My computer just crashed (first time in 10 years of having a laptop!) and I went in search of the only piece of writing that I knew I hadn't backed up (thankfully I had e-mailed to a few people). When I found it, I was freshly struck by the truth that the only things you really have are the things you give away....think about it.....
So, pasted in here below are a new devotional format that I created for Tabitha Summers while she was in England making her first CD. They are each based on a very short youtube video and each limited to one page. Maybe you too find yourself in the place she was in during that week: excited about destiny, but challenged by the demands living toward that destiny daily makes! If so, take a week to breathe and walk this devotional journey, as I once again GIVE AWAY what I feared I had lost!
DAY ONE:
http://youtu.be/47LCLoidJh4
Awareness Test (55 seconds)
In labeling the right brain as the “creative” hemisphere, people might wrongly assume that one of the things it creates is disorder (like some artists they might have known)! But in fact, it is the right side of the brain that orchestrates and organizes left-brain data into a seamless and beautiful whole. Take a golf swing: It is impossible to swing a golf club well when you are consciously working on each component of the swing. The golfer must step up to the ball and clear his mind of the analysis—no matter how helpful it has been or how accurate--and instead hit the ball for the joy of doing it and love of the game! When this happens, there is actually a right-brain burst of alpha waves that calm all the activity in the left, creating a feeling of peace. (This happens in many other sports as well. All the details of training are set aside as the athlete in the starting gate releases them and reaches from a deeper and more intuitive place to actually run the race!)
Life is no different than sport in this respect. The left side of the brain definitely has a role, but when it is taking us over, we need a right brain burst---something has to orchestrate the data and remind us of the joy of living. The left side of the brain can enslave us, but God can bring a right-brain burst to set us free. When Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest,” he was speaking to a nation who had become so focused on the rules of religion that they had lost the joy of knowing God. He was calling them, in a sense, to have a spiritual “right-brain burst” that would calm the nagging considerations of pleasing and performing and return them to the freedom of just relating! (Matthew 11:28-29)
The Message Bible completes those words of Jesus by saying, “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” There is nothing wrong with drive and determination, but it is not a very good drummer—its rhythms will mess you up and ultimately cut off the creative flow that is necessary for efficiency! Life loses its orchestration and you bog down in halting, fragmented and frustrated motion. It is then that you need to return to God and lay it all down again. Trust that if a golfer can swing, knowing that everything he’s worked on so hard will pay off--without him consciously forcing it--surely you can also rest in the big processes of God.
These devotionals are meant to bring a right-brain burst from heaven. They are meant to help you run the race from a deep place—a place where God’s reality is not just theory in the mind, but actual efficient orchestration of all things such that they WORK TOGETHER FOR GOD.
The video you watched (if you hadn’t seen it before) gave you a little right-brain burst! When you laughed at yourself for not seeing the man in the bear suit the first time, your mind was also experiencing a moment of wonder: Could it be that the world is parading before your eyes many notable things that you are missing because of your focused expectations in rehearsed directions? You were trying to count the basketball passes—you had a job to do!
Don’t let the job you have to do today obscure your vision. Don’t let focus become a blinder. Let the “moon-walking bears” sent by God be noticed and BREATHE. You’ll get the job done—MORE efficiently!
DAY TWO:
http://youtu.be/BW4LseJp728
YouTube: “Even stars and galaxies show God’s greatness” (1:47)
In December of 2010, a study by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum proposed that the estimated number of stars in the universe—100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 100 sextillion—needed to be tripled. Whether or not this astronomer is correct, that’s a lot of stars! With that in mind, read Isaiah 40:26 with a heart of wonder and pause to stand amazed:
Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an
army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.
What is even more amazing is that, if we truly have the Spirit of God inside us, each of our creative endeavors is simply a retelling of the ancient story! The God who hung the stars in the sky with has chosen to dwell inside his people. Surely, surely, he knows how to bring out of them the “good works” he has already deposited inside us—each focused point of energy shall come forth in perfect placement. He knows exactly how to decorate, orchestrate, order, energize, strategize, adapt, release, mix, engineer, oversee...and the list goes on. (AND, he even knows how to do it all for an audience: consider the constellations decorating the sky!)
The universe has never stopped expanding because creation is an open-ended process. The energies of God flow through his people and take shape and form, translating themselves into the outflow of men and women’s hearts.
Lose yourself in God’s vast orchestration and take joy in the fact that this current initiative is being summoned forth BY HIM. You—and the relationships that have rallied around you—are a part of an intricately beautiful wisdom that has been at work from time immemorial. Your life and projects are a part of a display of power that is God showing off who HE is! You are proclaiming the Creator by participating in the creative release that He began!
Take a deep breath and revisit the last sentence of the Scripture, now applying it in the here and now, since you now know that you are personally cooperating with the expansion the universe(!): BECAUSE OF HIS GREAT POWER AND INCOMPARABLE STRENGTH, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THE MELODIES, MEANINGS OR EVEN SUBTLETIES OF THE “STARS” YOU ARE BIRTHING WILL BE MISSING! He has already called each one of them by name!
DAY THREE:
http://youtu.be/AFVac_XzxZA
YouTube: The incredible beauty in the life of cells (3:07)
Isn’t it amazing that even the work of researchers studying what happens when cells “go wrong” cannot help but create a display of intense beauty—the beauty that is present in everything that bears the fingerprint of God! Cells (and you have 50 to 100 trillion of them in your body) are little “storehouses” of the essence of YOU! Each one contains approximately SIX FEET of DNA that is unique to you, coiled up in extraordinarily tight fashion. Every cell is a literal treasure chest of “you-ness”, waiting to be summoned forth for service!
In Matthew 13:52, Jesus was explained the Kingdom by saying:
"That is why every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings both new and old things out of his treasure chest."
God (the same One who summons forth the stars on a large scale) knows how to summon forth every bit of potential that is in each one of us. He has created each compartment of our spirits to house the very things that are needed for us to fulfill our destiny. Though at moments we might feel empty, nothing could be farther from the truth. We are packed with tightly wound spiritual DNA—full of living information about who we are meant to be! It will actually require all of eternity to fully express our individual identities. In a real sense, the odyssey of discovery through which we unravel the spiritual “code” inside us IS the fulfillment of our destiny!
You are a treasure chest of things both old and new. In you (each one of you), all experiences are processed as preparation, according to the information in your spiritual DNA! In the grand scheme of things, every single challenge encountered only serves to summon forth strengths and skills from the storehouse of heaven’s resources inside of us! We were built to activate and release a host of Kingdom traits!
How do we know when the Kingdom DNA has been expressed? Because the end result is always and forever BEAUTY—subtle tones and colors and shadings and contrasting splashes of blinding light, but always and forever, BEAUTY. When Watson and Crick were attempting to construct the first-ever model of DNA, they ruled out several proposals because they simply weren’t BEAUTIFUL and they just knew—even though they weren’t believers—that this amazing molecule of life HAD to be BEAUTIFUL! They were right!
Beauty is in your DNA—reject what isn’t beautiful because it just can’t be God’s fingerprint! Wait for the beauty to fully manifest. Even amidst dysfunction, beauty shines through untainted—it has to: it’s in our genes!
DAY FOUR:
http://youtu.be/IcevP5tkWH0
YouTube: Cell Journey Deep Inside (1:44)
Each of the 50 trillion cells in your body is carrying on life constantly! This video shows the constant activity in just one cell, and it actually happens at this rapid rate. Whenever we feel that “nothing is happening” for us, we should remember that even on a cellular level (much more so on an invisible spiritual level), a whole host of processes are literally working for our good!
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” Though most people focus on the command in the first part of the verse, “watch over your heart,” the second part of the verse actually carries the energy of grace to fulfill the command! Out of your heart are flowing springs of life! There are constant processes at work inside you, facilitating life and destiny! The life of God inside you is not stagnant or lacking movement EVER! God in you—every part of you—is dynamic and full of energy. Things are happening, even when you are at rest! Springs of life are on the move and they are available in every moment!
Notice that the word “springs” is plural. Imagine the variety of springs on earth. Some are high in the mountains and some are surprises in the desert. Some are in a well-tended garden and others are waiting to be discovered in wilderness. There are many kinds of springs in you and they flow with different strengths and at different times. They blend their waters into one glorious mixture but still retain the characteristics they took on from their various sources. The rushing water of the springs inside you carries dissolved minerals from its subterranean journey, giving a unique flavor to your particular flow! Every rocky place you have experienced has only served to add texture to your life.
Springs imply energy from another place. Fatigue is not a factor when the springs of life flow. Some springs come from a whole different geography, travelling hundreds of miles to contribute their stream. Heaven’s springs are in you, flowing forth, each carrying its own energy and climate. WATCH as they simply erupt and flow forth from your heart!
DAY FIVE:
http://youtu.be/DQus4je7Jw4
YouTube: Tabernacle _Animated (1:10)
Exodus 30:18 Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and put water in it.
Exodus 38:8 They made the bronze basin and its bronze stand from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
Every part of the Moses’ tabernacle in the wilderness portrayed Christ in some way. And now the reality that the symbolism pointed to lives in us, since we have become his dwelling place. The basin for washing was a picture of the grace that not only removes sin, but also cleanses the identity from the desires and memories association with human dysfunction. As the priests entering the tabernacle paused to wash at the basin, they were looking ahead in time to the continual cleansing of being that would freely flow from Christ.
