Search Results for: Friends and friends of friends

Sorry, I’ve been too busy here in Ireland with dozens and dozens of conversations with people I love and too involved in an unfolding crisis at home to keep up with the blog here. It’s amazing how our days here have touched everyone so differently and opened their eyes to things God was doing in them at the same time he connected people that I’m sure will share lifetime relationships beyond international borders. Just simply amazing! I know there will be much more in a future podcast about it all.

I fly home tomorrow into the arms of the love of my life, for which I can’t wait. But also into jaws of trauma and pain that some of our dearest friends are going through. I’m not sure when I’ll update again, but your prayers, should God put us on your hearts would be most welcome.

I’ll leave you for now with this. I ran across this quote the other day in the manuscript of a friend. It describes an awesome place of freedom:

The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, the garden and the sky) instead.

C.S. Lewis

Religion is trying to stop the scratching in the midst of the itch.

Life in Jesus is losing the itch so there is no desire to scratch.

And how do we lose the itch? Only as we come to recognize and live in the reality of Father’s love do all our itches fade away to nothingness. Ask him! He’ll show you!

I am smack in the middle of one of those moments in time when it seems the air is crystal clear and you get to see further down the road than you get to most days. Here in Ireland with brothers and sisters from all over the world, it is very easy to see how Jesus is knitting together his church throughout the whole world. And it isn’t through the organizations and institutions, which almost always do more to divide us than they do to bring us together, but with the simple power of growing friendships. Those of us who are here are getting to taste of the fruit of years and years of relationships that others have let Jesus develop among them.

Some have been at it with this bunch for 30 years or more, some 10 or 15 and some just showed up in the middle of a bunch of friends celebrating their life in Christ and jumped right in to participate in those relationships as well. So did it just happen? In one sense, it did! In another sense, however, this is the fruit of something he has been doing for some time as people following him have given themselves to the relationships Jesus provided for them. Connecting his body this way is not a quick process, but it’s fruit is awesome!

I can think of hundreds of people I wish were here and their probably hundreds of others who wish they were here. I can understand how powerful this would be for those who feel isolated and hunger for more Godly connections. But this is just one connecting point that is bringing together a lot of different pools of relationship. It is not the end of anything, but just part of an ongoing process of Jesus knitting his family together. Rarely does that process take on the expression it has here, but when it does it is the fruit of a work he has been doing for some time. Let me point out some bits of that process to you, that I see reflected in this occasion and which might put you at peace with where he has you in this process.

First, Connect with Jesus

It all begins here. Remember body life does not produce the life of Jesus, only Jesus does that. The church can never be our source of life, it is the fruit of that life being borne in us. Let your relationship with him grow. If you don’t know any others, just lean in close to him and keep your eyes open. He may just want you to himself for a time so that he is the only one you’ll be dependent on. In time he will begin to connect you in the simple joy of—

Twos and Threes

The heart of body life is not found in large gatherings, believe it or not. Just as Jesus said it is perhaps best expressed wherever two or three gathering in his name. That can happen by scheduling time to share a meal or an outing together, or it can happen just because you cross paths in a store and decide to hang back for a moment and enjoy each other’s company. Relationships grow best in small conversations where people just get to know each other. Trying to form groups is a poor substitute for this, and often they subvert the process of true relationships growing.

Those who’ve had a role to play in facilitating what is happening in Ireland are people who have given themselves to these kinds of relationships for years. They are not about building groups or fulfilling ministries, but simply letting God connect them with others and investing time in those relationships, whether it be over the Internet or face to face. In time those pools of twos and threes find themselves with—

Growing Connections

Someone once said you know you’re truly someone’s friend when they share their other friendships with you. There are some intersecting people here, who have helped bring their relationships alongside other relationships. What a glorious thing it is as God begins to let us see a network of friendships locally, regionally or globally that have interrelationships with each other! I love seeing some of my dear friends becoming friends with some other of my dear friends. They can sit down to a meal together, focus on some growth together or help others meet that will be of mutual benefit.

