I am free at last….free at last!!! When I read your book I was once again reminded of his amazing and everlasting love. I truly believe that we all need a revelation of God’s great love for us and to hear of his love over and over again. I have always believed that Billy Graham has had such an overwhelming response to the invitations he gives because when ANYONE who is lost or hurting hears the first few words of “JUST AS I AM” it is just so powerful. You have written a simple and most POWERFUL book of love. Thank you from my heart!!!!!! I love him because he first loved me.

This email arrived in my inbox this morning and I wanted to share it here, not for the kudos it offers to me, but for the encouragement it might offer others who live where this woman has lived. I hope we all know by know that only God can win someone to his love and affection. Don’t get me wrong. That some of the things I’ve been involved in provided a conduit for him to be revealed in her is wonderful and encouraging to be sure. But the larger story is of how God makes his love known to people who have not known a lot of love in their lives. I want to share her story because I know there are hundreds if not thousands like her out there.

They were raised in the demands of a religion devoid of love. They didn’t find it from their overly-religious parents, and never found it whatever kind of “faith community” they were raised in. But God never gives up. He pursues us with a love that can overwhelm all of our failures and hurts.

If you’ve never known God’s love for you, don’t give up. Just keep asking him to make it real to you. And if you know God’s love be aware that some person like this one may cross your path today and perhaps God can give them a glimpse of himself through you. Perhaps a smile or a gracious word from you might open a door that will allow God to find someone he has been looking for, for a long time.

Words will not come close to expressing my thanks to you for your book He Loves Me. I was born into a pastor’s home. There was no real love but lots of condemnation. I didn’t hear God’s love preached from the pulpit. My childhood was an extremely sad place. When I was six I went forward to accept Jesus as my Savior six nights in a row at children’s camp. When my father asked me why, I replied, “Because I’m not too good saved yet”.

That has been my journey. No love at home so I couldn’t believe that God loved me. To say I have struggled with God would be a huge understatement. I have walked away for years at a time, come back when I was hurting from my choices of looking for the love and approval I so sought.

Last June after a particularly hard time I heard about the book The Shack. Oh my goodness! It tore apart all the false beliefs and showed me a Papa I had longed for. I’ve shared that book with my friends and talked about it to anyone who will listen! Over the next months I read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. That book knocked my socks off. Then came along He Loves Me. “WOW!” is all I can say. Papa will have to bring to your heart the understanding of how powerful your book has been in my heart and my life. It has changed everything. Even that is a big understatement.

Wayne, one day we will meet in heaven and I just to warn you, I am going to be the one who jumps up and down telling you about how Papa used you in my life. We are now studying your book in our Bible Study and the women are loving it. Thank you for the remarkable work he doing in my life because of finally understanding HIS LOVE.

I think God did let me in on what happened in her heart. I teared up reading this. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone who has never known love to find for it full and free inside God himself. Isn’t that what the gospel is all about? We all have a Father that loves us more than anyone on this planet ever has or ever will.

Can I ask for your help?

Windblown Media has been approached by a doctoral candidate at Regent University to help conduct a survey of readers to gauge the impact of this book on the population. The book has now reached its 43rd week at the top of the NY Times bestseller list and over 7 million copies are in print.

They are looking for a broad cross section of people to respond to this survey, so please feel free to post this request and the survey link on your blog or forums that you regularly participate in.

Here is their request: “As researchers, we would like to understand what you think of the best-selling novel by William Paul Young (Copyright 2008, Windblown Media). Your answers will be extremely helpful in helping us to understand the story’s influence and appeal.”

You can take the survey here.

Take a minute, and help them out, will you?

It’s flying time again. Tomorrow morning I am headed out to Georgia for a few days to hang out with brothers and sisters who are growing on this journey. I’ll be at a weekend retreat in Woodstock, and then heading out to I’m looking forward to what God might have for us there.

This has been a crazy week here, meeting with some wonderful people and checking out some new doors that God seems to be opening. Yesterday we met with some executives from Walmart who want to take on “He Loves Me” and “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” as titles they want to promote in their stores. Who would have guessed? They said “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” has bounced around between #10 and #6 on the religious fiction bestseller lists for the last few weeks. I had no idea.

I have noticed that my email load has ramped up tremendously with the increase readership brought to these two books because people enjoyed THE SHACK and wanted to see what else Windblown offers. Honestly, I wasn’t initially thrilled with “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” being so prevalent in the culture. That book was written for a very specific audience, not so much for the general public. But maybe God knew better than I did. (Imagine that!) I’ve been shocked at how many people have resonated with the message of that book. I even know congregations whose leadership are studying that book and rethinking how they view church. Pretty amazing! Oh, yes, a few folks hate it, but what are you going to do?

I got this the other day from a Christian church pastor in Texas:

I just wanted to say “thank you” for your book, “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore”. God has been moving me on a journey for several years, and I am coming to a point in my journey of a transition (but am waiting and trusting God to be clear of timing and opportunity). I wanted to thank you not only for the book, but also for the way in which it was written and the Spirit behind it. It has been a God-send for me, and especially at a time where I had many of the same questions. Several books I’ve read just seem to wreak of bitterness and control in another form. Yours, however, was easy to read (well, in some ways), but also got to the heart of the issue for me and opened my eyes to things that I wasn’t even aware of. I so appreciated it and will recommend it to people as God leads. It’s amazing how God does connect you to people on a similar journey as you are moving through your own.

In any case, those books are gaining a wider reading and our publishing partner has made arrangements for a publicity campaign that will go on for the next couple of months to help people be aware of those books. I am thrilled with the opportunity to make God more widely known in our culture. I’d love your prayers about this, not so much for the success of the books (what does that mean anyway?), but for people to find them who need them most at this moment of their lives.

I’m just finishing editing work on two other titles that Windblown Media will release this fall. One is a novel called “Bo’s Cafe” by the men who wrote Truefaced, and it is as amazing a story about a man confronting grace as I’ve ever read. His marriage is in trouble and his attempts to fix it is only driving his wife further away. Will he learn to embrace the only thing that will save his marriage and himself—God’s extravagant grace? We’re also doing “The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells About God”. It is a remake of Darin Hufford’s book, “The God’s Honest Truth.” Those will be out this fall and I can’t wait for some of you to read them.

OK. Gotta run. Bags to pack. Family to say goodbye to. Blessings on you all.