Making Disciples

 Thank the Lord we have had really beautiful weather over the last week here in western Washington.  The sky has been crystal clear and blue, the sun has been shining brightly, and the days have been very cold.  We have regularly dropped into the 20's at night and the days struggle to get out of the 30's.  The mountains have started to pick up snow again and all is again beautiful in the area.

There is a lot that has been going on in the background over the last few weeks since our church planter training, but I won't get into that just yet.  I continue to have this internal battle every day asking myself if I've done everything the Lord asked me to do.  That's a really hard thing that not all of my Christian friends here understand.  The only way I can explain it is that when you've put aside your life and moved your family across the country because the King asked you to, you always have this pressure to make every minute count.  Add to that my nature that is bent on taking action and you have a recipe for anxiety, which I have experienced to a high degree lately.  Unfortunately much of this pressure comes from myself, and what I am finding is that Jesus wants me to bring these tensions and anxieties to Him.

Lately at EFC I have had the privilege of teaching on the Exodus, specifically focusing on the life of Moses.  I have long said that I am the main beneficiary of teaching because it forces me to study hard and pray over what I'm teaching on.  In doing this with Moses I have gained a fresh understanding of this man of God and what he was about.  Like me, you might have read many commentaries on his life and absorbed much of what the writer saw in the life of Moses, and there are many good things to note.  My takeaway from it was pretty simple though.  For much of his journey that he was on, Moses was alone and incapable of doing the job on his own.  If you read through just the first 7 chapters of Exodus you will see a man who was given a very specific task by God himself, but who wrestled with that task and many times came back to God and asked Him to just find someone else for the job.  Moses had many doubts and many doubting moments, but the best thing he did was to always take it back to the Lord himself.

This has been a huge piece of learning for me.  I tend to talk with Amanda about burdens I'm bearing, but so many times she is helpless to do anything about them.  Sometimes even talking about them with her raises her anxiety level to the level that mine is, and that isn't fair.  I don't detect that Moses did that.  You notice every time something happened that was difficult, when people turned their backs on him and questioned his call, when he was scared or feeling helpless, he always came back to God with it.  Notice also what God's reaction to this was.  God didn't fry him with a lightning bolt, set him on fire, or drive him into the wilderness to be abandoned. God listened to him and responded very specifically to what he was saying.  But God didn't let Moses go back to his former life or let him off the hook. 

So I too am learning to take these anxieties to the Lord himself.  I have had many frank and honest prayers with him in the last few weeks.  Several times I have even asked the Lord why He didn't just leave me alone and not call me here to Washington.  Those are the intense and raw prayers, and the Lord has been so faithful and patient with me even in those times.  He hasn't whisked me back to the life we used to have because I'm convinced He doesn't want that for us.  He wants to change us so we can be instruments in changing others here.  It always starts with us first though.

Opportunities to Disciple
Over the last two weeks I've reconnected with a couple of guys here who I've been out of touch with for quite a while.  They both are dealing with their own issues daily and at times have surrendered to those to their own detriment.  The blessing for me has been in spending time with them talking about their walk with the Lord.  One has not allowed Jesus into his heart yet but is interested in what the Christian life offers, although he struggles to lay down his life for Jesus.  Another professes to know Jesus but is struggling in sin.  Both of these guys have said they are interested in meeting regularly for discipleship.  This is a GREAT thing!

I have come to realize that I have taken too lightly Jesus's command to "go and make disciples."  As someone who grew up in church culture, I believed often that it was about getting someone across the line to pray the "sinner's prayer" to accept Jesus into their heart.  After that, who cares?  They're saved, right?  Now I'm seeing firsthand the effects of that kind of thinking.  We have tons of people here who believe they are Christians but who produce no fruit.  We have supposed Christians who continually struggle with the same sins habitually who believe that simply asking forgiveness is good enough to get them right with God so they can keep doing what they were doing.  They are slaves to a terrible master who is bent on their destruction.

 And when I look for freedom he puts more chains on me,
Strangles my hope so that I live like a zombie,
What masters house can this be, that when I look for freedom he still deceives me?
If there’s a God I screamed, “Answer me!”
I didn’t expect an answer to be received...

-Josh Garrels, Sisu, Album:  Over the Oceans

Luke 15:  ¹⁰ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

In fact, if you care to look it up, Jesus said over and over and over again that we must repent of our sins.  Asking forgiveness for them and repenting from them are two very different things, yet church culture often just focuses on asking forgiveness.  It is entirely possible that many who have said the "sinner's prayer" will not wind up in Heaven  because they didn't do it from the heart.  They were just uttering words of a magic formula.

Matthew 7:21-23New International Version (NIV)

True and False Disciples

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Like many Christians, I have been disobedient to make disciples.  I thought that was for someone else to do, like the missionaries in other countries.  However that command applies to all Christians and that is job number 1 while we are on this earth.  In not doing that, I have disobeyed.

I have been praying for people who want to be discipled and now have had 2 step forward.  What a rich blessing this is!  This is an opportunity to walk together with another person in their struggles and in my own, while both of us walk toward the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.  Salvation is a process that only begins with a person inviting Jesus into their heart.