When I was in Bournemouth last week, I met a lovely young couple that had just immigrated to the UK from South Africa. They knew a couple I’d spent some time with in South Africa who in turn knew an elderly couple living near them outside London. They made that connection. That couple connected them with another young couple in Bournemouth who let them know I was coming a few weeks later. They came down to meet me as well as the couple in Bournemouth. This week I am in Ireland with the couple from South Africa who started it all and the elderly couple from London, whom I will introduce to you all in a future podcast. And the only reason I knew the family from South Africa, is because the people here in Ireland commended them to me when I was headed to South Africa. And that happened because in a trip long ago to the U.K. some Irish folks invited me to visit here. Do you hear the knitting needles bringing together—

The Wider Family

Now a hundred of us or more are spending some days together in Ireland representing about a dozen countries. Those from out of the area or staying in the homes of people here who have maintained contact with each other over 30 years without trying to manage an institution to tie them together, which is most probably why they are still together. We are spending a week together in and out of each other’s homes, one day meeting for a picnic and fellowship under a marquee in a field, and on another day jumping in a tour bus together and tasting a bit of the history and culture of this part of Ireland.

All along relationships are still connecting and growing. Even in these expressions of the wider family that encompasses the whole world, those moments of twos and threes or eights and tens are still where people really get to know each other as the family continues to grow. And threaded throughout those conversations is what Jesus is doing in our lives and what he has shown us of himself.

One can’t help but wonder how many other of these networked relationships scatter our globe, and how easy it will be for Jesus to connect them when he is ready. Only two people have to cross paths for separate bits of the family to connect. What a joy it is to be with people who have no desire to manage God’s working or to manipulate others with their pet theologies or need to control others for their desired outcome. Living loved and sharing that love is really more than enough to give expression to this incredibly family.

And it all begins when people simply connect with Jesus and learn to live in the reality of his love. As they give time and attention to those relationships he puts before them and the connections that follow will dazzle us all!

I promised you a picture from my home-away-from home near Palmer, Alaska last weekend. What an amazing time with folks in various seasons of their journeys from religious obligation into the freedom of the life of Jesus! It made for some interesting large-group large-group discussions and even more wonderful bits of personal time with various people couples, and families. These were wonderful days and the weather was even perfect for them! It was sunny every day, but being from Southern Cal, I would have prefered more clouds and rain! But they were happy as could be!

But the flight home was my worst trip ever. I caught the flu somehow and came down with it as my flight left Anchorage. Alternating between sweating fevers and freezing chills with nausea and aches I made my way home to Denver then to California. I got home as sick as I’ve ever been in the last 15 years or so, and have been wiped out ever since.

I’m recovering now, but weak and woefully behind on just about everything lining up for my attention these days. So if you’re waiting for me to respond to you, please be patient. Also a dear friend and his wife from Australia arrived a day earlier than we’d anticipated, but we’re so blessed they are here and looking forward to a weekend of fellowship with them. It’s a holiday for us in the States, so I am looking forward to relaxing and sharing life with our friends and others who’ll come by to join us.

Every day this week I started with the intention of writing a post for this blog about Communion and how it can be the focus of our life as a community of Jesus people, but the days have been so filled with the tyranny of the urgent that I haven’t gotten to it yet. Bummer!

All of this was refreshed in me as my friend Bob Stamps came out for a few days to get my help on a book he’s writing about the Lord’s Supper and how the early believers celebrated it—so very different from what it has become today. I have never thought that our preferences about music styles or teachers we like to hear would never be enough to bring the family together. In fact music styles wouldn’t even bring my own family together. I doubt my family could choose any kind of concert that we’d all want to go to hear.

The only thing we can gather around is him, and one of the key places he promised his presence is when he sits down at table with us and there we encounter the Risen Christ as our forgiver, reconciler, Lord, healer, friend and older brother and by engaging him together we come away transformed. But at this meal we can all come and be enriched by him and our celebration of the larger family to which he’s joined us. Wow, we’ve missed something here…

I have more to share here, but I’m off to Alaska in an hour or so to spend the weekend with some newfound friends. If you haven’t heard our interviews with Bob Stamps at The God Journey, they focus a bit on refreshing our heart in the Lord’s Supper and how we can share it together with grace and reality. Blessings all!

I’m back from the heartland. Awesome time with tons of people! I’m so blessed and exhausted. I also got to go to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield, Illinois as I pass through. That place is incredible. If you live or go anywhere near there, you might want to plan a trip to that locale. There are some awesome technical displays to help tell that story.

I also returned to a very caustic letter from an angry pastor who thinks I’m the anti-Christ for writing Why I Don’t Go to Church Anymore. He accused me of some pretty ugly stuff, in belittling terms. I’ll spare you the details. Actually, my heart really goes out to the brother. I remember feeling like he does now. He has a great passion for God, but can’t see beyond the little knothole he’s known all his life.

