Search Results for: Friends and friends of friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not much on New Year’s resolutions. I don’t make them and don’t try to follow them. That’s not to say at regular intervals I don’t assess what God seems to be doing in my life and contemplate what choices he might ask of me to move into the next phase of my journey. That’s pretty regular, though it rarely falls on the turn of a calendar.

And it usually is not some kind of self-made attempt to change myself. I gave that up a long time ago.

But I got an email yesterday that gave me a wonderful chuckle in the middle of the day. I might be able to get in on resolutions like these. Here’s what Charity wrote me…

Last Year I gave up my microwave for New Years to see how life with out instant gratification would be.

Its all good.

This year I have made the decision with the help of some godly friends that maybe I should give up religion.

I’m nervous but know I have been given a great opportunity to walk with Jesus.

2007! Can you believe it? I hope you had some relaxing and refreshing times over your holiday season. We did here. It was a marvelous time with family and friends. But, I’ve got to tell you, I really enjoyed getting back into more of a routine this morning and getting back to those things God has put before me in this new year.

But one of the things I hope to hold on to this year is the childlike wonder I see in my granddaughter. (Yep, that’s her again on the left. Sorry, the combination of her expressions and my daughter’s photographic skills, makes it irresistible.) We got to spend a couple of days with her and her parents up in the snow, which we don’t see much of around the Los Angeles area. This picture of her captures perfectly what it was like being with her. Almost everything around her filled her with wonder and laughter. I love seeing the world through her eyes. (And if you want to see a bit more of the Jacobsen’s in the snow with kids and dogs, you can check out our very own YouTube video here.)

I’ve been spending some time of late with Nicodemus in John 3 for a future BodyLife article. I am challenged by Jesus’ words to him that to see the kingdom we must become like little children. I think part of that includes this sense of wonder that pervades our life, even the most difficult moments with the expectancy of his appearing within it.

I think that may get more difficult as we get older and get more focused on the challenges, pains and unfulfilled wants of this age than we do the love of our Father. Even as Aimee was wondrously enraptured at the scenery, she was also cutting in some molars that have been more than painful. Somehow, for her the wonder of all things new still outweighs the bad stuff.

I know many people facing the direst of circumstances as this year begins, in terms of medical challenges, financial needs and emotional brokenness. I know it isn’t easy to keep our head up when the world throws it’s nastiest stuff our direction and so many challenges seem to pile on, but one look into the face of the Creator of all, and the Gracious Father of love, is enough to melt our hearts and restore our joy. He knows you and he loves you, and his purposes in you will not thwarted by the most brutal of circumstance.

There is no greater wonder than the simplicity and power of his glory. May you often in this year, turn your eyes to the Father of all!

Living this journey isn’t an always thing to get since most of us have been brought up in religious environments where our lives are based on obligation instead of friendship with him. Learning to live in freedom and watch him do things in far better ways than we ever could on our own is one of the great joys of this journey. I got this email from a friend of mine who lives in Canada. I love what he is discovering and how he expressed it. He’s learning that our evangelistic efforts and our living as demonstrations of his reality in the world are two very different things. And they are.

When evangelism is an obligation where we need to convince others how wrong they are, we are only pushing people away because of our religious agenda. But when the Gospel simply flows from our lives in the simplicity of how we live, some amazing things can happen. As you read what, he’s learning, watch too at how he’s learning. He’s responding to those nudgings on his heart and watching what the Spirit can do through him is more incredible than anything our own efforts can achieve. That’s how the Spirit wins us into living freely in this kingdom by convincing us that he works in ways our own efforts can’t fathom.

Also, thought I’d quickly share a bit of what Father’s been doing in my life. Towards the end of this past summer, as I began to think about upcoming commitments and scheduling for this fall and winter, I felt Father prompting me to scale back the commitments on my time. In past years, I found myself at times swamped doing things I didn’t always enjoy. Looking back, I could see this was robbing me of time for enjoying simple fellowship and relationships. Anyway, I knew something had to change for this fall/winter, and I felt increasing peace about freeing up my time. I didn’t have any idea what specific things Father was going to do, but it was on my heart to just spend time with whomever God brought across my path and build relationships with people.

Suffice to say, I have enjoyed some tremendous times with different people and can only stand back in awe at how Father connects people. I have also begun to experience the simple pleasure and freedom of relationships. Real stuff happens because of relationships!!! I am so convinced, like no other time in my life, that relationships are what it’s all about. And it’s because of Father’s revelation to me as I’ve experienced this in my own life. There’s such a freedom in just getting to know and love another person only for who they are. Not as a “candidate” for salvation or because I can “get something” from them.

