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Thirty-five years ago to today I stood at the end of an aisle and awaited my lover’s approach in her long, white gown. We had dated over three years, graduated from college together six days before, and now stood on the dock of the greatest adventure of our young lives.

What is so amazing to me is that our love as only grown deeper over the years even as we have changed so much. I am not the same young man she fell in love with and she is not the young woman I fell for. We have both changed greatly over the years and not in ways either of us expected. Our continued joy has not been trying to stay compatible, but in fighting hard to find the “us” at every stage of our journey.

I’ve learned this over the past 35 years. Joy does not come from getting all that I want, nor is it giving Sara everything that she wants. The fullest joy has come in finding those things we can say yes to together. Wherever we could find that place where we could both participate wholeheartedly we found great joy.

That doesn’t mean we both don’t have things the other does not enjoy. Sara thinks golf is a stupid game, and I don’t enjoy the gardening that brings such peace and refreshing to Sara. So we have our times of doing things the other doesn’t have to participate in. But the bulk of our friendship is found where we share wholeheartedly our life together—the decisions that fit us both, the moments that express what is inside each of us, the friendships we enjoy together, and the spiritual journey that has drawn us closer to the Father’s heart.

Through awesome joy and bitter pain we’ve somehow found a way to get on the same page together. That hasn’t always been true in our journey. At many points we couldn’t see eye-to-eye and struggled with what was happening in the other. That’s been quite a process since we both are flawed humans, making our share of mistakes, at times taking the other for granted, and sometimes just wanting things our way.

But we’ve never settled for a disjointed friendship kept looking ways for our hearts to be joined together anew and find those things that would express both of us. That has not been easy, but we always put our growing friendship above any thing else we might have wanted for ourselves and the fruits of that has been its own reward. And our trust for each other has grown through it all because neither of us ever betrayed the other’s trust.

Right now we not only seem to be on the same page, but even in the same sentence. I don’t think we’ve arrived, and I’ve no doubt that time and circumstance will yet challenge us, but we are wholeheartedly committed to sharing this journey together, no matter what.

So we wake up to our 35th anniversary this morning ever more in love. And by love I don’t mean the starry-eyed romance of fiction, but the deep-seated friendship that does the hard work of caring, serving, changing, working together, being true, and all the while cherishing the other. I stand amazed at all we have shared together, and grateful that we have each stayed faithful to the promises we made to each while standing on that metaphorical dock a long time ago. We do see all of this as an act of God’s grace working in our hearts and lives and find great contentment in the settled love we share together.

Sara, thank you for 35 awesome years. Thanks for going on this journey with me and being a partner on it, helping shape the realities that have formed our life together. I love you, Sweetheart, only and always!

The fullest fruit of it I enjoy now is in the unbridled joy of my wife. She has always been fun to be around, but through our early years she was quite reserved. But as God has shaped her, she embraces life with a greater joy and it spills out at times in spontaneous laughter that rings with freedom and joy. Hearing that laugh is among my favorite sounds today.

We’d wish the same for every couple we know. A life of love and true friendship is a great reward! And if you’re not enjoying it now, there’s no time like the present to start on a different journey together, where you fight for your friendship more than anything else.

To follow up on my last post appeals to the law, I wanted to include Paul’s appeal to love.

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Philippians 2:1-4 – The Message

The biggest disappointments I’ve had on this journey are the brothers in Christ I got separated from in various conflicts and disagreements, especially those with whom I’ve shared some season of sharing the Father’s gifts together. Love is easy when everyone sees things the same way, but isn’t it really tested when we don’t? If it’s love it endures the pain and seeks a course that serves each other’s interests. Scripture records many moments in the life of the early church where disputes and violent disagreements pitted brother against brother and the outcome wasn’t always glorious, so I’m not surprised when it happens.

Nothing is more painful than a close relationship that goes awry, especially when a former friend thinks they have more to gain by turning on you than honoring the friendship. Even David felt it’s pain as he showed us in Psalm 55: “If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with the throng at the house of God.”