As I read it, it reminded me how I used to feel about truth. Somehow when you’re caught up in religion, truth seems the least desirable thing on the planet and you have to attack everything and everyone one that disagrees with you. But when you discover that the life of Jesus is the pearl of great price, you don’t have to attack anything else. Just let people know how real Jesus wants to be in them.

But I also got a letter today from a brother in Alberta, Canada. I love what he wrote:

We are discovering quite by accident that as we keep Jesus centre, He raises up folks to function in specific leadership functions when they are needed. If we need hospitality, folks with that gifting take leadership. When we need pastors, folks with those gifts take leadership. It seems Holy Spirit raises up the right gift at the right time to provide leadership for whatever He wants to accomplish. Everyone gets to play!

This drives my professional pastor friends crazy!!! “What about order? What about accountability?” “You can’t build a church like that!”. That’s my point exactly! We don’t build the Church—Jesus does. When you don’t have something to build, control or to protect, it really frees folks to be who God created them to be and the freedom to step out and use gifts they have been given as He leads them to.

I love that part of not having something to build, control or protect. Then we really do get to be what God made us to be, and not what any institution needs us to be! So cool!

Tomorrow I leave for the heartland with a stop this weekend in Kansas City, then Monday and Tuesday I’ll be in St. Louis, Wednesday in Springfield, IL and in the Quad Cities area of Iowa over the following weekeknd. I’ll be hanging out with some old friends meeting some new ones and might even get a game of golf in.

There are a number of upcoming opportunities, for people to gather from a broad region in some of my upcoming travel. If you live in or near any of the following places and want to join in, please email me for contact information.

• May 17-20: Palmer, AK
• May 20-22: Anchorage, AK
• June 15-17: Bournemouth, UK
• June 18-19: Holland (tentative)
• June 23-July 1: Dublin, Ireland
• July 20-23: Stratford, Ontario, Canada
• August 17-19: Lake Tahoe, NV

In addition, I’m going to be hosting two gatherings in the Southern California area. One will be the first weekend in May as an old friend and long-time colleague is visiting from the east coast. He has as good a grasp on the gospel of grace and the place of Scripture as anyone I’ve met. We’ll open up our home on Friday night or Saturday night for those who would like to glean from the wisdom in his life. Date will depend on who wants to come and when they’re free. Contact me if you’re interested.

Then, on Memorial Day Weekend Sara and I will be hosting long-time friends and a co-writer with me on some BodyLife articles, Kevin and Val Smith from Australia. We’re planning a Sunday get-together for folks in the area who would like to discuss the journey living in the Father’s affection and as the New Testament family with any who want to come. Again, please let me know if you are interested and we’ll schedule it on Saturday or Sunday depending on the availability of those interested.

Finally! I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent on this amazing piece of fiction in the past 16 months, from rewrites to edits to layout and design to putting up the website, but the finish line is in sight. I can’t wait to share this book with so many of you whom we’ve tortured over the last year by talking about a book few of you could actually read. Well, we’re about to fix that.

As I write this, the books are being printed about 25 miles from my study. We should have them in hand to send out even before our May 1, 2007 pre-publication date. We’re doing two releases on this book to help us generate some buzz that might encourage bookstores to carry this book. As you know we did not go with a regular publisher here because some of the Christian publishers we talked to wanted to change the most powerful parts of this story and secular publishers thought the plot was too ‘Jesusy’ for them! So, we’re depending on viral marketing, word of mouth and ultimately a work of the Spirit to take this book as far and wide as he desires.

Many people I’ve discussed this book with cast a suspicious glance when they think I am talking about Christian fiction. And I understand why. I read very little Christian fiction because most of the plots are too predictable, the answers very religious and the characters often one-dimensional with plastic answers for life’s difficult challenges. This is NOT that book. In fact when many of those I talked into reading it, finished with it they wanted 10 or 20 more copies for their friends and family.

When I first read The Shack it reminded me of a young Lewis or Tolkien, and I realize that is high praise indeed! I’ve now read it seven or eight times and I love what this book says about the God I love so deeply!

If you’d like to pre-order a copy you can do so now at the Lifestream Book Page. You’re also welcome to vist TheShackBook.com where you can sample a couple of chapters and find out what others who’ve pre-screened this book have to say about it. I just got another one today by Bart Campolo, Founder of Mission Year, who wrote:

My biggest disappointment with Christian books is that almost all of them seem to say the same things in the same way. Not so with The Shack! It reads like no other book, and tells a story I guarantee you have not heard before. Enjoy the adventure!