It was no accident that the basin was made of the brass mirrors donated by the women who served. Christ is not just an addition to our identity: He engulfs that very identity with Himself, rendering it unrecognizable apart from him, blending it into the very grace that he gives. And all of this happens as we experience him through living worship. The cleansing of our sin is only the beginning; the REDEMPTION of our very IDENTITY is the real goal of the presence of God!
Our identity thrives on a continual washing in the realities of heaven. I can’t help but think that Bono’s faith along these lines must have informed his lyric writing when he wrote the bridge to the song Walk On. After singing, “You’ve got to leave it behind,” he lists the categories of things that can be left behind:
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress-up
All that you scheme...
We need to see our identity--both the “good” and even the self-perceived “bad” of it—lost in the basin of grace. In the place of worship, we can let the notion of our separateness from Him be just a distant memory. Turning in our mirrors to become a basin for others’ cleansing is MINISTRY…..
DAY SIX:
http://youtu.be/R_w4HYXuo9M
YouTube: How to Turn a Sphere Inside Out (1:38)
Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….”
The word “transform” in Romans 12:2 is a door into a huge room of truth. It does imply metamorphosis like the butterfly, but there is so much more! The Greek roots of the word “transform” mean literally to CHANGE FORM IN KEEPING WITH AN INNER REALITY, AS AN AFTER-EFFECT OF BEING IN SOME ENVIRONMENT! The verb comes from a noun that means AN OUTWARD EXPRESSION THAT EMBODIES AN ESSENTIAL INNER SUBSTANCE SO THAT THE FORM TAKEN IS IN COMPLETE HARMONY WITH THE INNER ESSENCE! It is not just finally changing into something useful or worthy! True transformation from God is about manifesting the real YOU (which is in every way beautiful).
God is clearly up to just one thing in all our lives: INSIDE-OUTING us so that our inner essence—the expression of HIS creativity—is on display! But, like the mathematicians that know how to inside-out a sphere, he does not cheat! He doesn’t abuse us or break us or force us in any way. Moment by moment, he leads us in a deeper understanding of who we really are so that what we end up giving to the world is an authentic expression of Him in us! The process may stretch us, but will never break us, and if we know that the goal at the end of the road is the giving away of ourselves in complete freedom, then we can endure the intricate twistings and turnings and rejoice in the beauty of his realm of ultimate order!
Death Cab for Cutie’s song Soul Meets Body contains the amazing line, “I still believe it’s true that there are roads left in both of our shoes…” What makes that line so amazing is this: In God’s view of things the paths of our lives aren’t really inanimate things stretching out before us, beckoning us to embark. Instead, the roads of our journey are actually inside of us, waiting to come out! Isaiah 26:12 says, “LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us.” Our future is waiting to emerge from within! As we are inside-outed by God’s Spirit, our destiny unfolds. The Kingdom of heaven is within….
(You might want to watch the video again with this all in mind. The sphere is you and, by the way, the process of inside-outing you will change the world—but that’s just a glorious side-effect!)
DAY SEVEN:
http://youtu.be/GtiSCBXbHAg
YouTube: Cymatic experiement (2:05)
Cymatics is the study of “visible sound”. The beautiful wave patterns displayed by the sand in this video are generated solely by the frequency of the sound being emitted. The sand is self-organizing according to the standing waves patterns created by the vibrations. You are watching sound energy literally organize matter! The information in the pitch (the wavelength of the frequency) is being translated into a visual form!
This simple experiment provides a great metaphor for our relationship with God. There are really only two “requirements” for flowing with Him:
1. Don’t resist the organizing force of His orchestration! (Release the desire to set up patterns of our own or to take charge of the other pieces involved: imagine a grain of sand in the experiment nervously running around trying to help the patterns emerge!)
2. Hear the frequency of heaven and welcome its energy! (This is just living a life of responsive worship.)
God’s universe is one of both extreme order and beauty and our lives will ultimately reflect that when we rest in Him and simply tune in. The chaos with which we are all too familiar is simply a perception we experience in the moments in which we are temporarily unable to see the pattern, and the lack of a pattern is just evidence that the frequency (energy) is increasing!
In Genesis, we read that God created the universe with his WORDS! In a sense, the world around us is just “visible sound”, still vibrating to the patterns that God generated with His voice! He SAID, “Let there be light….” And there WAS light. And there still is, because when God speaks, the vibrations continue throughout the ages.
In Psalm 51 in the Message Bible, David prays, “Shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.” The voice of the Lord is inside you today saying, “Let there be light” and calling for that light to be divided from the darkness. The sound of heaven is organizing your energies and even your thoughts (which are just biochemical events, really) according to his patterns of beauty! You cannot fail and you cannot fall. You are simply responding to the creative sound of His voice. And you are becoming “visible sound” for others who have never heard Him! He is acting on you in unseen ways in every moment.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
"How Was Your Trip?" (An Answer)
The journey to Wellspring on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda is a long one. For us starting from Texas, it meant 18 hours of flight time via London, navigating the netherworld that is immigration in Entebbe, and a two-hour car ride from the airport ending in a session of midnight honking outside the ministry center gate as we waited for it to be opened for us! Herbert and Eve and all the Wellspring staff are the most amazing hosts, but they must share along with the rest of their nation the frustrations of frequent and unpredictable power outages. By candlelight we found our room and fell into our beds.
Wellspring is not remote in location—certainly there are places in the African bush that are far more remote in terms of being cut off from civilization—but it is remote in terms of ease of accessibility. We in the west who like to talk about being “intentional” need only take a car ride of any kind through the streets of Entebbe and Kampala to sample a new level of intentionality displayed by each and every driver! The amount of focused determination necessary to get somewhere through the traffic would be enough to accomplish a dozen goals in our lives and churches which offered a “normal” amount of resistance! (It was no surprise that even in Heathrow airport on the way home, conversations could be overheard between several nationalities, the topic of which was the Kampala traffic!)
Once at the Wellspring complex, however, perched as it is with a view of life in the valley below (a valley that only a few decades ago was bush), one finds an oasis of peace—a little city of Kingdom development, fully functioning and moving in the opposite spirit of the chaos outside. There is a small hospital, a not-so-small primary school, a fully-functioning cafeteria and dormitories, conference center, offices to support micro-enterprise and housing developments, and also a church which is bustling with activity. In my life, I don’t know that I have ever seen such a footprint of the Kingdom—and I live with my eyes searching for such things! (I declared upon our return to our church which we very purposely named, “The Abbey,” that I had just come from an African Abbey: so much more than a Sunday morning!)
We had come to Wellspring to speak at their annual pastors’ conference—their 7th such event. Having learned through experience that God delights in joining his people across cultures, we knew that the relationships formed with the African pastors and leaders on the trip would be rich—and it certainly was. (I feel I carry them in my heart now.) What we did not realize, however, was that God was doing something that would transcend our bonds with Africa. The six members of the ministry team that had been assembled by Herbert and Eve (directors of Wellspring) were appointed for a purpose beyond the ones we could have imagined.
The web of relationships among the team included so many “coincidences”. Phil Moore from England was one of the first people that we had connected with 15 years ago when we first travelled to the U.K. He and his church had taken us in and loved and cared for us, but we had lost touch with him as the years had gone on. Our good friend, Andy Read, had completed a year as C.E.O. of Links International and it was a joy to travel with him doing Links business, moving our relationship beyond just visiting each other’s houses and churches. And then there were Mike and Beryl Godward, the founders of Wellspring (and doers of many other exploits) who now lead Links International in South Africa. We had only run across them briefly over the years, but had always longed to hear their stories and know them better—amazingly in them we discovered a mutual desire towards us!
We ministered all day (literally—many sessions) at the Pastor’s conference. Unlike an ordinary conference where you simply come with a message and deliver it, we all noticed that we were, like bike racers on the same team, drafting off of each other’s wind! I fled to my room more than once to alter my prepared message, having caught fresh inspiration from someone else on the team in the previous session! Though we came from diverse starting points, never has a conference been so thoroughly “whole”—it was one big teachable moment with several players involved—an epic unfolding that consumed our individuality!
At the end of the day—when everything shuts down because there may or may not be power—we found a way each night to be together for fellowship, joined the second part of the week by our son Joe and Billy Wells from San Marcos—two of the next generation who have begun to work with Links USA. Whether it was gathered with all the African leaders at the home of Herbert and Eve for a meal, dancing, singing, including the national anthems of every nation represented (and the University of Texas fight song—sorry—Billy kept saying that Texas was once its own nation!), or just the team hanging out together at the home of Holly who oversees the Wellspring educational initiatives, we couldn’t get enough time together.
