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I know it came as a shock to me, and judging by your emails to many of you as well.  The deadline to sign up for our February 5-16, 2014 trip to Israel was this past Sunday.  Unfortunately that date had completely gotten past me and I know many of you were considering it who were not able to get everything nailed down by that date.  So, the tour company has graciously given us another two weeks for anyone still interested to sign up.  We already have plenty of people going, but there are six spots remaining and if you’d like to join us you now have until October 1, 2013 to register.  You can get all the details and register here.  They are treating us very well because the tour coordinator is a good friend and interestingly enough was my first editor at Harvest House years ago when I wrote The Naked Church and The Vineyard.  

For those concerned about security issues while in Israel, we’ve received this notice from the tour company:   “Safety is always the primary concern for The Israel Tour Company. ITC groups travel under the care of an Israeli land operator, guide, and driver who are well-informed and up-to-the minute in terms of daily security conditions and concerns.  The US State Department is not discouraging travel to Israel at this time. The warning for Israel that currently exists is on par with the worldwide warning in place for Americans traveling anywhere in the world since 9/11.  As of now, the security situation is stable and tour cancellations are unlikely. A tour cancellation would most likely be precipitated by a change in the US State Dept. Advisory. For the full text of the US Advisory you may go to their website. 

For those that haven’t decided whether or not they want to come, you have no idea how much being in the land where God made himself known to the world will affect you and add huge dividends to your Bible reading as you picture the actual sites in which history happened.  In addition to being all about Jerusalem (with visits to the dungeon under Caiphas’ house, a private part of the garden in Gethsemane, the traditional site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the site of Solomon’s Temple and excavations back to the time of Jesus, we will also be in the second most-mentioned site in the Bible after Jerusalem—Capernaum, which is situated along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It is definitely one of the most amazing places you’ll be visiting around the Sea. Some of the great Old Testament stories will also be a part of your experience as you explore Israel. You will see the caves where a young David hid from King Saul at the springs of Ein Gedi. You’ll view the location of Jericho where the Bible says the walls came down. You’ll walk through the place where King David looked over onto Bathsheba’s rooftop. You will stand where his son built the First Temple. From the top of Mt. Carmel, you will look over the Valley of Armageddon as Elijah did when he challenged the prophets of Baal. We”ll also visit Masada and the Dead Sea.

We hate to waste these last six slots if there are any more folks that would like to come.  You’d be more than welcome to join me and 33 of my friends for a wonderful tour of Israel.  

The first time I heard it was after it had come out of my mouth.  But I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.  I was asked to speak at a local fellowship in Boise on Sunday morning last week.  I asked them if they’d be more open to a conversation instead of a lecture, and though they hadn’t done it before they were game enough to give it a try.  You gotta love their courage.  In the course of that conversation about learning to live loved I was asked a question about overcoming sin.  And I said something to the effect of, “I’m coming to see sin as a coping mechanism for not knowing we are loved by God.”  I’ve talked about that idea with a number of people since and it seems to resonate with people, even a main-line denominational pastor here locally with whom God is giving me a growing friendship.  He told me later he almost quoted it last Sunday in his sermon. 

I don’t know if it’s a great definition for sin, but what I like about it is that if it’s a coping mechanism then we there’s no way we can consider trying to fix it by strength of will alone.  If it is what we do because we don’t know we’re loved, then growing to know we’re loved is the only thing that love fills up the empty space than sin so poorly tries to fill.  At least that has been my experience.  I navigated most of my life as if I was not loved by God and thus had to earn his favor every day.  Since I’ve been growing in the awarness of his affection for me, I find that the same old temptations and motivations have been displaced somehow. They just aren’t there any more, and I’m the one who is most surprised.  That doesn’t mean I’ve got it all figured out and live flawlessly now.  Just ask some of the folks closest to me if you doubt that.  But I am not the same person I used to be and that gives me how that he is still changing me.  