Love isn’t easy over the long haul, which makes me appreciate my relationship with Sara over 35 years all the more! We have found a way through ever disagreement, every struggle and every hurt to continue to forge an enduring relationship that means the world to both of us. We have found our way to ‘us’, mostly by following Paul’s counsel above. Notice it doesn’t take much of any of those things Paul lists there: “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ…, if his love has made any difference…, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything…, if you have a heart…”

From the smallest bits of love and grace any friendship can be restored. But both parties have to take that risk. I got an email recently asking how much do we have to do to make reconciliation happen, especially from those who had made harsh judgments against them. I told her there isn’t much anyone can do until the other party wants reconciliation. Forgiveness is one-sided, reconciliation takes two soft and willing hearts. I told her all she can do is keep her heart ready to respond in love when they open a door.

I guess I have a hard time with those who toss aside friendships so casually, or trade it away for more temporal objectives. Real open and honest friendships are some of the greatest treasure we get in this age. I guess I won’t every understand those who chose betrayal and division over healing and reconciliation.

These two words, “living loved” have come to express the passion of my heart and the sum of how I hope my life encourages people through writing, podcasts or in conversations. For me, living loved is not a mantra or a theology to espouse. At it’s simplest and most powerful, it is a reality to live in.

And I love how much God is sharing that with the world today. There are many voices talking about the love and grace of our Father and how the coming of Jesus changed everything about how we get to live in him. I love that no singular human is leading this parade and that many brothers and sisters are coming to discover it together.

What does frustrate me most, however, is knowing that some who can write or speak in eloquent terms about Father’s love, even moving crowds to tears, do not reflect that love in how they treat others. Living in the freedom of Father’s love shows up in your relationships—and not just those who benefit you, but those you consider the least or the last, or even those you presume to be your enemies. I am convinced that the depth of our character is most demonstrated by how we treat those who disagree with us when we’re most sure that we are right. Do we treat them gently, give them the opportunity to engage, and offer them the same grace we talk about with others? As Jesus said, it is wholly inconsistent for those who have received great love and forgiveness to grab anyone else by the throat and demand their satisfaction.

What I love about living loved as opposed to just talking about it, is that it is transformational. Those who are well-loved, love others well in good times and bad always valuing the relationship above their own perspective. This is not something you can learn by principle, but by embracing God’s affection at the deepest place in your soul. Until you know you are loved you will be sucked into every religious activity and performance treadmill that exists, hoping against hope that you can do the right thing to merit that deep affection from the heart of the Father.

But you already have his affection! The great lie of the universe is that you are not loved by the Creator of all. The question is only do you realize how loved you are? If not, that’s where the journey begins. He wants to teach you that and in the process untwist in you what has distorted his love or has blinded you to it.

I’m off this week to upstate NY to spend a weekend with some dear friends and to share about living loved. But this week we’re going to add something that has been growing in my heart over the last year and that is not just to spend time helping people learn to live loved, but also to spend some time equipping people who are already learning to live loved, to help others learn as well.

I am meeting more people on this journey who are living loved who also have a heart to help others. But if they are not writers or speakers, how do that do that? Since many have thrown out all the conventions often associated with organized religion, they are unsure how their passion to equip others applies outside the box. We’re going to spend part of Friday talking with some people who want to have that conversation. I’m excited about what may come of that. There is a need for far more workers in the fields helping people embrace the reality of living loved.

Surely the best way to equip people around you is by the example we live when we’re not trying and the conversations we have with people who are struggling to discover what it is to live loved. But there is also the need to help equip others with the instruction that sustains that walk and the encouragement to dive in and sample its wonders, without reducing it to principles and boring lectures.

If you’d like to join us in Lowville this weekend, come ahead! I know it’s late notice, but I’ve been heavily distracted by the unfolding circumstances of life. If not, let’s look for more opportunities to have that kind of conversation as I travel about and deal with others.

I’m still in Nashville finishing up with some business meetings today. Brad and I have had some amazing times with people all over the spiritual map on their journeys and have been encouraged and blessed by the choices people are making to live free even in the face of sometimes painful consequences. We even recorded our first live podcast with a room full of people who jumped in with us. We’ll post that in the next couple of weeks. While I always get to spend time on the road with amazing people, I always look forward to heading home. That will happen tomorrow.

I’m sure people are going to get tired of me sharing the needs in Kenya. I’m sorry to do that to those of you who just need some encouragement or provision in your own lives these days. And please, don’t feel any guilt whatsoever if God has not put it in your heart to be of help or if you don’t have the means to do so right now. Like anything else, if God wants you involved it will be a joy to do so, not a frustration or a guilted conscinece. But I got this email this morning and these are boys I know, most of them orphans. I was in their home the man who wrote this letter cared for Kent and I over the five days we were in Kitale.