Even you are even one tenth as blessed by this book as I have been, you’ll still consider it money well spent. And when you read it, I’d love to hear how it touched your life too.

I got this email a few weeks ago, and thought it appropriate to share on this Good Friday. This is from a lady in South Carolina who has been recently been reading some of the materials from Lifestream.

I just had to share this with you. I went out to eat with some friends tonight and (they were talking about a recent message they’d heard) about Christ on the cross and the two thieves and how we have destroyed out lives through sin. One repents; one does not, But… tonight as we shared that story I saw something incredibly awesome for the first time. I saw two men hanging next to Jesus that He loved with every bit of his being and one of them knew it and the other did not! I am telling you my eyes are seeing clearer and clearer.

I’ve just finished So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore. A friend gave me He Loves Me a couple of years ago and I’m in the middle of it now. I really believed I knew that Jesus loved me. I really did! But..,

I had no idea. After 32 years of trying to love Jesus with everything I had in me, I am beginning to get sight of what lays ahead! No words to describe!!!

That Jesus loves each of us has never been the issue. Somehow religion gives us the mistaken idea that there are some folks, those who work hard to please him, whom he really loves, and then there are those who don’t, whom he hates. When the love of the Jesus has never been the question. He loves—all of us! The question is only whether we’ll embrace the reality of his love, or deny it to our own destruction.

Sad, isn’t it? You would think that the one thing 32 years of living in Jesus would produce, would be the security in his affection that allows us to awake to each new day surely grounded in him. Instead, religion makes us busy with doing well-intentioned things for him, instead of coming to rest in the certainty of his affection for us.

And don’t try to tell me that those motivated by the fears of religion do more for God than those who rest secure in his love. I know better than that. Those who respond to the fears of religion may be caught up in a frenzy of activity they think is for him, but it the long run it is only for them and their hope of earning an affection he’s already given. While I will always acknowledge his graciousness to use even our misguided efforts for his glory, they can also cause much hurt to others in the process.

The people that I think are doing the most for the kingdom, are those who live each day in the security of his affection and do what he puts on their heart WITH him, instead of trying to do a bunch of stuff FOR him. And if it takes 2 days, 10 years or even 32, I pray you come to know just how loved you are and learn the joy and freedom of living in that reality.

I will be ruminating on the death and resurrection of my Older Brother Jesus this weekend, and all he did to secure for each of us a place in Father’s house. My parents and kids will be coming over this weekend. We’ll probably hunt a few easter eggs with Aimee. And then Sara and I are taking some days off. Her Spring Break began today and this year we’re going to enjoy some time off with each other! YIPPEEE!!!

I pray you all have a blessed Easter as well!

I got an email today from someone who is struggling to sort out what’s going on in the fellowship she’s been a part of for some time. Suddenly she’s finding that she doesn’t want to sit through all the meetings and finding them an “ugly weight†rather than a joy. But she feels guilty if she thinks about not going. She is realizing that although she goes in hopes of encountering God, it rarely happens there and yet she still has wonderful friends there.

It’s not an easy thing when God begins to open your eyes to the manipulation of religious systems. Suddenly participating seems like a chore, and you begin to see how the classes and designations designed to provide protection are actually manipulating people’s desires to belong and to be approved by others. Now it feels like a game and participating in it a bit “creepyâ€. What does she do?

Here are some excerpts from her emails: “That’s not to say that the pastor or others are horrible people – far from it. I love them and respect them. It’s just that I’m not comfortable spending from 10:30 to 12:45 there when all I really want to do is leave. It’s like my heart is changing as is my way of thinking. But adding to that is this sense of ‘well what would I do on Sunday anyway?’ I almost feel like I’m distancing myself from church as an institution and don’t know if that’s right or how to handle it….

“I’m frustrated and restless and honestly don’t know how to deal with much of what’s going on in my spiritual life lately. It’s like I can’t rest and that troubles me. I really hope you don’t mind me sort of tossing this your way. It’s just that you seem to be at a place where you actually do know rest and you’re not striving to be right or make a point.â€

Knowing her concerns reflect what so many others go through at this stage of the journey, I thought others with similar concerns would appreciate reading what I wrote back to her:

I can appreciate your story. Once you start seeing through the illusion of religion, it can be a scary road. All the things you’ve found comfort in before, suddenly seem destructive.