In a nutshell, that's what we are seeking to do here in western Washington.  We want to be disciples who make disciples.  We want to train those around us so they can do the same with others in their circles.  It really isn't complicated, but it is messy, and that's why so many in church culture don't get involved like this.  It is a lot more comfortable to stay behind my own four walls, or to stay behind the four walls of the church on Sunday, and to leave other people's lives to themselves because "their life is their own."  I'll have more thoughts on this in a future post.

For now, we'll be making some big announcements in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.  God is moving us forward on the plan that He had for us all along.  It is an exciting and anxiety-inducing time for our family.  Please be in prayer for us and for the ministry here.

Church Planter Training

 

Another great sunrise over the Cascade Mountains.

Fall has officially come to Seattle, and the rain has increased.  The mountains are starting to pick up some snow and our days are very gray of late.  People on the streets are scarce as the temperatures have cooled a lot and people want to stay inside where it is dry.  Days are now less than 10 hours long and we will soon have only 8 ours of light.  

It's interesting that the change in seasons is accompanied by changes in moods.  While we used to be able to enjoy sunrises and sunshine all day every day, now moods are darker.  Many attribute these changes to the psychological state of mankind, who needs sunshine and human companionship.  What isn't acknowledged always is the darkness of the spiritual realm here.  The enemy doesn't want people to know about Jesus.  The enemy wants to muddy the water of spiritual things by dividing people into groups, with some following one line of thought and others following a different one.  The tragedy is that there is only one way, and few people here have found Him.  

Matthew 7:13-14New Living Translation (NLT)

¹³ “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell^[a] is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. ¹⁴ But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

Last week we were privileged to go to a church planter training in Lynnwood that was put on by Seattle Church Planting.  This is the same conference that we got to attend for 2 hours last year when I came back to Seattle for my job interview and eventual hire in Everett.  This time, however, I took most of the week off from that job so that I could learn how to plant a church.

We were joined that week by Rick Whitaker, missions pastor of Humble Area’s First Baptist Church.  This was yet another tangible expression of their level of support for us and for the calling God has placed on our hearts to come here to Everett.  Rick has been a friend for a long time and it was especially fun to have him in our home for the week, catching up on events from his recent mission trips.

The boys were particularly interested in hearing about how people in the jungles of Peru eat grub worms for a meal.  Rick showed them pictures and a video of the mission team cooking and eating these critters. 

The training itself was very good and very overwhelming.  I was confronted each day with the fact that I’ve never been down this road before and am walking blindly forward in a human sense.  Fortunately for me, Jesus continues to lead the way.  My discomfort with all of this comes from the realization that leading and leadership in God’s kingdom is opposite of what we see in the world.  The world says you can only take someone down a path that you yourself have traveled before.  Nope.  The world says that leaders need to be out in front, confident, secure, and have worked extremely hard to get to where you are.  While I am out in front, I admit to lacking confidence at times, and the only reason I’m in this position is because God has brought our family to this point.  While some of you may read that as a bad thing or may be tempted to think that what I’m describing is something you should feel sorry about, I can tell you that God is in control of this thing.  What you are witnessing is His remaking of a person, which often turns them and everything they think they knew completely upside down.

I left last week’s training with a long list of things to do to prepare to launch a church in north Everett.  On the surface those things seem overwhelming because the list is so very long and time is so very short.  In the still, quiet moments with he Lord I feel Him telling me to simply follow, to do the tasks that I am given right now, and to trust Him to make it work out in the end.  There is genuine peace for me in that kind of approach.  Let’s face it, God doesn’t need my particular skill-set to accomplish what He has set out to do in Everett.  He can do it with our without me.  The only concern I have is what degree of surrender I have to His will.  That doesn’t make a lot of sense in earthly terms, but makes perfect sense in His kingdom.

Our immediate tasks for now involve deciding on a name for this new church, developing and refining the vision and values of it, and continuing to be out in the neighborhood and schools to connect with people and see what God does.

Family Fall Festival
Last week ended on a good ministry note with our participation in the EFC Family Fall Festival at Family Tree Apartments.  All of us got costumes on and went to Family Tree to play games with kids, eat candy, and enjoy a good time together.  This is yet another way that EFC reaches out to families at the apartment, and we were able to connect again with many people that we have not seen in a while.

 

In private, I continue to go through days of great encouragement and other days of wrestling with the Lord.  I am so fortunate at work to have the ability to stop what I'm doing and pray, which is really what I need to be doing above all things right now.  At work there is a current push called "Walktober" which is an initiative to get people up and walking rather than sitting at their desk all day.  I have used this to go prayer walk on the city streets during lunch breaks, and to just take a few private minutes to walk with the Lord and talk to Him.  He is forcing me to confront inner selfishness that still remains, and I'm bringing to him my huge feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy, and fear of the future.  I've been told recently that we as a family stepped out in faith just by agreeing to come here, and that is true.  Our next moves will be an even bigger stepping out in faith as we consider when to officially start the church, what it will look like, and what we spend our days doing.  And even as we consider those things in the future, our God is already preparing us right now for the work.  Truly we are blessed to be on such a great adventure with Him.