Receive greetings from Kenya. I thank God for the wonderful time we were together with you in Kitale. Your conference has changed people here and teachings has changed people and there is a great change for everybody here. I want to share with you that I have tried to find your email and I am not familiar to communicate through internet but the secretary has helped me to communicate with you. The director and other people went to the northern part of Kenya near Sudan for preaching to the people there who have not been getting the word of God a long time but the problem is that when they were out almost nine children in the children’s home including one of the workers came under heavy attack of malaria and typhoid. I have tried to communicate with the people who went for the mission through phone but I cannot reach them due to heavy rain , the children have been admitted in hospital for three days now including my little child.

The Doctors wanted the initial deposit of 28,000 Kenyan schillings (about $400.00) before they continue with the treatment and I don’t know what to do. I am sending this information without the permission of anybody and the way I know you as a man of love the time I was with you here. The malaria has gone around the country especially this heavy rain season. These are the names of the children who are admitted: Edwin, Mateka, Deno, Brian, Martin, Sammy, Faith, Nelly, and my little child Enos

God bless you so much as I wait to hear from you,

Hassan

In a posting I put up last week, I also shared another need for mosquito nets and food, totally almost $20,000.00. Really, these people truly have nothing. They have never received money from anyone outside Kenya before coming in touch with us and have so few options. The combination of the violence many suffered two years ago the poverty of their region, and now the rains and diseases that come with it continue to pile upon them. Simply these are life and death issues, and they are so used to death.

I continue to encourage them to look to God and not to Lifestream. He is their provider and he wants them to grow in their dependence on him, not me and my friends. But I also know that this is an incredible opportunity for some of our abundance to flow to a need around the world where every dime actually helps someone subsist today and perhaps find a future to take care of themselves.

We will be sending some money over today. If you’d like to help us with any of these needs, from medical to food to mosquito nets, please 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 • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you for your consideration and prayers.

I read this the yesterday in THE MESSAGE and it was such a wonderful reminder of where life really happens:

Listen carefully to what I am saying—and be wary of the shrewd advice that tells you how to get ahead in the world on your own.

Giving, not getting, is the way.

Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes. (Mark 4:24-25)

I love the way Jesus thinks. It is polar opposite to the way we were all trained to do things. We even think that generosity can only happen after we get enough for ourselves first. But Jesus said that living generously is the way to live in the world because it will inspire others to do the same and the world becomes a more gentle place.

But the more we grab for ourselves what we think we deserve, or ignore or belittle others around us in pursuit desire to grasp for ourselves, the more impoverished we become. All conflict and disappointed expectations originate in grasping what God hasn’t given us.

And this goes way beyond money. It’s about our time, talents. and attention as well. The more we focus on ourselves and our needs the more we are swallowed up by our own ambitions and even if successful in outward terms, we end up in a very dark and lonely place.

Of course there is no human way to live generously unless we first are secure in the reality that God is caring for us. When you know he is, then you no longer have to fight for what he hasn’t given. Then we can let Jesus show us how to live with open heart and open hands to people around us, seeking their blessing and joy even above our own. That enriches us and it makes us enriching in the world.

Life is not about our own comfort or joy; it’s about giving gifts to others—our help, friendship, support, time and talents. All the good stuff in life flows from that simple reality. According to Jesus that’s the way to really live. Self-pursuit sucks the world into us and destroys who we are. Generosity is about blessing others and that flow is filled with life and grace and joy that knows no limit.

At 57 years of age, I’m more inclined to agree with him than ever!

I got this email the other day and in answering it felt I should let a few others look over my shoulder. I know he is not alone in his concern and perhaps others will be encouraged by this exchange:

Over the past year my wife and I have had some close friends go into deep funks in which they won’t return phone calls, emails, etc. These are folks we have known for some time and fellowshipped with on a pretty regular basis. Each situation is independent of the others and in all cases no one seems to be currently having any relationship with Jesus and are instead showing signs of addictions, depression or…well, funk. Over the past year we have both repeatedly left voice messages and sent emails but have received virtually no response from any one except one who has simply said she would rather feel numb right now than deal with her life.
 