A neat example is this guy I met golfing in the summer. He’s in his mid-50’s, single, (not a believer) and has had a variety of health problems over the years (including drug and alcohol addiction). Anyway, I began to spend some time with him and have continued to do so. In the past, I would have felt a guilt or burden to “witness” to him in some way. But Father has slowly changed me in that area, and I don’t feel any pressure at all. As a result, we’ve had some interesting discussions about God over time, but it’s on his accord. And I’m finding that I don’t have any agenda in that regard, but just a simple love for him that I know doesn’t come from me!!

One time he said something that really encouraged me. He told me that when we first met, he immediately sensed something “spiritual” about me in the way I was. This was such an encouragement to me, as I’ve always struggled with “not saying enough,” especially since I’m not the most “evangelistic” or outgoing person. It was as though Father was telling me that I don’t have to do or say anything, that I can just rest in the fact He lives in me and his light will not be dimmed. But to just trust him—that I don’t always need to “see” the results to verify God’s work! Needless to say, I feel blessed at what Father is doing not only in my life, but in those around me. What a journey! I’m excited at what he has in store!

Tomorrow I’m off to Illinois and Missouri for the weekend, meeting with some old friends, and connecting with some people I’ve only corresponded with on the Internet. It should be lots of fun, though the weather tomorrow doesn’t look like the best as I’m trying to get into St. Louis.

So before I go, I want to leave you with two things. The first is a special offer we’re running through the month of December at Lifestream. With the order of any two books or CD collections we will give you a FREE copy of Tales of the Vine. All you have to do is ask for it when you order. Please do NOT use the shopping cart button for that book, simply request it in the comment section of your PayPal or credit card order, or mention it in your email order to us.

And then I wanted to leave you with a quote. It is from an unpublished manuscript that a friend asked me to look over for him. The book hasn’t been published yet, and I’m not sure if or when it will. It’s called “Where the Rocks Are†by Fred Wechsel. I’m also not sure it is a book that most of you would want to read since it is written by a pastor to a more liturgical audience, but this paragraph is profound:

“Sister, Brother, you the Body of Christ, be of good courage: the church is alive and well and much of the time hidden. Let this be a clue, that the world does not, cannot, will not see it. It is to be sought. It is to be found. Do not be surprised at the distance away from Christ that others would lead you, fool you, use you, or destroy you. This God-business is for keeps. The Lord is faithful. Keep your sense alert to catch the sound, the sight, and the warmth of spiritual fellowship. Be sad for what we all encounter, yet rejoice that you are able to see it for what it is.“

Be encouraged! God’s work is unfolding in the earth. It may not be where we’ve been trained to see it, but it is nonetheless real and growing every day…

Here’s another look over my shoulder. What a way to wake up to this new day! I go this email today from some dear friends I met in New Zealand during my stay there. I love what God has been doing in them and don’t mind being called ‘Jim’ at all if it puts the focus where it belongs—on Jesus himself! And I love her story of the lamb and freedom, and sensing by the Spirit that it was first for her before it was for otherrs. I love the way God sets people free in him. He’s amazing!

I just wanted to say how much we have first of all, enjoyed your book So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. I have lost count of how many I have ordered from your office. A friend lent it to us and we have found it fantastically freeing. I have given it away to numerous people who are all plodding along on this journey, and I would say that every one of them have also found it so freeing. Some of them, who have read it, have already been living in real freedom; others, like me, feel like it was a door into more freedom in Jesus. And then I ordered your 8 CDs on Relational Living and the Cross, and I personally would say, that the book is just the appetiser to the CDs. I saved them all to my computer, and have copied them numerous times onto CD for others to enjoy. Knowing that I have a Dad in heaven who loves me more than I can ever know—is that wow or what? I wake up most mornings asking the Lord to show me how much He loves me, and I ask Him to help me live loved. I realise that I haven’t had a clear concept of “Daddy” where I can sit on His lap and be just loved by Him. When I was young I remember envying another kid who was sitting on his dad’s lap, and wishing that my dad would do that to me, but he wouldn’t. So I’ve asked Him to heal that in me, and for Him to be my daddy, and I know He’s doing that in me.

Now we also have to confess Wayne, that we have renamed you ‘Jim!’. I gave the CDs to some very close friends of ours, and we have all listened to them so much, and are getting such a new revelation of the cross, and living in Him, and we often start saying, “What about when Wayne said this, or Wayne said that.” And we know it’s not about you! And I know that you know that too! So we came up with laughingly calling you Jim for a while. I hope you don’t mind!

