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Many of you know I am involved in helping bring a new novel and novelist to the public table with a book that has captured my heart. The folks I’m involved with want to do a bit of focus group consideration for a cover concept. If you’d like to give us your feedback, that would be awesome.

Look at the cover below:

The less you know about the book, the better, since we just want some reader input from the cover design itself. If you don’t mind could you either leave a comment here or email me to let me know what you think.

What feelings or thoughts does this cover evoke for you?

What kind of book would you expect behind the cover?

Does this entice you to read it or turn you off?

Are you male or female?

Feel free to make any other comments about what you like or dislike about he cover.

We hope to have the book out around May 1.

Thanks.

The last few days have been filled with preparing for trips in the next couple of months, including quite a few BridgeBuilders events. I head to Tulsa for the weekend, gathering with some long-time college friends and sharing with the folks at Bread of Life on Sunday morning. This is part college reunion and part spiritual retreat taught by one of the people who greatly impacted my journey at a young age. So, I’m really excited to be going and seeing what Father has in mind. Beyond that I will be in Central California, Nashville, Washington, DC and South Dakota in February and March.

And because so many people have asked us for these, we are releasing two new CDs at Lifestream. We have now placed mp3 files for the audio versions of both He Loves Me and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore on one Audio Book Combo Disc. The cost for this one CD is $14.00 and gives you both books. Both of these are available on our book or audio collections pages.

Also, we’ve just released the second archive disc for The God Journey. This CD holds the mp3 files for all the podcasts Brad and I did between March 31, 2006 and January 2007. Cost is $12.00. Both of these discs are data discs containing mp3 files and will not play in a CD player. You can however access them by computer, mp3 player and on most new DVD drives. Find out more on our book or audio collections pages.

This morning I have started to read Matthew again in my own readings. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been in one of the Gospels and I’m always excited to get a fresh look at the life of Jesus and how impacted people around him.

I hope you don’t mind reading over my shoulder again. It came in an email from someone in Iowa who has recently discovered our website. He told me about a friend of his that he is watching Jesus change before his eyes and the joy of it. I thought you’d love this story and it might encourage you to follow the nudges Father puts on your heart too!

And anyone who’ll barbeque in the snow is a friend of mine. But when they do it for the reasons below, it’s really awesome!

I am warmly filled with the walk of a brother that is new in his faith and just getting to walk with God and see and hear the new things he is learning. Is it right to be proud of the work that God is doing in someone else? It is God doing it and it is so cool to sit back and watch Him form this brother into the image of Christ right before our eyes.

This brother had a dream. He was grilling in his backyard, he is a big griller, and everyone loves to go to his house for fellowship because he cooks the best food. He saw hands reaching into his grill to grab the food. When he looked up, the hands belonged to homeless people that were in his backyard eating his food.

The dream troubled him until he wondered what would happen if he went down to the inner-city and setup his grill and fed anyone that came. So, he made some calls all on his own and the Salvation Army said they would pass out flyers for him during the week to let people know and he could use their back parking lot on a Saturday. As the word got out among his
friends we all wanted to go too.

On a snowing Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago we loaded up and headed down there. It was a great time! We tried to give these men and women back their dignity by calling them by name and talking to them without any expectation of anything in return. Not even listen to a
salvation pitch. If it was appropriate we would pray with them if they had concerns that we could bring to the Father.

Two guys that were traveling together, Joshua and Michael were such a blessing to us. We enjoyed their fellowship and laughed with them when Joshua said the City Union Mission was unsanitary, he had slept under the bridge in the rail yard because he knew he wouldn’t get sick, instead of sleeping inside in a dorm full of coughing men. What a sweetheart. We prayed for their safe journey and that they would be able to catch a west bound train for San Diego. We loaded them up with food and toothbrushes and sent them off into the snow.