In the past I was taught to attack sin by overcoming it by sheer strength of will.  I could do that for most things.  But I found like Paul the Apostle did, that self-righteousness is not righteousness at all. While it doesn’t  violate as many of the commandments, it only channels our sinful heart to religious arrogance, where we seek spiritual status above others and condemn those who do not perform as well as we do.  Paul reminded us that legalistic righteousness makes us the worst of sinners because of how destructive we become to others.

When love displaces sin, there is no room to boast in our own works. Not only does that love begin to transform us from the inside out, but it also leaves us more gentle and compassionate with others who do not yet know how deeply loved by God they are.  

When you see your sin the way God does, you are not filled with shame and contempt.  You see it as something damaging to you and people around you, but you know only he can set you free from it.  His love does that.  Grace is not an excuse not to be concerned about our sin and the damage it causes, but it is a portal into the relationship with God that can set us free from it’s power.  When you know that, you’ll resist what you can, but you won’t put your hope in your performance.  It is Christ in us that gives us hope that our lives can bear his glory in the world.  

I come away from every encounter with him having a greater desire to know and to rely on the love he has for me, and share it as freely as I can with the world around me.  

(The latest Engage Video talks more about dealing with sin inside a relationship of affection with God.  It is not what many of us have been taught about God and our sin. It’s called What About Sin? and you can find it toward the bottom of this page.)

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In other news, I’m two and a half chapters into my next book, Finding Church: What If There Really Is Something More?  and I couldn’t be more excited as to how this book is coming together.  As I’ve shared bits of it with some people, I have appreciated the feedback and excitement I hear in their voices.  So, I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone this fall and trying to get it done as soon as possible.  That means I’ll be limiting my travel this fall and not doing as many podcasts.  

There are seven slots left for our February trip to Israel.  If you are still considering it, now is the time to jump in.  You can get all the details here.  I know many people have security concerns with all that’s going on in the Middle East these days, but we are with a tour company that takes this into consideration all the time. Each morning the get briefings on the situations around Israel and even reroute the itinerary if there are potential hotspots.  And, if it is not deemed safe to go at the time we’re planning, we will reschedule it for a better time.  Tour groups like this are in Israel all the time.  Everyone in the region understand that tourism is a major driving force in the economy for all concerned and have not been targets for violence in the past.  I wouldn’t be taking my wife there if i wasn’t certain that it will be safe and secure for all.  

The Sunday morning presentation I referred to earlier in the blog can now be found here.  If you want to hear a Q & A presenation I did for the Aphesis group on Saturday night when I was in Boise, you can find it here.  

During my first trip to Israel, I was a little put off by how some of the people on the tour were trying to convert your Jewish guide, Abraham.  They kept making snide asides to him as to why he didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.

On the last day I found myself alone with him by the bus as we were awaiting others to bring their bags from the hotel.  I fell into a conversation with Abraham and was able to ask if he’d been personally offended by some of the comments. 

He passed it off with wave.  “Not at all,” he answered.  “I’ve been doing this for twenty years. Everyone tries to convert me to their religion—Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, Reformed Jews, Conservative Jews, Mormans, and Muslims—everyone.”  Then he looked up at me with a smile, “Do you want to know why none of them convince me?”

“I would!” I replied.

“Come with me,” he said as he led me around the front of the bus and to the edge of the road.  “Do you see that building down there with the Star of David on it?” 

“Yes.”

“That’s ours.”

“Do you see that steeple with the cross on it across the way with the cross on it?”

I nodded.

“That’s yours.”

And then he pointed me toward the dome of a mosque on a hillside not far away.

I nodded.

“That’s theirs.”

I smiled trying to imagine what he’d say next.

“Take off the Star of David, the cross, and the dome and underneath aren’t they really all the same thing?   You would think if one of us were serving the Living God, it would look very different.”