I know that Father has called, or maybe better put, wired me to pastor. I know what that doesn’t mean but I guess maybe I’m struggling a bit with what it does mean. Over the years I (we) have tried hard to simply be friends with people and have positioned ourselves to be in the messes and struggles with them and not control them. We have offered help and input as we were led but steered clear of controlling people or distancing ourselves if they chose not to take our help. 
 
I know this isn’t the end but rather a season and nothing but nothing can separate them from the love of Father. I’m not sure what my question is but hope you can hear my heart and what I am trying to express. I feel like I could have/should have done more for these friends and that I still should. I understand the old saying, “you can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink and if you force him to drink it’s called drowning.” But I can’t help but wonder if I had been more authoritative they would all be in a better place right now. As painful as these situations have been for Kim when I express this to her she thinks I’m nuts.

Honestly, I’m with your wife on this. 😉

I’ve had it on my heart of late to spend more time with people who want to help others live loved, than just spending time with folks who want to live loved. I think people have lost all sense of what a true pastor or elder is—someone who knows how to help and encourage others to live inside a relationship with Father in a growing journey of learning to live in his love and share that with others. Your note seems to be a further nudge that direction. I’m not sure how that will work yet, but I know people all over the world who are really gifted as pastors and elders, not in the traditional sense but in the Biblical sense, but simply are unsure how to do it relationally. Without the position, title, or job description they seem to drift aimlessly unsure how to really help others. I want to spend time with people like that, those who are already learning to live inside Father’s love for themselves, and now want to find creative ways to help others. But that’s something God is going to have to show us how to do going forward.

That said, one of the worst things we do to ourselves is second-guess what we could or should have done or said, especially when we are feeling responsible for how someone else is responding. This would have killed Jesus, I’m sure, long before he got to the cross. He invited people to the kingdom, and he didn’t seem to get too freaked out when people missed the open door, and wandered off to spend more time in their self-effort or religious performance. Paul didn’t either. If people weren’t listening yet it was because their eyes were veiled and they weren’t ready to see. Neither of them blamed themselves for not being more authoritarian. The kingdom is an invitation for the hungry not a demand on the complacent. As sad as it is, some times people just need to stew in their mess a bit longer.

Sure an authoritative approach might have gotten them to conform their outward behavior to please you, but the inner life would have been more at risk. Thinking they are doing OK by how they look on the outside, they wouldn’t be dealing with the reality of their mess on the inside. Freedom is all about letting people live inside their choices, even when those choices are hurtful to themselves and others. You can always be lovingly, honest with them, helping them see a better way as God gives us insight and grace. But you’ll come to recognize those who are hungry and want your help, and those who aren’t ready yet and shy away. Don’t think that’s a bad thing. Keep praying and keep loving without badgering them. When they are ready to find healing and life in Jesus, they will fight their way through every obstacle to embrace it.

Perhaps the most difficult part of loving is letting others have the very freedom they are using to destroy themselves. I see the Father of the prodigal son doing exactly that. I’ll give you the freedom to ruin your life, in hopes that the ruin will invite you back to me! That’s more painful loving than the euphoria of welcoming them home when they come.

So don’t be too hard on yourself, Bro! If being more authoritarian wins the day, then I’m not sure you haven’t lost the greater prize for them and you.

What a sad, but enlightening statement. . This came to me in an email last week. I know not ever congregation is like this, but way too many are:

So, that brings us to now: we are both at a point where we are really realizing the emptiness of the church we are in. We have not heard one sermon in our 4 years of being there about the heart of God, the character of Jesus, abiding in Christ, or really walking in Him and the life that can be found in Him. It’s all about how we can change our world, impact those around us, the need to walk in the spiritual disciplines, etc…

(These are) all good things, but it’s like asking a tree to produce fruit with no root and soil.

So for two firstborn, overachievers, more performance-based preaching actually feels like weed killer on the little seeds God is trying to grow in our hearts. But we’ve had a hard time making the break from the church, and at times feel a bit crazy for even thinking about doing so, because of the friends and involvement we’ve had. However, what we keep coming back to is the joy, life, and love we’ve both been experiencing in a way that 20 years of living in the Christian community has never brought us and that our effort to follow Jesus with all our hearts has never brought us.

Staying for friends is one of the best motives for hanging in there. But if the seeds of your hear are being consumed by the performance-based environment, then that isn’t even a good way to love them. In time it only traps people in the same emptiness. But find your life in him, and there’s no telling where he might lead you and you can keep on loving your friends in the meantime and still seek out relational time with them.