The Kingdom is both present as well as “waiting to emerge” at all times, but there are those moments when the invisible reality of Kingdom just SHOWS UP like a STORM! We seem to live for those moments. On the last night of the conference, in our fellowship at Holly’s house, we had one. What began as just sharing turned into revelation and we realized God Himself had joined in the chat-time with a loud voice and a mighty hand! Suddenly we knew we were sitting in a miracle: Through all it took to get there, God had assembled us in Holly’s living room to testify once again to us that this Kingdom is built through relationships and that it will never be any stronger on earth than the relationships that carry it! From diverse places, backgrounds and experiences, we sat as one sensing the reality of God’s strategies and networking for the nations. IT WAS SO REAL! Words couldn’t express it and yet we all tried. Tears flowed. Hearts merged.
We realized as we sat there in the “remote” safe harbor that is the Wellspring zone, that each of us had every reason not to have been together and yet God had drawn us! And we realized that for some of us, there was a destiny to be together than had taken years upon years to emerge! It was as if the camera zoomed out and we could see the big picture in which God had been constantly working and shaping, nurturing seeds that to us had gone dormant during the years that had brought us to this point—during our lifetimes. Those of us connected with the journey of Links International (and it was all of us in the room) have experienced highs and lows, loves and losses, victories and questions, and yet we still believe there is a cause and we are more than ever devoted to each other!
Links International was founded on relationships and it is that relational mindset—which is the Kingdom mindset—that is the revolution waiting to fully engulf the face of missions as we know it. Here we sat experiencing the very essence of what Links is all about: we sat declaring with tears the value of each relationship in that room, thankful that through doubts, challenges, or simply “busy-ness”, we had managed to have enough sensitivity to heed the call and come and partake! In a real Kingdom way, we “fell in love with each other” all over again—not for any natural reason but for the burning sense that God had ordained that TOGETHER we would walk! There, in a place that that seemed inaccessible, and in an assembly that seemed on some level impossible, heaven found complete ACCESS to earth via a few gathered hearts with no veil or defensiveness. As we wept, we began to feel the right-brain burst that is Jesus echoing his words, “With me, all things are POSSIBLE!”
I told someone before I left for the trip that Africa has always had the wonderful effect of stripping me down to basics, showing me the things that I have let become far too complicated. It dulls my delusions of grandeur and grounds ambition in a sense of what is really vital. I suppose you call this perspective, but it is way more exciting than that word tends to sound. I feel I’ve been re-calibrated—like the best of all inner chiropractic adjustments—a realignment that will generate health throughout the rest of the body in time to come! All things really ARE possible, but not because I strive to do all things right! All things are possible because we live in a Kingdom of relationships, chief of which is the one with the glorious God-head, but beyond that includes strategically placed networking of people in real-time dynamic situations!
Lest you think that this is all theory, however, or even all just for the good of the far-away nations, let me share one last very personal thing. In God’s great economy, what helps the nations in the macro is the same thing that revolutionizes the individual in the very deep-hearted “micro”. There is always an individual application.
You see, I’m that girl who always says too much, shares too much, tells it all and lets it out—there is an unexplainable drive in me to express. (My dear husband is often praised as the “saint of saneness” at my side.) But inside, I am also a constant student of human behavior and I have made it my life’s project to decode the effect I seem to have on the world, so as to finally come up with a rule of thumb of when to speak and when to keep silent. I still have not found one but I keep doing the research!
On one evening of our international relational festival of fellowship, over a lovely meal, I began to talk about my childhood and personal life prior to Christianity. I seldom do this. However, I had lost myself in the enjoyment of a Kingdom moment and a sense of temporary but very real “family” had been created in the dinner conversation. Suddenly, Andy Read said, “You should put this on a podcast,” and to my surprise, everyone at the table agreed. I am being honest when I admit that never in my life had I experienced anything but embarrassment about my checkered and unusual bohemian past. I tell people with shame that I was simply “raised by my culture” and I tell it only to justify my passion FOR culture! But I NEVER thought any of it was interesting, or even remotely acceptable! And I don’t think I ever consciously realized I felt such shame until that moment!
Something changed in me in that very moment when a group of friends listened with fascinated interest AND ACCEPTANCE to my little life story—not just the story of who I am in Christ in theory, but the story of the somewhat ridiculous set of circumstances on earth into which the seeds of redemption fell! I had a real and genuine moment of honest ACCEPTANCE at that table that ranks up there with the most extreme “Toronto” or “carpet times” ever experienced. God used these relationships to be family for me, supplying a missing piece, and I will never be the same. I saw myself in the mirror of the group in a way I had never seen myself before—I wasn’t “strange”: I was “interesting”—and that made all the difference in a deep place inside—a place that had formerly been untouched! As He did with the geography of Wellspring, God was again showing me how able He is to ACCESS THE INACCESSIBLE!! It didn’t take hours and counseling, just a moment of complete transparency when I had lost my filters combined with an environment of GRACE that was tangible (not just theological).
All my posturing, packaging and careful self-presentation is unnecessary when I know that God has POSITIONED me where he wants me. God took me to Uganda to remind me of that. There is hope for us all: God has a relational positioning for every one of us—one which will demonstrate the health of family where it has not been known before. As the church comes to more and more look like the Kingdom (less and less like a corporate business model), the grace of acceptance will become tangible more than theological just as it did for me. And if God can orchestrate the details to assemble us as He did in a postmodern African Abbey, then certainly He can move all the pieces necessary to re-calibrate anything else in all our lives that stands in need of adjustment. Many people have asked me in the 48 hours since I have been back, “How was your trip?” See….it’s a big Kingdom answer…..Let’s just say that along with Toto, I really must say, “I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICA…..”! (http://www.lyrics007.com/Toto%20Lyrics/Africa%20Lyrics.html)
Wellspring is not remote in location—certainly there are places in the African bush that are far more remote in terms of being cut off from civilization—but it is remote in terms of ease of accessibility. We in the west who like to talk about being “intentional” need only take a car ride of any kind through the streets of Entebbe and Kampala to sample a new level of intentionality displayed by each and every driver! The amount of focused determination necessary to get somewhere through the traffic would be enough to accomplish a dozen goals in our lives and churches which offered a “normal” amount of resistance! (It was no surprise that even in Heathrow airport on the way home, conversations could be overheard between several nationalities, the topic of which was the Kampala traffic!)
Once at the Wellspring complex, however, perched as it is with a view of life in the valley below (a valley that only a few decades ago was bush), one finds an oasis of peace—a little city of Kingdom development, fully functioning and moving in the opposite spirit of the chaos outside. There is a small hospital, a not-so-small primary school, a fully-functioning cafeteria and dormitories, conference center, offices to support micro-enterprise and housing developments, and also a church which is bustling with activity. In my life, I don’t know that I have ever seen such a footprint of the Kingdom—and I live with my eyes searching for such things! (I declared upon our return to our church which we very purposely named, “The Abbey,” that I had just come from an African Abbey: so much more than a Sunday morning!)
We had come to Wellspring to speak at their annual pastors’ conference—their 7th such event. Having learned through experience that God delights in joining his people across cultures, we knew that the relationships formed with the African pastors and leaders on the trip would be rich—and it certainly was. (I feel I carry them in my heart now.) What we did not realize, however, was that God was doing something that would transcend our bonds with Africa. The six members of the ministry team that had been assembled by Herbert and Eve (directors of Wellspring) were appointed for a purpose beyond the ones we could have imagined.
The web of relationships among the team included so many “coincidences”. Phil Moore from England was one of the first people that we had connected with 15 years ago when we first travelled to the U.K. He and his church had taken us in and loved and cared for us, but we had lost touch with him as the years had gone on. Our good friend, Andy Read, had completed a year as C.E.O. of Links International and it was a joy to travel with him doing Links business, moving our relationship beyond just visiting each other’s houses and churches. And then there were Mike and Beryl Godward, the founders of Wellspring (and doers of many other exploits) who now lead Links International in South Africa. We had only run across them briefly over the years, but had always longed to hear their stories and know them better—amazingly in them we discovered a mutual desire towards us!
We ministered all day (literally—many sessions) at the Pastor’s conference. Unlike an ordinary conference where you simply come with a message and deliver it, we all noticed that we were, like bike racers on the same team, drafting off of each other’s wind! I fled to my room more than once to alter my prepared message, having caught fresh inspiration from someone else on the team in the previous session! Though we came from diverse starting points, never has a conference been so thoroughly “whole”—it was one big teachable moment with several players involved—an epic unfolding that consumed our individuality!
At the end of the day—when everything shuts down because there may or may not be power—we found a way each night to be together for fellowship, joined the second part of the week by our son Joe and Billy Wells from San Marcos—two of the next generation who have begun to work with Links USA. Whether it was gathered with all the African leaders at the home of Herbert and Eve for a meal, dancing, singing, including the national anthems of every nation represented (and the University of Texas fight song—sorry—Billy kept saying that Texas was once its own nation!), or just the team hanging out together at the home of Holly who oversees the Wellspring educational initiatives, we couldn’t get enough time together.
The Kingdom is both present as well as “waiting to emerge” at all times, but there are those moments when the invisible reality of Kingdom just SHOWS UP like a STORM! We seem to live for those moments. On the last night of the conference, in our fellowship at Holly’s house, we had one. What began as just sharing turned into revelation and we realized God Himself had joined in the chat-time with a loud voice and a mighty hand! Suddenly we knew we were sitting in a miracle: Through all it took to get there, God had assembled us in Holly’s living room to testify once again to us that this Kingdom is built through relationships and that it will never be any stronger on earth than the relationships that carry it! From diverse places, backgrounds and experiences, we sat as one sensing the reality of God’s strategies and networking for the nations. IT WAS SO REAL! Words couldn’t express it and yet we all tried. Tears flowed. Hearts merged.