As you know, we are on a sheep farm. We have just finished our lambing season, which is our busiest time of all on the farm. My job during this is to “mother-on the sheep.” This involves taking an orphaned lamb (either her mother has died, or the mother has twins or triplets and doesn’t have enough milk to feed all her lambs), and putting her with another mother and getting that mother to adopt the orphan lamb as if it were her own. Often the mother will accept her new lamb within 2 or 3 days, but sometimes I get a very “stroppy” ewe, and I could take up to a week working with her, for the mother to accept the lamb.

One of the ways that we get the mother to adopt her lamb, is by tying one of the front hoofs of the mother to a fence, and also tying the lamb up to the fence as well. The rope is about a metre in length, and the mother sheep can move along the fence about 4 feet, before she is stopped by another fence post. She can then eat the grass in this area that she is tied to. And hopefully the lamb is able to tuck under the mum and have a feed. Every morning and evening, I will go and make sure the lamb has a good feed of milk from the mother, and then after she has fed, I will move the mother and lamb on to the next block on the fence, so that she is continually getting new grass to eat, which keeps her milk supply up.

Anyhow, I had a particularly “stroppy” mother who DID NOT want to adopt her new lamb. As I would walk up to her, the mother would jump up and down, racing up and down her little patch of fence, and I would hold her tight so that the lamb could get a feed. I was beginning to wonder if she would ever accept the lamb, and then one morning, when I came to her, I found the lamb full, and the mother was bleating her (which is a very good sign of accepting the lamb as her own.) They were finally ready to let go! The ewe was sitting down, so I quietly untied her, and the lamb, and walked away so as not to disturb them. As I watched from a distance, I realised that the ewe did not know she was free, so I walked back to her to give her a gentle nudge. She leapt to her feet, and ran to the end of her fence post, and stopped sharp. She still thought she had the rope on her hoof! As I walked away, I thought, “She’s free and she doesn’t even know it.” And I also realised that although she didn’t know that she was free then, by the time I came back in the evening, she would’ve discovered her freedom, and nobody would’ve told her, she would’ve found it by herself.

And then I thought smugly (yes smugly!) to myself – “Well, that would make a good object lesson to share with others!”, and almost immediately came the thought, “so how does this apply to you?”, and I felt the Lord say to me, “You’re free, and you don’t even know it.” Well I blinked back a few tears at that, for it was the truth. And now I have to say, my Dad is now showing me what it is to begin to be free. And it’s awesome! And it’s incredibly relaxing, as I begin to learn to live in Him. Do I think I hear Him much? No, I don’t reckon I do very much. But that’s okay too. I’m free in that, realising that I’m puddling along, day by day. It’s really cool.

Anyhow, time is ticking by here. I have just had my 16 yr old son come in. He has really enjoyed your Jake book, and also listening to the CDs and he said to say, “Please feel free to come stay!†Seriously, if you ever feel to come back to NZ, we in Fairlie would be keen to catch you up. Our other son who’s just got engaged and is in Christchurch, would also want to hang out with you.

And I’d love to hang out with all of you again someday, should Jesus have it in his heart for me to return to New Zealand someday!

I have just arrived in Maine for the tail-end of fall color. I love fall! I got in on the beginning in upstate New York, and am getting it on the finish here in New England. I’m sorry I’ve not written here in awhile, but this is a very busy season for me. I only had two days to turn-around from my trip to College Station, Texas and this eleven-day trip to New England. (If you want to hear more about the Texas trip, check out today’s GodJourney podcast. And I had a ton of things to do just to catch up on email and to get the Jake book read onto CD. I wanted to get it done before this trip, but didn’t make it. I still have some editing to do on the audio files and they should be ready shortly after my return from this trip.

Over the next few days I’ll be meeting with six or seven different groupings of people from Maine to Massachusetts to New Hampshire and back to Massachusetts. I have been looking forward to this trip for some time because I have so many dear, dear friends in this area and have not been back here for almost five years. I’ll also be meeting a lot of new people, some of them just starting on a fresh journey of intimacy with Jesus. This will be fabulous.

I’ll leave you with this quote I read the other day in a very strange book. I want to write more about it in a future blog. For three-fourths of the book it chronicles a fabulous journey that is incredibly challenging. And then the last quarter totally misses the point for the last fourth. Very sad. Some great insights, though, including this one:

“A truly great preacher isn’t someone with a seminary degree who explains the gospel. It’s someone who is the gospel.”
Ian Morgan Cron in Chasing Francis

The events in Lancaster County, PA this week were as gruesome as one can witness. A deranged man took ten Amish elementary school girls hostage, ties them up with plans on molesting them. But police arrived sooner than he expected and he quickly shot all of them in the head, execution style, before he killed himself. Five of the girls are dead and the others are in the hospital.