He was right.  Christianity doesn’t look any different from the outside as any other religion.   It doesn’t surprise me that all man-made religions would have the same components at its core. The shame of the fall draws us into religious activity that seeks to appease an angry deity and to try and please him with better living.  That’s why they are laced with fear, defined sacred space, calls to sacrifice, and are led by a local, holy-man guru-type, who officiates at rituals that are meant to at times to comfort the faithful, and at other times to threaten them for not doing enough. 

If one of us were serving the Living God, it would look very different.  I think it would.  Nothing better has expressed my lifetime quest to discover what real life in Jesus would look like today, both for the individual and for the redemptive community that unveils God’s reality in the world.  How did we go from “believing what we hear”, to observing a religion more preoccupied with doctrine, ritual, and ethics?  Could it be that what we mostly see in Christianity today is a religion that well-intentioned people have created out of the teachings of Jesus, and that many of us have yet to see the church that Jesus is building in the earth? 

In the last few years I have come to the end of that quest.  I’ve been able to taste of the life of the church that is “not made with hands” all over the world as I have seen Jesus quietly knitting together a family so rich and real that it doesn’t need the religious conventions.  Surprisingly it wasn’t where I thought it would be, and far closer than I’d ever dreamed. 

For those on a similar quest I would love to help you see it too. 

Excerpt from Finding Church:  What If There Really Is Something More?

By Wayne Jacobsen, an uncompleted manuscript

(Special Note:  Abraham will also be our guide on the trip Sara and I and some of our friends will be taking to the Holy Land this February. There’s still room if you want to join us.) 
 

Last weekend the brothers and sisters in Kenya dedicated the new gas station to the Lord’s service.  Children from Living Loved Care Centre were there to celebrate what the generosity of so many of you have provided.  My heart overflows today at their excitement that God has provided a way for them to care for the children as a result of this enterprise.  It is my joy to know that we were able to leave to something in that country that is not perpetually dependent on the West for money and resource.  The goal all along has been to be alongside them as brothers and sisters helping them learn to trust God’s provision through our own generosity.  I’m blessed this is getting there. 

So far we have sent them $80,000 to build the service station. The process has not been without it’s difficulties.  They needed an additional $8,000 to buy extra land to accommodate truck access due to where the pumps had to be installed.  When it finally opened a couple of weeks ago they were excited at the number of vehicles stopping for fuel, as well as the local people getting gas for cooking.  But then the traffic suddenly stopped on the road.  As they checked into it they discovered the government had closed the road throught that stretch for an unannounced construction project.  So after only a week of operation at the scale they anticipated, sales have dropped to near nothing as there is no traffic on the road.  This project was unannounced and unforseen, and is only supposed to last a couple of months before the road reopens again to hopefully increased traffic.  

We still need funds to help offset the original $80,000 and now we need an additional $3,000.00 per month through July and August to pay for food and staff at the orphange until the traffic resumes.  So the work goes on and we’re standing with them as God makes provision for a people so impoverished by the harsh conditions of East Africa.  I am so grateful for how many of you have been part of this with us, sending in your contributions to help the brothers and sisters there.  They are blessed as well.  I did receive this email last week from our contact there:  

Greetings in Jesus name , I finished the mission in Uganda and I am now in Kenya, last Saturday and Sunday we had a very wonderful dedication prayer, some of the children from living Loved centre were leading in prayer and singing , I took the time to share about you for what the lord had done through your hand, we got this project and Living Loved Care centre.  The first prayer it was for your family, second is for your ministry and the third is for the friends , brothers and sisters over there who stretch their hands towards this project.  The prayer team work came from all over from different of the regions.