I don’t know what it was, but there was something different about those two; they blessed us more than we blessed them. “Show hospitality to strangers, some in doing so have entertained angelsâ€. All of this because a new brother in the Lord had a dream and he followed thru on it. I don’t know if they were angels and I don’t care, I just really loved the community and love we had that day for each other. Will we do it again? When the Lord sends along another dream, you bet!

The February 2007 issue of BodyLife has just been posted at the Lifestream website.

The lead article is titled Windblown: What Life in Jesus Looks Like and is an extended look at what Jesus was trying to communicate with Nicodemus the night they met to discuss the kingdom. Living in the fullness of Christ is not a matter of embracing theology ritual, or ethics but to engage him by the Spirit and follow him wherever he leads. There’s also some wonderful letters there from many of our readers who are on some amazing journeys, as well as some new information on new things going on around Lifestream.

With this issue we also include two different downloadable PDF files—one for printing and one for viewing. We hope this issue encourages you to keep to the journey God has put before you and draw you into his life and grace.

I got some questions the other day from a reader on the role of shepherding in the body. I know others have similar questions to his, so I thought I’d post our exchange here in case it will help other sort through these issues.

I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on something I’ve heard you make reference to, and seek a bit more clarification. I have heard you make reference to Ezekiel 34 in connection to who is to “shepherd the people” in the New Covenant. That the solution to the “bad shepherds” was not to replace them with “good shepherds”, but to do away with that whole system, and that God Himself would be the Shepherd to His people; that “my servant David” (i.e. the Messiah) would be the shepherd to the sheep. Obviously Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy, Who professes to be the True Shepherd.

My question is this: There do seem to be passages that assign a “shepherding role” to key leaders in the Body of Christ. Jesus, when comforting Peter after the denials, tells Him to “feed my lambs, care for my sheep, feed my sheep” (the task of a shepherd), and then we have Peter’s instructions to his fellow-elders, “Be shepherds of Gods flock that is under your care…” (1Peter 5:2), and in Eph 4:11, where it is said that Jesus gave some to be “pastors” is the same word used of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd”.

So while in one sense, it seems we are all sheep to Christ our Sole-Shepherd, in another sense, it seems the Scriptures do indicate that certain members of God’s flock share in the role of “shepherd”; that certain “elders” are “under-shepherds” to the Chief Shepherd; that Jesus does raise up certain individuals to be “shepherds” for the sake of the flock.

Can you offer any additional clarification? Is not this Chief-Shepherd/Under-shepherd paradigm what the typical Church System would claim to emulate? And if we do have “good shepherds” caring for the flock after all, how does this reconcile with Ezek 34?

Here’s how I tried to answer those issues in a 100 words or less: I agree with what you write here. I think the problem for me comes in how we’ve applied that over 2000 years, so that the idea of shepherding people no longer carries the sense of reflecting Jesus’ care in other lives, but in managing them as a wholly ‘other’—the clergy/laity distinction. I know some of that terminology is used in verb form (shepherding as opposed to shepherds in I Peter 5), but there is a marked contrast from the Old Testament to the New as to how the word shepherd is applied to human leaders. No human being, except Jesus is designated as a shepherd in the New Testament. Jesus became the Good Shepherd for all the sheep, promising we’d be one flock with one shepherd.

But I also see that there is a recognition that there are more mature brothers and sisters in this journey who have the calling and equipping to spend a significant part of their time coming alongside younger brothers and sisters helping them get this journey. But to describe that as being an under-shepherd moves away from biblical language and is grossly misunderstood semantically in our day. Shepherds often have a sense of ownership about sheep—‘my sheep’. They are threatened by ‘sheep stealing’ in the body and often treat the ‘sheep’ as different from themselves. None of that would have been in Paul or Peter’s mouths. So I do see this as a semantic problem in part, and also a management problem. To describe institutional leadership in this language definitely corrupts it, putting the emphasis on leading the ‘thing’, not equipping and caring for lives.