The problem with institutionalizing life, is that the life gets killed. I love that people are finding the courage to look beyond the emptiness of religion and making the choice to find life instead of staying safe. It is a choice we all have faced or will face in time.

Tomorrow morning early Sara and I leave for New London, PA, to spend the weekend with a Presbyterian fellowship that has been reading some of my books and wanted me to visit. This is not my usual venue, to be sure, but their hunger drew our hearts to spend some time with them. We’ll be doing a Friday night conversation, a marriage seminar on Saturday, and then sharing Sunday morning. Lots of folks from other places are joining in, including a couple flying in from Spain. Should be an interesting weekend.

As I go, I wanted to leave you with this. I received this email yesterday, and talk about an email that can make an entire day, this is it! I’m thrilled at how this young lady has responded to the books, and even more grateful that they helped rescue her from sliding into the hard legalism of religious obligation. I’ve withheld her name and location because of her age, but how could anyone not be touched by God’s working in this young life.

It reminded me of an email I got some years ago from a man reading He Loves Me to his ninety year-old father on his death bed. He told me that his father came to understand the Father’s love one hour before he slipped into eternity. All if it makes me rejoice that God is making his heart known to all of us—from the youngest to the oldest.

Hi, I’m 13 years old. I want to thank you soooooooo much for your books, He Loves Me! and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, and especially for He Loves Me! It’s the most awesome book EVER! A good friend of mine said it was a good book, a really good book, then gave it to me in ’09 for Christmas. I thought I would read it every once-in-a-while because I was still finishing another book. As I read the first chapter, I found myself reading it every chance I got!! Before I knew it, 2 or 3 weeks later I got to chapter 23.

I was reading it with two other friends (one was reading it for the second time). We saw each other every Sunday, and shared our favorite quotes from it. We were amazed at how much God was using this book in soooooooooooooooo many amazing ways! Thank you!

This book meant so very much to me because in the last 4 months I felt guilty about every wrong thing I did. I felt like I had to drown myself in guilt to make Father accept me. I just couldn’t grasp the fact that He just loved me, regardless of who I was or what I did. I felt like I had to make up for all those mistakes, and that God must NOT be bigger than all of them. It wasn’t any major things, only things like wrong thoughts, believing lies, saying the wrong things, not loving others, looking for satisfaction in things that could never give me that, and just struggling, I guess. I felt so guilty! I don’t know. But I struggled in these things again, and again. I couldn’t see Father anywhere in the middle of all this.

I had gotten so caught up in the do’s and don’t’s that I had this thirst to know the God–that maybe did love me. I just couldn’t seem to tell at the time. Then I read your book, it got me right at the right time. As soon as I saw the cover, I thought : “That little girl looks so content. She looks loved. Oh! I want that!!” I read it, and one day God showed me in a special way how much He really loved me. I felt so free for at least a few days– but then the lies only came back. My dearest friends could tell me they weren’t true, but I just couldn’t believe them. I’m learning that it’s only Jesus who can free me of the guilt, lies, and the shame. I’m now on that journey you talked about in So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. By the way–thank you soooooo much for that book too, it’s shown me how far religion goes–or doesn’t go!

So that’s my story. I lived for about 4 months unloved, to the extreme, and then I read your book. Father is working in amazing ways through it!! Thanks for caring about people like me, people who are longing to be free. It means so much. Thanks for caring! Thanks for your book! I’ve told so many people about it, and currently have 3 copies (of He Loves Me!). One’s mine, another is for another great friend, and the other I’m lending out because it’s my lend-out book. Thank you again for your openness and love for Father.

In the age of microwave ovens, Internet access and video on demand, we are being seduced to the illusion of instant answers and quick fixes. The renewing of our minds, however, is a process that does take some time. God is not interested in waving a magic wand and making all your circumstances glorious; he is interested in transforming us from the inside out. He’s works in the inner live to bring real change from within, and that just takes time.

So don’t get frustrated when you don’t see the results you want coming to pass quickly. They were never meant to. God is not about a quick fix, but real transformation over time. I meet lots of people who are frustrated in the middle of the process, not realizing that something real is going on at a level they can’t see yet. So it is always a great encouragement to me when I see someone move from painfully disillusioned, to gratefully disillusioned because of the fruit they see in their lives. I got this email a few days ago. I hope it is an encouragement to many others who are still in the middle of a transformation and can’t yet see the end of it. It’s coming!