Another thing, thank you very much for understanding our need, which Thomas shared with you due to road construction for continuing stretching the hands for the kids, I appreciate really for the heart of love and caring, may the lord bless you  so much as I look forward to hear from you, the construction of the exit is complete we appreciate so much for the extension of the land.
                                                  Yours,
                                                  Brother Michael

If you would like to help us finish off the service station as well as feed and educate the children for the next two months, we and they would be grateful. If you want to know more about this project or the AIDs recovery home we also support in South Africa, you can see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd, Ste 1 #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Here are some pictures they sent to celebrate their progress:

Filling the tanks for opening week

A steady stream of traffic on opening week

Girls from the orphanage prepare for the day of dedication

Preparing to officially open the service station

I got this email over the weekend and loved it.  She’s really angry at God and wants to know if it’s safe to let him in.  I wish more people were like her.  I meet so many people who have a deep anger or disappointment in God but are either too afraid of him to let him know, or too busy trying to pretend otherwise that they miss the transformative moment. Every good engagement with God begins with naked honesty.  

I’ve listened to The God Journey podcasts for around two years and read a couple of your books.

I have a question: Is it okay to be angry at God?
I feel so angry and I’ve been pushing it down, because I’m terrified that Papa will be angry with me or will abandon me for expressing anger at Him. I’m 20 yrs old and don’t really have a close connection with my family or really have any close friends, so Papa is really all I’ve got and the thought of Him being angry or ignoreing me is frightening!

It’s the season for new graduates, in high school, colleges, and universities to mark a moment of significant transition in their lives.  I don’t know John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars, but I do know truth when I hear it.   Here are some excerpts of his recent commencement address to the graduates of Butler University.  I hope they listened long enough to let it soak into their bones and influence a thousand decisions they’ll make in the next frew years.  

We don’t hear these kinds of words often enough in our culture and yet they are as true as true gets.  

I would just note that the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of twitter followers, or facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.

This is the hero’s journey, right? The hero starts out with no money and ends up with a lot of it, or starts out an ugly duckling and becomes a beautiful swan, or starts out an awkward girl and becomes a vampire mother, or grows up an orphan living under the staircase and then becomes the wizard who saves the world. We are taught that the hero’s journey is the journey from weakness to strength. But I am here today to tell you that those stories are wrong. The real hero’s journey is the journey from strength to weakness…

 

You are probably going to be a nobody for a while. You are going to make that journey from strength to weakness, and while it won’t be an easy trip, it is a heroic one. For in learning how to be a nobody, you will learn how not to be a jerk. And for the rest of your life, if you are able to remember your hero’s journey from college grad to underling, you will be less of a jerk. You will tip well. You will empathize. You will be a mentor, and a generous one.

Let me submit to you that this is the actual definition of a good life. You want to be the kind of person who other people — people who may not even be born yet — will think about … at their own commencements. I am going to hazard a guess that relatively few of us thought of all the work and love that Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber put into making this moment possible for us. We may be taught that the people to admire and emulate are actors and musicians and sports heroes and professionally famous people, but when we look at the people who have helped us, the people who actually change actual lives, relatively few of them are publicly celebrated. We do not think of the money they had, but of their generosity. We do not think of how beautiful or powerful they were, but how willing they were to sacrifice for us — so willing, at times, that we might not have even noticed that they were making sacrifices.

(You can see his entire speech here, though I have not and cannot vouch for all he said.) 

Sara and I are reading through Ephesians these days and read these words last night in The Message, “You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.”   I hear that sentiment echoed in the words above. The world teaches to pursue the wrong things and I applaud the courage of someone who will speak into the absurdity of false success and invite people into a different way of living where success is not measured the way the world measures it, or even rewards it.

Life is found in embracing our weakness and in doing so find a God so much larger than ourself and a way to live generously in the world.  Those people do more to make a difference in the world they live in than the politicians, media moguls, or Wall Street brokers.  