Throughout this week my heart has broken for those little girls and their family and friends. How could someone do this to such innocent young girls, no matter how deep their pain? What a world we live in!

But as much as I have grieved through this tragedy, I’ve also been wonderfully uplifted by the demonstration of God’s forgiveness that this community is demonstrating to the world. As I’ve watched news reports about them and heard them talk, this does not sound like forgiveness-as-denial and a false covering for pain, but a real desire to find the way of Jesus to be real even in a tragedy as crushing as this one. They have even reached out to the family of the man who killed their children, offering forgiveness and help to them. Can you think of any similar situation where you’ve had the opportunity to even consider the pain that the family of the perpetrator are going through as well? They’ve helped me pray there too!

I have been in Lancaster County a number of times and seen the Amish farms there. When I see their horse-drawn carriages and farm equipment, I can’t help but wonder what kind of legalistic time warp they got trapped in. While it allows them to live simple, family-centered lives, how relevant can they be to the world around them?

It turns out extraordinarily relevant when you consider the conflicts of our world where anger and rage fester and grow generation after generation until the only solution they can see is to seek out ever-grander schemes of death and destruction. As these Amish brothers and sisters have struggled with what it means to walk in forgiveness even before the emotions of their own loss have had time to settle, I have been freshly encouraged and challenged myself to embrace forgiveness in my own life so deeply and so immediately. I have been brought to tears numerous times watching the news as they talk of what it means to forgive and act on it with such conviction.

And in doing so they have demonstrated more of life and reality of Jesus in our world than anything else I’ve seen in the media this year. May God grant them great grace and comfort in this season and to the family of the killer as well.

You’ll either thank me for this, or be deeply concerned that I’ve lept off the cliff of cynicism. I’ve got more than a few friends with a playful sense of humor. A couple of those just uploaded a new website,The Church You Know. It is anchored by some creatively crazy videos that poke fun at ‘church’ as we’ve come to know it in the 21st Century and makes some potent points in doing so. I think many of you will enjoy these immensely. There’s also a forum if you wish to discuss them. Please be warned, however. If you don’t find sarcasm funny, or your just not in a place yet to laugh at some of the absurdities of religious institutional conformity, you might not want to click on that link.

But I know that will be hard to resist, like the fruit on a tree God warned the first two humans not too touch. But I promise, the consequences here are humorous and not too destructive.

I just returned from a quick trip through the Central Valley of California where I met with six different groups of folks in four days from the Fresno area to Sacramento and back. What a trip!

While I was away someone sent me a cartoon by Steve Benson that appeared over the weekend in the Arizona Republic newspaper. The cartoon depicted Lenny Bruce, a comedian and social critic who had been imprisoned for breaking obscenity laws and died of a drug overdose in 1966. He is standing next to a newspaper vending machine where the headline reads, “Study Finds Personal Faith Up, Religious Affiliation Down.” The the artist quotes something Bruce said more than 40 years ago, “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” The tag line next to him reads, “Lenny Bruce, Prophet”. I am amazed that such a conflicted individual would have the insight to make that conclusion years before it became a reality.

Of course I wouldn’t say people are straying from ‘church’, but they are straying from the structures we call ‘church’ because many of them no longer answer the deep cry to know the Living God and to share authentic community with others. This last trip really testifies to that. On this whirlwind trip I met with people that represented some 7 or 8 different groups of people who are in such different places in this journey.

I was with the Family Room bunch in Sacramento who have over the last number of years let go of the institutional element of their life together to learn what it means to be a relational community of God’s people. There’s is an amazing story that we’ve told on our podcasts. I met others who had recently left congregations they had been instrumental in starting, only to be ostracized from close friendships because they struggled with serious questions about relationship and body life. I met a former pastor who was walking through an incredible journey sorting out what body life could look like at the risk of his salary and job security because he hungers for something deeper than an institution can produce. And I met numerous individuals who are risking relationships with family and friends to follow the hunger God put in their hearts.

That’s why I get a bit riled when people accuse those who no longer participate in traditional congregations as selfish. Believe me, this is not a selfish way to walk. It can cost you so much more than you ever dreamed. But when you are faithful to what God puts on your heart, it will in time bear some incredible fruit. By stripping away the institutions’ dependence on program, conformity, and approval it opens people up to see God as he really is, and the church as she really exists in the earth. That is rarely easy, but it is always real! So follow him, however he leads you, whether that’s inside a traditional congregation or outside of it. But find a way to live in his fullness and not settle for having a form of godliness, but denying its reality.

I’m only in town about 52 hours, before I head back out to visit the reaches of upstate New York and some new places I’ve not been to before. I suspect I’ll find some more folks freshly considering what it means to live deeply and freely in the life of Jesus.