We realized as we sat there in the “remote” safe harbor that is the Wellspring zone, that each of us had every reason not to have been together and yet God had drawn us! And we realized that for some of us, there was a destiny to be together than had taken years upon years to emerge! It was as if the camera zoomed out and we could see the big picture in which God had been constantly working and shaping, nurturing seeds that to us had gone dormant during the years that had brought us to this point—during our lifetimes. Those of us connected with the journey of Links International (and it was all of us in the room) have experienced highs and lows, loves and losses, victories and questions, and yet we still believe there is a cause and we are more than ever devoted to each other!
Links International was founded on relationships and it is that relational mindset—which is the Kingdom mindset—that is the revolution waiting to fully engulf the face of missions as we know it. Here we sat experiencing the very essence of what Links is all about: we sat declaring with tears the value of each relationship in that room, thankful that through doubts, challenges, or simply “busy-ness”, we had managed to have enough sensitivity to heed the call and come and partake! In a real Kingdom way, we “fell in love with each other” all over again—not for any natural reason but for the burning sense that God had ordained that TOGETHER we would walk! There, in a place that that seemed inaccessible, and in an assembly that seemed on some level impossible, heaven found complete ACCESS to earth via a few gathered hearts with no veil or defensiveness. As we wept, we began to feel the right-brain burst that is Jesus echoing his words, “With me, all things are POSSIBLE!”
I told someone before I left for the trip that Africa has always had the wonderful effect of stripping me down to basics, showing me the things that I have let become far too complicated. It dulls my delusions of grandeur and grounds ambition in a sense of what is really vital. I suppose you call this perspective, but it is way more exciting than that word tends to sound. I feel I’ve been re-calibrated—like the best of all inner chiropractic adjustments—a realignment that will generate health throughout the rest of the body in time to come! All things really ARE possible, but not because I strive to do all things right! All things are possible because we live in a Kingdom of relationships, chief of which is the one with the glorious God-head, but beyond that includes strategically placed networking of people in real-time dynamic situations!
Lest you think that this is all theory, however, or even all just for the good of the far-away nations, let me share one last very personal thing. In God’s great economy, what helps the nations in the macro is the same thing that revolutionizes the individual in the very deep-hearted “micro”. There is always an individual application.
You see, I’m that girl who always says too much, shares too much, tells it all and lets it out—there is an unexplainable drive in me to express. (My dear husband is often praised as the “saint of saneness” at my side.) But inside, I am also a constant student of human behavior and I have made it my life’s project to decode the effect I seem to have on the world, so as to finally come up with a rule of thumb of when to speak and when to keep silent. I still have not found one but I keep doing the research!
On one evening of our international relational festival of fellowship, over a lovely meal, I began to talk about my childhood and personal life prior to Christianity. I seldom do this. However, I had lost myself in the enjoyment of a Kingdom moment and a sense of temporary but very real “family” had been created in the dinner conversation. Suddenly, Andy Read said, “You should put this on a podcast,” and to my surprise, everyone at the table agreed. I am being honest when I admit that never in my life had I experienced anything but embarrassment about my checkered and unusual bohemian past. I tell people with shame that I was simply “raised by my culture” and I tell it only to justify my passion FOR culture! But I NEVER thought any of it was interesting, or even remotely acceptable! And I don’t think I ever consciously realized I felt such shame until that moment!
Something changed in me in that very moment when a group of friends listened with fascinated interest AND ACCEPTANCE to my little life story—not just the story of who I am in Christ in theory, but the story of the somewhat ridiculous set of circumstances on earth into which the seeds of redemption fell! I had a real and genuine moment of honest ACCEPTANCE at that table that ranks up there with the most extreme “Toronto” or “carpet times” ever experienced. God used these relationships to be family for me, supplying a missing piece, and I will never be the same. I saw myself in the mirror of the group in a way I had never seen myself before—I wasn’t “strange”: I was “interesting”—and that made all the difference in a deep place inside—a place that had formerly been untouched! As He did with the geography of Wellspring, God was again showing me how able He is to ACCESS THE INACCESSIBLE!! It didn’t take hours and counseling, just a moment of complete transparency when I had lost my filters combined with an environment of GRACE that was tangible (not just theological).
All my posturing, packaging and careful self-presentation is unnecessary when I know that God has POSITIONED me where he wants me. God took me to Uganda to remind me of that. There is hope for us all: God has a relational positioning for every one of us—one which will demonstrate the health of family where it has not been known before. As the church comes to more and more look like the Kingdom (less and less like a corporate business model), the grace of acceptance will become tangible more than theological just as it did for me. And if God can orchestrate the details to assemble us as He did in a postmodern African Abbey, then certainly He can move all the pieces necessary to re-calibrate anything else in all our lives that stands in need of adjustment. Many people have asked me in the 48 hours since I have been back, “How was your trip?” See….it’s a big Kingdom answer…..Let’s just say that along with Toto, I really must say, “I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICA…..”! (http://www.lyrics007.com/Toto%20Lyrics/Africa%20Lyrics.html)
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Of Sunrises and Dualism (A Poem)
Morning breaks slowly over the murky water
And I give this day to You.
I could be standing a thousand exotic places
Taking in fresh inspiration
From the sights and sounds You created
But I’m right here in this familiar spot
This place where no one finds escape
This hum-drum drudgery of life and time
That incessantly beckons
Our local lake, dirty from the free usage
Is a far cry from the sunrises around the world I long to see
And yet here in the dusk it seems
That the colors in the sky are just as bright.
Here as I pause to breathe before the day fully attacks
I realize that the sky show above this lake
Is no less dazzling than that of a thousand different horizons
The mystery of pink invasion is the same worldwide
And the glow of hope as the darkness gives way
Points to the same truth about newness and awakening
And I laugh as I realize that though I seem to have a thousand things
Anchoring my schedule in time,
I carry within me always the prospects of a new morn
And a far away hope.
The odyssey is within me
And the sun always rises with a thousand more possibilities there
And then I drive away and begin another day
Of sojourning
Two realms or just one? That seems to be the question.
And I give this day to You.
I could be standing a thousand exotic places
Taking in fresh inspiration
From the sights and sounds You created
But I’m right here in this familiar spot
This place where no one finds escape
This hum-drum drudgery of life and time
That incessantly beckons
Our local lake, dirty from the free usage
Is a far cry from the sunrises around the world I long to see
And yet here in the dusk it seems
That the colors in the sky are just as bright.
Here as I pause to breathe before the day fully attacks
I realize that the sky show above this lake
Is no less dazzling than that of a thousand different horizons
The mystery of pink invasion is the same worldwide
And the glow of hope as the darkness gives way
Points to the same truth about newness and awakening
And I laugh as I realize that though I seem to have a thousand things
Anchoring my schedule in time,
I carry within me always the prospects of a new morn
And a far away hope.
The odyssey is within me
And the sun always rises with a thousand more possibilities there
And then I drive away and begin another day
Of sojourning
Two realms or just one? That seems to be the question.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Grace Lived Out...Even in Leadership
Here at the Abbey Church in Azle, Texas, we just finished four days of meetings with our new (but quickly gone deep) friend, Dr. Lynn Hiles. Dr. Hiles preaches grace--and by “grace”, he means the finished work of Christ, not a sweet but weak sentimental acceptance—in a way I have never experienced. My long held dream of erasing the Western demarcation between the “word” and the Spirit” comes true when I listen to Dr. Hiles preach—and by “preach”, I mean dispense a lifetime’s study of blazing truth from an inner spiritual assembly mechanism that seems to function somewhat like a catapult hurling blazing missiles at a fortress!
The universality of the Gospel—the sheer enormity of what Jesus did for us—was splashed across the canvas of my inner world while I listened to such a degree that I wanted to lay flat on the floor in complete surrender to the panorama of truth. I felt like the Queen of Sheba as she was described in the Bible when she saw the wealth and excellence of Solomon’s empire: it took her breath away. Simultaneously, however, I wanted to rise up stronger than ever in hot pursuit of my own particular flavor of Ephesians 2:10 “good works”—you know the kind, not the dreams of our own born out of our need to bolster insecurities, but the big dreams of God birthed in us—the ones that are finished in Him before they are even begun on earth!
So, I’m just saying….it was a great few days and my inner world is still reverberating. Sometimes we know the blazing truth, but have allowed it to be dosed with a fair measure of “reasonableness” and we don’t even realize that we are being lulled into less real living than is our portion! It sounds like this, “Well, of course, Jesus is everything, but, let’s be real…” In our hearts, we don’t reassess the absolute nature of salvation, but our experiences tend to sink down into the level of a distant hope of that salvation showing up, rather than a real-time reality!