I was at the bedside of one of my closest friends when he passed into the next life about six years ago, my first thought was, “I’d love to know what he knows now.”  I felt that way again yesterday when I heard that Brennan Manning had passed away.  I know he had been very sick for a long time and rejoice that he has now entered into the fullness of the Father’s glory and can enjoy him forever without the frailties of our human flesh and the limitations of this age.  He will be sorely missed here, and my heart goes out to those closest to him that will live for awhile with a Brennan-sized hole in their lives.  For many, that will be quite large, but fortunately he has left many words behind to encourage others to understand how deeply loved by God they are.  

Brennan Manning is the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel, Abba’s Child, Ruthless Trust, and numerous other books.  You can see a list of them here at Amazon.com.  If you’ve ever read a Manning book or heard him speak, his message was of the deep love of a Father who could reach into our most broken places with transforming compassion.  A former Catholic priest, he had an ongoing struggle with alcoholism and wrote about it with such transparency and grace that it freed many others to a more honest journey with their own struggles.  Unmasking the empty platitudes of religious obligatoin, he was a voice for the common person finding Jesus in the midst of darkness and discovering what a life-long journey with him might look like.  You didn’t have to be wise or whole to discovery the joy of knowing God’s love.  

If you haven’t read a Manning book now would be a good time to find out what you’ve missing.  Abba’s Child, far and away was my favorite.  He was a provocative writer whose openness and honesty made him an endearing figure and his passion for God was infectious to say the least.  I have benefited greatly from his life and his writings and am so grateful that God allowed his gift to be so widely shared in the world.  

I am convinced that for those who know God, what happens in the first moments after death has to be the ride of all rides.  We weren’t created for the foibles and frustrations of this age, but for the glories of eternity in the presence of the Father.  While I am content to live here as long as Father desires it, I realize that this is just the lobby for an eternity with him that none of us can imagine.  Viewed from there, this life will just be a dew or a vapor.  Brennan Manning arrived at the front of the line yesterday and got to finally pass through those doors.    

I’d love to know what he knows now!  If he could just write one more book….

What a crazy week!  This one began in the Bay area of California with some great dialog.  Not everyone loved it, however. We did have some people that wanted to promote some abusive views of God that others among us were trying to break free of.  It was in interesting conversation to say the least.  I know people like them mean well, or so they think, but when you’re militant about others knowing that God will strike them with calamity just to get their attention, you’ve missed who he is entirely. 

They even argued that that is exactly what God’s discipline is about.  My heart hurts for such people.  They sound like abused kids of an angry alcoholic dad as they try to explain that dad’s violence is a sign of his love.  God simply isn’t like that.  He’s in the world to rescue us from its destruction.  Our troubles arise from a fallen world, not a disciplining Father.  Discipline means to train up, as in a dad directing his child, not one who’s beating them into submission. 

Then, Sara and I had a couple of days on the Central Coast before I head off to Australia.  Then we returned home for a quick visit by some dear Swiss friends.  All the while we’ve been trying to sort out the new website.  I appreciate the patience and help so many of you have offered.  It turned out to be more of a mess than we thought it was when it launched, so now we’re having to fix things on the run. But I’ve heard from many of you that you love the new look and how much easier it is to find the free stuff!  People really love the free stuff! 

Next up is a three-week trip to Australia.  There are a lot of hungry hearts there and people taking great risks to follow God instead of man.  I love that!  And we’re going to begin some of the conversations there about Seeding Community in the world.  We have the tendency to keep creating various systems to try to manufacture community in the world.  Most don’t realize that God’s kind of community is a gift he gives. We can’t create it by anything we do, but we can recognize what he’s doing and participate with him.  By living lives of freedom, love, and hospitality we can open up space in which God can seed his community in the world.  I’m excited about exploring that more with people who share a hunger for nonsystematized ways encouraging community in the world. 

In June, we’ll be looking to take some of that to the Carolinas as well, though the schedule is far from complete at the point, but will be in the first two weeks of June.  And in between those two trips Sara and I will be on Vancouver Island for an anniversary trip, though we’ve set aside some time over the weekend to connect with other hungry hearts in the region. 