But, yes, I agree that there are elders and other gifts in the body who are a great help to equip, release, strengthen, rebuke, and facilitate the life of the body. I just think if we don’t keep the Shepherd definition attached clearly to Jesus alone, others start co-opting his place in the lives of others. This is most often with the best of intentions, but it is no less destructive when people start to follow another human, rather than Jesus…

You’ll love this! My friend Gayle Erwin (author of The Jesus Style) has just released his latest book Not Many Mighty. Sara and I have been reading bits of it each morning before work and it has been so refreshing.

With his unique sense of humor Gayle retells the Old Testament stories and recounts the foibles of the early apostle, to drive home his point. God does not choose the most deserving people to work through, but common people who have known failure and heartache and who even make lots of mistakes trying to follow him. This book will encourage you cease from your own labors and learn to rest in his while it reacquaints you with a different side of our Biblical heroes than you usually hear.

It’s available from his Servant Quarters website. And if you haven’t read The Jesus Style yet, do yourself a favor and order that one as well.

Here’s an excerpt:

The more we look at the preconceptions of the apostles in the Gospels, the more we realize that Jesus chose a group that we would call losers. Keep in mind that he did not choose these men from the halls of academia. Education of that day was religious schools for Torah stud. Thos who lacked the intelligence or motivation to achiever were released to get a job. So, where did Jesus find these men? At work! These men were somewhere down the ladder in terms of intelligence…

So Jesus apparently chose the apostles to show us whom he could use. That overwhelms me with encouragement. For this inner circle, Jesus chose a group that affirmed the trend we see from the Old Testament—only the weak and foolish need apply. (I Corinthians 1:27)

I’m off tomorrow for a weekend in Turlock, CA and a weekend helping some people focus on the cross! Pray for us if you think about it…

I’ve had a bit of an email exchange of late with someone who has struggled with visiting her parents because they always pressure her to sing for their fellowship when she’s there. She didn’t like the pressure and having been a performer in the past, she was concerned that being in that venue would trigger those old appetites for performance.

Our conversation was a bit about the difference between honoring our parents with love and respect and being manipulated by them. Honoring our parents doesn’t mean we do everything they ask. That’s control and co-dependence and a host of other things that aren’t healthy for them or us. But I also mentioned that the work God was doing in her would really make performance tasteless over time. That’s the way it has worked for me. When you start this journey you think you’re going to die giving up the old ways you enjoyed seeing your gifts touch others. But in time you come to see how empty that is, and when that’s true you’ll never be lured back to it again. That allows you to freely go in those environments when he asks you to to help trigger hunger in others, without fearing that it will drag you back into the same old bondage again.

This is her resonse. I love what she wrote here, especially about keeping our eyes focused on the pleasure and purpose of our Father:

Thanks for getting back to me, Wayne. I so relate to your experience. I believe that I have offered my gifts to be shared with my parents and their church because I really have come to a place where I just want to bless them and encourage them. I don’t need to prove anything to them, and you’re right, they probably won’t be able to comprehend what we’re talking about. But I also feel in my heart that I’m weak, and could easily get sucked into these old patterns of performance. I spent some time with the Lord on these questions today, and He put me back in that wonderful, safe place of freedom with Him.

Over the past few years of listening to him, asking tons of questions like a child, and receiving healing, he has shown me that my performance-tendencies came from the fear of disappointing others. He really, really HATES fear! And today I was asking him what is the lie behind the fear that I’m feeling creeping up again. Here’s what he said the lie is: “If my parents (or other authorities) don’t affirm me, I’m a ‘bad girl’. I can’t be trusted. I’m ‘in sin’.

And here’s what he spoke to the lie: “If that’s true, then I’m a bad boy, I can’t be trusted, and I’m a sinner too. In fact, that’s what the Pharisees accused me of. I overcame because I stayed tuned in and focused on the pleasures and purposes of My Father. You do what you do in freedom, when it originates with the Father. Fear and frustration come when it originates in your ‘need’ to please others.†His grace is such a SAFE PLACE and there is no manipulation or love withheld in him, even if my choice isn’t “rightâ€.