I love what you’re seeing, though I know it can be disorienting. It is the result of God answering your prayers to know him as he really is. As we get to know him, our perception of the things around us change, especially those things we’ve thought are his. I have no idea where this will lead you. Going to gather with other believers because they are your friends is never a bad reason to go. To see it as your place to meet Father is problematic, since he wants to be with you all the time. And seeing how you and others get manipulated by well-intentioned policies and programs will cause some grief.

Will God give you the grace to live through it and love folks anyway? Will God give you the grace to walk away and see what else he has for you? I don’t know. Only he does.

What you can do now is to stop responding to guilt. That’s the real power of religious thinking. It manipulates us with shame and with wanting others to approve of us, so that we’ll jump through its hoops. You don’t have to jump through those hoops to love God and love the folks there. But when you stop doing so, it may make you a bit more dangerous for the powers that be. The system cannot love what it cannot control and that may result in problems over time.

For now, just listen to Jesus. Do what he puts on your heart. Stop giving place to guilt so it can whither and die away and be gentle with those who cannot possibly grasp what you’re seeing now any more than you could a year ago. In that he will make the way clear ahead and you, too, will get to learn to live in his rest, and enjoy the incredible fellowship that the body can have together when it is less concerned about the success of the institution and more focused on who this Jesus really is…

I know that’s not very concrete, but he did not promise us concrete. He promised us life!

This feels like one of the longest trips of my life, just because of the ever-changing nature of the meetings I am into. I started over the weekend with some brothers and sisters from the Nashville area (and some that came in from further distances) sharing the life of Jesus together. Then it was off to Vanderbilt University for three days of sorting through church/state issues with a host of civil liberty groups, advocacy groups, lawyers and academics attempting to sort out such things as the Bible in public schools and evolution and intelligent design. I had some wonderful personal conversations as part of those days that were incredibly enriching.

Now I’ve moved on to Washington, DC and yesterday toured the Holocaust Museum (pictured at left) for a gut-wrenching, moving and eye-opening experience. We came away overwhelmed by what had happened, how easily an entire society was manipulated into such atrocity and the absolute devastation of so many lost lives. Unbelievable! And the exhibit touches some of your deepest emotions. Everyone on the planet would do well to live through that unspeakable time of our planet’s history and the reality of how one group of people could be so systematically targeted for torture and death.

Then last night we met with some networks of believers in the DC area that were most fascinating to say the least. I wish I could speak more about it here, but I just don’t have any idea what to say or how to process it yet. We went from one of the high-end office/restaurant areas of DC to a smoke-filled basement with half a dozen young men who were sharing a hookah as they were asking real questions about life in Jesus and how they could live it more authentically.

I’ll finish here this weekend with Friday night, Saturday and Sunday meetings with friends of Lifestream and The God Journey, and friends of those friends. I’m looking forward to seeing some folks I’ve met before and meeting new ones. And then on Saturday afternoon I’m doing a presentation as part of my BridgeBuilders portfolio to the leaders of 17 of the most influential government lobbying groups on public education about how we can deal with sexual orientation discrimination and harassment without undermining people of faith.

You just never know the places God will ask you to go. I treasure each of those environments and what he is doing in the midst of them, though so many coming at me in rapid succession, has worn me down pretty well. Today has afforded more rest and a chance to catch up on the office stuff that has built up.

As I spent some time in Matthew this morning, however, one phrase put perspective to so much of what I’m involved with during these days. I read the story of Jesus coming to the disciples in the midst of the storm as their boat is being swamped on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has just endured the news of his cousin’s beheading by Herod, dealt wiht 5,000 people who wanted to hear from him and spent an all night session alone with his Father. The disciples saw Jesus coming to them over the waves and their hearts are struck with fear.

“It is I!” Jesus spoke to them, though they hardly believed it in their fear. I love that simple expression. Honestly it doesn’t matter to me where God asks me to go or who I might be asked to touch on any given day, as long as I can identify him and the work he is doing in those things. I may only have a hint of it, but when I hear, “This is I,” my heart comes to rest. It doesn’t matter if I’m stretched way beyond my comfort zone, or if the waves are crashing over the bow. It only matters that he is there and his purpose is unfolding in the way I live alongside him. Then, I really don’t mind being anywhere he wants me to be!