I know that there are a thousand expressions of “church” showing up all over the planet and I fully believe in a God who is just as real and ready to speak and demonstrate at a Starbucks as He is from a pulpit, BUT, I have just been refreshed in the amazing effect of what the Bible calls “the foolishness of preaching”. Church is relational and it is NOT (never has been and never will be) just about sitting behinds on chairs while they listen to one man, BUT, GOD DOES USE THAT FORMAT TOO! When the man is actually emblazoned with revelation that he has interacted with for years such that even his communication of it has become pregnant with all the creativity that is God, then we’ve got something! Preaching is about washing the psyche with the truth so much so that our consciousness can’t for a little while come up for air and we are swimming in heaven—experientially reminded of the amazing potential for Kingdom that we carry every minute of every day!
There is a particular variety of “settling” I have discovered, however, that seems to require large doses of heaven to drown! It hides in the crevices of our ideas about church and is aided by the church’s tendency to forget that it is only a subset, a manifestation, an outcropping of the broader picture of reality: the Kingdom. (As Dr. Hiles points out the relationship, the rainbow around the throne declares for all to remember that the New Covenant is the constitution of the Kingdom of God.) The particular compromise I here seek to expose hides under the banner of words like “leadership” and “responsibility” and it looks like this: Church leaders who well know that all function in the Christian life must flow from a place of REST, end up creating for themselves only a parallel universe where striving is allowed! When it comes to salvation, they preach and believe that Jesus did it all and that the life he gives he maintains, but when it comes to building a church or leading a ministry or “getting results” in the corporate sense—beyond individual growth—they somehow subtly permission a reversion to the energies of the flesh. Christ plus nothing for righteousness, but Christ plus…..John Maxwell, marketing strategies, political promotion, hype, or the latest fad…when it comes to being a leader. Please understand me, I am NOT against all of these things (some of them I am against—I’ll let you guess which). What I am against is the dual system that implies that Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection on our behalf is big enough to reverse the entire polarity of our existence, extending to every area of life we encounter EXCEPT the areas that deal with leading people.
When we replace the rainbow around the throne with a list of considerations that don’t flow from rest and create for ourselves a modern-day litany of leadership requirements, our journey is headed toward resentment. We begin to feel the least able to access the grace that we preach. We are unable to offer to ourselves fully the freedom that we proclaim (or hopefully continue to proclaim) so freely! We are, to put it biblically, double-minded. And we ultimately go about like nervous little scavengers, vulnerably feeling that we must find the “key” or the “door” that will unlock our ministry, rather than trusting the One who holds the keys and said most plainly, “I am the door”. If He could unlock our eternal mess, certainly, he can unlock doors of opportunity—it’s that simple. There is only one operating system in the Kingdom—the finished work of Christ. Out of that place, not only our own personal and ever-emergent salvation appears, but also our CORPORATE EXPERIENCE OF MINISTRY OR CHURCH!
It is Western dualism once again seizing the opportunity presented by our “unrenewed” mind. But, I now have a new definition of the unrenewed mind. I have decided that an unrenewed mind is not so much a mind that thinks bad thoughts or doesn’t have Scripture at the ready, but rather the unrenewed mind is one that draws boundaries on the finished work of Christ, declaring that perhaps there are just places it might not extend and inspiring the creation of several “plan B’s” in people who would never offer any other plan for their eternal salvation! Am I making sense to you? If I am…..you might be a church leader! Appealing to our common sense, traces of law-based fear seduce us into creating systems of flesh, even while we are fully aware that the product we want to dispense is spirit, and the grandest of all ironies swirls within us!
Obviously, I could go on and on about this—it is a big topic, maybe even a best-selling book (smile)! But, the purpose of a blog is to get personal, and so now I will share with you what you may have already surmised. How am I able to describe this particular affliction common to church leaders with such passion? Is this the culmination of years of research, note-taking, interviews and case studies? Yes and no. Though I have seen it everywhere in the church, my deep understanding of the dysfunction was as close as my mirror and the case study was me! Years ago, the passage in I Samuel 13 where Saul “forced himself” to offer the sacrifice, rather than waiting on Samuel (a type of the Holy Spirit) to do the job on his behalf, was carved deep into my constitution. And one of my “life Scriptures” was, “And HE will make your righteousness be seen like the light AND….YOUR CAUSE like the shining of the sun!” (Psalm 37:6, combined translations, Emphasis on: YOU don’t have to produce it.)
The most difficult journey of my “hot responder” personality has been the journey of TRUST related to my own destiny. I have never breathed a moment without the biggest of dreams: I want to be the Christian answer to both Oprah and Chopra. I want to shout from the housetops to the chart-topping musicians all over the world as well as the wannabes alone in apartments, “I know what you’re singing about—I hear your cry!” I want to stand up in the middle of an Eat, Pray, Love generation and declare a God who could blow every Eastern mind in a second with spiritual reality so blinding it would make every knee bow to the One who both fulfills and transcends both East and West! I see all this potential but I don’t know how to produce it myself and I have heard the wise man say that the richest place on the planet is the graveyard, due of course to all that buried potential! That just can’t be me, so I must act! Right? Only partly….I must ACT from that place of REST, realizing that I am not posturing myself, but being positioned by Him. I do not have to be a slave of destiny at the expense of Kingdom provision! Destiny is simply my little corner of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is HIM! How could I take my dreams to my grave if my life is enveloped in Him?
Recently, my friend April had a prophetic vision about my “ministry”. She said she saw me lying flat on the floor and people were digging around inside of me and taking what they needed—like an autopsy, she even said. What followed was a long, tearful, God-visited discussion with April and her husband, Jason, about my disappointment over being compared to a corpse and the reasons behind it. (The vision had aroused my greatest fear: that I would be “used” by others to build their “ministries” and left for dead in terms of my course to run! Don’t judge me: it was deeper than a conscious drive. ) Now, after a week of intense focus on the finished work of Christ, I see it differently. What people were taking from me was not my vitality, but my produce! I am a garden (as we all are) and the amazing economy of God is designed such that the things that grow in me to actually provide nutrients that other people need!
And that growth is not a strain, but rather a natural process of relationship that I share with all sojourners. Lying there flat need not be interpreted as corpse-like, but maybe instead as just RESTING. As I rest in the fact that He has a plan, not just for my spiritual growth but even for my MINISTRY, then the garden blooms and is ripe for picking. If the soil is rich, the produce might be varied—books, preaches, sure, but also conversation over dinner or coffee, Facebook status updates, or….blogs—but it is all just the fruit of the fact that I am connected to heaven. If my strong desire turned to straining can’t add a millimeter of stature to my natural height, it certainly can’t stretch the bounds of my reach, either, no matter how many leadership books I read or clever strategies I adopt. But conversely, if I just consider the lilies, how they grow and continue to do the same, then I believe by the working of the Holy Spirit, my energies will be funneled into creative channels that will feed a landscape the size of my Kingdom dreams!
The universality of the Gospel—the sheer enormity of what Jesus did for us—was splashed across the canvas of my inner world while I listened to such a degree that I wanted to lay flat on the floor in complete surrender to the panorama of truth. I felt like the Queen of Sheba as she was described in the Bible when she saw the wealth and excellence of Solomon’s empire: it took her breath away. Simultaneously, however, I wanted to rise up stronger than ever in hot pursuit of my own particular flavor of Ephesians 2:10 “good works”—you know the kind, not the dreams of our own born out of our need to bolster insecurities, but the big dreams of God birthed in us—the ones that are finished in Him before they are even begun on earth!
So, I’m just saying….it was a great few days and my inner world is still reverberating. Sometimes we know the blazing truth, but have allowed it to be dosed with a fair measure of “reasonableness” and we don’t even realize that we are being lulled into less real living than is our portion! It sounds like this, “Well, of course, Jesus is everything, but, let’s be real…” In our hearts, we don’t reassess the absolute nature of salvation, but our experiences tend to sink down into the level of a distant hope of that salvation showing up, rather than a real-time reality!
I know that there are a thousand expressions of “church” showing up all over the planet and I fully believe in a God who is just as real and ready to speak and demonstrate at a Starbucks as He is from a pulpit, BUT, I have just been refreshed in the amazing effect of what the Bible calls “the foolishness of preaching”. Church is relational and it is NOT (never has been and never will be) just about sitting behinds on chairs while they listen to one man, BUT, GOD DOES USE THAT FORMAT TOO! When the man is actually emblazoned with revelation that he has interacted with for years such that even his communication of it has become pregnant with all the creativity that is God, then we’ve got something! Preaching is about washing the psyche with the truth so much so that our consciousness can’t for a little while come up for air and we are swimming in heaven—experientially reminded of the amazing potential for Kingdom that we carry every minute of every day!