What great language! Freedom in Father is unlike anything this world can offer. It can take you right back to where you used to be, to incarnate his love there, without being victimized by the expectations of others or by the fear that God will withhold his grace if we make a mistake. What a truly safe place to be!

No, we don’t need any money, so let me put you at ease there. I am, however, working on a couple of projects in which I need some help from others. I don’t like using the blog for this, but I know it touches a lot of people and I thought I’d at least ask.

The first involves a coming trip to Europe. I’ve been invited to two different events in Europe this spring and summer and need to decide between making two trips—one in the UK in April and one in Ireland in June—or combining these into one trip in late June. Whenever I fly so far, I also have an ear out for other invitations in the same area to make best use of my time and the flight expenses. I am not seeking invitations nor asking people to plan something just because the opportunity is there, but simply trying to get in touch with those who have asked about my coming in the past to see if you sense God is wanting to do something around these trips. Please let me know, even if it would involve a hop over to the mainland.

The second involves some connections for a book I’m trying to help find traction for its release. Many of you know that I am part of a team that is helping to publish a new novel called THE SHACK. I have never read a more engaging work of fiction that reveals God’s heart and grace in the midst of human pain and suffering. This is a superb work. Also, if we can facilitate 100,000 of these being sold we have the possibility of 20th Century Fox helping to produce it into a movie. To that end, we are looking for some connections that will help us put it in the hands of some key people we think will enjoy the message of this book and help us let others know about it. We are working on a number of connections that we already have but would like to get it in the hands of some people we don’t know and don’t have connections to. If you have any connections to one of the following people, would you please see if they would be willing to take a look at this book for us and possibly write a blurb for it? Tony Campolo, Anne Lamott, Larry Crabb, Phillip Yancey, Brennan Manning or Michael Card. If you have ways for us to get in touch with these people, would you please let me know. If you have other connections you think we should know about, please let us know that as well.

And for all of you waiting to read it, we hope to have the book in print sometime in April… I can’t wait!

I have gotten a ton of responses from people since posting the video of Sharing in Father’s Affection. I have been blessed by the impact this has had.

Many have asked if we have it available in full size on DVD and we’re working to put that together now. I hope to have more information about that in the next couple of weeks. Also, for those who keep track of my travels, I’ve just finalized trips into Central California, Tulsa, OK, Nashville, TN, and Washington DC over the next couple of months.

Now, back to the video. Here’s one of the emails I have received, and I know this dear brother is not alone. My heart resonates with his cry to know his Father again:

I just finished watching the video your posted on your blog today. Thank you for sharing that teaching. I must say that it tugged deeply on my heart. I spent almost thirty years of my life ministering to people, really thinking I was truly loving them. When things in our minstry went awry, I was deeply hurt and wounded. All of the unloving things that were done and said to me and my wife unfortunately I laid in the Father’s lap. I quickly forgot how much He loved me, and consequently I basically quit loving others, and have pretty much refused to be loved by others for fear of being hurt again.

Needless to say, I miss my Father and I miss giving His love to others, and there is nothing outside of His love that can fill that void. I intend to listen again to this teaching as I think it is the fundamental truth that we all need to embrace. Thanks for letting God work in you to make this available on the internet. I have kind of been doing a Forrest Gump for the last 5 years..running, and running, and yet I am no farther away from the Father or closer to Him. He is just waiting for me to get exhausted enough to grab His hand again. I know there is still a place for me in His household, and my wife and I are looking for His direction in the coming year. Please keep us in your prayers.

And as I prayed for him, I pray for others of you that feel as if your hurts in organized religion have not yet been overrun by Father’s emmense affection for you. I pray that you’ll have the freedom to open your hear to his love again and stop all that running! I get tired just reading about it. I know how vicious ministry hurts can be, when our life in God gets all tangled up in people’s needs and demands. It is quite a mess. I pray God unravel it all and put a clear path before you and set you ever-more at rest in his presence.