I wanted to thank you all again for your great podcasts and books and all that you have done to bless my life!!! I’ve been wanting to write this letter for several months.

I have been listening to your podcasts for about 3+ years after someone recommended the So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore book to me. That book we cried through; it was so close to our own personal experience. Wayne, you came to my house in Michigan (the one with all the mosquitoes) and shared with us – thank you!

The first few years we didn’t know if the pain would ever subside and my husband suffered from frequent migraines as each family we had loved from the organization stepped away from us as we “deprogrammed” from religion and stepped down from our place in leadership at a church we helped start.

You guys always said that it will get better and that it will come, and it has. I didn’t know if it ever would at the time. We are now totally “gratefully disillusioned” and the freedom and joy we experience are worth it all. We can now thank God for the “baseball bat to the face” (as my husband calls it) of our organized group’s catastrophe (a situation very similar to the “Jake” book). You even spoke of how eventually even some reconciliations came over time, Wayne, in your own experience after you went through various betrayals. We also have been through layers of betrayals and would never have believed that there are finally some cracks in the walls of ice that came between us and our friends after the “shunning” we experienced.

We felt like the Spirit was clearly leading us elsewhere other than supporting that organization we helped start, but the emotional pain and agony were immense as for a time we even lost relationship with my parents while they were still at the organization that we were at and commiserating with our old friends on how “concerned” they were for us. That has now all been worked through and healed, my parents have left, the relationship restored, and my husbands migraines have subsided. New friendships have been made that are much richer and more meaningful to us.

Anyway! I am glad to testify that you were right and that you all have been such a help our own journeys. The freedom you have talked about has become our freedom, too, and we rejoice. God is good. Now we enjoy the daily adventure of walking with Father and how He leads us and who He leads us to love each day.

One of our most amazing experiences recently was to stand with a woman who was being “evangelized” by Christians in a co-op group we are in. Some kids from the religious families in our group were telling her kids on the playground that they are going to hell. We had this couple over and got to know their story and found out that this wife had been sexually abused by her pastor as a teenager. When she brought this to the light the deacons swept it under the carpet and her mother abandoned her. Needless to say this woman does not want much to do with organized “Christianity” anymore. Well we were able to stand with her and love her and be at least one Christian family in her life who didn’t mistreat her (the religious people in our co-op were pretty toxic to her). She really seems to have a real yearning for Jesus and even hears from Him, but doesn’t quite know His name after what she’s been through (just as The Shack talks about). It has been really neat how we have just been able to love her and not have any agenda and she has been so drawn to us and some other friends of ours that are “out of the box”.

It has been a beautiful and amazing experience to bring healing to others out of our wounds. We could really connect with her and her husband about the misguided ways of organized religion and how they go against Jesus’ ways. After her and her husband left our house one night they said, “I will never forget this night”. Thank you for helping us deprogram from “evangelism” and religion and be able to love people freely and help rebuild what has been broken down.

I praise the Lord for the reconciliations that have started to flow for us with a couple people from our old organized group. And also the rich fellowship we now have with others on the journey. At first we had lost our whole community and it felt like being in the desert for a long time, but in three years time our community has rebuilt now is so much more rich, diverse, deep and amazing then it ever was. It was worth the pain and change. It is like before we were eating fast food before (organized religion) and now we sit down to homemade feasts with candles and ambiance—that’s the fellowship we now enjoy. Especially one family who left the organization with us has been such an amazing experience of building relationships built of honesty, transparency and love instead of duplicity and “fronts”.

Tonight we are having over a family who feel they have never fit into any church. They were not shiny enough to ever take the notice of those in leadership (looking like they might be of service to the organization and inner circle). And their children’s worst verbal abuse has happened at church from the other kids – so much so that their oldest daughter really wants to be a boy since she had so many terrible comments from the girls at church. We see though that they have genuine hearts for Jesus and we want to love their children and help heal the wounds.

Let us stand together in being God’s people and loving those He brings into our lives! Thanks for being true brothers in Christ – a little ahead of us on the journey – and gently showing us a better way!

Don’t give up the good work even if some people are being stinkers!