There is a particular variety of “settling” I have discovered, however, that seems to require large doses of heaven to drown! It hides in the crevices of our ideas about church and is aided by the church’s tendency to forget that it is only a subset, a manifestation, an outcropping of the broader picture of reality: the Kingdom. (As Dr. Hiles points out the relationship, the rainbow around the throne declares for all to remember that the New Covenant is the constitution of the Kingdom of God.) The particular compromise I here seek to expose hides under the banner of words like “leadership” and “responsibility” and it looks like this: Church leaders who well know that all function in the Christian life must flow from a place of REST, end up creating for themselves only a parallel universe where striving is allowed! When it comes to salvation, they preach and believe that Jesus did it all and that the life he gives he maintains, but when it comes to building a church or leading a ministry or “getting results” in the corporate sense—beyond individual growth—they somehow subtly permission a reversion to the energies of the flesh. Christ plus nothing for righteousness, but Christ plus…..John Maxwell, marketing strategies, political promotion, hype, or the latest fad…when it comes to being a leader. Please understand me, I am NOT against all of these things (some of them I am against—I’ll let you guess which). What I am against is the dual system that implies that Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection on our behalf is big enough to reverse the entire polarity of our existence, extending to every area of life we encounter EXCEPT the areas that deal with leading people.
When we replace the rainbow around the throne with a list of considerations that don’t flow from rest and create for ourselves a modern-day litany of leadership requirements, our journey is headed toward resentment. We begin to feel the least able to access the grace that we preach. We are unable to offer to ourselves fully the freedom that we proclaim (or hopefully continue to proclaim) so freely! We are, to put it biblically, double-minded. And we ultimately go about like nervous little scavengers, vulnerably feeling that we must find the “key” or the “door” that will unlock our ministry, rather than trusting the One who holds the keys and said most plainly, “I am the door”. If He could unlock our eternal mess, certainly, he can unlock doors of opportunity—it’s that simple. There is only one operating system in the Kingdom—the finished work of Christ. Out of that place, not only our own personal and ever-emergent salvation appears, but also our CORPORATE EXPERIENCE OF MINISTRY OR CHURCH!
It is Western dualism once again seizing the opportunity presented by our “unrenewed” mind. But, I now have a new definition of the unrenewed mind. I have decided that an unrenewed mind is not so much a mind that thinks bad thoughts or doesn’t have Scripture at the ready, but rather the unrenewed mind is one that draws boundaries on the finished work of Christ, declaring that perhaps there are just places it might not extend and inspiring the creation of several “plan B’s” in people who would never offer any other plan for their eternal salvation! Am I making sense to you? If I am…..you might be a church leader! Appealing to our common sense, traces of law-based fear seduce us into creating systems of flesh, even while we are fully aware that the product we want to dispense is spirit, and the grandest of all ironies swirls within us!
Obviously, I could go on and on about this—it is a big topic, maybe even a best-selling book (smile)! But, the purpose of a blog is to get personal, and so now I will share with you what you may have already surmised. How am I able to describe this particular affliction common to church leaders with such passion? Is this the culmination of years of research, note-taking, interviews and case studies? Yes and no. Though I have seen it everywhere in the church, my deep understanding of the dysfunction was as close as my mirror and the case study was me! Years ago, the passage in I Samuel 13 where Saul “forced himself” to offer the sacrifice, rather than waiting on Samuel (a type of the Holy Spirit) to do the job on his behalf, was carved deep into my constitution. And one of my “life Scriptures” was, “And HE will make your righteousness be seen like the light AND….YOUR CAUSE like the shining of the sun!” (Psalm 37:6, combined translations, Emphasis on: YOU don’t have to produce it.)
The most difficult journey of my “hot responder” personality has been the journey of TRUST related to my own destiny. I have never breathed a moment without the biggest of dreams: I want to be the Christian answer to both Oprah and Chopra. I want to shout from the housetops to the chart-topping musicians all over the world as well as the wannabes alone in apartments, “I know what you’re singing about—I hear your cry!” I want to stand up in the middle of an Eat, Pray, Love generation and declare a God who could blow every Eastern mind in a second with spiritual reality so blinding it would make every knee bow to the One who both fulfills and transcends both East and West! I see all this potential but I don’t know how to produce it myself and I have heard the wise man say that the richest place on the planet is the graveyard, due of course to all that buried potential! That just can’t be me, so I must act! Right? Only partly….I must ACT from that place of REST, realizing that I am not posturing myself, but being positioned by Him. I do not have to be a slave of destiny at the expense of Kingdom provision! Destiny is simply my little corner of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is HIM! How could I take my dreams to my grave if my life is enveloped in Him?
Recently, my friend April had a prophetic vision about my “ministry”. She said she saw me lying flat on the floor and people were digging around inside of me and taking what they needed—like an autopsy, she even said. What followed was a long, tearful, God-visited discussion with April and her husband, Jason, about my disappointment over being compared to a corpse and the reasons behind it. (The vision had aroused my greatest fear: that I would be “used” by others to build their “ministries” and left for dead in terms of my course to run! Don’t judge me: it was deeper than a conscious drive. ) Now, after a week of intense focus on the finished work of Christ, I see it differently. What people were taking from me was not my vitality, but my produce! I am a garden (as we all are) and the amazing economy of God is designed such that the things that grow in me to actually provide nutrients that other people need!
And that growth is not a strain, but rather a natural process of relationship that I share with all sojourners. Lying there flat need not be interpreted as corpse-like, but maybe instead as just RESTING. As I rest in the fact that He has a plan, not just for my spiritual growth but even for my MINISTRY, then the garden blooms and is ripe for picking. If the soil is rich, the produce might be varied—books, preaches, sure, but also conversation over dinner or coffee, Facebook status updates, or….blogs—but it is all just the fruit of the fact that I am connected to heaven. If my strong desire turned to straining can’t add a millimeter of stature to my natural height, it certainly can’t stretch the bounds of my reach, either, no matter how many leadership books I read or clever strategies I adopt. But conversely, if I just consider the lilies, how they grow and continue to do the same, then I believe by the working of the Holy Spirit, my energies will be funneled into creative channels that will feed a landscape the size of my Kingdom dreams!
Monday, March 07, 2011
What's Really in a Name?
Unless they are given a traditional family name, every child wonders about their parents’ choice for the word that will seem synonymous with all that they are. With the name, “Perrianne,” I was certainly no exception, especially given my extremely “identity-driven” personality. Because my dad’s middle name was “Perry,” I initially surmised that I was named for him--a happy thought to me. When I presented the findings of my research to him (at age 5, I believe), I was immediately told that this was not the case. It even seemed as if the connection had never occurred to him! Instead, he told me that I was named after a contestant on a game show that he and my mother watched while they were expecting me. This woman signed in on What’s My Line,”, the classic show where celebrities guess the profession of uniquely employed contestants. The woman who was the source of my name was, my dad said, a sports reporter. And that was that: I grew up with that minimally resourced consciousness regarding what seemed to me to be a very impersonal heritage connected to my name.
Having a unique name has drawbacks. I could never get a personalized keychain or bicycle license plate like the other kids—they just don’t make them with “Perrianne”. And, later, when Western pop culture discovered the joy of name-meaning plaques, “Perrianne” was a sure one to stump the band! I remember years ago in the local Walmart, a kiosk was set up to print and sell plaques with name meanings, and when we typed in Perrianne, I noticed that the description it spit out for me was vaguely similar to an example that was hanging there for display—an example which sounded nothing like “Perrianne”! I strained through the adolescent desire for conformity to develop an appreciation for being unique (because believe me, I am), but still there were times, I must admit, I wished for a different name. (At around 14, I must have thrilled my parents when I embarked upon a short-lived campaign to legally change my name to “Donna”—I now am not sure why I picked that one—perhaps because there were plenty of key chains and bike tags pre-printed with that moniker.)
Then came my college days, during which I felt like an unlikely invader into the world of scientific research….I had the skills to thrive academically (having been “diagnosed” with a 170 IQ early on), but I was so different from the typical chemistry major and there was also still a noticeable edge of stigma about being a woman, even in those “liberated” days of the late 70’s and early 80’s. When a new semester would begin, any professor whom I hadn’t had before would call the roll on the first day of class, reading off names and looking up after each one to see which face corresponded. Every time he stopped his rhythm and stared at the page, I knew he had arrived at my name and what would follow would be a halting attempt at pronunciation (really? how hard is it?) or the words, “how do you pronounce this?” at which time I would supply him with the correct pronunciation, still with a tinge of doubted identity in my hesitant voice.
So, being named Perrianne came to symbolize several things for me: First of all, my ambivalent relationship with attention. When I have a speaking gig or when I am just telling a story, I access a part of me that has NO problem being the center of attention—believe me! However, I am convinced that every extrovert has a large corresponding introvert somewhere inside and I have definitely navigated that mysterious artistic balance all my life. I did, in fact, as I matured, realize that this woman for whom I was named must have been a real trail-blazer. Now we see females reporting fairly frequently on sports—and not just women’s! But in the late 50’s and early 60’s, it must have been the case that this woman was a true pioneer! Though the main cause of my life is not gender-related, I do believe with all my heart that barriers made by human ideas with little or no grounding in truth are ALL meant to be broken! However, this only built my curiosity about the original Perrianne.
Then, at age 50, everything about my naming would change. Having written two books, I decided, at the urgings of media-savvy friends, to create an “author page” for myself on Facebook. A dear friend in England who had showered me with encouragement after reading both my books in one weekend had called his little session, “Perrianne-stock” and I loved the comparison it evoked to a “festival” (without all the trash and irresponsible behavior, of course). So at the beginning of this year, Perrianne-stock was launched and I am proud to report that it has rocketed to—wait for it—100 Facebook “likes”! Because the number is so low, I still notice every new addition and two weeks ago, someone named Perrianne “liked” my page to my amazement—spelled just like me and living in New York. Interested, I “friended” her and then fired off a quick message explaining briefly the random origin of my name and asking her the origin of hers. And then I went to the gym—no big deal.