And finally, we’ve been putting the final touches on a Lifestream trip to Israel next February, February 5-16 to be exact.  I’ve wanted to take Sara there since I first visited seventeen years ago.  It impacted me more than I expected and has forever shaped my enjoyment of Scripture having been in the land in which it was penned.  Standing on the shore of Galilee, or sitting in a private spot in Garden of Gethsemane, or being in the holding cell where Jesus was the night before he was crucified were forever stamped on my heart.  Finally God has opened the door for us to go and take 40 people with us and we’ll have the same guide whom I enjoyed so much last time.   Full details will be available soon, and we’ll announce it here first.
 

Finally, the birthday gifts and party are now in the past, but what a weekend it was! I am so grateful to all who made this one special in so many ways. To have my home and yard filled with people I love and share the laughter and joy of family and long-time friendship was truly a blessing and an honor. Sara and I know some pretty incredible people and connecting with them again filled our lives with gratitude.

And there were so many others who wrote and shared their thoughts and greetings as well. I already told you about my birthday book my daughter created for me with letters people sent from all over the world to celebrate our relationship. It turned out to be quite a project as she worked on it for more than eight months. It was a secret she and many others had to keep for much of that time. Here’s what she wrote about it:

              The secret… a book of letters to my dad… expressions of love, gratitude,

              special memories, or as simple as a birthday wish written from people that

              have known my dad at some point over his 60 years of life. It all started

              with a simple email that spread from Ventura County through California,

              across the US and all across the world…Australia, South Africa, Canada,

              and all over Europe. I received well over 100 letters when all was said and

              done. And put them all together in this book.

If you want to see some of what she wrote about it, you can check out her blog and pictures about the night she gave the book to me. And the book was a big draw on Saturday. Everyone wanted to see it and many spent time reading it. I won’t post it here; it’s over 40,000 words. So you’ll just have to come by and look at it if you want.

   Part of the crowd that was able to join us this weekend for my birthday

Sara and I are now left in the afterglow of that rich weekend and the love of so many people. As we’re slowly reading through the book my daughter put together, I’ve been reminded of a couple of things that are pretty important:

First, what people most appreciate about your life is not what you’ve accomplished but how you’ve treated them. What came up over and over again in the letters was not the books I’d written or the achievements people attach to my life, but how they’ve watched Sara and I have live our our lives and the simplicity of conversation, whether in laughter and tears, that helped them through a tough spot, or encouraged them to lean more deeply into Jesus. I love that. I think that’s why Jesus didn’t write books or start ministries. He knew that how he lived with Father would best be conveyed by simply living openly in the world, and he knew that the power in a real conversation was all that was needed to allow the kingdom of God to spread in the world.

Second, I’m refreshed in the power of affirmation. Reading what others have appreciated about my life has impacted me far more deeply than I thought it would. It has helped me be reminded of those things that really matter in life, and not get lost in all the projects I sometimes think are so critical. Sharing with someone how you appreciate them and what they’ve meant to you is life-changing. It is often difficult in our culture either to give or receive complements. Both make us uncomfortable. We don’t often give them for fear will be responsible for stoking someone’s pride, and we often deflect them when given to us because we feel undeserving.

I’ve often gone away from funerals thinking how powerful it would have been for the deceased to have heard those things said about them while they were still alive. How much would it have set them at ease in knowing how God had made himself known through them, or how much they meant to others? Reading my daughter’s book was like attending my own funeral, without the death part, which really is the worse part. And I’ll admit to being incredibly surprised at what many people said and how they looked at my life. But it has been and continues to be so enriching and it has allowed me to relive memories of my times with them.

So I come away from this week wanting to be more intentional about speaking life and encouragement into people while it still matters. I want them to know how much they are loved and appreciated and what I see of God’s glory reflected in them. Imagine if our conversations were filled with that an dhow it would not only change the tone of many of our conversations, but perhaps the tone of the world around us as well.