And let us all remember that this is something God does in us, not something we can produce on our own. Just tell him you want to know the depth of his affection for you. Follow whatever nudges he puts on your heart to that end and let him untangle all that blinds you to the reality of his affection.

I absolutely love stories of God’s transforming work in other people’s lives, and judging from the mail I get in response to the ones I post, I realize they are very encouraging for others as well. These are not easy-fix stories, but stories of transformation God has been working over them for some time. Often we may not think he’s doing anything at all, then something happens to show us that he has in fact been working deeply and now when the sprout finally emerges from the soil, we can see and enjoy the splendor of his working.

Wayne, I am reading once again He Loves Me! This must be my third or fourth reading of it, the last time being a couple years or so ago. I “noticed” it the other day in my stack of books and today I went to pick it up once again, and wanted to share something that you wrote in it that is what God wanted me to see. I can’t seem to get past this part.

First, earlier in my morning He has shown me how He has called me to Himself to relieve me of my orphan spirit. He knows how much I need Him, my Father. A real Father. Sitting there soaking that in was/is wonderful. After a time, I recalled my “noticing” it and went to read it once again.

In the very beginning, where you wrote how you come to meetings early to mingle and get into conversations with the people, and how they are restful and relaxed in your presence until, that is, they find out that you are the speaker/author. You go on to write how God has that same problem with us, and how He had to disguise Himself as a man in order to have us relaxed enough after we get through the awkward stages of beginning to know someone enough to be ourselves. (pages 18 – 20)

I am seeing. He is revealing Himself to me, His good intentions toward me, and most of all, it’s HIS idea to be in relationship with me. This changes everything! Oh, I so hope to be growing in being loved. That’s all I want, to be loved, and know it, and if there will ever be a testimony that I carry around, that this would be it. Not out of my mouth but just because I am living loved.

This time, it’s different. These aren’t just words I am reading, something going into my mind that I can agree mentally with. No, this time these aren’t just words alone, for along with them I am hearing my Father’s Voice. His Voice! Just a day or two ago, I realized there is a Voice! …and now I am hearing Him while reading this book.

It’s not just “reading” I am doing though. He is cradling me in His arms or something as I go along in it, and ..I can’t describe this at all. This is more than just having a witness of the Holy Spirit in me, or having my spirit respond. No, there is perhaps, love? Surrounding me? Compassion?

A Voice. His Voice. Until two days ago, I don’t know if I ever heard it. Now, while in your book (and I’m only on p. 45). His Voice of Love is here speaking to me, all around me. Oh, I hope that His Voice becomes stronger!

I see now due to what you wrote, that I am getting past the angry God I thought He was, and even beyond the Powerful God that He truly is, and coming to this place, this place that is His true Voice, the Voice of Love. It’s getting past being in awe of Him, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but to honestly be in conversation with Him. It’s been so slow, but I am reminded of what you wrote, that this is what I can look forward to the rest of my time here on earth and, most likely, beyond.

I am helpless in that. Only HE can, and He has not given up on me, and now that I have more of a taste of a true Father’s love, I so want to know more. I don’t want to live as an orphan anymore. No, not at all. Thanks for helping me. The Holy Spirit has used your talents many times to bring me out of that orphan mentality and spirit.

Wow! I am so thrilled at what Father is consummating in you in this season of your life. I am blessed that my book has been part of that, but I think it is just the symptom of a greater work he is doing? Why is my book different this time? Because of the work he has been doing in you all along. Now, you’re getting to see some of that fruit in renewed relationship with him. But I’m not silly enough to think my book can produce that; it can only help identify it. What God does in us takes a long time. It mostly goes on where we can’t see it, and then one day somehow the veil gets pulled back and we see what he’s been doing all along to draw us closer to his side and set us ever-more free in his life.