An hour later, workout done, I clicked on my profile and discovered probably the most amazing FB reply in history! Perrianne in New York told me, “I was named after the same person as you were. Her name is Perian Conerly and she was married to Charlie Conerly, the most famous pro quarterback of his day, and…” (and here’s the real mind-blower) “…here is the video of the TV show your parents watched to name you…” In one click of a link to youtube, I saw for the first time ever this woman who was the source of my parents’ choice! I wept as I realized that I had probably—due to the low self-esteem from which we humans so often suffer—misjudged the whole situation. I had made negative judgments about my parents’ choice of a name, assuming that this 1959 TV show just tossed a novel idea into their empty well, rather than realizing this was an amazing woman who probably actually INSPIRED them about what their daughter could be! I am pleased to announce that for about 50 years, I got it a little wrong!
I am a passionate Christian and a truly spiritual one and my afore-mentioned identity-driven personality has found ample fulfillment in the legacy and destiny that I believe was intended in the divine plan. BUT, somehow through this experience, God had managed to fill a big gap in my inner world by restoring to me a missing sense of legacy and destiny that extended even to the farthest circumstances of my life! I already believed that there was purpose for me—and for every human being—but this experience drove it home so uniquely. There is so much purpose that NOTHING is accidental, marginal or useless. I believe more than ever in the orchestration of God.
Perrianne in NY also sent me a biographical article on Perian Conerly (and we found it ironic that both of our dads changed the spelling to the same one we share) and the hope I found only grew. I may share more in the future, especially after I read Perian Conerly’s book, which I have now ordered on Amazon, about exactly what she is coming to represent to me (especially as a writer), but that is not what I am aiming for right now. Right now, I want to shout from the housetops how good it feels to have been wrong! I owe my parents an apology for my judgment of them as uncreative! I owe myself an apology for failing to believe that my uniqueness was anything less than a gift! I experienced a true spiritual “retro-fit” at age 50. It happened to be related to my name, but it set me off wondering how many other subtle little judgments that limited my thinking might be lurking in the shadows…..?
I wish my daddy had sat me on his lap and explained to me, “Honey, we saw a wonderful woman on What’s My Line who captured our imaginations and we felt that you would be a trail-blazer and history-maker like her. Even more than that, we felt that you would be the kind of person who held her head high with dignity and brightened the world of everyone you came in contact with. And, we do even feel that there is some voice for you to have to your generation and we want to launch you on that journey with a name that will remind you of that every moment.” I wish he had said all those things, rather than leaving me to my own darker interpretation, but men of the great generation didn’t effuse emotion, nor did they require it. At the end of the day, maybe I didn’t need him to say it: I’m saying it for myself now quite well! I now feel, through “meeting” Perian Conerly via youtube, this is what my daddy meant to say to me and I am strengthened. He has said it to me now through a thousand Facebook “coincidences” and I am “gobsmacked” as the Brits say—overwhelmed with amazement at the divine orchestration.
Seekers of mere self-esteem cannot begin to understand the exceeding worth one feels when he finds his place in the Plan! What is most amazing is that I have lived so much of the legacy that my mom and dad reached out to, even without knowing it. I have now met a little army of Perrianne’s all over Facebook, some of whom knew of their legacy, some of whom did not and I am beginning to suspect that many of them will say the same! But, whether you are named Perrianne or Donna or Mary Jane, I guarantee you that there is more buzz surrounding your existence than you ever dreamed. And no matter your age, there is something wonderful to discover about who you really are. There are whole new worlds of perception that will completely erase dark clouds that you didn’t even know where there. There are a thousand horizons of meaning and purpose and all of them have your NAME on them.
Having a unique name has drawbacks. I could never get a personalized keychain or bicycle license plate like the other kids—they just don’t make them with “Perrianne”. And, later, when Western pop culture discovered the joy of name-meaning plaques, “Perrianne” was a sure one to stump the band! I remember years ago in the local Walmart, a kiosk was set up to print and sell plaques with name meanings, and when we typed in Perrianne, I noticed that the description it spit out for me was vaguely similar to an example that was hanging there for display—an example which sounded nothing like “Perrianne”! I strained through the adolescent desire for conformity to develop an appreciation for being unique (because believe me, I am), but still there were times, I must admit, I wished for a different name. (At around 14, I must have thrilled my parents when I embarked upon a short-lived campaign to legally change my name to “Donna”—I now am not sure why I picked that one—perhaps because there were plenty of key chains and bike tags pre-printed with that moniker.)
Then came my college days, during which I felt like an unlikely invader into the world of scientific research….I had the skills to thrive academically (having been “diagnosed” with a 170 IQ early on), but I was so different from the typical chemistry major and there was also still a noticeable edge of stigma about being a woman, even in those “liberated” days of the late 70’s and early 80’s. When a new semester would begin, any professor whom I hadn’t had before would call the roll on the first day of class, reading off names and looking up after each one to see which face corresponded. Every time he stopped his rhythm and stared at the page, I knew he had arrived at my name and what would follow would be a halting attempt at pronunciation (really? how hard is it?) or the words, “how do you pronounce this?” at which time I would supply him with the correct pronunciation, still with a tinge of doubted identity in my hesitant voice.
So, being named Perrianne came to symbolize several things for me: First of all, my ambivalent relationship with attention. When I have a speaking gig or when I am just telling a story, I access a part of me that has NO problem being the center of attention—believe me! However, I am convinced that every extrovert has a large corresponding introvert somewhere inside and I have definitely navigated that mysterious artistic balance all my life. I did, in fact, as I matured, realize that this woman for whom I was named must have been a real trail-blazer. Now we see females reporting fairly frequently on sports—and not just women’s! But in the late 50’s and early 60’s, it must have been the case that this woman was a true pioneer! Though the main cause of my life is not gender-related, I do believe with all my heart that barriers made by human ideas with little or no grounding in truth are ALL meant to be broken! However, this only built my curiosity about the original Perrianne.
Then, at age 50, everything about my naming would change. Having written two books, I decided, at the urgings of media-savvy friends, to create an “author page” for myself on Facebook. A dear friend in England who had showered me with encouragement after reading both my books in one weekend had called his little session, “Perrianne-stock” and I loved the comparison it evoked to a “festival” (without all the trash and irresponsible behavior, of course). So at the beginning of this year, Perrianne-stock was launched and I am proud to report that it has rocketed to—wait for it—100 Facebook “likes”! Because the number is so low, I still notice every new addition and two weeks ago, someone named Perrianne “liked” my page to my amazement—spelled just like me and living in New York. Interested, I “friended” her and then fired off a quick message explaining briefly the random origin of my name and asking her the origin of hers. And then I went to the gym—no big deal.
An hour later, workout done, I clicked on my profile and discovered probably the most amazing FB reply in history! Perrianne in New York told me, “I was named after the same person as you were. Her name is Perian Conerly and she was married to Charlie Conerly, the most famous pro quarterback of his day, and…” (and here’s the real mind-blower) “…here is the video of the TV show your parents watched to name you…” In one click of a link to youtube, I saw for the first time ever this woman who was the source of my parents’ choice! I wept as I realized that I had probably—due to the low self-esteem from which we humans so often suffer—misjudged the whole situation. I had made negative judgments about my parents’ choice of a name, assuming that this 1959 TV show just tossed a novel idea into their empty well, rather than realizing this was an amazing woman who probably actually INSPIRED them about what their daughter could be! I am pleased to announce that for about 50 years, I got it a little wrong!
I am a passionate Christian and a truly spiritual one and my afore-mentioned identity-driven personality has found ample fulfillment in the legacy and destiny that I believe was intended in the divine plan. BUT, somehow through this experience, God had managed to fill a big gap in my inner world by restoring to me a missing sense of legacy and destiny that extended even to the farthest circumstances of my life! I already believed that there was purpose for me—and for every human being—but this experience drove it home so uniquely. There is so much purpose that NOTHING is accidental, marginal or useless. I believe more than ever in the orchestration of God.
Perrianne in NY also sent me a biographical article on Perian Conerly (and we found it ironic that both of our dads changed the spelling to the same one we share) and the hope I found only grew. I may share more in the future, especially after I read Perian Conerly’s book, which I have now ordered on Amazon, about exactly what she is coming to represent to me (especially as a writer), but that is not what I am aiming for right now. Right now, I want to shout from the housetops how good it feels to have been wrong! I owe my parents an apology for my judgment of them as uncreative! I owe myself an apology for failing to believe that my uniqueness was anything less than a gift! I experienced a true spiritual “retro-fit” at age 50. It happened to be related to my name, but it set me off wondering how many other subtle little judgments that limited my thinking might be lurking in the shadows…..?
I wish my daddy had sat me on his lap and explained to me, “Honey, we saw a wonderful woman on What’s My Line who captured our imaginations and we felt that you would be a trail-blazer and history-maker like her. Even more than that, we felt that you would be the kind of person who held her head high with dignity and brightened the world of everyone you came in contact with. And, we do even feel that there is some voice for you to have to your generation and we want to launch you on that journey with a name that will remind you of that every moment.” I wish he had said all those things, rather than leaving me to my own darker interpretation, but men of the great generation didn’t effuse emotion, nor did they require it. At the end of the day, maybe I didn’t need him to say it: I’m saying it for myself now quite well! I now feel, through “meeting” Perian Conerly via youtube, this is what my daddy meant to say to me and I am strengthened. He has said it to me now through a thousand Facebook “coincidences” and I am “gobsmacked” as the Brits say—overwhelmed with amazement at the divine orchestration.
Seekers of mere self-esteem cannot begin to understand the exceeding worth one feels when he finds his place in the Plan! What is most amazing is that I have lived so much of the legacy that my mom and dad reached out to, even without knowing it. I have now met a little army of Perrianne’s all over Facebook, some of whom knew of their legacy, some of whom did not and I am beginning to suspect that many of them will say the same! But, whether you are named Perrianne or Donna or Mary Jane, I guarantee you that there is more buzz surrounding your existence than you ever dreamed. And no matter your age, there is something wonderful to discover about who you really are. There are whole new worlds of perception that will completely erase dark clouds that you didn’t even know where there. There are a thousand horizons of meaning and purpose and all of them have your NAME on them.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Religion's NO versus the Father's YES
I have been spending my three snow days here in Texas re-writing our church (The Abbey) membership class and have managed to inspire myself and now have more energy wanting to burst out of this house. Below is an unpolished excerpt that goes with my current Facebook status....I haven't added a FB "note" (or blog entry) in such a long time that I thought I would share the fruits of my labor here in cyberspace! Warning: INTENSE AUTHENTIC OPTIMISM demonstrated below!
Experiencing the Father’s YES:
You will no doubt hear the word “religion” used in a negative context often here at the Abbey. Because religion can also be used in a positive vein, it is good to clarify what we mean by the term. Of course, we do not mean the kind of “pure religion” that James 1:27 commends, where acts of service are the fruit. The religion that actually keeps people from getting to the marvelous realities of God is the same thing that Jesus spent a good portion of his ministry dismissing. Throughout the Gospels, we hear Jesus saying, “The scribes and Pharisees say…., but I tell you instead…..” and his contrasting declaration was always a statement of a loving God, rather than a harsh and legalistic judge. Perhaps it was Bono (yes, the U2 rock star) who recently said it best: “Religion can be the enemy of God. It`s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship.”
Considering that sense of the word religion—what men make up about God when he is not allowed to speak for Himself, for whatever reason—religion does keep people from the real GOD and we have no apologies for pointing out the contrast! Religion is a system based on law, sin, guilt and fear, but Jesus died on the cross to change the system. Our new system is one of SPIRIT which functions BY GRACE! Man has always been seeking his source, but religion hands out “NO” answers (or sometimes, “Yes, but….only if you jump through hoops of conformity” answers). God however, sent from heaven in the form of Jesus, one all-encompassing divine YES!
What is it you desire in your deepest heart? What is the quest at the deepest part of your being? In Christ, the answer is YES—perhaps not a magic, instant yes, or a yes that is an exact fit for your sometimes convoluted expectations, but a broad over-arching YES to your destiny, your prosperity and all God’s best for your life! Can I have…..? (fill in the blank with anything that is a genuine desire in the spirit) YES! It is not just our wish--it IS Scripture: “For all God's promises are "Yes" in him. And so through him we can say "Amen," to the glory of God.” II Corinthians 1:20
And that kind of bold confidence makes “religious” people angry. They want you to work for it like they think they have to do! They want to monitor your behavior and use guilt as a motivator. They want to sprinkle caution signs everywhere, just so you keep an element of fear in your relationship with God for protective purposes. But that is the issue at the crux of it all: FEAR! When people have only heard about the Father’s YES, and have not EXPERIENCED it, they still retain an edge of fear in their lives. You cannot mentally assent to the goodness of God—you have to give your heart to the experience. The only way to know the Father’s YES is to experience his goodness spirit to Spirit—to experience the perfect love that absolutely casts out that performance-based fear! (I John 4:18) That is what the spirit of God pours out every time.
When Moses asked God to show him his glory, God answered by allowing his GOODNESS to pass before him! God is the supreme ruler of the universe, the ultimate unchallenged power, but the most amazing thing that we notice when we experience Him (which we sense first in our spirits, but it readily spills out into our emotions and even our physicality) is that His power is never separate from his intense and overwhelming love and desire to share Himself with us! As the best of Fathers, His love is the motivating factor for all he does and He gives Himself away. He IS love—a love that says YES to the deepest desires because He actually is the source of those desires. (And be assured that silly or harmful “desires” are not the deep ones—they actually arise as poor substitutes when the deep ones are unmet).
The word “abbey” comes from the word abba which means “father.” You might remember it from Romans 8:15-16 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba,Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
So, an abbey is meant to be a place of God’s Fatherhood demonstrated. In this world of dysfunction where fatherhood has so often been absent or undependable, God is pouring out a healing grace that affects all aspects of life. We are not just experiencing the meeting of needs, but we are experiencing being “re-Fathered” from above! It is not just a place of YES, but a place of the FATHER’S YES, where all fulfillments are attached to His good heart! His blessing is not just material—it is much more! As God said to Abraham in a vision, so today we hear the same from the heart of the Father God, “I AM your shield and your exceedingly great reward.”
Experiencing the Father’s YES:
You will no doubt hear the word “religion” used in a negative context often here at the Abbey. Because religion can also be used in a positive vein, it is good to clarify what we mean by the term. Of course, we do not mean the kind of “pure religion” that James 1:27 commends, where acts of service are the fruit. The religion that actually keeps people from getting to the marvelous realities of God is the same thing that Jesus spent a good portion of his ministry dismissing. Throughout the Gospels, we hear Jesus saying, “The scribes and Pharisees say…., but I tell you instead…..” and his contrasting declaration was always a statement of a loving God, rather than a harsh and legalistic judge. Perhaps it was Bono (yes, the U2 rock star) who recently said it best: “Religion can be the enemy of God. It`s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship.”
Considering that sense of the word religion—what men make up about God when he is not allowed to speak for Himself, for whatever reason—religion does keep people from the real GOD and we have no apologies for pointing out the contrast! Religion is a system based on law, sin, guilt and fear, but Jesus died on the cross to change the system. Our new system is one of SPIRIT which functions BY GRACE! Man has always been seeking his source, but religion hands out “NO” answers (or sometimes, “Yes, but….only if you jump through hoops of conformity” answers). God however, sent from heaven in the form of Jesus, one all-encompassing divine YES!
What is it you desire in your deepest heart? What is the quest at the deepest part of your being? In Christ, the answer is YES—perhaps not a magic, instant yes, or a yes that is an exact fit for your sometimes convoluted expectations, but a broad over-arching YES to your destiny, your prosperity and all God’s best for your life! Can I have…..? (fill in the blank with anything that is a genuine desire in the spirit) YES! It is not just our wish--it IS Scripture: “For all God's promises are "Yes" in him. And so through him we can say "Amen," to the glory of God.” II Corinthians 1:20
And that kind of bold confidence makes “religious” people angry. They want you to work for it like they think they have to do! They want to monitor your behavior and use guilt as a motivator. They want to sprinkle caution signs everywhere, just so you keep an element of fear in your relationship with God for protective purposes. But that is the issue at the crux of it all: FEAR! When people have only heard about the Father’s YES, and have not EXPERIENCED it, they still retain an edge of fear in their lives. You cannot mentally assent to the goodness of God—you have to give your heart to the experience. The only way to know the Father’s YES is to experience his goodness spirit to Spirit—to experience the perfect love that absolutely casts out that performance-based fear! (I John 4:18) That is what the spirit of God pours out every time.
When Moses asked God to show him his glory, God answered by allowing his GOODNESS to pass before him! God is the supreme ruler of the universe, the ultimate unchallenged power, but the most amazing thing that we notice when we experience Him (which we sense first in our spirits, but it readily spills out into our emotions and even our physicality) is that His power is never separate from his intense and overwhelming love and desire to share Himself with us! As the best of Fathers, His love is the motivating factor for all he does and He gives Himself away. He IS love—a love that says YES to the deepest desires because He actually is the source of those desires. (And be assured that silly or harmful “desires” are not the deep ones—they actually arise as poor substitutes when the deep ones are unmet).
The word “abbey” comes from the word abba which means “father.” You might remember it from Romans 8:15-16 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba,Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
So, an abbey is meant to be a place of God’s Fatherhood demonstrated. In this world of dysfunction where fatherhood has so often been absent or undependable, God is pouring out a healing grace that affects all aspects of life. We are not just experiencing the meeting of needs, but we are experiencing being “re-Fathered” from above! It is not just a place of YES, but a place of the FATHER’S YES, where all fulfillments are attached to His good heart! His blessing is not just material—it is much more! As God said to Abraham in a vision, so today we hear the same from the heart of the Father God, “I AM your shield and your exceedingly great reward.”
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